The Abuse Stops Here

A nation which demonstrates weakness, or which shows that it lacks the will to defend itself, will not long endure. During one period of history in 1975, the United States risked such a fate, until courage and nerve of President Gerald Ford demonstrated to the world that we were willing to protect the lives of our citizens.

Professor John Greene at Cazanovia College, explains that American flirted with passivity at the same time that the barbaric government of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge was becoming ever more aggressive. The bloodthirsty thugs who took illegitimate control of Cambodia's government had not only proved that they were willing to murder millions of their country's own citizens, but they had also captured an American ship, the Mayaguez; they assumed that America's lessened posture, in the wake of its humiliation in Vietnam, meant that the United States would not dare to defend itself:

This was not the first hostile action of the new Khmer Rouge government in the weeks following American withdrawal from Cambodia and Vietnam. Ten days prior to the Mayaguez incident, they had seized and released several Thai fishing boats; eight days earlier, they had fired on a South Korean ship and unsuccessfully attempted to board her; six days before, several South Vietnamese craft had been confiscated, and five days before, a Panamanian ship had been stopped and detained for thirty-six hours. Nor was it the first seizure of an American commercial vessel. Over the preceding twenty-three years, Ecuador had seized twenty-three vessels and had beaten and shot at numerous American crews. Rather than react in a hostile fashion, previous administrations had paid fines to secure the release of the ships.

America had turned onto a dangerous path: allowed pirates or hostile regimes to capture our ships, and then paying ransom money to get them back. This pattern of activity only encourages more piracy and more attacks on our ships.

To change this pattern would require boldness. President Gerald Ford is the leader who decided that America should stop taking abuse and stand up to protect the lives and freedom of its citizens.

Mere hours after the capture of the Mayaguez, President Ford ordered the U.S. Marines to land on a small island owned by Cambodia, and at the same time ordered the Air Force to begin bombing over Cambodia. Quickly, the Khmer Rouge released both the ship and its sailors.

President Ford had demonstrated that he would take decisive action, and that he would not allow Americans to be bullied. The United States gained, or regained, some respect among the nations of the world.

Obtaining Full Civil Rights for African-Americans

The general outline of the struggle by the Blacks for civil rights in the United States during the 1950's and 1960's is well known: Martin Luther King, voting rights, desegregation, and bus boycotts. But in addition to these general notions, more specific facts can shed light on the details of the process by which African-Americans gained full access to the rights first delivered to them a century earlier, immediately after the Civil War: in the late 1860's and early 1870's, Blacks had more access to voting and other civil rights than they would have in the 1930's or 1940's. Things had actually regressed rather than progressed. When the Democrat party gained control of the federal government, in the forms of Woodrow Wilson and FDR, segregation was introduced into many social institutions. (Wilson actually discouraged Black students from applying to universities.) It would not be until the late 1940's that progress toward civil rights would resume: Eisenhower began integrated the Army, forcing Truman to finish the process. When Eisenhower moved from being a general to being a president, he continued the integration process: he ordered the famous 101st Airborne unit to integrate the high school in Little Rock, Arkansas - when the governor of the state, a member of the Democrat party, had refused to integrate the school, and had in fact sent the state's police to keep Black students out.

The Republicans carried the move toward from integration from the 1950's into the 1960's: when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was presented to Congress, Cengage's history textbook tells us, it was clear to President Johnson that

the Democratic Party would continue trying to block it. Consequently, he and his allies in the U.S. Senate courted crucial Republican support for curtailing a

Democrat-led filibuster. Finally, the Republicans defeated the Democrats, passed the Civil Rights Act, and ensured that African-Americans in the south would have their full civil rights. Martin Luther King's dream was fulfilled by his friends, the Republicans in Congress. Despite the anti-Black sentiments of the Democrat Party, the Republicans won, ensuring equality for all Americans.

Flying Spies Save Lives

During the Cold War (1946 - 1990), aircraft flying around the world gathered data about potential threats to the lives of Americans, and this data helped defense planners design ways to protect us. The Washington Times reports that

Beginning with the first manned U-2 flight in 1956 and culminating with satellite missions that produced detailed images of the vast Soviet landmass, the "eyes in the sky" closely monitored Soviet missile and atomic programs, permitting arms-limitation agreements that truly benefited all of mankind.

Sometimes we think of military intelligence as part of war, but it is much more about keeping peace. Rather than win a war, it is better to make sure that the war never happens in the first place, and that's largely what happened between the United States and the Soviet Union. Much of the airborne surveillance was organized by President Eisenhower,

whose repugnance at the thought of a nuclear war led him to push for the overflight programs even though he realized the risk of provoking a confrontation with the Soviets. As Richard Helms, the director of central intelligence, later summarized, “For the first time, American policymakers had accurate, credible information on Soviet strategic assets ... It was the greatest bargain and the greatest triumph of the Cold War.”

Eisenhower knew that a nuclear war would be unspeakably horrible, and that the full power of military intelligence could save the human race from this frightfulness. Keeping millions of families peacefully safe, however, had its price.

The flights were highly dangerous. Crew members, chiefly drawn from the Air Force and Navy and their signal units, were briefed on the perils involved. According to a National Security Agency historian, “Of the 152 cryptologists who lost their lives during the Cold War, 64 were engaged in aerial reconnaissance.” Families of the downed airmen were never told what happened to them, only that they had been on “secret missions.”

Of course, out of all the spy pilots shot down, not all of them died. The most famous pilot was captured alive: Francis Gary Powers. He airplane was attacked by Soviet defenses on May 1, 1960. He was taken prisoner as he parachuted to safety. Although the Soviets pretended to be shocked and offended by the fact that the United States was taking photographs over their land, they were in fact even more active in spying on us: their network of on-the-ground spies in America exceeded any activity we managed to organize in Russia.

The Cold War is now over, and we were saved from having to face a nuclear war by the sophistication and bravery of military intelligence gathering.

Whittaker Chambers - Friend or Foe?

In the complex world of counter-espionage and double-agents, it is difficult to sort out who is on whose side. Whittaker Chambers, technically a member of the Communist Party and paid by the Soviet Union to undermine and sabotage the U.S. government, is remembered largely as a friend to the United States, because he eventually helped expose the spy rings operated in America. The Washington Times writes that Chambers

is remembered for testifying before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1948 about the penetration of the Soviet spy apparatus into the highest level of the U.S. government. He detailed his own involvement as a courier for the communists and fingered Alger Hiss - a friend, former State Department official and (at the time of Chambers' accusation) president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - as a fellow operative.

The evidence against Alger Hiss was both shocking and undeniable: not only an employee of the federal government, but one who had access and influence in foreign affairs. In the course of revealing evidence against Hiss, Whittaker Chambers lost his career and reputation. Spies are useless, once they have revealed themselves in public. Chambers told about his activities in court, sacrificing his career in order to protect America from Communist spies.

Chambers was viewed as a hero who stood up under considerable pressure, in a sense destroying himself in order to witness to the truth about an inhuman system that had beguiled many.

Whether in the year 1948, or in the year 2011, systems like Communism and Socialism present themselves as viable and kind-hearted options. One must look past the rhetoric about helping one's fellow human being (who could argue against that?) in order to see that these systems are built upon flawed assumptions about human nature, and are doomed, despite any good intentions, to become ruthless tyrannies.

Growth Resumes

After the Great Depression and WWII, the United States could look back on thirty-six difficult years (1929 - 1945). Resuming a peacetime economy, people were eager for prosperity. Cengage's history book tells us that

Newer U.S. industries, such as chemicals and electronics, quickly came to dominate the world marketplace. The Corning Glass Company reported that most of its sales during the mid-1950's came from products that had not even been on the market in 1940. General Electric proudly proclaimed that "progress is our most important product."

These advancements in technology led to changes in economics. The notions of “working class” and “middle class” and “upper class” were no longer quite accurate. Factory workers often enjoyed a middle class lifestyle, and people at all levels saw themselves as enjoying economic mobility - the opportunity to change their income levels. Given the high level of economic freedom, people often did not fit, or want to fit, into a simple ‘class’ structure of low, middle, and upper. Some ideologies, however, have been slow to grasp the waning of the class structure. Temple University's Mark Levin writes:

The Marxist class-struggle formulation, which pits the proletariat (“working class”) against the bourgeoisie (“wealthy merchant class”), still serves as the principal theoretical and rhetorical justification for the Statist's assault on the free market. But it is an anathema to the free market in that the individual has unto himself the power to make of himself what he chooses. There is no static class structure layered atop the free market. The free market is a mutable, dynamic, and vibrant system of individual interactions that engages all aspects of the human character.

The freedom of individuals to shape their own economic roles, and with them, their cultural and social roles, depends upon a free market: allowing people to make decisions about buying and selling:

the free market is a vital bulwark against statism. And it would appear the Statist agrees, for he is relentless in his assault on it. Indeed, the Statist’s rejection of the Constitution’s limits on federal power is justified primarily, albeit not exclusively, on material grounds.

Although inefficient and indirect, allowing millions of people to make their own economic choices adds up to a whirlwind of business activity which ultimately brings prosperity to both the individual and the nation.

The Making of a First Lady

While the wife of the president has no power or authority under the U.S. Constitution, she has long held an influential and symbolic role. One need only think of Mary Todd Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, or Jackie Kennedy to see this. What makes a successful First Lady? Laura Bush writes that “one summer,” as a graduate student at the University of Texas after completing her Bachelor’s Degree, she

spent nearly every day reading the classics of Russian literature, traveling through the frigid, snow-laden novels of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

An appreciation for world literature is an important cultural skill, given that the First Lady is often involved in diplomatic receptions. While working on her Master’s Degree, she recalls spending days in the library school,

a treasure trove of rare manuscripts from Shakespeare’s First Folio to manuscripts by the Bronte sisters and John Keats and the page proofs from James Joyce’s Ulysses. I was learning about the conservation of books in a place with some of the most beautiful pieces of literature in the world.

Representing, even if unofficially, the United States, the First Lady needs to be conversant with history and culture.

Clinton Applies Federalism

One of the successes, or apparent successes, of the Clinton administration was a welfare reform program. President Bill Clinton, according to Cengage's history book,

used his 1996 State of the Union address, his last before having to stand for reelection, to declare that "the era of big government is over" and began working with congressional Republicans to fulfill his goal of overhauling the social-welfare system. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) represented a series of compromises. Clinton voiced concern over cuts in the food stamp program and in benefits for recent immigrants, but he embraced the law's central feature. It replaced the AFDC program, which had long provided funds and services to poor families headed by single unemployed women, with a flexible system of block grants to individual states. The new program, entitled Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), allowed the fifty states to design, under general federal guidelines, their own welfare-to-work programs.

This move, as a political compromise, contained both good and bad. Allowing fifty different states to explore program possibilities allowed for expansive experimentation and creativity, much more than a rigidly-dictated program from the central government. There was also an attempt to change the emphasis from supporting families to empowering families to support themselves. Welfare program had previously done great damage, by intimating to men that they need not support their families - a man could father a child and leave, knowing that his family would be paid for by the government when he chose not to support it.

Both Clinton and the congressional Republicans took their cues from the federalist principle: the ability of the individual states to make their own decisions in certain matters. As Temple University's Mark Levin writes,

Whatever kind of experimentation states and local communities may engage in, it is correct to say that they serve as useful examples for adoption, modification, or rejection by other states and localities. In the 1980s, Oregon's welfare reform experiment was so successful that it became a model not only for other states, but also for the federal government. Milwaukee's experiment with school vouchers sparked similar efforts across the country. Experimentation properly understood is a dynamic characteristic of federalism, which exists among, between, and within the various states. That is not to say that all experimentation produces desirable results. When Maryland passed a computer-services tax, its burgeoning technology sector threatened to relocate to neighboring Virginia, which had no such tax. Maryland repealed the tax. But other states learned from Maryland's experience.

Whatever Clinton's motives - he certainly did not believe or agree with his own words about reducing the size of government, given that he endorsed a program of socialized health care - and whether or not the 1996 welfare reform was a success - the data are ambiguous - we can see the principle of federalism at work in this political event.