David Boaz

The parallel Tehran wants us to see between its Holocaust-themed cartoons and the controversial Danish ones is not actually there.

NPR reports on a new Florida law that requires the teaching of American history in the schools and sets up some rules for how it should be taught. At the beginning of the report I was amused by the description of the impetus for the law:

Mike Fasano was a state Senator from New Port Richey, Florida, just north of Tampa. After visiting some schools he learned that students often didn’t know the name of their town’s mayor, the name of the state’s lieutenant governor, or even the difference between the Florida legislature and the U.S. Congress.

The name of the lieutenant governor? Let’s see . . . kids who can’t vote can’t name a public official who has no power. And that’s a problem? But OK, they should know the difference between the legislature and the Congress. And so:

To help remedy that, Fasano proposed a bill recently signed into law that requires Florida schools to teach the history of the United States from the period of discovery to the present. Nothing controversial about that. The clause that alarmed historians was the one that seemed to suggest that any discussions of controversial events that were open to different interpretations would be off-limits.

Indeed, the bill does say:

American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed, shall be viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable, and shall be defined as the creation of a new nation based largely on the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.

And that has stirred controversy. Teachers and educrats and a Washington lobbyist for historians (!) all complain that history is not just “facts,” that interpretation is essential for understanding what happened. And of course they’re right. The first problem is that millions of things happened every day in 400 years of American history (note that “400 years” assumes that American history began with the arrival of European settlers). You can’t tell kids every one of those things, so already you’re picking and choosing among facts, based on some theory or assumption about what’s important.

And then of course history is full of controversies: Did the British treat the colonists unfairly? Did the colonists treat the Indians unfairly? Were the costs of the American Revolution worth it? Were the Founders hypocrites to proclaim their devotion to liberty while holding slaves? And so on and so on, right up to the dropping of the atomic bomb, the debacle of Vietnam, and the contemporary questions of whether either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush was the worst president in American history.

But the mere listing of a few historical controversies illustrates the difficulty of deciding on a “right” answer. Whose interpretation should be taught to all students in government schools? Should we tell students that Jefferson was a hero or a hypocrite? That the 600,000 deaths in the Civil War were or were not worth it? That the bombing of Hiroshima was a war crime or a necessary measure to save even more lives? That FDR saved capitalism or transformed a federal republic into a centralized welfare state?

There are no right answers to these questions. (Well, there are, but apparently not everyone sees them.) So the teaching of history becomes a political struggle: Which faction will get to impose its view on millions of children?

The way to avoid political fights like these is to depoliticize them. Take away the power for anyone to impose his or her views on all the children. People used to expect the state to impose one religion on the whole society. When, nevertheless, people came to hold differing religious beliefs, Europe went through the Wars of Religion. And out of those conflicts came a new understanding: religious toleration and the separation of church and state. Let everyone worship as he chooses, and let no one impose religion on those with different beliefs.

The separation of school and state would accomplish the same thing in education: No more political fights over school prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, gay teachers, evolution, dress codes, sex education, or historical interpretation. Let every family choose schools that reflect their own values or otherwise best meet their educational needs. And if we can’t achieve separation, we could at least adopt toleration: Let all parents send their children to schools they choose, without financial penalty.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Finance Committee, is asking Medicare/Medicaid administrator Mark McClellan why two senior Medicare investigators spend up to two months each year “on travel to popular vacation destinations.” Grassley wants to know, “What did American taxpayers and Medicare beneficiaries get for the travels of Rollow and Jencks?”

Good for him. As I suggested in another recent item, it’s better for Grassley and the Finance Committee to be exercising their oversight of federal programs than to run amok through American society, investigating the Red Cross, American University, the Nature Conservancy, and other charities and nonprofits. A top Grassley aide has met 500 times with nonprofit officials as part of his investigations and hearing preparations.

So better to remember that the role of the United States Senate Committee on Finance is not to regulate American society, but to oversee the finances of the federal government. In that light, the investigations into wasteful spending at Medicare and the Legal Services Corporation are to be welcomed.

Still, you have to consider: The budget for Legal Services is about $326 million, and the allegedly wasteful spending probably amounts to a few million dollars. In the case of Medicare, Grassley is complaining about $75,000 in travel expenses. Total spending on Medicare will rise by $52 billion this year, to $382 billion. Medicaid will cost taxpayers another $200 billion in FY2007. The federal deficit is projected to total $1.76 trillion over the coming decade. And the government’s total fiscal imbalance, as calculated by Kent Smetters and Cato’s Jagadeesh Gokhale, is now $63 trillion.

When the Senate Finance Committee investigates $75,000 in suspicious travel at Medicare or doubled meal expenses at Legal Services, it is engaging in sleight of hand. Like a magician who draws your attention to his right hand while he moves things around with his left, the committee is trying to divert our attention from the fact that it is ignoring these massive problems while it gets favorable headlines for penny-ante stunts.

Do Republicans still support limited government? Don’t laugh–there are still people around who would answer “yes.” On this site we’ve spent plenty of time on Republicans spending like drunken Democrats, nationalizing education, expanding entitlements, declaring the president an absolute monarch, embracing Wilsonian foreign policy, and so on. The latest just adds insult to injury.

A lead story in the New York Times is headlined, “G.O.P. Deserts One of Its Own for Lieberman.” Yes, Republicans are actually supporting the Sore Loserman for reelection rather than their own nominee. More specifically, Lieberman is being officially supported by Connecticut’s three Republican congressmen, Newt Gingrich, and William Kristol. The White House and the Republican National Committee are “staying out of this one.” Gov. Jodi Rell and Sen. John McCain are endorsing “the Republican nominee” but not campaigning for him. (His name is Alan Schlesinger, by the way.) Sen. Norm Coleman says, “From America’s perspective, it would be a good thing for Joe Lieberman to be back in the Senate.”

And that’s because Lieberman supports the good old Republican principles of low taxes, less regulation, limited government, and a strong national defense, right?

Well, not quite. He does support President Bush’s floundering war in Iraq. But as Robert Novak pointed out last week:

Lieberman followed the liberal line in opposing oil drilling in ANWR, Bush tax cuts, overtime pay reform, the energy bill, and bans on partial-birth abortion and same-sex marriage. Similarly, he voted in support of Roe vs. Wade and for banning assault weapons and bunker buster bombs. His only two pro-Bush votes were to fund the Iraq war and support missile defense (duplicating Sen. Hillary Clinton’s course on both).

Lieberman’s most recent ratings by the American Conservative Union were 7 percent in 2003, zero in 2004 and 8 percent in 2005.

I actually agree with him on a couple of those votes, though I wouldn’t expect that conservatives would. The National Taxpayers Union says that he votes with taxpayers 9 percent of the time, worse than Chris Dodd or Barbara Boxer.

Only if you believe that continuing to support the war in Iraq outweighs all other issues combined can a conservative reasonably support Joe Lieberman. And apparently a lot of Republicans and conservatives are willing to toss aside his commitment to high taxes, higher spending, more regulation, and entitlement expansion in order to get that vote for Bush’s war.

Have blogs become part of the mainstream? Consider the evidence of a front-page story in Saturday’s New York Times, which reports on reaction to the federal court ruling that the NSA wiretapping program is illegal. The first three legal experts quoted are bloggers; two of the quotes are from the blogs, one appears to be from an interview with a lawyer-blogger. Stop writing those law review articles, legal scholars, and get thee to Blogger.

The Wall Street Journal‘s “Remembrances” column notes the death this week of Alfredo Stroessner this way:

Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, the military strongman who ruled Paraguay from 1954 until 1989. Among 20th century Latin American leaders, only Cuban President Fidel Castro has served longer.

Why is Stroessner a “military strongman” while Castro is “Cuban President”? Both came to power through bullets, not ballots, and ruled with an iron hand. Stroessner actually held elections every five years, sometimes with opposition candidates, though of course there was no doubt of the outcome. Castro dispensed with even the pretense of elections. Both ruled with the support of the army. In Cuba’s case the armed forces were headed by Castro’s brother, and indeed he has just turned over power to his brother who heads the military. So why does the Journal not give Stroessner his formal title of “president,” and why does it not describe Castro accurately as a “military strongman”?

From the Washington Post:

Former Comverse Technology chief executive Jacob “Kobi” Alexander was declared a fugitive by the FBI, which issued an alert calling for his arrest. An international manhunt was launched late last month, shortly before authorities unsealed a criminal complaint.

Speaking of my claim yesterday that “people spend other people’s money far less efficiently than their own,” this just in from the Associated Press:

The federal program that provides legal help to poor Americans turns away half of its applicants for lack of resources. But that hasn’t stopped its executives from lavishing expensive meals, chauffeur-driven cars and foreign trips on themselves.

Agency documents obtained by The Associated Press detail the luxuries that executives of the Legal Services Corp. have given themselves with federal money — from $14 “Death by Chocolate” desserts to $400 chauffeured rides to locations within cab distance of their offices.

The government-funded corporation also has a spacious headquarters in Washington’s tony Georgetown district — with views of the Potomac River and a rent significantly higher than other tenants in the same building.

Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is upset. Maybe at last he can turn his attention from oversight of private charities and universities to his actual job, oversight of federal spending.

A big story on the front page of the Washington Post Style section is illustrated with a beautiful, stylized photo of new CBS anchor Katie Couric. In tiny letters almost invisible to the naked eye, the photo source is identified as CBS. In other words, it’s a publicity photo, not a news photo. There’s another glamorous CBS photo dominating page 8, where the story jumps.

Would the Post print a corporate news release? Not likely, though smaller papers do. Is that different from using a corporate photo? Perhaps. Should the Federal Newspaper Commission look into the use of corporate photos and corporate news releases? Oh, right, we don’t have a Federal Newspaper Commission, because we have a First Amendment.

Why, then, is something called the Federal Communications Commission investigating the use of “video news releases” by television broadcasters (as reported on the front page of the Business section the same day)? Oh, right, because somehow the First Amendment doesn’t give broadcasters the same free speech rights that newspapers enjoy. Prodded by the anti-free-speech lobby Center for Media and Democracy, the FCC wants to know if broadcasters clearly label “video news releases” produced by corporations when they are used on local news programs. CMD is well within its rights to criticize the use of VNRs. But when it calls for government regulation of what can and must be shown on news broadcasts, it’s calling for censorship. And censorship is far worse than “fake news” about new products on local television broadcasts.

Pathological liar Robert Reich offers a commentary on Wednesday morning’s “Marketplace Radio” (not posted yet) complaining that American companies are not lobbying for more spending on science and math education because they are unpatriotically opening labs and software design offices in India and China. So let’s see . . . he’s upset that the people of the world’s two largest countries are finally entering the modern world, and he’s upset that huge American businesses are not lobbying for more business subsidies. What a great liberal!