roundtable: Shooting Stars and Culture Wars

roundtable: Shooting Stars & Culture Wars

Shooting Stars & Culture Wars

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Mon, 23 Oct 1995 11:27:42 -0400 (EDT) 

Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 11:27:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
To: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
Subject: Shooting Stars & Culture Wars
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951023112511.4152D-100000@access1.digex.net>


----------------Original Message Posted in Multiple Lists----------------- 
-------Republication is Authorized Only When Message is Kept Intact-------
  
FINS: Communicating the Emerging Philosophy of The Information Age       
FEDERAL INFORMATION NEWS SYNDICATE                    
Vol III, Issue No. 20 (250 lines)                          October 23, 1995
    
     
                  READ THIS ISSUE OF FINS TO CONSIDER:      
                                                             
                *   Marshalling the forces of democracy
                                          
                *   A question of "How ought we live together?"
    
========================================================================= 
 
 
CLOSING THE "VALUES-GAP":
Shooting Stars & Culture Wars
By Vigdor Schreibman

   They came quietly on cats paws in the early hours of Monday morning Oct.
16, and jammed into every available space in the Mall that is the nation's
great public forum spanning between the West plaza of the US Capitol and the
Lincoln Memorial.  They came to Washington not only to protest the oppressive
evil of white supremacy, which has alienated, disfranchised, and devastated
their lives for more than four centuries--but for a "Day of Atonement."

   I'm speaking about the million or more black men who manifestly, now
comprise the civil army unmistakably commanded by Minister Louis Farrakhan,
Nation of Islam leader.  Farrakhan, sent out his order for the "Million Man
March," and black men from communities throughout the nation obeyed
Farrakhan's command, in sharp rebuke to many of the best known African
American leadership groups that question Farrakhan's leadership and opposed
the March (e.g., the Urban League, NAACP).  They arrived at the Mall with
dignity, peaceful determination, and stunning discipline, which marks the
militant organizational character of the Nation of Islam.  The "atonement"
they seek is not merely their own, which was loudly pledged.  The mindset of
white supremacy "has to die," Farrakhan insisted, "for humanity to live."

  Farrakhan's message was grim, for many commentators.  Others began to see
the handwriting on the wall.  Among the latter, Russell Baker observed in an
op-ed piece in The New York Times Oct 17, "He filled a vacuum."  Baker added:
     Politics has declined into a game for overgrown boys and their high-tech
     toys.  You win by finessing reality.  So finally it was left to Louis
     Farrakhan to act.  It made a lot of people so mad they could spit.  That
     often happens when good people have done nothing.

  The Republican "Contract with America" would exacerbate the desperate
plight of countless millions of minority, poor and oppressed Americans by
"reforming" welfare programs that are their lifeline and sharply cutting back
on many other programs that comprise the "Great Society," regulatory and
environmental safeguards, and traditional foreign policy initiatives.  While
harshly stomping on the least powerful among us, the majority leadership in
Congress would transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to the least needy,
wealthy and super rich constituents who already possess an obscene portion
of the nation's family income and wealth, which is steadly growing more
inequitable each day, as a reliable analysis discussed below discloses.

  Republicans claim that the largest share of their proposed tax cuts would
go to families with incomes under $100,000, through a $500 family tax credit.
However, families with children who are in the lowest 20 percent income
group, "would lose an average of $1,500 in income and $1,700 in health
coverage," under the Republican budget proposal, according to an analysis
released at a White House press conference Oct 13, by Dr. Laura Tyson and Dr.
Alice Rivlin, from the National Economic Council and the Office of Management
and Budget.  "Those cuts are very large," Rivlin observed, "and they dwarf
any benefit that families would get from a $500 tax credit."

   Drawing upon Rivlin's analysis, Molly Ivins (a columnist for the Fort
Worth Star-Telegram) wrote an article on "Economic Ignorance" published
in the Boston Globe Oct 20.  Ivins observed that under the Republican plan:
     * the richest 1 percent of families will each receive almost $19,000 a
year in tax breaks. The $21 billion that they would receive is 42 percent
more than the total tax relief for all families that earn less than $50,000
a year - more than 61 percent of American families.  
     * tax breaks for the richest 5 percent are $37 billion - almost as large
as the total of income and health-coverage cuts hitting all families with
children.
     * tax cuts for the wealthy are to be financed by benefit cuts to middle-
and low-income families - a massive redistribution of wealth.

  The need for progressive redistribution of income has traditionally been
supported as an essential element of public policy in the United States, to
ameliorate the inherent inequities of a capitalist economic system, as the
prophetic writings of Tom Paine first cogently argued.  This is a bedrock
principle of democratic fairness and justice, now rejected by the majority
leadership in Congress, however.  Moreover, they are determined to impose
their extremist world-view following the ruthless "politics of destruction"
advocated by Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) [Fins 3.13].


   Incited by Gingrich's politics of destruction, Republicans are attempting
to chop the heart out of the Medicare and Medicade programs to achieve their
obscene ends, and threating to "blow the place up" unless they get their way.
They are the "Unabombers of Congress," observed Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA),
at a conference of Democratic members of the Committee on Government Reform
and Oversight held Oct 18, to air complaints from senior citizens about
Republican attempts to silence their opposition to Medicare cutbacks.

   "Republicans were so *desperate* to silence opposition to their Medicare
proposal that they had members of the National Council of Senior Citizens
arrested," according to a statement released at the Oct 18 conference, by
Rep. Cardiss Collins (D-IL).  Teresa McKenna, of NCSC, told FINS that a group
of some 20 seniors had appeared Oct 11, before the House Energy and Commerce
Committee, at a scheduled mark-up of the proposed bill to reform the medicare
program, the so-called "Medicare Preservation Act of 1995" (H.R. 2425, title
XVIII).  Teresa said "they had a list of questions because no hearings had
been held on the bill," so she "stood up to ask for a hearing prior to the
markup." That way a careful assessment could be made of the merits of the
proposal, which would cut back $270 billion in benefits to poor and middle
class Americans, over seven years, largely for the purpose of transferring
that wealth to rich Republican constituents, through increased tax credits.

  In response to the protest of the senior citizens, they were charged with
disrupting a hearing by Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R-VA), chairman of the
Energy and Commerce Committee, who ordered Capitol Police to, "arrest those
persons." Bliley then adjourned the mark-up, had the lights turned off in the
hearing room, and left the seniors standing there, McKenna said.  They were
subsequently taken into custody and placed in a lock-up, where they were
"held without food and drink," although they were eventually "released
without charges," McKenna added.   Among the group locked up, McKenna noted,
were "Burt Seidman, age 75; Joseph O'Rourke, age 90; and two senior citizens
in wheel chairs."

  That treatment was very different from the way Republicans dealt with the
American Medical Association's criticism of the bill.  "Instead, Republicans
*bought* the AMA's support for its proposal by promising not to cut the money
doctors receive to provide services under Medicare," Rep. Collins stated.

  Incited by Gingrich's politics of destruction, Republicans have also
mounted a ruthless campaign to severely constrain the political advocacy of
voluntary associations.  In legislation known as the Istook amendment for its
principle promoter, Rep. Ernest J. Istook, Jr. (R-OK), Republicans have
targeted nonprofit organizations to limit their "political advocacy." The
term has been defined so broadly that the measure would prohibit expressing
opinions and filing legal briefs, subject voluntary associations to a species
of "bounty hunters" encouraged to find and harass suspected offenders, and
subject them to intrusive and inordinately burdensome reporting requirements.

  Recipients of Federal grants are already prohibited from using Federal
funds for lobbying.  The Istook amendment to a bill making appropriations for
the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education for FY
1996  [H.R. 2127, title VI], narrowly passed by the House August 4, by a vote
of 219 to 208, would also prohibit Federal grants to an applicant who has
expended more than 5% of their own funds for political advocacy, in any one
of five previous fiscal years.  Anthony Lewis, observed in an an op-ed piece
in The New York Times, Oct 2, "The American Red Cross, for example, would be
limited in the advice it could give to deal with emergencies."

   These non-profit groups are the backbone of democracy, essential to secure
the social and environmental well being of the nation; public goods that are
disregarded by the private marketplace.  They received Federal grants covered
under the Istook amendment amounting to $24.5 billion in FY 94, according to 
Congressional testimony by Gary D. Bass, of OMB Watch, Sept 28.  Private
contractors carry out similar functions in performing public works that serve
the economic and security interests of the nation.  They received $196.4
billion in Federal contract payments in FY 1994, eight-fold more than non-
profits.  Far too large a part of such payments are squandered on $7,600
Pentagon coffee pots, according to Bass, or "thrown away" on information
technology, at a cost of more than $200 billion dollars during the past
decade, according to a finding by the Senate Aug 4.  Yet private contractors
would not be similarly limited in their expenditures for political advocacy.

  The Istook amendment, if passed by both houses of Congress and signed by
the President, would clearly impinge upon freedom of speech, the right of the
people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances protected by the First Amendment.  "The love of democracy is being
smothered by these folks," Steve Protulis of NCSC observed Oct 18.  That is
also the implicit conclusion of a report issued by the Congressional Research
Service on "Constitutional Issues Raised By Proposals To Restrict Privately
Financed Advocacy Activities of Federal Grantees," July 28, 1995.

  Nevertheless, scared by the likelihood of Senate opposition to the Istook
amendment, the Gingrich Unabombers have threatened to "block all legislation,
including the budget reconciliation and spending bills, if Congress fails to
support [Istook]," according to a statement of freshman Rep. David McIntosh
(R-IN), appearing in The Hill newspaper Oct 18.  Last month McIntosh was
caught red handed when his House Subcommittee on Government Reform and
Oversight prepared and distributed a false document at a hearing, Sept 28,
intended to discredit the Alliance for Justice, opponents of the Istook
amendment.  On Tuesday, October 24, 1995, it is expected that Rep. Louise
Slaughter (D-NY) will introduce a House Resolution regarding the incident.

   McIntosh is not a newcomer to dirty politics by the people's
representatives in Washington.  He was executive director of Vice President
Dan Quayle's Council on Competitiveness, widely known as a back door channel
for heavy hitters seeking to defeat OMB regulatory actions during the
administration of President George Bush. 

    This list of destructive Republican behavior goes on and on.  So what is
the likely outcome: a million man army of fully engaged black citizens,
commanded by a widely distrusted but utterly brilliant, General of racial and
inner city strife;  tens of millions of experienced senior citizens mobilized
to defend their paramount needs; America's democratic political advocacy
backbone, and its massive constituency, called to action.  Extremism of
elected officials comes at a cost. Just like shooting stars that expire by
their own ungovernable fires, the radical violation of our democratic creed
by Speaker Gingrich and Republican opportunists drawn into his orbit, cannot
long survive the inexorable wrath of democratic advocacy.

  Conservative political pundit Kevin Phillips, who in 1969 predicted the
"Reagan revolution," has published three volumes during the 1990s, predicting
a deep reversal of political currents.  Rep. Gingrich is described as a
"consummate con artist," in a profile appearing in The New Yorker, Oct 9,
based on interviews with the Cato Institute's Ed Crane, conservative
godfather Paul Weyrich, and other Republicans now distancing themselves from
the Speaker of the House.

   The renown futurist planner Hason Ozbekhan has observed that the question
presented to a technological civilization "surely ... is no longer "Can I"?
it is "Ought I"?  Pope John Paul II made the same point with respect to the
aspiration of Americans to sustain democracy, during his homily, Sun Oct 8,
at Oriole Park at Camden Yards Baltimore.  He said: 
     One hundred thirty years ago, President Abraham Lincoln asked whether a 
     nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all
     men are created equal" could "long endure."  President Lincoln's
     question is no less a question for the present generation of Americans. 
     Democracy cannot be sustained without a hard commitment to certain moral
     truths about the human person and human community.  The basic question
     before a democratic society is: "How ought we live together"?

   While there is broad agreement about the question, there are no clear
answers.  Indeed, this generation of Americans must invent its own response.
In the past, one could touch and see the threats to our individual and
collective existence, and respond directly.  During the 20th-century we have
fought and continue to fight against unjust and unnecessary wars, the
pollution of our environment, and the violation of the civil rights of African
Americans, women, and other minority groups.  Nevertheless, the successful
antiwar movement and the civil rights battles that were "won" during the
1960's, and the environmental battles that were "won" during the 1970's, have
only regenerated themselves in more insidious forms during the 1980's,
together with the instabilities and threats to our existence forging the new
battlegrounds of the 1990's and beyond. These new battlegrounds are not merely
about simple justice and a clean environment, but about the way human beings
think, the values that shape the behavior of children and organizations, and
the infrastructure through which control is exercised.

   What we have before us is a "culture war" says George Gerbner, co-founder
of the Cultural Environmental Movement, and Dean Emeritus of the Annenberg
School of Communications <cemnet@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu> <fgg@asc.upenn.edu>.
     The control of the cultural environment into which the children of the
     world are born is the new source of culture-power.  That is what the
     culture wars are all about.  And only organized action entering into
     decisions that shape that environment can effectively challenge
     mega-corporate power. 

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