Outliving this Day and Coming Safe Home

This week marks the 50^th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in The New York Times Co. vs. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (March 9, 1964). That case established the “actual malice” rule in defamation cases brought by public officials against a news organization. The opinion was a landmark in First Amendment law, and changed the slander and libel landscape with respect to commentary on pubic issues.

Some background is in order. The English common law of slander and libel required the person bringing suit to prove three things (1) that the speech or writing was defamatory; that is, it tended to bring disrepute upon the plaintiff; (2) that the statement was clearly about the plaintiff; and (3) that it was published; that is, uttered to a third party. The speaker or writer had a complete defense if he could prove the statement was true. If the defamatory statement was about the government or a government official, however, truth was not a defense. This was the seditious libel doctrine which held that publishing a libel about the king or his ministers, true or not, tended to provoke breaches of the peace.

The case of New York printer John Peter Zenger in 1735 changed the law in America. There a jury found that truth was a defense to seditious libel as well as to private defamation. This case established the legal principle of freedom of the press, which was later enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

While truth as a defense had been established in American jurisprudence for nearly 200 years, up into the 1960s the law of libel was still an inhibition to freedom of expression on public matters and about public officials and figures. The burden of proof was on the alleged defamatory speaker or writer. If sued for libel, he had to amass and present sufficient evidence to convince a judge or jury that, more likely than not, the statement was true.

In Sullivan the Court wrote “[I]t is a prized American privilege to speak one’s mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions at national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” (pp. 269-270)

Furthermore “[E]rroneous statement is inevitable in free debate, and that it must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the ‘breathing space’ that they ‘need . . . to survive.’” (pp. 271-72)

The rationale explained: “A rule compelling the critic of official conduct to guarantee the truth of all his factual assertions — and to do so on pain of libel judgments virtually unlimited in amount — leads to a comparable ‘self-censorship.’ Allowance of the defense of truth, with the burden of proving it on the defendant, does not mean that only false speech will be deterred. Even courts accepting this defense as an adequate safeguard have recognized the difficulties of adducing legal proofs that the alleged libel was true in all its factual particulars. Under such a rule, would-be critics of official conduct may be deterred from voicing their criticism, even though it is believed to be true and even though it is, in fact, true, because of doubt whether it can be proved in court or fear of the expense of having to do so. They tend to make only statements which ‘steer far wider of the unlawful zone.’ The rule thus dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate. It is inconsistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with ‘actual malice’ — that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” (pp. 279-280).

There we have it. The Court shifted the burden of proof on truth or falsity of the alleged libelous statement from the defendant to the plaintiff. It went a step further. The plaintiff, if a public official, must prove not only the falsity of the statement, but that it was uttered with knowledge that it was false or that the writer acted recklessly in expressing an untruth.

Later cases extended this “actual malice” standard to public figures. The Court appears to have recognized that public policy demands that those who seek and obtain public office, or inject themselves into public controversy should, in the words of my fifth grade teacher, be big and ugly enough to fade the heat.

Those of us who mind our own business and stay out of the limelight have nothing to fear. The common law standard of slander and libel where the burden of proof as to truth is on the speaker or writer is still the law. The “robust and uninhibited” speech and debate the Supreme Court found was necessary to the maintenance of a free society is standard fare in the United States. It may be unpleasant and offensive, but expression of views, even at the risk that sometime the facts might not be completely true, or skewed, is one of our most effective guardians of liberty.

The opinion is available at numerous sites online, including this link.

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“Pompous Jackasses.” Those are the words Juan Williams used to describe the Rutgers University faculty. They could be apropos to describe the majority of professors at nearly any American college or university today.

Rutgers invited former Secretary of State and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice to give the commencement address this coming spring. Ostensibly because Dr. Rice served in President George W. Bush’s administration, and there allegedly misled the Congress and the country about the dangers of Saddam Hussein and Iraq having weapons of mass distraction, the left-wing faculty went apoplectic. They passed a resolution demanding the University rescind its invitation. So far the Rutgers administration has refused to do so.

Williams maintains, and he is probably correct, that Dr. Rice’s real sin in the eyes of leftists is that she is a black woman who is also a Republican and, on most issues, a conservative. The left cannot stand a black person, of either sex, who dares to stray from the liberal plantation. Juan Williams is himself progressive/liberal on most issues, but in that vein he is a promoter of freedom of expression and honest debate, unlike so many on the far left are today. Those people, and the greatest offenders are on college faculties, are for freedom of speech only if it agrees with their viewpoint. If it doesn’t, it should be suppressed. See Juan Williams opinion

Why are college faculty members so overwhelmingly left-wing? There’s an old cliché that those who can, do, while those who can’t, teach. I don’t really buy into that, especially for adjunct faculty members, whose competence in their day jobs is usually part of reason they are chosen to supplement the full-time faculty. My personal hypothesis is that the academic setting is a fantasy world, at least for full-time faculty members. It’s not a particularly hard existence, and pays rather well. Those who don’t have to make a payroll, or come to grips with the realities of the business world, and have time to dream up all kinds of Pollyanna-ish scenarios for a perfect world, tend to lean left. Naturally, that’s not every faculty member, but there are numerous reports that those who lean right tend to be ostracized by the majority.

Before I received Williams’ commentary on the Rice/Rutgers controversy, I had a discussion with a number of my friends and colleagues at which the consensus was that if Rice and had been President Obama’s Secretary of State, and he had listened to her, the present conundrum the United States finds itself in with regard to Ukraine may well have been avoided. Rice, prior to her service in both Bush administrations, was recognized as one of the pre-eminent experts on Russia and the former Soviet Union, which is why she was chosen to serve. She has a sense of reality when it comes to foreign affairs. True, she was mistaken about Iraq’s possession of nuclear, or other weapons of mass distraction, but so was the rest of the intelligence community, as well as the Congress. Had the weapons existed, the invasion and dismantling of them would certainly have been appropriate. As it turned out, the world is doubtless better off that Saddam Hussein gone. The biggest mistakes United States made in Afghanistan and Iraq was not the initial invasions, but that the jobs were never finished. Both wars should have been over, and our forces out, within two years at the very most. The protracted wars, however, were not Dr. Rice’s doing.

While I have a great deal of admiration for and empathy with the Ukrainians, I’m not real sure where the United States’ interests are in that regard. There are those who believe that Russia’s President Putin wants to restore the Russian Empire. Perhaps, but how does that really hurt us? The old Soviet Union was ideologically diametrically opposed to the capitalist West, and was aggressively trying to expand its influence worldwide. It had the emphatically stated goal of bringing the entire world under the communist system. Since the USSR imploded in 1991, Russia has not been our adversary. Furthermore there is no indication that Putin wants to restore that posture. One of the hallmarks of Russia, whether Tsarist, Soviet or otherwise, has been paranoia. Putin’s main concern, from what I have read, is to make sure that his country is safe and secure from foreign aggression. Whether he really has anything to fear in that regard is problematic, but the Russians have always thought so, and the West has on occasion given them reason to so fear.

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I plead guilty to being a Downton Abbey junkie. I am not sure, however, why that BBC drama series is so appealing. It is essentially a soap opera. The plots and sub-plots – the number of which would boggle Leo Tolstoy’s mind – are often improbable and inconsistent. There are rifles over the mantle left unfired; that is, loose ends left all over the place. And It makes liberal use of the Deus ex Machina to extract characters from tight spots. Nevertheless, the series has gained a loyal following, especially in this country. Downton has survived four seasons, and a fifth is in preparation. As usual, there are open questions about what will happen to some characters that build anticipation.

One of the sub-plots involves John Bates, valet to the Earl of Grantham, and his now wife Anna Smith Bates, the head housemaid and maid to first daughter Lady Mary. Bates and Anna throughout the series have had a relationship made rocky, not by their passions or proclivities, but by external forces. Most significantly, Bates has escaped the clutches of a vindictive estranged wife, of whose murder he was accused, convicted, and sentenced to hang. He was exonerated and restored to his beloved Anna partially through her efforts as well as that of his employer Lord Grantham. Now, the latest potential fix Bates and Anna find themselves himself in poses an interesting moral issue often portrayed in fiction, and occasionally in real life.

It is not necessary here to relate all the couple’s trials and tribulations during the first three Seasons of the show even if the reader has not been a Downton Abbey fan. Suffice it to say that Anna and Bates met at the manor, and though star-crossed, fell in love, and eventually married. The main obstacle to their getting together and marrying was that Bates was already married, however estranged. At that time in England, divorce was exceptionally difficult, but that obstacle to their happiness was removed when the estranged wife died of poisoning. Another obstacle immediately popped up in that Bates was accused of murdering her, tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang. The first Deus occurred when the sentence was commuted; the next when through the efforts of Anna, evidence was discovered which exonerated Bates, and he was released from prison.

During the first episodes of Season 4, the couple’s life is happy but uneventful, except for an occasional benevolence that demonstrates their good character and loyalty to the Grantham family. Anna, caught alone one evening by one Green, the valet of a visiting nobleman who is a suitor to Mary, is accosted and raped. She is discovered in her ravished state by the head housekeeper Elsie Hughes. Fearful that she might not be believed it was rape, and further that Bates will kill Green if he discovers what happened, Anna swears Elsie to silence. The two women concoct a story that Anna tripped and fell down the stairs to explain her injuries and change of clothes. Nevertheless, the couple’s relationship is palpably changed, and Bates cannot figure out why.

Bates later discovers that Anna had been raped, though she maintains it was an interloper, and not Green, fearing that Bates would kill Green and be hanged for murder. Nevertheless, it is hinted that Bates knows it was, and at the end of episode seven, it is related that Green was killed in an improbable accident in London at a time when Bates was away from the Abbey and ostensibly in York. Elsie and Mary later find evidence that he really went to London that day. The unstated, though clear implication, is that Bates decided that taking the law into his own hands was preferable to reporting the deed to the police and letting the criminal justice system take its course.

Because Bates and Anna are such appealing characters, and the valet Green is a despicable one, it is a good guess that the majority of the audience applauded Bates’s action, assuming that he did it. The moral issue of course, is whether it is ever appropriate for an individual to take the law in his own hands and do justice by punishing a wrongdoer without due process of law. This is a theme in quite a bit of literature, and most of the time authors portray such action to be sympathetic to the wronged individual settling the score by him or herself.

That is what happened at the end of one of the most renowned 20^th Century American novels. The real denouement of To Kill a Mockingbird not the trial, verdict, or death of the wrongly accused defendant, but the manner of the principal villain’s fate. The neighborhood recluse, who has been a kind of surreptitious guardian angel looking after lawyer Atticus Finch’s children, saves their lives by killing their attacker, the wicked Bob Ewell. It is clear what happened, but ever the lawyer Atticus believes that there should be a formal proceeding to confirm that Boo Radley was justified. Sheriff Tate refuses. The sheriff says that Ewell deserved what he got, he is not going to expose the shy Radley to public scrutiny, and that the man did Finch and his children a service. He concludes that while he might not be much, he was “sheriff of Maycomb County, and Bob Ewell fell on his knife.”

A number of writers have criticized Mockingbird as condoning vigilantism and obstruction of justice. In their world, there should always be accountability, especially when a human being is killed by the hand of another, however justified it may be. Well, maybe not. The villain was reprehensible. Exoneration of his killer is a forgone conclusion, and the expense of sorting it out, and trauma to the emotionally challenged recluse who saved the day is, well, akin to killing a mockingbird.

In early 20^th Century Britain, the setting for Downton Abbey, a woman accusing a man of rape would be forced to testify in open court, face her former attacker, have her sexual history and conduct questioned, and be subject to the opprobrium of a society where a rape victim was often considered to have brought it upon herself. To do justice by taking the law into one’s own hands and punishing the attacker informally seems to be the righteous way. The legal way seems barbaric by comparison.

Alas, in real life things are not quite so cut and dried. We cannot make up the facts, as fictional authors do. There are a lot more ambiguities and obscurities that would just as often cause an injustice, or more important, an affront to individual liberty. One fictional work that brings this home is Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s The Oxbow Incident (1940). Clark’s novel, and the 1943 movie adapted from it, bring home the danger of vigilantism. The plot involves an informal posse who seeks to apprehend and punish cattle rustlers who reportedly had murdered a rancher and stolen his herd. The posse finds two men who, circumstances suggest, are probably the culprits. Rather than arrest them and take them in for a trial, the men are hanged on the spot. Later it is discovered that the real rustlers have been caught elsewhere and the allegedly murdered rancher is alive and well. Two innocent men were killed for no good reason.

The scenarios set up in fiction, where the author has control of the facts, generally come across as clear-cut. The average reader or viewer has no reason to doubt the moral rightness of killing an attacker, who himself clearly intends to kill two small children, to prevent that murder. In a clear cut case, should the person who kills to defend himself or others be subjected to the psychological trauma and expense of then defending himself? Who makes that decision? It varies. There have been cases where witnesses decline to come forward. That seems to be what is happening in the Downton Abbey sub-plot. Police officers like the sheriff in Mockingbird look the other way. Prosecutors have discretion, and most of the veteran ones know who bad guys and good guys are.

I understand that in Great Britain, the use of deadly force in self defense or defense of property is illegal and punishable in almost any case. Most of the states in this country, on the other hand, have laws that allow for such defenses. Many protect a person using deadly force against civil liability as well. Nevertheless, no jurisdiction that I am aware of allows a victim or victim’s family members or close friends to hunt down a perpetrator after the fact and punish him. That is the morality of crime syndicates, Middle Eastern tribal societies, and drug cartels.

The lesson is that those who yearn for perfect justice in this world are bound to be disappointed. Systems that demanded strict justice from the law, such as the lex talonis, appear to have caused more injustice than otherwise, especially the more hyper-technical they became. The correct view is that, at least in our legal system, law is really not about justice. Its purpose is to safeguard ordered liberty. Law protects individual freedom and life, liberty, and property up to the point where it transgresses upon that of others. In the seeking of that goal, pure justice sometimes must give way. That is why the principle that it is better to free ten guilty persons than to convict an innocent prevails. Justice occasionally is not served, but ordered liberty is. And that’s a good thing.

Ten months from now (somewhat earlier if in Britain) we’ll find out what Mr. Bates really did, or did not do. As quirky as Downton Abbey’s creator Julian Fellows has been, I’m not making any predictions.

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This blog in early December reported that it received the large percentage of page views, and presumably readers, from Ukraine. I doubt there is any connection with the revolutionary events in that country, but the events of this past month have been stunning. The Ukrainians in Kiev ousted Viktor Yanukovych from the presidency, and sent him packing to Russia. The take over of his opulent residence revealed that he basically ran a kleptocracy in his country. Yanukovych’s principal rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, who he had imprisoned after accusing her of essentially the same conduct, has been released. Yulia’s reception in Kiev’s Independence Square did not exhibit the same quality of enthusiasm that greeted, say, Nelson Mandela upon his release, but she remains popular among a large segment of the country. It has been suggested that, though she will not aspire to office as president or prime minister, Tymoshenko might be a behind-the-scenes force in Ukrainian politics. The most serious fallout from the nascent revolution, however, is Russia’s reaction. As of today, Vladimir Putin has sent troops into the Crimea region of Ukraine. The Russians defend this move as merely to protect Russian interests, but it appears to be an attempt at de facto takeover of that predominantly Russian-speaking province. This action has prompted condemnation by the European Union and the United States, for whatever that is worth.

There is extensive news coverage, both in print and in the electronic media, about the events and possible fate of Ukraine for those who are interested. I do not intend to write further in that regard. What is interesting to me is Russia’s focus on the Crimea. That rather large peninsula jutting into the Black Sea had been part of Russia since the reign of Catherine the Great in the 18^th Century. It’s primary importance was that it provided a warn-water access for shipping, necessary if Russia were to become a commercial power, and expand its worldwide influence. It gave its name to a mid-19^th Century war that ultimately involved Great Britain and France on the side of the Ottoman Empire against Russia. The stated casus belli was the mistreatment of Orthodox Christians in the Middle East the Ottomans. The real reason, of course, was money, as it is in all wars. The Crimean War was the scene of the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade, made famous by the Tennyson poem. A main boulevard in Paris is named Sevastopol to commemorate the French victory against the Russians at Crimea’s main port and Russian navy base. Nurse Florence Nightingale pioneered medical treatments based upon her ministering to wounded British combatants in the Crimea. After the 1917 Russian Revolution and ensuing civil war, Ukraine was made a constituent “republic” of the USSR, and Crimea remained part of the Russian Soviet Republic. It was a favorite vacation spot for Soviet apparatchiks, who maintained luxurious dachas on the Crimean coast while their subjects languished in their workers’ paradise. The seaside resort of Yalta was the site of a conference between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill in early 1945 where they decided the postwar fate of Eastern Europe. In the 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev, supposedly in a magnanimous state as a result of being over-served, transferred Crimea to Ukraine. At the time, such a gesture was meaningless; Ukraine and the other constituents of the Soviet Union were autonomous in name only. The dissolution of the USSR in 1991, however, meant that Ukraine left with the Crimea as one of its regions. Because Sevastopol was the Black Sea Soviet naval base, and Russia was the successor of most of the navy, a lease between the two newly sovereign nations was negotiated. The fear that the present revolution in Ukraine might cause Russia to lose that base appears to be one of the factors that makes Putin take precipitous military action there. Crimea also has a high percentage of Russian speakers, who would rather be part of Russia. Most importantly, pipelines across Ukraine deliver Russian natural gas to customers in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

What all will result is anybody’s guess. There seems to be a significant power vacuum in Ukraine. The EU and USA are cautioning Putin not to overreach, but it unclear what they can really do about it if he ignores them. Even in our brave new world, geography matters, and Ukraine has a long, contiguous border with Russia. The United States is half a world away.

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An article in the current issue of The Economist (February 8th-14th 2014) reports a hypothesis that sexual equality increases the gap between rich and poor households. That concept was analyzed in “Assortative Mating and Income Inequality”, a working paper disseminated by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a Cambridge, Massachusetts think tank.

The thesis is that the increase in female participation in high-end professional and managerial occupations has increased the tendency for those with similar earning potential to marry (or cohabit with) each other. The net result is a disparity in household incomes; they are becoming more unequal. The wage gap between highly and barely educated individuals has grown in our high-technology society. In previous times, say the 1950s and 60s, however, this would been mitigated because of households formed where men and women of disparate earning power were more likely to marry. Or so the paper postulates.

The Economist article states that “Nowadays, successful men are more likely to marry successful women. This is a good thing. It reflects the fact that there are more high-flying women. Male doctors in the 1960s married nurses because there were few female doctors. Now there are plenty.” So doctors marry doctors, lawyers marry lawyers, and so forth.

The phenomenon of assortative mating, that like tend to marry like, is not new. There is the occasional Cinderella, or even rarer, Downton Abbey’s Tom Branson, the chauffeur who married the earl’s daughter. But the “like” used to be more based upon social connections fostered by neighborhoods, rural communities, churches, ethnicity, and other social, rather than economic or occupational, characteristics. Today, similar occupational interests, at least among the more educated, is the determinative similarity.

“The wage gap between highly and barely educated workers has grown, but that could in theory have been offset by the fact that more women now go to college and get good jobs. Had spouses chosen each other at random, many well-paid women would have married ill-paid men and vice versa. Workers would have become more unequal, but households would not.”

I am not so sure this is valid entirely. While it may be statistically valid if the assumption that spouses would choose each other randomly was true, that assumption contradicts the whole associative mating theory and seems not to be so. Furthermore, in the past, our culture put a stigma on men who earned less than women, and it seems unlikely that many would have married one. While in those days, executives might marry their secretaries, it is unlikely that many factory workers would have married professional women, the few who existed back then.

The NBER paper is not long, but relies on a lot of esoteric mathematics to make its point. It seeks to find the Gini co-efficient (named for an Italian economist, and which is expressed as zero at total equality, and one at total inequality, i.e., one person owns all the wealth), for then and now. The study shows a Gini of 0.34 in 1960 and 0.43 in 2005 for U.S. household incomes – a significant change.
It certainly appears that sexual equality in higher education and the workplace influenced associative mating, and has been a factor in household inequality in income and wealth accumulation. That is not surprising to a close observer. When artificial, mainly cultural, barriers are removed, a person’s sex, except for some obvious physical characteristics, will not limit her accomplishment. Those characteristics, outside of biological reproductive functions, mainly relate to physical strength. Ayn Rand pointed out that the standard of living that a man’s muscles can provide is that of a medieval blacksmith; in today’s society, the rest of our living standard come from the minds of men and women.

The irony is that many of those who have been the most vocal for the advancement of women in education and the workplace have been part of the “social justice” crowd that decries inequality of income and wealth. Inequality in that regard has been with humankind almost from the beginning. It’s certain to continue until the last day.

This weekend makes the 50^th anniversary of the coming of the Beatles. To the United States, that is. They had been around and popular in Britain for over a year, but barely heard of on this side of the pond. It is hard to remember, or for those born later, to conceive of the limited awareness of what was going on in the rest of the world at that time. True, trans-Atlantic jet travel had been around for awhile, but the instant communications provided by satellite and Internet was years and decades away. American popular music was pretty much indigenous. Imitations of it might have been popular to some extent in Britain and Europe, but the was little reciprocity. No British music artists outside the classical realm had any traction in America. Anyway, most fans on one side of the ocean paid little attention to the popular music on the other.

On Friday February 7, 1964, the Beatles landed at the newly named John F. Kennedy International Airport in anticipation of their appearance on CBS’s Ed Sullivan Show. (Note: the days of the week this year 2014 match the 1964 dates until the end of February, when 1964 got an extra day.) This first appearance on American national television (they appeared twice again in subsequent weeks) is considered a watershed in pop music culture, and was the vanguard of the British Invasion that set the music scene during the rest of the 1960s and later. Popular music became truly international.

The Ed Sullivan Show, formally known as the Talk of the Town, was one of the first nationally broadcast television variety shows, and it ran from 1948 through 1971. It was certainly the most influential, and was the breakout venue for Elvis, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the Supremes, and others. What has been regarded as first rock and roll song, Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock”, had its first nationwide exposure on the Sullivan show.

By early 1964, the Beatles were not completely unknown in the United States. There had been a story in Life magazine of the band’s wild popularity in Britain. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had been released by Capitol Records on December 26, 1963, and managed to make it to Billboard’s top spot by February 1. Accordingly, there was a great deal of anticipation for the band before they arrived. Ed Sullivan had noticed the popularity of the Beatles during a visit to England, and offered to pay them top dollar to appear on his show. The story goes that manager Brian Epstein, sensing the vast United States market, offered to appear for a much lower remuneration if the Beatles could get top billing for the show, and appear multiple times. Sullivan agreed; the rest is history.

The February 9, 1964 show, broadcast in black and white as color television had not yet become standard, opened and closed with Sullivan introducing the “BEAT’ls” in his usual monotone. Their openers were “All My Loving” and “Till There Was You” and they closed the show with “I Saw Her Standing There”, “From Me to You”, and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” The latter song was played, seemingly, at least once every half-hour on pop music radio stations for the next month or so. The band appeared twice again that month. On April 4, 1964, The Beatles had the top five singles at one time on Billboard Hot 100, a feat never again equaled, and they dominated the pop music scene for most the next six years before they broke up in 1970. They reached their apotheosis with the Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album in 1967.

Almost immediately following The Beatles was the British Invasion’s second star Dusty Springfield, who started the “blue-eyed soul” phenomenon. Close behind were the Rolling Stones (still together and touring, though their membership partially changed over the years – the mainstays, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Charlie Watts are still there), Peter and Gordon, The Animals, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Mindbenders, Herman’s Hermits, The Dave Clark Five, and numerous others.

Outside of popular music, and its related culture, how are we to assess the significance of the Beatles after a half century? That is a hard question to answer. Did the Beatles really change anything, or was their extreme popularity and the scene they brought with them a result or reflection of what was happening in the world at large? Their phenomenon was certainly made possible by the technological advances made up to that time, particularly those involving the speed of travel and communications. The tyranny of distance was on the wane, but, nevertheless still had a ways to go. One thing seems to be clear, the Beatles’ songs and recordings, and the number of covers other artists have made of their songs, are still popular today and continue to be played and listened to. The ultimate standard by which art is judged is the test of time. Fifty years later, the Beatles are still passing that test.

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Amy Chua, of “Tiger Mom” fame, together with her husband and fellow professor Jed Rubenfeld, appear to have created a firestorm that might make Charles Murray’s 20 year old The Bell Curve seem like a pleasant hearth on a cold night. And their book, which I’m sure many of our friends – across the spectrum, but mainly on the left – would doubtless love to burn, hasn’t even been officially published yet.

The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America is due in bookstores, and on Kindle and Nook, February 4. Not one to be favored with the publisher’s pre-release like the publishing cognoscenti, I have not read the book. Chua and Rubenfeld, however, have given us a preview with an article in last Saturday’s (January 25) New York Times.

Commenting on the commentary yet is in order, given the screams already audible and visible. I first stumbled across the fact of the upcoming publication in last week’s Time magazine. Further Internet investigation revealed quite a few opinions, some screeds, and the predictable high tech equivalent of writing on public toilet walls: the anonymous comments.

One Suketu Mehta, who identifies himself as an “American, Calcutta born,” writes a multi-page article in Time asking “when does cultural pride cross over into racism?” The New York Post, the Huffington Post, the British Daily Mail, and others posit the same theme, if not the precise question. A follow up piece in Time by one Anna Holmes positively indicts Chua and Rubenfeld, and anyone who beams in with them, as racists, opining that there is “nothing ‘new’ about their ‘new racism’” at all.

Mehta, by his self-description, belongs to a cultural group that Chua and Rubenfeld identify as having the three qualities they posit are the reason for the groups’ members’ success: Indians. The others are Chinese (like Chua), Jews (like Rubenfeld), Nigerians, Lebanese (though unsaid, they probably mean Christians, not Muslims), Cubans, Mormons, and Iranians.

To point our that Jewish and Chinese Americans include a disproportionate number of over-achievers in this country is to state the obvious. The other cultural groups, especially our indigenous Mormons, have been somewhat under the radar. There is evidence, however, that the number of successful individuals who belong to all of these groups is significantly out of proportion to their number in the general United States population.

According to Chua and Rubenfeld, members of the aforementioned cultural groups possess three traits that are responsible for their achievements in a free society such as ours in America. “The first is a superiority complex — a deep-seated belief in their group as exceptional. The second appears to be the opposite — insecurity, a feeling that you or what you’ve done is not good enough. The third is impulse control.”

The authors are quick to point out that any individual from any background can have these traits, but the identified groups seem to have cultural forces that install and reinforce them.

How do these traits help success?

In recent years, many American have become hung up on the supposed rise of “inequality” in our society. They mean lack of economic equality, not the legal equality that our founding documents value and attempt to guarantee. Sometimes it is put that our laws and government should foster, if not guarantee, “equality of opportunity.” Economist F. A. Hayek some time ago debunked that chimera as not only impossible, but undesirable. Hayek well explained the impossibility. Chua and Rubenfeld provide evidence to explain the undesirability. A belief in one’s superiority sets a standard to live up to. Like it or not, competition is hard-wired in nature. Is there anyone who really wants to be equal to everyone else? The bell curve is real. Roughly 20% of any given, random population are going to be high achievers, 20% impaired, the other 60% in the middle. Who, other then ascetics, doesn’t want to be in the top 20%, or at the very top?

When first considered, insecurity doesn’t seem to go with superiority. If one believe they are superior, why should they be insecure? Believing you are superior provides confidence, but living up to that belief takes effort. Perfection may be impossible; but striving to be better will at least make for improvement. Aim for the stars, and you might get to the moon. Thus, insecurity can be a great motivator. Especially for one who believes he is superior. Franklin D. Roosevelt once told our nation that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. It might be that he got it wrong. The thing to fear is the lack of fear, fear that you might not measure up. Thus, belief in one’s superiority motivates one to prove it.

The trait of impulse control is a technique. It involves foregoing short term gratification for the prospect of long term gain. There is little doubt that successful persons generally do not, like Esau, sell their birthright for a mess of pottage because are hungry. (If they are starving, it might be a another matter – first things first.) Subsumed in this trait is persistence, the ability to continue to strive in the face of adversity. One with this trait refuses to regard a setback as failure; it is actually success in learning what doesn’t work. I have long observed that the inability or unwillingness to see the long term is what traps one into low achievement, usually by squandering, rather than accumulating, resources. Examples abound.

Now to answer the question “when does cultural pride cross over into racism?” The short answer is that it doesn’t. Chua and Rubenfeld aver that while “[m]erely stating the fact that certain groups do better than others — as measured by income, test scores and so on — is enough to provoke a firestorm in America today, and even charges of racism. The irony is that the facts actually debunk racial stereotypes.” The successful groups mentioned include all races. Nearly all Nigerians are black; Lebanese are Arabs; Chinese are in what was used to be termed Mongoloid; if one were to regard “Hispanic” a race (it’s not), Cubans certainly belong; Jews, contrary to the views of Houston Stuart Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler are not a race, though since the mid-nineteenth century, some have regarded them so; Mormons clearly are not, though most are Caucasians.

Anyway, race and culture are two different things. They may be related, but are not at all congruent. Race is physical and immutable; it’s determined by manifest, usually visible, characteristics that have objectively little or anything to do with a person’s moral, or even biological, status as a human being. They are accidents, not essence. Culture, on the other hand is a system of values that are changeable, and which is manifested by behavior. Culture is associated with race because both developed in insular environments over numerous generations by the evolutionary process. With technology’s overthrow of the tyranny of distance, adult persons can and often do reject the culture, or aspects of it, into which they are born. (One who does is often vilified as a “traitor” to his race, class, or whatever group he rejects, but a contrarian attitude is a value and a virtue, up to a point anyway.) No one is superior or inferior because of their race, but they can be so because of the cultural values they embrace., as Chua and Rubenfeld maintain.

Read more: The ‘Tiger Mom’ Superiority Complex – TIME
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Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 short story “Harrison Bergeron” is a dystopian narrative about a future world where everyone is equal. It is the take-off point for Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens’s own dystopian version of a State of the Union Message that a future President might give in 2019, a lot sooner than Vonnegut’s 2081.

Both are worth a read, particularly for those appreciative of dark humor, and for Stephens’s TIC prediction as to who is President in 2019.

See SOTU-2019 for the Stephens article.

Although copyrighted “Harrison Bergeron” is available at a number of places in the Internet by just entering the title. Apparently, schools use it as a teaching tool, possibly because it is short enough for today’s student’s attention span. One site is here.

Also, there was a 1995 cable TV production that seems to have escaped much notice.

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A thirteen hour filibuster in the Texas State Senate by Wendy Davis toward the end of last year’s legislative session that delayed a restrictive abortion bill from passing made her a national figure and hero to abortion rights activists who form part of the Democrat base. Though eventually futile in its purpose, it brought Davis to the attention those who saw a charismatic figure who could help “turn Texas blue” as a candidate for governor in this year’s state elections.

Davis’s campaign has fashioned an appealing hardship-to-success story for her. She was a divorced teenaged mother living in a trailer and waiting tables who, through hard work and singular focus, earned her way through community college, Texas Christian University, and eventually to a law degree from Harvard. She ran for the city council in Fort Worth twice before winning a term there and is now in her second term as a Texas state senator.

Wayne Slater, a Dallas Morning News political writer, has written an in depth article about Davis’s life narrative that seems to reveal a somewhat checkered version. (See article here.) Although Slater does not do a hatchet job, his article alleges that “Davis’[sic] life is more complicated, as often happens when public figures aim to define themselves. In the shorthand version that has developed, some facts have been blurred.” What he actually does is show a more nuanced story. There are no revelations of bad conduct or skulduggery, and the worst that can be said regarding Davis’s character that she was an opportunist. Of course, as Margaret Mitchell’s character Rhett Butler observed in Gone with the Wind, opportunism is held in ill repute, chiefly by those who had the same opportunity but didn’t take it. No, Davis has a pretty good rags-to-riches story in grand narrative, and she would be wise to emphasize it. The details, none of which are sordid and thus not very interesting, will be mostly ignored.

Davis’s background reminds me of Robert Reich’s essay “The Lost Art of the Democratic Narrative” (The New Republic, March 28, 2005). Although the narrative, which Reich concedes had been the Republican story from 1980 through 2004, was apparently taken to heart subsequently by Democrat strategists. They successfully used it to elect Barack Obama President, at least for the first term and probably the second. With a great deal of unwitting Republican help, I might add.

Reich’s narrative has four essential American stories, two positive, or hopeful: the Triumphant Individual and the Caring Community; two negative, or fearful: the Mob at the Gates and the Rot at the Top. The candidate or party that has three of the four will generally win, assuming they get the stories into the consciousness of the electorate.

As stated above, Wendy Davis has a great Triumphant Individual story. While the Caring Community generally has been Democrat turf for some time, it’s unclear how she can or will exploit it. As for the Mob at the Gates, that is Republican turf. I have not heard her stance on gun control, but she could partially neutralize the GOP hold there by declaring her belief in Second Amendment rights, however vaguely. As for the Rot at the Top, in Texas there’s not much grist for that mill at present, in Texas anyway.

Republican contender Greg Abbott has his own Triumphant Individual story which should be nearly as good. While out running for exercise when a young man just out of law school, a tree fell on him and damaged his spine and permanently paralyzing him. Actually, a spinal cord injury creates many more problems than simply paralysis of the extremities, which anyone who, or is close to, one has suffered that kind of injury knows. Nevertheless, despite his disability, Abbott had a distinguished law career, was a trial judge and Texas Supreme Court Justice, and now has been a three-term Attorney General. He boasts that, while some figuratively have a steel spine, he literally has one.

The Mob at the Gates, foreign and domestic, is always there. Abbott includes the federal government as part of that mob, and that plays well in Texas. He is very much a gun rights advocate and NRA member. On behalf of the state, he filed an amicus curiae brief in the District of Columbia v. Heller case. He launched Cyber-Crimes and Fugitive units in the AG office. He defends the Voter ID law, which is arguable a Mob at the Gates issue for many. Abbott’s Caring Community narrative is that he vigorously enforces child support laws, and has used his attorney general power to protect consumers by shutting down and prosecuting scams. Still, Abbott will have a hard time wresting this issue from any Democrat. The dole is what many Democrat supporters believe is necessary to have a Caring Community. As stated above, there is no serious Rot at the Top in Texas presently.

I have to say that in many ways I really like Wendy Davis. She is obviously intelligent, has much greater than average stamina and persistence, and has an awful lot of gumption. While I am certainly not “in favor of” abortion, I believe it is a moral issue for the woman concerned and, in general, not the government’s business. Anyway, Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, and cannot be changed except by Constitutional amendment, which is not going to happen.

Still, she’s not my guy, or gal, if you must. The GOP is not perfect by any means, but it is far less threatening to individual rights, particularly in the economic sphere.

When name recognition, the statewide dominance of the GOP, and the absence of a Presidential election are factored in it appears Greg Abbott has the edge. Wendy Davis might be a formidable candidate, but she ain’t no Ann Richards. More importantly, Greg Abbott is no Clayton Williams (for those who remember 1990).

Nevertheless, as far as who will win, it’s a long way to November.

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Fifty years ago on January 11, 1964, the Advisory Committee of the U. S. Surgeon General released its report on smoking and health. The committee had met from November 1962 to January 1964 and analyzed over 7,000 scientific articles and papers on the subject. The report’s conclusion was that tobacco smoking was definitely a causal factor in a number of diseases, chief among them were lung and larynx cancer, cardiovascular disease, and chronic bronchitis.

Before the report, many people knew or suspected that smoking tobacco was not good for you, and could cause health problems, but was not widely believed that it would kill you. Around 43% of Americans over 18 smoked in 1964. Smoking was glamorous, and the image of a smoker was that of a sophisticate. Tobacco manufacturers hired celebrities of all stripes, even sports stars, to advertise their products. Images were concocted to appeal to all. The Marlboro cowboy for those who fancied themselves as rugged he-men, or who aspired to be, Benson & Hedges were aimed at the yacht club set, Lucky Strikes had gone to war with the GIs in World War II, Salem was menthol refreshing, Kool was cool, and Winston simply tasted good (“like a cigarette should”). For the really pretentious, there were custom-made cigarettes. James Bond, who in the book Casino Royale smoked 70 in one day, had his (with the three gold rings) made by Moreland’s in Grosvenor Street (or some such place). Accessories like lighters and, particularly for women, designer cases to carry cigarettes were sold everywhere.

There was hardly any place one could not smoke, outside of petroleum refineries and explosive manufacturers. Ashtrays were ubiquitous; many even had designer labels. Smoking was allowed in restaurants, waiting rooms (even in doctors’ offices and hospitals), public buildings, courtrooms and college classrooms. A “smoke-filled room” was where political deals were made. Cigarette, but not pipe and cigar, smoking was permitted anywhere on airplanes; the airline even provided free four-packs with the meal that was included in the price of a ticket. The same four-packs were also included in military C-rations (the predecessor of today’s MREs), ostensibly as a show of support for the troops, but mainly as advertising by the manufacturers.

Mentioning taverns risks stating the obvious. Smoking and alcoholic beverages seemed to be natural companions. Visibility in some bar-rooms was near zero for the tobacco smog.

As early as 1951, there was concern in the medical science community that smoking could be carcinogenic. There was little doubt that heavy and long term users developed the chronic “smoker’s cough” and tobacco use diminished aerobic capacity. The tobacco industry discounted this and introduced filter cigarettes (and pipes with filters in the stem – “Dr. Grabow”) to answer the concerns. One brand advertised that there was “not a cough in a carload.” The industry was naturally concerned that labeling its product as poison could put them all out of business, and it sought to downplay the evidence.

President Kennedy, himself a cigar smoker (First Lady Jackie was a menthol cigarette chain smoker), had commissioned the cigarette smoking Surgeon General Luther Terry to form a committee to investigate the effect of smoking on health. Terry included tobacco industry representatives on the panel to protect its credibility. Of course, JFK did not live to see the report, but after 15 months the committee released its findings. They were devastating, and left little doubt that smoking contributed to many life-threatening diseases.

It wasn’t long afterward that the first warnings that cigarette smoking was hazardous to one’s health began to appear on cigarette packages, mandated by federal law. The warnings became stronger later on. Some publications, prominent among them Readers’ Digest, began a campaign with stories about the fate of those who smoked, why smokers should stop, and how to quit. Hardly a month went by without a horror story about some victim of a disease presumably caused by smoking. One that sticks in my mind was one with graphic descriptions of a throat cancer victim who had his larynx removed, and in his words had “become a freak” who could no longer breathe or talk normally. There is a photograph that appeared in magazines recently of a woman who died at age 50 after a decade of treating oral cancer that cost her larynx, teeth, and part of her jaw. Plastic surgery mitigated the damage to her face somewhat and a scarf discretely covered the permanent tracheotomy in her throat. The point was still graphically made.

The reaction among the majority of smokers appears to have been denial, at least at first. After all, smoking was still cool; that is, sophisticated and in with the in-crowd. Some bravado was evident. I recall an item in my college newspaper on the Surgeon General’s report that asked a number of students whether they intended to quit smoking as a result. One fraternity member, mentioned by name and described as tall and blond, replied “hell, no.” Wonder if he ever did?

It took several decades, but, inexorably, attitudes changed. As more and more evidence of the deleterious effects of smoking came forth, many quit, or didn’t start to begin with. Congress banned cigarette advertising from radio and television as of January 2, 1971 (giving the tobacco companies one last crack at the TV bowl game audiences). During the 1980s, many public accommodations, such as restaurants and airlines, began to segregate smokers from non-smokers, and businesses began to designate smoking areas for employees.

Most importantly, smoking lost its panache – its cool. By the 1990s, the image of smokers was no longer that of movie stars and professional ballplayers, but that of construction workers and rock band members whose only gigs were in local dives. Also, having to leave one’s workplace to go outside to smoke tended to brand smokers as pariahs. As fewer people smoked, non-smokers felt less compelled to accommodate those that did. The price of cigarettes, upon which higher and higher taxes were levied by federal and state governments, skyrocketed. Since tobacco remained a legal, though disfavored product, the cost increase was not so high so as to create a criminal market. A pack of cigarettes in 1964 cost a quarter from a vending machine (which were all over the place) and $2.00 for a carton of 10 packs in the store. In military exchanges there were considerable cheaper, as there was no tax. That last time I bothered to look, they were selling at around $3.00 per pack in the store. The high price probably does not much deter smokers, but it must have some effect.

According to some figures published in various places this week, approximately 18% of the population still smokes tobacco. There is probably no way to tell how much smaller that percentage will become in the future. My guess is that it will never be much less than 10%, but that is a gut feeling that based upon the perception that it is about the percentage of population that is pathological anyway.

This month is witnessing the legalization (or decriminalization) for recreational use of marijuana, another substance that is smoked for psycho-physical effect, in two states. More states are to follow this year and, probably, even more will in the next decade of so. Possession and use, as well as manufacture, transportation, and sale remains illegal under federal law, but the U.S. Justice Department has said, wisely, that so long as state law in that regard is followed, it will not enforce the federal statutes.

There have been numerous writings and broadcast opinions speculating that legalization of marijuana will doom us. Children will now be able to smoke pot. Driving while stoned will cause more road and highway deaths. Many other horrible things will happen as a result of legal pot.

I say, relax. Around 20 years ago, articles in American Heritage magazine looked to history before there were any laws prohibiting the possession and use of what we now called controlled substances. We had a problem in this country. Around 10% of the population used opiates, cocaine, and cannabis to some extent; some abused these substances. A somewhat higher percentage abused alcohol. Today, after a 40 year full scale “war on drugs” we have the same percentage who abuse those substances (along with ones that have similar effects). Many people drink alcoholic beverages; a small percentage abuse them. If we want to keep marijuana use under control, we must make it un-cool to use it, like we have done with tobacco.

But that’s another story.

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