Jerry Voorhis: The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon 4

In my post today on Jerry Voorhis’ critical look at the Nixon Administration, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (copyright 1972, 1973), I’ll focus on Voorhis’ discussion of President Richard Nixon’s environmental policies.

My conservative brother has brought up Nixon’s environmental policies when he has had political discussions with myself and my mother (who leans more to the left).  One of his arguments is that the Republican Party is not anti-environment because there have been significant environmental accomplishments during Republican Administrations: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, etc.  I believe that there is more nuance to how Republicans address environmental issues than many leftists may tell us.  I wrote an article for the web-site Helium that talks about the positive things that President George W. Bush did for the environment (see here).  Moreover, conservative Barry Goldwater had environmentalist sentiments (see here).  At the same time, I would not be surprised if there have been times when Republicans have sought to relax environmental regulations, seeing them as a hindrance to free-enterprise and a clamp on the economy.

Voorhis acknowledges that some of President Nixon’s pro-environment policies have been unprecedented, in terms of their scale and spending.  And yet, Voorhis finds fault with Nixon’s approach to the environment.  Voorhis contends that Nixon’s spending on his environmental policies is not enough, and that Nixon’s impounds funds rather than spending what Congress has appropriated.  While Voorhis praises Nixon’s appointment of Indiana Republican William D. Ruckelshaus to head the EPA, an appointment that garnered praise from environmentalists, Voorhis narrates that Nixon, the Secretary of Commerce, and the head of the Office of Management of Budget have stood in Ruckelshaus’ way and have pressured the EPA to water down its regulations.  This, Voorhis states, is for the benefit of Nixon’s industrial campaign contributors.

According to Voorhis, Nixon has supported atomic energy, which is unclean and potentially dangerous; he has pressured Congress to support the environmentally-harmful supersonic air transport plane; he supported a nuclear blast on an Alaskan island that signaled a new weapon for the U.S., when the Council on Environmental Quality advised against it; and he proposed abolishing a 7 percent tax on the automobile, which is a great polluter.  Meanwhile, Nixon has failed to provide substantial support for clean energy, such as thermal and hydroelectric power, which are making gains in other countries (Voorhis says that Mexico is taking advantage of thermal power, as France harnesses the tides).  Nixon has proposed that federal anti-pollution standards not apply to the states if they come up with their own standards, which (according to Voorhis) “was an open invitation to the states to compete against one another for location of industries by deliberately setting their standards low” (pages 100-101).  Voorhis also states that Nixon has used environmental enforcement as a tool against political opponents, which explains the disproportionate prosecution of incidents in Maine, Edmund Muskie’s state.

Voorhis argues that the Democratic Congress has come up with noteworthy environmental legislation.  My impression is that this observation may overlap with a claim that Voorhis likes to make (or at least imply) elsewhere in his book: that Nixon is not principled in his stances on issues that are of concern to liberals (i.e., welfare, the environment), for Nixon’s main agenda is to take credit for advancements, all to serve his own political well-being, whether he fully deserves that credit or not.

It’s interesting that some of the issues that Voorhis raises are still issues today, such as alternative energy.  Voorhis does not address climate change or the greenhouse effect, however, perhaps because those were not major topics of discussion back then.  When Voorhis does say that carbon from automobiles is a problem, the reason that he gives is that CO2 weakens the heart and makes people susceptible to diseases.  For some reason, though, Voorhis criticizes air conditioners (page 97), which since the 1990′s have been blamed (at least in part) for the hole in the ozone layer.  But why did Voorhis, in his time and context, believe that air conditioners were damaging to the environment?

Jerry Voorhis: The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon 2

Jerry Voorhis was a Democratic Congressman from California, and he was defeated by Republican Richard Milhous Nixon in 1946.  Voorhis wrote a book during Richard Nixon’s Presidency, much of which was a critique of Nixon’s policies as President.  The book is entitled The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon.

In my reading so far, Voorhis addresses Nixon’s policies on agriculture, poverty, unemployment, the inner city, and health care.  Voorhis’ criticisms usually fell under the following categories:

1.  President Nixon does not spend as much money as Congress appropriates for programs.  While Nixon argued in his memoirs that he was simply fulfilling a Presidential prerogative that his predecessors, too, used, Voorhis views Nixon’s freezing of funds as a probably unconstitutional disregard of the system of checks and balances.  Moreover, Voorhis believes that the amount of money that Congress appropriates is necessary for the programs to work, and so they do not work when Nixon under-funds or reorganizes them.  There are then ill effects on real-life people: small farmers don’t get low-cost electricity, the prices of their crops plummet, the poor live in sub-standard housing, etc.

2.  President Nixon, when he proposes a program, does not request enough money.  For example, his Family Assistance Plan would not give poor families enough in terms of helping them to meet their needs. 

3.  President Nixon vetoes programs that can help the poor.  For example, he vetoed a plan to assist the poor with child care facilities, while his Family Assistance Plan would require a number of poor mothers to work (but see here and here for another perspective on this).  Nixon also vetoed a bill that would create permanent public sector jobs, in a time of high unemployment.  (According to Voorhis, Nixon supported public sector jobs as a temporary, emergency measure, but not permanently.)  How, Voorhis wonders, would that coincide with the work requirements of the Family Assistance Policy?  And, while I’m on the topic of work requirements, Voorhis argues that many people on public assistance cannot work due to disability, or they are eager to work but there are no jobs out there for them.

4. There are times when Nixon is quite generous in terms of the government spending money.  For one, Nixon is quite generous when an election year is close, presumably because Nixon is trying to get votes for the Republicans.  Second, Nixon can be quite generous towards special interests.  For example, Nixon cut government spending on low-income housing, yet Nixon supported section 236 for senior citizens, which “was already proving costly to the taxpayers and such a bonanza to the mortgage lenders” (page 73).

5.  Nixon claims to be such a budget-cutter, alleging that the government needs to restrain its spending to counter inflation.  Voorhis, however, blames inflation on high interest rates (which businesses pass on to their customers) and high and wasteful military spending, which (according to Voorhis) Nixon has no problem with.

6.  Nixon downgrades programs that actually work, such as cooperative farms and cooperative housing, and a program that would teach the poor how to save (and give them some money to save).  These programs have grass-roots participation, yet they need funding, which Nixon is stingy in providing.  Moreover, Nixon cuts loans to programs, even when people benefiting from those programs have a good track-record in paying those loans back to the government.

7.  Nixon’s stinginess hurts the small farmers’ business.  If not much government money is going towards milk and food for low-income children, that ends up depriving the small farmers of business, when crop prices are already abysmally low, and small farmers have difficulty purchasing capital to farm (which is why Voorhis thinks co-ops help).  Then, small farmers leave their land to go to the cities, looking for jobs that are not there for them.

8.  Overall, according to Voorhis, Nixon talks a good game.  Nixon speaks in favor of the co-ops, health care reform, and eliminating hunger.  But Nixon doesn’t sufficiently walk the walk that he talks.  There were right-wingers who complained that liberals got the action from Nixon’s Administration, whereas conservatives got the rhetoric.  Voorhis’ argument seems to be the opposite: that Nixon often talks like a liberal (with exceptions, as when Nixon criticizes welfare recipients), yet his actions are quite conservative.

9.  Nixon proposes to spend a certain amount of money on a program (say, environmental clean-up), then he dumps a significant amount of the cost onto the states.

10.  Sometimes, Nixon even turns around and betrays the special interests!  For example, when the American Milk Producers, Inc. (AMPI) arranged an event at which Nixon spoke, where Nixon got votes for the 1972 Presidential election, he agreed on a higher milk price.  But, after the dairy farmers’ money “was securely in the hands of the Nixon campaign committee”, his Justice Department sued “AMPI for monopolistic control of the price of milk” (pages 36-37).

11.  At times, Nixon manipulates statistics to make things look better than they actually are.  On pages 34-36, Voorhis says that “the Nixon Administration…changed the base on which parity was calculated” to make it look like the parity index jumped from 67 to 93 (pages 34-35).  But Voorhis doubts that farmers were buying that, for the Nebraska Legislature was still “calling on the President to set farm price supports at 90 percent of the old parity” (page 35).

Tomorrow, I’ll go into more detail on Voorhis’ discussion of health care.

RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Volume 2: 6

I have three items for my write-up today on volume 2 of Richard Nixon’s memoirs.

1.  A couple of posts ago, I wrote about Watergate.  In that particular post, I said that Nixon admitted that he sought to encourage the CIA to limit the FBI’s investigation into Watergate.  In my latest reading, however, Nixon said that he had serious reservations about cover-ups.  On page 151, we read:

“…I knew that the two worst actions in this kind of situation were to lie and to cover up.  If you covered up you would inevitable get caught, and if you lied you would be guilty of perjury.  That was the story of the Hiss case and the 5 percenters under Truman.”

(UPDATE: On page 413, Nixon mentions the story that he released claiming to explain why he encouraged the CIA to limit the FBI’s investigation into Watergate: Nixon said in a document that he sought to ensure that the investigation would not uncover “secret CIA operations”, I presume because Watergate conspirator Howard Hunt had done things for the CIA in the past.  But Nixon denied in the document that he wanted to impede the investigations into Watergate.)

But Nixon and his advisers still deliberated about how they should handle Watergate.  Regarding Watergate conspirator Jeb Stuart Magruder, should Magruder be encouraged to plead the Fifth Amendment?  Should Magruder simply admit that he got carried away?  Should Magruder say that he ordered the gathering of information but did not envision that this would be carried out through a break-in and wiretapping?  Should he “rationalize a story that would not lead to his conviction”, since Nixon was concerned that “Magruder’s whole life would be ruined for this one mistake” (pages 151, 153)?  On conspirators G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, would it be so terrible to let them take the fall and be convicted?  Were their ties to the White House sufficient enough to bring bad publicity to the White House?  Maybe Nixon realized that there were disadvantages to lying and covering things up, but, according to his own story, he was weighing various options.

On pages 175-176, Nixon says that his aide John Ehrlichman assured him that “John Dean, the Justice Department, and the FBI all confirmed that there had been no White House involvement” in the Watergate break-in.  But that apparently didn’t bottle up the scandal!

2.  In my write-up on volume 1 of Nixon’s memoirs, I said that Nixon appears to be shadier in his memoirs than he was in his 1962 book, Six Crises.  That is still the impression that I am getting, and I’ll mention two examples.  First, on page 124, Nixon narrates, “Later in the day, I said that every time the Democrats accused us of bugging we should charge that we were being bugged and maybe even plant a bug and find it ourselves!”  Nixon may have been kidding, I don’t know.  But Nixon’s critics have charged that one of the strategies that Nixon and/or his henchmen frequently employed was to do something sinister or controversial and to blame the Democrats for it, in an attempt to make the Democrats look bad.  According to Stephen Ambrose, Nixon’s defenders alleged that Democrats did the same sort of thing.  I recall reading in Ambrose’s Nixon: The Education of a Politician that one of Nixon’s defenders speculated that, in Nixon’s 1946 run for the U.S. House against Democrat Jerry Voorhis, when voters were receiving phone-calls calling Voorhis a Communist, it was the Democrats who made those calls in an attempt to make the Nixon campaign look despicable.  People who like to profile Nixon psychologically could say that Nixon or his defenders are projecting onto their opponents their own characteristics (not that the psychological profiles of Nixon that I read made this claim about this specific case, but Bruce Mazlish, and I think Eli Chesen, liked to accuse Nixon of projecting his own flaws onto others).  Or maybe politics truly is a dirty business, within both political parties!

Second, on page 172, Nixon discusses the case of Larry O’Brien, a Democrat who loved to hit Nixon below the belt in his rhetoric.  O’Brien was accused of not paying taxes on money that wealthy magnate Howard Hughes gave as a retainer to his lobbying firm.  Essentially, Nixon was rooting for O’Brien’s fall and was trying to make it happen.  Nixon states, “I was doubtful as I was hopeful that we would nail him on this issue”, that “I ordered Haldeman and Ehrlichman to have the audit expedited and completed before the election”, and that “it would be a pleasant—-and newsworthy—-irony after all the years in which Howard Hughes had been portrayed as my financial angel, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee was in fact the one profiting from a lucrative position on Hughes’ payroll.”  Instead, Nixon narrates, the IRS cleared O’Brien of the charges.

Why does Nixon appear shadier in his memoirs than he did in Six Crises?  I mean, in his memoirs, we still see the fair-minded Nixon of Six Crises, the one who sees the good even in some of his political opponents.  But Nixon in his memoirs appears shadier, at times.  Perhaps Nixon was more honest and candid in his memoirs because he could not hide who he truly was by that point: people had heard the Watergate tapes, and they were aware of Nixon’s activities.  Nixon could justify them, express regret for them, or simply acknowledge them, without offering an explanation.  It seems to me that Nixon in his memoirs does all three, depending on what he’s narrating.  Or maybe Nixon actually was a more honest and morally-conscientious politician in his earlier years, but the press’ criticism of him and his political defeats convinced him that he needed to play dirty in order to succeed, since the other side played dirty.  Politics can harden a person.

3.  On pages 163-163, Nixon lists his accomplishments in his first term as President.  Inflation went down from 6.1 percent to 2.7 percent.  The growth of the Gross National Product went up by 2.9 percent.  The stock market was doing well.  Real earnings were increasing at an annual rate of 4 percent by 1972, and “Average income per farm was 40 percent higher than the average from 1961-1968″ (page 164).  Federal income taxes were reduced “by 66 percent for a family of four making $5,000, and by 20 percent for a family of four making $15,000″ (page 164).  Welfare reform was proposed.  A national health insurance plan—-which “shared the cost between those who could afford to pay for health insurance, employers, and government”—-was offered as an alternative to “several socialized medicine schemes proposed by others” (page 164).  Funding to fight cancer went up, as did arrests for drug crimes.  The increase in the crime rate came down.  There was created a “formal research institute for learning and education” (page 164).  Government spending on mass transit went up.  There was progress in revenue-sharing between the federal and the state governments, environmental protection that (according to Nixon) balanced the preservation of the environment with the needs of industry, and the development of parks.  A higher percentage of government spending was for “education, social services, [and] health” than for national defense.  Government spending on the arts and social security benefits increased.  Draft calls were reduced, and “we were on our way to the elimination of the draft and the creation of an all-volunteer Army” (page 165).

Nixon is bragging here about a number of accomplishments that could be considered liberal or progressive, which is odd, considering the conservative rhetoric about government that he employs elsewhere in his memoirs.  Perhaps he figured that, yes, he increased government spending, but he was more reasonable about it than many of the Democrats.

Is Nixon accurate?  I’m sure that there’s another side to the story, but I don’t know what it is right now, so I can’t critique Nixon’s claims.  It does interest me that inflation remained a problem under the Presidencies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, so, even if Nixon succeeded in taming inflation, it made a comeback.

Native American Eschatology

In my latest reading of Circle of Life: Traditional Teachings of Native American Elders, James David Audlin talks about eschatology.  In reading Audlin’s discussion of this, I thought about Rosemary Ruether’s critique of environmental apocalyptism in her book, Gaia and God.  In my post here, I say that Ruether “criticizes ‘militant environmentalists’ who expect ‘Mother Earth’ to rise up ‘like a chthonic Jehovah to topple the human empires and return the earth to precivilized simplicity when humans, in small hunter-gatherer tribes, lived lightly off the land’, apparently unconcerned that ‘most human beings would die in the process’ (page 84).”  I don’t know if Audlin agrees with all of what Ruether criticizes here, but he did talk about a Native American eschatology that presumes that nature and the spirits are upset with what humans are doing to the earth.

On page 332, Audlin refers to Hopi prophecies.  He says: “The end is near, the prophecies say, when the House of Mica in the Lands to the East where world leaders meet to resolve issues and settle disputes ignore three times the message of peace and harmony with Nature (as the United Nations has done) and a ‘gourd of ashes’ is dropped upon the earth (nuclear war).  Soon after that, all land and life could be destroyed…unless human beings remember first how to live in peace with each other and in harmony with Nature.”  This intrigued me because Audlin’s interpretation of the Hopi prophecies actually wants for the United Nations to take an active role, a sentiment that you will not see in Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins’ Left Behind series (which holds that the UN will set the stage for the Antichrist one world government).  But are the Hopi prophecies about the UN?  I doubt this somewhat, for the prophecy says that the world leaders meet in the Lands to the East, whereas the UN is located in the west, in New York City.

I’d like to quote something that Audlin says on pages 332-333:

“Elders have told me that this future is all but unavoidable—-but that that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  And that, in fact, it might be a bad idea (or at the least wasted effort) to try to stop it from happening.  Just as we are taught not to try to heal someone whose time to die has come but only use palliative medicines to make their passing as comfortable as possible, we should do what we can to provide comfort and safety for all nations.  We may need to let the washichu descend into nuclear war.  It will be devastating and many people will unfortunately die (though remember there is no death, only a change of worlds, so they will yet live), but, as in homeopathic medicine, the [debacle] will cleanse the Earth of all chemical, mental and spiritual pollution.  Mainstream modern culture may already be terminally ill; it may already be impossible to change the direction of this juggernaut enough to avoid annihilation, but its worst effects might yet be blunted somewhat.  We can prepare for the time that will follow this nuclear winter, so that the teachings of the traditional ways, the descriptive law of how humans properly live, will still be remembered and taught and followed.  That is why I must write this book.”

That is a very disturbing passage, and it reminds me of the environmental apocalypticism that Rosemary Ruether was criticizing.  I’d say that Audlin is a little more generous towards humanity than are the environmental apocalypticists, however, for he supports ways to blunt the effects of the catastrophe.  But he does appear to envision a new beginning: after the earth is cleansed of pollution, people can follow the traditional ways of harmony with nature.  Personally, I’d like to think that we can avoid the catastrophe altogether.  Of course, the Christian apocalypticism with which I was raised would probably be skeptical that humans can effect any significant good at this stage, and so it looks for Christ to return to cleanse the earth and renew it.

Clear and Present Dangers 9: The Environment and Energy

In my latest reading of M. Stanton Evans’ Clear and Present Dangers: A Conservative View of America’s Government (copyright 1975), I finished the chapter on the environment, read the chapter on the energy crisis, and started the chapter on civil liberties.  I have two items, and I will focus in this post on the environment and energy.

1.  This first item is about the environment, but it will also refer to information that’s in the chapter on the energy crisis.  Yesterday, I said that Evans expressed apprehension about the types of substances that could replace lead in gasoline, fearing that those substances could be more hazardous than lead.  In my latest reading, Evans elaborates on this.  On page 240, Evans says that the catalytic converters that are supported by the Environmental Protection Agency change sulfur into sulfates, which “are potentially quite dangerous to people with respiratory ailments—-as lead, for example, is not.”  Evans later discusses a similar scenario, in which the federal government recommended that detergent manufacturers replace phosphates with a substance known as NTA, on the ground that phosphates have negative environmental affects in that they cause algae to proliferate in lakes (actually, in this sentence, I’m combining what Evans says with what this article says).  According to Evans, NTA itself was problematic because it “caused birth defects in rats” and was believed by a former Surgeon General (Jesse Steinfeld) to possibly cause cancer (page 241).  Moreover, Evans states that certain non-phosphates that were “marketed in place of phosphates” could “cause damage if splashed in the eyes or swallowed”, and some “destroyed the flame-retardant qualities of infants’ clothes” (page 241).  In contrast, Evans states, phosphates had a “rather wholesome record” in that they were not known to harm anyone (page 241).

On DDT, Evans argues that banning it has resulted in more malaria-related deaths.

Regarding where Evans’ discussion of the environment intersects with his comments on the energy crisis, Evans on page 255 refers to a 1972 report by the Office of Science and Technology estimating that environmental regulations and environmental protection equipment will be costly for businesses, and that there are many areas in the country in which such equipment is unnecessary.  According to Evans, the report also says that pressuring businesses with time-limits hinders them from developing better technology that is good for the environment.

On page 253, Evans argues that government regulations have resulted in gas-guzzling cars, which are inappropriate when the country supposedly has an energy crisis.  Evans says that EPA-mandated emission-control equipment reduces gas mileage and that the push to remove lead from gasoline “meant that fuel for efficient high-compression engines became appreciably more expensive.”

Evans may have legitimate arguments on the environment.  I don’t know enough to comment one way or the other.  I will say, though, that my impression has been that liberals tend to support fuel-efficient cars, whereas there are a number of conservatives and Republicans who glorify gas-guzzling SUVs and believe that stringent fuel-efficiency standards hurt the economy.  But was that always the case?

2.  Regarding the energy crisis, Evans advances a variety of arguments.  He argues that government price-controls on natural gas has discouraged development and contributed to demand outstripping supply (page 250), yet he also contends that they have hurt the coal industry, which cannot effectively compete against the low price of natural gas (page 251).  Is this contradictory, or can both be true?

Pages 256-259 had some interesting discussions.  Evans says that the U.S. produces 75 percent of its own energy needs, while getting only 8.1 percent from Middle Eastern and North African imports (Evans refers to the October 29, 1973 U.S. News and World Report); that domestic production increased since the protectionist policies of Eisenhower; and that oil profits have been modest compared with other industries.  Evans is arguing against the narrative that oil companies are deliberately creating shortages in order to boost profits.  Evans is open to the notion that oil companies are “shipping oil to foreign nations” and are “holding back supplies to wait for better prices” (page 257), but he believes that lifting government price controls could ameliorate this situation, as the lifting of price controls on meat resulted in more meat being brought to the market and thereby a reduction in meat prices.

On page 260, Evans refers to Chase Manhattan’s insight that taxes have inhibited oil companies from keeping up with their capital needs, and so it’s no surprise that petroleum is “in short supply” (Chase Manhattan’s words). 

The thing about the last observation, though, is that an energy bill passed during President George W. Bush’s Presidency gave energy companies tax credits, and yet the price of gasoline remains high. 

Clear and Present Dangers 8

In my latest reading of M. Stanton Evans’ Clear and Present Dangers: A Conservative View of America’s Government (copyright 1975), I finished the chapter on health care, read the chapter on “The Population Scare”, and started the chapter on the environment.  Here are three items:

1.  On page 211, Evans quotes economist Herbert Klarman, who said that Medicare and Medicaid’s reimbursement of hospitals was based in part on the hospital’s cost of operation, and that discouraged hospitals from keeping down costs because having a higher cost of operation could get them more money from the government.  Klarman states: “The hospital administrator can no longer deny requests for higher wages or more supplies on the ground that money is lacking; to get money, he need only spend more.”  According to Evans, government intervention has increased the cost of health care.  Evans is critical, however, of government attempts to solve this problem, since it entails government bureaucrats snooping through medical records to see that doctors are behaving themselves and imposes high fines if the government concludes that they are not.

Evans may have a point that government intervention has increased the cost of health care.  At the same time, I doubt that health care prices were especially low before the government stepped in, which was why the government stepped in in the first place: the poor were having problems paying for health care, and many private health insurance companies were reluctant to cover the elderly because there was more illness among that particular population.  Consequently, I don’t favor getting the government out of health care, for I believe that this would leave many people vulnerable.  But I do support reforms.  If Obamacare, for example, is living up to its claim to control costs, then I support it.

Evans also critiques federal drug regulations.  I don’t know if he’s for eliminating them, but he does believe that the rigor with which the government practices such regulation hinders the supply of potentially life-saving medication.  Evans is often a critic of the European health care systems, but he notes that a number of new drugs are appearing in Europe, but few have made it to the U.S.  Evans doubts that even penicillin would have passed the FDA’s “‘safe and effective’ meter’”, for it has caused “unfavorable reactions in some people [and] is less effective in certain cases than in others”, even though it has saved many people’s lives (Evans’ words on page 215).

I do know people in the health food industry who had to put up with the FDA and its rules regarding vitamins and supplements, but, when it comes to pharmaceuticals, the complaint among many today is that the pharmaceutical industry has too much power.  It’s interesting that Evans notes that new drugs were appearing in Europe, which many conservatives regard as socialistic in its health care policies, for conservatives often have argued that the U.S. system’s stress on the profit-motive provides incentives for the development of new drugs in the U.S.  Since Evans in the 1970′s appeared to lament that new medications were not sufficiently making their way into the U.S., I wonder if Evans would support the importation of cheap prescription drugs, something that a number of Republicans have opposed.

2.  Evans does not buy into the population scare, the notion that the number of people is rapidly increasing even as space and resources are limited.  For one, Evans notes that the birth rate is decreasing in the U.S., even as there is a lot of space in the country.  While Evans is not into scare tactics regarding population, he does appear to be concerned about the decline of the birth rate, for that would result in a smaller workforce, which would not be able to adequately sustain the Social Security system.  Second, even in the Third World, Evans argues, people having children may be helpful because it could result in more human-power and thus increased productivity.  For Evans, productivity is important because that entails that there is more food to go around.  Evans notes on page 220 that Malthus wrote “before the full effects of industrialization became apparent”, and that “it is precisely this neglected factor that makes all the difference.”

I first heard about the population crisis when I was in seventh-grade social studies, which was in 1989-1990.  And, in the 1970′s, there was a lot of concern about over-population, as was evident in such movies as Soylent Green (which is made of people!).  I don’t hear much about the population crisis nowadays, though I do think that there is a belief that overpopulation is a problem in the Third World, and thus we should encourage contraception there.  And yet, it seems to me that contemporary discussions about contraception revolve more around women’s rights than over-population. 

3.  I started the chapter on the environment.  I’ve encountered some of Evans’ arguments in other conservative and libertarian writings that I have read: that businesses pollute public lands that nobody owns, and thus privatization of parks and beaches can reduce pollution; that DDT is not a danger to humans, for too much of it was pumped into animals when it was tested on them and it had ill-effects; that nature causes more pollution than human beings do (and Evans documented this claim better than Ronald Reagan did when Reagan claimed that Mount St. Helens caused more pollution than cars, or that trees cause pollution, for Evans refers to a team of Harvard researchers), etc.  Evans also made arguments that I had not read as much before: that human-caused pollution was decreasing prior to the onset of federal anti-pollution legislation, that there is no evidence that leaded gasoline harms human beings (Evans quotes Dr. Robert Kehoe of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and a 1972 National Academy of Sciences Report), and that there is a potential danger that oil refineries could substitute something more hazardous than lead (Evans quotes E.P.A. Administrator William Ruckelshaus).

Evans may make some good points, here.  But there’s probably more to the story than what he presents.  While Evans may be correct that pollution declined prior to the onset of federal anti-pollution legislation, and this was probably due to improved technology, I’ve still heard stories about how smog was at one time a problem in major cities.  Moreover, if businesses would do a good job by themselves in keeping the air clean, why would they have a problem with federal mandates for air quality?  Granted, they may feel that there are better ways to keep the air clean than what the government is prescribing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, on some level, companies think that pollution is an unavoidable side-effect of the services that they provide.  On DDT, I’m somewhat skeptical that scientists wouldn’t have recognized that there is a difference between animal and human ability to absorb DDT and that the quantity of DDT injected into the animals is important, and that the scientists didn’t take that into consideration in their studies.  On privatization, I wonder if that would hinder businesses, since businesses would be restricted in terms of where they could log or drill or dump their waste.  Wouldn’t that lead to higher costs for consumers?

Personally, though, I’m a person who hopes that we can have our cake and eat it, too: that there are ways that we can have cleaner air and cleaner water, without harming the economy.  I hope that technology, both existent and developing, can make this possible, and there are many who argue that it indeed can.

Jonathan Edwards (and the Puritans) in High School

As my readers know, I finished George Marsden’s excellent biography of Jonathan Edwards.  In this post, I’ll talk about some of my experiences with Jonathan Edwards’ works, particularly when I was in high school.

If my memory is correct, I first heard of Jonathan Edwards when I was in the eleventh grade.  We read Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”.  The sermon itself did not make much of an impression on me, to tell you the truth.  I was from a denomination, Armstrongism, that did not believe in eternal torment in hell.  My family took that doctrine in a rather generous direction, probably more generous than the church itself intended the doctrine to be.  One of my relatives thought that no one in this life could be lost, since there was no solid evidence that one religion was superior to another, plus there was a lot of deception, and so how could God judge so many people for having the wrong religion?

Even though I did not take Edwards’ fire and brimstone sermon seriously, I did enjoy my eleventh grade English class’s unit on the Puritans.  Eleventh grade was when we learned about American literature, and the Puritans were unit one.  Or, actually, we started with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, which was set in the time of the Puritans, and immediately after that we launched our study of Puritan literature.  I could really identify with the Puritans, in a number of ways.  The eleventh grade was a time when my own faith was really deepening.  I read a lot of religious literature, even carrying my Bible to school.  I rested on the Sabbath and the annual holy days.  I took walks in nature as a way to get closer to God and to appreciate the beautiful world that God made.  Similarly, the Puritans read their Bibles.  The Puritans rested on a Sabbath—-only their Sabbath was Sunday, whereas mine was Saturday.  And Jonathan Edwards enjoyed taking long walks in nature. 

I’m not sure where exactly I first learned about Jonathan Edwards’ nature walks.  Perhaps it was in our textbook’s introduction to “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”—-the part of the book that gave us background as to who Edwards was.  But I obviously learned about it sometime in high school, for I participated in an essay contest in high school on what some aspect of American history can teach us about protecting the environment.  I chose to write about Jonathan Edwards’ appreciation of God’s creation.

On a related note, when I was in the eleventh grade, I enjoyed other things by the Puritans that we read as well: Mary Rawlinson’s story of being captured by Native Americans, and Anne Bradstreet’s pious poetry.  As an adult, at the place where I am now religiously, I doubt that I would enjoy living in Puritan times—-where people are evaluating where I am spiritually and are judging me negatively, where people get puffed up on account of their spiritual experiences, where having an alternative worldview is considered heresy, and where preachers use the fear of hell as a way to keep people in line.  I much prefer living in today’s era.  And yet, I do feel rather nostalgic, warm, and cozy when I read about the Puritans, as I did when I recently went through George Marsden’s biography of Jonathan Edwards.

Take It Back 7: Energy and the Environment

In my latest reading of James Carville and Paul Begala’s Take It Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future (copyright 2006), I read the chapter on the environment, and I started the chapter on the media (i.e., how the media does not really manifest a left-wing bias).  My post today will be about the environment, whereas my post tomorrow will be about the media.

What did I like about the chapter on the environment?  A number of things.  I liked Carville and Begala’s point that Democrats should concentrate on climate change rather than drilling in ANWR (which many people don’t visit anyway), that they should promote good environmental stewardship as a religious value, that they should highlight how environmental damage threatens people’s health, that they should seek the support of hunters and fishermen by talking about how environmental damage leads to fewer places where people can hunt and fish, and that they should discuss how higher CAFE standards could lead to the production of more fuel-efficient cars and thus more jobs.  I also appreciated that Begala and Carville mentioned people who were being part of the solution rather than part of the problem.  They refer favorably to the advancements that Texas has made in terms of alternative fuels (and I talk about Texas Governor Rick Perry’s discussion of Texas’ environmental and clean energy record in my post here), as well as General Electric’s profits from renewable energy, “water purification and cleaner transportation” (page 182).

After talking about GE, Carville and Begala criticize how a number of Democrats approach environmental issues: “We’ll admit it: There are times when Democrats can be preachy and prissy and sanctimonious and scornful when talking about energy and the environment.  We tend to sneer at people who drive SUVs and at companies that create jobs but also contribute to global warming.  Worse, some Democratic environmentalists tend to be almost self-loathing about America’s energy consumption.  Instead, we should celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit of America; we should embrace the profit motive that is driving more and more corporate leaders to the Green/Green Solution.”

I appreciate Carville and Begala’s support for an environmentalism that is consistent with jobs, religion, and the desires of hunters and fishermen.  I remember a professor saying that, in some regions of the country, the National Rifle Association is a strong proponent of responsible environmental policies.  Why should environmentalists position themselves as extremists, when they can form alliances with a wide range of people, even conservatives?

What did I not like about the chapter on the environment?  I did not feel that Carville and Begala were sensitive to the deleterious effects that some of their proposals could have.  For example, they support cap-and-trade and the windfall profits tax.  But could not those lead to higher energy prices, as companies pass on the cost of buying carbon credits or paying the windfall profits tax to consumers?  Carville and Begala should have addressed that point.  It would be nice, though, if a windfall profits tax could work out, for I like the story about how Sarah Palin as Governor of Alaska brought in higher revenues and gave Alaskans a check through taxes on oil profits (but see here for another take on that).

Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance 13

I finished Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit.

It was a heavy book to read in that it had a great deal of sophisticated discussion about science and policy.  Consequently, there were probably things that I missed or failed to absorb as I read it.  I was pretty much expecting this to be the case when I started the book.  But, overall, the book was rewarding in terms of what I learned.  I especially appreciated Gore’s discussion about what policies towards the Third World do not work, and which policies might work better instead.

But there were a number of things in the book that took me by surprise.  For example, Gore talked at great length about such issues as history, addiction, relational dysfunction, and even his son’s accident changing his family’s life—-and he related those things to the environment, often in an analogical sense.  Consequently, this book had somewhat of a poetic feel.  Did I like that?  Well, it was different!  There were times when I wondered what Gore was driving at, or where exactly he was going, and I felt like he was getting into distractions.  But, as I reflect more, there was part of me that actually enjoyed his holistic treatment of environmental issues.

Something that took me slightly by surprise was Gore’s ideological flexibility.  I already knew going into the book that Gore did not believe that we had to choose between a strong economy and the environment.  I also had a hunch that the way that many Republicans have characterized his book is not entirely accurate, the same way that Democrats sometimes (Republicans would say “often”) caricature Republican positions.  But I didn’t entirely expect for Gore in this book to seek common ground with conservatives who oppose big government, or the Catholic church and pro-lifers on addressing over-population in the Third World.  Moreover, Gore actually sought to address the arguments of climate-change deniers (particularly those with credentials) rather than casually dismissing them or crying conspiracy.  As one who long regarded Gore as a pompous ideologue who looks down on those with whom he disagrees, I was pleasantly surprised.

In terms of where I was disappointed, I wish that the book had gone more into green technology and how that could create jobs—-particularly how other countries are achieving success in the area of green technology.  Perhaps he covered that more than I remember, and I missed it, but I don’t recall him going into this issue all that often (though he did recommend cheaper and cleaner equipment on quite a few occasions).  That surprised me, for I can tell that he regards it as an important issue because he has brought it up in a number of settings (i.e., on talk-shows, in debates, etc.).  Perhaps my problem is that he did discuss this issue, but not in a manner to which I’m accustomed.

Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance 12: Ideological Flexibility

For my write-up today on Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, I’ll use as my starting point something that Al Gore says on pages 348-349:

“To most of us, the principle sounds unassailable: let the polluter pay.  But what about when it applies to each of us instead of to a nameless, faceless corporation?  For example, rather than require homeowners to pay higher property taxes to cover the cost of garbage collection, why not lower property taxes and then charge for garbage collection directly—-by the pound?  Those responsible for creating more garbage would pay more; those who found ways to cut down would pay less.  The interest in recycling might rise dramatically.  And when choosing between products at the store, people might even start avoiding unnecessary and bulky packaging if they knew it was going to end up in their garbage.  There is an economic rule of thumb: whatever we tax, we tend to get less of; whatever we subsidize, we tend to get more of.  Currently, we tax work and we subsidize the depletion of natural resources—-and both policies have contributed to high unemployment and the waste of natural resources.  What if we lowered the tax on work and simultaneously raised it on the burning of fossil fuels?  It is entirely possible to change the tax code in a way that keeps the total amount of taxes at the same level, avoids unfairness and ‘regressivity,’ but discourages the constant creation of massive amounts of pollution.”

In the 1992 Vice-Presidential debate, Dan Quayle said to Al Gore about Gore’s book: “In the book you also suggest taxes on gasoline, taxes on utilities, taxes on carbon, taxes on timber. There’s a whole host of taxes. And I don’t just — I don’t believe raising taxes is the way to solve our environmental problems.  And you talk about the bad situation in the auto industry. You seem to say that the answer is, well, I’ll just make it that much worse by increasing the CAFE standards. Yes, the auto industry is hurting, it’s been hurting for a long time, and increasing the CAFE standards to 45 miles per gallon, like you and Bill Clinton are suggesting, will put, as I said, 300,000 people out of work.”

As far as I could tell from the transcript, Gore didn’t get a chance to respond to Quayle on this.  But what Gore probably would have said was that Quayle’s reading of Gore’s book was rather one-sided, for Gore in the book endorses certain tax cuts, plus Gore believes that environmental technology can save companies money and entail the creation of jobs.  While Quayle portrayed Gore as a hard-core leftist, Gore in the passage that I quoted from his book actually appears to be quite flexible and open to a variety of approaches, some of which can be characterized as conservative: privatization of garbage collection (if I’m understanding Gore correctly), reduction in property taxes, and lower taxes on work.  Whether that matches Gore’s voting record and the record of the Clinton Administration, I don’t know.  But one thing that I have admired about Gore in terms of his book is his openness to different ideas.