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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (502959)	12/3/2003 2:13:24 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769670

Walter Williams Economic straight thinking newsandopinion.com \| A fortnight ago, I wrote "Harm's a two way street," a column that generated considerable reader response, some of it angry and nasty. The gist of the column was that the liberty-oriented solution to the smoking controversy was through the institution of private property, where the owner of a workplace, restaurant or bar decides whether there would be smoking or not. The totalitarian solution was to use the brute force of government. I argued that harm is a two-way street. Tobacco fumes might harm someone who is allergic or just finds the odor offensive. The person who smokes and is not permitted to do so is also harmed by being denied a pleasurable experience. Quite a few letters asserted, "Williams, you can't compare the health harm to a nonsmoker to the inconvenience harm that a smoker suffers just because he's not allowed to smoke." No, I can't and wouldn't even try. Why? Using economic jargon, it is impossible to make interpersonal utility comparisons. Let's try a few. A dollar will bring me more happiness than it will bring you. It's better to like opera music than hip-hop music. Human life is more important than money. There's no objective way to prove any of these statements simply because there is no objective standard for comparison. You might have an opinion, but an opinion is not proof. The same reasoning applies if you said, "The harm I suffer from your smoking is greater than the harm you suffer from not being permitted to smoke." Contrast these statements to: "You are taller than I." For such a statement there are indeed objective standards for falsifying or verifying it -- just get out the measuring instruments. > Another part of the column suggested that an owner of a restaurant, workplace or bar might post a sign indicating whether he permitted smoking or not. After all, private property rights have to do with rights held by an owner to keep, acquire and use property in ways he pleases so long as he doesn't interfere with similar rights held by another. Private property rights also include the right to exclude others from use of property. Quite a few readers asked, "What if the owner wished to exclude blacks or some other race?" I value freedom of association. An important part of the right of association is the right not to associate for a good reason, bad reason or no reason at all. That's not to say that I don't find some forms of association offensive. But the true test of one's commitment to freedom of association doesn't come when he allows others to associate in ways he deems desirable. The true test of his commitment comes when he is willing to allow others to associate in ways he deems offensive. One might be tempted to think that if owners were free to reject customers by race, segregation would be widespread. But that's nonsense because there's a difference between what people can do and what they'll find in their interests to do. Think about it. During the United States' Jim Crow era and South Africa's apartheid era, there was an elaborate legal structure mandating and enforcing racial segregation. Whenever you see a law on the books, your best guess is that the law is on the books because not everyone left to their own devices would behave according to the specifications of the law. After all, why would there be a need for a law saying bars or theaters cannot admit blacks if no white bar or theater owner would admit blacks in the first place? jewishworldreview.com

To: calgal who wrote (502959)	12/3/2003 2:13:32 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769670

Paul Greenberg The Clark bandwagon breaks down newsandopinion.com \| What ever happened to Wesley Clark's once promising presidential campaign? It already begins to feel finished, over, even before the first caucus has been held in Iowa, even before the first vote has been cast in the New Hampshire primary. It doesn't seem fair, but there it is. When he announced, General Clark led the polls. He looked like just what the country wanted, and needed. But the more he campaigned, the lower he sank. What happened? Americans were ready for another Dwight D. Eisenhower, a military man who would rise above partisan politics and unite us in troubled and divisive times. Instead, General Clark joined the partisan clamor, doing and saying pretty much what everybody else in the race for the Democratic nomination was doing and saying. He acquired a staff of clintonoids, listened to the pros, echoed the party line, played the debate game and in general competed with the Howard Deans and John Kerrys at bashing this administration — instead of taking the debate to a whole new, higher, level. Which is what some of us hoped he'd do. We wanted an Eisenhower, and got a McGovern. What happened? Far from not being enough of a politician, the general turned out to be too much of a politician. Maybe Wesley Clark's problem is that Ike isn't his only role model. He's also got some of the imperious General MacArthur in him, and even a bit of General Boulanger, the original Man on a White Horse. He was the hero who was going to save France at the tail end of the 19th Century but missed his one chance. Oh, Ike had his problems, too. A world of them. We just don't remember them very clearly because of the way he surmounted them. When he got into trouble, his first and only concern was how to get out of it. Think of Kasserine Pass, Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge . . . one awful blow after another. But Ike wasted no time assigning blame or lashing out at his critics. Ike used prima donnas like Montgomery and Patton; he was never one himself. He had no time or energy to waste on assigning blame or countering critics or justifying his own actions. Criticism? He ignored it. Rumors and gossip? He wasted no time on them. He rose above them. But the more General Clark explains why he's never been wrong about a single foreign-policy issue, and tries to straighten out all the inconsistent things he's said on CNN and in this campaign and at Republican rallies before he became a Democrat . . . the lower he sinks in the polls and the angrier he sounds. That's not the kind of leader Americans are looking for just now, or maybe ever. Wesley Clark has missed his chance — and much more. He's wasted a vast well of good will — and his own exceptional intelligence, competence and energy. There's apparently no virtue a driving ego cannot obscure. Wes Clark is proving one of those sad figures everyone thought would make a great president — till he ran for it. Remember George Romney? Edmund Muskie? Many of us have already started thinking of the general as a vice- presidential candidate. But there's room for only one presidential-size ego on a national ticket, and you have to wonder if someone like Howard Dean would risk having him on the ticket. There are times when General Clark would have made Ross Perot's running mate, poor bumbling Admiral Stockdale, sound cogent. The political pundits speak of the Invisible Primary that occurs the year before the primaries begin. Howard Dean, this year's real George McGovern, already seems to have swept that Invisible Primary as measured by the polls and gut instinct. The signs were unmistakable and unshakable even as Wesley Clark set out on his little bus tour to nowhere in particular. Another bad sign was Peter Boyer's mercilessly fair portrait of the general in The New Yorker magazine, which is just the kind of venue in which Wesley Clark should shine. Instead, he was quietly, definitively, extensively panned. In short, Wesley Clark is no Ike. There goes my dream. Though I have to admit it's been going for months now, with every strange rumor the general has retailed, every predictable, party-line stance he's tamely repeated . . . . I hope General Clark will prove me wrong, awfully wrong, comically wrong, and he'll yet emerge as this year's Eisenhower. But I don't think it's going to happen. What a pity. jewishworldreview.com