Our Decrepit Constitution: When Congress Goes Wrong

In many ways, the US Constitution is like an operating system that tells a computer how to run. The Constitution tells the government how to run. Its task is far more important than an operating system, like Microsoft Windows. If Windows fails, it usually causes no more than a minor inconvenience. When the Constitution fails, it affects people's lives dramatically.

The Framers, the colonial Americans who wrote the Constitution, had some experience writing similar documents. Both James Madison and George Mason helped write the Virginia Constitution of 1776. The Framers understood how Constitutional law worked. They did not understand how Constitutional law could fail.

Software operating systems make the computer work. The authors frequently do not consider what will make the computer fail or how to escape from a failure. The Constitution shows the same kind of blindness. The Framers believed the government would work. They did not see how it could fail. They all belonged to a class of well-off gentry. Many in the South held large estates that were run by slaves. The northern framers were professionals—doctors and lawyers and businessmen. These men tended to think alike. All alike believed that they were the elite who should govern the new country.

The framers wrote a document that is particularly ill-suited for our country today. We have numerous contending classes. Each class believes it has a right to participate in government. In the past few years, the former ruling class has been pushed aside and its members are having difficulty accepting their new role. In 2012, Mitt Romney, whose father ran for president in 1960, believed that he would win because he belonged to the governing class.

The governing class, composed primarily of white males, has grown accustomed to receiving preference, in political office, in jobs, in salary, and in a whole host of other ways. This class is recipient of many government programs, including the farm subsidies that go almost exclusively to them. The class never received food stamp benefits, which accounts for its support for the former and hostility to the latter.

The old ruling class viewed the election of Barack Obama as symbolic of their loss of prestige and power. They regarded the presidency as rightfully theirs. The class considered anything that was not traditional—such as African-Americans owning homes and receiving medical care—as a threat to them. For these people, conservatism means preserving their status and prerogatives.

For the ruling class, conservatism also means moral prerogatives. They vehemently oppose legalization of abortion, legalization of marijuana, and gay rights. They see the laws governing these things as the end products of moral struggles that they fought hard to win. They are appalled to watch their America fade away.

But the old America is fading away, and faster than anyone predicted a few years ago. The Republican party has become the party of old, white men. The younger generation today grew up in an integrated society. The young are much more in touch with what is going on throughout the world, and the world is coming to our doorstep.

Past waves of immigrants took at least a generation before they integrated into white American society. The society of those days forced them to conform through discrimination and a tightly knit ruling class. The ruling class is faltering. The new Americans are demanding their rights even before they become citizens. Groups of Americans who never participated in politics before are learning that their votes make a difference.

What we are watching is the last flare-up of a dying system and the birth of a new one. Birth pangs are always painful. Let us hope most of our troubles are behind us.

Our Decrepit Constitution: Remedies (Part Two)

6. Give the President More Domestic Power

The Founders persuaded the colonists to support the revolution by blaming a long list of problems on the King of England. They included this list in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration also served—pehaps primarily—as a notice to the countries of Europe that the colonies wanted a new country, not reconciliation with the King. The colonists fought against the King and were not likely to accept a new monarch in his place.

The Articles of Confederation lacked a strong executive authority, which was seen as a major weakness. So the new Constitution had to describe a middle road. The office of the Presidency was a compromise between the power of a monarch and the limited authority of an administrator appointed by the Congress.

The President at first glance appears impressive. But the President does not propose a budget; only the House of Representatives can introduce spending measures. The President can appoint his cabinet, but they must be approved by the Senate. The President can negotiate and sign treaties with foreign nations, but the Senate must approve them before they go into effect. Likewise, the President appoints judges, but the Senate approves them.

This situation has lasted for two hundred years. At the beginning, when there was mutual respect between Congress and President, the system worked fairly well. As time went by, it worked less and less well. Today, Congress sees its approval as conditional on concessions from the executive branch, or simply as a way to attack the President.

It is absolutely impossible to imagine a corporation operating successfully under similar restrictions. The CEO appoints subordinate executives without any interference from the Board of Directors. The CEO proposes plans for the Board to approve, but once the plan is agreed upon, the CEO may implement the plan in any manner he or she sees fit. The President should have similar powers.

In line with their limited powers under the new system, the Senate may have veto power over presidential appointments, but only for 60 days. After that waiting period, the appointment becomes official.

7. Impeachment should be abolished

When it came time to establish procedures for removing a President from office, the Framers adopted a complex set of rules for impeachment, modeled after the British Parliament's impeachment procedures. In recent years, other procedures have been substituted for impeachment. The House or Senate may expel a member without any complex, quasi-judicial process. There is no reason to continue using this creaky, 18th century artifact, except that it can be used to completely stymie the political program of a president, as happened in President Clinton's second term. That alone is a reason to abandon the process, not to preserve it.

The last impeachment proceedings held in the Congress, against William Clinton, were entirely political in nature. The Republican House indicted Clinton with only five democratic representatives voting to impeach. The Republican Senate voted to convict Clinton with none of the democratic senators joining the Republicans.

The impreachment of President Clinton was a direct result of a Supreme Court ruling that Paula Jones could bring a charge against him in a civil court because there was little likelihood that he would be hindered in his duties as president while answering the civil suit (Clinton v. Jones, 1997). The Supreme Court was unanimous in this decision and they were completely wrong. Clinton spent much of the rest of his term as president embroiled in the Paula Jones case and the impreachment that followed.

After the National Initiative Amendment is passed, the Constitution may substitute a much simpler procedure involving a recall election. The House may vote for a recall by a two-thirds majority to place the recall on a special election ballot. The election must be held within 30 days to avoid any undue delay. If the President loses the recall election, he is immediately removed from office and the Vice President assumes his duties.

8. Sign International Treaties and Remove Exceptions

American Exceptionalism is a theory that regards the U.S. as a special nation. The idea has become part of conservative dogma since the 1980s. Ronald Reagan introduced the concept, if not the name, in a speech delivered to the first Conservative Political Action Committee. Reagan claimed he had a mystical revelation that America was part of a divine plan that involved men who believed in freedom and had a special kind of courage. 

Reagan backed up his mystical belief in that speech with a number of examples drawn from history, particularly the history of the founding fathers. Most of his examples were entirely false, but Reagan connected with the conservative movement with his folksy charm and his Hollywood-inflected view of the world and world history. 

Since the 1980s, the U.S. has withdrawn more and more from the family of nations. It has failed to sign treaties that offered cooperation on war and peace, the climate crisis, and the law of the sea. While President George H. W. Bush conducted an attack on Iraq with a broad coalition of nations under the auspices of the United Nations, his son rejected the advice of the U.N., instead attacking Iraq with a small coalition of U.S. allies. This action violated the United Nations Charter by carrying out an aggressive war that did not respond to a threat against our nation. 

Bush appointed an ambassador to the U.N. who stated that there was no United Nations, that the U.S. was the only real power in the world and that sometimes the U.S. could persuade other countries to follow its lead. This is an expression of American exceptionalism that few countries in the world could accept.

As a result of this quasi-religious belief in American exceptionalism,

the U.S. Senate has repeatedly failed to ratify treaties intended to increase cooperation between the countries of the world. Instead of leading the rest of the world, the U.S. has pursued its own interests in despite of any other country's opinions.

The Supreme Court has fallen in line with this belief. Its conservative members refuse to consider any court rulings from outside the U.S. as persuasive. This position is insulting to jurists in other countries, especially those who have been working for world peace and cooperation. Rulings of the Supreme Court have also reduced the reach of the Alien Tort Statute, further eroding any possibility of legal remedies for victims of injustice overseas.

We the people must curtail the power of the Senate to block implementation of treaties which the executive branch has negotiated and agreed to. These treaties could be approved by initiative and referendum, but that process is time-consuming and unnecessary. The Senate should have the power to block treaties for one year only. After one year, if the Senate hasn't approved a treaty, it should go into effect automatically.

9. Incorporate the International Declaration of the Rights of Man into our Constitution

The U.S. helped form the United Nations after World War II. We were then the world leaders calling other nations to move toward a peaceful world. In recent years, due in part to the theory of American Exceptionalism, we have moved away from a vision of the world which was ours. We the People should reclaim this vision.

The Framers believed that the Bill of Rights guaranteed all the rights that government should be concerned with. Their vision of the world did not extend farther than that. At that moment in time, the Bill of Rights was a laudable achievement. But we no longer stand at that moment in time.

Americans believed in 1945 that they possessed all the virtues in the world, since their armies had just defeated the alliance that embodied all the evils in the world. Sixty years later, we know better. We have seen our own country commit unspeakable crimes, bomb defenseless civilian populations, torture captives, imprison captured enemy soldiers indefinitely without trial. We can have only two reactions to these crimes: We can embrace a theory that defines them as virtues, since the country that committed them is ordained by God to be the savior of the world; or we can atone for our errors by becoming the world leader for peace and prosperity that we once were and can be again.

Our Decrepit Constitution: Remedies (Part One)

The National Initiative Amendment (NIA) is the only way to resolve our Constitutions problems in the long run. There are a number of stop-gap measures we can take without amending the constitution, but these would be just as hard to pass as the NIA, so there would be little point in wasting our energy on them. Once we give the power to amend the Constitution back to We the People, there are a number of measures we can take to restore the balance between competing interests.

1. Increase the number of Senators

The Constitution provides for two senators to represent each state. This has led to many problems, chief among them the fact that California, with 35 million residents, has the same number of senators and the same relative power as Delaware, with under a million. This imbalance leads to defeats for issues of interest to large states, such as gun control.

The U.S. Senate was modeled on the House of Lords. Like the Senate, the Lords became a barrier to passing bills for the common good. The House of Commons partially resolved the problem by increasing the number of Lords. We, the People, could resolve the Senate problem by adding another 100 Senators to be elected at large. By definition, these Senators would represent a larger constituency than any of the current Senators. Small states would still have disproportionate representation, but nothing could stop one of the small-state senators from running at large. Such a candidate must appeal to a broader electorate than one running in a small, homogeneous state.

Other, more drastic measures may be taken. The Senate could be abolished altogether, or Senators could retain the ability to block bills (which is their primary function now) but only for three years.

2. Elect the Supreme Court

Life appointment for Supreme Court Justices was intended to free them from political pressures, giving them liberty to vote their conscience. This idea never worked very well, since the Justices are nearly always members of the elite classes. Recently, the idea of apolitical Justices must appear a cruel hoax. Observers can usually predict which justices will join a majority. Presidents appoint younger and younger justices to prevent the opposing party from gaining a majority on the court. Retiring justices choose the terms of like-minded presidents to give up their seats. The Court has actually become a third legislative body, one with even less variety of opinion than the Senate.

We, the People, should make the Court responsible to us by forcing the Justices to run for election every seven years. Renowned jurists who can't get seats on the current, highly politicized court, should be happy to run for such a prestigious post. Presidents could still fill vacancies with the consent of the Senate, but they would be forced to make better choices if they want their appointees to withstand an electoral challenge.

3. Normalize the Laws

Another measure would be to remove the appellate responsibilities from the court, or abolish the federal bench entirely. The Federal Bench exists side-by-side with the state courts, with many of the same responsibilities. All courts should be combined into a single, national system of district courts and appellate bodies. Instead of striking down laws they deem improper, the judges in this system could replace the offending laws with others that have been passed in other states. Many states have similar legal codes already. This blending of federal with state authority would discourage state legislatures from passing frivolous laws that pander to the electorate.

This system would also discourage well-heeled groups like ALEC from changing the laws, state by state, to favor corporations and the wealthy. Judges would be free to ignore changes made by ALEC and other groups in favor of more moderate laws.

Lawyers should be allowed to practice in any state, since the laws would, over time, tend to be similar. State Bar Associations would lose their monopoly control of the legal profession. Legal professionals could practice in any state without fearing law suits from the State Bar. The cost of legal assistance would decrease, enabling ordinary people to better afford lawyers.

4. Abolish the Electoral College

We, the People, should elect presidents by majority vote. If no candidate achieves a majority, we should hold a runoff election. Third parties would be able to participate in elections without fear that their participation would defeat candidates with whom they agree on most issues.

There is currently a National Popular Vote movement (NPV) to sidestep the electoral college by passing laws in each of the states. These laws commit the states to cast their electoral votes for the candidate who wins the majority of all votes cast in all states. NPV flips current presidential campaigning on its head. Candidates would spend most of their time and money in the largest states instead of in the key swing states.They would have to take positions on important issues instead of avoiding them.

NPV avoids the Amendment process but ends up with laws that can be repealed without using the Amendment process. It also fails to institute a runoff system, as described above. It does not encourage third party candidates, since it will rob them of any electoral votes they might have gotten using the current electoral system. This could lead to appeals through the courts, throwing elections into confusion for other reasons, such as when a third-party argues that the anti-electoral college law prevents third parties from getting the votes necessary to appear on ballots. Current election laws are a tangled thicket that may cause unforeseen problems.

The instability of the NPV, which could be undone by the votes of only a few states (assuming it ever passes) will lead to more electoral confusion, not less. The supporters of this plan have a good idea, but the execution would likely be chaotic and reversible within a few years. NPV will go into effect when the states that have adopted it have enough electoral votes.

NPV now has about 50 per cent of the states necessary to put its plan into action. From here on, however, it will run into the same problem of the electoral college, only in reverse. Each state that passes NPV will now be a state that benefits from the current situation.

Another movement, much less realistic, to reform the electoral college would divide the nation into 50 new states with equal populations. The logistics of this proposal make it impossible. State governments are huge, unwieldy bureaucracies that have taken root in one place for up to 200 years. Moving one of these bureaucracies to a new location would create a complex mess and cost a fortune. Moving 50 of them might take another 200 years.

5. Undo the Corporate Strangle Hold on Our Laws

In the late nineteenth century the Supreme Court discovered that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to corporations, though they couldn't figure out how to use it to help African-Americans. In 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to regulate corporations. The Courts permitted the Sherman Act to be used against Unions, which it declared illegal combinations as defined by the law. In United States v. E. C. Knight Company (1895), the Supreme Court upheld the appeal of the American Sugar Refining Company, which controlled 98 per cent of sugar refining in the U.S., because this control did not constitute a restraint of trade.

During the last years of the twentieth century, Congress responded to public concern about corporate lobbyists influence in politics by passing modest reforms. In Citizens United v. FEC (2004), the Supreme Court reversed much of what reformers had accomplished. In his dissent, Justice Stephens cited earlier Court decisions that recognized that corporate spending on elections should be viewed as a business transaction designed for no other purpose than profit-making. Corporations unfairly influence elections with vast sums of money that few individuals can match. Finally, Stephens pointed out that the mere appearance of impropriety fostered by Corporate campaign contributions would have a chilling affect on voter participation.

Stephens' arguments fell on deaf ears. The Court, as so often before, sided with corporations against the interests of ordinary citizens. One protection for We the People would be to limit the power of the Court by limiting its terms and making it easier to overrule their decisions with a national initiative. Critics of the Citizens United decision have proposed a Constitutional amendment to overturn it. A constitutional amendment would require majority votes of both houses of Congress and passage by three-fourths of the state legislatures. The amount of time, energy, and treasure necessary for the effort is enormous. This massive effort, involving millions of citizens, is required to counter the opinions of five Republican Justices. Nothing about our republic is less democratic than this proposition.

An amendment should be passed outlawing corporate spending in political elections. Laws should be instituted imposing heavy penalties for corporate officers who authorize anonymous spending from the corporate coffers.

Kiobel v. Shell: Supreme Court Gives Corporations A Break

In an important case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell, the U.S. Supreme Court has once again ruled in favor of corporations and against individual human rights. Court observers should have had no doubt about the resolution of this case. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful lobbyist for corporate interests, has made its opinion known. Businesses around the globe, said a spokesman, are being punished in U.S. courts with costly, reputation-damaging litigation.

Neither the Chamber of Commerce nor the Court seem interested in the crimes committed by corporations in these cases. These crimes are the worst sort of human rights abuses.

Filartega v. Pena-Arala (1980) was brought by the sister and father of Joelito Filartiga who was tortured and killed by the Paraguayan government. In Kadic v. Karadzic (1995), muslims and Serbians charged Radovan Karadzic, president of Srpska, for acts of rape, torture, extrajudicial killing, and genocide committed by soldiers under his command.

In re South African Apartheid Litigation (2004) was brought by South African citizens against multi-national corporations for aiding and abetting apartheid, extrajudicial killing, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and denationalization. The corporations involved in these lawsuits were Daimler, Ford, General Motors, and IBM. This case has not yet been brought up on appeal. Its fate is doubtful, given the Court's decision in Kiobel. All these cases have been brought under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789 ("ATS"), which gives U.S. District courts the right to try cases that originate in foreign countries.

ATS has been invoked in law suits 154 times since 1995.

The Supreme Court tolerated ATS until victims began targeting corporations. One law journal article estimated that continued prosecution under the law might cost corportions $6 billion over the next few years and cause multi-national corporations to stop doing business in countries that are notorious violators of human rights, like China. The article called this a nightmare scenario, while admitting that it hasn't happened yet.

An alternate scenario could be that multi-national corporations begin to protest human rights violations in countries like China to protect their bottom line. Then human rights violators will stop denying rights to their citizens because they need foreign capital to survive. One advantage of ATS is that it allows victims to sue for damages, while other international human rights laws hand out criminal penalties. The cash awards permit human rights law firms to take the cases on contingency and continue to represent victims in other cases.

The chances of either scenario happening were diminished by the Supreme Court, which rejected the arguments of human rights victims in Kiobel. Cases filed under ATS had two characteristics that bother the conservative justices on the Court. First, the statute can be used against corporations, which the Court has shown an eagerness to protect. Second, the statute can be used for any violation of the law of nations, now known as international law, which the conservatives on the court hold in contempt.

Justice Scalia proudly boasts he does not cite the opinions of foreign judges in his analyses of Constitutional law. He cites a number of areas where European law differs from American law as the reason for this practice. European courts, he says, have declared homosexual sodomy legal; abolished the death penalty; banned political donations for periods of time before elections. ATS specifically mentions offenses under international law. Using ATS forces American District Courts to become interpreters of international law.

The differences Scalia cites between U.S. and European law do not represent instances where Europe is wrong and the U.S. is right. They are instances where Scalia personally disagrees with European law, but where millions of Americans would accept the European position.

In his opinion in Kiobel, Chief Justice Roberts used a concept, presumption against extraterritoriality, that has not been well-defined. Roberts rejects the petition of Kiobel for redress against Shell Oil Company because accepting the petition might result in discord between nations. This decision is a transparent effort to resolve the claim in favor of a multinational corporation, regardless of the merits of the case. Recall that Filartiga was brought by a Paraguayan citizen against another Paraguayan citizen for crimes committed in Paraguay. Kiobel was brought by a Nigerian citizen against a multinational corporation for crimes committed in Nigeria. If anything, there is a closer relationship to the U.S. in Kiobel than in Filartiga. It is hard to view the Court's decision in the current case as anything but a complete reversal of the earlier case.

Roberts decides that the U.S. Supreme Court cannot intercede because the acts of Shell are also illegal under international law and therefore should be tried in an international court. Roberts knows Kiobel won't be tried in an international court, however, because the attorney for the plaintiff informed him in oral argument that no other judicial body showed an interest in taking the case. Furthermore, international courts are familiar with conflicts between countries and have procedures in place to handle such conflicts. Therefore, U.S. entry into the case would offend no one.

The Court's minority also concurred with the majority, making this a unanimous decision. The minority refused to accept Roberts's opinion on extraterritoriality. Rather, they ruled against appellant because they viewed the case as too trivial for action. This is probably the reason why international courts would not take the case, because they are busy with cases involving thousands of victims. The Supreme Court's refusal to uphold Kiobel’s appeal probably means that individuals will have a hard time getting a hearing for human rights violations in the foreseeable future. The international courts are too busy and the U.S. courts don't care.

The legislative agenda of the conservative Court majority proceeds. The Court has chosen groups to favor and others to disappoint. In this case, they have taken an inconvenient law and emasculated it. The judicial tools they use differ, but the result is always the same. Conservatives prosper, progressive languish.

Somewhere in its world of parsed word derivations and historical usages, the Court should find room for justice and equality. They should care whether Kiobel's wife gets compensation for her husband's murder. They should care whether prisoners on death row are innocent or only guilty of being poor and black or brown. They should put on their robes and walk to the courtroom with the humble acknowledgment that they are empowered by the people to administer justice and they should do their duty.

Our Decrepit Constitution: Defanging the Senate

The Framers designed the Senate as a stronghold for prominent men. John Adams wrote that all members of the government should be gentlemen, which he defined as friends and connections of the well-born and educated. In those days, prominent men took pride in their erudition. We know what books Thomas Jefferson had in his library because he donated the entire collection to the Library of Congress after the War of 1812. Jefferson was an American patriot, but no isolationist. His library included an extensive collection of Greek and Latin classics, books in modern European Languages like French and Italian, and a broad selection of subjects from astronomy to poetry. He likely would have laughed at the idea, commonly espoused by today's Supreme Court, that only American laws should be consulted.

Adams himself wrote 10 volumes of scholarly books, primarily on government and law. He was both a scholar and an author, as well as a statesman. He believed in the superiority of the natural aristocracy. Adams believed the aristocracy were the only men who should be allowed to govern the new country. He and other framers believed that democracy was dangerous. He favored not a democracy but a republic which he defined as a government run by representatives of the people, not the people themselves.

The Senate was one of the measures taken by the framers to keep government firmly in the hands of the gentlemen. The framers assumed that fewer members in the Senate would make the positions more highly sought after. Originally, the Senators were to be appointed by state legislatures, rather than elected by the people directly. This method of appointment was thought to add even more assurance that only the best men would be elected to the senate. Senators were to serve for six years. This qualification insulated senators from pressure by the people they were supposed to represent. The framers believed senators should represent the votes of the people, not their opinions.

From the beginning, the Senate was a place where a few men could block progress, the inevitable change brought about by the passage of time. Progress happens primarily because people are changeable. New ideas arise for the popular mind to accept or reject as it sees fit. The framers assured that the public would learn new ideas when they guaranteed freedom of speech and religion. They tried to slow progress by omitting the liberal ideals expounded in the Declaration of Independence from the Constitution. The Constitution did not consider all men equal, at birth or at any other time. It consigns Africans to slavery and the original inhabitants to annihilation by making no reference to the rights of indiginous peoples.

During the first 60 years of its existence, the primary function of the Senate was to prevent any anti-slavery laws from passing. It did this by creating gridlock in the government. Each state had two senators, regardless of its population. The pro-slavery states assured that one slave-holding state would be admitted to the union for each new free state. This tactic meant that the number of pro-slavery senators always matched the number of anti-slavery senators. The admission of California as a free state in 1850 doomed the senate deadlock system and led to the Civil War.

The Senate remained a place where a minority faction could block the will of the majority. The Senate was still the bastion of elitism it had always been. During the twentieth century, the Senate opposed internationalism, preferring a protectionist system that they felt favored the wealthy banking and merchant classes in the U.S. The Senate used its veto power over treaties to wreck the League of Nations. President Wilson intended for the League to prevent major wars by creating a forum where the great powers could talk to each other instead of shooting at each other. Without the cooperation of the U.S., the League failed to prevent the next catastrophic war. The Senate still had more damage to inflict on the world, however, by committing the U.S. to a policy of isolationism. In that isolationism, Nazi Germany arose and grew until it was almost capable of taking over Europe. During the 1950s, the Senate used its filibuster power to block civil rights laws, once again delaying inevitable progress.

After the election of Barack Obama, the Senate used its filibuster power to halt most of the president's fiscal programs. This led to a prolonged recession and suffering for millions of Americans. The Senate, representing the wealthy elite, was not affected by the suffering it inflicted on others. By this time, the U.S. government had delayed facing numerous problems, including drug violence, massive incarceration of its minority populations, two disastrous wars, an enormous and expensive military, the collapse of the middle class, violence in its cities, and a country divided against itself to as great an extent as it had been in the 1850s.

The Framers modeled the Senate after the English House of Lords. The House of Lords performed the same function as the U.S. Senate, that is, rejecting legislation aimed at taxing the wealthy and aiding the poor. The British system was not crippled by a Constitution like ours, however, and in 1911 the Parliament passed a law removing most of the power of the House of Lords to reject or delay laws.

The U.S. Senate was certainly as much a hindrance to progress as the House of Lords. In the 20th century, the Senate kept the executive branch from forming critical alliances, enacting treaties that meant the difference between war and peace, and enacting legislation that provided equal rights to African Americans. In the 21st centure, the Senate became even more obstructive, blocking or delaying numerous judicial nominations and refusing to fund agencies that favored the middle class over Wall Street millionaires and corporate executives.

The addition of another layer of checks allotted to the wealthy class in the form of a powerful Senate is a drag on the government at a critical time in our history. After passage of the National Initiative Amendment, the people should pass initiatives that severely limit the power of the Senate as it is currently defined in the Constitution. The number of Senators should be increased by 100 at-large seats, elected by popular vote nationwide. This will increase the influence of larger states like New York and California, while making each Senator less powerful.

An amendment should pass that limits the ability of the Senate to delay a bill by more than 3 months. If the Senate refuses to accept a treaty negotiated by the executive within 6 months, the treaty will automatically be ratified. These reforms should defang the Senators and turn the Senate into a debating club for the wealthy. Its fangs will be removed.

Our Decrepit Constitution: The Courts

Our Decrepit Constitution: The Courts

The executive branch quickly found ways to circumvent the rigid language of the new Constitution. Alexander Hamilton revealed that the federal government had implied powers not enumerated by the Constitution itself. Hamilton determined that among these implied powers was the ability to form a corporation, if the government found that it needed a corporation to fulfill its Constitutional duties. These implied powers exist in the interstices between the clauses explicitly granting powers to the government. According to Hamilton and his followers, the government did not need to follow the precise dictates of the Constitution, but could take actions that it felt were merely implied by the document.

The Framers themselves did not agree on such and important right as the right to free speech granted in the First Amendment. John Adams's administration passed the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) which gave the administration the power to imprison and deport opponents to the policies of the president. Adams proposed these laws to attack the French during the Quasi War. Adams did not consider the law unconstitutional because the U.S. was fighting an enemy. Just ten years after the constitution was adopted, the president demanded extra-legal powers during wartime.

The Framers failed to recognize the importance of corporations in commerce and manufacture, since corporations were small and few. The Framers did not make any rules governing corporations or protecting citizens from injuries that corporations might cause. Injuries inflicted by corporations have had extensive repercussions in the country and these injuries have seldom been corrected by law. Fortunes made by manipulation of stock or monopolization have remained the property of the men who committed the crimes. Corporations that cause massive dislocation in unemployment and property devaluation seldom pay any penalty for their actions. The Constitution does not enumerate the powers and rights that might be granted to corporations that are different from those granted to individuals. The bill of rights for corporations is lacking.

The framers did not make allowances for a standing army. They instead decided to rely on militias, guaranteeing that people could keep and bear arms in the second amendment. Militias proved incapable of defending the country, however. The weakness of militias was proven in the revolutionary war, when militias broke ranks and ran from British regular soldiers at the Battle of Camden. Camden resulted in 1000 casualties and 1000 prisoners taken by British.

More evidence of the unreliability of militias followed. In response to the need for security, the federal government has built a huge arms industry around its military forces. Neither the forces, nor the industry were foreseen by the Framers. The Constitution should contain guidelines for government oversight of the military and rules for the regulation of the arms industry, which has become a potent force for military aggression and congressional corruption. The Second Amendment should have been repealed after militias ceased to be relevant to the defense of the nation, but instead has continued in force to the detriment of law enforcement and the security of the population.

Treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution. That definition was not clear in the decades after ratification. Chief Justice John Marshall acquitted Burr of treason on the grounds that Burr had committed no overt act, as required by the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson disagreed.

Other clauses deserve amplification. The Intellectual Property clause has been captured by the publishing industry as if it had been written to provide them a perpetual monopoly. The clause was too vague even at the time it was written, since there was already a specific idea of what a law governing patents and copyrights should look like. The Framers wanted to assure there could be laws written governing copyright and patent. They did not assure that those laws could not be abused in the future. On the contrary, the lack of specificity in this clause made its exploitation by corporations inevitatble. Corporations exist to make a profit. Monopolies are the surest source of profit, so every corporation seeks to become a monopoly. The Intellectual Property clause in the constitution apotheosizes an issue where debate is sorely needed. Corporations hav taken advantage of Intellectual Property being blessed by the constitution to act against the best interests of the country.

Here again, the Framers were more concerned with the rights of property owners (publishers and industrialists) than with those who toil with their hands (writers and inventors). They therefore left the terms of the law open for the property-owners to fill in as they see fit. The current intellectual property complex, like the military industrial complex, is a side effect of the Constitution. While the Constitution has created these profitable entities, it gives no guidance on regulating them.

The checks and balances imposed by the Constitution are all intended to thwart the will of the majority, which Madison called the majority faction. The bicameral legislature sets up a smaller, more prestigious Senate which is intended to represent minority interests of property owners and the elite. The U.S. Senate has evolved into the kind of body the Framers intended. It is filled with rich, famous, and powerful people. The Senate provides a strong check to the lower house, which tends to be more representative of the common people, although its members are also well-off.

The presidency has veto power over the legislature, providing another check on the power of the majority. The judiciary provides yet another check.

The judiciary has always been a politicized body, since John Marshall imposed his federalist views on Republican administrations. Bush v. Gore, Dredd Scott, and Citizens United were all highly polarized decisions decided along party lines. The Supreme Court was acting in these cases as the last line of defense against a majority faction. The Court is thus a legislative body in itself, the third legislative body set up by the Constitution. The Supreme Court is the least democratic of the legislative bodies. Its nine unelected members serve life terms. Even the College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church is more democratic because it has more members so more viewpoints may be represented.

John Marshall has been praised for establishing the Supreme Court as a respected body. In the last 30 years, the court has lost a great deal of its prestige. The Court has handed down politically charged decisions like Citizens United, Bush v. Gore and Jones v. Clinton. Important decisions are made along strict party lines. The Framers envisioned the Supreme Court as a neutral body where decisions would be made by respected jurists after careful deliberation. Instead we see a court where decisions are made with no deliberation at all. Opinions have become mere formalities tacked tacked onto decisions made by political hacks. Jurists are chosen for the court, not in recognition of their legal stature, but by their ability to hew the party line and by their youth. Politicians who wish to control the court far into the future pick young judges to help them perpetuate a political philosophy. These judges are too young to have distinguished for their wisdom or scholarship, but the political parties are looking for people who will follow their leaders. This practice is reminiscent of the Soviet aparatchiks, functionaries who never made a move without checking first with their political leaders.

Large corporations grow stale. They become unable to adopt new methods of business, even when adopting new methods is the only thing that can save the company. The constitution is an example of an outmoded way of doing business. The U.S. needs to change its way of doing business if it wants to survive.

Our Decrepit Constituion: Protecting Vested Interests

Our Decrepit Constituion: Protecting Vested Interests

Our present constitution is an experiment. Our previous governing document, the Articles of Confederation was seen as a failure because it had severe and incurable problems. The Articles created a loosely allied group of states. There was no central authority, no president, and no way to resolve disputes between the states. The Articles led to trade and taxation disputes between the states and outbreaks of violence.

A group of citizens led by Daniel Shays took up arms against the government of Massachusetts. The federal government lacked the military power to put down the insurrection, so the state's wealthier citizens formed a private militia to do the job. The state government easily suppressed the rebellion, which had been inspired by taxation and austerity policies. Washington considered the rebellion an awful presage of things to come, but was happy that the state had been able to control it so quickly.

Shays's Rebellion had at its root the difference between the well-off and the poor. At that time, the currency was worthless and the small farmers in rural Massachusetts had nothing with which to pay taxes. They had to watch as banks foreclosed on their property. They also resented the money from taxes being transferred to wealthy financiers. Massachusetts resolved the problem by discounting its debt.

Jefferson, with his typical laissez-faire philosophy, considered Shays's Rebellion a good thing, a means to water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. George Washington and James Madison considered the uprising a sign that a stronger central government was needed, one that had the ability to raise revenues and support a professional army. They took steps in the new Constitution to strengthen the federal government and to increase its ability to levy taxes and maintain a standing army.

The adoption of a new Constitution did not prevent armed uprisings, however. The Whiskey Rebellion was a revolt against excise taxes proposed by Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary under President Washington. Once again poor farmers revolted against paying taxes when they had no paper money, only produce. Washington led a sizable militia force into western Pennsylvania to put down the revolt. The revolt evaporated before any military engagements occurred.

Fries's Uprising in 1799 was caused once again by taxation issues. The poor farmers of western Pennsylvania objected to the imposition of a property tax. Farmers in slave states could apply this tax to their slaves. Slaves could be sold to get cash, but property could not. While the newly strengthened federal government was able to suppress the insurrection, President John Adams drew criticism for his handling of the crisis, while Albert Gallatin, by acting as a calming force, gained prominence among the anti-federalists.

All three of these rebellions were popular uprisings against the wealthy financiers who held war-debt from the revolutionary war. Hamilton's excise taxes transferred money from the poor farmers in the west to the wealthy bankers in the east. Madison referred to these uprisings as excesses of democracy. He and his allies designed the Constitution to assure that the faction of the majority (I.e., the poor) could not dominate the faction of the minority (I.e., the wealthy).

The Constitution protects the wealthy minority from the poor majority by a system of checks and balances. The Framers explained these features as intended to prevent tyranny or anarchy. John Adams gives the Long Parliament as an example of a single-house legislature that led to tyranny. While John Adams was a well-read, well-traveled man, his conclusions do not take into account changing times and circumstances. The Long Parliament may have led to tyranny, but it started out as a reaction to tyranny of the British king. It failed to hold regular elections, which Thomas Paine suggests as a counterweight to tyranny. Adams discounts this argument entirely. Yet we know today that there are many single-house legislatures that have not devolved into tyranny or anarchy, the British House of Commons foremost among them. Whatever arguments may have been accepted at the time of the framing have now been refuted by subsequent events.

The British Parliament found a way to neutralize its obstructive House of Lords because it has no written constitution and hence has more freedom to change its customs to respond to changing circumstances. The American Constitution has no such ability. In evolutionary terms, the American Constitution has proven itself unable to evolve and has set itself on the path to extinction.

Our Decrepit Constitution: Electoral College and The Civil War

Electoral College

Americans credit the men who wrote the Constitution—the framers--with great wisdom and foresight. Supreme Court Justices have started a cult that worships the Constitution as a perfect document. They pore over its text and the opinions of its creators as though they were religious texts and revelations of the true word. Some also claim that the framers were inspired by God, usually by a Christian fundamentalist God.

None of these beliefs is true. The framers were neither godlike nor exceptionally wise. The document is not based on religious ideas. The Constitution is deeply flawed and becomes more so with each passing year. The framers made it hard to change. Amendments require passage by both houses of congress with a two thirds majority, then ratification by three fourths of the state legislatures. Most amendments also specify that they must be ratified within seven years.

The framers have recently been considered by some the infallible source for American law. This assumption implies that they were always right, at least about law and government. This assumption was very far from the truth.

The framers invented the electoral college, ostensibly to prevent the voters from making a mistake when electing a president. Instead, it was the electoral college that made the mistake, in 1800, when it gave the same number of electoral votes to both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The House of Representatives elected the president that year. The Constitution created a crisis where none existed.

The framers decided that each state should have only two senators. This compromise gave more power to the less populous states at the expense of the states with larger populations. In 1787 the most populous state, Virginia, had 20 times the population of the smallest, Delaware. In 2010, the most populous state, California, had 65 times the population of the smallest, Wyoming.

History tells us that states vote in regional blocs, with relative size having little to do with their decisions. Neighboring states New York (a large state) and Rhode Island (a small state), for example, voted for the same presidential candidate in the last seven elections. Neighboring states Louisiana(small) and Texas(large) voted for the same presidential candidate in the last seven elections as well. Louisiana and Rhode Island, both small states, voted for different candidates in all seven elections.

Since small states no longer vote in a bloc, if they ever did, the election of two senators from each state, regardless of population, does not serve the purpose intended by the framers. Instead of balancing the interests of different sized states, California's two senators represent a disenfranchisement of 36 million voters in relationship with Wyoming. The framers may have been right in 1787, but their judgment on this matter, at least reflected by presidential choices, is wrong today.

The framers made no provision for political parties in their Constitution. This oversight has become a serious problem in recent years. The British Parliamentary System recognizes that there will always be more than one party. The leader of the majorityThis arrangement gives the leader of parliament, the prime minister, the ability to govern if he can unite his own party behind his platform, a relatively easy proposition, given that all members of his party stood for election on the same platform.

The American system divides government between political parties. This division makes legislation more difficult to pass and slows down the process of government. James Madison argued that representative democracy rather than direct democracy because he claimed that direct democracy gave rise to factions. Madison defined a faction as a group of citizens united in some passion or common interest against the interest of others. He singled out the factions that arise from inequality of wealth and argued that a representative democracy would protect the minority from the majority.

Madison believed the best way to guard against factions was to create a representative democracy. Direct democracies, he claimed, always failed within a short time. The difficulty that arises here, which is a major difficulty with all opinions expressed by the framers, is that these conclusions are drawn on examples with almost no data. The number of direct democracies documented by history in Madison's day was precisely one, the direct democracy of Athens during the fifth century BCE. Any argument based on such limited data must be questioned.

It is pointless to argue whether Madison's theories on factions or democracy were correct. Like the philosophers he admired, Madison argued using only pure examples to illustrate his ideas. Madison argued that representative democracy had advantages over direct democracy but failed to recognize that no pure direct democracy has ever existed nor ever could exist. The representative democracy created by the Constitution has over the years become more democratic, through the direct election of Senators in the federal government and the addition of democratic ideas such as initiative and referendum in the individual states.

The Civil War

Madison considered that factions of the majority were dangerous to a nation, not those of the minority. He had in mind the faction of the poor, which is always greater than the faction of the rich. Madison's Constitution intended to guard against majority factions and guard minorities. This presumption, that only majority factions are dangerous, has been disproved by history. Several crises in American history have arisen because of minority factions, primarily because the wealthy have been successful in seizing and holding the reins of power in precisely the manner which the framers sought to prevent. The rise of a tyrant, which Justice Scalia claims that the Constitution has prevented, has never been a problem in America. What has been a great problem, and remains a problem today, is the accumulation of vast riches by a small class of people, who use their wealth to seize and retain power.

Scholars often speak of a Constitutional crisis as being a political problem that cannot be resolved easily by the Constitution. Examples of such crises were the election of 1800, when Jefferson was elected president by the House of Representatives; the election of 1876, when Benjamin Harrison became president with fewer popular votes; and the Watergate scandal that ended the presidency of Richard Nixon.

The most serious crises in American history did not arise from a failure of the framers to foresee an event. Instead, they were caused by the framers' express intent. Despite Madison's concerns, there have been no factions of the majority. Instead, three crises in American history have been caused by factions of the minority, who were not poor but wealthy. The Civil War, the Great Depression, and the Great Recession were caused by flaws in the Constitution.

The framers needed to gain the support of slave holders. They inserted several pro-slavery features into the Constitution. Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution defined a slave as worth three fifths of a person. This article strips African Americans of their rights as humans. African Americans not only submit to the lash, they must also give their votes to their masters, who were free to vote, again and again, to keep them in perpetual servitude. This article continued in force for seventy-six years. It contributed to the widespread belief that African Americans were racially inferior and reinforced the conviction in the Southern states that their actions were legal and just.

Article II, Section 1 establishes the electoral college for the election of the president. The slave-holders were concerned that their slaves, once freed, would take control of state government from them. They saw the electoral college as a means to permit a small group of voters to thwart the will of the majority. This worked in actuality. Only 1.3% of the population cast their votes in the first presidential election. Virginia had the most electors, thanks to its large number of slaves. The first president was George Washington, a prominent Virginian and a slave-holder. The second president was John Adams, from Massachusetts. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were all Virginians and slave holders. Andrew Jackson, from Tennessee, was also a slave-holder from a slave state.

These early slave-holders held the presidency until 1836. At that time, slave-holders from southern states had held the presidency for 40 of the previous 48 years. They used their tenure to promote slavery at home and abroad. They appointed southerners to the Supreme Court with lifetime tenure. These supreme court justices tried to perpetuate slavery and spread it to the northern states.

The US Supreme Court ruled, in Dred Scott decision(1857), that a slave who lived in a free state was still a slave. All six southern justices voted with the majority. Northern opponents of slavery feared that this decision meant southern slave-holding states could export slaves to the north. The decision heightened tensions that led to the Civil War breaking out in 1861. Although the Supreme Court did not cause the Civil War, Dred Scott showed how much influence the southern states had gained through the electoral college and the pro-slavery compromise within it.

Our Decrepit Constitution: 3. The Silver Bullet

Our Decrepit Constitution: 3. The Silver Bullet

On December 12, 2000, the US Supreme Court decided that George W. Bush would be president of the United States. The Court acknowledged that the Constitution left the election of the president to the people, but decided nevertheless to intervene, something it had never done before.

The Constitution furnishes almost no guidelines for the election of the president, one of the most important political undertakings of the government. The framers intended for the president to be chosen indirectly, by electors elected by the people, not by the people themselves. The framers intended for the electors to meet after the popular vote was taken. Only then would the electors decided the actual winner of the election.

As usual, however, the framers omitted the process to be followed in case of dispute. In particular, they did not specify that the Supreme Court, an unelected body of judges who held lifetime appointments, should not determine the outcomes of elections. In 2000 this led to the election of a president by five such judges after 200 million citizens had cast their votes in the general election. Furthermore, all five of these judges had affiliations to the Republican party, whose candidate they chose as the winner. These judges showed no reluctance to support their party's candidate, despite the express intent of the framers to lift the Supreme Court justices above the fray of electoral politics by giving them lifetime tenure.

Over the years, the citizens of the US became concerned about the influence of corporations and large political contributions. The Congress, responding to the will of the people, passed laws that regulated contributions from corporations. In Citizens United v FEC, the Supreme Court ruled that the concerns of the people were groundless. The Court ruled that corporations were nothing more than associations of individuals and as such were entitled to the same rights as individuals under the First Amendment.

This ruling supported the Court's belief that the rich had more rights to express their opinions, since it is obvious to everyone that the rich can buy more speech than the poor. The Court delared that there cannot be too much speech. Through this ruling, the court overruled the people of the United States, whose common sense tells them that corporations spending vast amounts of money wield inordinate influence over politicians and their decisions.

In Citizens United, the Court once again found a way to support the Republican party. They voted five to four along party lines to permit unlimited corporate contributions. Many groups have been proposed that an amendment to the constitution would resolve this issue. The impartiality of the supreme court is fundamental to the design of the Constitution. The framers designed the Constitution to operate by checks and balances. Without an unbiased Supreme Court, their design fails.

The Constitution conceals this flaw and many others. The framers intended the Constitution to be amendable, yet only 17 amendments have been enacted, other than the Bill of Rights, in over 200 years. There are several reasons for this failure of the original design.

1. The United States has many more states than it had originally. When there were only 13 states, the number of legislatures required to ratify an amendment was 10. Today, when ratification requires the approval of 38 state legislatures, the amendment process should be at least 3 1/2 times as difficult.
2. The population of the United States is more than 100 times what it was in 1787. Persuading a number of people of the necessity of a change increases with the number of people who must be convinced. The people do not directly vote to ratify amendments, but they do vote for the legislators who must make the decision.
3. Both the larger number of states and the larger population make the amendment process more time-consuming.
4. The increase in time and energy, and above all money, that can be spent to defeat an amendment makes it unlikely that an issue can achieve a 3/4 approval. Money can be spent liberally to confuse the issues. Confusion will make the amendment less likely to pass.
5. The vast amount of money that must be raised to ratify an amendment will make it difficult to pass a complex amendment, such as one that abolishes the Electoral College.

Numerous amendments have been proposed to overturn the Citizens United decision. The opponents of this decision correctly view it as a threat to democracy itself. All of these amendments, however, share a common flaw. These amendments seek to correct a single decision of the Supreme Court, but history has shown that the enemies of democracy will soon find another way to suppress the rights of the people. Given the impediments blocking any Constitutional Amendment and the large errors and oversights in the Constitution itself, there is only one solution. The amendment process itself, as described in Article V of the Constitution, must be changed.

The change required is simple. The Constitution must be amended by referendum and initiative, using the same process as already exists in many states. Such an amendment, known as the National Initiative, has already been proposed.

The existing initiative and referendum laws were proposed during the Progressive Era (1890 – 1930). At that time, people were concerned that big corporations were controlling state legislatures. Corporations are once again threatening our democracy. We need the National Initiative, the Silver Bullet that can rectify many of the Constitutions problems and return the government to its rightful owners, the People.

Happy-talk: right-wing talk radio and its fans

The AM airways are filled with conservative happy-talk. People like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others have not so much invented something new as they have tapped into an already existing vein of talk. Using buzzwords and catchphrases, they reassure their listeners that their ideas are the right ideas and their feelings, the right feelings. This is especially important because many of those feelings and ideas suffer severe criticism in other arenas.

Happy-talk is primarily a radio phenomenon. The words themselves, not their meanings, have an effect on their listeners. On television, images arouse feelings of fear, revulsion, or amazement. Their impact is more forceful when the images are negative. No one can forget the sight of a commercial airliner crashing into the world trade center.

Happy-talk is subtler than that. It performs the same function as a men's club or prehistoric hunting group. It gives people a sense of belonging, and a feeling that all is well in the world. It does this by creating a nexus of words with positive associations: America, freedom, victory. The talkers themselves create a sense of membership with code words that act like a secret handshake. Limbaugh's fans are “dittoheads”. Their membership greeting is “Megadittos”. This does not imply that they are merely carbon copies for Limbaugh's happy-talk. Instead, the shared greeting indicates that both are members in a wider fellowship whose members all share common values: patriotism, the virtue of hard work, and a belief that wealth is itself something admirable. Limbaugh refers to this group simply as “us”.

Hannity's listeners are “freedom-loving Americans”. His fans greet him by saying, “You're a great American,” a sentiment that he returns.

When you are a member of the club, your understanding of the happy-talk is different from the casual listener. The following phrases have special meaning for insiders.

1. Happy-talkers claim that America is a great country

For conservatives, America is not just a great country, it's the only great country. Ronald Reagan called it a City On A Hill and captured the imagination of many who wish to believe they have some sort of a sacred mission. This is why the right wing applauded when the U. S. ignored the UN and invaded Iraq on his own. There is an arrogance born of power. They believe the U. S. should have special privileges, including the right never to have soldiers under the command of a foreign officer, as in a U. N. peacekeeping mission. The feeling that the U. S. is a great country fills them with pride and the feeling that they, too, share in the greatness. People who point out America's flaws arouse their unreasoning anger.

2. Happy-talkers claim that Liberalism is the problem

Conservatism is the solution to the world's problems, although the mechanism is a little vague. So it follows that Liberalism is the problem. But the liberalism here is not a philosophy of goverment but simply the opposite of everything conservative. So we see all sorts of infamous people--Stalin, Mao, even Sirhan Sirhan--called liberals. Conservatives preach small government and lower taxes, but they don't explain how that can happen in a modern society. Undoubtedly they only yearn for a simpler time, a golden age when governments were small and people did as they pleased. But in this longing they face the same problem as the Russians did when they saw Western countries on tv. The Russians wanted the material goods they saw. People of today want the things they know other countries provide, health care, security, and a happy retirement. When conservatives say they want smaller government, they can't prevent spending that benefits the wealthy backers who elected them. President Bush took care of the pharmaceutical industry with his budget-busting Medicare program, the agriculture business with his ethanol subsidies, and the oil industry by failing to address global climate change and alternative energy development. Although continuance of these policies would ruin the U.S. economy, businessmen are even more afraid of liberals, who would take away their money in taxes.

3. Happy-talkers claim that a free market is the answer to every economic ill.

If the markets puff up like balloons and then go pfluie, it's not the fault of the markets; it's the fault of liberals and their mania for regulation. The markets aren't free enough. If social security is becoming a burden to taxpayers, then we should let people invest their money in stocks or other securities. They will make more money that way, through the magic of the free market. Rising health care costs will be solved by letting providers compete with each other on the free market. That this never happened before is never blamed on the free market, but on the regulators, and especially the poor. Spiraling health care costs are caused by poor people whose government benefits must be paid by the rest of us. The conservative alternative to public health care, as Alan Greyson has pointed out, is for the uninsured not to get sick, and if they do get sick, to die quickly. That will save everyone a lot of money, but is completely immoral.

4. Unbelievably, happy-talkers claim that only African-Americans are racists.

This belief reassures happy-talk fans that their anti-minority opinions are not racist, which would be a bad thing. Instead, happy-talkers preach that white racism ended in the 1970s. Now, the blacks are the racists. Happy-talker Hannity played endless loops of Rev. Jeremiah saying “God damn America”, which he said proved Obama is a racist. From the context, it is clear that Wright was talking about the U. S. Government, not the people, which would exclude the comment from any charge of racism. Anti-Americanism, yes, but not racism. But Hannity and other copycat happy-talkers find it made their listeners feel better to imagine that African Americans, not whites, are racist.

5. Happy-talkers believe that using the government to help the poor is redistribution of wealth.

Redistribution of wealth will lead the poor to be less self-reliant and destroy their work ethic. Why wealth doesn't have this effect on the wealthy is a mystery. If poor people have enough to eat and a roof over their heads, they are likely to become lazy and stop working. Then where would America be? The same thing happens when you train greyhounds to chase a mechanical rabbit. They must never be allowed to catch the rabbit, or the whole game would be ruined.

6. Happy-talkers believe that using the government to help the wealthy is justified.

The best option would be to do away with government altogether. Then the wealthy would be able to keep all their money without interference. Poor people do not pay taxes so they are out of the game. Government's best use is to recycle money to the wealthy in ways that make the rich richer.

7. Happy-talkers believe that preferential hiring of minorities is un-American and therefore wrong.

The only discrimination in America should be in favor of the wealthy. They have always had the best land, the best houses, and the best cars. Their wives wear the best clothing and have the best plastic surgeons. Their children have the best toys and go to the best schools. That is the American way. Any other system is un-American.

8. Happy-talkers believe that European countries are un-American.

Programs that work in Europe, even market-based programs, will not work in America. We can safely ignore anything that happens over there. Whenever an American politician mentions a European country, his patriotism is immediately called into question. Better stick with an idiot who doesn't know where Europe is then take a chance on an intellectual who might have imbibed anti-American ideas on a sojourn abroad. An exception to this happens when an immigrant, like Henry Kissinger, admits that America is the one great country and repudiates everything he learned abroad. Also, certain English conservatives, like Margaret Thatcher, can be considered conservatives. It helps if they knew Ronald Reagan and he said they were okay.

9. Happy-talkers believe that terrorists are cowards who can be tortured or killed without trial.

This is hard for non-conservatives to understand. Someone who attacks the United States of America, armed only with a knife, may be insane but he is not a coward. But he is also a human who should be treated with the same respect we would wish for ourselves. What is the Geneva Convention on torture but an updated version of the Golden Rule? Yet people who call themselves Christians don't understand its importance. It is important for the happy-talk listeners, however, that their own deep-seated desire for revenge receive validation. Their own bloodlust would bother them if they did not hear constant reinforcement.

10. Happy-talkers believe that illegal immigrants should be deported and the border sealed.

This is another impossible dream. Deporting 10 million people would constitute an act of genocide under the Geneva convention, whether we call it ethnic cleansing or just cleaning house. In this area, as in so many others, the hard-core conservative is not deterred by the facts, even of his own experience. History shows us that people will emigrate to the U.S., whether legally or not. Our problem is how to handle the people after they arrive, not how to prevent their arrival.

What's So Great About Dinesh D'Souza?

Dinesh meets his hero, Ronald Reagan

Rush Limbaugh says the Heritage Foundation are scholars, but not eggheads, brilliant geniuses, but not elitists. But Limbaugh is no reliable judge of what makes a brilliant scholar or a genius. Like other conservatives, he appreciates people because they agree with him, not because their ideas are sound or their arguments persuasive.

Heritage House advertises itself as “Washington's preeminent think tank”, but some of its writers are less than stellar. A case in point is Dinesh d'Souza, who has written the first essay in the Heritage House series, “First Principles.” His article, entitled “What's Great About America”, exposes him as a gifted writer but mediocre thinker.

In the view of America's critics, he says, “America can do no right”. Many of America's critics are patriots who believe that their country has made mistakes that should be rectified. But D'Souza frees himself from having to answer their criticisms by creating a straw man who thinks everything about America is wrong. So all he has to do to win the argument is to show one single thing about the country that is right.

America's greatest weakness, says D'Souza, is a lack of moral self-confidence.

Americans cannot effectively fight for their country without believing that their country is good and that they are fighting in a just cause.

Apparently D'Souza approves lying to our troops to improve their morale, just as he lies in this essay to make his arguments more convincing. But others are not so certain; they argue that lying about our goals and methods to encourage our troops is immoral and cannot be tolerated in a democracy.

So D'Souza sets off to examine the charges of America's critics. He is in a good position to do this, he says, because he is an immigrant, who “is in a good position to evaluate American society.” This may be true, in the case of a brilliant observer like Alexis de Tocqueville. Even so, Americans have far more experience on which to base their opinions of their own country. If D'Souza wants us to believe that his position as an immigrant gives him special insight about our country, he needs to show us something special.

But in the very next sentence, D'Souza shows us that his insights are pedestrian:

As a “person of color,” I am competent to address such questions as what it is like to be a nonwhite person in America, what this country owes its minority citizens, and whether immigrants can expect to be granted full membership in this society.

His insights are flawed because he does not have adequate experience on which to base his opinions. The experience of a “person of color” in America is a group experience. We learn about the effects of race on our lives in our families, our neighborhoods, and our shared experiences over a lifetime. We can't draw conclusions from what people say at cocktail parties or how we are treated by the staff in luxury hotels, or even at elite think tanks like the Hoover Institute.

D'Souza admits his differences:

Unlike many of America’s homegrown dissidents, I am also acutely conscious of the daily blessings that I enjoy in America.

In other words, people who complain about racial discrimination are ungrateful; they should count their blessings. This is exactly what African Americans did for decades after the Civil War, until they decided to start speaking out about their problems and conditions started improving.

Notice that D'Souza hasn't mentioned anything that makes America great yet, but has already insulted Americans by claiming that he, as an immigrant, knows more about our country than we do and insulted African Americans by telling them they should keep quiet about racial discrimination.

D'Souza now takes a couple of paragraphs to explain how hard life is in the developing world:

For most poor people on the planet, life is characterized by squalor, indignity, and brevity.

This may be true, but it has nothing to do with the question at hand, namely, what makes America a great country? D'Souza has not promised to tell us how life in America is materially better than life in India. I don't think anyone questions that. What we would like to know is what makes America great; not just better, but great. Remember, I didn't ask D'Souza to tell me this; he volunteered.

D'Souza stumbles on with a description of how good things are in America:

The place is full of countless unappreciated inventions: quilted toilet paper, fabric softener, cordless telephones, disposable diapers, roll-on luggage, deodorant.

Quilted toilet paper? Disposable diapers? That's what makes America great? Is D'Souza joking? Laundry lists of curiosities may make America interesting or even unique, but they can't make it great.

D'Souza finally lists some things he believes make America great:

The moral triumph of America is that it has extended the benefits of comfort and affluence, traditionally enjoyed by a very few, to a large segment of society. Few people in America have to wonder where their next meal is coming from. Emergency medical care is available to everyone, even those without proper insurance. Every child has access to an education, and many have the chance to go to college.

Here at last we have some observations that might help us decide if America is great. But we also find some problems. Calling something a moral triumph does not make it one, but if it is, then the morality surely comes from American liberalism. Morality does not happen by accident; it must be intentional. Liberalism intentionally uses government to ameliorate the conditions of the less advantaged. If “few people...have to worry about where their next meal is coming from,” then food stamps, social security, food banks, unemployment, and other liberal programs must be the reason.

D'Souza proudly proclaims that emergency medical care is available to all, but fails to note that this is a defect of the system, not a virtue. Poor people go to emergency rooms because they don't have access to other forms of medical care. The care they receive is costly to the general public, which would be much better served by medical plans that provide non-emergency care to everyone, thus reserving expensive emergency care to those who really need it. Furthermore, those who can pay for emergency care will be billed if they make use of it, and the costs are steep.

Although it is true that every American child has access to an education, not all have access to a first-rate education. Many go to college, but every child of rich parents has the opportunity to go to college, while many children of the poor are forced to work to support their families. Besides, not all college educations are equal. Only a few colleges and universities, because of their reputations and connections with wealth, can promise their graduates good careers on graduation.

D'Souza notices that

we live in a country where construction workers regularly pay $4 for a nonfat latte, where maids drive rather nice cars, where plumbers and postal workers take their families on vacation in Europe or the Caribbean.

But here again he seems to believe that these things are merely accidents of society, not products of intentional actions. In many places, a maid must have a reliable car to make a living, but it is a huge expense, not a benefit; her car takes money away from her children, food, clothing, and other necessities of life. Besides, having a car does not mean you have insurance for it, or even a license. If plumbers or construction workers can afford some cheap luxuries, it is most likely because the construction industry is heavily unionized. We can't be sure of that because D'Souza is vague about such details—D'Souza does not mention trade unions in his essay—but it is a reasonable inference. We can be certain, though, that postal workers belong to a strong union that has worked to get them those vacations in Europe.

In all of these examples, D'Souza reminds me of Republicans who voted against the stimulus package and then took credit for the benefits provided to their constituents. Far-right conservatives admire America as it is, not as they would make it.

Up to this point, D'Souza has merely been uninformative. He makes a few observations, but tells us nothing about their causes. Now, however, he becomes dishonest:

As a result, people live longer, fuller lives in America.

There are 41 other countries in the world with longer life expectancy than the US. So life expectancy in the US is neither unique or exceptional. It is deceptive to imply that it is. Here again the US is being compared to India rather than other developed economies.

Equality

Having closed his section on America's good life with a deceptive statistic, D'Souza plunges into America's history. He starts out by denying the genocide of the American Indians:

Let’s begin by asking whether the white man was guilty of genocide against the native Indians. As a matter of fact, he was not.

His extraordinary thesis: The American Indians were wiped out by epidemics, not genocide. But even a cursory reading of American history reveals numerous genocidal events, among them

• 1637. Puritans massacre 500-600 Pequod Indians at Mystic Fort.
• 1835. 4,000 Cherokee die during forced march from Carolinas to Oklahoma known as the Trail of Tears.
• 1864. American Cavalry murders 134 at Sand Creek, Colorado Territory.
• 1868. American Cavalry murders 103 Cheyenne at Washita.
• 1890. American Cavalry murders 146 Sioux at Wounded Knee.

These events were genocidal under the definition established by the UN General Assembly resolution 260 A (III) of 9 December 1948. It should also be understood that deaths from disease, such as those on the Trail of Tears, are also considered genocide if they are caused by direct government action.

With regard to slavery, D'Souza commits even greater blunders. First, he excuses American slavery by saying that "everyone does it":

No one will deny that America practiced slavery, but America was hardly unique in this respect.

But American slavery was not like everywhere else. Alexis de Tocqueville, himself an aristocrat and conservative, nevertheless severely condemned Southern Americans for their treatment of African slaves:

The legislation of the Southern states with regard to slaves presents at the present day such unparalleled atrocities as suffice to show that the laws of humanity have been totally perverted.

Those are strong words. De Tocqueville contrasts the treatment of slaves by the ancient Romans, who educated their slaves and frequently liberated them, with that of the Americans of the South,

who do not admit that the Negroes can ever be commingled with themselves, [and] have forbidden them, under severe penalties, to be taught to read or write; and as they will not raise them to their own level, they sink them as nearly as possible to that of the brutes.

It is this unrivaled ferocity of American Slavery, which we recognize today as racism, that sets us apart from the rest. Without excusing that for which there is no excuse, D'Souza raises a new argument:

What is distinctively Western is not slavery but the movement to end slavery.

So instead of describing slavery as it was in the South, D'Souza emphasizes the good done by the people of the North, namely the abolition of slavery. He then quotes Mohammed Ali, whom no one ever accused of being a scholar, to support the incredible conclusion,

though slavery was oppressive for the people who lived under it, their descendants are in many ways better off today.

This statement is not only morally repugnant, it is demonstrably false. It is morally repugnant because almost any atrocity could be justified by saying that some distantly related good came from it. It is false because between 5 million and 65 million Africans died during transport to America. These people had no descendants, so their descendants are not better off in any way.

For his next attempt to falsify history, D'Souza repeats the commonly held belief that

For a few decades now, blacks and some minorities have enjoyed more rights and privileges than whites. The reason is that America has implemented affirmative action policies that give legal preference to minority groups in university admissions, jobs, and government contracts.

This stands history on its head. The reason that affirmative action policies have been implemented is precisely because these groups continue to lack equal opportunities, due to poverty, poor schools, language difficulties, and discrimination. African Americans demonstrably lack the same opportunity with whites. The US Census shows that the median income for an African American household is just 60% of the median white income. If it were true, as D'Souza suggests, that African Americans have enjoyed more rights and privileges “for a few decades”, surely they would be richer than whites, but the opposite is true. Clearly, African Americans still carry the burden of prejudice.

D'Souza enlists Jesse Jackson as a witness to the lack of racism in America. Once again, he chooses a celebrity, not a scholar, as a source. He says he challenged Jackson to show him

how racism today is potent enough to prevent his children or mine from achieving the American dream.

Any number of scholars could give a detailed answer to that question, but Jackson could not, and D'Souza never asked anyone better qualified. Jackson may have been stymied because his children, and D'Souza's, being children of celebrities, did not face the same problems as most African Americans.

Finally he mentions de Tocqueville and his famous depiction of American equality. Whereas the earlier writer draws conclusions about the negative aspects of equality, D'Souza gives an example that just isn't true. In India, he says,

the rich enjoy the gratification of subservience, of seeing innumerable servants and toadies grovel before them and attend to their every need.

But in America,

If [Bill] Gates were to walk the streets of America and stop people at random and say, “Here’s a $100 bill. I’ll give it to you if you kiss both my feet,” what would the typical American response be? Even the homeless guy would tell Gates to go to hell.

This is a marvelous image, but reveals a misunderstanding of American culture. There are many humiliating things a homeless guy would do for $100—apparently D'Souza never watched Survivor. Furthermore, most Americans would not enjoy the gratification of subservience the way an Indian might. But more importantly, D'Souza assumes that because he cannot see something at first glance, it does not exist. As the CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates not only had innumerable toadies, but he probably had a hard time finding anyone to disagree with him, even when they knew him to be dead wrong. I doubt that Gates ever heard one of his employees tell him to go to hell.

The Pursuit of Happiness

D'Souza next relates a number of stories that might be prefaced, “Only in America...” But it is all anecdotal evidence that can easily be refuted with statistics. He nevertheless draws the conclusion that

Most societies offer limited opportunities for and little chance of true social mobility.

Once again, D'Souza proves that the US is better than India and invites us to conclude that the US is a great country, and again he mindlessly recites a conventional wisdom. But Miles Corak presented research showing that the possibility of upward (or downward) mobility in the US is actually smaller than in several other countries, including France, Germany, Denmark, and Canada. The probability of an American born into the poorest 20% of the population rising to the top 1% was, in 2000, only 1%. The odds, in other words, were 100-1 against it. On the other side, the probability of an American born into the richest 20% remaining in the richest 20% was 51%.

This may seem trivial. After all, D'Souza only claims that many Americans acquire wealth, not that all do. But he is clearly using this as an example of why America is great. If Germans or Danes have a better chance to improve their fortune than Americans, why isn't he talking about economically developed countries, instead of going on about the Founding Fathers? America did not invent the blueprint for a successful economy. We received one from European thinkers like Adam Smith, John Locke, and J. S. Mill, to name only a few.

D'Souza cannot admit this. His task is not just to show that America is a great country, but also to provide support for the beliefs of right-wing conservatives. One of their beliefs is that we can't look to Europe for inspiration or leadership. If Sweden (or Japan) have gone through economic crises similar to ours, we can't use their experiences as examples because America is, somehow, different. So D'Souza must prove that America is great by omitting all references to other countries similar to our own.

Right-wing conservatives, like those associated with the Heritage Foundation, pretend that all wisdom begins with the Founding Fathers and Milton Friedman. All of their arguments for monetary policy and morality rest on this premise. If there is some other way to find truth, their entire belief system falls apart, primarily because it cannot stand criticism from outside its own carefully prescribed limits.

The Ethics of Work

Having described how America is better than India and other developing economies, D'Souza begins to attack antiquity. Once again, his arguments are more effective if the reader knows nothing about history. He announces, without proof, that

[i]n the cultures of antiquity, Western as well as non-Western, the merchant and the trader were viewed as low-life scum,

This is certainly true for the middle ages and for Islamic societies where religion is paramount. In societies where trade is difficult, as it was upon the fall of Rome, the merchant and the trader have nothing to do. But in antiquity, this was not the case. Athens (and many other Greek city-states) rose to prominence through trade. The mosaics at Ostia testify that merchants were not shunned at Rome. Among famous Romans, the triumvir Crassus obtained his great wealth by running a sort of insurance company. The Medicis during the Renaissance obtained their great wealth as bankers. While Crassus lost out to Caesar in the struggle for absolute rule, the Medicis achieved high status, titles, respect, and even the Papacy. In Northern Europe, the mercantile cities of the Hanseatic League held monopoly power between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the South, the trading cities of Genoa and Venice became the leading powers in Italy. Mercantilism, an economic system that places trade at the center of state policy, was dominant in Western Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.

Trade became ever more important as the middle ages receded. So it comes as somewhat of a surprise when D'Souza claims that

In America, it is different, and the American Founders are responsible for the change.

Once again D'Souza is ambushed by right-wing mythology. Since that mythology states that the American Founders are the fount of all wisdom, he ignores all evidence to the contrary. In this instance, however, he does give a nod to the English philosophers, although he insists that the Founding Fathers, drawing on the inspiration of John Locke and Adam Smith, “altered the moral hierarchy of the ancient world.”

The Americans did not need to change anything from the way the English regarded trade. English law had favored business interests for centuries. The wealth of the nation came from trading slaves, spice, rum, and anything else they could buy, seize, or steal. English government policies favoring trade helped start the Industrial Revolution in England. An important part of the motivation for the American Revolution was the desire of American merchants to compete with their English counterparts. In order to do this, they had to make laws favoring American trade over British trade. It's hard to see how this “altered the moral hierarchy of the ancient world”; rather, it altered the balance of economic power in favor of the Americans.

D'Souza gives more credit to the Founding Fathers than they deserve. They were primarily practical men. The theorists whose ideas led to the American Constititution were Europeans. D'Souza implies that they were inventors, not just followers, when he says that they “devised” a system of checks and balances:

In the public sphere, the Founders took special care to devise a system that would prevent, or at least minimize, the abuse of power.

But the Founders did not invent the idea of separation of powers. The Roman Republic incorporated it into its system of government in ancient times. In modern times, the idea was discovered and elaborated on by the Baron de Montesquieu in 1748. He invented the name, “separation of powers”, and described as well a system of “checks and balances”.

Freedom of Religion

Finally D'Souza hits upon an idea that truly originated with the Founding Fathers, one that has proven to be a great boon to American society: The idea of separation of church and state, attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Religious tolerance in America attracted many of its early settlers. Their combined and peaceful efforts contributed to the rapid growth of the colonies. But separation of church and state was not envisioned until the Founders realized that any other solution might prevent acceptance of the Constitution by the States.

D'Souza interrupts his description of religious tolerance to bring up what he sees as an instance of intolerance:

Of course, Americans have not always lived by these principles, and there are exceptions, such as affirmative action. Such policies remain controversial because, in a sense, they are un-American.

D'Souza apparently believes that it is un-American to favor one ethnic group over another; but he is wrong. Discrimination was written into the Constitution, where it is famously stated that slaves are worth three-fifths of free men when apportioning representatives and taxes. After the Civil War, the former Confederate states passed Jim Crow laws that legalized descrimination against African Americans. Some states adopted poll taxes and literacy tests to keep African Americans from voting. So passing discriminatory laws is hardly un-American.

But perhaps D'Souza means that affirmative action regulations are unjust As stated above, these laws are intended to counter the injustices of poverty, inadequate schools, and housing that African Americans must deal with in our society. These injustices continue, and the few examples of affirmative action make hardly any difference to the African American community.

Ideals and Interests

D'Souza begins this section with his boldest lie yet:

America has the kindest, gentlest foreign policy of any great power in world history.

All great powers have their own interests at heart and never hesitate to crush anyone who gets in their way. Even when they appear to be magnanimous, great powers usually have ulterior motives. Like America, they clothe their true motives in high-sounding words like liberty and morality. When France aided the American revolutionaries, it did so as part of a world-wide struggle with England. But ordinary Americans believed they acted out of friendship and idealism.

America itself has fought one-sided wars with the Indians, with Mexico, and with Spain, primarily to seize land and power. Terms of peace were equally one-sided, requiring Indians to give up their lands and relocate to distant reservations, requiring Mexico to cede half its territory, requiring Spain to hand over naval bases around the world. America's treatment of allies is not always kind, either. During World War II, America took advantage of Great Britain's desperate plight to acquire naval bases in return for food and munitions.

America has refused to set up a legal way for Mexicans to enter the country and work, instead requiring such workers to undergo hardships to perform tasks useful to the host country. It has installed a rigorous trade embargo against another neighbor, Cuba, for 60 years, even though the embargo clearly has no effect on Cuba's internal politics other than to stiffen their resistance.

After World War II, America loaned money to European nations to help them recover from the effects of war, but this was almost entirely through selfish motives, since the economic troubles in Europe after World War I led to another catastrophic war within 20 years, and since America also required the assistance of Europe to combat the emerging threat of Soviet Russia.

During the post-war era, America helped destabilize the governments of Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, and others. It also prosecuted a bloody war in Indochina that led to the deaths of millions, and sponsored a guerilla action in Nicaragua and a terrorist regime in El Salvador.

These actions may have been justified, or even necessary, given the political climate of the time. But they were not kind and gentle. D'Souza understands this, so he has taken care to claim that American foreign policy is the “kindest [and] gentlest”, instead of simply “kind and gentle”, which would have been impossible to defend. Certainly some acts of violence and treachery are kinder and gentler than other, more vicious acts, but they are nevertheless violent and treacherous. The governments of Vietnam and Cambodia killed far more of their own citizens than did America, but we did kill our share.

But here again D'Souza uses a rhetorical trick to bolster his case. He compares America with some of the worst foreign policy offenders:

Imagine how the Soviets would have acted if they had won the Cold War...Thus, if the Chinese, the Arabs, or the sub-Saharan Africans slaughter 10,000 of their own people, the world utters a collective sigh and resumes its normal business. We sadly expect the Chinese, the Arabs, and the sub-Saharan Africans to do these things.

When praising America's economic conditions or quality of life, D'Souza compares us with India. When praising our political policies, he compares us with China and Russia. But Mao's China and Stalin's Russia were two of the most vicious dictatorships in the history of the world. Almost any country would seem kind and gentle in comparison with them. In order to show how great America is, D'Souza ought to compare us with other democractic empires, such as England or France, or even with the anti-militarist policies of Japan and Germany in the last half-century.

D'Souza should recognize the weakness of this argument:

On occasion, the U.S. intervenes to overthrow a tyrannical regime or to halt massive human rights abuses in another country, but it never stays to rule that country. In Grenada and Haiti and Bosnia, the United States got in and then got out.

Because he is an Indian, D'Souza knows that a great power does not need to govern a country in order to benefit by trade and military bases. The British ruled India only through intermediaries. They seized no territory. What they wanted was the right to exploit India's riches; they left the governing to others. In the same way, when America acts to defuse possible catastrophes in international hot spots like Bosnia or the Middle East, it does so out of self-interest, not charity. D'Souza admits as much:

However one feels about these cases, let us concede to the critics that America is not always in the right.

Shouldn't a great country always be in the right?

America's Virtue

At the start of each section of this essay, D'Souza makes another dubious claim. For this last section he makes two.

America, the freest nation on earth, is also the most virtuous nation on earth.

Here, D'Souza doesn't bother to prove his first claim, that America is the freest nation on earth. This isn't as easy to prove as it might seem. The Heritage Foundation itself ranks countries on the basis of how much freedom they have from government interference in economic matters. They rank America fifth in this year's list, behind Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, and Australia. One doubts whether we will remain so high next year, after quasi-nationalizing the banks.

Other measures of freedom are just as difficult to determine. Any independent country is free, of course. We consider that citizens in a democracy have more personal freedom than under other forms of government. But there are degrees of personal freedom. India itself is one of the freest countries on earth. Its government is weak and unable either to raise taxes or enforce laws. In the matter of traffic laws, for example, Indians do as they please, knowing the government is powerless to stop them. There are no effective rules about how many people can ride on a bus, or which side of a divided highway to drive on, or how fast a vehicle must travel on the roads.

But D'Souza here is only interested in religious freedom, since that is what leads to virtue.

Similarly, when D'Souza claims America is the most virtuous nation on earth, he sets himself an impossible task. There are endless shapes and forms of morality. Trying to decide which is best has been the neverending quest of moralists since we began keeping records of such things. To extricate himself from this confusion, he compares America to the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran. Then he uses another rhetorical trick to win his argument.

D'Souza assumes that we all have free will. This is a Christian concept, and once he has made this assumption, the claims of another religion to superior virtue vanish.

In externally directed societies such as Iran, the absence of freedom signals the absence of virtue. Thus, the free society is not simply richer, more varied, and more fun: It is also morally superior to the externally directed society.

This is true only if we accept the existence of free will and discount the validity of another's religious experience altogether.

Conclusion

D'Souza is an intelligent man with a certain rhetorical brilliance. But he is operating at a disadvantage because he cannot use any arguments to support his point of view that conflict with the tenets of far-right conservatism espoused by the Heritage Foundation. Furthermore, far-right conservatism preaches that America is the only great country, perhaps in all history. This would be a difficult point to prove in any event, but D'Souza does not even begin. Instead he sets up several straw man arguments which he has no difficulty in proving: Life in America is easier than in India; America's foreign policy is more moral than Soviet Russia's; and America has more individual freedom than Iran.

These points made, D'Souza is still far from proving that America is a great country. Nevertheless, I believe that America is a great country; but I also believe that D'Souza doesn't understand why.