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THE WAY WE SEE IT
Discouraging
YOUR VIEWS
heroism
A
mid the endless dissection of a madman’s
rampage in an Omaha, Neb.,
shopping mall, one fact is largely
ignored by the media and those who insist that
restricting access to firearms will somehow prevent
such acts of mass murder: Despite a law
that allows Nebraska residents to carry concealed
weapons, the mall naively declared itself a
“gun-free zone.”
Robert Hawkins, a
troubled 20-year-old
who indulged his misery
to homicidal effect,
entered the shopping
center Dec. 5 intent on
“going out in style,” as
he wrote in a suicide
note. With no one
Our view
■ Gun-free zones
make it easier for
madmen to pull
the trigger.
armed and able to stop him, he gunned down
eight innocents before finally killing himself.
While attempting to comprehend the tortured
logic of prohibiting concealed weapons in vulnerable
public places, we’re reminded of an essay
penned by Republican presidential candidate
Fred Thompson shortly after the Virginia Tech
University massacre in April. Thompson correctly
excoriated the university for happily advertising
itself — much like the mall — as a “gun-free
zone.”
“Whenever I’ve seen one of those ‘Gun-free
Zone’ signs, especially outside of a school filled
with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens,
I’ve always wondered exactly who these signs are
directed at,” Thompson wrote. “Obviously, they
don’t mean much to the sort of man who murdered
32 people just a few days ago.”
Indeed, one wonders how many lives might
have been saved in Omaha had just one person
been armed and in position to stop Hawkins.
Addressing that issue, Thompson’s essay sadly
rings true again today: “When people capable of
performing acts of heroism are discouraged or
denied the opportunity,” he wrote, “our society is
all the poorer.”
Editor’s note: This letter is in response to the Dec. 9 editorial “Childless
but one with the Earth,” which criticized female environmentalists who
regard abortion and sterilization as a useful way to limit human pollution.
‘Defaming those who try’
To the editor:
On occasion, I catch a glimpse of The Way We See
It section of your publication and when I read it, I
am absolutely disgusted. It is typically the most uninsightful,
shallow piece of bigotry I’ve ever read —
on every occasion.
This person, who is obviously too embarrassed to
sign his name to his words, defames leftists, environmentalists
and other insightful, forward-thinking
mind-sets. The people he attempts to shred are at
least making an effort and are thinking ahead,
instead of thinking only of themselves and their
pocketbooks. These people the writer tries to humiliate
have defeated laziness and risked combating the
system for the sake of humanity. These people put
their own needs aside and look to the future —
something we all should be doing. After all, every
one of us must have one goal in mind: survival of
humanity.
This person should show his face and sign his
name if he is proud of the garbage that spews from
his pen. Then maybe he should get off his self-righteous
high horse and do some forward-thinking, like
apologize for the blinders he has been wearing, and
contribute to humanity’s survival, instead of defaming
those who try.
Sonja Schlesner
Lake Geneva
Paul won’t win presidency, but ...
Let us concede at the start that Ron
Paul is not like likely to be elected president.
He neither looks nor sounds particularly
presidential. He has a tendency
to wander from his central message
to discuss esoterica such a the gold
standard. He lacks a professional campaign
organization. He is an anti-war
candidate in a pro-war party. And his
campaign has attracted more than its
share of conspiracy theorists and other
fringe elements.
Yet it is undeniable that Paul has
struck a chord with a large segment of
disaffected Republicans.
His fundraising over the last few
weeks has been phenomenal. Paul
announced Dec. 2 that he expects to
raise more than $12 million this quarter,
and possibly as much as $15 million.
Little more than an asterisk in polls
just a couple of months ago, Paul is now
running a respectable fourth in New
Hampshire and closing in on double
digits in other key states. As he spends
some of the millions he has recently
raised, that can only be expected to rise.
Some of Paul’s appeal undoubtedly
stems from his opposition to the war in
Iraq. Polls show that as many as a third
of Republicans oppose the war, and
many others are deeply troubled by the
seemingly endless conflict. With all the
other Republicans trying to outdo one
another at being the most belligerenttoward
Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and the
world in general, the Texas congressman
stands out. If you want to register
opposition to the Bush foreign policy,
but aren’t willing to support the
Democrats’ tax-and-spend government,
Ron Paul is the perfect vehicle.
But there is something more important
at play here.
Under the Bush administration, the
Republican Party has increasingly drifted
from its limited-government roots.
Instead, it has come to be dominated by
a new breed of “big-government conservatives”
who believe in using an activist
government to achieve conservative
ends — even if it means increasing the
size, cost and power of government, and
limiting personal freedom in the
process.
The difference in the two camps is as
clear as the difference between Ronald
Reagan’s saying, “Government is not
the solution to our problem; government
is the problem,” and George W. Bush’s
saying, “We have a responsibility that
when somebody hurts, government has
got to move.”
Bush’s brand of big-government conservatism
brought us No Child Left
Behind, the Medicare prescription-drug
benefit, and a 23 percent increase in
domestic discretionary spending. It may
well have cost Republicans control of
Congress. After all, on election night
2006, 55 percent of voters said that they
thought the Republican Party was the
party of big government.
Most of the current Republican candidates
fall squarely into the big-government
camp. Former Massachusetts Gov.
Mitt Romney imposed a Hillary
Clinton-style health plan in his state
and not only supports No Child Left
Behind but calls for the federal government
to buy a laptop computer for every
child born in America. He thinks we
should increase farm price supports.
John McCain has an admirable
record as a fiscal conservative, but he
shows a disturbing predilection for
making a federal issue of every personal
pet peeve from steroids in baseball to
airplane service quality. He embraces
heavily regulatory environmental policies
that hurt businesses and cost jobs,
such as expanding the Clean Water and
Clean Air acts and implementing the
Kyoto Protocols, and compulsory national
service. More important, he also is
the principal author of a campaign
finance bill that severely restricts political
speech.
Rudy Giuliani's record on civil liberties
suggests he views the Constitution
as an afterthought.
Fred Thompson talks a good game,
but his record suggests he is closer to
McCain-lite.
Mike Huckabee may be an even bigger
spender than President Bush, and
he never met a tax increase he didn’t
like.
Thus, when Ron Paul talks about
returning to limited constitutional government,
a great many Republican primary
voters sit up and take notice. For
voters hungering for a return to the
party of Barry Goldwater and Ronald
Reagan rather than the party of George
W. Bush, Paul’s rhetoric is a breath of
fresh air.
No, Paul is not likely to be our next
president. But he is delivering a message
that the other candidates would do
well to heed. Is anyone listening?
How free press can protect us
Two recent news items — an obituary
about a U.S. Air Force officer and a
newspaper column about a jailed
Associated Press photographer — have
a First Amendment connection that
reaches across more than 50 years of
U.S. history.
Milo Radulovich, an Air Force
reservist caught up in the 1950s
McCarthy era, died Nov. 19. Secret
charges in 1953 against Radulovich
were brought to light by famed CBS
newsman Edward R. Morrow and specious
“evidence” of disloyalty evaporated
when exposed to public scrutiny.
Just a week after Radulovich died,
Associated Press president and chief
executive Tom Curley wrote an op-ed
piece in The Washington Post about AP
photographer Bilal Hussein. Hussein,
part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning AP
photo team in Iraq, has been jailed
there since April 2006. Curley said the
U.S. government is now claiming
Hussein was a terrorist who infiltrated
AP’s staff. But Curley maintains that in
reality, “Bilal’s crime was taking photographs
the U.S. government does not
want its citizens to see.”
What ties the two cases across time
from a First Amendment standpoint is
— irrespective of eventual guilt or innocence
— the role of a free press as a
watchdog on government.
Public awareness of that role is too
often lost in hyperventilated debates
over whether the press is too liberal or
conservative, too consolidated, too
weak, or too focused on trivial celebrity
highjinks. None of those issues is without
merit. But the babble and boil
obscures appreciation of the role of our
free press to examine, expound on and
occasionally expose what our govern-
MICHAEL ICHAEL TANNER ANNER
CATO INSTITUTE
GENE ENE POLICINSKI OLICINSKI
FIRST AMENDMENT
ment is doing.
In Radulovich’s instance, his military
rank was threatened because of the
activities of his father, a Serbian immigrant,
and his sister. As it happened,
his father’s suspicious action was reading
a Serbian-language newspaper. His
sister was a social activist, but it was
her participation in a public protest
over a Detroit hotel that refused to
admit African-American singer-actor
and activist Paul Robeson that authorities
cited. Hardly the stuff of treason.
Still, two Air Force officers showed up
in August 1953 at Radulovich’s
Michigan home and told him he was to
forfeit his rank, pay and benefits and to
appear at a hearing as a danger to
national security.
Murrow featured the Radulovich case
in an Oct. 23 broadcast of the groundbreaking
TV program “See It Now.” A
month later, the reservist was exonerated.
In 1998, the State Bar of Michigan
honored the telecast, saying, “It is generally
believed that the program was
the beginning of the end for the
McCarthy era.”
Curley’s column about Hussein has
echoes of the earlier case. He wrote that
“every claim we’ve checked out has
proved to be false, overblown or microscopic
in significance.” A column or television
program is neither evidence nor
proof, but Curley publicly raises issues
of fairness, fair trial and secret prosecu-
tion. While the Bill of Rights is supposed
to prevent such procedures from
being employed by the U.S. government,
it is the First Amendment’s provision
for a news media outside the control
of government officials that is the
ultimate protection against Star
Chamber tactics.
At least one news report about
Radulovich’s death quoted his attorney
in 1953 as saying his “only chance” was
to “get public opinion on his side.” The
Detroit News did a series of stories that
led to Murrow’s program, which
brought more than 12,000 letters to
CBS — most from people outraged
about the Air Force proceedings.
Whether or not Curley and others
will raise the same public hue and cry
about the Hussein case remains to be
seen. Public opinion in wartime, we
have seen repeatedly in our history,
tends to favor the government and support
its actions.
But we already know, whether it’s the
20th or 21st century, that the American
public is best served when the government
is held to account in public, rather
than being able to operate, and perhaps
convict, behind closed doors.
The First Amendment protection for
a free press also preserves an independent
voice in favor of a fair system fairly
applied, with the public presence to
hold government accountable for its
actions. And that voice is, on occasion,
all that stands between us and a government
juggernaut that can take away
our liberty, career or reputation.
■ Walworth County Sunday welcomes issue-oriented letters and guest column submissions for publication on the Outlook page. Guidelines: Letters no longer than 250 words; all letters are subject to editing for spelling, grammar, length; no personal
attacks or letters related to personal disputes; daytime phone number needed for verification; limit of one per month. Guest columns should be approximately 550 to 650 words; not all guest columns will be published; limit of one per month. Send to:
Managing Editor, P.O. Box 367, Delavan, WI, 53115. E-mail to bheisel@communityshoppers.com
CENTER
Michael Tanner is director of health and
welfare studies at the Cato Institute in
Washington, D.C.
Gene Policinski is vice president and
executive director of the First
Amendment Center in Washington, D.C.