Friday, April 19, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor
Op-Ed Observations

JANUARY 31, 2004 --

President Clinton " did not fight for traditional Democratic core values." From Phyllis Stock-Morton's letter in The New York Times Jan. 31.

Conservatives fear gay marriage, education for the poor, universal child care, "if health care is provided," and a reduced military budget. From Philip M. Smith, same paper, same date. Ms. Stock-Morton, writing from New York, and Mr. Smith, writing from College Station, Texas, were commenting on the January 29 op-ed piece by Robert Reich, secretary of labor in the Clinton Adm inistration and now a professor of social and econ omic policy at Brandeis University.

That the former labor secretary is on the Brandeis faculty presents some irony, as Justice Louis D. Brandeis, for whom the university is named (I am a graduate, class of 1962), was not a great defender of huge national government, preferring that the states be laboratories for public policies.

Professor Reich, in his op-ed piece, called for Democrats to create a political movement, but, criticizing Democrats for their "silence," among other things, he, himself, was silent as to the elements on
which his idea of a political movement would be based.

To call for taxes on the rich "to pay for what needs doing" is hardly to set forth the elements of a cohesive program that remains faithful to the traditional core values of the Republic, which surely oppose unrestrained power, and hold that tyranny is avoided when leaders are close to the people.

Professor Reich argued, "...any political movement derives its durability from the clarity of its convictions."

The convictions in the Reich piece seem based on a call for control and coercion, to restore the notion of Big Government from top down that tends to brush aside demands for show of constitutional authority and implementation of due process. Justice Brandeis joined the Supreme Court decision that struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act.

Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes,
writing for the majority in that case--Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (Justices Cardozo and Stone concurred)-- noted at the start of the opinion: "Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.'" [Constitutional Law, Gunther, ninth edition, p. 162]

Perhaps today's liberals accept that dictum when a Republican is in the White House. The blurred direction of the Reich article--the only point clarified is his interest in class warfare --offers no indication that liberals, back in power, would place the Hughes quote on the wall behind their desks.

It is not clear how liberals expect to persuade others with arguments that include outlandish claims that conservatives oppose education for the poor. And when liberals accuse Republicans of seeking power through fear, for some of us, perhaps, that better
describes one mode of leftwing polemic. Besides, didn't FDR reassure us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- and not conservatives, Republicans, or even a Federalist 57 populist?