Soundings, June 1998

"Up at Harvard last term in Lit 129, 'Reading the 18th Century Through 20th Century Eyes,' the reading list included Beaumarchais, Diderot, Kant, Rousseau, Foucault, Kundera, and 'Unabomber,' among other distinguished thinkers. . . . And so what? Bad men can be good writers. Trouble is, Kaczynski made the Harvard reading list not despite his vicious crimes but because of them. Some thinkers (I don't deny) agree with his anti-technology ideas. But no serious person ever claimed that his thoughts were new, or that his manifesto was well argued or well written. Kaczynski made that Harvard reading list on the basis of our shattered hands and shattered eyes, permanent injury and permanent pain—ours, the lucky ones who survived. Three unlucky men died to make Kaczynski's name at Harvard. . . . . My guess is that, two generations ago, a large majority of Americans would have condemned such a course as disgusting and most intellectuals would have shrugged it off. And my guess is that, today, a bare majority of the public would still find it disgusting and a large majority of intellectuals would still shrug it off. Just a guess." "Unresolved Evil," David Gelernter, The Weekly Standard, April 6, 1998.

Comparing present reality to past expectations serves as a useful reality-check on one's principles. Quite by accident, the New York Times (April 14, 1998) offered such a revealing check when (in the course of cleaning out some files) a reporter looked back at those labeled "Energy." In 1982, the chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corporation predicted that, by the end of the 1980s oil would be $100 a barrel. The correct figure was $13. Melvin Calvin, winner of the 1961 Nobel Prize in chemistry, suggested that guayule plants, rich in hydrocarbons, could substitute for oil and Congress invested $35 million (of your money) in guayule plantations. As it happens, "guayule takes up an awful lot of land to yield modest oil harvests, and some variants cause debilitating skin rashes." A large category of energy projects were based on wave power. "Unfortunately, some of these machines generated ear-piercing screeches that nearby residents found unbearable." But environmentalists never lose heart. According to the Times, the March issue of Scientific American presented a report predicting an end of cheap oil and a beginning of a permanent slide in oil production—ten years from now. Julian Simon, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

George A. Forsyth, executive director of the Catholic Campaign for America, published a letter in the Wall Street Journal (April 27, 1998) attacking Ron Adkins of Oregon's Cascade Policy Institute for his argument against subsidizing assisted suicide. Isn't this backwards? No, Forsyth says Adkins's libertarianism "is a misunderstanding of freedom." "For [Adkins] and the libertarians, freedom means doing whatever one likes. But true freedom consists in the liberty to do what is right. These two views are politically incompatible. The laws must reflect either one or the other. State subsidy of self-murder on equal access grounds is an entirely predictable outgrowth of the ideas of a right to suicide." Next time a neoconservative belittles the dangers of yoking church and state, remember that "true freedom consists in the liberty to do what is right."

Stanley Hill, leader of New York City's largest municipal union, recently "denounced the Giuliani administration's workfare program, equating it with slavery because, he said, it did not lead most of its participants to meaningful jobs"—the failure to lead people to meaningful jobs being, presumably, the essence of involuntary servitude. The New York Times, April 19, 1998. U

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