How Rail Screws the Poor Latter-Day Acceptance Student Loan Scam reason Eating Bugs Free Minds and Free Markets August/September 2012 August/September Generational Warfare Old-age entitlements vs. the safety net $3.95 U.S. & Canada Analysis and Critique: From Reason Magazine Senior Editor How to Engage and Brian Doherty Write about Anything IM ED T E O IT FF Taught by Professor Dorsey Armstrong E IM R    L    WHO IS ? 1. How to Write about Anything 70% 2 O 1 2. How to Be an E€ ective Reader R D off R 3. How Literature Can Help AMERICAN SKEPTIC. . . E ER B 4. Shaping Your Voice B EM Y SEPT 5. Knowing Your Reader 6. The Art of the Essay—How to Start FOUNDER OF A DYNASTY. . . 7. How to Organize an Argument 8. Supporting Your Argument LEADER OF A MOVEMENT. . . 9. Finishing Strong 10. The Uses of Poetry 11. Poetic Diction and Syntax 12. Drama—Writing Out Loud 13. What You Can Learn from Autobiography 14. Writing and Leadership 15. The Rules of Rhetoric 16. Invention and Arrangement The indispensible 17. Ethos and Pathos 18. Finding What You Need 19. Using What You Find guide to this 20. Getting Started—Writing First Drafts 21. Editing—Finding What’s Wrong 22. Rewriting—Fixing What’s Wrong most enigmatic 23. Avoiding Common Errors in Grammar and Usage 24. The Power of Words of politicians. Discover How to Analysis and Critique: Write about Anything How to Engage and Write about Anything Course no. 2133 | 24 lectures (30 minutes/lecture) All writing is at its most effective when it’s built on the fundamental Available Wherever Books critical and analytical skills that transform good writing into great writing. These skills—the heart and soul of engaging and effective and E-Books Are Sold writing—include the ability to organize your thoughts, craft persuasive SAVE UP TO $185 arguments, draw on various literary styles, create a productive fi rst draft, make responsible use of research materials, and avoid common grammar errors. DVD $254.95˜NOW $69.95 Get the secrets to these and other aspects of strong writing with the 24 accessible lectures of Analysis and Critique: How to Engage and CD $179.95˜ NOW $49.95 Write about Anything. Delivered by Professor Dorsey Armstrong, +$10 Shipping, Processing, and Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee Priority Code: 66052 these lectures immerse you in all the elements of successful writing. With its engaging examples, inspirational prompts, and unforgettable insights, this course is the perfect reference guide for both professional Designed to meet the demand for lifelong learning, and casual writers. The Great Courses is a highly popular series of Read our blog and join in the discussion audio and video lectures led by top professors at www.broadsidebooks.net O er expires 09/12/12 and experts. Each of our more than 350 courses is an intellectually engaging experience that will 1-800-832-2412 change how you think about the world. Since ­­­.‚ƒ„ . †/9 1990, over 10 million courses have been sold.

August/September 2012 reason Volume 44, No. 4 Free Minds and Free Markets

Departments 44 Resetting Your Biological Clock Briefly Noted (cont.) Egg freezing opens up new 54 Jacob Sullum on the TV show 2 Unthinkable, Predictable frontiers in gender equality. Nurse Jackie Disasters Ronald Bailey 56 Katherine Mangu-Ward on the art The disintegration of the euro, exhibit “Elevator to the Moon” like America’s entitlement 62 How Rail Screws the Poor 58 Peter Suderman on the bomb, is both unfathomable and As Los Angeles spends billions on documentary Last Call at the Oasis inevitable. Matt Welch light rail, transit use declines. Tim Cavanaugh 50 Latter-Day Acceptance 6 Contributors Mitt Romney may inspire anti- Mormon paranoia, but it’s 7 Letters and Reaction Features nothing compared to the fears his Born this way?; fixing the forefathers faced. Jesse Walker unbroken Internet… 24 Generational Warfare Old-age entitlements vs. the 56 Frederick Douglass, Classical 10 Citings safety net. and Liberal 100-mile search exemption; Silent Veronique DeRugy A fresh look at the political Spring’s shoddy science; rent evolution of a great American. control reigns; no border crisis; 36 After the Storm Damon W. Root mobile snacking crackdown; How Joplin, Missouri, rebuilt The Political Thought of Frederick cellphone tracking… following a devastating tornado Douglass: In Pursuit of American by circumventing bureaucracy. , by Nicholas Buccola Tate Watkins Columns 60 1776, All Over Again A 1969 musical about the 8 Obama Says ‘I Do’ to Gay Culture & Reviews Declaration of Independence is Marriage back. Katherine Mangu-Ward The president changes his mind 46 Shenanigans! on gay unions. Again. Jacob Sullum A worm’s-eye view of what it 64 Bin Laden’s Doll House takes to get someone I can stand The Pentagon declassifies 16 Eating Bugs elected president. Peter Bagge a model of the terrorist’s The search for new food frontiers Abbottabad compound. in an era of population growth. Briefly Noted Peter Suderman Greg Beato 50 Ron Bailey on the art exhibit “SPILL” 20 Student Loan Scam 52 Ed Krayewski on the film Cover Illustration: Terry Colon Why are today’s poor subsidizing Coriolanus tomorrow’s rich? Veronique de Rugy

reason (ISSN 0048-6906) is published monthly except combined August/September issue by the , a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization, 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90034-6064. Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA, and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 2012 by Reason Foundation. All rights reserved. Repro- duction or use, without permission, of editorial or graphic content is prohibited. reason and Free Minds and Free Markets are registered trademarks owned by the Reason Foundation. SUBSCRIPTIONS: $38.50 per year. Outside U.S. add $10/year surface, $55/year airmail. Address subscription correspondence to reason, P.O. Box 8504, Big Sandy, TX 75755, Tele. 888- 732-7668. For address change (allow six weeks), provide old address and new address, including zip code. UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS returned only if accompanied by SASE. INDEXED in Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, InfoTrac, Historical Abstracts, Political Science Abstracts, America: History and Life, Book Review Index, and P.A.I.S. Bulletin. Available on microfilm from University Microfilms International, 300 North Zeeb Rd., Dept. P.R., Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Printed in the United States. Publications Mail Agreement No. 40032285, return undeliverable Canadian addresses t0 P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill ON L4B 4R6. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to reason, P.O. Box 8504, Big Sandy, TX 75755. Publications Mail Sales Agreement No. 1476696. From the Top: Matt Welch Unthinkable, Predictable Disasters The disintegration of the euro, like America’s entitlement bomb, is both unfathomable and inevitable.

You’d have to be willfully ignorant to be Yet European Union officials still refused to surprised by Greece’s potential exit from the contemplate the inevitable. In January 2010, common European currency. First the famously Joaquin Almunia, the E.U.’s economic and mon- misgoverned country failed to meet the ini- etary affairs commissioner, insisted that “we tial 1999 fiscal and monetary targets for euro have no Plan B” for Greece. Shockingly, some integration: a budget deficit below 3 percent of eurocrats were still expressing that attitude as gross domestic product, a national debt below recently as late May of this year. Keeping Greece 60 percent of GDP, inflation within 1.5 percent- in the euro zone, European Central Bank (ECB) age points of the lowest euro-member country’s executive board member Jorg Asmussen said at rate, and a stable currency for more than two a conference in Germany, is “Plan A; that’s what years. Then Greek officials were forced to admit we’re working on.” What about the elusive Plan in 2004 that they had lied when they said they B? “There’s already been criticism that there is did meet those targets. none,” Asmussen acknowledged. “But as soon In late 2009 the newly elected Greek gov- as you start talking about ‘Plan B’ or ‘Plan C,’ ernment let slip that its annual budget deficit then ‘Plan A’ is automatically thrown out of the was coming in at double its predecessor’s window.” previous forecast, which was already double You can’t plan for disasters by refusing to what was technically allowed. The news was talk about them. Yet that was the European hardly startling, given that in its first eight years approach to monetary disintegration until May within the euro zone (2001–08) Greece aver- 6, 2012, when the SYRIZA party won second aged annual budget deficits equal to 5 percent place in Greece’s parliamentary elections after of GDP, compared to the other members’ aver- promising to rip up all post-2009 bailout agree- age of 2 percent; gorged itself on an extravagant ments with Brussels. Only at that late date did 2004 Summer Olympics; and capped off the you begin to hear the first real official war gam- party in October 2009 by voting in the Panhel- ing of what a euro-less Greece, and a Greece- lenic Socialist Movement party, which promised less euro, may look like. Unsurprisingly, the to spend even more money. last-ditch reality check looked grim. This reckless behavior was in keeping with The National Bank of Greece waited until Greece’s checkered modern history, which late May to warn Greeks that exiting the euro includes being the first country to be booted out would result in a 22 percent reduction in GDP, of the euro’s main predecessor, the Latin Mone- 30 percent unemployment, 34 percent inflation, tary Union, back in 1908 and suffering through a 55 percent loss of income, and a 65 percent at least four significant devaluations since devaluation of the new currency. ECB President World War II. That history was why the single Mario Draghi, meanwhile, informed the Euro- biggest question about the common European pean Parliament on May 31 that the common currency as it was being established in the late currency had become “unsustainable unless 1990s was whether messy, balkanized Greece further steps are undertaken.” could coexist monetarily with disciplined, infla- tion-phobic Germany. Since October 2009 we We should not feel too smug as we watch this have had a conclusive answer. fiasco unfold on the other side of the Atlantic.

2 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012

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Americans display similar habits of Security payouts by 40 percent. Rom- ing the party’s over, you lose. This FROM THE mind in the way they talk about, and ney, meanwhile, has attacked Obama helps explains why, as Veronique de mostly avoid talking about, our own all campaign season for cutting Medi- Rugy points out in her column on NOWINPAPERBACKNEWLYEXPANDED utterly predictable yet practically care, and in May he pledged to keep the “Student Loan Scam” (page 20), unfathomable fiscal maladies. On the country’s grossly excessive level both major-party presidential can- page 24, reason online Editor in Chief of military spending at 4 percent of didates support subsidizing federal Nick Gillespie and reason Contribut- GDP indefinitely. This is how we are student loans at below-market rates. ing Editor Veronique de Rugy lay out debating a debt crisis that is every bit For similar reasons, President Barack Essential reading for in damning detail what almost every as inevitable as the Greek withdrawal Obama’s cut in employee-side payroll “ policy thinker knows but almost no from the euro. tax contributions, which has made everyone who cares politician dares acknowledge: Social Washington does not even have Social Security even more insolvent, “ Security and Medicare are bankrupt- the excuse of trying to avoid a bank retained a bipartisan support even about our economic ing the country and jeopardizing our run, which is surely contributing after a Tea Party–influenced Repub- future. ability to provide a social safety net. to European bankers’ reticence to lican majority took over the House of The numbers are daunting: In 1940, discuss disaster planning. Instead, Representatives in 2010. —JEFFREY A. MIRON, Gillespie and De Rugy note, there American lawmakers have mostly We don’t know which brave Harvard University were 159 workers for each beneficiary You can’t plan for disasters political souls—outside of libertar- in Social Security’s pay-as-you-go by refusing to talk about ian stalwarts such as Rep. Ron Paul system; today there are fewer than (R-Texas) and Libertarian Party them. Yet that was the three. In 2011 Social Security and nominee , both dis- Johan Norberg Medicare accounted for 37 percent of European approach to cussed in comic artist Peter Bagge’s exposes the abiding all federal outlays; that share is pro- monetary disintegration reportage “Shenanigans!” on page “ jected to hit 44 percent in 2020 and until May. 46—will dare utter the truth about hypocrisies of policy 50 percent by 2030. the punishing costs of guaranteeing

concluded that confronting our massive payouts based on birth cer- that generated this If you are not serious about confront- demographic demons is a one-way tificates. But in a sense, that doesn’t crisis far better than ing the time bomb of automatic ticket out of power. matter. America will soon face what “ entitlement payments going out But that’s not the only reason the Europe finally began to confront in an American insider to every retiring baby boomer, you inevitable feels so unthinkable. Some May: a reality so brutal that all the could. A masterwork are not serious about public policy. of it, I suspect, is the same reason that usual incentives for kicking the can Regrettably, though predictably, the Southern Californians keep building down the road no longer apply. When in miniature. two major-party presidential nomi- houses in the fire- and mudslide- that day of reckoning arrives, the best AMITY SHLAES, George W. Bush nees are not serious about this issue. prone foothills, that New Orleans was that we can hope for is that enough — Institute, and author of The Forgotten Democrat Barack Obama claimed in woefully underprepared for Hurri- people will have prepared for it by Man: A New History of the Great Depression May (falsely) that Republican Mitt cane Katrina (for more on that, read mapping out how we can convert Romney would cut Social Tate Watkins’ “After the Storm,” page a disorderly retreat into a sensible 36), and that even the most skeptical withdrawal. r A Notice To Our Subscribers investors keep betting on ever-inflat- From time to time, our subscriber list ing bubbles: We lack the imaginative Editor in Chief Matt Welch (matt.welch@ is rented to others. We carefully screen reason.com) is co-author, with Nick Gillespie, ow was it possible that in a world where thousands of people regulated financial markets, the those to whom we rent our list and try scope to comprehend the potential of The Declaration of Independents: How Lib- only to rent to those whose offers we devastation, and life is more fun ertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with whole system crashed down? And should we now give more power to central banks, government believe may interest our subscribers. when you believe in the fantasy. America (PublicAffairs). If you do not wish to have your name agencies, politicians, and regulators? Now in paperback, with a new chapter on the spreading included on our rental list, simply let us H know by writing us at: This psychological tendency has global economic crisis, Financial Fiasco guides readers through a world of irresponsible behavior by reason produced a damaging political tru- consumers, decisionmakers in companies, government agencies, and political institutions. 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 400 ism: If you promise voters free Los Angeles, CA 90034 goodies and no consequences, you Attn: List rentals PAPERBACK: $9.95 • E-BOOK: $6.99 win; if you bum people out by say- 4 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 Available now at Cato.org and nationwide on September 16th. AD Reason_FinancialFiasco_8x10.5_BW_5-25:Layout 1 5/22/12 2:59 PM Page 1 FROM THE NOWINPAPERBACKNEWLYEXPANDED

Essential reading for everyone who“ cares “about our economic future. —JEFFREY A. MIRON, Harvard University

Johan Norberg exposes the abiding “hypocrisies of policy

that generated this

crisis far better than an American insider“ could. A masterwork in miniature. —AMITY SHLAES, George W. Bush Institute, and author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression

ow was it possible that in a world where thousands of people regulated financial markets, the whole system crashed down? And should we now give more power to central banks, government Hagencies, politicians, and regulators? Now in paperback, with a new chapter on the spreading global economic crisis, Financial Fiasco guides readers through a world of irresponsible behavior by consumers, decisionmakers in companies, government agencies, and political institutions. PAPERBACK: $9.95 • E-BOOK: $6.99 Available now at Cato.org and nationwide on September 16th. reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch ([email protected]) Contributors In “Latter-Day Acceptance” (page 50), Senior Editor, reason online Nick Gillespie ([email protected]) Editor Jesse Walker looks at America’s increas- Managing Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward ([email protected]) ing tolerance of Mormonism. Once considered Managing Editor, reason online Tim Cavanaugh ([email protected]) dangerous and bizarre, the Church of Jesus Senior Editors Brian Doherty ([email protected]) Christ of Latter-day Saints is now the spiritual Damon Root ([email protected]) Peter Suderman ([email protected]) home of the presumptive Republican candidate Jacob Sullum ([email protected]) Jesse Walker ([email protected]) for president. Walker, 41, coordinates reason’s Associate Editors Mike Riggs ([email protected]) book coverage and is working on a book-length Lucy Steigerwald ([email protected]) history of American political paranoia for Harp- Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey ([email protected]) erCollins. In his book, he chronicles conspiracy Editorial Assistant Mary Toledo Jesse Walker ([email protected]) theories both silly (are manholes really designed Art Director Barb Burch ([email protected]) Photo Researcher Blair Rainey to kidnap pedestrians?) and serious: “The Sen- Contributing Editors Peter Bagge, Greg Beato, Gregory Benford, ate’s post-Watergate report on the CIA, the FBI, Veronique de Rugy, James V. DeLong, Charles Paul Freund, Glenn Garvin, Mike Godwin, David and other Executive Branch agencies,” says R. Henderson, John Hood, Kerry Howley, Carolyn Lochhead, Loren E. Lomasky, Mike Lynch, John Walker, “is full of demonstrably true stories McClaughry, Deirdre N. McCloskey, Michael McMenamin, Michael Valdez Moses, Michael about conspiracies.” Walker, a graduate of the C. Moynihan, Charles Oliver, Walter Olson, John J. Pitney Jr., Julian Sanchez, , Jeff University of Michigan, lives in Baltimore. A. Taylor, David Weigel, Cathy Young, Michael Young J.D. Tuccille J.D. Tuccille is managing editor of 24/7, Legal Adviser Don Erik Franzen reason online Editorial and Production Offices ’s news aggregation project, which 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 400 Los Angeles, CA 90034-6064 will be launched this summer. Tuccille, 46, lives Tel: 310-391-2245 Fax: 310-391-4395 in rural Arizona and was born in New York Washington Offices 1747 Connecticut Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20009 City. “came naturally,” he says, Tel: 202-986-0916 Fax: 202-315-3623 since there were issues of reason lying around Advertising Sales Burr Media Group the house growing up and he had freewheel- Ronald E. Burr, 703-893-3632 Joseph P. Whistler, 540-349-4042 ing family history such as a “great-grandfather ([email protected]) Subscription Service [who] owned a high-profile speakeasy in the P.O. Box 8504, Big Sandy, TX 75755 Ed Krayewski 1-888-reason-8 (1-888-732-7668) Bronx that was said to be the then-police com- ([email protected]) Circulation missioner’s watering hole of choice.” Tuccille Circulation Specialists Inc. Newsstand Distribution has a B.A. in economics from Clark University. Kable Distribution Services, 212-705-4600 reason is published by the Reason Foundation, Some previous jobs include stints at The New a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational foundation. Contributions to the Reason Foundation are York Daily News’ website and Freemarket.net. tax-deductible. Signed articles in reason reflect the views of the authors and do not necessarily He’s also the author of the 2011 comic novel represent those of the editors, the Reason Foundation, or its trustees; articles should not High Desert Barbecue (CreateShip). be construed as attempts to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before any legislative body. Associate Editor Ed Krayewski previously The claims and opinions set forth in paid adver- tisements published in this magazine are not worked as an associate producer for Freedom- necessarily those of the Reason Foundation, and the publisher takes no responsibility for Watch with on Fox Business any such claim or opinion. Reason Foundation Network. Krayewski, 27, has an M.S. in journal- Trustees Thomas E. Beach, (Chairman), Baron Bond, Drew ism from Columbia University and a B.S. and Carey, Derwood S. Chase Jr., James R. Curley, Richard J. Dennis, William A. Dunn, David W. an M.A. in international relations from Seton Fleming, Hon. C. Boyden Gray, James D. Jameson, Manuel S. Klausner, David H. Koch, Hall University. He currently resides in Newark, James Lintott, Stephen Modzelewski, David Nott, George F. Ohrstrom, Robert W. Poole Jr., New Jersey, where he was born. Before working Carol Sanders, Vernon L. Smith, Richard A. Wallace, Fred M. Young, Harry E. Teasley Jr. (chairman emeritus), Frank Bond (emeritus), in cable news, Krayewski taught seventh grade Walter E. Williams (emeritus) social studies and language arts. Krayewski will President David Nott Vice President, Magazine Nick Gillespie be working on reason online’s 24/7 news aggre- Vice President, Policy Adrian T. Moore Vice President, Research Julian Morris gation project. He is also adapting his father’s Vice President, Development Victoria Hughes Vice President, Operations; Publisher Mike Alissi Chief Financial Officer Jon Graff novel, Skyliner, which Krayewski says he “previ- ously translated into English, into comic book form, with my father doing the art.”

6 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 Letters Fixing the Unbroken Internet Reaction “Fixing the Unbroken Internet” (May) properly points out that under (voided) [Haidt] is not a libertarian, but a 1996 legislation, “a minor could buy liberal who has come to appreciate [Howard] Stern’s book, Miss America, some aspects of libertarian thought. in a store, but ‘if that same youngster I think his theory could use a bit of reads a profanity-laced quote from the work, but the fact that he is actu- book on the Internet [the person who ally trying to understand is worth posted it] could go to the slammer.” encouraging. The old political divi- But the piece then attempts to extend sions are being altered, and a lot of the concept invalidly, describing 2011 liberals are going to be looking for congressional bills as renewed efforts a new home—perhaps it would be to give “the government broad power good to help them understand alter- to censor the Internet.” No mention is native views. made of legitimate concerns that gave —reason online commenter “Alan” in rise to the bills. response to “Born This Way?” (May) If a boatload of unauthorized DVDs of movies currently in first-run theatri- As far as I can tell, there are three cal release arrived at an American port, options for approaches to civic life: U.S. Customs could seize them as con- 1. Live and let live Born This Way? traband. The Stop Online Piracy Act 2. All for one and one for all While Jonathan Haidt’s research is (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) bills 3. In God we trust interesting, he missed the core of the were intended to parallel this function It really is that simple. problem (“Born This Way?” May). in the virtual world, so that foreign- —reason online commenter “KPres” in “The most basic of all ideological origin Internet packets could be response to “Born This Way?” questions” is not “should we preserve stopped at the U.S. border. SOPA and the present order or change it?” Rather PIPA were troublesome not in aim but Matt Welch has a nice essay, “Why it is: How much force will we initiate in overkill. Big Government Is Offensive” to shape government, society, and David P. Hayes (May). It is not a new point, but is the world to fit our own personal Washington, DC well-made and deserves to be reiter- wills? ated often: the more government Haidt gets close to this issue CORRECTION: Dirty Harry’s weapon does, the more it offends basic val- when he observes, “Morality binds of choice was a .44 Magnum, not a ues; words to keep in mind as we us into ideological teams that fight .357 Magnum (“The Gun Explosion,” head into the election season. each other as though the fate of the May). —Georgetown University law professor world depended on our side winning , writing at the Volokh each battle.” More important, the fate Conspiracy blog of every individual can be seriously Letters are welcome and should altered by these battles. Government be addressed to achieves essentially unfettered power reason to initiate force, injuring or destroying 1747 Connecticut Avenue, NW some to benefit others. It’s the natural Washington, DC 20009 course of democracy, which will get fax: 202-315-3623 nastier and bloodier every day—unless [email protected] and until we stop initiating political force. Bradford L. Warren Indianapolis, IN

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 7 Columns: Jacob Sullum Obama Says ‘I Do’ to Gay Marriage The president changes his mind on gay unions. Again.

After President Barack Obama comfortable with the fact that men marriage in 2008, as did most Lati- finally gave his explicit support to gay marrying men, women marrying nos. At the same time, Obama did not marriage in May, women, and heterosexual men and want to alienate gay donors or young claimed it was the culmination of “a women marrying [each other] are voters, who overwhelmingly support wrenching personal transformation entitled to the same exact rights, all gay marriage. Hence his “evolving” on the issue.” If so, Obama changed the civil rights, all the civil ,” views on the issue, which seemed to back into the person he was in 1996, Biden said on Meet the Press. “And be driven by polling data. when he was a political novice run- quite frankly, I don’t see much of a While recent polls asking for ning for the Illinois Senate. “I favor distinction beyond that.” a simple yes or no find support for legalizing same-sex marriages,” he Obama did—or at least, he was gay marriage as high as 53 percent, told a gay newspaper back then, “and aware that many voters did, which surveys that give people additional would fight efforts to prohibit such is why he had been careful to avoid options suggest opinions are more marriages.” endorsing “gay marriage” as such. complex. In a February New York Running for re-election two years Instead he advocated a “strong ver- Times/CBS News poll, 40 percent of later, Obama already had learned the sion” of “civil unions,” one that would respondents supported “legal mar- value of reticence regarding touchy give gay couples “all the rights” of riage” for gay couples, up from 22 social issues. “Do you believe that the straight couples, except the right to percent in 2004. An additional 23 per- Illinois government should recognize call their relationship a marriage. cent favored “civil unions,” while 31 same-sex marriages?” a questionnaire Obama understood that the name percent said there should be “no legal asked. Obama’s response: “Unde- really does matter to some oppo- recognition at all.” An August 2010 cided.” nents, mainly because they conflate poll had similar results. Evidently the wrenching decision civil marriage—the legal arrange- Obama’s support for “strong” civil Obama had to make was not whether ment recognized by the state—with unions straddled two positions that he thought gay couples should have a “the sacred institution of marriage” together account for more than 60 right to marry but whether he should (as Republican presidential nomi- percent of voters (and an even bigger say so out loud. The fact that it took nee Mitt Romney calls it), which is majority among people apt to vote for 16 years reflects the gradual evolution defined by religious traditions that him). By contrast, “no legal recogni- of public opinion on the question, date back a lot further than marriage tion” for same-sex couples clearly which ultimately made it thinkable licenses. As Obama put it in a 2007 has become a minority position—a for him to tell ABC News “it is impor- presidential debate, “We should try fact that Mitt Romney, who talks a tant for me to go ahead and affirm to disentangle what has historically lot about protecting marriage but that I think same-sex couples should been the issue of the word marriage, very little about fair treatment of gay be able to get married.” which has religious connotations to couples, may have to contend with as The immediate impetus for that some people, from the civil rights that he repositions himself for the general affirmation was the fallout from Vice are given to couples.” election. r President Joseph Biden’s unguarded The leery people Obama had in comments about gay marriage three mind included not only older swing Senior Editor Jacob Sullum (jsullum@reason. com) is a nationally syndicated columnist. days earlier, which drew unwelcome voters but also crucial parts of his attention to Obama’s studied ambigu- base: Seven out of 10 black voters ity on the subject. “I am absolutely supported California’s ban on gay

8 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012

Citings Strip search approval held for a week in two different a seat belt, officers can present Spread ’Em jails and strip-searched twice drivers with a choice: a search of before the matter was cleared up. your car now or a search of your Jacob Sullum The five justices in the major- bodily orifices later. r In 2001 the Supreme Court said ity, in an opinion by Anthony 100-mile search the Fourth Amendment does not Kennedy, deferred to the judg- preclude “a warrantless arrest ment of correctional officials War on chicken cutlets exemption; Silent for a minor criminal offense, concerning which policies are Breast Man such as a misdemeanor seatbelt appropriate to prevent weap- Spring’s shoddy violation punishable only by a ons and other contraband from Katherine Mangu-Ward science; rent control fine.” The other shoe dropped in entering jails, noting that the “Would this happen if I were April, when the Court said the hazard does not necessarily dressed as Britney Spears?” reigns; no border Fourth Amendment allows strip hinge on the seriousness of a drag star Derrick Barry asked a searches of “every detainee who prisoner’s crime. The four dis- reporter for the Las Vegas Review- crisis; mobile will be admitted to the general senting justices argued that Journal in April. Barry, a featured snacking crackdown; population” of a jail, no matter the Fourth Amendment’s ban player in the Divas Las Vegas how minor his offense. on “unreasonable searches” show at the Imperial Palace, was cellphone tracking requires an exception to the delayed by the Transportation general strip search rule when Security Administration (TSA) a prisoner is charged with “a when he attempted to board a minor offense that does not plane with a carry-on bag con- involve drugs or violence,” unless taining tools of his trade: silicone there is a “reasonable suspicion” breast enhancers, known as that he is carrying contraband.” chicken cutlets. The strip search decision Apparently Barry’s enhance- not only magnifies the potential ments were sizable; they humiliation associated with the exceeded the TSA’s 3.4-ounce- arrests for trivial offenses that per-container limit on liquids Images

the Court approved in 2001; and gels. According to the TSA’s AP The strip search case was it also enhances the already website, the list of permitted brought by Albert W. Florence, considerable power that police objects includes “items used a New Jersey man who was officers have to conduct searches to augment the body for medi- arrested during a traffic stop during routine traffic stops. In cal or cosmetic reasons such as because a database erroneously states that give police discre- mastectomy products, prosthetic showed that he had failed to pay tion to arrest people for minor breasts, bras or shells contain-

a criminal fine. Florence was offenses such as failing to buckle ing gels, saline solution, or other bnpdesignstudio Veer/ © Lawyer, © Bettman/Corbis/ Reagan, Ronald 25 years ago in reason

“The Fourth Amendment might as well “The great achievement of Ronald Reagan, in fact, was be torn up as far as financial privacy is in making ideology once again respectable in Ameri- concerned. The IRS, for example, audits can politics. He talked about liberty, about individual millions of tax returns every year with- rights, about how the Founders established certain out any probable cause or evidence principles that need to be followed to maintain a free of wrongdoing. The filing of the return and prosperous society. And Americans responded itself is a violation of your right to pri- with enthusiasm.” vacy in your personal papers. The IRS —Edward H. Crane, “Max Headroom For President” requires you to divulge all sorts of pri- vate details about your monetary affairs and, upon audit, demands disclosure of —August/September 1987 anything related to a tax issue—all with- out a court warrant.” —Mark Skousen, “Snooping Sam”

10 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 liquids.” Furthermore, “If you As the San Francisco Chronicle In April U.S. District Judge Quotes decide to bring your prosthe- reported, California’s U.S. attor- Jennifer G. Zipps nevertheless sis or mastectomy bra in your neys “said in October that they approved the Tucson search, accessible property rather than would aggressively prosecute writing that “agents could have “Politics is weird. And wearing it, it will be allowed many marijuana dispensaries as objectively believed that Defen- creepy. And now I know through the checkpoint after it is profit-making criminal enter- dant’s truck, based on its size, lacks even the loosest screened.” prises. Since then, three dispen- contained evidence of alien attachment to anything like The latter guidance is aimed saries in San Francisco, one in smuggling.” Since the federal reality.” r at breast cancer survivors, how- Marin County and 50 in the city government applies the border —Fox News anchor Shepard ever. It remains unclear whether of Sacramento have closed under search exception anywhere Smith on Mitt Romney’s being not a girl and not yet a pressure, along with about 150 within 100 miles of an inter- statement that he was woman is a qualifying condition. others throughout California.” national boundary, the logic of “look[ing] forward to work- After being held for more than Oaksterdam is still operating, this ruling potentially subjects ing with” Newt Gingrich an hour while TSA officials tried but in a weakened state. Dale two-thirds of the U.S. population after Gingrich dropped out to figure out what to do with Sky Jones, the school’s executive to roadblocks aimed at revealing of the presidential race, him, Barry narrowly managed to chancellor, told KTVU, a local TV violations of any law, as long as May 2 catch his flight to Tampa, falsies station, that the raids “knocked law enforcement officials invoke in tow. r the wind out of us,” since the immigration. r feds “seized all of our computers, “I reject her philosophy. curriculum, files and records, It’s an atheist philosophy. Medical marijuana which we desperately need in Himalayas: still icy It reduces human interac- tions down to mere con- order to operate the school.” r Pot School’s Out Glacier Scare tracts, and it is antithetical Brian Doherty Ronald Bailey to my worldview.” r In April dozens of federal 100-mile search exemption The demise of the Himalayan —Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), agents, including representa- Checkpoint Zone glaciers is happening more denying allegations that tives of the Internal Revenue glacially than expected—and in he is an fan, Service and the Drug Enforce- J.D. Tuccille some cases may not be happen- despite having gone on the Images

AP ment Administration, raided For travelers in the American ing at all. record many times praising Oaksterdam University, a trade Southwest, brief Border Patrol In 2007 the U.N. Intergovern- her work, school for the burgeoning medi- interrogations at highway check- mental Panel on Climate Change Online, April 26 cal marijuana industry. They also points are a familiar experience, (IPCC) projected that the mas- raided the home of its founder, courtesy of the “border search sive Himalayan ice sheets would Richard Lee, and a dispensary he exception” to the Fourth Amend- melt away by 2035, dramatically “Seniors love getting junk operated. ment. reducing the amount of water mail. It’s sometimes their only way of communicating Lawyer, © Veer/ bnpdesignstudio Veer/ © Lawyer, © Bettman/Corbis/ Reagan, Ronald The federal agencies did not Omar Ruiz-Perez was in rivers on which hundreds of specify what they were looking stopped along Interstate 19, millions of Indians and Chinese or feeling like they’re part for at the three Oakland, Cali- south of Tucson, on January 19, depend. Two years later, gov- of the real world. Elderly 25 years ago in reason fornia, locations, and they made 2011. Using guidelines specifi- ernment-sponsored research by Americans, more than no arrests. The businesses were cally developed to identify trucks Indian glaciologists found such anyone in America, rely on legal under California regula- smuggling illegal drugs, Border predictions to be wildly off the the United States Postal tions, and Lee’s dispensary had Patrol agents directed the defen- mark. India’s environment min- Service.” r a permit from the city. Lee—the dant to a secondary inspection ister at the time, Jairam Ramesh, —Senate Majority Leader moneyman behind Proposition area where X-rays of the vehicle said “there is no conclusive Harry Reid (D-Nev.), arguing 19, the failed 2010 initiative to revealed a hidden compartment scientific evidence to link global on the Senate floor for a fully legalize adult marijuana full of narcotics. They did not warming with what is happening postal reform bill, The Hill, possession in California— suspect him of carrying illegal in the Himalayan glaciers.” April 18 stepped down from running his immigrants. IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri businesses, fearing he might face As the Supreme Court put it dismissed the glacier-melt skep-

Medical marijuana, © Veer/ daveh900 Veer/ © marijuana, Medical federal drug charges. in the 1985 case United States v. ticism as “school boy science,” Montoya de Hernandez, “automo- but embarrassingly, it turned tive travelers may be stopped at out that the IPCC’s own glacier fixed checkpoints near the bor- guesstimate was based on a der without individualized suspi- popular science magazine’s 1999 cion” for the sake of immigration misquotation of a researcher. control. But in the 2000 decision Now new research is lend- Indianapolis v. Edmond, the Court ing further support to the cautioned that “we cannot sanc- “school boy science.” A study tion stops justified only by the published in the April 20 issue generalized and ever-present of Science bluntly concludes “the possibility that interrogation and statement that most [Himalayan] inspection may reveal that any glaciers will likely disappear by

given motorist has committed 2035 is wrong.” In fact, the study some crime.” reports that some glaciers in ≥

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 11

List down, citing “insufficient justifi- medical alert pendant while cation.” r sleeping in his White Plains, New York, apartment. Unable to Silent Spring’s Shoddy Science contact Chamberlain via its two- No Supreme Court review way audio box, LifeAid called The 1962 environmentalist classic Rent Control Reigns the White Plains Department Silent Spring by Rachel Carson helped of Public Safety. Police officers build the foundation of the green Damon Root arrived to help Chamberlain 17 movement. Roger Meiners, a professor In April the U.S. Supreme minutes later. Instead they ended of economics and law at the University Court declined to hear a consti- up killing him. of Texas at Arlington, is the editor of tutional challenge to New York When a bleary and annoyed a new book, Silent Spring at 50: The City’s rent stabilization law. Chamberlain, speaking through False Crises of Rachel Carson (Cato). Landlords James and Jeanne his door, told the officers he was reason asked him to list Carson’s three Harmon argued that the law vio- fine, they insisted on coming in most egregious scientific errors. lates the Takings Clause of the anyway. According to the official She exaggerated cancer rates. Roger Meiners Fifth Amendment: “nor shall pri- police report, officers “heard Carson asserted that one person vate property be taken for public loud noises inside and thought 1in four in the United States would die of cancer and that use without just compensation.” someone else might be in dan- cancer was becoming epidemic in children, despite public Although this clause is typically ger.” health data to the contrary. The cancer rate was increasing, associated with eminent domain According to Chamberlain’s but chiefly because far fewer Americans were dying of other cases, the Supreme Court has son and the family’s lawyers, diseases. This meant they lived long enough to die of cancer, held that “it is a taking when a police camera footage shows the incidence of which rises with age. Carson also ignored the state regulation forces a property that when the cops finally forced evidence linking tobacco smoking to cancer. owner to submit to a permanent their way in, about an hour after physical occupation.” they arrived, Chamberlain was She ignored the upsides of pesticides. Silent Spring’s New York’s rent regulations standing, unarmed, in his boxer 2 reporting on the effects of pesticides is entirely negative. seem to fit the bill. The Harmons’ shorts. Yet the cops immediately Carson ignored the public health benefits ofDDT and other rent-regulated tenants pay Tasered the man with a heart pest controls that saved millions of lives worldwide by con- government-set rates that are 59 condition they had come to help, trolling malaria, typhus, dysentery, dengue fever, and other percent below market, and they and later Officer Anthony Carelli diseases that had previously been common. get to occupy their apartments shot him in the chest—a moment She promoted the myth of the balance of nature. Rachel for life. They can even name their the cameras missed. An autopsy 3 Carson’s belief in the still-common concept of a “balance own relatives as lease successors showed that the bullet entered of nature” is a misunderstanding of how ecosystems really (who must live in the apartment through Chamberlain’s upper work. There is no “equilibrium” in nature. Her presentation of for two years to qualify). Further- right arm and lodged in his right the environment is teleological or mystical rather than scien- more, the Harmons’ Upper West lung, where it caused the inter- tific. Side brownstone has been desig- nal bleeding that killed him. nated a landmark, meaning they Police said Chamberlain > the region appear to be growing right-wing extremist group in may not tear it down, and the threatened them with a knife, rather than shrinking and that in Texas dubbed the Veterans Aryan land is zoned for residential uses, and White Plains Public Safety any case they will persist beyond Movement (VAM), according to so they are forbidden to start Commissioner David Chong 2100. Furthermore, since most of documents released in response over with a grocery store or some deemed the shooting a “war- the water in affected Asian rivers to a Freedom of Information Act other business. For all practical ranted use of deadly force.” In comes from monsoon rains, any request by Foreign Policy maga- purposes, the Harmons face “a April, after months of complaints glacial melting due to climate zine. VAM was a three-member permanent physical occupation.” from Chamberlain’s relatives change will have only a minor team led by an agent with a back- Because the Harmons previ- and their supporters, Westches- effect on those rivers. r ground in narcotics working ously lost at the U.S. Court of ter County District Attorney under the alias Dave Rossi. The Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, Janet DiFiore announced that operation, codenamed PATCON which upheld the law as a legiti- she would present the case to Not so patriotic (short for Patriot-conspiracy), mate exercise of state regulatory a grand jury. A month later, FBI Fakers lasted two years. During that power, New York’s rent stabiliza- DiFiore said the grand jury time, the FBI used VAM to track a tion scheme remains in place. r had found insufficient basis for Ed Krayewski wide range of radical and fringe criminal charges against any of Newly released documents groups associated with the so- the officers. r reveal that the Federal Bureau of called patriot movement. Helping a man to death Investigation infiltrated various The documents reveal an Deadly LifeAid right-wing and anti-government institutional reluctance to pur- No border crisis Jacob Sullum movements in the early 1990s, sue investigations based merely Fewer Migrants crossing paths with Oklahoma on suspects’ beliefs. In April 1993 Early on the morning of City bomber Timothy McVeigh an FBI review committee warned November 19, Kenneth Cham- Brian Doherty and participating in the infa- agents to focus on criminal con- berlain, a 68-year-old former As the Obama administra- mous 1992 raid at Ruby Ridge duct, rather than constitutionally Marine and retired correctional tion deports record numbers of in Idaho. protected speech. By July 1993, officer with a heart condition, immigrants (400,000 last year) In 1991 the FBI created a fake the Bureau shut the investigation accidentally set off his LifeAid and the Supreme Court consid-

12 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012

ers whether Arizona’s tough law Brickbats aimed at illegal immigrants is constitutional, the supposed cri- sis that such policies are meant to solve is going away on its own. against the law to release information about peo- Fewer illegal immigrants are ple with weapon permits. coming to America these days. Douglas Massey, who runs Juliet Pries wanted to open an ice cream store in Princeton University’s Mexican San Francisco’s Cole Valley neighborhood. She Migration Project, reports that eventually succeeded. in the wake of the recession, net But Pries said it illegal migration from Mexico took her two has reached zero. The number of years and tens illegal immigrants living in the of thousands United States dropped from 12 of dollars just million to 11 million or so toward to get all of the the end of the last decade, and no permits and com- new influx has followed. Parents of some students at California’s plete the paper- What’s more, Massey argues, work required the number of illegal immigrants Albert Einstein Middle School are upset that Sacramento County sheriff’s detec- by the various within our borders probably bureaucracies would be lower if we had a less tives pulled their children out of class, interviewed them, and took DNA samples she had to deal strict border control regime. with. The traditional pattern was for without parental permission as part of a Mexicans to come and work, murder investigation. then return to home and fam- Louie Castro received a less-than-honorable ily. But when getting back into The state of Nevada and the city of Hen- discharge from the U.S. Army back in 2002. What the United States became much derson have agreed to pay a total of he didn’t realize was that the thick file of papers more difficult, workers tended to $292,500 to Adam Greene and his wife to he got from the Army when he left didn’t contain stay put. Massey estimates that if settle a lawsuit the couple brought after a DD-214, an official release from active duty. He we weren’t spending nearly $12 police officers and state troopers beat found that out almost a decade later when return- billion a year on border enforce- him during a traffic stop. Officers pulled ing from a trip to Europe. When he went through ment, those natural patterns of Greene over when they saw him weav- Miami International Airport in January, comput- return would mean 2 million ing. They thought he was drunk, but he ers flagged him asAWOL . He spent 12 days in jail fewer illegal immigrants living was actually suffering a diabetic shock. before the Army agreed to release him. But officials north of the border. r Dashboard cameras taped the officers as still wanted him to fly to Fort Carson in Colorado they repeatedly kicked the unresponsive to officially process him out of the Army. After Greene while shouting at him to stop local media outlets picked up the story, the Army Cyberbullying suspensions resisting. decided it didn’t need Castro in Colorado to com- Troll Patrol plete the paperwork. J.D. Tuccille In an effort to lobby against laws allow- Has cyberbullying become ing citizens to openly carry firearms, an Victoria Baca called the disorderly conduct of the Orange County, Florida, sheriff’s captain the New Mexico online world—an all-purpose sent out photos of eight he State Police to legal bludgeon with which to claimed were outlaw bikers who had report that she thump innocent people when concealed carry permits. That violated a had been victim- the authorities don’t like what state law against identifying those with ized by an Internet they’re doing? That might be the concealed carry permits as well as a law scam. Officials told takeaway from an incident in barring the release of driver’s license her they couldn’t San Francisco, where three high photos. The sheriff’s immediately send school seniors were suspended department an officer, so she for saying mean things about cleared the asked them to call their teachers in online postings. captain of before coming. They were reinstated only after any wrong- Instead an officer civil liberties groups intervened. doing, say- came by without calling In March, after students at ing he hadn’t while Baca and her family were gone. The officer George Washington High School realized the jumped a fence with a “Beware of Dog” sign and used their home computers to photos shot and killed one of the family’s dogs. State post parodies and nasty com- were police officials say the officer was acting in self- ments about teachers and school driver’s defense and no action will be taken against him administrators on Tumblr, the license principal interrogated them photos Charles Oliver and decided to suspend them ≥ Colon Terry by Illustrations or that it was

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 13 Follow-Up the locations where food trucks were no longer welcome to offer their cupcakes, Vietnamese Gray Markets Forever! noodles, or traditional tacos and Katherine Mangu-Ward hot dogs. Vendors are banned from In November 1993, Contributing Editor selling within a 200-foot radius Glenn Garvin introduced reason readers of any stationary restaurant to Marta, an immigrant from Ocotlán, in the downtown area. Other Mexico. Marta came to the United types of established food ven- States legally in 1971 as the wife of an dors enjoy a similar bubble of American citizen. But she quickly joined protection, as do the convention the “informal” economy of Los Angeles, center and the city’s two sports the gray and black markets that help venues. Food truck owners were meet demand for cheap, off-the-books also reminded to stay away from services of all kinds. hydrants and bus stops. The In “America’s Economic Refugees,” result: precious few areas where Garvin explained that Marta started food trucks can legally operate. work in a garment factory but, like so “We have done our best many immigrants before her, soon real- to work with all food vendors ized she would rather be in business for downtown,” Kara Bowlin, a herself. She sold her jewelry and used spokeswoman for the mayor’s the $50 she netted to buy her first batch office, told theSt. Louis Post- of ingredients for tamales, a cornhusk- Dispatch. “It is our hope that wrapped savory treat from home. Soon this map will make it easier for she was so busy she had to bring a food trucks to find an allowed niece from Mexico to help her keep up parking spot and will alleviate with the demand. the issues between trucks and restaurants during the busy sum- Life in the gray market isn’t all pork mer months.” sausage and roses, though. “You have Adding insult to injury, the to watch out for the police,” Marta message instructed food truck told Garvin. “They don’t always make Washington, D.C., libertarian law firm, operators to keep a copy of the trouble for us. But sometimes they do. One day I found that of the nation’s 50 major cities, new map in their vehicles, put- bought a $125 urn so that I could branch out a little 20 ban legitimate mobile vendors from ting the onus on honest entre- bit, offer my customers a chocolate drink. I bought setting up near their brick-and-mortar preneurs “to show to any police it on Friday. On Saturday the police took it. I was competitors, while 19 allow vendors to officers or license-collector rep- sad, but what can you do?” stay in one spot for only a short amount of resentatives that you are in an Not much has changed. Today the Los Angeles time, leaving much of the vending arena to allowed spot.” r Department of Public Health routinely confiscates the unlicensed. The Los Angeles proposal the inventory and propane-powered mini-carts under consideration when Garvin wrote of unlicensed folks selling bacon-wrapped hot his article was virtually identical to the dogs or other taste treats deemed dangerous by restrictions in place today: To go legit, a the government. Cart owners who fail to dodge vendor must procure nearly $1,000 worth the authorities must pay a fine of up to $1,000 or of permits, plus a cart that costs between serve up to six months in jail. $1,000 and $2,000—figures that are out of A 2011 report from the Institute for Justice, the reach for entrepreneurs like Marta.

> for three days, accusing them of First and Fourteenth Amend- ary records have been expunged, bullying and disrupting school ments.” they still lost three days of activities. The students also were With the law clear, school school. And California’s law barred from their prom and from officials quickly backed down empowering school officials to graduation ceremonies. after they were contacted by the penalize cyberbullying remains The disciplinary measures American Civil Liberties Union on the books. r ran afoul of the U.S. Supreme of Northern California and the Cellphone tracking Court’s ruling in Tinker v. Des Asian Law Caucus. “We abso- Pocket Rat Moines. In that 1969 case, the lutely recognize and value our Mobile snacking crackdown Jacob Sullum Court held that “a prohibition students’ right to free speech,” Truck-Free Zones against expression of opinion, Gentle Blythe, spokeswoman for In January the Supreme without any evidence that the the San Francisco Unified School Katherine Mangu-Ward Court said tracking a car by rule is necessary to avoid sub- District, assured the investigative On April 19, food truck own- attaching a GPS device to it is stantial interference with school journalism website California ers in St. Louis woke up to an a “search” under the Fourth discipline or the rights of others, Watch. unwelcome email message from Amendment. But because the

is not permissible under the While the students’ disciplin- city officials, featuring a map of decision hinged on the physical McHenry Veer/ © truck, Food

14 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 intrusion required by that tech- Soundbite nique, it left unclear what limits the Constitution imposes on sur- Lynching Charlie Lynch veillance that does not involve touching the target’s property, Interview by Alex Manning such as cellphone tracking. In the absence of clear guidance, a he tried to do this the right way, he ran into recent report from the American trouble. The federal government wanted to Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) make an example of him, to show that there suggests, law enforcement agen- is no right way to do medical marijuana in the cies are making up the rules as United States. they go along. Q: What does this say about the drug war? It’s one The ACLU asked 383 agencies man’s story, but does it apply to the rest of the about their policies for obtaining country? location information from cell- phone providers and received A: I became interested in the film becausereason. about 200 responses. “Law tv hired me to do a short piece about Charlie enforcement agencies’ tracking Lynch. I went up, and the producer said we’re policies are in a state of chaos,” going to be meeting someone who runs a the organization reported. Some medical marijuana dispensary. So in my mind police departments do warrant- I thought, OK, he’s a bit of a stoner, probably; less tracking only in life-threat- he’s kind of a hippie, maybe sort of a free ening emergencies, but many do spirit. And Charlie Lynch was a completely it routinely, while others let cell- different kind of man: the kind of person you phone carriers decide how much would trust babysitting your kids, who looks legal authorization is necessary. just like an ordinary businessman. And [he] As examples of permissive essentially acts very much like a regular phar- Rick Ray macist, simply wanting to dispense medicine policies, the ACLU cited Lincoln, Nebraska, where police “obtain to patients and do it the right way, and do it legally. And so the disconnect was huge. I went even GPS location data (which is more precise than cell tower into the interview and thought, “Wait a minute, this is Charlie Lynch? He’s never had a traffic location information) without Charlie Lynch, operator of a medical mari- demonstrating probable cause,” ticket, he’s never violated any law, and here he juana dispensary in Morro Bay, California, is about to go to federal prison?” and Wilson County, North Caro- was arrested in 2007 for violating federal lina, where police “obtain his- drug laws. The following year, reason com- Charlie Lynch’s plight is a small example of torical cell tracking data where it missioned filmmaker Rick Ray, best known the great chasm between the federal govern- is ‘relevant’ to an ongoing inves- for his 2006 film10 Questions for the Dalai ment and state law that exists today, especially tigation—a standard lower than Lama, to put together a short film on the as regards medical marijuana. The federal probable cause.” By contrast, case. He was so inspired by Lynch’s story government considers this to be a Schedule I police in Hawaii County, Wichita, that he wound up spending four years on a substance, the equivalent of heroin and PCP and Lexington, Kentucky, have full-length documentary. Lynching Charlie and other serious drugs. There’s almost zero a general policy of obtaining a Lynch, released on April 20, chronicles tolerance of it being sold or distributed in any warrant based on probable cause this politicized prosecution. Although sort of storefront or dispensary environment. before tracking a cellphone. Lynch strove to comply with state law [But] California has laws that have legitimized Attitudes about the privacy and was careful to get the approval of marijuana as a medicine. And so for an ordi- of cellphone location data local officials, he is now in the process of nary businessman like Charlie Lynch, to step vary along with the policies, as appealing a one-year sentence in federal into this divide put him at great risk. Anyone reflected in documents quoted prison. reason.tv producer Alex Manning who is trying to do this right can easily fall into by The New York Times. While interviewed Ray in April. Check out the rest the chasm between state and federal law. training notes from the Califor- of the interview at reason.tv. Q: What is the current state of medical marijuana? nia District Attorneys Associa- tion enthused that “subtler and Q: Did Charlie Lynch deserve to go to jail? A: A lot of us had hope that the Obama adminis- more far-reaching means of A: Charlie Lynch is a man who was tration would come in and the persecution and invading privacy have become determined to open a dispensary the prosecution of dispensaries in California would available to the government” right way. California allowed medical be relaxed. In fact, Eric Holder, the attorney thanks to modern technology, a marijuana dispensaries. He wanted to general, said that as long as dispensaries were Nevada training manual empha- open one in San Luis Obispo, where in compliance with state law they would not be sized that warrantless cellphone there wasn’t one [for] 100 miles in any harassed by the federal government. But the reality has been that dispensaries continue to tracking “IS ONLY AUTHORIZED direction. And he got permission to FOR LIFE-THREATENING EMER- open his dispensary. The city attorney be raided. So the current state of medical mari- GENCIES” and warned that “con- wrote an opinion authorizing it. The juana is that it is still in that dangerous limbo tinued misuse by law enforce- mayor blessed it; they had a Chamber between state and federal prosecution or per- ment agencies will undoubtedly of Commerce opening ceremony and mission.

Food truck, © Veer/ McHenry Veer/ © truck, Food backfire.” r ribbon cutting. On some level, because

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 15 Columns: Greg Beato Eating Bugs The search for new food frontiers in an era of population growth

By 2050, the U.N. predicts, our planet will be Crispy Mix appetizer pairs wax moth larvae inhabited by 2 billion more humans. If income with thin, inch-long slivers of potato cooked in and body mass continue their current upward duck fat and sprinkled with agave worm salt. trends, those billions will be richer and fatter Side by side in a tiny square serving dish, the than we are. That means they’ll want meat, not golden-brown insects and stem tubers look like grain. They’ll also want seconds. But will 2050’s brothers from another mother. concentrated agricultural feeding operations— As it turns out, wax moth larvae don’t much less its free-range heritage pig farms—be taste all that different from potatoes either. able to produce enough livestock to meet the They’re a little salty, a little smoky. Mostly, demand? though, the insect fetuses are light and airy, not A growing number of optimistic soothsay- exactly stick-to-your-ribs food. It seems such ers say yes. But only if we expand our definition fare will deliver future food security only if at of livestock to include such underutilized food least 80 percent of 2050’s extra humans are sources as mealworms, grasshoppers, and Sago super models. grubs. In January 2012, 37 international experts Restaurants around the world are show- met at the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organi- casing insects in similarly artful ways. At Vij’s, zation (FAO) in Rome to discuss “the potential an Indian eatery in Vancouver, the flatbread benefits of using insects for food and feed as is made out of roasted crickets. At Typhoon, a part of a broader strategy to achieve global food pan-Asian restaurant in Santa Monica, you can security.” get silkworm larvae stir-fried in soy, sugar, and Insects, their advocates enthuse, are high in white pepper. London’s Archipelago serves protein and other nutrients: A 100-gram por- pan-fried locusts and crickets as a starter and tion of grasshopper meat contains 20.6 grams chocolate-covered scorpions or baby bee brûlée of protein, just 7 grams less than an equivalent for dessert. portion of beef. In addition, insect farming requires less water, less feed, and less land per Such dishes suggest the fundamental irony that calorie than traditional livestock farming, and informs contemporary entomophagy. While it produces much lower greenhouse gas emis- insect evangelists champion bugs as a poten- sions. All in all, 2050’s squirrels and housecats tial solution to looming food shortages for the appear to be in luck: When worldwide beef masses, we eat them today largely because food supplies get tight, we’ll have other options. for the comparatively well-off is so boringly abundant. For millions of people, food is no To get a taste of the future, I recently visited a longer just a form of sustenance, comfort, or tequila bar called Mosto in San Francisco’s Mis- sensual pleasure; it’s a medium for exploration, sion District, where a local chef named Monica discovery, and self-expression. Like a roiling Martinez had been operating her Don Bugito army of ants clear-cutting their way through snack bar on Monday nights throughout the the Amazon jungle, today’s foodies devour spring. Martinez favors gradualism over shock everything in their path on the hunt for new value in her efforts to introduce people to the flavor combinations to taste and new textures virtues of entomophagy, or insect eating. Her to tweet. Having exhausted the possibilities of

16 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 ADVERTISEMENT There is one aspect of life that unites, controls, and affects all people. That one aspect is life’s natural laws. They unite, Do people intentionally refuse to meet the require- control and affect people no matter what their race, ments of laws of physics: gravity for instance? No, they gender, creed, or where on this planet they live. try their best to keep their balance or safely recover it If you are a new reader of this subject matter, be pre- whenever necessary. pared for a pleasant shock. Scriptures record the fi rst wrong action of the cre- Whoever or whatever is the creator revealed nature’s ated beings was their disobedience. It ended the perfect law of right action to the mind of Richard W. Wetherill situation that had existed and resulted in the predicted decades ago. The law calls for people to be rational penalties. More shockingly the admonition to obey end- and honest not only regarding laws of physics but also ed with the creator’s words, “or you will surely die.” in their thinking and behavior toward one another. Whether that account is actual or symbolic, it describes Wetherill also cautioned that the law, itself, is the fi nal ancient people’s misbehavior still continuing today. arbiter of right action. It states: Right action gets right Obeying nature’s law of right action unites people, results whether it relates to laws of physics or to the law giving them the benefi ts that then control and favor- of behavior. ably affect their lives, nullifying that fi nal admoni- Ordinarily people unknowingly have been conducting tion, “or you will surely die.” their relationships to satisfy their purposes; not the pur- poses of the creator of natural laws. Such behavior ex- For more information visit www.alphapub.com or for a plains why the earth’s population has never been peace- free mailing write to The Alpha Publishing House, PO fully united and controlled nor favorably affected. Box 255, Royersford, PA 19468

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seaweed ice cream and frog-ovary humans and other creatures but fatal expressed much interest in bugs. But 1,500 AVAILABLE soup, they turn their restless palates to Acheta domesticus, the common given their reputations for relent- ONLY to boiled cockroaches. brown house cricket, has wreaked less cost cutting, it’s only a matter of But what will it to take for such havoc on the commercial cricket time before they discover the profit- fare to cross the chasm from novelty industry in the U.S.) boosting efficacies of grub nuggets to staple? Couple the artisanal cachet There will also be a great demand and mealworm burgers. provided by talented chefs like Mon- for processing—increasing shelf life, Even with such powerful com- ica Martinez with insect husbandry’s ensuring product safety and consis- panies on board, it will be difficult tiny environmental footprint, and it’s tency, and, most of all, making meal- to grow a business from zero to, say, easy to depict the whole cuisine as worms and crickets look and feel one-third the size of the current live- a utopian endeavor, a radically out- and taste a little less like mealworms stock industry by 2050. To establish of-the-box solution to the corporate and crickets. While many people may insect farming as a significant enter- industrial food system and all the never eat insects even after they’ve prise so quickly, its practitioners will plagues it has unleashed upon the been beheaded, declawed, and dew- have to innovate in radical ways. Is world. inged, they might eat insect flour or it possible, for example, to grow a Yet who is best positioned to sports bars fortified with insect pro- grasshopper the size of a humming- make the green, sustainable, cruelty- tein. free promise of large-scale insect Especially if these products taste A shot of tequila farming a reality? To augment 2050’s good, come in attractive packages, does wonders for the food supply in a significant way, to and are aggressively advertised. A palatability of a roasted have a real impact on greenhouse gas shot of tequila does wonders for the grasshopper, but emissions, an industry that essen- palatability of a roasted grasshopper, tially doesn’t exist today will need but entomophagy isn’t going to hit entomophagy isn’t going to figure out how to produce hun- the big time on tequila bars alone. It to hit the big time on It’s a first. It’s silver. dreds of billions of pounds of insect will take experimentation in state- tequila bars alone. meat per year in just three and a half of-the-art R&D kitchens, consumer decades. testing, alluring packaging design, bird using growth hormones? Will It’s patriotic. And it’s a steal. massive advertising campaigns, and we need new laws that require TV Washington crossing the Delaware. love proof coins from the U.S. Mint. disappear quickly at this special price. Eisenhower launching D-Day. Kennedy Each is struck twice from specially We urge you to call now to get yours. Today’s insect farms primarily serve probably some help from Shrek and networks to air commercials promot- rescuing the crew of PT 109. prepared dies and has deeply-mirrored You must be satisfied with your set or the pet food and bait markets. In SpongeBob SquarePants. Indeed, ing the benefits of entomophagy dur- surfaces and superb frosty images. return it within 30 days of receipt for a These men made history. prompt refund (less s&h). the U.S., they produce enough food given that adults are more likely ing shows aimed at children? And you know you’ve got a real piece to keep approximately 13.6 million than children to harbor longstand- For those who have been envi- This set made history of American history when you hold this Buy more and SAVE pet frogs, toads, and lizards satis- ing, hard-to-change biases, it makes sioning the future of insect farming To celebrate the bicentennial of America, set—the red white and blue holder 1776-1976 Bicentennial Silver Proof Set the U.S. Mint struck this special three- is spectacular! $49 + s/h fied, but humans tend to have bigger more sense to target kids, positioning as a local, small-scale, farm-to-fork piece proof set honoring these three 5 for only $39 each + s/h appetites, and there are a lot more insect gobbling as a fun, rewarding endeavor, a way to exterminate the American presidents—and our 200th Now for the steal part... birthday. To capture the bicentennial This first-ever Bicentennial Silver Proof SAVE $50 of us. In the future, we will not only activity. corporate food system once and for spirit, the coins in the set are dual–dated Set sold out at the mint three decades Toll-Free 24 hours a day need far more insect farms; we will all, the idea of using free collectible 1776–1976. ago. When you consider how much Will Big Food accept the challenge? prices have risen since then, you might 1-800-558-6468 need bigger, more productive farms figurines to help sell genetically mod- This set was so popular over 4 million expect to pay $100 or more to buy this Offer Code BPF199-02 as well. Corporate behemoths like Archer ified grub nuggets may be as hard to were sold. set today. Please mention this code when you call. Regulation of the industry is Daniels Midland, Tyson, and Cargill swallow as a cockroach sandwich. Yet Unlike the regular circulating coins of But for this special offer, we are releasing likely to get more stringent when have more experience killing insects unless 2050 has many more tequila the day, the coins in this set are struck our entire stock of Bicentennial Silver in precious silver. people replace tarantulas as the tar- than cultivating them, but they also bars than we have now, it seems Proof Sets for only $49 each. Or better 14101 Southcross Drive W. yet, buy five and pay only $39 each! get consumer. As insects inch their have the expertise it will take to cre- unlikely that entomophagy will catch It’s the first commemorative U.S. Mint Dept. BPF199-02 Proof Set ever. It’s also the first proof Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 way toward the food pyramid, dis- ate a robust insect farming sector in without Big Food at the table. r set to feature all dual-dated coins. Order now risk free www.GovMint.com ease management capabilities will just a few decades. As do companies And finally, it’s the first U.S. Proof Set We expect our small quantity of to include a Silver Dollar. Americans Bicentennial Silver Proof Sets to need to improve. (In the last few such as Kraft Foods, General Mills, Contributing Editor Greg Beato (gbeato@ soundbitten.com) writes from San Francisco. ® years, for example, cricket paralysis Walmart, and McDonald’s. Prices and availability subject to change without notice. Past performance is not a predictor of future performance. Note: GovMint.com is a private distributor of worldwide government coin issues and is not affiliated with the United States government. densovirus, which is harmless to So far these food giants haven’t Facts and figures were deemed accurate as of March 2012. ©GovMint.com, 2012

18 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 BPF199-02_7x9.5_ad 5/29/12 11:03 AM Page 1

1,500 AVAILABLE ONLY

It’s a first. It’s silver. It’s patriotic. And it’s a steal. Washington crossing the Delaware. love proof coins from the U.S. Mint. disappear quickly at this special price. Eisenhower launching D-Day. Kennedy Each is struck twice from specially We urge you to call now to get yours. rescuing the crew of PT 109. prepared dies and has deeply-mirrored You must be satisfied with your set or surfaces and superb frosty images. return it within 30 days of receipt for a These men made history. prompt refund (less s&h). And you know you’ve got a real piece This set made history of American history when you hold this Buy more and SAVE To celebrate the bicentennial of America, set—the red white and blue holder 1776-1976 Bicentennial Silver Proof Set the U.S. Mint struck this special three- is spectacular! $49 + s/h piece proof set honoring these three American presidents—and our 200th Now for the steal part... 5 for only $39 each + s/h birthday. To capture the bicentennial This first-ever Bicentennial Silver Proof SAVE $50 spirit, the coins in the set are dual–dated Set sold out at the mint three decades Toll-Free 24 hours a day 1776–1976. ago. When you consider how much prices have risen since then, you might 1-800-558-6468 This set was so popular over 4 million expect to pay $100 or more to buy this Offer Code BPF199-02 were sold. set today. Please mention this code when you call.

Unlike the regular circulating coins of But for this special offer, we are releasing the day, the coins in this set are struck our entire stock of Bicentennial Silver in precious silver. Proof Sets for only $49 each. Or better 14101 Southcross Drive W. It’s the first commemorative U.S. Mint yet, buy five and pay only $39 each! Dept. BPF199-02 Proof Set ever. It’s also the first proof Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 set to feature all dual-dated coins. Order now risk free www.GovMint.com And finally, it’s the first U.S. Proof Set We expect our small quantity of to include a Silver Dollar. Americans Bicentennial Silver Proof Sets to

® Prices and availability subject to change without notice. Past performance is not a predictor of future performance. Note: GovMint.com is a private distributor of worldwide government coin issues and is not affiliated with the United States government. Facts and figures were deemed accurate as of March 2012. ©GovMint.com, 2012 Columns: Veronique de Rugy Student Loan Scam Why are today’s poor subsidizing tomorrow’s rich?

The interest rate for the main federal stu- While aggregate student debt has reached dent loan program was set to double on July 1, $829 billion, which is higher than the country’s from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. Even in this collective credit card debt, the burden faced contentious election year, there was one thing by individual students coming out of college is everyone in Washington could agree on: The relatively small. According to the Department rate hike should be avoided at all costs. The of Education, the typical college graduate who only disagreement was where to extract the $6 borrows money for attendance ends up owing billion annually that would be needed to make about $22,000. The standard repayment period up the difference. is 10 years, but terms can be renegotiated if But extending the lower rate, which was needed, especially by people who choose to go instituted by the College Cost Reduction and into public service or teaching. According to the Access Act of 2007, is foolhardy. By keeping stu- repayment calculator at Mapping Your Future, dent loan rates artificially low, the federal gov- an online resource sponsored by student loan ernment is contributing to the rapid increase guaranty agencies, it would cost $253 a month in college tuition and forcing today’s workers over 10 years to repay $22,000 in principal at a to subsidize the educational choices of tomor- rate of 6.8 percent. row’s big earners. Everyone wants to borrow money at the According to the latest data available from lowest rate possible. But it is important to keep the U.S. Department of Education’s National in mind that today’s student loan recipients are Center for Education Statistics, 39 percent of tomorrow’s big earners. Using the most recent all undergraduates at four-year colleges had data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), student loans in 2007–08. For full-time under- the editors of the economics policy website e21 graduates the number was 53 percent. The over- compared the earnings of the most successful whelming majority—93 percent—of these loans college graduates with those of the most suc- are subsidized by the federal government. And cessful high school graduates. A worker in the even the 6.8 percent rate that Democrats and top 10 percent of bachelor’s degree holders Republicans were determined to avoid would earns an average of $2,310 a week. That’s 1.8 still represent a significant subsidy; the rate on times as much as the $1,316 earned by the aver- similar loans that students obtain in the private age worker in the top 10 percent of high school market is about 12 percent. degree holders.

There are many other ways to help pay for a The gap between typical workers in those college education: You can work through col- education categories is even more significant. lege, choose to attend a cheaper state school, or BLS data show that the weekly earnings of the take time off to earn money before or during median worker with a bachelor’s degree is school. So the decision to take on student debt $1,051, compared to $450 for the median high is a personal choice, and the reward from get- school graduate. ting a college degree is also personal. People That means federal student loans force making this choice have a responsibility to lower-income taxpayers to subsidize the educa- understand the costs and risks. tion of future U.S. elites. Why should a grocery

20 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 Average Weekly Earnings of the Top 10 Percent by Educational Attainment Cumulative Federal Student Loan Debt (average per person when entering repayment) $3,000 $25,000 2,500 20,000 2,000 15,000 1,500

1,000 10,000

500 5,000

0 0 No High High School Some College Bachelor’s Advanced 1990 2000 2010 School Degree Only (inc. A.D.) Degree Degree Source: U.S. Department of Education, FY 2013 Source: economics21.org budget store clerk pay taxes to help the rate for second mortgages reached its education bubble, like the housing store’s owner send his kids to a selec- high-water mark two months earlier bubble before it, will eventually pop. tive out-of-state school? at 4.7 percent. Meanwhile, large numbers of stu- This burden is not trivial. As e21 There is another reason to look dents will graduate with more debt noted, “since 2008 the Federal Gov- twice at the massive subsidies for than they would have in an unsub- ernment has effectively socialized the education loans. As it did in the hous- sidized market. More important, student loan market by enacting laws ing market, free or reduced-priced taxpayers face two equally bad out- to eliminate private lender participa- money has artificially inflated the comes: They are subsidizing millions tion in administering Federal loans.” price of a college education. of dollars in interest for student loans As a result, e21 notes, the amount of Federal student aid, whether in that they shouldn’t have to shoulder, outstanding student loans owned by the form of grants or loans, is the and they likely will pick up the tab the federal government has grown main factor behind the runaway for underpaid student loans. from $111 billion at the end of 2008 cost of higher education. As Cato Given that President Barack to $425 billion in 2011, a compound Institute economist Neal McCluskey Obama and his presumptive oppo- annualized growth rate of 56 percent. explained in an April 2012 article nent, Mitt Romney, agree that the for U.S. World & News Report: “The student loan rate should not rise, Unfortunately, taxpayers probably basic problem is simple: Give every- it is unlikely that Congress will let will have to pay a significant share one $100 to pay for higher education the rate float back up. But the whole of those outstanding loans. In a Sep- and colleges will raise their prices by enterprise of federally subsidized tember 12, 2011, press release, Sec- $100, negating the value of the aid. college loans is dysfunctional and retary of Education Arne Duncan And inflation-adjusted aid—most should be ended. American taxpayers announced that the share of federal of it federal—has certainly gone up, —especially today’s working poor— student loan borrowers who default ballooning from $4,602 per under- should not have to subsidize tomor- within the first two years of repay- graduate in 1990–91 to $12,455 in row’s big earners while pricing them- ment is 8.8 percent. The overall 2010-11.” selves out of a better education. r default rate for those receiving a fed- eral student loan is 23 percent. That’s Thus begins a classic upward price Contributing Editor Veronique de Rugy ([email protected]) is a senior research fel- huge. To put this number in perspec- spiral caused by government inter- low at the Mercatus Center at George Mason tive, at the peak of the housing crisis vention: Subsidies raise prices, lead- University. in May 2009, first-mortgage default ing to higher subsidies, which raise rates reached 5.7 percent; the default prices even more. Yet this higher

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 21 Nadine Strossen, Nick Gillespie, Matt Welch, Jacob Sullum Eli Noam, director, professor of law, editor in chief, editor in chief, senior editor, Columbia Institute 2012 Alaska New York Law Reason.com and Reason magazine Reason magazine for Tele-Information School, former Reason.tv Only president, ACLU Seminar Cruise a few spaces August 11-18, 2012 left!

Thaddeus Russell, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, co-directors, Peter Suderman, Veronique de Rugy, historian and Center for Evolutionary Psychology, UCSB senior editor, senior research author, A Renegade Reason magazine fellow, Mercatus History of the Center United States

Explore magnificent vistas and the rugged ou’ve never been on a cruise like this! Join Reason’s A-team of wilderness of the wild Alaskan coastline Y journalists, policy wonks, and special guests for an amazing Private receptions, activities, dining and parties week of thought-provoking seminars and stimulating discussions Discover: • how evolutionary psychology explains aboard Holland America Line’s luxurious Westerdam. With our understanding of free markets exclusive cocktail parties, special dinners, and fun excursions • why “delinquents” did more for our with fellow freedom lovers, it will be a week you’ll never forget! personal freedom than you realize

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Reason Alaska ad double spread v6.indd 1-2 5/1/12 3:03 PM Nadine Strossen, Nick Gillespie, Matt Welch, Jacob Sullum Eli Noam, director, professor of law, editor in chief, editor in chief, senior editor, Columbia Institute 2012 Alaska New York Law Reason.com and Reason magazine Reason magazine for Tele-Information School, former Reason.tv Only president, ACLU Seminar Cruise a few spaces August 11-18, 2012 left!

Thaddeus Russell, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, co-directors, Peter Suderman, Veronique de Rugy, historian and Center for Evolutionary Psychology, UCSB senior editor, senior research author, A Renegade Reason magazine fellow, Mercatus History of the Center United States

Explore magnificent vistas and the rugged ou’ve never been on a cruise like this! Join Reason’s A-team of wilderness of the wild Alaskan coastline Y journalists, policy wonks, and special guests for an amazing Private receptions, activities, dining and parties week of thought-provoking seminars and stimulating discussions Discover: • how evolutionary psychology explains aboard Holland America Line’s luxurious Westerdam. With our understanding of free markets exclusive cocktail parties, special dinners, and fun excursions • why “delinquents” did more for our with fellow freedom lovers, it will be a week you’ll never forget! personal freedom than you realize

Register today! • why health care price controls always fail

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Reason Alaska ad double spread v6.indd 1-2 5/1/12 3:03 PM Generational Warfare Old-age entitlements vs. the safety net

Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy

In 1964 a young Bob Dylan released “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” an anthem that defined what would shortly become known as “the generation gap.” With a mix of sympa- thy and sneer—“Come mothers and fathers / Throughout the land / And don’t criticize / What you can’t understand / Your sons and your daughters / Are beyond your command / Your old road is / Rapidly agin’ ”—Dylan described an unbridgeable gulf in values, styles, and aspi- rations between the rising baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, and their elders, who had managed to survive the depredations of the Great Depression, World War II, and the swivel- ing hips of Elvis Presley. Flash forward half a century, and the boom- ers who once sang along with Dylan have become the reactionary elders, clinging to their power and perks at the literal expense of every- one younger. There’s a new generation gap opening up, one that threatens to tear apart the country every bit as much as past confrontations over war, free love, drugs, and sitar music. This fight is about old-age entitlements and whether the Me Generation will do what’s right for the country and stop sucking up more and more

money from their children and grandchildren. Colon Terry

24 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 25 In 1984, reports the Pew Research Center, households headed by people 65 or older had 10 times the wealth of households headed by people under 35. By 2005 the gap had increased to 22 times, and by 2009 it was 47 times.

Social Security and Medicare, which provide retirement “Without Social Security,” Vice President and health insurance benefits for senior Americans, gener- Joe Biden asserted to a Florida crowd in March, ally without regard to need, are funded by taxes on the rela- “nearly half of American seniors…would be tively meager wages of younger Americans who will never struggling in poverty.” Biden was merely chan- enjoy anything close to the same benefits. From any serious neling Lyndon Johnson’s remarks at the original fiscal or moral viewpoint, and particularly for the sake of press event announcing the passage of Medicare. helping those truly in need, Social Security and Medicare “No longer will older Americans be denied the should be ended. healing miracle of modern medicine,” LBJ said as The demographic math is irrefutable: Entitlements are he handed former President Harry Truman the killing the safety net. They should be replaced with social very first Medicare card (Truman had “planted welfare programs that cover all citizens, regardless of age, the seeds of compassion” during his unsuccess- but only those who are too poor or incapacitated to take ful attempt while president to create national- care of themselves. Focusing on those truly in need instead ized health care). of automatically shoveling out larger and larger amounts Johnson was equally quick to pitch the ben- to well-off senior citizens is the best way to avert looming efits of entitlements to the younger generation, fiscal catastrophe and restore some morality to an indefen- whose anger over Vietnam would stop him from sible system. running for re-election in 1968: “No longer will young families see their own incomes, and their Gourmet Cat Food own hopes, eaten away simply because they are The entitlement state, whatever its intentions and past suc- carrying out their deep moral obligations to their cesses, is like a starter home that has been expanded and parents, and to their uncles, and their aunts.” Get- renovated so many times that it has no architectural coher- ting kids off the hook remains an alleged selling ence or structural integrity. The country has grown much point to this day. “Retirement is multigenera- wealthier and much grayer since the starter home was built. tional,” Biden said in his speech. “It matters to Whether the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act your children if you have a decent retirement. (a.k.a. ObamaCare) supersedes Medicare or simply adds to Every one of you—it matters to your children. its costs, publicly funded spending on retirement and elder Because if you don’t, your children feel obliged care will skyrocket as baby boomers start retiring en masse. to step up.” But why should we spend increasing amounts of money In a 1999 address to the National Educa- —as a proportion of GDP, in absolute dollars, or as a percent- tion Association’s Women’s Equality Summit, age of government spending—on a group of people simply then-First Lady Hillary Clinton was even more because of their age? To hear elected officials and repre- explicit in celebrating her own generation’s sentatives of the American Association of Retired Persons freedom from the burdens of traditional care- (AARP) tell it, Social Security and Medicare are the only taking responsibilities. “Were it not for Social reasons older Americans don’t have to eat cat food or choose Security, many of us would be supporting our between prescription drugs and heating their homes. parents,” intoned the author of It Takes a Village.

26 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 “We would take them in; we would do what we 2007 had increased almost 80 percent during the previous needed to do to try to provide the resources they 20 years. The same sort of improvement has not spread to required to stay above poverty, to live as comfort- all age groups. In fact, the data show that younger Ameri- ably as we could afford. And that would cause a cans are losing ground. lot of difficult decisions in our lives, wouldn’t it?” In 1984, reports the Pew Research Center, households This rhetoric about entitlements freeing the headed by people 65 or older had 10 times the wealth of young ignores the fact that they are hit with households headed by people under 35. By 2005—before the cost of supporting their elders in every pay- the Great Recession hit—the gap had increased to 22 times, check. Furthermore, when repurposing lines and by 2009 it was 47 times. In 2010, 11 percent of house- first uttered a half-century ago, today’s politi- holds headed by people 65 or older were officially under cians are also ignoring some very good news: The the poverty line. For households headed by someone under oldest among us are in remarkably good shape 35 years of age, the figure was 22 percent. The last time compared to graybeards of previous generations. younger households were less likely to be poor than elderly Using consumption data, economists Bruce ones was back in 1983. Conditions for older Americans have Meyer of the University of Chicago and James improved remarkably since Social Security and Medicare X. Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame were established. have shown that people 65 and older have much That older households are wealthier than younger ones lower poverty rates than most other demo- is not surprising, and it is no cause for concern in itself. graphic groups and that these rates have fallen Elderly Americans have had a lifetime to amass savings and sharply over the past 50 years. Writing for the assets and to earn money from interest and investments. By New York Times website in November 2011, Meyer the time they reach 65, most Americans also have lower liv- reminded us that “even over the past 10 years, ing expenses. The kids are out of the house, and the house those 65 and older with the lowest income are is more likely to be paid off (or to cost less due to inflation). now living in bigger houses that are much more In their new book The Clash of Generations, economists Law- likely to be air conditioned and have appliances rence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns show the cost of living for like a dishwasher and clothes dryer.” Eighty- households of different sizes and ages varies dramatically. three percent of elderly households own a home, The cost of living for a married couple with children ages 6 and 86 percent own a car. to 17 is at least twice the cost for a retired couple. And these Seniors have more stuff and more wealth. numbers underestimate the gap between retirees and mar- According to 2010 combined data from 15 federal ried parents since they don’t include expenses such as sav- agencies on population trends, economics, and ing for college, orthodontic treatment, and vacation time. health issues, seniors’ average net worth as of This is not to say that some seniors aren’t seriously

Median Net Worth by Age of Householder (2010 dollars)

AGE 1984 1995 2002 2009 CHANGE (1984–2009)

All $ 65,293 $ 57,511 $ 71,400 $ 71,635 10%

35 and Younger 11,521 10,627 7,925 3,662 -68

35 to 44 71,118 45,338 49,928 39,601 -44

45 to 54 113,511 87,622 99,921 101,651 -10

55 to 64 147,236 130,658 160,727 162,065 10

65 and Older 120,457 132,187 158,182 170,494 42

Sources: Pew Research Center, U.S. Census Bureau

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 27 When Social Security first started cutting checks, America was still in the throes of the Great Depression. Retirement was a rare and wonderful thing, as most people worked pretty much until the day they died.

struggling. But to assert that younger Americans benefit and more. Yet the trust funds are not purely an from having the government take money from their current accounting fiction, as is widely claimed; they are wages and give it to their parents obfuscates obvious points actual assets that the government has borrowed about where that largess comes from—and whether it will against and, as such, represent liabilities. exist when today’s 50-, 40-, or 30-year-olds retire. These programs, then, are the very defini- tion of unsustainable. They pay out more than Entitlements Forever they take in and cannot exist without constant Given their failure to successfully pass a run-of-the-mill tweaks, fixes, and adjustments—all of which annual budget for the last three years, it’s not surprising that point toward a future of higher taxes for workers Congress and the president lack the courage to confront the and smaller or nonexistent benefits for retirees. apocalyptic structural problems of old-age entitlement pro- Yet when leading politicians deign to men- grams. Social Security and Medicare together represented tion Social Security and Medicare, it’s never to about 37 percent of total federal outlays in fiscal year 2011, seriously confront their disastrous trajectories, according the Congressional Budget Office. In 2020, absent but rather to guarantee the programs’ survival the sort of changes routinely dismissed by members of both while impugning the barbarous motives of their parties as grotesquely inhumane and politically impossible, electoral rivals. Presumptive GOP presidential that figure will jump to 44 percent. Based on current trends, candidate Mitt Romney—routinely assailed by the two old-age entitlements will account for half of all fed- Democrats as a heartless plutocrat who will turn eral outlays by 2030. old people out in the streets—stresses that Medi- Social Security’s various trust funds, according to its care is sacrosanct and blasts President Barack own trustees, will be depleted of all reserves by 2033 and Obama for “taking a series of steps that end won’t be able to take in anywhere near enough cash to pay Medicare as we know it.” its obligations. Medicare’s major trust fund, which covers Social Security was created in 1935 as a way hospital benefits, is scheduled to run dry in 2024. In addi- of supporting Americans in their old age. The tion, both programs already contribute to the deficit due first checks were cut in 1939. The program is to massive borrowing that will only get bigger and more widely regarded as the signature achievement of expensive. Contrary to common belief, the various trust the New Deal. Conservatives such as Barry Gold- funds for Social Security and Medicare aren’t filled with water and Ronald Reagan groused about Social gold coins or even the money collected from taxpayers over Security throughout the 1950s and early ’60s. the years. Instead, they are filled withIOU s or promises by During his famous 1964 nominating speech for the government to pay back whatever has been taken. By Goldwater, Reagan asked, “Can’t we introduce law, the trillions of dollars in taxes collected above what was voluntary features that would permit a citizen to needed to pay for benefits has been invested since the ’80s in do better on his own?…We are against forcing all interest-bearing government securities. Of course, the fed- citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory eral government doesn’t have that money anymore because government program.” it’s been spent on defense, stimulus, education, green jobs, Yet by the 1980s, President Reagan called

28 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 preserving “the integrity of the Social Security covered the program’s costs even before the massive, system” the “highest priority of my administra- unfunded expansion to cover prescription drugs enacted in tion.” In an era of bitter partisanship and divi- 2003 under President George W. Bush. sion, “one point that has won universal agree- But as serious as the two programs’ fiscal flaws may be, ment,” Reagan declared, was that the entitlement the more basic problem is ethical. When Reagan negotiated “must be preserved.” He tweaked the system by what he called “a new lease on life” for Social Security in the increasing payroll taxes and slightly increasing early 1980s, he said the reforms would guarantee nothing the age at which benefits would kick in for peo- less than the “present and future well-being of every man, ple currently paying into the system. He left the woman, and child in America, and generations yet unborn.” benefits of current retirees untouched. That’s not only gross political overstatement. It fudged all Medicare, which subsidizes health care for questions about whether living children and “generations the elderly, joined Social Security in 1966 as the yet unborn” should during their leanest years as workers be nation’s other entitlement specifically for seniors. forced to pay for a system that Reagan himself had assailed Both programs have changed substantially over just two decades earlier. the decades, covering ever more types of people and conditions and expanding in cost and scope The Myth of Mandatory Spending beyond the wildest imagination of their initial Social Security and Medicare are part of what’s called backers. When Medicare started, its supporters “mandatory spending,” or federal spending that is auto- estimated that the program would cost $12 bil- matically continued under current law without the need lion in inflation-adjusted dollars in 1990. The for annual reauthorization. Social Security, Medicare, and actual inflation-adjusted price tag came to $107 Medicaid, which provides health insurance for the poor, billion. comprise by far the largest portion of mandatory spend- The two programs share a technical prob- ing in the budget; other items in the mandatory category lem: There is no way to reliably pay for them include federal retirement funds, food stamps, veterans’ as they currently exist. The taxes—and the peo- benefits, and the earned income and child tax credits. The ple who will generate those taxes—aren’t there other major category in the federal budget, known as “dis- now, and there is no reason to believe they will cretionary spending,” incudes items such as homeland magically appear anytime during the next half- security, most military spending, farm subsidies, and aid century. Social Secu- rity is already in cash- Social Security and Medicare As a Percentage of the Federal Budget flow deficit, meaning current taxes are not enough to cover cur- 100% Actual Projected rent payouts. Each month the accounting 80% surplus built up over Other Spending years past, held as 60% government securi- ties, is drained a bit Social Security more. The payroll 40% taxes earmarked for Medicare (1.45 per- 20% cent of wages collected Medicare on both the employee 0% and employer side), 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2070 2080 together with the premiums and state Source: Congressional Budget Office, “2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook,” June 2011 Note: “Other spending” does not include interest on federal debt. transfers, never fully

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 29 “The term Ponzi scheme is over the top, unnecessary, and frightening to many people,” Mitt Romney said. That may be true, but it doesn’t change the reality that current workers are paying for current retirees, not for their future selves.

to schools. Discretionary spending is what gets haggled enroll with government-certified private insur- over in annual budget negotiations. In 2011, mandatory ers who in exchange for a flat monthly fee from spending accounted for 56 percent of total outlays while the feds provide the same coverage as Parts A discretionary spending accounted for about 37 percent. The and B, typically throwing in extras not covered remaining 7 percent of outlays is mostly net interest. by standard Medicare, such as vision, hearing, But the terms mandatory and discretionary are mislead- and dental programs. Depending on various fac- ing at best and mendacious at worst, as all spending is open tors (such as whether the operator runs a health to negotiation, to increases and cuts. If President Obama maintenance organization or a preferred pro- is at all serious when he repeatedly describes the govern- vider organization, whether the insured wants ment’s fiscal trajectory as “unsustainable,” addressing old- drug coverage or no deductibles, etc.), Medicare age entitlements must be part of any attempt to reduce Advantage may charge fees on top of the basic expenditures. premium. Finally, Medicare Part D, which took In 2011, according to the Congressional Budget Office, effect in 2006 under legislation passed as part of the country spent $725 billion on Social Security, the sin- the Medicare Modernization Act in 2003, covers gle largest spending item of the year. The Social Security prescription drugs. Premiums for drug cover- Administration says it will give checks to over 56 million age, which has a mandated annual deductible of Americans in 2012. While recipients include some depen- $320, start around $25 a month and vary based dent children and disabled workers, the largest bloc (36 on the patient’s income, needs, and preferences million) is retirees. Retirees receive an average of $1,229 per regarding deductibles vs. co-payments. month, with a maximum benefit of $2,500. When Social Security first started cutting Medicare is health insurance for all people who are checks, America was still in the throes of the 65 years or older, along with a subset of younger people Great Depression. Retirement was a rare and who suffer from dialysis-requiring kidney failure and a few wonderful thing, as most people worked pretty other disabilities. The program costs $560 billion a year and much until the day they died (the average life serves around 49 million people. Medicare benefits break expectancy at birth was 47.3 years in 1900; 68.2 down into four distinct parts. years in 1950s; and 78.5 years in 2009). When Part A, “hospital insurance,” covers in-patient stays in Medicare was created, seniors were more likely medical facilities (including nursing homes and some home than the average American to be poor. Although care) and generally does not require any sort of premium neither of those things is true anymore, spend- payment from beneficiaries. Part B is “medical insurance,” ing as a percentage of federal outlays on both designed to replace coverage that seniors used to get through programs continues to grow and shows no signs their jobs. Recipients pay a premium that ranges from $99 of slowing down. a month for individuals with adjusted gross incomes under Because it is on automatic pilot, spending $85,000 (95 percent of all recipients) to $320 for those on entitlements can grow without political con- pulling in $214,000 or more. Part C is a voluntary program, sequence or fiscal conscience. Between 1975 also known as Medicare Advantage, in which beneficiaries and 2000, spending on all entitlements grew

30 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 at an average annual rate of 3.96 percent, while In 1940 there were 159 workers for each beneficiary. annual GDP growth was 3.27 percent. Then the Today there are fewer than three. Last fall Mitt Romney, ratio really started to deteriorate: Between 2000 whom the Obama administration accuses of wanting to and 2010, entitlement spending grew 5.3 per- “dismantle” old-age entitlements, attacked Texas Gov. Rick cent a year while the economy managed just 1.81 Perry during a Republican presidential debate for calling percent. The Great Recession has added a bit to Social Security “a Ponzi scheme,” a scam in which cur- that disparity (Medicaid rolls tend to swell dur- rent investors are paid profits from new investors, not out ing downturns), but it’s far from the whole story. of actual returns. “The term Ponzi scheme is over the top, The aging of the population and the expansion unnecessary, and frightening to many people,” Romney of Medicare to include prescription drug cover- said. That may all be true, but it doesn’t change the reality age—at a cost of $338 billion from 2006 through that current workers are indeed paying for current retirees, the end of 2011—are the major reasons entitle- not for their future selves, which means that as the number ments grow faster than the economy. And given of contributors falls, payouts cannot continue at the same that the oldest baby boomers are turning just 66 rate. The only options are to reduce benefits, increase con- this year, we haven’t seen anything yet. tributions, or some combination of both. While life spans have increased and birth rates have Who Pays? decreased, Social Security’s revenue has not been able to Social Security and Medicare are paid for through keep pace. In 2010 Social Security entered into a permanent a combination of specifically earmarked payroll cash-flow deficit, meaning annual payroll tax revenue is no taxes, general tax revenue, and borrowing. Under longer sufficient to cover annual benefits. (The last time this the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA), occurred was in the early 1980s, when Congress responded most workers pay 6.2 percent of their earned by gradually raising payroll taxes and the eligibility age.) income in taxes earmarked for Social Security For now, benefits therefore must be partially covered by payouts to current beneficiaries (a rate that has interest income from the assets in the trust funds. After been temporarily reduced to 4.2 percent as a 2021, Social Security will have to cash in the trust fund means of “stimulating” the economy). Employ- assets—currently around $2.7 trillion—to pay full benefits ers kick in another 6.2 percent to the same fund. until the trust fund is exhausted. Over the years, the amount of gross wages sub- In 2011, according to the most recent report from the ject to the Social Security tax has been adjusted Social Security trustees, released in April, Social Security upward; in 2012 it maxes out at $110,100. FICA raised $691 billion from payroll taxes and general revenue also levies a tax of 2.9 percent (split equally while paying out $736 billion in retirement benefits. The between employee and employer) to cover a por- $45 billion shortfall was covered by money in the plan’s tion of Medicare. The Medicare tax is not subject various trust funds. The Trustees’ Report projects that at to a regular compensation limit and is applied to current tax rates and benefits levels the trust funds will be every dollar of wages. completely exhausted by 2033. That’s three years earlier Theoretically, total contributions to Social than the projections made in 2011 and seven years earlier Security are designed to cover the full cost of than projections from 2006. The day of financial reckoning the program. That is, the usual amount of 12.4 is approaching with accelerating speed. And that situation percent in payroll taxes paid by workers and hasn’t been helped by the temporary two-percentage-point employers should provide enough revenue to cut in payroll taxes Congress enacted in December 2010 pay for current and future outlays. Historically, to let Americans keep more of their money during the Social Security has had far more people paying economic downturn, since Congress refused to offset the into the system than drawing funds from it, so reduced revenue with benefit cuts. the program amassed a surplus in its trust funds Current law holds that when the trust funds are that since 1983 has been automatically invested depleted, benefits must be cut to the level of payroll tax rev- in a mix of short-term and long-term govern- enue. As it stands, that would amount to a 25 percent haircut ment securities. But those favorable demograph- or, in current dollars, $307 off the average retirement check ics have changed dramatically. of $1,229. Compounding the problem is that the govern-

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 31 ment has already spent the Social Security surpluses to pay missioned a poll that is still widely quoted. One for other expenses. Absent tax increases or benefit cuts, all of the questions found that more members of operating deficits will not actually be covered by past sav- Generation X (ages 18 to 34 at the time) believed ings but by new borrowing. in UFOs (46 percent) than thought that Social Medicare’s finances are in even worse shape. Costs are Security (9 percent) would be solvent when they rising more quickly, and, unlike the Social Security levy, started to retire around 2030. But even if Social the Medicare payroll tax was never designed to fully cover Security is around when Gen Xers finally stop benefits. Currently only one-third or so of Medicare costs working, they will discover that they have put far are covered by payroll taxes, a fraction that will get smaller more into the system than they will be taking out. over time. All told, payroll taxes, along with dedicated fund- Last year C. Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie ing sources such as premium payments, state transfers, and Rennae, researchers at the liberal Urban Insti- taxes on benefits, cover around half of all Medicare costs. tute, calculated what Americans at various lev- The rest comes from general tax revenue and borrowing. els of income (high, average, and low) and in Looking down the road, the picture is bleaker still. various types of households (single or married) According to the most recent trustees’ report, the Medicare can expect to pay into and receive from Social hospital insurance (H.I.) trust fund will run out of assets Security and Medicare over the course of their in 2024. As with the Social Security trust funds, if the H.I. lifetimes. For Social Security, the calculations fund is depleted, Medicare will by law be able to pay out in assumed that individuals retire at the age when benefits only what the program collects in taxes. full benefits kick in (originally 65 but rising past Even though payroll taxes aren’t enough to fund Medi- 67 under current law) and that Medicare pay- care and Social Security, they impose a major burden on ments start at 65. The main findings are both workers, especially younger workers, who are likely to highly informative and deeply dispiriting. make less money and thus pay a higher percentage of their Consider the Social Security numbers first. income to support retirees who are already as a group more A single man earning the average wage ($43,500 affluent. in 2011) who retired in 1980 would have paid a total of $96,000 in Social Security taxes and Underfunding the Future received lifetime benefits of $203,000, or about In 1994 the youth advocacy group Third Millennium com- 211 percent of contributions. A single man earn- ing the average wage but retir- Medicare Costs Over Time ing in 2010 faces a vastly dif- ferent situation: He would have paid $294,000 in taxes 100 $20,000 to receive benefits of just Medicare Enrollees Cost per Enrollee (in millions) $265,000, or about 90 percent 80 $16,000 of contributions. For the same person retiring in 2030, taxes of $398,000 yield $336,000 in 60 $12,000 benefits, or just 84 percent of contributions. (Because they 40 $8,000 tend to live longer, women fare slightly better than men, but single women earning the 20 $4,000 average wage and retiring in 2010 and 2030 also face nega- 0 $0 tive returns on their lifetime 1975 2010 2040 1975 2010 2040 tax contributions to Social Security.) Sources: 2011 Medicare Trustees Report, Congressional Budget Office The calculations for Medi-

32 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 In 1940 there were 159 workers for each Social Security beneficiary. Today there are fewer than three.

care underline the point that everybody is getting that reimbursement rates will be trimmed anytime soon. more out of the program than they are paying Social Security and Medicare thus present twin horns in. Consider a single woman earning the aver- of a dilemma. The retirement entitlement offers nothing age wage who turned 65 in 1980. She has paid but negative returns for future beneficiaries, whose taxes in $8,000 but will take out $81,000 in ben- in the meantime will need to be raised to cover current ben- efits, or more than 10 times her contribution. eficiaries. And the health entitlement’s costs have proven The same woman turning 65 in 2010 will have resistant to all forms of price control, meaning the system paid $58,000 in taxes to receive $185,000 in will either chew up a larger share of federal spending at the benefits, or a threefold return. A single woman expense of other outlays, go bust, or rely on larger and larger retiring in 2030 will have paid $87,000 to get tax levies on today’s younger workers. $275,000. Medicare is notoriously ineffective at con- Old vs. Young taining costs. Champions of the program like to Social Security and Medicare were created in a very differ- note that it has lower administrative costs as a ent America as a response to very different circumstances. percentage than most private insurance plans, The old-age entitlements were designed to alleviate prob- but they routinely ignore at least two other points lems related to an economy still in transition from rural that explain why overall costs continue to spiral agriculture to urban manufacturing and post-industrial upward. First, Medicare wastes a lot of money services. Private pensions and retirement savings were rela- on procedures that have no impact on patients. tive rarities, and the communitarian dream of multiple As a 2009 report by President Obama’s Council generations living under the same roof—invoked as an ideal of Economic Advisers, then chaired by Christina by some of the very people, such as Joe Biden and Hillary Romer, put it, “Nearly 30 percent of Medicare’s Clinton, who champion old-age entitlements as a means of costs could be saved without adverse health “independence” for seniors—was a routine necessity. consequences.” Second, Medicare reimburse- That’s no longer the case in a country where most retir- ment rates to providers have proven politically ees are wealthier than the younger people paying for their impossible to cut. In 1997 Congress created “the benefits. According to 2010 data (the latest available) from sustainable growth rate,” which tied what the the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s Consumer Expenditure government would pay for particular procedures Data, the typical American 65 or older had a pretax income to rates of inflation. The reimbursements went of about $41,000 and annual expenses of about $37,000, up steadily for several years until 2002, when including $4,800 for all medical care costs they bear under the rate of increase in rates slowed slightly—not the current regime (insurance, prescription drugs, doctor’s an actual cut, mind you, merely a decrease in the visits, etc.). Those who can pay for their needs out of their rate of increase. Since then, doctors have man- own pockets should do so, not only in the name of fiscal aged to muscle through what has become known sanity and generational fairness but because the U.S. health as the “doc fix”: ongoing “temporary” increases care system suffers mightily from a lack of pricing signals in reimbursement rates. No one seriously thinks and consumer self-control.

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 33 Social Security and Expected Medicare Benefits vs. Taxes

Single man earning the average wage ($43,500 in 2011 dollars)

If you Annual Lifetime Lifetime Total Lifetime Lifetime Total Social turn 65 Social Social Medicare benefits Social Medicare Security & in… Security Security benefits received Security taxes Medicare benefits benefits over a (OASDI) taxes paid lifetime taxes

1960 $9,300 $113,000 $15,000 $128,000 $18,000 $0 $18,000

1980 $15,100 $203,000 $62,000 $265,000 $96,000 $8,000 $104,000

2010 $17,500 $265,000 $167,000 $432,000 $294,000 $58,000 $352,000

2030 $20,500 $336,000 $251,000 $587,000 $398,000 $87,000 $485,000

2011 $17,500 $266,000 $170,000 $436,000 $299,000 $60,000 $359,000

Single woman earning the average wage ($43,500 in 2011 dollars)

If you Annual Lifetime Lifetime Total Lifetime Lifetime Total Social turn 65 Social Social Medicare benefits Social Medicare Security & in… Security Security benefits received Security taxes Medicare benefits benefits over a (OASDI) taxes paid lifetime taxes

1960 $9,300 $146,000 $23,000 $169,000 $18,000 $0 $18,000

1980 $15,100 $249,000 $81,000 $330,000 $96,000 $8,000 $104,000

2010 $17,500 $290,000 $185,000 $475,000 $294,000 $58,000 $352,000

2030 $20,500 $363,000 $275,000 $638,000 $398,000 $87,000 $485,000

2011 $17,500 $290,000 $188,000 $478,000 $299,000 $60,000 $359,000

Source: C. Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie Rennae, “Social Security and Medicare Taxes and Benefits Over a Lifetime,” Urban Institute, June 2011

We must reform the current system, starting now. The taxes on income, should be scrapped, freeing up most obvious, effective, and just approach is to end Social huge amounts of money for Americans of all ages Security and Medicare and replace them with a true safety to spend and save as they see fit. As Americans net that would help poor Americans regardless of age. To start to think seriously about saving for their the extent that seniors qualify for income supplements, retirements, long-term investment will boom, food stamps, and other transfer programs, they should be and so will insurance planning; generations will added to those rolls. They can also be added to Medic- be forced to recognize that they are connected aid rolls (currently about 9 million seniors are so-called not via impersonal and punitive payroll taxes but double-dippers, receiving benefits from both Medicaid and through shared assets and household expenses. Medicare). There is no reason to have separate programs for The popular counter-argument—that cur- the elderly and the poor when the real distinction should be rent and future beneficiaries have paid into not age but ability to pay. Payroll taxes, the most regressive these systems and are thus “entitled” to Social

34 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 A single man earning the average wage who retired in 1980 would have paid $96,000 in Social Security taxes and received lifetime benefits of $203,000. A single man earning the average wage but retiring in 2010 would have paid $294,000 in taxes to receive benefits of just $265,000.

Security and Medicare— holds no legal or moral spent on the program as spending rages out of control). water. In the 1960 case Flemming v. Nestor, the It is hard to know which is more depressing: the pun- Supreme Court ruled that, contrary to the rheto- ishing and sure-to-rise price that younger Americans are ric surrounding Social Security, the program is forced to pay for a system that steals from the relatively poor not an actual retirement system in which partici- to give to the relatively rich, or the smugness with which pants maintain legal claims to the contributions champions of this patently unfair system insist on its righ- they’ve made or the assets they’ve accrued. While teousness. In his March speech in Florida, Vice President it is terrifying for all of us to consider losing the Biden told stories of building a new house that included money we’ve paid into Social Security, the fact is living quarters for his parents, who refused to move in. that we already have. It makes no moral sense to Biden explained that his parents and other seniors value string along a program that winds up screwing their “independence” and “dignity” more than anything. even recent beneficiaries as measured by money His mother, he said, was representative of seniors in that in vs. benefits out. And as for Medicare, there is she wanted to be able to pay her own way at check ups with something wrong with perpetuating a system her doctor. “She didn’t want to ask her kids.” that doles out scarce tax dollars to recipients In Biden’s strange moral universe, his mom should regardless of need. Old-age entitlements aren’t be admired for wanting to get medical care on the dime a problem to be adjusted; they are a blot to be of strangers rather than from her own family. The vice thoroughly mopped up. president was trying to defend old-age entitlements, but The technical details and transition times his example is the quintessence of what is wrong with the for a post-entitlement country are less impor- current system: It gives to those who already have much by tant than a basic principle that should appeal to taking from those who have little. conservatives, liberals, and even many libertar- Back in 1964, the last year of the baby boom, Bob Dylan ians: Federal aid programs should be means- warned: “There’s a battle outside / And it is ragin’ / It’ll tested. The welfare reforms of the 1990s provide soon shake your windows / And rattle your walls.” Born in a model. Rather than create and oversee expan- 1941, Dylan has been receiving Social Security and Medi- sive projects from afar, the federal government care—both programs have mandatory enrollment—for at started sending nonmatching block grants to least four years now. In 1964 he was singing to a very dif- the states, which were given more freedom to ferent America with very different concerns. But his song set their own requirements and more flexibility of generational war, so prophetic in its day, may well prove to try out approaches tailored to their specific prescient again. r needs and circumstances. When the federal government gives matching grants, it creates Nick Gillespie ([email protected]) is editor in chief of reason.com an incentive for states to increase spending and reason.tv. He is co-author with Matt Welch of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with on programs regardless of effectiveness (as hap- America, just out in paperback (PublicAffairs). Contributing Editor pens currently with Medicaid, where Wash- Veronique de Rugy ([email protected]) is a senior research fellow at the ington pays about 60 cents out of every dollar Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 35 After the Storm How Joplin, Missouri, rebuilt following a devastating tornado by circumventing bureaucracy Tate Watkins

On May 22, 2011, a tornado ripped through the many strings attached, New Orleans and the surrounding town of Joplin, Missouri. The multi-vortex storm area to this day remains hamstrung by federal, state, and cut an eerily straight west-east line through Jop- local bureaucracy. Joplin’s experience offers a powerful lin’s downtown street grid, growing to three lesson in self-sufficiency and knowing when to say “no quarters of a mile wide at its peak. In the end, thanks” to government. the Category 5 twister physically picked up and slammed down about one-quarter of the town, ‘This Isn’t the FEMA of Katrina’ creating 3 million cubic yards of debris. It flat- When I flew to Joplin in the fall of 2011 on one of the two tened big-box stores such as Home Depot and daily flights serving the city, residents were still struggling Walmart and left a desert of concrete foundation to fathom their losses. But they were certain about one slabs covering a six-mile stretch of destruction. thing. Over and over, locals told me, “This isn’t the FEMA of The storm killed 161 people, displaced 9,000 Katrina.” Which was good, because after Hurricane Katrina more, and completely wiped out more than 4,000 the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) stalled structures while damaging another 3,000. It was the recovery and rebuilding for millions of Gulf Coast resi- the deadliest tornado since modern recordkeep- dents. In the months and years after the hurricane and ing began in 1950, according to the National resulting floods, media outlets, congressional investiga- Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. tions, and government reports excoriated the agency for But as the one-year anniversary of the storm its inept response. Indecision at local, state, and federal lev- approached, Joplin found itself in startlingly els of government, as well as rigid regulations concerning good shape. Local officials estimate that insur- everything from occupational licensing to debris removal, ance claims will total $2 billion, yet the town’s delayed or hindered Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts. FEMA’s business tax revenues are actually up for the own internal investigation admitted that the “widespread year. School enrollment is 95 percent of what it criticism for a slow and ineffective response” was well was before the tornado, and the vast majority of deserved. displaced residents have secured lodging in or One reason the FEMA of 2011 did not perform like the near the area. FEMA of 2005 was that Joplin residents were determined Joplin’s recovery contrasts with the fitful, not to let that happen. Founded by lead and zinc miners in /Newscom

fraught response to the destruction wrought by the 19th century, this small southwestern Missouri town UPI Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, 700 miles has a long history of self-reliance in a state that ranks fifth to the south, in 2005. The two storms, like the in overall freedom from burdensome government regula- two cities, were different in nature and scale. tions, according to a 2011 study by the Merca- But there were also disparities in the official and tus Center (which sponsored my trip to Joplin as part of unofficial responses after the initial damage. a broader tornado recovery research project for which I While the people of Joplin largely took matters handled logistics). The community has the close-knit feel into their own hands, pushing aside burdensome you’d expect of a small Midwestern town, with a network of

rules and refusing help when it came with too active voluntary organizations and church groups that col- their home in Joplin, of left is what through go People page: Previous Uhlenbrock/ Tom 2011. 24, on May Missouri,

“A lot of the residents are staying here,” Assistant City Manager Sam Anselm tells me. It’s “a testament to the spirit, the way the community responded to this.”

38 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 laborate regularly. And as Beloit College economist Emily with donated material such as tarps, clothing, Chamlee-Wright concluded after leading more than 400 and food. interviews with Katrina survivors, the best approach once Most displaced people found refuge with emergency gives way to recovery is to reduce government nearby family or friends; the city estimates that 95 involvement and devolve power to disaster victims, who percent of people displaced by the storm stayed know their own situations best. “In order to minimize sig- within 25 miles of town. “A lot of the residents nal noise that inhibits the response from markets and civil are staying here,” Assistant City Manager Sam /Newscom

UPI society,” Chamlee-Wright writes in her 2010 book The Cul- Anselm tells me. It’s “a testament to the spirit, the tural and Political Economy of Recovery, “government at all way the community responded to this.” levels should scale back its efforts as soon as possible to The city registered 130,000 volunteers from make room for markets and voluntary organizations to around the country and estimates that at least provide basic supplies, food, clean-up, and construction that many helped and weren’t counted. One even services.” came from Japan and stayed two weeks, citing the Despite its small size, Joplin, home of St. John’s Regional way Americans donated to his country after the Medical Center and battery manufacturer Eagle Picher, earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. (Some-

Previous page: People go through what is left of their home in Joplin, their home in Joplin, of left is what through go People page: Previous Uhlenbrock/ Tom 2011. 24, on May Missouri, is a regional hub for commerce, providing jobs and con- one found the Japanese volunteer a bicycle that nections to residents of nearby Arkansas, Oklahoma, and he rode 12 miles each day to and from his cleanup Kansas. “Joplin’s a town of 50,000 people at night but a site.) In October, ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home

Photo/Mark Schiefelbein Photo/Mark city of a quarter-million during the day,” goes the local Edition rolled into town and built seven homes AP refrain. The recovery benefited from these trade routes. in seven days. Habitat for Humanity built 10 the After the tornado, emergency response teams from around next month. the state streamed into town. Four hundred and thirty The tornado sucked nine-story St. John’s a police, fire, and public works departments helped with few inches off its foundation before setting it search and rescue, cleanup, and debris removal. Doc- back down. The medical center erected tempo- tors and nurses, many of whom worked at one of Joplin’s rary structures in open space next door, com- two hospitals or in the medical services sector clustered plete with an emergency room, and managed to around them, came from around the four-state area. A keep nearly all of its 2,200 employees on payroll.

Damaged main entrance of Joplin High School. School. High Joplin of entrance main Damaged handful of warehouses around the city are full to this day Along with medical jobs, Joplin is home to a

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 39 handful of big businesses, such as building mate- pace, we needed to give our superintendent authority to rials company TAMKO, a PotashCorp animal feed make decisions as quickly as possible,” says Joplin Board plant, and a General Mills factory. of Education President Ashley Micklethwaite. “The worst Joplin Schools Superintendent C.J. Huff thing we can do as a board is get down into the weeds and didn’t want what he dubbed the “Hurricane worry about minute details. We had to look at the big pic- Katrina effect” of people fleeing the area per- ture, and the big picture was getting our schools back up manently, so the school district established a and running.” program for volunteers to “adopt” students and Huff’s new powers included the ability to make emer- provide them with school supplies. Private dona- gency procurement decisions instead of, for example, tions poured in; the United Arab Emirates gave $1 adhering to a mandatory two-week minimum for posting million, enough to issue a MacBook to every high bids. The superintendent also successfully lobbied Missouri school student. TAMKO donated $500,000. Other Gov. Jay Nixon, who signed a handful of executive orders sources, from Lions Club International to singer granting the district emergency permission to speed up the Sheryl Crow (who auctioned off a Mercedes) to contracting process faster than state regulations usually a 9-year-old Nevadan who raised $360 with a allow. Huff gathered a team of architects and contractors car wash, combined to contribute $3.5 million of he had used for previous district jobs and began planning private money to the district by September 2011. temporary construction for the approaching school year. Within a few days, he says, they were able to choose which ‘Better to Ask Forgiveness Than Permission’ subcontractors and building materials to use, a process Two days after the tornado, when 4,200 kids that would normally take up to one month. City Hall also had nowhere to go to school, Superintendent responded to the needs of the school district and its build- Huff stood up at a staff meeting and said, “We’re ers, agreeing to receive and approve plans and blueprints going to start school in 84 days.” On August 17, piecemeal rather than requiring the usual single master set. they did just that. The tornado had destroyed the A process that would typically take months took only a few town’s only public high school and 50 percent of weeks. the school district’s property, inflicting $150 mil- The school system now houses most of its students in lion worth of damage. When school re-opened as temporary structures or leased space. Joplin High School’s scheduled in the fall, enrollment hit 95 percent. juniors and seniors attend class in a decade-vacant Shopko How did they do it? “Sometimes,” Huff store in a mall that has been refurbished with modern class- explains, “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than rooms, a spiffy computer and video lab, and Joplin Eagles permission.” A day after the storm, once Huff artwork on the walls. had canceled the remainder of the school year, Getting students in classes improved community the Joplin school board granted him emergency morale and has been among the most consequential steps authority to circumvent usual bureaucratic pro- in Joplin’s recovery. It would not have happened if Huff cedures in order to deal directly with the disaster. and his team did not have the flexibility to innovate around “We knew that to keep things moving at a rapid bureaucracy as usual.

Two days after the tornado, when 4,200 kids had nowhere to go to school, Superintendent C.J. Huff stood up at a staff

meeting and said, “We’re going to start school in 84 days.” Riedel Photo/Charlie AP On August 17, they did just that. Temporary high school in a converted big-box store store big-box in a converted high school Temporary Missouri. in Joplin,

40 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 ‘A Different Set of Rules’ “According to the state and how we have to East Middle School is a less happy story than Joplin High. bid architects, it’s much more open,” Mickle- Having opened only in 2009, the school was declared a thwaite explains. “But when you bring the fed- “total loss” after the tornado. Because reconstruction has eral government and FEMA into it, they have involved the federal government, the project initially was very specific requirements, for architectural delayed for months. “We’re having to follow a different set bids or anything else.” Micklethwaite recalls sit- of rules,” Huff says, “because federal dollars are involved.” ting around a table with fellow school board Most taxpayers appreciate government procurement members and FEMA representatives after the tor- and contracting regulations designed to limit waste, fraud, nado. “There’s this giant book,” she says, “that’s and abuse. But those safeguards can exasperate locals who like three inches thick with tiny, tiny print, and are racing against the clock to make important decisions in it’s all the rules and regulations about federal the wake of catastrophe. “For us to be able to tap into those emergency management. And they’re flipping

Photo/Charlie Riedel Photo/Charlie federal funds that we’ll need to rebuild,” Board of Edu- through the book and looking at very specific AP cation President Micklethwaite says, “we have to follow statutes and rules that we have to follow, and at their procedures, which are quite frankly slower than what that point I really thought, ‘OK, this is going to we—even in a normal situation—would have to do in the be challenging.’”

Temporary high school in a converted big-box store store big-box in a converted high school Temporary Missouri. in Joplin, state of Missouri.” Micklethwaite is quick to add that FEMA

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 41 has been helpful, providing among other things three weeks ahead of schedule once all but 300 lots had “temporary modular classrooms” for seven been cleared. schools damaged by the storm, as well as 600 David Glenn, a local commercial real estate broker, said trailers for displaced residents. But the feds are the city’s flexible building department also smoothed recon- by nature bureaucratic. struction efforts. “There’s some building jurisdictions that “It’d sure be nice,” says Superintendent Huff, feel like they’re the Gestapo,” Glenn says. “ ‘You’re going “if there were federal procurement policies that to do it our way, or you’re not going to do it all.’ But Joplin allowed for expedited processes in emergency doesn’t have that attitude.” City administrators brought events, and that’s not the case. So we’re wading in extra inspectors to deal with the massive demand for through paperwork.” He says that, “hypotheti- building and repair permits. Meanwhile, Glenn says, most cally,” the district could have broken ground on local businesses turned down the $10 million in rebuilding a new East Middle School in late summer of 2011. loans offered by the federal Small Business Administration, “That would be a building,” Huff says, “that we because they deemed the lower interest rates not worth the could have online next fall for our kids, and now red tape that comes with a government-backed loan. it’s probably looking more like next Christmas at best.” Huff’s “at best” turned out to be ambitious, ‘We Just Keep Moving Forward’ if not unrealistic. The school board has since Much of Joplin’s recovery success to date is thanks to asser- approved a reconstruction schedule that predicts tive local leaders and coordination between government an East Middle School ribbon-cutting ceremony and voluntary organizations. Hurricane Katrina wrought in December 2013. devastation on a much greater scale, but even accounting for that difference, stories of red tape and bureaucratic ‘Get the Hell Out of the Way’ inertia are much rarer in Joplin. Freedom and discretion to Owners of houses that were declared a total loss rebuild have been the default setting for locals. faced a daunting obstacle to rebuilding: The city Mistakes after Katrina caused much delay, despair, and government would not let them build even a tem- suffering. They also revealed lessons that have improved porary structure to protect their property from FEMA’s disaster response. Joplin provides more learning the rain, for fear that it would obstruct debris- material. If successful disaster recovery relies upon having removal efforts. Joplin faced a hard August 7 good people in power, many if not most municipalities will deadline from FEMA to have the wreckage cleared fare much worse in the event of a catastrophe than Joplin in order to get 90 percent of cleanup costs reim- has so far. We have a government of laws, not men. The bursed from Washington. good men and women of Joplin have pushed those laws to On June 20, 2011, after contentious debate, promote recovery, but in the absence of such people, and the Joplin City Council voted 7 to 2 for a 60-day especially in the absence of improved laws, victims of future moratorium on new construction. City Council- disasters are more likely to be saddled with something man Bill Scearce, an insurance salesman, was closer to the Katrina recovery. one of the votes against, fearing displaced resi- Micklethwaite went through the tornado not just as dents would simply settle somewhere else, as president of Joplin’s school board but also as a resident of many Gulf Coast homeowners did after Katrina. her hometown, to which she returned 20 years ago. She “If you’ve got somebody that wants to build a describes her neighborhood as “closed” before the tornado; house on site and protect their property,” Scearce after the storm, she did laundry in a neighbor’s house while says, “I mean, who are we to tell them they can’t hers was being repaired, and people on her street held do that?…We need to put up ways that people can group meetings in the cul-de-sac to discuss rebuilding. “We get things done instead of making them jump joke about it being group therapy,” she says. “We just keep through hoops.” City employees, he says, should moving forward.” r do their jobs and then “just get the hell out of the way.” Tate Watkins ([email protected]) is a 2012 Phillips Founda- In the end, the moratorium itself got out of tion fellow and a former reason intern. He lives in Port-au-Prince. the way: The council lifted the ban more than

42 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012

Columns: Ronald Bailey Resetting Your Biological Clock Egg freezing opens up new frontiers in gender equality.

More and more American women are wait- aged 35–39 was 46.5 births per 1,000 women. ing until they are older to have children. Why? In fact, more children are now being born to Because they are building their careers and women over age 35 than to women under 20. waiting for Mr. Right. But what if Mr. Right fails Every advance in assisted reproduction to come along before they turn 35? comes with ethical questions, and this one is no As the biological clock ticks along, the different. First, should eggs be set aside at all? chances of having biologically related children In her 2009 Bioethics article, “Egg Freezing: A diminish steeply, especially as women pass their Breakthrough for Reproductive Autonomy,” mid-30s. So some women are now taking out North Carolina State University philosopher “fertility insurance” by having clinics retrieve Karey Harwood notes that infertility occurs and freeze their youthful eggs. when a normal biological process is impeded In May The New York Times devoted some by disease or defect. Thus assisted reproduction front-page real estate to a new twist on this techniques are used to treat the illness of infer- practice: would-be grandparents subsidizing tility. the freezing of their daughters’ eggs. Fertility specialist Daniel Shapiro, medical director of But women who decide to have their eggs Reproductive Biology Associates in Atlanta, told frozen are not infertile. They are making an the Times his egg-freezing patients often say, “elective” or “social” choice to take advantage “My parents want me to have this as a gift.” of a new technology. Does this make any ethi- cal difference? No, argues Harwood. She points While many women put off childbearing as out that contraception and nontherapeutic their careers develop, others are stuck waiting abortion are both “elective” and do not treat an for their relationships to reach the next level, illness. “The analogy to a contraceptive pill is thanks to the fecklessness of modern men. apt because both egg freezing and the pill can Many women in their late 20s and early 30s are effectuate delayed reproduction,” writes Har- in long-term relationships with men whom they wood. “Because egg freezing may be reasonably think will eventually father their children. Occa- interpreted as another form of family planning, sionally, the relationships don’t work out, and it can be considered a legitimate exercise in the women find themselves in their mid-30s or reproductive autonomy.” later without a promising partner. One ethical upside to freezing eggs is that it Things have been trending this way for a gets around moral concerns about whether fro- while. The average age of mothers at first birth zen embryos are persons, since uninseminated has increased from 21.4 in 1970 to 25.2 in 2009, eggs do not have two sets of genes derived from according to the most recent vital statistics parents. That issue is apt to come up eventu- from the Centers for Disease Control and Pre- ally, however, if the frozen eggs are later used vention. In 2009, the CDC reports, the “rate of to create embryos via in vitro fertilization (IVF) 39.1 births per 1,000 women aged 15–19 was techniques for implantation into a woman’s the lowest ever reported in the nearly seven womb. Standard IVF techniques often involve decades for which a consistent series of rates producing extra embryos that are frozen as is available.” By contrast, the rate for women backups to be used if those initially introduced

44 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 into a woman’s womb fail to implant zen eggs might be disproportionately nological fix for persistent problems or if patients later want additional at risk of various physical and mental of sexual inequality. They argue that children. Consequently, there are harms. Already some 2,000 children the ethical thing to do is to change often frozen embryos left over once may have been born using frozen workplaces so there is less conflict IVF treatments have been completed. eggs. Preliminary evidence indicates between bearing children and having Clinics could avoid the issue of what that the rate of birth defects among a career. They also say public policy to do with spare embryos by freezing such children is comparable to that should encourage women to avoid eggs and sperm separately. among children born by means of the problem of age-related infertility conventional IVF techniques. For by having children at younger ages. The biological clock is relentless. example, a 2009 study looked at The case of France suggests A woman’s fertility, defined as her 936 live births from frozen eggs that attempts to shift public policy probability of getting pregnant dur- and reported, “Compared with con- in directions friendly to childbear- ing a year, falls from 86 percent at age genital anomalies occurring in natu- ing and rearing may have limits. In 20 to 52 percent at age 35. Thereafter rally conceived infants, no difference pronatalist France, the average age it drops ever more steeply to 36 per- was noted.” for first childbirth is 29.9 years (vs. cent by age 40 and 5 percent by age 25.2 in the U.S.), and despite all sorts 45. Some ethicists argue that egg freez- of social programs aimed at easing Ethicists fret that egg freez- ing amounts to an illegitimate tech- the burdens of child rearing, French ing as “fertility insurance” women have a lower labor engenders false hopes, in part force participation rate than because women may over- American women. estimate the real chances of Furthermore, egg freez- having a baby using this tech- ing actually promotes equality nique. If the relevant standard between the sexes. In a 2009 is the success rate of other IVF paper for the journal Bioethics, techniques, recent data from Oxford University philoso- several clinics indicate that phers Imogen Goold and Julian the rate of live births using Savulsecu note: “Men already frozen eggs is comparable, enjoy the choice of when they with about one in three cycles have children. Women should resulting in a live birth. have the opportunity to enjoy Another concern is that the same choices as men, if women who hear of the tech- we can provide them, unless nique will wait too long before there are good reasons not taking advantage of it. Clini- to.” Instead of dismissing egg cal evidence strongly suggests freezing as a mere biomedi- that the chances of having a cal work-around, we should baby are greater for women celebrate it as another way in who choose to freeze their which technological progress eggs before age 35. Eggs fro- is reducing and ameliorating zen after that age do not grow inequalities between men and and implant as readily. Older women. r eggs are far more likely to have flaws that prevent them Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey ([email protected]) is the author of from developing into babies Liberation Biology (Prometheus). than younger eggs do. Another ethical concern is

Biological clock, © iStockphoto/ Ultra_Generic © iStockphoto/ clock, Biological that children born from fro-

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 45 Culture and Reviews

46 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 47 48 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 49 Briefly Noted Latter-Day Acceptance Republican primaries. Newt Gingrich Mitt Romney may inspire anti-Mormon had to fire his Iowa political director paranoia, but it’s nothing compared to for describing rival candidate Mitt the fears his forefathers faced. Romney’s religion as “the cult of Mormon.” Texas Gov. Rick Perry had Jesse Walker to do some public squirming when a prominent Baptist backer, the Dallas For many Americans Mormons are scary, pastor Robert Jeffress, announced or weird, or at least not the sort of folk you’d that Romney is “not a Christian” and want marrying your first lady. Last year a Gal- that Mormonism “has always been lup poll found that 22 percent of the country considered a cult by the mainstream A Beautiful Oil Spill would not support a Mormon candidate for of Christianity.” My inbox over- Pathetic birds with crude- president. MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell flows with press releases from the coated wings are the usual foul claimed in early April that Mormonism “was ex-Mormon activist Tricia Erickson, photographic emblems of oil created by a guy in upstate New York in 1830 who warns that electing “this hor- spills. Seattle-based photogra- when he got caught having sex with the maid rendous Romney Manchurian Can- pher Daniel Beltrá complicates and explained to his wife that God told him didate” would mean the Elders Near the story implied by those sad to do it.” Jacob Weisberg, generally a reliable Zion “will most assuredly be pulling news photos in his gallery show barometer of center-left conventional wisdom, the strings behind the scenes.” Bill “SPILL.” wrote during the run-up to the last presidential Keller, the self-proclaimed “world’s Beltrá spent two months campaign that he “wouldn’t vote for someone leading Internet Evangelist,” man- photographing the 2010 who truly believed in the founding whoppers ages to outdo Erickson with mass Deepwater Horizon blowout of Mormonism.” emails carrying headlines like “Why from high up in the air over the Anti-Mormonism haunted this cycle’s Would Christians Vote for Romney Gulf of Mexico. The exhibition, and Listen to [Glenn] Beck, Both Cult which ran in March and April at Members?” the Catherine Edelman Gallery All of which obscures something in Chicago, consisted chiefly of important: By historical standards, gorgeous large-format photos Mormonism enjoys an amazing level emphasizing the luminous of acceptance in America today. The colors of oil spread abstractly Republican Party, an organization across the sea’s surface. whose first presidential platform (Images from the show can be denounced Mormon polygamy as a seen online at edelmangallery. “relic of barbarism” comparable to com.) Working boats lost in the slavery, is about to nominate a Mor- vast windrows of crude reveal mon bishop as its presidential candi- the scale of the incident. Bel- date. Mitt Romney’s chances of pre- trá, a conservationist, hopes vailing in November have very little to provoke outrage, but he to do with his religious beliefs and attenuates that goal with the almost everything to do with how the seductive sublimity of his pho- unemployment numbers look come tographs. —Ronald Bailey fall. That shift reflects some substan- tial changes in Mormonism itself, which has given up the polygamist and separatist ways that alienated

so many Americans in the church’s Chicago Gallery, Edelman Catherine of .” Courtesy SPILL “ early decades. But it also reflects the History/Newscom Picture Savage C.R. Young, Brigham

50 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 SiteworksReasonY 10/10/08 2:33 PM Page 1

fact that non-Mormon Americans— had visited their ancient American gentiles, as the Latter-day Saints civilization. sometimes call us—have gotten used As Smith attracted followers, he The Enduring to having Mormons around. You can moved his church’s base from upstate still hear strange conspiracy theories New York to Ohio and then to the Elegance of about the church today, but we are a Missouri frontier, where its adher- long way from the 19th century, when ents faced heavy harassment from Limestone the popular perception of Joseph their neighbors. The church tried to Smith’s faith featured a wild mélange establish a town of its own in Illinois, of mind control, assassinations, secret and it was in that state that an angry sexual lodges, and plots to subvert mob killed Smith while the prophet the republic. was confined to a jail. Control of the movement shifted to a Vermont-born ‘To Yield Themselves Entirely’ tradesman named Brigham Young, Our story starts in the early 19th who led the Mormons west to estab- century, a spiritually rambunctious lish a kingdom in the desert. period now known the Second Great The opponents of Mormonism, Awakening. Big camp meetings drew like the opponents of other new reli- thousands of Americans to multiday Dozens of lurid novels festivals of prayer, with worshippers falling into trances and speaking in depicted Danite tongues. Traditional religious lead- assassinations, church- ers were often alarmed at the deliri- sanctioned white slavery, ous varieties of worship on display. and other alleged LDS Some of them denounced the revival preachers as puppet masters engaged crimes. in a sort of mass hypnosis. On the gions, took old anti-Catholic themes outskirts of the excitement, unusual and updated them for a younger faith: creeds attracted new followers: Smith and then Young were imagined Shakers, Adventists, Oneida Perfec- as the all-powerful popes of a cult, tionists. their followers as docile sheep. Those It was in this atmosphere that followers’ allegiance, furthermore, Joseph Smith reported a series of was allegedly achieved through a sort religious visions in the 1820s and of mind control, not unlike the mass founded the Church of Jesus Christ hypnosis purportedly on display at of Latter-day Saints in 1830. The new revivals. faith, contra Lawrence O’Donnell, The latter idea lies at the core of Live Free had nothing to do with the family the best-selling Female Life Among the with Beauty, Style maid. (Polygamy would not become Mormons (1855), which presents itself and the Enduring a Mormon doctrine until several as the memoir of a woman hypno- Elegance of Limestone. years later.) Smith, a part-time trea- tized into marrying a church elder. SITEWORKS sure hunter, claimed to have found (A more accurate description was Custom Limestone Mantels a holy book engraved on golden offered by the historian David Brion 1-800-599-5463 www.siteworkstone.com plates. The plates contained a host of Davis, who called the book a “ridicu- revelations, he reported, including lous fantasy.”) At one point in the the old idea that the American Indi- narrative the author asks another ex- Call Today For Your .” Courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago Gallery, Edelman Catherine of .” Courtesy ans were descended from the Isra- Mormon how Joseph Smith managed FREE Color Catalog! SPILL “ Brigham Young, C.R. Savage Picture History/Newscom Picture Savage C.R. Young, Brigham elites and the new idea that Christ to master Franz Mesmer’s mind-con-

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 51 Briefly Noted trol method—Mesmerism—before “its general been “expelled from the Church as a circulation throughout the country.” Her infor- result of his flagrant sexual immoral- mant replies that “Smith obtained his informa- ity.” tion, and learned all the strokes, and passes, and manipulations, from a German peddler, who, ‘Grim, Hidden, Secret Power’ notwithstanding his reduced circumstances, When Mormons clustered in a single was a man of distinguished intellect and exten- location, the fear that they might steal sive erudition. Smith paid him handsomely, Christian bodies and souls through and the German promised to keep the secret.” kidnapping and conversion was What’s more, “You, madam, were subjected to joined by another anxiety: the fear its influence. So have ten thousand others been, that they would steal American insti- Shakespeare Security who never dreamed of it. Those most expert in tutions by voting en masse, installing Theater it, are generally sent out to preach among unbe- a government that would replace the Ralph Fiennes’ film adaptation lievers.” republic with a theocracy. And since of Coriolanus, now out on DVD, The church started promoting polygamy you couldn’t expect such a subversive marries Shakespeare’s dia- privately in 1843, and it acknowledged the prac- menace to limit its efforts to the bal- logue to a 21st-century setting tice to the outside world in 1852. This height- lot box, another story began to take to retell the story of the Roman ened the sexual dimension of stories like Female hold as well: that the church com- general Caius Marcius, nick- Life Among the Mormons: In the popular imagi- manded an army of assassins, dubbed named Coriolanus for his valor nation, Mormon men were out to add gentile the Danites, to inflict its will by force. during a siege of the city of women to their harems, by hypnotic seduction The historical Danites were a Corioli. Fiennes’ Roman Repub- if possible and by force if necessary. Plural mar- vigilante group created in 1838 to lic is thoroughly contemporary. riage was perceived as a threat to the traditional compel dissenting Mormons to exit Troops are equipped with high- family, and the anxieties it inspired unleashed the area and, subsequently, to pro- tech accoutrements, senators a flood of fantasies about other sorts of sexual tect Missouri Mormons from their are strikingly Washingtonian, nonconformity that the Latter-day Saints might neighbors’ attacks. It has never been and protesters are drawn from be up to. proven that the organization lasted stock Hollywood movie tropes The excommunicated Mormon John C. Ben- longer than a year, but it became a of the last decade. nett spread stories of a “secret lodge of women” central part of anti-Mormon rhetoric Still, Coriolanus remains a who serviced church officials, going into great for decades afterward, its reputation quintessentially Roman story detail about the orders found within the lodge growing ever more fearsome with and figure. The Volscian cam- and the duties and depravations identified time. When Brigham Young set up paigns in which Coriolanus with each. The Consecrates of the Cloister, for a group of minutemen in Utah, say- made his name were not the example, were a degree “composed of females, ing that they were to battle rustlers same as the easily recognizable whether married or unmarried, who, by an and hostile Indians and the like, the imperial follies that followed. express grant and gift of God, through his group was quickly nicknamed the It’s tricky to transplant to the Prophet the Holy Joe, are set apart and conse- Destroying Angels, conflated with modern day the story of a crated to the use and benefit of particular indi- the old Danites, and feared as a secret general spurned by his govern- viduals, as secret, spiritual wives,” Bennett wrote squad of hit men. In 1859 the fron- ment who allies with a national in 1842. “They are the Saints of the Black Veil, and tiersman John Young Nelson could enemy to seek revenge; such are accounted the special favorites of Heaven.” casually (and inaccurately) assume, things don’t happen much A lot of projection was at work here. In upon meeting a Mormon painted these days. But depictions Davis’ words, readers “took pleasure in imagin- like an Indian, that the latter was one of political ineptitude and ing the variety of sexual experiences suppos- of the church’s “fanatical renegade- national security theater are edly available to their enemies. By picturing destroying angels, whose mission was unfortunately timeless. themselves exposed to similar temptations, they to kill every white man not belong- —Ed Krayewski assumed they could know how priests and Mor- ing to the sect, and particularly those

mons actually sinned.” Bennett, he adds, had who were apostates.” Coriolanus

52 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 Those whose fears of the Danites Danite plot to force a woman into men. At night they crawl under your were grounded in more than mere an unwanted marriage. The most windows into the court, an’ I reckon rumors could point to a memoir writ- famous American yarn about Mor- into the house.” ten by the outlaw Wild Bill Hickman mon conspirators is probably Zane after he was arrested for murder Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), ‘Jesus Isn’t on the Ballot This Year’ in 1871. Hickman, who had been a book often credited with setting the In some places a fear took hold that excommunicated from the Latter-day mold of the formula western. Mormon ideas—and Mormon weap- Saints a few years earlier, claimed to Grey’s story is set in the wild ons—might find their way to the local have carried out several murders on country of Utah in 1871. Jane Wither- Indians. Meanwhile, in the face of Young’s orders. There’s no consensus steen, one of the book’s protagonists, constant harassment, the Mormons on how much of what he wrote was has been enmeshed in Mormon had started to identify with the accurate and how much was blame- society since birth. In theory, she Native Americans themselves. This shifting or braggadocio, but all of it occupies a high place in the commu- had its limits, though, as one group was incorporated into anti-Mormon nity: Her father founded the settle- of natives learned on September 11, lore. ment, and she is one of the town’s 1857. To see the hold that lore had on wealthiest citizens. But she refuses to It was the middle of the conflict the American imagination, read Mark marry an elder who wants her, and called the Utah War. The federal Twain’s 1872 account of an evening the consequences of that decision government thought the Latter-day supposedly spent with a Mormon demonstrate just how little autonomy Saints were plotting a rebellion. The assassin, a tale calculated to puncture she has. “Above her,” Grey writes, Mormons thought the feds, who the minutemen’s image as a sinister “hovered the shadow of grim, hidden, had dispatched more than 2,500 elite. “ ‘Destroying Angels,’ as I under- secret power.” troops to the region, were plotting to stand it, are Latter-day Saints who are The conspiracy, we soon learn, eliminate them. In that tense atmo- set apart by the Church to conduct doesn’t just lurk above her. Wither- sphere of mutual distrust, a group of permanent disappearances of obnox- steen finds traces of the secret power ious citizens,” Twain wrote in Rough- at every level of the social hierarchy; ing It. “I had heard a deal about these it isn’t an authority bearing down Mormon Destroying Angels and the on her so much as an all-enveloping dark and bloody deeds they had done, system that is almost impossible to and when I entered this one’s house I escape. Her friends inform on her, had my shudder all ready. But alas for and her ranch is haunted by spies all our romances, he was nothing but and assassins. Anyone is a poten- a loud, profane, offensive old black- tial betrayer. Withersteen’s servant guard! He was murderous enough, women “spied and listened; they possibly, to fill the bill of a Destroyer, received and sent secret messen-

but would you have any kind of an gers; and they stole Jane’s books A FundAmentAl Angel devoid of dignity? Could you and records, and finally the papers F r e e d o m abide an Angel in an unclean shirt that were deeds of her possessions. Why Republicans, Conservatives, and Libertarians Should Support Gay Rights and no suspenders?” Through it all they were silent, rapt By David Lampo By this time Mormon conspira- in a kind of trance.” Even apparently “A serious, thoughtful, and important analy- cies were a staple of popular culture. empty spaces are haunted. “There’s sis of gay rights and marriage equality from Dozens of lurid novels depicted no single move of yours, except when a conservative and libertarian perspective.” —Ted Olson, U.S. Solicitor Danite assassinations, church- you’re hid in your house, that ain’t General under President sanctioned white slavery, and other seen by sharp eyes,” a gentile friend George W. Bush June 2012 • 216 pages alleged LDS crimes. On the other warns Withersteen. “The cottonwood 978-1-4422-1571-9 • $19.95 • Cloth side of the Atlantic, the first Sherlock grove’s full of creepin’, crawlin’ men. eBook Available www.rowman.com | 800-462-6420 Holmes story, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Like Indians in the grass. When you

Coriolanus A Study in Scarlet (1887), featured a rode…the sage was full of sneakin’

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 53 Briefly Noted Mormons—it is not known whether they were the church with suspicion, but in the following Brigham Young’s wishes or acting culture wars of the late 20th century on their own—combined forces with a group they often found themselves fight- of Paiute Indians and slaughtered around 120 ing alongside the Latter-day Saints. unarmed migrants passing through Mountain “These people had never been in the Meadows, Utah, including about 50 children. same room before,” the anti-feminist Afterward the Mormon hierarchy tried to scape- activist Phyllis Schlafly told Richard goat the natives, claiming the assault had been Viguerie and David Franke in their committed by the Paiute acting alone. Evidently, 2004 book America’s Right Turn. “I’d a church that identified with the persecuted say, ‘Now, the person sitting next to red man wasn’t above appealing to anti-Indian you might not be “saved,” but we’re Nurse’s Little Helper prejudice. all going to work together to stop The fourth season of Nurse It was an awful act, and it shows that some [the Equal Rights Amendment].’ Get- Jackie, the Showtime TV series Mormons deserved a portion of the outrage and ting the Baptists and the Catholics starring Edie Falco as a super- fear that they inspired. But most of the conspir- to work together, and getting them competent emergency-room ing in Mormon country was open and basically all to work with the Mormons—this nurse with a fondness for pain benign: a concerted effort to construct a com- was something!” But work together pills, begins with her charac- munity from the ground up. Mormons built they did, because a socially conserva- ter in rehab. It is a thoroughly schools, temples, courts of arbitration, an elabo- tive Catholic or Protestant ultimately predictable outcome for a TV rate private welfare system, and a network of had more in common with a socially addict, except that Jackie Pey- cooperatives. These were the sort of voluntary conservative Mormon than either did ton’s drug-related problems organizations that Americans often celebrate, with the secular world or with the stem almost entirely from but they appeared to be entwined with civil religious left. the fact that the drugs she government in predominantly Mormon areas Today, 128 years after Idaho favors are legal only for doctor- out west, with the same figures dominating both barred Mormons from holding office, approved medical use. church and state. Sometimes they were more a Mormon bishop has a substantial Jackie is very good at her influential than the formal government. chance of becoming the next presi- job, which never seems to be This situation stoked still more fears of dent of the United States. And while compromised by her drug use subversion, and it led to some stunning restric- his candidacy has dragged the anti- except to the extent that she tions on the Saints’ civil liberties. In 1884 the Mormons out of the woodwork, their lies and cheats to get painkill- Idaho territory made it illegal for Latter-day angry rhetoric may be a sign of frus- ers (along with the occasional Saints to vote, hold office, or serve on a jury. trated impotence, not power. stimulant) and to cover up her Legislators invoked the standard anti-Mormon Just look at Robert Jeffress, who habit. Hence she invents inju- conspiracy theories, but lurking behind those in April endorsed the Romney cam- ries, deceives friends, swipes exotic charges were more ordinary resentments: paign. The pastor explained his deci- medication, and starts an ill- opposition to plural marriage, jealousy of the sion by quoting a friend: “Jesus isn’t advised extramarital affair with Mormon co-ops’ economic clout, and, above on the ballot this year, so we have to the hospital pharmacist. all, Republicans’ eagerness to disenfranchise a make choices.” That’s the same Rob- If Jackie could simply walk group that in Idaho voted overwhelmingly for ert Jeffress who embarrassed Rick into a store and buy the oxy- the Democrats. Perry last year by describing Rom- codone, hydrocodone, and The church’s road to respectability began ney’s faith as a “cult.” Evidently he amphetamine that help get her in 1890, when it renounced polygamy. During can overlook a little cultism when the through the day, those prob- the next couple of years its leaders dissolved alternative is another four years of lems would disappear. Which the People’s Party, a specifically Mormon politi- Barack Obama. r raises the question: Does cal group in Utah, and they pledged not to vote Jackie have a drug problem or a as a unit in Idaho, which helped persuade the Senior Editor Jesse Walker (jwalker@reason. com) is writing a history of American political prohibition problem? authorities there to restore Mormon liberties. paranoia for HarperCollins.

—Jacob Sullum Conventional Christians continued to regard Jackie Nurse

54 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 reason for NOOK Color.

reason magazine

Available at NOOK.com today.

NOOK Color is a trademark of Barnes & Noble, Inc. Briefly Noted Frederick Douglass, lass wrote to his old master, the Classical Liberal slaveholder Thomas Auld. It rings out repeatedly with the tenets of A fresh look at the political evolution of . “You are a man a great American and so am I,” Douglass declared. “In Damon W. Root leaving you, I took nothing but what belonged to me, and in no way less- The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pur- ened your means for obtaining an suit of American Liberty, by Nicholas Buccola, New honest living.” Escaping from slavery York University Press, 225 pages, $49 wasn’t just an act of self-preservation, Douglass maintained; it was an The Past of the Future In April 1865, as the Civil War was reaching affirmation of his unalienable natu- of Space its bloody climax, the abolitionist leader and ral rights. “Your faculties remained “Elevator to the Moon: Retro- escaped former slave Frederick Douglass stood yours,” he wrote, “and mine became Future Visions of Space” is a before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society useful to their rightful owner.” petite, uneven show hiding in and delivered a rousing speech entitled “What Douglass struck a similar note a back hallway at the massive, the Black Man Wants.” “The American people in his powerful 1852 speech “What quirky bar-and-art venue Arti- have always been anxious to know what they to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” sphere in Arlington, Virginia. shall do with us,” Douglass told the crowd. “I Evoking John Locke’s famous The exhibit offers 15 artists the have had but one answer from the beginning. description of chance to “create work that Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has emerging from man mixing his labor celebrates beautifully flawed already played the mischief.” In fact, he contin- with the natural world, Douglass ideas” from the 20th century ued, “if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, pointed to slaves “plowing, plant- about what the 21st would be let him fall.…All I ask is, give him a chance to ing and reaping, using all kinds of like. stand on his own legs! Let him alone!” mechanical tools, erecting houses” as The quality of the work var- To modern ears, statements like “let him proof that they too deserved the full ies tremendously. Dana Ellyn’s alone” and “do nothing” may sound suspi- range of natural rights. “Would you acrylic-on-canvas depiction of ciously libertarian. Frederick Douglass has long have me argue that man is entitled to jetpack-equipped astronauts been accused of harboring certain libertarian liberty? That he is the rightful owner zooming toward a glowing tendencies. University of Virginia historian of his own body?” Douglass asked his Space Jesus in Rapture Rock- Waldo Martin, for example, charged that Doug- mostly white audience. “There is not eteers, for example, is a crime lass’ “do nothing” rhetoric revealed an unfortu- a man beneath the canopy of heaven, against kitsch. nate “procapitalist bias” in his otherwise com- that does not know that slavery is But intrepid artonauts will mendable thinking. Yale University historian wrong for him.” be rewarded by Steve Strawn’s David Blight, meanwhile, has criticized Doug- three Space Invaders–inspired lass for preaching “a laissez-faire ouglass’s arguments against photo prints, where familiar bit- that echoed the reigning Social Darwinism of “Dslavery are, in a very impor- map Atari aliens become sinis- the day.” tant sense, arguments for liberalism,” ter shadows glimpsed through It’s true that Frederick Douglass simultane- writes Linfield College political sci- a haze of battle smoke and ously championed both civil rights and eco- entist Nicholas Buccola in The Politi- rain. Other highlights include a nomic liberty. But the proper term for that com- cal Thought of Frederick Douglass, his travel poster in which a friendly bination isn’t Social Darwinism; it’s classical engaging new study of the great abo- robot cruise ship captain bids liberalism. The central component of Douglass’ litionist. Taking seriously Douglass’ “Aloha” from Mare Tranquillita- worldview was the principle of self-ownership, dual commitment to both a “robust tis, the moon’s waterless Sea of which he understood to include both racial conception of mutual responsibility” Tranquility. equality and the right to enjoy the fruits of one’s and “the ideas of universal self-own- —Katherine Mangu-Ward labor. ership, natural rights, limited govern-

Consider the remarkable 1848 letter Doug- ment, and an ethos of self-reliance,” Artisphere. Courtesy Kiss. Kiss Bang, Bang Gun or The Love Gardner, Todd

56 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 Buccola offers a nuanced portrait that chafing under the paternalistic guid- The new book from the illuminates both Douglass and his ance of Garrison and other allies. FOX Business News Host place in American intellectual his- “Give us the facts,” one abolitionist tory. leader told him.“We will take care Born in February 1818 in Tucka- of the philosophy.” But as Douglass Government hoe, Maryland, to a slave mother and explained, “I could not always obey, Government CAN’T a white, likely slaveholding father, for I was now reading and thinking.

can solve our solve our Frederick Douglass escaped from It did not entirely satisfy me to nar- bondage at the age of 20, making his rate wrongs; I felt like denouncing

problems. way first to New York City, where he them.” problems… got married, and then to the whaling It wouldn’t be the last time Doug- port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, lass disregarded the misguided views where he changed his last name (he of his fellow activists. As Buccola had been known as Frederick Bailey notes, “throughout his development until then) and found a job loading as a political thinker, Douglass was ships. “I was now my own master— presented with a series of ideological a tremendous fact,” he later wrote. alternatives,” including the pacifist As far as Douglass was anarchism of Garrison, who said the concerned, the former only government he recognized was the “government of God,” and the slaves had been robbed, utopian socialism of John A. Collins, not just of the fruits of general director of the Massachusetts their labor but of their Antislavery Society, who believed very minds and bodies. “that private property was the root of all evil.” Douglass, Buccola observes, “The thoughts—‘I can work!…I have “consistently rejected these in favor no Master Hugh to rob me of my of liberalism.” earnings’—placed me in a state of independence.” ocialism was then becoming Within a year he was attending Sparticularly attractive to many abolitionist lectures and subscrib- New England reformers. Yet Doug- ing to The Liberator, the abolition- lass rejected the socialist case against JOHN ist weekly edited by William Lloyd private land ownership, saying “it Garrison, the country’s most famous is [man’s] duty to possess it—and to STOSSEL antislavery leader, who became a possess it in that way in which its friend and early mentor. Encouraged energies and properties can be made The New York Times to share his own remarkable story, most useful to the human family.” bestselling author and Douglass soon became a fixture on He routinely preached the virtues of Fox News commentator the abolitionist lecture circuit, cap- property rights. “So far from being a debunks the most sacred cow tivating audiences with his gripping sin to accumulate property, it is the of all: our intuition and belief account of the outrages he suffered plain duty of every man to lay up that government can solve and witnessed under the peculiar something for the future,” he told a our problems. institution. black crowd in Rochester, New York in 1885. “I am for making the best Pick up or download Yet as Douglass later explained in of both worlds and making the best your copy today! My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), the of this world first, because it comes second of his three autobiographies, first.” As Douglass’ glowing descrip- www.simonandschuster.com it didn’t take long before he started tion of his first paying job indicated,

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 57 Briefly Noted he also considered economic liberty an essential public education for African Ameri- aspect of human freedom. cans. But there is an important dis- Nor was Douglass a fan of organized labor. tinction between his justifications for Since most labor unions at the time excluded these programs and the arguments blacks from their ranks, while lobbying the gov- made today by advocates of welfare- ernment for exclusive privileges, Douglass jus- state liberalism. tifiably saw unions as yet another racist obstacle As far as Douglass was concerned, to black economic independence. As he argued the former slaves had been robbed, in his 1874 essay “The Folly, Tyranny, and Wick- not just of the fruits of their labor edness of Labor Unions,” there was “abundant but of their very minds and bodies. proof almost every day of their mischievous They were therefore entitled to some Water Wrongs influence upon every industrial interest in the serious compensation from the fed- Last Call at the Oasis is a slickly country.” eral and state governments that had produced but conventionally As for Garrison’s pacifism and anarchism, aided, abetted, and profited from liberal documentary about the Douglass thought them preposterous in the those crimes. So he wasn’t talking world’s ongoing “water crisis.” face of the state-sanctioned outrages perpe- about redistribution; he was talking The movie spends considerable trated under the slave system and later under about restitution—paid directly to the time and effort trying to con- the South’s incipient Jim Crow regime. “Yes, let victims. vince viewers that water access us have peace, but let us have liberty, law, and is a problem, across the globe justice first,” he declared on Memorial Day, ouglass also immediately recog- but also in the United States. 1878. “Let us have the Constitution, with its Dnized that the end of slavery did Proposed solutions, how- thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amend- not mean the end of racist govern- ever, are in short supply. Pacific ments, fairly interpreted, faithfully executed, ment abuse. In the aftermath of the Institute hydroclimatologist and cheerfully obeyed.” Civil War, the former Confederate Peter Gleick argues that it’s states began passing a series of laws, wrong for California to pursue A highlight of The Political Thought of regulations, and ordinances aimed fixes that might harm a com- Frederick Douglass is Buccola’s sharp analysis of at restricting or even eliminating the mon fish but fails to explain how Douglass’ belief in “social responsibility” new political, civil, and economic

why. Any solutions that do not shaped and informed his political judgments. rights enjoyed by African Americans, the Oasis at Call Last detail) (cover Douglass of Frederick Thought The Political come directly from the stan- “Douglass’s hope,” Buccola writes, “was that dard progressive playbook are men could be so devoted to freedom—the value summarily rejected. he identified as the center of the northern social Where property rights and system—that they would be moved to action on privatization are mentioned, behalf of their neighbors.” Unfortunately for it’s only to dismiss them. Mar- both Douglass and the country, things didn’t ket pricing for water—tradition- always work out that way, and his optimism ally a very useful way to ration diminished as he aged. valuable things we don’t want Buccola is slightly less persuasive when it to waste—goes unmentioned, comes to Douglass’ complicated relationship as do decades of labyrinthine to government power. Douglass “had a reform state-level distribution rules, liberal’s sensitivity to the ways in which social waste-encouraging subsidies, and economic inequality can undermine the and pricing controls that have promise of liberty,” Buccola argues. “As such, he contributed to water shortages defended an active role for the state to combat in the American West. inequality and promote fairness.” —Peter Suderman Douglass did defend an active role for the federal government, including subsidized land grants by the Freedmen’s Bureau and universal

58 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 including their right to vote, earn a living, and defend themselves from attack. Mississippi’s Black Code, for example, declared “that no freedman, free Negro, or mulatto…shall keep or carry firearms of any kind,” while reason Louisiana’s Black Code decreed that “every negro is required to be in the online store regular service of some white per- son, or former owner, who shall be responsible for the conduct of said negro.” These laws were enacted and enforced in blatant violation of the freedmen’s rights, although as Doug- lass acidly remarked in 1872, “The trouble never was in the Constitu- tion, but in the administration of the Constitution.” Douglass repeatedly urged the government, including the federal courts, to fulfill its basic con- stitutional responsibility to safeguard the life, liberty, and property of all citizens. Tragically, he met with very limited success. Which brings us back to Doug- lass’ famous statement that the gov- ernment should “do nothing” with Visit the new

Last Call at the Oasis at Call Last detail) (cover Douglass of Frederick Thought The Political black Americans. Obviously he didn’t reason store for mean do absolutely nothing. After all, t-shirts, sweatshirts, he favored the aggressive enforce- ment of federal civil rights legisla- mugs, caps, and tion. So what did he mean? more. Consider the way he phrased that statement on a different occasion. “Give the Negro fair play,” Douglass declared in 1893, “and let him alone.” That 1893 statement is Douglass’ entire agenda in a nutshell, a perfect distillation of Douglass’ classical liberal approach: protect individual rights, pay restitution for past crimes, reason.com/stuff and let black Americans get on with the business of seeking happiness as they see fit. r

Damon W. Root ([email protected]) is a senior editor at reason.

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 59 1776, All Over Again great nation grounded in a sincere A 1969 musical about the shared belief in liberty must have Declaration of Independence been appealing to an American pub- is back lic stunned in the aftermath of the 1968 election, in which Alabama Katherine Mangu-Ward segregationist George Wallace took 13.5 percent of the vote while Nixon 1776 debuted on Broadway in 1969, squeaked into office with 43.4 per- just as Richard Nixon was taking up cent. Such a message might seem residence in the White House. The eternal, but the show’s positive recep- show won a Tony for Best Musical tion has yet to be duplicated in the that year, beating out the naked hip- post-Watergate era. pie romp Hair, despite two aston- ishing facts: 1) there is a 30-minute he most famous song in a show stretch in the first act where no one Tfull of decidedly non-famous sings a note, and 2) it is a musical tunes is “Egg,” in which John Adams, about the Declaration of Indepen- Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin dence. Franklin squabble over the appropri- These Broadway versions of the ate avian emblem of the nation-to-be. Founders, plucked from their solemn They settle on Adams’ choice: the poses in John Trumbull’s famous por- eagle. But not until Franklin has put trait and forced to tread the boards, up a staunch case for the turkey, and are fractious ideologues floundering Jefferson a weak one for the dove. in a fudged timeline as they squabble (“We’re waiting for the chirp, chirp, their way through the summer of chirp / Of an eaglet being born,” they 1776 at Philadelphia’s Continental sing in unison. “On this humid Mon- Congress. The crusading John Adams, day morning in this / congressional Sherman Edward’s lyrics remind us incubator.”) over and over, is “obnoxious and dis- But the best song is actually liked.” A gloomy Gen. George Wash- “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men,” a ington sends dispatches from the quasi-minuet in which the conserva- front, whining (in rhyme!), “Is any- tive faction vows to dance only “to body there? / Does anybody care?” the right, ever to the right / Never Accusations of treason swarm like to the left, forever to the right.” The the flies John Hancock can’t shut up whole thing is horrifyingly anachro- about, and everyone complains about nistic; the political usages of left and the heat. (How many musicals could right have their origin in the National possibly have lyrics that revolve Assembly of the French Revolution 1947, naming a dozen screenwriters around the word humid?) The final of 1789, which took place many years as Communists. After the musical vote for independence is an act of after the events depicted in the show. hit the big time, the White House cowardice, not bravery, by a compos- But it wasn’t out of concern for his- requested a special showing, only to ite character who simply doesn’t want torical accuracy that the song was cut demand the removal of that right- to be remembered as the guy who by the time the show was made into a wing minuet, as well as the touch- put the kibosh on American freedom movie in 1972. ing “Momma Look Sharp,” sung from British rule. The film’s producer, Jack L. by a dying soldier. (As the Found- The idea that a bunch of vain, Warner, was a friend of Nixon and ers became increasingly human self-obsessed, and frequently rac- had testified before the House Un- and complex, common soldiers are

ist jerks could manage to forge a American Activities Committee in reduced to noble stereotypes.) Those 1776

60 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 White House demands resurfaced ilk as hypocritical schemers, more in locals. But who can say what drew when the film was in post-production line with the mood of a nation about them there, or what resonates more and Warner killed the song. It was to face up to the realities of Water- with the current climate: the musical restored in later laserdisc, VHS, and gate. The show that took the Tony spectacle of enemies coming together DVD releases. three years before couldn’t even man- to forge a new nation, or the bunting- But by the time the movie came age a Golden Globe, losing to Cabaret. draped box where Abraham Lincoln out, America was in no mood for a was shot? r lighthearted romp through American Now 1776 is back on tour. This spring history. Burr, Gore Vidal’s 1973 run- it came to the historic Ford’s The- Katherine Mangu-Ward ([email protected]) is managing editor of reason. away bestseller, offered a vision of ater in Washington, D.C., where the

1776 Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and their house was packed with tourists, not

reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 61 Tim Cavanaugh sor Zev Yaroslavsky came up with an MTA bus has an enforcer, a driver even smaller figure of 9,000 daily who collects the standard fare of riders. $1.50. Trains operate on an “honor system” in which fares are not col- Here you begin to see how the MTA is lected. Although the MTA claims to simultaneously increasing operating conduct occasional spot checks and costs, reducing operating revenue, lay heavy fines on fare cheats, its rail cutting service for working-class and revenue numbers suggest very few poor customers, and dismantling train riders pay. (The MTA is planning a functioning mass transit system, to add gating at rail platforms later all in the service of a fantasy that this year.) was pushed on an unwilling L.A. by Why would a public transit wealthy liberals. authority want to reduce its number Since 2009 the MTA has added of paying customers while adding eight miles of train service, at a capi- costly, inflexible capacity that is des- tal cost of about $2 billion. These new tined to be severely underused? Part How Rail Screws the Poor trains, the Expo Line and an exten- of the answer lies in the nation’s light As Los Angeles spends sion of the east-county Gold Line, rail obsession. New trains are being billions on light rail, transit carry a total of about 39,000 people added or planned in Austin, Cincin- use declines. a day. nati, Minneapolis, and other cities In the meantime, the cash- around the country. But L.A. train strapped authority radically reduced buffs have a special complex rooted The dirty secret of the Los bus service twice: It cut bus lines in the legend of the Pacific Electric Angeles County Metropolitan Trans- by 4 percent in 2010 and 12 percent rail system. portation Authority (MTA) is that it in 2011. These cuts were made even provides some of the finest public though buses move more than four According to Bradford C. Snell’s 1974 transit service in the country. With a times as many Angelenos as trains Senate Antitrust Committee report network stretching over 1,513 square do. In 2009 MTA buses carried about A Proposal for Restructuring the Auto- miles, the MTA runs a fleet of 2,723 1.2 million riders a day. Multiplying mobile, Truck, Bus & Rail Industries, buses every weekday, operates trains that by 16 percent, we can estimate the evolution of modern car-friendly over 87 miles of track, and carries more than 180,000 people had their Los Angeles was not a matter of more than 1 million passengers a service canceled while fewer than consumer choice or technological day. 40,000 had service introduced. improvement but a plot by General The authority’s newest service, Motors and Standard Oil to trans- the long-aborning light-rail Expo ot surprisingly, the result is that form L.A. from a “beautiful city of Line from downtown L.A. to Cul- Nfewer people are using mass lush palm trees, fragrant orange ver City, rides like a dream along transit overall in Los Angeles than in groves and ocean-clean air” into an its eight-mile route. Shortly after 2009 (about 5 percent fewer, accord- “ecological wasteland” with “palm the Expo Line opened in late April, ing to MTA statistics). This is a contin- trees…dying from petrochemical my colleague Scott Shackford and I uation of a long-term trend. Since the smog” and air quality equal to that found Expo Line riders unanimously MTA began rail construction in 1985, of “a septic tank.” This remarkably enthusiastic about the train. more than 80 miles of railroads have popular if historically dubious anti- Unfortunately, we also found very been built, but mass transit ridership rail conspiracy theory informed the few riders. Based on our counts and as a percentage of county population plot of the 1988 movie Who Framed calculations, we estimated total daily is lower than it was in 1985. Roger Rabbit? ridership could not exceed 13,000 Bus riders get screwed in another Using transit policy to right people. A few days after we rode the important way: We have to pay for a alleged historical wrongs salves the

rails, Los Angeles County Supervi- ride, while train riders don’t. Every consciences of well-heeled liberals, Colon Terry

62 | reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 provides plenty of room for doling ing stops. In 1996 a coalition led cuts, adding that his group is launch- out political pork, and pleases plan- by the left-wing Bus Riders Union ing “a national campaign to get ning utopians (including Los Angeles successfully sued the MTA, alleging President Obama to overturn the FTA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa) who discrimination in transit decision and restore 1 million hours of bus want to remake Angelenos into hub- making. The action was based on the service.” centered, vertically living New York- questionable idea that subsidized I wish the Bus Riders Union well, ers. But L.A.’s further left recognizes public transit is a human right, but but this civil rights bean counting something the Democratic donor it had a good effect: Under a 10-year wouldn’t be necessary if the MTA Why would a public transit consent decree, the authority beefed were even minimally responsive to up its bus service and saw rider- market stimuli. To spend billions authority want to reduce ship increase. That ended in 2006, on infrastructure and end up with its number of paying and bus service since then has been fewer people using mass transit is an customers while adding declining. So has overall use of mass absurd result on its face. Light rail costly, inflexible capacity transit. does not reduce smog, fight global warming, or serve the taxpayers. It that is destined to be he Federal Transit Administration does not, as rail buffs claim, “get peo- severely underused? T(FTA) in April ordered the MTA to ple out of their cars.” It is just another base does not: Poor people get the review its recent service cuts to find perverse dream from the ivory tower, short end of these grand schemes. “unjustified disparate impacts, or one that vanishes when it hits the Bus riders are overwhelmingly justified disparate impacts that may street. r poor and working class. As a regular be mitigated through an alternative.” rider I can attest that often the only Bus Riders Union co-founder Eric Tim Cavanaugh ([email protected]) is managing editor of reason online. English spoken on an L.A. bus is the Mann says the FTA instead should robotic voice that announces upcom- have ordered L.A. to undo its service EXIT STRATEGY: Shouldn’t you have one?

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reason | Aug./Sept. 2012 | 63 Artifact Photo/National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Geospatial-Intelligence Photo/National AP Scale model of the Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound where Osama bin Laden Laden bin Osama where compound Pakistan, the Abbottabad, of model Scale was killed.

Bin Laden’s Doll House 2011 raid that killed the terrorist since at least last October. It was put leader. (Special Forces also reportedly on display in the Pentagon in May of Peter Suderman practiced operations in a full-scale this year. Imagine playing with your toy sol- mock-up of the compound.) “It really puts it into perspective diers in this: a 1/84th scale miniature Made of clay, Styrofoam, and how large the compound actually is, model of Osama bin Laden’s Abbot- other materials, it was constructed or was, sorry, because it no longer tabad, Pakistan, compound made based on satellite imagery gathered exists,” Pentagon spokesperson Erica by a team of staff model makers at by U.S. intelligence agencies. It fea- Fouche told the Agence France- the National Geospatial Intelligence tures a wealth of tiny details, includ- Presse news service. The compound Agency. ing a Hot Wheels–sized red moving was destroyed by Pakistani authori- The table-sized model, which van parked out front and true-to-life ties after the raid. r measures one inch for every seven foliage in the compound’s inner feet of real-world compound, was courtyard. Peter Suderman ([email protected]) is a senior editor at reason. built over six weeks to help train U.S. The model, which is only one of forces in preparation for the May several copies, has been declassified

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