This Noble Land: My Vision for America

by James A. Michener

  Since the takeover of so many governments followed more or less the same pattern, it is possible to codify the common principles governing the behavior of the young rebels:

  They have all been motivated by a fierce patriotism and a determination to protect their nation, but it is noteworthy that Napoleon was not a native-born Frenchman nor Hitler a German.

  The idealistic young colonels all want to guide their nations back to some dream period when a moral type of life prevailed. They are infected with nostalgia and deluded as to what the ‘purer’ former life had been. But they persist in their dedication to the past and are determined to turn back the clock till the days of supposed glory are recovered.

  They are instinctively afraid of intellectually superior people and take savage steps to control or even eliminate them.

  They cannot trust artists and take harsh steps to discipline them or forbid them to practice their skills.

  They loudly proclaim that they support and defend family values—whatever the young men consider them to be—but their actions are almost always destructive of the family.

  For reasons I do not understand but whose bad results I have often witnessed, they seem to be afraid of women, especially young women at the height of their sexual allure, and they pass drastic edicts aimed at bringing them under control. Women do not prosper in the revolutions; the Nazi prescription for a woman’s life was ‘Kirche, Kinder, Küche’ (church, children, kitchen).

  In lands governed by Muslim law the young colonels enact the most repressive rules, severely enforcing old and outmoded religious laws against women that previous and more liberal governments had relaxed. In many countries the women must return to the veil that covers their faces in public; others have been chastised for driving their own automobiles; and in the worst instances, some women have been executed for not adhering to the new rules.

  Regarding religion, the young colonels are apt to be ambivalent. They say they subscribe to the most conservative forms of worship but they do not treat organized religion kindly. They demand that it serve as an agency of the new state, not as a protector of human values.

  Sad to say, the revolutions usually deteriorate in purpose so that thousands and even millions of lives are lost. The awful example of this in recent times was the murder of thousands of intellectuals and liberals by the young colonels of the Argentine takeover. The killings in Algeria have also been persistent and gruesome.

  Because of their association with civil leaders, most of whom happen to be wealthy, the colonels seem almost to worship persons with large fortunes, and the new laws they initiate invariably favor the wealthy and penalize the poor. Even in the few cases in which the colonels seriously intend to better the conditions of the poor, they wind up favoring the rich.

  Human nature being what it is, I would expect such revolts by young colonels to occur in many nations through the foreseeable future, and I suppose that most of them will follow the traditions of the past. Young conservatives will always want to lead their nations back to the past days of a simpler life, a more rigidly patriotic citizenry and a sense of discipline as defined by themselves. I view the 1994 congressional election as a sweeping victory of the young colonels, American style.

  A major and vitally important difference between the Republican young colonels and their European and South American counterparts is, of course, that the victorious Republicans have been legally elected to their present positions of power. Nevertheless, they have been leading a revolution. They are an American phenomenon, brash young neophytes eager to throw their weight around despite their lack of political experience. They have sent an overwhelming message that they are dissatisfied with American political life as it is being conducted. These young white males are fearful that the dictates of affirmative action are giving minorities and women an advantage over them, and they want to reverse all aspects of special legislation protecting the employment of these groups. And among the public there is a general dissatisfaction with liberals, regardless of what the liberals propose. The message of antigovernment fury was so strong and so decisive in the 1994 elections that no one could miss its significance.

  The young Republicans leaped into the fray with breathtaking speed, completing in their first six months in power what a more conservative and thoughtful legislative body would have required a year and a half to enact. The victorious young colonels quickly presented and passed in the House of Representatives what they termed a Contract with America, and the nation had to acknowledge that from now on things were going to be different. The social revolution that Franklin Delano Roosevelt engineered in 1932 and that Lyndon Johnson extended in the 1960s was largely to be scuttled with the major result that citizens at the lower end of the economic hierarchy would be deprived of many of their aid programs while those at the upper end would watch their fortunes grow.

  Even though some of the provisions of the Contract with America passed by the House of Representatives have already been stalled in the Senate or vetoed by the president with little chance of acquiring a two-thirds override of the presidential veto, it is worthwhile to discuss the provisions here. The Contract represents a philosophy—a sometimes dangerous, self-serving philosophy—held by a large number of our citizens and congressmen. Even those provisions that have already been rejected could possibly be resurrected if the Republican Party increases the size of its majorities in Congress or if the Republicans gain possession of the Oval Office.

  The contract, drafted under the supervision of Congressman Newt Gingrich, is divided into two parts. The first contains recommendations that can be imposed upon Congress without the passage of an act or the signature of the president. Some of these are housekeeping measures that everyone applauds, such as requiring Congress as a body and congressmen individually to obey all the laws that apply to the rest of the nation. Who could object to that? Other proposals curtail the cumbersome committee system. I and probably many other Americans were pleased to see these rules put in effect during the early days of the Republican revolution. But two other rules these young colonels tried to impose without formal passage of a bill gave me trouble. They advocated a three-fifths majority vote before any tax could be increased, and they wanted to discipline our budgetary process by zero baseline budgeting requiring justification each year, without factoring in inflation. Neither of these proposals has become law yet; both are flagrant attempts to curtail taxation and balance the budget, not so much for their intrinsic value but rather to protect the wealthy against taxation and ensure they can retain ever larger percentages of their growing fortunes.

  The real body of the contract, the second half, outlines specific proposals, called Acts, that require approval by both houses of Congress and signature by the president. Again there are elements in the contract that a majority of the voters could probably endorse. The ones I have supported or could support if they were well drawn are the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which included giving the president line-item veto power; the Family Reinforcement Act, designed to strengthen family ties; and the National Security Restoration Act, giving the United States control of U.S. troops when serving under United Nations commanders. Unfortunately this last proposal includes a recommendation that we restore the ‘essential’ parts of our national security funding ‘to strengthen our national defense and maintain our credibility around the world.’ This is a euphemism for ‘unlimited spending on the military to be paid for by termination of social services to the public.’ Extreme caution should be exercised to avoid that unwise choice.

  On a more positive note, the president has now been given the power to veto ridiculous or improper line items in a larger budget bill. Most modern presidents, Democrat and Republican alike, have appealed to Congress for this line-item veto power, because such a power enables them to kill egregious pork-barrel inserts in otherwise solid bills and save huge sums of tax dollars.

  To strengthen family ties the Family Reinforcement Act includes three proposals: in a divorce, enfor
ce court orders handed down for the support of the children involved; offer tax incentives to any family that will adopt an abandoned child; and strengthen laws against child pornography. I would work to help pass each of those suggestions if they are brought before Congress again, but at this draft the tax credit for adoption and the legislation to collect child support payments have been vetoed as part of the balanced budget and welfare vetoes.

  Our congressional young colonels very sensibly—considering the pusillanimous behavior of international bodies—want no United States troops to be placed under the control of United Nations commanders. I approve, but must point out that during the war in the Pacific I watched as British, Australian and New Zealand troops fought side by side with us, often with heroic results, so I know it can be done. But I would not want our troops to be assigned as subsidiaries to a United Nations force unless we volunteer to place them under some acknowledged outstanding foreign commander of the caliber of Montgomery in the African desert, Zhukov in the rout of the Germans in Russia or the brilliant British air commanders who fought off Göring’s Luftwaffe.

  The young Republicans also propose a brief and attractive Common Sense Legal Reform Act, which involves ‘reasonable limits on punitive damages and reform of product liability laws to stem the endless tide of litigation.’ I was assured that the final act would also end the infamous ‘deep-pockets rule.’ It works like this: A product, clearly defective, has caused a damaging accident, and the question becomes ‘Who was guilty of this malfeasance?’ The trail of responsibility is easily determined from past records. ‘A’ manufactured the item, but he has no money to pay damages. ‘B’ was a retailer who sold the item, and he has deep pockets—he is rich. ‘C’ was the installer and did a poor job, but he is broke. ‘D’ inherited the item in a deal many years after ‘A’ made it, and so the entire burden of the case is thrown on ‘B’ and he must pay, primarily because he can afford to.

  I had a friend who was held culpable twenty-five years after he sold a piece of equipment to later dealers. He had the deep pockets; they did not, so he had to pay. That crazy practice ought to be abolished.

  When a lawyer friend read the conclusions reported above, he cautioned: ‘Personally, while I agree that many punitive damage awards have been ridiculous, I find this part of the contract little more than a protection of that twenty percent of the wealthy who own eighty percent of the country. It restricts the bottom eighty percent when they have been hurt in some way by the malfeasance of the top twenty percent.’

  I do not like the recommendation that we pass ‘Loser pays’ laws because, although it would make a litigant think twice before initiating a frivolous lawsuit, it would also make it almost impossible for a person with only moderate means to sue for damages to which he or she may be entitled.

  About several of the remaining acts in this second part of the contract I have serious doubts, and even considerable fear that wrong actions are being proposed. I do not like the Taking Back Our Streets Act, for it calls for a drastic cut in funds for the prevention of crime, for a comparable increase in money for the construction of ever more jails, and for more death penalties. Those are regressive steps; the emphasis of funding should be on prevention rather than on punishment. We already have more jails than a democracy should have, and it has been proved that the death penalty accomplishes little except the removal from the streets of a specific criminal—the influence on others appears to be minimal.

  The proposed Personal Responsibility Act is so draconian in its probable effect on the poor and especially on poor women with children that I find it completely outside the mainstream of American history in this century. I beg the brash young colonels to restudy this proposal and awaken themselves to the ugliness of its directives, which include: (1) Discourage pregnancy and illegitimacy by stopping welfare to minor mothers. How is the girl of fourteen going to support herself and her child? (2) Deny increased funds to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children for women who have additional children while on welfare. (3) Cut spending for all welfare programs. And (4) enact a tough two-years-and-off-the-welfare-rolls provision with stiff work requirements to promote individual responsibility; any such provision is blind to the realities of American life. In thousands of instances there are no jobs, and the deficiency is going to grow. It is folly beyond imagination to believe that a mother with no husband but two small children can ‘go out and find a job.’ Only one in five hundred will be able to swing this miracle, but she will be paraded on the evening news as proof that it can be done. The president has vetoed the welfare reform bill sent to him, and I pray that the two houses of Congress will reject any similar proposals in the future and instead tackle the heartbreaking problem that I identified earlier: how to create some kind of employment for citizens trapped in the bottom levels of our society.

  The proposal for congressional term limits in the Citizen Legislature Act finds me perplexed, and a personal note will explain why. I ran—and usually lost—for office five times, including a backbreaking campaign for Congress in 1962, and when I wasn’t running I worked for my party locally, statewide and nationally. From this experience I developed such a powerful addiction to politics that until my eighties I was involved with one government job or another. I am one of the few people you will meet who ever actually voted for the president of the United States; in 1968, when Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey, I chanced to be the presiding officer of the Pennsylvania Electoral College and on a sad, wintry day I cast my vote and the twenty-nine votes of Pennsylvania for Humphrey.

  So politics is in my blood, and in beating the campaign trails I met far more good men and women, Republican and Democrat alike, than bad. And out of some fifteen rough-and-tumble campaigns I developed several generalizations. The work of an election is performed by no more than a comparative handful of devoted men and women. At election time millions of voters support one party or another, but it is misleading to claim they are all members of the party; they are really temporary supporters of it. The active membership of the party as an ongoing force in our national life is probably not over sixty or seventy thousand for either party. The decisions are made by this inner core; more important, the hard work of an election is also done by them, and I am immensely appreciative of the contributions these faithful workers make. I am partial to politicians and would appreciate being considered one.

  I therefore cannot be supportive of any act that limits terms served in Congress, and I am gratified that both houses of Congress have failed to pass the necessary legislation to institute a constitutional amendment for such term limits. We need the guiding hand of the time-tested politician, and not long ago I was pleased when the Supreme Court decided that the individual states could not restrict the number of terms a man or woman could represent them in Congress. Limitation could be authorized only by an amendment to the Constitution. If a move is made in that direction I hope it will be soundly defeated. Congress needs battle-tested veterans.

  Even among the provisions of the proposed acts that I in general applaud, I nevertheless find several clauses that trouble me. In the Fiscal Responsibility Act, I am fearful of the recommendation that Congress must ‘live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.’ I find this to be a silly, crowd-pleasing bit of sophistry. I do not fear a reasonable amount of national debt, because being unafraid to gamble on the future is one of the traits of nations that rise to greatness. I would deplore seeing us, in the next dozen years, retrogress to a position in which there is no national debt, because to achieve this we would be forced to discard many functions that a nation should perform and, in so doing, deprive our citizens of services they have a right to expect. At this moment I am sitting in my office three or four blocks from a handsome, well-stocked city library. I am more fortunate than those in other areas where, because of budget cutbacks at all levels of government, the library doors are shut and the books do not circulate. I feel a wound in my heart each time I think of what the pe
ople have lost. Why in the world does a society exist except to provide libraries and hospitals and schools and parks and playing fields for its citizens? And it can safely go into reasonable debt to pay for them.

  To make my position clear, if I were somehow in charge of our nation, as soon as the proposed new laws diminished our public debt to zero, I would immediately borrow a hundred billion dollars to spend on our national infrastructure: repaved highways, rebuilt bridges, improved airstrips, state-of-the-art aviation guidance systems, new schools, enhanced transportation for the inner cities and all the other improvements we need to keep our country thriving. Nations on the upward climb are not afraid to go into debt to provide services; it is the nation that is sliding downward that insists on a perfectly balanced budget.

  In the otherwise fine Family Reinforcement Act, with its proposals regarding adoption and opposition to child pornography, occurs the frightening clause ‘strengthening rights of parents in their children’s education.’ This is code-speak for the move to issue tax-supported vouchers to families who wish to send their children to private schools, especially parochial ones. Any such move should be defeated, because one of the glories of American life has been our system of free public schools. Any move that weakens them, such as taking away substantial funds for their upkeep, will prove damaging to the nation. I said earlier that if I had children of school age I would probably send them to some superior private school and pay for their education myself. I would certainly not want to burden the taxpayers of our community to gain an advantage for my offspring.

  I find it difficult to understand the venom with which many of the young colonels view our nationally administered free-lunch program for schoolchildren and our distribution of food certificates to the impoverished elderly. Some critics who seek to minimize the programs or cancel them altogether grow livid as they rant about the waste, the socialism and the misguided humanitarianism in the programs, but as I remember the genesis of the free-food operations that have been so helpful to so many, they came into being largely because Midwestern farmers wanted a device whereby they could dispose of their surplus crops at a profit. Dairy farmers quickly saw that it could also be used to get rid of their unwanted surpluses, and others jumped on the bandwagon. It was an example of how, frequently, a move motivated by the crassest self-interest can be massaged until it produces an absolute good.