In May 1918, with America embroiled in the First World War, Iowa Gov. William Lloyd Harding dealt a blow against Germany. His Babel Proclamation — that was its title; you cannot make this stuff up — decreed: “Conversation in public places, on trains and over the telephone should be in the English language.” The proscription included church services, funerals and pretty much everything else.
Iowa’s immigrant communities that spoke Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and French objected to this censorship of languages of America’s wartime allies. Harding, however, said speaking any foreign language was an “opportunity [for] the enemy to scatter propaganda.” Conversations on street corners and over telephone party lines — Iowa telephone operators did the metadata-gathering that today’s National Security Agency does — resulted in arrests. Harding was ridiculed but Germany lost the war, so there.
The war validated Randolph Bourne’s axiom that “war is the health of the state,” but it killed Bourne, who died in December 1918 from the influenza epidemic it unleashed. Today, as another war is enlarging government’s intrusiveness and energizing debate about intrusiveness, it is timely to remember that war is not the only, or even primary, cause of this.
Or, more precisely, actual war is not the only cause. Ersatz “wars” — domestic wars on various real or imagined vices — also wound the defense of limited government. So argue David B. Kopel and Trevor Burrus in their essay “Sex, Drugs, Alcohol, Gambling and Guns: The Synergistic Constitutional Effects.”
Kopel and Burrus, both associated with Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute, cite the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Act, which taxed dealings involving opium or coca leaves, as an early example of morals legislation passed using Congress’s enumerated taxing power as a pretext. In 1919, the Supreme Court held that the law “may not be declared unconstitutional because its effect may be to accomplish another purpose as well as the raising of revenue.”
Its “effect”? The effect of suppressing the drug business obviously was its purpose. Nevertheless, the court held that even if “motives” other than raising revenue really explained Congress’s exercise of its enumerated power, the law still could not be invalidated “because of the supposed motives which induced it.” …
So, a 1934 law imposed a $200 tax on the making and transfer of certain guns. Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone complacently said that any act of Congress “which, on its face, purports to be an exercise of the taxing power” should be treated as such, without judicial inquiring into any “hidden motives” Congress had. “Hidden”?
Congress responded to this “abdication of judicial scrutiny” (Kopel’s and Burrus’s correct characterization) with the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, another supposed tax law actually designed not to raise revenue but to legislate morality by changing behavior. The 1951 Revenue Act taxed “persons engaged in the business of accepting wagers” and required them “to register with the Collector of Internal Revenue.” The IRS was becoming the enforcer of laws to make Americans better behaved, as judged by their betters in the federal government.
There have been equally spurious uses of Congress’s enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce. In 1903, the court upheld, as a valid exercise of that power, a law suppressing lotteries by banning the interstate transportation of lottery tickets. Dissenting, Chief Justice Melville Fuller argued that the power to regulate persons and property in order to promote “the public health” and “good order” belongs to the states.
Seven years later, the Constitution’s commerce clause was the rationale for the Mann Act banning the transportation of females for the purpose of “prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” Including, it turned out, noncommercial, consensual sex involving no unhappy victim.
Today, Congress exercises police powers never granted by the Constitution. Conservatives who favor federal “wars” on drugs, gambling and other behaviors should understand the damage they have done to the constitutional underpinnings of limited government.
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Christian Schneider observes Milwaukee’s political leadership, and is unimpressed by same:
Throughout the 1990s, former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist was fond of saying that without Milwaukee, Wisconsin would be Iowa.
(Someone also said without the Brewers — the team that gave up seven runs yesterday to a team that has been shut out as often as it has scored in its past 10 games — Milwaukee would be Omaha.)
It wasn’t so much a shot at Wisconsin’s neighbor to the southwest as much as it was a reminder of how crucial Milwaukee was to the state. And while many believe the city is under siege from Republican-led state government in Madison, it is instructive to look at the political wounds Milwaukee has inflicted on itself. It’s no accident that the city’s influence has been greatly diminished.
At one point, Norquist was one of the heavy hitters the city sent to Madison to represent its interests in the state Legislature. For decades, the city had a run of legislators who had experience, power and access. After serving as the Assembly co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee during the 1979 and 1981 sessions, Norquist moved to the state Senate, then served as Milwaukee mayor for nearly 16 years.
In 1981, Norquist’s Senate companion on Joint Finance was Jerry Kleczka, who would go on to represent Milwaukee in Congress. Other Milwaukee legislators of the time also are names that will stand out in Wisconsin history books. State Sen. Gary George was the second-longest serving co-chair of the budget-writing committee in state history before legal troubles derailed his political career. All told, the Joint Finance Committee has had 44 representatives from Milwaukee since 1911. (Madison and Racine are tied for second with 12.)
State Sen. Brian Burke likely would have become Wisconsin’s attorney general had he not been ensnared in the “caucus scandal” in the early 2000s. State Sen. Gwen Moore went on to serve in Congress; in the early ’90s, Wally Kunicki served as speaker of the Assembly; Shirley Krug would later serve as minority leader.
“They had heavyweights — they elected some of the smartest, savviest people in the whole Legislature,” said one long-time Republican legislator about the Milwaukee delegation. “They had people who knew how to make that system work — now they just have people who either collect a paycheck or their goal is to get on the news yelling about something.” (Consider State Sen. Lena Taylor, who recently compared Gov. Scott Walker to Adolf Hitler and called Senate Republicans the “Taliban.”)
In the past, Milwaukee legislators weren’t afraid to cut deals with Republicans when necessary. While Gwen Moore was frequently bombastic in public, she and Republican Assembly Speaker John Gard got along famously behind the scenes, often negotiating changes to welfare programs to benefit Moore’s constituents.
Yet through the primary process, Milwaukee Democrats have recently purged their ranks of many legislators who were willing to work with Republicans on bills to aid their home districts. In 2010, Chris Larson defeated moderate state Sen. Jeff Plale in a primary; in 2012, five progressive Democrats won Assembly primaries in the city, taking out moderate incumbents such as Elizabeth Coggs, Peggy Krusick and Jason Fields.
“Democrats wiped out anybody that could work with the other side to get things done,” said one GOP operative, noting that Fields had the most bills passed of any Democrat in the Legislature last cycle. His reward for helping his district? Being thrown out in a primary.
Gary George blames the new anti-school choice independent expenditure groups for driving moderates from the city’s ranks. “The battle lines in the city politically for legislative seats, election after election, is over choice,” George told me. “And the Democratic Party institutional money is just being almost like the politburo in going against anyone who is willing to work with the choice movement.”
George pointed the finger at groups such as the Progressive Wisconsin political fund, which is funded with hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors such as millionaire Lynde Uihlein, heiress to the Schlitz and Allen-Bradley fortunes. Uihlein has donated more than $1.5 million to progressive groups in the past four years, including groups working to unseat moderates in Milwaukee.
Others point not to the lack of leadership in the Legislature, but to the ineffectiveness of Mayor Tom Barrett in sticking up for the city. After Barrett lost in the state Legislature on residency for city employees, some critics said he spent all his time fighting that battle rather than focusing on other things that could have helped the city. Barrett “picks fights instead of building relationships,” said one GOP operative. “He lost poorly, and it hurt his ability to win anything back in the future.”
Part of it is that a lot of Wisconsinites look at Milwaukee as the source of nearly everything bad in this state. (Which is a narrow view, because by definition that view doesn’t include Madison.) Milwaukee is the capital of nearly every social pathology in this state, including crime, violent crime, what used to be called “broken homes” and rotten schools. Milwaukee has done nothing about any of that; the only solution to the rotten schools was the idea of a couple of Milwaukee Democrats, including Norquist, and Republicans who gained no political advantage by advocating for a better educational solution for Milwaukee children.
Norquist on his worst day will go down in history as a better mayor than Barrett on his best day. Several years ago I worked with someone well connected in Democratic circles who swore that Wisconsinites would love Barrett if they only knew him. Either my former colleague was wrong, or Barrett has turned out to be far smaller than Democrats thought he would be. Name one political issue on which Barrett has taken a courageous stand. The deplorable state of Milwaukee schools? He has done nothing but parrot the views of the Milwaukee teachers’ union, which is a major contributor to Milwaukee’s bad schools. (If Barrett asked legislative Republicans or Gov. Scott Walker today for legislation to disband the Milwaukee Board of Education and put MPS control in the Milwaukee mayor’s office, Walker would sign the bill Tuesday.) Crime? He is a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns (the title is a misnomer since by definition every gun used in a crime is an illegal gun), a group that includes the deceased Boston Marathon bomber as a victim of gun violence. Economic development? Barrett has nothing to do with it. The half-fast Milwaukee-to-Madison train doesn’t count, since nearly every other Wisconsinite objects to paying for something that will benefit them in no way.
Remember: politics is the art of the possible. Republicans have been in charge in Madison since the 2010 elections. To refuse to deal with the GOP in hopes of more favorable election results is not really serving your constituents. It is true that Wisconsin cannot expect significant economic growth without Milwaukee doing well too. It is also true that the traditional bigger-government solutions now being doubled-down-upon by the leadership of the People’s Republic of Milwaukee not only do not work, but do not stand a chance of becoming law.
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Proving that there is no accounting for taste, I present the number six song today in 1972:
Twenty years later, Billy Joel got an honorary diploma … from Hicksville High School in New York (where he attended but was one English credit short of graduating due to oversleeping the day of the final):
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Today in 1956, perhaps the first traffic safety song, “Transfusion,” reached number eight:
Today in 1975 was not a good day for Alice Cooper, who broke six ribs after falling off a stage in Vancouver:
Today in 1979, the Knack released “My Sharona”:
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Today in 1959, along came Jones to peak at number nine:
Today in 1968, here came the Judge to peak at number 88:
Today in 1985, Glenn Frey may have felt the “Smuggler’s Blues” because it peaked at number 12:
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Jason Wilde takes a few minutes with Wisconsin’s favorite quarterback, Aaron Rodgers:
Q: Brett Favre has made a lot of news lately, and you’ve talked a lot about it. Why did you decide to get involved in this? What was your thought process in not only doing the NFL Honors presentation but now continuing to be somewhat at the forefront, or being the catalyst, of this reconciliation?
Rodgers: Well first, I don’t want to be at the forefront of this. I really don’t think that’s my place. It’s the organization and Brett and retiring his number, bringing him back into the family … I just felt like I had the opportunity to bury anything that people thought had been between Brett and I. And it was an opportunity to see Brett, to talk, to reconnect beforehand and then to do something very public that was kind of making light of the situation in an atmosphere where many people, when we were announced together, probably were very surprised that one, we were on stage together, and two, that we both agreed to do it. So that was good, I think. The joke, it was almost an inside joke between Brett and I. The awkward comment was off the top of my head; it wasn’t contrived. But I think it was making light of the fact that getting to talk to him, we had patched things up, if anything needed to be patched up. I think it could and can set the tone and set things in motion for the organization and the fans – and Brett – being able to move forward. I think as the face of the franchise, it was important for me to show that I was ready to move on, and hopefully everyone else can as well.
Q: You were the one caught in the middle, though, during the summer of 2008. And we have to be careful about revisionist history here, in terms of your relationship with him when you were his backup. Did you need to hear something from him – “I’m sorry that I put you through that, that wasn’t fair to you,” something to that effect? And did you get it?
Rodgers: Well, the stuff that we talked about I’m going to keep between Brett and I. But I think that we’ve all just moved past it. We’re 4 1/2 years on the other side of that. A lot has changed around here, obviously. We’ve been able to have success as a team, I’ve been able to have some success individually. I’m very, very secure with the stuff we’ve accomplished here. And proud of it. And I’m able to give the respect that Brett deserves for the many years that he played at a high level here and what he accomplished here. This league is a league that doesn’t wait around for people. It’s a tough league; guys are here one day and gone the next. I’ve seen a lot of friends go on to different teams or go on to a different profession. And change is a constant in our business. We made a change four years ago, five years ago, but Brett had an incredible career here. It’s time to bring him back and retire his number here before he goes into Canton.
Q: Let’s talk about your contract. What does $110 million mean, exactly? We throw these numbers around with professional athletes’ contracts, but for normal people trying to pay their mortgage and put their kids through college, that kind of money unfathomable. Does it blow you away?
Rodgers: Yes, it’s humbling and silly at times to think about it. But money doesn’t change people, I don’t think. I think it highlights characteristics in your personality that maybe weren’t so visible when you didn’t have as much. So I’ve tried to remember that and stay true to who I am as a person and as a teammate. The guys have been great. There’s jokes every now and then, but I’m trying to be the same person in the locker room that I was when I was a backup and working on the scout team. It gives you an extra responsibility that you take care of the people that are important to you and realize that you have an opportunity to make an even bigger difference in your community and in your world. …
Q: In any way is the contract a burden? Do you worry about justifying the contract?
Rodgers: No, I don’t think it’s a burden. You know, I’ve felt like I’ve had to justify myself every year, so this is nothing different. I wouldn’t look at it as a burden. When they drafted me, I wanted to prove I was worthy of being a first-round draft pick. When they named me the starter, I felt like I had to prove that I was worthy of being a starter. When we went 6-10 the first year, I felt like I had to prove that I belonged in this league and we could get to the playoffs. When we didn’t win in the playoffs (in 2009), I had to prove that I could help this team win a playoff game. When we won a Super Bowl, I had to prove that it wasn’t a fluke, that we could have another good season. There’s always going to be critics and doubters out there, and it’s about finding your inner motivation, because that’s what successful people can do.
Q: So the world-famous chip on Aaron Rodgers’ shoulder hasn’t gone anywhere? You haven’t made it?
Rodgers: I’m very self-motivated. We’ve talked enough about the chip. …
Q: People who’ve been married a long time always say that the key to a long, successful marriage is that both people work at making the relationship grow, even after years together. This is now your eighth year with Mike McCarthy. That’s a long time. How do you view your relationship, and how do you grow it and strengthen it? Because there’s been some ups and downs.
Rodgers: Well, I think it has grown. I think one thing that did a lot for us was starting to meet once a week back in 2010, and spending time talking together – about football, about life. I think when you really understand a person off the field, you can better get along with them on the field. I think that’s done a lot for us. You know, he leads by example – in the way he sets up the schedule and practice, a game plan. That’s how he gets the respect from the guys. And he gets more respect from me when he shows me he trusts me by allowing me to have a bigger input on plays at the line of scrimmage or have a bigger voice in the meeting room. And I think that does a lot for the relationship. I think trust goes both ways. We’ve played a lot of football together, been around each other for a long time – me around him as a young head coach, and him around me as a young player. And now, we’re old, grizzled veterans and it’s been fun to see how both of our lives have changed on and off the field, and I think there’s nothing but good things ahead.
Q: He’s said before that he believes conflict is good because it leads to growth. Did you two see your relationship grow after you screamed at him for throwing that challenge flag in Minnesota? I don’t know how you view how you reacted to that, but it was a very emotional reaction.
Rodgers: Yeah, it was. That was definitely a conflict and we grew from it. And now, I think we can both laugh about it. Well, I laugh now. He’ll be able to laugh about it in the future, I think. -
Today in 1982, Paul McCartney released “Take It Away”:
Birthdays today start with the great Lalo Schifrin:
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One of the most vile things any American has ever said is the phrase “the personal is political,” the title of a 1969 essay by feminist Carol Hanisch.
That is not merely because of the implication in Hanisch’s essay that everything bad in a woman’s life is men’s fault and/or society’s fault. Sonny Bunch explains the other reason:
Whenever I touch on what I find worrisome about the politicized life—here, here, and here, for example—the most common retort is “So? It’s like, free speech man. I’m allowed to say I disagree with people. Boycotts are just capitalism.” That sort of thing. And it always leaves me shaking my head at how thoroughly they have managed to miss the point.
Look: No one is telling you that you can’t boycott people who vote a way you don’t care for. No one’s telling you it should be illegal for you to say you won’t support someone because they dared disagree with some stance you have decided is really super serial. What I am saying is that engaging in such behavior—politicizing every aspect of your life, allowing politics to determine your every move, and judging everyone you meet online and in person by how stridently they agree with the positions you support—is immensely, horribly destructive to the very fabric of our society. It inspires mistrust, hate, and fear. It tears apart the polity. And a polity torn asunder is a weak one indeed. A house divided, and all that.
Bunch quotes Elizabeth Scalia …
I recently received the following message from a stranger: “So basically, the ‘orthodox Catholic’ game you all play is just that . . . a game?” It was in reference to a Catholic man with whom I am friendly, and like very much. She had apparently read on social media that this man was planning to marry another man.
My friend had never “come out” to me, and—call me old-fashioned, or call me incurious—it had never occurred to me to ask, so the wedding plans were mildly surprising. But reading the email I thought, “Yes, so? What does this woman want me to do? Should I now hate him? Am I supposed to ‘un-friend’ him (that ridiculous term) or even publicly denounce him in order to demonstrate sufficiently ‘orthodox’ Catholic bona fides for her satisfaction? Is that what she wants?”
Well, I couldn’t do that. I like this man. Every exchange I have ever had with him, in person or online has been pleasant, very kind and sweet-natured. The world needs all the pleasant, kind and sweet-natured people it can get, and I wasn’t going to give one up in order to prove myself to some scold I didn’t even know.
… and adds:
In other words, a woman had taken it upon herself to write up a stranger and demand that she denounce a friend in order to prove her purity. Sans an affirmation of righteousness, how could this poor wretch allow Scalia into her life? How could she enjoy Scalia’s writings on PRISM or pet dogs or Bobby Kennedy if she didn’t first publicly shame this awful gay for getting married?
Bunch also quotes Rod Dreher:
What a strange culture we live in, in which people are expected to approve of everything those they love believe in and do, or be guilty of betraying that love. I have friends and family whose core beliefs on politics, sexuality, religion, etc., are not the same as my own, and it would not occur to me in the slightest to love them any less because of it. I hope it would not occur to them to love me any less because they don’t agree with me. People are somehow more than the sum of their beliefs and actions.
Growing up in the Deep South is good training for developing the kind of conscience that can love sinners despite their sin. Every younger person, white and black, knows at least one old white person who holds immoral views on race, but who is also, in other ways, a kind, generous, and upstanding person. Are we to condemn them wholesale for their moral blindness on this one issue? How fair is that? More to the point, how truthful is that, given that all of us are morally blind in one way or another, and depend on the mercy of others, hoping that they will love us and accept us despite our sins, failings, and errors. Once you start pulling at that thread, and deciding who you are and aren’t going to love and live in relationship with because they’ve transgressed an important moral boundary, who knows where it will end?
Exhibit A in this overemphasis on politics is Wisconsin in the past two years of Recallarama. (The disease that infests the People’s Republic of Madison extended to the entire state.) Businesses whose employees dared to contribute money to Gov. Scott Walker or Republicans were boycotted. And then they were “buycotted.” Friendships ended over a vote by politicians. Families, at least extended families, found that state politics, of all things, needed to become a taboo topic. As I’ve written before, Recallarama became so nasty that I am honestly surprised no one was killed by the end of the 2012 elections.
The latest example was the appointment, and then de-appointment, last week of UW–Platteville student Josh Inglett as one of the two students on the UW System Board of Regents. Inglett’s appointment was rescinded after conservatives discovered that Inglett had signed one of the gubernatorial recall petitions, even though, as later reported, he apparently didn’t vote in the gubernatorial recall election.
Independent of whether or not a governor has the right to appoint people who actually represent his points of view (he does), and independent of whether or not the Walker administration thoroughly vets its appointees (apparently not), and independent of whether or not this is definitive proof that government run by either party is far too large (it is), we appear in this state to have reached the nadir, even months after the end of the Recallarama Cycles of Elections, of tolerance of political points of view that don’t match our own. Comrade Soglin of the People’s Republic of Madison is trying to create a blacklist of would-be contractors to the city who fail to hew to the liberal line. Are “Recall Walker” bumper stickers still found on the backs of cars out of owner laziness or spite?
Bunch concludes:
What madness is this? How can we expect to have a fully functioning society if we spend all of our time adjudicating whether or not the people we read and the culture we consume is of the correct political persuasion?
This is a horribly corrosive state of affairs. And, I fear, it’s not going away any time soon.
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The National Journal’s Ron Fournier:
There is a common element to the so-called Obama scandals—the IRS targeting of conservatives, the fatal attack in Benghazi, and widespread spying on U.S. journalists and ordinary Americans. It is a lack of credibility.
In each case, the Obama administration has helped make controversies worse by changing its stories, distorting facts, and lying.
The abuse of trust may be taking a toll on President Obama’s reputation.
A CNN/ORC poll of 1,104 adult Americans June 11-13 shows the president’s job approval rating at 45 percent, down 8 percentage points in a month.
Among young voters, only 48 percent approve of the president’s performance, a 17-point decline since the last CNN/ORC poll. These are the president’s most loyal supporters, and the future of American politics. …
Voters don’t judge their leaders on the basis of one or two policies, and their decisions often seem at odds with what elites consider to be their “self-interests.” Especially when it comes to the presidency, Americans tend to trust their guts, and in Obama’s case, lately, something doesn’t feel right. Can I trust this guy?
A month into Obama’s presidency, 74 percent of Americans answered “yes,” saying the terms “honest and trustworthy” applied to him. As you would expect, the percentage dropped a few months later but had remained steady at about 60 percent since November 2009, according to CNN/ORC.
This month, only 49 percent of Americans say Obama is honest and trustworthy. That is a 9-point drop since May 17-18. …
Obama can take solace in the fact that the CNN/ORC survey is just one poll. Others may show that his credibility has not slipped, although Democratic pollsters tell me privately the CNN/ORC findings reflect their own.
If this poll is part of a trend, Obama still may be able to recover. But he would need to take immediate steps to show accountability, transparency, and credibility.
No more slow-walking the truth as the White House did with the cause of the Benghazi attacks and with the names of West Wing officials notified about IRS targeting.
No more lies, such as the IRS claiming for months that the targeting did not take place, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper denying the existence of the NSA programs weeks before they were revealed.
No more doublespeak such as the president earnestly claiming, “Your duly elected representatives have consistently been informed” of the NSA programs. He knew that wasn’t quite true, or should have known.
Obama needs to take action, too.
The IRS scandal needs to be aggressively investigated, with the seizure of White House and Obama campaign e-mails as well as interviews, under oath, with members of Obama’s team. Those responsible for the abuse must be punished.
The USA Patriot Act needs to be debated and amended, and the public needs to be part of that debate.
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Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 