Windsor Mann's Blog, page 2

Winning Isn't Everything

Nothing instills credibility like conceding defeat. As Al Gore
proved after his 2000 concession speech, there's something lovable
about a loser.

This even applies to undemocratic rulers, who have a lot to lose
from winning elections. Consider two wannabe tyrants -- Venezuela's
Hugo Chavez and Russia's Vladimir Putin -- who emerged from
national elections this past week. The victory of Putin's United
Russia party only underscored Putin's illegitimacy, whereas
Chavez's narrow defeat achieved just the opposite effect.

Losing the constitutional referendum allowed Chavez to win in
the world court of public opinion. Even skeptics took delight in
seeing that freedom isn't totally dead in Chavez country. President
Bush said Venezuelans had made "a very strong vote for democracy,"
which is an important admission: it acknowledges they had the
freedom to choose it.

Had it passed, the constitutional referendum would have allowed
Chavez to serve as president for life, declare arbitrary and
indefinite states of emergency, ban human rights groups, and build
a society based on "socialist, anti-imperialist principles" --
traditional components in anti-American repression.

Chavez framed the election in nationalist terms. "Whoever votes
'yes' is voting for Chavez," said Chavez, "and whoever votes 'no'
is voting for George W. Bush." By a (supposedly) narrow margin,
Venezuelans chose the latter. Like the Russians who inexplicably
chant "Rocky" at the end of Rocky IV, Venezuelans opted
for an American devil over a homegrown savior. Indeed, Chavez was
"humiliated by his own people," said the Daily Telegraph.

Paradoxically, this humiliation has gained him newfound
respectability. "He proved his democratic credentials by accepting
an electoral defeat," said Bart Jones, author of Hugo!: The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to
Perpetual Revolution. Losing gives Chavez something no
victory could have possibly bestowed: a sense of legitimacy. He
somehow would have seemed less authentic had he won, because
dictators always win. By admitting defeat, Chávez
proves that democracy still exists in Venezuela and thereby
mitigates concerns about his authoritarian designs. "There is no
dictatorship here," he can now boast.

As Chavez's defeat generated sighs of relief, Putin's triumph
brought gasps of despair. The West reacted to Russia's
parliamentary elections with heightened distrust of Russian
"managed democracy."

Though Putin has ruled out serving a third presidential term, he
says the win gives him the "moral right" to serve indefinitely as
Russia's de facto leader, as "father of the nation." Putin is a
popular figure in Russia, which makes it even weirder that he would
rig the elections in his party's favor.

Things happened in Russia that just don't happen in normal
democracies. In Chechnya, voter turnout was a mind-boggling 99.5%
(578,039 out of 580,918 registered voters participated). Numbers
like these are unthinkable in America; such political absolutism is
typically only found in the lands of the unfree. Lilia Shibanova,
head of the only independent Russian vote-monitoring group,
said the high turnout numbers "only show that
electoral laws were violated."

Western governments are similarly skeptical. "The election was
not fair and failed to meet standards for democratic elections,"
concluded the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
and the Council of Europe in a joint statement. A German government
spokesman said flatly, "Russia is not a democracy. The elections
were not free, not fair and not democratic." The results, said the
Czech Foreign Ministry, "will always cast a shadow over the future
lineup of the Russian parliament." Translation: the Russian
government is illegitimate. See what winning does for you?

Dimwitted despots are convinced that holding and winning an
election or two is all it takes to earn a pass from the West. But
if you look at the record, their subterfuges rarely succeed.

In October 2002, Iraq held an election. The ballot contained
only one question: "Do you agree with Saddam Hussein's continued
rule?" Of the 11,445,636 eligible voters, every single one of them
voted "yes" -- a minor improvement over the 1995 election, when the
Iraqi leader received a meager 99.96% of the vote. So sure of the
outcome were the Iraqi authorities, they declared the day a
national holiday even before all the votes were tallied.

The ploy failed -- badly. White House press secretary Ari
Fleischer said it was "not a very serious vote, and nobody places
any credibility on it." "It is not even worthy of our ridicule,"
added State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Sure it is, especially when you consider the explanations given
for Saddam's landslide. "Someone who does not know the Iraqi people
will not believe this percentage, but it is real," argued Izzat
Ibrahim, vice chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council.
"Whether it looks that way to someone or not, we don't have
opposition in Iraq." Of course, this claim had the plausibility
rating of a Baghdad Bob horoscope.

"This is a unique manifestation of democracy, which is superior
to all other forms of democracy," asserted Ibrahim.

There's nothing unique about dictatorships masquerading as
democracies. When elections were held in North Korea in 1962, the
reigning Workers' Party won by a 100% vote. Even in its less
menacing forms, this kind of nouveau riche democracy -- where
everyone participates, as an act of national braggadocio ("Hey,
look at us!"), and everyone agrees -- is the antithesis of
democracy. Dictators know they have to feign popular support to
maintain any sense of legitimacy. However, their mistake is in
overachieving; they fail by succeeding too much. They think the
greater the number of votes supporting them, the more conclusive
the evidence of democracy and therefore of their legitimacy. But
the truth is just the opposite.

Voter neglect is a sign of democratic health. Not caring about
politics doesn't mean the system is broken; usually, it indicates
things are just fine.

A key ingredient in democracy is imperfection. Real existing
democracies don't (and can't) produce the sort of unanimity that
dictatorships can achieve through force and intimidation. As a
result, huge victories can dispel a ruler's legitimacy more than a
narrow defeat ever could. The only thing worse than losing a rigged
election is winning one.

Some advice for dictators: Try losing. It will do wonders for
your image.

Flushed Out

"I am a woman, and I'm supposed to be here."

Imagine if you had to say that every time you entered a public
restroom.

One woman doesn't have to imagine. She says people mistake her
for a man on a daily basis. Perhaps understandably, she resents
having to explain her gender to strangers.

Khadijah Farmer, a 28-year-old lesbian, filed a lawsuit after
having to do just that. At issue is an incident that occurred at a
New York City restaurant on June 24. That night, Farmer and two
friends decided to grab dinner at Caliente Cab Company, a Mexican
restaurant in West Village. After placing her order, Farmer excused
herself to go to the (women's) bathroom. It was here that a male
bouncer walked in and, believing Farmer to be a man, told her to
leave the restroom and the restaurant immediately. Farmer explained
that she is a woman, but the bouncer did not budge. Farmer and her
friends were forced to pay for their appetizers and buzz off.

Farmer is being represented by the Transgender Legal Defense and
Education Fund (TLDEF), a nonprofit organization "committed to
ending discrimination based upon gender identity and expression."
The suit, filed at State Supreme Court in Manhattan, accuses the
restaurant of gender discrimination by engaging in sex stereotyping
-- treating Farmer adversely because she failed to conform to
societal norms concerning gender-appropriate behavior.

"If Khadijah were wearing pearls and white gloves, would the
bouncer have treated her like that?" asked Michael D. Silverman, executive director
and general counsel of TLDEF.

Answer: Probably not. That being said, she would have been safer
using the men's room.

Let me explain.

In 2002, New York City passed a law that allows people to use
restrooms "consistent with their gender identity or gender
expression." According to the "Guidelines Regarding Gender Identity Discrimination,"
gender identity is "an individual's sense of being either male or
female, man or woman, or something other or in-between." Other
cities have passed similar regulations. In San Francisco, the "sole
proof" of someone's gender identity is "that person's statement or
expression of their self identification." In other words, your
gender is whatever you say it is -- no questions asked. For the
sake of transgender rights, these cities trust but don't verify:
You can go into any restroom as long as you say you belong
there.

Discriminatory by definition, bathrooms let some people in and
exclude others. Anyone looking for segregation will find it in two
words: "Ladies" and "Gents." For transgender people, such
distinctions don't fit easily in their modus operandi. As a result,
they want to overturn the current lavatory system, which they
believe unfairly assigns people to one camp or the other.

"Must we label everyone?" asks an editorial in the New York Blade.

According to "Peeing in Peace: A Resource Guide for Transgender
Activists and Allies," a document recently published by the
Transgender Law Center (TLC), the answer is no. The document,
funded in part by George Soros's Open Society Institute, calls for
a "bathroom revolution": the elimination of "gender-segregated"
restrooms in favor of "gender-neutral" restrooms.

The road to gender-neutral commode is already underway at
American colleges and universities. Gender-neutral bathrooms can
now be found at Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, NYU,
Ohio State, UCLA, Rice, Williams, Tufts, the University of Vermont,
the University of Arizona, and many others. At the University of
Arizona, students can use whichever restrooms they want provided
their chosen facility matches their gender identity. At the New
College of California, you will find only "de-gendered" bathrooms,
marked by their lack of urinals and their door signs that read,
"Lots of people don't fit neatly into our culture's rigid
two-gender system" -- which is another way of saying, "Come
in."

The gender-blurring extends to other areas of campus life as
well. At Brown University, incoming freshmen fill out a housing
questionnaire that includes a "gender-neutral option." At Wesleyan,
students are asked to "describe your gender identity history"
rather than mark "M" or "F" when visiting the health services
clinic. Ohio State has amended its student affairs forms to
inquire, "Gender: M, F, self-identify: ______." At the University
of Oregon and the University of Utah (!), you can change your
gender on your official college record without actually proving
that your gender, biologically speaking, has in fact changed.

These are not rare or isolated examples. They're a natural
result of trying to accommodate students with "gender identity"
issues. And many colleges are trying. Right now, there are 96
colleges and universities that ban discrimination on the basis of
gender identity, which is 96 more than there were in 1995.

More and more people believe that "gender identity" deserves
legal protection. Currently, non-discrimination laws with
explicitly transgender-inclusive provisions exist in 92 cities and
counties in addition to 13 states and the District of Columbia,
according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's latest
figures. That's a total of 106 jurisdictions covering approximately
104 million people (37% of the U.S. population). Of those 106
jurisdictions, only 12 (11%) banned gender identity discrimination
prior to 1997. This means that 94 (89%) have gotten on board just
in the last ten years. That's quite a trend. In addition, Rep.
Barney Frank (D-MA) recently introduced a bill
that would make employment discrimination based on gender identity
a federal crime.

Despite these developments, very few people want to have this
discussion, which means that a bathroom revolution is unlikely to
gather much popular support outside of progressive habitats. Most
people like the system as it is; they want bathrooms to remain
places of one-gender rule, inaccessible to outsiders. The rules are
easy to understand: Go where biology leads you.

Not so in gender-neutral bathrooms. There, your inner sense of
gender, not your inner sense of nature, has the final call on
whether you are at the right place. No need to worry, however. If
you're ever confused, there's always one option: Just say, "I am a
______ and I'm supposed to be here."

Too Much Homework

America is in an affordable housing crisis. I know this because
Democrats say so. But rest assured. The Dems are on top of it.

On October 10, the House of Representatives passed a bill that
would set up a National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Who cares?
Normally, no one. But in this instance the Democrats seem to care
-- a lot. The program isn't important because of what it will do
but because of what Democrats think it will do. As one
Democratic congressman said, it "restores our nation's promise of a
decent home for every American family."

Democrats make no secret about what this means. Rep. Barney
Frank (D-MA), who sponsored the bill, readily admits, "The
Trust Fund will be the largest expansion in federal housing
programs in decades." It's a way "to get the federal government
back in the affordable housing production business," said Rep.
Maxine Waters (D-CA). It would allocate up to $1 billion per year
to construct or repair 1.5 million low-income housing units in the
next ten years. Anyone who's ever lived in a communist country can
vouch for the success of ten-year plans.

No matter how lovely the intentions, it's not the federal
government's job to build houses. Promising universal housing is
bound to disappoint. The Soviet Constitution similarly guaranteed
its citizens the right to affordable housing. Last time I checked,
that didn't turn out very well.

It's true that Democrats do not want to replicate USSR housing
policy. That would be too obvious. But they do want something
vaguely similar, which is for government to "make" housing
affordable (read: free) by decree. It's a simple idea, really. If
government can make housing affordable, then -- voila! --
people can afford housing.

It's not easy to oppose this. But such is the stigma that
plagues conservatives, who also hate health care and peace.
Democrats have long had the advantage on the rhetorical front in
domestic politics. Now that they are back in power, they are
exploiting this advantage at all costs -- to the taxpayers. "It has
been 17 years since the federal government last enacted a major
affordable housing production program," said Mrs. Waters. "The time
has long since passed to enact another one."

Are Democrats really concerned about housing, or are they more
interested in patting themselves on the back for a job well done?
Their rhetoric suggests the latter. One congressman has compared
the new program to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, saying it proves once
again that Democrats are on the right side of history. After the
bill was passed, Congresswoman Waters said it must be "a very
exciting day" for poor people because they finally "get a chance to
see their government responding to one of the most critical needs
in our society." Rep. David Scott (D-GA) declared, "It is us on the
Democratic side that are clearly responding to the needs of the
American people here."

But here's the thing: Who doesn't need affordable
housing? Everyone needs it, just as everyone also needs breathable
air, edible food and drinkable water. However, just because
something is universally needed doesn't mean it should be
collectively distributed.

The administration, to its credit, has threatened to veto the
legislation. As the White House's Office of Management and Budget
noted, the program is "redundant" and "duplicative," seeing that
another federal program, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program,
already does essentially the same thing on a $2 billion budget.
Furthermore, according to the Center for Community Change, there
are already 600 housing trust funds in cities, counties and states
that cost a total of $1.6 billion each year. In total, there are 34
HUD programs that already promote affordable housing for low-income
Americans.

"Yes," admitted Rep. Al Green (D-TX), "there are other housing
programs. Some say thirty; some say more than thirty. Every one of
them is needed, every one of them." Clearly they must be doing a
bang-up job, considering the housing crisis we're now in.

Why do we need more of the same? When is enough enough?

"We're creating, yes, and we're expanding," explained
Congressman Scott. "Why? Because the problem has expanded."

This perfectly encapsulates the Democratic mode of thinking:
Expand first, explain later. Democrats know the solution before
most people know there's a problem. In fact, their answer is what
leads them to the question. ("Subsidized housing is urgently
needed. Why? Oh, because there's an affordable housing crisis.
Good, now we can start building people homes.")

By and large, Democrats know ahead of time they want to expand
government, so they must go searching for crises, real or imagined,
to justify their programs. Their need for crises in part explains
why there always seem to be so many and why, curiously, in every
case the solution is always the same: more government.

The best way to guarantee affordable housing is for the federal
government to get out of the way. If people kept more of their
paychecks, they'd be better able to afford their own homes.
Democrats think this is too much to ask of Americans. "Working,"
according to Maxine Waters, "is simply no longer a guarantee of
being able to afford housing." In her view, the only jobs that can
guarantee housing are those held by Democrats in Congress.

Accommodating the poor is a noble goal, but at some point
permanent government housing is no longer a solution worth
affording.

Spent Republicanism

It isn't worth counting the number of times Ronald Reagan's name
was invoked at the two Republican primary debates (but for those
interested, the number is 27). The addiction to the gratuitous
Gipper name-drop reveals a tendency among today's Republicans to
romanticize a past which, however imperfect, appears in retrospect
to be so eminently superior to the present. This tendency is
revealed also by the platitudes the candidates speak.

In last Tuesday night's debate, Republican congressman Tom
Tancredo claimed that the GOP has "lost the mantle of fiscal
responsibility" it once held dear. Virtually every candidate has in
some way expressed this same view, i.e., that the GOP used to be
fiscally responsible up until recently. Sen. John McCain said in
both debates that Republicans spend money "like a drunken sailor,"
as if the profligacy were somehow a new phenomenon. It is a
familiar gripe, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Whenever Republicans cite their party's long-lost fiscal
sobriety, they're giving themselves too much credit. The claim is
refuted by asking one question: When was this golden era? Or: When
exactly were Republicans so fiscally prudent?

"Fiscal responsibility" is an elastic concept, but fundamentally
it means balancing the federal budget. Democrats want to do this by
raising taxes, whereas Republicans want to lower taxes and curb
government spending. Before Reagan came along and made this
approach the centerpiece of the Republican credo, Republican
economics spoke the language of balanced budgets and fiscal
austerity, which were to be achieved at all costs, whether through
spending cuts or tax hikes. Deficit hawks, not supply-siders,
dominated the party.

As Barry Goldwater wrote in The Conscience of a
Conservative, "[S]pending cuts must come before tax cuts. If
we reduce taxes before firm, principled decisions are made about
expenditures, we will court deficit spending and the inflationary
effects that invariably follow." It was on these grounds that the
Arizona senator opposed President Kennedy's tax cuts, fiscally
irresponsible as he thought them to be.

Today's Republicans certainly can't be nostalgic for the
preceding decade, the Fat Fifties. Eisenhower shaped his fiscal
policies around what Goldwater would later deride as "me-too
Republicanism," and the results were what one would expect from a
willing inheritor of the New Deal. In 1957, Eisenhower, happy to
pile up one bill after another for domestic expenditures, submitted
what was at the time the largest peacetime budget in American
history ($73.3 billion), a move which National Review
called "an extremely dangerous policy." He made the same decision
the next two years, only with more proposed spending.

Surely the candidates do not mean to hark back to the Nixon
years, hardly the epitome of responsible governance. The Nixon
presidency was supposed to represent a virulent pro-business
ideology, but instead it adapted to the prevailing liberal
orthodoxies of the day. Economist Herbert Stein, who served on
Nixon's Council of Economic Advisers, later said, "The
administration that was against expanding the budget expanded it
greatly."

Nixon enforced wage and price controls, embraced the Keynesian
doctrine of government spending, revalued the dollar, and expanded
welfare entitlements. Under his reign, for the first time ever
social spending eclipsed military spending, skyrocketing from $55
billion in 1970 to $132 billion five years later. Some
restraint.

It is no wonder that the New York Times praised Nixon for his "abandonment of outmoded
conservative doctrine." He had earned it. As the Times
noted, Nixon left conservative Republicans in a prickly situation.
"After the Nixon Administration's record, Republican candidates can
no longer inveigh against big government, budget deficits,
government subsidies or Federal regulation of the economy."

The Reagan years brought about a drastic revision of
conservative economic philosophy, but the results were not
flawless. Reaganomics worked wonders for the country, reducing
inflation and unemployment and leading to unprecedented economic
growth. However, as Attorney General Ed Meese would say almost a
decade after Reagan left office, "The country is still waiting for
the spending reductions." His rhetoric and best intentions
notwithstanding, Reagan left office with the United States $1.5
trillion deeper in debt and with the deficit having risen by some
$150 billion. "What's the sense of having a Republican
administration," asked Senator William Armstrong, "if the best we
can do is a $200 billion deficit?"

From the conservative point of view, the record of Reagan's
successor, George Bush Sr., is one not only of recklessness but of
infidelity as well. Bush 41 raised taxes, thereby repudiating the
Reaganite model, and on top of that the federal government under
his stewardship also spent more, resulting in larger deficits and,
in due course, a recession. Spending as a percentage of GNP rose
from 22.3% in 1989 to over 25% in 1991 -- that, even with the
pennies saved by the so-called "peace dividend."

That leaves the Gingrich-led revolutionaries. They prided
themselves on reining in Big Government, and they had some
successes. Yet, insofar as they exercised fiscal propriety, they
did so with a Democrat occupying the White House. As they soon
discovered, it is easy to oppose spending sprees when the other
branch is your adversary. If this arrangement is the formula for
fiscal rectitude, well, then, there isn't much reason to vote a
Republican into the White House after all. Perhaps this is why the
candidates resort to platitudes in the first place -- to avoid
having to explain what the concept of fiscal responsibility
actually entails.

It is easy to find faults in the economic legacies bequeathed by
past Republican officeholders. But even easier, and more credulous,
is pretending that there once was some mythical state of economic
bliss which can be magically re-created, provided one casts the
right vote. If you associate yourself with an idealized past, then
you don't have to answer for the imperfections of the present -- at
least that is the hope. Talking the talk is better than no rhetoric
at all, seeing as responsible behavior is unlikely without even the
pretense of it. But just as the 40th president cannot be
reincarnated by uttering his name, fiscal responsibility cannot be
realized by mistaking the ideal for an idea, or the past for the
future. Envisioning the latter should not mean revising the
former.