Letter to the Editor Regarding: “The GOP’s Epic Senate Fail”

Kimberly Strassel calls the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s staggering Senate loss candidates “professional malpractice” (“The GOP’s Epic Senate Fail,” Potomac Watch, Nov. 8). While Ms. Strassel is correct, she fails to explore the historical irony behind leaving Senate elections vulnerable to this particular brand of malpractice: The whole point of the American founders’ decision to divide the legislature in the first place was to protect states’ rights in one house, free from bungling attempts like the NRSC’s to direct the popular will and influence special interest groups.

Enacted in 1913, the 17th Amendment restructured the government so that there is no difference between how Senators and Representatives are elected. This is in stark contrast to how the American Constitution imagined the country would be run.

The Constitution outlined a legislative branch in which Americans didn’t actually directly elect senators, state legislators did. This reflected the fact that the House was intended to represent individuals’ rights, while the Senate stood for states’ rights. Individuals, the founders believed, would be better represented overall with two separate levels of accountability before submitting to the ultimate will of the federal government on high.

Federalism was an important principle for the American founders, and federalism holds states’ rights paramount. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has gone so far as to note that since the 17th Amendment was ratified, “you can trace the decline of so-called states’ rights throughout the rest of the 20th century.”

America was founded not as a democracy, but as a Constitutional Republic—a community of individuals and states responsible to constitutional procedures designed to promote divided government. The 17th Amendment changed the process to make the Senate democratically responsible to the people rather than, as in a republic, responsible to the states.

It is no wonder, then, that so many other American principles have also ceased to resemble the constitutional principles of 1776.

Kathryn Ciano

Arlington, VA

Saturday Links

Adult ADHD: Why so common (I’m looking at you, law school colleagues).

On the Next Justice: Questions to ask, and what we shouldn’t bother asking.

Can exercise be as effective as drugs in treating depression?

Linda Greenhouse on the implications of immigration jurisprudence.

Just in case you still care about Romney’s relationship to health care.

Michigan college offers money-back guarantee on getting a job.

The Volcker Rule Is No Magic Bullet

From today’s WSJ:

It is amusing to me that five (count them!) former Treasury secretaries of the U.S. think that further government control of the financial community will somehow prevent or repair this or any other boom-bust credit cycle (Letters, Feb. 22). The primary entity that needs to be restrained is the federal government in all its various forms. Its agencies have worked together to orchestrate the most massive credit expansion in our history, the real cause of our current difficulties, all the while telling the American people that they were doing them a favor.

In the process, they manipulated the financial community, among many others, to achieve their questionable goal of increasing home ownership at any cost. I am no particular advocate of banks or hedge funds, but the notion that all of these former Treasury officials are encouraging closer control of one of their key instruments in the wholesale manipulation of the American economy is laughable. We are in far more trouble than I thought.

Jane Mercer

Memphis, Tenn.

Before I Die…

Last week the WSJ printed a great column: one man’s list of “things most essential to a fully satisfactory and happy life.”

Here are the 5:

1. Before I die I want to know that I have done something truly great, that I have accomplished some glorious achievement the credit for which belongs solely to me.

2. Before I die I want to know that during my life I have brought great happiness to others.

3. Before I die I want to have visited a large portion of the globe and to have actually lived with several foreign races in their own environment.

4. Before I die there is another great desire I must fulfill, and that is to have felt a truly great love.

5. Before I die I want to feel a great sorrow.

This last is the most interesting.  Here’s the author’s explanation, in full:

Before I die I want to feel a great sorrow. This, perhaps, of all my wishes will seem the strangest to the reader. Yet, is it unusual that I should wish to have had a complete life? I want to have lived fully, and certainly sorrow is a part of life. It is my belief that, as in the case of love, no man has lived until he has felt sorrow. It molds us and teaches us that there is a far deeper significance to life than might be supposed if one passed through this world forever happy and carefree. Moreover, once the pangs of sorrow have slackened, for I do not believe it to be a permanent emotion, its dregs often leave us a better knowledge of this world of ours and a better understanding of humanity. Yes, strange as it may seem, I really want to feel a great sorrow.

In full it’s a beautiful piece; the last paragraph particularly lovely:

As for death itself, I do not believe that it will be such a disagreeable thing providing my life has been successful. I have always considered life and death as two cups of wine. Of the first cup, containing the wine of life, we can learn a little from literature and from those who have drunk it, but only a little. In order to get the full flavor we must drink deeply of it for ourselves. I believe that after I have quaffed the cup containing the wine of life, emptied it to its last dregs, then I will not fear to turn to that other cup, the one whose contents can be designated only by X, an unknown, and a thing about which we can gain no knowledge at all until we drink for ourselves. Will it be sweet, or sour, or tasteless? Who can tell? Surely none of us like to think of death as the end of everything. Yet is it? That is a question that for all of us will one day be answered when we, having witnessed the drama of life, come to the final curtain. Probably we will all regret to leave this world, yet I believe that after I have drained the first cup, and have possibly grown a bit weary of its flavor, I will then turn not unwillingly to the second cup and to the new and thrilling experience of exploring the unknown.

Letter Re: As the Flame of Catholic Dissent Dies Out

Dear Editor:

How ironic that on the same day the WSJ published Charlotte Allen’s call for Catholic activism (Opinion, Jan. 14), Massachusetts Attorney General – and Senate hopeful — Martha Coakley declared that “You can have religious freedom, but you probably shouldn’t work in an emergency room.”

Allen and Coakley both support the separation of church and state. Both likely value the freedom of conscience. But while Allen’s edict celebrates religious freedom, Coakley’s controversial statement suggests an important application: Religious freedom is a latent right that will fall to the wayside without staunch, active protection.

America’s Constitution rests on the principle that people are born imbued with innumerate natural rights. We cede some rights to government in exchange for protection, community, and organized trade. Rights like free speech and worship do not come from government; they belong naturally to individuals, latent and subject to our decision to protect them.

Ms. Allen asks Catholics to engage with their religion. Only through active, deliberate practice can Catholics protect the tenets of their faith from unraveling – or, indeed, from falling victim to government bent on encroaching further into that critical natural right to worship.

Even while AG Coakley agrees that “the law says that people are allowed to have [religious freedom],” her statements reflect just the kind of encroachment that should light a fire under every religious American.

When it comes to faith, use it or lose it. If religious individuals do not actively protect their beliefs, government will actively infringe on their religious freedom in the future.

If we do not take Ms. Allen’s advice to engage our latent freedoms, we will all become victims to politicians’ determination to usurp them.

Kathryn Ciano

Arlington, VA

Letter: Major Hasan and the Holy War

Dear Editor:

Reuel Marc Gerecht astutely points out that President Obama has missed a critical opportunity to militate against Holy Warriors in our midst (Opinion, Nov. 22). But Mr. Gerecht fails to connect the dots on a larger trend: American reluctance to admit that we are at war.

Major Hasan was not merely one of many soldiers suffering from PTSD, any more than Khalid Sheik Mohammed was a common criminal. Both should be treated as terrorists not, as Mr. Gerecht suggests, because they are “Muslim radicals,” but because they have committed terrorist acts.

We are living in a September 12th world, and language has evolved. “War” no longer means uniformed soldiers lined up for battle; it should now include extremists wielding airplanes as weapons. Similarly “terrorism” should have evolved to include making jihadist threats against soldiers and attempting to contact Al Qaeda, as Hasan did.

As long as the government refuses to classify terrorist acts as acts of war, terrorist activity will continue and it will get worse. Only by removing his head from the sand now can the President reverse this trend.

Try KSM as a war criminal. Label Hasan as the jihadist he is. Admit we are at war now, or keep bowing until the terrorists remove any doubt.

Kathryn Ciano

Arlington, VA

Capps Amendment

The Government, Abortion and Your Tax Dollars

Charmaine Yoest’s op-ed, “Tax Dollars Shouldn’t Fund Abortion” (op-ed, Oct. 14) blatantly misrepresents the amendment I offered to health reform legislation now before Congress.

My amendment would maintain the status quo on federal funding of abortions by extending current law forbidding federal dollars from being used to pay for abortion, except in the cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the woman.

My amendment allows plans in the Health Exchange to offer abortion coverage, but requires that those services to be paid for only out of premiums paid by consumers. No federal dollars may be used. This is the same principle currently used with Medicaid, which must follow the Hyde Amendment: No federal dollars may be used to pay for abortion services in Medicaid, but the 17 states that opt to cover the procedure can do so by paying for it with state dollars.

This is hardly a “radical departure from the status quo.” In fact, it is an extension of the status quo.

Rep. Lois Capps (D., Calif.)

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Charmaine Yoest states that the Capps Amendment “would make abortion coverage a part of the public option, funnel tax dollars to private health plans that cover abortion, and ensure that every area of the country will have at least one health insurance plan that covers elective abortion.” Ms. Yoest worries that the federal government is poised to enter “the business of funding the destruction of unborn human life.”

We’re already there. Planned Parenthood performs 62 abortions (305,310 abortions in 2008) for each adoption it facilitates. Planned Parenthood survives partly on tax dollars and government contracts that pay directly into this abortion giant’s operating fund. In the 2007-08 fiscal year, $350 million in “government grants and contracts”—those are our tax dollars—padded these controversial coffers.

Controversial choices deserve a hearty debate. Government’s intrusive fingers do not merely threaten to dictate the terms of that debate, as Ms. Yoest suggests. We are already there.

Kathryn Ciano

Arlington, Va.

Today’s Quick Letter

In “Tax Dollars Shouldn’t Fund Abortion,” (Opinion, Oct. 15), Charmaine Yoest states that the Capps Amendment “would make abortion coverage a part of the public option, funnel tax dollars to private health plans that cover abortion, and ensure that every area of the country will have at least one health insurance plan that covers elective abortion.”  Ms. Yoest worries that the federal government is poised to enter “the business of funding the destruction of unborn human life.”

We’re already there.  Planned Parenthood performs sixty-two abortions (305,310 abortions in 2008) for each adoption it facilitates.  And the lion’s share of the cost of those abortions comes directly from taxpayers’ pockets.

Planned Parenthood survives on tax dollars and government subsidies – subsidies that pay directly into this abortion giant’s operating fund.  In the 2007-08 fiscal year, $350 million in “government grants and contracts” – those are our tax dollars – padded these controversial coffers.

This is not a question of “choice” versus “life.”  Federal funding for abortions does not require mere moral considerations when dealing with private decisions.  Instead, this begs a discussion of the very purpose of government and the role it should play in our lives.

Whatever individuals think about abortion, we all recognize that this topic is controversial.  For the government to treat such a controversial topic –to fund this controversial practice! – disregards those fundamental protections of private decisionmaking.

Government exists to protect those fundamental freedoms inherent to its citizenry.  Whether or not our government permits citizens to make the kind of “choice” at issue in abortion discussions should incite discussion.  Whether the federal government should rob Peter to pay for Pauline’s choice should not.

Good Lord

The unparalleled awesomeness of the Letters to the WSJ Editor this weekend:

Debating the Really Big Questions of the Universe

The combination of Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong as presenters of two contrary views on the existence of God (“Man vs. God,” Weekend Journal, Sept. 12) is in itself a “creative act.” For one, God is a fairy tale, and for the other “at least it’s a nice fairy tale.” One may as well have asked Osama bin Laden to write his thoughts on America and then ask Hugo Chávez for a counter perspective.

Mr. Dawkins says: “What is so special about life? It never violates the laws of physics.” Let’s grant him that for the moment. But the fact of physics is that however you section physical, concrete reality, you end up with a state that doesn’t explain its own existence. Moreover, since the universe does have a beginning and nothing physical can explain its own existence, is it that irrational a position to think that the first cause would have to be something nonphysical?

A spiritual, moral first cause is a much more reasonable position than questions that smuggle in such realities without admitting it.

G.K. Chesterton said: “When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from him. But in heaven’s name to what?”

Ravi Zacharias

Norcross, Ga.

—

Unwilling to concede that God is cruel, Ms. Armstrong seems to conclude that God isn’t in control. But there are other ways of resolving the age-old question, “If God is good and all-powerful, why do evil and suffering exist?”

The best answer was provided by the medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas. In his “Summa Theologica,” he wrote that God wills only the good directly but permits some evils and indirectly wills others. God wills the beautiful harmony of the whole created order, but for the sake of the whole, God permits and indirectly wills defects in some of its parts.

While Thomas Aquinas didn’t conceive of evolution, his thought complements it, for evolution teaches us that defects produce conditions for new, more wonderful things to emerge.

The wisdom of this plan peaks in humanity. But while we are the high point of this world, we are its most dangerous part, uniquely able to destroy the whole. Why would God make something capable of such evil? God permits the evil of sin because God directly wills the good of human freedom

The ultimate wisdom of this order is apparent only in light of what Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan calls the “supreme good,” namely love. There is no love without freedom, and no freedom without the chance of evil.

Thus, this world order—with all its current imperfections—shows not that God is redundant as Mr. Dawkins believes, nor that God is not all-powerful as Ms. Armstrong implies. Rather, an evolutionary world order demonstrates more clearly the wisdom, goodness and power of God.

Mark T. Miller

San Francisco

—

As a retired scientist, I know that while parts of evolution are well-explained, there is no scientific explanation of the origin of life. If you accept that life began only because of random events, then you and science are acting on faith. Accepting an explanation on faith isn’t a part of science, but is the way to God.

Howard Deutsch

Atlanta

—

Albert Einstein famously said: “I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.” Mr. Dawkins has taken Einstein up a notch and has chosen to play dice with God. Any bets on the outcome?

Mr. Dawkins fails to recognize that religions view this world as fallen. This fall doesn’t impugn or dismiss a creator. We learn from the challenge.

Chris W. Kite

Cornelius, N.C.

—

My friend and erstwhile neighbor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was asked by reporters in the 1960s for his reaction to the fact that some intellectuals thought God was dead. The president replied, “That’s odd; I was just speaking to him this morning.” Mr. Dawkins goes one better; he says God was never alive in the first place. I’ll cast my lot with the former president, as well as the Psalmist who wrote “The fool says in his heart there is no God.”

Ms. Armstrong opts for God, but her God is no more than a mythic evolutionary journey on a road less traveled that we make up as we go along. No “unsustainable certainty” for her. Presumably she’s OK with the “story” of the death and resurrection of Christ, for example, if (making no pretentions to historical accuracy) it gives one the needed psychological boost to cope with human grief and helps one find ultimate meaning in life’s struggles. St. Paul would beg to disagree. Writing to the early Corinthian church, he said that if Christ isn’t raised, then our faith is in vain; and if we only have hope in Christ in this life, we are of all people to be pitied. Once again, I vote with St. Paul rather than Ms. Armstrong.

John E. Archibold

Denver

—

So life has evolved from the simple to the complex, and there can be no intelligent design to the universe because intelligence itself is complex and therefore can only exist through Darwinian evolution? I’m supposed to look at this amazing planet and galaxy and universe (with my eyes and brain), and rule out any intelligence behind its design based on this weak argument? I don’t think so.

The only thing of which I am truly convinced is that anyone who claims to know the origin of the universe and our astonishing lives is certain to be wrong.

Marianne Mason

Austin, Texas

—

Mr. Dawkins should leave the God question to others and stick to the evolution-versus-creation debate. Even I, an agnostic scientist, find his commentary polemic and off-putting. It is no wonder the God crowd is gaining in number; they are easier to read.

Katherine Helmetag

Troy, Mich.

—

If we accept Mr. Dawkins’s point of view, we have only the human mind left to worship, and if we accept Ms. Armstrong’s description of God beyond God, we are in danger of wandering off into the ethereal mists. While her approach may work for mystics and academicians, it offers little solace to most of us as we slog through our work-a-day world.

Whether God is a separate reality (my view) or a figment of our wishful thinking, we are a deeply flawed species and need God to save us from ourselves. Voltaire recognized this fact when he wrote, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

Thomas M. Hyers

St. Louis

—

I only had two semesters of college physics, so I must have missed the part where Mr. Dawkins’s much vaunted laws of physics began permitting man to love, laugh and cry.

Joseph Furman

San Antonio, Texas

—

One day Mr. Dawkins will discover God, not by looking up into the cosmos and failing to see God, nor by looking down into an electron microscope and failing to see God, but by looking deep within himself and finding his own inadequacy. When that day comes he will be astonished and delighted, not that he has invented God, but that long before he ever thought of God, God invented him. God will also be delighted, but not astonished.

William G. White

Franklin Park, Ill.

—

I conclude from their writings that both essayists are here on planet Earth totally by accident, and that their ancestors evolved from some primeval stuff that just happened to be around. That leads one to think that there is no reason for their existence. They have no purpose, no one to answer to, nothing to look forward to after death, and when they die, they will cease to exist. Their accomplishments during their 70 years of life, compared to eternity, will be completely insignificant. Boy, what a bummer!

However, I have a purpose and a future. I was created by God to worship him and to enjoy being in his presence forever. I am in unity with God through his son Jesus Christ and am assured of going to be with him when I die. I will live forever with joy, contentment, etc. No pain, no tears.

Frankly, I prefer my position to theirs.

Donald C. Dowdy

Greensboro, N.C.

—

Ms. Armstrong doesn’t speak for Christians, who believe that historical events are foundational to faith in God. Whether God used evolution or some other means to create the Earth, the belief that he did so in an historical act is foundational to the Christian faith.

For Christians in the mainstream of the faith, God was never as Ms. Armstrong asserts, “merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence.”

The Rev. Josh Miller

Church of the Ascension

Pittsburgh

WSJ Remembering 9/11

Peggy Noonan:

It is eight years since 9/11, and here is an unexpected stage of grief: fear that the ache will go away. I don’t suppose it ever will, but grieving has gradations, and “horror” becomes “absorbed sadness.” Life moves on, and wants to move on, which is painful for those who will not forget and cannot be comforted. Part of the spookiness of life, part of its power to disorient us, is not only that people die, that they slip below the waves, but that the waves close above them so quickly, the sea so quickly looks the same.

Best of the Web

Lifted whole-cloth from WSJ’s Best of the Web today:

Ethnic Etiquette
The Sonia Sotomayor hearings were something of a snooze, so we suppose we can’t blame the Associated Press for trying to come up with something–anything–to write about. Even so, this is a bit much. Yesterday the AP tried to transform some humorous banter into an outrage:

One of Sonia Sotomayor’s Senate interrogators had a joking response Wednesday when she talked hypothetically–and humorously–about getting a gun to shoot him in self-defense.

What Coburn said–and how he said it–was a riff on a Hispanic television character, Ricky Ricardo, whose accent is now widely considered a broad parody.

“You’ll have lots of ‘splainin’ to do,” replied GOP Sen. Tom Coburn, evoking the 1950s TV show “I Love Lucy” to laughter from the crowd and the judge.

“I’d be in a lot of trouble, then,” Sotomayor quipped back.

Ricky Ricardo, played by Cuban-born Desi Arnaz, would often use this line with his fictional wife, Lucy, played by real-life wife Lucille Ball. The AP successfully sought out a denunciation of Coburn’s bon mot:

The National Council of La Raza [Spanish for “the race”] responded to an e-mail inquiring about Coburn’s remark, saying it was unclear whether it was a badly told joke “or he’s just clueless.”

“While quoting Ricky Ricardo isn’t in and of itself a slur, in this context, it seems wildly inappropriate to say the least,” said the group’s spokeswoman, Lisa Navarrete.

A letter I mailed yesterday:

In “The Small Business Surtax,” (Review & Outlook, July 14^th), you pointed out that looming tax hikes target small businesses. While it is true that “punitive” taxes hurt entrepreneurs, taxes are only one among the invidious measures Congress has in store for small businesses this summer.

Congress announced that next week the minimum wage will rise over one dollar. Combined with benefits like unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation taxes, as of next week businesses must pay employees a new real-value minimum wage of nearly $8.

With the wage hike, employers will only hire—or continue to employ—workers who can produce $8 an hour worth of goods or services. Denying work opportunities to workers whose skills don’t add up to $8 an hour is far from compassionate. In this economy, for the government to levy harsh taxes on capital gains and then raise the barrier to entering the work force dooms unskilled workers to the depths of more permanent unemployment. That is not the way to “create or save” jobs.

We have long been a country eager to create. If the government wants economic recovery, it’s not just taxes that hurt small businesses. Congress should stop meddling with small businesses and leave entrepreneurs to do what they do best.

Kathryn Ciano, Arlington