Indeed, the awkward truth of test scores provokes anguish and hostility among establishment liberals. As one University of California bureaucrat complained: if Berkeley's racial preferences system were completely struck down, Berkeley would be "90 percent Chinese and 10 percent White." What an insensitive remark!

Another liberal logical melt-down: marriage is a "fading" or "outdated" social institution. For example, Barbara Ehrenreich (among many others) claims that half of all marriages end in divorce. The logical stumble: The marriages counted occurred within a single year, but the divorces were from marriages that occurred over decades, not a single year. With identical logic, we can prove that half the population died last year if deaths were half the number of births. One wonders if most orthodox liberals failed their math classes--repeatedly.

Perhaps the starkest example of liberal confusion is sex education. In the mid to late 1960's, various establishment liberals agitated for the establishment (and funding, naturally) of nation-wide sexual education programs. The nation heard continual calls to solve "the crisis" of teen pregnancy.

By the early 70's, sex ed. was well-established in public and private schools. And the pregnancy rate among unmarried girls from 15 to 17 years old rose 29 percent from 1970 to 1984--even though the number of abortions more than doubled.

Now, one can't claim that the sex ed. programs caused the increased pregnancy. However, the programs are radical failures in their own terms: "enlightened" sex education, so claimed the self-congratulatory social engineers, would reduce the "crisis levels" of teen pregnancy.

In fact, we'd now rejoice if teen pregnancy rates plummeted to their "crisis" levels of the early 1960's: the crisis was another liberal urban legend. Up to 1957, pregnancy rates among teenage girls had declined for over a decade. And venereal diseases had declined every year from 1950 to 1960.

A few establishment liberals concede these failures. Sargent Shriver, former head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, once testified before a congressional committee that venereal diseases "skyrocketed 350% in the last 15 years when we have had more clinics, more pills and more sex education than ever in history...teen-age pregnancy has risen".

Today, Shriver's candid concession has disappeared down the cultural memory hole. But again, that's not surprising. Establishment liberalism is today much more interested in striking smug self-righteous poses---and preening over their politically correct feelings---than in actually testing their exalted theories against evidence.


Now, to be evenhanded, one must ask: Does the right wing have a better grasp of reality?

Hardly.

The biggest conservative myth is that the United States prizes the free market and hates government interference. The market is a phenomenon of mystical wisdom, explain the conservatives.

In fact, big business despises really free markets, and for a practical reason: free markets are volatile, mercurial, and downright brutal. Big business demands plenty of governmental "interference", such as huge tax breaks, direct subsidy, aggressive governmental lobbying overseas for U.S. products from cigarettes to missiles, and highly-favorable "free trade" agreements such as GATT and NAFTA.

(Indeed, it's on these global economic issues that Bill Clinton's conservative impulses are plainly visible. He's especially pleased to sell arms to such havens of sensitivity as Turkey, which has been on its own "ethnic cleansing" spree of Kurds for years).

These government "interferences" for the benefit of selected big business put most other nations at enormous disadvantage. American Mom and Pop business are hurt too: they're far too tiny to make demands on the "free enterprise" gurus.

Boeing, IBM, and the drug company Burroughs Welcome (just to name three) have enjoyed enormous government "interference". Boeing couldn't survive in a free market: it depends upon government purchases of its products as well as aggressive US lobbying of foreign governments to buy Boeing products. In an especially clever arrangement, the U.S. offers "loans and credits" to bolster the defense of overseas friends: with the stipulation, of course, that the nations buy (for example) Boeing products.

Ah, the miracle of the free market!

Another example: IBM profited from the enormous initial research and investment that the federal government spent on computing. Plenty of early Cold War cash poured into computer-based defense, and Uncle Sam (as well as publicly-funded research universities) conducted plentiful R & D.

IBM, of course, is happy to enjoy private profits that were made possible by publicly funded research. It need hardly be pointed out---but we'll point it out anway, just for fun---that todays' Wall Street dot-com millionaires are direct beneficiaries of despised "government interference": the Internet, created by the federal government, is the backbone of the dot-com commerce.

And Burroughs Welcome--which sold the highly profitable (and highly toxic) anti-AIDS drug AZT--profited from government interference: the drug was developed in the 1970's by federal government research. Later, the government simply handed over the drug's design to Burroughs Welcomeäa venal violation of free market principles, generously overlooked by Burroughs and its stockholders.

Damn those busy body government bureaucrats!

The conservative's cracked thinking runs amock elsewhere, as in the oft-repeated claim that the United States foreign policy is selflessly devoted to the Global Greater Good. In this fantasy, the US is a gentle giant, a super-evolved demi-God whose benevolence is unfortunately under-appreciated 'round the world.

However, the gentle giant grows loud and angry when nations stupidly think that their own resources should be directed first at ordinary citizens, rather than US multinationals and their clients.

Nicaragua is a classic example. For years, Uncle Sam supported the dictatorship of Anastasio Samoza. In the late 70's, Samoza's National Guard carried out large-scale atrocities against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, including the bombing of residential neighborhoods. Tens of thousands were killed. Despite the terror, Samoza's government couldn't retain power.

In '79, Samoza washed up in Miami. The Carter Administration--widely praised for its devotion to human rights--flew Guard Commanders out of Nicaragua in planes with Red Cross markings (a war crime). The Reaganites escalated matters, helping re-build Contra forces and using economic strangulation against the Nicaraguan government.

Reagan displayed his keen grasp of global affairs by noting that Sandinistas could board Greyhound buses and gather at the Texas border: the Red Menace was alive and well!

When Nicaraguan elections were scheduled in 1988, Uncle Sam promised serious havoc if the right candidate didn't win. Exhausted by war, the citizenry understandably elected a U.S.-friendly government. Naturally, the U.S. hailed the elections as "free and fair", as if having a huge boot on the face of a tiny nation is fair play.


Whether liberal or conservative, political orthodoxy can indeed be understood as masturbation fantasy. It can also be understood as a subset of the most rigid religious fundamentalism. Like religious fundamentalists, political fundamentalists value correct "feelings", howl in rage when facing contradictory factual evidence---and, like the most fevered religious fanatics---curse the heathen heretics who dare question The Truth.

Just as the Church put poor Galileo under house arrest, establishment "liberals" celebrate diversity by slapping Mao-like speech codes on 18 year old newcomers to campus. Similarly, establishment "conservatives" shriek, point fingers, and condemn the "isolationists" who dare question the wisdom of putting 18 year old soldiers in the middle of dangerously volatile "peace keeping" missions all about the globe.

"We are dominated by the fanatic, whose worst vice is his sincerity"--Oscar Wilde