THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 18, 1995 TAG: 9509160004
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By LON SCOFIELD
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
Daniel P. Richardson's ``We need thoughtful, not ideological, responses to our real ills'' (Another View, Sept. 9) stated that one of many ``tragic consequences of strict adherence to ideology'' was the ``ideologies of the 1960s (which) urged the overthrow of the cultural verities people had believed and practiced for generations.'' But he then proceeded to mischaracterize our attempts to recover from this overthrow he so well identified. His list of ``ritual answers to problems not well-analyzed'' begs for response. This is my contribution:
All taxes are bad. No. But a tax system that unfairly punishes the successful with higher marginal rates; discourages savings, investment and economic growth; and empowers a federal bureaucracy with unconstitutional powers is bad and must be reformed.
All government spending is bad. No, again. Government spending that is wasteful, duplicative, counterproductive - and wildly in excess of tax revenues - is bad and must be reduced.
Most federal regulations properly should be the purview of the states. This concept seems somewhat more than shallow ideology. As I remember, the 10th Amendment to the Constitution states: ``The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.''
All federal programs are bad because they are federal programs. I'm sure that Mr. Richardson can name some good federal programs. But programs designed at the national level must be ``one-size-fits-all'' and administered by a massive horde of bureaucrats who can be arrogant, intransigent and abusive. Federal programs frequently hurt the very people they are designed to help and are nearly impossible to ``fix'' or eliminate once in place.
The only answer to crime is punishment; being ``tough on crime'' will solve all our social problems. Punishment is not the ``only'' answer to crime. But what laughably passes for ``punishment'' today (prisons with color TVs, complete legal libraries where convicts spend their time harassing an overburdened legal system, liberal judges who make outrageous rulings to put violent offenders back out on the street) certainly is not the answer to crime and hasn't solved our social problems.
Being poor and uneducated is the poor/ uneducated person's fault. No, but whose fault is it? This country is populated with millions of people who started off poor and uneducated and are now educated and prospering. Are there no schoolchildren who believe that working hard and achieving is not ``cool,'' or people who are happy to take advantage of their ``victim'' status instead of striving to achieve? Is personal responsibility a virtue that has been consigned to the ideological dustbin?
Welfare rolls are primarily made up of minority women and their illegitimate children. I have never heard anyone state that who holds the ideology which concerns Mr. Richardson - only those of the ideological persuasion who object to reform of this immoral system. The way welfare (and the public-housing program) is run in this country concentrates many minority mothers in government-runs slums and discourages them from work, marriage and reproductive restraint.
Affirmative action is bad. As currently practiced, e.g., in hiring and college-acceptance quotas, it is bad - and in direct violation of specific wording in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbade quotas. It empowers the EEOC to violate the Constitution (businesses are required to prove they are not guilty), forces the admission of underqualified applicants to higher education (columnist Thomas Sowell reports that SAT scores of African Americans in American universities average 200 points below their white classmates and, for Ivy League schools, 300 points below), and restricts admission of qualified applicants (Asians have to score much higher than other races to gain admission in California, for example). Affirmative action, as designed, is good: Recruit qualified applicants of underrepresented minorities.
Mr. Richardson further proclaims that ``These slogans are part of our current ideology and contain within the seeds of the destruction of our country and our way of life.'' Maybe if this ideology were as he misrepresents it, his fear-mongering would be partially understandable, though still not justified.
The ideology most Americans hold is more like what I have tried to present here. This prevailing ideology is the response to - not the cause of - the ongoing destruction of our country and way of life caused by 30 years of the ideology of the 1960s.
Mr. Richardson and others would surely object if their ideology were represented as ``Citizens should give according to their means. A progressive tax system is the tool to accomplish this.''
``Citizens should take according to their needs. Welfare, food stamps, public housing, etc. are the tools to accomplish this.''
``All citizens should be taken care of by the federal government. Private organizations should be discouraged from doing so.''
``Individuals are not responsible for their actions. Society is.''
``All crimes are crimes against society; therefore all crimes are federal crimes. It follows that the federal government has all power over the states. The states are administrative divisions of the national government.''
``The concept of private property is unfair.''
``Equality under the law means equality of outcome. Individual merit is not to be a factor in the distribution of success.''
``The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are irrelevant to modern life.''
``It is acceptable - even desirable - to take away the rights of some groups to redress past crimes against other groups.''
It seems to me that Mr. Richardson has misrepresented the prevailing ideology in order to discredit it. I note that he is the head of school at Cape Henry Collegiate School in Virginia Beach. That an educator resorts to this misrepresentation gives me great concern for our children. MEMO: Mr. Scofield is a resident of Virginia Beach. by CNB