Shelf Life: Everybody's Bill of Rights

National Review, Oct 27, 2003 by Michael Potemra

Americans are justly concerned whenever it becomes obvious that the freedoms of speech and religion are under attack. But sometimes the threats are least visible when they are in plain sight-that is to say, when the group being discriminated against is one "everybody" supposedly dislikes. In his fine new book, Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity (Regnery, 416 pp., $27.95), David Limbaugh makes the compelling case that in today's America, it's the freedom of expression of Christians that often gets short shrift. The chancellor of New York City public schools, for example, declared that at Christmastime, no Nativity scenes would be permitted on school grounds; any pretense that this was an act in defense of the state's religious neutrality vanished when it was reported that there would be no similar ukase against Jewish menorahs, or against Islamic and Kwanzaa symbols.

It's easy to see how this state of affairs came about: In the conventional secular psyche, Christians are not viewed primarily as individuals with the same rights as anyone else, but rather dehumanized into avatars of an outdated and overthrown past oppression. If John Q. Citizen espouses an unpopular view or religion, he is a person whose whims can be safely indulged; but if John Q. Citizen happens to be a Christian, he needs to be carefully circumscribed-lest he and his cronies return us to the days of witch-burning. As Limbaugh makes clear, however, the typical American Christian is not a lurking ayatollah. The author himself reassures readers that he is not, for example, calling for the public schools to return to the "Christian- oriented education" of years past; what he wants is simple fairness.

Limbaugh addresses all the familiar hot-button issues-the Ten Commandments in public buildings, secularist curricula in the schools, etc.-but some of the best sections of the book discuss more recondite concerns, such as discrimination against churches in local zoning decisions. In fact, these low-profile matters make Limbaugh's case more effectively than some of the hotter issues. Even those who declare a strict faith in "separation of church and state" will realize that an injustice is being done when a couple hosts a quiet weekly prayer meeting for six to eight people-and receives a letter from the city planning board to desist, on the grounds that they are running a church in a residential area. That's a clear case of Big Brother's overreach- and even Clarence Darrow would protest.

-- George Mason University law professor David E. Bernstein takes on a similar menace in You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws (Cato, 197 pp., $20). This excellent book demonstrates that, in case after case, "activists" for one cause or another have shown a willingness to trample on the rights of others. In the name of weeding out bigotry and male chauvinism, political conservatives are silenced by campus speech codes at public universities; in the name of tolerance, religious landlords are forced to accept tenants of whom they disapprove morally; in the name of defeating homophobia, the New Jersey supreme court tried to make itself the final arbiter of who should and should not be admitted to the Boy Scouts.

The book offers a wide array of these horror stories; against them all, Bernstein offers a reservoir of common sense and fair play. He points out that, on basic principles, even those who clamor most loudly for these state intrusions would be wiser to eschew them. He quotes the legendary individualist Albert Jay Nock: "Whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you."

A friend of mine many years ago suggested a bumper sticker that would capture the self-contradictory nature of much of the antidiscrimination agenda: "CRUSH INTOLERANCE." Bernstein suggests a better way-"asking Americans to display a measure of fortitude in the face of offense and discrimination." He recognizes that this "is asking for a lot . . . in these days of the Oprahization of public discourse." But, over the long run, it's our only hope for preserving freedom.

-- "FDR saved capitalism": This is one of the hoariest pieces of conventional political wisdom. If FDR hadn't reassured Depression-era Americans with New Deal measures, the argument goes, the country might have turned socialist-or worse. In FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression (Crown Forum, 336 pp., $27.50), historian Jim Powell demonstrates that the opposite is true. FDR's misguided centralist policies, anti-business demagoguery, and punitive tax increases blighted the prospect of recovery. One of Roosevelt's own advisers, Randolph E. Paul, later admitted that the tax policies had "intensified the depression they were working to correct." It's well known that Ronald Reagan venerated FDR as America's leader in hard times; nor was he alone in this, among members of his generation. But the next time economic cataclysm looms, leaders should read Jim Powell's book-so that we can have some of FDR's moral uplift without his disastrously counterproductive policies.