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Ivan W.
Parkins |
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To order Dr. Parkins book, Perspectives For
American Society Contact |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2009, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author
and can be obtained by contacting,
info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
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About Ivan W. Parkins: Dr. Parkins is a retired professor of
Political Science from Central Michigan University. He received his PhD from the University of
Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval officer
during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama.
He is a recent widower with three daughters, 3 grand children and 2
great grand children. Dr. Parkins has
written extensively, having authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column
for many years. |
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Front Page |
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In This Issue: -Obama Land (Some points along the way to…) -The
Intellectual/Media Love Affair -The
Misrepresentation of Congress -DDT and
Hasty Environmentalism |
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OUR ROAD TO OBAMA-LAND SOME HIGH/LOW POINTS ALONG THE WAY By Ivan W. Parkins What
raucous health care debates and related news have disclosed recently is that
our House of Representatives is grossly dysfunctional. I believed that I saw that coming half a
century ago. Then, I, at
least, had respect for Speaker Rayburn.
There have now been some positive changes in the House, but mostly
they have been overwhelmed by other changes in our political system. The seizure of authority by the Supreme
Court in 1962, did produce greater justice in
districting. But the big changes were
the continuing growth of business in Washington and of our population,
separating Representatives more and more from their constituents. Along with that separation came the
increased role of the mass media as our main link between individual citizens
and their Representatives.
Prior to 1956, all newly elected Presidents, if they had won by
majorities of the popular vote, had also won majorities in both Houses of
Congress. That, no doubt, was due largely
to partisan influences, e.g. presidential coattails and straight-ticket
voting. Since 1956, George Bush in
2004 has been the only Republican President to win a Congress of his own
party along with his popular majority.
And Bush’s congressional majority was a very thin one. All Democrat winners of the Presidency by
popular majorities continued to get Democrat Congresses as well. Carter, who had won the office by a
majority slimmer than Bush’s, had gotten huge majorities in both Houses of
Congress. To this situation the media
responded with much abuse—of Bush! We
were having a huge expansion of the media, especially with television in
nearly all our homes. And there was an
equally huge expansion of professional communicators, journalists, lawyers,
professors, entertainers, artists, etc.
Never before had these people been so central to our society and
economy. They wanted more political
influence, and their positions enabled them to take it, without even asking. An
early clue to the situation was fallout from President Kennedy’s
assassination. President Johnson
appointed a commission of our most prestigious political and legal leaders,
under the chairmanship of Chief Justice Warren, to investigate the
crime. That Commission did an
extensive and sound job, but found only one simple and well supported
explanation. Various people attempted
to exploit small oversights and ambiguities of the Commission into more
ominous solutions, with very little supporting evidence. The media gave wide notice to many of these
alternatives. For them, it was news,
readership, and money. Even now, opinion polls show that most Americans
distrust the Warren Commissions’ report.
Where would the most crucial political and legal judgments finally
rest in decades to come? The
Presidents, Johnson and Nixon, who followed Kennedy pursued with vigor the
Vietnam War to which Kennedy, following the containment strategy of the Cold
War, had largely committed us. Both
won, by record margins, re-elections to the top office. But, Johnson was discouraged from seeking
an additional term and Nixon was forced to resign. The ultimate authority in
America seemed to rest elsewhere.
Anti-Vietnam movements were rocking college campuses, encouraged by
good press coverage. Meanwhile, the
press was featuring every weakness and casualty that our war effort suffered,
but belittling the enemy brutalities and losses, both of which greatly
exceeded our own. The antiwar
movement, centered in the growing communications professions, assured our
defeat in a war that, even our former enemies have admitted, we were winning
on the battlefields. In
the post Nixon-Vietnam era, President Ford began with wide popular support,
but with a heavily Democrat Congress.
He soon lost media and public support when he pardoned ex-President
Nixon. More thoughtful judgments, many
of them coming later, were that the pardon enabled us to move on with less
division and bitterness.
Meanwhile, the Democrat Congress ran wild; seizing more power over
budgeting, imposing severe limits on police and intelligence agencies,
requiring that banks reduce their strict lending practices, and generally allying
themselves with the “mainstream media.”
From 1954 to 1994 the House of Representative had a 40 year,
unbroken, period of medium to very large Democrat majorities. The fact that several Republican Presidents
in that period labored under a special disadvantage got little attention when
comparing their achievements with those of Democrat Presidents. We
are now involved in a critical political conflict that might have occurred
earlier had it not been from the substantial popular victories, 1980-1992, of
Presidents Reagan and Bush. Meanwhile,
neither Democrat President Carter nor President Clinton produced much basic
political change. And, the House of
Representatives even shifted to a slim Republican majority under Newt
Gingrich’s leadership. That shift
foreshadowed what was to come. The
overwhelmingly “liberal” and Democrat mainstream media of the anti-Vietnam to
Gulf War days were encountering new and substantial competition. Cable news, Fox News, a more broadly
focused WALL STREET JOURNAL, and talk radio were supplying some potent
alternatives to THE NEW YORK TIMES, CBS and its sisters, several news
magazines, and other major elements of the old media “mainstream.” Now,
President Obama’s dilemma is that he
got most of his education, formal and otherwise, from some of the most
“progressive” elements of America’s Democrat indoctrination system. Bush bashing is rapidly losing its
salience. And Obama is
not really closely tuned to “down home” America. He is headed into what closely resembles a
“perfect storm” in three parts. 1. The choice of health care as his first big issue was a
mistake. It affects nearly everyone
personally, and cancels much of the voter apathy that had become an important
part of our politics. Furthermore,
even successful changes are most likely to produce confusion before benefits
for most of those who do benefit. 2. The old “mainstream media,” that have provided much of his
support, are largely addicted to
President baiting, it has been part of their bread and butter. The newer information suppliers are likely
to cover small “liberal” mistakes unlike mainstreaming back-paging of a few tens of millions of innocent deaths from
an errant environmental project, as occurred with the DDT ban. Prior to DDT, mosquito
borne malaria had infected millions of people annually, especially in Africa.
The chemical's discoverer received a Noble prize for the great
reduction in human deaths that it facilitated. But, neither science nor
legal process was sufficient to prevent a ban being rammed through the
Environmental Protection Agency once aggressive environmentalists, fearing
unproven danger to birds, 3. The House of Representatives, having long flourished on voter
apathy and festered on odiferous patronage, is not a strong leg on which to
base support for an inherently controversial program.
Whether our First Black President will prove able to advance life in
America is now very much in question. It may become more appropriate if he is
remembered not as Black, but as the too
aberrant and ambitious paladin of
another subculture, the verbal elite. |
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A SLOBBERING LOVE AFFAIR A
commentary on the book by Bernard Goldberg This is
reprint from July, 2009 By Ivan W. Parkins The
above book title nearly drove me away, but the authorship of Bernard Goldberg
and the picture of President Obama on the jacket had the reverse effect.
Journalist Goldberg, previously a CBS correspondent for 28 years, also
the author of BIAS, is for me well worth reading.
As usual Goldberg is quite direct and substantive. He is not averse to harsh judgments, but
seems to let them follow from his evidence, rather than reversing that order
as too many writers do. His account of
the Obama-Ayres (terrorist) link was more informative than the others that I
have seen.
Like Goldberg, I believe that what we are witnessing is not a
conspiracy but the logical consequence of people (for Goldberg journalists,
for me a broader range of information providers) who live like fish in the
ocean. Fish, Goldberg says, know only
“wet.” To them, all else is alien and
dangerous. Many journalists (and some
other information providers) know only their environments. Of media liberals,
Goldberg says, “To them, conservatives are not simply wrong—they are
repulsive.” I
would add to the above that a huge and heavily one-sided media is not at all
what was anticipated by the authors of our First Amendment. In the late eighteenth century there were
keen memories of two institutions that had contested the power of the nation
state. They were the army and the
church. The Framers limited the roles
of both in our Constitution.
What we have now is the emergence of
a communication elite, especially in large institutions of journalism
and higher education. And that elite,
largely united with the Democrat Party, seeks to make the nation
“theirs.” President Obama has emerged
as the vehicle. |
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Congress? Road to Chaos! By Ivan
W. Parkins This is
a reprint from June 8, 2007 It
takes a bizarre partisanship for the majority of 110th. Congress to suppose that their modest victory (in an election attended by nearly 30
million fewer American voters than elected the 109th. (Two years earlier) mandates major changes in the nations direction. The evidence suggests more clearly that
many Americans are alienated and confused about how their government does, or
does not, work.
Congress has come to believe that oversight of the Executive and Judicial
Branches is it’s most important function.
And, the resulting conflicts do win media attention. Meanwhile, Congress focuses too little of
its attention on providing our country with effective laws for dealing with
immigration, energy needs, etc. Even
more significantly, Congress fails to approve timely, manageable, and “clean”
budgets. If the United States is to
survive and to prosper, it cannot afford a Legislative Branch that neglects
its own primary, and most constructive, powers while it interferes in
time-consuming and other damaging ways with the Executive and Judicial
Branches. No simple reform will remedy what has
become a systemic and institutional failure of Congress. The problem extends beyond the short
comings of individual members and practices.
Congress must be reconstituted to be both closer to the American
people and more respectful of the other branches. Anything less is just more pavement on the
road to chaos. I.W. Parkins |
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DDT,
Malaria and Hasty Environmentalism Or how the ban on DDT has led to millions of malaria deaths. Why has this not been reported? By Ivan W. Parkins THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, May 23-24, 2009, in
its lead editorial says, “In 2006, after 25 years and 50 million, preventable
deaths, the World Health Organization reversed course and endorsed widespread
use of the insecticide DDT to combat malaria.” What! After a mere 50 million lives sacrificed
to the ban on DDT, it is withdrawn?
World War II cost all military involved an estimated 25 million lives,
and civilian deaths are estimated to have added 30 million more; it was a
bigger killer than malaria without DDT. Why have we been so poorly informed in this
matter? Is it that 50 million, mostly
poor African children, count less than the three or so, terrorists that our
security people have water boarded?
Will the occasional deviations of our national defense
establishment from gentlemanly rules
of warfare really cause us greater international grief than our sacrifices to
environmentalism of millions of human
beings? Isn’t there something more
than a little skewed in our huge public information system? |