U Not Gonna Like This

This article from an archives version of the Constitution articles page :



A Republic, Not a Democracy


By Greg Moeller



Constitution Party Regional Co-Chairman - Central States



May 4, 2000





Under the well-worn banner of "power to the people," a call to allow national referendums by direct popular vote has been raised by Reform Party presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan. The implementation of direct democracy through National Initiative and Referendum would not only subvert our system of representative government but would destroy the checks and balances so carefully crafted by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution.



The fact that such a proposition is not immediately rejected is proof that most Americans are misinformed about the nature and character of our system of government. They do not understand the thinking behind the structure of our Constitutional Republic and the protections it provides. This widespread ignorance of our political heritage presents a serious threat to the rights of every American citizen and our future security as a nation of free people.



The Constitution is the centerpiece of American government. Although the framers included democratic elements in our system of government, such as voters directly electing their representatives, our nation is not a democracy. The United States is a Constitutional Republic. In a republic, law making powers are not exercised directly by the people but by representatives elected by the people and accountable to them through re-election.



"Modern times...discovered the only device by which rights can be secured, to wit: government by the people, acting not in person but by representatives chosen by themselves." Thomas Jefferson



It is interesting to note that during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 not one voice was raised in support of direct democracy. Indeed, direct democracy was not merely disliked by our Founding Fathers, it was feared as a harbinger of tyranny. They understood that among the fatal flaws of pure democracy is that it provides no checks and balances on the people themselves. Pure democracy has been called tyranny of the majority because it would allow 51% of the people to deprive the other 49% of their rights by a majority vote.



"…democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." James Madison – Federalist #10



"Conservative" proponents of National Initiative and Referendum point to "successes" like Prop 22 in California as proof that further additions of direct democracy are good for our system of government. While it is tempting to focus on isolated examples to "prove" that Initiative and Referendum (I & R) can be used to pass "good" legislation, it is extremely important that we recognize that I&R has also been used to pass some very bad legislation.



Initiative & Referendum is a century old idea that was promoted by the Populist and Progressive movements for overriding corrupt politicians and disarming special interests groups of influence. However, in reality it has had the opposite effect. The modern ballot initiative process has become big business and involves big money. In California alone, during the recent primary over $150 million was spent to influence the vote on the few referendums that were on the ballot. In other cases, only a handful of people have advanced initiatives and often they were not even residents of the states whose laws they sought to change. In 1998, $91 million was spent in California for a single ballot referendum pertaining to gambling. How many of you belong to grassroots "citizen" organizations that have the ability to counter that kind of money being spent by gambling interests in your State?



Is this Mr. Buchanan’s idea of "power to the people" or is it "power to big money politics?" The ones holding the upper hand in the initiative process are the ones who have enough money to hire professional petitioners to place their measure on the ballot and have enough left over to sway the voters through a mass media advertising campaign.



While the nature of our constitutional system of checks and balances may be frustrating to deal with at times, to advocate bypassing them is a dangerous proposition indeed. The core issue is not whether you can pass a "good" referendum by popular vote that would have been difficult to pass through the legislature. More central is whether all aspects of legislation should be openly debated and considered fully by elected representatives, bound by oath to support the Constitution, who have the time and the duty to do so.



The framers designed our system of government so that our God-given rights would be secured and that legislation which affects many would be based on deliberate considerations of the issues by our elected representatives, not on the ever-changing winds of public opinion. As Alexander Hamilton said, "It had been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny."


If we are to be intellectually honest regarding the efficacy of Initiative and Referendum, we must recognize the following:

1. The voting public works full-time to put bread on the table and simply does not have the time to invest in full consideration of issues. Nor do many of them have easy access to the resources necessary for a full consideration of the issues.

2. Initiative and Referendum can be easily exploited by special interest groups and industries with their own political agenda. They’ve found that many times it is easier to manipulate public opinion through the use of mass media than to go through the time-consuming process of supporting candidates and lobbying them for the legislation they want.


3. In any significant initiative battle, money is usually the dominant factor. I & R is far more influenced by sound-bite ads than comprehensive reasoned arguments. This places an even greater amount of power in the hands of the media and those with the financial resources to place issues on the ballot and buy advertising time. Let’s face it, a majority of the American people still think Bill Clinton has done a "good job" as president. Have these people arrived at this conclusions based on an accurate knowledge of what President Clinton has done on a day to day basis, or are they more influenced by the image the media presents to them?

4. Minority interests are more likely to come out on the short end of the stick in a popular referendum environment. The fact of the matter is that the majority isn’t always right. Our system of government was designed to insure that the rights of the minority would not be trampled on by the majority. Decisions made purely on the basis of the "will" of the majority will at some point strip the minority of their rights.

However, this does not negate the reality that a whole lot of people are rightfully upset by what our elected representatives are doing. But the proper solution is not more "democracy." Keep this simple fact in mind; the representatives that you may hold in contempt were themselves elected by popular vote.



This cuts right to the heart of the matter. If you don’t like what your representatives are doing once in office, the solution is not to undermine our system of government, but rather to elect better representatives! To really change what’s happening in government, better alternatives are needed at the ballot box. People need to change both their vote and where they invest their political support. That’s where the Constitution Party comes in. We are focused on restoring health to our beloved republic and our constitutional system of government.



We must hold our representatives accountable to us and to their oath of office by requiring adherence to the power limits of the Constitution. The future of our children, grandchildren and indeed the nation, depends on it.



The Constitution Party is on the web at:

www.constitutionparty.com

From an archived copy of the Consent Journal (link) published by the Freedom Party of Canada:


by Kenneth H. W. Hilborn



(Professor Kenneth Hilborn teaches 20th Century international history at the University of Western Ontario, in London. A Freedom Party member, he is also a member of the President's Council of the National Citizens' Coalition.)



Last year the Pennsylvania State University Press published a book that should inflict great damage on its status as a reputable academic publisher. Entitled The Revenge of History: Marxism and the East European Revolution, it illustrates the continuing danger of leftist intellectuals' illusions about Marxism.



The author, Alex Callinicos, sets out to convince readers that the ideas of both Marx and Lenin were essentially sound, and that Lenin's revolution in 1917 led to evil consequences only because it fell victim to "Stalinism."



According to Callinicos (who teaches politics at a university in England), Lenin and his Bolsheviks were true Marxist socialists, whereas Stalin was a counter-revolutionary whose system represented a "variant of capitalism." Thus, the fall of European "Stalinist" regimes brought a transition not from socialism to capitalism, but merely from one form of capitalism to another. Genuine Marxist socialism, based on rule by workers' councils (soviets), Callinicos portrays as still a viable alternative.



The author's belief that "a qualitative break separates Stalinism from Marx and Lenin" is impossible to defend without massive suppression or distortion of relevant information. In his book Intellectuals, the British historian Paul Johnson maintains that everything in "Stalinism" was already foreshadowed in the conduct of Marx --- a man violent in his language, barefaced in his lies, fiercely intolerant towards all who disagreed with him, and determined to dominate everybody with whom he associated.



Callinicos makes no attempt to refute the evidence that Johnson summarizes; he simply ignores it. For him Marx is the supreme authority. He repeatedly deals with issues not by examining facts, but by telling us what Marx said on the subject, though Marx has been dead for more than a century and often misrepresented the realities even of his own time.



In his efforts to conceal the conspicuous continuity between Lenin's regime and Stalin's, Callinicos displays a dismaying indifference to the historical record. For example, though he mentions the decision of the Communist Party's Tenth Congress in 1921 to prohibit "factions" (pluralism) within the organization, he puts this development in the context of Stalin's ability as General Secretary to "control party congresses." In fact, Stalin did not become General Secretary until the following year, and it was on Lenin's initiative that the Tenth Congress acted against "factions."



The author also creates an impression that the Soviet secret police (originally called the Cheka) was founded in response to the pressures of civil war, whereas in fact Lenin's regime created the Cheka in December 1917 --- months before the civil war broke out. Callinicos says nothing whatever about Lenin's enthusiastic advocacy of ruthlessness and mass terror, nor about his role in inaugurating the system of camps that developed into Stalin's notorious Gulag.



On the other hand, the author makes no attempt to deny Lenin's responsibility for the decision in 1918 to suppress the Constituent Assembly. Conceding that the Bolsheviks had won only a quarter of the popular vote in the Assembly elections, Callinicos questions whether the outcome at the polls "accurately reflected the balance of social and political forces."



Perhaps recognizing that this point provides no adequate justification for a losing party's use of force to nullify an election result, Callinicos places more emphasis on the distinction between what he calls "two kinds of democracy" --- the "bourgeois" parliamentary form based on territorial constituencies and the "proletarian" or "soviet" form based on the workplace. Even with universal suffrage, he argues, parliamentary institutions --- such as the Constituent Assembly --- tend to result in the defeat of workers' revolution. As a Marxist, he assumes that revolutionary "workers" have a democratic right to rule even if they cannot win a majority of the national electorate as a whole.



Callinicos prudently avoids discussing the question of what percentage of the population would be excluded
from the soviet "democracy" that he advocates. Participation in the soviets is apparently to be restricted to "wage-labourers," though on one occasion Callinicos refers in passing to a "new middle class of professionals, managers and administrators occupying an intermediary position between wage-labour and capital." He says nothing about a political role for these people, for the self-employed, for retired persons, or indeed for anybody who either receives no wages or lacks a "workplace" as a "focus of collectivity."



The most ominous passage in the book is one in which Callinicos cites the precedent of wartime Britain to justify use of such measures as "detention without trial and extensive censorship" in defence of "socialist democracy." Marxist doctrine blinds the author to the difference between emergency measures by a constitutional parliamentary government acting in the interests of a nation under foreign attack and superficially similar measures by a revolutionary government acting in the (supposed) interests of one social class against the rest of the population.



The threat to freedom is especially great when the revolutionaries seek an objective, equality for all, that is inherently unattainable. Since inequality is a fact of normal life, any effort to achieve equality requires continuing enforcement, and to perform their function the enforcers must be entrusted with great power --- a power that allows them to establish themselves as a new privileged caste.



If academic propagandists like Callinicos can succeed in convincing gullible readers that a future Marxist experiment would have better results than those in the past, the twenty-first century may suffer as much as the twentieth from the disasters to which utopian dreams have so often led.



The Freedom Party can be found on the web at:

www.freedomparty.org

This old press relase is something I've had stored on my hard drive for some time now. I've decided to post it since the orginal is no longer on the web:



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


July 24, 2003


Source: Constitution Party National Committee



Constitution Party: U.S. House Betrays American Sovereignty


LANCASTER, PA: The nation's third largest political party sharply criticized the United States House of Representatives for its recent failure to pull the United States out of the United Nations, and applauded those Congressmen who were willing to go on record as opposed to further participation in the world body.



"It is absolutely reprehensible that the very chamber that is responsible under the Constitution for any federal spending refuses to defend the sovereignty of the nation that provides that money," said James N. Clymer, Chairman of the Constitution Party National Committee. "These Congressman have effectively betrayed American sovereignty to interests other than the Constitution to which they have sworn their allegiance."



"Those Congressmen who refused to support the Paul amendment have made it abundantly clear that their first priority is not the well being of the United States but the expansion of an anti-American global society," he said.



The Paul Amendment was an amendment to a foreign aid bill put forth by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) which would have pulled the United States out of the United Nations. The measure failed to pass the House by a vote of 350 - 74.



"What's so incredulous about this vote is the fact that the United Nations demonstrated how impotent and useless it was in the diplomatic fiasco that occurred just before the Iraq war," Clymer said.



"This Congress now knows that the U.N. is a waste of taxpayer time and money, and still they want to keep us hackled to it? It's absolutely appalling!"



Clymer said that those members of Congress who voted for the Paul Amendment should be applauded for both their courage and insight.



"They voted for what they know is right - American sovereignty and American independence," Clymer said. These are true heroes when it comes to defending American liberty against those neo-fascists who would have us enslaved to a world body that hates this country."



Clymer said that it is even more disgraceful that Congress chose to reject the Paul amendment given the long history of U.N. activity that directly contradicts principles and rights outlined in the United States Constitution.



"The U.N.'s history of supporting pro-abortion activities, of seeking to impose its gun control
totalitarianism on American citizens, and of promotion of the radical homosexual agenda is evidence enough that the goals of the U.N. are in direct contradiction to the U.S. Constitution," he said.



"So, the real question that has to be asked is whose side is Congress on: America's or the United Nation’s?"



Clymer said that the Paul amendment vote clearly demonstrates the need to reform Congress. "They vote themselves a pay raise every two years. They amend an income tax code that is antiquated and unfair. Then they vote to send hard earned American dollars to a world body that does not share the vision, principles and ideals that our Founding Fathers had and which led to the creation of this country."



"I ask again, whose side are these people on?"



The Constitution Party is the only national political party with a strong stand on moral, economic, and constitutional issues. The Constitution Party is working to restore government to its vital, yet limited, constitutionally defined role. The Party’s strong advocacy of less government spending, regulation, gun control, and taxes coupled with its expressed commitment to the protection of life, liberty, and property is finding growing popular support nationwide.




Constitution Party can be found on the web at:

www.constitutionparty.com

This article comes from the Internet Archives version of the Foundation For Economic Education:


Are There No Limits to Federal Regulatory Power?

Published in Ideas on Liberty - December 1992


by Russell G. Ryan







Most of us recall from our civics classes the quaint notion that our federal government is one of “limited” and “enumerated” powers. We might also remember that James Madison, in his Federalist No. 45, assured skeptics of a central government that “[t]he powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal government are few and defined.” For those of us who took Madison and our civics teachers at their word, the ubiquitous tentacles of today’s federal behemoth can be positively bewildering, often causing us to scratch our heads and wonder: “What happened?”



For example, several weeks ago I spotted some ants crawling on my kitchen floor. Frustrated that I had no insecticide designed specifically to kill ants, I reached for a popular wasp and hornet spray, confident it would do the job just as well. And as the commercial might say, “BANG!” Those poor critters would have fared better against a neutron bomb.



As I sat back to savor the victory, however, I noticed an intimidating warning on the back of the spray can (reminiscent of the proverbial mattress tag threatening all manner of trouble if it is removed): “It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling.” Had I really committed a federal offense? Admittedly, I had used a wasp and hornet spray to obliterate a few ants, and worse yet I had, contrary to the directions on the can, sprayed indoors and at very close range. But could our government of limited and enumerated powers really make a federal case out of how I choose to kill bugs in my own kitchen?



The following day in my law office, I determined to find the answer. I was sure that the power to regulate pesticide use was not among the enumerated powers granted to Congress in the Constitution-nor was even a more general power to regulate chemicals or kitchens. Yet, as I soon discovered, even without such specific enumerated power, Congress had indeed enacted an elaborate regulatory scheme for pesticides, called the Feder al Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, section 12(a)(2)(G) of which actually does outlaw the use of any pesticide inconsistent with its labeling. Moreover, as the statute expressly contemplates, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has in turn promulgated hundreds of pages of further rules and regulations governing pesticides, including one that explicitly requires all pesticide labels to include a warning that “It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling.”



The constitutional authority cited for this massive regulatory scheme, like that cited for many similar schemes enacted by Congress, is Article I, Section 8, clause 3 of the Constitution, which empowers Congress to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.” How, you might reasonably ask, does my kitchen use of a bug spray constitute interstate commerce? If you need to ask, you obviously did not spend three years and tens of thousands of dollars on a law school education. But don’t feel too bad; many of us who did spend the time and money to get through law school still—if I may borrow the trendiest phrase of the political season—“just don’t get it.”



As any law student will tell you, the so-called “commerce clause” of the Constitution, like much of the rest of the document, simply no longer means what it plainly says. For the past half century, the Supreme Court has interpreted the phrase “Commerce among the several States” to include not just commerce that occurs between or among two or more states, but virtually any activity that might, however remotely and indirectly, have a theoretical effect on such commerce, even if the activity occurs entirely within the borders of only one state.



Wickard versus Filburn



In fact, this November marks the 50th anniversary of perhaps the most infamous of all of the Supreme Court’s commerce clause decisions, Wickard v. Filburn (1942), which rejected a farmer’s challenge to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. In earlier challenges to President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Supreme Court had struck down several other regulatory schemes on the grounds that they unconstitutionally exceeded the federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce. By 1942, however, despite the failure of his “court-packing” plan, President Roosevelt was able to fill a sufficient number of court vacancies to obtain a far more liberal jurisprudence regarding federal regulatory power.



Mr. Filburn was the owner and operator of a small dairy and poultry farm in Ohio. Each year, he also raised a small quantity of wheat for the sole purposes of feeding his animals, feeding his own family, and seeding for the following year. Although his entire wheat crop was consumed on the farm property and no part was sold on the market, Filburn was subjected to a massive new marketing quota scheme dictated from Washington pursuant to the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the essential purpose of which was to prop up the price of wheat. When Filburn exceeded his “wheat acreage allotment” for 1941, the feds slapped him with a statutory penalty.



In order to uphold the penalty against Filburn as a permissible regulation of “commerce among the several States,” the Roosevelt Court had to overcome two inconvenient facts: The offending wheat crop was never entered into the stream of commerce, and it never left the State of Ohio (or, for that matter, the boundaries of Filburn’s farm). The Court overcame the first of these hurdles by magically redefining the word “Commerce” to mean not only the buying and selling of goods, but also the “consumption” of goods. It overcame the second by citing earlier decisions that had already rewritten the phrase “among the several States” to mean either among the several States or within only one state but having a substantial economic effect, whether direct or indirect, or interstate commerce. For sticklers who might question the Court’s apparent infidelity to the plain language of the Constitution, the Court explained that economic realities had “made the mechanical application of legal formulas no longer feasible.”



Even having rewritten the Constitution, however, the Court still needed to explain how one Ohio farmer’s small wheat crop, used entirely for home consumption, could have a “substantial economic effect” on interstate commerce. In a brilliant demonstration of the result-oriented jurisprudence of the day, the justices reasoned—unanimously!—that wheat grown solely for home consumption “supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market,” and that although Fil-burn’s own contribution to this depression in the demand for wheat “may be trivial by itself,” his contribution, “taken together with that of many others similarly situated, is far from trivial.” (Even the law professors get a chuckle when they explain this reasoning.)



After 50 years, Wickard v. Filburn endures as a classic example of how the Courts have stretched, pulled, and twisted the plain language of the Constitution beyond recognition, effectively rewriting key provisions without having to go through the formal amendment process set out in Article V. The decision also serves as a reminder of how our “limited” federal government has steadily grown into a leviathan bureaucracy that consumes over a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product in order to regulate even the distance from which we spray insecticide in our kitchens.

But according to a new wave of thinking, the next front in the fight against poverty should consist of policies aimed at these very individuals. Experts say that poor men, caught in profound economic and social changes, now number among society's most vulnerable members. The economy has shifted its weight to the service sector, shedding the manufacturing jobs that once offered low-skilled men the promise of good wages to support their families. Alarming percentages of poor men - disproportionately African-Americans - pass through the criminal justice system, further undercutting their employability. And child support laws have driven them deep into debt.

Read the full article by going here (link).

Yes straight from the mouth of yet another Ameriskank from Red Book Magazine (link):

Men are big kids (and proud of it)

Deep down, all men are big ol' boys. (This explains why so many grown men wear baseball caps.) Their interests are boylike, too. Take his obsession with sports. Most men love anything that involves kicking something, throwing things or punching other men. Sound like 10-year-olds on the playground to you? Does to me. When you put three or more men together, they bond by yelling at the TV and being idiots to each other. Regressing into childlike behavior isn't just a means of amusing themselves -- it's their way of escaping real-life pressures and feeling accepted as they are. There's no point in denying guys time to release their juvenile side. Just be glad they're doing it during boys' night out and not in front of your girlfriends or family!

This comes to you via the Internet Archives (link) and the now defunct Upstream web site:

The Truth about Anita Hill

While many laud Anita Hill as a national hero for bringing sexual ha- rassment into the national limelight, others remain skeptical of her and are gathering extensive factual evidence to show that she in fact lied. David Brock's The Real Anita Hill highlights the inconsistencies of her testimony.

By James E. McCloskey



Why do most liberals believe Anita Hill? Why do most conservatives believe Clarence Thomas? Much acrimony has been made about these hear- ings over the past two years. Conservatives believed that Anita Hill was used by liberals and feminists to defeat the Thomas nomination. Liberals believed that Thomas had demeaned this woman and those who pressed Anita Hill with tough and skeptical questions, such as Republican Senator Ar- len Specter, "just didn't get it." A new book by David Brock, The Real Anita Hill: The Untold Story carefully researches all of Anita Hill's claims. He also discusses the statements of her corroborating and con- tradicting witnesses.




Anita Hill claimed to have been harassed by Clarence Thomas when she worked for him at the Department of Education in the fall of 1981. She then followed Clarence Thomas into the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) in 1982, despite having a tenured appointment at the Department of Education. Many wondered why Hill would follow her sup- posed harasser to another job with him. Anita Hill told Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) that she was not sure that her job at the Department of Education was secure, and claimed that she was a political (non- tenured) rather than a career (tenured) employee. But Senator Arlen Specter showed proof that Hill was a career employee. After Specter's questions, Hill claimed that no one told her that she could not be fired without cause. However, all new employees were told whether they had tenure or not, as many others told under oath. David Brock shows that this meant that Hill claimed she was a political appointee under oath, when in fact she was a career employee. Even the two reporters friendly to Hill, Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, do not contest Brock's analysis of this.



Harry Singleton, Clarence Thomas's successor at the Department of Education, refuted many of Hill's statements. He said that Hill dec- lined to stay at the Department of Education, and enthusiastically fol- lowed Thomas to the EEOC. Singleton also told Hill that he wanted her to work for him at the Department of Education. Another employee, Diane Holt, claimed that Hill and her went to work for Thomas because both of them wanted to work for him. This shows that Hill not only lied about the fact that she had tenure, but also the fact that she knew she had tenure. Brock also shows that she was enthusiastic, not reluctant, about joining Clarence Thomas at the EEOC.



Evidence shows that Hill left ten telephone messages for Thomas be- tween 1983 and 1991. Only one of those were replies to his calls to her, despite her statement to the contrary to the Judiciary Committee. When approached by Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, Hill called the ten phone logs "garbage." When Specter questioned her, she claimed that she just wanted to speak with his secretary. But Thomas' secretary, Diane Holt, said that if Hill wanted to speak to her and her only, the calls would not have been logged. Brock shows that Hill misled the Committee on the existence of these calls.



Another sticking point is Hill driving Thomas to the Tulsa airport after he gave a speech there. When Senator Specter asked her why, she claimed that the dean of the Oral Roberts law school, Charles Kothe, had asked her to. Is this statement true? Kothe said that Hill was proud of her new car and wanted to show Thomas by driving him to the airport. This shows that yet another person would have to be lying if Anita Hill were telling the truth.



Brock piercingly shows how Hill also contradicted her accounts of meetings with the Senate Staff. Jim Brudney, a staffer for Democratic Senator Howard Metzenbaum, coaxed her into filing a harassment charge against Thomas. Hill wished to do so, but only anonymously. Her friend, Keith Henderson, said that if she made the charge quietly and behind the scenes, Thomas might be induced to withdraw. She only came forward when her statement was leaked to the press, probably by Brudney and Senator Paul Simon (D-Illinois). Senator Specter then asked her about this ac- count in USA Today. Hill claimed not to have been asked about a poten- tial withdrawal of Thomas. After Specter's questions, she volunteered information about Mr. Brudney. She said that "there was some indication the nominee might not wish to continue the process." In other words, Hill blatantly contradicted her previous testimony. Brock shows that first she stated to the Judiciary Committee that Brudney did not tell her about Thomas' possible withdrawal, and then she contradicted her testimony and said that she did. Hill then changed her testimony to avoid possibly being charged with perjury, omitting any information that would have implicated Mr. Brudney as the person who leaked her statement to the media.



Hill claimed that she typed up her accusation to the Judiciary Committee, gave a copy to her counsel, and kept the original. David Brock cites the report of Special Investigator Peter Fleming which showed that she had faxed a copy of her statement on September 25, 1991 to staffer James Brudney. Hill withheld this information under oath.




Hill claimed she met Brudney in order to clear up some missing knowledge that she wanted to know about civil rights and sexual harass- ment law. Yet Specter asked her whether she taught civil rights law af- ter 1980. Hill falsely claimed that she had not taught in the area since 1986. Brock uncovers yet another one of Hill's subterfuges. According to the Office of Admissions and Records at the University of Oklahoma Law School, she taught a civil rights class in 1990. Brock shows she lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee yet again. This showed that Hill left a string of lies in order to cover up the real reason she met Brudney.



Brock shows that Stanley Grayson and Carlton Stewart claimed in a sworn affidavit that Hill said to them at the American Bar Association Convention in August of 1991 "How great Clarence's nomination was, and how much he deserved it." She denied this. Grayson and Stewart would have had to perjure their testimony as well if Hill was to be truthful.

Republican Senators became more indignant when they found that Hill's testimony in front of the Judiciary Committee was more graphic than her sworn FBI statement. Senator Specter asked her why. She claimed that they did not ask for graphic details. The two FBI agents who took Hill's statement flatly contradicted her on this. The content of the conversation she would "always remember" were two different stories-- one to the FBI and one to the Judiciary Committee.




Perhaps the most telling example of the falsehoods of Miss Hill is the corroborating testimony proffered by Susan Hoerchner. Hoerchner claimed that Hill called her during the time the harassment supposedly occurred. In her deposition to the Judiciary Committee, Hoerchner claimed that Hill was harassed by Thomas in March of 1981. Yet Hill did not start working for Thomas until September of 1981. After consulting her attorneys, Hoerchner's memory became remiss. This also could not have been a case of Hoerchner forgetting the date of the conversations. Hoerchner said that she was in Washington when Hill called her about the supposed harassment. Hoerchner moved to California in September 1981 and said she lost touch with Hill after leaving for California. This shows that Hoerchner contradicted herself when asked the same question twice, which makes her an unreliable witness.



In March of 1981, Hill was working for the liberal law firm Wald, Harkrader, and Ross. Brock asks, could Hill have been harassed here and not at the Department of Education? Yet her record at Wald, Harkrader, and Ross was spotty at best. When Senator Joe Biden asked her whether anyone suggested she leave the law firm, she denied it. Many lawyers at the firm remembered her performance at Wald as substandard. John Burke, a partner at the law firm, stated in a sworn affidavit that her state- ment was false. When the Republican Senators wanted to subpoena the Wald, Harkrader and Ross records, the Democrats refused, apparently un- concerned about uncovering the truth.



Two of Hill's other witnesses, John Carr and Joel Paul said that Hill was telling them about the alleged harassment, but neither one could recall under oath whether she mentioned Clarence Thomas. Why did those two wait to render judgment on Thomas until 1991, when both of them could have done so in the American Bar Association ratings? Both opposed the Thomas nomination for political reasons. Her other witness, Ellen Wells, could not corroborate that Judge Thomas's comments to Ani ta Hill at the office were sexual in nature. They could just as easily been a chastisement for poor work performance or a passing over for a promotion or work assignment. Wells also had ideological disagreements about Thomas views on abortion.



A supposed second Thomas victim, Angela Wright was drawn before a group of liberal Senate Staffers who opposed Thomas. She made an unsworn statement that did not accuse Thomas of sexual harassment. However, Wright had been fired at the EEOC by Thomas because he was dissatisfied with her work at the EEOC and because she referred to one of his assis- tants as a "faggot." When she was also fired from the Agency for Inter- national Development by Kate Semerad, she also made eleventh-hour alle- gations opposing her. An aide of Thomas, Armstrong Williams stated under oath that she said "If it's the last thing I ever do, I'll get Thomas!" This showed that she was seeking revenge for her termination.



Although left-wing Senator Howard Metzenbaum relegated a series of female Thomas supporters' testimony until after midnight when no one was watching, their statements did much to vindicate Thomas. Liberal co- worker Pamela Talkin described how Thomas was keenly sensitive to the needs of women. Constance Newman said that in a large agency such as the EEOC, an allegation of sexual harassment would not remain secret for ten years. Nancy Altman, herself a victim of sexual harassment, corroborated Newman's testimony and stated that she did not believe Hill. Linda Jack- son talked of Thomas support for her when she left an abusive marriage. Janet Brown , another victim of sexual harassment, said that Thomas was so sensitive to harassment that he wouldn't do it. Thomas had many poli- tical enemies watching him, Brock notes, and they would have noticed harassment at the first opportunity. They did not. Not one co-worker of Hill and Thomas believed Hill. Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, in their negative review of The Real Anita Hill, also do not contest this.



Hill passed a polygraph test. But they said that the test was fi- nished at 1pm, yet it was not reported until 5pm. Could Hill have taken the test until she passed it? The administrator of the test, Paul Minor, had bungled the results of two previous polygraph tests. These tests are unreliable enough, Brock states, that they cannot be used for evidence. Even Hill's biggest partisans (Senators Metzenbaum, Kennedy, and Simon) all had spoken out against polygraph tests in previous years out of con- cern for civil liberties .




Hill lied under oath, contradicting herself on the witness stand four times. Twelve people plus her four witnesses would all have to lie if Hill was telling the truth. Why did she perjure her testimony? Brock uncovers a previously unknown Anita Hill. She became disgruntled at Tho- mas starting in 1982 because her workload was increasing while she was being passed up for promotions. She simply was unable to handle the work. She also disagreed with Thomas' increasing hostility to racial quotas. She kept in touch with Thomas in case she needed him for a re- commendation, which she needed at Oral Roberts University. She became a professor at the University of Oklahoma Law School, where she often pro- moted leftist ideas in the classroom. About fifteen students sent this information to Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming) unsolicited. She also supported codes against "hate speech." Brock reveals newspaper inter- views where she publicly criticized Thomas for ideological reasons. She resented Thomas' opposition to quotas, and his presumed opposition to abortion on demand (Thomas later voted to overturn Roe v. Wade).



Hill never intended to come forward and hoped her anonymous state- ment would be enough to get him to withdraw. Left-wing Senate staffers wanted her to defeat Thomas so badly that they slowly drew her out of the closet. Her statement was leaked, causing the saga. During the hearings, Brock shows that Hill lied under oath on four key occasions, and sixteen people would have to be all lying if she were to be telling the truth beyond those four lies. David Brock's carefully and indus- trially researched work shows that any reasonable person should ignore the radical feminist cries that those skeptical of Hill "simply don't get it", and realize that Anita Hill perjured her testimony on many occasions when she accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment before the Senate, the media and the country.




James McCloskey is a Junior in the College of Human Ecology.