Interview With Senator Wallop, Part Three
By Peter and Helen Evans (07/01/04)
Following is part two of an on-going collection of interviews which will eventually be a book, America, The Great Experiment: What's America For?
Helen: You've been right there in the pits of the Senate. You just spoke of having to filibuster your own bill after it had gone through committee changes. Now, let's go back to before your time in the Senate. When did you realize what America was all about? Was there a special time or instant?
Senator Wallop: I began to realize it when I was at Yale. When I had arguments with liberal classmates about what being an American was all about. Yale, at that time, was not anything as like as liberal as Yale is today. We talked about the privilege of Americana. One of the great things about being at university is that you could stay up all night and talk about things like that. Some of us wouldn't believe things we once said. I went to the Army after that.
Helen: Did you volunteer?
Senator Wallop: I was in ROTC when Yale still believed in it. Out of my high school graduating class of 13, 2 were killed in Korea. So we began to know the price of trying to defend things. We wanted to know about why the world was as it was. After all, WW II was just over, the Iron Curtain had rung down, communism was a threat to some and a right to others, the McCarthy era was upon us; there were lots of issues in the world. It became obvious to some of us that communism was a threat to the American way of life. Some of us realized that if we fell into the same pattern of governance as communism we realized that most of the things we knew as the rights and privileges of a free society would be gone. I remember talking to people about that and finding levels of skepticism because some people didn't think there was anything "so" wrong with the Soviets.
Helen: What did you say to them?
Senator Wallop: I told them what was wrong with the Soviets was that since they had no market at all, you would always be dependant on someone else for whatever it is you do or have. You don't have the choice to say "I'd don't want to be a steel worker, I'd rather be a coal miner." They sent you off to where they sent you off to. Then I began to listen to the ultra-liberal class of the 1960's who were of the opinion that the "command economies," as they called them, (they didn't like to call it communism) were the most benign and most efficient use of labor, or of a society's skills, and someday we would all learn that. And... by the way, when we learned that, they would be happy to be the ones to command our economy!
Incidentally, the ultra liberals from those days have turned into what we now know as environmentalists. When they lost the command economy argument (no one is rash enough to suggest there is any validity to it now), they are now saying that the environment has to be globally managed... and, by the way, they'd be happy to manage it for us. By controlling the environment they could tell us what we could or could not eat, what we could or could not use.
Peter: And where to not walk on the grass.
Senator Wallop: One of the interesting things to me is that, when I came to Senate, so many people were talking about how Americans were such profligate users of energy. We were having an energy crisis in the 1970's, and that we just didn't understand. But of course, Europe understood perfectly well. After all, they were paying three times more for a gallon of gas than we were! And we should do it too. That would have been just the beginning. But the reason they were paying three times as much for gas was because most of the cost was taxes! The oil market is fungible; it doesn't matter where it comes from. Those very same people who were moaning that Americans didn't pay enough for gas are now the very same ones who are screaming the loudest because gas prices are going up!
Helen: I'm of the personal opinion that they are trying to destroy the foundations of America. What do you think?
Senator Wallop: I don't think they're trying to destroy them. I don't think they appreciate them enough to care about them.
Helen: What happens if they get what they want? Wouldn't we become socialists?
Senator Wallop: What would happen is that we and the rest of the world would sink slowly into a slough of poverty. You can't create wealth out of demand. It just won't happen. Europe is trying to come to grips with that now. Just look at France, whenever they try to do anything reasonable about curbing benefits - such as the totally free education system which now has "students" in their 40's in there because as long as you're educating yourself you get a subsidy, a subsistence - they have people drive tractors into the middle of streets and stop the economy entirely. The public there has learned a way to demand their needs be satisfied before anything reasonable takes place.
Peter: There seems to be a fairly predicable half life to that kind of behavior which is based on a illusion that the government can just print more money and not have it result in inflation.
Senator Wallop: What you have is countries whose economies are just not creating wealth. For instance, I think it's in Sweden, you have to work until September until the money you earn is yours. We're upset by having to work until May.
Helen: Would you say that another misconception is that there is a finite amount of money in the world? Also, that the rich only get rich by taking it away from the poor.
Senator Wallop: Yes. That's all nonsense thinking. How much money was there in the world for the caveman? Maybe someone came to one of them and asked for 110 stone wheels. Well, there weren't 110 stones wheels in the world, so he had to make them. He had to invent a better way to make wheels, or come up with a new way to use wheels that had never been thought of before. Wealth is somewhat like military concepts. When I was on the Armed Services Committee, they used to talk about the "ultimate weapon." There isn't one. There is always this problem of people who can't sleep at night. They keep figuring out ways to do things better. Looking back, people were afraid of the longbow, then the crossbow made it obsolete. If you go down to Fort Jefferson in the Florida Keys. It's the place where Lincoln's doctor was confined. On top of this fort is a huge cannon which was obsolete the day they placed it on top. Rifled cannons had just been invented and could penetrate the walls of the fort. It was of no value a second after it was of ultimate value.
Helen: So we're constantly changing. Our best becomes obsolete and that idea drives us forward to new adventures and achievements.
Senator Wallop: Mankind has a troublesome habit of inventing things and creating money and power. Our biggest chore is to make certain that ingenuity it not locked up.
Helen: You were on the Armed Services Committee, and we'd like your response to the people who rhetorically ask, "What's the big deal? Why do we have to defend ourselves?"
Senator Wallop: No nation has ever existed without that fundamental obligation. The defense of the homeland is the principle obligation of government. If you can't defend it you'll no longer have a homeland, someone will be sure to come along and remove it from you.
Helen: Recently we read an article where someone said that the 3,000 who died on Sept. 11th is such a small number compared to the entire population of America. 3,000 people is not enough of a reason to go to war, especially since many more die every year from disease or traffic accidents. The writer suggested 3,000 wasn't a big deal in the larger scheme of things. What do you say to that?
Senator Wallop: It's a threat to the very existence of the concept of liberty and freedom that we have. If you can get by with losing 3,000 people, what's to stop them from killing 10,000 people? And if you can get by with that, what's to stop them from creating a Holocaust or with killing 15 million people, the way Stalin did? The fundamental duty of government, first and foremost, is the defense of the homeland. Without that there is no raison d'etre for government. That doesn't mean that we can possibly devise a way to keep the homeland entirely safe from danger, but that's still basic to the whole concept of government; even bad governments have that mandate. It may be that their concept is just to find a way to maintain their own existence, but, even then, they still have to defend their homeland.
Peter: They at least have to maintain their dependent constituencies, if nothing else.
Helen: I'm thinking of our problems with the UN. There are voices that say we should "get along" with everyone, and most times that means agreeing with them. How can we defend ourselves if we also have to agree with everyone?
Senator Wallop: You won't be able to. It's as simple as that. And let's remember, the UN doesn't have such a great reputation for doing good things for people in need. It likes to think it does, but the record shows otherwise. I can remember back in the Reagan era, some Republicans wanted to force President Reagan to embargo South Africa because of apartheid. I remember Senator Lugar and Congressman Gingrich and a few others saying, "this will win us Black votes." I said, "No. That will just give them the idea that they've been right all along, and you've just come over to their side. You haven't invited them home." Instead, I put an amendment on the floor that said, "If South Africa is the measure by which we find governance intolerable, then we should impose the same embargo on all the governments in the world that are this bad, or worse." For example, I mentioned Rwanda's then-current problems with the Hutus and the Tutsis. Someone said, "that's their internal problem." I replied, "There you go with the typical middle class racist concept that, if a white does it to a black, that's "evil," but if a black does it to a black, then "what else can you expect?" That's the ultimate plantation mentality again; arrogant middle class racism. That was not popularly received on the floor of the Senate, of course.
This is a country that forces you to think. That doesn't mean you'll succeed in your life, but it does force you to think about how things could be and how to try to put things in balance. So when someone says 3,000 people is tragic but let's move on, then they have just licensed the events that took place. They have just licensed the events that take place in Ethiopia, or what's going on now in Nigeria. Absent a government that is capable of defending its people, eventually, it will not be able to defend it from any crackpot idea that anyone has. I just can't imagine how it's possible for someone to think that we don't have an obligation to be as strong as we possibly can be and, as long as we're the strongest in the world, to stay that way.
Helen: As we drove over here today we said, "what a beautiful day, and to think we're at war." Our theory is that a lot of people just don't believe there is an actual threat, and that an actual war is happening. They haven't felt threatened in their private lives.
Senator Wallop: That's one of the hardest jobs in governing. You have two obligations: one is to secure the homeland and the other is to make sure that people have enough confidence in that security, so that they can carry on with the rest of their lives. So you have two contrary sets of actions taking place. And somehow, within that, you have to make it clear that what you're doing is securing the future, so that you can have the sort of day you're having today.
Helen: Have we sanitized life so much that people might think the war is just another movie on TV?
Senator Wallop: There's a problem with TV and that's a part of it, but another part of it is that people see one and a half minutes of newscast from the Middle East and they think they "know the Middle East" and even feel like they've been there. And the "Middle East" becomes simply whatever they have just been shown. [more to come]
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