Paul Mero

James O’Keefe is known for his short films exposing liberal hypocrisy and corruption. His most famous film was an undercover recording of corruption inside the offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). O’Keefe’s revealing video footage resulted in ACORN shutting down its operations.

His latest video shows O’Keefe crossing the U.S./Mexico border unmolested by U.S. border patrol. He did it twice – the second time dressed in army fatigues and wearing a Halloween mask of Osama Bin Laden. His point was to show how unprotected our southern border really is.

The border between the United States and Mexico runs nearly 2,000 miles. Picture standing on the shores of Imperial Beach, California, and walking east/southeast 2,000 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. That’s a lot of ground to cover. Most undocumented immigrants enter the United States at population rich spots – like the border at Tijuana. Understandably, U.S. border patrol is concentrated in those areas. Not so much in the desert areas.

But there’s James O’Keefe – I’m sure a very well meaning fellow – standing in the middle of nowhere, on the Mexican side of the border, video taping how he can saunter across the shallow river about 20 feet to the Land of the Free on the other side. He looks into the camera and says, “There’s not a border agent around for miles.”

Folks, if you think that seeing a border agent means our border is secure, please reconsider. There’s a reason why we call where O’Keefe was standing “the middle of nowhere” – it’s precisely because few people trod that ground. He was visiting 4,000 square miles of Texas desert in Hudspeth County, population 3,500. Not really the crossroads of the west. In fact, if somebody were trying to cross the border there, you’d be able to see them coming for miles.

We need to quit thinking of border security in the narrowest of terms. A border agent can hardly be defined as border security along a 2,000-mile stretch of land. My guess is that there are more future actual terrorists currently attending Ivy League universities than will ever cross the southern border at Hudspeth County, Texas.

I’m not arguing that the southern border isn’t a sieve. It is. But it’s always been a sieve. When Homeland Security tells Americans that the southern border has never been more secure, they’re not lying. But all of that debate is relative. Border security has to mean more than a physical presence. In this age of technology, our southern border is better protected from the sky than it is on the ground. And if we need to arrest bad guys, it’s done better strategically than randomly – and it’s done better in the country of origin before these bad guys get to our border. You don’t really stop drugs at the border. You stop them where they’re being manufactured.

Politics is killing every attempt at effective immigration reform. Just as a “pathway to citizenship” is a straw man raised by some progressives, border security is a straw man raised by some conservatives. Put another way, the problem isn’t border security. The problem is terrorism. The problem isn’t a fenceless border. The problem is a seemingly unquenchable thirst for illicit drugs. In either case, real solutions are far from our southern border.

I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.

6/23/2014

Recently, Utah’s Catholic Bishop John C. Wester released a statement arguing for Medicaid expansion, specifically calling on the Utah Legislature to accept Governor Gary Herbert’s Medicaid expansion plan. His words were direct and, at times, sharp. Bishop Wester’s moral defense of Utah’s poor and needy was on display. I like how he speaks. I appreciate a moral defense of anything. For me, there is no argument more important than a moral argument.

That said, I disagree with his endorsement of Medicaid expansion – and I disagree on moral grounds as well as a matter of good government.

I should add that I am a big fan of Bishop Wester. There are few religious leaders in Utah, if any, outside of my own Mormon faith, who I respect more. I have the pleasure of associating with him on several important political issues such as immigration, marriage and family. I admire his moral courage, his intelligence and grace. We just happen to disagree about Medicaid expansion.

As with food, clothing and shelter, health care is not a moral entitlement. Rather, human dignity and personhood obligate the “haves” to care for the “have nots.” Every human being has a personal moral obligation to care for neighbors in need – a moral obligation diminished every time we rush to have governments fill it. Admittedly, when we freely fail in this obligation nobody should be shocked when some voices call on public institutions to step in and address our personal failures to help the poor. But, even then, we remain bound to seek solutions that respect the full morality of giving and receiving.

Human dignity is meaningless without a working definition of what it means to be a human being. And, while that meaning is debatable, any working definition of human dignity cannot be limited to how we see others. It must include how we see ourselves. Put simply, in this case, human dignity is equals parts giver and receiver. The same morality that uplifts our neighbors in need must equally consider our neighbors who provide for those needs.

Furthermore, we should not imply that social justice is a greater moral priority than limited government. As much as I admire the moral courage of Bishop Wester in behalf of the poor and needy, I also admire the moral courage of Utah legislators who strive to balance the needs of people within the wisdom of limited government. If what is moral is only a function of social justice, we owe Karl Marx an apology. The policy of Medicaid expansion is hardly a moral imperative. On the other hand, providing adequate medical care for our neighbors in need is. This political debate, let alone the moral debate, centers on the best ways for Utahns to give life-sustaining care for our neighbors in need of medical attention and, at the same time, maintain good government.

Like Bishop Wester, I am pro-life, and so are the vast majority of men and women serving in the Utah Legislature. But so far in Utah, pro-life means equal parts mother and child. Providing adequate medical care for people who can’t afford it follows the same recipe. The morality of giving requires the same concerns for dignity as the morality of receiving. Likewise, the process of providing has an essential integrity that must be maintained in a free society – and using Medicaid expansion as a means toward a universal single-payer health care system breaches that integrity.

I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.

Every year since 2001, the Gallup organization has surveyed Americans regarding the moral acceptability of 19 social issues. These social issues range from birth control to extramarital affairs, from divorce to suicide and from human cloning to medical testing on animals.

Of the 19, the most morally acceptable behavior is the use of birth control, even across party lines. Largely accepted, although with less consistency across party lines, are divorce, sex between an unmarried man and woman, stem cell research, gambling, the death penalty, buying and wearing animal fur, out-of-wedlock births, homosexuality and medical testing on animals.

Coming at this list from the other direction, extramarital affairs, cloning humans, polygamy and suicide are seen by Americans as highly unacceptable. Three issues were found to be largely unacceptable: sex between teenagers, pornography and the cloning of animals. Interestingly, the most contentious social issues of the day – the two issues that divide society right down the middle – are abortion and doctor-assisted suicide.

I mentioned in a previous commentary that one author calls this new moral acceptance “utilitarian hedonism” – a fancy term to describe the growing sentiment in society that pleasure is an intrinsic moral good and a moral pursuit. Now, this isn’t a new idea. Utilitarian ethics have been around as long as selfish people and were canonized as a science into polite society nearly two centuries ago. Some of the old believers even created a calculus of pleasure and pain intended to identify, measure and weigh nearly every human action to maximize pleasure and reduce pain.

This all gets rather silly. But there is a growing fascination with pleasure as a political credo. The Gallup poll attempts to measure the degree to which modern Americans accept behavior that gives pleasure and reject behavior that gives pain. Again, the most morally acceptable behavior in the Gallup survey is the use of birth control. While civil libertarians like to get misty eyed about the right to control one’s own body, in this other context, birth control is more about pain relief. Unsupported unwed mothers are viewed as a stain on a progressive society, especially in an age of inexpensive and widely available birth control.

Polygamy also is viewed as harming woman and children but it doesn’t have a pill to make it go away. Its only prescription is legal prohibition on the conduct. Public opinion behind each of the 19 categories in the Gallup survey is highly predictive in terms of pleasure and pain.

Up until recently, most people haven’t viewed morality in relative terms, let alone as a calculus. Most Americans are people of faith who tend to see the world as a whole and not in pieces. Indeed, many people connect all of these issues. If you have a problem with extramarital affairs, you should have some problem with sex outside of marriage and homosexuality. If you frown upon suicide and abortion, you would think that the death penalty wouldn’t be so popular either.

Pleasure and pain morality, I think, feels easy for people increasingly confused by progressive times. The harder morality always has come from the Bible. It argues that life should be infused with meaning, dignity and potential and our job is to discern those deeper meanings. We, conservatives, often stress in our political philosophy what it means to be a human being – and once you’ve acquired that meaning it’s pretty tough to separate these social issues.

 

I got my first job when I was 15 years old loading groceries into cars at one of the nation’s first membership stores in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I made $2.15 an hour that, for a 15 year old in 1973, was nothing to sneeze at. After a while I got a ten-cent raise and was promoted to work inside the store in its warehouse.

I remember vividly the day that the union representative from the retail workers’ union stopped by to sign me up. He explained all of the benefits to joining the union. I knew how hard I worked and I recall asking him how much the guy pushing the broom all day was paid hourly. The union rep told me proudly, “He makes the same as you! That’s the strength of our union!” I told him I didn’t want any part of an organization that would pay that guy the same as me. We did different work. Furthermore, I did more work than the other guy and I expected to be paid more. I didn’t have anything against unions – how could I, I was 15 years old? – but I had a strong sense of self-interest.

The minimum wage has long been the sweetheart of unions and progressives alike. In 1973, the minimum wage was $1.60 – a point the union rep was sure to highlight when I was making $2.15 under union rule. But the same rules that paid me higher than minimum wage also kept me from making more if I worked harder and produced more.

Today, the minimum wage is $7.25 and the Obama administration is pushing for an even ten dollars or higher. Last February, around 100 employees of McDonald’s demonstrated and were arrested outside of its corporate headquarters for demanding $15 an hour. There is something hypnotic about the minimum wage for many people.

Minimum wage jobs are typically service sector jobs such as in restaurants and department stores and those businesses face certain realities. One reality is that service industries are extremely competitive and have tight profit margins. Increasing the minimum wage creates pressure on these industries to raise prices and that’s not always a competitive proposition.

Minimum wage increases put upward pressure on all wages – a fact not missed by unions whose members typically make higher than minimum wage. And there are lost jobs involved. When wages are artificially increased on an industry, that industry will adjust naturally to an employment equilibrium that makes sense for it. It has X amount of dollars for wages and if wages are forced higher, jobs will be reduced. Ironically for progressives, the jobs that are usually dropped first hit the poorest people.

Henry Ford established a living wage in his heyday. Ford would pay married men with families more than his single workers because he saw them as more dependable and harder working on the whole. But that was in the early 20th century when culture and personal values upheld the concept of supporting a family on one breadwinner’s wage, helping to keep the family intact and healthy. With the disintegration of families, these wage disparities (even if justified) are no longer possible. The progressive answer is the minimum wage. The problem, like most circumstances derived from egalitarian thinking, is that no industry outside of Kuwait can afford to pay everyone a living wage.

My friend, Lawrence Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, said it best, “You cannot make a person worth a certain amount by making it illegal to pay him less.” Increasing the minimum wage is a bad idea.

Here is a name you won’t soon forget: Brendan Eich. Like so many other success stories out of Silicon Valley, Brendan Eich is a computer programmer who struck it big. He created a popular web browser language called JavaScript. In 1988, Eich co-founded a tech project that turned into the Mozilla Corporation that owns the web browser Firefox. Mozilla named him its new CEO on March 24 where he remained for eleven days when he unceremoniously resigned his position on April 3.

After two decades of brilliant work inside a corporation he built, what sort of scandal must have befallen Brendan Eich to get him to resign his post in only eleven days? What caused him to resign his prestigious job is that six years ago he donated $1,000 to Proposition 8 in California – and, for that high crime, homosexual activists drove him from office. In his resignation letter, Eich said, “Under the present circumstance, I cannot be an effective leader.”

You won’t soon forget Brendan Eich’s name because, no doubt, it will assume immortality in the political lexicon as a verb – as in, “You’ve just been Eiched.” One important lesson for the rest of us is to not cower in the face of political correctness but to fight back and stand up for what you believe. It doesn’t mean you won’t lose your job but it does mean you refuse to be bullied – Brendan Eich never apologized for his Prop 8 donation.

As someone who plays in this sandbox daily, I can tell you what really rubs me the wrong way. It’s not homosexual activists. I expect them to behave this way. I certainly don’t blame Eich. He did what he felt was best for the good of the company he built. My problem is with Eich’s corporate colleagues who didn’t have his back. Those people are the cowards who flame irrational protests. Furthermore, they’re hypocrites. In the name of pushing Eich out the door, they invoke tolerance and inclusiveness as their motivating principle.

Many homosexual critics of Eich maintain that his resignation is the legitimate product of the free market – customers have spoken and disapproved of his appointment, they say. (Of course, the truth is quite the opposite. Mozilla consumer metrics reveal huge unhappiness with Eich’s decision to step down.) But let’s remember how these progressive critics view the free market generally: They see nothing wrong with commercial transactions involving illicit drugs or prostitution. Of course, you’re going to think the free market was at work in Eich’s resignation if you can’t tell the difference between the sale of an orange and a woman’s body. As life itself, the free market is bound by a tightly knit moral and social fabric.

But the free market is nothing if not a marketplace of ideas. Racism used to be a significant idea in western civilization but better ideas ultimately prevailed. Traditional views of marriage and family are now competing with selfish individualism and the idealization of “nondiscrimination.” Folks, if nondiscrimination means anything, it means Brendan Eich should still have his job. Nondiscrimination in the workplace is built upon the notion that a person who is “otherwise qualified” for a job should be able to keep it notwithstanding his moral and political views.

Remember the name Brendan Eich. What’s happened to him can happen to you.

I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.