So What's the Fuss? - OpEd

So What’s the Fuss?

It might have been expected that with the nomination of Harriet Miers to replace the retiring Sandra Day O’Connor, President Bush would ignite a din of criticism. What has confused the public is that the often bitter invective has come from his own party. While no nominee selected by this president would meet with approval by Democrats, the left has been gleefully restrained. In the face of the strident criticism from his staunchest supporters, the President has remained Ms. Miers’ primary cheerleader and assures his base that they will like what she does on the Court. The Left would like to know more about her position on abortion, but has been largely silent, and there appears sufficient Democratic support gathering for her among Democrats on the Hill that she would receive at least the 22 Democratic votes given to Justice Roberts and perhaps a few more.

What we know about the Nominee is that she is a native Texan whose career and life have been circumscribed by her state’s borders. In Texas, she has blazed the trail for women wanting to succeed in what used to be a man’s profession. She was the first women to make both partner and then managing partner for her Dallas firm. She has served as chair of the Texas Lottery Commission, been president of both the Dallas County and State Bar Associations and served as a member of the Dallas City Council. She has also served as the President’s personal attorney and in government she has been a staunch loyalist. Of perhaps key importance, unless there is something catastrophic in her background, it is strongly likely that she will be Madame Justice Miers before Christmas.

Beset by problems domestic and foreign, the President needs all the support he can muster on Capitol Hill and cannot afford a bruising battle over this nominee. If you take the President at his word that he “knows her heart” and that she is a committed Christian and conservative who will not legislate from the bench, what is the “Right” really upset about? The President and the right to life portion of his coalition are facing different realities. The President has to manage a broad array of issues while keeping together a ruling coalition. For him to win in today’s “contact sport” approach to policy implementation requires finesse in an independent minded Senate. He knows that today’s opponent is likely to be tomorrow’s ally. For the “Far Right” the President’s reality is their disappointment. They are focused on actually having the battle. They have supported Republican presidential contenders since Ronald Reagan totally focused on turning the clock back to a simpler age where the social fabric coalesced around traditional Judeo-Christian values. They cannot imagine how that was allowed to change. They are spoiling for the fight before another election puts its majority at risk for them; it has become an end in itself. Ms. Miers, conservative or not, just doesn’t do it for them. They want to collide in the U.S. Senate with Ted Kennedy’s legions over a candidate that is a proven conservative symbol. Re-nominate Bork! Nominate Estrada, Pryor, Owens or any number of candidates highly identified with an activist agenda. For the “Far Right” Miers’ stealth candidacy takes away the fulfillment of the years of toil to meet the Left head-on and roll over them.

I hope this won’t get me run out of the “club,” but I am with the President on this one even though I suspect Ms. Miers will be an “O’Connor” not a “Scalia”. To continue as a ruling majority we must take our victories with as little blood on the floor as possible. We must also recognize that dynamic conservatism is tasked with ruling in the first decade of the 21^st century—not 1980. It is essentially a weak position for the Far Right to presuppose the battle must be fought with blood on the floor before next year’s congressional races. It does not bespeak confidence as to the political future for the conservative coalition, which does not yet have a candidate for 2008 when Hillary Clinton is the likely opponent. Dynamic conservatism’s timeless values—fiscal prudence, individual responsibility, a strong defense but smaller central government, federalism, and free enterprise—continue to represent the view of the conservative majority. I am more concerned that the ruling party is losing its way in applying these principles than I am about its flexing muscles over Ms. Miers.

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Robert E. Freer, Jr., an attorney, former general counsel of Kimberly-Clark Corporation and sometimes federal government official is President and CEO of The Free Enterprise Foundation, a tax-exempt think tank located at The Citadel dedicated to the study of ethics, civic responsibility, leadership and enterprise best practice. Mr. Freer is also a visiting professor and The John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence at The Citadel’s School of Business Administration.

Charleston Mercury October 27, 2005. Page 16

Meeting the Global Challenge - OpEd

Meeting the Global Challenge

Listen—that noise you don’t hear is our society slipping into subservience to economic decisions made elsewhere on the globe by those who at best may not be our friends and at worst wish to do us real harm. Even today, our currency and the continuing stability of our national government is hostage to decisions made in Tokyo and Beijing. As of July this year, we have passed two trillion dollars in foreign debt of which more than 40% is held by Japan and China. The potential impact on our national foreign policy options in this climate is serious and could be calamitous. Like Katrina it is a silent menace of which we are aware and which we ignore. It is not; however, too late to read the signs and equip our next generation with the knowledge and attitudes required to preserve the best of our civilization. I am not being alarmist when I say we cannot rest on our laurels. Our opponents, unimpressed with our codes of conduct, jealous of our affluence and not a product of our heritage are focused on their goal and are coming on fast. We also need to keep in mind that the challenges to our way of life are not merely economic. The president has called us to arms in a war against terror, but the challenges we face are much broader than bombs and bullets. They are political, social, and philosophical as well.

Western societies, by which I mean those in Europe and The Western Hemisphere with the exception of Cuba, are relatively affluent. Many people of us have become addicted to the wide variety of social services we receive without understanding and accepting that those services come at a cost. Western Europe has particularly become so self absorbed that notions of self reliance and responsibility to equip the next generation to handle the challenges we know are just beyond the horizon are thought to be just so much scare tactics. They are not.

The number of highly educated professionals produced in India and China will soon dwarf our current output of pragmatic and scientific intellectuals. Possessing practical and applicable skills, these foreign workforces challenge us to integrate into a world view that does not diminish them and yet leaves our heirs equipped to stand tall in a future only dimly outlined by the flickering light of global change. If these challenges were solely economic, the task would be daunting enough. The revolution in communication technology makes workers’ locations irrelevant in economic terms. Billions of people spanning from the Near to Far East thirst for the better life they can now see on media in their own country. Not unexpectedly, having tasted some improvement from the production of textiles and footwear, they want more. Fulfillment comes not only making sneakers and cheap textiles but also in the micro-processing industry and by handling the global needs of the information age. India’s rapidly excelling economy is currently causing the upheaval of its caste system, gender biases, and labor laws. Meanwhile China has centralized, modernized, and specialized its national education system. Now their students encounter physics, biology, and chemistry in junior-high—two or three years before the average American student—and decide whether to pursue the humanities or sciences while young teenagers. As feudal structures dissolve, these foreign citizens acquire their own affluence, and by subsequently pressuring their own rulers, they pressure us as well. While we expect our past affluence to continue, they strive to capture that which we take for granted.

After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, our nation responded with the bi-partisan National Defense Education Act of 1958, which called for a dramatic increase in funds for scientific research and education. Soon after, President Kennedy’s call to place a man on the moon energized the country’s patriotism and scientific curiosity. We recognized the umbilical connection between our international dominance and its sustenance: Education! While the Cold War Era stimulated suspicion and isolationism, the twenty-first century demands that we once again galvanize our education system, this time to provide the tools to shine in the multilateral marketplace of the future.

Extremist religious beliefs, often an aberration of Muslim theology, glorify social structures that in the rest of the world went out with the advent of electricity. Proponents of such rigidity and intolerance are doomed, but their struggle against the democratic enterprise we champion exposes the stress points in our own society and calls for all of us to reaffirm our national theology. This is not a promotion of any specified religiosity but rather an incitation to dedicate ourselves to the future souls of this nation. We may have been endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, but we sure won’t keep them unless we treasure and protect those rights with the same energy and dedication that gained their recognition in the first place. Uneducated and unmotivated our children are ill equipped to respond to the diverse requirements of globalization. With hard work and our own faith as a shield, we are unbeatable. We need unapologetically to arm our children with our own faith and reaffirm the importance and nobility of individual hard work and community responsibility. The generosity of our population’s response to Katrina demonstrates we have the stuff to fix the problems concerning poverty and education that it exposed. We require leadership in examining the global challenge in all its parts, its symptoms, causes, and proper responses. At the Free Enterprise Foundation, we plan on doing our part through academic study, forums, conferences and publications. We ask an enlightened public to join us to do what is required to reclaim the rising sun for the next generation.

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Robert E. Freer, Jr., an attorney, former general counsel of Kimberly-Clark Corporation and sometimes federal government official is President and CEO of The Free Enterprise Foundation, a tax-exempt think tank located at The Citadel dedicated to the study of Ethics, Civic Responsibility, Leadership and Enterprise Best Practice. Mr. Freer is also a visiting professor and The John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence at The Citadel’s School of Business Administration.

Charleston Mercury October 12, 2005. Page 16.

Stairway to the Stars - OpEd

Stairway to the Stars


If one enjoys the often rare opportunity to gaze up at a clear nighttime sky, free from the distortions of society’s ambient light, he or she will notice dim stars that never rise or set, fixed motionless in the heavens. These are the growing number of satellites that hang in geosynchronous orbit (21,700 miles altitude) moving above the equator at the same speed as the revolving earth, remaining forever in the same spot. These industrial pinholes in the blanket of night shape our everyday lives in escalating proportions. Governments and corporations depend on them for communication and data, and consequently, so do many of us, citizens of a shrinking world dependent on cellular phones, Google searches, NFL Sunday Ticket, and other now commonplace marvels in our lives. Space, still the final frontier, has become, unnoticed an integral part of our daily existence.

The President and NASA hope to return to the moon and put a person on Mars. However, despite our nation’s more than forty years of space exploration experience, a space shuttle’s 15,000 miles-per-hour blastoff from Earth’s gravity and atmospheric friction still proves extremely dangerous and expensive. Increasingly those favoring a more reasonable alternative are being heeded. Miracle materials and nano technology are paving the way for a far better solution. Why not enjoy an elevator ride beyond gravity’s demanding tug and remain suspended like a great yoyo in space tethered to the earth below? No, this is not a suggestion to re-read Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, but rather to be thrilled by the very attainable goal that scientists and engineers now are exploring with carbon-nanotube technology.

In his 1978 novel, The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke asked: “If the laws of celestial mechanics make it possible for an object to stay fixed in the sky, might it not be possible to lower a cable down to the surface, and so to establish an elevator system linking earth to space?” Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky conceptualized this elevator nearly a century before Clarke, and Kim Stanley-Robinson’s 1990s Mars Trilogy recalled its wondrous possibilities to the minds of science-fiction readers. Currently the notion of a smooth ride up 62,000 miles of cable is being propelled into reality by physicist Bradley Edwards, who is backed by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts, and Ray Baughman, director of the Nanotech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas. There is even an upcoming Space Elevator engineering contest, Elevator: 2010, hosted by The Spaceward Foundation, which hopes their competition will provoke technical advances as well as demonstrate the feasibility and simplicity of the Space Elevator concept to a wide audience.

For a Space Elevator to work, a cable with one end anchored to the earth’s surface stretches upwards, rising clear through the atmosphere and beyond to a space station tethered in gyro synchronous orbit. Then the competing forces of gravity at the lower end and outward centripetal acceleration at the farther end keep the cable under tension. The simple physics of the design would allow a climber vehicle powered by electric motors to carry anything from people to scientific or industrial materials into space in safety and at lower cost. The cost of transporting matter could drop from the $20,000 a kilogram on a space shuttle to as little as $250 a kilogram because of the reduced amount of energy used.

In theory the idea is simple and achievable. The toughest challenge for moving forward has been developing a strong enough cable material, and the answer lies in the commercial construction of carbon nanotubes. The current challenge is that nobody has yet woven the miniscule nanotube ribbons together in a way to make sheets that are as strong as their individual fibers. Still, scientists and engineers working on the concept consider it little more than ten years and ten billion dollars away.

Besides re-instilling people’s sense of scientific awe, currently dulled by the continuous unending stream of ever smaller music machines and multitasking phones, the construction of a Space Elevator has global political implications. Because of the equator’s relative nearness to space, plausible designs would anchor the elevator to the ground of an equatorial country. Consequently, equatorial countries will profit significantly from whatever cargoes are shipped from their real estate into the sky. If international developers stress good business practices and the necessity of operating in a politically stable environment, this could positively alter the balance of power along the equator, a region where up until now, turmoil has seemed relatively commonplace.

Several millennia after zealots were rebuked for building the Tower of Babel, this project is no pipe dream. A modern stairway to the heavens lies within reach. It beckons us to accept its promise. Hopefully its possibility and man’s quest for the heavens will coincide in the next decade to give us and our posterity a more economical and cost effective stairway to the stars. Its completion in the next 15 years will serve as an inspiring and uniting pathway to the future, and a real shot in the economics of the Andean region.
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Robert E. Freer, Jr., an attorney, former general counsel of Kimberly-Clark Corporation and sometimes federal government official is President and CEO of The Free Enterprise Foundation, a tax-exempt think tank located at The Citadel dedicated to the study of ethics, civic responsibility, leadership and enterprise best practice. Mr. Freer is also a visiting professor and The John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence at The Citadel’s School of Business Administration.

Charleston Mercury September 29, 2005. Page 16.