Michael Moore, Tories, etc.

I asked Fred to share his views about two well-known classics, The Iliad by Homer and Dante’s Inferno. Barnes reiterated to me that these books are “what everybody oughta learn. They’re easy to read.”

In the course of my interview, I decided to give him a pop quiz. Fred didn’t do so well. (For your reference: Moore’s Weekly pages one and two, and the full column on Barnes, can be found at: www.michaelmoore.com.)

The conservative Washington Times liked my interview with Barnes and the paper wrote about it in their January 22, 1988, “Inside the Beltway” column. The Washington Times is the kind of paper Fred Barnes probably reads before he gets out of bed in the morning. You may read the article at www.michael moore.com as well.

Fred Barnes did not complain when I published the interview with him 16 years ago. He did not complain when the Washington Times article appeared in 1988. It was not until April 2002, when Stupid White Men came out, which recounted the interview, that Fox’s Brit Hume reported, “Fred Barnes told me today that he never talked to Moore in his life, and that he has read both [The Odyssey and The Iliad] cover to cover in college.”

Now that my movie Fahrenheit 9/11 is receiving significant attention, Fred Barnes has seen fit to publicly deny the whole thing again, even though I last referenced the interview in a book published two years ago.

Now, the cynically inclined might say that Barnes, who has steadily faded into obscurity as an editor of a small circulation weekly, is trying to take advantage of the moment. I prefer to give Barnes the benefit of the doubt and credit his belated complaint to a fading memory. We all forget things sometimes, Fred. No hard feelings here.

Michael Moore
New York, NY

Torytelling

WHEN I READ Adrian Wooldridge’s article about Britain’s anti-American conservatives (“The Michael Moore Conservatives, “May 31), I recalled reading how British generals constantly questioned American abilities and willingness to fight in World War II. I also recalled how many British conservatives in the 19th century toured America, professing amazement at what boobs we were. I am sure these Tories feel that the United States’ status as the world’s sole superpower is just dumb luck.

Tim Erlander
Richfield, MN

Butterball

IN “ON THE AFGHAN FRONT” (May 31), Christian Lowe states: “If America is to win the war on terrorism . . . the ‘guns and butter’ strategy must be maintained.” I submit that, rather than win, the guns and butter strategy will only prolong the war.

In order to win, we must kill the terrorists. If that isn’t possible, we need to disable them. And the way to do this is to withhold all financial support, including American trade, from those countries who support terrorists until such time as those countries eradicate the threat themselves.

Larry Radtke
Jackson, WY

No Pain, No McCain

IN “THE KERRY-MCCAIN FANTASY” (May 31), Noemie Emery marshals a comprehensive array of reasons why a John Kerry-John McCain ticket would be a mismatch that the Democrats would quickly come to rue. But her whole edifice tips over if Kerry says to his fellow senator: “John, I need you as my running mate. Please understand, I am not asking you to switch parties, nor would I expect or want you to do so.”

Under those circumstances, the team of Kerry, the Democrat from Massachusetts, and McCain, the Republican from Arizona, could be hyped less as a “ticket” than as a “coalition,” something akin to the war cabinet David Lloyd George formed in December 1916, when Great Britain’s fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Link that world emergency to the current one, and the Democrats would be positioned to make a compelling case for unseating President Bush.

Robert G. Wyeth
Homestead, PA

Unsafe at Any Speed

IN “BUCKLE UP . . . OR ELSE” (May 31), Andrew Ferguson writes of the lack of accountability of auto safety regulation (little or no correlation between seat-belt use and total traffic fatalities) and its self-contradictory nature (mandatory seat-belt use to protect against airbag injuries). Empirical studies by economists further weaken the case for safety regulations by documenting other “moral hazard” tendencies–namely, the likelihood that the regulations will generate unintended additional injuries by encouraging riskier driving patterns. In 1975, Sam Peltzman provided the first evidence that, by reducing injuries, mandated auto safety features were promoting more “intensive” (less safe) driving. Although auto occupants suffered fewer fatalities, pedestrian deaths increased during the study period so as to leave total traffic fatalities attributed to the regulations roughly unchanged. Patrick McCarthy in 1986 found that the higher cost of the safety features led buyers to shift to cheaper, smaller cars, whose occupants, even with the safety features, were more vulnerable to injury. This perverse effect was overcome to some degree by the tendency of drivers of small cars to drive less intensively and thus experience a lower accident rate than drivers of the larger vehicles.

The principle implied by these studies is that the law of unintended consequences may trump the best of regulatory intentions. As Gordon Tullock famously remarked, the only truly effective auto safety regulation would be one that requires a dagger to be mounted on the steering column aimed at the driver’s heart. Alternatively, a wag once suggested the airbags should be mounted on the exterior of cars–to protect pedestrians.

George Horwich
West Lafayette, IN

Curious George Soros

IN HIS MISINFORMED ANALYSIS of recent events in Georgia (“Georgia on His Mind,” May 24), Richard W. Carlson may not realize that he is attacking the Bush administration when he criticizes George Soros. The United States, along with other donors such as Soros’s Open Society Georgia Foundation, endorsed the efforts of nongovernmental organizations to ensure that elections were free and fair in that strategic country.

The Open Society Georgia Foundation, part of a network of foundations created by Soros to promote open society–public access to information and the strengthening of human and civil rights–in 2003 spent some $550,000 on its election support program, which is a bit less than the $42 million Carlson alleges.

In all, Soros’s philanthropic network spent $3.5 million in Georgia in 2003 on education, anticorruption initiatives, judicial and legal reform, arts and culture, Internet access, and HIV/AIDS prevention.

Election spending did not include, as Carlson claims, money for roses or buses to demonstrations. It did, however, cover get-out-the-vote events, domestic Election Day monitors and, most important, exit polling. The polling played a crucial role. It exposed the extent to which President Eduard Shevardnadze tried to steal the elections. In protest, Georgia’s citizens took to the streets. It was popular indignation and the realization that citizens could control their own destiny that brought down Shevardnadze.

They elected President Mikhail Saakashvili by a landslide. Along with the new prime minister, Zurab Zhvania, Saakashvili had worked with the Foundation in anticorruption efforts, and, significantly, had fallen out with Shevardnadze over his failure to fight against corruption.

Carlson seems unaware that the money spent in Georgia is just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Soros has given since 1984 to help the former Soviet empire make the transition from communism. He is widely acknowledged to have done more than any other individual to bolster democracy in a region emerging from darkness.

The Foundation in Georgia will work with the government to push through badly needed reforms, but it will also keep an eye on it to make certain the government is accountable to its citizens.

Laura Silber

Open Society Institute
New York, NY

RICHARD W. CARLSON RESPONDS: Saying that I both criticized George Soros, and by extension attacked George Bush, is a failed contrivance, and not in the least cunning. Nice try, Madam, but no cigar. Of course the U.S. administration supports Mikhail Saakashvili. Why shouldn’t they? He ousted the corrupt and violent Eduard Shevardnadze, the West’s Favorite Friend until misfortune punched him in the nose. And we have the Caspian Sea oil pipeline to worry about. But if George Soros is so committed to “human and civil rights,” then he and Laura Silber should be keeping a close eye on Shevardnadze’s replacement, Saakashvili, not bouncing up and down hysterically at the first whiff of criticism. It was less than a year ago that Shevardnadze was receiving the same NGO and media suck-up treatment now lavished on Saakashvili. (My, that might even have been happening at a time when George Soros was comparing George Bush to Adolf Hitler.) The $42 million that Soros allegedly spent on the election run-up was a figure widely reported in the Georgian media and told to me personally by a member of the Georgia parliament. If Laura Silber says the money for the “spontaneous demonstrators” and all those clutches of unseasonal roses didn’t come from Soros, so be it. Maybe it was funneled into Georgia by Move-On.org.

The serious worry in this for Georgia is the long-term effects of concentrated power in the hands of one messianic un-elected fellow whose billions, which after all define him, flowed from unseemly financial-market betting. Perhaps George Soros simply wants democracy and transparency and clean government for Georgia, whose oil pipeline revenues may generate up to $800 million a year, surpassing its construction costs in three or four years. He says he does. Someday we will know the answer.

Errata

IN ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE’S “The Michael Moore Conservatives” (May 31),the Tory leader Malcolm Rifkind is mistakenly identified as Michael Rifkind.