The Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug to combat non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That’s good news for cancer patients in America and around the world. But you wouldn’t know it, given the vicious political campaign being directed against the pharmaceutical industry.

 America’s drug makers are under attack. Congressmen would like to cut prices, and the expansion of Medicare will encourage Uncle Sam to regulate drug access and prices directly.

State legislators are debating their own draconian price-control schemes. The media, such as the PBS show “Frontline,” have targeted the drug makers. Trial attorneys, left-wing activists, and state attorneys general are filing lawsuits charging pharmaceutical firms with everything from racketeering to fraud.

This assault is not new. Drug companies have been under pressure for a decade. When the Clinton administration attempted to nationalize American health care, it sought to demonize the drug makers, as well as most doctors and hospitals.

Unfortunately, years of demagoguery advanced for political profit are having an impact. Public opinion of the industry has been falling sharply.

While the American people have yet to agree with Al Gore’s grotesque comparison of the drug makers to the tobacco companies and “big polluters”—there is little that he would not say to win a vote—they are increasingly turning on an industry that has done so much to improve their lives. Harris Interactive reports that those who believe the drug makers are doing a good job of serving consumers fell from 79 percent to 57 percent from just 1997 to 2001.

Yet new pharmaceuticals are responsible for almost half the reduced mortality from different diseases between 1970 and 1991. Columbia University’s Frank Lichtenberg figures that every new drug approved during that time saves over 11,000 life-years annually. And the benefits continue. He estimates that fully 40 percent of the increase in average life span between 1986 and 2000 is due to new drugs.

Three decades ago medical technology was rather primitive by today’s standards,” says Dr. E. M. Kolassa of the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy. “Today, physicians have at their disposal medications and technologies that provide for the immediate diagnosis and treatment of most of the disorders that affect modern man.”

Hundreds of new drugs are in development for cancer, heart disease, strokes, Alzheimer’s, infectious diseases, and AIDS. Consider the last: Two decades ago there was no treatment for AIDS. By 1987 there was one drug, AZT. Now there are 74 anti-AIDS drugs available and another 100 in development.

Similarly, pharmaceuticals offer the best hope of combating any future outbreak of SARS, which has killed over 700 people. In fact, the quickest solution is to find an existing medicine that works. Laboratories are currently screening some 2,000 approved and experimental drugs to see if they are useful in fighting SARS. Gurinder Shahi, a doctor in Singapore, explains: “Given how little we know about SARS and the reality that it is killing people, it is justified for us to be daring and innovative in coming up with solutions.”

Daring innovation is most likely to come in a competitive, profit-driven market. After all, today’s medicines exist only because there is a bevy of sophisticated pharmaceutical companies devoted to finding drugs to heal the sick.

Isn’t this serving consumers well?

Ah, but prices are high. Too high, in the view of myopic, vote-seeking politicians. “There’s no question that prescription drugs cost too much in this nation,” claims Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont.

Why, yes. They only save lives. Extend our life spans. Moderate our pain. Control our nausea. Eliminate our need for surgery. Treat our allergies.

Why should we have to pay for such products? The outrage. The horror. Drugs should be free. Or at least a lot cheaper.

If Life Were Different

It would be nice if they were, of course, but people who believe prices can be lowered legislatively are living in the world as it ought to be. Everyone ought to be rich and beautiful. Everyone ought to be paid a million dollars a year for working ten hours a week. Everyone ought to have a Mercedes at a Yugo price. Everyone ought to have a mansion for the price of a shack. And everyone ought to have all of the pharmaceuticals now available, but for less money.

Unfortunately, pharmaceuticals do not appear outside company doors every morning as manna from heaven appeared in the Promised Land for the ancient Israelites. Instead, firms review numerous plausible substances: of every 5,000 to 10,000 checked, 250 make it to animal testing. About five reach human trials.

Only one gets past the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) onto the market. That one has to pay for the research costs of the other 5,000 to 10,000. It isn’t easy.

Thus the real cost of pharmaceuticals is not making the pill that patients swallow. It’s the research that goes into developing the pill—as well as the other 9,999 substances that never made it to market. The pill’s price also has to cover the cost of running the company and complying with burdensome FDA requirements.

The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development estimates that companies spend nearly $900 million over a ten- or 15-year period to develop each drug. America’s major research firms alone spent $32 billion on R&D last year.

Nevertheless, some politicians would control prices directly. For instance, legislators in Maine want to impose prices they think are fair, and are threatening retaliation if any company tries to pull out of the market in response. Washington State already demands superdiscounts for some of its programs.

But government can only confiscate the drug makers’ existing inventory. It can’t force them to keep making drugs to be confiscated in the future.

Adopting Canadian- or European-style controls will result in a Canadian- or European-style drug industry and patient access. These countries do their best to free ride on America, but their pharmaceutical industries are weak and getting weaker.

Moreover, their ill citizens have far less access to important medicines. A group called Europe Economics points out that patients often wait years for life-saving products.

Still, America’s political air is filled with other alleged panaceas, such as reimportation of drugs from Canada. Yet prices are lower there because the government imposes price controls and litigation costs are less. (The country is not full of profit-minded tort attorneys.) Imposing Canadian (or Mexican, or Afghan) prices in the United States would mean the drugs would not be developed in the first place.

Politicians also are pushing a range of use restrictions—formularies, reference pricing, and more. Yet every attempt to stop people from using new medicines endangers their health and threatens to increase health costs elsewhere. For instance, Frank Lichtenberg estimates that replacing 1,000 older prescriptions with newer drugs raises pharmaceutical costs by $18,000, but cuts hospital costs by $44,000.

Everyone in America has a stake in lowering health-care costs. But they also have a stake in maintaining quality health care. If the pharmaceutical industry succumbs to the demagogic campaign against it, we will all suffer the painful consequences.

Related posts:

1. Potomac Principles ~ Demonizing Drug Makers
2. Evaluating New Drugs: Remember the Bigger Picture
3. Medical Overhaul Prompts Drug Price Hikes

Chemicals are one of the wonders of human creation. They help heal and feed us; they help fuel our autos and heat our homes; they help produce toys and computers. Yet some chemicals can hurt, making them a perfect target for alarmists who detest most anything modern.

There’s no doubt that chemicals have become an integral part of our lives. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has released its latest “National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals,” which reviewed Americans’ exposure to 116 different substances. The study confirms that most people have contact with a plethora of chemicals.

Yet this conclusion reflects the dramatic advances in bio-monitoring: scientists are now capable of detecting the minutest trace of different substances in human beings. Researchers measure concentrations of a thousandth, millionth, and billionth parts.

This enables us to better understand our environment, assess chemical exposure, and understand risks. But it also provides a tool for alarmists, who conveniently ignore actual contact levels when claiming an epidemic of chemical exposure.

At a time when many people fear for their lives, the CDC found much good news. Exposure to lead, which is particularly harmful to the development of children, and cotinine, a tobacco residue, is down.

Moreover, exposure levels to some of the most toxic chemicals were extraordinarily low. Reported the CDC: “For dioxin, furans and coplanar PCBs, most people in the Second Report had levels that were below what the analytic method could detect.”

Even the bad news was bad mainly relative to overall successes. For instance, during the 1990s cotinine exposure dropped 55 percent for teens, 58 percent for kids, and 75 percent for adults; yet today the exposure of black children remains disproportionately high.

Alas, good news does not dampen the alarmist impulse in some people. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) conducted its own study and found an average of “91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals” in the nine volunteers studied. All told, the EWG reported 167 different chemicals, many of which, it claimed, caused cancer, birth defects, or other harms. The result was a significant “body burden,” as the group put it.

But this is fear-mongering at its misleading worst. Simple exposure demonstrates nothing. As the CDC explained: “Just because people have an environmental chemical in their blood or urine does not mean that the chemical causes disease.”

This is the case even for substances known to be capable of causing harm. Observes Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health (ASCH), people “should remember the basic tenet of toxicology—the dose makes the poison.” Almost anything can prove toxic if ingested in a high-enough concentration, one vastly above the levels faced by even the most at-risk person.

Yet animal tests not only rely on huge dosage levels, but also can fall afoul of the substantial differences between rodents and primates. In many cases absorption rates and hormonal reactions, which vary among creatures, matter far more than exposure levels.

Todd Seavey of ACSH argues, “Thanks to the CDC report, we’re now more certain than ever that the synthetic chemical amounts we are routinely subjected to are trivial. We ought to feel safer than ever.”

Another argument has been advanced by groups like the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE), an umbrella group for the most active alarmists. It claims that multiple chemical exposure can be harmful—indeed, that chemicals are currently hurting one-third of the population. CHE is aided by the PR firm Fenton Communications, which specializes in turning junk science into newspaper headlines.

It’s an attractive argument for the scientifically uninformed, but it fails the basic test of evidence. As Steven Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.Com, points out: “Despite more than 40 years and countless billions of dollars of research, no credible scientific evidence exists to link typical exposures to chemicals in the environment with disease.”

Indeed, though our theoretical exposure to chemicals has increased dramatically over the last half century, actual chemical contamination of the environment has been falling. And we are living longer and healthier lives than ever. Apparently the human body is able to bear the alleged chemical burden.

Children at Risk?

What of children? People naturally worry about the impact on youthful development, but ACSH warns, “We are at a juncture where emotion, fear, and uncertainty compete with scientific data, toxicological principles, and principles of risk analysis.” In fact, ACSH reports in a new book, Are Children More Vulnerable to Environmental Chemicals?, “There is little toxicological evidence to support the premise that children are consistently more susceptible to environmental chemicals than adults.”

Where there is a problem, as with lead and PCBs, kids need to be protected. But parents need not live in fear of a world that is actually getting safer and healthier day by day. And they need to be aware of what ACSH warns as a “disturbing pattern in which activists with a nonscience agenda manipulate the public’s legitimate and appropriate concern for children’s health in an effort to promote legislation, litigation, and regulation.”

This is the fundamental problem. Alarmist groups with radical political agendas are ever-ready to manipulate science to promote their own ends. A particularly apt example is the case of acrylamide, a chemical coagulant used in drinking water, wastewater treatment, and tunnel construction. In April 2002 the Swedish National Food Administration and researchers at Stockholm University held a press conference announcing that disturbingly high levels of acrylamide had been found in food.

The revelation set off a media sensation around the world. French fries and potato chips cause cancer! California environmental activists sued snack-food makers and fast-food restaurants to warn customers that their products included a chemical “known to the State of California to cause cancer.”

Acrylamide is formed naturally in the cooking of many foods. It appears to cause cancer in rodents fed exceptionally high doses. In fact, in this case the doses not only well-exceeded human consumption, but they also may have exceeded medically tolerable levels for mice, since more died from other causes than from cancer.

Moreover, extrapolating such results to humans is always problematic: genetic differences between rodents and primates often result in different metabolic reactions to chemicals. Dr. Joseph Rosen of Rutgers University observes: “There is substantial evidence that the rodent studies may not be accurately predicting relevance to human health.”

Last January the British Journal of Cancer published a study announcing that there was no apparent link between acrylamide in food and cancer. One British newspaper headline trumpeted: “Crisps Do Not Cause Cancer!” A Swedish paper went onto suggest that acrylamide in food might actually reduce cancer risks.

Obviously, some substances do cause cancer, and evidence of carcinogenic properties requires investigation. But as Waldemar Ingdahl puts it, “Publication by press conference is not good scientific publishing,” especially when there is a transparent political agenda. Constantly crying wolf will make it harder to deal with the few cases where there is a legitimate health issue.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: An Endless Series of Hobgoblins: The Science and Politics of Environmental Health Scares by Eric W. Hagen and James J. Worman
2. Book Review: Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental Triumph of High Yield Farming by Dennis T. Avery
3. Book Review: Environmental Politics: Public Costs, Private Rewards Edited by Michael S. Greve and Fred L. Smith, Jr.

When Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, wanted a $190,000 Ferrari 360 Spider, he went to a German dealer, since it would have taken two to three years to obtain one from a domestic dealer. But it had to be modified to meet U.S. environmental and safety standards. That took 15 months.

If this were the only inefficient, silly, wasteful regulation, there’d be little cause for concern. But Washington is a regulatory behemoth, supplemented by state monsters of various sizes.

Last year Clyde Wayne Crews of the Cato Institute published his annual “Ten Thousand Commandments.” For the first time in years there was modest good news. For instance, the Federal Register in 2001 ran 64,431 pages, down 13.2 percent over the last full year of the Clinton administration. Also in 2001, 4,509 new regulations were working their way through the system, a reduction of 4 percent over the year before.

Still, the news is good only relative to how bad it has routinely become. The regulatory burden remains staggering. Perhaps the best estimate, from analysts W. Mark Crain and Thomas D. Hopkins, is that federal regulations cost the American people $854 billion, roughly 46 percent of the total $2 trillion in federal outlays this year. That’s about 8.4 percent of GDP.

It’s almost as much as collected by both the corporate income tax and the personal income tax. Per family it comes to $7,410. That means government is basically taking another fifth of the median two-earner income after direct taxes have been paid.

Moreover, the claimed advantages are often impossible to verify. For instance, the American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution’s Joint Center for Regulatory Studies estimates that roughly half of environmental regulations saves lives, but often at costs far disproportionate to the likely benefits achieved. And, incredibly, in about half the cases “regulations specifically aimed at saving lives actually resulted in a net increase in deaths,” according to the Center’s Robert Hahn and Patrick Dudley.

In another Center publication, Hahn and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School, review some of the most perverse rules. The Environmental Protection Agency’s municipal solid-waste regulations generate costs of $100 million annually with no benefits. Pulp and effluent guidelines start at a net zero benefit at best and range up to a $150 million annual loss. The EPA’s ozone standards are already wracking up annual net losses in the hundreds of millions, with the potential of exceeding $9 trillion in a few years.

Some regulations are completely irrational. Consider Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, by which the federal government mandates that auto manufacturers achieve an arbitrary level of fuel economy. It’s not clear that CAFE even saves energy. After all, raising fuel economy lowers the marginal cost of driving. Moreover, by forcing people into smaller autos, which lose in accidents with bigger ones (as well as vans, SUVs, and trucks), CAFE kills.

John Graham, formerly of Harvard University and now head of the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), and Robert Crandall of Brookings have estimated CAFE’s annual death toll at between 2,200 and 3,900. In the mid-1990s the Competitive Enterprise Institute figured that between 2,700 and 4,700 people were dying because of CAFE.

Even when some benefits might occur, there remains the problem of opportunity costs. Where an existing life is at stake it is tempting to say that every life is priceless. But when we are dealing with risks, no life is priceless. Every expenditure involves a tradeoff. The true cost of any activity is its opportunity cost, the value of forgoing some other activity. To spend $40 billion to save one potential life means that $40 billion is not available to improve roads and traffic signals or to do something else

Americans desperately need a wide-ranging program of regulatory reform. The executive branch can help. Graham has emphasized the importance of weighing costs as well as benefits and of considering “nonquantifiable factors such as fairness, privacy and personal freedom.” As part of its budget, the administration proposed additional changes in how benefits and costs are balanced. Agencies would have to compare different strategies for achieving the same ends, better address the issue of risk, and offer several estimates of benefits and costs for expensive rules based on “uncertain science.”

Crews, Hahn, and others propose a variety of other steps that would pare and improve regulatory policy. They start with reducing congressional delegation of power to regulatory agencies, further streamlining legislative procedures to overrule regulations, creating a congressional office of regulatory assessment (as an analog to the Congressional Budget Office), and setting statutory standards for regulatory disclosure, assessment, and oversight.

Just Say No

However, the most important “reform” would be the willingness to say no. Not every problem is worth regulating. Some cannot be solved by regulating. And many are not worth the expense of doing so. Besides, the free market is the most powerful “regulator” of all.

Reform in Washington isn’t enough. States have taken on an increasingly aggressive, and counterproductive, role. Particularly problematic is the increasing tendency of state attorneys general, almost all governor wannabes, to try to set policy independent of the federal government, such as their jihad against Microsoft.

People routinely refer to America as a free country. And compared to Europe, it is. There a frustrated European Commission recently declared that only through more economic reform could the continent catch up with America. Yet in 2002 the Washington-based Americans for Tax Reform pegged July 1 as “Cost of Government Day”—when we finally stopped paying to fund and comply with government. Of the 181 days spent working for the government, 38 went to cover the cost of federal regulation and 23 for state rules.

Then there’s the loss of simple personal freedom. For instance, Americans are not allowed to buy Kinder Surprise Eggs, chocolate eggs with tiny toys inside, which are available in Europe and elsewhere. Fanciers have to import them illegally through the Internet since both the Consumer Product Safety Commission (the toys pose a choking danger) and the Food and Drug Administration (the toys are an “embedded” non-food item) ban them here.

America, though it possesses the world’s leading economy, nevertheless faces some daunting problems. In such a world, it makes no sense to waste so many resources on trivial concerns.

Related posts:

1. Regulatory Overkill
2. The Clinton Regulatory Miasma
3. Regulatory Escalation

The Bush administration seems ready to push Medicare reform, and Republican legislators are committed to creating a pharmaceutical benefit. The congressional hopper is sure to fill with bills attacking the pharmaceutical industry and probably even a few proposing to nationalize the entire medical system.

Some states aren’t waiting for Washington to act. Maine and Vermont are trying to control drug prices. Florida is restricting the pharmaceuticals that Medicaid will cover.

In Oregon political activists unsuccessfully pushed an initiative for a Canadian-style, single-payer system last November. California State Senator Sheila Kuehl has proposed that her state adopt the same sort of plan.

West Virginia Governor Bob Wise and others score political points by using Canada to attack the drug makers. Pharmaceutical costs are “outrageous,” he says. People are “being taken advantage of” since they pay more than residents of Canada.

It’s an emotional litany worthy of the finest demagogue. Critics routinely heap abuse on the pharmaceutical industry, but only it makes new, life-saving medicines available to all Americans.

Of course, we face real health-care problems. In Governor Wise’s state surgeons went on strike to protest rising malpractice premiums. But rates are rising because of an abusive tort system, not high drug prices.

Despite Governor Wise’s obvious misconceptions, Canadian health care is no model for the United States.

Adjust for the two nations’ differences—the United States has more war veterans and inner-city residents and spends far more on medical research, for instance—and medicine doesn’t look so cheap up north. Indeed, a commission headed by former provincial premier Roy Romanow, appointed last year by the Prime Minister to review Canada’s health-care system, has just published a report advocating a doubling of the national government’s subsidies.

No wonder, given the fact that Canadians routinely stand in long lines for care. In fact, the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute estimates that Canadians are waiting longer than ever before for medical services. The average delay between general-practitioner referral and specialty consultation is 16.5 weeks; the time between the latter and actual treatment is another 9.2 weeks.

Delays for cancer patients run a month or two. The wait is almost seven months for eye care and eight months for orthopedic surgery.

Canadians have only limited access to new technologies. In August, reported Nadeem Esmail and Michael Walker of the Fraser Institute, “While ranking number one as a health care spender [compared to 26 largely European states], Canada ranks eighteenth in access to MRIs, seventeenth in access to CT scanners, eighth in access to radiation machines, and thirteenth in access to lithotripters.”

Total health-care outlays are determined by a “global budget” rather than medical needs. The province of Ontario closed its hospitals around Christmas 1993 because it was out of money. Explained Theodore Freedman, president of Toronto’s Mount Sinai, which was shuttered for two weeks, “This is not about health care. This is about the deficit.”

Patients flee abroad, particularly to America. Provinces contract out treatment, such as for cancer, to U.S. hospitals.

The story is much the same for pharmaceuticals. U.S. politicians have organized well-publicized bus trips to Canada to help constituents purchase pharmaceuticals at lower prices. “There’s no question that prescription drugs cost too much in this nation,” claims Senator Jim Jeffords.

But international cost comparisons must be viewed with skepticism, since there is no “correct” price. Prices overseas generally reflect the lower incomes of many nations and the highly politicized nature of most foreign health-care systems. Exchange rate variations also matter: America’s relatively strong dollar make drugs priced in weaker local currencies seem particularly cheap.

Canada’s economy too, has suffered, with its dollar losing nearly a quarter of its value over the last decade. As a result, many goods are cheaper there than here.

Less Litigation

Canadians also benefit from less, and less expensive, product-liability litigation. Economist Richard Manning estimates that one-third to one-half of the drug price differential between the two countries is due to the higher cost of liability litigation in America. Moreover, the national and provincial governments restrict prices, free-riding on American research and development.

Patricia Danzon of the Wharton School also points to issues involving patent protection, limited use of generics, and continuing availability of prescription drugs without prescriptions. After adjusting for such factors, she and Jeong Kim found, using 1992 data, “that the average U.S. consumer would have paid 3 percent more in Canada.”

More recently, Dr. John Graham, director of the Fraser Institute’s Pharmaceutical Policy Research Center, and Tanya Tabler, a student at the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Alberta, surveyed prices on both sides of the border. Although they found costs to be lower in Canada, Graham and Tabler observed that “a shopper can save almost as much money by bargain hunting within his own area as by crossing the border.” Indeed, reliance on U.S. list prices is itself misleading since actual transaction prices are often lower.

Pharmaceutical controls also have sharply reduced Canadians’ access to needed drugs. Even when the national government approves a medicine, provinces often do not cover its use.

For instance, Ottawa added only 24 of 400 drugs considered for reimbursement between 1994 and 1998. Provinces sometimes wait months or years before including pharmaceuticals in their formularies, or use such techniques as “reference pricing,” covering only the cheapest drug within a therapeutic category, irrespective of relative effectiveness.

The consequences are predictable. Canadian physician William McArthur reports that more than a quarter of doctors in the province of British Columbia have had to treat and even hospitalize patients because of government substitutions of medicine; six of ten have seen their patients’ conditions deteriorate.

American health care is a mess. But nationalizing the system will only exacerbate the problems. Drugs, which often cut costs by eliminating the need for other treatments, are part of the solution.

If Governor Wise and his allies nevertheless impose Canadian-style prices on drugs here, Americans will suffer Canadian-style access to drugs. In fact, the impact will be even worse, because Canadian-style pharmaceutical regulation means a Canadian-style pharmaceutical industry—with few new drugs and even fewer new breakthrough medicines.

Related posts:

1. Health Care: Over the Canadian Cliff?
2. Is Canadian Health Care a Good Model for the U.S. to Follow?
3. Book Review: Hazardous to Our Health? FDA Regulation of Health Care Products edited by Robert Higgs

As Washington, D.C., prepared for the descent of thousands of anti-globalization protesters last fall, George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf proposed deploying the ultimate weapon: trial lawyers.

Hit the demonstrators with a class-action lawsuit! Luckily, the city survived the protests without resorting to such extreme measures.

But the proposal was par for Banzhaf, who believes that just about every decision in life should be decided by judges. No rhapsodic commitment to liberty. Just send in the lawyers.

Unfortunately, there are few people Banzhaf would not like to sue. He apparently will not be satisfied as long as anyone is making a personal decision that has not been cleared by him in court.

He cites among his accomplishments sex-discrimination lawsuits against the Washington Cosmos Club and South Carolina’s military-oriented university, The Citadel; hair stylists who charged more to cut women’s hair and dry cleaners who charged more for women’s clothes; and bars that discriminated against men with “ladies’ nights.”

Long known as the “Father of Potty Parity,” last year he joined in a federal complaint against the University of Michigan for having only a third more restroom facilities for women. In his view, this constituted illegal “sexual harassment.”

He really hates the tobacco companies. Consenting adults have no right to make what he thinks is a bad decision. He was involved in the campaign to ban cigarette advertising on TV. He naturally backed the legal avalanche of state Medicaid lawsuits against cigarette makers, and last fall put out a press release lauding a judge for banning parental smoking around a child in a custody case.

Banzhaf also has suggested legislative action, such as a tax proportional to the medical costs created by consumption of particular foods. Banzhaf contends: “If there are products the use of which cause large costs, grave costs, it is better that the burden of those costs fall on people who use and make the products.”

He says that some of the revenues should go “to fund healthy eating messages to compete against the $30 billion that the food industry spends.” And government should “put more health foods in vending machines, install bike racks and showers at public buildings to encourage more exercise, and so on.”

Should his fellow citizens and their elected representatives be too stupid to go along with his plans, however, there is always the class-action lawsuit. Sadly, though, while helping to pioneer the basic theory of fat litigation, Banzhaf was slow in finding actual plaintiffs. An overweight 56-year-old, Caesar Barber, used another lawyer to file the first suit, charging McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, and Wendy’s with making him fat.

But now Banzhaf is trying to catch up. He has complained that fast-food companies “aim in particular [at] young people,” and kids thereby “fall into the trap and become obese at youth.” He’s threatening to sue schools and school boards “for entering into contracts whereby they get paid for every fat burger and sugary soft drink they sell to kids.”

Moreover, Banzhaf has filed a class-action case against McDonald’s for selling to children. Suing on behalf of kids “avoids the major argument that plaintiffs are supposedly responsible for their own actions, since one can hardly blame youngsters who are lured into McDonald’s by playgrounds, gotta-have toys in Happy Meals, birthday parties, etc.”

Elsewhere Banzhaf has admitted that consumers have some responsibility, but “to exercise their personal responsibility, consumers need the same clear and conspicuous disclosure of calories and fat content in fast foods that we enjoy and use regarding food purchased in stores.” As if most people don’t know that a Big Mac has more calories than a tub of Tofu.

We Know Better

The basic point is that people know better, but still choose “bad” stuff. And most people still eat most meals at home. Grocery stores, diet doctors, and packaging companies could be next on the legal hit list. Even people who give out candy on Halloween. Sue ‘em all!

Seem unlikely? Observes Banzhaf with delight: “Never underestimate the tenacity of a lawyer working on a contingency fee.” Indeed.

Nor are private suits the only option. Banzhaf says we could see “similar state lawsuits against fast food companies for the public costs of obesity, just as states were so successful in suing tobacco companies for the public costs of smoking.”

The argument that we are all paying for the costs of fat people and that instead such expenses should be “confined to those who use the products or produce them” is superficially attractive. But in the case of smoking, government actually benefited: though smoking-related diseases are expensive, they are not as expensive as decades more of age-related diseases.

Moreover, that government tries to socialize the cost of everything—health care, for instance—doesn’t entitle it to control our lives. Should people be allowed to hang-glide? Should people be forced to exercise? Why let individuals assess the relative benefits and risks of any activity when the rest of us pay?

Banzhaf is a dedicated social engineer. He told one critic, “the problem is, the remedies that you proposed—exercise, moderation in eating—and what some others propose—parental responsibilities, individual responsibility, education—aren’t working.”

He’d prefer that government legislate. But even here there are limits. Banzhaf allowed in an interview with a French publication: “one can change the behavior of the companies much more easily than that of the consumers. . . . I can’t think of any way we can legislate that people go out and jog a mile a day.” We should be thankful for small favors.

“But we can change how fast foods are advertised, promoted, sold. We can adopt taxes on fast foods so the losses are borne much more by people who eat them,” he exults. Who cares if people like fast food? He doesn’t want them to eat it, and he will do whatever is necessary to stop them. If government won’t do his bidding, then “as in the tobacco area, where the legislatures did not act, we were forced to litigate.” Lawsuits pushed their way out of his pen in the same way that hamburgers forced their way into Caesar Barber’s mouth.

When will all this end? Never, if Banzhaf has his way. He told Insight magazine: “I’m not sure anybody at this time can say. I would suggest that we have to work it out the way we always have. Which is . . . in the great laboratories of law that are our courts.”

Freedom requires responsibility, a willingness to bear the cost of one’s actions. Increasingly, however, Americans want someone else to bear the consequences.

Related posts:

1. The Money Lawyers: The No-Holds-Barred World of Todays Richest and Most Powerful Lawyers
2. Dictatorship of Lawyers
3. Are There Too Many Lawyers?

Related posts:

1. Potomac Principles
2. Potomac Principles ~The War on Charity
3. Potomac Principles ~ Making Terrorists Pay

Washington, D.C., is filled with professions of good intentions by politicians and bureaucrats as they steadily strip away Americans’ liberty and money. The political class uses even the most serious social problem to cement its control.

Elections, which H. L. Mencken called advance auctions of stolen goods, bring out the worst in politicians. But it’s better to have elections than not, even though the political world usually looks about the same whether the Democrats or Republicans win.

Nevertheless, America, in contrast to its government, remains special. The uniqueness is most evident when traveling abroad.

Not so much when visiting other industrialized nations—what I call “real countries”: Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Australia, and the like. Places that have advanced health care, modern telecommunications, democratic polities, respect for human rights, and abundant consumer goods. The United States remains freer and the opportunities remain better than in most of these states. But any American could live a prosperous and reasonably free life in them.

That’s not the case with much of the globe, however. The bulk of the world’s population lives in poverty and oppression. People spend their entire lives without opportunity or hope. The need for real reform—that is, freedom—is so much greater there.

For instance, journey to the border between Thailand and Burma (Myanmar). I’ve gone several times with a group called Christian Freedom International (CFI; www.christianfreedom.org), which works on humanitarian and religious liberty issues. In this case, it assists ethnic Karen refugees displaced by the Burmese military.

Roughly 100,000 Karen live in refugee camps near the city of Maesot in western Thailand. Wooden huts cover undulating hills as far as the eye can see. The physical facilities are primitive, but people have organized themselves, especially around several churches (the Karen were converted by Christian missionaries in the mid-1800s). They are fed, housed, and clothed. Yet many people have been there for years; children have been born in the camps. None see any prospect of going back to their ancestral homes anytime soon.

Even worse are conditions in eastern Burma. Up to three million people have been displaced by decades of war. The junta’s forces move in, rape the women, conscript men as porters, kill the villagers’ livestock, destroy the buildings, and sow landmines to prevent people from returning. Two years ago government forces eradicated one small village just over the Moie river inside Burma six weeks after I visited.

Last summer I went to a larger, semi-permanent camp, protected by guerrillas with the Karen National Union (KNU). At least they have formal privies, in contrast to other villages deeper in the hills. And the meeting building and “freedom hospital” supported by CFI have electricity, which is absent elsewhere.

Still, it is impossible to escape not just dirt, but mud during the rainy season. Jungle green encroaches a few yards away. Only the careless would wander into hills covered with landmines and vulnerable to Burmese military attack.

Moreover, there is no hope for peace or prosperity. I met soldiers as young as 13, teenagers whose parents had been murdered by government troops. I met KNU soldiers in their 30s or 40s who have fought and killed for their entire adult lives. I met Burmese defectors who prefer uncertain exile to forced service under government thugs in Rangoon.

Life in Pakistan

Or journey to Pakistan. I went there last year as well. It is a military dictatorship, where General-President Pervez Musharaff has rigged the electoral process to create a democratic facade for his authoritarian rule. As in most of the Third World, state mismanagement of the economy has resulted in mass poverty.

On top of that is state-supported discrimination against minority faiths. Converts from Islam are often murdered. Non-Muslims find themselves prosecuted for blasphemy. No one even bothers to mouth the principle of equal rights under the law.

Worse, far worse, is North Korea. There are executions, mass starvation, and labor camps. And a stifling personality cult. Never, ever, speak ill of the Great Leader and Dear Leader. Commemorate them by photos in every room and buttons on every breast.

It’s been a decade since I traveled to the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, but what I most remember is the lack of life on the streets. Masses of people walking, but never a group leaving a restaurant laughing. Never anyone having an animated conversation. Just silent souls streaming by, crushed by a system dedicated to squeezing out the slightest spark of creativity and individuality.

Obviously, many Americans face serious challenges, some of them life-threatening. But most problems here pale in comparison to those burdening the average Burmese Karen, Pakistani, and North Korean. In the United States hardship is real, but an exception. For so many other people elsewhere it is a way of life, for one’s entire life.

Seeing so many people in such straits highlights our responsibility for others, the obligation of those to whom much has been given to help those in great need. Moreover, such situations illustrate how the best way to help others is through private voluntary organizations that show up in isolated lands to feed and train people, create orphanages and schools, and maintain medical facilities. U.N. humanitarian agencies operate in Maesot, but none of them will work against the wishes of Burma’s brutal junta to help save Karen children who have stepped on land mines or been infected with malaria on the other side of the river. CFI will, even in the most primitive and distant village and at significant risk to its own personnel.

In Pakistan Christians routinely are denied access to basic services, such as electricity, available to Muslim neighbors across a street or field. And aid workers complained that the government manipulated foreign assistance for its own ends, rewarding its supporters and denying funds to disfavored groups. Looking to government for help is the path to starvation. Only private aid really turns out to be aid.

Not that this is always a good answer. Private groups can’t do much in North Korea. Some provide food, but their activities are constrained by Pyongyang’s dictates. Still, every little bit of private engagement helps, though often only a little bit.

Although I’ve always disliked jingoistic nationalism, even when applied to the United States, going to places like these causes me to grasp my American passport a little—actually, a lot—tighter. There is much wrong here. We desperately need to free our people, while addressing the sometimes desperate human needs that rightly unsettle our consciences. Even so, America remains a beacon of liberty for the world.

Related posts:

1. Potomac Principles
2. Potomac Principles ~ Making Terrorists Pay
3. Potomac Principles-The Constitution According to George Bush

Little upsets politicians more than people attempting to escape their control. So it is with U.S. companies that have fled overseas, now attacked as being unpatriotic and worse by Washington pols.

Over the last decade, at least 25 major firms have reincorporated in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. Eleven have emigrated since 2000.

The reason is simple: taxes. As Jonathan Weisman of the Washington Post put it: “The United States, with its 35 percent corporate income tax and its Byzantine rules for taxing worldwide profits, is not a particularly friendly tax environment, especially when compared with Bermuda, where there is no corporate income tax.”

But the economic incentive isn’t enough. Unlike European rules, U.S. law allows companies to shift to another country without shifting their headquarters.

Naturally, the legislators who enacted both the tax rates and the tax loophole are furious. Charles Grassley of the Senate Finance Committee says such inversions are “immoral and unethical.” Representative Jim Maloney calls firms that migrate “unpatriotic and immoral in a time of war.”

Even some nominal conservatives have joined in the hunt. Former Reagan administration defense aide Ken Adelman wants to go after companies that aren’t paying their “proper share of taxes to the U.S. Treasury.” Moving offshore to reduce Washington’s take is “shady” and “just awful.”

A half dozen laws have been drafted in response. The companies responded with their usual weapon of choice, lobbyists. Said Todd Malan, executive director of the Organization for International Investment: “They’ve hired everybody in town.”

Corporate inversion is one of those issues that invite demagoguery. Yet moving to lower one’s taxes is common in America. States without an income tax attract retirees; many people compare the level of taxation before deciding between adjoining states. Many people even avoid cities, such as New York, which hit up their residents coming and going.

Moving across national borders is more difficult, but makes equal sense. It’s not just small Caribbean nations that have lower corporate tax rates. So do Hong Kong and Taiwan, Norway and Sweden, Chile and Ecuador, Hungary, and Switzerland.

Playing by the tax rules enacted by Congress in order to lower one’s taxes hardly seems immoral, unethical, and unpatriotic. Rather than complaining, legislators could, perish the thought, lower tax rates and rationalize the regulations to make America more competitive.

Indeed, when it comes to blame, Congress is the obvious culprit. First, consider the mess Congress has made of international taxation. Senator Orrin Hatch admits that the foreign tax credit doesn’t fully offset foreign levies, resulting in double taxation. Thus, he says, “the effective tax rate of American-based firms is often much higher than that of their non-U.S. competitors.”

The second problem is the overall tax burden. Despite the modest Bush tax cut, the government’s take remains at historically high levels.

According to the Tax Foundation, Tax Freedom Day, when Americans stop paying for government, ran to April 27 in 2002. The good news is that this is down from May 1 in 2000, after the Clinton tax hikes. But it’s still the record before 1998. It’s almost a month longer than in 1945, at the end of World War II, because state and local governments then took so much less. Americans are working for government almost two weeks longer than they did in 1984, the low point over the last two decades.

Third, toss in the regulatory burden and you get Cost of Government Day. That, reports Americans for Tax Reform, came to July 1 last year, up six days over 2001. By this measure, people spend half their lives working for the state.

Thus, it seems a little churlish to demonize people as they attempt to lighten this burden a bit. That applies to corporate America too. For one thing, individuals, not businesses, pay the taxes.

High Taxes

In any case, U.S. tax rates are excessive. America’s corporate rate, combining federal and state taxes, averages 40 percent, 8 percent higher than the average of other industrialized states. Indeed, last year U.S. levies went from fourth to second highest in the developed world. Compliance costs in America are also among the highest in the world.

This extra money is going for an orgy of spending. In fact, the increase in outlays in George W. Bush’s first two years equals that in the first five years of Bill Clinton. Since February 2001 Congress increased discretionary spending by over $400 billion.

This isn’t due to the War on Terrorism. Representative John Spratt admits it: “The cost of 9/11 is a small fraction of the total deterioration of the surplus.” About two-thirds of increased spending is due to other factors. Reports Jeffrey Birnbaum of Fortune: “The rest is testament to a fact that predates Sept. 11: the era of big government has returned.” Indeed, he adds, the fight against terrorism has been a “ruse to justify all sorts of spending.”

Citizens Against Government Waste reported that last year the House and Senate included $662 million and $801 million, respectively, in pork in the 2003 military construction appropriations bill. No occasion is to be missed when it comes to lathering federal cash on constituents.

Rather than cut spending, in recent years the GOP majority elected in 1994 worked to shift the money to Republican districts. By 2000 the average Republican district was getting $612 million more in federal funds than the average Democratic district. “To the victor goes the spoils,” observed then-House Majority Leader Richard Armey. The National Taxpayers Union has found that the average legislator has been casting votes to increase the so-called budget baseline by twice as much as two years ago. Observes Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation: “Republicans and Democrats basically make a deal with each other—‘I’ll vote for your increase if you’ll vote for my increase.’”

People should feel immoral, unethical, and unpatriotic when they avoid this?

Congress should deal with corporate inversions, but not by punishing companies tired of seeing a large share of their revenues seized by politicians to reward favored interest groups and buy votes. It wouldn’t be easy: restricting inversions would make U.S. firms more susceptible to a foreign takeover, which would automatically result in a lower tax rate.

Restrictions would also encourage established firms to move their headquarters overseas and startups to begin there. For example, a company that located in Ireland, with a corporate tax rate less than half that in America, would be protected by a tax treaty from punitive retaliation.

The real immorality is when politicians take people’s money for their own purposes. The real lack of patriotism is when politicians put their interests before freedom.

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2. Potomac Principles ~ Letting Competition Reign
3. Potomac Principles

The Constitution explicitly requires that Congress shall “declare war.” and the Founders’ explicit intention, even while recognizing the President’s need to be able to respond defensively in an emergency, was to limit his war-making authority. Virginia’s George Mason, for instance, spoke of “clogging rather than facilitating war.” Thomas Jefferson wrote of creating an “effectual check to the dog of war by transferring the power of letting him loose.” Even Alexander Hamilton agreed.

Alas, Bush 43 seems to be following in the footsteps of Bush 41. The latter stated, “I don’t think I need it,” when asked if congressional approval was necessary before attacking Iraq more than a decade ago. Why? “Many attorneys,” he said, had “so advised me.” Too bad neither Bush apparently bothered to read the Constitution.

The president is the commander-in-chief, but only within the legal framework established by the Constitution and Congress. He cannot create a military—Congress must authorize the forces and approve the funds. Congress is also tasked with setting rules of war and organizing the militia. The president can negotiate a treaty ending a conflict, but the Senate must ratify it.

If the President can unilaterally order an attack on a nation halfway around the globe that has not provided a traditional casus belli, the Constitution is dead. And if conservatives treat the Constitution as dead when it suits them, they should stop complaining when federal judges, “liberal” activists, and Democratic politicians do the same.

Why, for instance, require congressional approval to impose taxes and borrow money? The Constitution lists this as one of the legislature’s enumerated powers, but that outmoded provision need not dictate present policy.

If the president sees a critical need, he shouldn’t have to wait for Congress to act. Especially if selfish, petty, and political legislators say no.

Nor should the nation’s fiscal health be impaired by pork-minded congressmen who lard essential bills with special-interest subsidies. Whatever the merits of the Founders’ scheme, the president should be able to cut wasteful spending unilaterally, without having to veto entire bills or fear being overridden. Article 1, Section 8, empowers Congress to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” as well as bankruptcy and patent laws. But look at what a mess legislators have made of the first, with foreigners coming to America to kill. Populists are doing their best to block bankruptcy reform. Patents are currently subject to a bitter congressional fight. Forget the Constitution. Let the president decide. Congress is allowed to establish post offices. It did so, and now Americans are suffering under an inefficient monopoly. Yet the postal unions block any change. The president should act unilaterally.

The problem of judicial activism would have disappeared had President Franklin Delano Roosevelt been able to pursue his “court-packing” plan. Why should some abstract constitutional provisions and congressional intransigence have prevented him from doing what had to be done?

Indeed, we could dispense with congressional approval of presidential nominations. The Senate’s “advise and consent” function is outmoded; the president should simply declare his nominees to be in office.

Health-Care Debate

Moreover, consider the potential of executive predominance during the ill-fated health-care debate of 1993–1994. The crisis should have been obvious: Tens of millions of people without health insurance, sharply rising medical and insurance costs, growing popular dissatisfaction with the system. Yet rather than working with the president, Congress thwarted Bill Clinton’s efforts. The GOP was especially shameless, using the issue for its own electoral gain.

Now, almost a decade later, the same problems remain with us. If only the President had had the courage to act unilaterally. Consider the speech that he could have given explaining why he was putting the Health Security Act into effect on his own authority:

“I realize that some people of good will believe that the Constitution gives this power to Congress. But there are few issues more important than Americans’ health. Many lawyers have told me that the Constitution established an energetic chief executive, vesting him with final authority for protecting the public. In my view, that requires acting to assure secure health care for all Americans.”

Why stop there? The Constitution’s electoral scheme is notably defective. The mere fact that more than two centuries ago some dead white males concocted a system as cumbersome as the electoral college doesn’t mean that we should follow it today. And if Congress won’t approve a constitutional amendment to fix it, why shouldn’t the president unilaterally recognize the candidate who has greater popular legitimacy by winning the most votes?

What is most surprising is not that presidents routinely attempt to expand their war-making authority, but that Congress is so ready to surrender its power. Of course, the partisan pirouettes are staggering.

Democrats outraged at what they saw as persistent abuses by Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush suddenly gained a strange new respect for executive power when President Clinton was preparing to invade Haiti and attack Serbia. Republicans routinely defended executive privilege by “their” presidents and criticized Clinton’s propensity to bomb other countries unilaterally.

Still, why surrender the most important power, whether or not to go to war, to a competing branch? House Majority Whip Tom DeLay explains that the President “has said he’s going to come to Congress when he decides what needs to be done and when it needs to be done.”

But DeLay must have taken an oath to a different Constitution than the one under which we live. The U.S. Constitution says that the Congress decides what needs to be done. DeLay might prefer that the Constitution read differently. It doesn’t, however.

For all of the bizarre constitutional interpretations emanating from law schools, courts, and op-ed pages, most people recognize that the President’s domestic powers are circumscribed by the law of the land. So too are his war powers. President Bush needs to do more than request Congress’s approval for war in Iraq. He has to abide by its decision.

Doug Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books.

Related posts:

1. Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush
2. Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy
3. Potomac Principles

Where Turkey ultimately ends up is particularly important, given its potential membership in the European Union (EU). Membership could remake Turkey. A number of Turks are liberal, in a classical sense, supporting individual liberty, economic freedom, and political democracy. They believe the lure of EU membership is the best way to enable their country to escape its authoritarian legacy. Turkey is a nominal democracy, with regular elections. Yet the military holds ultimate power, upending governments and dissolving political parties. Professor Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Bilgi University commented sardonically: "they have the bayonets and we don’t."

Turkey’s reigning ideology is statism, embodied in the nation’s founder, Kemal Ataturk. "Kemalism is treated like a religion," says Yayla, also a university professor: "In this way, Kemalists are more religious than Islamacists." It is hard to find a room in Turkey without Ataturk’s photo; his overpowering, square-block memorial in Ankara is a shrine. Dissent is highly constrained. Criticism of the military is simply banned-indeed, the provision was tightened earlier this year to bar criticism of individual soldiers (meaning, in practice, leading generals).

Criticism of other officials can be almost as dangerous. A magazine supported by Yayla’s Association criticized a supreme court ruling kicking religious conservatives out of politics. ALT’s publisher (Liberté Publication) and the author found themselves subject to a lawsuit and now face ruinous damages.

Academia offers no security. Ozel nonchalantly speaks of "immense pressure by the government" because the private university is seen as having "too many leftists and liberals, allowing women to wear head scarves, and talking about the Kurds." He expects the school to survive the attacks, but "we are on our own."

The government also controls the economy, creating a class of businessmen dependent on political subsidies. One cause of Turkey’s recent economic crisis is a state banking system that lost billions while shoveling money to favored interests. The International Monetary Fund required Turkey to liquidate many of these banks as a condition for receiving aid last year, but much remains to be done. Ankara still needs to privatize state enterprises and eliminate barriers to foreign investment. Despite much talk of reform, "you don’t really have a political party that represents economic liberalization," complains Mustafa Sayinatac, Corporate Affairs Director for the Cargill corporation.

All these problems run back to Turkey’s overarching philosophy of government. Gokhan Capoglu, a former member of parliament and now professor at Bilkent University, argues that "we have to achieve a liberal democracy. I’m speaking of the rule of law, separation of powers, accountability to the rules. What is lacking in this country is accountability." More fundamentally, suggests Yayla, "Without dismantling Kemalism, I don’t think there can be a real democracy, a real market economy." Democracy is important, but it is only secondary. More basic is liberalism, with its commitment to human dignity and freedom.

There is popular support for change. Ozel says there are "liberal people in most every political party," though no party has yet taken up the reform cause. Fuat Keyman, an associate professor at Bilkent University, points to the gap between the "social and economic forces pressing for a more liberal Turkey, a more democratic Turkey," and "existing parties which have no ability to deal with tense problems."

Thus, liberal-minded Turks tend to look outside for help. Ozel argues: "If the EU were to accommodate Turkey, the entire context of politics would change." Yayla says simply: the EU "is our hope."

Nationalist Reaction

But, worries Ozel, "Just make sure the EU doesn’t screw this up." Alas, with Europe preparing to judge the adequacy of Turkish political reform, demanding abolition of Turkey’s death penalty, and addressing the Cyprus issue, there’s no guarantee that it won’t overreach, sparking a nationalist reaction in Ankara.

Nor will pressure from Washington for economic and political reform necessarily work out any better. Warns Capoglu: an open endorsement would risk "making the same mistake as in other countries," when people ended up "associating the U.S. with unpopular governments."

Moreover, foreign pressure will have an impact only if there is a domestic constituency for reform. That is the ALT’s mission.

Yayla emphasizes that his group is not a political party. "We are trying to influence politics indirectly through ideas. We are not for political parties but for liberal politics." Indeed, ALT has "contact with members of all parties," including "the Islamic-oriented. They like us because they know we respect their rights." Although Yayla is not religious, he chides Turkey for repressing religious expression in the name of secularism and the EU for ignoring that assault on human liberty. Headquartered in a small, four-bedroom suite in a central neighborhood in Ankara, ALT employs five staffers. Formally organized in 1994, it seeks to spread market-liberal ideas among the young. It has helped publish 65 books, starting with F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in 1995.

The Association also offers two quarterly magazines, underwrites a student journal, runs an Internet magazine, hosts a series of forums and seminars on classical-liberal thought, organizes two annual academic conferences, and works with like-minded groups in the United States and Europe. "It is good to know that we have international friends," he observes. ALT’s refreshing perspective is captured by its website. Yayla emphasizes that the Association is careful to follow the law, which limits its ability to accept money directly from foreign groups. "Anything you do is risky. Any time you can be charged for anything," he says. But "if you are too cautious, you can’t do anything." Luckily, the government recognizes that ALT is nonpolitical and nonpartisan.

Turkey’s potential is vast. Strategically located and filled with entrepreneurial people, it could become a regional powerhouse. It could also provide the model for Islamic peoples to retain their culture while adapting to modernity and enjoying human liberty. But to fulfill that role Ankara must move away from its authoritarian past. Turkey may be more democratic "than any other Islamic country," observes Yayla, but that’s not nearly enough. "We want freedom, peace, and the rule of law."

Doug Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books.

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2. A Democratic Dilemma
3. Democratic Freedoms vs. Collectivist Newspeak