Soundings, April 2004

"A group of U.S. senators who invested in common stocks during a six-year period in the 1990s outperformed the market by about 12 percent per year, according to a new academic study. That's an astonishing record, given the double-digit annual gains in stock market indexes during the bullish study period, 1993 through 1998. Were these senators—about a third of all Senate members—extraordinary stock pickers, or did they take advantage of their positions to trade on privileged information not available to the public? The authors of the study contend it's the latter…. 'These results clearly support the notion that members of the Senate trade with a substantial information advantage over ordinary investors,' the study concluded. 'The results suggest that senators knew when to buy their common stocks and when to sell,' Alan Ziobrowski, an associate professor in the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University and one of the four study authors, said in an interview." Tom Walker, "Study: Senators Easily Top Market," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 22, 2004.

"Over the portals of the Palace of the World Council, there are words cut in the marble, which we repeat to ourselves whenever we are tempted:

'We are one in all and all in one.
'There are no men but only the great WE,
'One, indivisible, and forever.'"
    Anthem, Ayn Rand

"The success of self-help books has led to a supersaturated 'I'. It's time for the next spiritual step, a leap in human consciousness: the leap to we. In our modern society, we're all linked to one another. And the answer to our political, economic and spiritual challenges lies in co-operation, in a realisation that we are nothing less than we. Witness the birth of a new way of thinking. . . .

"Ever louder is the call for direct democracy, sustainable entrepreneurship, tolerance and for new values. And yet… who can tell us what we need to do to create these new values and how to apply them? Which party, which individual or which movement will point the way through the jungle of good intentions. Is there an answer to our global crisis?

"Yes, there is. The answer is 'we'. And the good news is, that we have already taken the first steps to activating that answer. Is it a movement? Is it a new group of thinkers? Whatever the case, more and more public opinion leaders are coming to the same conclusion: we….

"In short, the world appears to be preparing for a global transition from an egotistical consciousness that was geared towards survival, to a general consciousness that embraces the entire cosmos and evolution. It's no longer everyone for themselves, but one for all." Jaap Westerbos, "We Are Here," Ode, January 2004.

Says the well-known communitarian Amitai Etzioni: "With scores of magazines devoted to self-help and individual empowerment, it is nice to see Ode magazine getting the press it has. According to Ode's editor-in-chief, the goal of the magazine is to publish articles that help us to move towards a 'we-centered' world." www.amitai-notes.com/blog.

What happens when you base a society on the principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need"? In the first place, money goes from the able to the needy. In the second place, the able just go. One would think that Germany of all nations—remember the Berlin Wall?—would realize this, but apparently it does not. According to Deutsche Welle (February 9, 2004): "Germany's brightest and best qualified young professionals are leaving the country in droves and securing lucrative positions abroad….Nearly 118,000 people packed up and left the country in 2002 for jobs abroad, the German Statistical Office reported…. Every seventh person with a doctorate in science leaves Germany for the United States, The Scientist magazine has reported. Three of the four German Nobel Prize winners work in the United States. 'The trouble is that we are losing our highest achievers,' Christoph Anz of the Confederation of German Employers Associations told The Scientist…. Gerd Kempermann, a researcher in molecular medicine who has worked in the United States, says the work structure in other countries is often more attractive than in Germany. 'The rules (in Germany) don't always fit everyone. When someone realizes that they don't fit into a certain formula then they begin to search for where their potential can be realized—where employers look to see what they can offer good employees.'"

Noting that a significant number of Democrats voted against a resolution honoring the troops in Iraq, the Wall Street Journal Online (March 18, 2004) commented: "Such partisan small-mindedness isn't limited to Democrats. After the House passed the pro-troops resolution, it passed another resolution, 'honoring the life and legacy of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt…on the anniversary of the date of his birth.'" The vote was 398 to 5, and all five no votes were Republican. Said WSJ Online: "The tiny number of Republican noes is testimony to the tendency of partisan divisions to heal over time."

"Partisan divisions" are those that separate people who share a general constitutional understanding: adventurous Whigs and cautious Tories. Franklin Roosevelt destroyed America's constitutional understanding of human rights and limited government. Under the circumstances, "Soundings" honors the five congressmen who declared that they are not prepared to forget and forgive that destruction of liberty: Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Joel Hefley of Colorado, Steve King of Iowa, and Ron Paul of Texas.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project conducted a poll during late February and early March 2004, in the United States and eight other countries, asking whether Iraq would be better off after the removal of Saddam Hussein. Even before heavy fighting broke out in April, large numbers of people in Muslim countries thought Iraq was going to be worse off after Saddam's ouster than it was before.

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. "A Year After Iraq War," March 16, 2004.