Page 8-Sunday, Janlry 20, 1980-The Michig Daily neo (Continued from Page 6) the neoconservative movement very many friends-it just isn't in vogue today to take from social groups that do not have much to give up. The neocon- servatives, however, are really not too concerned about the popularity of any of their individual theories. They do not run candidates for office or lobby for legislature on Capitol Hill; consequen- tly, they do not have to worry if their ideas are unpopular. Rather, the neoconservatives are in- tellectuals, creating political theories that they are confident will eventually be assimilated by the public. "Philosophy determines public policy," Mitchell explains, repeating a neocon- servative belief that was originated by the French revolutionary statesman Alexis de Tocqueville. "The group which is in dominance determines the philosophy and therefore the policy," Mitchell continues. This is the goal of neoconservatism: to be the dominant philosophy. If there is one issue about which most neoconservatives hold similar views it is that the market can and should be used to solve social problems without interference by government. Indeed, many critics of government social programs point to what they describe as the failures of two key attempts to bias the market for the benefit of the poor-the minimum wage and welfare. Mitchell maintains that the minimum wage program actually excludes many less-skilled workers from the job market. "Every academic study of the minimum wage program has shown that it increases unemployment. This occurs because employers will not hire someone who is worth only two dollars per hour if they must pay them more than that," Mitchell says. "The Marxist view that workers would be exploited by employers if there were no minimum wage is disputed by many economists, not just conservatives. Research looking at wages and productivity has shown that this Marxist view is just not true," he con- tinues.Y Welfare, too, has resulted in un- desireable and unanticipated side ef- fects, according to the neoconser- vatives. In an article about neoconser- vatism in Current magazine, Columbia Sociology Prof. Amitai Etzioni explains the neoconservative thought. "Poverty exists because society insulates poor individuals from the negative con- sequences of their improper attitudes and actions-thereby, in effect, en- couraging them." Harvard Prof. Edward Banfield, who Steinfels characterizes as "ultra-neo- conservative," elaborates on this con- tention. "The almost universal opinion today is that, both for his own sake and that of his society, an individual must not be left to suffer the consequences of his actions. If, for example, he has chosen a life of improvidence, he can- not for that reason be allowed to remain below the poverty line. To give him money, however, is to give him an in- centive to persist in his ways." Has this neoconservative position on welfare programs reached Ann Arbor? Well, it depends on whom you ask. David Morgan, an LSA senior and for- mer member of the Michigan Republicans Club, agrees with the neoconservative line. wholeheartedly. "I believe neoconservatism is the wave of the future. People are coming to realize that big government spending programs have not accomplished what they were supposed to," Morgan says. "The failures of the minimum wage program and the welfare program show that there should be minimum government interference in the economy," continues Morgan, who is now working for Ronald Reagan's Presidential campaign. Mitchell also says he believes that "many government programs are set up in such a way as to give people no in- centive to work." And Third Ward Republican Councilman Clifford Sheldon "would tend to, agree that welfare programs can't become too much of a crutch." But Morris, who finds herself in the neoconservative camp on two issues, has no taste for the neoconservative's welfare argument. "Welfare is. necessary for those who need help," she says. SecondWard Democratic Coun- cilman Earl Greene agrees with Morris. "There are people in our society who need that extra push from welfare to survive in our society." It is Greene who comes very close to pinpointing a serious problem with the neoconservative confidence in the free market to alleviate social injustice. "The concept of democracy is to share wealth for the good of all, so I'm not sure how the philosophy of capitalism is compatible with the philosophy of democracy," Greene says. Democracy is not commonly inter- preted as guaranteeing sharing of wealth-Greene may be slightly off base here. But in his casual musing about the relationsip of capitalism to democracy, he has raised a key question that Etzioni explores in his ar- ticle. "Even a sophomore," Etzioni writes, "and not necessarily in sociology, knows that the market, far from maximizing the freedom of the in- dividual, maximizes the range of choice of only those with a high buying power. "Unlike the policy in which the notion of one individual, one vote is at least very crudely approximated, the market offers individuals as many (or as few) votes as they have dollars." Etzioni continues, "(Neoconser- vatives) argue that you can use the market to introduce the social changes you desire, but this ignores the need to deal with the powerful people who op- pose such changes. Societal stability is a classic conservative value. It was always a conservative line to call upon the underprivileged to sit still so as not to upset national unity, law, and order. These arguments gloss over the possibility that a class of people may find their needs better served in a dif- ferent societal structure (hence one cannot assume that they will be scared off by fear of overly disturbing this one)." Because few Ann Arbor conser- vatives want to be considered by'fellow townies even slightly right-of-center, it is difficult to get a feeling for local con- servative reaction to the neoconser- 'vative movement. When asked if he would comment on the neoconservative movement, one economics professor-who is regarded almost unanimously as a staunch conser- vative-snapped, "Go find a real con- servative to talk to." L wr . . brethren (Continued from Page 7) distinct views on crime, on press freedom, on executive authority, and on civil rights -views that they vigorously attempt to get written into the law of the land. The Brethren gives each of the anonymous justices a name, a face, and a personality that helps explain the outcome of some of the court's most celebrated cases. We see Warren Burger, Nixon's appointed chief justice, as the dogged defender of the administration and the chief architect of the president's grand plan to move the nation in a more conservative direc- tion. We see Burger as the chosen legitimizer of the tough law-and-order philosophies that Nixon rode to the White House in 1968. We see Burger and Nixon in indirect cohoots to implement the President's southern strategy, with Burger writing a draft opinion in a busing case that praised the ad- ministration for its efforts at cautious desegregation. Warren Burger is seen here not as the robed chief justice, always staid and stoic in formal public appearances, but, rather, as an intense paranoiac, bent on projecting an image of leadership and always conscious that he is compared to his predecessor, Earl Warren. We see the chief justice switching his vote on vital cases, merely so he can be in the majority and not be publicly em- barrassed as the lone dissenting vote. We see the chief assigning the law-and- order and criminal's rights cases to those conservative justices whose views were most like his own, so that even when the decision went against him, he could still control the language of the final opinion. In short, we see the chief justice of the Supreme Court without any robes, and the sight of Warren Burger stripped of all the public judicial trappings is not pretty. It must send a chill down the spine of civil liberatians to hear the chief justice of the nation's highest court telling another justice, "We're the supreme court, we can do anything we want." Each of the justices is given a per- sonality, an attribute each previously lacked in the public eyes. Douglas is the crusador, committed fervently to the liberal cause. Brennan is also a liberal ally, with impeccable liberal creden- tials but too willing to compromise. Black, too, is an old south liberal, but he's seen becoming disheartened by rampant crime and degeneration of American youth. His decisions become increasingly conservative, and he even votes to uphold the conviction of a young California man sent to jail for wearing the words "Fuck the Draft" in a courthouse. Despite the first amen- dment implications, the word "fuck" offends Black's moral sensitivities, This book is a compilation of vast research, its impressiveness heightened by the high court's pensity for protecting its own privacy. The authors, however, fall into the same writing pattern that characterized Final Days. That is, despite the claim in the introduciton that the book was writ- ten "based on interviews with more than two hundred people, including several justices . .. " the authors take dubious liberties at probing the minds of their characters and coming out with declarative statements of questionable credibility. When Messers. Woodward and Armstrong write: "The chief thought it fantastic and unprecedented ." or "Douglas thought Blackmun's opinion outrageous," the reader is left to wonder how the reporters gained the omnicient power to delve into the private thoughts of men whom they may never have even spoken to. The Brethren is an important book, if only in that it helps strip away the text- book-inspired aura of the high court as a institutio.rxemoved from politics and personalities. Such an image of the court removes what is perhaps this country's most powerful branch of government from public scrutiny, and the opinions of the court are then treated as unbiased intrepretations of law, not the 'political decisions of political men. And when nine persons can so shape the future of the American constitution, then their politics, their personalities, and their pet peeves become important to understanding the processof government itself. law- (Continued from Page 4) an abortion, if you can pay for it, iri the first trimester of pregnancy. With regard to race relations, I also look for continuity. School busing as a remedy for past segregation may be restricted somewhat but I doubt that the Court will forbid its use in all cir- cumstances. If the 1980's proves to be a decade of relative economic stringency, we can expect an intensification of disputes between various levels of government regarding economic policy, par- ticularly with regard to such questions as the exploitation of natural resources and environment protection. The last decade witnessed a very mild revival of judicial concern for states rights; I think this revival could accelerate in the future. On the other hand, it is also possible that a national preoccupation with the economy could result in even more in the way of constitutional doc- trines establishing federal supremacy. That certainly was the result in the 1930's, the last era when the nation felt truly threatened economically. Finally, in most eras the justices seem to find at least one new group of - claimants to serve as beneficiaries of a dramatic doctrinal breakthrough. Most likely candidate for the 1980's: gay people. Cundao Co-ed itors Elisa Isaacson- RJ Smith Neoconservatives on the rise Supplement to The Michigan Daily- Considering death in the 80s Scrutini: the Supr Cover collage by Reggie Sandman Ann Arbor, Michigon--Sunday, January 20, 1980