OPINION 0 Page 4 Sunday, November 8, 1981 The Michigan Daily I1 &tre imideaUn an1 Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Wasserman SENATOR, MYOUR O4AT A15ouT THE Vol. XCII, No. 52 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, Ml 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board Protecting whose family? &UN' CONTROL No I &eT {HUNIDDSOF IQ 000 \ KILLED ECH HAWD&UN5 ? T~lEY SEE-4 MUCHHLESS VOCAL r ,/ M'OPLE ... ' DESPITE complaints from New Right groups that President Reagan has forgotten them and their pleas for the moral reform of America, the Moral Majority and co. may find they still have some friends in Washington. Several Congressional committees are now considering the dubious Family Protection Act- a measure in- tended to restore American families to their purest state in light of the deterioration they have suffered from two decades of evil social trerds. The proposal hits everything from schools to homosexuality to taxes in its ridiculous efforts to make American institutions conform to vague and questionable moral ideals. Among its features is the familiar plea for voluntary prayer in public schools, which besides being con- situtionally questionable has been in the past known to sometimes devolve into something less than voluntary. In addition, the proposal would amend the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act to reinstitute corporal punishment as an acceptable means of teaching naughty boys and girls ac- ceptable behavior. Shades of Anita Bryant and her crusades of a few years ago against homosexuality have resurfaced in the Family Protection Act. The act would deny federal assistance to any organization or individual who ad- vocates homosexuality as an accep- table lifestyle. The implications of this measure are frightening. Gay rights organizations, of course, would be the most obvious targets of this provision. But all groups, ranging from the Peace Corps to The University of Michigan, could also lose funding if they, when asked, refused to condemn homosexuality as immoral. When it comes to saving the family, civil liberties it would seem are not important. With its myriad of other provisions, the act is trying desperately to rein- stitute the old fashioned values that made America great before and will, its proponents hope, make her great once again. Rescinding progressive reforms and denying basic civil liberties, however, will only do more to destroy the quality of life in America than to save it. A Wef.K o??oSiNG C //' Reagan can't have it al:It's strength at home or abroad' A wise foreign policy plan A LEXANDER HAIG'S State Department finally seems to be taking more of an interest in human rights. The new assistant secretary of state for human rights, Elliott Abrams, has drawn up a plan by which the United States would take a much more active role in attacking abuses of human rights abroad, even if the guilty nations were allies of the United States. This proposal, if approved, would be a seeming reversal of the current Reagan administration position. The president . and his State Department have refused to recognize, much less criticize, violations of human rights in a number of nations friendly to the United States. In Argentina, in Egypt, in El Salvador, again and again the Reagan administration declined to acknowledge flagrant abuses of human rights, instead opting for stepping up U.S. assistance in the global battle against monolithic communism. Secretary of State Haig surprisingly has given the policy proposal his OK, and it is now up to the White House to. make the final decision on whether the plan will be implemented. Approval from the Oval Office would appear doubtful, but then again who would have ever predicted Haig's consent. The Abrams proposal is delightfully well-reasoned-a breath of fresh air from an administration whose foreign policy seems to be largely based on false assumptions of Soviet ambitions mixed with a healthy dose of paranoia. In the policy memorandum, Abrams argues that the United States cannot take a hypocritical approach to inter- national human rights violations if it is to win the respect of developing Third World nations. And the trust and sup- port of these nations, Abrams con- tinues, is vital if these nations are to be persuaded to follow the American path to development rather than the Soviet example. So it becomes apparent that even in this measure the Reagan ad- ministration has based its policies on a fear of Soviet expansion rather than any basic concern for the betterment of impoverished peoples. Happily, however, the Abrams policy lends it- self to serving both U.S. idealistic goals and more pragmatic con- siderations about the ideological direc- tions of the Third World. Hopefully, President Reagan will see in it the same virtue and encourage the State Department to pursue the goals of global human rights with the same zeal with which it seeks to counter "the. Soviet threat." By Franz Schurmann President Reagan soon may have to decide which of his two loves-a healthy American economy and a forceful U.S. foreign policy-he loves more. To favor one, as he now appears to be intimating with his drive, for a bigger defense and a more vigorous role abroad, necessarily means pain and illness for the other. That is the message the stock and bond markets alike sent the president in the last weeks of August. By contrast, some ner- vousness aside, foreign markets greeted the president's new global moves by letting the dollar rise to its highest value in seven or eight years. GLOOMY WALL STREET brokers are convinced that interest rates will stay high, and that the Treasury will step up its forays into the capital markets to find new funds to offset deficits and pay for the defense effort. The result: Less money for businessmen to wonder why a president who promised to revitalize the American economy with new spending and tax cut policies now appears to be sacrificing it. Normally, bond markets go up as stock. markets go down, because in times of uncer- tainty people prefer long-term investments. But the normal dynamics fail if inflation is aging while the central government offers in- terest rates even higher than the bond sellers; and the money markets and ailing savings and loan institutions are outbidding each other in a wild scramble for short-term cash. When the bond market collapses, planning for the economic, future of the country collapses with it. "No bonds" means "no money" for cities to repair roads, sewers or schools. Cui bono, as the Romans used to say: Who benefits? The primary beneficiaries of high interest rates are wealthy Americans and conservative foreign investors. People who have money, but do not want to risk it in productive ventures, are happy to plunk it down for fool-proof astronomical rates of return. In the process, tidal waves of foreign capital are being drawn into the United States. IT HARDLY SEEMS in character that so American a man as Ronald Reagan would use his presidency to help foreigners make money. Nor, for that matter, was it in charac- ter for his predecessor to undertake a series of measures in March 1980 which helped doom his re-election. When Jimmy Carter did nothing to dissuade Federal Reserve chair- man Paul Volcker to let interest rates rise to then-unprecedented levels, the country plunged into a recession on the very eve of the primaries.' Yet Reagan now appearsto be moving in the same direction. His advisers have argued vigorously that they can hold the deficit down to some $40 billion, that inflation will continue to level off, and that "supply-side" stimulation will so increase the output of the American economy that we can easily pay for a vast new defense program. But as long as interestkrates remain high and the gover- nment keeps raiding the capital markets, American business will continue to have trouble finding capital. The effects,; moreover, will not be felt by big business, but; by those myriads of small businesses that ac- count for the great bulk of new employment inj 0 DOES PRESIDENT REAGAN want a thriving domestic economy, a strong foreign policy, and the jelly beans, too? l y - t1 ~8dI4J \j \ .±. i the United States-the true cutting edge of the economy., HENCE WALL STREET, whose influence on his decisions was jokingly dismissed by the. president, now is reassessing its friendship with Reagan. We don't think you can feed, clothe, and please both your loves, the finan- ciers are saying. Why, then, is Reagan trying to do precisely that? Why did Carter also try it? The simplest answer is that ever since Lyndon Johnson lost his bet that Americans could have guns and butter at the same time-a forceful posture abroad (including war) and a Great Society at home-U.S. presidents have tilted toward the primacy of foreign policy considerations, even in economic decision-making. Nixon engineered his new economic policy primarily to rectify imbalances in the U.S. role in the global economy. Ford did not cause the great recession of 1974-75, but tolerated it in order to dampen inflation and keep the dollar strong overseas. Carter's encouragement of sluggish economic growth at home, coupled with a strong defense of the dollar abroad, did much the same. As the Reagan administration clearly recognizes, foreign policy cannot be sacrificed for unilateral economic growth at home because our dependence on foreign economies now is irreversible. A few sops to the automobile industry aside, Washington has been systematically clearing away protectionist obstacles to international trade. With final decontrol of all oil prices, the ad- ministration even is considering letting foreign carriers transport Alaskan oil to the U.S. West Coast; already howls of protest have come from American shippers and maritime unions. If U.S. economic well-being in the end depends more on what happens abroad than on what is done at home, when push comes to shove, overseas concerns will dominate. A MAJOR ELEMENT among those over- seas concerns is keeping the price of oil stable. And indeed, since 1980, oil prices have been quite stable-so stable that the once- flooded Rotterdam spot market in oil is ac- tually drying up. Thus, the most recent rise in the inflation rate was, for a change, not due to oil at all.I Only Saudi Arabia, thanks to the oceans of oil on which it sits, can control world oil prices simply by widening or narrowing the spigot of production. It has kept that spigot wide open, causing the global oil glut. Coupled with sluggish economies, this act along has done more to advance U.S. interest than a thousand bombers zooming over hostile skies. It has helped keep Iraq and Iran in line. It has put the squeeze on Libya and Nigeria. And here at home it has helped moderate the single most dangerous inflationary feature in the price picture-for the time being. BUT NOW, for the first time since taking office, President Reagan appears dismayed by the prospect of an economy, much more sluggish than anticipated. Meanwhile, thanks in large part to the effectiveness of his own administration's tough talk, the defense buildup is progressing much faster than an- ticipated. The armed services are demanding as big a slice of the pie as they can get away with. The need to bolster the defenses of U.S. allies argues for even greater expansion: Japan has already agreed, reluctantly, to buy more American hardware, and the sophisticated AWACS planes will now be rushed to Saudi Arabia. The simultaneous downturns of both the stock and the bond markets may on the sur- face have been created by interest rates and similar economic worries. But deep down, the markets always have been more significantly influenced by "psychology" than by bare- bone economic facts. The deeper message seems to be: Mr. President, we are not sure you know what you are doing, and we are worried, given past experience in the early 1960s, that too many glowing promises can in the end only lead to growing catastrophies. Schurmgnn is a professor of history and sociology at. the University of California at Berkeley. 0 'T ..._ . ____ .._ ..7_ _ T_!L_. Ahi