Hitting the Phantam Curve; D. G. Smith

As I said, my son was a competitor, and he was determined to hit the unhittable pitch, but of course he never did. When he hit the ball, he would look hopefully at me and ask if that was the phan tom curve. The answer was always negative, but when he swung and missed, we had a different sto ry. That was the phantom curve. He was about eight when he finally saw through the whole charade, realizing that he couldn't win because I was calling the shots. I alone decided what was, and what was not, this remarkable pitch. Mr. Smith is a writer living in Santa Maria, California. He has been a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal The whole thing was rigged, and he was the victim of a bit of deceit from a man with questionable pitching skills and an active imagination. I recalled the phantom curve recently when I heard yet another speaker castigating the federal government for its "inadequate efforts" in dealing with AIDS and the homeless problem. The simple truth is that efforts to date have been far too ambi tious because neither matter is the government's business, but that is another issue. The point to be addressed here is in the area of problem solving.

The speaker, and all people of like mind, see the federal government as a problem-solving institu tion, a place in which bureaus and departments are established to deal with social problems. Then, presumably, the problems go away and humanity takes a giant step forward. It is another case of the phantom-curve decep tion because the whole thing is rigged from the outset and no batter will ever make contact. Peo ple who are awarded desirable government jobs, with all attendant perks, don't work their jobs out of existence. This is a universal law of human nature and shouldn't be all that difficult to compre hend. These people don't solve; they regulate. Solution is terminal, and regulation is forever. This is not intended as a put-down of govern ment workers, because they are human and they react as humans react. Not being entirely pure of heart, I would do the same thing if given a plush office with commensurate salary, medical cover age, a fat pension plan, a government car, and all kinds of business to conduct in Paris and the 267 Bahamas. The problem is not the people, but the systema system that makes problem-solving the kissof death and problem-perpetuation a one-way ticket to the good life.

This is something that our selfappointed humanitarians don't understand. Government doesn't cure diseases, and it doesn't make the indi gent disappear. It doesn't make the deserts bloom, the blind see, nor the lame walk. This is not whywe have government. It is interesting to note that since Lyndon John son offered to cure all our social illswith the Great Society,we have spent more than a trillion dollars trying to turn the federal government into the Magic Kingdom, and it hasn't even come close to working. We have added five cabinet-level departments, all devoted to some kind of social better ment, and this has resulted in nothing more than jobs for people who regulate this massive wheel spinning operation. All of this leads us back to the phantom curve, the unhittable pitch. Whenever I hear of a new Federal agency created to solve a social problem, I think of a sevenyear-old boy, digging in at the plate and mustering all his skills and deter mination to do something that couldn't be done, simply because the man who controlled the game wouldn't let it be done. There is, however, one major difference. The little boy figured it out and went on to more constructive things. People who should know better are still up there swinging a bat. D 268 Biblical Roots of American Liberty by Edmund A. Opitz T he First Amendment to the Constitution forbids Congress to set up an official church; there was to be no "Church of the United States" as a branch of this country's gov ernment. Such an alliance between Church and State is what "establishment" means. An estab- .