The American Spectator

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Unshared Sacrifice

By Ben Stein on 11.18.05 @ 12:05AM

This installment of Ben Stein's Diary appeared in The American Spectator's October issue. To subscribe, please click here.

WEDNESDAY
IT'S EARLY AUGUST. Here I am in hot, humid, miserably oppressive Washington, D.C. It is a steam bath. I am on a good mission, though. Thanks to a woman named Ms. Brody at the USO, I am visiting Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland to see and talk to wounded Marines from Iraq and Afghanistan. I have a driver and he's doing all of the hard part, so I can concentrate on the scenery. I passed the intersection of Connecticut and Kanawha Streets, NW. Years ago, some pals from Columbia and I rented a house there. I had a bedroom with purple walls and used to get very, very high there with the woman who is now my wife. Alas, the house has been torn down, replaced with icky townhouses. Well, ou sont les neiges d'antan? What times we had there. Now I am still in touch with two of my roommates from those days, both doing well. But one of them borrowed my eyeglasses a month or so ago and has not returned them. I wonder why.

Then we drove farther on past the District Line to the gates of the Chevy Chase Club. Immediately, my stomach started to hurt and my head spun. I really had a major resentment towards that club when I was a kid. In those days, in the 1950s and 1960s, it was strictly restricted against Jews. No Jews would even be considered at all under any circumstances for membership. When I drove by it in those days I would feel a surging, crazed fury.

It hurts like mad insanity to be excluded on the basis of a condition of birth. Here the little Stein family was. My father was a successful man with impeccable manners. Both of my parents had gone to major schools. My father had served in the Navy during World War II. But we were too dirty and low to be considered for membership. We might start bringing in our shmatas and trying to go from member to member selling them wholesale. Or we might talk too loud or play pinochle or some damned thing.

Anyway, time has passed. I now think clubs should be free to exclude anyone they want under law. That's because I think an intrusive government is a lot more dangerous than a racist club. But it still is personally insulting that (as I have been told and maybe I am misinformed) the Chevy Chase Club is still restricted against Jews. It makes me even more furious that the Los Angeles Country Club, less than a mile from my house, is also, de facto, restricted against Jews. They have a silly charade that they don't discriminate against Jews. They just don't take anyone in the entertainment business. Gee, I wonder if they would have turned down Ronald Reagan.

Well, enough of that. My life is great and I have very little indeed to complain about.

WE ARRIVED AT THE Bethesda Naval Medical Center, passed the old FDR-designed main tower where my very own father was treated during World War II, and then went to a new building. Three crisply dressed, very fit-looking Marines and a pleasant-looking Ms. Brody greeted me. They immediately introduced me to a young Marine missing both legs below the knee but walking around perfectly well and visiting with his lovely young wife.

He could not have been cheerier or more self-effacing. What a hero.

Then to several wards to see men missing limbs, missing eyes, often with severe, scary-looking machines implanted in them to make their bones grow again. To a man, they were cheerful, optimistic, eager to stay in The Corps. How unbelievably lucky we are to have them on our side, defending us. One star with a prosthetic limb said his only goal was to return to Iraq and help out his buddies. His wife, sitting nearby, looked sad.

There were actually a lot fewer men there than I thought I would find. Is the media making the war seem worse than it is? Hmm, 1,850 killed so far, many in accidents. That's fewer than in Civil War battles we have never heard of. Each death is a tragedy and a curse. And I wish there were none. But is 1,850 deaths in a war a lot or a little? By historical standards, it's not a huge number. In the Civil War, over 600,000 died out of a population very roughly one-eighth what ours is now. That would be equal to almost 5 million killed today. A whole Southern generation was essentially halved.

If this is an important war, we had better grit our teeth and accept that great men and women will die. It's horrible, but there it is. If we really mean to win it, though, let's get serious and have a much, much bigger Army and tax ourselves enough to pay for it. Wars are not won by tax cuts.

Anyway, I spent about two hours there and then went back to my apartment at the Watergate. I really do not deserve to be on the same planet as those men and their families and their doctors and nurses in Bethesda, but here I am, so I'll just try to get out a message of gratitude to the real sunshine of our lives: our brave, glorious military men. Let's not sell them out, again, please.

Off to dinner at the marvelous Watergate Hotel restaurant. I took my sister and Marina Malenic, also a contributor to this mag. We had a lovely meal looking out at the Potomac drifting by. We made small talk about the horrible East Coast climate, and then in strolled our Secretary of State, the redoubtable Ms. Rice. She was with two distinguished-looking men. I greeted her and she greeted me affectionately. I introduced my sister and Marina, and she introduced us. This is typical of Dr. Rice. She has the world's most deferential manners. She is almost on a par with my pal, Phil DeMuth, in the manners department.

Then, off for a solitary walk through Georgetown. It was fantastically hot and humid. They were filming a movie on 31st Street south of M Street and the sidewalk was blocked. I went over to M Street, but it was so deserted that I might as well have been in a cemetery. The climate is getting unbearable, that's the long and short of it. Is it global warming? Who knows?

Back to my little apartment to soak up the vibes of my deceased parents. I keep wondering how my father would react to the war in Iraq. I think he would say we would all be behind it a lot more if we had some shared sacrifice. It's just not pretty that we civilians should be getting our taxes cut, get rich (on paper) from real estate, watch the stock market zoom, while those who signed up to defend us get killed and maimed for us. Can't we at least have a small tax increase for the very rich? There are so many very rich and they have money to burn. (I know. I live among them.) They can spare a few thousand more each month.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Business, Global Warming, Law, Military, Iraq, NATO