RIP Mr. Heston

Investors Business Daily has an excellent editorial on the life of actor and former National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston, who died Saturday.

I have apparently now reached the age where most of what I see in the media prompts a story. My one encounter with Heston was at Austin Straubel International Airport in Green Bay, where Heston was flown in for a 1998 campaign appearance with Mark Green, a state representative who was running for Congress against Democratic incumbent Jay Johnson. Heston noted that his wife, Lydia, was a native of “Trivers,” and told the story of how Lydia had been asked if, in their then-54-year marriage, she had ever considered divorcing her husband? According to her husband, her answer was: “Divorce? Never. Murder? Often.”

(Later that night, Green and Johnson debated each other on the late Wisconsin Public Television “WeekEnd” show. I concluded that Johnson was in serious trouble not just because he was a Democrat in a very Republican-leaning district — are you paying attention, Rep. Kagen? — but because the two young campaign staffers sitting in the control room at WPT’s UW–Green Bay studios were very vocal in their inaccurate conclusion that Johnson had wiped the floor with Green in the debate.)

Heston is known more for his starring roles in “The Ten Commandments,” “Ben-Hur,” “Planet of the Apes,” and my favorite of his, "Touch of Evil.” But he was political at a time when his stands weren’t exactly popular in Hollywood — he marched with Martin Luther King, and then, more than 30 years later, served as the NRA’s most visible president in its history. Heston and actor Tom Selleck took on the American Federation of Radio and TV Artists when the two did a free commercial for National Review and AFTRA tried to force the magazine to pay Heston and Selleck union scale. Heston also committed a flagrant act of public notice when, at a Time Warner shareholder meeting in 1992, he read aloud the (highly profane) lyrics to Ice-T’s “Cop Killer.”

Heston was a throwback to the days when the public could see celebrities as role models, because the public image basically matched the real man. (He and Lydia were married for 64 years.)

“The egalitarian world view now considered politically correct makes us uneasy with the idea that one individual is better than the rest of us,” said Heston in a 1995 interview. ”But having played several great men, I can tell you that they are better than we are.”

The world is worse off without Heston in it.

Radio station contest of the day, or What’s the Buzz?

QUESTION: You are a rock radio station that has procured tickets to “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center April 18–20. How do you give those tickets away?

ANSWER: If you are Rick McNeal and Len Nelson* on WAPL (105.7 FM), you hold a contest you call “Name That Apostle.” This morning, they were seeking caller number ... 12.

* Two people who left their employer and then returned some years later, like a certain business magazine editor you may know.

Ab abusu ad usum non valet consequentia*

If your judgment is based on election results, you could say Gov. James Doyle was the April Fool after the April 1 election:

• The constitutional amendment prohibiting the “Frankenstein veto,” which allowed governors to create new words out of existing sentences in bills passed by the Legislature, passed with 71 percent of the vote.

• State Sen. Lena Taylor (D–Milwaukee), Doyle’s hand-picked candidate to run against Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, got just 41 percent of the vote in heavily Democratic Milwaukee County.

• And, in the most superficially surprising result of all, Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler, appointed by Doyle in 2004, lost to Burnett County Circuit Judge Mike Gableman. Butler is the first Supreme to lose an election in 41 years, and is now 0-for-2 in Supreme Court elections.

Perhaps the hangover of going 0-for-3 spurred Doyle’s overwrought reaction to Butler’s defeat: “It is a tragedy that such a fine judge and good human being was trashed during the campaign.” A tragedy is when people die in an unexpected manner, as Doyle, a former district attorney, should know. The only thing that died Tuesday was “Loophole Louie” Butler’s judicial career. (At least one assumes so, although Doyle still could appoint Butler to some other vacant judicial bench, I suppose.)

Liberals may not be able to grasp that voters prefer non-liberal judges. The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute blog points out the result of four Supreme Court elections this decade:

2000: Liberal Butler, a Milwaukee municipal judge at the time, loses to Justice Diane Sykes, who now is a federal judge.

2003: Conservative Justice Patience Roggensack defeats Barron County Circuit Judge Ed Brunner.

2007: Conservative Justice Annette Ziegler defeats liberal lawyer Linda Clifford.

2008: Gableman defeats Butler.

This was a hugely important election for business (and not just in Wisconsin; according to the University of California–Davis Law Review, Wisconsin’s is the eighth most cited state supreme court by other judicial bodies, higher than the supreme courts in New York, Texas or Florida). The court will now have a majority of at least 4–3 (with Justices David Prosser of Appleton, Roggensack and Ziegler joining Gableman) that actually follows the law and legal precedents.

Justices Patrick Crooks of Green Bay and Ann Walsh Bradley used to be considered moderate to conservative, but then they joined Butler and Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson in the reprehensible 4–3 decision that eliminated the individual causation requirement for liability in lawsuits against manufacturers of “fungible products.” In English, this means the court eliminated the requirement that, to quote the Wall Street Journal, “a particular manufacturer’s lead paint be linked to an injury before a consumer can sue,” allowing the plaintiff to sue paint manufacturers and lead pigment suppliers if he could merely prove the companies had sold products in Wisconsin. This version of the Supremes also eliminated caps on noneconomic damages (that is, “pain and suffering”) in medical malpractice cases, superseding the state law that set a $450,000 noneconomic-damages ceiling.

As one of the three justices who ruled correctly noted, “The end result of the majority opinion is that the defendants … can be held liable for a product they may or may not have produced, which may or may not have caused the plaintiff’s injuries, based on conduct that may have occurred over 100 years ago when some of the defendants were not even part of the relevant market.”

With four justices whom Sykes said in 2006 had abandoned “some familiar and long-accepted principles that normally operate as constraints on the court's use of its power,” no wonder business interests spent an estimated $1.86 million on the Butler–Gableman race. According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, contributions for Gableman, collected by the candidate and other groups, totaled $2.57 million, and contributions for Butler totaled $2.25 million. The difference can be argued as being necessary to overcome Butler’s incumbency advantage.

Judges are supposed to be referees, not legislators. If judges are going to let their God complexes get out of hand and anoint themselves as a super-legislature with more powers than the other two branches of government, then the campaigns for the bench will be exactly like races for the Legislature or governor. The real way to get “big money” (which means more money than your side spends) out of politics is to reduce the stakes in elections by reducing the size and scope of government, period.

This race also should be a reminder to candidates that any candidate who is perceived as being soft on crime, regardless of the race, will be subject to capital punishment of his or her political career when facing a competitive candidate who takes the opposite position. (Then again, there are always exceptions.) To voters, there is no such thing as being too tough on crime, particularly after 40 years of holding anyone and anything except criminals responsible for crime.

Proof of this comes from the debate over the “truth in sentencing” debate in the late 1990s. Previously, if a criminal was sentenced to 10 years in prison, that person would be first eligible for parole after 2½ years, one-fourth of the convict’s sentence, and the convict was required (absent “extenuating circumstances”) to be released after six years and eight months, two-thirds of the sentence. The plan hatched in Madison was to (1) eliminate traditional parole and (2) reduce sentences so that our hypothetical convict would be sentenced to six years and eight months.

The old system was replaced with “determinate sentencing,” where all convicts whom the judge wanted to send to prison were given two sentences, a prison term of at least one year, followed by a term of extended supervision of at least one-fourth the length of the prison sentence. Determinate sentencing eliminated parole, but sentences weren’t reduced.

I appeared on Wisconsin Public Television’s old WeekEnd show around the time of this debate, with two other people who were horrified that the Legislature might not go through with part two of this proposal and make criminals actually serve their entire sentences. I said then that it was obvious that people wanted criminals in prison, not out committing more crimes, and I predicted then that no elected official would pay any political price for not reducing sentences. I believe that prediction has been proven repeatedly. Voters don’t care if, as one report estimated, the price of more criminals in prison for longer sentences balloons; every criminal in prison is one less person who will commit a crime outside prison. By extension, the voting public also clearly lacks faith in rehabilitation of criminals. And, as Butler’s two Supreme Court race losses may demonstrate, voters also have little patience for those who work to free criminals from legitimate convictions and sentences, even if that’s how the system is supposed to work.

And speaking of the system, those who didn’t like the results of the April 1 election are now calling for the system by which justices are elected to be changed to require only public financing or even replace elections with appointments, as if the system by which U.S. Supreme Court justices are selected is superior. (Just ask Justice Robert Bork about that.) How is giving governors the authority to appoint Supreme Court justices substantially different from giving governors the authority to appoint Supreme Court justices to fill unexpired terms, as Wisconsin’s governors have now? Proposals for “merit selection” are antidemocratic and elitist and inevitably give lawyers (specifically, according to criticism in Missouri, liberal lawyers) more say in the process than those paying for the court system, the taxpayer. As Marquette University Law Prof. Richard Esenberg puts it, “We are now going to see cures that are worse than the disease.”

Esenberg also gets the last word here: “Across the blogosphere, folks on the left are what doing what they have done for my entire adult life when they lose. They convince themselves that they — and the public — got hosed. Perhaps that is why they continue to lose.”

* “The consequences of abuse do not apply to general use.”

Letter to the Editor of the Day

From the April 2008 Motor Trend, a reference only people of a certain age would get:

Are you serious? Whatever it is you guys are smoking, please pass the dutchie on the left hand side.

Celebrate however you deem appropriate

From a Supple Group news release:

On April 7, brewers, beer importers, distributors and beer lovers across America will celebrate 75 years of beer that has been flowing legally since the drought of Prohibition. The date will be marked with specially brewed commemorative beers, brewery tours and events at many of America’s 1,400-plus breweries including one in our own backyard, Fox River Brewing Co. of Oshkosh and Appleton, Wis. ...

Historians note that Prohibition officially ended on December 5, 1933, with the ratification of the 21st Amendment. But earlier that year, newly-elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt took steps to fulfill his campaign promise to end the national ban on alcohol. He spurred Congress to modify the Volstead Act to allow the sale of 3.2 percent beer in advance of Prohibition’s ratification. Thus on April 7, 1933, Roosevelt himself received newly legalized beer at the White House to toast what was the beginning of the end for Prohibition. In the 24-hours that followed, more than 1.5 million gallons of beer flowed as Americans celebrated.

“April 7th is a day to recognize the past 75 years of beer and the beer community’s contribution to American's quality of life. The explosion of creativity and innovation by those who make beer is an American success story,” said Charlie Papazian, President of the Brewers Association.

“As we celebrate this significant day in the history of beer, we also recognize the incredible contributions beer has made to our nation and the economy over the last 75 years,” added Jeff Becker, President of the Beer Institute. “Today, our industry contributes nearly $190 billion annually to the U.S. economy and provides more than 1.7 million jobs to our nation’s workforce.”

“April 7th is the perfect time to highlight the entrepreneurial spirit and economic contributions America’s beer industry brings to our country. Americans now have access to nearly 13,000 labels of beer — within the safest alcohol distribution system in the world — because of the state-based regulatory system that was established 75 years ago,” added Craig Purser, president of the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA).

For more information and a list of brewery celebrations by state please visit: www.75YearsofBeer.org.

To quote Ben Franklin, "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Enjoy your personal observance of the undoing of one of the dumbest things politicians and voters worked together to do in our history.

Who are you?

Hey there everybody

Please don’t romp or roam

We’re a little nervous

’Cause we’re so far from home

So this is what we do

Sit back and let us groove

And let us work on you

— Chicago, “Introduction” from Chicago Transit Authority

It occurred to me after writing Marketplace of Ideas e-column numbers one and two that many readers may have no idea who I am, since I left Marketplace in 2001, two children, one presidential election and numerous other events (including 9/11) ago. (Then again, I have been amazed at the emails and phone calls I’ve gotten from people who did in fact remember me and welcomed me back to Marketplace. Thanks to all of you.)

(Warning for future reference: Reading this column may make you dizzy, since, as you may have already noticed, I often add enough parenthetical phrases to make reading me look like an electrocardiogram reading, augmented by hotlinks. Read on for examples.)

“Prestegard” is a Norwegian word meaning either “priest’s farm” or “animal farm,” the latter of which strikes me as an unkind statement on the usual state of my work space. (My retort to such comments usually is that people with neat desks obviously don’t have enough work to do.) The most famous Prestegard is probably James H. Prestegard, Ph.D., “a noted researcher in biological structures” at the University of Georgia. (In contrast, my worst subject in school was science.)

My father, also named Steve (his middle name; you can imagine the confusion during phone calls at home when I started sounding like him), is not a “noted researcher” (although he was part of southern Wisconsin’s first rock and roll band), but he worked in banking for 40½ years for one employer (with four different names) and, more importantly, was an excellent dad. My mother was a finalist in the 1960 Miss Wisconsin USA pageant, and my parents were pictured on the 1961 official Wisconsin road map, getting directions from a state trooper (a highly unlikely scene, believe me). I will never reach the level of coolness of any of the three famous Steves of the movie “The Tao of Steve” — Steve Austin (this one, although there is also Stone Cold Steve Austin, whose name is not actually Steve Austin), Steve McGarrett or Steve McQueen — or, for that matter, the “Cult of Steve,” but then again, life is too short to worry about being cool.

I’m a native of (the People’s Republic of) Madison and a Journalism and Political Science graduate of the University of Wisconsin, where I probably spent more time playing in the world famous University of Wisconsin Band than on, say, studying. (Then again, the UW Band was much more fun, and that was before the Badgers started making regular appearances at football bowl games like three Rose Bowls and NCAA basketball and hockey tournaments.) I was a reporter for weekly and daily newspapers and owned a weekly newspaper for 1½ years before coming to Marketplace in January 1994. My side interest, other than eating, is sports announcing, currently on Ripon’s Channel 19, including the twice-state-champion Ripon Tigers football team.

For those who care about personality, according to the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator I’m an ESTJ, as were or are, according to these sites, Simon Peter, George W. Bush and eight other presidents, Jack Webb, Eliot Ness, John D. Rockefeller, Sam Walton, Rev. Billy Graham, Mike Wallace and Vince Lombardi. According to various online sites, I’m a “capitalist,” “libertarian,” more libertarian than conservative, and very right-wing economically and somewhat socially libertarian, as Milton Friedman was. (And according to this site, there is only one other Stephen Prestegard in the U.S.)

More Steve trivia: I was the first person to win the Madison City Spelling Bee more than once, in 1977 and 1979 (possibly a harbinger to my future career as an editor). I earned the Eagle Scout Award in 1981. Between stints here at Marketplace, I have had two political experiences — member (or, if you will, commissioner) of the City of Ripon Plan Commission and candidate for school board, where I said I wanted to finish first or last, and I got my wish. (This company prohibits its employees from serving in political offices the grounds that those who report the news should not be involved in being in the news, so thus ends my political “career.”)

I’m a big fan of the rock group Chicago (this Chicago, not this Chicago). The lyrics that begin this column come from the first song of Chicago’s first album. My uncle (owner of an Appleton machine shop, incidentally; his wife, my aunt, found the ad for the Marketplace editor position back in 1994, so blame her if you don’t like what you read) once played the entire 16-minute-long “Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon” (including “Make Me Smile” and “Colour My World”) at ear-splitting levels in his house for me, and I was hooked from then on. I’m also a big fan of America’s sports car, the Chevrolet Corvette (any manual-transmission model from 1965 to 1981 or from 1997 onward), even though I sadly lack money or garage space for one. (Corvettes are also somewhat incompatible with tall people and families of five.)

My most visible personal eccentricity, if you must know, has to do with my facial hair, which has already made my photo on this site obsolete, at least until next winter. In eighth grade, I had a science teacher who grew a beard during the fall (my first exposure to a deer hunting beard), then shaved it off after spring break. In my case, I have a beard during the winter, shave down to a goatee during the equinox seasons, and then usually shave down to a mustache during the summer. Why do I do this? Because I can.

Other Steve trivia: I was the first person to win the Madison City Spelling Bee twice, in 1977 and 1979 (thus perhaps cementing my future career as an editor). I earned the Eagle Scout Award in 1981. Between stints here at Marketplace, I served on the City of Ripon Plan Commission and ran for school board; I said I wanted to finish first or last, and I got my wish. (Journal Communications policy prohibits employees’ serving in political office on the grounds that those who report the news should not be part of making the news.)

Journalism is a profession of, for most, long hours, low pay and little recognition outside of when a journalist screws up. (That may explain why so many journalists are liberals and tend to dislike business — perhaps they assume that all work environments are like theirs.) Yet, as I wrote here before, there is something bracing about having your name on your work for everyone to like, hate or otherwise critique. However, journalism is not nearly as tough as being a parent — my most important job, and yet the job I often feel least able to do.

For those who wonder about how I got my particular political bent, it probably is at least in part the result of growing up in Madison and attending UW. It wasn’t just the daily display of some sort of left-wing idiocy; it was the fact that so many people took the left-wing idiots seriously and gave respect to views that no one with a brain should consider for more than 0.02 seconds.

Personal example: Madison once had an “anti-nuclear dance group” called Nu Parable, which performed what they called “die-ins” (think Marcel Marceau performing the last scene in “Dr. Strangelove”) in public places, such as Madison’s East Towne Mall, to demonstrate their conviction that the large worldwide supply of nuclear weapons of the time was going to leave the Earth either a flaming and radioactive, or frozen and radioactive, hunk of rock orbiting the Sun. Nu Parable was particularly convinced that Ronald Reagan, having inexplicably failed to immolate the Earth during his first term in office, would certainly succeed if he was re-elected in 1984.

Where would be an ideal place for Nu Parable to express this belief? During the National Anthem before the nationally televised Wisconsin–Ohio State football game that fall, of course. When you are standing on Camp Randall Stadium’s artificial turf in uniform playing the Star Spangled Banner, you do not expect, once you get to “And the rocket’s red glare,” people you don’t recognize to run past you on the way to the U.S. flag to perform their “die-in.” (Then again, Nu Parable probably didn’t expect the entire student section to start a “Nuke ‘em! Nuke ‘em!” chant as they were arrested by UW police.)

Individuals or groups like Nu Parable have the right, under the First Amendment, to express whatever views they like. (The fact I was in uniform probably deterred me from finding one of the Nu Parables and expressing my constitutional rights upon that person, something the legal system probably would have called “felony battery.”) What seems unique to the left is that much of the left seems to believe that everyone should live like the lefties believe people should live, and they enforce their beliefs through, say, burning down under-construction million-dollar-houses because such houses are inconsistent with their environmental views.

I have become more libertarian as I’ve gotten older. We have certainly seen that Republican presidents or governors (or, more accurately, those they appoint or those elected with them) can screw things up or waste our tax dollars left and right almost as well as Democratic presidents or governors can. I do not want to be told how to live my life by a conservative-leaning government (consider that the Federal Communications Commission is fining ABC-TV over the appearance of bare actress skin in an episode of “NYPD Blue,” a series that has been off the air for three years) any more than I want to be told how to live my life by a liberal-leaning government (read the stickers warning about the air bags that are federally mandated to be in your car). At the risk of igniting an argument I won’t explore in detail here, one advantage of the free market is that if you don’t like a particular company, you don’t have to use that company’s products or services. Such, unfortunately, is not the case with government. (As to whether we really have a free market in the U.S., that argument is likely to be picked up later.)

As I wrote before, I do not believe markets are perfect, because humans are imperfect. (This probably separates me from the followers of Ayn Rand — for one thing, Rand was an atheist, and I am not — although I’m a big fan of Atlas Shrugged, which is one of the great philosophical works of the 20th century.) To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it may well be that capitalism is the second worst economic system on the planet, with all other economic systems tied for worst. But if God indeed gave us all reason and free will, then no other economic system other than the free market is compatible with that reality — people making their life decisions themselves. As Churchill put it, “The common denominator in the history of the English-speaking peoples is individual freedom. We are its creator, its protector and its guarantor.”

It’s baaaaaaack

You didn’t seriously believe I was going to return as editor of Marketplace and Marketplace of Ideas wasn’t going to return, did you?

In fact, Marketplace of Ideas can now be found both online at http://mpmmarketplaceofideas.blogspot.com/ (its temporary home) and in the printed version. (“Online” and “On Dead Tree,” as National Review terms their delivery vehicles.) This will help me with one of the challenges of writing the original Marketplace of Ideas, which was the four-week wait between issues. That was one reason many of the columns ran, shall we say, a bit long. (Insert your own snide comment here.)

Before we proceed further, I should give credit to Paul Gigot, Allouez native and editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal. He doesn’t know this, but Gigot, his predecessor Robert L. Bartley (who, like me, got a University of Wisconsin degree without becoming a raging leftist), and their colleagues were mentors to me in how to approach Marketplace of Ideas specifically, and opinion-mongering in general. Back in the 1990s, Gigot pointed out that the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion page was intended to reflect manifestations of a consistent philosophy — “free markets and free men,” or “people” in more politically correct language — instead of the “all opinions are valid” school of opinion page management found in most newspapers.

The result of the latter can be found, for instance, in the pages of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, owned by Journal Communications, whose Journal Community Publishing Group also publishes Marketplace. Back in the 1990s, the Journal Sentinel editorially opposed the Milwaukee school choice program, in which state funds are used to pay for Milwaukee children to attend private schools instead of Milwaukee Public Schools, the worst school system in Wisconsin and perhaps beyond. The constitutionality of sending private money indirectly to public schools was challenged, and the state Supreme Court decided that the Milwaukee choice program was indeed constitutional, since the money went to parents to be used on the private school of their choice instead of being sent directly to private schools.

The Journal Sentinel blasted this Supreme Court decision in their editorial’s headline: “An appalling decision on school choice.” They were wrong, of course (in fact, I’ll argue at some point that private school choice should be available to all children in Wisconsin). Perhaps they realized they were wrong, because less than a year later, the Journal Sentinel’s opinion page began extolling the virtues of the school choice program, without once admitting the error of their previous point of view or why it had changed, even to make the utilitarian argument that, well, now that the Supreme Court said it’s OK, we think so too. (Two words come to mind why that’s a lousy argument: “Dred Scott.”)

In fairness to the Journal Sentinel, the Opinion mongers claim to have a mission and guiding principles on which their opinions should be based. You can decide for yourself whether they actually follow those guiding principles.

Most newspapers with opinion sections (and those that do deserve credit for at least having them) take this kind of ad hoc philosophy; they’re for A, against B, counsel caution about C, and wax philosophical about D, perhaps reflecting the old Oakland Raiders’ philosophy that being right at any particular time is better than being consistent. (Which hasn’t worked too well for the Raiders in recent seasons, come to think of it.) Another group of opinion sections hits the grooved pitch, so to speak — they take such daring positions as favoring downtown revitalization and opposing drunk driving. Both approaches lack a consistent (or as consistent as humans can get) set of principles, or core values, on which opinions can be based.

Philosophies and core values are important, because they serve as a judge of your actions. For this space, the core value is freedom, in its economic, political and even personal dimensions. (Writing that may force me to take a position on drug legalization, which I will write about as soon as I figure out what my position on drug legalization is.) Markets are not perfect, because human beings aren’t perfect. But free enterprise is the best way mankind has devised, and will ever devise, for humans to realize and maximize our universal, “inalienable” human rights “endowed by our Creator” and identified in the Declaration of Independence — life, liberty, and the pursuit (not necessarily realization) of happiness. Economic freedom and political freedom are inseparable — one can exist without the other, but one cannot be maximized without the other.

Even though we are one of the freest countries on the planet, we suffer from a lack of freedom today. Government takes too much in taxes from us so that government can pass laws and regulations that limit our freedoms merely to limit our freedoms. (Yes, that applies to Republican-led government as well as Democrat-led government.) It is a problem for our democracy when a decreasing number of people are paying for government services through their taxes. (That’s one reason why, back in (what I thought was) my last Marketplace of Ideas, I made a modest proposal that only taxpayers should be allowed to vote.)

This column will also strive to point out the difference between government and society, and specifically the things for which government should and either cannot or should not be responsible. For instance, the trillions of dollars the federal government has spent on poverty and on education since the 1960s have produced nearly the same results as zero federal government spending on either would have achieved. Government’s performance improves markedly when it has a few responsibilities (for instance, national defense, road-building and enforcing the law) instead of trying to tell people how to live their own lives, whether those Nanny State efforts come from liberal or conservative impulses.

Let’s get this out of the way right now: To repeat what I wrote about a decade ago, even though I live in the birthplace of the Republican Party, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a card-carrying, dues-paying member of the Republican Party. (To foreshadow a future column, for instance, I believe the mainstream of the GOP is wrong about illegal immigration. The first presidential candidate I ever voted for was a Democratic candidate, clearly the most qualified in the Democratic field in 1984 … None of the Above.) I would argue the Republican Party represents the ideals that maximize freedom and benefit free enterprise better and more often than the Democratic Party, but certainly not all the time. The fact that the GOP supports some of what I support doesn’t mean I support all that the GOP supports.

One more thing to point out: This space reflects the opinions of the editor of Marketplace, and not necessarily the magazine itself, Journal Community Publishing Group, Journal Communications, or any of its other subsidiaries such as the Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin’s largest newspaper, or WGBA-TV (channel 26) in Green Bay. Agree or disagree, Marketplace of Ideas comes from the space between my ears.

You may note that this page is not merely Marketplace of Ideas, but the Marketplace of Ideas Blog, which will give visitors an opportunity to post comments on what they read here. The ground rules for blog responses can be summed up in the words of sports radio talk show host Jim Rome: “Have a take, and don’t suck.” In other words, agree, disagree or suggest alternatives to what you read, either from me or from the posters, but make an argument; don’t engage in name-calling or puerile insults. Those will be deleted by the blogmaster, who doubles as the editor of Marketplace.