European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - February 10, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes monday february 10,1986 Flora Lewis Call for return to Gold Standard still just a gimmick str ii Jfhn in Tow of 1 i"t53 the old idea of to Fig the Dollar Loa fixed Price of Gold is being pushed again by the hard right. The arguments arc More sophisticated than during pre Vious apparitions. Lewis Luhrman the new York Busi Nessman who used his Fortune to run against Mario Cuomo in the race for new York governor has made a Long intricate analysts that was distributed by Morgan Stanley the investment Bank. Luhrman Points to the need for monetary Reform to fight protectionism and to re Lieve the Dollar of the Burden of being the prime International Reserve currency and he concludes that the answer is to return to Gold based Money at the fixed Price of $500 an ounce. But for All the reasoning and appeals to history this is still a gimmick and a dangerous one. Like he Cromm Rudona deficit reduction Law it s an attempt to create an automatic mechanism that will do things governments need to do and for which they Don t have the courage or the will to take responsibility. It is Tike put Ting a sword of Damocles Over your own head so you will no longer be in a position to decide your own Fate. Some ultraconservative who Are backing Gold Are also turning against president Reagan considering him. Too moderate because they Are losing Hope thai he will Complete during his Sec Ond term the toughest parts of the Agenda with which he started is first term. These Are people who want to dismantle what has been achieved Over several generations of social and economic Reform to domesticate the beast that lurks in unrestrained capitalism. They want America to revert to country of Puritan morals and Jungle economics restoring the Fang and the claw of social darwinism. The attraction of Agold based currency for them is exactly that it removes from government both the obligation and the tools for keeping stability in the Economy without cataclysmic booms and bursts. There arc sound Points in the argument that floating currency Exchange rates pro Voke instability promote speculation and James j. Kilpatrick Are bad for Trade and investment in the Long term. The world s Money system does need discipline just As it needs care Ful handling to ease Down the crushing mountains of International debt. It is Welcome to see that Lehrman sup ports Treasury Secretary James. Baker in his turn around from the View of his predecessor Donald Regan who advocated that the United states need not cooperate with other countries to keep currency Exchange rates reasonable. The size and complexity of modern Trade sad the Al most instantaneous Speed of modern financial transfers make it impossible for any country to manage its economic relations by itself. But the key to needed changes is government management not abdication which would result from an arbitrary an obligatory link to Gold. For one thing. Gold has no particular intrinsic value. Fix ing it at $500 because Luhrman calculates that is a fair Price for the Cost of production and incentive to mining in North America would be no More a free Market operation than directly pegging currencies to one another. For another it would be a Windfall for the soviet Union and South Africa the world s two largest Gold producers. Management Means agreements and rules,.baker s proposal to have the group of Rve countries pledge intervention Incurrence markets Ana the attempt to tackle the debt Issue Are a Good Start but they Don t go far enough. There is an element of nostalgia for the simple and bad remember the great de pression old Days in the Call for a return to the Gold Standard and there is an element of rejection of the duties of government no automatic device exists to sustain growth keep inflation Down reduce debt and assure the provision of human needs that Are essential to social and political ,4 stability. The idea of a minimum of Tocito v3 Justice which has permitted Western so 1,-1 cities to weather the High unemployment rates of recent years was hard won and it j has been rewarding to the preservation of democracy. Gold contains no notion of jus Tice it is dead Metal. But it is a Symbol not Only of wealth but of the other old ideas that rights Are based on wealth and that Bayern ment based on democracy has no Busi Ness interfering in the ways that wealth is distributed. There is great fragility in the current world Economy. The Gold Sun Dard would be a Way to make govern ments impotent to Deal with la no York Tymn textbook writers View events through tinted glasses Gary Bauer undersecretary of education recently took some Lime off. He spent the better part of a week Reading tin textbooks in 20th-Century world history. All of the books intended for High school seniors were newly written or revised since 1983. He found it a. Depressing experience in a speech to the association of american publish ers Bauer reviewed his findings. His principal impression though he did not define it in these words was of a kind of intellectual anaemia. Certain chapters of recent and contemporary history seemed to be protected by a thin Gray film. It was As if the authors looked at events through smoke tinted glasses obscuring the Glare of fact. Bauer quoted a passage from one widely used text. Equality for women in the . Is a Rcv Lily. They May marry or vote when they Are 18." Bauer read on looking for some explication of what i meant by a right to vote in the soviet Union. He looked in vain. Soviet women have the right to vote in the same context As soviet men in the context of a society that gives them Only hand picked candidates of the communist party and no one else. This should t be a hard concept Tor a textbook writer to understand or to explain. To fall to Tell our children these facts is a seriously mislead them about the nature of the soviet Bauer compared the six textbooks on the War in Afghanistan. One volume he said got the Story right it said the soviets invaded Afghanistan to bring that country under their Complete control. In the other books however the soviet goal was simply to Shore up the government in Kabul to sendoff guerrilla attacks or remarkably because the soviets feared that an uprising among the mus lims of Afghanistan might spread to. The soviet Union in Short five oui of in gave the impression that Moscow s move a essentially defensive or vaguely compassionate. None it must be noted had a Dren abut exploding Wys Hal maim Afghani Chil one of the textbook authors said Bauer seemed to have suffered from amnesia in his recollection of events that most of us Well remember. To a he a forgot Abul the ukrainian famine of1923-33. Forgot about the millions who died in the communist takeover of China forgot about the genocide in Cambodia in i97s. Another textbook re called that . Troops invaded Grenada but the authors forgot to Tell students that our forces were Bauer mined not Only the six textbooks but also a Boquet published by the National Council for Lodal studies. In comparing freedoms in the United state to freedoms in Eastern Europe the Booklet says that free Dom of speech voting and due process Are of print concern Here. In Eastern european countries econom pc right such the right to worm Forny Deans � stake and to Lake vacations Are considered essential Walesa Tell us about the right to pc inf on and to strike in Poland the disturbing problem in Bauer s View is the air of Bland neutrality. Many textbook reflect the views of prominent historians and social scientists who refuse to see a difference Between the United. States and the soviet Union who refer to both nations commonly with 1 the Neutral term superpower but Are unable or Unitt Ling to make crucial distinctions about both systems of government. Bauer emphasized that he was not asking the pub Lishers to produce textbooks of Patent indoctrination not at textbooks also should read As if they were written by neutrals in the struggle Between Freedom and a slavery. We need to nothing More than Tell the truth j the truth about our atari bulbs and our shortcoming about our triumphs and about our defeats about our heroes and about our fools. And we should Tell the truth about those who believe and act upon different principles about those who see Man As a creature of the Rutti a m Chiw fat d endowed Ilbna Ien Bhoj. Let me say amen to All that. A textbook in Amer can history that sugarcoated the evils of 19th-Century slavery would be a poor textbook but a text that us arc Oats the evils of contemporary communism is worse., Ini ii Weir of old so m he ugh Tepool we intellectual neutrality is the unforgivable sin ii May be explained but it cannot be condoned. To Una Wal Gnu syium i
