The Kennedy-Schumer bin was a victory for “law and order,” proclaimed Senator Edward Kennedy after the Senate vote to crack down on protesters at abortion clinics. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Bill authorizes lengthy jail time and fines for entirely nonviolent conduct that “intentionally and physically obstructs the ingress or egress of another to a medical facility” with the “intent to prevent or discourage any person from obtaining reproductive health services.”

The threat of prison, however, applies only to those who protest for moral reasons, and not to striking clinic workers. The interesting thing about the Kennedy-Schumer bill is that it specifically exempts labor pickets. No paddy wagons will be dispatched by Senator Kennedy to pick up the clinic receptionists who are striking for flex time or better dental benefits, even if their sidewalk actions “discourage” patients from entering. It’s those who might have some ethical questions about the widespread use of abortion as a method of birth control who need to watch their step.

In a recent speech in Texas, Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “The market knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing.” This “sleeping sickness of the soul” is one of Hillary Clinton’s long-running concerns. She rejected the “acquisitive” life in her 1969 commencement speech at Wellesley College, and she continues to wonder “Who will lead us out of the spiritual vacuum?” in her recent New York Times Magazine cover interview. She’s probably right. There must be more to life than writing laws that protect striking abortion workers against liability for ingress and egress blockages.

If she was off the record and away from the ideologues at NOW and the AFL-CIO, one wonders if Hillary Clinton would acknowledge the underlying materialism in allowing picketing for pay raises but not for the expression of moral disagreement. Isn’t that putting “the market” before values? Doesn’t that put the “acquisitive” on a pedestal?

There is, too, the question of a double standard, with the Kennedy-Schumer bill criminalizing acts and speech that are intended to “discourage abortion,” while the same type of activities outside the Embassy of South Africa, which are intended to discourage trade, aren’t penalized with the same jail time. This differential treatment for the same conduct flows from the assumption that those protesting outside the embassy are good pro-democracy activists, while those outside the abortion clinics are antiwoman bigots. Any discussion about the potential for totalitarianism in South African Marxism is considered reactionary, and to say that half of all fetuses are potential women is completely off limits.

A big mystery in all of this is how Senator Kennedy moved like lightning to propose federal protection for abortion clinics after the senseless murder of Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola and yet was fully unmoved when Won Tae Lee was murdered in his store not too far from the senator’s office in Washington. Lee’s killing was part of something worse, a widening pattern of murdered Korean storekeepers from coast to coast, while Dr. Gunn was the only abortion doctor killed in America during two decades of anti-abortion demonstrations. What law would Senator Kennedy propose if four abortion doctors were killed in Manhattan? That’s the number of Korean grocers killed in New York City last year—just Korean grocers, not Korean florists or landlords, in just one city in one year.

In South Central L.A., Korean entrepreneurs now run a 1-in-250 chance of being killed each year, about the same fatality rate our troops faced in Vietnam. Hyung Soo Kim, 65, was recently beaten to death outside his grocery store in Los Angeles. He had survived the riot of 1992 and rebuilt his looted market. This time, he was lured outside his store by two young punks who were spray-painting graffiti on his wall. Four other Korean storekeepers were killed within two months in the same area this year.

Ice Cube makes a good living rapping about the slaughter in his song “Black Korea”: “So don’t follow me up and down your market, or your little chop suey ass will be a target.” If hit songs glorified the killing of abortionists, wouldn’t Senator Kennedy be calling the music a hate crime?

None of these murders of Korean businessmen stirred the liberals in Washington as much as the one politically incorrect murder of Dr. Gunn. It was front-page news when the Senate passed the Clinic Entrances Bill. The headline in the Washington Post was “Abortion Clinics Given Protection,” while back inside the newspaper on page D-3 on the same day was a small story about the murder of Uwoma Afamefuna Elue, 39, at the Metro Food Store in Capitol Heights. He was shot in the forehead with a sawed-off shotgun on the late shift the night before.

Maybe murders of small-business owners arc politically correct now. Perhaps liberals see the slaughter of Mom-and-Pop proprietors as proof that their whole analysis and agenda are right. “Those weren’t criminals,” explained Representative John Conyers about those who rioted and looted in L.A. and left 51 dead, “they were outraged citizens.” Rev. Jesse Jackson says, “Desperate people do desperate things,” while Representative Maxine Waters says, “No justice, no peace.” These politicians are coloring it as expected and understandable, even excusable, for people to kill their neighbors if they don’t like the outcome of a trial. From there, it’s a short step to saying it’s okay to kill Korean storekeepers because the world’s unfair.

Each year, the loudspeakers from the politicians and the entertainers move us closer to saying that hopeless and frustrated people are entitled to kill. In his Home Invasion album, Ice-T says “We have a common enemy and that’s the people who don’t want to give out equality.” Bill Clinton says that the “free ride” is over for the “elite few” who didn’t pay their “fair share” in the 80’s. He never explains that the top 25 percent of income earners pay over three-fourths of the federal tax bill. “Who you going to blame it on, me?” asks Ice-T about the coming urban war that he predicts—”Try your quest for wealth,” he answers. “I have news for the forces of greed,” warns Bill Clinton, “your time has come and gone.” Maybe that’s what the killers of Won Tae Lee and Hyung Soo Kim were thinking. Maybe they overdosed on Bill Clinton’s class-warfare rhetoric. Maybe they think “12 years of neglect” makes them exempt from moral standards, responsibility, and guilt.

“Who will lead us out of the spiritual vacuum?” asks Hillary Rodham Clinton. She could start the journey by telling the truth about the 1980’s. She could say that the number of black families earning over $50,000 per year tripled in the past 12 years, and that women entrepreneurs in America now employ more people than the Fortune 500. Rather than exaggerating every obstacle, she could say that the number of white male and black male executives and managers expanded by 12 percent and 45 percent respectively in the 80’s, while the number of black female executives and managers jumped by 120 percent. Instead of trying to maximize the numbers of Americans who see themselves as victims in need of a larger nanny state, she could point to the successes and opportunities that surround every one of us. Isn’t that what the “Boy from Hope” film at the Democratic Convention was all about?

Hillary Clinton could start the trip out of her spiritual vacuum by pointing to Koreatown as a better anti-poverty program than anything the social engineers from Yale or Harvard have delivered. That’s the first step.