Chief of Staff John Sununu. Darman arrivedrnwith one sheet showing the costs.rn”It just blew apart Kemp’s ideas beforernthey ever got started,” said former Kemprnaide Thomas Humbert. “The deathrnquestion was always, ‘How are you goingrnto pay for it?'” an administration officialrntold DeParle. “These people had nornclue.”rnThey did come up with the wordrn”empowerment” as “a way of soundingrnconservative and activist at the samerntime.” Darman noted that “empowerment”rnwas popularized by commie SaulrnAlinsky in the 1960’s and asked that itrnnot be used in any memo to him. “Yournpeople,” he told the Kempians, “don’trnunderstand the connotation of thernword.” When he heard about this,rnKemp said: that’s “sick,” that’s “a sickrnthought.” (We are not told whether hernstuck his finger down his throat.) As tornthe favorite phrase of Kemp’s WhiternHouse soulmate, James Pinkerton, Darmanrnasked: “Hey, brother, can yournparadigm?”rnBut Kemp kept rolling on his wobblyrnway, and at another meeting he flippedrnout over the purple suspenders of stafferrnRichard Porter, which would deny himrn”any credibility with poor people.”rnKemp lectured him on the “proper antipovertyrndress,” presumably not byrnChanel.rnWhen Kemp visited Los Angeles afterrnthe anti-poverty riots, a group of blackrnDemocratic mayors—^America’s loudestrnadvocates of more welfare—”swarmedrnaround Kemp,” which he proclaimed asrna great tribute. They did not, he pointedrnout off the record, swarm aroundrnBush (an actual tribute to the President).rnAt a black boys club the next day, Kemprn”stole the crowd’s attention” from thernPresident with repeated “exaggeratedrnshoulder rolls.” It was “a little bit of arngoofy thing to do,” admitted a Kemprnaide.rnAt a press breakfast a week after the riots,rnKemp recalled “the lessons of racialrnequality he had picked up in lockerrnrooms filled with black athletes.” Herndidn’t describe what those millionairesrnhad taught him, but he did call his warrnon poverty “my way of redeeming myrnexistence on this earth. I wasn’t therernwith Rosa Parks or Dr. King or JohnrnLewis, but I am here now and I am goingrnto yell from the rooftops about what wernneed to do.”rnWe need to do something, too. AsrnKemp yells, does his shoulder rolls, andrnmimics Valley girls with his gag-me-witha-rnspoon routine, we need to spread thernword about what Wacky Jack actuallyrnstands for.rn—Llewellyn H. Rockwell, jr.rnTHE DEBATE OVER GAYS in thernmilitary has highlighted the progressivernimpulse to look anywhere but to Americarnfor cultural truth. On talk shows andrnin editorials, Americans are urged to emulatern”other industrialized nations” (readrn”increasingly decadent Western Europe”)rnthat permit openly homosexualrnsoldiers and sailors. Often praised is Holland,rnwhose ponytailed, hairnet-coiffedrnlegions strike terror in exactly nobody.rnBut perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick tornjudge; except for World Cup soccer, thernDutch have fought no major battlesrnsince Hitler rolled over their defenses inrnabout 12 minutes.rnAnother contender for military correctnessrnis France, which does not ask inducteesrntheir sexual orientation. Butrnhold les horses. When a French soldierrnis found to be overtly homosexual, he isrnsent to a psychiatric unit for appraisal,rnand usually reassigned to national civilianrnservice. “There’s a cultural difference,”rnsays a French military official whornrequested anonymity. “Homosexuality isrnless of a stigma for us. And you have arnvoluntary force; we have a draft. If yourncould escape military service simply byrndeclaring homosexuality, 85 percent ofrnour conscripts would turn out to be ‘homosexual.'”rnIsrael, whose policy toward women inrncombat (forbidden since 1948) is oftenrnmisconstrued, is similady misrepresentedrnon its homosexual policy. In a report tornthe United States Army cited in thernWashington Times, military personnel expertrnCharles Moskos of NorthwesternrnUniversity summarizes: “De facto, openrngays in the Israeli Defense Forces arerntreated much in the manner of womenrnsoldiers, e.g., usually they reside in theirrnhomes, are not allowed into combatrnunits, and are kept out of forward basernareas.”rnIn NATO, 10 of 15 nations ban orrnrestrict homosexuals in the military,rnaccording to a study by the SupremernHeadquarters Allied Powers, Europern(SHAPE). The good guys, at least byrnBarney Frank’s standards, are Canada,rnDenmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,rnand Norway. Bad guys includernSpain, Creece, Portugal, Turkey, Italy,rnCermany, Iceland, and Belgium (whichrndefines homosexuality as “a psychologicalrnanomaly inconsistent with militaryrnservice”).rnThe real stinkers, however, are thernUnited States and Great Britain, both ofrnwhich still fight occasional wars. AlthoughrnBritain does not ban homosexualsrnoutright the way the United Statesrndoes, gay soldiering is discouragedrnthrough “administrative” means. MajorrnJohn Sylvester, staff officer at the BritishrnEmbassy in Washington, explains:rn”There’s a degree of subtlety here. Ifrnthere’s conduct unbecoming, then werncould discharge.” But conduct unbecomingrncan be as simple as an open declarationrnof sexual attraction to the otherrntroops, especially those under one’s directrncommand.rnTwenty years of federal court rulingsrnin the United States unambiguouslyrnshow that an open declaration of homosexualityrnis de facto conduct, because it isrna foolproof indicator of intent to commitrnsodomy, an illegal activity under the UniformrnCode of Military Justice. Of thern17,000 homosexual men and womenrnmustered out of the U.S. Armed Servicesrnover the past ten years, not one hasrndenied indulging in or planning to indulgernin the proscribed behavior.rnBut back to the “other industrializedrnnations.” The gay ban only recently fellrnin Canada and Australia. Canada knuckledrnunder to a judge upholding the claimrnof a dismissed female soldier who admittedrnto having had a lesbian affair. InrnAustralia, officials said that their ban wasrnlifted in response to Clinton’s publicizedrnpromise. So wc now have the UnitedrnStates looking to one nation that mirrorsrnour problems with an imperious judiciaryrnand to another that is admittedly followingrnwhat its leaders believe to be thernAmerican example. Which brings us tornthe folly of this whole business of comparingrnthe United States military to thatrnof other nations. Like it or not, we arernthe world’s policeman. And internationalrncomparisons tend to be quite selective.rnFor example, we are not supposedrnto buck a fictitious internationalrnlavender military tide. On the otherrnhand, no other nation is thrusting womenrninto combat roles, but such comparisonsrnare deemed useless. The UnitedrnStates must lead the world in unisex innovation,rneven if it means drafting ourrnmothers, wives, and daughters alongrnwith gays. As Dave Barry would say, IrnAm Not Making This Up, this stuffrn6/CHRONICLESrnrnrn