Green-Light Halloween
Don’t let Bin Laden steal this treat.

By Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, and Phil Kerpen, a research assistant at the Club
October 31, 2001 8:35 a.m.

he scariest Halloween I ever experienced was four years ago when my then six- and seven-year-old sons decided that they were going to dress up as the Menendez brothers. That just seemed kind of demented. For the rest of that year my wife and I slept with our bedroom door securely locked. If their point was to spook us, they succeeded in spades.

Some of my fondest memories of youth were of Halloweens in Winnetka, Illinois. Back in those days, Winnetka allowed trick-or-treating on October 31st, but the next town over Kennilworth, celebrated Halloween on the 30th, Halloween eve. So we used to go out trick-or-treating two nights in a row and we were quite systematic about it. We would start right smack at 6:30 until well after 10:00. A lot of times the parents would be irate because they'd already gone to bed by the time we arrived at their house. Look, we'd say, just give us the candy and no one gets hurt. We used to spend several weeks constructing a detailed map that would send us on the route maximizing the number of houses we could hit in the allotted time. (Even at that young age I was an efficiency expert — born to be an economist I guess.)

We used to stash our loot in those huge six-foot-high trash bags, and by the end of the night the thing weighed something like 30 pounds. By about November 6th all I would have to do was glance in the direction of a Three Musketeers bar and I would get sick to my stomach.

Trick-or-treating in Kennilworth was a real trip. The average per capita income in Kennilworth is bigger than the entire GDP of Afghanistan. And these people gave away awesome treats for Halloween. One house I remember used to give away silver dollars, and that was back in the late 1960s before Nixon, Ford, and Carter devalued the currency and the dollar was really worth something. We used to change into different costumes and keep coming back for more. This was our way of soaking the rich. Back then I was a big class-warfare zealot.

There was one palace in Kennilworth owned by W. Clement Stone, where even the carriage house was a mansion. Every year Mr. Stone would give away lavish gifts. One year when the stock market had done particularly well, he gave people cars. No not Matchbox cars, real cars. After leaving the Stone residence, you would walk down the street and ask your buddies: Whud you get? And one person would say, I got a BMW. And someone else would say. I got a Jaguar. And then I would say, dang, I only got a Chevy. That was a terrible Halloween.

In those days the question of who you would go trick-or-treating with was a big status issue. Sometimes nobody would invite unpopular kids to go trick-or-treating at all and those unfortunate souls had to be escorted by their parents, which was really embarrassing if you were over the age of four. This is probably one of the great differences between growing up today and growing up 30 years ago. Nowadays, parents are omnipresent — they escort their kids everywhere. They set up play dates for their fifth grade kids. Everything is organized by parents and run by parents and…well if you ask me, ruined by parents. I truly believe that all these idiot soccer leagues are much more for the insufferable modern-day parents than the kids.

I used to go whole summers without seeing my parents — except for when they fed me. I don't think there was ever a time after about the second grade that my parents worried about where I was. (I was a bit of a problem child, so I think they half hoped I had been kidnapped whenever I didn't show up for dinner on time.)

Oh sorry, yes, about Halloween. There was a brief and forgettable time in the late '70s and early '80s when Halloween became an adult holiday. People started throwing lavish costume parties, but the part for kids was phased out. Trick-or-treating was confined to the daylight hours, which was about as much fun as having the senior prom on a Tuesday night. Parents became terrified that their kids were going to eat a Mars bar laced with cyanide or containing razor blades. The good folks at STATS, the research organization that pummels media myths, have found that this was one of the great hoaxes of all time. There never were razor blades in Halloween candy.

Now Halloween is a big deal again for kids. And thank God. I have a sister-in-law, a real Bible thumping' southern Baptist, who doesn't allow her kids to participate in Halloween. Why? Because "it's a pagan holiday." Well, thanks to the ACLU, aren't they all now.

George W. Bush has asked us to get back to the normalcy of our lives as the best way to defeat the evil intent of the terrorists. That means, yes, Virginia, there should be a Halloween this year. And any insecure parent out there who won't let their kids out on this wonderful evening of fun and mischief, BEWARE. I know where you live, and I'm coming to egg your house.