IN PURSUIT OF E.B. WHITE ANDREW FERGUSON

SEPTEMBER 11, 2017 $5.99 A BEATING IN BERKELEY

MATT LABASH on antifa mayhem and malice

A photographer being attacked by masked demonstrators, August 27

WEEKLYSTANDARD.COM Contents September 11, 2017 • Volume 23, Number 1

2 The Scrapbook Hillary’s book tour, distracted walking, & more

5 Casual Joseph Epstein on the reign of shabby chic

6 Editorial The Law Is King

14 Articles

9 It Can’t Happen Here by Barton Swaim Trump and fascism

11 The Merit System by Candice Malcolm What America can learn from Canada’s ­immigration policies

13 Evangelist to the Press Corps by Fred Barnes Michael Cromartie, 1950-2017

14 Pyongyang’s Playbook by Anthony Ruggiero Tehran has studied it well

15 Bringing the Senate to Heel by Jay Cost Many presidents have tried; many have failed

17 Feeding the Crocodile by Philip Terzian Remember Kim Jong-un? Features

18 A Beating in Berkeley by Matt Labash Antifa mayhem and malice in Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park

27 Regulatory Rollback by Adam J. White Paging the attorney general: the administrative state won’t deconstruct itself

Books & Arts 18 30 Writer’s Seat by Andrew Ferguson

HELENA ZEMANEK A walk through the home that inspired E. B. White’s essays and stories

35 Mutiny and Identity by James M. Banner Jr. A forgotten episode that rocked American politics

38 Paper, Plastic—or Prime? by Victorino Matus The past and future of the American supermarket

40 Terror and Slow Justice by Ann Marlowe Dragging Libya to court for a deadly 1989 hijacking

42 Poetry and Prayer by James Matthew Wilson Two new collections that grapple with grief, hope, and faith

42 44 Parody Category 4 Trump

COVER: STEPHEN LAM / REUTERS / NEWSCOM THE SCRAPBOOK Tragical Herstory Tour illary Clinton is hitting the road in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and performance remain empty. It’s a book H (or more likely the chartered Michigan, respectively.) tour as electoral map. skies) to promote her new memoir, These are not exactly arena-rocker The prices for tickets vary. None due out September 12. It’s a book venues. Typical is Jackson Hall on the of them will leave the featured whose title might have better cap- campus of the University of California, speaker dead broke. The cheap seats tured the author’s state of mind if it Davis, a place with just 1,801 seats. As in Florida start at $50. But that bar- had included a question gain price isn’t really mark: What Happened. the Clinton style. More In a bold prediction, in keeping with Bill her publisher says of the and Hillary’s money- upcoming book tour, making habits are the “She’ll connect with audi- “VIP Platinum Tickets” ences” with “a story that’s available for the Cana- personal, raw, detailed, dian shows, tickets that and surprisingly funny.” include: “Front Row Indeed, the tour’s title, Seating, Admission for “Hillary Clinton: Live,” Two, Back Stage Meet makes it sound like a foray and Greet with photo and into late-night comedy. signed Book.” All for a Or better yet, a folk mere $3,000 (Canadian). artist on a comeback The woman who lost tour: Clinton is hitting to Trump promises she’s at least 15 concert halls ready to let it all hang in the United States and out: “In the past, for rea- Canada, places such as the Riverside we go to press, three of the American sons I try to explain, I’ve often felt I Theater, Kimmel Center Academy of dates had gone on sale: those in New had to be careful in public, like I was Music, and, appropriately, Hill Au- York City, Washington, D.C., and Fort up on a wire without a net,” Hillary ditorium. (She might have thought Lauderdale. Those first two sold out laments. “Now I’m letting my guard about visiting those particular places quickly. But as of this writing, some down.” That’s doubtless easier for her last fall instead of this one: They’re half the seats for the Sunshine State to do with no blue wall to defend. ♦

in a culturally accurate to a living, terrestrial In a Handbasket Dept. way holds significance human—Harbour— ctor Ed Skrein (don’t worry if for people, and that to rather than an honest- A you’ve never heard of him, The neglect this responsi- to-goodness denizen Scrapbook hadn’t either) was re- bility would continue of the Inferno. “Bloody cently hired for a supporting role in a worrying tendency to typical,” Malacoda, an a new movie adaptation of the Hellboy obscure ethnic minor- activist in the Eighth comic book franchise. He was to play ity stories and voices Circle of Hell, posted a military man named Major Ben in the Arts.” on Facebook. “It’s a Daimio. Unbeknownst to the hapless David Harbour, the measure of prejudice young Skrein, however, in the origi- actor chosen to play against demons that nal comic books, Daimio is an Asian the lead in the movie, Hollywood takes a character. A Twitter mob descended applauded the mob: “Hey internet. white actor and paints him a ridicu- on the actor, who is not Asian, accus- Thank you for your voices,” he tweet- lous shade of red, when any number ing him of being an accessory to the ed. “An injustice was done and will of infernal actors of natural cochineal crime of “whitewashing.” be corrected.” hue would kill—well, at least eternally Knowing what was good for him, Overlooked in the controversy torment—to get that role. And they Skrein skedaddled. He announced were social media posts from various wouldn’t even need CGI batwings.” he was leaving the production: “It is demons angry that the prime role in On Twitter, an outraged goblin

clear that representing this character Hellboy has once again been awarded named Farfarello added, “Just like DEMON, BIGSTOCK COMMISSION; FIGURE, BIGSTOCK. BELOW: CTBTO PREP. SEATS, TOP:

2 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 Potter series—goblins played by non- goblins in ludicrous makeup. SAD!” The Malebranche branch of Ac- tors’ Equity is joining forces with organizers in the Lowerarchy, no- tably a “senior tempter” named Screwtape. “Mine has been one of the truly authentic voices in the underworld,” he said in a statement issued by his spokesman, Toadpipe. “And yet time and again when my words have been adapted, the actors hired have been sinners, yes—some of them admirably robust sinners— but not real demons. For shame.” ♦ Book ’Em, Danno! merican cities are discovering A a new public health threat. But don’t worry: They are passing laws against it—and will soon start collect- ing fines that go into city coffers. The scourge in question is “dis- tracted walking.” It turns out that many pedestrians crossing streets are so glued to their smartphones that they fail to pay attention to traf- fic signals and passing cars. In their wisdom, cities are concluding that if the prospect of being flattened by a speeding vehicle doesn’t encourage phone addicts from watching where they walk, perhaps a small fine will. In July, Honolulu became the first city in the country to pass such an ordi- nance. It bans “texting or anything else requiring the pedestrian to look at the device, including using laptop comput- ers, video gaming devices and pagers, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertis- That said, the whole issue brings while crossing a city street or highway,” er. Fines start at $15. Stamford, Conn., to mind the old joke: Why did the is considering a similar law. chicken cross the road? It can’t re- We at The Scrapbook are no ex- member—it was too busy posting a perts on Charles Darwin, but if mem- selfie on Instagram. ♦ ory serves, we believe On the Origin of Species contains an extended section Do Do That Voodoo on the adaptation habits of cell phone addicts who cross busy intersections. That You Do So Well It’s between the chapters on the wool- ow’s this for irony: Dawn Ben- ly mammoth and the dodo. H nett, who used to host a radio In fairness, pedestrian traffic show called “Financial Myth Busting” deaths are on the rise. But that in- (italics ours), allegedly attempted to use crease could just as easily spring from a voodoo curse to hobble investigators distracted drivers as from distracted who were pursuing her on allegations walkers. We’ll be sure to look up the of running a Ponzi scheme. relevant statistics while driving home Reuters reports that prosecu-

this evening. tors “disclosed the discovery in an TRUCK AND FIGURE, BIGSTOCK

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 3 Aug. 2 search of Bennett’s penthouse Washingtonian reports that Quinn in Chevy Chase, Maryland, of two “reveals that, in her less mellow days, freezers containing sealed Mason jars she put hexes on three people who bearing the initials of U.S. Securities promptly wound up having their lives and Exchange Commission lawyers, ruined, or ended.” www.weeklystandard.com on whom Bennett may have hoped So maybe voodoo does work after Stephen F. Hayes, Editor in Chief to cast a ‘hoodoo spell.’ ” (Though no all—it just depends on the voodoo- Richard Starr, Editor ista. Two-bit con-artist radio hosts? Fred Barnes, Robert Messenger, Executive Editors Eric Felten, Managing Editor Nah. But exalted longtime religion Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, columnists for one of the nation’s Lee Smith, Philip Terzian, Senior Editors Peter J. Boyer, National Correspondent leading newspapers? Now there’s a Barton Swaim, Opinion Editor woman with the magic touch! ♦ Adam Keiper, Books & Arts Editor Kelly Jane Torrance, Deputy Managing Editor Jay Cost, Mark Hemingway, Matt Labash, John McCormack, Theme Park Bards Tony Mecia, Michael Warren, Senior Writers Jonathan V. Last, Digital Editor Rachael Larimore, Online Managing Editor ne might think of Orlando as Ethan Epstein, Associate Editor O gateway to the land of amuse- Chris Deaton, Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editors Hannah Yoest, Assistant Books & Arts Editor ment parks, but one would be wrong. Priscilla M. Jensen, Assistant Editor The city’s heart beats with a more Andrew Egger, Jenna Lifhits, Alice B. Lloyd, Reporters profound purpose. Its citizens yearn Grant Wishard, Editorial Assistant Philip Chalk, Design Director for Art. Their souls demand Poetry. Barbara Kyttle, Design Assistant doubt there are experts who make Contributing Editors Claudia Anderson, Max Boot, Joseph Bottum, some distinction between the two, Tucker Carlson, Matthew Continetti, Terry Eastland, The Scrapbook feels safe in equating Noemie Emery, Joseph Epstein, David Frum, David Gelernter, Reuel Marc Gerecht, hoodoo with voodoo.) We have no way Michael Goldfarb, Daniel Halper, of judging Bennett’s skill at double- Mary Katharine Ham, Brit Hume, Thomas Joscelyn, Frederick W. Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, entry bookkeeping, but given that, Yuval Levin, Tod Lindberg, Micah Mattix, Victorino Matus, P. J. O’Rourke, happily, the SEC folks are in fine John Podhoretz, Irwin M. Stelzer fettle, her hoodoo skills clearly do not William Kristol, Editor at Large impress. That’s not to say she wasn’t MediaDC methodical. Her apartment is said to Ryan McKibben, Chairman Stephen R. Sparks, President & Chief Operating Officer have contained detailed instructions Jennifer Yingling, Audience Development Officer for various curses, including the “Beef Kathy Schaffhauser, Chief Financial Officer David Lindsey, Chief Digital Officer Tongue Shut Up Hoodoo Spell.” Alex Rosenwald, Director, Public Relations & Branding Perhaps the problem wasn’t the Mark Walters, Chief Revenue Officer Nicholas H. B. Swezey, Vice President, Advertising practice, but the practitioner. Last T. Barry Davis, Senior Director, Advertising week Washingtonian magazine profiled Jason Roberts, Digital Director, Advertising Paul Plawin, National Account Director Sally Quinn, the legendary D.C. soci- Andrew Kaumeier, Advertising Operations Manager ety hostess who was married to the late But it’s not enough for poets to Brooke McIngvale, Manager, Marketing Services Washington Post grandee Ben Bradlee. write poems. No, there has to be of- Advertising inquiries: 202-293-4900 Subscriptions: 1-800-274-7293 Quinn is also known for the religion ficial governmental recognition if the The Weekly Standard (ISSN 1083-3013), a division of Clarity Media Group, column she penned for the Post for verse is to really count. What is art is published weekly (except the first week in January, third week in April, many years. And now she has a new without a politician’s approval? first week in July, and third week in August) at 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, book out that, among other things, ex- And so Orlando is looking for its DC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Weekly Standard, P.O. Box 421203, Palm Coast, FL 32142-1203. tols occult practices. first poet laureate. A contest is under For subscription customer service in the United States, call 1-800- way, to be judged by professors at 274-7293. 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4 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 CASUAL

selling shoes.) In the business world, Shabby Chic casual Friday became casual everyday, and successful CEOs took to being photographed for the business pages of the New York Times and Wall Street friend sent me an article, read, Dress: Slovenly, which in this Journal—just regular guys, earning accompanied by several case seems to have meant out of the serious seven-figure salaries—tieless. photographs, from the dirty-laundry bag? In the days of Today men and women in their 50s, 60s, July 5 Daily Mail about the Hollywood studios no actor or 70s walk about in crowded urban areas Athe celebration of the playwright actress would be permitted in pub- in outfits most of our parents wouldn’t Tom Stoppard’s 80th birthday. The lic in other than elegant or glamor- have worn to take out the garbage. photographs, chiefly of English ous attire. Presumably no one wishes The baseball cap, the cargo shorts, actors whom I’ve watched with much the return of the tyrannical reign the gym shoes, the inevitable jeans— admiration on PBS and in the mov- of the studios. Yet need the pendulum such, for men, is the uniform of the ies over the years, confirmed my have swung so far to the other side? day. Many women wear it, too, should view that we are living in one of the The general populace once fol- the mood strike them. Along with unhappiest periods for human dress lowed, or at least attempted to follow, being close to androgynous, this outfit in memory, the age of shabby chic. the movie stars of the day in the mat- is certainly ageless. Achieving ageless- But for the occasion of Tom Stop- ter of dress. No man could bring off ness is one of the leading desiderata of pard’s birthday, this afternoon the day. Sitting in a favorite res- party might as easily have been taurant recently, at an interval billed as a Worst-Dressed Man of 10 or so minutes, I saw two and Woman contest. Assuming men with gray ponytails go by it was such a contest, allow me on walkers. Tom Wolfe, I believe to announce the winners. The it was, said that contemporary envelopes, please. Americans seem to be going Worst Shoes worn by a middle- from juvenility directly to senil- age performer: Iain Glen of Game ity, with no stops in between; of Thrones for his leather flip-flops. their wardrobes are helping to Most Overly Denimed, Jacket get them there. and Jeans: Ralph Fiennes. Capitalism, never caught nap- Greatest Wife-Beater Under- ping, has long been producing shirt Exposure: Jude Law. expensive shabby-chic wear. One Least Makeup Worn to Less Than the sartorial suavity of Cary Grant or can acquire Prada pre-washed jeans Good Effect: Dame Maggie Smith. Fred Astaire, or woman the refined ele- for a mere $365 (pre-torn jeans may Most Makeup Worn to Sadly Over- gance of wardrobe of Deborah Kerr or cost more), an Yves Saint Laurent done Effect: Joanna Lumley. Audrey Hepburn, but these and other workshirt for $900, fatigue jackets for In the Ugliest Shirt Untucked in actors did provide models of sorts. Now, upwards of $1,000. Trousers category: Damien Lewis. if the crowd at Tom Stoppard’s party is Clothes once expressed personal- General Rumpledness: Michael any example, actors are imitating the ity; they could be cosmopolitan, garish, Kitchen. population in its general schlepperosity. serious, puritanical, witty even. The Most Impressive Pot Belly Hanging When did this schlepperosity set effect of shabby chic, with its eschew- over Jeans: Sir Tim Rice. in? Some people blame it on California, ing of style and letting-down of adult Least Ironed Chambray Workshirt: the home of the open-collared shirt for standards that it brings with it, is to the birthday guy himself, T. Stoppard. men, Betty Grable shorts for women. divest the world of the pleasures of The coveted Gabby Hayes General Others lay the blame on the tumultu- clothes. Under shabby chic, they are Fuzziness Award: Michael Gambon. ous years of the 1960s, when student covering merely. Clothes make the What, one might ask, is going on protest brought on the militantly man and woman, haberdashers and here? Why are these moderately but unkempt look. (When I began teaching designers once held, which of course genuinely famous people all so badly at a university in the early 1970s, I had clothes don’t. But they do make, or at got up? At the bottom of invitations the choice of doing so in tie and jacket least once did, life richer, more charm- in an earlier day, a note sometimes or T-shirt and jeans; I went for the ing. The reign of shabby chic is soon appeared, Dress: Casual, which former, in the hope of convincing my enough likely to put an end to that. meant not formal. Might the invita- students that should my teaching not

DAVID CLARK DAVID tions to Tom Stoppard’s party have work out, I might be able to get a job Joseph Epstein

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 5 EDITORIAL The Law Is King

e’re a nation of laws, not of men.” Politicians Arpaio pardon was neither necessary nor defensible. He use this line so often that it has begun to was a badged hooligan who openly flouted federal law. ‘Wsound like a cliché. It’s a loose rendering of The U.S. government has generally failed to enforce its a phrase John Adams put into the Massachusetts constitu- own immigration laws along the Mexican border, but tion in 1780, but the idea is a much older one. It was given that doesn’t exempt local authorities from the obligation its most distinct and memorable expression in 1644 with to follow them. When Donald Trump on August 22 asked the title of Samuel Rutherford’s legal treatise: Lex, Rex. a Phoenix crowd if Arpaio was “convicted for doing his The law is king. job” and the crowd cheered its The principle is ancient, but affirm­ative answer, you heard in recent times it has begun to an ascendant populist right that seem outdated. Elements on no longer views the law as an both the right and the left find impediment to anything that ready justification to defenes- outrages its political enemies. trate the law when some politi- You will hear the same cal outcome looks desirable. unthinking assent on the left On the right, Donald whenever the subject is that Trump’s most reliable support- confederation of hoodlums ers—Sean Hannity and Laura known as “antifa.” The group Ingraham chief among them— considers itself a modern man- either cheered or made jokes ifestation of leftist resistance when the president pardoned to German, Italian, and Span- Joe Arpaio, the former sher- ish fascists in the 1930s—or, iff of Maricopa County, Ariz. maybe, the leather-clad ruffi- Arpaio had been convicted of ans who fought neo-Nazi skin- criminal contempt of court Pardon me: Joe Arpaio with his benefactor heads at punk rock concerts in for racial profiling. He and his the 1980s. The group now con- deputies were notorious for their aggressive targeting of sists largely of anarchists who oppose police and corpora- anyone with brown skin and dark hair. The sheriff was tions and who feel entirely free to disrupt any event and ordered by a federal judge to halt his office’s practice of assault any group it deems “fascist,” the term applying to workplace raids and targeted roundups. He refused, and in any organization it finds insufficiently disapproving the consequence he was indicted for contempt. presidency of Donald Trump. But that was only a part, and a small part, of the abuses Antifa engages in vandalism and intimidation, but and gross mismanagement for which the lawman is known. seems to specialize in physical assaults on small peaceful His office neglected hundreds of sex crimes, burned down crowds that pose no threat to anyone. The movement is a a home in a botched raid, and misspent tens of millions of hellish combination of malice and self-righteousness, as dollars in public money. Arpaio harassed political adver- Matt Labash chronicles elsewhere in these pages. saries with trumped-up charges, ordered journalists Anarchists and anti-capitalist troublemakers are noth- arrested, fabricated an assassination attempt on himself, ing new, of course. What makes Antifa’s nihilistic violence and once sent a deputy to Honolulu to find Barack Obama’s genuinely dismaying is the fact that most of the nation’s birth certificate (“It’s one deputy, so what?”). Arpaio felt he elite liberal politicos can’t bring themselves to condemn was above the law. “Nobody is higher than me,” he once it. Apart from House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who said to an inmate who questioned his authority (the words on August 29 condemned Antifa by name after masked were caught on camera). “I am the elected official, elected toughs attacked a small and peaceful rally in Berkeley, by the people. I don’t serve any governor or any president.” Calif., the vast majority of prominent elected Democrats The president’s power to pardon is a necessary and have either kept silent or avoided outright condemnation.

defensible one, but it is also a dangerous temptation. The When Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren was asked NEWSCOM

6 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 if she condemned Antifa and its tactics, she sidestepped in any form is contrary to Dartmouth values.” And, as of the question by censuring Donald Trump for failing to August 29, more than 100 faculty members had signed a condemn neo-Nazis in Charlottesville two weeks before. letter of condemnation—of Hanlon for rejecting Bray’s She sounded for all the world like one of those right- praise of violence. When white nationalist Richard Spencer wingers who can’t muster any criticism of Donald Trump was punched in the head by an Antifa bruiser in January, because “the left” is so awful and they started it anyway. Twitter and Facebook were alight with expressions of glee But the left’s problem with lawlessness is not confined from liberal academics and journalists. to Antifa thugs. It is just one of several groups engaging In all these cases, an abhorrence of political foes has in threats against and assaults on conservative and right- grown unchecked and encouraged otherwise decent people leaning speakers invited onto university campuses. In the to excuse acts of lawlessness they would rightly denounce worst of these disruptions, at Middlebury College in Ver- in every other circumstance. Hypocrisy and double stand­ mont in March, the scholar Charles Murray was shouted ards are ever-present in democratic politics. They are noth- down and literally chased off campus; his liberal inter- ing new. But the cynical intellectual stance that’s lately viewer, Allison Stanger, was attacked, sustaining a neck begun to trivialize criminality or condone it by jokes or injury and a concussion from which she is still recovering silence—this is something new. months later. Condoleezza Rice, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Ann We will not lecture the public officials and academics Coulter, among others, have all been disinvited from our and journalists perpetrating this affliction. They wouldn’t institutions of higher learning as a result of student pro- listen anyway, so emotionally invested are they in their tests and threats. perverted judgments. Instead we will only remind our A not insignificant number of influential progressives readers—and ourselves—that the health of our republic either defend or make light of these tactics. Dartmouth pro- demands that we assess each problem against a fixed set fessor Mark Bray, for instance, openly justified the group’s of principles, not according to the political implications attacks on the grounds that “fascism cannot be defeated by or what our antagonists did or said yesterday. To make speech.” The college’s president, Philip J. Hanlon, quickly excuses for villainy may feel right, but it leads to a kind of dismissed Bray’s statement: “The endorsement of violence regicide. The law, remember, is king. ♦

Thank You, American Workers THOMAS J. DONOHUE spent an additional $1.9 trillion on ourselves on the back but, rather, PRESIDENT AND CEO employee benefits. to remind those who question the U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE One of the most popular benefits motives of business that we care in the private sector is employer- a great deal about the welfare of On Labor Day many Americans sponsored health care, which our employees—and are willing to enjoy a day off to spend with friends approximately 150 million Americans spend big to protect them. More and and family—and for good reason. received in 2015. Many employers more employers are making it a core Our country’s workers are some of find that providing health care is part of their business plans to offer the most creative, productive, and not only the right thing to do, but exceptional benefits to employees— resilient in the world, and together it is an important way to attract from workplace amenities to they drive the most dynamic the best talent and foster a healthy, generous family leave policies to economy in history. A day off to productive workforce. In 2016, paid vacation, and more. honor their efforts and achievements total health benefit costs averaged Business owners who can afford is well deserved. But they also $11,920 per employee. to offer outstanding benefits are deserve to be rewarded throughout Businesses also help workers often eager to do so. This is one the year—and employers work hard save and plan for the future. Private of the many reasons it’s good for to ensure that they are. sector employers provided everyone—including workers, Business leaders are committed $242.3 billion worth of retirement families, and communities—when to helping their employees become benefits in 2016. Millions of businesses businesses are able to compete, grow, fulfilled in their work, earn a good offer defined contribution plans, and succeed. So if we really want to wage, provide for their families, which are tremendously popular with honor American workers on Labor and have the resources and support employees. Nearly 90% of employees Day, and each day, we must advance they need to lead healthy and are eligible to participate in these types a robust free enterprise system that comfortable lives. For example, of plans. Many other options are also lifts the economy for all people. employers paid roughly $8 trillion made available to workers, including in wages and salaries last year, and defined benefit and profit-sharing plans. Learn more at that’s only the beginning. They We don’t share these figures to pat uschamber.com/abovethefold.

8 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 2016 that we think of Trump as a “neo- fascist.” “It’s a peculiarly American kind of fascism,” he said on CNN. “Fascism is about a maximum leader, who is contemptuous of real democ- racy, of real democratic institutions, contemptuous of the press and a free press, who extols torture and violence, who incites hatreds.” Bernstein also recommended Lewis’s novel. “Well, maybe it could happen here.” Michael Kinsley began a column in the Washington Post in December by stating flatly: “Donald Trump is a fas- cist.” The word gets thrown around a lot, Kinsley explained, but Trump has many of the characteristics of fascists in the 1920s and ’30s. “Not in the sense of an all-purpose bad guy, but in the sense of somebody who sincerely believes Protesters in New York City, January 14 that the toxic combination of strong government and strong corporations should run the nation and the world.” Robert Kuttner, editor of the Ameri- can Prospect, similarly needed no con- It Can’t vincing that America had elected its first fascist president. “Fascism, classi- cally, includes a charismatic strongman Happen Here who speaks directly to the mystical Peo- ple, over the heads of the squabbling politicians who ruined the Nation. Or as Donald Trump put it at the Repub- Trump and fascism. lican National Convention, ‘I am your by Barton Swaim voice. . . . I alone can fix it.’ Check. Fas- cism scapegoats some demonized other, or several days in mid-August, Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis’s or sets of others. Check.” And so on. Donald Trump found him- 1935 novel about the rise of fascism Timothy Snyder, a professor of F self ensnared in a bizarre con- in America, increased dramatically, as history at Yale, is certain that we’re troversy over the “very fine people” did those of George Orwell’s dysto- witnessing the onset of a fascist gov- marching alongside neo-Nazis in Char- pian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four ernment. A week after Trump was lottesville, Va. It was a stupid thing (though the latter targeted Marxist elected, he posted on his Facebook to say—he said it several times, of communism rather than fascism). page 20 “lessons” drawn from his course—and he was roundly criticized Many liberals and progressives study of Nazism and Stalinism. He for his failure to condemn Nazi-sym- could see only one thing in Trump’s wasn’t arguing that Trump was a fas- pathizing troublemakers. It brought to rise: the return of fascism. Several cist; he was assuming it, and counsel- mind, once again, all those panicky pre- lefty entertainers used the term early ing Americans to respond well. “Do dictions of an impending fascist insur- and without nuance. “The guy is not obey in advance,” he began impe- gency in the wake of Trump’s victory. Hitler,” wrote the comedian Louis riously. “Much of the power of author- Before and especially after last C.K. in an email to his fans. “And by itarianism is freely given. In times like November’s presidential election, that I mean that we are being Ger- these, individuals think ahead about many liberals and progressives openly many in the ’30s.” In an interview, the what a more repressive government assigned the words “fascist” and actor George Clooney called Trump “a will want, and then start to do it with- “Nazi” to Donald Trump and “brown- fascist; a xenophobic fascist.” out being asked. You’ve already done shirts” to his supporters. Sales of It A number of accomplished journal- this, haven’t you? Stop.” ists said largely the same, though with After his Facebook post went viral, Barton Swaim is the opinion editor a little more sophistication. Carl Bern- Snyder turned it into a slim book, On

of The Weekly Standard. stein, for instance, suggested in March Tyranny, in which he warned readers to PRESS / LIGHTROCKET GETTY MICHAEL NIGRO / PACIFIC

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 9 watch out for some version of a Reich- who appears to regard all other nations the boost in confidence the movement stag fire—a reference to the 1933 attack as vaguely despicable. He loves the has supposedly received from the elec- on Germany’s parliament building, adoration of the masses. And, of tion of an allegedly sympathetic presi- falsely blamed by the Nazis on Com- course, he feels little obligation to ver- dent, the white nationalists could only munist insurrectionists and employed ify what he says before saying it. muster half the number of people who as a pretext for gaining the emergency On the other hand, Trump lacks any showed up to protest it. police powers that Hitler’s government kind of internally coherent ideology. Consider, too, the nature of fascism used to crush its opponents. “Watch for Occasional outbursts aside, he seems itself. The term fascism is notoriously the Reichstag fire” has become a com- less inclined to remake America into difficult to define—George Orwell mon refrain among liberal academics some new order than to return it to memorably complained that the word and journalists on social media. what it used to be (make America great “has now no meaning except in so far More recently, in an essay in the again). Unlike a fascist dictator, he is as it signifies ‘something not desir- New York Review of Books, Snyder inclined to defer to his subordinates: able’ ”—but its most crucial charac- considered the possibility of the His military advisers have talked him teristic, the thing without which it’s Trump administration faking a ter- into reversing his entire approach to not fascism, is the tendency to domi- rorist disaster: “If we face again a Afghanistan and his secretary of state nate every part of life from the center: terrorist attack—or what seems to persuaded him to okay the recertifi- economic activity, intellectual debate, be a terrorist attack, cation of the Iran religion, art, music, language. or what the govern- nuclear deal. Progres- Fascism failed in America for the ment calls a terrorist sives are convinced same reason communism did. Both attack—we must hold that Trump makes a systems assume a political worldview the Trump adminis- scapegoat of an entire in which power is held by a rational tration responsible ethnicity, namely elite at the center. The American gov- for our security.” Mexicans, the way ernmental system, despite centripetal Asked by an inter- fascists did. But there tendencies in the first half of the 20th viewer at Salon if in is a vast difference century, has an essentially centrifugal fact a fascist is now between common quality—a quality reflected in Amer- in charge of the U.S. bigotry—the kind ica’s politics no less than its culture. government, Snyder Philadelphia, January 26 of bigotry that exists That quality manifests itself sometimes said, in essence, yes. in any society any- as independent-mindedness and some- “Whether he realizes it or not is a dif- where—and the sort of visceral loath- times as anti-intellectualism, and ferent question, but that’s what fascists ing that grew into a worldview and led perhaps the two are not always distinct did. They said, ‘Don’t worry about the to the Final Solution. attitudes, but they amount to the same facts; don’t worry about logic. Think The trouble with the belief that thing: Americans as a rule don’t like to instead in terms of mystical unities Trump is a fascist, however, isn’t so be told what to think by people who and direct connections between the much that it gets Trump right or purport to be smarter than they are. mystical leader and the people.’ That’s wrong. The trouble with it is that it gets The case was vastly different in fascism. Whether we see it or not, America itself wrong. The accusation continental Europe 90 years ago. For whether we like it or not, whether we is based on a gross misinterpretation of fascist parties to conquer Italy and forget, that is fascism.” America and its political culture. The Germany, the movement’s functionar- For a dismaying number of preemi- United States might generate many ies and propagandists had to persuade nent liberal commentators, fascism is evils, but fascism is not one of them. a great many intellectuals and cultural everywhere—almost as communism Consider as evidence the events in arbiters to go along with it—and they was for John Birchers in the 1960s. Charlottesville in mid-August. There succeeded. The list of intellectuals “Let’s call things by their proper is no official estimate of the crowd’s and artists and scientists who either names here,” wrote Paul Krugman size, but the Associated Press esti- acceded to fascist ideology or enthusi- in his August 28 New York Times mated 500 people in the white nation- astically contributed to it is a long and column on the subject of Presi- alist or “alt right” group and 1,000 in depressing one. Even taking the worst dent Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio. the counter-protesting group. Jason possible interpretation of the Trump “What Arpaio brought to Maricopa, Kessler, a white nationalist and some- movement, does anyone seriously and what the president of the United time University of Virginia student, think it could produce such a list? States has just endorsed, was fas- spent weeks organizing this “Unite the American liberal intellectuals think cism, American style.” Right” rally on Facebook and various of this nation as the sort of centripetal Whether these critics are interpret- alt-right websites; the famed former society that once allowed real fascism ing Donald Trump correctly is a ques- Klansman David Duke was advertis- to flourish and dominate. They don’t tion worth debating. Trump is a bully ing the event on social media in early understand the country they’re paid to

and a demagogue. He is a nationalist June. Yet with all this planning and interpret—thank God. ♦ / GETTY CHARLES MOSTOLLER / BLOOMBERG

10 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 It’s designed to maximize economic growth; the system is fair, selecting The Merit System newcomers based upon merit; and it works to achieve social integration, which in turn promotes broader trust What America can learn from Canada’s in the immigration system. The first factor to consider is the ­immigration policies. by Candice Malcolm economic impact of immigration. Despite a misconception popularized n 2012, Fareed Zakaria dedi- the rationale behind the reforms. by activists, immigration programs cated an episode of his CNN It was curious to see a CNN are not intended to serve as a global I show GPS to exploring Canada’s reporter so vehemently defend the charity. Western democracies facili- skills-based immigration system, dis- same policies the network’s immigra- tate immigration not from benevo- cussing why such a program accords tion expert lampooned as dysfunc- lence, to paraphrase Adam Smith, with the modern economy. On Twit- tional. As drafted, the RAISE Act but from regard to their own inter- ter, Zakaria proclaimed that “Canada would take the country in the Cana- est. Welcoming young and motivated has the most successful set of immi- dian direction. RAISE proposes to workers helps boost innovation and gration policies in the world.” His cut legal immigration by half over entrepreneurship. Newcomers start praise continued in the pages of Time, the next decade by reducing green businesses, file patents, and spark eco- where he stated America “is losing cards for family members of U.S. nomic renewal. the best and brightest” to countries, citizens and allotting the remaining Immigration, when managed care- like Canada, with an “immigra- fully, can work as a countervail- tion advantage.” ing force to an aging population As recently as this March, and retiring workforce. Young Zakaria focused CNN airtime immigrant families help reverse on what the United States could the falling birth rates and help learn from its northern neighbor. with population growth; about He noted that Donald Trump two-thirds of current Canadian applauded Canada’s immigra- population growth is the result tion program in the president’s of immigration. speech to Congress. “You have In Canada, immigration is a really innovative reform sys- divided into three categories: eco- tem,” Zakaria said of Canada’s nomic immigration (63 percent), point system, which prioritizes family reunification (24 percent), immigration applicants based on and refugees (13 percent), and education, work experience, and there are stark differences in the language skills. productivity of each stream. It’s They’ve got skills: A family becomes Canadian, Viewers of CNN could be worth noting that the economic August 27, 2014. forgiven, therefore, if they were stream itself is divided into prin- confused by the network’s frenzied spaces based on skills and merit. It cipal applicants (45 percent) and imme- response to Trump’s endorsement of also seeks to end the green card lot- diate family members (55 percent), the Reforming American Immigra- tery, known officially as the Diversity making the true number of economic tion for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Immigrant Visa, and cap the annual immigrants closer to 28 percent of the Act, sponsored by Republican sena- intake of refugees offered permanent total annual intake—still more than tors Tom Cotton and David Perdue. status at 50,000. double the comparable ratio in the CNN reporter Jim Acosta placed While the RAISE Act is not perfect, United States (13 percent). himself at the center of this debate it does address a fundamental discon- Canada selects its economic immi- as the liberal ideological opponent nect between immigration selection grants using a merit-based points to a merit-based system. In a bitter and economic suitability. RAISE system. Objective and easily measur- exchange, Acosta provided an emo- attempts to help focus the selection able criteria for selection include an tional appeal for low-skill immigra- criteria to produce a better immigra- applicant’s education, work experi- tion while White House senior adviser tion experience, for both migrants ence, language skills, as well as age Stephen Miller impatiently explained and Americans, by emulating a model and adaptability. The point system championed by level-headed analysts: allows for a neutral and unbiased Candice Malcolm is a nationally syndicated the skills-based Canadian system. assessment of the elements that are columnist for the Toronto Sun and a fellow Canada’s immigration system empirically proven to lead to more

with the Center for a Secure Free Society. is successful for three key reasons: successful outcomes. ROBERTO MACHADO NOA / LIGHTROCKET GETTY

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 11 When a migrant is selected to come migration. In his seminal book The be partly responsible for the rela- to Canada, the assumption is that he Ethics of Immigration, Joseph H. tively . . . positive social integration or she will begin work on day one. Carens explains: of immigrants and the high level of The government has devised criteria acceptance of immigrants in Canada.” that lead to productive, self-sufficient, From the 1920s to the 1960s Amer- Canadians trust that the government and successful migrants. Research ican immigration policy had a is welcoming newcomers who will “national origins” quota, which tied from the Canadian government finds the number of spaces available for strive to integrate and achieve eco- that “highly educated immigrants immigrants from other countries to nomic independence. are more likely to generate a net posi- the proportion of people from those Despite what critics of the RAISE tive fiscal balance over the longer countries already in the United Act say, Canada’s focus on skills- run, paying more taxes and using less States. This was explicitly intended based economic immigration is nei- government benefits than their less- to restrict the flow of immigrants ther racist nor a veiled policy of from outside Europe and to main- race-based nationalism. Jim Acosta, skilled counterparts.” tain the ethnic, racial, and religious The second factor to consider is composition of the United States as for instance, implied the RAISE that of fairness. A common criticism it was. It was indeed an unjust policy. Act was racist and that Republicans of RAISE is that it unfairly punishes were “trying to engineer the racial those wishing to bring extended fam- Third, it’s important to consider and ethnic flow of people into this ily members into the country. The the social impact of immigration, country.” He asked Stephen Miller, National Immigration Law Center, both in terms of how well newcom- “are we just going to bring in people for instance, issued a statement say- ers integrate in the host society and from Great Britain and Australia?” ing the bill would “devastate fami- how the public views immigration. A Facts, however, show that a focus on lies, eliminating the traditional and host of studies find that knowledge of skills-based immigration increases long-accepted means by which family the local language is the number-one racial diversity. The top source coun- members such as grandparents, moth- indicator of economic, and therefore tries of immigration to Canada in ers, fathers and siblings are able to social, integration and success in a recent years have been the Philip- reunite with their families.” new country. pines, China, and India. Meanwhile, To these activists, the privilege of Canada has an obsession with pro- Canada’s foreign-born population is U.S. citizenship has morphed into the tecting languages and promoting now 20 percent, compared with the right to bring extended families into knowledge of its official languages, United States’ 13 percent. the country, in a phenomenon known French and English. This impulse The RAISE Act has borrowed its as chain migration. The obvious prob- affects immigration selection. In core tenets from Canada’s skills-based lem with an immigration program 2015, 76 percent of all permanent res- program. Despite the hysteria pushed dominated by family reunification is idents self-identified as having a pro- by Jim Acosta and others, CNN’s own that economic and social consider- ficiency in English, French, or both. Fareed Zakaria, the network’s most ations are not weighed, and therefore That number jumped to 96 percent knowledgeable immigration expert, many newcomers arrive without the for principal applicants in the eco- declared last year that in this arena, skills or training needed to be success- nomic immigration stream. By con- “Canada should be a role model.” ful in America. trast, a 2012 U.S. census study found Canada has struck a successful There is also a moral problem. that only 44 percent of immigrants balance with its skills-based immi- America’s current immigration pro- who have arrived since 2000 report gration system, and the numbers gram gives individuals with family the ability to speak English. back it up. Immigrants welcomed ties preferential treatment over those Inability to speak English creates a to Canada through the economic applying based on their own capabili- social divide, isolating newcomers in stream collected social assistance at ties. In America, nepotism and family their own cultural silos and increas- half the rate of the native-born pop- connections have never been consid- ing divisions between newcomers ulation. In 2005, only 2 percent of ered superior to hard work and merit. and the host population. Sponsoring Canada’s economic immigrants used Rather than being “cruel, anti-family elderly family members into these social assistance. In the U.S., wel- and un-American,” as the Anti-Defa- isolated communities only increases fare use for immigrant households is mation League claims, RAISE places the social divide and produces more over 50 percent. limits upon secondary family spon- hostility toward and mistrust in the At a time when populist backlashes sorship, following the example of the immigration system. Canada’s solu- against mass, unchecked migration Canadian system. tion is, once again, more economic have erupted across the Western Advocates of the family reunifi- immigration focused on select- world, it’s common sense to focus cation program may be surprised ing high-skilled applicants. A 2016 immigration selection on economic to learn that it has its origins in rac- government report stated that “the skills and readiness for success. The ism. The program was designed spe- high educational and skill level of RAISE Act seeks to put U.S. immi- cifically to restrict non-European immigrants and their children may gration on just such a path. ♦

12 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 six kids. . . . The best-selling books in the evangelical Protestant community Evangelist to right now are books on sexuality in marriage and how to have a good ful- filling marriage . . . sexually. . . . I was the Press Corps hoping in the piece he’d quote me on that, but he didn’t.” Another inquiry came from a reporter who asked about a discussion Michael Cromartie, 1950-2017. at the Southern Baptist convention by Fred Barnes involving men, women, and marriage. Mike began by referring to the book ichael Cromartie, by his the platoons of journalists who knew of Ephesians, only to be interrupted. wits and his Christian and loved him and from many oth- What’s that book? Who’s the author? M faith, created something ers. Mike didn’t push them to convert Who’s the publisher? out of nothing, what investor Peter to Christianity but the power of his “Oh, I’m sorry,” Mike said. “It’s a Thiel calls going from 0 to 1. And he presence and joyfulness in his faith letter from a man named the apostle became an important and influential affected them. I suspect some did Paul. It’s a letter to the Ephesians. It’s figure in Washington, though that accept Christ as Savior under Mike’s in a book called the New Testament, wasn’t his aim. influence, but I’m only guessing. which follows the Old Testament.” It’s an unlikely story: a scholar at the Mike was memorable like no one Conversations like that sparked the Ethics and Public Policy Center who I’ve ever met. I knew him for more than creation of the forums. focused on evangelical Christians and 30 years. His wife Jenny teaches at Riv- Basketball is another story. Mike other religious matters and became a endell, a wonderful Christian school in was a backup point guard at Covenant teacher and friend of the press corps. College in Georgia. After graduation Scores of reporters and columnists he learned the Philadelphia 76ers would learn from him how to talk and were looking for a mascot. Mike write knowledgeably about religion. assured them that “I can run around But let’s back up a bit. In the 1990s, and I can dance.” He got the job. Cromartie started getting phone calls But there was a problem. The Six- at his think tank from befuddled ers often played on Tuesdays, when media folks. The rise of the Chris- Mike also had a graduate-school tian right had aroused interest in class at American University in evangelicals. Journalists knew practi- Washington. So he spilled the beans cally nothing about the subject and to his professor, who was sympa- called him. Cromartie, an evangeli- Michael Cromartie, right, with thetic. “That’s a great excuse,” he cal himself, knew everything. More Tom Brokaw in October 2014 told Mike. “We’ll get you the notes.” important, he was happy to help. Mike made the games dressed as The result was Faith Angle Forum, Arlington, Virginia, not far from their what he described to Hayward as “a twice-yearly gatherings in which 20 home. She’s the favorite teacher of my chicken/roadrunner type of character.” journalists would spend two days grandchildren, who attend the school. Pickup basketball games with men with religious scholars, theologians, Mike was a great storyteller and half his age were a temptation Mike preachers, and historians—from the loved basketball. (He was multifaceted.) couldn’t resist. He got knee surgery right and left and not just Christians. These were not an insignificant part of in hopes it would help his game. He Cromartie organized the whole thing, his life. He told humorous stories about also bought a basket that tossed the got the funding, lined up the speakers, those early calls from journalists curi- ball back after the shot. He put it in invited the needy journalists, and got ous about evangelical Christians. The his driveway. He liked it so much he them to come to Key West and later forums took up other religious subjects became the regional distributor for Miami (that was the easy part). The as well, from Mormons to Muslims. the device. sessions, which he moderated, contin- He once spent an hour talking In an interview last year, Mike and ued until this year. about evangelicals to a skeptical politi- Hayward discussed all the players on Mike died last week at 67. If you cal writer. “Let’s cut to the real issue,” the great Sixers teams when Mike was check the Internet, newspapers, or the writer said. “These people are sex- the mascot. Mike knew all of them. TV news, you’ll find eulogies from ually repressed, aren’t they?” When Hayward mentioned Lloyd Mike’s response was as gentle as Free, Mike, always looking to be help- Fred Barnes is an executive editor possible. As he later told Steve Hay- ful, corrected him.

at The Weekly Standard. ward of Powerline: “I said they all have “Lloyd B. Free,” he said. ♦ POST / GETTY WASHINGTON

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 13 by Iran to secretly purchase additional natural uranium. German intelligence Pyongyang’s reports showed that Iran attempted procurement of nuclear-related items, likely in violation of the agreement. Playbook Second, limited nuclear deals can be exploited. The Agreed Framework and Joint Statement merely froze the North Korean nuclear programs Tehran has studied it well. (what was known of them), and in by Anthony Ruggiero both instances Pyongyang was not required to dismantle its programs he crisis between the United Washington tried another nuclear deal upfront. The result left North Korea States and North Korea shows with the Kim regime, negotiating the with the infrastructure to produce fis- T no signs of abating. Indeed, 2005 Joint Statement, but the Kim sile material (plutonium and highly Pyongyang escalated its provocations regime built a nuclear reactor in Syria enriched uranium) for the nuclear last week, firing a missile over Japan on during the negotiations. The reactor weapons that now threaten America’s August 29. Critics of the president cite was eventually destroyed by Israel in allies and the U.S. homeland. his brash approach to Pyongyang as a 2007. Normally that would have ended Tehran adopted this very strategy factor behind North Korea’s bel- when it negotiated a nuclear ligerency. Some also link Trump’s deal that allows it to keep its ura- tough talk about the Iran nuclear nium enrichment program and deal. Why, they ask, would continue research on advanced North Korea want to cooperate centrifuges. Iran can thus com- with a White House that insists ply with the deal and emerge on revisiting a nuclear deal the about a decade later with a pro- United States struck with Iran duction-scale enrichment facility just two years ago? and near-zero breakout time to What they fail to note is the develop nuclear weapons. Kim regime has already vio- Third, you can also push the lated two nuclear deals with the envelope on military and non- United States. North Korea, in nuclear issues. North Korea fact, authored the playbook now tested a space launch vehicle being used by Iran to fleece the Dupe the Great Satan 101: Iranian president (SLV) only four years after United States and our allies. And Hassan Rouhani meets with North Korea’s negotiating the 1994 Agreed if the United States fails to neu- Kim Yong-nam in Tehran, August 3, 2013. Framework. Pyongyang has tralize the North Korean threat, tested additional SLVs five Iran will notice how the United States negotiations, proving that North times since 1998, placing satellites in buckles in the face of nuclear pressure. Korea was not a serious interlocutor. orbit in 2012 and 2016. These SLVs Iran has already learned a number of Instead, the Kim regime was rewarded provided key advancements Pyong- damaging lessons from North Korea. for its nuclear proliferation when the yang used to improve intercontinen- First, cheating on nuclear deals is per- Bush administration removed North tal ballistic missiles that the Kim mitted. North Korea cheated twice, Korea from the state sponsors of ter- regime can use to deliver a nuclear and we kept coming back for more. rorism list in 2008. weapon to the United States. North President Bill Clinton announced the Iran’s cheating has focused on test- Korea has also tested the Hwasong-12 1994 Agreed Framework as a deal that ing the will of the United States and intermediate-range ballistic missile, would “freeze and then dismantle its its partners to hold Tehran to the which can reach Guam, at least five nuclear program,” but Pyongyang vio- negotiated limits in the 2015 nuclear times this year, with a successful test lated the agreement when it started a deal. During the Obama administra- in mid-May and again last week. The covert uranium enrichment program. tion, Tehran twice exceeded the cap on international community’s failure to heavy water, and rather than punishing respond meaningfully is viewed by Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow Iran, Washington and Moscow pur- North Korea as tacit approval. at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, chased the excess material from Iran. Since the 2015 nuclear deal was was the nonproliferation adviser Iran is operating advanced centrifuges signed, Tehran has reportedly con- to the U.S. delegation to the 2005 rounds in excess of the limit of 10 it agreed ducted two SLV launches. It has of the Six-Party Talks and spent more than to in the deal. And reports suggest the launched as many as 14 ballistic mis-

17 years in the U.S. government. United Kingdom blocked an attempt siles, many of which are “nuclear KENARE / AFP GETTY ATTA

14 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 capable,” in violation of U.N. Secu- North Korea, the president should the need for Washington to remain rity Council Resolution 2231, which insist on the denuclearization of the committed to the agreement. They codified the nuclear deal. Iran has Korean Peninsula. have it exactly wrong. Pyongyang’s undoubtedly noticed the U.N.’s lack of The “echo chamber” supporting the path highlights how a limited nuclear a firm response. 2015 Iran nuclear deal wants President deal can lead to a nuclear threat to the The number of Iranian violations Trump to believe that North Korea’s U.S. homeland. Another such threat, detailed by U.N. Secretary General aggressive nuclear weapons and mis- this time from Iran, could be only a António Guterres in a recent report is sile programs somehow demonstrate matter of time. ♦ stunning. Two Iranian attempts to pro- cure missile components, aircraft parts, and anti-tank missile components from Ukraine were thwarted over a period of just six months. How many Bringing the others have gotten through? Iran also continues its shipment of arms to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, in violation of Senate to Heel two Security Council resolutions. Finally, insist that your military sites are off-limits. The first nuclear crisis in the mid-1990s started in part Many presidents have tried; many have failed. when North Korea refused a request by Jay Cost by the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect a waste facility that ince the defeat of the Obama­ who can bring stability, esteem, and Pyongyang said was a military site care repeal effort in the Senate, a sense of “national character” to the unrelated to its nuclear program. The S President Donald Trump has government. The Senate, Madison Kim regime’s refusal set off a crisis seemed to be on the warpath against proclaimed, would enable the “cool that almost ended in a military conflict the upper chamber. He has made and deliberate sense of the commu- between the United States and North negative comments about a number nity” to prevail. Korea. The crisis was resolved when of Republican senators, including That was the public side of the the Clinton administration negoti- Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. argument, at any rate. Behind closed ated the ill-fated Agreed Framework. Some reports suggest he may strike doors at the Constitutional Conven- Tehran has learned from the North out on an independent course​—​ tion, Madison fought tooth and nail Korean experience to insist that mili- which might include promoting pri- against the Senate as it was eventually tary facilities are off-limits and hope mary challengers against senators agreed upon. By giving each state two the issue fades away. Before the 2015 he does not like. His nice comments members and allowing the state legis- nuclear deal was completed, Iran’s about Kelli Ward—​ ​who is going after latures to appoint them, the delegates supreme leader declared “inspec- Arizona Republican Jeff Flake in next had basically imported the Congress tion of our military sites is out of the year’s primary​—​may be a harbinger of the Confederation into the new question and is one of our red lines.” of intra-party conflicts. Constitution. Madison and his nation- Iran’s foreign minister boasted that Yet any presidential effort to alist allies were deeply concerned he had maintained the red line in improve the stock of Republican sena- that the state governments—​which negotiations. Tehran has allowed only tors will be incredibly difficult. Trump had proven themselves incapable of a cursory inspection of the Parchin is not alone in complaining about the supplying national leadership in the military site where undeclared ura- Senate, but a number of institutional 1780s—​would use the new Senate nium particles were discovered, and and personal factors cut heavily against to hamstring the government. But the regime continues to deny more his chances of success. the small states insisted, and so the intrusive inspections. James Madison extolled the vir- actual Senate represents a compro- While Iran has learned many les- tues of the Senate in Federalist 62 and mise between the high principles of sons from North Korea, Washington 63, where he argued that it would be Federalist 62 and 63 and the parochial should have learned a few, too. The a check “to the impulse of sudden demands of Delaware and New Jersey. most significant is that flawed, limited and violent passions” that may arise This is key to understanding the nuclear deals do not solve the strate- in the House, by empowering legisla- history of the United States Senate. gic issues. The Trump administration tors with a “due acquaintance with the As Madison predicted, it does cool must internalize this lesson if it is to objects and principles of legislation” the often hot-tempered initiatives prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, which of the House. But it has also proven could in turn set off an arms race Jay Cost is a senior writer itself a regular and formidable oppo- in the Middle East. Similarly, with at The Weekly Standard. nent of proposals that would clearly

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 15 advance the general welfare. Senators McCain voted to repeal Obamacare­ to senators. Presidents, on the other have demonstrated a unique talent for when Obama was still president and hand, are outsiders to these closed leveraging the esteem of the “upper” the vote was merely symbolic, but communities, and their interference is chamber of Congress for the small- voted against the very narrow repeal often taken as meddling. minded interests of their state patrons. bill this summer. In so doing, they Party politics also works to the The most colorful critique of the halted a repeal effort their party had advantage of senators. A presidential Senate remains Henry Adams’s lament won multiple elections promising to effort to oust an incumbent senator in The Education of Henry Adams. He carry out. is a high-risk endeavor. The upside is reported a conversation with a cabinet But what can Trump do about it? getting rid of a less-than-enthusiastic secretary, who told him a member of He faces the same challenges that his supporter of the presidential agenda. the House “is a hog! You must take a predecessors faced in bringing the The downside is the danger of elect- stick and hit him on the snout!” But Senate “back to decency.” It is truly ing an unflappable opponent from the senators “petrified any executive officer an independent branch. Only a hand- other party. that ever sat a week in his office.” The ful of Republican senators were on These challenges confront any “comic side of their ego- president in bringing tism” was beyond belief. about Senate reform, Senators like Charles and Trump faces two Sumner and Roscoe Con- unique problems of his kling “could not be bur- own. First, he is not very lesqued; they were more popular. The Gallup grotesque than ridicule poll has his approval rat- could make them.” This ing among Republicans description still hits the at 78 percent. That may mark. Sumner and Con- seem high, but George kling are long gone, but W. Bush had greater than it is not hard to think 90 percent support from of a dozen (or more!) the GOP at the same point senators whose vanity is in his presidency. It’s an comically outsized. easy bet that a portion of Adams believed that that 78 percent support “the most troublesome is soft, so many Republi- task of a reform president Wait, is that somebody back there? GOP senators Tom Cotton, cans will not reflexively was that of bringing the John Thune, and Mitch McConnell at the White House, June 27. side with Trump against Senate back to decency.” their senators. Troublesome indeed, for the Sen- the ballot with Trump in 2016. Most Moreover, Trump is inexperienced ate has proven itself time and again of them would have won regardless of in politics and generally has exhibited resistant to presidential influence. Trump’s performance, so what kind a lack of follow-through in many initia- No president had more political capi- of sway does the president have over tives. A sustained effort to oust obsti- tal than Franklin Roosevelt after his them? Few Republican senators are nate members of Congress requires a smashing reelection in 1936. He chose on the ballot in 2018, so Trump’s lot of hard, careful work. Is Trump capa- to spend it, in part, by endeavoring to options are limited. There will be ble of this? If history is any guide, prob- replace conservative Democrats who more in 2020, but Trump then will ably not. He will more likely continue had opposed the New Deal and his have to reckon with the challenge of to tweet caustic remarks about this or Court-packing plan. It did not go well. his own reelection. that senator when the mood strikes. He managed to replace a few House Another problem is the ancient The Senate is bound to be nettle- members, but the conservatives in the compromise hammered out at the some for just about any president. Senate held firm, and FDR’s clout was Constitutional Convention. By giving Take the inherent conservatism of the thereafter diminished. each state two senators, the Constitu- branch, toss in the parochial interests Ultimately, Barack Obama and tion established permanent political and powers of its members, separate Harry Reid were able to get Obama­ fiefdoms. Those who rise to the rank them from the direct influence of the care through the Senate only by of senator usually have become mas- president—​ and​ it adds up to an insti- promising a handful of goodies to ters of their states’ politics and can use tution that stubbornly makes its own recalcitrant members​—​the “Corn- their position in the upper chamber way in our government. Frustrating, husker Kickback” for Ben Nelson, to sustain that elevated rank. Political no doubt. But it has ever been thus, the “Louisiana Purchase” for Mary elites​—​be they in the party, the press, since the first Senate was gaveled into Landrieu, etc. On the Republican the business community, or interest session back in 1789. There is little

side, Lisa Murkowski and John groups​—​are thus naturally deferential Trump can do about this. ♦ POST / GETTY WASHINGTON

16 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 delayed the progress of North Korea’s nuclear program and, at worst, guaran- Feeding the Crocodile teed that Pyongyang pays no price for recurrent defiance. There is another word here for Remember Kim Jong-un? diplomacy, of course, and that is appeasement. And the relevant lesson by Philip Terzian is the same as Winston Churchill’s war- time description of appeasement: the eaders will recall that just Or so his partisans argued: Unlike his hope that if one “feeds the crocodile before memories of the Con- predecessors, who had been grappling enough, the crocodile will eat him last.” R federacy became an existential diplomatically with North Korea’s Yet the irony, as Americans must now threat to national unity, Americans nuclear ambitions since the 1990s, grasp, is that the instinct to appease, were worried about another—and Trump called Kim’s bluff with public while self-defeating in the long run, is surely more plausible—menace to the resolve and a credible threat. And that not entirely irrational in the moment. United States. In early August, Kim was that—no more apocalypse, and Neville Chamberlain is a foreign-pol- Jong-un, the North Korean dictator on to Charlottesville—until last week, icy folk villain; but when he became who has been successfully testing bal- when North Korea successfully fired a prime minister in 1937, memories of listic missiles, threatened the Ameri- ballistic missile over Japanese airspace, the Great War—and 800,000 British can territory of Guam, in the western the first since 2009, and once again, the military dead, nearly 2 percent of the Pacific, with attack. Kim’s security and survival of population—were as fresh as the late nuclear saber-rattling our Asian allies and Pacific 1990s are to us. Contrary to popular was met with a bellicose territories (not to men- myth, Chamberlain and his predeces- response from President tion Honolulu and Seattle) sor Stanley Baldwin had few illusions Trump, who vowed that became a question mark. about the nature of Nazi Germany or any assault on Guam— Even at this juncture, Adolf Hitler. But for them, diplomacy/ and by implication, neigh- it is unlikely that North appeasement was a price worth consid- boring allies such as Japan Korea will pose a palpable ering to avoid a second, and consider- and, of course, South threat anytime soon. But ably more destructive, world war. Korea—would be met it’s clear that its nuclear In that sense, one might argue with “fire and fury like the ambitions are genuine, that our own version of appease- world has never seen.” Kim Jong-un that American soil may ment—it is better to deal with North Indeed, for a worrisome soon lie within Pyong- Korea, directly or indirectly, than to week, the American press felt the yang’s range, and that Kim Jong-un risk a Pacific catastrophe or nuclear nuclear jitters for the first time since seems unimpressed by diplomacy. conflict—has enjoyed some success: the heyday of the freeze movement This may explain why American While the problem has festered, it has in the 1980s. And this time not with- analysts and statesmen, at the moment, remained a problem largely in theory, out reason: North Korea is hurtling seem equipped only to wring their not practice, and bought us time. But steadily toward a deliverable nuclear hands—or better yet, complain about Trump’s belligerence—or, depend- capacity, and Kim is not just unre- Donald Trump—in pondering the ing on your viewpoint, resolve—has lentingly hostile toward the United dilemma of Kim’s bomb. The alterna- yielded rewards as well. If dictators States—which remains technically at tives are almost equally unwelcome. In respect power and despise weakness, war with Pyongyang since the 1953 the midst of his professionally suicidal it is possible that Kim Jong-un’s aspi- armistice—but disconcertingly unpre- interview with the American Prospect, rations have been effectively checked. dictable. Even North Korea’s stra- the then-White House counselor Ste- Or so we may hope. tegic ally and chief trading partner, phen Bannon made the obvious point The point is that while the Kim China, seemed incapable of restrain- that in the event of a military conflict regime in Pyongyang strikes Ameri- ing Kim Jong-un. between North Korea and the United cans as surreal, even comic at times, it is At which point, in the parlance of States, “Until somebody . . . shows me no less lethal—and worst of all, depend- another nuclear standoff, the 1962 that ten million people in Seoul don’t ably volatile. We have glimpsed the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kim blinked. die . . . from conventional weapons, I abyss. In 1939, as the Germans crossed He retreated publicly from his threat don’t know what you’re talking about. the frontier into Poland, the League of to attack Guam, and Trump’s brink- There’s no military solution. They [sic] Nations was debating the codification manship appeared to be vindicated. got us.” But the fruits of diplomacy, of level-crossing signs. Is it smarter to such as they are, have been equally be thinking the unthinkable about the Philip Terzian is a senior editor bleak: Since the Clinton administra- North American continent, or shouting

at The Weekly Standard. tion, the United States has, at best, in rage about Robert E. Lee? ♦ AFP / GETTY

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 17 A Beating in Berkeley Antifa mayhem and malice in Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park

By Matt Labash be dancing in a “Springtime for Hitler” kick line. Don- ald Trump, of course, who draws frequent Hitler compari- Berkeley sons in some quarters, has already set nerves on edge with s white supremacists go, Joey Gibson his nativist rhetoric, perpetually divisive style, and what’s makes for a lousy one. For starters, he’s widely perceived as his winks ’n’ nods to white national- half Japanese. “I don’t feel like I’m Cau- ists. But in the wake of the recent white supremacist casian at all,” he says. Not to be a stick- hoedown in Charlottesville—a cesspool of racial hatred ler for the rules, but this kind of talk that resulted in the death of anti-racism activist Heather couldA get you sent to Master Race remedial school. Heyer when a Nazi fanboy drove his Dodge Challenger And it gets worse. The founder of into her and 19 others—opportunistic left- Patriot Prayer—a Vancouver, Wash.- ists/Democrats have been on the prowl based operation that sponsors rallies and to paint everyone to the right of Angela marches promoting freedom and First Davis as a dangerous racist lunatic. Amendment rights along with all-purpose They seem to have forgotten that the unity—also spews hippie-dippie rhetoric far right hardly has a monopoly on politi- like “moderates have to come together” cal violence. Just a couple of months before and “love and peace [are] the only way to Charlottesville, a Bernie Sanders sup- heal this country.” Joey tends to sound less porter opened fire on a baseball-field full like an alt-right bully boy than a conflict- of Republican congressmen, almost killing resolution facilitator or a Unitarian Sun- Rep. Steve Scalise. And this, of course, has day school teacher. been the year of antifa, the masked anar- For his late August “Liberty Weekend” chists in black ISIS pajamas, who advocate in the Bay Area, which was to include a violence while battling “fascists,” defined free speech rally in San Francisco followed loosely as anyone they don’t like (includ- by a “No to Marxism” rally in Berkeley ing run-of-the-mill Trump supporters). (headed by a local “transsexual patriot”), Antifa have shown up at one right- Joey advertised that “no extremists will leaning gathering after another this year be allowed in. No Nazis, Communists, to administer random beat-downs with KKK, Antifa, white supremacists . . . or everything from metal poles to bike locks white nationalists.” (So much for free to bear spray, causing multitudinous inju- speech.) Likewise, the advertised docket ries and large-scale property damage. Back of speakers was to include “three blacks, in February, they literally set fires on the two Hispanics, one Asian, one Samoan, Berkeley campus, smashing windows as one Muslim, two women, and one white they rampaged through the city streets, to male.” If becoming a liberty movement prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from appear- fixture doesn’t work out for Gibson, he ing, even though the professional provoca- A masked counterprotester has a promising future as a UC Berkeley in Berkeley, August 27 teur frequently speaks about his penchant admissions officer. for sex with black men, which used to Despite all this, you’d have thought from the avalanche count as a social-justice twofer during less polarized times. of alarmist walk-up stories that Gibson and friends would But when it came to Joey Gibson’s Liberty Weekend, enter Nancy Pelosi, who seems to be pining for girlhood

Matt Labash is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. activism days, as she’s billed this “Resistance Summer.” IMAGES: HELENA ZEMANEK

18 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 Gibson secured a permit for his free speech rally to be held Joey was growing increasingly uneasy with the security at Crissy Field, a former Army airfield next to the Golden arrangements, or lack thereof, by Park Service and law- Gate Bridge. But Pelosi loudly suggested the permit be enforcement officials. pulled, saying the National Park Service should reflect Convinced the security situation would resemble an on its “capacity to protect the public during such a toxic” antifa turkey shoot for his attendees, Joey canceled Lib- event, which she termed a “white supremacist rally.” The erty Weekend. I heard the news on TV during my flight. fact that over two-thirds of the event’s scheduled speakers But when I landed, he told me there was no need to board were minorities, that race wasn’t being discussed, and that a return flight home. He was still going to pop up around the event was billed a “day of freedom, spirituality, unity, town, and “there will be craziness—they will still come peace, and patriotism” didn’t seem to cut much ice with her. after me.” He wasn’t kidding. No matter, Pelosi had lots of company. Sen. Dianne Feinstein wrote a letter to the Park Serv­ ice, expressing her dismay that Crissy Field “will be used as a venue for Patriot Prayer’s incitement, hate and intimidation.” The mayors of San Fran- cisco and Berkeley denounced the group, too. Conservative news outlets subsequently revealed that Berkeley’s mayor, Jesse Arreguin, was a Face- book member of BAMN (By Any Means Neces- sary), one of the antifa affinity groups that had helped trash his own city during the Milo riots. Yet this didn’t stop him from announcing that the city had printed up 20,000 “Berkeley Stands United Against Hate” posters for its citizens, not in anticipation of antifa’s next vandalizing, sucker-punching Viking raid, but to put everyone on notice about the Patriot Prayer rally. Perhaps Arreguin was worried antifa would unfriend him ‘Tiny,’ left, and Joey, center, at a Patriot Prayer march in Portland, June 30 on Facebook. Properly whipped into an anti-racism frenzy, the Bay Area did what the Bay Area loves doing most. Or second JOEY AND ‘TINY’ most, after driving low-income minorities out of hopelessly meet up with Joey and his ever-present sidekick, expensive neighborhoods so that tech millionaires can live Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, in front of their budget hotel on in them. They planned counterprotests! Lots of them. The I San Francisco’s Lombard Street. Joey doesn’t look so events list ran to multiple pages. much half-Japanese as like a Latino gang-banger, in head- There would be “empathy tents” and “mobile dance” to-toe black (including his Patriot Prayer T-shirt), with counter rallies. They slated candlelight vigils and Michael generous arm ink. Tiny, you might have guessed, is named Franti concerts, “anti-hate” marches and “Flowers Against ironically. He’s a 6ʹ6ʺ, 345-lb. Samoan. His favorite food, Fascism.” One event was titled “Calling All Clowns”— he says, “is food.” Grabbing a bear-paw’s worth of his own a “call for anti-racist, anti-fascist clowns to descend upon flesh, he says, “I ain’t fat, I’m stab-resistant.” Crissy Field to mercilessly ridicule any neo-nazis, white We pack into a compact rental Toyota so small that supremacists, or alt-right trolls who dare show their face.” the steering wheel crushes Tiny’s crotch. Joey always Then there was the invitation for concerned citizens to buys the full-insurance package, since antifa has done every- deposit “your dog poop on Crissy Field” in order to “leave thing from slash his tires to douse his car in degreaser to strip a gift for our alt-right friends.” A Guardian headline-writer the paint job. He has been punched, pepper-sprayed, billed this the “Turd Reich.” hit in the head with silly-string cans, and choked (“he Joey, for his part, wasn’t worried about menacing looked like a dolphin,” Tiny mocks, making limp flipper clowns or dog droppings. He was worried that his rallies motions with his hands). Tiny shows me a slash wound on would come to resemble Altamont, a hellscape of dark and his arm, courtesy of an earlier antifa encounter at one of their eruptive violence. Since rally-goers would likely be out- rallies, and a gnarled bruise on the bridge of his nose, where numbered by hecklers and antifa ninjas by about 10-to-1 in he caught an axe-handle from a nominal ally who thought one of the most aggressively liberal enclaves in the world, Tiny was antifa and whacked him by mistake.

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 19 All of this sounds like the Crips versus the Bloods for divided us as a people. “We have to focus on the division, white people (or for Japanese and Samoans, as the case may first,” Joey says. “The division is allowing extremists to be be). Joey is fully aware of the ridiculousness. Never particu- involved.” He learned that lesson the hard way earlier this larly political—he detests labels, but allows that he’s a mod- year when Jeremy Christian showed up in the crowd at one erate libertarian with a strong taste for freedom—Joey came of his rallies in Portland, spewing hatred and Nazi talk. to activism through anger, as most people do these days. Joey and his cohorts were wigged out by him and showed “I’m surrounded by anger all the time, and I really struggle him the door. A month later, Christian stabbed three peo- with that,” he says of the often unsavory people he crosses ple on a Portland commuter train, killing two of them, paths with, both on his side and the other. Joey himself, after they came to the defense of two girls at whom Chris- though, rarely loses his cool, and even in high-pressure sit- tian was barking anti-Muslim slurs. Proving that people uations appears as calm as a Zen monk. are never simple—especially insane ones—Christian was A Washington state house-flipper who has also spent the largely portrayed as a Trumpkin/far-right tool, although past decade coaching high school foot- he’d written on his Facebook ball (he was a starting high school quar- page: “Bernie Sanders was the terback himself), Joey counted himself Blaming Patriot Prayer President I wanted.” a vague Trump supporter. Like many for provoking antifa into Tiny, 21, also came to poli- people, he enjoyed watching someone tics through anger. Convinced upset the establishment. But he was attacking them at their all Trumpkins were racists, “I’d radicalized after watching online the own events is a bit like drive around and beat them up,” aftermath of the June 2, 2016, Trump blaming black marchers he says nonchalantly. When he rally in San Jose, where departing rally- for provoking racist couldn’t find any to sass him back goers were hunted down, egged, and Alabama policemen into in street encounters after he’d beaten like dogs in the street by vicious provoked them, he’d go home mobs. For those who thought Trump creasing their skulls with and watch other Trump support- rallies got violent—and they occasion- billy clubs for traversing ers get pounded online. “It made ally did, with hecklers getting decked the Edmund Pettus me happy. F‌—‌in’ racists getting and candidate Trump sometimes root- Bridge. It’s both a denial beaten up,” he said. While look- ing on the deckers—there are hours of basic human freedoms ing for more anti-Trumpkin-vio- and hours of online footage of Trump lence to enjoy, he clicked one day supporters catching sustained abuse and victim-blaming of the on video from one of Joey’s ral- from “liberals,” assuming that term any highest order. lies. “He gave a speech” about love longer applies. and unity, says Tiny. “Everything Joey believed that a person should be able to attend he said made me confused. I thought all these f—ers were the political rally of his choice in America, or to wear a violent and racist. So I kind of had a change of heart and MAGA hat in a place like Portland, Ore., without worrying reached out to Joey. If I had found out about antifa before about getting hit in the face. So he started Patriot Prayer in finding out about him, I’d have been antifa, too.” 2016—it has no employees, and he takes no money from Here, Joey chants a favorite antifa chant: “No Trump, it. He began throwing rallies and marches in liberal cities no KKK, no fascist USA!” on the West Coast. In the early days, his rallies had overtly pro-Trump themes. These days, mentions of Trump have EVERYONE’S REDEEMABLE mostly been scrubbed from his own rhetoric, as he knows ogether, Joey and Tiny represent a sort of yin and even invoking the name can be alienating. (Plenty of those yang of antifa foes. Joey doesn’t begrudge any of who show up at his events are ardent Trumpers, with whom T his comrades defending themselves if they’re he maintains an easy rapport.) Instead, his emphasis is on attacked, which plenty, along with Tiny, lustily do. For freedom and unity. When I ask him to distill his message, instance, there’s Kyle “Based Stickman” Chapman. Stick- he says, “Unity, peace, love, truth—these simple things,” man gained Internet folk-hero status, along with his nick- sounding not at all like your average Trumpkin. “People name, by breaking a wooden signpost over some antifa get mad when I say that, because they say that’s not good ninja’s head after they’d invaded a Trump rally in March enough. They want more specifics, like ‘What’s your view in one of this year’s Battles of Berkeley. We head over to on abortion?’ They want all these political messages.” Stickman’s house just south of San Francisco for a strat- But politics, as the last several years have evidenced, egy session and then again later to watch the Mayweather/ are by definition divisive. They have both amped up and McGregor fight.

20 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 Providing Krispy Kremes and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer it comes to suppressing their own extremists, who seem as he chain-smokes American Spirits, Stickman, a squared- hellbent on suppressing everyone else. As with some of off salvage diver who looks like the fifth Baldwin brother, the rancid elements of the right, when the moderates are tells me that he faces eight years in the pen for some of his quiet, extremist voices become amplified. “I’m also trying Braveheart exploits—all captured on YouTube, of course. to help conservatives understand that they have a warped Perhaps even worse, the judge said he’s not allowed to perception of liberals, because the good liberals are keeping go anywhere near sticks, putting a crimp in the trademark. While Stickman admits he’s a “Western chauvinist” (his antifa adversar- ies love to portray him as a supremacist), he’s called the participants in Charlottesville “racist alt-right f—in’ Nazis.” His Asian wife and child appear while I’m there, once again complicating assumed narratives. Tiny, a former youth pastor and now a strip- club bouncer, will proudly show you Internet footage of himself dropping an antifa combat- ant like a sack of wet cement when he fool- ishly chopped at the mighty Samoan. But he says Joey never, ever fights back. While Joey’s years on the gridiron suggest he can both take a hit and deliver one, Tiny says his strategy seems to be “making people feel badly about Above: At Crissy Field, the originally scheduled Patriot Prayer beating him up.” He’s never seen Joey throw rally site, a counterprotester, left, argues with a Patriot Prayer supporter, a punch, no matter how much he’s assaulted. at right, August 26; below, two counterprotesters in masks cross Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park to join an antifa mob. For the sometimes-violent racket that he’s in, it’s a very Gandhi/Jesus approach. I point out to the 33-year-old that he’s the same age J. C. was when He died. It seems to bother Joey for a sec- ond. “Well, my birthday is in November,” the married father of two says. Joey admits he’s not some perfectly pure-of- heart missionary, that he’s also a bit of a provo- cateur. Though how provocative should it be, he wonders, to attend your own free-speech ral- lies in liberal enclaves in a free country without wishing to be physically attacked? Media types frequently charge that violence follows his ral- lies, and indeed it does. Precisely because antifa brings it. Blaming Patriot Prayer for provoking antifa into attacking them at their own events is a bit like blaming black marchers for provoking racist Alabama policemen into creasing their skulls with quiet.” Joey says. “You go on YouTube and see thousands billy clubs for traversing the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It’s of videos of social justice warriors acting like crazy Batman both a denial of basic human freedoms and victim-blaming because that’s what gets the views. You’re not going to see a of the highest order. video of a normal liberal making sense, you know?” When Joey draws antifa out to show themselves, it’s Joey holds the door open for liberals in his freedom- not really conservatives he’s trying to reach. Conservatives loving unity movement, and some, including liberals of already loathe antifa, he says. Rather, Joey’s interested in color, have joined. One African-American liberal I meet, appealing to good, honest middle-of-the-road liberals. He Ryoga Vee, signed on after having an antifa member call likes them and believes there are plenty of them still out him a Nazi and then try to set him on fire with a road flare

IMAGES: HELENA ZEMANEK there. They’re just not terribly vocal at the moment when when Vee attempted to attend Milo’s Berkeley speech out

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 21 of curiosity. “I don’t care who you vote for,” Joey says, so sponging off girlfriends. He used people. He used a lot of long as you’re pro-freedom. drugs, whatever was available. He even did a short stint in When Joey first started protesting, and was still oper- jail for breaking into a restaurant and “stealing 1,200 bucks ating with a lot of anger, he headed to Cleveland for the just for the fun of it.” Republican National Convention. He saw an “anarchist But Joey came back. People helped him. He remem- and his stupid little buddy” holding a “f— the police” sign. bered who he was and got his heart straight again. Maybe Joey snapped, and ripped the sign in half. “His buddy came because of his own time in darkness, he thinks everyone’s up to the other guy and said, ‘You need to tell the police!’ ” redeemable and anyone can be helped, including those we (Presumably, not the same police referred to in the sign.) think are bad guys who don’t even know they need it. This “But I felt bad,” he says. “People just need to express what is a truth that he thinks we’ve all but forgotten. they believe. You think if I tear his sign in half, all of the sudden he’s gonna be like, ‘Oh, you’re right. I shouldn’t say DODGING ANTIFA f— the police’? So I gave him 20 bucks for his sign. He was ith Patriot Prayer’s rallies canceled at the last just shocked. He thought I was going to beat them up. He minute, the Patriots who made it to town any- was like, ‘Do you want change?’ I said no. He said, ‘Thanks, W way decide to have a press conference. They man, I appreciate that.’ ” slate it for Alamo Square, across from San Francisco’s It’s a lesson he has to learn over and over again: Treat Painted Ladies. But the cops, still fearing violence, fence it people like they’re human, and they’ll cease merely to be off before they can get there. Unable to find a secure indoor one-dimensional objects of scorn. Joey tells me he used venue, the Patriots notify some reporters, tell them not to be a bad person. After high school, he had a wild, self- to announce the particulars so that antifa doesn’t disrupt destructive streak. He dropped out for a time, willingly them, and have a hurried presser in a pasture at a far-flung going homeless, though he came from a decent, stable fam- community center down the peninsula in Pacifica. ily. He tramped around for three years, backpacking every- An ethnically diverse group of Patriots address the where from Hawaii to Mexico, camping in the woods and assembled reporters. One of them, Will Johnson, announces

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22 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 hpe.com/supercomputing

URL_HPE(ShipLong)_WeeklyStand_4CHPCS.indd 1 8/14/17 7:42 AM that he is a black American and a Christian. “This is not a reads “F— you, f— you, f— you, f— you, have a nice day.” neo-Nazi, white supremacist rally,” he says. “I don’t know Further dialogue is obscured by an antifa member holding where they got that from. I actually called Nancy Pelosi’s two eardrum-shattering horn sirens. The cops hustle us off, office and asked her to change that. There’s no way I am a suggesting we have to leave, as though the Patriots are the white supremacist.” Looking at this black man with dreads, disturbers of the peace. On the way out of the park, another reporters laugh, but press on anyway with skeptical ques- group of Patriots get their car stoned by antifa. tions about the Patriots being potentially violent, forgetting We stop by a restaurant, where I see a multi-genera- that the entire reason we’re in this out-of-the-way place is tional family sitting. They are clearly protesters, as one to stay one step ahead of antifa, whose stated goal is shut- has a “Stop Trump/Pence Fascist Regime” sign sticking ting down “white supremacists” like an African-American out of a stroller. Another wears a Cuban revolutionary hat. man saying “we’ve got to stop this fighting in America.” Two have “Indivisible” T-shirts on. A gray-haired woman When a cop informs the Patriots that their whereabouts literally has flowers in her hair. I walk over to their table have leaked on social media, the press conference is hastily and ask if they’d like to meet the man they are protesting, concluded, and Joey, Tiny, and I beat it back to the Toyota. who is sitting at the bar, nursing a Patrón while Tiny has a With many of the counterprotests proceeding despite Lib- Sprite. Their faces grow pinched. They look uneasy. “No, erty Weekend being canceled, Joey wants to pop up all over thank you,” one of them says sternly. “Have a nice day.” the city anyway in order to have “dialogues,” reasoning that Afterwards, we walk down to Civic Center, where an if people can just talk to him, some of their anger and fear all-day protest wrapped up about 30 minutes earlier. Joey’s will recede. It does and doesn’t. presence there causes an immediate stir among the strag- We hit Crissy Field, the originally scheduled rally glers. A panicked woman in a “Resist” shirt closes a secu- site. There are just a few protesters, scattered antifa, and rity gate, as though he might crash the stage and boost the an overwhelming police presence. Everyone is still ner- sound system. She films him with her iPhone, as though vous violence will go off. Whatever dialogue could occur is Joey’s a dangerous wild animal she spotted on safari. mostly drowned out by a screaming woman in a shirt that Others end up forming a circle around him, with

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September 11, 2017 The Whpe.com/supercomputingeekly Standard / 23

URL_HPE(ShipLong)_WeeklyStand_4CHPCS.indd 1 8/14/17 7:42 AM spirited exchanges taking place as bike cops press in on all “Why do we need radios?” wonders Joey. “Couldn’t we just sides. A demented Indian guy wants Joey to reclaim the use phones like everyone else? The veterans like to have symbol of the swastika, which the Nazis appropriated from their fun.” When we get to Berkeley, nobody can find park- his people. “That’s your battle,” Joey says. There’s a Black ing near each other, while staying 10 or so blocks away Panther who wants to kick Stickman’s ass for allegedly from the action in order to protect the cars. As the ex-mil- pepper-spraying him at a rally, and he’s hoping Joey will itary types among them seem to take a half an hour to kit give him his address. Joey won’t, but the Panther says he up (pads, tear-gas goggles, GoPro cameras, etc.), Joey and respects him anyway for coming down and facing the peo- I both have to take a leak. We do so stealthily in a nearby ple. There’s a huffy white beardo in a rainbow “Orlando” park. Joey doesn’t want to get caught on camera literally shirt who keeps interrupting Joey accusatorily, while trying pissing on Berkeley. Bad optics. to give the floor to people of color, who he deems worthy of While the preparations continue, I grow impatient. listening to. A masked-up antifa blasts a horn siren a foot “Let’s go! This is Berkeley, not Somalia,” I say. Joey agrees away from Joey’s ear for a good 10 min- and isn’t sure it’s wise to come in utes, while a man dressed in a Super Girl with a large contingent anyway. It costume, complete with red boots and A hundred or so makes it look like you’re spoiling cape, yells at him to stop. masked-up antifa for combat, and fighting is not his A forceful black surgical nurse who ninjas and affiliated intention. So he stalks off towards calls herself a liberal ends up fiercely the demonstration with me, Tiny defending Joey and Tiny against all protesters seem to (now in goggles and football shoul- comers, turning the tables on liberal simultaneously turn. der pads), and a political rapper who hypocrisy. “They’re so progressive, but It looks like we’ve plays Patriots events named Pete V, they go home in their BMWs back to interrupted al Qaeda aka Political Muscle. Pete looks like Glen Park, where they don’t have to walk tryouts. Joey, Tiny, a pirate with a stars’n’stripes do-rag, through Tenderloin shit.” She shames peo- which in these parts doubles as a ple for slandering these black men as white and Pete all raise bull’s-eye on your head. supremacists when “we’re missing one their hands high in the On the walk up to the square, vital element, which is whiteness.” Joey air, and flash peace Joey’s several paces ahead, seem- sheepishly points out that he’s not black, signs, a conciliatory ingly in another zone, not even he’s Japanese. “You’re a person of color,” gesture. But nobody noticing the protester in the “Nasty the woman barks. “I’ll take that,” he says. Woman” shirt who starts filming The exchanges last for an hour. here wants peace. him, as though she’s doing surveil- Though Joey stays serene throughout, the lance. After all the hype, he is now so conversation rages around him like a whirlwind. It is rau- infamous in Berkeley his face is instantly recognizable, and cous and rude but occasionally affirming and generous. It’s people act like it’s Jesse James walking into a bank. They untidy, but there’s something beautiful about it, as there elbow each other, scandalized. often is when people just stand in front of each other and From the moment we hit the square, the “Nazi” catcalls interact, instead of regarding each other from a distance with start. Whatever’s happening on the stage seems to cease to mutual suspicion. Close your eyes and shut off the antifa exist, and the energy around us turns very dark, very fast. horn siren, and free speech can sound a lot like music. Joey, Tiny, and Pete start walking with greater purpose, on the balls of their feet, almost like fighters entering a ring MAYHEM IN THE PARK or Christians entering the Coliseum, except instead of fac- he next day in Berkeley, a different tune is played. ing one lion, they’re facing thousands. As the chants rain A small band of Patriots decide to visit the Martin down (“Nazis are here! . . . F— you! . . . F—ing fascists!”), T Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, where the “No we near the stage thinking we might find some kind of buf- to Marxism” rally was to be held. It has now been appropri- fer zone, since the police knew that some of Joey’s original ated by thousands of impromptu protesters. The Patriots rally-goers would show up. But there isn’t one. Our prog- will make a stand for free speech, without actually expect- ress is halted when we run up into a small clearing snug up ing to be able to talk. I ask Joey what the objective is today. against a barrier. And behind that barrier, near the park’s “Not dying,” he says. “Peace Wall,” is a wall of human blackness. From the jump, it’s a goat rodeo. Our four-car caravan A hundred or so masked-up antifa ninjas and affiliated gets separated coming out of the hotel parking lot. When protesters seem to simultaneously turn. It looks like we’ve the Patriots try to rendezvous, their radios aren’t working. interrupted al Qaeda tryouts. Joey, Tiny, and Pete all raise

24 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 their hands high in the air, and flash peace signs, a con- our streets” chant. There’s the gray-haired interdenomina- ciliatory gesture. But nobody here wants peace. Not with tional “Choral Majority” singing peace songs: “There’s no fascists on the scene. As Joey nears the barrier, one of the hatred in my land / Where I’m bound.” I want to vomit on ninjas swings and misses. Then the barrier topples, and the Berkeley Peace Wall. they pour over, chanting, “Fascists go home!” I’m made even more sick when I look down the road As I’m reading the action into my recorder, antifa slides and see a punching, kicking mob form a circle around a around me on all sides, nearly carrying me off like a breaking wave. The boys are about 20 yards off and walk backwards. Pete catches a shot right on his stars’n’stripes dome from a two-by-four and goes down, blacking out for a second. Tiny, trying to protect everybody, pulls him up with his massive Samoan hand and pushes him out of the scrum. The mob ignores Pete, as he’s just an appe- tizer. Joey is the entree. First he catches a slap in the head, then someone gashes him with something in his ribs. He keeps his hands up, as though that will save him, while he keeps getting dragged backwards by his shirt, Tiny trying to pull him away from the bloodthirsty ninjas. Someone crashes a flagpole smack on Joey’s head, which will leave a welt so big that Tiny later calls him “the Uni- corn.” Not wishing to turn his back on the crowd, a half-speed backwards chase ensues, as Joey and Tiny Above: Pete V, a Patriot Prayer supporter, passes in front of are blasted with shots of bear spray and pepper spray. masked and black-clad antifa ranks in Berkeley, moments They hurdle a jersey barrier, crossing Martin Luther before they attack him; below, the attackers pepper-spray King Jr. Way while antifa continue throwing bottles at rally organizer Joey Gibson as Tiny Toese pulls him away. them. The mob stalks Joey and Tiny all the way to an Alameda County police line, which the two bull their way through, though the cops initially look like they’re going to play Red Rover and keep them out. No arrests are made. Except for Joey and Tiny, who are cuffed. A crack reporter for the Los Angeles Times will later write that they were arrested for charging the police, which couldn’t be less true. A Berkeley cop tells me they were arrested for their own safety (and weren’t charged). When I catch up and reach the police line, the cops won’t let me past to follow my subjects. My reportorial dispas- sion has worn thin. I yell at the police for doing nothing, for standing by while two men could’ve been killed. One cop tells me there’s a thin line between solving one prob- lem and being the cause of more, as though they’re afraid to offend antifa. I am sick at what I just witnessed. Angry, new victim. By the time I roll up on them, an older man even. I wheel around on some protesters, asking them if in camo-wear spits out from the maelstrom. As he runs to they think it’s right to beat people down in the street. “Hell safety, an antifa thug runs up behind him, sucker-punching yeah,” says one. I ask them to cite anything Joey has said him as hard as he can in the back. I will go home that night that offends them, as though being offended justifies this. A and watch several more cold-blooded beatdowns on You- coward in a black mask says: “They’re f—ing Nazis. There’s Tube that I didn’t personally witness. nothing they have to say to offend us.” A squad car rolls up on the mob, but the black masks All around me, good non-antifa liberals go about their block it. The cop throws his car into slow reverse, inch- business, pretending none of this has happened, carry- ing backwards, as if to say “please don’t hurt me,” while an ing “Stand Against Hate” signs. There’s the sound truck antifa member yells “F— you, pig!” Finally, I start hearing

TOP, ELIJAH NOUVELAGE / GETTY; BELOW, AMY OSBORNE / AFP GETTY BELOW, ELIJAH NOUVELAGE / GETTY; TOP, with preachers in clerical garb, leading a “Whose streets/ whistling smoke grenades fired by the otherwise useless

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 25 somebody’s going to get killed, just as someone was in Charlottesville. Violence, he says, still smiling, is “as American as apple pie. Berkeley pie.” “You can’t like this,” I tell him. “If you like the horseshoe theory of American poli- tics,” he rejoins, “the far right and the far left are closer than either believe.”

‘WE CAN’T JUST SHUT UP’ y phone rings, showing Joey’s number, but it’s Tiny, telling me Joey’s been taken M to the hospital. Tiny’s about to be released from police custody. He’ll pick me up on a side street behind the station, so as not to attract more antifa attention. When I get into the Toyota, I suggest that Tiny maybe ought to change out of his American flag shirt if he wants to be stealthy. A red-white-and-blue 6ʹ6ʺ Samoan doesn’t exactly whisper, “Ignore me.” But Tiny is obstinate: “They wanna rip off this shirt? Kill me. Because it ain’t comin’ off.” Above, masked counterprotesters kick and punch a Hispanic man in Martin Luther We head to the hospital. Joey is King Jr. Civic Center Park, August 27; discharged, wearing doctor scrubs at right, Tiny and Joey, post-release. and socks, holding his clothes and shoes in a plastic bag, completely police, dispersing the crowd. I watch saturated with bear and pepper antifa retreat in every direction, some spray. They had to scrub him down jumping fences and cutting through in the shower for an hour to get it residential yards. As I run down the off, his skin burning all the while. street, getting out of range, I’m joined I’ve taken the wheel of the Toyota, by a middle-aged man I saw wit- with Tiny sleeping in the cramped nessing what I just witnessed, filming it on his phone. back seat after injuring his ribs. He insists they’re not bro- His name is Bobby Hutton, or at least that’s the name ken, but his forehead is clammy, and he’s cold sweating. he gives me. He’s not antifa. He looks and talks like a I tell my battle-weary subjects I’ll treat them to din- surfer dude, with long hair and aviator shades, and identi- ner and drinks after their ordeal, but we’re getting the hell fies himself as a political activist. He’s smiling, seemingly out of Berkeley, as I honestly don’t trust that they won’t be entertained by the spectacle. I ask him how he can smile, attacked again, here in the cradle of the Free Speech Move- as if what we’ve just witnessed is all okay. “It’s politics,” ment, if somebody spots them. As we drive over the San he says, shrugging. “Politics is in the street. Always has Mateo Bridge, I ask Joey how he feels about what happened been, and always will be.” I tell him I’m profiling Joey. today. “I’m starting to love this town,” he deadpans. “It’s “Oh, that’s fun,” he says. I add that I haven’t heard one starting to be my playground.” disturbing, racist thing come out of Joey’s mouth. “I’m Then he gets serious. “We can’t just shut up, just be familiar with Joey’s presence,” Hutton says. “And you’re quiet, and let this evil continue. The darkness contin- right that he stays on this side of white supremacy. But ues to get bigger and bigger in our country, and it will he’s a shit disturber. And if you wanna disturb shit, Berke- be gone. The country will burn, I’m telling you, if we ley’s always been a good place for that. There aren’t a lot of don’t do things to stand up against it. We all take it for places in America where you can get this kind of opposi- granted. We take for granted everything that we have. tion, and Joey knows that. Which is why Joey’s here.” That’s why we have to wake up and understand. Goddamn, Hutton claims antifa has “legitimate political beliefs.” we have too much to lose.” His eyes well as he takes a long I tell him beating people down in the street to suppress pause, looking out on the shimmering San Francisco Bay. their speech doesn’t sound very legitimate or American “We can’t stand by, we’ve gotta stand up. And we’ve got to

to me, and that eventually, if this nonsense continues, do it together, or it’s gonna be gone.” ♦ IMAGES: HELENA ZEMANEK

26 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 Regulatory Rollback Paging the attorney general: the administrative state won’t deconstruct itself

By Adam J. White to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Gov- ernment Affairs, never to return. hen the new Congress convened in But seven years later, Sessions has the opportunity to January, its immediate focus was play a much more significant role in securing enactment the administrative state. After pass- of legislative reforms that he has long advocated. Now, as ing the Midnight Rules Relief Act to attorney general, Sessions can focus national attention on accelerate the process for nullifying these issues. To borrow a favorite phrase from a predeces- theW Obama administration’s major regulations, the House sor, Eric Holder, the Justice Department can convene a promptly passed the REINS Act—the Regulations from “national conversation” on the modern administrative state. the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act—which prohib- Indeed, if the attorney general fails to shine a spotlight its agencies from imposing costly new regulations without on this issue, then it risks languishing once again in the Congress’s express approval. Days later, the House passed Senate. Even with a bipartisan coalition of senators now the Regulatory Accountability Act, to subject agencies’ rule- promoting regulatory reforms, there remains significant making efforts to new procedural requirements and height- risk that this year’s regulatory reform bills will ultimately ened judicial review. share the same sad fate as previous years’ versions. The Much of this had a familiar ring to it. The House had attorney general and the Justice Department are uniquely passed the REINS Act and Regulatory Accountability Act well-suited to inform this national debate and energize the before—repeatedly. Versions of the bills passed the House reform effort—just as their predecessors did seven decades in 2011, 2013, and 2015, only to die in the Senate each time. ago, at the dawn of the modern administrative state. Not that the bills didn’t have fans in the Senate. In late 2010, a dozen senators cosponsored the REINS Act. Among hen former White House adviser Steve Ban- them was Alabama’s Senator Jeff Sessions, who painted the non told the audience at the 2017 Conserva- state of American governance in bleak terms: W tive Political Action Conference that the new administration was committed to “deconstruction of the We’ve witnessed a dramatic expansion of the use of admin- administrative state,” the CPAC crowd burst into applause. istrative rulemaking to set national policy on major issues. There is an appropriate role for administrative rules, but it Bannon and the Trump administration were preaching to is a dereliction of congressional duty to allow the executive the choir. Conservatives have long clamored for thorough branch to fill in important details of legislation after it is reform of modern administrative governance. Year after passed, and it is an executive overreach to use the rulemak- year, the House has passed significant legislation to reform, ing process to circumvent the will of the people. This prob- lem is exacerbated by the trend of appointing unelected modernize, and restrain the agencies. In recent years, con- czars that are not subject to Senate confirmation or the servatives drew additional intellectual energy from the scrutiny of congressional oversight. This legislation would judicial opinions of Justice Clarence Thomas and several implement important changes in the rulemaking process federal judges (including Neil Gorsuch), and from books to limit the scope of rulemaking authority, and to ensure that Congress passes judgment on major rules that could like Philip Hamburger’s Is Administrative Law Unlawful? affect our economy. And the reformist mood only intensified as the Obama administration grew increasingly aggressive and creative in Senator Sessions’s plea fell on deaf ears; upon its intro- asserting administrative power, unilaterally setting national duction, that year’s version of the REINS Act was referred policies on health care, energy markets, immigration, and even the Internet, either in lieu of statutory authorization or Adam J. White is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and in outright defiance of Congress’s statutes. director of the Center for the Study of the Administrative State But while recent efforts to reform regulatory agencies at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. have been led by conservative Republicans, they have found

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 27 support among some Democrats, too—especially Senators president. Regulatory reform “should not be controver- Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill, and others. sial,” she said, “because I just keep asking my colleagues, Such bipartisan interest might surprise contemporary you could have a president that is not a Democrat. What observers, but it is hardly unprecedented. In his speech oversight, what accountability do you want for the decisions accepting the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, that are going to be made in that case?” And so she stressed Jimmy Carter insisted that “Democrats believe that compe- the need for bipartisan cooperation on regulatory reform. tition is better than regulation, and we intend to combine “When we can sit down,” she told one witness called by the strong safeguards for consumers with minimal intrusion of Republican majority, “and you and I nod our heads in total government in our free economic system.” In the four years agreement about kind of where we are, recognizing that that followed, the Carter administration set precedents for we may not agree on everything as a matter of politics, we some of the Reagan administration’s most important regula- know that we have some fertile ground here to actually get tory reforms; Carter’s Executive Order 12044, for example, something done.” asserted significant White House oversight of the scattered One particularly fertile piece of ground for bipartisan agencies’ rulemaking efforts. In the 1980s, Senator Dale reform is the modernization of the Administrative Pro- Bumpers pressed unsuccessfully for legislation cedure Act of 1946. That 70-year-old piece of intensifying judicial review of agency actions. legislation remains the most important body And after the Reagan-Bush years, President of law governing federal agencies’ regulatory Clinton continued his predecessors’ practice actions. At the time of its enactment, it was a of overseeing administrative agencies. “The realistic, practical set of laws that reflected the American people deserve a regulatory system daily work of administrative agencies. Seven that works for them, not against them,” he decades later, however, the APA reflects a world announced in Executive Order 12866: “a regu- that no longer­ exists—a “lost world of admin- latory system that protects and improves their istrative law,” as two professors recently put it. health, safety, environment, and well-being Administrative agencies long ago learned how and improves the performance of the economy It’s no time to go to sidestep or minimize the APA’s septuagenar- without imposing unacceptable or unreason- wobbly, Jeff. ian standards. When the APA’s breezy process able costs on society” and “regulatory policies for “informal rulemaking”—that is, notice-and- that recognize that the private sector and private markets comment rulemaking—can be used to impose far-reaching are the best engine for economic growth.” and disruptive national policies ranging from the EPA’s Today, that spirit of good-government reform among Clean Power Plan to the FCC’s Open Internet Order on progressives is carried on first and foremost by North Dako- broadband Internet services, it is clear that the APA and ta’s Heitkamp and West Virginia’s Manchin. Heitkamp, a other parts of administrative law are due for reform and former state attorney general and state tax commissioner, modernization, to better reflect the realities of today’s over- worked to reduce the regulatory burden in North Dakota. weening administrative state. She recounted this experience in a 2016 address to a Fed- The House has repeatedly passed legislation to bulk eralist Society conference: “With the right kind of scalpel, up the APA’s procedural requirements and judicial-review with the right kind of innovation, with the right kind of standards, in a bill known as the Regulatory Accountability direction,” she said, “we can in fact pare down this morass Act. This spring, Senators Heitkamp and Manchin joined of regulations that we have.” Heitkamp is no libertarian; in Republican colleagues Rob Portman and Orrin Hatch in her Federalist Society talk, she reiterated the basic need for cosponsoring a Senate version of the bill. Because it is bipar- government to use smart regulation to set reliable ground tisan, it reflects some moderation of the House’s bill. But it rules to protect the public and undergird functioning mar- remains a significant improvement upon the status quo. kets. This requires government to strike a balance: “It’s a At least it would be an improvement, if the Senate and tricky balance in regulation; it’s a tricky balance in trying House were to pass it and the president were to sign it. to figure out at what point [you] do not try and regulate a perfect world, but at what point do you walk away and say, resident Trump already has signed many documents ‘buyer beware’?” to reform and improve the modern administrative To that end, Senator Heitkamp has sought common P process. But to date they all have been executive ground with Senate Republicans. At a September 2016 orders, not legislation, and thus they stand little chance of hearing, she observed that Democrats skeptical of regula- outlasting the inauguration of the next Democratic presi- tory reform in the Obama years might come to appreciate dent. President Trump has ordered executive agencies to

the need for greater agency accountability under a different rescind two old regulations for every new one and to cap the GAGE SKIDMORE!

28 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 total costs imposed by regulations. He has ordered agencies public at large upon the vital role played by the administra- to review and reduce regulatory burdens upon the develop- tive process.” Given the criticisms that “have from time to ment of U.S. energy resources. He has issued orders direct- time been directed at certain features of administrative pro- ing agencies to reform their regulation of private lands, cedure,” he concluded that it “would tend toward a clarity of financial markets, education, and other subjects. And to thinking to ascertain in a thorough and comprehensive man- carry out these executive orders and Congress’s statutes, ner to what extent, if any, these criticisms are well founded President Trump has appointed a number of cabinet sec- and to suggest improvements if any are found advisable.” retaries and officials, including EPA administrator Scott To aid his special committee in its work, Attorney General Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and White House Murphy created an advisory committee with representatives “regulatory czar” Neomi Rao, who bring a reform-minded from all federal agencies, to contribute their own expertise. approach to their offices. Murphy recognized that this work fell squarely in the These are all welcome achievements. But long-lasting Justice Department’s wheelhouse. “The Department of Jus- reform requires legislation. And that may not happen with- tice has played a vital part in the recent reform of Federal out the aforementioned Jeff Sessions. civil procedure,” he recalled. “It owes a duty to render simi- Attorney General Sessions already has reiterated Pres- lar service in respect to administrative procedure.” ident Trump’s calls for regulatory reform. Pursuant to In the years that followed, the Justice Department did Executive Order 13777, Enforcing the Regulatory Reform not shrink from that duty. In 1941, under Attorney General Agenda, the Justice Department has established a task force Robert Jackson, the Justice Department’s committee pro- for identifying regulations to be repealed or reformed, and duced a landmark report on the need to reform administra- in late June the department issued a request for public com- tive law. And in 1947, a year after President Truman signed ment on “specific regulatory actions previously taken by the the Administrative Procedure Act into law, the Justice Department that should be repealed, replaced, or modified, Department (then led by Tom Clark) issued a final report consistent with applicable law.” explaining the new law’s standards. This work proved to be But the attorney general can go much further. The so influential and credible that the Supreme Court and other Justice Department is uniquely positioned to inform and courts continue to turn to it deferentially, to better under- help to lead the legislative effort to reform and modernize stand how the APA’s terms should be construed and applied. administrative law. The Justice Department litigates regu- That is the best possible service that the Justice Depart- latory cases every day, defending administrative agencies’ ment could possibly render now toward the goal of reform- actions in the federal courts and even in the Supreme Court. ing the administrative state and modernizing administrative No one knows better than the Justice Department the fault law. The Regulatory Accountability Act, the REINS Act, lines and leverage points of administrative law, and thus and other bills pending in the House and Senate would be no one in government can speak more credibly on the best immense improvements on our outdated administrative ways to improve administrative law than Justice officials. statutes. But if these measures get stuck in the gridlock of This is not a task that can be accomplished within liti- health care and tax reforms, then the Justice Department gation itself. While in theory the Justice Department can can seize the opportunity to expand upon Congress’s work. forswear reliance upon judicial doctrines that tilt too far Indeed, the Justice Department could convene a much in favor of the agencies, in practice lawyers cannot simply broader national conversation, bringing together the state refuse to invoke precedents and statutes in their favor. But if attorneys general who, led by Texas’s Ken Paxton, recently the Justice Department cannot change the rules in the mid- sent the White House a letter offering further suggestions dle of a particular game, the department can ask Congress to for structural regulatory reform. Such an effort by Sessions level the playing field for everyone going forward. would echo the legacy of his predecessors—such as Attor- Indeed, this is precisely the role that the Justice Depart- ney General Ed Meese, who led the Reagan-era project of ment played in the years leading to the development of the returning American constitutionalism to its proper roots in Administrative Procedure Act in the 1940s. For the first part the Constitution’s text. And it would echo the legacies of of the 20th century, the nascent field of administrative law attorneys general Frank Murphy and Robert Jackson, who spurred intense debate among lawyers, scholars, and govern- dedicated years to the project of understanding the admin- ment officials. Eventually, in 1939, Attorney General Frank istrative state and proposing legislative reforms, an effort Murphy (a future Supreme Court justice) appointed a spe- that produced invaluable benefits to the legislative process cial committee to study the law of federal administration then and in the decades that followed. and propose reforms. In appointing the committee, Murphy Attorney General Sessions should follow their example observed that rapid expansion of the New Deal-era adminis- and assert the legislative role for which the Justice Depart- trative state had “centered the attention of the Bar and of the ment is singularly well suited. ♦

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 29 Books&Arts Writer’s Seat A walk through the home that inspired

E. B. White’s essays and stories. by Andrew Ferguson

friend sent me news that the barn out back where Charlotte ten thousand of you. Please don’t come. E. B. White’s saltwater wove her web, and the meadow behind Sincerely, E. B. White.” farm on the coast of Maine the house that led down to the little A couple years later, White’s death is up for sale, and my mind waterside boathouse where White, in made the front page of the New York leaptA back nearly 20 years—an impres- fair weather, pecked away at his type- Times. And then, still later, came sive leap for a mind in my condition—to writer. I had tried to worm my way in this assignment: airfare to Bangor, a visit I’d made there to mark the 100th there before. Sometime in the early a high-end rental car, a generous anniversary of White’s birth in 1899. ’80s, White had graciously answered a amount of walking-around money, I was on assignment for a magazine, a fan letter I’d sent him, and his warm and three nights at the Blue Hill Inn, staggeringly profitable magazine that response, I saw at once, established a the famously quaint bed and breakfast offered its writers expense accounts special intimacy between us. I didn’t down the road from White’s farm. A that can only be described as bottom- learn till much later that he would type friend gave me the phone number of less. (Yes, kids, there really was such a out a dozen or more such letters a day. Roger Angell, like White a celebrated magazine. Lots of them, in fact.) White Answering fan mail was the chief occu- writer for the New Yorker, and also had died 14 years before, in 1985. My job pation of his declining years, and one White’s stepson. It took me a while to was to call on the current owners of the he didn’t much like. work up the nerve to call him. house and nose around and come back Anyway, a year or two after our When I did manage it, I told him with some kind of publishable tribute. exchange I found myself out of work, the story of my ill-fated correspondence Everyone who pushes words around footloose, and broke. I reasoned that with his stepfather, and he laughed. a screen for a living has a special writer White, an octogenarian widower living “That sounds about right,” he said. or two whose influence is so deeply alone and in poor health, would appre- Angell apologized that he wouldn’t be grooved in him that he can never ciate a visit of unknown duration from at his own place in Maine while I was quite get over it. These are not the a young stranger with lots of time on there, otherwise he could show me profoundest writers in the scribbler’s his hands and no visible means of sup- around himself. Instead he gave me the experience, necessarily, but they are port. As a courtesy I dropped my friend numbers of several locals who had been the most congenial in temperament, a line letting him know I was planning great friends of White, and of the couple and they often arrive at a tender time, to come see him in Maine—although from South Carolina who had bought when the mind and spirit are most planning was a deceptive word. At the White’s farm after his death and used it impressionable. White was this writer time I couldn’t plan a trip to the gro- now as a summer getaway. for me, and I can still remember the cery store. From the Bangor airport, an hour sensation of reading the first of his This was years before email, and I away, I drove a wandering route to essays that put me instantly in thrall had no idea the postal service could Blue Hill. When I hit the outskirts of to him and permanently in his debt. operate so quickly. Within four days town—it’s a very short-skirted town— (Unlike most readers, who find White an envelope was in my mailbox, with I passed a sign for the fairgrounds. I through Charlotte’s Web or one of his elegant pale blue lettering showing the hit the brakes, threw the car in reverse other children’s books, I backed into return address in the upper left hand (I hadn’t seen another car for 20 min- him, starting with his many books of corner. “Dear Mr. Ferguson,” the letter utes), and turned onto the dusty drive essays.) As the years passed, I saw the read. “Thank you for your letter about through the open metal gates. I’d never inevitable unevenness in his stuff. But the possibility of a visit.” After this been there, of course, but the grounds when a writer grabs you young, he uplifting sentence, the tone went brittle. looked just like I remembered them. usually grabs you for good. He mentioned a couple of his stubborn Later, after I’d unpacked at the inn, I I was thrilled and moved by the ailments, including his failing eyesight. pulled Charlotte’s Web from the canvas prospect of seeing his house, and And then: “So here I am, one eye gone, bag I’d brought, full of White’s books. half my wits gone, and you want to Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor come and view the ruins. Figure it out. When they pulled into the Fair at The Weekly Standard. There’s one of me, at most, and there are Grounds, they could hear music and

30 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 E. B. White photographed by Jill Krementz in his boathouse in Maine

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 31 see the Ferris wheel turning in the and the stoop—and the store—looked very night I ate dinner in the din- sky. They could smell the dust of just as I knew they would. E ing room at the inn, where the fish the race track where the sprinkling I spoke to the long, thin fellow man- was fresh and simply prepared. In the cart had moistened it; and they could smell hamburgers frying and ning the giant brass cash register, vin- middle of dinner one night, the host— see balloons aloft. They could hear tage 19th century, and he told me I could and, from what I could tell, the owner sheep blatting in their pens. likely find the store’s former proprietor, and chef—hustled over to my table. who had known White for decades, “Mr. Angell is on the line from At the fairgrounds there were no across the road at the library. The library New York and would like to talk to hamburgers frying, no balloons aloft, was built with funds raised by White’s you,” he said. not a sheep within earshot; the fair wife Katharine, a celebrated editor her- He took me back to the kitchen wouldn’t kick off for another month. self, and there was a long shelf with cop- where the phone was, and I picked up But the pens were here—they were the ies of each of White’s books, signed by the receiver amid the clatter of dishes same pens where Wilbur the pig won the author. I found the old fellow read- and the chatter of kitchen help. his medal at the fair, the pens where ing newspapers, and we sat on the porch “How did you know where to find Charlotte the spider laid her eggs to talk. I took out my pen and reporter’s me?” I asked Angell. before she breathed her last, thereby notebook, a stupid move. “Well, where else would you be?” prompting from readers, young and He had a couple more phone num- old, the largest disgorgement of tears bers he’d forgotten to give me, includ- since the death of Little Nell. When I E. B. White’s jealousy ing the number of Henry Allen, who’d got back to my car it was silted with a worked full-time for White for nearly coating of fairground dust. for his privacy was 40 years as manager of the farm. Allen This feeling recurred as I moved legendary. He thought figured often in White’s writing as a about the neighborhood. I was seeing stalwart of Yankee knowhow and savvy. things I remembered seeing though about this tension a I had assumed he was no longer alive— I’d never seen them. A lifelong great deal—between a mythic figure beyond reach. Angell immersion in a writer’s work can had a few other pointers about things do that to a reader, especially when the essayist who to see, by way of making me feel at the work is as vivid and particular invites readers in and home, even if he could only do so by as White’s. One morning I stopped long distance. I took his friendliness at the general store in the crossroads the private man who and generosity to mean that he was as town of Brooklin, near the post office eager as I was to see that White’s cen- where White used to pick up his mail insists they mind their tenary didn’t go unnoticed. every day, using a basket to carry own business. When I returned to my table, the home the bundles of unsolicited gifts host asked if I was writing about and the stacks of fan letters, includ- White. “He would come here for din- ing, nearly 20 years before, those two This Mainer’s carapace showed no ner several times a week, after his wife breathless letters of mine. signs of having ever been breached; died,” he said. “Always alone. This was When I crossed the stoop to the it shone unblemished as an egg. “Mr. his table right here.” He gestured to store I remembered the scene in White always left town on his birth- the table next to mine. It was a table an early essay in One Man’s Meat, day,” he said, “because that’s when all for two, up against a large window, White’s account of farm life in the the reporters would show up, bothering on the other side of which was a riot years leading up to the Second World him.” He glanced down at my note- of foxglove and asters. Had he been War. Having moved there from Man- book. “He’d tell us at the store where he there, eating plump scallops gathered hattan a few months before, and was going, but nobody else. He always from the bay down the hill, I hoped regarded suspiciously by neighbors went to the same place to hide out.” I would have had the courage not to as a city slicker, White had been try- Where was that? I asked. bother him. ing to befriend a local he’d hired as “We always kept mum about it to The jealousy for his privacy became a farmhand. The youngster finally the reporters,” he said. legendary. When he wrote from his farm cracked through his Maine quietness Was the place close by? in dispatches for the New Yorker, he was and reserve, that carapace of reti- “Oh, I couldn’t tell you that.” fuzzy about where he was. The dateline cence installed around every Mainer Why not? I asked. After all, I said, was always “Allen Cove,” a nautical at birth. White took the moment as a Mr. White is—well, dead. designation known only to sailors. Of small victory. It happened right here He straightened up, offended. course, diligent admirers could always on this stoop, as the two men sat in “Sir,” he said, “I told Mr. White I find it. Angell cleared the way for me the sun. It’s not a major event in the wouldn’t tell anybody. And I’m not to see Russell Wiggins, an old friend of essay or the book, just a hint about going to.” White’s and a fellow escapee from the the Mainers he was coming to know, And he didn’t. city life, and a lifelong newspaperman

32 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 who had bought the local paper to run day, you can find one book or another state road. I told myself I didn’t need in his dotage. He used to stop by White’s of White’s lying open somewhere directions, and I didn’t: When I got house on his way home from work for a around my house. It may go undis- there I knew the place, a handsome martini “or two or three,” he said. turbed for weeks or months, but I like clapboard colonial of stately propor- “People would be coming by all the to know he’s there. As I went around tions, set back from the road behind time,” Wiggins told me in his office. Brooklin, I was relieved to hear from a rail fence. After I pulled into the “Perfect strangers, parking in the drive- his friends that the White they knew drive I saw the cupola on the barn out way, just walking right up to the front was roughly compatible with the one I back, and I recalled from One Man’s door and knock-knock-knock.” The had met through the books. But no one Meat that White was putting the final impertinence still shocked him. Usu- claimed to know him well. And that touches on the weathervane when he ally, he said, White wouldn’t answer the was as far as they wanted to go. “We’re heard the news that Germany had door, though he might call his house- private people,” one of his neighbors invaded Poland. (The contrast between keeper to shoo them away. Unless . . . told me. “We respect the privacy of the banality of the chore and the enor- “He could look out the window and others. And we’re always rather sur- mity of the event was not lost on him; see who was on the drive,” Wiggins said. prised when someone else does not.” the carrying on of domestic duties “And if it was a pretty girl, well, you bet After the third or fourth such amid the calamitous news from Europe the door was flung wide open. She was encounter I began to get a creepy is one of the themes of the book.) welcome to have a martini too.” feeling. I wondered if it was the same Off to the side stood an ancient The privacy was selectively feeling a stalker gets. elm, presumably the “coon tree” of the enforced. He was after all a man who essay of the same name, where a fam- made a large part of his living writing hite’s will stipulated that the ily of raccoons made their home in its about his own life—a master of the per- W house remain in private hands hollow right outside White’s bedroom sonal essay who over a long career gave after his death—it was not to be window. I parked and went around only a handful of interviews, refused turned over to a foundation and made to the back of the house, as Mr. Gal- to appear on television or talk on the a shrine or a museum or a writer’s lant had instructed me, along the lane radio, and vanished whenever a neigh- retreat. White’s son Joel, who survived where the two geese, one old, one in bor spotted someone with a reporter’s his father by only a decade, waved the bloom of youth, had conducted notebook. The paradox is all the more off a couple of offers coming from their epic battle in “The Geese,” the noticeable nowadays, when an essayist that direction before finding a suit- last great essay White wrote. It’s about in these confessional times is liable to able private buyer. But the desire to regeneration and old age—a kind of expose his innards until readers recoil enshrine the house as something other memento mori in prose. or beg for mercy. White had better than a home lives on. When word of And so it went as Mr. Gallant showed manners, but he thought about this the impending sale made the news me around. I remembered sights I’d tension a great deal, between the essay- last month, the president of PETA never seen. Mr. Gallant was tall and ist who invites readers in and the pri- sent a letter to the realtor asking that imposing but his voice was soft with vate man who insists they mind their “the owners convert the home into an a South Carolina lilt. First he took me own business. empathy museum for pigs, complete to the barn, which had not been used “Only a person who is congenitally with a vegan café offering veggie sau- as a barn for many years; it was swept self-centered has the effrontery and sages, vegan BLTs, and more.” clean, and the sea breezes had long ago the stamina to write essays,” he wrote, PETA, so far as I know, got no blown away whatever remained of the in an introduction to his collected response from the owners, Robert barn smells. The inside was awash in essays. “I have always been aware that and Mary Gallant, who bought the light from the windows the Gallants had I am by nature self-absorbed and ego- house from Joel and have used it as a installed. The plank floor was spotless, istical; to write of myself to the extent summer house ever since. When Joel gleaming from polish. It wasn’t a barn I have done indicates a too great atten- White met the Gallants, a few months but a showcase of a barn. A spider web, tion to my own life, not enough to the after his father’s death, he saw they even one woven by Charlotte, wouldn’t lives of others.” In the end it was a satisfied all his criteria: They loved have lasted a half-hour here. means of freezing his readers in place: Maine, they loved Brooklin and Blue The Gallants, a sociable couple, Stay right where you are, this far and Hill, and they wanted the house to liked to string lights along the walls, no farther. be a place for a large extended family, slide open the big doors, and throw If he sounds waspish, the man that where children and grandchildren and parties. But still there was the base- White left on the page was unfailingly cousins could gather. ment pen that Wilbur called home, the companionable. In his essays he is When I phoned them they said they workbench with White’s tools, and a modest, self-aware, wry, generous, a bit were happy to cooperate with anything bizarre contraption dangling from the jittery, well-meaning, and never more that would honor Mr. White on his ceiling. Mr. Gallant explained what it than a beat or two from uncorking a birthday. The house was a couple miles was, though I already knew. “My doc- joke. That man is why, on any given south of Blue Hill on another two-lane tor has ordered me to put my head in

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 33 coop became an artist’s studio, the pasture where White’s sheep once grazed bloomed with wildflow- ers. The Whites’ old icebox sat by the kitchen, but as a decorative antique, not a functioning appli- ance. The wood-burning stove was still there—“I like the cold,” White wrote in “The Winter of the Great Snows,” “I like snow. I like the descent to the dark, cold kitchen at six in the morning, to put a fire in the wood stove and listen to weather from Boston”— but it showed no sign of having been used. In fact, none of the many fireplaces showed signs of use; it was a summer house now. The magazine had sprung for a local photographer to tag along and take pictures for the article. (I was told it could be no longer than 700 words, amounting to The barn and “the best swing in the county” as they look in 2017 a single magazine page; still, no expense was spared. The good traction,” White wrote, in an essay in Charlotte’s Web. “They feared some times . . .) Carl, the photographer, was from 1956. “I have rigged a delight- child would fall off. But no child ever energetic and full of ideas. He disap- ful traction center in the barn, using a did. Children almost always hang onto peared outside with Mrs. Gallant so canvas halter, a length of clothesline, things tighter than their parents think she could show him her vast and beau- two galvanized pulleys, a twelve-pound they will.” tiful flower beds. Mr. Gallant took boat anchor, a milking stool, and a Now that the mothers have won, me into the old living room, where barn swallow.” Like many writers, aided by liability lawyers in cushion- the Whites had waited out the hurri- he suffered horribly from the disease ing their kids from every imagined cane in “The Eye of Edna.” Like the hypochondria. This ingenious con- danger and hint of trouble, I was happy enlarged kitchen, it was immaculate, a traption was material testimony to its that the Gallants were on the side of page out of House Beautiful, a Martha incurable nature. children who simply hang on tight— Stewart dream. No doubt the Gallants Beyond the traction pulleys I saw White’s side too. had straightened up for the reporter the rope swing from Charlotte’s Web: “Try it out,” Mrs. Gallant said. I and photographer who were coming “Mr. Zuckerman had the best swing in remembered a photo of White by the to visit, but the whole house had the the county. It was a single long piece of great portraitist Jill Krementz, taken immobility of a museum exhibit—a heavy rope tied to the beam over the when he was nearly 80: White on the museum dedicated to flawless taste in north doorway.” Mrs. Gallant occasion- swing holding tight to the rope, pass- home decoration. ally entertained grade-school groups ing through the doorway from the dark Mr. Gallant gave me to understand here “to do the whole Charlotte deal,” barn into the brilliant sunshine. His that it hadn’t always been like this. as she put it. She’d arrange hay bales in family had chosen it for the cover of The house they bought, he said, was a semicircle for the kids to sit on and the program for his memorial service. a house that a single family had lived play a recording of White reading from “I’ll pass,” I said. in for 40 years, and an old widower for the book. Best of all, she let them take another 10, and it showed. Now it had turns on the rope swing, an item that r. Gallant took me into the been turned into an ideal of a Maine could only survive from a long-gone M house through the back. No- farmhouse by the sea, a picture that era: A child gets access to it by jump- body in Maine uses a front door, he White’s essays had helped form in the ing from a loft, with no guard rails, no said. The Gallants had a keen sense of public imagination. “Suburbanized,” foam floor, no halters or strings to pre- the house’s importance to people like one Mainer sniffed at me when I men- vent a scraped knee or sprained ankle. me, and he said he hoped the changes tioned how spruced up the house was. I think this is the way White wanted they made were done with the appropri- We went down the hall to White’s it. “Mothers for miles around worried ate tact—the woodshed attached to the office, across the hall from his wife’s.

about Zuckerman’s swing,” we read house became a sunroom, the chicken The walls were still papered over with MAGAZINE MARK FLEMING / YANKEE

34 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 nautical maps, as they had been when open window. The Gallants took care too much, too much.” I might have he worked there—by the end, mostly to keep the boathouse much as he even said it aloud. answering letters like mine. The creepy left it. They had even found the little feeling, the feeling of doing something wooden barrel he kept for waste paper. he magazine paid for lunch at a a bit unseemly, returned and intensi- Carl joined us, clicking madly. I T local fish joint, and then I said fied as we climbed the stairs into the ducked into the boathouse. A breeze goodbye to the Gallants and to Carl. I private rooms of the house. came off the bay and into the room, still had the number Angell had given “The Whites had separate bed- where at last there was a smell of me for Henry Allen, the caretaker, but rooms,” Mr. Gallant said. “And a age and living, a place beyond the I didn’t call him. That night at the inn, room for the night nurse. After his devitalizing hand of Martha Stewart since it was my last dinner, the host wife died he didn’t want to be alone.” and home decor. Carl took a picture suggested I might like to sit in “Mr. The bathrooms had been renovated of the Gallants at the doorway and White’s seat.” I told him I’d pass and to contemporary tastes, though I had then turned to me. “There,” he said, took a table across the room. no desire to look. Mr. Gallant turned pointing. “Have a seat.” He meant the After dinner I worked out a draft of and pushed on a door reverently. same bench where White had sat for my 700 words. I got into it nothing “And this is Mr. White’s bedroom.” Krementz, in the fullness of age, at of what I was feeling, as a reader, as an Its window faced north. I could see the close of an honorable career, bent admirer, as an intruder. It was fine but the coon tree. Mr. Gallant opened the over his typewriter with the light false—lacquered newsmagazine prose closet and showed me a rope ladder bouncing off the bay. and utterly artificial. I got up early the that had been rigged there, ready to “I don’t think so,” I said. “No type- next morning and checked out and toss out the window. “In case of fire,” writer.” No typewriter, and no good almost forgot the canvas bag that con- he said. “I guess he was terrified of reason to be imitating E. B. White. “Go tained every book that I owned by E. B. fire.” (From “Home-Coming”: “The on,” Carl said. “Maybe the magazine White. I found it and threw it into the fact that my chimney was on fire did can use it on the contributors page.” I back of the rental car. In there, right in not greatly surprise or depress me, sat on the bench and instantly regret- the bag, was all I needed to know of him, as . . . I have learned to be ready for ted it. I popped up, thinking, “Nope, or was entitled to know. ♦ anything at any hour.”) “Toward the end he was in bed most of the day. Joel would come and read B A to him—mostly from his own books & and essays.” Hearing the words he had written long before, Mr. Gallant said, had a calming effect on the old Mutiny and Identity man. Suddenly I thought this was the A forgotten episode that rocked American politics. saddest piece of information I’d ever heard. “He died in here.” I turned and by James M. Banner Jr. made for the staircase.

utside we found Carl on the o one who spends time O lawn, cajoling Mrs. Gallant into in the archives of the American Sanctuary acrobatic poses, flowers in hand. She first quarter-century of Mutiny, Martyrdom, and National Identity seemed reluctant but Carl was insis- the American republic in the Age of Revolution by A. Roger Ekirch tent. “Come on,” Mr. Gallant said to Ncan avoid references to one Jonathan Pantheon, 320 pp., $30 me. “One last thing to show you.” He Robbins. Probably in reality the Irish led me down through the woods to tar Thomas Nash, the pseudonymous the water—past the spot where White Robbins scarcely ranks up there with Robbins widely mentioned in congres- buried the pig from his essay “Death other major figures of the period. sional debates and in contemporary of a Pig.” (Don’t tell PETA.) A weath- But then why is his name braided so newspapers and correspondence? ered boathouse stood on the shore. thickly through the last years of the Those are the questions that pro- This was where he liked to work, presidency of John Adams and the first voke Roger Ekirch’s lively book Ameri- weather permitting. Jill Krementz— of Thomas Jefferson and even invoked can Sanctuary. Unintimidated by the one of the pretty women who made later in the nation’s history? Why is shelves already teeming with volumes it past the driveway—took a much- on the sulfurous politics of the 1790s, reproduced photo of White in his James M. Banner Jr.’s second edition of the complex election of 1800, and the boathouse, sitting before a typewriter The Elements of Teaching, coauthored Jeffersonian aftermath of both, Ekirch at the desk he had made for himself, with the late Harold C. Cannon, manages to add much to our under- with the cove showing through the has just been published by Yale. standing of this formative period of

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 35 American history by posing questions themselves on land and at sea, the Royal sul in Charleston, South Carolina. The never before ventured. And he does so Navy wasted no time in going on the British, who believed he was actually with a clarity and flair that will draw in hunt, with the aim of making examples Thomas Nash, one of the ringlead- not only readers of history but all read- of the mutineers. That’s how, in 1799, ers among the mutineers, wanted him ers who enjoy a good adventure tale. the United States became involved. handed over—a request for extradi- The story begins in 1797, when, in a By provision of the treaty of 1795 tion that Britain had earlier lodged world gone topsy-turvy in the wake of with Britain—popularly known as the with American authorities regarding American independence, the French Jay Treaty, after its principal American other mutineers held in American jails. Revolution, and unrest in Great Brit- negotiator, John Jay—the pact’s signa- Some of those earlier requests had been ain’s maritime ranks and adjacent Ire- tories were each obliged to extradite refused. That option also presented land, the British experienced the most to the other upon request “all persons, itself in this case. Claiming that he was violent naval mutiny in their history. who, being charged with murder or actually a Connecticut-born American In a bloody rampage, crew members forgery, committed within the juris- who had been impressed into serv­ ice in the Royal Navy, Robbins was in an American jail. But even if, as was alleged, he had participated in the Herm- ione mutiny, had he mutinied in British jurisdiction—which would mean, under the Jay Treaty, that he would have to be extradited—or, as many Americans argued, on the high seas, where territo- rial jurisdictions were more fluid? American law and practice granted leeway to federal judges on whose dockets cases like this one ended up. If President John Adams, a Federalist, had not been distracted by other matters and under political attack, he and his administration might have found a way to forestall Robbins’s transfer to British authorities or facilitate his release under some pretext. Instead, badly advised by Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, Adams pressured the local federal judge to hand over Robbins to the British. The former HMS Hermione—handed over by her mutineers to the Spanish, At first, the judge resisted doing so who renamed her Santa Cecilia—was recaptured by the Royal Navy in 1799, over questions about Robbins’s citizen- the action depicted in this Nicholas Pocock painting. ship. Was he the Irish Thomas Nash or the American Jonathan Robbins? But of HMS Hermione took over their frig- diction of either, shall seek an asy- given Pickering’s determination not to ate off Puerto Rico’s coast, murdered lum within any of the countries of the anger the British, as well as the poor rep- its officers, and eventually sailed it into other.” From the moment the treaty’s resentation of their client by Robbins’s safe harbor in a Spanish port in what’s terms were announced, it had been defense attorneys, the judge acceded to now Venezuela. From there they scat- unpopular in the young nation. While the British application for Robbins’s tered to the winds. it seemed to secure peace with the for- person. Turned over to the British, Rob- No navy can tolerate mutiny or mer mother country, some Francophile bins was hanged in the summer of piracy; no military force can tolerate critics believed it was too generous 1799. Now, in addition to political insurrection. And Britons’ pride in their to the British. And it did not end the opposition and the unanswered legal navy and anxiety about their island hated British practice of forcibly seiz- questions about Robbins’s surrender, nation’s security were in those years ing (“impressing”) seamen deemed to the United States had created a mar- heightened by the threat that revolution- be British subjects from American ships tyr to British impressment. ary fervor and democratic demands were on the high seas. That missing treaty Thomas Jefferson—who was Adams’s posing to their highly stratified society. provision deeply rankled Americans. vice president but was also, as the fore- Rebellion and sedition inside the realm most of the Democratic-Republicans, were considered menaces as great as wo years after the Hermione mutiny, his chief rival for national leadership— military attack from outside it. So after T Robbins was apprehended and saw right away what had happened. “I Hermione’s crew members tried to lose jailed at the request of the British con- think no one circumstance since the

36 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 establishment of our government has heavily for actions for which he was not or British subjecthood all contributed to affected the popular mind more” than altogether responsible. fresh views of American national iden- the Robbins affair, he wrote in late 1799. “If the Robbins affair did not render tity. The declaration of war against Brit- That is to say, Jefferson believed the the election’s outcome inevitable, it is ain by Congress in 1812 is inconceivable Robbins matter was more politically sig- also difficult, in its absence, to imagine without this awakening of nationalism. nificant than even the controversy over the Republicans’ razor-thin triumph,” With more mixed results, the Robbins the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts Ekirch writes. Jefferson’s victory led to affair also contributed to the growing (a judgment that historians have never the establishment by the Democratic- American sense of exceptionalism. shared). Once again revealing the bone- Republicans of the nation’s first major- Of course, what Ekirch terms headedness to which Adams and the ity party. It was that party that held the “national self-consciousness” could work Federalists were often susceptible, they presidency, with only modest interrup- in many ways, as it has ever since. Immi- failed to see what was at stake in turning tions, for the next 60 years. And, as we grants seeking the protection of the Robbins over to the British. now understand all too clearly, Jeffer- American flag came to be seen in a more In Ekirch’s view, that failure cre- son’s election and his party’s ensuing favorable light than that which anti- ated “daunting” political obstacles for dominance of the presidency and Con- immigration Federalists had thrown the Federalists: “A purported Ameri- upon them. But both law and culture can, who had been impressed by the also began, more than before, to feel the Royal Navy, surrendered by the federal If Ekirch is right pressures of immigrant origins, num- government in the absence of prob- in his assessment, bers, and claims to rights that law and able cause for committing a crime that culture had not previously had to sus- enjoyed widespread support in the the Robbins case, tain. Those issues remained long after United States.” In his book’s principal previously overlooked Robbins went to the gallows, as could be contribution to historical understand- seen by political references to the Rob- ing, Ekirch makes a plausible, even by historians, lay bins affair well into the 19th century. convincing, case that the uproar over behind Jefferson’s They unsettle the nation still. Robbins’s extradition and execution played strongly enough into the hands victory in the election kirch’s book will please and of the Democratic-Republican oppo- E enlighten all who read it. The nents of John Adams that the affair was of 1800—one of work of a master historian who is a major factor in the election of 1800. the major political also a superb prose colorist, it is an Adams’s political opponents exco- example of what can result from his- riated him for interfering with the turning points in torians’ endless search for additional judiciary. Even moderate Federalists American history. understanding. In this case, the mate- threatened to abandon him. The public rial is ideal for narrative treatment, outcry was tremendous. This gave Jef- and Ekirch treats it rip-snortingly. ferson’s political troops the ammunition gress allowed the slaveholding South Until now, few had noticed that the to move for the president’s censure—the to keep a stranglehold on American case of Jonathan Robbins might have effort that, Ekirch argues, kicked off politics until the Civil War. If Ekirch had profound consequences for early the election campaign of 1800. Why the is right in his assessment, the Robbins American politics and diplomacy and Federalists failed to see what was at stake case, previously overlooked by histori- the larger history of American self- for them has never been entirely clear. ans, lay behind one of the major politi- consciousness. Didn’t we already have No doubt everyone’s sheer inexperience cal turning points in American history. the story of the Adams and Jefferson with organized partisan politics played Beyond politics, the affair’s conse- administrations—the Alien and Sedi- a role, and the Democratic-Republicans quences were “profound and lasting.” tion Acts, naval battles with French had the advantage of being on the offen- As soon as Congress fell under the con- and British forces, Jefferson’s elec- sive. Also, Federalists were blinkered, trol of the Democratic-Republicans, tion, the Embargo Act of 1807—pretty failing to see that at least the next few they restored to five the number of years much straight? Well, yes, but not years, if not the whole future, favored the required for the naturalization of alien straight enough. Along comes Ekirch, loosening of elitist political apron strings immigrants, a number that the Alien a historian who says, Hold on! Here’s in favor of greater public participation in Act had raised to 14. More significant something you haven’t noticed. debates and campaigns. But the equally was the boost the Robbins affair gave And thus it always is: New minds, blind stupidity of British naval leaders to Americans’ sense of national identity new sensibilities, new approaches to in provoking the latent nationalist loyal- and of the rights of Americans. Ekirch the past open up new routes to new ties of American citizens by continuing demonstrates how the partisan brou- understanding. In the line of historians to search for Hermione’s mutinous survi- haha, the debates about individual rights who engage in a never-ending quest for vors and impressing American seamen under law, and the tension between deeper knowledge, Ekirch now takes an in the process also meant Adams paid Robbins’s debated American citizenship honored place. ♦

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 37 Paper, Plastic—or ?

The past and future of the American supermarket. by Victorino Matus

ast week, Amazon acquired technology—a combination of systems Whole Foods Market in a that bill customers for what they take merger valued at $13.7 bil- Grocery from the shelves, so they can shop and lion. And while consum- The Buying and Selling of Food in America just leave without having to wait at a by Michael Ruhlman Lers are already seeing lower prices at Abrams Press, 320 pp., $28 cash register. the organic chain (often referred to as If this is the supermarket of the near Whole Paycheck), there’s much con- future, my mother, who still withdraws cern over the deal’s impact on jobs. As cash from a bank teller, is going to be a Bloomberg headline put it, “Amazon “Already, we spend less time shopping in a lot of trouble. Robots Poised to Revamp How Whole in the physical world. Now the disap- But as food writer Michael Ruhl- Foods Runs Warehouses.” At least the pearance of bookstores seems to be man points out in Grocery: The Buy- human cashiers will be spared—for now. extending to retail stores more gener- ing and Selling of Food in America, the But the way we shop at the super- ally. Grocery stores, too, will soon be story of American supermarkets has market will change. As Joshua Roth- thinner on the ground.” been one of constant evolution. The man observes in the New Yorker, And the interiors of those thinned- first major national supermarket out grocery stores may come to resem- chain traced its origins back to 1869, Victorino Matus is a contributing editor to ble Amazon Go, a convenience-store just after the completion of the trans- The Weekly Standard and deputy editor concept in Seattle, which features what continental railroad, when George

of the Washington Free Beacon. the company calls “Just Walk Out” Gilman formed the Great Atlantic & H. ARMSTRONG ROBERTS / RETROFILE GETTY IMAGES

38 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 Pacific Tea Company. “Among the first need for daily living,” Ruhlman writes. ourselves and food that’s manufac- of Gilman’s ingenious ideas,” writes Grocer Jeff Heinen of the Cleveland- tured for the grocery store shelf. Ruhlman, “was to offer an exclusive based Heinen’s chain concedes the absur- branded tea, a black tea with a green dity of having to carry each of the dozen Here’s Ruhlman on the unbal- tea flavor called Thea-Nectar.” Green varieties of Cheerios—but if his stores anced diet: tea flavor?Plus ça change . . . don’t carry them, “he knows . . . the shop- In time, the Great Atlantic & Pacific per will go to a store that does.” If all you ate was lettuce, you would eventually become very ill, so I Tea Company broadened the kinds The result is an arms race: In 1975, would like to caution you about the of goods that it sold, becoming a sort of supermarkets had fewer than 9,000 hidden hazards of lettuce. Consider general store, and expanded its roster different items on the shelves. Today yourself warned. But if you eat a vari- of locations from New York to Chicago they carry between 40,000 and 50,000 ety of natural foods, including plenty and beyond. But it was the inventions of products. Ruhlman lists the dizzying of vegetables, and avoid foods that come in a box or bag or are in some the cardboard box and the cheap tin can array of items he came across while way processed, you should be able to that truly revolutionized the business. bagging for a few days at Heinen’s: salt your food to pleasing levels. “These two innovations, which hap- “Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks, pened at roughly the same time,” says Organic Valley ghee, . . . Southwestern- Ruhlman defends pork cracklings, Ruhlman, “paved the way for the mod- style Egg Beaters, Silk cashew milk, “composed almost entirely of protein, ern grocery store as we know it today, Chameleon cold-brewed black coffee, typically undergirded by a layer of fat. filled with brand names such as Camp- flax milk, . . . bottles of probiotics that When these strips of pig skin are fried, bell’s soup and Kellogg’s cereal.” cost thirty dollars and up, some for the fat is rendered out and the connec- At first, “patrons of grocery stores oddly specific purposes . . . five differ- tive tissue puffs, resulting in a delectable, were serviced by clerks; the customer ent Temple Turmeric juices, Melissa’s crunchy, salty crackling. I therefore rec- read off a list of items and amounts Hollandaise Sauce in a microwavable ommend them to you as a go-to ‘protein and the grocer weighed them out and pouch,” and on and on. snack’ during your busy day.” Despite set them on the counter.” But in 1916 the popularity of flaxseed, an equally a new type of grocery store opened in uhlman’s book is no mere history nutritious yet cheaper alternative is Memphis, Tenn., called Piggly Wiggly, R of the supermarket. Rather, he Planters Cocktail Peanuts. He’s skepti- which introduced the concept of self- insists, it is “an expression of my own cal about fish-oil pills—a $731 million service. Customers could now do the love, anger, opinions, and concerns industry. And don’t even get him started shopping for themselves. (A few years over what is in them, how it got there, on SnackWell’s. ago I went to a pharmacy in Germany and what it all means.” The recurring themes are those that still used the clerk system. My Anyone familiar with Michael Ruhl- Ruhlman has stressed in his previous attempt to get toothpaste on my own man, his popular books, and his blog is writings: Think for yourself. Apply was deeply frowned upon.) fully aware he is never lacking in love, common sense. Don’t let the govern- By 1925, the Great Atlantic & anger, opinions, and concerns. Here he ment or the sugar lobby or the latest Pacific Tea Company, which shortened is explaining the illogic of certain low- dieting fads dictate your eating habits. its name to A&P, boasted sales exceed- fat products: “You can bet abundant Have a balanced diet and cook more ing $350 million—larger than any sugar is the reason my Quaker low-fat for yourself. other retailer in the world at the time. granola bar was every bit as sweet and You can see where the author is It had more than 10,000 locations. It chewy as a Milky Way bar.” The gra- headed—from a grocer’s point of view, was, as Ruhlman suggests, the Walmart nola bar has 7 grams of sugar, meaning: the customer is always right, even if of its era. Its rivals included Grand “The bar itself weighs 24 grams, so it’s that customer wants SnackWell’s or Union (founded in 1872 as the Jones nearly one-third sugar and two-thirds Dora the Explorer fruit snacks. So if Brothers Tea Company) and Kroger (a carbohydrates (17 grams according to customers made better food choices, Cincinnati-based chain started by gro- the label).” the supermarkets would, in turn, cer Barney Kroger in 1883). The larg- And this glorious rant regarding fat: reflect that. est supermarket chains, which could Indeed, there are a few glimmers of consolidate distribution out of central- I say unto you: Fat is good! Fat is hope. Ruhlman quotes a cattle rancher ized warehouses, had the clear advan- necessary. Ask any chef. Fat does who told food writer Michael Pollan not make you fat—eating too much tage. The small family-owned grocery makes you fat. We aren’t filling our the following for a 2002 New York Times was ultimately doomed. bodies with sodium because of the Magazine article: “I’d love to give up Larger outfits could also afford to box of kosher salt we use to season hormones. . . . If the consumer said, offer more products, with the goal of our food, we’re doing it with all the ‘We don’t want hormones,’ we’d stop creating one-stop shopping: The chains processed food that’s loaded with in a second. The cattle could get along hidden salt (case in point: those same “are driven to do so because they want to granola bars). American cooks and better without them. But the market appeal to everyone and be considered a American diners need to understand signal’s not there, and as long as my place where you can get everything you the differences between food we cook competitor is doing it, I’ve got to do it,

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 39 too.” But the market began to change: German supermarket chain Aldi is kets will stop being super. If people Consumers (at least those who could planning a massive expansion across choose to have a large fraction of their afford it) started demanding things America, growing an audience with its groceries delivered to their homes, like grassfed beef free of hormones and steep discounts. The company is now stores may contract in size. That’s antibiotics. The change happened so working with Instacart to test deliv- what Jeff Heinen predicts—that gro- quickly that by the time Pollan adapted ery of groceries ordered online in Los cery stores will offer “prepared food his article for his 2006 book The Omni- Angeles, Dallas, and Atlanta. And an and specialty products” but “every- vore’s Dilemma, he decided not to Aldi corporate cousin, the Trader Joe’s thing else will be so commoditized include the cattleman’s quotation. chain, continues to expand its own that we won’t be able to compete from base with direct-from-suppliers, low- a price perspective.” From the con- ut there are also signs pointing cost products that are much loved by sumer point of view, it would be like B the other direction. Sure, flaxseed its customers. going “back to the old days, where it’s and kale chips are trendy—and Kom- With these new competitors, plus all specialty stores.” Your great-grand- bucha is, in fact, the Next Big Thing— Walmart and Amazon and technol- parents’ routine of visiting a separate but people are cooking less. The trend ogy-enabled services, the future for butcher, baker, and greengrocer may started after World War II, with more today’s U.S. grocery chains is unclear. seem quaint to you but might look women joining the workforce. Who But one possibility is that supermar- familiar to your great-grandkids. ♦ has the time? To wit, how many people buy whole chickens anymore as opposed B A to conveniently packaged chicken & parts? Or take heads of lettuce: According to Ruhlman, “sales in 2015 at Heinen’s for iceberg lettuce Terror & Slow Justice totaled $697,624; sales for bagged sal- ads totaled $9,722,524.” The fastest- Dragging Libya to court for a deadly 1989 hijacking. growing section of the supermarket is by Ann Marlowe prepared foods. It’s a money loser but again, Ruhlman writes, “once a cus- tomer wants it, you’ve got to get it for ew Americans noticed, but them or risk losing all their business this past June, Muammar The Forgotten Flight to a store that will carry the item.” Qaddafi’s longtime spy chief Terrorism, Diplomacy As it is, supermarkets are already Abdullah Senussi was appar- and the Pursuit of Justice by Stuart H. Newberger losing business to Walmart. Annual Fently released from prison in Tripoli, Oneworld, 320 pp., $30 sales for groceries alone for the Arkan- where he had been sentenced to death in sas-based company and its Sam’s Club July 2015 for decades of officially sanc- division come to over $200 billion. As tioned murders of his fellow Libyans. If conscious when they smashed into the Ruhlman points out, “the nation’s larg- Senussi was not released—everything is Niger desert. est supermarket chain, Kroger, with murky in Libya—he was at least seen at Newberger, a lawyer who represented its 2,600-odd stores, is a distant second a festive meal at a Tripoli hotel. the seven Americans killed on Flight with sales of roughly $110 billion.” Put Justice has been a long time com- 772, writes that it is unlikely Senussi in perspective, Walmart’s revenue just ing to Senussi, one of six Libyans will leave Libya alive. But his own nar- from groceries beats the total revenue convicted in a French court in 1999 ration of decades of terror by Qaddafi of giant companies from other indus- for the murder of 170 people on UTA and others, and decades of appeasing tries, like General Motors and AT&T. Flight 772, the “forgotten flight” of the international responses, should make And to counter Amazon’s takeover of title of Stuart Newberger’s book. The us wonder. One condition of the release Whole Foods, Walmart has announced DC-10 had left Brazzaville, Congo, on of the American hostages from Iran in it is joining forces with Google—its September 19, 1989, and reached its 1981 was that they could not sue Iran. products will now be available on the first stop, N’Djamena, Chad. It took Many laws have been passed since Internet giant’s website. off from N’Djamena for its final stop, to assist victims of terror in seeking Meanwhile, even as some of the Paris, but 45 minutes after takeoff a redress in civil lawsuits in the United biggest names from a century ago bomb exploded and the plane broke States, but as Newberger’s UTA 772 have recently disappeared—the few into four sections that plunged from the case shows, legal judgments can always remaining Grand Union and A&P sky, some of the passengers likely still be overtaken by political events. The locations were sold or rebranded dur- results are rarely fair to the victims of ing the last five years—other players Ann Marlowe is a visiting fellow terrorism and their loved ones. have eagerly entered the arena. The at the Hudson Institute. Newberger is most engrossing in

40 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 describing the work supervised by with destroying UTA 772; they were his $40 million aircraft, and his lawyer France’s Jean-Louis Bruguière, an convicted in absentia in 1999. knew of Newberger. 11th-generation investigating magis- Meanwhile, in November 1991 a Newberger had become famous in trate, which he calls with some justice Scottish prosecutor had indicted Abdel- 2000 for winning $40 million in com- “one of the greatest detective stories of baset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah pensatory damages for newsman Terry all time.” The plane’s debris—and the Fhimah, apparent Libyan Mukhabarat Anderson, held hostage for seven years passengers’ remains—were scattered agents, for the bombing of Pan Am by Iran. This lawsuit was only made over a 50-by-5-mile area of remote Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, possible by the Antiterrorism and Effec- desert in an era before GPS, mobile on December 21, 1988, which resulted tive Death Penalty Act of 1996 and by phones, Google Earth, and many other contemporary tools. Remark- ably, within four weeks the remains of a suitcase were found; it tested positive for plastic-explosive residue. Bruguière leveraged France’s good connections in Congo, where it turned out the bomb entered the UTA plane in a suitcase carried by a Congolese, Apol- linaire Mangatany. His small group of revolutionaries aimed to overthrow Mobutu, the dictator of neighboring Zaire, and they accepted assistance from Libya’s Brazzaville embassy. In revenge for France’s support of Chad in the recently ended Libya-Chad war, Man- gatany’s Libyan handlers supplied him with a suitcase containing explosives, telling him it was intended to blow up the French plane when it sat on the run- way in N’Djamena. Mangatany may not have been killed in the explosion: His remains, along with those of over 60 of the other passengers, were never iden- tified, and it’s possible he got off the plane in Chad and disappeared. By June 1990, physical evidence sur- faced indicating Libya’s involvement. In 2007, nearly two decades after UTA 772 was brought down by a terrorist bombing, Newberger details the patient police families of the victims gathered in the Niger desert to construct a haunting memorial, work that tied a tiny piece of green here shown in a satellite image. Thousands of black rocks form a silhouette the shape plastic circuit board found at the crash and size of a DC-10, slowly obscured over time by the shifting sands. site to the German middleman who sold 100 Taiwanese-made timers to one in the deaths of 259 passengers and 1996 amendments to the 1976 Foreign of Abdullah Senussi’s subordinates in crew, as well as another 11 people on the Sovereign Immunities Act. These meas­ the Libyan Mukhabarat (intelligence ground. The majority of victims aboard ures, enacted in response to the 1993 service). The Germans apparently had that flight were American and the crash World Trade Center bombing and the thought they were providing timers site was easy to reach, so it received 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, allowed for battery-operated runway lights on much more media attention than UTA for the waiving of sovereign immu- remote desert airstrips in Libya. 772. Yet even for Pan Am 103 it would nity to bring lawsuits against states In October 1991, Bruguière issued take until 2003 for a compensation deal that sponsored terrorism, and allowed international arrest warrants for four to come together, and it was not final- commercial assets of these countries Libyans—including Senussi. But none ized until 2008. to be seized in the United States. It was extradited: Libya doesn’t allow Newberger entered the story in took the passage of still another law for its citizens to be tried for crimes out- April 2002 when he was contacted by Anderson to collect his judgment from side the country, and Libya’s lawyers Douglas Matthews, the billionaire $400 million in Iranian government pointed out at the time that France owner of the DC-10 leased to UTA. funds frozen in the United States. doesn’t either. Eventually Bruguière Matthews wanted to bring a civil suit The UTA 772 suit was filed in 2003

DIGITALGLOBE / GETTY IMAGES DIGITALGLOBE charged Senussi and five other Libyans against Libya for the destruction of and took its name, Pugh v. Socialist

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 41 People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, from Robert L. Pugh, a diplomat who sur- vived the U.S. embassy attack in Beirut in 1983 and was ambassador to Chad in 1989. His wife Bonnie had been one of the seven Americans killed on UTA 772. It took until 2008, with Libya delaying every step of the way, but Pugh resulted in a massive judgment of around $6 bil- lion in favor of the American plaintiffs. Here is where Newberger and the fami- lies involved in his case find out that “politics was more powerful than law”— because (spoiler alert) a political agree- ment ended up having a large effect on the settlement. The relatives who par- ticipated in the Pugh suit were each eli- gible to receive $10 million, just a tenth of what they would have received under the court judgment against Libya, had it been allowed to stand. Newberger’s book is at its best— clear and fast-paced—when discussing the details of policework. The book would have benefited, however, from an editor who could have steered the B A author away from some formulaic & descriptions and clichés. Also, it would have been compelling to hear the Poetry and Prayer voices of the Pugh plaintiffs that New- berger represented, were they willing Two new collections that grapple with grief, be interviewed and quoted. And, given by ames atthew ilson the complicated nature of the story hope, and faith. J M W Newberger is telling, the absence of a timeline is keenly felt. Le Poème de l’âme 15: Un Soir. The Poem of the Soul is a series of 34 works by In the years since the Pugh case was French neoclassicist Louis Janmot. Influenced by his Catholic faith, Janmot incorporated decided, the struggle to use our legal religious themes throughout the 1835-55 series. Un Soir is a midpoint of the set system to bring terrorists and their and shows simple, faithful souls in harmony with nature. supporters to justice has continued. A law passed in 2016—the Justice o read the second and Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, final stanza of Catherine The Frangible Hour which was enacted in the only override Chandler’s “Chasubles”— by Catherine Chandler of a presidential veto in the Obama “Summer’s a smiling University of Evansville, 81 pp., $15 years—allows federal courts to exercise Tcharlatan / camouflaged in green / jurisdiction over foreign states charged where violet truths lie mantled in / with supporting terrorism, regardless the seen and the unseen”—one might Devotions of whether the state is designated a think American religious poetry is by Timothy Murphy sponsor of terrorism. This change in now much as it was in Emily Dick- North Dakota State, 158 pp., $24.95 the law made it possible, earlier this inson’s day. The reclusive maid of year, for many of the families of the Amherst wrote hundreds of strange victims of the September 11, 2001, ter- poems in variations of the ballad feeling one has of God lurking some- rorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia in measure, many of them exploring the where in nature, always a mystery, civil court. This is a welcome develop- never allowing himself to be seen ment, but if there is any lesson to be James Matthew Wilson teaches humanities straight, but only “slant.” Chandler’s found in Newberger’s book, it is that at Villanova. His most recent book is The stanza engages in just Dickinson’s expectations should be tempered, since Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, sort of play; nature is a “charlatan,” justice can be very slow in coming. ♦ and Beauty in the Western Tradition. because her “green” is less lasting

42 / The Weekly Standard September 11, 2017 than it appears to be on a summer remembrance of the past and a sense Devotions is his first attempt to gather afternoon, and yet nature is also more that suffering belongs to the divine his poems about the hard pilgrimage than it appears, a “mantle” hiding, in mystery. In one elegy for her mother, toward holiness, undertaken late in the words of the Nicene Creed, “the she writes, life even as one’s dearest friends and seen and the unseen.” family have begun to die. Appropri- Chandler, like Dickinson, is a poet Gone is the golden mountain of our ately, many of the poems are prayers of divine mystery, but the similarity youth; or about prayer, and the way Murphy ends there. Whereas Dickinson’s poetry gone is its rarefied reality. captures the spiritual life’s immersion Still, there lies an element of truth remains a frontier eccentricity in our amid this crushing verticality. in the everyday can be fascinating. tradition precisely because of its odd Down. Down in history we go: “Hunting on Thanksgiving” is dedi- cramming of intellectual profundity past anthracite, the color of all woe. cated to the friend described in these into the quaint form and cute imagery opening lines of prayer: of the folk ballad, Chandler is a demon- Every journey to the underworld is strated master of poetic technique who, followed by a return to this world with Thanks for my tall, Norwegian in The Frangible Hour, attempts some new knowledge. So the poems for her hunting buddy. fantastic feats of ingenuity to make mother conclude with one in which I love him best when his right hand is bloody stanzaic forms adequate to her mean- she finds, in the now-empty house, “a from gutting birds. ing, especially in her variations on the faded ribbon-festooned box”: conventional sonnet. It ends with thanks for two other The tension between form and Inside, my fairy-stolen baby teeth “friends” on whom Murphy has feeling in Dickinson seems in retro- and first-shorn locks depended, his hunting dog and spect essential to her New England acknowledge, in an elegant Christ himself: goodbye, Protestantism, for which nature was that I was once the apple of your at once a sign of God’s determina- eye. Thanks for the bird I missed, for tions and a wild emblem of the devil’s Feeney’s flush, temptations. Chandler’s poems, in The most appealing poems in the faint thunder of wings breaking the hush contrast, suggest the complementar- Chandler’s volume are the sketches of mass conducted in the open air. ity of nature and grace, of faith and of midcentury America found in the Thanks for pulling me back from reason, proper to Catholicism. In one sonnet sequence “One-way Street.” the despair poem, for instance, a swing out in the They remind me of E. A. Robinson’s that might have lost me eighteen family’s backyard becomes simul- affectionate but unsparing and pre- hundred days taneously an example of the laws of cisely imagined poems of rural Maine. I have devoted to my Maker’s praise. physics governing nature, an expres- In her sustained attention to the sion of God’s providential order amid regional, in her mastery of form, and apparent chaos, and an instrument also in her Catholic faith, Chandler Elsewhere, he remarks, “The prai- of childhood magic that charms her has much in common with the North rie is a poem rarely read,” and once father home from work. Dakota poet Timothy Murphy. Mur- more prays, “grant me more time to Her poems begin in the particulars phy has published three previous understand, / more years to walk and of her mature life in Montreal and her books of poetry and a memoir treating memorize this land.” Catholic childhood in rural Pennsyl- of farm and hunting life in his home In his youth, Murphy studied at vania, digging into them to discover terrain, all of which have received Yale with Robert Penn Warren, “lost the significance they conceal. A com- critical praise for their taut, restrained in a whiskey haze / with Milton on bination of technical power and intel- metrical forms and their honest treat- my mind.” In 1972, he returned home lectual depth shows in her poems ment of daily life on the Dakota prai- to farm and work as a private inves- named after Pennsylvania wildflow- rie. Much of his work proceeds like a tor but continued to struggle with ers, in which Chandler’s wit draws kind of log book, recounting in rhyme drink. In his waywardness and late the botanical and the biographical battles with alcoholism and sin, the devotion we rightly detect an echo of together in surprising ways. Even incidentals of a life passed between St. Augustine, and so it is unsurpris- more impressive are the three groups duck hunts and daily Mass at the local ing that the best single poem in this of poems that conclude the collection, parish. The results have been massive new volume is a translation of a psalm consisting of elegies for her mother in quantity though uneven in qual- from the saint’s Confessions: and father, and “Almost,” which ity, for the same attentiveness to the records the almost insufferable vigil particular that makes Murphy’s best I thirsted, hungered, yearned. at her daughter Caitlin’s bedside, poems so memorable is sometimes left You touched me, and I burned. after she has suffered a cerebral aneu- to carry on about the inconsequential. How late I came to you, rysm. In each instance, present grief Murphy returned to the Catholic Beauty ever ancient, ever new. is reckoned with and overcome by faith nearly a dozen years ago and How late I came to you. ♦

September 11, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 43 “Is it too soon for a presidential visit?” —CBS This Morning anchor Maurice DuBois, August 29, 2017 PARODY

September 11, 2017