2013_06_23-postal:cover61404-postal.qxd 7/1/2014 6:56 PM Page 1

July 21, 2014 $4.99

BOLTON ON HHILLARY’S CHOICES NORDLINGER DEMUTH:OUR DEBTCRISIS ON DD’SOUZA’S AMERICA

SmarterSmarter thanthan Neil deGrasse Tyson and ThouThou America’s Nerd Problem CharlesCharles C.C. W. W. Cooke Cooke

www.nationalreview.com base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/30/2014 11:53 AM Page 1

RECLAIMING THE GREAT Christian Intellectual Tradition IN PHARMACY RESEARCH

A few years ago, Union University made the Union was the first decision that its new health sciences building “place that offered me would house the caliber of pharmacy labs that the ability to follow could support cutting edge research. Today, top Christ as well as do faculty and students work together in Providence scientific research to Hall designing anti-cancer agents and conducting the best of my ability.” other research to benefit people’s lives. DR. ASHOK PHILIP To learn more about Union’s commitment to Assistant Professor of Christ-centered academic excellence, visit uu.edu. Pharmaceutical Sciences

FOUNDED IN 1823 | JACKSON, TENNESSEE SEE | uu.edu EXCELLENCE-DRIVEN | CHRIST-CENTERED | PEOPLE-FOCUSED-FOCUSED | FUTURE-DIRECTED TOC--FINAL:QXP-1127940144.qxp 7/2/2014 2:06 PM Page 1 Contents

JULY 21, 2014 | VOLUME LXVI, NO. 13 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 26 John J. Miller on Rick Snyder Smarter than Thou p. 21 An astrophysicist and evangelist for science, Tyson currently plays three BOOKS, ARTS roles in our society: He is the director of & MANNERS

the Hayden Planetarium at the American 37 HILLARY’S WAR OF FOG Museum of Natural History; the John R. Bolton reviews Hard Choices, by Hillary presenter of the hip new show Rodham Clinton. Cosmos; and, most important of 39 A MORE PERFECT CONGRESS all, perhaps, the fetish and totem of Joseph Postell reviews The Once and the extraordinarily puffed-up “nerd” Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America, culture that has of late started to bloom by F. H. Buckley. across the United States. Charles C. W. Cooke 42 SHAPER OF MODERN AMERICA COVER: ROMAN GENN Ryan L. Cole reviews Fierce Patriot: The Tangled ARTICLES Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman, by Robert L. O’Connell. 16 ESTABLISHMENT TEA by Richard Lowry & Ramesh Ponnuru The GOP is coming together, not apart. 44 THE LION AT TWILIGHT Michael F. Bishop reviews Churchill 18 EXTINGUISH EX-IM by Kevin D. Williamson and Empire: A Portrait of an But do it gently. Imperialist, by Lawrence James.

46 FILM: DOWN-UNDER THE TURNAROUND GOVERNOR by John J. Miller 21 DOWNER Rick Snyder and the future of Michigan. Ross Douthat reviews The Rover.

23 TAKE TWO by Jay Nordlinger 47 COUNTRY LIFE: D’Souza films again. THE LAND AWAKENS Richard Brookhiser discusses June as the 24 HAPPY-GO-LUCKY NIHILISM by Thomas S. Hibbs coronation of summer. A troubling new film makes a joke of abortion.

SECTIONS FEATURES 2 Letters to the Editor 26 SMARTER THAN THOU by Charles C. W. Cooke 4 The Week Neil deGrasse Tyson and America’s nerd problem. 35 Athwart ...... James Lileks 36 The Long View ...... Rob Long 28 OUR DEMOCRATIC DEBT by Christopher DeMuth 45 Poetry ...... Sarah Ruden We’re borrowing to fund personal benefits, not public goods. 48 Happy Warrior ...... David Harsanyi

NATiONAl RevieW (iSSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATiONAl RevieW, inc., at 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, inc., 2014. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., NATiONAl RevieW, 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATiONAl RevieW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATiONAl RevieW, 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATiONAl RevieW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters--FINAL:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/2/2014 2:20 PM Page 2 Letters JULY 21 ISSUE; PRINTED JULY 3

EDITOR Richard Lowry Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Writing and the Right Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra Adam Bellow’s cover piece, “Let Your Right Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy Brain Run Free” (July 7), argues com- Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson National Correspondent John J. Miller pellingly that without engaging the arts, Art Director Luba Kolomytseva conservatives’ political efforts are doomed Deputy Managing Editors Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz to fail—a prediction likely to prove only Associate Editors Patrick Brennan / Katherine Connell too true—and rightly notes that conserva- Production Editor Katie Hosmer tives have failed to put in place the kind of Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace structural support that could help young, Contributing Editors Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn right-leaning artists. Writing programs, fel- Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg / Florence King lowships, prizes, and the rest would no Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi doubt be a boon. However, since, as they Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne say, books beget books, much good could Reihan Salam / Robert VerBruggen also be done simply by pointing potential NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez conservative storytellers to masters of the art (beyond J. R. R. Tolkien, Managing Editor Edward John Craig C. S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy, who, though News Editor Tim Cavanaugh National-Affairs Columnist John Fund vital, often seem to be the only worthwhile novelists conservatives National Reporter Eliana Johnson Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke have heard of). There are significant strains of conservative thought Political Reporter Joel Gehrke in mystery and crime fiction, where the problem of evil is paramount. Associate Editors Molly Powell / Nat Brown Try P. D. James. Editorial Associates Science fiction has long entertained strong libertarian tendencies. Try Andrew Johnson / Christine Sisto Technical Services Russell Jenkins not just Ray Bradbury and Robert A. Heinlein, but the brilliant Gene Web Developer Wendy Weihs Web Producer Scott McKim Wolfe. So-called literary fiction has well-known conservative entries (e.g., the work of Wendell Berry, Cormac McCarthy, or Mark Helprin), EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan but there are many rewarding new arrivals: Christopher R. Beha and

NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE William Giraldi, for example. None of these authors adheres to a party BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM line—they might even reject one another as philosophical allies—but Ryan Lovelace / Ian Tuttle each exhibits a temperamental conservatism and a masterly ability to Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman transform that worldview into art. Providing examples of substantive Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza conservative fiction to our aspiring novelists will increase the likeli- M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner hood that a conservative literary movement will flourish for genera- David Gelernter / George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler tions to come. David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Gregory Campbell Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Covington, Ky. Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu / Emily Gray A Forgotten Freshman Circulation Manager Jason Ng WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 John J. Miller’s article “The Mailman’s Son” (April 21) contains one SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 minor error. Miller claims that John Kasich was “the only non-incumbent ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 GOP candidate to win a seat in the House that year” (1982). Nancy Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler Johnson (R., Conn.) won her first of twelve terms that year and, when Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet she left Congress in 2007, was the longest-serving member of the Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Director of Development Heyward Smith House from Connecticut. Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell

PUBLISHER Paul Carver Jack Fowler Old Saybrook, Conn. CHAIRMAN John Hillen

CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes

FOUNDER Letters may be submitted by e-mail to [email protected]. William F. Buckley Jr.

2 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/30/2014 11:29 AM Page 1

WORLD’S FIRST POWER TOOL? Take control of today and tomorrow with the Stauer Advancer Hybrid for ONLY $39! EXCLUSIVE OFFER! t’s time to take back time. For centuries, we didn’t have a choice. GET IT NOW FOR The kings of Europe built clock towers and forced subjects to obey Ia royal schedule. The Industrial Revolution imprisoned us with time clocks in the factories. Those who controlled the clocks, controlled the ONLY$39 people. Until the 20th-century, when the rise of the wristwatch sparked a revolution. Suddenly, power was put back in the hands of the people. Time was set free! Today, we give you more power than ever before with the Advancer Hybrid, a 21st-century timekeeping machine that is all yours for ONLY $39! Two big watches, one small price. Inside the Advancer are two precision movements working together for a single purpose: to give you complete control over time. Some companies make you pay handsomely for that kind of power. Those big name ‘luxury’ brands don’t think twice about charging more than $800 for analog/digital models. But only Stauer delivers a hybrid as stunning as the Advancer for under $40! A different kind of multi-tasking, mobile device. The Advancer doesn’t make phone calls, take pictures or tweet. It marks the minutes, counts the hours and much, much more. Need to stop time within 1/100th of a second? Done. Want an alarm so you don’t miss your next flight? No problem. Need a light? Push a button. This watch is packed full of features to make your life easier every hour of every day. And not by accident, it also dazzles the eye with its roguish good looks. Your satisfaction is guaranteed. Wear the Advancer Hybrid for 60 days. If for any reason you are not completely impressed, return it for a full refund of your purchase price. Act now. Call today. And find out what it feels like to take control of all the time in the world.

Stauer® Advancer Hybrid Watch Online for $395* 90% OFF– Our Lowest Price Ever! Now only $39 Packed with features! ® You must use the offer code below to receive the lowest price. • Dual analog & digital display Stauer • 1/100 sec. chronograph function 14101 Southcross Drive W., 1-888-201-7097 • Alarm/stopwatch/backlight Dept. AHW183-04, Offer Code AHW183-04 Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 Please use this code when you order to receive your discount. • Water resistant to 3 ATM www.stauer.com • Brown silicone band *Price quoted is for the non-offer code Stauer.com price. • Fits wrists 6 ½"–8 ½" Rating of A+ Smart Luxuries—Surprising Prices™ week:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/2/2014 2:53 PM Page 4 The Week

n Okay, the World Cup starts when?

n Hillary Clinton can’t leave wealthy enough alone. After her “dead broke” interview, she told the Guardian that regular Americans “don’t see me as part of the problem, because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off . . . and we’ve done it through dint of hard work.” The “hard work” of which she boasts was rising in politics, then being paid for her reflections, in speaking fees and book ad - vances. Nothing to be embarrassed about in that: She charges what the market will bear. But she is embarrassed because she and her fellow Democrats spend so much time railing at rich people they do not like: the Koch brothers, Mitt Romney. Thus “the problem” of which she claims not to be a part. Mrs. Clinton is “truly well off” by most people’s reckoning. She cannot ac cept it and move on, which shows that she has neither grace nor humor: traits valuable in any politician, essential in one who practices the dangerous politics of envy.

n Tapes unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon offer a glimpse of the young Hillary Clinton. It is not flattering. They feature the Chicago-born Clinton affecting a deep southern drawl and laughing out loud as she recalls her successful defense of Thomas Alfred Taylor, a 41-year-old man accused in 1975 of rap- ing a twelve-year-old girl. Clinton won the case by attacking the cally increase the number of low-skilled immigrants who come credibility of the young victim, accusing her of emotional insta- here over the next decade, is a good fit with his other ideas. And bility, of having a tendency to seek out older men, and of in- other Re pub li cans should offer their own ideas, so that the 2016 dulg ing in fantasy. On tape, she offers a rather different portrayal, presidential primaries exemplify healthy competition, rather casually joking about her client’s guilt. “I had him take a poly- than just discuss it. graph, which he passed,” she says. “Which forever de stroyed my faith in polygraphs,” she adds with a laugh. The victim, now 52, n The Supreme Court’s decision in Noel Canning v. National told the Daily Beast that Clinton—who, in all of her public roles, Labor Relations Board was the twelfth time since 2012 that it has positioned herself as a feminist champion of women and unanimously rejected a case brought by the Obama administra- girls—took her “through hell.” When Glenn Thrush, then at tion. This one was as clear-cut as can be: President Obama Newsday, wrote about the matter in 2008, he said his editor added wanted to make a number of appointments to the NLRB that the a snoozer of an intro to a blockbuster piece because, in Thrush’s Senate wouldn’t confirm. So he declared the body in recess— words, it “might have an impact.” Remember that, in 2012, “trou- blatantly violating the separation of powers and the ancient prin- bling incidents” from Mitt Romney’s high-school years were the ciple that a legislative body makes its own rules—and used a subject of major national headlines. When it comes to Demo - constitutional power to fill without Senate confirmation “vacan- crat ic politicians, the press has an instinct for the capillaries. cies that may happen during the recess of the Senate.” The ap- point ments have now been invalidated by the Court, though what n Republican politicians often explain that they are for conser- happens to the NLRB rulings made by the invalidly appointed vative policies, but sometimes forget to explain why those poli- members is not clear. The president has a habit of ignoring con- cies will deliver good results for most people. That’s not a stitutional scruples to impose his agenda—in this case, to get ap - mistake Senator Marco Rubio of Florida intends to make. In a poin tees who would bend labor law toward the unions. This time, recent speech sponsored by Hillsdale College and the YG not even the justices he put on the Court were willing to go along. Network, he outlined an agenda of conservative reforms to health care, higher education, taxes, and retirement programs, n In another late-June decision, the Court ruled that the states and used illustrative examples to show how deregulation, tax may not compel citizens to join a union as a condition of their relief, and competition would help people. It is a fine agenda for receiving federal assistance. The case was brought by Pam fostering upward mobility in this country. Senator Rubio should Harris, a mother from Illinois who spends her days caring for her

ROMAN GENN reflect on whether his immigration bill, which would dramati- son, Josh. For the treatment of his debilitating Rubinstein-Taybi

4 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/17/2014 1:03 PM Page 1 week:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/2/2014 2:53 PM Page 6

THE WEEK syndrome, Josh receives an SSDI stipend, which he can use to enemy combatant. Besides his complicity in a notorious act of contract with and pay a full-time “carer.” As many in his situa- war—the terrorist attack of September 11, 2012, on an tion do, he chose his mother. Illinois law requires all carers to American-government installation in which four Americans, spend a portion of their funds paying a public-employees including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, were murdered—he union—namely, the SEIU. Harris objected on the ground that is, according to the State Department, a “senior leader” of the state was violating her First Amendment right to freely asso- Benghazi’s al-Qaeda affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia. He could have ciate and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, been detained indefinitely under the laws of war. Even if one and sued. Writing for a 5–4 majority, Justice Alito agreed, draw- shared the administration’s conceit that civilian courts are the ing a distinction between traditional public employees and what ideal forum for prosecuting enemy combatants, there is no he termed “partial public employees”—that is, carers, such as urgency to try Khatallah. He could have been held at Gitmo, Harris, whom the state pays to look after their children. used as a long-term intelligence source (intel obviously being Henceforth, the Court ruled, Harris and others like her will be in short supply, given that Khatallah’s fellow Benghazi plotters exempted from regulations that force individuals to pay dues are still at large), and then turned over to the civilian system for against their will. The opinion was narrow. America’s unions Miranda warnings, free counsel, and trial. It could even have had been terrified of a broader ruling. Samuel Gompers famously been done on some future Saturday. said what labor wanted was “more.” Coercion always seems to be what today’s unions want more of. n After Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, won his recall election, a group of Democratic prosecutors launched an investigation into conservative fundraising efforts sur- n Speaker John Boehner announced that the House would rounding the recall, issuing over 100 subpoenas and alleging be suing President Obama for “not faithfully executing the that several groups had illegally coordinated their activities. laws of our country.” (The complainant would be the Early this yea r, a state judge ruled that the subpoenas did not Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, an arm of the House.) “show probable cause” of campaign-finance-law violations, Boehner did not go into details, but the effectively stopping the investigation. Then, in May, in a federal suit evidently will focus on Obama’s civil-rights lawsuit brought by one of the accused, a federal- executive orders and other instances district-court judge ordered that the probe end and, further, of overreach. There is room to ques- held that conservative groups have a case that the investigation tion the propriety and wisdom of is an infringement on their free-speech rights. In June, sealed Boehner’s move. The president’s dis- court documents relating to the secret investigation were missive response—that he retains released, prompting headlines such as “Wisconsin Gov ernor at the power to act when Con - Center of a Vast Fund-Raising Case,” from the New York gress will not—is, how- Times. It’s not looking quite so vast in court. ever, a stark example of the kind of lawlessness n In an effort to elect Democrats this November, and to suggest that Boehner has in a Republican “war on women,” President Obama has been mind. Article II does going around the country campaigning for mandatory paid not have a whatever- maternity leave. He has said, “There is only one developed it-takes clause. country in the world that does not offer paid maternity leave, and that is us. And that is not the list you want to be on—on your lonesome. It’s time to change that.” He also said, “If France can n Opponents of the Iraq War are taking defeat laps—their version figure this out, we can figure this out.” Vive la différence. of victory laps (Iraq is in chaos, we told you so). Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) makes his round wrapped in “the mantle of Ronald n From the dog-bites-man department: The Justice Department Reagan,” which he claimed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “We is investigating potential corruption among the employees of a need a new approach” to the world, Paul wrote, “one that emulates federal agency that hands out favors to businesses. Specifically, Reagan’s policies, puts America first, seeks peace, faces war it’s alleged that four employees of the Export-Import Bank reluctantly.” Ronald Reagan increased military spending, armed accepted payments and gifts from Ex-Im beneficiaries. It’s heart- proxies (the Contras, the Mujahedeen), shamed enemies (“Tear ening that around the same time the DOJ investigation was down this wall”), colluded with the disaffected (Solidarity), and, announced, Kevin McCarthy, the new House majority leader, yes, sent troops to Grenada and Lebanon. Which of these would announced that he opposes reauthorizing the bank. The previous Rand Paul endorse now—or ever? If he wants to say—as many majority leader, Eric Cantor, helped cut the deal that saved Ex-Im libertarians do say—“Make war no more,” let him say it. But he in 2012, but he was defeated in a recent primary. Can tor’s primary should not claim the mantle of the great Cold Warrior. opponent emphasized during his campaign that he would fight corporate welfare. Supporters of Ex-Im have taken to arguing n In signature Obama-administration fashion, Ahmed Abu that we have to grant favors to our companies just as other coun- Khatallah, the lone suspect apprehended in the Benghazi mas- tries do to theirs. But crony capitalism shouldn’t be an import. sacre, was whisked into Washington for a quick Saturday ar - SCOTT APPLEWHITE .

J raign ment. This assured minimal attention to the president’s n The federal Highway Trust Fund, historically, is a fund that the / reinstatement of the disastrous pre-9/11 paradigm of treating government can’t be trusted to spend on federal highways.

AP PHOTO terrorism as strictly a law-enforcement issue. Khatallah is an Unfortunately, Senator Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) is proposing to put

6 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/30/2014 11:34 AM Page 1

Scintillating marquise-cut DiamondAura center stone, 9mm x 4.5mm

90 brilliant-cut DiamondAura rounds

.925 sterling silver setting fits whole ring sizes 5-10 Does This Ring Make My Wallet Look Fat? Spend 100% LESS on Luxury with FREE* Jewelry... only from Stauer uy now, pay never. Call us today and rubies, emeralds and sapphires and If we had our way, we’d send your Bwe’ll send you the .925 sterling silver vintage-inspired watches. Once you Mirador Marquise Ring with no ship- and DiamondAura® Mirador Marquise discover “Luxury for Less,” we’re betting ping charge. Unfortunately, the rising Ring (a $295 value†) for FREE!* That’s that you’ll fall in love with Stauer. cost of gas and freight makes that right... FREE. It’s true. We cut the ring impossible. But, to sweeten the deal, COMPARE FOR YOURSELF AND SEE! price 100% and you pay only $19.95 for we’ll include a $20 Stauer Gift Coupon Mined D-Flawless DiamondAura shipping & processing (*see details Diamond Compares to: with your FREE ring. More proof that below). There are no tricks. You aren’t true luxury is money in the bank! Hardness Cuts Glass Cuts Glass  obligated to spend another dime... Cut (58 facets) Brilliant Brilliant  Mirador Marquise Ring (1 ¼ ctw) although we make it VERY hard to resist. Color “D” Colorless Colorless  Appraised at $395† Why give away jewelry? We want Clarity “IF” Flawless Clear  Your Cost With Offer Code—FREE* your attention. We want you to take a  Dispersion/Fire 0.044 0.066 *pay only shipping & processing closer look at our 8 million carats of 1 ctw ring price $22,000+ FREE of $19.95. * This offer is valid in the United States (and You must use the offer code below to ® Puerto Rico) except in TX, FL, CO, OK, RI, receive this special free ring. NH, WV, OR, SC, VA and ID. These state Stauer residents will be charged one cent ($.01) + 14101 Southcross Drive W., shipping & processing for the item. Void Dept. FMR146-01 where prohibited or restricted by law. Offer Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 1-888-324-2060 Rating of A+ subject to state and local regulations. Not www.stauer.com Offer Code FMR146-01 valid with any other offers and only while Please mention this code when you call. supplies last. This offer is limited to one item † For more information concerning the appraisal, per shipping address. Free is only for customers visit http://www.stauer.com/appraisedvalues.asp. Smart Luxuries—Surprising Prices ™ who use the designated offer code. week:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/2/2014 3:05 PM Page 8

THE WEEK more money in it by raising the federal gasoline tax, a proposal states decide how to spend money on projects within their own he’s concocted with Senator Chris Murphy (D., Conn.). The idea borders. Republicans shouldn’t even bother kicking the tires on is bad policy and bad politics. The politics: Gas prices are rising Corker’s idea. rapidly, taxes on fuel are regressive, and Americans, rightly, really don’t like it when you raise any kind of tax at all. And n The IRS settled a lawsuit by the National Organization for there’s no pressing policy reason to increase the tax: The trust Marriage, admitting that it leaked confidential information about fund has plenty of money to fund highway priorities that the fed- it to a left-wing group. The agency says that the leak was the result eral government needs to address—especially if federal money of the isolated actions of a single employee, one who was acting were spent more efficiently. Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) and in error but not out of malice. In isolation, that might—barely— Representative Tom Graves (R., Ga.) have a worthwhile legisla- be credible, but consider the agency’s recent history: the targeting tive plan: cut the gas tax, fix federal highway policies, and let of conservative organizations for extraordinary harassment and Back to Basics

N the aftermath of the Great Recession, observers have in the U.S.—between 1948 and 1973, and between 1995 searched for a cause for the persistent limping pace of and 2003. This most recent boost was largely due to a I economic growth. Demand-side theories have formed boom in information technologies, in both the industries the basis of the common assertion that the lingering effects that produce them and those that use them. The slowdown of the financial crisis are to blame for our slow growth, but of productivity improvements in these sectors is a large a striking new paper argues that another culprit may be to force behind the decrease in productivity growth in the blame: the computer. economy that preceded the Great Recession. Fernald doc- It’s not that computers are bad, of course, but that the uments that the industries that sped up the most slowed impact of the computer on growth appears to have been down the most, and that there was no geographic varia- much less impressive than expected. Economists thought tion in the slowdown that might have been related to the the computer’s impact on the economy would have three real-estate crash or other cyclical factors. Thus, technology main stages. For illustrative purposes, imagine a machine- must be the culprit. tool shop. In the pre-computer stage, a customer might ask With the productivity boom behind us, truly healthy the shop to make a part for an engine. The shop owner growth will have to come from policies that drive capital would dig through manuals, find the specifications of the and labor inputs higher. A corporate tax cut, for example, part, and then use his machine tools to craft it. When the could well induce a machine shop to purchase a large computer arrived, the manuals could be organized on a number of new computer-driven machines. If it did, output computer—the first stage. Instead of spending time digging would go up, even if tomorrow’s machines were no more through manuals, the owner could pull the specifications up productive than today’s. right away, significantly increasing the number of parts he —KEVIN A. HASSETT could craft in a day—the second stage. And the final stage has been reached today: The computer not only knows the specifications, but runs the machines as well. Contributions to Labor- Economists expected the growth effects from this multi- stage process to be great, and enduring. But the new paper, Productivity Growth by John Fernald and the San Francisco Fed, suggests a dra- Business Sector, Percentage Change, Annual Rate matically different picture. The economy received a huge jolt 3.5 Labor Quality from computers between 1995 and 2003, owing to large Capital Deepening 3.0 improvements in technology that accompanied the wide- Total-Factor Productivity spread introduction of computers—but the jolt tapered off suddenly, so much so that a decline in the growth rate of 2.5 productivity is visible even before the financial crisis. Growth can come to an economy if its workers become 2.0 more talented (“labor quality”), if it accumulates capital that Percent can then be used to increase production by its workers 1.5 (“capital deepening”), or if it experiences technological 1.0 progress that makes it capable of using its capital and labor more efficiently (which appears as growth in 0.5 “total-factor productivity”). The nearby chart shows Fernald’s estimates of how these three factors have con- 0 tributed to growth in labor productivity in the United States. 1948 Q1– 1973 Q1– 1995 Q4– 2003 Q4– 2007 Q4– 1973 Q1 1995 Q4 2003 Q4 2007 Q4 2013 Q4 It is apparent in the chart that there have been two SOURCE: FERNALD, JOHN, "PRODUCTIVITY AND POTENTIAL OUTPUT BEFORE, periods of extremely heightened technological progress DURING, AND AFTER THE GREAT RECESSION," NBER WORKING PAPER 20248, 2014

8 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/30/2014 11:26 AM Page 1

“My friends all hate their LongerSound BatteryBetter and Life EW N cell phones… I love mine!” FREE No Car Contract Here’s why. Charger Say good-bye to everything you hate about cell phones. Say hello to Jitterbug.

“Cell phones have gotten so small, Basic 14 Basic 19 I can barely dial mine” Monthly Minutes 50 was 100 NOW 200 Not Jitterbug®, it features a larger keypad Monthly Rate $14.99 $19.99 for easier dialing. It even has an oversized Operator Assistance 24/7 24/7 display so you can actually see it. 911 Access FREE FREE Long Distance Calls No add’l charge No add’l charge “I had to get my son to program it” Voice Dial FREE FREE Your Jitterbug set-up process is simple. Nationwide Coverage YES YES We’ll even pre-program it with your Friendly Return Policy1 30 days 30 days favorite numbers. More minute plans available. Ask your Jitterbug expert for details. “I tried my sister’s cell phone… “My cell phone company wants to lock me in on a I couldn’t hear it” two-year contract!” Jitterbug is designed with an Not Jitterbug, there’s no contract to sign and no penalty improved speaker. There’s an if you discontinue your service. adjustable volume control, and “I’ll be paying for minutes Jitterbug is hearing-aid compatible. I’ll never use!” “I don’t need stock quotes, Internet sites Not with Jitterbug, unused or games on my phone, I just want to minutes carry over to the next talk with my family and friends” month, there’s no roaming fee Life is complicated enough… and no additional charge for Jitterbug is simple. long distance.

“What if I don’t remember a number?” “My phone’s battery only Friendly, helpful Jitterbug operators are lasts a couple of days” available 24 hours a day and will even The Jitterbug’s battery lasts greet you by name when you call. for up to 25 days on standby.

“I’d like a cell phone to use in an emergency, Enough talk. Isn’t it time you but I don’t want a high monthly bill” found out more about the cell Jitterbug has a plan to fit your needs… phone that’s changing all the and your budget. Available in rules? Call now, Jitterbug product Blue, Red (shown) experts are standing by. and White. NEW Jitterbug5 Cell Phone Order now and receive a Call toll free today to get your own Jitterbug5. FREE Car Charger for your Jitterbug – Please mention promotional code 58701. a $24.99 value. Call now! 1-866-428-5018 www.jitterbugdirect.com We proudly accept the following credit cards.

® 47618 IMPORTANT CONSUMER INFORMATION: Jitterbug is owned by GreatCall, Inc. Your invoices will come from GreatCall. All rate plans and services require the purchase of a Jitterbug phone and a one-time set up --7' 7   76' -,!)-7!% $7(-,/-7/(7% ' .7!!/ !+ -7--,#&  -,-7< . -,7 !,)-(7!% $7,-(.,/./' % (7 !#7!  #75,--% 7/ !)-(7(/ * !.-$7: -,-7!,-7% ' 7!$$/./' % ! 7--(7.' 7! 70/..-,+ * )(7   ' * ,7457 !(-$76* (.'  -,75-,/-7 However, for calls to an Operator in which a service is completed, minutes will be deducted from your monthly balance equal to the length of the call and any call connected by the Operator, plus an additional 5 minutes. Monthly minutes carry over and are available for 60 days. If you exceed the minute balance on your account, you will be billed at 35¢ for each minute used over the balance. Monthly rate plans do not include government taxes or assessment surcharges. Prices and fees subject to change. We will refund the full price of the GreatCall phone and the activation fee (or set-up fee) if it is returned within 30 days of purchase in like-new condition. We will also refund your first monthly service charge if you have less than 30 minutes of usage. If you have more than 30 minutes of usage, a per minute charge of 35 cents will be deducted from your refund for each minute over 30 minutes. You will be charged a $10 restocking fee. The shipping charges are not refundable. Jitterbug and GreatCall are registered trademarks of GreatCall, Inc. 5! (*%)7/(7!7,-)/(.-,-$7.,!$- !,7' 75! (*%)73 -.,' %/(76'  7.$77
 75! (*%)7:- -'   *%/!./' %(79  -,/! 7677
 7" ,-!.6! 7?%77
 7+#7/,(.5:; 33:7' ,7 ' '  -,(7!%$7 -#' %$ 7?% week:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/2/2014 2:53 PM Page 10

THE WEEK intimidation; lies about the scope of that targeting, its timeline, republic that once fought a revolution the proximate cause of its extent, and the involvement of senior IRS officials in which was a minuscule tax on tea. Washington; its agents’ openly campaigning for Barack Obama on agency time; the convenient destruction of evidence related n Wind turbines are so efficient at killing birds that they could to investigation of these misdeeds; the planted questions at almost have been designed for the purpose. To be sure, near staged press conferences; the willful misleading of Congress. ground level, cars, cats, and buildings kill a lot more birds, but for We can see how that employee might not have thought he was species that fly at high altitudes, wind farms are a significant doing anything untoward. threat. The eagle population at Altamont Pass, in California, once a major breeding ground, has been nearly eliminated by wind n A business professor at Brooklyn College says the school’s turbines, which chop up about two of them per week. Those ad min is tra tors rejected a $10 million donation because the turbines, installed in the 1980s, are grandfathered, but with prospective donors were the Koch brothers. Administrators dis- newer construction, regulations have imposed heavy fines for pute the story, saying that no formal offer was made and that killing eagles. Under President Waiver, however, rules are just there might have been logistical problems and conditions suggestions, and his administration has just issued its first attached to the grant; the professor says they never seriously aquiline indulgence, allowing a wind farm not far from Altamont considered it. What’s not in doubt is the Left’s glee over the Pass to kill one eagle per year. Other waivers are in the works. rebuff. One commentator called the refusal “a new academic Wind power has always been an expensive, unreliable, scenery- credential” for Brooklyn College (which—along with 350 other destroying, subsidy-hungry boondoggle; now, with eagle-killing American colleges, including such right-wing bastions as MIT, made legal, we can add unpatriotic to the list. Harvard, and NYU—has accepted Koch money in the past); a headline read “Brooklyn College Defends Academic Freedom n The kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, Eyal by Saying No to Koch Millions for Its Business School.” In Yifrach, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Frenkel, has added to the ten- similar fashion, an oth er critic has urged the United Negro sion and tragedy already coursing through the Middle East. Is - College Fund to spurn a $25 million Koch gift because “the raeli authorities up to and including Prime Minister Netanyahu Koch brothers have given huge amounts of money to Tea Party immediately identified the killers as Amer Abu Issa and Marwan candidates.” Finally, the Left has found a limit to the pleasure Qawasmeh. Both men are members of Hamas, the Islamist terror of spending other people’s money. or ganization that specializes in kidnapping Israelis and exchang- ing them for other members serving sentences in Israeli jails. It n The United Nations has lumped the accounts-payable was at night, and Naftali just had time to call the police on his cell clerks at the Detroit waterworks in with Pol Pot and the brutes phone. The presumption is that the two Palestinians feared they of Boko Haram: as human-rights abusers. Their offense? were being pursued, panicked, and shot the three boys. Their Cutting off wa ter to people who fail to pay their bills. Detroit bodies were found in a field belonging to the Qawasmehs. The is bankrupt, and is $18 billion in debt; $5 billion of that debt Palestinian nationalists under Mahmoud Abbas have recently ac- is associated with the Water and Sewage Department. There cept ed Hamas in the government, and these murders put a fragile are 258,000 households in Detroit, and approximately unity to the test. In a statement, Mahmoud Abbas accused Hamas 150,000 of them, or 58 percent, are behind in their water bills. of harming Palestinians, and he also called on Israel to show re - The scenes from the city are positively Third World, with cut- straint. As mourning gives way to anger in Israel, the op tions un - off households filling up trashcans and attempting to collect der discussion there range from measured reprisals (which have rainwater. But Detroit did not become De troit because of an already begun) to full-out war to destroy Hamas. Meanwhile Abu earthquake or a tsunami; Detroit is what Detroit ers have made Issa and Qawasmeh have gone into hiding, and their capture sets of it. It has to pay its bills, which means that its residents ulti- a very different test, one for the Israeli secret services. mately must pay their bills, too, the water bill be ing trivial among them. The city is performing a perverse and painful n The world’s organized hostility to Israel would be kind of public service for the rest of the country: showing the inev it - funny if it didn’t have such serious consequences. There are some a ble endpoint of grievance politics, union rapacity, and Demo- 200 nations in the world. Many of them are very bad actors: dic- cratic misgovernance. Detroit is a monster in the classical tatorships, terror states. And it is tiny, democratic Israel that faces sense of that word: a warning of things to come. It isn’t the the world’s wrath. The latest is that the Presbyterian Church water company that is abusing Detroit, but three or more gen- (U.S.A.)—not to be confused with the Presbyterian Church in erations of elected officials and public-sector unions, which America—has voted to divest from three U.S. companies doing have reduced the city, within memory the nation’s most pros- business with Israel. This might seem a trivial matter, and, in iso- perous, to its current shocking state. lation, it is. But myriad anti-Israel actions add up to something important: the delegitimization of that state. Iran and other ene- n A New York court has refused to reinstate former mayor mies of Israel have pledged to wipe Israel off the map. Israel’s Mike Bloomberg’s hoped-for ban on soft drinks served in por- survival is no sure thing. The Jews have faced extermination tions greater than 16 ounces. The ghosts of Valley Forge surely before, of course. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has done are scratching their incorporeal heads, but the legal issue is in more than indulge in a silly act of political correctness. It has fact an important one: The court found that the Board of Health joined a nasty and growing mob. exceeded its mandate with the rule. The result seems sound, but it is worth noting that a 20-page legal ruling has now had to be n Rumors have swirled for years about who’s funding the envi- issued on the question of the legal status of Super Big Gulps in a ronmentalist opponents of fracking, the technology that has

1 0 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/30/2014 11:17 AM Page 1

6/26/14 3:15 PM Page 1 Direct from Locked Vaults to U.S. Citizens! Original U.S. Gov’t Morgan Silver Dollars National Collector’s Mint an- Dollar more valuable. But nounces a special limited release acquiring your own pri- of 2,541 Morgan Silver Dollars vate cache of Morgan 93-136 years old at $29 each. Silver Dollars is a long Several prominent national term investment in dealers charge $46 MORE for a so much more... in comparable Morgan Silver history... in Ameri- Dollar. These Morgans are can heritage... in the among the last surviving originals splendid rendering still in existence, and each coin is of Miss Liberty’s guaranteed to be in mostly Brilliant profile by designer Only Uncirculated to Fine condition. George T. Morgan, Due to volatile fluctuations in the whose “M” mark on $ 00 precious metals market, price can every Morgan Silver 29each be guaranteed @ $29 each for one Dollar identifies his week only! masterwork. And, of course, MARKET CONDITIONS Morgan Silver Dollars have not A message from the The last time silver hit $50 an been minted for 93 years and are 37TH TREASURER OF THE UNITED STATES ounce, China was a poor, under- no longer in circulation. Hello, I’m Angela Marie Buchanan. developed nation. Now, the Chi- Phone orders will be filled on a You might know me as Bay nese are rich and using over three first-come, first-served basis and Buchanan. I was appointed by times as much silver! Will this a limit of 100 coins per customer Ronald Reagan to be the 37th drive the price of silver back to will be strictly adhered to. Timely Treasurer of the United States… $50 or even higher? One thing is mail orders will be accepted if maybe you’ve seen my signature on certain – dramatic increases in directed to: National Collector’s some of the bills in your wallet. So, you can silver investment have seen silver Mint, Dept. 7392, 8 Slater St., understand why our nation’s coins are vitally prices rise over 368% in the last Port Chester, NY 10573. THIS important to me. That’s why I’m so pleased to ten years, and as much as 40% in OFFER MAY BE WITHDRAWN be able to announce this release of Morgan one month alone! AT ANY TIME WITHOUT NO- Silver Dollars by National Collector’s Mint. TICE AT THE SOLE DISCRE- Of all the coins ever struck by the U.S. Gov’t, TION OF NCM. none have so captured our imaginations the You may order 1 Morgan Silver way Morgans have. I invite you to sample Dollar for $29, plus $4 shipping, some of these magnificent Morgan Silver handling and insurance, 3 for $94 Dollars. Enjoy them. Protect them. ppd., 5 for $154.50 ppd., 10 for Celebrate them. What better way to hold $303 ppd., 20 for $599 ppd., 50 for your history, our history, America’s history in $1480 ppd., 100 for $2935 ppd. If the palm of your hand! you’re not 100% delighted with Sincerely, your purchase simply send us your postage paid return within 60 days for a refund of your purchase price. INVESTMENT Angela Marie (Bay) Buchanan Increasing prices of precious 60-Day Money Back Guarantee! 37th Treasurer of the United States of America metals make every Morgan Silver Co-Director, NCM Board of Advisors CALL TOLL-FREE, ASK FOR EXT. 7392 1-800-799-MINT (1-800-799-6468) National Collector’s Mint, Inc. is an independent, private corporation not affiliated with, endorsed, or licensed by the U.S. Government or the U.S. Mint. Offer not valid in CT or MN. © 2014 NCM, Inc. E1-E83 week:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/2/2014 2:53 PM Page 12

THE WEEK allowed oil-and-gas production in the U.S. and other countries Gavrilo Princip killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. to skyrocket in recent years. One source is the countries of the The world that came, after the ensuing bloodshed, was as bad Persian Gulf: Abu Dhabi Media, part of a United Arab Emirates as the bloodshed itself: politically unstable, riven with passions sovereign-wealth fund, made its debut in the U.S. film market and hatreds, poised for a second, even more destructive con- by investing in Promised Land, an anti-fracking film starring vulsion. “Do not fool yourself,” Roth wrote prophetically in Matt Damon. Now the secretary general of NATO, not exactly 1933. “Hell reigns.” The Cold War checked hell, until it finally an Alex Jones figure, is alleging that Russian intelligence agen- abdicated with the collapse of Communism. We have our own cies are fomenting and funding anti-fracking activism in Europe. problems, but the furies unleashed by the assassin were—are— Besides Russia, with its interest in protecting the competitive- inconceivable. We are lucky to have outlived them. ness of its low-tech oil infrastructure, countries with great frack- ing potential include Poland and Ukraine. Environmentalism: n The Death of Klinghoffer, an opera by John Adams, had its pre- just another church Vladimir Putin has managed to harness to his miere in 1991, six years after the event on which it is based. That political interests. event is the Achille Lauro hijacking, in which Palestinian terror- ists took over an Italian cruise liner and murdered a man named n According to taped conversations leaked in Poland (probably Leon Klinghoffer. He was an elderly American Jew in a wheel- by Russian intelligence), Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski chair. They shot him and dumped his body and the wheelchair described his country’s alliance with the United States as “worth- overboard. Some people have condemned the opera for moral less.” At the time he made that statement, Sikorski—who was equivalence (and worse). The New York Times, defending the NR’s roving correspondent in the 1980s and 1990s—was quite op era, said that it “gives voice to all sides.” Exactly. The Met ro - correct. The Obama administration had canceled the deal to site pol i tan Opera is staging the opera next season, which prompted U.S. anti-missile installations in Poland and the Czech Republic opposition, chiefly from the Anti-Defamation League and the even though their governments had risked political capital to wel- Klinghoffer family. The company decided to go through with the come them. In addition, President Obama had ignored the appeal staging but to cancel an international broadcast of it. The reason from 22 Central European leaders to revive America’s commit- for the cancellation, said a Met press release, was that the com- ment to the region. And Washington had clearly prioritized the pany did not want to “fan global anti-Semitism.” Management reset with Russia over its relations with these countries. Since probably thought it was being Solomonic, but it was roundly at - then, however, the Ukrainian crisis has erupted. Today Sikorski tacked, including by the Times. As for our own view: If the opera would almost certainly be far friendlier to the U.S.—and far more should be staged, it should be broadcast. And if it should not be critical of his then-favorite Germany—over their handling of the broadcast, it should not be staged. Ukraine crisis. Like the Berlin crisis in the 1960s, the Ukraine crisis has greatly clarified the international scene. By annexing n For an hour or two, a fair number of conservative commenta- Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine by proxy, Russian presi- tors were convinced that Christin Scarlett Milloy’s essay in Slate, dent Vladimir Putin has realized a number of negative achieve- “Don’t Let the Doctor Do This to Your Newborn,” was a parody, ments. He has encouraged Ukrainian nationalism throughout the and an oafish one at that. What Milloy objects to is having the nation and made it hostile to Russia—Ukraine will now never attending physician announce: “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” Mil - become part of a Russian system. He has lost the prize he origi- loy, a transsexual, is peddling the fantasy that sex is a social con- nally sought—namely, keeping Ukraine out of any relationship struct rather than a biological reality, and that when a doctor takes with the European Union and incorporating it instead in a note at birth of the baby’s sex the newborn is “instantly and bru- Eurasian Economic Union. He has shown that despite a full mea- tally re duced from such infinite potentials down to one concrete sure of braggadocio, he and the Kremlin have no appetite for a set of expectations and stereotypes.” This is, in a word, madness. full-scale war with Ukraine, thus removing one major anxiety of (A ri poste to NATIONAL REVIEW’s Kevin D. Williamson on the NATO and Western military planners. He has broken the rules of matter of transsexualism began: “As a woman with a penis . . .”) international good behavior and thus alarmed the Germans, Milloy went so far as to argue that treating boys as boys and girls who are sticklers for transnational good conduct. He has been as girls constitutes “psychological abuse.” Given the radical and unable to prevent the election of a legitimate and internation- invasive medical procedures to which transsexuals routinely ally recognized government in Kiev that has the loyalty of most subject themselves, there can be little doubt that their sense of Ukrainians. The crisis is not over; it may continue for years. But sexual misidentification is sincerely felt. But it is far from clear it is beginning to look as if Putin can no longer win it. We look that the correct response to that sensation is its encouragement in forward to Sikorski’s memoirs in, say, 20 years—and to what he in di vid uals; the idea that an entire child-rearing ethic should be has to say about Obama, Merkel, Hollande, and the alliance with constructed upon it is perverse and intellectually indefensible. To Western Europeans. At NR he was always easy to edit. take reality into account is not bigotry.

n “I sometimes look at [my children] when they’re asleep. n One would think that the business of the U.S. Patent and Their faces then look very alien to me, almost unrecognizable, Trade mark Office would be registering patents and trademarks, and I see that they are strangers, from a time that is yet to but because our laws are written with all of the precision of a come.” So speaks a character in The Radetzky March, one of the crayon-wielding toddler attempting to reproduce Titian’s novels of Joseph Roth that mourn the end of the Austro- Salome, the agency is empowered to act as an arbiter of social Hungarian Empire. That empire and three others, along with 16 and cultural disputes, and so its appeals board has rescinded the million lives and countless treasure, vanished in World War I. trademark be longing to Washington’s NFL franchise, the The first shots were fired on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, when Redskins. It has deputized itself to act on behalf of aggrieved

1 2 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 week:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/2/2014 2:53 PM Page 13

Native Americans, though which of them is unclear—polls con- ambassador to Japan. He married two politicians’ daughters: sistently show that Native Americans do not collectively give a Everett Dirk sen’s daughter Joy, who died in 1993; and Alf fig about sports mascots: An Annenberg poll on the subject Landon’s daughter Nancy, who was a senator in her own right, found that 90 percent of Native Americans were unbothered by and survives her husband. Baker has died in his native Huntsville, the name. But President Barack Obama is bothered by it, as are Tenn., at 88. We had our ideological differences—he was more Harry Reid and any number of Democratic grandees, and there liberal than we—but he gave politics a good name. R.I.P. is no federal agency too modest or too obscure to be drafted into the Left’s endless culture war. n Fouad Ajami was a proud Shiite born and bred in Southern Lebanon, and from the age of 18 onwards also a proud American. n Robert Roche of the American Indian Education Center in The play of identities brought insight and interpretation. He Parma, Ohio, plans to file a federal lawsuit against the Cleveland explained to Arabs that they were victims only of themselves and In di ans in July. He says he will seek $9 billion in damages be- he explained to Americans that democracy brought with it the cause he thinks the club’s name and logo are racist. Whereas re spon si bil i ty to oppose dictatorship. Writing books and op-ed critics of the Washington Redskins’ name assume that the word articles in elegant and idiosyncratic prose, speaking with polite “redskin” is disparaging in any context, despite its history (Amer- authority on television, he found a rightful place as a Washington i can In di ans referred to themselves as “redskins” when negotiat- insider. In his view, the Arabs would save themselves from ing with settlers), evidently Roche does not find “Indians” to be home-made disaster by recognizing that American intervention offensive in itself, since it’s included in the name of his own in the Arab world was their good fortune. There was nobody like organization. Presumably he feels that it is the baseball team’s him. Aged 68, he has died of cancer. R.I.P. appropriation of the word that is disrespectful of American Indians, and presumably future targets of his principled indigna- n Richard “Rick” Sharp tion will in clude Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish and the feisty may not have been a house- leprechaun that serves as their logo and mascot. hold name, but since the mid 1980s his products n Minnesota’s governor has approved a bill to rename a species could be found in millions of fish called the “Asian carp.” The fish will hereafter be known of American homes. Sharp, as “invasive carp.” The species was imported into the U.S. from who died in June of early- Asia in the 1970s, hence its original name. As the fish have been onset Alzheimer’s, was the a major threat to the ecosystem of the Great Lakes, some Min ne - CEO of Circuit City during so tans decided this title was a negative, hurtful allusion to the its meteoric rise, from 1984 state’s Asian population. Democratic state senator John Hoff - to 2000. Under his leader- man, the hero who sponsored the bill, explained to the senate: ship, the company’s rev- “Our state and our nation has learned that words, nicknames enues expanded 71-fold and made consumer electronics matter, often at great expense in hurt feelings, inappropriateness, available to tens of millions. Sharp’s other ventures will be and money.” Later, he told the Star Tribune, “Caucasians brought equally familiar: the nation’s largest used-car retailer, CarMax, them to America. Should we call them ‘Caucasian carp’? They which he launched in 1993; and footwear giant Crocs, in which have names. Let’s call them what they are.” Problem solved (ex- Sharp was a founding investor. He was also a noted philan- cept for the fish). thropist, giving away much of his wealth for cancer and Alzheimer’s research, private-school scholarships, Boys and n Longtime NR contributor Terry Teachout has won the presti- Girls Clubs, and conservative political causes. A fierce defender gious Bradley Prize. Teachout, besides being the drama critic for of the free market, Sharp once observed: “The free-enterprise the Wall Street Journal, is the author of artists’ biographies, opera system is what made this nation wealthy and allowed someone librettos, and, most recently, a play (Satchmo, which just closed like me to become rich. Why does Washington want to tear down its Off-Broadway run). But (ahem) we found him first, and run that system?” His crucial question stands. Dead at 67. R.I.P. him still. Bravo—and encore! THE LAW n Howard Baker was a talented and good man who had a big career in politics. A Republican senator, he asked the key Hobby Lobby Hysteria Watergate question: “What did the president know, and when did ONTRARy to what you may have read elsewhere, the Su - he know it?” Like WFB and NR, he backed the Panama Canal preme Court did not deny access to contraception to treaties, though he knew this would ruin his chance to win the C anyone in the Hobby Lobby case. Rather, it ruled that if Republican presidential nomination in 1980. He ran anyway and the owners of a closely held company have religious objections DEAN HOFFMEYER

, fell off quickly. He became Senate majority leader in 1981, help- to providing contraceptives or abortifacients in their insurance ing the new president, Reagan, pass his program. He retired from policies, the Obama administration cannot force them to do it. DISPATCH - the Senate in 1984, planning to spend the next several years run- The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) trumps the ning for the 1988 nomination. In 1987, Reagan called, his presi- administration’s regulations. The act says that religious objec- dency in disarray, chiefly because of Iran-Contra. Would Baker tors must be exempt from a government policy that imposes a

RICHMOND TIMES come be his chief of staff? He would, and did, even though that substantial burden on their beliefs if the government has a less / required dropping the idea of running for president. He righted burdensome way of advancing a compelling interest. Five jus-

AP PHOTO Reagan’s ship for him. And, in the first term of W., he served as tices of the Court ruled that closely held companies can be reli-

1 3 week:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/2/2014 2:53 PM Page 14

THE WEEK harder question of how to roll back an offensive by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that has taken much of the Sunni heartland in a country breaking apart at its seams, at a time when our military presence is essentially nil and our influence is a fraction of what it once was. It would have been much wiser to answer the first question so we would never have had to face the second, but President Obama’s willful negligence in liquidating our military presence and in essentially ignoring Iraq for six years has enabled a calamity that may not be reversible. ISIS has declared a caliphate in the parts of Iraq and Syria that it controls and has continued to advance toward Baghdad. Hav ing captured equipment from the retreating Iraqi military and ta ken over banks in major towns, the al-Qaeda offshoot has resources that jihadists could only have dreamed of a few years ago. For now, it may be focused on consolidating and extending its gains on the ground in Iraq and Syria, but if it suc- ceeds in creating a quasi-state, it will surely turn its attention to training ji had ists to attack the West. The U.S. needs a comprehensive political, diplomatic, and mil- itary plan to push it back. We need to reengage with the Sunni gious ob jec tors protected by the law, and that the government tribes that were essential to defeating al-Qaeda the first time can indeed make contraception more affordable without coerc- around, in 2006–08, and fund and arm those that are still potential ing these companies. allies. We need to work much harder to aid the anti-ISIS opposi- Just as notable is what the Supreme Court’s ruling did not do. tion in Syria, since the extremist group’s ascendancy during the Women who work for the plaintiff, Hobby Lobby, remain able to Syrian bloodbath helped it in launching its offensive in Iraq. We use their employer-provided insurance coverage to finance the need to buttress our allies in Jordan, threatened by the chaos across most popular forms of contraception. They remain free to use its border, and in Kurdistan, which will be an even more impor- their wages to finance the ones Hobby Lobby will not cover. tant strategic partner should Iraq fall completely apart. They remain free to find other jobs, too, if they want employer- The default military option when we feel compelled to “do provided insurance coverage that includes the abortifacients to something” in response to a crisis is usually airstrikes. They which Hobby Lobby objects. Congress remains free to enact a should be considered here only in the context of a broader new law that requires employers to cover abortifacients and con- strategy, rather than as a substitute for one. traceptives and explicitly rules out any RFRA exemptions. It The necessary condition for a stepback from renewed civil remains free, for that matter, to repeal RFRA altogether. war in Iraq, and for detaching Sunni tribes from ISIS, is more- The ruling does not make it clear whether the Little Sisters of inclusive rule in Baghdad. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s the Poor, a Catholic religious institute, will, in the end, remain rank sectarianism and growing authoritarianism have done free from the requirement that they authorize another party to much to stoke the current conflagration (the Obama policy to provide contraceptive coverage. That question will be answered this point has been to back him to the hilt, no matter what). With in a different case. The Court’s ruling, in short, is an extremely prominent Shiite figures abandoning him, he could well be on limited one. It does not even restore the full scope of freedom his way out. We need to do what we can, ideally with a more employers had in these matters as recently as 2012. Nobody then, reasonable Iraqi politician at the helm, to return professional you may recall, was agitated over the fact that, throughout the leadership to the Iraqi military and to strengthen the army units entire course of American history up to that point, their supposed that have proven more capable in the latest fighting. “rights” to free contraceptive coverage from employers had been even in the best of circumstances, the Iraqi government is continuously violated. going to be quarrelsome and dysfunctional and much too close It can be safely predicted that any change in birth rates and to Iran. This will fuel the temptation, after so much blood and rates of contraceptive use based on this ruling will be unde- so many tears, to wash our hands of the entire business. But re - tectable. All that has changed is that employers are a little freer to gard less of who is running Baghdad, ISIS will be our enemy. refuse to en gage in conduct they consider religiously objection- And the surest way to hand Iraq, or at least its Shiite rump, com- able. That this increase in freedom makes some people so very pletely over to the Iranians is to turn our back on the country upset tells us more about them than about the Court’s ruling. once and for all. The Obama administration is showing signs of emerging from AT WAR its passivity in Iraq, but we doubt its resolve and have no confi- Time to Get Serious in Iraq dence in its execution. It should get serious, if for no other reason than out of a sense of guilt for all it has thrown away. He question in Iraq a few years ago was how to maintain

PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS the fragile stability created by the surge, at a time when / EDITOR’S NOTE: The next issue of NATIONAL REVIEW T we had tens of thousands of combat troops in the country will appear in three weeks.

AP PHOTO and our influence was considerable. We now face the much

1 4 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/30/2014 11:32 AM Page 1

AS LOW AS Pure China $29.95 Silver Sparks American Demand Lock in new 2014 China Silver Pandas before they disappear!

ach year, as China releases its Silver EPanda coin, millions of collectors and silver lovers around the world swarm the market for these silver coins. Why? The answers are surprisingly simple.

Massive 99.9% Pure Silver Each hefty, One Ounce China Silver Panda is official legal tender struck in 99.9% pure silver—among the purest silver coins ever struck! In addition, each coin is guaranteed to be in stunning Brilliant Uncirculated (BU) condition.

One-Year-Only Design Unlike comparable U.S., Canadian, and other world silver coins whose designs don’t change, each years’ China Silver Panda features a new, one-year-only design. This leads many to seek out each and every year for their beauty and collectibility.

Legal Tender Silver The China Silver Rush is ON! Actual Size: 40mm The China Silver Panda has been one of the world’s most popular coins for the last thirty years. But remarkably, an old If you are not satisfied, simply return within 30 days for a full 1949 law prohibited Chinese citizens from owning these coins refund (less all s/h). until the law was changed in 2004. When the law was finally changed, millions of China’s prosperous new middle class Buy more and SAVE MORE! buyers flooded into the market. The Chinese silver rush is on! $34.95 each for 1–4 coins (plus s/h) $32.95 each for 5–9 coins (plus s/h) Current prices for past-year Pandas: $29.95 each for 10+ coins (plus s/h) Save $50 or MORE! Due to availability and demand, some past-year One Ounce Silver Pandas command impressive values these days: Toll-Free 24 hours a day 2002 Silver Panda ...... $120.00 2003 Silver Panda ...... $158.00 2004 Silver Panda ...... $108.00 1-888-201-7662 2008 Silver Panda ...... $99.00 Offer Code DPS138-01 Of course, no one can predict the future, but you can secure your Please mention this code when you call. 2014 Silver Pandas NOW for as little as $29.95 each.

FIRST RELEASE—Lock In and SAVE! As a distributor, our very first official mint allocation is now available on a strictly first come, first served basis. 14101 Southcross Drive W., Dept. DPS138-01 By ordering today, you can lock in our lowest current price— Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 plus the security of our full 30-day satisfaction guarantee. www.GovMint.com Prices and availability subject to change without notice. Past performance is not a predictor of future performance. NOTE: GovMint.com® is a private distributor of worldwide government coin and currency issues and other collectible numismatic products, and is not affiliated with the United States government. Facts and figures deemed accurate as of February 2014. ©2014 GovMint.com 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 10:41 PM Page 16

make significant mistakes on the cam- paign trail. We need conservative candi- dates, but they must also be skilled candidates in order to win.” The marquee “establishment” victories this year in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Oklahoma have reflected the flip side of this coin. It’s not enough simply to be “electable,” or the longtime incumbent. Candidates who make the case that they will fight for conservative ideas, and not just serve time, can win tea-party support. polling suggests that Mitch McConnell won an outright majority of tea-party vot- ers in Kentucky. By definition, the Senate minority leader is an establishment fig- ure. But the relative ease with which he dispatched his challenger, Matt Bevin, spoke to how he had preserved his con- servative bona fides and maintained a connection to his state. In Oklahoma, Representative James Establishment Tea Lankford won big over former state- The GOP is coming together, not apart house speaker T. W. Shannon, racking up a big enough margin to suggest that he BY RICHARD LOWRY & RAMESH PONNURU too did well among tea partiers. perhaps that should not be surprising, since he was considered one himself when he EpORTERS and commentators is Ben Sasse, the college president who first won election to Congress in the have been drawn to civil-war stormed out of nowhere to win the wave of 2010. Some tea partiers soured metaphors in describing the Republican nomination for the Senate on him because, for example, he voted to R fight between the “establish- in Nebraska. Sasse had the support of reopen the government during last year’s ment” and “tea party” wings of the tea-party groups and campaigned on a shutdown fight, but he was apparently Republican party for years now, and it full-throated anti-Obamacare and anti- able to convince many others that these has usually seemed overwrought. Then Washington message. Yet he was a former votes did not reflect an abandonment of along came the shocking upset of House Bush official who didn’t scare anyone, conservative goals. majority leader Eric Cantor in Virginia, and he also talked about a governing Before winning his primary in North followed by a Thad Cochran–Chris Mc - agenda. He won a resounding victory Carolina against two tea-party candidates, Daniel Senate primary in Mississippi over candidates who had either more Thom Tillis was speaker of the North that was about as pleasant as the Battle establishment backing or more moder- Carolina house at a time when the state of Chickamauga. ate records. was becoming a byword for an aggressive The drama of these elections—Cantor’s Sasse’s consultants wrote a shrewd program of conservative reforms. So in all defeat was literally historic, and Cochran’s memo on the meaning of his victory. “In these races, Republican primary voters— victory will generate ill feelings for a the last two cycles,” they wrote, “we saw including many tea partiers—decided that long time to come—has obscured the what happened when anti-establishment the establishment man was also theirs. larger story of the evolution of the party. candidates with questionable backgrounds Cantor and Cochran are the exceptions The GOp may well be coming together, or poor campaign skills were nominated that prove the rule. In retrospect, Cantor not coming apart. Both wings of the party in several states. In 2012, other states had clearly lost touch with his district, are, in fits and starts, converging on a showed what happened when the estab- making him vulnerable. His favorability new synthesis. lishment worked to manipulate the system rating was shockingly low, and tea-party The tea parties have almost since their to put forward equally flawed candidates primary voters didn’t consider him con- inception been attacking the party estab- who also fared poorly in General Elections servative enough. Immigration was the lishment for not standing for anything, in 2012.” issue that was the blasting cap. For a sig- and the establishment has been com- It isn’t enough, they argued, for tea nificant minority of voters, Cantor’s re - plaining for nearly as lo ng that tea-party partiers to support conservative candi- fusal to take a harder line on the issue was candidates are not ready for prime time. dates. “We must also nominate,” they a reason to vote against him. For others, This primary season, each side seems to urged, “candidates who have substantial the issue lent credence to Dave Brat’s be learning the other’s lesson. credibility as candidates, can articulate a arguments that Cantor was out of touch, The candidate who best encapsulates vision of what they believe, can propose untrustworthy on issues, and a tool of big

the possible synthesis of the two wings real solutions to problems, and don’t business. ROMAN GENN

1 6 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/30/2014 11:27 AM Page 1

6;8
*-9:
9-3315/
,8-99
90 18: <0 1:-
7157615:
6=.68, $"  
 %#!&%!#(

"#   

8-/
   

?
<0 1:-

+6::65 ?

+633)8
9:>3-9 ?
*;::65
68
.8-5+0
+;..9 ?
8-/;3)8
*1/

:)33
68
:814

?
 A @
=
 @
:6
@
=
@

?
#






8-/
  



4656/8)4415/

?
,,
)
9132
:1-
.68



  


8-/
   #-,
3;-
8--5
3)+2

";873-
68
!8)5/-

7);3.8-,81+2 +64 15:866..-8
   
$7-+1.>
78646:165)3
+6,-
 $ #

#
'   $
-<
+;9:64-8
6..-8
141:

90 18:9
7-8
+;9:64-8
$017715/
-=:8)
)556:
*-
+64*15-,
<1:0
6:0-8
6..-89
=718-9
  

2:06 PM 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 10:41 PM Page 18

In Mississippi, both the establishment At the same time, the party is also and the tea-party candidates played to starting to forge a new agenda. Much of type, and their dueling weaknesses created this work is being done by tea partiers Extinguish a conflagration. Thad Cochran is a tea who came to the Senate in 2010: Mike partier’s caricature of the Republican Lee, Marco Rubio, and to a lesser ex- Ex-Im establishment. Aside from missile de- tent Rand Paul. They have been pro - fense, he has been associated with no posing new conservative policies on But do it gently major conservative causes in his many everything from higher education to years in office. These days, he is not a taxes to criminal justice: policies that BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON dynamic champion of anything. It was a could simultaneously unify the party, stinging rebuke that he lost the first round attract the public, and improve the HERE is no economic reason for of the primary narrowly to Chris Mc - country’s governance. One of Lee’s ideas the Export-Import Bank of the Daniel. He forged his comeback in the is to break the accreditation monopoly United States to exist; there is a runoff, in part, by running as a dispenser of what he calls “the higher-education T political reason to be sensitive of big-government benefits to a poor cartel.” It’s easy to see Ben Sasse, the about how we wind it down. state and thereby attracting Democratic tea-party winner, co-sponsoring legis- The Export-Import Bank provides no votes. (It was an open primary.) The lation on it next year. But it’s just as easy net benefit to the U.S. economy. Rather, it future of the party this isn’t. to see Tillis, the establishment man, subsidizes the operations of some firms, Cochran’s challenger, Chris McDaniel, doing the same thing if he makes it to domestic and foreign, at the ex pense of was much more impressive than tea-party the Senate. their competitors and the public. It does busts such as Christine O’Donnell. But In part because of the Cantor defeat, this by offering financing at below- he seemed perfectly capable of a Todd the Republican leadership in the market rates to companies that buy Akin–like gaffe. From the beginning, his House appears likely to allow the U.S. firms’ exports, and by offering campaign wasn’t just about making the Export-Import Bank to expire. Here domestic firms insurance against non- case against Cochran, but about waging too is another change in the party’s payment by their overseas clients, also at a personal war on him. This backfired agenda, which now includes a stand below-market rates. Like every other when a handful of his supporters were against corporate welfare. Tea partiers loan-guarantee and risk-subsidy pro- caught trying to videotape the sena- have led the fight on the Ex-Im Bank. gram the federal government has created, tor’s bed ridden wife in a nursing home On this issue they have an achievable from Fannie Mae to student loans, the (a tea-party leader charged in the inci- goal and a plausible strategy, and the Ex-Im Bank is an exercise in camouflage, dent committed suicide shortly after fight will communicate a message a way to give money to a politically the runoff). about the party that might help it in the favored group without the embarrass- If Mississippi were the norm, the future. In all three respects that’s an ing spectacle of Uncle Sam handing Republican party would burn itself to the improvement over the tea-party cam- over a check. ground. Fortunately, it’s not. Even more paign that led to the government shut- In its simplest form, the process looks fortunately, Republicans of all stripes down last fall. like this: If the prevailing interest rate in can learn the lessons of these races. Party establishments too often be - the market is 5 percent and I lend you Establishment candidates who cross the come expert at the means of acquiring $10 million at the lower rate of 3 percent party’s base on key issues and seem dis- and retaining power and indifferent to for one year, I have effectively given engaged at home will have a rough time its ends, and the Republican establish- you $200,000—but, for the purposes of getting renominated; tea partiers who ment has not proven immune to this my balance sheet, it looks like I made seem practical and forward-looking can tendency. Tea partiers have had a clearer $300,000 rather than giving away unify the party. sense of the proper ends of conserva- $200,000. It is a deceit that obscures The press has wanted to say that the tive politics, which is why we have both opportunity cost (the additional establishment is “winning” or “losing” more often sided with them in these $300,000 I could have made lending out the primaries, but there is no such overall internal disputes; but they have some- the money at market rates) and, more pattern. In most of these races, the “estab- times given too little thought to ques- important, the price of risk, which the lishment” and “tea party” factions have tions of means. It is just possible that federal government effectively ignores been rather loosely defined. It appears the party as a whole is fumbling toward for these sorts of programs. And as the that at the center of the Republican elec- the right combination—realism about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts torate are many voters who are not hostile means and idealism about ends—and show, the cost of risk is not zero. to either group. They do not think of tea devising a winning policy agenda. We subsidize exports for much the partiers as a bunch of crazies, or the Is this analysis just wishful thinking? same reason that we subsidize mortgages Republican hierarchy as a group of quis- If so, it’s a wish other conservatives and college loans: bias. Just as we seem lings. Their reflex is to support the most should share. Because if there’s one to believe that wealth held in the form effective conservative, regardless of label. thing even more wishful, it’s the alter- of owner-occupied-real-estate equity is And so the races have, for the most part, native of the two sides’ ferociously somehow socially preferable to wealth turned on specific issues and candidate fighting it out until one of them van- held in other forms, such as stocks, there quality rather than on which faction quishes the other altogether and then is an enduring belief that export sales are claims each candidate for its own. beats the Democrats in 2016. somehow economically superior to other

1 8 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/30/2014 11:46 AM Page 1

You deserve a factual look at . . .

Israel: An Apartheid State? Is there any truth at all in this oft-repeated calumny? At many universities Arab militants and other radical students hold Israel Apartheid Weeks. Even some establishment politicians have taken to using the word “apartheid” to describe Israel’s policies or the danger of Israel becoming a segregationist state. What justification is there for this odious characterization?

were not allowed in apartheid South Africa. WhatSouth Africanare the Apartheid. facts? “Apartheid,” the Dutch-Africaans But, yes, there is one difference: Jewish Israeli men are term for separation, was the social order of the former South obligated to a three-year stint in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Africa. It meant exactly that. The Black majority of the nation and serve in the reserve until they are 50 years old. For Arabs, and the so-called Colored were kept strictly apart in all aspects this service is voluntary. Except for the Druze, hardly any Arabs of life. White domination over the native population was volunteer to serve in the armed forces. mandatory. For instance: Non-Whites had to carry a Israel has granted permanent residence and full citizen rights “passbook.” Passbook infringement could lead to deportation to a large number of legal and illegal foreign workers and their to one of the Bantu “homelands.” families – from the Philippines, Eritrea, Blacks and Coloreds were being kept “To call Israel an apartheid state Colombia, Nigeria, and from many other from a wide array of jobs. Black-White is an expression of ignorance, countries. Nobody, of course, is forced or sex was a serious jail-time criminal requested to convert to Judaism as a offense. Hospitals and ambulances were anti-Semitism, and malice.” condition of their being allowed to stay. strictly separated. Whites enjoyed free Israel has accepted a shipload of education until graduation. Not so for Blacks, whose education Vietnamese refugees who had sought asylum. No Arab country was strictly limited by the oppressive “Bantu Education Act.” has accepted a single one of those refugees. Israel has brought By law, no mixed sports were allowed. Park benches, in about 70,000 black Ethiopian Jews, who despite their swimming pools, libraries, and movies were strictly separated. backwardness have become fully integrated citizens of Israel. Blacks were not allowed to purchase or imbibe alcoholic Everything that Blacks were not allowed to do in South Africa drinks. And that is only a partial and small list of the many is totally open to non-Jews in Israel. abusive impediments that non-Whites suffered under the The “Apartheid Wall.” Another reason for which left-wing South African apartheid regime. zealots and anti-Semites like to refer to Israel as the “apartheid Israeli Equality. In fact there can be no comparison of these state” is the fence between Israel proper and the territories. policies to life in Israel. To the contrary: Not one single This fence (which is indeed a fence and not a wall over most of apartheid law or practice can be found in Israel. Israel is by far its length) was constructed at great cost in order to prevent the the most racially mixed and tolerant nation in the entire suicidal attacks that had killed hundreds of Israelis and Muslim Middle East. Arabs, who are about 20% of Israel’s grievously wounded thousands more. Thankfully, this “wall” is population, enjoy, without any exception, the same rights and exceptionally successful and has totally prevented any such opportunities in all fields as their Jewish fellow citizens. The attacks since its completion. There is little question that this total equality of all Israelis is assured in Israel’s founding separation fence is the cause of inconvenience for some of the document. All non-Jews (which means primarily Muslim Arabs) Arab population. But it is an annoyance that they have brought have full voting rights. At present, eleven Arabs sit in Israel’s about themselves. And, of course, there are walls for protection Knesset (parliament): Three Arabs are deputy speakers. Arabs all over the world. The Chinese invented it hundreds of years are represented in Israel’s diplomatic service all over the world. ago. Our own country has a long, high, very sophisticated wall Arab students may and do study in all Israeli universities. All across our border with Mexico. It is a wall, not to keep out children in Israel are entitled to subsidized education until criminals who want to kill Americans, but people who want to graduation, without any restrictions based on color or religions. come here only in search of a better life. To call the Israeli fence In short, Muslim Arabs and other non-Jews are allowed an “apartheid wall” is an expression of ignorance and of everything that Jews are allowed, everything that non-Whites malevolence. Israel is a light unto the nations. It has, regrettably, many enemies – all or most of the world’s Muslim nations and left-wing ideologues who mostly hate the United States and who consider Israel to be America’s cat’s-paw in the Middle East. The reality, of course, is that Israel is the exact opposite of an apartheid state. It is a country in which all residents, all citizens, enjoy the same full rights. All other countries in the Middle East are benighted theocracies, ruthless tyrannies, or mostly both. To call Israel an apartheid state is an expression of ignorance, anti-Semitism or malice – or all three.

This ad has been published and paid for by FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world. Your tax- deductible contributions are welcome. They enable us to pursue these goals Facts and Logic About the Middle East and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines. We I P.O. Box 590359 San Francisco, CA 94159 have virtually no overhead. Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail. Gerardo Joffe, President 121B To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 10:41 PM Page 20

sorts of sales because they result in in - 2012. The outcome would be the same, The manufactured exports that have flows of money—people fail to take but the federal government would have suffered in the United States as a result of into account the associated outflow of to account for the transfer as spending. competition from relatively low-wage goods. There is basically no evidence The effect of Ex-Im Bank policies on countries are for the most part low- justifying this bias; it’s mainly emo- the national economy is minuscule ; U.S. value-added products—T-shirts and flip- tional. We treat exports like we’re get- exports are mainly driven by factors flops, plastic toys, lower-end electronics, ting one over on those damned dirty other than the policies of the U.S. gov- etc. Until recently, more than 40 per- foreigners, but, strangely, we ourselves ernment or other governments, and our cent of the U.S. trade deficit was in do not feel victimized by the French exports do not correlate very strongly the form of oil and refined-petroleum when we buy a bottle of Bordeaux or by with Ex-Im Bank activity. If there is a pro d ucts; thanks in no small part to bet- the villains in Stuttgart when we buy a policy driver, it is more likely the ter hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and Mercedes-Benz. North American Free Trade Agree- other technological developments, the Consulting World Bank figures, we ment: Be fore the passage of NAFTA in United States is about to export signifi- find that there are rich countries that 1994, our exports hovered between 10 cant amounts of crude oil for the first have high levels of exports as a share of percent and 11 percent of GDP; today time in a generation. their economies (Switzerland, Sing a - they are closer to 14 percent of GDP. The economic case against the Ex-Im pore) and rich countries that have rela- Un surprisingly, the biggest national Bank is strong; the fact that senior offi- tively scanty exports (the United States, buyers of U.S. exports are, by far, Can a da cials of that institution currently are un der Australia), just as there are poor coun- and Mexico, with China coming in investigation on corruption allegations tries with high exports (Democratic third. Having the standard of living in does not help its standing. Republic of the Congo) and poor coun- Mexico rise from its current level to that Republicans have long faced the di - tries with low exports (Haiti). What a of Poland or Slovenia would probably lem ma of whether they desire to be the country produces tends to matter more do as much for U.S. exports—and for party of free markets or the party of big than where it is sold: Zambia and Swe - the U.S. economy—as all of the reforms business, and the revolt against the Ex- den both export just under 50 percent of currently contemplated in Wash ing ton Im Bank suggests that they are primed GDP, but Zambia exports minerals, combined. to come down on the angels’ side. This tobacco, and flowers, whereas Sweden Supporters of the Ex-Im Bank and is to be celebrated, but conservatives exports Ericsson mobile-network equip- similar programs often argue that such should proceed with caution on this ment and Volvo automobiles. China ex - measures are necessary to offset similar and similar issues. While narrow self- ports more as a share of GDP than does subsidies offered to overseas competi- interest may provide a great deal of cor- the United States; in fact, it exports 27 tors by the governments of the coun- porate America’s political energy, there percent, just like Burkina Faso, one of tries in which they are based. This is a remains substantial overlap between the poorest countries on earth. Large, fairly thin rationale. China, the country that self-interest and the interests of rich countries such as the United States that earns most of our resentment vis-à- principled conservatism. And conserva- may have relatively small export pro- vis the balance of trade, does indeed tives should always be mindful of facts files, mostly because their hungry use government policy to make its and particularities, which should not be domestic markets consume so much of exports more attractive. But no sane subsumed by ideological puritanism. their economic output. Papua New American wants to replicate the Chi nese It is a fact—and it is perfectly legiti- Guinea is a big gold producer, but it’s approach, which consists of artificially mate—that there are real and meaning- also poor, so it’s a gold exporter, not a reducing the quality of life for Chinese ful economic interests attached to bad gold consumer. people: Their artificially low wages policies, be they the Ex-Im Bank or the So, bearing in mind that achieving an make Chinese exports relatively attrac- tax code. Boeing has been effectively increase in exports for its own sake is a tive, and their diminished purchasing singled out for certain benefits, but it questionable goal at best, the next ques- power makes imports less affordable also was singled out by the National tion is: Does the Ex-Im Bank effectively for Chinese buyers. This is a net bene- Labor Relations Board for punitive achieve that goal? The short answer is: fit to Americans, particularly poor attention. The Ex-Im Bank should be Yes, it does. Setting aside the critical Americans, though it does place some wound down, but the sting of winding it related question—At what price?—the specific U.S. firms at a disadvantage— down would be mitigated if paired with, Ex-Im Bank makes some export deals but not the sorts of firms whose sales e.g., reform of our unusually burden- happen that would not happen otherwise. are generally subsidized by the Ex-Im some tax treatment of overseas earn- It is probably a marginal factor, but Bank. Boeing does not really have any ings. The Fortune 500 have legitimate marginal factors are not to be sneered Chinese competitors, the market being interests, too, and Republican reformers at. How much Ex-Im Bank subsidies a duopoly comprising Boeing and Air - would do well to keep that in mind. function as deal-makers ra ther than as bus. The Chinese-made Comac C919, Eliminating corporate welfare should be deal-sweeteners is unclear and probably expected to launch next year, is intend- a centerpiece of Republican thinking unknowable. But whatever economic ed to bring China into that market, and going forward, but conservatives should effect they have could be replicated we’ll see how many of the world’s air- not let the desire to reform degenerate simply by writing checks to Boeing and lines are eager to risk life, limb, and into the desire to punish. Big business is Boeing clients, who together received solvency on an airliner with a “Made in not always our friend, but it is not the 82.7 percent of Ex-Im Bank benefits in China” label. enemy, either.

2 0 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 10:41 PM Page 21

The Turnaround Governor Rick Snyder and the future of Michigan

BY JOHN J. MILLER

Detroit ODAy we’re going to achieve an important milestone in the comeback of Detroit,” ‘T said Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan on June 20, shortly before signing legislation that commits nearly $200 million in state funds to a bailout for the city that filed the largest munici- Michigan governor Rick Snyder in Detroit, June 20, 2014 pal bankruptcy in U.S. history last sum- mer. The ceremony took place in the Snyder may not be a name-brand Snyder set out to distinguish himself Globe Building, where Henry Ford once conservative reformer in the mold of from the career politicians who were his worked as an apprentice machinist—but other midwesterners, such as former rivals in the GOP primary. His campaign which had fallen into such disrepair that Indiana governor Mitch Daniels or cur- made like a think tank, publishing papers it had become a showcase for the style rent Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, full of policy proposals. Then Snyder of photography that turns visions of but he has assembled a record that many landed on a winning theme that turned his Detroit’s urban ruins into a neo-Gothic Republicans think will carry him to an technocratic impulses into a virtue, call- art form. yet on this day, after a year of easy victory in November against former ing himself “one tough nerd” who had gutting and restoration, the Globe was congressman Mark Schauer, a Democrat. the know-how to jump-start Michigan. A bright and clean and smelling of drywall The most optimistic believe that his per- television commercial boasted that he paste. “I picked this place,” said Snyder, formance may reverberate in Wash - was a reader of Fortune at the age of a Republican, following the event. “I ington, helping Terri Lynn Land become eight and claimed that “his ten-point thought it was a great analogy.” only the second Republican since the plan to reinvent Michigan is so detailed As Snyder seeks reelection this year, Nixon years to win a Senate race in that, well, it’s likely no politician could he’s all about symbols of renewal, right Michigan. even understand it.” In the pr imary, he down to the green that decorates his On paper, the 56-year-old Snyder is won a 36 percent plurality, beating three campaign logo. He can hardly hold a exactly the sort of officeholder that other Republicans with long résumés in con versation without using the word many voters, especially conservatives, state and federal politics. In the general “comeback”—or “turnaround,” “resur- say they want: a figure who spent the election, he trounced his Democratic foe gence,” or any number of synonyms. bulk of his career outside of politics. He by 18 points. Some of his constituents refer to the first grew up in Battle Creek and attended Calling himself a “nerd” wasn’t just a ten years of the 21st century as “the lost the University of Michigan, where he clever campaign ploy: It’s a fitting de- decade,” a depressed period of auto- earned degrees in business and law. He scription of Snyder’s actual proclivities. industry upheavals and demographic worked for an accounting firm and “A nerd is someone who loves to learn,” downsizing. Since Snyder took office in eventually joined Gateway, the computer says Snyder, from his office in Lansing’s 2011, however, Michigan has perked up, maker known for the cow spots on its Romney Building (named for Mitt’s dad, adding about a quarter-million jobs. This boxes. Snyder rose to its upper ranks who was Michigan’s governor in the spring, unemployment fell to 2008 pre- and made a small fortune in stock 1960s). “I love the private sector, but the crash levels. Most notable, perhaps, is options. Then he became a venture breadth of what you need to learn as gov- that Michiganders have halted their mass capitalist in Ann Arbor and grew even ernor is so much wider.” Snyder hands exodus: Following seven straight years wealthier. Friends say he had talked for out colorful brochures full of tiny print of population loss, the state has gained years about running for public office, that chronicles his accomplishments people for two years in a row. In June, and in 2009 he jumped in, announcing through three years in office. The list is

CARLOS OSORIO Snyder’s job-approval rating stood at his candidacy for governor. Apart from a wonk’s delight. Day 355: “Battery / 58 percent, according to a survey by the business community, almost nobody production tax credit signed into law.”

AP PHOTO Mitchell Research and Communications. had heard of him. Day 417: “Counties allowed to absorb

2 1 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 10:41 PM Page 22

county road commissions.” Day 909: even as it flummoxed local govern- manager. In the summer, Detroit filed “Bill signed to allow funeral directors ments and school districts. Other fiscal for bankruptcy. from neighboring states to practice in moves are more suspect. Last year, he “This was not a new problem,” says Michigan.” became one of just a handful of Re - Snyder. “We’re proposing a solution to What’s the most unexpected thing publican governors to collaborate with 50 to 60 years of problems.” Couldn’t he Snyder has had to learn? The governor the Obama administration on Medicaid just have ignored Detroit’s plight, as answers immediately, with a laugh: “I expansion, adding nearly half a million others, including the city’s own political had to study legislation on the appropri- people. In May, he signed a bill to leaders, had done? “That wouldn’t be ate age for petting bear cubs.” The matter boost the state’s minimum wage to me,” he says. arose last year, in a dispute over the $9.25 per hour. This was part of a gam- Working with Orr and others, Snyder practices of a petting zoo in Michigan’s bit to keep an even more costly union- assembled “the grand bargain,” a Upper Peninsula. Snyder doesn’t appear backed proposal off the ballot in bailout plan for Detroit that seeks to to regard such minutiae as distractions or November—a gambit that might in ease unavoidable pension cuts and also irritants—or beyond the scope of a limited fact have worked, and that had the protect the city-owned collection at the government. Instead, he seems to embrace support of many business owners— Detroit Institute of Arts from creditors the challenge of thinking through prob- but the reluctance to take a principled who demand a fire sale. Philanthropies lems as they arise. (For those who want stand against a job-killing initiative and corporations have agreed to con- to know: Snyder believes it’s safe to pet was striking. tribute more than $450 million to the baby bears in captivity before they’re 36 Snyder also wants to raise $1.2 bil- deal, with the state’s share coming to an weeks old and when they weigh less than lion in new road funding by hiking the additional $195 million. Some conser- 90 pounds.) state’s gas tax from 19 cents per gallon vatives have grumbled about the ar - The governor also has pushed a few to 33 cents per gallon, apparently be- rangement, sensing a cash-for-clunkers big ideas. Early on—Day 143, to be pre- cause there’s nothing to trim in the $53 rip-off. Snyder is unmoved: “We’re in cise—he wiped out a complicated busi- billion budget he negotiated this spring. problem-solving mode,” he says. “We’re ness tax that small-business owners had The condition of the roads is poor— in positive mode.” Legislators have despised. “We called it the ‘Frankentax’ polling suggests that after the economy, approved the package, but so must because it took the worst parts of every road repair is the top concern of vot- Detroit’s pensioners as well as a bank- tax you could find and stitched them all ers—but the state is also giving $35 ruptcy court. together,” says Charlie Owens, director million to Warner Bros. so it will film Snyder won’t say much about specific of the Michigan chapter of the National Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice plans for a second term: “I want to con- Federation of Independent Business. It in Michigan. Snyder isn’t a big fan of tinue the same things we’ve been doing.” amounted to a cut of $1.6 billion, but the handouts to Hollywood, but the fact Items high on any Michigan conserva- more important, it represented a major remains that the state budget is full of tive’s wish list include the repeal of simplification. In the Tax Foundation’s bloat. “Ideally, a government this large prevailing-wage laws that drive up the state-by-state rankings of business-tax is plenty big enough to pay for good costs of public construction, making climate, Michigan leaped from No. 49 roads,” says Joseph Lehman, president roads and schools more expensive for to No. 7. “This was one of the biggest of the Mackinac Center, a Michigan taxpayers by hundreds of millions of re forms in business taxes in the last think tank. “We’re facing gas-tax in - dollars. “That’s not something I’m look- quarter-century,” says the foundation’s creases now because lawmakers irre- ing at,” says the governor. He’s similarly Joe Henchman. sponsibly spent money on other things noncommittal about new reforms to In 2012 (on Day 711), Michigan be - while the roads crumbled.” pensions for state employees, though he came a right-to-work state—a startling Snyder’s biggest challenge has in - seems warmer to the subject: “I won’t achievement in the state perhaps more volved Detroit, whose recent history pursue that in the near term, but people closely linked to Big Labor than any teaches that no matter how bad things should continue to ask that question.” other. Yet Snyder was at best a bit player. are, they can still get worse. A toxic This is different from the approach he The legislation arrived on his desk not combustion of race riots, family break- took four years ago, when Michigan’s because he had demanded it but down, political corruption, and economic nerd reveled in the specificity of white because conservative legislators put it dislocation, spread across decades, has papers. These days, he just wants to pro- there. His boldest proposal may be to devastated a once-mighty city. Detroit’s mote a sense of good feeling. In February, create 50,000 special visas for immi- long decline has seen its share of during the Super Bowl, his campaign ran grants who agree to live and work in phony revivals, too. The entrance of a 60-second commercial that touted the Detroit, in the belief that they would fuel the Globe Building offers a good view state’s revival. A brief opening image, the economy. In January, Snyder flew to of Downtown’s best-known skyline offered without explanation, showed Washington and urged Congress to prop, the glassy and cylindrical Ren - Snyder in a black wetsuit, rising to the include the measure as part of compre- ais sance Center, opened during the surface of a swimming pool. Casual view- hensive immigration reform. Dark Ages decay of the 1970s. Even ers must have thought it weird. Those Ever the accountant, Snyder made the so, it’s possible to think that Motor City who puzzled over it for a moment or two passing of timely budgets a priority, a really did hit rock bottom last year. In probably got the point: After a long goal that didn’t seem to concern his pre- the spring of 2013, Snyder appointed period of submersion, Michigan at last decessor, Democrat Jennifer Granholm, Kevyn Orr as the city’s emergency is coming up for air.

2 2 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 10:41 PM Page 23

George Washington. The movie proposes He portrays them as Alinskyites, i.e., fol- a what-if: What if Washington had been lowers of Saul Alinsky, the author of Take felled by a sniper’s bullet, before com- Rules for Radicals, and the original com- pleting the revolution? What if America munity organizer. There is now a right- Two had never gotten off the ground? wing smell about pointing out Obama’s In the movie, D’Souza pronounces, “I and Hillary’s ties to Alinsky. But it used D’Souza films again love America.” He sure does. He loves to be fairly straightforward. In 2007, as it as perhaps only an immigrant can. the two Democrats were squaring off for BY JAY NORDLINGER (D’Souza came from Bombay.) He their party’s presidential nomination, the loves it without embarrassment, without Washington Post ran an article headed apology. When I was growing up—and “For Clinton and Obama, a Common En route from New York to where I was growing up—you couldn’t Ideological Touchstone.” And that touch- Philadelphia really talk this way. You had to remember stone was Alinsky. T would be hard to imagine a nicer, America’s sins. You were loath to be a I myself depart a bit from D’Souza on swankier bus than Dinesh D’Souza’s. jingo, an Archie Bunker. D’Souza knows Alinskyism: I regard Obama and Hillary “It’s a lot better than Tom Cruise’s,” all about America’s sins. But he knows as mainstream Democrats, no different I says Jerry Molen. He would know. Molen has been in Hollywood for many years, and knows everybody. He was the One of D’Souza’s most interesting producer of several Spielberg movies, and he is D’Souza’s producer as well. contentions is that “the shaming D’Souza is touring the country, rolling of America is related to the shakedown out his new movie, America: Imagine the World without Her. He travels like a of America.” rock star, and is sometimes greeted like one. For years, he was an intellectual and about the rest of the world’s, too. And he is from Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and the a writer of books. He still is. But he also equally appreciative of America’s virtues. rest of the gang. And this gang com- has this new stardom. I ask him, “How His movie quotes Lincoln, who said mands the respect, or at least the votes, does it feel?” The answer, in a nutshell, that no danger can come from abroad. It of approximately half the country. is: Strange and good. must “spring up” among Americans In any event, D’Souza is highly skilled His first film was 2016: Obama’s themselves. “If destruction be our lot, in defending his point of view. Scarcely America, released in the summer of 2012. we must ourselves be its author and fin- anyone is better in Q&A. I have seen him It is the fourth-highest-grossing docu- isher.” D’Souza asks, “How do you con- handle questions for years (often very mentary of all time. First is Michael vince a great nation to author its own hostile questions). I saw him do it again Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. In between are destruction?” He answers, “You start by last night, after the screening. (These were March of the Penguins and a Justin Bieber telling a new story.” not so hostile.) In one of his answers, he flick. (Bieber may have a nicer bus, if he He then explores what he calls the startled me: saying he was not only an has a bus.) D’Souza is the anti-Moore: “shame narrative” of American history: immigrant but a “person of color.” someone who has taken to the big screen We stole the land from the Indians (the On the bus, I pursue this subject: “Your to press conservative points. American Indians, not the Bombay ones); ‘Indianness’ must be an advantage in your His new movie was screened in New then, to add insult to injury, we com- work, right? I mean, in debating others, in York City last night. The theater was mitted genocide against them. We pro- approaching the Left for interviews, and in Union Square, hard by Greenwich ceeded to build the nation on the backs of so on.” It is, he says. “My ethnicity is a Village—not a bastion of conservatism. African slaves. We stole the Southwest matter of complete indifference to me, an The audience included many young peo- from Mexico. We unleashed imperialism accident, of no intellectual or moral sig- ple, of various hues (for those keeping on much of the world, including Vietnam. nificance whatsoever. However, in the racial score). D’Souza tells me, “Young And we degraded our own people with politicized context of American life, people haven’t rejected conservatism; capitalism. with all the racial and ethnic taboos that they’ve never really been exposed to it.” You will find the sh ame narrative in surround us, I realize that having brown In Union Square, the radio host Mike Howard Zinn’s textbook, which has sold skin is in fact a tactical asset. I have a Gallagher warmed up the audience, citing more than 2 million copies, and is a prin- certain amount of ethnic immunity in the old political line “Vote early and vote cipal teacher of Americans. You will find addressing otherwise forbidden subjects. often.” He and D’Souza want people to go it in many other places, too. D’Souza talks I see it as almost my moral obligation to to the movie early, and go often. That’s back to it. The shame narrators focus on use that immunity to raise the curtain on what fans did for the 2012 movie. maybe 20 percent of the story, he says. these issues.” The first words of the new one are D’Souza simply puts the other 80 per- One of D’Souza’s most interesting con- arresting: “September 11th.” A revolu- cent—the rest of the story—back in. tentions is that “the shaming of America is tionary soldier is writing home to his The second part of his movie deals with related to the shakedown of America.” If wife on September 11, 1777. He’s telling today’s politics, and two figures in partic- you can convince people that they are her about their wonderful commander, ular: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. guilty, you can rob them of their stuff. If

2 3 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 10:41 PM Page 24

you can convince them that their goods are make contributions, for which he would ill gotten, you can get them to fork them reimburse them. That is illegal. And it was over to you. This explains much of Jesse “cockamamie” and “dumb” of him to do, Happy-Go- Jackson’s brilliant, extortionist career. he tells me. “I was swamped, I was rush- D’Souza says, “I know a shakedown when ing, and my brain just shut down.” There Lucky I see it, and I blow the whistle on it.” were all sorts of legal ways he could have He further says, “What I resent most helped his friend: by setting up a PAC, for of all about the Left is that they exploit example. Nihilism American decency.” Tell Americans The FBI found out about the re im - A troubling new film makes a joke of abortion that they are wrong, and they’re apt to bursement in a supposedly routine review. say, “I’m sorry about that. How can I do The matter went to the U.S. attorney’s BY THOMAS S. HIBBS better, and how can I make it up to you?” office in New York—that office being a This very decency, in D’Souza’s eyes, Democratic stronghold. D’Souza was N a telling exchange in the new film makes Americans vulnerable. prosecuted and, in May , pleaded guilty, Obvious Child, the main character, Here is another advantage of D’Souza: to one count. He will be sentenced in Donna Stern (played by Jenny Slate), He is absolutely clear-eyed about the September. And faces up to two years in I about to go onstage for her comedy Third World. While liberal Americans jail. He and his defenders say that the pros- act, receives encouraging words from her romanticize it, he has lived it. In his film, ecution was spectacularly selective and best friend: “You are going to kill it out he playfully asks a retired Border Patrol suspect, smelling of political retribution. there!” her friend urges. “I actually have an agent whether he ever saw anyone try to Regardless, his career will continue appointment to do that tomorrow,” Donna sneak into Mexico from the United States. (perhaps with an aspect of martyrdom). responds with a smirk. The appointment is The answer, of course, is no. Not many His goal, he says, is to create a movie for an abortion. In a Hollywood culture people would have asked the agent that company that will offer maybe two whose obsession with explicit sexuality question, I think. products a year: a documentary and a and graphic violence has lost the power to Possibly, D’Souza’s most compelling feature film. “The Left knows the power shock, that line—which shrugs off killing insight is that justice is a more powerful of telling a story,” he says. “Oliver Stone with a glib, nihilistic chuckle—shocks, as idea than freedom, in political debate. and Steven Spielberg are much bigger does the film’s novel twist on the genre of Justice will trump freedom every time. than Michael Moore. They don’t make the romantic comedy. D’Souza points out to me, “What do little liberal films—they just make films, and Watching the film, which culminates in a kids say? ‘That’s not fair!’” Conserva - they have a point of view. I want to make Valentine’s Day visit to an abortion clinic tives will defend capitalism, and a free films with a different point of view.” (described as a “trip to the DMV”), and society, on grounds of efficiency; they The best-selling book he ever had sold witnessing the way it has been universally are woeful at defending those things on 150,000 copies—which is a huge num- celebrated as a “refreshing,” “honest,” grounds of justice. The Left eats our ber, in the book world. But his first “sophisticated” take on romantic comedy lunch, justice-wise. movie was seen by 8 million people. and abortion, one cannot help but sense that President Obama talks unceasingly That’s a bigger megaphone, as he says. the culture has taken something of a turn. about “fairness.” He has since the 2008 And, as he also says, conservatives need Just a few years back, around 2007, a campaign. “It is the core theme of his more and bigger megaphones. The re - number of films (Bella, Juno, Waitress, presidency,” says D’Souza. Conserva - sources are there, but the know-how and Knocked Up) featured young women tives may think the fairness, or justice, of and initiative largely aren’t. with unplanned pregnancies who opted to freedom obvious. But to many people, it’s I tell him that I regard him as some- keep the baby. But that unusual coinci- not. Throwing off complacency, we have one who came from a foreign land to dence of films, which had some observers to connect freedom to justice. For years, teach or remind Americans what is speculating about a pro-life turn in the the Marxists have had an effective line: good about their country. He enjoys popular culture, now looks like a blip “Freedom, sure: the freedom to sleep quoting a remark from Jeane Kirk - rather than a trend. under bridges.” patrick: “Americans need to face the Obvious Child represents a radicaliza- In Union Square last night, Mike truth about themselves, no matter how tion of something latent in the pro-choice Gallagher said, “Millions of Americans pleasant it is.” America, I believe, is position, indeed within modern liberalism have been praying for this man, caught in sometimes like a pretty girl who, afraid itself, that is only now coming to fruition: the government’s crosshairs.” He was to be stuck up, is a self-condemnatory, The notion that abortion needs absolutely referring to D’Souza. What did he mean? neurotic wreck. no defense. The choice is now so trivial In the 2012 election cycle, D’Souza For his part, D’Souza says that America that it can be considered a fit subject for a made a financial contribution to Wendy welcomed him with open arms. In no romantic comedy. Long, the Republican nominee for Senate other country could he have enjoyed such Comic takes on abortion have been rare in New York. She is an old friend and col- a life (jail or no jail). “I see myself as but not nonexistent. Recall the Seinfeld lege classmate of his. She was an under- standing up for an America that has been dog by a lot—indeed, she wound up good to me.” That is a worth while, even Mr. Hibbs is the dean of the Honors College at losing by some 45 points—but D’Souza noble role. And if it pays off, with film Baylor University. An updated and expanded version wanted to help her anyway. Wanting to do stardom and all that goes with it, so of his book Shows about Nothing was recently yet more, he asked two friends of his to much the better. published by Baylor University Press.

2 4 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 10:41 PM Page 25

episode “The Couch” (1994), in which formance of the abortion, are a source of When she confesses to her mom, with Jerry causes an uproar at Poppie’s restau- comic mockery. Homer chuckles as he fearful hesitation, that she’s pregnant and rant by urging Elaine to inquire about silently reads the rules, most of which have considering an abortion, her mom laughs, Poppie’s views on abortion. To Poppie’s to do with forbidding workers to go on the takes a deep breath, and says, “That’s a peremptory claim that “on this issue there roof, which, it turns out, is long, flat, quite relief. I thought you were going to say you can be no debate,” Elaine retorts that “the safe, and one of their favorite places to eat were moving to L.A.” It turns out that Supreme Court” has given her the right to lunch. As he reads them aloud, the workers Mom had her own abortion, and even in a different opinion. One arbitrary asser- guffaw and deride the rules as irrelevant the pre–Roe v. Wade days it was no big tion meets another. Another plot in that and outrageous. With little subtlety, the deal. “That was that,” Mom explains. “I episode has Kramer teaming up with film equates the cider-house rules with was out dancing.” Poppie to establish a pizza shop in which rules against the taking of the life of unborn The trivialization of choice, the reduc- customers make their own pizza. The plan babies. In fact, at least in the theatrical- tion of formerly grave matters in need of comes undone when Poppie bristles at release version of the film, the scene imme- deliberation and debate to matters so Kramer’s notion that customers should be diately after the performing of the abortion insignificant that to take them seriously is allowed the opportunity to choose their has the African-American workers stand- itself laughable, might seem an odd result own toppings. Then the debate, such as it ing on the roof—a scene that drew laughter of modern liberalism, which likes to trace is, shifts to the question, When does a at the screening I attended at the time. its ancestry to Immanuel Kant, who de - pizza become a pizza—when it comes out Cider House moves back and forth un - tected in human freedom, in our free self- of the oven or when you first put your easily between abortion as a necessary rule (“autonomy” is Kant’s word), the hands in the dough? The episode could be evil and abortion as a choice so trivial as basis of human dignity. seen not so much as making comedy out of to be unworthy of serious debate. Obvious Not long after Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche abortion itself (viewers were not invited Child has no such ambivalence. wrote that autonomy and morality are to laugh at an actual abortion) but rather “Obvious Child” refers not to the unborn incompatible with each other. What he had as a send-up of our shrill and inconclusive baby but to the main character, Donna, who in mind was that, while morality is about public debates about abortion. is a woman and yet a child. She’s 28 but being bound by and to some standard other To my mind, the true cultural predeces- has the maturity and sense of humor of a than one’s own will, autonomy as self-rule sor of Obvious Child is the 1999 film The 14-year-old (boy). She’s incapable of com- could easily slide into self-expression and Cider House Rules, which, like Obvious pleting a sentence without frequent inter- authenticity, aspirations governed by aes- Child today, was embraced quite publicly jection of the word “like”; the range of her thetic rather than moral criteria. by Planned Parenthood. Cider House stars comedy routine extends from vaginas to Here liberalism faces a quandary. If Michael Caine as Wilbur Larch, who runs a farts. She exemplifies her generation’s choice itself is the highest value, a self- New England orphanage an d an illegal blurring of the private and the public, as justifying one, then there is nothing in abortion clinic. Larch tries to train one of her stand-up routine is nothing more than light of which—no independent standard the residents of the orphanage, Homer exposing her private experiences for pub- on the basis of which—we can distinguish Wells (Tobey Maguire), as his heir and lic consumption as entertainment. When between good and evil, noble and base, or medical apprentice. But Homer is against her boyfriend dumps her and she learns that better and worse choices. And that, as abortion and, as adulthood approaches, he the used bookstore for which she works is Nietzsche saw, is an apt and succinct state- decides to leave the orphanage. He ends up going out of business, her already fragile ment of nihilism. working at an apple orchard where he lives sense of self unravels. During a night of In its desperate attempt to remove and toils among the African-American heavy drinking, she has sex with a guy she abortion from the realm of public debate workers. When it comes to light that one meets in a bar. Discovering she’s pregnant and to rid it of the stigma of shame and the of the male workers has raped and impreg- a few weeks later, she decides, without a burden of guilt, contemporary liberalism nated his own daughter, Homer faces a moment’s hesitation, to have an abortion. embraces the self-absorbed fantasies of crisis of conscience and elects to perform It’s not just that the film slides right past libertine adolescents, the chief example the abortion. Eventually he returns with the debate about abortion. It doesn’t even of whom is the obvious child, Donna great fanfare to the orphanage, where he feel compelled to argue that the fetus is not Stern. More seriously, it courts nihilism. will carry on Larch’s tradition of caring a human life. Her best friend describes The impoverishment of the moral cos- for orphans and aborting unborn babies. abortion as “getting that f***ing thing” out mos of the characters in the film is lost on Tough cases may make bad law, but at of one’s body. them, as it is on film critics across the coun- least the film forces its viewers to reckon The trivialization of choice here is evi- try. Perhaps it was with something like this with a case of pregnancy that is somber and dent in the fact that informed choice sim- condition in mind that Mother Teresa once serious, even horrifying. But the film also ply means, “I want this.” In Donna’s initial urged, “It is a poverty to decide that a child contains an especially troubling line of meeting with a Planned Parenthood repre- must die so that you may live as you wish.” defense of abortion. The title of the film is sentative, the staffer interrupts her request A poverty perhaps, but for contemporary crucial and revealing: The rules of the for an abortion by saying that she wants to liberalism no longer a tragedy; instead, “to cider house are rules typed up and affixed make sure that Donna has thought this decide that a child must die so that you may to a wall in the building where illiterate over and understands her options. Donna live as you wish” is now, in the words of African-American workers live. In the responds that she’s thought about it and film critics, a surprisingly refreshing source film, these rules, references to which occur this is what she wants. That’s the end of the for romantic comedy, a comedy about and immediately before and just after the per- discussion of options. for happy-go-lucky nihilists.

2 5 2col:QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/1/2014 11:08 PM Page 26

Smarter than Thou Neil deGrasse Tyson and America’s nerd problem

BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE

y great fear,” Neil deGrasse Tyson told Al Gore; celebrity scientist Bill Nye; and, really, anybody who MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in early June, “is that conforms to the Left’s social and moral precepts while wearing we’ve in fact been visited by intelligent aliens glasses and babbling about statistics. ‘M but they chose not to make contact, on the con- The pose is, of course, little more than a ruse—most of our clusion that there’s no sign of intelligent life on Earth.” In professional “nerds” being, like Mrs. Doubtfire, stereotypical response to this rather standard little saw, Hayes laughed as if he facsimiles of the real thing. They have the patois but not the had been trying marijuana for the first time. passion; the clothes but not the style; the posture but not the All told, one suspects that Tyson was not including either imprimatur. Theirs is the nerd-dom of Star Wars, not Star himself or a fellow traveler such as Hayes as inhabitan ts of Trek; of Mario Kart and not World of Warcraft; of the latest Earth but was instead referring to everybody who is not in their X-Men movie rather than the comics themselves. A sketch coterie. That, alas, is his way. An astrophysicist and evangelist from the TV show Portlandia, mocked up as a public-service for science, Tyson currently plays three roles in our society: He announcement, makes this point brutally. After a gorgeous is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American young woman explains at a bar that she doesn’t think her job Museum of Natural History; the presenter of the hip new show as a model is “her thing” and instead identifies as “a nerd” Cosmos; and, most important of all, perhaps, the fetish and who is “into video games and comic books and stuff,” a totem of the extraordinarily puffed-up “nerd” culture that has of dorky-looking man gets up and confesses that he is, in fact, a late started to bloom across the United States. “real” nerd—someone who wears glasses “to see,” who is One part insecure hipsterism, one part unwarranted conde- “shy,” and who “isn’t wearing a nerd costume for Halloween” scension, the two defining characteristics of self-professed nerds but is dressed how he lives. “I get sick with fear talking to are (a) the belief that one can discover all of the secrets of human people,” he says. “It sucks.” experience through differential equations and (b) the unlovely A quick search of the Web reveals that Portlandia’s writers AP

tendency to presume themselves to be smarter than everybody are not the only people to have noticed the trend. “Science and / else in the world. Prominent examples include MSNBC’s ‘geeky’ subjects,” the pop-culture writer Maddox observes, INVISION Melissa Harris-Perry, Rachel Maddow, Steve Kornacki, and “are perceived as being hip, cool and intellectual.” And so / Chris Hayes; Vox’s Ezra Klein, Dylan Matthews, and Matt people who are, or wish to be, hip, cool, and intellectual yglesias; the sabermetrician Nate Silver; the economist Paul “glom onto these labels and call themselves ‘geeks’ or ‘nerds’

Krugman; the atheist Richard Dawkins; former vice president every chance they get.” FRANK MICELOTTA

2 6 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 2col:QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/1/2014 11:09 PM Page 27

Which is to say that the nerds of MSNBC and beyond are not ject is instructive. He was launched into the limelight by pre- actually nerds but the popular kids indulging in a fad. To a per- cisely the sort of people who have DVR’d every episode of son, they are attractive, accomplished, well paid, and loved, lis- Cosmos and who, like the editors of Salon, see it primarily as a tened to, and cited by a good portion of the general public. Most means by which they might tweak their ideological enemies; of them spend their time speaking on television fluently, debat- who, as apparently does Sean McElwee at the Huffington Post, ing with passion, and hanging out with celebrities. They attend see the world in terms of “Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. the Right: dinner parties and glitzy social events, and are photographed Cosmos, Christians, and the Battle for American Science”; and and put into the glossy magazines. They are flown first-class to who, like the folks at Vice, advise us all: “Don’t Get Neil deliver university commencement speeches and appear on late- deGrasse Tyson Started About the Un-Science-y Politicians night shows and at book launches. There they pay lip service to Who Are Killing America’s Dreams.” the notion that they are not wildly privileged, and then go back Obama knows this. Look back to his earlier backers and you to their hotels to drink $16 cocktails with Bill Maher. will see a pattern. These are the people who insisted until they In this manner has a word with a formerly useful meaning were blue in the face that George W. Bush was a “theocrat” eter- been turned into a transparent humblebrag: Look at me, I’m nally hostile toward “evidence,” and that, despite all informa- smart. Or, more important, perhaps, Look at me and let me tell tion to the contrary, Attorney General Ashcroft had covered up you who I am not, which is southern, politically conservative, the Spirit of Justice statue at the Department of Justice because culturally traditional, religious in some sense, patriotic, driven he was a prude. These are the people who will explain to other Ironically enough, what Tyson and his acolytes have ended up doing is blurring the lines between politics, scholarship, and culture—thereby damaging all three.

by principle rather than the pivot tables of Microsoft Excel, and human beings without any irony that they are part of the “reality- in any way attached to the past. “Nerd” has become a calling based community,” and who want you to know how excited they card—a means of conveying membership of one group and are to look through the new jobs numbers. denying affiliation with another. The movement’s king, Neil At no time is the juxtaposition between the claim and the real- deGrasse Tyson, has formal scientific training, certainly, as do ity more clear than during the White House Correspondents’ a handful of others who have become celebrated by the crowd. Dinner, which ritzy and opulent celebration of wealth, influence, But this is not why he is useful. He is useful because he can be and power the nation’s smarter progressive class has taken to deployed as a cudgel and an emblem in argument—pointed to labeling the “Nerd Prom.” It is clear why people who believe as the sort of person who wouldn’t vote for Ted Cruz. themselves to be providing a voice for the powerless and who “Ignorance,” a popular Tyson meme holds, “is a virus. Once routinely lecture the rest of us about the evils of income it starts spreading, it can only be cured by reason. For the sake inequality would wish to reduce in stature a party that would of humanity, we must be that cure.” This rather unspecific have made Trimalchio blush: It is devastating to their image. message is a call to arms, aimed at those who believe whole- Just as Hillary Clinton has noticed of late that her extraordinary heartedly they are included in the elect “we.” Thus do we see wealth and ostentatious lifestyle conflict with her populist mien, unexceptional liberal-arts students lecturing other people about the New Class recognizes the danger that its private behavior things they don’t understand themselves and terming the dis- poses to its public credibility. There is, naturally, something a senters “flat-earthers.” Thus do we see people who have never little off about selected members of the Fifth Estate yukking it in their lives read a single academic paper clinging to the man- up with those whom they have been charged with scrutinizing— tle of science as might Albert Einstein. Thus do we see residents all while rappers and movie stars enjoy castles of champagne of Brooklyn who are unable to tell you at what temperature and show off their million-dollar dresses. And so the optics must water boils rolling their eyes at Bjørn Lomborg because he dis- be addressed and the nomenclature of an uncelebrated group agrees with Harry Reid on climate change. Really, the only cynically appropriated. We’re not the ruling class, the message thing in these people’s lives that is peer-reviewed are their opin- goes. We’re just geeks. We’re not the powerful; we’re the out- ions. Don’t have a Reddit account? Believe in God? Skeptical casts. This isn’t a big old shindig; it’s science. Look, Neil about the threat of overpopulation? Who are you, Sarah Palin? deGrasse Tyson is standing in the Roosevelt Room! First and foremost, then, “nerd” has become a political des- ignation. It is no accident that the president has felt it necessary to inject himself into the game: That’s where the cool kids are. RONICALLy enough, what Tyson and his acolytes have Answering a question about Obama’s cameo on Cosmos, Tyson ended up doing is blurring the lines between politics, was laconic. “That was their choice,” he told Grantland. “We I scholarship, and culture—thereby damaging all three. didn’t ask them. We didn’t have anything to say about it. They Tyson himself has expressed bemusement that “entertainment asked us, ‘Do you mind if we intro your show?’ Can’t say no to reporters” have been so interested in him. “What does it mean,” the president. So he did.” he asked, “that Seth MacFarlane, who’s best known for his fart One wonders how easy it would have proved to say “No” to jokes—what does it mean that he’s executive producing” the president if he had been, say, Scott Walker. Either way, Cosmos? Well, what it means is that Tyson has hit the jackpot. though, that Obama wished to associate himself with the pro- Actual science is slow, unsexy, and assiduously neutral—and it

2 7 2col:QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/1/2014 11:09 PM Page 28

carries about it almost nothing that would interest either the hipsters of Ann Arbor or the Kardashian-soaked titillaters over at e!. Politics pretending to be science, on the other hand, is Our current, and it is chic. Useful, too. For all of the hype, much of the fadlike fetishiza- tion of “Big Data” is merely the latest repackaging of old and tired progressive ideas about who in our society should enjoy Democratic the most political power. Much of the time, “It’s just science!” is a dodge—a bullying tactic designed to hide a crushingly bor- ing orthodox progressivism behind the veil of dispassionate Debt empiricism and to pretend that hayek’s observation that central planners can never have the information they would need to cen- We’re borrowing to fund personal benefits, trally plan was invalidated by the invention of the computer. If politics should be determined by pragmatism, and the pragma- not public goods tists are all on the Left . . . well, you do the math. All over the Internet, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s face is presented BY CHRISTOPHER D E MUTH next to words that he may or may not have spoken. “Other than being a scientist,” he says in one image, “I’m not any other kind of -ist. These -ists and -isms are philosophies; they’re philo- he federal government’s total debt is approaching $18 sophical portfolios that people attach themselves to and then the trillion. Its operating deficit was more than $1 trillion philosophy does the thinking for you instead of you doing the in each of the years 2009–12 and $680 billion in 2013. thinking yourself.” Translation: All of my political and moral T These numbers are too immense and unfamiliar to be judgments are original, unlike those of the rubes who subscribe useful. (A trillion is not yet even a standard measure—it means to ideologies, philosophies, and religious frameworks. My a thousand times a billion in the United States and a million worldview is driven only by the data. times a billion in much of europe.) Better to convert them to This is nonsense. Progressives not only believe all sorts of portions of the economy and government, so that the current unscientific things—that Medicaid and head Start work; that debt is 103 percent of U.S. gross domestic product and the 2013 school choice does not; that abortion carries with it few impor- deficit was 4 percent of GDP and 20 percent of federal spend- tant medical questions; that GM crops make the world worse; ing. These ratios put the dollar figures in perspective. The GDP that one can attribute every hurricane, wildfire, and heat wave to ratio shows the burden of the debt (a larger economy can afford “climate change”; that it’s feasible that renewable energy will to borrow more, just as a higher-income family can afford a take over from fossil fuels anytime soon—but also do their level larger home mortgage), and the spending ratio shows how best to block investigation into any area that they consider too much of our government we are declining to pay for with our delicate. You’ll note that the typical objections to the likes of taxes. And they facilitate comparisons over time (effectively Charles Murray and Paul Mchugh aren’t scientific but amount adjusting for inflation) and across nations with larger and smaller to asking lamely why anybody would say something so mean. economies. But ratios are still just numbers: They need interpre- Still, even were they paragons of inquiry, the instinct they tation to tell us what they mean for our personal circumstances demonstrate would remain insidious. Anyone who privileges and those of our government. one value over another (liberty over security, property rights We are not getting much help from public officials and policy over redistribution) is indulging in an “-ism.” Anyone who experts, whose interpretations tend to be abstract and amor- believes that the Declaration of Independence contains “self- phous. The consensus formulation, embraced by President evident truths” is signing on to an “ideology.” Anyone who Obama, Speaker of the house Boehner, and the Congressional goes to bat for any form of legal or material equality is express- Budget Office, among many others, is that our current debt and ing the end results of a philosophy. deficits are “unsustainable.” This suggests that they are tolerable Perhaps the greatest trick the Left ever managed to play was to for the time being but will need to be reduced by some degree successfully sell the ancient and ubiquitous ideas of collectivism, sometime in the future. Such a judgment has the advantage of lightly checked political power, and a permanent technocratic sounding responsible and admonitory while suiting the short class as being “new,” and the radical notions of individual liberty, time horizons of democratic politicians and their preoccupation limited government, and distributed power as being “reac- with immediate electoral exigencies. tionary.” A century ago, Woodrow Wilson complained that the And they have a point: Why not kick this can down the road? checks and balances instituted by the Founders were outdated experts have been warning for decades that our debt and deficits because they had been contrived before the telephone was are unsustainable, yet here we are today, out and about and being invented. Now, we are to be liberated by the microchip and the sustained by an economy and government that continue to chug Large hadron Collider, and we are to have our progress assured along even though the debt is bigger than ever. The only debt by ostensibly disinterested analysts. I would recommend that we crises most of us have noticed have been the periodic impasses not fall for it. Our technology may be sparkling, but our politics between the president and Congress over the debt ceiling—the are as they ever were. Marie Antoinette is no more welcome in statutory mechanism for enforcing Congress’s second enu- America if she dresses up in a Battlestar Galactica uniform and self-deprecatingly joins Tumblr. Sorry, America. Science is Mr. DeMuth is a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. He was president of important. But these are not the nerds you’re looking for. the American Enterprise Institute from 1986 to 2008.

2 8 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 2col:QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/1/2014 11:09 PM Page 29

merated power (Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution), which is the eminent economists Martin Feldstein and Laurence Kotlikoff to “borrow money on the credit of the United States.” Recurring how to improve economic growth today, they will tell you that annual deficits have obliged the Treasury Department to ask reducing the debt is essential. If you ask the eminent economists Congress to raise the ceiling a dozen times since 2000, and Lawrence Summers and Paul Krugman, they will tell you that Congress is always reluctant to recognize the gap between spend- increasing the debt, and spending it on useful things such as infra- ing and tax revenues that its policies have created. The most structure and job training, is essential. Some economists argue recent stand-offs threatened, in July 2011, default on U.S. debt- that the debt itself is a sideshow; the essential thing, they say, is service payments or drastic cuts in government spending, and to reform tax, spending, and regulatory policies to spur produc- then produced a two-week government shutdown in October tivity and “grow our way out of the debt.” 2013. But Congress invariably resolves these crises by raising the I am in the camp of the deficit hawks such as Feldstein and ceiling to make room for additional borrowing, whereupon Kotlikoff, but I do not think the reason we are failing to address everyone sighs in relief and gets back to business. the problem is that some other smart and influential people are A somewhat edgier formulation of our fiscal situation is that deficit doves. Rather, I think that our political institutions and debt and deficits are “robbing our grandchildren.” This is political leaders have accommodated themselves to deficit Speaker Boehner’s position today, and it was President Obama’s spending and growing debt and acquired a stake in their continu- Efforts to relate government debt to current economic performance quickly run into disagreements over technical economics, political philosophy, and policy tactics.

position when, as a senator, he opposed President Bush’s pro- ance. Disagreements over the consequences and immediacy of posed debt-ceiling increase in 2006—but Obama renounced it the problem are always resolved in favor of borrowing more to when campaigning for his own increase in 2011. It seems to be address the problems of the moment and deferring “debt con- the position of the opposition party—an attempt to use moral solidation” (through some combination of higher taxes, lower suasion when practical forms of persuasion are unavailable. I spending, and higher economic growth) to a later time. The think there is much truth in the expression but that it is too broad American body politic has acquired deficit-attention disorder. and rhetorical. When a city sells revenue bonds to finance high- It won’t last, as we shall see, but for the time being it is getting way or airport improvements, is it robbing from future genera- worse. The pitched battles of the House tea-party Republicans in tions? The “greatest generation” of Americans that fought and 2011–13 were probably the high-water mark of debt-ceiling won World War II borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars to do brinkmanship deployed as a tactic for spending and deficit reduc- so; was it robbing from the future or securing the future? tion. The pathetic final score: more than $3 trillion in immediate A third formulation is that high public debt impedes the private new debt, all of it promptly borrowed and spent; $1 trillion in economy, slowing its growth. The economists Carmen Reinhart promised future spending “sequesters,” spread over nine years and Kenneth Rogoff, in a widely noted 2010 article in The through 2021 (and already being relaxed in this year’s budget), American Economic Review, compared debt ratios and economic during which time the debt will grow by another $6 trillion; a tax growth across nations and time periods. They found that debt of increase limited to high-income taxpayers that will raise only more than 90 percent of a nation’s GDP is associated with signif- about $600 billion through 2021; and a substantial increase in the icantly lower levels of economic growth, and argued that debt amount of debt the CBO projects over the next ten- and 25-year ratios this high are an important cause of lower growth rather periods. In the end, when Congress reopened the government than merely the result of low growth and a smaller economy. following the October 2013 shutdown, it did so in a way that This approach has the advantage of making debt an issue of the provided a fitting coda to the drama: It did not raise the debt ceil- here and now rather than mañana, but it yields no more than a rule ing to a new and higher level but rather suspended it, permitting of thumb. Government borrowing can undoubtedly promote the Treasury to borrow as needed without any further authoriza- rather than retard economic growth when it is invested in such tion. By thus excusing itself from its constitutional duty to pro- things as improved highways and education. (Despite today’s vide for the shortfall between spending and taxing, Congress heavy state and local debts and occasional bankruptcies, the moved the debt out of the headlines and away from public atten- municipal-bond market—much of it invested in physical infra- tion through the 2014 elections. The suspension lasts only structure and secured by the proceeds—is flourishing.) And through March 2015—but by then another election will be in many things other than debt can influence economic growth: sight, and a precedent will have been set. More-efficient taxing, and more-productive spending and regu- lation, can promote higher growth and thereby reduce the burden of debt. The mechanisms by which a given amount of debt affects HREE features of our current fiscal circumstances are economic growth involve many contingencies and theoretical almost never mentioned explicitly in political debate, arguments. T official reports, and academic studies. Each one is simple As a result, efforts to relate government debt to current eco- and straightforward yet will come as a surprise to those whose nomic performance quickly run into disagreements over techni- understanding of the debt comes from newspapers and the blo- cal economics, political philosophy, and policy tactics. If you ask gosphere. Taken together, they provide a more useful account of

2 9 2col:QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/1/2014 11:09 PM Page 30

our situation than generalizations about sustainability, robbing Second, a major federal innovation in recent decades has been our grandchildren, and economic growth. They also point to the the promotion of private borrowing, especially for home mort- source of our deficit-attention disorder—and to a range of prog- gages and college tuition, through loans and loan guarantees on noses. easy terms and at preferential interest rates. These programs have generated enormous but unrecorded federal debt (“implicit 1) Today’s government debt is far larger than anything in our debt”), because government accounting fails to capture the pro - national experience. spective costs of loan defaults or loan forgiveness. When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage It is sometimes said that today’s debt is our highest peacetime underwriters, went insolvent in 2008, the federal rescue cost debt—that our debt has been higher only in times of war. This is nearly $190 billion that had not been in the budget. The White incorrect. Our major wars have indeed required substantial bor- House now counts Fannie and Freddie as profit centers, because rowing, but the debts of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, they have since paid more than $200 billion in dividends on the and World War I were in each case only about 30 percent of GDP. government’s preferred stock. But this is absurd: As the CBO and The federal debt passed 40 percent of GDP for the first time others have pointed out, it completely ignores the risks of default during the Great Depression and peaked at 119 percent in the on the firms’ nearly $4 trillion in loan guarantees, which fair final year of World War II, falling the next year to 103 percent, accounting would record at several hundred billion dollars (the the same as today’s. 2013 deficit alone would have been $780 billion rather than $680 On average, the official federal debt during the years since the billion). The federal government now owns 85 percent of the 2008 financial crisis is about what it was during the years of nation’s outstanding student loans, which total more than $1 tril- World War II—years of desperate national mobilization in the lion. Here, the feds do make some, but not much, allowance for greatest military conflagration in human history, coming on the default risks. With half of recent college graduates either unem- heels of a prolonged depression that had already left the govern- ployed or working in jobs that don’t require a college degree, the ment deeper in hock than ever in its history. But the official fig- unrecorded debt is probably substantial, and indeed it is already ures miss profound changes in government since the 1940s and appearing in the form of President Obama’s order to cap the loan ’50s that have made our actual debt far larger. The changes are of repayments of lower-income graduates. three kinds. Third, by far the largest implicit federal debt is to the Medicare First, state- and local-government debt has grown substan- and Social Security programs. It is the difference between the tially, from about 7 percent of GDP in the late 1940s to 18 per- programs’ future benefit payments and future tax revenues under cent ($3 trillion) today. Now as then, state and local debt includes current law, discounted to a present value. Some of that differ- much that is invested in new and improved physical infrastruc- ence is explicit debt: Revenues from the programs’ payroll taxes ture, such as roads and water and sewer systems, which is rela- have exceeded benefit payments in years past, and the excess was tively unproblematic. But the recent municipal bankruptcies in spent on other federal programs and booked as IOUs from the Detroit and elsewhere, and the dire fiscal problems of states such Treasury to Medicare and Social Security. This “interagency” as Illinois and California, show that many states and cities have debt (which includes several smaller programs as well) now gotten themselves badly overextended. (They have done so by amounts to $5 trillion of the nearly $18 trillion of official fed- finagling with balanced-budget requirements and capital- eral debt, and it is to be repaid as Medicare and Social Security budgeting procedures—a cautionary example to those who spending outpaces revenues from payroll taxes. But that is a advocate such measures at the national level.) In addition, the small fraction of the gap between future benefits and future rev- post-war development of public-sector unionization has gener- enues—which amounts to a present value of $50 trillion to $200 ated generous pension commitments that are now terribly under- trillion, depending on such variables as the number of years pro- funded—by $4 trillion, or 24 percent of GDP, according to the jected and whether one assumes that Congress will repeal statu- best estimates. That more than doubles today’s actual state and tory expenditure reductions (such as cuts in reimbursement rates local debt, bringing it to $7 trillion. to Medicare physicians) in the future as it has in the past. These are not federal debts, as they would be if we had a uni- This implicit debt is almost entirely a post–World War II phe- tary government like that of France. And we have, for the most nomenon. It is the result, first, of the major expansions of Social part, avoided bailing out bankrupt localities, and thereby Security in the 1960s and ’70s and the enactment of Medicare nationalizing local debt, in the manner of the European Union’s in 1965; and, second, of demographic developments (the baby bailout of Greece. But some state and local debt (no one knows boom and subsequent decline in the birthrate and increase in how much) does sponge up to Washington through the opera- longevity) that are now destroying the programs’ pay-as-you- tion of grant programs such as Medicaid, and these programs go financial structure. The exact size of the implicit debt is not may be used selectively to assist failing localities such as important; projections so far into the future involve tremendous Detroit. A cascade of state and city insolvencies similar to the uncertainties over such things as economic growth and tax rev- corporate insolvencies of 2008 would generate a similar panic enues. The important point is that it dwarfs the official debt by and intense pressure for explicit federal bailouts—or disguised any reckoning and gives teeth to the notion of “unsustainability.” bailouts, in the form of Federal Reserve pressure on major We know enough about some key variables—such as the size banks to purchase dubious state and local bonds. But even with- of the baby boom and the younger generations, and trends in out bailouts, the size and uses of today’s state and local debt— longevity and medical costs—to say with confidence that con- more than half of it for income support for retirees—are already tinuing the current Social Security and Medicare programs adding to the special risks of the federal debt, which I will would require a level of resources that no one has any idea how explore in the coming sections. to obtain.

3 0 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 2col:QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/1/2014 11:09 PM Page 31

The resources could come from increased borrowing, in - creased taxes, reduced spending on other programs, or default on CHART 1 outstanding debt—and each one looks self-defeating. The requi- Federal Debt and Deficits site new borrowing or debt defaults would push interest rates and payments to levels that would consume other government pro- 1970–2014

grams and eventually Medicare and Social Security themselves; Federal Debt (%•GDP) Federal Deficit (%•Spending) the requisite spending reductions would consume basic govern- 120% ment functions that affect the welfare of the elderly as much as

Medicare and Social Security do; and the requisite tax increases 100% would take us well into Laffer Curve territory where revenues

begin to fall. 80%

2) Our high debt reflects the normalization of annual deficits. 60%

Until a half-century ago, spending beyond current tax revenues 40% was limited to investments such as canals and railroads and to emergencies such as wars and natural disasters. Investment debt 20% was paid down over the life of the investments, and emergency debt was paid down when the emergencies subsided. Andrew 0% Jackson—paragon of populist fiscal rectitude, founder of the -20% Democratic party, and spiritual godfather of the Tea Party— 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 wrestled the remaining debts from the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 all the way down to zero. Even John Maynard 2014 (estimate) SOURCE: OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET, FISCAL YEAR 2015 HISTORICAL Keynes, who in the 1930s pioneered the idea of deficit spending TABLES, TABLE 7.1 (WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/OMB/BUDGET/HISTORICALS) to surmount economic depressions as well as other emergencies, assumed that the debts would be repaid once the economy Chart 1 outlines the saga of routine annual deficits and rising rebounded. debt since 1970. It is important to note that the debt did not grow But Keynesian balancing was never even tried. In the 1950s, as a share of GDP in every deficit year, because economic growth the federal fisc oscillated between small deficits and small sur- sometimes outpaced the deficit. An economic boom—the “dot- pluses, more the result of economic fluctuations th an of delib- com bubble” of the late 1990s—even produced a surprise surplus erate policy, and averaged to a small surplus for the decade. in 1998 after President Clinton had proposed a deficit budget. The 1960s saw the beginning of deficit spending as a routine President Clinton and the Republican Congress both deserve practice rather than a temporary expedient: JFK’s experiments credit for maintaining surpluses through 2001, but their four-year with tax-cutting stimulus, followed by LBJ’s Great Society deficit hiatus, which ended with the dot-com collapse and then and Vietnam “guns and butter” spending, yielded a stream of the 9/11 terrorist attack of 2001, is a reminder that fiscal policy is annual deficits that averaged 4 percent of spending for the often hostage to events in the larger world. The strongest pattern, decade. The deficits were tiny by today’s standards, and they unfortunately, has been for extraordinary events to produce extra- were exceeded by economic growth that continued to chip ordinary deficits and unanticipated new borrowing. These have away at the World War II debt as a share of GDP, but they included the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s; Reagan’s defense established a new normal. As government officials, econo- build-up in the 1980s; the 9/11 attack, wars in Iraq and mists, and the general public became increasingly comfortable Afghanistan, and Hurricane Katrina in the 2000s; and several with deficits, borrowed money became a continuous, growing financial crises along the way, the most severe and costly occur- source of routine annual spending. The federal government has ring in 2008. The frequency of such “extraordinary” events is an run a deficit in 40 of the 44 years since 1970, averaging 10 per- important part of our debt predicament, one we will return to at cent of federal spending in the 1970s, 18 percent in the 1980s, the conclusion of this essay. 10 percent in the 1990s, and 11 percent in the 2000s. The deficit rocketed to 36 percent of spending in 2009–12, then fell 3) As debt and deficits have grown, their function has changed to 20 percent in 2013. from funding public investment to funding private consumption. The current projection is that deficits will average 16 percent of spending (3.4 percent of GDP) over the coming decade, then The traditional purpose of government debt is the provision of rise sharply to pay the m ounting unfunded Social Security and public goods with long lifespans, such as waterworks or aircraft Medicare bills of the baby boomers (and the accompanying carriers. Borrowing spreads their costs among the current and rise in interest payments on mounting debt). The Obama admin- future taxpayers who benefit from them. Needless to say, the istration has suggested that it is comfortable with regular investments do not always turn out well. President Jefferson’s deficits at the current level. The demurrals of congressional Louisiana Purchase was a triumph; President Obama’s Solyndra Republicans are mainly rhetorical: If you take all the spending- was a bust; President Ford’s swine-flu-inoculation program is reduction proposals championed by fiscal-reform leaders such still studied as a policy debacle; I am dubious about high-speed as House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, significant rail from Cedar Rapids to Chicago. And such investments are annual deficits will continue for at least a decade and probably often controversial not only in prospect but also in retrospect. for much longer. Midway through the Reagan administration, Senator Daniel

3 1 2col:QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/1/2014 11:14 PM Page 32

Patrick Moynihan, a firm critic of Reagan’s economic policies, proclaimed, “The 1980s will be remembered as the decade when CHART 2 America borrowed a trillion dollars and threw a party.” I would say that it was the decade when America borrowed a trillion Federal Spending Transformed dollars and terminated the Soviet empire, but some would dis- 1970–2014 agree with that assessment even now. Politics is aspirational, and government projects are open to varying interpretations (except Payments to Individuals (%•Spending) Public Goods (% Spending) where a project produces its own revenue stream, like a toll high- Payments to Individuals (%•GDP) Public Goods (%•GDP) way, to eventually settle the matter). The essential point is that 80% debt was traditionally intended to expand and improve the future—through a larger and better capital stock, greater security 70%

against foreign threats, recovery from disasters and emergencies, 60% and higher levels of invention and productivity. These are not the primary purposes of today’s government 50% borrowing, which is being used primarily to pay for immediate 40% private consumption. The routinization of deficits and the

growth of debt since 1970 have been accompanied, and encour- 30% aged, by a profound transformation in the nature of federal spending, illustrated in Chart 2. I have divided federal spending 20% into two broad categories, based on line items in historical 10% tables from the Office of Management and Budget. The first,

Public Goods, consists of defense and international operations, 0%

from diplomacy to foreign aid; highways, airports, and other 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012

physical infrastructure; national parks and other preserves; 2014 (estimate)

courts, law enforcement, and the regulatory agencies; the National NOTE: THE “% SPENDING” FIGURES ARE SHARES OF FEDERAL-PROGRAM EXPENDITURES, Institutes of Health and other research-and-development efforts; EXCLUDING NET INTEREST PAYMENTS, WHICH VARIED BETWEEN 6% AND 15% OF FEDERAL SPENDING DURING THE PERIOD COVERED. Congress; and smaller “general government” items. The sec- SOURCE: AUTHOR’S CALCULATIONS FROM OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND ond, Payments to Individuals, consists of money payments such BUDGET, FISCAL YEAR 2015 HISTORICAL TABLES, TABLE 6.1 as Social Security, unemployment compensation, and various (WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/OMB/BUDGET/HISTORICALS) welfare programs, and of in-kind provisions such as Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps, and housing subsidies. I have some on Chart 2. Most of that growth has been for personal benefits, issues with OMB’s bean counters: I would count farm subsidies such as the tax exclusion of employer-provided health insurance, and the Export-Import Bank as Payments to Individuals the mortgage-interest deduction, and the earned-income tax (because they are uncompensated subsidies to designated per- credit rather than for putative public goods, such as the tax breaks sons and firms) and the veterans’ hospitals as Public Goods for energy-efficient cars and appliances and for corporate re - (because they are a form of deferred compensation to military search and experimentation. (I will leave it to the metaphysicians personnel). But I want to stick to the government’s categories, to categorize the tax benefits for children and child care.) and my adjustments would have only a small effect on the One cannot allocate the deficit in any given year, or the growth aggregate figures and the story they tell. of debt over time, between my two spending categories. Receipts Chart 2 traces Public Goods and Payments to Individuals as from bond sales and receipts from tax levies are a common pool, percentages of federal-program spending (not including interest used to pay for spending programs as the bills arrive. But the tan- on the debt) from 1970 through 2014. During this period—when dem growth of Payments to Individuals and of deficits and debt large annual deficits became routine and debt grew from 36 per- is remarkable. And there is little doubt that these payments have cent to 103 percent of GDP—Payments to Individuals soared become not only the dominant form of spending but also the from 36 percent to 75 percent of annual spending while Public more politically entrenched. The government categorizes all Goods plunged from 64 percent to 25 percent. Tracking spending Public Goods as “discretionary” and most Payments to Indi - to GDP, also shown on the chart, reveals a similar pattern: viduals as “entitlements” not subject to congressional appropri- Payments to Individuals grew from 6 percent to 15 percent of ations. The 2013–21 spending sequesters, adopted in the GDP while Public Goods fell from 11 percent to 5 percent. The debt-ceiling compromise of August 2011, are focused almost two signal innovations of post-1960s government—continuous entirely on discretionary programs. The partial government borrowing to support regular spending, and spending primarily shutdown of October 2013 did not shut down Social Security, on private consumption—were concurrent. (Incidentally, essen- Medicare, unemployment benefits, or food stamps. tially all of the fall in Public Goods has been in national defense; Moreover, debt and consumption spending have been joint domestic public goods have stayed about constant, with the projects at several critical points. Social Security and Medicare exception of increased spending on law enforcement—reflecting are pay-as-you-go transfers from wage earners to retirees—so the costly “homeland security” measures introduced after 9/11 earlier recipients (those who are older), who paid program taxes and also the continuing growth of federal criminal law.) for less than their full working careers, receive relatively greater Incorporating the growth of “tax expenditures”—implicit benefits than younger recipients. That in turn has created pressure public spending consisting of tax credits or deductions for speci- to increase current benefits faster than payroll taxes over fied private expenditures—would amplify the trends displayed time, most dramatically in the 2002 addition of a Medicare

3 2 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 2col:QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/1/2014 11:09 PM Page 33

prescription-drug benefit, 75 percent of which was financed consumerist: a stimulus program that was mostly transfer by new borrowing. It is this Ponzi-scheme dynamic that has payments rather than investments, and a sweeping takeover propelled implicit debt to impossible heights. At the same time, of the health-care sector intended to make its products and the biggest growth in loan guarantees and subsidies has come services less costly and more widely available. In the months from increased private borrowing for home mortgages and for before the national elections of 2012, the president involved college tuition, room, board, and expenses. These are often justi- himself with great fanfare in requiring universities and health fied as investments in household and human capital, but they insurers to furnish birth-control products free of charge to clearly involve large elements of consumption. The extension of students—which was not even insurance, much less produc- loans on extremely lenient, non-investment-grade terms, and the tion, but pure consumption. continuous expansion of debt-forgiveness programs to those Let us stipulate that consumption beyond the basic necessities whose loans did not turn out well, are powerful inducements to is a good and worthy thing. For many it is what production is use the loans for consumption. for—work to live, not live to work—and no one is indifferent to It is often said that the American government has become it. The government of an affluent, egalitarian nation is going to an insurance state; more precisely, it has become a consumer concern itself with the level, quality, and distribution of con- state. The shift from public goods to private consumption is sumption among its citizens. And, at a time of slowing income a pervasive feature of contemporary government, not limited growth, it is going to take steps to maintain the purchasing power to spending programs. Regulation, too, has shifted from pro- of the middle class. What is striking about our consumption state, moting production (transportation, communications, energy) and menacing, is that it is a debt-financed consumption state. to promoting consumption (environmental quality, personal Public investments often fail. Wars are lost at least half the time. health and safety, consumer protection). In the aftermath of But borrowing for consumption is not aspirational. It is intended the 9/11 terrorist attack, when the public and media were ask- to ease the present rather than enlarge the future; and, when pur- ing what regular citizens could do to support the government sued on the massive scale we have become accustomed to, it can response, the government’s answer was: Keep shopping and only diminish the future. traveling. In the aftermath of the financial collapse of 2008, which revealed that major financial firms had gotten them- selves impossibly overleveraged and engorged with inconti- he essence of our debt predicament is not so much its nent loans, the government’s flagship response was: a new size as its source. It has grown to unprecedented lev- consumer-protection agency. And when the collapse precipi- T els not because of external crises or failed or over- tated a dramatic rise in unemployment and a fall in employ- ambitious public ventures, which would be bad enough. ment, President Obama’s responses were emphatically Rather, it has arisen from within, generated by our democracy

MAKE YOUR DREAM A REALITY. COME on NR’S POST-ELECTIOn CRUISE! HEAR, LEADING CONSERVATIVES MAKE sense of THE CONGRESSIONal +0+*7.326 WHILE DISCUSSING today’s hot issues and the future of the conservative movement. jonah goldberg, victor davis hanson, FRED THOMPSON, ,30/6 ALLEN WEST, JON KYL, john yoo, rich lowry, mona charen, ralph reed, cal thomas, Tim pawlenty, andrew mccarthy, 0 . / + jay nordlinger, tim phillips, bing west, AND MANY more. 43 ALL-STAR SPEAKERS WILL BE ON BOARD. WILL YOU? go vi sit to get complete25*58.6+ information about *31 this spectacular voyage to the sunny caribbean. (OR CHECK OUT THE AD ON 4(-+6$!$" of this issue!) if you’re the kind of person who prefers to talk to someone, then call monday to friday, 9 am to 5 pm, eastern: the '!! &!& "%#$ good people at the cruise authority will get you into an affordable and make your dreams real! see you in and luxurious cabin that Will meet your standards and wallet, 239+1)+5

3 3 2col:QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/1/2014 11:09 PM Page 34

itself. Through a long sequence of accommodations to imme- Whatever the path, it will lead to a welfare state that is more diate contingencies and opportunities, we have built a system constrained and limited and less generous than the one we are in which the electorate expects, and political officials pro- enjoying today. It is possible to have a generous welfare state vide, a higher level of personal benefits than of tax collec- financed by current taxation; Sweden is close to one, and it has tions to pay for the benefits. The difference is taxed to even put its retirement pensions on a budget. But Sweden is a younger and future generations—to be paid in the future, by small, homogeneous, collectivist, consensus nation, and unknown subsets of them, through higher outright taxes, America is a vast, heterogeneous, individualistic, fractious reduced benefits, debt defaults, or inflation. The situation is nation. Our transition from debt-supported to tax-supported intractable because most of those being burdened are not vot- consumption is going to be much more contentious. And, ers (most are not even alive) and cannot be part of a con- because we are not going to share current wealth so agreeably stituency for reform. as the Swedes do, our welfare state is going to get smaller than It is true that non-voting future generations also bear part of it is today. the burden of debts for investments in infrastructure, deterring It is important to note, finally, that even in the best of all pos- and prosecuting wars, and other long-lived public goods. But sible worlds—the first scenario, in which we begin the transi- the political dynamics, not just the economic dynamics, are tion now and give everyone plenty of time to adjust—the fundamentally different. For one thing, living persons bear transition is going to be a period of considerable national risk. most of the burden (the non-monetary burden) of wars and nat- To be sure, risk always involves positive as well as negative ural disasters. More important, investment and disaster man- possibilities. The official projections of our future debt burden agement are self-limiting, while consumption is open-ended. assume that economic growth in the coming decades will be One can make a plausible case for only so many highways, bat- lower than in the past. That is because, among other things, tleships, foreign interventions, and cancer-research centers. work-force participation will be lower in an older society, and But there is no inherent limit to the demand for more and better because many of the 20th century’s big growth-promoting consumption, and for redistribution from the future to the pre- developments (such as in transportation, urbanization, and the sent to pay for it. entry of large numbers of women into the work force) have There are three basic scenarios for resolving America’s pretty much run their course. But there could be happy sur- debt problem. First, far-sighted political leaders could put our prises: Dramatic discoveries in medicine, energy, or informa- entitlement and income-transfer programs on a path to sol- tion technology could propel economic growth far beyond vency, through reforms that have already been thoroughly expectations, diminish the real burden of our existing debt, worked out in academic and think-tank research—such as subdue the dynamics of population aging, and give debt- voucherizing Medicaid, raising the Social Security retire- financed consumption a renewed franchise. Deficit doves who ment age and indexing its benefits to prices rather than think we can grow our way out of our debt are implicitly count- wages, and pre-funding both programs for future generations. ing on such big positive surprises. Second, high inflation could reduce the debt burden at the That would be wonderful and is devoutly to be wished. expense of bondholders by shrinking the real value of fixed- However, a central responsibility of government—one might interest payments and bond redemptions (sometimes called say its first responsibility—is to be prepared for big negative slow-motion partial default). Third, resolution could await a surprises. The purpose of maintaining low public debt is not crisis—a war or other costly emergency, or a sharp increase to adhere to abstract notions of fiscal rectitude. Rather it is to in interest rates that balloons the cost of new and replacement maintain the government’s capacity to respond forcefully to bonds—that forces a choice between outright default and severe emergencies that citizens cannot manage on their own. abrupt, severe benefit cuts. Such emergencies—foreign aggression, epidemics, natural disasters, financial collapses, and economic depressions— have occurred frequently throughout American history. HeRe are precedents for each scenario and no need to Actuarially, at least one is likely to occur in the decades that it predict which one (or which combination) we will fol- will take to reduce our debt to a manageable level of, say, 30 T low. The first path is obviously the best but will percent of GDP without risking serious social dislocations. If remain open for only another decade or so before the demo- a severe shock should come our way soon, the government’s graphic arithmetic begins to dictate benefit reductions that response will be seriously weakened by its inability to borrow are immediate and steep rather than prospective and gradual. massive resources immediately. And the very fragility of our The second option would export some of the immediate losses, financial circumstances will invite emergencies of the man- because foreigners own nearly half of our publicly held debt, made kind. but it would also injure most domestic savers regardless of The theory of social insurance is that government is able to their Treasury holdings. The third solution is obviously the reduce the lifetime risks facing individual citizens by spread- worst, because it destroys settled expectations, imposes ing those risks among large populations and compensating for windfall losses on many people of modest means, and, in the lack of individual foresight. Adding the expedient of massive extreme, inflicts widespread misery and loss of social morale borrowing to the equation has produced a different, untoward (as in Greece) or tempts outright confiscation of private result. Whatever success our debt-financed welfare state has assets (as in Argentina). Confiscation is not so alien from the had in reducing risks among the citizenry, it has certainly cen- American experience as one might suppose: It’s what FDR tralized a great deal of risk in the government itself, thereby did in 1933 in seizing everyone’s gold coins at a fraction of hobbling its ability to provide the most important form of their value. social insurance of all.

3 4 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 lileks--READY:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 10:42 PM Page 35

Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Apocalypse-Proof E-Mail

uCkY Lois Lerner: I couldn’t lose old e-mails if I local network-attached server, which in turn backs them up wanted to. Let me explain. on a mirrored disk, just in case the main disk gets clicky and First: I hate e-mail. Loathe it. Oh, it was fun at decides to die. L first, back when AOL was training everyone for All well and good, you say, but if a fire took your house, the day the Internet arrived. Now each day is a fire hose of then the data would be lost. True! That’s why it’s all backed e-mail, with the ones you want to read interspersed with up to the Cloud, because nothing says eternal security like a notices to appear in Spanish court to face charges (viruses, puffy thing that blows away. every one of them, and besides, I was acquitted); spoofed Anyway. Years ago I put some crucial data on a Zip disk, messages from apple.com that actually redirect to a place which was capable of holding an unimaginable quantity of where you can buy knock-off penis pills if only you hand data. 100 MB. There are graybeard nerds in the audience over your credit-card information to people who lied to get who surely know: That’s an awful lot of ASCII Cindy your click; blast e-mails from political Crawford pictures. One day the disk began organizations from the left and right, each E-mail was to clack upon insertion. You went on this equally convinced that the flood of Huns new thing, the Internet, and typed words pouring over the horizon can be stopped if fun at first, into Yahoo! or Alta Vista, and learned that only I contribute; an e-mail from Amazon the Click of Death—oh no, there’s a term asking if I wouldn’t mind answering a back when for it—meant the disk was probably use- question about the belt I bought a few less. Ever since then I have regarded all months back, which makes you wonder AOL was storage media as a gouty old rich man what sort of question someone might have, training regards his chorus-line paramour: You and how you could possibly help. Does it have to assume eventual faithlessness. have holes? It has Holes. everyone for So the local backups and the cloud back- It’s like having someone gong your ups aren’t enough. Once a month I clone doorbell every three minutes with a the day the everything on a hard drive I keep in a telegram. Internet locked drawer offsite. Now: If someone At work I find I can reduce my inbox walks past the location testing out a Penta - by searching the term “For Immediate arrived. gon super-magnet capable of picking up Release” and sending it all to Trash. tanks from a distance of two miles and flip- The only time “For Immediate Release” gets my atten- ping them over like hapless turtles, the drives will suffer. tion is when we’re talking about Abu al-Murder getting So I burn critical data to CDs. Of course, CDs degrade at out of Gitmo. the same speed as the morals of a European vacationing at But I save them. I save them all. Ibiza—and in both cases it happens sooner if you leave them Not because I want to; not because I wish to leave the in the sun—so the CDs must be duplicated every so often. future a record of the daily tsunami that hammers the levee When I do this, it’s a reminder I should also visit the safe- of a modern man’s mind. It’s just the way I’ve set things up. deposit vault where I have a small hard drive containing the I have a program that periodically downloads all the e-mail, mission-critical data, because the interface has changed from which is then compressed into a wad of hurt and automati- SCSI to SATA. Also, kill me now. cally archived on my computer. I don’t do all of the above to save e-mail; it’s part of an Ah, but you say, your computer could crash, and the automated, pathetically anal-retentive regime to protect servers on which the e-mails reside could be struck by light- family photos, movies, and everything I’ve written. (I also ning, and their backups could be corrupted by a power surge, print everything off, in case of EMP, and store the copies in and an asteroid could strike the moon a glancing blow, send- a box with candles and matches, so they can be read at night ing chunks of rock streaking into the atmosphere—most if electrical civilization takes it on the chin.) I do it because would burn, but a few could get through and hit the archived the pictures and movies and words mean something to our servers at the precise point where e-mails of people under family. The e-mails get dragged along for the ride. They congressional investigation reside. It’s possible. matter only because I back up everything. Yes, it is; the drives could also be ruined by a sudden I believe the IRS did what I do, and more, because they’re plague that swept through a flock of pigs flying overhead, the government, and the idea that a massive institution is causing them to crash into the car of the one fellow who more lackadaisical than a guy who wants to save his daugh- knew how to retrieve the data from a 1966 tape-based IBM ter’s birthday pictures—well, it’s preposterous. So there had mainframe that controlled the IRS e-mail backups. But: My to be some catastrophic failure. nightly backup regimen sprays the archived e-mails on a I should note that somehow the unflattering photos got trashed and purged from all backups. Oops! Now how did I Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. do that.

3 5 longview--READY:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 10:42 PM Page 36

The Long View BY ROB LONG

availability. Make sure you’re booked CALLER: “I mean, I can’t ask my par- solid and they understand the kill fee.” ents to pay my rent in the city while I BILLCLINTON: “Right. So, when work for free. They barely have you’ve got that list, think about your enough right now for themselves.” personal connections. Do you know CHELSEACLINTON: “Really? That’s any supermarket magnates? Do you weird. Even when my parents were OFFICIAL TrAnsCrIpT: know any chairmen of any private- broke they still had lots of money. equity shops?” Maybe it’s the same with your parents. YOUR MONEY MATTERS CALLER: “I don’t.” Are they broke but have several mil- Syndicated radio call-in show with HILLARY CLINTON: “That’s what I lion dollars?” the Clintons thought, too. But you’ll probably be CALLER: “No.” surprised at the range of your connec- CHELSEACLINTON: “That’s really HILLARY CLINTON: “Hi, is the caller tions. I know we were.” weird.” there?” CALLER: “So, stocks, mutual CALLER: “The problem is, it’s a great CALLER: “Hi, Hillary. Can I call you funds . . . ?” opportunity but I can’t afford to take it. ‘Hillary’?” BILL CLINTON: “Honestly, I think you’re I mean, I don’t even know what I’d do HILLARY CLINTON: “Of course! I’m just better off as a limited partner at a ven- for food.” an ordinary American grandmother!” ture fund, or maybe make a private- CHELSEA CLINTON: “Well, I can help CALLER: “Oh, great! Can I call you equity play.” you there. Most television networks— ‘Grandma’?” HILLARY CLINTON: “Or books. Do you I had an unpaid internship at one of HILLARY CLINTON: “What’s your ques- have a book contract?” them—have really well-stocked tion, caller?” BILL CLINTON: “Hello?” kitchens and pantries in the office. CALLER: “Well, I work two jobs right HILLARY CLINTON: “Hello?” Muffins, cookies, what have you. now, but have to pay for child care. I’m BILL CLINTON: “I guess we got cut off.” And I’m told that the fashion maga- also trying to get out from under a lot HILLARY CLINTON: “Next caller! Hello!” zines have the same kind of deal. of credit-card debt. I have some sav- CALLER: “Hi! This is so amazing! You When I was an unpaid intern at a ings, not much, and I’m thinking about guys, I love your show. But this is a large investment bank, though, most investing it more aggressively for question for Chelsea. Hi, Chelsea!” of my lunches and client dinners growth. What do you think I should do, CHELSEA CLINTON: “Hi there.” were paid for, so that helped. Where’s pick specific stocks or invest in an CALLER: “I’m a young person like your internship?” index-type fund?” you and I’m just starting out in my CALLER: “City traffic planning.” HILLARY CLINTON: “Well, this is a real- career and I’ve been offered a terrific CHELSEA CLINTON: “Cool!” ly interesting question and it hits opportunity as an unpaid intern and CALLER: “I guess. I mean, it’s not home. As most of you know, it wasn’t I’m wondering how I can make that investment banking.” too long ago that the Clinton family work.” CHELSEA CLINTON: “No, right, it’s not. was dead broke. We had massive bills CHELSEA CLINTON: “That’s a great ques- But in a lot of ways it’s better. You to pay and no way to pay them. What tion. Internships are a really great way know, I did all of that stuff and then I we did, though, was have a family to get exposed to a lot of different suddenly realized—I think it was meeting and really thought through careers and possibilities, and I’ve found when Mom and I were on an amaz- the options.” that the unpaid ones, actually, are even ing trip through India, and I was sit- BILL CLINTON: “If I can interject here. more useful. The first thing you’re ting on an elephant and I just had this Just a couple of thoughts. I think you going to need is a bunch of work- realization. I just didn’t care that need to sit down at the kitchen table, appropriate outfits. Then, because you much about money. I just don’t care like we did, like a lot of American want to project a professional image, about it. It’s not something I even families do—” I’d invest in a really nice leather case. think about.” HILLARY CLINTON: “A lot of broke Don’t forget shoes—shoes really say CALLER: “I think about it all the time.” American families—” ‘I’m all grown up,’ so assemble some CHELSEA CLINTON: “Oh, you’ve really BILL CLINTON: “Thanks, Hillary. Right. really basic, classic shoes of excellent got to stop doing that.” Just sit down and make a list of your quality. And good luck!” BILL CLINTON: “Yeah, that’s not a great assets. How many homes you have. CALLER: “Um, okay. Yeah, see, what I lifestyle choice.” How many book contracts you have. was asking was, how do I make it HILLARY CLINTON: “Totally agree. Don’t How many speaking engagements you work financially? I have some student make money the center of your life.” have on the calendar—” loans and I really can’t afford to work CHELSEA CLINTON: “Coming up next HILLARY CLINTON: “Confirmed ones, for free.” at the top of the hour! Simple house- though, not just the kind where they CHELSEACLINTON: “Not following hold products you can make yourself! call your agent and ask about your you.” Stay with us!”

3 6 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 7:19 PM Page 37 Books, Arts & Manners

my reaction is any indication, the chlo- On iraq, for example, while Hillary roform technique could well work. The focuses on trying to put her 2002 vote Hillary’s crushing effect of the clichés alone to authorize the use of force in iraq may be enough. Really, how much can behind her, thus apologizing to the War of Fog readers be expected to endure of re - democratic party’s Left, she spends peated references to high-wire acts, precious little time assessing what JOHN R. BOLTON hard truths, “facing the world as it is,” happened in iraq while she was secre- the need to “keep my eyes wide open,” tary. given today’s sectarian violence foreign leaders “riding high horses,” and the possible disintegration of the “the legacy of history hanging heavy” country, she will find it difficult to over issues, and—not to be forgot- establish distance from Obama on ten—those clever israelis who “made iraq even though she is no longer in the desert bloom”? and did i mention his administration. “hard choices”? Hillary’s sleight-of-hand is accom- The rollout of Hard Choices was plished partially by organizing Hard intended as a testament both to the Choices along subject-matter lines Clintons’ massive media support net- rather than chronologically. While no work and to their enduring political memoir can ever be strictly chronolog- skills, at least where all of the variables ical and still maintain any narrative are essentially under their control. Sur - coherence, Hillary has gone very nearly prisingly, even under these most favor- to the opposite extreme. Her memoir is able of circumstances, the opening less history than a collection of dis- Hard Choices, by Hillary Rodham Clinton barrage of interviews did not go well. crete essays on specific subjects. (Simon & Schuster, 656 pp., $35) Hillary couldn’t articulate her key and after a while, the essays begin to accomplishments at State (not that the read much the same: i first visited eading Hillary Clinton’s book itself is any better), and she was [Country X] as First Lady [with/with- memoir of her State de - snappish and defensive even under ques- out Bill]. X has a fascinating history partment years is like wad- tioning from such presumable media [fluff out as appropriate]. i next visited R ing through an ocean of friendlies as nPR and aBC news. as a senator, and met [this, that, and oatmeal. Cloying, tiring (sometimes How she and Bill will look when the other] political figure/women’s to the point of exhaustion), and as scrutiny intensifies from outside the leader/prominent dissident. during my controversy-free as possible, the more mainstream media is now a much more first trip as secretary of state, i spoke at than 600 pages of Hard Choices are a interesting question. [name college campus], and met many hard slog. The book reveals precious now that the rollout is over, and the fascinating woman students. Then i little new information, it is overloaded focus can shift from campaign glitter to made some hard choices and ex changed with clichés, and the superficiality of substance, the picture for Hillary tough words with Country X’s leaders. its policy analysis is remarkable even Clinton doesn’t get any better. Her de - i close with fond words about Bill and for the campaign-biography genre. fenses in the book are the best that Barack and how proud i am of our col- That may be exactly what Hillary and years of political-spin strategizing and lective record. Lots of traveling and Bill intended. Whether Hard Choices word massaging could produce. none talking, but not a lot of thinking. enlightens or educates, or whether it of the arguments pre sented there will nonetheless, despite the best efforts sells many copies, is, for the Clintons, improve with time, so it is significant of Hillary’s “book team” (the new beside the point. They are focused on how little there is in Hard Choices to euphemism for “ghostwriters”), impor- the politics rather than the policy of support a second Clinton presidency, tant insights about her Cabinet tenure, Hillary’s tenure as secretary of state, based on Hillary’s tenure as secretary mindset, and competence escape along and on how that tenure might enhance of state. Concededly, she faced a deli- the tortuous way. and on Benghazi, the their ongoing 2016 presidential effort. cate task: obscuring her minimal influ- most controversial issue, there is inter- Polishing her thin record, excising or at ence on policy decisions in Obama’s esting material indeed, both what is least recasting her mistakes, and, per- first term (which, ironically, will pro- said and what is not said, that should haps most important, anaesthetizing vide her campaign numerous opportu- provide interesting leads for congres- her critics are the real priorities. and if nities to distance itself from Obama’s sional investigators to explore. policies when necessary), while simul- For example, Hard Choices fails to Mr. Bolton, a former U.S. representative to the taneously avoiding having her essential mention that, when all U.S. diplomats United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American powerlessness on key issues undercut were evacuated from Libya in late Enterprise Institute. He is the author of Surrender her résumé’s most important qualifica- February 2011 as opposition to Qaddafi Is Not an Option. tion for the White House. grew, State had to rent a greek ferry

3 7 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 7:19 PM Page 38

BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS because no U.S. military assets were our Benghazi compound. There was operations worldwide. Remaining on available in the Mediterranean region, a no need to query CIA intelligence ana- the seventh floor reinforces the aware- revelation that would startle most lysts at CIA headquarters in Virginia, ness that lives are at risk. The impor- Americans. Fortunately, that evacuation just as far from Libya as Hillary’s tance of being with others also working was in a relatively “permissive” envi- State Department. Tele phone calls on the issue, face-to-face communica- ronment. But the inescapable reality, in back to Washington from the moment tions, and the sense of urgency and Libya and throughout the Middle East, of the attack were uniform in their adrenaline that come from working was that a need for “non-permissive reporting. Clinton herself says that late into the night to save people in evacuations” (essentially, departing in Ambassador Christopher Stephens mortal peril cannot be underestimated. the midst of active hostilities) in the retired for the evening at 9 p.M., when Other secretaries have stayed at their near future was entirely foreseeable. it was quiet, and that the attack began desks through the night in far less dra- Yet no one in Obama’s administration 40 minutes later. How many people matic or dangerous circumstances.

Historians will find little of interest in Hard Choices, readers will choke trying to get through it, and the publisher may well regret Hillary’s $14 million advance.

learned the lesson of the Greek ferry start demonstrations after 9 p.M. that Clinton does say that her 10:00 p.M. boat, or took steps to avoid a potential turn into armed attacks within 40 telephone call with Obama, apparently catastrophe. minutes? her only contact with him all day, was Evaluating security circumstances in Moreover, Clinton is silent on what from her home. And there is no claim tumultuous countries and regions in - she did in the hours after first learning that she ever spoke with Defense volves judgments about international about the Cairo demonstrations that Secretary Leon panetta. This is stun- politics as much as (or more than) breached our embassy’s security de - ning. I have worked for six secretaries “expert” knowledge about the thick- fenses, sometime in the morning of of state, very different in background, nesses of blast walls, one of Hillary’s September 11, Washington time. She style, and demeanor. I am convinced favorite dodges during her book tour. says merely that she was “closely none of them would have gone home The U.S. political imperative for Obama, monitoring” reports from Embassy that evening. But Hillary did. however, was his utterly inaccurate Cairo. Why, on September 11 of all Tellingly, Clinton writes not a word claim that terrorism globally was on days, did she not immediately order a about the post-attack efforts to find the decline, and that Libya post- region-wide security assessment and and eliminate the terrorist attackers, or Qaddafi was a success story for his put everyone on alert throughout the even to arrest them under the Obama “lead from behind” foreign policy. In State and Defense Departments, press- paradigm that terrorism is merely a fact, as has been typical throughout his ing for military assets to be moved law-enforcement matter. True, most of presidency, Obama turned away from toward the region generally if not the post-attack chronology occurred the irritating distraction of Libya and specifically toward Libya? after she left State, but similar cir- returned to his real priority of “funda- In addition, Hard Choices still pro- cumstances didn’t deter her from mentally transforming” America, as he vides no satisfactory answer to the writing about Syria’s 2013 use of had promised in 2008. question of why and when, on that chemical weapons, or about recent Hillary’s central defense regarding night, Hillary left her office on State’s nuclear negotiations with Iran. So the Benghazi and its aftermath is “the fog seventh floor to go home. Certainly the absence of any substance on post- of war,” where information is “hard to times of several meetings in her office attack policy is noticeable, and may come by and conflicting and incom- she refers to can be established, and be another sign of where she intends plete,” especially far away in Wash - State’s diplomatic-security bureau will to preserve distance from Obama. ington, and that “the fog persisted for have a precise record of when she left One thing is certain: Benghazi is still so long.” There are two answers to the Department. Since Hillary won’t tell an issue, despite her best efforts to this. First, great leaders are those who us that time, the House select committee put it behind her. pierce through the fog of war, see what on Benghazi should. It is simply unac- Historians will find little of interest their colleagues fail to see, and act ceptable for her to say that telecom- in Hard Choices, readers will choke decisively and correctly even in condi- muting during a crisis was legitimate trying to get through it, and the pub- tions of high uncertainty and risk. Not be cause she had secure communica- lisher may well regret Hillary’s $14 Hillary Clinton. tions facilities at home. physical pres- million advance. But the Clinton ma - Second, it was not nearly so foggy ence on State’s seventh floor in the chine will simply shrug and say, “On as she recalls. No officials, U.S. or midst of a crisis, as the commander “on to Iowa and New Hampshire.” The Libyan, in Benghazi or Tripoli, had the bridge,” is incalculable in its effects real question is whether they will get any doubt that terrorists had struck on the Department’s personnel and away with it.

3 8 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 7:19 PM Page 39

house. he set the agenda and maintained diminished and that of regulatory rule control over party members, and the making has expanded, with the regulators A More result was an efficient and responsive (if responsible to the executive branch and rather corrupt) political system, since the not to the legislature.” Perfect speaker was accountable to and spoke the second thesis is that, in this brave for the party as a whole. Joe cannon, the new world of executive government, par- speaker they called “czar” at the turn liamentary systems “better protect politi- Congress of the century, was the last real Frank cal freedom”: “an american is apt to Underwood to walk the halls of congress think that his constitution uniquely pro- JOSEPH POSTELL (with LBJ as a partial exception). tects liberty. the truth is almost exactly the greatest immediate effect of the the reverse.” Because presidential sys- Progressive movement in the early 20th tems are more likely to slide into despo- century was the weakening of political tism than parliamentary systems, we are parties as institutions that managed con- actually free in spite of our constitution, flict and allowed a national majority to not because of it. rule efficiently. the Progressives under- In support of this thesis, Buckley notes stood that if a modern administrative state that “parliamentary governments, which was to be established in america under lack a separation of powers, rank sig- the leadership of a powerful executive, nificantly higher on measures of political the strength of parties and congress freedom” than presidential systems. would have to diminish. Pushing for Moreover, prime ministers are monitored The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown direct primaries (rather than nominating more vigorously by legislatures and are Government in America, by F. H. Buckley conventions) and instituting a profes- constantly dependent on a legislative base (Encounter, 424 pp., $27.99) sional civil service (rather than using for support (rather than elected for a term party patronage) would revolutionize the that they are essentially guaranteed to watched the first two seasons of political system. serve). Most important, parliamentary House of Cards while teaching the chickens are coming home to systems contain fewer checkpoints and courses on the development of roost, and today we see how the decline therefore less gridlock than presidential I congress and the history of politi- of parties and congressional leadership systems. the checks and balances are cal parties in america. as I watched, I paved the way for the modern presidency actually “Madisonian Infirmities” that could not help but be skeptical of the and administrative state. Professor F. h. render the legislative process inefficient way the political process was portrayed: Buckley’s new book is the best recent and induce us to turn to a dominant exec- Frank Underwood is a one-man show, a description of this phenomenon and why utive for leadership. member of congress who can move the it matters. In short, Buckley argues, our endemic entire assembly through his artful deal- Buckley’s book contains two central political problems stem from a cause we making and threats. theses. the first is that america’s dedica- tend to think helps protect liberty: the sep- My response: “If only!” we might tion to separation of powers is inconsis- aration of powers. If crown government actually have a better political process tent with the intent of its founders, who is inevitable, we would be better off with if mythological creatures like Frank envisioned a government “with a weaker a congressional system rather than a Underwood existed. at least congress separation of powers between the execu- separation-of-powers system. and a con- would move; as it is now, there is a dearth tive and legislative branches and with gressional system would also be more in of leadership in our legislative branch very different ideas about presidential line with the Framers’ intent. and, consequently, we have gridlock and elections.” the result would have been a Buckley’s second thesis does not inaction. more efficient, parliamentary-style sys- hinge on his analysis of the constitu - the history of congress helps us to see tem. alas, the democratization of presi- tional convention. this is important, this in perspective. From the civil war to dential elections moved us from the because Buckley’s interpretation of the 1910, very powerful political parties and Framers’ “second constitution” of “con- conven tion is somewhat questionable. their leaders dominated the government. gressional government” to our “third while there is some evidence that some the speaker of the house chose committee constitution” of the separation of powers. Framers wanted a more legislature- members and chairmen, controlled the In setting forth this first thesis, Buckley centered political system, some of them Rules committee (and therefore the leg- examines the evolution of the British, changed their views at the convention islative agenda), and used his power of canadian, and american constitutional (James Madi son) and others simply lost recognition to control debate in the systems. all three resulted in what he (Roger Sherman, George Mason). the calls “crown government” (in the case consti tution as drafted and ratified did Mr. Postell is an assistant professor of political science of the United States, this is the “fourth establish an independent executive, and at the University of Colorado–Colorado Springs. He american constitution”). “what more this was not an aspect of the consti - is a co-editor of Rediscovering Political than anything explains the move toward tution that its supporters regretted. Economy and Toward an American crown government” in these countries, Buckley’s thesis about the relative Conservatism: Constitutional Conservatism he writes, “is the growth of the regulatory merits of parliamentary versus presiden- during the Progressive Era. state, where the role of legislation has tial systems stands on its own as a very

3 9 two page Caribbean 2014 cruise new format_no corner:Panama cruise.qxd 6/16/2014 3:45 PM Page 1

day #4 on THE Nr 2014 post- ELECTION Cruise

Well, after four incredible days aboard the Allure of the Seas, you wouldn’t have known that Mary and I once thought we “weren’t cruisers.” I’m so glad our friends finally convinced us to really check out those NR magazine cruise ads we’d been looking at for years. Those NR post-election trips always sounded like fun, and heck, now I can admit, they ARE. No question, this voyage is a BLAST. It’s everything my pals said it would be, and more. Take the ship for starters: It’s beautiful. The cabins: beautiful. The restaurants (there are many to choose from): beautiful. And the food: deee-licious. The public spaces: beautiful. You like spas? The Allure’s are super. You like quiet places? There are plen- ty, so you can read, write, nap, whatever (on Monday Mary handed me a pencil and this notebook and pointed at some palm trees: I think I am getting the hang of it! Didn’t know I was an artist!). Want to zip line or climb a rock wall? Yep, you can. Make new friends? We’ve made a lot, including a few of the NR speakers. Morning PANEL Session Every “panel” is an exclusive and inti- mate 2 1/2-hour ses- sion that kicks off with a fascinating one-on-one interview. This morning’s began with Jay Nordlinger quizzing Luis Fortuno about Puerto Rico’s future. Jay’s way of get- ting to the heart of any matter is the tops. After a short break there was an hour-plus panel with Jon Kyl, Tim Pawlenty, Ralph Reed, Cal Thomas and Fred Thompson--yep, all of them--giving very smart analyses of the elections. One was better than the other. And Mary even got a chance to ask a question (to Pawlenty, or as we now call our new pal, “Tim,” about the 2016 race).

Afterwards, we figured we’d hang around, just a few minutes, to get Cal to sign his new book, and, well, as he was signing we got to talking, one thing led to another, and we ended up having lunch with him and his wife (she is so cool, and even funnier than Cal). You see the ads, you wonder--are these guys and gals really going to be on the cruise; are Allen West and John Yoo two page Caribbean 2014 cruise new format_no corner:Panama cruise.qxd 6/16/2014 3:45 PM Page 2

(I played blackjack with him in the casino the first night!) and Brent Bozell and the NR Gang of Rich, Ramesh, KDW, K-Lo and Charlie Cooke (damn he is sharp!) and the rest going to be on the ship? They are! And they’re so accessible, fun, friendly. I swear I was Rob Long’s BFF for a few minutes after I lit his H. Upmann cigar at last night’s smoker. afternoon­PaNel Where to start? Andy McCarthy and VDH (my f avorite!) and Bing West made mincemeat of Obama’s national security policy. They were brilliant--what a unique chance this was to hear them expound. And that came after a kick-off inter- view of Cleta Mitchell by John Miller. Turns out Cleta knows everything about the IRS scandals--I wish she had another hour to talk. That was just one of nine sessions happening this week. When it ended I turned to say some- thing to Mary, and she had such a look of contentment. I don’t think she ever looked so beautiful. This really is proving to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. 6:00pm--private­cocktail­Party Great event! Out by the pool hundreds of NR guests were enjoying each others company. We met several people just like us (Red State vote, Blue State address) and before you knew it a dozen of us were talking about t he direction the conservative movement is taking and shared our local-level experiences. Then Jim Geraghty and Tim Phillips joined us. I can’t tell you how cool that was. It only ended when the steward came around chiming his bells letting us know it was time for dinner. 10:15pm--”Night­Owl”­ What could you possibly do after a sumptuous dinner? We walked into the show lounge to see Jonah, Rob, Michael Walsh, M ichael Ramirez, and James Lileks talking about Hollywood and Washington, and having us in stitches half the time. What a way to end a phenomenal day: Another one is just a few hours off. Mary and I are so glad we decided to come on this great cruise! ­­­DON’T­MISS­NR’S­POST-elecTION­cRuISe! FT.­lauDeRDale,­NaSSau,­ST.­ThOMaS,­ST.­MaaRTeN,­ RcI’S­alluRe­OF­The­SeaS . NOveMbeR­9-16,­2014 www.NRcRuISe.cOM .1.800.707.1634 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 7:20 PM Page 42

BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS important contribution. He points out the Instead of turning to an imperial presi- deficiencies in pure separation-of-powers dent, we would have adequate leadership systems and calls us to consider the advan- in the legislature. Instead of a decentral- Shaper of tages of the parliamentary approach. We ized Congress that promotes narrow and should consider the advantages of both local interests, there would be a supervis- Modern systems and how they might be com- ing power that would advance a national bined—as they were in the late-19th- agenda. The result would be a much more century era of strong political parties and efficient system that is accountable to America congressional leadership. national majorities. RYAN L. COLE The most obvious feature of parlia- Our administrative state feeds off of the mentary systems is the strength of their inability of the national interest to trump political parties in the legislature. “Com - the narrow and special interests that pared to American political parties, par- have access to the network of congres- liamentary parties are much more under sional committees and administrative the control of the party leader, whether he agencies supervising federal pro grams. be the prime minister or the leader of the Con gressional leadership stemming from Opposition,” Buckley observes. By con- a national party and representing a trast, in America, John Boehner can national majority is the best way to coun- merely hope for support from his own teract this trend. political party, and sometimes has to We can’t—nor should we desire resort to begging members of the other to—eliminate the separation of powers Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William party for their votes. in our political system. It is an impor- Tecumseh Sherman, by Robert L. O’Connell In our system, legislators are not reliant tant mechanism for preventing tyranny (Random House, 432 pp., $28) on their parties, but “have their own power and protecting local and particular inter- base, separate from the national party,” ests. For all its advantages, however, it OCenTS at William Tecumseh because they are elected in districts with does give rise to problems: an uncoordi- Sherman’s boyhood home in local interests rather than a national elec- nated legislative process, the ability of a Lancaster, Ohio, treat visitors tion. Their impulse is to follow prevail- minority to obstruct a legitimate majority D to a telling anecdote from the ing opinions back home rather than the party, and an inevitable shift to presi- general’s youth. The ginger-complected national interest, which might be imposed dential government. For a century, we Sherman was so incensed when a foster by leaders of a strong national party. In - offset those problems in the separation brother christened him “red-haired wood- stead of being obedient to party leaders of powers by using strong party govern- pecker” that he furiously concocted a implementing a national agenda, today’s ment to coordinate and lead the legisla- chemical treatment and dyed the offending Congress is decentralized and atomistic, tive process. Restoring some semblance mane . . . green. pursuing each district’s local interests of party leadership and coordination “Dirty, ragged, and saucy,” is how (which tend to favor increased spending will allow us to retain the separation-of- Sherman characterized his army. The and cronyism). Coordinating all of these powers system we cherish while limit- description could be applied to its leader independent legislators without any sticks ing its deficiencies. as well, with “theatrical,” “mercurial,” or carrots turns out to be a thankless and One evening, I stumbled across another and “ferocious” appended for good mea- futile task. Into this leadership vacuum, version of House of Cards, one that takes sure. Cump, as intimates called him, was the president is all too willing to leap, place in Britain rather than America. As a grand character in an era populated by assuming the persona of the only adult in I watched the first episode, I was them. But the full scope of his personality the room, the only person who looks after amazed by the fact that the British ver- and the reach of his life are less understood the American people as a whole. sion follows nearly the exact same plot and contemplated than those of many The best way to avoid this imperial as the American one. But whereas the other primary players of the Civil War. presidency is to rebuild Congress’s inde- power wielded by House majority whip That’s why Robert L. O’Connell’s new pendent capacity. Congress’s job is to leg- Frank Underwood is implausible in the biography is so welcome and valuable. islate for the national interest, but no single American system, chief whip Francis “Biography” is actually something of a member’s constituency is the nation as a Urquhart’s actions make sense in the misnomer in this case: O’Connell, a mil- whole. “What is needed,” Buckley argues, British parliamentary system, with its itary historian and the author of The “is a grand coalition—a coalition of the strong leadership and party unity. The Ghosts of Cannae, has written a study whole of the voters—that will vote for the writers of the American version failed to that has little relation to the 800-page general welfare, rather than the narrow adjust the plot to fit the particular char- lives that come and go with such fre- interest of individual congressional dis- acteristics of our legislative system. quency and seem designed for coffee tricts.” Such a coalition would be a While the American version certainly tables rather than actual reading. national political party with leadership does not paint efficient congressional Fierce Patriot, in contrast, is relatively capable of implementing policies in leadership in a positive light, it is worth brief and avoids overly florid prose or end- accordance with its national coalition. noting that a lot more gets done in Frank A restoration of party leadership in Underwood’s mythical Congress than in Mr. Cole, a former adviser to Governor Mitch Congress would achieve this objective. the actual one. Daniels, is a writer in Bloomington, Ind.

4 2 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 7:20 PM Page 43

less detail (if you are interested in the O’Connell does not hesitate to put his march, another that reads like a travel- chronology of Sherman’s ancestors going subject on the therapist’s couch or to point ogue—O’Connell uses a mix of observa- back generations, look elsewhere). In their out his faults. As secession approached, tions and firsthand accounts, drawn from place is an engaging series of chapters Sherman’s view of events was obscured by the recollections of Sherman’s men, to (occasionally not in chronological se - what O’Connell calls a “strategic blind- give a sense of life on the journey and to quence) that explain what a fascinating fold”: He was oddly comfortable with emphasize the strategic relevance of the and complex life Sherman led and, most slavery and completely failed to antici- action of a stripped-down elite fighting strikingly, make the persuasive argument pate the rebellion. In fact, in a bit of his- force—O’Connell compares it to a vora- that his fingerprints can be found on tory that might jolt some, as the Civil War cious human land shark—in torching America even today. approached, Sherman happily headed Atlanta, abandoning its supply lines, and Naturally, much of the book is a con- south to found the Louisiana Military then vanishing into the Deep South. templation of Sherman the soldier. This Seminary and, in the process, even pro- The high-water mark of Sherman’s life begins at West Point, from which the cured muskets that would be used by strategic powers, it was a campaign based

young cadet emerged with a very defined the Confederacy. on theatrics and psychology. When the     idea of his place in the Army, and it was not But once the shells fell on Fort Sumter, general and his men headed out of a town, a position of absolute command. Writes there would be, from Sherman’s  perspec-  they  left smoldering   ruins in their wake; O’Connell: “If you can say one thing about tive, no mercy for the South. This—the state capitols were smashed, homes were Sherman with certainty, it’s that he never Civil War—is where both  the book  and its  raided, farms were pillaged. The image of wanted to be ultimately in charge.” subject reach their apexes. O’Connell’s   the South   was defaced and vandalized, and It was a career that quickly built up a treatment of the many battles Sherman  its people  left demoralized. Sherman’s aim head of steam, but eventually derailed. participated in is well wrought, but ev  en was not to bring bloodshed—in fact, his O’Connell takes readers on a brisk tour, more interesting is how the historian  traces   men showed considerable restraint—but illuminating the skills Sherman developed the evolution of Sherman’s mind and rather to send a message: The end of the at each post and would put to later use. personality as the war progressed.    In the rebellion  was nigh. It was a memo that was  Service in Florida during the Second earliest days, from First Manassas to received loud and clear, and, the author Seminole War was a primer in asymmet- Western Kentucky, he was irascible, argues, represented a form of warfare that rical warfare; travels across South Caro - threatening unruly troops at gunpoint, provided a blueprint for our nimble, adapt- lina and Georgia cultivated an unrivaled unsettling superiors, and shocking re - able, modern military. sense of southern geography. (A posting porters. “Sherman’s gone in the head, he’s It was a considerable accomplishment, in the Mexican War—he sailed to Cali - looney,” observed one War Depart ment but, O’Connell argues, not Sherman’s fornia to perform administrative tasks— official. Whispers of insanity spread; de - most important one. This honor is reserved led to Sherman’s sending an oyster can pression returned and his career was on a for his primary postbellum project—over- full of gold nuggets dredged from the deathwatch. His frenemy Henry Halleck, a seeing the construction of the transconti- Sacramento River to federal authorities in fellow cadet at West Point and the overseer nental railroad. During the war, Sherman Washington, which helped set off the of the Department of the Missouri, inter- marched his men to the sea; after it, he Gold Rush of 1849.) vened and brought Sher man to St. Louis. marched the reunited nation to the One cause of Sherman’s rise, as Lincoln, who knew something of melan- ocean. As head of the Department of the O’Connell explains, was family. When choly, approved the reprieve. Missouri, Sherman was, in O’Connell’s Sherman’s father, Charles, died in 1829, There Sherman crossed paths with words, “Manifest Destiny’s chief of oper- Thomas Ewing, a successful Ohio attorney another peculiar Buckeye. O’Connell ations,” ditching the nation’s capital, and future cabinet secretary and senator, pays special attention to the relationship shrugging at Reconstruction, and gather- adopted nine-year-old Cump. This pro- between Sherman and Grant, one of the ing up remnants of his old army to link vided not only future political connec- most important collaborations in America’s bands of steel from coast to coast. It was tions, but also a life partner in the form of history. They were a perfect match: Ewing’s daughter Ellen. It was an awk- Sherman, always happy to play second ward but enduring union: She was a fiddle, was the wingman, and Grant, the “Rated One of New York City devout Catholic; he had little use for demanding taskmaster, the decider. ‘Best Value’ Hotels.” ... Zagats church. She loved Lancaster; he could not Where Sherman had been accused of wait to leave home and had little desire to lunacy, Grant was labeled a drunk. The return. The Ewings hoped he would aban- two bonded at once, provided a support don the Army and prosper elsewhere; he system for each other, and by the spring had no such desire. of 1864 they held the reins of the Sherman lost this last struggle, resigning North’s war efforts. his commission in 1853 and heading to Any consideration of Sherman, of New York’s all suite hotel is located in San Francisco to manage a branch of the course, demands a focus on the blaze of the heart of the city, near corporations, theatre & great restaurants. Affordable Lucas and Turner Bank, the first of many destruction he lit, from Atlanta to elegance with all the amenities of home. ill-fated business ventures that sent him Savannah to the Carolinas, which brought spiraling into depression. By 1858, he was the Confederacy to its knees. Readers will 149 E. 39th St. (Bet 3rd & Lex) New York, NY 10016 back in Lancaster and, by his own admis- not be disappointed. Spread out across two Reservations 1-800-248-9999 Ask about our special National Review rates. sion, washed up. chapters—one a straight history of the

4 3 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 7:20 PM Page 44

BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS the accomplishment he was most proud of, subject, he unsentimentally recounts and one that O’Connell argues is the crown Churchill’s ultimate and unwitting com- jewel of his legacy. The Lion plicity in Britain’s imperial demise. Of course, it came with a cost. In this The empire would be linked both to endeavor, Indians replaced Southerners At Twilight Churchill’s greatest triumphs and to as the object of Sherman’s fury. Westward his most crushing defeats. His heroics expansion, he reasoned, required their in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and South removal. This goal was accomplished by MICHAEL F. BISHOP Africa launched his literary and politi- annihilation of their source of sustenance, cal careers, making him a worldwide the bison, 3 million of which were slaugh- celebrity. But by the 1930s, his tena- tered between 1872 and 1874—at Sher - cious defense of British rule in India man’s urging. This is no doubt a blemish, had nearly ruined him. He excoriated but O’Connell provides a provocative political colleagues of all parties for rebuff to those who would condemn appeasing Indian nationalism and en - Sherman from the comfort of the 21st couraging further unrest, and feared century. National expansion and its con- losing the Indian army, vital for the sequences for America’s indigenous pop- defense of British interests in Asia and ulation were an act of a tragic play staged the Middle East. He raged that Indian repeatedly since the Neolithic period: leader Mohandas Gandhi was “a half- herders overpowering hunters. Sherman naked fakir” and “a malevolent fanatic.” accelerated a predestined process; we James is sympathetic to Churchill’s may complain about ill-gotten territory, Churchill and Empire: A Portrait of an Imperialist, legitimate concerns regarding the rights but, as the author says, “nobody is talking by Lawrence James (Pegasus, 448 pp., of minorities in India, and the violent about giving back the place.” $28.95) clash between Hindus and Muslims There were many more sides to the that followed independence made him man. The philanderer: He was romanti- HETHER the British Empire seem prophetic. But, as so often in his cally entangled with the youthful sculptor was truly, as Flashman career, Churchill found himself isolated Lavinia “Vinnie” Ream. The post-war author George MacDonald when the India bill, which he con- celebrity: He toured the country, speaking W Fraser put it, “the greatest demned as an “unsure, irrational com- endlessly, maintaining his brand, the thing that ever happened to an unde- promise,” became law, ensuring eventual crusty general in the rumpled Brooks serving world,” it was one of the domi- Indian independence. As James shows, Brothers suit. And political recluse: The nant geopolitical realities of the 18th and Churchill evaluated nearly every mili- presidency could have easily been his, but 19th centuries, and survived well into the tary and foreign-policy issue through he curtly declined. It is all here, in a book 20th. And for a fair portion of its exis- the prism of Britain’s imperial interests, that manages to be accessible, funny, and tence, the career of Winston Churchill, an intellectual framework that was fascinating. And idiosyncratic references stretching from the reign of Victoria to sounder than most critics appreciate, to Daffy Duck, Muhammad Ali, Monty that of Elizabeth II, was entwined in it. but sometimes faulty and often politi- Python, and big-wave surfing come and He was no armchair general; Churchill cally hazardous. go, drawing analogies that always, no fought for empire both in the cabinet Perhaps the most compelling chapter matter how incongruous at first glance, and on the battlefield. Around the world in James’s tale concerns the Dardanelles make their mark. he bore with gusto Kipling’s “white campaign of 1915, that ill-starred attempt Sherman’s standing in American history man’s burden.” to drive the Turks—German allies—out is formidable. And his importance prefaces Churchill comes down to us in histor- of the Great War. It may fairly be said and passes the war with which we always ical memory as the arch-defender of to have been Churchill’s brainchild, associate him. His life was one of odd con- empire, determined that Britannia should and as first lord of the admiralty he tradictions: the Union warrior who never ever rule the waves (and as first lord of spared no effort in its conception. saw the war coming; the man who brought the admiralty in both world wars, he James quotes Margot Asquith’s recol- the South absolute war, then tossed it the worked to preserve that rule—for a lection of Churchill’s delight in his role: most generous terms of peace; the West time). But as Lawrence James recounts “Why I would not be out of this glori- Poi nt man who turned up his nose at vol- in this brisk, thorough, and revisionist ous, delicious war for anything the unteer soldiers, then won the war with study, the truth is more complex. James, world can give me.” At that point, even them. It is hard to imagine any other a well-regarded historian of the British Churchill knew he had gone too far, but biography capturing it all in such a con- Empire, considers Churchill a reason- there was no denying his love of battle. cise and enlightening fashion. ably enlightened and ultimately heroic Spurred by the Ottoman caliph-sultan’s The sesquicentennial of the Civil War statesman. But while he admires his declaration of jihad against the Allies, a has brought and will continue to bring a move with potentially disastrous conse- flurry of books about that well-trod subject Mr. Bishop has held several posts on Capitol Hill quences for the multiethnic British and its many actors. Robert L. O’Connell’s and in the White House and is the former executive Empire, Churchill was determined to Fierce Patriot will be required reading director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial strike at Turkey. According to James, the long after the anniversary passes. Commission. desire to confront a challenge to imperial

4 4 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 7:20 PM Page 45

authority was “a motive stronger than mined to preserve the British Empire as Churchill’s death “a winded, middle - the conventional strategic and diplo- he was to crush Nazi Germany. weight pug in a world dominated by matic objectives cited in textbook But he could do neither alone. two fit and beefy heavyweights, the accounts of the campaign,” though to Church ill understood better than most United States and the Soviet Union.” Churchill and others the Sea of Mar - that an alliance between Britain and the To James, the special relationship mara was a more alluring prospect than United States was critical. He assidu- now “involves British soldiers fight- more mud and blood in France and ously courted FDR; as he said later, “no ing on old imperial battlegrounds in Flanders. As the planning continued, lover ever studied every whim of his the Middle East and Asia to defend Churchill further exulted: “I love this mistress as I did those of President America’s informal empire.” war—I know it’s smashing and shatter- Roosevelt.” And he was determined to “All political lives, unless they are cut ing the lives of thousands every moment preserve this “special relationship” after off in midstream at a happy juncture, and yet—I can’t help it—I enjoy every the Americans formally entered the war end in failure, because that is the nature second of it.” in December 1941. of politics and of human affairs,” ob - His enjoyment would not last. James But, according to James, conflict was served Enoch Powell. Churchi ll was no argues that the conception was sound, inevitable, for “while the Americans failure; even the usually acerbic historian quoting with approval the observation of insisted that the dissolution of the old A. J. P. Taylor deemed him “the savior Churchill’s prime-ministerial successor, empires was a prerequisite for the of his country,” and in a 2002 BBC poll Clement Attlee, a veteran of Gallipoli: building of a new world, Churchill, Churchill was voted the greatest Briton “Sir Winston had the one strategic idea with equal vigour, believed that the of all time. In energy, intellect, and of the war. He did not believe in throw- British Empire and Commonwealth courage he towers over all other 20th- ing away masses of people to be sacri- were destined to be its vital compo- century leaders. But it was poignant that ficed.” But the execution was bungled, nents.” And he also saw them as vital to the empire he fought so long to save and the landing force faced a stalemate the war effort; “the Empire,” writes faded from the earth as his own life as intractable as any on the Western James, “provided just under half of drew to a close. Front. So completely (if unfairly) was Britain’s armed forces” and vast quan- Churchill and Empire is not quite as Churchill blamed for the disaster that he tities of food and weapons. To the groundbreaking as its author claims; was forced from his post, his career prime minister’s dismay, however, the the subject has not been entirely seemingly in ruins. empire was dealt a series of blows “overlooked or discreetly sidelined in He would of course rise again, and more mortal than any inflicted by Churchillian literature.” Richard Toye, fall again, but Winston Churchill final- American hostility, most notably the in his fine (and somewhat more schol- ly reached supreme power in May fall of Singapore to a vastly inferior arly) 2010 book Churchill’s Empire, 1940, becoming prime minister on the Japanese force, which he considered dealt with it at length, and none of same day that Germany invaded France “the greatest disaster to British arms in the countless biographies ignore it. and the Low Countries. The appeasers history.” This abject surrender, coming But James has a gift for narrative may have won on the India issue, but after his admonition to the high com- and—though he never ignores it—is the intransigence that had wounded mand that “commanders and senior less inclined than Toye to dwell on Churchill in the past suited his present officers should die with their troops,” Churchill’s occasional racism; he role to perfection. This was the most shook his confidence in the fighting judges his subject by the standards of important chapter in the saga of Churchill spirit of his army, and indeed augured his time. Churchill and Empire is a and empire, for, as James argues, “the the twilight of empire. thoughtful, searching look at British Second World War was an imperial con- Sadly for Churchill, and to the dismay imperial rule and its most eloquent flict.” And the new leader was as deter- of the author, Britain had become by champion.

THE PAINTING

When I was sleeping in the sun A window seeped into my eyes: Bright green, soft green, then overrun With orange. There was no gift, no prize

Greater than seeing it, no thought Of anything behind that square. Nothing was missing, nothing sought— Nothing to do but sleep and stare.

What will He give of light, of bliss, Who has already given this?

—SARAH RUDEN

4 5 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 7:20 PM Page 46

BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS have had everything except resolve work as legal tender. It promises a Film scorched out of him, and he really thriller’s plot but then refuses to fill in wants his car back. wants it enough, in the information we expect, the material Down- fact, to start killing people, without that would make the stakes compelling. much justification, long before he It gives us talented actors playing catches up with the actual thieves: It’s potentially fascinating characters, but Under that kind of movie, he’s that kind of declines to elaborate their backstories, anti-hero, and no, he doesn’t get more or offer more than a cursory explanation Downer likable with time. of what has brought them to this pass. one person he doesn’t kill is Rey It requires great talent—think Terrence ROSS DOUTHAT (played by Robert Pattinson of Twilight Malick, and sometimes not even fame), who’s the Forrest Gump–ish him—to make a great film out of a plot ow’s your life right now? brother of one of the car thieves. shot that refuses clarity, a story that with- Are you in a good place, but and left for dead during their botched holds so much. And while The Rover worried that you’re getting H a little bit too comfortable there? Has everything been breaking your way, and you feel like you need a wallow in misery so that you don’t jinx yourself? Are you sick of run-of-the- mill happiness, and desperate for a lit- tle darkness in your life? well, then, I have the tonic for what doesn’t ail you. The Rover, starring Guy Pearce as a man on a mission in a near-future Australian outback, is a 103-minute cure for sunny optimism, a cinematic shot glass full of 100-proof despair. The movie, like its protagonist, is unrelenting. He doesn’t particularly want to go on living, and The Rover is designed to make you feel exactly the same way. The director, David Michôd, made a savage, gripping Aussie crime drama called “Animal Kingdom” in 2010—it had Pearce in a supporting role, and Jacki weaver as a terrifying matriarch Guy Pearce in The Rover in a performance that grabbed an oscar nomination. That story fairly teemed whatever-it-is, he doesn’t die, gets does have some haunting shots, its aes- with life; this one is emptied out and stitched up, and then gets enlisted as thetics and thematics don’t justify its arid. A title card informs us that we’re Eric’s guide in the search for Rey’s sib- elliptical storytelling. Mostly what it ten years after “the collapse,” an un - ling’s cronies and the car. has to offer—in place of information, specified disaster that’s turned the As a pair, they’re interesting to watch. world-building, character develop- Australian countryside into a mostly Pearce is one of those actors who are riv- ment—is unrelenting brutality: more, lawless zone. It’s not quite the post- eting even in repose, and the “hollowed- now, again, as the body count rises and apocalyptic outback of Mad Max, since out man on a mysterious mission” part is cruel twists turn out to be the only kind the military still shows up from time to one he perfected in Christopher Nolan’s that Michôd is interested in dealing out. time and dollars (American, ideally) Memento years ago. Pattinson is his Past a certain point, this has a numb- still buy petrol. But it’s still a despair- inferior in experience and talent, over- ing effect; a little way beyond that, it ing, decaying place, full of drug addicts, acting a part that never quite comes into might even inspire a little laughter. barricaded-in survivors, and weather- focus, but there’s something about his we do finally learn, at the end of all beaten men with guns. shambling fool that holds your attention the lawless roads, exactly why our one of these men—though he doesn’t even so. man Eric wants his car back so very acquire his weapon for a little while—is Unfortunately, watchable leads do not much, and for what secret sorrow, pre- Pearce’s Eric, whose car gets stolen in an interesting story make. The Rover cisely, a dozen-odd survivors of civi- the movie’s opening minutes by a col- sketches a potentially fascinating world lization’s collapse have died. And at lection of thugs fleeing some underex- but withholds all the detail s—the nature this secret, revealed in the movie’s plained Big score Gone wrong. Eric is of the collapse, the politics of the after- closing shot, you would need a heart of

A24 sunburned and bearded and seems to math, the reason American dollars still stone not to giggle.

4 6 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/1/2014 7:20 PM Page 47

Country Life The Land Awakens

brown.” Those first snowless weeks are the end of their lives, they will all burst wan and dirty. But they are enlivened by out writhing, like the kraken. swallows, the earliest creatures: spring peepers, and sitting on the posts of the garden fence in the Mourning Cloak butterfly, whose their concierge tailcoats, groom them- Victorian wings are dark brown with a selves and watch the no-wings dig. narrow creamy border. These butterflies Coats reminds me; ours have gone into appear so early because they overwinter their closets, down and camo and suede. under bark or in holes in trees. By skip- we still keep long-sleeved shirts handy ping the trip to florida they can go because, although it is warm, even hot, in RICHARD BROOKHISER straight to mating. the afternoon sun, the nights are still cool. Then comes the birth of the leaves, Tingling peepers gave way to screaming wo Thousand fourTeen took a millions of them. The carpets of their tree frogs; these have both now been long time to get to June. Cities dead predecessors do not faze them; the replaced by the frogs of summer, cough- keep life at a steady pitch of spears of flowers and even sturdy grasses ing and barking, like old men in the read- T bustle and noise, punctuated can push up through a papery corpse and ing rooms of their clubs. dJ-style by samples of holidays and bear it aloft. at branch level, whether on a In June—for we have now reached news. In the country, change is both bush or an 80-foot titan, the tips swell, June—there is the sky, blue, tall, and glori- greater and more gradual. then unfold—first red or gold, then green. ous. Cloud TV never runs out of programs, The year begins in darkness. I am never In a spring with steady rain and without from horse tails to wide white anvils. up, bathroom breaks aside, to see day- late frosts the sudden transfusion of rain when it comes, even if it rains in break, but I am very conscious of night- greenness can seem drunken, almost psy- buckets, only leaves more space for light. break. In the new-born year, the small chedelic. You had forgotten what so much June is the time of weddings and nature cold sun shuts down at five o’clock. The green looks like. Vistas are abolished. is a prodigal decorator. Catalpa trees are twin of darkness is silence. Grasshoppers Computers have firewalls; woods have filled with white blossoms (and the lawns and crickets died months ago, there are no leafwalls. The trailer in which my neigh- and roads beneath them are soon filled leaves to rustle; the stream is muffled in bor lives, and the winnebago in which with white blossoms). wild roses, a tangle snow and ice. only a strong wind will stir he vacations: gone. The lights of the old and an eyesore year round, hang with pine boughs audibly. There are still birds resort down the road: extinguished. The grace. Mountain laurel, toxic for livestock about, but they waste as little energy as hill that is three-quarters of my property: (one of its names is lambkill), is covered possible in conversation. once I heard a It could be a cliff face, or the Mall of with pink buds that open into white, red- saw-whet owl in winter; I thought it america, over there, you would have to streaked bells. I am not a fan of garden was machinery—distant, tiny, repeti- go and look to find out. Green spills into roses, but I do have one: large, flat, and tious machinery, fit music for the cold. the pond, in the leaves reflected on its pink, the apothecary rose, said to be the Light returns first. The days begin surface, in new cattails rising out of old red rose of Lancaster. visibly to lengthen as early as the calen- stubs, in algae beards and duck weed. June is the coronation of summer. al - drical new Year. The sun sets farther to In my late middle age I have taken up most everything is still to come (lettuce the north, successive full moons move gardening, which is almost as precise as has bolted, but there will be a second crop lower and lower across the sky, orion having an iPhone—you always know the in the fall)—dog days and summer nights; walks west. The weather follows the date. The first thing you do is rescrew clam bakes and corn boils; political con- heavens. some of the heaviest snow- your irrigation hoses, which had been ventions and the world series. and every- storms can hit in March, but they are like drained for winter. If you have old com- thing is still to go, for although for weeks bad arguments—sloppy and blustering. post, you spread that. The first crops—if I yet it will grow hotter and hotter, daylight The truth of time is against them. can use the word for the produce of a 40- is already beginning to contract. our har- Then the snow shrivels, only a few by-20-foot patch—are peas and lettuce: vests and our achievements come in when scraps hanging on in the woods like spite. hard dry peas in finger holes, lettuce we are running out of time. Then the cold rilke compared the spring earth to “a child broadcast or planted, already growing, in comes back, and with it come celebra- who has memorized poems. . . . when we little plugs. Then the batting order: basil tions—jack o’lanterns and turkeys and ask what the green and the blue are, right and cucumbers, pumpkins and squash, santa. But there is a death’s head at the off she knows every word.” Better if he tomatoes and beans. each young tomato party, for we party to keep the night at bay. had written, “when we ask what the plant now huddles childishly at the base so, we’ll be partying. Cheers, old eye color of mud is, right off she answers, of an inverted conical wire cage. But by socket.

4 7 backpage--READY:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/2/2014 2:20 PM Page 48

Happy Warrior BY DAVID HARSANYI Glorious Gridlock

ACT: Washington’s inability to get stuff done is “when we have a serious issue, and Congress chooses to do the most critical issue facing our nation today— nothing” . . . which doesn’t sound autocratic at all. and, who knows, maybe ever. While some obstacles to progress can be briefly circum- F I know this because D.C.’s lack of productivity vented with creative borrowing, the only way to resolve the has been the focus of countless panel discussions, featuring partisanship problem in politics is through institutional lots of important people. It’s a topic churned through end- reform. And, fortunately, a group featuring governors, acad- lessly by distressed pundits and columnists. It’s a calamity emics, technocrats, former White House officials, and an that drives an entire subgenre of political journalism. (“Can array of other smart people—not to mention former Senate this government be saved?” asks one unsettling headline I leaders Trent Lott and Tom Daschle, a duo that knows a little ran across in USA Today recently.) In neighborhood markets something about creating a purring political efficiency— and gas stations across this great nation, from Beacon Hill to have pooled their gravitas in the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Chappaqua to Adams Morgan, Washington’s impotence Commission on Political Reform. The group offers belea- weighs heavily on the minds of most ordinary Americans. guered citizens a blueprint to “ease the friction that has con- Well, perhaps. The notion that Washington isn’t “work- tributed to fiscal cliffs, government shutdowns and a record ing” is so deeply embedded in our national dialogue, it goes low public approval rating for Congress.” virtually unchallenged. If you’re interested in how the How does the plan work? It begins with redistricting media reach this conclusion, simply calculate the ratio of reform, so that we can transform an “overtly political pro - liberal-policy-agenda items that have been proposed to cess” by granting independent commissions the power to liberal-policy-agenda items that have passed. Needless to create more competitive districts and generate candidates say, D.C. has hit intolerable levels of uselessness. The only who “represent the breadth of the electorate, ” explained thing left to ask is what we can do to end the quagmire that’s Olympia Snowe, one of the would-be reformers. Who gripped this formerly dynamic city. doesn’t dream of a process that yields more malleable Whatever we want, answers the administration, that’s what. politicians who represent everyone? And who doesn’t When Speaker of the House John Boehner recently believe partisan tensions can be lowered by transforming announced that he was going to sue the Obama administra- every single district into a battleground that will take tens tion for its lavish use of executive power, the president’s for- of millions of dollars to win every two years? mer political adviser David Axelrod posed a question The panel also suggests we move away from party worth pondering to his Twitter followers: “Shouldn’t it be caucuses and conventions, and instead set a national taxpayers suing Congress for LACK of action, instead of congressional-primary day when independents and mem - Congress suing the President for doing too much?” bers of the opposing party can participate in choosing can - You can never do too much good, can you? Now, some didates. All of which seems to undercut the idea of a people—granted, crazy people—might argue that obstruct- political party. In Washington, reforms would limit the use ing harmful legislation is an action. And a rather constructive of filibusters in the Senate to block debates on bills, but action, at that. These same people might also observe that allow the minority greater opportunity to offer amend- Axelrod’s insinuation that “action” is to be venerated even if ments. This would, one imagines, allow the minority to it bends the law or functions outside constitutional norms has feel better about themselves, but ensure that they have an unnerving authoritarian ring to it. They may even reason absolutely no say in the outcome. that justifying unilateral action with infantile slogans like Hey, I don’t want to be part of the problem, but it might be “We can’t wait!” or “It was the right thing to do” is not only pointed out that the commission fails to take into account one in contention for World’s Most Vacuous Populist Rhetoric minor issue: They’re dealing with human beings. Perhaps but creates a dangerous precedent for abuse of power. Even partisanship, as ugly as it can be sometimes, is a reflection of more dangerous than failing to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Act, the geographical, ideological, and theological diffe rences of if you can imagine such a future. real people. Maybe attempting to subvert diversity of opin- Of course, there are the residual structural problems left to ion won’t create harmony. Maybe allowing one party to lord us by the Founders, who, among other silly notions, charged it over half the country is not the way to temper anger. And Congress rather than the president with the task of legis- maybe the friction we see isn’t the consequence of a struc- lating. This is why Obama, through no fault of his own, has tural problem, or money in politics, or racism, or even the been pressed to occasionally “borrow the power,” as one irrational desire of conservatives to be persistently disagree- prominent Democrat likes to put it. So while the Supreme able. Maybe Americans have philosophical disagreements Court may have recently (and unanimously) found that the that can’t be bridged. Maybe trying to cram huge, central- administration abused authority in making recess appoint- izing reforms through Congress is what creates gridlock. ments, Obama promises he will brandish his pen only And right now, maybe taking a time-out in the form of political inaction is the best-case scenario. Because maybe Mr. Harsanyi is a senior editor of the Federalist. Washington is working.

4 8 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/30/2014 11:23 AM Page 1

The Decisive Battles of World History Taught by Professor Gregory S. Aldrete   –     TIME ED OF T F 1. What Makes a Battle Decisive? I E IM R 2. 1274 B.C. Kadesh—Greatest Chariot Battle L 3. 479 B.C. Plataea—Greece Wins Freedom 70% 4. 331 B.C. Gaugamela—Alexander’s Genius 1 5. 197 B.C. Cynoscephalae—Legion vs. Phalanx O R off R 6. 31 B.C. Actium—Birth of the Roman Empire D E 7. 260–110 B.C. China—Struggles for Unifi cation E B R M 8. 636 Yarmouk & al-Qadisiyyah—Islam Triumphs B TE Y SEP 9. 751 Talas & 1192 Tarain—Islam into Asia 10. 1066 Hastings—William Conquers England 11. 1187 Hattin—Crusader Desert Disaster 12. 1260 Ain Jalut—Can the Mongols Be Stopped? 13. 1410 Tannenberg—Cataclysm of Knights 14. Frigidus, Badr, Diu—Obscure Turning Points 15. 1521 Tenochtitlán—Aztecs vs. Conquistadors 16. 1532 Cajamarca—Inca vs. Conquistadors 17. 1526 & 1556 Panipat—Babur & Akbar in India 18. 1571 Lepanto—Last Gasp of the Galleys 19. 1592 Sacheon—Yi’s Mighty Turtle Ships 20. 1600 Sekigahara—Samurai Showdown 21. 1683 Vienna—The Great Ottoman Siege 22. 1709 Poltava—Sweden’s Fall, Russia’s Rise 23. 1759 Quebec—Battle for North America 24. 1776 Trenton—The Revolution’s Darkest Hour 25. 1805 Trafalgar—Nelson Thwarts Napoleon 26. 1813 Leipzig—The Grand Coalition 27. 1824 Ayacucho—South American Independence 28. 1836 San Jacinto—Mexico’s Big Loss 29. 1862 Antietam—The Civil War’s Bloodiest Day 30. 1866 Königgrätz—Bismarck Molds Germany 31. 1905 Tsushima—Japan Humiliates Russia 32. 1914 Marne—Paris Is Saved 33. 1939 Khalkhin Gol—Sowing the Seeds of WWII 34. 1942 Midway—Four Minutes Change Everything 35. 1942 Stalingrad—Hitler’s Ambitions Crushed 36. Recent & Not-So-Decisive Decisive Battles

Examine the Turning The Decisive Battles of World History Points in World Warfare Course no. 8140 | 36 lectures (30 minutes/lecture) Discover the military conflicts that have had the greatest impact in SAVE UP TO $275 shifting the direction of historical events and shaping our world in The Decisive Battles of World History. Covering nearly 4,000 years of history, this course explores more than three dozen history-making DVD $374.95 NOW $99.95 +$15 Shipping, Processing, and Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee military engagements, from the landmark battles of the Western world to their counterparts across Asia, India, and the Middle East. CD $269.95 NOW $69.95 +$10 Shipping, Processing, and Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee These 36 dynamic lectures by Professor Gregory S. Aldrete feature vital Priority Code: 95687 historical background, vivid accounts of the campaigns themselves, and a thorough look at their influence on the unfolding of history. Could one For 24 years, The Great Courses has brought man’s finger have changed the course of a war? As it turns out, yes! the world’s foremost educators to millions who want to go deeper into the subjects that matter O er expires 09/01/14 most. No exams. No homework. Just a world of knowledge available anytime, anywhere. Download T GC . /5 or stream to your laptop or PC, or use our free mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, or Android. Over 500 1-800-832-2412 courses available at www.thegreatcourses.com. base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/30/2014 11:37 AM Page 1

The IRS seized our family-owned grocery store’s entire bank account through civil forfeiture. But we did nothing wrong.

We fought for a year to get our money back—and won.

Now we’re suing the IRS to ensure this never happens to us or anyone else again.

We are IJ.

Terry Dehko and Sandy Thomas Institute for Justice Fraser, Michigan www.IJ.org Property rights litigation