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AMERICA IN PERIL: Attacking the Heroin and Opioid Addiction Crisis America: Enforcement, Prevention and Education By Christopher B. Smithers

Dr. Toby Cosgrove, CEO of The Cleveland Clinic and member of President Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum vividly described a country on the brink of disaster when he noted in a television interview that during the entire Vietnam War America lost 53,000 people. “Last year,” he went on to say “52,000 people died of opioid abuse.” “A Vietnam War is taking place in our country every year,” he said. I could not agree more. This is a war that knows no geographic or demographic boundaries. From desperate inner cities through, wealthy urban enclaves, middle-class suburbs, and out to our poorest rural areas regardless of age, race, education, marital status, political leanings or even athletic ability, any way you measure it we are under attack from cheap heroin and easily obtainable opioids. We have come to a point where the New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio has authorized newspaper advertisement telling people to purchase and carry doses of Naloxone to administer in case they come across someone who has over- dosed, as if it is such a common event that you might see your next door neighbor passed out on his lawn. It would be satire if it was not so frightening. First responders throughout the country have been carrying Naloxone for some time now and law enforcement has shown determination and innovation for their part. The NYPD recently started an “Opioid Squad” to join its cadre of specialized squads like homicide and arson units. In 2016 there were four times as many heroin overdoses as mur- ders in New York City. However, we agree with the experts that law enforcement’s efforts alone are not the answer. We support the use of targeted advertising. The national anti-smoking television ads proved very effective in the ongo- ing struggle to reduce smoking among teenagers. Those ads are effective because they show the horrible effects of a lifetime of smoking. They picture people struggling to breathe, they tell stories of youngsters who lose their parents to smoking, they show real life examples of people scarred and deformed by the effects of a lifetime of addiction to nicotine. We need television ads like those aimed at drug abuse. We need to demonstrate to our youth the horrors that await them if they continue on a path that often starts with alcohol abuse, to experimenting with drugs they find in their parent’s medicine chests or are over prescribed to them by a doctor. The irresponsible use of these powerful drugs, some are used to put elephants to sleep, can lead to brain damage, physical disability and death. These advertisements must be crafted in a way so the message is one of deterrence rather than stigmatizing those suffering the illness of heroin and opioid addiction. They must also be constructed to specifically target young people. The “Journal of Health Communication” in 2002 reported that, the most successful anti-smoking campaigns were those that specifically targeted youth with their message rather than the broader audience. In advertising the “one size fits all” approach is widely recognized as unsuitable. The medical profession, the treatment community and law enforcement knows all this. The challenge is to get our young people to understand it. Advertisements on all media platforms; television, social networks and newspapers is a way to go that has not been fully exploited. We support any of these efforts. At the same time we must continue our research into addiction. Learning how it works will lead us to more ways to controlling it. The Smithers Foundation has had great success in the field of alcohol abuse education, research and treatment and we are here to lend our support to similar work in the battle of the opioid epidemic. Parents, clergy, teachers and school guest instructors all play a significant role in educating young people about the devastating effect heroin and opioid use and addiction will have on their lives. This must continue but more must be done. Schools at all levels should include in their curriculum a structured course of study that teaches the dangers of experimentation with drugs and how it can lead to a life of addiction. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) firmly sup- ports the idea of schools developing a required course focusing on the multi-faceted and dangerous world of drugs and drug use. A growing number of colleges and universities around the country now offer at freshman orientation, sessions on the risks of binge drinking. These sessions should be expanded to include the dangers of drug abuse. Studies show that alcohol abuse by young people leads them in search of the greater high. Given the availability of prescription drugs and the relative inexpensive cost of heroin, that greater high is not hard to find. America is in the throes of an epidemic. Heroin and opioid abuse is destroying individuals, destroying families and destroying communities across our great country. We have an obligation to see to it that those addicted are treat- ed, those who traffic arrested and prosecuted AND those who have never touched a pill or never used heroin in any form get the message that those drugs will kill you.

Christopher B. Smithers, President of The Smithers Foundation [email protected] TOC-FINAL_QXP-1127940144.qxp 6/21/2017 2:04 PM Page 1 Contents

JULY 10, 2017 | VOLUME LXIX, NO. 13 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 24 Prime Minister Corbyn? Jay Nordlinger on Evan Mawarire p. 20 Jeremy Corbyn’s rise is a tale of strange accidents, unintended consequences, and BOOKS, ARTS long odds overcome. Nothing has gone as & MANNERS Corbyn’s opponents expected. Since Theresa May’s snap election blew up in her 35 EUROPE IN CRISIS David Pryce-Jones reviews face, Jeremy Corbyn has become the The Strange Death of Europe: odds-on favorite to succeed her as Britain’s Immigration, Identity, Islam, by Douglas Murray. prime minister. Michael Brendan Dougherty 36 NEVER THE TWAIN Andrew Stuttaford reviews COVER: ROMAN GENN Who Lost Russia? How the World Entered a New Cold ARTICLES War, by Peter Conradi.

THERESA MAY’S FAILURE by Charles C. W. Cooke 38 THE DARK LADY 14 Peter Tonguette reviews Mary Overconfidence and bad campaigning created a Tory disaster. McCarthy: The Complete 16 AGAINST HIGHER INFLATION by Ramesh Ponnuru & David Beckworth Fiction, edited by Thomas Mallon. A better monetary policy wouldn’t set any inflation target. 40 MENTAL-HEALTH PRIORITIES 18 SHINZO ABE’S JAPAN by Richard Lowry Kim Hendrickson reviews Insane It’s moving away from pacifism and toward defending the liberal order in Asia. Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the 20 ZIMBABWE’S FREEDOM PASTOR by Jay Nordlinger Mentally Ill, by DJ Jaffe. Evan Mawarire, the anti-Mugabe. 42 WILD RIDE 22 FRIENDS, COUNTRYMEN? by Kevin D. Williamson Ross Douthat reviews The Book At a Shakespeare production in New York, the Right imitated the Left’s incivility. of Henry. 43 DRIVE, HE SAID FEATURES Richard Brookhiser takes the driver’s seat 24 PRIME MINISTER CORBYN? by Michael Brendan Dougherty He’s close, but don’t count on it. SECTIONS 27 STOP OBSESSING OVER RACE AND IQ by John McWhorter It serves no obvious purpose. 2 Letters to the Editor ERIC GREITENS’S RISING STAR by John J. Miller 4 The Week 30 Athwart ...... James Lileks The remarkable career and bright future of Missouri’s governor. 33 34 The Long View ...... Rob Long 37 Poetry ...... William W. Runyeon 44 Happy Warrior ...... Daniel Foster

NATIONAL REVIEW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by N ATIONAL 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., 2017. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to Editorial Dept., N ATIONAL REVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONALREVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00A.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.,ATIONAL N REVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to N ATIONAL 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-READY_QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/21/2017 2:11 PM Page 2 Letters JULY 10 ISSUE; PRINTED JUNE 22

EDITORINCHIEF Richard Lowry Senior Editors Obergefell and Forced Labor Richard Brookhiser / Jonah Goldberg / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts With respect to Alexandra DeSanctis’s article “Religious Liberty after Literary Editor Michael Potemra Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy Obergefell” (June 12), it is surprising to me that no defendant has cited the 13th Executive Editor Reihan Salam Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The amendment states that “neither slav- National Correspondent John J. Miller Senior Political Correspondent Jim Geraghty ery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime, . . . shall exist Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Deputy Managing Editors within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The verdict Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz against Ms. Stutzman of Richland, Wash., would force her to provide labor to Robert VerBruggen Production Editor Katie Hosmer another person under penalty of law in clear violation of the 13th Amendment. Assistant to the Editor Rachel Ogden Requiring a store to sell off-the-shelf items to any purchaser is one thing; Contributing Editors Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Daniel Foster requiring personal service is quite another. Roman Genn / Arthur L. Herman / Lawrence Kudlow Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long Robert C. Whitten Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi Andrew C. McCarthy / Andrew Stuttaford Cupertino, Calif.

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor Charles C. W. Cooke Managing Editor Katherine Connell Deputy Managing Editor Mark Antonio Wright ALEXANDRA DESANCTISRESPONDS: This particular argument hasn’t been Senior Writers Michael Brendan Dougherty / David French used in court to defend the rights of businesspeople such as florist Barronelle Critic-at-Large Kyle Smith National-Affairs Columnist John Fund Stutzman, but your last point seems to hint at one possible policy compro- Reporter Katherine Timpf Associate Editors Molly Powell / Nick Tell mise. Many on the right and the left agree that there is a distinction between Digital Director Ericka Andersen Technical Services Russell Jenkins a pre-made bouquet, for example, and flowers custom-designed for a client, Web Editorial Assistant Grant DeArmitt such as the ones Stutzman was asked to create. Because the latter involves Web Developer Wendy Weihs Web Producer Scott McKim personal artistry—and, as a result, can be understood as a sort of participa- EDITORS- AT- LARGE tion in a customer’s same-sex wedding ceremony—some believe business Kathryn Jean Lopez / John O’Sullivan

NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE owners should be free to refuse. They would still be legally required, how- THOMASL. RHODESFELLOW ever, to sell pre-made bouquets off the shelf to every customer, no matter the Ian Tuttle event in question. BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Alexandra DeSanctis / Austin Yack Contributors Hadley Arkes / James Bowman / Eliot A. Cohen Dinesh D’Souza / Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman James Gardner / David Gelernter / George Gilder Corrections Jeffrey Hart / Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune / Alan Reynolds Tracy Lee Simmons / Terry Teachout / Vin Weber In the Week (June 26), the home paper of Bob Novak’s long-running column was

Vice President Jack Fowler identified as the Washington Post; in fact, it was the Chicago Sun-Times. Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya In John J. Miller’s “Fifty Flags,” in the same issue, the Maryland state flag’s Business Services Alex Batey Circulation Manager Jason Ng crosses bottony were misidentified as fleurs-de-lis. The Ohio state flag was Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet described as having the “angled shape of a cavalry guidon,” but in fact it combines the swallowtail of a cavalry guidon with the angled shape of a PUBLISHERCHAIRMAN Garrett Bewkes John Hillen naval burgee.

FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr.

PATRONSANDBENEFACTORS Robert Agostinelli Dale Brott Mr. and Mrs. Michael Conway Mark and Mary Davis Virginia James Christopher M. Lantrip Brian and Deborah Murdock Mr. & Mrs. Richard Spencer Mr. & Mrs. L. Stanton Towne Maryland Ohio Peter J. Travers

Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected].

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n Can it be mere coincidence that Ossoff is a Russian name?

n In spite of the total lack of available information, a host of fig- ures in the media were convinced at the first report of the Alexandria shooting (see editorial below) that the story was about gun control. Among the positions that were articulated almost instantly were that Virginia was in need of more laws; that “assault weapons” were to blame; and that the open carry of long guns—legal in 40-plus states—was proving to be a menace. That the shooter turned out be from Illinois; that he used a standard rifle that has never been included in a ban; and that open carry is prohibited in Alexandria were all evidently irrelevant. Others took a different tack: “Now that Republicans have been shot at,” they asked, “will they finally agree with us on firearms?” One would hope not. Indeed, it was encouraging that one of the law- makers who found himself in the midst of the maelstrom, Mo Brooks of Alabama, gave an impassioned defense of individual liberty just hours after the news broke. In the same spirit we will refrain from calling for journalist control.

n James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Com - mit tee largely confirmed what we knew already. The legal case that Democrats are trying to mount against the president remains far-fetched. Earlier this year, and after clearing the Oval Office, scorched-earth 2002 prosecution of Enron’s accountants was President Trump reportedly told the then FBI director that he overturned by the Supreme Court; one hopes he is not now set- “hoped” the bureau could “let go” of its investigation into former ting the tone. Mueller is an honorable man—and we mean that NSA director Michael Flynn. But, according to Comey, the pres- in other than the sense used by Mark Antony—but he needs to ident never followed up on his comment; Trump did not object to focus on his mandate if he is not to become a legal perpetual- investigations into other members of his team, even suggesting motion machine. it would be “good to find out” if his subordinates were engaged in wrongdoing; and the only explicit request Trump made of n Democrats again came up short in a special election to the U.S. Co mey regarding the Russia probe was to state publicly that House. When Tom Price left a suburban Atlanta district for Pres - Trump himself was not under investigation. As for the question i dent Trump’s cabinet, Democrats thought they had an opportu- of “collusion,” Comey offered no evidence that Trump or anyone nity: Trump had barely carried the district last year, even though in his inner circle had conspired with the Russian government Mitt Romney had won it going away four years previously. during last year’s election. All in all, then, Comey’s testimony Karen Handel, the Republican nominee, had lost previous races largely backed up what has seemed to be the case for a while: for governor and senator, and Democrats outspent her. In the end, The president, hypersensitive to unfriendly press coverage, though, Handel won. Democrats continue to expect an anti- behaved irresponsibly by badgering his FBI director about an Trump backlash to help them, and it may yet do so. For the mo - ongoing investigation. This may have been improper, but it’s a ment, though, a lot of people who have reservations about him far cry from criminal obstruction of justice. dislike them even more.

n Word that special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the n Megyn Kelly, now of NBC, interviewed conspiracy nut Alex finances of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner confirms ex Jones to a chorus of criticism, the loudest of it coming from the officio suspicions of special counsels: that they drag ever-larger parents of the children murdered in the Sandy Hook school nets until something turns up. The object of Mueller’s assign- massacre, which Jones has suggested was either a hoax or— ment is to find evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the inevitable conspiracy-theory term—a “false flag” opera- Russia’s pre-election meddling. None has emerged. Is Kushner tion concocted as a pretext to assault Americans’ Second supposed to have been a conduit for it? He allegedly suggested Amendment rights. The criticism was not unfounded, but it a back-door line of communication between Russia and the was unfair: Alex Jones is a kook, but he is not an insignificant Trump transition—but that was in December, after the election. one. His organization enjoys White House press credentials, ROMAN GENN N.B. One of Mueller’s hires is Andrew Weissman, whose and the president himself has appeared on Jones’s show, praising

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Drug Companies Fear Release of the New AloeCure Big Pharma stands to lose billions as doctors’ recommend drug-free “health cocktail” that adjusts and corrects your body’s health conditions. by David Waxman Acemannan has many of other health benefits?... body’s ability to break down and absorb Seattle Washington: HELPS THE IMMUNE SYSTEM TO CALM calcium. Aloe delivers calcium as it aids in Drug company execs are nervous. That’s INFLAMMATION balancing your stomach acidity. The result? because the greatest health advance in Thicker, healthier looking hair…more According to a leading aloe research, youthful looking skin… And nails so strong decades has hit the streets. And analysts when correctly processed for digesting, expect it to put a huge crimp in “Big Pharma” the Aloe plant has a powerful component they may never break again. profits. for regulating your immune system called SAVE YOUR KIDNEY So what’s all the fuss about? It’s about a Acemannan. So whether it’s damage that is National and local news outlets are new ingredient that’s changing the lives of physical, bacterial, chemical or autoimmune; reporting Kidney Failure linked to PPI’s. Your people who use it. Some call it “the greatest the natural plant helps the body stay healthy. Kidney extracts waste from blood, balance discovery since penicillin”! RAPID ACID AND HEARTBURN b o d y fl u i d s , f o r m u r i n e , a n d a i d i n o t h e r The name of the product is the AloeCure. NEUTRALIZER important functions of the body. Without It’s not a drug. It’s something completely Aloe has proved to have an astonishing it your body would be overrun by deadly different. And the product is available to effect on users who suffer with digestion toxins. Aloe helps your kidney function anyone who wants it, at a reasonable price. problems like bouts of acid reflux, heartburn, properly. 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In June of 2015 a major study shows “We can only offer this incredible of drugs classified as proton pump inhibitors that chronic PPI use increases the risk of guarantee because we are 100% certain this like Prilosec®, Nexium®, and Prevacid®. heart attack in general population. product will work for those who use it,” Says In a nutshell, the FDA statement warned UNLEASH YOUR MEMORY Dr. Leal. people should avoid taking these digestion drugs for longer than three 14-day treatment Studies show that your brain needs the Here’s how it works: Take the pill periods because there is an increased risk healthy bacteria from your gut in order exactly as directed. You must see and feel of bone fractures. Many people take them function at its best. Both low and high remarkable improvements in your digestive daily and for decades. dosages of digestion drugs are proven to health, your mental health, in your physical destroy that healthy bacteria and get in the appearance, the amount inflammation you Dr. Leal should know. Many patients come way of brain function. So you’re left with a have throughout your body – even in your to her with bone and joint complaints and sluggish, slow-to-react brain without a lot of ability to fall asleep at night! she does everything she can to help them. room to store information. The acemannan Otherwise, simply return the empty bottles One way for digestion sufferers to help used in AloeCure actually makes your gut avoid possible risk of tragic joint and bone with a short note about how you took the healthier, so healthy bacteria flows freely pills and followed the simple instructions problems caused by overuse of digestion to your brain so you think better, faster and drugs is to take the AloeCure. and the company will send you...Double with a larger capacity for memory. your money back! Analysts expect the AloeCure to put a Doctors call it “The greatest health HOW TO GET ALOECURE huge crimp in “Big Pharma” profits. discovery in decades!” This is the official nationwide release of the new AloeCure pill in the United States. The secret to AloeCure’s “health adjusting” SLEEP LIKE A BABY And so, the company is offering our readers formula is scientifically tested Acemannan, A night without sleep really damages up to 3 FREE bottles with their order. a polysaccharide extracted from Aloe Vera. But your body. And continued lost sleep can lead not the same aloe vera that mom used to apply This special give-away is available for to all sorts of health problems. But what you readers of this publication only. All you to your cuts, scrapes and burns. This is a perfect may not realize is the reason why you’re not strain of aloe that is organically grown under have to do is call TOLL-FREE sleeping. Some call it “Ghost Reflux”. A low- 1-800-746- and provide the operator very strict conditions. AloeCure is so powerful intensity form of acid reflux discomfort that it begins to benefit your health the instant you with the Free Bottle Approval Code: quietly keeps you awake in the background. JC025. 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THESE STATEMENTS HAVE NOT BEEN EVALUATED BY THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION. THIS PRODUCT IS NOT INTENDED TO DIAGNOSE, TREAT, CURE OR PREVENT ANY DISEASE. week-FINAL_QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/21/2017 2:28 PM Page 6

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the conspiracy-monger for his efforts at . . . whatever it is Trump The potentially heavy jail time she faces will serve as a warning imagines him to be doing. Kelly may not be William F. Buckley to other officials. That the administration was determined to Jr., but she had Jones on her show for the same reason WFB had bring the case, apparently unconcerned about the unsupported cranks such as Noam Chomsky and Huey Newton on Firing “Trump collusion with Russia” narrative, is a welcome sign. Line: Jones is part of the national political discourse, whether we like it or not. Buckley’s cool on-air dissection of George Wallace n In late 2015, Otto Warmbier, was more effective than any mere denunciation of the man and a student at the University of his ideas could have been. Jones, who recently was obliged to Virginia, was traveling in admit during a custody case that he plays a character on television China. He signed up with some for entertainment purposes, wilted under Kelly’s courteous but other students for a four-day sharp questioning. Some people who did not know who or what trip to North Korea. They re - Alex Jones is now know. And, the times being what they are, it is turned but he did not. He was worth knowing. detained by the regime and, this June, was returned to us in n When Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) grilled Attorney a coma. He had obviously been General Jeff Sessions and his deputy Rod Rosenstein at a hearing tortured into it, as the Kim dic- of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she went into full prosecu- tatorship has been doing to its torial mode (she is a former DA), rapid-firing questions and own people since the 1940s. A follow-ups. Twice John McCain and committee chairman Rich - week after his return, Warmbier ard Burr admonished her to let witnesses finish their answers. died. In other circumstances, This became (vide a New York Times headline) “The Universal this might be a cause of war. A Phenomenon of Men Interrupting Women.” In fact it was the great power such as the United States cannot allow its citizens Two-Hundred-Year-Old Phenomenon of Senators Upholding to be tortured and murdered. Other governments—not just Their (Often Fusty) Notions of Decorum—especially when one North Korea’s—will get the wrong idea. But when a govern- of the witnesses (Sessions) is a former colleague. But keep an ment is nuclear-armed, as North Korea’s is, one’s options are eye on Harris: borderline incivility, plus grievance (nasty wo - severely limited. This is the point, incidentally, of preemption. men will not be silenced!), may equal a winning political profile Once a dictatorship acquires WMD, nuclear or not, almost all in 21st-century America. bets are off. But Warmbier’s death does not have to go unan- swered. The Trump administration has a range of robust sanc- n Someone needs to send Bernie Sanders a copy of the Con - tions measures at its disposal, which it could use to apply sti tu tion. During an otherwise routine confirmation hearing of significant economic and political pressure on Pyongyang and Russell Vought, President Trump’s nominee to be deputy those who abet it. In the wake of this brazen murder, it should director of the Office of Management and Budget, Sanders not hesitate to do so. quoted a column Vought wrote that stated a traditional Christian position on salvation. Contrasting Muslim and n The Senate has voted almost unanimously to codify a Russia- Christian religious beliefs, Vought had argued that “Muslims sanctions package into law, preventing President Trump, who has do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know expressed warmth for the authoritarian regime in Moscow, from God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they undoing them at will. In addition to the sanctions imposed by stand condemned.” Sanders then launched an extended attack President Obama in December, which targeted two Russian intel- on Vought’s beliefs and didn’t even attempt to tie his Christian ligence agencies (the GRU and the FSB), a handful of affiliated theology to his specific job duties in the OMB. We don’t know companies, and four GRU officers, new sanctions will be extend- the senator’s theology, but his understanding of religious plural- ed to Russia’s all-important energy sector. Under the proposed ism is certainly deficient. bill (S.722, the Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017), any energy project involving a Russian company, as well n President Trump has railed against the failure of the Justice as any foreign firm that makes a sizeable investment in Russia’s Department and intelligence-agency chiefs to identify and pros- attempt to develop next-generation oil-procurement capacities, ecute leakers. His administration has now nabbed its first, a 25- is liable to sanctions, and discretionary sanctions also apply to year-old Air Force veteran with the unlikely name “Reality investment in the construction of Russian energy-export pipe- Winner.” A linguist whose social-media presence displayed a lines. The bill also mandates sanctions on any person or entity that loathing of the president, she was working as a National Security does business with affiliates of Russia’s defense and intelligence Agency contractor—one of a staggering 5 million people who establishments. The bill, which now heads to the House, is an have been granted security clearances by the U.S. government, impor tant, bipartisan reassertion of tough-mindedness toward and thus access to the nation’s defense secrets. She pilfered a top- Mos cow at a time when America’s policy toward a geopolitical secret document describing Russian-government efforts to target ad ver sary seems up for grabs. and ensnare local election officials during the 2016 campaign. She leaked the document to the Intercept, which encourages n President Trump is rolling back parts of his predecessor’s Cuba national-security leaks and serves as a platform for the infamous policy. At the center of the president’s plan, announced with a KIM KWANG HYON / Edward Snowden. Ironically, the Intercept’s contacting of the speech in Miami, is a prohibition on commerce with any busi- NSA to authenticate the document inadvertently helped identify nesses owned by Cuban military or intelligence services. Such AP PHOTO Winner as the leaker. She is said to have confessed immediately. enterprises account for more than half of the Cuban economy.

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Trump is exactly right about the economic effects of Barack Oba - which, it should be noted, the big banks support. That’s no sur- ma’s policies: “They only enrich the Cuban regime,” not the Cu - prise: Heavy regulatory burdens give a competitive advantage ban people. The president also called on the regime to “put an end to large institutions, which are better positioned to endure them. to the abuse of dissidents, release the political prisoners, stop jail- Rather than deal forthrightly with the causes of the crisis, ing innocent people, open yourselves to political and economic Dodd-Frank was mainly an exercise in regulatory adventurism freedoms, return the fugitives from American justice,” among and progressive wish fulfillment, among other things creating them cop-killer Assata Shakur, who has been shielded from ex - the wide-ranging (and unconstitutional) Consumer Financial tra di tion by the Castros since 1984. There is more that the Trump Protection Bureau, a quasi-independent agency dreamed up by administration can do, publicly and behind the scenes. None the- Elizabeth Warren. CHOICE would relieve financial institutions less, the Trump administration has made an important reversal. of many of Dodd-Frank’s burdens in exchange for their holding The Castro dictatorship was not, never has been, and never will larger capital reserves, a model that does not favor the kingpin be America’s friend, and Donald Trump’s course is a better route firms. The House has passed CHOICE, and the Senate should to a true Cuba libre. take it up. Meaningful financial reform is a project that is too big to fail. n Word is that the forthcoming Senate Republican health bill will seek to make it easier for people to attain coverage than did the n Brian Sandoval, the gov- House version, which President Trump recently called “mean” ernor of Nevada and a Re - (even though he celebrated its passage). Conservatives on the publican, vetoed legislation Hill seem to be willing to trade short-term spending increases for that would have jacked up long-term reform of Medicaid and for deregulation that makes it the state’s minimum wage possible for people to buy catastrophic health insurance. Those from $7.25 to $12 an hour. are the right priorities. We’ll have to reserve judgment on the bill Why? Just across the bor- until we see it. Senate Republicans have been working in secret, der in California, radical which is fine, and planning to vote soon after finishing the bill, increases in the minimum which is not. Complex legislation affecting tens of millions of wage (it will rise to $15 an Americans ought to be debated. Obamacare went through com- hour in some cities) have mittee hearings and floor debate and still had unforeseen conse- had exactly the predictable quences. Do Republicans want to be responsible for rushing effect. In the affluent Bay through their own bill with even less open debate? Area, at least 60 restau- rants have closed since the n The Trump administration has officially rescinded President wage hike, and San Diego, another rich coastal city, is preparing Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Law- for a restaurant “die off” of its own—and the minimum hasn’t yet ful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, and rightly so. The 2014 hit the $15 mark. California’s crass class politics is at work executive order extended de facto amnesty to 4 million illegal here: “The impact of the minimum wage varies with the rating immigrants in the United States on laughable pretenses of of the business,” according to a Harvard Business School study. “congressional inaction” and “prosecutorial discretion.” In “Our point estimates suggest that a $1 increase in the minimum real i ty, this was an unlawful attempt to waive immigration wage leads to an approximate 14 percent increase in the likeli- statutes for a broad category of people. The courts have so far hood of exit for the median 3.5-star restaurant but the impact agreed, making Trump’s action somewhat symbolic. The courts falls to zero for five-star restaurants.” That’s California in 2017: have not, however, acted against Obama’s 2012 Deferred Ac - Life is good for those dining at the French Laundry, but it’s a lit- tion for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which performed the tle tougher for those running a small, low-margin business in same function for more than 2 million young illegal immi- the Central Valley. grants. But the administration apparently has no plans to end that program or even to curtail it. Candidate Donald Trump, n U.K. prime minister Theresa May and her allies in the Tory though, opposed both unlawful amnesties. The president should leadership—a very small group—have inflicted a serious blow wind down the remaining one by withholding new permits and to their party, their government, and their country. Yet they only granting renewals. An amnesty for those who came here as seem disposed to treat their failure as something that can be set minors should pass Congress before taking effect, and even aside in the greater interest of remaining in office. May was a then only if coupled with new measures to block the hiring of poor candidate—stilted, stiff, dull, and unspontaneous, rather illegal immigrants. like Hillary Clinton—and she ran an inept and self-destructive campaign that assumed the Tories were bound to win, even with n In finance as in health insurance, Republicans are busy trying a manifesto full of proposals for regulatory intervention. In the to reform the reform, in this case with the Financial CHOICE context of Brexit, this amounted to arguing that Britain should Act, legislation that would significantly alter the Dodd-Frank break free of the controls and regulations of Brussels in order banking-reform law passed in the wake of the 2008–09 financial to impose its own, better controls and regulations—a self- crisis. CHOICE is a step in the right direction: Many of the new conscious rejection of the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. Further - rules adopted under Dodd-Frank did little or nothing to address more, May was unable to mount an effective attack on Labour CQ ROLL CALL / the actual causes of the financial crisis—indeed, the “too big to leader Jeremy Corbyn’s crankish economics—something fail” institutions are bigger today than they were before Dodd- very much needed now that a wild and erratic spirit of social- BILL CLARK Frank was adopted, thanks in no small part to Dodd-Frank, ism is again loose in the world. May’s speech after visiting

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Buckingham Palace to be reappointed prime minister was an higher to be more convincing. Alexei Navalny, a popular dissi- exercise in dignified unrealism. She promises stable govern- dent in his forties, is positioning himself to run against Putin. ment, yet she cannot deliver it: Under minority governments, a His Anti-Corruption Foundation documents illegal transactions second election is an everyday possibility, and she cannot fight involving Putin and his sidekick, Prime Minister Dmitry Med - another election because she is now unelectable. It’s time for ve dev. On Russia Day, a national holiday, Navalny’s supporters the Conservative backbenchers’ 1922 Committee to propose took to the streets in every major city across the nation’s eleven an expedited leadership election to begin the resistance to the time zones. An estimated 65,000 were shouting “Putin out” and Cor byn ite socialism that the Tory election campaign inadver- “Russia without thieves.” For the authorities, Tass, as reliable tently revived. as ever when it comes to agitprop, estimated that 270,000 peo- ple were participating in “festive events” marking Russia Day. n Tim Farron, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, will re - The police moved in, and in the course of scuffles arrested some sign because, he explained, media and the political class have 1,500. Twice previously, someone almost killed Navalny by grown obsessed with his Christian faith. It distracted from his means of poisoning, so this time his sentence of 30 days in party’s business. During the spring campaign, reporters interro- prison is light. gated him relentlessly about his views on sexual morality, a topic he never raised. To one journalist who would not stop harping on n Was it inevitable? In any case, it has happened. Outside Fins - the question, Farron eventually mumbled that he did not think bury Park Mosque in London, a man drove a van into a group of homosexual conduct was a sin. To think otherwise would have worshipers. Apparently, he yelled, “I’m going to kill all Mus - been no crime. To his critics, however, it would have been heresy. lims.” As of this writing, one person has died. Prime Minister In his resignation speech, Farron said that to lead “a progressive, May said the attack was “every bit as sickening” as attacks by liberal party in 2017 and to live as a committed Christian” should Muslim extremists. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said, not be incompatible, but they have become so. He chose his faith “Terrorism is terrorism.” Rightly said, by both politicians. It is to over his party. It’s his party’s loss. the West’s credit that such incidents have been rare, but they are never rare enough. n Elections are due next year in Russia, and statisticians in the Kremlin may well be calculating that Putin has already won n Days ago, there were 21. Now there are 20. Taiwan has 20 dip - them with a solid 67 percent—or maybe a few points lower or lo matic allies in the world. The PRC will not allow a nation to

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recognize both it and Taiwan. It has to be one or the other. And pro cedures to recognize and prevent the non-consensual taking the PRC is very good at buying off nations and otherwise apply- and illegitimate possession, sale and export of traditional cultural ing leverage. The latest ally to drop Taiwan is Panama. (The Unit ed expressions,” according to James Anaya, an advocate for the States did its dropping way back in 1979, though of course we cause. Anaya, dean of the University of Colorado law school, have unofficial ties.) The PRC cannot abide a Chinese democra- cites as an example Urban Outfitters, whose “Navajo” line (in - tic nation on an island to its southeast. Taiwan sets a bad example clud ing a “peace treaty feather necklace”) is, we would agree, in to other Chinese: It gives them the idea that it’s possible to be bad taste, which is hard to define, hence the paucity of laws both Chinese and democratic. It is Taiwan’s fate to have more against it. Anaya and his friends do well to promote respect for admirers than it does allies. what they hold to be the authentic version of any culture they mean to honor. Sharing their sensibility, however, should not be n “Antifas” attacked conservative columnist Andrew Bolt in legally mandated. Melbourne. They got a bit more than they bargained for as the suit-and-tie-clad columnist boxed the black-hooded terrorists on their ears until they fled in disgrace. Bolt was of course well n John Lennon co-founded the Beatles at age 15, gave a glo- within his rights defending himself. That he needed to is yet riously ragged vocal performance on “Twist and Shout,” in - more evidence that these “anti-fascist” activists have horribly spired thousands of listeners to start bands of their own, and mislabeled themselves. created timeless masterpieces of musical art too numerous to n list. Unfortunately, he also wrote “Im a gine.” This dirge-like Rolling Stone magazine has settled a defamation lawsuit solo effort, in which utopia is envisioned through the aboli- with the University of Virginia chapter of Phi Kappa Psi for tion of religion, nations, and private property, might seem de- $1.65 million. In the fall of 2014, the magazine published a rived from The Communist Manifesto, but in fact John once 9,000-word article accusing members of the fraternity of bru- said it was based on a book by his wife, Yoko Ono, called tally gang-raping “Jackie,” a UVA student. Within days, how- Grapefruit. Based on this statement, an industry group has ever, Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s sensational exposé, “A Rape on de creed that from now on, Yoko will Campus,” began to unravel as skeptical journalists began be officially credited (or blamed) looking into the details. Erdely had gone looking for the per- as the song’s co-composer. With fect example of how campus “rape culture” was terrorizing a piano part that a second- young women—Rolling Stone trotted out the thoroughly de - grader could handle and politi- bunked claim that one in five college women will suffer sex- cal so phis ti ca tion to match, ual assault while in school, a claim that would mean the leafy “Ima gine” was always an em - campuses of Brown or Yale or Ohio State are as dangerous as barrassment—es pe cially the war-torn Congo. The reporting was so bad that the Co - coming from down-to-earth lum bia Journalism School’s report on the matter stated that John, who wrote the 1960s’ the magazine had failed to employ “basic, even routine jour- most clear-eyed po li ti cal nalistic practice,” such as, e.g., independently verifying song, “Rev o lu tion.” In the Jackie’s story, identifying the attacker, or cross-checking end, it’s somehow reassur- facts with purported witnesses. Journalists sometimes joke ing to know that it wasn’t that certain stories are “too good to check”; this one, appar- entirely John’s fault. ently, was too bad.

n Imagine explaining this in 1960: Whole Foods Market, a high- end grocery specializing in “organic” food and other rarefied n The Golden State Warriors are so good that they just might tastes, has been acquired by the online clearinghouse Amazon, a be bad for basketball. Earlier this month they completed a ruthlessly efficient deliverer of goods that also offers a discount- historic 16–1 romp through the NBA playoffs, losing only ed service for people who use food stamps. Whole Foods is a one game to the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team that just last favorite of a certain species of well-heeled urban progressive, but year came back from a 3–1 deficit to shock the Warriors in its founder and chief executive, John Mackey, is equal parts hip- Game Seven. The difference? The Warriors added Kevin Du - pie and Ayn Rand character, a libertarian crusader who famously rant to a team that last year went 73–9. The Warriors were so took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to denounce the so- dominant that, barring injury, one wonders when the league called Affordable Care Act. Mackey describes himself as a prac- will be competitive again. Durant is in his prime. The War ri - titioner of “conscious capitalism.” Amazon’s Jeff Bezos leans in ors’ original core of Draymond Green, Stephen Curry, and a libertarian-ish direction as well. But the real testament to the Klay Thompson are all at the beginning of their primes. To philosophy of Mackey and Bezos isn’t their public statements— consider the greatness of this team, imagine the Showtime-era it is the businesses they have built, both of which have made the Lakers, then imagine them adding, say, Dominique Wilkins. world a better place, one with many more possibilities. Call it There’s a dark side to such a concentration of talent, however. “conscious capitalism”—or just call it capitalism. The NBA doesn’t want its playoffs to double as coronations, but unless LeBron James can craft his own superteam, the GETTY IMAGES / n An international committee within the World Intellectual Prop - league might enter a competitive drought. Yes, there will still er ty Organization of the United Nations is seeking to make gov- be good basketball. There will still be intriguing storylines. POPPERFOTO ernments “create effective criminal and civil enforcement But no one is ever captivated by a race for second place.

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n Helmut Kohl was a genial, easygoing character who held the TERRORISM office of chancellor in Germany from 1982 to 1998. In that Do Not Descend into the Maelstrom time, he had the unexpected chance to reunite West and East Germany, and his success in doing so made him seem the father ARLIER this year, James Hodgkinson, 66, of Belleville, Ill., figure of his nation. His was a leading voice in persuading Mi- left his wife and his (defunct) business to live out of a van khail Gorbachev to bring the Cold War to its peaceful ending. E in Alexandria, Va., and hang out at a local YMCA. One Born in 1930, he had experienced enough of the Hitler era to re- fine June morning he went to a park where congressional Re pub - solve that the accretion of strength that came with unity must li cans were warming up for an annual charity baseball game avoid alarming the neighbors. To this end, he persuaded his against Democrats and opened fire with a rifle. Capitol Hill po - compatriots to drop the deutschmark for the euro on the lice officers returned fire and eventually shot the would-be mur- grounds that they are Europeans before they are Germans. If derer, fatally. Four innocents had meanwhile been injured; this succeeds too, he will seem a man of destiny. He died at the Ma jor i ty Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana is still in serious con- age of 87. R.I.P. dition as of this writing. Like most mass shooters, Hodgkinson was a troubled soul. He n Vic Gold was a legend in conservative and Republican poli- had minor run-ins with the police over the years, and a major one tics. He worked for Goldwater in ’64. For Vice President Ag - a decade ago when a foster daughter accused him of beating her new. For Bush the Elder. He also wrote prolifically. Introducing (the case lapsed after she failed to testify). But he also had a clear him once, the historian of conservatism Lee Edwards said, political motive. He was a passionate left-wing Democrat who “Vic Gold is the wizard of wordsmiths, the prince of press sec- had volunteered for Bernie Sanders, and he belonged to several retaries, the man with the shortest temper in Washington . . .” anti-Trump Facebook groups. “Trump Is a Traitor. . . . It’s Time Indeed, Gold was known as “Old Faithful,” because he blew to Destroy Trump & Co.” he wrote on a Change.org petition. up at regular intervals. He had no use for Bush the Younger, no Before his fusillade, he made sure to ask the baseball players use for the Religious Right, and definitely no use for Donald whe ther they were Republicans; he reportedly was carrying a list Trump. Indeed, he quit the Republican party last year. He of members of the Freedom Caucus. wrote a blog, which was headed “The Wayward Lemming.” Democratic politicians denounced his deed. Sanders said he Perfect. An adornment to our era and our cause, Vic Gold has was “sickened by this despicable act,” which he “condemn[ed] in died at 88. R.I.P. the strongest possible terms.” After the rescheduled baseball

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coffee, made his rounds every morning to say hello, was gone at 5 (had that bus to catch), attended office functions, and on any given day did all sorts of grimy tasks that would have had anyone else kvetching. But Al never kvetched. Maybe that’s because there was per- missive downtime at NR, which he filled by reading travel guides to all countries, by wandering the office offering commentary and unsolicited two cents (a.k.a. “Al Wisdom”), and, as the years wore on, by watching YouTube videos of bygone wrestling matches starring ancient heroes (Bruno! Chief Jay! Ric Flair!). Al knew everything about professional wrestling. He was a man of many passions (sci-fi novels, H. P. Lovecraft, crime histories, R&B, anime), but none as beloved as his trains. The beautiful scale models came to NR, where he would open them with care and offer gratis lectures on the features of this vin- FBI agents inspect the crime scene after the June 14 attack on Republicans tage engine or that caboose. His hobby took over his home base- in Alexandria, Va. ment, and he shared many videos of his layouts. Al belonged to one category: Al. A police officer’s son, Alex game was played, the victorious Democrats loaned their trophy had a social awkwardness offset by an itch to engage; he was to Representative Scalise. exceptionally bright, decidedly uncool, and talked no differently Liberal media did not all behave so well. Searching for context, to Bill Buckley than to the NR receptionist. He defied physics: the New York Times compared Hodgkinson’s attack to Jared You could spot Al a block off, bouncing down Lexington Avenue, Loughner’s slaughter of six at Representative Gabby Giffords’s his body moving somehow in every direction at once. He could 2011 meet-and-greet in Tucson. The Times repeated the canard, take and give a joke. His politics were elusive; still, he was one debunked years earlier by its own reporting, that Loughner had of us. Unfittable, Alex Batey fit in here. been inspired by the campaign literature of Sarah Palin (in fact One recent Tuesday, he complained of ailments and went to a Loughner was a paranoid schizophrenic). The Times, evidently fear- walk-in clinic. The next two days he was out ill. And he was. ing legal action, tacked a non sequitur of a disclaimer onto its libel. Very. He was counseled: Get yourself to an emergency room. Yet Hodgkinson’s crime occurred in a context, and the evolu- And: Don’t. Come. In. tion of this context is not encouraging. Bill Clinton’s serial shadi- ness stimulated bloodhound critics. The endgame of the 2000 election, followed by the Iraq War, made partisanship lunatic. Ba - rack Obama inspired outlandish conspiracy theories about his birth, spread most prominently by Donald Trump. Trump’s cam- paign and victory brought rancor to new heights. Some of this was Trump’s fault: Boorish, childish, crude, he campaigned as if he were still chasing reality-show ratings. But, funny thing, vio- lence, when it happened, was more frequently visited on his sup- porters, not by them. Left-wingers rioted at Trump events in Chicago and San Diego. The absurd post-election trope of “resis- tance” keeps the fires stoked. Decent Americans must not give in to the madness. The swamp frogs croaking that we are in a new civil war should be mocked, then ignored. We had a real civil war, once upon a time. Seven hun- dred and fifty thousand men died in it. Pretending we are in another Al being Al, on the following Friday, defiant, he came in. For one does nothing to help us get through the trials of our own time. the last time. At 10:00 A.M., delivering the new issue of NR, he collapsed. The ambulance came and took him to the local hospi- tal. By mid afternoon, he was dead—a massive infection had OBITUARY swamped his system. Why did he come in? Alone in the world, Alex Batey, R.I.P. Alex Batey knew that he had arrived at the hour that will arrive for all of us. But he didn’t want to die alone. And he didn’t. OR a quarter of a century, Alexander Batey ran NR’s busy, Over its 62 years, NATIONAL REVIEW’s three editors—Bill unglamorous mailroom. The most punctual and reliable Buckley, John O’Sullivan, and Rich Lowry—were called friends F of staffers, he was a loner of sorts (never married, no kids, and colleagues by Alexander Batey. And they said the same of GETTY IMAGES / a strange mix of shy and nosy) and smart (sharing facts useful him. As do all his shocked colleagues. Rest in peace. AFP / and sometimes decidedly not). He fit right in with NR’s cast of —Jack Fowler quirky characters. Alex was habitual. Lunch was always at noon, on the dot; he Editor’s Note: The next issue of NATIONAL REVIEW linked vacations to federal holidays (Montreal ever beckoned will appear in three weeks. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI to him); and he never played sick. Alex came in early, got his

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belonged to a figure who had landed accidentally in Downing Street. THERESA MAY: STANDING UPFOR BRITAIN, read vague signs that would have once adver- tised the Conservative party and its poli- cies. Worse still, every would-be Tory MP had willfully rendered himself a drone, the apparent selling point for each being a willingness to “stand with Theresa” and her “strength,” “resolution,” and “safe pair of hands.” Around the redoubtable Teresa of Calcutta, such a display would have been overkill. Around Theresa May, the patron saint of medioc- rity, it was borderline farcical. Given the speed at which politics moves in the 21st century, it was also strategically ill advised. One can cer- tainly comprehend the temptation: When the leader is more popular than the party, it makes sense to shift the focus. But it does not take a prophet to grasp that centering a whole campaign on one person is akin to running a whole hospital on a single fuse. While it works, everything’s dandy. When it doesn’t, you’re in trouble. TheresaOverconfidence and bad May’s campaigning created Failure a Tory disaster And so it was to be. Margaret Thatcher had a saying: “Being powerful,” she proposed, “is like being a lady; if you BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” So, too, it turns out, is being “resolute,” HE Battle of Carrhae did not go mistake for which there is no obvious “strong,” “sensible,” and all the rest of well for Marcus Crassus. political analogue. Convinced that her the ghastly poll-tested adjectives de - T Having determined that the popularity was the product of her nature ployed to puff up Mrs. May. In the inner Parthians were weak and divid- rather than her honeymoon in the office, sanctum to which May likes to restrict ed, Crassus sensed a golden opportunity and persuaded by the press that her herself, it seemed to be believed that to run up the score for Rome. A victory, opponent would prove unelectable, May merely to repeat those words incessant- he believed, would fill the Roman cof- called an early election, to be held on ly was magically to make them true. But fers; tarnish the reputation of his bitter June 8, in the hope that she could engi- it wasn’t—especially when the evi- rival Pompey; and, to the potential bene- neer a broader “mandate” for her agenda. dence so dramatically contradicted the fit of his son Publius, cement his position And then she blew it. claim. Inexplicably, May declined to as a great historical figure. It all looked Driving around England during the attend the one televised “leaders’ so easy. week running up to the vote, I was debate,” and on the haughty grounds As it happened, the Romans were bewildered to see the Tory party that political discourse was in practice crushed. Having selected quite the attempting to build what could best be so much “squabbling.” So much for wrong tactics, mistaken the nature of his described as a cult of personality around bravery. Awkwardly, she backed off a victories hitherto, and relied much too their leader. Americanized though their central manifesto promise within days heavily on his sense of superiority, elections have become, the British in of its publication—a first in the modern Crassus walked straight into a wall. His fact do not have a presidential system era. So much for courage. Arrogantly, army was swiftly wiped out; the Romans but rely on the same parliamentary she went bluntly negative on her oppo- lost territory—and face; and, to add scheme they have enjoyed since 1688. nent and repeated the word “Brexit” as if insult to injury, he was brutally killed at Alas, one wouldn’t have known that it were talismanic. So much for appear- the peace conference. from the pitch the Conservatives made. ing as the obvious choice. Something similar happened recently Bringing to mind Donald Trump’s now- Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the to Britain’s Theresa May. famous insistence “I alone can fix it,” Labour party, is a socialist and a crank. He May is the prime minister of the voters in the United Kingdom were is a disciple of Karl Marx, an IRA sympa- United Kingdom—at least she was at the asked by every flyer and billboard to thizer, and a friend to foreign tyrants. This time this was written—and in April of believe that the only safe pair of hands is a man who looks back at the 1970s— ROMAN GENN this year she made a dramatic tactical in the land of Gladstone and Orwell with the chronic nationalization, the

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rampant unions, the stagnation and investors across the world. If Britain malaise—and thinks, “Well, that’s when can make itself vital, it can call the EU’s they had things right.” He is, in short, a bluff: “We don’t need your nasty little menace. And yet, somehow, he is ascen- club,” it will be able to say. “We’re Against Higher dant. (The bookmakers in London have Britain.” It cannot do that with Jeremy him odds-on as the next PM.) Rarely has Corbyn near power. Jeremy Corbyn is A betterInflation monetary policy wouldn’t there been a better opportunity for a now near power. party to make its case than the Con - As for the future of Brexit, the irony is set any inflation target servatives had. Rarely has that opportu- palpable: Bizarrely, May is weaker nity been so disastrously, embarrassingly today than she was when she com- BY RAMESH PONNURU & squandered. For most of the campaign, plained about her weakness. The elec- DAVID BECKWORTH Mrs. May ignored policy completely. tion was called for one reason only: to And, when she did deign to discuss it, accord May a mandate before she begins OES the U.S. economy need she sounded cold, aloof, and bored. As negotiations in Brussels. Ostensibly, the more inflation? A group of 22 should be fairly obvious, “I’m not the prime minister wanted “the people” D progressive economists has crazy one” is not a winning message, and behind her, to ensure that her calls would written a letter to the Federal neither, for that matter, is “I’m all things be seen as representative. In truth, she Reserve urging it to appoint a blue-ribbon to all people.” In our restless environ- wanted a buffer against the fractious, commission to study whether the central ment, beige is an emetic. Theresa May purist Euroskeptics in her own party. bank should raise its target for inflation was beige. She got neither. above its current 2 percent. Fed chairman One can make some reasonable- How important will that prove to be? Janet Yellen, in her press conference fol- sounding excuses for the present for- Less than we’ve been led to believe, I’d lowing the latest interest-rate increase, tunes of the Conservative party. One can wager. Certainly, Brexit itself is not called it “one of the most important ques- argue that the polls predicted a landslide imperiled. Jeremy Corbyn started to tions” facing the organization. and that Mrs. May merely followed their recover in the polls when his party made The economists’ advice shouldn’t be advice. One can propose that the sur- its peace with the referendum’s outcome, rejected out of hand, but it should be re - prise return to a two-party system in and, in a survey conducted post-election, jected. They make some valid points in which the Conservatives and Labour are 70 percent of Britons said they want to their diagnosis of the ills of the current dominant once again was a development see it done. To renege now would be monetary regime. But the Fed can and that couldn’t have been—and, indeed, political suicide. But the devil, as so should address these problems without wasn’t—anticipated. One can even spin often, may hide deep in the details. raising inflation. the numbers into a credible silver lin- Having watched the chaos unfold in For most people it is probably puz- ing: May might have lost ground, but London, the Europhiles are elated and zling that anyone should want inflation she won the largest share of the vote empowered, and they will presumably to rise. They consider inflation a hit to since the smashing Conservative victory try to roll Mrs. May in any way they can. their standard of living and don’t want of 1983; Corbyn might have gained There will be a deal. Whether it’ll be a more of it. But the extent to which infla- ground, but in any other year his share good one remains to be seen. tion reduces standards of living depends would have been low enough to man- A few hours before I left England, a mostly on what drives it. If an oil date resignation. Ultimately, though, friend of mine joked that this result was embargo raises costs throughout the that is so much fluff. At a critical time unprecedented. “When else,” he asked, economy, it will indeed tend to raise in British history, the prime minister “has a supposedly safe pair of hands done prices and cut into real incomes. An gambled and lost. That is the story of worse than expected against an insurgent inflation driven by the central bank’s this election. candidate talking about change?” Not creation of extra money, on the other How serious is the loss? Going door everything must be brought back to hand, should increase prices and wages to door in Yorkshire, a candidate I was Trump, but the line stuck nevertheless. very close to proportionally. (We’re shadowing would explain that this was In our present climate of dissatisfaction, using the term “inflation” the way most “the most important election in a long the “safe” choice is often perceived as people and economists do, as a rise in while.” Typically, this is a trope de- the riskier one—especially when there the general price level.) This kind of signed to motivate the indifferent. This are effectively only two options to choose inflation is unpopular mostly because time, though, there was something to it. from. Theresa May is the prime minister people assume that they have earned In the best of eras, a Corbyn govern- of the United Kingdom because those their inflated wages but resent paying ment would have damaged the United who objected to Britain’s leaving the inflated prices. Kingdom. But at this moment—in European Union believed that they could which Britain is determining how to win a political fight by tarring their Mr. Ponnuru is a senior editor of NATIONAL position itself in a post-Brexit world? opponents and pretending to be even- REVIEW. Mr. Beckworth is a senior research fellow The best hope for the U.K. is that it can keeled. That, as an active choice, May with the Program on Monetary Policy at the Mercatus turn itself into an Atlantic Singapore— elected to make the same mistake that had Center at George Mason University and a former a place with low corporate tax rates, a pushed her into Downing Street in the international economist at the U.S. Department of the thriving financial sector, and a legal first instance is almost beyond belief. Treasury. His booklet on monetary policy is forthcoming and regulatory framework that pleases Next stop: Prime Minister Corbyn? from the Conservative Reform Network.

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Which is not to say such inflation is would give the Fed even more room to total amount of dollars spent throughout costless. If inflation is unpredictable, maneuver. International comparisons bol- the economy. The growth rate of nomi- businesses and households will have ster this case: Countries that have tolerated nal spending equals the sum of the rates difficulty making long-term economic higher inflation over the past decade have of inflation and of real economic growth. plans—in part because it creates arbi- fared better than we have. Australia had (In 2015, for example, inflation ran at 1.2 trary wealth transfers. When inflation some of the same vulnerabilities we did percent and the economy grew by 1.6 comes in higher than expected, the bank before the Great Re ces sion—a real-estate percent in real terms, so nominal spend- that provided your fixed-rate mortgage boom and a surge in household debt—and ing grew by 2.8 percent.) Under a level will take a bath; when it comes in lower, was more exposed than we were to swings target for nominal spending, the Fed you will. Inflation also raises the burden in commodity prices. Yet its economy would commit to keeping total spending of taxes on capital, since our laws do not continued to grow during the crisis. It growing at a steady rate, say 4 percent. It adjust for it: It is possible to pay a capital- came into the crisis with a core inflation would commit, further, to correcting for gains tax on an asset even when it has not rate of 4 rather than 2 percent, which any failure to hit the target. If nominal appreciated at all in real terms. Then meant higher interest rates. Australian spending grew by 4.5 percent one year, there are the costs of having to adjust monetary authorities could thus cut inter- that is, the Fed would shoot for 3.5 per- prices to keep up with a constantly est rates more than we did. cent the following year. changing price level: what economists, Israel did not avoid the recession, but it This policy would capture the benefits thinking of the restaurant business as a had a more robust recovery than we did. of inflation targeting, such as facilitating good example, call “menu costs.” Higher inflation played a role there too, long-term economic planning by house- When inflation is both low and stable, albeit a different one than in Aus tra lia. holds and businesses. It would arguably however, these costs are manageable. After Israeli interest rates fell close to 0 serve that purpose a little better than Central banks the world over have con- percent, monetary authorities allowed the inflation targeting, since most debt and verged on a 2 percent target rate for inflation rate to go as high as 5 percent in labor contracts are written in nominal inflation during the last few decades 2009. Although this inflation eventually terms. It would be compatible with keep- partly as a matter of happenstance, but caused interest rates to rise, its immediate ing inflation low and fairly stable. If the economists have generally considered 2 effect while interest rates were stuck near economy’s real growth rate over the long percent a reasonable number. The costs 0 percent was to push real interest rates term averages 2 percent, then hitting a 4 mentioned above would not rise much deep into negative territory and thus spur percent nominal-spending target implies higher with year after year of 2 percent more spending. achieving a 2 percent average inflation inflation than they would with year after The argument, then, is that both Austra - rate too. year of 0 percent inflation. (And they lia and Israel did better than the United A key difference between the two would be lower still if our capital-gains States during the crisis by tolerating high- policies is that a nominal-spending tar- taxes adjusted for inflation.) er inflation. Why not tolerate a bit more get would allow inflation to fluctuate The slightly higher rate has a few inflation here, the advocates say, through over the short term in response to move- advantages over the lower one. It can a higher inflation target? ments in productivity. A negative supply make economic transitions smoother. The proponents also argue that a high- shock, such as the oil embargo we men- Employees are more hostile to wage cuts er inflation target is needed because real tioned earlier, will push prices up and of 2 percent with 0 percent inflation than interest rates have been headed down- output down. A strict inflation-targeting they are to stable wages with 2 percent ward for decades. Many economists, central bank would try to keep prices inflation, even though these outcomes are especially those who want a higher target, from rising by raising interest rates—at economically identical. A little inflation say that slowing productivity growth and the cost of harming an already weak therefore makes it easier for employers an aging population are bringing real economy. Something like that happened to lower labor costs by not giving pay interest rates down. in 2008: Rising commodity prices led raises rather than by laying people off. Over the decades before the Great Re - the Fed to refrain from cutting rates in One of the other reasons central banks cession, inflation averaged 2 percent and the early months of the recession. A preferred 2 percent to 0 percent inflation the real interest rate roughly 3 percent, nominal-spending target would have is that it gave them more flexibility. making for an interest rate a little above 5 had more tolerance for a short-run in - During a recession, central banks usually percent. These days it is often estimated crease in inflation. cut interest rates in order to stimulate the that the economy can sustain real interest A positive supply shock, on the other economy. The higher the interest rate is at rates near 1 percent. To get interest rates hand, will pull prices down. In that case, the start of the recession, the more they above 4 percent again would therefore an inflation-targeting central bank, what- can cut it. Since interest rates are com- require raising the inflation target to the 3 ever inflation rate it has chosen, will be posed of both a real return to savings— to 4 percent range. tempted to lower interest rates to keep the real interest rate—and compensation These arguments for a higher inflation inflation from falling. If it does it will for expected inflation, a 2 percent infla- target are reasonably strong if you accept overstimulate the economy. This appears tion target will keep interest rates higher the premise that keeping inflation stable to have happened in 2002–04, when a than a 0 percent one. should be the Fed’s principal task in the productivity boom made the Fed fear And that brings us to the case for an first place. There is, however, a superior deflation and it responded by holding even higher inflation target. The support- alternative. That alternative would stabi- interest rates too low for too long. Under ers note that a higher inflation target lize the growth of nominal spending: the a nominal-spending target, on the other

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hand, the Fed would have allowed pro- state since 1955, lost its grip. The center- ductivity to reduce inflation. left Democratic Party of Japan took over A key argument for a higher inflation in a political revolution but proved rate, you will recall, is that real interest Shinzo Abe’s unequal to the task. After Abe’s fall, a five- rates have declined as the economy’s pro- year period of one-year, lackluster prime ductive potential has. But those interest Japan ministers ensued—Japan’s Italian phase. rates can move rapidly. The San Francisco It’s moving away from pacifism Then the LDP came roaring back and, Fed uses a measure of the “natural” real and toward defending the liberal order shockingly, Abe ascended to the prime interest rate—the rate justified by the in Asia ministership again. He is fortified by a economic fundamentals—that fell from clear sense of mission. He sees himself 2.12 percent at the end of 2007 to 0.34 BY RICHARD LOWRY undertaking a restoration of national self- percent a year later. That was a rapid confidence comparable to that of a Reagan decline tied to the business cycle. There or Thatcher, attempting to jolt Japan out of is no reason in principle that the real Tokyo a funk brought on by two decades of eco- interest rate could not rise rapidly as well. HE Japanese are nothing if nomic stagnation and deflation. If it did, the argument for a higher infla- not deliberate. Prime Minister Abe’s inspiration is his maternal grand- tion target would go into reverse: A lower T Shinzo Abe showed up at Trump father, Nobusuke Kishi. A bureaucrat who one would be justified. But changing the Tower during the transition served in the occupation of Manchuria target with every change in productivity bearing the gift for the president-elect of a during the war, Kishi almost was tried as would nullify the advantage of stability. driver—the present of one golfer to a Class A war criminal. He spent three A nominal-spending target, on the other another—and the perfect opening line. He years in jail but probably wasn’t implicat- hand, would not need to alter in response told Trump that they were a lot alike— ed in the worst abuses of the occupation to changes in productivity. Changes in they both had won despite the opposition and, besides, we realized that post-war productivity would change the composi- of their respective countries’ liberal media. Japan needed effective technocrats. Kishi tion of nominal spending—the more With that, their friendship was practi- embarked on a political career, becom- productivity grows, the higher the ratio cally assured. ing prime minister in the late 1950s. He of real economic growth to inflation— This was clever personal diplomacy, was pro-American and strengthened the but not the total. but much more than that. For Tokyo, a alliance while desperately wanting to As for Australia and Israel, it’s worth strong bond with the United States is restore Japan as a normal country un - noting that in both countries nominal nearly an existential need. Japan is a small shackled by its pacifist constitution. spending grew at a steady pace. Spikes in island nation with no natural resources to Abe’s version of the same, unfinished inflation may have been helpful, that is, speak of that punched above its weight project begins with his deflation-fighting only insofar as they enabled the stabiliza- economically during much of the post– economic program, a.k.a. Abenomics. The tion of nominal spending. World War II era. Now, it has been program involves the “three arrows”— We have not yet mentioned one pecu- eclipsed by a China that believes its rise loose monetary policy, fiscal stimulus, liarity of the argument for a higher infla- is just beginning. Absent the alliance with and structural reforms. The first two are tion target. Even though Yellen signaled the United States, Japan, whose popula- much easier than the third, although Japan her openness to that argument, we have tion is aging and shrinking, will eventu- has made progress on reform within the actually been below 2 percent inflation ally be just a speed bump on China’s constraints of the country’s stultifying for eight years—which is to say, before, drive to preeminence in the region. special-interest politics. So far, the results during, and after the Fed’s formal adop- I traveled to Tokyo (with a side trip to have been slow and incremental, as eco- tion of that target. In some quarters the Nagasaki) in May on a trip sponsored by nomic growth and inflation both still lag. Fed’s failure to hit its target has led to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs In terms of national security, Japan doubt about whether the Fed even has the for U.S. journalists and policy experts. sees itself, correctly, as a status quo capacity to raise inflation any more, in The Japanese officials and political ob - power, concerned with maintenance of which case its capacity to increase nomi- servers we talked to are confident that the current rules-based liberal interna- nal spending would also have to be ques- their relationship with the United States tional order. Abe is prodigiously well tioned. This doubt is unjustified: The Fed is strong and proud of how the Japanese traveled and meets with foreign leaders at has repeatedly refrained from taking government has navigated the potential- an impressive clip. The strategic concep- steps that would have increased inflation ly disruptive advent of the Trump admin- tion is to get closer to other seafaring further, and taken steps that reduced it. istration. But the long-term threat of powers invested in free navigation of the A nominal-spending target would make China looms. seas and current international norms. for a stabler macroeconomic environment This is Prime Minister Abe’s second try Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of than an inflation target, for the reasons we in power. He failed after just a year about Australia has called Japan a “special have described, and would not require a decade ago, brought low by scandal in strategic partner” based on a common enduring higher inflation rates on aver- his cabinet and his own ailing health. His commitment to “the rule of law, free age. But no target is going to work as well departure opened a chapter of major polit- trade, and open markets.” as it could if the Fed is unwilling to take it ical disruption. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Obviously, no alliance is more impor- seriously. And no blue-ribbon commission party (LDP), whose success had made tant than that with the United States. is going to supply that willingness. Japan effectively a one-party democratic Japanese officials paid close attention to

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President Trump and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe at the G7 meeting in Taormina, Italy, May 26, 2017

Trump’s tweets (the adage “seriously, not of Japan’s 2.5 million war dead, both norms and make new ones that better literally” sank in among Japan’s America- military and civilian—think Arlington serve its interests. watchers), and Abe carefully thought Cemetery, although with an added reli- And it has resources to burn. One about how to get along with an American gious element. The shrine became con- prong of the Chinese assertion is yuan counterpart who has long criticized Japan troversial when the priests who run it diplomacy. For example, it funded a port for eating our economic lunch. Abe went decided to enshrine the spirits of about a in Sri Lanka that the South Asian country out of his way to explain that Japan pays dozen Class A war criminals in 1978. Abe couldn’t afford. Then a Chinese company for 75 percent of U.S. forces based in the visited the shrine after his return to office, conveniently took a 99-year lease over the country. And the mutual affinity for golf causing a massive international backlash, facility. This sort of tactic represents a helped—Abe cites it when asked how he especially in South Korea and China. modern iteration of the tributary system manages to get along so well with Trump. Abe wanted to make a statement that no that the Ming Dynasty once upon a time After the warm meeting at Trump Tower one could dictate how he honors Japan’s used to extend its influence. Another during the transition, Abe spent two days dead; international critics, when they prong is the military, in which China con- at Mar-a-Lago and got a robust U.S.– aren’t merely opportunistic, see the shrine tinues to make enormous investments, Japan joint statement. as an emblem of Japanese revisionism. swamping everyone else in the region. That said, Trump’s pullout from the (The war museum maintained by the As nationalism replaced Communism Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agree- shrine relates a highly tendentious version as the animating force of the Chinese sys- ment was a disappointment. Japan invested of World War II, blaming the start of the tem, Japan became a target—a whipping significant political and diplomatic capi- war on the U.S. oil embargo and laugh- boy on the history issues and a strategic tal in the TPP. A welcome by-product of ably portraying the post-war decoloniza- obstacle. Historically, Japan has always that effort has been a diminishment in the tion of Asia as a vindication of Japan’s been buffered from China’s reach by the domestic clout of Japan’s agricultural war aims.) Sea of Japan. Today, the Chinese can cooperatives. The talk now is of moving The view in Japan is that on history intimidate other countries in the region ahead with the deal without the U.S., in a the South Koreans are emotional while but not Japan, which hopes to encourage so-called TPP-11, and hoping the U.S. the Chinese are calculating. Ironically, other Asian countries to be proud, inde- eventually comes back in. there is a sense that China may be making pendent, and responsible. The problem with Japan as a leader in the same mistakes Japan did in the run-up Based on straight-line projections, the region is what is called, rather to World War II, when Japan was aggres- though, it is only a matter of time until euphemistically, “history issues.” Demo - sively nationalistic, couldn’t control its Japan is overwhelmed by the Chinese cratic South Korea should be a natural armed forces, and challenged the U.S. in material advantage. Ten years ago, the ally, but the relationship between the two the Pacific. Chinese economy was smaller than Ja - countries is still dogged by contention China labors under a feeling of his- pan’s. Now it is three times larger. Japan’s over “comfort women,” the Korean toric humiliation. It essentially wants military, the so-called Self-Defense Force women forced into sexual slavery for the to recapture its old glory before the (SDF), is smaller than that of Myanmar

GETTY IMAGES use of Japanese troops during World War British invented the steam engine. or the Kingdom of Thailand. Its coast / AFP / II. Japan has officially apologized, but China has bucked the liberalizing trend guard, trying to fend off constant, low- the issue never goes away. in Asia since the 1980s. It modernized, level Chinese encroachments on the Another flashpoint is the Yasukuni but without embracing freedom. It uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East MANDEL NGAN Shrine. The Shinto shrine houses the spirits now seeks to undermine international China Sea, is under strain.

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It’s with the Chinese threat in view that frustrations, and the hopes of an Abe seeks to make Japan a more normal oppressed population.” But others see country, the same ambition as his grand- him as a political leader, including the father had decades ago. He created a Zimbabwe’s regime. “I didn’t find it,” says Mawarire, national-security council, taking firmer of politics. “It found me.” control of the national-security apparatus Freedom A word about pronunciation. That from the bureaucracy, and in 2013 pro- name is pronounced “Mah-wah-REER- duced contemporary Japan’s first-ever (!) Pastor ay.” And his first name, interestingly national-security policy. He has steadily Evan Mawarire, the anti-Mugabe enough, is pronounced “Ee-VAHN” pushed to loosen restrictions on the oper- (though he also answers to the familiar ations of the SDF. Now he wants to BY JAY NORDLINGER “EH-vin”). change Article 9 of the constitution, He was born in 1977, during the final which renounces war and forbids the days of Rhodesia. He spent his early country to have a military (except for NE day last year, Evan childhood in a ghetto of Salisbury, the strict self-defense). Mawarire was feeling very capital city (now Harare). In 1980, when Abe’s proposed amendment to O low. He had just turned 39— independence came, Robert Mugabe Article 9 is highly symbolic. It will and he considered himself a took power. He still has it, 37 years later. make the SDF legal when everyone failure. He had a wife and two children, At 93, he is one of the oldest men already believes it is legal. It’s mostly a which was great. And there was a third ever to rule a country. Next year, there way to create a precedent for amending child on the way—also great. But will be another of those sham elections the American-written post-war consti- Mawarire could barely make ends meet. that dictators sometimes feel the need tution, which hasn’t been touched in 70 The family was living hand to mouth. of holding. Mugabe will run. If he dies, years. Ideally, Japan would dump its Mawarire could not afford school fees his wife has said, the ruling party will official pacifism and allow itself to pur- for the children. He owned no home of run his corpse. sue the military and national-security his own. Prospects seemed negligible. Mawarire was brought up in a policies of any other nation. Yet even “I was dejected and frustrated,” Christian home. His parents were civil Abe’s minor amendment is highly con- Mawarire says, “but also, for the first servants. Evan worked in business for a tentious and would have been unthink- time in a long time, I was angry.” while. But he also worked at church, able years ago. That was April 19. The 18th had been teaching Sunday school and the like. The fundamental problem is that we Zimbabwe’s independence day. And on And he found this much more fulfilling. succeeded beyond our wildest dreams in the 19th, Mawarire sat down and made a “So I decided I would give my life to imposing a post-war regime on Japan, four-minute video, with the Zimbab - pastoring,” he says. He quit his job, went such that they are still committed to it wean flag wrapped around his neck. to Bible school, and indeed became a when it doesn’t make sense anymore. That flag is a colorful one. And all the pastor. That was 15 years ago. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we colors have meanings. For example, red When he made his “flag” video, he did bombed and nuked Japan into pacifism. is supposed to stand for the blood that not stop there: He made 25 more videos, We killed 100,000 people on one night of patriots shed in the liberation effort. But one a day from May 1 to May 25, which firebombing Tokyo in 1945. Anywhere what would those patriots say about is Africa Day on the continent. Mawarire in the capital where there seems to be an Zimbabwe now? What had they died wanted Zimbabweans to think, “What old building, it is assuredly a replica. A for? That’s the kind of thing Mawarire kind of African nation do we wish to tour of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb asked in his video. be?” In those videos, he discussed the Museum, with its carbonized rice bowls At the end of it, he asked Zimbabweans various problems of Zimbabwe. and melted rosary beads from the morn- to stand up: for themselves, for their And he continued to strike nerves. The ing Fat Man detonated above the city at flag, and for their country. democracy movement grew. Mawarire’s 11:02 A.M., tells you all you need to He hesitated to post this video, natu- repeated message was, It’s up to us to know about Japan’s attachment to its rally: He lives in a dictatorship. He save ourselves. No one’s going to swoop pacifist constitution. knew the video could get him into big in and help us. We have to claim our But it isn’t the 1940s anymore. Japan trouble. But post it he did, around mid- own country. is a lovely country whose history reach- night. After a hard, emotional day, he He tells me that, year after year, he es far back into the mists of time and went to bed. watched rigged elections. “And I always whose culture is highly cohesive and The next morning, he received a call yearned for someone to come to our res- distinctive. Its sins should never be for- from a friend, who had unexpected cue: regional powers, or the African gotten, but it has long been a bulwark of news: The video was going viral. It Union, or the United Nations. But there the liberal order at a time when that had struck a nerve among Zimbab - is so much happening across the world, order needs all the friends it can get. weans. And it would lead to a democ- there is no one to listen to your own China, a Communist kleptocracy with a racy movement that travels under a troubles. We have to rescue ourselves.” chip on its shoulder, is not a “normal hashtag, #ThisFlag. Mawarire and his movement have a country.” The pressure of its rise will even- Evan Mawarire does not see himself slogan: “If we cannot cause the politi- tually force Japan to become one, and as a political leader. “I’m someone who cian to change, then we must inspire the the sooner, the better. has been able to express the views, the citizen to be bold.”

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Zimbabwe is in desperate shape—it marveled, telling the prisoner in is desperately poor. Unemployment is his cell about the scene. something like 95 percent. And more Back in the courtroom, the than half the population is under the magistrate had good news: The age of 25. Silvanos Mudzvova has prisoner was to be released, on a something funny to say, regarding this technicality. He had been arrest- mass joblessness. ed on one charge and was now He is a Zimbabwean actor, play- facing another. That violated his wright, and activist. He is also a guest of rights. So he had to be let go. The the Oslo Freedom Forum, as is Pastor courtroom erupted in cheers. Mawarire. (It is in Oslo that I talk with The government’s plan was to Mawarire.) In Zimbabwe, Mudzvova rearrest him immediately. But used theater as a form of protest. In a the young guards, with the help country where nobody’s working, he of some of those 150 lawyers, quips, “you are assured of an audience led him outside by an unexpect- within minutes.” ed route. Mawarire fell into the They arrested him many, many arms of the waiting, weeping times—so many times, he lost count. crowd. “Zimbabwean flags were Finally, they tortured him almost to everywhere,” he says. death, leaving him paralyzed on one side. From his wife, he learned Mudzvova now lives in exile, in Britain. some grim news: While he was Last July 6, there was a mass protest in prison, thugs had tried to rape in Zimbabwe. And, six days later, Evan her. (She was seven months Mawarire was arrested. The charge was pregnant, incidentally.) They incitement to violence. What happened had also tried to kidnap the two next, as people have noted, is straight kids. Whether these thugs were out of a movie. state agents or ruling-party goons The courthouse for Mawarire’s hear- is hard to say. They often amount ing was packed to the rafters. People to the same thing. were singing: worship songs, church The family fled, without songs. Outside, there were thousands of de lay—to South Africa. people, also singing. Mawarire could They were there a month. hear it from his prison cell. The young Mawarire met with university guards were amazed: They had never students from Zimbabwe—thou- seen anything like it, and neither had sands of them—and they talked anyone else. about democracy. Getting wind Evan Mawarire According to the Mugabe regime, of this, South African authorities Mawarire summoned this crowd by were not pleased. Worse, Mugabe, back means of a secret phone in his cell. They in Zimbabwe, made threatening noises: In the U.S., Mawarire’s third child accuse him of trying to overthrow the threatening noises against Mawarire. was born. “I just wanted to see her,” he government, Arab Spring–style. This is Do you know what it’s like to be says. And “I love her to bits.” After the nonsense, says the accused. The thou- threatened, publicly, by Robert Mugabe? birth of this child, his wife gave him per- sands came of their own accord. “They “It was a turning point,” says Mawarire. mission: permission to return to Zim - realized that an injustice to one was an “I have to be honest in saying I was babwe, and the cause. Which he did, on injustice to all.” enveloped in a cocoon of fear that I February 1, 2017. Then, in the courtroom, something never thought possible. Everything that Once he arrived at the airport—even very strange happened: Some 150 law - I had ever heard about Robert Mugabe before they stamped his passport—they yers stood up, waving their credentials, came flooding back in”: the murders, arrested him. They interrogated him prepared to defend Mawarire. the abductions, etc. hour after hour. They kept him in a While in the dock, Mawarire got a rude, Mawarire got himself and his family maximum-security prison. They again frightening surprise: The charge against to the United States as soon as possible. charged him with treason. They also him had been changed to what amounted “Green-card traitor”: That’s what the charged him with disrespecting the flag. to treason. He looked at his wife and Mugabe regime called Mawarire. They Disrespecting the flag! It was respect mouthed, “I’m sorry.” This could be more said he was a pawn of the West, and his for the flag that launched Mawarire on serious than he ever imagined. paymasters had taken him under their this project in the first place (#ThisFlag). There was a break in the hearing. protection. Some of the democracy After twelve days, he was released Night had fallen. Outside the court- activists felt bruised, too: because on bail. In May, he was able to leave for house, the people were lighting candles, Mawarire had done so much to kick up the Oslo Freedom Forum because his and singing. They were also buying this fuss—this democratic fuss—and parents put up the title deeds to their OSLO FREEDOM FORUM food for one another. Again, the guards now he was gone, safe in the U.S. house as a guarantee of his return to

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Zimbabwe. He is deeply grateful to them The other was Jack Posobiec, an aspiring for this—“my old parents,” he says. new-media celebrity of the sort who As of this writing, he is back in might one day grow up to be Cernovich, Zimbabwe, coping with the charges Friends, who was involved in the “Pizzagate” hoax against him, speaking out to the extent and Seth Rich conspiracy-mongering. possible. He has not seen his family Countrymen? Both are veterans of Ezra Levant’s since January. When will he see them At a Shakespeare production in Rebel, which does not speak very well of again? What is his obligation, primarily? New York, the Right imitated the Levant’s eye for talent. To his family or to his countrymen and Left’s incivility At the moment of the assassination, their fate? That is the kind of question a Loomer stormed the stage, while Posobiec man such as Mawarire faces. BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON shouted “You are all Goebbels!” though Zimbabwe is no place for an opposi- it sounded like he was talking about tion politician, as he makes clear to HAT do we make of Brutus? gerbils, which, in spite of the generally me—and as Mugabe makes very clear. At the end of Shakespeare’s low intellectual standards of rodents, In public remarks, he has warned W Julius Caesar, Mark Antony might not have been proud to be part of Mawarire to stick to religion, not med- declares him “the noblest the evening’s performance or part of dling in politics, which is his realm—the Roman of them all,” but Dante locates its disruption. dictator’s realm—alone. him at the lowest point in the Inferno, This summer’s version of Julius Mawarire is a dictator’s nightmare. spending his eternity being chewed in the Caesar depicted the Roman dictator as a He is talented, articulate, and person- mouth of Satan himself, or at least one man with funny-looking blond hair, able—and honest, inspiring, and brave. of them: Dante’s Satan is three-headed, wearing an ill-fitting Brioni suit with an Some people want him to run for presi- and the other mouths are occupied with overlong red tie, and . . . you get the pic- dent next year, if such a thing is possible Brutus’s co-conspirator, Cassius, and ture: Trump as Caesar, assassinated by a in Mugabe’s land. Mawarire had a brush Judas Iscariot. The State of Virginia takes gang of senators who are conspicuously with politics almost 25 years ago. his famous declaration “Sic semper non-white and (in part) non-male. The All across the continent, June 16 is the tyrannis!” as its motto, but then so did production has been controversial (Delta Day of the African Child. This marks a John Wilkes Booth. (A scholar at the and Bank of America revoked their spon- terrible event that occurred on June 16, Mises Institute once described Abraham sorships of the performance), partly 1976, in Soweto, South Africa. Thou - Lincoln as an “American Caesar.”) The because the talk-radio Right takes offense sands of students protested the introduc- Liberty goddess in the Virginia state to make a profit, but also because it coin- tion of Afrikaans as the language of seal, who stands over the bloodied cided with the attempted assassination instruction. Some number—estimates corpse and dishonored crown of an of Representative Steve Scalise by an vary—were shot and killed by govern- empurpled monarch, is in essence Divus enraged Democratic activist and Bernie ment forces. Brutus, Brutus apotheosized, but who Sanders supporter. In Zimbabwe, the Day of the African aspires to be a brute? Defenders of the Public Theater’s Child is celebrated with a child parlia- There’s Michael Cernovich, I suppose. take on Julius Caesar point out that in ment, a mock parliament. In 1993, at age Cernovich is, among other things, the 2012, a similar performance cast a black 16, Evan Mawarire was elected to this author of a self-published self-help man suggestive of Barack Obama in the parliament. He was also elected presi- book bearing the title “Gorilla Mindset: role of the tyrant. But of course context dent of the Republic of Zimbabwe— Timeless Strategies to Unleash the matters: 2017 is not 2012, the Obama- child president. Animal within You.” He’s a familiar sort Caesar version was put on in a much less His mother likes to read things into the of alt-right knucklehead, one who talks a high-profile venue, and it did not coin- affairs of men (and children). She sees the great deal about being an “alpha male” cide with the attempted assassination of hand of Providence. Over the years, she while living off a divorce settlement a member of Congress. (Representative has told Evan, “I’ve always known that from his Silicon Valley–millionaire ex- Gabby Giffords had been shot the previ- God would use you to influence the poli- wife. In June, he offered the princely ous year.) But perhaps more to the point, tics of our nation, perhaps even as presi- sum of $1,000 to anyone who would dis- progressives cannot help assuming that dent.” Recent events have done nothing to rupt a performance of Julius Caesar theater producers are, somehow, on their dampen her view, to put it mildly. being put on by the Public Theater as side, whereas conservatives cannot help Mawarire is well aware of the role of part of the Shakespeare in the Park series assuming that theater producers are, by pastors in the American civil-rights at Central Park in New York, and he their nature, the enemy. Which is a pity movement. He is also well aware that the found two takers. One of them was Laura for conservatives, who do not seem to be foremost of those pastors, Martin Luther Loomer, a batty young woman formerly able to enjoy much of anything other than King, was martyred. I tell him what my employed by James O’Keefe’s Project Toby Keith and old war movies anymore. profound desire is: that he both lead and Veritas who only a few months ago was Not that they are entirely wrong about live. He tells me that, pinned on his lamenting that wicked progressives those theater people: The Public Theater Twitter page, is a verse from the 27th would not allow a conservative to simply and Shakespeare in the Park under the Psalm: “I remain confident of this: I will enjoy a play. (Mike Pence had been sub- artistic direction of Oskar Eustis aren’t see the goodness of the Lord in the land of jected to a homily from the stage after “political” in the sense that theater people the living.” attending a performance of Hamilton.) normally mean by that word, but political

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in the most obvious, craven, and cheap sense of the word: A performance of The Winter’s Tale in 2014 featured two actual political speeches by Democratic politi- cians, one by New York mayor Bill de Blasio and another, near the end of the play, from Senator Chuck Schumer, who concluded his remarks with a rousing “Vote Demo cratic!” But there were also Muppets and much more, and very little that looked like the work of William Shakespeare. The Public Theater under Oskar Eustis is the opposite of “challeng- ing,” but rather is an institution that can- not abase itself deeply or enthusiastically enough before the political powers in New York. It is embarrassing. It is in fact one of the reasons that I decided to stop writing the theater column in The New Criterion: If that is one of the crown jew- els of New York theater, then maybe New York theater isn’t worth bothering about twice a week. Mustering all the depth of character Shakespeare in the Park’s production of Julius Caesar and keen personal insight characterizing the great American Millennial, Loomer told a writer from The New Yorker: “I defend such behavior as “effective” have But whether Caesar was his pater or redefined Shakespeare tonight.” With not given sufficient consideration to the simply his patronus, Brutus was torn in equal maturity, Posobiec wrote that the question: Effective at effecting what? If two filial directions. The Brutus who ensuing criticism illustrated only that you believe that entrenching sophomoric assassinated Julius Caesar was Marcus “the whole world is still fixated on how tantrum culture is anything other than a Junius Brutus, whose name recalled his jealous they are not to be me.” gift to the Left, you are mistaken. famous ancestor, Lucius Junius Brutus, Well. But, still, sometimes the rules have to no less a personage than the founder of In a conversation with Sean Hannity be broken, do they not? That is, after all, the Roman republic and the man who (of course it was Sean Hannity), Loomer the question asked, if not quite answered, showed the last of the Roman kings, his framed her disruption of the show as a by Julius Caesar. uncle Tarquinius Superbus, to his grave. “free speech” issue, and the talking Dante assigned Brutus the lowest spot in A man named Brutus could no more mouths of Fox News insisted that the pro- hell because he was a betrayer—a double- take the part of a would-be king than a duction was intended to incite violence betrayer and, possibly, a triple-betrayer. A man called Kennedy could go Repub - against Republicans. Which is to say, betrayer because he did in his friend and lican. And therein is found one of those only a few months after ridiculing the benefactor, a double-betrayer because horrifying historical ironies that so fas- “snowflakes” at Berkeley and Yale for that friend and benefactor was also his cinated Shakespeare: The first Brutus their inability to hear an opposing point rightful (or so Dante would argue) sover- conducted an assassination that gave of view without taking to their fainting eign. A triple-betrayer, possibly, because birth to the re public, and the second couches, the Right is wheeling out its Julius Caesar was to Brutus a father figure Brutus, acting on the example of his own fainting couches and offering up an and, if we take Plutarch seriously, perhaps illustrious forebear, conducted an assas- absolute avalanche of snowflakery. even his father: Caesar carried on a long sination that ended the republic and gave On the particular point, Loomer and and passionate affair with Brutus’s mother, birth to the empire. The monarchical Posobiec are in the wrong. American pub- Servilia. A famous story recounts that dur- ambitions of Julius Caesar, as Mark lic life already is ugly and stupid enough, ing the deliberations over the Catiline Antony demonstrates in his famous and theaters (to say nothing of cinemas conspiracy, a messenger brought Caesar a speech, were plausibly deniable. Those and music venues) already are so beset by note in the Senate, drawing the attention of of Caesar Augustus were not. boorishness and boobishness that adding Caesar’s bitter rival, the arch-conservative Worth noting: The Latin word impera- to the sum of it ought to be considered an Cato the Younger. Cato demanded to see tor, from which the English “emperor” is unforgivable crime. Conservatives ought it, and Caesar handed it over: Seeing that derived, means “commander in chief.” to be resisting the coarsening of American it was a love letter from Servilia—his own Brutus did not understand what vio- COM . life rather than leading it. Adopting the half-sister—a red-faced Cato is supposed lence and anarchy he was setting loose Berkeley-style heckler’s veto will not to have said: “Keep it, you drunk.” “So in the republic he believed himself to be GAZETTE - advance any worthwhile conservative public and notorious was Servilia’s love defending. Neither do the little brutes in POST end. Those activist-entrepreneurs who for Caesar,” Plutarch reports. New York.

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Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour party, waits to hear results from Britain’s general election, June 9, 2017. Prime Minister Corbyn? He’s close, but don’t count on it

BY MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY

EREMY CORBYN’S rise is a tale of strange accidents, unin- work in the House of Commons or else blunder their nation’s tended consequences, and long odds overcome. Corbyn government into the hands of a man who once told colleagues, J was never supposed to become leader of a renewed “Our job is not to reform capitalism, it’s to overthrow it.” British left wing; that role was expected to fall upon a It’s not only blunders that have contributed to Corbyn’s ascent, more colorful figure, such as Tony Benn or Ken Livingstone. though. Corbyn possesses real political talents and real virtues— Corbyn was never supposed to become the leader of the Labour ones that have become rare over the last three decades of political party; he accepted a nomination to run from a small group of left- life in the West, and more valuable. wing colleagues only because it was his turn to represent their The first is constancy. Jeremy Corbyn’s political orientation views. Bookies had him as a hundred-to-one long shot to win that never adjusted with the winds of political fortune. The aston- contest. Yet he won. ishing victories of the Conservative Margaret Thatcher were After he won, Corbyn’s Labour-party colleagues expected taken by many in the U.K. as a lesson for Labour: Ditch social- him to go away when 80 percent of them turned against him in ism. Tony Blair did just that. Along the way to his own massive a vote of no confidence. But under new rules that were meant to political success, he removed Labour’s commitment to “the moderate the Labour party, left-wing activists discovered they common ownership of the means of production, distribution, had the power to retain him as party leader over the objection of and exchange” from the party’s constitution. his parliamentary colleagues. Corbyn’s 2017 campaign showing Corbyn stuck to the old faith throughout these years of exile. was supposed to be so disastrous that the spell of Corbynmania His first speech in Parliament after his election in 1983 closed among his fervent supporters would finally break and the party with a flourish that could be inserted, unchanged, into any of his could ditch his far-left brand of politics and begin a long crawl campaign speeches today. It would be just as relevant as ever: back to the center and power. GETTY IMAGES / Nothing has gone as Corbyn’s opponents expected. Since I represent an area of London that has suffered as much as any other AFP / Theresa May’s snap election blew up in her face, Jeremy Corbyn from the policies of this government, and I shall be telling the has become the odds-on favorite to succeed her as Britain’s House repeatedly that we do not intend to take these issues lying prime minister. The Tory government, with the help of Ulster’s down. We shall not allow unemployment to go through the roof. NIKLAS HALLEN Democratic Unionist party, has to make a razor-thin majority We shall not allow our youth to have no chance and no hope for the

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future. . . . We shall return to these issues because justice has to be Did Corbyn learn anything from that episode? Perhaps that it done for those who are worst off and unemployed in areas such as might be unwise to embrace movements about which you know the constituency that I represent. little just because they are left-wing? No, of course not. In 2013, Corbyn eulogized Hugo Chávez: “He showed us there is a differ- Corbyn’s cause has always moderated his ambition. Other col- ent and a better way of doing things. It’s called socialism, it’s leagues were happy to abandon the Left to gain influence and called social justice.” He doesn’t speak about Venezuela now, power in later Labour governments. And other leftists, such as either. Corbyn knows what side he is on, even when he knows Livingstone, were happy to leave Labour and run as indepen- nothing about it. dents. Corbyn stuck with his convictions and his party. Though Among the unpopular or outré left-wing positions he has he consistently increased the size of his electoral victories in his adopted, a few have given him reason to feel vindicated over North Islington district and achieved seniority as an MP, he never time. His hatred of British imperialism (arguably, even British tried to move forward in the House of Commons, preferring to national interest) impelled him to criticize the sale of weapons to hover over all from the back benches, a physical embodiment of Saddam Hussein. In 1993, as a Euroskeptic, he voted against the his party’s left-wing conscience. Maastricht Treaty; he’d have been dismissed as a crank if he had Corbyn has other virtues, too. He is deeply conscientious. He predicted the economic conditions that are accepted as normal in has developed a top-shelf reputation as a “constituency MP.” the European Union today. Corbyn was against NATO’s decision He is often walking around his small district, attending events, to give air support to the Kosovo Liberation Army. He went and stopping by the local pubs, even though he never drinks against his party’s leader by opposing the Iraq War in 2003. The much. He diligently helps constituents in their tussle with British ferocious backlash against that war in British public opinion has bureaucracy. Corbyn also has a democratic touch. He is un-self- nearly wiped out Blair’s legacy and benefited lonely dissenters conscious and seems oblivious to social status. He lives modestly such as Corbyn. and dresses modestly. He is gentlemanly and plainspoken. But Corbyn’s embrace of far-left-wing causes can make him Corbyn exudes nothing of the clubbiness and slickness of a Tony seem morally obtuse on occasion. In 2009, when announcing that Blair or a David Cameron—he’s a conviction politician. he had invited members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to address Parliament, he said: “It will be my pleasure and honor to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will UT about those convictions. Corbyn has always struck be speaking. I’ve also invited our friends from Hamas to come his colleagues as madly left-wing. Corbyn’s defense of and speak.” When he took over the Labour party’s leadership, he Marxists began early in his parliamentary career. In only said he regretted the “inclusive language” he had used. theB 1980s, some Labour leaders led an effort to expunge Sometimes these efforts at “inclusion” are bone-headed. Corbyn Communists from the Labour party. One group on which added to a series of recent anti-Semitic remarks by British left- Labour’s moderates set their sights, a circle of Trotskyites that wingers when he compared Israel to ISIS last year: “Our Jewish had influence in the party in Liverpool, was called “Militant.” friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Corbyn’s embrace of far-left-wing causes can make him seem morally obtuse on occasion. Writing in the fringy London Labour Briefing magazine (later Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those of called simply “Labour Briefing”), Corbyn defended Militant, various self-styled Islamic states,” he proclaimed in a kind of back- saying, “If expulsions are in order for Militant, they should handed magnanimity. His intention was to embrace Muslims, but apply to us too.” In his 2015 run for Labour’s leadership, he the moral equivalence of his comparison amounted to a blood libel. was quizzed about his ideological affinities by TV presenter The one cause that nearly ended Corbyn’s political career Andrew Marr. “I haven’t really read as much of Marx as I was his support for Sinn Fein and his open admiration for the should have done,” Corbyn calmly confessed. Nevertheless, he Irish Republican Army. Corbyn’s district was home to a mas- was confident enough to say, “Marx obviously analyzed what sive Irish population, with great sympathy for Irish Catholics in was happening in a quite brilliant way, and the philosophy Ulster. In 1984, Corbyn invited two convicted IRA terrorists to around Marx is fascinating.” Corbyn’s occasionally vacuous a private meeting to discuss prison conditions. His articles in tributes to left-wing thought give the impression that while his London Labour Briefing (later simply called “Labour Briefing”) political commitment is deep, his intellectual formation is appeared beside eye-popping endorsements of IRA bombings superficial at best. and jokes about dead Tories. To this day, he deflects questions That is consistent with Corbyn’s undimmable enthusiasm for about whether the IRA was a terrorist organization with criti- Third World socialists who do not share his conscientiousness or cisms of British policy in Northern Ireland, or with paeans to the modesty. Colleagues report that in the 1980s, beyond serving his “bravery” in the Irish-nationalist community. constituents, Corbyn seemed most interested in using his office In 1996, Corbyn invited Sinn Fein’s leader, Gerry Adams, to for promoting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, who talked about the launch his autobiography in the House of Commons, only a few revolution and the poor and quickly instituted a kleptocratic state days before a pre-election Labour-party conference. Adams, upon gaining power. Like Bernie Sanders, another ’80s enthusi- being an elected member to Parliament (even one who followed ast for the Sandinistas, Corbyn one day just stopped talking about Sinn Fein’s policy of abstaining from taking his seat), had the the ongoing embarrassment of Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua. right to launch his book there, Corbyn reasoned. The timing was

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ugly: Just seven months earlier, the IRA had interrupted its had included police cuts. At each turn in the news cycle, Corbyn cease-fire by blowing up a truck bomb in London’s Canary seemed more self-assured and more responsible than anyone Wharf. Bowing to pressure, Corbyn agreed to move the event. could have foreseen. It is all this accumulated history of radicalism that gives You, looking on from America, might be thinking that it’s Corbyn his reputation as a man of lonely integrity. Like Bernie inevitable now. His gentle demeanor disguises his radicalism. Sanders, he is an older socialist whose almost otherworldly affect His purism keeps the stink of normal politics off him. And he has is intensely attractive to younger voters who seem to crave put together a wide coalition of Greens and Ukippers, of immi- authenticity. Sanders and Corbyn are hopelessly themselves. An grants and border hawks, of Leavers and Remainers, of socialists image consultant couldn’t possibly make them over. and socialites. Meanwhile, a hobbled Tory government is stuck Corbyn’s rise within Labour also bears some distressing simi- paying off a few Ulster Presbyterians to stay in power while May larities to Donald Trump’s rise in the GOP. In Britain, it was the negotiates a Brexit that the entire political class loathes and is try- Labour party that led the U.K. into the Iraq war, which proved ing to undermine. disastrously unpopular. It was the Labour party that pursued The thought is dawning on you that Jeremy Corbyn is going to trade-liberalizing policies and freed the financial sector from become prime minister. constraints just before a traumatizing economic crash. Just as in Not so fast. Jeremy Corbyn did not really win the 2017 elec- the GOP, voters in Labour proved willing to inflict an ideological tion; he just outperformed expectations. Labour won 262 seats makeover on their party after a period of misrule. The media and in 2017. Previous Labour leaders Neil Kinnock and James party mandarins were dead set against Corbyn, as they have been Callaghan resigned when they won more than Corbyn. Corbyn against Trump. That elite opposition only made Corbyn and has merely overcome the soft contempt of abysmal expectations. Trump supporters redouble their enthusiasm. The shifting tectonic plates can quickly undo Corbyn’s Labour party. A first sign of this was his response to the terrible fire that consumed the Grenfell apartment block and killed scores of the WO sets of tectonic plates operate beneath British politics underprivileged residents who lived there, in the middle of a posh now. There are the old party alliances, which matter a neighborhood. Labour’s 2017 win in Kensington was a sign of just great deal. And then there is Brexit. Theresa May’s how many cosmopolitan elites had defected from the Tories. But Tstratospheric approval ratings earlier this year came when all the Corbyn suggested that Grenfell Tower’s displaced residents could tectonic plates in British politics shifted the ground in her favor. find accommodation by seizing the homes of the local rich. He She commanded the partisan energy of Tories. But she also stood urged supporters to “occupy” empty apartments in that neighbor- as the political representative of Brexit, a cause supported by a hood. A TV presenter asked whether this was merely a temporary majority of Britons. She had never lied in the cause of Brexit; she solution—or would the new residents live in these homes forev- had simply converted to it when it won. And she provided clarity. er? “Occupy, compulsory-purchase it, requisition it, there’s a lot May was going to make it a “hard” Brexit and make sure Britain of things you can do,” Corbyn explained. You can sense Labour’s regained control of its borders, another cause supported by a share of socialites and Financial Times readers dwindling already. majority. Then, thinking her popularity was impregnable, she Corbyn’s policy proposals will come under more-rigorous called a snap election. But the plates began shifting again, and examination if people really believe that he is close to becoming they went against her. prime minister. His Labour-party manifesto was a fantastical Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party had accepted Brexit. This document, a series of enormous promises made in the serene con- meant that May was left campaigning merely as a Tory. Corbyn fidence that he would never be asked to deliver on them. Free had also moved his party to the center on immigration issues tuition for all students. Re-nationalization of several industries. without inspiring a revolt. So he had successfully submerged two An extra £48.6 billion in new annual spending, and £250 billion issues that divide his party. or so of new debt. How would he pay for it? Massive new tax His party’s relative electoral fortune then followed from the increases on corporations, pushing the total tax burden to levels fact that he could be the candidate of every kind of objector. Do not seen since the immediate post-war period. The corporations you hate the Establishment? Well, they’re all behind May now, so would respond to this by hiring even more people, the manifesto vote Corbyn. Are you an upwardly mobile Financial Times sub- alleged. The amount of triage to be done on an agenda this ambi- scriber whose French friends are planning to leave London for tious would leave many Corbynistas looking for the exits. Zurich because they feel unwelcome after Brexit? Stick it to May There is also the matter of Brexit. According to polls, young by voting Labour. Are you a working-class voter who joined voters overwhelmingly favor remaining in the EU, and Corbyn UKIP because Tony Blair sold you out to Brussels, and you want turned out the youth vote, giving the political class ideas about to see immigration stopped? Well, you can return to Labour now. scuttling Brexit or softening it. So the submerged issues of Are you a Green-party supporter? Jeremy Corbyn agrees with Britain’s sovereignty and its immigration policy are ready to most of your platform, and he leads a major party. Vote Labour. spring out at any minute and begin dividing the Labour party and Corbyn had an advantage over May also because he was a con- uniting people behind the May government once again. viction politician, and conviction politicians don’t have to decide Corbyn has glued together a deeply fractured anti-Tory coali- on their response to events—they just respond. When the United tion. His strange mix of radicalism and equipoise, and the low Kingdom was hit with two appalling Islamist terror attacks dur- expectations of the public, allowed him to pull off that remark- ing the campaign, at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester and able feat. But before he can think of pushing May out of Number on London Bridge, Theresa May fumbled for a response and came 10 and drafting a Queen’s speech, he’ll need the tectonic plates up with the suggestion of better Internet monitoring. Corbyn of British politics to produce an earthquake in his favor. He’s still quickly blamed the already unpopular policies of austerity, which Jeremy Corbyn after all.

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including this topic in our liberal-arts discussions. Certainly sci- entists will research the topic and will share their findings, which Stop Obsessing will always be available online for those interested. However, those aggrieved that this particular issue is not aired more widely in general discussion need to make their premises clearer—upon which, I suggest, those premises will seem less convincing than Over Race they are aware.

And IQ ANY would suppose that we do discuss race and IQ. But the typical discussion consists largely of a cultur- It serves no obvious purpose ally entrenched web of observations, some of them erroneous,M that qualify less as engagements than as evasions. I must address these before proceeding. BY JOHN McWHORTER For one, I will proceed on the assumption that there is indeed a general factor of intelligence—what researchers usually refer to as g—that varies among individuals. Experts of all stripes largely UPPOSE it’s true. concur on this particular fact. Suppose that, at the end of the day, people of African I will also proceed on the assumption that race is a biologi- S descent have lower IQs on average than do other cally valid concept. Certainly the lines between races, given the groups of humans, and that this gap is caused, at least complexity of the human genome and of human interactions, in part, by genetic differences. are hazy. However, fuzzy boundaries do not preclude identifi- Of late, since Charles Murray was all but physically assaulted able clusterings; to insist otherwise is anti-empirical and unscien- when he tried to speak at Middlebury, the issue as to whether his tific. Geneticists agree that humanity is divisible into certain broad claim (with Richard J. Herrnstein) in The Bell Curve that blacks categories on the basis of the genetic and migrational history of on average have lower IQs, and that it’s “highly likely” that genes our species. play a role, has entered the public discourse once again, in part More to the point, we must beware the popular objection that through a podcast interview Murray did with Sam Harris. even if race is real, there is more genetic variation “within” racial Meanwhile, there has long been discussion of the issue in forums groups than “between” them. This idea is based on a misreading that are rarely sampled by the mainstream media and feature of the data, overgeneralizing from intra-racial variation on partic- frequent complaints that “enlightened” people refuse to talk ular traits. To give an analogy, the variety among bats’ faces is about race and IQ. almost confounding, and yet this hardly invalidates the fact that There is, however, a question that those claiming black people there is a cluster of more general traits that distinguish the cate- are genetically predisposed to have lower IQs than others fail to gory of “bat” from that of “cat.” (I suggest “On the Reality of answer: What, precisely, would we gain from discussing this par- Race and the Abhorrence of Racism,” by Bo Winegard, Ben ticular issue? Winegard, and Brian Boutwell, for a lucid explanation, or I have often written and spoken over the past few years about “Human Biological and Psychological Diversity,” by the same the threat to free speech on college campuses and throughout our authors, for a more technical treatment.) society that the newly prominent social-justice-warrior philoso- There are two other ideas on race and IQ that distract from the phy poses. This outlook, most recently wreaking its havoc in the issue rather than address it. One is that if racial differences in IQ shutdown of Evergreen State College after a white professor are real, then they are a matter of tendencies, not absolutes. This refused to comply with a call for all whites to leave the campus is plain—but evasive. The question still remains: Are black peo- for a day to create a fully “safe” space for other students, dictates ple on the average inherently lower in IQ than whites? Similarly, that views unsavory to the Left are not alternative perspectives no one believes IQ is determined solely by genetics; environ- but confirmedly contemptible atavism along the lines of a ments matter too. Again, however, the question remains: Does defense of slavery or genocide. the heritable portion result in lower average IQs for black people Indeed, there are views, including such a defense of slavery or than for other races? genocide, that we can reasonably exempt from “discussion” at this This brings us to the heart of the issue. We are often taught, point—human morality may progress slowly, but it does progress. as the enlightened and even scientific verdict, that blacks and But to treat issues such as affirmative action, cultural appropri- whites occupy radically different environments today, and that ation, and the like in the same way is blinkered and facile. these differences can explain the entire black–white IQ gap. Is the issue of whether IQ differs innately between races as Under this analysis, there may be a heritable part of IQ that dif- unequivocally settled as that of whether genocide is okay? If not, fers between the races, but, first, it is small, and second and does it fit into the class of things that ought to be up for discus- more important, environmental factors override its effects. This sion? In fact, I suggest that race and IQ is an exceptional topic, in is the main takeaway from a recent article in Vox by the IQ the literal sense. The data are not all in, yet I see no value in researchers Eric Turkheimer, Kathryn Paige Harden, and Richard Nisbett. Specifically, they point to evidence that envi- Mr. McWhorter teaches linguistics, philosophy, and music history at Columbia ronmental changes, such as a child’s adoption into a better-off University. His latest books are Words on the Move and Talking Back, family, can produce IQ gains as big as the average difference Talking Black. between blacks and whites. Poor schooling, plus the general

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stresses occasioned by a hardscrabble existence, depresses IQ in the 1930s; legions of whites in America have grown up in similar ways we all intuitively understand. According to this analysis, environments (as J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy eloquently testifies). Murray and his confreres can qualify as charlatans at best, The fact nonetheless remains that as a hopelessly nerdy kid, I was racists at worst, and likely something in between. told warmly but firmly by older southern black relatives that I The Vox article will stand as our moment’s gold-standard ref- needed to stop thinking life was in “them books”—i.e., sources erence on the issue, but its calm conclusion that the black–white teaching me to look beyond my immediate experiences and ready IQ gap is wholly environmental in origin is by no means as self- intuitions. Given that these adults had grown up in an America evident as the authors imply. James Lee’s trenchantly critical that largely denied them quality schooling and restricted them to review of Nisbett’s signature book on the issue is nobody’s idea menial labor, it was hardly surprising that my geekiness did not of a partisan or racist screed—Lee is a psychologist at Harvard. strike them as useful or even congenial. A handier rundown of the case is “The Cherry-Picked Science in Make no mistake: My relatives were hardly calling for me or Vox’s Charles Murray Article,” from a Medium user who goes by anyone else to drop out of school or get bad grades. These same “Elan.” Also useful is an article by Murray himself, “The people swelled with pride to see their children, including me, Magnitude and Components of Change in the Black–White IQ graduate from high school and even college. However, I find it Difference from 1920 to 1991.” None of these sources can be hard to imagine that performance on an IQ test is not affected— rejected as the mere “junk science” that many try to dismiss them even in small children—by overtones of a day-to-day stance of as: All three reference a great many respected scholars of estab- alienation from, rather than orientation toward, what Jewish lished credentials and engage in the kind of close argumentation people might refer to as “the Book,” and the associated ways of associated with serious scientific inquiry. thinking. And culture does not march in lockstep with income, or There have been rejoinders aplenty, of course: Harden’s “The at least not right away: This subtle orientation can persist even Science and Ethics of Group Differences in Intelligence” is espe- among middle-class descendants of the working-class ancestors cially cogent and useful. But no unbiased observer could read the who instilled it. vigorous exchange on this topic of late and come away thinking So that’s how I hope the issue of race and IQ works. But I that the objectors are mere cranks. Clearly, even uncontroversial cannot allow myself to fall into the sadly common pattern in experts on intelligence have not converged on the smackdown which people’s insistence that something is true is founded as kind of consensus on race and IQ that experts on, say, climate much on their wanting it to be true as on actual evidence. My change largely have. hunches and predilections do not qualify as conduits to truth. I can responsibly claim neither on my gut sense nor on what I have seen of the research that it has been proven that there is no genet- Y purpose here, however, is not to throw my hat in ically based racial gap in IQ. with those who argue that there is a genetic racial But I do question why those calling attention to possible evi- gap in IQ. I have always hoped the black–white IQ dence for such a gap feel that it is such an important topic to dis- Mgap was due to environmental causes. My intuition—whatever cuss. That is, let’s suppose that black people actually are, on the it is worth given that I am not an expert on the subject—is that average, lower in g than others. Why, exactly, is it so urgent that the lag in performance of African-descended persons on IQ this be openly “acknowledged”? tests is the result of culture. As I have argued for 20 years now, a people are determined not only by external conditions but by the norms passed on in their culture. Many, including most aca- CAN see exactly three rationales as to why we must be “hon- demics, insist that culture is itself determined by external condi- est” about the IQ gap, if it exists. None offers anything we tions, but this is an oversimplification. Norms and culture, once could call progressive or constructive. settled as habit, can persist long after the external causes that IThe first is that the IQ gap delegitimizes policy devoted to originally created them. redressing the injustices that black people have suffered. That is, Black American culture, for example, grew from implacably one might argue that because black people are on the average less oppressive slavery followed by a Jim Crow hegemony that reca - intelligent than other people, our efforts to give a hand to black p it ulated slavery in essence. These were people living in what my children in education and point poor black people to employment linguist’s training reveals as a life bound in orality rather than lit- opportunities are misguided. Rather, society should accept that a eracy. To live restricted to casual speech rather than the artifice of disproportionate number of black people will labor at the bottom writing creates a psychology ill equipped to score highly on the of the occupational scale and that in general black people will be distinctly modern stunt known as the IQ test. Speech emphasizes underrepresented in the higher echelons of society. immediate experience over the athletically hypothetical. In If this is what those calling for us to be “honest” about the data speech, one focuses on a sequence of events—one damned thing they draw attention to mean, then I suggest they be more overt in after another—rather than on layered particularities along the their prescription. But the prescription would fare poorly. The lines of “If it had . . . , then it would . . .” The latter sort of mental chances that there will ever be a brutally open, race-based work, which is what a psychometric test requires one to perform, meritoc ratic consensus of this kind among America’s ruling and can seem irrelevant to an oral culture unless it is absolutely nec- chattering classes are roughly nil. Those who are revolted by essary—which it rarely is, given the broad generalities that suf- the very idea of such a conclusion—including me—can rest fice for basic human thriving. assured that the moral development of the West, halting and This characteristic of an oral culture is by no means exclusive imperfect though it has been, has produced a bulwark against to African-descended people. Anthropologists discovered similar complacently accepting racial stratification. As I have written concretely bound reasoning among Uzbek peasants way back in often, educated Americans in particular now harbor nothing less

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than an anti-racist religion that will never accept such a mode of who are good at spearing fish, playing the flute, or making thinking as anything but antiquated and morally repulsive. themselves well liked. Much of the reason we step around the A second purpose of being “honest” about a racial IQ gap issue of race and IQ is that intelligence, shimmering in all of would be the opposite of the first: We might take the gap as a rea- its viscerally resonant glory, is something whose value we do son for giving not less but more attention to redressing race-based not really question. inequities. That is, could we imagine an America in which it was The popularity of Howard Gardner’s schema of “multiple accepted that black people labored—on average, of course— intelligences,” including the musical, social, and kinesthetic, under an intellectual handicap, and an enlightened, compassion- only illuminates our genuine sentiments toward IQ. This exten- ate society responded with a Great Society–style commitment to sion of the concept of what it is to be intelligent handily distracts the uplift of the people thus burdened? us from a guilty but primal elevation of the particular kind of I am unaware of any scholar or thinker who has made this argu- intelligence Gardner classifies as “logical-mathematical”—i.e., ment, perhaps because it, too, is an obvious fantasy. Officially what all of us deep down think of as “real” intelligence. In real designating black people as a “special needs” race perpetually life we will continue to casually designate some people as smart, requiring compensatory assistance on the basis of their intellec- with the implication that this is an unquestionably superlative tual inferiority would run up against the same implacable resis- attribute, on the basis of math, science, and scholastic perfor- tance as condemning them to menial roles for the same reason. mance rather than that of shooting hoops, playing the saxophone, The impulse that rejects the very notion of IQ differences or being popular. between races will thrive despite any beneficent intentions This will not change. Given a choice between history’s having founded on belief in such differences. produced Beethoven—or Ray Charles, or Hamilton—and its Finally, some advocates of “honesty” about race and IQ have having produced penicillin, all would choose the latter. That is, argued that we must acknowledge that black people have lower neither black Americans nor educated America will ever accept IQs but must also “progress” toward an ability to celebrate indi- the idea that black people must cherish themselves as something viduals for a range of talents beyond intelligence. I consider those other than smart. The exploratory mind may imagine or wish that making this argument sincere—and quixotic. black people would—and it will do so without influence. “Smarts,” as they drive civilization forward, will always occupy a privileged place in our evaluation of human beings. The Duke Ellingtons and the Michael Jordans will be our N sum, various thinkers insist, some more publicly than kings, but the Albert Einsteins and the Stephen Hawkings will others, that we are at fault in not openly “facing” that there be our gods. As a linguist, I am aware of no human language is a genetic IQ gap between black people and others. Yet in which the word for “smart” does not refer to, well, smarts. Ithere would seem to be no constructive benefit in “facing” this No society in the world applies that word as well to those gap if it exists.

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One thing that may undergird these thinkers’ sense that this issue must be “aired” is a general resentment of the Left’s cen- sorious policing of race issues in general. As someone who has Eric Greitens’s taken issue with such policing at length, I share these thinkers’ grievance that on so many topics—such as the value of stan- dardized testing, the wisdom of open-ended racial preferences, Rising Star the definition of cultural appropriation, whether black-on- black crime or the police present the direst threat to poor black communities, and others—views other than the Left’s are The remarkable career and bright future of blithely dismissed as morally repugnant. A more open and Missouri’s governor honest discussion of such matters has direct implications for the well-being of the black community. But the IQ issue is dif- ferent. To discuss it would shed not more heat than light, but BY JOHN J. MILLER all heat and no light. Our valuation of intelligence, combined with black people’s grievous history in America, suggests an eccentric yet logical Jefferson City, Mo. approach to the issue of race and IQ: As a topic whose discus- OLLOW me! Let’s go!” shouted Eric Greitens to a sion will yield injury, fury, and doubletalk with no countervail- cheering crowd on May 23. Then the Republican ing benefits in terms of prescriptions for how society ought to ‘F governor of Missouri left his podium and led several operate, it ought be exempted from open discussion. busloads of people up a curving stairway on the That is: Intelligence researchers, writing in dense, obscure north side of the state capitol, through his office, and into the academic journals, will continue to quietly present data that building’s dim halls. They waved signs, plastered doors with show that race influences the heritability of IQ to certain petitions, and urged lawmakers to pass a bill that Greitens says degrees; others will present data in disagreement. I hope they will bring jobs to the state’s southeast corner, its beleaguered ultimately settle on a verdict that environment really does entire- “Bootheel” region. Their rally culminated with speeches and ly trump the heritable portion of the IQ difference; possibly they ovations on the third floor, just outside a room that holds a set of will not. However, in the wider world, I see no reason that this murals called “A Social History of Missouri,” one of the most research should be “faced” and subject to ongoing “debate.” For celebrated works of art by the painter Thomas Hart Benton. example, undergraduates should not feel comfortable bringing Missouri’s annual legislative session had ended less than two up these data in class discussions unrelated to genetic research; weeks earlier, but Greitens ordered lawmakers back to Jefferson society would gain nothing from their doing so. Our mainstream City for a special session to focus on a single issue that had media organs, while remiss in their current tendency to insist the stalled earlier in the spring: allowing the state’s utilities commis- issue is settled, will not be remiss in declining to program arti- sion to slash electricity rates for factories in the Bootheel, in the cles and symposia exploring it out of some kind of “curiosity.” hope that a shuttered aluminum smelter will reopen and a new Those who continue to follow this research and decry in the steel mill rise up. “When people have jobs in a thriving economy, blogosphere that America refuses to “face” its implications it solves a lot of problems,” says Greitens. need to consider what they are actually calling for. None of the Three days later, the legislature gave Greitens the bill he want- three hypothetical scenarios I have considered would serve any ed. “We won this fight . . . for all the families who need quality, purpose in the real-world America we live in. What, then, high-paying jobs,” he said in a statement. The victory functioned would be the purpose of dwelling on the race-and-IQ issue at as a kind of encore performance for the governor, whose rookie all? If these objectors did somehow make America openly season began with a series of conservative reforms. This marked and ongoingly designate black people as, on the average, less a refreshing break for Missouri’s Republicans, frustrated for the intelligent than others, upon what constructive grounds could previous eight years by the incessant vetoes of Democratic gov- they congratulate themselves for having succeeded? ernor Jay Nixon. Now Greitens is drawing interest from outside Back to hunches and predilections. I surmise that in a the Show-Me State. In just a few months, he has rocketed from future America, if ever fewer black people are poor—and political obscurity to become one of the most fascinating figures when, as part of its eternal transformation, black culture in public life today. What’s more, he’s an ambitious man—and moves ever farther from its roots in the oral mindset forged in conservatives may come to take a keen interest in his future. a rural, preliterate context—inequities between black people The 43-year-old Greitens (rhymes with “tightens”) boasts an and others will decrease to the point that if it turns out that astonishing, almost too-good-to-be-true résumé. Born and there really is an inherited IQ deficit, it will qualify as a pecu- raised in St. Louis, he attended Duke University, where he stud- liar fact ultimately of little interest, seeming unconnected to ied philosophy with the renowned professor Alasdair MacIntyre, anything about black people in the moment. The IQ differ- became a skilled boxer, and won a Rhodes scholarship, which led ence will be about as interesting as African-descended peo- to a Ph.D. at Oxford. Along the way, he volunteered at refugee ple’s genetic predisposition to lactose intolerance or lesser camps in the Balkans and Rwanda and examined the lives of the amounts of bodily hair. poor in Bolivia, India, and elsewhere. Then, in 2001, Greitens That’s hypothetical, of course—but what isn’t hypothetical made a startling decision: He joined the Navy. He earned his tri- is that, in our times, there is no apparent benefit to dwelling on dent as a Navy SEAL, deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, and the IQ gap. The burden is on those who claim otherwise to received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his service. When make their case. he mustered out in 2007, he founded The Mission Continues, a

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nonprofit group that helps veterans adjust to life after the mili- tary. It won a series of awards for excellence. As if that weren’t enough, this scholar-turned-humanitarian- turned-warrior-turned-entrepreneur also wrote a bestselling book: The Heart and the Fist, a 2011 memoir. It reveals an ability to tell a story and draw a lesson, and its pages show the fruits of a classical education, with regular references to antiquity, from Pericles to Plato. “There’s a lot of wisdom from the classical world that we can apply to the problems of today—so many lessons about how we use models and confront challenges,” he says. As governor, Greitens says he remains an avid reader. He recently finished a biography of Napoleon by the historian Andrew Roberts and plans to start Dreamland, an account of the opiate crisis by the journalist Sam Quinones. He keeps a set of books by Winston Churchill on the credenza behind his desk. Greitens is the son of a Jewish mom and a Catholic dad. His parents agreed to bring up Greitens in the religious faith of his mother and in the political faith they both shared. “I was born and raised a Democrat,” he says. “I was a Democrat as a kid for a very simple reason: People told me that Democrats were the ones who cared about people.” He cast his first presidential vote in 1992, for Democrat Bill Clinton. Even so, he remained remote from partisan politics: “When I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, I never once turned to someone before a raid on a house and said, ‘Hey, man, are you a Democrat or a Republican?’”

Eric Greitens IS political evolution took time: “It was not a single moment but an accumulation of actual experiences.” It didn’t work. They hurt people. If you really cared about people, started in the refugee camps in the 1990s. “I came to you needed to care about the results you’re getting.” Hsee that it wasn’t enough just to care about people. You also had As he searched for solutions, he discovered the Manhattan to build systems in which you could ensure that there are results Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, a pair of conser- and accountability,” he says. “That was the beginning of a vative think tanks. “I saw the power of conservative ideas put change in my philosophy—realizing that caring and compas- into action,” he says. “I developed a conservative philosophy sion are good and that they’re even better when they’re matched first. I’m a conservative not by birth but by conviction. Later, I with a focus on responsibility.” became a Republican.” Then came another shift in his thinking, which he described in In 2015, this newly minted Republican announced his candi- The Heart and the Fist: “I had become an advocate for using dacy for governor. Greitens had not spent years on Missouri’s power, where necessary, to protect the weak, to end ethnic cleans- Lincoln Day dinner circuit, so Republican primary voters hardly ing, to end genocide. But as I wrote papers to make this argument knew him—and he looked like an underdog in a field that and spoke at conferences, my words seemed hollow. . . . How included a longtime lieutenant governor, a former statehouse could I ask others to put themselves in harm’s way if I hadn’t speaker, and a wealthy businessman. Greitens reminded every- done so myself?” Up to this point, he had not given much one of his service as a Navy SEAL but often seemed to avoid thought to the military. Suddenly, he felt called: “The world discussions of policy, raising concerns that he wasn’t quite up to needs many more humanitarians than it needs warriors, but there the demands of the governorship. To doubters, he was all biog- can be none of the former without enough of the latter.” So he raphy and no conviction. He ran a couple of cartoonish, Rambo- resolved to become a warrior and worked his way into the elite like television commercials in which he fired an AR-15 at an ranks of the Navy SEALs. “The experience brought me face to explosive target and a riotous, six-barreled M134 minigun into a face with what I had seen in humanitarian work—the necessity small lake. They looked like Saturday Night Live skits that to fight evil, that there is evil in the world, and good people need sought to spoof the primitive passions of red-state Republicans. to stand up and fight it,” he says. Around this time, he began vot- In the GOP primary last August, Greitens carried only a lit- ing for Republicans on the presidential level. tle more than one-third of the vote, but it was a plurality—and His political conversion continued after active duty as he began enough to capture the party’s nomination. Heading into a his regular dealings with the Department of Veterans Affairs. “I November contest against Democrat Chris Koster, a popular watched the VA bureaucracy destroy the lives of my friends,” he two-term attorney general, Greitens continued to face skepti- says. As the chief executive of The Mission Continues, he cism. The Missouri Farm Bureau and the National Rifle observed the VA’s failures up close—and he recognized a root Association, both usually loyal to the GOP, backed Koster. cause. “The dominant philosophy that we ran into was that it was Missouri Right to Life opposed Koster but remained wary of the VA’s responsibility to help veterans to reintegrate, as if only the Greitens, refusing to endorse him even as he professed pro-life ROMAN GENN government has a role to play,” he says. “I saw that liberal ideas views. Despite these obstacles, Greitens won with 51 percent of

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the vote, probably riding the coattails of Donald Trump, who Talent, head of the Show-Me Institute, Missouri’s free-market took Missouri by nearly 20 points. think tank, raves: “We’re now talking about all the right things.” One of those things is crime control. In 2014, the country watched riots overtake the city of Ferguson, just outside St. T his swearing-in ceremony in January, Greitens became Louis, in the wake of a police shooting. As governor, Greitens has the second-youngest governor in the country and sound- embraced police officers in every way possible, exercising with ed like an old-fashioned conservative. “No matter how them as he travels the state and hailing them in his rhetoric. “We Awell we do in government, there is a limit to what government have men and women who leave their houses every night, put on can do well,” he said in his inaugural remarks. Over the next four body armor, strap on sidearms, say good night to their families, months, he pushed conservative policies. He signed a law that and step into the night to do dangerous work,” he says. “The pro- made Missouri the nation’s 28th right-to-work state. In another fession of policing is built on the willingness of every police offi- blow to unions, he revised project-labor agreements, cutting the cer to make a hundred difficult decisions every night. Should I cost of public construction. He enacted tort reform and approved pull this car over or not? Should I talk to the guys on this corner a bill to ease restrictions on rideshare companies such as Lyft and or not? They need to know that they’re supported.” When they Uber. He set in motion a couple of endeavors whose political pay- sense that they’re not, says Greitens, they’re less likely to take off will come in a year or two: the creation of a tax commission these actions—a reluctance that has become known as the whose goal is to propose a simplified code and lower rates, and “Ferguson effect,” and one that possibly has caused an uptick in the launch of an 18-month review of every state regulation. He crime. The governor cites the work of Heather Mac Donald of the also repealed a controversial policy that had blocked churches Manhattan Institute, who has documented the troubling trend. from participating in a state program that pays for the resurfacing For Greitens, crime isn’t a theoretical problem: In December, of playgrounds with rubber-tire mulch. A religious-freedom case his wife was robbed at gunpoint in St. Louis. In February, van- against the prohibition had worked its way up to the U.S. dals desecrated a Jewish cemetery just outside the city. Greitens Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in April. led a restoration effort, assembling an ecumenical cleanup crew “We promised people during the campaign we’re going to do that included Vice President Pence. Yet it all comes back to cops things differently,” says Greitens. Yet his different way is on the beat. “Our law-enforcement officers deserve support almost as much about style as it is about substance: “I’ve never through the whole chain of command, from sergeants and chiefs been involved in politics before,” he says, meaning that he of police to mayors and governors,” says Greitens. “That’s how wouldn’t know how to behave as an ordinary politician even if we create peace in communities.” he wanted to. But clearly he doesn’t want to. Rather than court- The University of Missouri also has suffered from recent ing lawmakers, he routinely berates them as “career politicians” unrest, and Greitens has had to deal with the ongoing fallout, who “serve their petty political agenda.” On May 12, a reporter which includes plummeting enrollments at the state’s flagship asked him to assign a letter grade to the state’s senators and rep- school. “Just like Ferguson was Ground Zero for a lot of the anti- resentatives. Greitens answered with a rhetorical jab: “What’s police movement, what happened at the University of Missouri the grade I would give the legislature? Frankly, sometimes it was in many ways Ground Zero for this unthinking liberal idea looked like the third grade.” that you should intimidate people who disagree with you,” says When he talks this way, which is often, Greitens strikes at Greitens. “I come from a perspective where I worked with 18- members of his own party. That’s because in Missouri, Re- and 19-year-olds who were putting on 40-pound rucksacks, publicans don’t merely control the statehouse; they command walking around the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of supermajorities in both chambers. The brashness that led him to Afghanistan, and fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda. And then I come invite hundreds of angry Bootheelers to the state capitol on May back and I hear 18- and 19-year-olds in Missouri complaining 23 has compelled local reporters to note the governor’s “need- that life is just too tough on campus. We need to bring back some lessly aggressive approach” (Kansas City Star) and his “bellicose core values of hard work, responsibility, and respect.” attitude” (Springfield News-Leader). Yet Greitens also has won Greitens says he hopes to do for Missouri what Mitch Daniels, plenty of fans. Farmers like his stance on regulations, gun owners the former Republican governor of Indiana, accomplished for see him as an ally, and the pro-lifers are pleased. “He’s been vocal Hoosiers: “He did an extraordinary job. I read his book Keeping on our issues,” says Susan Klein of Missouri Right to Life. On a Republic at least three times, maybe four. It was required read- June 12, in fact, lawmakers reconvened at his insistence for ing for our transition team.” He mentions another inspiration. another special session, this time to consider pro-life legislation. “Everybody talks about Alexis de Tocqueville,” he says, pro- To be sure, Greitens didn’t get everything he wanted this spring: nouncing the name “Alex-ee,” the French way. “His insight was The legislature refused to pass education savings accounts, failed that what has made America great is the power of Americans to to take up welfare reform, and ignored an ethics package that come together. Government has a role to play, but we can’t look Greitens had campaigned on. The governor also encountered what to government to solve all of our problems. We need to have might be called Missouri’s deep state—an administrative bureau- leaders in government who recognize the power of the private cracy in the grip of outmoded habits. “One of the things that was sector, philanthropic and civic institutions, and our citizens. If really frustrating when I came into office was that when we were we respect and recognize that power, we can solve problems and looking at the first budget, they’d show me a program—for prison create a freer and more prosperous society.” recidivism, school-bullying hotlines, and so on—and they’d tell It sounds like Missouri may have a bright future. What me what it did. Then I’d ask, ‘Well, what are the results?’ There about Greitens? He’s been optimistic for a long time. Eight were no answers, no metrics or measures so we can hold programs years ago, he registered an Internet domain name: accountable for creating results.” He means to fix that, too. Brenda “EricGreitensForPresident.com.”

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Shakespeare in the Dark

ID you hear about Brutus Interruptus? Some rabid wasps and sting the accused until you have been fired (knuckleheads/patriots) rushed the stage where and any Google search turns up “[Your name here] strug- a (predictable/treasonous) performance of gles to defend himself against charges of Yakophobia.” D Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar was being put on in That’s how they roll. The Right is less likely to destroy (New York City/Gomorrah). The NYC staging put the reputations and careers over political disagreements, having Roman leader in the garments of Donald Trump. You either learned its lesson when Congress presided over the execution rolled your eyes or cheered on the protest. of the Dixie Chicks. (Lost them the midterms, it did.) All performances of the assassination of Julius Caesar When leftists pay no professional price for holding up have had echoes of and implications for the leaders of the something that looks like the severed head of the president, day, except for the first one, of course. they have an incentive to ramp it up: Those bourgeoisie ain’t But of course the audience that showed up to see Caesar gonna épater themselves, you know. Next up: Über-woke in the Park came to see Trumpus Maximus get the pincush- performance artists decide to draw and quarter an anima- ion treatment. tronic sex doll painted to look like the first lady. Everyone That was the marvelous frisson, the fulfillment of the will coo with amusement: They did that in SoHo last month. Facebook memes they had posted by hitting the ENTER key Maybe you weren’t invited to the gallery. with extra force, because #Resistance! What better way to So, the Right acts nice, hoping to shame into civility the signal your virtue than to frame your Caesar-Trump tickets people who walk around the Lincoln Memorial wearing and hang them in the bathroom so guests know that you’re vagina hats. How’s that working out? part of the underground? Poorly! So turn their tactics on them, right? Interrupt Not to say the pro-Trump protesters who interrupted the their plays. De-platform their speakers. Conduct massive play were justified. The cast of Hamilton finished a show by sponsor boycotts. Stinkbomb their movies. Glitterbomb asking Veep Pence not to put the gays in camps, which was their movie-star events. Code Pink the bejaysus out of stupid—I mean, this isn’t Cuba. The hardest, grimmest left- everything they do, so that they know what it’s like to have ists believe that everything must be politicized. The softer a reasonable, civilized event disturbed by some maniac elements prefer politics sprinkled everywhere like pollen who has to be dragged out shrieking like a wolverine with dust or broken glass and don’t think there should be a cost for its tail in a wood chipper. ruining art with incessant complaints. So now there’s a cost. They’d be uncomfortable, and isn’t that reward enough? We should feel bad? Maybe then they’d dial it back since they know how it feels? Yes. No. But yes. No. The Left already thinks the Right is a seething mass Sure, they started it. Progressives have made everything of insanity, what with the daily abortion-clinic bombings, problematic. When a new idea or paradigm emerges, we white militia guys scalping Muslims, or just the people who must all rewire our moral and intellectual frameworks to call up talk radio and say things about the Constitution in a approve, endorse, and celebrate the latest improvement in southern accent. The Right is always extreme—except for human society. the sober types who appear on TV or write in magazines, Allowances can be made, if the Left believes you are and they’re just deep in delusional denial about the amount lying. It is permissible for Barack Obama to believe that of hoot-at-the-moon feral bloodlust on their own side. transgendered interspecies polygamy isn’t the best arrange- So, ramping it up won’t work. But even if Nasty Con - ment for bringing up children, because the Left knows he’ll servatives Who Nevertheless Persist annoy them, leftists not only change his stance but be a reliably tendentious won’t question what they do. Because they are right. They’re brow-beater for the cause: not only correct, they’re decent. If a few step over the line— “The arc of history bends slowly,” the former president interrupting a Captain America movie to protest the normal- said today from the balcony of his D.C. mansion. “But it does ization of fascism!—it’s only because they feel the cause bend toward two yaks raising a child. I recall the old parable more intensely, and they are to be congratulated for their of the brick, which believed it was a round rock and wanted purity: Why, it is a lesson to us all. to roll with the other rocks. But it was held down by its con- In the end, you get two warring camps that are incapable tours, until it decided a rock is just a brick that knows it’s of appreciating the value of a civil society and unable to going places. And that brick, it rolled. Society is like that see where the lack of a common culture will take us. You brick, sometimes. It just needs to believe.” may say we’re there already, and perhaps for a while the Everyone applauds and cries. loudest and shoutiest parts of our culture are enjoying the But let’s say you’re not one of the elect and you speak clarity of a Manichean world. But if we’re not past the tip- something that conforms to yesterday’s mainstream ping point yet . . . do you want to get out of this clown car beliefs but not tomorrow’s. The Twitter mobs gather like we’re stuck in together and help push it off the cliff? No, the answer isn’t “Depends who’s in it.” We’re all Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. in it.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

cent female is “slut shamed” by a text. How would you go about re - corrupt populace and forced to wear versing that? an unfashionable outfit. Her ordeal is contrasted with the celebrated and exalted position her abuser THE DIARY OF enjoys due to the cis-male power ANNE FRANK SUMMER structure. Warning: The novel A teenage girl keeps a diary that depicts religious faith and religious suggests that, had she lived, she READING LIST conflict without context and charac- would be against Israeli settlements ters are often described as “believ- in Area C and East Jerusalem. To all Parents: ing” and “faithful.” Care should be Please find below the summer taken when discussing the book reading list for all grades. After last with your child so as not to leave CHARLOTTE’S WEB summer’s very valuable dialogue as the impression that religious belief A young girl experiments with regards the list, our choices, and our is “okay.” veganism in a rural setting and is lack of guidance for possible parent– schooled in the powers of text and child discussions, please note that language by a gay spider. Problems: we have added suggested questions, ADVENTURES OF Many ancillary characters display problems, and methods of creative HUCKLE BERRY FINN signs of carnivorousness and strictly response for each work. A young racist from the 19th- binary gender identities. Be prepared Hoping you have a peaceful, cen- century American South engages in to discuss with your child who is not tered, and very present summer! a clandestine gay relationship present in the novel and what their The Faculty with an African-American slave. absence tells us about the world Through out a series of misadven- depicted, our world, and the current tures in the picaresque tradition, the state of pork farming. MOBY-DICK young Klansman attempts to check This novel tells the tale of a privi- his own privilege, to middling leged white male and the destruction results. Problems: The tone of the 1984 he wreaks on the natural environment. novel is light-hearted and sprightly, A troublemaking alt-right citizen The quest for the “whale” is a depic- which we have trained most of our insists on disrupting the peaceful tion of white heteronormative disre- students to become instantly and nonviolent social movement gard for the importance of renewable offended by. Violent hate speech led by “Big Brother,” a benevolent and sustainable energy, all told has been abridged in the student and sexually ambiguous two-spirited through the eyes of a first-person nar- study edition, resulting in a novel character who struggles with his rator who is exploring his non-binary of 17 pages. own sense of what is true and what sexual identity with a variety of his is not. The main character is a fellow mariners, one of them a color- white, male “loner” who plots vio- fully tattooed indigenous South Pacific JULIUS CAESAR lent actions and deliberately flouts sailor named Queequeg. Questions to When Donald J. Trump is elected the social order. Questions for your guide the discussion with your child: president of the United States with child: 1) Terrorism comes in many 1) How does the latent homoeroticism questionable tactics and swirls of forms, of course, but mostly it of Queequeg and Ishmael’s shared controversy—including a popular- comes in the form of a white hetero- bed prefigure the all-male and exclu- vote defeat—the resulting chaos sexual Christian male. Does your sive politics aboard the Pequod? How causes three of President Trump’s child know any likely troublemak- would you like to share your bed with close advisers to plot his death and ers? Who are the “Winston Smiths” a large and fierce indigenous warrior? overthrow. Questions for your child: in your child’s life? 2) A free and 2) Why is the whale “white” and what 1) Which of the three advisers— open society relies on its citizens to does it say about the racial politics of McMaster, Tillerson, or Mattis—is identify and denounce those who the time that the whale’s race needed the most heroic? 2) Write a short hold alternative—and problemat- to be specified? paragraph from the point of view of ic—views. Who in your child’s life your chosen hero, as if he were writ- deserves this? Which parent does ing a letter to his own child and dis- your child find the most loyal to the THE SCARLET LETTER cussing the reasons for his action. 3) social order? Which the least? The novel takes place in a repres- Discuss why transgender and other sive and religiously fanatical time LGBTQIA persons have been (much like our own) when an inno- erased and made invisible by the Have a great summer!

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failure to set any effective limit on “Nazi.” Yet Douglas Murray is only ful- Europe in admissions meant that the authorities filling the obligation of every writer were giving free rein to a mass move- worth his salt to interpret the world as ment with which they were already he finds it. Virtually unique among Crisis unable to cope. The imposition of quo- commentators, he has had the courage tas, closure of frontiers, erection of and originality to make the failure of DAVID PRYCE-JONES fences, and establishment of holding integration and assimilation his very camps were desperate improvisations own subject. certain to generate a response of crime He began his researches by inter- and violence of a kind and on a scale viewing migrants who had fetched up impossible to police. The Labour gov- on the Italian island of Lampedusa and ernment of Tony Blair employed a the Greek island of Lesbos, the two bureaucrat who could have been speak- most crowded way stations. Investi - ing for every administration in Europe gations in Holland, Sweden, and Ger - when she said about the task she had many convinced him that migrants have been given, “There was no policy for not been given any incentive or encour- integration. We just believed migrants agement to integrate into society, and would integrate.” To welcome into the that it is fanciful, mere wish fulfillment, house people who will then make it to expect them to be other than what The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, unlivable is the stuff of some grim fable they are. A balance of power now exists, Islam, by Douglas Murray (Bloomsbury of moral instruction. and perhaps it is tilting in favor of Continuum, 352 pp., $26) Perhaps the huge majority of migrants Muslims. “Vast epochal changes” is a entering Europe thought that they phrase of his that envisages a time not UROPE almost committed sui- cide by means of the two world wars, but managed to The reality of the ongoing survive both times. Douglas EMurray holds that a third attempt at sui- cultural clash is sometimes surreal, cide is under way. The context is rather straightforward. The order of the sometimes ugly. Muslim Middle East was always frag- ile, and hideous power struggles and should stay true to themselves, and they so distant when perhaps the whole Islamic rivalries have shattered it saw no harm in that. But along came course of history will have been redi- beyond recovery. Either fleeing from exemplars of Islam, imams and mullahs rected. (Attached to sentences like a tal- chaos or taking the chance to better who preached that Muslims could never isman to ward off bad luck, “perhaps” themselves, Muslims numbering in the be friends and good neighbors of the might well be the word most repeated in millions have come to settle in Europe. kafirs, the unbelievers, but had the reli- this book.) Quoted on the dust jacket, an The initial humanitarian impulse of gious duty to wage jihad, a campaign of endorsement from Clive James amus- Europeans to come to the aid of the vic- conquest, against them. Recep Tayyip ingly does justice to Murray’s careful tims and the dispossessed was only Erdogan, a mainstream Sunni Muslim, and measured insights: “I found myself right and proper. Something had to be showed how to lay the foundations of a continually wishing that he wasn’t mak- done, as policymakers like to assure one war of civilizations in an address to an ing himself so clear.” another in the corridors of power. audience of 20,000 Turks in Germany at The reality of the ongoing cultural The governments of Western Europe a time when he was prime minister of clash is sometimes surreal, sometimes decided to admit these migrants more Turkey, not the president he subsequently ugly. Iraqi migrants who have no expe- or less unconditionally, taking the sim- became: “I understand very well that rience of snow are quartered in Finnish plistic view that they would integrate you are against assimilation. One cannot villages near the North Pole. A man naturally, the way migrants are sup- expect you to assimilate. Assimilation is called Mohammad brands the letter M posed to do. As far as is known, nobody a crime against humanity.” on an eleven-year-old girl to signify in authority had the vision to ask Anyone who dares to say that Muslim that she is his sex slave. Mass rapes and whether it was wise to introduce a migrants bring with them religious, the grooming of underage girls for sex minority whose very strong religious social, and cultural values incompatible are commonplace in Britain, Sweden, faith and culture have a long history of with those of native Europeans—and Holland, and Germany, but the authori- opposition to Christendom and risked what’s more, immune to reform—is ties and the police cover up these crimes keeping them separate from the bound to be called names, certainly for fear of being called racist. In 2015, natives, to put it no more strongly. The “racist” and probably “fascist,” if not Sweden admitted 162,000 migrants;

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according to government statistics, only disarmament is recommended as the 494 of them got jobs, owing to the over- best measure of self-defense; every dis- Never the whelmed admission system. In 2010, pute is negotiable; and peace and pros- there were 48,589 applicants for asylum perity are universal rights effortlessly in Germany. Five short years later, bestowed as though by magic. Twain Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a Other excuses are even more spe- speech announcing her extraordinary cious and Murray makes short work of ANDREW STUTTAFORD decision to commit Germany to accept them. Multiculturalism is evidently migrants, 1.5 million of them in that one self-abasement. Migrants are said to year alone, according to government bring diversity, itself only a variant of estimates. “Wir schaffen das,” we can self-abasement. (Besides, how diverse do it, she saw fit to boast. Confronted by can diversity be? One sample of critics, she responded with the astonish- Turkish cuisine is much like another ing unforced error of raising the stakes sample.) Populations in Europe are by promising that another million would indeed declining, and migrants are to be be welcome next year. treated as so many useful pairs of hands The intention is to show that the and nothing more. Education will cure Germany of today has nothing to do prejudices. In any case, the migrants are with the Germany of Hitler. Europeans here, nothing can be done about it. Who Lost Russia? How the World Entered a New are supposed to have behaved in the Meanwhile, many more are on the way, Cold War, by Peter Conradi past with unmitigated brutality every- waiting for the opportunity to cross the (Oneworld, 400 pp., $27.99) where, but especially in their empires Mediterranean or the Aegean and head overseas, so migrants who now accept for whichever European destination it is Mrs. Merkel’s abject invitation to take to be. On a single day last summer, the ISTORY has no right or advantage of Europeans are only Italian coast guard rescued 6,500 wrong side. There is little evening the score. migrants. Traffickers charge at least about it that is inevitable. How and why has Europe come to $1,000 per person and run a ferry ser- But probability cannot be this pass? In general terms, as another vice in collusion with European Union Hwished away. To read this book by of Murray’s telling phrases has it, “the police and navy personnel. This little Peter Conradi (the foreign editor of the intellectual and political pollution of racket turns murderous whenever London Sunday Times) is to be remind- Europe’s 20th century” is a dead weight storms blow up and unseaworthy ed that the odds were always against a on the spirit of Europe. Communism dinghies capsize, leaving unfortunate durable rapprochement between post- and Nazism between them crushed migrants to drown. Soviet Russia and the West, but, as beliefs, tradition, and legitimacy. In Murray quotes with approval a Conradi shows, that doesn’t mean that reaction to the totalitarian monstrosi- French philosopher, Chantal Delsol, both sides didn’t do their bit to make ties, the European Union has disman- who believes that Europeans have lost them even longer. tled the nation-state; its abolition of “our sense of the tragic dimension of The original sin was Russian: The borders, its shibboleth about the free life.” To spell it out, Europeans might 1991 “revolution” was, as Conradi puts movement of labor, and its regimenta- have saved themselves from being it, “incomplete.” The old regime poured tion of virtue leave the Continent de - caught up in the consequences of into the supposedly new, unbothered by fenseless and all doors open for Muslim chaos only by putting a halt to fresh elections. Conradi maintains that a whoever cares to walk in. Europe lost the mass migration while it was still “short-sighted” West eventually staked faith in itself and “today has little desire possible to do so, and that would have too much on an increasingly authoritari- to reproduce itself, fight for itself or been hard and painful. Too late now. an, increasingly erratic Boris Yeltsin. even take its own side in an argument.” Acts of terror are placing the Maybe, but one of the tragedies of the Exhausted, the Continent has nothing to Continent’s future in the hands of incomplete revolution was that it had say; all that survives of its story is guilt Islamists. Murray would wish Islam to thrown up no credible alternative. Russia and shame. The ingrown attitude of be “deliteralized, wounded and de - in 1992 was not Germany in 1945. There self-abasement is perfectly captured in a fanged.” Die-hard Europeans, fascists was no Stunde Null, no definitive break, throwaway remark of Fredrik Reinfeldt, by any other name, are waiting in the no settling of accounts with the past—no a recent prime minister of Sweden: wings and mobilizing the backlash Soviet Nuremberg (who, Conradi won- “Only barbarism is genuinely Swedish. without which there will be no wound- ders, in the deeply compromised “ruling All further development has been ing and defanging. The shadow of class would have wanted such a reckon- brought from outside.” future dreads and unwanted changes ing”?)—or even any agreement as to A terrorist collects unemployment darkens the final chapters of this aston- what that past had been. Many Russians, benefits to the tune of 19,000 euros right ishing crystal ball of a book. More of writes Conradi, “felt a sense . . . of dis- up to the moment of committing his out- the same uncertain standoff, indefinite- orientation after so much of what they rage; in other words, the society is pay- ly extended, is the best that Murray had been brought up to believe in had ing this man to attack it. It becomes hopes for, though it comes with a very been denounced as a lie”; so much, yes, impossible to stand up for oneself when big “perhaps.” but not enough.

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The survival of countless relics, nations,” to grasp that their homeland ed a Russian veto over NATO mem- physical as well as political and psycho- too was an empire. Relentlessly repeat- bership for countries that had broken logical, of the Soviet epoch—those ed propaganda (the lie that the Baltic free from its vanished imperium. To do Lenins on their plinths, that mummy in States had volunteered to join the USSR so “would have meant a de facto con- that mausoleum—conveyed a message was just one of many) and also, not least tinuation of Europe’s Cold War divi- that the old days had not been as bad as with respect to Ukraine, a genuinely tan- sion” and a denial of a country’s right, all that, a myth made easier to succumb gled history, had left their mark. And so enshrined in the 1975 Helsinki Charter, to by the brutally hard times that fol- had geography: Conradi recalls how to choose its own alliances. The lowed the Soviet collapse. Conradi Russia’s was a “contiguous empire” NATO–Russia Founding Act of 1997 finds it “difficult to fault the underlying undivided by the oceans that split up its restricted NATO’s ability to base per- logic” of the economic reforms of the French or British counterparts. Moving manent forces closer to Russia’s bor- early Yeltsin years, but it was a logic from one Soviet republic to another was ders, but only “in the current and torn apart by an uncooperative reality no bigger a deal than crossing an foreseeable security environment.” that, critically, was deformed by a American state line. The disintegration Moscow’s subsequent behavior has “political class . . . sharply divided of the USSR left millions of ethnic since so changed the environment that, between reformers and Communists.” Russians stranded in what overnight as Conradi notes, the door has opened In Poland, by contrast, “a broad . . . con- became foreign countries, their plight a for the argument that that old constraint sensus” helped smooth the move away reproach to their kin back home and an no longer applies. And, however tenta- from a command economy after 1989. opportunity for future mischief-making tively, NATO has marched through it. Conradi asks whether the West, in what, years before Putin’s ascendan- The West, contends Conradi, misread which was less than openhanded to cy, the Yeltsin government rapidly Russia in the 1990s. “What it chose to Russia, might have done more to help dubbed the “near abroad.” It was a interpret as assent . . . to [NATO’s] east- out, citing sources that suggest, not phrase that signaled Russia’s continuing ward expansion was, in reality, weakness unreasonably, that at certain moments strategic interest in what went on there. and an inability to resist,” a humiliation of crisis it could have. But he appears Conradi correctly dismisses the compounded by the manner in which, as unconvinced that even significantly idea that the West should have accept- he explains, a “triumphalist” America more-generous assistance would have made the necessary difference. That seems fair. In all likelihood, a Marshall Plan 2.0 would have struggled to turn around a land ruined by seven decades of LOST PRAYER Communism. Unlike the battered recipi- ents of American post-war largesse, A prayer well known and repeated, Russia lacked the habits, the skills, and and repeated, the mind focused on the words, the institutions needed to make a free on the words, becomes an internal ceremony, market work. An inflow of massive with little room, and then no room amounts of aid money might well have for another thought; sooner or later done nothing more than further comes the moment when the focus is lost, entrench the kleptocracy that had the words are lost, when the internal chant viewed privatization as an invitation to comes up empty, comes to silence; pillage. The misery of the many had better silence than the meaning lost. been accompanied by the enrichment But when the words are lost, of the few, a looting that discredited across that vacant moment, liberal reform—economic and politi- an image will follow, of Divinity, cal—and did much to pave the way to of a sacred place, of Benevolence Putin’s sly despotism. accepting the devotion of a Adding insult and yet more injury weary humanity, prone to loss after the loss of Russia’s Eastern Euro - of focus and of meaning, to the pean empire came the dismantling of the wavering use of words, tending to Rodina itself under conditions—a quick obscure and not to illuminate. deal struck in a Belorussian hunting The silence becomes a light, lodge—that fed many Russians’ suspi- the silence turns to light, cions, as Conradi observes, of a stab in that the loss might be redeemed; the back, a Dolchstoss, as they used to picture without words, the figure say in Weimar. And the breakup of the surprised in the clearing, become USSR was made more painful by the as a candle of sunlight, by the breath failure—stressed by Conradi—by large of contemplation turned to action, numbers of ordinary Russians, “elder so the loss of words may come to nothing. brothers” (so the party had never ceased to insist) in a “socialist family of —WILLIAM W. RUNYEON

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“had become rather too fond of a unipo- punch back. The West was right to pur- lar world.” It had become too confident sue the agenda it did in Eastern Europe The Dark as well, beguiled by an interlude that it but was oddly unprepared for counter- mistook for an era. It trampled over the measures by the Kremlin, especially sensitivities of a fallen superpower that after the challenge to the Putin regime Lady had not accepted its fall. Russia believed posed by the color revolutions in it still merited a seat at the top table, and Ukraine and Georgia and then, with cat- PETER TONGUETTE not only, as Conradi emphasizes, on astrophic results, the far greater up - American terms. heaval in Ukraine in 2014, an upheaval To be sure, it was wildly optimistic that Conradi chronicles with characteris- of Russia to expect an invitation to join tic evenhandedness. NATO (something for which Putin was To Conradi, it’s remarkable that the angling in his early period in office): West has yet to put together the “well- There could be no room for the bear in considered and historically relevant” the henhouse. When West Germany policy that Zbigniew Brzezinski called was admitted by its former adversaries for over 20 years ago. Well, our states- into NATO in 1955, it was dependent men are what they are, but it’s hard to on the U.S. for its defense and had deny that Russia has been treated with quite clearly learned from the horrors striking carelessness and startling Mary McCarthy: The Complete Fiction, of the past: It was no conceivable dan- complacency, treatment that may not edited by Thomas Mallon (Library of ger to those with whom it wanted to have “lost” Russia but undoubtedly America, 2 vols., 2,066 pp., $90) team up. The same could not be said of helped make matters worse. The sup- early-21st-century Russia. position by the Western elite that H, but a man’s reach Yet Russia’s support for the U.S. Russia’s time as a great power had should exceed his after 9/11 was speedy and helpful (and passed played its part in all this, hand- grasp,” wrote Robert beforehand Moscow had warned ily reinforced by the pleasantly reas- Browning, “or what’s a Washington that there could be trouble suring assumption that the history it no heaven‘A for?” Fair enough, but should a brewing). The threat posed by Islamic longer understood had come, as the writer’s ambition surpass his ability? extremism might have formed the saying then went, to an end. In the mid 20th century, such major basis for long-term cooperation be - Then there was the conviction, par- writers as Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, tween the two, but that promise was ticularly within the EU and the Obama and Kurt Vonnegut had a common idée sabotaged by America’s unwillingness administration, that an emerging fixe: Each was bent on the prospect of to reciprocate, not to speak of the supranational order was eclipsing “19th penning the next Great American Novel, attack on (secular) Iraq, a Soviet client century” power politics, a delusion a worthy follow-up to Adventures of for decades. that overlapped with a curious faith in Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and And Iraq was not the only longstand- allegedly universal values. What those The Sun Also Rises. Yet, no matter how ing Kremlin ally to fall foul of NATO. were was a touch murky, but democra- long and hard they labored, such a work Orthodox, Slavic Serbia was also bat- cy was ostensibly among them, some- remained beyond their grasp; in fact, each tered into submission, and Kosovo, a thing George W. Bush declared that he proved more adept at writing almost any- rebel province of immense historical wanted to promote worldwide—a thing other than traditional novels. significance, was later wrested from it. stance incompatible, as Conradi To be sure, Mailer vaulted to fame and European borders had been shifted by recounts, with Russian calls for “non- fortune on the basis of his first novel, The force. After occupying Crimea six interference in the affairs of sovereign Naked and the Dead (1948), but how years later, Putin referred to the “well- countries.” However hypocritical those many today actually read it—or subse- known Kosovo precedent.” calls (ask the Balts, the Ukrainians, the quent efforts, including Why Are We in Yeltsin’s relative liberalism, argues Georgians . . .), they revealed a grow- Vietnam? (1967) and Ancient Evenings Conradi, will prove an aberration. That ing ideological dimension to the bur- (1983)? The author was more at home too is not inevitable, but under the cir- geoning rivalry between Russia and with nonfiction works, including Ad - cumstances, it’s not surprising that the West. vertisements for Myself (1959) and The Russia, nursing the grievances it did, As President Trump is discovering, Armies of the Night (1968), in which his turned into the antagonist it has be - that rivalry is unlikely to ease anytime rowdy, knockabout personality had free come. What is surprising is how long it soon, but it could be managed— rein. By the same token, Sontag refused took for it to be taken sufficiently seri- jostling between great powers is noth- to recognize the reality that her strong ously even after the wealth created by a ing new—and perhaps even reduced. suit was her allusive, epigrammatic recovering oil price (rather than by the After all, Russia and the West do have essays, such as those found in Against fruits of a well-managed economic interests in common, most notably restructuring that, had it happened, (but not only) with regard to Islamic Mr. Tonguette has written about the arts for the Wall might have taken the country in a dif- extremism. But first the West must Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and ferent direction) both entrenched the learn to toughen up, panic less, preach The New Criterion. He is the editor of Peter regime and gave it the resources to less, and think more. Bogdanovich: Interviews.

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Interpretation (1966), rather than her from influenza rendered her not only an awkward, somewhat bumbling novels, orphan but, for a spell, beholden to a dis- including Death Kit (1967) and In agreeable great-aunt and -uncle. The America (2000). At least Vonnegut was book—like McCarthy’s subsequent mem- honest about his failure: In the first chap- oirs, How I Grew (1987) and the posthu- ter of Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), he mous Intellectual Memoirs: New York, admitted that this—his long-planned 1936–1938 (1992)—is full of memorable “famous Dresden book”—was not a great, incidents and piercing insights. At one cohesive novel but rather a strange admix- point, McCarthy ruminates on the almost ture of fiction and nonfiction: “so short tangible pleasure her mother took in con- and jumbled and jangled,” as he wrote. verting to Catholicism: “She was proud Similarly, Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) and happy to be a convert, and her attitude is remembered today not for any particu- made us feel that it was a special treat to be lar work of fiction but for her personali- a Catholic.” Later, she casts her distaste ty, her presence, and even her physical for her relatives in deliciously vicious aes- appearance. Norman Podhoretz once thetic terms: “Even if my guardians had wrote about McCarthy in such terms, been nice, I should probably not have identifying her as the outgoing “Dark liked them because they were so unpleas- Lady of American Letters” soon to be suc- ing to look at and their grammar and ceeded by none other than Sontag: “The accents were so lacking in correctness.” next Dark Lady would have to be, like Yet the Library of America’s new her, clever, learned, good-looking, capa- two-volume compilation of McCarthy’s ble of writing . . . criticism as well as fic- fiction serves as a surprising reminder tion with a strong trace of naughtiness.” that—like Mailer, Sontag, and Vonne gut— In fact, it was more than a trace: the author often swung, and missed, for McCarthy’s obstreperous temperament the Great American Novel. Included are emerged in her notorious quarrel with seven novels, only two of which—her Mary McCarthy Lillian Hellman, whom she derided on 1942 debut, The Company She Keeps, The Dick Cavett Show in 1979: “Every and her 1963 best-selling sensation, The word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ Group (later a film starring Candice McCarthy was married to the latter’s and ‘the.’” The incident—appealingly Bergen, Joan Hackett, and Shirley author, Edmund Wilson.) indicative of an earlier era in which writ- Knight)—could be charitably described Even worse is the novel’s monoto- ers’ spats had the currency of a feud as well known. Readers will be forgiven nous march through topics once thought between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry— for having forgotten about—or simply too outré for mainstream fiction, includ- even gave rise to a play, Hellman v. having never heard of—such obscure ing contraception and lesbianism; as McCarthy. More recently, in 2012, a titles as The Oasis (1949) and Cannibals McCarthy checks off boxes, her too- major feature on McCarthy in the New and Missionaries (1979). transparent aim is to shock the gentle read- York Times honored the author less for Despite McCarthy’s devotion to the er. For example, when Dottie is de scribed her contributions to the library than for art of the novel, few of the works gath- as having visited a “birth-control her good taste in the closet: “Could we ered here have the timeless, surprising bureau”—departing with “a doctor’s possibly be having a McCarthy Moment quality of great fiction. Instead, Mc - name and a sheaf of pamphlets that in fashion?” asked reporter Celia McGee. Carthy seems mired in her historical described a myriad of devices”—we “This season’s little black cutaway moment. For example, The Group— don’t feel the character’s embarrassment dress from Balenciaga? Or that pretty about young lasses who attempt to set as much as we do the author’s in-your- tie-neck blouse from Lanvin (just look the world afire following graduation face (though always elegantly worded) at the author’s portrait-sitting with from (where else?) Vassar in (when outrageousness. The same is true of a sub- Cecil Beaton)? She visited both design else?) 1933—is littered with political sequent passage in which Priss is shown houses and shopped for leather goods and cultural references that have about as to be alarmingly alienated from her new- at Mark Cross, cashmere at Brooks much relevance as the presidential cam- born son: “She felt, to her shame, that he Brothers, suits at Bonwit Teller and paign of Henry A. Wallace. References was a piece of hospital property that had gloves and scarves at Hermès.” are made to the Socialist Appeal and the been dumped on her and abandoned— It is fitting, then, that McCarthy’s finest Spanish Civil War. One character advis- they would never come to take him away.” hour as a writer came not in attempting to es: “Read the Communist Manifesto— McCarthy’s oh-so-modern sentiments imagine the lives of others but in describ- for its style.” Another, whose favorite also come through in the otherwise GETTY IMAGES

/ ing the contours of her own. In the unde- tome at Vassar was The Auto biography vividly imagined opening scene, depict- niably powerful and affecting Memories of Lincoln Steffens, later resides in an ing the nuptials of Kay and Harald in an of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), the apartment decorated with reproductions Episcopal church despite the bride’s CONTRIBUTOR / Seattle-born, Vassar Class of 1933 author of paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe and being a “self-announced scientific athe- recalls the one-two punch she endured as such books as Ten Days That Shook the ist” and the groom’s being an “unlikely” BETTMANN a youth: At age six, her parents’ deaths World and Axel’s Castle. (In-joke alert: communicant. In the congregation with

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

the rest of “the group,” Dottie worries quences” for those who most need about the spiritual ramifications of such Mental- assistance, Jaffe will infuriate many sacrilege, but McCarthy makes her seem readers. But his attack has the poten- silly rather than earnest: “A flush stole up tial to make a positive difference, in from Dottie’s collarbone, reddening the Health showing how to make alliances in patch of skin at the V opening of her hand- challenging the status quo and how to made crepe de Chine blouse.” Priorities change policy by debunking assump- Equally problematic is “The Man in tions. This is an indispensable book the Brooks Brothers Shirt,” a story of an KIM HENDRICKSON for advocates for the seriously mental- amorous interlude on a train between a ly ill and policymakers who want to Bohemian woman and a Brooks change the system. Brothers–clad but bumpkinish man. The Jaffe’s driving critique is informed story (an episode in The Company She by a single problem: A small but sig- Keeps) reeks of passé faux sophistication; nificant part of the American popula- its heroine interprets her one-night stand tion (Jaffe says 4 percent) suffers from in political terms, initially regretting the severe mental illness (SMI). Around encounter with the man and therefore half of them, at any given time, are not despising what she associates with him: receiving treatment. This treatment “In the tepid water, she felt for the first gap has awful consequences for the time a genuine socialist ardor. For the first individuals afflicted, for their fami- time in her life, she truly hated luxury, lies, and for their communities. I see hated Brooks Brothers and Bergdorf these consequences in my work with Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Goodman and Chanel and furs and good law enforcement. Every day, police Industry Fails the Mentally Ill food.” Worse, McCarthy implies that the , by DJ Jaffe en counter people with severe mental man ought to rid himself of his stuffy (Prometheus, 363 pp., $25) illness who are not getting medical ways—at one point, he is described con- attention—the man on his roof being temptuously as “more the businessman ONALD TRUMP’S election tormented by demons, the mom whose and less the suitor”—while the woman, suggests many things about son attacked her and the family cat, alternately smitten with and revolted by Americans. Among them: the concerned citizen hearing awful her bedmate, is meant to be a figure of Many of us are sick and sounds next door when his neighbor supreme sympathy. Today, the story Dtired of political correctness. Much of screams at his visions. As Jaffe points stands out for its anti-male fervor. the country cringes when the president out, tens of thousands of people with Even when McCarthy seems to be makes outrageous comments—but SMI are homeless, and many are drug- using her imagination and straying from much of the country loves it. There is addicted. People commit bizarre and her milieu, the results land with a thud. something deeply satisfying, to many violent acts because of their afflic- The parable The Oasis is set in a purport- people, about insulting people you’re tions. It is not politically correct to edly paradisal future enclave known as not supposed to make fun of and ques- connect mental illness with vagrancy Utopia, yet its references would make tioning prevailing assumptions. The and crime, but this is the reality that any 1940s-era intellectual smile. Dwight problem, of course, is that it’s often we must confront. Macdonald, for example, has been counterproductive to be offensive. Jaffe is not the first person to speak rechristened Macdougal Macdermott— Politically incorrect statements and frankly about the suffering related to hardly the wittiest invention. And appar- tweets can preclude alliances and im- severe and untreated mental illness. ently this is a future society in which pede policymaking. He is, however, one of the few who 19th-century communities are still on cit- DJ Jaffe’s new book is an important analyze the causes in a clear and izens’ minds: “They feared, above every- reminder about the useful side of approachable way. That millions of thing else, that Utopia, like Oneida, Brook flame-throwing. Being politically in- Americans are not receiving treatment Farm, and the phalansteries, would make correct can create change when it’s for their diseases is a complicated itself a laughing-stock by the advocacy of done with a strategic sense and a clear problem that has been many decades extreme ideas.” Meanwhile, Cannibals sense of policy direction. Insane Con - in the making. Among the police I and Missionaries—her last, lamentable sequences is an unapologetic critique work with, there is a sense of fatalism novel—concerns an airplane of highbrow of the approaches and assumptions of about the situation, a belief that the types commandeered by terrorists, a the mental-health industry and mental- mental-health system is too en - Radical Chic scenario beneath McCarthy. health advocates. By stating—bold- trenched, too intricate, and too dysfunc- Some writers, no matter how waggish ly—that prevailing approaches to tional to change. Jaffe ably cuts or witty, are just not cut out for novels. mental illness have “insane conse- through this thicket. Dorothy Parker never produced one; There is a standard narrative about Fran Lebowitz has declined to publish Kim Hendrickson is the program manager for the why untreated SMI exists: Many decades one for more than 30 years. And Mary Behavioral Health Outreach Program in Poulsbo, Wash. ago, people learned of the horrible things McCarthy? She wrote a bagful but came She works with police and courts in Kitsap County to happening in state-run insane asylums. up short every time. address mental-illness-related issues. A process of deinstitutionalization was

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put in place whereby state facilities the central fact remains: There is a Jaffe misses an opportunity to make were scaled back or closed, and people fundamental difference between dis- the same critique of people in the with mental illness were sent back to eases such as schizophrenia and major criminal-justice system that he gives their communities. According to this bipolar disorder and ailments such as of people in mental health. In Jaffe’s story, the problem is funding: People stress, trauma, and low-level depres- telling, police and corrections officers returned to their communities without sion. Second, when SMI is untreated, are the victims of a failed mental- adequate services in place, so they a high degree of suffering ensues: health system. They interact with the became neglected. If only the federal There are serious and even tragic out- mentally ill because other people and government would send more money comes for afflicted individuals and systems fail, and it’s not fair that they to counties to provide mental-health people around them. Third, many peo- should have to deal with the conse- services, people would get the care ple with SMI need involuntary treat- quences. There is truth in this perspec- they need. ment. Many of them lack awareness of tive, to be sure, but it misses something Jaffe’s description of the problem their illness; brain disorders cause important: Inter acting with people with doesn’t deny that deinstitutionaliza- people to resist and resent treatment. mental disorders is a central part of tion occurred or that financing prob- The current practice, in many states, policing and jailing, and will continue lems exist. But these are not the of setting the bar high for involuntary to be as long as we live in a society fundamental problems. The reason so treatment is dangerous and inhumane. where civil rights are balanced against many people with SMI are untreated, Programs should be favored, in outpa- people’s need for treatment. Many according to Jaffe, is that mental- tient and inpatient settings, that man- people with mental illness disturb the health providers and mental-health date medical treatment. peace or violate the law but do not advocates choose not to help them. In the light of these three assump- reach even the lowest thresholds, in the Assisting people with SMI is difficult tions, it’s clear that programs promot- most treatment-friendly states, for and expensive, so the mental-health ing broad “mental health” solutions involuntary commitment. industry “cherry-picks the most com- and feel-good anti-stigma campaigns Criminal-justice professionals must pliant and least symptomatic.” In the should be cut; that funding should be acknowledge this as an important part case of the advocate community, targeted to evidence-based programs of their job and take responsibility

It’s both politically incorrect and true to say that the mental-health system fails the most mentally ill.

admitting that untreated people with serving people with SMI; and that rules for it. This will open up new approaches SMI need serious help is highly that discourage treatment—such as the and treatments—such as having inconvenient. It conflicts with advo- Medicaid “IMD Exclusion”—should be mental-health professionals do case- cates’ brittle beliefs about individual immediately rescinded. (Jaffe’s four- management work within police de - rights, self-determination, and the page treatment of the perverse incen- partments, or having jails provide immorality of involuntary treatment. tives created by Medicaid, Medicare, meaningful therapy and treatment. Instead of helping the seriously men- and Social Security Dis ability In - Jaffe gives a pass to police and correc- tally ill, mental-health advocates surance might be the best quick summa- tions because, I think, he wants to win actively work against them, using ry available.) them over as allies; this is perfectly public pressure and litigation to get Jaffe advocates programs that serve understandable, but we should also them out of treatment. the needs of the seriously mentally ill raise expectations. One of the important takeaways by giving them supervision, structure, Jaffe has written a powerful book here, for Jaffe, is that people with SMI and medical care: more psychiatric with a clear and important message. suffer because of recent and ongoing beds, intensive case management, It’s both politically incorrect and true decisions by authorities, not decisions teams of people providing care to help to say that the mental-health system made decades ago. People aren’t get- patients live safely in community set- fails the most mentally ill. Jaffe often ting the care they need because of bad tings. He is a strong advocate of overstates his critique of agencies and rules and ideology. There is plenty of court-supervised programs, such as programs (many people in community- money being sloshed around, but it’s mental-health courts and assisted outpa- health organizations do great work, being spent in the wrong way: “The tient treatment, because of their account- for example, as do disability-rights problems are fixable, and solving them ability mechanisms (for both participants activists). But his unapologetic, in- is affordable.” and mental-health professionals). He your-face approach is powerful, and Jaffe’s ideas for reform rest on three urges advocates of these reforms to form his cause is of the highest impor- basic assumptions. First, there is a alliances with police and corrections tance. He will, I hope, help bring critical difference between mental ill- officers. These two groups, more than more care to people desperately ness and serious mental illness. The any other, understand the flaws of the needing our help. It’s worth enraging definition of SMI may be debated, but current system. some people.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Film Wild Ride

ROSS DOUTHAT

NE for them, one for me.” That’s the credo of the actor or director trying to keep integrity intact amid‘O lucrative but soulless opportunities. Today’s passion project justifies tomor- row’s franchise installment, which pays for that art film you always wanted to do, Jaeden Lieberher and Jacob Tremblay in The Book of Henry and then it’s time to jump back on the commercial train, and after 20 years, if all goes well, you have lots of money and a different kinds of stories (body horror from his bedroom window into hers. But corpus creditable enough to make your plus Chariots of the Gods plus AI awak- these crimes can’t be dealt with by law film-school self feel proud. ening), impressively ambitious but also a enforcement, because the stepfather is a Sometimes, of course, it becomes “ten little much. The Book of Henry is like that, cop, his brother runs the local child-abuse for them to pay my alimony and rehab except with slightly more earthbound help service, and the local principal, while bills and private-island costs and gam- genres. You think it’s going to be a “sin- sympathetic, doesn’t feel she has the evi- bling debts . . .” That’s how you end up gle mom, genius kid” movie, or maybe a dence to act. So it’s up to Henry and his with a career like Johnny Depp’s, caper film about precocious kids defeat- brother to put a stop to the abuse, perhaps lashed to the Pirates of the Caribbean ing malign adults. Then it becomes a using some of the mechanical inventions franchise like a mariner aboard the terminal-illness tearjerker—but midway that Henry specializes in, which he builds Flying Dutchman, or the “I’ll go any- through, not at the end, because the termi- in a workshop-treehouse that looks like it where, play anyone, do anything, just pay nal illness is just a path to the crazy “sub- belongs in a steampunk Hobbiton. me” IMDb page of Nicolas Cage. urban mom as assassin” that it has waiting But before they can get very far, a But let’s not get too negative too soon. at the climax. brain tumor intervenes, delivering Watts Our subject here is Colin Trevorrow, a The Henry of the title, played by Jaeden a potential love interest in the form of director whose career is still squarely in Lieberher as an old soul, is the brilliant Henry’s handsome neurosurgeon (Lee the optimistic, idealistic phase: He made pre-teen son of Susan (Naomi Watts), Pace), but also making it impossible for a shaggy little time-travel movie called who’s been raising him and his brother Henry himself to be active in the world. “Safety Not Guaranteed” that people (Jacob Tremblay) since their father split. So his mother has to do God’s work for liked, got tapped to direct Jurassic World, She drives an ancient Volvo and works him, which means—I kid you not— did a creditable job and earned the studio alongside a brassy pal played by Sarah acquiring a high-powered sniper rifle, a few jillion dollars, and now is on deck to Silverman, with tattoos and cleavage dressing her trim, Wattsian form in badass direct Star Wars IX: The One Where We’ll showing, at their local diner in some black, and following Henry’s instructions Have a Computer-Generated Princess autumnal Small Town, U.S.A. So you via tape recorder (again, presumably the Leia, dropping sometime in 2019. Which assume that she’s just scraping along . . . last one in existence) as he walks her means he had time to fit in a “one for me” but no, in fact, she waits tables and drives through his airtight assassination plot. between the dinosaurs and Jedi, and it’s a rattletrap for the principle of the thing, Again, the movie is not good. The char- arrived this month, offering some modest while Henry spends hours making calls acters are mostly cutouts, the dialogue is counterprogramming to Cars 3 and The from a phone booth (the last one in exis- subordinate to plot mechanics, the jokes Mummy and, of course, Pirates of the tence, apparently, since the movie is set in barely turn the corner of your mouth, and Caribbean: We Know You Don’t Even the world of MacBooks) to his stockbro- the tearjerking scenes left my eyes dry. Read These Subtitles Anymore. ker, keeping tabs on the fortune that his But if it isn’t worth paying for in the- The movie is called “The Book of otherworldly acumen has built for them. aters, it’s worth checking out if it pops Henry,” and it is not, unfortunately, partic- That twist is a little striking, but it’s up on your TV some afternoon, simply ularly good. But the usual metrics of good as nothing compared with what’s com- to honor and appreciate its total com- and bad might not be that useful to evalu- ing: There’s the neighbor girl (Maddie mitment to insane plot dynamics. In an ate what Trevorrow has come up with Ziegler), who lives next door with her age of recycled and rebooted proper- here, since the most distinctive thing stepfather (Dean Norris), a man whose ties, the same stories told time and again, about his passion project is that the story villainy is first established by his demand Trevorrow clearly wanted to make is completely bonkers. that Susan rake her leaves instead of let- some thing quite unlike other movies, A few issues back, I remarked that the ting them blow onto his property and then something that’s willing to risk ridicu- Alien franchise under Ridley Scott in - by the fact that he abuses his ward in ways lousness to defy your expectations. In FOCUS FEATURES creasingly felt like a mash-up of several that Henry can observe simply by looking that much, he succeeded.

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When I mentioned my Camaro online, a tufted appearance. The big rust-out hap- Country Life some commenter said it must go with my pened on the state road when Doug sud- mullet. A mechanic told me admiringly denly found himself looking not ahead that it was impressive both for what it had but up at the ceiling. The front seat had Drive, and for what it didn’t have. It had muscle. fallen through the floor and was dragging Give it a straightaway and it left trucks in along the asphalt. He is tall enough to He Said the rear view. It didn’t have power win- have peered over the dashboard, and con- dows or working AC. If you felt hot, you tinued on home, trailing a tail of sparks. rolled the windows down and drove fast. To fix this, he put eye screws in the door Another thing it didn’t have was wet- frames—still solid—and ran a metal weather capability. It wobbled in heavy cable under the seat, supporting it like a rain, became ungovernable in snow. Since sling. At last there came a day when he it snows a lot in the country, it had to decided that, for all his surgery, his spend winters in the carport, where it mount was no longer suited to roads. So became the Airbnb of mice. They would he sliced off the back half and put down greet me in the spring, popping out of the a flatbed, and used it to haul logs out of hood or the floorboard. the woods for firewood. When it could So the Camaro was supplemented and no longer do even that, he gave it to the RICHARD BROOKHISER finally supplanted entirely by a new car— Kelseys, one of the old families in the a 2004 Subaru. Subarus are the draft hors- valley whose surname is attached to odd HE city is the carless island. es of the country, sturdy and roomy. You little roadlets, who added it to their car You can get almost everything can put mulch bags and boxes of flooring graveyard, until the town told them to you need on foot. Sub ways in the back, tie Christ mas trees to the roof. clean it up. wait to take you farther. Where They love snow. If Scott had had one, he In Thomas Pynchon’s V., a woman Twould you put a car if you had one? could have spent his old age giving lec- makes love to a sports car. That is a satir- Garaging it is like paying for another tures about the South Pole. ical outlier. But we personalize cars, just apartment. I would have to rent the car But the Subaru is not so new anymore. as we personalized Traveller and Trigger, out, on the days I wasn’t using it, as an I have killed two deer with it; they took assigning will to their characteristics and Airb(no)b. BACKSEAT BED, NO KITCH NO their vengeance on the grille and BATH, FREE RADIO. the front But this is the land of the car. The expanse that amazed all the poor sad Euros fresh from hilltop village, slum, and shtetl demands mobility. Once it came from the horse. But Pony Express and wagon trains, Paul Revere and Apaches, long ago gave way to the car. When we bought green acres, a car became a necessity. A mile away, there is a convenience store/pizzeria. Three miles license plate. We had to replace a crum- adding our own to theirs. One of Locke’s away there are two gas stations, a bar, and pled hood; the new one is nominally the odder ideas is that we acquire property in a funeral parlor. The road twists like an same color as the body, but not quite, as if land by mixing our labor with it. How is angry snake, and there is no shoulder, we matched it incompetently or went that supposed to work? Add 50 man- much less sidewalk. Fifteen miles away is rogue half-heartedly. The skin has minute hours, stir. But it is certainly true of prop- the nearest supermarket. Farmer Chris’s dents and discolorations, rather, come to erty as ubiquitous and serviceable as cars. U-pick place is closer, but if you want to think of it, like my face. They take us to lessons and sports, we kiss eat between September and Mother’s Day But the Subaru has nothing on Doug’s in them, drive to honeymoons and deliv- there’s not a lot to pick. 1968 Volkswagen. He bought it in 1974 ery rooms and on family trips (are we So the urbanites broke down and got for $400, and rebuilt the engine, which there yet?). When we’re past caring, they wheels. For a few years, we rented kept it going for another 150,000 miles. form funeral processions. No wonder we wrecks. Their weakness was their brakes He added many other custom touches as love them. (did I mention our roads are also hilly?). well. He fitted the dashboard with a The other night, as I was coming down We would hear strange sounds and feel wooden tray for wine and cheese, suitable the snake road past the pizzeria, I saw its unwanted momentums. So we would for date nights. One evening, when he modest lawn set up for a party. There were make a distress call and wait for the rental took a girl to the reservoir, they were picnic tables, strings of lights, and seven agency to bring a substitute wreck. joined by a mousey chaperone who sat or eight classic cars, glowing, metallic, COM . Then we inherited my mother-in-law’s next to the cheese, then moved on. The uncomputerized. The half-glimpsed sign 1977 Camaro. I missed the cult of muscle bodies of old Volkswagens were notori- announced some little festival. We passed HEMMINGS . cars when they were new, but, like the cult ous for rusting out. He stuffed the holes a few oldsters coming as we drove on. I WWW of Star Trek, it has only grown with time. with expandable insulation, which gave it wished I’d kept the Camaro.

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Happy Warrior BY DANIEL FOSTER Our Pornographic Age

LEFT-WING terrorist tried to assassinate—may Then I got to the part that, knowing my friend, I realized yet have assassinated, our prayers notwith- was the pitch-black-comic punchline he’d really wanted standing—Republican members of Congress me to read all along: practicing for a bipartisan baseball game that A However, the period was not so barren of merit that it failed raises money for disadvantaged youths. to teach some good lessons as well. . . . Distinguished men Some wondered on social media whether House majority driven to suicide faced the last agony with unflinching whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, then fighting for his life courage, and there were death scenes not inferior to those with a hundred bits of 7.62 millimeter in his guts, had it held up to our admiration in the history of early Rome. coming, what with being the only devoutly Catholic Klansman in Dixie and all. That’s old Publius Cornelius’s definition of “the bright American student Otto Warmbier succumbed to the time- side.” Who knows whether the historians of our stubby delayed torture of North Korea’s antediluvian regime, whose 21st century will find such cause for optimism. goons somehow liquefied his brains and forgot to tell any- For my own part, I’m fickler than waters, as the poet body for a year. said. But I do think our age, if not uniquely awful, is at At the time of his capture, hot takes from Salon and Ebony least uniquely obscene. and Larry Wilmore blamed Warmbier’s “frat boy” attitude Think about it. Each of the horrific crimes I describe and “white privilege” for his show trial and banishment to a above was followed by a kind of prurient glee from the Pyongyang gulag. Wilmore, you’ll be forgiven for forget- danker corners of our public fora, a level of sadistic plea- ting, is one of those now-canceled members of the Daily sure that can be experienced only by the self-righteous Show diaspora who for a time said snarky things to images of wicked. The immaculate conscience of someone gawping Republicans digitally projected over their right shoulder. at the deserving dead. And oh how his audience whooped and hollered at his taking This sort of thing has been called “outrage porn” for the Caucasian victim of a murdering bastard down a peg. some time, but it only recently occurred to me watching A 17-year-old Muslim girl breaking her Ramadan fast it unfold on social media that a good test of whether was beaten to death with an aluminum baseball bat and her someone’s opinion is profane is whether you can imag- body dumped in a pond after an apparent dispute with a ine him masturbating while typing it. You’ll learn quick, passing motorist. as I did, that Twitter is mostly wankery of varying levels A spirited race up Mount Virtue commenced between of depravity. those preemptively, and it appears wrongly, blaming her In fact, what we’re living through is worse than porn— murder on Islamophobia and those giddy to point out that her or rather, actually has the deleterious effects on the soul killer was a Salvadoran migrant. It remains to be seen that the Comstockers imagine all porn does. whether any of the contestants will remember the child’s I’ve seen naked ladies in print and liked it, and I don’t name this time next month. think this fact condemns me to perdition. I understand the This was one week in America in 2017. And I said nothing pathologies that come along with pornography proper—the about the craptacular geopolitical gestalt against which it’s abuse, the blurry lines of consent, what it does to real rela- all set. Corbyns and Putins and Muellers, oh my. tionships. But at least with smut the, er, proximate objective A friend of mine, sensing my glumness, suggested the other of the viewer isn’t necessarily dependent on the viciousness day that I pick up my Tacitus, if for no other reason than to reas- of the material. With outrage porn, it seems to me, there sure me that there’s nothing new under the sun. Sure enough, in isn’t even that plausible deniability. the first pages of the Histories we have this, Tacitus’s descrip- Outrage porn’s audience revels in being bystanders to tion of Rome at the first century of this epoch, which with cruelty, voyeurs to woe, consumers of its enemies’ mis- the few bracketed amendments could describe our own age: ery. (Think here of “I drink [liberal/conservative/ feminist/meninist] tears.”) The period upon which I embark is one full of incident, Of course the irony about being entertained by things marked by bitter fighting, rent by treason, and even in peace you hate is that you increase the demand for them. As left- sinister. . . . Things holy were desecrated, there was adultery in ist Harvard historian Peter E. Gordon put it in a study of high places. The [sea] swarmed with exiles and its rocky islets the 2016 election, the current president of the United ran with blood. The reign of terror was particularly ruthless at States “holds a powerful fascination for [his] critics pre- [home]. Rank, wealth, and office, whether surrendered or cisely because [he] serves as an object for our negative retained, provided grounds for accusation, and the reward for virtue was inevitable death. The profits made by the prosecu- self-definition. . . . [The President] is indeed entertainment tors were no less odious than their crimes. Some helped them- but not only for those whom [he] entertains. If [he] selves to priesthoods and consulships as the prize of victory. enchants his supporters, he awakens a no less powerful Others acquired official posts and backstairs influence, creat- fascination for the critics who loathe him since love and ing a universal pandemonium of hatred and terror. loathing are only two sides of the same coin.”

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