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April 5, 2010 49145 $3.95 JOHN O’SULLIVAN: How Special a Relationship?

LiberalismLiberalism $3.95 DiminishedDiminished 14 MICHAEL KNOX BERAN

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APRIL 5, 2010 | VOLUME LXII, NO. 6 | www.nationalreview.com

COVER STORY Page 30 Mark Steyn on Deferred Adulthood The Descent of p. 56 Liberalism The progress of the social imagination has BOOKS, ARTS forced liberals to relinquish the principles & MANNERS and even the language of the classical 45 SEARING DEFEAT conception of liberty. Michael Knox Beran Alistair Horne reviews Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America COVER: ROMAN GENN Into the Vietnam War, by Ted Morgan. ARTICLES 47 THE ANOINTED 16 THE DEAD END OF LIBERALISM by Ramesh Ponnuru John Derbyshire reviews Intellectuals Why progressives can’t govern. and Society, by Thomas Sowell. 20 DIVIDED BY AN OCEAN by John O’Sullivan The Obama administration is undermining the Anglo-American 50 PAUL, TO THE LIFE special relationship. John Wilson reviews Paul Among the People: The Apostle 24 THE PRESIDENT’S NEW SEX ED by Robert Rector Reinterpreted and Reimagined So long, love, abstinence, and marriage. in His Own Time, by Sarah Ruden. 26 BAWD AND MAN AT YALE by Nathan Harden Involving lux, veritas, and plenty of adult toys. 52 MUSIC: A NOSE, A SCOT, AND A HUN 28 A LITTLE WORK by Rob Long Jay Nordlinger on three musical By rights, Nancy Pelosi should resemble Tip O’Neill. evenings in New York.

54 FILM: FUGITIVE PLEASURES FEATURES Ross Douthat reviews The Ghost Writer. 30 THE DESCENT OF LIBERALISM by Michael Knox Beran Having repudiated classical liberty, which once counterbalanced their 55 COUNTRY LIFE: politics of social reform, the Left today confronts the abyss. CAN I HELP YOU? Richard Brookhiser searches for service. FINANCIAL SPECIAL 36 WE DIDN’T DEREGULATE by Veronique de Rugy SECTIONS And more regulation won’t prevent another financial crisis. 2 Letters to the Editor 38 BREAK UP THE BANKS by Arnold Kling 4 The Week It’s politics, not economics, that made them behemoths. 43 The Bent Pin ...... Florence King 44 The Long View ...... Rob Long 41 RESOLVE TO REFORM by Stephen Spruiell & Kevin D. Williamson 46 Poetry ...... Lawrence Dugan How to get un-TARPed and police the shadow banking system. 56 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

NATIONAL RevIeW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATIONAL RevIeW, Inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 2010. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., NATIONAL RevIeW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONAL RevIeW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATIONAL RevIeW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATIONAL RevIeW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters--ready_QXP-1127940387.qxp 3/17/2010 1:45 PM Page 2 Letters

APRIL 5 ISSUE; PRINTED MARCH 18 Monkeying with the Facts

EDITOR Richard Lowry I don’t want to belabor Matthew Scully’s critical review of my book A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy, but he continues to mislead readers about a particular Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger experiment described in its pages. Scully initially claimed I supported an exper- Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones iment that broke the limbs of chimps. When I wrote in reply (“Animal Welfare Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra vs. Animal Rights,” March 22) that I had never heard of such an experiment, Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy National Correspondent John J. Miller Scully referenced pages 74–75 of my book. Art Director Luba Kolomytseva I did indeed write about an animal experiment in those pages—the “Silver Deputy Managing Editors Fred Schwarz / Kevin D. Williamson Spring Monkey Case,” infamous because of animal-rights activists’ nearly suc- Associate Editors cessful attempts to stop it. The experiment did not, however, involve the break- Helen Rittelmeyer / Robert VerBruggen Research Director Katherine Connell ing of limbs, but rather a surgical procedure performed under anesthesia. It was Research Manager Dorothy McCartney NIH-approved research, and led to a tremendous breakthrough in the rehabili- Executive Secretary Frances Bronson Assistant to the Editor Natasha Simons tation of stroke patients—Constrained Induced Movement Therapy—that Contributing Editors now benefits tens of thousands of stroke patients around the world, and, most Robert H. Bork / John Derbyshire Ross Douthat / Rod Dreher / David Frum recently, children with cerebral palsy. Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg It seems to me that any discussion of such research should accurately describe Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi the animals used and what was done, and address the tremendous human bene- Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne fit thereby derived. David B. Rivkin Jr.

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Wesley J. Smith Managing Editor Edward John Craig Castro Valley, Calif. Deputy Managing Editor Duncan Currie Associate Editor Emily Karrs Staff Reporter Stephen Spruiell News Editor Daniel Foster On Thin Ice Web Developer Nathan Goulding Technical Services Russell Jenkins I have been a subscriber to NATIoNAl RevIeW since at least 1971. Your publica- CHAIRMAN & CEO tion not only was the first, but continues to be what I consider the finest, source Thomas L. Rhodes EDITORS- AT- LARGE of conservative thoughts and ideals. Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan That said, it concerned me—as I eagerly leafed through the March 8 issue to Contributors read one of my favorite columns, Mark Steyn’s “Happy Warrior”—to discover Hadley Arkes / Baloo / Tom Bethell James Bowman / Priscilla L. Buckley that with a flick of his deft pen Mr. Steyn had seemed to relieve our family Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans company, which makes ice-resurfacing machines, of a long-held trademark by Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman declaring its name, “Zamboni,” a generic noun. James Gardner / David Gelernter George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler James Jackson Kilpatrick / David Klinghoffer Anthony Lejeune / D. Keith Mano Michael Novak / Alan Reynolds William A. Rusher / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Taki Theodoracopulos Vin Weber Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak Treasurer Rose Flynn DeMaio Business Services For more than 60 years, the Zamboni brand name has been a valuable trade- Alex Batey / Amy Tyler mark, and we diligently protect it. like “Coke,” “Kleenex,” and “Jeep,” Circulation Director Erik Zenhausern Circulation Manager Jason Ng “Zamboni” has a close identity in the public mind with a particular type of WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com commodity—but please remember: A trademark is always an adjective, never a MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 generic noun. “Zamboni” is the brand, and “ice-resurfacing machine” is the WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 generic product name. Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Richard F. Zamboni ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Olivett President, Frank J. Zamboni & Co., Inc.

PUBLISHER Jack Fowler

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

2 | www.nationalreview.com APRIL 5 , 2 0 1 0 base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 2/24/2010 1:18 PM Page 1

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P thebyforaidP Magnesium Online .comater.MgWwwwyLibrar .com and Adobe CoaterWSprings LLC.Co (408) 897-3023 week_QXP-1127940387.qxp 3/17/2010 1:47 PM Page 4 The Week

n “Rum, tickling, and the lash” just doesn’t have the same See page 13. ring.

n Chief Justice John Roberts, belatedly responding to the pres- ident’s State of the Union address, said it was “troubling” for the justices to be surrounded by hooting and hollering critics of their campaign-finance decision without being able to respond. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said it was the Court’s decision that was troubling. (Translation: Democrats think they have found a winning issue.) Roberts was right. Next year, the justices should stay home.

n Last month, we commented on Wisconsin Republican con- gressman Paul Ryan’s ambitious free-market “roadmap” for the future of American tax, health-care, and entitlement policy. We find much to admire but have reservations: Ryan’s tax plan undervalues investment in children, and we generally prefer incremental to comprehensive plans. Needless to say, the lib- eral reaction to Representative Ryan has been less mixed. The prevailing line is that Ryan’s plan would savage the poor while still failing to balance the budget. The studies purporting to analyze the roadmap have not been notably competent: One widely quoted paper, from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, used an old version of the roadmap rather than the one Ryan proposed to reach its negative conclusions. The lib- eral critics also ignore that Ryan would make Social Security and the big tax break for health care more rather than less pro- gressive. It would not be accurate to say that the liberals have n When the House Ethics Committee started investigating scored no points in this debate. Have they shown that their charges that Rep. Eric Massa (D., N.Y.) had harassed male plans to bring the government’s books into long-term balance staffers, he claimed it was payback for his opposition to are superior to Ryan’s? To do that, they would first have to Obamacare (he supported a single-payer plan). He soon have such plans. became a former Rep. but continues to deny the allegations: He had tickle fights with his male staff, he said, because “I never n A dinner was held in Kentucky to honor retiring Re - translated from my days in the Navy to being a congressman.” publican senator Jim Bunning, at which he received praise, The Navy, well-known hotbed of tickle fights. “I have not yet deservedly, for holding up a $10 billion extension in benefits begun to tickle.” “We have tickled the enemy, and they are to the unemployed. The media storm over Bunning’s hold ours.” “You may tickle when ready, Gridley.” Your sail is done; was full of righteous fury at his supposed heartlessness, but dismissed. these knee-jerk condemnations ignored the fact that Bunning supported the extension, insisting only that Congress offset n The Senate can pass only one reconciliation bill per year, the spending. Why not take $10 billion in unspent stimulus which is why the Democrats—who seem to intuit that they funds and redirect it? he suggested. Bunning released his won’t be so numerous next year—want to combine the health- hold after Senate majority leader Harry Reid agreed to allow care reconciliation bill with legislation that would make the a vote on a funding amendment, which was narrowly de - government the direct provider of most student loans. The feated along partisan lines. After all, to the Democrats, it’s combination is poetic: American college-loan policy offers an just another $10 billion, a rounding error on this year’s illustration of how the government can absorb an activity deficit of $1.4 trillion. “Many people asked me, ‘Why incrementally, claiming to cherish the benefits the private sec- now?’” Bunning wrote in an op-ed defending his hold. “My tor provides until the bait has worked and it’s time for the answer is, ‘Why not now?’ . . . If the Senate cannot find switch. Government support for student loans began in the $10 billion to pay for a measure we all support, we will form of subsidies for private loans, much as the Democrats’ never pay for anything.” A toast to a rare outbreak of good health-care bill would succor the insurance industry by subsi-

ROMAN GENN sense in the Senate. dizing its product while forcing people to buy it. In the 1990s,

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THE WEEK Democrats added a “public option”—making government the restricting “short” sales. Under the new rules, short sales direct provider of some student loans—with the Clinton would be banned when a firm’s shares have dropped more than administration claiming that “students and schools are served 10 percent in a single trading day. In other words, the regula- by healthy competition” between the private sector and the tors are insisting on an upside bias in the marketplace (cf. government. This is the same rhetoric Obama used when he bubbles, inflation of). Short-sellers are the misunderstood tried to sell us a public option for health care. And now we see watchdogs of Wall Street who bet that the price of a stock is how quickly Democrats dispense with the rhetoric of competi- going to go down. Successful shorts are the ones who root out tion when a government takeover seems viable: The new incompetence, laziness, and complacency. And they are subse- student-loan bill would make the public option the only option, quently hated by the incompetent, the lazy, and the compla- thus completing the absorption of the activity. In a similar way, cent, who are to be found in corporate boardrooms just as they the current health-care legislation isn’t the endgame. are found in Washington bureaucracies.

n The Securities and Exchange Commission has once again n The Obama administration released its proposal to change shown itself the prisoner of Big Business, adopting rules federal K–12 education policy. It is seeking tighter standards

Liberty Abhors a Cultural Vacuum

SK a Frenchman how to “act French” and he will Vast swaths of the American Left do not like this fact, or know exactly what to do (and, no, this isn’t a setup at least they do not like it when you say something like, “I like A for the punch line “surrender to the Germans”). The American culture the way it is,” or “That program sounds French have all sorts of phrases that prove my point: “Plus fine for Belgium, but it really doesn’t fit American culture.” Français que les Français,” which means “More French A perfect case in point has been the reaction to Rich than the French.” These days it’s used to describe non- Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru’s recent NATIONAL REVIEW French folks who are trying too hard to be authentic. cover essay on American exceptionalism. The response There’s also “Plus royaliste que le roi”—“More royalist than from liberal writers has been almost entirely incoherent. the king,” which nicely evokes people who are more That’s not to say that none of their criticisms have weight. committed to a cause than the symbol But at the end of the day, their funda- of the cause, and also literally describes mental objection is to the notion that several of my reactionary friends. The “American way” means anything be - French also talk of “la France profonde,” yond the constellation of platitudes and which refers to deep and profound special pleadings represented by groups Frenchness, particularly as found in like the ironically named “People for the rural areas. American Way.” Something similar is true of nearly Amusingly, the people most outraged every advanced nation in the world. by the notion that there is an American Britain, Japan, and Russia: Each has a culture are often—not always—the core conception of its national essence. people most eager to lecture their fel- One obvious exception is Germany, for low Americans about the richness, del- reasons either too complex or too obvi- icacy, and permanence of nearly every ous to get into here. But the old joke gets at it well enough: other culture in the world. We must understand that there How do you tell if someone’s a German? If he says he’s a is an Arab culture or a Vietnamese culture. We need to “European.” grasp that the Chinese way of doing things is different Another seeming exception is America. Ask someone from ours and deserves our respect. And, truth be told, at how to “act American” and he’ll most likely be perplexed. the level of platitudes, I don’t know a conservative who There is no one way to act American, he might say; in disagrees with such statements. But turn things around America the individual is king. Or, if he’s of a certain leftist and talk about how American culture should constrain the bent, he will likely make fun of cowboys, cheeseburgers, actions of our government at home even a little bit, and John Wayne, or cowboy John Wayne eating a cheeseburg- their hackles rise. er. One can imagine how obnoxious Bill Maher or Michael And I think that gets to the core of things. The notion that Moore would be if asked to “act American.” there is an American culture is an impediment to the But Americans are wrong about this. America has a schemes and will to power of progressive domestic im - culture. It may not be as old as Japan’s or have as many perialists. The more you subscribe to the idea that there pretty brands of furniture as France’s, but American cul- is a cultural vacuum here at home, the more empowered ture is there, and it is obviously there to immigrants and you feel to fill it with whatever you see fit. visitors. Indeed, it is a major reason why people immigrate here, and why they visit, too. —JONAH GOLDBERG TODD GIPSTEIN

6 | www.nationalreview.com APRIL 5 , 2 0 1 0 base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 3/15/2010 12:27 PM Page 1

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THE WEEK for the worst schools while easing up on most of them—a ing car companies. Is the underlying story itself dubious? defensible approach. There is plenty of continuity with the James Sikes, owner of the Toyota Prius that he says zoomed up Bush administration, especially rhetorically: The utopian goal to 94 m.p.h. all by itself, filed for bankruptcy in 2008; one of of “universal proficiency by 2014” has been replaced by the his creditors is Toyota Financial Services, from which he utopian goal of “universal college readiness by 2020.” This leased the allegedly errant car. Sikes says he is not interested new goal will be pursued with the same seriousness as the last, in suing, though he would like another car. Meanwhile blog- i.e. none. Many experts and pundits have high hopes for the gers Theodore Frank and Megan McArdle looked at the ages Obama administration’s education policy; many of the same of drivers in fatal accidents allegedly caused by accelerating ones had high hopes for Bush’s. What none of them allow Toyotas. The median age, when it could be determined, was themselves to learn is that education cannot be reformed from 60. A sign that the problem, in at least some cases, was driver Washington. error? More study needs to be done before we can say yes or no—but to do that we need to avoid the sudden acceleration of n It’s not the federal government’s job to set state and local a rush to judgment. education policy, but if it’s going to do so, it should at least put its muscle to good use. Initially, it appeared that this was what n The latest polls have Marco Rubio far ahead of Gov. Charlie the Obama administration was doing with Race to the Top: Crist in Florida’s Republican Senate primary. Crist started the In the scramble for federal funds, education secretary Arne race with liabilities, notably his support for Obama’s stimulus, Duncan promised, states that capped the number of charter and has since only compounded them. (First Crist denied schools would be at a disadvantage, and states that banned having supported the stimulus; then he suggested that all the the use of student test-score progress in teacher evaluations Republican governors who opposed the bill but took their wouldn’t even be eligible. But the finalists for the first round state’s share of the money were hypocrites.) Perhaps the gov- of funding have been announced, and results aren’t promising: ernor should drop out. We’re all in favor of primary competi- New York, which both caps charter schools and bans the use tion, but at this point Crist is not even providing that. of student test-score data in tenure decisions, is on the list; so is Kentucky, which doesn’t allow charter schools at all. n Counterintuitiveness has long been blogger Mickey Kaus’s Meanwhile, the process has been shrouded in secrecy: Neither stock-in-trade, but he has surpassed himself with the announce - the judges’ names nor the states’ actual scores on the 500-point ment of a primary challenge to Sen. Barbara Boxer of Cali - scale will be released for another month. We’re awaiting fornia. Kaus says he intends not to defeat Boxer but to raise announcement of the winners, but so far, Race to the Top is issues—namely, the Democratic party’s ill-advised support for stumbling out of the gates. illegal immigration, labor unions, and affirmative action. We wish Kaus had as much zeal for fiscal restraint as he does for n We must leave al-Qaeda terrorists at liberty unless there iconoclasm—he says, “I believe in affirmative government and is enough admissible evidence to convict in civilian court: spending gobs of money,” alas—but he is an independent voice That was Eric Holder’s argument in two briefs submitted as and a real mind; if he would like our endorsement in the Dem - a private lawyer in the case of “dirty bomber” (and, now, con- ocratic primary, he may have it. victed terrorist) Jose Padilla. We must accept the risk of cata - strophic attack, Holder told the Supreme Court, in order to n Republican moderates are always on the lookout for a avoid the true evil, an overly powerful president (translation: chance to throw social conservatives under the bus. But some- George W. Bush). These views should have sparked aggres- times the so-cons jump, as in the recent fight over Texas’s his- sive questioning when Holder was nominated to be attorney tory curriculum and textbook standards. A faction on the state general, but they were not asked, because Holder did not dis- board of education led by Don McLeroy—a young-Earth, close the relevant briefs, and others, to the Senate. As Sen. Adam-rode-a-brontosaurus type straight out of liberal carica- Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) observed, Holder’s claim of an accidental ture—has been on a jihad against academic liberals, Charles oversight “strains credulity.” Holder submitted only a hand- Darwin, and . . . Thomas Jefferson. (T. J. will no longer have a ful of Supreme Court briefs as a private lawyer. Moreover, place in a lesson about Enlightenment writers’ effects on revo- in February he defended his handling of the “Christmas lutions.) Texas’s curriculum practices are clumsy, with office- bomber” case in a letter that tracked the argument in his holders in Austin micromanaging mentions of particular briefs. Perhaps DOJ can offer Holder a refresher course in individuals and groups: not William Travis and the Rangers, legal ethics. but Phyllis Schlafly and the Heritage Foundation. (Love ’em both, but jeez.) The conservatives protest that they’re just beat- n In our last issue, we com- ing the liberals at their own game—“I’ll see your MALDEF mented on transportation and raise you an NRA!”—but they are not covering themselves secretary Ray LaHood’s in glory. In the battle over education, victory for conservatives heavy-handed testimony at should mean depoliticizing the textbooks, not politicizing congressional hearings in - them along conservative lines. Some sensible conservatives ves tigating sudden acceler- in Texas agreed, and Republican Thomas Ratliff defeated ation in Toyotas. A guardian McLeroy in the March election. of the nation’s motor safety invites doubt when the na - n Forbes magazine has published a list of America’s 25 rich-

tion bankrolls two compet- est counties, as measured by median household income. The TOYOTA

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THE WEEK first, second, and third are all suburbs of Washington, D.C. negotiate with the Israelis directly. There’s only one way for Altogether eleven of the top 25 are in close proximity to the this spat to end: badly. federal capital. Note that what is being measured here is not wealth at its billionaire extremes, but solid middle-class pros- n Anyone trying to understand Middle East developments perity, the foundation of any stable modern society. The gush- should study the behavior of Walid Jumblatt. He is the leader ing fount of that prosperity in today’s United States is the of the Druze in Lebanon, a small minority that long ago federal government. Political employment, not commercial learned to take care of themselves by the simple method of employment, is now the guarantee of a good life. Within living being useful fighters and always making sure to fight for the memory the District of Columbia was a sleepy southern town winning side. Occasional miscalculations have had dire conse- with scores of working farms within its boundaries; now it is a quences. In 1977 Kamal Jumblatt, Walid’s father and then the great imperial hive of bureaucracy, and of the lawyers, lobby- Druze leader, opposed Syria’s designs on Lebanon. The then- ists, and consultants who leech off the federal mandarinate. dictator of Syria, Hafez Assad, had him murdered. Since then, Walid has lived in a castle on a mountaintop protected by his n Iraq held parliamentary elec- Druze militia. Succeeding his father as Syrian dictator, Bashar tions of great promise. They Assad has also used murder as a political tactic. But his assas- were clean and inclusive, put - sination of Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister, was too ting to shame Afghanistan, not to blatant. With the backing of the United States, a coalition of mention Iran. The Sunnis, who Lebanese communities formed a democratic bloc that has had disastrously boycotted the governed the country until now. Walid Jumblatt was one of the 2005 elections, voted in droves most enthusiastic supporters of this embryo democracy, and he and for a secular Shiite, former made a point of criticizing Bashar outspokenly. Cozying up to prime minister Iyad Allawi. Bashar in a totally unpredictable switch of policy, the Obama Iran’s preferred candidates did administration has placed Walid in sudden danger of his life. not do particularly well. And So on television he has been apologizing to Bashar. “Forgive the split result will mean a di - and forget,” he pleads, and in public too. Imagine what it vided parliament requiring deal- means to be the son of a murdered man appealing for mercy to making and coalition-building. the son of the murderer. This is the stuff of high tragedy. It’s All to the good. Sorting out what also evidence that Lebanon is again slipping away. Iyad Allawi happens from here will be the byzantine work of months, but it wouldn’t be surprising if prime n Brazil claims that U.S. farm subsidies artificially depress minister Nouri al-Maliki were forced to relinquish his office. Such world commodity prices and injure developing-world farmers. a peaceful, democratic transition of power would be another The World Trade Organization has cleared the way for Brazil notable event. Yet on the cusp of a sustainable success in Iraq, to impose retaliatory countermeasures, which would depress when it should be working to cement a strategic partnership, the demand for U.S. products in Brazil and harm a broad swath Obama administration has signaled a lack of interest. Our ambas- of export-oriented businesses. Reuters columnist James Petho - sador there, Christopher Hill, is passive and unengaged, and koukis astutely noted that Obama’s reliance on pro-labor Obama cannot even muster statements commensurate with Iraq’s Democrats to pull his health-care mess across the finish line achievement in holding the fairest elections in the Middle East has impeded his ability to act on the advice of his own eco- outside of Israel, so soon after emerging from a vicious civil war. nomic team, which wants to halt our backsliding on trade. He should swallow his pride and consolidate the gains made Reduced growth from increased protectionism can be added to possible by his maligned predecessor. the growing list of Obamacare’s liabilities.

n The Israelis humiliated the vice president of the United n On February 23, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a Cuban prisoner States by announcing the next stage in planning for housing of conscience, died after an 83-day hunger strike. President construction in Jerusalem just as he arrived in Israel. Prime Lula da Silva of Brazil happened to be in Havana, visiting with Minister Netanyahu rightly apologized, explaining that he didn’t the Castros. Democracy activists pleaded with him to say know of the announcement in advance. That should have been something about human rights. He refused. And he has refused the end of it, but Secretary of State Clinton called to bawl him to do so since. Instead, he has defended the Castros’ dictator- out a few days later, in a calculated move by the Obama admin- ship. He said, “We have to respect the decisions of the Cuban istration to blow up the episode into a diplomatic crisis. If the legal system and the government to arrest people depending on administration wants to try to bring down Netanyahu, it is mis- the laws of Cuba.” He further said, “I don’t think a hunger reading the effects of its actions on Israeli politics. Regardless, strike can be used as a pretext for human rights to free people. the diplomatic escalation is a mistake. No Israeli government Imagine if all the criminals in São Paulo entered into hunger is going to forswear new housing in undisputed areas in and strikes to demand freedom.” Thus did he compare prisoners of around Jerusalem, and it’s folly to make such a cessation a goal conscience to drug dealers, rapists, and murderers. Silva him- of U.S. policy. Besides, the more critical the U.S. is of Israel, self was a hunger striker, back when he was a prisoner of his the greater incentive the Palestinians have to make more country’s military dictatorship. But now he has changed his AP / demands. This accounts for the seeming paradox that the most tune: “I would never do it again. I think it’s insane to mistreat “evenhanded” American administration in at least a decade is your own body.” In January, the World Economic Forum

YAHYA AHMED failing to get the Palestinians to agree even to sit down and (famous for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland) gave

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THE WEEK Silva its first-ever Global Statesmanship Award. Perhaps a n The BBC reports that the 1985 Live Aid concerts, which Nobel is in the offing. were meant to raise money for starving Ethiopians, ended up killing many of them instead. A good-sized chunk of the con- n The Dalai Lama, one of the world’s great men, was born in cert’s receipts, perhaps as much as $100 million, went to mili- 1935, and Tibetans are beginning to worry about his successor. tias fighting the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam—who Whoever holds the office is the national as well as the spiri tual is known to have diverted aid money for his own forces. leader of Tibet. Doctrine has it that, upon death, the Dalai Officials from the 1980s rebel army of Meles Zenawi (who Lama is reincarnated as a newborn child, and Tibetans attach today is Ethiopia’s prime minister) have told how they dressed supreme importance to the careful process of discovering this as merchants, set up fake food-distribution networks, and sub- child. But already top Chinese officials are saying that they stituted sacks of sand for grain in order to siphon off money for will have first to endorse the candidate before they recognize guns and ammunition. The Ethiopian famine was a genuine him as the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation. There is a precedent. emergency, though one greatly exacerbated by human venal ity, Second only to the Dalai Lama is the Panchen Lama, who is and Live Aid money did save many lives. Yet the case is a selected by the same process. When last this happened, the reminder that a large part of any aid project in an area without young new lama and his family were disappeared into “pro- conscientious and effective government will end up arming tective custody,” and a Communist-chosen alternative, to be and lining the pockets of vicious thugs. educated by the Chinese and groomed as an apparatchik, was installed in his place. In March 2008, nationalist and anti- n It has been going on for as long as anyone can remember: Chinese riots confirmed how the Tibetans really feel about the effort to get Congress to pass a resolution declaring that their forced incorporation into China. Hundreds of people the Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1915 were genocide. are thought to have been killed in the crackdown. Should the This effort has always been defeated, in the name of U.S.- succession of the Dalai Lama be similarly rigged, Tibet is Turkish relations, among other things. In 2007, the House certain to explode with yet more violence. Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution saying, “Genocide.” Turkey recalled its ambassador. The resolution n The PVV, Geert Wilders’s anti-Islamic party, won local elec- went no further. In early March, the committee passed the res- tions in Almere, Holland’s eighth-largest city, and finished sec- olution again, on a 23–22 vote. Turkey again recalled its ambas- ond in The Hague. The PVV already holds four (out of 25) sador. And so it goes. Before the vote this year, Rep. Gary Dutch seats in the European parliament, and nine (out of 150) Ackerman (D., N.Y.) pointed to three elderly—very elderly— seats in the Dutch parliament. Some polls show it finishing survivors of the massacres. “They’re here for justice,” he said. first in Holland’s parliamentary elections in June. It would be “How long can they wait?” Justice is, alas, beyond the power of interesting to see how Wilders governed, since he lives under Congress. 24-hour guard, thanks to Muslim death threats. (Which are not empty: Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered, and former n Oscar liked The Hurt MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali forced to leave the country.) Wilders wants Locker, Kathryn Bigelow’s to ban the burqa, the Koran, and the construction of mosques, low-budget film about an as well as immigration from Muslim countries. “I want to Army explosive-ordnance defend freedom,” he says, “which I think will disappear into disposal team in Iraq. It thin air the moment the Islamic ideology gains a stronger won Best Picture, she won foothold.” A paradoxical program. Yet free men must defend Best Director. After a string themselves when attacked. The Dutch establishment’s failure of anti-American agitpix, to do so leaves the field to Geert Wilders. Hurt Locker gave American troops their due, and Miss n Moammar Qaddafi, doing what comes naturally, called for Bigelow dedicated her Best a holy war against Switzerland: a “jihad,” he said. This was in Director award “to the wo - retaliation for the decision of Swiss voters to ban the con - men and men who risk their struction of minarets on mosques. At the State Department, lives on a daily basis in Iraq spokesman P. J. Crowley was asked about Qaddafi’s call for and Afghanistan.” Well done, jihad. He said he was reminded of the dictator’s speech at the ma’am. The following week United Nations last September, during which the speaker Green Zone, starring Matt ripped pages from the U.N. Charter. Said Crowley, “Lots of Damon, opened and went words and lots of papers flying all over the place, not neces- back to the same-old same- sarily a lot of sense.” Qaddafi was aggrieved. He threatened old: Bush lied (about WMD), retaliation against U.S. interests, including oil companies. thousands died. It tanked, opening to just $25 million ($9.7 Crowley apologized: “I understand that my personal com- million of that overseas), after costing $100 million to make. ments were perceived as a personal attack. . . . These com- The larger story is the shrinkage of Hollywood as a human ments do not reflect U.S. policy and were not intended to storyteller. Stars are known for their antics rather than their AP

/ offend. I apologize if they were taken that way. I regret that my work; all the genres—not just history or recent history—limp comments have become an obstacle to further progress in our along, except for new-tech fantasy twaddle (Avatar, Alice in bilateral relationship.” There is a line between diplomacy and Wonderland), and video games purvey that just as lucratively.

CHRIS PIZZELLO groveling, and Crowley has crossed it. Will the last Oscar winner turn out the lights?

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n Ronan Tynan is an Irish tenor who has been a fixture in of Brooklyn. Mr. Ortiz wants to ban salt entirely from food New York City for about a decade. His signature tune is “God preparation in the restaurants of his state. A chef caught salt- Bless America” (once the signature tune of Kate Smith). He ing his dishes could be fined up to $1,000 under the Ortiz bill. sang it for rescuers at Ground Zero, while serving food as a Is there any connection here to current national political volunteer. He sang it at 9/11-related funerals and memorial obsessions? You bet: Mr. Ortiz tells us that his salt ban will events. He sang it at Yankees games, during the seventh- save $32 billion in health-care costs. Imagine what prodigies inning stretch. He was an inspiring figure to many, standing of rigorous data analysis must have gone into generating that on his two artificial legs. (Owing to a childhood disability, he number! Heaven forbid we should take it with a grain of salt. had to undergo amputation in his twenties.) But then some- “We need to keep our country healthy,” says the assembly- thing happened: He was accused by a lady of making an man. Collectively, of course. anti-Semitic remark. And that was that. The Yankees ditched him and he became a tarnished man in the city. He pleads his n “Stepping” is a form of dance that involves lots of foot innocence, and his plea sounds reasonable: He was not, in stomping, singing and chanting, hand-clapping, and so forth. fact, making an anti-Semitic remark; the woman who accused It is practiced almost exclusively by blacks, yet at a recent him misconstrued his reference to “two Jewish ladies.” But “step off” championship sponsored by Sprite, an all-white he could not remove the tarnish. He has now decamped to group of sorority girls from the University of Arkansas won Boston, where he’s singing “God Bless America” in a Red the top prize. Shared the top prize, we should say, because Sox jersey. There is much anti-Semitism in the world, some of nearly a week after their victory, Sprite posted a cryptic state- it murderous and even genocidal. But at least we’re doing ment on its website saying: “After the competition, we con- something about Ronan Tynan. ducted a post-competition review and discovered a scoring discrepancy. There is no conclusive interpretation, nor defin- n Appearing on Bill Maher’s television show, actor Sean itive resolution for the discrepancy.” A black sorority from Penn said that anyone who calls Chávez a dictator should go Indiana University was belatedly named co-winner, and both to jail. In Venezuela, Chávez is way ahead of him. groups received the full amount of prize money. If only Bush v. Gore could have been settled that easily . . . n Movie actor Tom Hanks has a new production out, a TV docudrama series about the Pacific theater in WWII. In a n When the Germans overran France in 1940, Andrée Virot gushing interview with Hanks for Time magazine, historian took immense risks on behalf of the Resistance. Code name Douglas Brinkley tells us that the diffident star has become Agent Rose, she was active in clandestine publishing, and in “American history’s highest-profile professor.” What does passing on to the Allies information about the naval base, with Professor Hanks have to tell us about the motivations of its U-boats, at Brest, her hometown. Her network rescued the Japanese in the Pacific war? “They were out to kill us more than 100 pilots and airmen who had been shot down and because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted smuggled them back to England. Arrested by the Gestapo in to annihilate them because they were different.” Really? 1944, she was sent to Ravensbrück and Buchenwald, tortured, Name “Pearl Harbor” mean anything, Tom? And weren’t the and saved from execution at the very last moment. Afterwards Chinese, with whom we were allied, equally different? Why she lived in England with her English husband. “You don’t didn’t we want to annihilate them? In best professorial get- know what freedom is if you have never lost it”: These words the-students-thinking mode, Hanks followed up with: “Does from an interview she gave are a fitting epitaph for this hero- that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?” ine, who died aged 105. R.I.P. We’ve been on campus, so yes, it sounds familiar.

n Before the Bolshevik Revolution, the theater in St. n Michael Foot belonged to a privileged family from the Petersburg—with its opera and ballet—was the Mariinsky. south of England but nevertheless, or perhaps therefore, When the Bolsheviks took over, the theater underwent some was a man of the hard Left. A journalist by profession, he name changes. After 1935, it was the Kirov, named after wrote in the mode of prosecuting counsel. As an orator, he Sergei Kirov, the brutal Bolshevik who, in grand Soviet seemed to be acting permanent outrage. A pacifist who him- tradition, was killed by other brutal Bolsheviks. When Com - self had not served in the war, he insisted on unilateral munism fell in 1991, the theater became the Mariinsky again. nuclear disarmament, every inch one of Lenin’s useful But the opera, ballet, and orchestra continued to travel in the idiots. Once he became a member of Parliament, the Labour West under the name “Kirov”—because the West had gotten party took him to its heart and made used to that name. The relevant authorities, understandably, him its leader. The general election were reluctant to harm a brand. Then they took an intermedi- of 1983 was a turning point, when ate step—billing the orchestra, for example, as the “Kirov Mrs. Thatcher proved that the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater.” Now, at long last, after country thought more highly of her almost 20 years, they are the Mariinsky, plain and simple. than of Foot’s Socialist alternative. “Kirov” is consigned to the ash heap of history—where the He was 96 when he died, and at his name and the man belong. AP / funeral they sang “The Red Flag.” R.I.P. n If the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?

JOHN REDMAN Well, you could ask New York State assemblyman Felix Ortiz

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irregulars captured on a battlefield. Congress and the public AT WAR should know whether the Gitmo lawyers now in Justice have The Legal Front engaged in such behavior, what they think of it, and what responsibilities they now have. N one corner, Attorney General Holder. In the other corner, Some of the Gitmo lawyers call themselves the John Adams members of Congress and Keep America Safe, a national- Project, after Adams’s successful defense of the British troops I security advocacy group run by Elizabeth Cheney, William who perpetrated the Boston Massacre of 1770. Be careful of Kristol, and Debra Burlingame (sister of Charles Burlingame, this comparison. John Adams was part of the revolutionary pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the strategy of his older cousin Sam, who devoutly believed that Pentagon on 9/11). the latter wanted to know how many British rule was unjust. With one hand, he encouraged con- lawyers who offered pro bono services to Gitmo detainees are frontation, and made hay out of the violence that ensued. With now working in the Justice Department. After much hemming the other, he sought to show that Americans were capable of and hawing, the attorney general released their names. running their own institutions. John played the second gambit. Many in the legal guild, on the right as well as the left, were If the DOJ lawyers acted out of the patriotic sentiments of made as uncomfortable as Holder by this process. Former the Adamses, why so much effort to conceal their identities? attorney general Michael Mukasey, whose record on counter- terrorism is stellar, called the search for Gitmo lawyers “shoddy and dangerous.” Lawyers who represent odious clients—he PUBLIC POLICY mentioned drug dealers as well as terrorists—should not “auto- matically . . . be identified with their former clients and regard- Political Poison ed as a fifth column within the Justice Department.” Yet Mukasey acknowledged that there are limits to his t press time, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Pres. Barack defense of his profession. “It is plainly prudent for us to assure Obama seem absolutely determined to get House that no government lawyers are bringing to their public jobs A Democrats to pass the Senate health-care bill. Arms any agenda driven by views other than those that would permit aren’t all they’re twisting: they are also bending the rules of full-hearted enforcement of laws that fall within their respon- Congress. the latest gambit is to have the House “deem” the sibility.” Why would one think that of the Gitmo bar? Senate bill to have passed without actually voting on it. Like Gitmo lawyers are allowed to transmit legal documents con- so much about the Democrats’ health-care initiative, this tactic fidentially to their clients. Yet Gitmo lawyers themselves have is both outrageous and senseless: Everyone will know that a admitted sending their clients anti-American polemics (e.g., a vote for this procedure is a vote for the bill, and congressmen comparison of military physicians to Joseph Mengele), maps will be held to account accordingly. of the detention camp, and interview questions from news Pro-life Democrats are coming under particularly heavy outlets. Some of this is rationalized as building “rapport and pressure. they have long been isolated within their party, but trust with our clients.” All of it suggests that they view the until now they have been allowed to vote with their con- Gitmo crowd as defendants in an ordinary American court, not sciences and their districts. Now, for the first time, party disci- pline is being imposed on an abortion-related vote. the Senate health-care bill facilitates government funding of abortion; it is the most pro-abortion legislation ever to come close to passage in Congress. those congressmen who succumb to the pressure to vote for it should know that they are forfeiting the pro-life label. Democrats hope that Obamacare will become more popular once it is enacted and the debate dies down. But the debate will not die down: Republicans have at least two election cycles to go before the legislation goes into effect, and in the interim Democrats will have ownership over every aspect of the health-care system. Do Democrats really believe that their bill will cause public satisfaction with that system to undergo a large increase? the Democrats might well succeed in getting this legislation passed on a mixture of will, procedural tricks, and deception. (Obama is still insisting that the bill does not cut Medicare.) If so, Republicans should call for the repeal of the legislation’s major elements and their replacement by sensible, modest, free-market health-care reforms. And they should challenge those Democrats who balked at Obamacare to do the same. AP Pelosi’s troops want nothing more than for this war to be over. / Conservatives have to make it clear that it will merely have moved on to a new front—and that the Left’s fortifications will

be no sturdier. GERALD HERBERT

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under the $5 billion program that the stimulus devoted to the purpose. Weather- ization grants are subject to the govern - ment’s Davis-Bacon rules, which require that federal projects pay the “prevailing wage.” The Department of Labor had to figure out the prevailing wage for weath- erization work in each of the country’s 3,000-plus counties. During the Bush presidency, liberals were taken with the argument that conser- vatives, because they oppose much of modern government, cannot run it pro - perly, and then use its mismanagement to justify their ideological predilections. But the fact that California is increasingly described as a “failed state” cannot plausi- bly be attributed to mere defects in admin- istration, or even to underfunding caused by conservative anti-tax activism. The state’s revenues per capita are among the highest in the nation, notes William Voegeli. The Dead End of Writing in City Journal, Voegeli has argued that California came to grief because its government offers high spend- Liberalism ing, high taxes, and lousy services. What makes up the gap are compensation for Why progressives can’t govern state employees and transfer payments. For example: “California government wor kers retiring at age 55 received larger BY RAMESH PONNURU pensions than their counterparts in any other state (leaving aside the many states HE chief obstacles to new liberal had. They were voting, in other words, like where retirement as early as 55 isn’t even policy victories these days are Medicare recipients. possible).” The state’s bloated govern- past liberal policy victories. As a Brown’s election threw Congress into ment is incapable of doing a good job of T matter of political philosophy, turmoil. Senate Democrats had passed a the many tasks liberalism has given it; its contemporary liberalism may exalt gov- health-care bill that sought to raise funds incompetence then reduces public support ernment, but in practice, it enfeebles it. and control costs in part by taxing expen- for handing it more responsibilities. No group of voters has resisted the pres- sive insurance plans. A large bloc of House Contemporary liberalism both presup- ident’s project of transforming American Democrats who favor the legislation in poses and desires a government that is health care more than senior citizens. general were unwilling to vote for it flexible, competent, energetic. It wants Their health care was already transformed, because unions had negotiated those plans and needs a government that can mobilize by Medicare. That program is one of Lyn- and wanted them left alone. Their unhap- society’s resources to accomplish a long don Johnson’s great liberal achievements, piness is the principal reason that Dem - list of difficult tasks, including the reduc- but also a major source of funding for ocrats spent February and early March tion of economic inequality, the educa - Obama’s health-care initiative. The old trying to figure out how the Senate could tion of children, the protection of the beneficiaries, in both senses of “old,” pass a second bill amending the first be- environment, the elimination of unjust don’t want to give new beneficiaries a cut. fore the House voted. discrimi nation, and the safeguarding of The very recent beneficiaries don’t, The pattern goes beyond health care. con sumers—to name just a few. Yet in either. When Massachusetts elected Re - The unpopularity of the stimulus bill has operation, it weighs down the government pub lican senator Scott Brown in January, been a major headache for Democrats, with interest groups that first make it inef- liberal commentators pointed out that he dragging down support for all of their ficient and inflexible and then make it had argued that the state’s voters already other plans. One reason the stimulus is impossible to reform. had universal health coverage and thus widely seen as ineffective is that it has Another example. Liberalism is as com- had no incentive to sacrifice to cover peo- taken a long time for projects it funds to mitted to fighting global warming as it is ple in the rest of the country. Some Brown get under way. And one reason for that to any other cause. It believes that the fate backers, they said, were not so much vot- slowness is the burden of compliance with of the earth—literally—rests on changing ing against liberal health-care reform in environmental and labor regulations. In our patterns of energy consumption. Some

principle as voting for the one they already 2009, only 9,100 homes were weatherized liberals, notably including the president, ROMAN GENN

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have gone so far as to abandon earlier lib- and visibly redistributive program would incoherent only upon contact with the eral leeriness of nuclear power in the name not have the necessary popular support. political process. They start out that way of this urgent cause. But liberal laws FDR called it an “insurance policy” that because of preemptive concessions made enable environmental activists to file suits kept “individual accounts” for each con- by the would-be technocrats themselves. against, and otherwise impede, the spread tributing worker. If a program for poor The reason the Obama administration of wind farms, let alone nuclear plants; people were funded out of income taxes, favors cap-and-trade legislation rather and for all the urgency of the liberal cru- that program would be under threat at bud- than a tax on the emission of greenhouse sade on climate change, nobody is propos- get time. Instead, everyone gets benefits, gases is not that the former is more ele- ing to change that. and everyone feels that they have paid for gant, simple, or efficient. It is that an It may be that liberalism’s political their benefits with their contributions and explicit tax on energy would be less pop - weakness, especially in the United States, are thus entitled to them. The program’s ular than a disguised one. The greater forces it into these traps. It cannot survive resultant popularity has benefited liberal susceptibility of cap-and-trade to horse- without strong public-sector unions; the politicians for decades. trading exemptions makes it costlier as alternative to them is not a large, liberal Now that we have had those decades to well as politically more attractive. government with less sand in its gears. watch the politics of Social Security play Nor does the administration’s health- One reason our society is so much more out, do liberals regret the bargain they care policy make any sense at a basic litigious than those of Western Europe is made? Not really. In 2005, President level. There is a reason that its most per- that, across the Atlantic, politicians can Bush offered them a chance to move suasive advocates, to a man, would actual- openly advocate social democracy. Here toward the safety-net-plus-forced- ly prefer “single payer”: the abolition of we have empowered the trial bar to serve savings model for the program, and they private health insurance in favor of a gov- The progressive project remains obnoxious to liberty, and it retains, in some sense, its ideals. But it lacks a coherent and determined purpose.

as a force for piecemeal redistribution and vehemently and uniformly turned him ernment monopoly. Instead, the admin - regulation—a force that is often turned down. Many of them said that he was istration favors making the insurance against governments as well as private- attacking the program and thus a crown companies behave in ways no free-market sector actors. Entitlement spending may jewel of liberalism. Some of them openly industry would, forcing everyone to buy crowd out the discretionary spending that warned that trimming the growth of ben- their products, and subsidizing those who liberals prefer, but the former does more efits for high-wage workers, as Bush pro- cannot afford the new, higher prices. The than the latter to keep liberal politicians in posed to do, would reduce public support advantages of such an approach over power. for the program. single payer are purely political. Under Social Security is an instructive case. If liberalism in operation subverts liber- this system, the profits of the industry In terms of redistributing wealth from al aspirations, this tendency also undercuts serve little social purpose; they’re nearly rich to poor, the program is only very some conservative critiques of liberalism. pure waste. (The profits will still provide modestly progressive if it is so at all. The In the first issue of National Affairs, an incentive to classify and manage risk, overwhelming majority of funds that go William Schambra wrote an influential but acting on that incentive will generally into the system from upper-middle-class essay on the limits of President Obama’s be illegal.) people go right back out to upper-middle- “policy approach,” in which disinterested “No menace of socialism threatens class people. (Ditto for other economic experts seek comprehensive solutions to the United States,” conservative scholar groups.) The program’s goals could be rationalize complex, interconnected sys- Michael Greve has grimly written. much more efficiently served by splitting tems. He cautions that “as Obama’s pro- “Socialism implies a seriousness of pur- it into two programs. A mandatory sav- posals begin their journeys through the pose and a willingness and ability to ings program in which people had to requisite institutional hoops, they will impose order, none of which is in evi- make conservative investments could inevitably begin to lose their coherence dence.” Again, the health-care overhaul prevent most people from retiring in and uniformity.” He also notes that this has shown the pattern. What began as penury, while a small transfer program model of policymaking, inherited from an effort to reorder important parts of could help those who can’t amass enough the progressives, both underestimates the American society became a series of bar- savings. That efficiency would not just fallibility of reason and imposes strains on gains and shakedowns in which progres- enlarge the private economy; by saving democracy. sives could not tell which groups would be money, it would make it possible to Contemporary liberals, including their clients and which their targets from increase types of government spending Obama, do indeed have excessive confi- week to week. The progressive project attractive to liberals. dence in the power of their intellects to remains obnoxious to liberty, and it re - Social Security’s seeming irrationality order society. But Schambra underesti- tains, in some sense, its ideals. But it has a rational basis. That basis is political. mates the extent to which the liberal dream lacks a coherent and determined purpose. It was designed so as to hide its redistribu- of technocracy is a self-delusion. The poli- More and more, liberalism has become a tive elements, on the theory that a purely cies that liberals propose do not become grift.

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has no particular affection for the Brits, remaining silent ought to be a no-brainer. who, as colonists, once oppressed his Instead, the secretary of state has declared Divided by family in Kenya. A sinister significance U.S. neutrality and mediation in ringing is placed upon his returning a bust of tones: “now, we cannot make either one An Ocean churchill that George W. Bush had placed do so [i.e., negotiate], but we think it is the in the Oval Office. And in recent days the right way to proceed. So we will be saying The Obama administration is U.S. has somewhat ostentatiously declared this publicly, as I have been, and we will undermining the Anglo-American its neutrality between Britain and Argen - continue to encourage exactly the kind of special relationship tina over the disputed Falkland Islands. It discussion across the table that needs to all adds up. take place.” BY JOHN O’SULLIVAN Or does it? These offenses are of very Since the British have no intention of different orders of magnitude. Frankly, as a negotiating away their own territory, this nce again—the fifth time in loyal subject of Her Majesty, I find the con- is support for Argentina posing as neutral- recent years, by my count—the cerns expressed by some Brits (including ity. But since the Falklands are armed to so-called Anglo-American good friends) over such matters as the the teeth, it offers no real help to Buenos O special relationship is being return of the churchill bust to be silly and Aires. So it may annoy the Brits today, but dismissed as a self-destructive illusion demeaning. even if it really was to reflect a it will irritate the Argentinians even more (self-destructive for Britain, that is) by the disdain for churchill and his countrymen— tomorrow. It is hard to make sense of such usual geostrategic experts. Mostly it is and I can think of ten other reasons why diplomacy except as a form of gesture pol- Brits who go in for this hand-wringing, Obama might want to return the bust— itics. It has the faint flavor of anti-colonial generally those who want their country what of it? That disdain would reflect badly disapproval (though one British wag noted to submerge itself constitutionally in a on the president rather than on churchill. that the distance between Britain and the european federal state and who see a close And whatever happened to the stiff upper Falklands was almost identical to that friendship with America as an irritating lip? Unless the islanders have turned into a between Obama’s birthplace in Hawaii obstacle to that end. Occasionally, howev- pack of huffy adolescent girls, they could and the U.S. mainland). It signals a prefer- er, the odd American confirms British fears simply shrug their shoulders at his folly ence for Argentina and Latin America over that the relationship is one in which Lon- and determine not to trust his judgment on a traditional Western ally. And it is likely don makes all the sacrifices and Wash - matters of greater importance. rooted in the cynical calculation that ington gets all the gains. As for Britain’s colonial history, it’s the Brits will get over it when American In March of last year, for instance, the nothing new that sheltered Ivy League mediation quietly fails. Daily Telegraph confirmed its readers’ graduates tend to be as reflexively anti- All these gestures, however, point in the most masochistic fears when it reported imperialist as . . . well, as cuban intelli- same direction: a wish to distance the U.S. that an anonymous State Department offi- gence agents. If the president shares this from Britain in international politics and cial had dismissed not just the relationship elite prejudice (and he may not), he should a willingness to take risks in doing so. but Britain along with it: “There’s nothing reflect on the fact—very fairly recounted Several ideological currents feed this ten- special about Britain,” he fulminated. in his autobiography—that his grand - dency. If you are a left-liberal averse to “You’re just the same as the other 190 father, who served the British colonists U.S. intervention abroad, you probably coun tries in the world. You shouldn’t ex - as a cook in their army, actually admired won’t look kindly on a country that is pect special treatment.” them. He was one example among mil- America’s most dependable ally in such naturally I wondered if this diplomat lions (two and a half million Indians who ventures. State Department analysts (even was the same State Department official volunteered to fight for Britain in World those not in the pay of cuba) have long who, in 2006, had publicly dismissed the War II among them) who knew that, with shared the belief of euro-federalists that special relationship as a “myth” and “one- all its flaws, British rule was infinitely the special relationship is an obstacle sided,” complaining that President Bush better for its subjects than the slavery, to Britain’s inevitable (and desirable) had given Prime Minister Blair very little endemic war, and oppressive misrule that absorp tion by a unified europe. Foreign- in return for British support over Iraq. This preceded it. The problem for Britain is not policy “realists” have a visceral dislike of was one Kendall Myers, who, in June that Obama regards its imperial history as the Anglophile nostalgia that in their view 2009, was revealed to have a special rela- shameful but that too many Brits take the explains the special relationship and dis- tionship of his very own: He was “Agent same misguided and disabling view. torts hard-headed calculations of national 202” of the cuban intelligence service, and Washington’s intervention in the Falk - interest. (Some realists can get very emo- had, for 30 years, spied for castro because lands dispute, however, is really serious tional about this.) And then there are the he strongly disapproved of America. So and even ominous. Britain is a close ally; anti-imperialists, both modern academic there’s a kind of logic in his contempt for a its troops are fighting alongside G.I.s in and traditional Yankee. close American ally and his wish to frac- Afghanistan; and it has both international earlier administrations have succumbed ture the link with Britain. law and the Falkland Islanders on its side in to these ideological temptations. The first This time around, however, the critics of the dispute with Argentina. A still greater President Bush started by “signaling” that the special relationship are more numerous consideration is that almost 300 British Germany had replaced the U.K. as Amer - and more varied. Also, they seemingly servicemen lost their lives recovering the ica’s closest european ally because geo- have more to chew on. Stories have filtered islands in recent memory. Supporting Lon - economics had replaced geopolitics as the out of Washington that President Obama don or, if that is too bold a stance, simply organizing principle of U.S. policy. Then

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Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait; Ger - hegemonic world civilization for the last many and geo-economics both took a back 200 years. Its constituent elements include PORTSMOUTH seat. In a dangerous and unstable world, a “the idea of a global economy governed by INSTITUTE 2010 dependable ally with military forces can free trade and sound finance and respect for come in very handy. property rights, and the idea of a global A superficial (but not wrong) view of the polity governed by the principles of demo - special relationship explains its perennial cracy, human rights and the rule of law.” usefulness as follows: Born in World War II In other words, the special relationship and strengthened during the Cold War, the is merely one conscious expression in Anglo-American alliance is a unique exam- diplomacy, politics, and military affairs of ple of military, diplomatic, and intelligence a wider and deeper set of cultural under- cooperation that goes very deep in the standings. Nor is this an exercise in nos- governing institutions of both countries. talgia, as the critics tend to assume. Administrations come and go, but there is a Gam ble notes with reluctant awe that “by degree of inter-operability between the the end of the 20th century the whole British and American armed forces and world was once more being governed by intelligence agencies far greater than that the Anglo-American conception of a lib- between those of the U.S. and any other eral world order.” nation—except, significantly, Australia. That order was shaken, at least temporar- at Portsmouth Abbey School The example usually given is that the Lon- ily, by the financial crash. As the title of Portsmouth, Rhode Island don representative of the CIA sits in at Gamble’s book suggests, moreover, it is meetings of Britain’s Joint Intelligence now threatened with replacement—both Committee (well, most of the meeting). But internationally and in British politics— Newman and the there are many such arrangements. This by more regulatory, interventionist, and intimate cooperation is underpinned by the centralizing conceptions deriving from Intellectual Tradition habit of working together over a long peri- continental Europe. Emboldened by the June 10-13, 2010 od—and by the close social connections financial crisis, France and Germany seek that grow from that. But all these links to regulate the investment flows of hedge Speakers will include: depend on something more significant than funds and “Anglo-Saxon speculators”— habit or politics or affection. For realists are over the united opposition of the U.S. and Fr. Richard Duffield right to mock the idea that national policies U.K. treasuries. But how long will that The Newman Cause should or even can rest on such straws. In unity last? Under the Lisbon treaty, the City reality all these things rest on the fact that Paul Griffiths of London—approximately one-fifth of the two countries are part of the same the U.K. economy—will come under the The Grammar of Assent cultural-political sphere. They tend to see increasing sway of Brussels. Fr. Ian Ker the world in the same ways—and accord- As Britain’s election campaign gets Newman’s ingly to act in the world in the same ways. under way, no major party promises to roll Hermeneutic of Continuity James C. Bennett has popularized this back these regulatory interventions. Indeed, wider cultural concept in his books and arti- all the talk is in the other direction, notably Peter Kreeft cles on “the Anglosphere” (which includes about greater defense cooperation between The Dream of Gerontius other English-speaking countries as well as Britain and France. That would inevitably America and Britain). He explains the dif- come at the expense of Anglo-American Patrick Reilly ferent ways in which “Anglosphere excep- defense and intelligence collaboration. Yet Newman and the Renewal of tionalism” has flowered in different climes the strongest natural supporters of Anglo - Catholic Identity in Higher Education when transplanted from its original cultural sphere collaboration, the opposition Tories, Fr. George Rutler soil of English individualism—but also are (with a few exceptions) oddly quiet on how it has retained common features that such topics. They want to avoid a row with The Anglican Newman facilitate an easy cooperation between “Europe,” even though “Europe” is short- & Recent Developments Anglo sphere countries. The Chilean- hand for the gradual dissolution of their Edward Short: Australian scholar Claudio Véliz, in his main national political tradition. That, in Newman and the Americans book The New World of the Gothic Fox, turn, compels them to avoid any rhetoric similarly contrasts sterile Spanish order that might awaken patriotic memories. So Deacon Jack Sullivan: with the English liberty that in his view has Britain drifts towards an illiberal European My Miraculous Healing shaped the modern world. And this concept future and away from the U.S. and the ... and more to come. also has more cautious adherents, if not Anglosphere on a great sea of ignorance necessarily admirers, on the left. In his book about its own history and boredom with its Between Europe and America: The Future own identity. To register please visit of British Politics, Andrew Gamble, pro - Unless that changes, Americans will www.portsmouthinstitute.org fessor of politics at Cambridge University, soon have to discover Australia—if only to sees what he calls “Anglo-America” as the distance themselves from it.

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This clash has been going on for quite a This old-fashioned perspective is vali- while. Supported by small amounts of fed- dated in the oddest place: Hollywood. In The President’s eral funding, abstinence programs gained films, sex usually happens, steamily, be - a toehold in classrooms in the mid-1990s, tween attractive unmarried couples who New Sex Ed particularly in middle schools. This out- have just met. But at the end, the loving raged the Left, which worried about losing couple heads off together, in a vague but So long, love, abstinence, and marriage its monopoly over sex ed. At the federal presumably long-lasting union. A film that level, Planned Parenthood and Kinsey- ended with the protagonists cavalierly BY ROBERT RECTOR inspired groups such as Sexuality Infor- going their separate ways would offend or mation and Education Council of the disappoint most of the audience. This FEw weeks back, the main- United States and Advocates for Youth script-writing habit shows that the hu - stream media were scandalized strove to abolish the modest federal fund- man mind (even if only subconsciously) by a new study showing that ing for abstinence and replace it with regards casual sex as unrewarding, and A abstinence education works. revved-up safe-sex programs. These alter- believes that sex should, optimally, lead to The study found that an eight-hour absti- native programs were camouflaged with love and bonding. It is this commonsense nence course dropped sexual-activity rates such misleading names as “abstinence- view, implicitly embraced by nearly all among teens by a third, and that the de - plus,” “comprehensive sex ed,” and, most adults, that abstinence education strives to crease continued two years after the recently, “evidence-based programs.” reinforce. course. By contrast, a “safe sex” program The problem these advocacy groups Not so comprehensive sex ed. These and a third program combining abstinence have is that parents overwhelmingly sup- curricula read as if they were written joint- and contraceptive messages had no effect port the messages in abstinence education, ly by Hugh Hefner and a school nurse. Sex in reducing sexual activity or increasing and oppose those in “safe sex.” For exam- is all about transitory physical pleasure: contraceptive use. ple, abstinence teaches that teens should The goal is to attain it while avoiding seri- Abstinence experts weren’t surprised. abstain from sex at least until they have ous disease and unwanted pregnancy. Eleven prior studies, which the media finished high school. Over 90 percent of They offer a present-oriented view of sex chose not to report, have shown similar parents agree. By contrast, comprehensive without commitment, entanglement, or results. The latest study, however, using sex-ed programs teach that it is okay for consequence—a world designed for 17- the most rigorous methods, and published teens to have sex as long as they use a con- year-old males. in the prestigious Archives of Pediatric dom. Only 9 percent of parents agree. Their main message: Hook up, have and Adolescent Medicine of the American Abstinence curricula teach that sex fun, but wear that condom. Condom rhap- Medical Association, was too prominent should be linked to “love, intimacy, and sody is pervasive, with teachers telling to be ignored. commitment” and that these qualities are students to “eroticize condom use with The claim that abstinence programs most likely to be found in marriage. Again, partner . . . use condoms as a method of don’t work is one of several myths used to 90 percent of parents agree. But the sex-ed foreplay . . . act sexy/sensual when putting attack abstinence funding. In addition, lobby is appalled at “privileging” mar- the condom on . . . hide them on your body opponents have claimed that the federal riage over casual relationships, cohabita- and ask your partner to find it . . . wrap government funds only abstinence—but a tion, or “hooking up.” them as a present and give them to your recent study by the U.S. Department of The contrast between the two approach- partner before a romantic dinner.” Health and Human Services found that, es grows out of a fundamental difference Aware that not all parents will be even during the Bush presidency, the fed- of philosophy. when I speak to parents thrilled with programs that teach students eral government spent $4 on programs about sex ed, I often ask: “Suppose we to “tease each other manually while proselytizing for condoms and distribut- invented a pill that offered 100 percent putting on the condom,” comprehensive- ing them to teens for every $1 it spent on protection against pregnancy and all sex-ed writers usually “balance” their per- abstinence. STDs. would you then be happy to see missive texts with token statements about Opponents have also charged, falsely, your 16-year-old sexually active or to abstinence. They may comment briefly that abstinence education leaves youth have your kid at college hooking up with that “abstinence is the safest choice.” ignorant of contraception. while it’s true random partners?” Nearly all parents Since the text has just spent 50 pages that abstinence programs as such, allotted answer no, but many have difficulty artic- explaining that sex with condoms is fun little classroom time, do not teach about ulating why. and really safe, however, such comments contraception, in most cases students learn A good abstinence program explains simply make abstinence seem pointless. basic information about contraception in why. Abstinence teaches that human Students are never given a reason to ab - other venues, such as a biology or health sexuality is predominantly psychological, stain. No surprise, since comprehensive- class. emotional, and moral rather than physical. sex-ed experts believe no such reason The rap on abstinence education in the while physical pleasure from sex is very exists: In their world, protected teen sex mainstream media has been a smoke- important, it’s not an end in itself. The has no downside. screen to obscure the real issue: a clash of proper function of this pleasure is to A final difference between the compet- values. strengthen a long-term bond of love and ing sex-ed models involves the collapse of commitment. Sex that does not promote marriage in lower-income communities. Mr. Rector is a senior research fellow at the Heritage long-term emotional bonding is to be Federal abstinence funding began as part Foundation. avoided. of welfare reform in the mid-1990s with

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the goal of slowing the growth of illegit - in both promotion and turnout, was imacy. Nearly 40 percent of American surely the instructional presentation on children are born outside marriage, most Bawd and oral sex called “Babeland’s Lip Tricks,” of them to less-educated women who which was sponsored by a sex-toy com- will have a tough time going it alone. In Man at Yale pany. The event’s planners were wise to many lower-income communities, the rate book one of Yale’s larger lecture halls: reaches 80 percent. The decline of mar- Involving lux, veritas, When I arrived, every seat in the house riage and the growth of single parenthood and plenty of adult toys was full, including those in the balcony, are the predominant causes of child pover- and hundreds of extra students had ty in the U.S. The cost to taxpayers is some BY NATHAN HARDEN flooded the floors and aisles, with scores $300 billion in welfare each year. In low- more huddled around the back doors. income neighborhoods, abstinence pro- T sounds like the opening of a porno- Some sat on the stage itself. I estimate grams were designed to be a small first graphic movie: An attractive young there were 2,000 students present—more step in confronting this disaster. teacher saunters up to the black- than a third of the undergraduate student To comprehensive sex ed, on the other I board. Next, she ducks behind the body. hand, the collapse of marriage is irrele- podium to slip off her tights. Before you The instructor was a burlesque per - vant. True, these programs talk about know it, she’s standing topless and bare- for mer from New York called, simply, “teen pregnancy,” but only about 7 percent chested in front of the entire class, call- “Dar linda.” Using a projector screen and of non-marital pregnancies happen to girls ing for a few student “volunteers.” But various rubber props, she demonstrated under 18. About the vastly larger problem this story isn’t fiction. oral-sex techniques in front of the rapt of non-marital pregnancy and births The teacher, in this case, was a porn audience for an hour and a half. among young adults, sex ed is conspicu- actress named Madison Young. Young Pornography has always been a part ously silent. was invited to speak at Yale University of Sex Week—more so every time, it Moreover, the Left’s omnipresent solu- in February as part of a nine-day series seems. Of the 34 events on this year’s tion (ever more condoms) is irrelevant to of lectures, panels, and special events Sex Week schedule, eleven featured porn the real cause of non-marital pregnancy known as “Sex Week at Yale.” stars or adult-film producers as primary among low-income adults and teens. Har - Introduced in 2002, Sex Week at Yale speakers or performers. That’s about one vard sociologist Kathryn Edin recently has courted controversy from the begin- event in three. studied non-marital pregnancies among low-income girls and women and found that none were caused by lack of access Of the 34 events on this year’s to birth control. Rather, the pregnancies were deliberate, or at least not specifically Sex Week schedule, eleven featured avoided. Abstinence education seeks to address porn stars or adult-film producers the complex motivations underlying non- as primary speakers or performers. marital pregnancies and births. It attempts to deter them by explaining the value That’s about one event in three. of marriage to adults and, especially, to children. But teaching low-income youth ning. Held every other year, it brings to In 2008, a screening of pornography about the benefits of marriage treads heav- campus everyone from porn stars to sex- was shut down mid-reel after organizers ily on the bunions of political correctness. toy manufacturers, and has grown bigger became alarmed by the film’s depictions To the Left, the pro-marriage information with each installment, this year topping of sexual violence against women. This in abstinence programs is a compelling 30 events. They included, to name a few, year, however, sadomasochistic porno - reason to eject them from the schools. a presentation on “kink” and fetishism, graphy was back on the program. On Thus President Obama and Speaker a lingerie show that used Yale students the afternoon of February 13, Madison Pelosi have abolished federal abstinence as models, two presentations in defense Young was scheduled to give a lecture on programs and provided new funding for of non-monogamous relationships, an sadomasochism entitled “BDSM 101,” comprehensive sex ed. A thick smoke instructional presentation on masturba- a presentation billed as an opportunity screen still blankets the issue. Con - tion, a female-condom giveaway, and a for students to learn how to “build new gressional liberals would like everyone to graphic presentation on erotic genital levels of intimacy, trust and connection believe that sex-ed programs share the piercing. with your partner/s.” same goals; the only question is which I first experienced Sex Week as an Her talk was held in William Harkness program is most effective—as it were, undergraduate. This year, I returned to Hall, the building on Yale’s central quad which makes the trains run on time. But cover the event as a journalist. where, as a student, I attended a class the real issue is not the trains’ timeliness, The biggest event of Sex Week 2010, on international relations. I returned to but where the trains are going. Abstinence Room 208 for a lecture on relations of a and comprehensive sex ed proceed from Mr. Harden graduated from Yale in 2009. He is very different kind. opposing values—and are bound for currently writing a memoir of his experiences as a Near the classroom door, bras, panties, very different destinations. conservative student at Yale. and briefs were laid out across a chair,

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along with dozens of condoms. These way. The speaker, David Schaengold, items were free for the taking, cour- had been invited by the Anscombe tesy of Sex Week’s corporate sponsors. Society at Yale, a small campus group A Little (Merchandise is promoted or given devoted to the cause of premarital absti- away at nearly every one of Sex Week’s nence. The event drew about 14 stu- Work events.) dents. I passed on the latex and took a seat in Schaengold explained that, with the By rights, Nancy Pelosi should the back row. At the front of the class- sexual revolution, traditional ideas about resemble Tip O’Neill room, Young’s manner was breezy and sex gave way and “consent” became the casual. She encouraged students to shed only moral test. The modern view ig - BY ROB LONG their coats and extra layers. “I want you nores the possibility that “some sexual to be comfortable.” acts are incompatible with human digni- n Hollywood, when we say that some- She began by explaining the basics of ty.” He asked the audience, “Can we one has had “some good work done,” BDSM. “The ‘B’ stands for ‘bondage,’” move from saying what is permissible to we’re talking about eye lifts. Young said. “It can be handcuffs. It can I And lip implants, tummy tucks, asking what is right and what is good?” be zip ties. It can be rope—anything At that moment, on the other side of cheek pulls, lipo, chemical peels, rhino- that’s restraining you. It can be neckties. the wall, a porn star was standing half- plasties, breast augmentations, upper-arm “The ‘D’ is for ‘discipline’ and ‘domi- naked before a crowd of students while trims, and neck reductions. nance.’ . . . Dominance is more about volunteers inflicted pain upon her for the There’s “good work” and “bad work.” power. The ‘S’ stands for ‘submissive,’ instructive benefit of the class. Good work is work that you can barely often associated with ‘service’—a domi- Margaret Blume, a Yale senior, resents notice. It’s restrained. Youthful but not nant and slave, a teacher and a school- the hypersexualized atmosphere that Sex young. The neck is smooth but not tight. boy. Week promotes. “It’s pretty degrading,” The bosom ample but not cartoonish. The “‘S & M’ stands for ‘sadism and she said to me. “It just seems to rob many eyes and the surrounding tissue are open masochism.’ Sadists give sensation, or things of dignity. Obviously, as a woman and clear of sagging pockets of eyebrow what might be referred to as pain.” in particular, objectification is more fat. Young paused for a moment. “Is prevalent this week. The whole week The actor or actress who has had good everyone in here 18 and over?” She had seems to just demystify everything and work looks younger, and what people in the to make sure before playing a clip from de-reverence everything.” plastic-surgery business call “refreshed.” one of her films, because in it she is As people like Blume see it, Yale is not The actor or actress who has had bad bound by all four limbs, and a man is simply being permissive; it is pushing a work done looks like a burn victim: skin lashing her with a whip. Large red welts specific sexual agenda. Or, as a female blasted smooth; permanently startled eyes, appear across her torso. I averted my friend of mine put it, “It’s not Sex Week, finger-in-an-electric-socket wide; and fat gaze but could still hear the sound of it’s Have Sex Week.” lips surrounding a mouth pulled into a blows as well as the man’s taunts, which For the last eight years, university ghastly rictus that suggests, more than any- are too obscene to print. He orders her to administrators have played willing host thing, some kind of amphibious sea crea- repeat the insults as he beats her, which to the biennial pornification of Yale—not ture walking the earth in Juicy Couture. she does. just the screening of pornography but its In bad work, the pieces don’t fit to gether, After the clip ended, Young began a promotion and distribution, and not in as in a clumsy Photoshop experiment. series of demonstrations. She took a the dorm room but in the classroom. In The worst part about bad work is, despite young female student from the front row both 2008, as a student, and 2010, as a the line-less face and the elastic bosoms, and bound her hands with a zip tie, then journalist, I witnessed volunteers, guest it somehow makes the subject look older led her around the room so everyone lecturers, and, in a few cases, even Yale and more decrepit. could get a closer look. Students ap - professors passing out to students para- Speaker of the House nancy Pelosi has plauded. Young asked the next volunteer, phernalia such as vibrators and porno- had, in my opinion as someone who has a young man this time, to pin clothespins graphic DVDs. Sixty years ago, William worked in Hollywood for over 20 years, along her inner thighs. (At first, he was F. Buckley Jr. faulted Yale for an “extra- good work done. Mostly, I think (and I’m too delicate. “Put it on with an inten- ordinarily irresponsible educational atti- no doctor), some judicious Botox injec- tion,” she critiqued.) He and another tude” on the basis of much less. tions around the hairline and forehead. student, on the count of three, tore the Maybe an eye tuck. Almost certainly some clothespins away with an attached string. work around the mouth. But honestly, she Young exhaled deeply. “That was won- looks pretty good for a powerful and un - derful,” she said. popular multi-millionairess. Young’s next demonstration began Sure, she’s got that wide-eyed, startled with her stripping to the waist, but I can- look that people get when the surgeon tugs not say what happened after she started too hard on that final suture, but my guess attaching pinching devices to her naked is that she comes by that look honestly. breasts, because I left the room. Who, in her position, wouldn’t be startled I went next door to Room 207, where “Quiet desperation— by the torrent of opposition to Obama’s a very different presentation was under that’s the best kind.” health-care legislation? How could she

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not be shocked—and how could her face not show it?—to discover that she and her party are in free fall, from back-to-back smashing victories in 2006 and 2008, from sweeping majorities in both houses of Congress and a popular president in the White House, to this? To procedural tricks and outright bribery? To the speaker of the House begging and threatening members of her own team in a desperate, rat-in-a- coffee-can, crazy-making effort to pass the single most unpopular piece of federal Looks great The real thing legislation since . . . since ever? And in an election year? we’re saying, essentially, is that an actor or exactly the kind of thing that administra- All in all, I’d say she looks pretty good, actress is a lot older than he or she looks— tion would have passed with O’Neill’s considering. No, wait, that’s too stingy: and probably deserves to look a lot worse guidance. She looks amazing. than he or she does—and that we as insid- (If you’re too young to know who The last speaker of the House whose ers can identify the work and where on the Walter Mondale is, I’ll pause briefly while physical appearance seemed to symbolize body it took place; but we’re also assuming you consult Wikipedia. But the nutshell the exhausted and tapped-out energy of his that out there in America, the ordinary folk version is: Old Time Big Government party was corpulent, red-faced Tip O’Neill, will buy it. Democrat, lost big to Reagan in 1984. who, as far as I know (and I’m no doctor), In Hollywood, we imagine a vast nation Pledged in his convention address to raise didn’t have any work done, ever. of easily duped proles who really and truly taxes. And no, that last sentence does not O’Neill was a streetfighter, of course, believe that an actress in her late 40s has contain a typo.) and a political gangster back when that grapefruit-firm breasts and a neck as If you could somehow “refresh” Walter really mattered—back when politics was smooth as PVC pipe. When an actor comes Mondale, it would be hard to do better than really all about ward heeling and steak frys in to read for a role with saucer eyes and turning him into Barack Obama. Obama’s and buying the votes you needed when you teeth so white they’re actually blue, we all sleekness and lean lines; he’s dashing needed them. O’Neill punished his ene- don’t think, “Eek! A monster!” We think: and looks great in a suit. As a piece of cast- mies and rewarded his friends, and he had “He looks pretty good for 63,” and we give ing, there’s no better choice. But no matter the face to prove it—a pocked, veiny red him the part, because in Hollywood there’s how hard they try, politics still isn’t Holly - face that showed a thousand late-night ben- no better choice for a role than a pro, than wood. ders spent arm-twisting committee chair- someone who knows the job and has Old School legislation requires some men, jowls that drooped under the weight played a million versions of it but still Old School politics; even good work looks of big union pancake breakfasts, and a looks okay. A little weird, maybe (espe - like work. The American people might belly bursting with pork-barrel spending cially around the eyes), but okay. forgive some judicious tummy suctioning and special amendments and last-minute Say this for gin-blossomed old Tip and neck darts on their favorite stars, but earmarks. O’Neill—he was the real thing. He looked they’re not as crazy about that kind of Tip O’Neill lumbered around D.C. like the part. In a true-to-life movie about thing on gigantic new federal expenditures, the old Democratic party itself—powerful, American politics, he would have been the hence the ferocious opposition to Obama- huge, blue-collar, a little soused. And then perfect star: charming, working-class, cor- care. And because the Democratic party is along came Reagan and a reenergized Re - rupt, emotional, persuasive. If you were made up, like Hollywood, of people who publican party, and suddenly Tip O’Neill trying to pass an enormous new federal believe that you can sell anybody anything wasn’t such a great physical symbol any- entitlement package that required massive if you get the optics right, they’re just not more. Suddenly, he was the butt of Johnny new spending and crippling tax hikes, he’s hearing it. Carson’s jokes; the punchline to a hundred the guy you’d cast to do it, and he’d do But everyone else is hearing it, loud and Republican fundraisers; a liability, in other it over dozens of lunchtime porterhouse clear. And the sound they’re hearing from GETTY / words. steaks. A brittle and Botoxed unpopular Washington, D.C., is the sound of a hun- It’s impossible to imagine what a “re - millionairess, tone-deaf to the wider coun- dred sutures bursting; a thousand brows freshed” Tip O’Neill might have looked try and besotted with perks, just isn’t the re-furrowing themselves; the crackle and like—I’m thinking a little Joe Biden right fit for the job. Speaker of the House roar of a million wrinkles re-etching their KARL SCHUMACHER : crossed with Barney Frank—but it’s safe to Nancy Pelosi will be 70 years old at the end lines along the eyes, mouth, ears, and nose; NEILL ’ say that cosmetics weren’t the problem. of March. And she looks great. the noise of jowls and bellies reinflating AP O / And as with speaker of the House and She shouldn’t. She should look a little and bursting out—in other words, the unpopular millionairess Nancy Pelosi, a more like Old School Tip—a little heavier sound of a lot of work going horribly little work wasn’t the solution. and redder and jowlier. What she’s trying wrong, a greasy federal boondoggle burst- Which is the problem. Because in Holly - to pass, ultimately, is a signature piece of ing into life, and the Democratic party wood, when we say that someone has had legislation from the lost Walter Mondale returning to its roots. LAUREN VICTORIA BURKE : a little work done, we’re acknowledging administration: a big-government boon- I’m no doctor, but I think that is going

PELOSI that work, in fact, has been done. What doggle, a massive new entitlement— to be a hard one to fix.

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The Descent of Liberalism Having repudiated classical liberty, which once counterbalanced their politics of social reform, the Left today confronts the abyss

BY MICHAEL KNOX BERAN

n his 1950 book The Liberal Imagination, Lionel Trilling lost this equipoise; the progress of the social imagination, with said that “in the United States at this time liberalism is not its faith in the power of social science to improve people’s only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.” lives, has forced liberals to relinquish the principles and even I Liberalism was no less the dominant political tradition; a the language of the classical conception of liberty. coherent conservative opposition had yet to emerge. Over the The two philosophies that animated liberalism in its prime next 60 years, however, the liberal imagination lost its hold on were widely different in both origin and aspiration. Classical the American mind. In October 2009 Gallup found that just 20 liberty is founded on the belief that all men are created equal; percent of Americans described themselves as liberals; twice that they should be treated equally under the law; and that they as many called themselves conservatives. should be permitted the widest liberty of action consistent with What happened? Part of the answer lies in liberalism’s loss public tranquility and the safety of the state. The classical of an element that was essential both to its intellectual vitality vision traces its pedigree to Protestant dissenters who in the and to its popular appeal. Liberalism in the middle of the 20th 17th century struggled to obtain freedom of conscience. Their century maintained an equilibrium between the antagonistic critique of religious favoritism was later expanded into a critique principles within it. The classical liberalism that descended of state-sponsored privilege in general. from Jefferson and Jackson survived in the movement; the The American patriots who took up arms against George III social liberalism that derived from the theories of 19th-century thought it wrong that some Englishmen were represented in social philosophers, though it was steadily gaining ground, had Parliament while others were not. This sort of privilege, in the not yet obtained a complete ascendancy. Liberalism to day has Old Whig language of liberty from which classical liberalism de scends, was known as “corruption.” The revolutionary patri- Mr. Beran is a contributing editor of City Journal. His most recent book is ots, it is true, countenanced their own forms of corruption; Forge of Empires 1861–1871: Three Revolutionary Statesmen and when they came to write a Constitution for their new republic,

the World They Made. the charter tacitly recognized slavery and other forms of DARREN GYGI

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discrimination. The country, in Lincoln’s words, was “con- take decent account of the feelings and opinions thus ex - ceived in liberty,” but not until it experienced various “new” pressed, and yet would assure a sufficient concentration of births of freedom was the promise of its founding ideal extend- governmental authority, sufficient stability in its exercise, and ed to all of its citizens. sufficient selectivity in the recruitment of those privileged to Unlike classical liberty, social liberty is formed on the con- exert it, to permit the formulation and implementation of hope- viction that if a truly equitable society is to emerge, the state ful long-term programs of social and environmental change.” must treat certain groups of people differently from other A similar administrative ideal is found in the 1912 novel Philip groups. Only through a more or less comprehensive adjust- Dru: Administrator, written by Woodrow Wilson’s éminence ment of the interests of various classes will a really democrat- grise, Col. Edward House. ic polity emerge. The social vision traces its origins to thinkers The privileged class of experts favored by liberals like who in the 19th century argued that the close study of social Kennan was itself grounded in discrimination. It had some- facts would reveal the laws that govern human behavior, much thing of the complexion, Milton and Rose Friedman observed, as physics and biology reveal the laws that govern nature. of an aristocratic caste: Auguste Comte, for example, believed it possible to elaborate a “social physics” (physique sociale); Karl Marx purported to Believers in aristocracy and socialism share a faith in centralized discover the dialectical laws of human history. rule, in rule by command rather than by voluntary cooperation. Rulers skilled in the social sciences would translate the new They differ in who should rule: whether an elite determined by knowledge into codes of behavior that would organize man’s birth or experts supposedly chosen on merit. Both proclaim, no activities in a more efficient and coordinated way than had doubt sincerely, that they wish to promote the well-being of the “general public,” that they know what is in the “public interest” hitherto been possible. (The classical liberal believes that and how to obtain it better than the ordinary person. Both, there- however much the lawgiver knows of the innumerable factors fore, profess a paternalistic philosophy. that create desirable patterns of social order, he never knows enough to undertake an extensive renovation of society with any hope of success.) The new social technic, it was thought, F the object of American liberals who embraced the social would produce more equitable forms of social order than those imagination was to promote the well-being of the com- created by the “invisible hand” of voluntary, spontaneous I monwealth, they could do this, they believed, only if they cooperation. A new communal life would overcome what first promoted the well-being of particular groups within it. Comte called the “per enn i al Western malady, the revolt of the The result was a preference state. Although the reformers jus- individual against the species.” Man would be liberated from tified the new regime with various technical arguments, it was the biological or class-inspired rapacity that too often made in many ways a rationalization of the informal preference pol- him an “asocial” being. Yet although they dreamt of a more itics and group sensibility of the old Democratic machine. In perfect human union, the social reformers made a fetish of the The Age of Reform (1955), Richard Hofstadter showed that “it very distinctions they sought to overcome. The wolf will even- was the boss who saw the needs of the immigrant and made tually lie down with the lamb, but in the meantime there is him the political instrument of the urban machine. The ma - enmity between the rich man and the poor man, the white- chine provided quick naturalization, jobs, social services, per- collar worker and the blue-collar worker, the bourgeois and the sonal access to authority, release from the surveillance of the proletarian. courts, deference to ethnic pride.” The “boss, particularly the The American liberals who in the last century embraced the Irish boss,” Hofstadter wrote, “. . . became a specialist in per- social imagination looked, not to its most extreme forms, but sonal relations and personal loyalties.” to the more modest permutations associated with the Fabian Social liberals, both Republicans and Democrats, sought to socialists of England and the adherents of Otto von Bismarck make the machine more accountable by transferring its opera- in Germany. Yet mild as the social idealism of the liberal tions from the party to the government. Favored groups were reformers was, it was, like the more rigorous theories of Comte given special deals fitted to their needs. Labor unions were and Marx, premised on the efficacy of discrimination between endowed with new privileges under the Norris–La Guardia Act groups and classes of men, and on the need for extensive of 1932, which placed them, the Harvard scholar Roscoe codes of commands that would realize the reformers’ vision Pound noted, in a protected legal category. Farmers were sub- of fairness—what in Europe is called dirigisme or droit sidized under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933; the administratif. New Deal’s Federal Theatre Project, Federal Arts Project, and Theodore Roosevelt, who in his 1910 “New Nationalism” Federal Writers’ Project assisted struggling thespians, painters, manifesto lamented the “absence of effective State and, espe- and literatuses. cially, national restraint upon unfair money-getting” in In establishing new systems of privileges and immunities for America, called for a paternal form of government that would particular groups, the social reformers believed that they were “control the mighty commercial forces” of the Republic. mitigating the unjust privileges and immunities of market capi - Under the system of social administration proposed by liber- talism. And it is true that when E. L. Godkin or Louis Brandeis als, experts trained in the social sciences would determine the opposed protective tariffs, or when Woodrow Wil son opposed needs of particular groups and oversee the allocation of combinations in restraint of trade, each was fingering a gen- resources. George F. Kennan, in his memoirs, sketched the uine instance of unfair privilege. The struggle against monop- social dream of a powerful administrative magistracy that oly, Wilson said, was “a second struggle for emancipation. . . . “would not demean or deceive [the people], would permit If America is not to have free enterprise, then she can have them to express freely their feelings and opinions, and would freedom of no sort whatsoever.”

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Others in the social-preference school went further and FDR himself, observing that government spending had ris en asserted that the free market was itself an unfair bulwark of dramatically under Hoover, campaigned in 1932 on a balanced- class privilege and corruption. Hofstadter, for example, argued budget platform. Hofstadter argued that Roosevelt afterwards that the Founders’ rhetoric of liberty and private property con- broke with the Jefferson-Jackson tradition of classical liberal- cealed a desire to preserve their own economic power. Their ism: The New Deal, he wrote in The Age of Reform, repre sented status as members of the rich, propertied classes determined a “drastic” departure from the older tradition. It would be more their politics and explains what Hofstadter called their “rigid accurate to say that FDR adjusted the balance between liberal- adherence to property rights.” ism’s competing elements. In The End of Reform (1995), Alan Whatever one thinks of these arguments, they were a depar- Brinkley showed that the New Dealers’ faith in “statist plan- ture from the classical theory of liberty. Andrew Jackson con- ning” waned during the course of the Roosevelt presidency. demned the second Bank of the United States not because he Hartz believed that even the most radical New Deal reforms believed that private property or money made in the market were made “on the basis of a submerged and absolute [classi- was objectionable, but because he believed that money made cal] liberal faith.” If Roosevelt embraced the public-assistance with special help from the government was objectionable. He measures of the Social Security Act of 1935, he also warned Even as liberals in the last century promoted social policies, the classical countercurrent within liberalism mitigated the hubris that the new social ideal might otherwise have bred in its disciples.

portrayed his attack on the bank (a private corporation with that the dole advocated by champions of the So zi al staat was “a proprietary access to public funds) not as an attempt to regu- narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” late a corrupt private sector but as an attempt to abolish the Federal spending under the New Deal tells a story of what in “exclusive privileges” the bank had been granted by the state. our day would be called fiscal restraint. Spending rose to just In the “full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of over 8 percent of the gross domestic product in 1933, the first superior industry, economy, and virtue,” Jackson said, “every year of Roosevelt’s presidency, an increase of slightly more man is equally entitled to protection by law.” The “gifts of than one percentage point from Hoover’s last year; it reached Heaven,” for the classical liberal, were legitimate; the gifts of a pre–World War II high of 10.7 percent in 1934. (By compar- the state were suspect. ison, federal spending in 2009 accounted for 24.7 percent of In spite of the challenge posed by the social imagination, the GDP, and is expected to exceed 25 percent in 2010.) Total classical element survived in mid-20th-century American lib- government spending—federal, state, and lo cal—in 1934 did eralism. A political movement, unlike a political theory, does not exceed 20 percent of GDP; in 2010 it is expected to not necessarily suffer from its internal contradictions; the lack approach 45 percent. of doctrinal purity that degrades a paper philosophy often strengthens a program that aims at practical results. Even as liberals in the last century promoted social policies, the classi- F the social element in liberalism spoke to the electorate’s cal countercurrent within liberalism mitigated the hubris that hopes and its generous idealism, the classical-liberal element the new social ideal might otherwise have bred in its disciples. I spoke to its desire for continuity and its attachment to Bliss there was in that social dawn, and the temptation to America’s founding inspirations. Maintaining a balance between overreach was strong. “American socialists and liberals,” Ed - the two contending philosophies required considerable states- mund Wilson wrote in the 1971 edition of To the Finland manship on the part of liberal leaders. The social doctrines held Station, believed that it was possible “to get rid of an oppres- the promise of a brave new world, yet the classical-liberal ele- sive past, to scrap a commercial civilization and to found, as ment, though it had less intrinsic appeal for visionaries, survived Trotsky prophesied, the first really human society. We were the New Deal and contributed to liberalism’s post–World War II very naïve about this.” Liberalism’s leaders were less naïve. appeal. The old antipathy to state-sanctioned privilege led Classical liberalism formed part of their standard intellectual Truman to desegregate the military and Lyndon Johnson to equipment, and it acted as a corrective to utopian arrogance. sponsor civil-rights legislation. If Roosevelt had, until Yalta at Woodrow Wilson, although he presided over an expansion of any rate, made it his policy to vindicate the liberties of Europe, the powers of the federal government, counted such classical Truman laid the foundation for the Cold War struggle against the liberals as John Bright and Richard Cobden among his he roes. socialism of the USSR. In 1924 John W. Davis, an unreconstructed Jef fer son i an, John F. Kennedy not only filled a number of posts in his headed the Democratic ticket. In The Liberal Tradition in administration with Republicans—among them C. Douglas America Louis Hartz argued that even such “Comtian” social Dillon, Robert McNamara, and McGeorge Bundy—he was planners as Lester Ward and Herbert Croly could not bring willing to be guided by the advice of classical liberals. In 1962 themselves to “transcend” America’s classical-liberal or he overruled economist Paul Samuelson and proposed tax cuts. “Lockian” consensus. Rejecting Keynesian spending models that are closely tied to

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the preference regime and enable politicians to distribute so the classical liberal argues. By subsidizing poverty, welfare- money to favored groups, Kennedy resolved instead to promote state policies perpetuated it. The public-assistance measures of growth through private investment in the marketplace. He the Social Security Act made barriers that are permeable in a brushed aside those in his administration, such as Arthur M. healthy society harder to penetrate for those bred up in the cul- Schlesinger Jr., who wanted to enlarge the preference architec- ture of the dole. The policies widened the chasms they were ture of the social state. Schlesinger, Kennedy said, “couldn’t get intended to bridge and checked the upward mobility that it through his head” that this was “1963, not 1933.” The presi- Lincoln thought characteristic of a free society. dent was quoted in Newsweek as saying, “Boy, when those lib- The classical liberal argues, too, that social-welfare erals start mixing into policy, it’s murder.” To the dismay of his codes—which give current beliefs about social problems the critics on the left, the balancing act Kennedy performed made force of law—tend to forestall innovation. The pressing prob- him popular. When his approval rating rose in April 1962, he lems of earlier generations have often been simply outgrown, told Newsweek’s Benjamin c. Bradlee, “What really breaks and the obstacles they confronted have been surmounted (with their [the Left’s] ass is that 78 percent. That really gets them.” little or no government intervention), through the spontaneous Kennedy was the last liberal president to make classical lib- progress of society, and through the emergence of new and eralism an important part of both his policy and his rhe tor ic. In unanticipated ways of doing things. The social reformer, far the half-century since he entered the White House, the social from embracing this voluntary, unplanned species of social imagination has become, if not the sole element in liberalism, regeneration, too often compels people to stand still: He insti- certainly the dominant one. Lincoln argued that the state should tutionalizes problems that might otherwise be transcended. eschew the group politics of “classification” and “caste,” yet This is seen most clearly in societies where the social imagi- liberalism’s signature initiatives over the last 40 years require nation has been carried the farthest. There one finds, not us constantly to classify people according to the particular growth and change, but morbidity and stasis, the petrification social and even racial and sexual groups to which they belong: of the social organism. Both affirmative action and hate-crime legislation grow out of a faith in the discriminating power of classification. “Today it is the right that speaks a language of commonalities,” rEfErEncE politics is nothing new. It underlay the the sociologist Todd Gitlin has written. “To be on the Left, mean- master-slave distinctions of the ancient world and the while, is to doubt that one can speak of humanity at all.” P feudal distinctions of the medieval one. no political Schlesinger himself, in one of his last books, The Dis unit ing of movement, it is true, can entirely escape such politics: Every America (1991), lamented the effect of social, ra cial, and sexual party has its under-texture of tribalism and its cherished con- preference politics on liberalism, and he condemned the spread, in stituencies. But the preference politics of social liberalism The preference politics of social liberalism transforms what ought to be a matter of embarrassment into an instance of virtue; there is no longer even an aspiration to purity.

the Democratic party, of a “plague of institutionalized ‘caucuses’ transforms what ought to be a matter of embarrassment into an representing minorities concerned more with ventilating their instance of virtue; there is no longer even an aspiration to puri- own grievances than with strengthening the party” as a whole. ty. The damage has by no means been limited to Dem o crats; The liberal who is committed to social classification coun- republicans, too, trade in the pander-politics of group favori - ters that his preference criteria are a reaction against an un - tism. The tax code is swollen with giveaways to favored official culture of preference, the bigotry that has led to groups. One instinctively applauds when a group that one hap- dis crimination against blacks and gays and women. Yet if this pens to like, or to which one happens to belong, obtains grace really were the crux of the matter, surely the solution would be and favor. But each extension of privilege erodes a little more to insist even more passionately on the principle that all people the idea that all men are created equal and should be treated are created equal and that the laws of the state ought to apply equally under the law. equally to all. Instead the liberal’s vivisectionist politics exalt, The preference state is now so closely associated with the not the common humanity of the species, but the various social politics of group favoritism that the classical ideal of equal and genetic barriers that separate its specimens. treatment has become untenable for liberals. To tout the clas- It is true that some of the groups the modern liberal seeks sical vision in the teeth of such exercises as the “cornhusker to protect constitute fluid classes rather than fixed ones, and Kickback”—the provision of the Senate health-care bill subsi- therefore do not in a strict sense violate the equal-protection dizing nebraska’s Medicaid costs on terms given no other principles of classical liberalism. The 20th-century welfare state—would be too palpable an imposture. In De cember, 13 state, for example, was designed to help the poor, and any citi - states’ attorneys general threatened a legal challenge to the zen might fall into poverty. But even here the liberal’s social cornhusker provision precisely because, if enacted, it would policy tends to exacerbate divisions within the body politic, or violate the equal-protection and privileges-and-immunities

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clauses of the Constitution. Whatev er the constitutional status 1994 elections, sought to establish a middle or “third” way of such preference legislation, there is no doubt that it is between the social imagination and the classical-liberal one. incompatible with the classical ideal. Liberals themselves But his attempt to find a via media was rejected by the pro- sense this. The classical motifs have ceased to form even a tected classes that liberalism’s preference politics has created, merely verbal element in liberal discourse; the note of freedom and was repudiated still more vehemently by the social man- that President Kennedy sounded so often in his oratory is agers and public-sector workers whose prosperity is intimately scarcely heard at all in President Obama’s. bound up in the preference state. Americans are alive to the change; their suspicion of state- These groups exert a disproportionate influence in sponsored privilege and their apprehension of the corruption it Democratic-party councils. Champions of public-sector work- fosters have led to the revival of the “tea party” language of the ers commend their commitment to public service in the lan- Revolutionary patriots. A CNN poll conducted in Feb ru a ry guage of republican virtue. But in offering their political found that 56 percent of those questioned think the federal support to sympathetic candidates in exchange for lucrative government has “become so large and powerful that it poses an compensation packages, a number of the public-sector organi- immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citi- zations have engaged in a politics that savors of corruption. zens.” The social reformer inspires in many Americans today Their allegiance, like that of the Praetorian Guard in Gib bon’s the same dread he once inspired in John Stuart Mill, who in Rome, can be purchased only by those contenders for power 1855 wrote that almost “all the projects of the social reformers who are willing to bestow what Gibbon called a “liberal dona- in these days are really liberticide—Comte particularly so.” tive” out of the public purse. Such projects, Mill predicted, would lead to “a des pot ism of Liberal the donatives certainly are. The average salary of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated federal workers rose in 2009 to $71,206, a figure that does not in the political ideal of the most rigid dis ciplin ari an among the include bonuses, overtime, fringe benefits, pension accruals, ancient philosophers,” and stood “as a monumental warning to and the priceless gift of all-but-absolute job security. Some 19 Rather than try to revive the classical-liberal strain in their politics, liberals have devised new justifications of the managerial authority of the social expert, the master planner of public privilege.

thinkers on society and politics, of what happens when once percent of the civil service received salaries of more than men lose sight in their speculations, of the value of Liberty and $100,000. (The average private-sector wage in the same year Individuality.” was $40,331.) The federal government, Cato Institute scholar Liberals dismiss such fears as mere right-wing hysteria. Chris Edwards observes, has become an “elite island of highly They have left the work of maintaining the integrity of the paid workers.” Lib er al ism is being devoured by the monster it “Lockian” safeguards of freedom in America to Republicans created. and conservatives; it is no longer their responsibility or their There is something else to be feared now that the dreams of shtick. Rather than try to revive the classical-liberal strain in the social imagination alone seem to inspire enthusiasm in their politics, they have devised new justifications of the those who identify themselves as liberals. The social philoso- managerial authority of the social expert, the master planner of phy that has become the essence of one of the great political public privilege. In their book Nudge, Richard H. Thaler and movements of our age is, even in its mildest forms, tainted by Cass R. Sunstein “show that by knowing how people think, we a subtle tincture of compulsion, one that mocks the idea of [i.e., the social experts] can design choice environments that freedom. The deepest thinkers in the social line suppose that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, man’s actions are determined by matter, or nature, or history; their families, and their society.” Thaler and Sun stein do not they claim that their own proposed commands are merely propose to push people into doing what is good for them, as the expressions of an overpowering necessity. The social realm is social managers of old did; they propose only to manipulate preeminently the realm of physis, of nature: it has no place for their “choice environments.” It is nonetheless a departure from meta-physis, or that which is beyond nature. “Necessity is the the liberalism of Mill, who believed that people must be free to kingdom of nature,” Schopenhauer says, “freedom is the king- choose badly. The cover of Nudge is revealing: It shows a dom of grace.” By “grace” he means the state of having got mommy elephant nudging a baby elephant. The citizen is a over nature. In The Human Condition (1958) Hannah Arendt child. The social expert, armed with the power of the state, is contended that the idolatry of nature and necessity that is his benevolent mother. charac teristic of the social dispensation might yet, if un - Why, after kindred social movements have been discredited checked, “reduce man as a whole, in all his activities, to the abroad and faith in the social school of political economy has level of a conditioned and behaving animal.” In sacrificing the waned at home, do liberals persist in their romance with the classical imagination of liberty on the altar of social necessity, social imagination? A number of liberal leaders have attempt- liberals have brought us a little closer to the realization of that ed a reformation; Bill Clinton, after his party’s defeats in the dark prophecy.

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Financial Special

other words, we’ve had regulation, not and by 7.1 percent in 2009. While these deregulation. data do not say anything about the reg- We Didn’t The great villain in the deregulation ulators’ effectiveness, it is reasonable myth is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, to assume that a dramatic increase in Deregulate signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1999, their budgets is not a sign of radical de - which repealed some restrictions of regulation. And more regulation won’t prevent the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, To be sure, there has been a great another financial crisis namely those preventing bank holding deal of deregulation in some sectors of companies from owning other kinds our economy over the last 30 years or BY VERONIQUE DE RUGY of financial firms. Critics charge that so—the airlines, telecom, and trucking, Gramm-Leach-Bliley broke down the just to name a few—but practically Hen Barack Obama was walls between banks and other kinds of none of it has been in the financial running for president, he financial institutions, thereby allowing sector or has had anything to do with made no secret of his plan enormous systemic risk to percolate the current crisis. Which is to say, the W to “restore commonsense through the financial world. This cri- Obama administration’s regulatory regulation” by closing up regulatory tique is the keystone of the “blame proposals rest on imaginary founda- “loopholes” he blamed Republicans for deregulation” case, but it doesn’t hold tions. And while the president’s pop- opening. Deregulation of the financial up: While Gramm-Leach-Bliley did ulist criticism of greedy executives and industry, he argued, was a main cause facilitate a number of mergers and the unbridled capitalism may make for of the financial crisis. general consolidation of the financial- good headlines, it has nothing to do Much like Franklin Delano Roose - services industry, it did not eliminate with the actual problem. This was that velt during the Great Depression, Pres - restrictions on traditional depository the FDIC, the Treasury Department, ident Obama offered a sweeping, banks’ securities activities. In any case, and the Federal Reserve created a hous- am bitious regulatory agenda: a total it was investment banks, such as Leh - ing bubble by encouraging a decade revamp of the financial industry, in - man Brothers, that were at the center of of careless lending. When the federal cluding reform of the process by which the crisis, and they would have been government guarantees bank loans or loans are converted into securities; more able to make the same bad investments assets, banks have a weaker incentive robust federal regulation of credit-rating if Gramm-Leach-Bliley had never been to evaluate loan applicants thoroughly, agencies; the creation of a systemic-risk passed. and a stronger one to engage in risky regulator; stricter govern ment oversight Another common claim, that credit- be havior. When things are good, they of the hedge-fund industry; new regu- default swaps and other derivatives left make high profits; in the case of a cata- lation of credit-default swaps; and the unregulated by the Commodity Futures strophic downturn, it is the taxpayers, consolidation of several financial regu- Modernization Act of 2000 were a not the banks, who foot the bill. latory agencies. cause of the financial crisis, doesn’t The financial-reform legislation But unlike FDR, Obama won’t have stand up to scrutiny, either. Research by currently under consideration in Con - to create a new regulatory system from Houman Shadab of the Mercatus Cen - gress does nothing to address the Fed’s scratch: For all the lamentation of our ter has shown that this argument is cheap-money policy or the unsustain- allegedly scanty policing of Wall Street, undermined by its failure to distinguish able subsidies that government still the financial industry already answers to between credit-default swaps, which provides to homeowners and mortgage a host of regulators, including the Feder - are simply insurance against loan de - lenders—the main causes of the hous- al Housing Finance Agency, the Com - faults, and the actual bad loans and ing bubble. Instead, our would-be re - modity Futures Trading Commission, mortgage-backed securities at the root formers assume that increased federal the Federal Deposit Insurance Corpor- of the crisis. Stricter regulation of control of the economy, the appoint- ation, the Federal Reserve, the Office credit-default swaps wasn’t going to ment of a new federal czar with the of the Comptroller of the Currency, the make those subprime mortgages any power to curtail the pay of executives Office of Thrift Supervision, and, not less likely to go bad. in businesses the government now con- least, the Securities and exchange Com - And it’s not as though our regulators trols, or the creation of a Bureau of mission. have been hamstrung by a lack of re - Consumer Protection (the zombie ver- In fact, as Peter J. Wallison of the sources. Government budget figures sion of Senator Dodd’s Consumer American enterprise Institute explained show that inflation-adjusted spending Financial Protection Agency) will set in 2008, “almost all financial legis - on finance-and-banking regulation has things right. The proposed regulations lation, such as the Federal Deposit In - gone up significantly over the last 50 don’t attack the problem of excessive surance Corp. Improvement Act of years, from $190 million in 1960 to leverage. They don’t reform Fannie 1991, adopted after the savings and loan $2.3 billion in fiscal 2010. Total real Mae and Freddie Mac. They don’t guar- collapse in the late 1980s, significantly expenditures for finance-and-banking antee that taxpayers won’t have to pay tightened the regulation of banks.” In regulation rose 45.5 percent from 1990 for the future errors of bank executives to 2010, with a 20 percent increase in who, cheered on by their government Veronique de Rugy is an economist at the Mercatus the last ten years. That spending rose enablers, take on excessive risk. The Center at George Mason University. by 26 percent during the Bush years, “reformers” simply wish away the root

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Financial Special

causes of this crisis: the “too big to fail” been more toxic than in the case of mentality and crony capitalism. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The only Crony capitalism means that not reason those government-sponsored Break Up everybody plays by the same rules. enterprises were able to guarantee near- Allowing financial institutions such as ly $5 trillion in home loans with a mere The Banks Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and invest- $100 billion in net equity was that both ment banks to maintain significantly their management and other market It’s politics, not economics, smaller capital reserves than commer- operators knew that the government that made them behemoths cial banks, while implicitly guarantee- would step in if things took a turn for the ing their obligations, was a critical part worse. BY ARNOLD KLING of the financial problem. Capital-ratio Rather than ending the explicit and rules require that firms value all their implicit guarantees, the administration IG banks are bad for free mar- is calling for limits on the size of finan- kets. Far from being engines of cial institutions. Under the Treasury free enterprise, they are con- Department’s proposal, no one firm’s B ducive to what might be called holdings could amount to more than 10 “crony capitalism,” “corporatism,” or, in percent of the entire financial industry’s Jonah Goldberg’s provocative phrase, liabilities. While those limits would like- “liberal fascism.” There is a free-market ly reduce the system-wide repercussions case for breaking up large financial insti- of bank failures, they would do nothing tutions: that our big banks are the product, to curtail the bad lending at the heart of not of economics, but of politics. the problem. Similarly, the administra- There’s a long debate to be had about the tion’s proposal to prohibit commercial maximum size to which a bank should be banks from carrying out some kinds of allowed to grow, and about how to go “high risk” trades is another sign of how about breaking up banks that become too little has been learned from this crisis. large. But I want to focus instead on the The perverse incentives in the financial general objections to large banks. industry will remain, as will the political The question can be examined from manipulation of housing prices and lend- three perspectives. First, how much eco- ing standards. nomic efficiency would be sacrificed by Not only will these regulatory initia- limiting the size of financial institutions? tives not address our biggest problems, Second, how would such a policy affect they threaten to make things worse. The systemic risk? Third, what would be the massive government intervention in political economy of limiting banks’ size? the economy in the 1930s made the It is the political economy that most con- Depression an even bigger disaster than cerns me. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae it had to be and significantly delayed the represent everything that is wrong with eventual recovery. President Obama’s the politics of big banks. They acquired invasive agenda—and the great uncer- lobbying prowess, their decisions were tainty it has injected into the system— distorted by political concerns, and they probably has already had a similar were bailed out at taxpayer expense. All of Crony capitalism at its worst effect, distorting the market mecha- these developments seem to be inevitable tradable assets at market prices and nisms that otherwise would allow in - with large financial institutions, and all are maintain a cash balance equal to a cer- vestors to price securities accurately and deeply troubling to those who value eco- tain percentage of that price, weighted help get us out of this crisis quickly and nomic freedom. Unless there are tremen- for the risk of each asset. In 2004, the efficiently. dous advantages of efficiency or systemic SEC decided to allow five firms— With all that in mind, it is hard to stability from having large banks, their Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill argue that deregulation of the financial- adverse effect on the political economy AFP / Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan services industry was the problem, and justifies breaking them up. Stanley—to reduce their capital ratios, that more regulation is the answer. Yet, If we had a free market in banking, very RICHARDS . letting them keep more assets on their like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, large banks would constitute evidence that

PAUL J balance sheets while subjecting them to the Obama administration insists on : less-stringent reporting requirements. fighting imaginary enemies. The presi- Mr. Kling is an adjunct scholar with the Cato Special favors like that—favors from dent’s war on Wall Street windmills will Institute and a member of the Financial Markets AFP FREDDIE / the regulators themselves—are rep - come at a tremendous cost to taxpay- Working Group of the Mercatus Center at George resentative of the unhealthy marriage ers—and to everyone in the private Mason University. He is the author of Unchecked between government and its friends on sector who will remain unemployed or and Unbalanced: How the Discrepancy KAREN BLEIER : Wall Street. financially insecure while the recovery Between Knowledge and Power Caused the

FANNIE And nowhere has that relationship is delayed. Financial Crisis and Threatens Democracy.

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Financial Special

there are commensurate economies of scale Turn now to the question of efficiency: banking system performed relatively well in the industry. But the reality is that our Is bigger better for consumers? Bankers during the financial crisis, noting that present large financial institutions probably speak mystically about the “financial Canada’s assets are concentrated in just owe their scale more to government policy supermarket” and claim that there are five large banks. This is offered as evi- than to economic advantages associated tremendous economies of scope in finan- dence that large banks are conducive to with their vast size. Freddie Mac and cial services, meaning that a consumer financial stability. But while Canada’s big Fannie Mae were created by the govern- benefits from being able to have a check- banks have a big share of the country’s ment, and they always benefited from the ing account and a stock portfolio at the assets, they still are much smaller than perception that Washington would not same large firm. But in practice, whatever America’s largest banks: Bank of America permit them to fail—a perception that benefits might be derived from such a and JP Morgan Chase are three or four proved accurate. Similarly, large banks supermarket are probably more than offset times the size of the Royal Bank of were viewed as “too big to fail,” which by the diseconomies of managing such a Canada, Canada’s largest. And while its gave them important advantages in credit complex entity. banking marketplace is dominated by five markets and allowed them to grow bigger Another unsound argument is that large big players, Canada’s population is less than they otherwise would have. In 2007 banks are needed to finance large multi- than one-seventh that of the United States; and 2008, Lehman Brothers was able to national firms. If large international firms even if we concede that Canada is served obtain substantial short-term credit from require big capital investments, these can well by five large banks, the equivalent in what otherwise would have been risk- be obtained by issuing securities or by the United States would be 35 large banks. averse money-market funds, notably the loan syndication, in which the risk of bor- In 2008, total assets of the U.S. banking Reserve Primary Fund, which “broke the rowing is spread across several banks. The system were about $10 trillion, with the buck” after Lehman’s collapse, greatly existence of large non-bank firms does not top five bank holding companies in pos- session of $6 trillion. If the entire $10 tril- lion had been divided evenly among 35 banks, none would have accounted for more than $300 billion in assets; all of our banks would have been smaller than the fifth-largest Canadian bank. Overall, there is little evidence that really big banks are necessary to a sound financial system. The financial crisis demonstrated that they are not sufficient for a sound financial system. And it is possible that without very large banks the system actually would be more robust. Certainly, the failure of any one bank The Royal Bank of Canada: a fraction of the size of America’s largest banks would be less traumatic if the size of that intensifying the subsequent financial panic. imply the need for similarly gigantic bank were small relative to the overall It is difficult to view Reserve Primary’s banks. market. large position in Lehman debt as anything There are economies of scale, but small I am not optimistic that there is an easy other than a bet that the government would banks can take advantage of them, too. For cure for financial fragility even if we break engineer a bailout. It probably would have instance, a small bank can join an ATM up the banks. To the extent that they share parked its funds elsewhere had Lehman network or contract with a third party to exposure to the same risk factors, a system been considered small enough to fail. develop Internet services. It does not have with many small banks could be just as Other policies in recent decades have to build such systems from scratch, and vulnerable as a system with a few large subtly favored big banks. The government we do not need big banks to make them ones. The fundamental sources of finan- encouraged the boom in securitization, for possible. cial risk—including leverage, interest-rate instance, which helped swell the size of Which brings us to the question of sys- risk, exchange-rate risk, and speculative financial firms and was stimulated by temic risk. Regulation can, of course, bubbles—have a way of insinuating them- banks’ desire to skirt capital-requirement make systemic risk worse: The U.S. bank- selves regardless of the banking industry’s rules. And the credit-rating agencies’ out- ing crisis of the 1930s was exacerbated by structure and in spite of the best intentions sized role in financial markets—indeed, the fact that banks could not start new of regulators. But while no one can pro- the very existence of a small, powerful branches across state lines or, in many mise that breaking up large banks would cabal of federally approved rating agen- cases, even within the same state. This led make the financial system safer, it would cies—was the work of regulators. Such to poor diversification of regional risk. without question make it less corporatist. policies fostered large financial institu- The regulation in question was admittedly Which returns us to the question of politi- tions such as AIG, which built its huge poor, but we need not return to the banking cal economy. portfolio of credit-default swaps on the system of the 1930s to achieve a reduction In the United States, big banks provide basis of Triple-A grades from the credit- in the size of America’s largest banks. an invitation to mix politics and finance.

ZUMA rating cartel. Some point out that the Canadian Large financial firms get caught between

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public purposes imposed on them by an FDIC-style resolution authority that Congress and the interests of private can do for the shadow banking system stakeholders. If they do not maintain good Resolve to what the FDIC does for banks: police relations with legislators, they risk adverse safety and soundness and, when neces- regulation. Therefore, it behooves them Reform sary, take troubled institutions into cus- to shape their regulatory environment. tody and disassemble them in an orderly And they have done so. In recent How to get un-TARPed and police manner. decades, the blend of politics and banking the shadow banking system Some free-marketers will protest that created a Washington–Wall Street finan- such a resolution authority promises to be cial complex in the mortgage market. This BY STEPHEN SPRUIELL & just another failed federal regulator, that development, and its consequences, have KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON we should “let markets work.” But the been well documented. Michael Lewis’s bailouts have proved beyond any doubt 1989 book Liar’s Poker includes a por- hAT was so bad about the that “too big to fail” is a durable feature of trayal of the political exertions of in - bailouts? Everything, ex cept Washington’s thinking about finance—the vestment bankers to enable mortgage that they sort of worked, at reality is that an immaculate free-market secur i tization to take off. “The Quiet W least as a short-term patch- solution is not in the works. It’s rather a Coup,” an article by Simon Johnson that up and a bid for time. But that time is run- question of what sort of regulation we are appeared in the May 2009 issue of The ning out, and we should now start thinking going to have and who is going to be doing Atlantic, chronicles the rapid accrual of about the next crisis, and the next—and it. We don’t expect the new resolution profits and power by large financial insti- how to mitigate what cannot be avoided in authority to be perfect, but if its powers are tutions over the past 30 years; during this the post-TARP era. well defined and reasonably insulated period, Wall Street firms were able to The really offensive thing about the from electoral politics, it could prove as shape the basic beliefs of political figures bailouts was the prevailing sense of useful as the FDIC at stemming panic and regulators, a phenomenon that Brook - adhocracy—that Congress and the White and containing spillovers into the real ings Institution scholar Daniel Kaufmann house and the Treasury and the Fed were economy. has dubbed “cognitive capture.” Andrew more or less making things up as they The new authority probably should be Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail, which de - went along. This bank got rescued, that under the jurisdiction of the Federal scribes the response of the Federal Re - one didn’t. This firm got a bailout on gen- Reserve, though its activities and the Fed’s serve and Treasury to the financial crisis, erous terms, that one got the pillory. Dick traditional monetary-policy functions leaves the distinct impression that senior Fuld got vilified, Tim Geithner got made should be walled off from each other. Why bankers had much more access to and in - Treasury secretary. the Fed? It has a great deal of financial fluence over Washington’s decision mak- It didn’t have to be that way: We have a expertise and knowledge at its disposal, ers than did career bureaucrats. pretty good system for regulating tradi- and it is not headed by a cabinet secretary Notwithstanding the good intentions of tional banks and, when necessary, for with an eye on the next election. The Fed’s policymakers, who no doubt plan to create taking over failed banks and “resolving” haughty independence, for many a source a stronger regulatory apparatus going for- them—taking care of depositors and sort- of irritation and suspicion, is in fact its ward, large banks will inevitably have too ing out losses among creditors and share- great virtue. It has made its mistakes— much power for the apparatus to govern holders. The Federal Deposit Insurance keeping interest rates too low for too long, them. They will shield themselves from its Corporation is one of the few players and thereby helping to inflate the housing attentions by making political concessions in the recent crisis that have acquitted bubble—but an obsession with short-term on lending practices. So long as big bank- themselves reasonably well. No American politics is not one of them. The FDIC has ing is conjoined to big government, that is, de positor lost a dime from his savings enough to do, and neither Treasury nor we risk a return to the regime of private account, checks cleared, and everyone’s Commerce nor any other cabinet agency profits and socialized risk. ATM card kept working. The FDIC works should be trusted with the broad powers I would prefer a completely hands-off as well as it does because there is not much that any effective resolution authority policy when it comes to financial mar- adhocracy in its approach—terms and would have to command. kets, but the political reality is that deposit practices are defined in advance, and its The institutions that make up the insurance and regulation are not going operations are prefunded through insur- shadow banking system are a diverse and away. Given that they are not, the worst ance premiums charged to the banks complicated lot: If traditional banking is possible outcome is that the marriage of whose deposits it insures. a game of checkers, this is 3-D chess on politics and finance evolves into outright But we also have a shadow banking dozens of boards at the same time. It is corporatism, as it did with Freddie Mac, system: a menagerie of hedge funds, therefore likely that the regulators will Fan nie Mae, and the rest of the nation’s structured-investment vehicles, non- lack the expertise to establish appropri- largest financial institutions. And that depository investment banks, and other ate, timely resolution programs for the evolution is directly attributable to the intermediaries that shuffle money be - complex institutions they are expected to influence that comes from banks’ being tween borrowers, lenders, and investors govern. The solution to that problem is big enough to achieve real political outside of traditional banks. Before we found in Columbia finance professor power. To expand free enterprise, shrink can get our economy fully un-TARPed, Charles Calomiris’s proposal that every the banks. un-Fannied, and un-Freddied, we need TBTFI—Too Big to Fail Institution—

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Financial Special

coming under the new agency’s jurisdic- cyclical on the downside, too: During the first step is relatively straightforward: tion be required to establish and main- recessions, declining share and asset The government should start by admitting tain, in advance, its own resolution plan, prices erode banks’ capital base, ham- that it is on the hook for all of Fannie and which would be subject to regulatory stringing their operations and making Freddie’s losses, not just the $100 billion it approval. financial contractions even worse. In- has already loaned the companies. The Such a plan—basically, a pre-packaged stead, we should use counter-cyclical White House still is not accounting for bankruptcy—would make public detailed capital requirements: During booms, the Fannie and Freddie the way it accounts for information about the distribution of loss- amount of capital required to back each other federal entities. According to one es in the event of an institutional failure— dollar in lending should increase on a pre- estimate, Fannie and Freddie’s liabilities in other words, who would take how defined schedule, helping to put the brake total $6.3 trillion, every dollar of which is much of a haircut if the bank or fund were on financial bubbles and to tamp down now the taxpayers’ potential problem. to find itself in dire straits. This would be irrational exuberance. During downturns, Policymakers are understandably reluc- a substantial improvement on the political capital requirements should be loosened tant to add such an enormous sum to the favor-jockeying that marked the govern- on a pre-defined schedule, to facilitate national balance sheet, but they could start ment’s intervention in General Motors, for lending and to keep banks from going into by accounting for the $300 billion the instance, or the political limbo that saw capital crises for mere accounting rea- Congressional Budget Office says it costs Lehman doing nothing to save itself while sons. But these counter-cyclical capital to insure the agencies’ liabilities against waiting to be rescued by a Washington requirements should begin from a higher the possibility of default over the next ten bailout that never came. The authority’s baseline: The shadow banking system years. Adding Fannie and Freddie to bud- main job would be to keep up with the exists, in no small part, to skirt traditional get calculations would, we hope, pressure resolution plans and, when necessary, to capital requirements, and its scanty capi- policymakers to reduce taxpayer exposure execute them. tal cushions helped make the recent crisis to the GSEs by winding down their large Like the FDIC, the new resolution much worse than it had to be. portfolios and breaking them up—instead authority should be prefunded, its day-to- One other aspect of the FDIC that of doing what they are currently doing, day operations and its trust fund under- should be incorporated into the new reso- which is close to the opposite of that. written by insurance premiums charged lution authority: automatic triggers. The Of course, these are our ideal reforms, to the institutions it oversees. This in itself FDIC Improvement Act ensures that the and they bear only a coincidental resem- might have a useful dampening effect: agency has relatively little regulatory dis- blance to those that Chris Dodd and other Institutions not wishing to fall under the cretion: If a bank fails to satisfy certain congressional panjandrums are bandying resolution authority’s jurisdiction, and standards, the FDIC is not only empow- about. Dodd’s resolution authority would thereby becoming subject to the expenses ered to move in and resolve it, but required leave too much discretion to politicians to and inconvenience associated with it, to do so. Likewise, the resolution authori- offer insolvent firms permanent life sup- would have an incentive to moderate the ty should have relatively little leeway in its port, Fannie- and Freddie-style, rather size and complexity of their operations, operations. More than the FDIC, perhaps, than force them into orderly liquidation. which would be a good thing in many due to the variety and complexity of the Other proposals we’ve seen emerge cases. Unlike TARP, the authority’s trust institutions it will be expected to over- from Congress look more like reorgani- fund should be treated as what it is—capi- see—but not much more. What is most zation than reform, reminding us of the tal backing an insurance program—and important is that its rules, processes, and man who wrote, “We tend as a nation to restricted by statute from being used as a standards be well defined in advance— meet any new situation by reorganizing; political slush fund. Being funded by the before the next crisis, and the next oppor- and a wonderful method it can be for financial institutions themselves, it would tunity for the ad hoc shenanigans that creating the illusion of progress while not be subject to the whims of congres- made TARP the hate totem it is. producing confusion, inefficiency, and sional appropriators. Only after the new resolution authority de moralization.” It is one thing when Taking a fresh regulatory approach is set up can we really untangle ourselves this reorganizing involves the renaming would give us the opportunity to enact from TARP and the rest of the bailout of some unimportant bureaucracy, but some useful reforms at the same time. regime. That is because many of the insti- when it comes to financial reform, the At present, capital requirements—the tutions still being propped up under illusion of progress is dangerous. Al - amount of equity and other assets finan- bailout protocols are weak, and some of ready it can be argued that investors’ cial firms are required to hold in propor- them probably are going to fail. Nobody appetite for risk has returned to pre-crisis tion to their lending—are static: X cents knows which ones, though the amalga- levels as government support of the bank - in capital for every $1 in, for example, mation of corporate blight that is GMAC ing system has bolstered the impression regular mortgage loans. This makes them is an excellent candidate for extinction. that there is no such thing as a bad “pro-cyclical,” meaning that, during A special situation, one that probably credit risk on Wall Street. A resolution booms, banks suddenly find themselves would exceed the new authority’s re - authority, properly structured, could mit- awash in capital as their share prices and sources, is the sorry case of Fannie Mae igate this moral hazard by reacquainting the value of their assets climb, with the and Freddie Mac. The government- the bankers with the prospect of failure effect that they can secure a lot more loans sponsored (now government-owned) and their creditors with the prospect with the assets they already have on the enterprises present a real obstacle to re - of losses. Whether we will get one is books. But the requirements are pro- turning to a more normal economy. But another question entirely.

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The Bent Pin BY FLORENCE KING Thuggery with a Smile

ORmENTED people are said to be “pursued by the The actual definition and value of endorphins was scien- Furies.” I am eminently qualified for mem - tifically as well as hilariously explained by Dr. Ronald W. bership in what, in today’s parlance, probably Dworkin in Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the T would be called the tormented community, but New Happy Class, but that wasn’t the end of it. Now we the Furies just aren’t that into me. Instead, for as long as I have Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest, Bright-Sided: How the can remember, I have been pursued by the Pixies. Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined The classic Pixie is the cheery thug who gambols up to a America. Ehrenreich witnessed an attack of the giant endor- perfect stranger sitting quietly in a public place, minding her phins at a breast-cancer clinic whose patients refused to say own business, and brays, “Whatcha so sad about? It can’t be they “had” cancer; no, they were “battling” it, and they that bad—smile!” The Pixie’s glass is so half-full that it run- expected to defeat it because they were convinced that a pos- neth all over you, as happened with a boy I dated in college, itive attitude could make a cancer give up and go away. She who put his arm around me, gave me a reassuring pat, and soon discovered that “dissent [is] a kind of treason” when she said, “You’d be a great gal if only you’d develop a sense of posted hers online and was told she needed counseling. humor.” He gave me a how-to book called something like Another venue of Pixiedom are the high-tech trouble - “Three Weeks to a Funnier You!” with worksheets in the shooting manuals in the “Idiot’s Guide to . . .” and “. . . for back. He saw nothing funny about the worksheets, but he Dummies” series whose authors try so hard to be funny that roared at the author’s stories, e.g.: “When my son said he they skimp on thoroughness. They will say something like was reading David Copperfield in English class, I said “If you need more space on your hard disk, get your hand ‘What the dickens!’ and we all had a good laugh.” When I out of that jar and delete your cookies!” How? They don’t remarked that the son probably went around in a perpetual say because they are too intent on making the desperate feel cringe, saying, “Jeez, Dad, cut it out, will ya?” he said I insouciant. didn’t get it because I was too bitter. Even worse is AOL’s Live Help. In theory you sign on and Pixies never get anything, which is why they never stop type out your questions and a rep types out his answers, but trying to simplify the complex and complicate the simple. in reality it turns into an Alphonse-Gaston gavotte. The rep Now that the subject of health insurance rivals the quantum types, “I will do everything I can to help you,” which leads theory, they are raising their half-full glasses to Pixiecare. the customer to type, “I’m sure you will.” It being impossi- The monthly bulletin put out by my local hospital just ble to describe in logical fashion the freezes and crazy dia- came in the mail. These publications regularly show people logue boxes you keep getting, the rep types, “I hope I’m wreathed in smiles in unlikely situations—in the shade of helping you resolve your problem,” and you, still hopeful, their IV trees or while being sucked into the giant maw of a type, “Yes, you are.” You try to say what’s wrong without CT scan—but the latest issue has a lead article on women saying, “It’s doing something funny!” but you can’t. Finally, and heart attacks illustrated by a big Valentine-candy-box your time is up and the rep types, “Have I helped you heart superimposed over a female chest. Hey, it was Feb - resolve your problem?” and the wrung-out customer, who ruary. just wants to end it and get drunk, e-babbles, “Yes, you’ve Pixiecare’s thought for the day is headlined “Something been so helpful.” Congratulations, you have turned into to Laugh About” and illustrated with a politically correct a motivational speaker. The next day they send you an e- assortment of people all convulsed in mirth. The text reads: survey that goes on forever, every question phrased in such “The next time you find yourself sweating the small stuff, a way as to ask: “How do you rate the way your problem laugh it off. Laughter increases the release of endorphins, was resolved?” Afraid to ignore the first survey for fear they compounds in your brain that give you a sense of well- will send another, you go through and check every “Ex - being. Research also shows that laughter and joy can boost cellent” just to get rid of them. immune functions, and produce natural cells that help Observe that by now you too are a Pixie. It’s contagious, defend the body from illness. So read your favorite comics, and Barbara Ehrenreich explains why: “We have become watch your favorite silly movie, and laugh to good health!” the emotional wallpaper in other people’s lives, less indi- Arm-twisting optimism became the mainstay of Pixie - viduals with our own quirks and needs than dependable dom back when Reader’s Digest started running its sources of smiles and optimism . . . [urged to] see the glass “Laughter, the Best medicine” feature, but it was the jog- half full, even when it lies shattered on the floor.” ging craze that got them started on endorphins. “Gotta get I may weaken now and then, but I refuse to become a those endorphins goin’,” the panting joggers explained, great gal. I stand or fall on the paradox of the clown iden- until the word captured the Pixie imagination and spread tified by Carol Burnett in her memoir, One More Time. through the land, compliments of the media anchors who Taken to the circus as a child, she was repelled and terri- make up Pixiedom’s priestly class. fied by the clowns because their obvious striving for humor—bulbous red noses, silly wigs, flappy shoes— Florence King can be reached at P.O. Box 7113, Fredericksburg, VA 22404. translated as menace.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

What do you do when the American get to eleckt representatives who are citizen is so clearly wrong about what’s beholden to their interests, no, I get good for himme? Isn’t there some way that. in your vaunted “constitution” to sort of But here’s what I’m saying: Suppose get something done super quick when for instance that a lot of guys in Con - The (Lost) Federalist Papers nobody is really looking and maybe greff are facing the citizens in, like, six Special Obamacare™ Edition they’re all too busy with tax-time tsuris months, and that’s too soone to both and what not? My point here is, you paff a HUGE piece of legislation and Dear Publius: guys have constructed a whole big thing also convince the greyt unwashed that Got a hypothetical question for you. here that really requires consent of the it’s a good thing to do—I mean, it’s Would love your insight into this. Just governed, which sounds awesome but, going to be a bloodbath when the vot- say, hypothetically, that Congreff is you know, I mean, really? Really? ers check into this—but still, it’s a trying to enact legislation that would My thinking here is, you guys need greyt piece of legislation—a little benefitte pretty much everyone except to get out more and meet some real expensive, but, hey, so was the War of for the big insurance companies (al - Americkans, who, let’s be honest, aren’t Independence, ryght??—and so what though they’ll benefitte too, actually, the brightest people around. Fat, too. they need is politickal cover. In that but let that go for now) and it’s totally Which is another thing you guys don’t scenario it’d be okay, right? hard to do because the people—who, talk about. as you have mentioned and I totally Also: Is this Madison or Hamilton? A Member of the totally agree with you, are super good And please don’t be all “It’s Publius, it’s (Thinkinge) Publicke at loads of stuff—but the people don’t Publius” because we all know it’s one of like this legislation so much, and are you guys. energized against it with lots of pub- To the People of the State of New York: lick demonstrations and unruly mobs A Member of the Your hypothetickals have grown &c. (Thinkinge) Publicke tiresome. Speak plainly, sir. Owne up So, here’s the question: Why can’t to your designs and stratagems. What Congreff just paff that legislation by, in a is the acktual coste of this “legislative sense, not paffing it? By way of recon- To the People of the State of New York: programme” of which you write? And ciliation or even paffing amendments to In the fyrst place, we’re not saying bear in mynde that I’m really quite it and “deeming” it paffed? Can we do who is who. It’s Publius. That’s who it is busy. that? writing these things. Google us if you Again: hypothetical only. But would wysh, but we’ve been awfully goode PUBLIUS love your insight. about covering those tracks. You can find us on Facebooke and Twytter and Dear Publius: A Member of the that’s about the size of that. Okay: brasse tackes. The whole she- (Thinkinge) Publicke In the seconde place, it has never bang is going to run about a trillion dol- been our contention that the citizenry lars. For now. More later, obviously, but P.S.: Please do something about your are uniformly knowledgeable about one tryll gets us started. font! elements of governance and taxation. Which is why we have advocated here A Member of the and elsewhere a republic—delegat - (Thinkinge) Publicke To the People of the State of New York: ing to such citizens as their neighbors Although we have always eschewed choose the rights and responsibilities to to principles of the hypothetical, I legislate and decide on matters as they To the People of the State of New York: would have to add that such an acktion see fytte. And to appear before those cit- Truly wonderfulle! You really had me on behalf of any Congreff would be at izens on a timely fashion for reapproval going! I was into the exchange hooke, least distreffing and at most a breach of and elecktion. I don’t see what’s so hard lyne, and sinkerre! One trillion of dol- the most elemental form of governance. about that. Seems pretty basick, really. lars! Marvelous! Also, he who orchestrated such an Would rather debate the thornier stuff, Thank you, sir, for providing a won- acktion would be a royale aff. to be frank, about inter-state stuff and derful jape for my amusement. I shall taxes and what have ye. paff this along to my colleagues! PUBLIUS The government of the United States! PUBLIUS Spending a trillion dollars! Without a Dear Publius: vote in Congreff! Right. I get it. Forget I mentioned it. Dear Publius: Still, a question: Ryght, ryght. I get it. The people PUBLIUS

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defeat at Dien Bien Phu had on the were sent to try their hand in Indochina. French psyche. He has now returned to The problem was that the French colony Searing study, in great depth, the events sur- there, truly the jewel in France’s imperial rounding that decisive battle—as well as crown, had been occupied by the Japanese Defeat the repercussions in the outside world. from Pearl Harbor onwards, and under He is particularly skilful in counter- their presence a powerful independence ALISTAIR HORNE pointing the grim struggle for strong movement, the Vietminh, had sprung up points like “Eliane 2” with the epoch- unchecked—under the aegis of two most making negotiations that were occurring remarkable men, Ho Chi Minh and Vo simultaneously in Geneva, Washington, Nguyen Giap, respectively political boss London, and Paris. and military genius. Following the terrible defeat of 1940, Tragically for France—and maybe the post-war France had a problem; to be West as a whole—Leclerc, who might accurate, it had many. In what de Gaulle have aimed for a sensible, negotiated with- dubbed “this absurd ballet,” governments drawal while France was still relatively of the Fourth Republic trooped on and off strong vis-à-vis the Vietminh, was killed, the stage with depressing regularity. In in a 1947 plane crash over the Sahara. De 1950, Queuille was followed by Pleven; Lattre, vainglorious and one of the most then Queuille returned, to be followed arrogant Frenchmen ever, came to Hanoi Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien by Pleven again. In 1953 came Laniel, claiming that his presence was worth Phu That Led America Into the Vietnam War, who was followed by Pierre Mendès- a division of French troops (which, of by Ted Morgan (Random House, France, the courageous little Sephardic course, the Fourth Republic didn’t have). 752 pp., $35) Jew who took the brave, but inevitable, Nevertheless, a brilliant soldier, he saved course of getting France out of Indochina, Hanoi in 1951—and might well have ay I declare an interest, or thus ending what most Frenchmen called produced a solution. But de Lattre was two? While France was los- the sale guerre, or dirty war, unwinnable already a burnt-out case, his son had just ing the battle of Dien Bien as it was to prove for four successive U.S. been killed in the sale guerre, and he M Phu in 1954 I was a young presidents from the 1960s to the final dis- would be struck down by cancer in Jan- foreign correspondent, for the British aster of april 1975. uary 1952. (He was posthumously nomi- Daily Telegraph, in Germany. I watched Those poor French leaders of 1945 nated maréchal de France.) the course of the battle with mounting fear were weak men, presiding over a broken, De Lattre was followed by one of the and dread. We were painfully conscious divided, and bankrupt country—and most disastrous figures in French military that between that “Valley of Death” and us plagued perpetually by the cancer-like history, Gen. Raoul Salan, the quintes- there stood nothing but the apparently presence of the most powerful Com - sence of the “political general,” an old invincible forces of Stalinism. at the east munist party in Europe, which command- opium-smoking Indochina hand, nick- end of the Rhine bridges at Bonn there was ed roughly one-third of the seats in the named “the Mandarin,” who thought he a sign in three languages: “No member of National assembly. If Richard Nixon knew everything. (I got to know him well, the Soviet Occupation Forces permitted thought he had a problem, he should have in his algerian War context—a slimy fig- across the bridge.” With the French still looked at France in those years. There was ure with mauve-tinted hair. He was to end rejecting German rearmament, that was also a dichotomy not unfamiliar to the his career in disgrace, running the terror - virtually it. and there, in far-off Vietnam, U.S. in the 1970s—or indeed today, over ist OaS organization in algeria, and one of the West’s best-equipped armies afghanistan: The majority of Frenchmen sentenced to death in absentia by the was surrendering to a ragbag of oriental wanted “out,” and successive French gov- de Gaulle government—but amnestied in guerrillas in the most abject humiliation. ernments wanted to win a military victory 1968.) How had this come to pass? convincing enough for them to negotiate In Hanoi Salan was followed by two Ted Morgan is superbly qualified to an “honorable” exit strategy. But the mil- commanders, Navarre and Cogny, who revisit the awful scene and re examine itary remained convinced they could win argued with each other incessantly. as the story. as an american who had the a decisive victory. Morgan puts it, the French were left “rud- bad luck to be born in France, he found In 1950s France, there was this differ- derless.” To try to preserve the crucial himself conscripted into the French ence: after the sore humiliations of the Hanoi delta, and at the same time defend army, so had to do his time as a “grunt” 1940s, the army had to win. There was an inland Laos from the Vietminh threat, in the grim algerian War. There he ex - element of machismo involved, harking Navarre decided to establish an im- perienced at first hand the impact that back to that old slogan that so haunts pregnable fortress in the middle of enemy French history: la gloire. territory at Dien Bien Phu, 500 kilo - Sir Alistair Horne’s Kissinger: 1973, The In 1945, France had two military giants, meters northwest of Hanoi, and a safe Crucial Year is published by Simon & Schuster. Leclerc and de Lattre de Tassigny. Both 300 kilometers from the Chinese frontier.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS With occidental arrogance, Navarre as- and British in Afghanistan, unhappily, the dead-ground behind. Thus those captured sumed that because the French couldn’t French with all their sophisticated mobil- 105mms would command every inch of access it by road, through what they ity were reduced to fighting a kind of Beau the defenders’ positions—and eventually deemed “impassable” jungle, the enemy Geste war, defensively based on fortress- the vital airstrip. Realizing what lay ahead, couldn’t either. He forgot about the rein- es. It was the primitive foe who proved to the French artillery commander, Col. forced bicycle frame, and the limitless have the mobility. Giap decided to commit Charles Piroth, blew himself up with a supply of commandeered coolie labor all on winning a decisive, pitched battle— hand grenade. available to General Giap. With total com- something guerrilla forces had never done Morgan rightly rates the two-month mand of the skies, Navarre would supply before—with far-reaching political aims. assault on Dien Bien Phu as “one of the the fortress by air. He won. great epics of military endurance.” With By the early 1950s, Giap had created a By January 1954, Dien Bien Phu had the advantage of all the documenta - powerful force of 250,000 men. Released been surrounded, invested like a fortress tion available since Bernard Fall’s 1967 from commitment in Korea, the Chinese in a medieval siege, with all its attendant classic, Hell in a Very Small Place, he could supply them with quantities of U.S. horrors—an extraordinary anachronism in describes the course of the battle day by 105mm artillery, captured from the defeat- the midst of the nuclear age. Foolishly the day with most minute detail—perhaps ed Chiang Kai-shek. Without the French French allowed Giap to occupy the high almost to excess. To regain their reputa- noticing, the war in Indochina had been ground ringing the fort, so he was able tion, tarnished by World War II, the transformed by China. Rather like the U.S. to dig tunnels through from the safe French fought with a kind of World War I heroism. (Indeed, trotted out at various mo ments was the totemic word “Ver - dun”—that great Pyrrhic victory of 1916.) THE LOCAL HARVARD MAN After desperate hand-to-hand fighting, one by one the French outposts (all, A character you never meet, only hear of, characteristically, named after women) A music student in The Sun Also Rises were whittled away by Giap’s suicidal Helping a negro boxer in Vienna after assaults. Under the relentless bombardment of The crowd went crazy when he floored the home-town the Vietminh guns, the fate of the French Boy, knocked him cold after two fouls— wounded in their makeshift field hos - Is called the local Harvard man by Bill pitals was unimaginable; worse still was the death march of the POWs once Dien Who saw the fight, remembers being drunk Bien Phu finally fell in May 1954— And drunkenly recalls the riot, the rescue, comparable to America’s Calvary in The boxer escaping without his street clothes. Bataan in 1942. Out of 15,090 defenders, 1,142 were killed; plus 429 who died of The drunken Osterreichers staggered home; wounds, and 1,606 unaccounted for, but And Bill tells of loaning the fighter money presumed dead. Over 10,000 were taken To travel back to his family in Cologne. prisoner, of whom 70 percent died (Mor - gan tellingly compares this to Dachau’s Why the fight at all, to give Bill a boxing tale, 80 percent). A realistic recent past, but as remote as Yet only 25 percent of the defenders The Eastern Kingdom at its worst could be? were actually French; many were ex- Wehrmacht veterans from World War II; How the Austrians loved their local boy others were Algerian. The survivors would And hated the American, whose darkness take home lessons of a French army de - Did nothing to repress the other Vienna’s rage? feated by Third World guerrillas. Revolt in Algeria would begin six months later; by We never meet student or fighter, just Bill 1962 France would lose that last jewel in Telling their story, with the storyteller’s sense its colonial crown. Of the recent past, now in Paris, speaking Dien Bien Phu was unquestionably one of the stupidest battles of the 20th century, Of them; and Jake telling us what he says, but it was also one of its most important, Hemingway redacting the grand drama, with consequences that reverberate even The shouting mob, the punch below the belt . . . today. The Geneva Conference for a solu- tion on Indochina began during Dien Bien I think we called him the local Harvard man Phu. That sealed its fate, says Morgan. Bill remembers, and like Nick Carraway’s Finnish maid Moral for today: Don’t begin political Whom we also never meet, we can’t forget. negotiations while a military campaign is still under way. —LAWRENCE DUGAN Worse than the military defeat at Dien

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Bien Phu, however, were the splits re - Intellectuals and Society continues the vealed in the Western Alliance. they theme. (I wonder whether Sowell’s pub- mimicked France’s “absurd ballet.” Sec- The lisher has considered issuing the three retary of State John Foster Dulles—in books in a boxed set.) there is some repe- Churchill’s memorable comment, “the Anointed tition of arguments from the earlier books. only bull I know who carries his own I see no harm in that: We more often need china shop around with him”—raged in- JOHN DERBYSHIRE reminding than instructing. Each of the effectually, while Ike, as was his wont, particular ways in which intellectuals have was indecisive. British foreign secretary their effect on society is given a chapter Anthony Eden, vanity personified, was to itself: “Intellectuals and Economics,” determined to prevent America’s Adm. “Intellectuals and War,” and so on. Arthur W. Radford from unleashing a What is an intellectual, though? Plen - nuke in support of the French, or indeed ty of people—engineers, architects, sur- any other kind of intervention over geons, lawyers, generals—make a living Dien Bien Phu. French foreign minister by applying their intelligence to learned Georges Bidault was, perhaps understand- knowledge, but are not considered intel- ably, drunk much of the time—and, when lectuals on that account. Even academics sober, he did not tell the U.S. (which was are not necessarily intellectuals: We would funding 80 percent of France’s war) what hesitate to pin the tag on, for example, a was going on. Intellectuals and Society, by Thomas Sowell professor of biochemistry. Contrariwise, When you read ted Morgan’s account (Basic, 416 pp., $29.95) some non-academics have been counted of this Allied disunity, you wonder how as intellectuals: a few jurists (including, we ever won World War II. the divisions t is a commonplace observation that surely, Sowell’s favorite, Oliver Wendell he so skillfully, and ominously, delineates very smart people often have no Holmes Jr.), a poet or two, the founder of led in a direct line to Suez, two years later. sense. Writers since Aristophanes this magazine. that was to mark the final collapse of I have been making sport of their Sowell defines an intellectual as one Franco-British empire, which began in intellectual superiors. Jonathan Swift had whose work begins and ends with ideas. that hellhole at Dien Bien Phu. the academicians of Lagado striving to “Work” refers here to one’s primary occu- In Hanoi, in 1998, I interviewed the extract sunbeams from cucumbers. twenty pation, though the occupation need not victor of Dien Bien Phu, General Giap—a years ago Paul Johnson wrote a fine book be a paying one. the ideas should be big, tiny walnut of a man. It was somewhat called Intellectuals, in which he tossed general ideas about human nature, life, disappointing that, now in what Prime and gored such luminaries of 19th- and and society. Ideas in, ideas out, for most Minister Harold Macmillan once de - 20th-century deep-browdom as Emerson, of one’s working day: If that’s your life, scribed as his “anecdotage,” Giap treated Sartre, and Bertrand Russell. Roger Kim - you’re an intellectual. there are quibbles me to a thousand-year treatise on Viet - ball covered some of the same ground one can raise against this definition (histo- namese history. It was nevertheless excit- more thoughtfully in Lives of the Mind. It rians? economists?), but for a book-length ing to meet the man who, never losing is useful and necessary work to point out discussion, it is quite good enough. a battle, had vanquished successively how silly and clueless the most brilliant Anyone can come up with an idea, of the armies of France, the U.S.—and people often are. It is also fun, and a salve course. the ideas that matter are the ones China. Of significance in today’s struggle to our envy of those who have attained that possess staying power by virtue of with Islamic terrorism was his reminder eminence just by thinking hard. having survived some agreed validation that he and his ragtag guerrillas would, Why are intellectuals often so daft, process. In mathematics, the validation is if necessary, have gone on fighting for though? thomas Sowell has been rumi- by logical proof; in the sciences, by con- another 100 years until victory was finally nating on the matter for a quarter of a firming observations. Sowell, whose train- achieved. century. In A Conflict of Visions (1987), he ing was in economics, would like to see How long can any Western democracy posited two different approaches to hu - that kind of empirical rigor applied to the manage? President Obama, please answer. man affairs: the constrained vision, which utopian schemes of those intellectuals he So what did Giap glean from Dien acknowledges our limitations, and the calls “the anointed.” What he sees instead Bien Phu? Plenty. But what did the unconstrained, which believes us to be is self-congratulation, the blithe ignoring Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon administrations perfectible. It is adherence to the second of unwelcome facts, the pathologizing of learn from that one battle—which cost view, he thinks, that leads intellectuals into disagreement, herd behavior, and “the fatal the equivalent of nearly one-fifth of all folly. In 1995, Sowell enlarged on this talent of verbal virtuosity.” the 58,000 U.S. fatalities in the whole of theme in The Vision of the Anointed, mem- the only validation process the anointed their Vietnam War two decades later? Nil. orably subtitled “Self-Congratulation as a will submit their ideas to is “the approval What do the intelligent baboons who run Basis for Social Policy.” there he settled of peers.” When rigorous empirical valida- our countries learn from history? Nil. It’s on the terms “tragic vision” and “vision of tion is applied, as it often is by conscien- depressing. But let us hope the White the anointed” to describe the two contrast- tious social scientists, the results usually House and the Pentagon will be reading ing outlooks, and showed the dire con - contradict the utopian vision. then they are ted Morgan’s excellent, but depressing, sequences of the latter when applied to ignored and forgotten. A recent study of book. public affairs. Head Start, for example, showed that this

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS venerable Great Society program, now in “President Nixon had no regard for intel- its 46th year of lavish funding (currently lectuals.” That is not quite right. While it $7.1 billion a year), accomplishes nothing is true that Nixon preferred to spend his Paul, measurable. Every previous study, all the leisure hours with practical men like way back to 1969, said the same thing; they Bob Abplanalp and “Bebe” Rebozo, he To the Life were all shoved down the memory hole, as was nonetheless an intelligent and well- no doubt this latest one will be. read man—something of a closet intellec- JOHN WILSON Similarly with the “root causes” theory tual, in fact. It is worth recalling John of crime, which, says Sowell, has re - O’Sullivan’s very perceptive observation mained impervious to evidence on both here: that while John F. Kennedy made a sides of the Atlantic. “In both the United great show of patronizing the arts, it was States and England, crime rates soared Nixon who actually knew how to play the during years when the supposed ‘root piano. causes of crime’—poverty and barriers The intersection of politics with the to opportunity—were visibly declining.” anointed intelligentsia is an area I wish Gun control, a great favorite with the Sowell had explored in more depth. (A anointed, has likewise been a bust, gun fourth book, perhaps?) Politics is properly crime rising steadily in Britain through the domain of Big Players: men or women the later 20th century as laws against gun skilled in persuasion and the judging of ownership became more severe. That others, single-minded in pursuit of domi- Paul Among the People: The Apostle other criminological favorite, “alterna- nance, deft at hiding ruthlessness behind Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time, tives to incarceration,” has been so thor- idealism. Intellectuals do not perform well by Sarah Ruden (Pantheon, oughly internalized by liberal intellectuals in this hyper-worldly zone. Politicians of 214 pp., $25) as to give us the famous 1997 New York course have no objection to being present- Times headline “Crime Keeps on Falling, ed as intellectuals, but the façade rarely ARAH RUDEN is a poet and trans- but Prisons Keep on Filling.” survives close scrutiny. Sowell offers Adlai lator steeped in the literature The follies of the anointed in matters of Stevenson as an illustration. “No politician of classical Greece and Rome. war and peace are so abundant Sowell in the past two generations was regarded S Her superb translation of The spreads them over two chapters. The first by intellectuals as more of an intellectual,” Aeneid was published in 2008 by Yale covers the 20th century to 1945; the sec- he reminds us. Stevenson’s loss of the University Press; she’s also translated ond, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the two 1952 presidential election was taken by the Homeric Hymns, Aristophanes’ Ly - Iraq wars. This gives the author an oppor- Russell Jacoby to illustrate “the endemic sistrata, and the Satyricon of Petronius. tunity to note parallels across the decades, anti-intellectualism of American society.” Her new book, Paul Among the People, is the “peace movements” of the 1960s and Harry Truman, by contrast, was looked a sustained rebuke to lazy projections of 2000s echoing the sentiments, and often down on as a provincial hick. Yet of the modern sensibilities onto the ancient the actual slogans, of pacifists in the 1920s two men, Truman was much the better world. And yet Ruden is an effective and 1930s. read. He once corrected Chief Justice Fred apologist for Paul precisely because she Here Sowell points up a change in the Vinson’s Latin, Sowell tells us. Stevenson well understands his cultured despisers, methods and targets to which intellectuals could happily go for months on end with- whose prejudices she shared not so long of the anointed type address themselves. out picking up a book. ago: Before the age of mass media, intellectu- Stevenson had the intellectual de - als sought to influence power-holders by meanor, though, as does our current presi- The last thing I expected my Greek and offering advice on statecraft. From Daniel dent; and that proved quite sufficient to Latin to be of any use for was a better and Confucius to Machiavelli and Locke, make the Left intelligentsia bond to both understanding of Paul. The very idea, had anyone proposed it, would have an intellectual wanted to be the “voice men. Having little contact with reality, the annoyed me. I am a Christian, but like behind the curtain,” whispering advice in anointed do not see deeper than the surface many, I kept Paul in a pen out back, with the ruler’s ear. Once public opinion came of things. Addicted to that “verbal virtu - the louder and more sexist Old Testa - into its own, however, an alternative form osity,” they are easily swept off their feet ment prophets. Jesus was my teacher; of influence offered itself—one that re - by high-sounding rhetoric. Paul was an embarrassment. moved the intellectual farther from the Of the Republican victory in the 1920 results of his advice. This distancing from presidential election, Calvin Coolidge Ruden acknowledges Paul’s faults at real power and real consequences has remarked that “it means the end of a period the outset—“his bad temper, his self- allowed modern intellectuals to be irre- which has seemed to substitute words for righteousness, his anxiety”—but she sponsible, leading to the displays of silli- things.” Alas, that period soon came back goes on to note that “we tend not to feel ness recorded by Paul Johnson. Of the with a vengeance. The substitution of inspired that such a painfully human per- 1960s anti-war movement Sowell says: words for things is now a mighty industry. sonality was able to achieve so much in “The intellectuals’ effect on the course of Thomas Sowell is the chronicler and ana- the name of God,” a theme that Paul events did not depend on their convincing lyst of that industry. Intellectuals and or influencing the holders of power.” Society is a fine addition to his work. I hope Mr. Wilson is the editor of Books & Culture, a The sentence following that one is: he will give us more books like it. bimonthly review.

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himself repeatedly underscores, empha- “erotic, mutually fulfilling marriage was It might be possible if love is not an ethe- sizing his own unworthiness. Point by a ready option for Paul’s followers, when real, abstract standard, an impossible point, Ruden takes up the indictment actually he was calling them away from assignment written in lightning on a against Paul: He was a killjoy, a misogy- either the tyranny of traditional arranged rock, but a living God. Suppose the love nist, and virulently homophobic to boot; unions or the cruelty of sexual exploita- people need to carry out loves them and he counseled deference to unjust authori- tion, or (in the case of married men helps them, sometimes through the other people it loves, and sometimes merely as ty, even urging slaves to obey their mas- exploiting the double standard) both.” itself. Suppose it reaches out, calls, never ters and make the best of their condition. Here and in many other passages, we find gives up on failure. Suppose that, though Interpreting Paul in the context of his a forthright rejection of the “unmitigated human beings fail most of the time, love time, Ruden shows how the charges chauvinistic attitudes Paul would have never does. against the apostle can’t withstand scruti- found in Greco-Roman households, both ny. She does so by toggling between pas- in his boyhood Tarsus and anywhere he It would be splendid to end on this sages from Paul’s New Testament letters would have traveled in the Roman note. Here, finally, is the conviction on and quotations from classical writers: Empire later.” which Ruden’s argument rests, the source This is the first book about Paul I have Paul created an honored place for of hope for all who share her faith. And ever read that treats him alongside celibacy as well as “putting brand-new yet for now, as Paul himself acknowl- Homer, Aristophanes, Plautus, Virgil, limits on male desire” and “licensing edged, we see through a glass darkly. We Hor ace, Ovid, Petronius, Juvenal, and female desire, which had been under a muddle along, bickering, divided, as Apul eius, among others—not as their regime of zero tolerance” (women, you fractious as the early church described in liter ary equal (Ruden speaks teasingly of see, “were supposed to stop at nothing the Acts of the Apostles and in Paul’s own Paul’s “rough art”) but to convey a sense once they got started,” but Paul regarded letters. Interpreting Paul in the context of his time, Sarah Ruden shows how the charges against the apostle can’t withstand scrutiny.

of attitudes and assumptions that were male and female desire as equal and Still, in “reimagining” Paul with the pervasive in the classical world, against reciprocal). And in so doing, Ruden ob - aid of her intimate knowledge of classical which Paul’s message stands out in stark serves, literature, Ruden hasn’t only helped us to contrast. better understand him and his message in So, for example, after noting the wide- Paul changed people’s experience of the context of his time (as indispensable spread prevalence of pedophilia in Paul’s their emotions and their bodies in ways as that service is). She has also brought day—celebrated shamelessly in stomach- that inevitably changed marriage, Paul to us, to our time. “The critic who turning texts—Ruden writes: “No won- though the new kind did not send down forms his style on that of his author,” der parents guarded their young sons deep roots until the modern age and the Hugh Kenner once said, “not only does end of the authoritarianism that began to doggedly. It was, for example, normal for mimetic homage, he avails himself in - blight the church in the generations after a family of any standing to dedicate one Paul. But real marriage is as secure a part telligently of the author’s principal re - slave to a son’s protection, especially on of the Christian charter, and as different search: how to write about the pertinent the otherwise unsupervised walk to and as from anything before or since, as the world. For 18 months, wanting all the from school: This was the pedagogue, or command to turn the other cheek. time to commence a book on Samuel ‘child leader.’” It was a culture in which Beckett . . . I delayed until I could com- virile manhood was the measure of all Notice what Ruden is doing here by mand a style sufficiently like his for the things. Routine sex with slave boys, mentioning one of the hard sayings of purpose. Like, not identical; Beckett seduction of a free-born prepubescent Jesus (“the command to turn the other couldn’t write a book on Beckett.” youth, violent rape of an adult male: All cheek”) in conjunction with Paul’s teach - Nor could Paul write a book on Paul. were manly acts with no opprobrium ing on marriage. As a Quaker, Ruden has But Sarah Ruden could and did. In an attached. Only the victims were mocked probably spent more time digesting this uncanny way, her book is animated by and scorned. Little wonder that Paul’s injunction from Jesus than most of her the apostle’s style: his urgency, his argu- revolutionary denunciation of such be - fellow Christians have—but that doesn’t mentative agility, his bluntness, his exas- havior (Romans 1:24–27) struck a chord mean she finds it easy to follow. Indeed, peration, his vision of great felicity with many of his contemporaries. in her concluding chapter, devoted to (“though he almost needed to reinvent Or consider the much-abused passage Paul’s famous passage on love, Ruden Greek to express it”). Turning the pages, from I Corinthians 7, in which Paul talks asks, “How could anyone manage to I half expected the man from Tarsus to about the marriage relationship. Is this follow I Corinthians 13 and not go in - come striding impatiently through the the testament of a killjoy, a hater of wo - sane?” door. This is an act of literary sorcery: men? Hardly. This misreading makes Fortunately she doesn’t stop there. She white magic, of which not even Paul sense only if we assume (falsely) that goes on to answer her own question: himself could disapprove.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Mazeppa or Mussorgsky’s Fair at Soro - Gowdie and Veni, Veni, Emmanuel. The Music chyntsi. or The Nose. And he brought former is an orchestral “requiem” for a to Shostakovich’s opera the energy and Scotswoman burned as a witch in the 17th A Nose, smarts we expect from him. century; the latter is a percussion concerto In the leading role of kovalyov was the (not many of those). MacMillan is a reli- baritone Paulo Szot, a Brazilian of Polish gious person, a Catholic, and many of his A Scot, and parentage. He is best known for what he compositions have religious or spiritual has been doing next door to the Met, at the themes. His second string quartet is called A Hun Lincoln Center Theater: singing emile de Why Is This Night Different? and concerns Becque in South Pacific. In 2008, he won a the Passover rite. Two years ago, he wrote JAY NORDLINGER Tony award for it. of course, there is a long a St. John passion, commissioned for the tradition of opera singers in this role, as 80th birthday of Sir Colin Davis, the con- ew York has offered some those who remember Pinza and Tozzi will ductor. interesting musical evenings attest. kovalyov is a starkly different role, This is a subject for another day, but it is of late, as it usually does. In and Szot measured up in that one, too. simply true that many of the best com- N fact, that is one of its jobs. The Perhaps the star of the Met’s Nose is posers now working are religious, writing Metropolitan opera staged two little- the production, fashioned by william religious music. I think, just for starters, of known works by very well-known com- kentridge, a South African artist. It is busy the estonian Arvo Pärt. posers. Carnegie Hall had a concert and farcical, filled with video clips, car- MacMillan is what is known as “con- fea turing a new chamber piece by an toons, poster art, and other devices. The troversial” and “outspoken.” At the 1999 amazing, iconoclastic Scotsman. Shall production matches the score and the edinburgh Festival, he gave a speech called we go to the opera first? libretto to a T—which should be the aim of “Scotland’s Shame” in which he said that For the first time, the Met staged The a production, though that is a very old- anti-Catholic bigotry was rife in his coun- Nose, an opera by Shostakovich. The com- school notion. try, and covered up by the media and the poser wrote it in 1928, when he was 22. His Soviet authorities did not care for The rest of the establishment. More recently, source is the short story by Gogol, written Nose, and they were critics with bite: After he issued a long, magnificent blast against in the 1830s. A minor official, kovalyov, its unveiling, the opera was not staged the grip that dogmatic modernists—Pierre wakes up one morning to find his nose again in the Soviet Union until 1974, a year Boulez and his crowd—have long had on missing. Then he encounters that nose all before Shostakovich’s death. He wrote just the world of com po sition. It was published around town—St. Petersburg—before get- one more opera, Lady Macbeth of the in Standpoint magazine, the conservative ting it back. This is the kind of story, and Mtsensk District (1932). That one almost journal in Britain edited by Daniel Johnson, opera, known as “absurdist.” cost him his life. It is hard for us, slurping son of the historian Paul. The music is tart, brash, sarcastic, our lattes, to imagine the pressures under MacMillan inveighed against secular- nuts—you perhaps know Shostakovich in which such as Shostakovich worked. ists, Marxists, ideologues, anti-Americans, that mood. There is some lyricism, some He was our last great composer—which and other menaces and nuisances. Here is relief, in this score, but very little. what is to say, our most recent composer to be one sample statement: “The liberal elites comes at you, unrelentingly, is musical great, our most recent composer to enter who control the commanding heights of talking—“sung speech,” to use a familiar the pantheon. But he will not be our last, culture and criticism have an instinctive phrase. right? There will surely be another, and anxiety about religion.” Here is another In my view, the opera soon becomes many others ...right? one: “The modernist hierarchy is still so tedious and monotonous—and I say this as James MacMillan may not be a great powerful in places such as German radio a deep admirer of the composer. Think of a composer, in the pantheonic sense, but he stations and German and French New joke or a point that goes on too long. “I got is unquestionably a composer worth know- Music festivals that it acts like a politburo.” it, I got it,” you want to say. The Nose is one ing, and it was his String Quartet No. 3 that MacMillan’s essay was a plea for open- of the shortest operas in the repertory, at an had a hearing in Carnegie Hall. Actually, mindedness, tolerance, and genuine art. hour and 45 minutes. To me, it felt as long that hearing was in Zankel Hall, which I know from experience that many as Les Troyens. And did Shostakovich in - is the venue downstairs in the building composers and other musicians whisper tend this quirky, absurdist jaunt to be per- known as “Carnegie Hall.” There is an opinions such as MacMillan’s in the shad- formed in a grand house such as the Met? upstairs venue too, the weill recital Hall. ows. For a guy to shout them for all the what cannot be faulted is the perfor- The space we ordinarily think of as “Car - world to hear is wonderfully shocking. mance—not the one I caught, early in the negie Hall” is, technically, the Isaac Stern MacMillan has given heart to many who show’s run. It was led by Valery Gergiev, Auditorium. The very stage has a name, are more circumspect. the famed russian conductor. He has intro- too: the ronald o. Perelman Stage. Pretty Fortunately for those who admire his duced the west to a great variety of operas soon, they’ll be naming each urinal. what - views and outspokenness, MacMillan is a from his home country. Before the collapse ever it takes to keep music afloat. good composer, too. Consider his String of the Soviet Union, we got Tchaikovsky’s MacMillan—not to be confused with Quartet No. 3. (It carries no title, unlike the Eugene Onegin and Queen of Spades, and the late Canadian composer, Sir ernest second one.) The work is in three move- Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and maybe MacMillan—comes from Ayrshire. He ments, and these have unusual markings: Khovanshchina—but not much else. Ger - was born in 1959. Probably his two most “Molto rubato,” “Largo,” and “Patiently giev is the type to give you Tchaikovsky’s popular works are The Confession of Isobel and painfully slow.” The music is spare,

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searching, intense. An agitation is ongoing, Scheduled for the role of Foresto, an occasionally relieved by some whimsy: Italian knight, was Ramón Vargas, the for example, a take on a Viennese waltz. well-known Mexican tenor. Indisposed, he MacMillan has his players do some strange was replaced by Russell Thomas, a young things, such as tap on their instruments American. I first heard him several seasons (making these players percussionists, tem- ago as the First Prisoner in Fidelio. The porarily). A lot of composers go in for tap- prisoner has just a few lines, but they are ping and the like. These moves usually sublime ones, and Thomas made the most sound like gimmicks; not in this quartet, of them, using what I called a “melting however. trumpet.” He was impressive as Foresto, There is a huge amount of passion— too: not endowed with true Verdian heft, anger, outstandingly—packed into the but lyrical, ringing, and pleasing. work. The composer grabs your attention The Attila of old, Ramey, made an at the outset, and holds it. Along the way, appearance as Leone, the Roman bishop he may well unnerve you. At the end, the (otherwise known as Pope Leo the music dissolves spookily into nothing- Great). The kid from Colby, Kansas, is ness. just one year younger than his friend We hear in this quartet a composer who Muti: but he can still sing with tremen- obviously takes his craft very seriously— dous authority. The voice may have gone a disciple of music, you might say—and wobbly, but the thinking and the overall who has important ideas to express. You artistry stay true. can tell real music from the fake sort, the And the production? The Met engaged contrived sort: This belongs to the real. I Pierre Audi, the Beirut-born director who give MacMillan’s quartet practically my has been with the Netherlands Opera for highest accolade for a new work: I’d like to more than two decades. I will yield the hear it again. floor to my fellow critic Sam Ramey— It was well played by the Takács Quar - who, amazingly, posted a comment on a tet, but they insisted on giving a lecture website: about the piece before they performed it. This will deflate the atmosphere in a hurry. It is unfortunate that for the Met’s first pro- Samuel Ramey, bass, bishop, and critic Talking, lecturing, from the stage is epi- duction of Attila they could not do a more demic in the music world. Performers and the opera was the conductor in the pit, “conventional” production. The sets and administrators seem to think that new Riccardo Muti. The Italian Stallion is the costumes had nothing to do with the period of the opera or the characters. I music in particular needs special pleading almost 70 now; this was a late debut. When know from having been at rehearsals that and hand holding. When will composers he was a relative kid (colt?), presiding over the director gave the singers nothing and rise up against this? When will audiences? the Philadelphia Orchestra, one criticism the set prevented them from doing any- Return now to the Met—no lecturing!— of him was, “He makes everything sound thing dramatically. The production is a and the other little-known work by a great like Verdi.” There is no gainsaying his fiasco! composer: Attila by Verdi. The Met had Verdi: He has long been a superb champion never staged this one, either. Verdi com- of this composer, and his conducting of That’s tellin’ ’em. I am softer on the posed Attila in 1846, when he was 32. Attila was masterly in every respect. production than Ramey is, seeing some In Verdi’s operatic catalogue, this work The title role was taken by the Russian merit in the “fiasco,” but his denunciation comes just after Alzira (even more of a bass Ildar Abdrazakov, who is always an is more than valid. Very rare is the singer rarity than Attila) and just before Macbeth imposing presence, certainly in the physi- who will speak out against a production. (a hit). Verdi, lucky guy, would be given cal sense. He is married to Olga Borodina, They grouse in private, constantly (believe many more years—he lived to 87—and go the mezzo-soprano who is one of the great- me)—but they do not risk professional on to write such ditties as Otello. est singers of our time. Abdrazakov is all repercussions. They grin and bear idiocy Attila may be early Verdi, with a foot in right himself. There have been more po - after idiocy. A famous bass at the end of his the old bel canto world, but it is very much tent Attilas, vocally—Samuel Ramey, for career is a free man indeed. Verdian: Most of the composer’s stylistic example—but Abdrazakov conveyed the Here is a question: If Attila were not by traits are in place. The story involves necessary. His love interest was Violeta a great composer, would we see and hear Attila’s invasion of Italy in the 5th century. Urmana, the Lithuanian soprano who used it? I think the answer is yes, definitely. We see a kinder, gentler Hun: Attila is the to be a mezzo: Sometimes they make the Attila may not be Otello, Traviata, or Scourge of God, sure, but he is a fairly rea- switch upward. The night I attended, she Falstaff, but it is a substantial and com- sonable scourge. And he is dangerously was suffering from a cold, but she still pelling work. How about The Nose? clement toward his enemies. I dare say acquitted herself well. She has the kind of Would we see and hear that? Probably, that Attila and his barbarians come off as technique that can be relied on. I recall although the question is debatable. As METROPOLITAN OPERA / more sympathetic than the Italians, who something Marilyn Horne once told stu- for MacMillan, may he have at least as should be the victims. dents in a master class: “If you get your many years as Verdi and compose bravely

KEN HOWARD Making his Met debut along with technique, the world’s your oyster.” and well.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS his extradition to the United States: It will man-eating Sex and the City persona). Film cost Polanski his liberty, but it might And as if this weren’t enough intrigue for restore his artistic touch. a simple scribbler to reckon with, Mc - At the very least, the shadow of jail time Gregor’s character gradually realizes that Fugitive seems to have concentrated his mind, and the last ghost writer was on his way to spurred his creativity. his latest film, The uncovering a dark secret from Lang’s Pleasures Ghost Writer, which slunk into American past—one that certain people might be theaters this month (how would you like to willing to kill to keep hushed up. ROSS DOUTHAT be the publicist responsible for promoting It will not surprise you to learn that this it?) and which Polanski edited while under secret rewrites the history of the Bush- here were many choice senten - house arrest in Gstaad, turns out to be Blair relationship along the most paranoid ces in the disgraceful petition very much worth seeing. Sleek, chilly, and lines imaginable. But the sub–Gore Vidal that circulated among the movie hitchcockian, it’s by far his finest work in conspiracy theorizing didn’t really bother T industry’s elite following ro - years. me. Unlike, say, Paul Greengrass’s Iraq man Polanski’s long-overdue arrest, de - ewan McGregor plays the nameless War thriller Green Zone, which I caught a manding the confessed sex offender’s “ghost” of the title, a talented hack hired to few days before I saw The Ghost Writer, release and pledging him the “support and assist Pierce Brosnan’s Adam Lang, a Tony Polanski’s movie doesn’t pretend to be a friendship” of “everyone involved in inter- Blair–esque British prime minister, with hyper-realistic commentary on contem - national filmmaking.” But the one that his post-resignation memoirs. The ex-PM porary events. Lang’s secret is just the jarred the most, perhaps, was a passing ref- has repaired to a grimly modernist beach MacGuffin, as hitchcock would say, that erence to Polanski as “one of the greatest house on Martha’s Vineyard (though of keeps the plot’s gears clicking into place. contemporary filmmakers.” course Polanski had to use a european The conspiracy theory is entirely in the Now I know what they meant: The long- coastline as a stand-in), where the huge service of the deft plotting, rather than the time fugitive from American justice made windows expose an expanse of sand dunes other way around. It’s also in the service of a slew of fine performances. McGregor takes an under- written, undermotivated part and infuses it with the kind of ferocious charisma that I briefly worried he’d lost during his grim slog through the Star Wars prequels. Bros - nan, who was too handsome to be taken seriously as a younger actor, is perfect as a faded, battered lion—charming and evasive, bitter and entitled, flashing a politician’s grin one moment and blowing up in rage the next. The Ghost Writer’s Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor But it’s Olivia Williams, as his seeming- great movies in his time, and so long as and the sea beyond—the same sea, as it ly disillusioned wife, who walks away with he’s alive and behind a camera (or behind happens, that claimed Lang’s first ghost the movie. Beautiful and brittle, with a cut- bars, with any luck) I suppose he counts writer, who washed up on the beach after ting putdown for everyone and an alluring as a “contemporary.” But it’s still a strange drinking too much and tipping himself vulnerability underneath, she’s the keeper turn of phrase, given how long it’s been over the side of the island-bound ferry. of The Ghost Writer’s deepest secret, and since any of Polanski’s movies deserved his replacement is quickly enveloped the character who makes the implausible the appelation “great”—rather like refer- by a mood that’s tense, claustrophobic, story seem worth taking seriously. ring to Jimmy Carter as one of our most and besieged. Lang stands accused of Williams enjoyed what seemed like her important contemporary politicians, or turning British citizens over to the CIA breakout role more than a decade ago, in Ann-Margret as one of our most beautiful for waterboarding, and the case has been Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, but she hasn’t contemporary actresses. referred to the International Criminal done much that’s worth seeing since: She’s During his brief time in hollywood, Court; if the PM recrosses the Atlantic, he too caustic and intelligent, perhaps, for Polanski made Rosemary’s Baby and may face trial for war crimes. (Perhaps the kind of work that hollywood usually Chinatown, guaranteeing his place in the you can see why Polanski was attracted to assigns its younger actresses. With any cinematic pantheon. But across the 30-odd the material.) There are protesters outside luck, her turn in The Ghost Writer is a fore- years since his arrest, trial, and flight to the gates of the oceanfront estate that taste of the roles that await her in middle europe, he’s made a succession of mis- Lang is borrowing, and a media swarm age. If so, then roman Polanski will de - fires, duds, and not-that-interesting fail- gathering in the island’s inns. his inner serve credit, in what may prove his final ures. (The Pianist, his most acclaimed circle is divided against itself, with his effort as a filmmaker, for reviving what post-exile work, was distant, stagey, and long-suffering spouse (Olivia Williams) ought to be a fine career—and for doing so overpraised.) Indeed, if they really care staring daggers at his aide-de-camp and in a movie that reminded me of his talent, about the cult of art so much, maybe all his paramour (a wildly miscast Kim Cattrall, and almost (but not quite, not quite) made ROMAN POLANSKI

© rape-excusing friends should be rooting for layering a bad British accent atop her me forget about his crimes.

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still fill our kitchens, boiler rooms, and the size and appearance of a wall safe, the Country Life desktops. stove top was set in a linoleum frame. Our land line in the country was on the Finally they went to the great kitchen in fritz. We have a land line because cell- the sky and had to be replaced. Twice dur- Can I phone service is spotty, and we depend ing this process the gas leaked. A call to on it because our country computer can the local utility—I can see its Beaux Arts Help You? access the Internet only via dial-up (rely- office tower out my window—brought ing on 1995 technology turns you into repairmen. There was no nonsense about Daniel Boone). But one fine day service these guys; they were quick, knowledge- became very not fine. everyone seemed able, effective, and confident. “Don’t run to be talking through steel pads. I could until you see me running,” one of them not read the Corner. The phone company assured us. “I’m not going to blow myself sent a repairman, who examined the pole up.” If everything were potentially lethal, box down the driveway. His explanation would we all be efficient? was smooth, plausible, and incomprehen- But that is not the answer to the prob- sible. But the problem persisted. The sec- lem of the non-service economy either, as ond repairman had a different theory, and my boiler in the country showed. This a ponytail. That is not relevant to his piece of equipment is only as old as the RICHARD BROOKHISER theory, but it made me think of eternal millennium, and it kept the house going youth in American life. Some men (and the winter the temperature went down e have a service econo - women) can pull it off, but why should all to –27. So when it failed twice last month, my, in part, because we no of us try to look like the bands we liked we were even more surprised than we longer have servants. Car - in high school? The phone still didn’t were incommoded. The fuel company W riage maintenance hap- work. Third time was the charm. The sent two young men; one drove from as pened in the stables, amongst the grooms. fault was the contractor’s, who at our re - far as Pennsylvania. Their primary tool Perhaps you even retained/owned a smith quest had run an underground line to the kits were pouches, fatter than laptops but and a carpenter, so that if a wheel came pole box, but used a line that was meant to smaller than briefcases. They found the off, Ben or Fetka would fix it right up. be used only indoors, not in the dirt con- problems (a broken circulator pump, a (We project ourselves onto the heroes and heroines of what we read, yet our ances- tors are more likely to have been Ben and So accustomed can we become Fetka than elizabeth Bennett or Pierre Bezukhov.) Now that we drive hybrids, to non-service that when service and every man is the impresario of his happens we feel blessed. own life, we require service. Our refrac- tory items have to be taken to a service center, or a service man or woman must tending with deluges and frost heaves. chewed wire), fixed them, and were gone come to us, in person, by phone, or as an (He used it, I have no doubt, because he in each case in less than half an hour. They invisible, inaudible online manifestation. had some lying around—a frequent re- bantered politely; one texted his wife, The service economy begets the non- course in the non-service economy.) though he said later that they were to service economy—not agriculture or Sometimes the problem is far up - be married this summer (these days the man ufacturing or extraction, but those stream. I have written about the broken ceremony follows the commitment). So who offer service, yet do not provide it. valve on the back of my country stove, Americans can still put things right with- They come in a uniform with a name whose function is being performed by an out the threat of death. stitched on the shirt pocket, or in distant old television antenna. I was about to There is a third, much rarer class of Bangalore they ask our names, after the say, “temporarily performed,” except our service, which is closer to art. My friend recording that tells us this conversation friend the antenna has been at work since Doug is also an artist, and his skill at diag- may be recorded for quality control, yet before Christmas. Why has a new valve nosis and problem solving is creative. It they do not serve us. The false servers been as elusive as the health-care bill? We was he who put the D handle on the anten- cause a seepage of time, money, and equi- know that stagnant inventory lowers a na and made a valve. The artistry arises librium that looms large in our lives, company’s productivity (the dusty ware- from focus and calm (if one thing does not though I do not know how it is scored in house is the sign of death), so maybe no work, try another). Given his ability to the GDP. inventory at all means your business is make almost anything happen, he has a I am thinking of the servicing, not pri- super-productive. So, until the wretches degree of scorn for those who profession- marily of my computers—since I myself in Hubei Province can fill another con- ally make only one thing happen. Of the have mastered the solution to half of all tainer ship with valves, I will go without. boiler repairmen, for instance, he said, computer problems (unplug it, wait a So accustomed can we become to non- “That’s all they do.” minute, then plug it back in), I seldom service that when service happens we feel But I had an answer for that. “David deal with computer geeks—but of the blessed. My oven and stove top in the city Paterson has been in politics all his industrial-age artifacts, modernized, that were almost as old as I am. The oven had life.”

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Adolescent Thinking

SEE some young people in the audience,” said have access to contraception, the morning-after pill and President Obama in Ohio the other day. Not that advice on sexually transmitted infections.” young. For he assured them that, under Obamacare, Whatever it takes to get you through recess. So a sixth- ‘I they’d be eligible to remain on their parents’ health grader can be taught oral sex—“outercourse,” as British coverage until they were 26. teachers call it—and given the abortion-helpline number The audience applauded. without parental consent. Because, as everyone knows, our Why? bodies “mature” earlier, so it would be unreasonable not to Because, as the politicians say, “it’s about the future of all our expect our grade-schoolers to be rogering anything that children.” And in the future we’ll all be children. For most of moves, and the most we can hope to do is ensure there’s a human history, across all societies, a 26-year-old has been con- government-funded condom dispenser nearby. But, evident- sidered an adult, and not starting out but well into adulthood. Not ly, our minds mature later and later, pushing into what less someone who remains a dependent of his parents, but someone evolved societies regarded as early middle age, so it would who might well have parental responsibilities himself. But, if be unreasonable to expect people who’ve been fully expert we’re going to remain dependents at 26, why stop there? Why in “sexually transmitted infections” for the best part of two not 36? An Italian court ruled recently that Signor Giancarlo decades to assume responsibility for their broader health-care Casagrande of Bergamo is obligated to pay his daughter arrangements. Marina a monthly allowance of 350 euros—or approximate- And if retirement begins at 50, when does it end? Life ly 500 bucks. Marina is 32, and has been working on her col- expectancy in most advanced nations is nudging 80. When lege thesis (“about the Holy Grail”) for over eight years. Bismarck introduced the old-age pension in 1889, you had America is not yet as “progressive” as Italy, so let us take to be 70 to get it at a time when life expectancy was 45. We President Obama at his word—that, for the moment, the haven’t precisely inverted that equation, but we’re getting 27th birthday marks the point at which there. So the “death panel” has a certain a boy becomes a man and moves out of rationale. The Dutch, pioneers in medi - his parents’ health-insurance agency. At cally assisted suicide, are now debating what point then does an adult reenter whether to let non-medical personnel dependency? assist in dispatching people who don’t Well, in Greece, a woman working in a have anything wrong with them: If you’ve “hazardous” job can retire with a full gov- reached the age of 70 and “consider your ernment pension at 50. “Hazardous” used life complete,” well, don’t let us stop you. to mean bomb disposal and mining. But, The economic impact of an aging popu- as is the way of government entitlements, lace has been well aired, even if not much the category growed like Topsy. Five hun- has been done about it. But European dred and eighty professions now qualify politicians are frantically trying to wean as “hazardous,” among them hairdressing. their citizens off unsustainably early re- “I use a hundred different chemicals every day—dyes, am- tirement on lavish public pensions that, in Greece and else- monia, you name it,” 28-year-old Vasia Veremi told the New where, will swallow the state if not rolled back. The impact of York Times. “You think there’s no risk in that?” Not to men- an ever-extended adolescence is also economic—and demo- tion all those scissors. TV and radio hosts can retire at 50 be - graphic: The longer you stay in school, the longer you delay cause they use microphones, which could increase their forming a family, and the fewer children you’ll have to pay exposure to bacteria. Is column-writing also “hazardous”? It taxes to fund your third-of-a-century-long “retirement.” used to be, what with the significant risk of paper cuts. Takes When American politicians promise airily a future in which its toll over the years. every child can go to college, they presumably haven’t So working life is now an ever-shrinking window of thought through all the ramifications. opportunity between adolescence and retirement. These two Yet the impact of an endlessly deferred adulthood is, I’d happy conditions are the contribution of the advanced social- say, primarily psychological. What kind of adults emerge democratic state to the traditional life cycle. In the old days, from the two-decade cocoon of modern adolescence? Even as you were a child until 13 or so. Then you worked. Then you the Western world atrophies, not merely its pop culture but died. And that’s it. Now the interludes between childhood and its entire societal aesthetic seems mired in arrested develop - adulthood and between adulthood and death consume more ment. In Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity, time than the main acts. Gary Cross asks simply: “Where have all the men gone?” If adolescence ends somewhere between 27 and 32 in Like George Will, Victor Davis Hanson, and others who’ve GETTY / advanced Western nations, when does it begin? We turn for posed that question, Professor Cross is no doubt aware that he guidance to the Daily Mail in London: “Girls as young as sounds old and square. But in a land of middle-aged teenagers 11 are to be offered pregnancy tests at school. They will also somebody has to be. MICHELLE PEDONE

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