Kevin D. Williamson's the End Is Near

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Mark Krikorian $4.99 20 The Editors

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MAY 20, 2013 | VOLUME LXV, NO. 9 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 27 Jay Nordlinger on George W. Bush The Rubio Amnesty p. 22 In the months leading up to the BOOKS, ARTS introduction of the Senate immigration bill, conservatives & MANNERS looked hopefully to Rubio as 39 A GRIEF OBSERVED their representative. But he is David French reviews The Little now much less the Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, conservative ambassador and the Secret of a Good Life, to the Gang of Eight than by Rod Dreher. the Gang’s ambassador to 40 THE TRIBES OF conservatives. Mark Krikorian POST-AMERICA John O’Sullivan reviews , by Tom Wolfe. COVER: AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE Back to Blood THE COVER IMAGE WAS ALTERED SLIGHTLY, TO REMOVE PEOPLE STANDING IN THE BACKGROUND. 42 NO AQUATIC TARTS? Charles C. W. Cooke reviews Worlds ARTICLES of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages, by Guy Halsall. 16 AMERICAN DAWA by Andrew C. McCarthy The radicalization of the Tsarnaev brothers. 44 BIG BROTHER AT YOUR TABLE Julie Gunlock reviews 19 ACCULTURATION WITHOUT ASSIMILATION by Stanley Kurtz The Food Police: A Well-Fed We reject American identity at our peril. Manifesto About the Politics of Your Plate, by Jayson Lusk. 22 GEORGE W. BUSH DAY by Jay Nordlinger Some notes on a dedication ceremony. 46 FILM:•THE PLACE OFF THE A-LIST DONALD KAGAN’S LAST LECTURE 24 by Eliana Johnson Ross Douthat reviews The Place An important career ends memorably. Beyond the Pines.

47 CITY DESK:• THE OBJECT OF BEAUTY FEATURES Richard Brookhiser discusses 27 THE RUBIO AMNESTY by Mark Krikorian women and beauty. It’s not what the senator promised, but he’s defending it anyway. 29 iPENCIL by Kevin D. Williamson SECTIONS Nobody knows how to make a pencil, or a health-care system. 31 HOW THE FED CAN UNWIND by Ramesh Ponnuru & David Beckworth 2 Letters to the Editor And its critics can relax. 4 The Week 37 Athwart ...... James Lileks 34 FAITH AND FAMILY by Mary Eberstadt 38 The Long View ...... Rob Long We should be optimistic about their future. 43 Poetry ...... Jason Lee Steorts 48 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., 2013. 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:QXP-1127940387.qxp 5/1/2013 2:51 PM Page 2 Letters

MAY 20 ISSUE; PRINTED MAY 2

EDITOR Richard Lowry Explaining the Gulf Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger According to Kevin A. Hassett in his April 22 column, a “gulf has emerged” Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts between the academic achievements of boys and girls—women now earn 57 per- Literary Editor Michael Potemra Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy cent of bachelor’s degrees and 60 percent of master’s degrees, for example—and Washington Editor Robert Costa “new clues” explain the roots of these differences. A graph plots the differences of Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson National Correspondent John J. Miller time spent on children’s cognitive activities (number of books a child owns, atten- Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Deputy Managing Editors dance at story hours, and visits to the library). Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Robert VerBruggen But of the six comparisons, the greatest difference has to do with library visits Production Editor Katie Hosmer among two-year-olds. About 30 percent of girls Editorial Associate Katherine Connell Factors in Child Research Associate Scott Reitmeier visited a library in the past month, as compared with Cognitive Development Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace Two-year-old boys Two-year-old girls 24 percent of boys—a six-percentage-point differ- Four-year-old boys Four-year-old girls Contributing Editors 70.2 Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat ence, as compared with the roughly 20-point gaps in 65.9 40.5% 36.5% 33.1% Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty 29.8% 29.5% 44.5 Jonah Goldberg / Florence King degree-earning. How such a small difference can 39.9 23.4% Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin produce an “achievement gulf” is not clear—and at 11.5% 12.6% Yuval Levin / Rob Long

Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy any rate, girls mature faster than boys, so such a dif- Number of Books Attended a Visited Kate O’Beirne / Reihan Salam Child Owns Story Hour the Library ference among young children is hardly surprising. NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Mr. Hassett is entirely correct about one thing, though—yes, boys are more Managing Editor Edward John Craig National Affairs Columnist John Fund wiggly than girls! News Editor Daniel Foster Media Editor Eliana Johnson Political Reporter Andrew Stiles Margaret B. Larson Reporter Katrina Trinko Editorial Associate Charles C. W. Cooke Mt. Airy, Md. Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Developer Wendy Weihs

EDITORS- AT- LARGE Kevin A. HAssett replies: even though the differences in activities between boys Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan and girls from the study i described may appear small, the cumulative effect of all NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM the small differences is startlingly large. the authors of the study show that the dif- Patrick Brennan / Betsy Woodruff ference in parental activities was responsible for up to 50 percent of the differences Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman in boys’ and girls’ cognitive-test scores when they entered kindergarten. the activ- Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans ities listed are only some of the many ways that parental involvement may affect Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman academic performance, which may well explain the large estimated impact. James Gardner / David Gelernter George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart visiting the library, for example, may be a proxy for other differences. the striking Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune thing is that the “wiggles” in the data are found to have a major impact, leaving less D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak to be explained by the wiggles in the boys. Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak Corrections Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu / Lucy Zepeda in “King roger” (May 6), Jay nordlinger reviewed Zev Circulation Manager Jason Ng Assistant to the•Publisher Kate Murdock Chafets’s new book, Roger Ailes: Off Camera. He quoted the WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com author as saying that Ailes pioneered the use of musical MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 “intros and outros” in television news. He went on to ques- WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 tion this claim. in fact, Chafets quotes a Berkeley professor, Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd who makes the claim. He does not make it himself. Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet in addition, a letter in the May 6 issue stated that Berkshire Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Hathaway A shares were valued at $155; in fact, they were Director of Development Heyward Smith Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell valued at $155,000. PUBLISHER Jack Fowler

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

2 | www.nationalreview.com MAY 2 0 , 2 0 1 3 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 4/30/2013 12:56 PM Page 1

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n New line of attack on Ted Cruz: He doesn’t act like the other senators. New slogan for Cruz campaign: See above.

n A Washington Post/ABC poll taken the week before the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library (see Jay Nordlinger, p. 22) showed that the former president and the current president have identical approval ratings: 47 percent. Barack Obama has been hailed by his supporters in and out of the media as the Second Coming. But even Jesus would be a lame duck in a second term that has so far been a substantive fizzle. For the departed, on the other hand, time removes the pricks of daily controversy. For Bush, it has allowed Americans to recall his fundamental decency and to appreciate that the Terror War, which came to him and us on 9/11, will last for more than two adminis- trations and that Bush confronted it manfully. Better days have come for his reputation. Far more important, as he said at his library, is the hope that America’s best days lie ahead.

n Back in 2010, Republicans were not able to stop or shape Obamacare, but they did win one tiny victory: requiring congressmen and some of their aides to enroll in the law’s “ex - changes.” Now congressional Democrats are worrying that they the party was retreating from the goal of a full repeal of will not be able to attract young, single staffers, who will have to Obamacare. We supported the bill, but it is not an idle worry. pay much more for exchange coverage—thanks to Obamacare’s Republicans need to match their anti-Obamacare rhetoric with an regulations—than they pay today. So the Democrats are trying to alternative to the program that would let at least as many people create an exemption for their offices, either through new legi s - get coverage as that misbegotten law, but without its side effects. lation or through a favorable regulatory ruling. Speaker John (We are happy to send inquiring Republican congressmen back Boehner immediately nixed the legislative option, saying that the issues of NR for more details.) It is only in the context of an over- solution to the country’s Obamacare problems is repeal. Around all strategy to replace Obamacare with something better that the same time, Senator Max Baucus (D., Mont.), who more than Republicans can achieve unity on tactics. any other individual wrote the bill, complained that its implementation would be a “train wreck.” A few days later he an - n In Washington, it’s not always easy to tell where the incompe- nounced that, after six terms, he will not be running for reelection tence ends and the cynicism begins. So it was with the FAA next year. The people who know this law best are doing what they air-traffic-controller furloughs, a stupid and inept response to can to get off this train in time. sequestration that the Democrats planned to exploit to the fullest. Even before the flight delays had been felt, Harry Reid was using n But Republicans have their own Obamacare headaches. House them as an illustration of the need to cancel almost all of the Republican leaders sought to shift some Obamacare funds from spending cuts. Never mind that the FAA had to find only $600 the program’s propaganda division to its “high-risk pools” to help million in cuts in an agency with a $16 billion budget within a sick people. The move would have highlighted the law’s prioriti- Transportation Department with a $70 billion budget. Only zation of ideology over its putative beneficiaries. Conservatives 15,000 of the FAA’s 47,000 employees are air-traffic controllers. have generally supported high-risk pools, although preferring Yet the agency furloughed them as though they had no special that they be designed differently than they are in Obamacare. The role in the nation’s transportation and commerce. The FAA problem those pools are meant to address—that some people claimed—probably wrongly—that it lacked the flexibility under who have chronic conditions are effectively locked out of health- sequestration to allocate its cuts differently. A bipartisan revolt insurance markets—is the result of federal and state policies that forced the White House to accept a bill explicitly giving the FAA have made it impossible for individuals to buy cheap, renewable the authority to shift from other accounts the money necessary to catastrophic policies. A conservative reform of health care would avoid the furloughs—a small victory for reason. allow such a market to emerge while essentially (through the risk pools) giving money to the people for whom it is too late to start n Higher levels of public-sector debt and deficits are, generally, buying insurance. The leaders had to pull the bill, though, associated with slower economic growth. But just what level

ROMAN GENN be cause of opposition from a few conservatives who worried that presents a serious problem is a remarkably difficult question.

4 | www.nationalreview.com MAY 2 0 , 2 0 1 3 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 4/29/2013 1:36 PM Page 1

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THE WEEK Econ o mists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have n As secretary of state, John Kerry hasn’t lost his knack for the attempted to examine it on a number of occasions, using histor- inane. Testifying before Congress, he was asked about Benghazi, ical data from wealthy nations over the past two centuries. Their where four of our people were killed last September 11. He fin- most famous study, in 2010, found that when a country’s ratio of ished his answer by saying, “We got a lot more important things national debt to total economic output rises above 90 percent, to move on to and get done.” But there are still unanswered ques- its economic growth drops dramatically, or stalls entirely. (U.S. tions. And we don’t recall that Democrats were eager to move on debt is currently about 70 percent.) This stark result has become from Abu Ghraib, even though there were important things to a popular piece of evidence in favor of austerity in Europe and “move on to” then, as well. On another day, Kerry made a casual of fiscal restraint in the United States. But this spring, econo- comparison of those who died on the Mavi Marmara to those mists at the University of Massachusetts published a paper who died in the Boston terror bombing. The Mavi Marmara was attacking Reinhart and Rogoff’s work, demonstrating one the Turkish ship carrying thugs who were bent on breaking the minor error and what they considered questionable weighting Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza. On a third day, Kerry made of the countries involved. In the UMass paper’s assessment, a statement about jihadists: “I think the world has had enough of the relationship between high debt and slow growth re - people who have no belief system, no policy for jobs, no policy mained, but it was much weaker, and there was no cliff at 90 for education.” Unfortunately, the jihadists have a rather well- percent or any other level. Regardless, it is likely that the developed belief system. It’s almost enough to make you pine causality runs in both directions: Slower growth also drives for Madame Secretary Clinton. higher debt. None of this changes the fact that the growth of entitlements, and the growth in debt it will yield, will crowd n A handful of conservative outlets—including this one, but out private investment and restrain growth. That problem, most persistently Breitbart.com—have for years sought to bring our real fiscal dilemma, has not been seriously considered— attention to a little-known class-action settlement called Pigford, or addressed. which has spiraled into a racially charged, billion-dollar government kickback machine for untold thousands that shows no signs of letting up. One organ of the indifferent mainstream media has n Paul Krugman, writing on his blog on April 28, asserted at last caught up, with the New York Times publishing a deeply that events were refuting the theories of a school of conser- reported piece on Pigford and its descendants that, if anything, vative critics of Keynesianism. Against the Keynesian insis- reveals the truth to be worse than was previously thought. The tence that spending cuts must hurt a de pressed economy, original Pigford settlement made $50,000 payments available to these conservatives had argued (to simplify) that monetary any black American who had even “attempted to farm” and who expansion by the central bank would do a lot to offset any was willing to write on a form that he had been discriminated such effect. Krugman noted that we have had a real-world against by the USDA. An orgy of fraud followed, led by a small test of this theory in the U.S.: The Fed launched a new round cadre of lawyers and hucksters who, among other efforts, toured of expansion in late 2012, and around the same time the rural churches in the South encouraging parishioners to get their budget took a turn toward “austerity” (i.e., modest spending checks. Some claimants were as young as four years old; others cuts). The result is a disappointing new figure on economic had their forms filled out by lawyers just to “keep the line mov- growth showing that “austerity seems to be taking its toll.” ing.” In some towns, the number of claimants exceeded the num- Hang on a minute, though: That number is higher than the ber of farms operated—by individuals of any race. Instead of 2012 growth rate, which means that the lesson (to the extent closing the spigot, in 2010 the Obama administration opened it to there really is one) is the exact opposite of the one Krugman women, Hispanics, and Native Americans, overruling in the drew. Twenty minutes later, Krugman wrote another post process the objections of career lawyers in the Justice De - explaining that “again and again” he has been proven to be partment. It financed the payouts by dubiously tapping a Justice right in economic de bates, and his oppo- Department fund reserved for a different purpose. And it applied, nents to be, in many cases, “knaves and in most cases, evidentiary standards even looser than the ones fools.” To doubters, he summed up: governing the original settlement. Pigford has long screamed for “Look at how the debate has run so congressional investigation, and now that the mainstream media far.” Follow Krugman’s links and have taken notice, perhaps it will get it. you will see a trium phant mention of a study showing how, from 2007 n Fisker is—or perhaps, by the time you read this, was— another to 2008, his predictions were better “green” automotive company, a producer of a plug-in luxury car than those of Sam Donaldson and called the Karma that it sold to the likes of DiCaprio and Clooney Senator Lind sey Graham. Though for just $100,000 or so a pop. Karma, as it turns out, is a bitch, armed with no study, we will and Fisker is nearly bankrupt. This would be just another exam- venture a prediction: ple of the vicissitudes of the free market if it weren’t for the fact Krug man will keep that the American taxpayer is on the hook for a $529 million loan on winning de bates given to the company by Steven Chu’s gang at the Department of in the future as Energy—the same rocket scientists (in some cases literally) who long as he’s brought you Solyndra. So cozy was Fisker with the administra- the judge.

tion that Vice President Biden stood at the site of a proposed MEL EVANS / Fisker plant in Delaware promising that the government’s invest-

ment would return untold billions. The loan did bring in a billion AP PHOTO

6 | www.nationalreview.com MAY 2 0 , 2 0 1 3 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 4/30/2013 11:27 AM Page 1

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32%R[)W&ROOLQV&2 week:QXP-1127940387.qxp 5/1/2013 2:51 PM Page 8

THE WEEK A Long-Term Problem for the Economy

N a perfect frictionless economy, there would never be long-term unemployed made up only 17.3 percent of all any unemployment. If a number of workers were ex - unemployed workers in December 2007; today they I pected to lose their jobs tomorrow, firms would antici- constitute fully 39.3 percent of all unemployed workers pate an increase in the supply of workers, everybody’s in the labor market. In December 2007, the average wage would drop, and higher demand for the newly avail- length of unemployment was 16.6 weeks; today, it is able workers would emerge instantly. In the real world, of much higher, at 37.7 weeks. There is growing evidence course, there are many frictions that make non-zero unem- that employers are extremely reluctant to make a job ployment possible. Most important are skill mismatches offer to persons who have been out of work for more and geographic mismatches. A surge in the demand for than six months. A recent study by Rand Ghayad engineers might not reduce the unemployment rate today if involved submitting fake résumés in re sponse to job it takes time to train engineers. An energy boom in North postings and varying the levels of experience and lengths Dakota can create job listings that remain unfilled until of unemployment on them. He found that the chances of workers decide to move to North Dakota. receiving a callback from an employer dropped off sig- In one of the more important papers in economic nificantly for the long-term unemployed; a worker who history, Christopher Dow and Louis Dicks-Mireaux had been unemployed for only a short time and had no showed that there is a regular relationship between job relevant experience in the industry to which he was openings and unemployment. When there are many applying was more likely to receive a callback than a unemployed workers, openings disappear relatively long-term-unemployed person who did have relevant quickly, and when there are many openings, unemploy- experience. Providing 99 weeks of unemployment in - ment tends to be low. Econ o mists later began referring surance may not have helped matters, since it encour- to this curve as the “Beveridge curve” after William aged workers to stay out of jobs for longer and they then Beveridge, an economist who studied unemployment in became mired in unemployment for the long run. (There the first half of the 20th century. are large geographical differences in unemployment as Subsequent research has demonstrated that economies well, and workers reluctant to move to find jobs may tend to move up and down a relatively stable Beveridge have become stuck as their area floundered while oth- curve over the business cycle. In recessions, there tends to ers, such as North Dakota, flourished.) be high unemployment and few openings. Employers make that choice for rational but unfortu- The nearby chart portrays one of the most striking shifts nate reasons: Workers whogo through longer periods of in U.S. labor-market data on record. Data on U.S. openings unemployment have a heightened risk of substance and unemployment from January 2001 to February 2013 abuse and suicide, a shorter life expectancy, and a are shown, and non-linear estimates of the Beveridge curve higher likelihood of personal problems, including divorce are provided for the periods from January 2001 to August and troubled children. The costs of long-term unemploy - 2009, and from September 2009 to February 2013. ment are high, and the shift of the Beveridge curve In an economy with low friction, the Beveridge curve implies that they may stick around for a long time. would be very close to the origin. Unemployment would tend to be low, and openings filled quickly. In an economy —KEVIN A. HASSETT with large matching problems, high unemployment and high job openings could coexist, and the curve could be farther from the origin. The chart indicates that the Beve - Beveridge Curve: ridge curve has shifted out sharply during the Obama January 2001–February 2013 administration. 4.0 It has been almost four years since the end of the recent recession, but the U.S. has yet to return to its previous Sept 2009-Feb 2013 3.5 levels of unemployment. The shift in the Beveridge curve Jan 2001-Aug 2009

suggests that it may never do so. The points labeled A and 3.0 B B illustrate why. In February 2013, the job-openings rate A

(unfilled jobs as a percentage of total jobs) was 2.8, a rate 2.5 that would have corresponded with an unemployment rate

of about 5.25 on the Beveridge curve from 2001 through Job-Openings Rate (Percent) 2.0 August 2009. The unemployment rate in February, however, was 7.7—almost two and a half points higher. 1.5 345678910 11 What explains the shift in the Beveridge curve? The Unemployment Rate (Percent) biggest factor is likely the massive increase in the number of workers who have become long-term unemployed. The SOURCE: BLS

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THE WEEK in private capital, investors who liked the idea of a firm with organization, responded to the Boston attack with an article mak- White House connections, and who now stand to be wiped out ing the claim that so-called right-wing terrorism has killed more because Fisker offered a product it didn’t know how to efficient- Americans since 9/11 than has Islamic terrorism. The problem, as ly mass-produce to a public that didn’t want to buy it. There will Ben Shapiro notes, is that practically none of the incidents likely be no plant in Delaware, no untold billions in return on the Mother Jones describes as right-wing terrorism were 1) instances federal investment, and no Karma in every garage. of terrorism or 2) perpetuated by right-wingers. Most are common crimes committed by people with the sort of lunatic politi- n When President Obama addressed a Planned Parenthood na - cal opinions one hears at the worse class of bars and the better tion al conference in Washington, D.C., he assured his audience class of universities: Robert Andrew Poplawski, for example, that they had “a president who’s going to be right there with you, was an angry anti-Semite, but he did not murder his mother out fighting every step of the way.” He has been fighting since he was of political principle—they had an argument about letting the dog an Illinois state legislator, voting against bills that would have out. (He subsequently killed two police officers.) Chris and Wade required trying to save the lives of infants who survive attempts Lay were militia nuts who killed a man during a bank robbery; to abort them. Give Planned Parenthood and President Obama Jim David Adkisson was angry about losing his welfare benefits. the benefit of consistency: They are a business that provides Strangely enough, the magazine also characterized Andrew Jo - abortions; he is a politician who approves their handiwork. May seph Stack’s 2009 airplane crash into the IRS building in Austin the days of their sway be numbered. as right-wing terrorism, even though Mr. Stack identified himself as a Communist in his suicide note. (We are familiar enough with n Jurors in the trial of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia doctor the magazine to know that it is possible to be a Communist and accused of one third-degree and four first-degree murders, have still be to the right of Mother Jones, but this is ridiculous.) Pre - begun deliberations as we go to press. No one disputes the gen - dict ably, recent left-wing terrorism—such as the attempt by er ic description of the 41-year-old woman who died after seek- members of Occupy Cleveland to blow up the Route 82 bridge— ing an abortion at his clinic. The task of describing the four does not much enter into Mother Jones’s analysis. persons who, according to the prosecution, were killed after attempts to abort them failed is a different matter. Anglo-Saxon n Speaking of which, Floyd Lee Corkins II has pleaded guilty. If terms—“child,” “baby,” “newborn”—applied to the aborted you don’t know the name, it’s because the national media have party have a humanizing effect and suggest that the moral worth not been interested in his story. He’s the one who went to the of the object of abortion is equal to that of its agents and every- Family Research Council in Washington and shot security guard one else. Those who think it isn’t resort to the word “fetus,” the Leonard Johnson, who nonetheless subdued him. FRC is a con- Latinate, clinical term for “unborn child” and the analogue of servative organization, concentrating on social issues. Corkins another Latinate, clinical term rightly absent from the legal and also planned to attack similar organizations. He told investigators political debate: “gravida,” a pregnant woman. Journalists and that he intended to kill as many FRC employees as possible. Then commentators who call the infants fighting for their lives in the he was going to smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces. He chaos and filth of Gosnell’s clinic “fetuses” clearly signal their had bought 15 of the sandwiches for the purpose. He got the idea affirmation of abortion rights but inaccurately convey the fact of that FRC was a “hate group” by going to the website of the the matter: The children at that point were no longer unborn. Of Southern Poverty Law Center. And you can never be too careful course, if babies are fetuses, fetuses are babies. The lesson in about hate. logic is unintended. n NR has a table every year at the White House Correspondents n The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity has landed, Dinner. When Louis XIV expected every nobleman to appear at and of course its roster is fruitier than Natalie Portman’s break- Versailles, who would stay at his chateau? But the dinner is an fast. Habitual scourge of Paulism James Kirchick makes the institution as grotesque as Versailles. Tom Brokaw slammed the introductions: Lew Rockwell, believed by many to be the author 2012 iteration because of the splash made there by Lindsay of Ron Paul’s oddball racist newsletters, is a prominent member Lohan. But celebrity varnish had been layered on for years. of the board, as is Michael Scheuer, who insists that American Hollywood glitz, plus journalistic and Beltway self-esteem, Jews are a “fifth column” acting in Israeli interests; John Laugh - makes the dinners about as republican as Versailles too. We here land, a prominent toady to Slobodan Milosevic and Alexander are the in-crowd; you (outside) are most definitely not. When the Lukashenko; Eric Margolis, who has suggested that 9/11 was the president, the guest of honor, shares the prejudices of his audi- work of either the U.S. military or the Israeli intelligence service; ence—i.e., is like most of them a liberal Democrat—there is a tri- and a few other questionable characters. The line-up is dis - fecta of snobbery. Modern American democracy was born when tasteful, but some features are simply laughable: a pair of Big the triumphant plebs trampled the carpets and furniture of the Broth er ly cartoon binoculars over the words “Neocon Watch” White House at Andrew Jackson’s inaugural ball. Now the (“Neocons, who are at all times salivating for war . . .”), to say American political elite behave like the gilded freaks in Saint- nothing of the presence of Dennis Kucinich. From 9/11 truthers Simon. Not good for them, not good for the U.S. to Lew Rock well’s sad little theme park in Alabama to crackpot- tery, the intellectual decline of the Rothbardian tendency within n Is the best possible next mayor of New York Anthony Weiner? libertarianism is a sad spectacle. Ludwig von Mises had no chil- If the city had a functioning GOP, Joseph Lhota, former head of dren, and also no heirs. the subway system, might fill the bill. But the odds against a Republican who is neither the Wrath of God (Rudy Giuliani) nor n Mother Jones, a magazine named for the founder of a terrorist a billionaire (Michael Bloomberg) are immense. The Democrats

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THE WEEK offer a field of tiny hacks, occupying ethnic or sexual niches: Bill weapons from the air, without too much risk of contamination to Thompson (black), John Liu (Asian), Christine Quinn (lesbian), innocents on the ground, we should do it. We shouldn’t want Bill de Blasio (married to an ex-lesbian). Weiner opposes an in - these weapons in the hands of Assad, or of a radical Islamist gov- spec tor general for the police department. He also dislikes Mayor ernment that could replace him. More broadly, we should give Bloomberg’s bike lanes, one of the incumbent’s worst whims. military aid to the more secular elements of the opposition, to Weiner is a sad case. Because his downtime amuse ment was strengthen them vis-à-vis the dominant radicals and give our- tweeting obscene pictures of himself to women to whom he was selves some allies on the ground. It would have been much bet- not married, he wrecked his political career. Yet because he can ter if the president had done this sooner, but in Syria he put all his think of no other, he seems determined to run for mayor. Pity the trust in meaningless gestures and words. New Yorkers who may have to hold their . . . noses and vote for him. n Demonstrating in the street is a well-known sport in France, and there’s plenty to demonstrate about at the moment. Ac cord - n The Sacramento Bee published an ugly and uninventive caring to polls, no president has ever been so unpopular as François toon mocking Texas over the fertilizer-plant disaster that killed Hollande, and unemployment has seldom been so high. At the 15 people in the small town of West, juxtaposing the explosion ministerial level, there’s financial jiggery-pokery. The socialist with Rick Perry’s boasting that “business is booming.” The im - Hollande makes known how little he appreciates the conservative plied argument—that the West catastrophe is a result of Texas’s governments of Germany and Britain. Hoping to shore up his lighter regulatory touch—is false. Fertilizer plants in Texas, like position, he got a bill to legalize same-sex marriage through the fertilizer plants everywhere in the United States, are heavily reg- parliament. There were fisticuffs inside the building and mass ulated: The West facility was subject to oversight by no fewer demonstrations outside, leading to arrests and tear gas. Gays have than seven agencies. The problem is not the regulations but the been attacked and beaten in cities throughout the country. A coali- regulators: OSHA had not visited the site since the Reagan ad - tion of right-wing opposition parties, the Catholic Church, and a min is tra tion. DHS is responsible for monitoring facilities with formidable lady comedian who goes under the spoof name Fri- more than 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate—the stuff Timothy gide Barjot, denounces violence but remains determined to take McVeigh used in the Oklahoma City bomb—but was ignorant of all legal steps to stop final ratification. The media compare the the fact that the plant had more than half a million pounds on demonstrations planned for the coming days to historic revolu- hand. The plant had informed one regulatory agency, but agen- tions, and even Le Figaro, that cautious newspaper, raised the cies do not communicate. The owners filed a “worst-case sce- specter of 1789. A lot of people evidently want the famous phrase nario” report with the EPA, which did not follow up to see Gay Paree to keep its old-time meaning. whether that scenario was in fact the worst case. The U.S. Pipe - line and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration—there is n In Paris, an Iranian man chased a rabbi and his son, both wear- such a thing—visited the facility in 2011 and handed down a ing yarmulkes, through a synagogue, then slashed them with a $5,200 fine for failure to draft certain safety plans; the 270 tons box cutter badly enough to require hospitalization. Witnesses of highly explosive material apparently did not seize their atten- said the man shouted “Allahu akbar!” repeatedly during the tion. Rick Perry, needless to say, does not oversee OSHA, DHS, attack. According to the Associated Press, “an official investiga- or the EPA. tion was underway to determine a possible motive.” Hmmm, we’re stumped too. n President Obama has made a memorable contribution to the annals of worthless diplomatic ultimatums with his infamous n The Vatican may have a scoop on its hands, or so thinks “red line” warning to Bashar al-Assad not to use chemical wea - Antonio Paolucci, the director of its museums. They have been pons. It would be “totally unacceptable,” a “game changer,” and restoring rooms with frescoes by Pinturicchio. One of these has a bring “consequences.” He said all of this apparently believing he portrait of Rodrigo Borgia, elected as Pope Alexander VI in 1492. could bluff Assad out of using such weapons, and giving nary a Probably because he was such a source of scandal, these rooms thought to what he would do if Assad defied his threats. Now, the were shut for centuries, and the frescoes obscured by the city’s British, French, and Israelis all believe that Syria has used chem- grime. The restorer, Maria Pustka, reveals that hitherto indistinct ical weapons, and so do U.S. intelligence agencies “with varying figures in the background of one fresco are naked men wearing degrees of confidence,” in the words of Defense Secretary Chuck only headdresses and dancing, with one on horseback. This is Hagel. The president has responded with Clintonian parsing of precisely how Christopher Columbus describes the people he had his past words—all but saying that it depends what the meaning encountered in the New World. Columbus was back home by of “red line” is—and with a defense lawyer’s doubt about the evi- 1494, the date when Pinturicchio finished the painting. Experts dence against Assad. The entire episode is a lesson in not writing are at work figuring out if the Borgia pope had got a copy of rhetorical checks you don’t want to cash, especially when the Columbus’s journal. If this was the source, then here is the first international credibility of the United States is at stake. It is cer- portrayal of native Americans, so to speak a Renaissance travel tainly true that Syria, locked in a hellish civil war between the poster. regime and an increasingly radicalized opposition, presents limited and unpalatable options for the United States. No one wants n Animal-rights vandals are the modern-day equivalent of book to put boots on the ground. A no-fly zone would invariably com- burners, destroying knowledge to intimidate anyone who defies mit us to toppling Assad by force of arms and taking ownership them. In Italy, protesters invaded a University of Milan laborato- of the post-Assad dispensation. We should pursue a more limited ry where scientists used mice (plus a few rabbits) to research course. If it is possible to identify and target stocks of chemical psychiatric disorders such as autism, Alzheimer’s, and schizo -

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phrenia. To be sure, research animals should be treated humane- become a leader of the New Right: the movement associated with ly, which is why every lab must run a gauntlet of rules and regu- Jack Kemp, Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, and others. He lations and review boards. But that wasn’t enough for the founded the Conservative Caucus in 1974, remaining its chair- extremists, who spoiled research records, switched or defaced man until 2011. “Conservatives used to believe their job was to labels on cages, and otherwise nullified several years’ worth of lose as slowly as possible,” he said. “I don’t just want to slow the work. The protesters also set free around 100 of the lab’s experi- train down; I want to put it on another track.” Phillips set himself mental subjects (a questionable move, since lab animals have against the temporizing qualities in the Republican party, and he trouble surviving in the wild) and at last report were negotiating occasionally went too far. He accused President Reagan of being for custody of the other 700 rodents. Meanwhile the researchers “a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda”; the Gipper turned out to will just get more mice and start over—not that the protesters know what he was doing. Three times, Phillips ran for president, care, as long as they can indulge their Wind in the Willows fan- on tickets of his devising. He has died at 72. In its obit, the New tasies. York Times said, “Even among stalwart conservatives, Mr. Phillips was known for being especially devoted to the ideologi- n Private Bradley Manning was named an honorary grand mar- cal principles of the right, including limited government, tradi- shal of the San Francisco gay-pride parade. Soldiers no longer get tional family values, strong national defense and opposition to booted from the Army over such things, which must be of great abortion.” A high tribute. R.I.P. comfort to him—that and the fact that prosecutors have opted not to seek the death penalty in his trial on charges of stealing classi- TERRORISM fied information and aiding the enemy during the Iraq War. But After Boston after a few days of withering criticism, the organizers of the event rescinded the invitation: Private Manning apparently is too con- HE Tsarnaev brothers’ bombing of the Boston Marathon troversial for the decorous ladies and gentlemen of the San raised questions peculiar to itself, and others already Francisco gay-pride parade. If ever you have had the pleasure of T familiar to us in the War on Terror. witnessing that great American spectacle, you will appreciate that In the Nineties, it gratified some liberals to think that the dis- the group’s announcement that the party responsible for inviting turbers of our peace were right-wing anarchists and survivalist Private Manning “has been disciplined” could mean any number nuts. If Timothy McVeigh could be fused with ordinary conserv- of things. atives, all the better. So the day after the Boston attack, former Obama aide David Axelrod speculated that it could be linked to n Four years ago, the Barbadian pop sensation Rihanna was “Tax Day” (April 15). Axelrod represents an old type in Ameri - beaten by her rapper/r&b-singer boyfriend Chris Brown; he ad- can politics, but for this slimy remark, in a better world he would mit ted to the assault and was sentenced to five years’ probation. be shunned. They are back together, and the faniverse buzzes with gossip As in other jihadi crimes—most prominently the Fort Hood about their relationship as Rihanna embarks on a world tour. In murders of Major Hasan—we saw what our colleague Andy the bad old days, entertainment moguls ran their talent like McCarthy calls “willful blindness.” The Russians warned us chattel. But they kept their troubles (purely for commercial rea- twice about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and the FBI even interviewed sons) hush-hush. Maybe that was no bad thing. him. Yet he was allowed to fly to Russia, spend six months doing who knows what, and return unmolested. It is not anti-Muslim to n The advance of women’s rights through the ages has been in - investigate dodgy Muslims for terrorist activity. Most American spir ing, and to it we can add the heroic effort of Washington’s leg- Muslims are not terrorists, but many American terrorists have islature to purge the state’s laws of such degradingly sexist terms been Muslims. Whether this is a perversion of the religion, or an as “penmanship” and “journeyman” (which have been replaced expression of an authentic strain of it, is not the business of gov- with “handwriting” and “journey-level plumber”). The notion ernment. Actions most definitely are. that a little girl growing up in Puyallup will be deterred from a Are we involved in a war, or crime-fighting? Dzhokhar rewarding career in ichthyology because a law says “fisherman” Tsarnaev, the brother who survived, was questioned for 16 hours, instead of “fisher” is beyond far-fetched. This Olympian effort then read his Miranda rights. Unless there was a connection to al- took six years plus a long series of bills, each numbering in the Qaeda, he couldn’t be held as an enemy combatant, but there hundreds of pages, and a 40-member staff; Samuel Johnson com- should not have been such a rush to treat him as a common crim- piled his dictionary in not much more time with far fewer re - inal. sources. The shame of it all is that instead of tracking down Out came the armies of excuses. The brothers felt alienated outdated words in obscure statutes, the legislature could have in America. Thousands of immigrants feel the same, yet do not used the time for more important work, such as subsidizing in - be come mass murderers. Dzhokhar was under the spell of dus tries to stimulate the economy, or setting up Obamacare ex - Tamerlan (but the Unabomber’s younger brother didn’t help changes . . . well, come to think of it, there’s really no better way him mail bombs—he turned his brother in). It can be hard to for a legislature to spend its time than copy-editing old laws. In believe in monsters who are young or (in Dzhokhar’s case) fact, the next thing they should do is carefully check the entire cute, but history provides examples enough. legal code for serial commas and the correct use of “which” and The older members of the bombers’ family were a study in “that.” contrasts. Their parents, Anzor and Zubeidat Tsarnaev, showed a combination of shock, stupidity, and evil. The more they n We first took notice of Howard Phillips in the early 1960s, talked, the larger the proportions of the last two grew. Mean - when he was president of the Harvard Student Council. He would while the bombers’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, berated his nephews

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THE WEEK as “losers. . . . You put a shame on our entire family” and “on the entire Chechen ethnicity.” Good for him. Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s wife, the former Katherine Russell, suggests a newish phenomenon. The transgressive partner of choice is no longer the black rebel or the criminal, it would seem, but the radical Muslim. Only wearing hijabs can express the full measure of rebellion (or self-hatred, or just dim-wittedness). Expect to see more such. Was the police lockdown of Boston excessive? The comic Bill Maher said we have become a “police state.” On the other hand, Senator Rand Paul discovered a use for drones (they can be used when there might be a need to use them, just not when there is no need). Policing is always open to criticism and improvement: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found only after the Perhaps President Obama will suddenly get religion on en - lockdown was lifted and the Watertown homeowner went out- forcement. But consider his Deferred Action for Childhood side to see blood on the boat where he was hiding. But hot pur- Arrivals initiative, which gives some illegal immigrants relief suit is hot pursuit; salus populi suprema lex esto. from deportation after what is supposed to be a rigorous screen- The murderers were caught in short order. Yet they took four ing process to weed out criminals and national-security threats. lives, injured hundreds, and disrupted a great city. Food for “Criminals” has a rather loose definition—you can have a couple thought, for our enemies and for us. of convictions and remain golden in the eyes of Obama’s DhS, so long as you pled any felony charges down to misdemeanors— IMMIGRATION the result of which is a 99.5 percent approval rate. There is no reason to expect this bill’s legalization process to be implement- This Time It’s Different? ed more rigorously. hE Gang of Eight’s immigration-reform bill contains a We very strongly support mandating the use of E-Verify or a number of superficially attractive security mandates: It similar system nationwide in order to ensure that businesses hire T would require the federal government to have 100 per- only those workers who are legally eligible to be employed in cent “situational awareness” of the border, to catch 90 percent the United States. Mandating E-Verify is so obvious and sensible of illegal border-crossers in high-traffic areas, to establish a a move that it should have been made years ago in a stand-alone tracking system to address the problem of those who enter the piece of legislation, but that bill was rejected. Those who op - country illegally but overstay their visas, etc. So attractive are posed it, including business interests and farm-state Republicans, those goals that we have supported them in the past, on the will have similar incentives to water down enforcement pro - many occasions upon which the government has promised to visions in any compromise bill that passes Congress and contin- achieve them. ue to resist them even after they are written into law. Disappointingly, Washington keeps failing to deliver on its The bill has additional perversities. It not only would offer promises. The unspoken premise of the Gang of Eight bill is: This legal status to the 11 million or so illegals currently in the time it’s different. We are skeptical that this is so. And regardless, country but also would readmit many of those who have been there is a great deal in this package that is deeply objectionable. deported. The argument for normalizing the status of illegals It follows the same amnesty-first/enforcement-later model that already resident in the United States has in the main proceeded has burned us before. The bill’s proponents, such as Senator from the fact that they are already resident in the United States. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), lay a great deal of stress on the “triggers” Offering legal status for those who are not living in the United that must be pulled before it lets illegal immigrants become citi- States is indefensible. zens. Yet the trigger for the amnesty itself—creating “provision- Further, the bill would open the floodgates for unskilled al” legal status for the millions who have entered the country laborers. Many of those unskilled laborers would be brought illegally—would be almost entirely meaningless: The De - in under guest-worker programs, which are in and of them- partment of homeland Security would merely have to affirm in selves objectionable. They amount to nothing more than the writing that it had plans to do something about border security, creation of a caste of second-class workers for the benefit of and that money had been appropriated for doing so. That’s it: no certain business interests. rigorous empirical standard, just the fact of having a plan. The Gang of Eight bill is a cobbled-together beast, a truly ugly Offering legal status before enforcement—even if citizenship is creature of politics. If Washington were serious about border delayed—can be expected to draw more illegal immigrants to our security and controlling illegal immigration, then Congress country. would pass a mandatory E-Verify bill, and the executive would As we noted earlier, these security measures have been legis- enforce it, finish the job of securing the border, and implement lated before. Congress mandated the creation of a visa-tracking visa controls. More broadly, our immigration procedures would system, for instance, in 1996. Since then, Congress has on multi- be reoriented toward the economic needs of the country rather ple occasions during three presidencies reiterated its demand that than other concerns. Once the government had built up its the executive branch comply with the law, and the executive credi bility on enforcing the immigration laws against new ALEX WONG / branch has on each occasion failed to do so. The system the bill entrants, then the time might come to talk about granting legal would mandate is even weaker than the system already mandated: status to those who are here illegally. Until then, we won’t

GETTY IMAGES It would apply at airports and seaports, but not to land crossings. believe promises that this time it’s different.

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supply our battalions.” “Our battalions,” indeed. “Battalions of Islam” was the honorific applied by Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian intellectual, Banna admirer, and convicted terrorist better known as “the blind sheikh,” to the jihadists who answered his summons to savagery in Cairo and New York. That these battalions will emerge from the dawa mission stressed by Muslim leaders is inevitable. It is why atrocities such as the rampage in Boston are bound to happen. Robert Spencer, a sharp critic of Is - lamic supremacism, fittingly describes dawa as “stealth jihad.” Dawa can in - clude charitable fundraising (part of which is, under sharia guidelines, quite intentionally diverted to jihadist groups), intimidation of detractors, cultivation of sympathizers in the media and the universities, exploitation of legal systems and American Dawa religious liberty, infiltration of political systems, and the portrayal of any scrutiny The radicalization of the Tsarnaev brothers of Islamic doctrine as Islamophobia. The defining feature of dawa in the West, BY ANDREW C. McCARTHY though, is resistance to assimilation. “One cannot expect you to assimilate,” EEp-BluE, multi-culti Boston is The Tsarnaevs seemed well assimi - Turkey’s Islamist prime minister, Recep the latest target of jihadist ter- lated, at least until recent years. Thus the Tayyip Erdogan, told a throng of Muslim ror. The spree began on April pressing question: How did this happen? immigrants to Germany in 2008. “Assimi - D 15, when terrorists remotely The answer begins with that simple, chill- lation,” he exclaimed, “is a crime against detonated two improvised explosive ing admonition from Muslim leaders: humanity!” The Brotherhood’s leading devices near the finish line of the Boston Integrate but do not assimilate. For those sharia jurist, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Marathon, killing three spectators: two Muslims who have begun assimilating, who boldly promises that it is through young women, Krystle Campbell and there is this corollary: Turn away from dawa that “we will conquer Europe, we lu lingzi, and eight-year-old Martin Western wickedness and embrace the will conquer America,” is perhaps the Richard, who was waiting for his dad to cloister of Islamic piety—as construed by most influential champion of the “inte- complete the race. Four days later, with a Islamic-supremacist leaders, whose ide- grate but never assimilate” principle. The major American city paralyzed by fear, ology glorifies violent jihad even as it pre- key to “our quest for an Islamic state,” he the siege ended with a series of wild fire- tends to moderation. instructs, is to “convince Western leaders fights in the streets, during which the ter- The strategy has been called “volun- and decision-makers of our right to live rorists killed MIT police officer Sean tary apartheid.” The idea is to provide according to our faith.” Collier and critically wounded transit- Muslim immigrants in the West—partic- Of course, the right to live according to authority police officer Richard Donahue ularly, energetic young Muslims like the one’s faith is a fundamental guarantee in (who, thankfully, is expected to make a Tsarnaevs—with cultural, psychologi- the united States. When Qaradawi and full recovery). cal, and even physical insulation from other Islamic supremacists say “faith,” The terrorists were a pair of brothers, Western mores, traditions, and insti - however, they are not talking merely Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, origi- tutions. It was the bedrock of Muslim about what we would understand as reli- nally from Chechnya. Their family had Brother hood founder Hassan al-Banna’s gious tenets; they are talking about immigrated to the united States begin- framework for ground-up revolution. In sharia’s socio-political strictures, its suf- ning in 2002. Dzhokhar, 19 years old at every city and town, the Egyptian acade- focating regulation of human life’s every RYAN . the time of the bombing, had been natu- mic taught, Muslim leaders must estab- detail. What the supremacists demand is ralized, in perverse irony, last September

DAVID L lish a mosque–cum–community center. something quite the opposite of an Is - , 11. He was captured hiding in a boat and These, he explained, would become “the lamic seat at America’s ecumenical table. faces a capital trial in federal court. His axis of our movement,” serving as the It is the establishment of autono mous 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, a green- “House of Dawa”—that is, of Islam’s Muslim enclaves within a society to BOSTON GLOBE

THE card holder who bore the name of a leg- / particularly aggressive form of prose- which they are irrevocably hostile. endary 14th-century jihadist warrior, was lytism—and providing “the base for our The supremacist’s interpretation of

AP PHOTO killed during the manhunt. rise . . . to educate us, prepare us, and sharia rejects liberty and equality, casting

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women as chattel and non-Muslims as moderate—until he was convicted, in the attention of both the FBI and the CIA. contemptible. It thus instills in young 2004, of complicity in a plot to help Libya But while the latter entered his name in an Muslims the animating belief that West - recruit jihadists to kill the Saudi crown anti-terror database (the Terrorist Identi - ern culture is not just to be resisted as cor- prince. The investigation had revealed ties Datamart Environment), the former, ruptive but disdained as beneath human that he was a major al-Qaeda financier, after interviewing Tamerlan, reasoned dignity. It is true enough that most adher- as well as a champion of Hamas and that being a follower of radical Islam did ents to this ideology will not become ter- Hezbollah. not necessarily make one a terrorist rorists; but it is equally certain that some Naturally, none of that derailed the threat. In the face of a lethal, ideologi- will—and many have. ISBCC enterprise, which includes a cally driven threat, our government’s Though Brotherhood leaders and mosque in Cambridge, only a few blocks policy is to turn a blind eye to ideology. Islamist intellectuals in the West purport from the Tsarnaev family home. In the last Only criminal activity, it insists, may prop - to renounce violence except in self- three years, both brothers attended the erly be investigated—even if that means defense, they concurrently beatify vio- mosque, as well as other mosques in the investigation happens only after the lence and preach that Islam is always the area. Tamerlan, the older and more activity has killed innocent people. under attack. The Hamas terrorist organi- fervent, was more of a fixture than Tamerlan did indeed embark on a six- zation, one should never forget, is the Dzhokhar. month journey to Dagestan in 2012, evi- Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch; raising Prior to this recent phase, the brothers dently making contact with—and perhaps global alarms about supposed tidal waves seemed like unexceptional young Ameri - receiving training from—jihadists. When of anti-Muslim bias and aggression is the can males, decent students who were he returned to the U.S., only two days supremacist’s stock in trade. The young active in sports—Tamerlan became a after a July firefight in which several Muslim who hears terrorism occasionally champion boxer who dreamed of Olym - Muslim militants were killed, he was condemned also hears it constantly ratio- pic fame, Dzhokhar a top wrestler. The clearly seething. But the insouciant in - nalized, excused, and endorsed—by recall of supremacist ideology was never far vestigators were not in a position to know vered role models. away, though, most immediately in the this, having already closed the case after For Banna, there was no contradiction influence of their mother. As the years finding “no derogatory information.” in this. Combat, including terrorism, was went by in Cambridge, Zubeidat Tsarnaev When post-bombing video pointed to something young Muslims had to train increasingly withdrew into Islamic piety. Tamerlan as a suspect, they had to ask the and be prepared for. The revolution, he Tamerlan followed her, gradually distanc- public’s help in identifying him. taught, could not ultimately succeed with- ing himself from American acquain- Dzhokhar was clearly enthralled by out it. But though violence had its place, tances, expressing disdain for American Tamerlan’s exploits, but his turn to Islam that place was not necessarily central. life, and lacing his conversation with allu- was not as pronounced—such that, as Like strategic deception, it was one option sions to Allah’s will. his grades cratered at the University of on a very extensive dawa menu, resorted This is symptomatic of the process of Massachusetts at Dart mouth, friends to only when its benefit to the movement becoming “radicalized,” to borrow the attributed his lethargy to his hard- outweighed its drawbacks. popular, politically correct term that partying ways. But the signs of with- Decades later, it has become the fash- sanitizes Islam of its scriptures’ suprem - drawal into a Muslim identity were ion to abide, even to admire, Muslim lead- a cist dictates. Tamerlan’s wife, an there. Invited to describe his “outlook” ers who temper their effusive praise for American Christian named Katherine on the Facebook page he maintained, jihadist violence in the Middle East with Russell, abruptly converted to Islam, Dzhokhar succinctly responded, “Is - vague denunciations of attacks in the donning the veil and similarly isolating lam.” The Wash ington Post reports that West. This explains Sheikh Qaradawi. herself from American acquaintances he played soccer with members of the With a huge international television fol- in favor of spending time with other Muslim Students Association and, for a lowing courtesy of his weekly sharia Muslim women. Tamerlan took to study- time, attended a Muslim prayer group. program on Al Jazeera, Qaradawi is prob- ing Sheikh Feiz Mohammed, an Aus - Just two weeks before the bombing, he ably the most influential Islamic scholar tralian, a former boxer like himself, and a told a friend that he no longer cared alive today. Consequently, despite his notorious sharia hardliner who spews about his classes because Islam and God infamous fatwas endorsing suicide bomb- bile against non-Muslims and endorses were the only true things in life. ings against Israel, terror war against jihadist violence. Tamerlan even began At the moment, it is unknown whether American troops in Iraq, and the death maintaining YouTube playlists glorifying the brothers Tsarnaev had technical help penalty for homosexuals, he is a darling jihad, including a list he called “Terror - from any international terrorist organi - of Western chancelleries and academics, ists” and one featuring a song entitled “I zation. It is known, however, that they who present him as a leading “moderate” Will Dedicate My Life to Jihad.” drank deeply the ideology that creates ter- intellectual. By 2011, Tamerlan’s radicalism had rorism by insulating its adherents and He is a ubiquitous figure, sitting on a come to the attention of Russian intelli- dehumanizing non-believers. Far from scholarly congress here, an advisory gence. Based on intercepted conversa- re garding Islamic supremacism with board there. They include the original tions between the young man and his dread and suspicion, our government board of trustees at the Islamic Society of mother, the spy service concluded he was appeases suprema cist agitators. We avert Boston Cultural Center. The ISBCC’s poised to travel to Dagestan, a republic our gaze as the House of Dawa supplies founder was Abdurahman Alamoudi, the that has long endured a brutal Islamic the battalions of Islam. As America re - bipartisan Beltway’s favorite Muslim insurgency. The Russians brought him to treats, the war comes home again.

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at the time of the bombing. These terror- From the late 1960s on, a multicul- ists wanted to be Americans, yet they turalism hostile to everything Teddy Acculturation nursed a murderous hatred for the United Roosevelt stood for has entrenched it - States. Clearly the quest for citizenship is self in our schools, our universities, Without no guarantee of assimilation. Sad to say, large corporations, and the mainstream the Tsarnaevs are but extreme examples press. Pockets of traditional assimi - of a far wider breakdown in America’s lationist thinking remain, yet the trend Assimilation system of assimilation. We ought not to is clearly in the opposite direction. Fed - We reject American be mulling amnesty for millions of illegal eral and state governments reinforce the immigrants before putting that system new multiculturalism by funding bi - identity at our peril back in order. lingual education, multilingual voting, One of the architects of this country’s diversity training, and the like. BY STANLEY KURTZ ethos of assimilation, Teddy Roosevelt, The famous melting-pot metaphor delivered an 1894 address called “True notwithstanding, America has never he Boston Marathon terror Americanism,” which seems almost to required a total sacrifice of culture or attack has pushed the problem have been written with the Tsarnaevs in creed from its immigrants. Instead we’ve of assimilation to the forefront mind: “We freely extend the hand of wel- called on prospective citizens to attach T of the debate over immigration come and of good-fellowship to every their personal heritage to American prin- reform. The younger bomber, Dzhokhar man, no matter what his creed or birth- ciples and identity. In a 1997 essay, the Tsarnaev, took his oath of citizenship on place, who comes here honestly intent on Manhattan Institute’s Peter Salins iden- September 11, 2012, of all dates. Al - becoming a good United States citizen tifies three core components of what he though his older brother and the master- like the rest of us; but we have a right, and calls “assimilation, American style”: mind of the plot, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had it is our duty, to demand that he shall acceptance of english as the national been investigated by the FBI in 2011, his indeed become so and shall not confuse language, willingness to live by the citizenship application was still pending the issues with which we are struggling by Protestant work ethic (self-reliance, hard introducing among us Old World quarrels work, moral integrity), and pride in Mr. Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public and prejudices.” It’s a message today’s American identity and belief in our Policy Center. immigrants are no longer hearing. democratic principles. Knowing J. Lo

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from Jay-Z isn’t enough, in other words. time, may be taking for granted a pattern specter of terrorism. Yet the abandon- That’s mere “acculturation.” Genuine of assimilation that no longer exists. ment of Roosevelt-style assimilation assimilation—true Americanism, in America’s vaunted ability to forge a has caused problems for the immigrants Roosevelt’s words—is something more. cohesive society out of many immigrant themselves. In 2000, Brookings Inst i - Many studies purporting to show that strands is now in doubt. The implications tution scholar Peter Skerry described a our assimilation system is flourishing do of this breakdown range well beyond ter- process by which the children of such not adopt Roosevelt’s standard—that rorism, but the connection between ter- immigrants undergo a sort of reverse immigrants should embrace Ameri - rorism and the weakening of assimilation assimilation. According to Skerry, canism—as their own. A 2010 research cannot be dismissed as a side issue. many Mexican Americans who largely report for the Center for American Salins, in his 1997 essay, presciently assimilate into majority-Anglo environ- Progress by Dowell Myers and John singled out several Arab-born perpe - ments in their K–12 years, scarcely Pitkin and a 2013 study for the Man - trators of the failed 1993 World Trade even thinking of themselves as mem- hattan Institute by Jacob Vigdor, for Center bombing as pure examples of bers of a minority group, dramatically example, use the rate at which immi- “acculturation without assimilation.” change when they reach college. The grants become citizens as an index of These men were quite familiar with politicized multiculturalism that domi- civic assimilation. Yet citizenship itself in American society. The sister of one of the nates America’s universities substan- no way guarantees assimilation, as the ringleaders said of her brother, “We tially deassimilates many of them, Tsarnaevs show. always considered him a son of America. leading them to attribute virtually all of A newly published Hudson Institute He was always saying, ‘I want to live in their discontent to race-based griev- study by John Fonte and Althea Nagai America forever.’” As observers on both ances. That process may not make for provides a more reliable assessment. In left and right have pointed out since the terrorism, but it won’t foster civil comity “America’s Patriotic Assimilation Sys- Marathon bombings, post-9/11 terror either, much less a raft of Republican tem Is Broken,” Fonte and Nagai found attacks in Europe were likewise carried recruits. wide differences between native-born out by plotters conversant with the cul- The reversal of assimilation at the uni- and naturalized citizens on a series of ture of their targets. versity is by no means a worst-case questions measuring patriotic attachment Many of those terrorists were chil- scenario. Too often, says Skerry, high- to the United States. For example, native- dren of poorly assimilated immigrants school-aged Latinos born in the Uni ted born citizens are, by large margins, more from Muslim countries. These second- States are “prone to adopt an adver sarial likely than immigrant citizens to believe generation European Muslims had an stance toward school and a cynical that schools should focus on American easy familiarity with the ways of their anti-achievement ethic.” Even left- citizenship rather than on ethnic pride, or birthplace, yet they never felt quite at leaning assimilation researchers such that the U.S. Constitution ought to be a home in the adopted countries of their as Marcelo and Carola Suárez-Orozco, higher legal authority for still unassimilated parents. Caught be- who want more multiculturalism, not tween two worlds, fully belonging to less, describe the tough urban schools neither, these young men turned to radi- that many immigrants attend as riven by cal Islam for certainty and identity when racial and ethnic tensions. The Man - they felt the hard knocks of adulthood. hattan Insti tute’s Heather Mac Donald The same thing happened to recently called the fast-growing split the Tsarnaevs. The col - between America’s English-speaking and lapse of cultural self- Spanish-speaking cultures “E pluribus confidence in the West duo.” has left us with too lit- Fixing our broken system of assimi- tle spi ritual food to lation won’t be easy, because the prob- offer the children of lem is deeply rooted. Fonte and Nagai Muslim immigrants, propose doing away with the apparatus leaving some to turn of state and federal supports for multi- to militant Islam in a culturalism and bilingualism. That step search for lost roots. would surely have positive conse- This suggests that quences beyond the programs directly opening our doors to affected by the change, and Re pub - new citizens without lican leaders should advocate it. They first paring back the ex - also ought to insist on guarantees of cesses of multiculturalism and con- border security that far exceed those on Americans fidently reasserting traditional American offer in the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” than international law. Republicans who principles of assimilation is asking for immigration proposal before consi d - believe that amnesty for illegal immi- trouble. ering a path to citizenship. Should grants will be a political boon for the Unlike immigration from regions Democrats demur, it will show they GOP, whether because they view wracked by violent ethnic and religious were never truly serious about compre- Hispanics as “natural conservatives” or conflict, such as the Tsarnaevs’ home- hensive immigration reform to begin

because they hope to win them over in land, Hispanic immigration raises no with. DARREN GYGI

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The GWB Center at SMU is a combi- determined. Then come children of nation of library, museum, and public- deceased presidents—led by the Johnson George W. policy institute. It holds some 40,000 girls, both of whom look chic and splen- artifacts. These include a container of did. Then come the first ladies, all of them Bush Day chads (a symbol of Election 2000); the from Rosalynn Carter onward, except for bullhorn used by Bush at Ground Zero; Nancy Reagan, who is apparently unable Some notes on a dedication ceremony and the pistol taken from Saddam Hussein to make such a trip. Michelle Obama when he was dragged from his “spider looks embarrassed to be here, a little con- BY JAY NORDLINGER hole.” temptuous—nose-holding. Serving as architect for the center was And I don’t know about you, but I sort Dallas, Texas Robert A. M. Stern, the dean of the Yale of forget that Hillary Clinton was first HEY’RE streaming onto the School of Architecture. When Stern’s lady. She has been other things since. grounds of Southern Methodist design was unveiled in 2009, Philip Out troop the husbands, the presidents: University, at 7:30 in the morn- Kennicott of the Washington Post wrote Obama, Bush 43, Clinton, Bush 41 (in T ing. They’re dressed in their of the difficulties of designing a building a wheelchair), Carter. Bush 43, of course, Sun day best, too—even though it’s for W. Architects are defined by “intellec- gets a bigger cheer—a much bigger Thursday. They, we, have come for the tual sophistication” and “aesthetic refine- cheer—than Obama. I think, “Is this the dedication ceremony of the George W. ment,” he said, and Bush is “seemingly only place where that would happen?” I Bush Presidential Center. That will begin hostile” to those things. At least he said have another thought: “Say Romney had at 10, but we were told to be here very “seemingly.” Earlier this month, by the won last November. Would the Obamas early, to go through the security rigma- way, Kennicott won the Pulitzer Prize have shown up for this?” They would have role. At the ceremony, five U.S. presidents for Criticism. had to, right? It would have been a miser- will appear: the incumbent and the four This day in Dallas, there is not only a able, almost impossible duty, though. living former ones. Bush celebration but a Bush denuncia- Condoleezza Rice comes to the podium, People have traveled to Dallas from all tion, too—a series of counter-events to acknowledge distinguished guests in over the world—but mainly they’ve trav- called “The People’s Response.” Some of the audience. Among them are Tony Blair, eled from somewhere in Texas, I think. the People featured in the Response are John Howard, and José María Aznar—in Observing them, I get the impression Code Pink, Phil Donahue, and Lawrence other words, the Bush-friendliest foreign they’ve been supporting the Bush family Wilkerson. This last figure was chief of leaders. When Rice acknowledges Silvio for a long time. Is this kind of a last hur- staff to Colin Powell. In citing Bush’s Berlusconi, there are a few titters. For rah? Well, Jeb—who became a Floridian, mistakes, critics tend to say, “Iraq! Tor- once, Bill Clinton may not be the randiest true—may run for president. And his son ture! Katrina!” A few of us are tempted to statesman in the house. In reading the George P. is running for land commis- say, “Powell!” long list of names, Rice performs feats sioner here in Texas. For celebrators and denouncers, the of pronunciation. She throws a “th” into George W. is suddenly back in the weather is heavenly in this city: about 70 “Aznar.” And she tries to pronounce national media—because of this cere- degrees, without a trace of humidity. Here “Bahrain” Arabicly—which is a little mony, to be sure, but also because of the at SMU, the atmosphere is one of a happy, awkward. terror attack in Boston a week and a half elegant party. There are celebrities in the In due course, we have the Pledge of ago: It reminded people of 9/11, and of the crowd, including athletes: Troy Aikman, Allegiance. When all rise, Mutombo turns president’s resoluteness in the face of it. for example, and Dikembe Mutombo. to the people behind him and says, with a This week, journalists have been writing The former was a quarterback for the bright wonderful smile, “Can you see?” reassessments of Bush. One of them was Dallas Cowboys; the latter was a center (He is 7 foot 2.) by Ron Fournier, the veteran Washington for the Houston Rockets. The first president to speak is Carter, reporter, and it was titled “Go Ahead, Waiting for 10 o’clock, we are enter- wearing shades. He gives a good, crisp, Admit It: George W. Bush Is a Good tained by singing groups, and by a slide - vigorous speech. He credits Bush with Man.” To some of us, that’s like saying, show. The Bush presidency is depicted settling the war between North Sudan and “Go ahead, admit it: Two plus two equals in a glowing, heroic light, to the accom- South Sudan (known formally as the four.” paniment of Coplandesque music. We Second Sudanese Civil War). I remember Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats’ leader in see the president with his fellow states- something Congressman Frank Wolf, the the House, provoked a few gasps last men, but also with dissidents and for- Virginia Republican, once told me: He summer when she described Bush as mer political prisoners. One of them is would have nominated Bush for the “really a lovely man.” Kang Chol-Hwan, a survivor of the North Nobel Peace Prize, but Khartoum was In a blogpost this week, the Daily Korean gulag. “If our opinion-shapers committing genocide in Darfur, and it Telegraph’s Will Heaven reminded us of were of a different nature,” I think, for would have looked odd to make a Sudan- some of the old venom. He cited the the thousandth time, “Bush would be related nomination. British historian Nigel Hamilton, who in a known as a human-rights president.” In further remarks, Carter praises Bush recent book claims that Bush is “ill-read At last, the ceremony begins, starting for his help to Africa in general. And he to the point of near-illiteracy.” What’s the with a parade of special guests, led by ends with an exceptionally warm enco - point of literacy if you have to read lies W.’s vice president, Dick Cheney. He is mium: “Mr. President, let me say that I’m like that? wearing a cowboy hat and looks thin and filled with admiration for you and deep

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April 25, 2013, at SMU

gratitude for you,” because of “the great obviously something Democrats can con- dom that. It occurs to me that Bush is contributions you’ve made to the most cert on. And he enlists Bush in the cause talking more about freedom in this one needy people on earth.” of the present immigration reform in speech than Obama has done in all the I have another memory: One of the best Congress, whether Bush wants to be speeches he has given as president. But speeches President Reagan ever gave was enlisted or not. that can’t be true (quite). on October 1, 1986—Carter’s 62nd birth- President Obama does the same thing, Bush also answers a criticism of the day. They were dedicating the Carter and he, too, repeats the praise concerning Left, I believe. In recent years, they’ve Library in Atlanta. Carter responded, “As Africa. Overall, he is good and gracious. been painting conservatives as dog-eat- I listened to you talk, I understood more He refers to 43 as “George,” and does so dog Darwinians, radical individualists, clearly than I ever did in my life why you with apparently genuine friendliness. “To caring for nothing but the Self. Bush won in 1980 and I lost.” know the man is to like the man,” says says, “Independence from the state does On the stage at SMU, Bush 41 is next to Obama, “because he’s comfortable in his not mean isolation from each other. A speak. He does so from his wheelchair. own skin. ...He takes his job seriously, free society thrives when neighbors help He has no notes. “It’s a great pleasure to but he doesn’t take himself too seriously. neighbors, and the strong protect the be here,” he says, “to honor our son”— He is a good man.” weak, and public policies promote private then he switches to “our oldest son,” for Giving the final speech, Bush is com- compassion.” there are three others, two of whom aren’t pletely himself: folksy, formal, cocky, Winding up, he says, “I dedicate this really famous. He continues, “This is very humble, idealistic, hard-boiled—that library with an unshakable faith in the special for Barbara and me.” Is Bush the whole, strange package. He pays tribute future of our country.” I think of what last person in America to use “I” and to Cheney, saying, “I’m proud to call Martin Luther King said at the Nobel “me” correctly? you ‘friend.’” It sounds to me the slight- ceremony in Oslo: “I accept this award His remarks last a grand total of 25 sec- est bit strained. I think of the dispute today with an abiding faith in America onds. Afterward, W. shakes his hand and between the president and the vice pres- and an audacious faith in the future of says, “Good job.” His father cracks, “Too ident over the pardon, or non-pardon, of mankind.” Bush says, “Whatever chal- long?” which breaks up his son. Scooter Libby, the Cheney aide. lenges come before us, I will always As for Clinton, he’s on pretty good In the last couple of weeks, Bush has believe our nation’s best days lie ahead.” behavior. I could pick at him, but I should become a grandfather for the first time, Does he really mean it, or is he express- give him a rest. He notes what some peo- and he talks of the “joy” of it. The child is ing more like a wish? Either way, his ple have said: He’s so close to the Bush a girl named Mila. I don’t think I’ve heard face is wet with tears. family, he has become “the black-sheep that name since Brian Mulroney was And the crowd goes nuts. People son.” And that gives me a memory of W. prime minister of Canada, and the coun- thrust three fingers in the air, in a “W” himself—who in 1991, during his father’s try’s first lady was Mila. She was “Yugo - sign—I don’t think I’ve seen that since presidency, identified himself to Queen slav,” as we used to say. the 2000 campaign. Later in the day, Elizabeth as the black sheep of the family. Naturally, Bush talks about freedom, someone tells me, “In a way, that was Exactly ten years later, he was president his perpetual subject. The idea of free- the last speech of the Bush presidency.” himself. dom “sustains dissidents bound by It was a good one, by a good man, yes. Like Carter, Clinton heaps praise on chains” and “believers huddled in under - I appreciate him anew, though I’ve never

THE BUSH CENTER Bush for his activism in Africa. This is ground churches.” Freedom this, free- actually stopped.

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as head of the classics department, dean aimlessness” among students, who float of Yale College, master of the residential through their undergraduate years secure Donald college Timothy Dwight, and Sterling in the belief that “the whole world was Professor of Classics and History. He is born yesterday.” Kagan’s Last perhaps the only scholar of antiquity to According to Kagan, the nation’s elite have served as a university’s director of universities are doing little to correct the athletics. He also happens to be one of problem. A liberal education now means Lecture the most consequential historians of the that students pick up “enough of the sub- An important career ends memorably 20th century; his four-volume history of jects thought interesting in their circle the Peloponnesian War has drawn com- and . . . make friends who may be advan- BY ELIANA JOHNSON parisons to the masterworks of Tacitus, tageous to them in their lives.” Gibbon, and Thucydides himself. This poses a challenge for the Ameri - Today, students, alumni, and some of can experiment, Kagan tells his audi- New Haven, Conn. his fellow faculty members pack into ence, because a democracy must edu cate onALD KAGAn’s survey course, an oak-paneled hall to hear his re - its citizens. He points to the champions Introduction to Ancient Greek marks. Some cram awkwardly into small of the liberal arts, from Cicero to Casti - History, has for the past four wooden desks intended for younger and glione to Benjamin Franklin, who con- D decades been an intellectual more flexible bodies. Kagan, the most sidered a liberal education an essential touchstone for Yale undergraduates. His visible conservative on the Yale campus, element of individual freedom. final lecture of the semester, during which is predictably iconoclastic. (“There are Kagan calls for institutions of higher he recounts Demosthenes’ heroic strug- places in this university where a motion learning to create a common core of stud- gle to defend Athens against Philip of to wish me a happy birthday would get a ies consisting of the literature, philoso- Macedon, is famous for rousing students close vote,” he has said.) His subject is phy, and history of Western civilization. to their feet as he exits the stage. not ancient Greece but contemporary The students of today and tomorrow, he The 80-year-old Kagan is retiring this America—in particular, the meaning of says, deserve the same opportunity as year, and today he delivers a different a liberal education, which has in recent those of previous generations; they too kind of final lecture: his last as a member years become a nebulous and controver- must be “freed from the tyranny that of the Yale faculty. He left the Cornell sial topic. comes from being born at a particular faculty for Yale in 1969; he was by then Kagan is greeted at the podium with time in a particular place.” already a conservative, having been the type of lingering applause that con- This is what Kagan has been doing in pushed right watching the fecklessness veys the warmth and emotion of the audi- his classroom for the past five decades. of Cornell’s administrators as black stu- ence, but his message is not particularly The foremost living scholar of the Pelo - dent protesters turned a university build- sentimental. The trendy, specialized, and ponnesian War, he has imparted to stu- ing into an armed camp. scattershot courses that now constitute a dents both his intellectual seriousness In the 44 years since his arrival in new liberal-arts education, he says, reinforce and his sense of history’s great drama. Haven, Kagan has served the university “a cultural void, an ignorance of the He is known to pluck kids from the audi- in virtually every position imaginable— past,” and “a sense of rootlessness and ence of his lecture and arrange them on

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stage in the rectangular formation of the behavior, from looking into the hearts both speakers and booed them off the ancient Greek hoplite phalanx. and minds of human beings engaged in stage. In Kagan’s view, Brewster had Kagan was born in lithuania in 1932, things.” been a party to the intimidation, and he but his mother brought the family to a Kagan’s version of ancient events has denounced the president in a speech working-class Jewish neighborhood in come to be widely accepted, and this tri- before the Yale Political Union. Brownsville, Brooklyn, when he was two umph has helped to loosen the grip of His agitation led the Yale College fac- years old. It was surrounded by rough social-science reductionism on the his- ulty to demand that Brewster appoint a Italian and black communities. “In our torical profession. He has done some- faculty commission to study the state of neighborhood, you’d see butcher shops thing similar on the Yale campus, acting free expression on campus and to make that would have Hebrew writing on the as a consistent counterweight to the recommendations for its preservation. windows, and when you went up the hill, forces of political correctness. Brewster appointed the eminent historian everything was in Italian,” Kagan tells After arriving at Yale in 1969, “I C. vann Woodward to lead the endeavor, me over lunch. “Sometimes, if you almost immediately began making trou- and Woodward’s report—which con- crossed over, you really felt like you were ble,” Kagan recounts, a note of defiance cludes, “even when some members of in a foreign country.” in his voice. When the Nixon adminis- the university fail to meet their social and Though he came of age in a commu- tration compelled the university to for- ethical responsibilities, the he paramount nity of european refugee Jews as Hitler mulate an affirmative-action plan for obligation of the university is to protect reigned in Germany, he says it was great faculty hiring, Yale president Kingman their right to free expression”—remains teachers who shaped his interest in his- Brewster issued orders to the chairmen the university’s policy to this day. The tory. There was Mr. Silverman, a high- of the university’s academic depart- Yale Daily News has noted that the school teacher of modern european ments to sort applications by gender Woodward report brought about among history who shared Kagan’s flair for and race. “I found that objectionable, students and faculty “a renewed concern drama and asked his students big ques- and I wrote a letter to the president in for and commitment to free expression.” tions. “He had a wonderful trick of which I said to him, ‘You’re a liar and “Scratch Don and you’ll find a com- speech that really captured me,” Kagan I’m not, but I believe this order is illegal, bination of Winston Churchill and John recounts. “He used to say, ‘So, at that immoral, and unconstitutional, and I Wayne,” Kagan’s colleague and fellow point, Bismarck could have done A or he will not carry it out.’” historian Paul Kennedy has said. “You could have done B. He did neither.’” A meeting with Brewster followed. hear about faculty who are intimidated “He was the first one I ever saw who Kagan recalls, “I gave him a little lec- about going against the grain and all resembled in any way what I later came ture in which I said, ‘You have to know that stuff,” Kagan says. “What the hell to think of as a historian, in the sense this is bad, and you are the man best sit- are they intimidated by, what the hell that he used to pose questions and then uated to fight this.’ I basically said to are they afraid of? You don’t ever have undertake to answer them, and to make him, ‘If you had the guts, you could do a anybody getting up and saying any- us understand what the issues were,” great thing here.’” Brewster, who sensed thing that is going to make anybody Kagan continues. “I still think that’s Kagan was not truly looking for a public else sore. It never cost me a thing. I what it is to be a historian: You pose a fight, exempted him from the distasteful think there’s something about profes- question that emerges from what you business of sorting and asked him to sors, something in their lives,” he know, and if you’re smart enough, you pass faculty applications along to the muses. “I guess they didn’t grow up in pose the right question, and then you dean’s office, where it would be done on Brownsville.” are very careful to consider the alterna- his behalf. Kagan agreed. Kagan has for years concluded the tives.” In retrospect, he says, “I was wrong. I final lecture of his introductory course This is an old-fashioned approach to should have made it a public fight. It just with a tribute to those who have defend- history, and it led Kagan to rebut, in his didn’t occur to me that I could just set ed liberty in the face of seemingly insur- four-volume study, the popular idea that myself up and make it a public war.” mountable odds. “Men like Churchill and human beings merely behave in accor- The lesson was not lost on him, and he Demosthenes know that those who love dance with the larger societal forces that would go on to cause Brewster and oth- liberty must fight for it, even against odds, work upon them, and that events such as ers considerable grief. In the spring of even when there is little support, even the Peloponnesian War are in this sense 1974, Yale’s chapter of Young Americans when victory seems impossible,” Kagan inevitable. Thucydides em braced a sim- for Freedom invited the Nobel Prize– has told students through the years. “In ilarly fatalistic view of history; he be - winning physicist William Shockley to spite of the outcome, it seems to me that lieved Athens had simply become too debate his noxious views on race and the stand of Athens and its Greek allies at powerful for Sparta to abide, regardless intelligence with NATIoNAl RevIeW pub- Chaero nea may have been, in words that of the policies adopted by either side. lisher William Rusher. Brewster had Churchill used in another context, ‘their Kagan puts the decision-making of indi- urged the organization not to invite finest hour.’” vidual leaders at the center of the action. Shockley to campus, a move to which These words are a fitting tribute to “Human beings appear not to be just like Kagan strenuously objected. “The life’s Kagan himself as he concludes a career artifacts or elements of science,” he breath of a proper university is to resist for which he, too, will be remembered as argues, but rather to have will, choice, censorship,” he insists. When the debate someone who fought for liberty, with and the capacity to act. “There is no was about to begin, with the auditorium little support, when—and where—vic- escape, if you want to understand human full, student protesters shouted down tory seemed impossible.

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The Rubio Amnesty It’s not what the senator promised, but he’s defending it anyway

BY MARK KRIKORIAN

hen Mitt Romney lost last november, the Re pub- deal that sought to placate a dizzying array of interests, all li can establishment decided that his moderately seeking de facto unlimited immigration but each with a dif- hawk ish stance on immigration had been a major ferent set of specific concerns. The result of all this is S.744, W cause of his defeat. never mind that his share of a sprawling, 844-page measure legalizes most of the illegal the hispanic vote was within the margin of error of McCain’s population (plus many who were deported and are currently 2008 share. never mind the significant drop in white turnout. living abroad), promises tougher enforcement in the future, There is little elite constituency for a hawkish approach to and hugely increases all forms of legal immigration, low- and immigration, and much elite support for lax enforcement and high-skilled, temporary and permanent. increased legal immigration (Romney actually supported the In advance of the release of the bill’s text, Rubio fearlessly latter). and tirelessly made the case for it to conservatives. he was So the Republican establishment turns its hopeful eyes, once greeted by Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and others as a friend again, to so-called comprehensive immigration reform. The and was afforded a respectful hearing as he made repeated same senators who pushed such a bill in 2007, prominently assurances about the coming bill. It would guarantee tough including Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham and enforcement, so we wouldn’t be having this same debate a Democrat Chuck Schumer, are at it again. They have devised decade from now about yet another wave of illegal settlers. a plan that would ease the path to legality for illegal immi- The legalized population wouldn’t get green cards until certain grants while making some gestures toward enforcement. But a strict “triggers” were met. There would be no special path to new element this time around is Marco Rubio. citizenship for them. They would have to pay their back taxes A tea-party favorite (and a favorite of this magazine) who and a fine. They would not receive taxpayer-funded benefits. wrested the senatorial nomination from GOP-establishment They’d be required to learn english. pick (now Democrat) Charlie Crist, he’s young, telegenic, and Then we got to see the actual text of the legislation. Ru bio’s the son of Cuban immigrants. Rubio became part of the “Gang promised provisions are absent. Regarding back taxes, for

of eight,” four Democrats and four Republicans negotiating a instance, the bill requires only that applicants “satisfy any JACQUELYN MARTIN / applicable federal tax liability” that has previously been

Mr. Krikorian is the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “assessed” by the IRS. But a tax is “assessed” only after a tax AP PHOTO

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return has been submitted or after the IRS has conducted an immigrants will be able to get a green card until the enforce- audit. Since neither of those things happens with illegal immi- ment benchmarks are met. But he seldom notes that virtually grants working off the books, there aren’t any back taxes to be all illegal aliens would get a kind of green card lite within paid. months of the bill’s signing. This “Registered Pro vi sion al The fine for legalization is small—just $500 up front and $500 Immigrant” status would provide work authorization, a legiti- paid in installments, in return for lifetime legal access to the U.S. mate Social Security account, a driver’s license, and tra vel labor market. And while $500 can be a lot for an illegal immi- papers—in other words, the amnesty is effectively granted up grant, in a certain sense it isn’t a fine, since the money would go front. The only “trigger” for the government to begin the into a slush fund for DHS to dole out to groups such as La Raza, green-card-lite program is the submission to Congress by the which are in turn to provide services for the very amnesty bene- Department of Homeland Security of a border-security plan ficiaries who paid the fines. (Conser va tive writer John Fonte has and a fencing plan—of which DHS already has a full shelf. called this the Alinsky Fund.) Even such a modest penalty is But once all the illegal aliens are amnestied, working legally, absent for crooked employers. They get amnesty for free— and able to travel back home to display their new status, we’re amnesty from prosecution for knowing employment of illegal told, the real work of enforcement will begin. The bill contains aliens, non-payment of wages, non-payment of payroll taxes, three enforcement objectives that must be met over the decade and facilitation of identity theft. following its passage before the now-legal am nes ty benefi - As for learning English, the language requirement applies ciaries may upgrade from green card lite to a regular green card, only to already-amnestied immigrants seeking the upgrade to which would allow them eventually to apply for citizenship: full green card, and even then, requires only enrollment in a mandatory use of E-Verify, implementation of an exit-tracking class, not demonstration of actual proficiency (which is what is system to identify visa overstayers, and securing the Mexican required for citizenship). border. All are important goals—so important that it’s not clear Moreover, the bill provides for a huge increase in legal immi- why their completion has been held hostage to amnesty. gration—and not just increased numbers but increased com- E-Verify is the free online system that allows an employer to plexity, in a system already excessively complex. It has special check the legal status and identity of a new hire by verifying provisions for guest workers, farm laborers, and foreign tech- his name, Social Security number, and date of birth. It is cur- nology workers, doctors, and nurses, as well as re tir ees, entre- rently voluntary but widely used, and making it a required part preneurs, and foreign students graduating with technical of the hiring process is an important part of turning off the degrees. The Schumer-Rubio bill simply seeks to placate every magnet of jobs that attracts illegals. The Schumer-Rubio bill interest group at the table by handing out more visas. Numbers would indeed make the system mandatory (though, due to USA has estimated the number of green cards that would be sloppy drafting, it seems to abolish E-Verify and require the issued during the first decade of the bill’s operation at 33 mil- development of an entirely new system). But it would be five lion. About one-third of those would be illegal aliens receiving years before all employers had to use it, and it could not be amnesty, so new immigration would go from about 1 million used to check on the existing work force, only new hires. This per year to 2 million. last part is a large loophole; one would think that deporting But it’s in the enforcement provisions that the gap between workers who didn’t qualify for amnesty would be an important Rubio’s promises and the actual bill is most consequential. aspect of enforcement. But the goal of this and other measures in the bill appears to be to shield non-qualifying illegal aliens so they can stay illegally and wait for the next amnesty. DVoCATES of amnesty tout the best polls money can As for the exit-tracking system, it is important that we buy, claiming public backing for their goal. Yet set- establish one, because perhaps 40 percent of the illegal popu- A ting aside the tendentious nature of most of the lation are visa overstayers, and if we don’t track who departs, polling, even by ostensibly objective media organizations, we can’t know who has illegally remained. But the system there is considerable support for some kind of amnesty, if provided for in the legislation would have to be in place only often half-hearted and mainly as a way to clear the decks and in airports and seaports, even though most foreign visitors start fresh. But it’s predicated on ensuring that this will be the cross land borders. What’s more, Congress already mandated last such amnesty—that immigration security will be im - an entry- and exit-tracking system at all border points—in proved, so that another 11 million won’t sneak across the bor- 1996. It has reiterated that mandate five times since then. It der or overstay visas. takes chutzpah to offer as enforcement a seventh such man- This was the promise of the 1986 amnesty law, the Im mi gra - date and a simultaneous provision of ten more years for its ful- tion Reform and Control Act. In a grand bargain of am nes ty for fillment. enforcement, the amnesty came first, with 2.7 million people Finally, securing the Mexican border. The benchmark giv en legalized within a few years. But the enforcement petered out in the bill is called “effective control” and means surveillance as the political incentive to support it disappeared with the of 100 percent of the border and apprehension of 90 percent of completion of the amnesty. It had gotten so bad by 2004 that attempted infiltrators. This is absurdity many times over. You only three employers in the entire country were fined that year have to know the total number of attempted crossings to know for knowingly hiring illegal aliens. that you got 90 percent of them, and as even DHS Secretary Despite Rubio’s promise to have an enforcement system Janet Napolitano has pointed out, there is no way for the “that ensures we’re never here again with the situation that we Border Patrol to know how many people it misses. This stan- face today,” the Schumer-Rubio bill sets up a replay of the dard also applies only to “high risk” sectors, which turns out to 1986 scenario. Rubio stresses that none of the currently illegal mean just three of the nine sectors along the Mexican border.

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If “effective control” of the selected portions of the border is not achieved within five years, rubio has said, “it goes to a border commission made up of people that live and have to iPencil deal with the border and they will take care of that problem.” More nonsense. The bill’s “Southern border Security Com - mis sion” would be made up of six Washington-appointed Nobody knows how to make a pencil, members (two by the president and four by congressional or a health-care system leaders), plus one from each southern border state (appointed by the governor), and it could do nothing but issue recommendations. BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON Moreover, the bill states that if, after ten years, “litigation or a force majeure” has prevented any of the conditions serving as enforcement triggers (e-verify, exit controls, and border verybody knows the first words spoken on a tele- security) from being met, the legalized immigrants will be phone call—Alexander Graham bell’s simple de - upgraded to green cards anyway. A rubio spokesman called mand “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.” concern over this “hysterical,” but the ACLU has already made E April marked the 40th anniversary of the first cell- clear that it opposes the e-verify mandate, and litigation over phone call, which was quite different in tone. Two research the 1986 amnesty ended just a few years ago. teams had been competing to bring the first real consumer cell In the words of Frank Sharry, a liberal supporter of the bill, phone to market, and the first mobile call was placed by “The triggers are based on developing plans and spending Motorola engineer Marty Cooper to his chief rival, Joel engel money, not on reaching that effectiveness, which is really quite of bell Labs. “Joel, this is Marty,” he said. “I’m calling you clever.” from a cell phone.” In other words: “you lose, suckers.” And once the amnesty is safely out of the way, does anyone It took nearly a century to get from Alexander Graham think Speaker Pelosi and President Clinton II (or Presi dent bell’s conversation to Marty Cooper’s, even though the basic bush III) won’t seek the watering down even of these triggers technologies of mobile phones—telephony and radio—date in order to get people their green cards faster? from the 19th century. Conversely, it took only 66 years for mankind to go from the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk to Neil Armstrong’s stroll on the moon. Technology does not ITH its obamacare-style expanse and complexity, move in predictable ways. the bill contains much more than what is sketched but it does move. W above. democrats packed it with as many loopholes We treat technological progress as though it were a natural and immigration-lawyer schemes as they thought they could process, and we speak of Moore’s law—computers’ processing get away with. rubio’s staff, like most GoP Senate staff, are power doubles every two years—as though it were one of the relative amateurs on immigration, while Schumer’s people are laws of thermodynamics. but it is not an inevitable, natural pros. This is how Ted Kennedy dominated immigration policy process. It is the outcome of a particular social order. for so long. (The House GoP committee staff on immigration, When I am speaking to students, I like to show them a still on the oth er hand, are professionals with long experience.) from the oliver Stone movie Wall Street in which the master- opposition to the bill should be the obvious position for con- ful financier Gordon Gekko is talking on his cell phone, a servatives who care about immigration enforcement and don’t Motorola dynaTac 8000X. The students always—always— want to open the spigots even wider to low-skilled immi - laugh: The ridiculous thing is more than a foot long and gration. Whatever the discrepancies between rubio’s assur- weighs a couple of pounds. but the revelatory fact that takes ances and the reality of the bill, though, he has now lashed a while to sink in is this: you had to be a millionaire to have himself to it. His convoluted justifications for various provi- one. The phone cost the equivalent of nearly $10,000, it cost sions suggest that he’s decided to do what he must to sell it. about $1,000 a month to operate, and you couldn’t text or play He’s made the laughable argument that the bill doesn’t give Angry birds on it. When the first dynaTac showed up in a anything new to illegal immigrants because they can already movie—it was Sixteen Candles, a few years before Wall return home and apply to come here legally. (This sounds a Street—it was located in the front seat of a rolls-royce, lot like what Mitt romney called “self-deportation.”) He’s which is where such things were found 25 or 30 years ago. by claimed that amnesty must precede enforcement because the comparison, an iPhone 5 is a wonder, a commonplace miracle. enforcement measures would throw millions of illegals out of My question for the students is: How is it that the cell phones work, creating a humanitarian crisis. In fact, the three security in your pockets get better and cheaper every year, but your triggers, if enacted on their own, would have only a gradual schools get more expensive and less effective? (or, if you live impact on the existing illegal population. in one of the better school districts, get much more expensive In the months leading up to the introduction of S.744, con- and stagnate?) How is it that Gordon Gekko’s ultimate status servatives looked hopefully to rubio as their representative symbol looks to our eyes as ridiculous as Molly ringwald’s on the Gang of eight, someone who would make sure its plan reagan-era wardrobe and asymmetrical hairdos? That didn’t didn’t turn out to be a call for de facto open borders. early on, just happen. rubio may well have seen that as his role. but he is now much less the conservative ambassador to the Gang of eight than the Mr. Williamson is NATIONAL REVIEW’s roving correspondent. This article is Gang’s ambassador to conservatives. adapted from his new book, The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome.

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In his classic short story “I, Pencil,” economist Leonard iPhone and the No. 2 pencil, are wildly successful; others, such Read considers the incomprehensible complexity involved in as New Coke or Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt Shampoo, are not. the production of a simple No. 2 pencil: the expertise in Products come and go, executives come and go, firms come design, forestry, mining, metallurgy, engineering, transporta- and go. The metaphor of biological evolution is an apt one, tion, support services, logistics, architecture, chemistry, though we sometimes draw the wrong conclusion from that— machining, and other fields of knowledge necessary to create Social Darwinism and all that nonsense. a product so common, so humble, and so cheap as to have Conservatives like to say “Markets work,” as though that become both ubiquitous and disposable. Read’s conclusion, were an explanation of anything. What we really are saying is: which is one of those fascinating truths so obvious that “Failure works.” Corporations are mortal. Failure is not only nobody appreciates them, is that nobody knows how to make an important part of the market process, it is the most impor- a pencil. Nobody is in charge of the operation, and nobody tant part of the market process. understands it end to end. From the assembly-line worker to U.S. Steel was at the height of its power a behemoth, the the president of the pencil company, thousands or millions of largest American business, the first corporation in the world to people have tiny, discrete pieces of knowledge about the have a market value in excess of $1 billion. process, but no coordinating authority organizes It was formed out of the union of J. P. their efforts. Morgan’s business interests and Andrew That is the paradox of social Carnegie’s steel empire. When Carnegie knowledge: Of course we know took payment for the interests he sold to how to make a pencil, even though Morgan—the equivalent of $6 billion in none of us knows how to make a pen- contemporary dollars—he received it in cil, and pencils get made with very the form of 50-year gold bonds, docu- little drama and no central authori- ments that took up so much room that ty, corporate or political, overseeing the bank in which they were deposited their creation. A mobile phone is a had to build a special vault to house much more complicated thing than a them. U.S. Steel seemed to be a perma- No. 2 pencil, but both are the products nent thing, but it is today a shadow of of spontaneous order—of systems that itself, reduced to a mere division of are, in the words of the Scottish another firm, surviving mainly in Enlightenment philosopher Adam name, and that name reduced to Ferguson, the “products of human grandiosity: U.S. Steel Corporation action, but not of human design.” indeed, as though it were the U.S. Mint or the U.S. Army. It produces barely more steel today than it did in OMPLEx though it is, the iPhone Morgan’s time, and it is well below is also a remarkably egalitarian Staples and Rite Aid on the Fortune C device: The president of the 500. The decline of U.S. Steel was United States uses one, as does the young bad for the company’s share holders Bengali immigrant who sold me my coffee and its employees, but it was good this morning. But you can bet that her chil- for people who use steel—mean- dren do not attend schools as good as those ing everybody else in the world. U.S. Steel that instruct the Obama daughters. The rea- was itself the product of an improved business model that had son for that is politics: not liberal politics, not conservative poli- displaced older, less efficient competitors. Without the pressure tics, not bad politics, but politics per se. and opportunity created by the possibility of failure, the U.S. The problem of politics is the problem of knowledge. The steel industry—and the entire U.S. economy—would be (at superiority of market processes to political processes is not in best) stuck in the early 19th century. It seems paradoxical, but origin moral but technical. The useful knowledge in any mod- failure is what makes us rich. (And we are, even in these trou- ern society is distributed rather than centralized—and, as bled times, fabulously rich.) We’d all be a lot worse off if cor- Read intuited and as modern scholars of complexity studies porations such as U.S. Steel lived forever (which is one more confirm, there is no way to centralize it. Ludwig von Mises reason not to engage in bailouts). applied that insight specifically to the defects of planned Politics creates the immortal corporation. Amtrak and the U.S. economies—the famous “socialist calculation problem”—but Postal Service are two institutions that would have failed long it applies in varying degrees to all organizations and all ago if not for government support—subsidies for Amtrak, the bureaucracies, whether political, educational, religious, or government-chartered monopoly on letter delivery for the postal corporate. Markets work for the same reason that the Internet service. The cost of their corporate immortality is not only the works: They are not organizations, but disorganizations. More waste associated with maintaining them, but also the fact that precisely, they are composed of countless (literally countless, their existence prevents the emergence of superior alternatives. blinking into and out of existence like subatomic particles) No sane person would invest 12.5 percent of his income in Social pockets of organization, their internal structures and relation- Security in 2013, but we are compelled to do so, and so the bank- ships to one another in a constant state of flux. Market propo- rupt enterprise continues as though it were not tens of trillions of sitions are experimental propositions. Some, such as the dollars underwater. A political establishment is a near-deathless

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thing: even after the bitter campaign of 2012, voters returned essentially the same cast of characters to Washington, virtually ensuring the continuation of the policies with which some 90 How the Fed percent of voters pronounced themselves dissatisfied. No death, no evolution. Outside of politics, human action is characterized by evolution and by learning. And what are we learning? How to take care of one another, which is the point of what we sometimes Can Unwind call capitalism. (Don’t tell Ayn Rand.) And its critics can relax

T is remarkable that we speak and think about commerce RAMESH PONNURU & as though competitiveness were its most important fea- DAVID BECKWORTH I ture. There is, as noted, a certain Darwinian aspect to economic competition—and of course we humans do com- pete over scarce resources. But what is remarkable about s the Federal Reserve has continued to buy bonds to human action is not its competitiveness but its almost limitless aid the economic recovery, critics of its actions, and cooperativeness. Competition is one of the ways in which we even some supporters, have grown increasingly con- learn how best to cooperate with one another and thereby deal A cerned about what comes after all of this “quantitative with the problem of complexity—it is a means to the end of easing”: How will the Fed “unwind” its balance sheet—that is, sell social cooperation. Cooperation exists elsewhere in the ani- off the bonds it has purchased—without harming the economy? mal kingdom, but human beings cooperate on a species-wide, The short answer: Don’t worry about it. The Fed can reverse planetary level, which is a relatively new development in our its actions without wreaking economic damage, especially if it evolution, the consequences of which we have not yet fully does it at the same time as it announces that it intends to keep appreciated. If you consider the relationship of the organism nominal income growing at a stable rate. to its constituent organs, the relationship of the organ to its Nobody disputes that the Fed will at some point need to reduce cells, or the relationship of the single cell to its organelles, it its asset holdings. They have grown so large in the first place would not be an overstatement to say that the division of labor because the financial crisis accompanied (and, in our view, to a is the essence of life itself: Birds do it, bees do it, but human very large extent resulted from) a sharp increase in the public’s beings do it better. The size and complexity of our brains demand for money balances: for the safety, that is, of cash and its evolved in parallel with the size and complexity of our social near-equivalents. The Federal Reserve increased the supply of groups, which are just as much a product of evolutionary money in response to this increase in demand. It did so by pur- processes as our bodies are. chasing Treasury and agency securities from the public, thus Thus, we do not have the U.s. steel Corporation, a tightly adding to the money held in bank accounts. The increase in sup- integrated and hierarchical operation overseen by a CeO with ply, however, was insufficient to keep up with the increase in an omniscient command of his operation. We have lots of U.s. demand, especially in 2008 and 2009, which is why the crisis was steel corporations, and a worldwide steel industry, and many so severe. worldwide industries making products that are substitutes for The demand for money balances and safe assets is still very steel, from aluminum to carbon fiber to nanotubes. But we do elevated, albeit down from its crisis peak. If the economy enters have the U.s. Postal service, the social security Admini - a robust recovery, that demand should fall, as it usually does stration, and the government-school monopoly in your home when there are attractive alternatives to just holding on to money. town. These agencies underperform consistently when com- At some point, for example, banks will want to start investing pared with such benchmarks of innovation as the software more aggressively the $1.7 trillion in excess reserves—dollars industry or the biotech industry. They fail because they they hold beyond what they are legally required to hold—that attempt to substitute a single brain, or a relatively small panel they have accumulated since the crisis began. A strong recovery of brains organized into a bureaucracy, for the collective cog- would raise the demand for credit and provide just such an invest- nitive firepower of millions or billions of people. Put simply, ment opportunity for banks in the form of higher-yielding loans. they attempt to manage systems that are too complex for This increased lending would increase the money supply and, left them to understand. Complexity is humbling, but politics is unchecked, would cause a rapid rise in inflation. Recall the old immune to humility. explanation of what causes inflation: too much money chasing Which is something to keep in mind the next time some- too few goods. body promises to “solve” our health-care challenges or unemployment. Washington is packed to the gills with people who believe that they have the ability to design an intelligent eD officials say they plan to use two different methods to national health-care system, but there is not one who does— prevent such a destabilizing surge in the money supply. no Democrat, no Republican, no independent. The informa- F First, the Fed will stop reinvesting principal payments it tion burden is just too vast. Washington is not only full of people who do not know what they are talking about, it is full Mr. Ponnuru is a senior editor of NATIONAL REVIEW. Mr. Beckworth, a of people who do not know that they do not know what they former international economist at the Treasury Department, is an assistant professor are talking about. That is no model for social change. Your of economics at Western Kentucky University and the editor of Boom and Bust pencil and your phone are. Banking:•The Causes and Cures of the Great Recession.

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lion on average over the 2009–25 period. We should not distort monetary policy to keep payments close to an abnormal peak. Second, an operating loss need not mean a bailout. Imagine, for example, that the Fed were to take a large capital loss on its holdings and could not sell enough securities to rein in a rapidly expanding money supply. It could still tighten money by raising the interest rate paid on excess reserves, and fund the higher payments by tapping into its future earnings. It could do this by creating more dollars to pay the banks and then offsetting this transaction in the future by sending less of its earnings to the Treasury. Third, these concerns miss the forest for the trees. These poten- tial balance-sheet problems will emerge only if there is a robust economic recovery. We would be fortunate to have these problems! Moreover, a robust recovery would mean much more tax revenue for the Treasury. Even the best year of Fed earnings pales in comparison with the annual trillion-dollar deficits the weak economy has brought. Surely, no one would argue that we should keep the economy weak so that the Fed can generate extra revenue for the federal government. The impact on the Treasury isn’t the only widespread concern about the Fed’s future undoing of quantitative easing. One popular line of argument holds that the economy has been “artifi- receives from its maturing Treasury and agency securities. The cially” boosted by the Fed, which has been inflating a bubble as dollars the Fed takes in, that is, will no longer circulate. Since it inflated one in the pre-crisis years. Based on this premise, the Fed won’t be buying more securities at this point, its bal- some people argue that the Fed now faces a no-win choice ance sheet will shrink. The Fed learned the hard way how effec- between popping the bubble and inflating it further. So either the tive this approach can be: By not reinvesting the proceeds when Fed will not unwind its balance sheet, and we will get galloping its agency securities matured between mid 2010 and late 2011, inflation, or it will and the economy will crash. it passively drained about $662 billion from the economy. It These concerns, too, are overblown. The claim that the Fed decided to reinvest the payments so as not to tighten monetary has been inflating a bubble, for example, is based on the idea that policy inadvertently. In the future, it will deliberately tighten its monetary policy has kept interest rates below their natural money by again ceasing to reinvest. levels. That’s not true. Low interest rates are almost entirely the The second method the Fed will deploy to shrink its balance result of a weak economy, not the Fed’s inadequate attempts to sheet is to sell off its agency securities. According to the minutes loosen money. from the June 2011 Fed meeting, the Fed would most likely do this over three to five years. Along with taking these two measures, the Fed would have S we’ve argued in these pages before, the key to distin- to adjust its “forward guidance” on interest rates—that is, raise guishing between loose and tight monetary policy is its projections of where it expects interest rates to go—and A what’s happening to nominal income: that is, to the size gradually raise its target federal-funds rate. A recent Fed study of the economy measured in dollar terms, with no adjustment found that, under reasonable scenarios, this unwinding process for inflation. If the growth of nominal income is accelerating, would take about five years and would cause no disruptions to then monetary policy is loosening; and if growth decelerates, economic activity. it’s tightening. The right policy aims for steady growth, which One source of worry about this process is the fear that it will happens when the supply of money rises and falls with demand. be expensive for the Treasury. As interest rates go up, some of By this measure, Fed policy was loose in the years before the the Fed’s securities will decline in value and will have to be sold crash, leading to interest rates below the natural level and rising at a loss. Also, the Fed has been paying banks interest on excess household debt. But Fed policy has since then been very tight— reserves, and higher interest rates will increase the size of these first disastrously tight in 2008–09, then only damagingly tight. payments. The Fed has been sending money to the Treasury, but One reason to keep nominal-income growth steady is that most these developments would reduce that flow. In a worst-case debts, such as mortgages, are contracted in nominal terms. An scenario, the Fed could experience an operating loss and require unexpected slowdown in its growth, as we have experienced over a taxpayer bailout. the last five years, makes the burden of repaying those debts The worriers are overlooking some important facts. First: heavier. The fact that households are nonetheless continuing to While the Fed will send fewer funds to the Treasury during the deleverage, rather than to add to their net borrowings, suggests winding down of its balance sheet, it will have sent, over the that this is not a bubble economy. period including both the expansion and the unwinding, higher The claim that the Fed cannot be trusted to unwind its balance payments to the Treasury than normal. Prior to the crisis, the Fed sheet—that it will let inflation go out of control—ignores its was earning about $25 billion a year on average. Since then, it has actual record over the last five years. Inflation has consistently

earned as much as $90 billion, and it is expected to earn $40 bil- come in below the Fed’s target and unemployment above it: The ROMAN GENN

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You’ll want to get The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure, Kevin Williamson’s new book making the bold argument that the United States government is disintegrating—and that it is a good thing! In what is sure to be one of the most important books of 2013 (which you can order, signed by the author, directly from National Review!), Williamson, NR’s acclaimed Roving Correspondent and ‘Exchequer’ blog author, offers a radical re- envisioning of government, a powerful analysis of why it doesn’t work, and an exploration of the innovative solutions to various social problems that are spontaneously emerging as a result of the failure of politics and government. Critical and compelling, The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome lays out a thoughtful plan for a new system, one based on success stories from around the country, from those who home-school their children to others who have successfully created their own currency. The End Is Near is a radical re-visioning of what government is, a powerful analysis of why it doesn’t work, and an exploration of the innovative solutions spontaneously emerging thanks to the fortunate failure of politics. Every year, consumer goods and services get better, cheaper, and more widely available while critical necessities delivered by government grow more expensive, even as their quality declines. The reason for this paradox is simple: politics. Not bad politics, not liberal politics, not conservative politics, not politics corrupted by big money or distorted by special-interest groups, but the simple practice of delivering goods and services through federal, state, and local governments and their obsolete decision-making practices. In The End Is Near, Williamson, considered by many the conservative movement’s most talented writer, describes the crisis of the modern welfare state in the era of globalization and argues that the crucial political failures of our time—education, health care, social security, and monetary policy—are due not to ideology but the nature of politics itself. Meanwhile, those who can’t or won’t turn to the state for goods and services—from homeschoolers to Wall Street to organized crime—are experimenting with replacing the outmoded social software of the state with market-derived alternatives. The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome compellingly analyzes the government’s numerous failures and reports on the solutions that people all over the country are discovering. Between its covers, you will meet homeschoolers who have abandoned public schools; see inside private courtrooms that administer the law beyond government; encounter entrepreneurs developing everything from private currencies to shadow intelligence agencies rivaling the CIA; and learn about the remarkably peaceable enforcement of justice in the National Review w 215 Lexington Avenue w New York, NY w 10016 allegedly lawless Wild West. As our outmoded twentieth-century government Send me ______copies of The End Is Near. My cost is $28.00 each (shipping and handling collapses under the weight of its own incompetence are included!). I enclose total payment of $______. Send to: and inefficiency, Williamson points to the green shoots of the brave new world that is already being Name born. Leaving America? Richer, happier, and more PAYMENT METHOD: Address secure! o Check enclosed (payable to National Review) Order The End Is Near And It’s City State ZIP Bill my o MasterCard o Visa Going To Be Awesome now at e-mail: Acct. No.

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Fed has erred, that is, on the side of tightness. The last five years have seen a lower average inflation rate than any five-year stretch since the mid 1960s. Yet all of the political pressure on the Fed Faith and from Congress has been directed at getting it to tighten more. Finally, we have a tool that we lacked the last time we experienced high inflation: a market-based indicator that will warn us that it is on the way. The Treasury now issues bonds indexed for Family inflation as well as unindexed ones, and the spread shows market expectations of inflation over the duration of the bond. if that spread rises a lot, the Fed will face even more pressure to tighten We should be optimistic than it would otherwise. about their future There would be less reason to worry about any of this if the Fed had adopted an explicit nominal-income target, or adopted one now. Under such a target, the Fed would commit to adjusting BY MARY EBERSTADT monetary policy so that nominal income grew at, say, 5 percent a year (roughly the rate at which it expanded in the decades of the “great Moderation” before the crisis). if the economy grew by ollowing heavy losses in the same-sex-marriage 3.5 percent in real terms, for example, inflation would run at 1.5 fight, traditionalists are anxious. “Conservatives percent. The Fed would also commit to correcting for past mis- have been routed, both in court and increasingly in takes: if it let nominal income grow by 6 percent in one year, it F the court of public opinion,” writes Rod Dreher in would subsequently keep its growth below 5 percent in order to an elegiac piece on “sex after Christianity.” one can appre- keep the long-run path as close to the predicted one as possible. ciate fully the efforts of those brave men and women who The Fed would not have had to amass as many assets as it now have not given up the battle and still suspect that Dreher and has if it had followed this policy. if markets had expected the Fed others who argue similarly are right. if they are, then reli- to keep nominal income on a steady path, the demand for the gious believers not only in America but across the western safety of money would not have risen as much as it did, so there world are entering darker and more difficult times. would have been less need to increase the supply. As Australia For one thing, surely the rewriting of laws and customs shows, a “looser” monetary policy can lead paradoxically to a along radical new lines consistent with radical new dispen- smaller money supply. it has kept nominal-income growth rela- sations has only just begun. How many Christian students, tively steady, and its monetary base is smaller compared with its teachers, professors, counselors, priests, nuns, ministers, economy than is that of the U.S. (or of most other countries that doctors, pharmacists, businessmen, and politicians of the let nominal income crash). it has also avoided the last two reces- future will run afoul of rules against ever-expanding defini- sions that hit the rest of the developed world. tions of “hate group” and “hate speech”? How many will be Even after the initial decline in nominal income, the adoption ostracized, or worse, in their schools and workplaces, as of a credible commitment to nominal-income targeting could some already have been, for “extremism”? How many will have kept the Fed from having to buy so many assets by reduc- see their children penalized for religious beliefs that seemed ing the demand for money balances. (it is partly because of this unremarkable in America until the day before yesterday? sort of effect that studies find that expectations of future nominal will the United States now go the way of great Britain, income are a strong determinant of current nominal income.) And where a couple was recently forbidden to adopt a child nominal-income targeting could moderate any future money- because they were practicing Christians and therefore on demand shocks in the event that, for example, Europe collapses. the wrong side of current right thinking? will we follow A credible nominal-income target would also aid the Fed’s Canada, where, as Mark Steyn reports, Catholic schools are unwinding by moderating the decline in the demand for money required to include gay-straight alliances subversive of balances during a recovery. if markets don’t think the Fed will Catholic moral teaching? Father Raymond de Souza of the allow nominal income to grow 10 percent a year for the next Archdiocese of Kingston, ontario, recently commented that decade, a bubble psychology is less likely to set in. many young priests he knows think “the prospect of one of And it should be easier for the Fed to commit to a credible us spending some time in jail for teaching the faith is not a nominal-income target than to an inflation target because the distant or unlikely proposition, it is a plausible reality to be former would not require the perverse actions that the latter prepared for.” will men and women of the cloth in the would. if the target is 5 percent, a nominal-income-targeting United States someday say the same? central bank will, in a year when the economy grows by only 1 if that were the whole picture, despair would abound. But percent in real terms, let inflation rise to 4 percent. when the it isn’t. For 2,000 years, Christianity has weathered severe real economy grows by 4 percent, it will let inflation sink to 1 storms, surviving discrimination and outright persecution. percent. An inflation-targeting bank would have to adopt tighter Are we really and only now facing the Church’s terminal money during the bust and looser money during the boom. So decline? Does the sexual revolution, alone among all cultural it will either have to make the business cycle more extreme or influences inimical to the Church throughout history, render fudge its target. The worriers are wrong. The Fed can and should unwind its Mary Eberstadt is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. This essay balance sheet without hurting the economy—especially if, at long is adapted from her new book, How the West Really Lost God: A New last, it adopts the right monetary policy at the same time. Theory of Secularization.

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the cross and all it stands for obsolete? from London to Athens, from Barcelona to Paris and back, it A contrarian case can be made that things aren’t as grim as has grown ever clearer that the welfare states of the West are they seem—or, conversely, that they aren’t nearly as invigo- overextended and ultimately unsustainable. Nor is this just rating as they seem to their adversaries. The case for cautious a matter of euros and cents. The eventual civilizational im - optimism shares many facts with the case for pessi mism. In plosion of the welfare state, one can argue, will be a game- fact, the case for optimism is more or less the case for pes- changer for family decline. simism turned on its head and examined from a different Easier divorce and more widespread illegitimacy, along angle. with related developments, have been taken more or less in For over a hundred years, sociology has broadcast the stride for decades now, in the belief that the state can do death of God—prematurely, it turns out, because sociologists what was once done by competent families: care for the have ignored the part played in religious belief by that great young, tend to the sick and old, provide for the home. Family institution with which religion’s fate appears inextricably decline has so far been premised on Western affluence. entwined: the family. In the 1970s, sociologist David Popenoe predicted that History shows that, in case after case, one pillar is only as one consequence of diminished Western affluence might be strong as the other. Religion, and specifically Christianity, exactly the revival of the institution of the family. After all, Is a revival of the natural family possible—and, with it, a revival of Christianity? The answer is and will continue to be yes.

waxes and wanes according to the strength of marriage and he observed, families perform a function crucial to all soci- family formation. Across the Western world, the first ten to eties, doing for free what would otherwise cost money to 15 years after World War II saw a religion boom in conjunc- accomplish. “The importance of this family care-giving tion with the Baby Boom. The decades since the 1960s, con- function,” he writes, “becomes clear when we consider what versely, have seen rising out-of-wedlock childbearing and might happen if modern societies ever again fall into a seri- falling birthrates in conjunction with a religion bust. Family ous economic depression.” and faith are historically bound together in ways that intrin- Could the post-welfare Western state end up imparting sically historicist sociology has wholly ignored. So one way economic value to marriage, childbearing, and family ties, of considering the future of Christianity is to ask another as the pre-industrial agricultural state did for many cen- question: Is a revival of the natural family possible—and, turies? One needn’t imagine a full-scale crisis to see how the with it, a revival of Christianity? The answer is and will con- pressures of a shrinking and ageing Western population tinue to be yes. might make the family look like a grossly undervalued stock. As Stanley Kurtz observed presciently in “Demo - graphics and the Culture War,” an article in Policy Review EGIN by meditating on an insight from the late Pitirim three years before the financial collapse of 2008: Sorokin, founder of Harvard’s sociology department B and one of the seminal social thinkers of the mid It wouldn’t take a full-scale economic meltdown, or even a rela- 20th century. Sorokin wrote at a time when sociology was tive disparity in births between fundamentalists and secularists, practiced not through finely granulated statistical analysis to change modernity’s course. Chronic low-level economic but rather with the broadest possible brush and the widest stress in a rapidly aging world may be enough. There is good reason to worry about the fate of elderly boomers with fragile historical canvas imaginable. families, limited savings, and relatively few children to care for In Man and Society in Calamity (1942), Sorokin dedi cated them. A younger generation of workers will soon feel the burden his powers to a project broadly applicable to the present of paying for the care of this massive older generation. . . . moment—in his case, to disentangling the ways in which Modernity itself may come in for criticism even as a new appre- historical catastrophes of various kinds, principally wars, ciation for the benefits of marriage and parenting might emerge. famines, and pestilence, set countervailing social forces into motion. Reviewing wide swaths of human history, Sorokin Tantalizing evidence from the crash of 2008 shows just the spied a general rule: “The principal steps in the progress of sort of unintended consequences of economic adversity mankind toward a spiritual religion and a noble code of mentioned by Kurtz. Consider divorce. An economic crisis ethics have been taken primarily under the impact of great turns divorce, always expensive, into a luxury item. catastrophes.” Calamity, as he saw it, is not only a possible According to figures from the American Academy of inducement to religious revival but may even be its sine qua Matrimonial Lawyers, the divorce rate in the U.S. dropped non. 24 percent in 2008 and 57 percent in 2009, following the Is the Western world today home to a calamity of suffi- housing collapse. The rates then began creeping back up in cient dimensions to prove Sorokin’s rule once more? Since 2010, as the economy improved. Like other observers, the 2008, when the global financial crisis first burst into the con- president of the AAML was certain that the drop was in sciousness of the mass of Western voters, followed by riots response to harder times.

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Another inadvertent consequence of the economic crisis ning of infanticide and abortion, and its overall attentiveness has been the return of many adult children to the homes of to the family contributed to a demographic advantage for their parents. Though undertaken for financial reasons, believers. All those conditions still obtain. might not the movement of the “boomerang generation” Consider one more fact in support of traditionalists. In back to the nest also have the effect of reinforcing family Family and Civilization (1947), Carle Zimmerman, another bonds? Hard times, in short, have a way of driving people Harvard sociologist, demonstrated that throughout history back to what’s most elemental. the family has followed a pattern: It grows stronger after a This leads to another reason for cautious optimism about period of decay has incurred mounting social costs. Zimmer- the future of family and faith: People learn. Marriage rates man argued that family strength is cyclical and that the prob- and childbearing among relatively affluent, educated Ameri - lems resulting from periods of weak and atomized families can women, for example, are on the uptick (even as marriage lead to counter-cycles of strong family formation. continues to implode further down the socioeconomic Finally, there remains on the side of contrarianism what ladder). Two can live more cheaply than one, as Robert J. might be called Christianity’s secret weapon. Throughout Samuelson reflected in a recent column on the relationship history, men and women have been drawn to the Church pre- between personal wealth and family structure, and it’s rea- cisely because of the traditional moral code that so many Family strength is cyclical and the problems resulting from periods of weak and atomized families lead to counter-cycles of strong family formation.

sonable to think that more people will come to realize as people today love to hate. The pagans, the early Christians much. One reason better-off women are a little more inclined were instructed, could have it all: their idols, their infanti- toward children and traditional family may be that they have cide, their contraception, their abortions, their sexual liber- learned from the past, particularly from the tolls associated tinism; the Christians couldn’t. And on the list went. From with alternative structures. If more people learn the same the beginning, these “no”s were fundamental teachings of lesson, the natural family—and, with it, the churches— Christianity (and in many cases, also of Judaism), but they might enjoy a recovery. were not only prohibitions. They were also teachings that Current, historically low rates of natural-family formation drew many people in, fallen but serious human beings who and their attendant problems are not longstanding. Single recognized the teachings as somehow true. And such re - motherhood, for example, cheered by feminists in the name mains the case, as the legions of Western converts down to of “liberation” less than a generation ago, is now widely this very day go to show, sometimes in some pretty sophisti- seen for what it really is: an inhumanly difficult task for cated places. almost any woman, let alone poorer women, who are more As a caution against the notion that anything ever is likely to be unmarried. Likewise, “Career first” is now a inevitable, let us consider the last boomlet of faith across the slogan that many educated younger women reject, including West, during the years immediately following World War II. many feminists. Maybe future generations will be more So pervasive was religious practice in the United States then kindly disposed to the idea that more is merrier than were that Will Herberg, the foremost sociologist of religion in their forebears in the 20th and early 21st centuries. It’s pos- America during the mid 20th century, could observe in his sible to imagine a turnaround of family-formation rates classic book Protestant, Catholic, Jew that the village atheist across the West both because the economics of subsidizing or freethinker was a disappearing figure, that agnosticism familial decline will have become untenable and because the was in decline, and that “the pervasiveness of religious social cost of alternatives to traditional families will have identification may safely be put down as a significant feature become more obvious to many people than it is today. of the America that has emerged in the past quarter of a century.” Those words were written only decades ago. Religion HeRe’S another reason not to write the obituary for ebbs and flows in the world in ways not dreamed of by soci- Christianity and the traditional family quite yet: ologists. Belief does not simply enter and leave the earth as T demography. As Phillip Longman and eric Kauf - a unidirectional force, like a comet. Christianity in particu- mann have independently documented, and as Jonathan Last lar engages with that other spiral, the one of family, in a deli - energetically explores in his riveting book What to Expect cate, profound dynamic of mutual dependence. When No One’s Expecting, believers have babies, and non- None of which is to say that Western believers today can believers don’t. And among believers, the most religious count on seeing brighter days for either institution in their have the most babies. Over time, as those who look at the lifetimes. In the short run, to reverse John Maynard Keynes, numbers agree, this simple fact will tilt Western populations we’re all dead. As for the long run, though, several signs toward religious belief. Sociologist Rodney Stark argues point the way not just to hope but to likely revival. Therein that Christianity grew from a small sect to a world religion lies a limited but real case for optimism about the twinned precisely because the Church’s prizing of marriage, its ban- futures of family and faith.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Let Us Rage Together

HE Sanctioned F-Bomb finally appeared in the “artistic” form of suspension, she’d probably work a cross wake of the Boston bombings. Speaking at a tele- into it. As for the “community standards,” the Carnegie vised baseball game, Red Sox player Big Papi Mellon student code of conduct says that students “must T said, “This is our [bleepin’] city.” The FCC not show a commitment to honesty without compromise, as only declined to scold, but approved: The chairman tweeted well as truth without equivocation and a willingness to that Papi “spoke from the heart,” which makes everything place the good of the community above the good of the okay. You could say the same thing of Mother Tsarnaev’s self.” lunatic screechings, but never mind. So, no, she didn’t violate community standards, since Contrast with a poor TV anchorperson in North Dakota they no doubt praise a raspberry blown to the gynophobic who mumbled the F-bomb while looking at his script, patriarchy. It was honest and authentic in its rage. It struck unaware that his mic was on. He also said something was a blow. Pope Francis probably read the news story with a gay, which gets you banned from the profession for two trembling hand, convinced this sort of honesty can only call lifetimes. If he had, however, said “gay” and sworn in dis- into question two millennia of established religion. Good gust over a terrorist attack on an LBGT advocacy center by thing she didn’t go topless too or everyone would begin to tea partiers, he would probably be looking at Matt Lauer’s doubt the Old Testament as well. job right now. Authenticity, man! They’re doing topless priest-mocking over in Belgium. That’s what proper sanctioned cussing is: authentic. There’s a feminist group called FEMEN, known for showing Quality cable shows like Mad Men use profanity like a up topless with feminist slogans scrawled on their bosoms— drop of Tabasco, and it has tang; it’s real. Network TV talk about the medium being the message. They crashed a will be next. Because it’s real. No one seems to realize press conference and threw holy water on a priest while that if Papi had called the bombers “herkenheiming fish- screaming abuse, possibly because the Church doesn’t admit binding ocelot tossers,” we would have gotten the point the possibility that Jesus was a cross-dresser. Put the and remembered him all the better. But no. Our Bleepin’ trans in transubstantiation, man. The priest would have Town. Readjust your Thornton Wilder theater programs been ex cused if he’d stood up and shouted “HARLOTS accordingly. BE GONE!” and shot lightning out of his fingertips— Ah, you say: If occasional cussing’s okay in the context church attendance would have soared—but he simply of art, why not in public life? Don’t bring up standards, bowed his head and prayed for them. Grandpa. Standards kept the Smothers Brothers from joking The photographs of the tableau may not convince an about the Vietnam War; ergo, all standards must go. Well, atheist that God is real, but they certainly make you believe not all; if something is hurtful or hateful to select tender in the previously mythical harpies. demographics, standards are terribly important, and part of Who are we to judge, though? Until he’s run a mile bra- encouraging a Positive Space where nowhere is heard a dis- less in their scratchy T-shirts, who among us can judge couraging word. But outside of that, eff ’em. the wrath of the FEMEN or the disenfranchised Carnegie For example: Previous standard for a college student: Mellon student? Anger is a guarantee of authenticity; if study hard, get good grades, be graduated to the sound of something is truly felt, it must be truly true. The art of one’s sonorous Elgar, then beaver away in a good job. New stan- utterance takes a backseat to the quantity of honesty. dard: topless pope protests. KDKA-TV reported: But it’s real, and that’s what matters today. Studies of the last Obama campaign showed that e-mails with casual sub- Students at Carnegie Mellon say it’s freedom of expression, ject lines—“Hey” or “Are you in?” or entreaties to make but the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh calls it inappropriate sure Barack knew you “had his back”—appealed well to and disrespectful. At an annual art school parade, a female younger voters. They sounded so inarticulate and slacker- student dressed up as the pope, and was naked from the waist casual they had to be real. Perhaps the GOP could vault over down while she passed out condoms. Even more, witnesses say the woman had shaved her pubic the slacker-chat tone and go right for the new age of hair in the shape of a cross. Authentic Sanctioned Eff: swearing at every turn, sending out Mitch McConnell stripped to the waist to yell at Hillary As songwriter Neil Innes once said, “I’ve suffered for my Clinton for Benghazi answers, shaving a dollar sign into his art, now it’s your turn.” pubic hair to “explore the relationship between politics and CMU issued a statement about the artistically reordered money.” They would fail to attract new voters and drive nether-hair, saying: “We are continuing our review of the away their base, but they would make these things so uncool incident. If our community standards or laws were violated, that politicians would say “Gosh” and “ma’am,” protesters we will take appropriate action.” would hone arguments instead of cheap shocks, and the cul- How? If they left it up to the student to come up with an ture would look to artists who create beauty instead of empty acts of theatrical narcissism. They’d lose the 2014 Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. election, but if that’s the trade-off? Worth it.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

Ali Ba’Nasri: I agree. Ali Ba’Nasri: Oh, right. I keep forget- Qu’Turush: And then she should be ting that. set on fire. Salil Faqtb: Of course you do! Your Ali Ba’Nasri: I agree. nephew is studying physics! In the West! There is no such thing as Al-Irshad: So we have agreement at physics! Your nephew should be tied Transcript from the Al last, between syndicated columnist into a sack and dropped from a minaret! Jazeera political talk show Qu’Turush and Baath strategist Ali Ali Ba’Nasri: Well, maybe. But that The Al-Irshad Group Ba’Nasri! Exit question: Tsarnaev sayo nara! As the fervor dims from the would be physics, right? events in Boston, we ask ourselves, Salil Faqtb: I will taste your blood Sunday, May 5, 2013 where are the next youngsters coming before this show is over! Die, you per- Al-Irshad: Issue One! Boston Bo - from who are willing to engage in verted monster with diseased genitals! nanza Brou-Ha-Ha! In the aftermath jihad? With the Twitter and the Face - Qu’Turush: You see, this is the prob- of the Boston Marathon jihad demon- book and the Spotify, many of our lem. We need to reach out to the mid- stration by our brothers-in-arms the young men find themselves bespoiled dle. We’re only talking to the very and feminized. Is there hope for our Tsarnaevs, questions have emerged small minority of folks who think young, I ask you political consultant about their reliance on the largesse of nuclear weapons are the be-all and Salil Faqtb! the Great Satan! Question: Is receiv- end-all. What about pipe bombers? ing WIC and/or other assistance, in- Salil Faqtb: Brother, there is only What about the boys in Boston? They cluding Section 8 housing, from the doom and hellfire for our young. They were making some inroads in a very American taxpayer a crime against travel to the West and construct incen- blue state. Islam? Most Exalted Imam and syndi- diary devices made entirely of cooking Salil Faqtb: They were JINOs! cated columnist Qu’Turush? utensils, like females. Like common Jihadists in name only! Brothers! Am I brazen whores and prostitutes! Qu’Turush: No, no, no. Look. We’ve the only one who sees it? They used a been through this and through this. Qu’Turush: I don’t think you’re see- cooking utensil! They may as well What the Tsarnaev family did was ing the pressure-cooker bombs in con- have been wearing dresses! apply for funds that were available to text— Al-Irshad: Last question. On a scale all who qualified. There’s really no Salil Faqtb: Do not speak to me of of one to ten, one being impossible and scandal here. We need to stop stigma- context, you blaspheming hypocrite ten being metaphysical certitude— tizing folks who just need a helping homosexual agnostic Jew-loving liber- Salil Faqtb: Both are impossible for hand. That’s what these social services tine dog. are there for. That’s what we pay our man. Both are the repository of the Qu’Turush: The root causes of that taxes for. Divine. Please allow me to disem - pressure cooker— bowel you immediately. Salil Faqtb: We? What is this “we,” Salil Faqtb: Prepare to die! you filthy son of a whore-mongering Al-Irshad: What is the likelihood that pig? You are like the shopkeeper who Qu’Turush: Get off me! Get off me! our movement is becoming rapidly sells coffee to the Jew! Al-Irshad: Gentlemen! Gentlemen! decentralized? Qu’Turush? Qu’Turush: Allow me to finish! Please! Qu’Turush: I’d say a six. Luckily for Allow me to finish, you devil! Die! Ali Ba’Nasri: Can I break in here? I us, American universities and local Die! Die! think the real question isn’t where is governments remain a wonderfully Salil Faqtb: The warrior who lives off the next generation of jihadists coming hospitable place to nurture jihad. But of the enemy is like the handful of from, but why are the Americans doing that could change. dates that harbor the stone! such a better job teaching it than we Al-Irshad: Ali Ba’Nasri? are? My nephew is studying physics at Al-Irshad: Political consultant Salil Ali Ba’Nasri: Ten. Have you seen Harvard, and let me tell you, when it Faqtb, let me break in here— what’s happening on Kickstarter? Ex - comes to understanding just how evil Qu’Turush: Please, brother. I’m try- citing stuff for jihad, let me tell you. and twisted the American system is, There’s an app for that. ing to get a word in edgewise, here. All he’s way, way ahead of anything we’ve I’m saying is— got over here. I mean, just the other day Al-Irshad: Salil Faqtb? Al-Irshad: And what about the he was explaining to me how obvious Salil Faqtb: Please remain motionless American wife? it was that what happened in Boston while I pour gasoline upon you. Qu’Turush: She should continue to was an inside job. Al-Irshad: You’re all incorrect! The receive whatever the system allows. Al-Irshad: But it wasn’t. It was us. answer is three! Bye bye!

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better known as the “Mule Capital of the Ruthie, after all, saw Rod’s lifestyle as World”). I love my town, and the people mystifying and strange. She was a public- A Grief in it, but they are people, and people are school teacher; Rod and his wife home- fallen. schooled. She lived in one place and had Observed Dreher’s book begins with the story one job; he couldn’t stay in a city for of his childhood in Louisiana. his little long and hopped from job to job. In one DAVID FRENCH sister, Ruthie, loved him, but was dif- painful vignette, she even refused to eat a ferent from the start. Rod was bookish, French meal Rod and his wife had pre- intellectual, and questioning. Ruthie pared, believing it was a symbolic rejec- loved the outdoors, the rural life, and tion of their simpler southern way. the town where they lived. Rod left as then Ruthie was diagnosed with can- soon as he had the chance, at age 16, to cer. go to boarding school. Ruthie stayed for In the hallmark version of this story, the rest of her life. the cancer would claim Ruthie’s life, but the writing is both intimate and dis- it would also bring a family together in tant. Dreher’s subject is people he knows a spasm of forgiveness and healthy per- better than anyone else, but he steps back spective. Death would come, but so would from them stylistically and intellectually. closure, and healing. But Dreher doesn’t the book reads a bit like an authorized, shrink from the sometimes terrible real- The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, insider biography of a celebrity or polit- ities. Yes, there is healing and forgive- a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life, ical leader, respectful as it identifies and ness, but there is also stubbornness and by Rod Dreher (Grand Central, evaluates formative events—but it is denial. Some wounds aren’t healed, and 288 pp., $25.99) also painfully honest. are even ripped open further amidst the Rod left home, but he also kept look- unimaginable stress of a terminal-cancer hat I felt when I picked up ing back, often desperate to reconcile diagnosis. Rod Dreher’s new book with a father who seemed to scorn his It turns out that a person with cancer is was, simply, dread. From choices. he also looked back to his sis- still a person, and a family rallying to W the dust jacket, I knew it ter, who made a life as a teacher and support a stricken sister, wife, mother, dealt with his sister’s untimely death seemed to open her heart and life to and daughter is still a family. Ultimately, from cancer. If it was written well, it everyone but her brother. his family this is what makes Dreher’s book so would rip apart my old wounds—wounds felt that Rod was rejecting them; Rod powerful. as Ruthie nears the end of her inflicted by seeing too much premature felt rejected and misunderstood by his life, the prose is compassionate but re - death in too short a time. If it wasn’t, I family. morseless. You know what’s coming, had another kind of dread—that of voyeuristically reading about someone else’s pain against the backdrop of an excessively idealized small southern town. there is a genre of conservative writing and thought that takes rural america and elevates it, drains it of the brokenness that plagues the rest of our nation, and turns it into an unrecognizable Disneyland of simple folks just doin’ good. But I know better. I grew up in a small southern town, and—like Dreher—have returned to the South after years of northeastern wander- ings, moving from New York to upstate New York and then to Philadelphia be - fore settling in my family’s longtime home town of Columbia, tenn. (perhaps

Mr. French is a senior counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice and a co-author (along with his wife, Nancy) of Home and Away: A Story of

COURTESY OF RODFamily DREHER in a Time of War. Rod Dreher and Ruthie Leming

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS you see the family make mistakes, and and often scorning those who don’t jump you know there’s no remedy. When a into the global marketplace with both daughter decides to distance herself from feet. Live your dream, they say, as hard The Tribes her mother in the final weeks of her as you can, as fast as you can, as long as mother’s life, you know it won’t end you can. But Dreher’s book is about Of Post- well. something completely different: not lean - As Ruthie dies, and as Rod sees not ing in, but leaning on, creating and sus- America just the outpouring of love from friends taining communities where imperfect and neighbors but also the outpouring of people lean on one another as they strug- JOHN O’SULLIVAN grief (a grief that you’ll feel yourself; I gle together through sickness, through read those pages on a flight from Boston grief, and even through conflict. We lean to Nashville and had to close the book on and are leaned upon, ready to jettison while I composed myself), he decides to ambition in order to serve and to sustain. come home. The book inspires, moves, and con- These are the most difficult passages victs. Dreher introduces readers to his of the book. Ruthie’s loss tore a gaping patron saint, Benedict of Nursia. Bene - hole in the lives of her family but also in dict took a vow of “stability,” asking his an entire community. Such voids aren’t monks to settle down, to embrace “the left by people who live just in a “little discipline of place and community.” way,” but only by those who live in a But this vow often conflicts with the noble, honorable, and loving way. goal of ambition, and the desire to exer- As an imperfect family and an im - cise influence. Back to Blood, by Tom Wolfe perfect community cling to each other, Dreher is too smart and wise to draw (Little, Brown, 720 pp., $30) Dreher comes to a convicting conclusion: rigid boxes, to declare that we should all stay in small communities near home. oM WoLfE long ago declared a During the decade leading up to Ruthie’s But he does remind us that amidst the preference for the great, teem- death, I had spent my professional life avalanche of contemporary hand-wringing ing, socially panoramic novels writing newspaper columns, blog posts, about values, ideas, and communities, T of the 19th century—in which and even a book, lamenting the loss of community in American life. I had a rep- someone has to actually live those val- a plot of ambition and scandal brings utation as a pop theoretician of cultural ues. Someone has to walk the talk. And together a rich variety of characters from decline, but in truth I was long on words, Ruthie walked. the overclass, the underclass, and the short on deeds. . . . My friends and I When you lose someone close to classes in between—over the novel of talked a lot about the fragmentation of you, there is often a desperate desire to internal reflection and exquisite sensi - the modern family, about the deracinat- tell that person’s story—not just to pre- bility where what little happens is of ing effects of late capitalism, about mass serve memories but also to honor her great significance for a particular exam- media and the erosion of localist con- and to sustain the meaning of her life. ined life. This preference for Dickens sciousness, about the consumerization In this book, Dreher has done much over Virginia Woolf, so to speak, or for of religion and the leviathan state and more than honor his sister or preserve Trollope over Henry James, is a very every other thing under the sun that undermines our sense of home and per- her memory. He’s shown us a way—per- scandalous one, because it is probably manence. haps the best way—to build our culture shared by most readers. That more or The one thing that none of us did was and to strengthen our families. less ensures that it will be viewed with what Ruthie did: Stay. Simply put: Be there—for your family, suspicion, if not distaste, by most critics. your friends, and your community. Live Mr. Wolfe, moreover, has compounded And so, he moves back to his tiny not to achieve, but to serve. There is, of this offense of taste by actually writing Louisiana home town. course, no single way to “lean on” rather (by my estimation) at least three great But this is no fairy tale, and there is than “lean in,” but the very decision to do social novels: The Bonfire of the Vanities, no “happily ever after.” Back home, the so should transform the focus and object A Man in Full, and now Back to Blood. challenges keep mounting, as he dis- of our lives. But lean on (and be leaned The main character in all of these novels covers Ruthie disliked his lifestyle even upon) with eyes wide open, not with is, of course, America itself, whose ener- more than he knew. Each page contains expectations of creating utopia but in - gy and disarray provide all the other char- yet another surprising and disturbing stead with the realization that unless mil- acters with their dreams and nightmares. revelation. Though all is not well back lions of us choose the “little way,” there Like any other character, however, Tom at home, he feels called to “accept the will be no good way left. Wolfe’s America is subject to change and limitations of a place, in humility.” Man is still fallen, small towns strug- decay, even perhaps to dissolution. And And this is where the book’s deeper gle much as big towns, and—absent self- in Back to Blood that ominous possibility social significance lies. It seems that we sacrifice—we’d struggle even more. It’s is beginning to seem possible. now live in the era of “lean in”: As the not policy that redeems a culture, but That in turn creates exaggerated diffi- underclass fragments, and families col- character and commitment, lived in culties for Wolfe’s other characters. He lapse, the elite strains to achieve—lean- towns large and small, in the way of has sometimes (and plausibly) argued ing into careers, rejecting limitations, Ruthie and her loving brother, Rod. that status anxiety is the motive force of

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most social lives. People are moved to Hensley make his way across America up as a large open-air orgy by the sea. act in order to establish their social sta- on an underground railroad for the Disgusted by the evident fact that tus, to improve it, or to defend it. Most undocumented (provided with their Norman wants her to take part in these of the time their actions are ordinary documents, naturally) and discover festivities, she decides to transfer her enough—studying at night school, say, Stoicism as a means of coping. But here affections elsewhere. Soon, a glam- or “marrying up”—but sometimes the he deepens the comparison with orous Russian billionaire and art col- prospect of social ruin or social triumph ancient times by giving another mean- lector, Sergei Korolyov, wanders into drives them to extreme actions, murder ing to multiculturalism as well as its view at a cocktail party, and asks her for instance, or martyrdom. Whatever ethnic one. As mainline WASP Christi - for her telephone number. the nature of someone’s social anxiety, anity shrivels, other cults flourish in its We already know a great deal about he will face unusually tangled and baf- place: the ethnicity cult, of course; the Sergei from the other characters. Ed - fling difficulties in a society whose arts cult for the very rich; the sex cult ward T. Topping IV, the understandably splintering standards and broken guide- for the young; the celebrity cult for insecure WASP editor of the Miami posts no longer give him clear direc- professionals; the psychology cult for Herald and a minor deacon in the cult tions on how to behave. billionaire clients; a religion cult (non- of art, regards him with nervous awe as But that is the dilemma facing only traditional religion, of course) for the a public and private benefactor. Topping some of the players in Back to Blood; perplexed; and the cult of wealth for had smiled complicitly from the head others are liberated by the collapse of everyone. Only the Gods of the Copy - table on behalf of his newspaper when older standards. For Wolfe’s vision of book Headings are missing from this Korolyov donated billions of dollars’ the America emerging from the chaos teeming agora through which Wolfe’s worth of hitherto unknown paintings by of modernity is eerily similar to the characters pursue their fantasies and masters of modern art to a new museum Rome of Antiquity before Constantine. flee from their anxieties. It is a world of bearing the billionaire’s name. It was Where that antiquity was pre-Christian, fear, superstition, and constant insecu- the high point of his editorship so far. this New Antiquity is post-Christian. rity as people try to adapt to the new, But Topping’s ace investigative re - Its original brand of Protestant Christi - always shifting social reality. porter, John Smith, also a WASP, is less anity no longer influences the politics, Nestor Camacho is a Cuban-American starry-eyed about the Russian. Smith is institutions, and laws of the nation it cop whose status anxiety derives from once shaped. The WASP elites, for whom the fact that he is the lone Cuban in the Protestantism was long a mark of maritime department of the Miami respectability and soundness, no longer police. Nestor is brave and good, as we even pretend to believe. It is a genuine quickly realize, and he also proves to religious faith for only a tiny number of be the wise counselor that his name people. Its secular expressions, “Ameri - suggests. Initially, however, it is he can exceptionalism” and “the Ameri- who needs counseling. His troubles can Creed,” are in only slightly better arise when, from a sense of duty but shape. The former provoked President also to win the approval of his fellow Obama into an embarrassed meandering cops, Nestor performs an astounding as he sought to reconcile his cosmo- physical feat in the course of rescuing a politan disdain for it with its popu larity would-be Cuban immigrant from death. among the rubes; the latter has been This rescue, however, also prevents the redefined into its opposite, an umbrella refugee from setting foot on land and term covering a multitude of tribes and thus from winning asylum. To the cops their different customs, namely multi- he is now a credit to his profession; to culturalism. the Cuban community he is a traitor to This transformation from the Great his race. Even his own family shuns Republic to the New Antiquity has him. At this low point in his fortunes, happened in large measure in order to but coincidentally, Nestor’s girlfriend, accommodate the growing number of Magdalena, leaves him to become the immigrant groups forcing their way mistress of a would-be-famous psychi- into the metropolis. It is a colder and atrist, Norman Lewis, who specializes crueler world: Inside the cultural ghet- in treating sex-addiction cases among tos, the new tribes of post-America the very rich. retain much of their old affections and Magdalena is fundamentally a decent loyalties; outside them, they treat others girl, but she is foolishly in thrall to with wariness and distrust. And they celebrity and to Norman’s near-fame, are slow to develop a common attach- and Norman, though a priest in the psy- ment to their new “home.” chiatry cult, is a secret worshiper in the Wolfe touched upon this New cult of sex. His real faith emerges when BROWN , Antiquity shaped by immigration in A he takes Magdalena to what starts as a

LITTLE Man in Full, where he had Conrad regatta for young WASP kids but ends Tom Wolfe

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS a devotee in the temple of truth (a real, ties as a result. There are exceptions, if inadequate, deity) and takes his re - interesting ones: Ghislaine is anxious ligion seriously. He knows Korolyov not for herself but only for her young No Aquatic to be a Russian mafioso with terrible brother, who is so desperately prey to crimes to his credit. He also suspects status anxiety that he is almost drawn to Tarts? him of having the promised art treasures crime and self-destruction by the desire forged by an émigré Russian painter as to be accepted in the ethnic-gang sub- CHARLES C. W. COOKE part of an elaborate fraud that Smith world of Miami kids. She is admirable can’t quite make out. In order to solve in her uncomplicated goodness, also the puzzle, Smith seeks out Nestor— perhaps a little unrealistic. Korolyov, an now famous owing to his acro batic intelligent criminal, thinks status comes exploit on the patrol boat—to find the out of the barrel of a gun. Other people’s painter/forger and expose the mafioso. status is something to be manipulated, Nestor, meanwhile, is on a roll. Taking as he successfully manipulates Topping, part in a police raid on a drug den, he in order to advance his criminal inter- overpowers a huge and brutal crack ests. He is, alas, a very realistic picture dealer under the admiring eyes of of evil. John Smith is a WASP who has Ghislaine Lantier, a beautiful Haitian found in journalism a respectable way of girl of good family who is present in upholding WASP ideals in this treacher- the crack house looking after neglected ous New Antiquity. Like his colonial children on behalf of a fashionable namesake, he survives amid other tribes Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the charity, South Beach Outreach. Im - by wit and coolness. pressed by Nestor’s bravery, and his Topping suffers most from status Dark Ages, by Guy Halsall kindness to her, Ghislaine seeks his fears. He is like an officer in a long, los- (Oxford, 384 pp., $34.95) help to prevent her foolish but harming war—the WASP in gradual retreat less young brother from being con- before the new post-American tribes. Hy is it,” I once asked victed of a serious crime. He succeeds Inevitably, he cuts a somewhat pathetic a friend at Ox ford, in that, reinforcing Ghislaine’s admira- figure. But he has learned a thing or two “that I have to write tion, and also in tracking down, with in the campaigns, and Wolfe allows him ‘W 2,000 words per es - John Smith, the Russian painter and a final flourish of deceptive leadership say and you only have to write 800? his forgeries. as he boldly oversees the Korolyov ex - After all, we do the same subject.” She That leads to a front-page story on posé he has been quietly obstructing. bristled slightly at the suggestion. “No, Korolyov, which, unfortunately for Mag- Magdalena is, as her name suggests, a we don’t, Charles. you study modern da lena, appears in the early morning of good girl gone bad who will now make history and I study medieval history and the night on which she has slept with good again. She will no longer be de - nobody knows anything about medieval him. Korolyov dismisses her fairly ceived by sex, celebrity, or power. Like history—bugger all, in fact. There’s not brusquely (as if, she reflects, taking out her namesakes, she is the sadder but much to write.” the garbage), pauses briefly to arrange wiser girl. We really do know “bugger all” about to have the painter murdered, and then And Nestor—well, Nestor was never the early medieval period, and what we takes off in his private plane back to pursuing a higher status, he was defend- think we know changes all the time. Mother Russia. His scheme to use the ing a decent status he had chosen on Written primary sources are thin on the prestige of his museum donations as the other (decent) grounds. Nestor has an ground and most of the archaeological basis for selling other fake masterpieces internal moral compass and, given that, evidence is still buried under it. None - to dealers for billions is now in ruins. he will navigate his way through the theless, although it is placed slap-bang Magdalena, who has seen her status ethnic suspicions of Miami and its vari- in the middle of a historical wilderness, soaring heavenwards, now looks at her- ous worlds. And Nestor, like Smith, is one story is burned into our collective self in a new, harsh, and glaring light, brave—which in Wolfe is always the memory: King Arthur’s. Dark Ages be literally so in the oligarch’s bathroom, key to someone’s worth. damned, we have a legend and we’re and also metaphorically, as someone ex - As always, Wolfe is a very entertain- sticking with it. posed as a cheap whore. She now thinks ing read. The book has great set pieces— Guy Halsall, a professor at the Uni - fondly of Nestor and their happy times the seaside orgy, the strip club, the drug versity of york, has set out to address this together. But Nestor is basking in the raid, the editorial debate over whether to paradox. In Worlds of Arthur, he exam- admiration of his fellow cops again, run the exposé of Korolyov. It tells sad ines not just the Arthurian myth but the along with John Smith, and also in but rumbustious truths about modern entire period during which Roman Ghislaine’s smiles. Who will Nestor end America; in describing Miami, it ex - Britain “fell” and an Anglo-Saxon “inva- up with . . . but I will leave you in sus- plains the Boston bombers. sion” allegedly took its place. His work pense on that. Only one mystery remains: One sour sits at the confluence of mystery and Wolfe’s characters, driven by status, critic said that Wolfe was writing less history, raising the awkward, compelling are for the most part seeking to rise in a about Miami than about himself. What on question of how much value we put on slippery world and getting into difficul- earth must he think Wolfe is like? objective truth. “The study of King

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Arthur has been insular for too long,” through the evidence. He notes that the Halsall doesn’t even accept the termi- Halsall complains, and it has been Historia Brittonum, the first datable nology of the question. In what is by hijacked by profit-seeking “amateur source to mention Arthur, was written far and away the book’s best section, enthusiasts” who, in thrall to Winston 300 years after he supposedly existed, “New Worlds,” we are treated to a Churchill’s vain hope that “it is all true, creating a vacuum into which existing scintillating reevaluation of the period. or it ought to be; and more and better legends were readily sucked. In the Halsall’s contention is that the Roman besides,” pretend to hordes of willfully ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, period was not as Roman as is popu- gullible readers that they have unlocked Halsall concedes, there “could be snip- larly imagined, nor was the barbaric the “secret” at last. pets of sixth-century fact”—but “it is period as barbaric. Roman hegemony “Medieval writers and their audi- impossible now to disentangle them had all but collapsed by 435, Halsall ences expected different things from from the narrative and structure of its contends, meaning that a fifth-century ‘history,’” Halsall allows early on, be - authors’ propaganda and from the huge Arthur was unlikely to be fighting to cause “medieval people did not have a dose of myth, legend, and pun with preserve it. Moreover, the threat from category of ‘factual history’ separate which they injected it.” likewise, there outside was not as discrete as it is from what today might be thought of as is no reason to take the Welsh Annals made out to be: The “barbarians” had ‘historical fiction,’ ‘alternative history,’ “very seriously,” nor Welsh heroic adequate exposure to Roman influence Halsall confesses to being a “romantic, Arthurian agnostic”: He wishes “that Arthur had existed” but is aware that there is “no evidence” that he did.

or even ‘fantasy.’” Moral truths, he poetry, which may have been full of and generally desired to settle within adds, were often more important to attractive stories for a people that felt the Roman Empire, not to destroy it. writers of the epoch than accuracy, threatened but which has little to rec- And the Saxons? They, and the oft- because their works were contrived pri- ommend it in the way of veracity. By ignored Angles and Jutes, didn’t so marily to assuage contemporary con- the time Halsall is done, he has con- much “invade” as they formed Roman- cerns. Nevertheless, this does not excuse structed a convincing case that the writ- blessed war bands that garrisoned modern historians from the author’s ten sources make “depressing reading” areas of importance while the military contempt. As much as anything, his for those who are set on believing in any went off to fight civil wars of larger book is a polemic in favor of academic Arthur who would be worth believing imperial import. The truth is, to borrow discipline. Halsall confesses to being a in. Books that claim that the written a favored academic word, “complex.” “romantic, Arthurian agnostic”: He record aids their cause, the author in - And complexity is no friend of lore. wishes “that Arthur had existed” but is sists, should “be rejected immediately At one point, the author lets his frus- aware that there is “no evidence” that he and out of hand. Such attempts repre- tration with his adversaries translate did. “Poetry creates the myth,” held sent fiction, no more and no less.” into open belligerence, writing: “The Jean-Paul Sartre, but “the prose writer What about archaeology, a typical locations of all of these battles are draws its portrait.” Worlds of Arthur is refuge of the more creative Arthurian unknown and unknowable. This is of very definitely written in prose. optimists? Is there anything in the supreme importance if reading modern At this point, the fable’s keener devo- record to indicate that a man named pseudo-histories so I’ll say it again: THE tees might ask, “All right, killjoy, but Arthur was a champion of Roman civ- loCATIoNS of All THESE BATTlES ARE which Arthur are you talking about?” A ilization against Saxon barbarism? uNKNoWN ANd uNKNoWABlE.” fair question. To be sure, the Arthur of Such combativeness is unsurprising, Merlin, Guinevere, and so much Came - coming as it does from a man who made lot flim-flam is widely conceded to be the British press when he lambasted his fanciful folly. (To paraphrase Monty KOAN PRACTICE truant students for missing the “chance Python, “strange women lying in ponds to hear (probably) the most significant distributing swords” is no basis for On one hand, what historian of early medieval Europe under the age of 60 anywhere in the serious history.) But what of the sup- Is it not? posedly historical Arthur, with whom world give 16 lectures on his current But on one hand it every schoolchild is familiar? What of research.” But at points, I confess, I had the man who played the heroic role in Isn’t everything. some sympathy with those students. fighting for civilization against the Halsall is clearly a brilliant man, but onslaught of barbarism? The beer I do not drink when he is not fulminating against peo- Halsall has little more time for this With the friend I have never met ple he doesn’t like, he can be terribly iteration than he does for the fairy tale. In the café that doesn’t exist. dry. I suppose he can’t help it here; this Knocking it down as he goes, a touch book is dry because a book like this irritably at times, he takes us patiently —JASON LEE STEORTS must be dry. Shakespeare, too, corrupted

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS our national knowledge of history with top academic journals. If this impressive the considerable poetic license that he academic career doesn’t give him that took, and any book that endeavored to Big Brother whiff of liberalism, there is also this: He set the record straight would inevitably wrote the book while taking a sabbatical suffer from an inability to be even half At Your in Paris. as entertaining as that it sought to cor- But that Lusk is hardly a food nanny rect. Like Shakespeare’s versions of becomes clear on the very first page, events, the Arthur myths survive be - Table when he says the food police are “totali- cause they make great stories, and great JULIE GUNLOCK tarians” who “seek control over your stories endure. refrigerator, by governmental regulation Pathologies endure, too. The modern when they can or by moralizing and guilt resurgence of the Arthurian legend when they can’t.” He explains that the came at the height of the Victorian era, catastrophic predictions often made by at an odd crossroads during which the the food nannies are nothing more than success of the Industrial Revolution the “hysterics of an emerging elite” and was felt to be costing England its Ruri - admits he’s being polite by using the term tanian idyll and at which the success of “food police” instead of the more accurate the Empire was causing more self- terms “food fascists” and “food social- conscious elites to worry aloud about ists.” His tone is unapologetic when he going the way of the Romans. When the says that today’s food police are less like British Parliament burned to the ground Andy Griffith than like the Gestapo. in 1834, the queen’s robing room in the The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto About the Lusk begins by identifying members House of Lords was decorated with Politics of Your Plate, by Jayson Lusk of the food police, who “play on fears Arthurian themes, instilling the new (Crown Forum, 240 pp., $24) and prejudices while claiming the high with the virtues of the old. Likewise, in mantle of science and impartial journal- the New World, Americans at the HERE has been an explosive ism.” No longer just a few über-healthy height of their post-war boom rechris- growth in government power in academics and public-health activists, tened the youthful Kennedy adminis- recent years, from the health- the modern food police now include tration as “Camelot.” The details may T care system to the financial- among their ranks talk-show hosts, have changed, but neither the urge to services sector. Compared with such politicians, and celebrity chefs. Lusk return to the romance of nature nor breathtaking assaults on liberty as says “it is impossible to turn on the TV, Western anguish at the prospect of de- Obama care, New York mayor Michael pick up a book about food, or stroll cline has disappeared. We remain in Bloomberg’s ban on large sodas might through the grocery store without hear- search of ideals toward which we might seem to be an issue that conservatives ing a sermon on how to eat.” strive. Fiction remains preferable to can shrug off. But Jayson Lusk’s new The regulators have even enlisted fact. book explains that government’s grow- A-list Hollywood actresses to spread the At the end of the classic 1962 western ing intrusion into Americans’ eating message. Joining Lusk’s book on book- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a habits should not be ignored. Politicians store shelves this spring is a cookbook newspaperman learns a dark, poten- now think it’s perfectly appropriate to by Gwyneth Paltrow—but this cook- tially ruinous secret about an American try to limit the amount of soda people book is not just another collection of hero, written evidence of which he pro- consume; to tinker with food manufac- favorite family recipes. Paltrow proceeds to crumple up and throw in a fire. turers’ recipes by restricting the use of motes an “elimination diet” that entails “You’re not going to use the story?” certain ingredients (including sugar, removing a long list of items from the asks the hero. “No, sir,” the newspaper- salt, and trans fats); to ban toys in family grocery list, including, but not man replies. “This is the West, sir. Happy Meals and restrict what restau- limited to: coffee, alcohol, eggs, sugar, When the legend becomes fact, print rants offer their customers. shellfish, soy, dairy, wheat, meat, and the legend.” In Worlds of Arthur, Guy Lusk is more than qualified to tackle processed food. What qualifications Halsall is almost certainly correct: The these issues. In fact, his curriculum vitae does Paltrow possess that make her an legend becomes fact if you look at it almost makes him look like a double expert on human dietary health? The properly. Nonetheless, this is still the agent: He could easily be mistaken for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics West and Halsall has managed to write food nannies about whom he writes. An states that to become a registered dieti - perhaps the only book on Arthur this agricultural-economics professor at Okla - tian, one must pass an examination after year that will not be profitable. Such are homa State, Lusk has written about food completing an accredited bachelor’s- or the trials of academics and truth tellers. and agriculture policy for more than 100 master’s-degree program. According to The rest of the Arthurian aficionados, peer-reviewed publications and has Paltrow’s Wikipedia entry, the actress meanwhile, will shake themselves off served on the editorial councils of seven “briefly” studied anthro pology at the from the scolding, thank the professor University of California, Santa Barbara, for his opinion, and continue to do what Julie Gunlock is a senior fellow at the Independent before dropping out to act, but never they have always done: Print the legend Women’s Forum and directs its Culture of Alarmism completed any studies in nutrition or and be damned. Project. dietetics. This hasn’t stopped her from

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moralizing on what foods Americans lators’ view that the general public are centralize the feeding of children by should be eating. low-information eaters who lack the government agencies. Hillary Clinton Lusk explains that more and more peo- smarts to differentiate between a slice of famously floated this idea over a decade ple are buying into this sort of pseudo- greasy pizza and a vitamin- and nutrient- ago in her pleasant-sounding yet ulti- expertise on food issues. Once, while rich leafy green salad. According to Lusk, mately creepy big-government love giving a presentation on writing, he dis- it is these low expectations that make the story It Takes a Village. Most recently, covered that his audience was far more regulators so devoted to “nudge theory,” MSNBC political commentator Melissa interested in discussing food policy: which holds that since fallible human Harris-Perry cheerfully corrected par- I engaged in a lively discussion with beings are incapable of acting in their own ents on the silly notion that “your kid is about seventy-five graduate students and best interests, government must step in to yours and totally your responsibility,” professors of English. I wasn’t surprised make their lives better. Lusk says that suggesting instead that Americans view that they had questions about food and even though nudge theory is “pseudo - their offspring with the “collective agriculture, and I was happy to answer scientific,” it has “permeated the highest notion of these are our children.” them. What surprised me was the abso - lute moral certitude permeating the air. Many in the room had no doubt they were being poisoned and fattened up by an out-of-control food system. What facts did these folks have to bolster their case? Nothing more than what was pre- sented in [the 2008 documentary] Food, Inc., along with a few innuendos picked up in the Sunday paper. I would never have dared question them on the finer points of Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky. Yet they were certain that my explana- tions for why food is produced the way it is were wrong. Great self-confidence, combined with a highly ideologized view of food issues, is a syndrome afflicting much of the food- police establishment. Lusk doesn’t deny that there are problems with food production and manufacturing in America. He levels of regulatory decision making” at Instead of making us better off, Lusk shares the food police’s “unease with the various government agencies and “is the warns, giving the government more present state of farm policy,” saying that it engine behind the new food paternalism.” power over food decisions would “usher is an “anachronistic throwback” that sur- Food paternalism dovetails perfectly in a more stagnant, less dynamic world, vives on “the political power of the farm with the regulators’ view of the free- and . . . breed a generation of children lobby” and results in such bizarre policies market system and individual freedom unwilling or unable to imagine how to as paying farmers not to farm and food- in general: They believe in the need for improve their diets through mathe matics, assistance programs that drive up the “Uncle Sam’s helping hand.” Lusk chemistry, biology, and engineering.” price of food. But he disagrees with the writes that the food police’s “readiness Lusk doesn’t want his children to live in intrusive regulatory solutions proposed to empower government to control food a society preoccupied with the romanti- by the food police: businesses; to centrally direct agricul- cized ideas of the past, but in one that’s tural output through heavy taxes, subsi- innovative in how it creates and distrib- Where I part with [food activist Michael] dies, and public-agency purchasing utes food—“feeding the world’s hungry Pollan and his fellow foodies is in their requirements; and to override consu - with higher-yielding, more nutritious conclusions that “like so many govern- mers’ free choice with everything from a crops, and developing space-age tech- ment programs—what subsidies need is not the ax, but reform that moves them gentle nudge to outright ingredient bans nologies that make tasty food at the push forward.” What makes the food police is slowly leading us down the road to of a button.” think the government will get it right this serfdom.” Lusk makes a strong case that the food time? They like to talk about market fail- Government intervention is the only police are a major obstacle to the kind of ures but are apparently blind to the abun- solution identified by the majority of innovation we need. Their intransigence dance of government failures. If the modern thinkers on food policy. First on many of the benefits of food modern- process is so corruptible by corporate lady Michelle Obama’s strategy to ization—from genetically modified food interests and mega farms, as they claim it solve the childhood-obesity problem to industrial farming and synthetic fertil- is, then Uncle Sam is incapable of work- was not to encourage parents to take a izers, and even modern conveniences ing in our food interests, and all the greater role in their children’s nutrition- such as large-scale grocery stores and preaching of hope and change is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. al development, but to increase the today’s shipping methods—is the kind of number of children enrolled in federal thinking that will, as Lusk warns, ulti- Lusk also disagrees with the food regu- school-feeding programs; to, in effect, mately doom us to poverty.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS punishments, fathers and sons, all set arcs of both Gosling and Cooper are the Film against the deep greens and rusting red- set-up for a dénouement involving their browns of Schenectady, N.Y. teenage sons, their families’ buried The the first act belongs to Gosling’s char- secrets, and the long shadow of the past. acter, Luke. We see him first as a tattooed this last leap, unfortunately, is a disas- body headed into a carnival tent for his ter for the film. the boys are miscast: the Place Off motorcycle act—a wild spin around the lanky, pasty Dane Dehaan is believable interior of a globe-shaped metal “Cave of as Gosling’s son but not as Mendes’s, The A-List Death.” then we see him reconnect with while the pouty, puffy Emory Cohen a local woman (Mendes) with whom he looks and talks more like a refugee from ROSS DOUTHAT had a fling the last time he passed through a Long Island variation on Jersey Shore Schenectady—and with whom, he dis- than the son of Cooper and Byrne’s hat are we to make of covers, he had a child as well. this intel- WaSPy upstate couple. Dehaan at least Ryan Gosling? In certain ligence persuades him to stay put when can act; Cohen evinces no such talent. ways, he’s one of the pre- the carnival moves on, and the place he their story is supposed to vindicate the W mier actors of his genera- finds to crash belongs to an auto mechanic movie’s sprawl and shifting points of tion—the thinking woman’s sex symbol, (Mendelsohn) who happens to be a re tired view; instead, it makes everything that’s the heartthrob who actually cares about bank robber. their easy friendship, happened since Gosling ceded the spot- his craft, with the mix of cool, intelli- Luke’s motorcycle skills, and his desire to light feel like a waste of time. Indeed, gence, and vulnerability that we associ- provide for his kid all point in the same with the possible exception of There Will ate with a-list leading men. Yet he’s direction: Soon enough he’s speeding into Be Blood, I can’t think of another recent made disappointingly few movies that are actually successful as movies, rather than as showcases for his magnetism and dramatic chops. It’s not for want of trying: Gosling has appeared in a lot of interesting small films and a lot of respectable bigger ones, and he’s single-handedly made flawed exper- iments more watchable and elevated trashy melodramas above their station. But none of his movies has united critics and audiences in the way that true stardom usually requires. So while it feels like he could end up in the same league as Nicholson, Pacino, and Newman, his film ography doesn’t merit those comparisons. he’s been headlining movies for more than a decade, but he’s still waiting for a Chinatown or Cuckoo’s Nest, a God - father or Serpico, a Butch Cassidy or Cool Hand Luke. For a little while, his latest film seems like it might be that breakthrough. The Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes, and Anthony Pizza in The Place Beyond the Pines Place Beyond the Pines has promising ingredients. the director is Derek Cian - banks instead of tents, and speeding back movie with such a stark drop-off in qual- france, who helmed Gosling’s best out with bags of ill-gotten cash. ity from the first hour to the last. small movie to date, the art-house the robberies go well until they don’t, the ambition animating The Place downer Blue Valentine. the cast is stel- at which point the movie shifts perspec- Beyond the Pines is still impressive, lar—Gosling shares top billing with tives, introducing Cooper’s character, a and Cianfrance’s film is memorable Bradley Cooper, another actor obviously straight-arrow Schenectady cop named and immersive despite ultimately feel- hungry for an adult form of stardom; he avery with a wife (Byrne), a son, and a ing like a misfire. But for anyone fol- shares great scenes and chemistry with powerful politician father whose sha dow lowing its star’s not-quite-fulfilled the australian character actor Ben Men - he’s trying to escape. here the bank- career, and hoping that he finds the del sohn; and they’re joined by Rose robbery plot gives way to a police- vehicles his talent deserves, that “not Byrne, Eva Mendes, and Ray Liotta in corruption plot, in which Cooper’s avery quite, not quite” feeling is all too famil- supporting roles. and Pines has big learns about Realpolitik the hard way, iar. Once again, alas, Ryan Gosling has ambitions: It’s at once intimate and even as his relationship with his family made an interesting-but-flawed movie sprawling, weaving multiple lives and frays. and then finally the story leaps that’s worth seeing mostly because it

FOCUS FEATURES generations into a story of crimes and forward 15 years, and we realize that the has Ryan Gosling in it.

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take her clothes off.” the predecessor Venus of willendorf. Genesis says there City Desk the reporter cited went mega in the late is a father God back behind the genera- Nineties—a technological era ago— tive process, but as far as we can see we when he shot videos of young women all come from women and we just can’t The Object who took off some or all of their cloth- turn away. ing at Mardi Gras or spring break, and the young women who attract so Of Beauty marketed them via infomercials. You much attention never change: they are all know the name of his franchise. all stupid. they have at best only the But so swift is time’s arrow that the crudest notions of their own power, reporter did not cite an even earlier and never calculate motives or conse- predecessor, who went mega in the quences. Giving a young woman a Seventies, two technological eras ago. young woman’s body makes as much He stalked the streets of the city in a sense as giving ten teenagers Lambor- silver-lamé jumpsuit, carrying a video ghinis and telling them to drive in fig- camera over his shoulder—this was ure 8s around a parking lot. when video cameras were the size and the artists never change. they may weight of pig carcasses. He would ask be great architects or creepy auteurs or young women to take off some or all of sleazy promoters or sleazy auteur- their clothing, and even to have sex promoters. But they are bound hand with him, then pull together both his and foot, sinew and synapse, to their RICHARD BROOKHISER acceptances and his rejections and subject, the female human form divine. show them on public-access tV. I Feminists and other moralists may say wrote for the weekly on pink know about him because the great they are exploiters and users. they paper for 20 years, and I still Keith Mano once followed him around, wield the paintbrush, box camera, video look at it from time to time. It schlepping the video camera. In a life- camera, digital camera; they occupy I was the city’s perfect high-low time of trying, Keith had found some- the power position, gazing the male venue, running the gamut from auteur- one as indefatigable and in-your-face gaze, which is omnipotent. why then theory film criticism to dirt diving (did as he was (Keith was a much better do they all gaze at the same thing, it mock the dirt, or just grub it up? the writer, of course). instead of, say, Arcturus? whose posi- satirist’s problem, from Martial on). But the predecessors stream back tion is truly powerful? only the stu- the last issue I saw featured a russian even farther than that. Priscilla Buckley pefying ignorance of young women lad who is about to go mega. His told me that she was once playing golf prevents them from comprehending project in the land of the free is to with her mother when a man asked to the stupefying emptiness of the men attend dance parties and take pictures play through. Mrs. Buckley was notably who cluster round them. of young women who take off some or cold to him, Priscilla asked why. “He is empty, not untalented. the real abil- most of their clothing for him. He also Harry thaw,” Mrs. Buckley said curtly. ities of artists are widely misunder- shakes up champagne bottles and Harry thaw—the socialite who beat a stood. they are often credited with spritzes the foam into their yowza-ing murder rap by pleading insanity, now intelligence and, since the romantic mouths, a service he calls the cham- free on the links. the crime for which he era, originality, but these are not their pagne facial. He then posts these pic- had been unpunished: shooting the attributes. Most artists have no intelli- tures on his website. “I kind of had to architect Stanford white in the restau- gence (and whether they have it or not build a character to stand out from rant atop the old Madison Square Gar - is irrelevant) and none have originali- everyone else taking photos” at par- den. His motive: white had seduced ty. their great merit is getting the job ties, he told the pink paper. the char- Mrs. thaw when she was a model and done. they work hard and they hit acter he built: “dark and making fun of chorine, taking off some or all of her their marks. when some geezer, look- sluts. . . . If you post a photo of a chick, clothing, so that white and his artist ing at art he dislikes, says, My three- no one cares,” but if you post it with friends could paint her, photograph her, year-old could do that, he is exactly an insult, “then you start a conversa- or otherwise enjoy her company, many, wrong. Neither his three-year-old nor tion.” many technological eras ago. his 30-year-old could do that. Art is It sounds like the punchline of a eras change, the dance never. the done by artists. Yakov Smirnoff joke—what a coun- young women may be chorine/models they need the guidance of patrons try!—but the young russian is making or dim-bulb pedestrians or drunken and tradition, though, or their art, how- a career of it. thanks to the buzz his revelers or dancing publicity hounds, ever competent, will be meretricious: site generates, he gets paid to shoot but they all possess the human form impulsive, lowest-common-denominator. parties; soon he hopes to do coffee- divine—more exactly, the female hu - ride them with a whip and artists will table books and tV. man form divine, which is divinest. give you Mary Magdalene or the three what caught my eye in the story was Sorry, Donatello’s David, sorry, gay Graces. Let them go and you’ll get a comment by the reporter that the men: You’re outvoted, you lose. women sluts in clubs. young russian “is hardly the first are what the world goes round, and we I knew the pink paper would not dis- entrepreneur to convince a woman to have been going round them since the appoint.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Jihad Abhors a Vacuum

OST-9/11, we in the omniscient pundit class boasting that she’ll be shrieking “Allahu akbar!” when the were all Afghan experts. Post-Boston, we are all Great Satan takes her out too, the “faded portrait” is well Chechen experts. worth your time: Back then, just before the U.S.S.R. fell P Strictly between us, I can count what I know apart, the jihadist crone looked like a mildly pastier version about Chechens on one leg. A couple of years ago, while I of an Eighties rock chick—a passable Dagestan doppel- was in Copenhagen picking up an award from the Danish gänger for Joan Jett, with spiky black hair and kohl-ringed Free Press Society, a one-legged Chechen prematurely self- eyes. She loves rock ’n’ roll, so put another ruble in the juke- detonated in the Hotel Jørgensen while assembling a bomb. box, baby! His device, using the same highly volatile TATP as in the Then she came to America and, after a decade in London Tube bombings, was intended for my friends at Cambridge, Mass., returned to her native land as a jihadist Jyllands-Posten, publishers of the famous Mohammed cliché—pro-sharia, pro-terrorist, pro-martyrdom, pro- cartoons, to whom I chanced to be giving an interview. All slaughter. She arrived here as Joan Jett, and went back all things considered, I’m glad the poor fellow pre-activated in black heart. his hotel room rather than delivering his package in the The Tsarnaevs were a mixed marriage. Pop was midst of my photo shoot. His name was Lors Doukaiev, and Chechen, Mom was Dagestani, from the Z-list stan on he had traveled from his home in Liège, Belgium, in order Chechnya’s borders. But there’s really no such thing as a to protest the Mohammed cartoons by exploding a bomb on “Dagestani.” Dagestan is a wild mountain-man version of September 11. Got that? A citizen of Belgium is blowing up Cambridge, celebrating diversity until it hurts. Its popu - a newspaper in Denmark on the anniversary of a terrorist lation includes Azerbaijanis, whom you’ve heard of, attack on America. because they’re from the stan that thinks it’s a jan. The rest So whatever was bugging him didn’t have a lot to do of the guys are—stan well back—Avars, Dargins, Kumyks, with Chechnya. In Boston, before he was run over by his Laks, Rutuls, Aghuls, Nogais, Tsakhurs, and Tabasarans. brother and found himself committing the jihadist faux Oh, and Lezgians, a mountain tribe of fearsome female pas of greeting his 72 virgins with tire tracks from head to warriors high on fermented yak’s milk. I’m making that last toe, young Tamerlan Tsarnaev had apparently put on his bit up, but for a moment you weren’t sure, were you? Amazon wish-list the book The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Dagestan has everything except Dagestanis. They’re all in Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule. Yet Ingushetia, maybe. while the Chechen-nationalist struggle has certainly For the last decade, I’ve been lectured by the nuancey- become more Islamic in the last two decades, it’s a bit of boys on how one can’t generalize about Islam, and espe- a mystery what it has to do with Jutland newspapers and cially about Islam in the West: There are as many Massachusetts marathons. Lors Doukaiev and Tamerlan fascinating differences between Mirpuri Pakistanis in Tsarnaev were young men in their mid twenties who had Yorkshire and Algerian Berbers in Clichy-sous-Bois as lived in the West for much of their lives. Both were box- there are between Nogais and Lezgians in Dagestan. No ers. Aside from the fact that Lors was one-legged and doubt. But, whatever their particular inheritance, many Tamerlan wasn’t, the quotes their friends and neighbors young Muslims in the West come to embrace a pan-Islamic offered in the wake of their sudden notoriety are more or identity. The Tsarnaev boys, for example, fell under the less interchangeable: “He was perfectly integrated. He influence of an “Australian sheikh.” That’s to say, a sheikh was jovial and very open.” That was Fabian Detaille, born in Sydney. While back in the Caucasus in 2012, young Doukaiev’s trainer at the Cocktail Boxing Club in Tamerlan is rumored to have met William Plotnikov, a Droixhe, speaking to Belgian radio, but it could just as Toronto jihadist whose Siberian parents are such assimi - easily have been one of Tamerlan’s boxing buddies on lated Canadians they winter as Florida snowbirds. When NPR in Boston. they came back, they found a note from William saying The Washington Post covered much of the Tsarnaev nar- he’d gone to France for Ramadan. And thence east, to his rative under the headline “A Faded Portrait of an Immi - rendezvous with the virgins. grant’s American Dream.” The story is about what you’d Like the photographs of Mrs. Tsarnaeva then and now, expect from the headline but the “faded portrait” is fasci - these are stories of dis-assimilation, of secularized nating—a photograph of the family before they came to Easterners who in the vacuum of Western multiculturalism America: young Mr. and Mrs. Tsarnaev with baby search for identity and find a one-stop shop in Islamic Tamerlan, and Uncle Muhamad with a Tom Selleck mous- imperialism. tache and Soviet military uniform. If you only know Ma Either that, or it’s the local gym. Like Lors and Tamerlan, Tsarnaeva from her post-Boston press conferences as a the Aussie sheikh and the Canuck terrorist were boxers. For head-scarfed harpie glorying in her sons’ martyrdom and African-Americans, boxing used to be the way out of the ghetto. For Western Muslims, boxing is apparently the way Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). out of Cambridge, Mass.—and straight into jihad.

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Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition

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