Save the Constitution Nation of Birthers Islam’s Civil War Fall Books & Culture JUSTIN AMASH JONATHAN KAY WILLIAM S. LIND
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013
IDEAS OVER IDEOLOGY • PRINCIPLES OVER PARTY
HATE OR FAITH? Religious Freedom After Gay Marriage
ROD DREHER
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How many readers ever gave a moment’s thought to the meaning of life? Not I. However after attending a series of lectures by Richard W. Wetherill decades ago, I embarked on a thoughtful journey, regarding the meaning of life.
Wetherill spoke of an insight he had been given, describing “Just found your site. I the true meaning of life explained by a natural law he called was quite impressed and the law of absolute right. It specifi es rational, honest action look forward to hours of with results that confi rm or deny the rightness or wrongness enjoyment and learning. of the action taken. Thanks.” - Frank All natural laws are self-enforcing, and if people disregard them, even slightly, what results is troublesome. Daily news- casts report a plethora of troublesome results. Obviously, human beings accumulate so many debilitating results from their decisions of right and wrong that death is just regarded as inevitable. But is death inevitable? Created natural laws caused the action that created this planet and its people, and when obeyed, applicable natural laws support the planet and its inhabitants. It is people who, over time, have been unknowingly destroying themselves. It is not the giver of life that destroys human life. It is the receivers of life who do not live in the rational, honest way called for by the creator’s behavioral law. Instead they live as they please and fi nally are forced to depart this life. Wetherill referred to the law of absolute right as the “I have fi nished reading creator’s moral code for people to obey. We must all respect the book How To Solve the fact that only rational, honest behavior assures the life Problems. So simple, yet and well-being of both the planet and its people. so profound and powerful. Thank you.” - Alex Visit alphapub.com for more information or for a free mail- ing write to The Alpha Publishing House, PO Box 255, Royersford, PA 19468.
This public-service message is from a self-fi nanced, nonprofi t group of former students of Mr. Wetherill. Vol. 12, No. 5, September/October 2013
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COVER STORY FRONT LI NES ARTS & LETTERS
12 Does Faith = Hate? 6 Why I am a constitutionalist 40 United States of Paranoia: A Marriage equality puts REP. JUSTIN AMASH Conspiracy eory by Jesse religious liberty at risk. Walker 7 Will Virginia go libertarian? ROD DREHER JONATHAN KAY MARINA OLSON 43 e Barbarous Years: e Peopling ARTICLES 8 Don’t ght Islam’s civil war of British North America: e WILLIAM S. LIND 16 How to Tax Carbon Con ict of Civilizations 1600– e right alternative to the le ’s 9 America’s Israel-Palestine angle 1675 by Bernard Bailyn climate-change agenda SCOTT McCONNELL GENE CALLAHAN ANDREW MOYLAN 46 Edmund Burke: e First 20 Main Street Libertarians COMMENTARY Conservative by Jesse Norman Crony capitalism provokes a 5 Modern freedom & the right CARL BOGUS new free-market populism 49 For the Republic: Political Essays W. JAMES ANTLE III 11 What to do about Egypt’s coup PATRICK J. BUCHANAN by George Scialabba 23 Christian, Not Conservative GERALD J. RUSSELLO Calvin and Obama alike inspire 29 Counterterror a er al-Qaeda 50 History and the Human novelist Marilynne Robinson PHILIP GIRALDI Condition: A Historian’s Pursuit ROBERT LONG 33 Declaring war doesn’t make of Knowledge by John Lukacs 26 Freedom or Virtue? it right JOHN WILLSON RANDOLPH BOURNE Where traditionalists and 52 Tocqueville in Arabia: libertarians both go wrong 39 All-American paranoia Dilemmas in a Democratic Age DONALD DEVINE BILL KAUFFMAN by Joshua Mitchell 30 A.J.P. Taylor Is History JONATHAN MARKS 58 How the rich ruined St-Tropez His work is a master course in TAKI 54 e Muslim Brotherhood: diplomacy—and how to write Evolution of an Islamist Movement R.J. STOVE by Carrie Rosefsky 34 What Miniver Cheevy Means MATTHEW FEENEY e joyful sadness of poet 56 Small Wars, Far Away Places: E.A. Robinson Global Insurrection and the JAMES MATTHEW WILSON Making of the Modern World: 1945–65 by Michael Burleigh Cover illustration: Michael Hogue WILLIAM ANTHONY HAY
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 3 Reactions e American Conservative Editor Daniel McCarthy Senior Editors Rod Dreher Daniel Larison Mark Nugent TELL ME A STORY 41 months in the period April 1965 to Editorial Director, Digital We conservatives need to reclaim our March 1970. And just oand, I can Maisie Allison stories, insist on sharing part of the en- pick up the phone and call four oth- Associate Editor tertainment world. is movement has ers, all vets who are friends and former Jonathan Coppage National Correspondent already started, fueled by independent work associates. So collectively, we ve Michael Brendan Dougherty publishing and a diaspora of visual me- spent something approaching 12 years Contributing Editors dia. Small lm companies are cropping in Vietnam, and in every nook and W. James Antle III, Andrew J. Bacevich, up in the South, many of them friend- cranny of that country. Yet none of us Doug Bandow, Jeremy Beer, James Bovard, Patrick Deneen, Michael Desch, Richard Gamble, ly to conservatives, and a er digging ever heard of anything to substantiate Philip Giraldi, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, through the cha you can nd hundreds Madar’s contention that “the relentless Freddy Gray, Leon Hadar, Peter Hitchens, Philip Jenkins, Christopher Layne, of good books written and self-published violence against civilians was more than Chase Madar, Eric Margolis, James Pinkerton, by conservative writers who could never the activity of a few sociopaths: it was Justin Raimondo, Fred Reed, Stuart Reid, have made it through the liberal gauntlet policy.” And in almost 50 books on the Sheldon Richman, Steve Sailer, John Schwenkler, Jordan Michael Smith, of the traditional publishing world. war, I have found nothing approximat- R.J. Stove, Kelley Vlahos, omas E. Woods Jr. I’m a writer, and I know a lot of con- ing these claims. How could this be? Publisher servative writers. We know. Mr. Dreher My civilian boss in Vietnam the late Jon Basil Utley is right on target. 1960s was an ex-company commander Publishing Consultant JAMIE WILSON from the Korean War. He told me that Ronald E. Burr In a web comment his company had been ordered once Editorial Assistants Gracy Howard to take a particular hill defended heav- Robert Long Getting to a place of inuence in the ily by North Koreans. A er repeated Founding Editors “story-telling” industries requires one bloody attempts fraught with severe Patrick J. Buchanan, Scott McConnell, to spend years waiting tables and going casualties, they nally overran the hill’s Taki eodoracopulos to auditions, waiting for the big break. defenders. But he said that a er being Alternatively, it requires good connec- so frustrated and nally so frenzied, e American Ideas Institute tions in the industry. that when they got to the top they didn’t President Wick Allison Neither of these options is readily stop but continued killing not just any available to the middle-class married- enemy alive or wounded but every- e American Conservative, Vol. 12, No. 5, September/October 2013 (ISSN 1540- relatively-young-with-kids white Chris- thing living including the enemies’ dra 966X). Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. O c. Published tians who form the bulk of the conser- animals, chickens, etc. Altered states of 6 times a year by e American Ideas Institute, 1710 Rhode Island Avenue NW, vative movement in this country. mind, literally. General William Tecum- Suite 1200, Washington, DC 20036-3128. MC seh Sherman’s statement that “war is Periodicals postage paid Washington, DC and additional mailing o ces. Printed in the In a web comment hell” is known by many. But how many USA. POSTMASTER: Send address changes know of the second part of his state- to e American Conservative, P.O. Box 2023, Langhorne, PA 19047-9023. YOU CANNOT REFINE IT ment, “and you cannot re ne it?” War Subscription rates: $59.95 per year (6 issues) In the July/August issue, Chase Ma- is violent force, which is killing or the in the U.S., $69.95 in Canada (U.S. funds), and $79.95 other foreign via airmail. Back issues: dar, a New York attorney (two strikes implied willful intent or potential to kill $12.00 (prepaid) per copy in USA, $13.00 in against already), demonstrates why in service to interests. Canada (U.S. funds). the relatively young and inexperienced Pat Buchanan wrote that the Viet- For subscription orders, payments, and other subscription inquiries— should be reticent about commenting nam War was justi ed if you accepted By phone: 800-579-6148 upon subjects that they are so mani- that the Soviet Union and Interna- outside the U.S./Canada 215-826-8411 festly ignorant (“Vietnam: A War on tional Communism were existential Via Web: www.theamericanconservative.com Civilians”). And it is dishonest for this threats to America and the West. Pros- By mail: P.O. Box 2023, Langhorne, PA 19047-9023 Please allow 6–8 weeks for delivery of your magazine to publish this review of a ecution of the war was concurrent with rst issue. purportedly true account of American the grand-strategic background of the Inquiries and letters to the editor should be sent soldiers in the Vietnam War. Cold War, even if dishonestly devised to [email protected]. For advertising sales call Ronald Burr at 703-893- I was one of the estimated 2.59 mil- and incompetently conducted. 3632. For editorial, call 202-955-3600. lion service members who served “in- RICK JOHNSON is issue went to press on August 28, 2013. country.” I was present there for almost Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho Copyright 2013 e American Conservative.
4 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 { Vol. 12, No. 5, September/October 2013 }
e Balance of Freedom
half-century ago conservatives were as and “economic” conservatives alike. e modern much divided as they are today, philo- world is intrinsically fractured—in one sense going sophically broken into warring tribes back to the advent of Christianity and in many more of virtue-minded traditionalists and ways since the Renaissance, Reformation, and rise of Afreedom-loving libertarians. To bring order to this democracy and capitalism. is is not simply a story chaos, National Review senior editor Frank Meyer of freedom’s steady triumph, a libertarian iteration of proposed not a compromise but a closer look at both Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History.” e need for sides’ principles. Freedom had de ned the Western order, in the state and in the mind, has remained— tradition since Christianity placed the human con- and something always lls it. us the question con- science between heaven’s commands and earthly fronting both traditionalists and libertarians is not power, leaving the individual suspended in a terri- merely how they can get a world closer to their own fying and creative tension. ough Meyer has been principles but how their principles can survive in a called a “libertarian manqué,” he drew from one of world always to some degree hostile. the wisest of traditionalists, Eric Voegelin, in arriv- What must liberty mean for the traditionalist, ing at this vision. and what is libertarian virtue? As abstract as all this Meyer was misunderstood the minute his ink was seemed when Meyer was writing, and may still seem, dry. His principled “fusionism” could make little the implications can readily be felt today—in the headway in a political movement more concerned challenges facing people of good will attempting to with the clash between establishment Republicans reconcile religious liberty with same-sex marriage, in and grassroots insurgents than with philosophical the troubling tendency of Americans to grow more subtleties. And Meyer had already antagonized the tolerant yet more complacent about citizenship and most devout traditionalists, Russell Kirk and Meyer’s civil liberty at the same time, and in the evolution friend and colleague Brent Bozell Jr., who responded of an economic system whose concentrations of to his ideas with polemics. Libertarians meanwhile, power—in Washington or on Wall Street—favor nei- then as now, were reconsidering their association ther freedom nor virtue. with the right: the 1960s New Le at least was anti- Conservatives don’t need philosophical consen- war and against the surveillance state. (One wonders, sus about the answers to these questions. But they in the Obama era, what ever became of that le .) must ask the questions themselves honestly. ese e Republican Party marched on, achieving its problems are not amenable to one-sided solutions: own kind of fusion between populists and party pro- traditionalists must be better libertarians, and lib- fessionals. But Meyer’s philosophy languished, and ertarians must be better traditionalists, even if we before long new controversies—abortion, the drug do not all settle on Meyer’s notion of fusionism. e war, gay rights—reinforced the mutual suspicions alternative is not only philosophical stagnation—an between traditionalists and libertarians. unwillingness to see the mixed and complicating Yet thoughtful men and women of the right (broad- nature of our time—but the decomposition of our ly de ned) need not accept all of Meyer’s conclusions commonwealth into a hunting ground for those to see that he diagnosed an acute problem for “social” who wield power.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 5 Front Lines
How to Keep the Constitution works. Providing things, where neces- sary, is for local governments, religious It requires transparency and checks, not a national-security state institutions, charities, families, and by REP. JUSTIN AMASH friends. Living as subjects of King George A er news broke this summer of the best-intentioned government o cial and ghting a revolutionary war made National Security Agency’s blanket col- cannot sort out what’s right when he our Founders wise beyond their time. lection of Americans’ telephone records, spends most of his time hobnobbing e Founders preserved local control Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.) with one percent of society. for almost everything because it would co-sponsored an amendment with Con- Wherever government power has allow competition among the states, gressman John Conyers (D-Mich.) to proliferated, societies have become because the people would be closer to rein in the program. e amendment fell poorer, crueler, and less productive. their elected o cials and could more just 12 votes short of passage—a historic e extreme examples are found in easily toss them out, and because in rebuke to the surveillance state. Communist states, but we need not the worst case scenario a person could We asked Congressman Amash to tell look that far. Europe is wracked by leave his city or state in search of better us about the philosophy of government economic chaos and civil strife be- government, but could not easily leave that inspires his e orts on behalf of civil cause decades of big government bred his country. liberty and limited government. –ed. dependence, resentment, and division For those who do not agree with this among its peoples. In my own state of system, there is a method to amend the hen I entered Con- Michigan, bankrupt Detroit is a victim Constitution. It is not an easy method gress, I swore an oath of the corruption and failed incentives because the Constitution exists to pre- to support and defend that accompany too much govern- vent power consolidation and restrain the Constitution, and ment. extremism at the federal level. And WI have followed through on that prom- ose who favor more government that, too, is an uncomfortable fact for ise. e political elites of both parties power face an uncomfortable truth: Washington politicians who enjoy the don’t like what I’m doing. ey have a the Constitution is a libertarian docu- privileges of power and consider them- vision of government that is very dif- ment, and we in government are sworn selves judge and jury over what is best ferent from the vision laid out in the to uphold it. Under the Constitution, for all Americans. Constitution. As the elites see it, the the federal government’s sole purpose e Founders also understood that American people are their subjects, is to protect our liberty, not provide the people’s God-given rights are para- and a benevolent privileged few— us things. e government protects mount, and that a dangerous world standing above the law—must watch liberty by defending the nation from does not make those rights less impor- over the rest of society. foreign attack, maintaining open trade tant, but rather more important, be- History and logic show us that no among the states and foreign nations, cause government o cials are always matter how “good” the leaders are, and pursuing a few other limited func- tempted to use dangerous times as a unrestrained government invites cor- tions. justi cation for spying on us and vio- ruption and cronyism. On the whole, is limited role for the federal gov- lating our freedoms. And, indeed, we government power always bene ts the ernment takes courage to embrace. It is see that happening today, even as many wealthy and well-connected at the ex- easier to keep providing things—using of my colleagues and I, backed by mil- pense of others. Some of the reasons other people’s money and incurring lions of patriotic Americans, are ght- are just common sense. It costs a lot of large debts. But that is not what the ing to stop it. money to lobby Washington. Even the Constitution allows, and it is not what In the Internet era, there is more
6 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 hope for freedom than ever before. before casting a vote that ignores the But if ever yet there was an elector- While some in government see the basic principles of the Constitution. ate poised to hear a message like Sar- Internet as a way to monitor the peo- Fortunately, I am not alone in my vis’s, it ought to be Virginia in 2013. ple and illegally sidestep the Fourth eorts to preserve our constitutional Republicans won sweeping victories in Amendment, I use the Internet to keep republic. In both the House and Sen- state races in 2009 and 2010, including government accountable to the people, ate, a new generation of representa- electing McDonnell as governor, yet in as the Constitution demands. tives—some younger, some older— 2012 President Obama carried the state Since entering Congress in 2011, I are taking up the cause of liberty. It is a with 51.15 percent of the vote—just a have used Facebook to explain every cause without partisan labels. It is the point and a half less than he received vote I take on the House oor—more constitutional foundation on which in 2008. Like much of America, Vir- than 2,000—and I have never missed we Americans have built the most free ginia is in the midst of a demographic a vote. It is a small gesture that has had and prosperous nation in history. shi: according to data collected by the amazing consequences, opening up Cooper Center, minorities make up 32 government to greater scrutiny and Justin Amash serves as U.S. Representative for percent of Virginia’s population. Sarvis forcing my colleagues to think twice Michigan’s 3rd congressional district. himself represents this new Virginia: he was born to a Chinese mother and is raising his own interracial family. is changing, purple demographic Libertarian Plays Center is where Sarvis hopes to nd support. “I have the best from either of the par- Virginia’s GOP crackup fuels a third-party bid for governor. ties without the worst of either,” he by MARINA OLSON says. “ at’s why we chose our slogan ‘open-minded and open for business,’ irginia voters have a lot not to “Certainly Virginia’s voters are because we want to focus on both eco- look forward to this Novem- just screaming for someone else,” the nomic and personal freedom. None of ber. e state’s gubernatorial 36-year-old Sarvis says. No recent the other candidates can do that.” Vrace—to replace the term-limited and third-party candidate in Virginia has But are these the ideas disaected scandal-wracked Republican Bob bested independent Russ Potts’s 2.22 Virginians are looking for? McDonnell—features two candidates percent in the 2005 governor’s race. Some of them, perhaps. Larry Sa- who in the minds of many represent But in a close race between McAulie bato, director of the University of the worst traits of each party. Demo- and Cuccinelli, doing only as well as Virginia’s Center for Politics, notes: crats have nominated Terry McAu- Potts could still aect the outcome— “Not the Libertarian Party as such, lie, a Clinton crony and consum- assuming Sarvis draws mate Beltway insider with ties to a votes disproportionately company, GreenTech Automotive, from one of the major- under federal investigation for alleg- party candidates. If ever yet there was an electorate edly receiving special treatment from He downplays that pos- the Obama administration. Atop the sibility, saying his cam- poised to hear a message like Sarvis’s, Republican ticket is Ken Cuccinelli, paign’s research indicates it ought to be Virginia in 2013. currently the Old Dominion’s attor- his support comes from ney general and a gure perceived “people who were going by many—inside his party as well as to stay home because they out—as a rigid social conservative. didn’t like either of the candidates, and but libertarianism has long had appeal (For better or worse, he has proved then the people who would vote for ei- broadly, especially in one wing of the exible on economics, refusing to ther of the other two candidates, about GOP. I suppose, with Rand Paul’s rise, sign an Americans for Tax Reform equally.” is pleases Sarvis “because it that wing may be expanding.” pledge not to raise taxes.) goes to show that you can vote for me Virginia’s GOP has also long been Moderate Republicans, gun-owning without feeling that you are helping one split between centrists like Lt. Gov. rural Democrats, and scally conserva- of the other guys win.” Bill Bolling and conservatives like tive independents face an unappealing His vote will be a test of the libertar- Cuccinelli and Governor McDonnell. choice. But will that make them any ian brand—small as well as big “L”— Bolling chose not to challenge Cuc- more likely to consider the third name and whether it can appeal to anyone cinelli for the party’s gubernatorial on the ballot, Libertarian Robert Sarvis? beyond a tiny sect of true believers. nomination—a ght he would have
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 7 Front Lines lost—but has refused to endorse him. hand, while McAulie, displaying the counted, his eort may symbolize a e acrimony within the GOP, as well lobbyist’s gi, had $6 million. Sarvis’s long-term philosophical trend. As he as between McAulie and Cuccinelli, campaign balance was $2,002. candidly puts it, “the GOP should be has he potential to bene t an outsider. But the cash isn’t the whole sto- terri ed they’ve lost people like me.” “ is has been an exceptionally ry, and while Sarvis can’t expect to negative campaign, and frankly, the break double-digits once the votes are Marina Olson writes from Washington, D.C. two major-party nominees are highly controversial—both of them,” says Sa- bato, who suspects that with Bolling opting not to run as an independent, “Sarvis will get some of those poten- Islam’s Civil War tial Bolling votes.” In fact, Cuccinnelli’s nomination America can win it—by staying out. over Bolling helped prompt Sarvis to by WILLIAM S. LIND enter the race. “It was aer Bill Bolling had said he wasn’t going to run in the ne of the disappointments of Fatamid dynasty in 1171. It thereby … primary; it was clear that it was going the young 21st century is that fanned the embers of the Sunni-Shia to be Cuccinnelli and McAulie, and H.L. Mencken was not around stando into millenarian ame.” that was clearly going to be a Hobson’s Oduring the presidency of George W. Fighting for a sect or a religion is choice for Virginia,” recalls Sarvis. “At Bush. He would have had what sol- one of the most powerful contributors that point that I was like, ‘well we re- diers call a “target-rich environment.” to Fourth Generation war, war waged ally need another candidate,’ and in Mencken would have understood by entities other than states. So pow- the LP some folks were looking for … Bush’s invasion of Iraq as a world-class erful is religious war that it can sweep a candidate.” blunder, one so dumb only a boob states away altogether, as has happened He’s run for o ce before, as a Re- from the deepest, darkest Bible Belt in Syria. Gardner writes, “ e sectar- publican, in a 2011 state senate race could have made it. ian viciousness of the current Sunni- he lost to Democrat Dick Saslaw. One can imagine what Mencken Shia battle knows no boundaries. It is Asked why he changed parties, Sarvis might have written of Bush’s neocon bursting through the arbitrary borders explains that the “GOP was no place advisors: perhaps something on the drawn by the British and French a cen- for a liberty candidate, someone who lines of “A cracker barrel of backwoods tury ago.” actually believes in both personal and Arkansas faith healers, card sharps, and e harsh fact is that extensive economic freedom.” carnival side-show barkers, galvanized Fourth Generation war in the Islamic Sarvis isn’t the only one who feels with the sheen of the garment district, world is inevitable. As descendants of that way. In July, a Pew Research poll clustered about the head of their moon Western colonies, most Islamic states found that 40 percent of Republican calf...” are weak. eir legitimacy was open to and Republican-leaning voters would In Heaven, which may bear a re- question from their founding, in part like to see the party become more semblance to Mencken’s Baltimore, we because their boundaries seldom lie moderate. Sarvis hopes to strike a shall know. along natural divisions in the cultural chord with that group, with his con- It is therefore ironic that Bush’s Iraq geography. Sects, tribes, and ethnic viction that “on personal issues [the debacle may have opened the door to groups overlap. Frequently, representa- GOP is] very closed-minded and re- the possibility of American victory in tives of one tribe or sect—oen a mi- gressive, trying to foist their ideology the Middle East. How has this miracle nority—form the political elite. ey on the rest of us. On economic issues, come about? treat the state as a private hunting they can’t be trusted. ey talk about One of the unanticipated and unin- preserve, stealing such wealth as it has small government and the rule of tended results of the U.S. invasion of while supplying government as incom- law, but then we get tax increases and Iraq in 2003 was to reignite the latent petent as it is corrupt. spending increases, and we get a GOP Sunni-Shiite civil war within Islam. As On top of weak states has been laid a that is beholden every bit as much as David Gardner wrote in the June 15 Fi- demographic bomb, in the form of vast the Democrats to corporate backers.” nancial Times, the invasion “catapulted populations of young men with noth- To judge from his fundraising, the the Shia majority within Islam”—a ma- ing to do and no prospects. So what Libertarian has yet to nd his audi- jority in Iraq—“to power in an Arab will they do? Fight. ence. In late August, the Cuccinelli heartland country for the rst time ey will ght us, they will ght their campaign had $2.7 million cash on since the fall of the heterodox Shia neighbors, they will ght each other in
8 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 supply-side war, war occurring not as Clausewitz’s politics carried on by oth- er means but war driven simply by an over-supply of warriors. If this sounds strange to moderns, it would have been familiar to our tribal ancestors. Finally, we think of jihad as some- thing waged by Islam against non- Muslims, but quite oen it has been between one Islamic sect and another. Now Islamists are once again declaring jihad on each other. In June the New York Times reported on an in uential Sunni cleric who “has issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling on Muslims around the world to help Syrian rebels... and labeling Hezbollah and Iran”—both Shi’ite—“enemies of Islam ‘more in - del than Jews and Christians.’” David Gardner’s Financial Times piece tells of a “conclave of Sunni clerics meeting in Cairo [that] declared a jihad against what it called a ‘declaration of war on Islam’ by the ‘Iranian regime, Hezbollah and its sectarian allies’.” How should the West react to all
this? With quiet rejoicing. Our strate- Hogue Michael gic objective should be to get Islamists to expend their energies on each other rather than on us. An old aphorism says the problem with Balkans is that they produce more history than they Peace for Palestine (and Us) can consume locally. Our goal should be to encourage the Muslim world to Why the U.S. can’t disengage from Mideast diplomacy consume all its history—of which it by SCOTT McCONNELL will be producing a good deal—as lo- cally as possible. ink of it as “farm to hat, if anything, does term, and earned Anwar Sadat and Me- table” war. American diplomacy ac- nachem Begin the 1978 Nobel Peace All we should do, or can do, to obtain complish in the Middle Prize. To persuade Egypt and Israel to this objective is to stay out. We ought WEast? make peace, the United States com- not meddle, no matter how subtly; if Contemplating the Egyptian mess— mitted itself to subsidizing both states we do, inevitably, it will blow up in our where the United States is now dis- to the tune of several billions a year. faces. Just go home, stay home, bolt the trusted, blamed, and largely despised While the core agreement has held doors (especially to refugees who will by every faction, Andrew Bacevich up—those states have not fought a war act out their jihads here), close the win- writes, “In the four decades before with one another since—the anticipat- dows, and nd a good opera on televi- Camp David, the U.S. had managed to ed broader bene ts never materialized. sion—perhaps “ e Abduction From steer clear of war in the Middle East; e accord’s loosely draed provisions the Seraglio.” in the near four decades since, U.S. in- to open a path towards Palestinian volvement in hostilities throughout the self-determination were brushed aside William S. Lind is author of the region has become routine, with little by a Likud government dedicated to Maneuver Warfare Handbook and to show as a result.” expanding Israel into the West Bank. director of the American Conservative Center Camp David was celebrated at the Consequently, Egyptian-Israeli peace for Public Transportation. time, a highlight of Jimmy Carter’s was not a rst step towards a broader
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 9 Front Lines
Arab-Israeli peace, but only a localized For 15 years aer Israel’s birth, U.S. Iraq would be replenished with re- salve. e question of Palestine contin- presidents and diplomats pressed the cruits. And the terrorist threat facing ued to fester. Jewish state on the Palestinian refu- the United States would be ampli ed. irty- ve years later, we are at it gee problem, pushing proposals that is is not the only possible result again, with John Kerry’s recent bid included extensive repatriation of of our “walking away.” But it seems a to sponsor a nal status negotiation displaced Palestinians back into Is- likely one. To admit this is not an ar- between Israel and the Palestinians. rael proper. e policy that eventually gument for the status quo—for Amer- Meanwhile the region slides into cha- supplanted these, aer the 1967 war, ican diplomats to serve as “Israel’s os, riven by con icts that have little or was to try to advance peace by arming lawyers” and for Washington to view nothing to do with Israel or Kerry’s ne- Israel, with the idea that a strong Is- the region through the optic of what is gotiation. It’s fair to ask whether there rael would feel secure enough to make best for Israel. We have already done is anything America can do right in the concessions. e strengthening part that. Middle East, and whether we should succeeded all too well, but instead of On the American political scene, even try. Why should America care peace there has now arisen a genera- there are few strong advocates for a about Palestinian statehood anyway? tion of Israeli leaders who barely pay thorough reassessment of our Mid- Such questions arise inevitably, but lip service to diplomatic engagement east diplomacy. Obama hinted at ma- especially when the perennial realist with their Arab neighbors. With lavish jor changes in his early speeches but American assistance, drew back when it was made clear Israel has transformed that even members of his own party itself from a vulnera- in Congress would applaud Benjamin ble edgling state into Netanyahu over their own president. a regional superpower Under such circumstances, is it even It’s fair to ask whether there is anything with a considerable worth talking about new strategies? America can do right in the Middle East, conventional and nu- Of course it is—politics can be sur- and whether we should even try. clear arsenal. prisingly uid, and establishments What then would be can collapse with surprising speed. the likely outcome of So let us stipulate: American policy American disengage- should be consistent with American ment? A plausible, values. Forty-six years of Israeli rule even likely scenario over a people that has neither self- answer—Mideast oil and our depen- would be the lowering of inhibitions determination nor civil rights outs dence on it—is no longer the trump on the Israeli right. Gone would be the such values. Secondly, the U.S. should that it was before the advent of hy- most powerful restraint on Israel’s de- welcome the input and assistance of draulic fracturing to extract more oil ciding it could resolve the Palestinian other powers, particularly in Europe. in North America. question any way it pleased. Ethnic (It would not hurt to acknowledge Yet the more one thinks, the more cleaning advocates in Israel, already that European anti-Semitism was the clear it is that there is no easy exit. One less marginal than they were 20 years original impetus for Zionism.) And reason is that the United States bears ago, would be invigorated. e liberal then let us think about real alterna- considerable historical responsibil- and humanitarian in uence of the tives. Could an Israel within the 1967 ity for the Israel-Palestine impasse. If American Jewish community would borders, alongside an independent it is politically di cult to stand aside grow faint, as American Jews would Palestine, become part of the Euro- from con icts where America has no no longer be seen as a critical link to pean Union, with trade and immigra- stake or historical connection—as in U.S. aid and support. In short, Israel tion rights? Would not such solution Syria—what of one where America would be in unchained, its worse im- satisfy the Israeli wish to be part of has close emotional ties with one par- pulses empowered. the West? Would it not also transform ticipant, extensive involvement with American interests would be aect- Palestinian life immeasurably for the the other, and has already been en- ed. Few Muslims would hold America better? Such alternatives deserve to be gaged for nearly three generations? blameless for whatever Israel did. An- explored—they are far more promis- When the United States recognized ti-American propaganda, which has ing than either trying to walk away or Israel in 1948, aer supporting the UN considerable resonance in the Mid- continuing in well-worn ruts. partition resolution that gave it a legal east now, would be supercharged. An basis, Washington had no intention al-Qaeda that has already begun to re- Scott McConnell is a founding editor of e of endorsing Palestinian statelessness. cover from defeats in Afghanistan and American Conservative.
10 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 Made in America PATRICK J. BUCHANAN
The Generals Take Egypt
ire, clear the square with and pledged to work with President Egypt’s security forces was done with- gun re or abdicate.” Mohammed Morsi. But Morsi failed out our approval. President Obama did “ at was the message as badly as Hosni Mubarak. So when that by canceling the military exercises one of his generals gave the millions massed in Cairo’s streets to de- with the Egyptian army in Sinai. youngS czar Nicholas I in December of mand Morsi’s overthrow, we signaled Yet Egypt has problems we cannot 1825 as thousands of civilians and sol- our approval for a military coup. solve. It is divided between secularists diers massed in Senate Square to chal- en, when Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and fundamentalists, whose visions are lenge his claim to the throne. Nicholas seized power, imprisoned Morsi, jailed irreconcilable. It is divided between a gave the order, the cannons red, and Brotherhood leaders, and installed a middle class and millions of poor for he and his heirs ruled Russia for anoth- puppet government, we refused to call whom neither Mubarak nor Morsi was er century, until Nicholas II was over- it a coup. Secretary of State John Kerry able to create any measure of prosper- thrown and murdered by Bolsheviks. provided the comic relief by assuring ity. Without constant infusions of aid, Such was the moment Egypt’s army us that the Egyptian army was “restor- Egypt, a country whence the tourists faced with thousands of backers of ing democracy.” and investors alike have ed, cannot the Muslim Brotherhood encamped For two years, America has been loy- create a robust economy until radical- in Cairo, challenging its rule. e al to no one and consistent in nothing. ism and extremism are in the past. slaughter that ensued, 500 dead the us, Egypt’s soldiers decided to do Egypt today cannot sustain itself. rst day and thousands wounded, what they had to do to save their coun- But America’s role as primary foreign means there is no going back. e die try. And if new elections are likely to aid provider is coming to an end. Saudi is cast. e Egyptian army has crossed produce a regime that threatens their Arabia, Qatar, and the Gulf states are the Rubicon. Egypt, they will dump the democratic today sending many times the aid we Egypt’s generals cannot now hold procedures rather than lose Egypt to are sending to Cairo. Let them take elections that a coalition of the Broth- the Brotherhood. the lead. e fate of Arab peoples is far erhood and Sala s might win. Were ey will comply with our wishes more tied up in what happens along that to happen, many of them could to the extent that they do not imperil the Nile than is the fate of America. wind up like the shah’s generals, on what the Egyptian army regards as vi- While we do not know what will trays in the morgue. tal. General Sisi either did not believe succeed in the Middle East, we do So where does Egypt, and where do we would cut o his military aid or was know what has failed. Nation-building we, go from here? e one issue on willing to take that risk when he gave in Afghanistan and Iraq has le us which Egypt’s Muslim militants and the order to re on the protesters. bleeding and near bankrupt. Our ip- Egypt’s militarists seem to agree is that He read the Americans right. What ping and opping in Egypt’s turmoil the Americans cannot be trusted. do we do now? has alienated all sides. Our wars have Two years ago, the United States As our interests dictate maintaining accomplished what? celebrated an Arab Spring that began the peace between Egypt and Israel, Perhaps lowering our pro le and with the overthrow in Tunis and Cairo keeping Egypt as an ally against Is- shutting up would serve us better. is of dictators who had been our loyal al- lamic terrorism, and protecting Chris- part of the world will be decades sort- lies. We then became the champions of tians, we cannot sever ties to the army ing out its future in light of the politi- free elections in Egypt, as we had been that runs the country. In these goals, cal, religious, ethnic and ideological the champions of free elections in Pal- Egypt’s military, no matter the brutal- forces unleashed by the Arab Spring estine, until Hamas swept the board in ity with which it behaved against the and the rise of Islamism. Gaza. Brotherhood, is an ally. A phrase from the America of a cen- When half of Egypt voted for the But if we were to retain any credibil- tury ago, when Mexico was in turmoil, Brotherhood and a fourth for the more ity as the champion of peaceful protest, comes to mind. Why not a period of militant Sala s, we accepted the results we had to signal that what was done by watchful waiting?
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 11 Cover
Does Faith = Hate? Gay marriage and religious liberty are uneasy bedfellows.
by ROD DREHER
his summer’s Windsor decision from the in this ght. Supreme Court overturned the Defense of “Everybody knows that [church] sanctuaries are Marriage Act, but it did not declare a con- going to be out of the reach of same-sex marriage stitutional right to gay marriage. Yet even laws,” she says. “ e whole ght is over religiously af- TMaggie Gallagher, the country’s most tireless and liated organizations and individuals who are in gov- high-pro le opponent of same-sex marriage, now be- ernment employment or out in commerce.” lieves such an outcome is a foregone conclusion. Religious schools and charities could su er penal- “It’s clear that the courts are going to shut down the ties such as the loss of government funding or state marriage debate and impose gay marriage uniformly,” credentials necessary to operate. ey could also have she says. “ ere is not yet a uni ed sense of where we their tax-exempt status taken from them. go from here, except for this: there is an accelerating e latter actually happened to a group of New awareness that the consequence of marriage equal- Jersey Methodists in the 2007 Ocean Grove case. ity is going to be extremely negative for traditionalist at state court decision held that the New Jersey Christians.” government was permitted to withdraw a special Interviews with legal scholars, activists, and other tax exemption, tied to public access, from a church- social and religious conservatives involved in the ght owned pavilion that declined to host two gay com- against same-sex marriage con rm this grim outlook. mitment ceremonies. What happened next, says Wil- In the courts, and in the court of public opinion, the son, set an ominous precedent. momentum towards same-sex marriage has been “ e local taxing authority then removed the local clear. A consensus is emerging on the right that the exemption for ad valorem taxes for the pavilion, and most important goal at this stage is not to stop gay then billed them for back taxes,” she says. “ at tax marriage entirely but to secure as much liberty as pos- bene t is one of the most substantial bene ts religious sible for dissenting religious and social conservatives groups receive from the government. Although the while there is still time. group had elected a local tax status tied to public To do so requires waking conservatives up to what access, if state and local governments use this as a may happen to them and their religious institutions if guide for how to deal with religious organizations that current trends continue—and Catholic bishops, say, don’t accept same-sex marriage, that could be a big come to be regarded as latter-day Bull Connors. d e a l .” Will religious conservatives be seen as no better Individual religious believers also stand to lose than racist bullies in the emerging settlement? Despite their jobs or have their businesses take to court. what you haven’t heard—the news media’s silence on Christian orists, photographers, and bakers have religious liberty threats from same-sex marriage is already been sued or punished under nondiscrimi- deafening—this is not slippery-slope alarmism. e nation law for refusing to provide wedding or com- threat is real. mitment-ceremony services to gay couples. State Robin Fretwell Wilson is a University of Illinois courts in New Mexico have upheld a $6,000 ne lev- law professor and religious liberty expert. ough she ied against a wedding photographer who declined to takes no position on same-sex marriage, Wilson ar- gues that religious freedom is enormously important Rod Dreher blogs at www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher.
12 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 Michael Hogue Michael
shoot a lesbian commitment ceremony. Civil litiga- of marriage rights and that no one who opposes it will tion underway in Colorado pits a gay couple against su er undue hardship. two Christian pastry chefs who refused to bake a cake But if gay activists understate the threat same-sex to celebrate a wedding the pair held in Massachusetts. marriage poses to religious freedom, chicken-little In these cases, state nondiscrimination laws did not traditionalists sometimes overstate their vulnerability. carve out religious liberty exceptions. ough many Wilson points out that the courts have expressed observers focus only on Supreme Court rulings, Wil- support for what they deem reasonable accommoda- son says instances like these highlight the importance tion of religious belief, even when that belief clashes of marriage battles in state legislatures. with civil rights claims. “When same-sex marriage gets dropped out of the “ e idea that this is all of a sudden some newfan- sky, it doesn’t drop onto a blank slate, but into the ex- gled thing where we’re having to think through for the isting substrate of state anti-discrimination laws,” she very rst time how religious organizations are having explains. to deal with civil rights norms is just not true,” says is belies the claim by marriage-equality activists Wilson. that same-sex marriage is merely a simple expansion Wilson and others engaged in this debate have
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 13 Cover
suggested detailed legislative remedies attempting to could get away with going further—for now. balance gay rights and religious liberty for the com- at’s why some leading traditional-marriage ac- mon good. She concedes, however, that the 1960s civil tivists insist that the movement must continue to rights template is of limited use in thinking through press arguments on the marriage question itself, even religious liberty vis-à-vis homosexual rights. ose as religious liberty takes center stage in their political laws were written in a time in which no one could and policy strategizing. have imagined them being used to question the gen- e Heritage Foundation’s Ryan T. Anderson is one der structure of marriage. of the top theoreticians of the traditional-marriage Until now, the debate has focused on the question, movement. Anderson has become a high-pro le ad- “What is marriage?” But henceforth it is coalescing vocate of applying natural law thinking to the mar- around the question, “What is homosexuality?” Or, to riage debate. His view, in short, is that traditional be more speci c: is homosexuality the same thing as marriage recognizes anthropological truths about human nature and therefore is critical to building stable societies in which to rear children. Accepting same-sex marriage, Love brings all there is into existence, it is through he says, requires a philosophical shi love that all there is continues in existence, that erodes the solid ground on which traditional marriage stands. and it is for love that all things exist. “ e other side’s lead talking point is that opposing gay marriage is the same as racial bigotry,” he says. “If this goes unresponded to, it will be no surprise if race? e future of religious freedom depends on how a majority of Americans eventually decide that they’re the courts, and the country, answer that question. right. We’re not there yet, but if that happens, the re- To gay marriage supporters, homosexuality is, like ligious liberty protections we are able to lock in now race, a morally neutral condition. Opponents dis- will be very fragile.” agree, believing that because homosexuality, like het- Both Congress and the Supreme Court are sensitive erosexuality, has to do with behavior, it cannot be sep- to political reality. Anderson says the court’s refusal to arated from moral reection. As Gallagher put it in a constitutionalize gay marriage in its two rulings this 2010 paper in Northwestern University’s law journal, term indicates that the justices are not willing to get “Skin color does not give rise to a morality.” out too far ahead of the country on this issue. e problem for traditionalists is that the sexual “Justice Scalia’s dissent said it’s just a matter of time revolution taught Americans to think of sexual desire until the other shoe drops,” Anderson says. “If it looks as fundamental to one’s identity. If this is true, then like the pro-marriage people have given up, the Su- aside from extreme exceptions (e.g., pedophilia), stig- preme Court will be more likely to move quickly in matizing desire, like stigmatizing race, denies a per- usurping authority from citizens and rede ning mar- son’s full humanity. To do so would be an act of blind riage for the entire country. If Congress thinks we’ve animosity. surrendered, they will conclude that there’s no point ough she appealed in that same law journal in extending religious liberty to bigots.” paper to the magnanimity of gay rights supporters, In Washington, a prominent religious conserva- Gallagher acknowledged that their con dence that tive lobbyist sees Democrats increasingly energized homosexuality is no di erent from race would make around advancing gay rights, and Republicans “scared compromise morally indecent. Americans, she wrote, of the entire issue.” “do not dra legislative accommodations for irratio- “ ey’ll talk about these things behind closed nal hatred.” doors and wonder where they are leading, but it’s only is is largely why the Supreme Court majority a small group that’s prepared to do anything about it struck down DOMA: the 5-4 majority saw it as moti- right now,” says Russell Moore, the new head of the vated only by an unconstitutional desire to stigmatize Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious and injure homosexuals. ough Chief Justice John Liberty Commission. Roberts’s dissent highlighted the majority’s explicit Moore, a 42-year-old pastor and theologian, has endorsement of the right of states to de ne marriage, drawn favorable notice for taking a nuanced approach Justice Antonin Scalia warned that this was only be- to culture-war issues. He sees his task as not only com- cause his anti-DOMA colleagues didn’t think they municating grassroots Evangelical concerns to political
14 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 elites but also helping grassroots Evangelicals under- they disagree.” stand how radically circumstances have changed. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “ e problem is that Evangelicals have taken a chairman and gay-rights advocate Chai Feldblum God-and-country, Moral Majority stance for so long, agrees with George. e former Georgetown law one that assumes the rest of the culture shares our val- professor has written sympathetically about religious ues, and that it’s only small groups of elites out there concerns, but he concludes that the clash between who are out of step,” Moore says. gay rights and religious liberty is a “zero-sum” a air. “I tell them you have to understand the mindset People who don’t see that are fooling themselves, she of the other side,” he continues. “ ey see this as the contends. equivalent of the civil rights movement. If the Chris- So, with the front in the gay-marriage culture war tian de nition of marriage becomes the equivalent of shiing to religious liberty, where do traditionalists KKK ideology, then religious liberty will be very hard stand? to defend.” George writes that they have to win this battle en- is is why both the Windsor ruling and the 2003 tirely or be crushed everywhere, as segregationists Lawrence v. Texas ruling that overturned anti-sodomy were, and for the same reason: their views will be laws portend so much ill for marriage traditionalists. deemed too abhorrent to be tolerated. On this view, Twice in the last decade, the Supreme Court found preserving religious liberty cannot be separated from that laws restricting gay rights were based entirely on preserving traditional marriage. animus and served no rational purpose. If the justices Wilson, a religious-liberty scholar, believes that apply this reasoning to the core of marriage law, reli- there is room for compromise at the state level to pro- gious conservatives may well nd little asylum outside tect religious liberty, and there are good prudential the walls of their churches. reasons for both sides to do so—but time is running Hence the urgency of marriage activists on religious out for the faithful to make deals in state legislatures. liberty. ough same-sex marriage is almost certainly Anderson, the think-tank philosopher, contends the wave of the future, the country isn’t there yet. In that the battle over the meaning of marriage is in- states where marriage equality is still under contention, creasingly dicult but can be won. In any case, he traditionalists could take advantage of this divide to negotiate a settlement that both sides can live with—one that protects both religious institutions and religious individuals. Time is on the Because American Christianity has gay-rights side, but its more pragmatic been privatized, it is also highly secularized. leaders may be persuaded that achiev- ing basic marriage equality now is worth granting substantial protections to religious dissenters. is is hard to do in a culture where religious con- says, it must be waged to prevent an eventual rout for servatives are increasingly demonized for their beliefs religious liberty. about homosexuality. And not just religious conserva- And Gallagher, the activist, no longer believes win- tives. In August, Dartmouth withdrew its job o er to ning—that is, stopping gay marriage—is possible but African Anglican bishop hired to run a campus spiri- insists, like Anderson, that conservatives cannot af- tuality and ethics center because of his past opposi- ford to surrender and accept their opponents’ judg- tion to gay rights. ough Bishop James Tengatenga, a ment of them as bigots and haters. widely respected and e ective advocate for peace and “Refusing despair is a powerful political weapon. If reconciliation in his native Malawi, had since evolved we don’t keep ghting, we are not going to be tolerat- into a gay-supporting liberal Anglican, the fact that he ed,” says Gallagher. In Windsor’s wake, she is working hadn’t always been one cost him his job. to build legal and political institutions to help tradi- Granted, a New Hampshire liberal arts college is tionalists endure coming hardships. not America. But stories like this help vindicate the “ e question we have to face is this: did the Su- hardline view of Princeton’s Robert George that there preme Court give us Roe v. Wade, or Brown v. Board?” is “no chance of persuading [gay-marriage propo- she says. “If it’s Roe, we lose, but our views of marriage nents] that they should respect, or permit the law to will still be respectable. But if we let it be Brown, we’re respect, the conscience rights of those with whom in big trouble.”
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 15 Policy
How to Tax Carbon Conservatives can ght climate change without growing government.
by ANDREW MOYLAN
ather than acknowledge climate change as of the Clean Air Act. at law, a creature of the 1970s a major public-policy issue and dra a seri- regulatory state, was designed to regulate—within cir- ous proposal to deal with it—to counter the cumscribed geographical areas—gases such as ben- le ’s plan to expand dramatically the size, zene or oxides of nitrogen that pose immediate risks Rscope, and cost of the federal government—the right to human health in high concentrations. has too long pursued a course of obstructionism that Carbon dioxide emissions, by contrast, are global amounts to little more than political theatre. in nature. A ton of CO2 emitted in Peoria or Pyong- If this sounds familiar, it’s because similar circum- yang has basically the same impact on the environ- stances allowed Democrats to pass Obamacare a er ment and will remain in the atmosphere for decades. decades of agitating for universal healthcare. Liberals Carbon dioxide also happens to be necessary for plant spent years building a policy infrastructure to advo- life and does not by itself pose immediate negative cate for greater government involvement in health- consequences for human health. care, while according to Reason’s Peter Suderman, Nonetheless, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 deci- sion in Massachusetts v. EPA found the agency has au- Republicans, on the other hand, all but ignored thority to regulate greenhouse gases if they are found health policy for all those years. Yes, there were to endanger public health. In the a ermath of this think tank wonks and a handful of adminis- ruling, the EPA issued an “endangerment nding” tration sta ers who were deep in the weeds of that asserted the agency’s regulatory authority under health policy, but the party and its allies didn’t the Clean Air Act. Although there are good reasons invest in developing ideas or consensus. Your to question the court’s decision, it is now settled law. average Republican legislator didn’t have a great Subsequent e orts to reverse the nding through liti- grasp of the issue, and would have struggled to gation have failed, and a landmark U.S. Senate vote to tell you what the party was actually for when it strip the EPA’s authority in 2010 attracted only 53 of came to health care. the 60 needed votes. In a speech at Georgetown University in June, So it is today with climate change. Despite the con- President Obama outlined the EPA’s complex and ex- sensus of 97 percent of scientists that the planet is pensive scheme to regulate greenhouse gas emissions warming and that human activity is a signi cant part from existing power plants, a plan likely to cause se- of the cause, a March 2013 Pew Research Center poll rious disruption to electricity generation and to the found that just 44 percent of Republicans believe in economy as a whole. Earlier executive action had climate change at all. To the extent that establishment already applied stricter standards for building new conservatives talk about climate change, it’s to ques- electricity-generation facilities, making it e ectively tion its scienti c validity or complain about the le ’s impossible to build coal- red power plants. But ap- policy response. plying the heavy hand of the EPA to existing facilities is is a mistake. No amount of hand-waving can is poised to be the game changer. change the science of climate change, mitigate its like- e best estimates about what such a regulatory ly consequences for the environment, or wipe away scheme will cost are staggering. A study from the Na- the legal authority that the federal government al- tional Association of Manufacturers estimated that six ready has to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Even if Congress does nothing, the Environmental Andrew Moylan is senior fellow and outreach director for the R Protection Agency can regulate carbon dioxide emis- Street Institute, a think tank that advocates free markets; limited, sions through the spectacularly ill- tting mechanisms e ective government; and responsible environmental stewardship.
16 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 97% of scientists agree that the planet is warming and that human activity is a greenhouse gas regulations alone will weigh the econ- significant part of the cause. omy down by a minimum of $142 billion per year and potentially, when other costs are included, as much as $630 billion per year—nearly 4 percent of U.S. GDP in Partisan divide in views 2012. at’s roughly equivalent to half of all corporate about global warming income-tax revenues, imposed in a highly uneven and Solid evidence the earth is warming? opaque manner. Even worse, costly carbon regulation will be layered on top of all the other burdens borne by 87% Republicans businesses and individuals with no o sets whatsoever. Democtrats While conservatives continue to ght a losing 57% battle on the science of climate change, the EPA is moving forward with regulation. As with healthcare 44% reform, unless there’s a miraculous Republican revo- 19% 22% 23% lution delivering 60 Senate votes and a Republican president in 2016, carbon-reduction e orts almost certainly are here to stay. e question that con- Yes servatives must now grapple with is whether we’ll Mostly ... Human ... Natural achieve those emissions reductions through onerous because of … activity patterns regulation with no attention paid to cost, as the le desires, or through an approach based on limited Source: Pew Research Center government and open markets. e best policy to address greenhouse gas emis- the so-called “fee and dividend” model pushed by sions, while adhering to conservative principles, is a some climate advocates and members of Congress carbon tax combined with tax and regulatory reform. would levy a fee on carbon dioxide emissions that Merely uttering the phrase “carbon tax” strikes fear then would be returned to citizens through some sort into the heart of many on the right. is is under- of at dividend payment. Such a scheme easily could standable, to the extent that what conservatives actu- prove vulnerable$20 per ton carbon tax could to abuse: one can imagine dividends ally fear is a plan that would layer energy taxes on top would reduce deficit by $1.2 trillionbe suspended in years of high de cits or that of the overly burdensome tax and regulatory regime the programIn most cases, 25% of indirect tax revenue would morph into a slush fund that ows we already have. to progressives’must be retained for revenue neutrality. In a pet projects. But one need not engage in climate alarmism or Insteadstudy by MIT, here’s the fraction of carbon of empowering government to generate a capitulate to big government to make a case for a rev- pot of moneyrevenue that would be withheld to offset and relying on the bene cence of elected enue-neutral carbon tax. In fact, President Obama’s ocialsrevenue losses from conventional taxes. to return it to the people, reform must devote recent speech helps illustrate why the right needs to every dime40% of carbon-tax revenue to reducing other consider one more seriously. tax rates or abolishing other taxes altogether. Turning A conservative carbon tax has three key compo- on one revenue stream while turning o others is how 35% nents: revenue neutrality, elimination of existing we prevent growth in government. taxes, and regulatory reform. When combined, these Which brings us to the second component of a policies would yield a smaller, less powerful govern- conservative30% carbon tax: outright elimination of some ment; a tax code more conducive to investment and of the most damaging and anti-growth levies on the growth; and the emissions reductions the law says we books.25% Forrevenue neutrality example, a Massachusetts Institute of must achieve. Technology analysis estimates that a $20 per ton tax e rst and arguably most important component is on carbon dioxide emissions could generate roughly 20% absolute, bona de revenue neutrality. e federal gov- $1.5 trillion in revenue over ten years. at’s enough ernment is already too large and expensive. Conserva- to allow for 2015the complete elimination2035 of several2050 levies tives routinely oppose e orts by the le to raise revenue that conservativesSource: Massachusetts Institute of Technology rightly regard as structurally de - in order to shore up lavish spending and broken entitle- cient or duplicative: capital gains and dividends taxes,
ment programs. A carbon tax should no more be used the deathPAGE 7&8 of this report tax and tari s. to fund bigger government than any other tax. Every If thehttp://globalchange.mit.edu/files/document/MITJPSPGC_Rpt228.pdf average economist sat down to dra an ide- single dollar raised by a carbon tax must be devoted to al tax code from scratch, it’s unlikely that any of the tax reductions elsewhere in the code. aforementioned levies would exist. Capital gains and ere are alternative carbon-tax proposals that dividends already are taxed at the corporate level, and make bogus claims of revenue neutrality. For example, taxing them again when received by individuals is
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 17 the problem, since the United States accounts for just 16 percent of global emissions, compared to China’s 29 percent. Indeed, the most important thing the U.S. could do to address a changing climate is to ensure that it is wealthy and prosperous, to better a ord nec- essary adaptation and mitigation e orts. But adopting a revenue-neutral carbon tax with regulatory preemption will do two very important things. e rst is to provide a counter to liberal big-government policies that are already underway: conservatives currently are utterly absent from an important policy debate that will advance without their input. e second is to establish a tax code that
Miguel Davilla Miguel is more pro-growth. Eliminating onerous EPA regula- tions and swapping out taxes on positive things like investment in favor of taxes on energy use would duplicative. Similarly, the death tax places a new levy lighten the load placed on businesses and individuals on assets on which taxes already were paid. And tar- by the federal government, giving the U.S. a larger and i s, though they now produce a relatively small share more vibrant economy to help absorb future climate of federal revenue, erect substantial barriers to inter- impacts. national trade. e good news is that this debate isn’t entirely e consensus of conservative economic thought theoretical. ere are various forms of carbon taxes today is that governments should reform taxation already in e ect around the world. Perhaps the ex- to focus on consumption rather than income or in- ample most comparable to the policy described here vestment. In other words, governments should target is in the Canadian province of British Columbia. taxation on “bads” like pollution rather than on good at province has had a tax on carbon emissions things like labor, wages, and pro ts in order to raise since 2007, a levy now set at 30 Canadian dollars per revenue with as light a touch on economic growth metric ton, with the revenue devoted to reducing as possible. is is why such prominent conservative other taxes. economists as Kevin Hassett, Glenn Hubbard, Greg Early returns on the policy are quite positive. A Mankiw, and Art La er have expressed support for a recent study found that the province’s gross domes- carbon tax swap. ( e way this philosophy has mani- tic product growth has outpaced the rest of Canada, fested itself on the state level is in ongoing e orts, while its corporate income tax rate has been reduced primarily driven by Republicans in places like North to among the lowest anywhere in the G8 countries. Carolina, to reduce or eliminate income taxation in Despite concerns that it might grow government, favor of expanded sales taxes.) the tax has stayed revenue neutral and enjoys broad e nal component of a conservative carbon tax public support. Polling of business and community plan is wholesale reform of regulations that are in- leaders by the Pembina Institute found 64 percent tended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Because believe the tax has been a positive move. of its cost and complexity, a carbon tax should not Reducing carbon emissions doesn’t need to entail be layered atop an existing regime to regulate carbon bigger government and a damaged economy. A con- emissions. Instead, we should preempt the EPA’s abil- servative carbon tax could achieve the same goals ity to regulate emissions from power plants while also President Obama seeks to achieve without expanding considering elimination of policies like Corporate federal power or contracting economic opportunity. Average Fuel Economy standards for automobiles. A price signal operating in a free and open market In short, the carbon tax should supplant entirely the would encourage people to transition to less carbon- myriad regulations that exist to reduce emissions. Af- intensive energy sources, while a clean tax swap and ter all, if the tax on carbon is priced properly so that streamlined regulatory regime would ensure that gov- it “internalizes the externality” posed by emitting a ernment doesn’t grow larger and more powerful. ton of the gas, there is no need for other policies to Conservatives should seize the opportunity to em- achieve reductions. phasize the superiority of free markets over central A carbon tax will not solve climate change in and planning. A revenue-neutral carbon tax with regula- of itself. In fact, it can do little more than put a dent in tory reform would do exactly that.
18 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 ANYTIME. ANYWHERE.
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Main Street Libertarians Meet the free-market populists ghting Obama’s crony capitalism.
by W. JAMES ANTLE III
ust as Upton Sinclair a icted the comfortable But libertarian populism is controversial even and brought about policy reform a century ago, on the right. New York Times conservative colum- a small group of conservative journalists seek nist Ross Douthat has gently pushed back against Jto do much the same thing through libertar- its “broader economic agenda” as “politically unten- ian means roday. Among them is Tim Carney, once able and mistaken on the merits.” On the le , Brian understudy to veteran Washington journalist Rob- Beutler of Salon has less tenuously described it as “a ert Novak, who compared his protege to Sinclair nebulous, nearly oxymoronic term” and a “swindle.” and praised as him as the “best political reporter A problem for libertarian populists is that their among the outstanding young men and women who ideas run counter to deeply ingrained political prej- worked for me starting with the redoubtable John udices across the political spectrum. In addition to Fund in 1981.” that, there is the reality of coalition politics: the Re- Since an editor rst urged him to dig into the publicans remain to a great degree the party of the obscure topic of the Export-Import Bank, Carney well-heeled and big business. Even insofar as this has developed a beat writing about the incestuous has become less true of elements of the party—its relationship between big government and big busi- grassroots, for example—the stereotype remains an ness, o en assumed to be adversaries. Challenging accurate picture of its donor and consultant classes. this assumption jumbles all sorts of political catego- First let’s address the prejudices. Calvin Coolidge, ries. who has reemerged as a beloved gure on the right Today Carney, a Washington Examiner colum- in recent years, once told the American Society of nist and American Enterprise Institute fellow, seeks Newspaper Editors, “ e chief business of America to jumble these categories more comprehensively. is business.” And while they may not have liked the Along with Ben Domenech of the Transom and the auto bailout, many Republicans instinctively sympa- Heartland Institute, Peter Suderman of Reason, and thize with the statement misattributed to Eisenhower his Examiner colleague Conn Carroll he has been Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson: “What’s hashing out a grab-bag ideas under the label “liber- good for General Motors is good for the country.” tarian populism.” (Wilson actually said, when asked if his GM ties Libertarian populism takes the idea of K Street and would corrupt his judgment as a public ocial, “for Wall Street collusion a step further, arguing that in- years I thought what was good for our country was stead of achieving fairness for the masses much gov- good for General Motors and vice versa.” Yet he was ernment intervention rigs the game in favor of the more of a forerunner to “too big to fail” than liber- rich, powerful, and politically connected. One might tarian populism: “Our company is too big. It goes say it is a “new fusionism” of sorts—in the vein of conservative theorist Frank Meyer’s symbiosis of lib- W. James Antle III is editor of the Daily Caller News ertarianism and traditionalism—proposing that lib- Foundation and author of Devouring Freedom: Can ertarian means can be used to realize populist ends. Big Government Ever Be Stopped?
20 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 with the welfare of the country,” he also said.) per-rich but who has nevertheless presided over vast Many liberals, by contrast, have come to see what taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street and the big automo- they regard as excessive money in politics, a corpo- bile companies. Obama’s stimulus package doled out rate media, and Supreme Court decisions like Citi- money to big businesses while his green energy gam- zens United as the chief impediments to American bits have seeded enterprises—sometimes incredibly democracy. shaky ones like Solyndra—that ended up enriching Even more than “self-deport” and “binders full individual investors. of women,” no phrase uttered during the 2012 cam- Big pharmaceutical companies spent almost as paign was more perfectly Mitt Romney than his re- liberally promoting the Aordable Care Act as did tort to hecklers in Iowa, “Corporations are people, the big labor unions. Obama raised more money my friend… Of course they are!” from Goldman Sachs than did any of his Republi- But there have also been some developments fa- can rivals. In 2008, he raised more money from the vorable to libertarian populism. First is that conser- securities and investment industry—a healthy $14.8 vative Republicans have become more libertarian, as they usually do when they are out of power in the executive branch. In addition to sharpening their critique of big government, spending, and debt— A problem for libertarian populists formerly dulled by the proigate is that their ideas run counter compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush—a signi cant to deeply ingrained political prejudices faction of the right has regained across the political spectrum. its civil libertarian impulses, as well as Robert Ta ’s skepticism of foreign adventurism. e tax-and-spending revolt of the Tea Party has created some- thing approaching a social base for libertarian popu- million—than any candidate in history. He received lists, a movement that seems to be a kind of fusion twice as much money from hedge funds as his Re- between the anti-statist rebellion fantasies of Atlas publican opponent that year, John McCain. Shrugged and the Middle American radicals behind Sometimes Obama’s defenders mock right-wing Pat Buchanan’s Republican presidential campaigns complaints that the president is a socialist by point- in the 1990s. More recently, libertarian populist sen- ing to record Wall Street pro ts. But this hasn’t es- timents powered both of Ron Paul’s White House caped the notice of some conservatives—and many bids. progressives. And it has had an impact on how they In fact, libertarian populism can be seen as a con- view the nexus between government and business. nection between the concerns of the Paul movement Yet in a sense this is nothing new. Many tradition- and the observations of public-choice theory in alist conservatives have an aversion to bigness across economics. Rational businesses co-opt government the board, whether in business or government, while power out of simple economic self-interest, sowing the late National Review senior editor James Burn- the discontent and sense of disenfranchisement felt ham famously critiqued managerial elite in business by the Paulites and Tea Partiers while engaging in and government alike. the rent-seeking libertarian populists hope to coun- “Conservatives must get over their infatuation ter. with big business,” wrote the columnist Don Feder, Meanwhile, the Obama administration has itself author of such tomes as Who’s Afraid of the Religious been a strange new fusion between corporatism and Right?, back in 1998. “In many instances, corpora- liberalism. is was the topic of Carney’s second tions are our worst enemies.” Feder cited data from book, Obamanomics: How Barack Obama is Bank- the Capital Research Center showing that even 20 rupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, years ago, Fortune 500 companies donated $4.07 to Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses. liberal groups for every $1 they gave to conservative us we have a liberal president who o en claims organizations. to be ghting untrammeled corporations and the su- But today’s libertarian populists aren’t just irritated
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 21 Politics
about corporate grants for advocates of abortion and Critics of libertarian populism argue this isn’t a gun control. ey agree with liberals and centrists comprehensive agenda, and it is imperfect politi- who see money as a corrupting inuence in govern- cally. Some proponents concede this as well: Carney ment: they see a revolving door between Capitol Hill observes of his platform in Obamanomics, “Some of and K Street, as lobbyists and lawmakers write bills the planks may be overly ambitious (constitutional to fatten their own wallets. amendments) and some may be too obscure to gen- ose liberals and centrists, however, believe that erate any political wind (abolishing the Export-Im- some combination of rules and regulations can x port Bank).” these problems. Libertarian populists believe the ere is also the problem of recruiting actual game is rigged against the little guy in a more fun- politicians to support something like this platform. damental way: government is self-interested and Rand Paul probably comes the closest, though his self-dealing. What the backers of McCain-Feingold at tax looks more like Steve Forbes’s 1996 plan than a new populism. Jon Huntsman pro- posed breaking up the banks during his ill-fated 2012 GOP presidential cam- paign. Even Mitt Romney tried a bit of free-market populism by campaigning The Obama administration has itself against Solyndra and regularly repeat- been a strange new fusion between ing the line “You didn’t build that” to small business owners, though he had corporatism and liberalism. little credibility as a messenger on this subject. Business Insider’s Josh Barro writes, “Libertarian populism aims to x a mes- saging problem that doesn’t exit,” noting that the American public doesn’t seem and critics of Citizens United see as a bug, libertarian overly concerned with “bigness.” But that seems like populists believe is a design feature of big govern- a misreading when the Obama administration has ment and corporatism. prospered in part by saying that its healthcare poli- Bigger companies use regulations to stie their cies protect ordinary people from huge predatory smaller competitors, exploiting public interests like insurers; its environmental policies target big busi- health, welfare, and environmental protection for nesses that pollute for pro t; and it’s protecting Main private gain. Government subsidies don’t just go to Street from Wall Street. poor people; they ow to General Electric, General In fact, the vili ed businesses and industries in Motors, and Goldman Sachs. almost every case played a role in designing and Insights and impulses aren’t enough to sustain a promoting these policies. Obamacare mandates and political movement, even one so small as this em- subsidizes the purchase of the health insurance com- bryonic libertarian populism. ere needs to be a panies’ and Big Pharma’s products. Even where some concrete policy agenda. Here it is in broad sketches: energy producers might be hurt by cap and trade, Undo the taxpayer bailouts of private industry. Break other entities will pro t. And Wall Street has done up the big banks as a rst step toward repealing too notably better than Main Street under Obama. big to fail. Reintroduce actual market competition Turning the president’s populist appeals against into regulated and subsidized industries. Kill cor- him would have tremendous political bene ts, even porate welfare and get rid of government-sponsored if conservatives would still have to provide solutions entities ranging from the Export-Import Bank to the to healthcare access, job creation, wage growth, and Federal Reserve. other top public concerns. Expose where government is actually bene ting “Every time government gets bigger,” Carney big business and the politically connected. Increase writes, “somebody’s getting rich.” at observation transparency. And then speci cally target the poli- may not be sucient for a winning libertarian popu- cies promoting the giveaways. Reform and clean up lism. But it is a good starting point for changing the the tax code. At the local level, curb abuses of emi- terms of a debate that is o en stacked against pro- nent domain and battle regulations of start-up busi- ponents of limited government in favor of the fattest nesses like food trucks. cats of all.
22 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 Ideas
Freedom or Virtue? Pure traditionalism and absolute liberty alike fail the Constitution.
by DONALD DEVINE
hile one may grant religion and tradi- and troublesome tendencies—was set deep within tion credit for providing much of the the Western tradition. e Founders saw di erences, energy necessary for a vibrant social divisions, factions, and even conict as innate to the life, it is also clear that both can gener- tensions of social life, arising naturally even from mi- Wate such passion as to endanger social order. Rousseau nor disagreements. Concern about conict under- was correct to this extent: freeing the individual from lay the whole constitutional structure the American the cosmological consensus—from the ancient unity Founders created. ey sought to form governmental of church, state, and culture—has made nations di - institutions that would balance ambition against am- cult to rule. Failure to accept the resulting tension has bition, interest and against, region against region, reli- caused a great deal of mischief and bloodshed over gion against religion, power against power. the centuries. Adoption of the Constitution did not change the James Madison argued that there are only three pos- historical fact that most peoples and cultures want sible solutions to the clash of interests. e rst is to agreement, with someone in charge. e desire to give government the power to suppress the divisions, have someone in charge is overwhelming to the more “destroying the liberty that is essential” to allowing progressive-minded, who have no tradition that people to disagree. He argued that this is equivalent to would tolerate such ambiguity. Given world history, destroying air to eliminate the danger of re. Freedom why would anyone agree to a Constitution that sepa- causes disorder, but it is as essential to energetic social rates power and leaves no one in charge? life as air is to natural life. e inability to comprehend the idea of unity in di- e second solution is to demand that all citizens versity of power makes it impossible for progressives have the same opinions—that all agree. is is the to see the world as the Founders did. At the heart of historical cosmological solution, the one advocated Western tradition is paradox, tension, ambiguity, sub- by Rousseau and the progressives. Madison dismissed tlety, balance. ere is a single Constitution but sepa- this idea as “impractical” as long as people have di er- rate legislative, executive, and judicial branches; a na- ent property, interests, and opinions and are allowed tional but also separate state and local governments; the freedom to express them. a single society but also churches and synagogues of e only solution to faction compatible with liberty many denominations and an in nite variety of private is “controlling its e ects” through the “proper struc- and public social entities that can be accommodated ture” of a government in a constitution. Madison wrote: only by a vast social market allowing separate free choices. Once the subtlety of that synthesis cannot be If men were angels, no government would be comprehended, the Constitution as the Founders un- necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither derstood it cannot stand. internal nor external controls on government Progressivism was by no means alone in its desire to would be necessary. In framing a government suppress the tension. As political theorist Frank Mey- which is to be administered by men over men the er argued, the desire to assert control can come from great di culty lies in this: you must rst allow traditionalists or utopians of many stripes. Tradition- the government to control the governed; and in alists may try to recreate a virtuous order supervised the next place oblige it to control itself. Donald Devine is senior scholar at the Fund for American is view of human nature—as not unequivo- Studies and was Ronald Reagan’s director of the U.S. O ce of cally bad or good but as a balance between angelic Personnel Management during his rst term.
26 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 by a reconstituted cosmological state. Or there can be own desired ends. is was well illustrated in a 2005 a rush to something entirely new, “to impose a lim- debate under the topic “Conservatives and Libertar- ited human design of perfection upon a world by its ians: Can is Marriage Be Saved?” nature imperfect” to use a government power to es- America’s Future Foundation held a roundtable fo- tablish a utopian version of freedom or justice as the rum on the question of whether Meyer’s philosophi- end of society. Either way, the goal is to force a unitary cal “marriage” of libertarian means and traditionalist vision in place of an open-ended Constitution. ends should be dissolved. Nick Gillespie of the liber- According to Meyer, pure traditionalism and pure tarian magazine Reason made the case for divorce. libertarianism are “both distortions of the same fun- Gillespie criticized conservatives for too much gov- damental tradition” that undergirds the Constitution. ernment spending and regulation when Republicans Both have attempted to suppress the constitutional were in power, especially under the Bushes. But the tension. conservatives agreed with him on this. e real issue Meyer was particularly critical of those tradition- was that the conservatives supported what Gillepsie alists he called the New Conservatives—as opposed considered repressive institutions such as family and to the old conservatism of the Found- ers—who were inspired by professors Clinton Rossiter and Peter Viereck. In the name of traditionalism, they blamed The inability to comprehend the idea of unity in Western individualism and freedom for diversity of power makes it impossible for weakening the ability of the state to in- progressives to see the world as the Founders did. culcate virtue in modern times. Meyer especially targeted Rossiter’s demand to reject the “indecent anti-statism of lais- sez faire individualism,” which the professor claimed the church, whose “authoritarian” obligations under- had undermined support for both traditional virtues mined modern free lifestyles. and a compassionate welfare state. When asked what his position would be if freedom ese so-called New Conservatives in fact adopted led to the free choice of authoritarian institutions the same solution that two early 20th century philoso- like the family, community, and religion, Gillespie phers of modern progressivism had proposed. T.H. responded: “ at is a good question, but history Green and Leonard Hobhouse argued that the neces- shows no such tendency. Freedom leads toward free- sary reform of classical liberalism was to make a dis- dom.” (Not only did this avoid the question, but F.A. tinction between positive and negative freedom. As Hayek—whom Gillespie had quoted in support of his Rossiter stated the required change in the New Conser- libertarian position—was clear that such institutions vatives’ worldview: “ e conservative should give us a were what countered the state historically and allowed de nition of liberty that is positive and all-embracing, freedom to develop.) not negative and narrow. In the new conservative dic- Pure libertarianism de nes positive freedom in a tionary, liberty will be de ned with the help of words manner that requires a particular societal end: free like opportunity, creativity, productivity, and security.” lifestyles. is is the di culty for the pure libertarian. Progressives o ered di erent words to de ne “posi- He requires the power of the state, through a Supreme tive” liberty—terms like equality, welfare, compassion, Court isolated from public opinion, to enforce his type and fairness. In either case, though, the result was the of freedom. Unless the national courts intervene to same: their ideology transformed liberty from a means overcome private, local, state, and national prejudices, to an end. e old meaning of liberty—as “freedom “libertarian” free lifestyles would be frustrated by social from” rather than “freedom to”—allowed individuals pressures from traditional local social institutions. to set their own goals as long as they obeyed a few Freedom does not necessarily lead to freedom when understandable general rules restricting one person’s de ned as “free lifestyles.” Freedom is unpredictable. liberty from infringing on another’s. Changing that Americans freely choose “authoritarian” institutions like meaning gives government a positive role of deciding family, church, and local community associations pre- what “freedom to” entails. cisely to restrict their “free lifestyles.” e Constitution’s Most self-described libertarians would be shocked freedom is not an end to Americans but a means toward to be linked to Rossiter and Viereck, but they have at- a safe, free, moral, devout, loving, and ordered life. tempted to resolve the tension in the same manner, by Progressivism, pure traditionalism, and ends lib- de ning “freedom” in a positive way that forces their ertarianism are united in rejecting the Constitution’s
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 27 Ideas
only end as being the balancing of power to leave national citizenship where citizens deferred to govern- state, local, and private sources to positively de ne the ment experts, as Bok and Myrdal frankly admitted. good ends of social life. Instead these three ideolo- From the progressive viewpoint, it is the responsibility gies maintain that there is one right end for social life of those who understand to liberate the people from called positive freedom, which the state exists to pro- those parochial but free ways of home, community, mote. All three derive their positions from the philos- church, and school. To a great degree, the progressive ophers of positive freedom. All three reject the truly project has succeeded in both concentrating power and authoritarian solution of eliminating freedom as the inculcating alternative lifestyles. means, but each assumes that everyone will agree that In the face of this, what can the traditional con- its version of positive freedom is the one right end. stitutionalist do? e pure traditionalist must accept Although these three doctrines di er on goals— the changes as the new tradition or absolutely oppose one favors scienti c administration; another, tradi- them. What about those who support the old consti- tional morality; the third, free lifestyles—they agree tutional citizenship based on a fusion of traditional that people should pursue the same goal, their goal. morality and individual freedom? e only solution at is, all three share the cosmological assumption would seem to be loyalty to the Constitution and to that there should be a natural consensus on the proper local participation but a peaceful yet resolute noncon- end of society, an agreement that government o cials formity toward the accepted progressive values and and judges must enforce. the outcomes to which they lead. When progressive intellectual E.J. Dionne Jr. in- he progressive position is that this agreement can terviewed Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the 1980s, he Tcome about through democratic participation. could not comprehend how this seemingly intelligent But a widely reprinted analysis of the citizenship nec- man could insist on moral positions that conicted essary for the modern welfare state calls this view into with the views of a majority of Americans of his own question. In the study—“Democracy in the 21st Cen- tradition. Why could he not compromise with those tury: Easing Political Cynicism With Civic Involve- people, who mostly took libertarian views on social ment”—former Harvard University president Derek issues, especially on sexual matters? Bok conceded that while some public participation Ratzinger replied: “If it is true that a Christian faith was important in a democracy, popular involvement taken seriously means nonconformity with a not in- in referenda and local activism did not necessary lead considerable number of contemporary social stan- to sound results as understood by those with the best dards, then a more or less negative image is unavoid- understanding of the problem, the policy experts. able.” Ratzinger concluded that in a confused world, Right at the beginning, the major theorists of the the obligation of a moral tradition, Christian or oth- progressive welfare state recognized the paradox. As erwise, is to recover the capacity for nonconformity Gunnar Myrdal noted, for the experts to improve so- rather than seeking either elite or mass approval. cial welfare they must be free to plan more compre- Ratzinger’s view was “conformed and united” with- hensively. But progressivism also taught that democ- in a broad Judeo-Christian tradition. Yet freedom was racy required people to participate in the government part of that tradition too. Once the cosmological veil to give it the necessary legitimacy. at very partici- is torn, the individual is freed from every restraining pation could create pressures against the best expert- bond of clan, tribe, people, nation, and even family. designed programs. In the progressive view, power As Jesus phrased it, “From now on there will be ve in must be centralized in the hands of expert planners one family divided against one another, three against and popular participation must be limited to symbol- two and two against three.” ic rather than active citizenship. Released from every social group restriction, each e Constitution’s Founders understood that na- individual must freely accept or reject the truth by tional participation was necessarily symbolic for aver- him- or herself, guided by tradition or not. is in- age citizens. at is why they devised a system where dividual free choice creates the tension that made active citizenship was local and national responsi- Western civilization so dynamic, a dynamic that can bilities were limited. Tocqueville found that the early be resolved only through something equally power- Constitution freely produced active citizen participa- ful—what Ratzinger identi ed as love. tion locally. is made the new nation work better is freedom does not require rebellion from or than any other; greater participation at the levels clos- even disloyalty to the social order or the government, est to citizens even led to greater love of country. but it does require a certain peaceful nonconformity e welfare state, by contrast, required a complacent, toward them. Love of nation still may be high, but it
28 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 cannot be blind. ere must be tolerance and even and creativity weakens its welfare state socially, mor- love for all other individuals, traditions, and religions, ally, and nancially. e insurmountable obstacle is since traditional values cannot rightly be imposed that concentrated power and uniformity cannot work on other individuals. Such a tolerance can even ac- in a complex world freed from cosmological unity cept that relativism is dominant and that it must be and racked by tension. Freedom, tradition, and the confronted in free and rational debate rather than Constitution require nonconformity toward power, through power. Freedom is essential to human nature, and progressivism demands submission to it. Ratzinger argued, but it must be in the context of the One or the other must yield. tradition that identi es “constitutional democracy as being the only system realistically ensuring freedom.” Adapted from America’s Way Back: Reclaiming Freedom, Progressive modernism requires a quiescent, con- Tradition, and the Constitution by Donald J. Devine. formist citizenry, but the resulting decline in energy Copyright 2013 and reprinted by permission of ISI Books.
DEEPBACKGROUND by PHILIP GIRALDI
here has been a fierce debate going on in the eectiveness) have reduced both the group’s reach National Security Council (NSC) over the and capability to do real damage. Al-Qaeda has been Tnature and location of the terrorist threat so reduced that it currently presents few targets to kill today, in the wake of the panicked closure of 22 U.S. or arrest. Drone strikes are increasingly “signature,” diplomatic facilities during the first week in August. which means that the hellfire missiles are firing at a President Barack Obama was hoisted on his own profile. Nine recent strikes in Yemen that killed 36 men, petard, having previously suggested that terrorism for example, hit only low-level or “suspected” militants had receded to such an extent that the War on who were selected due to telephone use, travel pat- Terror might soon be handled by conventional law terns, and the carrying of weapons. enforcement, only for him to reverse course to hype The CIA insists that al-Qaeda in the Arabian the embassy danger and the explain away what is Peninsula (AQAP) has only limited capability to increasingly being seen as a U.S. overreaction in strike outside Yemen itself and virtually no ability Yemen. to engage targets in the United States. The same The document that represents the United States is true regarding the other al-Qaeda aliates, government’s consensus position on global terrorism including the growing presence in Syria, which is the annual State Department “Country Reports on suggests to some on the National Security Council Terrorism.” In its most recent edition (2012), it does that Washington might want to refine its targeting, not identify any recent terrorist act carried out by reducing the counter-terrorism eort from a global al-Qaeda against a U.S. target, apart from a kidnap- war into something considerably less, with nearly all ping in Afghanistan in 2011. It also states, “In South resources being directed against groups that have a Asia, AQ’s core has been seriously degraded. The genuine capability to strike the United States. In such death or arrest of dozens of mid- and senior-level AQ a two-tiered approach, Washington might adopt a operatives—including bin Laden in May 2011—have variation on the old Nixon doctrine as its counterter- disrupted communication, financial, facilitation rorism policy, aiding foreign governments in their own nodes, and a number of terrorist plots. AQ serves as eorts with minimal direct involvement. The strategy a focal point of ‘inspiration’ for a worldwide network makes sense as the NSC and the Federal Bureau of aliated groups… Additionally, supporters and as- of Investigation are convinced that the burgeoning sociates worldwide who are ‘inspired’ by the group’s terrorist threat is not based on developments in Mali ideology may be operating without direction from AQ or in Yemen but rather originates within the United central leadership, and it is impossible to estimate States. The fly in the ointment is that intensifying their numbers.” action against so-called “home grown” terrorism will This not-very-alarming assessment is derived from inevitably raise new concerns regarding civil-liberties both intelligence-based and embassy political report- infringements and FBI entrapment operations. ing. CIA particularly notes that the al-Qaeda leadership vacuum and the organization’s eorts to work through Philip Giraldi, a former CIA o cer, is executive local franchises (which vary considerably in quality and director of the Council for the National Interest.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 29 Religion
Christian, Not Conservative Why Marilynne Robinson’s literary—and liberal—Calvinism appeals
by ROBERT LONG
t a White House ceremony in July, Presi- Wherever you turn your eyes the world can dent Obama told this year’s recipients of shine like trans guration. You don’t have to the National Humanities Medal, “Your bring a thing to it except a little willingness to writings have changed me—I think for see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? Athe better.” He then turned directly to novelist Mar- … eologians talk about a prevenient grace ilynne Robinson and said, “Marilynne, I believe that precedes grace itself and allows us to ac- that.” cept it. I think there must also be a prevenient It was a spontaneous acknowledgement of Rob- courage that allows us to be brave—that is, to inson’s prominence in American life and letters, an- acknowledge that there is more beauty than our other honor atop the Pulitzer, National Book Award, eyes can bear, that precious things have been and host of other prizes her work has collected. For a put into our hands and to do nothing to honor writer whose novels barely have plots and whose es- them is to do great harm. says plumb the thought of John Calvin, Robinson is astonishingly popular—and not just among readers Chief among the “precious things” Robinson hon- who share the president’s politics. ors is America’s religious heritage. She is in a sense Her conservative admirers include Je rey Hart, a culture warrior, striving against what her essays emeritus professor of English at Dartmouth and a call our “impulse … to disparage, to cheapen and to contributor for over 50 years to National Review, in deface, and to falsify, which has made a valuable in- whose pages he hailed Robinson’s 2004 novel Gil- heritance worthless.” ead as a “masterpiece.” In Gilead, Hart found a rare For this reason her non ction, like her novels, spiritual gravity: “Despite the unaccommodating attracts the attention of thoughtful conservatives. phase of ordinary culture through which we live,” he In a Weekly Standard review of last year’s essay col- writes, Robinson’s “subject is holiness.” lection When I Was a Child I Read Books, Houston As he explains further in his critical work e Liv- Baptist University professor Micah Mattix praises ing Moment, Robinson’s novel “consists entirely of Robinson’s contrarian projects: defending America’s a long letter written by the Reverend John Ames; it Puritans (and their forefather, John Calvin) from does have a plot, but it does not drive the reader ur- their caricature as dour fundamentalists, champi- gently ahead. Rather, the letter, while recounting in- oning the Old Testament as wise and humane, and cidents, establishes a meditative pace, inviting you to critiquing the reductionist materialism of the New read patiently, and soon with wonder. Precisely that Atheists. To all this, Robinson brings a “penchant for is the philosophical point of the book: the experi- the ignored fact and the counterintuitive argument.” ence of wonder, of Being.” e thread that unites these concerns is a tradition Gilead not only won the Pulitzer but sold enough neglected today by le and right: liberal Christianity. copies to become “one of the most unconventional ough the themes of Robinson’s work resonate with conventionally popular novels of recent times”—as “crunchy conservatives” and others who emphasize James Wood put it in the New Yorker—thanks to passages like this one, near the end of the book (and Robert Long is an editorial assistant for e American of Ames’s life): Conservative.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 23 Religion
virtues like duty, rootedness, and tradition, the author a mystery and make foolishness of it, just because that herself is a member of what she calls “that shaken and is what people who talk about it normally do,” Like- diminishing community, liberal Protestantism.” wise, Robinson, responding to a TAC query about her e decline of the Protestant mainline churches understanding of the Second Coming, demurs: has transformed American religion since the pro- tagonist of Gilead wrote his letter in 1956, as has the I expect to be very much surprised by the Sec- political polarization of Christianity. While there are ond Coming. I would never have imagined the exceptions—a small “secular right,” a more substantial Incarnation or the Resurrection. To be astonish- religious le —in general the more o en an American ing seems to be the mark of God’s great acts— goes to church, the more likely he or she is to vote who could have imagined Creation? On these Republican. In 2012, the overwhelming majority of grounds it seems like presumption to me to treat religiously unaliated voters (70 percent) cast their what can only be speculation as if it were even ballots to re-elect Obama; an even larger majority of tentative knowledge. I expect the goodness of white evangelicals (80 percent) voted Republican. God and the preciousness of Creation to be real- Yet Robinson grounds her liberalism in her Cal- ized fully and eternally. I expect us all to receive a vinist tradition. She responded by email to a ques- great instruction in the absolute nature of grace. tion from TAC about the identi cation of American Christians with the right: As Ames writes, “I think Calvin is right to dis- courage curious speculations on things the Lord has Well, what is a Christian, a er all? Can we say not seen t to reveal to us.” that most of us are de ned by the belief that Je- Calvin looms large in Robinson’s work: Gilead sus Christ made the most gracious gi of his life and its 2008 companion novel, Home, are surely the and death for our redemption? en what does only bestsellers to hinge on a scene where a preacher he deserve from us? He said we are to love our ruminates about predestination. In her essays, Rob- enemies, to turn the other cheek. Granted, these inson presents Calvin as a Christian humanist— are dicult teachings. But does our most gra- contrary to his stereotype as a cold-hearted theo- cious Lord deserve to have his name associated crat—and his intellectual heirs as a vital corrective with concealed weapons and stand-your-ground to our cheapened discourse. laws, things that y in the face of his teaching and As she tells TAC: example? Does he say anywhere that we exist pri- marily to drive an economy and ourish in it? He Something I nd regrettable in contemporary says precisely the opposite. Surely we all know Christianity is the degree to which it has aban- this. I suspect that the association of Christianity doned its own heritage, in thought and art and with positions that would not survive a glance at literature. It was at the center of learning in the the Gospels or the Epistles is opportunistic, and West for centuries—because it deserved to be. that if the actual Christians raised these questions Now there seems to be actual hostility on the those whose real commitments are to money and part of many Christians to what, historically, hostility and potential violence would drop the was called Christian thought, as if the whole pretense and walk away. point were to get a few things right and then stand pat. I believe very strongly that this world, ough Robinson has written that she is “ex- these billions of companions on earth that we tremely reluctant” to talk about her faith, “chiey know are God’s images, are to be loved, not only because my belief does not readily reduce itself to in their sins, but especially in all that is wonder- simple statements,” her work is su used with her re- ful about them. And as God is God of the living, ligious sensibility: distrustful of over-precise dogma, that means we ought to be open to the wonder- emphasizing spiritual wonder and acts of love. ful in all generations. ese are my reasons for Like John Ames (and Barack Obama), Robinson is writing about Christian gures of the past. At a Congregationalist, a member of the mainline Unit- present there is much praying on street corners. ed Church of Christ. And like Ames, she preaches— ere are many loud declarations of personal the occasional guest sermon for her congregation in piety, which my reading of the Gospels forbids Iowa City. Unsurprisingly, author and character at me to take at face value. e media are drawn by times echo one another. noise, so it is dicult to get a sense of the actual Ames writes “I’m not going to force some theory on state of things in American religious culture.
24 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 Most Americans still call themselves Christians, fare, from the recent farm bill. As Robinson writes but Robinson nds our politics aicted by a debased in When I Was a Child, Jesus does not say, “I was and un-Christian view of ourselves. “We have forgot- hungry and you fed me, though not in such a way as ten that old American nonsense about alabaster cit- to interfere with free-market principles.” ies, about building the stately mansions of the soul,” Asked about “compassionate conservatism” and she writes in e Death of Adam: Essays on Modern whether a Christian can ful ll the duties of love ought. Instead, we “adopted this very small view of while being skeptical of government redistribution, ourselves and others, as consumers and patients and she tells TAC: members of interest groups.” “Our idea of what a human being is has grown op- Skepticism is appropriate in all cases, especially pressively small and dull,” she continues in When I where money is involved. ere should always Was a Child, and proposes an alternative anthropol- be checks and balances. We all know of non-gov- ogy: “What if we were to say that human beings are ernment charities whose CEO’s have done very created in the image of God?” well for themselves. As Christians, we must be Calvin writes in the Institutes that man’s creation concerned with outcomes—are the hungry fed, in the image of God establishes a duty of unlimit- are the naked clothed, are the sick visited. e ed love: “ e image of God, by which he is recom- more strategies that are brought to bear on the mended to you,” he writes, “deserves your surrender problem—which current policy or lack there of of yourself and all that you possess.” e social con- has made a pressing problem—the greater the sequences, Robinson believes, are clear: an “unquali- likelihood that it will be dealt with as Christ, who ed requirement of generosity” that is repeated again identi es himself unambiguously with those in and again in the Christian tradition: in Deuterono- need, tells us it must be. ere is no analogy to be my, the Gospel, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards. drawn between a beleaguered community gov- In “Open y Hand Wide: Moses and the Origins erned, in e ect, by a hostile and alien occupation of American Liberalism”—a lecture she delivered and a modern society that can indeed govern it- at the Princeton eological Seminary—Robinson self and care for its own as it chooses. If we were observes, “ ere is clearly a feeling abroad that God indeed a Christian country I think we would be smiled on our beginnings, and that we should return making other choices than many self-proclaimed to them if we can.” is would mean a return to the Christians are trying to impose on us now. No moral seriousness with which our ancestors under- talk of compassion impresses me when the tone took their duty to the poor and needy. of all reference to those who are struggling is “ ose among us who call themselves traditional- hostile and judgmental. And of course anyone ists, and who invoke things like ‘religion’ and ‘family’ can be open-handed. But, as an American, I want in a spirit that makes those honest words feel mean to be able to help an American child in Detroit, and tainted, are usually loyal rst of all to a tooth-and- an American family in Alaska, because they are nail competitiveness our history does not in fact en- as much my own as my dear Iowans. e na- shrine,” she writes in e Death of Adam. Later essays tional government is without question the most in When I Was a Child continue her attack on these ecient means for this kind of ‘redistribution,’ purported traditionalists. a word that distracts from the deeper fact that Conservatives are taken aback by the bracing tone one naturally wishes to share one’s blessings with here. As Mattix contends, when Robinson turns her one’s own. eye on contemporary politics, her typical nuance and generosity can fail her. In her anger at what she It’s little wonder conservatives are drawn to the lib- sees as depredation, Robinson caricatures conser- eral Robinson, when she not only writes beautifully vatism as a bundle of jingoism, mean-spiritedness, but does so with a thoughtful Christianity that tran- and tribalism, dismissing out of hand the notion scends our current political divisions and economic that Christians who are conservative espouse limited ideologies. Robinson’s critiques, if at times broad- government because they believe it best secures not brush, provide an always-needed reminder that the only liberty but also prosperity—including prosper- church should never allow itself to be simply the Re- ity for the poor. publican Party at prayer. As Robinson writes in “Open Yet the caricature, if uncharitable, is at least un- y Hand Wide,” the Christian story is “too great a derstandable—just consider the willingness of Re- narrative to be reduced to serving any parochial inter- publicans to cut food stamps, but not corporate wel- est or to be overwritten by any lesser human tale.”
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 25 Culture
A.J.P. Taylor Is History He made us see World War II anew—and merits another look himself.
by R.J. STOVE
eldom is the Oxford Dictionary of National York Times obit on September 8, 1990. e tempta- Biography considered an ideal place to seek tion is, therefore, to dismiss Taylor as of purely local pathos-laden anecdotes, but one can nd interest. them there. In the DNB’s article on Sir Arthur at temptation must be resisted, on two SBryant—for decades among Britain’s most popular grounds. First, Taylor found himself caught up in non- ction authors—there occurs such an anecdote geopolitical struggles that curbed his Little Englander in which Bryant, sometime a er World War II, was cussedness. Periodically he drew from these struggles introduced as “our greatest living historian” to A.J.P. fallacious conclusions; periodically he drew correct Taylor. e alarm felt at these words by Taylor, who conclusions for fallacious reasons; but he stayed suf- had long believed this title to repose safely with him- ciently engagé—in the best sense of that ambiguous self, may be readily envisioned. adjective—to ensure that even at his worst he war- How stands either man’s reputation in our time? ranted public attention. e second reason for taking Bryant died in 1985 and now is almost unread, his Taylor seriously (not solemnly, nor literally) is that he books retailing for derisory sums on eBay. Nobody wrote remarkably well. would have predicted such oblivion to overtake Not for the rst time, Evelyn Waugh had it right: Taylor, who outlived Bryant by only ve years but “We remember the false judgments of Voltaire and had made himself a public gure as the largely pre- Gibbon and Lytton Strachey long a er they have been television Bryant had not. While the phrase “media corrected, because of their sharp, polished form and whore” had not attained common usage in Taylor’s because of the sensual pleasure of dwelling on them.” lifetime, it accurately—if nastily—describes Taylor’s A man who writes nonsense that he can verbalize addiction to the studio arc lights, his gi at lecturing as memorable nonsense will forever retain at least learnedly in prime-time schedules for half an hour artistic interest. Obvious risks attach themselves to without a single written note, and the sheer demotic assessing any historian by the yardstick of how many fame of his bow tie. Yet Taylor has been forgotten to column-inches in the quotations dictionaries he oc- an extent that middle-aged denizens of former British cupies. Still, Taylor’s tally in this sphere is impressive. colonies nd almost beyond belief. ( is neglect has Some quips, at random, from Taylor the gady: occurred despite his having inspired no fewer than “Human blunders usually do more to shape history three biographies since his death, much the best of than human wickedness.” which is the 2006 production by Nottingham Univer- “Like most of those who study history, he [Napo- sity professor Chris Wrigley.) leon III] learned from the mistakes of the past how to As late as 1980, undergraduates on the campuses make new ones.” of Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand could “Nothing is inevitable until it happens.” not attend classes in post-1789 European history A er Prime Minister Anthony Eden had just issued without confronting Taylor’s achievements head-on. a self-exculpating memoir called Facing the Dictators: Today, students in these same lands can become post- “Eden did not face the dictators; he pulled faces at 1789 European history majors—can even achieve them.” doctorates in the eld—without noticing the smallest “In other countries dynasties are episodes in the indication that Taylor existed. It should, moreover, be history of the people; in the Habsburg Empire peoples stressed that Taylor’s American readership was always comparatively small, though he did score a long New R.J. Stove is the author of César Franck: His Life and Times.
30 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 are complications in the history of the dynasty.” counterpart and less bitchy colleagues. An Australian If we discovered these maxims with no clue regard- academic born in 1906 would have had stupider audi- ing their origin, we might well assume their creator ences and still bitchier colleagues but would have been to have been unduly fond of a er-dinner speech- wealthy beyond the dreams of British (or American) making and hostile to doing the hard scholastic collegiate avarice. A British academic born in 1906 yards. We would thereby be wrong, as so many have had practically the worst of all possible worlds. so regularly been about Taylor. Far from being—to Taylor married thrice: no celibate don he. By his quote a former Australian prime minister’s attack on rst and in every way most high-maintenance wife, a clever opponent—“all tip and no iceberg,” Taylor he had four children requiring to be fed somehow. had polyglot learning to clarify even the least con- His initial spouse’s protracted lust-aair with the al- vincing of his claims. Few who admired or abhorred ready alcoholic Dylan omas ensured not merely a Taylor the talk-show guest appreciated Taylor the humiliating ménage à trois for Taylor but an econom- “archive rat” (Stalin’s jovial rubric for classifying in- ic mechanism worthy of Rube Goldberg or Heath suciently obsequious historians), but the latter un- Robinson by which Taylor’s earnings had scarcely derpinned the former. Profuse source materials, of- emerged from his employers’ accounts departments ten primary, needed to be hunted down, interpreted, processed, and metabolized within Taylor’s intellect before the funny stu could emerge from his typewriter Taylor has been forgotten to an extent that or his mouth. Here initially plausible middle-aged denizens of former British colonies comparisons with Clive James—fellow find almost beyond belief. newspaperman, fellow populist, fel- low talk-show pundit—break down. In James’s case, the funny stu does not ha- bitually arise from the research but is all too apt to substitute for the research. than they were poured down omas’s throat, before en again, nature and nurture combined to make they could make even glancing contact with Taylor’s Taylor, born in 1906, what James never wished to own wallet. (A er omas had nally drunk himself be: a genuinely hard man. Rich but socialistic and to death, the cuckolded husband announced pay- unglamorous Lancashire parents of antiwar convic- back time: “Men pressed money on him, and women tions farmed out young Alan John Percivale Taylor to their bodies. Dylan took both with equal contempt. various Quaker schools that he might be inoculated His great pleasure was just to humiliate people.”) against Great War militarism. Originally he wanted e surprise is less that the cash-strapped Taylor to be an archaeologist; maybe, deep down, he never churned out third-rate columns for London’s tabloids stopped being one. He punctuated his 1920s Oxford than that he churned out anything else. A more gener- sojourn, successful but not spectacular, with member- ous interpretation of Taylor’s literary practice would ship of the Communist Party. A er only two years— involve likening him to Paul Hindemith, who late in which included an actual visit to the Soviet Union— life maintained that 80 percent of his own music was his card-carrying ended: “I … quietly lapsed, thus bad but that without penning the bad 80 percent he escaping the soul-torments that troubled so many could never have penned the good 20 percent. While intellectuals during the 1930s.” It is dicult to resist Hindemith erred on both counts, such inherent un- concluding that his mercurial temperament rejected pretentiousness—with an authentically 18th-century communism not for being evil but for being tedious. artisanal spirit—sounds a refreshing note a er pro- Henceforward Taylor’s career amounted pretty tracted exposure to modern British academe’s “I’ve much to “scribble, scribble, scribble,” with no let-up gotta be me” brigade. till the early 1980s and with no suggestion of dilet- With certain members of this brigade, notably tantism in either his Manchester University lecture- Hugh Trevor-Roper, Taylor had his own methods of ship (1930–1938) or his subsequent fellowship (1938– dealing. In a 1957 review of Trevor-Roper’s latest es- 1976) at Oxford’s Magdalen College. Neither teaching say collection, Taylor purred: “It seems like an original job of Taylor’s enriched him overmuch. Before 1945 work, and will enable Mr. Trevor-Roper to conceal for British welfarism hardly even touched higher edu- some time the fact that he has not yet produced a sus- cation. An American academic born in 1906 would tained book of mature historical scholarship.” Taylor have had more reverential audiences than his British actually liked Trevor-Roper’s nest eorts, even call-
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 31 Culture
ing Trevor-Roper’s style “Mozartean,” and remained Leo Strauss Komsomol. en his researches started to as baed as posterity has been by how much time disturb his initial suppositions and force on him more Trevor-Roper wasted on grubby administrative in- nuanced appraisals. What if Hitler had indeed been trigue, on anti-Catholic hatred that would disgrace a capable of improvisatory Realpolitik? What if he oper- Klansman with 11 ngers, on unhinged JFK conspir- ated within a national tradition formulated by Tirpitz, acy theories, on truckling to Harold Macmillan, or Hindenburg, and even Bismarck? What if Britain’s preferably on all four pastimes at once—even before appeasers had in fact played a poor diplomatic hand the asco in which he “authenticated” the fraudulent with unsuspected skill? “Hitler Diaries” made him a global laughingstock. Contemplate such appalling premises, and soon Almost every tome among the three dozen bear- you can nd yourself writing—as Taylor wrote—con- ing Taylor’s name can be read with bene t, as much clusions like this one, on the Sudetenland crisis: “Hit- for its erudition as for its streamlined English. Even a ler, the supposed revolutionary, was simply reverting comparative potboiler like British Prime Ministers and in the most conservative way to the pattern of previ- Other Essays furnishes permanently instructive in- ous centuries. Bohemia had always been a part of the sights into 10 Downing Street’s best known occupants. Holy Roman Empire; it had been part of the German It is tempting to discourse at length on Germany’s First Confederation between 1815 and 1866 … . Indepen- Bid for Colonies, on English History 1914–1945, and dence, not subordination, was the novelty in Czech on War by Timetable. Nonetheless, two major schol- h i s t or y.” arly feats deserve notice above all: e Habsburg Mon- e response was predictable, not least among archy, which helped make him, and e Origins of the those who never read Taylor’s book or, like Trevor- Second World War, which almost destroyed him. Roper, only half-read it. Trevor-Roper’s references to When e Habsburg Monarchy emerged in 1941, it were so lazily misleading that Taylor could scarce- its subject remained largely unknown even among ly believe his luck: “ e Regius Professor [Trevor- Britain’s well-educated. Comprehensive Habsburg Roper]’s methods of quotation,” Taylor informed studies by Taylor’s compatriots Edward Crankshaw Encounter readers, accompanying his complaint with and C.A. Macartney had yet to appear. Taylor’s over- copious examples, “might do harm to his reputation view has the defects of its pioneering qualities: few as a serious historian, if he had one.” experts now accept Taylor’s assumption of the early- Half a century on, we can argue about whether Tay- 20th-century Austrian imperium’s “unavoidable” de- lor did or did not so -pedal Mein Kampf’s genocidal cline. Today’s consensus—shaped by such historians import, did or did not overestimate Chamberlain’s as Alan Palmer, Alan Sked, and John Van der Kiste— and Lord Halifax’s foreign-policy discernment, did stresses the opposite: Franz Josef’s and his succes- or did not misrepresent prewar Poland’s ruling class. sor’s pragmatic conservative radicalism. But though e point to emphasize here is that World War II his- intermittently outdated, Taylor’s survey avoids ir- toriography could never be the same a er Taylor’s relevance. Not the least important element in its ap- bestseller. We can no more return to a culture without peal is Taylor’s failure to decide on his own nal at- this book than to a culture without Max Weber’s Prot- titude towards the Habsburgs. Part of him—the larger estantism-capitalism thesis or indeed without Sey- part, it must be admitted—accepted the conventional mour Hersh’s exposé of Camelot. For Taylor, merely Whig caricature of them as mere amusing dinosaurs. suspecting that a genie might exist imbued him with Part of him, more sensibly, respected their “sane an irresistible impulse to let it out of the bottle. ( is internationalism”—a phrase coined by chronicler Sir eventually attracted such Holocaust deniers or Holo- Charles Petrie, no friend of Taylor—as a cherishable caust minimizers as Harry Elmer Barnes and David contribution to peace. Hoggan, whom Taylor despised but who formed a e Origins of the Second World War forms a rare rowdy fan club regardless.) example of an historian being honest enough to ad- Taylor’s life ended sadly. Parkinson’s Disease is a pe- mit that he has discarded his original interpretation culiarly horrid aiction for suerers much saintlier when confronted with contrary evidence. Attributing than he was. It trashed his memory, once so retentive. to Taylor a desire to scandalize from day one would be Having mocked with daring panache the 1948 Wro- pardonable but false. An admirer of Churchill and still claw Congress’s Stalinist goons, Taylor now credited more of Churchill’s accomplice Lord Beaverbrook, Labour Party leader Michael Foot with Richelieu-like Taylor fully expected that his volume would be the statesmanship and crusaded on behalf of Soviet spy sort of rah-rah-rah Churchillian agitprop that these Anthony Blunt. His death seemed like that of a king days would bring him honorary membership of the in banishment.
32 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 How to summarize Taylor at his best? e lines with has wrapped himself in Clio’s mantle since 9/11, Tay- which Clive James praised W.H. Auden seem suitable: lor’s worldview oers a standing reproach: “You should “A mortal fear of talking through his hat, / A moral never,” he warned, “ask a historian to predict the fu- mission to be understood.” Or else Noël Coward’s self- ture—we have enough trouble predicting the past.” description: “I have colossal pride, which is why I have Of anyone who could utter that, one thing is sure. absolutely no vanity.” To every dirigiste groveler who His time will come again.
OLD and RIGHT he formality by which Parliaments and Con- the universal conclusion that, since its Congress had gresses declare war is the merest technicality. formally declared the war, the nation itself had in the Before such a declaration can take place, the most solemn and universal way devised and brought Tcountry will have been brought to the very brink of on the entire aair. war by the foreign policy of the executive. A long se- Oppression of minorities became justi ed on the ries of steps on the downward path, each one more plea that the latter were perversely resisting the ratio- fatally committing the unsuspecting country to a nally constructed and solemnly declared will of a ma- warlike course of action, will have been taken with- jority of the nation. e herd coalescence of opinion out either the people or its representatives being which became inevitable the moment the state had set consulted. When the declaration of war is nally de- owing the war attitudes became interpreted as a pre- manded by the executive, the Parliament or Congress war popular decision, and disinclination to bow to the could not refuse it without repudiating what has been herd was treated as a monstrously antisocial act. So representing itself in the eyes of the other states as the that the state, which had vigorously resisted the idea symbol and interpreter of the nation’s will. of a referendum and clung tenaciously and, of course, To repudiate an executive at that time would be to with entire success to its autocratic and absolute con- publish to the entire world the evidence that the coun- trol of foreign policy, had the pleasure of seeing the try had been grossly deceived by its own government, country, within a few months, given over to the ret- that the country with an almost criminal carelessness rospective impression that a genuine referendum had had allowed its government to commit it to gigantic taken place. When once a country has lapped up these national enterprises in which it had no heart. In such state attitudes, its memory fades; it conceives itself not a crisis, even a Parliament which represents the com- as merely accepting, but of having itself willed, the mon man will cheerfully sustain the foreign policy whole policy and technique of war. which it understands even less than it would care for All of which goes to show that the state represents if it understood, and will vote almost unanimously all the autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces for an incalculable war, in which the nation may be within a social group, it is a sort of complexus of ev- brought well nigh to ruin. erything most distasteful to the modern free creative at is why the referendum which was advocated by spirit, the feeling for life, liberty, and the pursuit of some people as a test of American sentiment in entering happiness. War is the health of the state. Only when the [ rst world] war was considered even by thought- the state is at war does the modern society function ful democrats to be something subtly improper. e die with that unity of sentiment, simple uncritical patri- had been cast. Popular whim could only derange and otic devotion, cooperation of services, which have al- bungle monstrously the majestic march of state policy ways been the ideal of the state lover. With the ravages in its new crusade for the peace of the world. of democratic ideas, however, the modern republic Whereas up to this time, it had been irreproach- cannot go to war under the old conceptions of autoc- able to be neutral in word and deed, henceforth it racy and death-dealing belligerency. If a successful became the most arrant crime to remain neutral. e animus for war requires a renaissance of state ideals, Middle West, which had been soddenly paci stic in they can only come back under democratic forms, our days of neutrality, became in a few months just as under this retrospective conviction of democratic soddenly bellicose, and in its zeal for witch-burnings control of foreign policy, democratic desire for war, and its scent for enemies within gave precedence to and particularly of this identi cation of the democ- no section of the country. e herd-mind followed racy with the state. faithfully the state-mind and, the agitation for a ref- erendum being soon forgotten, the country fell into —Randolph Bourne, “ e State,” 1919
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 33 Poetry
What Miniver Cheevy Means E.A. Robinson’s art made joy out of despair
by JAMES MATTHEW WILSON
very semester, on the rst day of the poetry would always loathe. courses I teach, I hold up Lilla Cabot Perry’s No longer nameless, Edwin still went unnoticed, portrait of Edwin Arlington Robinson and save for a teacher’s blow in his 11th year that per- tell the students an only slightly embel- manently damaged his inner ear. His family was up- Elished anecdote. is rst great American poet of wardly mobile within the small society of Gardiner, the 20th century, I begin, once stared out from the and the older boys seemed promising. His oldest coast of Maine at the dark Atlantic waters stretch- brother, Dean, became a doctor in town and our- ing into the horizon’s gloom. A ask in hand, he ished for a time, until self-medicating with opium watched the waves and considered the prospects of undid his practice and his faculties. Robinson’s son- his chosen career. In Gardiner, where he lived, six net “How Anandale Went Out” is one of several persons read poetry out of a population of 6,000; pieces of evidence indicating Dean’s early death by there was about an equal number of drunks. Robin- morphine overdose was a suicide. son estimated that the proportion held for the entire e second brother, Herman, also began well. He country. ( e critic D.H. Tracy has speculated that won the hand of Emma Shepherd, with whom Edwin this proportion is about right today, as well.) Per- was deeply in love, and le for St. Louis in pursuit of haps a tenth of a percent of Americans appreciate riches as a land speculator. With the panic of 1893, poetry. With this sobering gure in his head, the as- he lost his fortune and came back to Gardiner—the pirant poet twisted his ask and took another drink. whole Robinson family, its prospects fading, under at you have enrolled in a poetry course—by one roof once more. choice, no less—automatically makes you a rare Edwin’s father entertained no great hopes for breed, I tell my class. Robinson would be happy. him. A er high school, Edwin lived on in the fam- at E.A. Robinson ever did know happiness ily house and kept it running. His father’s experience should be a cause of wonder. As the poet Robert Me- with Dean had made him cynical about college edu- zey recalls in his edition of Robinson’s poems—and cation, and Edwin might well have lingered on, the as Scott Donaldson, in his recent biography of the reliable and undistinguished servant of a failing fam- poet, describes in detail—the facts of the poet’s life ily, for the rest of his years. would not seem a recipe for contentment. Born in ree occurrences determined otherwise. First, 1869 in Head Tide, Maine, Robinson was the third Dr. Alanson Tucker Schumann, a local physician in a family of three boys. His parents had been hop- and leader of a circle of amateur poets, discovered ing for a girl, and such was their disappointment that Edwin had a talent for verse. Edwin may have been they neglected to name the child for many months. without a profession, but he felt sure he had a voca- When they were nally prevailed upon to do so, tion—to be a poet. But his painful and increasingly at a lawn party in the summer of 1870, they held a deaf ear required treatment; and so, second, he was contest to name him by lot. A woman from Arling- ton, Massachusetts, drew the name “Edwin” from a James Matthew Wilson teaches in the department of hat, and so the infant had a name at last, clattering humanities and Augustinian traditions at Villanova University. though it was with an ungainly triple rhyme that he His new volume of poems is e Violent and e Fallen.
34 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 sent to a specialist in Cambridge and allowed for two his character bore unexpected fruit: this otherwise years to enroll as a “special” student at Harvard. He meek, aimless, and unsettled man inspired a lasting did not distinguish himself as a scholar, but he de- aection in nearly everyone he met. lighted in the life of learning. A third decisive event e poems came quickly. e books began to sell. occurred in 1896, the year his mother died. Back in His Collected Poems was awarded the Pulitzer Prize Gardiner once more, Edwin watched as his brother in 1922. He won a second in 1924, and a third in withdrew into alcoholism. is gave him the chance 1928. As he lay dying in 1935, Robert Mezey tells us, to enjoy, in D.H. Tracy’s words, “the pleasant illusion Robinson remarked, “As lives go, my own life would of being married to Emma.” It could not last. Her- be called, and properly, a rather fortunate one.” man confronted him. Edwin departed for New York. In the coming years he worked odd jobs there and have known Robinson’s poetry since my own ado- elsewhere; he moved from hotel to hotel, never set- I lescence; his were among the rst poems I enjoyed. ting up a household of his own, nor nding an at- I have known something about his misfortunes, his tachment to other women comparable to what he family’s alcoholism (which did not entirely spare had felt for Emma. is would be his life: itinerant the poet), and his career’s salvation through the of- and detached. e year he le Gardiner, he pub- ces of a president for almost as long. But I cannot lished, at his own expense, e Torrent and the Night. stop marveling at it all. Reading Robinson’s poems, Once in New York, he published a revised volume, one quickly detects the sadness of the stories behind e Children of the Night, methodically sending out them, the melancholy of his invented Tilbury Town copies for review. As Robinson the boy had been mirroring the happenings in Gardiner. Yet as seems treated by his family, so Robinson the poet was treated by the literary world. “Nobody devoted as much as an inch to me. I did not exist,” he would later say. Robinson’s poems invite us to delight in the good Unfortunate, unloved, and dri ing, they derive from sorrow and loss. Robinson “lived in and for his work,” as fellow poet and dramatist Louis O. Coxe observes. His faithfulness to po- etry did not help him overcome the apparent unhappiness of his early life; it rendered his to have been the case with the man himself, the po- misfortunes a matter of indierence. He knew what ems accept these sad details and give them form with he was born to do, and it showed. He possessed a a kind of indefatigable joy. Robinson’s poems invite “jarring wholesomeness as a man.” People just liked us to delight in the good they derive from sorrow and him. ey handed him money and provided him loss. shelter; the actress Isadora Duncan would oer him A late sonnet, “New England,” describes the dour her amours, which he politely declined. He opped and emotionally dry reputation of Robinson’s na- from place to place, job to job, and waited for the tive region. ere, “children learn to walk on frozen world to discover the value of his verse. toes,” he writes, and “Joy shivers in the corner where at might never have happened had the son of she knits.” But the whole sketch is set in scare quotes: President eodore Roosevelt not shown his father “Passion is here a soilure of the wits, / We’re told” (em- some of Robinson’s poems. e president immedi- phasis mine). If you were told only the facts of Rob- ately wrote Robinson, seeking to help him. He re- inson’s life, you would think joy had died of cold very viewed e Children of the Night for the monthly young, but he stands apart from such a judgment. magazine Outlook with the requisite Roosevelt en- Robinson has a dierent tale to tell. We can limn thusiasm. And he found Robinson a sinecure in it from reading just one of his best, most apparently the New York Custom House, where the man from melancholy poems, a portrait of “Miniver Cheevy.” Maine wrote and drank until the end of the admin- It runs thus: istration. Robinson wished to be a poet; he did not seek presidential favors, and indeed he turned down Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, two initial oers. He would be content, so long as Grew lean while he assailed the seasons; he was suciently provisioned to go on writing po- He wept that he was ever born, ems. Again the obvious goodness and integrity of And he had reasons.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 35 Poetry
Miniver cursed the commonplace And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; He missed the mediæval grace Of iron clothing.
Miniver scorned the gold he sought, But sore annoyed was he without it; Miniver thought, and thought, and thought, And thought about it.
Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking; Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking.
Robinson favored the Petrarchan sonnet for his shorter poems, as he did blank verse for of his lon- ger narratives and dramatic monologues. In both modes, he distinguished himself for the plainness of his speech, its colloquial, at, and sometimes ob- scure abstractions moving across the lines as if indif- ferent to where they end. (For an especially ne ex- ample, see his early sonnet, “ e Clerks.”) “Cheevy” has some of that but shows him at his most inventive as well; the cross-rhyming quatrains run at tetram- eters for three lines before coming to a clunking halt in the dimeter fourth line. Sentence rhythm adheres entirely to stanza form. In consequence, each stanza gives us a single statement of Cheevy’s aections and then undercuts it with a quick nal stroke—a phrase E.A. Robinson in 1888 that feels two notes short but also like a lingering af- terthought. Cheevy’s lachrymose character begins the poem Miniver loved the days of old in blank despair—“He wept that he was ever born”— When swords were bright and steeds were before tipping and tunking into something else: prancing; “And he had reasons.” What is that last line? A mere e vision of a warrior bold dark corroboration on the part of the author? Or Would set him dancing. does it undermine the deathwish with a comic grin? Note that the second rhyme in each quatrain is femi- Miniver sighed for what was not, nine: “SEA-sons” with “REA-sons,” and even “SEEN And dreamed, and rested from his labors; one” with “BEEN one.” Does not that hypermetrical, He dreamed of ebes and Camelot, falling syllable bring each observation to a clattering, And Priam’s neighbors. clownish halt? e practice of such masters of femi- nine rhyme as Lord Byron and W.H. Auden suggests Minever mourned the ripe renown its eect is consistently thus. at made so many a name so fragrant; In the third stanza, Miniver’s dreams are a conso- He mourned Romance, now on the town, lation to him. Of what does he dream? Of “ ebes And Art, a vagrant. and Camelot,” the outposts of classical and medieval grandeur. Of the courage and chivalry of yore that Minever loved the Medici, beguile the idle mind of a neglected scholar stuck in Albeit he had never seen one; the backwater of Tilbury Town. He has little else to He would have sinned incessantly while away the rest “from his labors.” But Miniver Could he have been one. “dreamed of ebes and Camelot … And Priam’s
36 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 neighbors.” e sublime invocation of capitals of Robinson delights in that nal quatrain, which leaves culture proceeds not to the equally emblematic king Miniver stranded in re ective impotence, with a hint of Troy but to his “neighbors”: the all and sundry of of a tubercular “cough,” a declaration of unhappiness ancient civilization. at his “fate,” and a swig from his ask. Something similar happens twice in the h stan- Robinson would later remark of this character and za, where Miniver’s love of the decadent Medici is others like him that they were “sustained by dreams detailed. Robinson quali es his love with a conces- and soothed by drink. I certainly should know them. sion: “Albeit he had never seen one.” He does the I’m one of them.” “Cheevy” would be no less a great same with Miniver’s desire for the excesses of a red- poem were it just a frank expression of Robinson’s blooded man of the Italian Renaissance: “He would despair with his own fortunes. But it is not a poem have sinned incessantly / Could he have been one.” of despair at all. E.A. Robinson, child of New Eng- e humor is at Cheevy’s expense: he is impotent much as T.S. Eliot’s “J. Alfred Prufrock” would be—Eliot’s poem was written the same year as Robinson’s was published—his aspirations to greatness frustrated by a personal inadequacy that Cheevy is swi to displace from himself Robinson rejoiced his whole life long, onto the banality of his age. To para- phrase Eliot, he could have been Ham- his poems glittering with wry appreciation let, if only Maine were Denmark and he for the comedy of sadness. a crown prince. In lieu of a title, Miniver “cursed the commonplace / And eyed a khaki suit with loathing.” His would be a dierent and better life if only the “mediaeval grace” could be made avail- able again. Yes, the quatrain concludes, if only we could recover the elegance “Of iron clothing.” But we rely on tailors not armorers, land, looked with scorn on those who found his re- and that change is indeed a loss—just not the shat- gion joyless and cold. He greeted misfortune with tering one that Cheevy’s heart says it is. amiability, and in his poems he turned it into well- is last line is my favorite in the poem, but its wrought humor, and then he turned humor into a hilarity may be surpassed by what immediately fol- cause of joy. By this, I do not simply mean that Rob- lows. He “scorns” at once the industrious and ac- inson identi es with Cheevy and must, therefore, be quisitive age in which he lives and also his failure to sympathetic to his nostalgia. at is true: Robinson share in its wealth. ere’s an impasse here—one that viewed his career as a ght against “materialism” that exceeds the refusal of history to reverse course at the resembles his character’s hatred of khaki suits. What beck of nostalgia—and Robinson does not let us miss I intend is something more intrinsic to the poem: the it: “Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,” we form of the poem, its metrical and syntactical struc- read, “And thought about it.” ture, transforms mockery to companionship, failure In Robert Frost’s introduction to Robinson’s last to victory, sorrow to joy. book, King Jasper, he recalls meeting Ezra Pound in Robinson rejoiced his whole life long, his poems 1913 and reading these lines with him: “I remember glittering with wry appreciation for the comedy of the pleasure with which Pound and I laughed over sadness. He had come into the world to write poems; the fourth “thought” … ree ‘thoughts’ would have in the world he knew, itself mired with suering, he been ‘adequate’ as the critical praise-word then was. found the materials that would allow him to pursue ere would have been nothing to complain of if it his vocation and ourish. He asked for nothing more, had been le at three. e fourth made the intoler- and this faithfulness to the good he had been given able touch of poetry. With the fourth the fun began.” seems to have preserved his character and to have For Robinson, the fun was there from the begin- made him an object of aection to nearly everyone ning. One does not need good fortune to rejoice, but who knew him. is is something to think and think only something to think and think about, some raw about—that is, to study with the other six amateurs material out of which to make something ne. So in town and to marvel at, and even to rejoice in.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 37 A RIVETING THRILLER, A HAUNTING PICTURE OF AMERICA Could two people be more enviable than Richard and Helen Bittenberg? They love each other, have two healthy, intelligent children, and are ܁nancially comfortable. Richard is at the top of his profession. Their home is in a desirable Washington, D.C., neighborhood. The culturally rich, cosmopolitan atmosphere of the capital of the most powerful nation in the world forms part of their privileged existence.
But to Richard it seems that perverse, irresponsible forces are destroying the country he loves. He feels compelled to resist. But how? Deeply troubled by his powerlessness, he seizes a daunting opportunity that he could never have foreseen. His life changes drastically. He is drawn into tension-܁lled, sometimes harrowing circumstances. They tax his moral conscience, courage, and endurance to the utmost. Helen worries about his increasingly fraught and stressed condition and tries to make him change his ways, but she does not know their real cause. Then, when she least expects it, she ܁nds herself in the middle of a nightmare of her own. She has to muster all her willpower and wile. Helen and Richard must independently handle daunting ordeals, one involving secret, nerve-racking political machinations, one involving an agonizing police investigation. The milieus of the novel are Washington, D.C., Paris and environs, and Charleston, South Carolina.
This is a political and psychological thriller that sneaks up on the reader and then only tightens its grip. It also has the fully developed characters and the trenchant, nuanced narrative of a serious work of ܁ction. Telling the story of the existential crises that Richard and Helen must face, the novel becomes a disquieting and thought- provoking commentary on the state of America and the Western world.
Does the novel’s poignant picture of contemporary society suggest merely ܁ctional possibilities? A Desperate Man deeply engages the reader, raising profound moral and cultural questions. A novel by Claes G. Ryn ISBN 978-0-9887508-0-7 • Hardcover 672 pages $42.00 ISBN 978-0-9887508-1-4 • Ebook, Amazon $9.99
To order copies of the hardcover edition, call toll free: (800) 621-2736 To receive a 20% discount, order at http://www.amppubgroup.com Home Plate BILL KAUFFMAN Paranoia Will Destroy Ya
n the southwest corner of the Old ey are at the country’s core.” anxiety” lead Hofstadterians to assume Batavia Cemetery, a Daryle La- Walker dissects Richard Hofstadter’s that the degree-less are imbeciles or monica bomb’s throw from the unfortunate 1964 essay “ e Paranoid bigots incapable of self-government, grand monuments to Ellicotts Style in American Politics,” which at- especially in times of “crisis.” Yet, Iand Richmonds as well as modest tributed support for Barry Goldwater Walker writes, “In real-world America, Kau man gravestones, rises a 37-foot- to mental illness and which gave the sociologists have shown that it’s rare high cenotaph dedicated to Captain pedants of the pundit class (few of for people to panic or riot in a disaster, William Morgan, a dissolute apostate whom have actually read the article) particularly in a community with few Mason who spilled the secrets of the a favorite crutch-phrase. (Hofstadter serious social divisions.” Walker dis- Order in 1826 and then vanished. He treats the Anti-Masons fairly in his es- misses the myth that the 1938 national may have been drowned in the Niaga- say.) radio broadcast of Orson Welles’s War ra River or, as some Masons insist, he Hofstadter, says Walker, sketches “a of the Worlds provoked millions of may have ed to Canada to live out a distorted picture in which the coun- American idiots to load their shotguns besotted life. try’s outsiders are possessed by fear and or hide under their beds cowering at Morgan’s disappearance in amed its establishment usually is not.” In the the Martian menace. what historians call our Burned-Over smug “Paranoid Style” school spawned Walker leads an entertaining tour District; within a lustrum, an Anti-Ma- by Hofstadter, if the hayseed dads and of 1970s paranoia icks, the gold stan- sonic Party ran vigorously in upstate Main Street moms whose sons do most dard of which is the Alan Pakula-War- New York, Vermont, and Pennsylvania. of the dying in our endless wars protest ren Beatty lm “ e Parallax View.” He e Anti-Masons, a strange mixture injustice they are villains, while those o ers a contrarian analysis of POW of hyperbolic pamphleteers, politi- who condemn the sons of the power- rescue movies, especially the “explicitly cal operators with an eye on the main less to overseas deaths are dwellers on antiwar and surprisingly radical” rst chance, and ordinary folks justi ably Olympus. entry of the Rambo series. (My favor- suspicious of a secret society whose But “educated elites have conspiracy ite of the genre is the even more anti- members occupied countless oces theories too,” says Walker, oen based establishment Gene Hackman movie up to and including the presidency, are on their fear of rural populism. Who “Uncommon Valor.”) among the subjects of e United States can forget the 1990s Clinton-stoked At book’s end, Walker thanks his wife of Paranoia: A Conspiracy eory, a hysteria over militias—which, in Al- Rona Kobell and their daughters—“I terri c new book by Jesse Walker of the exander Cockburn’s observation, were owe more to them than to anyone else.” libertarian monthly Reason. mostly working-class guys standing up en he adds: “Except, of course, the I was going to call Jesse a “young for the Bill of Rights? Order of the Illum—ah, but I am not journalist” but hell, he’s gotta be well More recently, a Hofstadterian in supposed to speak of that.” into his forties. I’m getting to be like the Department of Homeland Secu- Witty acknowledgements: we are my dad, who calls nonagenarians “the rity (what a fascism-reeking title that not in Doris Kearns Goodwin territory. Marr girls” or septuagenarian ex-team- is) warned darkly of the threat posed Conspiracies exist, says Jesse Walker, mates “kids.” by those who are “antigovernment, but so does paranoia. As an antidote, he Walker’s argument is that “ e fear rejecting federal authority in favor of advises, “We can empathize with peo- of conspiracies has been a potent force state or local authority,” a category ca- ple who seem alien.” At the local level, across the political spectrum, from the pacious enough to have included, over where the liberal professor can know, colonial era to the present, in the estab- the years, such right-wing extremists as a rounded human being, the Second lishment as well as the extremes. Con- as Dorothy Day, Norman Mailer, and Amendment-loving gun owner, or the spiracy theories … have been popular Paul Goodman. evangelical Christian can know the gay not just with dissenters and noncon- I suppose practicing decentralists couple next door, neighborliness usu- formists but with individuals and insti- are a threat to the Empire—in the way ally trumps paranoia. But among the tutions at the center of power. ey are that love is the solvent of hate. commenting class, placeless almost to not simply a colorful historical byway. “Elite hysteria” and “antipopulist a man and woman, Hofstadter rules.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 39 Arts&Letters
claimed that he has a secret plan to de- George III as a sort of 18th-century A Nation of Birthers stroy the American economy (the so- Stalin. by JONATHAN KAY called “Cloward-Piven strategy”) so he Once the United States came into can construct a socialist worker state being, bickering federalists and anti- e United States of Paranoia: A on its ashes. Others accused Obama of federalists co-opted such hyperbole Conspiracy eory, Jesse Walker, plotting with the Muslim Brotherhood for their own purposes. One delegate Harper, 418 pages to impose shariah on the United States to the 1787 constitutional convention, or of conspiring to send political dissi- for instance, called the blueprint that s elaborate and bewildering as dents to FEMA camps. ese theories emerged “the most complete, most they o en seem, conspiracy are not embraced by mainstream Re- abject system of slavery that the wit of theories address a very simple publicans or libertarians, but they have man ever devised, under the pretense Apsychological need: they o er an ex- nonetheless provided liberal critics of forming a government of free states.” planation for evil. is is why conspir- with an easy avenue to discredit con- When John Adams became president, acy theories always proliferate in the servative politicians and ideas. rumors spread that he would inter- shadow of great trauma, such as that Jesse Walker, books editor for Reason, lock his family with British royalty and produced by World War I, the assas- supplies a needed counterpoint in e thereby become “King of America.” Is sination of JFK, and 9/11. United States of Paranoia. e author that really so di erent from Rush Lim- But conspiracy theories also have a does not try to defend the unhinged the- baugh’s claims that Barack Obama is political function: they provide ideo- ories spouted by the likes of Jones and plotting to become America’s “socialist logues, partisans, and religious zealots Glenn Beck. Instead, he argues that U.S. dictator”? with a narrative to explain away their political culture, on all sides, has been Indeed, Walker argues that the seeds defeats and to cast their mission in the infused with a spirit of wild-eyed fear- of American paranoia were planted at dramatic, even apocalyptic, language mongering since the nation’s founding. least a century before the revolution of good versus evil. Sadly, some radi- Paranoia isn’t a hallmark of conserva- that brought the United States into calized conservatives became a case tism. It’s a hallmark of America. existence. Early settlers from Britain study in this phenomenon following e Founding Fathers themselves spread all sorts of fantastical stories the election of Barack Obama as presi- were big-time conspiracy-mongers, about local Indian tribes. During King dent in 2008. Walker reports. George Washing- Philip’s War in the 1670s, many set- Tea Party activists, fringe libertar- ton, for instance, accused the Brits of tlers believed that their Indian foes ians such as Alex Jones, and even some hatching “a regular Systematick Plan” were Satan-worshippers who had been commentators on Fox News, have com- to turn colonists into “tame & abject brought to the New World by the devil pared Obamacare to policies imposed Slaves.” Much of this over-the-top lan- himself. by the Nazis, spread debunked theories guage found its way into the Declara- Much of America’s paranoid spirit, about the president’s birthplace, and tion of Independence, which presented Walker argues, is connected to reli-
40 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 Michael Hogue Michael
gion—in particular, the phobic atti- in the incubation of popular paranoia. activists, black-power leaders, and sur- tude of Puritans to Shakers, Mormons, Until the Salem witch trials, the author vivalists. We o en think of paranoia as Adventists, Oneidans, and other Chris- notes, “the use of malevolent magic something that ordinary citizens direct tian o shoots. Catholics o en were es- was dicult to prove, so the New Eng- at their government. e overarching pecially feared because their faith was land courts were ordinarily reluctant to theme of Walker’s book is that govern- presumed to put them in league with take on such cases. But now the state ment just as o en returns the favor. a foreign power (usually the French). was throwing itself into the conict, Walker is a media historian at heart. Convents were imagined to be full of creating a situation closer in spirit to (His rst book, published in 2001, was sex slaves, as well as armies of papist Europe’s persecutions than to tradi- Rebels on the Air: An Alternative Histo- foot soldiers set on conquering the tional ti s between neighbors.” ry of Radio in America.) And e Unit- continent. In this case, the state’s interest was ed States of Paranoia is lled with all Walker’s chapter on the Salem witch to sni out a demonic plot to subvert sort of interesting excursions into pop trials supplies a concise and nely writ- Massachusetts’s Puritan mission. But culture. In his section on the ludicrous ten summary of the events of 1692 over the next three centuries, the state anti-German hatred that enveloped and 1693. But he also uses the episode would turn its phobic gaze to aboli- America in 1917, for instance—the to push forward a libertarian-tinged tionists, tramps, strikers, communists, city of Pittsburgh banned Beethoven— thesis about the role of government Japanese Americans, paci sts, student he reproduces a fascinating strip from
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 41 Arts&Letters the comic Katzenjammer Kids, in In Chapter six, “Conspiracies of draw dubious comparison between which the title characters tell a judge Angels,” Walker also adds in a h, dangerous, hard-boiled conspiracy that they are actually Dutch: “Chudge, benevolent type: the Christian and theorists and the government agents ve vant our dod-gasted name changed! New Age view that supernatural forc- seeking to monitor them. Ve iss from Holland by Edam-On-Der- es are in conspiracy to bring peace, In one breath, for instance, Walker Cheese, but ven ve get tooken for cho- harmony, and happiness to our world. describes the CSA, a failed terrorist imans it’s a ding-busted nuisance!” In its most harmless form, the con- group whose rabidly racist leader- Elsewhere, Walker illustrates the spiracy of angels manifests in the ship warned followers of a coming “Enemy Within” brand of American angel-shaped tchotchkes that appear “one-world Zionist Communist gov- paranoia (more on this typology be- on car dashboards and the child- ernment,” under which “witches and low) with a lengthy and detailed dis- goes-to-heaven genre of non- ction satanic Jews will o er people up as cussion of the various extraterrestrial literature. But it also can lead to the sacri ces to their gods, openly and body-snatcher movies of the Cold creation of religious cults led by un- proudly; blacks will rape and kill hinged rip-o artists— white women and will torture and kill as detailed in Walker’s white men; homosexuals will sodom- fascinating pro le of ize whoever they can, [and] all but the Christian/wiccan con- elect will have the mark of the Beast.” U.S. political culture has been infused spiracy theorist and se- en, on the next page, Walker dis- rial sex criminal John cusses the disastrous government in- with a spirit of wild-eyed fear-mongering Todd (1950–2007), who terventions at Ruby Ridge and Waco since the nation’s founding. roamed the country and argues that these episodes show telling congregations that, in one sense, the FBI, ATF, and of a world-domination CSA are all just peas in a pod be- plot involving witches, cause they all succumb to “violence” the Illuminati, Ayn that is motivated by “paranoia.” It’s a War period. Another chapter contains Rand, Big Oil, Elton John, and the nice linguistic trick. But to my mind, a standalone analysis of all four “Ram- Denny’s restaurant chain. the comparison is completely unwar- bo” lms and their evolving message “It isn’t clear to what extent Todd ranted: the episodic overreaching and about America’s malign elites. Jesse was a con man and to what extent violent clumsiness of national police Walker is a deep political thinker, but he was a crazy man,” Walker writes. organizations that are charged with he evidently also has spent much of en again, the distinction doesn’t defending more than 300 million his life watching some extremely bad seem to matter much to the author: people from criminals and terrorists movies. e United States of Paranoia is based cannot be casually compared to the e United States of Paranoia is a on historical sources, not interviews, unhinged hatemongering of groups loosely organized book. Most of the and Walker is far less interested in the such as the CSA. chapters begin with a sketch of some inner lives of the conspiracy theorists Such libertarian excesses notwith- conspiratorial mania drawn from the he pro les than in showing how their standing, Walker has produced a book history books and then proceed there- seemingly disconnected fantasies fuse worth reading. In the Obama age, lib- from in a stream-of-consciousness together into one grand American erals like to pretend that the ght be- manner. Over the course of the book, paranoid pastiche. tween le and right is fundamentally Walker attempts to assign conspiracy Describing this pastiche is an ambi- a struggle between enlightenment and theories into four broad categories: the tious intellectual project. But at times, fear. But as e United States of Para- Enemy Within (as described above), the Walker’s approach seems overly re- noia demonstrates, political and reli- Enemy Below (slave-revolt plots, tramp ductionist. As the author describes gious fear-mongering has been a near- scares, and the like), the Enemy Abroad it, “paranoia” is a broad label that can universal constant of public life in this (modern Islamist phobias would supply be applied to just about any activ- country for more than three centuries. an example), and the Enemy Above. For ist group, Internet discussion forum, It’s a ding-busted nuisance—but it’s as purposes of understanding the current lone nutbar, cleric, politician, or agen- American as Denny’s. political climate, this latter category is cy that exhibits any sort of unfounded the most important since it covers both fear. Toward the end of the book, as Jonathan Kay is managing editor for le -wing theories about Wall Street and his libertarian stripes become more comment at the National Post in Canada and right-wing theories about One World apparent, Walker exploits this broadly a fellow at the Foundation for Defense Government and the like. constructed de nition of paranoia to of Democracies in Washington, D.C.
42 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 How Our East before the arrival of the Europeans. practically minded settlers actually Warfare in the world of the eastern sought to build viable settlements and Was Won forest Indians was frequent but o en establish relations with the natives. engaged in more like a sport than a Working at cross-purposes, faced by GENE CALLAHAN life-and-death struggle. Although with a novel and hostile climate rid- the Indians practiced agriculture, den with strange diseases, the early e Barbarous Years: e Peopling of “cultivation of the elds did not bind settlers’ death rate was appalling. By British North America: the Con ict one to the land” since farming was 1611, over 1,500 people had immi- of Civilizations, 1600–1675, Bernard slash-and-burn rather than involving grated to the colony, but the popula- Bailyn, Alfred A. Knopf, 640 pages careful management of xed plots. tion stood at only 450. us, land ownership was not a rel- Conict with the natives was part ernard Bailyn is one of the gi- evant concept for the Indians, a fact of this grim picture. If you want to ants of early American histori- that would lead to innumerable con- disabuse yourself of any notion that cal scholarship. In recent years icts with the Europeans, as each side colonial American history consists Bhe has been engaged in a project “to failed to comprehend the other’s ways entirely of peaceful Indians being ex- give an account of the peopling of of land use. terminated by ruthless colonists, then British North America in the sev- Especially fascinating is Bailyn’s de- you need only read Bailyn’s account of enteenth and eighteenth centuries.” scription of the importance of dreams the Virginia massacre of 1622. Acting Barbarous Years is the most recently for the Indians. Rightly interpreted, on Chief Opechancanough’s plan, the released product of that e ort. As we dreams were guides to the best course Indians wandered unarmed into Eng- have come to expect from Bailyn, it of action: “A dream might oblige one lish settlements and o ered trades or is a magisterial work, which, for any to nd sexual grati cation with two even sat down to breakfast with their reader interested in this period, more married women; to sacri ce ten dogs; English hosts. (For the Indians to than repays the serious attention it to burn down one’s cab- requires. ( e book is over 500 pages in; even to cut o one’s and dense in detail.) own nger with a sea- The Indians grabbed whatever Barbarous Years covers the period shell.” But most impor- from the rst permanent English tantly, he describes how weapon was at hand—“axes, settlements on the continent through the Indian’s world “was hammers, shovels, tools, and knives”— King Phillip’s War. Besides discussing multitudinous, densely and slaughtered their hosts. the English in the Chesapeake area populated by active, and New England, this work also con- sentient, and sensitive siders the Swedish and Dutch settle- spirits, spirits with con- ments along the Delaware and Hud- sciences, memories, and purposes, share meals with the English, or even son rivers. (South Carolina, founded that surrounded them, instructed sleep over at their houses, was appar- in 1670, is le out.) roughout this them.” ese spirits demanded that ently very common before the mas- period the European toehold on the things be maintained in a certain bal- sacre.) At a certain moment, the Indi- edge of the North American continent ance, a balance the arrival of Europe- ans grabbed whatever weapon was at was precarious, and it was the sense of ans would o en disrupt, which the hand—“axes, hammers, shovels, tools, fragility, as well as the mutual incom- spirits might require the natives to and knives”—and slaughtered their prehension between the Europeans redress. hosts, killing over 300 English men, and Indians, that, Bailyn contends, Bailyn begins his story of European women, and children. ey mutilated made these years “barbarous.” Every- migration with the Chesapeake area, the corpses, burned down farms, and thing was uncertain in the new world and there with Jamestown. e early killed or dispersed the farm animals. being created by this clash of cultures. years of that colony were so grim that e attackers apparently singled out e constant threat felt to the very ex- he names the chapter describing them as targets the settlers who had been istence not just of oneself but of one’s “Death on a Coastal Fringe.” ere friendliest towards them, “as if the ac- whole community led to desperately was great confusion of purpose: the culturation they had sought, with its brutal acts on the part of natives and colony’s sponsors wanted colonists to assumption of divine sanction, was a newcomers alike. nd the fabled Northwest Passage, or special danger that had to be utterly Bailyn sets the background for his gold, or the lost colony of Roanoke, obliterated.” main narrative with a chapter describ- or establish English sovereignty over e English, of course, were not ing the character of the native world the whole area, while a few of the blameless, and they had been very
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 43 Arts&Letters
e 1622 massacre of Virginia settlers depicted in a 1628 engraving by Matthaeus Merian careless about encroaching upon In- cades, the English settlers had found it is far too simple to see the military dian lands with their plantations. in tobacco a way to make their outpost conict of this period as simply be- But one can see why their view of the self-sustaining and increasingly pros- tween Europeans and Indians, as dif- Indians was a little less accommoda- perous, and thus laid the foundations ferent European groups and di erent tive a er this event. In any case, they for the plantation-and-slave culture of Indian groups o en aligned with each would conduct plenty of massacres of the Virginia of Washington, Madison, other to ght mutual enemies. their own in the years to come, some and Je erson. Meanwhile, in 1634, Bailyn next takes up the story of of them equally brutal. a rival English colony, Catholic-tol- New Netherlands and the nearby, but It took decades for the population erant Maryland, was formed on the largely forgotten, New Sweden. New in the Chesapeake to begin replacing northern shores of the Chesapeake, Netherlands was a tiny outpost of itself, but by the close of the period an episode to which Bailyn devotes a the worldwide Dutch trading empire covered here, it had reached almost chapter. One point that becomes clear of the 1600s and was never densely 40,000, and the English hold on the in his analysis of the relationships be- settled. e prosperous Dutch were area was secure. In the intervening de- tween these various colonies is that themselves usually more interested in
44 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 international trade than in farming in ethnic, multilingual, commercially her own version of it? When faced the wilderness, so they recruited set- driven society perched between the with Hutchinson’s claims that she was tlers from across Europe: the colony more homogeneously English New the recipient of new revelations, the of 6,000 (at the date of English con- England and Chesapeake areas. New church denied that post-scriptural quest in 1664) contained Germans, York seems to have never lost the im- revelation was possible and declared French, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, print of its founding. that claiming such was “sinful”—itself Poles, and blacks. In contrast to these other colonies, a doctrine found nowhere in Scrip- As this potpourri spread out along New England was founded on more ture. the Hudson, we get another taste of explicitly religious grounds. Yet from Another area of contention in the misunderstandings that generated the beginning, the Pilgrim colony early New England was the nature of so much racial conict in this period: at Plymouth and the later Puritan landholding. Libertarians o en tout colony of Massachusetts Bay were di- property rights as a means of avoid- Europeans continued to ex- vided over matters of faith. Firstly, the ing conict. Of course, when property pand their settlements into In- “true believers” had had to allow a fair rights are agreed upon, there won’t be dian lands and to fence in their number of religiously indi erent “tag- disputes—but that really says nothing own elds while allowing their alongs” to join them in their “shining more than that where there is agree- animals to forage in the Indians’ city on the hill” so that the colonies ment, there is no conict. Yet ques- farmlands. e Indians contin- would have sucient servants and tions of property rights are o en the ued to kill the roaming livestock tradesmen. Bringing such people very source of disputes. Reading Bai- as just retribution for damages into line with the founders’ desire for lyn’s account of the English settlement done and to seek vengeance for strict religious discipline would be a of Massachusetts drives that point sleights and injuries, some of continual challenge. which the Europeans were not But perhaps even aware of having inicted. more divisive were From the beginning, the Pilgrim colony relations among the Southwest of New Netherlands, believers. Roger Wil- at Plymouth and the later Puritan along the Delaware, New Sweden liams was a brilliant colony of Massachusetts Bay were had barely gotten going when it was Puritan preacher, but conquered by the Dutch, and it might he was eventually divided over matters of faith. hardly be worth mention but for its driven to form his one, somewhat surprising, impact own colony in Rhode on the future of America: the Finns. Island due to his disagreements with home with great force. Conict over e Finnish settlements in New Swe- the Puritan establishment in Massa- the best assignment of property rights den—Finland was part of Sweden at chusetts. e triumph of the Puritan sometimes split apart entire commu- the time—although small in number, cause in the English Civil War caused nities; in particular, there was a grave contributed an enduring image of co- further consternation: what had been conict between those settlers who lonial America. e Finns, from the the point of the colonists removing came from open- eld, common-land- frontier of Europe, lived in rough log themselves thousands of miles from holding communities in England and cabins in New Sweden, and soon af- their homeland only to see those who those who came from places where in- ter settling there they could be found had been unwilling to take such a risk dividual freeholding was more com- dressed in animal skins instead of Eu- triumph in the mother country? mon. Both forms survived for a long ropean clothing and shod in deerskin e case of the brilliant individual- time in New England: in fact, the New moccasins. Bailyn claims the Finns ist Anne Hutchinson highlights the Haven Green today remains a vestige had “a greater anity to the culture tensions inherent in the Protestant of the communal form of landholding. of the native Americans then did any Reformation and by extension Pu- roughout Barbarous Years, Bai- other Europeans in North America,” ritan Massachusetts. How could a lyn conveys a sense of the early years and it was the Finns who were initially movement that upheld the primacy of European settlement in North responsible for what we think of as the of the individual conscience over America as a tragedy of mutual mis- American frontier style of life. the hierarchy of the Catholic Church comprehensions. While cultural dif- New Netherlands, the conqueror of sustain any sort of hierarchical struc- ferences were great and important, New Sweden, became the conquered ture at all? On the other hand, what another factor at play, highlighted by in turn, falling to the British as noted in the world would Protestantism Bailyn, was how empty North Amer- above. e result was a strange, multi- mean if every individual had his or ica seemed to the English colonists
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 45 Arts&Letters versus how full it was for the native Burke Versus compendium of essays, scienti c re- Indian inhabitants of the eastern for- ports, literary pieces, and poems. His ests. My rough estimate, from the the Economists standing within London’s scintillating gures that Bailyn provides, is that intellectual community was suciently England in this period was popu- by CARL T. BOG US great that Samuel Johnson invited him lated at about 100 times the density to be one of nine members of e Club, of eastern North America. In 1600, Edmund Burke: e First Conservative, his famous discussion group. All this London had a population roughly Jesse Norman, Basic Books, 306 pages served as something of a spectacular equal to all of the eastern woodlands. graduate education. To English eyes, therefore, the Indi- ’m so jealous! A member of Par- When he was 35, Burke became ans were barely using the land, and liament has written a book that is private secretary to the Marquis of there was plenty of room for English- historically and philosophically Rockingham, the leader of a faction of men to expand and establish planta- Ierudite, yet an enjoyable read for any Whigs in Parliament. In short order, tions and towns. But the way of life intelligent reader, elegant, and truly Rockingham arranged for Burke to that these eastern forest Indians had important. If any member of Congress be elected to the House of Commons, established in fact required 100 times could accomplish a similar feat—or where over the next 28 years Burke de- the land per person that the English amidst the relentless scramble for livered some of history’s most enduring way of life did. campaign cash, even nd time to do speeches. ose speeches—together e above could be read in two dif- so—I don’t know who it is. with his letters and Burke’s most fa- ferent ways: the Indians were ecologi- Perhaps Jesse Norman is unique mous book, Re ections on the Revolu- cally wise stewards of the land who even on the other side of the pond. tion in France, published near the end respected its carrying capacity, or the at he comes from a wealthy, aris- of his Parliamentary career—elaborate English had much more ecient eco- tocratic family and is a graduate of a sophisticated political philosophy. nomic arrangements and could make Eton and Oxford hardly makes him Unlike some of Burke’s biographers, use of land far more e ectively than unusual in Parliament. But Norman Norman is adept at crisply giving read- the Indians could. also holds a Ph.D. from University ers—even Americans not well-versed Both views have some truth in them. College London, taught philosophy in in English history—whatever’s neces- ere were so many English heading to distinguished universities, and previ- sary to make the relevant events ac- North America precisely because they ously wrote four books and edited a cessible. For example, one of Rock- had exceeded the carrying capacity of h. Elected to House of Commons ingham’s allies, Lord Verney, arranged their own island, given the technology three years ago, he has already been for Burke’s rst election to Parliament of the time. But it is also true that, had appointed to the powerful Treasury Se- from the pocket borough of Wendover. the Indians adopted certain practices lect Committee and the Policy Board at But what’s a “pocket borough,” and how well known in Europe, such as tech- 10 Downing Street. does it di er from a “rotten borough”? niques to replenish depleted farmland, Norman belongs to the Conserva- Norman explains: “Wendover at the they would have been able to expand tive Party and argues that Edmund time had just 250 electors—the mod- their own population well beyond Burke was the original conservative, ern constituency has around 75,000— what it was in 1600 without severely but not in a merely partisan sense. “Not most of whom were Lord Verney’s damaging their environment. a member of the Conservative Party,” tenants and therefore disposed to vote What would have happened had he writes, “not a neocon or a theocon, as instructed.” Meanwhile, the rotten each group been able to appreciate the not a atcherite or a Reaganite—but a borough of “Old Sarum, long owned viewpoint of the other, I know not. conservative nonetheless.” by the Pitt family … had three houses, But it was not to be, and what actually Norman divides his book in two seven voters—and two MPs.” Simi- happened, as Bailyn makes clear, was a parts. “Part One: Life” briskly describes larly, in a single paragraph Norman tragedy. In any case, I have only been Burke’s upbringing, professional and ably describes the origins and political able to skim lightly over the wealth of political life, and key speeches and divisions between the Whigs and the fascinating material in this excellent writings. A er graduating from Trin- Tories and explains why they were not work: if you have any interest in this ity College Dublin, Burke briey fol- really political parties. period, do pick it up. lowed his father’s wishes and became at last point is important because a barrister, but he soon le the Bar to Norman argues that Burke made the Gene Callahan teaches economics at SUNY instead pursue a career as a writer. As Rockinghams into the rst proto-polit- Purchase and is the author of Oakeshott on a young man, Burke wrote three well- ical party in a Western democracy. Pre- Rome and America. regarded books and edited an annual viously, subgroups of Whigs and Tories
46 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 were factions—temporary alliances mightily to anticipate and ameliorate indicators give us a deep sense of un- designed to acquire or retain power. adverse consequences, and believed ease, including troubling levels of lone- Political parties, by contrast, are dedi- that culture and institutions would be liness, drug abuse, suicide, and a loss of cated to advancing principles, and they more potent than legislation. Norman national identity. promote their ideas over time, whether mentions that this design is underap- e root problem, suggests Norman, in power or in opposition. Looked at preciated, but then brushes past it in a is that we as a society have lost sight of from this standpoint, maybe it’s for- single paragraph. what sustains us as human beings. “ e tunate that the Rockinghams were in But it is “Part Two: ought” that consumer is king”: is that what we are power only for two short stretches of distinguishes Norman’s book and made for, to live in societies devoted to time. Opposition o ers the greater makes it so important. e “ ought” consumption? To have nations—and opportunity to develop and articulate here is a much Norman’s as Burke’s: indeed the world—constantly depen- ideas, and that was Burke’s special gi . Norman situates Burke within Western dent on consumer con dence? e rst part of Norman’s book also political philosophy and argues that his ere are contemporary villains in describes Burke’s great campaigns: his thinking is essential today. He begins Norman’s book. We’ll come to them in e orts to maintain the constitutional by contrasting and comparing Burke a minute. But rst, let’s go back to the balance of power between Parliament to Newton, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, 17th and 18th centuries and the En- and the Crown; his attempt to persuade Bentham, Adam Smith, Kant, John lightenment. Burke himself must be Britain to listen to the complaints of Stuart Mill, Abraham Lincoln, and considered a part of the explosion in American colonists about being taxed others. If this sounds heavy going, be science, philosophy, and literature that without representation, followed by his not afraid! Norman is clear and uid; constituted the Age of Reason—as were entreaties against attempting to bring never does his fascinating discussion Adam Smith, David Hume, and Sam- the colonists to heel through military bog down. Moreover, this philosophic uel Johnson, who were Burke’s friends. force (“a nation is not governed which tour is not of mere academic interest. Norman argues that the Enlightenment is perpetually to be conquered”); his Everything drives forcefully toward branched into two forks. Rousseau led work to end trade restrictions on Ire- Norman’s argument about why we the way down one fork. He believed that land and repressive laws against Catho- need Burke today. human beings are naturally free, ratio- lics in England; his e orts to end the If we need Burke—maybe even des- nal, and autonomous creatures. “Man is terrible abuses perpetrated by the Brit- perately—it must be because we are in born free, but is everywhere in chains,” ish East India Company in India; and trouble. What, then, is the problem? he proclaimed. e individual is of tran- his passionate warnings against being “ e world has become at, compe- scendent importance; society is inher- seduced by siren songs of the Jacobins tition is global and the consumer is ently corrupt. and following France down the bloody king,” Norman observes. Yet various Burke represents the other fork. He road of revolution, mob rule, and—as Burke predicted nine years before Na- poleon’s coup d’état—the inevitable rise of a military dictator. Although Norman has done as well possible in the space he allocated for describing Burke’s life and works, other
one-volume biographies of Burke— (CC BY 2.0) Exchange Policy including those by Russell Kirk and Conor Cruise O’Brien—are more complete. (O’Brien’s runs nearly 700 pages.) At times, Norman’s brevity has costs. An example is Burke’s detailed plan for ending slavery in the British Caribbean. It is important because it demonstrates that not only was Burke an incremental reformer, but when cir- cumstances merited it Burke could be a radical reformer. Even then Burke was, well, a Burkean reformer: he studied the situation with great care, worked Jesse Norman MP
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 47 Arts&Letters saw human beings as innately social All of this has been said before, the ideas of Bentham, the utili- animals. “Growing up within a given though seldom as well as Jesse Norman tarians and indeed modern society is not simply a process by which says it. But Norman follows the chain economists have themselves now humans become civilized; it is a process to our present time. is brings us to become highly inuential insti- by which they become human,” writes the contemporary villains. tutions in their own right, em- Norman, describing Burke’s thinking. ey are the economists. Not that bedded in universities, business Our societies were not built in a day, and Burke would distain all practitioners schools and corporations around they cannot be demolished and remade of the dismal science. A er all, Adam the world. Since their basic tenet in a day. ey evolved over time. ey Smith once said that Burke was “the is o en that humans are purely are comprised of rich fabric of institu- only man I ever knew who thinks on economic agents, seeking gain tions—schools, colleges, professional economic subjects exactly as I do, and shunning loss, the danger is groups, occupational associations, reli- without any previous communications that this creates further feedback gious organizations—to which individ- having passed between us,” and Burke loops, inculcating successive gen- uals can be deeply devoted, and are the pronounced e Wealth of Nations, erations into an orthodoxy of self- product of many people’s life’s work. “To “probably the most important book interest and thereby making them be attached to the subdivision, to love ever written.” e villains are today’s more sel sh. What starts with an the little platoon we belong to in society neoclassical economists, who have economist’s assumption ends up is… the rst link in the series by which constructed a “dazzlingly sophisticated as a deep cultural pathology. we proceed toward love to our country array of mathematical of mathemati- and mankind,” wrote Burke. Society, cal techniques” premised on three as- Burke always recognized that hu- said Burke, in perhaps his most famous sumptions about human nature: that man beings are driven by emotions as quote, “becomes a partnership not only individuals are rational, that they seek well as logic and that our behavior is between those who are living, but be- to maximize their utility, and that they shaped as much by customs and habits tween those who are living, those who act independently based on perfect in- as by reason. He considered manners are dead, and those who are to be born.” formation. Norman argues that more important than legislation. Nor- man carries Burke’s thinking into the The New Book Everyone Is Talking About 21st century. Drawing on cutting-edge research in sociology and behavioral The War State: The Cold War Origins of economics, he persuasively argues that the rational maximizer model is incon- the Military-Industrial Complex and The sistent with fundamental aspects of hu- Power Elite, 1945-1963 man nature. Nevertheless, that model Written by Michael Swanson has become so inuential that it a ects, at a deep level, how we view ourselves,
what we consider valuable, and the American civil liberties are being function of government and society. eroded away by NSA spying and the e full extent of Norman’s sophis- federal deficit is exploding due to the ticated argument cannot be captured costs of empire. It all started during here. I urge you to read it for yourself. the critical twenty years after World But be warned: the magnitude of Nor- War II when the United States man’s argument is dicult to overstate. changed from being a continental re- He is arguing for nothing less than a public to becoming a global imperial paradigm shi in worldview. “ e great paradox, Norman writes, “is that, thus superpower. Since then nothing has understood, Burke the anti-radical be- ever been the same. In this book you comes a far more radical thinker even will discover the history of the than Karl Marx himself.” He’s right. United States that formed the basis of the world we live in today. Carl T. Bogus is a professor of law at Roger Williams University and author of Buckley: Buy this book at Amazon.com. William F. Buckley and the Rise of Available in paperback or as an ebook. Also for sale at TheWarState.com American Conservatism.
48 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 Liberalism’s critics of liberalism. In the Age of cultural critique. Nevertheless, we Obama, no one wants to notice that get from his choice of subject matter Greatest Critic liberalism is the party in power and its a sense of where his sympathies—and concerns have become largely cultur- antipathies—lie. ese essays range by GERALD J. RUSSELLO al—favoring certain privileged class- from reections on the 2000 election es—rather than economic. For liber- and considerations of heroes (Orwell, For the Republic: Political Essays, als of Scialabba’s stripe, that needs to Christopher Lasch, Ralph Nader) and George Scialabba, Pressed Wafer Press, be corrected. As Scialabba puts it in villains (Irving Kristol, Fish) to an 253 pages his careful evisceration of Stanley Fish overall concern with what Scialabba in these pages: “ e debunking of lib- sees as our nation’s “long descent into eorge Scialabba is an un- eralism is urgently necessary.” so authoritarianism and cultural de- abashed admirer of socialism But it is a particular kind of liberal- basement.” who believes that econom- ism that deserves debunking. is lib- Moreover, he has a healthy impa- Gics is as much a political question eralism is the posturing of celebrities tience for what Russell Kirk might as a mathematical one. He has little who opine about injustice while they have called “defecated rationality.” In patience with the idea that there is a bene t from the commercialization an essay on Harvard philosopher Mi- “free market” that must be allowed of culture; it’s the ideology of busi- chael Sandel and competing theories to operate without political interven- ness concerns that use culture wars to of justice, Scialabba comments: “Cor- tion or moral principles. In an earlier prevent the populace from noticing rect reasoning can help us de ne and day, this would have been enough to their servitude. ere is in Scialabba’s discriminate among our obligations. strike him from any good conserva- analysis much with which to disagree: But without humane feeling on our tive’s reading list. What about price no conservative, for example, could part, no obligation will have much discovery? Spontaneous order? Cre- accept his prioritization of material- force. Solidarity and generosity are ative destruction? e right’s ideo- ism over ideas as the driver of culture, the root of the matter, not Socratic logical gatekeepers would at one time for example. have barred Scialabba from conserva- Yet Scialabba recog- tive publications or attempt at nd- nizes progress’s trap: in ing common ground. It is perhaps a his consideration of the hopeful sign that the intellectual dis- anti-progressivism of D.H. George Scialabba comes array of conservatism provides an op- Lawrence and Christopher from a rapidly diminishing line portunity to consider friendly critics Lasch, he writes, “every of liberal critics of liberalism. like Scialabba anew. liberation can be captured Scialabba has become an increas- and exploited. We had bet- ingly visible presence among the co- ter stay inside our own gnoscenti, writing for the Atlantic and skins—and even, perhaps, N+1 on a range of political and liter- within traditional social forms—un- dialectics, however, stimulating.” is ary subjects. A native of East Boston til we are sure that it’s safe to discard neglect of solidarity and generosity and Harvard graduate, Scialabba fell them.” Nevertheless, where a conser- includes our treatment of economics: out with the Catholicism of his youth vative would defend such traditional capitalism dominates democratic pol- in college—a er an aliation with the social forms, Scialabba sees them only itics and allocates power to those few strict practices of Opus Dei—over, as as protection for the “squalid, savage- who set the public agenda and “manu- he tells it, his reading of modern intel- looking peasant”—in the words of facture popular consent.” lectual history. He has never been an Henry James—who has not yet been Traditional conservatives share academic or a professional journalist enlightened, as Scialabba was, by On some of the central points of this di- or editor. Indeed, he credits even the Liberty and Middlemarch. agnosis, which is what makes Scialab- ability to write as he does to the fact For the Republic is an explicitly po- ba one of the few liberal critics worth that he has a day job unrelated to the litical collection in which, through reading consistently. He is far better, vagaries of small magazines and edi- studies of a number of thinkers, Sci- for example, than Christopher Hitch- torial politics. is gives his writing a alabba lays out his indictment in char- ens (another hero) on American cul- practical edge and a widely accessible acteristically graceful prose. Given ture. Scialabba does his part to further style. their origins as reviews and short a cultural critique that is the le -wing What’s more, Scialabba comes from essays, only a few of the pieces here version of the “middle American re- a rapidly diminishing line of liberal allow Scialabba to really expand his publicanism” fostered by writers like
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 49 Arts&Letters
Bill Kau man. Scialabba shares with voting or “sortitionism” or massive John Lukacs’s Kau man a fondness for Gore Vi- new social programs—this time prop- dal—for both, Vidal is America’s nov- erly funded!—things would work out. Valediction elist of empire, and of its costs. In his He also displays on occasion a too- condemnations of crony capitalism, generous view of some rather sinister by JOHN WILLSON Scialabba nds common cause with gures. One can defend, for example, conservatives like Timothy Carney. a humanitarian agenda on the part of History and the Human Condition: A And he has praised Wendell Berry, the the world’s great powers in favor of Historian’s Pursuit of Knowledge, John localists’ lodestar, in interviews. In his aiding poorer nations without relying Lukacs, ISI Books, 233 pages critique of Sandel he writes, “it is not on the musings of Peter Singer, who our theoretical confusion that renders has little interest in protecting de- his is the best introduction to us passive and condemns billions of fenseless infants. the historical cra of John Lu- our fellow humans to needless agony; What is missing from these essays kacs. History and the Human it is our indi erence. Where there’s is the same thing that is missing from TCondition does not replace the much a moral will, there is a political way.” a lot of right-wing paeans to capital- longer Remembered Past, a wide- at is awfully close to a le -wing de- ism: a sense of scale. Our national ranging selection of Lukacs’s works fense of what Russell Kirk called the conversation is predicated on the as- also published by ISI Books. But this moral imagination. sumption that centralization and na- work, a coda to the author’s career, One need not overplay the similari- tionalization are best, and whether contains just the right mixture of re- ties. Scialabba and I once had an ex- di erent structures might be suited ection and nostalgia (true nostalgia, change in which he separated himself for di erent levels of society is rarely Lukacs says, “is a desire less for a time from what he saw as Kirk’s antiquated considered. If socialism (or capital- than for a place”), addressing new and traditionalism. He is no conservative, ism) is good for one community, it old historical problems, that it should for reasons best explained in a per- must, therefore, be good for a nation serve well to draw a new generation of sonal essay where he distinguishes his of 300 million. is failing is not Sci- readers under his spell. rational humanism from the ‘“amoral alabba’s fault—the authors he discuss- Lukacs has already inuenced and familism” of his Sicilian background. es are captive to the same nationalist inspired (and sometimes, infuriated) For a conservative, preference for dream. But it does limit the areas in three generations of accomplished one’s kin over abstract humanity and which he might make common cause historians despite never having a suspicion of authority—especially with conservatives. His disdain for the taught at prestigious universities governmental authority—are features amoral familism of many of his fellow where he could sequester graduate that protect people from tyranny and citizens tends to diminish con dence students and make disciples of them. encourage human ourishing. And as in his faith that the “real” democracy Russell Kirk applauded his Historical one who shares the Sicilian heritage, he champions will prevail. Consciousness, especially its “moral I have a more favorable view of that Yet that Counter-Reformation pa- imagination” and nuanced arguments world and don’t think bloodless Brit- pistry with which the undergraduate against all philosophies of history. ish utilitarianism or the bloody his- Scialabba wrestled leaves its mark on Forrest McDonald, meeting Lukacs tory of the French Revolution neces- these pages still. ese writings reveal for the rst time—I happened to sarily the better choice. But Scialabba’s the same struggle to reconcile the de- introduce them—discussed with him critique is valuable precisely because mands of those closest to us with our how their thinking about history he reminds us that this view can be obligations to our fellow man simply by had reached similar conclusions and harmful to the civic culture that is reason of our common humanity. Many praised Historical Consciousness Europe’s great achievement. at civic conservatives nd a balance in religion as an elegant statement of those culture is based on a level of trust of and tradition. e author of For the Re- conclusions. Stephen Tonsor, Clyde strangers and market relationships public, fully aware of that approach, has Wilson, Richard Gamble, and many that an amoral familism, unchecked, taken a di erent path, one imbued with others have expressed their debt to can destroy. enough humanity and decency that his art. e distinguished Robert H. Contrary to Scialabba’s usual com- conservatives need to understand its ap- Ferrell, slightly older than Lukacs monsense approach to economic jus- peal to otherwise sympathetic thinkers and not very o en in agreement with tice and inequality, a couple of these like George Scialabba. him, wrote an essay, “Appreciating essays indulge in the le -wing fan- Lukacs,” that must have mysti ed the tasy of completely reworking society. Gerald J. Russello is editor of e University Hofstadters and Schlesingers of the If only we could have proportional Bookman. mainstream historical profession.
50 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 One of the essays in this volume is case, this Catholic view—is that we country, while nationalism is the cult on Arthur Schlesinger Jr.: “ e Vital must study real people, not categories of a people (and of the power of their Center Did Not Hold.” While wishing of people. His critics, and many of his state).” no ill to a man who appears to have had friends, have labeled John Lukacs a is distinction helps explain why a “pleasant career,” Lukacs nevertheless proponent of the “Great Man” theory Lukacs understands Hitler to have sums up Schlesinger’s life’s work—and of history. ere is some truth to this, been more dangerous than Stalin, why thus probably three-quarters of the especially in the books for which he he is critical of the conservative hero work of his generation—by noting is best known—those about Hitler, Reagan, and why he became so close “the rapid decline of the appeal of Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt a friend, even a soul mate, to George liberalism, and the attraction and the controlling the destiny of the world Kennan. What Lukacs calls “the force of a populist nationalism—the in World War II—but it is only a militarization of popular imagination” cult of the people and of the military half-truth and can cause readers to has led inexorably to the imperial power of the nation, the meaning of misunderstand what he means by presidency and massive growth of the which Schlesinger cannot comprehend studying real people. state, even as liberal and socialist ideas or perhaps even discern.” In the selections “A Tocqueville are dying. Such insights were what rst drew Tide,” “ e Germans’ Two Wars: e sense of place Lukacs so me to Lukacs’s writings, when I was a Heisenberg and Bohr,” and “ e World lovingly feels for his household—and young historian at the end of the ’60s Around Me: My Adopted Country” Schuylkill Township and Chester thoroughly disabused of the Great presented here, Lukacs may not exactly County and Pennsylvania—he nds Liberal Idea of Progress and trying to say with Emerson that “all history replaced by the false patriotism, and make sense of the cultural mess that is biography,” but he comes rather therefore false conservatism, of servile decade was making of my chosen close. It is important to Lukacs to nationalists. ere is a caveat to this profession. understand the details of Tocqueville’s observation, however: the Hungarian- I rst read Lukacs’s The Passing of life, to understand that the “history of born Lukacs does love his adopted the Modern Age, thrilling to it almost science not only is inseparable from country, and “many things that I saw as much as to Kirk’s The Conservative the history of scientists; Mind. At Kirk’s suggestion, I then spent it is the history of several weeks studying Historical scientists.” How can Consciousness, which changed my we comprehend the Lukacs may not exactly say with life as a teacher. Its central insight— history of mankind if Emerson that “all history is biography,” at least to a young scholar seeking a we cannot comprehend but he comes rather close. way to frame U.S. history that would what moves its men and counter the great myths of the land women? e Terrible of opportunity, the primacy of the Simpli ers are those for individual over real community, whom categories and statistics and were not what many others saw... liberal internationalism, and the “forces” are the stu of our common democratic surfaces are big and thick. emerging nexus of the race-class- story. Sometimes I was wrong.” gender “social” history—was that a is volume also introduces a great Here, a note of personal interest sound understanding of human nature theme of Lukacs’s work: the 20th to me. Lukacs praises the great precludes the need for a philosophy century gave us not the struggle of American historian of modern of history. Schlesinger once quoted democracy and communism, not Europe Carlton J.H. Hayes for his Pascal as saying that “man is neither the impending victory of liberal understanding of the cultural unity angel nor brute,” which Lukacs calls capitalism, but two great choices: of “Atlantic civilization.” Hayes was a “safe, liberal, gray, centrist view of nationalism and socialism, and the also the founder of the study of human nature. To the contrary: man greatest of these was nationalism. nationalism, and he made many of the is both angel and brute.” One of his criticisms of American distinctions between patriotism and Such distinctions, and Lukacs is “conservatives”—he usually uses nationalism that Lukacs now insists a lover of distinctions, demand that quotation marks—is that they o en upon. Hayes, who was discarded by we study history according to truths conate patriotism with populist liberals for his common sense about that are beyond the ability of man nationalism: “It may be enough the materialism of the modern age to manipulate and that are rooted in to say that patriotism is defensive, and for his prudence about Spain in his nature. One consequence of this while nationalism is aggressive; World War II and the early Cold War, Christian view of man—in Lukacs’s that patriotism means the love of a deserves the recognition that Lukacs
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 51 Arts&Letters wants him to have. Tocqueville, the same resistance in Qatar. Strange- Hayes and Kennan share another ly, in these very di erent places on of Lukacs’s passions. In my favorite the Arabs, and Us three continents, the expression of selection in this book, “History as resistance is “not simply similar” but Literature,” Lukacs asks, “Is history by JONATHAN MARK S “identical.” literature or science?” He answers e expression owes much to the boldly, “Well—it is literature rather Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in disciples of Rousseau, Marx, and Ni- than science. And so it should be. a Democratic Age, Joshua Mitchell, etzsche, whose ideas have spread to For us.” In a footnote, he quotes University of Chicago Press, 208 pages Europe’s former colonies. But the re- approvingly from a letter written to sistance itself owes more to students’ him by Kennan: “I view every work oshua Mitchell, professor of po- doubts about the “delinked” demo- of narrative history as a work of the litical theory at Georgetown Uni- cratic man whom Tocqueville de- creative imagination, like the novel, Jversity, helped establish George- scribed. Mitchell does not deny that but serving a somewhat di erent town’s School of Foreign Service in Middle Eastern views of America have purpose and responsive to di erent, Qatar and taught there from 2005 to much to do with Islam and something more con ning rules.” 2008. From 2008 to 2010, he was act- to do with wounded pride. But he Lukacs insists, “the choice of ing chancellor of the American Uni- urges his American students today to every word is not only an aesthetic versity of Iraq. Tocqueville in Arabia see their Middle Eastern counterparts or a technical but a moral choice.” draws mainly on his Qatar years. But as caught up in the same democratic e consciousness of a historian the Cairo-born Mitchell, son of a dis- forces that have shaped them and to involves more than “facts,” which are tinguished Arabist, also spent part understand Middle Eastern anxieties themselves limited, and should be of his childhood in the Middle East, about democratic man as in part war- informed by right reading, especially and the book is deepened by his rich, ranted. of literature. “Our knowledge of personal relationship with that part Tocqueville’s democratic man history,” Lukacs says, “is of course of the world. emerges “amidst the ruins” of aristo- less than the entire past, but it is also Tocqueville in Arabia is the result, cratic society. Aristocratic man was more than the recorded past.” e says Mitchell, of an “imagined em- rmly linked to “family, to land, to best historians do not become slaves brace between Azar Na si’s Reading kingdom or empire, and ultimately of “categorical idealism” but cultivate Lolita in Tehran and Allan Bloom’s to the cosmos itself.” With the ad- what Russell Kirk and T.S. Eliot called Closing of the American Mind.” Like vance of equality, these arti cial links the moral imagination. Historians, the former, it “seeks to illuminate the largely dissolved, leaving human be- once they learn this truth, may even concerns of students in the distant ings liberated but weak and alone. If be the leaders in bringing light to lands of the Middle East.” Like the delinked democratic man can be “re- what otherwise could become a new latter, “it aspires to be a comprehen- linked” by means consistent with de- Dark Age. sive reection on the challenges fac- mocracy—such as civic associations, John Lukacs is well known not so ing America.” Above all, Tocqueville religion, and strong families—he may much for speaking truth to power as in Arabia “seeks to foster an un- become capable of ruling himself. If speaking truth to audiences he senses derstanding about one another that not, his isolation and anxiety at being have settled into safe and unexamined eludes Americans and Middle East- alone will cause him to depend on the opinions. is has earned him, among erners alike.” state to resolve his problems; he will friends and critics alike, a somewhat Mitchell nds the key to such an become “somnambulant,” “self-ab- curmudgeonly reputation. I trust, understanding in an unlikely place, sorbed,” and wont “to die alone, with however, that readers of this admirable Alexis de Tocqueville’s 19th-century cats.” introduction to one of the true classic Democracy in America. He fell Here is the problem for Mitchell’s creative geniuses of his profession will for Tocqueville as a postdoctoral fel- Middle Eastern and South American recognize not only Lukacs’s passion low at the University of Chicago and students. ey come “from societ- for truth but a certain humility born of has lived with and taught him every ies where aristocratic linkages still his profound understanding of human since. Mitchell’s argument begins prevail” or are at least remembered nature—and the sweetness as well as with his perplexity at the resistance fondly. Delinked democratic man is the fearlessness of a gentleman. to Tocqueville he encountered when “a source of terror for them.” Yet they he taught, early this century, in a de- are drawn to the prospect of freedom John Willson is professor emeritus of history clining Buenos Aires and an up-and- from the bonds of extended family and at Hillsdale College. coming Lisbon. Later he encounters religion. ey are, as Tocqueville puts
52 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 it, in “an intermediate age” between excessive love of equality, which aristocracy and democracy, “a glori- causes American students and their ous and troubled period, in which parents to demand a world in which conditions are not xed enough for nobody fails, to excessive impatience the intellect to sleep.” with authority and limits, which As for Mitchell’s American stu- causes them to adopt an easygoing dents, who have known nothing but “spirituality” in place of a demanding democracy, they cannot understand religion. this ambivalence. eir problem is Americans and Middle Easterners their inability to see the democratic share a dangerous wish to retreat from social order as anything other than the problems posed by democracy. the inevitable outcome of history or Middle Easterners long for “the per- to think of it as having virtues that ceived organic union of some bygone need support and vices that require age” or for “a revolutionary upheaval” vigilant opposition. e “challenges that puts an end to all troubles. Amer- facing America,” Mitchell thinks, icans, disengaged but experiencing stem mainly from such vices—from the anxieties that attend democratic life, take refuge in “-isms” that “prom- ise to put an end to the void in their lonely souls” without demanding they talk to their neighbors. Tocqueville’s work is a partial antidote to this prob- lem, “a sober defense of the coming [democratic] age” that “seeks to iden- tify its bene ts while warning against its dangers.” Tocqueville in Arabia succeeds in a task that would have seemed nearly impossible—that of making Toc- queville, who is o en pressed into service to comment on contemporary American life, a plausible commenta- tor on the contemporary Middle East. But Mitchell’s exercise has notable limits. Qatar is among the world’s wealthiest nations. It is stable, and it has virtually no unemployment. While only half of Mitchell’s students in Qa- tar were actually Qatari, one should be cautious about drawing conclu- sions about the Middle East from this unusual sample. More gener- ally, while Mitchell briey acknowl- edges brutality in Middle Eastern politics and the conspiracy theories that govern the “Arab Street,” mu- tual understanding would seem to demand a less sanitized view of the Michael Hogue preoccupations of young people in the region. Equally problematic, the students Mitchell o ers to help us under- stand seem atypical to me. Mitch-
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 53 Arts&Letters ell’s American students are more Get to Know world in 2011, and Mubarak came to money-oriented than almost any I represent the sort of authoritarianism have met in 15 years of teaching. ey Egypt’s Islamists that protesters across the region were say things like, “What is the value of demonstrating against. e protesters motherhood… if money is the only by MATTHEW FEENEY in Tahrir Square seemed to stand for value?” But they are also much more all who wanted democracy and liberal critical of capitalism than my stu- e Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of reforms. dents. ey sympathize with Marx an Islamist Movement, Carrie Rosefsky A er Morsi came to power the fact and “the fact of pro t making of- Wickham, Princeton, 384 pages that Egypt was to be led by a member of fends their understanding of justice.” the Muslim Brotherhood caused con- My students rarely sympathize with t is remarkable that a er years of cern among those segments of Egyp- Marx, and I have met but one who occupying countries with predom- tian society that had been comfortable professed to be o ended by the idea inantly Muslim populations—fol- with Mubarak’s rule. e Arab Spring of pro t. As for Mitchell’s students in Ilowing attacks motivated by a particu- had resulted not in the emergence of Qatar, it is not credible that when they lar brand of Islam—most Americans, a moderate Egyptian government but hear that America rejects the idea of including commentators and politi- one headed by a member of a politi- “permanent winners and losers, they cians, remain misinformed about the cal movement founded on Islamism. are “dismayed” and wonder “how can politicization of Islam and the e ect The Muslim Brotherhood’s electoral this be just?” Mitchell has already told Islamism has across this area of the successes naturally enough also re- us that these same students have been world. e recent war in Iraq and the vived discussions in America about the inuenced by Rousseau and Marx. ongoing conict in Afghanistan tragi- role of Islamist movements in Middle It is impossible not to conclude that cally highlighted the importance of Eastern politics and what U.S. foreign Mitchell, under the guise of describ- understanding demographic and sec- policy should be in the region. De- ing his students, sometimes draws tarian complexities in the Middle East mocracy promotion had been a pillar cartoon Tocquevillian democrats and and South Asia. of U.S. foreign policy under George W. aristocrats. Yet events across the Arab world in Bush—but what if the democrats who But as a whole, Mitchell’s portrait the last few years have made it clear came to power in the Middle East were of his students is a ecting, and I be- that it is not only in countries where distinctly illiberal ones? lieve him when he says that they nd American troops are patrolling streets Wickham’s book provides a fascinat- in Tocqueville a man who “reads or the CIA is conducting drone strikes ing historical account of the Muslim their own hearts.” Mitchell’s ca- that signi cant, unpredicted, and o en Brotherhood and its development over reer has taught him that students in violent political and cultural changes the decades, while also showing how America and the Middle East sense can take place. is is perhaps the most misguided much of the commentary that the tools they have for under- clear in Egypt. on the Muslim Brotherhood is. Wick- standing themselves are inadequate. Given Egypt’s crucial position as the ham argues that while the Muslim Good teachers dispose them to “so- Arab world’s most populous nation, it Brotherhood undoubtedly wants to licit help from the authors they read is especially welcome that Emory Uni- implement political change, it has itself so that they may understand [their versity’s Carrie Rosefsky Wickham has undergone transformations through- experience] more deeply.” With such written e Muslim Brotherhood, an out its history, prompted by political help, students may see further than accessible and informative analysis of reality. is dynamism makes char- “the blur of daily events” and the one of the most important and perhaps acterizing the Muslim Brotherhood’s “liberal triumphalism and colonial most misunderstood political organi- mission and the ambitions of its mem- indignation” that pass for an analysis zations in the Middle East. bers very dicult. of them. In June 2012 Mohamed Morsi, a One of the most revealing parts of Tocqueville in Arabia ends by argu- member of the Muslim Brotherhood, e Muslim Brotherhood is its exami- ing that support for liberal arts edu- was sworn in as president of Egypt af- nation of the group’s ideology, which cation in the Middle East is essential. ter elections held in the wake of huge is the key concern many in the West is view may seem quixotic, but popular protests that brought down the have with its involvement in Egyptian Mitchell makes a powerful case that it military-backed dictatorship of Hosni politics. e Muslim Brotherhood was is the long view—and the right one. Mubarak. Although not where the founded on a particular strict inter- Arab Spring began, Egypt had quickly pretation of Islamic law (Shariah) at Jonathan Marks is professor of politics at become the focus of attention amid the beginning of the last century, and Ursinus College. the wave of protests across the Arab it is today viewed by many in the West
54 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 as the embodiment of a worrying po- Ramadan would be considered toler- seems that the U.S. will continue to be litical Muslim worldview. But while it able as long as not promoted in public. viewed with suspicion—and in some may come as a surprise to an audience While far from ideal for anyone sym- cases anger—by whichever side is out of unfamiliar with Egyptian politics, for pathetic to liberalism, Morsi’s under- power, presenting American legislators some of the Muslim Brotherhood’s his- standing of political Islam is di erent with an awkward diplomatic situation. tory it has been a proponent of grant- from the sort of totalitarian fundamen- While e Muslim Brotherhood ing political rights to women, despite talism that the West o en associates provides an excellent account of the opposition from many members, and with Islamism. organization’s history and how it com- of democratic reform. It has also, like Egypt has become a recurring tar- pares to other Islamist movements any political movement, experienced get of libertarian-leaning legislators in the Middle East, the most valuable its share of internal conicts. in Congress, who highlight the fact lesson of Wickham’s book is that the Founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Ban- that aid continues to be handed out to Muslim Brotherhood is an example of na, the Society of the Muslim Broth- Cairo despite its illiberal leadership. how long-term politics in Egypt, like ers was only one religious organiza- While non-interventionists might anywhere else, is conducted with ideo- tion in Egypt that was reacting against well applaud criticisms of the Ameri- logical compromise and pragmatism. Western inuences in Egypt. Under can government’s policies relating to While Americans accept this as a given al-Banna’s charismatic leadership, the Egypt, Wickham highlights the fact in domestic politics, it is too easily for- movement grew to hundreds of thou- that the situation there—and the Mus- gotten when the political situations in sands of members only a little over lim Brotherhood’s inuence—cannot other countries are considered. a decade a er its founding—and the be understood simply as a resurgence A er reading Wickham’s book it entire population of Egypt in 1940 was of fundamentalist Islam that has been becomes easier to understand why so only around 17 million. Wickham’s brewing in the region for decades. many Egyptians feel that the Muslim account of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Indeed, non-interven- beginnings outlines not only what the tionists are not immune group stood for but also what it came to broad generalizations. to represent a reaction against—name- When Sen. Rand Paul (R- For some of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ly Western inuences and domestic Ky.) told an audience at history it has been a proponent authoritarianism, though Wickham CPAC this year, “I say not notes as well the Brotherhood’s own one penny more to coun- of granting political rights to women worrying relationship with authoritar- tries that are burning our and of democratic reform. ian governments in Europe. ag,” he was making a point To many observers in the West, it that resonates with Ameri- seems contradictory that the Muslim cans who want to scale Brotherhood has evolved and devel- back U.S. involvement in the rest of the Brotherhood is their only refuge. e oped in opposition to authoritarianism world, but he was also drawing a rather organization is exactly what the West while also advocating a strict interpre- tenuous link between the behavior of fears during times of political upheav- tation of Islam as a basis for personal some Egyptians and Egyptian ocials al—but during times of relative stabil- and political life, an interpretation that in government who happen to be mem- ity, it’s something more complex. With- if fully implemented would hardly be bers of the Muslim Brotherhood, an out the violence that followed Morsi’s characterized by tolerance. Wickham organization that Wickham points out removal, Wickham’s book would have explains how some members of the cannot be characterized in sound bites. been a fascinating examination of an Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership in- If noninterventionists want to be more inuential and o en misunderstood tend Shariah to be implemented. involved in foreign-policy decisions political movement. But given the One of the most fascinating parts of on Capitol Hill, they will have to move present situation in Egypt, the book the book is a discussion of an interview beyond rhetoric and deal with the com- provides more than just an interesting she conducted with Morsi in 2010 in plex political reality in places like Egypt. history of the Brotherhood—it also al- which he said that while the Muslim Anti-Americanism has been seen lows the reader to examine the coun- Brotherhood would allow for individ- in Egypt across the political spectrum. try’s most signi cant political change uals to doubt the foundations of Islam During the coup this summer, some in perhaps a generation with a more in private, the Muslim Brotherhood protesters bemoaned the U.S. relation- informed perspective. would prohibit the promotion of such ship with Morsi, with one memorable doubt in public. In fact, even homosex- sign reading, “Obama your bitch is our Matthew Feeney is assistant editor of Reason ual activities and breaking fast during dictator.” In contemporary Egypt, it 24/7 at Reason.com.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 55 Arts&Letters
Empire’s Aftermath ing positions their states’ resources no tails wagged dogs more o en than not. longer could sustain. Burleigh’s wide- Syngman Rhee leveraged American by WILLIAMA NTHONY H AY ranging account brings out the rela- backing to punish Korean rivals and tionship between political challenge consolidate a regime that relied heavily Small Wars, Far Away Places: Global and response, along with the dicul- on former collaborators with the Japa- Insurrection and the Making of the ties in understanding very di erent so- nese. Minimal oversight coupled with Modern World: 1945–65, Michael cieties from the outside. limited American knowledge of Korea Burleigh, Viking, 608 pages Challenges came thick and fast even gave Rhee considerable scope. Burleigh before 1945, although their implica- cites him as an early case in which the lthough the Cold War tions only gradually became clear. Ja- United States relied upon a charismatic dominated the half-century pan’s vicious campaigns in China had gure who spoke English—and played a er World War II, many devastated a country already torn apart to American preoccupations—instead of the regional struggles it by civil war and economic collapse. Its of indigenous movements with a wider Aovershadowed had e ects that only early victories upset the foundations popular base. Kim Il Sung, meanwhile, later came into focus. e end of em- of European colonial rule in Southeast cleverly used Stalin’s permission to in- pires—formal and otherwise—that Asia. e eventual defeat and occupa- vade South Korea as an opening to es- had brought order to much of the tion of Japan then le a power vacuum tablish a Communist regime under his world since the late 19th century in Korea, where local groups battled own family’s authority. e brutal war sparked vicious conicts. Indigenous for control. European powers faced he began prompted a major expansion movements with their own local dy- the dicult task of restoring control in American—and British—military namics shaped events beyond the con- over their lost colonies with limited spending while committing the United trol of statesmen in distant capitals, resources. British forces in Southeast States to holding back Communism who grappled with their own more Asia scrambled to hold a line until the across the Eurasian periphery. Reality immediate problems. Decolonization Dutch and French could take respon- on the ground mattered less than the established a host of new indepen- sibility, but nationalist movements in principle of thwarting aggression. dent states, many of which lacked the the colonies had changed the situation Mao Zedong’s 1949 victory over capacity to control their territories or to make the pre-war status quo un- Nationalist opponents and subsequent sustain public order. Older countries tenable. Amid this, the United States alignment with the Soviet Union al- recreated themselves with varying de- reluctantly abandoned its opposition ready had sparked an American de- grees of success through internal up- to colonialism, largely for fear of weak- bate over who lost China that begged heavals that reverberated across fron- ening sympathetic allies in Europe. the question of whether it had been tiers. Events that seemed peripheral to Dutch and French authorities consid- Washington’s to lose. Recriminations the developed world set the context for ered the prestige and revenue of their supported a hard line that guided pol- vexing challenges that dominate to- empires vital to their postwar recov- icy on Korea and Indochina. Indeed, day’s headlines. ery, but their fortunes varied sharply. events in China had spilled over bor- With Small Wars, Far Away Places, Washington forced the Dutch to give ders to destabilize both those regions. Michael Burleigh o ers a penetrating up Indonesia when nationalists there e domino theory, which originated and o en sardonic narrative of the proved able and willing to suppress with the French, set a sharper edge on struggles that formed the world as we communism. France, however, won the containment strategy George Ken- know it. Blending engaging charac- backing for a struggle in Indochina nan had developed to limit Communist ter sketches and telling vignettes with that became a bitter attritional war that expansion in Europe. It also imposed a geopolitical analysis, he presents the ended in a failure and soon drew the Cold War template of ideological rival- two decades a er 1945 from a vantage United States into the European colo- ry onto situations where very di erent point that provides illuminating per- nizer’s place. factors drove events. spective. Actions in those years set the As the Cold War escalated, the search European authority collapsed less path for later policies and established for allies drew the United States and precipitously in the Middle East than perceptions that are still hard to escape. Soviet Union into situations they might in Asia, but changes there raised the e United States took on a new global otherwise have avoided. Stalin tended costs of empire as returns diminished. role amidst the wreckage of World War to be cautious, pushing at what he per- Britain’s prewar colonial secretary, II, but Americans failed at rst to ap- ceived to be open doors but withdraw- Malcolm McDonald, had complained preciate how fully total war had dis- ing when facing opposition. Burleigh that while he had responsibility for 50 ordered the world. Leaders elsewhere shows how allies and protégés turned colonies, the Palestine mandate occu- had their own illusions about recover- superpower rivalry to their own ends: pied more than half his time. Keeping
56 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 peace between Jews and Arabs drew of a military coup. e gap between an today as a guide to counterinsurgency, Britain into an embarrassing counter- impoverished, alienated Muslim ma- reected that land’s particular circum- insurgency e ort that ended in unilat- jority and the colonists who dominated stances. e Communist insurgency eral withdrawal in 1948. Instead of a the North African possession bred an drew its manpower and support from negotiated partition, Jews and Arabs escalating crisis that French authori- an ethnic Chinese minority. Once the fought to secure favorable boundar- ties failed to manage. Withdrawal from British established military control to ies. Israel won a Jewish homeland at a département of metropolitan France contain the rebellion, police and intel- the price of ongoing strife that enabled seemed unthinkable, especially af- ligence work isolated guerillas and set Arab nationalists and later Islamic rad- ter defeat in Vietnam, but Charles de them against each other. Psychologi- icals to bid for popular support with Gaulle amputated what he considered cal warfare and measures to integrate extremist rhetoric. a diseased limb to prevent further con- the Chinese into Malayan society re- e low stakes for Britain in Pales- tagion. inforced targeted military operations tine made disengagement the rational Algeria’s nationalists then struggled that skillfully used mobility. e Brit- strategy, but di erent considerations among themselves without bringing ish operated from a position of military applied to Iran. Britain’s stake in Iran’s their country either stability or eco- strength against a minority group un- petroleum industry dated from its nomic development. early development to supply a fuel ere as elsewhere, source when the Royal Navy switched decolonization rarely The U.S. took on a new global role from coal to oil, and it provided vital met aspirations. Ex- revenue for Iran during the postwar pelling foreigners and amidst the wreckage of World War II, economic squeeze. When Moham- their local collabora- but Americans failed at first to appreciate med Mossadeq nationalized the in- tors seldom brought how total war had disordered the world. dustry as prime minister and stirred order or prosperity. popular agitation, a CIA-backed coup Modernization proj- overthrew his government in 1953. An ects, especially in Anglo-American consortium restored Muslim societies, prompted a popular able to draw mass support. Replicating something like the old status quo, but backlash that produced the now fa- the outcome elsewhere under di er- splitting revenue 50/50 with Iran along miliar struggles between Islamists and ence circumstances proved easier in the model of Aramco’s contract with military regimes. Endemic corruption theory than reality. Saudi Arabia. e underlying tensions alienates populations from rulers. Small wars that roiled distant places behind Mossadeq’s actions remained, Occasional victories mark exceptions over the 20 years a er 1945 highlight however, and Shia clergy, who had kept that illustrate the general pattern a er the diculty of maintaining political their distance from him, took up the 1945. e United States defeated the order amid deeper cultural and social initiative. Becoming an American pro- Hukbalahap movement in the Philip- upheavals. Understanding complex tégé, the shah leveraged the dependent pines by reinforcing military operations situations, particularly when they in- relationship with Washington to pro- with reform e orts that won the govern- volved di erent cultures, presented mote his own delusional ambitions of ment in Manila popular support. Con- diculties Western leaders rarely over- ruling a great power. taining and suppressing an insurgency came. Intervention all too o en en- Burleigh takes a dim view of Britain’s proved easier on islands than in other tailed a costly struggle or made outside imperial pretensions, which he paints areas where guerrillas could shelter powers the means to self-interested as a waste of resources that should have across borders. e social and political ends sought by local groups. Burleigh’s been used to modernize industry at reforms faded as the crisis passed, how- analysis underlines the limits of what home. Rather than acting as Greeks to ever, and the Philippines reverted to the outsiders can accomplish: seizing the provide wisdom to America’s Rome, status quo—albeit without unrest that golden hour of opportunity sometimes British leaders misread or mishandled outsiders could exploit. e appearance works to push events along a desired situations as much as their counter- of success provided an illusory model path, but all too o en the chance never parts in Washington or Paris, and per- that Americans brought to Vietnam really existed. Better to forgo transfor- haps with less excuse. Britain, however, when they took over there from the de- mative ambitions or dreams of glory paid a much lower price for its errors feated French. A policy aimed at defeat- when most pressing burdens, a er all, than France or the United States by ing Communism by bringing Lyndon are typically found at home. avoiding prolonged, costly wars that Johnson’s Great Society to the Mekong embittered politics at home. predictably ended in tears. William Anthony Hay is an historian at Algeria brought France to the brink British victory in Malaya, o en cited Mississippi State University.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 57 Taki
Too Much Money
he editor asked me to write could get a quickie into a four-star places the Russian mega-crooks deign a column reminding our hotel with rooms costing more than a not to look at. (All they had to do was readers that the world isn’t thousand bucks per night. Next to the bribe the authorities, which to a Rus- all vulgarity and gray bu- hotel, where charming small bistros sian crook is as natural as catching a Treaucracy, which reminds me of the used to serve cold beer and co ee and y ball was to Joe DiMaggio). time I was asked to write about the a good glass of red wine, the vulgar So, like a Wermacht ocer look- elegance of living in Miami. (Tom Frenchman has replaced them with his ing east and seeing nothing except Wolfe has plenty to say about the lat- Fendi and Celine fashion and leather Russkies, I see Cannes, Antibes, Nice, ter). e trouble with such an assign- megastores. It is only a matter of time and Monte Carlo having gone down ment is money. Take the case of St- before the boules players will be asked the drain, plus Sardinia, now a hell- Tropez, the once sleepy shing port to move, something not even the occu- hole. e Italian coast was ruined made famous by Brigitte Bardot and pying German army dared to do. ( ey long ago by the Italians themselves, other French beauties of the Fi ies. once parked a tank there, and thought which leaves only Sicily and Greece It has now turned into a showcase for better of it a er the players demon- as citadels against the vulgarians and the boutiques of France’s richest man, strated in a far more aggressive manner the nouveaux unacceptably riches. Bernard Arnault, who owns brands than the French army had done three is August I chartered Gerald and such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior years previously). St-Tropez now has Sara Murphy’s sailboat, Weatherbird, and Moët & Chandon. Every year turned into a giant designer store, and built in 1931, and sailed around the some friends and I would drop an- I for one am looking for another venue Peloponnese with my family. It was chor in St-Tropez harbor, take over for our annual regatta. beautiful and calm but hardly excit- a restaurant in the Place des Lices, Oh yes, I almost forgot. As the race ing. But there was a bonus to the trip. and challenge the locals to a game of always takes place on the rst week of I didn’t run into a single oligarch or boules, which is a bit like using the June, and most of us own classic boats, superyacht in the three weeks I sailed. center court of Wimbledon for a so- the harbormaster kept slots for us in I gave a birthday party for myself at- cial tennis match. e Place des Lices front of the main street in the harbor, tended by the Greek royals and some is famous for not being impressed where the famous Senequier bar and very old friends, then called it a day by famous people; if one’s friendly restaurant is located. Crowds would and ew back to Gstaad. at’s when and the locals like you, the game is gather with lots of banter from the the penny dropped. e world I used on. If not, au revoir les enfants. e drunken sailors and classic boat a - to know is no longer. I saw ten to 15 evening would start with drinks on cionados would take place. Early June Arab women, their heads and faces board, then dinner in the Place, the is a magical time on the Riviera, be- totally covered, walking up and down challenge with the locals, then more fore the great unwashed descend dur- main street, a horrible fat man in front drinks paid for by the winners, then ing July and August. No longer. e of them sort of showing the way. It was back on board for some sleep before Russian invasion has put a damper to a shock, sort of like going into La Sca- the next day’s sailing competition. all that. eir superyachts, including la and hearing rap music. Sorry, dear is year Mr. Arnault spent 30 mil- hookers in very high heels and loud editor, the world ain’t what it used to lion big ones transforming a wonderful rap music, have taken over all the be. And Miami is looking better by small hotel where some of our sailors good spots, relegating sailing boats to the minute.
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AmCon--Devine--08.23.2013.indd 1 8/23/2013 2:12:43 PM