Pat Buchanan’s Brain Wins Bernanke on Ice 10th Anniversary Issue MICHAEL B. DOUGHERTY W. JAMES ANTLE III CHARLES HUGH SMITH 2002–2012

NOVEMBER 2012

IDEAS OVER IDEOLOGY • PRINCIPLES OVER PARTY RIGHT WAY FORWARD America’s Hard Road Back From Empire and Insolvency When News Becomes 10TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL ISSUE

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ARTICLES FRONT LINES ARTS & LETTERS

14 Mind of the New Majority 6 France teaches that tradition 48 The Founders and Finance is more than means by Thomas K. McCraw a conservative. michael lind Michael Brendan Dougherty 7 , Britain’s mayor 50 In Search of the City on a Hill 21 Ten Years in the Right Freddy Gray by Richard M. Gamble A decade of The American 9 When elite education thomas e. woods jr. Conservative and its enemies clashes with quotas scott mcconnell 53 What’s the Matter With White People? by Joan Walsh 24 Who Killed Rudy Giuliani? 10 War is conservatism’s opposite florence king Ron Paul retires in victory. william s. lind 55 From the Ruins of Empire w. james antle iii by Pankaj Mishra 28 An Iceberg Called Bernanke Commentary vijay vikram “Beautiful deleveraging” is really 5 Our mission 57 The Short American Century “ugly inflation.” ed. by Andrew J. Bacevich Charles Hugh Smith 12 No exit for Iran daniel larison PATRICK J. BUCHANAN 32 How the Rich Rule 60 The Invisible Hand in Popular Libertarians know the financial 18 Who has the most nukes Culture by Paul Cantor system is rigged. per person? jordan bloom S heldon Richman R ussell Seitz 62 Government Bullies 38 The athP of Khan 36 Grover Norquist vs. the Pentagon by A cricket legend aims to lead michael d. ostrolenk james bovard Pakistan 42 Coming to terms with Christopher Sandford 63 Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the the Taliban People” returns 43 Close Encounter PHILIP GIRALDI N oah Millman The Cold War’s final issue R .J. Stove 46 America can do without a president BILL KAUFFMAN

66 Right from the beginning Cover illustration: Michael Hogue TAKI

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 3 Reactions

MODERNISM AND than with their people. of existence, but it is actually a perni- Somewhere between Patrick J. De- It’s now time, I believe, to apply cious and corrupting force. neen’s re-reading of Bloom and Dan- this thought to our national politics, JAMIE MALANOWKSKI iel McCarthy’s exaltation of modern- to wit: that our members of Congress Excerpt from a Washington Monthly ist tendencies (October 2012) is some and political party elites have more post substantial food for thought, but also a in common with each other than few troubling contradictions. they have with the rest of us. (This, “Our plutocracy now lives like the Brit- If one were to dig into the remark- of course, would go a long way to ish in colonial India: in the place and rul- ableness of Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles explaining the RINO phenomenon.) ing it, but not of it,” Mr. Lofgren wrote. d’Avignon,” one would invariably run But then, didn’t Orwell instruct us in “If one can afford private security, pub- into his African mask collection. Pi- Animal Farm that the members of the lic safety is of no concern; if one owns a casso, on one level, took an art form ruling class have more in common Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause that existed as a three-dimensional with each other than with the people less apprehension.” container of custom belonging to one they rule? Contrast this with Madi- It is jarring to hear this said of America, culture and converted it into a two-di- son’s observation in Federalist No. 57 precisely because of where else I’ve wit- mensional form of modernist, cultural than when leaders are distant from nessed it: in São Paulo, where rich Brazil- currency. If we have no recognition of the people, tyranny is inevitable. I am ians whiz above choked traffic in helicop- multiculturalism, how can we really puzzled that the Tea Party doesn’t call ters, live in doubly gated apartment blocks appreciate Picasso’s unique contribu- attention to the political wisdom of and resist revealing home addresses to tions, let alone the masks from which our founders, set forth in The Federal- GPS devices so as to prevent car thefts he drew inspiration? The charting of ist Papers. Or is the Tea Party basically from escalating into something worse; in the origins of appropriation in mod- no different from those who challenge New Delhi, where an upper-middle-class ern art is a necessary component for power merely to attain it? family might have its own private security understanding the depth of artistic Orwell, in 1984 made the point that guard, cook, driver, power generator and expression and the many levels of the Big Brother held power solely for pow- water treatment system, becoming almost perversion of theft (of which, the ma- er’s sake. Consider President Obama’s independent of the republic; in Port-au- ture artist is mostly cognizant). If the political fundraising process. (Also rel- Prince, where Haiti’s well-connected have notion of “many cultures” is an im- evant to 2012, the concept, in 1984, that their own special immigration lounge, perfect approach, why does it work so the news was whatever Big Brother said complete with tended bar. magnificently in works of art? it was.) To borrow the opening observa- From the vantage point of places like LARAY POLK tion in Federalist No. 57, I see the presi- these, America long represented some- Dallas, Texas dent’s big bucks donors as constituting thing different: “What’s great about this our neo-aristocratic class intent on the country is that America started the tra- REVOLUTIONARY RICH “ambitious sacrifice of the many, to the dition where the richest consumers buy Former Republican congressional aggrandizement of the few.” Indeed, essentially the same things as the poor- aide Mike Lofgren’s September ar- with the [likely] re-election of President est,” Andy Warhol once observed. He ticle on the secession of America’s fi- Obama, I see the “1984-ization” of the was thinking of Coca-Cola in particular, nancial elites set new records for speeding full steam ahead. but the observation was true of many TheAmericanConservative.com, attract- DAVID R. ZUKERMAN other things and practices: A generation ing more than 175,000 readers and Bronx, New York ago, the American rich and poor were 11,000 Facebook “likes.” The piece was more likely than now to sit side by side named to “best reads” lists at both The The most important article of the cen- at baseball games, to attend the same Daily Beast and BBC News. tury … so far, anyway, has appeared in schools, to live in similarly built families, The American Conservative. It is called to attend church about equally often, to Concerning Mike Lofgren’s observa- “Revolt of the Rich,” and it is by by live in the same areas and eat at more or tion that transnational elites have more Mike Lofgren, who spent 16 years as a less equivalent restaurants, as scholars in common with each other than with Republican staffer on House and Sen- like Charles A. Murray, Robert D. Put- their countrymen, while attending UN ate Budget Committees. In the article, nam and Michael J. Sandel have shown. sessions, in the 1970’s, with NGO cre- he makes a case that very few other Re- ANAND GIRIDHARADAS dentials, I concluded that the delegates publicans are willing to advocate: not Excerpt from the International Herald had more in common with each other only is wealth not the be-all and end-all Tribune

4 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 The American Conservative Publisher Ron Unz Editor Daniel McCarthy Senior Editors Rod Dreher Daniel Larison Mark Nugent { Vol. 11, No. 11, November 2012 } Editorial Director, Digital Maisie Allison Associate Editor Jordan Bloom National Correspondent Michael Brendan Dougherty Contributing Editors W. James Antle III, Andrew J. Bacevich, Conservatism’s Hour Doug Bandow, Jeremy Beer, James Bovard, Patrick Deneen, Michael Desch, Richard Gamble, Philip Giraldi, David Gordon, , fter every election half the remedies from invading Iraq to subsi- Freddy Gray, , Peter Hitchens, country sighs with relief dizing Solyndra—while a people hard Philip Jenkins, Christopher Layne, while the other gnashes its pressed by diminished opportunity Chase Madar, Eric Margolis, James Pinkerton, Justin Raimondo, Fred Reed, Stuart Reid, teeth. What remain con- and dwindling incomes stands ready Sheldon Richman, Steve Sailer, stant as Republicans and Democrats to accept whatever is offered. This is a John Schwenkler, Jordan Michael Smith, A R.J. Stove, Kelley Vlahos, Thomas E. Woods Jr. rotate through office are the intrac- mistake: careful analysis and consid- Associate Publisher table difficulties now faces. eration, a competent diagnosis, must Jon Basil Utley From budget surpluses and confi- precede any cure. Publishing Consultant dence in perpetual prosperity at the This is the task of the American Ronald E. Burr end of the 20th century, America has conservative and The American Con- Editorial Assistant arrived at trillion-dollar deficits and servative. The watchword is real- Vijay Vikram an economy razed by the Great Re- ism—in foreign policy, in economic Founding Editors cession. The “indispensable nation” reasoning, and in life. “The philoso- Patrick J. Buchanan, Scott McConnell, that emerged the indisputable victor phers have only interpreted the world; Taki Theodoracopulos in the Cold War 20 years ago is to- the point is to change it,” urged Karl The American Ideas Institute day a superpower still, but one mired Marx. But change—“regime change” President in the longest war of its history—in as practiced by President Bush, for Wick Allison Afghanistan, no less, graveyard of the example, or the “change” Barack

The American Conservative, Vol. 11, No. 11, Evil Empire—a superpower strategi- Obama promised in 2008—is never November 2012 (ISSN 1540-966X). Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Offic. Published 12 times a cally adrift in a disordered new world salutary reform unless one first un- year by The American Ideas Institute, 4040 of drone killings, terror, and rising derstands the realities of the situation. Fairfax Drive, Ste. 140, Arlington, VA 22203. regional powers. For America today, that means taking Periodicals postage paid Arlington, VA and additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA. What America needs most amid all a hard look at our strategy and diplo- POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The this is conservatism: not the ideology macy toward others, at our monetary American Conservative, P.O. Box 9030, Maple Shade, NJ 08052-9030. of any party, but a disposition to con- system as well as our taxes and spend- Subscription rates: $49.97 per year (12 issues) serve, and wisely invest, our national ing, at our social order and popular in the U.S., $69.97 in Canada (U.S. funds), and capital. The capital in question is not culture, and at religion and philoso- $89.97 other foreign via airmail. Back issues: $6.00 (prepaid) per copy in USA, $7.00 in merely financial; Lord Salisbury, in phy, examining all of these things not Canada (U.S. funds). an earlier era of humanitarian inter- through the lens of partisan politics For subscription orders, payments, and other subscription inquiries— vention and empire, warned against but with a keen critical eye. By phone: 800-579-6148 squandering “military capital” on un- This is hard work, to be sure, but (outside the U.S./Canada 856-380-4131) necessary and unwinnable conflicts. we undertake it cheerfully. For as we Via Web: www.theamericanconservative.com More important yet is our civiliza- wrote ten years ago in our inaugural By mail: The American Conservative, P.O. Box 9030, Maple Shade, NJ 08052-9030 tional capital—our habits and laws as issue, “We believe conservatism to be Please allow 6–8 weeks for delivery of your a people, the written and unwritten the most natural political tendency, first issue. Constitution. How has it fared? Our rooted in man’s taste for the famil- Inquiries and letters to the editor should be sent to [email protected]. For advertising civil and the civic fabric of iar, for family, for faith in God. We sales call Ronald Burr at 703-893-3632. For American life have lately been torn to believe that true conservatism has a editorial, call 703-875-7600. rags by both parties. predisposition for the institutions and This issue went to press on October 19, 2012. Copyright 2012 The American Conservative. Confronted by systemic crisis, the mores that exist,” and America needs parties prescribe a quick fix—quack it now more than ever.

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 5 Front Lines

within our culture to resolve our prob- Paris in Fall lems. The past has been cut off as a A traditionalist rediscovers American liberty in France. source of renewal. The elites of the left by Rod Dreher and the right only want to preserve their privileges. The French economy n October, I decamped with my tage, leaving European culture as it is is anti-entrepreneurial, and the French wife and children to Paris for a lived—as distinct from what one en- attitude towards absorbing immigrants month. You could probably fit counters in museums, churches, and li- rigid and unworkable. Iall the Francophile conservatives in braries—to either imported American That, plus the fact that America is a America in the elevator of my build- pop culture or postmodern relativism. far richer place for practicing and cul- ing, but I do love France, especially Jean-Louis, as I’ll call him, has little tivating Christianity, convinces Jean- Paris in the autumn. And as a con- patience for my American pessimism. Louis that America is where the future servative of traditionalist convictions Yes, he understands that Romney Re- happens. “I am a French patriot, I guess, and melancholic temperament, it was publicanism is uninspiring. And yes, but I’ve got so much faith in America, a pleasure to escape the final weeks he gets my point that America has and in America’s ability to solve its of a presidential contest between the deep-set problems it can’t seem to problems,” he says. “I’ve got to get out of multi-culti Jimmy Carter and an es- solve. Yet as dispiriting as conditions France, for the sake of my kids.” tablishment Republican who makes are for conservatives in America, he Don’t romanticize America, I warn. Bob Dole look like General de Gaulle. says over a lunch of choucroute garni, I talk about the deleterious conse- Given his weariness of the transience, it’s a paradise compared to France. quences our own Soixante-Huitards deracination, and galloping vulgarity “The French right is either racist, left us with and of the political stasis of his own culture, the American tra- illiberal and dirigiste”—the National preventing much-needed reforms in, ditionalist takes pleasure—intellectual, Front, he means—“or it’s completely for example, entitlement spending and spiritual, and aesthetic—in a pilgrimage statist. Did you know that 56 percent of education. to Europe. Yet it is difficult to see France our GDP comes from state spending?” “Here is the difference between today as a source of hope. For all its pros- I did not. In Europe, that number France and America,” Jean-Louis ri- perity and accomplishments, France no is second only to Denmark’s; it is also postes. “In France, we are stuck. In longer seems to be a place where the nearly triple the U.S. figure. Jean-Louis America, you think more creatively, and future happens. It has been a long time says that a material and psychologi- are more willing to do things different- since anybody looked to the French for cal dependence on the state pervades ly.” He mentions homeschooling, which new ideas in art, film, economics, poli- France and enervates initia- is legal in France, but relatively and tics, culture, or even cooking. tive. The French right, in his view, is as looked upon unkindly by the state. Its “The Soixante-Huitards destroyed compromised as the French left. growing popularity in America is, to everything,” says my young friend, a “France desperately needs a Marga- him, a sign of what people with liberty French writer from an established fam- ret Thatcher,” he says. “There will be no and initiative can do to improve things ily and the beneficiary of an elite educa- Thatcher for us.” for their children, especially to rekindle tion. “Those people from ’68, they left Jean-Louis, who is in his twen- appreciation of Western civilization. us with nothing. I call myself a conser- ties, says he is planning to emigrate to Jean-Louis’s parting words, from a vative, but in truth, I don’t know what America. This is hard for me to under- European to an American: “Cling to there is left to conserve in France.” stand, I say; though France is beset by your religion, desperately, and keep He explains that after the student- problems, it remains free, democratic, the government out of as much stuff as led upheavals of 1968, Europe de- and prosperous. possible.” cisively cut out the roots of its heri- Yes, he says, but we don’t have it Walking off lunch with a stroll

6 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 through the Luxembourg Gardens, I a French Catholic émigré friend in the lunch with Jean-Louis gave it fresh sa- found my spirits rallied by this conver- U.S., who told me that 15 years ago he liency in my mind. Unlike libertarian sation—and not in a “grass is always realized what Jean-Louis did and got conservatives, who focus on the pri- browner” way, either. out. Whatever the future holds, I will macy of choice, traditionalist conserva- Jean-Louis is right: for all our prob- come home to America with a gift from tives emphasize what is chosen. Yet to lems, we do have within the American Jean-Louis: more hope for the future of paraphrase Burke, , with character, and under American laws, my country than I had when I left. its exaltation of freedom and choice, the and liberty to build new That lunch in Paris, especially Jean- could be, in the American context, the institutions, to construct, as Alasdair Louis’s valediction, left me with an only effective political means of creat- MacIntyre said of the early medieval enlightening irony: that traditionalist ing the space for conservation of the Benedictines, “new forms of commu- conservatism, and the cultural renewal permanent things. nity within which the moral life could it promises, almost certainly requires Rolling back the state is no guaran- be sustained so that both morality and being more of a libertarian in politics tee of cultural change for the better, but civility might survive the coming ages than I have been. as Jean-Louis and other young French of barbarism and darkness.” Traditionalists believe that the de- conservatives tell me, the alternative In fact, just that morning, I sat read- bilitation of our culture is at the root of is a kind of suicide. You could build a ing the Odyssey as part of my older son’s the current crisis. Wiser traditionalists new culturally conservative but broadly school project. He is part of an entrepre- grasp that cultural restoration cannot be appealing politics on that. If America neurial educational effort some Chris- legislated any more than a garden can needs not a Margaret Thatcher or Ron- tian homeschooling parents founded be ordered to grow by act of Congress. ald Reagan, but a new St. Benedict to this past summer, in which our children Could it be that the kind of change we lead authentic cultural rebirth, our meet twice weekly for guided instruc- want can best be achieved not by impos- country also needs a new Ron Paul to tion in the classics. My son’s tutor en- ing it—a non-starter, by the way, with make that politically possible. couraged us to take this family trip to younger generations of voters—but by Paris, to give the boy a deeper under- limiting the state’s power? Rod Dreher is a TAC senior editor. His blog is standing of our tradition—in the belief This is not a new thought, but my www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher. that true education entails far more than what can be regurgitated on standard- ized tests. Homeschooling families are, in many ways, the new Benedictines of Boris Johnson’s Coup whom MacIntyre wrote. My son came to Paris from faraway London’s mayor is pagan, popular, and aspires to be prime minister. America in part to learn more about by FREDDY GRAY the things that make him a child of the great Western tradition: Greek, Ro- n a windy September day in chant started up: “Bo-ris! Bo-ris! Bo- man, and above all, Christian. He can London, I went out to see the ris!” And there he was, Boris Johnson, do this in large part because of Ameri- post-Olympics “victory pa- mayor of London. He milked the adu- can liberty—specifically, the tradition- Orade.” I found a good spot by a railing lation. “Thank you all for coming,” he alist belief in Burke’s small platoons on a street in Westminster, near the said, as if it were his party—which, in of civil society and a libertarian con- Houses of Parliament, and watched a way, it was. viction that the state ought to keep its as Britain’s Olympians and Paralym- It’s been a great year for Alexander hands off the private realm. A bright pians filed past in their tracksuits and Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the journalist young French Catholic conservative wheelchairs, showing off their medals. turned would-be Conservative prime believes that my son, as an American, The atmosphere was cheerful, even minister. In May, he won re-election has a better chance of holding onto the jubilant. Suddenly, though, I heard a as London mayor. Then, in time for great tradition than his children, citi- collective groan: David Cameron, the the Olympics, he transformed himself zens of a republic in which people have prime minister, had appeared, flanked into a sort of national mascot, popping lost the capacity to renew their culture by security men. “What’s he bloody up everywhere, spreading good cheer. and affirm their civilization. doing here?” shouted a man on my left, He mocked , who had For France’s sake, I hope Jean-Louis and others laughed. Cameron waved suggested that London was not ready is wrong, but I have heard the same awkwardly and hurried on. He must to host the games, and everybody fell thing from other thoughtful French have been able to hear the roar behind about laughing. Even Johnson’s sup- conservatives on this voyage, and from him. Another hero was coming. A posed gaffes—episodes that might

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 7 Front Lines

He’s a libertarian and something of a libertine. He’s in favor of gay rights and recently upset religious groups by saying that Britain needed “to move beyond the stone age” and redefine ASSOCIATED marriage. Certainly, he doesn’t seem constrained by his own marriage vows. He has no interest in Christianity, be- yond a fondness for Anglican Hymns and the King James Bible. He’s a pagan, really, obsessed with classical literature and his sense of his own . “He’s very superstitious,” says Mary Wake- field, his friend and former colleague. “If he saw BJW on a car number plate, for instance, he’d think that meant Bo- ris Johnson Wins. “ Yet Boris’s outlandishness is exactly what people outside of the right like about him. He is a great anti-politician, Boris Johnson, mayor of London the opposite of slick. He always looks and acts unprepared. His hair—the have sunk another politician—worked hailed as the man who could save the much discussed “blond mop”—is pro- in his favor. A funny video of him stuck party. (Cameron may be prime minis- fessionally messy. He seems to get the on a zip wire during a botched public- ter, but he governs in coalition with the joke, too, in a way that no other mod- ity stunt went viral. That’s our Boris, Liberal Democrats.) Polls suggest that ern statesman does. He can’t stop him- everyone thought. Johnson-led party might be as much self from acknowledging the absurdity Until recently, talk of Johnson suc- 50 seats better off than under David of being a public figure. Young people ceeding Cameron was not much heard Cameron. The question today is not love him, according to the polls. Every- outside newspaper offices and West- whether Boris will make a bid for the thing he touches instantly becomes im- minster pubs. Dave vs. Boris seemed leadership, but when and how. bued with a hilarious Borisness. a fun story—two upper-middle-class Boris still publicly professes loyalty For now the gods seem to be smiling boys who went to Eton and Oxford, to Cameron. Yet his private but well- on BJ, but as a classicist he must know locked in a fierce rivalry—but not reported contempt for Cameron— that nemesis awaits. “Boris mania” will much more. Serious politicos scoffed whom he regards as an intellectual in- ebb. As he gets closer to real power, at the thought of Boris as PM. He has ferior—is shared by many disgruntled and the seriousness of his ambition to see out his term as mayor, they said, Tories, and he has been successfully becomes clear, his carefree image starts which would keep him out of Parlia- maneuvering against the prime minis- to look false. All that jollity might even ment until 2016. The next general elec- ter for some time. As London mayor, seem a little sinister. Max Hastings tion will be in 2015. In August, a book he has outflanked Cameron on the wrote a much-read piece in the Daily called Prime Minister Johnson and right, while using his superior charms Mail in which he said that Boris was Other Things That Never Happened was to endear himself to the middle. While not to be “trusted with your woman published. Cameron ducks questions of Britain’s or your wallet.” Others described his But that’s old hat now. In the sum- membership of the European Union, light-hearted tribute to David Camer- mer, the Westminster experts suddenly Boris has signed a “people’s pledge” on at the party conference—“If I am a realized that Boris had become some- for an in-or-out referendum. While mop ... then you are a broom, a broom thing new in British politics: a genu- Cameron annoys right-wingers with that is sweeping up the mess left by the inely popular right-wing politician. his commitment to subsidized green Labour government”—as “menacing.” Journalists began pointing out, again energy and international aid, Boris at- Cameron, by contrast, seems posi- and again, that he is the only active tacks the governing coalition for fail- tively gracious and restrained, and he Conservative politician to have won a ing to support the “struggling middle” emerged from the recent party con- major election. At the Conservatives’ of society. ference in better standing than any- annual conference in October, he was Boris is not a traditional conservative. body had anticipated. He laughs when

8 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 Boris ribs him in public and has taken message and explain our vision and been horrifying, they had taken place to praising his rival at every opportuni- values.” It would be an irony if, rather 30 miles away over the hills—events ty. “I have got the opposite of tall poppy than sinking Cameron, Boris ended you saw on television rather than expe- syndrome,” he said, when asked about up reminding Conservatives why they rienced in daily life. Boris’s success. “I like having other liked him in the first place. But the ideological tide of the late people in the Conservative Party who 1960s had begun seeping into the pub- are popular, who get out there, talk our Freddy Gray is assistant editor of . lic education system, gradually replac- ing the post-Sputnik push for rigorous academic quality with a focus on “ex- No Quotas, No Elite Public High School perimentation,” with “New Math” and “Whole Language,” while the bench- How Los Angeles undercut its pathbreaking IHP project mark for success shifted from excel- by RON UNZ lence to “equity” or “diversity.” Meanwhile, a long political battle n late September I attended a me- enth graders was enrolled, and this was over proposed forced busing for racial morial service for William M. Fitz- repeated again the following year, with integration—possibly involving daily Gibbon, a retired public school IHP now containing three teachers round-trips of 50 miles or more—be- Iteacher who had passed away a few and close to 100 seventh through ninth came the absolute centerpiece of edu- weeks earlier, just short of his 78th graders, representing the tiniest sliver cational politics and provoked a white birthday. of the half-million-plus Los Angeles exodus from the schools. Unlike on Without doubt Bill Fitz-Gibbon— Unified School District. And I had be- the East Coast, virtually all ordinary “Fitz” to everyone—was the individual come part of that sliver, entering IHP Angelenos had traditionally attended who had the greatest academic influ- as a seventh grader in 1973. local public schools, but over a decade ence on my life, and my feelings were Within a few years the program had or so a substantial fraction nervously shared by many others, with hundreds begun to achieve impressive results, switched to newly established private of his former students from the last 35 with eighth and ninth graders passing academies. By the time the busing pro- years attending the service, held at Wal- Advanced Placement exams for college posals finally died in court, the LAUSD ter Reed Junior High in the San Fernan- credit, the same sort of APs normally had suffered a huge loss of its previ- do Valley area of Los Angeles. But what taken only by the top 11th and 12th ous middle-class enrollment, and the made his achievement so remarkable is graders at other leading schools. Reed’s school board had become ideologically that his decades of teaching had almost IHP became the first and only junior polarized to an extreme degree. entirely been spent—with only mixed high school in America success—trying to climb up the down where a sizable fraction escalator of American education. of the students were do- Reed’s IHP became the first and only Unlike most MIT science graduates ing college-level work. junior high school in America where with exceptional IQs, he was drawn The obvious next step— to teaching, first at private schools in part of the plan from the a sizable fraction of the students Switzerland and England and later in very beginning—was were doing college-level work. suburban Los Angeles. He decided the to extend the program existing system was inadequate for the to the upper grades, most able and saw the need for an aca- thereby creating a public school whose This was the landscape in fall 1984 demically elite public school similar to achievements would rival those of any when I returned to California as a Stuyvesant and Bronx Science in New in the world. But over three decades it Stanford grad student in theoretical York. So in 1971, with the approval of never happened, and therein lies a tale. physics, after having spent years away his principal and working with two on the East Coast and in England. other teachers, he established his major Although LA schools had never en- With the IHP track record now long legacy, the Individualized Honors Pro- joyed the reputation for academic excel- and impressive, I believed the time gram (IHP) at Reed in North Holly- lence found in some East Coast cities, might be right to create the intended wood, taking in some 30 seventh grad- they had also never faced the same sort high school, and working with the IHP ers, mostly from the local area but with of bitter racial struggles. The suburban teachers and a couple of other IHP some drawn from across Los Angeles. Valley was entirely middle class and alumni, we began the project. When these students moved up to well over 90 percent white in those days, At first, things went extremely well. the eighth grade, a new group of sev- and although the 1965 Watts Riots had IHP’s academic results were amazing,

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 9 Front Lines but had never been noticed by the me- The Los Angeles School Board soon created a successful television sit- dia, so sending out a few simple press members went back to fighting over com called “Head of the Class,” which releases quickly attracted outstanding unionization issues and planning ran from 1986 to 1991 and featured coverage, including a front-page story their future races for city council. Bill ten ultra-bright students in a public in the Los Angeles Times and a full-page Fitz-Gibbon spent another 20 years school program called “IHP.” The show article in Time. teaching at IHP, always hoping to ex- launched the career of Robin Givens, With such strong media coverage, tend the program to high school, but Mike Tyson’s future wife, while one of we gradually recruited an impressive with no more luck than before. And the other students was actually played advisory board of supporters, includ- I became so disgusted at our failure by a Reed IHP graduate. ing six Nobel Laureates, the president that a college friend finally persuaded Naturally, the show itself was set in of Caltech, the president of the Ameri- me to take a summer job writing soft- New York City, since everyone knows can Physical Society, a past chairman ware on Wall Street, a decision that that a high-powered academic program of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commis- unexpectedly marked my permanent like that could never exist in an educa- sion, and a former president of the defection from a planned academic tional backwater such as Los Angeles. Harvard Law Review. Leading local career in theoretical physics. high-technology companies endorsed The only long-term consequence Ron Unz is publisher of the The American the effort, and prominent university of our years of effort was that ABC Conservative and founder of Unz.org. professors expressed interest in teach- ing at the school part-time, including a Caltech Nobel Laureate. By 1986, we had developed an out- Why Conservatives Hate War line of our proposed School for Ad- Conflict erodes a nation’s cultural continuity as well as its finances. vanced Studies and its full curriculum. by WILLIAM S. LIND Even more importantly, we had at- tracted the backing of the Los Angeles- ne of the odder aspects of about social and cultural revolu- based Weingart Foundation, which present-day politics is the as- tions in the United States, including a offered to provide $3.5 million in sumption that if you are anti- large-scale movement of women out supplemental private funding to help Owar you are on the left, and if you are of the home and into the workplace. establish the program. conservative you are “pro-war.” Like Nineteenth-century reformers had la- All that remained was receiving labelling conservative states red and bored successfully to make it possible authorization from the Los Ange- liberal states blue, this is an inversion for women (and children) to leave the les School Board, but that last hurdle of historical practice. dark satanic mills and devote their proved insurmountable. For nearly The opposition to America’s entry lives to home and family, supported two decades, the board had been bit- into both World Wars was largely led by a male breadwinner. The Victori- terly split down the middle between by conservatives. Senator Robert A. ans rightly considered the home more right-wing and left-wing factions. Al- Taft, the standard-bearer of postwar important than the workplace. A man’s though the conservatives generally conservatism, opposed war unless the duties in the world of affairs were a supported our effort, they hardly con- United States itself was attacked. Even burden he had to carry to provide for sidered it a major priority, while some Bismarck, after he had fought and won his household, not something women of the “progressives” hated it, viewing it the three wars he needed to unify Ger- should envy. as the worst sort of educational elitism. many, was staunchly antiwar. He once This happy situation was overturned In particular, they demanded that described preventive war, like the one in both world wars as men were drafted students be selected by strict racial America is being pressured to wage on by the millions while the demand for proportions, which we believed would Iran, as “committing suicide for fear of factory labor to support war produc- destroy the program. One of the front- being killed.” tion soared. Back into the mills went page newspaper articles quoted board Conservatives’ detestation of the the women. The result was the weaken- member Jackie Goldberg as saying, “If war has no “touchy-feely” origins. It ing of the family, the institution most they don’t want quotas, they don’t want springs from conservatism’s roots, its responsible for passing the culture on a public school.” With LAUSD refusing most fundamental beliefs and objec- to the next generation. to allow the school, we explored vari- tives. Conservatism seeks above all so- The threat war poses to the cake of ous other options, but none of them cial and cultural continuity, and noth- custom is exacerbated by one of its materialized, and our efforts eventually ing endangers that more than war. foremost characteristics: its results are faded away. In the 20th century, war brought unpredictable. Few countries go to war

10 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 expecting to lose, but wars are seldom ate the powerful, centralizing federal could not compete with London, his won by both sides. The effects of mili- government they sought by going to response was, “A war for the Scheldt? tary defeat on social order can be revo- war. It was they, the left, who A war for a chamber pot!” That lutionary. engineered America’s entry into 50.6 was a genuinely conservative re- Russia’s involvement in World War World War I. Nearly a century 50 action. I gave us Bolshevism. Germany’s de- later, 9/11 gave centralizers in Real conservatives hate war. feat made Hitler possible. As the First the neocon Bush administra- If that now sounds as strange as World War shows, if a conflict is costly tion the cover they needed for thinking of blue as the conserva- enough, the victors’ social order can the “Patriot Act,” legislation that tive color, we can thank a bunch suffer nearly as badly as that of the would have left most of Amer- of (ex?)-Trotskyites who stole our vanquished. Not only did the British ica’s original patriots rethinking name, and a military-industrial- Empire die in the mud of Flanders, but the merits of King George. Just congressional complex that has postwar Britain was a very different as nothing adds more to a state’s bought right and left alike. If place from Edwardian Britain. debt than war, so nothing more history is a guide, and it usually The plain fact is, conservatives increases its power. Conserva- is, the price for the nationalist loathe unpredictability. They also tives rue both. right’s love of militaries and war know that vast state expenditures and When Edmund Burke, gener- is likely to be higher than we can debts can destabilize a society, and no ally regarded as conservatism’s to imagine. activity of the state is more expensive 18th-century founder, was faced than war. America’s adventure in Iraq, in Parliament with a proposal for William S. Lind is director of the driven in no small part by the quest for a war to ensure the river Scheldt American Conservative Center for 25.2 oil—which will now mostly go to Chi- in the Austrian Netherlands Public Transportation and author of na—has already cost a trillion dollars, remained closed so Antwerp the Maneuver Warfare Handbook. with another trillion or two to come caring for crippled veterans. Even the peacetime cost of a large military can break a country, as it broke the . American conservatives used The Comedy of Deterrers Some per capita nuclear to be budget hawks, not warhawks. Overkill has survived three decades of throw weight ratios: If we look beyond dollars, francs, disarmament in the few nations still pounds, and marks, the toll of war stockpiling more than enough nuclear Russia vs. U.S.: 3 to 1 weapons to vaporize themselves: grows endless. After World War I, Pakistan vs. India: 5 to 1 there were no young men on the Megatons per million population Israel vs. Pakistan: 460 to 1 streets of Paris. As one British observer Kilotons per square mile noted, the German casualty lists from Estimates of Israel's current the early battles in that war read like stockpile reflect the continuing 7.42 exodus of third generation weapons the Almanach de Gotha, the book that design expertise from the former catalogued the German nobility. Most Soviet Union. frighteningly to conservatives, wars like World War I can destroy a whole culture’s faith in itself. It may well be that European civilization’s last chance .54 .62 .7 .47 1.9 for survival was a German victory on Russia the Marne in 1914. U.S. U.K. .5 One gain that comes out of war is France .001 .000004 .24 .09 as disturbing to conservatives as any .11 .04 N. Korea Israel China of the losses: an aggrandizement of Pakistan state power. The argument of “war- .02 .025 time necessity” runs roughshod over India all checks and balances, civil liberties, and traditional constraints on govern- ment. In the 20th century, American Text: Russell Seitz progressives knew they could only cre- Art: Michael Hogue

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 11 Made in America Patrick j. Buchanan

No Exit for Iran

n diplomacy, always leave your Iran building a bomb in the face of a oil exports are down to 800,000 barrels adversary an honorable avenue of U.S. commitment to go to war to pre- a day, a third of what they were a year retreat. vent it: “Let’s even imagine that we have ago. The cost of food and medicine is Fifty years ago, to resolve a Cu- an atomic weapon, a nuclear weapon. soaring. Inflation is running officially Iban missile crisis that had brought us to What would we do with it? What intel- at 25 percent. Foreign travel is drying the brink of nuclear war, JFK did that. ligent person would fight 5,000 Ameri- up. Workers are going unpaid. He conveyed to Nikita Khrushchev, se- can bombs with one bomb?” “We’re close to seeing mass unem- cretly, that if the Soviet Union pulled its Ahmadinejad did not mention that ployment in cities and queues for social nuclear missiles out of Cuba, the United Israel has 200 to 300 nuclear weapons. handouts,” an Iranian-born economic States would soon after pull its Jupiter He did not need to. The same logic ap- adviser to the European Union told missiles out of Italy and Turkey. plies. Reuters. “There are few alternatives for Is the United States willing to allow And Tehran seems to be signaling it those people, and many will end up on Iran an honorable avenue of retreat, if is ready for a deal. the bread line.” Last week, merchants it halts enrichment of uranium to 20 According to the United Nations’ marched on parliament and had to be percent and permits intrusive inspec- watchdog agency, Iran recently con- driven back by police using tear gas. tions of all its nuclear facilities? Or are verted more than one-third of its 20 An Iranian businessman in Dubai U.S. sanctions designed to bring about percent enriched uranium into U308, told Reuters: “Business is drying up. not a negotiated settlement of the nu- or uranium oxide, a powder for its Industry is collapsing. There’s zero in- clear issue, but regime change, the fall medical research reactor. vestment. … I see it with my own eyes.” of the Islamic Republic, and its replace- also reported In short, the oil embargo and econom- ment by a more pliable regime? that Iran had proposed to European ic sanctions, what Woodrow Wilson If the latter is the case, we are likely officials a plan to suspend the enrich- called the “peaceful, silent, deadly rem- headed for war with Iran, even as our ment of uranium in return for the lift- edy,” are working, and Ahmadinejad— refusal to negotiate with Tokyo, whose ing of sanctions. By week’s end, Iran who leaves office next year—is rapidly oil we cut off in the summer of 1941, was denying it. losing support. led to Pearl Harbor. Yet common sense suggests that if So a new question is now on the What would cause anyone to believe Iran is not determined to build a nu- table. If Iran advances ideas to demon- Iran is willing to negotiate? clear weapon, it will eventually come to strate convincingly that it has no weap- There are the fatwas by the ayatol- the table. Why? Because, if Iran is not ons program, but insists on having a lahs against nuclear weapons and the seeking a weapon, no purpose is served peaceful nuclear program under UN consensus by 16 U.S. intelligence agen- by continuing to enrich. inspection, will America accept that? cies in 2007, reaffirmed in 2011, that Iran already has enough 20 percent Or will we, seeing the economic cri- Iran has no nuclear weapons program. enriched uranium for medical isotopes sis deepening, make demands so hu- Even the Israelis have lately concluded and more than enough 5 percent en- miliating no Iranian government can that the Americans are right. riched uranium for its power plant. accept them, because our true goal is Nor has the United States or Is- Further enrichment gives Iran nothing and has always been regime change? rael discovered any site devoted to in the way of added security, but it does No one would weep if the Islamic the building of nuclear weapons. The ensure that the severe sanctions will be Republic fell. But this is a tough crowd deep-underground facility at Fordow sustained and perhaps tightened. And that will not go quietly. If we give them is enriching uranium to 20 percent. those sanctions are creating tremen- no way out, only a choice between na- There are no reports of any enrichment dous hardships on the Iranian people. tional humiliation or escalation, the to 90 percent, which is weapons grade. In two weeks, Iran’s currency, the hard-liners in the regime and Repub- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahma- rial, lost a third of its value. It is at an lican Guard will likely take the death- dinejad has lately mocked the idea of all-time low against the dollar. Iran’s before-dishonor course.

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Mind of the New Majority Pat Buchanan is more than a conservative—he’s Nixon meets Spengler.

by MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY

atrick J. Buchanan stood beside a window in a “paleoconservative.” The man who wrote incendi- Chicago’s Conrad Hilton hotel during the ary editorials on Goldwater’s behalf for the St. Louis 1968 Democratic convention and looked Globe Democrat, who attends Latin Mass regularly, over the panorama of dissent raging below. and who injected the term “culture war” into the PAt about two in the morning, the phone rang—it heart of political discourse is certainly a conserva- was Nixon. “Buchanan, what is happening there?” tive. But that label is incomplete. “I said, ‘Listen’,” Buchanan recalls, then panto- In media, he is the pioneer pundit. mimes how he stuck the phone out the hotel win- and scores of others from all political backgrounds dow. “All you could hear was ‘F-you Daley! F-you learned the trade from him. His three-hour radio Daley!’” show with Tom Braden evolved into a television “That’s what’s going on,” he told Nixon, and hung program and later spawned “Crossfire” and “The up. He smiled taking it in. McLaughlin Group.” But few other columnists or Later the police, tired of the verbal abuse being talking heads match his depth. If a cable news pro- hurled at them, charged into the park and at the pro- gram is on in the background and you hear the testors, looking for a brawl. “The cops shouldn’t have words “Agincourt” or “the snows of Canossa,” it is done it,” says Buchanan, remembering the savage Buchanan, inevitably, speaking them. way they beat the demonstrators. “But the country But he is not just a media figure, either. In that saw the pictures of cops racing into the park. And time of tumult before the 1968 election, National Re- the country was with the cops.” view publisher Bill Rusher asked Pat, “Are you Nix- The continental plates of America’s politics were on’s ambassador to the conservatives, or are you our grinding into new positions beneath Buchanan’s ambassador to Nixon?” He replied, “I’m Nixon’s.” feet. That shift tilted ethnic whites and eventually As a journalist, political operative, candidate, and Southern evangelicals into the Republican coali- thinker, Buchanan is above all a man of Nixon’s New tion, awarding the party five of the next six presi- Majority—something much broader and larger than dential elections, including two 49-state victories. In the conservative movement has ever been. a phrase crafted by Buchanan, Nixon called it “the He never captained that majority as a politician great silent majority.” Buchanan prefers to call it the himself, though he aspired to in his campaigns for New Majority. the presidency. But along the way Buchanan built In the generalizations of political history, Buchan- a surprisingly durable estate as a journalist and au- an—as a wordsmith and veteran of two Republican thor, defending the New Majority’s interests and ca- White Houses—is lumped with the broad postwar joling Republicans to reconnect with them. On the conservative movement. Since the Cold War ended one hand, his columns have the same energy and and that movement degenerated into a set of inter- locking cliques, he has been identified more finely as Michael Brendan Dougherty is TAC’s national correspondent.

14 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 fire as once characterized reaction- ary luminaries like Westbrook Pegler at their anti-FDR finest—all joyous tub-thumping on behalf of Middle America, giving the impression of the

merry warrior. In those columns, lib- Press the Meet for Images Getty erals are sparring partners, foils, and fools. On the other hand, there is an ele- giac quality to many of Buchanan’s books, which now fill an entire shelf. Although the books may be pegged to the political battles of the time they were published, when Buchan- an writes between hard covers the spirit of German philosopher Oswald Spengler and American anti-commu- nist is in the work: Western civilization is exhausted, sui- cidal, and dying. Liberalism, now in the forms of multiculturalism, mass immigration, deindustrialization, and the sexual revolution, is the philoso- phy that justifies and celebrates the end of Western civilization. If ever that seems overwrought, consider that the American culture he knew had been utterly erased. When explaining it himself, Buchan- an points to the year his father was born, 1905. “Then the Western pow- ers, the United States, and Japan ruled the whole world. Now all the empires Pat Buchanan on the set of Meet the Press in 2007 are gone. The great armies and navies are gone. The countries have been reduced to their had versed him in what Buchanan calls all the “old basic size, their birthrates beneath what is necessary conservative issues,” such as how America got into to reproduce themselves, and they are subject to in- the Spanish-American War and World War I. On vasions of various kinds from the subjects of their Saturdays at his father’s accounting office, the young former empires,” he says. Pat Buchanan read the anticommunist wordsmiths For Buchanan, the cultural changes are just as dra- of his day, Westbrook Pegler and George Sokolsky. matic and unsettling. In his biography Right From The Both held flaming pens, revolted against the New Beginning he recalls times in the 1960s when one of Deal, supported Joe McCarthy, and wanted Robert his brothers dumped stacks of Playboy he was sup- A. Taft over Dwight Eisenhower as leader and sym- posed to deliver around Washington, D.C. into the bol of the Republican Party. Although Pegler would dumpster. Another set a rack of girlie magazines on later go to such extremes that even the John Birch fire in a local store. This was commended by the their Society threw him out, he was once so prominent family and community as “Catholic action” in soci- that he was considered along with F.D.R. and Stalin ety. Half a century later, porn star Jenna Jameson is for Time’s Man of the Year in 1942. These were con- widely hailed as an entrepreneur and enthusiastically servatives before the conservative movement. endorses the Republican candidate for president. Their influence is still seen in the way Buchan- It wasn’t always clear to Buchanan that he would an writes a column. Unlike the clever interludes become a writer. He didn’t want to be an accountant of David Brooks or the verbal curlicues of Peggy like his father, nor enter the priesthood. But his father Noonan that feel like being wrapped in a down blan-

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 15 Ideas

ket, a Buchanan column is like being doused with After a few years, he wanted to get closer to the gasoline and threatened with a lit match. “I don’t action—to be in politics. Running for office made no know that it is a style,” he says on reflection, “I write sense, as he was a Washington, D.C. native. So he and I cut, tightening and tightening and tightening it looked at how well Jack Kennedy’s aides were doing, until it is pure dynamite, and then I send it out.” The especially Ted Sorenson, whom Kennedy had called “New Journalism” of the 1960s was almost insensible his “blood bank intellectual.” to him: “They were all into the perpendicular pro- “You’d see these pictures of this guy leaning over noun, ‘I’ and ‘me’. I don’t get into that,” he says. behind the president,” Buchanan says. “If I can’t be Out of Columbia University’s Graduate School of the president I could be the guy leaning over there.” Journalism, Buchanan had a few offers. He took one The man Buchanan cared to lean over was Rich- from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, hoping to be seen ard Nixon, whom Buchanan successfully impressed by the and other major newspapers. at a party, mentioning that he wanted to be a part of Very quickly he ended up as an editorial writer for the whatever Nixon did in 1968. Nixon hired him to help conservative paper, and Buchanan’s short-fuse, big- with correspondence and other writing, but mainly bang editorials were recirculated by they shared ideas and analysis, with Buchanan sum- and the Manchester Union Leader. He wrote against marizing and interpreting the news and the mood of unions and for —but also in favor of the country or working as an advance man. reforming Missouri’s penitentiary system. He edited What was happening in the country was obvious columns by new conservatives like William F. Buckley to them. The New Deal coalition that had been so Jr., whom he admired but from a distance. powerful was cracking up. Ethnic whites and South- ern evangelicals balked at the Great Society of Johnson and were disturbed by the social transformations around them. While many in the elite were sympathetic to student protestors, that Silent Majority feared and detested them. “Like FDR did with the malefac- tors of great wealth and the Wall Street crowd, you say that these people have declared themselves hostile to us. And by 1968 they were carrying flags and chanting ‘Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh’,” Bu- chanan recalls. Beating the left was easy then. After the Nixon White House melt- ed in scandal, Buchanan became the chief theorist of Nixon’s coalition, in his books Conservative Votes, Liberal Victo- ries and The New Majority, which talked up the possibilities of realignment. To Buchanan, Republicans could become the party of Middle America, capture the bulk of the New Deal coalition, and leave Democrats with the detritus of Woodstock. “We were squares,” says Buchanan, “and happy.” The thesis of Conservative Votes struck a chord that rings true to Bu- chanan even today. “We get our folks out and organized, we tell them what is going to be done, and they vote and go home,” he says. “But the forces in Buchanan at Nixon’s New York City headquarters in March 1968 the city, and the forces in [Capitol]

16 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 Hill, they don’t change and they work every day at many others, Buchanan was not a convert to his faith maintaining what they want in terms of policy, so it or a political cause. In the book his family, schools, becomes impossible to prevail.” Conservative votes parish, and neighborhood are the crucible that form could grant electoral victories, but the institutions of his character, tough but well loved. They gave him an academia, the media, and the think-tank world were education of the heart and the head. against them. But at the end of the biography, Buchanan sud- Buchanan never signed up to be in the conserva- denly opens onto the rest of the world with a chap- tive klatsch. The movement frankly bored him even ter, “Democracy Is Not Enough,” which insists that as he was trying to bring it into the Nixon fold. “I the form of government matters not if America loses was never in that,” he says now, recalling all the little the ethos and culture in which he grew up. He pro- organizations like Young Americans for Freedom or poses ten amendments for a new constitutional con- the Liberty Society. “In the conservative movement vention, beginning with placing the unborn under there is all this talking and meeting. I viewed a lot the protection of the law and preserving the right of of it as just a waste of time. I learn more when I’m states to impose the death penalty; he goes on to in- reading.” clude a federal balanced budget requirement. These He liked many of ’s writers, to were “populist amendments,” Buchanan wrote, “de- be sure. But when Garry Wills asked him if they signed to broaden the scope of human rights and had any influence, he could recall none. “I was go- restore the power of the people to shape their own ing to say Burnham, but when I read Suicide of the society and destiny. They would diminish the power West I already agreed with it,” Buchanan says be- of unelected judges and enhance that of elected offi- fore quoting Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, “The heart cials.” He reiterates that a constitutional convention has reasons that reason does not understand.” Years would “reveal which of the two parties is populist, later he would tell the 1992 Republican convention and which elitist.” For Buchanan, it was time to un- that the party needed to reconnect with people who leash the New Majority once more. don’t read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but who remain “conservatives of the heart.” He could have ut his 1992 run for president and subsequent been referring to a less tutored version of himself. Bcampaigns in 1996 and 2000 showed that if the Unlike nearly every other self-consciously con- New Majority still exists, Buchanan was not the servative writer in his time, Buchanan was unim- one to lead it—although there were flashes of the pressed with political doctrine by itself. Ideological prophetic author to come. In his speech to the Re- catechisms were only useful in defending the things publican convention in Houston, Buchanan defined you already knew you loved. This might explain how the culture war: for him, the culture was something easily he threw away right-wing dogmas if he felt more than the social issues, such as abortion, that they at all threatened his country or the interests of would be talked up in a more pious way by Pat Rob- the New Majority. In the course of his interview with ertson and Marilyn Quayle—culture was rather TAC, Buchanan reminded me of the things he used a nexus of society, authority, and institutions. His to think: “Of course I admired Churchill,” “I was a concluding image of cultural victory was the same militant Zionist,” “I was a free-trader.” that he’d seen motivate the New Majority in ’68—in After the Nixon years, Buchanan needed to make this case, a scene of cops defending a convalescent a living and so he returned to column writing, even- home from rioters in Los Angeles. In those flames, tually getting picked up by the New York Daily News. the National Guard deployed—“force, rooted in jus- By the early ’80s he was doing three hours of radio tice, backed by courage”—and took the city back an afternoon with Braden, followed by a television block by block. show. Then came “Crossfire” and “The McLaughlin In recent years another GOP troublemaker, Ron Group.” And eventually, in 1985, a return trip to the Paul, has used his bids for the party’s presidential White House as Reagan’s communications direc- nomination to develop institutions to carry on his tor, overseeing the speechwriters and writing a few ideas and even to elect a small cadre of young mem- speeches himself. bers of Congress. Buchanan did not do anything As he left the Reagan White House, Buchanan re- quite like that after the 1992 campaign. He main- leased his biography Right From the Beginning, which tained a very small organization, but it was merely presented the story of Northwest D.C., Blessed Sac- the ’96 campaign in waiting. “I went up one time rament parish, and Gonzaga high school in the 1940s [to Capitol Hill] and talked to a congressman for and ’50s as something just outside of Eden. Unlike so forty minutes about trade and what it is doing to

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 17 Ideas

this country. He told me ‘Pat you make a convinc- same time arguing that we are not homo economicus, ing case. But leadership tells me we have to vote for that the efficiency of the global market was a threat this.’” Buchanan recalls. “I thought, ‘I’m not wasting to the American way of life. These arguments were my time with this.’” largely lost on the public because the book was an- “Did we make an effort? I have to say no. Maybe nounced right as the Lewinsky scandal erupted. Bu- that is a failing. It is a failing of not being an office- chanan was put before reporters as the author of a holder. I’m not a politician really.” Some called for new book on trade, but was asked questions about Buchanan to run for the Senate in Virginia, but he a blue dress. had no taste for the Hill. “I don’t know if I would Because the policy establishment in Washington have even lasted. There is an intellectual sterility to is so set on , Buchanan’s book remains all this. You go to meetings and there is all this talk- one of the few popular historical works about trade ing and babbling. It’s not in me.” policy published in the last half century. And Bu- Buchanan had sensed that after the Cold War chanan really did land crushing blows in his book. there would inevitably be a fight over foreign policy When politicians say that it doesn’t matter whether and to define the right. “It was an epochal event in America makes potato chips or computer chips, history, and it seemed like it called for a little fresh Buchanan helpfully reminds us that potato chips thought,” he says, laughing. But after 20 years of that don’t power smart missiles. Tariffs are not some debate there is almost a sense of exasperation when profanation of the economic gods, as the hysteri- he talks about America’s dependents in Europe and cal reaction of the ideologues suggests, they are a Asia—“It’s been two thirds of a century fellas, get tax policy with economic consequences similar to over it”—or when Republican candidates rattle the those of other taxes, like those on income or invest- drums about Russia: “The country has lost a third of ment. Policies have beneficiaries, and Buchanan its size, and will lose another 25 million more people, saw that America’s elite seemed to benefit from free and the Far East. They are in a difficult position but trade and mass immigration while the core of the they are not a threat to the United States. C’mon.” New Majority did not. “Sure you get cheap goods down at Wal-Mart,” Buchanan says now, “but they used to tell me that tennis shoes were cheap. They’re not Buchanan had sensed that after the Cold War so cheap anymore.” there would inevitably be a fight over The second half of his histori- foreign policy and to define the right. cal opus, A Republic, Not An Empire, toured the history of America’s expan- sion to continental proportions but warned against remaining an aggres- sive power beyond those borders. An But if the debate is to be joined, Buchanan will obsession with saving the Third World, an attach- join it. He wrote a massive volume on the history of ment to outdated Cold War alliances, and an addic- U.S. trade and foreign policy that would eventually tion to conflict were for Buchanan the signs of decay be split into two different books. The first, The Great and inner weakness at America’s core. Betrayal, remains one of Buchanan’s favorites. The The reaction to the book neatly foreshadowed the subtitle says everything about the ideological heresy foreign-policy debates that would come after 9/11 Buchanan was committing to paper: “How Ameri- and ahead of the second Iraq War. On one side were can Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacri- those like who claimed that ficed to the Gods of the Global Economy.” Buchanan had written a tract of “Catholic funda- In a sympathetic review, warned, mentalism” and who repurposed the Know-Nothing “It is hard to read this book without wincing in antic- language of Americanism to denounce it. To his ipation of the carnage” that free traders would inflict immediate right were and the on it. And libertarians did tear into it. Cato’s Brink other partisans of America’s unipolar moment, vari- Lindsay thought the book was smart politics but ously accusing Buchanan of being a soft-hearted lib- “shameful demagoguery.” To Lindsay, Buchanan was eral, a Nazi sympathizer, and an ultramontane reac- trying to argue at the same time that tionary. Alongside Buchanan were a stalwart group was historically consistent with American prosper- of libertarian noninterventionists and a few admir- ity—that it was economically efficient—while at the ing missives from The Nation and other left-liberals.

18 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 uchanan would return to these themes in his ergies into posterity, they were enjoying their wealth Bbooks over the next decade. Where the Right today. There is a jagged edge at the bottom of such a Went Wrong expanded his charge on foreign policy thesis: for Spengler, the only power strong enough to by adding a distilled brief against . overthrow the worship of money is blood and tribe. “They are imposters and opportunists,” he conclud- Buchanan’s thesis was first denounced, then imi- ed. State of Emergency focused on mass immigra- tated—sometimes by the same . Chris- tion, but rather than emphasize as Lou Dobbs and topher Caldwell of the Weekly Standard initially other restrictionists did the way in which it lowered criticized the “demographic alarum” in Death of the the wages of American workers, Buchanan’s view West. Less than a decade later, he would reiterate seemed more informed by the downfall of Rome. The most of Buchanan’s themes in his own Reflections presence of enormous blocks of foreigners meant de- on the Revolution in Europe, which documented the composition for the host nation, or at least cleavage along lines of color, class, and language. Day of Recokoning returned to all these topics, updating them with the Western nations had lost their Christian faith; their latest grim statistics. With these nationalistic myths had been revised and were now volumes, Buchanan surpassed the anti-New Dealers like Pegler objects of scorn to native and immigrant alike. who so inspired him, but who left few books to give us the flavor of the day. And Buchanan went far beyond the pundits of his demographic and cultural retreat of the continent’s own day in his 2002 book Death of The West. There old civilization in the face of a rising, intolerant Is- he put journalistic heft behind the decades-old in- lam. The vehicle of this retreat was the same liberal tuitions of Oswald Spengler and James Burnham. and multicultural ideology that Buchanan—as well United Nations population statistics coming in at the as Burnham, and more vaguely Spengler—had also close of the 20th century demonstrated what they condemned. had sensed, that Western civilization itself was con- Death of the West was Buchanan’s biggest commer- tracting. The Western powers, and Japan with them, cial success, an odd thing for such a gloomy book were losing population and bound to shrink radi- released on the heels of a 2000 presidential run that cally. They had not just given up their navies, they even some of Buchanan’s closest supporters would had given up on posterity altogether. rather forget. But the Internet had returned political Buchanan’s title echoed Spengler’s Decline of the commentary to the days of Pegler and others fire- West, in which the German had theorized that civili- brands, away from the prim editorializing of Mau- zations have a predictable life cycle analogous to the reen Dowd and David Brooks. “I have to credit Matt seasons. In winter, democracy becomes the form of Drudge,” says Buchanan, with sincerity. As people government, religion curdles into materialism, and watched their College Bowl Games, Drudge made the wealthy plunder their empire while fetishizing Buchanan’s book his banner headline—“‘End of the the barbarians beyond their borders. Burnham had World,’ says Buchanan.” Death of the West would be a similar intuitions in Suicide of the West—for him, 12-week New York Times bestseller. It was number 2 liberalism wasn’t the cause of Western contraction, on Amazon.com before Buchanan had done his first which had more to do with loss of religion, but it was television interview. the “typical verbal systematization of the process of Buchanan is fondest of the books that were worst Western contraction and withdrawal; liberalism mo- reviewed, and so it is no surprise that one of his tivates and justifies the contraction, and reconciles dearest is Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary us to it.” War.” He would stay up late reading new histories of Buchanan indicted liberalism for just that. West- the two great wars, find a paragraph that electrified ern nations had lost their Christian faith; their na- him, then take to his computer to type a few pages, tionalistic myths had been revised and were now before returning to bed at 3 a.m. or later “to sleep like objects of scorn to native and immigrant alike. With a baby.” Although reviews pummeled Buchanan for nothing to pass on but material comforts, Western going back to World War II revisionism, the book’s people were no longer investing their capital and en- thesis is something that fits into the broader theme

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 19 Ideas

of Buchanan’s work: not a reappraisal of fascism, of the realignment, putting together a book on the but a despair over the civilization that formed us all years he spent with Nixon. “He was like a father to which has been grievously, perhaps fatally, wounded me for three years, and I want to introduce him to by Europe’s two-act war. a generation and maybe two generations that never In the opening pages, Buchanan uses lines from knew the guy,” says Buchanan. “He was not a bad Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias” to sum up the state man. He was a very good man and in a lot of ways, of the world as the West’s empires collapsed: “Of but he had these damn hangups.” The prospect of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/ The lone Buchanan writing a Nixon book is tantalizing to a and level sands stretch far away.” The book’s thesis large cadre of Nixonologists. Buchanan had been had nothing to do with rehabilitating Hitler; it was by the old man’s side during his rise to the highest about re-examining Churchill and finding out why office, and then at the downfall, testifying for five the West was dying, why it had adopted ideologies and a half hours before the Watergate committee. “I of contraction and suicide. Spengler had attributed remember in March 1973, I was having lunch with dissolution to a natural life cycle, Burnham to loss Frank Rizzo [mayor of Philadelphia], and it was the of faith. More jejune conservatives blamed decay on day that [James] McCord said higher-ups were in- rival political parties, on improper “ideas” that have volved,” Buchanan recalls. Rizzo replied, “Why don’t bad consequences, or subtle changes in philosophy. you catch Teddy Kennedy in his underpants?” Bu- Buchanan blames war. chanan shot back: “I think that may have been what we were trying to do.” For it was the war begun in 1914 and the Paris In a very real sense, the emergence of the New peace conference of 1919 that destroyed the Majority that so excited and indeed defined Buchan- German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian em- an as a political thinker—and that made Republican pires, and ushered onto the world stage Lenin, victories so easy—turned out to be a sign of a fatal Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler. And it was the war illness in the body of the Republic. The common begun in September 1939 that led to the slaugh- faith had been broken. On one side was the New ter of the Jews and tens of millions of Christians, Majority, too silent and too preoccupied to combat the devastation of Europe, the Stalinization of what Burnham would have called the New Class of half the continent, the fall of China to Maoist academics, media professionals, think tankers, and madness, and half a century of Cold War. political machines. They were the other side, and they found their mandate for power in the ideology It is a thesis fit for a graduate of a Jesuit school: God of liberalism. curses murderers, and the men of the West spent the This is why in the shelf of books Buchanan has 20th century destroying each other with mustard gas, written he slides so easily from defending the inter- fire-bombs, gas chambers, and a splitting atom. The ests of the New Majority to warning of the death of empires most responsible lost not just their navies and civilization altogether, from Pegler to Spengler in vassal states, they lost their will even to remain dis- the space of a paragraph. For Buchanan, the New tinct nations. Their elites are all globalists. Majority is the only force capable of preserving and Buchanan brought that same thesis home in Sui- passing on the traditions of the West in America cide of a Superpower. Provocatively, he opens his as Buchanan knew them growing up. This is why most recent book by comparing the United States he stands between the tub-thumping columnists to the Soviet Union. Like our Cold War foe, we are for Middle America and the great declinists of the now a nation committed to a worldwide ideological 20th century. Buchanan wants to communicate to revolution; we are an overstretched empire abroad his Middle American audience that the stakes are as and a nation with simmering class and racial anxiet- great as intellectuals claimed. At the same time, Bu- ies at home, with no shared faith, history, or heroes. chanan is a realist who recognizes that the declining Can whatever is left of the nation survive even to ranks of the New Majority were never capable of car- 2025? “When I was young we had ferocious battles rying the full weight of the West. over politics, over Joe McCarthy being invited to the “How do you bring us together culturally?,” he parish,” Buchanan says, “but after those ended we all asks, then answers himself, “You don’t need Pat believed the same things, had the same faith, revered Buchanan, you need St. Paul.” It is a self-awareness the same men. It was one culture.” rare in men who have run for president three times: And now? “Look, I’m a right-wing troublemaker from North- Buchanan is returning in his writing to the time west that likes poetry.”

20 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 Conservatism

Ten Years in the Right A decade of The American Conservative—and its enemies

by scott mcconnell

en years ago, greeted be receiving foreign-policy tutoring from Elliott news of The American Conservative’s pend- Abrams and two Kagans? To be a neocon in 21st- ing arrival with a mocking piece titled “Bu- century America is truly never to be held account- chanan’s Surefire Flop.” Franklin Foer’s ar- able for one’s errors. Tticle now seems an almost museum-quality exhibit of There is, to be sure, a much wider understanding neoconservative and liberal hawk hubris—the beat- among the attentive American public of TAC’s central ing heart of an elite consensus that suppressed mean- message: of America’s need for a conservatism distinct ingful discussion about the wisdom of invading Iraq. from the neocon version, more Burkean, more pru- Pat Buchanan and his partners “couldn’t have cho- dent, less remote from the concerns of average Ameri- sen a worse time to start a journal of the isolationist cans, less tied to the Israeli right. right,” wrote Foer. When President Clinton waged Foer’s piece distilled the conventional wisdom war on Serbia, some conservatives opposed foreign of 2002: even conservatives who disliked the neo- military interventionism. But “no one on the right conservatives on other grounds—for their support is listening anymore” to anti-interventionist argu- of high levels of immigration, for example—shied ments. The 9/11 attacks had “produced a war on ter- away from frontal assaults on their foreign policy. rorism that has virtually ended conservative qualms Two months before the magazine’s launch I dined about expending blood and treasure abroad.” with a young economics writer who would soon Foer cited polls: 94 percent of Republicans sup- write brilliantly for TAC. On the war, he advised a ported Bush’s foreign policy. A triumphant Norman symposium—out-and-out opposition would only Podhoretz was quoted: there really was no conser- marginalize the magazine. Needless to say, his advice vatism distinct from neoconservatism anymore. A was not taken. magazine whose thrust would be to attack neocon- What Foer and the conventional wisdom missed servative foreign-policy prescriptions was doomed was that the foreign-policy debate had already be- to fail. come three-sided by 2002. It had evolved consider- A decade later, how can TAC’s impact be assessed? ably since 1991, when Buchanan was one of a hand- Clearly, the magazine did not flop—it has steadily ful of conservatives to oppose the first Gulf War. expanded its readership and survived an economy Opposition to that war was primarily “isolationist” extremely inhospitable to print media. But if the Iraq in spirit, with Buchanan and a small cadre of others War was a “clarifier,” it was unfortunately not a terri- pitted not only against the neocons but a wide array bly strong one. If success is to be measured by influ- of foreign-policy realists. The point is not to debate ence on the conservative movement or the Repub- whether that war was necessary or strategically justi- lican Party, TAC still has a great deal of work to do: fied (though afterwards, the hawkish realist Robert astonishingly, the neoconservatives—the group who W. Tucker wrote in wrote that sold the idea of the Iraq War to the last Republican bombing a more or less defenseless Iraqi army in the president—are now if anything more entrenched in open desert violated just war precepts). Desert Storm the GOP foreign-policy brain trust than in 2002. was not in the main a neoconservative enterprise; Who might have predicted, seven years after it was clear that the Iraq War was one of greatest strategic Scott McConnell is a founding editor of The American disasters in American history, that Paul Ryan would Conservative.

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 21 Conservatism

it was planned and executed by an internationalist tive war-mongering was viewed skeptically through- establishment, sanctified by UN resolutions, and out the democratic West, including in Europe’s major backed by a broad allied coalition. George H.W. Bush center-right parties; in every country save Israel, the had essentially followed the script that had governed Iraq War was unpopular. TAC’s potential audience American foreign policy since the early Cold War. included all those who feared a neocon-led United Several months after Desert Storm’s conclusion, a States would be igniting wars throughout the Middle memorandum produced under the guidance of un- East and isolating itself. dersecretary of defense was leaked But if Franklin Foer was wrong, why did TAC not to the New York Times. It laid out a post-Cold War make more headway with the conservative establish- strategy for maintaining American global hegemo- ment? True, our writers never really experienced the ny: Russia was still to be treated as an enemy; the shunning had urged in “Unpatriotic U.S. needed to sustain a military powerful enough to Conservatives,” his 2003 National Review attack on suppress the emergence of any new regional power; the outspoken antiwar right. and Pat America ought to be ready to go to war over the Bal- Buchanan remained popular among the Republican tic countries. As the leakers anticipated, the Wolfow- rank and file. Five years after Frum wrote, most Re- itz plan was greeted with derision and mockery, and publicans wanted to forget all about the Iraq War— the Bush administration quickly made it clear that and many were ready to acknowledge that TAC had the memorandum was merely a “draft”—the kind of been right to warn against it. outside-the-box exercise an official might try in his At the same time, they were unable to draw any con- spare time. More sober grownups were in charge. clusions from the observation. George W. Bush might But by 2002, Wolfowitz was number two at the have been treated as a non-person and his eight-year Pentagon, and the building was filled with supportive presidency an afterthought at the 2012 Republican neoconservatives. The grown-ups had largely lost ac- convention. But prominent Republicans opposed to cess to the neophyte president’s ear. Brent Scowcroft, an aggressive foreign policy remain a minority. Ron the first Bush’s national security advisor at the time of Paul’s ceiling in the primaries seemed to be in the 20 Desert Storm, was reduced to writing op-eds lament- percent range, and while a more establishment figure ing that attacking Iraq would jeopardize the broader might have done better, there may be good reason aims of the war on terrorism. More or less unnoticed, why someone like Chuck Hagel never ran. the foreign policy pecking order within the GOP had I think the answer is that the aging conservative been overturned during the 1990s. The neoconserva- movement needed, and acquired, a glue to substi- tives had risen from being a significant but minority tute for the anti-communism that held its dispa- faction to a position of dominance. rate factions together from the 1950s to the 1980s. Realists, including those with Republican lean- Fear and hatred of Islam now serves that function. ings, remained influential outside Washington, in the Many grassroots conservatives justifiably perceive major universities: in the fall of 2002, several dozen an America besieged by demographic changes, glo- prominent international relations scholars published balization, and the collapse of job security, while Re- an advertisement decrying the rush towards war. publicans have few answers to offer. As a substitute, But they lacked Beltway power. Unlike their neo- talk radio and the activist right—the organs that link con rivals, they had no network of think tanks and the GOP to the grassroots base—supply a belligerent echo-chamber outfits, no Fox News or talk radio to attitude toward the Islamic world. disseminate their views, no columnists to advance What can make allies of a lower-middle-class their ideas or undermine their opponents’. Rather like evangelical from Tennessee and a hedge-fund op- the vanished WASP establishment to which many of erator in New York passionately interested in Israel? them were culturally and temperamentally linked, re- The sense that America’s survival is somehow threat- alists seemed ill-suited to the contemporary rules of ened by Islam, whether in the form of a mosque in political conflict. But if the realist retreat was bad for Murfreesboro, a Palestinian trying to travel from one the country, it would help secure TAC’s philosophical town to another in his homeland, a nuclear program foundation. in Tehran, or a genuinely hostile terrorist group. Thus critics like Foer were wrong when they pre- A more measured view—that Islam is a historic dicted that TAC’s only real audience would be the anti- civilization now in the throes of a tumultuous com- globalist left. Foer had concluded his piece by gibing ing-to-terms with modernity, a process America is that “Workers of the world unite” would soon be Taki fortunately situated to observe from some distance, Theodoracopulos’s rallying cry. In fact, neoconserva- treat with judiciousness, and perhaps assist—has sur-

22 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 TAC 10-07-2002 9/18/02 3:54 PM Page 1

OCTOBER 7, 2002 ● $3.00

prisingly little traction. Instead the right The American adopted the full “clash of civilizations” narrative. And eventually, as America be- Conservative came an occupier of Muslim countries, taking casualties and inflicting them, the clash acquired its own bloody momen- tum. It mattered not whether Islam is IRAQ FOLLY Sunni or Shia, democratic or monarchic, How Victory or modernizing. The “Islam- Could Spell is-the-enemy” spirit may have been as alien to Dwight Eisenhower, Richard American Defeat Nixon, and George H.W. Bush as it is to By Eric S. Margolis Pat Buchanan. But it is now perhaps the most critical element holding together the . If TAC’s successes in changing GOP politics have thus far been modest, the magazine’s central arguments continue to resonate with an ever wider public. In 2012, perhaps ten times as many Ameri- cans have a good sense of the problems caused by neoconservative ideologists as when we began. In the last decade there have been perhaps a dozen good books 40> ■ Brimelow on Malkin on the subject—not enough to dethrone ■ Sailer on Neil Young the neocons, but enough to illuminate 0774470 57377 ■ Buchanan on Empire their ideology. www.amconmag.com The same can also be said of the Israel lobby. In 1990, when Buchanan made an off-the-cuff remark on “The McLaughlin The cover of TAC’s inaugural issue: October 2002 Group” that Capitol Hill was “Israeli-occupied territory,” it was seized upon by his foes as evidence of wide margins, while drawing more donations from anti-Semitism. To speak in such a way was to break active-duty military personnel than any other can- the most serious of taboos. Since then, two of Ameri- didate, Republican or Democrat. Even GOP insid- ca’s leading political scientists, John Mearsheimer and ers seem to understand that neoconservative foreign Stephen Walt, have published The Israel Lobby and policy has little national backing at the grassroots, U.S. Foreign Policy, which systematically explored the a fact indirectly acknowledged by the treatment of phenomenon Buchanan alluded to—and became a George W. Bush at the GOP convention. national and international bestseller. Tom Friedman, The path Ron Paul forged in two campaigns will the bellwether centrist New York Times columnist, has be followed and surely widened by others. One can written that Benjamin Netanyahu’s ovations in Con- look to his son Rand, casting iconoclastic votes in gress are bought and paid for by the Israel lobby, and the Senate, or to congressmen like young Justin while people some complained, there was wider ac- Amash, a Paul supporter from Michigan. More- knowledgment that he was simply stating a fact. That over, while younger neoconservatives have seldom neoconservatism and the Israel lobby are now openly served in the armed forces, it seems inevitable that and widely discussed inside and outside the beltway is the ranks of both parties will increasingly include a major victory. many more veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Moreover, if the current crystallization within the Republicans among them are likely to scoff, not too GOP looks dispiriting, there are several signs that quietly, at marching orders issued by the Weekly point to better days ahead. In early contests where Standard. They will want a different kind of conser- he had the resources to campaign competitively, vative magazine instead—one that takes a realistic Ron Paul—whose foreign policy stands had much and sober view of America’s challenges at home in common with TAC—won the under-30 vote by and abroad.

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 23 Politics

Who Killed Rudy Giuliani? How Ron Paul won the war for conservatism’s future

by W. James Antle III

hen Ron Paul leaves office in Janu- defeated in the Democratic tidal wave of 2006. ary, he will have been more success- editorial page surveyed ful than many of the legislators who this track record and concluded there was no politi- spent decades maligning him. Paul’s cal benefit for Republicans to turn against what was Wideas have gradually gone from marginal to main- by then an increasingly disastrous war. These were stream, and his record shows how much even a sin- dark years for antiwar conservatives, when Rudy Gi- gle determined man of principle can do to change uliani appeared likely to seize the GOP presidential a movement. In foreign policy especially, the Texas nomination—in spite of his pro-choice stance—on congressman leaves behind a new generation of lead- the strength of his hawkishness and 9/11-hero status ers, both libertarian and conservative, who challenge alone. the disastrous bipartisan consensus. As it turned out, Giuliani’s biggest moment in the A decade ago, only seven Republican members of 2008 primary campaign was an exchange with one of Congress voted against the Iraq War—six congress- the two surviving antiwar Republicans in Congress. men and one senator. The number of conservative Ron Paul was then in his tenth House term, running legislators who opposed the war was even smaller still, for president as practically an asterisk candidate, re- the redoubtable trio of Jimmy Duncan, John Hostet- ceiving just 1 percent of the vote in national polls. Gi- tler, and Paul. uliani led nationally as late as November 2007, beating The other dissenters were moderate to liberal Re- new entry Fred Thompson by nine points in Gallup’s publicans representing districts where George W. polling. Bush and any policy he proposed—much less sending On May 15, 2007, the Republican contenders de- young Americans to die in a war of choice—would bated in Columbia, South Carolina. Paul argued that have been deeply unpopular. Lincoln Chafee, the American intervention in the Middle East—bomb- only GOP senator to vote against the authorization ings, sanctions, and efforts to destabilize foreign gov- of force, was the son of the last great Rockefeller Re- ernments—helped turn local populations and their publican and easily his party’s most liberal member co-religionists against us, to the point that they would of Congress. Connie Morella of Montgomery County, contemplate terrorist attacks like those on 9/11. Maryland represented the most Democratic congres- “Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attacks, sional district held by a Republican. sir?” asked the Fox News moderator. Paul had said Rounding out this group was the unpredictable nothing of the sort, but neither did he react to the im- Iowan Jim Leach and Amo Houghton, a New Yorker plication behind the question as forcefully as he might who voted with Democrats on many issues. While have. Giuliani pounced. “That’s an extraordinary Paul, Duncan, and Hostettler all opposed the war statement, as somebody who lived through the attack from the right, the bare majority of antiwar Republi- of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were cans opposed it from the left. attacking Iraq,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard Small as this group was, its ranks would soon that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd expla- grow thinner. Morella was defeated in 2002, right af- nations for September 11.” ter voting against the war, the victim of redistricting Giuliani waited for the thunderous applause to die by Maryland Democrats. Houghton retired after the 2004 elections. Chafee, Hostettler, and Leach were all W. James Antle III is editor of News Foundation.

24 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 Michael Hogue Michael

down, then demanded a retraction: “I would ask the caucuses, wrapping up his first Republican bid for the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us White House with more than 1 million votes. Giuliani he didn’t really mean that.” Paul didn’t budge. dropped out of the race after the Florida primary and The optics were poor: a little-known congressman received less than 600,000 votes. was standing against the GOP frontrunner on an is- More importantly, Giuliani’s influence waned after sue where 90 percent of the party likely disagreed his disappointing performance while Paul became with him. Paul did not do enough to rebut the “blame something of a GOP rock star. He ran again for presi- ” charge, while Giuliani hit all the right dent four years later, this time topping 2 million Re- emotional notes. Predictably, there came calls from publican primary votes. He briefly surged to the top prominent Republicans over the next few days to ex- of the Iowa polls—eventually finishing a very strong clude Paul from future debates and even throw him third in the caucuses—and ran second behind Mitt out of the party. Giuliani was judged the decisive win- Romney in New Hampshire. ner of the exchange. When Ron Paul voted against the Iraq War in 2002, But then something surprising happened: the en- he represented conservative political tendencies from counter helped galvanize a movement behind Paul Robert Taft to Pat Buchanan that were on the wane. while Giuliani’s campaign died a slow, painful death. The conservative magazines, organizations, and third Paul outperformed Giuliani in most primaries and parties that dissented from hawkish foreign policy were

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 25 Politics

uniformly small. There was a concerted effort to mar- vative movement than his father. Reason editor Matt ginalize even these few “unpatriotic conservatives.” Welch has called him “the most interesting man in the Support for the war was not only nearly unanimous Senate.” He has also become the most vocal conserva- within the GOP, but bipartisan. Half the Democrats in tive Republican opponent of excessive foreign adven- the Senate and key Democratic leaders in the House turism in that chamber since Robert Taft. joined Republicans in the march to war. Consider That’s not to say the GOP is Ron Paul’s party. Paul this abbreviated list of prominent Democrats who supporters were mistreated by party bosses in prima- supported the Iraq War: Joe Biden, , Ste- ries and caucuses from Maine to Louisiana. Conven- ny Hoyer, , Chuck Schumer, Richard tion planners in Tampa were short-sighted and brut- Gephardt, John Kerry, John Edwards, , ish in their handling of Paul delegates. But Ron Paul and Robert Wexler. All of these Democratic leaders, supporters hold important party leadership positions many of them potential presidents, had less sense than at the state level in Iowa, Maine, Alaska, Nevada, and a congressional backbencher from Texas who mainly elsewhere. They have won seats on the Republican wanted to give speeches about Austrian economics. National Committee. Paul’s campaign chairman will be running Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s 2014 reelection campaign. Today Ron Paul leaves behind an entire wing The number of Republicans who of the Republican Party sympathetic to his views. more quietly are coming around to Paul’s positions is growing. Many Re- publicans who once wanted to read Paul out of the party now embrace him—or What began as an academic exercise became a real at least covet his voters. Former Republican National movement. Paul’s is the only flavor of conservatism Committee Chairman Michael Steele went from sug- that currently appeals to millennials and other young gesting in 2008 that Paul was in the wrong party to voters. In Iowa, he finished 35 points ahead of Rom- saying the 2012 convention planners treated him with ney among voters aged 17 to 29. In New Hampshire, “rudeness and stupidity.” Paul won more voters between the ages of 18 and 24 “Why would you alienate an individual who has than Romney, , New Gingrich, and the ability to attract a new generation of voters, who combined. are already skeptical of your institution but are will- Even in Alabama, a rare state where Paul took just 5 ing to at least listen through the vehicle of this indi- percent of the vote, he did twice as well with voters be- vidual and the words that he is saying?” Steele asked tween the ages of 18 and 29. His worst states were the on Comedy Central. “Why would you alienate them, places where the Republican electorate was old. Paul’s get on the floor and not let them speak?” boisterous campaign rallies were filled with young Even Romney, whose aides were responsible for people, as are the conservative and libertarian orga- the “rudeness and stupidity,” has been careful to avoid nizations—such as Young Americans for Liberty—his saying anything critical of Paul. He went so far as to efforts spawned. allow a video tribute to a politician who had refused In January, Paul will retire from Congress. A de- to endorse him to be broadcast during the convention. cade ago, this would have signaled the effective end of Perhaps the most celebrated speech at that conven- antiwar conservatism as a meaningful political force. tion was delivered by Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood, Today Paul leaves behind an entire wing of the Repub- who unlike the nominee criticized Obama for staying lican Party sympathetic to his views, some of whom in Afghanistan too long. The crowd laughed and ap- identify explicitly as “Ron Paul Republicans,” while plauded. Some of them might have cheered any anti- some do not. Obama jibe, regardless of substance, but it is notewor- , a freshman Republican from Michi- thy that even in that setting the most popular speaker gan, has already emerged as a Paul successor of sorts sounded more like Ron Paul than John McCain. in the House. Like Paul, he is a constitutional stickler, When Ron Paul’s remarkable congressional ca- refusing to vote for bills that contradict his oath to up- reer comes to a conclusion, he can return to Texas hold the Constitution. He has pressed for an end to with the satisfaction of knowing that his educational Bush’s wars and opposed Obama’s new one in Libya. mission revived an honorable political tradition: an Paul’s son Rand has become the leading Tea Party American conservatism dedicating to conserving, not senator, more widely admired by the broader conser- destroying.

26 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 BECKRETURNS TO TV ’s new TV channel, TheBlaze, is available exclusively on DISH! The people may have spoken, but the political pundits have plenty left to say. Join the conversation today – sign up for DISH to get TheBlaze!

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249913_7_x_9.5.indd 1 10/17/12 2:32 PM Economics

An Iceberg Called Bernanke Manipulating interest rates is only the tip of the Federal Reserve’s agenda.

by Charles Hugh Smith

o wonder the policies of the Federal Re- at 20th and Constitution Avenue. serve are so widely misunderstood: in Did bailing out the banks truly serve the public many ways the Fed is like an iceberg, with good, or did it stymie much-needed “creative destruc- its public pronouncements being only the tion” of failed financial institutions that have grown so Nvisible 10 percent above water. The real mass of the powerful that they are now “too big to fail”? How ex- Fed’s actions lies beneath the surface, invisible to us actly did enabling the banks to draw upon trillions of mere citizens. dollars of Fed support, safe from Americans’ scrutiny, Consider the Fed’s public mandate, which is to serve the public good? “promote stable prices, maximum sustainable output and employment.” This is solid public relations, self- lessly focused on the good of the nation, but it’s also Managing Perceptions deeply disingenuous, as the Fed’s less PR-pretty agen- da is rather obviously to preserve the banking sector’s Here’s the other primary source of misunderstanding: profits and power. the Fed cannot directly funnel money into the real We can find clues to the Fed’s real goals in its ac- economy, it can only funnel money into the banks. Its tions behind closed doors—the 90 percent of the ice- actions are indirect. This sets up a peculiar mismatch berg that’s out of public view. between the Fed’s public goals and its levers of con- On the surface, the Fed has increased its balance trol: it can’t actually increase employment, it can only sheet by about $2 trillion since the 2008 global fi- flood the banks with credit and hope that individuals nancial crisis. This electronically created money and enterprises will borrow money and inject it into purchased about $1.1 trillion in mortgage-backed the real economy, (hopefully) boosting employment. securities (MBS) to support the housing market and In other words, the only way the Fed can trigger $1 trillion in Treasury bonds to keep interest rates changes in the real economy is to manage perceptions low. These two goals—super-low interest rates (also in order to stimulate borrowing and spending. In ef- known as “zero interest rate policy,” or ZIRP) and fect, the Fed has two public-relations tasks: one is to supporting assets such as housing and stocks—are persuade households and businesses to borrow and the core strategies the Fed publicly deploys to boost spend profligately as a means of growing the economy, growth and employment. while at the same time the central bank must mask the Supporting the banks is not mentioned, for obvi- project of preserving the “too big to fail” banks behind ous PR reasons. Yet a Government Accountability Of- a façade of public policy that is long on persuasion fice audit found that the Fed provided $16.1 trillion and short on mechanisms to help real people in the in “emergency program” loans to global banks from real economy. 2007 to 2010. A Levy Institute study uncovered a total Take housing as an example. The Fed’s initial of $29 trillion in Fed support—roughly ten times larg- $1.1 trillion in MBS purchases has had remarkably er than the Fed’s public programs. For context, the an- little effect on the moribund U.S. housing market, but nual U.S. gross domestic product is about $15 trillion. This suggests we should take the Fed’s assurances Charles Hugh Smith is the proprietor of the Of Two that its policies are all for the public good with a grain blog and author of An Unconventional Guide to Investing in of salt roughly the size of the Fed’s D.C. headquarters Troubled Times.

28 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 Michael Hogue Michael

this didn’t stop the Fed from announcing another $40 This is an indirect way of aiding homeowners, billion per month of MBS purchases from now until but it is a very direct way of aiding banks, who have housing re-inflates (or doomsday, whichever comes dumped $1 trillion in impaired mortgages—over 10 first) as part of the third round of quantitative easing percent of the nation’s total—onto the Fed, which (QE3). kindly exchanged hard cash for assets that were worth How exactly does the Fed’s investment in impaired a fraction of the face value paid by the central bank. mortgages help homebuyers and homeowners? The If that wasn’t a transfer of “free money” designed to Fed’s answer is that transferring dodgy mortgages bolster bank reserves, what was it? from struggling banks to the Fed’s balance sheet helps As a thought experiment, imagine an alternative banks originate more mortgages and lowers mortgage policy where the Fed paid off $1 trillion of underwa- rates for buyers and homeowners who are refinancing ter mortgages, leaving the overjoyed owners free of existing mortgages. mortgage payments and the equally overjoyed banks

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 29 Economics

Median income down change expectations is that it only works if earnings rise along with the cost of goods and services. Alas, the Real household income has declined by Census Bureau reports that real household income— 8 percent since 2007 that is, adjusted for official inflation—has declined 8 percent since 2007. This is horribly counterproductive 55,000 to the Fed’s stated goals, as households with less income have a harder time paying debt, a harder time qualify- ing for more loans, and less money to spend on goods 50,000 and services. Meanwhile, inflation bubbles along, rob- bing households’ purchasing power at a 2–3 percent 2011 clip annually. In the 12 years since 2000, medical care $50,054 has shot up 61 percent, energy has jumped 116 percent 45,000 and college tuition has skyrocketed by 112 percent. Many economists believe that the unmassaged rate of Inflation-adjusted inflation is higher than the official rate, but even the of- dollars 40,000 ficial rate has devastated households. ’91 ’00 ’11 The second mind trick is known as the wealth ef-

Source: U.S. Census Bureau fect, which Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke recently de- scribed: “If people feel that their financial situation is better because their 401(k) looks better for whatever Inflation since 2000 reason, or their house is worth more, they are more withInside the cash. the ConsumerSetting aside Price the ethicalIndex ramifications willing to go out and provide the demand.” of such a policy, that would certainly boost household The key phrase is “for whatever reason.” In other 116% spending and consumption—precisely what 112%the Fed words, it doesn’t matter how artificial the increase in claims it seeks—while achievingThe eight the same goal of hand- their assets may be, any increase is presumed to be ing the banks cash forcomponents hopelessly impaired mortgages. good enough to trigger a “wealth effect” that gener- In the real world, one-thirdof CPI of U.S. homeowners are ates a pressing urge to borrow and spend. “underwater,” with mortgages that exceed the value Since incomes are declining in all brackets, the of their homes, and a significant61% percentage of the re- Fed’s “solution” is to encourage more borrowing and

maining households no longer qualify for48% refinancing spending—more demand for goods and services. But 45% or a mortgage40% of any sort other than the government- the wealth effect is an entirely internal psychological subsidized variety.33% The banks have 30%been aided by Fed state that is highly dependent on trust that the wealth policy, but little of the largesse has trickled down into increase visible on the 401(k) statement isn’t fleeting. the real economy. 12% The Fed’s massive and very public intervention in This is the basic -3%problem with the Fed’s policies: housing, bonds, and stocks actually erodes that trust, unable to funnel money directly to households, it can for people intuitively grasp that manipulated markets

only Energyaffect the real economy by modifying the inter- are not to be trusted. HousingApparel nal psychological states of consumers.Recreation Are the Fed governors really so intellectually myo- Medical Care Transportation pic that they can’t recognize that people now under- Food & Beverage stand the difference between central-planning ma- Data through Feb. 2012 College Tuition & Fees JediSource:dshort.com Mind Trick: YouOther Will Goods Borrow& Services More nipulation and a legitimate bull market? Because You FeelEducation Wealthier & Communication Even more ominous for the Fed’s mind trick, those who look at their income and its dwindling purchas- So the Fed is attempting two Jedi mind tricks: one is ing power feel poorer in the real world, and a nudge to spark enough inflation to change our expectations upwards in home or stock valuations doesn’t change of future inflation. If you’re confident that your cash the real-world sense that their income is buying less. will be worth less next year, you’re highly incentivized Relatively few Americans are seeing any significant to spend it now rather than see its purchasing power expansion of paper wealth: 83 percent of all stocks decline. This is called bringing demand forward, and and bondsMETRO are owned bySPOR theTS top 10 percent of houseGUIDELIVE-

the weakness of this policy is painfully obvious: if you holds. The80, 0, bottom0, 30 90 0,percent 90, 100, 10 feels little if any wealth0, 28, 87, 10 persuade all of next year’s vehicle buyers to purchase a effect from a rise in equities. car this year, then sales plummet next year. Regardless of one’s view of income disparity, the The other problem with generating inflation to fact that only the top 5 percent of U.S. households are

30 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 Median income down Real household income has declined by 8 percent since 2007

55,000

50,000

2011 $50,054 45,000

Inflation-adjusted dollars 40,000 ’91 ’00 ’11

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Inflation since 2000 quiring any structural change to the status quo. Inside the Consumer Price Index Understandably, those who benefit from the sta- tus quo have embraced this solution for the appeal- 116% 112% ing reason that it doesn’t change the power structure. The eight Everyone currently in charge remains in charge, and components everyone who controls outsized wealth continues of CPI controlling outsized wealth. Rather than falling onto the politically powerful “too big to fail” banking sec- 61% tor, the pain of deleveraging is spread over the entire

48% economy. Since there is no such thing as painless de- 45% 40% leveraging, this “solution” distributes the pain over 33% 30% hundreds of millions of people. That’s what makes it “beautiful” to the status quo: it doesn’t cost them their 12% power or their wealth. -3% This is a rerun of the game plan that worked in the last banking crisis of the early 1980s: don’t force the

Energy banks to declare their losses but “extend and pretend” HousingApparel Recreation while offering them risk-free ways to rake in billions Medical Care Transportation in profits. The goal was to enable the banks to recapi- Food & Beverage talize “painlessly” on the backs of consumers and tax- Data through Feb. 2012 College Tuition & Fees Source:dshort.com Other Goods & Services payers, who continued to pay high margins on debt Education & Communication and taxes to fund financial-sector bailouts. The other explicit goal of the Fed’s strategy is to create modest inflation by brute-force expansion of paying down debt, i.e., deleveraging, reveals the futil- the nation’s money supply. This inflation is “good” ity of the Fed’s plan to encourage spending in house- because it enables debtors to pay off their debts with holds with declining incomes. cheaper dollars, and it also serves to reinvigorate the Is it any wonder the mind tricks aren’t working? “animal spirits” of borrowing and spending that the Fed views METROas the foundationSPORTS of growth. But as weGUIDELIVE

have seen,80, inflation 0, 0, 30 has0, 90, 10backfired,0, 10 as a relentlessly0, 28, 87 , 10 The Fed’s “Beautiful Deleveraging” globalized economy and structural surplus of labor have lowered real incomes across the board. “Beauti- Financier Ray Dalio recently described what he ful deleveraging” has morphed into “ugly inflation” termed “beautiful deleveraging.” To understand the that saps purchasing power and the ability to lever- phrase we have to start with one of the core problems age more debt. in the American economy: we’re over-indebted and How about those super-low interest rates? Banks overleveraged, which means that incomes and assets can borrow from the Fed at zero percent, but real (collateral) no longer support the debt that was taken people in the real economy are still paying stiff rates: on in the bubble years. the average interest on credit cards has declined from There are only three ways to deleverage an over- 19.9 percent to 14.52 percent—but only if the con- indebted private sector: write off the bad debt—i.e., sumer has outstanding credit. Student loans in fed- lenders absorb the losses or close their doors—in- erally guaranteed programs have rates of 6.8 percent crease the income of the borrowers with inflation and 7.9 percent to 8.5 percent for PLUS loans, very so it’s easier for them to make debt payments, or use hefty returns in a ZIRP economy. Meanwhile, inter- public funds to bail out the lenders, squeezing public est on cash savings draws near-zero yields—another spending. counterproductive “gift” of Fed policy, as ZIRP has “Beautiful deleveraging” combines equal doses shaved billions of dollars from household incomes. of austerity, write-downs, and inflation to gradually The Fed’s public policies have not just failed to stim- lighten the load of impaired debt. This is Goldilocks ulate productive growth; they have triggered deeply deleveraging. Each component is “not too hot, not too counterproductive forces. Out of sight, the Fed’s proj- cold”—inflation is modest, write-downs of bad debt are ect of preserving bank wealth and power has succeed- gradual, and austerity is not too severe. Given enough ed, at a very high cost to households struggling in the time, the leverage and debt are worked off without re- real economy.

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 31 America

How the Rich Rule Financialization means class war, not market freedom.

by Sheldon Richman

Ernest Hemingway: I am getting to know the rich. unnatural wealth accumulation. A primary source is America’s financial system, Mary Colum: I think you’ll find the only difference which since 1914 has revolved around the government- between the rich and other people is that the rich have sponsored central banking cartel, the Federal Reserve. more money. To understand this, it must first be noted that in an advanced market economy with a well-developed divi- rish literary critic Mary Colum was mistaken. sion of labor, the capital market becomes the “locus for Greater net worth is not the only way the rich entrepreneurial decision-making,” as Walter E. Grinder differ from the rest of us—at least not in a cor- and John Hagel III, writing within the perspective of poratist economy. More important is influence the of economics, put it in their 1977 Iand access to power, the ability to subordinate regu- paper, “Toward a Theory of State Capitalism: Ultimate lar people to larger-than-human-scale organizations, Decision-Making and Class Structure.” political and corporate, beyond their control. Grinder and Hagel, emphasizing the crucial role of To be sure, money can buy that access, but only in entrepreneurship in discovering and disseminating certain institutional settings. In a society where state knowledge and coordinating diverse production and and economy were separate (assuming that’s even con- consumption plans, write: “The evolution of market ceptually possible), or better yet in a , economies … suggests that entrepreneurial activ- wealth would not pose the sort of threat it poses in our ity may become increasingly concentrated within the corporatist (as opposed to a decentralized free-market) capital market as the functional specialization of the system. economy becomes more pronounced.” Adam Smith famously wrote in The Wealth of Na- That sounds ominous, but as long as the market tions that “[p]eople of the same trade seldom meet is free of government interference, this “concentra- together, even for merriment and diversion, but the tion” poses no threat. “None of this analysis should be conversation ends in a conspiracy against the pub- construed as postulating an insidious process of mo- lic, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Much less nopolization of decision-making within the non-state famously, he continued: “It is impossible indeed to market system,” they write, prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or market factors [that is, free and open competi- justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of tion] preclude the possibility that entrepreneurial the same trade from sometimes assembling together, decision-making could ever be monopolized by fi- it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; nancial institutions. … The decision-making within much less to render them necessary.” the capital market operates within the severe con- The fact is, in the corporate state government in- straints imposed by the competitive market process deed facilitates “conspiracies” against the public that and these constraints ensure that the decision-mak- could not otherwise take place. What’s more, be- ing process contributes to the optimum allocation cause of this facilitation, it is reasonable to think the of economic resources within the system. disparity in incomes that naturally arises by virtue of differences among human beings is dramatically Sheldon Richman is the author of Tethered Citizens: Time to exaggerated. We can identify several sources of this Repeal the Welfare State.

32 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 All bets are off, however, when government inter- venes. Then the central role of the banking system in an advanced economy is not only magnified but trans- formed through its “insulation … from the counter- vailing competitive pressures inherent in a free mar- ket.” Only government can erect barriers to competitive entry and provide other advantages to special interests that are unattainable in the marketplace. The original theory of class formulated by early 19th-century French classical liberal economists is relevant here. It was these laissez faire radicals who pointed out that two more or less rigid classes arise as soon at the state starts distributing the fruits of la- bor through taxation: taxpayers and tax-consumers. Rent-seeking is born. It takes little imagination to see that wealthier individuals—many of whom, in Anglo-Amer- ican history, first got that way through the enclosure of commons, land grants, and mercantilist subsidies—will have an advantage over others in maintaining control of the state apparatus. (Eco- nomic theorist Kevin A. Carson calls the continuing benefit of this initial advantage “the subsidy of his- tory.”) And indeed they have. “It seems reasonable to assume that individuals [in the tax consum- ing class] sharing objective interests will tend toward an emerging and at least hazy Miguel Davilla common ‘class consciousness,’” Grinder and Ha- gel write. (Karl Marx acknowledged his debt to the French economists for his own, crucially different, class analysis.) which viewed the state as a necessary instrument Unsurprisingly, in a money-based market economy for the rationalization and stabilization of an in- the financial industry, with the central role already herently unstable economic order. mentioned, will be of special interest to rulers and their associates in the “private” sector. “Historically, In short, financial intervention on behalf of well- state intervention in the banking system has been one heeled, well-connected groups begets recessions, de- of the earliest forms of intervention in the market sys- pressions, and long-term unemployment, which in tem,” Grinder and Hagel write. They emphasize how turn beget vulnerable working and middle classes this intervention plays a key role in changing a popu- who, ignorant of economics, are willing to accept lation’s tacit ideology: more powerful government, which begets more inter- vention on behalf of the wealthy, and so on—a vicious In the U.S., this intervention initially involved circle indeed. sporadic measures, both at the federal and state Fiat money, central banking, and deficit spending level, which generated inflationary distortion in foster and reinforce plutocracy in a variety of ways. the money supply and cyclical disruptions of Government debt offers opportunities for speculation economic activity. The disruptions which accom- by insiders and gives rise to an industry founded on panied the business cycle were a major factor in profitable trafficking in Treasury securities. That in- the transformation of the dominant ideology in dustry will have a profit interest in bigger government the U.S. from a general adherence to laissez-faire and chronic deficit spending. doctrines to an ideology of political capitalism Government debt makes inflation of the money

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 33 America

supply an attractive policy for the state and its cen- the economic system less efficient at serving of the tral bank—not to mention major parts of the financial mass of consumers. Thus inflation, economist Murray system. In the United States, the Treasury borrows Rothbard wrote, “changes the distribution of income money by selling interest-bearing bonds. When the and wealth.” Federal Reserve System wants to expand the money Price inflation, of course, is notorious for favor- supply to, say, juice the economy, it buys those bonds ing debtors over creditors because loans are repaid in from banks and security dealers with money created money with less purchasing power. This at first ben- out of thin air. Now the Fed is the bondholder, but by efits lower income people as well as other debtors, at law it must remit most of the interest to the Treasury, least until credit card interest rates rise. But big busi- thus giving the government a virtually interest-free nesses are also big borrowers—especially in this day loan. With its interest costs reduced in this way, the of highly leveraged activities—so they too benefit in government is in a position to borrow and spend still this way from inflation. Though banks as creditors more money—on militarism and war, for example— lose out in this respect, big banks more than make up for it by selling government securities at a premium and by pyramiding loans on Fiat money, central banking, and deficit spending top of security dealers’ deposits. When people realize their purchasing foster and reinforce plutocracy in a variety of ways. power is falling because of the implicit inflation tax, they will want to under- take strategies to preserve their wealth. and the process can begin again. (These days the Fed Who’s in a better position to hire consultants to guide has a new role as central allocator of credit to specific them through esoteric strategies, the wealthy or peo- firms and industries, as well.) ple of modest means? Meanwhile the banking system has the newly cre- The result is “financialization,” in which financial ated money, and therein lies another way in which the markets and bankers play an ever larger role in people’s well-off gain advantage at the expense of the rest of us. lives. For example, the Fed’s inflationary low-interest- Money inflation under the right conditions produces rate policy makes the traditional savings account use- price inflation, as banks pyramid loans on top of fiat less for preserving and increasing one’s wealth. Where reserves. (This can be offset, as it largely is today, if the once a person of modest means could put his or her Fed pays banks to keep the new money in their inter- money into a liquid account at a local bank at about est-bearing Fed accounts rather than lending it out.) 5 percent interest compounded, today that account But the Austrian school of economics has long earns about 1 percent while the consumer price in- stressed two overlooked aspects of inflation. First, the dex rises at about 2 percent. Savers thus are forced new money enters the economy at specific points, rath- into less liquid certificates of deposit or less familiar er than being distributed evenly through the textbook money market mutual funds (which arose because in “helicopter effect.” Second, money is non-neutral. the inflationary 1970s government capped interest on Since Fed-created money reaches particular privi- savings accounts). Fed policy thus increases business leged interests before it filters through the economy, for the financial industry. early recipients—banks, securities dealers, govern- Inflation is also the culprit in the business cycle, ment contractors—have the benefit of increased pur- which is not a natural feature of the market economy. chasing power before prices rise. Most wage earners Fed policy aimed at lowering interest rates, a policy and people on fixed incomes, on the other hand, see especially favored by capital-intensive businesses re- higher prices before they receive higher nominal in- mote from the consumer-goods level, distorts the comes or Social Security benefits. Pensioners without time structure of production. In a , low in- cost-of-living adjustments are out of luck. terest rates signal an increase in savings, that is, a shift The non-neutrality of money means that price in- from present to future consumption, and high rates flation does not evenly raise the “general price level,” do the reverse. Behold the coordinative function of leaving the real economy unchanged. Rather, infla- the price system: deferred consumption lowers inter- tion changes relative prices in response to the spend- est rates, making interest-rate-sensitive early stages of ing by the earlier recipients, skewing production to- production—such as research and development, and ward those privileged beneficiaries. Considering how extractive industries—more economical. Resources essential prices in a free market are to coordinating and labor may appropriately shift from consumer production and consumption, inflation clearly makes goods to capital goods.

34 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 But what if interest rates fall not because con- economist George Stigler dubbed this “regulatory sumers’ time preferences have changed but because capture.”) Wealth also gives the elite a clearer path the Fed created credit? Investors will be misled into to politicians and candidates for office, who will be thinking resources are newly available for early-stage amenable to policies that make wealthy contributors and other interest-rate-sensitive production, so they happy, such as subsidies, bailouts, and other measures will divert resources and labor to those sectors. But that socialize costs and privatize extra-market prof- consumers still want to consume now. Since resources its. Campaign finance “reform” doesn’t change this, can’t be put to both purposes, the situation can’t last. and even tax-funded campaigns would only drive the Bust follows boom. Think of all those unemployed quid-pro-quo process underground. construction workers and “idle resources” that were Finally, a significant source of upward wealth dis- drawn to the housing industry. tribution is intellectual property. By treating ideas and While some rich people may be hurt by the reces- information as though they were objects to be owned, sion, they are far better positioned to hedge and re- IP law encloses the intellectual commons and de- cover than workers who are laid off from their jobs. prives the public of benefits that a competitive market Moreover, even after the recovery, the knowledge that would naturally socialize. the threat of recession looms can make the workforce The conventional understanding of rich and poor, more docile. The business cycle thus undermines capitalism and socialism, is profoundly misleading. A workers’ bargaining power, enabling bosses to keep corporatist, mixed economy institutionalizes finan- more of the fruits of increased productivity. cial privilege in ways that are overlooked in everyday Bottom line: inflation and the business cycle chan- political discourse—in part because of the ideological nel wealth from poorer to richer. deformations created by the system itself. As Austri- The financial system isn’t the only way that the rich an-school macroeconomist Steven Horwitz put it in benefit at the expense everyone else. The corporate a lecture this year, one need not be a Marxist to see elite have better access to the regulatory agencies and that the state is indeed the executive committee of the rule writers than the rest of us. (University of Chicago ruling class. AD AmericanConservative_FireNext_4C_7x5_10-4_Layout 1 9/26/12 2:29 PM Page 1

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NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 35 Budgets & Bullets

Grover Norquist vs. the Pentagon by Michael D. ostrolenk

rover Norquist, the presi- A Spanish socialist once declaimed: easier than measuring actual metrics of dent of Americans for Tax Spending too much money is not accomplishment. Reform, famously quipped left wing—it is stupid. Ditto wasteful Then one should ask why defense that he didn’t want to spending in zones conservatives tend spending is exempt from the laws of Gdo away with government, merely to favor because they are actually men- politics. “shrink it down to the size where we tioned in the Constitution. can drown it in the bathtub.” He is best Spending should be transparent. All TAC: What lessons do you think known as the architect of the Taxpay- spending by the Pentagon should be Americans need to learn from the last er Protection Pledge, a promise from online. Every check. Exceptions should 10 years of war including Iraq and Af- lawmakers to their constituents to op- be made for legitimate national securi- ghanistan? pose any and all tax increases. Since its ty issues. But military and civilian pay inception in 1986, the pledge has be- and retirement benefits are not state GN: Ask advocates of the decision to come a virtual litmus test for Repub- secrets. This has already been done in occupy Iraq and Afghanistan after lican office-seekers, and today all but many state governments. the Baathist and Taliban regimes were a handful of GOP congressmen have The private sector has moved most overthrown what their goal was. What signed it. of their pensions from defined ben- would define winning or succeeding? Though the GOP often professes a efit to defined contribution. Utah just How much did it cost? In dollars and desire to reduce spending, the party passed a law that beginning in July in lives. And how much will continu- has been notably reluctant to go after 2012 all new hires by state or local ing the occupations cost? When will the largest item in the discretionary government will have a 401(k) defined they end? Someone sure of the virtue budget—the Pentagon. TAC’s Michael contribution pension. There will be no of his decisions will welcome answer- Ostrolenk recently spoke to Norquist new unfunded liabilities. The Pentagon ing those basic questions. Those who about this curious exception. should make the DC reform that the cannot answer those questions now private sector did in the 1980s, civilian should have been forced to answer TAC: Grover, you are famous for say- federal workers began making in the them before lives were spent towards ing that the U.S. government does not 1990s, and state and local governments an unarticulated purpose. have a revenue problem but a spending are doing now. Why be last? Reagan asked in 1980: are you better problem. Sequester aside, how would off than you were four years ago? Are you recommend the next Congress TAC: What actions do conservatives American interests in the world more and President address pork at the Pen- need to take in order to help educate secure today than before the decision tagon? some members of Congress on their to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan? mistaken notion that spending equals GN: Conservatives should insist that strength? TAC: You are a strong proponent of defense spending be examined with the transparency, which included your same seriousness that we demand in ex- GN: One should look at the charts that support for an audit of the Federal Re- amining the books of those government compare tax dollars spent per pupil serve. What are your thoughts on a full agencies that spend taxpayer money in on education to SAT scores, or high and complete audit of the Department the name of welfare, the environment, school graduation rates. Spending is of Defense? or education. We laugh at liberals who not caring. Spending is what politicians declare that their favorite spending pro- do instead of caring. Spending more GN: The Department of Defense grams should be exempt because the does not guarantee success. Politicians should be audited, as should other de- spending is for a noble cause. like to measure spending because it is partments of the federal government.

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Concerned persons suggest that unless there is an awakening, government in America’s republic will continue being transformed into a foreign ideology. Fortunately there is an awakening powerful enough to halt that juggernaut of government control: a of right action.

It states: Right action gets right results, and it defi nes right “These books are action as rational, honest thinking and behavior. absolutely amazing. I Unknowingly people’s actions have been contradicting cre- can’t thank you enough ation’s law, so they have not known to look to themselves when for advertising them.” wrong results occur. - Elsie Because natural laws never play favorites, people obey them or suffer the consequences. That is the awakening information for this generation. And when people contradict this natural law, sooner or later, they suffer the eternal sleep from which there is no awakening. Whoever or whatever is the creator revealed this natural law to the mind of Richard W. Wetherill decades ago, answering his fervent appeal to understand the cause of humanity’s plight. Centuries ago the Founding Fathers of America established a country ruled in a God-fearing way by representatives of the people. Newcomers willing to be governed by its Constitution and Bill of Rights were welcomed. Over the years, people came in droves, but now the present political action is causing many people great concern. The solution? People must heed Nature’s Wake Up Call and obey a natural law, calling for their rational, honest “Thank you for your thoughts and action. work. I have found Mr. Wetherill’s books to be For more information visit www.alphapub.com or for a free of great importance. The mailing write to The Alpha Publishing House, PO Box 255, fi nal piece of the puzzle.” Royersford, PA 19468 - John

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The Path of Khan Will Pakistan’s most famous cricketer become its next leader?

by Christopher Sandford

ricket remains the world’s second most annual basis. Imran eventually played his final pro- popular spectator sport, after soccer, and fessional cricket game in March 1992. His climactic Imran Khan, a Pakistan-born superstar, act on the field was to personally strike out the last bestrode the game in the 1970s and ’80s. opposition batsman and thus win the World Cup CImran was not only fearsomely fast and accurate for Pakistan. No scriptwriter would dare contrive with the ball as a pitcher or “bowler,” he was a such a scene. After more than two decades of dis- formidable batsman, too. To get a comparative fla- tinguished service, Imran went out amid scenes of vor of his achievements as an all-round performer, delirious street celebration in a country that has long you’d have to combine Mariano Rivera and the tended to judge its national self-worth in terms of home-run firepower of an Albert Pujols, with a dash the performance of its cricket team and the size of its of Ichiro Suzuki’s elegant strokeplay, all in one play- nuclear arsenal in comparison to India’s. er. Throw in movie-star good looks and a certain Most international cricketers, if they’re lucky, go feline grace—Imran had a habit of walking across a on to an afterlife of ghosted autobiographies, su- room on his toes, as if warming up for a race—with permarket openings, pro-am golf tournaments, and a vibrant social life to match, and you can see why occasional color commentary on television. Imran Imran Khan was the renaissance man of the sport chose a different route: following the death of his for over 20 years. mother from cancer at the age of 62, he dedicated His eventual retirement from professional cricket himself to founding a hospital, well-equipped and was an unusually protracted business. When he was privately funded, in her name. Over the next five 31, about the age a top international player typi- years, he worked hard to see the project through in cally begins to review his remaining career options, a country where large-scale capital works tend to he suffered a serious leg injury that put him out of attract the attention of interest groups, politicians action for more than two years. It appeared even to seeking rewards for providing the necessary build- seasoned sports reporters that his playing days were ing permits, and contractors earning grossly inflated over. Against the odds, he returned to captain the sums to work outside their strictly prescribed hours. Pakistan team in a further 38 “test,” or internation- He read every available regulation on Pakistan’s na- al, matches, which included some of his own best tional healthcare system. He also visited dozens of performances with both bat and ball. Yet there was clinics and surgeries around the country. Existing always a degree of uncertainty about his plans, and conditions were “a disaster,” Imran concluded. Years there were several occasions in the 1980s and early later, he would recall going to one state-run facility in ’90s when Pakistan’s officially designated captain Lahore, where “three or four small children suffering failed to join his team on the field due to other com- from cancer had to share a filthy bed.” There were no mitments—primarily politics. funds for modern equipment or even the most basic Sometimes only Imran himself knew whether he sanitary requirements, though, curiously enough, would deign to appear in a particular game. To call the government was able to maintain its own lavishly him the Frank Sinatra of the international sports furnished hotel-cum-infirmary for members of the world would be to confer a somewhat flattering sense of consistency on a player who seemed to rest, Christopher Sandford is a Seattle-based writer and the author or retire, and then come back again on roughly an of a 2009 biography of Imran Khan.

38 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 ruling party and senior military officers. talking about a career in politics. A few years later, After seeing off every conceivable kind of official in the midst of a road tour of Pakistan to raise funds opposition, Imran announced the opening of the for his hospital, he underwent an almost Dama- Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital in Lahore in scene conversion when, in one dusty Punjab market January 1995. He remarked that this was something square, “a very elderly and obviously impoverished of more consequence to him than winning the World man emptied the contents of his pockets to put ev- Cup. Treatment would be completely free for those erything he had into my collecting box. That one unable to pay, meaning that the ordinary Pakistani gesture made me realize how fundamentally good citizen of limited means now had access to the sort the common people were, as opposed to their rul- of critical healthcare previously reserved for what ers.” For some six weeks, Imran traveled the coun- the Times of London called a “tiny minority com- try’s smaller towns and villages, 29 in all, in a sort posed of the country’s military and civilian rulers, of Popemobile, alighting to give upwards of a hun- or those who had used their influence for personal dred speeches. His basic message combined the key gain”—insofar as there was a distinction between the financial appeal with what the Sunday Times called two groups. “rousing, quasi-religious sermons attacking femi- Imran told me that he was reconciled to spend- nism, atheists, politicians, ‘evil’ Western values, and ing the rest of his life on a recurring fund-raising the ‘brown sahibs’ or those Pakistani elites who aped drive for the hospital—as well as to the fact that his country was full of “evil bastards” who for one reason or another opposed even the most hu- manitarian initiative if it happened There appear to be several mysteries, then, to offend their own political agenda. about the sports icon, swinger, and philanthropist In 1996, someone set off a bomb in struggling for pre-eminence in Imran Khan: the Shaukat Khanum hospital. Sev- en patients died and 34 more were he seems to be several different people. wounded in the explosion, which the Pakistani government officially blamed on India’s intelligence ser- vices. Imran added calmly that he had narrowly their former colonial masters.” Imran’s tone grew avoided being on the premises, as “I was due to show more populist as the trip progressed. a donor around the facilities that morning, but the Not long afterwards, Imran formally launched his guy was late.” Tehreek-e-Insaf (“Movement for Justice”) party. Its essential platform was one of social equality allied ere’s another thing Imran did that might not with national self-reliance. Soon he was back tour- Happly in the case of the average professional ing Pakistan again, where he was received with a cricketer. In 1984, when he was in London recover- warmth rarely seen even in the subcontinent. There ing from his leg injury, Imran attached himself to was a particular frenzy among students and young a visiting tribal warlord from the Balochistan re- people, many of them female, whom the Tehreek-e- gion of western Pakistan, named Sher Mohammad Insaf identified as being “totally alienated by the ex- Marri. Marri and his personal guard of four parari isting power structure.” One has only to think of the (fighters) spent a month in England as part of a Eu- likes of Eugene McCarthy in 1968 to get something ropean fundraising tour. They were put up for sev- of the mood. eral nights at Imran’s apartment in the fashionable In the midst of this, Imran married the British so- South Kensington area. The neighbors’ view of the ciety beauty Jemima Goldsmith, who was 22 years group enjoying a traditional Balochi feast of a roast his junior and not previously known for her ascetic sheep served in a makeshift barbecue on the back lifestyle. As Imran’s opponents pointed out, his bride lawn was the locals’ major talking point, although was also the daughter of a London- and Paris-based the sight of Marri and his men calmly strolling up Jewish billionaire. Alluding to the newlyweds’ cul- the Brompton Road in their native regalia also left tural differences, the satirical weekly Private Eye ran a mark. a picture of Imran and Jemima’s father on its front The visit made an impression of a different kind cover: in the speech bubbles, Imran was saying, on Imran, who soon began reading Islamic texts and “May I have your daughter’s hand?” and his prospec-

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 39 World

tive father-in-law was replying, “Why? Has she sto- age as a playboy during his cricket days. Anyone who len something?” Imran was soon back in the head- chooses to appear in the Daily Mirror’s center-page lines again when two prominent English cricketers spread “stretched across his hotel bed wearing only sued him for libel in the British High Court for hav- a petulant expression and a pair of tiny, black satin ing allegedly described them as cheats, among other shorts,” to quote the paper’s feature writer Noreen unappreciative remarks. The jury found in Imran’s Taylor, is at least complicit in his own downfall. favor. There appear to be several mysteries, then, about orn into a comfortably set family in a gated part the sports icon, swinger, and philanthropist strug- Bof Lahore, Imran attended the city’s Aitchison gling for pre-eminence in Imran Khan: he seems to College, where he’s remembered as short on raw in- be several different people. It’s not even sure exactly tellect but long on determination. The Khans’ home when he was born. All the cricket reference books was a six-bedroom villa of English-stockbroker dé- list the date as November 25, 1952. But Imran told cor. According to one visitor, there was a “teak cabi- me that this had been the result of a “typical Paki- net record player the size of a coffin, woven farashi stani administrative foul-up” when he came to ob- rugs, and doilied armchairs.” A water buffalo grazed tain his first passport, and that he actually arrived in the back garden. The family also farmed several hundred acres of sugar cane in Murree, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Imran’s competitive streak came out Imran was a made, not born, cricketer, in a variety of ways, including his partic- ipation in a series of cutthroat kite-flying who augmented his fair amount of competitions. (What brought drama to natural talent with ferocious reserves the proceedings was that on occasion of determination and self-confidence. the kite strings would be coated with ground glass, with the idea of disabling rivals’ kites by cutting their strings in the air.) As a teenager and young man, he seemed to be in perpetual motion, and among us on October 5 of that year. More pertinent- in 1965, when Pakistan and India went to war in one ly, perhaps, there’s the question of what sort of leader of their periodic disputes over Kashmir, he had to be Imran might make of America’s most dysfunctional restrained from marching off with a knapsack in the and strategically crucial ally—a distinct possibility as general direction of the front. Summer and winter, Pakistan approaches its national elections in Febru- he went for daily seven-mile runs, a Pakistani na- ary 2013 and he continues to attract crowds in the tional flag often fluttering above him. To add to this tens of thousands to his rallies. already punishing regimen, he was known to carry a This is a man who abhors the decadence of what pillowcase filled with rocks on his back. In later years he calls “Western frivolity” in general and “fat girls when about his remarkable stamina, he always men- in miniskirts” in particular, while having led a no- tioned the runs: “I would sprint, not just jog along,” tably vibrant social life in London for 20 years. As he invariably pointed out. “It would often be like an the Times reminds us, “some discrepancy exists” obstacle course—over walls, hedges, fields, roads, between “the latter-day Muslim fundamentalist and plowed land. … I got tougher and tougher,” he and his earlier ’80s incarnation as a fun-loving in- added, a metaphor for his later career. ternational athlete.” One attribute even Imran’s po- Imran was also a made, not born, cricketer, it’s litical opponents agree on is his incorruptibility, by widely agreed, who augmented his only fair amount no means a universal trait among Pakistan’s ruling of natural talent with ferocious reserves of deter- class. Another clue to his essential character came mination and self-confidence. A case in point is his back in 1982 when, as captain of his country’s cricket now-legendary bowling technique. At first, this was team, he unceremoniously fired his predecessor Ma- thought nothing special. Imran just ambled up to the jid Khan, who also happened to be his first cousin. point of delivery, then more or less stood there and Ruthless, then, and not always a friend of what he lobbed the ball at the batsman. After many hours of once characterized as the “boozy and lying Western practice, he eventually emerged with an altogether press”—although it’s perhaps possible to discount more fearsome routine that was part athletics, part some of Imran’s specific protests at his tabloid im- ballet, and part tribal wardance. Imran would walk

40 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 back some 20 yards from his mark, turn, then run in once elections were held, and that in return I would full steam towards the batter, elbows pumping, leap- be made prime minister.” Imran at first stalled, and ing high in the air at the moment of delivery. Thus he then roundly declined the offer when pressed for a was able both to gain extra momentum and dramati- reply. Colorful language was used. “You’ll never be cally tower over his opponent, who would then have anything now!” Aziz shouted at him. to deal with “this crazy, vaulting Pakistani bowling at Three years later, in May 2005, Newsweek reported you at 90 miles per hour,” as one distinguished for- that U.S. interrogators had desecrated copies of the mer England player put it. Koran while questioning prisoners at Guantanamo The result was at once superbly efficient and Bay. The 300-word story cited sources as saying that shamelessly flamboyant. No one in the history of investigators looking into abuses at the military jail cricket up had ever seen anything like it. Imran ap- had found that “GIs placed Korans on toilets, and in plied the same exacting standards to others as he did at least one case had flushed a holy book down the to himself. When in 1982 he took over the captaincy pan.” Imran lost little time in calling a press confer- of the Pakistani national team, they were the joke of ence at which, flourishing a copy of the magazine, he the international cricket circuit, in part because up demanded that President Musharraf secure an offi- to half the side would be bickering with the other cial apology for the incident, which was “a disgrace” half at any given time. Whenever approached for ad- and “an insult to Muslims,” who were now “under vice by a younger player, Imran eschewed technicali- direct attack” from the West. At least 17 people were ties and instead offered the four-word overview: “Be killed and up to 600 injured when demonstrators like a tiger.” Ten years later, when he retired, Pakistan then took to the streets in Peshawar, Lahore, and were the sport’s world champions. other parts of the country to shout anti-U.S. slogans Imran’s entry into Pakistani politics was also a and burn the American flag. case of dogged perseverance. Following his retire- Imran remained unapologetic, even as he disasso- ment from cricket, he accepted an unpaid position ciated himself from the violence. “To throw the Ko- as Pakistan’s first ever ambassador for tourism. This ran in the toilet is the greatest violation of a Muslim’s was an area hitherto under-explored in the country’s human rights,” he announced. “Should we close Am- 50-year modern history. A vigorous publicity cam- nesty and the Red Cross because they bring up viola- paign aimed at the American mass market proved tions? When you speak out, people react.” Newsweek something of a stretch, Imran admits, as Pakistan is subsequently disowned much of its original story, “not the vacation resort of choice for most Midwest- noting that errors in its report were “terribly unfor- erners.” tunate.” Although initially supportive of General Pervez Imran’s political fortunes reached their nadir in Musharraf following the coup of October 1999, re- November 2007, when, having resigned his parlia- lations between the two soon cooled to the point mentary seat, he took his protest to the streets by of open enmity. Eventually charges were brought giving a series of stridently anti-Musharraf speeches against Imran and his English wife accusing them of at Pakistan’s schools and colleges. After narrowly the serious offense of “exporting goods of paramount eluding capture on one occasion by climbing out of national archaeological interest”—specifically, a box a bedroom window and jumping over the back wall of 200 glazed blue bathroom-floor tiles, intended as of his home when the police burst in at 4 a.m. one a gift for Imran’s in-laws in London. Although the morning, he was subsequently arrested on the stage case was later dismissed, it marked a downward turn of nearby Punjab University, where he had again in the Khans’ marriage: they divorced in 2004 and called for Musharraf’s impeachment. Imprisoned share custody of their two sons. Imran later called for six days in medieval conditions, Imran was unex- Musharraf a war criminal and a crook, and along pectedly released when the government announced with President George W. Bush, “the greatest threat an amnesty for “our friend Mr. Khan [and] all others to life on this planet.” held under the interim security provisions.” The BBC Even so, in August 2002—in one of those serpen- speculated that the gesture came about primarily be- tine twists so common to Pakistani politics—Mush- cause the detention of the nation’s greatest sporting arraf approached Imran with a surprising proposal. hero was “making waves internationally, and causing The offer was conveyed by the state president’s pow- embarrassment in Islamabad and Washington.” erful principal secretary, Tariq Aziz. “The basic idea,” President Musharraf left office the following Au- Imran told me, “was that I would join the govern- gust and now lives in a luxury government villa, ment coalition, which would do Musharraf’s bidding planning his comeback. His immediate successor,

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 41 World

and the man with his finger on Pakistan’s nuclear it affects Pakistan and regularly demands that “the trigger, emerged as Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of insult of the Western jets and drones” overflying Benazir Bhutto. Apart from other issues, there were his country be stopped or, if necessary, shot down. soon questions about the state of the new president’s On the other hand, he’s also repeatedly praised the mental health. In a corruption case brought against “basic American promise of freedom and generos- him by the Musharraf government, Zardari’s own ity to others” and does most of his lucrative hospital lawyers told a London court in 2007 that he had suf- fundraising here. Imran once told me that he made fered from “dementia, depression, and other psycho- a sharp distinction between the ordinary citizens of logical problems,” after being repeatedly tortured on this country and “the stooges at the Pentagon.” Truly the orders of his political opponents. legitimate governments, he added, can survive only Should Imran Khan come to power in 2013, we as long as they are grounded in the “affections” of the can expect him to continue his divided approach to people. “Whatever else democracy means in this age U.S.-Pakistani relations. On the one hand, he’s con- of terrorism and corruption, it surely has to mean at tinually denounced “the so-called war on terror” as least that.”

DEEPBACKGROUND by PHILIP GIRALDI

ashington’s playbook has been reduced NATO forces off balance. They are also boasting to “drop back and punt” in Afghanistan. that they withstood the highly publicized U.S. surge WEverybody knows that there have been on- of last year. The Taliban see themselves as winning again off-again talks to obtain a political settlement, the conflict and are reluctant to renew negotiations but there has been much speculation over what except as a ploy to buy time. exactly is taking place since the Taliban ostensibly There have been continued secret talks in ended negotiations in March over U.S. hesitation to Germany seeking possible re-engagement through release five senior prisoners held at Guantanamo. defining minimum conditions for the four parties The talks were nearly invisible in the press, even involved—the U.S., Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the though their existence was confirmed by the Afghan Taliban. The Taliban have demanded the withdrawal and U.S. governments as well as by the Taliban of all foreign soldiers from Afghanistan, while the itself. Such talks are the sine qua non for American U.S. continues to insist that no terrorist groups be departure from the country in 2014 because without allowed to use the country as a safe haven. Afghan an agreement a prolonged civil war with continued President Hamid Karzai knows he has been dealt a U.S. involvement is virtually guaranteed. weak hand and wants a political transition formula U.S. special envoy Marc Grossman has been replete with guarantees, while Pakistan is pushing engaging in shuttle diplomacy in Qatar, where the for the repatriation of all Afghan refugees and full Taliban have a political office, as well as in Islam- control of the border between the two countries. abad, Berlin, and Kabul to try to stitch together a U.S. intelligence assessments are increasingly post-2014 settlement, but he has not been able to pessimistic about the capability of Afghan forces to claim any breakthroughs. The State Department resist a post-2014 Taliban coup de main without con- and the intelligence community are acutely aware siderable outside assistance, and that is where the that without an agreement the situation in Afghani- problems come in. Washington is unwilling to leave stan will eventually degrade into a major strategic behind a large residual force to guarantee a peace defeat. The best current estimate by the CIA settlement, and the only other player able to put suggests that the wind-down by NATO forces over boots on the ground if necessary is Pakistan, which the next two years would produce an Afghanistan is proving uncooperative. It is on very bad terms with that is one-third controlled by the Taliban when the both Washington and Kabul and would prefer a weak last foreign soldiers depart, with a gradual erosion and divided Afghan regime that it could manage, of remaining support for the government in Kabul though it would not like to see the disruption that a and eventual regime change. The Taliban too are civil war would produce. having problems with falling morale and rising casualties, but they are able to exploit their safe Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive havens in Pakistan to keep the government and director of the Council for the National Interest.

42 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 Culture

Close Encounter The last days of the Cold War’s greatest journal

by R.J. Stove

ou know you’re getting old when graduate Barzini to Ignazio Silone, the turgidity of Frank Ker- students—still in diapers when the Ber- mode (“Old Toad, Frank Kermode,” in Philip Lar- lin Wall collapsed—lecture to you about kin’s snicker) alongside the repartee of Ken Tynan: Leonard Bernstein As Cold War Icon. Encounter catered for them all, and you can now YEspecially when they insist on saying “Bern-steen,” look up every issue online, thanks to Unz.org. which no Australian in Lenny’s lifetime dreamed of Encounter even found room for Australians. It ran doing. an early (1979) anti-Holocaust-denialism exposé, one Cold War historiography has become, of late, tru- carried out by Melbourne University’s Czech refugee ly hip. The selfsame collegiate bloviators who at the Frank “Franta” Knopfelmacher. Franta must have time denied that the Cold War even existed are now been the greatest, and most vilified, political philoso- falling over each other to hold conferences on the pher of modern times. After all, he would say so him- subject. Cold War historians can make megabucks. I self, usually in late-night telephone monologues of have bills to pay. Some of those megabucks, I cannot Toynbeean length, invariably with more F-words than help feeling, should be mine. Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor combined. Obeying the vainglorious but understandable Another Australian had known about Encounter code of the brush-wielding dilettante who alleged- because since 1953 copies of it had been sent to his ly told Michelangelo, “I too am a painter,” I should address: David Stove, Philosophy Department, The like to assure the world that “I too was a Cold War- University of New South Wales. David Stove was a rior.” It is no more impudent an assertion than Al regular victim of Franta’s telephony until his wife Gore’s boast of inventing the Internet, and within my Jessie Stove, goaded beyond endurance by same, or- youth’s largely tin-pot circles it has—unlike Gore’s dered him to cease picking up the handset. He was swanking—the merit of accuracy. In particular, I can also my father, and Jessie Stove my mother. Which is claim to have done my part to wreck Encounter. where I came in. My mother always maintained that the first word I f you’ve read this far you probably remember what ever used in Scrabble was “Encounter” (Dad: “That’s IEncounter was. But the name of its boss, Melvin J. my boy”) and that the second word I learned to use (“Mel”) Lasky, will mean nothing to almost anyone in Scrabble was “communism” (Dad: “That bloody under 35. For almost anyone over 35, though, he was boy!”). Yet I knew the second word only because of as prominent once as A.C. Grayling is today. In Brit- the first word. Our house had Encounter back issues ish (and West German) high journalism from 1953 the way dogs have fleas. There I learned about a mys- to 1990, Lasky mattered. He controlled Encounter terious term called “communism.” I learned much while other editors came and went. else too. To read Encounter was a liberal education. There is no equivalent to Encounter now, except Years later I discovered from Michael Easson —a the Times Literary Supplement, perhaps. Encoun- hard-as-nails, bookish social democrat and plausibly ter seemed to publish all scribblers marginally less credited with having run New South Wales the way politically demented than Kim Il-Sung. Historians Richelieu ran France—that a similar abundance of from Sir Arthur Bryant to the knighthood-hating A.J.P. Taylor, veteran Italian antifascists from Luigi R.J. Stove is the author of César Franck: His Life and Times.

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 43 Culture

ancient Encounter copies prevailed in his childhood garb. Most piercingly: the same hooded Tartar eyes, home. which never moved. Passing in silence over school, Brezhnev, Viet- (Obviously Mr. Lasky had decided, through a kind nam, Nixon in China, and “Mr. Gorbachev, tear of spiritual mischief, to emphasize the Lenin looka- down that wall!”, we come to 1990. By this stage Dad like Gestalt. An anti-communist physically indis- had joined Encounter’s stable of authors. I wanted to tinguishable from the Bolshevik Messiah! Eat your join Encounter’s stable of authors. This did not seem heart out, Catskills comedians.) inherently impossible. Already I had planned, or His manner, once he dug out my clippings from “planned,” a book on César Franck. My “plans” re- the papers on his desk, cut my thinking short. Cour- sembled those of Micawber, but let that pass. teous but businesslike, he said: “So. What’s on your Usually I avoided submitting articles to any peri- mind?” odical where Dad was published. (I had become all Somehow I explained to him my hopes that too conversant with editors who either eulogized me Encounter might consider a César Franck-related article by me. Occasionally he interrupted, with flawless decorum but not a wasted sylla- ble. “Why do you think that is?” “And then?” Editors of highbrow periodicals are “We’ll see.” “That’s curious.” Finally—here I no longer recollect the exact words—he said habitual optimists about where the the best thing that any honest editor can tell next million dollars will come from. a literate supplicant: he asked me to submit something, and there’d be no guarantees but he’d give it serious consideration. The only other thing I recall is that my clippings included a prize-winning example or denounced me purely because I was David Stove’s of mine, published in one of the Spectator poetry son. Call it “the Siegfried Wagner syndrome.”) This contests. The next contest’s announcement, as Lasky time, I vowed to make an exception. noticed, began with the hail-fellow-well-met words: I happened to be visiting London anyhow. We are “My old friend Bertrand Russell.” “Aha!” ejaculated speaking of 1990, when Britain’s notion of custom- Lasky. “Russell!” er service and telephone answering was about on a He might also have said “Well, that’ll be all, I par with Cuba’s. Especially when the caller had an think” because I quickly realized I should leave. And Australian accent. Getting the cut-glass-voiced Brit so I did. lady receptionist (I’ll swear she was practicing for Approximately ten days later, when of course my the Emily Blunt role in “The Devil Wears Prada”) to Franck submission had been neither accepted nor allow me to request an appointment—not to make rejected, Encounter had gone broke. Within weeks an appointment, to request one—took three tries. another valuable British magazine, The Listener, had Finally I heard back, somehow, at my hotel from Mr. also collapsed. I never saw, or heard from, Mr. Lasky Lasky himself. Yes, come and say hello. But it can’t be again (why would I have?). He died in 2004. earlier than 6 p.m. on such-and-such a date. ake of this vignette what you will. Several he Encounter office. A dump. Sorry, but that’s Mquestions have nagged at me. Did Lasky actu- Thow it was. November in London. Pitch dark- ally know, when he met me, that Encounter had run ness outside. The receptionist and all other staff save out of funds? Did he merely suspect it? Did he will- one had gone home, no doubt traumatized by my fully refuse to scrutinize the bookkeeping? Did he antipodean speech patterns. A concierge of some consciously string me along in the knowledge that sort, with access to Mr. Lasky’s den; Mr. Lasky; and he was playing me for a sucker? myself. “Come on in.” In conversation years ago with me on the topic, I came in. Peter Coleman—erstwhile federal parliamentarian, What???????? author of The Liberal Conspiracy, and former edi- It was a standing joke that Lasky looked similar to tor of Sydney’s Quadrant— emphatically ruled out Lenin. But my first thought was more definite: “[Ex- deceit on Lasky’s part. I am inclined to agree with pletive] me dead, there’s been a terrible mix-up, this Peter (whom I know so well that I must call him by guy is Lenin.” Same facial hair, similar size, similar his Christian name). Editors of highbrow periodicals

44 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 are habitual optimists—whether or not they have, as Lasky had, a mon- eyed spouse suddenly fallen on hard times—about where the next mil- lion dollars will come from. Their optimism is either a déformation professionelle or a needed spiritual prophylactic against the funny farm, take your choice. Lasky cannot have objected to de- ceit per se. For all his scholarship he was a Noo Yawk intellectual street- combatant with not an ounce of sugar in his blood. He had lived in London for decades, but his accent remained pure Brooklyn Heights. How much he ever knew about Encounter’s CIA funding, head- line news from 1967, no expert can say. Michael Wreszin’s biography of Dwight Macdonald is reduced to conjecture on this point. So is Fran- ces Stonor Saunders’s Congress for Cultural Freedom chronicle, The Cultural Cold War. You’re baffled, I’m baffled. My guess, which anyone is free to mock, is that Lasky compartmental- ized his thinking. On the basis of my encounter (oops) with him, I formed the impression of a man who lived simultaneously—as perhaps, all em- Encounter’s final issue inent Cold Warriors needed to do— in two worlds: the world of geopo- litical intrigue and the world of literature. If push Aron, after their terrible quarrel, always seeking a came to shove, and if the Soviet menace had become rapprochement while Sartre lived; Sartre always re- so appalling as to make the CIA decide that saving fusing; and the dying Sartre, it is said, suddenly re- France from communism depended upon Sartre marking: “Aron est là.” Did either man ever read T.S. undergoing a fatal “accident,” I think Lasky would Eliot’s verse? have assented to such a sub rosa execution without a single night’s subsequent insomnia. But I also think … These men, and those who opposed them that Lasky would have moved heaven and earth to And those whom they opposed prevent Sartre’s books from being confiscated by the Accept the constitution of silence police. Does that make sense? And are folded into a single party.

his revelation is not exactly a Venona decrypt. Sartre has passed on, and Aron has passed on, and TBut maybe a retired spook in Maryland or a Melvin Lasky has passed on, and Stephen Spender— retired call girl in Georgetown will find the above with his tantrums over the CIA moneys—has passed sketch of interest and will know something even on, and my parents have passed on, although Peter Robert Conquest doesn’t. Coleman, thanks be to God, still goes gangbusters. Examine the compleat Encounter for yourself, if Of a magazine, no less than of mankind, a version you want. It’s online, unprotected by a paywall. of the proverb is true: death is what happens to you Do, at least, look up Raymond Aron’s obit there. while you’re making other plans.

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 45 Home Plate BILL KAUFFMAN

Who Needs a President?

o matter which hollow that all parties at the Convention tacit- hundreds of thousands of American man occupies the bunker ly agreed that the first president would boys to the other side of the world to at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave- be George Washington, whom even kill and die for… whatever it was and nue, the evidence from 225 the most suspicious Anti-Federalists is that men killed and died for in Viet- Nyears points to an inescapable conclu- admired. How much more protective nam and Iraq. sion: the Founders erred horribly in of our liberties would the Framers have The key vote of the Convention was creating the presidency. To invest in been, one wonders, if the putative first not the famous Connecticut Compro- one man quasi-kingly powers over president was a man less universally mise, approved on July 16, 1787, which the 13 states then, 300 million people respected than Washington: say, John provided for equality of representa- and half a continent today, is madness. Hancock? tion in the Senate, but rather the vote And it didn’t have to be this way. Consider South Carolina delegate of June 19 on Rufus King’s motion that Many Anti-Federalists proposed, Pierce Butler’s admission in a letter of William Paterson’s New Jersey Plan as an alternative to what they called May 1788 that the president’s “Powers was “not admissible.” By a vote of seven the “president-general,” either a plural are full great, and greater than I was states to three, with Maryland divided, executive—two or more men shar- disposed to make them. Nor ... do I be- the Convention approved King’s mo- ing the office, a recipe for what a sage lieve they would have been so great had tion. James Madison’s nationalizing once called a wise and masterly inac- not many of the members cast their Virginia Plan was to be the markup tivity—or they wanted no executive at eyes towards General Washington as document. all. Federal affairs would be so limited President; and shaped their Ideas of A poet who wrote and lived just in scope that they could be performed the Powers to be given to a President, north of Boston, an Anti-Federalist of competently and without aggrandize- by their opinions of his Virtue. So sorts, wrote about roads not taken. ment by a unicameral legislature—that that the Man, who by his Patriotism What if delegates from the Anti-Fed- is, one house of Congress—as well as and Virtue, Contributed largely to the eralist states of New Hampshire and various administrative departments Emancipation of his Country, may be Rhode Island had been present on June and perhaps a federal judiciary. the Innocent means of its being, when 19? What if the Anti-Federalist Mercer The New Jersey Plan, fathered by He is lay’d low, oppress’d.” had been there to tip Maryland’s vote? William Paterson of the Springsteen The Framers, so often credited with What if Connecticut had flipped? With State, was the small-f federal option at farsightedness, saw no farther than a tweak here and epiphany there, and the Constitutional Convention. It is the the noble Washington. Only the Anti- maybe a timely attack of gout thrown great decentralist what-might-have- Federalists, it seems, could envision in for good measure, what if enough been. The New Jersey Plan provided Lyndon B. Johnson or George W. Bush. votes had shifted so that the New Jersey for a unicameral Congress with an Well, I hate to break it to the demigods Plan had been the template of the new equal vote for each state, and copresi- of the Philadelphia Convention, but Constitution? dents chosen by Congress for a single George Washington had not discov- Would a monument (modest, natu- fixed term and removable by Congress ered the elixir of eternal life. He was rally) to William Paterson greet the oc- if so directed by a majority of state gov- not going to live forever, let alone serve casional visitor to the sleepy Federal City ernors. as president for the life of the republic. of... wait, there would be no Federal City. This would have saved us from the Lesser men would come along, and be No Washington, D.C. Congress probably cult of the presidency, the imperial granted those same powers, and the would meet in Philadelphia, where the presidency, the president as the world’s powers would expand, as the executive presidents of the United States, whose celebrity-in-chief—the whole gargan- branch expanded, until you have men names the citizens never can quite recall, tuan mess. I’d not trust to serve as Exalted Rulers also keep their spartan offices. One reason for the disastrous en- of the Batavia Elks Club being serenad- Maybe we shoulda taken that gorgement of presidential powers was ed by “Hail to the Chief” and sending road…

46 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 Poor Management Is Steadily Destroying the United States Our Country is Totally Mismanaged At Executive & Legislative Levels! We are Overextended & Underproductive - And Our Economy is Underprotected! We are bleeding to death and to debt • We are fighting a draining war in Afghanistan that we cannot win and with no exit strategy • We are unintentionally creating terrorists as we attempt to fight terrorists with our drone planes – bombing unknown people in countries like Pakistan • We are bleeding money through our balance-of-trade deficit. It is always in the red, with no end in sight as we haven’t had a trade surplus in 37 years • Our trade deficit (difference between imports and exports) is now around $600 billion. This means we are sending $1.2 million out of the country every minute, on average in trade alone • This money comes back not to buy our products but to buy our companies. We have sold 16,613 of our best companies in the past 30 years to foreign interests • 2012 national budget deficit is over $1 trillion • Accumulated national debt is over $16 trillion • Total consumer debt in the U.S. is $11 trillion • Student loan debt is over $867 billion • 1 in every 5 home loans is financially underwater

We have no way to pay these debts! Our priorities are all wrong. Our armies are all over the world – in Afghanistan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, among other countries – yet our country is crumbling. Our infrastructure is in shambles, yet we spend our money building infrastructure in Afghanistan while our enemies are shooting at us.

We will never be able to pay back these debts as long as we continue to misuse our military and pursue outrageously misguided “free trade” policies that are proven to be disastrous failures.

Simply put, free trade allows unrestricted, uncontrolled access to our economy for goods made overseas at labor costs far below ours, sometimes as low as $2 per hour, tariff- and duty-free. We cannot compete with these labor costs, so we must outsource our manufacturing and watch our factories go bankrupt. This renders us uncompetitive and unproductive, sending the middle class jobs we once depended on overseas, devastating our economy.

We must demand better policies from our elected officials. Clearly the way we are living is unsustainable and it will only get worse if we do not rethink our failed “free” trade policies, bring our troops home and start to become safe, sound and productive again.

To fix our economic problems and point the country in the right direction, we must, must, must speak out - demand our leaders substitute disastrous “free” trade for FAIR trade and completely withdraw from the choking grip of the World Trade Organization so we can manage our own country again. Learn More at EconomyInCrisis.org, Your Economic Report - Daily Economy In Crisis, INC.(614) 210-7255 Arts&Letters

Founding Financiers if the tale won’t soon be coming to your from Liverpool who became a lead- neighborhood metroplex. ing Philadelphia merchant and the first by Michael Lind Four of the first six secretaries of the superintendent of finance appointed U.S. Treasury—serving for a cumula- by Congress during the Revolutionary The Founders and Finance: How tive 21 of the first 27 years of the U.S. War. Before modern bankruptcy laws Hamilton, Gallatin, and Other under the federal Constitution—had were enacted, finance was a high-risk Immigrants Forged a New Economy, been born abroad. They were Alex- as well as a high-reward business, and Thomas K. McCraw, Belknap Press, ander Hamilton, born in St. Croix in both Duer and Morris died in disgrace 496 pages the Caribbean; Albert Gallatin, born in debtors’ prison. in Geneva, Switzerland; George W. No one is better suited to recover n a source I cannot now recall, I Campbell, born in Scotland; and Al- their stories than Thomas K. McCraw. once read that following the fail- exander James Dallas, born in Jamaica. An emeritus professor at Harvard ure of a movie set during the era These foreign-born Treasury secre- Business School, McCraw has a strong Iof the American Revolution a Holly- taries were only a few of the immigrants claim to status as the dean of American wood mogul decreed: “No more quill who contributed disproportionately to economic historians, a worthy succes- pen pictures!” The studio head’s com- the development of the American fi- sor to Alfred Chandler, some of whose mercial instincts were sound. In pub- nancial system in the early decades of work McCraw edited and presented lic consciousness, the Civil War mar- the republic. Other Treasury officials in The Essential Alfred Chandler. Mc- ginalizes the War of Independence, included Joseph Nourse, an immigrant Craw won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for and American history between the from London, and William Duer, a na- Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Founding and the Jacksonian era has tive of Devonshire who quit the U.S. Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James H. been lost to a kind of collective amne- Treasury in order to speculate and Landis, and Alfred E. Kahn. Among sia. The American republic in its first helped to cause the first great financial McCraw’s other major contributions to few decades, with its East Coast patri- panic in the United States. A Jewish fi- economic history is the recent Prophet cians and aristocrats, its balls and wigs nancier from Poland, Haym Solomon, of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and and buckled shoes, seems more like a contributed to financing the war of the Creative Destruction. detached fragment of the Old World American colonists against Britain, Using a technique borrowed from than the germ of a New, best suited for while a French sailor and merchant Plutarch that he earlier employed in cinematic treatment by “Masterpiece named Stephen Girard became one Prophets of Regulation, McCraw struc- Theater” or Merchant and Ivory. of the richest men in the early United tures The Founders and Finance in the Thomas McCraw’s The Founders and States. Girard joined with John Jacob form of parallel lives of Hamilton and Finance is not likely to be optioned by Astor, a butcher’s son from Germany Gallatin. Hamilton was a poor orphan Hollywood for a big-budget motion who became an American tycoon, and from St. Croix—the illegitimate son of picture. Bankers and immigrants have David Parish, German-born scion of a the fourth son of a Scottish aristocrat— always been viewed with suspicion by British banking dynasty, to rescue the who married into a rich New York a certain strain of American , finances of the federal government family, dreamed of military glory, and and McCraw’s story is about immi- during the War of 1812—in those days served George Washington as aide-de- grant bankers. But subsequent Ameri- the rich bailed out the government, camp during the revolution and as de can history is rooted in the thoughts not vice versa. Even more important facto prime minister during Washing- and actions of McCraw’s subjects, even was Robert Morris, an immigrant ton’s presidency, only to die in a duel

48 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 in 1804 at the hands of Jefferson’s vice president Aaron Burr. Hamilton could hardly have been more different from Gallatin, a Genevan patrician who sided with Hamilton’s political ene- mies—the frontiersmen, working-class urban-dwellers, and Southern plant- ers who looked to Thomas Jefferson as their cynosure. Gallatin first came to prominence among the Jeffersonians as a well-informed critic of Hamilton’s plans during the 1790s for the federal assumption of state debts left over from the Revolutionary War, for a national bank, and for government support of manufacturing. But once he was appointed as secre- tary of the Treasury when Jefferson as- sumed the presidency in 1801, Gallatin set forth a vision of federally guided national economic development that was similar in many ways to Hamil- ton’s. Gallatin not only followed Ham- ilton in publishing a state paper on manufacturing—he plausibly argued that favorable public credit to manu- facturers was preferable to subsidies or tariffs—but also came up with a gran- diose scheme for a nationwide canal network, which was, however, quickly rendered obsolete by the replacement Hogue Michael of canals by railroads. Why did the post-colonial United States lack native-born Americans who understood commerce and finance the British empire left its former colo- tories of their own, their… situation as well as Hamilton, Gallatin, and the nies ill-prepared for existence as parts will make them always dependent on others? McCraw notes: of a sovereign nation-state. Although Great Britian.” Edmund Burke, who Britain began to champion free trade sympathized with the Americans, told Within the colonies, the functions in the mid-19th century, after it be- Parliament: “These colonies were evi- of managing currencies, collecting came the first industrial superpower dently founded in subservience to the taxes, and spending on defense and and sought to open foreign markets for commerce of Great Britain.” On gain- public works had been performed its machine-made goods; previously ing their independence, the American either by British administrators British economic policy was based on colonies—now states—found them- serving in America or by local of- empire-wide protectionism, a division selves in an economic situation similar ficials. … Morris, Hamilton, Galla- of labor among manufacturers in Brit- to that of today’s former Soviet repub- tin and other immigrants plugged ain, and colonists who supplied raw lics, whose economies had been part of the many institutional holes in a materials to the manufactories of the a larger, integrated system that has now multilayered system undergoing metropole. been disrupted. very rapid change. Indeed, the manufacture of many Turning these fragments of an high-value-added goods was forbid- empire into the nucleus of another McCraw might have devoted more den by law in the American colonies. great military and economic power space to describing the ways in which The British Board of Trade in 1721 was more difficult than it may seem the mercantilist economic system of told the king: “Having no manufac- in hindsight. Similar challenges were

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 49 Arts&Letters faced by the former Spanish and Por- McCraw notes that, given a choice Whose City? tuguese colonies of Latin America among four possible economic strat- following their independence, with egies—laissez-faire reliance on the Which Hill? radically different outcomes. While market; uncoordinated intervention Britain’s former North American col- in markets by city, county, state and by Thomas E. Woods Jr. onies, outside of Canada, were welded national governments; systematic gov- into a union that survived a titanic ernment guidance of economic deci- In Search of the City on a Hill: civil war, Spain’s colonies crumbled sions; and top-down, comprehensive The Making and Unmaking of an into a Balkanized patchwork of in- government economic management— American Myth, Richard M. Gamble, dependent countries. And while the U.S. has oscillated between the first Continuum, 224 pages the United States was able to exploit and the second: “And only during pe- economies of scale in a single conti- riods of major war (1861–1865, 1917– ne of the conventional nental market to catch up with and 1918, 1941–1945) has it taken up even right’s gripes against then surpass Britain as an industrial temporary residence in category three. Democrats like Barack colossus, for most of their history the Category two—frequent but uncoordi- Obama has been their al- “banana republics” of Latin America nated intervention in mostly free mar- Oleged lack of faith in “American ex- have combined nominal political in- kets—has been the American way of ceptionalism.” The United States, say dependence with a quasi-colonial role public economic management.” these critics, is not as other nations, in the world economy as commodity Ultimately, according to McCraw, which content themselves with the exporters to more advanced industrial “the dream of an integrated, diversi- prosaic pursuit of bourgeois life, but economies. fied, and booming economy—the aspi- is endowed with a global, world-his- A Balkanized, underdeveloped, non- ration of Hamilton, Gallatin, and many toric task from which Americans, if industrial America, supplying food, other immigrant nationalists—even- they are to be true to themselves, can- timber, and energy to industrial Europe tually came true.” Because his view is not flinch. and, later, to industrial Asia was always retrospective, McCraw does not specu- In fact, both political parties invoke a possible alternative in successive crises late on what his subjects might think the world-historic mission of the Unit- in American history from the Founding about the present condition of their ed States—just recall the preposterous to the Civil War, and conceivably could adopted country. But if ever there were claims and promises made in John F. be again someday. McCraw observes: a bipartisan consensus worth preserv- Kennedy’s inaugural address—and nei- ing and promoting, it is to be found in ther would consider for a moment the A fusion of many of Hamilton’s what Hamilton and Gallatin shared: an possibility of reducing America’s over- and Gallatin’s policies found ex- emphasis on the legitimacy of govern- seas presence in any significant way. pression in an economic program ment borrowing for the right purposes, is a bi- that came to be called the ‘Ameri- combined with an appreciation of the partisan phenomenon, and in modern can System’—the fullest program need for the nation to have a sound America its most potent expression is for national economic develop- credit rating in order to keep borrow- the “city on a hill,” a biblical image em- ment since Hamilton’s Reports of ing costs low; the need for ambitious ployed by John Winthrop in “A Model 1790–1791. In speeches and legis- and comprehensive systems of public of Christian Charity,” the lay sermon lative bills beginning in 1815 and infrastructure development, without he composed in 1630 on his way to continuing for two decades, Hen- which markets are fragmented and New England. In fact, so iconic has ry Clay and many others sketched businesses are taxed by inefficiency; that image become that Americans no out blueprints for the establish- and, above all, a vision of the national doubt assume it has been invoked and ment and then continuation of the interest, a vision which may come less appealed to in an unbroken tradition Second Bank of the United States, easily to native-born Americans with from its 17th-century drafting down for federal aid to build roads and parochial attachments and local loyal- to the present day. canals, for development of the ties than to immigrants to the United Historian Richard Gamble, in his West, and for the encouragement States who can view their adopted new book, In Search of the City on a of manufactures through high country as a whole. Hill, finds the truth to be quite dif- levels of tariff protection. On each ferent. He traces the history of that of these goals except for the high Michael Lind is co-founder of the New Winthrop sermon from its composi- protective tariffs, the American America Foundation and author of Land tion aboard the Arbella—there is no System mirrored the policies of of Promise: An Economic History of the evidence Winthrop actually delivered both Hamilton and Gallatin. United States. the sermon, it turns out, as opposed to

50 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 Michael Hogue Michael

merely writing it—all the way down to marks were described as an admirable its sudden elevation to iconic status, John F. Kennedy, , and exposition of the demands of Chris- let’s consider for a moment what Win- . In so doing, he found it tian charity, and that was that. throp had in mind in 1630. The John was the proverbial story of the dog Even more surprising to the mod- Winthrop who told his wife that God that did not bark. ern reader, who is often inclined to would “provide a shelter and a hiding For over two centuries after Win- view the rest of the sermon with im- place for us and ours” had a finite goal, throp composed the “Model,” it was patience as he awaits the reference to namely a place of asylum for the Puri- altogether unknown to the American the city on a hill, is that as late as 1968, tans and the establishment of proper public. Only in 1838 was the manu- when historian Lee Tuveson wrote Christian worship and civil govern- script published, and in the ensuing his important book Redeemer Nation ment as called for in the Bible. For years it was cited and discussed only about the messianic strain in Ameri- him, that meant worship expunged of sparingly. And even then, the “city can thought and practice, Winthrop’s popish superstition, churches emanci- upon a hill” imagery was almost never “Model of Christian Charity” was not pated from the authority of bishops, emphasized as the document’s rhe- mentioned at all. the Word of God as the central focus torical or philosophical crescendo. Before proceeding from the relative of the church service, and a political For the most part, Winthrop’s re- obscurity of Winthrop’s “Model” to society in which sin was to be pun-

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 51 Arts&Letters ished and Christian charity promoted. own interpretation into rather serious every age and generation to come.” Ambitious, to be sure, but finite. question, though he believed Win- Gone for good was the idea of divine This new Christian community of throp himself did hold this messianic judgment to be visited upon a disobe- New England, said Winthrop, ought to vision. Gamble is skeptical. “Winthrop dient city. This was a city that boasted imagine itself as a city upon a hill, with understood the mission behind the only promise, and a distinctly secular the eyes of the world upon it. The Puri- mission, Miller claimed, although it promise at that. tans had to be faithful to their covenant sounded more like Miller was the one Gamble is at pains not simply to with God in order not to bring shame blessed with the special gnosis.” trace the evolution of the “Model of on the cause of the Gospel. God would During Reagan’s presidency, Theo- Christian Charity” and its “city on a surely bless them if they remained dore Dwight Bozeman accused Miller hill” in American culture but to in- faithful, but he would just as surely of having invented the “idea of an ex- sist that the original city on a hill was withdraw those blessings and punish emplary Puritan mission” and noted a biblical image, not a political sym- them if they failed. that the “city on a hill” language was bol. It was not a physical place at all Winthrop held that the mission of a “rhetorical commonplace,” not the but the Christian church itself, con- document’s interpretive ceived of as the community of believ- key. ers wherever they may be found. The Winthrop, said Boz- Christian community, Gamble insists, eman, had drafted no ought to be outraged at the secular ap- The Christian community ought to be “installment upon an propriation of one of its most arrest- outraged at the secular appropriation American plan of rest- ing images. less progress” but was “Ronald Reagan,” says Gamble, of one of its most arresting images. focused on returning “took hold of a metaphor and re- church practice to what worked it to such a degree that a na- the Puritans considered tion of 300 million people has lost the its primitive purity. An- ability to hear that metaphor in any drew Delbanco found way other than how he used it. … Its the Puritans was do to service for the Winthrop “considerably more focused political use has been potent enough Lord, to build up the body of Christ on what was being fled than on what to all but eclipse its biblical meaning, (i.e., the church), to preserve their was being pursued,” and Winthrop bi- even among American Christians posterity from the corruptions of the ographer Francis Bremer noted that who might reasonably be expected to world, and to live their lives according the “city on a hill” phrase was quite resent seeing their metaphor dressed to “his holy ordinances.” Not exactly common and Winthrop’s message up like Uncle Sam.” the mission statement later glosses on overall doubtless seemed fairly con- There is no such resentment, of Winthrop’s words would have in mind. ventional to his Puritan audience. course. The intellectual debasement In the scholarly realm it was Perry It was Ronald Reagan who seared of American conservatism, combined Miller, the prolific 20th-century histo- the image of the city on a hill (the with the grotesque and impious neo- rian of the Puritans, who did so much “shining city on a hill,” in his rendi- conservative conflation of Christi- to link Winthrop’s city on a hill to the tion) into the national consciousness. anity and “America’s mission in the idea of a messianic American con- To be sure, John F. Kennedy had earli- world,” have decimated the kind of sciousness. Miller, although not a be- er appropriated the image for his own religious sensibilities that would alert liever himself, was fascinated by and use, but thanks to Reagan it became the properly formed Christian con- held a great respect for the Puritans, one of the most common refrains science to blasphemy. whom he sought to rehabilitate after in the American cultural and politi- Thus when Abraham Lincoln is their treatment at the hands of icono- cal idiom, to the point that foreign found to have said that “the gates of clasts like H.L. Mencken. leaders and dignitaries today make hell shall not prevail against” Amer- According to Miller, Winthrop and reference to it when giving pleasant ica’s ideals, this does not shock or the Puritans sought to establish a “rev- speeches about America. scandalize American Christians. olutionary city” in New England that Reagan spoke of the city on a hill When George W. Bush said “the light would regenerate the world. Miller nearly two dozen times in presidential shined in darkness and the darkness conceded that the Puritans themselves speeches. His was “a city aglow with did not overcome it,” and by “light” probably did not understand the full the light of human freedom, a light meant American ideals, few Ameri- significance of what they were do- that someday will cast its glow on ev- can Christians batted an eye. ing—an admission that throws his ery dark corner of the world and on So we have the following spectacle: a

52 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 religious image is adapted by an earth- whites are their own worst enemy, hav- ly government for secular purposes, Honky-Talk Woman ing followed where Nixon’s “Southern in order to urge Americans to pursue by Florence King strategy” led and become “Reagan Dem- a messianic world mission that would ocrats.” Threatened by the civil rights have been dismissed with contempt by What’s the Matter With White People? movement, resentful over blacks getting a classical conservative like Edmund Why We Long for a Golden Age That “something for nothing,” disdained by Burke and which bears more in com- Never Was, Joan Walsh, Wiley, 278 pages liberal Democrats who ignored them mon with the French Revolution and to cater to blacks, they thought that its wars of ideological expansion than verybody knows who Joan Walsh simply voting Republican would make it does with anything conservatives is. To liberals she’s a saint, and everything the way it used to be: silent would have recognized—and so-called they just might have a point: her minorities, not majorities; no hippies; conservatives cheer. ETV guest spots have established her a perpetual Eisenhower era of prosper- If anything, the references to the as Joan of Fallen Archness. Editor-at- ity where their middle-class aspirations city on a hill grow more inane over Large of Salon, she regularly turns up could proceed undisturbed—the Gold- time. Neoconservative on the People’s Republic of MSNBC, en Age of Walsh’s subtitle. calls the New England Puritans the wearing her trademark simper and ooz- But working-class whites who vote “first imperialists” and “global revo- ing coyness, and obsequiously recites, for the GOP, says Walsh, are voting lutionaries.” For his knowledge of the “Yes, Reverend Al” to the honkyphobic for economic royalists who intend to Puritans he relies almost entirely on views of Al Sharpton. But she is likely put them back where they were be- Perry Miller. David Gelernter—the to appear on Fox News as well, coy- fore FDR’s New Deal rescued them Yale professor who said in 2004 that ness at the ready and wearing the same from the satanic mills and gave them “George W. Bush has already earned simper but adding a furrowed brow of “something for nothing”—collective his Great President badge”—describes troubled understanding as she analyzes bargaining, the G.I. Bill, federally in- the Puritan city on a hill as the begin- and sympathizes with the fears roused sured mortgages, Social Security, un- nings of America’s “sacred mission” to by Pat Buchanan’s predictions of an im- employment insurance—to help them spread “liberty, equality, and democ- minent white-minority America. realize their middle-class aspirations. racy.” Her signature characteristics hold Minorities now had the same middle- “John Winthrop,” Gelernter goes fast in her new book. She demon- class aspirations, and the civil rights on, “was a founder of this nation, we strates her fallen archness by crafting a movement was the second New Deal. are his heirs, and thank God we have title that reminds everybody of “What’s In short, working-class whites and inherited his humanitarian decency Eating Gilbert Grape?” and enlists her minorities were brothers under the along with his radical God-fearing coyness and her simper in the service skin and ought to vote accordingly. Americanism.” of book promotion to see if it really is Whenever Walsh says “minor- Instead of arguing over how best to possible to fool some of the people all ity” she really means black, because frame the American mission in terms of the time, and who—or all of the peo- blacks were the minority of her white of the city on a hill, Gamble suggests ple some of the time, and for how long. working-class New York childhood. we ought to ask a different question. If you read her title as “What’s the Puerto Ricans were still a local “eth- We ought to have a debate “between matter with us white people?” you nic” problem but blacks had gone na- exceptionalists of all sorts on one side align yourself with her Irish-Catholic tional, so to speak, so that Walsh, born and skeptics on the other, that is, be- working-class origins (the book’s cover in 1952, had a front-row seat for every tween those who believe that the is green with a black-and-white family racial convulsion beginning with the United States is somehow exempt from snapshot) and probably hold the same Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of human finitude, the lust for dominion, racist attitudes and prejudices she grew Education school integration ruling in and the limits of resources and power, up hearing. If you read it as “What’s 1954. These were the times that tried and those who do not.” the matter with you white people?” men’s souls in the close-in Long Island Richard Gamble’s book is an impor- you identify with the later forces that suburbs where she grew up. tant first step toward that long-overdue pulled Walsh in the opposite political It’s obvious that blacks are her favor- debate. and cultural direction: going to college; ite minority even though she knows becoming a career woman; working in she’s not supposed to have one. Her Thomas E. Woods Jr. is a senior fellow of the the media; looking down on unedu- formative story, which she clings to Ludwig von and author of cated people; and general, all-round even as she calls it a “fairy tale,” is her Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before moral superiority. father’s belief that he and Joan, the the Coming Fiscal Collapse. Her theme is that working-class brunettes in the fair-haired family,

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 53 Arts&Letters were “black Irish,” descendants of the alone or “with reluctant husbands” just slavery but the Chinese exclusion Irish with Spanish or “Moorish” blood and often raised their children alone. acts, Amerindian genocide, and Japa- “from centuries before.” Did he mean Don’t tell this to an Irish tenor. That nese internment. Irish people who somehow managed unique vocal quality, exquisitely de- A worse shock lay in wait for her to meet and mate with the North Af- scribed as “the struck silver of chaste when she covered Stanford’s decision rican invaders of southwestern Europe melancholy,” is inextricably linked to to multiculturalize its Western Civ that Charles Martel defeated in the ballads about girls with names like course and found blacks practicing battle of Tours in 732? He didn’t say, Mary turning into old maids in plac- self-segregation in the cafeteria along and neither does she. Did he mean the es like Tralee because the letter from with all the other minorities. They ac- shipwrecked sailors who supposedly America never came. But don’t tell tually had a black table. “I learned to washed up on Irish shores after the this to Joan Walsh. For whatever sub- accept, against my integrationist in- destruction of the Spanish Armada? conscious reasons, she wants the Irish stincts, that black self-segregation was Again, neither father nor daughter is as black as she can get them. natural, even developmentally impor- specific about these “centuries before.” An author who is forever teeter- tant…” She simpers on in this vein, What they do say unequivocally is ing on the brink of an identity cri- but we don’t believe a word of it. Nei- that Cromwell exiled many Irish to sis is extremely irritating to read. ther does the black person who replies Barbados, and that they ended up in Walsh refers over and over again to to Walsh’s objections with, “We didn’t the 17th-century South, working to- “my Irish Catholic workingclass fam- fight the civil rights movement so gether with blacks as slaves on white ily” well after she first describes her white kids could have black friends.” plantations, intermarrying or living ethnic vital signs, as if she fears that Oh, didn’t they? As far as Walsh’s together until “white elitist” planters— somebody somewhere out there in (white-working-class-Irish-Catholic) read today’s GOP—separated them readerland has forgotten who and subconscious was concerned, that’s by inventing black-only slavery. Pre- what she is. She may cite this as proof exactly why the civil rights movement Famine Irish immigrants also married of unabashed pride in her back- was fought, and now they were dis- or lived with blacks in the 19th-century ground, but her unnecessary reitera- criminating against her. North until “white elitist” Abolition- tion sounds more like the obsessive It would seem that she suffered an ists—read today’s Democrats—pitted chant of a guilt-ridden child hop- identity crisis over the identity crisis them against each other. Committed ping down the sidewalk repeating, suffered by Equality, Inc. There was no to the cause of black emancipation, “Step on a crack, break your mother’s place for her: “our historic civil rights the Abolitionists (mostly Protestant) back.” It gets worse. We almost feel model didn’t entirely make sense any- wanted to draft Catholic Irishmen into embarrassed for her when, analyz- more in a world where Latinos and the Yankee army to help free Southern ing failed legislation, she writes: “The Asians were the fastest-growing mi- blacks. This made the Irish turn on the result was, nobody got nothing, to norities.” She needed to find some blacks and caused the New York Draft use the workingclass vernacular of other way to occupy her subconscious Riots of 1862. It was a bloodbath; the my childhood.” This is the sort of mind, so she appropriated the identity atrocities committed by the Irish in- thing editors take out but it’s easy to of her Jewish husband and refashioned cluded the castration of black men, imagine Walsh writing Stet! beside it herself as a classic perfect mother. which, writes Walsh, “can only be de- because she needs it to re-emphasize scribed as sexual.” her other identity as a college-edu- We had named our daughter Nora, Up to this point, Walsh’s conten- cated elitist—though if she had half after searching for a name with tions at least have historical events an ear she would write it as “nuttin’.” both Irish and Jewish roots—thank and dates attached, but she gets the Fallen archness strikes again. you, Nora Ephron! I realized how bit in her teeth when she claims that Walsh will go anywhere, bear any thoroughly I had transformed my- the “Irish Diaspora” in America was burden, to establish her integration- self one Friday afternoon, sitting female-driven and therefore compa- ist identity with all deliberate speed, in a tiny chair at a tiny table at my rable to the matriarchy of the single- but she overshot the mark when she daughter’s pre-school, eating chal- mother black experience. Where she moved to the Bay Area during the ’70s lah the kids had baked themselves, gets this curious information she and ran into the Ethnic Awareness drinking grape juice, and singing doesn’t say; the book has no footnotes, movement. It wasn’t just about blacks Shabbat songs. I realized I was as a spotty index, and no annotated sec- anymore. Writing for various West observant a Jew as I was a Catholic. ondary sources to speak of, but Walsh Coast publications, she got involved Nora attended a wonderful Jewish produces Big Mama Machree any- in an Oakland public schools history- Community Center pre-school, way. Irish women, she says, came here textbook controversy involving not and I never missed a Shabbat. …

54 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 Here I was, the Irish Catholic girl, Post-Colonial Prophet for , and files long, non- celebrating Shabbat more often fiction essays for The New York Review than I went to Mass. by Vijay Vikram of Books from all over the world. He also adds much-needed color to the It didn’t last. She was happy, she From the Ruins of Empire: opinion pages of the Financial Times realized, except when she was mis- The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, and Bloomberg, titillating his elite erable. Once again the problem was Pankaj Mishra, Farrar, Straus and Western capitalist readership with his clashing identities, but this time it was Giroux, 356 pages decidedly non-Western, non-capital- the same clash experienced by mil- ist Weltanschauung. lions of women, not just the morally ankaj Mishra is a fascinating Mishra’s eloquence is not in doubt. superior few: creature. He was born to a family But what is it about the zeitgeist that of pauperized Brahmins in Jhan- explains his rise to secular sainthood I found myself in my early thir- Psi, a small town in the north of India in the Anglo-American literary estab- ties with a baby I loved to distrac- in 1969. By the age of 20, he had spent lishment? What is it that makes him tion, a career I treasured almost as “three idle, bookish years at a provin- the West’s Orientalist-in-chief? much (yes, I said almost), and a cial university in a decaying old pro- The West, post-9/11, is a chastened marriage coming undone at least vincial town.” Like many young men and humbled beast. Its adventures in partly due to my bewilderment of a bookish disposition, he had little the Muslim world have ended in di- and resentment at being unable to idea of what to do with himself. He saster and many of its nations face manage both gracefully. I wanted harbored literary ambitions, but was political and economic crises at home. to be home, I wanted to be work- uncertain how to fulfill them. Add to The prevailing mood in the West is ing, and nothing in my feminist this an aversion to “the modern world curiously reminiscent of the Weimar- reading or debates had prepared of work and achievement … careers ian pessimism of the interwar period me for the pull in both directions. and jobs” and we find ourselves in the in the early 20th century, where a company of a distinctly brooding, mel- population bred on the Whiggish cer- So that was it, over and out. “My ancholy character who would either titudes of the Victorian era struggled marriage ended and I moved on, with beat the odds and rise to make a mark to come to terms with its self-immo- my amazing daughter in tow.” Amaz- on the world of English literature or die lation in World War I. Thus, it almost ing is right: “She wound up the only in obscurity. welcomed the polemical pessimism of white kid in a special Kwanzaa study He succeeded. By 2012, Mishra had Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the group that doubled as a small-group completed the journey from periph- West (1918) and its cruder American session on impulse control.” ery to metropole in a most spectacu- cousin, Theodore Lothrop Stoddard’s Walsh’s mask drops only once. “I got lar manner. Mishra writes for—and The Rising Tide of Color Against White a little tribal, for the first time in my is written about in—the New York World-Supremacy (1920). life, after September 11, knowing that Times. He trades barbs with Harvard Similarly, Americans in the 21st so many cops and firefighters like my historian and enthusiastic Atlanticist century—unthinkingly nourished uncles and cousins died in those build- Niall Ferguson in the London Review for generations on the unalloyed vir- ings, a lot of Irish and Italian guys, the of Books, produces punchy polemics tues of universal suffrage, free-market boys I’d grown up with in Oceanside.” Soon afterwards, a supercilious review mocking the “maudlin” Twin Towers      benefit concert appeared in her own  Salon magazine. Her Irish up at last,  and to hell with her Moorish blood, she  penned a memorable reply: “Who did   we think died in those buildings, Alice  Walker and the Dalai Lama?”  It’s almost enough to make me like  her, but odds are she will just end up apologizing to Al Sharpton for it.  Florence King is the author of STET, Damnit!  The Misanthrope’s Corner, 1991 to 2002.

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 55 Arts&Letters capitalism, and the self-seeking sover- Mishra makes it clear that this book is and social desolation that can perhaps eign individual—cheerfully followed a work of intellectual biography, yet one never be relieved by modernity alone.” their political leaders into the dark- expected to find, at the very least, the Despite this, he also writes, “the est recesses of the Muslim world. The lineaments of a broader theory of non- dominance of the West already appears project to immanentize the American Western political modernity—a way for just another, surprisingly short-lived eschaton in the Middle East may not non-Western polities to conduct them- phase in the long history of empires have cost as many lives as the Western selves in a post-Western world. and civilizations.” There is a paradox civil wars popularly known as World Instead one is greeted with a compen- here. The formal dominance of the Wars I and II, but it has created a par- dium of what men of previous genera- West may be at an end. However, the allel sense of shock and civilizational tions have said on the topic. This is clear- ideational Pandora’s box opened by the flux. In this environment of renewed ly sufficient for some. Mark Mazower in West refuses to shut. As the English civilizational pessimism, the West is the Financial Times writes, “From the philosopher John Gray observes, increasingly open to critical diagnoses Ruins of Empire retains the power to in- of its imperial overreach, particularly struct and even to shock. It provides us Even in those non-Occidental cul- from eloquent outsiders. with an exciting glimpse of the vast and tures which have preserved them- It is in this context that Pankaj still largely unexplored terrain of anti- selves substantially intact, and Mishra has flourished. Although colonial thought that shaped so much which have modernized without of the post-western world Westernizing their social forms in which we now live.” and structures, the impact of the But only a glimpse. revolutionary nihilism of West- Mishra fails even at the ernization has been to disrupt the India may have achieved formal comparatively modest traditional conceptions of the hu- independence in 1947, but her task of surveying Indian, man relationship with the Earth, intellectual subservience to Western Islamic, and Confucian and to supplant them by human- responses to the West- ist and Baconian instrumentalist political thought continues. ern juggernaut, let alone understandings, in which nature weaving them into a web is no more than an object of hu- of common meaning and man purposes. crafting a theory of non- Mishra is not a Westerner, and cer- Western political modernity from their In adopting the secrets of the West tainly no Spengler, he has eagerly sinews. Fired by the urge to reach a lay to beat the West, the non-West has embraced the narrative of Occidental audience, Mishra leaves the educated Westernized itself. The “rest” may rise decline and Oriental vitality. Con- reader scratching his head in incom- to inflict humiliation on the West, but cluding a recent op-ed in the New York prehension at the short shrift awarded they can only do so with the ideational Times, he argued, “It is the world’s to the thinkers of his choice. The author weaponry of the West. Isn’t the great- newly ascendant nations and awak- jumps from world-historical event to est victory of all that in which one has ened peoples that will increasingly world-historical event, political thinker succeeded in colonizing the minds of shape events in the post-Western era. to political thinker, in a desperate at- one’s enemies, turning them into dop- America’s retrenchment is inevitable. tempt to impose order and teleology pelgangers of oneself? The West con- The only question is whether it will be onto the chaos that characterized the tinues to live on in the practices of the as protracted and violent as Europe’s East’s original responses to the blue- East. In that sense, it has ensured its mid-20th century retreat from a new- eyed, red-bearded men of Europe. immortality. ly assertive Asia and Africa.” Mishra does make some interest- Mishra recognizes this contradic- The objective of Mishra’s new book ing claims of his own in the chapter tion. “Much of the ‘emerging’ world is to articulate and synthesize the re- “Asia Remade” and in the epilogue. now stands to repeat, on an ominous- sponse of Asian thinkers to Western He is correct to highlight the world- ly larger scale, the West’s own tortured imperialism. The primary figures in this historical nature of the rise of the and often tragic experience of mod- attempted synthesis are Jamal al-Din West: “White men, conscious of their ern ‘development,’” he observes near al-Afghani (1838-1897), an itinerant burden changed the world for ever ... the end of his book. The triumph of anti-colonial Muslim political activist successfully exporting its ideas to the Western-style scientific instrumen- of Persian extraction, and Liang Qichao remotest corners of the world, the talism threatens to condemn “the (1873-1929), who according to Mishra West also destroyed native self-con- global environment to early destruc- was China’s first modern intellectual. fidence, causing a political, economic tion, and looks set to create reservoirs

56 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 of nihilistic rage ... among hundred thesize a native alternative to Western The Sun Sets on of millions of have-nots—the bitter democratism. outcome of the universal triumph of What hope then for the non-West? American Empire Western modernity, which turns the Mishra is right to focus on China as revenge of the East into something the Occident’s most formidable chal- by Daniel Larison darkly ambiguous, and all its victories lenge but he does not see the Chinese truly Pyrrhic.” articulating a meaningful universalist The Short American Century: These meaningful observations are response to Western ideas of politics A Post-Mortem, Andrew J. Bacevich, the saving graces of Mishra’s book. and economy. John Gray, however, is ed., Press, 287 pages However, there is one odd, barely no- more optimistic: “In those non-Occi- ticeable claim that must be singled out dental cultures which have remained hroughout the campaign sea- for scrutiny. He writes: “We can see substantially intact, there may never- son, Mitt Romney and Barack that the seemingly wholesale adoption theless be a possibility of a recovery of Obama alike insisted that the of Western ideologies (Chinese com- their traditional conceptions, such that T21st century must be another Ameri- munism, Japanese imperialism) did they might successfully integrate West- can century—that the U.S. should not work. Attempts at syntheses (India’s ern technology without thereby suc- continue to be the world’s predomi- parliamentary democracy, Muslim Tur- cumbing wholly to Western humanism nant military, economic, and political key’s secular state, China’s state capital- and nihilism.” power for generations to come. Af- ism) were more successful…” This is the fundamental challenge ter ten years of shattered hegemonic While I am in complete agreement for the non-West, and the man who dreams, leaders of both parties still with the general principle, I am un- lives up to it is the man who invents feel compelled to declare their loyalty able to fathom Mishra’s inclusion of non-Occidental political modernity. to the vision that inspired the follies “India’s parliamentary democracy” There are signs that the Chinese have of the Bush era. Foreign-policy de- as an example of “synthesis.” What is begun thinking in this direction. Eric bate continues to turn on the question it about India’s Westminster form of X. Li, the Shanghai venture capitalist of how to preserve American hege- government that is native to her po- and polemicist, has begun articulating mony, rather than how to secure U.S. litical traditions? The Constitution a non-Western conception of political interests once America is no longer of India reads like a document of the modernity and Yan Xuetong, profes- so dominant. What nobody in Wash- European Enlightenment. India may sor of International Relations at Ts- ington can acknowledge is the subject have achieved formal independence inghua University has begun probing that this book addresses: the Ameri- from British rule in 1947, but her in- native Confucian traditions of “hu- can Century, to the extent that it ever tellectual subservience to Western po- mane authority” to temper Chinese was real, is now definitely at an end. litical thought continues. materialism. Similarly, Mark Lilla, a Henry Luce famously coined the Westernization-from-above is cer- Western academic, has highlighted phrase in a 1941 issue of Life. He de- tainly a plausible post-colonial project. Chinese scholarly interest in the po- clared that America’s role was to “ex- (In fact, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk man- litical theology of Carl Schmitt and ert upon the world the full impact of aged it with finer aplomb than most . our influence for such purposes as we as he romanized the Turkish alphabet There is great intellectual ferment see fit by such means as we see fit.” As and erected a wall of separation be- in China, and Mishra’s meditation on Luce imagined it, that influence would tween mosque and state.) However, to non-Western thought would have been extend to economic and cultural dom- attempt such a thing while unleashing much improved had he focused on it. inance as well as political. His mis- the energies of universal mass suffrage However, despite the disappointment sionary vision took for granted that from below is to court political disso- of this book, there is no better model America had not only the right but the lution. In The Times of India, Mishra than Pankaj Mishra for young non- obligation to propagate its values and has mourned that at 65 years old India Westerners eager to carve a niche for exercise leadership throughout the has lost her way. The truth is, she never themselves in the West’s intellectual world. Seventy years later, Luce’s idea had her way in the first place. “Secu- establishment. For this reason—and is still part of Washington’s bipartisan larism and socialism” were somebody because his literature is some of the consensus, but in recent years it has else’s words, somebody else’s thinking. finest to emerge from the Indo-English collided with the practical limits of India had merely borrowed them to encounter—he will be worth watching; American power. give herself a political voice in the age his next move should not be missed. As editor Andrew Bacevich explains of Western dominance. The real trag- in his introductory remarks, the pur- edy is India’s complete inability to syn- Vijay Vikram is a TAC editorial assistant. pose of the essays assembled in this

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 57 Arts&Letters

volume is not “to decry or to mourn scholars—are also judicious in their While this book is a “dissenter’s the passing of the Short American interpretations. The book aspires to be guide” to the period of “putative Century (much less to promote it res- much more than a series of polemics, American dominion,” the contribu- urrection) but to assess its significance.” and it is very successful. tors’ judgments of the American Cen- Each chapter is a study of different as- If the American Century is at an end tury are not always negative. At least pects of this era of American preemi- and the contributors are performing a one, David Kennedy, sees its early nence, reflecting on matters of race, postmortem, what do they identify as conclusion as the result of a disastrous consumerism, and globalization, as the patient’s cause of death? One an- departure from the postwar American well as reviewing the history of the last swer is that American economic and legacy abroad during the Bush admin- 70 years with special attention to the political strength have been abused istration. Kennedy is offended that critics of U.S. policies abroad. Though and run down through mismanage- the Bush administration “trashed” the often sharply critical of the moral and ment. As Emily Rosenberg discuss- achievements of presidents Wilson, political failings of this epoch, the con- es in her chapter on consumerism, Roosevelt, and Truman and weak- tributors—a distinguished collection of America’s culture of mass consump- ened some of the major international historians and international-relations tion cultivated habits that have sapped institutions created after World War American wealth and power through II. Instead of seeing the Bush era as the accumulation of enormous pri- the logical conclusion of decades of Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation (All Periodicals Publications Except Requester Publications) 1. Publication Title 2. Publication Number 3. Filing Date vate and public debt, while the spread American triumphalism, Kennedy The American Conservative 1540_ 9 66x 9/17/12 4. Issue Frequency 5. Number of Issues Published Annually 6. Annual Subscription Price Monthly 12 $49.97 of the consumerist ethos around the views it as a betrayal of the creators of 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication (Not printer) (Street, city, county, state, and ZIP+4®) Contact Person Ronald Burr world has further eroded America’s the American Century. 4040 Fairfax Drive, Suite 140, Arlington, VA 22203-1613 Telephone (Include area code) 703-875-7600 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher (Not printer) earlier economic advantages. At the other end of the spectrum, 4040 Fairfax Drive, Suite 140, Arlington, VA 22203-1613

9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor (Do not leave blank) Publisher (Name and complete mailing address) American economic and politi- Walter LaFeber dismisses the idea of Ron Unz, 4040 Fairfax Drive, Suite 140, Arlington, VA 22203-1613 cal strength are also victims of the an American Century as a fantasy, a Editor (Name and complete mailing address) Daniel McCarthy, 4040 Fairfax Drive, Suite 140, Arlington, VA 22203-1613 American Century’s own successes. “dream” that Luce “conjured up in or- Managing Editor (Name and complete mailing address) As Jeffry Frieden explains in his chap- der to persuade” Americans to go to 10. Owner (Do not leave blank. If the publication is owned by a corporation, give the name and address of the corporation immediately followed by the names and addresses of all stockholders owning or holding 1 percent or more of the total amount of stock. If not owned by a corporation, give the names and addresses of the individual owners. If owned by a partnership or other unincorporated firm, give its name and address as well as those of each individual owner. If the publication is published by a nonprofit organization, give its name and address.) ter on globalization, the success of the war. As LaFeber sees it, the preten- Full Name Complete Mailing Address 4040 Fairfax Drive, Suite 140, The American Ideas Institute Arlington, VA 22203-1613 United States in leading the rebuild- sions to an American Century were ing of the global economy in the wake exploded by the postwar division of of World War II produced a competi- Europe and the Cold War and have 11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1 Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities. If none, check box x None Full Name Complete Mailing Address tive economic order that has hastened been mocked once again by the recent the end of American preeminence. failures of the “freedom agenda.” Yet Viewed this way, the American Cen- he concludes on the grim note that tury ended because it is no longer this fantasy will continue to distort 12. Tax Status (For completion by nonprofit organizations authorized to mail at nonprofit rates) (Check one) The purpose, function, and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes: x Has Not Changed During Preceding 12 Months Has Changed During Preceding 12 Months (Publisher must submit explanation of change with this statement) needed. Likewise, Akira Iriye argues U.S. foreign policy for the foreseeable PS Form 3526, August 2012 (Page 1 of 3 (Instructions Page 3)) PSN: 7530-01-000-9931 PRIVACY NOTICE: See our privacy policy on www.usps.com. that the world has become so integrat- future, as long as Americans ignore its

13. Publication Title 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below The American Conservative 09/01/12 ed economically and culturally that consequences. 15. Extent and Nature of Circulation Average No. Copies No. Copies of Single Educational Each Issue During Issue Published Preceding 12 Months Nearest to Filing Date the global order that is replacing the Pragmatic realists have been among a. Total Number of Copies (Net press run) 14,183 13,504

Mailed Outside-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541 (Include paid (1) 5,634 5,819 U.S.-led one will not be dominated by the strongest critics of America’s distribution above nominal rate, advertiser’s proof copies, and exchange copies)

b. Paid Mailed In-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541 (Include paid dis- Circulation (2) -0- -0- (By Mail tribution above nominal rate, advertiser’s proof copies, and exchange copies) any one nation. abuses of its power abroad. T.J. Jack- and Outside Paid Distribution Outside the Mails Including Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, (3) the Mail) Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Paid Distribution Outside USPS® 860 838 Proponents of continued U.S. he- son Lears recounts the evolving views Paid Distribution by Other Classes of Mail Through the USPS (e.g., First- (4) Class Mail®) 3 3

c. Total Paid Distribution (Sum of 15b (1), (2), (3), and (4)) 6,497 6,660 gemony sometimes attempt to scare of George Kennan, Walter Lippmann,

d. Free or (1) Free or Nominal Rate Outside-County Copies included on PS Form 3541 Nominal 226 228 Rate Americans with visions of a world led Reinhold Niebuhr, and Sen. William Distribution (2) Free or Nominal Rate In-County Copies Included on PS Form 3541 (By Mail -0- -0- and Free or Nominal Rate Copies Mailed at Other Classes Through the USPS (3) Outside (e.g., First-Class Mail) the Mail) -0- -0- by Russia or China, but what comes Fulbright in his study of the pragmat- (4) Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail (Carriers or other means) 4,927 4,210

e. Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution (Sum of 15d (1), (2), (3) and (4)) after the American Century will be ic realist tradition in the 20th century. 5,153 4,438 f. Total Distribution (Sum of 15c and 15e) 11,650 11,098 nothing like that. According to Iriye, Lears traces the tradition back to its g. Copies not Distributed (See Instructions to Publishers #4 (page #3)) 2,533 2,406 “it will not be a Chinese century or an anti-imperialist roots in the thought h. Total (Sum of 15f and g) 14,183 13,504

i. Percent Paid 55.8% 60.0% (15c divided by 15f times 100) Indian century or a Brazilian century. of William James, who was among 16. Total circulation includes electronic copies. Report circulation on PS Form 3526-X worksheet. It will be a long transnational century.” the foremost opponents of American

17. Publication of Statement of Ownership X If the publication is a general publication, publication of this statement is required. Will be printed Publication not required. This is a useful reminder that it is ex- expansion overseas at the turn of the in the ______November 2012 issue of this publication. 18. Signature and Title of Editor, Publisher, Business Manager, or Owner Date tremely unusual for any one nation to last century, especially the annexation 09/17/12 Daniel McCarthy, Editor be hegemon over the globe, and it is of the Philippines. James’s respect for I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanctions (including fines and imprisonment) and/or civil sanctions (including civil penalties). not something that will be quickly or pluralism informed his hostility to any PS Form 3526, August 2012 (Page 2 of 3) easily repeated. political project aimed at denying the

58 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 self-determination of other nations, best, recent references to this idea fraud,” as Bacevich says in the conclud- and his pragmatism led him to prefer have been expressions of respect for ing chapter. As long as most Ameri- the instruction of experience over the America’s tradition of constitutional cans imagine that there is a necessary abstractions used to agitate for war. government, but more typically they link between our country’s unique The careers of Kennan and Niebuhr have been little more than appeals to and admirable qualities and an activ- best reflect the tensions in this tradi- what was once called “national great- ist, hegemonic role around the world, tion between accepting a significant ness conservatism,” which defines the fantasy will persist that the Ameri- American political and military role America’s worth in terms of its com- can Century has never ended and can abroad and recoiling from abuses of mitment to global hegemony and continue indefinitely. The last 70 years power, ideological enthusiasm, and military supremacy. Just as often, these have been a transformative time in the militarization of foreign policy. references have been clumsy appeals our history, but they do not define the Lears says of Niebuhr and his sup- to a form of American whole of the American experience, nor port for U.S. entry into World War II in which the country is conceived of should we mistake America’s role dur- that the “Jamesian tradition might be as an ideological project. When pro- ing this period for our country’s natu- anti-imperial but not necessarily anti- ponents of continued U.S. hegemony ral or destined role. The Short Ameri- interventionist—if this intervention- invoke American exceptionalism, it is can Century serves as a timely and ist argument was grounded in a con- usually an idea of America as a crusad- necessary corrective to the illusion that vincing assessment of consequences.” ing power regularly interfering in the American global pre-eminence is un- It was in response to the consequences affairs of other nations that they have ending, an empire to last, if not a thou- of abuses of the containment doctrine in mind. sand years, at least another hundred. Kennan had defined that he became Rejecting the ambitions of the what Lears calls “a prophet of dis- American Century is to some extent Daniel Larison is a TAC senior editor. His criminating restraint,” as he showed “to concede that American Excep- blog is www.theamericanconservative.com/ in his criticism of the superpowers’ tionalism is an illusion or an outright Larison. nuclear arms build-up and in his opposition to the Vietnam War. Al- though Niebuhr recognized the need for U.S. involvement in World War II, Announcing: the theologian was appalled by Luce’s call for an “American Century,” which A collector’s item: a hardcover he dismissed as a new “white man’s book of enlightening articles by burden.” Joe Sobran. Often compared Politicians still use the phrase “Amer- to G.K. Chesterton and H.L. ican Century” as shorthand for U.S. Mencken, Sobran wrote some of global preeminence, and there continue the fi nest essays in the English to be demands for a new one. The neo- language. This selection from conservative Project for a New Ameri- his years at National Review can Century—which disbanded in 2006 only to be reorganized as the Foreign magazine is an engaging look at Policy Initiative in 2009—is one well- the politics, culture, and mindset known example, but it would be wrong of the late 20th century. to see a fixation on another American Perfect for Christmas gifts! Century as something confined to that faction of the Republican Party. The dream of perpetual power is based on “Sobran’s voice was unique, his style readily much more widely shared assumptions identifi able, his wit irrepressible, his range as that America is not subject to the same wide as that of any columnist of his generation.” limitations that have constrained all other great powers in the past. —Patrick J. Buchanan (from the Foreword) Calls for another American Cen- $26.95 (postpaid to U.S. addresses). Big discounts when ordering tury are closely linked to an emphasis two or more books. FGF Books, 713 Park St., SE, Vienna, VA 22180 on a peculiar, distorted understanding 703-242-0058. [email protected]. www.fgfBooks.com. of American exceptionalism. At their

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 59 Arts&Letters

Screening Liberty addition to his literary scholarship, thinker whose ideas best explain it. he’s harbored an enduring interest in There’s Tocqueville somewhere in by Jordan Bloom Austrian Economics and libertarian the way “Mars Attacks” celebrates the thought, ever since as a young man persistence of ordinary people and The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: he attended lectures by Ludwig von Aeschylus in John Ford’s “The Search- Liberty and Authority in American Mises in New York City. His latest ers.” The TV show “Deadwood” holds Film and TV, Paul Cantor, University project has been to draw these liter- to a Lockean conception of the state Press of Kentucky, 488 pages ary and libertarian pursuits together, of nature, in which markets precede first producing a book on television formal political order. Most major t’s easy to flip through television entitled Gilligan Unbound and then Enlightenment figures are represented channels today and see a waste- co-writing the more highbrow Litera- in these chapters, as are less iconic yet land, from the redneck voyeurism ture and the Economics of Liberty. The still indispensable thinkers like James Iof “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” to Invisible Hand in Popular Culture is C. Scott, whose The Art of Not Being forgettable crime shows and bad sub- the next step, an episodic libertarian Governed—an anthropological volume urban comedies. Critics gush over the history of film and television. that suggests stateless hill people in latest high-budget network drama, American pop culture both cel- southeast Asia were not primitive but while the real heavyweight ratings ebrates freedom and is an example had chosen tribal anarchy over oppres- battle is duked out between the likes of of it. Many of the films and television sive governments—is mentioned in Merv Griffin, Judge Judy, and Dr. Phil. programs Cantor examines as case relation to Deadwood’s post-political There’s a temptation to view television, studies “in upholding freedom as an South Dakota community. as well as most movies, as too compro- ideal, present what appears to be dis- There’s a delightful eclecticism to mised to commercial pressure to be a order as a deeper form of order.” But Cantor’s writing that stems partly legitimate artistic medium. isn’t the only sort from the serious analysis of what are The critical establishment generally Cantor discovers in American popu- sometimes very lighthearted topics. adopts some version of this pose. As lar culture—the paternalistic variety Applying Bakhtin’s “carnivalesque” Paul Cantor puts it in his new book, also rears its head. description of Rabelais, he deems Eric The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture, For example, in Paladin, the pro- Cartman of “South Park” the “pint- tagonist of Gene Roden- sized Falstaff of the cartoon world.” In berry’s Western “Have Gun, one episode of that show, gnomes who Will Travel,” Cantor sees a steal underpants become a symbol of There’s Tocqueville somewhere premonition of the enlight- capitalist production and the failure of in the way “Mars Attacks” celebrates ened Kennedy liberalism most people to understand it: the persistence of ordinary people. that would be more fully expressed in Roddenberry’s We know two things about these later “Star Trek.” By virtue strange beings: (1) they are of Paladin always playing gnomes; (2) they are normally critics inside and out of the academy the role of outside arbiter in crimes, invisible. Both facts point in the tend to “treat culture as a realm of un- water disputes, and various cultural direction of capitalism. As in the freedom, dwelling on the constraints misunderstandings, “Have Gun, Will phrase ‘gnomes of Zurich,’ which under which would-be creative people Travel” betrays a skepticism toward refers to bankers, gnomes are of- necessarily operate.” Or worse, they local or individual autonomy. The ten associated with the world of hold the view—inherited from post- show “asks us to believe that every finance. In the first opera of Wag- structuralists or the cultural Marxists rich man in the West is corrupted by ner’s Ring Cycle, Das Rheingold, of the Frankfurt School—that pop money except Paladin.” Moreover, “in the gnome Alberich serves as a culture is actively deceptive, giving all his travels, Paladin never seems to symbol of the capitalist exploit- people a false sense of satisfaction come upon a functioning community, er—and he forges the Tarnhelm, while “producing forms of debased with a set of political institutions that a cap of invisibility. The idea of entertainment to numb the American make it capable of self-government. invisibility calls to mind Adam people into submission to their capi- The local authorities he deals with are Smith’s famous notion of the ‘in- talist masters.” almost always corrupt or too weak to visible hand’ that guides the free All that is what Cantor—by day a handle a crisis.” market. In short, the underpants Shakespeare scholar at the Univer- Several of Cantor’s chapters pair gnomes are an image of capital- sity of Virginia—seeks to refute. In a film or television program with a ism and the way it is normally—

60 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 and mistakenly—pictured by its lateral damage to accomplish its goals. was expected by those who predicted opponents. Without indulging in a lengthy dis- that the 9/11 attacks would lead to course about manufactured desire, we an upwelling of patriotic triumpha- It’s nice to have someone making might nonetheless concede that fascist lism and the “end of irony.” Yet “The the case that one’s favorite television art is in relatively high demand. Is the X-Files” was ahead of the critics—in show also advocates a free society. But anti-authoritarian strain of American more ways than one. at points I wondered if Cantor wasn’t pop culture really the stronger one, es- Cantor delves into the most eerily engaging in the critical equivalent of pecially since 9/11? prescient moment in “X-Files” his- cutting butter with a chainsaw, es- The 1990s saw an unusual number tory, the pilot episode of the spin-off pecially in the case of “South Park,” of movies and television shows sug- show “The Lone Gunmen,” named for whose creators are explicitly libertar- gesting a skeptical view of govern- a trio of Mulder’s three conspiracy- ian. Still, his elaborations are always ment, perhaps none as telling as “The minded friends. The episode debuted interesting. X-Files.” Through most of that decade on March 4, 2001 and centered on a Cantor’s most direct attack on the it was the marquee show on Fox. If plot to fly a commercial jet into the critical mainstream comes in his dis- you doubt that current events can World Trade Center. The government, cussion of Edgar Ulmer’s noir classic have a dramatic impact “Detour” in relation to the Frankfurt on the public’s taste in School, the group of German acade- entertainment, consider micians who formulated the concepts that after 9/11 the next If you doubt that current events of cultural Marxism. Ulmer himself, Fox show to achieve can have a dramatic impact on as well as Theodor Adorno and sev- comparable success was eral other members of the Frank- “24.” The two programs the public’s taste in entertainment, furt School, emigrated to the United have substantially dif- consider the post-9/11 success of “24”. States and harbored a deep unease ferent attitudes toward about the egalitarian consumerism of the state. FBI agent Fox this country. Cantor draws connec- Mulder in “The X-Files” tions between the movie’s portrayal is a plucky eccentric hell-bent on ex- as is often the case in “The X-Files,” of Hollywood success as a mirage— posing an alien conspiracy within the turns out to be behind the scheme, the protagonist is perpetually waylaid upper echelons of the U.S. govern- motivated by weaponized Keynesian- on his way there—and the Frankfurt ment, while his superiors continu- ism. As one of the Gunmen’s fathers School’s notion of the movie industry ally try to thwart him. Jack Bauer of explains: “The Cold War’s over, John, as a dream factory manufacturing the “24” kills, tortures, and maims with- but with no clear enemy to stockpile whims of the masses. Encoded in the out restraint in the name of national against, the arms market’s flat. But Frankfurt School’s opposition to re- security. bring down a fully loaded 727 into corded music, mechanical reproduc- Yet Cantor proves that the style of the middle of New York City and tion in general, and “commercial” art “The X-Files” won out in the end. In you’ll find a dozen tin-pot dictators was a nostalgia for the old European Gilligan Unbound, he analyzed how all over the world just clamoring to aristocratic order in which only the the show reflected Americans’ hopes take responsibility and begging to be privileged had access to high culture. and anxieties about globalization in smart-bombed.” It’s no surprise that Cantor offers a useful corrective, to a quintessentially ’90s way. Here he the episode itself fueled conspiracy be sure. Yet there may be something examines several post-9/11 televi- theories about the attacks. to the Frankfurt explanation as to why sion programs—some, like “Fringe,” For the case that American film and there is demand for overtly authoritar- more successful than others—to television not only celebrates self-gov- ian entertainment. I recently watched demonstrate how “The X-Files” also ernment and freedom but stands as a movie theater full of young people “pioneered a model of what post-9/11 an art form undiminished by its com- cheer this year’s movie adaptation of popular culture would look like.” mercial associations, you can do no the British comic Judge Dredd, a sheer The final episodes of “The X-Files,” better than Paul Cantor’s new book. totalitarian fantasy set in a dystopian in which Fox Mulder is subjected to a Though he has written in this vein future in which the title character plays show trial, aired in May 2002. Watch- before, The Invisible Hand in Popular jury and executioner as well as judge. ing them today, they seem like a clear Culture is by far his most original and The movie seems to glorify a mono- indictment of the national-security comprehensive effort. lithic law-enforcement state prepared state. Their suspicious attitude toward to go to any length and accept any col- government is the opposite of what Jordan Bloom is associate editor of TAC.

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 61 Arts&Letters

Getting a Read just happened to the World Trade shals have been arrested [for felony Center. They knew this was not a offenses] than the number of people on Rand Paul typical hijacking. ... Those pas- arrested by air marshals.” Schneier ex- sengers knew that thousands or amined the air marshals’ budget and by James Bovard perhaps tens of thousands of in- performance and concluded that “we nocent people might die if the hi- are spending approximately $200 mil- Government Bullies: How Everyday jackers succeeded in crashing the lion per arrest” by the marshals. There Americans Are Being Harassed, plane. So they acted. They over- is no evidence that they have prevent- Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds, powered the hijackers and took ed a single terrorist attack. Rand Paul, Center Street, 280 pages down the plane themselves, sac- Government Bullies offers a long list rificing their lives to save count- of TSA horror cases, and Paul is justly ith Ron Paul’s exit from less others. No one knows for outraged by abusive TSA patdowns, Congress, his senator son, sure how many lives they saved which are often instigated after false Rand Paul, is now the great that day. It is hard to imagine an alarms by unreliable scanning equip- Whope of many conservatives and liber- act of heroism any greater. ment. He notes: “Passengers who do tarian-leaning activists. Senator Paul everything right—remove their belts, has done superb work challenging There was never any evidence that their wallets, their shoes, their glasses— the Patriot Act and the National De- Flight 93 passengers chose to com- and all of the contents in their pock- fense Authorization Act. He is seeking mit suicide as opposed to fighting to ets—are then subjected to random pat- to burnish his bona fides with a new capture control of the plane from the downs and tricked into believing that book, Government Bullies. hijackers. FBI director Robert Muel- the scanners actually do something.” This volume will tell you all you ever ler told a closed congressional hearing One of Rand Paul’s solutions in his wanted to know about federal wetlands in 2002 that Flight 93 crashed a few Air Travelers Bill of Rights, however, policy, which is discussed exhaustively minutes after one of the other hijack- is “Guaranteeing a traveler’s right to in the book’s first hundred pages. The ers “advised Jarrah”—the one piloting request a patdown using only the back the flight—“to crash the plane of the hand.” This seems akin to enti- and end the passengers’ at- tling rape victims to request their as- Air marshals are far more likely tempt to retake the airplane.” sailants wear a condom. There would A 2003 Associated Press re- still be no way to hold TSA liable to lose a gun in an airplane port noted that the FBI’s inter- when its agents help themselves to a bathroom than to catch a terrorist. pretation, “based on the gov- full handful. ernment’s analysis of cockpit The senator’s proposal also calls for recordings, discounts the an “expansion of canine screening at popular perception of passen- airports.” It is difficult to understand Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, gers grappling with terrorists to seize how boosting the number of German and other agencies have trampled the plane’s controls.” In 2006, the feds shepherds and their handlers sweep- property owners’ rights time and again finally released the transcript the final ing around passengers will revive the on the most arbitrary and unjustified minutes of Flight 93 that showed the spirit of liberty. The dogs are notori- pretexts. Similarly, Government Bullies hijackers chose to crash the plane into ous for giving as many false positives contains extensive discussions of the the ground after passengers stormed as TSA scanning machines. government’s abuses of farmers, small the cockpit. Perhaps the starkest difference be- businessmen, a guitar manufacturer, Senator Paul says that the federal tween Senator Paul and his father is and other likeable victims. government had some “good reac- on U.S. government meddling abroad. While Government Bullies thrashes tions” after 9/11, such as “we took Ron Paul was one of the most outspo- federal bureaucracies despised by steps to put air marshals on planes.” ken critics of the National Endowment conservatives, the book avoids con- He’s too generous. Air marshals have for Democracy (NED). In contrast, troversial subjects. And it repeats the become the biggest law-enforcement Rand Paul heaps praise on the Inter- myth of Flight 93, which President laughingstock in the land. They are far national Republican Institute and the Bush once trumpeted but was eventu- more likely to lose a gun in an airplane National Democratic Institute, divi- ally shamed into dropping: bathroom than to catch a terrorist. Se- sions of NED. “These organizations curity expert Bruce Schneier, whom are not partisan. They do not choose Those brave passengers on board Rand quotes elsewhere in the book, political sides. They do not provoke or that day had heard of what had noted in 2010 that “more air mar- become involved in the politics of any

62 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 country they work in. They do not en- that terrorize their own people—and of theatrical “socialism.” That is, he courage or cause dissent. They do not no more aid to anyone who detains created plays that were enormously advocate against government.” innocent American citizens.” Sounds successful as dramas and dealt with In reality, NED has been involved in great, but who will be administering pressing social issues of the day, election-manipulation scandals ever the new conditionality of the foreign- whether the effect of modernity on since it was created in 1983. The Inter- aid program? The State Department marriage (“A Doll’s House”) or how national Republican Institute played a and the U.S Agency for International sexual hypocrisy helps spread vene- key role in the overthrow of Haiti’s elect- Development, a bureaucracy that ex- real disease (“Ghosts”) or the vicissi- ed president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In ists to disburse U.S. tax dollars abroad. tudes of modern finance (“John Ga- February 2004, an array of NED-aided Rand Paul remains a work in prog- briel Borkman”). groups and individuals helped spur an ress. Will he take the principled high This is harder to do than one might uprising that left 100 people dead and road that his father paved with such think. Too often writers who attempt toppled Aristide. Brian Dean Curran, courage? Or will he become simply an- it—even great writers—wind up sub- the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, warned other conservative who flourishes gov- ordinating the psychological reality of Washington that the International Re- ernment waste, fraud, and abuse stories their characters to their ideas about publican Institute’s actions “risked us to make supporters believe he is going the issue in question. In the worst cas- being accused of attempting to destabi- to roll back Leviathan? Unfortunately, es, you get a crude morality tale: the lize the government.” the answer to those questions will not utterly righteous hero taking down NED pulled out all the stops to help be found in Government Bullies. the system. “Issue” movies of this sort its favored candidate win an election are a staple of modern Hollywood, the in 2004 in Ukraine. In the two years James Bovard is the author of Attention kinds of films frequently described as prior to the election, the United States Deficit Democracy. “Oscar bait.” spent over $65 million “to aid political Ibsen’s play “An Enemy of the Peo- organizations in Ukraine, paying to ple”—reportedly the inspiration for bring opposition leader Viktor Yush- the great Spielberg film “Jaws”—is chenko to meet U.S. leaders and help- both a perfect prototype of these cru- ing to underwrite exit polls indicating What the People Want sader-against-the-system movies and, he won a disputed runoff election,” by Noah Millman as well, the perfect takedown thereof. according to the Associated Press. And the current production, of an en- Ron Paul complained at the time that “An Enemy of the People,” by Henrik gagingly contemporary translation by “much of that money was targeted to Ibsen, Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Rebecca Linkiewicz, at the Manhat- assist one particular candidate, and … New York, dir. Doug Hughes tan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman millions of dollars ended up in sup- Theatre, provides a rare opportunity port of the presidential candidate, omewhere in Hollywood, there to see this classic produced at Broad- Viktor Yushchenko.” ought to be a statue to Henrik way scale with a phenomenal cast and It is mystifying why a senator as Ibsen. to consider how much and how little smart as Rand Paul would hitch his SThe great 19th-century Norwegian has changed since it was written in wagon to a federal agency that has dramatist is often credited with the in- 1882. tarnished itself and the United States vention of theatrical realism, but this The play is set in a small but pros- around the world. Is the senator re- has always struck me as an unfortu- perous Norwegian spa town, and the ceiving extremely bad information nate choice of word. The upper classes new production is set in the original from someone? are no less “real” than members of the period, with a set (by John Lee Beatty) Rand Paul has made excellent com- other orders of society, and Ibsen’s of warm, unpainted timber and starkly ments in floor speeches and TV in- protagonists are as apt to break into dark Victorian costumes (by Catherine terviews on the folly of foreign aid. set-piece declamation as any Shake- Zuber). (A flimsy, diaphanous scrim Yet Government Bullies champions spearean soliloquist. In my book, the that barely obscures the stage during the notion that U.S. foreign aid can theatrical master at capturing reali- changes is the only odd element—per- be used to spread good government ty—internal and external—has always haps intended as another signifier of abroad. The senator declares, “We been Chekhov. rustic simplicity.) The central figure need a firmer hand. We need a stron- If the word were not already ex- is Doctor Thomas Stockmann (Boyd ger voice. We need to say no more aid hausted from use in a very differ- Gaines), a boisterous, liberal man who to countries that do not have demo- ent context, I would call Ibsen’s great only a couple of years earlier finally re- cratic elections, no more aid to nations theatrical achievement the invention turned to his hometown after toiling in

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 63 Arts&Letters

do is shut the baths down and rebuild the water system the way he, Thomas, had suggested it be built in the first

Joan Marcus place—more expensively but more securely. His friends from the town’s liberal paper applaud him and con- fidently affirm his prediction that he will be hailed as a town hero. Of course, things are not so simple. The liberals—the rabble-rousing pub- lisher, Hovstad (a sly John Procac- cino), his easily-roused flunky, Bill- ing (James Waterson), and the sober printer, Aslaksen (a charming Gerry Bamman, who benefits more than anyone from the colloquial transla- tion)—aren’t so much interested in the health and safety of the baths as they are in using the issue as a stick with which to discredit the conserva- tive authorities and bring in a more liberal government. Hovstad even hopes that his championing of the doctor will help to win the favor of the doctor’s daughter, Petra (Maïté Alina). And Thomas’s father-in-law, Morton Kiil (played with exquisite malice by Michael Siberry), the owner of the offending tannery, believing not for a minute in the reality of the pol- lution, cackles with excitement at the prospect of the stuffed shirts in gov- ernment getting a good skewering. Only Thomas thinks battle won’t be necessary—surely the authorities will immediately take the necessary steps to protect the town and its visitors. Peter has no such plans, and his Boyd Gaines and Kathleen McNanny in “An Enemy of the People” initial confrontation with Thomas is electric. Richard Thomas sheds his fussy reserve and lays into Gaines, obscurity in the provinces. He has set- nally earning “nearly as much” as he and Gaines returns fire, decades of tled in, thanks to the help of his broth- spends. the brothers’ mutual contempt burst- er, the town’s mayor, Peter Stockmann Thomas hasn’t just settled in hap- ing into the open. The battle is joined, (Richard Thomas), who arranged for pily, though. He’s too restless for that. words are said that can never be un- him to be hired by the spa as the official For the past year, he’s been investi- said, and Thomas Stockmann races medical director. gating a suspicious series of typhoid off to the offices of the liberal paper to Peter is Thomas’s opposite in every- cases among visitors to the baths. At blow the lid off his brother’s attempt thing: restrained, even finicky in his the end of the first scene, his investi- at a cover-up. It takes only one visit movements where his brother is ex- gations have born fruit: he has defini- from the once again oleaginous may- pansive; a teetotaler where his brother tive evidence that the baths are thor- or, though, to turn the liberals against enjoys a toast or two or three; fiscally oughly contaminated by runoff from Thomas. The corporation, he reveals, prudent where his brother brags of fi- a tannery upstream. The only thing to won’t absorb the exorbitant costs of the

64 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER 2012 proposed renovation; if the baths are to the same, overcome our defects and who stands by the family in the depths be rebuilt, it’ll mean a steep tax hike on become heroes. of their trial, are never explained at all. workers. And the baths will still have to Doctor Stockmann’s fatal vanity, And the final act’s repeated tightening close, probably for years. though, is inseparable from his virtue. of the screws around Doctor Stock- The prospect of the town’s ruination He’s not a compromised hero: he’s not mann and his family begins to feel quickly turns all of Thomas Stock- intimidated by the prospect of losing more mechanical than emotionally re- mann’s allies into enemies and him into his job or his children’s inheritance (he’s velatory. But the importance of the play the titular Enemy of the People. This is blackmailed towards the end of the play lies in that portrait of the doctor. the title slapped on him by virtually by his father-in-law), but that’s because It’s not exactly news that communi- the entire town at a meeting called by he doesn’t have the slightest appre- ties will not look kindly on someone Thomas himself, at which he insults ev- ciation of money. He wants to be wor- who exposes their dirty little secrets, eryone in attendance and rails against shipped generally as he is “the majority” as the greatest threat by his daughter and his to sane, liberal governance. It’s a bi- off-stage sons. His vanity People don’t want to hear they zarre speech, but brilliantly executed is the vanity of the would- by Gaines and marvelously staged by be-hero—the vanity we may be letting their own children director Doug Hughes, who plants the share and that the typical be poisoned; how much more readily townspeople in the front row, turning Hollywood “issue” movie would they poison the messenger. the theatre audience into the attendees exploits to win us over. at the meeting. I say bizarre because no There’s a marvelous bit more foolish strategy could possibly be of business in the middle conceived for winning popular sup- of the play where Thomas steals his or that most people are more devoted port. But what it lacks in logical sense brother’s beribboned black top hat and to their livelihoods than to honesty it makes up for in psychological acuity. parades about the liberal newspaper’s and righteousness. Indeed, if you take For this mad speech, really, is the heart office, proclaiming himself king, to a look at how anti-fracking campaigns of the play. the embarrassment of everyone and are received in western Pennsylvania There is a contradiction at the heart the exasperation of his brother, who towns that have been revived from of progressive liberalism, a contradic- snatches at it saying: it’s an emblem near-death by the new oil and gas rush, tion that conservatives have exploited of office. To which Thomas shouts in you’ll see that Ibsen wasn’t cynical from the beginning, in that liberalism reply: it’s a hat! Leadership, Thomas enough. People don’t want to hear—as- calls for government of, for, and by the declares in his town-meeting rant, be- suming for the sake of argument that people, but it also calls for government longs by right to the noble, by which he fracking’s critics are right—they may according to liberal principles—trans- means the noble of character, such as be letting their own children be poi- parency, public concern for the welfare himself. Not the noble-by-birth, or by soned; how much more readily would of the needy, education to promote “en- wealth. Or by headgear. But the key to they poison the messenger. lightenment,” etc.—that are not always his character—the ignoble flaw—is the The news that never seems to pen- popular. And when the populace vote demand that this nobility be publicly etrate is that those who wish to do for an illiberal government, liberals all affirmed. Over and over in the play, right in the teeth of interest, like Doc- to often wind up lecturing the people the doctor effuses his thanks to anyone tor Stockmann, are also selfishly mo- about their gullibility at best, their stu- who agrees with him in his self-esti- tivated, and this is a sign of their hu- pidity and venality at worst. Just like mation. It’s almost as if he isn’t actually manity, not their elitism. If they were Thomas Stockmann does. sure of his own worth. more aware of their motivations and It’s a credit to Ibsen that he shows us “An Enemy of the People” has un- had a bit more humor about them— just how vain and self-serving Thomas questionable weaknesses, particularly and if we were more accepting of such Stockmann really is, just like everyone in the dynamics of the Thomas Stock- motivations and had a bit more humor else in town. The typical Hollywood mann family. His daughter, Petra, is a about them—we might listen with crusader film flatters our vanity; he- one-note father-worshipper, and his far more open ears. Which would be a roes may be flawed—drunks, cow- more sensible wife, Catherine (Kath- good thing, because sometimes, as in ards, women “with a past”—but they leen McNenny), loses her ginger right this little Norwegian town, the well re- find a higher calling in a great moral when she should be gaining it, which ally is being poisoned. crusade that lifts them above their considerably dilutes the final scene. biographies and redeems their flaws, The motivations of Captain Horster Noah Millman’s blog is and we feel, watching, as if we’ve done (Randall Newsome), the only character www.theamericanconservative.com/Millman.

NOVEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 65 Taki

Right From the Beginning

ow quickly time flies, and cades, that wars are caused by appeas- financing the mag. The dwarfish Bill how much more quickly ers, and that it was tough guys like W Kristol had prepared the way by mak- they forget? It was ten who do the unpopular thing and stand ing personal attacks against me, but in years ago that I flew to up to dictators. The media were like view of the fact I had always called him HWashington to see Pat Buchanan with groupies allowed inside a rock star’s a smiling cobra and a Likud propagan- a proposal in mind. Scott McConnell hotel suite. Ready to obey and strip. dist, that was to be expected. The Saudi was with me, and the deal we present- Time dulls memory and makes it query was simply malicious. I loathe ed to Pat was a new magazine whose hard to evoke the war fever of those the Saudis on a par with the Likud- sole purpose would be to recapture days, weeks, and months leading up ists, but I guess D.C. journalists are too traditional conservatism from the hi- to the greatest disaster ever for Uncle busy trying to get access to the power- jackers of the movement, namely the Sam’s foreign policy. The ground had ful to do any homework. neo-cons, back then, as now, riding been prepared by the usual suspects, Our first cover story was written by high and Iago-like whispering in W’s the Podhoretzes, Kristols, Feiths, Per- Eric Margolis and ran as follows: “Iraq ears about an end to evil. les, and Wolfowitzes of this world. folly. How Victory Could Spell Ameri- Pat immediately agreed. “But where’s Those of us who opposed the war can Defeat.” Now just think about the money coming from?” I swallowed were seen not only as unpatriotic, this. Tom Fleming in Chronicles aside, hard, and pointed at my chest. “That’s in a climate reminiscent of the Mos- we were the only conservatives who great,” said Pat, “when do we start?” It cow purges, but also as anti-Semites, not only warned that Saddam had no was as simple as that. Pat runs a dry America Firsters, racist scum. Attend- weapons to speak of, we also stated un- house, which was a bit of a letdown, ing the funeral of a common friend equivocally that military victory would but I did get rather drunk that evening with William F. Buckley, I noticed spell defeat. Ten years later, all we have in Café Milano. They say that owning about to have to do is change a letter, from a Q to an a yacht is like sitting under a shower a seizure when Bill and I sat next to N, from Iraq to Iran. The same slimy tearing up $100 bills. Financing a polit- him. “Nothing to do with you, Bill,” types are again beating the war drums. ical magazine is less fun. It’s like sitting I whispered. (Buckley, sitting on my Neocons only looked dead when the in a drab D.C. hotel room throwing boat three years later, told me that had Iraqi disaster became obvious even to $1,000 bills into a flickering fire. But I he known then what he knew at pres- people as thick as W, but they are a re- didn’t mind. This was six years before ent, he would have never backed the silient bunch, like flu bugs, and are back the you-know-what hit the fan, and the war. I asked if I could quote him and with a vengeance. Now it’s Assad and neocons were going over the top, con- he said, “please do.”) the ayatollahs who are about to blow flating Israel’s interests with America’s, For a start up The American Conser- us up, so we are helping the very same demanding that Uncle Sam go to war vative did rather well straight off the Syrians who are financed by the Sau- against Saddam’s weapons of mass de- bat. Buchanan’s loyal readers had us dis and Qataris and who will one day struction, and cheer-leading for Amer- selling close to ten thousand after cou- soon be killing Americans wherever ican “benevolent global hegemony.” ple of issues. Just before we published, they find them. I spent a lot of money The neocons back then—as now— we held a press conference in the Na- financing TAC, and although I say so had something very good going for tional Press Club in D.C. It opened my myself, it really was worth it. We always them: namely, the ability of the Ameri- eyes to the hostility of the so-called knew who the fifth columnists were. can people to forget rather easily. In press. Most of the questions I faced One day in the future, when history is 2002 their rallying cry was the same were about my drug bust 25 years pre- written, more than just us will come to one they had been preaching for de- viously and whether the Saudis were know it. Happy tenth anniversary!

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