MARCH 6, 2017 $5.99

Microaggression & Macrononsense ANDREW FERGUSON on another social science failure

WEEKLYSTANDARD.COM Contents March 6, 2017 • Volume 22, Number 25

2 The Scrapbook Pants on Fireball, white out, & more 5 Casual Matt Labash, soulcatcher 7 Editorials Remember Henry Clay • Drawing Boundaries • An Outlaw State Articles

11 Take Two at the NSC BY THOMAS JOSCELYN McMaster and commander

14 Gunning for Hillary BY FRED BARNES The NRA’s unheralded role in 2016

11 15 An Extraordinary Career BY JOSEPH BOTTUM Michael Novak, 1933-2017

17 Friend of Freedom BY CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH SR. The spirit of Michael Novak

19 Trump’s New Enemy BY JAY COST Hating the press is a venerable presidential tradition

20 A Case for Caution BY IRWIN M. STELZER Think twice before throwing out the fi duciary rule

21 The Democrats’ Last Hope BY FRED LUCAS 7 Their attorneys general may be the president’s most redoubtable foe

23 Restoring Solvency BY HAL BRANDS & ERIC EDELMAN The military buildup we need Features

26 Microaggression and Macrononsense BY ANDREW FERGUSON Another social science failure

30 Manufacturing Optimism BY TONY MECIA 26 Can factory jobs be made in America again? Books & Arts

34 In Search of Mrs. T BY GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB The elusive woman behind Thatcherism

36 Mark My Word BY DAVID WOLPE From ancient tongue to everyday language

38 Ghostly Women BY MICHAEL DIRDA A sisterhood of the supernatural—in fi ction

42 An Unquiet Belle BY DANIEL ROSS GOODMAN The mysteries of Emily Dickinson revealed

43 Magical Kingdom BY JOHN PODHORETZ The unlikely origins of a classic movie 34 44 Parody The media see the light COVER: SLEDGEHAMMER, BIGSTOCKPHOTO; GNAT, ANDRÉ KARWATH THE Scrapbook Pants on Fireball s there nothing so louche that How surprising it was, then, for tion not over the last few months, I Trump supporters won’t indulge The Scrapbook to find, in the but back in the glory days of the in it? According to the Washington article’s 14th paragraph, way Obama administration. Post, apparently not. So low have we back on page C5, this: But the editor responsible for been brought, the Post suggests, that Tanner Smith, a liquor distri- the headline clearly didn’t feel as in ’s capital there is a bution representative whose constrained as the reporter. fad for that odious cinnamon-flavored market includes 95 bars and After all, the claim that sugar gargle that masquerades as whis- restaurants in the District, Fireball’s sales are in key, “Fireball.” thinks the whole idea is goose-step with the The article took up most of the front “comical” because Fireball Trumpian hordes was page of the paper’s Style section plus a sales are actually slowing in the whole point of the the capital. jump to the inside pages. It started with article in the first place, a big picture of a bottle of Fireball To her credit, the re- so why let inconvenient and a display headline: “Is This the porter cites the testimony information get in the Spirit of ? Fireball whiskey’s of multiple bartenders way? If it takes con- sales rise in D.C.; theories abound.” and “beverage directors” tradicting the factual Of course theories are just theo- who are dismissive of the reporting of a story to ries, but the factual part of the head- article’s very premise. She get the Trump-bashing line is simple and unambiguous: even notes that Fireball be- headline just right, well, “Fireball whiskey’s sales rise in D.C.” came a Washington sensa- so be it. ♦

White Out And so the neighborhood organ­ last April, “An opera company which ized, forming groups such as the tried to stage a performance at the ho knew that in the age of Boyle Heights Alliance Against Art- [neighborhood’s Hollenbeck Park] W America First, the greatest washing and Displacement. They was drowned out by shouts, whistles threat to Hispanic communities in picketed the galleries; they confront- and a brass band.” When the opera the wasn’t marauding ed patrons arriving for show openings company’s music director tried to bands of ICE agents wielding mass with shouts of “Get out!”—well, actu- talk to the woman organizing the deportation orders or the con- protest, he was told, “This is not struction of a border wall? No, the a park for white people. You are scourge is Art. white people.” That’s The Scrapbook’s take- Given the contentious atmos­ away from the news this week that phere, it’s no wonder PSSST is a small art gallery called PSSST packing up its easels. But rather had been driven out of the hard- than expressing defiance, the scrabble Los Angeles area called gallery organizers issued a rather etty

Boyle Heights. PSSST, you see, pathetic statement, whining on G was one of several art galleries about how theirs had been an imes / making insidious inroads into the effort to democratize art given T predominantly Hispanic neigh- that art “institutions privilege ngeles borhood. The nonprofit galleristas the already privileged.” They A os thought they were bringing wel- also declared that art is about L come Culture to an underserved “community,” never mind that area; the locals saw them as the the Boyle Heights community / aylen Everyone’s a critic. B . thin-wedge of Anglo infiltration, wasn’t interested. They even said O iz the shock troops of gentrification. ally, “Fuera!” Parties had to be can- something about how it was a mis- L It’s an old story: First come the art celed. Canapés and Chardonnay went characterization that they were “fun- galleries and, before you know it, the to waste. Donors were rattled. damentally in opposition with the local bodega has been replaced with Other efforts at bringing Art to varied intersectional communities we an artisanal boucherie selling acorn- Boyle Heights have met with similar aimed to support.”

fed ibérico ham for $15 an ounce. resistance. As the Guardian reported Contrast the mewling mush of sazerac; below, top,

2 / March 6, 2017 “varied intersectional communities” with the anti-gringo movement’s memorable slogan, spray-painted on one of the galleries: “F— White Art.” No wonder PSSST lost the struggle. One can understand the feelings of those who having lived for some time in a neighborhood wish to see it re- tain its character. But The Scrapbook can’t help but note the sad irony of an immigrant community—who should be in favor of the free movement of peoples, after all—dead set against people of a different ethnicity immi- grating into their neighborhood. ♦ Snuggly Vestments leading case in constitutional A law it ain’t. But we now have a ruling: The Snuggie—“The Blanket That Has Sleeves!”—is indeed a blan- ket, the sleeves notwithstanding. So says Judge Mark A. Barnett of the United States Court of Interna- tional Trade. And rightly so, as far as The Scrapbook can tell. How did the Snug- gie—that comical “as seen on TV” accessory for couch potatoes who want their hands free to drink beer and eat chips while otherwise swaddled on the sofa in polyester fl eece—get to be an ob- ject of such gravity to warrant the judgment of a federal court? can pull the polyester fl eece over their and robes,” garments that “have wide- It all has to do with eyes. They demanded that Snuggies armed sleeves and fl ow loosely around the sort of differential be treated as garments, what with the the body.” in taxation that makes sleeves and all. Needless to say, the United States for full employment for The dispute ended up in court, lost. Have the lawyers for the Justice Washington lobbyists. with Allstar Marketing Group squar- Department never been in court be- In this case, it is the fact ing off against no less than the United fore? If they had, they might have that imported blankets are hit with States itself. noticed that judges wear robes. The an 8.5 percent tariff, whereas, under Which is where the Department of Scrapbook suspects those judges are subsection 6114, “garments, knitted Justice came in. The geniuses there not inclined to have their workwear or crocheted,” brought into the coun- argued on behalf of Customs that equated with Snuggies. try require the payment of 14.9 per- the Snuggie was the same as “clerical Case closed. ♦ cent duties. The Snuggies people have or ecclesiastical garments and vest- been bringing their product into the ments” (which may be true if one wor- Democracy’s Eulogists United States as “blankets,” thus en- ships at the altar of junk-food). And if joying the lower “blanket” tariff. The the court wasn’t buying that, Justice ast week, the Washington Post clever fellows at Customs and Border maintained that the Snuggie was akin L unveiled a new slogan displayed

HeaD, JareD cramer; below, snUggie HeaD, JareD cramer; below, Protection were not fooled. No one to “professional or scholastic gowns just below the paper’s masthead:

March 6, 2017 The Weekly STandard / 3 “Democracy dies in darkness.” As Times no longer merely asks people Count Floyd might say, “Scary stuff, to subscribe, it pleads with them to huh, kids?” “SUPPORT OUR MISSION.” The Post’s new slogan may be hi- We don’t dismiss Trump’s at- lariously overwrought, but it does tacks on the media lightly. In- www.weeklystandard.com suggest a parallel motto: If democ- deed, The Scrapbook wishes he racy dies in darkness, journalism would spare us all the “media is the stephen F. Hayes, Editor in Chief richard starr, Editor surely dies in self-aggrandizement. enemy” hoo-ha—mainly because Fred barnes, Executive Editor For the last few weeks, the scrib- it just inflates reporters’ already eric Felten, Managing Editor blers and prattlers of the press have intolerable sanctimony. christopher caldwell, andrew Ferguson, lee smith, Senior Editors been plumping themselves as civi- If there is an imminent threat to philip terzian, Literary Editor lization’s last best hope. There they journalism, we suspect it is less in the Kelly Jane torrance, Deputy Managing Editor Jay cost, mark Hemingway, are, manning the barricades, mili- bluster of one Donald J. and more in matt labash, Jonathan V. last, tants of a movement. The New York the self-regard of the Fourth Estate. ♦ John mccormack, michael warren, Senior Writers larry o’connor, Online Editor ethan epstein, Associate Editor chris Deaton, Jim swift, Deputy Online Editors Hannah yoest, Assistant Literary Editor priscilla m. Jensen, Assistant Editor tatiana lozano, Editorial Assistant Jenna lifhits, alice b. lloyd, Web Producers philip chalk, Design Director barbara Kyttle, Design Assistant teri perry, Executive Assistant Contributing Editors claudia anderson, max boot, Joseph bottum, , matthew continetti, terry eastland, noemie emery, Joseph epstein, David Frum, David gelernter, reuel marc gerecht, michael goldfarb, mary Katharine Ham, brit Hume, thomas Joscelyn, Frederick w. Kagan, , yuval levin, tod lindberg, micah mattix, Victorino matus, robert messenger, p. J. o’rourke, John podhoretz, irwin m. stelzer william Kristol, Editor at Large

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4 / The Weekly STandard March 6, 2017 CASUAL

fish like to be scared a little, the same Release Me way people do. Fear reminds us that we’re still alive. The science is divided on whether fish feel pain. But from my hands-on experience, I safely assume they don’t here is nothing more bor- up with anything better than a weak relish being caught. While I enjoy ing than other people’s paraphrase of Thoreau: Some men communing with them, they seem dreams, so I try to forget count fish all their lives without like they’d be perfectly willing to go most of my own. Life’s knowing what it is they’re counting. it alone. But even if fish had the neo- Twaking nightmares are vivid enough. Non-fishing friends often look cortex and microcircuitry to guaran- But I’m dogged by one I had the askance at you when you tell them tee they feel pain, it’s nothing like the other night. I was standing in a how many fish you catch without eat- pain I feel when I can’t catch them in favorite fishing hole up to my waist, ing a one. “Oh, you’re just a sadist, deepest winter or when life presses in. attempting to release a largemouth then,” they say. They call me “fish I don’t know what it says about bass I’d just caught. Slow on the trig- molester,” “fish torturer,” and worse, me that I always feel closest to God ger, I’d missed the lip- when I’m giving His hook. So my fly had majestic creation a lip- lodged deep down his piercing. But the book gullet. As I struggled to of Hebrews states work it free with hemo- plainly that without stats, trying not to bloodshed, there is injure the fish, hands no redemption. Jesus grew out of his pecto- himself was a bit of a ral fins, gripping my catch-and-release story. wrists, as he patiently The Romans thought awaited his fate. they had Him good I woke up with my and dead; then three heart pounding out days later, the tomb let some thumping, jun- Him go. Not for noth- gle arrhythmia. What ing were at least five Releasing a trout if fish had hands? of Christ’s disciples in Alberta, Canada Could I spend all this fishermen, including time doing what I love his two favorites (Peter to do most, catching-and-releasing as though my fly rod and I amount and John). So I rest confident that them? Thank God they don’t. A good to some piscatorial Abu Ghraib. I He’d forgive this minor blasphemy. break for me, a bad break for the fish. tell them I like to eat fish just fine on As for counting and logging all my Anatomy is destiny. occasion. But Mrs. Paul has already escapees, I can’t say what it amounts I’ve written about catch-and- done the dirty work for me. Why to. Except that each of those marks on release fishing in these pages before, commit felonies when misdemeanors a page represents a fleeting window almost exactly 10 years ago. Since bring you more pleasure? of time. One in which I was looking then, I’ve caught 13,005 more fish I’m free to just fish. I don’t have to neither forward nor back—I was just on a fly rod and have let them all go. kill them, clean them, cook them, or looking. It’s my favorite kind of time, I know the precise number, because take their PCB loads into my blood- since it’s the time we have the least I’ve counted and recorded each one. stream. I can just hold something of. String enough of those moments They say fishing is cheaper than beautiful and wild for a second, before together, and a good fishing moment therapy, which my wife suspects I’m turning it loose to be fruitful and mul- becomes a good fishing life, irrefut- in need of. Though after tallying up tiply. Maybe I will even catch its chil- able evidence of what Roderick Haig- the tabs for rods, waders, boots, flies, dren and grandchildren down the line, Brown called “living a life, instead of gas, and convenience-store junk-food before evolutionary calculus kicks in, enduring it.” on my runs, I’m not so sure. But it’s and it finally dawns on the progeny I’m not pretending that fish can given me a lot of time to think about that a woolly bugger isn’t actual food. save our souls. But on some days, they this seemingly pointless blood pag- The fish, in the bargain, gets a good come close enough. eant I participate in, and why. With human tale to tell to his fish kin, scar-

NEWSCOM another decade gone, I haven’t come ing the bejesus out of them. Maybe Matt Labash

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 5 EDITORIALS Remember Henry Clay

hen your mind runs over the history of the or spending or defense or health care, most of the denizens Grand Old Party, you think of the presidents of the Hill—understandably, given recent history—defer W first. You think of Abraham Lincoln and are to forthcoming guidance from the administration. proud to be in some way associated with a political party But it’s becoming increasingly clear that such deference whose first president was our greatest. You recall Ulysses may be self-defeating. This is unlikely to be a White House S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt and , and that provides concrete or consistent or sound guidance in you think . . . not bad, not bad at all. And you move along to many policy areas. Dwight Eisenhower and and the two George So, senators and representatives: This is your moment. Bushes, and you conclude: It’s an impressive legacy. Don’t be intimidated by the Master of Mar-a-Lago. You Who knows whether President Donald Trump will ever were also elected by the American people, in most cases be looked back on with comparable nostalgia and respect? by a larger margin. Your grant of legislative powers comes If he is, we suspect it will be due mostly to in Article One of the Constitution—his in the actions of Republican members of Con- Article Two. He will be the executor of your gress. It won’t primarily be due to their dili- legislation; he can be a kibitzer in your delib- gence in supporting him. What will prove erations. But you know more than he does, more important to success for the Republican you’ve thought more than he has, and you party and for Republican principles over the have a longer time horizon than he is capable next four years is the success of Republicans of. You can guide him, you can check him, in Congress in guiding Trump, in correcting and you can override him. him, in checking him—and, yes, at times in As most of you know but will say only opposing him. privately: If the next four years are the years Republicans in Congress shouldn’t be of Trump alone, they’re likely to be years of intimidated by this responsibility. They do, ‘Still shining high’ failure. If the next four years are the years in after all, have a grand congressional history the House of Paul Ryan and Kevin Brady, of to look back upon as well. From the great Whig Henry Clay, Mac Thornberry and Jeb Hensarling, of Mike Gallagher who might be considered the forefather of the Republican and Liz Cheney, and in the Senate of Mitch McConnell and party, all the way down to the present, Republican mem- John McCain, of Lamar Alexander and Mike Lee, of Tom bers can reflect on senatorial and congressional statesmen Cotton and Ben Sasse, they’re far more likely to be years galore. In the modern era alone, they can, for different rea- to be proud of. sons and in varied ways, take pride in the legacies of Rob- The first Republican president had a high regard for ert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg, of and the legislative branch. Here’s what he had to say in his , of Bob Dole and and Jack eulogy for Henry Clay, who served almost four decades in Kemp. And there are current members to admire like John both chambers of Congress and never became president, McCain and Paul Ryan and a host of younger members but did more for his country than most presidents: recently arrived, who bid fair to step forward and join their illustrious predecessors. Mere duration of time in office, constitutes the smallest Most of these congressional figures made their names part of Mr. Clay’s history. Throughout that long period, he cooperating with Democratic presidents or resisting them, has constantly been the most loved, and most implicitly fol- or leading from the Hill when there wasn’t a Republican in lowed by friends, and the most dreaded by opponents, of all living American politicians. In all the great questions the White House. But it would be a mistake to assume, just which have agitated the country, and particularly in those because a Republican holds the presidency, that the task of great and fearful crises—the Missouri question, the Nullifi- congressional Republicans is primarily to support and to cation question, and the late slavery question, as connected follow him. Republicans on the Hill haven’t quite adjusted with the newly acquired territory, involving and endanger- to the current situation. When you ask them these days ing the stability of the Union—his has been the leading and what their plans are, they typically say they’re waiting for most conspicuous part. . . . the White House. When you inquire about plans on taxes Even those of both political parties who have been

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 7 preferred to him for the highest office, have run far briefer The Yiannopoulos affair is a reminder that just because courses than he, and left him, still shining high in the many on the left have lost their minds, along with any sense heavens of the political world. . . . of decency and civility, that’s no excuse for conservatives to Mr. Clay’s predominant sentiment, from first to last, do the same. It shouldn’t have taken a video in which Yian- was a deep devotion to the cause of human liberty—a strong nopoulos said child rape could be “perfectly consensual” for sympathy with the oppressed everywhere, and an ardent conservatives to cut their ties. His anti-Semitism and rac- wish for their elevation. . . . He loved his country partly ism should have been enough. As , a conserva- because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country; and he burned with a zeal for its advancement, tive and Yiannopoulos’s former Breit­bart colleague, wrote prosperity and glory, because he saw in such, the advance- on February 3 at the Daily Wire: ment, prosperity and glory, of human liberty, human right [Yiannopoulos] says Jews run the media; earlier this month and human nature. he characterized a Jewish BuzzFeed writer as “a typical example of a sort of thick-as-pig shit media Jew”; he justi- Members of Congress: Act so that when the antics of fies anti-Semitic memes as playful trollery and pats racist Donald Trump have faded in memory, your deeds will be sites like American Renaissance on the head; he describes memorable enough to inspire a eulogy half so heartfelt and himself as a “chronicler of, and occasional fellow traveler so powerful from a future Republican president. with the alt-right” while simultaneously recognizing that —William Kristol their “dangerously bright” intellectuals believe that “cul- ture is inseparable from race”; back in his days going under the name Milo Wagner, he reportedly posed with his hand atop a Hitler biography, posted a Hitler meme about killing 6 million Jews, and wore an Iron Cross; last week he berated a Muslim woman in the audience of one of his speeches for wearing a hijab in the United States; . . . he personally Drawing Tweeted a picture of a black baby at me on the day of my son’s birth, because according to the alt-right I’m a “cuck” who wants to see the races mixed; he sees the Constitution as a hackneyed remnant of the past, to be replaced by a new Boundaries right he leads. olitical correctness holds too strong a grip on too When CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp appeared on much of American life these days. Religious citizens Morning Joe on February 21, he explained that Yiannopou- P who politely and conscientiously object to working los had been disinvited because his pederasty comments gay weddings may be crushed by the state and driven into crossed “very important boundaries,” but he suggested bankruptcy. In academia, the very place where the life of anti-Semitism was not one of those boundaries. Joe Scar- the mind is supposed to flourish, critiques of Islam, femi- borough asked Schlapp: “[Yiannopoulos] has also made nism, or transgenderism may be treated as thought crimes some extraordinarily offensive anti-Semitic remarks. So to be stamped out. On many a college campus today, saying can’t you find somebody else . . . to fire off a speech against 2+2=4 is an act of rebellion. p.c. codes on college campuses? Get anybody at CPAC that’s And so some conservatives have been drawn to Milo not an anti-Semite?” Yiannopoulos, a rebel whose cause is provoking the left “Joe, it’s a fair point. But the other point is that, whether and promoting himself. The flamboyantly gay Yiannopou- we like it or not, he is a big voice in this movement,” Schlapp los made a name for himself as a Breit­bart News person- replied. “The question is this: Is it okay for people who are ality who took his anti-p.c. message to colleges across the offensive to speak on campus? And that was the point of country on his “Dangerous Faggot” tour. Yiannopoulos why he was invited.” made more headlines last week when he was announced What nonsense. Of course it is okay for people who are as a headline speaker at the Conservative Political Action offensive to speak on campus. The violence and intimidation Conference (CPAC) and then disinvited two days later, after that shut down a Yiannopoulos speech earlier this month attention was drawn to a video in which he defended sex at Berkeley was criminal. College students who shout down between adults and children as young as 13. “We’re talking speakers invited to campus are a disgrace. But supporting about 13[-year-olds with] 25[-year-olds], 13[-year-olds with] the right to free speech, including vile speech, does not obli- 28[-year-olds]—these things do happen perfectly consensu- gate anyone to honor and promote vile speech. ally,” he said in a January 2016 video. “In the gay world,” As for the claim that Yiannopoulos is already a “big he went on, “some of the most important, enriching, and voice,” that looks more like an excuse to justify a poor deci- incredibly life-affirming, important shaping relationships sion. More important, it ignores the duty of conservatives [are] very often between younger boys and older men; they to marginalize rather than elevate such voices. Yiannopou- can be hugely positive experiences for those young boys.” los didn’t rise to semi-prominence all on his own. Breit­bart

8 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 News, whose former head Stephen Bannon is now Presi- dent Trump’s chief strategist, gave Yiannopoulos a job and bankrolled his college tour. “Mr. Yiannopoulos, whose college tour was being subsidized by Breit­bart, did not charge a fee,” the Chronicle of Higher Education reported following a recent speech. “[] made me into a An Outlaw star,” Yiannopoulos said in November 2016. Bannon acknowledged that he wanted to make Breit­ bart News into a “platform for the alt-right.” In 2014 State remarks, Bannon shrugged off anti-Semitic and racist ele- ments within right-wing European parties and movements ince 2009, each edition of the State Department’s because “over time it all gets kind of washed out, right? Peo- annual Country Reports on Terrorism has contained ple understand what pulls them together, and the people on S a cheerful fiction: State has given the nation that the margins I think get marginalized more and more.” it insists on calling the “DPRK”—using the anti-demo- That comment glosses over how marginalization takes cratic, anti-people, and anti-republican Pyongyang gov- place. It ignores the important work it took from prominent ernment’s laughable official appellation, the Democratic conservatives—men like William F. Buckley Jr.—to purge People’s Republic of Korea—a clean bill of health. North the American conservative movement of anti-Semitism. Korea “is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts It ignores the role of people who control microphones and since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987,” assemble audiences in deciding which “big voices” they last year’s document reads. The country has therefore will choose to amplify. Technological changes in the media remained safely off the United States’ list of state sponsors may have made it more difficult to marginalize vile speech, of terrorism. but that’s no excuse for anyone who pretends to care about This year’s report, due to be released by April 30, will American to promote the idea that such require a revision. For what last year was—at a minimum— speech is within the bounds of civil discourse. a highly questionable judgment now looks utterly indefen- —John McCormack sible in the wake of North Korea’s brazen assassination of

Regulatory Relief Is on the Way

THOMAS J. DONOHUE Congress is taking bold action too. to withdraw or modify those rules. PRESIDENT AND CEO Lawmakers exercised their authority While this progress is welcome and U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE to review and rescind many recent badly needed, regulatory relief alone is rules using the Congressional Review not enough. We also need to reform the After a relentless, eight-year regulatory Act (CRA). The Obama administration system itself. In the opening days of the onslaught that loaded unprecedented issued an estimated 38 major rules 115th Congress, the House passed the burdens on businesses and the economy, after President Trump’s election in Regulatory Accountability Act, which relief is finally on the way. The president November. Under the CRA, Congress would update our regulatory system for and leaders in Congress have quickly has already repealed the Department the first time in 70 years. This legislation made good on campaign pledges to rein of Interior’s Stream Buffer Rule, would increase scrutiny on the rules in the regulatory state. which threatened to severely restrict with the highest costs and the greatest President Trump promptly halted access to domestic coal resources, impact and demand more transparency most pending regulations until the and the Venting and Flaring Rule, and accountability. We’re pushing the administration has a chance to review which stunted our energy revolution Senate to quickly follow suit. them and signed an executive order to with unnecessary restrictions on oil The Chamber has long fought back slash current rules and their costs. He and natural gas production. The U.S. against overregulation—and for smart, also issued executive orders to begin Chamber of Commerce will continue to balanced regulation—for a simple finding ways to relieve burdensome push lawmakers to use the CRA to undo reason: A heavy-handed regulatory requirements from some of the most ill-conceived 11th hour rules. approach stokes uncertainty, repels sweeping Obama-era actions, including Some of the worst regulations of investment, stalls hiring, and suffocates the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank, the last eight years are tied up in the growth. Now that the government is and the Department of Labor’s judicial system. As a result of aggressive starting to get out of the way, businesses Fiduciary Rule. Significant executive engagement by the business community can focus on what they do best— orders to unravel major environmental and its allies, many of these rules have creating jobs and growing the economy. regulations are also expected soon. been temporarily or permanently These early and aggressive actions show enjoined by the courts. And with a new Learn more at he’s serious about reform. administration, there’s an opportunity uschamber.com/abovethefold.

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 9 its dictator’s older half-brother at Kuala Lumpur’s airport have committed or attempted to commit multiple assassi- on February 13. nations abroad. And closer to home, the 2014 cyberattack In the waning days of his administration, George W. on Sony Pictures, which was clearly designed to “influence Bush removed North Korea from the State Department’s the conduct of . . . members of the civilian population” by terror list. Pyongyang had been on the list since that preventing them from seeing a movie that mocked North aforementioned 1987 bombing, which killed 115 innocent Korea, was arguably an act of terrorism. people. Call it the audacity of hope: Bush figured that by Happily, some lawmakers are waking up to this real- rewarding Pyongyang with a delisting, the North Korean ity, with several members of the House of Representatives regime would agree to halt its development of nuclear weap- calling for North Korea to be relisted. The State Depart- ons and allow international weapons inspectors inside the ment should heed their advice. Re-designating North country. Like many dubious propositions, Bush’s move Korea a state sponsor of terror would, for one, affirm that gained widespread bipartisan support. Then- the truth matters: North Korea supports ter- senator praised the deal, call- rorism and it does no good to pretend other- ing it a “modest step forward.” wise. It would also be an important symbolic Four nuclear weapons tests later, we see step in its own right and a sign of solidar- how well the denuclearization component ity with South Korea, an ally that is feeling of the arrangement has worked. And in the shaky about America’s commitment to it. meantime, North Korea has continued to Relisting North Korea would have aid and perpetrate acts of terrorism, render- concrete salutary upshots too. As Stanton ing the claim that it “is not known” to have explains on his blog, sponsored terrorism true only if one has never cracked a newspaper. Banks would have to apply for a Treasury Writing in these pages in July 2015, Department license to process dollar trans- actions on North Korea’s behalf. That would attorney and sanctions expert Joshua Stan- Kim Jong-nam in 2001 be extremely powerful by itself. Just ask BNP ton noted that Paribas, which paid a multi-billion-dollar settlement for violating similar requirements under U.S. law, and according to the precedents on behalf of Iran, Cuba, and other countries of the State Department’s past Country Reports, subject to that sort of licensing requirement. international terrorism includes both material Second, it would trigger SEC rules requiring support for terrorists and terrorist organiza- corporations to disclose their investments in tions, and also the use of a state’s own clan- North Korea in public filings. That, in turn, destine agents to commit violent, politically could trigger a North Korea divestment move- motivated acts against noncombatants, across ment by NGOs. . . . Third, it would require international boundaries, that are unlawful in U.S. diplomats to oppose benefits (like loans) the place where they are committed, with the for North Korea from international financial intent to influence the conduct of a government institutions. Fourth, it would mean that U.S. or members of the civilian population. victims of North Korean terrorism could sue Kim Jong-un North Korea for its acts of terrorism. North Korea has committed such acts in spades. Since its delisting, several shipments of arms have Of course, the most brutal form of terrorism that been intercepted on their way from North Korea to Iran North Korea commits is the kind it perpetrates on its own and its terrorist proxies. In the first half of 2015 alone, at citizens. Dictator Kim Jong-un—who holds the distinc- least three delegations of North Korean nuclear scientists tion of being a morbidly obese leader of a country that suf- traveled to Iran to provide assistance to that regime’s illicit fers from chronic food shortages—operates a slave state. nuclear program. Crucially, Iran (along with Syria and Political, intellectual, religious, and economic liberties are Sudan) is considered a state sponsor of terror, meaning nil. Hundreds of thousands languish in labor camps. That that North Korea has certainly provided “material sup- South Korea has over the past several decades blossomed port for terrorists and terrorist organizations.” Oh, and in into a prosperous and vibrant democracy while North 2009, it was discovered that North Korea had attempted Korea has remained stuck in Stalinist misery highlights to ship more than 10,000 chemical weapons suits to Syria, the tragedy of the situation. another example of Pyongyang aiding a regime that the Anything that prudently moves us closer to the end State Department considers terrorist in nature. of the North Korean regime is worth doing. Labeling There’s more. Even before Kim Jong-nam, a promi- North Korea a state sponsor of terror would be a small nent critic of his half-brother’s regime, was brutally mur- move, yes. But it would certainly qualify as a “modest dered in Kuala Lumpur this month in a brazen public step forward.”

TOP, NEWSCOM TOP, attack ordered by Pyongyang, North Korea was known to —Ethan Epstein

10 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 powers such as China and Iran are expanding their footprints. Russia, Take Two at the NSC China, and Iran may not be capable of mounting a sustained challenge to America’s global leadership on their McMaster and commander. own. Not yet, that is. But working in parallel, and sometimes through by Thomas Joscelyn coordinated action, they could tip the scales in favor of anti-democratic, anti- t has been a tumultuous start Western forces. for President Donald Trump’s McMaster’s warning with respect to I National Security Council, to put Russia’s invasion of Crimea was based it gently. General Michael Flynn was on his reading of The Unquiet Fron- forced to resign as national security tier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and adviser less than a month into the new the Crisis of American Power, by Jakub administration, amid controversy over J. Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell. The his contacts with a Russian ambas- authors are keenly aware that Ameri- sador. It is clear from press reporting cans are questioning the value of our that some NSC staffers have been leak- alliances today, more than in the past. ing negative details while others are And they seek to reestablish the case being heavily scrutinized and criti- for American supremacy in the world. cized in the press. President Obama believed that the Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, a highly time for America to hold its tradi- respected scholar and military leader, tional adversaries in check through is now tasked with stabilizing the sit- alliances with other nations was over. uation. As Trump’s newly appointed “In an era when our destiny is shared, national security adviser, he holds power is no longer a zero-sum game,” one of the most important positions Obama said in a speech before the in government. The amount of power United Nations General Assembly on a national security adviser wields can September 23, 2009. “No one nation vary depending on the level of trust a can or should try to dominate another president has in him. But McMaster nation. No world order that elevates certainly looks well-positioned to help one nation or group of people over shape America’s role in the world. another will succeed.” Obama believed A veteran of the post-9/11 wars that rival nations jockeying for power in Iraq and Afghanistan, McMaster was a thing of the past. “No balance knows America’s jihadist enemies of power among nations will hold,” well. He is widely credited with help- McMaster is no apologist for Vladi- Obama continued at the U.N. “The ing to turn around the (albeit mir Putin. He has carefully assessed traditional divisions between nations briefly), by working with local Iraqis how the American military might deter of the South and the North make no to defeat al Qaeda’s men in the city of and counter Russian provocations. sense in an interconnected world; nor Tal Afar. McMaster got deep into the “Historians will likely regard Russia’s do alignments of nations rooted in the war in Afghanistan, too. And even 2014 invasion of Ukraine as the event cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.” while prosecuting the war on terror, that punctuated the end of the post- Obama began his presidency with McMaster has been preparing the Cold War era,” McMaster wrote in a this post-Cold War view, attempting American military for other conflicts book review for to “reset” relations with Russia. He that may lie ahead. in March 2016. He may very well be ended his presidency by ordering the It is clear from a review of his writ- right. History has turned on less conse- expulsion of 35 Russian “diplomats” ings, interviews, and congressional quential events. from American soil, after Russian testimony that he has been thinking For McMaster, Russia’s pry- hacking became a factor in the 2016 deeply about America’s role in the ing Crimea away from Ukraine and presidential contest. That move fol- world—and how our nation’s enemies annexing it should not be viewed as an lowed the imposition of sanctions on are attempting to undermine it. isolated act of aggression. Instead, it is Russia for the annexation of Crimea— one of a series of challenges to Ameri- a belated recognition that some Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the can leadership. And it isn’t just Russia nations do, in fact, still seek to “domi- Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a that is seeking to shift the balance of nate” others.

contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. power in the 21st century. Regional It is significant that McMaster THOMAS FLUHARTY

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 11 has been thinking along the lines sophistication.” Politico reported at reasons for their behavior, but chal- of Grygiel and Mitchell. The pair the time that the McMaster-led review lenging American power is central to defend America’s leadership role in was expected to have a “profound their thinking. the 20th century and argue that the impact on what the U.S. Army will Outside of these regional pow- United States must continue to take look like in the coming years.” ers, other actors continue to threaten a proactive stance in various contests In testimony delivered to the Sen- American interests. The jihadist threat for power. They advocate contin- ate Armed Services Committee in is as virulent as ever. Many foreign pol- ued support for a host of small to 2015, McMaster and other U.S. offi- icy thinkers tend to underestimate the medium-sized countries neighbor- cials warned that Putin’s Russia was jihadists as strategic adversaries. Not ing China, Russia, and Iran. Grygiel “willing to use force to achieve” its McMaster. In an op-ed for the New and Mitchell recognize that Amer- objectives. Although they noted the York Times in 2013, he decried the ica’s alliances are costly, but they “centrality of land forces” in Russia’s “hubris” in America’s military circles argue the benefits far outweigh the “effort to assert power and advance leading up to the 9/11 wars. The domi- liabilities. In fact, the more America its interests in former Soviet states,” nant theory held “that further advances retreats from the world, the more McMaster and his colleagues recog- in military technology would deliver dangerous the world becomes. nized that Russia also “used cyber- dominance over any opponent,” so less After eight years of Obama’s illu- space capabilities and social media advanced adversaries “would not dare sions about the world, all is not well. to influence perceptions at home and to threaten vital American interests.” “The American alliance network is in abroad.” The reference to social media That was grossly mistaken. In Afghan- a state of advanced crisis,” Grygiel and is noteworthy. One of the ways Mos- istan and Iraq, McMaster wrote, “plan- Mitchell write. “Many long-stand- cow is seeking to destabilize Europe is ning did not account for adaptations ing U.S. allies believe that the United by spreading disinformation and mis- and initiatives by the enemy” or recog- States, for reasons of either decline or information, “fake news” in the cur- nize the complex “political and human disinterest, is in the process of pulling rent parlance. dynamics” of the insurgencies raging back from decades-long commitments McMaster and his fellow military in both countries. and inaugurating a multi-regional dip- commanders warned, “Without a via- McMaster’s celebrated 1997 book, lomatic and military retrenchment.” ble land force capable of opposing the Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNa- It remains to be seen how the Trump Russian Army and its irregular prox- mara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and administration will address this dire ies, such adventurism [as in Ukraine] the Lies That Led to Vietnam, is an situation. President Trump often is more challenging to deter.” extended case study in the failures of seems more comfortable questioning In other words, the U.S. mili- military leadership. “The war in Viet- the value of America’s allies than seek- tary, degraded by budget sequestra- nam was not lost in the field, nor was ing to reassure them. There are com- tion, must be rebuilt, especially its it lost on the front pages of the New peting schools of thought within the ground forces. If American military York Times or the college campuses. It new administration. McMaster seems might does not evolve to counter what was lost in Washington, D.C.,” he con- unlikely to side with those in favor of Grygiel and Mitchell describe as Rus- cluded. He has made similar critiques deeper American retrenchment. sia’s “revisionist probing,” it will be of Washington’s role in the wars in McMaster spearheaded the Rus- exceedingly difficult, if not impos- Iraq and Afghanistan, arguing that the sia New Generation Warfare Study, a sible, to deter further aggression. The enemy gets a vote and that American government panel that pondered how result could be an even more disas- military planners did not sufficiently the U.S. Army should adjust to Rus- trous conflict. understand who they were fighting. sia’s evolving military doctrine. In The concept of “probing” plays a America’s enemies are surely hop- testimony before the Senate Armed prominent role in Grygiel’s and Mitch- ing to capitalize on uncertainty sur- Services Committee in April 2016, ell’s thinking. In his review of their rounding the nation’s role in the world. McMaster warned that Russia had book, McMaster endorsed this way of And as the first weeks of the Trump learned from the American military’s framing strategic behavior. “Russia, administration have demonstrated, shortcomings. “It is clear that while China and Iran are using aggressive the knives are out in Washington, too. our Army was engaged in Afghanistan diplomacy, economic overtures and McMaster has earned a reputation as and Iraq, Russia studied U.S. capabili- military action to test America’s will- an effective commander, a military ties and vulnerabilities and embarked ingness to defend its interests and its intellectual, and a contrarian—some- on an ambitious and largely success- allies,” he wrote. In addition to Russia’s one who can buck authority and still ful modernization effort,” he testified. invasion of Crimea, “China’s assertive- succeed. Now that he is at the center “In Ukraine, for example, the combi- ness in the South China Sea, and Iran’s of power he will need all those traits. nation of unmanned aerial systems support for terrorist groups and militias As national security adviser, he will and offensive cyber and advanced across the Middle East are all examples no doubt be reminded daily, if not electronic warfare capabilities depict of probing.” To be sure, this trio of hourly, of the perils of underestimat- a high degree of technological American adversaries have many other ing his adversaries. ♦

12 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 believe there is an individual right to bear arms.” But she quibbled with Gunning for Hillary the Supreme Court ruling that upheld that right. She would gut the right by mandating that guns in homes be The NRA’s unheralded role in 2016. kept in pieces “to protect toddlers.” Clinton’s debate comments turned by Fred Barnes out to be the least of her worries. The NRA had decided to go all out to here are many claimants to “That’s when the politics changed defeat her. Its series of ads ran from the honor of having nudged on the Democratic side,” says Brad June through early November. T Donald Trump over the top in Todd of OnMessage, the Republi- Just before Clinton’s acceptance the presidential election. But the folks can firm that created the ads for the speech at the Democratic convention, with the best case are the National NRA. They softened the image of an ad ran in four battleground states Rifle Association and the consultants gun owners by featuring women. The and on and sports channels, who made their TV ads. ads were cleverly sequenced, the final the same formula followed in airing The NRA did just about every- one suggesting Clinton would create later ads. It featured a woman, Kim thing right. It endorsed Trump last a Supreme Court majority opposed to Corban, who changed her mind about May when he was still just the de facto the right of individuals to own guns. having a gun after she was raped. “My nominee. The goal was to persuade In the 1990s, Bill Clinton had per- fear of firearms disappeared when I Second Amendment supporters got my second chance at life,” who’d backed other candidates to she said. unify behind him. In August, an ad showed The NRA planned ahead. It Clinton arriving at a private had lined up TV time months airport in a motorcade of black beforehand when rates were lower. SUVs. She’s been “protected That saved money. Thus when the by armed guards for 30 years,” Access Hollywood tape threatened the narrator says. “But she to capsize the Trump campaign doesn’t believe in your right a month before the election, the to keep a gun at home for your NRA had cash on hand for a fresh self-defense.” ad to steady Trump. The next ad began with a And the NRA kept track of woman, fearing a break-in, who every word Hillary Clinton uttered The NRA’s July ad featuring rape victim Kim Corban leaps out of bed and rushes to on the subject of guns. This wasn’t get a gun out of a safe. The gun new. It’s what an interest group does. suaded Democrats to avoid the gun vanishes. “Hillary Clinton could take Once she was the Democratic nominee, issue as a political loser. That was wise away her right to self-defense,” the ad they were ready to shred her claim to advice and spared Democrats years of says. “And with Supreme Court jus- back the Second Amendment and the grief. But first President Obama, then tices, Hillary can.” right of women to own guns. Hillary Clinton changed course and Then came a crucial and timely Democrats helped too. They made stepped forward on gun control. ad. That it had been produced in July the mistake of going on offense on In her primary fight with Bernie meant it was available to be aired gun control. They were playing with Sanders last year, Hillary gave gun immediately. And it was, the same fire. But the issue proved irresistible control top billing. She harped on it week the Access Hollywood tape was after Terry McAuliffe stressed gun in debates and it got her to where she leaked with Trump’s crude talk about control in his successful race for gov- wanted to be: to the left of Sanders. groping women. A young woman tells ernor of Virginia in 2013. McAuliffe He fought back clumsily. Vermont has of fighting off a man who was wield- didn’t get any gun restrictions passed, many gun owners, and Sanders wasn’t ing an eight-inch knife. “I carry a but he hooked Democrats. Next was willing to alienate them completely, pistol,” she says. “I fight back. That’s the former New York City mayor not even in a presidential race. why I’m still here.” Michael Bloomberg. He poured Hillary eased off on guns in the gen- This ad contrasts Clinton with millions into Senate races in 2014, eral election, only addressing the issue Trump. “Every woman has a right tightening the Democratic party’s when asked. And in the second and to defend herself with a gun,” the attachment to gun control. third debates with Trump, she was. woman says. “Hillary Clinton dis- “I respect the Second Amend- agrees with that. Donald Trump sup- Fred Barnes is executive editor ment,” she said in the second debate. ports my right to own a gun.”

of The Weekly Standard. In the third, she went further. “I also The ad series ended between the NRA / YOUTUBE

14 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 eighth and ninth innings of the sev- enth game of the World Series. Again, the NRA had money to pay for ads on An Extraordinary short notice in both the sixth and sev- enth games. The final ad focused on the 4-4 tie Career in the Supreme Court on guns. Clin- ton sides with the four anti-gun liber- als, the ad says. “Hillary’s made her choice. Now you get to make yours. Michael Novak, 1933-2017. Defend freedom, defeat Hillary.” by Joseph Bottum How do we know these ads were critical to Trump’s victory? We don’t n March 14, 1976, a writer, notice, assuming a public seriousness know for certain and never will. But academic, and Democratic and personal kindness in others that after the election, OnMessage polled O party operative published matched his own. 5,100 voters in Florida, Indiana, a 1,200-word op-ed in the Washing- For that matter, Michael had enor- Maine, Missouri, Nevada, North Car- ton Post called “A Closet Capitalist mous amounts of abuse directed at olina, , and Pennsylvania. Confesses,” and all hell broke loose. him for his public positions, from The poll found that more NRA sup- Nearly every intellectual journal in his praise of the working class to his porters voted for Trump in 2016 than America felt compelled to opine about support for Reagan and his success for in 2012. This meant the absurdity­ of a modern intellectual at helping establish the American 208,000 additional votes for Trump defending capitalism. Nearly every reli- Enterprise Institute as one of the pre- in North Carolina, which he won by gious journal denounced the Catholic mier think tanks in the nation. The 173,000 votes. In Ohio, he got 479,000 thinker’s apparent apostasy. Across the years saw a parade of lost friends, hos- more votes from NRA backers and nation, angry letters and harsh newspa- tile reviews, withdrawn invitations. he won Ohio by 447,000. In Pennsyl- per columns raged at the sight of a ris- Crowds in South America gathered vania, Trump received 421,000 addi- ing figure in the public intellectual life to scream “Yankee Shit!” at him for tional votes and won by 44,000. of America being so . . . so . . . stupid. So his arguments against liberation the- A second group was tested in June atavistic. So wrongheaded. ology. European audiences hissed at 2016: the 19 percent of voters in the If you have trouble imagining that his name. And through it all, he kept battleground states who viewed both there was a time in America when inviting his opponents to confer- candidates unfavorably. The poll democratic capitalism seemed to ences, kept writing notes to his old lost found that 60 percent of them sup- have almost no intellectually respect- friends, and kept conversation going ported the NRA. Moreover, it found able defenders, you owe a debt to the even with those who announced to the that most were “very willing to author of that op-ed. If you can’t pic- world how much they despised him. believe” that Clinton was corrupt and ture a world without widely read out- When Michael Novak died last hypocritical. And it found that “most lets for intellectual conservatism—a week at age 83, there came an imme- women” polled were conservative and world in which socialism and secular- diate outpouring of reminiscences liked the Second Amendment. ization were the unquestioned air that and obituaries, remarking on his There was a third test. The post- all American thinkers were assumed to extraordinary career. All of it was election survey found that 3 percent breathe—you should offer up a prayer deserved. He had been an adviser of 2016 voters in battleground states of thanks for the life of a man named to popes and presidents, written said they hadn’t voted in 2012. And Michael Novak. more than 40 books and hundreds of 79 percent of them were supporters of Those who knew him owe him even essays, founded (with Ralph McIn- the NRA. “This means 784,000 NRA more, for Michael was not just some- erny) the magazine Crisis, and forced supporters in battleground states did one who influenced the history of the into American public life a counter- not vote in 2012 but did vote in 2016,” age. He also radiated a gentleness that current of conservative thought. the pollster said. touched all around him. He spent his Not that he was alone in the effort. This is neither definitive nor con- life working among public intellectu- William F. Buckley Jr. had founded clusive evidence the NRA elected als, politicos, and writers—which is in 1955, Milton Fried- Trump. But it certainly suggests that to say, people given to a level of ambi- man published A Monetary History of the NRA ads played a critical role. tion, backbiting, and status-seeking the United States in 1963, the Philadel- And it’s the best case I’ve heard for not usually seen outside of junior high phia Society began meeting in 1964, crediting anyone with tipping the school. But he seemed not even to Allan Bloom and other students of Leo election to Trump. Absent the NRA, Strauss were beginning their careers I think we know how Trump would Joseph Bottum is a contributing editor by the mid-1960s, and various Catho- have fared. He’d have lost. ♦ to The Weekly Standard. lic, libertarian, and anti-Communist

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 15 writers had been producing serious cover the Second Vatican Council for the Reagan Democrats who would vote studies for decades. Nonetheless, well Time magazine—and a subsequent, Republican in 1980, he wrote The Rise into the 1970s, all that work seemed well-received book on the council of the Unmeltable Ethnics (1972), arguing invisible, unnoticed by much of the by what seemed the hotshot young that the actual nation was far different intelligentsia in the United States. reporter on intellectual topics. from what the elites supposed it to be— And then there came along a gener- Michael’s return to the United both more optimistic and more pes- ation of former leftists who compelled States, however, was marked by uncer- simistic than the politics of the 1970s the nation’s thinkers and writers to pay tainty. He had written a novel, The Tiber could represent. attention. Of all the classic works of Was Silver (1961), and met Karen Laub, From there, it was only a small step the original neoconservatives—Irving the artist he would marry. His graduate to “A Closet Capitalist Confesses” and Kristol’s essays, ’s study at Harvard was abandoned after all that followed: the influence on fig- indefatigable work at Commentary, gaining a master’s degree, and he wrote ures from Margaret Thatcher and Ron- Richard John Neuhaus’s The Naked ald Reagan to John Paul II and Lech Public Square, ’s Walesa, the ambassadorships, the med- influential essay “Dictatorships and als and awards, the 26 honorary doc- Double Standards”—the most irre- torates, the million-dollar Templeton placeable may be Michael Novak’s Prize, and all the rest. Along the way, he 1982 book, The Spirit of Democratic wrote on sports, the American found- Capitalism. The expansion of his Wash- ing, the nature of business, the struc- ington Post op-ed into a full-blown tures of theology, and nearly everything theoretical account of the American else under the sun. experiment, The Spirit of Democratic Along the way, as well, he carried on Capitalism stands as the one volume his conversations and his kindnesses. from which much of the entire proj- The first time we heard Michael give a ect of the new conservatives could be lecture, my wife got the giggles, having reconstructed, were all else lost. to flee outside at the sound of that sur- These days, the book is remem- prisingly high-pitched voice coming bered mostly for its economics, but in from the distinguished, barrel-chested truth it ranged far beyond that, reflect- man at the lectern. But she and I ing Michael’s interests in theology, quickly learned to love Michael not philosophy, social organization, public just for the books he had written but culture, and even sports. The Spirit of Novak at home, November 1982 for the company he was always willing Democratic Capitalism insists that the to provide. family and the church—and not just mainly philosophical texts—Belief and Dozens of dinners with Michael the entrepreneur and the investor— Unbelief: A Philosophy of Self-Knowledge and Karen followed from our meet- are engaged in high social and moral (1965), The Experience of Nothingness ing, especially the one they threw for endeavors, and they flourish best when (1970)—while he worked in academia us when I first moved down from New left to their own devices. They stand as at Stanford, SUNY, and Syracuse and York to join The Weekly Standard—a bulwarks against the tyrannies, great tried to see his way forward. gathering of people whom Michael and and small, to which all societies are His magazine writing on Cathol­ Karen thought we should know, if we prone, because they require economic, icism and politics brought him into were going to live and work in Wash- social, and even political power to be the circle of Catholic politicians with ington. It was there that I first met distributed widely, scattered in too intellectual interests: Bobby Kennedy, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ben Wattenberg, many places for any government to Eugene McCarthy, and especially Sar- Walter Berns, and others. Professional seize complete control. gent Shriver, the vice-presidential talkers, all of them. Accomplished peo- However successful he was, Michael candidate whom Michael served as a ple with amazing careers. Sharp, quick, never lost the formation he received senior adviser and speechwriter during and deep thinkers. growing up among Slovak immigrants George McGovern’s doomed 1972 pres- But what I remember best from the in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Sent to idential campaign. And yet those politi- evening is Michael himself. His joy in the Holy Cross fathers for preparatory cal experiences, the peak of his career our toddler daughter. His concern that seminary at Notre Dame at age 14, he on the left, are what began his turn to all his guests enjoy themselves. His studied for the priesthood at Stone- the right. His travels with Shriver con- intelligence, yes, but overwhelmingly hill College in Massachusetts and the vinced him that political and cultural his kindness and gentleness. Michael Gregorian in Rome, before deciding liberals were abandoning the tradition- Novak was not just a great man. He against taking priestly vows. Articles ally Democratic working class, espe- was a good man. And all who knew in the Catholic journals America and cially the old Catholic constituencies he him are injured by his passing: some

Commonweal turned into a gig helping knew from his childhood. Predicting essential part of us, wrenched away. ♦ / TIME & LIFE PICTURES GETTYDIANA WALKER

16 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 time being. “Free to choose,” when we gain it, is an obligation. Friend of Freedom I thought of Novak the Rea- gan Democrat last election night, November 8, 2016, when the early The spirit of Michael Novak. returns from western Pennsylvania were beginning to upset expecta- by Christopher DeMuth Sr. tions of a Hillary Clinton triumph. (Johnstown’s Cambria County, heav- arly morning on February 17, noticed that his daughter, Jana, was ily Democratic in party registration, word was getting around that reading him the numerous emails went 66 percent for Donald Trump.) E Michael Novak had passed she was receiving attesting to his In my political set, sharply divided away in his sleep, and email klatsches great works and influence. Enough between Trump supporters and oppo- were forming. In mine, one of his close testimonials, the visitor interjected, it nents, we had learned to be circum- friends wrote that “the generosity of is time to turn to larger matters. Michael spect about election preferences—but Michael’s friendship allowed him to mustered a smile and said: No, no, when I reached Michael he was obscure the fact that he was among the read them all! Which was his way of bluntly at the barricades. “If America few truly great men that any of us have telling everyone assembled that the is going to come apart into those who known.” We all piled on with fervent Novakian spirit they knew and loved went to college and those who did assents. That a man of such towering was still burning strong. not,” he said, “I want to be with the achievements should also be a down- Michael’s combination of ambition folks who did not go to college.” home, kindly friend (even “cuddly,” and friendliness was more than per- I did not question Michael in any discerning women would attest) was sonal disposition. His thinking and detail, but am certain that he was not so unusual that we had pretended he writing, too, were at once aggressive rooting for the Trumpsters as if they was just one of the guys. and gentle, tough-minded and irenic. were the Steelers. I think he regarded Which is not to say that Michael This was an expression of his intellec- the Trump revolt as the rough-hewn, was modest. He wrote more than tual position and Catholic faith—as I extravagantly flawed, internally con- 40 books and countless essays on tried to explain in remarks at a dinner flicted agency of freedom in its latest everything under the sun and many in honor of Michael on his retirement struggle. But in Michael’s conception things beyond the sun. He promoted from AEI in 2010, printed below. Here the struggle is a noble one, because free- his ideas assiduously, through 50 years let me elaborate with words of his own. dom is at once contingent and divine, of nonstop lecturing, debating, and Michael was a Reagan Democrat, and it can succeed only by attaching classroom teaching and in everyday proud of his ethnic (Slovak-American) itself to human goodness. That is the small-talk that never stayed small roots and upbringing in working- teaching of the stem-winding conclu- when he was around. He was driven class Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In the sion of his address at Westminster by a firm conviction that he was in 1970s, his intellectual migration from Abbey on receiving the Templeton possession of singular talents for left to right was inspired by the left’s Prize for Progress in Religion in 1994: educating and improving mankind. (and the Democratic party’s) abandon- Early in my time as president of the ment of working-class sentiments and No one ever promised us that free soci- American Enterprise Institute, I told aspirations for a new-age progressiv- eties will endure forever. Indeed, a cold view of history shows that submission Michael that he had exactly 12 min- ism that he regarded as utopian and to tyranny is the more frequent condi- utes, not a minute more, to summa- effete. Accordingly, his conservatism tion of the human race, and that free rize his current work for a gathering was sinewy, and distinctly non-liber- societies have been few in number of trustees and donors. He cheerfully tarian. Human freedom, for Michael, and not often long-lived. Free societ- agreed and then, as he warmed up at was not an abstract good but rather a ies such as our own, which have arisen the podium, spoke for 50 minutes (on social artifact—the fruit of lived expe- rather late in the long evolution of the baseball and American democracy) to rience, grounded in family and com- human race, may pass across the dark- ness of time like splendid little comets, a rapt and appreciative audience. munity, and demanding continuous burn into ashes, disappear. And Michael was ardent for rec- struggle against the forces of moral Yet nothing in the entire universe, ognition and honors—which, among entropy. Democratic capitalism is the vast as it is, is as beautiful as the friends, he never bothered to conceal, preferred political system for more human person. The human person treating praise simply as evidence than its palpable material benefits: It alone is shaped to the image of God. that his labors were indeed moving is the most auspicious arena for the This God loves humans with a love most powerful. It is this God who incarnate struggles among groups and the world. As he lay dying, a visitor draws us, erect and free, toward Him- nations and within the human heart. self, this God Who, in Dante’s words, Christopher DeMuth Sr. is a distinguished Economic prosperity is evidence that is the Love that moves the sun / and all fellow at . the struggles are going well for the the stars.

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 17 Michael was one of the last remain- and the expansion of economic free- many young people, seem to think ing (a few are still with us) of those dom and prosperity in much of the we have lost our grip and fallen away giants who collaborated directly with West and beyond. Today we are once from a halcyon past. In the face of such Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, again beset by violent totalitarianism, despair, Michael Novak’s legacy is that and Pope John Paul II on the great economic stagnation, angry social divi- the struggle for freedom is ever pres- liberal achievements of the 1980s— sions, and an abundance of unpleas- ent, ever changing, and ever in need of the defeat of Soviet communism ant options. Many conservatives, and active, tough-minded idealism. ♦

A Tribute to Michael Novak ichael Novak and his work during the past 35 years have shibboleths and theological wrong-turns. In his 2001 book, On Two M been abundantly feted. Celebrants have expounded on his Wings, he grafted back the second wing of faith onto the long-pre- brilliance, his prolificacy, and his influence. But brilliance and indus- vailing narrative (even at AEI) of the American founding as a secular triousness, although highly important virtues, are not nearly as rare exercise in institutional ingenuity. Bravest of all, he has provided reli- as the total Novak phenomenon. And influence, although highly gious instruction to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. admired, is not a virtue at all—it puts Michael in the company of What Michael’s greatest projects have had in common is Eliot Spitzer and Peter Singer. So I would like to take a audacity. In taking them on, he was committing him- different tack and remark on Michael’s character, in par- self to originality, which risked failure, and to unflinching ticular his ambition and his bravery. truth-telling, which risked elite derision if he succeeded. He spent the first 20 years of his professional life His brilliance may have given him the confidence to in academics. To the brilliant and industrious, university take the big risks; his industriousness may have been life offers wonderful opportunities for achievement and inspired by fear of failure. But they alone cannot explain fulfillment. Michael could have continued to hold the what Michael achieved. They had to be coupled with best chairs at the best schools and to win all the teach- Michael Novak guts—sheer obstinate confrontational Johnstown guts. ing awards. But the academy favors work on discrete, Michael’s toughness is often masked by his sweet, manageable problems “in the literature” and can punish depar- magnanimous disposition. Don’t be fooled. If you have watched him tures from certain orthodoxies. At some point in the 1970s, Michael make a big concession in a debate, or respond sympathetically to decided that he would go after bigger game. a hostile questioner, or provide a generous account of an opposing I have often marveled that in the midst of the Jimmy Carter view in a book or essay, then you know that his kindliness is often administration, the hardheaded businessmen on the American the sign that serious intellectual vivisection is about to commence. Enterprise Institute’s Board of Trustees would countenance the And then there’s his vast philosophical mastery: He already appointment of a theologian, and moreover a theologian with a knows Argument 27 better than the other guy, and he also knows colorful paper trail in left-wing politics and Democratic party elec- that it is conventionally trumped by Argument 8—but he also tioneering. But it was Michael who took by far the greater risk in knows that it is completely annihilated by Argument 131‑C, accepting the offer—throwing away tenure and respectability for God which he derived himself 15 years ago. knew what (but He wasn’t talking, not even to Michael). But most of all, Michael’s sweet magnanimity is genuine and Since then Michael’s vocation has been the conquest of in fact reflects the ambition and bravery of his intellectual position. momentous, difficult, contentious problems. Problems with large For it expresses his certainty that there is good in human nature— practical and political components, where his philosophical learning good that calls for earnest entreaty on its own terms. Among career provided a foundation but everything else was left to his own wits pundits and haut thinkers, nothing could be more politically incor- and experience. Today we recognize the moral architecture of dem- rect, more embarrassingly naïve. Yet in Michael’s choices of projects, ocratic capitalism because Michael built it for us—even the terms and in the particulars of his arguments, one sees three overarching were unknown before he and started their work. propositions constantly at work: And, since publication of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism in First, that man for all his failings is ardently concerned to know 1982, he has provided many elaborations and applications: on the what is right and just. moral architectures of economic development, of escape from Second, that politics for all its flaws is capable of pursuing the welfare trap, of nuclear deterrence, of the corporation and busi- social betterment and sometimes finding it. ness-as-a-calling, and of the income tax, intellectual property, medi- Third, that reason for all its frailties can help us find our way. ating structures, ethnic politics, and even sports (the last however To dedicate a lifetime to such propositions in late-20th-cen- limited to Notre Dame football). If you listen in on Michael debating tury America one had to be not only brave but downright reckless. the progressive income tax with a professional economist, you will That the endeavor has proven so astoundingly fruitful is reason to get an idea of the moral clarity he has brought to questions that doubt the cynicism of the age and to work, as diligently as he has, everyone knew to be terribly complicated and endlessly nuanced. for a return of the better angels. Along the way he has dispatched many cherished liberal —Christopher DeMuth, July 2010 ♦ MICHAEL NOVAK / MICHAEL NOVAK

18 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 Theodore Roosevelt of “deliberate misstatements of facts” regarding the Trump’s New Enemy purchase of the Panama Canal, based on reports from the Indianapolis News. Roosevelt responded by accusing the Hating the press is a venerable papers of “a string of infamous libels,” and the World was charged in a New presidential tradition. by Jay Cost York district court in 1909, though the indictment was eventually quashed. onald Trump declared in a the president or Congress, with the Lyndon Johnson’s administration tweet on February 17 that intent to “bring them . . . into contempt lied to the press so often about the D the mainstream press is “the or disrepute; or to excite against progress in Vietnam that the phrase enemy of the American People.” This them . . . the hatred of the good people “credibility gap” was coined to charac- inflammatory remark was greeted by of the United States.” Fortunately, this terize the disconnect between what the outrage mixed with anxiety. Chuck blatantly unconstitutional law expired White House said and what really was Todd of NBC’s Meet the Press spoke in 1801, and the Jefferson administra- happening. confided for many journalists when tion did not renew it. privately to that jour- he responded, “This is In prosecuting the Civil nalists “are the enemy, and we’re just not a laughing matter. I’m War, the Union govern- gonna continue to use them, and never sorry, delegitimizing the ment sometimes took let them think that we think they’re the press is un-American.” a hard line against the enemy.” His administration famously Of course, it was just a media. In 1863, General sought a court injunction to stop the tweet, thus far unaccom- Ambrose Burnside sus- release of the Pentagon Papers; it got panied by any state-spon- pended publication of the one, but the Supreme Court eventually sored efforts to suppress the liberties of Chicago Times because of “repeated overturned the decision. More recently, the media. Without excusing the presi- expression of disloyal and incendiary Barack Obama’s Justice Department dent’s choice of words, it is important sentiments,” an order that President investigated Fox News’s James Rosen to understand the larger historical Abraham Lincoln quickly rescinded as a potential criminal co-conspirator and political context. As uncouth as amidst widespread protest. The New for seeking classified information. In Trump’s rhetoric was, the fact remains York World, initially sympathetic to December 2016, James Risen of the that the government and journalists Lincoln, was sold to a group of New New York Times blasted the admin- have long had an uneasy relation- York Democrats and became highly istration for its “criminalization of ship, and prior presidents have, unlike critical of the administration. In 1864, the press” and said that Obama’s was Trump to date, used the power of the the government shut the publication “the most anti-press administration state to censor the press and even down for two days. since the Nixon administration.” criminalize free speech. During World War I, the Woodrow Trump’s “war” on the media is The first and most egregious exam- Wilson administration used the Espio- substantially different from all these ple of this pattern came in the early nage Acts of 1917 and 1918 to suppress examples, at least so far. No news years of the republic. During the presi- the media. These laws effectively made outlet has been prosecuted. No jour- dency of John Adams, the opposition it a crime to criticize the government nalistic endeavor has been enjoined. had coalesced behind James Madison or its prosecution of the war, and the Nobody has been put in jail. Trump’s and Thomas Jefferson under the ban- administration halted anti-adminis- assaults have been strictly rhetori- ner of the “Republican” party (different tration publications from being sent cal in nature and political in purpose. from the modern GOP). They placed through the mail. During the New The president is calling the press the special emphasis on the press, such that Deal, the sweeping nature of the enemy in the same sense that Barack by 1800 Federalist senator Uriah Tracy National Recovery Act’s licensing sys- Obama encouraged liberals to “pun- of Connecticut lamented there was a tem led newspaper publishers to worry ish” their “enemies” at the ballot box Republican newspaper “in almost every that it would be a handmaiden used and Hillary Clinton called Republi- town and county in the country.” The to censor the press, prompting exten- cans her “enemies.” This is American Federalist Congress responded by pass- sive negotiations with the Franklin factionalism at work—the difference ing the Sedition Act, which imposed a Roosevelt administration. being that rather than calling out the maximum penalty of $2,000 and two Presidents have also been prone other party, Trump has turned his vot- years in jail for publishing “false, scan- to use “rough elbows” against the ing coalition’s ire against the press. dalous, or malicious writings” about press—hardball tactics that fall short Or to be more precise, Trump is of systematic suppression, but never- exploiting the ire that already exists. Jay Cost is a senior writer theless have a chilling effect. In 1908, A September 2016 Gallup poll found at The Weekly Standard. the New York World accused President that just 30 percent of independents

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 19 and 14 percent of Republicans trust tirade is unsettling, for the people need decades of appearing before different the mass media. During the election, a press that can reliably inform them of regulatory bodies. Some regulators Gallup determined that 80 percent the goings-on in government. But if the are dumb, some endlessly seek ways of Republicans thought the media press is indeed part of the Democratic to expand their reach, others look for was biased in favor of Hillary Clin- team, even though it wears the uniform solutions that as closely as possible ton, while most Democrats perceived of an umpire, Trump’s harangue is not mimic the results that markets would no bias at all. By extending partisan nearly as outrageous. It’s just a con- produce, still others know when cir- warfare to the press, Trump is taking tinuation of the martial-style rhetoric cumstances have changed enough to advantage of the fact that most Repub- that has characterized our politics for allow or require them to find a differ- licans, and many independents, seem some time. ent way of supporting their families. to agree with University of Either way, these are hardly dark Most notable among the latter was professor Glenn Reynolds that main- days for American journalism. It is Alfred Kahn, the late Cornell pro- stream journalists are “Democratic incumbent upon the president to be fessor who enabled the Civil Aero- operatives with bylines.” more considered in his rhetoric, but nautics Board to end its regulation Ultimately, the propriety of presidential rhetoric is only fearsome of the airline industry, and to let the Trump’s remark hinges on one’s view when it is supported by the heavy hand market decide which planes could fly of the press in 2017. Is it fairly call- of the state. That is not hitherto the to which cities, charging prices that ing the balls and strikes? If so, Trump’s case with the Trump administration. ♦ would attract customers. One obvious step a president can take to minimize the reach and cost of any regulation is to appoint regu- lators whose first instinct is not to figure out how to expand the reach A Case for Caution of their legislative remit. So far as we can tell from his appointments thus far, Trump aims to do just that. Think twice before throwing out the fiduciary rule. Which explains the revolt of the masses of civil servants and rules- by Irwin M. Stelzer interpreters who have made a career of taking long-dormant bits of legisla- ho could be against a rule investors, especially retirees, from tion and parlaying them into control that requires investment advisers who would assign their cli- of entire industries. Think the EPA. W advisers to act in the best ents’ interests a lower priority than If Trump has his way, that game is interests of their retiree-clients? Don- earning fees from sales of financial over. But it is important not to over- ald Trump, the Washington branch instruments. Some who are advising use the rule-shredder. of the Goldman Sachs alumni asso- investors are already subject to such a The president’s men should begin ciation, the Wall Street Journal, and rule but others—insurance and annu- their review of the fiduciary rule by well-intentioned policy wonks who ity salesmen, for example—are held to recognizing that the sale of invest- have never met a regulation they like, a lower “suitability” standard. Oppo- ment advice is different from the sale that’s who. nents of the rule argue that it will of many other products. Commis- President Trump has set in motion unleash a wave of meritless lawsuits sions give the salesman an incentive a process that will allow the so-called by unhappy investors when the prices to do his clients harm. He makes a fiduciary rule to die a quiet death, of shares and other assets decline, and living getting them to buy and sell rather than become effective in April. will deprive small investors of the financial instruments, and maintains He has postponed the application of advice of professionals unwilling to his living standard by getting them to the rule, which would require brokers expose themselves to that risk. do so often—it’s called churn—and to act in “the best interests of clients,” It is of course true that the fidu- by persuading them to buy the prod- with the expectation that postpone- ciary rule, 1,023 pages in length, ucts that offer the highest commis- ment will become permanent. That’s opens a path to the courthouse for sions. Not all will succumb to such what Gary Cohn, a Goldman alum- class-action lawyers, and that not all perverse incentives, but some will. nus who heads the National Economic judges are willing to dismiss merit­ Added to these perverse incentives Council, says he wants to happen. The less suits. But that is true of any rule, is what economists call “information intention of the rule was to protect including those that require food asymmetry”—the seller inevitably has companies to label their products more knowledge of the product than Irwin M. Stelzer is a contributing editor to truthfully. In the end, it is the reg- most buyers can have. We now have The Weekly Standard and a columnist for ulators that matter as much as the Yelp and HomeAdvisor and the like the Sunday Times (London). regulations, as I have learned during to recommend the best plumbers, but

20 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 I doubt they are up to the job of warn- ing investors away from bad advisers. In anticipation of the activation The Democrats’ of the rule Bank of America’s Mer- rill Lynch is offering retirees a fee- based rather than commission-based Last Hope advisory service and, for investors who might find that too expensive, a robo-advisory service is aimed at clients who have at least $5,000 to Their attorneys general may be the president’s invest. The fee, 0.45 percent of assets, most redoubtable foe. by Fred Lucas is less than half that charged by Mer- rill’s brokers. UBS, Wells Fargo, and emocrats were decimated at New York attorney general Eric Morgan Stanley are readying simi- nearly every level of govern- Schneiderman told CNN, “There’s a lar digitalized services. In short, the D ment over the past six years. sense of urgency and a real sense that mere prospect of the fiduciary rule Republicans control the House and we are now the guardians of the rule of has already increased reasonable may well do so for the foreseeable law in the United States.” New Mex- options for small investors. All to the future; the party is looking at a very ico attorney general Hector Balderas good, but another nudge in the direc- favorable Senate map in 2018. Demo- told , “It does seem tion of developing incentives that crats control just 31 of the 99 state leg- that we are becoming, potentially, the align advisers’ and investors’ interests fourth branch of government.” would prompt others to get on the That fourth branch is responsible reform bandwagon. for Trump’s chief policy setback so far. Even if President Trump agrees Washington state attorney general Bob with the rule’s critics, he might Ferguson sued to stop the president’s reflect on the likely political fallout executive order restricting travel from scotching the fiduciary rule. from seven Middle Eastern countries. One lesson those of us who have Washington state, later joined in the tangled with the regulatory agencies suit by Minnesota, won a temporary have learned the hard way is that anec- restraining order against the admin- dotes are more politically potent than istration, which was upheld by data. If he scraps the fiduciary rule, the 9th Circuit. the president had better be prepared Other Democratic attor- to watch a stream of defrauded wid- neys general haven’t wanted ows tell tearful stories to TV anchors to be left out: Many signed about how they were taken in by the a statement condemning the tips of smooth-talking advisers. executive order shortly after At a recent partially televised Trump issued it, denounc- meeting with business leaders, ing the order as “uncon- Trump, a well-informed investor, stitutional, un-American thanked Larry Fink for making him and unlawful.” A total of a lot of money. Fink, CEO of Black- 18 attorneys general joined Rock, a premier investment advisory islative chambers across the country in an amicus brief supporting Wash- group with over $5 trillion under and have a measly 16 governorships. ington state. management, is unlikely to do cold- The opposition’s glimmer of hope: Extreme vetting will hardly be calling in search of new investors or Democrats have 22 state attorneys the only target of litigation. A group to fritter away his reputational capital general—enough to gum up the works of Democratic AGs, led by Con- by running up his firm’s already-ade- for President Donald Trump’s agenda necticut’s George Jepsen, has already quate fees. The president, Cohn, and when congressional Democrats can’t. filed a motion to protect the Con- other members of the administra- And these AGs aren’t humble about sumer Financial Protection Bureau, tion’s branch of the Goldman Sachs this point. an agency with wide-ranging powers alumni association might not need a created under the Dodd-Frank law, fiduciary rule. Many less advantaged Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent which Trump wants to roll back. The retirees probably do, a probability for and author of Tainted AGs want the courts to defend the high enough to persuade the presi- by Suspicion: The Secret Deals bureau, even though a district court dent to do what he does least well— and Electoral Chaos of Disputed last fall found the structure of the

GARY LOCKE think twice. ♦ Presidential Elections. CFPB to be unconstitutional.

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 21 The Democratic AGs have a lot on President George W. Bush’s EPA to their plate. They’ve stated their plans regulate greenhouse gases. It resulted to challenge a reversal of the Obama in a 5-4 ruling that gave states wide administration’s Clean Power Plan latitude for bringing lawsuits. And of and other Environmental Protection course, well before that was the pio- Agency rules; to protect sanctuary neering model for activist attorneys cities; to push back against poten- general: the tobacco wars of the 1990s, tial voter integrity meas­ures from in which states sued to force tobacco the Justice Department; and to pro- firms to pay for Medicaid costs attrib- tect funding for Planned Parenthood uted to smoking. and contraception. But don’t expect a repeat of the suc- Virginia’s attorney general, Mark cessful tobacco litigation, says Peggy Herring, is pushing for more power Little, a constitutional litigation attor- to prosecute hate crimes because he ney in Connecticut: “So many states doesn’t think Trump’s Justice Depart- cite the tobacco model, but there is a ment will. much more even spread with Repub- lican and Democratic attorneys gen- Republican AGs who hounded eral,” she says. “With tobacco, you had 46 states. It’s not the same today.” the Obama administration Democrats aren’t expecting any were following the Republicans to join their litigation, Democrats’ lead. It was a which has an air of election fundraising about it. The Democratic Attorneys dozen Democratic state General Association (DAGA), for attorneys general who sued example, is an arm of the Democratic to force President George National Committee. After the Wash- W. Bush’s EPA to regulate ington state victory, DAGA posted on its page: “Tonight is a win greenhouse gases. for The Constitution, for the idea that no man is above the law. Democratic Such state challenges to federal AGs will lead that fight. Chip in and authority might almost make one stand with them.” think Democrats have discovered fed- When it comes to sparring with eralism. Republican AGs such as Greg Trump, New York’s Eric Schneider- Abbott, Scott Pruitt, Pam Bondi, and man may have the most experience. Ken Cuccinelli became stars chal- He brought the civil fraud suit against lenging the Obama administration Trump University (which, after the on Obamacare, immigration, and election, Trump settled for $25 mil- environmental rules (as chronicled in lion without admitting guilt). New these pages by Fred Barnes, “The Last York provides expansive powers to Redoubt,” July 22, 2013). So why is it its attorney general over the state’s any different when Democrats do it? businesses and financial institutions. “Conservative attorneys general Schneiderman may use those expan- have had some success at this, but sive powers to turn over every rock of progressives have a broader agenda,” the Trump corporate empire based in says Curt Levey, president of the New York state, making himself a de Committee for Justice and a senior facto special prosecutor. legal fellow with FreedomWorks. But is this sort of national activ- “Conservatives will use state liti- ism what states have attorneys gen- gation to fight government action. eral for? No, says Hans Bader, senior The left has always used litigation as attorney for the Competitive Enter- another means of legislation.” prise Institute: “There is always an Still, the Republican AGs who incentive to sue because that’s what hounded the Obama administra- they do. The traditional role of state tion were following the Democrats’ attorneys general was supposed to be lead. It was a dozen Democratic state to defend and advise state agencies, attorneys general who sued to force not being roving inquisitors.” ♦

22 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 War. In a comparatively benign inter- national environment, Washington Restoring Solvency has had military primacy—and its geopolitical fruits—on the cheap. Today, however, the strategic land- The military buildup we need. scape is darkening and U.S. primacy is eroding. This is due to four interre- by Hal Brands & Eric Edelman lated factors. First, great-power military competi- oreign policy, Walter Lippmann tion is back. China and Russia are seek- wrote, entails “bringing into ing regional hegemony and contesting Fbalance, with a comfortable sur- global norms such as nonaggression plus of power in reserve, the nation’s and freedom of navigation. They are commitments and the nation’s power.” also developing the military punch to If a statesman fails to balance ends underwrite these ambitions—namely, and means, he added, “he will follow a advanced power-projection capabili- course that leads to disaster.” ties meant to bully their neighbors Today, America is hurtling toward and anti-access/area denial capabili- such a disaster. Since the end of the ties meant to prevent U.S. forces from Cold War, Washington has possessed coming to those neighbors’ defense. uncontested military dominance and Second, the international outlaws enjoyed it at bargain-basement prices. are more dangerous than at any time Now, however, America confronts in a quarter-century. North Korea has military challenges more numer- a growing arsenal of nuclear bombs ous and severe than at any time in and is developing intercontinental bal- decades—just at the moment its mili- listic missiles with which to deliver tary resources are showing the effects them. Iran is a nuclear threshold state of prolonged disinvestment in defense. which international scourges such as that tests ballistic missiles while back- American politicians boast that the rogue states, nuclear proliferation, and ing sectarian proxy forces across the nation has the finest fighting force in catastrophic terrorism would be sup- Middle East. The Islamic State has the history of the world. But the bru- pressed. And because they recognized displayed far greater military compe- tal truth today is that the United States that military force remained the ultima tence than any previous terrorist group is slipping into what Samuel Hun- ratio regum, they understood that doing and shown that counterterrorism will tington—building on Lippmann’s so would require “military strengths continue to place significant opera- ideas—termed “strategic insolvency.” beyond challenge,” as George W. Bush tional demands on American forces. American military power has become indelicately put it in 2002. Third, the rapid spread of precision dangerously insufficient relative to Since the early 1990s, Washing- munitions, stealth, and other technol- the grand strategy—and international ton has therefore accounted for 35 to ogies that were once the sole preserve order—it must support. 45 percent of world defense spend- of the United States means that we That grand strategy might be ing. It has maintained peerless global now face more actors who can contest described as “enlightened liberal domi- power-projection capabilities. Per- American superiority in dangerous nance.” After the Cold War, U.S. policy- haps most important, U.S. primacy ways. As Secretary of Defense Chuck makers committed to averting a return has also been unrivaled in the key Hagel noted in 2014, “we are entering to the unstable multipolarity of ear- strategic regions: Europe, East Asia, an era where American dominance on lier eras and to perpetuating the more and the Middle East. From thrash- the seas, in the skies, and in space— stable unipolar order. They commit- ing Saddam Hussein’s million-man not to mention cyberspace—can no ted to fostering a global environment military in 1991 to deploying two car- longer be taken for granted.” in which liberal economic and politi- rier strike groups off Taiwan during Fourth, the number of challenges cal institutions could flourish and in the China-Taiwan crisis of 1995-96, has multiplied. Rogue states, jihadist Washington has been able to project extremism, great-power rivalry, insta- Hal Brands is Kissinger Professor of power superior to anything a regional bility in Europe, the Middle East, and Global Affairs and Eric Edelman is Hertog rival could employ even on its own East Asia: Today’s security environ- Practitioner-in-Residence, both at the Johns doorstep. And yet, this dominance ment has it all. Hopkins University School of Advanced has come at a remarkably afford- And as the world has become more International Studies. They are also senior able price—usually between 3 and menacing, the United States has dra- fellow and counselor, respectively, at the Center 4 percent of GDP, as compared with matically cut back its investment in

for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. 12 percent at the peak of the Cold defense. The triple whammy of the THOMAS FLUHARTY

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 23 Great Recession, Obama-era bud- states or Taiwan. But such retrench- McCain and the American Enterprise get cuts, and the Budget Control Act ment has historically worked best Institute. The McCain budget calls for reduced annual defense spending from when the overstretched hegemon can $430 billion in new money over five $768 billion in 2010 to $595 billion transfer its burdens to some friendly years, resulting in a defense budget of in 2015, a decline of nearly a quarter. power. Today, there is no liberal $800 billion by 2022; the AEI proposal Defense spending as a share of GDP superpower waiting in the wings. The advocates a $1.3 trillion increase over fell from 4.7 percent to 3.3 percent, beneficiaries of an American pullback 10 years. with the Congressional Budget Office would be precisely those hostile pow- How viable is this option? Crit- projecting that military outlays will ers that U.S. strategy seeks to con- ics offer three primary objections. fall to 2.6 percent by 2024—the lowest strain. Retrenchment is a recipe for The first is that a major buildup is percentage since before World War II. aggression and instability. unaffordable. The second is that this The effects of this budgetary buzz- Second, U.S. officials could sim- approach would simply spur arms saw have been severe. Readiness and ply live with greater risk. They could races with American adversaries. The modernization have suffered, and all gamble that the nation’s enemies will third is that it would incentivize con- the services are at or near post-World not test vulnerable commitments. tinued “free-riding” by U.S. allies. War II lows in terms of end-strength. But while hoping that exposed com- None of these arguments is persuasive. The U.S. military is now signifi- mitments won’t be challenged might Although a multiyear buildup cantly smaller than the 1990s-era work for a while, there is enormous would be expensive, it would hardly Base Force, which was designed as risk that those guarantees will even- be unmanageable. Even the most “a minimum force that constituted a tually be tested and found wanting, aggressive buildup would push defense floor below which the nation should with devastating effects on America’s spending only to 4 percent of GDP; not go if it was to remain a globally position and credibility. Another pos- the United States has supported far engaged superpower.” sibility would be to employ riskier higher defense burdens without com- approaches—such as nuclear escala- promising economic performance. his combination of increasing tion—to sustain commitments on Nor does defense drive federal spend- T threats and decreasing capabili- the cheap. But relying more heavily ing or deficits to the extent often ties is having profound implications. on nuclear weapons would hardly imagined. Defense consumes around For one thing, it ensures that U.S. be credible. If Washington balked at 16 percent of federal spending; man- forces will face far harder fights should paying for the conventional forces datory domestic entitlements consume conflict occur, whether against Iran, needed to defend Taipei or Tallinn, 49 percent. America’s fiscal solvency North Korea, Russia, or China. Ameri- would it really fight a nuclear war on will hinge on its ability to control can forces might still win—albeit on their behalf? entitlement spending and generate a longer timeline, and at an appall- This leaves a final option—to dra- greater revenues, not on whether it ing cost in lives—but then again, they matically increase defense resources, spends 3 percent or 4 percent of GDP might not. Reports by the RAND Cor- bringing capabilities back into align- on defense. poration have cast doubt on whether ment with commitments. This It is also hard to see how increased NATO can actually defend the Baltic Reagan-like buildup would require U.S. defense spending could trig- states from a Russian assault, and if permanently lifting the Budget Con- ger arms races with Russia or China, the United States would prevail in a trol Act caps to provide increased because these countries have already conflict with China over Taiwan. The resources and budgetary stability. It been competing militarily with Wash- prospects are even worse should the would require not just procuring more ington for years. Finally, as for free- United States have to fight or deter in existing capabilities, but also invest- riding, America has historically been several regions at once. ing aggressively in future capabilities. most successful at securing increased As the shadows cast by U.S. mili- It would entail recapitalizing the atro- allied contributions when it, too, has tary power grow shorter, American phying U.S. nuclear triad and invest- been willing to do more for the com- alliances are likely to be undermined, ing in a “high-low” mix of assets to mon defense. adversaries emboldened, and the sta- enable effective operations against A Reagan-style military buildup bility of the international order imper- threats ranging from jihadists, to rogue is therefore the best way to reassure iled. The United States is rapidly states, to great-power challengers. And allies, deter adversaries, and stiffen reaching the point of strategic insol- crucially, greater resources must be the hard-power backbone of the global vency, with all the resulting dangers. coupled with innovations in how to order. “Peace through strength” is not So how should America respond? project power where it’s needed. a catchphrase; it is good strategy. And Great powers facing strategic insol- Several recent proposals give a sense though not cheap, the price is afford- vency have three options. First, they of this approach, including the biparti- able for a wealthy superpower that has can reduce their commitments. For san National Defense Panel’s report in benefited so much from its military example, the United States could walk 2014 and proposals by Senate Armed primacy—and certainly cheaper than away from guarantees to the Baltic Services Committee chairman John the price of strategic insolvency. ♦

24 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 Microaggression and Macrononsense Another social science failure

BY ANDREW FERGUSON They were the outward, unwitting expressions of implicit racism; not only were they evidence of it, they were offered very few weeks, it seems, a new crack appears as proof of it. (Circularity is a common tool in cutting- in the seemingly impenetrable wall of social- edge social science.) Microaggressions are usually verbal science dogma. The latest appeared last but they don’t have to be. In their pathbreaking paper month with the publication of a paper by the “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life” (2007), the well-known research psychologist Scott Lil- psychologist Derald Wing Sue and his team of researchers ienfeld,E a professor at Emory University and coauthor of from Columbia University helpfully listed many common the indispensable primer 50 Great Myths of Popular Psy- microaggressions. Saying “America is a melting pot” is chology. Among other things, he is a great debunker, and really a demand that someone “assimilate to the dominant he has trained his skeptical eye on “microaggressions.” culture.” Having an offi ce that “has pictures of American Sophisticated, affl uent people in the United States presidents” on the wall announces that “only white people (SAPs) have been trained through years of education to can succeed.” Also, an “overabundance of liquor stores in respect whatever is presented to them as “science,” even communities of color” carries the microaggressive mes- if it’s not very good science, even if it’s not sage that “people of color are deviant.” science at all. Their years of education have Sue’s paper came at a crucial time, just not trained them how to tell the difference. as it was becoming obvious that public, sys- Sophisticated and affl uent Americans, as a tematic, and institutionally enforced rac- group, are pretty gullible. ism was declining toward zero. The paper So when their leaders in journalism, perfectly matched the prejudices, if you’ll academia, and business announce a new forgive the expression, shared by nearly truth of human nature, SAPs around the every credentialed social psychologist and country are likely to embrace it. The idea of cognitive researcher. “Racial Microaggres- microaggressions is one of these. It was fi rst sions in Everyday Life” has been cited in popularized a decade ago, and now the pervasiveness of more than 1,700 published papers over the last 10 years, microaggressions in American life is taken as settled fact. better than three times a week on average. It also inspired We could have seen it coming. Already, by the time more sequels than X-Men. You can fi ll in the blank: “Racial microaggressions became widely known, social scientists Microaggressions and . . .” “the Power to Defi ne Reality” . . . had invented the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The “Daily Well Being Among Asian Americans” . . . “Diffi cult test, administered online and to college students through- Dialogues on Race” . . . “Psychological Functioning” and out the country, pretended to establish that anti-black and so on. The pursuit and explication of microaggressions is anti-Latino prejudice among white Americans was ever- a cottage industry in the larger industry of social-science present yet, paradoxically, nearly invisible, often unrecog- research, and guaranteed grant-bait. nized by perpetrator and victim alike. Even people who The SAPs of higher education tumbled fi rst to the had never uttered a disparaging remark about someone of idea. As Lilienfeld points out, microaggressions now another color were shown by the IAT to be roiling caul- include using the phrase “politically correct” at the Uni- drons of racial animus. You know who you are. versity of Wisconsin and describing America as “the land The IAT thus laid the predicate for microaggressions. of opportunity” anywhere in the University of Califor- nia system. From higher ed the idea quickly migrated to

Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at ThE WEEKLY STaNDarD. the world of business, where more SAPs were waiting. ANDRÉ kARWAth

26 / The Weekly STandard March 6, 2017 ­Lawsuit-shy executives and easily excited personnel direc- according to Gallup.” At least they’ve fixed the spelling. tors instituted elaborate and expensive programs to con- And recently, in a solemn act of validation, lexicogra- vince employees, first, that their workplace was lousy with phers included the word “microaggressions” in the Mer- microaggressions, and second, that they were about to be riam-Webster Dictionary’s website. deloused, ready or not. As always in corporate America, political correctness ou’d think that an idea like this, passing from (I’m not in Wisconsin) comes packaged as good business social science into the larger culture with aston- sense. One commonly cited figure—that microaggressions Y ishing speed, would have received a lot of scien- cost U.S. businesses $450 billion to $550 billion in lost pro- tific scrutiny from social scientists: how microaggressions ductivity—is predictably dubious. It came from a Gallup work, socially and psychologically; how frequently and finding that “actively disengaged employees” diminish U.S. under what conditions they occur; how they can be productivity by that amount. A former Harvard dean, citing avoided or ameliorated . . . “Gallop,” then told readers of the left-wing website Huff- But you would be wrong. This is where Lilienfield and ington Post that microaggressions contributed to the $450 to his paper come in. What he calls the “microaggression $550 billion loss in productivity. And now, from a legal research program” has been a daisy-chain of confirma- website: “The ‘soft bigotry’ of microaggressions has real tion bias rather than a rigorous pursuit of scientific truth. costs—$450 to $550 billion in U.S. workforce productivity Indeed, he says, the very concept of microaggressions is

The ‘Stereotype Threat’ Reconsidered

tereotype threat” is another discovery of social science discovered that Steele’s findings ‘S designed to account for a racial disparity, in this case the had been misinterpreted, owing to academic achievement gap between black students and white stu- a statistical confusion. The African- dents. The gap shows up in high school graduation rates, proficien- American students in the non-threat cy levels, and especially in average scores on standardized tests. group had indeed scored better on the Stereotype threat emerged in psych lab experiments under test than those in the threat group. But the direction of Claude Steele, a Stanford social psychologist the most exciting finding, the one that What kind of a test is it? (and twin brother of the great essayist Shelby Steele). Claude had made Steele’s paper famous, was Steele theorized that African-American students, confronted with false: The gap between white and black scores was proportion- an achievement test, were held back by the internalized stereo- ally the same in both groups. The achievement gap had not type that whites were more intelligent than blacks. been closed by removing the stereotype threat. Nevertheless, In his basic experiment, two groups, each with a mixture of many psychology text books and other researchers continue to “high-achieving” white and black students, were given the same report the original misinterpretation. SAT-like test. The first group was told the test was a measure of Replications of stereotype threat experiments have rarely intelligence, thus conjuring up a stereotype threat. The second been done in real-world settings. Variations on the original group was told that the same test was a simple problem-solving experiment are usually conducted in university psych labs, with exercise; no stereotype threat was introduced. small, nonrepresentative samples, under the watchful eye of According to Steele and his colleagues, the test scores of sympathetic researchers. In 2014, two researchers finally did the group under stereotype threat showed the typical black-white the first meta-analysis of studies of stereotype threat and girls’ disparity in scores you’d expect to find in such tests. But in the math scores. When they adjusted for “publication bias”—the second group, they said, the disparity effectively disappeared. tendency of researchers and journals to publish papers that Their paper, published in 1995, has been cited more than 5,000 reach a popular conclusion—they found that the effects of times and spawned yet another cottage industry. Social scientists stereotype threat on math scores were statistically insignificant. eagerly embraced the idea that intellectual performance, and In social psychology generally, stereotype threat remains other kinds of performance, could be improved or discouraged by too good to check. One renegade psychologist, Lee Jussim of merely tweaking a few environmental factors. Stereotype threat Rutgers, thinks he knows why. “Stereotype threat,” he wrote last has come in especially handy in explaining the gap in math year, “is a great rhetorical tool in the quest for egalitarianism. . . . scores between girls and boys. It is, therefore, professionally risky to challenge ideas that serve It wasn’t until 2004 that another team of researchers egalitarian rhetoric.” ♦ bigstockphoto

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 27 too hazy and ill-defined to be studied systematically, even they see in the microaggressions the same offensive mes- by social scientists. sage that Sue’s researchers did. “The association between His “Microaggressions: Strong Claims, Inadequate microaggressions and specific implicit messages remains Evidence,” published in the journal Perspectives on Psycho- conjectural,” Lilienfeld writes. logical Science, is a tour de force. Lilienfeld undertakes a He finds in the literature all the methodological flaws critical review of the literature that social scientists have that we have come to expect from politically motivated produced on microaggressions. He begins, as he should, social science: small sample sizes, self-selected nonran- by conceding the fact of ongoing racism in the United dom samples, self-reporting of results, the embedded bias States. He knows too that words can be unintentionally of researchers, the lack of an agreed-upon terminology and wounding. He points to an incident in which an engi- system of measurement, and an inadequate use of control neering professor expressed surprise before his classroom groups. Most obviously, the all-important matter of per- when an African-American student got a perfect score on sonality traits has not been factored into the research. If a a test, apparently on the assumption that no black student microaggression is “in the eye of the beholder,” then we could be expected to do such a thing. All of us have been should know something about the beholder. What traits witness to similar incidents of callousness and gaucherie. I are shared by people who are most likely to sense and be once heard of a well-loved public servant who referred to a offended by microaggressions? rival politician as “the first mainstream African American The research, says Lilienfeld, “has all but ignored the who is articulate and bright and clean.” Racial prejudice potentially crucial role of negative emotionality [NE] in can indeed be insidious. shaping perceivers’ judgments of microaggressions.” NE But is it ubiquitous? Does it soil even the most innocent is one of those complicated social science-y terms that encounter between persons of different races—or rather, describe something utterly commonplace. It refers to the between a white person and a person of another race? (In gloomy disposition of someone who is given to worry, irrita- the scheme of microaggressions, a white person is ipso bility, and feelings of victimization. Often researchers inves- facto the perp.) The answer is, and Lilienfeld’s point is, tigating psychological reactions to others will try to control we don’t know. Anecdotally it’s clear that words taken as a for NE. This way they can be sure they are measuring an microaggression by one Latino or African American may go independent reaction and not just the person’s normal dis- unnoticed by another. Despite such common experiences, position. The single microaggression researcher who did which would seem to undermine many definitions of the consider NE found that it could not entirely account for word, no scientist has “challenged the central assumptions the mental harm attributed to microaggressions. Otherwise, that microaggressions, as currently conceptualized, . . . however, “in light of the virtually wholesale neglect of NE comprise a psychologically meaningful construct.” The in [microaggression research] it seems especially prema- most important and worrisome claim of micro­aggression ture to advance strong causal assertions regarding the ties researchers is that microaggressions cause consistent and between microaggressions and mental health outcomes.” measurable harm to the mental health of their recipients— and yet no one has done a systematic review of the empirical f NE and not microaggressions account for some of evidence that supposedly establishes such a causal link. the mental harm experienced by people who claim to Lilienfeld says that the incoherence of the concept I perceive them, should we be surprised? None of what begins with the word coined to express it. “It is doubtful Lilienfeld suggests is novel, after all; none of it would have whether an action that lies largely or exclusively in the eye come as a surprise to anyone lucky enough to have lived of a beholder can legitimately be deemed ‘aggressive,’ ” long before any social scientist felt the need to invent the he writes. To be aggressive, an act must be intentional. term “negative emotionality.” Just about everyone under- Yet microaggression scholars insist that many micro­ stands that some people are ornery, and orneriness, by aggressions are involuntary, an unconscious ripple from my own unscientific calculation, seems evenly distrib- the depthless sea of racism in which we have been soaking uted among human beings whoever they are. After many all our lives. And there’s the oxymoron problem. A truly thousands of years of human behavior, men and women in aggressive act is unlikely to be best described as “micro.” authority should know that priming such people when they Aggressions tend to be big. are young and impressionable to detect insults and slights And so do the holes in microaggression research. even where they don’t exist will result in a great deal of gen- It passes over the most basic questions of how the con- eral unhappiness. cept should be applied. Researchers have yet to use Sue’s Given our estrangement from such home truths, and list of microaggressions to test precisely what proportion our hypnotic devotion to whatever we are told is “sci-

XXX of minority students are offended by them and whether ence,” Lilienfeld’s approach may be the only one that

28 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 will return the conversation to the realm of life where which now include initiation into the ideology of microag- it is actually lived. He emphatically wants research into gression, are increasingly understood to be worthless. “The microaggressions to continue, assuming the term can be positive effects of diversity training rarely last beyond a meaningfully defined. At the same time, he’s using mod- day or two,” wrote two researchers in the Harvard Business est and plausible social science to undo the damage that Review last summer, “and a number of studies suggest it can bogus and extravagant social science has done to life on activate bias or spark a backlash.” (“Nonetheless,” they add campus and elsewhere. He is translating basic human puckishly, “nearly half of midsize companies use it, as do understanding—common sense—into the only language nearly all the Fortune 500.”) many of our SAPs understand and accept. Cutting-edge thinkers who boast of their devotion to And he is not completely alone among social scientists. science may soon have to concede that many fashionable Just within the field of race relations, a handful of research- assumptions about how human beings behave are as unsci- ers are casting doubt on once-unquestioned findings. New entific as racism itself; so is the vast belief system based on research, for example, threatens the conceptual underpin- them. And if this process of self-correction continues, with nings of the IAT, one of the most widely used tools in social brave researchers willing to question the assumptions at the science (see sidebar below). “Stereotype threat,” a hazy phe- foundation of their discipline, we who are skeptical of nomenon uncritically accepted by students of racial dis- the whole enterprise may have to concede that some social parity, has failed multiple attempts at rigorous replication sciences do, after all, qualify as real science. (see sidebar on page 27). Even diversity training programs, I hope nobody takes that the wrong way. ♦

IAT or BS?

ew inventions of the social sciences have been as police officer kills a black suspect, journalists and lawyers F influential and unavoidable as the Implicit Associa- will lunge for the IAT. Rare is the cop who has escaped tion Test. Introduced at a press conference by a team of schooling in the science of his own implicit racism. social scientists in 1998, it has since has become an But for several years the science behind the test has essential tool for marketing researchers, corporate train- been under pitiless assault. In 2015 two social scientists, ers, and anyone else who hopes to discern, and hence Gregory Mitchell of the University of Virginia and Philip manipulate or improve, the views and behavior of other Truth— Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania, undertook a if convenient people. The powers of the IAT are said to be large and clear-eyed review of the vast, mostly credulous literature various, but it is most famous for divining hidden racial attitudes, on the IAT. I might as well quote their comprehensive conclusion or what the trade calls “implicit bias.” The bias is implicit because directly rather than paraphrase. “On issue after issue, there is the poor subject who takes the test isn’t aware of his own racism. little evidence of positive impacts from IAT research: theories and He may even pride himself on his egalitarian racial views—indeed, understandings of prejudice have not converged as a result of the such people are often the worst offenders, implicitly. IAT research; bold claims about the superior predictive validity of You can take the test online, and millions of people have, the IAT over explicit measures have been falsified; IAT scores have at a site called “Project Implicit” run by Harvard University. The been found to add practically no explanatory power in studies subject presses one key or another as faces and words flash on his of discriminatory behavior; and IAT research has not led to new computer screen. Sometimes bad words appear with pictures of practical solutions to discrimination.” black people, sometimes with pictures of white people. Measured The best science reporters are on the case. In an exhaustive to the millisecond, the test-taker’s reaction times—how quickly he and heroic account of the IAT controversy, Jesse Singal of New associates bad words with black faces and good words with white York magazine concluded that the critics had the better evidence faces—are deemed to convey his true racial attitudes. The mechani- and the better argument. He quoted one of the inventors of the cal process­ by which implicit racism adjusts its travel time from the test, now a much-decorated professor at Harvard. “I don’t read brain to the fingertips has never been traced, or at least publicly commentaries from people who are non-experts,” she wrote in an revealed. Still, the Harvard researchers insist that implicit racism is email. Then she suggested her critics might be suffering from rac- found in nearly everyone and, unchecked, will often lead to brutish ism themselves, or something still darker. Their study of the race behavior. The implicit racism uncovered by the IAT is routinely IAT, she wrote, “seems not to be about the evidence. It will need brought out to explain any disparity between white people and to be dealt with by them in the presence of their psychotherapists black people, from per capita income to criminality. When a white or church leaders.” ♦

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 29 Manufacturing Optimism Can factory jobs be made in America again?

By Tony Mecia As Philbeck continues to train for his new factory job, the Trump administration is talking up manufacturing. Trump Gastonia, N.C. has visited a Boeing plant and met twice with executives of or nearly 20 years, Michael Philbeck drove the country’s largest manufacturers, most recently on Febru- forklifts and fixed machines at a factory here ary 23, at the White House. Rebuilding U.S. manufacturing that makes materials for car tires. Over the the Trump administration is facing choices on how to make years, as dozens of good on the president’s promise other plants west to reawaken American manu- Fof Charlotte closed, his hung on. facturing. It would seem to be a A few years ago, though, daunting task—one that depends Philbeck started looking for upon thousands of discrete busi- ways to boost his pay. With a wife ness decisions by companies of and five kids, the $20 an hour vastly different sizes, interna- from the Firestone Fibers & Tex- tional profiles, and sophistication. tiles plant wasn’t going far. There are plenty of policy levers The Army veteran returned to pull, too, in areas including to school, to the local com- trade, regulation, taxes, worker munity college. But he didn’t training, energy, and health care. train for a career in technol- With the new administration ogy or health care or some just starting to spell out its man- other flashy field that receives ufacturing agenda, it’s too early a lot of positive press. Instead, to guess whether the effort will he started studying something unleash a new era of prosperity called mechatronics—a blend for workers left behind in the ane- of mechanical engineering, elec- Michael Philbeck adjusts a machine that makes webbing mic recovery, envelop the United tronics, and computers. for roofing material, Gaston County, North Carolina. States in a disastrous trade war His new job? It’s back at the and recession, or land us some- Firestone plant, where he will make $5 an hour more when where in between. What seems more certain is that whatever he finishes his degree at Gaston College. That works out to the policies from Washington, new jobs in manufacturing a raise of roughly $10,000 a year. Philbeck, 41, says he feels are unlikely to resemble those of the past. They’re not going good about staying with the company in a new role, and to be the low-wage, low-skill, repetitive-motion factory jobs he’s optimistic he can establish himself with skills that are that we remember from the opening sequence of Laverne & in demand. He doubled down on manufacturing. Shirley (brewery) or the end of An Officer and a Gentleman “Rather than me turning wrenches,” he says, “I can (paper mill). The jobs are more likely to be like Philbeck’s: turn PLCs.” He laughs. I laugh. Then I admit I have no high-skill, solid wage, with at least some college and brain- idea what a PLC is. It turns out a PLC is a programmable power required. Those PLCs don’t run themselves. logic controller, an industrial computer that controls fac- In contrast to the public image of a sector in perpet- tory machinery. ual decline, manufacturing these days is on the upswing. Output has increased even as jobs melted away, though

Tony Mecia is a business writer in Charlotte, N.C. job losses have stabilized. Manufacturing employment COURTESY OF GASTON COLLEGE

30 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 has risen nearly 10 percent since 2010, to about 12 million equipment, they required fewer workers than the factories jobs (the peak was 19.5 million in 1979). Productivity is at of the past. None of the new companies announced in the an all-time high. One analyst even wrote in 2015 that the last five years expects to employ more than 150 workers, country seems poised for a “manufacturing renaissance.” and most are much smaller. Still, about 20 percent of the In conversations over the last month in Gaston County county’s workers are employed in manufacturing, double and with national experts, it is clear that there is now opti- the national average. mism among manufacturers and workers. Some of it stems The county isn’t relying solely on manufacturing, of from larger economic trends, but some also emanates from course. The school system is the biggest employer. The the feeling that they have a booster in the White House. medical center is expanding. Old mills are being redevel- “This notion that we can bring manufacturing jobs oped into breweries and loft apartments. Gastonia is not back to this county to levels like we had in the ’80s, that one of those depressing, boarded-up former industrial just can’t happen,” says Donny Hicks, longtime execu- towns. While some parts of the city look the same as they tive director of the Gaston County did decades ago, the area also has big, Economic Development Commis- new $500,000 brick homes, horse sion, which recruits companies to None of the new farms, a highly regarded private day the area. “Can we bring it all back? school and thriving shopping malls. No. Can we do a better job of keep- companies in Gaston Gaston has voted reliably Repub- ing what we have? Yes. . . . For so County expects to lican in recent times. Trump won long, the manufacturing sector has employ more than here in November by a two-to- been used as a chip for other politi- 150 workers, and one margin over Hillary Clinton, cal agendas. We gave up a lot we most are much smaller. and with a larger share of the vote didn’t have to give up.” than Mitt Romney in 2012 or John Still, about 20 percent McCain in 2008. Gaston’s results aston County’s manufactur- of the county’s workers mirrored Trump’s successes in the ing roots run deep. In the are employed in industrial areas of Michigan, Ohio, G late 1800s, as Europe and manufacturing, double Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which America industrialized, rural Caro- the national average. helped power him to victory. linians left the farms and headed to In addition to being more cul- Gastonia and surrounding commu- turally conservative than residents nities to work in the textile mills. The factories spun cot- of bigger cities, many factory folks are drawn to Trump ton into yarn, or put yarn on looms and wove it into fabric, because he speaks to them like no other politician in and they sat at the center of a textile belt in the Caroli- recent memory. When I covered manufacturing for the nas that surpassed New England as the hub of U.S. fabric- Charlotte Observer in the early 2000s, the local jobs in tex- making. There was occasional labor unrest: A violent 1929 tiles and furniture-making were in free fall. There was a textile strike that resulted in the shooting deaths of Gasto- sense among workers and business owners that manufac- nia’s police chief and a millworker helped sour the South turing powered the economy but that nobody in Wash- on union labor. ington—Republican or Democrat—really minded that The urbanization around the mills imbued Gaston factories were closing. Yes, politicians would pledge County with an identity separate from that of nearby money to retrain laid-off workers. Maybe they would Charlotte, the trading and banking town located across the even take an occasional plant tour wearing a dark suit Catawba River. Gastonia was known as more hardscrabble paired oddly with safety goggles and a hardhat. and gritty. People in manufacturing at the time felt that politi- Charlotte grew into a modern-day financial center, cians shrugged off the migration of factory jobs to other with shiny bank buildings rising above its downtown. countries, preferring to build a “knowledge economy” Gaston County has been slower-growing. To help offset based on high-value services. To economists and policy- the textile layoffs that peaked more than a decade ago, makers, that approach made sense. Classical economists Hicks has worked to attract new manufacturers—compa- have long argued that economic growth is enhanced for nies that make products such as bedding fabric, automo- all by letting countries produce what they are most effi- tive foam, industrial adhesives, and hydraulic lifts. The cient at producing, and that trade barriers only increase county’s experience, though, shows how tough it can be consumer prices. to add factory jobs in big chunks: While those new Gaston Dan Pearson, who served for 10 years on the U.S. County companies made large investments in plants and International Trade Commission under George W. Bush

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 31 and Barack Obama and is now a senior fellow in trade pol- everybody in our country. We’re not letting that happen icy at the Cato Institute, echoes that assessment: “When anymore, folks. Believe me. There will be a very substan- we have a government trying to allocate resources or drive tial penalty to be paid when they fire their people and move to another country, make the product, and think decisions in a nonmarket way, we are going to get a lower that they’re going to sell it back over what will soon be a standard of living.” very, very strong border. Going to be a lot different. . . . Looking at data showing roughly 10 percent of the coun- To achieve that goal, we’re going to massively reduce job- try employed in manufacturing, with factory automation on crushing regulations—already started, you’ve seen that— that send our jobs to those other countries. We are going to the rise, Pearson says: “It’s not like there are no opportuni- lower taxes on American business so it’s cheaper and eas- ties in this country outside of manufacturing. The opportu- ier to produce product and beautiful things like airplanes nities in manufacturing are rather few. If you want to build right here in America. a career for yourself as a young person, you might want to We are going to enforce—very strongly enforce our trade rules and stop foreign cheating. Tremendous cheat- look at something else. . . . The goal should be: Let’s keep ing. Tremendous cheating. We want products made by our the business climate strong, let’s keep the manufacturing workers, in our factories, stamped with those four magnifi- sector growing and train these people cent words: “Made in the U.S.A.” for the service jobs that need doing.” The crowd started chanting, any of the workers I Trump’s talking points “U-S-A! U-S-A!” Trump then talked to in the early on trade resonate here, promised a “level playing field” for M 2000s believed that Pear- whether the president American workers and took credit son’s view was the dominant govern- is decrying the ‘false for announcements by automakers ment view. Now, though, we have song of globalism,’ and Intel of plans to keep produc- a president pursuing a much dif- tion in the United States. ferent agenda. The solutions to fix hectoring automakers Trump has some knowledge of manufacturing that I was hearing in on Twitter for opening manufacturing realities in his busi- 2002—punish China, enforce trade plants in Mexico, or ness résumé. His line of dress shirts, agreements, rebuild America’s indus- lamenting the ‘rusted-out ties, suits, and accessories was criti- trial might—were almost identical to factories scattered like cized during the campaign for being Trump’s talking points 14 years later. made in China and Mexico. Asked They still resonate here, whether the tombstones across the during one candidate debate why president is decrying the “false song landscape of our nation.’ Americans should trust somebody of globalism,” hectoring automak- whose clothing line was manufac- ers on Twitter for opening plants in Mexico, lamenting the tured abroad, Trump said: “Because nobody knows the “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across system better than me. . . . It’s very, very hard for our com- the landscape of our nation” in his inaugural address, or tell- panies in this country . . . to compete. . . . But I’m the one ing visiting executives at the White House: “We’re bringing that knows how to change it.” manufacturing back to the United States, big-league.” Of course, over the years, plenty of industry groups and Like other Trump pronouncements, the rhetoric on government panels have crafted specific proposals to help manufacturing is concise, muscular, and thin on specifics. the manufacturing sector. Often, those proposals gather From his public statements, his administration’s manu- dust. For instance, the Commerce Department has a manu- facturing plan appears to consist of a mix of tougher trade facturing council composed of business owners, who make deals, robust enforcement of existing trade agreements, pro- recommendations on improving competitiveness. It has growth tax changes, higher duties on imports, and fewer weighed in on a range of issues, from energy to tax policy to regulations, combined with the occasional public shaming trade agreements. of American companies choosing to make products abroad. When Mary Isbister, president and majority owner of At a South Carolina Boeing plant after a month on the GenMet Corp., a metal fabrication company north of Mil- job, in one of his first visits outside Washington and Mar- waukee, first joined the council during the Obama admin- a-Lago, Trump characteristically described the approach istration, she noticed some council members became like this: frustrated at the lack of political will to enact their recom- mendations. “Given the makeup of that group, there would We wanted to make much easier—it has to be much eas- be times we would ask things of the Obama administration ier to manufacture in our country and much harder to leave. I don’t want companies leaving our country, mak- that weren’t going to happen,” she says. “There were peo- ing their product, selling it back, no tax, no nothing, firing ple who lost heart and left.”

32 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 Later, she says, under the guidance of Obama’s third “You have to do the math,” Raha says. “Any manufac- and final Commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker, the council turing can be done in the United States if there are skilled made some headway by focusing on items that were achiev- people there and there’s a market there.” able, given the political realities. Today, Isbister says she is Manuel Diez, chief executive of CTL Packaging USA, optimistic about the future of manufacturing and pleased at agrees. His company, which makes packing materials for its prominence in the political discussion. “The more man- the cosmetics industry, opened a $30 million plant in Gas- ufacturing gets into the public consciousness, the better it ton County in 2012. Before it opened, he sent 15 new hires will be for everybody, the more it becomes demystified.” to Europe for six months to learn to operate injection- The National Association of Manufacturers, the sector’s molding equipment. The plant now employs 60. leading trade group, also recently recast its policy agenda “We have been a service-oriented economy in the last in light of the Trump victory. On its website, it now intro- 30 years, and manufacturing has gone somewhere else,” duces its “Competing to Win” Diez says. “To bring that back, agenda like this: “Many of the we need to give people the tools policy decisions made over to be able to run machines and the last eight years have been understand how that works. extraordinarily difficult for man- Only through training can we ufacturers. Now it’s time for a do that.” reset—and a better direction. . . . Michael Stumo, chief execu- After all, it was manufacturers tive of the Coalition for a Pros- who, in big numbers, decided perous America, a pro-U.S. this election.” The document manufacturing and farming goes on to detail manufacturing- educational and advocacy friendly initiatives in the areas of group, says predictable regula- taxes, trade, energy, the environ- tions, lower taxes, and worker ment, transportation and infra- training are nice, but “the big- structure, labor, immigration, money numbers in relative workforce, health care, research, costs are in the trade sphere.” and regulatory and legal reform. He says most economists who advocate just f all those issues, some Francisco Sanchez, under secretary of commerce for don’t understand the complex Gaston County manu- international trade in the Obama administration, ways that other countries beat O facturers say one in tours a Parkdale Mills plant in Belmont, N.C. U.S. manufacturers on price— particular stands out for them that it’s not just lower labor when they think about what American manufacturing costs and automation, but taking advantage of currency needs most: a skilled workforce. In 2011, Owens Corning exchange rates, subsidizing industries, and devising favor- starting thinking about building a new plant to make mate- able tax schemes. He says the notion that U.S. manufactur- rials used in ceiling tile and flooring. It looked at China, a ers can’t compete is “baloney, fake news, alternative facts.” popular pick among U.S. manufacturers, but worried about He points to Germany, which has high wages and stringent its technology being stolen. It looked at India, which would environmental protections and ran a $270 billion trade sur- have been cheaper than China with better intellectual prop- plus in 2016, while the U.S. ran a $502 billion trade deficit. erty protections. Stumo thinks better trade policy could lead to as many as But in the end, with 80 percent of its customers in North 5 million new manufacturing jobs in America. America, Owens Corning settled on building a $135 million That sounds good to Philbeck, the Gaston County plant in Gaston County. Building in this country reduces worker training for a better job at the tire cord plant. He worries about managing a far-flung supply chain, and the says he doesn’t have all the answers, but he thinks Wash- plant is so automated that it requires little human labor. ington politicians haven’t helped. “They’re done the oppo- Nearly 800 people applied for the 60 jobs running the equip- site, those NAFTA trade deals,” he says. “If you were a ment, says Suman Raha, director of operations for Owens company and could go overseas and pay people less per Corning’s global nonwoven technologies business. Finding hour, with less restrictions, then ship it back and not get people with the right backgrounds was difficult. “It’s not a charged, that makes more sense for them. All them trade physical job. You’ve got to think,” Raha says. Another 40 deals hurt us. Maybe we can halt that, or in the best case,

JOHN CLARK / GASTON GAZETTE / AP workers have white-collar jobs such as product development. build that back up.” ♦

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 33 Books&Arts

Margaret Thatcher (1979) In Search of Mrs. T

The elusive woman behind Thatcherism. by Gertrude Himmelfarb

avid Cannadine dedi- Dictionary of National Biography, from cates his biography of which it has been reprinted. Cannadine Margaret Thatcher Margaret Thatcher: “In A Life and Legacy is eminently qualified to be Thatcher’s memory of Mrs T.” But by David Cannadine biographer: A distinguished historian, Dthat Mrs T is not, as one might sup- Oxford, 144 pp., $14.95 author of many books, and recipient pose, Mrs. Thatcher, the longest-serv- of many awards, he is almost Anglo- ing prime minister of Great Britain in American in his life and career, having the 20th century. Instead, the preface a “vehement anti-Communist.” Can- studied and taught in both countries informs us, it is a Mrs. Thurman, the nadine concludes the tribute to his (he is now a professor at Princeton). headmistress of Cannadine’s primary Mrs. T, the admirable headmistress, As something of a public intellectual, school—an “unforgettable, intimidat- by hoping she would have recognized a commentator on TV, radio, and the ing, charismatic, and inspirational” herself in his portrait of the more press, he also had occasion to meet and figure, who, unlike many of her pro- eminent Mrs. T, the prime minister. converse with her frequently. fession, was a “staunch Conserva- This brief biography is a welcome The reader may well see Cannadine’s tive,” a “committed Christian,” and addition to the considerable literature headmistress in “the Iron Lady,” as she about Margaret Thatcher, all the more is now known, but not in “the Grocer’s Gertrude Himmelfarb is the author of the welcome because it captures the “Life Daughter,” as she was more familiarly forthcoming book Past and Present: The and Legacy” of the subtitle so suc- called. Born in 1925 to a hardworking Challenges of Modernity, from the cinctly. It may be a short book, but it is grocer and wife in the provincial town

Pre-Victorians to the Postmodernists. one of the longest entries in the Oxford of Grantham, Lincolnshire, Margaret PRESS ASSOCIATED

34 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 Roberts gave no intimation, in her enduring hostility of the entire educa- More memorable is another label she childhood or youth, of her later emi- tion establishment, symbolized by the acquired at the time—“Iron Lady”— nence. After attending a local school, refusal to bestow upon her the honorary from a Russian newspaper protesting she ventured to seek a scholarship to degree from Oxford that had been the her criticisms of the Soviet Union. Somerville College, Oxford. Failing tradition for all earlier prime ministers. That label was promptly picked up, for that, she was admitted the following This was symptomatic of much good and bad, in England and abroad, year as a regular student at a painful of Thatcher’s career. Even when her and remained with her throughout her cost to her family. A good, conscien- policies—cost-cutting and government lifetime—and promises to be perpetu- tious, but undistinguished chemistry retrenchment, denationalizing indus- ated by biographers and historians. student, she graduated in 1947 with a tries and privatizing council housing— It was this Mrs. Thatcher, the Iron second-class honors degree and went had the positive effect of stimulating Lady, who presided over Britain as on to work as a researcher in a chemical the economy by reducing inflation, prime minister from 1979 to 1990. firm. Her initiation into politics came unemployment, and the public debt, In domestic as in foreign affairs, in her final year at Oxford with her they alienated many in the public, as she exhibited the same iron will. At election as president of the Conserv­ well as in her own party. Her personal home, it was evident in her persistent ative Association—a break with her attempts to undo the welfare state and father, who, like most Methodists at establish something like the free mar- the time, was Liberal. Three years later ket advocated by and she stood, predictably unsuccessfully, Friedrich Hayek (whom she had read as a Conservative candidate for a safe at Oxford). Towards the end of her first Labour seat. term in Downing Street, she prided Her marriage in 1951 to Denis herself on having done more “to roll Thatcher was another break, this time back the frontiers of socialism than any in economic and social status. He was previous Conservative government.” 10 years older, divorced, a business- She was equally resolute in foreign man, not rich but comfortably off, not affairs, resisting the expansionist ambi- particularly interested in politics but tions of the Soviet Union, vigorously tolerant of her views and indulgent in pursuing the Falklands War, strength- her activities. The birth of twins two ening Britain’s nuclear facilities, and years later was no hindrance, or even opposing the establishment of a Euro- distraction: As was often the custom, pean Community. As she was earlier they were sent off to school for much pleased to have rolled back socialism at of their childhood and then found home, so she later declared, at a meet- their way to distant parts—her daugh- ing in Bruges: ter to Australia and her son, whom she We have not successfully rolled favored, to Texas. Margaret Thatcher (1959) back the frontiers of the state in “The home,” she once said, Britain only to see them re-imposed “should be the center but not the popularity was low even at the best of at a European level with a European boundary of a woman’s life.” It was times, and there were constant predic- super-state exercising a new domi- nance from Brussels. not the center of hers. Politics was her tions of defeat. center, her passion. Yet she continued to be reelected “Iron Lady”—a feminist might That passion was satisfied, in 1959, by increasing majorities. What may bridle at the word “lady” as archaic, with the victory of the Conservatives account for this anomaly—the dis- elitist, sexist. But she would have more in the general election and her vic- junction between political power and reason to quarrel with Thatcher on tory in Finchley, a middle-class London personal popularity—was the vigor other grounds, for not being a woman suburb with a sizable Jewish population. and determination she brought to in the proper feminist spirit. Margaret After a series of lowly ministerial posi- her agenda, which gave her an aura of Thatcher was well-dressed and properly tions, with her party in power and out, authority that seemed to empower her coiffed, womanly in attire and appear- in 1970 she became secretary of state and legitimize her policies. ance, but “manly” (as Cannadine says) for education under Edward Heath. Challenging Heath as leader of in other respects, exhibiting “the asser- One of her most controversial acts the Conservatives, she was elected to tive, domineering, and aggressive attri- was the abolition of free milk for that position in 1975, the first woman butes commonly associated with alpha schoolchildren between the ages of 7 leader of any party. Heath’s former males.” Rejecting the very idea of “wom- and 11, which earned her the epithet deputy, who had sought the leader- en’s lib,” she did not associate herself “Mrs. Thatcher, the milk-snatcher.” ship position himself, derided her with “women’s causes,” made no effort Similar cuts in later years in funding as “governessy”—first cousin, per- to accommodate demands for female

ASSOCIATED PRESS ASSOCIATED universities earned her the bitter and haps, of Cannadine’s “headmistress.” representation in the government (there

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 35 was never a woman in her Cabinet), and globalization. Nor do they account for rian values: “Oh, exactly. Very much so. did not seek election for herself (as one the assertiveness and aggressiveness Those were the values when our coun- candidate recently did in America) as a with which she pursued them. try became great.” On another occa- woman and because she was a woman. Nor, and this may be even more sion she informed another critic that On one occasion, she seemed to for- decisive, do they do justice to the com- she was pleased to have been brought get that she was a woman, let alone a pelling ethic that inspired her, the up by a Victorian grandmother who lady. At a dinner celebrating the Falk- Methodist ethic of her father—bet- taught her those values—hard work, lands victory, wives were invited to ter known as the Puritan ethic or, self-reliance, self-respect, helping one’s the reception after dinner. Thatcher perhaps, the Victorian ethic. In my neighbor, and pride in one’s country: concluded the dinner: “Gentlemen, obituary of Margaret Thatcher in “All of these things are values. They are shall we join the ladies?”—“we,” her- these pages (“The Victorian Lady,” also perennial values.” self a gentleman among the gentle- April 22, 2013), I recalled my meet- David Cannadine hopes that his men. (There had been other woman ing with her at the British embassy headmistress would have recognized prime ministers, Golda Meir in Israel in Washington shortly after her retire- herself in the Iron Lady of his por- and Indira Gandhi in India, the for- ment. I was introduced to her as some- trait. She might also have recognized mer praised as the “Iron Lady of Israeli one who had recently delivered the herself in the Victorian Lady lurk- politics.” David Ben-Gurion’s tribute inaugural Margaret Thatcher Lecture ing behind that formidable figure. to Meir as “the best man in the govern- at Tel Aviv University on the subject What is more challenging, perhaps, ment” could as well be applied to the of “Victorian Values.” than Margaret Thatcher herself is the Iron Lady of British politics.) “But of course,” she replied, “I know Thatcherism she bequeathed to us, If Thatcher is notable as the first Gertrude, we’ve met before. What a which is as controversial today as it woman prime minister in Britain, she great subject, Victorian values. Let was in her day. Is Thatcherism more was also notable as a conspicuous exam- me tell you about Victorian values”— than an exercise in nostalgia? That ple of social mobility in a political sys- which she proceeded to do at some question will occupy another gen- tem that was still class-ridden. “From length, and with great enthusiasm. eration of biographers and historians, the Grantham’s grocer’s shop to St. A few years earlier, during an elec- who will continue to be fascinated by Paul’s Cathedral”—it was a long climb tion campaign, she told an interviewer her life but disarmed by her legacy— up the social ladder that Cannadine who observed, rather derisively, that what to make of it and what remains describes, longer than Disraeli’s, who she seemed to be approving of Victo- of it. ♦ prided himself on having “climbed to the top of the greasy pole” but who started that climb from the London A home of an affluent man-about-town B& and man-of-letters (a Jew, to be sure, but one accepted in the best clubs and in most social circles). Her climb was Mark My Word more notable still because it resulted, as Disraeli’s did not, in an “ism” attached From ancient tongue to everyday language. to her name. by David Wolpe “Thatcherism” was coined in the first year of her premiership and has endured throughout her lifetime and n 1992, the exiled Haitian presi- beyond. It is still something of a puz- dent Jean-Bertrand Aristide spoke The Story of Hebrew zle. No other prime minister, not even to Jewish leaders in New York by Lewis Glinert Winston Churchill, has enjoyed the City. Having studied for three Princeton, 296 pp., $27.95 distinction of an “ism.” More puz- Iyears in Jerusalem, he spoke to them zling is the definition of Thatcherism. in Hebrew as well as English. Aristide It does not, Cannadine insists, imply a was slightly shocked to discover, after is emblematic of the paradoxes of mod- coherent philosophy or even ideology; the talk, that he was not understood: ern Hebrew. Even after the establish- at best, it describes a “political phe- Most of the American Jewish leaders ment of Israel, being Jewish does not nomenon” or, more simply, an “atti- did not speak Hebrew. always entail speaking Hebrew. Before tude.” Yet those terms do not convey Although unmentioned in Lewis the establishment of the state, Hebrew the ambitiousness of Thatcher’s goals: Glinert’s elegant book, that anecdote was a language familiar primarily to economic liberty in defiance of the the pious. As the secular Theodor militant trade unionists (the coal min- David J. Wolpe, rabbi of Sinai Temple in Herzl asked in The Jewish State: “Who ers, most notably) and national great- Los Angeles, is the author, most recently, among us knows enough Hebrew to ness in spite of the movement towards of Why Faith Matters. use it to buy a railway ticket?” Hebrew

36 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 was not exactly a “dead” language, but his monumental law code, he fash- was not only necessary to invent words lived only in sacred tomes and learned ioned a form of Hebrew that made denoting locomotive, telegraph, or par- discourse. When the early Zionists the code both a linguistic as well as a liament; the language would also need began their push for statehood, the legal landmark. to express such conceptual distinctions number of genuine Hebrew speakers The poets of Spain’s golden age as people, nation, and state.” It was could be counted on one hand. wrote beautiful odes to God, but also left to the collective creativity of a new The revival of modern Hebrew is poetry about war and wine and women. movement, Zionism, and individual only the latest chapter of the story. Other medieval poets, living in a tex- fanatics, such as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Glinert begins with the Bible, whose tual echo chamber, composed elabo- to shape, update, and enforce the new Hebrew shows a variety of levels and rate referential poem/prayers, called language. (One of the many piquant covers centuries of language develop- piyyutim. These were not only creative details Glinert includes here is that ment. The rabbinic texts following and pietistic exercises, but intellectual the national poet laureate of modern the Bible—the Mishnah, an austere feats: Some were of great beauty, others Hebrew, Hayim Nahman Bialik, was and stately law code providing the as much puzzle boxes as poetry. forced to apologize in the press for foundation on which the mostly Ara- Glinert walks the reader through speaking Russian in public!) maic discourse of the Tal- Ben-Yehuda would only mud is based; the Hebrew allow Hebrew in his of interpretation (midrash); home, which condemned and the proliferation of his wife Dvora to silence written legal decisions— for a long time, as she sustained the thread of knew no Hebrew. Their Hebrew. Yet as Glinert son Bentzion was prob- writes of the rabbinic age of ably the first child in Rome: “By any sociologi- thousands of years raised cal yardstick, the prospects solely in Hebrew. In con- of native Hebrew’s survival versation with Bentzion’s were now minimal.” surviving sister, in 1990, After the destruction Glinert learns that Ben- of the Temple in the first Yehuda caught his wife century, Jews were scat- singing a Russian lullaby tered among non-Hebrew- to their child and flew into speaking populations. As a rage. His response evoked the Aristide incident dem- the very first “native” onstrates, keeping linguis- Hebrew word: The fright- tic proficiency in a foreign ened child said, “Abba, land is difficult. Abba!” (“Daddy, Daddy!”) Jews continued to pray Now, an ancient tongue in Hebrew, however, and a is the everyday language of succession of adepts modi- a people living in their land. fied and clarified the work- Student of Hebrew in Israel (ca. 1950) There are still debates about ings of the language: The how much foreign influ- Masoretes standardized the text of the the phases of Hebrew with sufficient ence should be permitted—when I’m Torah, and the mystics and poets per- historical background to make the stumped by a word in a Hebrew newspa- formed exegetical acrobatics with let- story clear but uncluttered. There are per it invariably turns out to be a trans- ters and numbers. (In Hebrew, letters fascinating byways, such as the place literation of something like “Twitter” or have numerical values as well: aleph of Hebrew in the revival of science dur- “computation”—and Glinert touches is 1, yod is 10, and so forth. So each ing the Renaissance. The early story of on these debates and others. But this word also has a numerical equivalent, our nation is also deeply affected by the is not so much a book for linguists or giving rise to ingenious and often far- centrality of Hebrew to the Pilgrims scholars: Deeper questions of Hebrew’s fetched connections.) Along the way, and their intellectual descendants. The relation to other Semitic languages, and Hebrew benefited from the efforts of first two presidents of Harvard were its morphology, are barely discussed. Yet religious genius as well: In 11th-cen- Hebrew scholars, as was the first presi- The Story of Hebrew covers a great deal of tury France, the great commentator dent of Yale, Ezra Stiles, whose univer- ground in a readable style, studded with Rashi used a compact and elliptical sity seal still bears a Hebrew motto. stories and quotations that make clear Hebrew to illuminate the meaning The capstone of the story is the how astonishing it is that out of the fos- of the Bible and Talmud. When, in miraculous revival of Hebrew as a spo- sil DNA of this sacred language, a new

GEORGE PICKOW / THREE LIONS GETTY IMAGES GEORGE PICKOW the next century, Maimonides wrote ken language. As Glinert writes: “It creation has arisen. ♦

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 37 accident happened. What accident? Some years previous, the coach pitched B&A over a parapet into the valley below and six people died. Later, waiting nervously on the dark road, Murray Ghostly Women finds himself growing confused and lightheaded from the extreme cold, but A sisterhood of the supernatural—in fiction. eventually sighs with relief when he hears the sound of approaching hooves. by Michael Dirda I won’t reveal the conclusion of Edwards’s story—nor of any other, for very year, during the bleak key text of American feminism—or that matter—but note that she sets up months of winter, I try to the ghost stories of E. Nesbit, Edith a climax that is liable to both a natural read some ghost stories. Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, or Elizabeth and a supernatural explanation. Mur- Since mine is a gentle, pacific Bowen. If, by chance, you’ve never ray had just been listening to occult nature,E I prefer classic tales, mainly read them, you should. speculations; he’d drunk some strong from the Victorian and Edwardian Anthologies of English ghost sto- whisky; he was worn out with fatigue eras. Gruesomeness, in my view, ought ries frequently begin with Elizabeth and cold. Perhaps what occurred was to be kept entirely offstage. A reader’s Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story” just an hallucination? imagination alone, under the direc- (1852), in part because it provides a Many ghost stories build in a chink tion of an accomplished writer, should particularly apt example of what the that would allow readers to rationalize be sufficient to generate what M. R. Victorians liked in a tale of specters apparently uncanny events. But the James called “a pleasing terror.” In and revenants. Told in the first person, best, I think, offer no such comfort. fact, James’s own “ghost stories of an its eerie events take place at an isolated “Nut Bush Farm,” by the prolific Char- antiquary” are precisely what I like country house, concern multiple gen- lotte Riddell (1832-1906), immediately best, even though my own favorite tale erations, hint at mysterious (or evil) introduces an ominous tone: “When I in the genre has long been the truly events in the past, and build suspense entered upon the tenancy of Nut Bush scary (and sexy) “Amour Dure” (1887) with threats to the present generation, Farm almost the first piece of news by Vernon Lee, the pen-name of Vio- in this case a child. which met me, in the shape of a whis- let Paget. It concerns a young scholar Revered even now as a pioneering pered rumor, was that ‘something’ had in Italy researching the life of Medea Egyptologist, Amelia B. Edwards pro- been seen in the ‘long field.’ ” We soon da Carpi, a Renaissance femme fatale duced at least a dozen fine ghost stories. learn that this “something” resembles able to bend any man to her will. To rid “The Phantom Coach” (1864)—partly Mr. Hascot, the former tenant of Nut himself of such a formidable enemy, based on folklore—again sets its action Bush Farm who, one day, simply disap- an Italian duke had finally ordered in the past, with the narrator vouching peared. What happened to him? Medea strangled—by two women. Yet for the truth of what happened to him When the narrator starts to investi- so indomitable is this vengeful beauty on a snowy night 20 years earlier. Bar- gate, Riddell ratchets up the tension by that her seductive powers might even rister James Murray had been out hunt- the diverse reactions of several women, survive the grave. ing and lost his way but, eventually, including the eccentric Mrs. Gostock, Lee lived from 1856 to 1935, the found a solitary house where he begged who actually owns the farm; the pale golden age of supernatural fiction. In for food and shelter. There he discov- and delicate neighbor, Mrs. Waite; a this period, a multitude of professional ered that his inhospitable host had beautiful servant girl; and even the nar- writers, most of them better known for withdrawn from the world to pursue rator’s own sensible wife. In the end, their “serious” novels, regularly pro- theosophical studies. Mr. Hascot’s spirit walks for a highly duced ghost stories for special Christ- traditional reason: It can’t rest easy He spoke of the soul and its aspira- mas annuals and magazines. For my tions, of the spirit and its powers, of until its bones are found. Almost to the seasonal binge this year I decided to second sight, of prophecy, of those end, “Nut Bush Farm” could hardly be read some of those stories but restrict phenomena which, under the names bettered, but then Riddell winds up the myself to women authors whose work of ghosts, specters, and supernatural story in an idiotic, perfunctory manner. I didn’t already know and admire. appearances, have been denied by After J. Sheridan Le Fanu—author the skeptics and attested by the Consequently, you will look in vain credulous of all ages. of Carmilla, the classic novella about for a mention of Charlotte Perkins Gil- a lesbian vampire—Riddell may be man’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”—that In the course of their conversation, the best, and most wide-ranging, high Murray—eager to return to his wife— Victorian writer of ghost stories. “The Michael Dirda is the author, most recently, learns that the night mail travels a road Open Door” verges on comedy, as a of Browsings: A Year of Reading, five miles away. If he hurries, he can clever young clerk tries to determine Collecting, and Living with Books. flag down a ride just where that terrible why a certain door in an empty country

38 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 A scene from ‘The Phantom Carriage,’ directed by Victor Sjöström (1921) manor never stays closed, even when the town’s smug mayor, whose uncon- Pitmilly, and her Aunt Mary, the nar- locked. “The Last of Squire Ennis- scious vanity is beautifully sustained, rator grows increasingly obsessed with more,” by contrast, is as lean and spare the story unfortunately grows tediously one particular window. Sometimes as a folktale: In it, an old reprobate first religiose and didactic. A similar slushi- it seems to disappear; at other times, discovers a cask of superior brandy ness mars Oliphant’s “The Open she can actually see through its glass on the beach, then encounters a dark, Door.” Something haunts the ruins into a room. Gradually, she makes out silent man who walks with a peculiar near Brentwood, something that crawls more and more of the room’s furnish- ambling gait. The two take to playing and moans piteously near a broken- ings, and eventually notices a young cards and drinking steadily until, one down doorway. The child of the estate’s man seated at a desk, busily writing. night, the brandy is all gone. new owner proves especially sensitive Like Henry James’s “The Turn of the In “Walnut-Tree House,” Edgar to these unearthly cries and longs to Screw,” Oliphant’s “The Library Win- Stainton moves into a mansion that help the poor suffering creature. dow” neatly tantalizes the reader with has been uninhabited for seven years. While Oliphant builds up an the undecidable and unresolved. For During his first night there he is impressive eeriness—so much so that example, is Lady Carnbee a witch? approached by “a child with the sad- a modern reader imagines some Love- “Maybe she once was,” says Aunt Mary. dest face mortal ever beheld.” But craftian lurker on the threshold—she Like so much in this magnificent story, instead of being frightened away by ultimately opts for pathos rather than the answer is exquisitely evasive. this phantom, Stainton shows it kind- horror. I was pretty much ready to dis- Do you need to be clever, then, to ness—and in so doing, learns the miss Oliphant as too moralistic for my produce an effective eerie tale? Not reason why Walnut-Tree House is taste—until I read “The Secret Cham- necessarily. Sometimes a single strong haunted. He quickly resolves to make ber,” about an inescapable ancestral image, or the creation of tender empa- what amends he can for the crimes curse and a truly frightening vampiric thy for an endangered protagonist, of the past. As must be obvious, this immortal. It never flinches at the end. will be enough. Take the stories of story—though effective—contains a “The Library Window” is even bet- Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915), considerable amount of sentimentality, ter: An adolescent girl, recovering author of the immensely popular sen- the Victorian era’s fallback emotion. from an illness, is spending the sum- sation novel Lady Audley’s Secret. In One finds an extreme case of this in mer with her aunt in the Scottish town “The Cold Embrace,” a callous lover, Margaret Oliphant’s 1880 short novel, of St. Rule’s. For the most part, she who has caused the suicide of his fian- A Beleaguered City. The citizens of a devotes her time to reverie, watching cée, learns that he cannot escape the French town, given over to material- the people passing by or studying the clutch of her spectral arms. In “Good ist values, are driven from their homes old library across the street. For some Lady Ducayne,” a wizened aristocrat by the risen dead. The gates are then reason, it seems unusually difficult to hires a vivacious young woman as her closed against the living, and Semur is determine the number of its windows. companion. But Bella soon begins to

JANUS FILMS shrouded in fog. Narrated largely by Rudely ignoring Lady Carnbee, Mr. lose her bloom and energy. Could this

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 39 languor have anything to do with the In Sinclair’s equally unsettling By contrast, in Ann Bridge’s “The marks on her arms, caused (according “The Villa Désirée,” Mildred Eve Buick Saloon,” the present reaches to the sinister Dr. Parravicini) by a vir- finds herself assigned the bedroom back into the past, though the end ulent species of mosquito? of her new fiancé’s dead wife, later result proves equally heartbreaking. For me, though, Braddon’s finest learning that the poor woman was After recovering from a long illness, story is “Eveline’s Visitant.” Hector frightened to death. But by whom— Mrs. Bowlby finally joins her banker de Brissac kills his cousin André in or by what? “The Villa Désirée” husband, who has been posted for a duel over a flirtatious court beauty. first appeared in 1926 as part of The some time in Peking. There she pur- On the field of honor, the dying man Ghost Book, edited by Lady Cynthia chases a used Buick saloon and, when pronounces a curse and vows revenge. Asquith, who had commissioned “six- inside it, occasionally hears a woman’s Years later, Hector weds the innocent teen new stories of the uncanny” from voice, murmuring words of love in Eveline, who adores him. Yet once the her many literary friends. That aston- French. Her curiosity aroused, Mrs. couple settle at the family estate, Eve- ishing volume includes such mas- Bowlby tries to learn more about her line, on her country walks, regularly terpieces as L. P. Hartley’s “A Visitor car’s history, its former owner, and an glimpses a pale, handsome young obviously passionate love affair. Even man watching her: André has come when the reader begins to guess the back to haunt not Hector, but his truth, Bridge brings off the story’s cli- wife. Braddon ends this story with a max brilliantly. shocking confession. When I first started this project, In fact, sex—often represented by I intended to chart some common vampirism or submission to a powerful elements or themes among all these Other—crops up regularly in Victorian women writers. Certainly, many of supernatural fiction. In Rhoda Brough- their stories are implicit cris de coeur, ton’s “The Man with the Nose” (1872), addressing marital or sexual tensions, Elizabeth tells her fiancé that she was thwarted love, and societal or patriar- once hypnotized by a traveling mes- chal constraints suffered by wives and merist. It was just a lark, though she daughters. Others, as I’ve mentioned, was made to do all sorts of “extraordi- display a didactic religiosity, and still nary” things and was very sick after- others emphasize a cozy homeliness wards. Later, on their honeymoon in and domesticity undermined by an Germany, this bantering couple behave otherworldly intrusion. like the leads in a romantic comedy— One also detects a gradual shift from until Elizabeth sees the hypnotist external to psychological horror. By the again. She recognizes him one night by 1930s, Dorothy L. Sayers pertinently his prominent nose as he stands (quite Edith Wharton (ca. 1889) observed, “In the old days the wick- impossibly) in the newlyweds’ hotel edness always belongs to the haunter, room and wills her to leave her hus- from Down Under,” D. H. Lawrence’s whereas today it so often wells up from band’s bed and come to him. “The Rocking-Horse Winner,” and the soul of the haunted. . . . We have Just a nightmare, of course. In fact, Hugh Walpole’s “Mrs. Lunt,” as well realized only too well that the kingdom the real nightmare is just beginning, as “The Corner Shop,” by C. L. Ray, a of hell is within us.” True enough. And and one hardly needs to be a Freudian pseudonym for Asquith herself. yet, many early stories also turn on to interpret Broughton’s symbolism. J. M. Barrie—for whom Asquith spiritual terror. Consider Violet Hunt’s Half-a-century later, May Sinclair’s once worked as a secretary—would “The Prayer,” first published in 1895. “Where Their Fire is Not Quenched” have loved that sentimental time- Addressing the corpse of her husband, (1922) carries sex into the afterlife. slip classic, but her other stories who has just been pronounced dead, Having missed out on true love, Harri- are much darker in tone. In “The a hysterical Mrs. Arne prays that “if ott, now in her thirties, finally yields to Playfellow,” for example, Claud Hal- there be a God in heaven, and if He the advances of a married man whom yard returns to his ancestral home ever answered a prayer, let Him . . . give she nonetheless finds mildly repulsive. in England with his American wife you back to me.” Shortly afterward, an They spend a week in Paris at a seedy and daughter. Hyacinth soon seems amazed doctor finds that the patient he hotel. After they both die, she and her perennially occupied and the reader had thought dead has somehow mirac- paramour find that for them, Hell is quickly realizes that the little girl is ulously recovered. But as time goes by, the Hotel Saint Pierre: playing with the ghost of her looka- it’s clear that there is something unset- like cousin Daphne, who died in a fire tling about Edward Arne, something We shall be one flesh and one spirit, one sin repeated for ever, and ever, spirit some years earlier. In due course, the that frightens people, including his loathing flesh, flesh loathing spirit, you past reaches out into the present with once-adoring wife. and I loathing each other. a vengeance. While clearly a variation of “The

40 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 Monkey’s Paw,” Hunt’s story can also scape hanging on the wall be a portal of a skeptic, a doctor, a clergyman, and be interpreted as a study of marital into another world? others to what seems to be a ghost. estrangement. Helen R. Hull’s “Clay- Some years ago, a famous list of the Bowen’s novel opens on a dark night Shuttered Doors” takes the same theme 13 most terrifying horror stories of all at a lonely country manor when the and gives it yet another twist. A pushing, time included Gertrude Atherton’s Devil knocks at the gate and demands vulgar businessman named Winchester “The Striding Place.” I’m not sure I a room. The frightened servants Corson, about to complete a big merger agree; but Atherton’s “Death and the quickly send for Julia Roseingrave, a that will make his fortune, crashes his Woman” remains a true tour-de-force, poor but beautiful young woman who car. His wife Thalia is, apparently, killed; presenting the stream-of-conscious- lives nearby and cares for her idiot but he cannot accept this—especially ness hysteria of a wife as she passes sister and sickly, bedridden mother. not now, not when his entire future is at the night by the side of her wasted, She, they believe, will know what to stake. Corson holds Thalia’s inert body, dying husband. My own favorite do. As it turns out, she does—though and pleads with her to come back to Atherton, though, is “The Bell in the things aren’t quite what they initially him. In fact, it seems that Thalia might Fog” (1905), in which an American appear, nor is Julia. Before long, in an only have been knocked unconscious. orchestrated campaign to capture his Hull’s tale of a loyal wife’s devotion to an heart, Julia is bathing in a supposedly unworthy husband has become a femi- enchanted pool, deliberately exciting nist touchstone. a visiting London nobleman with her Of course, the more stories I read nakedness. As the novel proceeds, its last fall, the more new writers I kept plot hints at the occult and alchemi- discovering. To name only a few, and cal, then gradually thickens to include just one story by each, there was Elea- such sensational elements as an aban- nor Scott, whose “Randalls Round” doned wife, blackmail, an incriminat- depicts a Cotswold village’s monstrous ing letter, even the prospect of coldly ancient ritual; H. D. Everett, whose calculated murder. Some of these same “The Death Mask” recalls one of M. R. dark themes are taken up by Bowen James’s most celebrated horrors; and in other famous short stories such as Alice Perrin, whose “Caulfield’s Crime” “Scoured Silk,” “The Avenging of Ann shows what may happen if you shoot Leete,” “The Crown Derby Plate,” and an Indian fakin. Lady Eleanor Smith’s “They Found My Grave.” “No Ships Pass”—about castaways on Most of the stories I’ve described an island out of time—could be a lost here are available as public domain episode from The Twilight Zone. In “The e-texts. Some have also been gathered Shell of Sense,” Olivia Howard Dunbar together in individual author collec- represents a ghost’s thoughts as it grad- Amelia B. Edwards (ca. 1890) tions. The vast majority, however, crop ually transcends human pettiness. At up regularly in anthologies of classic times, Harriet Prescott Spofford resem- writer, much like Henry James, buys supernatural fiction or may be found bles her contemporary Poe, especially an English country house and slowly in thematic volumes such as Rich- in her phantasmagoric prose poem grows obsessed with the portraits of ard Dalby’s Victorian Ghost Stories by about an eerie arctic voyage, “The two children, a boy and a girl. One Noted Women Writers, Jessica Amanda Moonstone Mass,” or her bizarre conte day, on a walk through the nearby Salmonson’s What Did Miss Darrington cruel (albeit with a happy O. Henry end- woods, he encounters a little girl who See?, S. T. Joshi’s The Cold Embrace: ing) “Circumstance.” is the image of the one in the painting. Weird Stories by Women, Mike Ashley’s While Edith Wharton stands pre- Did the Master ever see this homage The Darker Sex, and A. Susan Wil- eminent among American women to his own ghostly fiction? liams’s The Lifted Veil. writers of ghost stories, two of her And finally, I can’t overlook the To modern sensibilities, of course, contemporaries are nearly her equal. genre’s finest British woman writer only a few of these 19th- and early-20th- Of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s weird of the early-20th-century, Marjorie century stories are likely to truly tales—most, but not all, collected in Bowen (1885-1952). Julia Roseingrave, shock or surprise. Instead, the reader’s The Wind in the Rose-Bush (1903)—no in particular, ranks among the best pleasure typically derives from their praise is adequate. In “Luella Miller,” a short novels of the uncanny, with often-leisurely exposition, the deft helpless New England beauty enchants George Eliot’s superb The Lifted Veil— characterization of even minor figures, the people around her into working in which the narrator can read the the creation of an air of spookiness, themselves to death on her behalf. In minds of everyone around him except and the conscious use of symbolism. “The Hall Bedroom,” a woman rents that of the calculating femme fatale he Enjoy these tales, partly, for their scary a room that somehow seems to grow marries—and Lanoe Falconer’s Cecilia touches, but mostly for the accom- larger at night. Could the painted land- de Noël, which explores the reactions plished manner of their telling. ♦

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 41 religious declarations, and when Emily declined to do so, her friends worried B&A that she was a “no-hoper,” one of the unsaved. Though she would never be conventionally religious, spirituality An Unquiet Belle remained one of Dickinson’s lifelong concerns, as reflected in “My Sabbath,” The mysteries of Emily Dickinson revealed. one of only 10 poems published in her lifetime and showcased here in its origi- by Daniel Ross Goodman nal 1864 publication:

New York Some keep the Sabbath going to he myth of Emily Dick- Church— I’m Nobody! Who are you? I keep it, staying at Home— inson as the dark-haired, The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson With a Bobolink for a Chorister— inveterate recluse who cre- Morgan Library & Museum And an Orchard, for a Dome— ated her innovative poetry through May 28 Tin isolation from the outside world is Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice— just that—a myth, according to this I, just wear my Wings— wonderful, unprecedented exhibition. And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Never before have Amherst and Our little Sexton—sings. Harvard, the two institutions that maintain the largest holdings of God preaches, a noted Clergyman— Dickinson’s documents, letters, and And the sermon is never long, original manuscripts, cooperated in So instead of getting to Heaven, at last— allowing their Dickinson collections I’m going, all along. to be shown simultaneously. Not only does this exhibition reveal that Dick- Dickinson’s childhood verse was inson was not a brunette—she was conventional and sentimental, long a redhead, as a portrait and lock of narrative poems with tight rhyme her hair prove—it also demonstrates schemes and religious themes. Later, that her reputation as a recluse is not when she was taken out of Mount nearly as accurate as it has previously Holyoke and confined to her home been made out to be. As an adolescent, out of concern that she might be Emily Dickinson participated in many developing tuberculosis, her poems Emily Dickinson’s first edition (1890) meetings with an eclectic society of became shorter, unsentimental, and individuals; and as the thousand-plus one of the more important intellectual more lyrical, employing advanced letters she wrote will attest, she culti- regions of antebellum America. meters and themes and containing vated a small but close-knit group of The exhibit also contains Dick- idiosyncratic punctuation (especially friends with whom she continued to inson’s extensively marked-up Bible. dashes)—all so unconventional, for correspond throughout her life. Though religious people might com- the time, that editors either declined The exhibition traces Dickinson’s mend her for how well-read she was in to use her poems or published them in social and literary influences back sacred texts, others would likely disap- revised forms against her wishes. to her birth and upbringing in the prove of the irreverent way she treated Far from creating her unconventional small college town of Amherst, Mas- it, dog-earing pages and cutting out style in a vacuum, the Civil War had a sachusetts. She was born there in 1830, words and phrases she used in some of major impact upon Dickinson’s work: where her grandfather had cofounded her poetry. Of her 1,789 poems, about 900 were Amherst College as a school dedicated Dickinson’s willingness to push written between 1861 and 1865, and to training pious, impoverished young against the bounds of convention— with Amherst close to Springfield, men to be missionaries, and where both religious and poetic—began at home of the Union’s primary arms Dickinson’s father served as treasurer the age of 16 during her brief tenure manufacturer, news of the war for nearly 40 years. As the town of at the Mount Holyoke Seminary for reached Amherst early and often. Amherst gradually evolved into a more girls. The Second Great Awakening— As this exhibition makes clear, the cultured, cosmopolitan hub, Emily the nationwide Protestant revival—had Civil War clearly provided a major Dickinson grew up in the center of reached Amherst, and a spirit of zealous stimulus for her artistry—although Calvinism swept through Mount Holy- in what precise ways remains a Daniel Ross Goodman is a rabbi and doctoral oke. The school’s Congregationalist mystery, as does much of the life of candidate at the Jewish Theological Seminary. faculty pressured students into making Emily Dickinson. ♦ COURTESY OF THE MORGAN LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

42 / The Weekly Standard March 6, 2017 when it came to Hurt’s appearance. B A Lynch spent months working on a full- & body get-up for John Merrick, the Ele- phant Man—he had done all the effects for Eraserhead himself—but when Hurt Magical Kingdom finally donned Lynch’s creation, it looked like a costume and had to be The unlikely origins of a classic movie. scrapped. A desperate Sanger hired an obnoxious and unknown Briton by John Podhoretz named Christopher Tucker to do the makeup at an outrageous price. Tucker wonderful movie is a small needed weeks to perfect his effects, miracle. So many things Making the Elephant Man and so Lynch had to film around the have to go right, and they A Producer’s Memoir fact that Hurt could not yet be seen as usually don’t. What is by Jonathan Sanger John Merrick. McFarland, 208 pp., $29.95 needed?A A good story, and good actors, This concession to reality provided and a competent cinematographer, and the most important miracle of the proc­ a talented editor, and decent dialogue, timental Victorian London clasped ess. Before Lynch shows us Merrick, and a sensible producer, and a direc- him to its bosom. In the first miracle of we see how others react to Merrick— tor capable of mixing all the elements its miraculous gestation, Brooks hired including a staggering shot of Anthony together into a cohesive whole. Sanger to produce it and left him mostly Hopkins’s eyes slowly filling with tears A terrific new book by a Hollywood alone. The second miracle was Sanger of terror and sorrow, a mark then and producer named Jonathan Sanger tells coming across a crazy little movie now of his all-but-unparalleled greatness the story of the almost-enchanted called Eraserhead at an art-house theater. as an actor. series of lucky breaks and clever calls Sanger went to it, was transfixed, and set Only three years after the babysit- that made his first film a singular and up a meeting with its director—a Rea- ter had handed Sanger the script, The genuine classic. gan Republican from Montana who’d Elephant Man was nominated for eight Sanger was a young go-getter in made Eraserhead in his spare time and Oscars. The winner that year, Ordinary 1970s Hollywood who learned the craft on the weekends. People, is now recognized as the medio- of filmmaking as a production manager It is hard to convey what a wildly cre melodrama it always was. But take and assistant director. One day his baby- unconventional choice David Lynch two hours to watch The Elephant Man sitter asked him, shyly, if he would read a was to direct a picture set in the 19th today and you will see a movie of great script cowritten by her telephone-solici- century with a cast right out of Master- beauty and power undimmed by the tor boyfriend. He did, and was stunned piece Theatre. He’d never made anything passage of time. Indeed, it seems to by it. He paid the boyfriend (and his with a plot line, or with more than a have emerged full-blown from nowhere cowriter) $1,000 to reserve the right to few characters, and had never been to and has proved unduplicable. Sanger produce the screenplay as a movie. London, where the movie was to be never made anything remotely as good, Soon thereafter, the 33-year-old filmed. But Lynch was as likable and the screenwriting duo never wrote any- Sanger found himself working for self-effacing as his work was extreme. thing a tenth as good, and Brooks never Mel Brooks on Brooks’s Hitchcock Sanger’s book is a tale of exhilara- produced anything as good. Neither parody High Anxiety. Brooks was set- tion, as every element seemed to fall Hopkins nor Hurt were ever better. ting up a production company to make into place with shocking ease—includ- Lynch went on to become perhaps the serious movies and immediately took ing the hiring of veteran editor Anne most adventurous American director to Sanger’s optioned script. Brooks V. Coates and cinematographer Fred- of his time, but his often-perverse and thought Dustin Hoffman might want die Francis, who recognized Lynch inexplicable oeuvre has never been as to star in it. Showing both nerve and as a master in the making and served accessible as The Elephant Man. judgment, Sanger said the part had to both as teachers and protectors of a A wild comedic auteur allowed a be played by a relative unknown: “The man who was something of a novice. novice producer to hire an inexperi- audience would always be looking for Lynch and Sanger managed, as well, to enced avant-garde art student to direct a Dustin under the makeup.” cast the movie perfectly, with Anthony major motion picture from a highly dra- The script was called The Elephant Hopkins as the doctor who treats the matic script by the boyfriend of the nov- Man (1980), and it told the story of a deformed title character—played with ice’s babysitter. As Sanger shows in this sideshow freak named John Merrick unimaginable elegance and pathos by highly detailed and engrossing memoir, who had a moment of glory when sen- John Hurt, who died this past January. The Elephant Man could have been a But Making the Elephant Man is disaster. It should have been a disaster. John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, also a story of high anxiety itself. The It should never have been made. And is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic. movie almost plunged into disaster yet it was. Miracles do happen. ♦

March 6, 2017 The Weekly Standard / 43 “New on the Washington Post homepage—‘Democracy dies in darkness.’ Bob Woodward also said the phrase PARODY on ‘Face the Nation’ Feb. 19.” —Politico, February 22, 2017

March 6, 2017