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December 19, 2016 $4.99

MARK KRIKORIAN DANIEL FOSTER An Enforcement Agenda How to Think about Infrastructure The Art of Cursing

TheThe LiberalLiberal

N $4.99 FreakoutORENFreakout CASS DAVID FRENCH 51 KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

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ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WERE 9 PLANETS . . . Then Pluto lost the vote.

Science is the search for truth. Biomythology is the sale of truth. Science used to sell politics is pol- itics. Science used to sell values is ideology. These essays irreverently level the playing field of skepti- cism. They do for Darwin and science what Richard Dawkins and have done for God and .

Scientific truth rests on the faith that future“ discoveries won’t turn today’s facts into tomorrow’s fairytales.” —David Cook, Biomythology

A skeptical romp whose truths will persist long after today’s scientific stories voted most likely to succeed have been ravaged” by discovery. Clinician, author, and lecturer David Cook insists that while real science has doubled our life spans, biomythology is used to convince the court system that we lack free will and are not responsible for our choices. While real science has produced the Internet to unite the world, biomythology has fabricated the bell curve to divide it. A training manual for skeptics, Biomythology explores Darwin’s intelligent designs and over twenty rhetorical devices his disciples use to sell revisions of history, politics, and values under the name of science.

LAUGH OUT LOUD. BROWSE BIOMYTHOLOGY AT AMAZON.COM.

SOFT COVER ISBN: 978-1-5246-0183-6, $21.69. KINDLE ISBN: 978-1-5246-0182-9, $7.99. TOC--READY_QXP-1127940144.qxp 11/30/2016 2:25 PM Page 1 Contents

DECEMBER 19, 2016 | VOLUME LXVIII, NO. 23 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 26 John J. Miller on Representative Jim Banks Trumpocalypse p. 24 There is a whiff of apocalypse in the air. The election of has sent millions BOOKS, ARTS of progressives into a spiral of rage and pain & MANNERS that goes beyond any other post-election 35 A COURSE ON CURSING tantrum in modern American history. As Daniel Foster reviews In Praise of with every recent presidential election, the Profanity, by Michael Adams, and What the F: What Swearing Left described its opponent in the direst Reveals about Our Language, terms possible during the campaign. But Our Brains, and Ourselves, by Benjamin Bergen. this time, they seem to have believed ENFANT TERRIBLE their own rhetoric. David French 37 David Pryce-Jones reviews : A Life Revisited, COVER: by Philip Eade.

ARTICLES 39 VOICE OF ANGER Sarah Ruden reviews Birth of a LITIGATING POLITICS by Kevin D. Williamson Dream Weaver: A Writer’s 15 Awakening, by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. The Democrats deploy a cynical weapon. 16 TRUMP THE CLIMATE-SLAYER by Oren Cass 40 DROPS FROM A NIAGARA The environmental Left is having a panic. introduces his new collection, Digging In. TWO IMMIGRATION PRIORITIES by Mark Krikorian 18 FILM: ONLY CONNECT Mandate E-Verify and stop visa overstays. 42 reviews Arrival. 20 ATTORNEY GENERAL SESSIONS by Andrew C. McCarthy He will have the task of depoliticizing the Justice Department. 43 COUNTRY LIFE: EAGLE’S VIEW OF A NATION 22 INFRASTRUCTURE OBSERVATIONS by Ramesh Ponnuru looks at America Trump’s reason to build may be less economic than political. through the windshield and the flat screen. 24 INTRODUCING JIM BANKS by John J. Miller Indiana’s impressive new representative. SECTIONS FEATURES 2 Letters to the Editor TRUMPOCALYPSE by David French 4 The Week 26 Athwart ...... The world has not ended, yet. 33 34 The Long View ...... Rob Long 30 GETTING TO PEACE IN COLOMBIA by Jay Nordlinger 39 Poetry ...... Sally Cook A controversial year. 44 Happy Warrior . . . . David Harsanyi

NATIONAL REVIEW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by N ATIONAL REVIEW, Inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, , N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © , Inc., 2016. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to Editorial Dept., N ATIONAL REVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONALREVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00A.M . to 10:30 P.M. Eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept.,ATIONAL N REVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to N ATIONAL REVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATES: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters--READY_QXP-1127940387.qxp 11/30/2016 2:55 PM Page 2 Letters

DECEMBER 19 ISSUE; PRINTED DECEMBER 1

EDITORINCHIEF Richard Lowry American Interests and Obligations Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Mr. Nordlinger raises a legiti- Literary Editor Michael Potemra Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy mate question as to the extent Executive Editor Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson to which Americans should be National Correspondent John J. Miller Senior Political Correspondent Jim Geraghty prepared to commit military Chief Political Correspondent Tim Alberta Art Director Luba Kolomytseva resources, i.e., American lives, Deputy Managing Editors Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz in furtherance of our treaty Production Editor Katie Hosmer Assistant to the Editor Rachel Ogden obligations (“Smaller Coun - Research Associate Alessandra Trouwborst tries, Far Away,” October 24). Contributing Editors Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Daniel Foster Pursuant to realpolitik theory, Roman Genn / Arthur L. Herman / Lawrence Kudlow Mark R. Levin / / Rob Long the only time a state should Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy Kate O’Beirne / Andrew Stuttaford / Robert VerBruggen com mit its forces into any

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE armed conflict is when its na - Editor Charles C. W. Cooke Managing Editors Katherine Connell / Edward John Craig tional interest is directly af - National-Affairs Columnist Staff Writer David French fected. That is the reason the Kremlin blinked during the Cuban missile crisis Senior Political Reporter Alexis Levinson and why they never intervened directly during the Nicaraguan civil on Reporter Associate Editors Molly Powell / Nick Tell behalf of the Sandinistas. The Kremlin recognized correctly that these states Digital Director Ericka Andersen Assistant Editor Mark Antonio Wright were/are part of the American “sphere of influence” under the Monroe Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Editorial Assistant Grant DeArmitt Doctrine, and not part of the Kremlin’s. Web Developer Wendy Weihs Web Producer Scott McKim To be sure, in Westphalian parlance, the Baltics have always been within EDITORS- AT- LARGE Russia’s “sphere of influence.” That being said, NATO and EU treaty obliga- Linda Bridges / / John O’Sullivan

NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE tions by member nations may have provided a deterrent against Russian THOMASL. RHODESFELLOW Ian Tuttle aggression against these states. However, in an actual showdown with the Kremlin, neither the affected states nor the treaty organizations should expect BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Alexandra DeSanctis / Austin Yack American intervention if the area were ever to become “hot.” That is why the Contributors U.S. and Europe blinked when Russia annexed the Crimea. The Balkans have Hadley Arkes / James Bowman / Eliot A. Cohen Dinesh D’Souza / Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman been in the Kremlin’s sphere for centuries. Humanitarian considerations alone James Gardner / David Gelernter / George Gilder / Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler should never be the determinative factor in making long-term, armed treaty David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune / Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons commitments. Rather, the U.S. must limit the actual commitment of troops to / Vin Weber Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge those conflicts which directly affect America’s national interest. Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya Business Services Alex Batey David C. Frazier Circulation Manager Jason Ng Advertising Director Jim Fowler Via e-mail Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Assistant to the Publisher Brooke Rogers Director of Revenue Erik Netcher JAY NORDLINGER RESPONDS: Three quick points. (1) I would be careful about PUBLISHERCHAIRMAN Jack Fowler John Hillen using “sphere of influence,” the language of the Nazi–Soviet Pact. Their lan- FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. guage need not be our language. The Baltic states, like Britain, France, and Germany, are sovereign nations. They do not belong to Moscow. (2) The North PATRONSANDBENEFACTORS Robert Agostinelli Atlantic Treaty says that an attack on one is an attack on all (Article 5). That Dale Brott Mr. and Mrs. Michael Conway is the heart of the treaty. If you are not going to defend certain members, Mark and Mary Davis COM James you ought to expel them now. Anything else is a deception and a fraud. (3) The . Christopher M. Lantrip Brian and Deborah Murdock letter-writer brings up Crimea (though not the Donbass, which is equally rele- Mr. & Mrs. Richard Spencer WORLDATLAS Mr. & Mrs. L. Stanton Towne vant, at least). Ukraine, of course, is not a NATO member (sad for it). . Peter J. Travers WWW

Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected].

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n Say what you will about Twitter, it’s an improvement over Josh Earnest.

n President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Alabama sena- tor to be the next attorney general. Sessions is best known for his hawkish immigration stance, but that is only one aspect of a long career dedicated to law and order. Before being elected to the Senate, Sessions served as Alabama’s attorney general and as U.S. attorney for Alabama’s southern district, during which time he helped to desegregate Alabama schools and oversaw the prosecution of Henry Francis Hays, the head of the state’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan, for the murder of a black teenager, Michael Donald. Hays was ultimately executed, and a $7 million civil judgment against the Klan helped crush the group in Alabama. Those tidbits are worth keeping in mind as Democrats rush to declare Sessions “racist,” relying on specious accusations from three decades ago, when Ronald Rea gan unsuccessfully nominated him for a federal judgeship. Former Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter, who crossed party lines to help sink Sessions’s nomination, confessed in 2009: “My vote against candidate Sessions for the federal court was a mistake.” After eight years of Eric Holder—the only attorney general in American history to be held in contempt by the House of Representatives—and Loretta Lynch, Sessions has an opportunity to restore the integrity of a department that has de serv ed ly fallen into disrepute.

n First under George W. Bush and the No Child Left Behind Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau (see page 12) Act, then under and a long list of intrusive initia- tives, the federal government’s role in education has metasta- over their own education systems, and to help make the govern- sized, growing more and more aggressively in recent years. ment a resource for, not an impediment to, student success. Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s choice for education secretary, will be a desperately needed shock to this inept system. In her n Donald Trump says that he will leave his business in total, decades of experience as an education reformer, DeVos has although it’s not clear what this means. Trump is not the first worked quietly behind the scenes to create opportunities for wealthy man elected to the presidency or the first with com- every student to flourish, regardless of zip code. Those efforts plex business relationships: Herbert Hoover’s mining business started in her home state of , where in 1993 she and had outposts everywhere from St. Petersburg to Mandalay her husband (who, among other philanthropic roles, is on the (Trump does have a place just down the Strip from Mandalay board of the National Review Institute) helped enact the state’s Bay in Las Vegas), and he held stakes in overseas mines his charter-school law. Subsequently she founded the American entire life. But, unlike Trump’s case, the presidency was not Federation for Children, which pursues a nationwide strategy Hoover’s entry-level political job. Most presidents have signif- of backing legislators, candidates, and initiatives that aim to icant prior careers in government, during which they establish increase school choice. This year, AFC and its state-affiliated means for avoiding personal financial conflicts; in recent PACs were involved in 121 races in twelve states and won 89 years, most presidents have put their assets into blind trusts. percent of them. School choice—a term, DeVos has said, that This may not be effective for Trump, whose main asset is his ought to encompass everything from “vouchers and tax credits surname and whose main source of revenue is renting it. What [to] virtual schools, magnet schools, homeschooling, and charter to do? Congress should extend some aspects of federal schools”—is taking root as a viable, and better-performing, conflict-of-interest laws to the presidency, but this presents alternative to America’s longstanding public-school monopoly. both constitutional and practical enforcement problems. The As education secretary, DeVos will be able to roll back the mess most important thing is that Trump must commit to preserving of federal regulations that have hamstrung teachers and kept stu- the integrity of the office he has won, and to robust safeguards ROMAN GENN dents in failing schools, to restore to states a measure of power to achieve this end.

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THE WEEK

n Two things Trump has done consistently: boast that he n A host of explanations have been offered for Trump’s sur- never settles lawsuits, and settle lawsuits. In November, he prise election victory, but none has gone so viral as the charge paid $25 million to make the fraud case go that it was “fake news” that sealed ’s fate. away, giving New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, According to this theory, Americans were routinely taken in one of the most loathsome figures in American public life, the by non sense they read on the Internet, and this led them to opportunity to brag of winning “a major victory for the over support a candidate they would otherwise have found ap - 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.” Trump was right palling. Even President Obama has weighed in, proposing to settle the case. He conned his marks into spending thou- that “we are going to have to rebuild within this wild, wild sands (in some cases, tens of thousands) of dollars on a “uni- West of information flow some sort of curating function that versity” that wasn’t a university, or in any way accredited, people agree to.” But is this true? Certainly, the widespread in exchange for tips on buying and selling real estate from a adoption of the Internet has removed the gatekeepers from faculty of lightly qualified instructors advertised as “hand- news-making, and, as Jonathan Swift put it, ensured that picked” by Trump, who had never met most of them. Trump “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” But promised to make his students into millionaires, but some rumor has always dominated politics, and there is no hard things just can’t be taught in a classroom, such as learning evidence to suggest that it altered perceptions this year more how to inherit a vast real-estate portfolio from than any other. Could it be that the scourge of fake news is your father, and how to recognize a sucker when you see one. itself fake news?

n During the campaign, Trump said that he would appoint a n Ohio representative Tim special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton. Now he Ryan challenged Nan cy says that prosecuting her is “just not something I feel very Pelosi for House Dem - strongly about.” He doesn’t want to hurt her, he says, since ocratic leader, saying their she has “suffered greatly in many different ways.” There are party needs new blood many messages that the incoming president should want to and new appeal in be - avoid sending: that anyone is above the law; that his presi- tween the coasts. (She’s dency will be devoted to vindictive official acts against his from San Francisco.) He enemies; that he will be intervening with law enforcement in took some flak for having particular cases to secure desired outcomes. What he should been pro-life until 2015, say, then, is that he will appoint people with good judgment which is unfair: He was to enforce the law and then let them. During this time of pro-life the same way transition, let him transition away from kibitzing. Barack Obama opposed same-sex marriage. Both n In defeat, Hillary Clinton’s diehard supporters resemble Ryan and Pelosi are down- Jacobites, hoping for Highland uprisings and toasting the the-line liberals in a Queen over the water. Petitions to encourage faithless elec- party that is fairly uni- tors have gathered millions of signatures, while Jill Stein of Representative Tim Ryan (D., Ohio) form ideologically. In the Green party has raised millions of dollars to fund recounts that party, the debate over in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Reality check: white working-class voters pits those who want to ignore Although there have been a handful of faithless electors over them as a bigoted and declining share of the population the years, they have never come close to tilting the outcome. against those who want to appeal to them on the basis of left- Donald Trump’s margins in Stein’s three targeted states are wing economics. Nobody seems to be willing to meet them hefty—10,000 in Michigan, 24,000 in Wisconsin, and 68,000 partway on their values, which may not be those of the in Pennsylvania. Stein also—oops!—missed the filing dead- Southern Baptist Convention but are certainly not those of line in Pennsylvania, the richest electoral-vote prize. Could it Colin Kaepernick. understood that in the 1990s. be that her goal, rather than electing the woman whose candi- Good luck following his example if you want to be a Dem- dacy her own most undermined, is instead to raise money for ocratic leader today. future Green-party endeavors? Ah, money in politics. Radix malorum est cupiditas. Stupiditas doesn’t help, either. n When Vice President–elect Mike Pence attended the Broad way musical Hamilton, there was an unexpected n The incoming president does not drink, but he may be encore: The cast assembled on stage as the audience was addicted to Twitter. As Democrats pursued their foolish re- leaving, and one member read a statement to Pence, the gist counts, he could not resist tweeting that he won the popular of which was that they really, really don’t like Donald Trump. vote, too, “if you deduct the millions of people who voted ille- Performing artists always find their own political views more gally.” We have long insisted that elected officials take voter interesting than the audience does, but Pence reacted calmly NBC NEWSWIRE VIA GETTY fraud seriously—which ought to include not throwing around to the ambush, saying “I wasn’t offended” and reiterating / NBC made-up numbers. There is no evidence that anything close to Trump’s pledge to be “president of all the people.” Earlier, / “millions” of illegal votes were cast. When reporters pointed when Pence and his family were booed upon entering the PLOWMAN this out, Trump tweeted that it was up to them to prove that theater, he told them, “That’s the sound of freedom.” And . millions of illegal votes were not cast. The incoming president that’s the sound of wisdom, which we would commend to does not drink, but sometimes it would be nice to think he did. everyone on Broadway and off. WILLIAM B

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THE WEEK

n Trump says the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal eventually will stretch from North Dakota to Illinois, involving ten countries and us, is now dead. Most estimates which environmentalists seek to block with the assistance said it would add tens of billions of dollars to our economy: of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which says the project more than most initiatives before Congress, but not a huge will pass through culturally significant sites. The Left amount in the context of our $17 trillion GDP. The main intends to resist the construction of any ordinary energy impact of its demise will be geopolitical. The deal would infrastructure and any development of fossil-fuel produc- have sidelined China and established rules—such as restric- tion, using many means—including banning modern gas- tions on state-owned enterprises—that are not to its liking. drilling techniques in New York, fighting the construction Now China believes Asian countries will seek closer trade of a coal-export terminal on the West Coast, stalling ties with it. And economic reformers in Asia who had hoped Keystone XL, and staging violent riots to stop the Dakota that the pact’s proposed rules would strengthen their posi- Access Pipeline. The local particulars in question are ob - tion have been set back. None of this really reflects “the will viously secondary to an ideological crusade against oil, of the voters”: Senator Ron Johnson, having tilted in favor natural gas, and coal. Unfortunately for the people of North of the TPP, outperformed Trump in Wisconsin. But it does, Dakota—and for people who eat food and use products that unfortunately, reflect the will of the man who won the pres- are manufactured or transported—the Obama administra- idency. tion’s sympathies are with the anti-energy agitators, and not with the people who provide the energy that we use. Some n The other 49 states should think about sending Texas ducks are lamer than others, and this one cannot go into some sort of thank-you card for taking the lead in fighting retirement fast enough. the Obama administration’s executive overreach. The most recent victory came in November, when federal judge Amos n On Sunday, November 20, four police officers were shot L. Mazzant III ruled for Texas by handing down an injunc- in separate episodes across the country. In Sanibel, Fla., an tion blocking the Obama administration’s attempt to uni - officer was shot in a drive-by while conducting a traffic stop; laterally change the rules governing overtime so that in Gladstone, Mo., a traffic stop led to a chase and a em ployees making less than $47,000, rather than the previ- shootout; in St. Louis, a 19-year-old pulled up next to a vet- ous $23,000, would be required to get overtime pay. The eran officer and opened fire, shooting him twice in the head;

Law enforcement is a dangerous job, but it’s clear that ‘blue lives’ are especially under threat at the moment.

judge reasoned that while the relevant legislation gives reg- and in San Antonio, Detective Benjamin Marconi was killed ulators the right to define terms—overtime rules exempt when a man attacked him outside police headquarters. Two salaried workers who perform managerial and administra- days after these attacks, a Wayne State University police tive work—it does not empower the administration to set a officer was fatally shot while responding to an on-campus minimum for exempted positions, and that the Labor theft report. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, Department therefore “exceeds its delegated authority and gunfire deaths of police are up 64 percent compared with the ignores Congress’s intent by raising the minimum salary same period last year. Law enforcement is a dangerous job, level.” The Obama administration’s various attempts to but it’s clear that “blue lives” are especially under threat at force wages up artificially rather than see them drawn up the moment. organically—through strong economic growth and a subse- quently tight labor market—have always been a mix of bad n “No concealed carrier has ever stopped a shooting.” economics and wishful thinking, and many employers had “Only the cops should have guns.” Both of these statements indicated they would respond to the new rule by demoting are staples of the gun-control debate. But neither is true. In salaried managers to hourly positions. Texas and the other No vem ber, Floridians were reminded of that when Deputy states have performed honorably in fighting the Obama Dean Bardes, a twelve-year veteran of the Lee County Sher - administration’s increasingly autocratic unilateralism, much iff’s De part ment, was ambushed while working at an auto- of which could, and should, be undone with a few pen mobile accident. After a brief chase, the suspect knocked strokes in January. Bardes onto his back and began beating him. A nearby driver saw the incident and came to the officer’s rescue, first by n Police describe an “ongoing riot” at the scene of violent issuing a verbal warning to the assailant, and then by shoot- protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, with protesters ing him three times with his concealed-carry weapon. Had setting fire to cars and trucks, and police responding with the citizen not made the intervention, Bardes would almost tear gas and water cannons. With a blizzard bearing down on certainly have died. The incident was a reminder that the the area, North Dakota governor Jack Dalrymple has ordered existence of the police does not relieve citizens from the emergency evacuations, but protesters say they will not responsibility to look after their security—and that of others. move. At issue is a $3.7 billion, 1,172-mile oil pipeline that If you see something, do something.

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n Twitter cracked down on the alt-right in November, removing nor that the accounts in question were magnets for bigotry and more than 1,400 accounts, including those belonging to Radix racial animus. But there does seem to be a double standard at Journal’s Richard Spencer, online provocateurs “John Rivers” play. Just days after the removal of the alt-right, Twitter verified and Pax Dickinson, and serial troll “Ricky Vaughn.” As a pri- the account of “Ikhwan Web,” the official feed of the Muslim vate company, Twitter reserves the right to purge whomever Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has been designated a it pleases, and its management claims that the expulsions were “terrorist organization” by the House Judiciary Committee and the product of “targeted abuse and harassment” that violated the routinely spreads anti-Semitic propaganda across the Internet. site’s “rules.” There is no question that Twitter acted lawfully, Rules are rules only if they are applied equally. Recovery through Tax Reform

ITH apologies to , next year is current level of 39.6. As can be seen in the chart, the plan teed up to be the biggest supply-side-policy would cut the average tax on wages in our economy from W year in American history. The expected changes 23.7 percent to 22.1 percent. are too numerous to list, but the most economically In addition, the reform envisions those with income consequential will be tax reform. President-elect Trump from capital paying the ordinary tax rates but exempting promised a sweeping tax reform that strikingly resembled 50 percent of capital income from taxation. So if you have a proposal sketched last summer by House Republicans. a $100 dividend, you will need to pay tax only on the first These plans also closely followed ideas long sketched $50. This move effectively cuts these rates in half relative by Senate Republicans, so it seems certain that some- to the tax on wages and would be a significant stimulus thing like the Trump/House plan will become law. Thank of saving and investment, reducing long-term capital- goodness. gains taxation on average from 22.2 percent to 15.6 per- The chart below, which is drawn from a recently re - cent. Taxes on dividends and interest would see similar leased study of the House plan by my American En ter - reductions. prise Institute colleague Alex Brill, provides a summary Taken together, this tax bill would radically improve the view of the tax reform. There are many ways that taxes outlook for economic growth in our country. Cor por a - can influence the decisions of firms and individuals, but tions would locate more capital investment here, and a nice summary statistic is the impact they have on the individuals would provide the savings to fund those in - effective marginal tax rate (EMTR). The EMTR is the extra vest ments. But don’t just believe me. The OECD eco- amount of tax that is owed should the firm or individual nomic staff just significantly increased its growth forecast earn an extra dollar of income. for the U.S.—from 1.9 percent to 2.3 percent—and has On the corporate side, the big news is that rates are ratcheted up the forecast for 2018 all the way to 3 per- reduced dramatically, with the likely endpoint being cent. Why did it do this? Let’s quote the source: “In the around 20 percent, as compared with our current rate of aftermath of the U.S. elections, there is widespread ex - 35 percent. But the proposal would also allow firms to pec ta tion of a significant change in direction for macro- fully deduct capital expenditures in the year that they economic policy.” Amen to that. are made rather than spread them out over a number of —KEVIN A. HASSETT years. Factoring that in with the lower rates, and adjust- ing for a number of other changes, Brill estimates that the tax rate on corporate investment would drop from its cur- rent level of 31.6 percent all the way to 17.9 percent. As Effective Marginal Tax Rates we have discussed many times in this space, a country that is a friendly place to locate investment is a friendly Under Trump/House Plan place to work. If you think wage growth has been disap- pointing since the recovery began, you should pop the 35 champagne cork when this becomes law. 30 25 On the individual side, the proposal simplifies the tax 20 code significantly by limiting itemized deductions, except 15

for mortgage interest and charitable deductions. This 10

move gives legislators an enormous amount of revenue 5

to play with to reduce tax rates. We currently have eight 0 Wages Long-Term Taxable Qualified Corporate marginal tax rates (if one includes zero); the new law Rate Effective Marginal Tax (Average) Capital Gains Interest Dividends Investment would reduce that to four, with the three positive rates at 12 percent, 25 percent, and 33 percent. The biggest Baseline/Current Law House Republican Plan reduction is for the top bracket, which drops from its

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n “Patients, their families, physicians, and their institutions candidate for the conserva - remain proper cooperators in making the evolving and neces- tive Republican party. Instead, sary difficult decisions fronting modern medicine,” Judge François Fillon came up from Paul Armstrong of a state superior court in Morristown, N.J., behind to win the nomination re cent ly ruled. Translation: Remove the feeding tubes from handily. Now 62, he had “A.G.,” as she was identified, a 29-year-old psychiatric served a five-year term as patient suffering from anorexia. So it was done. She was prime minister; his pitch is to transferred to palliative care and presumably will starve her- offer the country “truth and self to death. Having failed to cure her mental illness, her doc- action.” His prom ises to com- tors gave up and called it patient autonomy. Invoking it to bat Islamism and limit immi- justify passivity in the face of the protracted suicide of a trou- gration notwithstanding the bled young woman is cynical or, to be charitable, sad. Her legal impositions of the Eu - caregivers who tried to revive her will to live deserved ropean Union, to cut taxes encouragement for their effort. Spare us the solemn paeans to for the rich, and to dismiss civil liberties and freedom of choice for their ultimate deci- 500,000 civil servants—in his sion to honor her will to die be cause it was stronger. Have the words, “to break down the François Fillon decency to extend your pity. house”—have earned him the sobriquet “Thatcherite.” A Catholic, he happens to have a n In a recent Sunday edition of , Mark British wife. His opponent in the presidential election is almost Lilla, a humanities professor at Columbia University and a dis- certain to be Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National and a tinguished political theorist, published an intelligent essay ti - highly self-assured populist and moralizer. If so, France will tled “The End of Identity Liberalism,” in which he argued that be deciding the degree of harshness needed to get through the “American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic current crisis. about racial, gender, and sexual identity that has distorted lib- eralism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying n Montenegro is a cast-off from former Yugoslavia, small and force capable of governing.” His prescription for reform would poor but with beautiful scenery and a stretch of the Adriatic be eminently sensible—were there any liberals to be found on coast. Playing on words, eager developers visualize the coun- the left anymore. Instead, there are persons such as Damon try as a rival to Monte Carlo. Due to be ratified in the near Young, a columnist for GQ and Ebony, who dismissed Lilla’s future, proposals of membership in NATO and the European essay as “the whitest thing I’ve ever read,” and Lilla’s Co lum - Union would put the seal on its novel Western identity. The bia colleague, law professor Katherine Franke, who an - Kremlin does not hide its fury that another piece of its potential nounced that Lilla was “more nefarious” than David Duke, empire might be disappearing. On the day of a general election because he was “making white supremacy respectable.” In last month, 20 men, many of them Russian, were arrested— other words, the response to Lilla’s article was precisely what ap par ent ly because they were about to seize the parliament; he warned against. Along with last month’s election, the Left murder the pro-Western prime minister, Milo Djukanovic; and seems to have lost any sense of irony. in stall someone pro-Russian. Arms and dollars in six figures have been recovered. One of the men under arrest, a Serb by n According to Colonel John Dorrian, a U.S. military spokes - the name of Aleksandar Sindjelic, has a story that the coup was man in Iraq, the Islamic State is using chemical weapons. masterminded by two agents of Russian military intelligence, Experts confirm that, to date, 52 chemical attacks have been both of whom have now gone to ground in Moscow. As usual carried out by IS, about a third of them in Mosul. Traces of with a Balkan crisis, it is impossible to be sure whether the chlorine and mustard sulfur have been identified on the cloth- story is true or has another story hidden within. Dubious at the ing of victims. Where IS obtains these chemicals is not clear, best of times, Sindjelic himself is known to have been an active but they do not match those found in the stocks previously built Russian nationalist in eastern Ukraine. A coup really was up by Saddam Hussein. As deadly as they are demoralizing, averted, the prime minister and the prosecutor claim, insinuat- chemical weapons are difficult to defend against without spe- ing that President Vladimir Putin almost certainly inspired and cialized equipment. Cornered, IS is evidently contemptuous of arranged it. The Russian story is that the coup is an invention international treaties banning chemical warfare, but Colonel designed to obtain American backing for the country’s intend- Dorrian says its technology is “rudimentary,” and that alone ed switch to the West. Their chosen word for this affair is may save the million or so unfortunates still in Mosul from “vaudeville.” the very worst. n This magazine used to spend a lot of ink on political prison- n France has to elect a new president next year, and this al - ers in Russia. The time has come, sadly, to spend some more. ready promises a genuine conflict of personalities and policies. The latest is Ildar Dadin, a democracy activist born in 1982. He All political parties agree that the country is in full crisis on was the first to be imprisoned under a 2014 law that bars GETTY /

several fronts. The Socialists now in office offer only more of protests without official permission. He is confined to the IK- 3 IP the same old failures at home and abroad—the incumbent pres- 7 prison in Karelia and has reported that he has been repeatedly / ident, François Hollande, is widely thought not to be running tortured. Recently, his wife said “they will kill him” if he for reelection. Two experienced politicians, Nicolas Sarkozy remains in the prison. He may be dead already, as Sergei and Alain Juppé, each hoped to emerge in a primary as the Magnitsky was tortured to death in 2009. The European NICOLAS KOVARIK

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Parliament has called for Dadin’s release and an independent police are still investigating,” the New York Times reports.) investigation into the treatment of him. Ben Cardin, the rank- Then it was replaced. The trustees voted to keep it flying at half ing Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has staff, “to mourn deaths from violence in the U.S. and around said that the Magnitsky Act should be used against the per - the world,” they explained, reigniting the controversy. Hamp - secutors of prisoners such as Dadin. This is the U.S. law that shire president Jonathan Lash proceeded to order the flag not permits sanctions against individual persecutors. Human rights to be flown at full staff but to be taken down. On the last week- is not the last word in foreign policy—but it is a word, and the end of the month, about 400 demonstrators, waving American United States ought to look alive. flags, gathered on campus for what was billed as a veterans’ protest. The American flag is not the banner for any one side in n Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the handsome young dynast a culture war, and to press it into that service is to abuse it. who made leftism chic again in Canada, overplayed his hand President Lash should fly it again, at full staff—not as a ploy, with a farewell tribute to Fidel Castro. There was admittedly a to appropriate the other side’s symbol in a dreary town-versus- family debt to pay: Justin’s father, Pierre, befriended the des- gown fracas, but as a gesture of good will, and basic civic pot, who was an honorary pallbearer at his funeral in 2000. de cency. Even so, young Trudeau overshot the mark, calling Castro “a larger than life leader who served his people,” making “sig - n In a formal letter, a coalition of progressive students at nificant improvements to . . . education and healthcare.” George Washington University declared the presence of cam- Mac lean’s, Canada’s venerable weekly, eviscerated him (“Tru - pus police officers to be an “act of violence.” Their reasoning? deau’s turn from cool to laughingstock” ran their headline), The Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Donald Trump, and while a murderous hashtag, #trudeaueulogies, repurposed his thus police are part of the inherently racist power structures words to an array of monsters (other monsters), from Hitler to that GWU must stand against. Around the same time, a knife- Lord Voldemort. Evidently abashed, Trudeau an nounced that wielding terrorist went on a rampage at Ohio State University, he would not attend Castro’s funeral, sending instead Canada’s stopping only when an officer shot him. If and when these governor general, who, as the Queen’s representative, can be GWU students encounter such a real act of violence, we know trusted to keep his mouth shut. that they will not be jumping to call the diversity officer at the multicultural community center. n The French State Council recently ruled that a video featur- ing children with Down syndrome will not be permitted to air on French television because the children’s smiles would “dis- n As recently as the late 1970s, most major-league baseball turb the conscience of women who had lawfully made different players held off-season jobs to supplement their sal a ries personal life choices”—in other words, seeing these children and have a career ready when they retired from the game. happy would upset women who had aborted children suspect- After baseball instituted a free(ish) labor market, however, ed of having the syndrome. The award-winning “Dear Future salaries skyrocketed, and today’s players, who average Mom” video shows young people with Down syndrome from more than $4 million a year, usually spend the off-season around the world speaking in a variety of languages about golfing and working out. But not Michael Ful mer, a pitcher being able to learn to write and to ride a bike, hug their mothers for the Detroit Tigers. Although he just won the American and go to school, earn money and live on their own. In France, League Rookie of the Year award with a 3.06 ERA, Fulmer 86 percent of babies who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down is passing the time until spring training begins by working syndrome are aborted. Why should anyone’s conscience be at as a plumber in his native Oklahoma. “He digs ditches and risk of being disturbed over this? gets dirty and does whatever needs to be done,” says his uncle, at whose family firm Fulmer is n Playing in Miami, where local fans are well informed about employed. Between his talent and the island nation an afternoon’s boat ride due south, San his work ethic, we would call Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took the field and Fulmer a lead-pipe cinch was booed with more feeling than the players for the visiting for continued stardom, but team typically elicit. Four days earlier, a columnist for the Miami even if his career follows Herald spoke with him about a T-shirt he wore emblazoned with a Joe Charboneau trajectory images of Malcolm X and Fidel Castro, and Kaepernick sang the (Rookie of the Year in 1980, out latter’s praises. He cited the cliché about the high literacy rate of the majors for good in 1982), among Castro’s subjects, neglecting to mention how much liter- it’s good to know he will still ature they can’t read because the government bans it. All season, have a ca reer beyond appearing Kaepernick has refused to stand during the national anthem. He at au to graph shows. explains his gesture as a protest against racism and police bru- tality. Why he thinks that thumbing his nose at a traditional expression of simple patriotism might persuade people of his n Seventy-five years ago this December 7, Japanese war- views on anything remains a mystery. planes bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, sinking some 20 ships, destroying 300 planes, and killing GETTY / n In Amherst, Mass., students at Hampshire College lowered 2,400 men. The next day Congress declared war, and though the American flag to half staff on November 9, the the first few months were harrowing—American ships sunk LEON HALIP election. Within 48 hours, the flag was burned. (“Campus off the coast of Florida in full view of bathers, the fall of the

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Philippines, submarines and merchant vessels torpedoed—and in 1956. Mao lost his luster, or some of it, in the wake of honest ’s armed forces on the eve of World War II had been accounts of his rule (by his doctor, Li Zhisui, for example). Ho roughly the size of Poland’s, scarcely any American believed rode high for a while, but not after the reeducation camps and the U.S. might ultimately lose. Our nation emerged from boat people. WWII as the undisputed leader of the free world. May it But Castro? In 2002, Carole King, the American singer- remain so. songwriter, crooned to him her hit song “You’ve Got a Friend.” He certainly did, lots of them. n There were so many things William Trevor, an Irish Prot es - Why did they love him? Why do they still? For one thing, tant author who lived most of his life in England, was not: not they see him as the defier of the yanqui colossus. But also, they avant-garde, not flashy, not poetic or eloquent in any obvious have bought, and propagated, several myths—such as that the way; certainly not an off-the-page headline-grabber. He wrote dictatorship brought literacy and health care to the island. As a string of novels, but his towering achievement was built, the great dissident Armando Valladares says, “It’s all untrue. brick by brick, of his many short stories, which rank with But even if it were true: Can’t a country have those things with- Chekhov’s. Set in Ireland and England, they are rich, humane, out being a cruel dictatorship?” and precise, surveying every class and clan, and bringing each Fidel Castro has died in bed at a very ripe old age: 90. This character, sympathetic and not, central and walk-on, to life. is a fate that he denied to many, many people, who were his The self-knowledge of the English-speaking world has owed a victims. He was a boot stamping on the human face. There are lopsided amount to England’s neighboring island. Trevor others to do the stamping. increased the debt. Dead at 88. R.I.P. A headline in the (London) Telegraph read, “The death of Fidel Castro, socialist leader of the third world, also marks the OBITUARY end of 20th century communism.” Unfortunately, Raúl is still going strong in Havana. His forces violently arrested a slew of Fidel Castro: Death of a Tyrant human-rights advocates the other day. As they were carted off, they tried to form the letter L with their fingers: L for libertad, HE headline over the Associated Press story read, liberty. “Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Who Defied U.S. for 50 Years, T Dies at 90.” That is how a great many people around the world view Castro: as the defier of the yanqui colossus and its imperialism. But that is a U.S.-centric view. Amazingly, Cubans tend to view Castro as their dictator. Or former dictator—in that he handed off to his brother Raúl in 2008—and now late dictator. The Castros and their compadres fought their revolution in the 1950s and triumphed on New Year’s Day 1959. They had promised a democratic Cuba. Instead, they installed something familiar in the Soviet bloc and elsewhere: a one-party dictator- ship with a gulag. The island was quickly impoverished, of course. There is an old joke about socialism: If the Eskimos adopted it, they would soon have to import ice. Well, Cuba, for a while, had to import sugar. In an interesting touch, Fidel Castro banned Christmas, from 1969 to 1998. Absolute dictators can do that. Cuba was, among other things, Fidel’s personal fiefdom. And it was a “republic of fear,” to borrow a phrase from Kanan Makiya, who used it to describe Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Many Cubans were too afraid to utter Castro’s name. They gestured toward their chin, indicating a beard. He and his gang killed tens of thousands, surely. The exact number is hard to pin down. Maria Werlau and her colleagues, at the Cuba Archive online, have done conscientious work on this subject. Over the years of the Castro regime, 1 million Cubans have gone into exile. Some Cubans have been shot in the water, in their attempts to flee. What kind of regime does this? What kind of regime would GETTY

rather kill people, in cold blood, than see them leave? The / Castro regime, and it has been very popular, though not in Cuba. Fidel Castro was the most popular dictator in the free and POPPERFOTO democratic world. Stalin lost his luster after the Secret Speech Fidel Castro circa 1961

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The culminating tactic is to demand a recount. When the Democrats won a majority in the Senate and began acting in the belief that they’d never lose it, they weakened the filibuster, a traditional protection of minority rights in our less democratic leg- islative house. Now, they are desperately clinging to what is left of it. Acting on a belief that the Mandate of Heaven would pass uninterrupted from Barack Obama to Hillary Rodham Clinton—a barely com- petent party hack they insisted was the most qualified candidate ever to seek the position of commander-in-chief, George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower notwithstanding—they waged a full-on assault on the democratic legislative process itself, seeking to consolidate power in the person of a president who would rule, like Charles de Gaulle in his later dictatorial phase, by executive fiat, Demonstrating against the president-elect in Philadelphia, , 2016 from its recently blocked overtime rules to making an end run around Congress on network security. They are naked judicial activists when it comes to courts where their fellow partisans predominate and Litigating Politics absolutely deferential to precedent when The Democrats deploy a cynical weapon the precedent was written by their fellow partisans. BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON But if they have mixed views on judi- cial precedent, they seem to pay no atten- tion at all to political precedent. HE Democrats suffer from two the legitimacy of the U.S. government What is happening between the elec- tactical deficiencies. The first is itself, Clinton and her allies insisted. This tion of Donald Trump and his scheduled T that when they win, they act like was tantamount to an act of war, they inauguration is, to borrow the progres- they’ll never lose again; the sec- said, and possibly a prelude to treason: sive phrase of the moment, not normal. ond is that when they lose, they act like They were sure that a losing Trump Progressive fantasists imagine some sort they’ll never win again. The Democrats would take to Twitter to inspire a coup of “Twelve Angry Men” debate within have just lost a big one—the presiden- attempt. the Electoral College, at the end of which cy—but both tendencies are of immedi- The progressives of course proceeded all the right-thinking (which is to say, ate interest. to commit every crime on their pre-cog left-thinking) electors band together One of the less rewarding chores as- indictment of Trump: violent protests and bravely confer the presidency upon signed to conservative polemicists—a complete with assaults, arson, racism, Hillary Rodham Clinton. In reality that job that ought to be done by fair-minded and extremist rhetoric of sundry daffy is unlikely to happen. The law here is rel- political reporters of all persuasions—is sorts—an anti-bullying advocate was atively straightforward, and even if a cataloguing the endless array of double even arrested for assaulting an elderly “faithless elector” coup were attempted, standards, ordinary hypocrisy, and heads- man at an anti-Trump protest in New it almost certainly would not withstand I-win/tails-you-lose conundrums culti- York; litigation based on the flimsiest the inevitable legal challenge, since vated by Democratic political operatives pretexts, or no pretext at all; the “normal- many state laws simply void such votes. and their allies in the news media. This ization” of these tactics through the Other states add civil and criminal penal- year produced a bumper crop of the efforts of such purportedly respectable ties to the mix. stuff, much of it involving Democrats’ mainstream Democratic figures as Paul But overturning the election results is de mand that Donald J. Trump more or Krugman of the New York Times, who not the point of all this. The point is to cost less preemptively concede his loss of the channeled Trump himself with his argu- Republicans time and energy, to raise presidential election to Hillary Rodham ment that we should investigate wild- money for Democrats, to cultivate the ter- GETTY

/ Clin ton. Failure to do so—to even sug- eyed electoral-fraud conspiracy theories ror and anxiety that are the Democrats’ gest that he might through litigation or that have no evidence to support them most effective fundraising tools, and to other legal means contest the results of simply because “it’s out there.” (Who put begin undermining the Trump administra- MARK MAKELA the election—constituted an assault upon it out there, Professor Krugman?) tion before it has taken office. Just as the

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phony indictments of Republican political held true until about 15 minutes after figures such as Tom DeLay, Kay Bailey Pennsylvania was called for Trump. Hutchison, and Rick Perry were never Now the Left, acting in a truly cowardly intended to produce convictions, and just fashion through the campaign of Green- Trump the as the ludicrous fraud case brought by var- party candidate Jill Stein, is seeking ious Democratic state attorneys general recounts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Climate- against ExxonMobil wasn’t intended to Wisconsin—states in which there is nei- rectify the injustices of any actual fraud, ther evidence of election-tampering nor Slayer the Democrats’ recount effort isn’t intend- any serious and credible accusation of it. The environmental Left ed to achieve anything more than the use (As of this writing, only Wisconsin has is having a panic of process as punishment. committed to conduct a recount.) It is not difficult to imagine how Dem - Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is, in the ha - BY OREN CASS ocrats would react if the tables were bitual Clintonian fashion, attempting to turned. After Barack Obama won the play it both ways. Her general counsel, presidency, Republicans held a publicly Marc Elias, says that the campaign does IVEN the emotional reactions announced meeting the subject of which not expect the recounts to change the out- that Donald Trump and climate was—shocking as this may seem—how come but will remain a legal party to liti- G change each trigger separately, to beat the president politically. Con - gation supporting them. they are especially combust ible servative radio host , The Clinton campaign here is being when combined. arguing that Obama intended to do things half-honest: This isn’t about changing the New York Times columnist Paul Krug - that would be bad for the country, said he election. It is about using the electoral man worries that Trump’s election “may hoped Obama failed. This was ordinary system as a weapon of bare-knuckles have killed the planet.” Activist Bill Mc - politics, elected officials and activists of politics, just as the Democrats have Kibben calls Trump’s plan to reverse the one party working to defeat and outma- done with everything from the Senate- Obama climate agenda by approving the neuver elected officials and activists of confirmation process to the National La- Keystone XL pipeline and other fossil-fuel the other party—democracy, in short. bor Relations Board. Lyndon Johnson, the projects, rescinding the Clean Power Plan, But the Democratic party does not “master of the Senate,” never imagined and withdrawing from the Paris climate approve of that sort of democracy. Re - that Republicans would evolve a more agreement “the biggest, most against-the- publicans were accused not only of polit- effective and disciplined legislative cau- odds and most irrevocable bet any presi- ical obstruction but of lack of patriotism, cus than that of the Democrats, and that dent has ever made about anything.” And sedition, and treason. Democratic pundit they would deploy it as well as they have let’s not forget “Zach,” the Democratic Chris Matthews said that Republican both in power and in opposition. When National Committee staffer who reported- attempts to frustrate President Obama’s Senator Ted Kennedy launched the mod- ly stormed out of a post-election meeting outreach to the terrorist regime in Tehran ern era of Senate judicial politics with after saying, “I am going to die from cli- were “seditious.” More than 165,000 his infamous “’s America” mate change.” people signed a petition calling for con- speech, he did not imagine that Re pub - A Trump presidency raises many seri- gressional Republicans to be charged licans one day would be able to stop a ous and reasonable worries. But the fear with treason for fighting the president Democratic Supreme Court nomination that it will cause to kill the on what was, after all, a legal as well as simply by refusing to hear it and running planet, or even poor Zach, should not be a political question. Serious discussion out the clock on a lame-duck president. among them. The most authoritative sci- was given to charging Republican lead- When Barack Obama turned up the pres- entific and economic analyses estimate ers with crimes under the Logan Act, idential nose at Congress and declared his that even if climate change proceeds un - which forbids the conduct of freelance pen and his phone a super-legislature, he mitigated for the next hundred years, the foreign policy. gave scant consideration to the fact that cost will be real but manageable. Even If Trump had lost and there were his successor would also be endowed if President Trump reverses President bloody riots in Provo, there would be with a pen and a phone. Obama’s efforts, the marginal effect on calls to have the DOJ designate the Re- The Democrats should pay some heed future climate change will be minimal publican party a terrorist organization. to the good news: They will, almost cer- because Obama’s efforts were so inconse- When Trump was complaining about tainly, win the presidency again some- quential. rigged elections and suggesting he might day. They should also consider that The Obama administration’s own “So - not accept the results, a CNN analyst Re publicans have gotten awfully good at cial Cost of Carbon” analysis, developed called this “unprecedented” (it wasn’t) wielding the political weapons forged by to demonstrate the enormous cost of and lamented that Trump was attacking Democrats, from the judicial ambush to climate change (and thus the enormous “the legitimacy of the electoral process.” the reconciliation bill. The Democrats benefit of reducing carbon dioxide emis- The New York Times fretted (on its news should really think twice about whether sions), provides a perfect illustration. The pages, not in an opinion piece) that Trump they want to make post-election legal analysis synthesized multiple efforts to had “cast doubt on American democracy.” fights an ordinary part of U.S. presiden- Mrs. Clinton claimed that Trump was tial politics—not least because, unlike Mr. Cass is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute “threatening our democracy” and called Republicans, they’ve never actually won and the author of the new report “Climate Costs in his statement “horrifying.” That position one. Context.”

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quantify in economic terms the projected in infrastructure, public health, and food effects of climate change on everything and water systems will greatly improve from agriculture to public health to sea society’s resilience against potential cli- levels, looking all the way ahead to the mate costs. Against that backdrop, the year 2100. But how much worse off exact cost of climate change is beside the than today did it find the world will be by point. Whether annual cost in 2100 equals century’s end with no efforts to reduce 4 percent of that year’s GDP or 14 percent, greenhouse-gas emissions? the world in 2100 would be vastly wealth- The world will be at least five times ier than it is today. The cost is real, and rep- wealthier. Zach might even live to see it. resents a tragic drain on resources, but it The Obama administration used three sits comfortably within the margin of the economic models to reach this conclusion, costs and benefits associated with many but let’s consider the one with the highest policy choices when compounded for so estimates for future climate costs: the many decades. Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy Once upon a time, “Obey the models” (DICE) model, developed by William was a central demand of the climate move- Nordhaus at Yale University. DICE esti- ment. Faced with actual model output of mates that global GDP in 2100 without costs that fail to support the movement’s climate change would be $510 trillion. apocalyptic rhetoric, the demand is now to That’s 575 percent higher than in 2015. ignore the models and focus instead on The cost of climate change, the model esti- hypothetical worst cases. For instance, mates, will amount to almost 4 percent of Zach has probably been reading the latest GDP in that year. But the remaining GDP outlier papers that warn of sudden col - of $490 trillion is still 550 percent larger lapses in ice sheets leading to the inun - than today’s GDP. dation of coastal cities. But the U.N.’s DICE assumes the average annual Inter govern mental Panel on Climate growth of global GDP will be 2.27 percent Change (IPCC)—the gold-standard Principled if there is no climate change. With climate synthesis of the latest science—estimates giving made change, that rate falls to 2.22 percent; at no that climate change will cause sea levels point does climate change shave even one- to rise by less than two feet this century. easy. tenth of one point off growth. By 2103, the Other scenarios, such as the one used by climate-change-afflicted world surpasses Harvard economist Martin Weitzman to the prosperity of the not-warming 2100. suggest that climate change poses nearly DonorsTrust is the only donor- Zach might take issue with DICE’s infinite risk, emphasize “runaway” cli- advised fund committed to the underlying scientific and economic as- mate change in which positive feedback principles of liberty. sumptions, yet the model produces esti- loops could make the earth’s temperature Many organizations offer donor- mates of cost due to climate change that spiral out of control long after 2100. But advised accounts to simplify your are much higher than those of the PAGE cost forecasts for 2200 or 2300 are diffi- charitable giving. Only DonorsTrust and FUND models, which are also used in cult to credit and almost impossible to was founded to serve conservative “The Social Cost of Carbon” analysis. weigh against the hypothetical state of hu- Certainly, all three models suffer from an man society so many generations hence. and libertarian donors who want to inability to assign economic value to every Regardless of whether one’s expecta- ensure that their commitment to possible form of climate damage. But tions are apocalyptic, the magnitude of liberty is always honored through these models and methodologies are not future climate change is only half the their charitable giving. To learn the choice of partisans hoping to down- story. Of equal importance, attributing how DonorsTrust can simplify and play the issue; they are the ones endorsed blame to the incoming Trump adminis - protect your giving, give us a call or by an Obama administration intent on tration requires some demonstration that visit donorstrust.org/principles. demonstrating large benefits from climate Trump will place the world on a signifi- action. And their forecasts bear no resem- cantly higher trajectory of greenhouse-gas blance to the frequently issued prophecies emissions than another president would of doom. have. But the climate agenda that Trump What the models do show is that the intends to unravel is a failure by that stan- threat of climate change cannot compete dard already. Because President Obama’s with the power of compounding economic policies have achieved no meaningful growth over a century-long timescale. In progress, reversing them cannot have any concrete terms, a GDP increase of 500– significant cost. BUILDING A LEGACY OF LIBERTY 600 percent implies a world in which most Domestically, even the EPA has ac - DT Philanthropic Services of the population is approaching the knowledged that its Clean Power Plan will -- • www.donorstrust.org West’s current standard of living while the not substantially influence future tempera- West advances as well. Transformations tures. The State Department has said the

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same about blocking the Keystone XL the Paris agreement and the futility of pipeline. The purported value of these President Obama’s climate agenda. If policies was to display international “lead- every nation is still just pursuing its ership.” But the global picture is no better. national interest, what has American Two Even with U.S. “leadership,” the commit- “leadership” accomplished? And what ments other countries made under last could be lost if Trump pursued a different Immigration year’s “landmark” Paris agreement look agenda? almost identical to the paths those coun- Those claiming sudden panic would Priorities tries were already on. have us believe the world was so close to Mandate E-Verify and China, for instance, pledged to reach solving this climate-change thing until stop visa overstays “peak” greenhouse-gas emissions “around Donald Trump came along. But in fact, the 2030,” but prior analysis suggested that world was still on square one. BY MARK KRIKORIAN China’s emissions would peak in 2030 That might suggest that the next admin- anyway. India promised only to reduce its istration’s policy will be more important level of emissions per unit of GDP, which than ever. But fears that the next four years RONICALLY, Donald Trump’s marquee was already declining at twice the rate represent “Game Over” for the climate are immigration proposal—a border wall, it pledged to achieve going forward. only the latest repeat of Al Gore’s warning I which Mexico will pay for—is the Pakistan “committed to reduce its emis- in 2006 that the world would reach a part of his immigration platform least sions after reaching peak levels to the point of no return within ten years; former likely to make much difference. This is extent possible,” offering nothing but a IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri’s warning not to say it’s infeasible or even ill definition of the word “peak.” When in 2007 that “if there’s no action before advised. Only about one-third of the bor- Secretary of State John Kerry said, “One 2012, that’s too late”; NASA climate der with Mexico has any kind of fencing, hundred eighty-six nations in the world scientist James Hansen’s warning in 2009 and half of that consists merely of low- came together to submit a plan, all of them that President Obama “has four years to rise vehicle barriers intended to stop reducing their emissions,” those were the save Earth”; and U.N. Foundation presi- truck traffic; anyone can easily climb kinds of non-committal commitments he dent Tim Wirth’s warning in 2012 that over or under them (as I myself have was hawking. Obama’s second term was “the last win- done on many occasions). And the presi- Adding together a lot of nothings pro- dow of opportunity.” Nor is there any evi- dent doesn’t need further authorization duces nothing; therefore the Paris agree- dence a President Hillary Clinton would from Congress to build a physical barrier, ment’s impact is at best a few tenths of a have improved on Obama’s record. although he would eventually need ad - degree Celsius. MIT’s Joint Program on Conversely, while Trump embarrasses ditional funding. the Science and Policy of Global Change, himself and the country by calling cli- As to Mexico providing that funding, for instance, projected warming by 2100 mate change a “hoax,” his climate poli- the campaign said this could happen of 3.9 degrees Celsius without the Paris cies mirror those outlined by his more through higher visa fees or a tax on remit- agreement and 3.7 degrees with it. conventional GOP primary opponents in tances. The latter is long overdue regard- Proponents of the agreement argue that 2016 and by GOP nominee less and already in place in Oklahoma, it will nonetheless unleash clean-energy in 2012. Hyperbolic warnings about which taxes all personal out-of-state wire investment. Instead, investment has plum- Trump that emphasize climate are not transfers but refunds 100 percent of the meted. Over the first three quarters of really about Trump at all—they are about tax to those who file their annual tax re - 2016, global clean-energy investment is Democrats losing to Republicans. Paul turns, thus levying the tax only on illegal down 29 percent relative to 2015. In - Krugman reflected the morning after the aliens. A national version of this fully re - vestment in the third quarter of 2016 was election on “the immense damage Trump fundable payment would be a fitting way 43 percent lower than in the third quarter will surely do, to climate above all.” The of making illegal aliens help pay for im - of 2015, having fallen to its lowest level Atlantic’s Peter Beinart listed climate migration enforcement. since the George W. Bush administration. change as the first “enormous danger” All that said, the problem at the border Bizarrely, some analysts have reversed posed by Trump that might justify the isn’t so much physical as political. While course about the need for U.S. “leader- Electoral College in overriding the elec- incremental improvements are needed in ship” and now argue that if the United tion’s outcome and choosing Clinton. infrastructure, technology, and person- States abandons the Paris agreement, we They should save their extreme rhetoric nel, the Obama administration has ren- will be left behind while the world contin- about Trump for the facets of Trump that dered the long buildup at the border ues with climate action. Alden Meyer, are in fact extreme. through the Clinton and George W. Bush director of policy and strategy at the Union As for Zach and the activists who can administrations moot by simply waving of Concerned Scientists, told The Atlantic, think only of climate? They should be illegal aliens across and letting them stay. “China, Europe, Brazil, India, and other relieved that Trump’s election will prevent This is no exaggeration; Brandon Judd, countries will continue to move ahead them from ever being held accountable for head of the Border Patrol agents’ union, with the climate commitments they made the costly and ineffective policies they testified before Congress last year that under Paris no matter what the next presi- pursued. They might also be relieved to 80 percent of apprehended illegal aliens dent does, because these commitments learn that—even with no climate policy are in their own national interest.” at all—the world will continue to grow Mr. Krikorian is the executive director of the Center That only confirms the weakness of healthier and wealthier. for Immigration Studies.

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are being released into the United States. it mandatory will require an act of Con - settling in the U.S. each day are believed Ending this catch-and-release approach gress. E-Verify is not a silver bullet— to be visa overstayers. to border enforcement (item No. 2 on despite continuous improvements, some This needs to be addressed at both the Trump’s ten-point list) is probably more illegals still slip through, and a signifi - front end and the back end. That is to say, important than the wall, and quicker to cant share (though a minority) of illegals the State Department needs to reduce its implement. work off the books. But any immigration- issuing of “nonimmigrant” (i.e., tempo- The other immigration initiative on the enforcement overhaul must include man- rary) visas to people who are likely to incoming administration’s to-do list that datory nationwide use of E-Verify if it is stay here illegally in the first place, and has drawn a lot of attention is Trump’s to have any chance of success. the Department of Homeland Security pledge to deport 2 to 3 million criminal The second enforcement initiative, needs to implement a check-out system aliens. This represented a move toward policing visas and the visitors who use for foreign visitors so we can know in realism, away from his comments early in the campaign that all illegal aliens would have to be deported; Trump realized that, Making legal status a labor standard as Andrew C. McCarthy has written re - garding immigration violations, “our goal is the most important single thing that is never to extirpate crime problems. . . . Crime problems are managed, not eradi- can be done to reduce the incentive to cated.” immigrate illegally. But deporting criminal aliens neglected under President Obama’s laxity is an es - them, isn’t the arcane issue some may real time who didn’t leave when he was sential part of such management. And the think. The old rule of thumb used to be supposed to. figure of 3 million is probably an under- that 60 percent of the illegal population Our nation’s visa officers abroad are count: Immigration and Customs En- snuck across the border and 40 percent America’s other Border Patrol, but State force ment itself estimated several years overstayed visas, making visa-tracking Department leadership views them more ago that there were 1.9 million deportable important but secondary. New research as travel agents. As with the actual Border aliens with criminal convictions. Add to from the Center for Migration Studies (no Patrol, this is a problem mainly of man- that close to a million people who were relation to my Center for Immigration agement and policy, not resources. The ordered deported but absconded, plus Studies) found the reverse—now close to relevant law clearly says that every appli- other alien criminals who weren’t con- 60 percent of the 1,000 new illegal aliens cant for a temporary visa is to be assumed victed only because they jumped bail or were released by sanctuary cities, and there will be plenty to do with the enforce- It’s Enough to Make You Blue in the Face ment resources now underutilized be - Time to take a stand against overpriced watches with the Stauer Urban Blue. cause of the huge decline in interior ® AND, get a FREE pair of Flyboy Optics Sunglasses as our gift to you! deportations under Obama. t’s absolutely possible to have the There are two parts of any effective Ihighest quality, precision classic immigration-enforcement plan that are timepiece without the high and more important than either the Mexican mighty price tag. 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Attorney General Sessions He will have the task of depoliticizing the Justice Department

BY ANDREW C. M C CARTHY

F Washington’s many swamps, none is more in need of drain- O ing than the Department of Justice. In choosing to nomi- nate Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) as A Border Patrol agent monitors the U.S.–Mexico border near Felicity, Calif. the next attorney general, President-elect Trump is off to a promising start. to be an intended illegal alien until he But even if State wanted to adopt a The institution in which I proudly proves otherwise. In practice, the burden data-driven approach to reducing visa spent nearly 20 years as a prosecutor is of proof is often reversed. Since 9/11, defects, getting data is hard, which is one in crisis, no small thanks to the mockery security screening has been taken more of the chief reasons to push for the com- made of the Justice Department by its seriously, but preventing non-terrorist or pletion of an exit-tracking system for vis- last two leaders: Eric Holder, the first non-national-security-related visa over- itors. The DHS report on overstays is attorney general in American history stays is simply not a priority. In fact, an notable in part because there’s no routine to be held in contempt of Congress earlier version of the Foreign Affairs source of such information; DHS itself (for obstructing the oversight investiga- Manual, the body of regulations that gov- admitted that “the process of matching tion of the “Fast and Furious” fiasco), ern the State Department, included this data to determine overstays has been and his successor, Loretta Lynch, who quote from a Truman-era immigration extremely difficult.” A fully functional be gan her term as the nation’s chief law- commission: exit-tracking system is essential. Con - enforcement officer by endorsing Presi - gress first mandated such a system in dent Obama’s aversion to enforcing the Shutting off the opportunity to come to 1996 and has re-mandated it seven times immigration laws and is ending it with the United States actually is a crushing since. , Obama’s first the farce of her shameful tête-à-tête deprivation to many prospective immi- DHS secretary, was openly disdainful of with Bill Clinton on an Arizona tarmac, grants. Very often it destroys the hopes exit-tracking, and only in the past few necessitating her all-but-formal recusal and aspirations of a lifetime, and it fre- quently operates not only against the years has the process of development from the investigation of Hil la ry Clin - individual immediately but also bears even begun. No new law is needed—only ton’s e-mail scandal—which Lynch’s heavily upon his family in and out of the consistent attention and pressure from subordinates managed none the less to United States. the White House, Congress, and outside whitewash. groups. Of course, attorneys general take their This perspective must change if immi- A comprehensive immigration- cues from the president. Rarely in history gration laws are to be enforced. Every vis- enforcement program would have many has there been one as deeply involved in itor who overstays a visa represents a additional elements: restarting routine the Justice Department’s work as Barack mistake by the State Department. If you enforcement at the workplace and else- Obama. Our Harvard Law School–edu- think of the visa process as a “decision where by canceling Obama’s unilateral cated president fancies himself an expert factory,” the decisions that result in over- edicts that gut the law; reining in sanctu- in constitutional law, and if undermining stays are analogous to products with man- ary cities; pressuring recalcitrant coun- is a form of expertise, I suppose he fits ufacturing defects. And the defect rate is tries to take back their own citizens when the bill. Obama’s real expertise, however, quite high; a long-awaited DHS report deported; ending tax subsidies that effec- is in Saul Alin sky–style community orga- released in January found that more than tively pay illegal aliens to stay here; and nizing, in which the law—or, rather, the half a million foreigners didn’t leave more. vexatious potential of the legal process— when they were supposed to in 2015, and But as important as those measures are, is weaponized in the service of “social even using DHS’s deceptive math (it two tasks must take pride of place: denying justice.”

GETTY inflated the denominator), that represents illegals jobs and making sure visitors go In his administration, the Justice De - / a defect rate of 10,000 parts per million, home. Without significant progress on part ment was politicized to a degree that or 1 percent, which would be unaccept- those two fronts, we cannot prevent illegal would have made and JOHN MOORE ably high in any manufacturing process. immigration. John Mitchell blush. The government’s

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awesome powers of investigation, and ruinous litigation costs for noncompli- Obama DOJ’s outrages has been its in - occasionally prosecution, have been ance, have squeezed schools across the jection of racial discrimination into the wielded against political critics such as country to accommodate the lavatory enforcement of civil-rights laws, in bla- conservative nonprofits and anti-Obama preferences and other demands of “trans- tant violation of the equal-protection filmmaker Dinesh D’Sou za, as well as gender” students. City and municipal principles those laws are supposed to scapegoats such as Na kou la Basseley police departments have been pressured ensure. As department whistleblowers Nakoula (who produced the anti-Muslim to submit to Justice Department monitor- such as J. Christian Adams attest, the video fraudulently blamed by the admin- ing and to adopt Obama-approved polic- civil-rights section frowns on enforce- istration for the Benghazi massacre, in ing practices in order to settle Justice ment in cases that feature white victims which four Americans, including U.S. De part ment lawsuits dubiously alleging and black perpetrators—such as the no - ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were discriminatory practices. States that torious New Black Panther Party case, murdered). The Justice Department not at tempted to enforce immigration or which Justice dismissed even though it only trumped up a supervised-release voter-identification laws could bank on had already prevailed when the Panther infraction (akin to a parole violation) to similarly being sued. Meanwhile, after an defendants lost by default when they imprison Nakoula; it carefully drafted in-depth study, the Government Account - failed to appear in court. Senator Sessions will have his hands full. His background suggests that he is up to the task.

the indictment of Ahmed Abu Kha tal lah, a bil i ty Institute found that the Justice Senator Sessions will have his hands the only terrorist charged in the attack, De part ment diverts millions of settle- full. His background suggests that he is to track the fictional Obama narrative of ment dollars from its “pattern of extortive up to the task. Thirty years ago, his an essentially , spontaneous lawsuits” to fund left-wing “nonprofit nomination by President Reagan to the attack. ‘community organizers’” with out any federal bench was blocked by Senate The department was similarly ac - appro priations from Con gress. Democrats—with the help of Penn syl - commodating of other administration Perhaps the most outrageous of the va nia’s then-Republican senator Arlen storylines. The aforementioned Fast and Specter, who later expressed regret over Furious investigation revealed a hare- the demagogic effort to smear Sessions brained scheme to allow the transfer of as a racist. But before he won election to illegally purchased firearms to criminal the Senate that had spurned him, Sessions gangs, some of them in Mex i co, the bet- was a highly accomplished United States ter to sow a claim that Sec ond Amend - attorney and state attorney general in ment gun rights were to blame for Alabama—prosecuting cases that in ternational violence. De spite the helped desegregate the public schools lack of evidence of criminal and convict the head of the Ku Klux wrongdoing, financial institu- Klan of capital murder. tions were pursued civilly by The matter most urgently in need of Justice Department lawyers to his attention is the restoration of the cement the narrative that predatory Justice Department’s core mission: en - lending, not reckless government hous- forcing American law irrespective of ing policies, was the culprit in the mort- politics, rather than using the law to blud- gage meltdown. Such a dedication of geon Americans into compliance with a law-enforcement power to political ends political agenda. was natural for a department that made For Sessions, that will doubtless be gin progressive activism the touchstone of with enforcement of the immigration its hiring—stacking various units, partic- laws, a clarion call of the Trump presi- ularly in the Civil Rights Division, with dential campaign and a matter on which social-justice warriors who view the U.S. he has been the Senate’s stalwart. “Our Code as an arsenal for achieving societal immigration system is broken” is the transformation. tired treacle of apologists for illegal Towns, cities, and even most states do aliens. But what has broken the system not have the resources to go toe-to-toe is failure to enforce the laws. Expect against the Justice Department, with Sessions to end that dereliction. This will its legions of lawyers and $28 billion not involve anything as draconian as annual budget. The Civil Rights mass deportations. Sen si ble enforcement Di vi sion’s infamous “Dear Col - means targeting both the worst offend- league” letters, providing legal ers—aliens who commit state and fed - ROMAN GENN “guidance” with the implicit threat of Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) eral crimes—and the magnets of illegal

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immigration: employers that hire aliens they’ll pay taxes, so the federal govern- unauthorized to work. ment will come out even. But the argu- Relatedly, a Trump/Sessions Justice ment is a poor fit for our circumstances, Department should restore prosecutorial Infrastructure since we are not in a recession. We are in discretion to what it was in the pre-Obama an economic expansion, and at such times era: a necessary, non-controversial Observations Keynesianism calls for reducing deficits. resource-allocation doctrine to shift fi- Trump’s reason to build may be less And with unemployment already low, nite law-enforcement assets to the most economic than political infrastructure spending is likely to move pressing crime problems. Obama con- already-employed workers from one ac - torted it into a license to refrain from his BY RAMESH PONNURU tivity to another, so there will be no rev- constitutional duty to execute the laws enue windfall. faithfully and an artifice for nullifying Anyway, deficit spending is not expan- laws he did not like—to the point where HERE is, thankfully, less to sionary if it causes monetary policy to he not only refused to enforce immigra- President-elect Donald Trump’s tighten. Since the economic crisis of tion law but granted de facto amnesty and T plan to boost infrastructure 2008–09, the Federal Reserve has tried to work permits to classes of illegal aliens. spending than meets the eye. keep its preferred measure of inflation It will be difficult to weed the radical During the campaign, Hillary Clinton running between 1.5 and 2 percent per activists out of the department. Obama proposed spending $275 billion on roads, year. If it sticks to that target, a building has deeply entrenched the lawyer Left bridges, rail-transit systems, and the like boom cannot do much to stimulate the throughout the civil-service ranks, not over ten years. Trump said we should economy: As soon as inflation threatens just in the relative handful of presidential spend $550 billion: a number he chose to rise above 2, the Fed will raise interest appointments. Sessions will need strong because it was twice hers. Sometimes he rates to bring it back down. The Fed could subordinates to marginalize the acti - has talked about a trillion dollars in in - instead determine that a little extra infla- vists—his appointments of the dep u ty frastructure spending. But a paper from tion is worth tolerating for a little extra attorney general (who runs the depart- Trump’s advisers calls for $137 billion in growth. In that case, however, the infra- ment’s day-to-day operations) and the tax credits, which they hope will call forth structure spending would not be neces- chiefs of the criminal and civil-rights the rest of the trillion dollars. sary: The Fed could raise its inflation divisions will be particularly critical. But Proponents of an infrastructure- target without that spending. there is no reason the Justice Department building boom, who have usually been The third argument for more infrastruc- needs a bursting affirmative-litigation on the left rather than the right, have gen- ture spending is that we need the roads, budget with which to wage war against erally made three arguments for it. A runways, and so on. This case is often states and police departments. Further- fourth may have more validity. overstated. During the campaign, Trump more, Sessions should immediately order The first argument is that with interest echoed a generation of Democratic a review of the department’s guidance rates low, there has never been a better politicians in saying that our bridges letters, consent decrees, and civil com- time to borrow money to invest in infra- are “crumbling.” The Department of plaints—the vehicles by which Obama’s structure. This view rests on a fallacy. It Transpor tation’s count of structurally Justice Department has squeezed states, assumes that low interest rates reduce the deficient bridges has, in contrast, been mu ni ci pal i ties, police departments, costs of an infrastructure project while its continually falling since the early 1990s schools, and other public entities to hew benefits remain constant. But if interest (even as the total number of bridges has to progressive policy preferences that are rates have fallen in part because the coun- risen). But it is surely the case that some not mandated by federal law. Many of try’s potential for economic growth has infrastructure spending could yield bene- these should be eased, narrowed, or with- also fallen—which is the view of many fits down the line that justify the cost. drawn. econ omists—then the assumption is Whether federal resources will go to In Jeff Sessions, Trump has chosen wrong. In that case, the potential econom- the most useful projects is a different an experienced prosecutor and law - ic benefits of a project are also lower. question. Governments tend to spend too maker who firmly grasps the Justice De - The second argument is that a deficit- much building new roads and not enough partment’s place in our federal system. financed infrastructure boom will stimu- maintaining existing ones, for example. His Alabama experience will reinforce late the economy. This argument is based Infrastructure may not be produced cost- Sessions’s respect for state sov er eign ty; on the familiar Keynesian view that in - effectively, either, although Trump and the Justice Department will fi nal ly work creased deficit spending can get an econ- his advisers say he will tackle two of the to support state and local police, not fed- omy out of a slump. It puts money in causes of inefficiency: union pay scales eralize them. Having been a United people’s pockets, they go spend it, which and red tape. States senator for 20 years, Sessions will puts money in other people’s pockets, etc. Japan is a cautionary tale about the appreciate the necessity of oversight by This was the argument that the Obama promise of infrastructure-led develop- the people’s representatives to keep the administration employed to justify its ment. It has spent more than $6 trillion Justice De part ment attuned and respon- stimulus bill in 2009, which included a since 1990 to upgrade its infrastructure. sive to the concerns of Americans— heavy infrastructure component. Trump’s All those tunnels, trains, and airports crime, terrorism, border security, and advisers take this argument far. They say have not resulted in increased economic threats to our liberties. that his tax credits will pay for them- growth. And Japan is not an anomaly. He is an excellent choice. selves: More people will be working, and In a 2014 paper for the International

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Monetary Fund, economist Andrew War - gained from corporate-tax reform to fund investments will not generate profits for ner looked at data from 124 countries over the tax credits. But many Republicans investors. 50 years. He found “very little” evidence prefer to use any windfall revenues to Whether or not infrastructure spending that big pushes for infrastructure invest- finance tax cuts, not infrastructure spend- will help the economy, however, it could ment led to increased long-term growth. ing. If Trump is emphatic enough about do a lot to help Trump. The Fed may offset He pointed to some chronic problems this priority, though, party loyalty may its stimulative impact on the economy as a with such investment, including poor triumph over their policy views. whole, but many particular people would selection of investments (since policy- Democrats are meanwhile split on still benefit. Particular places, too: States makers and construction firms have more Trump’s infrastructure plan. Nancy Pel - that happened to have a lot of infrastructure incentive to see that money is spent than osi has said she will work with him on it. projects deemed worth funding—Wis - to see that it is spent wisely) and poor But some Democrats oppose doing any- consin, perhaps? Pennsylvania?—would Whether or not infrastructure spending will help the economy, it could do a lot to help Trump. information (key actors having no incen- thing to cooperate with him. Others have come out ahead from a new infrastructure- tive to produce realistic forecasts or eco- faulted the design of Trump’s plan. building boom. The total number of jobs nomic analyses, they are not produced). Trump’s tax credits would cover 82 cents in the country might not go up. But a lot of The political prospects of Trump’s of every dollar in costs for private in - the people who got jobs working on infra- infrastructure plan are uncertain. Con- vestors, which they consider much too structure projects would be grateful to the servative Republicans in Congress are generous. Some of those credits would be president who brought it about. The best unenthusiastic about it. Some Trump wasted, they argue, on investments that argument for passing a big infrastructure advisers have discussed allaying their would be made anyway. And as gener- bill, in other words, is a political rather concerns about deficits by using revenue ous as the credits are, some Page worthwhile 1 than an economic one. New from the Cato Institute “It’s refreshing to learn how other Western nations strangle opportunity with insane

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we have when so much is at stake.” In Indiana congressional district famous the end, Banks joined many other Trump for flipping back and forth between skeptics and late deciders in backing the Democrats and Republicans. Between Introducing unconventional GOP nominee—but in a the demands of part-time jobs and sab- post-election interview, he continued to baticals for campaign work, it took JimIndiana’s Banksimpressive new emphasize his discontent: “I was never Banks seven years to earn his diploma. an enthusiastic supporter.” He doesn’t After graduating, Amanda lit out for representative appear to have suffered in any way for Colorado Springs, where she worked for his differences or his doubts. , the conservative BY JOHN J. MILLER The 37-year-old Banks himself is un- group headquartered there. A year later, conventional, at least for a Republican: Banks followed. “I was pursuing her,” he Columbia City, Ind. He grew up in a trailer park. His father says. He worked at Barnes and Noble HE northeast corner of Indiana worked in an auto plant and his mother until Focus on the Family hired him as is Trump country—a big, flat cooked at a nursing home. Their ances- well. They married in 2005. T piece of farmland wrapped tors came from . “I just fin- The couple moved back to Indiana in around Fort Wayne, a Rust Belt ished reading ,” says 2007, settling in Jim’s native Columbia city of a quarter-million people, over- Banks, referring to the best-selling book City. Banks took a job in commercial whelmingly white. It contains Indiana’s by J. D. Vance. “Those are our people.” construction and began his rapid rise in third congressional district, which bor- ders Michigan and Ohio, and where manufacturing jobs make up a greater percentage of the labor force than in any other congressional district in the coun- try: 23.3 percent, according to the Eco - nom ic Policy Institute. Donald Trump cleaned up around here, winning 56 per- cent of the vote in urban Allen County and topping 70 percent in many of the rural areas that surround it. Jim Banks did even better. This fall, as he sought a seat in Congress for the first time, the Republican ran ahead of Trump almost everywhere. In Allen County, which dominates the district, he outpaced Trump by nine points. “I’m overwhelmed and humbled,” he said after ward. Banks benefited from a weak Democratic opponent: Tommy Schrader is a jobless high-school drop out who gets by on disability insurance. Even so, Banks enjoyed an impressive win—big- Jim Banks ger than that of any other third-district Republican in recent memory—and he They went to church, hunted deer, be - GOP politics. First, he became the head probably can hold his new seat for as longed to unions—and mostly voted for of the party in Whitley County. “No body long as he likes. Democrats. else wanted to do it,” he explains. In His showing also suggests that al - Banks did well in school, and in 2008, he was elected to the county coun- though conservatives will support many 1997 he went off to Indiana Uni ver si ty cil. Then a seat opened in the state sen- parts of Trump’s agenda, their political —the first in his family to go to college, ate. Its retiring occupant, who had been survival won’t necessarily demand com- he says. He took courses in political sci- Banks’s boyhood dermatologist, encour- plete fidelity: Banks favors , ence because “they were easy.” Then he aged Banks to run. “I guess it’s a good entitlement reform, and traditional stra - joined the College Re pub li cans, partly thing I had acne issues,” jokes Banks. He tegic alliances, such as NATO. He prais- because he was drawn to the group’s pro- won that race in 2010. es and Ryan’s “Better Way” life beliefs but also because he was inter- One of his supporters was Byron policy plan. Just two weeks before Elec - ested in Amanda Izsak, an attractive Lamm—“my most significant mentor,” tion Day, when I met with Banks at a member of the group. “That’s how I ini- Banks calls him. In the 1990s, Lamm coffee shop in his hometown of Co - tially got involved,” he says, smiling. headed the , the US lumbia City, he admitted that he still They interned for Republican congress- national umbrella group for state-based . hadn’t decided how to vote for president. man John Hostettler, and Banks took time free-market think tanks. Now he lives in JIMBANKS “Trump is extremely flawed,” he said. off school to help Hostettler campaign northeast Indiana, close to Banks. “Jim is . “I’m sad that we’ve set the bar as low as in the “Bloody Eighth,” the southern- intellectually curious,” says Lamm. “He WWW

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always wants to talk about policy. He’s movie.” Yet he wasn’t entirely discon- much more interested in policy and prin- nected from politics. In Afghanistan, he CRITICAL PRAISE FOR ciples than in politics.” met Senator Ben Sasse, the Nebraska JAY NORDLINGER’S As a state senator, Banks participated Republican, who was visiting the troops. in the final stages of ’s They became fast friends. “ governorship. “He was a revolutionary needs more than generic Republicans leader,” Banks says of Daniels. “He who simply ‘vote right,’” says Sasse. would have made an excellent presi- “We need leaders who make the case for dent—he was our best available option.” explaining what Banks pushed for a full repeal of the we’re for—not just what we’re against. state’s death tax and joined the move- Jim gets that.” ment to adopt a right-to-work law, which In Congress, Banks hopes to focus on limits collective bargaining. “About 25 national security. “My experience in the union members picketed on my front service is more recent than any other lawn,” he says. “Back in the day, my member of Congress,” he says. “I father might have been one of them.” He watched us take steps backward in Af - has no regrets: “It was controversial ghan i stan. President Obama is leaving when we did it, but since then I haven’t behind a world far less safe than the one had a single phone call of complaint. We he inherited.” can show a link between the passage of He wants to help rebuild the mili- right-to-work and job growth.” In the tary—but he knows that the last thing wake of right-to-work, Indiana’s total the federal government needs to do is The New, Acclaimed History of the employment has grown by about 10 per- boost its budget. “Our $20 trillion debt Nobel Peace Prize, ‘the Most Famous cent, versus 6.5 percent for the entire is a national-security issue,” he says. and Controversial Prize in the World’ country. Economic growth may be the answer, Around the time Banks went to In di a- and Banks sees free trade as an impor- in The Weekly na po lis as a state senator, he also signed tant contributor. “I grew up in a home Standard: With this “erudite and up for the Navy. “I was getting a little old where ‘NAFTA’ was a dirty word, but insightful history,” Jay Nordlinger “has for it, but I wanted to do it and learned it’s good for Indiana and it’s good for written not only the go-to reference book for the prize and its laureates that the Navy has a direct-commission America,” he says. He supports the but also an important philosophical program,” he says. Banks joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the proposed reflection on the nature of ‘peace’ in Reserves, became a logistics specialist, trade agreement that Trump has loudly modern times.” and found himself shipped off to Af - condemned. ghanistan in 2014 for an eight-month For much of October, Banks thought SCOTT JOHNSON at : tour of duty. “I was prepared to resign that Trump would lose the presidential “. . . a brilliant, thought-provoking, from the legislature,” he says. Under an election. In the last days, though, he enraging, inspirational, fascinating, moving book.” obscure state law, however, lawmakers started to wonder: “On the campaign who are called up on active duty may trail, you could tell something was go ing in her syndicated be temporarily replaced—and Amanda on that was not accurately reported in the column: “Nordlinger is an engaging took over for him. slanted media.” He also decided to vote and wise tour guide.” While in office, she voted for a for Trump, despite their disagreements. religious-freedom bill that would have “The Su preme Court made the differ- National Review, 215 Lexington Avenue, NY, NY 10016 allowed Indiana businesses to opt out of ence for me,” he says. “We have an Send me ______copies of Peace, They Say. My cost is $27.99 each (shipping and handling are included!). I government-mandated insurance that opportunity for a constitutionally mind- enclose total payment of $______. Send to: covers birth control and abortion drugs. ed Supreme Court. I’ve never seen that Name Then-governor Mike Pence signed it into in my lifetime. It could be the most sig- Address law before facing the sharp criticism that nificant outcome of this election.” City State ZIP led him to call for the removal of its core Another significant outcome could e-mail: protections. Amanda voted against the involve Banks himself. A few conserva- phone: overhaul—and her husband says she was tives are already wondering whether he PAYMENT METHOD: right to do so. “Religious liberty is fun- should run for the Senate in 2018, chal- Check enclosed (payable to National Review) damental to everything,” he says. “This lenging incumbent Democrat Joe Don - Bill my MasterCard Visa may be the great social issue of our nelly, whose liberalism could make him day—it could be the cause of my gener- an easy target. “You can never say never, Acct. No.

ation.” but it’s not on my mind currently,” says Expir. Date Banks watched this controversy unfold Banks. “Right now, I’m excited to go to from Kabul. “There I was, serving in Washington and be part of an opportu - Signature the Navy but working in a landlocked nity for conservatives to advance an country, ordering around MRAPs and agenda.” (NY State residents must add sales tax. For foreign orders, add $15, to cover additional shipping.) Humvees,” he says. “It felt like I was in a He aims to do it for a long time.

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Trumpocalypse The world has not ended, yet

BY DAVID FRENCH

HERE is a whiff of apocalypse in the air. The election fellow citizens are, in fact, more racist than they had imagined. of Donald Trump has sent millions of progressives And so the fury is unleashed on each and every Trump support- T into a spiral of rage and pain that goes beyond any er. Those liberal voices calling for calm and reflection (there other post-election tantrum in modern American are some) are too often drowned out by those who now see all history. As with every recent presidential election, the Left of red America as the great, howling wilderness of hate. described its opponent in the direst terms possible during the Recounting a small but telling incident, David Marcus, a campaign. But this time, they seem to have believed their own writer for , describes a recent shopping trip to a rhetoric. This time, they believe, the American people really Whole Foods–style grocery store in Brooklyn. Like many did elect a man capable of destroying the republic. stores, it plays music over the intercom, and one of the songs on Examples of moral panic are everywhere. In Portland and the rotation was “Sweet Home Alabama,” by legendary south- Oakland, angry young radicals rioted. In schools across the ern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd. The song got an immediate reac- land, students walked out of class to chant “Not my president.” tion as a woman wearing a “Love Trumps Hate” button angrily Liberal outlets reported on a handful of disturbing, hateful declared the song “inappropriate” and demanded that it be incidents targeting religious or ethnic minorities as evidence turned off. Some loving liberals can’t stop hating the South. that we now live in “Trump’s America.” (By this logic, do the To be fair, leftists are hardly the only Americans to lose per- Left’s post-election riots represent “Obama’s America”?) spective. Hillary Clinton’s victory was so widely assumed that College administrators are writing emotional letters to their liberals had no time to prepare for the pain of an electoral loss. So students and opening “safe spaces” to those in need of a good it hit them all at once, during a roughly three-hour span beginning cry. The Left is whipping itself into a frenzy of fear. at 10:00 P.M. Eastern on Election Night. Conservatives, by con- But it’s a fear tinged with hate. The only way, they argue, trast, had months to ponder the implications of a Clinton win, that such a man could have been elected is if millions of their and their rhetoric was sometimes equally unhinged. ROMAN GENN

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This was the “Flight 93 election,” according to one (anony- escaped the checks and balances limiting the presidency’s mous) writer in a widely shared essay: “Charge the cockpit, power. The American system blocks and constrains a presi- or you die.” Every conservative writer who expressed doubt dent at every turn—as Obama found to his immense and last- about Trump was exposed to the same argument: If Hillary ing frustration. wins, America is over. One prominent Christian conservative Already we see the checks at work on the Trump agenda. His writer declared in that if Hillary won, most outlandish and dangerous promises are being rolled back, the chance for a Supreme Court that “values the Constitution” one by one, as the American system works its magic. His would be gone “forever.” promise to torture terrorists and order the military to commit All of this rhetoric—from both sides—is the product of a war crimes has run headlong into American law and military massive failure in civics education combined with equally resistance. Not one of his potential secretaries of defense massive portions of self-interest. Politicians seeking power would implement such an order, and a leading candidate, the (and activists raising funds) have for so long escalated their revered General James Mattis, has caused Trump to reconsider rhetoric that it’s understandable when citizens respond with the his stance on . same level of hysteria. A nation that has grown ignorant of its Trump’s misguided “Muslim ban” is slowly morphing as own constitutional system—and even of its own recent past— well. First he wanted to temporarily ban all Muslims from no longer understands how the American republic works. entering the country; then he (more sensibly) wanted to ban Take the Obama legacy, for example. For all of the hyper- immigration from jihadist conflict zones. Now there is dis- ventilation over his alleged “fundamental transformation” of cussion of re-implementing a modest Bush- and Obama-era the country, it turns out that a Republican president and a system of registering and tracking visitors from specific, Republican Congress can together undo virtually his entire listed nations. That’s hardly the stuff of dystopian night- legal and statutory legacy in the first three months of a new mares. administration. Obama’s executive orders can be undone with Even on Trump’s signature issue, immigration, the evolu- the stroke of a pen, and his most onerous regulations can be tion has begun. Sweeping statements made early in his cam- rolled back wholesale. Obama’s signal statutory achievement, paign about removing every illegal immigrant from the country Panic over Hillary was just as unjustified as the new panic over Trump. Neither president could have ruled by decree.

Obamacare, can be repealed and replaced if Congress has the have turned into a plan to focus on deporting criminal aliens. will and can craft a viable alternative. He didn’t have the Regarding the fate of the majority of illegal aliens who are opportunity even to fundamentally alter the balance of power otherwise law-abiding, Trump continues to be stubbornly on the Supreme Court. vague. Oh, and the big, beautiful wall is now going to be part It’s also time to revisit the alleged “failure” of the Re - fence, and exactly no one will be surprised if even the fence publicans in Congress—the failure that triggered so much becomes “virtual” in particularly rugged and desolate areas anger against the GOP establishment. But for congressional along the American border. Republicans’ stubborn resistance, Obama would enjoy the Donald Trump can’t escape judicial review, he can’t escape kind of legacy that would be truly hard to undo. A cap-and- Congress, and he can’t escape mid-term elections in less than trade system for carbon emissions would have transformed our two years. Even his control of the federal bureaucracy is limit- economy. The employment non-discrimination act would have ed, both by the labyrinth of pre-existing regulations and by the metastasized the culture war, bringing the conflict between same legal reality that thwarted Obama. Every contentious gay rights and religious liberty to every nook and cranny of new regulation will be answered with a lawsuit, often filed by American life. Card-check legislation could have helped revi- an ambitious state attorney general in a jurisdiction hand- talize highly partisan Democratic unions. Gun-control legisla- picked for maximum chances of legal success. tion would have limited the Second Amendment rights of Ironically enough, while these countervailing forces will Americans from coast to coast. None of these things happened, frustrate Trump’s most ambitious supporters—the ones who in large part because even the most “squishy” Republican want him to “drain the swamp” or “burn it all down”—they moderates locked arms with the Tea Party to block Obama’s may actually end up prolonging his hold on power by render- most ambitious reforms. ing him far less radical and less “dangerous” than leftist rhetoric suggests. In most areas of law and policy, he simply can’t do his worst. He will talk loudly but wield a rather small HAT’S the lesson here? The Founders built our stick. national system from the ground up to resist exact- But that won’t stop the Left from continuing to claim that the ly the kind of “revolution” or “transformation” sky is falling. This is a movement, after all, that uses words thatW politicians promise. Panic over Hillary was just as unjus- such as “Jim Crow” to describe a world in which one baker out tified as the new panic over Trump. Neither president could of ten thousand refuses to bake a cake for a gay wedding. It have ruled by decree. Neither president could have entirely screams about “voter suppression” and raises the specter of the

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post-Reconstruction South when a state merely requires voters he chooses to restrict trade, and if he bungles trade negotia- to show their identification at a polling place. What will they tions, he can inflict new pain on the very working-class do when Trump adds the first few miles to existing border Americans he now claims to represent. walls? How will they respond when he stops admitting Syrian In foreign policy, Trump has great authority to act on issues refugees? about which most Americans are indifferent. How many are Moreover, it’s a movement that seems intent on hating its concerned about how aggressively we should deter Russia enemies, on driving millions of persuadable Americans in the Baltics? How many think even for a moment about directly into the Donald’s waiting arms. If Trump’s policies America’s defense posture in South Korea? Yes, there are are reasonable—and by that I mean within the spectrum of many Americans who want the U.S. to “rip up” the Iran deal, conventional conservative or populist politics—progressives but what comes next? will shred what’s left of their credibility in middle America. Recent American history is littered with disasters born It’s simply not racist to appoint originalist judges, protect our from consensus or indifference. Americans broadly agreed borders from potential jihadist infiltration, or deport criminal with our escalations in Vietnam, then broadly agreed on our illegal aliens. None of those policies are extreme. None of decision to leave South Vietnam to its fate. Similarly, there them justify hysterics. was bipartisan consensus to invade Iraq followed by biparti- As pundits left and right noted before the election, the san, war-weary apathy when Obama pulled out our troops in Left’s tendency to “cry ‘Wolf’” helped create Trump’s candi- 2011. We make our worst mistakes when we make them dacy. Call people racist, sexist homophobes long enough and together. they stop believing or caring what their critics have to say. But Moreover, there is real danger in continued domestic over - the hard Left is now actually screaming “Wolf”—redoubling reaction to entirely manageable and normal events. Citizens its rhetoric and increasing its volume. How will voters re - can spit venom at one another for only so long before a nation’s spond when even the most watered-down Trump reforms are social fabric starts to unravel. Recent polls have shown that greeted with howls of outrage and a barrage of insults against upwards of 80 percent of Americans now believe that our his supporters? nation is growing more deeply divided. Americans’ perception Why can’t the Democrats acknowledge the crucial fact that many Trump voters viewed him as the lesser of two evils?

I live and work in a county in Tennessee that gave 68 percent of race relations is dangerously negative. Our distaste for one of its vote to Trump. While there are racists in my town (and to another is growing so strong that our political polarization is varying degrees in every town), it’s not a town of racists. It’s a mostly net-negative—we dislike the other side more than we great place to raise a family, full of people who are kind and like our own. Given his scorched-earth approach to his politi- generous, especially to strangers. Southern hospitality is real. cal opponents, it could be that Trump’s worst role will be as But this is also a town that struggles. The economic boom polarizer-in-chief, a man who does more than his fair share to that’s benefited so many of America’s urban enclaves has degrade our political culture. largely passed us by. Hillary Clinton had no answers for my It’s time to take a deep breath, renew our civic education, town. Hillary Clinton had contempt for its values, and her sup- and admire the wisdom of the Founders. Trump can’t destroy porters had contempt for its people. How could they possibly America. He can’t bring back Jim Crow. There won’t be jack- vote for a woman like that? How is it possibly their moral fail- booted fascists in American streets. Nor—to the disappoint- ing that between two unfit candidates they chose the one who ment of his supporters—will he “drain the swamp,” “burn it at least paid lip service to fighting for them and their values? down,” or shake up Washington apart from the non-stop scan- The exit polls showed that 61 percent of voters believed she dals (real and imagined) that will follow him everywhere he was dishonest, and while voters were certainly aware of goes. The city has absorbed more than its fair share of ambi- Trump’s faults (they viewed him as less honest than Hillary), tious outsiders. Like every president, he has a chance to do the he received 82 percent of the vote from those Americans who nation some lasting good—if he can show some wisdom and first and foremost wanted “change.” Why can’t the Democrats perhaps enjoy a bit of good luck. acknowledge the crucial fact that many Trump voters viewed In the contest between two unfit candidates, the Republican him as the lesser of two evils? won. It’s understandable that his Democratic opponents would be appalled, but their panic is unjustified. There is only one American president who had a real chance to rule like a king, O argue that Trump is far less dangerous than Dem - and his name was George Washington—not Donald Trump. ocrats fear—and less powerful than his base hopes—is Washington refused his chance and helped set in motion an not to argue that Trump is benign. As is often the case, enduring political system that resists the excesses of any one ourT nation risks making its worst mistakes in those few areas man. The president may be the most important man in politics, where there is either consensus or apathy. Take trade, for but the presidency is far from the most important institution in example. Trump can draw on widespread left-wing support if American life.

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what Fidel Castro and his forces had done in Cuba. The FARC was, and is, proudly Communist. But along the way these guer- Getting to rillas became the kings of cocaine. They are narco-terrorists as well as Communist revolutionaries. For more than 50 years, they have terrorized Colombia: killing, kidnapping, enslaving, Peace in etc. A catalogue of their crimes would make sensational reading, which I will forgo. More than 220,000 people have been killed, and more than 8 million displaced, in this ...conflict? What should we call it? Colombia The term “civil war” is used around the world, including by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. But it is radioactive here in A controversial year Colombia. To many people—not all of them hard-liners, by any means—it is offensive and obnoxious. Uribe is one such person. Colombia is the oldest democracy BY JAY NORDLINGER in Latin America, he says, and groups such as the FARC operate against this democratic Colombia. The FARC has no more than 6,000 members; Colombia has 50 million people. This long, Bogotá long conflict has been a menacing of society by terrorists. A LVARO URIBE has the air of a head of state, the air of a friend of mine in Bogotá says, “Civil war? A classic one would man around whom things revolve. And, to a degree, be the Spanish Civil War, in the 1930s: brother against brother, Á that is still true. Uribe is a senator in the Colombian neighbor against neighbor. A society split down the middle. congress. But from 2002 to 2010, he was president of Colombia is something else. We are talking about hit-and-run the country. Those were eventful years. The year 2016 has been attacks by narco-terrorists.” another one. And Uribe has been in the thick of it all. In the late 1990s, the governments of Colombia and the For the past four years, the Colombian government, headed by United States joined forces against them in what was known President Juan Santos, has engaged in a peace process with the as “Plan Colombia.” On the Colombian side was President Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. This group is known Andrés Pastrana and on the American side President Bill by its Spanish acronym, FARC. On August 24, the two sides Clinton. They tried various measures: military, diplomatic, and announced an agreement. That agreement was then put to a social. Pastrana engaged in a peace process with the FARC, national plebiscite. The No campaign—the campaign urging which went nowhere. The “narcos” grew in power and wealth. the rejection of the agreement—was led by Uribe. The Yes By 2002, the FARC had something like 20,000 members. campaign, naturally, was led by President Santos. On October 2, According to some, they were on the verge of taking the whole the vote took place: and Yes lost by an extremely narrow margin, country. 50.2 percent to 49.8 percent. It was in this atmosphere that Uribe was elected president. He The day of the voting was a Sunday. The next Friday morning, vowed to defeat the FARC and give Colombians their society the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo made an announce- back. He began a policy he called “democratic security,” which ment: The Nobel Peace Prize would go to Santos, for his efforts. insisted on the —the law of the state, not of the The president remarked, “I accept the award with great humility narcos, who were a law unto themselves. The policy also insist- and as an assignment to keep working for peace.” ed that the Colombian state had the right and the responsibility Álvaro Uribe, too, is a worker for peace. But his ideas are to govern every inch of the country. No more would swaths, quite different from those of Santos, his successor. large and small, be ceded to the terrorists. Uribe should have been an American politician: He was born Uribe was willing to negotiate with them, and he did so—but on the Fourth of July (1952). His hometown is Medellín, which on strict conditions. For one thing, they would have to cease became notorious around the world for a drug cartel. I ask Uribe, their attacks before talks could begin. In the FARC, he found no one morning in the capital, Bogotá, “Did you ever think that partner. your city would be infamous? What did that feel like?” He So he took the fight to them, unrelentingly. In this, he had a answers that he was particularly happy to help Medellín during full partner in Washington, President George W. Bush. Uribe is his time as president. In only his third week in office, he dis- grateful to Bush, saying, “He trusted me,” through good days patched a military battalion to a certain section of the city: and bad. Crucially, Bush agreed to Uribe’s request that the Commune 13. The people in this area, says Uribe, had “lived in United States sell Colombia “smart weapons,” to deploy against captivity, because of all kinds of narco-terrorist groups.” He rid the FARC and other narcos. “This was the tipping point for us,” the commune of the groups—which indeed must have given him says Uribe. “It changed the equation against terrorist groups.” I special satisfaction. think of what Churchill said in early 1941: “Give us the tools, For a brief time in 1982, he was mayor of Medellín. The next and we will finish the job.” year, his father, Alberto, was murdered by the FARC. Uribe’s Uribe, with Bush, did not quite finish the job, in that the FARC career-long fight against the FARC is national, humane, and was still alive by the time he left office in 2010. But the FARC patriotic, of course. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that was greatly weakened, greatly diminished. They were in such a it is personal, too. reduced state that they would soon be willing to talk disband- The FARC was founded in 1964, when Communist groups ment. George W. Bush left office in January 2009. In his last were proliferating in Latin America: They wanted to emulate week, he hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around the

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Álvaro Uribe in September 2014 in New York City

necks of three heads of state, three close allies: Tony Blair of Norway served as a “guarantor” of the peace process between Britain, John Howard of Australia, and Uribe. Colombia and the FARC. There was one other guarantor, Cuba. And the negotiations soon moved to the Cuban capital, Havana, where they would remain. In addition to the two guarantors, UCCEEDING Uribe as president was Juan Santos, who each party had a “facilitating” or “accompanying” country. The belongs to an old, distinguished political family in this Santos government’s was Chile; the FARC’s, unsurprisingly, country. Until recently, they owned a major newspaper, was Venezuela. SEl Tiempo. The president’s great-uncle, Eduardo Santos, was Here is a question that I have, for everyone I meet in Bogotá: himself president, from 1938 to 1942. The incumbent’s cousin, Why sit down with these brutes and killers in the first place? Francisco Santos, was vice president under Uribe. And the Is the FARC simply too difficult to defeat militarily, even incumbent himself was a defense minister under Uribe. though they are now a relatively small band? As Mary Anastasia “Was he a good defense minister?” I ask the ex-president. He O’Grady, the expert on Latin America at the Wall Street Journal, makes clear, but does not explicitly say, that Santos was not wrote recently, President Santos has “treated the FARC as the especially relevant. Uribe was his own defense minister. He also moral equivalent of the democracy.” From what I can tell, the recounts several occasions when, in his telling, Santos was hes- consensus is this: The cost of finishing off the FARC in the field itant, and boldness was called for. In any event, Santos was is just too high—too high in blood and treasure. If you can finish elected president on an Uribist platform. He vowed to continue them off with a treaty, do it. But make the treaty as workable and the policies that had decimated the FARC. palatable as possible. Once he assumed office, something curious happened: Santos One great advantage of the FARC is geography. Colombia is had a change of mind and heart. Either that or long-submerged chockablock with mountain ranges and jungles—areas to which views were at last on display. Before, Santos was hard-line, and terror groups can retreat, and in which they can hide. The terrain now he was soft. Uribe points out that Santos had been an ardent is their friend, not the government’s. Also, the FARC has plenty critic of Hugo Chávez, the strongman next door in Venezuela. of money, through their trafficking in cocaine. Moreover, they But, as president, Santos drew Chávez close, calling him “my have the support of Venezuela and other chavista governments new best friend.” Santos was unwilling to criticize Chávez, says in South America. Uribe, because Santos was determined to negotiate with the It may be astounding that a group as small as the FARC can FARC, and Chávez was their backer and ally. Their patron, in menace and, to a degree, hold hostage an entire large, proud, effect. To the FARC, Santos made one concession after another. democratic country—but there you have it. In a big one, he stopped spraying the coca fields, allowing those The FARC is now led by Rodrigo Londoño, who has been fields to resurge. Santos’s counterpart in the peace process. Londoño’s nom de He began his negotiations with the FARC in Oslo—home of guerre is Timoleón Jiménez, and his nickname is Timochenko. many a mediation. Think of the Oslo Accords between the He has been a FARC terrorist and trafficker since he was a Israelis and the Palestinians. It is in Oslo, of course, that the teenager. He was trained in the and Cuba. His Nobel Peace Prize is given. After the signing of the first Oslo nickname comes from the famous Soviet military commander,

GETTY IMAGESAccord, FOR CONCORDIA SUMMIT the Norwegian committee gave the prize to three of the Marshal Semyon Timoshenko. / principals: the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin; the Israeli Let me pause for a historical tidbit: Stalin’s son Vasily foreign minister, Shimon Peres; and the Palestinian leader, married several women, one of whom was a daughter of Timo - LEIGH VOGEL Yasser Arafat. shenko. And here is a tidbit of greater moment: The U.S. State

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Department has a bounty on the head of the FARC’s What if the Yes campaign had succeeded? Would the Nobel Timochenko—$5 million, to be specific. Whether this bounty committee have divided the prize between Santos and his coun- will be dropped, in the event of the FARC’s disbandment, terpart, Timochenko? There is speculation about that in Bogotá. remains to be seen. If the committee had done this, Colombians in all likelihood In Bogotá, there is much talk about the president’s mindset, would have reacted in fury. As it was, many on the left through- and in particular his ego. It is natural to want the Nobel Peace out the world were furious that Timochenko was denied half Prize—many have in the past, and will in the future. It is also of the prize. natural for a head of state such as Santos to want to be a star in In the wake of the prize, Santos was clearly determined to the world: a future secretary-general of the United Nations, per- have a new agreement—something to brandish—by December haps. Did Santos tailor his peace calendar to the Nobel calendar? 10, when the Nobel ceremony takes place. His negotiators Many think this is obvious. The prize is announced in October— worked ’round the clock in Havana, with the FARC team. And the first or second Friday of the month—and bestowed on by November 12 they had a deal: a . This one was December 10 (the date of Alfred Nobel’s death). Santos may “much better,” said the government’s chief negotiator, Hum- well have thought, “After the plebiscite will come a victory berto de la Calle. Evidently, the original agreement was not the lap—a victory lap in Oslo.” last chance after all. President Santos himself said, “Looking back, the result of the plebiscite gave us a chance to come together, and I want to express gratitude once again for the S you have heard, Santos and the FARC announced their positive disposition and the goodwill of all stakeholders,” par - agreement on August 24. It was 297 pages long. There ticularly those who voted No. would be five and a half weeks of debate before the The new deal was 310 pages—up from 297—and included Aplebiscite on October 2. The Yes campaign said, “This is your some 50 modifications. These were fairly modest in scope. last and best chance. If you don’t take this chance for peace, Notably, the FARC made a commitment to declare and surren- there will not be another.” The No campaign said, “That is not der its assets, from which victims could be paid compensation. true. There can and must be a better agreement. This agreement Yet the FARC would not budge on the question of amnesty, even gives away too much to the FARC.” Like what? Like amnesty, for its most flagrant criminals. Santos and Timochenko signed and seats in Congress, and money. the deal on November 24 in Bogotá’s Teatro Colón, with a pen The Yes campaign had many advantages. In his discussion fashioned from the shell of a bullet. with me, Álvaro Uribe goes through them. The government got Uribe and his allies are opposed—opposed to the new deal as to frame the question—the question that the public would vote to the old. They say it does not represent a national agreement: on. Also, the Yes campaign vastly outspent the No campaign. the kind of agreement that Colombians in general can endorse or And had many more television ads than the No campaign. swallow. So, will Uribe lead the new No campaign? There is not Furthermore, the Santos government was able to pressure to be a campaign, or a second plebiscite. One was enough, for Colombian governors and mayors, saying, “If you want money the Santos government. This new agreement will be ratified by from Bogotá, you will have to support Yes.” Congress, where Santos has the votes. Then there was the international environment, says Uribe: The powers-that-be were solidly for Yes and against No. “Do you understand how difficult this campaign was for us?” asks HE editors of the New York Times have dubbed Uribe a Uribe. “Against President Obama? Against the pope? Against “spoiler.” But “we are not enemies of peace,” says the the United Nations? Against the European Union? Against man himself. “We are concerned for the future of our Spain? Do you understand how important Spain is for our coun- democracy.”T He also says that a bad deal with the FARC sets a tries, as our oldest brother?” bad precedent. Other terrorist groups in Colombia—for exam- Finally, there was this: A vote for a peace agreement is very ple, the National Liberation Army (ELN)—will want the same attractive. The idea of peace, after decades of conflict, is extreme- deal, giving them little incentive to curb their outrages. ly attractive. That is why the No campaign took care to argue that In the course of our conversation, Uribe speaks movingly a vote against the agreement was not a vote against peace but a about drugs and their effects on people. “Self-control is one def- vote against a particular agreement—a bad one, a deal that was inition of humanity. Narcotics create alienation, and when peo- unnecessarily and outrageously lenient toward the FARC. ple become alienated, they lose their freedom to exercise By that narrow margin, in a shock vote, the public agreed. self-control. The laws of self-control are the laws of freedom. When I ask people why the No campaign won, they cite the sin Therefore, narcotics are the enemies of human freedom.” of amnesty and other issues—but ultimately they say, “People I ask him about the Medal of Freedom, from George W. Bush. simply hate the FARC. People who voted Yes, people who voted Where does it live? “In my house, very close to Medellín.” He No—we all hate the FARC, who have caused us so much pain remembers when Bush told him he would receive the award. It and misery.” was at a meeting in Peru in November 2008. “Uribe, mi amigo,” Once the voters rejected the agreement, it was reasonable to said Bush—“necesito que hablemos.” (“Uribe, my friend—we conclude that the Nobel committee would not turn to Colombia have to talk.”) He gave Uribe the news. “I almost fainted,” says but elsewhere: Santos did not get his victory, and therefore Uribe. Santos may have the Nobel Peace Prize, but Uribe has would not get his victory lap. But the committee indeed turned that medal. “It reminds me of my duties,” he says, “my duties to to Colombia—to Santos—saying that it wished to “encourage the rule of law.” He also notes this: “For my fellow Colombians all those who are striving to achieve peace, reconciliation, and who have supported us, and for my family, the Medal of justice in Colombia.” Freedom is the top award.”

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS That’s a Lot of Broken Eggs

IDEL is finally inert. Many of the online eulogies He was a hero because university professors made as were heartfelt, as in “I hope your heart felt much as doctors, and thus they felt great solidarity when awful right before you saw the maw of hell the rice ration was increased to six grains a week. F open wide.” He was a hero because the people of Cuba were not Others, from the progressive sensibilities, were more subjected to the pointless despair of choosing one brand nuanced. Castro was praised for standing up to the U.S., of soap over another in the store, and could use this lib- and never mind that he clambered to the top of a mountain erated mental energy to pursue a life in the arts, like the of skulls to shake his impotent fist; it was the thought that famous poet José Bosquiano, author of the beloved counted. He had stood firm against capitalism, and that’s epics I Need Not Bend to Your Bourgeois Concept of not only a get-out-of-jail-free card, it’s a put-everyone- Offensive Aromas and The Imperialist’s Sheets Are else-in-jail card. Play it for five decades, tattered and Always White. worn; marginalize the dark-skinned people and shove He was a hero because the revolution was Romantic. gays into camps; and it’s all good as long as you say Why, look at that famous image of Che, head tilted up “Profit is evil” while lighting your cigars with 20-dollar as he scrutinized the horizon for the dawning of a new bills. day. I’ve always thought he was looking up at a nice Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who went to Cuba as a penthouse apartment, and after the picture was taken he very young child and now runs Canada as a somewhat said, “Execute the occupants and move my stuff in by older child, issued a much-mocked statement of respect noon.” and love. If it had gone on longer, it probably would have He was a hero because he understood that to make an continued in this vein: omelet, you have to nationalize the chicken industry, “I will always remember the feel of his fuzzy beard implement Soviet egg-production techniques that consist against my tender cheek when I was just a boy, the rough of making the chickens watch films of Stalin inspecting smell of tobacco, the twinkle in his eye when he gave me farms, imprison the chicken-farm managers who report a some candy he called ‘People’s Socialist Confection #23.’ 65 percent drop in output, divert the reduced production It was just a pebble dipped in sugar, and I broke a tooth. to the military, erect enormous posters that blare the But my family saw firsthand the wonders of Cuba’s phrase SOCIALISMOOHUEVOS so people will inform on world-famous dental-care system, which restored my neighbors who have eggs. Counterrevolutionaries! molar with good, honest cement.” Hoarders of the Yanqui Ovals! Green candidate Jill Stein tweeted out—oh, who cares. Then, if you still want to make that omelet, you have to In her mind the people protesting a pipeline in North break 5,000 eggs to instill party loyalty in all the other Dakota are the spiritual heirs of dear Fidel, because they incubating eggs, and then you have to attempt to make an are Standing Up to a global system—unlike those freshly omelet, fail, and purge and execute the top 10 percent of minted traitors in Venezuela, who are facing a U.S.- all the chefs on the island. Final step: Print a week’s worth imposed toilet-paper shortage but continue counter - of stories in Granma about increased egg production, revolutionary activities such as eating and excreting. A complete with pictures of Fidel enjoying an omelet. Run true global citizen would find a way to cork himself it with a story about blacks in America facing firehoses for the duration. Granted, no corks are available, but that for trying to get an Egg McMuffin at a segregated has nothing to do with the nationalization of the cork- McDonald’s. importing sector of the economy. End result? Some chefs escape to America and set up an Anyway. Many of the eulogies suffered from a curious omelet restaurant, and progressives try a genuine Cuban- dissonance. Whom do we still mourn? JFK, cut down by style omelet and say, “This is awesome, I can’t wait to go a time-traveling Trump supporter. Whom did JFK want to to Cuba for the real thing.” overthrow? Fidel. What did everyone accuse Ronald On the most recent NATIONAL REVIEW cruise, the ship Reagan of wanting? Nuclear war. What did Fidel actually stopped by Cuba. Not at Cuba, just near Cuba. For an hour want? Nuclear war. What’s really bad for you? Sugar and or so the mountainous coastline was off the starboard tobacco. What did Cuba produce? Right. If you wanted to side—deserted, empty, devoid of habitation. conjure up the ultimate Progressive Demon, it would be a I’ll bet there were more eggs on the ship than there were man in military garb selling smokes and sweets, driving a in the entire city of Havana. Well, sometimes if you want ’59 Merc belching blue exhaust, shouting “Kill Kennedy to make an omelet, you have to force people to do it. But with atomic weapons.” they’ll spit in the cheese. But he was a hero because there weren’t any Anyway. Thanks for dying, Fidel. Somewhere at the McDonald’s in Havana. CIA some new guy’s getting a citation. All these years, all those attempts—never thought of an exploding bedpan. Mr. Lileks at www.lileks.com. Nice work, kid.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

almost three hours late for her Ge nius to clarify the details of her premium Bar appointment and demanded to cable package. Customer Care Repre - be accommodated immediately, sentative, who feared for the safety of TO: CHAPPAQUA FINE FOOD & GROCERY insisting that she was very busy and the subscriber and anyone else in the FROM: A CONCERNED CUSTOMER had run into the mall from the park- home, remained on the line while ing lot “under fire” with “gunshots all directing county mental-health and You guys need to do better! I stood in around.” Her assigned service tech - elder-care units to the residence. the center of your store for over ONE nician, Tyler, was already helping HOUR with my grocery list and at NO another customer, so Michelle, the Chappaqua Police Blotter TIME did anyone take the list from duty manager, informed customer Incident Report my hands and collect my grocery that she would be slotted in on an “if possible” basis. Customer then items in a grocery cart. Furthermore, Police were called at 14:33 to the cor- became furious and demanded to the young man in the freezer section ner of Shipman Lane and Church speak with the store manager, who was EXTREMELY RUDE when I Street, following a 911 call from the was at the time on dinner break and selected the ice cream I wished to operator of a black sedan-type vehi- down by the Panda Express on the enjoy and began eating it. Also, it is cle. Operator states that he was idling other end of the mall. When informed inconsiderate to allow others into your on Church Street while waiting for of this, customer and her companion store when former high-ranking feder- a parking space to become available (nurse? elder-service manager?) al officials who won the popular vote in front of Great Western Steak & marched out of the store and towards wish to grocery shop. Hoagie when an elderly woman en - the Panda Express. Moments later tered the vehicle utilizing the right they returned with the manager and TSA Newark Airport rear passenger door and then demand- elderly customer was escorted to the ADVISORY BULLETIN TO ed to be taken to a series of locations. Genius Bar table where she proceed- ALL TSA PERSONNEL Operator states that these locations ed to demand that we “take the cloud seemed to be entirely fabricated and off” of her iPad. Customer further Please be on the lookout for an elderly bore no relationship to any real lo - demanded that all other customers female traveler trying to come through cation in the area. When operator be held behind a pair of portable the security checkpoint without mak- informed the intruder that a mistake stanchions that were carried by her ing the proper adjustments to her carry- had been made, operator states that companion (nurse? elder-service man - on luggage and personal bag. Elderly intruder became irate and began using ager?) and required several Genius traveler is often accompanied by a foul language and threatened to Bar personnel to help her with the younger olive-toned companion, and have operator fired from his job as “iPad sync thingy that keeps going is EXTREMELY RUDE and DIFFI- an of ficial driver for the U.S. State around” and insisted that she didn’t CULT when trying to make it through Department. Intruder then began want the “whole Internet” on her the checkpoints. BE ADVISED she pounding her fists on the back of the iPhone. will be carrying water and other pro- car seat and shouting in louder tones hibited liquids and gels, she will invari- TIME WARNER CABLE to be obeyed, to be driven wherever ably trigger the metal-detection unit, she wanted to go. Operator states that and if the past is any guide, she will Subscriber Service Call Record when he explained to the clearly dis- probably attempt to make a run for the turbed elderly woman that this was a gate. TSA agents and operatives are Time of Call: 05:22 private car, that he was the owner- advised to be ready with pepper spray Subject of Call: “Fake news” channels operator of the vehicle, the intruder and/or Taser equipment. grew silent and repeated over and Irate call from elderly female cable over again, “Wait. Who am I here?” Apple Store Chappaqua subscriber who insisted that “fake” At which point patrolmen arrived and Genius Bar Customer Service news was being broadcast through her took charge of the situation. Suspect Ticket Number 459A television cable and that “Russians” was taken into custody and booked on were behind it all. Elderly customer disorderly conduct, trespassing, and Customer, an elderly female, arrived became verbally abusive when asked assault.

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Euphemism is another. But whether we or light? Bergen rattles them off: “glis- A Course on make “Jesus Christ” into “Cheese and ten,” “glitter,” “gleam,” “glow,” “glare,” Rice,” or obscure the odd vowel in “glint,” “glower,” “glaucoma,” “glitzy,” “f*ck” or “sh*t,” there’s something a and so on. Cursing little silly going on. Nobody’s thrown Profanity seems to play by grammati- off the scent by these little acts of cal rules all its own, too, and Bergen DANIEL FOSTER censorship, just as nobody was fooled puzzles about a few of them. One funny by my “douche” move above. Euphe- case is what grammarians have termed misms are, in Adams’s words, like a “squatitives,” which are the profane “see-through fig leaf.” or semi-profane cousins of a more But that doesn’t mean that function respectable family of words and phrases always trumps form when it comes called “minimizers.” So, “You don’t to profane words. Benjamin Bergen, know a thing about economics” be - head of the Language and Cognition comes “You don’t know squat about Laboratory at UC San Diego and author economics” becomes “You don’t know of What the F, spends a good deal of jack sh*t about economics” and so on. time showing how the material facts The odd part is that only squatitive about bad words—the way they look sentences mean the same thing when and sound, the syntactic and grammati- negated: “You know jack sh*t about cal rules they make and break, the little economics” expresses the very same parts of the brain they light up on the proposition as “You don’t know jack MRI—tell us a lot. sh*t about economics.” Early on, Bergen has a neat chapter The more fundamental the obscenity, on the phonics of profanity in which the deeper the grammatical peculiarities we learn there is something to the “four- go. For instance, serious linguistic letter word” thing, particularly in En - scholarship has been done on why In Praise of Profanity, by Michael Adams glish. Curse words in English tend “Screw you!” and synonymous phrases (Oxford, 272 pp., $17.95) overwhelmingly to be “closed monosyl- seem to function without subjects. Here, lables,” one-syllable words that end in “you” is the object of the screwing, but What the F: What Swearing Reveals about hard, terminal sounds instead of bare, “I” is not the implied subject. To wit: “I Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves , open-ended vowels or sibilants. There screw you!” sounds like the kind of epi- by Benjamin Bergen (Basic, are a few exceptions—such words as thet an angry foreigner in a tracksuit 288 pp., $27.99) “gay,” “Jew,” and “pussy.” Notice that might hurl at a blackjack table, but it’s these words, and virtually every other not what native speakers of English N In Praise of Profanity, Michael exception to the closed-monosyllable mean when they omit the “I.” Adams argues plausibly that the rule one can think of, have something Bergen flirts with but never quite hits threshold for what counts as pro- else in common: They all have alterna- the correct answer on why “Screw fane (or obscene, or vulgar, all tive, clean meanings. (This seems such you!” seems to work just fine. It’s that Irelated but not synonymous concepts) is an obvious explanation for their ab - the forefather of all such “maledic- vague and radically context-dependent. errancy that it’s a little odd Bergen tions”—and the reason we call it I can write “douche bag” out, for in - doesn’t identify it himself. It’s left to “cursing” or “swearing” (of oaths, you stance, and the editors of NATIONAL the clever reader to surmise.) see)—is the hearty “Goddam you,” REVIEW can’t do anything about it. The So why are most profane English the subject of which is easily elided in fact that this is a book review about words—95 percent of them, according the abbreviation “Damn you.” “Screw dirty words provides plenty of evidence to Bergen—closed monosyllables? you” maintains a veneer of grammatical that I mean “douche bag” in the inde- He thinks it’s mostly an accident. Lan - credibility from the elided subject, cent sense, to be sure—but that evi- guages evolve like organisms, and early “God,” so long as we don’t linger too dence is circumstantial. And, besides, I inputs can get locked into positive feed- long on it. took out a little extra insurance by using back loops. Bergen conjectures that as Bergen doesn’t give a full account of a space between “douche” and “bag,” modern English took shape, a few early the grammar of such simple profane even though no less a paragon of deco- profanities happened to share this pho- exclamations as “F*ck” or “Oh, sh*t!” rum than Microsoft’s autocorrect algo- netic feature, and they served as a sort either. It’s actually one of the few theo- rithm would have fully recognized the of magnetic pole for other bad words. retical areas in which Adams’s book has term as a compound word. This happens to polite language, too. the best of him. Working from soci - Homography is one way to slip cuss- Did you know that fully 39 percent of ologist Erving Goffman’s Forms of words into polite political periodicals. words starting with “gl” relate to vision Talk, Adams argues that the meaning

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of such interjections “isn’t lexical or syn- cipally in a structure called the basal pens in a parenthetical about the reap- tactic . . . but pragmatic”: These ex - ganglia, which is similar to the struc- propriation of its gendered counterpart, pletives are functionally equivalent to tures responsible for producing the “bitch,” in hip-hop culture. “Ouch!”—belonging to primitive auto- emotive grunts and squeals of monkeys. Bergen’s treatment of slurs is slight matic speech. They are, per Adams, “no It is a malfunction of the basal ganglia and tentative compared with his cover- more linguistic . . . than the cries of that results in the “coprolalia” of some age of other subject areas, but he’s animals, communication but not lan- sufferers of Tourette’s syndrome, for Kanye West compared with Adams. guage.” More on that later. instance. Consider that Bergen’s first chapter is To say that Bergen’s book is usually The two books share a conviction that titled “Holy, F*cking, Sh*t, N*gg*r” more interesting and insightful than profanity is a constitutive category of sans asterisks. It hits like a freight train, Adams’s is a bit unfair. There are de - language that performs a necessary producing first an uncontrollable guf- lights in In Praise of Profanity—for expressive function. You can’t extin- faw and then a pupil-dilating scandal. example, a fun discussion of the potty- guish it any more than you could banish But the formulation is actually much mouth gangsters of The Sopranos that prepositions. But Adams’s book is the more innocent, a shorthand for the in - name-checks Seneca, and a socio-history more political. Adams spends a great genious theory that all languages are of the “sh*thouse poetry” that adorns deal of time aligning himself against sortable into four categories according the stalls of American public restrooms. linguistic scolds and anti-profanity to whether their most taboo words are Adams, a well-regarded lexicographer speech police who, it seems to me, sim- blasphemous, copulative, scatological, of slang at Indiana University, is charm- ply don’t exist. Before Trump, it would or bigoted. Spanish, for instance, is a ingly formalist, a close reader and an have seemed a bit much to suggest, as sex language, while the French, for insightful one, refreshingly uncon- Adams does at various points, that there all their fallenness, consider sacrile- cerned with torturing texts with grave is some close-fought battle between gious speech most offensive. German, Nobody gives a sh*t about “f*ck” anymore, but the taboos against epithets directed at certain protected groups grow stronger by the minute.

ideology. But his book lacks thematic foulmouthed hepcats and the darned infamously, is a language obsessed with unity and sometimes feels like an ami- righteous forces of decency. After “scheisse.” And English, Bergen ar - able and well-read series of asides, a Trump, it’s downright ridiculous. Tip - gues, is among the relatively few lan- free-form-jazz odyssey of scatology. per Gore lost her war on profanity in guages where the biggest taboos are Bergen, by contrast, is a cognitive a rout somewhere around 1994, and slurs. scientist as well as a linguist, and the Trump just salted the earth. There’s a small but clever body of most interesting stuff in either book, Adams admits a version of this. At research about the effects of slurs. to this reader, is the insight scientific one point he says profanity is on the Homosexuals subliminally exposed to research gives us into how profanity fits verge of losing its edge, and that we’re anti-gay slurs were, in a later test, into various human projects. on the cultural precipice of an “Age of slightly quicker to identify positive Consider what profanity teaches Profanity.” He welcomes the new order, stereotypes with homosexuals than us about our brains. Bergen writes: of course. But given how uptight he they were to recognize negative ones. “Even when patients suffer from near - apparently thinks the holdouts are, and Another experiment showed that a sim- ly complete loss of language—so- how much he wishes they’d all realize ple shift of pronouns results in an even called global aphasia—they often retain how salubrious cussing can be, his near- greater divergence of positive and neg- interjections and profanity. For in - total silence on one entire continent of ative association. Test subjects who stance, a recently documented patient taboo speech is almost comically con- read an article containing the phrase could only produce six words: ‘well,’ spicuous. “You’re queer” subsequently rated that ‘yea,’ ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘goddamnit,’ and I speak, of course, of the slur. term twice as offensive as another ‘sh*t.’” Adams understands the link between group who read a similar article, but How do the sorts of words this patient linguistic transgression and group soli- with “I’m queer” substituted. Thus the retained clue us in to what might sep - darity: He writes that profanity in these folksy PC idea that “words can hurt” arate such words from the rest of lan- intimate relationships “matters a lot but reappropriation is empowering has guage? It turns out there is good precisely because it doesn’t.” He ac - some basis in empirics. evi dence that “automatic speech”— knowledges linguistic reappropriation But it nevertheless remains striking which is impulsive, reactive, and as a tool of resistance among the subal- that in this, the purported dawn of the emotive—is controlled by different tern or oppressed. But then he seems to Age of Profanity, the slur should be neu rological circuitry altogether. These hit the glass in the fishbowl. Only once, such a hearty holdout. Nobody gives a circuits exist in much more primitive by my lights, does he let himself say sh*t about “f*ck” anymore, but the neighborhoods inside the brain, prin - the N-word (no hard “r”), and it hap- taboos against epithets directed at

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certain protected groups grow stronger leaned out of a first-floor window shout- by the minute. Enfant ing, “Go away!” There seemed to be noth- Perhaps the fact that Adams doesn’t ing for it. We duly turned around and left. write on this taboo is a sign of the A year or two later, I received a letter in taboo’s power. And Bergen points out Terrible his handwriting but oddly signed in the that there is virtually no research on the name of Laura, his wife, inviting me to a DAVID PRYCE-JONES long-term consequences of slurs on white-tie dance. A military band played either the individual or the collective “The Post Horn Gallop,” music for brass psyche, among either the groups pro- to which it is impossible to dance. The scribed from using them or the groups moment midnight struck, Waugh clapped “taking them back.” his hands and dismissed everybody. But I can think of one recent cultural His son Auberon, the name usually phenomenon that might give us a clue. shortened to Bron, was making his way in The apex of prestige television for literary London as I was. Doing military the educated white bourgeoisie is still service, he had been shot and almost HBO’s The Wire. It’s a treasure trove killed in an accident, and was in a hospital of hard-boiled dialogue in African- near our house. We felt sorry for him, and American English (AAE, as the lin- while my father was visiting one day, guists call it). But though we love Evelyn arrived, glared at Bron, and said, it—and I don’t except myself here— Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited, by Philip Eade “It is a soldier’s duty to die for his coun- there’s much of it we’re not supposed (Holt, 432 pp., $32) try.” Bron’s wedding reception was in to repeat. When Brother Mouzone, the House of Lords. Waugh was standing the show’s cold-blooded but bookish IRST, a confession. When apart in a courtyard and wielding an Farrakhanist hitman, tells his proté - Evelyn Waugh published Sword antique ear trumpet as though to dissoci- gés that “the most dangerous thing in of Honour, as fine a post-war ate himself from the proceedings. “Who America” is a “n*gga with a library novel as any in the English lan- are you?” he asked me, and when I iden- card,” it crackles and pops. I’ve repeated Fguage, I wrote a crass review of it. It was tified myself, he said in tones of commis- the line among friends. But saying it in 1965; I was then in my late twenties and eration, “I used to know your poor dear the wrong context would be quite costly. should have known better. Accusing father.” Likewise, as many white kids as Waugh of being “a social Philistine” In word and deed, then, I had seen black memorize the verses of Kanye unable to imagine the lives of those out- enough of Evelyn Waugh to believe the West and Jay-Z, just as I memorized the side his own class, I was enlisting in the worst of him. No novelist since Dickens verses of Outkast and the Notorious chorus of fashionable leftists making it had been quite so much in the news. No B.I.G. in the mid ’90s. But the prohibi- their business to dismiss him as a prepos- Conservative, no high Tory in the En - tion on cultural appropriation—and the terous reactionary. Waugh liked to tease gland of that day, was anything like so heightening awareness of appropria- my father, Alan Pryce-Jones, a writer and defiant. In a television interview that left a tion’s obverse, “code switching” (the a Catholic convert like him, as “the man permanent image, John Freeman, a typ - necessity felt by minorities to oscillate Jones.” When my piece appeared, he let it ical socialist grandee, extracted from between patois and “proper” English)— be known that “the boy Jones” had given Waugh the admission that he hated the puts us in a weird linguistic spot. offense. Mea culpa. medium of television. Freeman then The result is a cumbersome etiquette My first meeting with Waugh had asked Waugh why he had accepted ap - in which both majority and minority been at a lunch party in the highly respect - pearing for this interview. “For the same cultures are forced to tell bald-faced able Randolph Hotel in Oxford. Teresa reason that you do. I need the money,” linguistic lies to each other (“I never Waugh, his eldest daughter, had invited a Waugh said, celebrating victory in this use that word!”) and perform shock dozen of her university contemporaries. battle of wits by puffing clouds of cigar and horror when others slip up. And In the course of the meal, someone said smoke into Freeman’s face. Hilaire Bel - the eager consumption of minority cul- that the person we were speaking about loc, a fellow Catholic, had a Biblical ture by whites—something a saner age had children and therefore wasn’t homo- explanation for Waugh’s rage and disap- might consider an act of empathy or sexual. “Nonsense, buggers have babies,” pointment: “He has the devil in him.” even homage—is increasingly regarded said Waugh in a voice that stopped con- Praise for his writing and huge sales of as suspect at best. versation throughout the dining room. his books made no apparent difference. There is an old sense of “vulgar,” “Lord Beauchamp had six, Oscar had Graham Greene, another fellow Catholic which refers to the manner of the com- two, and even little Loulou Harcourt and his obvious rival, paid tribute to him mon people, and a new one, which is managed one.” (I could place Lord Beau - as the best novelist of their generation. synonymous with “profane.” Could the champ and Oscar Wilde but little Loulou Anthony Powell measured his reputation new Age of Profanity be one in which was an unknown quantity to me.) That against Waugh’s. But the Century of the the only truly vulgar words left can be same term, Teresa further invited me for Common Man had destroyed the tradi- heard by the vulgar, but never repeated the weekend at Combe Florey, the Waugh tional aristocratic order whose memorial by them? And to what extent is that house in Somerset. As we drove up to the is Brideshead Revisited. Waugh was evi- bullsh*t? door after three hours on the road, Waugh dently speaking for himself when Pinfold,

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part of British soldiers with him on active service disillusion Guy. When Mrs. Stitch (modeled on the then virtually vice-regal Lady Diana Cooper) saves a favorite of ficer from disgrace by dropping the evidence that might incriminate him in her waste-paper basket, Waugh seals his artistry with the sentence, “Her eyes were one immense sea, full of flying galleys.” Eade might have made more of Waugh’s wartime rows with such com- manders as Lord Lovat and Fitzroy Maclean, who frustrated his wish for action, and with such colleagues as Ran - dolph Churchill, the prime minister’s overbearing son: His reaction to such men was far from snobbish. Nor is justice done to Waugh’s heartfelt efforts to care for a group of displaced and persecuted Yugoslav Jews. On the other hand, Eade tracked down Waugh’s batman, who had good memories of him and thought he Evelyn Waugh had looked after his men properly: hardly class-conscious on Waugh’s part. one of his fictional alter egos, singled out and be at the mercy of “the awfulness of Make-believe clouded over the final “plastics, Picasso, sun bathing, and jazz” my character.” His fusty middle-class years. The fictional alter ego Pinfold suf- as distressing details of a time out of joint. background, his equally dim education, fered from delusions similar to Waugh’s Christopher Sykes, a member of a his travels to very foreign parts, his quar- own. Waugh’s real-life cure, “a cocktail traditional Catholic family, was a long - relling, his tendency to boredom and of chloral and bromide,” as Eade calls standing friend of Waugh’s and his first depression, his satirical sense that most it, was more harmful than the voices in non-academic biographer. Taking Waugh people are rather ridiculous when they his head, and left a reek around him as at face value, he was surprisingly sancti- take themselves seriously are essential though the gas main were leaking. Whe - monious for a man of the world, some- components of his mythic way of coming ther out of fear of the consequences or times so disapproving that he came close to terms with the world. recognition that none of them was able to to breaking off his friendship with him. Nobody before Eade has devoted so exert any influence, the family humored By the time two subsequent biographers, much attention to Waugh’s sex life. At him. It is a psychological curiosity that Martin Stannard and Selina Hastings, Oxford, Waugh wrote in his diary, he had Bron was to adopt every one of his fa - had finished with him, the caricature of been “quite incredibly depraved morally.” ther’s views, pursing ancient feuds in Waugh was well and truly established: Almost certainly, he was referring to identical prose. The phrase “the boy unloving son, indifferent husband, brutal several apparently happy homosexual Jones” had a long run. father for whom children were “defective affairs that preceded his very unhappy Early in 1966, I was at the wedding adults,” snobbish social climber, rabid and short first marriage. Among women of friends in the quite small chapel of misanthropist, bilious conservative—in who re fused his advances were Lady Wardour Castle, a Catholic stronghold every which way a monster. Diana Cooper, Lady Mosley, and the since the English Civil War. Waugh made Philip Eade gives the impression of well-named Baby Jungmann, one of the his entry. He was in a tailcoat. Supported approaching Waugh on tiptoes, so cau- Vile Bodies of the period. So subservient by Christopher Sykes on one side and tious are his opinions. All the same, his was Laura as a wife that he described her wielding the old ear trumpet on the new biography deconstructs the monster as “a white mouse.” His visits to Winnie other, he walked to one of the pews at and reattaches the man to the human race. in Mrs. Meyrick’s swanky brothel are a the front. Not long before, the Second The central proposition is that Waugh was surprise to me. Vatican Council had decreed that Latin extracting from life the make-believe that The power of Sword of Honour lies was redundant. The wedding ceremony he needed for literature. Artists create in Waugh’s mythologizing of himself accordingly was held in English. Up came myths; great artists create great myths, through the character of Guy Crouchback, the ear trumpet, and Waugh boomed and and never mind who might get hurt in the the truest of his fictional alter egos. At the kept on booming with the same intention process. He did not deceive himself; he outbreak of the war, Hitler and Stalin had to be heard as once before in the dining recognized that “I am by nature a bully signed the pact that clarified the coming room of the Randolph Hotel, “What’s GETTY

/ and a scold” and condemned “my own struggle for civilization: “The enemy at going on?” and “What language is this?” odious, if unromantic sins.” Proposing last was plain in view, huge and hateful. and “I can’t understand a thing.” These marriage to Laura, he warned that she . . . It was the in arms.” The were his epitaphs. A few weeks later, he KURT HUTTON would be taking on “an elderly buffoon” cowardice and abuse of privilege on the had a stroke and died.

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hound who was adjusting well after his and it imposes more than the usual late- Voice of blinding, or a terrier who was of course career exhaustion. J. M. Coetzee, Wole never going to be the same after every Soyinka, Breyten Breytenbach, Chinua bone in his body had been broken but Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Sindiwe Ma - Anger who needed a kind home for just that gona, and Ben Okri ceased in the prime reason. of life (if not before) to speak eloquently SARAH RUDEN Back in the U.S. more than ten years (if at all) for Africa. later, clutching Ngugi’s book, I was sud- Cohorts of this literature’s popular denly sick of the endlessness of Africa, of readership, especially when compared vengeful violence that seems to be the with readers of some authors from other one inexhaustible natural resource and parts of the developing world (Gabriel looks likely to survive all foreign and García Márquez and Khaled Hosseini indigenous tyranny and plunder and to be come to mind), are enervated in paral- there, merely redirected and redecorated, lel—those cohorts that existed in the first long after the rest of the world has en - place, that is. Readers have their desires, tered into something new. too, albeit milder ones; but these may be As a writer, I’m particularly bitter about more implacable for being mild: “We the way Africa burns literary careers; want at least some help in deciding what and I can’t even get away with just a de - to think about Africa. We want Heart of batable, contingent political bitterness. I Darkness or Cry, the Beloved Country, Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer’s Awakening, know the consuming fire is one of love as but for the present era. Is that too much by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (New Press, well as of hatred. African writers love, in to ask?” 240 pp., $25.95) their bones, not only their highly commu- Yes, say the (after a certain time) nal but constantly disrupted cultures, but automatic-looking literary prizes, rev - N his latest of many books, the also the land itself, with its sweeping, erent critical treatment, and academic expatriate Kenyan writer Ngugi intricate, fragile beauty. And it’s white honors and positions for African writers. wa Thiong’o tells of an episode as well as black authors who suffer. For (With my access to an excellent academ- from the colonial era in which he nearly all, there’s a disfiguring ideologi- ic library, it is, shockingly, easier to get Igrew up. Kamawe Musunge, the “house- cal and aesthetic whipsaw as they try to books about Ngugi than to get Ngugi’s boy” of the British-born Peter Poole, was keep themselves attached (somehow) to actual books.) Students, who are conse- riding a bicycle when Poole’s dogs at - what is more and more barrenly chaotic; quently made to consider these writers, tacked him. The African tried to defend or there’s an insistent but steadily less tend to react dishonestly or mulishly at himself with a rock, and the settler shot convincing repetition of the various dis- best; at worst, there are additions to the him dead. So far, so routine; British East coveries of youth; or there’s a wordy drift popular rage against political correct- Africa was perhaps the most arrogantly into global or interpersonal or abstract ness, a rage that is a sort of pencil etch- run of Britain’s overseas possessions, issues that are relatively uninteresting. It ing of Africa’s carved-in, high-relief and this was 1959, during the extra- is no continent for old men (or women), hatreds. repressive late stage of the Mau Mau If we want to do anything about this rebellion. But for the first and only time American rage, then we should acknowl- in the country’s history, a white person MOVING edge one source of it, which is the forcing was hanged (albeit to hysterical white of people into roles they are no longer protest) for the murder of a black one. Worn chairs with no seats cluster where willing to play. In an episode of the “Two men died. Two dogs survived,” A mirror gives back a dull stare sitcom My Name Is Earl, an African- Ngugi remarks. At memories of other times. American character named Liberty At this point in the book, my uneasi- pressures the redneck Randy into mas- ness broke out into exasperation. No, not As leather books are losing rhymes, querading as her Klanish pro-wrestling even dogs come out okay in the long run They tumble from a cardboard box opponent. He gets whammed as he in Africa. In the early years of this centu- Where fossils hide, within grey rocks. recites from a script about, inter alia, con- ry, the most pitiful of reports reaching spiring to make standardized tests “rake- South Africa from Zimbabwe were about The dust of loss hangs on lost coats ially” biased; the audience howls against dogs—not only the enormous, often vi - As little dolls and tiny boats him. Randy is upset, but it’s Liberty’s cious guard dogs, but ordinary pets left Fall over yellow velvet chairs story, her show, her enterprise. Outside to farm invaders when the white owners the ring, his protests of regard for black fled for their lives. Cross-border rescue As each of us packs up, prepares people only confirm that he must respect initiatives would offer for adoption a To leave this place where he has sat, her judgment and go along with her Enduring frost and dark, and bat. scheme to depict an inexorable racism he Sarah Ruden is the author of the forthcoming book A stack of plates, cracked Staffordshire, can’t verify or comprehend, let alone be The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty Is doomed. House sold, the end is here. fairly accused of taking part in. and Meaning in the Bible and the translator of I felt a little like Randy while I was a forthcoming edition of Augustine’s Confessions. —SALLY COOK reading Birth of a Dream Weaver. With

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other books, Ngugi has made me love one does not, but it has two pieces about him. Dreams in a Time of War (2010) is Drops from golf: They bookend the chapter called about his boyhood triumph over poverty, “Issues and Essays.” The first piece deals violence, oppression, and his family’s with President Obama and his golf habit; near-dissolution. His novels, such as A Niagara the second one—the closing one— Petals of Blood (1977) and Wizard of the describes a visit to Augusta National. Crow (2006), drive home the violent, JAY NORDLINGER That first collection, Here, There & tender, and absurdist paradoxes of Everywhere, had a chapter called “Per - Af rica. Birth of a Dream Weaver, an EDITOR’S NOTE: National Review Books sonal.” It was about things pertaining to account (with many digressions) of his is now publishing Digging In: Fur - . . . well, me, the author. Digging In has university years and beginnings as a ther Collected Writings of Jay Nord - no “Personal.” Yet it has plenty of person- writer, is different, often descending ling er. To order the book, use the form al. Let me amplify this by telling a couple into pure indictments of the West. For on page 27 of this issue. Or go to of stories. example, though a younger Ngugi took store.nationalreview.com. What follows Several years ago, I was writing a his- meaningful stands against female cir- is a version of the book’s preface. tory of the Nobel Peace Prize (Peace, cumcision, he now makes out that for They Say). A friend of mine—a fellow Africans the practice was always inte- N my years as a writer and editor, writer—said, “I hope there will be plenty gral and understandable, whereas the I’ve titled thousands of pieces— of you in it. I mean, I hope that it will have opposition from whites was nothing but and posts and a few books. I your personal touches. I hope you will let brutal and ignorant. have a rule, at least in my head: No something of yourself come through.” Ngugi is especially hostile to Chris - Ititles that are subject to multiple interpre- That was very nice, but I said, “No way. tianity. He indicts John Newton—the tations. I think titles ought to be straight- This is a work of history. I’m writing neu- repentant ex-slaver who wrote the lyrics forward and clear in their meaning. I trally, objectively, and impersonally. But to “Amazing Grace” and joined the don’t like those cleverish titles that I’m afraid I will slip through, regardless.” British abolitionists—as a partial hyp- “work” on several “levels.” I then told my friend a story about ocrite over a long period; which he was. And here I’ve gone and titled a collec- another friend—Patrice Fowler, who was But that angle would be impressive only tion “Digging In.” My “rule” is not so from the South, and an excellent by contrast with an early, single-minded, much a rule as a guideline, southern cook. One day, she African-led anti-slavery movement. or inclination, or prefer- served a meal, and I said, “Pat, is Such bias is good only for jagged trains ence. this southern?” She thought for of thought, unconvincing tributes, and “Digging In” can be un - a second and said, “No. But by unprocessed scenes. For instance, a re - derstood at least three ways. the time I get through with spected former teacher confronts Ngugi You dig in to life, or to a book something, it’s southern.” about his sweeping jargon and the car- (maybe particularly a collec- Here, There & Every where toonish, bullying priest he has made a tion of diverse pieces). Think was published in 2007. All the major character in a play. “Are you say- of attacking a feast. Also, “dig- pieces in Digging In were ing that we oppressed you at Alliance ging in” means getting below written after that time. The [High School]?” asks the teacher. “No, the surface of something. And it first chapter is “People”—and no,” responds Ngugi; he seems to have means increasing one’s resolve. you never run out of them, as a journalist. meant that “no.” But he adds, to the You’re not weakening or retreating. On People supply endless and rich materi - present-day reader: “I felt like scream- the contrary, you’re digging in. al. Bill Buckley used to quote someone ing.” Right: The teacher couldn’t grasp, There is a saying in politics: “If you’re (whose name has been forgotten, at least any more than I do, all that the boy went explaining, you’re losing.” Well, I am by me): “Ninety-nine out of every hun- through, and how limited the West’s help explaining, but I hope I’m not losing, dred people are interesting, and so is the was. This inner scream of frustration, as too badly. hundredth, for he is the exception.” among Arab youth today, is sympathetic. My previous collection was called I’ll give you an example of how these But the judgment that has to emerge in “Here, There & Everywhere.” For this “people” pieces come about. In 2013, I the long run, if we are to have any com- new one, I thought of “Here, There & attended the funeral of a friend in Salz- mon future, is that there’s something bet- Everywhere, Volume II.” But that takes burg. A man, the head of the local Jewish ter than the scream. Here is an African up a lot of acreage on a cover, especially community, spoke. Someone said to song quoted in the earlier Dreams in a when you consider the subtitle (“Further me, “You know, that man is 100 years Time of War: Collected Writings of Jay Nordlinger”). old. And he survived practically every You don’t want to exhaust the reader concentration camp you can name. You Great Love I saw there before he begins. should talk to him.” I agreed. Among women and children The first collection had eight chapters; After “People” is a chapter called When a morsel was picked from the ground the present one has six. The first one had “America—Some Snapshots.” Consider It was shared equally among us a chapter on politics, whereas this one North Dakota. It was experiencing an oil Pray to him fervently does not. And yet politics infiltrates the boom, and it was a fascinating story: an Beseech him fervently book (not wrongly, I trust). The first col- economic story, yes, and a political one— He is the God eternal. lection had a whole chapter on golf. This but mainly a human one. A thousand

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Beyoncé lip-synchs the national anthem during President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, January 21, 2013.

human stories came out of that patch. In an editorial, the New York Times In this book, there are no photos. But I As there are snapshots from around described the Supreme Court’s Dem - hope you’ll be able to picture people and America, there are snapshots from around ocratic appointees as “moderate liberals”; places regardless. There are no audio the world, in “Abroad.” The opening the Republican appointees were “con - recordings either. But I hope you’ll hear piece of that chapter is about the Iraq War. servatives” (no modifier). This led to an the voices! I heard them, as I re-read Re-reading that piece, almost a decade essay by me about labels, political or the pieces, and that was easy because later, I thought, “How that war has been otherwise. I had heard them in the first place. mythologized, in the years since its end- The concluding chapter is “Music,” I must confess, I laughed out loud ing. How quickly things get twisted, to and it has essays, profiles, etc. Some of on revisiting my piece about Angela suit different ‘narratives.’” Anyway, read- these pieces, like others in this volume, Gheorghiu, the Romanian soprano: ers can ponder this for themselves, and were sparked by events. Take Obama’s “Prima Donna Assoluta.” Aside from her reach their own conclusions. second inauguration (please). Beyoncé singing, she is known for her diva antics Of course, that is true at every turn, lip-synched the national anthem—which and episodes. Let me quote from that right? led to “Faking It and Making It.” piece: In the 1960s and ’70s, there was a TV Preparing this collection, I of course re- program called “Issues and Answers.” I read the pieces. One notices one’s tics, There are books of opera anecdotes, and think that must have been in the back of which is annoying. And there is repetition I suggest to this soprano that books in the my mind when I titled the next chap - in this book, which I have done little or future will have whole chapters devoted to her. Yes, she says, “and I’m not fin- ter “Issues and Essays.” In this one, you nothing to obviate. I tell a story about ished yet!” I ask her about one of my have subjects from A to Z. Most of the , twice, in two different pieces. favorite stories: Did she really demand essays, I think, were prompted by current When it comes around the second time, hair and makeup for a radio interview? events—or at least by something I read or maybe you can pretend you haven’t heard No, she says: There was a photo-shoot observed, which tickled my brain, and it? the same day as the radio interview. Too made my fingers itch (to write). I will give Then there is WFB, William F. Buckley bad, I say, it’s such a good story. Yes, she just one example. Jr., whom I quote over and over again. says, “but I have lots of others.” In December 2013, a pro-Obama group Obviously, I have a bad case of Buckley - put out an ad promoting Obamacare. It itis. I quoted him just a minute ago, didn’t As I remember, she brightened when pictured a young man in pajamas, who I? More precisely, I quoted his quoting she said “but I have lots of others.” I think became known as “.” People of somebody else. I do more of the same she was trying to cheer me up. And she on the conservative side of the aisle said in Digging In. knew she was dishing up a good quote. that he simply “looked liberal.” So, I Friends and colleagues sometimes She is smart as hell. wrote an essay on looking like your poli- say, “Practically anything can remind I’d better stop now, and let you get on tics: looking liberal, or looking conserva- Jay of something Bill said or did.” Which with the book (“dig in”). Early in my tive. Can you judge a book by its cover? reminds me of the time he . . . career, I worried about where my next (Sometimes yes, sometimes no.) This is my defense, to the extent I need piece would come from. I soon stopped My next chapter consists of essays one: I spent chunks of my life reading worrying. There are zillions more pieces too—but they are all on one subject, lan- him. Thoroughly. I spent a lot of time than there is time to write them. The guage. I figured they should have their with him (personally). He just seeped in. world gives a journalist a Niagara. There GETTY

/ own chapter. Linguistic issues come up Plus, he’s quotable, isn’t he? As there is is horror, there is joy. There’s a lot in constantly, at least in my mind. My fin- something Biblical or Shakespearean between. gers frequently itch to write about lan- for every occasion, there is something It can be satisfying, journalism, to MARK WILSON guage. Again, one example: Buckleyan. write and to read.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

cating with the aliens, and that what about the aliens themselves, but rather Film they’ve uncovered makes them fear that the strange gift or curse (you’ll decide) the visitors bring not peace but a sword. that they bestow. Only For Banks, progress comes through The director, the Quebec-born Denis giving up on the oral realm and turning Villeneuve, has made two memorable to written language, using her white- but flawed English-language movies. Connect board to link basic English words—start- The first, Prisoners, about a small-town ing with “human” and her name—to kidnapping, felt overstuffed; the sec - ROSS DOUTHAT embodied realities and persuading her ond, Sicario, about feds working the alien interlocutors to do the same. They U.S.–Mexico border, was all mood with IKE last year’s Room, the write in smoke or vapor, producing cir- a plot that didn’t bear analysis. Here he alien-invasion (sort of) movie cular signs whose meanings are embed- finds the balance, with a script—adapted Arrival is an emotional gut- ded in densely packed curlicues. As she from a cerebral, cunning, but less emo- punch, a fist swinging right studies them, her psychology seems to tionally wrecking short story—that’s Linto the most vulnerable spot in the be reshaped—there is talk of the Sapir- finally worthy of his style. The movie’s parental solar plexus. Unlike Room, Whorf hypothesis, of the way that lan- palette is cold; its score is somber, throb- whose wallop was obvious from its guage forms our modes of thought—and bing; the pace is deliberate, but never mother-and-child-imprisoned premise, Arrival hits you in a way that is hard to explain. Indeed, I can’t explain much of anything about what makes it, maybe, a great movie, because almost all of its considerable power lies in the shock of revelation. I can tell you about the aliens, at least. They arrive in a dozen ships, huge gray lozenges hanging perpendicular to land and sea in twelve locations around the world—China and Montana, Sierra Leone and Sudan—with no clear rhyme or reason to their placement. A hatch opens and we are invited inside, into a large space with gravity and atmosphere set to our specifications, facing a huge glassy barrier behind which the aliens appear to us, fog-shrouded and mys - terious. They look part elephant, part octopus, with dark gray skin and seven appendages—“heptapods,” we label Amy Adams as Louise Banks in Arrival them—and a body that vanishes upward into the mist. And they clearly mean to different times in her life cycle seem to slow. Some of the political plotting is speak to us, in strange vibratory voices. blur: What seem like memories, frag- crudely done, but not egregiously so. We just have no idea what they’re say- ments of her life with a daughter who Renner is forgettable, with too little ing. died young, assert themselves within her romantic charisma for the part, but that’s Enter Amy Adams as Louise Banks, a consciousness, shaking the preeminence okay: This is Adams’s movie, and her distinguished linguist who’s plucked of the present. watchful, contained, slowly opening per- from her academic posting and lovely This is a movie in which what happens formance builds her case for acknowl- but lonely-seeming Pacific-facing home to Adams’s character is far more interest- edgment as one of this generation’s to join the soldiers and scientists en - ing than what happens to the world. The finest actresses. camped around the spaceship in Mon - story does a decent enough job of inte- Arrival isn’t a twist-ending movie; its tana, where she’s suited up and sent grating the personal and the political in surprise’s unfolding is more gradual. But inside to see if she can decode the new the end, but the aliens are a means to a as ever with films that gut-punch you the arrivals’ speech. She’s joined by a physi- spiritual and emotional climax, not an first time through, there’s a question of cist partner, played by Jeremy Renner, end unto themselves. I fear that this whether to trust that reaction, whether supervised by the military and the CIA makes it sound a little bit like Contact the emotional triggers overwhelm aes- (represented, respectively, by Forest and the more recent Interstellar, movies thetic judgment. In this case, I saw it Whitaker and Michael Stuhlbarg), and that tried unsuccessfully to spiritualize twice, and I can report that it didn’t make pressured by the perils of global politics. and sanctify first contact. In this case, all me sob the second time around. But I Via various newscasts, we see that other that I can say is that the spiritualization still admired it, so I still commend it: See PARAMOUNT PICTURES countries have made progress communi- is successful precisely because it isn’t it once, at least.

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Where there are rivers there will be doesn’t mean they will let you. Inspired, Country Life cities. Quick, an office building. Factories they score. But then, the rival’s hotshot or warehouses, lower but larger, receive a throws at the buzzer . . . longer glance. I don’t recall any smoke; What would we do without police pro- Eagle’s View we must have put it in containers and cedurals? Cops fight for prostitutes. The shipped it to Malaysia. In between, cows pimp wears a feather in his fedora, he Of a Nation confer at round bale feeders, dry corn- don’t know those girls. Keep talking, stalks shiver like devils’ toothpicks. Mc - you’ll get yours. A young Al Pacino has Houses eat the farmland up, but there is robbed a bank, but a cop sneaks a pistol still plenty left. out of a hiding place and shoots his part- When we make something, we have to ner in the head. He got his. A real-life sell it, which means we have to advertise. show shows a cop grilling a young Offers of gas, food, and lodging are segre- woman who has stolen a car. She has gated at exits, but rogue messages intrude. broken parole, and she is transgender. There is the signage on vans and pickups, The wages of humanism. mostly offers to build or fix. The oc - On a news show sits a table of foxes. casional outlet store goes all out: There Two short skirts, two suits, one guy, a RICHARD BROOKHISER was a big push for sheepskin products comic, in dress-down. Postulants are vis- of all sorts, including SEAT COVERS— iting the president-elect. Saint-Simon at RECENTLY went to one of the TRUCKERS WELCOME. One lucky entre- Bedminster. The comic has the best line: country’s holy sites, which in - preneur hardly needed a sign, for his Better not tap the senator, his father has a volved driving there from the city scrap-metal yard sat right off the shoul- record of assassination. Local news: for- and back, so I had many hours and der: a pyramid of blasted metal bits, and est fires. The graphic shows a pile of burn- anI interstate’s-eye view of the country. 20 truck cabs, lined up like old folks in the ing leaves, which is what you’re not Since I stayed in a hotel, I had a nighttime parlor of an assisted-living facility. Libido supposed to do. journey, click by click, of the country’s was served: KEEP YOUR EYESONTHE But most interesting—so interesting I televised mind. Once the towers of the city, the cranes of the container port, and the signs to the At night you can travel the airport shrink in the rear-view mirror, country proper begins. Sound fences and flat-screen highway without leaving median strips try to pretty it up, like the hotel duvet cover. scarves and makeup on an aging actress, but these soon give way to the utilitarian- ROAD warned one sign, dishonestly, while actually stopped to watch, for at least ten ism of the road, and its trucks and com- flashing a bare back under a shower head. minutes, which with a TV remote in hand muters. What do they see as they fare This cleanliness was not next to godli- is holding eternity—most interesting are forward? ness. That’s all right, because godliness the stories. One kept reappearing. I will The hills were not the Rockies, or Han - came soon enough. A Mennonite church give you two iterations. nibal’s Alps, but General Forbes trying to declared, YOU WILL FIND GOD. Not An ordinary young American boy cow- get to Fort Duquesne or General Lee try- “Come and” but “You will”: That’s more ers under a spaceship. Then we cut to a ing to sack Philadelphia had to be mindful definite than the pope these days. Then, remote solar system, a dead world. A star of them. They lie in ridges like fingers, a big hand-lettered message: GOD MADE voyager eases down his craft, explores. often perversely perpendicular to the way YOU LOVINGLY. TRANSGENDER IS HUMAN - Computer lights flash at his glance, dart you have to go. The semis labor going up ISM. from his hands. Then he presses a button them, then roar with gravity’s help going Do this twelve times east to west and and we hear—’80s soft rock. It is the down. Cars play tag in and around these seven north to south, with some multiplier boy, grown up. Villains appear: They behemoths. Police, heralded by every - to fill in the gaps, and you have the coun- have blue or charcoal-gray skins, one cuts one’s sudden observance of the speed limit, try. But at night you can travel the flat- off someone’s head. They are after the wait on side roads to catch the careless. screen highway without leaving the hotel boy/man, but they will get theirs. The town names are filled with conso- duvet cover. A different boy/man, comic. He looks nant clusters, the result of German immi- They say the big sports channel has like a pizza-delivery guy who ate all the gration—not the wave that brought the been losing viewers, but there is still plen- pizzas. His foe is a supervillain in a jungle Brookhisers, but the wave that brought ty of sports on offer, most of it now foot- lair. Orientalist clichés abound; the execu- the Hoovers and the Eisenhowers, before ball. I hate the superimposed lines which tioner is a negress with a bare back. It is there was even a country. Who was it show the viewer how far until a first all in fun, of course. The supervillain chal- who said that Germans make good down. The players don’t see them, or the lenges the hero to a game of ping pong, Ameri cans, though of course they make fans in the stands—what is this, ectoplas- sudden death, but guess who gets his? bad Germans? I pass East Berlin, which, mic football? There was also a fictional Moral: The boy/man wins in the end. since the fall of Communism, must be basketball game. Black coach to scrappy And so he has. The country has spo- the only one left in the world. players: Just because you deserve to win, ken.

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Happy Warrior BY DAVID HARSANYI When Driving Is Obsolete

LOOK forward to the singularity—the moment when pletely. Around 41 percent of Gen Xers would trust robot artificial superintelligence triggers an explosion of cars and around 56 percent of Millennials. technological growth that leaves us humans behind. In a round-up of national attitudes on the issue, one I Or, more specifically, I look forward to the day sen- automotive magazine proclaimed that those who have tient computers are driving your cars. Because, by and “endured computer crashes as part of their everyday exis- large, you’re terrible at doing it yourselves. tence are wary of trusting software to keep them safe.” Don’t get me wrong, humans excel at a broad range of Have these people ever met their neighbor? For that mat- important tasks; this includes the creation of life, and the ter, have they ever flown in an airplane or taken a train? morality, art, philosophy, and institutions that make that life Both methods of travel use computers to circumvent worth living. You are the inventors of wondrous technolog- human error. ical advances that have allowed us to experience longer and Now, nearly every time I praise the glorious driverless, freer lives. Yet surely we can agree that humans are also traffic-less future, I’m faced with similar pushback: Would hampered by limitations. Have I mentioned driving? you entrust your family’s welfare to a machine? Of course According to empirical data compiled over 20-plus years not. I’m a fantastic driver. This isn’t about me. What’s negotiating America’s traffic, I estimate that there’s an 88 important is that I would trust computers more than I trust percent probability that you’re a road hazard. You’re proba- you on the same road as my loved ones. Computers, I’m bly indecisive and impatient. You weave, text, and make afraid, are far more reliable than people. They tend not to unconscionable U-turns and perilous lane changes; you drink and drive or fiddle around with the radio or put on needlessly tailgate and flicker your brights; you drive lethar- makeup on their way to work. gically in the fast lanes and at hazardous speeds in the slow Of course, I’m no safety fascist, either. A bubble- ones; you attempt head-first parallel parking and experience wrapped life is a boring one. Nor am I a techno-utopian. I outbreaks of uncontrollable road rage when things aren’t certainly detest social engineering. I don’t believe anyone going your way; and, worst of all, you rubberneck. should be forced or nudged to participate in this driverless Driving up and down the East Coast every holiday sea- world. If the accessibility, reliability, and safety of driver- son has convinced me of one thing: The day of automated less cars shakes out as expected, the market will make self-driving cars couldn’t possibly come quickly enough. switching feasible and attractive. This position is not born wholly of selfish motives. I be- Google, a leading innovator of autonomous-vehicle seech you to think about our beloved septuagenarians and technology—though nearly every major car manufacturer octogenarians as they risk their lives (and those of all of is pushing forward on this front—recently marked more us) ambling down our nation’s byways in two-ton death than 2 million miles driven on public roads without an machines at 20 miles per hour. Think of the parents who accident of any kind. are forced to operate heavy machinery while unruly chil- I’m skeptical that robots will ever possess self-awareness dren distract them with endless questions and whining. in the way a human experiences it. Machines tend to be Think of our handicapped; the deaf, the blind, and teens. pro grammable, subservient, and useful. Isaac Asimov’s We will soon have the technology to help them. famous “Three Laws of Robotics” seem like a perfectly Around 30,000 people perish yearly in vehicular acci- serviceable set of ideals for our cars to follow. (1. Robots dents. When we consider the drop in deaths and the may not injure human beings or, through inaction, allow increase in vehicle miles driven per person over the past human beings to come to any harm. 2. A robot must obey five decades (not to mention how poorly we negotiate our orders given it by human beings except where such orders roads), it’s clear we’ve made tremendous strides in safety. would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect Still, something like 95 percent of all motor-vehicle its own existence as long as such protection does not con- crashes are caused at least in part by human error. Auto - flict with the First or Second Law.) mated cars could save tens of thousands of lives each year. The Office of Naval Research has also awarded $7.5 mil- A study by Department of Transportation claims that ro - lion in grants to researchers at top schools such as Brown, bots could also potentially save the nation around $160 bil- Georgetown, Tufts, Yale, and Rensselaer Polytechnic lion a year on gas and time gained by eliminating traffic. Institute to study the possibilities of teaching robots the And what right-thinking person wouldn’t answer to a robot difference between right and wrong and the weight of overlord if it meant eliminating rush-hour traffic? moral consequences. I find this heartening rather than Many, apparently. One recent poll found that only 23 per- frightening, because you never know when a car will have cent of Baby Boomers would ever have faith in self-driving to make an ethical choice—such as, say, decide whether technology. Younger people do tend to be more accepting to run over a person or a deer. of automation. But no one is sold on the prospects com- What I do know, though, is that if my Honda becomes a conscious being, I would still trust it more than most I-95 Mr. Harsanyi is a senior editor of the Federalist. drivers on Black Friday.

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