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March 23, 2015 $4.99

CONTINETTI on COOKE: THE RISE OF THE CONSERVATARIANS James Burnham PRYCE-JONES on FRENCH: PRESIDENT OBAMA’S CIVIC RELIGION Dada

NEW JERSEY ChrisChris PROBLEM Steven ChrisChristitie’se’s Malanga

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MARCH 23, 2015 | VOLUME LXVII, NO. 5 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 29 The Christie Hiatus Lately, Chris Christie has watched his reputa- Kevin D. Williamson on Greg Abbott tion tumble both in New Jersey and p. 24 nationwide. The governor’s efforts at cleaning up the state’s multitude of fiscal BOOKS, ARTS messes and recharging & MANNERS its economy have 41 THE SEER stalled, prompting Matthew Continetti reviews Suicide criticisms that he isn’t of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of doing enough to revive Liberalism, by James Burnham. New Jersey. Steven Malanga 44 A BRAVE TOUR DE FORCE Jay Nordlinger reviews COVER: THOMAS REIS Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our ARTICLES Country, by Shelby Steele.

16 CONSERVATARIANISM by Charles C. W. Cooke 45 A MOST CURIOUS COUNTRY the federal system, working properly, has room for us all. IT WAS Andrew Stuttaford reviews 20 STILL DERANGED by Andrew Roberts Nothing Is True and Everything Bush-hating historians are on auto-rant. Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, 21 SAVE THE SEQUESTER by Stephen Moore by Peter Pomerantsev. it’s the most successful program of spending cuts in modern times. 50 FILM: SOFT FOCUS 24 TEXAS HAS A CORRUPTION PROBLEM by Kevin D. Williamson Ross Douthat reviews Focus. Can Greg abbott solve it? 51 CITY DESK: SHRINK RAP 26 THE BIRTH OF DADA by David Pryce-Jones Richard Brookhiser discusses waiting out of the spirit of nihilism. rooms of psychoanalysts.

FEATURES 29 THE CHRISTIE HIATUS by Steven Malanga SECTIONS New Jersey’s governor has not won lasting reforms. 2 Letters to the Editor 33 PRESIDENT OBAMA’S CIVIC RELIGION by David French 4 The Week How the left brings church into politics. 39 Athwart ...... James Lileks 40 The Long View ...... Rob Long 36 THE SAGE OF by Arthur L. Herman 49 Poetry ...... Jennifer Reeser Can anyone replace andrew Marshall? 52 Happy Warrior ...... Jonah Goldberg

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MARCH 23 ISSUE; PRINTED MARCH 5

EDITOR Richard Lowry Senior Editors A Grateful Token Richard Brookhiser / Jonah Goldberg / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra I am normally a gigantic fan of Kevin D. Williamson, but I must disagree with Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy Washington Editor Eliana Johnson his characterization of the former NPR show Tell Me More and specifically Executive Editor Reihan Salam with his take on that show’s segment known as “Barbershop” (“The Un - Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson National Correspondent John J. Miller bearable Whiteness of Being NPR,” February 23). Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Deputy Managing Editors Kevin states that “Barbershop” was “a diversity show within a diversity Katherine Connell / Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Production Editor Katie Hosmer show” and that he was the token conservative. Like Kevin, I was one of the fre- Assistant to the Editor Carol Anne Kemp quent right-of-center voices on “Barbershop,” and I never felt like I was a token. Research Associate Alessandra Haynes Contributing Editors Michel Martin and her unbelievably good team of producers worked exception- Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn ally hard to make sure voices that normally weren’t heard at NPR were given a Jim Geraghty / Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long voice on Tell Me More. They weren’t sitting there with a Rolodex devoid of Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCa rthy Kate O’Beirne / Andrew Stuttaford / Robert VerBruggen right-wingers, saying, “Where will we ever find a conservativ e to put on the air- NATIONALREVIEWONLINE waves?” Another frequent panelist on “Barbershop” was former RNC chairman Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editor Edward John Craig Michael Steele. Opinion Editor Patrick Brennan National-Affairs Columnist John Fund True, Arsalan Iftikhar’s handle is “The Muslim Guy,” and yes, we agree on Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke almost nothing, and yet, through “Barbershop,” Arsalan and I, a Jewish right- Political Reporter Joel Gehrke Reporters of-center physician in Massachusetts (how’s that for overcoming stereotypes?), Andrew Johnson / Katherine Timpf Associate Editors became friends. We now correspond frequently. Tell Me More’s commitment to Molly Powell / Nat Brown Editorial Associates bringing views not normally heard on the NPR airwaves extended beyond the Brendan Bordelon / Christine Sisto Technical Services Russell Jenkins 20 minutes of “Barbershop” each week. Michel had a weekly segment, “Faith Web Developer Wendy Weihs Matters,” in which the views of pastors, ministers, and rabbis were presented to Web Producer Scott McKim what I presume was a highly secular listenership. EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan Perhaps it’s that I’m not a full-time pundit or politician—I’m a physician NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE turned entrepreneur—but I felt like it was a privilege to be a regular on BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Ryan Lovelace / Ian Tuttle “Barbershop.” It was a rare opportunity to bring my thoughts to NPR. We Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman often damn the “mainstream media” in general and NPR in particular for left- Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman wing bias. Michel and the team at Tell Me More fought against that, and our James Gardner / David Gelernter inclusion in her efforts should be appreciated. George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Neil Minkoff Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber via e-mail Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu KevIN D. WILLIAMSoN ReSPoNDS: Michel Martin had much the same complaint, Circulation Manager Jason Ng writing to me: “In what way were you a token on Tell Me More? White guy? WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 Nope. Conservative? Nope. A**hole? Maybe.” The fact is that NPR is institu- SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 tionally hostile to conservatives and to conservative views, which is precisely ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd why, as Mr. Minkoff notes, they include “voices that normally aren’t heard at Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet NPR.” NPR is also a radio network on the dole and must therefore do a bit to Assistant to the Publisher Emily Gray keep up appearances, so it has on a few conservatives whom it keeps in its safe Director of Philanthropy and Campaigns Scott Lange zone, where they can be asked to discuss celebrity news and sports. This is an Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Director of Development Heyward Smith excellent way of putting conservatives into the mix without putting conser- Director of Revenue Erik Netcher Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell vatism into the mix. I was a token conservative; so was Mr. Minkoff. It’s not PUBLISHER an especially honorable position, but even a token gets the chance to sneak in Jack Fowler a little something every now and then. CHAIRMAN John Hillen

CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes

FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. Letters may be submitted by e-mail to [email protected].

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n Sources at MSNBC say they need a conservative president in office for their ratings to recover. We’re working on it as fast as we can, guys.

n Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress. The atmospherics threatened to smother the speech: Speaker John Boehner invited him, and Republicans applauded enthusiastically. But the administra- tion snubbed him: President of the Senate was sent abroad, so as to be MIA; 50-some Democrats boycotted; mi - nority leader Nancy Pelosi attended, but writhed theatrically. The message, though, was blunt: “The greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear wea- pons.” The deal President Obama is negotiating with the Iran - ians “is a bad deal, a very bad deal.” A timely warni ng, or a wasted effort? President Obama is determined to hear it as the latter. But Netanyahu also hinted that Israel would strike Iran alone if need be. “The days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies are over.” So the pres- ident’s diplomacy might provoke a covert nuclear power into striking a would-be nuclear power in the heart of the Middle East. Isn’t it good we saw the last of Cowboy Bush?

n Is it true, as Rudy Giuliani asserted at a political dinner last month, that Barack Obama does not love America? If most Americans agreed, and if they thought that failure to love America was politically disabling, they declined two oppor- tunities to act on that judgment. Giuliani’s fourth-quarter comment wrong-footed fellow Republicans who were asked would have been less impressed if he had not spent the preced- by Democratic politicians and journalists to condemn it. Bio- ing years urging a renewal of the on every front. g raphers and historians should conclude that Obama wishes Walker’s early rise in the polls is a sign of his great promise, and his country well, according to his lights; those are the lights conservatives should defend him from cheap, or merely mis- of a late-century Ivy League grad, which hold that America taken, journalistic shots. He also needs to show that he is not has much to overcome. If Obama loves anything besides his going to be multiplying our occasions for defending him. family, it is his own life story; probably America’s greatest claim on his affection is that it elected him president. n The Freedom from Religion Foundation responded to Governor Walker’s insistence that he would consult with n A lot of reporters seem to be out to get Scott Walker—who God before making a decision about his political future by also seems to be giving them ammunition. Walker was faulted, cynically requesting that his office make public all official first, for not disagreeing with Giuliani; then for not answering correspondence with “God, the Lord, Christ, Jesus or any yes when asked whether Obama is a Christian; and then for say- other form of deity.” Naturally, this stunt was met with roars ing that he was tough enough to take on 100,000 protesters and of approving laughter by a Washington press corps that is therefore tough enough to take on ISIS, which was supposedly routinely dismissive of the religious, and ignorant on matters drawing an equivalence between American leftists and terror- of basic theology. This was just a few days after Walker had ists. In the first two cases silence, or derision directed at the made headlines by declining to weigh in on the question of press, would have been defensible. But Walker and his aides whether President Obama is, in any meaningful way, a nullified that defense by eventually saying that yes, Obama is a Christian. His demurral, it was widely suggested, was “dis- Christian who loves his country. In the third case, the point qualifying.” Thus might we sum up the media’s attitude: Walker was making was grossly distorted, but not especially Those who believe in God and in intercessory prayer are persuasive: Toughness has to be embodied in a foreign-policy hysterical rubes, who are clearly unfit for public office—but strategy. George Shultz thought that Reagan had rattled the don’t you dare suggest that Barack Obama is not truly

ROMAN GENN Soviets by firing striking air-traffic controllers in 1981; they among them.

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THE WEEK n For his proposed comprehensive immigration-reform bill unconstitutional amnesty. But when Democrats blocked the that in 2013 infuriated conservatives, Marco Rubio was lam- bill, Republicans, especially Senate Republican leader Mitch basted by the GOP base. He is not planning to make the same McConnell, grew worried they would be cast as endangering mistake again. At February’s Conservative Political Action national security. Republican leaders then folded, funding the Conference, he insisted that his debacle had taught him a les- department with no restrictions, over the “No” votes of most son: “What I’ve learned is you can’t even have a conversation House Republicans. They would have been better off follow- about [legalization] until people believe and know—not just ing a different course. They could have funded the department believe, but it’s proven to them—that future illegal immigra- except for the immigration service—taking counter-terrorist tion will be controlled.” He is not the only candidate to under- efforts off the table—and then pursued a separate bill funding go a conversion on the issue. Scott Walker has been criticized the immigration service with a no-amnesty provision. That recently for a 2002 resolution he signed, as Milwaukee County immigration bill might have died: The bureaucracy gets executive, that called for “comprehensive immigration re - enough money from fees to run itself, unfortunately, and to form,” and for endorsing the much-maligned McCain- carry out the amnesty. But Republicans would have avoided Kennedy immigration-reform package that failed in the Senate complicity in funding the amnesty. Instead they finish this four years later. But on Fox News Sunday in early March, confrontation divided and demoralized, as has become their Walker emphasized: “First and foremost, you’ve got to secure sad pattern. that border, or none of these plans make sense.” It’s a change of position Walker says is “firm” and describes as the result of n Republicans have also been divided over education. Re pub - “the way this president has handled the issue” of legalization li can leaders in the House advanced a “Student Success Act,” President Obama vetoed a bill that would have permitted the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, connecting Canadian oil producers with American refineries.

for illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. Political conver- while many conservatives wanted an “A-Plus Act.” The differ- sions always encourage suspicion, but in a Republican presi- ences between the bills have been exaggerated on both sides. dential field that has appeared almost uniformly soft on Both bills contain worthy conservative reforms—notably, the immigration, this migration rightward by two first-tier con- S tudent Success Act blocks the Department of Education from tenders is promising. being able to reward states that adopt the Common Core stan- dards by relaxing regulations on them—though the A-Plus Act n A federal district court in Texas invalidated President Oba ma’s arguably goes further. Neither of them is likely to get enough unilateral decree of amnesty for nearly 5 million illegal aliens. Democratic support to become law. Yet the House leaders The decision buoyed opponents of Obama’s u surpation of leg- refused to allow a vote on the more conservative bill, and con- islative authority, but the celebration could be fleeting. Judge servatives withheld their votes from the leaders’ bill. Result: no Andrew Hanen concluded that the executive action was a reg- action on any education bill, and another set of news stories ulation announcing rules; thus, because the public was not about the House Republicans’ fractiousness. If only they could given notice and an opportunity to comment, the action violated all be sent before the principal, preferably the stern, old- the Administrative Procedures Act. The administration, which fashioned kind. is appealing, counters that Obama’s action is merely an exec- utive exercise of prosecutorial discretion, and therefore unre- n President Obama vetoed a bill that would have permitted the viewable. That seems an untenable claim given that the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, connecting Canadian oil administration’s own lawyers say discretion requires a truly producers with American refineries. Inasmuch as Keystone is case-by-case review of illegal immigrants’ standing. Yet precisely the sort of job-creating infrastructure project that Obama could get a sympathetic appellate hearing, since the normally pumps up Democrats, that veto is inexplicable—ex- amnesty was not promulgated as a regulation, but rather as cept in the broader context of the Left’s war on American an intra-agency directive at the Department of Homeland en er gy infrastructure. Having failed repeatedly with broad Se cur i ty. There remains, moreover, a significant question pol i cy initiatives (Kyoto, carbon tax, etc.), the Left is adopt- about whether the states have the right to sue, although ing a piecemeal campaign of demonization against every ef - Hanen’s decision amply demonstrates that they will suffer fort to develop the means to produce, transport, and refine oil, significant economic harm. It comes down to whether a gas, and coal in the . In New York, Governor An - court can force the president to execute Congress’s immi- drew Cuomo has banned modern techniques of gas extraction, gration laws faithfully—a task that would seem to belong and environmentalists are pressing for restrictions or outright first and foremost to Con gress. bans on the trains that are used to transport oil (there being insufficient pipeline) and on tanker traffic at the Port of Al bany. n It is a task that Congress is, however, failing to perform. West Coast coal-export facilities, which would help U.S. pro- Congressional Republicans tried to attach a provision to the ducers connect with Asian markets, are under similar as sault. bill funding the Department of Homeland Security stipulating In each of these cases, it is clear that disputes about lo cal that no funds could be spent to implement the president’s impact were largely manufactured—in Washington State, a

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THE WEEK coal-export terminal to be located next to an oil refinery was Heritage Foundation. Most recently, at the YG Network, where opposed on the grounds that there were lummi burial sites in she will continue to have a post, she has been working to de - the area, but the lummi refused to say where—as cover for vise a new conservative policy agenda that takes on issues more global concerns, i.e., making it more difficult and ex - where the Right has lagged, such as busting the federally sub- pen sive for China to feed its power plants, and less profitable sidized higher-education cartel. In that capacity, she has been for Americans exporters to supply them. This is a very old working to take the kind of ideas that appear in our pages to habit among the anti-capitalists, with an appropriately old ap - politicians and then to the country. We hope Bush, and others, pel la tion: sabotage. are listening.

n From the first moments of the siege on the U.S. diplomatic n Since its halcyon days in 2006 and 2010, progressivism’s compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, then–secretary favorite television station has been gradually on the decline. of state and her top aides were alerted that the MSNBC has gone from attracting a million viewers a night in compound was under a terrorist attack. Indeed, they were th e dying days of the Bush administration to propping up the quickly informed that Ansar al-Sharia, the local al-Qaeda affil- charts from the bottom. Evidently, the channel’s bigwigs have iate, had claimed responsibility. These revelations were uncov- noticed, and they are looking to ring the changes. Today, the ered in a trove of e-mails pried from the State Department by Daily Beast records, the leadership is hoping to “move away Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. from left-wing TV” and to accept that “the glory days during The disclosures are consistent with congressional testimony by George W. Bush’s administration” are unlikely to return. Out Gregory Hicks, the No. 2 State Department official in have gone insipid opinion hosts Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid. during the attack. Hicks briefed Clinton and her staff, explain- Both Al Sharpton and Chris Hayes are rumored to be for the ing from the start that a terrorist operation was under way. Yet, chopping block, and even Rachel Maddow—the network’s beginnin g late that evening, Clinton began promoting the nar- star—is to be moved out of her 9 p.M. Eastern slot. If the sta- rative that the attack, in which Ambassador Christopher Ste - tion is to avoid the fate of failed progressive-radio project Air vens and three other Americans were killed, was a spontaneous America, these adjustments will be just the beginning. protest ignited by an anti-Muslim video—a video Hicks de- scribed as a “non-event” in Benghazi. The State Department n politiFact, a project of the Tampa Bay Times, is very useful has since stonewalled document requests from congressional as a barometer of Democratic conventional wisdom. The prob- investigators, while it has now emerged that Clinto n used a pri- lem is that it does not advertise itself as a barometer of Demo - vate e-mail account throughout her tenure, in violation of cratic conventional wisdom, but as a fact-checking operation. record keeping laws. The Benghazi select committee, led by It recently took to task NATIONAl REVIEW’s Jonah Gold berg Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), has a lot of work to do. and Kevin D. Williamson for telling purported half-truths about the Affordable Care Act, specifically that it lends legiti- n It’s ’90s nostalgia: A Clinton is running for president, and macy to various kinds of quackery, from acupuncture to home- the air stinks of money. The Clinton Foundation performs opathic medicine. It does, as politiFact acknowledges: The charitable good works; it also provides an opportunity to get in nondiscrimination language inserted by former senator Tom good with the Clintons, an o pportunity of which corporations Harkin (D., Iowa) “stipulates that as long as an alternative- and countries have availed themselves. On the eve of Hillary’s medicine practitioner is fully licensed by a state, insurance becoming secretary of state, the Foundation signed an agree- companies must reimburse them just as they do medical doc- ment with the Obama administration allowing it to accept tors.” Goldberg says that this gives “elevated legitimacy” to donations from countries that had given in the past—i.e., coun- quackery; nonsense, says politiFact, it only gives it a “leg up”; tries could continue to butter up Secretary Clinton as long as an exasperated Goldberg notes that “elevate” and “give a leg they were old cronies. Even these lax terms were violated in up” are synonyms. politiFact, in fact, did not identify a single 2010 when the foundation took $500,000 from a new donor, fact in Goldberg’s or Williamson’s work that was untrue. Its Algeria (for earthquake relief in Haiti). The news about argument was, instead, that these facts were unimportant. In Hillary’s foreign friends, detailed in and the process we learned again that politiFact is to journalism as , is causing tremors, if not yet an earth- homeopathy is to medicine. quake. Robert Gibbs, former Obama spokesman, called the matter “awkward at best.” Republicans were less restrained: n The Charlie Hebdo massacres were carried out by self- Ted Cruz told CpAC “we could have had Hillary here, beut w identified members of al-Qaeda in Yemen. ISIS, emulating couldn’t find a foreign nation to foot the bill.” A possible them, has called for the death of Yasir Qadhi, a professor of re - Clinton bumper sticker: ExpERIENCE pAYS OFF. li gious studies at Rhodes College in Memphis. That is not Memphis, the ancient capital of lower Egypt, but Memphis, n Conservatives with reservations about Jeb Bush should be Tennessee. Qadhi’s offense: He has condemned both the Char - pleased by one of his early hires. April ponnuru, who will be lie Hebdo murders and ISIS: “ISIS does not represent my faith, one of his policy aides, is a full-spectrum conservative with their actions are in contradiction to my faith, and I’m appalled extensive Hill experience: Concerned Women for America at what they are doing in the name of my faith.” Qadhi says he once named her “House staffer of the year” for her pro-life is unconcerned by the call for his murder, since those “who are work. She has also been a vice president at NATIONAl REVIEW threatening me are thousands of miles away.” But so was (her husband, Ramesh ponnuru, is one of our senior editors), Sana’a from paris. The FBI, showing proper concern, has ad - and has done fellowships with the Claremont Institute and the vised the professor to take precautions.

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THE WEEK n Wisconsin’s state senate in late February passed a bill that chained to a bench by his hands and feet, and charged with would prevent unions from imposing dues on workers who unlawfully carrying a firearm. The “firearm” in question was chose not to join them. As we go to press, the bill is being de - built in England in 1760; lacked the powder, flint, and ball nec- bat ed in the full assembly and is expected to pass. A spokes- essary to render it a functional weapon; and, under federal law woman for Governor Scott Walker has said he will sign it if it at least, is not even considered a gun. In New Jersey, however, arrives on his desk. Protesters rallied outside the state capitol it is treated as a deadly weapon, and the cost of its illegal pos- in Madison, though in smaller numbers than in 2011, when in session is precisely the same as for a .44 Magnum: a mandatory the midst of a budget crisis the newly elected Walker proposed minimum sentence of three and a half years. Upon his arrest, curtailments of collective barg aining for public employees; the Van Gilder said, he felt “embarrassed and ashamed.” Coming theatrics staged by union organizers failed, and Walker and his from a man who has never been in trouble with the law, this reform agenda emerged victorious. The new right-to-work leg- sentiment was understandable. But it was entirely misplaced. islation is popular with Wisconsin voters, who support it by a It is New Jersey, which dropped the charges only after a con- nearly 2–1 margin, according to a survey by a political scien- siderable public outcry, that should be feeling abashed. tist at the University of Chicago. Republicans picked up leg is - lative seats in Indiana and Michigan after right-to- work laws n If Representative Raul M. Grijalva should ever lose his seat in were passed in those states in 2012. Wisconsin is poised to be - the House, the former MEChA radical might consider going to come the 25th state to enact such a law, which should help fos- work for the IRS. Just as the IRS launched a campaign of harass- ter the formation of new businesses and attract jobs, shaking ment and intimidation against conservative groups, making out- yet more rust off the Rust Belt. rageous demands for documentation of everything down to the content of their prayers, Grijalva launched a witch hunt target- n For years, conservatives have said that environmentalism is a ing, among others, Professor Roger Pielke Jr. of the University substitute religion for the more extreme greens. A lot of people of Colorado at Boulder, author of The Climate Fix, demanding resent this observation. So a statement by Rajendra Pachauri is of every draft of every piece of communication with public enti- particular interest. Since 2002, he has been chairman of the In ter - ties and potential funding sources as part of a plan to discredit gov ern men tal Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. body. The IPCC critics of climate-change orthodoxy by charging that they are shared the Nobel Peace Prize with in 2007. Pachauri backed by filthy oil money. Pielke, as it happens, isn’t backed by accepted the IPCC’s share of the award on the organization’s be - oil—as he has already demonstrated in disclosures made as part half. He has now been forced out as chairman owing to sexual- of testimony before the House Natural Resources Committee, harassment charges. In his resignation letter, he said, “For me the where Grijalva is the ranking Demo crat. He holds conventional protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustain- views about global warming—that it is anthropogenic, that ability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion emissions should be regulated, that a carbon tax would be appro- and my dharma.” We’re guessing this isn’t one of those religions priate—but is an annoyance to those who claim, without evi- that are strict about sexual harassment. dence, that contemporary natural disasters (Pielke’s field of study) are being made more intense and expensive by global n It is not as though we do not warming. Warming alarmists have so harassed Pielke that he sympathize with the difficulties has given up climate-change research in his academic work. of having flowers arranged for Grijalva has backed off a half step, admitting to “overreach,” but a gay wedding, the wedding- intends to continue his inquisition into every iota of real or per- planning and floral-arts indus- ceived heresy on global warming. Academics who thought this tries being as notoriously packed was going to end with the Koch brothers, take note. with bitter homophobes as the Ballet and the n In early February, San Francisco archbishop Salvatore masthead of GQ. Still, we are Cordileone released a statement, to be included in the faculty not convinced that Barronelle handbook of the Bay Area’s four archdiocesan high schools Stutzman, a grandmotherly flo - come the new school year, that requires teachers to “affirm rist in Wash ington State, de - that we are educational institutions of the Catholic Church, serves to be hauled off in irons and as such strive to present Catholic doctrine in its fullness, or fined thousands of dollars for and that we hold, believe and practice all that the Holy Cath - declining the matrimonial cus- o lic Church teaches, believes and proclaims to be true.” That tom of two gentlemen desiring to get hitched. Stutzman cited Cordileone thinks Catholic schools should be Catholic has, religious objections to partici pating in a same-sex wedding, but naturally, scandalized area residents. The San Francisco Democratic prosecutor Bob Ferguson and the ACLU were Chronicle declared that “Cordileone could not be more out of having none of it. Forty years ago, the gay-rights agenda was touch with the community he has been assigned to serve”; an

about toleration. It is now about something less attractive. online petition has been set up to oppose the archbishop’s HUEI YAU - KAI

effort to create a “culture of fear”; and eight state lawmakers , n In February, the State of New Jersey flirted seriously with from the Bay Area wrote Cordileone a letter contending that the idea of imprisoning a 72-year-old retired teacher for pos- his call “sends an alarming message of intolerance to youth.” CITY HERALD -

session of a 250-year-old flintlock pistol. After he was pulled Politicians’ telling church leaders how to run their organiza- TRI / over in Cumberland County on his way back from an antiques tions does not send a great message about how tolerant and

dealer, curiosities collector Gordon Van Gilder was arrested, free societies work. AP PHOTO

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ship role. The sectarian coloration of the Iraqi force can only n The murder of Boris Nemtsov in Moscow is another increase Sunni disaffection from the government and thus fuel crime that cries to heaven. A natural politician, he was support for IS and other extremists. But as long as the U.S. is exceptionally courageous and charismatic. In appointing leading from behind, the Iranians are happy to lead from the him deputy prime minister, , the first president front, and make Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi, like Syria’s of post-Communist Russia, had picked the right man at the Bashar al-Assad, their client in a sectarian war. right time in the right place. But Yeltsin also promoted Vladimir Putin as his successor. Putin has been Nemtsov’s n “Jihadi John,” the brutal ISIS murderer who has become infa- nemesis. In Putin’s Russia you take your life in your hands mous for his calm manner and his jarringly out-of-place British by discussing either the endemic corruption of officialdom accent, now has a real name and a confirmed backstory. He is or the Kremlin’s foreign policy. Running both these risks, Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born, middle-class college grad- Nemtsov became today’s equivalent of a dissident, a leading uate who was raised in , England. He also has an excuse figure in opposition to Putin. In the month before his death, for his barbarism. According to the self-professed civil-liberties he was saying, “I’m afraid Putin will kill me,” adding, “I group CAGE, Emwazi claims that he was radicalized by a couldn’t dislike him more.” Putin’s adventure in Ukraine, he combination of ongoing Western foreign policy and the British thought, is “mad aggression.” The night before leading a government’s anti-terrorist policies. Having been “detained, inter - demonstration to protest the invasion of Ukraine, Nemtsov rogated and recruited by Mi5 on what was meant to be a safari had dinner with his girlfriend in a Moscow restaurant. As holiday to ,” CAGE suggested, Emwazi was finally they walked home past the Kremlin, a white car drew up, broken. So he decided to turn to a life of unimaginable violence. and someone fired four shots into Nemtsov’s back. At We suspected that it would turn out to be the West’s fault all along. least a dozen of Putin’s critics had already been assassinated, and n Since President Obama announced his new normalization not a single culprit has been with Cuba, there have been several congressional delegations brought to justice. Putin hopping down to the island. One of them had the nerve to meet is the only person who with dissidents, not just officials of the dictatorship. The dic- stands to gain from this tatorship announced that this would not happen again: Either murder. Taking personal visiting congressmen would snub dissidents or no congressman control of the investiga- would be allowed to set foot on the island. So, the subsequent tion, he at once offered the delegations from Capitol Hill obeyed. One day, the dictatorship theory that the murder was arrested more than 100 Cubans, for such crimes as trying to what Russians like to call a attend Mass. The congressmen on the island that day said noth- provocation, that is to say, com- ing. Neither did the administration back in Washington. The mitted by people who want next week, the dictatorship arrested more than 200 Cubans. him to look bad. So he Still, silence. A French expression goes, “Appetite comes with does, he really does. eating.” The dictatorship knows it can act with impunity. All that Obama wants to do is make nice. Whatever one thinks of normalization, should we be morally neutered? n is an archaeological treasure house of ancient civiliza- tions—Assyrian, Akkadian, Hittite, Parthian, Persian, Jewish, n When agents of the Venezuelan state come, they don’t come Chaldean, among others. Saddam Hussein, no aesthete or histo- quietly. Hugo Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, sent more rian, went to some trouble to do upkeep on sites and artifacts. Not than 150 agents to arrest Antonio Ledezma, the mayor of the cap- so the Islamic State, or ISIS, currently the occupiers of Mosul, an ital city, Caracas. They broke through the glass doors of his office Iraqi city with a great past. The museum there had 173 original with a sledgehammer. They arrested him violently. Ledezma is an pieces, according to the director general of Iraqi museums, Qais opposition politician who staged a hunger strike during Chávez’s Hussain Rashid. An ISIS video begins with a spokesman con- time, in protest of authoritarianism. Now Maduro has accused demning the people who once lived here as polytheists whose him of plotting to overthrow the government. As Ledezma’s statues and idols have to be destroyed on the orders of Allah. Mili - lawyer said, the government has “virtually kidnapped” him, in tants are seen with hammers and drills smashing works of art into violation of all law. Maduro is following the lead of his mentors fragments. One casualty is an Assyrian winged bull from the sev- in Cuba, the Castro brothers. The more desperate his country’s enth century B.C., a loss as irreparable for the world as that of the situation, the more ruthless is the government toward the opposi- giant statues of Buddha dynamited by the Afghan Taliban, their tion. Venezuela is in economic crisis, and the regime is in politi- Islamist brothers. Qais Hussain Rashid thinks some pieces may cal crisis. In New York’s Times Square, the mayor’s daughter, have been smuggled abroad and sold to fund ISIS. Hypo crisy, Antonieta, age 23, led a protest. A few dozen people attended. then, is an ISIS property, along with ignorance and vandalism. Venezuelans will need more help. President Obama once gave Chávez a soul-brother handshake and called him “mi amigo,” my n The war against the Islamic State is on in earnest, and the friend. As in Cuba, the United States should make clear that we Iranians are waging it. Iranian forces and Shia militia are at the are friends of the democratic and the jailed.

IVAN SEKRETAREV center of the Iraqi government’s attempt to retake the Sunni city / of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s old hometown; Iranian spymaster n No one can say that the murder was not promised. In Bang la-

AP PHOTO Major General Qassem Suleimani is taking a prominent leader- desh, an Islamist said on Facebook, “Avijit Roy lives in America,

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THE WEEK so it’s not possible to kill him right now. But he will be killed when a picture of the then-senator, his torso replaced with a waffle— he comes back.” There were other such promises as well. Roy was readers learned to expect a daily mix of scoops, mockery, insight, a Bangladeshi-American writer who lived in Atlanta. He wrote and analysis, all reported with scrupulous accuracy and Jim’s such books as The Virus of Faith. He was a relentless and fearless ever-present good cheer. “The Kerry Spot” became “TKS” and critic of the kind of people who threatened him. In February, he then “The Hillary Spot” before settling in as “The campaign traveled to Bangladesh to speak at a book fair. After the event, he Spot,” and through it all, Jim has produced prodigious amounts and his wife were returning to their quarters by rickshaw. Islamists of unskippable copy, not just in the blog but in NRO articles, a set upon them, dragging them from the rickshaw and attacking daily newsletter, and podcasts, not to mention his entertaining them with machetes, knives, and meat cleavers. Roy was hacked Washington novel, The Weed Agency. For all these efforts, Jim to death; his wife was maimed. This sentence in a news report is was named Journalist of the Year at last month’s conservative of interest: “Witnesses said no one came to the couple’s aid as they Political Action conference. For once, a ballot result took Jim by were hacked down.” When it comes to Islam ist violence, the surprise, and in true Buckleyesque fashion, his first impulse was world, sooner or later, will have to shuck passivity. to demand a recount; but not even the 2000 Florida supreme court could make this one add up any different. We congratulate Jim n Jennifer Lopez has a new movie out called The Boy Next Door, and look forward to many more years of his incisive commentary and, as often happens with her films, the biggest laughs are unin- on elections, national security, economics, foreign policy, NFL tentional. J-Lo, wearing glasses to show that she’s serious, plays football, Twin Peaks . . . a high-school English teacher who files for divorce. The neigh- bors’ amorous teenage son drops by and offers her a copy of the n One can learn a great deal about a government by examining Iliad, which she identifies as “a first edition.” That’s what hap- which laws its dissenters feel compelled to pass. That the state of pens when you major in comp lit at Empire Beauty School. Then Nevada is considering a bill that would protect children who she puts it on the shelf next to her original program from the 540 chew their Pop-Tarts into the shape of guns cannot possibly tell B.c. Olympics, autographed by Milon of croton, and . . . oh, wait, us anything salutary. If passed into statute, the extraordinary that’s a different movie. Sharp-eyed filmgoers have identified the measure would seek to prohibit teachers and other school author- book used in the film as an 1880s reissue of Alexander Pope’s ities from punishing students who play with toy guns, use their translation; in any case, the boy ends up taking as many liberties fingers to make gun shapes, or fashion their food to resemble a with J-Lo as Pope did with the Iliad, and eventually hits a Homer, firearm. Regrettably, Nevada would not be the only state to deem but then she has misgivings, and the whole thing ends with some such rules necessary. Florida and Texas already boast such legis- Iliad-style carnage. lation, and Maryland looks likely to follow suit soon. There was a time when provisions of this sort were held not in common law, n Patricia Arquette took the opportunity of being named Best but in common sense. That time, alas, has passed. Supporting Actress at the Oscars to declare that American wo - men had “fought for everybody else’s equal rights,” and that now n The Sharon Statement took its name from the home of William “it’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal F. Buckley Jr. in Sharon, conn.—but the words in this 1960 state- rights for women in the United States of America.” The audience, ment of conservative principle flowed from the pen of M. Stanton and Democratic politicians on Twitter, applauded, but Arquette Evans, then 26. He devoted his life to its ideals, working mainly was surprised to encounter outrage to her left. Her sin was a fail- in the precincts of journalism, as editor of the Indianapolis News ure to display an awareness of her own privilege vis-à-vis non- as well as a contributor to NATIONAL REvIEW and Human Events. white women, non-straight women, and non-white non-straight In countless columns and books, he wrote with insight about women—a hierarchy of disadvantage known in the academic jar- everything from communism to religious freedom. Evans en - gon as “intersectionality.” She had erred, two professors ex- joyed few things more than delivering a provocative quip: “I plained in the Washington Post, in “implicitly presenting equal didn’t much care for Joseph Mccarthy’s ends, but I always pay as an issue for straight, white women.” Who are, as everyone admired his methods,” or, “I didn’t like Nixon until Watergate.” knows, very nearly the worst group in America. In 1977, he founded the National Journalism center, with the goal of producing a new generation of conservative writers, and many n Baseball is a game with a rhythm set to lazy summer after- good ones came to regard him as a mentor. Dead at 80. R.I.P. noons. But a summer afternoon doesn’t have lefty relief spe- cialists, long commercial timeouts, pitchers holding the ball nWhen John c. Willke, a cincinnati obstetrician, began to advise forever, batters constantly fiddling with their batting gloves, anti-abortion activists in the 1960s, the fledgling movement to etc. Recent changes in the game have made it so slow that “I protect unborn children was earnest but ragged. He volunteered don’t care if I never get back” is less an enthusiastic exaggera- his time and expertise, creating slides that showed fetal develop- tion and more a serious commitment. Major League Baseball is ment before sonograms were common; his images of aborted instituting a couple of changes to speed up the game, including babies shocked and angered many, but motivated many to join the requiring batters to keep a foot in the batter’s box between cause. His short book Handbook on Abortion (1971) helped early pitches. They are small steps toward making root, root, rooting pro-life advocates articulate their arguments. As president of the for the home team less interminable. National Right to Life committee from 1980 to 1991, he raised the visibility and respectability of that organization; Sargent and n In 2004, when NATIONAL REvIEW ONLINE initiated its “Kerry lent it their support. Willke worked to Spot” blog, the writer was Jim Geraghty, a young reporter from organize the Rally for Life 1990, one of the largest marches ever the mean streets of Metuchen, N.J. In that blog—whose logo was held on the National Mall. He co-founded the Life Issues Institute,

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THE WEEK dedicated to the protection of human life from conception through natural death. His definition of justice was broad and generous and controversial, like the man himself. Forty years ago, sophisti- cated observers dismissed the pro-life movement as an anachro- nism. History has proved them wrong, thanks in large measure to Dr. Jack Willke. Dead at 89. Rest in peace.

n From his perch at the nation’s iconic Catholic university, Notre Dame, which he served as president for most of the second half of the 20th century, Theodore M. Hesburgh changed the face and the character of Catholic higher education in America. He was 35 when he took over in South Bend in 1952. When he retired, in 1987, Notre Dame’s endowment had increased fortyfold. En - rollment had nearly doubled, and the number of faculty had more than doubled. No university president of his generation was more celebrated. Appointed by President Eisenhower to the U.S. Com- FCC commissioner Ajit Pai mis sion on Civil Rights, Hesburgh was its chairman for more than a decade. In 1967 he led American Catholic educators in a move- tions that won’t work to solve a problem that doesn’t exist using ment that issued in the Land O’Lakes statement, a declaration of legal authority the FCC doesn’t have.” “academic freedom” from Rome and, in effect, a pledge of alle- It takes a certain kind of genius to decide to regulate 21st- giance to the country’s academic fashion centers in Berkeley, century broadband Internet by invoking a law from 1934, but Madison, and Cambridge. In subsequent , Catholic col- that is what the FCC has done, declaring that Internet service leges and universities took heed, muting their Catholic identity providers (ISPs) are “telecommunications services” as under- while pushing their way up the rankings in U.S. News & World Re - stood in Title II of the New Deal–era Communications Act, port. What profits it a school to gain the world but lose its soul? and thus subject to regulation that is comprehensive in scope Quite a bit, Father Hesburgh apparently thought. Dead at 97. R.I.P. and proctological in intrusiveness. Democrats believe this is necessary to prevent such potentially catastrophic outcomes n Leonard Nimoy acted on as a cable company’s prioritizing a streaming movie over an the big and small screens and e-mail in the operation of its own network, rather than treat- onstage, and had a serious ing every bit of data in precisely the same way. This is noth- interest in photography. He ing more—and nothing less—than a power grab by the federal will be known, however, as government, one that is certain to end in abuse and the stifling Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, half- of innovation and expression. Vulcan, half-human, and Net-neutrality advocates argue that these rules are necessary (almost) entirely logical. to prevent corporations—which are, in their worldview, evil— George Orwell wrote of lit- from blocking access to some plucky progressive blogger or erary couples that repre - from slowing down traffic to certain sites on behalf of their sented “the ancient dualism business partners. As Pai notes, this is a non-problem; if it were of body and soul in fiction a problem, then the likeliest solutions would be more robust form,” the classic example competition or, if warranted, Federal Trade Commission inter- being Sancho Panza (body) vention to break up collusion. and Don Quixote (soul). He ticked off other pairings— In reality, those interested in free and open communication Holmes/Watson, Jeeves/Wooster, Bloom/Dedalus. Mr. Spock have much more to fear from the federal government than they and Captain Kirk were the partners for the late 20th century. do from their ISP. The Democrats have, within recent memory, Nimoy embodied rationality, but it was always practical: How do made a serious drive to use the FCC to destroy conservative talk we analyze this situation, or parse these alternatives? William radio; they have used the IRS to suppress conservative political Shatner as Kirk provided passion, decisiveness, and the occa- groups; under the leadership of Harry Reid, they tried to amend sional burst of New Frontier rhetoric. Their skill as character the First Amendment, in a way that would seriously weaken its actors helped turn a failed TV series into a cult classic, then a core protections, in order to enable more invasive federal regu- mother lode of movies, spinoffs, and reboots. Does an actor as- lation of political speech; with Robert Kennedy Jr., they have pire to greatness as Romeo, or Lear? No doubt. But melding with called for literally imprisoning those who disagree with them on PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS the popular mind is no mean feat. Dead at 83. R.I.P. certain issues; in Texas, they have essentially criminalized /

political disagreement, with former governor Rick Perry under AP PHOTO : NET NEUTRALITY felony indictment for vetoing a funding bill; congressional RIGHT Democrats are trying to bully into silence a Colorado academic ; Lost Connection and blogger who corrects errors in the climate-change debate.

N MATT SAYLES the matter of so-called net neutrality, the Federal Com - These are not the people you want in control of the Internet. / mu ni ca tions Commission has spoken. Congress should Congress should act immediately to restore the status quo ante

tell the FCC to put a sock in it. As FCC commissioner and to permanently limit the FCC’s ability to interfere in these AP PHOTO O :

Ajit Pai wrote, “The order imposes intrusive government regula- matters. The Internet works, and Washington doesn’t. LEFT

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on the

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ment” in the sun and become the ascen- dant part of the alliance? Calling themselves “conservatari- ans,” one rapidly growing contingent of dissenters has taken to splitting the difference. Unimpressed by the Re - publican party’s recent time in govern- ment, at odds with the traditional conservative attitudes toward gay mar- riage and the war on drugs, uncomfort- able with the mainstream libertarian approach to defense, immigration, and abortion, and determined to defend the constitutional order from assaults from all sides, this group is attempting to fuse the best parts from each of the Right’s constituent philosophies. De - termining who these people are, divin- ing what they want, and deciding how their particular brand of fusionism might best accommodate their discon- tents is the objective of my new book, The Conservatarian Manifesto. Conservatarianism That one of the country’s two main The federal system, working properly, has room for us all political parties is at present struggling to reconcile a divided and recalcitrant array of adherents might seem to the BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE outsider’s eye to be somewhat disas- trous—especially this close to an impor- n the Age of Barack Obama, con- ment as to what “conservatism” should tant general election. It is no such thing. servatives can seem uncommonly mean in the 21st century. A good portion Instead, the divisions are providing the keen to tell you what they are not. of this antagonism is strictly philosoph- Right with invaluable opportunities for I “When I am around conserva- ical: On the questions of immigration self-reflection and reform that may tives,” anti-progressive Millennials and foreign policy, for example, various eventually redound not only to its own will gripe, “I feel libertarian. But when parts of the Right’s traditional coalition benefit but to that of the United States as I am around libertarians, I feel conser- are in open warfare as to how best to well. Really, it should surprise nobody vative. Perhaps,” they conclude, “I’m a reconcile the country’s founding princi- that conservatives and libertarians dis- bit of both?” ples with an interconnected world. In agree so vehemently as to what consti- A similar bewilderment has afflicted other areas, the clash is generational: tutes the good life. So, apparently, does hardened veterans of the Reagan revo- On the thorny “social” questions of everybody else in America. How to en - lution—many of whom have reluctant- drugs and gay marriage, the Republican sure that this discord does not break the ly come to the conclusion that the Bush party today faces a pronounced age- country apart is the defining challenge years were a disappointing failure and based divide that its leadership will of our generation. that the Republican party is an ineffi- soon be called upon to bridge as deli- It should be acknowledged as an cient vehicle for their aspirations. It has cately as is possible. example of bitter historical irony that, at caught in its trap the loudest players As this cycle’s unusually deep bench the very moment that America’s politi- within the effusive and multifaceted of Republican presidential aspirants is cal differences became so agonizingly Tea Party, which appears to be driven demonstrating daily, American conser- acute, the national government became as much by what it is against as by what vatism has not yet emerged completely so depressingly inflexible. Aided by the it is for. And it has stricken traditionally from its long dark night of the soul. quick-fire ingenuity of Silicon Valley, rightward-leaning voters who are un- Instead, crucial questions still abound. younger Americans have of late become sure how they should synthesize their Should conservatism attempt to repli- accustomed to the customization that is disappointment with the Right writ cate the classic “three-legged stool” made possible by the arrival of Uber, large and their dislike of President coalition—military, social, and fiscal Facebook, netflix, and the ever-present Obama and his agenda. conservatives—that made it a force to smartphone. And yet, year in and year The vast majority of this disorienta- be reckoned with during the 1980s? out, they are being asked to vote loyally tion is rooted in substantive disagree- Should it finally make peace with the for the sustenance of a political order social liberalism that has swept across that resembles the worst and most Mr. Cooke’s new book, The Conservatarian the United States? Or should the liber- homogeneous parts of the DMV. If they

Manifesto, will be published this month. tarians escape from their brief “mo - ever had anything in common, the ROMAN GENN

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Baptists in Mississippi and the hipsters Worse still, perhaps, conservatives Indeed, conservatives get an awful lot in Portland, Ore., have almost nothing have too often refused to subject right. Although it has run into a little in common in 2015. And yet, rather favored federal programs to the same trouble of late, the Right’s traditional than seeing fit to cherish and accommo- rigorous criticism they routinely apply approach to defense is grounded in the date their differences, their govern- to initiatives they disdain. The War on correct understanding of human nature, ments now seem hell-bent upon pitting Drugs is a $51 billion–per–year disaster in the sober recognition that the global them against each other. Insipid uni - that has helped to create and foster a order requires a strong power to under- formity, not beautiful variation, is the domineering federal Leviathan; that has write its security, and in the appreciation toast of the hour. invited routine violations of the suppos- that there is no acceptable candi date for It does not need to be like this. There edly cherished Constitution; and that that role other than the United States. is no good reason that Americans who has repeatedly and obviously failed to Since 1945, Americans have been called lean to the right should despair when a achieve any of its basic aims. And yet it upon to defend the liberal order. They figure such as Barack Obama ascends to enjoys majority support among self- must not direct deaf ears toward that the ; nor is there any need described conservatives—the very peo- vocation. for those on the left to inquire earnestly ple who typically apply a skeptical eye Conservatives also tend to grasp into the Canadian immigration system to the counterproductive activities of that virtuous nations are more than each and every time that a Scott Walker the state. Why? just economies and that one cannot In the realms of economics, self-defense, freedom of speech, and energy, the Right has done a commendable job of making the case for the genius of the American order.

or Ted Cruz surges in the polls. As we Such inconsistencies have been extra- expect to maintain the beautiful prin- are constantly reminded, the United ordinarily confusing to voters, and they ciples that were adumbrated within the States is a big, messy, and extraordinar- have served to undermine the Right’s Decla ration of Independence without ily diverse country, and it is in posses- winning message. Conservatives win determining who may and who may sion of a constitutional settlement that big when they make it clear that sthere i not belong to the polity. Although was explicitly contrived to foster and to a meaningful distinction to be drawn their choices for judicial office may accommodate dissent. If the Right hopes between civil society and the state, that sometimes let them down, conserva- to fuse its various factions into a unified the use of force and the use of persua- tives are correct to insist that caprice whole—and, for that matter, if Ameri- sion are by no means synonymous, and is the soul of tyranny and that no re - cans hope to maintain their individuality that the private preferences of our elect- public will stand for long if its founda- while still thrilling to a common civic ed officials should be largely irrelevant tional laws are permitted to be bent identity—reformers might take comfort to their roles in public office. As Wil - and twisted by transient majorities and in the recognition that they already have liam F. Buckley Jr. pithily observed, faithless judges. And, as ever, their de - the tools at their disposal. The federal “What is legal is not necessarily rep- fense of life cuts through the pabulum system, working properly, has room for utable.” Republicans and their ideologi- that typically accompanies any discus- us all. cal friends forget this at their peril. sion of America’s abortion-on-demand Once upon a time, conservatives knew There is always a risk that rigorous regime and goes to the heart of the mat- this. Now, they can often seem hypocriti- self-appraisal will descend into destruc- ter: that if we are to foster a culture in cal and inconsistent. In the realms of eco- tive self-flagellation. This is a temptation which all are treated equally, we cannot nomics, self-defense, freedom of speech, that should be assiduously avoided. At its forget the most vulnerable of all. and energy, the Right has done a com- heart, American conservatism represents Which is all, ultimately, to say that mendable job of making the case for the the most exciting, radical, transforma- most of what is wrong with conser- genius of the American order. The arrival tive, and fundamentally necessary politi- vatism can be fixed by what is right of Obamacare, one suspects, has helped cal philosophy in the history of the world. with conservatism, and that what is to sharpen the urgency of this pitch. And Unlike progressives, whose foundational discordant in America can be mended yet on the key questions of education, principles tend to change with the wind, by what is harmonious. In spite of the drugs, gay marriage, the drinking age, conservatives are the fortunate heirs to an many breathless predictions to the con- and even seniors’ health care, the recent intellectual tradition that has been unpar- trary, Barack Obama’s reelection nei- record has been less than salutary. There alleled in the whole course of human ther ushered in an endless age of is no good that can come from our politi- events. Adapting that ideology to chang- pro gressive triumph nor delivered a cians’ paying lip service to localism if ing times can, on occasion, be imperative knockout blow to the Right. Now, in they are happy to back intrusive laws to its survival. Today, such an adaptation the waning days of his influence, the such as No Child Left Behind and the is more pressing than usual. But there is intellectual field is as open as it ever National Minimum Drinking Age Act no need to meet the challenge by throw- was. We could do worse than to fill it when they actually get into power. ing the baby out with the bathwater. with conservatarians.

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Adam Gopnik in The­New­Yorker argued prevalent in Britain as Bush Derangement that the institution’s “thumbprint is every- Syndrome is in America.) Still where. . . . Even our own Guantanamo- The­First­Total­War (2007), by Da - making apparatus . . . has a forebear in vid Bell, which the author explains is Deranged Torquemada and the men in the red hats,” about “the culture of war roughly adding (correctly) that the book was “rac- across the lifetime of napoleon Bon a- Bush-hating historians ing back and forth in history from Tor - parte (1769–1821),” contains 317 pages are on auto-rant que ma da to .” (The Spanish of text. Until the top of page 316 it is lucid In quisi tion, already long defunct, was and insightful, proving that the mid 18th abolished in 1834.) to early 19th centuries saw the military for BY ANDREW ROBERTS In a Times­Literary­Supplement review the first time as being in a separate sphere of two books about the Louisiana Pur - of society, and war outside the ordinary n December 2003, Dr. Charles chase—which took place in 1803, some bounds of social existence. But sufferers Krauthammer diagnosed a new 143 years before George W. Bush’s of BDS can’t confine themselves within men tal disorder, Bush De range ment birth—Michael O’Brien complained in their own boundaries, however carefully I Syndrome (BDS), which he defined 2004 that “the governed of Louisiana had set forth in dates, so Bell quotes George as “the acute onset of paranoia in other- never given their consent. nor, in due W. Bush unflatteringly and states that wise normal people in reaction to the course, would most of the inhabitants “what commentators insist on calling our policies, the presidency—nay—the of Florida, Texas, Cal i for nia, Hawaii, new ‘world war’ against Islamist terror very existence of George W. Bush.” Alaska, Iraq and so forth, all of which has probably had a smaller [body] count Krauthammer, trained as a psychiatrist, were bought or conquered in the name of than just one single na po le on ic battle.” had already diagnosed the disorder now liberty, without consent.” Slipping “Iraq” He then blames “the apocalyptic lan- known as “secondary mania” (see Ar­- into a list of American states that were guage” of both sides for having “created chives­of­General­Psychiatry, no vem ber brought into the Union, as though the U.S. the conditions under which the American 1978), so he could spot new mal a dies as wanted to rule over Iraq forever, as it public came to support the misguided war well as any other shrink. He had hoped does Ha waii or Alaska, is a classic of the in Iraq that has drained away American that BDS might be confined to, as he put BDS genre. Yet what country ever gives lives, American treasure, and American it, “the Upper West Side and the tonier its consent to be conquered? O’Brien’s credibility in the world and that has ar gu - parts of Los An gel es,” but after twelve implication is that Occupied France and ably left the US less secure against more years of history-book reviewing, I’m nazi Germany should have been polled to serious threats from elsewhere.” So 315 afraid I have to report that BDS has now give their “consent” before D-Day could pages of serious historical analysis are reached epi demic levels in the history be launched. The fact that Iraqis cheered in followed by two pages of ranting. departments of the Anglo-American the streets, pulled down Sad dam’s statue, To stay in the period, a new book on academy. Here are my findings, which I and voted in their millions in democratic napoleon’s secret-police chief, Joseph present for peer review. Most of the elections is no more a post-invasion Fouché, attempts to suggest “parallels books I mention are well written and expression of “consent” for O’Brien than between extraordinary rendition and mil- scholarly, but all of them unaccountably the repeated demands of Hawaii, say, to itary tribunals and present-day challenges veer off into denunciations of George W. be allowed to become a state. and responses.” Furthermore, in Na­- Bush, even though they are totally un- For BDS sufferers, it’s completely im - poleon­and­His­Empire (2007), edited by connected with the 43rd president, the permissible not to assume that the inva- Philip Dwyer and Alan Forrest, the Iraq War, or neoconservatism. sions of Iraq and Afghanistan were both emperor’s decision to execute or deport In Rebirth­of­a­Nation:­The­Making­of utter disasters. When, in 2013, the Indian 130 Jacobins without trial in 1800, and Modern­ America,­ 1877–1920­ (2009) historian Za reer Masani wrote a biogra- the wholesale destruction of civil liberties —a book that ends with Wood row Wil- phy of Lord Macaulay, which stated that that followed in France, is described as “a son’s presidency—for example, the histo- liberal interventionism had led to the Iraq scenario which can appear eerily familiar rian Jackson Lears writes that Pres ident and Af ghan wars, “for better or worse”— in our post–September 11 world.” One Bush “revived all the old, destructive fan- since, for a historian writing about Vic tor- can understand historians’ desire to try to tasies—the belief in America’s capacity ian Britain, the jury must still be out make their work contemporaneous and to save the world; the faith in the revital- concerning an event only 13 years ago— relevant, but when did the U.S. conduct izing powers of combat; the cult of manly the British historian Piers Bren don lam- mass executions post-9/11 and close toughness in foreign policy.” He adds that basted him for it in Literary­Review. By down 60 opposition newspapers? 9/11 “brought militarism back with a ven - contrast, when Catherine Hall, in her Margaret Macmillan’s new book about geance, providing the idea of regenerative 2012 book Macaulay­and­Son:­Architects the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 war with a luster it had not enjoyed (out- of­Im­pe­ri­al­Britain, managed to slip into somehow drags in George W. Bush, and side Fascist circles) for nearly a century.” her introduction a reference to “Bri tain’s in a review of Frank Cos ti g li ola’s book Reviewing Cullen Murphy’s book on the shameful colonial history in Iraq, and sub- Roosevelt’s­Lost­Alliances:­How­Personal Spanish Inquisition, God’s­Jury (2012), sequently in Afghanistan,” indeed the Politics­ Helped­ Start­ the­ Cold­ War— introduction was as much about Tony which ends in 1949—Pro fes sor O. A. Mr. Roberts is a British historian and journalist. His Blair as Lord Macaulay. (Blair Derange - Westad, writing in Lit­er­a­ry­ Review, most recent book is Napoleon: A Life. ment Syn drome—or BDS Strain II—is as managed in his first paragraph not to dis-

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cuss Roosevelt, harry Truman, Averell harriman, George Kennan, or indeed From National Review writer anybody about whom the book is writ- Save the ten, but instead to ask: “Would the US Charles C. W. Cooke reaction to 9/11 have been different if Sequester George W. Bush had not needed to act as a Texas cowboy in order to hide his priv- It’s the most successful program of FISCALLY ileged east Coast upbringing?” spending cuts in modern times Other books that drag in Bush or the CONSERVATIVE Iraq War with the absolute minimum of ? connection to the subject include Adri - BY STEPHEN MOORE enne Mayor’s The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s he most unheralded achieve- AGAINST Deadliest Enemy and The Folly of ment of the Republican Con - Fools, a science book by Robert Triv - gress over the last four years THE WAR ON ers, which suddenly veers off on an T has undoubtedly been the Bud - anti-Bush diatribe, blaming him for get Control Act of 2011 (BCA), which DRUGS ? going to war for no cause and for oil, has shrunk the size of government more despite the self-contradiction. even the effectively than any budget tool in a great Yale historian Timothy Snyder, generation. A sign of how well the bud- GET THE writing about the equally esti ma ble get caps and across-the-board spending Mark Mazower’s Hitler’s Em pire: Nazi cuts called “sequester” have worked is MANIFESTO. Rule in Occupied Europe (2008), stated how much President Obama and left- in the very first paragraph of his Times wing special-interest groups have come Literary Supplement review: “The to despise what the president calls this United States of George W. Bush invaded “mindless” spending-reduction formula. Iraq in the name of democracy, though But for a growing number of con- any representative democracy would gressional Republicans—especially the have to oppose a foreign occupation.” appropriators—this success has be - Similarly, Chris Bel l a my in his book come too much of a good thing, and about hitler’s invasion of Russia, Abso - they are looking to undo some of the lute War (2008), has a recurring sub- sequester-imposed cuts. President Obama theme of the unanticipated resistance to is enticing members concerned about the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. national security by offering to devote historians of the ancient world and half of the extra spending to beefing up their reviewers are just as likely to suffer the defense budget. If Republicans get from BDS as those of Lord Macau lay or suckered into this fiscal jailbreak, it the Spanish Inquisition. On page one of will effectively kill the sequester for Josiah Ober’s Democracy and Know - good and give a green light to the Oba - ledge: Innovation and Learning in ma budget blowout, which would add Classical Athens (2008), the author nearly half a trillion dollars of spending denounces “the recipe followed by the over just three years. All the hard- conservative George W. Bush administra- fought fiscal gains would be lost. Fiscal tion when planning for war in Iraq in conservatives would be smarter to force 2002.” Similarly, Peter Jay opened his Obama to comply with the sequester review of John R. hale’s Lords of the and overall caps while shifting spend- Sea: The Triumph and Tragedy of An - ing within the caps from domestic to cient Athens (2010) in The Spectator with defense programs. the words: “One thing is certain: George Let’s start with the salutary impact “Examined and argued W. Bush was no Pericles. For which rea- that the sequester and caps have had by son it is a pity that John R. hale’s new slamming the brakes on the Bush- brilliantly.” history of Athens in the fifth and fourth Obama full-throttle spending from 2008 —S. E. Cupp, centuries BC is launched with a rhetoric to 2011. The sequester came about as a host of CNN’s Crossfire more Texan than Attic. . . . To be sure it by-product of the famous 2011 “debt was not Dubya . . . who called Athens ‘a ceiling” negotiations between Obama dem oc ra cy based on triremes.’ . . . That and Republican house speaker John was Aristotle.” Boehner. Before those negotiations, the For the moment there seems to be no cure to BDS in sight. except, per- Mr. Moore is a contributor to NATIONAL haps, ridicule. REVIEW ONLINE and Fox News.

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federal government was spending 24.4 a role as well. But the sequester’s spend- One complaint is that entitlements percent of GDP. In 2014, expenditures ing guardrail is also a reason the deficit are still inflicting relentless fiscal fell to 20.3 percent. has fallen by two-thirds from its tower- destruction. The budgets for the big This 4.1-percentage-point reduction ing height of $1.4 trillion. Call it the tea- three programs—Medicare, Medicaid, in federal spending as a share of national party movement’s revenge. and Social Security—plus a new fourth output is the equivalent of an annual To fully appreciate this turnaround in one, Obama care subsidies, are expected $714 billion in resources that the gov- budget policy, consider the breadth of to nearly double (86 percent growth) ernment would have spent and squan- the Washington spending frenzy in between 2014 and 2025. These fiscal dered. This constitutes one of the largest recent years. Federal expenditures from Goliaths are only minimally con- fiscal retrenchments in modern times. 2007 to 2011 skyrocketed by $874 bil- strained by the BCA, because the White And all of this is happening while the lion in nominal dollars—a nearly one- House has steadfastly resisted any White House is occupied by the most third blowout during an era of modest reductions to their growth rate. Alas, the liberal president since LBJ. inflation. Now, thanks to the caps and prospects of badly needed market- To understand how this fiscal miracle sequester, discretionary programs, after based entitlement restructuring, such as happened, we have to revisit the final peaking in 2011 at $1.347 trillion, have personal accounts for Social Security, days of the 2011 debt-limit showdown been sliced and diced to $1.179 tril- are close to zero under this president.

Though it’s still a flimsy recovery, economic growth and government spending have been shown to move in opposite directions in recent years.

between Obama and Boehner. Boehner lion—a near 13 percent three-year actual Some argue that spending cuts are and then–House majority leader Eric cut in agency spending (16 percent in “austerity” and that the sequester has Cantor shrewdly agreed to the cap-and- inflation-adjusted dollars). A little more hurt the economy. Wrong. The economy sequester mechanism proposed by Jack than 60 percent of these cuts has come and jobs have picked up steam as the Lew, the lead budget negotiator for the from the defense budget, and the re - government has shrunk. Though it’s White House—with half the cuts to maining portion from domestic pro- still a flimsy recovery, economic growth come from defense and half from do- grams—everything from transit grants and government spending have been mestic discretionary programs. Lew to foreign aid to the IRS to Head Start to shown to move in opposite directions thought he had set a trap, because bridges to nowhere. in recent years, refuting the Keynesian Republicans would never go along with Actual discretionary spending (in gospel of the Left. This has been the these tight military-spending restraints. nominal dollars) from 2011 to 2014 was pattern for the last 50 years at least. But Boehner played Lew like a fid- $427 billion lower than that projected by Milton Friedman had it exactly right: dle. He rejected a phony entitlement- the Congressional Budget Of fice in Jan - Less government spending means more reform-for-tax-hike deal—an outcome uary 2011, prior to the caps’ implemen- private-sector growth; there is no mag- that much of Washington was cheerlead- tation. Not bad. ical “multiplier effect” of government ing for, but that would have caused a Republicans rightly warn that the se - spending. civil war within the GOP—and instead ver i ty of the military cuts hurts national All of this is to say that right now wisely embraced the binding spending security. But many of these cuts would Republicans hold all the cards on the controls and the automatic sequester have happened anyway as a result of the budget. If they can force President cuts. It was his finest hour. Lib er als wind-down of military operations in Obama to live within the overall spend- never knew what was about to hit them. Iraq and Afghanistan. At least Re publi - ing caps that he has twice agreed to and Under the BCA, total federal outlays cans were able to secure domestic cuts at that are cemented into law, then with a have fallen from $3.603 trillion in 2011 the same time. There has been no replay pickup in economic growth, federal to $3.506 trillion in 2014, in nominal of the post-Vietnam domestic-spending spending could fall below 20 percent of dollars. This is the first three-year stretch boom that liberals scored from 1968 to GDP by the last year of the most statist of declining federal outlays since Dwight 1978, when military spending as a per- president in modern times. There is no Eisenhower’s first term in office (though centage of GDP shrank by half while executive order the president could in 2015 federal outlays have started to entitlements grew by nearly 50 percent. issue to stop it. Only Republicans can rise again). Not all of this reduction is To maximize national security and money bail out the big spenders. due to the BCA sequester. A fall in inter- for troops, spending on non-defense That is why liberals—who had hoped est rates has reduced federal borrowing items in the Pentagon, including billions the reelection of Barack Obama would costs, and the repayment of funds to of dollars of green-energy programs, bring on a second Great Society spend- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the should be eliminated, but the Obama ing binge—have learned to hate the term reduction in welfare payments caused administration and Republican appro- “sequester.” And it is why conservatives by the end of the recession have played priators have rejected this option. should keep loving it.

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hauled her in on drunk-driving charges, Texas standards, that’s not outrageous, uses her office as a political weapon— and Abbott didn’t need a scandal to run up Texas Has a just as her predecessor in the office did— a 21-point victory over the single-issue while the state’s Medicaid program alone late-term-abortion enthusiast, beating the Corruption is a cavalcade of hilariously unethical pink off her sneakers. But Abbott also got shenanigans: Texas’s Medicaid-fraud some guff on the subject: During a debate, police are so bad at their job and spend so he bemoaned the “Third World” corrup- Problem much money that a state audit suggested tion in which the border region is mired, Can Greg Abbott solve it? that taxpayers would be better off if the and was met with the usual Democratic office did not exist; a former state actuary refrain: “THAT’S rAAAAAAACIST!” working on Medicaid fraud is being Abbott didn’t back down—he just recit- B Y K E V I N D . W I L L I A M S O N investigated for fraud; a purveyor of ed the facts: “A former Starr County sher- Medicaid-fraud-detection software won iff’s deputy was sentenced last year for exAS is a fantastic place to do a state contract under questionable cir- accepting bribes to protect drug dealers business: Taxes are low, the trial cumstances that led to the resignation of and their smuggling routes. Members lawyers are on a short leash, reg- the top lawyer at the Health and Human of a drug-enforcement task force and T ulation is light, and the state Services Commission . . . other law-enforcement agents in Hidalgo government is an energetic advocate of In Texas, $100-a-barrel oil contributed County are awaiting sentencing for money business growth. to a boom so loud and long that it laundering and drug smuggling. A former Also: Texas is an insanely terrible drowned out the niggling little voice in state district judge was convicted for place to do business: It has corrupt public the heads of the state’s leaders, which accepting money in return for favorable officials—law-enforcement officers on surely must have been whispering that rulings in a public corruption investigation the cartel dime, judges selling verdicts, something was wrong; with oil at $60 a that included a former district attorney and members of a drug task force shepherd- barrel the mood is decidedly less indul- a former state representative.” ing contraband from Mexico, school- gent, and the new governor, Greg Abbott, Oil companies are used to dealing with board races in which cash and cocaine are has a substantial challenge in front of him. corrupt governments. But Texas is more traded for votes—along with a corrupt During the 2014 gubernatorial election, than the energy business, and it needs to university system flouting its admissions Abbott made ethics reform a key issue— be much more. If the state wants to go on rules for the family and friends of state leg- and accused his opponent, Democrat being an engine—if not the engine—of islators, a generous statewide economic- Wendy Davis, of improperly profiting American job creation, to continue its development program that swaps grants from public-sector contracts. Among remarkable recent run, and to diversify for job creation but fails to adequately other things, Davis was contracted to be its economy in investment-intensive keep track of either, an out-of-control paid $400 an hour to provide legal ser- ways, it is going to have to do a great prosecutor in charge of a state ethics vices to the North Texas Tollway Author - deal better. office who, when she is not berating and ity while she was sitting on the state The grossest sort of corruption—the threatening the police officers who have senate’s transportation committee. By Third World stuff to which Abbott re - ferred—is a more or less straightforward matter of policing. Like any border state, Texas will suffer more of it, particularly given the criminal networks associated with Mexico’s cartels. Taking a stand against public officials who accept cartel bribes is not a particularly controversial or brave stance, at least not on this side of the border. But Texas’s problems go deeper than that. The Texas enterprise Fund (TeF), one of the several corporate-welfare programs operated out of Austin (and

every other state capital), is supposed to POOL , be a proposition offering a measurable return on investment: A company moves to Texas or expands its operat ions there ANDY JACOBSOHN and, in exchange for creating a certain , number of jobs at a certain level of pay, gets payoffs from the state. As a matter of principle, those programs are repug-

nant; as a matter of pragmatism, they are DALLAS MORNING NEWS / defensible—if at all—only when the

Greg Abbott benefits outweigh the expenses. AP PHOTO

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Whether that is the case in Texas is any- ment, Perry demanded her resignation, body’s guess. The programs are widely and threatened to veto her office’s funding criticized as amounting to little more than if she did not depart. She didn’t; he did; The Birth a corporate slush fund under control of the and her office indicted him on felony cor- governor, his lieutenant, and the speaker ruption charges for the veto. It is a ridicu- Of Dada of the state house—all Republicans and lous case, but then so was the prosecution de facto provisional allies, even though of Tom DeLay by the same office. He was Out of the spirit of nihilism they are not always happy about that— vindicated, but it ruined his political career. and even some high-profile conservative Governor Abbott, if he’s serious about BY DAVID PRYCE-JONES friends of former governor Rick Perry pri- ethics reform, has a multi-front cam- vately describe the program as corrupt. paign ahead. Rosemary Lehmberg can- URICH, that decorous Swiss city, The office of the state auditor stopped not be impeached by the legislature, but is already preparing to celebrate short of that characterization in its assess- she can be disbarred; more important, next year the centenary of ment, but it found real cause for concern: Travis County, an island of Democratic Z Dada. A preliminary brochure TEF did little to confirm that the jobs dominance in an overwhelmingly Re - provides a map showing 80 sites in the companies were being credited for had publican state, can be stripped of its spe- city with associations to Tristan Tzara, actually been created, or that businesses cial role in statewide political affairs. Jim Hugo Ball and his companion Emmy given money to dissuade them from Pitts, the Republican former chairman of Hennings, Walter Serner, Hans Arp, and a choosing out-of-state sites were really the house ways and means committee, few more, all of them fathers (and a considering other locations. More than probably cannot be charged with a crime mother or two) of Dadaism. Who, you $220 million was given to companies that for browbeating the University of Texas ask, who? Forgotten, the whole lot of not only were not required to prove that law school to admit his grossly unquali- them, and yet they did their bit to shift they were creating jobs but did not even fied son—or even for his role in the contemporary culture. complete applications. Some $40 mil- impeachment of the UT regent who ex - In 1916, well over a million men were lion went to one organization, the semi- posed that wrongdoing—but he can be killed or wounded in the battle of the conductor consortium Sematech, that shamed, and the relevant documents can Somme. Whether pacifists or revolu- swapped loyalties when it got a better and should be released. Governor Abbott tionaries, those with alternatives to the offer to move to Albany, N.Y. The state has voiced support for a number of mea- world war then doing its worst found was frequently unable to demonstrate that sures related to lobbying relationships, Zurich a safe and welcoming haven. it had followed the law and program rules, conflicts of interest, and the like, many of One of the places marked on the map for that projects met legal criteria, or that which have Democratic support, notably next year’s visitors is the Café Odeon, a Texans had in fact enjoyed a return on from state senator and former Austin landmark because Vladimir Lenin and their investments. Of course there was mayor Kirk Watson, and many of those Leon Trotsky treated it as an office and money moving both ways: grants to busi- deserve to be pursued. held debates there. Marginal men lost in nesses, donations to politicians. But big pieces such as the Texas Enter - fantasies like the Dadaists and longing Conservatives engaged in the corporate- prise Fund present problems that are not to change the world without any likeli- welfare fight know from bitter experi- going to be rendered tractable through hood of being able to do so, both of them ence that this sort of monster—the U.S. greater transparency and bureaucratic re - were taken by surprise when they came Export-Import Bank being the Godzilla form. What is needed in those cases is not to power in Russia a few months later. of the species—is difficult to control, new procedures ensuring that corporate- Artists and writers were at home in the much less to kill. But having hundreds of welfare programs are run with greater Cabaret Voltaire, where they could put millions of dollars on tap to pour into the probity but a philosophical and moral on plays, stage exhibitions, and write pockets of business interests on very lit- shift—an acknowledgement that such manifestos. The building fell into disre- tle more than the say-so of the top three programs are corrupt and corrupting by pair, but a few years ago an entrepreneur elected officials in the state is an invita- their nature, and that they are illegitimate. with an eye on the commercial possibil- tion to corruption. The view from Washington is not en - ities of Dada restored it. And fighting corruption is a tricky couraging for reform in Austin: The rush If anyone was the movement’s moving business. Rick Perry is, as of this writing, of so-called progressives and “inequality” spirit, it was Tristan Tzara. He was born in under felony indictment for the purported warriors such as Senator Elizabeth Warren 1896 in what was then Moldavia and is crime of vetoing funding for the Public to defend the Export-Import Bank—the now Romania; his birth name was Samuel Accountability Office, a division of the main purpose of which is to subsidize Rosenstock, and he came from a Jewish Travis County district attorney’s fiefdom Boeing—is an unhappy reminder that the family doing well in the timber business. that, as a result of local political peculiar- power to dole out million- and billion- His pseudonym was supposed to convey ities, acts as the statewide ethics enforcer. dollar favors is one that few politicians are that he saw himself as a sad donkey, in When Travis County district attorney ready to give up. But as a Republican gov- French “triste âne.” According to one leg- Rosemary Lehmberg was videotaped ernor in Texas, Greg Abbott is one of the end, the word “Dada” derived from his not only excoriating the police officers few well suited to do just that—and if it habit of repeating “Da, da,” Russian for who had brought her in on drunk-driving means he wins his next election by only “Yes, yes.” Others said Dada derived from charges but also threatening to have them ten points instead of 21, the republic will the chance discovery in a dictionary that jailed if she did not receive special treat- thank him. it was French slang for a workhorse. Yet

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You deserve a factual look at . . . How Will We Stop Iran? Iran’s global jihad seizes new ground, fortified by an obsessive quest for nuclear arms. Negotiations are failing. Do we need tougher sanctions? Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist leaders are sworn by their nation’s constitution to pursue world conquest through jihad. Through global error t campaigns, Iran has already achieved dominance in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. It openly threatens to destroy Israel. Despite decades of Western-imposed trade embargos and sanctions, as well as recent U.S.-led negotiations, Iran’s drive to amass nuclear arms continues unabated, and its leaders vow not to give up their quest. What more must the U.S. and the world do to stop Iran’s apocalyptic uclear n threat?

government. Syria’s President Bashar Assad, roiled in a bloody WhatIran is by are far the the world’s facts? most aggressive perpetrator of terrorist civil war, has essentially become a proxy for Iran, and the Houthis, acts. It provides direct funding and leadership to Islamic terror who just violently took control of former U.S. ally Yemen, are also groups Hizbollah, Hamas, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Shiite on Iran’s payroll. While the U.S. has designated Iran a state militias in Iraq, as well as the ruthless Assad regime in Syria. The sponsor of terrorism and instituted a trade embargo in 1995, the Islamic republic also has been tied to bloody attacks on civilians in Islamic republic’s warlik e cts a against the U.S., Israel and many nations as far flung as India, Thailand, other nations have only increased. To Saudi Arabia and ulgaria, B as well as an “Of course we bypass the halt Iran’s nuclear weapons attempted assassination of the Saudi development, the West imposed Ambassador in Washington, DC. Iran sanctions, and we take pride in it.” sanctions in 2006, but Iran’s was recently implicated in the 1994 centrifuges continue to spin defiantly. bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani Despite intense recent negotiations and a murderous cover-up attempt. But between the U.S. and Iran to reach a Iran’s most belligerent threats have been directed at Israel, which peaceful resolution, several deadlines for settlement have passed, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei vows to “annihilate.” and Iran still refuses to cease nuclear weapons development. Iran’s terrorist tactics are motivated by its drive to become the Indeed, recent investigations indicate that Iran has already dominant ower p in the Middle East. The Shiite ideology of Iran’s violated existing agreements by establishing secret nuclear supply leaders commands Muslims to wage global jihad, and their networks. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani boasts, “Of course we constitution commits them to “the establishment of a universal bypass the sanctions, and we take pride in it.” No wonder a holy government and the downfall of all others.” So far Iran’s majority of the U.S. Congress urgently supports harsh new strategy has been successful, as its controlling influence now sanctions on Iran unless it immediately agrees to give up spreads over Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and most recently Yemen. More weapons-grade nuclear enrichment and ballistic missile critically, Iran has an effective chokehold ver the Gulfo of Hormuz, programs. President Obama, however, promises to veto any such through which much of the world’s oil travels. measure, arguing that increased sanction threats will frighten the No wonder most of the world’s nations, especially Saudi Arabia, Iranians from further negotiations. Jordan and Egypt, are horrified at the prospect of Iran acquiring What is the solution? Most Americans share the President’s nuclear weapons. In fact, a nuclear Iran threatens the worldwide hopes that Iran can be persuaded to set aside its nuclear balance of power, particularly in the inflammable Middle East. For ambitions—and its vendetta against Israel—through diplomacy. Israel, a nuclear-armed Iran poses an imminent threat to its very But one thing is certain: Iran is our enemy. Appeasement ill not w existence. work. It is only crippling Western economic sanctions, backed by Unfortunately, the West, and particularly the United States, the threat of force, that have driven Iran to the negotiating table. must share the blame for allowing Iran to increase its hegemony Above all, Iran must decommission its nuclear weapons and acquire nuclear weapons capability. The U.S. pulled out of infrastructure now. To this end, Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) Lebanon in 1983 after an Iranian-engineered bomb killed 241 and Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) have introduced the Nuclear Marines, facilitating the rise of Shiite Hizbollah terrorists. When Weapon Free Iran Act of 2015, which toughens sanctions if Iran the U.S. pulled out of Iraq in 2011, Iran stepped in, seizing control refuses to comply, thus strengthening the U.S. hand in forging an of Shiite militias nd exerting a decisive influence on the Iraqi agreement that peacefully eliminates the Iranian nuclear threat. Since sanctions brought the Iranians to the table, sanctions are the most powerful, peaceful means for convincing them to abandon plans to acquire nuclear weapons. But because the Iranians continue to declare themselves implacably committed to nuclear development, it’s time to ratchet up economic pressure. The Free Iran Act should be passed now. The survival of the world is at stake.

This ad has been published and paid for by FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world. Your tax- deductible contributions are welcome. They enable us to pursue these goals Facts and Logic About the Middle East I and to publish these messages n nationali newspapers and magazines. We P.O. Box 590359 San Francisco, CA 94159 I have virtually no overhead. Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational Gerardo Joffe, President James Sinkinson, Vice President work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail. 146 To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 3/3/2015 11:26 PM Page 28

another theory, just as likely, is made,” as he liked to say. that in the Kru language of West Relishing disgust, he also Africa, “dada” denotes the tail painted a moustache on a of a sacred cow. copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The beginnings of Dada Mona Lisa. Spawned by were not the beginnings of art, Dadaism, Surrealism had an but of disgust,” Tristan Tzara inbuilt belief in chaos and wrote. A brilliant operator, he generated a disgust with life was able to exploit the Dadaist that made it another anti- discovery that disgust is a humanist movement. Tzara medium. This was a novelty. and a number of Surrealists Classical art had had the pur- next evolved into Commu - pose of making statements nists and duly went to Spain about mankind’s place in the for the civil war. In Commu - universe. People read books nist doctrine, art involves and go to museums to learn instruction in the correct line what writers and painters can of thought and so is an instru- tell them about some aspect of ment of control. An inordi- the human condition. Western nate amount of Stalin’s time humanism owes its strength was spent examining plays, and spread in the world to that operas, books, and films. reason. Of course there have The Social Realism obliga- always been writers and artists tory in Soviet books and who despised the society and Tristan Tzara paintings was a decisive repu- the times they lived in, but even diation of everything Western those who worked for revolution and The first line of one such invention goes, humanism has ever stood for. The destruction had some view of what the “Gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni Marxist dialectic had settled all that there human condition ought to be. cadori.” Would it make any difference if was to be settled in the human condition. Out of disgust, Dadaists gave up on the word order were reversed? A drawing Adolf Hitler, an artist manqué, had the humanism. For them, art’s whole purpose by Francis Picabia of a piece of engi- comparable anti-humanist slant: For him, was to show that the human condition neered machinery has the title “Young art sustained , otherwise it was doesn’t come into it. There wasn’t any American Girl.” degenerate, fit to be destroyed. order and never would be, only disorder, To quote the critic Peter Fleming once Albert Einstein was one who lived anarchy, as though everything was a joke more, he summed up Dada as “a fully through World War I in Zurich and was that couldn’t be interpreted. Scholar Philip realized, soulless expression of Dionysian unaffected by the carryings-on in either Beitchman has summarized Tzara’s cen- excess,” evidently himself having the the Café Odeon or the Cabaret Voltaire; tral thought as follows: “As long as we do very Dadaist conviction that there’s no another was C. G. Jung, he of the collec- things the way we think we once did them point in being meaningful. Disgust is tive unconscious and the archetype. we will be unable to achieve any kind of reward enough: You shudder at it, or you James Joyce was also there, and for all I livable society.” have to laugh it off. Either way, the artist know innumerable doctorates trace the Hugo Ball, a German, has the same has put you in the difficult position of relationship of his magnificently unread- nihilism: “We should burn all libraries wondering what he’s getting at, what able novel Finnegans Wake to Dada. The and allow to remain only that which point he’s making in his dehumanized house he lived in is marked on the cente- everyone knows by heart.” Dadaist sculp- universe. He knows the significance of nary map, and his grave in the cemetery ture has been described by the critic Peter what he’s doing, so the unspoken mes- is already a tourist attraction. The absurd Fleming as consisting of “rusty bicycle sage goes, an d you, poor inferior crea- works of Samuel Beckett and Harold wheels, broken bottles and dented soup- ture, haven’t the faintest idea. Pinter have kept alive the solipsism of the cans, ancient, splintered furniture, dis- Such an approach really marks the end Dada tradition. Conceptual art is another carded rags and household appliances.” of Western humanism. Art ceases to be derivative. To pickle half an animal in a The characters in Tzara’s play The Gas about the human condition the moment tank of formaldehyde or to exhibit in a Heart are called Ear, Mouth, Eye, Nose, the artist thinks that he doesn’t have any- museum an unmade bed or the contents Neck, and Eyebrow. Symphonie Vaseline thing to explain. Uncoupling cause and of a rubbish bin is unadulterated Dada. required ten or twenty people onstage effect, displacing logic with whimsy, the The mental activity of the artist counts AP IMAGES / shouting “Cra” and “Cri” on a rising Dadaist movement devalued workman- for more than the work he has produced DPA / scale. A play on which several Dadaists ship, craft, understanding, all components out of it. Whether or not the visitors to the collaborated has the title “The Hyperbole of high Western culture. centenary in Zurich realize it, they will ALLIANCE - of the Crocodile’s Hairdresser and the After World War I, Tzara settled in have taken on board as an article of con- PICTURE / Walking-Stick.” Hugo Ball boasted that Paris. In Dadaist manner, Marcel Du - temporary faith that anyone and every- he had invented “a new series of verse, champ was there presenting a plumbed one who calls himself an artist must be

FRED STEIN verses without words, a sound poem.” urinal as a work of art—a “ready- one. Dada did that.

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The Christie Hiatus New Jersey’s governor has not won lasting reforms

BY STEVEN MALANGA

hRIs ChRIsTIe grabbed the attention of political titude of fiscal messes and recharging its economy have observers when he defeated New Jersey incumbent stalled, prompting criticisms that he isn’t doing enough to governor Jon Corzine in 2009, vowing to fix a state revive New Jersey. C that had been beset by almost continuous economic It’s worth considering what Christie was up against when he and fiscal woes for a decade. Christie’s tough talk about rein- took office, what he’s accomplished, and where he’s fallen ing in public-sector unions and his efforts to reduce huge short. A good starting point is to look at the massive debt in the deficits without raising taxes won him a certain celebrity in state’s pension system. The way New Jersey has mismanaged Republican circles. And in his home state, he gained popu- that system over 25 years—with a succession of administra- larity by engineering some overdue, bipartisan reforms such as tions and legislatures engaging in accounting tricks, backroom a cap on annual property taxes. Christie’s early successes deals, and outright deception about how much money was in sparked speculation that he might run for president in 2012, the pension funds—is indicative of how Trenton has mis - and though he declined, he has been exploring a run in 2016. handled its other fiscal affairs. But lately, especially since winning reelection easily in The tale begins when Trenton politicians discovered that 2013, Christie has watched his reputation tumble both in they could alleviate short-term budget woes by manipulating New Jersey and nationwide. This is partly the result of the the financial statements of the pension system. In 1992, political fallout from the so-called Bridgegate scandal, in Governor Jim Florio signed into law the innocuous-sounding which members of Christie’s staff ordered lane closures on Pension Revaluation Act, which raised the projected return the approaches to the George Washington Bridge to create on the state pension system’s long-term investments. traffic jams, and headaches for a political opponent who was Politicians have no business dabbling in such projections, but the mayor of a town that suffered the congestion. But, in the maneuver made the system seem better funded than addition, the governor’s efforts at cleaning up the state’s mul- before, allowing Trenton to reduce the money it contributed

to the fund by some $750 million in a tight budget year. Two MEL EVANS / years later, the legislature passed a bill, signed into law by

Governor Christie Whitman, that changed the pension sys- AP PHOTO

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tem’s actuarial methods. This produced a short-term paper McGreevey was perhaps the king of borrowing. Even while he gain that saved the state more than $1 billion in pension pay- was shortchanging the pension system, McGreevey floated ments over two years. But Trenton was just getting warmed nearly $2 bi llion in bonds to finance a 17 percent increase in up. In 1997, the Whitman administration decided to float $2.7 2005 state spending—a move that violated the state constitu- billion in bonds for the pension system as part of the ironi- tion’s ban on borrowing to finance day-to-day operations. New cally named Pension Security Plan. Borrowing to fund pen- Jersey’s supreme court reprimanded McGreevey but let the sions is rarely a good idea, but Trenton made it even worse borrowing stand. than usual. To get the public-employee unions to go along, As the state’s fiscal woes multiplied, Trenton could not the administration agreed to lower the retirement age for muster the will to enact any meaningful reforms. By 2008, workers and reduce their required contributions to the sys- New Jersey had emptied its transportation tr ust fund. All the tem. And to minimize the short-term impact of the borrowing money from gas taxes and tolls had gone toward paying back on its budget, New Jersey designed the bonds to pay no interest its debt. Still, the state managed to waste transportation money for ten years—making them more expensive to repay over at astonishing rates. A 2010 study by the Reason Foundation the long term. Then legislators cited the borrowed money to found that New Jersey spent $1.14 million per mile on its argue that the system was well funded and that therefore the roads, compared with a national average of just $145,127 per state could afford to skip some annual pension contributions mile. It expended an astonishing $123,844 per mile just on and simultaneously increase benefits to workers. Between transportation maintenance at a time when the national average 1999 and 2003, Republican and Democratic administrations was $22,937. No other state spent more. Those huge numbers approved 13 bills boosting benefits, at a cost of an additional represented expensive practices such as the imposition of $6.8 billion in total liability. prevailing-wage laws, which essentially require state contrac- To make these maneuvers look justifiable, Trenton misled tors to pay union wages on all jobs, and the maintenance of a voters. Even as the stock market declined in 2000 and through- complex and needlessly large transportation bureaucracy. out 2001, the state kept valuing the pension system as it had in What is perhaps most astounding is that the state racked up 1999, when the system was flush with borrowed money. The these debts even as McGreevey and Corzine enacted more than legislature also kept referring in budget documents to a plan to $5 billion in tax hikes. By the time Corzine left office, New shore up the pension system by putting more money into it, Jersey was collecting more state and local taxes per capita than even though that plan had been abandoned. State documents in any other state, yet it was deeply in debt and its projected reve - 2005, for instance, variously suggested that New Jersey con- nues and spending showed no signs of matching up anytime in tributed $551 million or $56 million to the pension system that the foreseeable future. year. The real number, reported two years later, was zero. Politicians often mislead their constituents in such ways, but when New Jersey extended its obfuscations to hEN Christie took office in January 2010, he inher- bond-offering documents, the Securities and Exchange ited a $2 billion midyear financial hole from Commission cited the state for defrauding investors, making W Corzine (New Jersey’s fiscal year, like that of most New Jersey the first state ever charged with violating federal states, begins on July 1) and a whopping $11 billion projected securities laws. “The State of New Jersey didn’t give its deficit for the next budget, on estimated revenues of only $30 municipal investors a fair shake, withholding and misrepre- billion. The state’s budget woes were exacerbated by the end- senting pertinent information about its financial situation,” the ing of a nearly $1 billion temporary income-tax surcharge on SEC complaint said. wealthy residents that Corzine and the Democratic legisla- In 2005, a governor’s commission estimated the pension ture had designed to expire at the close of 2009, knowing system’s unfunded liabilities at $12 billion and urged action. that any potential Republican candidates would be forced Corzine ran for governor that year p romising to make reform a during the gubernatorial campaign to declare whether they priority, but once in office he failed to propose any meaningful planned to extend the tax, and, if not, what programs they cost savings and continued shortchanging the system. By the would cut. time he left office in early 2010, the state’s pension debt had Christie refused to renew the tax and proceeded to slash soared to $48 billion, and the opportunity to fix the problem at some 300 items in the Corzine budget, including more than a price the state could afford had passed. $400 million in school-district aid. he then vetoed tax The economist Alicia Munnell, head of the Center for Re - increases sent to him by the Democratic legislature and tirement Research at College, has said that the one crafted a budget for the new year with still more budget common characteristic of states with severely underfunded reductions, including cuts to politically popular programs pensions is that they are fiscally irresponsible in other areas, such as a property-tax rebate for senior citizens. When too. New Jersey certainly fits that pattern. Not content to spend Democrats argued that Christie’s budget would force merely the money it should have pumped into pensions, munici palities to boost their own spending, the governor Trenton has foraged for even more cash. Between 1992 and traveled around the state urging residents to vote against any 2006, the state swept $4.6 billion from its unemployment trust efforts to keep local budgets growing. The spring of his first fund—meant to pay jobless benefits to workers—into other year in office, voters shocked the political establishment by spending. When the recession hit in 2008, New Jersey had to rejecting 60 percent of school-district budgets in a state borrow $2 billion from the federal government to pay benefits where they had routinely passed. to unemployed workers—money that it has had to pay back Christie took office arguing that New Jersey needed to under the Christie administration. Former governor Jim reduce taxes to make itself more competitive with other

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ction The Bent Pin Colle withering by florence king The new, complete, and unabridged collection of the popular slightsmonthly NR magazine column by America’s most revered misanthropic writer he hallmark of National Review is that it has been home to some of America’s very best writers, and few will argue that there are any of greater style, wit, and caustic wisdom than Florence King, whoseT beloved “second” column, “The Bent Pin,” graced the magazine in every other issue from 2007 to 2012 (her previous column, “The Misanthrope’s Corner,” held NR’s back page for a glorious decade). King fans (who isn’t?!) have so craved her timeless works that over the years NR has published two collections, STET, Damnit! and Deja Reviews. And now we’re delighted to announce a third treasure trove of unrivaled prose à la Florence—Withering Slights: The Bent Pin Collection, 2007 to 2012. On every page of this brand-new, handsome hardcover book is proof positive that in Miss King’s deft hand, the pen is mightier than any sword, and the pin of prose finds and pricks the many inanities bal- looning across the fruited plains and foggy moors—which is why you must get your first-edition copy of Withering Slights right now, hot off the press. The cost is just $24.95, direct from (and only from) NR, hap- pily shipped and handled at no cost to you. Admit again what you’ve admitted every time you’ve read a King column or r eview: that through the laughter you’ve chortled, “I wish I’d said that.” Which is what you indeed will say, without end, when you climb the lofty heights of Withering Slights. Conservatives, curmudgeons, and anyone who thrills to superior writing will delight at this complete “Bent Pin” collection, a 200-proof, rip-roaring, bombs-away exposition of La Firenze at her very best. Brandishing sharp, crafted, tight prose that dazzles and endures, Miss King’s dead-on, no-punch-pulled take on the American scene and its many cultural peccadillos will elicit gasps and guffaws, head-shakes and table-slams, Heck-Yeahs and Damn-Straights (and maybe even a Darn-Tootin’). From her first “Bent Pin” column in 2007 (“Grosser and Grosser”) to her 2012 adios (“Something Ere the End”), and some five dozen more beauts ween them (including clas- sics such as “A Broad at Home,” “Facial Politics,” “Softboiled Speech,” “The Defenestration of the Shmoo,” and “With Liberty and Pug Noses for All”), King holds nothing back, letting loose her pen on anyone and anything from atrocious trends (Neo- Cleavage!) to irksome types (Weeping Wardens, LibProgs, TempCons, Pixies, New Changers, and many more)—all of it refreshing and g uffaw-inducing. And as ever, you’ll relish the THWACK! when Florence gets National Review w 215 Lexington Avenue w New York, NY w 10016 her grump on to land a two-by-four of con- tempt upside many a deserving . Send me ______copies of Withering Slights: The Bent Pin Collection. My cost is $24.95 It’s beautiful, brand new, only $24.95, and each (shipping and handling included!). I enclose total payment of $______. Send to:

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states. He has sent the legislature a series of broad, across- mately 1.4 percent in both 2012 and 2013. New Jersey had the-board tax cuts that the Democratic-controlled senate and gone a whole decade before Christie took office, including assembly have refused to enact. But in 2011, the governor eight consecutive years under two Democratic administra- and the legislature did get together to pass modest business- tions, without ever surpassing annual employment growth of tax cuts that eliminated some of the most onerous character- 1 percent. But the Democratic legislature didn’t take advan- istics of the state’s commercial-tax code. When fully phased tage of New Jersey’s economic good fortune. In November in next year, the cuts will be worth about $700 million annu- 2013 it imposed a significant boost in the state’s minimum ally to firms. wage over Christie’s veto. And last year, job growth skidded Christie and the Democrats have also enacted reforms for nearly to a halt. Christie scrambled to balance his budget and the benefit of overburdened municipal taxpayers. In Christie’s decided to cut a $2.5 billion pension payment back to just $700 first year in office, the state passed a 2 percent cap on annual million. A judge allowed him to do so even though the reform property-tax increases (though the law has some loopholes that legislation did not permit it, on the grounds that the state faced allow for greater increases under certain circumstances). That a fiscal emergency. same year, Christie responded to complaints by municipal offi- The outlook is even worse when you consider the way the cials—who had long argued that state mandates made it diffi- state’s bills will grow. The pension-payback plan forces New cult to manage their own budgets—by dumping New Jersey’s Jersey to increase its contributions by about $500 million expensive binding-arbitration law, which had put the ultimate every year until 2018. It’s difficult to see how a state that has fate of negotiations between public unions and local govern- only about $34 billion in revenues and has never put more ments in the hands of an unelected arbitrator. than $1.5 billion into its pension system in any given year In his second year in office, Christie tackled the state’s will find more than three times that amount in just a few thorniest problem: the severely underfunded pension system. years. Christie has now begun arguing that the only alterna- Working with a handful of Democratic legislators who were tive is to go back and look for even bigger savings. In late willing to cross the aisle, Christie and the legislature modestly February he proposed a new plan that involves freezing the increased payments that workers must make toward their own current, expensive pension system and instituting a new, pensions, suspended annual cost-of-living adjustments for 401(k)-style plan for government workers, similar to what retirees, and raised the retirement age for state-government many workers in the private sector now have. Under this workers from 62 to 65. The reforms also made government plan, known as a cash-balance system, the state would make workers, who had previously been required to make no con- annual contributions to worker retirement accounts, and tributions to their own health-insurance costs, start paying a workers would receive a lump-sum payment at retirement small portion of their premiums. And the legislation re - rather than a monthly pension check based on some percent- quired the state to make its annual contributions to the pen- age of their final salary, which is what the current system sion system, too, although it gave the state seven years to provides. But the state’s taxpayers would not be responsible gradually increase its payments until they reached full fund- for making up any shortfalls that resulted from declines in ing in 2018. the stock market. Christie has also proposed requiring work- Compared with reforms passed up to that point in most ers to contribute more toward their health benefits and using other states, the changes that Christie engineered were con- the resulting cost savings to help pay off the current pension siderable. The problem, however, was that New Jersey’s system’s debts. These proposals represent the kind of reforms pension debt was so large that the cost savings needed to be he should have argued for back in 2011. The political obsta- even greater. Independent pension analysts almost univer- cle is that, because Christie declared victory on pensions sev- sally argued in the press that the legislation Christie was eral years ago, he now owns the state’s pension problems. about to sign would not be enough to fix the broken system. Democrats have put him on the defensive and proposed $1.6 George Mason University fiscal analyst Eileen Norcross told billion in new taxes. the Philadelphia Inquirer, “I don’t think it’s going to be enough to save the system from the size of the liability they are looking at.” Christie, however, disregarded these warn- s Christie has scrambled to pay off the state’s debts ings and accepted the optimistic assumptions of legislative and balance its books, he has employed question- Democrats and of his own team’s economic projections. A able budget tactics himself, including sweeping It was clear that New Jersey faced a long, arduous road monies dedicated to specific purposes—such as funds from back to fiscal responsibility. The reform legislation gave a national mortgage-fraud settlement and road tolls that Trenton seven years to start making full contributions to its should be used for highway maintenance—into the general pension system. In the meantime, the system’s debt would budget. He has also “reduced” spending in some cases sim- continue growing. The law also put most of the onus for pay- ply by pushing expenditures from one fiscal year into the ing off the system’s debts on taxpayers. While the state next, which is not a true long-term reduction. He employed asked workers to contribute an additional $250–300 million these gimmicks in the early years of his tenure, after years of a year to the cost of their benefits, taxpayers were handed a state spending far in excess of actual revenue, because it bill that independent analysts estimated would grow to $5 would have been impossible for anyone to quickly solve the billion annually by 2018. enormous structural imbalances in New Jersey’s budget. The last two years of Christie’s first term seemed to provide “You can’t deal with it all at once,” respected Rutgers eco- him with the surging economy he needed to pay off the state’s nomics professor Joseph seneca told the New York Times. big bills. The number of private-sector jobs grew by approxi- “It’s going to take some time to get back, but I think the

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important first steps have occurred very effectively.” But rather than giving up the gimmicks he employed at first, Christie has persisted in his budget manipulations. President For a governor who preaches restraint on spending, Christie has also made some questionable decisions. He’s shown a fondness for expensive big-business tax subsidies that smack of corporate cronyism, and he’s chosen to bail Obama’s out a few white elephants from previous administrations, including a twice-bankrupt, $1.9 billion mall-and-entertainment complex in the new Jersey Meadowlands. He’s one of nine Civic Religion Republican governors who agreed to expand their states’ Medicaid programs under Obamacare, though he vetoed state legislation that would have made the policy permanent How the Left brings church into politics and promises to rescind it if Washington doesn’t meet its promises to fund most of the additional coverage. Christie has also seen some political failures that have BY DAVID FRENCH made his job tougher. A major source of new Jersey’s fiscal problems is its supreme court, one of the most activist in the even years after Jeremiah Wright came to national country. It has ruled that Trenton needs to subsidize urban fame as President Obama’s radical pastor, a man who schools so that they spend as much, per pupil, as schools in declared “God damn America” from the pulpit, the the state’s richest suburban districts, with the state covering S president’s faith is still a matter of controversy. With a the difference. As a result, schools in places such as newark, new presidential election looming, it’s apparently urgently Camden, and Paterson spend more per pupil—$25,000 and important for members of the media to know whether Re - up—than urban schools just about anywhere else. I estimate publicans such as Scott Walker believe that President Obama is that new Jersey has been forced to spend an additional $40 a Christian. billion on education over the last 20 years as a result of the Walker’s answer—“I don’t know”—is not one the media supreme-court ruling. Christie took office pledging to rein in want to hear. But how can any man know another man’s heart— the court, but he’s stumbled in his nominations, putting for- especially the heart of a person he’s never met? Who but God ward inexperienced jurists whom the Democratic-controlled knows our deepest beliefs? To the extent that a president bares state senate has balked at approving. his soul to anyone, it won’t be to a reporter or to any person Despite his failings, Christie has remained very popular likely to speak to a reporter. Thus, any pundit or commentator with one constituency that’s crucial for a new Jersey re - who purports to declare what a president “really believes” on bound: the state’s battered business community. In a January matters of faith should be viewed with deep suspicion. 2015 poll by the new Jersey Business and Industry But while we can’t know the faith in a man’s heart, we can dis- Association, 57 percent of executives said that Christie is cern quite a lot about the faith he manifests. Discussions about doing a good or excellent job—the best rating of any gover- religion should center not just on orthodoxy (correct belief) but nor since the poll began in 1991. That same poll found a sig- also on orthopraxy (correct conduct). And while we can’t know a nificant decrease in the pessimism that hung over the president’s inner walk of faith, we can know his conduct, and we business community: During Corzine’s last year in office, 52 can know how he publicly ties that conduct to his professed faith. percent of new Jersey executives rated their state as a bad In other words, we can discern how he practices his civil religion. place to do business; it’s down to 28 percent now. In the recent past, ’s public walk of faith was If his overall popularity doesn’t rebound, Christie’s biggest instantly rec ognizable to anyone who grew up in the heavily failing may be that he has paved the way for a Democrat to churched South: the backslidden Baptist, fluent in the lan- succeed him. Given the stranglehold that Democrats already guage of faith, struggling with personal demons, yet instantly have on the legislature, that would almost certainly lead to able to make connections with pastors and the public. new rounds of expensive and de structive tax increases. Under evangelicals who met with him privately often came away that scenario, Christie’s tenure would have been, at best, an impressed with his awareness of his own sin, with his pro- eight-year hiatus from the barrage of new levies, spending fessed desire to be a better man, and with his knowledge and boondoggles, and regulatory excesses that new Jersey expe- awaren ess of Scripture. He spoke of a desire to protect life, and rienced under Democratic governance. they believed him. He spoke of his close walk with God, and Christie’s administration could have achieved so much they believed him. more. It might have demonstrated to the state’s cynical and His policies, however, frustrated and angered many beleaguered voters that it is possible to change the culture of evangelicals and Catholics. Yes, he said that he wanted abor- Trenton, to overturn the greedy, profligate, dysfunctional tion to be “rare,” but in practice his support for Roe v. Wade politics that has so consistently earned new Jersey a reputa- was unwavering. And there were lingering suspicions that he tion as one of the worst-managed states, and to set state gov- was conning the public, that perhaps he wasn’t so much ernment on a path toward financial stability and regulatory struggling with personal demons as he was regretting that he sanity. But Christie still has time to demonstrate just how had gotten caught. destructive years of tax-borrow-and-spend policies have been, and this would be a real achievement. Mr. French is an attorney, a writer, and a veteran of the Iraq War.

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George W. Bush, by contrast, presented a form of main- the belief that each person is “unique and valuable.” If you’re stream Evangelicalism common to many of our nation’s so- looking for the Apostles’ Creed, or any expression of beliefs called megachurches. Focused on a relationship with Jesus, remotely similar to the Apostles’ Creed, you’ve come to the heavy on stories of personal renewal and redemption (Presi - wrong place. dent Bush spoke of his past battles with alcohol), oriented In 2004, Barack Obama gave perhaps his most candid inter- toward reaching out to the poor (especially overseas), and view about his personal beliefs, which clearly reflect UCC plagued with an oddly unbiblical optimism about human influence. Here’s his basic expression of faith: “So, I’m rooted nature, the mainstream Evangelical is hardly the religious in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to scold portrayed in the secular media. the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, President Bush’s policies—including his greatest successes a belief that we are connected as a people.” and most consequential mistakes—reflected this public faith. Obama noted that Jesus was a “wonderful teacher” and said, For a success, think of the launch of the President’s Emergency “Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge Plan for AIDS Relief and the millions of lives it has saved. between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I For a mistake, think of the consistent failures to understand think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of the cultural challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan, where—it us reaching something higher.” turned out—God may not have implanted in “every human In response to the question “Do you believe in heaven?” he heart” the “desire to live in freedom.” Some human hearts burn responded dismissively: “Do I believe in harps and clouds and with much greater desires for vengeance and blood. wings?” He went on to explain that he did, in fact, believe in some form of eternal reward: “What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded.” HAT about President Obama? What is his public Perhaps his most famous statement in the interview faith? Much ink has been spilled—almost all of it regarded sin, which he described as “being out of alignment W wasted—attempting to discern what President with my values.” Obama “really believes.” I’m a frequent guest on Christian To be sure, President Obama has said that Christ “died for radio shows, and even now—more than six years into his pres- our sins,” but viewed in context with his other theological idency—the occasional caller will proclaim, with confidence, statements, he is not speaking the language of most orthodox that the president is actually Muslim. believers, of the necessity of substitutionary atonement to rec- When Jeremiah Wright exploded onto the scene in 2008, and oncile a soul with God, but rather in accord with a more pro- sound bites of his anti-American rants filled the airwaves, mil- gressive model. Journalist Lisa Miller—in a 2008 profile of lions of Americans familiarized themselves with the basics of Obama’s spiritual journey—described the concept well: “black-liberation theology” and wondered whether President “Christ’s gift of salvation was to the community of believers, Obama was truly that radical. not to individual people in isolation.” He sat listening to Wright’s preaching for years. He named his Obama’s expressed beliefs do not, of course, represent tra- second book after a phrase in one of Wright’s sermons. By his ditional Christian orthodoxy, but they do represent a kind of own admission, it was in Wright’s church that he came to faith. Mainline orthodoxy, which holds that religions are roughly He claimed that he attended the church “every week, 11 o’clock equivalent (so long as they’re not “distorted” into fundamen- service.” How could he not have been heavily influenced? talism) and that Christ’s death didn’t represent an atoning In his public faith, he was. But not by black-liberation the- sacrifice so much as an example of his love and commitment ology. Instead, he has publicly adopted the beliefs and prac- to nonviolence. tices of Wright’s denomination, the United Church of Christ We see this line of thinking not just in the UCC but in the (UCC), perhaps the most liberal of the Mainline Protestant Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, and many American denominations. In fact, when one considers not just others. Writing in First Things, Philip Turner, former dean of the president’s public professions of faith but also his public the Berkeley Divinity Schoo l at Yale, described the Episcopal policies, his relationship with the UCC represents the perfect drift from orthodoxy, a drift common to all Mainline churches: marriage of church and politician. Obama’s public professions of faith have been in near-perfect The Episcopal sermon, at its most fulsome, begins with a state- harmony with his church’s teachings. The UCC, like many ment to the effect that the incarnation is to be understood as merely a manifestation of divine love. From this starting point, Mainline denominations, is scarcely Christian in any mean- several conclusions are drawn. The first is that God is love pure ingful theological sense. Its roots lie in the Reformation, but and simple. Thus, one is to see in Christ’s death no judgment its theology would be unrecognizable to any of the great upon the human condition. Rather, one is to see an affirmation of reformers. Rather, it draws on selective Christian teachings creation and the persons we are. The life and death of Jesus and selective Christian traditions to provide general spiritual reveal the fact that God accepts and affirms us. comfort and, specifically, to inspire its members to progres- sive social activism. The result of this theology is a transition of focus from a The UCC’s statement of its own beliefs is remarkable for relationship with the divine to a relationship with man, and to how little traditional, orthodox Christianity it contains. The advocacy of very specific social policies. Turner continues: church proudly declares, “The UCC has no rigid formulation of doctrine or attachment to creeds or structures. Its overarching Accepting love requires a form of justice that is inclusive of all peo- creed is love.” The church emphasizes each person’s “spiritual ple, particularly those who in some way have been marginalized by journey,” the “power of peace,” the “power of possibility,” and oppressive social practice. The mission of the Church is, therefore,

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to see that those who have been rejected are included, for justice as inclusion defines public policy. The result is a practical equivalence between the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and a particular form of social justice. And this brings us—from a public-policy standpoint—to the most ironic aspect of President Obama’s declaration of faith, that he is “a big believer in the separation of church and state” and that he’s “very suspicious of religious certainty expressing itself in politics.” President Obama’s church, at its core, is thoroughly and offi- cially invested in politics. This is, of course, an accusation hurled at Evangelical conservatives all the time, mainly in an effort to silence them, to drive them from the public square. But when it comes to denominations such as the UCC, it is formal, doctrinal truth. In 2007, Senator Obama spoke to the UCC’s Iowa confer- ence, declaring, “My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.” And what is the “Lord’s work” to the UCC? Politics. The UCC has a Web page called “Understanding the Issues” that provides church resources on dozens of contentious public- policy issues, from major national and international issues such as “Immigration,” “Israel/Palestine,” “Pentagon Spending” (the church declares that the “federal budget is a moral document”), and “LGBT Justice” to more small-scale issues such as the “UCC Coffee Project.” In many cases, the policy positions are quite clear. The church calls on Israel to end the “occupation” of Palestinian territories, for example. In others, the church con- nects members to far-left social-justice resources. Contrast this with the Web pages of major Evangelical denominations, such as the Southern Baptist Convention or the Presbyterian Church in America, which focus on man’s relationship to God while providing minimal to nonexistent commentary on public policy. Public policy for these de - version, Obama said that it helped “connect the work I had been nominations is largely a matter of individual conscience, pursuing with my faith.” applying the principles of faith, rather than an instrument for The picture that’s painted is of a young man looking for a spir- enacting formal church policy. To be sure, Baptist and itual experience that would confirm and then deepen his values, Presbyterian denominational leaders advance pro-life poli- not of a young man lost, recognizing his sinful nature (indeed, cies (so does the Catholic Church), but the full breadth of by contrast, Obama speaks eloquently of his pre-Christian good public-policy positions embraced by the UCC makes it a vir- deeds) and embracing his Savior as the true and only hope in this tual “ChurchPAC.” Yet it’s the religious Right, not the reli- life and the life to come. gious Left, that is consistently accused of improperly mixing And this brings us to the reason a man could, on the one faith and politics. hand, rebuke “religious certainty expressing itself in politics” while, on the other hand, essentially becoming an instrument of officially sanctioned church policy. The UCC and the rest HERE is remarkable conformity, in fact, between Presi - of the Protestant Mainline offer little religion in the classical dent Obama’s words and policies and his church’s offi- sense, but rather spiritualized politics supplemented with per- T cial positions on public policy—a level of conformity sonal inspiration and self-created meaning—inspiration and that would cause alarms to ring across the progressive spectrum meaning that they believe can be gained from virtually any if there were similar Evangelical church statements to which a other major religion. conservative president adhered. With the exceptions of his And because the focus isn’t on God but on man, the prac- apparent (temporary) lie regarding his opposition to same-sex titioner is oblivious to the fact that he’s embodying a union

FILE marriage (which his church has supported since at least 2005) of church and state that would repulse him if practiced by , and the church’s opposition to some of his military policies, the the orthodox. president has advanced UCC positions again and again. Barack Obama may believe in black-liberation theology, or But there’s a chicken-and-egg problem here. Does President he may not. He may have a close relationship with God, or he

CHARLIE NEIBERGALL Obama hold these views because of church teaching, or did the may not. We can’t know his heart. But when it comes to his / church essentially spiritualize views he already held? There’s civic religion, President Obama is his church’s—and liberal

AP PHOTO evidence of the latter. In his 2004 interview, discussing his con- Christianity’s—great and mighty instrument.

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served eight presidential administrations during 41 years in the Pentagon. His wisdom became a byword—and not just in mili- The Sage of tary and Pentagon circles or on Capitol Hill. During the Cold War, Marshall earned the grudging admiration of his Soviet opponents, who read his published works, and later he earned it as well from the Chinese military. “Our great hero was Andrew The Pentagon Marshall,” former general Chen Zhou told The Economist in 2012. “We translated every word he wrote.” Can anyone replace Andrew Marshall? Marshall has tended to convey his wisdom on America’s strategic outlook obliquely. His published writings are few. His famous net assessments were for the eyes of the secretary of de - BY ARTHUR L. HERMAN fense only, who decided to share sections with others only when he felt he had to. His other remarks tended toward the cryptic, SHTON CArTer, Obama’s new secretary of defense, even epigrammatic. The messages from Marshall to the CIA dur- will face some tough decisions about how to protect ing the 1970s when he and it were fighting over the true size and America’s security abroad: about what to do about scope of the Soviet military buildup became known as A ISIS; about russia and Ukraine; about China and its “Andygrams.” When they arrived, according to one witness, they bullying of Asian neighbors in the east and South China Seas; caused an institutional shudder. about defense budgets that are shrinking through sequestration— Marshall’s record of service is without parallel; all agree that at and about shrinking them without sequestration. age 93 his powers of mind and insight are undiminished. They One decision he will make may affect America’s security not also agree that in today’s Pentagon, where political correctness now but 20 or even 30 years from now. It’s about who will and wishful thinking about the future have seeped steadily in replace the legendary Andy Marshall as head of the Office of Net these past five years, a powerful independent mind such as Andy Assessments, or the ONA, at the Pentagon. The office is small, Marshall’s is needed more than ever. its budget by Pentagon standards quite tiny (barely $10 million a year). But by providing detailed and quantified assessments of future challenges and threats to America’s security, Marshall and HOrT-TerM thinking drives out long-term strategy,” one his team of assistants and a larger team of consultants have been of Marshall’s mentors, economist Herbert Simon, used guiding the Pentagon’s forward thinking under every president ‘S to say. It’s been Andy Marshall’s lifelong mission to since . keep the long term on the agenda of the most important shield the When the 93-year-old former rAND thinker turned Defense free world has, the Pentagon—largely because experience has Department fixture retired in January, the question in the taught him that the biggest questions the U.S. military faces are Pentagon’s inner circle was: Who can replace Andy Marshall? often ones it doesn’t have time or energy to address itself. The question in the rest of America was, Who is Andy Marshall, Marshall met Simon at the University of Chicago when the and why did 14 successive secretaries of defense come to hang former arrived in September 1945, days after Japan surrendered on his every word? and World War II ended. Born in Detroit, Marshall belonged to So as Ashton Carter weighs his decision, it’s time to bring that part of the Greatest Generation that spent World War II on everyone else up to speed. In Pentagon circles, Andy Marshall is a factory floor. He worked as an engineer at an automotive known as Yoda, after the Jedi grand master from the Star Wars plant; a heart murmur kept him from serving in uniform. movies. The comparison is apt. Although he was virtually Marshall worked with the legendary physicist enrico Fermi in unknown to the general public, for five decades, from his desk at upgrading the university’s cyclotron and would go on to be a the ONA, Marshall did more than any other person to shape how leading analyst of the use of the nuclear weapons Fermi helped the U.S. military thought about its role in the world and the chal- create. In the new biography The Last Warrior: Andrew lenges it faced, starting with the Soviet Union and finishing with Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense China—with the War on Terror thrown in. Strategy, Marshall’s protégés Andrew Krepinevich and Barry His disciples (known as Saint Andrew’s Prep) have populated Watts explain, however, that Marshall found his true home in virtually every think tank and defense-policy group in Wash - the economics department, under the tutelage of Milton ington. They include eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of Friedman, Herbert Simon, and Kenneth Arrow. (Another influ- Advanced Inter national Studies, Andrew Krepinevich of the ence was Friedrich Hayek.) Marshall learned that the unpre- Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, former ambas- dictability of human conduct and motives consistently wrecked sador Dennis ross, former Air Force secretary Jim roche, and the clean abstract models favored by more conventional econo- Jeff McKittrick, Steve rosen, and Mike Pillsbury of the Hudson mists—which was why economic forecasts were so often Institute—as well as dozens of others who worked on research wrong. Later, he would show little patience with the similar projects that fed Marshall’s “classified net assessments.” numbers-crunching systems analysis that prevailed in parts of “He’s the most influential person you’ve never met,” one of his the rAND Corporation, when he first arrived there in 1949, and former aides has quipped. Yet in his self-effacing way, Marshall in the McNamara Pentagon. Instead of capturing reality, Marshall decided, the systems approach largely missed it (as Mr. Herman is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author, most Americans discovered with tragic cost in Vietnam). A new recently, of The Cave and the Light: Plato versus Aristotle and the method for analyzing strategic trends was needed. Marshall Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization. would dub it “net assessment.”

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Marshall saw the flaws in other approaches firsthand when RAND began studying the strategic nuclear capability of the Soviets. While most analysts thought that Soviet strategic bombers posed a serious threat because of their numbers, the truth was that most bombers suffered from so much engine trou- ble that they couldn’t cross the Arctic, let alone reach the United States. This crucial fact was known through U-2 over-flights but had been kept secret from the analysts. The lesson was that any analysis, no matter how painstaking or sophisticated, is only as good as the intelligence backing it up—a point Marshall would return to again and again in his ongoing war with the Cold War CIA. (It would haunt CIA analysts again with respect to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.) Yet good intelligence was still not enough. “Merely adding up all U.S. forces and comparing them to Soviet forces,” whether tanks, missiles, or bombers, “does not really tell one very much,” he wrote in a pathbreaking essay in 1966. Instead, a strategy ana- lyst needs to understand which data are and which are not rele- vant in a given situation or context, and also to recognize what the other side considers relevant. The latter insight expressed Marshall’s other worry: that too often analysts assumed, accord- ing to a standard “rational actor” model, that the Soviets knew how to maximize their advantages and make optimal use of their forces. His training in economics had taught him that there are no true rational actors. Leaders of countries, like leaders of corpora- tions and other large organizations, tend to be trapped by group- think and bureaucratic decision-making, which guide their reaction to the unexpected—often with disastrous results. The example that caught his attention early on was Pearl Har - bor. Japan’s policymakers and best military and strategic thinkers all knew in 1941 that going to war with the United States would Soviet military spending and the drain it represented on the be a disaster, but they went ahead anyway. Likewise, the United Soviet economy. From his tiny perch at the ONA, Marshall fore- States knew that a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was coming, saw the economic collapse of the Soviet Union as early as the and even had specific intelligence that it was coming, but still 1970s. Indeed, in 1983 he and his ONA staff ran a war game that failed to prevent it. In short, unless a strategic forecast captures an ended with the Berlin Wall’s peacefully coming down. As one of opponent’s mindset as well as captures the reality that underlies them later put it, “we were off by only six years.” It was those appearances, it’s useless for making effective policy. insights from the ONA—that the Soviet Union couldn’t sustain This is the insight that Marshall would follow after getting the a major race with the United States—that helped to buttress the call in 1969 from Henry Kissinger to come to the White House, rollback strategies of the Reagan years. to reform the way intelligence was being organized, analyzed, So, although Reagan’s defense secretary and disseminated, especially by the CIA. (It turned out that, in was no Marshall fan (Weinberger’s priority was restoring choosing issues to investigate, the CIA often took its lead from America’s military strength rather than worrying about how the the New York Times.) Marshall’s approach was to break down Soviets might respond), he set in motion a U.S. force buildup conventional thinking and bureaucratic compartmentalization of that wound up fulfilling Marshall’s prediction; the coming of the information so that officials could gain a clear overall view, Strategic Defense Initiative was merely the tipping point. No including a view of how the other guys—the Soviets or, later, the one can claim that Marshall had a hand in the Reagan strategy Chinese or al-Qaeda—would think and react in a given situa- that won the Cold War, but he helped others inside the Pentagon tion, and what resources they would bring to bear. understand how it could be done. Hence the term “net assessment,” which Marshall gave to his But while others were celebrating the fall of Communism in office when it was formally set up inside the Pentagon in 1973. Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union soon thereafter, Marshall Just as a businessman knows his net profits when he subtracts his was looking into the future again and identifying Asia as the next costs from his revenues, so net assessment gives a defense policy - great arena of strategic competition—at a time when, after maker a bottom-line picture of the future by adding up the Vietnam, there seemed to be no strategic threats on the continent resources and limitations of both sides and arriving at a clear-eyed outside the Korean Peninsula. What Marshall saw was how new estimate of who will win in a future conflict and who will lose— technologies, including long-range missiles, could decisively and, in the meantime, who is gaining and who is falling behind. shape the future power of China, and he began to prepare a series That led to Marshall’s first important conflict with the CIA in of papers dealing with the technologies that the military would the 1970s. Reanalyzing much of the data the CIA was using to have to invest in to meet that future challenge. His views quickly project the size and scope of the Soviet military threat, Marshall became unpopular with those—including Clinton’s first secretary

ROMAN GENN discovered that the agency had consistently underestimated both of defense, —who saw the end of the Cold War as an

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excuse to cash in on the peace dividend. Although he resented Afghanistan. It took all of Rumsfeld’s energy, and then Robert Marshall’s presence, Aspin was reluctant to be the one to fire him Gates’s, to protect Marshall’s long-range focus from those who or shut his office down. That task fell instead to his successor demanded a different, more urgent role for his brand of strategic William Cohen, who proposed in late 1997 to close the ONA and thinking. Yet ironically it is precisely that high-tech weaponry, move Marshall’s operation to the National Defense University. from GPS-guided bombs to digital sensors and unmanned aerial The plan set off a Washington firestorm. The graduates of vehicles, that is, and will be, the key to winning the War on Saint Andrew’s Prep manned the barricades and bombarded Terror—and to dealing with the growing threat from China. Capitol Hill and the office of the secretary of defense with “From a net assessment perspective, China’s rise and the protests and e-mails. Former Marshall staffer Eliot Cohen told spread of nonnuclear precision munitions were intimately the Washington Post that it was “a frontal lobotomy for the entwined,” write Krepinevich and Watts. Long-range precision- Pentagon,” while three former defense secretaries—Donald strike anti-ship missiles and similar ballistic anti-satellite mis- Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and James Schlesinger—weighed in on siles, for example, in concert with Chinese unmanned aerial Marshall’s side. Major figures in Congress, including Senators vehicles and sustained cyber attacks on U.S. communications Joe Lieberman, Dan Coats, Rick Santorum, and Daniel Patrick networks, could become the means whereby China overcame the Moynihan, made their displeasure known as well. U.S. Navy’s advantage in numbers and strike capability. By January 1998, Bill Cohen had to back down. “We were Deterring China’s effort to shift the strategic balance had to rest totally blindsided,” Lieutenant General Jim Jones, Cohen’s chief on similar precision technologies, Marshall and his disciples military aide (and future Obama national-security adviser), later argued—just as those technologies are the point of the spear in admitted. Marshall, and the ONA, had been saved. But battle fighting al-Qaeda and ISIS. lines had been drawn, between those (mainly Republicans) who But his perceived shortcomings in the War on Terror aren’t believed that Marshall’s service was invaluable and indispens- really the problem that the Left has had with Andy Marshall, and able and those (almost all Democrats) who believed Marshall’s they are not why it welcomed retirement after 40-plus years of best days were behind him—or that his best days had done the service. It’s rather that he has dedicated his life to the twin country a major disservice. propositions that American power deserves to be preserved and Marshall is not popular with those on the left. When liberals extended, not undermined or reduced, and that America faces write about him at all, it is with hostility, in venues such as The real threats that require foresight and vigilance, which no amount Nation and The American Prospect, which ran “The Dubious of political correctness or utopian wishful thinking (such as Genius of Andrew Marshall” in December 2001, shortly after infects the White House of Barack Obama) can make go away. In the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Even a gener- the end, Andy Marshall helped to keep America strong, and to ally favorable profile in the Washington Post in October 2013 maintain its military technological edge over foes past, present, questioned whether what the Pentagon spent on the ONA and (hopefully) future. For that, there will be no forgiveness. (roughly $10 million that year, or 0.0019 percent of the annual As for the future, Ashton Carter has not yet named a successor, defense budget) was really worth it. but the issue goes beyond specific names or personalities. Some Some critics upbraided Marshall for not anticipating 9/11, for worry that without Marshall’s vigilance the ONA will decline into example, just as earlier he had been criticized for not paying more a Pentagon version of the CBO, an analytic bureau held captive attention to the war in Vietnam (which was over by the time the by its political masters and subservient to their assumptions and ONA was established, and which was not part of his beat at the policy dictates, under the guise of providing “objective analysis.” Nixon White House). But these attacks miss the purpose, and Representative Randy Forbes (R., Va.) and other supporters value, of net assessment. Marshall’s job was not to offer strategic insist that whoever Marshall’s successor is, the ONA must be advice and counsel for present wars, or even to predict the out- allowed to maintain its intellectual independence. “This office break of particular future ones. It was to anticipate the nature of is not just Andy Marshall,” Forbes told the Washington Post in future conflicts and how they would be fought—and how new 2013. “This office provides incredible value to the country at a technologies might change the entire character of war. time when we need strategy more than ever.” In that regard, even before the 1997 storm broke, Marshall had Others wonder whether the worst outcome might be that the once again shifted direction, to a growing interest in how com- ONA turns into a haven for a Yoda from the Dark Side, an arro- puter and digital technology, including new kinds of sensors and gant and preternaturally persuasive charlatan who imposes his communication electronics, would bring about a major change in agenda on the Pentagon under the guise of long-term strategic the way future wars would be fought. Borrowing a phrase coined thinking—with real long-term damage to the future of our mil- by Soviet strategists, he described this change as “a revolution in itary. Better to shutter the office altogether, they say, than allow military affairs,” or RMA. The first paper the ONA issued on the that to happen. topic was published in 1992; by the time “All defense secretaries are captives of our inbox,” Donald returned as secretary of defense in 2001, the military had a term Rumsfeld said. “Andy Marshall has been unique in that he cre- for the changes that Marshall said would be needed to take ates an outbox” through which they can address the future advantage of this high-tech revolution: “transformation.” from an independent point of view, one outside the usual Pentagon consensus. Marshall himself has put it slightly differently. “One of the VER the past decade, Marshall’s abiding interest in the things you want people to understand is the uncertainty of consequences of this revolution in military affairs ran- things,” he once said. “Any notion that you know what’s going O kled many in and out of uniform, who assumed that he to happen, I think, is not going to work.” Marshall’s words now should be thinking about how to get them out of Iraq and apply to the office he himself created.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Stuck in Neutral

ID you hear? Scott Walker wanted to prohibit darkest moments you imagine the president watching the University of Wisconsin from reporting news of an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel, shrugging and sexual assaults to the federal government. The thinking, “I told them not to build that apartment complex D news ricocheted around the Internet for a few on the West Bank.” hours until someone pointed out it wasn’t quite so. The No, it’s not comparable. There’s no evidence Scott university itself said it had requested the elision for rea- Walker supports campus sexual assault. And there is no sons of redundancy, and also repetition. No matter: If evidence the president would be indifferent to a nuclear Walker was a Rethuglican, the story meant he wanted strike on Israel during his term in office. cam pus rapists to be loaded onto gilded litters and borne The Drudge headline blared out on the top of the page around the school, preferably by frat boys in blackface. for hours, even when the website on the other end of the Even if it was false, it’s kinda true, no? The credulous link crumpled from the blast of traffic. Almost as if it was believe the GOP would like all colleges, workplaces, sufficient to let the assertion hang out there, unexplained. athletic clubs, golf courses, and possibly shopping Even if the details weren’t true, one might think, does this malls converted into places of untrammeled priapic per- strain credibility? False, perhaps, but kinda true? fidy. After all, if you oppose forcing nuns to pay for Now. Imagine that the FCC decided to regulate the someone’s birth control, it stands to reason you want all Internet. I know, I know, crazy talk, but just imagine. women to be chained barefoot to a stove. Not reporting Which story might get quick scrutiny for being Fair and campus sexual-assault statistics to the federal govern- Reasonable? Those are the standards the Net Neutrality ment is practically a green light to the frat boys to stock regs use, after all. Fair and Reasonable. No way those up on duct tape and clear out a space in the attic for a could be applied capriciously. thin mattress. A slight digression, if you don’t mind. I started working See, if the federal government learns of these things, in talk radio in the last months of the Fairness Doctrine. then things happen. You’ve seen the movie. An intrepid This was the lineup, more or less: mid-level bureaucrat (Naomi Watts) comes across a Let’s Talk Wheat Troubling Pattern in the statistics, and tells her boss there’s The Sticking-Plastic-Flowers-in-Chunks-of-Styrofoam something going on in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, her boss Hour is played by James Cromwell, so he doesn’t care, and What’s on Your Mind? (Note: Show was about hats.) makes a remark about how she should be baking cookies To be fair, we were allowed to be, well, unfair. The for her kids. However: A brassy, no-nonsense woman at Fairness Doctrine was represented mostly by dull editorials the Department of Heartland Bad Stuff is more receptive, and counterpoints that ran in the hours when the only and sends her to Wisconsin, along with a crack investiga- commercials were ad-agency reminders not to sniff glue. tor who may or may not be secretly working for a secret But it was always there in the back of our minds, govern- conspiracy to collate assault statistics on a statewide basis ing our tongues. Then it went away, and hey, presto, Rush without forwarding them to the feds. Limbaugh. The end of government regulation of a com- Eventually the brave bureaucrat uncovers a plot, which munications medium led to an explosion of new voices, goes all the way up to the governor, who is using the dark and the AM medium shifted right. arts of politics to shield his old fraternity. It’s an unsettling The lack of government regulation of content on the ending, because the governor was played by Michael Internet let every opinion flourish and seek an audience, Keaton and we all like him, but he’s really growing into which is why it can’t be allowed to chatter on in happy these dark roles. anarchy. The point of progressive management is not to Anyhow, it might be fiction, but it highlights some trou- enable all views, but only the helpful ones. The Wall Street bling issues, and that’s what that Walker flap was all about. Journal recently reported on a Spanish political movement On the other hand, the same week as the Walker flap, the that seeks to import Venezuelan Chavismo to Iberia, per- Drudge Report blared: “PAPER: OBAMA THREATENED TO haps because the people of Spain are too distracted by the SHOOT DOWN ISRAELI JETS.” The “paper” part was adequate ready availability of toilet paper and toothpaste and thus insulation—not making a charge, just reporting it. The unlikely to concentrate on the necessary struggle for a story seemed fanciful to some, since it was unlikely more egalitarian country. The Spanish Chávezophiles are Benjamin Netanyahu would be aboard any of the planes. quite clear about the necessity of shutting down uncooper- And let’s just say that “a Kuwaiti paper, citing anonymous ative media; when you have Virtue on your side it is your sources” is the sort of evidence that would get you five duty to fight those who enable evil. And by “evil” we mean seconds of death-stare from Judge Judy. Perhaps it seems the staff of wreckersandkulaks.com. more plausible than the Walker story, because in your No surprise if “net neutrality” ends up licensing websites. And by the way, does your Twitter feed have enough pro- Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. gressives? Good thing to know before you’re audited.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

sists in communicating entirely via terms should be reversed? Just food counsel, she also knows that appear- for thought as we enter a period of ance fees and speaking income are a intense political activity on the nation- crucial part of her between-govern- al scene. ment-jobs livelihood, and is asking I look forward to hearing from you. only for what has been previously Wilson & Sterling agreed to. Sincerely, A professional corporation When can we expect payment in Steve full? Via electronic mail SUBJ: UNPAID INVOICES I RE: CLINTON/CLINTON CONTINU- Best regards, ATION-OF-MARRIAGE AGREE- Greg The Office of MENT 2000, AND ADDENDA, (dictated but not read) Chelsea Clinton UPDATED OCTOBER 2014, The Bill, Hillary, and JANUARY 2015 Chelsea Clinton Foundation Wilmer, Patton VIA REGISTERED MAIL Dear Steve: A professional corporation Please find attached several unpaid Dear Greg and Steve: invoices from this office, as represen- SUBJ: UNPAID INVOICES IN RE: Effective immediately, this letter tatives of our client, former secretary CLINTON/CLINTON CONTINU- serves as a termination notice for your of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, ATION-OF-MARRIAGE AGREE- services to my parents, former secre- directed to your office, as representa- MENT 2000, AND ADDENDA, tary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton tives of her loving husband, former UPDATED OCTOBER 2014, and former president Bill Clinton. president Bill Clinton. These invoices JANUARY 2015 While my parents have appreciated are now over 90 days past due and we your many years of counsel and legal really do have to insist on prompt pay- Dear Greg: representation, they both feel that it is ment in full. Many thanks for your letter. perhaps time to change the nature of As you know, Steve, both the origi- Let me reiterate our client’s deep their marriage. While they will con- nal CONTINUATION-OF-MAR- love and total commitment to your tinue to speak and communicate only RIAGE AGREEMENT and all client, as both husband and helpmate, via intermediaries, for the duration of subsequent addenda include fees and once again reconfirm that, in most the next presidential-election cycle payable by your client to our client for cases, he also prefers to communicate that intermediary will be me. It is our the various appearances, speeches, via counsel. Yet, despite the possibility feeling both as a “family unit” and as conversations, and other one-on-one of an unpleasant outburst of the kind a Foundation that, in order to project a events (please see Appendix XIV: that occurred during our last “sit- more wholesome and “normalized” Payment Schedule for Artifacts of down” conference when, during a heat- image to the American public, com- Togetherness). Since the end of Q3 ed disagreement, and there’s no need to municating solely via paid legal coun- ’14, your client has withheld payment relitigate the whys and wherefores, sel needs to be rethought. My parents to our client for several joint appear- your client threw an iPad mini, a crys- will now express their deeply loving ances, three “fun” and “spontaneous” tal vase, and a woman’s shoe with mid- and affectionate feelings for each lunches that were planned and sched- height heel at our client, who other through me, in my capacity as a uled at some inconvenience to our ducked—side note: you’ll be happy to director of the Foundation and as their client. This is a troublesome pattern. know that the stenographer has re - only daughter. As a gesture of goodwill, our client gained both the eyesight in her re - We remain grateful for your service has agreed to consider all “family” and maining eye and on many days the and discretion. “family-type” events that occurred power of speech—despite all of that, Please direct your offices to for- during the traditional Christian holi- we still feel that an in-person discussion ward all files and documents and con- day of Christmas “on the house” and must ensue to rebalance the terms of the temporaneous notes to my office here will withdraw all charges related to original and amended agreement(s). at the Foundation. Please forward that time period. As those fees repre- In light of the increased scrutiny our your remaining unpaid invoices for sent what would be, to any other ven- client, the former president, is now legal work and counsel to HRH dor, charges in excess of $450,000, I required to live under—something he Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the think you can agree that our client is cheerfully agrees to, because of the Emir of Abu Dhabi, who has agreed to being exceptionally generous. love etc. he feels for your client and pay these for the Foundation. But please understand that while the long legal agreements that bind our client has great love for and devo- them together as a “family”—perhaps Sincerely, tion to your client and believes that the it is time to rethink the compensation Chelsea Clinton bedrock of their happy marriage con- schedule? Perhaps the actual payment (dictated but not read)

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American political thinkers,” wrote his The theme of The Machiavellians is biographer Daniel Kelly, “he is hard to the irrationality of ideologies and the The Seer classify.” Yet the education of this pretense of democracy. elites rule in unconventional thinker was typical for a every society and in every state, Burn - MATTHEW CONTINETTI member of his class. Born to a prosper- ham said, and “the primary object, in ous family in Chicago in 1905, Burnham practice, of all rulers is to serve their attended Catholic boarding school, own interest, to maintain their own Princeton, and Oxford before accepting power and privilege. There are no a professorship of philosophy at nYU in exceptions.” 1929. He specialized in aesthetics. in 1947 came The Struggle for the The temper of his int ellect was fixed World. “The United States has made even if his political beliefs were not. the irreversible jump into world “Burnham,” recalled Sidney Hook in his affairs,” Burnham argued. “it is com- memoir Out of Step (1987), “had come mitted everywhere, on every continent, to new York University a very strong in every major field of social action, and Catholic churchman, who dismissed it can never again withdraw.” Opposing Catholic dogmas as myths if taken lit- the United States was the Soviet Union, Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and erally but who argued that beliefs in the leader of world Communism, which Destiny of Liberalism, by James Burnham these myths were essential to insure aspired to global conquest. (Encounter, 400 pp., $17.99) the social stability threatened by man’s Only by an anti-totalitarian policy of ineradicable natural evil. His social confrontation and rollback, Burnham ne evening in February 1963, absolutism remained even when he said, would freedom and western civi- inside Firestone Library on became converted to a form of commu- lization be preserved. Yet he doubted the campus of Princeton nism.” indeed, this “social absolutism” that America was capable of the task. O University, the Christian outlasted Burnham’s Communism. “History offers each of its great chal- Gauss Seminar in Criticism was called Like other new York intellectuals, lenges only once,” Burnham wrote. to order. Authors under discussion in - Burnham wedded left-wing politics to a “After only one failure, or one refusal, cluded John Dewey, Karl Marx, Arthur taste for modernist art and literature. the offer is withdrawn.” Schlesinger Jr., and Michael Oakeshott. He wrote for Partisan Review and other Burnham’s anti-utopianism, his real - The instructor was James Burnham, a little magazines. He joined a Trotskyist politik, his dispassionate outlook, his senior editor of nATiOnAL Review. His faction opposed to Stalin—and debated matter-of-fact prose, his fascination topic: “Liberalism as the ideology of socialism and war with no less an with the operations of power, and his western Suicide.” authority than Trotsky himself. But the study of the manipulation of society by The seminar was not recorded. But Hitler–Stalin Pact of 1939 shattered his its ruling classes made his work the sub- Burnham turned the material into socialist faith. ject of intense scrutiny and criticism. Suicide of the West, published the fol- The similarities between Hitler and writers such as Hook, Lionel Trilling, lowing year and now reissued by Stalin inspired Burnham’s first book, and Dwight Macdonald re sponded to encounter Books in association with The Managerial Revolution (1941). its Burnham’s analysis critically while the william F. Buckley Jr. Program at subtitle, in oracular prose, promised an recognizing its audacity and power. Yale. Lengthy and sometimes dated, explanation of “what is happening in the “The immense significance of Burn ham’s Burnham’s treatise is nonetheless worth world.” what was happening, Burnham approach is potential,” wrote a 23-year- revisiting, not only for its cutting analy- said, was the displacement of both capi- old irving Kristol of The Machia vellians. sis, but also because it introduces the talism and socialism by an authoritarian “we can ignore it only at the risk of reader to the cold and breathtaking pre- system of technocratic managers. being disarmed by the future course cision of its author’s intellect. For the Over the next decade Burnham was at of events.” stoic, detached, empirical, hard-boiled, times an aesthete, a Trotskyist, a cynic, it was George Orwell who became penetrating, realist mind of James an employee of the forerunner to the Burnham’s most famous interlocutor. Burnham is something to behold, to CiA, and finally a founder of the con- “Burnham has real intellectual courage,” admire, to emulate. servative movement. in 1943 he pub- Orwell wrote in a review of The Struggle Burnham was a seer, an unblinking lished The Machiavellians, a study of for the World, “and writes about real observer who dismissed abstraction and the italian school of elite theory. The issues.” But Orwell could not embrace cant in his search for objective, prophetic book is a series of close readings not Burnham’s thought without qualifica- truth. “with no real counterparts among only of Machiavelli but also of forgot- tion: The American, he wrote, was too ten thinkers such as Robert Michels, deterministic, reductive, and catastrophic Mr. Continetti is the editor in chief of the Gaetano Mosca, vilfredo Pareto, and in his pronouncements. “The tendency Washington Free Beacon. Georges Sorel. of writers like Burnham, whose key

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS concept is ‘realism,’ is to overrate the minor, than would seem possible for an agerial revolution, which meant gov- part played in human affairs by sheer editor resident in Kent, Connecticut, ernment by executive fiat and the devel- force,” Orwell said. However, despite who came to New York only two days opment of a potentially totalitarian this objection and others, Burnham’s a week.” welfare state.” Democracy was under- dark vision fascinated Orwell to such an The early days of this magazine were stood not as a republican system of extent that he incorporated it into filled with ideological and personal bat- checks and balances but as the struggle Nineteen Eighty-Four. tles. Burnham clashed repeatedly with for resources and for status between By the early 1950s Burnham’s depar- fellow editors Willi Schlamm, Bill client groups of the government. even ture from liberalism had become irrepara- Rickenbacker, and Frank Meyer, and the president, “more creature than cre- ble. He did not rule out the possibility with publisher William Rusher. On ator,” was less in control than the man- of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, questions of management Buckley agers were. he warned of a “fifth column” of Soviet sided with his mentor, but he did not Congress retained its ability to con- infiltrators operating in the West, he dis- share all of Burnham’s positions. duct investigations as well as its power missed pieties involving the ballot box, Meyer, for example, referred to Burn - of saying “No.” But the new under- equality, education, and free speech, and ham as a “left-deviationist” for his standing of democracy had reduced his attitude toward Joseph McCarthy reluctance to embrace Barry Goldwater dramatically the importance of the What Burnham identified in this book was a dramatic modification of the way Americans understood democracy.

was much too ambivalent for the bour- and his support for Medicare on pru- House and the Senate. And this new geois liberals within his social circle. So dential grounds. understanding was itself the by-product he left. Burnham also sought, over the objec- of changes in the ideology of the ruling For these reasons Christopher Hitchens tions of some of the other editors, to class. Where classical liberalism saw would later name Burnham “the real endow NATiONAl RevieW with a sense the state as the opponent of liberty, the intellectual founder of the neoconserv- of maturity, ecumenism, and acceptance new liberalism, Burnham observed, ative movement and the original pros- of American culture that he believed it saw popular democracy as the “promis- elytizer, in America, of the theory of on occasion lacked. He did not always ing Angel,” the economic and social ‘totalitarianism.’” Burnham, Hitchens succeed. However, so devoted was he to benefactor of all. “We must reverse the observed, “was the first important this new project that he produced just perspective,” wrote John Dewey, “and Marxist to defect all the way over to one major work in the 1950s: Congress see that socialized economy is the the right.” He wasn’t an outcast. He and the American Tradition (1959), the means of free individual development was a pioneer. result of four years of research into the at the end.” The defection was finalized when relationship between Congress and the Burnham’s investigation into the Burnham agreed to join William F. presidency. premises, causes, and consequences of Buckley Jr. i n the creation of NATiONAl What Burnham identified in this book this ideological shift led to Suicide of RevieW in 1955. A quarter century later, was a dramatic modification of the way the West. He begins with a map. “in Buckley would say of Burnham, “Be - Americans understood democracy. The A.D. 1914 the domain of Western civi- yond any question, he has been the constitutional system designed by the lization was, or very nearly was, the dominant intellectual influence in the Founders established Congress as the world.” By the time of writing, howev- de velopment of this journal.” first branch of government, the medi- er, that domain had contracted to the At NR, Burnham was the first person ating institution between the people United States, Western europe, and the to speak at editorial meetings. He and the state bureaucracy under the remains of the British Commonwealth. wrote a regular column on foreign chief executive. Beginning in the 19th “liberalism,” Burnham writes, “has affairs, penned numerous unsigned century, however, and accelerating come to be the typical verbal systemati- editorials and items for “The Week,” under Wilson and FDR, the executive zation of the process of Western con- edited the biweekly National Review branch acted not with reference to the traction and withdrawal; that liberalism Bulletin newsletter, and was under- Consti tution but in the name of “the motivates and justifies the contraction, stood to be in charge of the magazine people.” Congress lost its primacy, its and reconciles us to it.” whenever Buckley was traveling, powers, and its prestige. Government What is liberalism? Burnham identi- which was often. was no longer constitutionalist. it was fies 19 of its assumptions. His list He also wrote numerous letters and Caesarist. (found on pages 134 to 142 of this edi- memos on internal strategy and manage- invocations of “the people” were a tion) is still relevant. But it is with the ment. As Buckley put it, “he devoted, mask for the interests of the rulers. “The ideological character of liberalism that over a period of 23 years, more time and changing balance,” noted Daniel Kelly, Burnham is most concerned. He is unin- thought to more problems, major and “reflected a long-term trend, the man- terested in refuting liberalism—indeed,

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he does not believe such a refutation practical consequence of the guilt cross-country journey, “granted all possible. “The question of the truth or encysted in the liberal ideology and psy- the rude facts of the raging fissures falsity of an ideology is in any case of che is this: that the liberal, and the and confrontations, [that] our country minor importance,” he writes. “Human group, nation, or civilization infected by does still hold together, continues to beings believe an ideology, as a rule, not liberal doctrine and values, are morally be a manifestly going concern?” because they are convinced rationally disarmed before those whom the liberal America “shrugs off the fires of the that it is true but because it satisfies regards as less well off than himself.” arsonists, the crime of the cities, and psychological and social needs and Whether it is the Soviet Union, Third the riots of the youth as a great ship serves, or seems to serve, individual or World insurgents, the criminal under- shrugs off waves.” group interests.” class, student revolutionaries, Vladimir If the mysterious sources of American Guilt is the psychological need satis- Putin, the Ayatollah, the Castro broth- tenacity provoked Burnham to reexam- fied by liberalism. Not only is man a ers, or Hamas, whether it is rioters, drug ine the materiali stic foundations of his fallen creature, according to Burnham; pushers, or pornographers, liberalism philosophy, he gave no sign. A student man is conscious of his fallen nature. offers reasons to justify, sympathize of the Machiavellians, he had a view of And such awareness produces in him with, and appease the agents of violence mankind that left out the sympathies, existential dread, unease about the and disorder and decline. Acting like a affections, benevolent and charitable world, a restlessness that manifests itself narcotic, it enables the intellectual “to impulses, and desire for liberty and self- in enthusiastic activity. What soothes leave the real world and take refuge in improvement that are difficult to quanti- this dread for most people in most places that better world of his ideology where fy but no less a part of human nature. It at most times is religion. Christianity, tigers purr like kittens and turn in their is these very qualities that contribute to for instance, “faces the reality of guilt, claws to the United Nations.” Which is the unpredictability and endurance of provides an adequate explanation of it, why Burnham called liberalism “suici- the American spirit and help explain and offers a resolution of the anxiety to dal”: It “permits Western civilization to why, despite the unshakeable force of which it inevitably gives rise.” be reconciled to dissolution.” his analysis, many of Burnham’s predic- But modern society, especially edu- That critics did not treat kindly tions have not come true. cated society, is secular. The religious these pages of vigorous, aggressive, Burnham’s last years were somber answer is ignored, regarded as a pri- unrelenting prose was in a sense con- ones. In 1978, poor health removed him vate affair, attacked and subverted. firmation of Burnham’s thesis that from the day-to-day life of NATIoNAL What is an affluent and credentialed “liberalism is the prevailing American REVIEW. His wife of 49 years, Marcia, and professional and secular man to do? doctrine.” Burnham was dismissed, died four years later. Burnham died in “Liberalism,” Burnham writes, “permits lampooned, and excoriated in the pages 1987 at the age of 81: two years before him to translate his guilt into the egali- of metropolitan newspapers and fash- the fall of the Berlin Wall, four years tarian, anti-discrimination, democratist, ionable journals such as The New York before the end of the Soviet Union and peace-seeking liberal principles, and to Review of Books. the close of the Third World War to transform his guilty feeling into” a “pas- He was not misunderstood entirely, which he had devoted his life. sion for reform.” however. Sociologist Andrew Hacker’s Though world Communism is no Liberalism for Burnham is a form of description of Suicide of the West as a longer a fighting faith, America contin- political religion. It responds to the “call for faith and force” was to some ues to shelter the last best hope for free- tragic facts of life by denying those extent true: Burnham’s description of dom and the traditions of a West beset facts and substituting myths. “Thanks liberalism carried within it the impli- with Islamic terrorism, a belligerent to the reassuring provisions of the lib- cation that a society that protected lib- Russia, and nuclear proliferation. What eral ideology,” he writes, “I can go erty through the dispersal of power, Burnham called Caesarism is resurgent about my ordinary business and mean- and maintained order through the use in the nation’s capital, and a massive while take sufficient account of my of force, would thrive and grow. Such inflow of immigration is challenging moral duties by affirming my loyalty to a society could not be preserved or notions of sovereignty and indepen- the correct egalitarian principles, voting restored without a conflict between dence and changing the character of for the correct candidates, praising the liberals and conservatives that was to free societies. activists and contributing to their de - some degree a reflection of the conflict Global finance, quantitative easing, fense funds wh en they get into trouble, between the West and its challengers. Ebola, environmental crusades, the and joining promptly in the outcry “The theme of a ‘struggle for the Islamic State, occupy Wall Street, against reactionaries who pop up now world,’ whether between communists anonymous hackers, gay marriage, and then in a desperate effort to preserve and anticommunists or some other set trans rights, Chinese nationalism, oli- power and privilege.” of antagonists, formed an enduring garchic politics, Twitter mobs and The conscience of a liberal remains leitmotif of Burnham’s thinking,” Buzzfeed and Lena Dunham—this the same a half century later. Thin, un- writes Kelly. world can be a bewildering place. What protected, and wracked by guilt, liberal- Even Burnham, however, was sur- we are missing is a guide, an analyst, ism generates paradoxes and dilemmas prised by the wealth and dynamism and an interrogator, an expositor with the with which the liberal cannot cope. “For creativity of the vast nation in which he intelligence and skill and courage of Western civilization in the present con- lived. How is it, he wondered in a col- James Burnham, the seer of Kent, dition of the world, the most important umn written in 1969 at the end of a Connecticut.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Steele begins his book by relating an 1950s Chicago,” where his life was experience he had at a conference, staged “entirely circumscribed by white racism.” A Brave by the Aspen Institute. He was scheduled when a young man, he traveled abroad, to be “the lone conservative” on a panel. which awakened an appreciation of Tour de (He will always be the lone conservative, America in him. (Me too.) He watched outside of NAtIoNAl RevIew cruises.) to in the white House and open the conference at large, some par- came to agree with him. (Me too.) He saw Force ticipants were asked to spend a few min- william F. Buckley Jr. on television and utes saying what they most wanted for was impressed. (ditto.) JAY NORDLINGER America. Steele was one of them. He did Steele had his season on the left, but he not waste his time. could not remain there. He wasn’t the “I said that what I wanted most for type. “loyalty to fact over ideology” America was an end to white guilt, or at drove him away, he writes. “For me, ide- least an ebbing of this guilt into insignif- ology does not precede truth. Rather, icance.” white people, he said, were truth, as best we can know it, is always the crushing blacks with paternalism in an test of ideology.” Yes. attempt to show themselves innocent of “liberalism in the twenty-first century,” racism. this was bad for whites, bad for writes Steele, “is, for the most part, a blacks (obviously)—bad for America. moral manipulation that exaggerates in - And these words went off at Aspen like a equity and unfairness in American life in stink bomb. order to justify overreaching public poli- Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized As a rule, the reviewer of a book cies and programs.” the liberal calls Our Country, by Shelby Steele (Basic, should not write about himself—but I am himself “progressive” and “forward- 208 pp., $25.99) not so disciplined. At a conference simi- looking.” (MSNBC adopted the slogan lar to Aspen’s, I, too, had a chance to say “lean forward.”) But he is always look- Ne-woRd titles are a current what I wanted for America. I used my ing at America’s sinful past, notes Steele. fashion, and Shelby Steele’s time to say that I wanted a fading out of the progressive’s gaze is fixed backward. latest book has such a title. race-consciousness. A lessening of iden- And what is conservatism? According o the word is well chosen and tity politics, a springtime for E pluribus to liberalism, it is “an ideology born of striking: “Shame.” the subtitle is apt unum. More recently, I said the same nostalgia for America’s past evils— too, for America’s “past sins” have thing in a debate at Yale. My opponent inequality, oppression, exploitation, war- indeed “polarized our country,” as the responded, scornfully, that I said this mongering, bigotry, repression, and all author shows. because I was white. (I’m no whiter than the rest.” the ability to “taint conser- He is an intellectual who belongs to he, incidentally.) Could be. But I suspect vatism” with “America’s past shames,” that bravest of bands: black conserva- I would hold my views even more writes Steele, has been a bonanza for the tives. My sense is that few people can strongly if I were black. left: “a seemingly endless font of power.” imagine what such conservatives have to Reading Steele’s book, anyone might Allow me a brief relapse into self- put up with. I once asked thomas Sowell, find himself thinking about his own life, reference. this particular tale does not “who has treated you worse in your life? and thoughts, and observations, and say- involve America, but it certainly applies. white liberals or fellow blacks?” He ing, “Me too!” As early as page three, Not long ago, I was writing of the oppres- shook his head, chuckled, and said, “It’s Steele says that he identifies with a for- sion of the Castro dictatorship. A writer too close to call.” mer liberalism, the kind that launched for a liberal magazine responded that when I think of black conservatives, the civil-rights movement: “that liberal- people like me “pine” for the days of the one image stands out: George Schuyler, in ism which sought freedom for the indi- Batista dictatorship (the military regime the 1930s, working with a gun next to his vidual above all else.” Me too! I believe that the Castros and the Communists typewriter. He had been threatened by that we call that liberalism “conser- overthrew in 1959). In truth, people like Communists vatism” today. me “pine” for freedom and democracy. In his new book, Steele writes that a Steele has written a short book—he to liberalism, writes Steele, black black conservative is “unforeseen and calls it an “essay”—but it is not slight. It people are “eternal victims.” their prob- unsettling.” what’s more, “we seem to is packed with hard thinking about very lems “are always the result of some put the moral authority that comes from important matters. I found myself under- determinism, some unfairness or injus- our race’s great suffering into the ser- lining sentence after sentence. eventually, tice that impinges on them like an ongo- vice of an ideology (conservatism) that I gave up, lest I underline the whole ing rain out of permanently hostile many see as a source of that suffering.” book. By the end of Chapter one, the skies.” (Can you blame me for underlin- therefore, “the black conservative can reader has his money’s worth, even if he ing sentences such as these? Shame is only be opportunistic or, worse, self- paid full price. loaded with them.) hating and sycophantic.” this is part of this book is not an autobiography, And here is one of Steele’s hard the lot of the black conservative. who though Steele draws on his life. He does truths—a Sowellian hard truth: A black but the strongest, and most indepen- so in order to make broad societal points. American hoping to rise “will be far more dent, would dare to join up? He grew up “in the rigid segregation of likely to receive racial preferences than to

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suffer racial discrimination.” Whatever book breathes wisdom, hard won, on you think of racial preferences, you might nearly every page. regard this development as something to As perpetual or unfounded grievance A Most hail and rejoice over, given our terrible is bad for an individual, it is bad for a past. To a great many, however, it is some- nation. I remember a news story, 20 Curious thing to fear, deny, and rage against. years ago, that shook me. A black gang One of the themes of this book is truth kidnapped, raped, and murdered a white versus “poetic truth.” The latter kind of woman. That was not the part that shook Country truth—a non-truth, or lie—“disregards me. Unfortunately, brutal crimes take the actual truth in order to assert a larger place every day. What stood out, to me, It Was essential truth that supports one’s ideo- was a statement by one of the perpetra- logical position.” Poetic truth, says Steele, tors. He told police that the crime had ANDREW STUTTAFORD is liberalism’s “greatest source of power.” been in response to “400 years of oppres- It is also liberalism’s “most fundamental sion.” Who taught him to talk that way? corruption.” Who saddled him with this mindset? The I have often spoken of “things that rapist-murderers were responsible for ought to be true.” (More self-reference.) their crime, of course. No one else. But it For instance, it may be that the Duke seems to me they were “carefully taught,” lacrosse team did not rape a young black to use Oscar Hammerstein’s phrase, too. woman. But shouldn’t they have? They Near the end of his book—his tour de were privileged white frat boys, playing force—Steele says what he wants: not an elite sport. They were perfect in the preferences or any other form of social role of villain. engineering but “a ‘flat freedom,’ like a In former times, says Steele, liberals flat tax that treats everyone the same.” and conservatives shared a national Again, I say, “Me too.” (I want the tax in Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: identity. One side might have leaned the bargain, but that seems to be a lost The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, toward labor unions, and the other toward economic cause.) by Peter Pomerantsev (PublicAffairs, business, but the two sides thought of Steele wants black Americans to think 256 pp., $25.99) themselves as Americans, devoted to a of themselves as individuals, race quite common project. These days, says Steele, aside, and he wants whites to think of HErE was a time, a time not “liberal” and “conservative” are more like them that way too. Furthermore, he wants long after history ended, nationalities—separate and at war. Each whites to get over their “terror” of being when the narrative was clear. side wants to vanquish the other and thought racist. T The Soviet Union collapsed, emerge as the One True Identity. Which leads me to a final story— followed by a period too close to chaos I’m not sure I agree entirely with this very recent. At the beginning of this for comfort. Finally Putin, picked out last point. It seems to me that conserv- review, I wanted to say that Steele from backstage, and promising a firmer atives, many of them, are struggling “belongs to that bravest of breeds: black hand on the tiller; if no one was sure of merely to coexist. To have some cultural conservatives.” But my race sensitivity— the course he would set, how bad could space. Take the issue of gay marriage: It hypersensitivity—kicked in. “What if it be? The past was past, after all. seems that this new kind of marriage is some imp says, ‘Breeds, huh? So this In 2006, Peter Pomerantsev, the here to stay. But the little old lady who right-winger from NATIONAl rEVIEW British son of Soviet-era émigrés, flew belongs to the Baptist church: Can she opt thinks black people are bred, like into Moscow set on a career in russian out of baking a cake for a gay wedding? slaves, horses, and dogs?’” I changed TV. His book tells what happened next. The answer is no, she can’t. the word to “bands”—“bravest of Vivid, gripping, and deeply disturbing, Though I am besotted with this book— bands”—though I preferred “breeds” it intertwines fragments of memoir I feel like passing it out in the street—I (probably for the repetition of the “br” with a beautifully written depiction of a have my objections, of varying kinds. I sound). I have as little use for political fevered, frenzied society, of a city glit- will bring up the most serious: Steele correctness as anyone I know. But even tering at the edge of darkness. apparently regards the American effort in I, with some regularity, twist myself It’s a story told from and about the Vietnam as misguided and ignoble. He is into a pretzel. center. russia’s vast hinterland is entitled to that view (of course). But I This is the kind of thing that drives object, not subject, seen mainly in think he should have taken note of what Shelby Steele crazy. Me too. glimpses: an excursion to the Caucasus happened to millions of Vietnamese, not like Barack Obama, Steele is an to check out “the biggest boy in the to mention millions of Cambodians, after American born to a biracial couple world,” seven years old, over 220 the American defeat. (though 15 years before). If he had any- pounds; a trip to the russian far east, to What Steele says in his book, others thing like Obama’s platform, influence, the hometown of an ex-gangster who have said—what is new under the sun? and reach, the world would be a dra- has made a second life making movies But Steele brings several things to the matically different place. But at least he about his former profession. table: his intelligence, his experience, his has the satisfaction of standing on the But it’s Moscow that is Pome - style. His powers of distillation. This truth, as he has discovered it. rantsev’s focus, citadel of the system

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day #4 on THE Nr 2015 ALASKA SUMMER Cruise

-Well, after four nights on the Westerdam, you wouldn’t have known that Mary and I once thought we “weren’t cruisers.” Good thing Jane and Mike convinced us to really check out those NR magazine cruise we’d looked at for years. They always sounded like fun. So, since we’d always wanted to go to Alaska, we figured, let’s do it. Did we ever make the right decision! This voy- age is a BLAST--everything my pals said it would be, and more. Take the ship: It’s beautiful. The cabins: beautiful. The food: delicious (on Sunday we dined at the Pinnacle Grill--the osso buco was off the charts). The public spaces: beautiful. We thought, let’s live--how about a couples’ massage? Wow! The Greehouse Spa was great! Make new friends? We’ve made a bunch, including some of the NR speakers. Find quiet places? There are plenty, so you can read, write, nap ... draw! When we embarked Mary handed me a pen- cil and this notebook and gave me that look. So yesterday I took it into Juneau, saw this totem pole, parked myself in front of it and began drawing for the first time in years. It felt wonderful: I think I’ve still got it!) Morning PANEL Every “panel” is an exclusive and intimate 2 1/2-hour session that kicks off with a fascinating one-on-one interview. This morning’s began with Jay Nordlinger quizzing Pat Caddell about the intricacies of polling and how Democrats play political hardball. It was fascinating, and Jay’s way of getting to the heart of any matter is a sight to see. After a break there was an hour-plus panel with Art Laffer, Stephen Moore, Kevin Hassett, and Ramesh Ponnuru--yep, all of them--analyzing the state of the economy. One was bet- ter than the other. And we watched it sitting next to Governor Sununu and his wife (we started chatting afterwards about New Hampshire and Mary’s hometown, and made a lunch date for tomorrow with our new pals, “John” and “Nancy”).

SCENIC CRUising We sailed Glacier Bay today, so after the panel we headed to the Promenade Deck to watch the glaciers “calving.” Stunning. But that wasn’t the half of it: a bunch (“It’s a pod, you goof” Mary just said) of whales out a ways was jumping around--I can’t believe I got a picture of it! All of it is staggering to this big-city boy. Next to us while all this was going on were Charlie Cooke and Kathryn Jean two page alaska 2015 cruise new format feb 23 2015 issue:Panama cruise.qxd 2/17/2015 12:44 PM Page 2

Lopez--gosh we had a great talk about the 2016 elections, the EU, the Pope, and even roller coasters. Well, we ended up having lunch with them, and Reihan Salam joined us (the dude is smart! ). You see the ads, you wonder, because we sure did--are these speakers really going to be on the cruise? Are Katie Pavlich and Jonah (got him to sign my Liberal Fascism the first night!) and Yuval Levin and Rich, Ramesh, Eliana and the rest going to be on the ship? Well, they are! And they’re accessi- ble, inviting, fun, friendly. Afternoon­pANeL Where to start? Pete Hegseth, Michele Bachmann, and John Hillen made mince- meat of Obama’s national security and defense policies. They were brilliant--what a unique chance this was to hear smart people. And that came after a kick-off interview of Andrew Klavan by John Miller. Drew’s take on the culture and on liberals, progressives, and occupiers was funny and brilliant. I wish he had another hour to talk. That was just one of eight sessions happening this week. When it ended I turned to say something to Mary, and she had such a look of contentment. I don’t think she ever looked so beautiful. This cruise really is proving to be what it claimed: a true once-in-a-life- time experience.

eVeNING­cocktail­party Great event! Out by the pool hundreds of NR guests were enjoying each others’ company. We met up with Jane and Mike, and then several people just like us (Red State vote, Blue State address) joined in, and before you knew it a dozen of us were talking about the direction the conservative movement is taking and shared our local-level experiences. Then Jim Geraghty and Naomi Riley joined us. That was cool. It only ended when the steward came chiming his bells letting us know it was time for dinner.

LATe-Night­“SMOKeR”­Now this is the way to follow up a sumptuous meal: H. Upmann cigars and cognac on the back deck! James Lileks and Rich Lowry had a bunch of us in stitches with stories on covering some prominent politicians. What a way to end a phenomenal day. Tomorrow ... Sitka! ­­­DON’T­MISS­NR’S­2015­ALASKA­CRuISe! SeATTLe,­JuNeAu,­KeTCHIKAN,­SITKA,­GLACIeR­BAY,­VICTORIA­ HOLLAND­AMeRICA­LINe’S WeSTeRDAM .­JuLY­18-25,­2015 WWW.NRCRuISe .COM . 1.800.707.1634 ACT­NOW:­pRICeS­START­AT­JuST­$2,299 A­peRSON! books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 3/3/2015 8:44 PM Page 48

BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS that somehow holds Russia together, a a regime that, for most of the time that like denial. When Pomerantsev intro- system too elusive to grasp fully, “some Pomerantsev is describing, used ideol- duces us to Ostankino, he explains how sort of postmodern dictatorship,” its ogy—no, a ragbag of ideologies—as “at the center of the great show is the lack of definition part of its strength: It means, not end. This is highlighted by President himself, created from a no hides in plain sight, its camouflage Pomerantsev’s remarkable portrayal of one, a gray fuzz via the power of televi- reinforced by the medium in which Vladislav Surkov, the brilliant shape- sion, so that he morphs as rapidly as a Pomerantsev finds himself working. shifter who emerged as the most effective performance artist among his roles of Television is “the only force that can of Russia’s “political technologists”—a soldier, lover, bare-chested hunter, busi- unify and rule and bind” this sprawl- gloriously cynical name for, Pom e - nessman, spy, tsar, superman.” ing, wildly diverse nation. “It’s the rantsev writes, “a very old profession: Gray fuzz? Stalin was once dis- central mechanism of a new type of viziers, gray cardinals, wizards of Oz.” missed by a fellow revolutionary as authoritarianism, one far subtler than An aesthete and a bohemian with a weak- having been no more than a “gray blur” 20th-century strains.” ness for gangsta rap, who has written during the Bolshevik coup, an insult Putin is not, and will never be, a Stalin, but, like his notorious predecessor, he is laconic, understated, easy to underestimate until too late.

Early on, Pomerantsev is taken to a (and denied, but not really denied, writ- that doubtless contributed to the execu- meeting at Ostankino, the television ing) a bestselling novel satirizing some- tion of that same revolutionary two center he labels “the battering ram of one a bit like himself, Surkov has held a decades later. Now, Putin is not, and Kremlin propaganda.” But back then, number of jobs within the government. will never be, a Stalin, but, like his its fare was gentler than that phrase He funds civic forums and human-rights notorious predecessor, he is laconic, suggests, vampire programming that NGOs, while quietly lending a helping understated, easy to underestimate Russians were happy to invite into their hand to the nationalist groups that until too late. Even before becoming homes, a seductive, manipulative fusion oppose them. He sponsors festivals for president, he was rather more than a of entertainment and control, exciting, Moscow’s most provocative modern nobody. In assessing the role that the beguiling, fun. artists and supports the Orthodox fun- media’s choreographers now play in Pomerantsev ends up elsewhere, at damentalists who attack them. “The buttressing Putin’s power, it is important TNT, one of Russia’s leading networks. Kremlin’s idea,” claims Pomerantsev, “is to remember that they may be organ His first commission, for a new documen- to own all forms of political discourse, to grinders, but he is no monkey. tary line, is How to Marry a Millionaire not let any independent movements And the tune has changed and is (A Gold Digger’s Guide). TNT (“Tvoyo develop outside of its walls.” changing. Pomerantsev notes how, as the Novoye Televideniye”—Your New That’s how it plays out in straight- years passed, the tone of Ostankino’s Television) is an “island of happy forwardly totalitarian states, but it can output darkened, becoming “ever more neon.” It’s Yours. It’s New. It’s relent- also work in a country where a signif- twisted,” something he attributes to an lessly upbeat, dedicated to an image of icant slice of the elite no longer “ever more paranoid” Kremlin: “Ra - a “youthful, bouncy, glossy” Russia, believes in anything. In Russia, there tionality was tuned out.” Not quite: pioneering Russian reality program- was the pretense of faith in Commu - Irrationality was whipped up in pursuit ming, Russian sitcoms, Russian trash nism, a long-failed god, and then of an agenda that, however unlovely, was talk-shows, all feeding that part of the “democracy and defaults and mafia all too rational. Putin’s principal inter- Russian psyche that has always wanted state and oligarchy,” traumas and est during the earlier stages of his pres- to be more like the West. No less tradi- absurdities that, Pomerantsev is told, idency was to nurture the system that tionally, it distracts attention from what fostered a conviction that “everything was making him and his allies very, very lies behind Russia’s prettier façades. is PR.” If so, playing along and look- rich, but he also appears to have a strong Many of Moscow’s brightest are work- ing, when the moment comes, for an sense of institutional loyalty, above all to ing at places like TNT, encouraged to edge has a bleak logic to it. Pome - the security apparatus in which he once promote a licensed rebelliousness, but rantsev goes farther: During the Soviet worked. That’s a loyalty highly compat- “they just can’t do real politics [there]; era, the elites had to dissimulate in ible with a belief in a strong state, albeit [TNT] is a news-free zone. Most are order to survive. That is no longer nec- a strong state subordinated to his inter- happy with the trade-off: complete essary, but “they continue to do so out ests, a belief that is probably genuine and freedom for complete silence.” TNT is of a sort of dark joy, conformism raised certainly useful. owned by Gazprom, the oil-and-gas to the level of aesthetic act.” A paranoid Kremlin? Not so much: giant. Gazprom is controlled by the That may be a stretch, and it may The reality of metropolitan alienation Russian state. Ah . . . also be too optimistic. As Putin’s grip from the regime was made dangerously That there was this space for a fac- hardens, the assertion that everything is clear by massive demonstrations in simile of liberty reflected the games of PR looks less like cynicism and more Moscow in 2011 and 2012. In response,

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Putin has turned to and toughened a tra- Grigory, a self-made multimillion- ditionalist message that was already aire—“one of the boys who became CRITICAL PRAISE FOR under development. It is designed to rich in a blink in the 1990s,” whose JAY NORDLINGER’S appeal to a larger and—how shall I put parties, a mixture of Babylon and art this?—less sophisticated constituency. project, were “oases where we escape Bolstered by increasing oppression, it’s the barons and werewolves for a a rejection of dissent and a call for a night”—spends less and less time in strong state synthesized from elements Russia. of Russia’s authoritarian past, both So- The economy slows. Mysticism, the viet and (particularly in its co-optation of supernatural, and the spiritual help keep Orthodoxy and explicit ethnic national- television audiences “in a constant state ism) czarist. The demonization of for- of panic and medieval ecstasies.” eign “enemies” only adds to the mix. Nationalist bikers (supported by the And it’s worked. Putin’s approval rat- Kremlin, naturally) take the stage, both ings have reached extraordinary levels: figuratively and literally, performing Why reverse course? grand celebrations of a Greater Russia This book’s description of Moscow, in a Crimea where night will soon fall, a city of spectacle—booming, corrupt, and then again, after it has fallen. gaudy, libertine, cruel, vibrant, des- Pomerantsev tells TNT that he can no perate, lost—may thus come to be seen longer find them the positive stories as a portrait of the moment just before they require, declines a job offer from Russia’s latest deluge. Pomerantsev Ostankino, and moves back to Britain. The Acclaimed History of the Nobel watches the shadows lengthen: “Every There will be those who stay behind; Peace Prize, ‘the Most Famous and week there were more arrests of busi- there will always be room for the clever, Controversial Prize in the World’ nessmen and -women, and more than appropriately ambitious, appropriately 50 percent of people were now harnessed. But their ironic masquerade John Bolton in The Weekly Standard: With this “erudite and employed by state companies. Polls will do little to reduce the pull of reins insightful history,” Jay Nordlinger “has showed that young people no longer that are already tightening. written not only the go-to reference wanted to be entrepreneurs but bureau- Putin will not be Stalin, nor will he book for the prize and its laureates crats.” The story of Yana, a business- be Hitler, but as I write this, I can’t help but also an important philosophical woman unjustly subjected to a brutal recalling the last scene in Cabaret. The reflection on the nature of ‘peace’ in legal ordeal, is a reminder that “the music stops, and that urbane audience modern times.” other real Russia rumbles on like a begins to change, tuxedos turning into scott Johnson at Power Line: distant ringing in the ears. And it can the uniforms and armbands of a new “. ..a brilliant, thought-provoking, grab us and pull us in at any moment.” triumphant reality. enraging, inspirational, fascinating, moving book.”

MonA chAREn in her syndicated column: “Nordlinger is an engaging and wise tour guide.” READING DOSTOEVSKY National Review, 215 Lexington Avenue, NY, NY 10016 It is like loyal marriage to a brilliant sage Send me ______copies of Peace, They Say. My cost is $27.99 each (shipping and handling are included!). I enclose Who beats you—an unhewn manner, rough and crude; total payment of $______. Send to: Globs of politics and gossip, theory, glued Name To bloated schemes of character, page after page. Address City State ZIP

Annulled from happiness on Desdemona’s stage, e-mail:

Indefinitely cast in mocking attitude, phone: You gain a transformation in that interlude Where Art has been divorced, and Grace will not engage. PAYMENT METHOD: o Check enclosed (payable to National Review) The world will disapprove, should yo u decide to quit Bill my o MasterCard o Visa This union, stand on bandaged feet, and say, “Enough.” Scant understanding will you find—for to admit Acct. No. Would be to hint at ignorance equally as rough. Expir. Date

“Boys will be boys, you sensitive, ungrateful twit,” Signature The oaf will think, then offer you a powder puff—

Not once the wiser, by your soft receipt of it. (NY State residents must add sales tax. For foreign orders, add $15, to cover additional shipping.) —JENNIFER REESER

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Film Soft Focus

ROSS DOUTHAT

f you think of the movies as an extended banquet served by a range of variously talented I chefs—now the burgers-and- fries of a summer action movie, now the complicated (and not always suc- cessful) flavors of a rich prestige film—sometimes it’s a real pleasure to be served something that tastes more like a palate cleanser or an apéritif, that goes down smoothly without adding Will Smith and Margot Robbie in Focus any weight. And that feeling is espe- cially welcome at this time of year, He’s paired with Robbie, an Australian Nicky running a con involving car racing after a holiday season full of heavy who put on a Long Island accent and and Jess mixed up with his client (or meals and an Oscar season full of argu- bared everything else to play Leonardo mark?), a crooked team owner played by ments about which bourguignon or DiCaprio’s blonde-bombshell wife in Rodrigo Santoro. gnocchi or paella tasted best. The Wolf of Wall Street. Here she’s bar- This flash-forward is the point at which So I’m happy to recommend Focus, a ing (somewhat) less, and her American some audience members may begin to glossy caper movie starring Will Smith accent is more generically girlish, but her doubt that the plot’s resolution will be and Margot Robbie as thieves and con bombshell status is intact, and she has the perfectly airtight, and those doubts may artists who might be falling for each charisma to go head to head—and given be correct. But there’s a lot of fun to be other, to anyone who’s had enough of how often her co-star is shirtless, chest to had while getting there—some of it sup- the American Sniper–versus–Selma, chest—with Smith. I’m not going to ven- plied by Gerald McRaney as the team Birdman-versus-Boyhood debates but ture an opinion on whether she has real owner’s grouchy, “kids these days” en - isn’t ready for anything substantial in acting chops, but she’ll get more chances forcer, some by Adrian Martinez as their place. Focus is pure fizz: not too to prove it. for now you can tell that she’s Nicky’s corpulent, computer-savvy side- long, not at all pretentious, lovely to having fun, which—along with that kick, and some by a last-minute perspec- look at, sometimes funny, never dull. aforementioned hotness—is all this tive shift that makes you feel that the You won’t quite figure out all the angles, movie really needs. filmmakers, no less than their stars, are you won’t be able to decide if the plot The plot starts with an attempt by relaxed and having fun. quite makes sense—and blessedly, you Robbie’s Jess to seduce and con Smith’s I was most grateful, Martinez’s charac- won’t care enough to argue about it for Nicky, which fails because she’s an ama- ter notwithstanding, to have the comput- very long afterward. Just taste, enjoy, teur who doesn’t realize that he’s a pro. erized element in the con artistry kept to a and move along. And not just a pro, but a legend, and the minimum. The hacker may be replacing Smith, America’s most reliable star not leader of the kind of gang that it would be the grifter in the real world, but, as far too so very long ago, needed a movie like this. fun to imagine actually exists—a whole many movies have demonstrated, hack- He’s been taking roles only occasionally gaggle of pickpockets, honey traps, match- ing is just vastly less interesting to watch of late, chaining himself to mystical- stick men, and the occasional hacker, than the old light-fingered, fast-talking nonsense movies (Seven Pounds, After working as a team and cruising from one ways of nonviolent theft. And when you Earth, a supporting role as the devil in mark-rich environment to the next. have movie stars to work with, the point is Winter’s Tale) and passing, stupidly, on After some pleading, and perhaps just that you want to watch them work—using the Jamie foxx part in Django Un - slightly influenced by how she looks, their larger-than-life charms to part other chained. Focus isn’t going to make a bil- Nicky takes Jess on as a protégée, bring- people from their money, just as you’ve lion dollars or restore him to the A-plus ing her in for a weekend of con artistry at willingly parted with your own. list, but it’s a reminder that, even looking the expense of the tourists, gamblers, and It is to be hoped that Smith, Robbie, a little older and wearier, he’s still very fools crowding into New Orleans for the and the moviegoing public all have better much a movie star—meaning the kind of Super Bowl. They steal, they bond, they movies than this one in their future. But . actor you watch for his own sake, who sleep together—and then things don’t Focus swiped less than two hours of my can entertain without having much of a end happily, and the movie picks up sev- life, and I was more than happy to let it

WARNER BROS character to play. eral years later in Buenos Aires, with take me for a ride.

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tor’s office is picked for distraction and that reason alone. A better reason is the City Desk grazing: fashion mags, Vanity Fair, interest that psychoanalysis takes in Time, and of course People. (i keep the past. the quality of its interest lies track of the stars of Hollywood via my midway on a spectrum that runs from Shrink visits to the doctor.) the offerings in Burke/Kirk to H. P. Lovecraft. to the the offices of shrinks, if there are any, traditionalist the past is the source of Rap tend to be more austere. My first psy- tried-and-true habit, deep-rooted affec- choanalyst took The New Leader (that tion, all those wardrobes that cloak our was a trip down memory lane—like a naked, shivering nature. to the devotee conservative subscribing to The Free - of horror/sci-fi the past is the dark man). the waiting room of my second womb of unshakeable curses and irre- psychoanalyst had an aging copy of versible inbreeding with monstrous Eichmann in Jerusalem. aliens. For the psychoanalyst the past is Speaking of which, it is true that most the source of what we love and how we psychoanalysts in the city are Jews. My love, which makes life worth living, but first two were; so is my psychoanalyst which also often (always?) comes with wife; so are her colleagues and friends, shortfalls and disappointments—else who long ago became my friends. So why would we need help now? RICHARD BROOKHISER strong is the correlation that my wife the big conservative objection to assumed that her analyst must have psychoanalysis has always been its ity apartment buildings of a been Jewish, even though his first name presumed attitude toward the Big Guy. certain vintage have offices was Siegfried. Only after his untimely Freud was a village atheist, his village for doctors and other helping death, when we attended his memorial being fin-de-siècle Vienna. Even his C professionals that open di - service in a church, was the truth re - most devoted remaining admirers rectly onto the sidewalk, so there is no vealed. true, it was a barely denomina- hurry past Moses and Monotheism, the need to go through lobbies crowded tional, Jesus-was-a-great-guy church, old man’s weird riff on his own reli- with doormen, delivery men, and ten- but still. gion: Moses was an Egyptian, hadn’t ants fussing with grocery carts, dogs, there was a time when psycho- you heard? (Freud could have used a and mail. this office belongs to a psy- analysis in America rode a high horse. good analysis, by someone other than choanalyst; perhaps unsurprisingly it is the Nazis and World War ii sent himself.) But, so what? the Almighty on the West Side (where one block has floods of mitteleuropäisch analysts to who presides serenely over plagues, so many psychoanalysts that it is known the United States. Post-war insurers tsunamis, and totalitarianism can absorb as the Mental Block), though shrinks in were generous with reimbursements. a little carping. fact practice throughout the city. Sigmund Freud, the all-father, had the waiting room of this psychoana- there are a few obvious differences lived until 1939, writing up to the very lyst is done in neutral tones, like the between the waiting rooms of doctors end; his commandments were still hot first-class lounge in a small airport. No and those of psychoanalysts. Doctors off the tablets, and there were enough Eichmann in Jerusalem—perhaps i employ schools of receptionists and schisms among his apostles to add could have finished it. the office, when secretaries to deal with patients, insur- spice (in the Fifties, many an intellec- he takes me in, has more neutral tones, ers, and the latest requirements of tual in the city spent time sitting in an but there are some bright electric gui- Uncle Sam. Shrinks work alone. the orgone box). But after pride came the tars hanging on the wall. A good sign: offices of doctors are crowded with fel- fall. the analytic community succumbed My first psychoanalyst’s office featured low sufferers, coming and going, or to arrogance and rigidity. An in-joke: A nothing; my second had a few plants mostly, like you, just sitting. Even when patient awaiting a transplant is offered straining for a window that looked over two or more psychoanalysts share a the heart of a 25-year-old triathlete, a dark back garden. this psychoanalyst suite, the interval of the 50-minute killed in a motorcycle accident, or the is indeed Jewish, and he is wearing an hour, so long as their customers are heart of a 90-year-old, three-pack-a- ear stud. Once upon a time that would staggered, means that they rarely see day analyst at a famous psychoanalytic have meant that he was a pirate or gay, one another. Some doctors’ offices pipe institute; he chooses the latter. ? it’s but now it just means that he is a cool in Muzak; the waiting rooms of psy- never been used. guy (if Mike Huckabee were somewhat choanalysts, never. (My wife had an Freud, feminists noted, had a penis— younger, he would sport one). older colleague, born and raised in another black mark. insurers wanted Preliminaries. Do i have Skype? Does Vienna, whose psychoanalyst husband, quicker results; pills promised them. he work on the phone? (the analytic a violinist, was told by his mentor, a the last mementos of the lost heyday couch now floats on the airwaves.) senior psychoanalyst, that he must are the psychoanalytic couches in New Fees? (Less than a suit, but no less than learn the viola so that he and his col- Yorker cartoons that do not take place in a really good shirt.) What do i want? leagues, who already included two vio- heaven or hell or on desert islands. i’m 60 years old, i don’t need to dis- linists and a cellist, could form a string So gone is the golden age that psy- cover that some thoughts are uncon- quartet—but that is a different matter.) choanalysis should appeal to a certain scious, or that parents had sex lives. the reading material in the typical doc- kind of lost-cause, tory/reb winger for Let’s get to it.

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Happy Warrior BY JONAH GOLDBERG Return to Jason Keep Your Worlds Straight

y heart’s for my family, Joe. My brains them both. “If we were to apply the unmodified, uncurbed and my balls are for business. And this rules of the micro-cosmos (i.e., of the small band or troop, is business. you got me?” or of, say, our families) to the macro-cosmos (our wider ‘M That line is from Cinderella Man, civilization), as our instincts and sentimental yearnings arguably the best boxing movie of the last 20 years. The often make us wish to do, we would destroy it,” Hayek context would take too long to explain, but suffice it to say warns. Moreover, “if we were always to apply the rules of this remark is supposed to establish its speaker—a tough- the extended order to our more intimate groupings, we as-nails boxing promoter—as a heartless SOB. And while would crush them. So we must learn to live in two sorts of the character is in fact a heartless SOB, I always liked the world at once.” line, because it sums up vast swathes of my political meta- This should be obvious. A large society run like a physics (if you don’t think “political metaphysics” is a family is in every meaningful sense tyrannical, and a thing, my short reply is “Shut up”). family run like a democracy or a business is a hot mess. In the opening pages of The Fatal Con - It’s no coincidence that just about every ceit, Friedrich Hayek makes a simple dis- dictator you can think of cast himself as tinction that explains what I’ve long called Nearly all the a father. Mussolini coined the term the fundamental category error in politics. “totalitarianism” not to describe some In our local, family-centric lives, we live in problems in Orwellian thugocracy, but to describe a what he describes as a “micro-cosmos.” society in which every person, or loyal The rules of the micro-cosmos are deeply politics stem Italian, is treated like family. The moral informed by our instincts, our emotions, and from people and spiritual impulse of The Communist what Hayek calls our “sentimental yearn- Mani festo—“from each according to his ings.” The macro-cosmos—i.e., society or thinking that ability, to each according to his need”— civilization—is gov erned by a very different is a pithy summation of how to run a lov- set of rules. the rules of ing family and a recipe for destroying a Let me put a fine point on it. Inside my civilization. Paternalism and nanny-statism family, I am a socialist and a bit of an author- one platoon are simply softer applications of the same itarian. I do not charge my daughter for her can be trans- category error. food, clothing, shelter, etc. My money is my Hayek’s description of two worlds is sim- wife’s money. As for the authoritarianism, ferred to the plified. The two worlds surely overlap, like my daughter doesn’t get to vote on how she two giant ovals sharing a sliver of common spends most of her time. She has to do her state. space in a Venn diagram. But, more impor- homework, go to bed at a time of our choos- tant, there are more than two worlds. There ing, eat what she’s fed, and so on. Ulti mately, the family, are countless worlds, infinite parallel universes sharing the properly conceived and run, is a benign autocracy, in which same space and time. We call these realms communities, democracy is introduced slowly and piecemeal. I know of no voluntary associations, religious faiths, sports teams, Dun - good parents and—just as important—no good capitalists geons & Dragons clubs, military units, and a thousand thou- who disagree with me categorically about any of this. sand other “little platoons” of life. Meanwhile, the farther out you get from the micro- Most of these platoons march to their own drummers, cosmos of your formal family and your extended informal rarely if ever intruding into realms where they do not be - tribe of friends, the more the rules change. I will happily long. But nearly all the problems in politics stem from feed my friends and relatives free of charge, but I see no people thinking that the rules of one platoon can be trans- problem charging strangers for eating my chili (cheap at ferred to the state. Whether it is the small businessman any price, by the way) or drinking my Scotch. My authority who wants to run government “like a business,” the veteran over my kid is near absolute, my authority over my friend’s thinking he can bring the esprit de corps (or, in Mussolini’s kids is extremely limited, and my authority over a stranger’s case, the “socialism of the trenches”) to the bureaucracy, or kid is nearly nonexistent. the pious man who wants to make the state a religious In the extended order of civilization, my obligations to endeavor, the great and abiding source of political calamity strangers are almost wholly negative and formal. I am obliged consists in people’s refusing to keep their worlds straight. not to steal your property or do you harm. These obligations The challenge for the happy warrior of the Right, as Hayek may have support in manners and customs, but the only noted, is that we are designe d to want to impose the rules rules that truly bind us are legal, written down in books. of the micro-cosmos on the macro-cosmos. These two universes depend on each other for their sur- The mission, therefore, of the happy warrior is to take vival. But if you try to run the macro-cosmos according to what joy he can from his platoons while telling anyone the rules of the micro-cosmos, or vice versa, you destroy who will listen to stay in his lane.

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