Ing Joker the Word “Literally” Has Taken a Beating in the Age of Biden

Home , Jonah Goldberg

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April 30, 2012 $4.99 THE BIKERSAMONG —Charles C. W. Cooke OBAMACARE IN THE DOCK: Ponnuru w Yoo w The Editors

BIG &#%!ING

$4.99 JOKER 18 Jonah Goldberg

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APRIL 30, 2012 | VOLUME LXIV, NO. 8 | www.nationalreview.com

COVER STORY Page 30 Big &#%!ing Joker The word “literally” has taken a beating in the Age of Biden. The vice Charles C. W. Cooke on Bikers p. 36 president’s speeches are “literally” festooned with “literally”s, like BOOKS, ARTS hundreds of tethers to the hot-air & MANNERS balloon that is his head. But let’s give the poor word some smelling salts and 41 HETERODOX NATION Patrick J. Deneen reviews Bad ask it to get back in the ring for Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, a moment. By Jonah Goldberg by Ross Douthat.

COVER: ROMAN GENN 42 TREND IS NOT DESTINY Matthew Continetti reviews The ARTICLES Lost Majority: Why the Future of Government Is Up for 18 OBAMA V. THE COURT by Ramesh Ponnuru Grabs—and Who Will Take It, Striking down an unconstitutional law is not activism. by Sean Trende.

20 ON JUDICIAL REVIEW by John Yoo 44 FAITH AND FOREIGN POLICY President Obama seems to understand it poorly. Allen C. Guelzo reviews Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: 23 YOUTH MOVEMENT by Brian Bolduc Religion in American War and Josh Mandel takes on Sherrod Brown. Diplomacy, by Andrew Preston.

26 THE STUBBORNEST TAX by Kevin A. Hassett 49 WHAT LIES BENEATH Why the U.S. hasn’t cut corporate rates, and why it really should. Andrew Stuttaford reviews Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall 28 THE COLD BLUE HEARTH by Kevin D. Williamson of States and Nations, A final surrender to TV. by Norman Davies.

51 FILM: A CLASSIC, AFTER ALL Ross Douthat revisits Titanic. FEATURES 30 BIG &#%!ING JOKER by Jonah Goldberg On the comedy routine that is Joe Biden’s vice presidency. SECTIONS

33 BOOMING NORTH DAKOTA by Jay Nordlinger 2 Letters to the Editor What it’s like, what it means. 4 The Week 39 Athwart ...... James Lileks 36 RIGHT TURN ON THE OPEN ROAD by Charles C. W. Cooke 40 The Long View ...... Rob Long Of bikes and bikers. 45 Poetry ...... William W. Runyeon 52 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

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Fiery Defense APRIL 30 ISSUE; PRINTED APRIL 12 In the April 2 issue’s “Week” section, you comment that the Chevy Volt had an

EDITOR “annoying habit of bursting into flames.” Richard Lowry Two Volts did burst into flames, but both had been involved in destructive Senior Editors crash tests. The fires occurred because the agency did not drain the battery after Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger the crash, which is required, much as crashed gasoline-powered vehicles must Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts be drained of gasoline when stored. Literary Editor Michael Potemra I am a GM retiree. I opposed the government’s handling of the GM bank- Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson ruptcy and oppose the current Volt subsidies. However, I also oppose the Right’s National Correspondent John J. Miller use of the Volt to attack the current administration on its “green energy” poli- Political Reporter Robert Costa Art Director Luba Kolomytseva cies. GM made the decision to build and market the Volt long before the Obama Deputy Managing Editors administration entered the picture. The technological leap is awesome, irre- Fred Schwarz / Robert VerBruggen Research Director Katherine Connell spective of anyone’s political views. Executive Secretary Frances Bronson Assistant to the Editor Christeleny Frangos The Volt’s commercial prospects appear dubious at best. Contributing Editors But the “rub off” impact, according to GM’s Robert H. Bork / Shannen Coffin engineers, is invaluable to the fu - Ross Douthat / Roman Genn Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg ture of automobiles as we deal Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin with restrictive and irrespon- Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne sible government fuel- David B. Rivkin Jr. / Reihan Salam economy standards. NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editor Edward John Craig Joseph C. Tatham News Editor Daniel Foster Sterling Heights, Mich. Editorial Associates Brian Bolduc / Charles C. W. Cooke Katrina Trinko Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Developer Wendy Weihs Web Production Assistant Anthony Boiano Word Count EDITORS- AT- LARGE In the April 16 “Letters,” Kevin D. Williamson calls Frank Fahrenkopf’s letter Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan “adjective-heavy.” Mr. Fahrenkopf used 23 adjectives (including participles) in Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman the course of 15 lines (counting his two incomplete lines as only one), for a fre- Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier quency of 1.53 adjectives per line, while Mr. Williamson used ten adjectives in Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman his five lines (again, fusing his two incomplete ones), for a frequency of 2.00. James Gardner / David Gelernter Though of course neither of these results is objectionably “heavy,” certainly Mr. George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler Williamson’s is quite noticeably heavier. David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons William P. Wadbrook Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Via e-mail Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak Business Services Alex Batey / Kate Murdock Elena Reut / Lucy Zepeda You Ain’t Heard? Circulation Manager Jason Ng WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com What is TANSTAAFL? Or more specifically, what’s the “A” after the first “T” MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 in the acronym headline on Jonah Goldberg’s article in the March 5 issue? I SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 know that “TNSTAAFL” stands for “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” but ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 I’m at a loss as to what the extra “A” is for. Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler Please advise, so I can get some sleep. Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Olivett Jim Grodnik PUBLISHER Jack Fowler Brevard, N.C.

CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes THe eDITORS RePLy: Rest well.

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

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n Okay, now can we see his Harvard Law transcript?

n Even before Rick Santorum dropped out of the primary, Mitt Romney, President Obama, and political journalists were all acting as though the general-election campaign had begun. (Newt Gingrich remains in the primaries, to unclear purpose.) Rom - ney is a slight underdog in that race, but he has started it well by contrasting his vision of an “opportunity society” with the “government-centered society” Obama is working to create. His campaign will have to resist falling for media distractions— chief among them, at the moment, the “gender gap.” Re pub li - cans almost always do better among men than women, and vice versa for Democrats. (John Kerry carried female voters in 2004.) Rather than try to craft some distinctive message in a vain attempt to appeal to women on the basis of their sex, Romney needs to improve his standing with voters across the board. Obama’s record should make that feasible.

n President Obama’s version of government efficiency turns out to be the misrepresentation of two budgets in one speech. He claimed that his own proposal would put something he calls “annual domestic spending” at the lowest level, as a percentage of the economy, since the Eisenhower years. He turns out to be using a term of art of his own invention, one that excludes the largest domestic programs. Paul Ryan’s proposal, on Obama’s telling, would leave senior citizens picking up an ever higher share of medical expenses—something it is specifically de - Their numbers are small, but they are high-profile targets of signed to avoid doing. Republicans, he warns, are “social Democratic class-envy rhetoric, which is what Obama’s Buffett Darwinists.” Never mind that Representative Ryan has argued, Rule speech was really about—even the president’s most en - explicitly and repeatedly, that the point of his reforms to anti- thusiastic supporters admit that the proposal has no chance of poverty programs is to help the poor rise from dependency making it through Congress. A serious tax-reform plan would be rather than to see them—well, what? Perish? That would seem a welcome development, but President Obama has only cheap to be Obama’s implication. News reports say that the Obama stunts to offer. campaign is having trouble coming up with a slogan. It does, however, seem to have a motto: Leave no calumny behind. n If major enterprises—presidential campaigns, Hollywood studios, Peloponnesian wars—can be wrecked by dueling egos, n President Obama has reiterated his call for a tax hike based on how could a limping left-wing cable network survive both Al the so-called Buffett Rule, which relies on an oft-repeated and Gore, co-founder, and Keith Olbermann, celebrity hire? The gig oft-debunked falsehood: that wealthy Americans pay lower tax had lasted only a year when the break came and the lawsuits rates than members of the middle class. Families earning flew: Olbermann wouldn’t show up for work . . . no, Current $40,000 to $50,000 pay an effective federal income-tax rate of couldn’t keep the lights on in the studio . . . Olbermann’s about 3.2 percent, while Americans with incomes of $1 million replacement is former New York governor Eliot Spitzer (what, a year or more pay on average nearly ten times that, around 30 was Anthony Weiner unavailable?). Current TV may be percent; about 10 percent of the very wealthy pay 35 percent or dropped by Time Warner. As for Olbermann, it is yet another more, and another 10 percent pay 24 percent or less. It is this last confirmation of Heraclitus (“Character is fate”) that a man of group that Democrats are targeting. Because leaders of both par- real abilities, however strident—forget his opinions—should ties have long desired to encourage savings—the lifeblood of bounce from one job to another. Where next? Public access in our economy and the surest path to family prosperity—long- Vermont? Short-wave radio in Nicaragua? Wherever, it won’t term investments are taxed at a preferential rate (usually 15 per- be for long. cent), as a result of which retirees and professional investors who make most or all of their income from capital gains rather n A disappointing employment report for March set off the

ROMAN GENN than from salaries and bonuses have a lower effective tax rate. usual debates: “The recovery is again stalling” vs. “Don’t over-

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THE WEEK read one month’s data”; “Unemployment looks even worse visit Eric Holder in his office at the Justice Department without when you notice the shrinking labor force” vs. “An aging pop- a valid photo ID. O’Keefe’s latest prank demonstrates that the ulation is bound to see such shrinkage.” A few points, however, liberal argument about voter fraud is fraudulent itself. cannot be gainsaid. This has been the longest stretch of unemployment above 8 percent since the Great Depression. When n Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, had the bad taste people are out of work for a long time, they lose valuable skills to imply, in response to a question about the tornadoes that had and become demoralized. The losses ramify for decades. De - just ravaged Texas, that they occurred because an insufficient bate will continue about how to address this problem, but let number of Americans had followed his lead in driving a hybrid no one doubt that it is a social crisis. car. Perhaps he is unfamiliar with the fact that Texas sits on the southern end of what has been known for a century or more as n Finally, some clarity on the Trayvon Martin case—no, not “Tornado Alley,” and that twisters have been a regular feature of about what happened in Sanford, Fla., but about what got mis- life on the Great Plains since time immemorial. (So ingrained reported by the media. NBC admitted that the Today show gross- are tornadoes in the Lone Star imagination that there is a famous ly elided a clip of George Zimmerman’s call to the San ford Tejano band called the “Texas Tornados,” a scattering of Texas police. Here is the full transcript, with the excision in brackets. sports teams called the “Tornados,” a famous concert series “Z: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, [or he’s on drugs or called the “Tornado Jam,” etc.) But let us engage in a little make- something. It’s raining, and he’s just walking around, looking believe and pretend that Texas tornadoes are in fact a direct about. Police: Okay, is this guy, is he white, black, or Hispanic? result of insufficient “investment” in alternative energy. The Z:] He looks black.” So an answer to a dispatcher’s question storms did about $300 million worth of damage, with no loss of became a malicious racial judgment. NBC fired a producer, but life. Which is to say, the economic damage resulting from them is making only cagey statements, evidently fearing a lawsuit. is a fraction of the economic damage done by the Obama admin- Elsewhere on the tape, some journalists have heard “f***ing istration in just one of its solar-power schemes. coons” (more racist malice). But new analysis of the scratchy tape yields “f***ing punks” as a possibility. Or is it “goons”? Or n President Obama has nom- “cold” (on a rainy winter night)? The media wanted a tale of inated Dartmouth president armed bigotry run amok. But we should want justice, which and global-health advocate means an investigation that unfolds off cable and not at its speed. Jim Yong Kim to the World A young man is dead; let us find out how and why. Bank presidency, a de facto American prerogative. Kim is n In the wake of Martin’s death, many commentators have an envelope-pushing choice. called on states to repeal their “Stand Your Ground” laws. For one, the medical doctor These laws eliminate the “duty to retreat” when attacked, and social anthropologist lacks allowing crime victims to meet force with force—lethal force if extensive economic training they reasonably fear death or serious injury. Stand Your Ground (nominees typically come is a reasonable policy, and despite some initial speculation to from the world of finance), the contrary, it probably has no bearing on the Martin case. but more important, he does Zimmerman says that Martin attacked him without provo - not seem to agree with the cation, then knocked him down and beat him. If this is true, World Bank’s mission. Editor of a book called “Dying for Zimmerman had no ability to retreat—and thus would have had Growth,” Kim has spent his career suggesting that the promo- no duty to retreat even before Stand Your Ground. If something tion of economic growth is not a good thing for the poor. The else happened to spark the physical confrontation and Zim - World Bank presumes that it is, and the Third World’s growing merman was the aggressor, his behavior was likely unlawful— prosperity appears to vindicate that view. The countries that a fact that removes him from the protection of Stand Your have finally prospered under the Bank’s policies have largely Ground. Whatever happened, a “duty to retreat” means that endorsed the African Union’s candidate, a Nigerian female when one person attacks another, he saddles his victim with a economist—and so have the Financial Times and The legal obligation not to fight back. The Martin case does not Economist. It is still unlikely that Obama’s nominee will fail, make that policy any less unreasonable. but it would be a rich irony for multiculturalism to defeat our president’s postmodern pick. n It is an article of faith among Democrats that there is no voting fraud in the United States, and that Republican efforts to pre- n The Export-Import Bank is a subsidized outfit that promotes vent such fraud—even the mildest of efforts, such as requiring U.S. exporters, and like all forms of industrial policy it is vul- valid identification for voters—are nothing less than the resur- nerable to a simple argument: If the transactions it promotes

rection of Jim Crow. Documentarian-prankster James O’Keefe would have happened without government support, it is waste- NEWSCOM / has performed yet another public service by demonstrating ful; if they would not have happened without government sup- ADMEDIA exactly how easy fraudulent voting is: An O’Keefe associate port, it is also wasteful. The Washington Post editorializes that / CNP received a go-ahead to cast a ballot in the voting district of although there is no economic rationale for the bank, we should / POOL Attorney General Eric Holder—in the name of Attorney General preserve it because “everyone else does it.” It would be better / Eric Holder. There are many things one cannot do without valid for the global economy if all countries were to give up their identification: buy a beer, cash a check, travel on an airplane, export subsidies at once. But taxpayers should not have to

drive a car, etc. As our friends at PJ Media point out, one cannot suffer until that nirvana. ANDREW HARRER

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THE WEEK n The official “vision” of the General Services Admin istration, bicycle-building teamwork exercise, and commemorative coins, the agency responsible for managing federal real estate and according to a recently released inspector general’s report docu- procuring supplies for federal offices, is a “government that menting the lavish spending in 2010. The revelations, as well as works ever better for the American people.” Administrators at the subsequent leaking of musical videos produced by employ- the GSA evidently thought that fulfilling this vision required the ees and showcased at the conference (one of which is a high- American people to fund a conference for 300 government tempo number about “going green” because “POTUS wants a employees in Las Vegas (the location was chosen to match the press event, a project he can show”), have proved embarrassing theme of “A Showcase of World-Class Talent”) costing more for President Obama, who has expressed his “outrage” and than $800,000 and featuring a clown, a mind reader, a $75,000 caused several top heads to roll at GSA. House Oversight chair- Goliath and David

hen I first had the idea to write my book Liberal help me make the point. Their reporter Adam Davidson W Fascism, I thought I might write it entirely about recently did a piece on the Jewish-food manufacturer economics. Manischewitz—a/k/a Big Matzo. The inspiration came from the CEO of the globe- Manischewitz follows incredibly complex rules to guar- spanning conglomerate Nestlé—a firm so enormous it antee that their matzo (the unleavened bread my people wouldn’t surprise me if “Nestlé” is actually Swiss French eat around Passover and often, for soup, crumble and for “Ram Jack Corporation,” or maybe “Skynet.” I was in mold into soggy spheres with the texture of balled wet Switzerland on the sort of junket I naïvely thought I’d soon toilet paper) is kosher. Squads of rabbis scour the plant, be going on a lot more of. brimming with tsuris (anxiety) over every detail. Indeed, As I listened to the CEO talk about his company’s rela- a single violation of kashrut (kosher law) by an employee tionship with the European Union, the UN, various NGOs, is punished with immediate termination because the and his competitors, it became very clear that he didn’t costs of cleaning and restarting the whole process are really care much about free markets. Oh, exorbitant. sure, he liked a little competition for effi- Now the regulations in question are rab- ciency’s sake among his vendors and binical and theological, not governmental suppliers, but basically, he saw Nestlé as (as the folks at Hebrew National say, “We bigger than all of that—and apparently, so answer to a higher authority”). But the did the various world leaders he dealt upshot is the same. Complying with the with. rules of kashrut is a burdensome, ex - Hardly an earth-shattering insight, I tremely expensive process requiring spe- know. But it got me thinking about how cial equipment and imposing high labor feckless big business is when it comes to costs, but it also keeps Manischewitz in fighting for free-market principles. It also business. illuminated how big business really doesn’t mind regula- Alain Bankier, the co-owner of the company, tells Da vid - tions, if the regulations help them secure market share and son that the costs of the matzo line “are huge barriers to prevent other firms from competing. entry that no businessperson would really start thinking that That’s one of the reasons the health-insurance industry they could get around, without a huge capital investment. was perfectly fine with being thrown into the briar patch of They’d want to buy our company before [trying to com- Obamacare. Thanks to the individual mandate, the law pro- pete]—you know, that’s the only way it could make eco- tected the big insurance companies by turning them into de nomic sense.” facto utilities. Or as Davidson summarizes, “rather than being a big, The example I usually use for this sort of thing is the difficult challenge, the owners of Manischewitz say all Americans with Disabilities Act. Big corporations didn’t these rules are a near guarantee that they will never have object to it much because they understood that they could a lot of competition.” pass the costs on to consumers, while the burden of the As new business start-ups are at a 30-year low, and the regulations would prevent smaller, nimbler firms from com- president pours more and more regulations on big busi- peting. nesses that are doing fantastically well, it’d be nice if some- When I make this point, people who don’t want to under- one reminded Barack Obama of this small bit of wisdom stand its implications look at me funny. “You mean big busi-from Hebrews. ness likes . . . big government?” Well, here comes NPR to —JONAH GOLDBERG

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THE WEEK man Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) has announced a probe of this and while Azerbaijan stokes it up, and the resentment between these past conferences, which will no doubt uncover similar waste and neighbors is mutual. Azerbaijan is the one Muslim country with abuse. Not to worry, though, a GSA spokesman has promised which Israel has had lengthy and consistently friendly ties. Israeli that henceforth “employees will be required to take mandatory planes taking off from Azerbaijani airfields would be hundreds of training in conference planning.” miles closer to their targets. Is the Obama administration so determined to avert an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities that it n The U.S. government has found a way to lose money even even prepared to leak potential operational options? Having while making money. Specifically, it costs the Treasury 2.4 cents Israel’s back, then, has a distinctly ambiguous meaning. to make a penny (the metal content, mostly zinc, accounts for about half a cent of this). And why does it bother? For most peo- n The Cuban dictatorship did pretty well out of Pope Benedict’s ple, pennies are not worth the hassle of carrying them around; if visit to that tortured island. Cuba’s democrats and human-rights you drop one, the only reason to pick it up is to avoid littering. activists—most of them Catholic, of course—are heartbroken, Beggars angrily toss them away, and with “a penny for your befuddled, and angry. The pope met with no members of the thoughts” tantamount to an insult and “pennies from heaven” opposition. The Vatican explained that the dictatorship made sounding like a Biblical plague, is there any reason to keep mint- this impossible. Democrats said, rightly, that the pope could ing them? The Canadians have decided that there isn’t, so they have insisted. He saw not only the Castro who is nominally in will cease production of pennies next year. This is one worth- charge, Raúl, but the Castro who is still supremely in charge, while Canadian initiative. Fidel. This meeting was “very cordial,” said the Vatican. The pope made no mention of the many victims of the Castros. n News quickly spread that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker People strained to see, and longed to see, criticism of the regime had repealed the state’s “equal pay law.” What Walker had actu- in what the pope said. (A sentence in a Reuters report began, “In ally repealed was the Equal Pay Enforcement Act, a 2009 law a possible dig at Marxism ...”) The pope very clearly, however, that allowed sex-discrimination victims to file their cases in denounced U.S. policy toward Cuba. Before his visit, the dicta- Wisconsin circuit courts—after they’d already won before an torship rounded up hundreds of democrats, to limit their trou- administrative-law judge. The circuit courts were directed to blemaking. During the visit, state security sent a text message: award compensatory and punitive damages of up to $300,000, “As soon as the pope leaves, we are going to disappear you all.” whereas administrative-law judges simply make accusers After the visit, the state made good, as old women were beaten “whole.” Of course, even before 2009, accusers seeking punitive up and parents were dragged off to dungeons while their chil- damages could sue in federal court, or they could file a complaint dren screamed. Many such episodes are documented. In short, with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the pope’s visit sent a message to the dictatorship, however unin- (which negotiates with employers, and sometimes files lawsuits). tended: “You can get away with it.” They have gotten away with What’s more, the statistics that the 2009 law’s defenders bandied it for more than 60 years now, ever since young Catholics, being about—such as that women make only 77 cents for every dollar murdered by the Communists, shouted, “Viva Cristo Rey!” that men do, and that Wisconsin rose in the “gender parity” rank- ings in the year following the law’s passage—do not hold up to scrutiny: The 77-cent number fails to take account of differences n George Galloway is the first politician to be elected to the between men and women, such as that women are more likely to British parliament by transforming himself from hard-core leave the work force after the birth of a child, and states’ “gender Leftist into Islamist fellow traveler. It is revenge of a sort for parity” numbers (which are calculated basically the same way) a very revengeful and quarrelsome character. Formerly a are incredibly volatile. The Equal Pay Enforcement Act was Labour member of parliament, he had been expelled in the unnecessary and deserved to be repealed. days of a critical Tony Blair and gone on to found the so- called Respect party. Devotion to Arab dictators and Iranian n Marion Barry has spent his adult life in District of Columbia clerics, to the cause of Palestine and the destruction of Israel, politics: as mayor (four terms) and as a city councilman. The is everything Respect stands for. A by-election in the city of Democratic party never tires of nominating him. After his latest Bradford gave him his chance to exploit this record and fol- victory in a city-council election, he celebrated by saying, “We low up on his ambitions. Rock-solid Labour for years, the got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up constituency has a probable majority of Pakistani immigrants, business—these little dirty shops. And they ought to go, under- if they are properly head-counted. Galloway campaigned as a stand that right now. But we need African-American business- pseudo-Muslim, criticizing his Labour opponent for being a people to be able to take their places too.” What’s dirty, and bad Muslim who drank alcohol. He won an ought to go, is Barry’s corrupt and racialist politics. astounding majority that showed Muslims had voted for him nearly unanimously. Re - n What is Israel going to do about the Iranian nuclear program, spect is the party of an exclusive and how, and when? Foreign Policy, a serious journal, has pub- religious faith, and nobody so far has been able to decide whether NEWSCOM lished an article confidently professing to have insider knowl- / EPA / edge on this subject. A senior and of course anonymous official this is the temporary achieve- in Washington is quoted as saying, “The Israelis have bought ment of a mendacious loud- an airfield and the airfield is called Azerbaijan.” Diplomats and mouth or a portent for the military-intelligence officers, also unnamed, are said to concur. future.

MATTHEW CAVANAUGH It’s plausible. Iran suppresses the nationalism of its Azeri minority

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THE WEEK n Britain continued its slow transformation into the land of never associate ourselves otherwise. So there had to be a surveillance, “hate speech” policing, and mob rule. First, parting of the ways. It’s a free country, and Derbyshire can British citizen Liam Stacey was sentenced to 56 days in prison write whatever he wants, wherever else he wants. But he will for posting (abhorrent) racist comments about a soccer player not be writing for us any longer. on Twitter. The judge at Stacey’s trial told him that he had “no choice” but to put him in jail, given the scale of the public’s n Evita, the 1970s Andrew Lloyd outcry. A few days later, another fan was targeted for having Webber/Tim Rice musical, has committed a similar offense, with Durham County police opened for its most recent incarna- launching an investigation after a public complaint. These tion on Broadway. We note, for the developments are unsurprising. The British have passed a record, the sardonic narrator, ori - series of laws over the past 20 years that prohibit free Britons ginally named simply “Che” but from causing anyone else “alarm or distress” and place the made into Che Guevara at the in - determination of what constitutes offense in the hands of the sis tence of Evita’s first producer, “victim.” There is, naturally, no way of consistently applying Harold Prince. That’s showbiz: such laws: The Internet is too big to police and, besides, dis- balance a starstruck portrayal of tress is in the mind of the beholder. In the two Twitter cases, two fascists (Evita and Juan Perón) there will be little disagreement that what was written was with a Communist. Some pro - utterly obnoxious, but this is beside the point. The law cannot ductions show Che in a full guer- substitute for the discretion of individuals and private institu- rilla beard, others dial down his tions, and becomes dangerous when it tries. Guevara-ness, which may be even worse: Che? He’s just the guy on n In May 1990, the Burmese my T-shirt. The current Che is the dic tatorship did something shock - gay pop singer Ricky Martin. What ing: They held free elections. would the actual Guevara have The National League for Dem - done with him? Called him a “mar - ocracy won in a landslide. The i cón” and murdered him. That’s dictatorship simply ignored the Communism. elections. One leader of the NLD was Aung San Suu Kyi. She is n Left-wing British journalist Laurie Penny, who writes the daughter of the nation, in a without irony about “pop culture and radical politics with a way: Her father, Aung San, was feminist twist” for a variety of outlets, including the New Burma’s independence hero. He Statesman, The Nation, and the Independent, appears to have was assassinated when she was been on a long quest to prove herself the world’s silliest per- two. For most of the last 25 years, son. In early April, she finally achieved it after being saved Aung San Suu Kyi has been from oncoming traffic in New York City by a movie star. She under house arrest. She won the promptly took to Twitter and then to Gawker breathlessly to Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. The announce “everybody needs to calm down about Ryan Gos- dictatorship would have let her ling saving me from a speeding car.” Penny described in de - go to collect it, but they would not have let her back in. And tail what happened to her, before first severely chiding her she preferred to stand her ground, even under house arrest. readers for having the gall to be interested and then remind- On April 1, 2012, the dictatorship again allowed free elec- ing them that it wasn’t important anyway because “there’s a tions. Again the National League for Democracy won in a war in the Middle East.” She also took a swipe at Americans, landslide. Aung San Suu Kyi herself was elected to parlia- calling them “very strange” and accusing them of “hyper- ment. The dictatorship seems doomed, but doom can take a ventilating” over salacious celebrity stories, such as the one long while to play out. Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the most that she related in over 1,000 words on the Internet’s most PENNYRED / @ admired people in the world, and rightly so: a living symbol gossipy site. Indeed, so morally TWITTER

of democracy, self-sacrifice, and bravery. superior to the rest of the world ;

is Miss Penny that she was en - EVITA n Anyone who has read John Derbyshire in our pages knows tirely incapable of looking the © 2011 he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. Every one of right way on a one-way street ; his “Straggler” columns has been a little gem. He can also be (Sixth Avenue) not only because NEWSCOM maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest she “is from London” but be - / ABACA provocation, published in a heretofore obscure webzine, cause she was “thinking about / lurched from the merely politically incorrect to the nasty and an article [she was] writing about indefensible (urging non-black parents to tell their children to birth control and the im por tance JAZZ EDITIONS avoid blacks as much as possible, including not helping black of reproductive freedom to wo - : motorists in distress). We never would have published it, but men’s rights.” One could forgive it caused a firestorm because it was by a NATIONAL REvIEW Gosling were he to wish that he writer. This meant that Derbyshire was effectively using our had performed his act of kind-

name to get more oxygen for views with which we would ness elsewhere. CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT

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THE WEEK n the 2012 Masters tournament gave the world something to remember. but then, they all do, in their ways. Many players THE LAW were in contention at this latest tournament, but it was bubba Marbury v. Obama watson of bagdad, Fla., and louis oosthuizen of South af - ri ca who wound up in a playoff. earlier in the day, oost hui - t the presidential inauguration of 1861, when James zen had achieved the rarest score in golf: an albatross, or buchanan stepped aside for abraham lincoln, young double eagle. He holed out his second shot on the par-5 sec- A charles Francis adams Jr., descendant of two presi- ond. People thought of “the Shot Heard ’round the world,” dents himself, thought buchanan “was undeniably the more Gene Sarazen’s double eagle on No. 15 in 1935, the second presentable.” appearances can deceive. in 2009, George w. year of the Masters. the best thing about the experience, Sar- bush, the texas gargler, gave way to barack obama, cool a zen later said, was that bobby Jones was watching. (So were con-law prof and veteran of the Harvard Law Review. byron Nelson and walter Hagen.) in 2012, watson (bubba, Finally, there would be some intellectual heft in the white not tom) won on the second playoff hole, by brilliantly curv- House. ing a wedge out of the trees. He is an american original, with it has been embarrassingly absent, though, as obamacare a homemade swing and a lot of heart. in defeat, oosthuizen has gone before the Supreme court. early this month the was incredibly gracious, even jolly. a terrific show. president lectured the court in a press conference. “i’m confident that the Supreme court will not take what would be an n chinese scientists have recently unearthed a fossil dubbed unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that Yutyrannus huali, or “beautiful feathered tyrant,” which not was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected only had feathers but was a relative of the more familiar congress.” leaving aside the question of the strength of the Tyrannosaurus rex. this discovery suggests that T. rex may majority—219 to 212 in the House—obama seemed not to have been feathered too. Some western researchers are know that the Supreme court first overturned a federal law in excited as only a paleontologist can be by this discovery. Marbury v. Madison (1803). others are dubious, suggesting that the chinese fossil grew obama later tried to refine his remarks. one of his former feathers because it lived in a cold climate, while T. rex, on teachers, Professor laurence tribe of Harvard law School, the balmy west coast of what is now america, had no such meanwhile rode to the rescue. He explained that his former need—especially since, at nine tons or so (six times the pupil “didn’t say what he meant”—a defense that is almost as weight of puny Y. huali), it was big enough to generate its embarrassing as the mistakes. but then he gave the president own heat. bitter controversy rages over this question—and a suggestion. “i don’t think anything was gained by his mak- don’t even get us started on whether T. rex was a predator or ing these comments.” in other words: Mum’s the word. that a scavenger. at least was good advice. tribe is an intelligent man, and so is obama, though not as n Mike wallace, longtime radio and tv reporter, most intelligent as everyone said when he took office (erasmus prominently for cbS’s 60 Minutes, lived to tear you down. was not that intelligent). the reason they bobble obamacare with a sandy voice and a face like the tongue of an old shoe, he would probe for any weak spot, and God help you if you had one. checkbook journalism, hidden cameras, gotcha questions—he used them all. over the years he interviewed approximately everybody, including ayatollah Khomeini and Mahmoud ahmadinejad. (N.b.: Journalism changes things only in free societies.) one unintended side effect of wal - lace’s career has been the diffusion of his methods: inter - viewees have learned to make their own films of interviews, so as to flag any unfair editing, while ambush techniques have spread beyond the networks to freelancers like James o’Keefe. Greater transparency is the (ever-beckoning) goal. Dead at 93, r.i.P.

n Notice to SubScriberS: Several agencies are soliciting your NatioNal review subscription renewal without our authorization. these organizations have no relationship with NatioNal review. Please make sure that you reply only to

NatioNal review subscription-renewal notices with a return NEWSCOM / address in Palm coast, Fla., and ignore all requests for renewal REUTERS / that are not directly payable to NatioNal review, as these may be fraudulent. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated. JIM YOUNG Professor Laurence Tribe

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THE WEEK and the courts is that their progressive desire to expand the billions of dollars of subsidies lavished upon the wind indus- scope of government drives everything before it; it obliter- try. New York and other states bordering the Great Lakes have ates historical memory (history is on their side, anyway) and entered into a wind-power compact, making themselves in part concern for legal detail (the law, properly understood, is on reliant upon a power source that simply would not exist with- the side of history). out massive government subsidies—and which, because of the Obama in his initial comments took one swipe, not at the fickle nature of wind power, does little or nothing to reduce courts, but at “conservative commentators” who, he said, greenhouse-gas emissions from traditional power sources. have argued for years that “the biggest problem on the bench Other countries, from Britain to Spain to Canada, are reducing was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint.” Con- their subsidization of such enterprises (the accounting firm servatives have assailed many of the decisions of the modern KPMG calculates that every resident of the United Kingdom activist judiciary, and sometimes our critiques have been too could save nearly $900 a year if the government would dump sweeping, whether from sheer impatience, or because of a green subsidies in favor of clean-burning natural gas) but the commitment to extreme legal minimalism or Jeffersonian Obama administration soldiers on, oblivious to the fundamen- states’ rights. Conservatives rightly deplore judicial activism tal facts of economics and thermodynamics. based on sociology, penumbras formed by emanations, foreign To top it off, Obama’s EPA has just handed down rules that law, or other political or law-faculty fashions. We deplore judi- will in effect ban the construction of new coal-fired power cial activism that rewrites the Constitution, or makes the task plants and shut down some existing ones, reducing the nation’s of judges identical to that of legislators (Dred Scott, Roe v. generating capacity by 4 percent—an enormous economic loss Wade). When judges rule, and overrule, like Chief Justice for a complex modern economy, and a millstone around the Marshall, we like them just fine. neck of U.S. manufacturing and heavy industry. This, too, will do nothing to reduce worldwide carbon emissions: Coal once destined for clean-burning U.S. plants will instead be redirect- PUBLIC POLICY ed to relatively dirty power plants in China, providing a de Green Powerball facto subsidy to one of our major economic competitors. The Obama administration’s energy policy represents an hE Obama administration’s energy policy, as one wag investment in precisely the same way that spending a week’s put it, is indeed “all of the above”—and nothing from pay on Powerball tickets represents an investment. It is finan- T below. While much of the country is undergoing an cial foolishness amplified by wishful thinking. The differ- oil-and-gas boom thanks to the combination of hydraulic ence is that with the lottery, somebody wins. fracturing and horizontal drilling (see Jay Nordlinger’s report from North Dakota on page 33), energy production on federal lands is in decline because the administration is slow- walking the permitting process. Meanwhile, the federal government has diverted many millions of dollars from the pockets of taxpayers into losing positions in dodgy solar- power projects—Solyndra was the most infamous of them, but the case of Solar Trust, another recently bankrupt recipi- ent of federal largesse, promises to give Solyndra’s sorry story a run for our money. The administration calls these projects “investments,” but ask yourself whether any sane investor would offer $2.1 billion in financing to a firm that has only $10 million in assets—and as much as $100 million in liabilities—as the government did in the case of Solar Trust. (The ailing firm withdrew from the program before the deal was fi nal ized.) That’s like giving a family with no income, $50,000 in illiq- uid assets, and a mortgage upside down to the tune of $500,000 a Visa card with a $10.5 million credit limit. The depth of the economic thinking here can be summed up by the observation of the city manager in Blythe, Calif., where the Solar Trust project was to have been constructed, that with the federal government behind “what was to have been the world’s largest solar power plant, someone somewhere will buy it and build it.” That “somebody, somewhere,” remains a mysterious party, but taxpayers will not have far to look for the parties on the hook for this fiasco. NEWSCOM State-level Democrats are following the president’s lead: / EPA Deval Patrick, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, is / foisting upon the state a wind project that will see consumers

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strike down Obamacare in part or in full, we will hear more about those precedents—and about how the Court has threatened the post–New Deal welfare state—as well as about conservative hypocrisy on judicial activism. So it’s worth restating a few points about judicial conservatism, especially since people as ostensibly well informed about constitutional controversies as the president seem unfamiliar with the basics. The first is that the accusation of judicial activism presupposes a baseline of what constitutes constitutional fidelity. In the paradigmatic case of the term’s usage, a judge is accused of departing from this baseline in order to strike down a law that is compatible with the Consti - tution but that the judge opposes because it offends his sense of justice or sound public policy. Obama v. the Court To call a judicial decision “activist” is to state a conclusion rather than a pre - Striking down an unconstitutional law is not activism mise. The word does no analytical work, and nobody seriously thinks it does. That is: The reasoning always moves from BY RAMESH PONNURU “The nullified law was compatible with the Constitution” to “The judge behaved rESIDENT ObAmA was once a Supreme Court will not take what would as an activist,” and never the other way lecturer on constitutional law, be an unprecedented, extraordinary step around. The phrase “judicial activism” is but he appears to be a little of overturning a law that was passed by a not therefore meaningless, as many peo- P rusty. most of what he has said strong majority of a democratically elect- ple say; it is simply shorthand. (The same recently about the Supreme Court case ed Congress.” As many commentators characteristics apply to the word “pro- challenging the constitutionality of the pointed out, this was doubly wrong. The life,” which few people consider mean- health-care law he signed has been ill- Court has often overturned laws passed ingless.) informed. by large majorities of Congress, and To deploy the rhetoric of activism Asked about the matter at a press con- Obama care passed narrowly. with out regard to the underlying constitu- ference on April 2, he responded that he Finally, Obama came to his most cut- tional merits of the question in dispute was confident the Court would uphold ting remark. “And I’d just remind conser- makes no sense. If the right understand- the law: “And the reason is because, in vative commentators that for years what ing of the Constitution requires a judge to accordance with precedent out there, it’s we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on set aside a statute, then setting it aside constitutional.” Actually, there isn’t any the bench was judicial activism or a lack cannot be activism. Establishing that it is precedent for the Court to examine on the of judicial restraint—that an unelected activism would require establishing first question of whether the federal govern- group of people would somehow over- that the understanding of the Constitution ment can order Americans to buy health turn a duly constituted and passed law. that caused it to be set aside was not right. insurance. There are plenty of cases, Well, this is a good example. And I’m A mere showing that the law was useful, from the New Deal onward, in which the pretty confident that this Court will rec- or well motivated, or wide-ranging in Court has said the federal government ognize that and not take that step.” Now its effects, or passed by large margins, has broad leeway in regulating commerce this comment, too, is clearly mistaken. would do nothing to establish that the among the states. Wickard v. Filburn, Conservatives have never maintained judge was wrong or activist. for example, is a canonical 1942 case in that it is always wrong for unelected jus- This point sometimes seemed lost on which the Court held that Congress may tices to “overturn a duly constituted and both the president and his legal represen- regulate even intrastate economic activ - passed law,” and to suggest that this pur- tative before the Court. Obama finished ity because of its interstate effects. but ported view of ours might be sensible is his second set of comments by saying the oral argument did not dwell much to cast doubt on the legitimacy of a core that “there’s a human element to this that on such cases, because they do not offer judicial function. everybody has to remember. This is not much guidance for the Court in the Obama drew enough criticism for an abstract exercise”—which is all well Obama care case. these remarks that he retreated the and good to note, so long as Obama does A few sentences later, Obama added, next day to his false claim about “well- not mean to suggest that the Court should

“Ultimately, I’m confident that the established precedents.” If the Court does be swayed by such considerations. In his DARREN GYGI

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closing argument Donald Verrilli claimed indeed “necessary and proper” to exe- that Obamacare would help “a husband cute its regulatory scheme. But it can - whose wife is diagnosed with breast cannot successfully make that argument, cer and who won’t face the prospect of because an order by the federal govern- being forced into bankruptcy to try to get ment to buy insurance cannot be “prop- care for his wife and face the risk of hav- er.” Crisp, comfortable white ing to raise his children alone”—a tug at As Michael Greve writes in The 100% cotton pinpoint oxford the heartstrings more appropriate for a Upside-Down Constitution, “the consti- dress shirts in Regular, legislative debate than a jurisprudential tutional provisions that suggest a federal Big & Tall or Trim Fit at a one. authority to ‘commandeer’ private parties The Obamacare case presents no real are few, institutionally cabined, and cal- SPECIAL role reversal, then. Liberals are in their culated to ensure the operation of the familiar posture, urging the Court to government’s own institutions (such as INTRODUCTORY

reach a congenial result for extralegal the armed forces and the jury system)— reasons. Conservatives, meanwhile, are not, as under [Obamacare], to protect the PRICE... being “activists” only if their consti- profitability of private corporations.” tutional argument has no merit. That is That the writers of the Constitution $19.95

the consensus position of liberalism, ex- authorized commandeering in such limit- Reg. $49.50-$54.50 pressed by legal liberals from Ronald ed circumstances suggests that it regards Dworkin all the way down to Dahlia commandeering in other circumstances Lithwick. But their scorn is neither a as improper. legal argument nor anything that ought The Court followed very similar rea- to impress conservatives. soning in Printz v. United States, a 1997 Liberals are in their familiar posture, urging the Court to reach a congenial result for extralegal reasons. Conservatives, meanwhile, are being ‘activists’ only if their constitutional argument has no merit.

The case (or at least a case) against the case. There the question was whether the individual mandate is based on an in - federal government could order state ference from the text and logic of the officials to participate in a gun-regulation Constitution. It runs as follows. The indi- program. The Constitution explicitly au - vidual mandate is not a regulation of thorizes the federal government to commerce; it is an attempt to force peo- commandeer state governments only in Plus, FREE monogramming! ple to enter into a type of commerce. The limited, specified circumstances, which (a $9.75 value) administration attempts to deny this point implies that other commands are improp- by suggesting that everyone, by virtue of er. That’s what a five-justice majority of Add this Silk Stripe Tie existing, is already part of the health-care the Supreme Court—a majority, inciden- for only $19.95! market. Therefore, forcing all people to tally, that included Anthony Kennedy— Item #TMG1520 (Regularly $49.50) purchase insurance is merely regulating held. the way they participate in that market. Agree or disagree with this case, there It’s a contrived argument, and if accepted is nothing radical, hypocritical, or neces- Specify promotional code it would seem to authorize additional fed- sarily activist about it. Agreeing with it TXRSRV eral intrusions without limit. does not require the Court to overturn a New customer offer. Limit four shirts per But the fact that the mandate is not single precedent. It does not commit it to customer. Shipping charges extra. Cannot be combined with other offers. a regulation of commerce does not by undoing the New Deal from the bench. It Free exchanges. Expires 6/30/12. itself make it unconstitutional. The Con - does not prevent the government from stitution also gives Congress the author - doing a great many things to improve or Order Today! ity to enact such laws as are “necessary “improve” the organization of health Call 800-309-6000 or visit and proper” to execute its constitution - care. al powers, and so the administration Proponents of Obamacare have used paulfredrick.com/try additionally argues that the mandate is that last fact against it. They suggest that

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a ban on commandeering would be an But the Court’s oral arguments have empty formalism: the government could thrown liberals into a panic. Kennedy get around it by simply taxing the pop- On Judicial declared that compelling purchases of a ulation to provide health care, as in a product (rather than regulating existing British-style single-payer program. But Review commerce) “is different from what we they underestimate the ingenuity of the have in previous cases, and that changes Constitution in limiting government. If President Obama seems to the relationship of the federal gov rnment Congress cannot keep the full cost of understand it poorly to the individual in the very fun damen - expensive legislation off budget by tal way.” scalia questioned wheth er the forcing individuals to cover some of it BY JOHN YOO administration’s claim that Con gress’s directly, it will be less likely to enact the Commerce Clause power allowed it to legislation in the first place. the political t’s a good thing that President Barack require nationwide health insurance also fortunes of single-payer suggest this Obama was not writing his law-school meant that the government could force constitutional intuition is correct. exams when he attacked judicial re - everyone to eat broccoli. Obama’s solici- As obtuse as President Obama’s com- I view. the administration is reeling tor general could not answer the question mentary on the Obamacare case has been, from the supreme Court’s tough question- that every law student knew was coming: he nonetheless deserves a defense on one ing of its signature legislative achievement, What is the Commerce Clause’s stopping point. Many conservatives and libertari- the Patient Protection and Affordable Care point? Based on the tea leaves, the odds ans have claimed that his remarks were Act. Rather than await the decision, as past have switched to slightly favoring the not just mistaken and ignorant but an presidents have done when facing high- law’s challengers. inappropriate attempt to intimidate the court scrutiny, Obama decided to attack President Obama’s reaction was to go Court. Many of the critics linked his preemptively with error-filled claims about on the offensive. “Ultimately, I’m confi- recent comments with his 2010 state of the place of judicial review in our consti- dent that the supreme Court will not take the Union address, in which he de - tutional system—claims that would have what would be an unprecedented, extra- nounced the Court’s Citizens United earned him a failing grade at the Univer - ordinary step of overturning a law that ruling. Obama received criticism then, sity of Chicago Law school, where he was passed by a strong majority of a too, for compromising the Court’s inde- taught, and Harvard Law school, where democratically elected Congress,” he pendence. he studied. said on April 2. “And I’d just remind con- Obama’s attack on Citizens United was Perhaps the president’s overreaction servative commentators that for years inaccurate (Justice Alito mouthed the comes from a hubris stung by an ap - what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem words “not true” from the audience) and proaching fall. Just a few weeks ago, lib- on the bench was judicial activism or a indecorous (the justices in attendance erals were triumphantly predicting that lack of judicial restraint—that an unelect- could hardly issue a press release in the vision of an unbounded federal gov- ed group of people would somehow over- response). But there is no good reason to ernment would seduce all. Chief Justice turn a duly constituted and passed law.” hold that presidents should refrain as John Roberts would not risk the Court’s this is not the first time that President a matter of principle from commenting prestige by stopping President Obama’s Obama has attacked the Court: Recall his on Court cases. If he believes the Court greatest political success. Antonin scalia 2010 state of the Union criticism of the got Citizens United wrong and hopes would follow his earlier vote in Gonzales justices (several of whom were sitting that they change course, there’s nothing v. Raich (2005), in which he agreed that in attendance) for striking down caps wrong with his saying so. there is noth- Congress could use its Commerce Clause on corporate campaign contributions in ing wrong with his trying to influence powers to ban the personal growth and Citizens United v. FEC. then, just as in a pending case, either; that’s what the use of minuscule amounts of marijuana. his recent comments, Obama blunted his administration’s legal briefs in the Obama - Anthony Kennedy, so sensitive to his already clumsy rhetoric by making seri- care case were for, after all. position as the swing vote and conscious ous mistakes of constitutional law. It While conservatives should sometimes of public opinion (which he had trumpet- simply would not be “unprecedented” or favor the Court’s setting aside of a law, ed in his 1992 vote to reaffirm Roe v. “extraordinary” for the Court to strike they should resist a conception of its role Wade), would never put himself in the down a federal law. the justices have that leaves it immune to criticism. they unpopular position of blocking economic exercised that power since 1803’s Mar - should not invest it with all the majesty of regulation. Only Clarence thomas, who bury v. Madison, in which the Court dis- the Constitution; and they should not ungrudgingly opposes the New Deal state, missed the case of a wannabe justice of invest in the Court all their hopes for a and perhaps samuel Alito might stand the peace who sued to receive his com- return to constitutional government. the against the latest effort at federal social mission of office, despite a statute giving federal government has swollen far engineering. the Court jurisdiction over such claims. beyond its constitutional dimensions. But It is also simply wrong to assert that, in judicial enforcement of constitutional Mr. Yoo, a former George W. Bush Justice overturning Obamacare, the “unelected limits was not the primary reason we Department official, is a law professor at the group of people” would be overturning used to have a smaller government. If we University of California, Berkeley, and a visiting a law passed by a “strong majority.” return to a smaller government, it will not scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a Obamacare barely squeaked through and should not primarily be the work of co-author of Taming Globalization, just out Congress thanks to questionable parlia- the courts. from Oxford University Press. mentary maneuvers (budget reconcilia-

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tion was used to avoid a filibuster). In any case, Marbury struck down a section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which had passed the House on a voice vote and the Senate by two-thirds; Congress that year boasted many members of the federal and state conventions that had just ratified the Constitution. Nor did Candidate Obama similarly criticize the Court when, in Boumedi- enev.Bush (2008), it struck down the Military Commissions Act’s reaffirma- tion that enemy prisoners at Guantanamo Bay had no right to seek habeas corpus from civilian courts during wartime. In fact, he had nothing but praise for the Court’s rejection of a law that had passed 65–34 in the Senate and 253–168 in the House. Obama further damaged his constitutional-law credentials in an April 3 walkback. “We have not seen a Court overturn a law that was passed by Con - gress on an economic issue, like health care, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce—a law like that has not been overturned at least since Lochner,” he said. “The Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and Taking the Supreme Court to task, April 2, 2012 our laws, and all of us have to respect it, but it’s precisely because of that extraor- mentions it, judicial review can trace its intention of the people to the intention of dinary power that the Court has tradition- origins directly to the constitutional their agents.” ally exercised significant restraint and structure. The Constitution represents a This modest vision of judicial review, deference to our duly elected legislature, contract between the principals (the borrowed by Chief Justice John Marshall our Congress.” American people) and their agents (the in Marburyv.Madison, should lead con- This invocation of the Lochner case federal government). Each branch owes servatives to reject judicial supremacy. missed the mark. Lochner (1905) did not its ultimate responsibility to the people, Contrary to Obama’s statement, the involve Congress’s powers, but instead a not to the legislature, and must follow its Supreme Court does not get “the final New York State law imposing maximum own understanding of the Constitution. say” on the Constitution. It interprets the hours of work and violating the consti - No branch, therefore, can force another Constitution only when deciding cases. tutional right to contract. In fact, during to cooperate in an unconstitutional ac - Its precedents do not bind the other the fight between the justices and the tion. branches when they conduct their own Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, the Judicial review springs from the duty duties, such as passing legislation or Court struck down several New Deal of a court, when deciding a case before it, enforcing the law. Thomas Jefferson, for statutes, such as the National Industrial to enforce the Constitution over a con- example, pardoned anyone convicted Recovery Act, as beyond Congress’s flicting act of Congress. A court must fol- under the Sedition Act for criticizing the powers. It is true that the Court’s review low the former, because it is the highest government and suspended all prose - of economic legislation remained dor- form of law. “No legislative act therefore cutions—even though the courts had mant for many decades after, but the contrary to the constitution can be valid,” upheld the act. “You seem to think it Rehnquist Court resurrected it in United Alexander Hamilton explained in Fed- devolved on the judges to decide on the Statesv.Lopez (1995), Printzv.United eralist 78. “To deny this would be to validity of the sedition law,” he later States (1997), and Morrisonv.United affirm that the deputy is greater than his explained to Abigail Adams. “But noth- States(2000). principal; that the servant is above his ing in the Constitution has given them a Disappointed in decisions such as Roe master; that the representatives of the right to decide for the Executive, more v.Wade, leading conservative lights such people are superior to the people them- than to the Executive to decide for them.” NEWSCOM as Judge Robert Bork have suggested selves; that men acting by virtue of pow- Other great American presidents used / MCT that judicial review itself borders on the ers may do not only what their powers do executive power to advance their consti- / illegitimate. But they should not make not authorize, but what they forbid.” tutional visions. Andrew Jackson waged common cause with President Obama. Hamilton concluded: “The constitution a bitter struggle against the Second Bank

While the constitutional text nowhere ought to be preferred to the statute, the of the United States throughout his first OLIVER DOULIERY

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term in office. In 1832, he vetoed the is unwilling to oppose the Court by using bank’s re-charter, even though the Su - alternative powers—such as enacting preme Court had upheld the bank in national health-care legislation through McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). “The Congress’s taxing and spending pow- opinion of the judges has no more author - ers—then he is reduced to attacking the We have remained profoundly ity over Congress than the opinion of justices in the hopes of changing their influential for over five decades. Con gress has over the judges,” Jackson de - minds. Why? Because of the greatness clared. And, he emphasized, “on that point In this respect, Obama’s assault calls of our founder? Because of the the President is independent of both.” to mind nothing less than Franklin Abraham Lincoln reached the pinnacle Roose velt’s war on the courts. Frustrated talent of our exceptional writers? of executive vigor in constitutional inter- with judicial resistance to the New Deal, Because of our determination to pretation. His party defined its existence FDR used his stunning 1936 reelection to articulate conservative principles through opposition to Dred Scott v. advance a court-packing plan. Because, and expose liberal platitudes? Sandford, which struck down congres- he claimed, the advanced age of the sional limits on the spread of slavery. justices prevented them from coming to ‘Yes’ to all. But also true is this: In his debates with Stephen Douglas, grips with the modern economy, Con - Our historic influence is due in Lincoln argued that the president and gress ought to allow him to appoint a new Congress could refuse to follow Dred large part to the many good justice for every sitting justice over Scott in other cases of runaway or free 70—which would have expanded the subscribers and friends who slaves. He continued his narrow ap - Supreme Court from nine to 15 judges. have generously and freely proach to judicial review once president. Under the pressure of the plan, it is com- contributed to National Review “If the policy of the government, upon monly thought, the Court’s majority annually to support and sustain our operations, and to those thoughtful few who have Obama not only denies centuries of remembered National Review in presidential leadership, he also their wills, estates, and trusts. funnels opposition to the Court into Please consider this: When you the kind of boorish threats launched are gone, will National Review . . . remain? If not, then who will by the White House and its supporters fight for those principles that you against judicial independence. wished dearly to bequeath to your country, your family, and vital questions, affecting the whole peo- made “a switch in time that saved nine”: future generations? ple, is to be irrevocably fixed by deci- It began to uphold New Deal legislation, sions of the Supreme Court,” Lincoln such as the National Labor Relations Act Can you trust National Review? argued, “the people will have ceased to and minimum-wage laws. Yes. Please do so when planning be their own rulers, having to that extent But those who would embark on such your estate. Keep us standing practically resigned their government political campaigns against the Court athwart history, yelling Stop. into the hands of that eminent tribunal.” would do well to study the aftermath of By issuing the Emancipation Procla - FDR’s scheme. The Court and constitu- mation, Lincoln went even further under tional law suffered. The Court’s obvious By remembering National Review his commander-in-chief power to upset flip-flop has deprived the New Deal state in your will, estate, or trust, you Dred Scott’s holding that slaves were of the level of legitimacy that attended the will leave a legacy of continued mere property. Framing and Reconstruction, and thus led support for those conservative Obama has decided to cede supremacy to the very constitutional challenges that causes and beliefs that will be as to the Supreme Court. Conservatives beset Obamacare today. FDR also paid a vital to future generations as they should not follow him. Under the proud political price. In the 1938 elections, his are to ours. Please contact: tradition of coordinate constitutional wing of the Democratic party suffered a interpretation, conservatives could refuse resounding defeat and the New Deal to accept any decision upholding Obama - effectively stalled. Were it not for his rise Jim Kilbridge care and seek its repeal by the president to the challenge of World War II, FDR National Review and Congress. Obama not only denies might have ended a mediocre second term 215 Lexington Avenue centuries of presidential leadership, he presiding over a listless economy. With New York, NY 10016 also funnels opposition to the Court into his clumsy attack on the courts, combined 212-679-7330 ext. 2826 the kind of boorish threats launched with his acceptance of judicial suprema- by the White House and its supporters cy, Obama may have set himself on the against judicial independence. If Obama same course.

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who “under the umbrella of teaching greenhouse-gas regulations, that would contracts, really advocated for the free- do little if anything to create jobs. Youth enterprise system”—and found a recep- Mandel thinks jobs are the key issue, tive pupil. and that’s evident in his campaign sched- Movement Mandel’s legislative career bears the ule. On this Monday morning, he takes a marks of these influences. In 2003, he tour of Staub Manufacturing Solutions, a Josh Mandel takes on won a seat on the city council of lynd - metal-fabrication shop in Dayton. In a Sherrod Brown hurst, Ohio, where he engineered the gray warehouse populated by blue-polo- first property-tax cut in local history. In clad workers, owner Steve Staub shows BY BRIAN BOLDUC 2006, he won a seat in Ohio’s state legis- Mandel his equipment—big machines lature and caused a stir when he pro- with names such as the “Trumatic l Dayton, Ohio posed a bill to divest the state’s pension 3060.” Under the dangling lights and he first Senate candidate Sen - funds from companies that did business stencil-letter signs, Mandel listens, with ator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) en - with Iran. After winning reelection in sympathetic nods of the head, as Staub dorsed this year was Ohio’s 2008, he successfully ran for state trea- recounts the obstacles his company has T state treasurer, Josh Mandel. surer in 2010. In that office, he cut over overcome. Manufacturing comes with On the day of his endorsement, Rubio $1.2 million from the state budget. he is large start-up costs; consider that the explained to Fox News why he favored pro-life and pro–traditional marriage. Trumatic l 3060 costs $850,000. Mandel over his Democratic colleague, In the fickle suburbs of Cleveland and “It’s not an easy business anybody can Senator Sherrod Brown. “We need . . . to Cincinnati, however, ideological consis- jump into,” Staub says. In 2007, he had tackle some of these issues like saving tency counts for little. Instead, Mandel is 34 employees, but in 2009, the recession Medicare and Social Security,” he said. emphasizing the economy—and his shaved his work force to ten. Today, he “We will not do that with the current opponent’s fumbling attempts to revive employs 20 people, but he doesn’t con- bunch that is in charge right now. We will it. From 2001 to 2011, the Buckeye State sider the federal government’s policies need to make some changes.” lost 345,600 jobs in manufacturing, responsible for his recovery. The feds A Senator Mandel would be quite the pushing its unemployment rate to 10.6 need to “help us,” Staub argues, “not change. The 34-year-old, fresh-faced percent in August 2009. In February, it continually add regulations that are Re publican is 25 years younger than the stood at 7.6 percent, while Brown’s going to strangle us.” For instance, were 59-year-old incumbent, who—as Man- focus in Washington remained on liberal he to have four 55-gallon drums of Win - del likes to remind voters—first ran for proposals, such as Obamacare and ePA dex on his grounds, he would be out of Ohio state representative in 1974, when Richard Nixon was president. The conservative Mandel also makes for a strong ideological contrast to Brown, whom PRACTICAL, SENSIBLE SOLUTIONS National Journal ranked the fifth-most- FOR MANAGING IMMIGRATION liberal member of the Senate. Mandel, profiled in these pages by # # # John J. Miller (“Buckeye for Promo - tion,” December 19, 2011), is a rising star in the GOP. Raised in Beachwood, a A MUST-READ FOR suburb of Cleveland, he played quarterback for his high-school football team. EVERY AMERICAN he majored in communications at # # # Ohio State University, where he served two terms as student-government pres- S. ROB SOBHANI, PH.D. ident and enlisted in the Marine Corps America’s most forward-thinking immigration expert Reserve. he went on to receive a law degree from Case Western Reserve Uni - versity. Available at ReformImmigration.com During his eight years in the Reserve, For National Review Readers Only Mandel served two tours in Iraq as an Use Code NATREV for Free Shipping intelligence specialist. The experience gave him “a heightened sense of per - NEW BOOK ON AMERICA’S BIGGEST DILEMMA sonal responsibility,” he tells NATIONAl RevIeW. For his appreciation of free - dom, he credits his grandparents, one of whom was imprisoned in Auschwitz while another served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Mandel also ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY! credits his law professor Arthur Austin,

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dodges questions about Brown’s pro - posal to levy tariffs on tires made in China, usually noting simply, “I believe in free markets.” He’s completely frank, however, in his condemnations of the president’s foreign policy. “I can’t stand President Obama’s blame-America-first approach,” he says. “I wish he was as publicly angry about the U.S. servicemen who were killed in the wake of the Koran burnings [as] he was about the Afghanis that were killed in that unfortunate incident by the staff sergeant.” He opposes the president’s timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan: “We can’t stay there forever, but it needs to be on the timetables set by our military commanders, and they shouldn’t be public.” And he’s crystal clear on his views regarding that country’s eastern neighbor: “We should cut foreign aid to Pak - Josh Mandel istan. I don’t think American tax dollars compliance with environmental regula- Mandel as a young man in too much of a should be sent to a country whose mili- tions, according to which the cleaner is a hurry. Brown’s aides have dug up video tary academy is five minutes from where toxic chemical. of Mandel saying he would like to serve Osama bin Laden was living for many In his first bid for the state legisla - four years as treasurer and labeled it a years.” ture, Mandel earned a reputation for broken promise. They’ve complained Mandel’s campaign believes he will his sneaker-punishing work ethic. He that Mandel has attended almost none of win because of his biography and his grunt knocked on 19,000 doors, raised $400,000, the Board of Deposit meetings, which work. He’s raised $5.8 million so far, with and won in a district where Democrats the treasurer is supposed to chair. (The $4.3 million in cash on hand—not too far outnumber Republicans by two to one. other two members of the board, the behind Brown, who has raised $6.5 mil- Even at this early-morning campaign attorney general and the state auditor, lion, with $5.2 million in cash on hand. stop, Mandel operates at full speed: usually don’t attend either; like Mandel, The campaign also contends that Man del shaking everybody’s hand, chatting they send representatives.) They also has crossover appeal. He cut his politi - briefly with a reporter from the Dayton have made hay of an unremarkable find- cal teeth in Democrat-heavy Cuyahoga Daily News and a camera crew from the ing by the Dayton Daily News that County, where he was the only statewide local station WHIO-TV, and receiving an Mandel hired inexperienced campaign Republican executive candidate to win endorsement from the tea-party group staffers for key posts. (The problem for more than 40 percent of the vote in 2010. FreedomWorks, all before jumping in his Mandel is he criticized his predecessor Hold your losses there under 100,000 Jeep for the next event. for a similar practice.) votes, Republican Buckeyes believe, and In front of a group of Staub’s associ- On a car ride to West Chester, Mandel success is assured. ates who have assembled in the ware- responds to these charges with a fusil- There’s reason to believe them. In a house, Mandel gives his stump speech. lade of points: “We’re running one of the recent poll by Rasmussen Reports, Man - With his hair closely cropped and his red most effective and efficient treasurer’s del tied Brown with 43 percent of the tie taut, he looks fresh out of Sunday offices in America. While Standard & vote. Other polls have shown Brown school. “I’m 34 years old for those of Poor’s downgraded the credit rating for leading, but much of that gap is attribut- you wondering,” he says, to laughs. His the United States . . . we earned the high- able to Mandel’s still-low name recogni- voice brims with energy. He promises to est rating we could earn—a AAA rat- tion across the state. eliminate the regulations that are hurting ing—for the $4 billion investment fund I “In order to change Washington, we small businesses and preventing the manage. . . . We’ll take that and stack it need to change the people we send there,” extraction of natural gas from the Utica up against Washington and Sherrod Mandel says in a summation of his cam- and Marcellus shale formations. “We Brown any day of the week.” paign. And though he sounds similar to trust families and small businesses more Mandel can be brash, but he is also other Republicans, he sounds very dif- than faceless bureaucrats in Washing- cautious. When asked what he thinks of ferent from the incumbent: He’s young, ton, D.C.,” he concludes, provoking Congressman Paul Ryan’s proposed plucky, and conservative. It was enough applause. budgets, Mandel responds, “I don’t have to win him a vote of confidence from Mandel will face a tough fight and a a position on any of the Ryan plans.” He Florida’s junior senator. Come Novem - ruthless opponent in Brown. The Dem - promises to unveil his own proposals ber, we’ll see whether it’s enough to win ocrat’s campaign is trying to portray before Election Day. In interviews, he him the Buckeye State’s.

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the average alternative. If a firm locates a corporate-tax-rate reductions in the plant in the U.S., it will, after state and lo - OECD since the U.S. increased its fed- The cal taxes, keep only 60 cents of every dol- eral rate to 35 percent. lar the facility earns. If it locates the new The link between an attractive busi- Stubbornest plant in Ireland, it will keep 87 cents. ness climate and jobs and wages has How did we get here? The lion’s share been widely acknowledged across the of the blame can be pinned on Dem ocrats. political spectrum. Take our neighbor to Tax They are in so much denial on this issue the north. Canada currently has a feder- Why the U.S. hasn’t cut corporate that President Obama’s proposed corpo- al corporate-tax rate of only 15 percent, rates, and why it really should rate tax “reform” actually would increase and it started its path toward Art Laffer’s the taxes paid by U.S. corporations. heaven under the guidance of the same BY KEVIN A. HASSETT President Obama is not the first Dem - Liberal party that constructed the Cana - ocrat to ignore the economics of the dian welfare state. The 2000 budget, HE first order of business for a issue. In 1993, President Bill Clinton prepared by Liberal finance minister Republican president next year signed into law the Deficit Reduction Paul Martin, proposed a cut in the fed - should be corporate-tax re - Act of 1993, which increased the feder- eral corporate-tax rate from 28 to 21 T form. But even if Republicans al corporate-tax rate from 34 to 35 per- percent over the course of five years. win big in the fall, undoing America’s cent and the combined rate from 38.9 According to Canada’s Department of largest policy error will be an almost to 39.7. The change came just after an Finance, Martin believed at the time that impossible political lift, unless enough explosion of academic literature that iden- “if no action were taken, Canada’s gen- people in both parties come to grips tified clear links between lower corporate- eral corporate tax rate would not be with the counterintuitive economics of tax rates and economic growth. That competitive with those of our trading corporate-tax reform. lit er ature set off a blizzard of corporate- partners.” The conservative government The U.S. is radically out of step with rate reductions that continues to this day, elected in 2006 and led by Stephen Har- contemporary corporate-tax practice. and only a few increases have occurred per finished the job, bringing the rate to On April 1 of this year, Japan reduced its over the same period. its current level. Most U.S. corporations are not excited about corporate-tax reform. The reason is simple. The current code is actually pretty friendly to big firms, which can avoid American taxes by locating activity abroad.

combined corporate-tax rate—that is, its However unfortunate it was, the 1993 There is little chance that the Left in federal rate plus the average corporate increase kept the U.S. close to the aver- the U.S. will be so reasonable. But the tax levied by state and local govern- age for the OECD countries. At the time, sad fact is that Republicans have been ments—from 39.5 to 38 percent, leaving ten countries had a federal corporate- terrible on this issue as well. President the U.S. with the highest rate among the tax rate higher than 35 percent, while Bush and the Republicans controlled all developed nations in the OECD. Across three matched the U.S. rate. Much has the levers of government in the 2000s, the entire earth, the U.S. now has the changed since then, and not in our favor. and stood idly by as rates fell around the third-highest recorded combined rate, at While the United States has kept its world. 39.2 percent, with only the Democratic federal rate constant for almost 20 years, Republicans made that choice be cause Republic of Congo and Guyana treating our trading partners have cut theirs. of the dirty little secret of corporate- corporate profits more harshly. Further, The OECD federal average has fallen tax reform: Most U.S. corporations are the U.S. is one of the few countries in from 34.3 to 23.6 percent. The post- not excited about it. The reason is the world to tax money that its corpora- Communist countries of Central Europe simple. The current code is actually tions earn abroad once that money is all lowered their rates from around 40 pretty friendly to big firms, which can repatriated; other nations tax only the percent to 19 percent. Germany, a coun- avoid American taxes by locating activ- activity that occurs within their borders. try that in 1993 was at the very top of the ity abroad. An American multinational The average combined rate in the pack with a corporate-tax rate of 50 per- pays the high U.S. tax on profits earned OECD is now 25.4 percent, leaving the cent, also more than halved its rate— domestically, and on profits earned by U.S. a whopping 13.8 percentage points it has been 15.8 percent since 2008. its foreign subsidiaries that are repa tri - higher than its typical trading partner. Den mark reduced its rate in four steps ated to the U.S. But if a firm earns money This gap actually understates the harm by a total of nine percentage points. This in Ireland, that money will be subject to U.S. job creation, because when a wave of reductions, which intensified to U.S. taxes only when the company multinational corporation decides where in the early 2000s, has left the United transfers it back to America. to put a new plant, it compares the U.S. States a sad outlier within the OECD. So what do firms do? Naturally, they with the best possible alternative, not All told, there have been 132 federal- locate as much activity as they can in

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low-tax countries, use every legal trick is to say that a bicycle was very close to in the book to make overseas subsid - an absolute necessity for a dashing man iaries receive as much of their profits as The Cold about town too young to drive. possible, and then leave the money sit- I had a good one: a Schwinn ten-speed. ting in foreign bank accounts. Blue Hearth It wasn’t fashionable—those were the These efforts are so successful that days of redline and Mongoose BMX U.S. firms, on average, are paying about A final surrender to TV bikes, with plastic mag wheels and Velcro- a 17 percent tax rate on their foreign secured padding to protect young gonads earnings. This rate is available to any BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON from sudden deceleration—but it was firm that has highly mobile production. quick and reliable and, unlike almost The only big losers are traditional man- fTer holding out for nearly 40 anything else in the world at the time, ufacturers such as Boeing, which are years, I have for the first time mine, entirely. Or so I thought. stuck with high-taxed big facilities here in my life intentionally and returning sunburnt and exhausted in the U.S., and American workers, who A vol untarily acquired a televi- from my annual two-week summer trip watch as workers in low-tax countries sion. In the fine reactionary tradition, I to my father’s house, I experienced my get all the new jobs. have joined the middle of the last cen - first real intimation of homicide when I Thus, a republican who offers to tury, albeit in an improved version. learned that my mother and her loath- reduce the U.S. rate to, say, 25 percent is Which is not to say I’ve never lived some third husband had, as was their offering something that has very little with a television. My parents had one habit, dispatched my stepbrother to go to value to most corporations. They are when I was a youngster (rather too much the furr’s grocery store to buy two car- already getting a better deal abroad. And more about that in a bit), and the vagaries tons of cigarettes. (Merits for her, Pall those with big overseas profits will be of my sometimes disordered domestic Malls for him, in an era in which a fourth- especially wary of reform, since a couple arrangements in adulthood meant that a grader could go toddling into a grocery of closed loopholes could easily wipe television occasionally made an appear- store with a signed check and walk out out the benefits of the lower rate. That ance in a place in which I was living. for with cartons of smokes, without a SWAT- doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make incre- instance, I briefly rented a television- team response.) Apparently the nicotine mental changes. At the margin, American equipped townhouse in northern Vir - fit was partcularly heavy upon them that firms will likely choose to locate more ginia, and, more significant, I once had afternoon, so my stepbrother was in - activity in the U.S. if the rate is lower. a long-term roommate of the sort with structed to expropriate my bicycle, if Benefits to American workers have been whom one traditionally enters into an only for the duration of this particular predicted in a number of recent studies, all too easily revoked legal relationship domestic emergency. My stepbrother, such as a 2007 paper by Alison felix; bearing tax benefits, and she desired to being a confirmed idiot, attempted to work done by Mihir A. Desai, C. fritz watch America’s Next Top Model and jump a curb on the ten-speed, as though it foley, and James r. Hines; and my own so acquired the necessary equipment, were a BMX bike, with the predictable research with Aparna Mathur. All the though I drew the line at cable. Said legal results: a warped front wheel and an en - studies conclude that labor bears much, relationship was in due time revoked, tirely useless front fork, a bicycle good if not all, of the burden of the corporate and though I was sad to see her go, I did for going nowhere except in wobbly cir- tax. It is counterintuitive, but a lower not miss the television. (Or the cat. es - cles. I spent a good part of the afternoon rate would therefore benefit workers pecially the cat.) sharpening my hunting knife. more than corporations. Workers and My beef with the cold blue hearth of But, being an ephebic libertarian, I their liberal allies around the world the American home was, I am embar- decided to test the Coase theorem and seem to have figured this out. But here rassed to admit, literally juvenile, an out- seek a remedy based on simple restora- in the States, they haven’t. growth of preteen rebellion that lasted tive justice. Immediately, there were So there we have it. Corporations will into early middle age. The story is this: problems of irreconcilable ideology. My give only two cheers for republican As attentive NATIONAl reVIeW readers mother, like most women who have had attempts to reduce the rate. Workers, may know, I was raised in the city of the experience of single motherhood, was who would reap most of the benefits lubbock, Texas, which is not a terribly at heart a redistributionist: Of course she of the reform, are under the allure of small place in terms of population— admitted my stepbrother’s culpability in Obama’s economically illiterate propa- about 185,000 during my childhood— the matter (though not her own), but she ganda. Corporate-tax reform will hap- and is a very large place in terms of believed that the repairs properly should pen in the U.S. if the corporate sector geo graphy: about three times the size of be funded by my father, who made more patriotically embraces it, even though Paris proper (and I don’t mean Paris, money than she did. Her redistributionist the direct pecuniary benefits to individ- Texas). The resultant lack of population tendencies were not shared by my father, ual corporations are small, uncertain, density made effective mass transit un- who was by then thoroughly post–New and eventually diffused into higher wages. economical, and my parents—who were, Deal, a welfare reformer before his time, It will also happen if the American left to put it charitably, sorely overmatched really, one who was convinced already produces a leader who is at least as by the demands of parenthood—could that his child-support payments were reasonable as the average Canadian not be relied upon even to take me to being squandered. And so there was a liberal. school on most days, much less to drive three-way impasse: My mother and father In other words, don’t bet on it. me to other appointments. All of which had discovered yet another irreconcilable

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difference, and child-labor regulations without Parks and Recreation and Party able on-demand content that I’ve not yet conspired to prevent me from earning the Down. My adolescent rage against the felt the need to subscribe to cable, and money to fund the repairs myself, at least machine was reinforced by a fair bit of that arrangement seems to me more of for a time. literary snobbishness, to be sure, though our time, anyway: Who in this busy age So I was literally stuck. My nearest (in when I looked at a television, what I wants to watch television on somebody both senses) friends were miles away, a remembered was my mother’s husband else’s schedule? (Or do anything else on half hour’s walk or more. I set about dropping off in a recliner, watching base- somebody else’s schedule, for that mat- scheming, and considered several en- ball, and performing the truly remarkable ter?) Televisions today are, like tele- trepreneurial and criminal options for feat of smoking Pall Malls in his sleep. phones and other appliances, computers, reclaiming my lost mobility, but to no (Seriously, you have to have seen it.) But and televisions only incidentally and success. A birthday came and went with- it wasn’t meant to last forever. among other things. To make a Skype call out progress, and my hopes were hitched For one thing, television program- on a 55-inch screen is to be reminded that to the one great bright star in the skies ming, as practically every cultural com- we do live in an age of wonders. of children everywhere: Christmas. My mentator already has noted at length, is a But I bought a really nice bike first. case was ironclad: I was definitely on the great deal better today than it was back nice-not-naughty list, with the report in the days of three “real” channels plus cards to prove it: high marks across UHF, or in the early days of cable. Tele- the board, from science to citizenship. vision began to find a crack into my Bicycle repairs were safely within the hardened heart when I was renting that budget of even my financially feckless townhouse in Virginia and coming home family—perhaps, I deluded myself, there from my rather long and enervating com- would even be a new bicycle under the mute from George Mason University to tree. watch the HBO series Rome, which was Come the day, I could have punted the terrific. It is surprising how much tele - Baby Jesus across the Great Plains. vision one absorbs without really ever What was in fact under the tree was the meaning to: A Mad Men episode here, a worst of all possible outcomes, an awful History Channel special there. It took its trifecta: 1) a gift that was not a bicycle, or time coming, but television did bloom even bicycle parts; 2) a gift that was, even into an occasionally fascinating medi- worse, a joint gift to me, my brother, and um for long-form dramatic storytelling, my idiotic stepbrother; 3) a gift that I did deeper in its way than cinema or theater. not want. My parents had spent what was Movies, as somebody once said, are like for them an uncharacteristically lavish short stories, but television shows are sum of money on a new television and, novels. My literary prudery was worn even more remarkable, a VCR—some- down incrementally. thing not everybody had back then. I was The real break came when I began to unimpressed. I was destined to be an travel a bit more for work and purchased English major, but I already could do the the horse opera Deadwood for my iPad. math: We three boys shared a room, but (Scenes from Deadwood occasionally are there were a total of six of us sharing the awkward to watch in intimate airplane one family television, to nobody’s great seating, I’ve discovered: whorehouse satisfaction. The idea of a joint gift al - realism and all that.) The final surrender ready was abhorrent to the emerging came when the terribly helpful people at young anti-collectivist (especially one in my credit-card company broke down one a family in which three boys had birth- month’s spending for me by category and days in the same month), but this one had I realized that my habitual late-night the distinct feel about it of something that socializing was costing me about as they were going to have bought anyway, much as the monthly payment on a bright for their own ends. red midlife-crisis coupe. I began to theo- The television is an anchor that tethers rize that the domestic anchor I had cut one to the home, and I had been looking loose all those years ago might entice me for a means of escape. I immediately into spending a few more quiet evenings turned my nose up at it, and it took three at home in front of Sherlock or Top Gear. decades for it to come back down. Being a single man, of course I went It’s been fun, these last few years, whole-hog into the thing, buying a televi-

CORBIS telling news-show bookers and cable sion that takes up the better part of one ./ hosts that I’ve never really owned a tele- of the walls in my small New York apart- vision, never sat through an episode ment and adding the irreplaceable online of the Sean Hannity show or the Bill services: Apple TV, Netflix, Hulu, vari-

LUCIDIO STUDIO INC O’Reilly program, that I have managed ous news apps, etc. So rich is the avail-

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Big &#%!ing Joker On the comedy routine that is Joe Biden’s vice presidency

BY JONAH GOLDBERG

n August 26, 2008, Politico story began: “During his ing the parts per billion of asininity, some of these comments first full day of solo campaigning, newly minted don’t even move the needle. Still, it was pretty good for a day’s Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden work, especially considering that Biden had already given the A showed some of the flashes of the hyperbole, exag- gaffe-watch industry some much-needed stimulus when he intro- gerations and quips that Republicans are hoping to use to paint duced his running mate for the first time as “Barack America.” him as a loose cannon.” And these statements do capture at least one band in the glo- For instance? rious rainbow that is Biden-speak, specifically its use of the According to Kenneth Vogel, the reporter, the elder states- utmost superlative and the exaggeratedly hyperbolic. Governor man of the Democratic party thanked God that one of his audi- Minner, at least according to her Wikipedia page, does have a ences was mostly female. “He also said he didn’t care about the nice rags-to-riches background, but is hers really the “most press, that Obama has a ‘sixth sense’ and Delaware Gov. Ruth incredible story in American politics”? (The Re pub li can presi- Ann Minner has ‘the most incredible story in American poli- dential candidate at the time had spent years being tortured in a tics,’ that he and Barack Obama had ‘the most incredible oppor- bamboo tiger cage while refusing to take early release.) I went tunity . . . since Franklin Roosevelt.’ And he choked up a back and read Michelle Obama’s convention speech. It, too, handful of times, once wiping away tears after proclaiming that was nice. But I don’t think the myriad books written about the having a chance to be vice president pales in comparison to 2008 election need to be re writ ten to account for the way her representing Delaware in the Senate.” remarks catapulted the ticket to victory. Biden’s rhetoric often He also proclaimed that Michelle Obama’s convention sounds like a stoned teenager talking about food. “Dude, these speech was “the most remarkable speech I have heard in my life” Cheetos are the best-tasting things ever!” and prophesied that it would propel the Obama-Biden ticket to The word “literally” has taken a beating in the Age of Bi den. NEWSCOM

victory. He’s often proclaimed that Obama had the opportunity “liter - / now, on the standard-issue Biden-o-Meter that I have been ally to change the direction of the world” (which, if possible, REUTERS carrying around like a post-apocalyptic Geiger counter, measur- might help fulfill that promise to lower sea levels). Biden / announced that “before we arrived in the West Wing, Mr. Mr. Goldberg’s The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the Boehner and his party ran the economy and the middle class lit-

War of Ideas goes on sale May 1. erally into the ground.” His speeches are “literally” festooned KEVIN LAMARQUE

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with “literally”s, like hundreds of tethers to the hot-air balloon lime Jell-O is “literally the greatest outrage to be visited on that is his head. mankind” since the orderlies took away his fern). Biden’s log- The standard joke is to quote the scene in The Princess Bride orrhea dementia is the most popularly diagnosed malady in when Inigo Montoya tells Vizzini, “You keep using that word. political life since Bill Clinton’s priapism. As a Senate commit- I do not think it means what you think it means.” The problem tee chairman, he would often exhaust nearly all of his question is that Biden insists that he does know what it means. One of his time rhetorically wandering off like an Alzheimer’s patient in favorite ways to emphasize his seriousness is to say, “and I the snow, only to come to his senses at the last second and ask mean literally, not figuratively,” as if “literally” meant “I’m an angry question of the stunned witness or nominee. The poor really serious” and “figuratively” connoted some effeminate fellow in the hot seat would usually be caught off guard thanks lack of conviction. He says JFK’s “call to service literally, not to the soporifically mesmerizing power of Biden’s enormous figuratively, still resounds from generation to generation.” teeth, which he flashed throughout his sentences like a sema- He told students in Africa, “You are the keystone to East phore to alert the audience: “I can’t stop this thing!” Afri ca—literally, not figuratively, you are the keystone.” “The Biden makes up a lot of things, too. And like many ec cen - American people are looking for us as Democrats,” he has said. trics, he is fond of playing with trains, only his aren’t toys, “They’re looking for someone literally, not figuratively, to they’re billion-dollar boondoggles. restore America’s place in the world.” Speaking at a rally for As part of my research, I read Biden’s seminal essay “Why Senator Patty Murray, he said, “I have now gone into 110 races America Needs Trains” in Arrive—the in-flight magazine, fig- around the country, and everywhere I go I see ordinary people uratively speaking, of Amtrak’s northeast-corridor travelers. who play by the rules, get everything right, paid their mortgage, You might wonder how he landed the cover, until you remem- showed up in their school helping their kids, made sure that ber that he, more than any other public figure, is responsible they did everything they could to save to get their kid to college, for pouring billions of dollars into white elephants on rails, took their mom and dad in when they needed help and hoped to largely because riding the train to Delaware is part of his save a little bit of money so they wouldn’t have to rely on their shtick. While zooming past the homes of ordinary Amer i cans own kids when the time came.” Here’s the kicker: “And all of a at 50 miles an hour, Biden has explained, “I would look out the sudden, all of a sudden—literally, not figuratively—they were window and hear their questions, feel their pain.” So he hears decimated.” If they were literally decimated, Biden doesn’t just voices too. see ordinary people, he sees dead people. But only one for It’s interesting to speculate about why Biden is like this. every nine among the living. Hillary Clinton has told Biden that “I think you and Bill were Let’s give the poor word some smelling salts and ask it to get separated at birth.” She apparently intended it as a compliment, back in the ring for a moment. It is literally absurd to say, “This though one can certainly understand why Mrs. Biden, at least, is a guy who walks and talks like someone who grew up in would be eager for some clarification. Scranton,” as David Wade, Biden’s spokesman at the time, told Apparently what Hillary meant is that both men are charmers Politico in defense of his boss. (It’s also not literally true that and happy talkers. But the similarities go beyond that. Both Biden grew up in Scranton; he left town at the age of ten.) As men were the products of difficult childhoods and both were part of my research for this article, I visited Scranton—not lit- determined to show up their detractors. Not only did Biden erally, mind you, but literally enough in Joe Biden’s America. have a terrible stutter as a child, he was born to privilege yet had Statistically speaking, Scrantonites are not more likely than, to grow up middle-class because of his father’s disastrous busi- say, residents of Muncie to instruct a wheelchair-bound man, ness decisions (though in his own telling, it often sounds like “Stand up, Chuck, let ’em see ya.” In 1929, there were a hand- life for young Joe was Dickensian; it wasn’t). ful of experimental television sets being developed in discrete That’s all probably true. But Biden also seems driven in no locations around the country, but literally none of them were in small part by a staggering intellectual insecurity. The figurative Scranton. Which explains why very few Scrantonites believe, evidence room is full of examples. The most notorious comes as Biden explained to Katie Couric, that FDR, who was sworn from Biden’s 1988 bid for the Democratic presidential nomina- in as president in 1933, went on national television after the tion. He had been hounded about his law-school rec ord and stock-market crash of 1929 to reassure the American people. plagiarism problems (among other things, he copied five pages The Wade defense—he’s authentic! he’s real! he literally from a law journal for a 15-page paper and then claimed it was talks like a real American!—is an explanation much of the press a footnoting error), and he was asked a question about his corps uses to rationalize why they don’t care about Biden’s academic record by a resident of New Hamp shire. gaffes. I doubt that all of them believe this, but clearly some do. He responded: “I think I have a much higher IQ than you do, And those who do are revealing that they hold the American I suspect.” He went on: people in remarkably low regard. It’s a frightening prospect, really, that large numbers of pols, flacks, and hacks in Wash - I went to law school on a full academic scholarship, the only one ington think we live in a nation of Joe Bidens. Not least because in my class to have a full academic scholarship. In the first year in Joe Biden is crazy. the law, I decided I didn’t want to be in law school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds of my class and then decided I wanted to stay, went back to law school, and, in fact, ended up in the top half of my class. I won the international moot-court competition. I was OW I don’t mean Joe Biden is literally crazy, just figu- the outstanding student in the political-science department at the ratively (although sometimes it is very easy to im ag ine end of my year. I graduated with three degrees from undergradu- N him at the mental hospital, dressed in stained white PJs, ate school and 165 credits—only needed 123 credits. And I would standing on a card table and explaining how the shortage of be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours.

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Most of these statements were outright lies. Biden gradu- ed in his approach to dealing with Osama bin Laden.” Then, ated from college with just one degree, not three. Yes, he did in this year’s State of the Union address, Obama openly win a moot-court competition, but he graduated 76th in his yearned for an America that cooperated as obediently as class of 85. He wasn’t the outstanding political-science stu- the SEAL team that took out bin Laden. If the White House dent. And why is he still talking about how many credits he didn’t care about politics going into the operation, it’s obvi- graduated with? Who does that? ous politics is all they cared about coming out. Biden’s intellectual insecurity can be found in his relent- One reason we were told Biden was an inspired veep less (mis)use of brainy quotations from Internet sites. His choice was that he lent the ticket “gravitas.” But as Mickey speeches are often a rhetorical version of The Love Boat with Kaus quipped at the time, “He doesn’t have gravitas. He has special guest appearances from Aristotle, Milton, Yeats, seniority.” Indeed, nobody in Washington save Biden himself Plato, and various unnamed poets who, we are nonetheless thinks the man has gravitas. That’s why it was funny when assured, are famous. As Meghan Clyne documented in The Obama emasculated him like a quarterback razzing the Weekly Standard, he often misses the point of the lines he waterboy during his first address to Congress. “Nobody delivers, as when in a nod to Milton he called soldiers slain messes with Joe!” he yelled, stopping just short of turning on the battlefield “fallen angels”—which, strictly speaking, around and giving Biden a noogie. would suggest that the U.S. military is in open rebellion Another argument, one made by Obama himself, was against God. Sometimes he just doesn’t quite get his audi- that Biden, with his years of legislative experience, would ence, as when he dropped a truth-bomb from G. K. Ches ter - prove extremely useful corralling Republicans in Congress. ton: “It’s not that Christianity has been tried and found Where’s even the figurative evidence for that? Yet another wanting; it’s been found difficult and left untried.” He was argument was that Biden would offer sage counsel on for- speaking to AIPAC, the Jewish pro-Israel lobby. He also has eign affairs. This was an interesting theory given Biden’s been caught repeatedly using a fake quote from virgil. But record. He opposed Reagan’s defense buildup, hailed that’s forgivable. We’ve all been burned that way at some point. Mikhail Gor ba chev’s “pragmatic” leadership almost until As Thomas Jefferson famously said, “Some quotes on the the moment the Soviet Union disappeared, opposed the first Internet are not reliable.” Gulf War, supported the second—an interesting fact given the central role opposition to the war played in Obama’s election—bragged about being the real author of the PATRI- HE best example of his incessant need to work the refs OT Act, and has always and everywhere claimed credit for of history, however, remains his penchant for the successes whether he had anything to do with them or not T grand i ose exaggeration. This is a real problem for the (one notable exception: He opposed the operation to get bin White House because his hyperbole has the unintended con- Laden). “For all Biden’s twaddle about doctrines and con- sequence of opening legitimate accomplishments to ridicule. cepts,” Andrew C. McCarthy wrote in NATIONAL REvIEW in The most famous recent example is his declaration that the 2008, “there is a simple technique for divining this foreign- raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound puts all other military policy solon’s bobs and weaves: Consult the polls and the operations to shame. “You can go back 500 years. You can- calendar.” not find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. In an interview with Esquire magazine, David Axelrod We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was explained that while Obama had high hopes for Biden as an there.” He went on: “Do any one of you have a doubt that if emissary to Republicans and admired his foreign-policy acu- that raid failed that this guy would be a one-term president? men, the real reason he picked Biden was that the two just get . . . I’m telling you, man, this guy is not only smart as hell, he along so well and see eye to eye with each other. is absolutely ready to make the decision and stand back and Aha. Now we’re on to something. After all, this is the live with it. No whining.” pres i dent who claimed he would lower the seas and has The Normandy invasion, the raid on Entebbe, the Inchon authored two autobiographies. This is the president who landing, Gallipoli, the capture of Adolf Eichmann? Cake- complained of having to campaign in all 57 states (“I think walks! My favorite part is the “48 percent certainty” bit. [I have] one left to go,” he added). This is the president who Where does this number come from? Do people in the White recently got burned with a fake Internet quote about House actually believe they can predict the future (never Rutherford B. Hayes’s hating the telephone, and who pro- mind military operations in Pakistan) with that kind of gran- claimed that America built the “intercontinental railroad.” ular precision? These are the same people, recall, who had to This is the president who once tried to sell his health-care discover on the job that there’s no such thing as shovel-ready reform by noting that “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, jobs. Where was their supercomputer crystal ball for that right? It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” stuff? Who once told Jake Tapper, “You’re absolutely right that Notice as well Biden’s measure of what qualifies as brav- John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith.” Who ery: This was a courageous operation because it risked tried to preemptively condemn judicial review of Obamacare Oba ma’s reelection effort. The White House immediately as “unprecedented.” Who is quoted, in Richard Wolffe’s book compounded this shamefulness by citing the success of the Renegade, as saying, “You know, I actually believe my own mission as a reason to back Obama’s domestic agenda. “On bulls***.” immigration reform, he keeps pushing to get it done,” ex - When you have a straight man like that, you need a special plained White House spokesman Jay Carney in a pathetic kind of sidekick to make the team work. And good ol’ Joe effort to clarify the point. “And I think that that was reflect- is certainly special.

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the aisles, and the customers grab the goods and go right to the register. Booming Someone says to me, “Do you mind if I tell you something blue?” I’m all ears. “From what I hear,” he says, “the strippers are making more per night in Williston than they do in Las Vegas.” North Dakota The best stories, of course, are those involving men and women whose lives have been renewed by work found in this What it’s like, what it means state. The nation has been down and ailing. North Dakota has been a godsend for many thousands—maybe as many as 50,000, so far (and the state has fewer than 700,000). Next BY JAY NORDLINGER door in Minnesota, the Star Tribune ran an article that began, “There’s no keeping up with North Dakota’s surging econo- Bismarck, N.D. my, but at least they’re hiring some of us to do chores.” OR many years, North Dakota has been the least visited Hearing stories in North Dakota, I recall something I heard an state in the Union. There are no real tourist attractions Egyptian say at a Middle East conference. He was talking here; Mount Rushmore is in South Dakota. The late about unemployment in Egypt and other Arab countries. F news man Eric Sevareid, who was born in North Dakota, Young people were having to go to the Persian Gulf, in order called his native state “a large, rectangular blank spot in the to find work. He was sorry that they couldn’t stay in their home nation’s mind.” But reporters from all over the world have been countries. But “thank God there is a Gulf. It has served as a coming here lately, because North Dakota boasts one of the safety valve for the whole region.” most interesting and exciting stories in the country: an honest- In the Bakken, the greatest need is for truck drivers, to haul to-goodness boom. materials to and from drilling sites. They earn between $80,000 The state has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, and $120,000 a year, with generous benefits. Dennis Lindahl, at 3.1 percent. Some wonder who could be out of work, given a councilman in Stanley, tells me about a family who lost their all the “Help Wanted” signs. North Dakota is No. 1 in job home in California. They came to the Bakken with one truck, growth and No. 1 in income growth. At the heart of this pros- which they ran 24 hours a day. Soon they had three trucks and perity is the Bakken formation, located in the northwestern five drivers, and bought a new home here—with cash. Many part of the state. It’s a vast pot of oil. “Bakken,” incidentally, workers are paying off their mortgages back home, or buy- rhymes with “rockin’.” They have a bumper sticker here: ing land back home, or saving for a business they’ve always “Rockin’ the Bakken.” dreamed of. Many are simply sending cash back home, to fam- Oil was discovered in this area in 1951, but the trick was ily members who need it. If these workers get a per diem, they extracting it. Then, not long ago, came a marriage of two try to spend as little of it as possible. In a Mexican or Cuban techniques—one older, one newer. The older one was “hy - context, we would use the word “remittances.” draulic fracturing,” or “fracking,” for short. This is the method Not only are people coming to North Dakota, North Da- by which oil or natural gas is forced from rock. The newer kotans aren’t leaving—as they have done for many years. For technique was horizontal drilling. A combination of the two generations, North Dakotans who have wanted a chance in life proved a bonanza. Earlier this year, North Dakota passed have had to leave the state. Mom and Dad may have been left California as the third-greatest oil-producing state. Before the at home, but the kids were gone. North Dakota was a place you year is out, they should pass Alaska, trailing only Texas. were from, not a place where you lived. Today, you probably People from the other 49 states are coming to North Dakota don’t have to leave, if you don’t want to. And people who did to participate in this boom. Entrepreneurs in and around the leave are “coming back in droves,” Lindahl says. (He himself Bakken are having a field day. The common comparison is to is one of them.) Not a few North Dakotans, who have always the Gold Rush, and that comparison is apt. North Dakota’s lived modestly, are becoming rich overnight: because they government is flush in money, and they are both investing in have surface rights to sell, or, even better, mineral rights. Or infrastructure and cutting taxes. Not every state has a Bakken, they may have some land on which people can place RVs or obviously—this goose laying golden eggs. Still, other states trailer homes. can learn from North Dakota, and so can Washington, D.C. Ah, yes, housing—probably the biggest problem facing the “There are 8 million stories in the naked city,” goes an old Bakken. These sons of men have nowhere to lay their heads. movie line. There are almost as many in the Bakken. Gary You can sleep in your car or truck—and many do—but that Emineth, an entrepreneur and politico, is in the burrito busi- can be dangerous in a North Dakota winter. (Fortunately, this ness. For the Bakken, he had a special burrito made: big, last one has been mild.) Some people commute for hours. manly, meal-like. He has done more business in 13 stores Throughout the oil patch are “man camps,” also called “crew in the Bakken than in 450 stores elsewhere. In the town camps”: modular housing occupied by thousands of men, of Williston, the McDonald’s had to close in the middle of some of whom sleep in shifts. These camps suddenly crop up a Wednesday afternoon. They had run out of food. The in farmers’ fields. They resemble military quarters in Iraq or Williston Walmart does not really bother stocking the shelves Afghanistan. One camp outside Tioga has what may be the anymore. First, who wants to work as a stockboy when you longest hallway I’ve ever seen. I ask one of the men in charge can make a bundle in the oil patch? Second, the goods would how long it is. He answers precisely: 1,008 feet. not stay on the shelves long. The store just sets the pallets in With the blessings of boom, of course, have come problems:

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“the Ronald Reagan of North Dakota.” (Hennen himself has been dubbed “the Rush Limbaugh of the Prairie” by the Wall Street Journal.) In the early ’90s, North Dakota was flat on its back, without growth or opportunity. Morale was very low. What Schafer did, in a nutshell, was reform government and make North Dakota business-friendly. He remembers when Harold Hamm came to visit him in the spring of 1993. Hamm, an Oklahoma oilman who ran Continental Resources, and still does, told him about horizontal drilling. Some in the industry thought horizontal drilling was a pipedream (so to speak). But Hamm thought he had something, and the Schafer government crafted policies to help Hamm and other oilmen see what they could do. They did well. Long before the current boom, North Dakota was an energy- production and energy-minded state. They have many of the elements of “all of the above,” as the politicians say. In other words, they have multiple sources of energy, including coal, hydropower, ethanol, biodiesel, and wind. (Being relatively flat and treeless, North Dakota has no shortage of wind. Sometimes, it’s hard to stand up.) Politicians, regulators, and others here stress, “We’re used to energy. It’s part of who we are. We’re not afraid of it, and we know how to deal with it.” While some refer to the current prosperity as “the North Dakota Miracle,” others will have none of it. Ed Schafer is one of them: “It was more like a long, hard slog through the swamps. It took a lot of planning.” Last month, the current governor, Jack Dalrymple, delivered the Republican response to President Obama’s weekly radio address. Dalrymple said, “We have created a friendly business climate in North Dakota, where taxes and insurance rates are low, the regulatory envi- a strain on utilities, hospitals, and the like. There’s a need for ronment is very reasonable, and we have the most responsive more teachers, more policemen—more of everything. At the state government anywhere.” It is true that other states with high school in Stanley, they’re holding class in the lunchroom, wonderful resources, including oil, have had different policies in the auditorium, and in the garage. They’re about to have a and different results. Until recently, New Mexico seemed $7 million expansion. Some don’t like the changes that have determined not to produce or compete. California’s hostility occurred in this quiet, or once-quiet, part of the world. Before, to energy production is legendary. Its unemployment rate is they may have seen three to six cars a week. Now there are 10.9 percent, third worst in the country. traffic jams. There’s dust, noise, and other unpleasantness. And yet, it doesn’t hurt to have a Bakken formation. Kevin There has been an uptick in crime, because there has been an Cramer, a member of the Public Service Commission, and a uptick in everything. North Dakotans have long said, “Twenty- Republican candidate for Congress, is grinningly aware of this. below keeps the riffraff away.” I’m informed, “The riffraff is He recalls an old Steve Martin skit on Saturday Night Live: still about 5 percent. But now the population is bigger.” You can become a millionaire and never pay taxes! How? So, there are problems—but good problems to have, as Well, first get a million dollars. “Let’s be honest,” says many see it. These are problems that come from abundance Cramer: “No politician invented the Bakken.” He also points rather than paucity. Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota out that North Dakota is blessed with private lands, rather than Petroleum Council, grew up in Tolna, a tiny town in the east- state or federal ones: Almost all of the Bakken is in private ern part of the state. He saw the town lose its school, its café, hands. “So that made it easier right out of the chute,” says and its grocery store. He walked just 500 yards to high school. Cramer. Companies could invest their capital and get a return Kids after him were bused 45 miles each way. This is the kind on it. of thing that happens when a state empties out. There are Ron Ness, of the Petroleum Council, suggests that four fac- maybe worse things than boom. tors made the Bakken boom: geology, technology, price, and business climate. And just about everybody can agree with Jason Stverak, a North Dakota–savvy journalist—or rather, CORBIS / S some North Dakota conservatives tell it—and they with his mother: “My mother always said, ‘Success is when have a strong case—the current prosperity has its roots opportunity meets preparation.’” FIRST LIGHT

/ A in conscientious policies of the past. It began with the This state has more than energy going for it, as people here election of a Republican governor in 1992, they say. He was Ed are keen to point out. Agriculture is still a mainstay. Micro - Schafer, later an agriculture secretary under George W. Bush. soft’s largest campus, apart from its headquarters in Redmond,

THOMAS FRICKE Scott Hennen, a radio host based in Fargo, describes Schafer as Wash., is in Fargo. In his radio response to Obama, Governor

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Dalrymple said, “We have thousands of job openings in North sweet spot. “There are people in industry who will test the Dakota today, but almost every day the national media asks me margins,” he says. “That’s why you have to have regulations. if it isn’t all due to the oil boom in northwestern North Dakota. Then, at the other extreme, there are radicals who would write I enjoy telling them the county with the most job openings is not rules that make it impossible to operate or make money in the among western oil counties but is the county surrounding Fargo, state.” our largest city and on the opposite side of the state.” In that Many North Dakotans were taken aback when the Obama city, I meet Michael Chambers, a young man from Carrington, Justice Department brought suit against Continental Resources N.D. His parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were and other oil companies last year. The charge: A handful of beekeepers. He’s a beekeeper too, but also a science whiz: His birds—between 25 and 30—had died in “reserve pits.” The company, Aldevron, is the first biotech company in the state, companies were prosecuted under the Migratory Bird Treaty and it employs 100 people. Act. A district-court judge threw the suit out with little ado. In the bargain, he listed some of the ways in which birds die: including flying into wind turbines. That kills an estimated OR all the state’s economic diversity, oil production is 33,000 a year. Why pick on oil? Why should wind be sacred front and center now. “Drill, baby, drill,” goes the cry, and oil the bad guy? F along with “Frack, baby, frack.” Fracking makes a lot of Kathy Neset, a veteran oil consultant in Tioga, doesn’t look people nervous (though not in North Dakota). A few days like a bad guy. She is all femininity, and sweet reason. A native before I came here, I was with some musicians back in Man - of New Jersey, she graduated from Brown University with a hattan. They asked me whether I was traveling anytime soon. degree in geology. I say, “Do people ever say, ‘What’s a nice Yes, I said, to North Dakota. Why, they asked. To look into the girl like you doing in a business like this?’” “Back East they oil boom, I said. One of them said, “Oh, yeah—fracking. Isn’t do,” she says. She decided to come out here in the late 1970s, that bad for the environment?” shortly after graduating. A friend said to her, “You mean, peo- Here in North Dakota, I put this question to all and sundry. ple actually live in North Dakota?” Like Lynn Helms, she did And the answer, honestly, is no—not with intelligent regula- practically every job in the oil business, including roughneck- tions. Elsewhere in the country, there are concerns that fracking. It was a different business back then, she says: dirtier, ing will contaminate the water. Not in North Dakota: The oil more dangerous. There were accidents. There was no drug test- and the aquifers are two miles apart. Then there is the question ing. Guys would have six-packs in the truck. Today, she says, of oil drilling in general. The footprint of such drilling is “it’s a kinder, gentler oil business.” getting ever smaller. The environmental impacts are getting Channeling Barbara Walters, I ask Neset what the biggest ever fewer. Derricks will be up for 20 to 30 days. Then they go misconception about the business is. She answers, “People away, leaving only simple, unobtrusive pumps (painted to don’t know how technical it is. How much knowledge it takes, blend in with the landscape). When the well is dry, the land will the huge amount of money behind it, the scientists working on be back to normal, with no sign that any drilling ever took it.” In a recent article about Pennsylvania, my colleague Kevin place. Contrast this with other ways in which we mess with the D. Williamson noted “a strong whiff of chess club and Science landscape: highways, railroads, telephone poles, telephone Olympiad” in the oil patch. True. You encounter a mixture of wires, wind turbines ... Poindexters and hard hats. I ask Neset, “What do you say to Over and over, North Dakotans tell me one thing: We love people—outsiders like me—who think oil is no good? Who our land more than you do. More than musicians in Manhattan have swallowed the line since childhood?” She says, “Well, I could. We have to live here. We are good stewards. We need can start by asking them how they got here. Whether it was by this land. You don’t have to worry that we’ll rape and pillage car, train, foot, or whatever, petroleum products had something our own backyard, for heaven’s sake. to do with it.” There tend not to be regulation wars in North Dakota: wars Petroleum is an ingredient in sneakers, by the way. And in between government and industry, liberals and conservatives, lipstick. And—how about this?—in wind turbines. crunchies and capitalists. (Pretty much everyone in North Dakota is a crunchy. And, increasingly, a capitalist.) People tend to solve problems together. There is a tradition of “North ATHY NESET has been through boom before, and boom Dakota nice.” Kevin Cramer says, “I tell companies, if you is often followed by bust: During the boom periods, want to get along with me, get along with the people out where K you have to guard against it, to the extent possible. you’re working. If you don’t get along with them, you don’t There are negative stories to be written in North Dakota. A get along with me.” The chief oil regulator is Lynn Helms, a headline in the New York Times said, “Even Boom States Get man who roughnecked his way through college and worked the Blues.” Another said, “A State with Plenty of Jobs but Few just about every other job in the oil business, before landing in Places to Live.” A headline in the Los Angeles Times said, his present position. “I think it’s important for a regulator to “Despite jobs, not all is rosy in North Dakota.” (Please point have a working knowledge of the regulated industry,” he says. me to where all is rosy!) An article in the Chronicle of Higher “For example, what does a rule mean to a roughneck or to a Education worried about whether North Dakota’s new wealth production engineer?” He says a regulator has to be able to go would find its way to colleges: “Dreams of lavish support are to a townhall meeting and take questions from all comers, all limited only by a persistent midwestern frugality.” Yes, that interests. midwestern frugality will screw you every time. Some people consider Helms too tight with his regulations; There are un-silver linings, sure. But the possibilities em - others consider him too loose. The challenge is to find the bodied by North Dakota are exciting. Many Americans dream

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of energy independence, a dream really within grasp. A headline in The New Yorker read, “Kuwait on the Prairie: Can North Dakota solve the energy problem?” A headline in Maclean’s said, Right Turn on “Bye-Bye, Sheiks.” While others talk about “energy independence,” Kevin Cramer prefers to talk about “energy security.” Like many another free-marketeer, he’s happy to import cheap oil The Open Road from abroad. But it never hurts to have some in your own back pocket, just in case. Even in the rockin’ Bakken, oilmen are getting just a fraction of what’s there: between 6 and 8 percent. With Of bikes and bikers future technology, who knows what will be possible? But there are those who would keep the Bakken from rockin’, BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE who would kill the goose laying the golden eggs. I ask several people what the biggest threat to them is, and they say, to a man or woman, “The EPA.” (Some say price collapse, too.) If Daytona Beach, Fla. the Environmental Protection Agency decides to ban or stifle IKERS WELCOME HERE!” read the signs at almost fracking, “we’re out of business,” as Cramer says. The Obama every establishment, and given that over half a administration is clearly no fan of oil. Dalrymple said, “The million of them arrive each March for the city’s federal government is killing energy development with overly ‘B annual Bike Week, it is a sensible policy. They burdensome regulations. The best example of this is the Key - come from all 50 states—even Alaska and Hawaii—and have stone XL pipeline which the Obama administration will not gathered almost every year since 1937. The Second World War allow to be built. ...We cannot effectively market our crude oil caused a brief hiatus (in lieu, those not overseas held an in - domestically without a large North–South pipeline.” formal rally), but when the fighting ended, the tradition was There are people who consider abundant American oil a resumed, and it has now grown to be the joint biggest motor - mortal threat to their agenda: their agenda for “renewables.” As cycle convocation in the United States—an honor it shares with John Kemp of Reuters wrote last year, many lobbyists “fear South Dakota’s more famous meeting in Sturgis. rising oil production would relieve upward pressure on prices For one kaleidoscopic fortnight, Daytona’s warm air is filled and remove the threat of energy insecurity.” He spoke of a with engine noise and rock music and its streets are marked out “Manichean struggle,” in which “leaders in Washington and in fast-moving chrome and brightly colored lights. Bike Week’s state capitals across the United States are being pressed to habitués more or less take over their host city, changing its char- decide between embracing the job and income gains that come acter from slightly run down Floridian beach town to hot mess. with drilling” and curbing those gains, to “focus on clean tech- Theirs is the America of Hotel California—of dark desert high- nology investments and employment.” President Obama has ways, flickering neon signs, the wind in your hair, and the inef- told Continental’s Harold Hamm, personally, that he sees essen- fable, perhaps apocryphal, “spirit of ’69.” America is deemed tially no future for oil and gas. Hamm has signed on as an energy the Great Satan by the modern era’s neo-puritans, primarily adviser to Republican Mitt Romney. The Obama campaign ran because it is the greatest tempter on earth; and its glittering a TV ad saying that Romney stands with “Big Oil.” charms are nowhere more plainly on offer than on its roads. It Okay, but is that bad, necessarily? Hamm’s a bigshot, sure— is a land of contradictions, in which churches stand next to strip one of the richest men in America. But he didn’t start out that clubs—and in Daytona there are cars and bikes parked outside way. He was the son of a sharecropper, the last of 13 children. both. He knows what oil can do for people, in all sorts of ways. Motorcycles have long been associated both with America’s “This is an upbeat story,” says Kathy Neset. It is. North Da- harder edge and with liberty itself. It is no accident that, in The kota, certainly in the west, is throbbing with life. On the Fort Great Escape, Steve McQueen rides away from tyranny and Berthold Indian reservation, there was 40 percent unemploy- toward freedom on the back of a Triumph two-wheeler, but one ment and “no hope,” as Lynn Helms says. Now there is virtu- also gets the impression that if Satan were to use earthly forms ally no unemployment and plenty of hope. People in North of transport to deliver his seductions, he, too, would be carried Dakota are feeling new pride. Someone tells me, “We were along the highways and byways on the back of a chopper. kind of the forgotten state on the prairie. Mount Rushmore’s (Indeed, hellfire—and the underworld more generally—is a not in North Dakota, it’s in South Dakota. But now we’re favorite decorative theme among those who ride, and bats, showing the way in domestic oil. We’re helping the whole skulls, and the Grim Reaper are among the most popular decals.) country.” Someone else says, “People always made fun of us. Bikers thus inspire mixed reactions in the public’s imagination, Now it’s kind of cool to be from North Dakota, where all the and it is maybe inevitable that even those who feel positive action is.” toward them tend also to perceive their culture as being em - Forgetting what the boom has done for North Dakota, think blematic of an unfortunate American tendency to metamor- once more about what it has done for others: all those Americans phose liberty into license and make fiends of the free. who are newly employed. Some of them were out of work for In a seminal 1965 essay for The Nation, a young Hunter S. years. Unemployment can have nasty side effects, including Thompson noted that the bad reputation bikers enjoyed was depression, alcoholism, and divorce. It’s easy for the already largely undeserved, but that there was no smoke without fire. employed to sniff at an oil boom. Men who have come to the Cataloguing both the true and the false accusations, Thompson Bakken are saying that, at long last, with work, they can look argued that, while a few on the fringe exhibited dangerous— their children in the eye. That is really good news. even criminal—tendencies, most were in fact just “harmless

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weekend types . . . no more dangerous than skiers or skin With the notable exception of the Ron Paul contingent— divers.” This has most likely been true from the outset, but which is well represented and typically vocal—bikers tend to truth does not always reign in the court of public opinion, and take positions rather than endorse candidates and, more than the bad-boy image has stuck, tarnishing all with the transgres- anything, seem fed up with the little things: with mandatory- sions of a few. This stubborn perception does a disservice to helmet laws, interference with gun rights, and incessant nanny- what is actually a remarkably conservative and deeply patriotic ing about food and drink and light bulbs. They are weary of group. being lectured about the environment and burdened with end- They’re religious, too. Daytona Beach is filled with church- less mandates and taxes. One festival-goer describes the current es, and on weekends during the rally the churches are filled with climate as being like “having your mother constantly calling bikers. Here too—giant signs make it abundantly clear—they you to check whether you’ve eaten your f***ing vegetables.” are “welcome.” The city’s Catholic Church of the Basilica of I ask a leather-clad woman how she feels about the contra- St. Paul does not just invite riders to attend services but also ception mandate. “It has got nothing to do with the govern- holds a “Blessing of the Bikes” on the festival’s opening Sunday. ment,” she scoffs. “I don’t want it banned and I don’t want it Farther down, opposite the beach itself, there is a rudimentary forced. I run my own business and nobody’s sex life ain’t no “Drive-In Christian Church,” which offers space to thousands one’s but their own.” Then she pauses and looks me up and of motorcycles in front of a bare wooden stage. Despite their down, perhaps mistaking me for someone who might wish to menacing appearances, bikers are a surprisingly pious bunch, force or ban contraception. “What am I, twelve years old?” she and Christian clubs proliferate among them. There are the asks. (It is abundantly clear from the way she is dressed that she Bikers for Jesus, the Bikers for Christ, the Bikers for Life, is not.) Her attitude is typical. Bikers exhibit much that is con- Christ’s Cruisers, and a whole host more, all operating under the sonant with individual liberty and with its most enduring icons. aegis of a prominent Evangelical group, the Christian Motor - They mistrust rules and reject the supposedly superior wisdom cyclists Association. The CMA’s 1,116 American chapters com- of others. Ruggedly individual, they are the new cowboys—the prise 125,000 members, and their organization is thriving: In tattooed pastors of America’s iron horses in an era in which 2010, CMA affiliates were active in over 30 countries, donated trains have lost their romance and cars all look the same, and $806,841.65 to partner ministries, and preached to over 170,000 theirs is a simple refrain: Leave Me Alone. people—most of them motorcyclists—around the United States. That bikers lean rightward, with their knees close to the floor, In Daytona Beach, they have come to the right place—there are is unsurprising. Personal transport has always been a redoubt 246 churches in a city of only 60,000 people, and while the of freedom—for good and for ill—but biking is particularly so. festival is on, attendance rises dramatically. Although theirs is an inherently solo enterprise, bikers look out In a local Five Guys burger joint at lunchtime, I stop and for one another; but they do not need to be instructed to do so, talk with three big and burly men, each with a shaved head, a and some I speak to wonder out loud “what the hell is wrong de rigueur salt-and-pepper horseshoe mustache, and a vaguely with people” who need to be commanded to help out. mean image. They are all members of the Chariots of Light That bikers tend to be conservative is also demographically club, and have come down from Pennsylvania for the festi val, predictable. The first question I ask myself as I leave the airport stopping on the way to preach the Gospel and to pray against and the bikes swarm around my car is, Where are all the young abortion. I ask what they are about, and the biggest man in the people and women? I am not helped by the local classic-rock group points to his expansive right bicep, on which a faded tat- radio station, which offers only the lazy platitudes by which our too of a cross with a motorcycle leaning against it is sand- superficial age is marked, repeatedly pretending that motor - wiched between the words, “I ride for Him because He died for cycle riders are a diverse crowd: “There is no such thing as an me.” The word “LOVE” is inked in capital letters across the ‘average biker,’” one such advert claims, before casually relat- knuckles of his left hand. All three wear identical leather jack- ing that black hip-hop producers and female first-grade teach- ets, identifying them as members of their club and advertising ers own Harley-Davidsons too. quotations from Philippians and the Gospel of John. That is probably true, but the sentiment is disingenuous: There demonstrably is such a thing as an average biker. The gathering overwhelmingly consists of white, middle-aged men OT all the bikers at the rally carry slogans on their with the same facial hair and clothes—who enjoy both suffi- clothes and motorcycles, but those who do promote cient income and sufficient free time to sustain an expensive N overwhelmingly conservative sentiments. Many fly and time-consuming hobby. The few under-forties who attend American flags and exhibit slogans about freedom and the open Bike Week appear on the non-American bikes—“Jap bikes,” road. Others are more directly political. The Rolling Thunder they are called by the Harley-Davidson crowd—and largely group—which boasts more than 90 chapters nationwide, is keep themselves to themselves. (They better resemble the cast over whelmingly populated by veterans, and endorsed George W. of Jersey Shore than the Hells Angels and stick out like sore Bush for president in 2004—advertises its POW-MIA and thumbs in the sea of leather and tattoos.) If women are riding veterans’-rights causes. (Its 2011 ride on Washington, D.C., they’re riding pillion. No motorcycle with a man on it is ever attracted 400,000 participants.) There are bumper stickers that driven by a woman, for that would upset the natural order; but simply read “God and Country,” or “It’s Time for Another Tea then women tend not to be involved in the subculture, period. Party,” or “Helmet Laws Suck: Let Those Who Ride, Decide.” Nearly 600,000 people have descended on Daytona Beach for About the only arguably liberal cause I see endorsed in my the rally, but only 130 take part in the Women’s Ride, and this three days among them is the legalization of marijuana, which is a record turnout. NATIONAL REVIEW has also long supported. The ranks are disproportionately filled with professionals,

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Main Street, Daytona Beach, March 10, 2012 ex-military types, and retirees. The average age of a Harley law tradition may still be honored in some circles, it is not hon- owner is 47, and his median household income is $83,000— ored by those I meet in Daytona. Biking is still ceremonially well above the national median. Moreover, the income and age communal, but its edge has largely been blunted and the most brackets are both rising: A recent study commissioned by its participants are guilty of is a wholesome enthusiasm for their Harley-Davidson showed that in 1987 half of all Harley riders hobby. Like Las Vegas, motorcycling has become a pastiche on were under age 35 and that their average household income was itself. $38,000. If the trend continues, by 2035 the average biker will By and large, bikers such as the Wisconsin nine are more be receiving Social Security checks. In fact, many attendees likely to take part in groups such as the Patriot Guard Riders, already do. I meet a group of retirees from Wisconsin—all which was formed in 2005 in response to the execrable Vietnam vets—who have ridden down to Florida together. They Westboro Baptist Church’s picketing of the funerals of fallen plan to attend the entire festival. All in all, their time commit- soldiers. The Patriot Guard comprises various existing clubs, in - ment is the best part of a month. cluding military groups such as the In Country Vets Motorcycle Club, the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association, the American Legion Riders, and Rolling Thunder, in addition to a nD what of the bad guys? Well, where there are cow- 20,000-strong law-enforcement group called the Blue Knights, boys, there will always be outlaws, and the “one per- and the stalwart Christian Motorcycle Association. Its stated A centers”—a term coined by an exasperated American mission is to “show . . . sincere respect for our fallen heroes, Motorcycle Association to describe those few whose income is their families, and their communities” and to “shield the derived from illegal sources such as crystal-meth production mourning family and their friends from interruptions created by and whose involvement in the subculture is not desired—still any protestor or group of protestors,” and the group’s members, occasionally color the sport for all. Indeed, as recently as 1999, its website notes, have “one thing in common besides motor - Taco Bowman, the “world leader” of the American Outlaws cycles,” that being “an unwavering respect for those who risk Association—perhaps the largest and most dangerous “one their very lives for America’s freedom and security.” percenter” group of its time—was sentenced to two life terms Indeed, if there is one unifying sentiment among the people I in prison for carrying out multiple murders and bombings. So have come across, it is love of country. It is profoundly impor- serious were the charges against him that Bowman, who boasts tant to most that Harley-Davidson is an American brand, and a swastika tattoo and has ties to various white-supremacist rare to see a biker without at least one American flag on his groups, made the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in clothes or his bikes—often on both. They constitute a legion of 1998. volunteers on wheels, representing—in sundry ways, and in the Sipping giant beers, my retired friends from Wisconsin tell pursuit of various good ends—the “vast number of voluntary me that, in some parts of the country, they are still very much associations” of which Tocqueville spoke so warmly. They treated with suspicion. “You have to stay in a lot of hotels when make their cases in rough language, and they go about their AP / you cross the country,” one explains, “and if the weather is bad, business ostentatiously; but their unifying cause is freedom and you don’t always get to choose where you stop. A few places are their sworn allegiance is to America—and, with this in mind, not happy when nine guys in leather jackets turn up on bikes. we might well agree with the ubiquitous signs around Daytona

REINHOLD MATAY They can freak. You have to judge it carefully.” While the out- Beach: Bikers Welcome Here.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Hunger Strike

DON’T mind Arby’s. It’ll do. The last time I ate there I Regularity Ticket! We believe every red-blooded citizen has thought, Hey, I’m not regretting this. Some red sauce, the right to effective, natural action for all without harsh some white sauce, a bun that doesn’t taste like it was purgatives! Oh, so it’s just citizens who deserve digestive I made three months ago in a vast industrial oven three health? So you’re racist, too? states away: Might not be actual food, but it’s a fine simu- Did I say it was new? No. When I was in college, pizza pref- lacrum. Some days you’re at the mall, you’re hungry, and it’s erence was a political matter. Your liberal roommate refused to a fast-food meat-wad or some grey chicken from the Peking eat Domino’s, because the founder was “anti-choice.” What, Slop House or whatever it’s called. Yes, I could see having you mean like anchovies are mandatory? You couldn’t have a Arby’s again. Nestlé chocolate bar, because they were selling powdered milk At least until they demonstrated to the Internet a heretofore to Africa. Conservatives frowned at Pepsi, because Nixon unknown fact: Only liberals eat. On Twitter, home of the struck a deal with the Reds: Pepsi could sell sugar-water unforced error, Arby’s spokestweeter said the brand would behind the Iron Curtain, and we’d get Stoli, a.k.a. Gulag Juice. yank ads from Rush Limbaugh’s show. Probably thought his Offer a Pepsi to a guy whose parents fled the Worker’s fans just ate foie gras washed down with a Paradise and he’d scoff: That old slogan flagon of orphan’s tears, so it wasn’t a big “Come alive” is rather ironic, given the mil- deal—but on the Internet a swarm of nettles lions of corpses accumulated under rule of the alights on anything controversial, and flenses godless Leninists, wouldn’t you say? it to the bone. Peeve the customers who At the time I agreed, but mostly because were previously unaware that shaved beef Coke had a strong patriotic vibe that went has a specific political agenda and they’ll back to the marvelous all-American ads by hit Twitter to say your signature condi - Haddon Sundblom, their association with ment “Horsey Sauce” sounds like something Santa, and a Raquel Welch campaign that they’d extract from Man o’ War and sell to a induced spontaneous adolescence a year stud farm, and the meat itself tastes like some ahead of schedule. But today Coke must be form of liquefied abattoir scrapings held together with bind- shunned. Organized pressure made them tuck tail and quit the ing agents—although, hey, with some Horsey Sauce, it’s not ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. They do completely inedible. more than exchange legislation; they’ve been supporting Next up: Arby’s—which was never a national advertiser on Voter ID, because they want an army of disenfranchised citi- Rush’s show in the first place—shoots itself in the other hoof zens who can be conscripted to work in the Koch brothers’ tin by blocking the complainers on Twitter. In terms of the mines. Or something like that. The Kochs are involved; say greater national debate, it was like a war of two anthills no more. Things never go better with Kochs. observed from the top of a mountain, but it was a reminder: If So it’s back to Pepsi. Except they quit ALEC, too. That your most banal economic decision isn’t political yet, it will leaves RC Cola, maybe, unless the company announces be soon. Nothing’s safe. they’re removing carbonation from their products over con- Perhaps you already have a list of businesses you’ll avoid. cerns about climate change. “Flat is the new Green!” would Progressive Insurance’s chairman gives millions to Move- be the ad campaign, probably. At this point the consumer On.org and other liberal causes; apparently “Pinko Life and makes the difficult decision to abandon brand identification Casualty” was already taken. Oh, just kidding. But you’re and goes with the house brand from the low-end grocery glad the Geico gecko hasn’t spoiled his charm by coming out stores. Except they’re non-union, and, you know, solidarity publicly for nationalized health care. The family behind Little forever. (Unless we’re talking about those Polish guys who Caesars Pizza announced a million-dollar fundraiser for the embarrassed the Russians. Splitters.) president, so they’re off the list. Bad luck if the only other Kraft quit ALEC, so that means cheese is out. Bill Gates’s place in town is Little Claudius Pulcher’s Pizza or Catiline’s foundation pulled out. No doubt they will soon drop all the Deep Dish, because they’re big progressives from way back. verifications you have to go through to prove you own This is new. In the past, it would have been unthinkable for Windows, since that disenfranchises Undocumented Pirates. a company that sold its products to everyone to pick sides. Switch to Macs? Apple’s Steve Jobs was a Dem, so that It’s election time, Sal Hepatica—whose side are you on? means it’s Linux, or dusting off the 300-pound Sinclair com- Why, we’re on the side of America, and every hardworking puter in the basement. ALEC’s actions apparently came as a American who wants gentle, overnight relief without acid TOTAL SURPRISE to the companies involved—who knew hangover! Yeah, but since hardworking Americans have been a political-action committee would turn out to be a committee suffering wage constipation for years, what’s yer stance on that took action, politically? Davis-Bacon? Er—Sal Hepatica is a staunch supporter of the In the end, you’re tempted to quote President Obama in 2008: Can’t I just eat my waffle? Not if the batter company Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. held a pancake breakfast for Joe Biden.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

TO: [email protected] Office of the Chairman FROM: [email protected] Goldman Sachs RE: Job app Dear Keith: It was great to chat this morning and to TO: [email protected] Thnx for coming n2 the McDonalds on spend some time catching up! It was indeed FROM: [email protected] Jefferson Turnpike, dude. We got your an amazing coincidence to run into you at RE: Drink? app and stuff and everything should my gym, which, honestly, I thought was pri- be cool. Just need the drug-test info vate. Who knew? Keith! Darling! I wish I could get and previous employers etc. U cool And I can’t tell you how flattering it is to together this week. Just totally crazy know that you think of us and our operation working fry-o-lator? with everything. as “family.” We certainly all are giant fans of your work. But quickly, before I forget, no, we One other thing: You know that we I have to be honest, though, and say that don’t have any plan to do more video don’t drive you to and from work, investment banking isn’t something you just here at AOL. And I appreciate it when right? Cause one of the girls heard “pick up along the way.” Goldman has a you say you’d be happy to do it for you talking on your phone to someone long tradition of promoting from within the only $5 million a year. and you were all like, hey this new gig ranks—it’s one of the pledges we make, and keep, to our employees—so I’m sure you’ll I get driven around and stuff. And you Let’s get together when things aren’t understand why it would be awkward, to say so nuts . . . know it’s minimum to start and then the least, to suddenly announce that we’ve we bump you about two bucks after created a new position, Executive President, Xo week four, right? You’re cool with that? and that a relative—though talented— Arianna Because she also heard you talking novice is filling it. about some crazy numbers. Just so And this really isn’t a question of compensation. While your salary ask was mo - Paramount Pictures we’re cool. mentarily stunning—and, again, I’m sorry 5555 Melrose Avenue for my initial reaction to you when you men- Hollywood, CA 90038 And I asked about the uniform stuff, tioned the figure; I must have eaten some and I was right—it is a total rule. You bad shellfish the night before—even for Dear Mr. Olbermann: can’t wear that suit you wore when Goldman Sachs there’s a limit. Many thanks for your recent letter and résumé. you came in to fill out the app. But, as I said, there really isn’t a place for Everyone here, of course, is a big fan of your a broadcaster such as yourself in an invest- work—both at ESPN and later—and we’re all ment bank like ours. thrilled and honored that you thought of us Also, are you like some kind of TV during your current job search. star? One of the old ladies who does All the best, Unfortunately, at the present time we have no mall walking says she saw you on the Goldman Sachs positions available that suit the criteria you out- news. Awesome! lined. Nothing in the “extremely powerful” category, nothing in the “I cannot bathe myself” Lemme know about that stuff, Customer Service sector, and nothing in the “$1 million per day in Monster.com perpetuity” area of compensation. The media business, as we know you’re aware, Kyle Dear OlbermannK: is a highly competitive and often entrepreneurial Assistant Manager one. We only wish we could take on someone Thank you for contacting with your qualifications (and demands) but Monster.com online customer service. the interests of our shareholders and current TO: [email protected] Your business is important to us, and Sarbanes-Oxley regulations forbid it. FROM: CustomerService@network - we are working hard to resolve the All the best for what we know will be an solutions.com following issue(s): exciting future. RE: Recent domain purchase NO PLACE FOR COMP CATEGORIES Paramount Pictures Congratulations! You now own IN EXCESS OF $10 MILLION/YEAR the following domains: CRAPPY INTERFACE I’M BIGGER THAN THIS WHOLE Mr. Roger Ailes THEOLBERMANNREPORT.TV WEBSITE President KEITHPOST.BIZ Fox News, New York, NY OLBERMANNPOSTNOW.NET A customer-service representative OLBERMANN.LY should be contacting you soon to Dear Keith: offer solutions to your concerns. We Just got your letter. You’re kidding, right? Best of luck with your new domains! appreciate your using Monster.com for your job search! Best, CUSTOMER SERVICE Roger NETWORK SOLUTIONS The Monster.com Team

4 0 | www.nationalreview.com APRIL 3 0 , 2 0 1 2 books4-30_QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/10/2012 4:56 PM Page 41 Books, Arts & Manners

neither in religious fervor nor in reli- what these heresies have in common is gion’s rout, but in better religion: a faith a willingness to dismiss what Douthat Heterodox that acknowledges original sin, the hu - regards as the defining mark of Christian man propensity to self-aggrandizement, orthodoxy: the effort to hold together Nation and the need for the difficult discipline in tension the central mysteries of of self-governance of our desires (eco - Christianity. Jesus as the man-god; God PATRICK J. DENEEN nomic as well as sexual). Douthat wants as three-in-one; humanity as sinful yet at once not only to advise secularists that redeemable; the compatibility of reason they have a strong stake in the revival of and faith; the need to both live in, and not “good” religion, but to chide his fellow be of, the world, and to accord respect, believers that faith alone is not enough: but not ultimate allegiance, to one’s poli- one must distinguish between good ty—these mysteries, among others, are and bad faith. central tenets of Christian orthodoxy, Religion went bad, says Douthat, reflecting “the intuition that the true around 1963. in the flourishing period nature of the world will always remain before the 1960s, traditional Christian - just beyond our grasp.” The common ity was a strong and vibrant presence in feature of our dominant heresies is to the american mainstream, as evidenced dissolve one or several of these tensions, by the popularity of such figures as and thus replace a modest awe in the face Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Reinhold Niebuhr, Fulton sheen, Billy of paradox with a false sense of certain- Heretics, by Ross Douthat (Free Press, Graham, and Martin luther King Jr. The ty. The various modern american here- 352 pp., $26) traditional Christian teachings shared by sies that Douthat describes all, in their Catholics, evangelicals, and mainline own way, represent this dissolution of his book is at once subtle Protestants were widely embraced and “mystery” in favor of settlement, and, and bold. Ross Douthat— admired by a broad swath of americans. not surprisingly, what they settle upon op-ed columnist for the New For all the differences among the vari - reflects the dominant american proclivi- T York Times and film critic for ous Christian denominations, there was ties toward materialism, self-absorption, NaTioNal Review—seeks to move be - widespread agreement upon traditional and nationalism. our heresies, it turns yond the rutted secularist-vs.-religionist teachings about the reality of original out, confirm what we already knew and terms of the culture wars. americans sin and the need for moral strictures. believed, rather than challenge our ten- today are apt to speak about “religious,” Douthat tells of traditional Christianity’s dency toward self-aggrandizement. “non-religious,” and “anti-religious” crisis in the 1960s and the rise of liberal The book’s final chapter—titled “The worldviews, and largely eschew the lan- “accommodationists” who sought to City on a hill”—is a tour de force that guage of “orthodoxy” and “heresy.” But move their churches away from tradi- should be required reading for every sol- Douthat insists that our problem is not tional doctrine. These reformers sought dier fighting in the culture wars. one too much or too little religion, but rather to further modernize Christianity in ways of the more interesting claims Douthat bad religion: “the slow-motion collapse that minimized doctrine, emphasized makes is that the deepest source of our of traditional Christianity and the rise of personal growth, and stressed indivi - political polarization is theological: we a variety of pseudo-Christianities in its dualized religious experience. The net have often invested salvific hope in place.” result was the simultaneous and not co - the nation. From its start, america has Bad Religion traces this fall and rise, incidental collapse of the mainline Pro - understood itself in religious and pro - and then makes a far more arresting testant churches and the weakening of vidential terms, manifested among liber- claim: that today’s religious heretics Roman Catholicism in america. als primarily in the form of messianism (who now constitute the mainstream of what took the place of traditional Chris - (e.g., woodrow wilson), and among re - religious believers) and opponents of tianity was not merely, or even predomi- actionaries primarily in the form of religion actually end up reinforcing each nantly, secularism, but instead—argues apocalypticism (the fear of imminent other in destructive ways—because they Douthat—various forms of Christian national demise due to the undermining share a belief in the centrality of self- heresy. such heresy was expressed in efforts of enemies, foreign and domes- realization and the pursuit of material both “liberal” and “conservative” forms, tic). Douthat points out that these two goods, and also in the notion that politics ranging from the “Prosperity Gospel” impulses are mirror images of each is the field of ultimate battle. Contrary of such ministers as Joel osteen, to other, both emanating from a heretical to the dominant contemporary narrative, the pervasive belief in a “God within” investment of hopes and fears exclu - the answer to our national woes lies expressed by Eat, Pray, Love author sively in the fate of the nation. in recent elizabeth Gilbert, to the conflation of years, he notes, each party has in- Mr. Deneen is the Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Associate Christianity and americanism articu - creasingly manifested both types of the Professor of Government at Georgetown University. lated in recent times by Glenn Beck. nationalist heresy. George w. Bush man-

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS ifested messianism in his ambition to rid of a dominant culture that promotes, at the world of evil, while his foes regarded best, “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” him as the apocalyptic incarnation of and at worst, atheism. What is the ortho- Trend Is Not malevolence; Barack Obama claimed dox Christian in fact to do? Douthat the messianic ability to cause the seas counsels hope, but he doesn’t seem over- Destiny to recede, while his opponents speak ly hopeful. in apocalyptic terms of his hatred of A further troubling note lurks beneath MATTHEW CONTINETTI America. Douthat mounts a powerful his efforts to encourage “good reli- case that this dysfunctional politics aris- gion.” While he attributes the decline of es from the decline of the traditional reli- orthodoxy after 1963 to a series of dis- gious caution against investing in the crete historical causes, ranging from political community all one’s hopes and the Vietnam War and the sexual revolu- fears. tion to globalization and rising eco - Douthat concludes his book by ex - nomic prosperity, on a broader view of pressing hope for a renewal of tradition- American history it might be more cor- al Christian faith—of an orthodoxy that rect to note that orthodoxy has always will chasten not only a rising secular been the exception rather than the rule tide, but also the dominant forms of in the American setting—that Amer - heresy. His practical advice, however, ica, in a certain sense, has always been is modest. One of his main recommen - a magnet for heresy. After all, the The Lost Majority: Why the Future of Government dations is for Christians to exercise phrase “city upon a hill” was invested Is Up for Grabs—and Who Will Take It, “the Benedict Option,” a monasticism- with political import by John Winthrop by Sean Trende (Palgrave Macmillan, inspired withdrawal from a dominant already in 1630, intimating that from 240 pp., $27) culture that appears incapable of correc- the very outset America understood tion and that increasingly appears to itself to be the new Zion. The heresies HEn the time arrives to draw view orthodox faith with hostility. While of self-creation, moral perfectibility, up the curriculum for the this may be a long-term strategy for the progressivism, and millenarianism are Walter Lippmann Pundit restoration of a healthy Christian culture, hardly new on the American scene in W Training Academy—think clown college, but less amusing—Sean Trende’s book ought to be at the top of the Douthat seems to acknowledge reading list. This is a remarkably informative and that hope for renewal of traditional insightful primer on American elections, Christian faith must chockablock with trivia, charts, and historical tables. Most important, the young be chastened, even minimal. pundit who reads it will learn the risks inherent in his profession’s most danger- it might take as many centuries for such the post-Sixties era, but rather are con- ous activity: predicting the future. If he’s a movement to influence the nation tinuations of a longstanding rejection not careful, our pundit might end up like as it took the monasteries to foster of Christian orthodoxy, expressed vari- Herbert Hoover’s Treasury secretary, Christendom following the fall of the ously by American high priests rang - Ogden Mills, who told his former boss in Roman Empire. Implicitly, Douthat ing from Thomas Paine and Thomas 1936 that it looked “almost impossible” seems to acknowledge that hope for Jefferson, through Emerson and Whit - to revitalize the Republican party after renewal must be chastened, even mini- man, down to John Dewey. America its Depression-era defeats. Or like soci- mal. was the child born of rebellion against ologists Herbert H. Hyman and Paul B. This impression is reinforced by his orthodoxy, and a major national story- Sheatsley, who predicted in 1953 that the somewhat dour conclusion in a chapter line has been one that equates demo - Democrats “may find themselves defeat- devoted to the story of just such an cracy’s advance with liberation from ed by Levittown” and its suburban vot- effort to restore orthodoxy: the alliance doctrine—from Roger Williams to Dan ers. Or like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who between Catholics and Evangelicals Brown. wrote in the summer of 1972 that George associated with the work of the journal Douthat makes a bold and compelling McGovern was “the leader of a coalition First Things. He concludes not by sug- argument that what is needed on the of citizen participation, a coalition for gesting that this movement represents American scene today is a renewal of change, as broad as FDR’s in 1932.” a hopeful form of resistance, but by good religion. But his book cannot dis - Those are just a few of the incorrect pointing to the challenges it faces—most pel the gnawing worry that, in America, forecasts that Trende mentions. (My important among them, the continued good religion has been the exception, favorite comes from an anonymous decline of orthodox religious belief even and that the growing dominance of bad commentator in 1893 who wrote of the among the children of those seeking to religion is not something recent and restore orthodoxy. Douthat seems to con- reversible, but the culmination of a long Mr. Continetti is editor-in-chief of the clude that this effort is futile in the face national story. Washington Free Beacon.

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“belief in many quarters that the Re - That’s also true of the young peopleafter the Republicans recaptured the publican Party is about to disappear.”) who supported Obama by a two-to-one House and picked up seats in the Senate But he devotes a special degree of atten- ratio in 2008. After all, the young peoplein 2010. tion to knocking down the notion, first who supported McGovern in 1972 went The pattern is striking. Electoral put forward by John B. Judis and Ruy for Reagan in 1984 and were Bush’s majorities might not be durable, and Teixeira in 2002, that upscale white pro- strongest supporters in 2000. How one political coalitions may come apart. But fessionals, minorities, and young people votes when one is 18 years old matters one finishes this book with the strong

far less than the condition of the country constitute an “emerging Democratic sense that there has been a national ideo- majority” that will dominate American in a given election year. Trende searches logical consensus in post–New Deal pol- politics for years to come. the data and concludes: “Every age itics, and that it was Eisenhower who The problem with such theories, Trende group here leans Republican at least embodied it: He favored Social Security argues, is that they assume that current once over the years, and every group and defense but was also, Trende writes, conditions will persist indefinitely. In leans Democrat at least once.” It’s a “skeptical about expanding [the welfare truth, political coalitions are unstable: wash. state] to other areas.” Departure from They resemble amoebas that divide once The one thing consistent about Amer - this norm invites public rebuke. they grow past a certain size. Events in - ican politics is its inconsistency. “The If The Lost Majority has a weakness, tervene. Demographics change. The type of instability we’ve witnessed re- it is that there are so many data and belief that a given election “realigns” cently is really the rule in American pol- insights in so few pages. Trende dashes politics in the direction of one party over itics,” Trende writes, “whereas extended without a pause from a lucid and revi- another leads to hubris, overreach, and dominance of [a party in] either the pres- sionist discussion of southern politics defeat at the polls. idency or the House is the exception.” to a lecture on the flaws of predictive The Judis-Teixeira thesis is a fair- But that does not stop partisans from modeling: The reader is flung from one enough description of the coalition that hyping the most recent election results fascinating idea to another without helped elect Bill Clinton in 1992 and as a mandate for drastic change, and a much time to catch his breath. Many of 1996, gave Al Gore a popular-vote ma - reflection of vast and insuperable trans- Trende’s topics would be fertile ground jority in 2000, returned control of Con- formations in the composition of the for an entire book, and I join Trende’s gress to the Democrats in 2006, and electorate. many fans in looking forward to his next brought Barack Obama to the White The Republicans did this after 2004, one. House in 2008. But it cannot account for when Bush led his second term with a the GOP’s unusual midterm-election Social Security initiative for which he gains in 2002, George W. Bush’s reelec- had not strenuously campaigned. The “Rated One of New York City ‘Best Value’ Hotels.” ... Zagats tion in 2004, and the Republican shel- president could have rather used his lacking of Democrats in 2010. The idea reelection as an opportunity to change turns out to be unfalsifiable: Liberal strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan—but victories confirm Judis and Teixeira, the failure of his Social Security reform while Republican victories are mere left him adrift. The situation got worse detours along the road to the emerging when Bush attempted an immigration Democratic majority. amnesty and Iraq spiraled out of control Not only do Judis and Teixeira have in 2006. New York’s all suite hotel is located in the heart of the city, near corporations, trouble fitting the last decade of Amer - The Democrats are just as guilty theatre & great restaurants. Affordable ican politics into their theory, they of over-interpretation. When LBJ elegance with all the amenities of home. also assume that the people voting for launched the Great Society after his Democrats now will be voting the same landslide victory in 1964, Democrats 149 E. 39th St. (Bet 3rd & Lex) New York, NY 10016 Reservations 1-800-248-9999 way in 2030. But consider, for example, were dealt setbacks in 1966 and 1968. It Ask about our special National Review rates. the Hispanic vote. The percentage of the happened to Clinton after the 1992 elec- electorate that is Hispanic has remained tion, when the president who had cam- stable at about 8 percent for years. That paigned on welfare reform decided to vote swings Democratic, but it is no - let the first lady redesign the American where near as monolithic as the black health-care system instead. On issue vote. Trende notes that Republicans after issue, Clinton did not resist the have improved their performance among liberal pull of the Democratic Congress. Latinos since 1996 and that the Latino His reward was the Republican Revo - vote, again unlike the black vote, tracks lution of 1994. with income: The richer the voter, the In 2008, Trende adds, “Barack Obama’s more likely he is to vote Republican. coalition was not novel. It wasn’t even NATIONAL REVIEW is There is every reason to believe that, as that broad. It was a narrower version of available on iTunes and in Latinos assimilate into American culture Clinton’s.” But that did not stop him and prosper, their voting behavior will from signing into law the stimulus, the Android Market. resemble that of earlier immigrant Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank, a string NR APPS ARE FREE TO DOWNLOAD. groups. of bad liberal policies that ended only

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS It became Preston’s burden to prove that “religion played an important role in PORTSMOUTH Faith and shaping American perceptions of the world, and in contributing to domestic INSTITUTE Foreign debates on how the United States should engage with other nations.” In many Policy respects, Preston has done his work well, in an opus of over 800 pages, with a ALLEN C. GUELZO bibliography of over 2,000 items and research in 36 different archives from Abilene to Geneva. And it comes as a relief that his book is not intended as a blandly reductionist account of how religion started strong in American diplomacy, among the old-time religious obsessives, but faded mercifully fast in the new age of secular Realpolitik. At its best, Preston believes, religion has acted as the conscience of American foreign policy, supporting the urge to promote democracy and humanitarian inter- Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: vention and criticizing the pursuit of mere Religion in American War and Diplomacy, national self-interest. It has also provided June 22-24, 2012 by Andrew Preston (Knopf, a large and easily mobilized constituency Portsmouth Abbey School, RI 832 pp., $37.50) that will respond to efforts to frame diplomacy in religious terms. At its worst, reli- Speakers will include: hERE is no vocabulary in mod- gion has encouraged reckless forms of Dr. William Dembski, ern politics to describe the moral adventurism, a recklessness made Discovery Institute point at which the heavens all the easier be cause, for much of its exis- T touch the earth. Which is why tence, the U.S. has enjoyed what Preston Dr. John Haught, Woodstock Andrew Preston, when he was yet a calls “free security,” courtesy of two Theological Center, Georgetown graduate student at Yale in 2003, was oceans. “Free security” has allowed pop- Dr. Kenneth Miller, Brown Univ. puzzled that George W. Bush should ular religious pressures to override the guide his nation into war with Iraq by cautions of more hard-headed American Dr. B. Joseph Semmes, Director of “consistently” framing “the crisis in leaders, and allowed assorted religious Research, True North Medical Center terms of religion.” There were three crusaders to make demands for a level of Rt. Rev. Dom James Wiseman, possible explanations: First, Bush was perfectionism that could flourish only in Abbot of St. Anselm’s Abbey and simply “a premodern aberration in a an atmosphere where no immediate retal- postmodern world,” which would have iation for such crusades was seriously Professor at Catholic University brought all further discussion to a conve- expected. Rev. Nicanor P. G. Austriaco, O.P., nient end; or, second, Bush was merely The history (rather than the analysis) Providence College manipulating the minds of the religion- of these ideas is what consumes the vast and-gun-clingers to his own cynical bulk of Preston’s book, beginning with Dr. Michael Ruse, Florida State Univ. political ends; or, third, he was the in- the asseverations of Protestant mission ... and more to come. heritor of some hermetic tradition in that accompanied the English colonists’ For information and registration: American foreign policy that laid out determination to make North America a the goals of diplomacy according to the theater in which “to trafficke” and “to www.portsmouthinstitute.org City of God rather than the City of Man. conquer.” This errand into the wilder - or contact Cindy Waterman The problem for Preston as he examined ness endured some severe backtracking at (401) 643-1244 the issue was that there existed a plenti - in America under the influence of or [email protected]. ful supply of historical writing that the En lightenment, but the American de scribed the shaping of Americans’ Enlight enment was still a “religious En - domestic-policy conflicts within a reli- lightenment” in which “faith and moder- gious framework, but there was no nity were two sides to the same coin.” corresponding literature among the dip - Americans, in their new republic, may lo matic historians. not have conducted their foreign relations with quite the same focus on the old Mr. Guelzo is Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil Protestant cause, but they certainly www.portsmouthinstitute.org War Era, and director of the Civil War Studies allowed it to go forward in privatized Program, at Gettysburg College. form in the great Protestant missionary

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enthusiasm of the 19th century. Preston ligious debate on policy issues in the appear at all, conservative Protestant dis- does not mean to say that “the American 1980s, characterized by the unconven- senters (McIntire, Billy James Hargis) missionary enterprise” was “a straight- tional but devout Ronald Reagan and the are presented as the commanders of omi- forward handmaiden of empire,” but he Jesuit-educated William Casey. And, nous armies of 20th-century night, heed- wants us to understand that American Preston adds, “the religious influence on less of the penalties American foreign diplomats trod very respectfully in the American foreign relations continues.” It relations would suffer if the country fol- shadow of Protestant missions, if only may not “always determine the direction lowed their foolhardy anti-Communism. because they still saw religion as a com- of policy,” but it will be “an ever-present But neither McIntire nor Hargis ever ponent of civilization itself. factor” to be reckoned with by policy- commanded more than the tiniest sliver Preston finds a significant fork in the makers. of a following, nor is there any bright road after 1900, with American religion And here lies the chief problem with line connecting Harry Truman’s recogni- becoming split between religious liber- this book—although not its only prob- tion of the state of Israel to the Scofield als who had lost faith in a uniquely lem. As a history of religion and diplo- Reference Bible—a connection Preston American mission and conservative mil- macy, it is thorough, at times daring suggests. (Ironically, the one Cold War lennialists who turned first Zionism and (especially in the connections it draws president who proclaimed an interest in then anti-Communism into articles of between 19th-century diplomacy and reading theologians as some form of foreign-policy faith. Even so, the rela- Protestant missions), but often pedestri- guide to foreign policy was also the pres- tionship between religion and diplomacy an. Much of it takes us over territory in ident who proved incapable of compre- remained “complicated and ambiva- American religious history that is just hending a religious insurrection in Iran lent.” Preston downplays just how liber- religious, rather than diplomatic, and in 1979.) As much as Preston wants to al a Presbyterian Woodrow Wilson was, that is a good deal more historical than it restore the religious fizz to foreign policy but still manages to show how even is either religious or diplomatic. And in the Cold War decades, the diplomacy of a milk-and-water Christianity of the much of it is simply a chronological nar- that era was not a debate between reli- Wilsonian sort surprised and dismayed rative, rather than a continuing applica- gious conservatives and secular liberals, cynical Europeans, and he is frank tion of Preston’s opening promise to but between secular liberals and secular enough in his assessment of Franklin show how American religion served as a more-liberals, with conservatives of all Roosevelt’s even thinner religion to say conscience, or played as a constituency, sorts relegated invisibly to the sidelines. that it still managed to foster a lethal or degenerated into reckless diplomatic But the book’s most frustrating aspect naïveté in FDR’s mind about the Soviet demagoguery. is the vague, and ultimately useless, lan- Union. Preston disappoints as well in the guage employed to describe religion as a What Preston calls the Great Schism actors he chooses for the speaking roles. “factor” in American diplomacy. What is between religion and diplomacy really Let me say at once that I understand his a factor? What, exactly, does it mean for waited until the Sixties to bow in, when dilemma: American religion is so vast a Preston to say that, “whether from the a “profound transformation” of attitudes tapestry that even with 600-plus tightly top down in the form of the personal robbed Protestantism of its dominance printed pages of narrative at his disposal, piety of American leaders, or the bottom and gave secularism the cultural upper a large amount of intellectual triage must up in the form of pressure from religious hand. The “wall of separation” between take place. Even so, the voices we end up groups and individuals,” religion was religion and diplomacy hardened as the hearing are almost entirely those of the “an integral part of foreign relations”? domestic balance between church and Protestant establishment. When they If, after wading to the end of the book, state shifted, and diplomacy became so neutered of religious consciousness that a U.S. diplomat in Iran, caught flat- PATIENCE OF DREAMS footed by the Islamic revolution in 1979, wailed uncomprehendingly, “Who ever A dream arrives with the comforting aura of the mists of morning; took religion seriously anyway!” But schisms are not necessarily perma- a time without shadow or warnings, as I, as horseman, unbridle and nent, and in the 1950s, anti-Communism release the animal into a broad springtime meadow—and turn back had become a solvent of the harsh to the barn . . . something without form to the mind, yet present as a boundaries that once existed between Protestants and Catholics. A common place of origin, around which comes the smell of coffee, unhurried, urgency brought together Catholics (Joe an invitation to the new day unborn, unborn with a presence unbridled McCarthy, William F. Buckley Jr., from the continuities customary to the waking mind, effortlessly Fulton Sheen) and Protestant funda - mentalists (Billy Graham, Carl McIntire) overriden by the dream’s silent assurance that the coffee will arrive in a diplomatic popular front that could in the form most suited to its partaking, both comforting and uncertain, scarcely have been thinkable to John Winthrop, but that eventually proved as the best dreams are, and entirely without the customary gestures of very capable of putting religious consid- procurement, saddle and hoof of the waking mind. erations back onto the foreign-relations table. The result was a resurgence of re - —WILLIAM W. RUNYEON

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Superior service, gourmet cuisine, elegant accommodations, and great entertainment await you on the beautiful mS Nieuw Amsterdam. Prices are per-person, based on double occupancy, and include port fees, taxes, gratuities, all meals, entertainment, and admittance to and participation in all NR functions. Per-person rates for third/fourth person (in same cabin with two full-fare guests) are as follows: Ages infant to 2 years: $586. Ages 2 to 17: $896. Ages 18 and over: $1,446. and will join Ed Whelan to score judicial decisions and Justice DELUXE SUITE Magnificent luxury quarters (528 Department hijinx. sq. ft.) features use of exclusive Neptune Lounge a Try to keep your sides from aching at our hilarious and and personal concierge, complimentary laun- informative post-dinner “Night Owls” where Jonah Goldberg, dry, pressing and dry-cleaning service. James Lileks, Michael Walsh, Rob Long et al. vent, ruminate, Large private verandah, king-size bed (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool expand, expound, and josh about the things which tickle their bath/shower, dressing room, large sit- fancies, yank their chains, and everything in between. ting area, DVD, mini-bar, and refrigerator. a Pollster Scott Rasmussen will analyze the numbers and Category SA explains why this candidate won and that one lost, while Ralph DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,799 P/P Reed, Mona Charen, Cal Thomas, and John Fund provide expert SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 7,499 analyses of the conservative movement and the GOP. a Picture John O’Sullivan, Bing West, and Elliott Abrams SUPERIOR SUITE Grand stateroom (392 sq. ft.) features private verandah, queen-size bed discussing the US military’s impact on foreign affairs, and Mark (convertible to 2 twin beds), whirlpool Krikorian giving you his critical take on immigration policy. bath/shower, large sitting area, DVD, mini- a Get your masters in economics as Alan Reynolds, James bar, refrigerator, floor-to-ceiling windows, and much more. Pethokoukis, Andrew Stuttaford, Kevin Hassett, and Kevin Williamson inspect America’s dilapidated fiscal house. Category SS a They’ll be joined in all the world-class elucidating and ana- DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,599 P/P lyzing by NR’s editorial heavyweights, including Rich Lowry, SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,899 Ramesh Ponnuru, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Jim Geraghty, Bob Costa, and Jay Nordlinger—who will do a very special interview with DELUXE OUTSIDE Spacious cabin (241 sq. ft.) conservative great (and WFB sibling) James L. Buckley. features private verandah, queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin beds), bath with shower, sitting As for the ship: The luxurious Nieuw Amsterdam offers well- area, mini-bar, tv, refrigerator, and floor-to- appointed, spacious staterooms and countless amenities, with a ceiling windows. stellar staff providing unsurpassed service and sumptuous cuisine,. Categories VA / VB / VC And don’t forget the fantastic itinerary: Ocho Rios (Jamaica), DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,999 P/P Grand Cayman, Roatan (Honduras), and Half Moon Cay (with SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,499 its famous must-see-it-to-believe-it blue lagoon)! Our 2012 Post-Election Cruise will be remarkable—but then LARGE OCEAN VIEW Comfortable quarters (190 sq. every NR sojourn is. And it will be affordable—prices start as low ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin as $1,999 a person (there’s a cabin for every taste and circum- beds), bathtub with shower, sitting area, tv, large stance). You really must experience it for yourself. ocean-view windows. Take the trip of a lifetime with America’s preeminent intellec- Category D tuals, policy analysts, and political experts. You can sign up now DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,499 P/P by filling out and and returning the applicaton form on the next SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,999 page, visiting our dedicated website, www.nrcruise.com (which provides complete information about the trip), or calling The Cruise Authority (M-F, 9AM to 5PM EST) LARGE INSIDE Cozy but ample cabin quarters (152 sq. ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin beds), at 1-800-707-1634. Don’t delay! We’ll see bathtub with shower, sitting area, tv. you on the Nieuw Amsterdam this November! Category J DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 1,999 P/P SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,499 REGISTER NOW: USE THE FORM ON THE NEXT PAGE, VISIT US AT WWW.NRCRUISE.COM OR CALL 800-707-1634 FOR MORE INFORMATION. caribbean 2012_appl_carribian 2p+application_jack.qxd 3/27/2012 12:28 PM Page 1

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all we can say about religion is that it is Poland (God’s Playground, most famous- a force, a factor, an integral part of ly), a nation blessed and burdened by American diplomacy, without in some What Lies shifts in borders and identity to an extent fashion showing how it provided spe - that stands out even in this most tangled cific intellectual defaults, or mapped out Beneath of continents. certain identifiable patterns of decision- That said, those expecting Vanished making, then we have actually done ANDREW STUTTAFORD Kingdoms to be a comprehensive guide as nothing more than we do when we help- to how, why, and when countries fail will, lessly ascribe changes in historical events despite a postscript titled “How States to trends, as though trends were small, Die,” be left a little disappointed. Sus - furry animals that gambol about, making pects, usual or otherwise, are listed: inva- things happen. sion, of course; artificiality (Napoleonic What we want to understand here is Etruria); stillbirth (the day-long Republic causality, and causality is what keeps of Carpatho-Ukraine); exhaustion; mer - slipping through Preston’s fingers. What ger; de-merger; and the loosely defined was it about George Kennan that moves “implosions” that put paid to the USSR Preston to describe him as a “Calvin - and Austria-Hungary alike. But Davies ist,” and what was it about Kennan’s has both a romantic streak and a sharp Calvinism that inspired containment? awareness of humanity’s susceptibility to What made John Foster Dulles a “spiri- Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of hubris, and the explanation, I suspect, that tual diplomat,” when it’s not very clear States and Nations, by Norman Davies really appeals to him is the inevitability of from Preston’s description what religion (Viking, 830 pp., $40) impermanence: Nothing endures forever, Dulles espoused? The one moment in Ozymandias and all that. the history of American politics where a OW to make a nation? In For the most part, we are left to draw president quite frankly admitted that he Vanished Kingdoms, his our own conclusions from the 15 national had left a decision up to God, and the fas cinating—and charac - obituaries that form the backbone of this signs that God would give him, was H ter is ti cally hefty—new book book. So densely packed that they can be Abraham Lincoln’s publication of the chroni cling the rise and fall of 15 Euro - difficult to digest (the five, six, or was it preliminary Emancipation Proclamation pean states (from Visigoth Tolosa to the seven Kingdoms of Burgundy do rather on September 22, 1862. That, of course, good-riddance empire of the Soviets), his- blur), they reveal their author’s roman - was not about foreign policy (although it torian Norman Davies offers a number of ticism in a sometimes elegiac tone, had major foreign-policy implications), suggestions. They include “good fortune, crowned with moments of unexpected and merits little more than a paragraph benevolent neighbors, and a sense of pur- beauty. In his description of a piece of in Preston’s account. Nevertheless, the pose.” There are nods to the power of a ancient Britain that endured in Scotland Emancipation Proclamation represents common language and a shared myth, and until the 12th century, Davies includes the closest we may ever come to an an implied recognition of the usefulness lines from a poem written in the days of American solon’s formulating policy on of conquest (where now are the Baltic its twilight of a loveliness so vivid that a the same basis as Joan of Arc. people, the Prusai, whose land formed the scene from 800 years ago comes close Preston has given us a very good his- core of ascendant Teutonic Prussia?), but enough—almost—to touch: “Gentle mea - tory of American religion and the reli- little focus on the shared (if often exag- dows and plump swine, gardens pleasant gion of some very important American gerated) sense of an ethnic bond that has beyond belief, / Nuts on the bough of diplomats. But even after 600 pages, we held nations, and nations-in-waiting, hazel, and longships sailing by.” still are at a loss to say what it is specifi- together through the centuries. Perhaps The forgotten and the neglected attract cally about religion that impels diplo- the last was too obvious to need spelling Davies, a passionate writer drawn to his- mats and presidents to do this and not out, or, in an era that sets such store in tory’s underdogs (thanks to this book, I that. We would need, for instance, to being over that sort of thing, just too em - am now something of a Montenegrin hear a president or a chairman of the barrassing. nationalist): “Historians usually focus . . . Senate Foreign Relations Committee say Making matters more complicated still on the past of countries that still exist. . . . that he has reviewed all the tables, charts, is the way that history has left many They are seeking the roots of the present, and reports, but cannot come to a final Europeans with overlapping, and, not thereby putting themselves in danger of decision until he polls the leaders of infrequently, conflicting identities: Sorb reading history backwards. . . . In [the] American churches, or holds an all-night and/or German, Briton and/or Scot? But jungle of information about the past, prayer vigil, or finds a specific direction there can be few better guides to these [today’s] big beasts invariably win out.” (or prohibition) in Holy Writ. Ask your- muddled layers of nationality than Nor - Attention is sucked away from smaller self how likely we are to hear something man Davies, a combative, unusually ori - states, let alone those that no longer exist. like that in 2012, and you have a good ginal historian of Europe (Europe: A We learn more about that of which we are measure of how blunt any swords of the History) best known for his studies of already aware, and “the blank spaces in spirit have become in our diplomacy, and our minds are reinforced.” how little faith has come to serve as our Mr. Stuttaford is a contributing editor of References to “big beasts” hint at shield. NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE. Europe’s history of, given human nature,

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS all too imaginable violence, a blood- a cabinet de curiosités in Krakow’s Czar - passed, but including a chapter in Van - drenched danse macabre that reached a toryski Museum bursting with celebrity ished Kingdoms on the glories of Aragon ghastly apogee in the wars, genocides, treasures that include Rousseau’s brief- makes the point that Spain’s restless and ethnic cleansings of the mid–20th case, Voltaire’s quill, and Queen Barbara Catalans may well be on to something, an century. As so often is the case, these Radziwiłł’s knife and fork. Nearby is “a approach Davies explored at even greater horrors are most powerfully conveyed half-gnawed, rock-solid, bright green length in The Isles (1999), in which he in miniature. Thus we learn of Ustrzyki chunk of moldy bread . . . allegedly cast argued that the United Kingdom was, is, Dolne, a small, largely Jewish sub- aside by . . . Napoleon.” Allegedly: With a and will be anything but united. The road Carpathian town that emerged from wink, Davies hints that, like some of the to the future apparently ran through Austro-Hungarian Galicia into the inter- other wonders on display, Bonaparte’s Brussels: The EU, wrote Davies, long an war Polish republic. When, after Stalin’s bread may not be the real thing. But never over-enthusiast for the gold stars on blue, pact with Hitler, the Soviets arrived, the mind: “Like all holy relics, genuine or “gives a place in the sun to Europe’s local Germans were sent off into the tem- fake, it has immense powers of imagin - smaller and middle-sized nations,” a porary safety of the expanded Reich, and atory stimulation.” Above it hangs an claim that looks absurd in the era of most of the town’s ethnic Polish inhabi- inscription (“The Past in the Service of Merkozy and that was, even a decade or tants were deported to the east, and, in the the Future”) that once crowned the en - so ago, at best willfully naïve. It is true majority of cases, their death. Two years trance to a Temple of the Sibyl erected by that Scots and Fleming nationalists (and, later Hitler’s legions arrived. Ustrzyki’s Izabella Czartoryska (1746–1835), a doubtless, others too) maintain that the Jews were exterminated. Polish princess of the Enlightenment who EU provides a framework within which That left the Lemkos, Ruthenians who was, splendidly, “as rich as she was patri- they can “safely” claim their indepen- had long farmed the surrounding country- otic as she was debauched.” But “whose dence, but this independence would be side—and then they, too, were cleared out past,” asks Davies, and “whose future”? one stripped of all meaning by a European Norman Davies is a beachcomber-historian, delighted by a cabinet de curiosités in Krakow’s Czartoryski Museum bursting with celebrity treasures that include Rousseau’s briefcase, Voltaire’s quill, and Queen Barbara Radziwiłł’s knife and fork.

by the Communist authorities after the The past, for Czartoryska, was the Polish- project profoundly opposed to popular end of the war. Their replacements inher- Lithuanian Commonwealth that had sovereignty and the assertion of national ited a ghost town and ruined villages, stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. identity. “blank spaces” of the most literal type, The future of which she dreamed was the But as the bitter, distinctly un-commu- and filled them with a Polishness that reversal of the partitions that had con- nautaire feuding over the euro-zone crisis lacked any traces of that old awkward, signed that state to history, but if that past, reminds us, notions of nationhood have a butchered Galician ambiguity. Violence and its relics and its memory, mean anyway of climbing out of the footnotes to had done its bit for nation-building yet thing now, it is as symbol of a reinvented which they have been banished. Rous - again, helped, as the years passed, by fad- Poland—and a Polishness—very dif - seau warned the Poles of the doomed ing memory and the easing of inconve- ferent from the sprawling multiethnic Rzeczpospolita that they were “likely to nient history into convenient oblivion. Rzeczpospolita for which the princess be swallowed whole” but must “ensure The annihilation of old Ustrzyki has little so yearned. that [they were] not digested.” They did. to tell us about Poland today: Lemkos, The persistence of some sort of Poland, The Baltic States were not fully “digest- Germans, and Jews will never again come however changed, brings up the question ed” by their Soviet occupiers either, but, back to their land by the River San. that lurks just below the surface of Van - as Davies (in a typically striking image) Under the circumstances, it’s unsur- ished Kingdoms: What is it that defines a notes, “fifty years later, like the Biblical prising that the notes that conclude nation? And identifying that question Jonah, they re-emerged from the belly of Vanished Kingdoms occasionally strike a helps us detect what Davies is really up to. the whale, gasping, but intact.” wistful tone: “Since it cannot be fitted A Briton of Welsh descent (aha!) who has Should they so choose, the nations of tidily into French, Swiss, or Italian his - predicted the disintegration of the U.K. the EU will now face a subtler challenge: tory, Savoy is frequently overlooked. No with somewhat unseemly relish, he clear- how to escape from a trap they (or their standard survey has been published in ly doubts the authenticity, and thus the politicians) set for themselves. Were they English, either of the land of Savoy or of pretensions, of some of the nation-states to succeed, and were Davies to write the House of Savoy.” that now dominate Europe, at the ex - about it, the results would be well worth Such are the “blank spaces” that pense, in his view, of the essence of the reading, but they would differ from Davies is looking to fill, beginning, as peoples that live within their borders, and, Vanished Kingdoms in at least one crucial he has to, with “flotsam and jetsam.” He indeed, beyond. respect: Telling that story would not be a is a beachcomber-historian, delighted by The time of the Prusai has irrevocably labor of love.

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you’ll go on, rose. P-p-p-p-promise posed to be unsinkable, they really did Film me . . .”) If you catch 25 minutes or so of have only enough lifeboats for the toffs in Titanic on TNT, where it’s intercut with first class, the band really did play all the commercials and shrunk down to tele - way to the end—and the whole catastro- A Classic, vision size, it’s easy to get annoyed at phe really did prefigure, in a fashion at Cameron’s hackneyed script. If you give once literal and mythological, the doom After All yourself to the movie in full, though, what that would come upon european civiliza- you hear coming out of the characters’ tion as a whole just two years later. ROSS DOUTHAT mouths will be overwhelmed and effec- What’s more, unlike in Cameron’s sim- tively rewritten by what you see on- ilarly lavish Avatar, where the anti- here the rerelease (in 3-D) screen. This isn’t just true once the sinking American polemic overwhelmed the of James Cameron’s Titanic starts (though at that point the dialogue drama, in Titanic the controlling themes is concerned, moviegoers really does become irrelevant), and it balance one another out: We’re invited to W will divide into three major doesn’t just reflect the movie’s combina- hiss at the snobbery and sexism of the old camps. The first group, and by far the tion of sumptuousness and sweep. order, but then also to mourn the passing largest, consists of people who loved the It’s also a testament to Cameron’s cast- of its grace and beauty. “For the former blockbuster unreservedly when it was first ing choices, from Winslet and DiCaprio, world has passed away,” we hear a priest released—who swooned for the romance, radiant at the top of the playbill, down say as the ship splits and sinks and the marveled at the special effects, sobbed at through Billy Zane’s criminally underrat- sea rushes in. the sinking—and who will happily line ed turn as the villainous Caledon hockley And oh, that sinking. The first time I up to swoon and goggle and grieve all over again. The second group is the small- est: These are the haters, the snobs, the anti–Celine Dion vigilantes, for whom Titanic the pop-cultural phenomenon is as much a monument to excess and folly and vulgarianism as the doomed liner itself. I am writing for the third group. These are people who saw the movie once (or twice at most) in theaters, and enjoyed it a great deal without becoming besotted, but have since internalized parts of Group 2’s anti-Titanic critique. They remember lik- ing the film, in other words, but they feel a bit guilty about doing so, and they’ve taught themselves to roll their eyes a little when they encounter it on cable, to gri- mace at the dialogue and distance them- (wait for the perfectly played moment saw the movie I remember experiencing selves from the spectacle, and to generally when he decides not to get in the lifeboat two jolts. The first came midway through, behave the way adults do when confront- because he can’t bear to lose his fiancée to when the iceberg loomed up and I sudden- ed with slightly painful reminders of their Leo), all the way to minor players like ly was recalled to the fact that the ship- wilder adolescent enthusiasms. Jonny Phillips (as taut, agonized Second borne world Cameron had conjured up so This is the group that should go see Officer Lightoller). In cinema the right comprehensively was fated to extinction. the movie again—in 3-D, 2-D, or any D faces matter more than the perfect words. The second came when the ship was swal- that their local cineplex will show it in. In Titanic all the faces are the perfect ones. lowed by the ocean, and it took a moment Because to see Titanic on the big screen The same goes for the movie’s to adjust myself to the fact that it was real- is to be reminded of what made it such a themes—class conflict, female empow - ly gone—that what had felt for more than phenomenon in the first place. James erment, the pre–World War I West’s two hours like a universe entire was gone Cameron’s epic is one of the movie-est rendezvous with catastrophe. There are beneath the waves. movies ever made: It does many things plenty of scenes where Cameron lays Neither of these turns was technically badly, but everything that film does better these themes on with a trowel. (Of course surprising, of course, since when a movie than literature it does better than 99 out of Winslet’s rose likes Picasso, while her is called Titanic you know how it’s going 100 films. Much of what’s been written, fiancé holds him in contempt. Of course to end. But they jolted me nonetheless. sarcastic or scathing, about the movie’s the WASPs are uptight snobs and the Irish And they’ll have the power to jolt you too, many flaws is completely accurate. It’s immigrants are big-hearted and mistreat- if you put aside your doubts and accept also completely beside the point. ed. Of course the ship’s patrons keep talk- that where Cameron’s masterpiece is Start with the dialogue—wooden, ing about how unsinkable it is.) But the concerned, the skeptics are wrong and the clichéd, anachronistic, and at times emi- reality he’s working with was no less millions of sobbing teenage girls were

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX nently mockable. (“P-p-p-promise me melodramatic: The ship really was sup- absolutely right.

5 1 backpage--ready_QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/11/2012 1:43 PM Page 52

Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Middle-Class Mick

IdWAy through a Julie Burchill column in the to. If memory serves, Mr. Blair introduced to Her Majesty’s Guardian bemoaning the Queen’s diamond Government a department called the “Office of the Third Jubilee, I was startled to learn the following: Sector,” which sounds so bland it ought to be one of those M Although fewer than 10 percent of British chil- covers for a ruthless wet-work operation the spooks want to dren attend private schools, their alumni make up over 60 keep off the books, but is, alas, just a way of “coordinating” percent of the acts on the U.K. pop charts. Twenty years ago, “resources” between the public sector and the third sector— it was 1 percent. i.e., a colossal waste of the private sector’s money. There’s always been a bit of this, of course: Mick Jagger The Internet wallah Tim Worstall thought that Miss Wil - went to the London School of Economics and made more liams had sort of missed her own point with that bit about money singing the songs of hardscrabble Mississippi blues- politics, media, and the third sector: “When the desirable men than the gnarled old-timers who’d lived those lyrics jobs are spending other people’s money, reporting on spend- could ever dream of. But he was “middle class” in what your ing other people’s money and lobbying to spend other peo- average exquisitely attuned snob would regard as a very ple’s money then you know that the society is f***ed.” drearily provincial sense: Mick’s dad was a teacher in Kent While the upper-middle-class corner the pop biz and the and his mum was an Aussie hairdresser NGOs, what’s left for the masses? Back and he went to the local grammar school. when Mick Jagger was at the LSE, the The new pop stars attended some of the futuristic comic books were full of com- most exclusive and expensive academies puter-brained robot maids whirring from in the land: Chris Martin (of Coldplay and room to room dusting the table, bringing Gwyneth Paltrow) went to Sher borne, our afternoon tea, and generally liberat- and Lily Allen to Bedales, and James ing humanity from menial labor. How’d Blunt to Harrow. The five lads from that work out? In America, 40 percent of Radiohead got together at Abing don, the population now do minimal-skill ser- founded by Richard the Pedagogue in vice jobs. Meanwhile, the robot maids are 1100 and where annual boarding fees are thin on the ground, but computers have now just shy of $50,000. In other words, replaced the typing pool and the recep- to recreate the conditions that enabled tionist and the bookkeeping clerk—in Radiohead, you’d have to spend about one-and-three-quarter other words, most of the entry-level jobs to the middle class. million bucks. you could try it the Elvis way—drive a truck, If you lack the schooling of a typical British pop star but blow $8.25 to make an acetate, and record your mama’s you’ve mastered flipping tacos and the night shift at the favorite Ink Spots song—but it’s not clear that works any- KwikkiKrap, what’s there to move on to? more. In the space of two generations, almost every tradi- Social mobility is already declining in the credential-crazed tional escape route out of England’s slums—from pop music United States and the wider West, and will decline further. If to journalism—has become the preserve of the expensively you’re already on the right side of the great divide, the world credentialed. I say “almost” because as far as I know no Old emerging isn’t so different from the way it was back when Abingdonian has yet won the heavyweight boxing cham- Harrow was producing Churchill rather than James Blunt: pionship. The less ambitious scions of great and well-to-do families A couple of weeks earlier, another Guardianista, Zoe amuse themselves with a leisurely varsity and then something Williams, filed a column deploring the fashionable profes- not too onerous with a non-profit, in the way that the younger sions’ increasing reliance on unpaid interns. The first time I sons of Victorian toffs passed a couple of years in a minor post used the word “intern” on Fleet Street was 14 years ago when in a British legation in an agreeable capital. the Monica story broke and my editor asked me to explain to If you’re on the wrong side of the divide, it’s less like British readers what it meant. Now they’re everywhere. Downton Abbey and more like one of those Latin American “Most people could weather a fortnight of unpaid work,” favelas the presidential motorcade makes a point of giving writes Miss Williams, “but once you start talking about three a wide berth to. Even Mick Jagger’s parentage—teacher or six months, you basically have to be living with your par- and hairdresser—sounds a bit of an unlikely match in an ents, they have to live in the same city—usually London for age when doctors marry fellow doctors rather than their the desirable posts—and they have to be able to support you. nurses and lawyers fellow attorneys rather than their secre- So pretty soon the point arrives when there’s a middle-class taries. Perhaps we’ll see a resurgence of the love-across- stranglehold on the jobs that people want to do—notably in the-classes plot beloved by Edwardian England, back when politics, the media and the third sector.” The “third sector” is real-life showgirls (Connie Gilchrist) married real-life earls what the British call all those non-profits the cool kids aspire (the seventh Lord Orkney). But I wouldn’t bet on it: These days, at least on the British pop charts, the earl is his own NEWSCOM / Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). showgirl. MIRRORPIX

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