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AUGUST 30, 2010 | VOLUME LXII, NO. 16 | www.nationalreview.com
ON THE COVER Page 43 The Greatly Ghastly Rand In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
looked out and showed us Reihan Salam & Scott Winship on the world of men as she sees American Competitiveness . . . p. 26 them. And she sees them viciously. Jason Lee Steorts BOOKS, ARTS COVER: MARK WILSON/GETTY & MANNERS
ARTICLES 41 A COMPLICATED REBEL Ronald Radosh reviews Radical: 16 COPS, AND ROBBERS by Daniel Foster A Portrait of Saul Alinsky, The public requires protection from public-safety unions. by Nicholas von Hoffman.
20 PRIME MINISTER CAMERON AT 100 DAYS by John O’Sullivan 43 THE GREATLY GHASTLY RAND In the Tory–Lib Dem coalition, the junior partner is running the firm. Jason Lee Steorts revisits Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. 22 THE MANY MEANINGS OF ‘EUROPEANIZE’ by Duncan Currie There are lessons to learn and not to learn from the Old Country. 48 PETRONOIA Iain Murray reviews Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st 24 ‘BARACK AND I’ by Jay Nordlinger Century, by Tom Bower. What’s in a first name? 49 ON THIN ICE Mario Loyola reviews Skating on FEATURES Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism, 26 THE LEANER WELFARE STATE by Reihan Salam & Scott Winship by Stewart A. Baker. New ‘citizen benefits’ could help restore American competitiveness. 51 CITY DESK: CANCERLAND Richard Brookhiser probes our 30 OUR REAL GULF DISASTER by Lou Dolinar relationship with cancer. The conventional wisdom was wrong, wrong, wrong.
32 THE ROAD TO CHARIKAR by J. D. Johannes SECTIONS Afghans have noticed that we are not the Soviet Union. 2 Letters to the Editor 35 ELEVENTH-HOUR COUNTERINSURGENCY by Bing West 4 The Week We must quickly prepare the Kabul government to win its own war. 39 The Bent Pin ...... Florence King 40 The Long View ...... Rob Long 37 FATAL CONCEIT by Justin Logan & Christopher Preble 42 Poetry ...... Lawrence Dugan What’s wrong with nation building. 52 Athwart ...... James Lileks
NATIONAL RevIeW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATIONAL RevIeW, Inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 2010. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., NATIONAL RevIeW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONAL RevIeW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATIONAL RevIeW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATIONAL RevIeW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters--ready_QXP-1127940387.qxp 8/11/2010 1:36 PM Page 2 Letters
AUGUST 30 ISSUE; PRINTED AUGUST 12 Oppression Is Oppression
EDITOR Richard Lowry In the August 16 edition of NR, Claire Berlinski called for the banning of the burqa in order to solve the problem of “gender apartheid and the subjugation and Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger abuse of women throughout the Muslim world.” How can removing a symptom Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones cure the disease? Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy National Correspondent John J. Miller Ivan M. Lang Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Glendale, Wis. Deputy Managing Editors Fred Schwarz / Kevin D. Williamson Associate Editors Helen Rittelmeyer / Robert VerBruggen As a sympathetic reader of your generally fine journal, it pains me to write in Research Director Katherine Connell complaint about Claire Berlinski’s argument in “Ban the Burqa.” She abandons Research Manager Dorothy McCartney Executive Secretary Frances Bronson the core conservative principle of religious liberty in the name of a politically Assistant to the Editor Christeleny Frangos expedient but ill-conceived reaction to a current political moment. Contributing Editors On what grounds does Berlinski say we should ban the burqa? Ostensibly, Robert H. Bork / John Derbyshire Ross Douthat / Rod Dreher / David Frum because women who remain uncovered will become increasingly harassed by Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin Muslim men. But do we ban miniskirts because a few men might respond boor- Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi ishly, and, even fewer, aggressively? No. And why? Because to do so is co ercive Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne David B. Rivkin Jr. and reduces the liberty of the woman in question.
NATIONALREVIEWONLINE I thought conservatives were not only for religious liberty but against govern - Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez AtIONAl evIew Managing Editor Edward John Craig mental social engineering. Apparently not at N R . Deputy Managing Editor Duncan Currie Berlinski may assume that the burqa reduces the liberty of Muslim women, Staff Reporter Stephen Spruiell News Editor Daniel Foster but what of those who choose to wear it as an expression of their faith? She Web Developer Nathan Goulding broaches but eschews this very topic. If it is wrong for Muslim men to coerce Technical Services Russell Jenkins Muslim women, why is it fine for the government to do so? EDITORS- AT- LARGE Berlinski advances the wrong solution to an identified problem. If europe is Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan worried about the dominance of Muslim immigrants, its governments should Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / Tom Bethell rethink their politically correct ideologies and start reducing the number of visas James Bowman / Priscilla L. Buckley Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier to their countries. they can debate in the public sphere and try to show why sec- Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans ularism, Christianity, or some other belief system is better. But coercion by the Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman James Gardner / David Gelernter government is simply not the answer. George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart AtIONAl evIew Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler N R should be resistant to governmental restrictions on reli- James Jackson Kilpatrick / David Klinghoffer gious expression. with a few twists of words and some backing by the leftists Anthony Lejeune / D. Keith Mano Michael Novak / Alan Reynolds who control our social-science departments, one could easily advocate govern- William A. Rusher / Tracy Lee Simmons mental intervention in other practices or communities. Beware the law of unin- Terry Teachout / Taki Theodoracopulos Vin Weber tended consequences. Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak Will Antonin Treasurer Rose Flynn DeMaio Via e-mail Business Services Alex Batey / Amy Tyler Circulation Director Erik Zenhausern Circulation Manager Jason Ng ClAIRe BeRlINSkI ReplIeS: I thank Mr. lang and Mr. Antonin for contributing WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com to this discussion. to Mr. lang: I didn’t argue that banning the burqa would MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 solve the problem of gender apartheid in the Islamic world. to Mr. Antonin: I WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 did not write that it was “fine” for the government to coerce Muslim women. I ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd wrote that it was an outrage against religious freedom and religious expression. Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet I moreover said that it was discriminatory, persecutory, and incompatible with ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Olivett the enlightenment traditions of the west. I fully appreciate your arguments and
PUBLISHER find them compelling. But the arguments in favor of banning the thing seem to Jack Fowler me, on balance and from experience, more compelling still. there are no good CHAIRMANEMERITUS solutions to this problem. there are only less bad ones. Thomas L. Rhodes
FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected].
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Discover New Insights into the Early Middle Ages We often think of the era between A.D. 300 and 1000 as a time The Early Middle Ages when Europe vanished into ignorance and shadow. But recent Taught by Professor Philip Daileader, scholarly evidence has shed new light across these once “dark” The College of William and Mary ages and their fascinating personalities and events.
In The Early Middle Ages, acclaimed historian and award- Lecture Titles winning Professor Philip Daileader shares a new understand- 1. Long Shadows and the 14. Charlemagne ing of a world that set the stage for modern Western history. Dark Ages 15. Carolingian Christianity Throughout these 24 lectures, you’ll explore some of the most 2. Diocletian and the Crises of the 16. The Carolingian Renaissance important transformations that occurred during this period, in- Third Century 17. Fury of the Northmen 3. Constantine the Great— 18. Collapse of the cluding the fall of ancient Rome and the rise of Christianity. Christian Emperor Carolingian Empire
n Robert Gibbs complained about “the professional Left.” These days the White House is looking more and more like the amateur Left.
n President Obama says that the job of plugging BP’s Gulf oil well is “just about over,” and the latest report from the admin- istration claims that most of the oil not captured or washed ashore is gone or diluted. Obama and his lower-downs have an obvious interest in saying so. They may also be right. Ocean microbes (especially prevalent in the warm Gulf) claim a lot of the oil from spills. Some of the most volatile chemicals evap- See page 10. orate. Much of the rest is breaking down into simpler mole- cules. The estimates come with a load of caveats: They are estimates, based on models and extrapolations; oil dispersed in deep water may not break down as quickly as surface oil; even the rosiest scenario leaves a malignant residue of 53 million gallons that has or could come ashore—five times the Exxon Valdez spill. The Gulf oil spill was a disaster. But the media, with its yen for more and worse, may have made it seem even greater than it was. So it truly was Obama’s Katrina.
n On consecutive days, a district-court judge in Virginia allowed a constitutional challenge to Obamacare’s indivi - dual mandate to proceed, and 71 percent of Missouri voters approved a referendum banning the mandate’s enforce- ment. These two events may have little immediate conse- quence: Missouri cannot nullify a federal law, and the Virginia judge merely declined to dismiss the case (though his state- n No one can fault Judge Susan Bolton for a lack of imagina- ment made clear that it is anything but a frivolous exercise; tion. She found that the Arizona immigration law is presump- never before has the federal government forced Americans to tively unconstitutional because the state might make too many buy something). Constitutional issues aside, the mandate is a calls to the federal database that is supposed to, as a matter of bad idea; it will be especially burdensome to the low- and law, apprise states and localities of the legal status of suspect moderate-wage households Democrats claim to be helping, individuals. (Never mind that in the unlikely event Arizona since they will have to accept one-size-fits-all coverage that is overwhelms the system, the feds could just add a position or more costly than what many of them are signed up for today. two to the 153-person staff.) The law might delay the release While there are many things wrong with Obamacare, oppo- of an arrested legal immigrant while his status is being nents are right to focus their initial attacks on the individual checked. (Never mind that law enforcement routinely runs all mandate, since if it is nullified, by either a court ruling or a sorts of checks on arrestees, looking for everything from child- political uprising, the rest of the edifice will become increas- support orders to outstanding warrants.) It might detain legal ingly shaky—increasing Republicans’ chances of knocking it immigrants from visa-waiver countries who lack proper docu- down after the November elections. mentation through no fault of their own. (Never mind that a visitor from such a country has the duration of his stay stamped n Responding to questions about Obamacare’s constitution - into his passport.) The decision was a tissue of fanciful ex cuses ality at a town-hall meeting, Rep. Pete Stark (D., Calif.) casu- for validating the Obama administration’s refusal to enforce ally replied: “I think that there are very few constitutional the federal immigration laws. Arizona’s offense is not being in limits that would prevent the federal government from rules on the joke. that could affect your private life. . . . The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country.” This sweeping n An internal memo leaked from U.S. Citizenship and assertion brings to mind Madison’s words from Federalist 45: Immigration Services revealed that the agency was consider- “We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that ing ways to enact “meaningful immigration reform absent the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the legislative action.” The memo proposed, for example, granting
ROMAN GENN same doctrine to be revived in the New . . . ?” “deferred action”—that is, an exemption from prosecution—to
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THE WEEK the tens of thousands of illegal-immigrant high-school gradu- their attention to campaigning for programs and policies re - ates who would qualify for citizenship under the DREAM Act lated to amnesty and the creation of a special detention system (which, by the way, has failed in Congress several times). for foreign nationals that exceeds the care and services pro - Meanwhile, the national union council that represents the vided to most United States citizens similarly incarcerated,” 7,000 employees of the Office of Enforcement and Removal the council wrote. Amnesty is doubly lawless when it is imple- Operations released a letter declaring a unanimous “vote of mented before being passed. no confidence” in the leadership of its parent agency, Immigra- tion and Customs Enforcement. “Director John Morton and n Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) stirred up an immigration Assistant Director Phyllis Coven have abandoned the debate already roiling nicely, thanks to Arizona, with a pro- Agency’s core mission of enforcing United States Immigration posal to amend the 14th Amendment, section 1 of which Laws and providing for public safety, and have instead directed declares: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States
Where Outfidels Are In
REG GUTFELD—editor, writer, blogger, TV host, words, I don’t normally celebrate gay disco openings or G provocateur, showman, weasel wrangler, outlaw closings. (thrice convicted of aggravated mopery), future NR But I like the idea for three reasons. First, it’s funny (and Cruise speaker, and now small businessman—has come funny is good). Second, it turns things back on the sup- up with a brilliant idea: open a gay bar. posed Islamic champions of tolerance who are building the Oh, not just any gay bar, but a Muslim-themed gay bar mosque. Among politicized Islamic leaders, tolerance is catering to outfidels—if you know what I mean—across something they’re great at demanding and not so great at the street from the Cordoba House, the infamous “Ground demonstrating. The Saudi royal family spends billions Zero mosque” to be built near the scandalously still-empty (that’s a guess) on exporting Islam around the globe and hole where the World Trade Center once stood. Here’s immediately declares opposition to its efforts to be a form Gutfeld: of “Islamophobia” or general bigotry. But try to even talk about Christianity in Saudi Arabia and you’ll find yourself You! in jail—if you’re lucky. We need not belabor the point by I wanna take you to a gay bar, noting at any length that the Islamic world is less than I wanna take you to a gay bar, wholly receptive to synagogue construction. I wanna take you to a gay bar, gay bar, gay bar. Last, I admire tough-minded libertarianism. Too often, libertarianism—or, as it’s called in lower Let’s start a war, start a nuclear war, Manhattan, “social liberalism”—is really At the gay bar, gay bar, gay bar. a pathetic ideological mask, used by Wow! (Shout out loud) people who want to hide their fear of At the gay bar. offending anyone. It can also be an expression of civilizational low self- Oh, whoops. Those are the opening esteem—“Who are we to judge?” and all lyrics to “Gay Bar,” by the band Electric that nonsense. It can also be a cop-out Six. to avoid critical thinking or an insidious Here’s Gutfeld, explaining his aim to means of undermining cultural institu- “open the first gay bar that caters not tions. In short it’s not always bad, but it only to the West, but also Islamic gay often can be. men. . . . This is not a joke. I’ve already spoken to a num- Tough-minded libertarians understand that freedom ber of investors, who have pledged their support in this isn’t merely—or even necessarily—a secular-governmental bipartisan bid for understanding and tolerance.” product, but rather a cultural institution that needs to be “As you know,” Gutfeld continues, “the Muslim faith defended, even if that means offending people. Whatever doesn’t look kindly upon homosexuality, which is why you may think of gay bars, they’re not going away in the I’m building this bar. It is an effort to break down barriers freedom-loving West. Pretty much everybody else in and reduce deadly homophobia in the Islamic world.” Amer ican life has learned how to live-and-let-live with such One floor will serve non-alcoholic drinks and it will oper- places, to one extent or another. If the folks behind ate round the clock, for those who still live in a burqa of Cordoba House really want to build bridges with the West, shame and need to come in off hours (closing time: they’ll have to learn to do likewise, particularly on Fatwah inshallah). Tuesdays, when the first 72 virgins drink for free. Now when it comes to social conservatism I’m no John Ashcroft, but I’m not exactly Perez Hilton either. In other —JONAH GOLDBERG
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THE WEEK . . . are citizens of the United States.” The 14th Amendment, n We’d like to congratulate Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) for get- ratified in 1868, aimed to prevent the disfranchisement of ting so completely under the skin of Princeton professor Paul freed slaves; subsequent court rulings held that it applies to Krugman, who recently used his New York Times column to the children of immigrants, whether legal or not. Defending call Ryan a “charlatan” and his deficit-reduction plan a “fraud” his proposed reform, Graham told NRO’s Daniel Foster, that had been “drenched in flimflam sauce.” Krugman did not “We’re not going to continue to have incentives for people to present any new criticisms of Ryan’s plan; he merely repeated break the law.” Yet we followed the policy of birthright citi- the claim that, according to one group of experts, the tax side zenship all the years we had no immigration problem. Clearly of it wouldn’t raise enough revenue to eliminate the deficit. it is not the main cause of our current woes. Slack law Ryan simply responded that experts oftentimes disagree when enforcement and unwise amnesties—the sort of policies estimating the effects of policy changes far into the future, and favored by such as Lindsey Graham—have caused the prob- that he would be amenable to tweaking his tax plan to keep lem. Graham indeed envisions his amendment as an add-on to revenues at their historical average as a percentage of GDP— an amnesty deal for the 12 to 14 million illegals already here. this would be sufficient to balance the budget under his plan. Since amendments require the approval of two-thirds of Krugman’s real problem with Ryan’s plan, of course, is that he Congress and of three-quarters of the states, it is an add-on thinks Americans have historically paid too little in taxes, and that will never be added on—boob bait for bubbas. No sale, the budget should be balanced through tax hikes rather than Senator Graham. spending cuts. Many of us have made the opposite case, but few have done it so effectively as to elicit such a hilariously n In 1856, Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina attacked self-defeating response from such an influential proponent of Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the floor of the higher taxes. Senate with a cane and beat him to unconsciousness. In 2010, Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, the presiding officer, snorted n It has been a long climb-down for the Democrats on the and mugged through a speech by Sen. Mitch McConnell of issue of new energy legislation. Last year, House Speaker Kentucky on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. “This is Nancy Pelosi was able to twist enough arms to get the House not Saturday Night Live, Al,” said an angry McConnell. Later to pass most of what the Democrats wanted: caps on carbon Franken sent McConnell a written apology, which was ac - emissions, renewable-energy mandates for utility companies, cepted. You know what they say on the set of SNL—the first and a grab-bag of subsidies for electric cars and solar-powered time as tragedy, the second time as snorting and mugging. houses—the works. But when the bill got to the Senate, Ma - jority Leader Harry Reid discovered that it was too much of a n Congressman Mike job-killer for the moderate wing of his caucus to stomach: McMahon is a New York Gradually he gave up the carbon caps and the renewable- City Democrat who repre- energy mandates until all he had left was the grab-bag of spend- sents all of Staten Island ing, and rising deficit concerns meant even that was no sure and parts of Brooklyn. A thing. For a moment it looked as though the oil spill would give couple of Republicans are the Democrats the momentum they needed to pass an energy competing for the honor of bill, but once again they overplayed their hand, by including pro- running against him this visions that would have killed jobs in Louisiana (Landrieu, D.) year—and one of them is and Alaska (Begich, D.). Chances that the Democrats will pass Michael Grimm. Grimm a bill before November are dimming, but the economy will not has raised a fair amount be safe until they have been completely extinguished. of money, which has the McMahon campaign con- n Fannie Mae and the Committee to Re-Inflate the Real Estate cerned. It compiled a list Bubble continue their assault on the American economy and headed—get this—“Grimm on good sense: In the aftermath of a financial crisis caused by Jewish Money Q2.” (The the default of marginal mortgages, Fannie Mae, the Federal last bit refers to the second Housing Administration, and state housing agencies have quarter of fundraising.) On teamed up to revive the nothing-down mortgage. Fannie has Michael Grimm the list are more than 80 agreed to buy mortgages from homebuyers who cannot even put donors whom the McMahon campaign identifies as Jewish. together the minuscule 3.5 percent down payment required of How do they know? Do the donors wear yellow stars? The most borrowers. Anybody who can scrape together a thousand spokesman for the McMahon campaign, Jennifer Nelson, bucks and pass the credit check can now get a government- explained that McMahon’s finance director is Jewish and backed mortgage. Worse, these borrowers will not even be “knows a lot of people in that community.” Nelson released required to purchase mortgage insurance, and they will auto- “Grimm Jewish Money Q2” to the press. She commented, matically be enrolled for additional mortgage subsidies should “Where is Grimm’s money coming from? There is a lot of they become unemployed. The default rate for FHA-backed GETTY / Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and mortgages is already 14 percent. If housing prices should Manhattan, retirees.” The McMahon campaign, embarrassed, decline, even by less than 1 percent, practically all of these ROLL CALL / fired Nelson for this comment, and for her release of the list. $1,000-down buyers will be underwater, and therefore likely to Since when is “Jewish money” odd or sinful in New York City default. Fannie Mae’s twin brother, Freddie Mac, just went
TOM WILLIAMS politics? begging to Congress for another $1.8 billion in bailout money,
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THE WEEK arguing that it needs this—because housing prices are going to “improperly” because one of the minorities who owned fall. Fannie, meet Freddie. OneUnited was Waters’s husband, and he held over $150,000 worth of stock in the bank when Waters intervened to arrange a n John Maynard Keynes famously wrote that any sort of meeting between its president and the Treasury officials charged spending—even paying people to dig holes in the ground— with overseeing the federal bailout of the banking system. “will increase . . . the real national dividend of useful goods OneUnited received a $12 million allocation from the Troubled and services.” But could he have imagined that giving coke to Asset Relief Program, despite being a poor candidate for a monkeys, tracing the historic roots of dog domestication, or bailout: The bank has so far missed all but one of its scheduled sending scientists to the Indian Ocean to collect ants would be dividend payments. Waters’s excuse, then, is that she is not a considered good ways to stimulate America’s economy? All crook, but was merely wasting taxpayer money on an expensive these and more are on a long list of questionable projects that boondoggle. were funded by last year’s $862 billion stimulus bill, and all have ostensibly beneficial purposes: The first study, for exam- n President Obama has prescribed a surge for Afghanistan. ple, is meant to find out how cocaine affects monkeys’ be - Like the surge in Iraq, this surge requires the trust and help of havior (though since they already spend all their time chattering the local population, who will be killed by extremists if their excitedly, it’s not clear how anyone can tell). Unfortunately, support of the Coalition becomes known. Hugely compli - official estimates say the cocaine project created less than one- cating, if not defeating, our effort has been the release of tens half of a job, and the vaunted multiplier effect must be small, of thousands of classified documents by a group called as the monkeys are unlikely to buy anything with their grant WikiLeaks: a group of people who fancy themselves righteous money except more cocaine. To be sure, it is easy to make whistleblowers. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said scholarly research sound silly, and studying coke-snorting that his goal is to “end the war in Afghanistan.” The released monkeys may be scientifically valuable. But only Barack documents include the names and locations of many Afghans Obama, and possibly J. M. Keynes, would suggest that it who have aided the Coalition. The Taliban is studying these stimulates the economy. documents closely, vowing death to informants. As a Taliban spokesman said, “America is not a good protector of spies.” n President Obama went to Michigan to drive a Chevy Volt, There is now “a panic among many Afghans,” in the words of General Motors’ new hybrid car. At $41,000, the Volt costs too one report. WikiLeaks has done grave damage to the American much. Washington will make it more attractive by offering a interest, and grave damage to the Afghan people. The person $7,500 rebate. But that subsidy shifts the cost to the taxpayer, or persons who gave the classified material to WikiLeaks, of who is already in for the substantial amount that General course, have done the same. Whether or not WikiLeaks is Motors, courtesy of Uncle Sam, paid to develop the Volt. Since beyond our legal reach, the leakers presumably are not. The the market, such as it is, for pricey green cars tends to be upper- U.S. government should find them and throw the heaviest middle-class types, the commoners are being made to help possible book at them. their betters. And there are already hybrid and all-electric cars out there: the Toyota Prius, the Nissan Leaf. So the other n Al-Qaeda has a new chief of operations, according to the beneficiary of the Volt is the United Auto Workers, for which FBI, and he knows the U.S. very well. Adnan Shukrijumah, General Motors acts as a front man. Politicians can make now 35 years old, came here as a child from his native things the public doesn’t want forever, if they have infinite Saudi Arabia. He lived in Brooklyn, where his father was resources and infinite patience. But the deficit numbers imam of a mosque. Then the family moved to Florida, where already tell us that resources are limited, and the polls sug- Shukrijumah took some college courses, and where his moth- gest that voters, if not politicians, may soon have a patience er still lives. Shukrijumah left the U.S. early in 2001 and was shortage. tagged by the FBI as a threat in 2003. Now thought to be in the Afghanistan–Pakistan border badlands, Shukrijumah has n Rep. Maxine Waters (D., been decisively identified from old videos and photographs Calif.) is the latest House by would-be New York subway bomber Najibullah Zazi, who Democrat to face ethics had met him at a training camp, and by 9/11 mastermind charges. The ethics charges Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, his former boss. Shukrijumah’s against Charlie Rangel, promotion comes with some risks to his health. Until recent- combined with the fact that ly he shared operational planning duties with two colleagues, both Rangel and Waters are but both fell victim to U.S. drone attacks. Let’s hope for a black, have led some mem- trifecta. bers of the Congressional Black Caucus to complain n The Taliban ambushed a team of aid workers hiking into the that this is about race. In roadless Parun Valley in northern Afghanistan. Seven men and Waters’s case, it is, but not three women were murdered; two were doctors. Among the dead: in the way the CBC is in - Tom Little, a 61-year-old American optometrist who had lived sinuating. Waters is charged in Afghanistan for 35 years and raised three daughters there; with improperly using her Dr. Karen Woo, a 36-year-old British surgeon, engaged to be office to benefit OneUnited, married. They had planned to treat cataracts, and conduct dental
JEFF MALET a minority-owned bank— clinics. A Taliban spokesman said they had maps and a Bible,
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WENN the right person for such a post must be left to the judgment national aid pouring into the country.” Whether Mr. Jean is winner will oversee spending of billions of dollars in inter- According to a PBS report on the upcoming election, “The documents. tax-lien federal more to according IRS million, $2 than the owes He disarray: in also are finances al of money and been sloppy about tax filings. Jean’s person- sums large him paid has foundation the but Haitians, ing 2005, he has been principal of a charitable foundation help- land, though he has lived in the U.S. since childhood. Since Jean’snative is Haiti papers. election filed has and Haiti, n THE WEEK THE 2 1 black men, to see how this white officer would respond. The respond. would officer white this how see to men, black two between fight a stage would He sleeve: his up something to give a presentation to a church audience. The pastor had pastor The audience. church a to presentation a give to t a b ta te hlnhoit n r Hra bought paid toomuch. Harman Mr. in philanthropist the that be may It philanthropist, for $1. $1. for philanthropist, grating act like a senior partner, he may as well make it one. it make well as may he partner, senior a like act to going is Beijing if that concluded has apparently Murdoch government. Chinese the by run fund investment an Capital, interest in controlling its to businesses television China Media a selling is It interference. state the much too about Kingdom: Middle thoughts second having starting Google that son rea- same the much for China in operations its back scaling is don’t need eyes or teeth. Taliban’sscripture? Thereisno God but Allah,and hesays you No. mercy.obtainshallthetheymerciful, And for meaning, the Blessedare director, group’s the Frans, Dirk said now?” countryfordecades anddoesnotproselytize. time“Isitquitto AssistanceMission, Christiana aid mission that has been inthe cowardsmurderers:andInternational workeddeadthe Thefor and thus were spies and infidels. The Taliban are liars, as well as n n n Newsweek mess that has lost more than half of its readers in recent years. Hip-hop singer Wyclef Jean is running for president of presidentfor running isWyclef singerJeanHip-hop In Indianapolis, police sergeant Matthew Grimes was asked News Corp., Rupert Murdoch’s worldwide media empire, media worldwide Murdoch’s Rupert Corp., News The Washington Post Company has unloaded the disinte- the unloaded has Company Post Washington The Newsweek , but the entrepreneur in him must know that he that know must him in entrepreneur the but , | f ata vtr, u srl some surely but voters, Haitian of on Sidney Harman, an entrepreneur and entrepreneur an Harman, Sidney on .nationalre .com o c w. e i ev r l a n o i t a n w. w w measure of cynicism is justified. is cynicism of measure Newsweek ets mve co Sa Penn, Sean actor movie Leftist who has been busy in Haitian in busy been has who ut nue uln celebrity dueling endure must enough to cope with, now they now with, cope to enough earthquake relief, has declared has relief, earthquake wretched Haitians didn’t have didn’t Haitians wretched himself “suspicious” of Jean’s of “suspicious” himself apin or A i the if As tour. campaign presidential bid, and mocked and bid, presidential the “vulgar entourage of vehi- entourage the “vulgar ls o te addt’ first candidate’s the of cles” egos. is a money-hemorrhaging a is I pastor has an ounce of sense in his head? his in sense of a ounce an has whether pastor test you do how way, the By happy. is everyone Wehospital. a hope at spasms back for this treated was and stunt, during injured was Grimes kidding!” the “Just said, to essentially, people point, thrown that At was gun. Taser his drew and intervened, ground, Grimes staged: was fight Dead ontheeveofhis89thbirthday.professorships. R.I.P. last and honors to home, go to him allowed Communism of fall The him. to clung always displacement plegia. When life stinks, it stinks hard. You tell ’em. R.I.P. You’em. hard. tell stinks quadri it stinks, of - life When plegia. complications from 59, at Dead ill. the and ples blind and black, but not musical.” His warmest fans were crip- was Job. “Please help me,” says the Callahan bum’s sign, “I am the faux pieties of niceness. They were false counselors, and he ing ofhisyouth,buttheblasphemiesthatstungwereaimedat upbring- religious the shoulderblasphemed He arm. left his of motions the with hand right his into wedged pen a guiding cartoonist, a became he wheelchair, his in Then, years. more the age of 21. A stubborn alcoholic, he did not go to AA for six more depressingnovelsofCharlesDickens? the of one from formed fully escape he did Or child? a ever you’re small-scale I don’t think is relevant.” Was the FBIPPM up shop, you’re suddenly engaging in commerce. The fact that set and event public a to go you “When following: the truded ex Manager Program - Prevention Illness Food-Borne state’s by a the reporter, Confronted a her with fine. $500 threatened they one, produce not could lass the When license. restaurant her see to asked inspectors health County fair. art local a at stand her up set who Ore., Portland, in Murphy Julie year-old seven- for transpired it So officials. government petty crazed more likely concern the moon-booted arrogance of regulation- will today learned lesson the but stand, a open still course, of may, child A stand. lemonade a running by enterprise talist R w acmlsmns h tuh; e rt fr N for wrote he taught; he accomplishments; own his to undermine novelty for by quest the driven ever era, ern 40 Then, mod- the in intellectual the anatomized Molnar exile. of years Communist. go country native his saw he ended, Forties the activism). As student Catholic crime: (his Dachau in Nazis the by interned was he Belgium in student college a stripped from Hungary by the post–World War I settlement. As Budapest, he was educated in a Hungarian town that had been hp ih sai eteit. e a pbihd bo in book a published has He extremists. Islamic with ship words: other In says. doubt. “The issue of is terrorism a very he complex question,” n n n THE MOSQUE CONTROVERSY MOSQUE THE Wrong Man,Wrong Place evIeW Rauf presents himself as a moderate. There is reason for reason is There moderate. a as himself presents Rauf John Callahan severed his spine in a drunken car accident at Time was, an American kid could get a first lesson in capi- in lesson first a get could an Timekid was, American The 20th century was not kind to Thomas Molnar. Born in Molnar.Born Thomas to kind not was century 20th The MAM seems. And neither is the project. the is seems. neither And with the Ground Zero mosque is project, not quite what he . In person he could be charming, but the sadness of sadness the but charming, be could he person In . F eISAL A BDUL It’scomplicated R AUF , the Islamic cleric associated cleric Islamic the , . And so is his relation- his is so . And T S U G U A ATIONAL 0 3 , 0 1 0 2 base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 8/6/2010 1:04 PM Page 1
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THE WEEK cooperation with two affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood, an LAW openly terroristic organization. He refuses to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and he minimizes Judge Walker’s Phony Facts terrorist atrocities. He calls the United States an “accessory” to 9/11. t was evident since last year that Judge Vaughn Walker, of And yet there was New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, was on a self- celebrating Rauf and what he stands for, and having the chutz- I imposed mission to establish a federal constitutional right pah to lecture critics of the mosque project about respecting to same-sex marriage, and thereby to overturn California’s the prerogatives of the owners of the site. Now we know what Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment passed by the peo- it takes to get Mike Bloomberg to discover property rights; at ple of the state in 2008. From his decision to have a “trial” of least something good has come out of this mess. And that’s not the “facts” in the case rather than proceed straightaway to legal all: the Anti-Defamation League, which too often has acted arguments about the constitutional issues (a highly unusual as the cat’s-paw of the Left, has taken a commendable stand choice that surprised even the plaintiffs’ attorneys), to his against the project. attempt to stage the trial as a nationally televised extravaganza this dispute has been presented as a question of whether an (thankfully brought to a halt by the Supreme Court), to his Islamic center and mosque should be built in proximity to the unconcealed bias in favor of the plaintiffs in virtually every scene of the worst act of Islamic terrorism—and the worst act aspect of the proceedings, Judge Walker had long been prepar- of political violence—ever committed on U.S. soil. But at ing us for a bald-faced usurpation of political power. least as germane to the dispute is the question of whether these What Walker did not prepare us for, however, was the jaw- particular parties ought to be doing so. the fact that an apolo- dropping experience of reading his sophomorically reasoned gist for terrorists and an associate of terrorist-allied organiza- opinion. Of the 135 pages of the opinion proper, only the last tions is proceeding with this provocation is indecent. We have 27 contain anything resembling a legal argument; the rest is thousands of mosques in the United States, and who knows divided between a summary of the trial proceedings and the how many Islamic cultural centers in New York City. We do judge’s “findings of fact.” His determinations of law seem but not need this one, in this place, built by these people. We’re all an afterthought—conclusory, almost casually thin, raising stocked up on Hamas apologists, thanks very much. more questions than they answer. Our frustration with this state of affairs is multiplied by the On what grounds does Judge Walker hold that the considered fact that Ground Zero remains a gaping wound in the middle moral judgment of the whole history of human civilization— of lower Manhattan, rather than having been rebuilt to match that only men and women are capable of marrying each other— the World trade Center’s former glory. If Mayor Bloomberg is nothing but a “private moral view” that provides no is really so anxious to expedite the building of new projects in conceivable “rational basis” for legislation? Who can extract an the financial district, perhaps he’d like to help do something answer from his muddled reasoning? Judge Walker’s wholesale about that, first. smearing of the majority of Californians as irrational bigots Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf blindly clinging to mere tradition suggests that he has run out of arguments and has nothing left but his reflexes. But the deeper game Judge Walker is playing unfolds in the many pages of “fact finding” that make up the large middle of his ruling. there, through highly prejudicial language that bears little relation to any fact, the judge has smuggled in his own moral beliefs—placing them in precisely the part of his opinion that would normally be owed a large measure of deference in the appellate courts, which are meant to accept the lower court’s factual findings and rule only on questions of law. to take one example: It is hardly an incontrovertible fact that “Proposition 8 places the force of law behind stigmas against gays and lesbians.” But there it is in the opinion, as finding No. 58. With “facts” like these, and appellate judges disin- clined to question them, Judge Walker plainly hopes to propel this case toward a victory for same-sex marriage, regardless of how transparently weak his legal conclusions are. But the judges who ultimately take up this appeal—the jus- tices of the Supreme Court, not of the eccentric Ninth Circuit—should not be buffaloed by Judge Walker’s invented “facts.” Still less should they confirm the specious legal con- GETTY / clusions he has extracted from them. AFP /
EDITOR’S NOTE: The next issue of NATIONAL REVIEW will appear in three weeks. FABRICE COFFRINI
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police chief Anthony Batts responded to the layoffs by ticking off a list of 44 situa- tions to which his reduced force would no longer be able to respond—and it wasn’t just cats up trees and noise-ordinance vio- lations. The list included felonies like bur- glary and grand theft, extortion and fraud. Throughout these crises, the unions have succeeded in casting the choice as one between public safety and layoffs, avoiding reductions in, or even talk of, their extravagant compensation packages. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 2008, state and local gov - ernments spent $1.1 trillion on public- employee compensation, a number that accounts for fully one-half of their total spending. State and local employees earn, hour for hour, 34 percent more in wages than do workers in the private sector, and enjoy far more generous health-insurance, Cops, and Robbers sick-leave, and pension benefits. The public/private disparity is espe - The public requires protection from public-safety unions cially stark when one focuses on public- safety compensation in places such as BY DANIEL FOSTER Oakland; police and firemen have ac - counted for about 75 percent of expendi- n July, the Fraternal Order of Police functions. Akron, Ohio, is eliminating hol- tures from the city’s general fund over the Lodge 103 in Bay City, Mich., used iday overtime pay for emergency-service last five years. Average total compensa- funds from its dues-paying members workers and reassigning a number of po - tion for an officer in Oakland—a city in I to erect a pair of billboards—one on lice to school districts, where costs can be which the median family earns $47,000— Saginaw and Columbus, another on Eu - “shared.” East St. Louis, Ill., one of Amer - is $162,000 per year. clid near Fisher—designed to instill fear ica’s most dangerous cities, is trying to As with most public-sector workers, a in the 35,000 Michiganders the union’s stave off police and fire reductions in major—and opaque—piece of emergency- officers were sworn to protect. force with accounting tricks such as salary services compensation comes in the form The billboards warned that unlike Bay deferrals. In perhaps the most dramatic ex - of lifelong pensions. City’s finest, city hall couldn’t prevent ample, the gang-ridden city of Oakland, “Public-safety workers tend to receive residents from being “Beaten,” “Shot,” Calif., laid off 80 police officers—a full 10 the most generous public-employee pen- “Stabbed,” or “Robbed,” and confronted percent of its force—in an effort to bal- sions,” says Josh Barro, a Manhattan passers-by with an image of a masked ance the city budget. Institute fellow and expert on state and man pointing an automatic pistol at them. Everywhere, cash-strapped councils local finance. “They are based on a signif- City commissioners, facing a $1.66 mil- and legislatures in the second year of post- icantly shorter career—it is not atypical to lion budget deficit, had asked the city’s crisis America are struggling to bring out- see police and fire pensions based on 20 eight public-sector unions—which in- lays in line with a shrunken and stagnant years of service—and they also tend to be clude two separate Teamsters locals—to revenue base after decades of metastas i - more generous as a percentage of salary.” shed 10.8 percent in labor costs to avoid zing growth in public-sector labor costs. Other laws make the payouts even more job losses. Only the firemen met the July 1 And they are being forced to take a hard generous. In new York, for instance, a deadline for the cuts, having struck a ten- look at their salary and pension obliga- “presumptive disability” law makes it tative deal at the eleventh hour. The other tions to police and firefighters—obli- easy for firemen to secure lifetime, tax- seven were hit with layoffs—including the gations that are both prime drivers of free pensions at three-quarters pay; when police, who saw five officers pulled from structural deficits and as close a thing as examining a fireman for the purpose of their force of 57, and who were given until there is in local governance to a sacred determining whether he has a work- the end of August to ratify new contracts if cow. related disability, a doctor is required to they didn’t want the reduction in force to And the fuzz aren’t taking it lying start with the assumption that certain ill- become permanent. down. In Akron, Fraternal Order of Police nesses are job-related even if there is no It’s a story that is playing itself out in local president Paul Hlynsky has engaged evidence that they are. A fireman from a cities, counties, and states across the coun- in a public war of words with mayor Don Bronx ladder company who develops a try. Hoboken, n.J., is planning to lay off Plusquellic, accusing him of lying and lung disorder will qualify for disability 18 cops, eliminate top-brass positions, and negotiating in bad faith. In a move to rival retirement even if it’s unclear whether he
civilianize a number of non-patrol police that of the Bay City police union, Oakland developed his impairment from smoke ROMAN GENN
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inhalation on the job, or from his two- handed union deals. . . . Then, as econom- policy, where the elite consensus—from pack-a-day cigarette habit. ic storm clouds gathered, he shifted gears editorial boards to the Obama administra- The “presumptive disability” bonanza and cut spending—while still trying to tion—is moving away from teacher hero- is sometimes exacerbated by abuse. In appease the unions. worship and the fetishization of things like July, the New York Post told the story of Notoriously, one such deal guaranteed class size (a preoccupation that happened almost $300 million in pension benefits John C. McLaughlin, a 55-year-old former to pad the coffers of the unions) and over 40 years to thousands of employees FDNY lieutenant who retired in 2001 with based on salary increases they never re - toward teacher accountability. But fiscal an $86,000-a-year disability pension, after ceived. The giveaway became known as crisis notwithstanding, this has yet to hap- it was determined that he was an asthmat- “Phantom COLAs,” for the cost-of-living pen in public safety. ic with diminished lung capacity. This raises that were never paid. And even Instead, public-safety unions have been despite the fact that McLaughlin is an when Montgomery’s teachers agreed to able to buffalo the public into thinking that accomplished triathlete who regularly give up cost-of-living raises last year, keeping the peace requires breaking the competes in long-distance races. about two-thirds of them continued to bank. What the public sees is scary bill- McLaughlin is hardly alone. An aston- receive step increases of up to 4 percent. boards and lists of unenforceable statutes, ishing 80 percent of 2010 FDNY retirees and not, for instance, the fact that the have qualified for disability benefits. As a result of their different collective- Oakland Police Department backed out of How did police and fire unions score bargaining policies, the two demographi- a job-saving deal that would have required such a sweet deal? Part of it is institution- cally similar jurisdictions have “parted officers to make a mere 9 percent pension al. Since public-safety unions can, by law, ways.” Montgomery County is “lurching contribution, because the city could guar- virtually never strike, nearly all of them under the weight of irresponsible gover- antee only one year, and not three, without take advantage of their right to force “in- nance, unsustainable commitments and further layoffs. terest arbitration,” wherein an ostensibly political spinelessness,” while Fairfax, That police unions say they want to neutral third party settles contract disputes “though facing tough choices[,] . . . has a avoid layoffs yet act so as to make them between labor and government. As such brighter future.” necessary should leave little doubt that Public-safety unions have been able to buffalo the public into thinking that keeping the peace requires breaking the bank.
arrangements became commonplace But beyond institutions, political—and their priority is to preserve the privileges through the 20th century, police and fire even cultural—norms play a role in the of their vested senior members at the unions began to see their compensation special status of police and fire compensa- expense of both the rookies who are usu- rise faster than that of non-uniformed pub- tion. For one thing, cops and firemen are ally first out the door and the communities lic employees. The availability of legally swing voters. they serve. binding arbitration meant that unions had “Their unions are more powerful in the In solving the immediate crisis posed by less incentive to deal directly with their sense that they are more politically hetero- the unions’ intransigence, state and local government employers, while elected offi- dox,” says Barro. “Teachers’ unions are governments facing structural deficits cials facing angry voters could blame nearly unanimous in their political support must be allowed to lower labor costs with- expensive settlements on the imposition for Democratic officeholders. Fire and out endangering public safety—by reduc- of the arbitrators. police unions split their loyalties more, ing compensation across the board instead The effect of forced arbitration on the and are therefore in a better position to of laying off staff. In most jurisdictions, fiscal health of local government is stark- extract support from politicians.” governments can’t renegotiate the terms ly illustrated in a recent comparative study “Republicans don’t view it as a waste of of existing union contracts, even in fiscal of Fairfax County, Va., and Montgomery time to try to make police unions happy,” emergencies. This must change. Better County, Md., undertaken in a refreshing he adds. yet, states should follow the lead of Vir - Washington Post staff editorial from May: And if public-safety workers are split in ginia and ban collective bargaining by their political allegiances, the elected class public employees. Virginia law denies public employees is unified in its deference to men and We must take care that public-safety collective bargaining rights; that’s helped women in uniform, especially after a workers are not allowed to hide behind the Fairfax resist budget-busting wage and decade whose defining acts of heroism badge. That they are our heroes does not benefit demands. As revenue dipped were performed by cops and firemen from excuse them from taking part in the diffi- two years ago, Fairfax officials froze all New York and New Jersey. Politicians are cult choices that must be made to restore salaries for county government and school employees with little ado. By con- loath to be seen as trying to nickel-and- solvency to state and local governments. If trast, Montgomery leaders were badly dime our heroes. the unions won’t let them, and the elected equipped to cope with recession. County Legislators have been able to see the class won’t make them, then the citizenry Executive Isiah Leggett took office pro - sense through the sentimentality before, must shame them. Somebody must watch posing fat budgets and negotiating open- most notably in the case of education the watchmen.
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Large and small, these concessions But people invest in second homes as nest arrive almost daily. What follows is a eggs rather than as residences. they are Prime modest sample: saving for their old age, hoping to stay off • Almost the first major decision made welfare. And they tend to be tory voters. Minister by the government—and its first major • unusually, Osborne has made clear that defeat—was its agreement to transfer reg- the full cost of trident—Britain’s nuclear ulatory powers over the financial-services deterrent—will have to be met from the Cameron at industry from Britain to the European Ministry of Defence’s budget rather than union. the powers include tough regu- from national finances. the MOD budget 100 Days lations on hedge funds, even though itself is likely to be cut by 10 percent at a these are concentrated overwhelmingly in time when increases in the budgets for In the Tory–Lib Dem coalition, the London. (Not coincidentally, the City of health and overseas aid are “ring-fenced.” junior partner is running the firm Lon don—i.e., the financial district—pays Because trident’s cost is estimated at $30 approximately 12 percent of u.K. income billion over a five-year period, this means BY JOHN O’SULLIVAN taxes.) Given the desire of France, draconian reductions elsewhere in the Germany, and the Eurocracy to subject defense budget. Among those signaled ust days before reaching its land- “Anglo-saxon” market liberalism to through press leaks are: cutting 7,000 air- mark “100 Days,” David Cam - government control, investors will in- men and 295 aircraft from the Royal Air eron’s Conservative‒Lib er al creasingly prefer to place their money Force (leaving it with fewer than 200 air- J Dem ocrat ic coalition govern- else where. this decision, which signals craft); reducing the navy by two subma - ment suffered a minor but significant the gradual decline of London as a world rines, three amphibious ships, and more shipwreck. David “two Brains” Will etts, financial center, was trumpeted by the than 2,000 sailors; disbanding a 5,000- the minister for universities and science, government as a victory because the Eu strong army brigade (after Af ghan i stan); was on television defending a junior col- regulatory body will be based in London. transferring the Royal Ma rines from a league whose letter detailing possible (Interestingly, tim Geithner and the u.s. weakened navy to army control, and per- spending cuts had been leaked to the treasury urged the Brits to resist these haps merging them with the special Air media. One potential cut had aroused regulations as best they could. this is a service; and—in an especially symbolic particular interest: withdrawing univer - very rare example of the u.s. govern- move—selling one of the Royal Navy’s sal free milk for children under five. A ment’s seeing a risk to American interests two new aircraft carriers to India. One similar proposal 40 years ago created in Eu ro pe an integration.) prominent figure will be disconcerted by mayhem and gave its ministerial pro - Other decisions to transfer powers from these defense reductions: hawkish defense poser, Margaret thatch er, then secretary London to Brussels have continued at secretary Liam Fox, who has never been for education and science, her first hostile irregular intervals. these include: a favorite with the Cameroons. But he is sobriquet: “Milk snatcher.” Would a sim- • London’s “opting in” to the European putting up a good struggle launching guid- ilar slur now be invented for a prime min- Investigation Order, which will allow ed leaks (see immediately above) and fight- ister who has so assiduously distanced prosecutors from any Eu country to bug ing hand to hand in the White hall trenches. himself from her? the phone calls of British citizens, monitor • Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke pro - undeterred, Willetts set about dutifully their bank accounts, and gain access to poses to axe the prison-building program explaining the presence of “free” milk on their DNA if they suspect them of com- and rely more on “non-custodial” sen- the list of potential cuts needed to shrink a mitting a crime in their countries, even if tencing in the community. this reverses fiscal deficit equal to about 12 percent of the alleged offense is not a crime in the the previous Labour government’s plan to GDP—when Cameron changed the policy. u.K. Opting in was, incidentally, volun- build five more prisons, ignores pledges In mid-interview the BBC interviewer told tary; Denmark opted out. And it seems to in the tory manifesto supporting the him Downing street had just announced contradict both the tories’ manifesto Labour policy, and glides smoothly over that universal free milk was no longer on promise to make no further transfers of the evidence from u.K. crime statistics the list of potential spending cuts. power to Brussels and their pledge to that “prison works.” But be of good cheer, Bold spending cuts are the “Ex cel si or” restore civil liberties lost under Labour. tories: It fulfills a pledge in the Liberal on the banner of this government. they • Chancellor George Osborne’s budget Dem o crat manifesto. are also the glue that holds it together. raised the capital-gains tax on higher- • From 2016, it was announced by the they are the reason David Cameron income taxpayers by ten percentage Housing Ministry, every new home is to enjoys the admiration of American con- points, to 28 percent. Measured tax in - be powered by a green-energy plant to off- servatives, including some who differ creases can be justified in the present bud- set its environmental impact. If properties strongly with him on social and foreign getary climate, but the prime minister’s do not reach a standard where their own policy. And they are the principal justifi- justification rankled: “there is a very green-energy production offsets their cation (others include radical conserva- big difference between the capital gains emissions, de vel op ers would be charged a tive reforms in education and welfare) on that someone pays on, say, a second tariff of around $22,500 by the local coun- the tory right for embracing a long list of home—which is not necessarily a splen- cil. this would go in part towards a “buy- policy concessions to their Lib Dem part- did investment for the whole econo- out fund” to finance the construction of ners and, more broadly, to progressive my—there’s a difference between that wind farms, solar panels, or geothermal and establishment opinion. and actual investment in business assets.” technologies in the local area, which
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would supply the new development with stability. A Week item in the last issue green power. This would also add $22,500 of NATioNAL REViEW listed the econom - to the cost of every new house. What that, ic exaggerations in that proposition. The Many coupled with the tax hike on second-home Massive spending cuts were on the agen- capital gains, would do to the housing da of every political party because the Meanings of market does not inspire optimism. markets and the rating agencies were • Above all, the Tories are committed demanding them. There is no alternative by their coalition agreement to pass legis- to them. indeed, in March the Labour ‘Europeanize’ lation changing the electoral system from government itself proposed cuts that, in There are lessons to learn U.S.-style “first past the post” to the the words of its chancellor, Alastair Alternative Vote. This system, in which Darling, would be “deeper and tougher” and not to learn from the voters cast alternative votes that are than those of Margaret Thatcher. What the Old Country counted if their first choice falls out of coalition has done is to add about 5 per- contention, would greatly benefit the Lib centage points to Labour’s 20 percent BY DUNCAN CURRIE Dems, making them the permanent gov- reduction over four years—a useful but erning “center party” in a multi-party hardly decisive difference. N 2008, with the rubble from Wall spectrum. But it would almost certainly Now, however, a political weakness has Street’s collapse still smoldering, mean that the Tories would never again been added by the televised abandonment pundits on both sides of the Atlantic win a governing majority—and that in the of David Willetts: Will the cuts actually I trumpeted the death of American- next election they would lose seats from materialize when the go ing gets tough? it style capitalism. in 2010, after the Greek their present minority. The same legisla- suddenly looks less certain. debt crisis, journalists and scholars have tion also proposes a fixed five-year par - Listen to Michael Brown, a former been penning obituaries for European liamentary term—with elections any Tory MP who is now a columnist for the social democracy. Meanwhile, Repub - earlier requiring a 55 percent majority of Independent and who knows the ways licans continue to warn that President MPs—to make Cameron and Nick Clegg, of government: “Across White hall, this obama’s agenda would “Europeanize” the Lib Dem leader and deputy prime week, under-secretaries and ministers of the United States. minister, feel secure from rebellion and state may now be less brave as they try to But what exactly does that mean? defections this time around. second-guess Downing Street’s likely Western Europe is hardly a monolith. Such proposals and the “progressive” reaction to any bold proposal they might Taxes are low in ireland but high in priorities they reveal are deeply unsettling instruct officials to prepare. ‘Minister, i’m Norway, and labor markets are much to non-Cameroon conservatives, though not sure this will go down too well if No more flexible in Denmark than in they are offset to some degree by conces- 10 gets to hear about this’ . . .” France. The region has innovation lead- sions exacted from the Lib Dems. Energy if the cuts are gradually whittled down ers (Switz erland, Sweden) and inno- Secretary Chris Huhne, a Lib Dem, has by such nervousness, the Tory case for the vation laggards (italy, Spain). Though recently had to explain—to the surprise of coalition will shrink with them. if, how- allusions to “European health care” were all—how he has always seen a place for ever, ministers press ahead with them, ubiquitous during the obamacare debate, nuclear power in national energy produc- they will face bitter struggles and deep health regimes vary significantly from tion. Some Lib Dems dislike the Tories’ unpopularity. The political logic of this country to country. All provide some type school and welfare proposals (though oth- second course for Tories is that they of universal insurance coverage, but the ers independently proposed similar ideas should spend the next five years trudging Swiss and Dutch systems are far more before the election). But the balance of through the Slough of Despond to enter market-oriented than those in Britain concessions falls clearly in the direction an election fought on a new electoral sys- and Scandinavia. of the Lib Dems and the more excitably tem that will deny them a majority even if Across the pond, Washington has dogmatic Cameroons. they have somehow managed to become severely distorted health-care costs and The lesser justification for this bias is that popular. “Very brave of you, if i may say incentives through tax subsidies (the the Lib Dems are in greater need of such so, prime minister,” as Sir Hum phrey employer exclusion) and government- concessions. Their precipitate fall in the Appleby used to say. run programs (Medicare, Medicaid). The polls—one showed them down to 12 per- We should therefore assume that the public sector’s share of total U.S. health cent support, from 23 percent at the elec- Cameroons at least have an escape hatch. spending is already hovering around tion—means they need help. So the Tories That could only be a permanent coalition 50 percent. America does not guarantee must continue to yield to them, lest they with the Lib Dems and the creation of a universal coverage—yet—but it does not leave the coalition to preserve their seats. new Center party, facilitated by the defec- have a genuine free-market system, But why should the Tories worry about the tion of either left-wing Lib Dems or right- either. instead, it relies on a wildly ineffi- Lib Dems’ losing seats if, as seems likely, wing Tories or, more probably, both. cient third-party-payer scheme, which they would lose most of them to the Tories? After the election, NR advised the Tory has fueled rampant cost inflation. A 2008 The answer to that lies in the greater Right to establish an internal caucus with- McKinsey & Co. study found that “the justification advanced by Cameron: The in the Tory parliamentary party to protect United States spends $650 billion more coalition is necessary since it alone can the long-term interests and traditions of on health care than might be expected push through the spending cuts needed to British conservatism. That still looks like given the country’s wealth and the ex - restore Britain’s budgetary and financial good advice. perience of comparable members of the
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Organization for Economic Cooperation nearly ten percentage points below the Norway, 19.6 percent in Finland, 19.5 and Development (OECD).” weighted OECD average (excluding the percent in Sweden, and 18.2 percent in This is not meant to disparage U.S.) in 1988 to more than eight points Denmark. Amer ican medicine—which remains above it in 2009. America is the lone America’s corporate-tax regime has a wellspring of innovative drugs and OECD member, Carroll adds, that taxes skewed investment decisions, hindered tech nologies—but rather to put the de - its multinational corporations on their capital formation, and suppressed wages. bate over “Europeanization” in context. foreign earnings from labor and services It has also contributed to excessive lever- The U.S. economic model emerged from rendered at a rate greater than 30 percent. aging on Wall Street: A 2005 Con - unique historical, ethno-cultural, and In general, those earnings are not subject gressional Budget Office study found geographical circumstances. Yet in con- to U.S. taxation until they are repatriated. that the effective tax rate on equity- temporary policy debates, transatlantic The Obama administration wants to scrap financed corporate capital income is 42.5 differences are often exaggerated or mis- this policy, arguing (correctly) that it en - percentage points higher than that on understood. Indeed, America’s vaunted courages U.S. multinationals to keep their debt-financed corporate capital income. commitment to free markets and limited profits abroad. Yet Carroll emphasizes that, In an era of increased capital mobility government is less robust than is com- given America’s steep corporate-tax rate, that will demand increased financial pru- monly believed. the deferral rule “helps place U.S. com - dence, the U.S. should seek to reduce That was true before Barack Obama panies on a more level playing field these distortions and bring its overall entered the White House. Even after one with their foreign competitors.” Most statutory rate down to a much lower controls for income inequality, a 2008 OECD countries now have “territorial” level. OECD study found, household taxes tax systems, meaning they don’t tax their If that requires introducing a federal are more progressive in the U.S. than domestically based companies on their value-added tax to recoup lost revenue, they are in any Western European coun- earnings from labor and services rendered the tradeoff is probably worth making. A try save Ireland. The World Bank and abroad. 2008 OECD working paper concluded PricewaterhouseCoopers reckon that, While U.S. corporate taxes are par - that corporate taxes are “most harmful America’s corporate-tax regime has hindered capital formation, skewed investment decisions, and suppressed wages.
through May 2009, the average total tax tially offset by assorted deductions, they for growth, followed by personal income rate on U.S. companies was 46.3 percent, are still quite onerous. After accounting taxes, and then consumption taxes.” while the equivalent rates were 44.9 per- for deductions and other tax breaks, Uni - Thus, a revenue-neutral, pro-growth tax cent in Germany, 41.6 percent in Norway, versity of Calgary economists Duanjie overhaul would “shift part of the revenue 39.3 percent in the Netherlands, 35.9 per- Chen and Jack Mintz estimate that the base from income taxes to less distortive cent in the United Kingdom, 29.7 percent effective U.S. corporate-tax rate on new taxes such as recurrent taxes on im - in Switzerland, 29.2 percent in Denmark, capital investments in 2009 was 35 per- movable property or consumption.” As and 26.5 percent in Ireland. According to cent, the highest in the OECD. Even Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center the most recent World Bank list of the when Chen and Mintz include the tem - director Donald Marron puts it, “Not all easiest places to pay business taxes, the porary “bonus depreciation” tax benefit tax increases—or tax cuts—are created U.S. ranks 61st out of 183 economies, that expired at the end of last year, the equal.” Broadly speaking, the U.S. needs behind France (59th), Sweden (42nd), U.S. rate stood at 27.2 percent. By com- to tax consumption more and corporate Holland (33rd), Switzerland (21st), parison, in high-tax Scandinavia, the income less; in that sense, it needs to Norway (17th), the United Kingdom effective rates were 23.8 percent in become more like Western Europe. (16th), Denmark (13th), and Ireland As for labor income, the fact that (sixth). Americans work longer hours than peo- Among all developing countries, only ple in Germany and France—countries Japan has a higher average statutory with higher labor taxes—suggests that corporate-tax rate than America. OECD the labor supply can be sensitive to mar- figures show that, by mid-2009, the U.S. ginal tax rates. Indeed, Nobel-laureate rate (including both federal and state economist Edward Prescott has deter- corporate taxes) was 39.1 percent. In mined that “virtually all the large differ- Western Europe, the corresponding rates ences between the U.S. labor supply and ranged from 34.4 percent in France, to those of Germany and France are due to 26.3 percent in Sweden, to 12.5 percent differences in tax systems.” Back in the in Ireland. As Tax Foundation economist early 1970s, he notes, when labor-tax Robert Carroll has observed, America’s “I’m retiring from politics rates in the three countries were more combined corporate-tax rate went from to spend more time on my blog.” comparable, Americans actually worked
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fewer hours per person than did the For that matter, neither denmark nor Germans and French. Prescott calculates Sweden is as “socialist” as many people that if France lowered its effective tax imagine, thanks to significant liberali - ‘Barack and I’ rate on labor income to the U.S. level, zation over the past three decades. den - “the welfare of the French people would mark is virtually tied with America in the What’s in a first name? increase by 19 percent in terms of life- 2010 Index of economic Freedom (com- time consumption equivalents. This is a piled by the Heritage Foundation and the BY JAY NORDLINGER large number for a welfare gain.” Wall Street Journal), and its labor mar- economist Richard Rogerson, a col- kets are the most flexible in europe. After oe BIden was goofy, sometimes league of Prescott’s at Arizona State being rocked by a financial meltdown alarming, before he became vice University, is another proponent of the during the early 1990s, Sweden im - president, and he’s goofy, some- idea that U.S.-european variations in plemented a series of market-friendly J times alarming, now. He has said labor supply are primarily attributable to structural changes, including bold pen- that he told obama he would be his run- variations in labor-income taxes. He cites sion reforms. The Index of economic ning mate on two conditions: “I’m not Holland as an instructive example. The Freedom reports that both countries offer go ing to wear any funny hats, and I’m country’s average labor-tax rate climbed greater business freedom, trade freedom, not changing my brand.” By “brand,” he fairly steadily through the 1970s and monetary freedom, investment freedom, apparently means “style” or “persona.” reached its peak in 1983; since then, it financial freedom, and property-rights And, true to his word, he’s not changing. has fallen substantially. Meantime, protection, as well as lower levels of cor- one curious thing about Biden is his dutch work hours declined consistently ruption, than does America, whose score habit of referring to the president by his from the 1960s until the late 1980s, when has gone down partly because of govern- first name—in public, I mean. or quasi- they began a persistent upward trajec- ment bailouts and interventions, and the public. He did this at a democratic “issues tory. Holland offers “very persuasive lack of “transparency and accountability” conference” in June; and he did it at a evidence,” writes Rogerson, that labor in those actions. fundraiser in July. The first time, he men- taxes are closely associated with hours World economic Forum (WeF) data tioned that “Barack and I sat in on” a par- worked. tell a similar story. As part of its annual ticular meeting. The second time, he said, Given this association, it is no surprise executive opinion Survey, the WeF asks “Barack and I are realists”—about the that expanding government can harm global business leaders to grade their economy, he meant. Let’s hope so. economic output. Based on a detailed country’s performance in a variety of I don’t know about you, but I have never analysis of the recent empirical literature, areas. In the 2009 survey, America ranks heard a vice president refer to a president Swedish economists Andreas Bergh and far behind denmark and Sweden in the by his first name in public. dick Cheney Magnus Henrekson conclude that, above following categories (among others): always spoke of George W. Bush as “the a minimum threshold, government size in “property rights” (denmark second, president” or “President Bush.” Face to rich countries is negatively correlated Sweden fifth, America 30th); “public face, I believe, he called him “sir.” In fact, with GdP growth. More specifically, trust of politicians” (denmark second, some reporters pointed this out, when when tax revenues increase by ten per- Sweden sixth, America 43rd); “favor - others were saying that Cheney, not centage points (as a share of GdP), annu- itism in decisions of government offi- Bush, was actually in charge: the top dog. al economic growth tends to shrink by cials” (Sweden first, denmark third, I don’t believe Bush’s father ever referred anywhere from half a percentage point to America 48th); “wastefulness of govern- to “Ron” or “Ronnie.” And did nixon say one percentage point—a major drop. ment spending” (denmark 14th, Sweden “Ike”? Unthinkable. did Garner, Wallace, Government spending represents a 17th, America 68th); “burden of govern- or Truman say “Franklin”? How about heftier chunk of GdP in Scandinavia than ment regulation” (Sweden 19th, den- “Frank”? Beyond unthinkable. it does in America, although this gap has mark 27th, America 53rd); “transparency Someone once noted something about been narrowing. To be sure, denmark of government policymaking” (Sweden Reagan’s White House staff. I don’t re - and Sweden are successful countries with second, denmark fourth, America 31st); member who it was, or I would credit him. impressive levels of income mobility. and “regulation of securities exchanges” Talking together in private, they would (norway’s vast oil wealth makes it sui (Sweden first, denmark seventh, Amer - refer to Reagan as “the president.” They’d generis.) But Bergh and Henrekson stress ica 47th). do this at the mess, out at a ballgame, that government size is not the sole In short, while the public sector con- wherever. And they would use an almost determinant of economic prosperity. sumes a larger slice of GdP in Scan di - reverential tone. This was highly unusual, Institutional quality, tax-system efficien- navia than it does in the U.S., the danish as political hands are a famously jaded, cy, and culture also play key roles. “The and Swedish governments appear to hard-boiled bunch. The reverence came in United States is much more diverse than operate more efficiently than their Amer - the first term; in the second, when Iran- Scandinavia in ethnicity, level of educa- ican counterpart. As the U.S. seeks to contra and other unpleasantness set in, tion, competencies, and social fractional- rejuvenate its economy while moving things were a little different. ization,” they write. “Hence, to the extent toward fiscal consolidation and address- More than once, I saw dave Powers, that a larger government blunts private ing future demographic challenges, there JFK’s aide-de-camp, interviewed on tele- incentives for productive activity, the are many lessons it can draw from vision. Reminiscing about election night behavioral effects are likely to be larger Western europe. But the virtue of big 1960, he’d say, “. ..and that was the last in the United States.” government is not among them. time I called him Jack.” He also said, “I
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called him Jack for 14 years and Mr. however, Bill would not persist: If they young women at the facility. This made President for two years, ten months, and could not bring themselves to call him the grandson nearly homicidal. two days.” Bill, he let them alone. Mary Tyler Moore, How do you know how to address The business of names, of course, can on her show, balked at calling her boss people? What are the rules? I think you be a minefield. We have all stepped on a “Lou.” To her, he had to be “Mr. Grant.” go by feel, as so often in life. You go by mine or two, as we try to navigate our way. Bill had a show too, of course—and we feel, judgment, sensitivity, stomach. To be safe, you might wait until someone might tell many stories about it. Here’s I don’t know what Biden says to Obama asks you to call him by his first name. one. Two of his guests one day were Jerry face to face: I bet it’s “Barack,” and I think But even that can be tricky. For a while, Falwell and Harriet Pilpel, an abortion- that’s what Biden is signaling, in public. I addressed an acquaintance of mine— rights lawyer. Falwell was appearing by But I would not refer to Obama by his first about 70, the mother of a colleague—as video hookup; Pilpel was in the studio. name when out and about: when speaking “Mrs. Jones” (let’s say). One day, she said Beginning a point, Falwell said, “Now, to the public. It feels wrong to me. It puts to me, with annoyance, “Why don’t you Harriet, I don’t know you ... ,” and Bill a dissonance in my ear. Of course, we all call me Alice?” (again, let’s say). I myself broke in, “Then why do you call her have different ears. was a little annoyed, inwardly: Because Harriet?” In front of my television, I Is Biden being condescending? Obama you didn’t ask me to, that’s why. winced hard for Falwell. is a younger man than he, and Biden likes Should you go ahead and ask, without If names are a minefield at home, how to consider himself a sage. In the general- waiting to be asked? Anthony Daniels has about abroad? There, the mines multiply a election campaign of ’08, he said, “I’ve made an interesting point, as he routinely hundredfold. And those mines include forgotten more about foreign policy than does. He notes that “May I call you by your pronouns, not just names. Vous or tu? Sie most of my colleagues know.” Yeah, sure, first name?” is not a neutral question. The or du? The formal you is not always the Joe (speaking of first names). When he person being asked is sort of trapped. If he safe you, you know: That, too, can give says “Barack” in public, is he trying to says, “Actually, I would rather you called offense (to those prepared to take offense, convey intimacy (as I’ve already suggest- me Mr. Smith,” he comes off as a total prig. which is many people). ed)? See how close I am to the president! Similarly, “Do you mind if I smoke?” is not For years, I stayed at the same hotel in We’re a team, he and I. Incidentally, no a neutral question. If the other guy says, “In Salzburg, and knew the staff quite well. I way he’ll dump me for ’12. fact, I do mind”—again, total prig. could not get them—even the guys—to Then there is the awful question of Once upon a time in America, people call me Jay. For a day or two, one of them race—an inescapable question in America, wanted to grow up real fast—to be consid- tried: I was “Jay” to him, and he was a question that taints everything. Shouldn’t ered adults. And that included “Mr.” and “Klaus” to me. But I could see that it a vice president be especially careful not other honorifics. Then, people wanted to caused him almost physical pain to say even to appear to condescend—to conde- grow up real slow, if at all: and be teen - my first name. So I let him off the hook— scend to our first black president? During agers into their grayness. You called some- we went back to “Herr Mertel” and “Herr the ’08 primary season, when he himself one “Mr. Brown,” and he might retort, Nordlinger.” (I will not first-name while was running for president, Biden described “‘Mr. Brown’ is my father! I’m Toby.” I others are “Herr”-ing.) The only one in the Obama as “the first mainstream African admit that I myself have always had a joint who easily called me Jay was the American, who is articulate and bright and problem with “Mr.”—some discomfort at Indian-born head waiter. clean and a nice-looking guy.” Al Sharpton being called “Mr.” I was a summer-camp I know a young German woman who protested, “I take a bath every day.” counselor at the tender age of 18; the works for a big German institution, where Um, what if a conservative Republican rules were, the kids couldn’t call you by her boss is American-born. They work leader repeatedly referred to the president your first name. I rebelled at “Mr. Nord - in both languages: German and English. as “Barack” in public? Would everyone linger”—so the compromise was “Mr. When speaking in German, they are think that was fine? The Senate minority Jay,” which was quite strange. “Frau” to each other; when speaking in leader, Mitch McConnell, and the House Bill Buckley spoke and wrote brilliant- English, they call each other by their first minority leader, John Boehner, both know ly about this first-name business. No sur- names. They make the switch uncon- Obama—they served together in Con - prise there, right? In a 1975 column on the sciously; it is perfectly natural to them. gress, and they work together, sort of, subject, he lamented “the obsessive egali- Class, among other things, can rear now. If they said “Barack,” would that be tarian familiarity which approaches a raid its head in the name business. When I hunky-dory? Or honky-dory? Remember on one’s privacy.” A couple decades later, was a teenager, I went into a pharmacy in that some Democratic commentators even he said he hated it when he was in a doc- Ypsilanti, Mich. A grandmotherly employ- found Scott Brown’s pickup truck, on the tor’s waiting room and a nurse would ee said to her manager—a man of about campaign trail in Massachusetts, racist. call out, “William?” He was either “Bill” 40—“I’m going to go on break now, okay, I have no doubt that Biden is innocent or “Mr. Buckley” (although one college Mr. Conner?” He said, “Okay, Mabel.” I in the “Barack” business—guilty only, classmate called him “Willie”). burned. I was ready to join the Communist perhaps, of bragging about his closeness When I first met him, I called him party on the spot. Dignity comes into play to the president, and his own senior- “Mr. Buckley,” of course. He said, “Call in this business. I know a man whose statesman status. And Biden can be ex - me Bill.” I mistered him once more—I grandfather, a pillar of the community, pected to be goofy: He maintains his guess I just couldn’t help it. And he said went into a nursing home. He had always “brand,” remember. But he might want again, this time with vehemence, “Bill.” been “Mr.,” but now, enfeebled and help- to rethink “Barack,” if he thought in the And so it was, ever after. With some, less, he was “Mike” (or whatever) to the first place.
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The Leaner Welfare State New ‘citizen benefits’ could help restore American competitiveness
BY REIHAN SALAM & SCOTT WINSHIP
HoUlD American workers fear the economic future? As glimpse of the wrenching change to come. From 2001 to 2003, recently as the early 1990s, many academic and political productivity growth reached a white-hot 3.6 percent. Yet the 2000s elites were convinced that the United States was doomed were no one’s idea of an economic Golden Age. Even before the S to become a backwater, an economic also-ran. From Great Recession, the last decade had been characterized by a per- 1973 to 1995, average labor productivity increased by 1.4 percent vasive if ill-defined sense of economic unease. Many on the left a year, a marked decline from the 2.7 percent annual growth rate have exploited this unease, yoking to it an expansion of the exist- that drove post-war prosperity from 1948 to 1972. Because ing welfare state that threatens to stifle growth and innovation. Germany, Japan, and a number of other industrial economies had Before we can offer an alternative, we have to understand the surpassed the United States in productivity growth over that peri- source of our economic woes. od, it seemed likely that our country would slowly slip behind in During the post-war era, the United States was without peer as the economic league tables. the ruined economies of Europe and East Asia struggled to re cover That’s not what happened. Between 1995 and 2000, productivi- from the ravages of war. The years from 1973 to 1995 saw those ty growth increased to 2.6 percent as heavy investments in infor- regions flourish, creating a market for U.S. goods and services as mation technology began to pay off. The American economy had, well as competition for U.S. firms, most strikingly in the manufac- by any objective standard, made an extraordinary comeback. The turing sector. Now, as workers in China and India upgrade their recession that followed was short and shallow, but it offered a skills, the global economy is entering a new phase. Harvard econ- omist Richard Freeman has warned of a global surplus of skilled Mr. Salam is a policy adviser at Economics21 and blogs at The Agenda on labor. “As the low-income countries catch up with the advanced NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE. Mr. Winship is a recent graduate of countries,” Freeman writes, “the pressure of low-wage competi- Harvard’s social-policy doctoral program and analyzes economic trends at his blog, tion from the new giants will battle with the growth of world pro-
The Empiricist Strikes Back. ductivity and the lower prices from goods produced in low-wage ROMAN GENN
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You deserve a factual look at . . .
The Deadly Threat of a Nuclear-Armed Iran What can the world, what can the USA, what can Israel do about it? Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has declared publicly – not once, but repeatedly – that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” That effort, the destruction of Israel, seems to be the main goal of Iranian policy. When Iranian missiles are paraded through the streets of Tehran, the destination “to Jerusalem” is clearly stenciled on them.
accomplished that in a daring and unprecedented raid. Iraq’s WhatA deat hare wish the for I sfacts?rael. Ahmadinejad and the ayatollah who is nuclear capability was eliminated in one stroke, never to rise up the “supreme leader” have publicly mused that one or two again. Israel had done the world an enormous service. Had it not nuclear bombs would obliterate Israel, but that, though it would been for Israel’s decisive action, the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait cause devastating damage and millions of casualties, Iran would and, without question, also of Saudi Arabia and its enormous oil survive Israel’s retaliatory attack. Iran is a huge country, with fields, and, for that matter, of Iran, could not have been about 60 million inhabitants, so they are probably correct. And prevented. Saddam Hussein would have been the ruler of the who can doubt that those religious fanatics would not hesitate to world. allow the destruction of much of their country and to sacrifice The solution to the deadly threat that Iran poses to the world a third or even one-half of their is obvious. Of course, diplomacy population in order to eliminate “An attack on the Iranian nuclear installations and persuasion, threats and the hated Jewish state. When our promises, sticks and carrots – country was entangled with the would fall under the heading of “anticipatory every possible means short of Soviet Union in the bitter 40- self-defense,” recognized and sanctioned by military action – should be used year long “cold war,” with both international law and by common sense.” until it becomes clear even to the sides having sufficient nuclear most obdurate that nothing can weapons to destroy the deviate Iran from its chosen path opponent’s country and its people, things were kept in place by of becoming a nuclear power and to dominate the Middle East. MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction. However “evil” the leaders There is reason to believe that the people of Iran, especially the of the Soviet Union (the “Evil Empire”) may have been, there was young people, oppose the oppressive and theocratic regime of one great consolation and assurance: They were not crazy. But their country and are hostile to the mullahs who control the Iranians and other Muslims are crazies, as we understand the everything. But the government has the tools of power firmly in concept. Because they take instructions directly from Allah, who its hands. It controls the instruments of coercion – it can kill tells them to kill the Jews and other infidels, whatever the cost. people and it controls the oil money. While it would be most Israel has no problem with Iran. They share no borders and desirable and in the interest of the world to be able to foment an have no territorial dispute. In fact, they face common Arab overthrow of the Iranian regime, that is an unrealistic and enemies and should be natural allies, as they indeed were under unattainable prospect. the Shah. Iran’s death wish for Israel is based entirely on Regrettably, there is only one solution to the terrible dilemma religious fanaticism. In contrast even to the intractable North confronting the world, the unacceptable danger of a nuclear- Koreans, the determination of the Iranians is immutable. It armed Iran. The terror, the destruction and the 60 million dead cannot be changed by persuasion, by diplomacy, by sanctions or of World War II could have been prevented at several times by threats. during the Nazi regime. But the Allied powers, under the Once Iran is in possession of nuclear weapons, it will not only leadership of Britain’s prime minister Neville Chamberlain, be a deadly danger to Israel, but to all of the Middle East and to opted for appeasement and for “peace in our time.” We cannot virtually all of Europe. The flow of oil from the Middle East, the afford to make that same mistake again. The world must give lifeblood of the industrialized world, would be totally under its Iran an ultimatum: Desist immediately from the development of control and so would be the economies of all nations of the nuclear weapons; if you do not, we shall destroy the facilities that world, very much including the United States. produce them. There still is a window of opportunity to do that. What is to be done? In 1981, then prime minister of Israel That window may close very soon. But who would do the job? Menachem Begin, being aware of Iraq’s nuclear ambitions and The United States would be the obvious choice. But if the United looming realization of those ambitions, decided that its nuclear States were in accord, Israel could do it, just as it did the job in reactor at Osiraq had to be destroyed. The IAF (Israeli Air Force) 1981 in destroying Iraq’s nuclear potential once and for all. An attack on the Iranian nuclear installations would fall under the heading of “anticipatory self-defense,” recognized and sanctioned by international law and by common sense. Nobody really knows for sure how far Iran is from reaching its goal — six months. six years? The experts disagree. But if Iran is not stopped now, it may well be too late not very long from now.
This message has been published and paid for by FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world. Your tax- deductible contributions are welcome. They enable us to pursue these goals Facts and Logic About the Middle East and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines. We P.O. Box 590359 I San Francisco, CA 94159 have virtually no overhead. Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail. Gerardo Joffe, President 109 To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org 2col_QXP-1127940309.qxp 8/10/2010 9:26 PM Page 28
countries to determine the well-being of workers in higher income ment opportunities for large numbers of less-skilled workers. For economies.” There is good reason to believe that growth in low- better or for worse, all of us depend on the success of digital orga- wage countries will prove overwhelmingly beneficial to U.S. nizations. The value they create spreads throughout the wider workers overall, not least by creating a wave of low-cost, innova- economy. America’s economic mission should thus be to attract, tive goods. Yet there is also no question that it will continue to retain, and develop talent, and to guarantee that the barriers to increase downward pressure on the wages of workers in tradable grassroots entrepreneurship are as low and as few as possible. economic sectors, from manufacturing and programming to legal Viewed through this lens, the Left’s effort to expand the existing services and perhaps even education. social contract, rooted in the industrial relations of the mid-20th Another source of our economic discontent lies in the subtle dif- century, looks short-sighted at best. Citizens rely on employers and ference between the two most recent productivity booms, which the state to provide a range of benefits, which have come to include economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Adam Saunders describe in their comprehensive health insurance, pensions and retirement-savings book, Wired for Innovation. The 1990s boom can be directly traced vehicles, and unemployment insurance. But this arrangement to IT investments, particularly in the retail sector, which had seen creates a number of economic inefficiencies that the United States sluggish productivity growth for decades. The productivity surge can no longer afford. from 2001 to 2003 was driven by investments in organizational For one, it prevents the personalization of benefits and restricts capital, a catch-all term for productivity-enhancing business the choice of providers. Employers approve only a limited number practices. of benefit providers, which in turn provide only a limited number Many U.S. firms invested heavily in technology. But the most of plans. Governments, attempting to reduce inequality and pro- successful firms—which Brynjolfsson and Saunders call “digital mote solidarity, typically mandate baseline benefit levels and organizations”—also embraced incentive systems and decentral- restrict the ability of beneficiaries to tailor benefits to their liking or ized decision-making to allow their most talented, driven, and to trade off greater risk for greater reward. This inclination also well-trained workers to use new technologies effectively. To put it requires governments to impose strict regulation on providers. simply, digital organizations reward workaholics and weed out The liberal social contract also obscures the link between bene- weak performers. Suffice it to say, the workers who flourish in fits and costs. When employers negotiate deals with insurance these firms are not replaceable cogs. Rather, they are valuable providers and “pay” the premium, employees fail to connect assets, and they demand and receive generous compensation. greater benefit use with lower take-home pay. And even if they did, While digital organizations tend to be culturally egalitarian, they there would still be a free-rider problem: Why should I be cost- are a major driver of wage dispersion. Google and Facebook, for conscious if I’m going to have to pay for my coworkers’ profli gacy all their progressive bona fides, spend far more on top-flight engi- next year through higher premiums? neers than on custodial staff, and they always will. This moral hazard is worse with public benefits. In Social The rise of digital organizations is one reason productivity Security and Medicare, population dynamics have allowed a large growth has continued during the Great Recession. One of the most base of workers to finance benefits for a relatively small number of striking facts about this downturn has been that employment has retirees, permitting the benefits to grow. But this arrangement declined far more than output. As jobs evaporated throughout worked only while fertility was high and life expectancy low, 2009, productivity increased by 3.8 percent, the largest increase in and the retirement of the baby boomers will reverse this alchemy. seven years. Comparatively few productive workers were let go, The federal government can also pay for public benefits by selling and many of those who were worked in firms that simply dis- bonds to investors—up to a point. Because legislators try to covered a way to do without them, in part by offshoring a range buy votes, the political dynamics push toward benefits of ever- of tasks. increasing generosity combined with low taxes—a toxic mix when As Dirk Pilat, an OECD economist, observed in 2004, these use of entitlements by beneficiaries is high. Debt levels eventually developments “are part of a process of search and experimentation, explode and tax levels explode soon after, crippling firms and where some firms succeed and grow and others fail and disappear.” driving away talent. Countries that allow this process of creative destruction have an Even employer benefits have unintended consequences, as edge, Pilat suggests, in reaping the full benefits of technology demonstrated by the “job lock” workers stuck in poor-fitting posi- investment. tions experience because they are afraid they will lose their health- care coverage. The system made great sense in earlier decades, hE job losses we’ve seen over the last few years have when lifetime employment was the expectation of employer and affected American workers unevenly. Those with some employee alike and when few married women worked. Today, T college, 26 percent of the adult population, have an unem- however, employer benefits can impede the smooth functioning of ployment rate hovering around 8.3 percent. For the 30 percent with labor markets and thwart worker efforts to develop their skills in only a high-school diploma, the unemployment rate is 10.1 per- new jobs and industries, undermining the central advantage of the cent. And for those without a high-school diploma, 13.4 percent of U.S. economy. the population, the unemployment rate is 13.8 percent. Meanwhile, the 30 percent of adults over the age of 25 with a hAT we need is a leaner, more flexible welfare state college degree or more have fared well, with an unemployment founded on the principles of personalization and rate around 4.5 percent as of July. These are the workers who—a W choice, but one that protects those who hit a patch of handful of brilliant dropouts aside—staff the digital organizations bad luck or whose marginal productivity lags behind the level that are driving the economy forward. This is also the group that demanded by digital organizations. To that end, we favor a pro- tends to outsource household labor—by buying meals outside of gram of what we call “citizen benefits.” Americans would have the home, day-care services, and much else—providing employ- access to a range of benefits sponsored not by their employer, but
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by a federal exchange. Just as workers today have employer- workers whose employers continued offering coverage, very sponsored retirement plans and health-insurance policies, all cit- little would change under citizen benefits. izens would have access to exchange-sponsored benefits. But for those whose employers dropped coverage, those who But citizen benefits would be entirely voluntary—there never had employer coverage, and those who simply prefer an would be no mandates imposed on individuals or employers— alternative to their employer’s coverage, one or more public and employers could continue offering benefits to their workers insurance pools would be open to everyone. Private insurers (but without receiving preferential tax treatment). There would would offer different coverage options and benefit packages in be subsidies to the disadvantaged, but they would be much the pool and compete on price. Plans participating in the pool more transparent than they are under today’s arrangements. would be subject to guaranteed-issue and renewal rules, and they And tradeoffs between greater pay, higher benefits, different would be community-rated. Insurers could still offer coverage benefit mixes, and greater costs would be much more trans- outside the exchanges without facing these federal requirements, parent than they are today, too. A federal safety net would con- meaning that ACA’s regulations would be repealed. A federal tinue to exist to catch those who fell through the cracks of the reinsurance program would help offset insurers’ costs for the citizen-benefit system. most expensive subscribers they cover. To see how such a system would work, consider health insur- The federal government would subsidize, on a sliding scale, ance. To switch to a system of citizen benefits, two large tax the premiums of families earning less than 200 percent of the fed- expenditures favoring employer-sponsored insurance—the eral poverty line, rather than the 400 percent ceiling established deductibility of insurance-related health expenses by employers under the ACA. Subsidies would be fairly transparent in this and the exclusion of employer-provided health benefits from system—federal revenues would redistribute toward the poor individual income taxation—would be repealed. The primary through premium support and toward the very sick through re - effect of this change would be that many employers currently insurance and risk adjustment. providing health insurance would drop their coverage and instead Ultimately, the system would not offer tax subsidies for health increase the pay of their workers. Workers could use the higher insurance; but to allow health-care and insurance markets to take-home pay to purchase insurance. adjust, tax subsidies could be temporarily offered—with incen- Or not purchase it. The individual mandate imposed by tives for enrollment in (lower-cost) catastrophic-coverage plans. the Democrats’ recently passed health-care reform law, the It would also move us toward a system where insurance actually Affordable Care Act (ACA), would be repealed, and employers functions as insurance, protecting enrollees from the risk of would not be required to provide coverage or endure new taxes unforeseen expensive services rather than paying for relatively to support citizen benefits, meaning the ACA’s play-or-pay inexpensive and predictable costs. Finally, for the system to bring penalty for not covering workers would also be repealed. For down future federal deficits, it would ultimately have to replace Enjoy the rewards. Get something back for your everyday purchases. Use your National Review Magazine Platinum Plus® MasterCard® credit card with WorldPoints® rewards, and you’ll earn points you can redeem for cash, travel, merchandise, even unique adventures.N Rewards for the things you buy anyway. You also have the chance to show your support for National Review Magazine every time you present your card.
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Medicare and the services to seniors that that program pro- vides—a change that would clearly need to happen gradually in order to be politically viable. OUR REAL retirement-savings benefits could be delivered in a similar way. The federal government would sponsor IrA-style plans, and existing IrAs and similar individual accounts would be rolled into them. Individuals could contribute to these new plans Gulf Disaster but would not be required to. Employers could match their employees’ contributions but would not be required to. They The conventional wisdom was could also continue to sponsor their own retirement plans and wrong, wrong, wrong match employee contributions to them. The federal government would provide its own match for contributions made by individ- uals in households earning under 200 percent of the poverty line. BY LOU DOLINAR All income-tax refunds would automatically be placed in an in- dividual account unless the taxpayer specified otherwise. Also our months after the Deepwater Horizon spill—which by default, 3 percent of earnings would be transferred by his President obama called the “worst environmental dis- employer from each employee’s paycheck to an individual aster America has ever faced”—the oil is disappearing, account, if the employee did not participate in an employer- F and fisheries are returning to normal. It turns out that sponsored plan or opt out of the default. this incident exposed some things that are seriously wrong in the Social Security would continue to exist, but over time it would world of oil—and I don’t mean exploding wells. There was a shrink to become more of a safety-net pension program (while broad-based failure on the part of the media, the science estab- retaining its other functions, such as providing disability bene- lishment, and the federal bureaucracy. With the nation and its fits). As with health-insurance tax subsidies, in the long run the leaders looking for facts, we got instead a massive plume of goal would be to eliminate tax incentives for savings entirely, a apocalyptic mythology and threats of Armageddon. In the Gulf, move that could be coupled with lower marginal tax rates, but this misinformation has cost jobs, lowered property values, and this, too, would require a transition period. devastated tourism, and its effects on national policy could be A third type of citizen benefit would be an income-loss insur- deep and far-reaching. ance program that would replace the state/federal unemployment To get an idea of the scale of misinformation involved, con- program. It would do so by allowing holders of retirement- sider how many of the most widely reported narratives about the savings accounts to take qualified distributions from them in the spill—ones that have woven their way into the national con- event of unemployment, divorce, death of a spouse, or short-term sciousness—have turned out to be dubious. Some examples: disability. What is more, accountholders could borrow, up to East Coast beaches are threatened. Everyone got the wrong some limit, against future savings if existing savings are deplet- idea about the magnitude of the spill from the very beginning. ed. For periods of unemployment lasting longer than 16 weeks, Simply put, while terrible, it was never going to be as big as most individual “re-employment accounts” would be given to those thought it would be. The spreading of this East Coast–beach still out of work, providing them with $5,000 to use for income meme was a joint operation of NCAr, the National Center for support, job training, or employment services. Holders of re- Atmospheric research, and the media. In June, NCAr produced employment accounts could keep however much of the $5,000 a slick computer-modeled animated video that showed a gigantic was left upon finding a job. After 20 weeks of unemployment, a part of the spill making its way around the southern tip of Florida traditional social-insurance program, similar to today’s govern- and up the East Coast. oil covered everything from the Gulf to the ment unemployment insurance, would provide an additional Grand Banks. “BP oil slick could hit East Coast in weeks: gov- safety net. This approach would give workers the flexibility they ernment scientists,” dutifully reported the New York Daily News. need to seek training or to relocate to a more promising labor CBS News, MSNBC, and many other media outlets chimed in in market. the same vein. The video was wildly popular on YouTube. Everyone from policymakers to entrepreneurs to parents But then the government, in the form of a more senior bureau- wants to know about “the jobs of the future.” But just as no one cracy, the National oceanographic and Atmospheric Adminis - in 1800 could have predicted the extent to which the railroad tration (NoAA), disavowed the scenario. would reshape the American landscape, there is no way to know In fact, according to Chuck Watson of Watson Technical exactly what the economy will look like in 2050 or even in 2015. Consulting—a Savannah, Ga., firm specializing in computer What we do know is that a dynamic market economy demands modeling of the effects of hurricanes, seismic events, geophysi- openness and flexibility. Trade, offshoring, and the global sourc- cal hazards, and weapons of mass destruction—the simulation ing of jobs are not just a quirk of history. As transaction costs was bogus from the very beginning, because it ignored impor- decline, successful firms focus on their distinctive internal capa- tant conditions in the Gulf. Furthermore, says Watson, the media bilities while mobilizing the resources of other specialized never took account of how diluted the oil would be once it hit the firms, wherever they are based. rather than fight this powerful Atlantic: The bulk of the theoretically massive spill the video tendency, we need to embrace it. The citizen-benefits model shows amounts to roughly a quart of oil per square mile. Watson would build on American strengths. It has the potential to give the united States the world’s most modern, flexible, and cost- Mr. Dolinar is a retired columnist and reporter for Newsday. He is currently in effective social contract, an essential competitive advantage in Mobile, Ala., working on a book about what really did happen in the Deepwater a shrinking world. Horizon spill.
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claims flat-out that NOAA was “gold digging” for grants; there’s probably more federal research money floating around the Gulf than there is oil. “There is a feeding frenzy with people trying to get funding for their specialty,” he says. Giant plumes of oil. By mid-May, oil was still comparatively scarce in the Gulf. Disappointed, the media began trying to figure out where it had gone. Marine researchers were drafted to provide the answer. Diluted oil was being found beneath the surface; but how diluted, no one was sure, and there was nothing vaguely resembling peer-reviewed literature. Still, news reports implied or asserted that “enormous oil plumes” were waiting, like submerged monsters, to rise and attack unsuspecting beaches and wetlands. The New York Times summed up the media consensus on May 15: “Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide, and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.” The article quoted Samantha Joye, a marine-sciences professor at the University of Georgia, as saying that this oil was mixed The leak, pre-cap with water in the consistency of “thin salad dressing.” According to the Washington Post, James H. Cowan Jr., a pro- Berman and Watson are contributors to The Oil Drum, a fessor at Louisiana State University, reported “a plume of oil in group blog written by and for people in the energy business. The a section of the Gulf 75 miles northwest of the source of the leak. website has been debunking many of the extreme scenarios sur- Cowan said that his crew sent a remotely controlled submarine rounding the spill. Most of its contributors are proponents of into the water, and found it full of oily globules, from the size of “peak oil” theories, and thus are skeptical of oil’s future and a thumbnail to the size of a golf ball.” The Post said that this eager to explore alternatives. The oil industry has come to a showed the oil might slip past containment booms and pollute sorry pass when its skeptics are its most credible defenders. beaches and marshland. The Corexit threat. No aspect of the spill response has been But late in May, NOAA did a study that was far less alarming. more controversial than the widespread use of Corexit, a family It found weak concentrations of oil in the area surrounding the of detergent-like compounds that break up oil, hence the name Deepwater Horizon site: 0.5 parts per million, maximum. The “dispersant.” Once broken up, oil evaporates, and is also easily median was a little over 0.2 parts per million. As with the “giant” eaten by bacteria. Dispersion turns thick, ugly slicks into spill that threatened the East Coast, that’s barely above the widely distributed droplets, minimizing damage to beaches and threshold of detection. And by late July and early August, BP, the sensitive wetlands. Massive application of dispersants is the federal government, and some independent researchers were reason the spill disappeared so quickly; but it’s important not to saying they couldn’t find any plumes at all. “We’re finding spray the dispersants directly on living things, like marshlands hydrocarbons around the well, but as we move away from the or coral. well, they move to almost background traces in the water col- Corexit has faced a variety of criticisms. Some say it is umn,” said Adm. Thad Allen, the administration’s point man on absolutely toxic, even more so when mixed with oil, and blame the spill. Some 75 percent of the oil released is gone—and that’s it for illness, including cancer, among spill workers in Alaska based on new estimates that put the spill rate at the high end and elsewhere. They claim it’s been banned in Britain because of earlier projections. it’s poisonous. They also suggest that Corexit is more dangerous As with the bogus doomsday model, industry experts say the and less effective than alternative dispersants, and has been used giant-plume threat was greatly overstated by scientists and fur- because BP has a financial interest in the firm that makes it. ther blown out of proportion by the media. According to Arthur While this full-blown Corexit fear has been the province, for the Berman, a respected petroleum expert at Labyrinth Consulting most part, of green blogs, a few such allegations have made their Services in Sugar Land, Texas, the theory flunks basic physics. way into mainstream publications like the New York Times, as “Oil is lighter than water and rises above it in all known situa- well as recent congressional hearings. tions on this planet. The idea of underwater plumes defies every- The reality is that enough of anything will kill you, but that the thing that we know about physical laws and has distressed me amount of Corexit in the Gulf is highly diluted. As for the British from the outset about these unscientific reports.” ban on Corexit, it was based not on toxicity, but on the product’s It also ignores the Gulf’s well-known ability to break down slipperiness: Because the island nation is surrounded by a rocky, oil. Berman points out that the Gulf has for millennia been a ecologically sensitive coastal environment, its version of the warm, rich ecological gumbo of natural oil seeps, oil-eating bac- EPA makes sure all the small creatures that live there can cling teria, and marine life that subsists on the bacteria. His research, safely to their rocks. If oil or Corexit gets on a rock, the humble he says, suggests that the spill represents at most four times as limpet, the official guinea pig, loses its grip, so Corexit failed the much oil as seeps into the Gulf naturally in a year—in other tests. It is approved for application to spills in open water.
words, it is eminently digestible by the native ecosystem. Even the EPA, which tries to ban basically everything but BP
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prune juice, has always approved of Corexit under tight super- vision. The ePA weighed in with new findings at the beginning of August: It said that Corexit was “similar” in toxicity to other The Road to dispersants, and that there was no evil synergistic effect when Corexit was combined with oil. To the extent we need to worry about subtle, long-term environmental problems, the issue of residual oil is 100 times more important than Corexit. CHARIKAR Senior scientist Judith McDowell of the Woods hole Oceano - graphic Institution, a marine biologist who recently returned Afghans have noticed that we are not from the Gulf, says she isn’t entirely comfortable with the com- the Soviet Union pound. But “given the situation in the Gulf,” she says, “given the massive amounts of oil and the human-health consequences at BY J. D. JOHANNES the well site, they had no choice.” She adds that dispersants should not be used with all spills. “It’s a trade-off when one wants to protect shoreline habitats, but you shouldn’t apply Bamiyan, Afghanistan dispersants in all situations.” he Soviets wouldn’t come up here with less than a bat- talion,” says Tim Lynch, a retired Marine Corps offi- cer driving us down the two-lane blacktop that crosses LL this misinformation comes at a serious cost. even if ‘T the Shomali Plain, one of the largest and most fertile the administration quickly rescinds its ban on offshore agricultural regions in Afghanistan. Alexander the Great founded A drilling (cost: 50,000 jobs, more than $2 billion in lost the ancient city of Bagram on this plain, which opens up just north wages), as appeared likely in early August, the economic impact of Kabul, widens through Parwan Province, and finally dead-ends of the spill and the paranoia surrounding it will be huge. at the Salang and Panjshir rivers. Centuries later, Afghanistan’s Potential visitors and customers are scared. Communist government would choose the same locale for a major n The real-estate company CoreLogic, as quoted by Bloom- air base, which today hosts the U.S.-led Coalition’s logistics-and- berg, says property values could fall by about $3 billion over the transshipment hub, Bagram Airfield. The Macedonians, the next few years along the Gulf, and as much as $56,000 for some Soviets, and now the Americans: All have found their way to the houses. Shomali Plain. n A trade group, the U.S. Travel Association, said the tourism “This area is primarily Tajik,” Lynch says. “The Tajiks fought industry in Florida alone could stand to lose up to $18.6 billion the Soviets harder than the Pashtuns, but don’t seem to mind over the next three years from the BP oil spill, even though the Americans that much.” There are pockets of Pashtuns, but the well has been capped. Tajik predominance makes the drive up the highway, through the n There are dozens of anecdotal reports that no one is buying plain, and over the ragged road through the mountains to Bamiyan Gulf seafood, even in areas unaffected by the spill. Gulf Coast relatively safe for three Americans and a hazara interpreter/fixer. shrimpers and fishermen are in a tough spot: On one hand, as If a group of Soviet travelers had ventured up here in their day, the more areas of the Gulf are declared safe, they presumably won’t mujahedeen would have killed them within an hour. Once in the be able to collect compensation from BP or the government and hazarajat area, Westerners can mostly roam around freely. The will have to get back to work; on the other, no one’s buying their greatest risk in Afghanistan, according to Lynch, is disease or ill- catch. Given the public fear of toxins in food, this problem could ness. “The second-highest risk is car wreck,” he says, a fact you last a long time. might pick up from watching him drive in the traditional Afghan n even if the drilling ban ends, regulatory uncertainty will style: like a maniac. “Way down on the list is the Taliban,” he says. exact a huge cost from oil firms and their shareholders. Some There are attacks on U.S. forces on the Shomali Plain and in the insider reports suggest that oil assets in the Gulf are already surrounding valleys, but they pale in contrast to the Soviet expe- being disposed of at fire-sale prices. rience. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, there were nine What’s especially unfortunate here is that all the misinforma- separate major expeditions into the Panjshir Valley. On the sev- tion connected to overreaction to the spill may have had a serious enth campaign, 15,000 Soviet troops and 5,000 Communist influence on President Obama and his advisers—leading, for Afghan troops moved over the Shomali Plain in an attempt to example, to the Gulf drilling ban and an overly strict regulatory take the valley, and at one point an entire Soviet division and approach. This is a tough sell for conservatives, many of whom Afghan corps were dedicated to clearing out mujahedeen here. are looking for evil purposefulness, rather than delusion, in the They failed. By way of comparison, the U.S.-led Operation administration’s policies. But think of it this way. We have the Anaconda, launched in March 2002 in Paktia Province, involved most liberal administration in history, and it is composed of peo- 1,700 helicopter-borne troops, 1,000 Afghan militiamen, and ple who lack the reflexive skepticism that conservatives apply to several smaller special-operations units. The recent Operation the mainstream media and left-wing blogs. Spend enough time Moshtarak in helmand Province included a mix of about 4,000 following the reporting and blogging on Deepwater Horizon, Coalition ground-combat troops and 4,000 Afghan National and you come to realize that the administration’s behavior in Army (ANA) troops, and is the only Coalition operation com- the crisis likely wasn’t based on a cynical master plan; rather, parable in size to the various Soviet Panjshir expeditions. the administration was overwhelmed by sheer panic about the magnitude of the potential disasters, outlined by its most loyal Mr. Johannes is a documentary filmmaker and former Marine. He has traveled supporters, that it thought it faced. through Iraq and Afghanistan, on his own and as an embedded reporter, since 2005.
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For the Soviets and the mujahedeen, the Shomali Plain and the that Nbard had not made any plans following the prescribed five- Panjshir Valley were what Sun Tzu termed “desperate ground”— paragraph order of the ANA, as well as by the fact that he does terrain that must be defended or captured. It is certainly storied not know how to read a map. Nbard is upset with the mission his ground: “Panjshir” in the Dari language means “five lions,” a superiors have given him. reference to the legend of five devout brothers who protected “It is a useless mission . . . it is a stupid mission . . . it is only good the valley from intruders. for getting soldiers killed,” Nbard says. The mission is a “presence In the war against the Soviets, a new lion emerged—Ahmed patrol,” a drive through the Musahee district in the southwest of Shah Massoud. An ethnic Tajik and a sophisticated mujahedeen Kabul Province. A presence patrol is often described by calloused commander, Massoud was educated at Afghanistan’s national veterans as “driving around waiting to get blown up.” Nbard military academy and studied engineering at Kabul Polytechnic. knows firsthand the uselessness of these types of operations; he He trained his fighters in the use of advanced weapons and spent years ambushing similar Soviet patrols in the 1980s. developed a logistics pipeline from China. At the peak of his In other words, the Coalition is using some of the same tactics power, he may have led as many as 50,000 fighters, and his well- that so dismally failed the Soviets, while the Taliban employs those honed publicity machine ensured that he became known as the that worked so well for the mujahedeen. “Lion of the Panjshir.” After the Soviets were forced out, The former mujahedeen often chafe at the bureaucracy and Massoud’s party dominated the short-lived mujahedeen govern- lethargy of the Afghan National Army and the Coalition. “Just give ment of Afghanistan. In 1994, Massoud and his army returned to me guns, trucks, ammo, and fuel, and I will defeat the Taliban!” their home field in the Shomali and Panjshir, fighting the Taliban Maj. Shane Gries, a member of the Validation Transition Team, to a draw until Massoud was assassinated by al-Qaeda shortly cries in a pitch-perfect parody of Afghan bravado. “But it is not that before 9/11. simple when you start putting NATO elements in the mix.” And so There is no current equivalent to Massoud in the Shomali and Col. Zalmat Nbard, once a commander of mujahedeen and a loyal Panjshir now. The Tajiks, with the exception of a few rent-a- deputy to the Lion of the Panjshir, today dutifully follows orders fighters and day-labor Taliban, have no quarrel with the and drives around waiting to get blown up. Coalition. Many of Massoud’s lieutenants have taken up posi- But we’re not using all of the old Soviet tactics. For instance, tions in the current Afghan National Army, working side by side the destroy-and-search mission is out. That practice was exactly with U.S. forces. what it sounds like: Aircraft would drop bombs on a village, then One of them is Col. Zalmat Nbard, commander of the 1st helicopter gunships would strafe it. Afterward, Soviet soldiers Battalion, 111th Division, southwest of Kabul. Nbard was an would search what was left of the smoldering village. Those free- effective enough fighter of Soviets that he was commissioned as gunning operations brought proportional retribution: In one case, a colonel by the interim mujahedeen government. He command- an entire battalion of the Soviet 201st Motor Rifle Division was ed Tajik fighters during the civil war and fought the Taliban until destroyed on the road between Gardez and Khost. the U.S. invasion in 2001. He was trained in Massoud’s acade- In nine years, about 15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in mies and rose through the ranks to become a commander. There Afghanistan. In roughly the same time, the Coalition has lost is little doubt that he has more combat experience than all his 1,993. NATO and U.S. advisers combined, and all agree that he is a seasoned leader of Afghans. That Nbard is on the side of the He failed tactics of the Soviets are on full display in Lester Coalition at all, rather than stirring up trouble in the neighbor- Grau’s book The Bear Went Over the Mountain. Grau hood, is telling. The major fights in Afghanistan are in the south T culled reports on Soviet actions from the Frunze, a Soviet and east, the Pashtun areas, not in the northern Tajik ones. general-staff college. The reports read like a chronicle of events that could have happened in 2008 rather than 1988—the loop of Afghan history repeating itself with better firepower. The compan- He officers of the Afghan National Army fall into four ion book to The Bear Went Over the Mountain, one told from the loose categories. There are former mujahedeen comman- mujahedeen side, is Grau’s Afghan Guerrilla Warfare: In the T ders like Nbard, former officers of the Communist regime Words of the Mujahedeen Fighters, written with Ali Ahmad Jalali. Nbard fought, a few retired Taliban, and young officers who have In both books, the Shomali Plain and the road between Kabul no history in the 30 years of war since 1980. There is some ten- and Charikar come up again and again. To take one example, the sion between the Communist officers and mujahedeen veterans. attack on Mumtaz in 1988, detailed from the mujahedeen side, is The Communists criticize the former mujahedeen for their failure notable for the firepower they brought to bear on a brigade-size to follow doctrine. The mujahedeen slight the Communists as garrison of government troops. “Mujahideen armaments in - unwilling to fight. cluded one Saqar, one BM12, one 122mm howitzer, six 82mm Nbard, who grew up fighting first the Soviets and then the mortars, eight 82mm recoilless rifles and approximately 40 RPG- Taliban, is frustrated by the type of war he is being told to fight 7s,” according to the mujahedeen who spoke to the authors. “We now. U.S. advisers try to get him to follow ANA doctrine, which is also had some ZSU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns and some Stinger based on U.S. Army doctrine from the 1990s. His superiors at the anti-aircraft missiles.” ministry of defense often are officers from the former Communist The Sarqar and BM 12 are multiple-rocket launchers with a regime, and they still fall back on Soviet tactics. His primary coun- range of 8,000 meters. The howitzer and ZSU are so heavy that terparts on the battlefield are Turks, whose government has issued they are usually towed behind a truck. rules of engagement that make them incredibly risk-averse. The plan at Mumtaz was to block the Charikar–Kabul road His frustration shows through during a planning session for a from the north and south, then bombard the garrison with rock- routine patrol with two U.S. officers. They are in turn frustrated ets and artillery for seven days before a 400-man ground assault
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Swinging from a destroyed Soviet tank in the Panjshir Valley
force would move on it. The Communist government’s troops Empirical evidence shows the restrictive ROE can protect held out for only a few hours before making a breakout for Coalition troops. A recent analysis by the National Bureau of Kabul, to the south. Economic Research found that “counterinsurgent-generated civil- By way of contrast, attacks by the Taliban on small U.S. outposts, ian casualties from a typical incident are responsible for six addi- like Combat Outpost Keating and Wanat in the eastern mountains tional violent incidents in an average-sized district in the follow ing near the Pakistan border, were fought with only mortars and RPGs. six weeks.” The tribal code of honor requires badal—blood The fighting at Keating and Wanat was fierce, but the Taliban does revenge—for the killing of a family or tribe member. If fewer not have nearly the firepower the mujahedeen employed. On the Afghans are accidentally harmed, then there are fewer instances Shomali Plain, the only comparable attack on U.S. forces was in of the blood revenge being sought against Coalition troops. May 2010, when the Taliban mustered 30 fighters with rifles, RPGs, and suicide vests to make a charge at Bagram Airfield. What is most striking in Bear and the scholarly Soviet-military hE Soviet force that arrived in Afghanistan was an artillery writings about Afghanistan is what is missing: There is absolute- army, with some tanks and mechanized infantry. Over the ly no evidence the Soviets seriously attempted population-centric T course of the 1980s, the Soviet 40th Army morphed into an counterinsurgency to win the passive support of the population, air-assault and mechanized-maneuver force. The U.S. military of which is a key to understanding where the United States stands the late 1990s was heavy and maneuver-based. It has since grown in Afghanistan. The WikiLeaks documents show that the vast into its counterinsurgency mission, but it still clings to too many majority of Coalition missions in Parwan are for meetings with conventional habits. The American way of counterinsurgency, as Afghan-government officials and assessments for development articulated in Field Manual 3-24, written in part by Gen. David projects. These discussions and assessments are textbook coun- Petraeus, is the exact opposite of the Soviet approach. We don’t terinsurgency. destroy-and-search, we sit-and-talk, mostly with local tribal lead- Soviet counterinsurgency did have economic, social, and politi- ers. We have different ideas, and a different kind of army. cal lines of effort—brutal ones: The Soviets succeeded in destroy- The Soviets in the 1980s to some degree had a less complicat- ing the rural agricultural economy by razing crops, clear-cutting ed fight than the one U.S. forces face now. During the Soviet occu- orchards in the Shomali Plain, and destroying irrigation systems. pation, the mujahedeen would actually come out and fight in the Their political line of effort was to exploit tribal and party rivalries open, at times, in an attempt to hold land and lines. It had stand- among the mujahedeen. The social one was to create hundreds of ing military units; the Taliban, on the other hand, operates in cells. thousands of refugees fleeing to Pakistan while sending select And, as the study from the NBER shows, a significant portion of urban youths to be educated and indoctrinated in the Soviet Union. the attacks on Coalition forces are driven by revenge rather than There was a kind of logic to this version of counterinsurgency: If by offensive strategy, meaning that the factors in play are more the greatest advantage of the insurgent is to hide in plain sight cultural than strictly military. among the civilian population, then get rid of the civilians. Perhaps nothing sums up the difference better than what I saw The Soviets put minimal effort into distinguishing civilians from as I drove through the city of Charikar. It passed from Soviet to combatants, and the Taliban was just as brutal, if not more so. Its mujahedeen hands in the 1980s, and the battle between the campaign in the Shomali Plain was as medieval as its imposition Taliban and Massoud in the 1990s left it practically a ghost town, of sharia, and at times amounted to no more than a bloody pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel. Today, Charikar hums with ethnic/sectarian cleansing, the murder of Uzbeks and hazaras by commerce, especially the downtown jewelry market, where gold the thousands. By contrast, Gen. Stanley McChrystal introduced chains gleam through the clean plate-glass windows. Four civil- highly restrictive rules of engagement in 2009 to minimize civilian ians in an old Land Cruiser, packing only pistols, could stop for casualties. The changes were controversial, accompanied by diesel fuel on the outskirts of town without much worry. Which many anecdotal accounts of how tying the hands of U.S. forces means Charikar is safer than Tijuana or Juarez—that’s not saying
JAMIE FRANCIS was causing more of our troops to be killed or wounded in action. much, but it’s something.
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but not a one of them carries a weapon. So they’re safe.” Austin addressed his commander: “We want to ambush them tonight in Eleventh-Hour the vil’, sir.” “How many?” Ellison asked. “We’ve counted eleven to 20,” Austin said. Counterinsurgency Ellison looked around. “You need four men to man posts,” he said. “Plus four as a quick-reaction force. Set your ambush We must quickly prepare the Kabul tonight with eight, but don’t let them cut you off.” A Pashtun interpreter in his second year in Helmand told me, government to win its own war “The Taliban fear the saman dirian [Marines]. They say saman- dari have much enthusiasm. They like to fight.” Austin showed BY BING WEST that. The Marines excel at raw firefights. In Marja, they will gradually exact a toll from the shoot-and-scoot bikers. As this HE Obama Surge began in July of 2009 with the entry of patient strategy of attrition continues, the trend points toward a Ma rine brigade into southern Hel mand Province. For Marine control across the populated districts of Helmand by three years, a British brigade had struggled in Hel mand, next summer. T meeting fierce resistance in every district. The surge Checking the Taliban momentum with American power, was meant to firmly establish Coalition control in this province though, is a midpoint, not a solution. After showing the Af ghans and elsewhere, with the goal of eventually handing the country that we are in charge, we will need to get them ready to take over to the Afghan army. charge themselves—the army and the civilians. And some of our The surge has one more year to produce results, and then efforts to win over the populace may be making this goal harder Obama has pro mised to begin withdrawing our troops. So how is to achieve. the Helmand campaign go ing, and what does it portend about Here’s an example. When Ellison left the outpost, he strode other areas? along the dirt road. I suspected he was trolling, hoping the Having just returned from my third trip in a year to the pro - Tali ban would engage and lose a man or two, which is how vince, I’d say that depends on how you assess success. In a sen- most direct-fire engagements end. He headed toward a mosque tence, the Marines are doing well, the Afghan army is tagging where several men were loitering. The mullah hast ened across along, and the people are standing on the sidelines. a poppy field to parley. Ellison listened to his complaints about Most of Helmand is a sand-and-dirt wasteland, though the the shortage of work and a Taliban neighborhood gang that had Helmand River runs 100 miles from the north to the southwest burned his motorcycle. Point out the Taliban compound, Ellison through the center of the province, irrigating a “green zone” said, and I’ll take care of that. The mullah refused. Okay, El li- about 20 miles in width. The main crop is opium poppies; this son said, I’ll give you ten dollars a day to pull weeds out of the one province produces close to half the world’s supply. The canal and get the water to your crops. It’s not my ca nal, the Marine strategy was to seize and hold the river valley, then mullah replied; it belongs to the community. Give me ten men pounce upon the Taliban and drug stronghold of Marja, located to clean it. near the center of the province. This “give me” attitude is one of the ways in which we have This February’s assault on Marja by thousands of Afghan created a culture of entitlement rather than self-help. This mis- soldiers and U.S. Marines, the war’s largest operation in eight take originates at the highest levels. According to Adm. Mike years, received intense press coverage. At first it was overhyped Mul len, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, “the central mission in as a success, because the fighting ended in a few weeks. Un - Afghanistan right now is to protect the people, certainly, and that fortunately, the new district governor failed to gain traction, and would be inclusive of everybody. And that—in an insurgency and the Taliban began a campaign of murder and intimidation that a counterinsurgency, that’s really the center of gravity.” continues today. Marja left a bad taste, since it showed that the That sort of gibberish has caused our current predicament. Taliban could adapt its tactics and string out the war. Counter in sur gen cy is based upon a social contract: Our soldiers In late July, I accompanied Lt. Col. Kyle Ellison, the comman- bring money and honest government officials; in return, the der of Marine Battalion 2-6, to remote Outpost Jus tice, deep in people cease passively and actively supporting the insurgents. Taliban-controlled territory in western Marja. Sgt. Christopher The Mullen approach misapplied counterinsurgency by giving Austin, 23, was in charge of a combined squad of eight Marines away $30 billion since the invasion without demanding self- and nine Afghan soldiers, with no interpreter. Austin carefully security in return. pointed at a row of stout houses a hundred meters away. We have been giving the villagers free goods for nine years. “We get hit from there twice a day,” he said. “So watch it. They Annually, the 31 Provincial Reconstruction Teams and District ride up on motorcycles, pick up cached AKs [rifles], blaze away, Support Teams and our military spend $3 billion on projects that and drive off. We don’t bomb the houses.” The Taliban knows are wildly popular. In fact, they are the only projects in many our rules of engagement well. districts. The one acronym most Afghans have memorized is On a bare hill behind the small settlement fluttered the flags of PRT. a cemetery. “When we score a kill,” Austin said, “they take the In return, nothing has been asked of the communities that have coffin up there in a parade of bikes. It looks like Hell’s Angels, benefited. Indeed, until a few weeks ago, Karzai was opposed to village self-defense for fear it would give rise to another set of Mr. West, a former assistant secretary of defense and former combat Marine, is just warlords. Because of all this, an attitude of entitlement and back from his eighth trip to Afghanistan. dependency has taken root. Now, suddenly, we, the givers, are
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asking the villagers to depend upon themselves and upon a gov- ble in that timeframe. Ben ev o lent counterinsurgency and billions ernment that depends upon us. That will be a hard sell. Until they of dollars will not persuade the Pashtun tribes to turn meaning- believe the Taliban are losing, most Pashtun villages will not fully against the Taliban, particularly if they believe the Amer - defend themselves or identify the secret Taliban who intimidate icans are leaving in a year. The people will not throw out the them, and who are their cousins and neighbors. Taliban; that is the job of the Afghan security forces. The priori- Our battalions are spending too much time on nation building: ty mission for our forces should be to train those forces and instill Every battalion gives a briefing that shows security as only one in them the confidence required to win. of its four Lines of Operation, or LOOs. Security, they say, is no Defeating an insurgency requires balancing three tasks: 1) more important than governance, economics, or the rule of law. destroy the insurgent forces; 2) remove the insurgents’ appeal and That military catechism is a fantasy, because the tribal response win over the people by building a nation with honest governance to all these well-meant priorities has not been commensurate with and the rule of law; 3) train an indigenous force. our efforts. Regarding task 1, we cannot destroy the Taliban. They are too Nation building by LOOs was also part of our military doctrine elusive and have a vast sanctuary. It’s not enough for our Special in Iraq, but it does not explain our success in that insurgency. Operations Forces to hammer the Talib leaders, as they are cer- True, the Sunnis did eventually rebel against al-Qaeda and the tainly doing. The rural districts also have to be controlled by Islamist extremists, but they did not come over because of Afghan forces, and that hasn’t happened yet. improved governance; in fact, they loathed the American- Regarding task 2, we don’t have the time or resources to build installed Shiite regime in Baghdad. a nation when its top leaders are so feckless. Corruption is rife at Instead, they decided to join the Americans because we were all levels, and their commitment to opposing the Taliban is shaky. the strong est tribe. I asked Abu Risha, who led the Sunni tribal Admiral Mullen has said, “Af ghan istan has to be stable enough, rebellion, why it took three years of blood and fighting before has to have enough governance, has to create enough jobs, have the Sunnis came over. He said, “You Ameri cans could not con- an economy that’s good enough so that the Taliban cannot re - vince us; we had to convince ourselves.” When they joined up, turn.” That certainly requires a vibrant nation. Yet President it was on the premise that the Americans would be staying. But Obama has scoffed, “Nobody thinks that Af ghan i stan is going that is not the case in Afghanistan. The Tal i ban repeat President to be a model Jef fer son i an democracy.” Obama’s pledge that we are leaving soon, so the people stand Our battalions are trying to build a nation from these un - aside. promising materials because senior officers from Mullen on down have bought into an unproven theory of liberal counterin- surgency. “Soldiers and Marines,” according to the doctrinal field ROM Marja, I visited Operating Base Geronimo in nearby manual entitled “Counterinsurgency,” “are expected to be nation Nawa district. When I was there last summer, the pace and builders as well as warriors.” If the president has rejected nation F nature of the fighting was similar to what we are seeing building, he must make that clear to his military commanders and now in Marja. But Nawa has distinctly improved; it is good let them concentrate on fighting and training. If he hasn’t, he enough to be considered a showcase. Nawa had an Afghan battal- must figure out a way to hold Afghanistan together as a nation ion commander who was willing to leave the wire, a new police once the Americans are gone. chief, a decent governor who had grown in self-confidence, an So task 3—training and instilling confidence in the Afghan assertive district council, and a bustling farmers’ market. forces—should be the first priority at present. In my combined- Lt. Col. George Nunez, the adviser to the local Afghan battal- action platoon in Vietnam, it took 16 months before we could turn ion, was optimistic. Hav ing advised an Iraqi battalion during the over the village to the Popular Force platoon. Every day we hard fighting in Anbar Province in 2006, he had a level eye. taught them on the job how to fight and how to have confidence “Before the summer of 2011,” he said, “we should turn Nawa that they could kill the Viet Cong. over to the Afghans. We’ll leave advisers. But most Marines If we expect to cut loose the Afghan forces a year from now, should be out of Nawa in a year.” we have to get serious about preparing them now. This war will The Marine battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jeff Holt, was more turn on whether they show they can beat the Taliban, not on guarded but still optimistic. “We’ll place the Af ghan forces in the Amer i can soldiers’ protecting the Pashtun tribes from their lead,” Holt said. “Beyond that, I can’t predict.” Taliban cousins. I next flew to Garmsir district at the bottom of Helmand, where Our domestic political clock is approaching midnight. We need Lt. Col. Ben Watson had deployed Battalion 3-1 in 50 outposts to fix dates to tasks. Otherwise, we will be suddenly rushing the across 350 square miles of farmland. Each outpost held an Amer - transition without having properly prepared the Afghan units. i can and an Afghan squad. Watson had deployed the combined I know—we tried this approach in Vietnam. There the war units systematically, week after week, snapping up territory from ended badly and millions were killed. So even as we turn the war the Taliban like Pac-Man. Garmsir had improved at an unexpect- over to Afghan forces, we must keep some American combat ed rate. Watson was in the process of seizing the Safar Bazaar, the units, air power, logistics, and large advisory teams committed, gateway from Pakistan into southern Afghanistan. With the com- and the U.S. Congress must allocate aid every year for perhaps bat drawing to a close, Watson was fighting a political battle to another decade. This means over $60 billion in 2011. After that, persuade the Afghan government to allow the local villagers to it would seem politically prudent to cut back in order to retain raise a police force. congressional support. Still, we are facing more than $40 billion I left Helmand convinced that the Marines will basically clear in 2012, and a like amount for years after that. The surge is work- the province over the next year. I was less certain that our national ing, but surges are temporary by nature, and Afghanistan is a command in Washington has a clear-eyed view of what is possi- long-term problem.
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from conservative foreign-policy intellectuals. John Bolton condemned clinton’s approach as reflecting an “instinct for the capillaries”; John Hillen, a scholar at the Heritage Foun - Fatal dation, urged the administration to make clear that “super- powers don’t do windows.” Their objections could be boiled down to two, both basically conservative: They believed that Conceit the U.s. should focus on its own national interest, which did not entail remaking other societies; and they viewed such pro- What’s wrong with nation building jects as unlikely to succeed in any case, because particular cultures and traditions generate institutions, not the other way BY JUSTIN LOGAN & around. What has changed about the first argument is that many CHRISTOPHER PREBLE conservatives now wonder whether nation building may be required for U.s. national security. On the second argument, mericans used to have a wise skepticism about some analysts believe that the U.s. intervention in the nation building. as recently as the 1990s, conserva- Balkans succeeded, and thus provides a template for future tives, especially, opposed the clinton administra- operations. A tion’s social-engineering projects in Haiti, somalia, To begin with the second argument, a brief look at the and the Balkans: They doubted that the U.s. military should, or Balkans suggests that the wariness some expressed at the time could, become a tool for creating modern states where none was well-founded. in the nearly 15 years since the Dayton existed. after 9/11, however, as the U.s. military drifted into accord was signed, Bosnia has been the site of the largest nation-building operations in afghanistan and iraq, even pre- state-building project on earth. On a per capita basis, the multi- viously skeptical observers found themselves endorsing the national project there has dwarfed even the post–World War ii expanded missions. Today, support for Barack Obama’s nation- efforts in Germany and Japan. Tiny Kosovo received higher building project in afghanistan is widespread, even among per capita expenditure. Yet, as political scientists Patrice conservatives. mcmahon and Jon Western warned in Foreign Affairs last Despite this new consensus, nation building remains expen- year, Bosnia “now stands on the brink of collapse”—partly as sive, unnecessary, and unwise. in a literal sense, nations, a consequence of persistent ethnic cleavages and the inherent unlike cars or computers, aren’t built: They develop organi- difficulty of state building. mcmahon and Western—who sup- cally. as charles Tilly observed in his 1990 book Coercion, port additional efforts in Bosnia to prevent a collapse—warn Capital, and European States, when the foundation of the that Bosnia has gone from being “the poster child for interna- modern nation-state was laid in europe during the 16th and tional reconstruction efforts” to being a cautionary tale about 17th centuries, it was a natural outgrowth of changes in mili- the limits of even very well-funded and focused efforts at state tary technology and resulted from the economic requirements building. of fielding a national army. it was the farthest thing imaginable similarly, in surveying conditions in Bosnia and Kosovo, from what goes today by the name of “nation building”—i.e., Gordon Bardos of columbia University recently concluded an external effort (usually by the United states) to create a that “it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we have viable national government where one does not currently exist. the intellectual, political, or financial wherewithal to transform in general, such efforts have been undertaken amid political the political cultures of other countries” at an acceptable cost. violence, as in the case of the clinton administration’s if Bosnia and Kosovo—european countries less rugged than endeavors in the Balkans and today’s efforts in the mountains afghanistan, and with, respectively, one-sixth and one-twelfth and valleys of afghanistan. of its population—represent the case for optimism in afghan - many of today’s nation-building proponents are sol - istan, then the case for gloom is strong. diers—but they resemble the military and political leaders of some might point to the U.s.-supported counterinsurgency the 17th century much less than they do the tweedy moderniza- efforts in el salvador and colombia as models to be emulated tion theorists of the 1950s and 1960s. They advocate using the in afghanistan. However, in both cases, it was not large-scale, U.s. military and civilian bureaucracies to help govern places U.s.-boots-on-the-ground state-building operations that suc- like afghanistan, in the hope that the result will be greater U.s. ceeded, but violent, enemy-centric tactics accompanied by national security. They favor a counterinsurgency effort that american financial and logistical support to sitting govern- includes distributing economic aid, establishing schools, orga- ments. as Benjamin schwarz, who analyzed U.s. efforts in el nizing modern military and police forces, adjudicating political salvador for the Defense Department, has made clear, the two disputes, uprooting corruption, and reforming judicial prac- strategically decisive events in the counterinsurgency there tices. as Gen. stanley mcchrystal promised before the recent were the cumulative effects of indiscriminate killing by death marja offensive: “We’ve got a government in a box, ready to squads supporting the government in the early 1980s, and the roll in.” collapse of the insurgency’s patron, the soviet Union. sim - This is the kind of ambition the clinton foreign policy dis- ilarly, in colombia, the game-changer was the government’s played in the 1990s, and it met with understandable scorn focus on improving the army’s officer corps and deploying a better-trained and better-armed army against the insurgents. Mr. Logan is associate director, and Mr. Preble is director, of foreign-policy studies There is little parallel between this and the nation building at the Cato Institute. under way in afghanistan.
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he larger disconnect is on the question of whether for successful state building on this scale; and there are espe- nation building is necessary for U.S. national security. cially strong centrifugal forces in Afghanistan, including ram- T A decade ago, the mainstream consensus on the impru- pant illiteracy, the country’s position as a plaything of regional dence of nation building was reflected in the foreign-policy powers (India and Pakistan), powerful identity politics, and a views of George W. Bush. During the 2000 campaign, Bush xenophobic culture. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that openly questioned the wisdom of such undertakings, and his Afghanistan simply is not far enough along in the historical foreign-policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, memorably de - processes that produced national states in the past. clared that the Bush administration wouldn’t have “the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten.” But Bush and Rice, along with many others, changed their he good news for Americans is that our security does minds in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. They succumbed to the not hinge on the emergence of an Afghan state. The tempting liberal argument that illiberal politics was the “root T U.S. retains the ability to prevent a Taliban takeover cause” of terrorism, and argued that using the U.S. military to without a large-scale, boots-on-the-ground presence in the spread political reform would enhance American security. This country. As for al-Qaeda, an extensive analysis by Columbia line of thinking yielded the two nation-building projects in Iraq University counterinsurgency expert Austin Long suggests and Afghanistan. The mission in Iraq is scheduled to end next that fewer than 20,000 U.S. troops would be sufficient to deal year, but the country’s medium-term prospects remain very with its forces in Afghanistan. much in doubt, and the U.S. has paid a high price in blood and That modest investment, aimed at an achievable goal, would treasure to achieve even the shaky equilibrium that exists leave us room to reexamine some of the assumptions that have today. In Afghanistan, despite the recent policy review and been embedded in U.S. thinking over the past decade, begin- after nearly nine years of fighting, there remains no clear ning with George W. Bush’s expansive interpretation of strategic end state in sight. America’s aims in the “long war.” Sounding distinctly Wil - There was such an end state available in October 2001. sonian, Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union address What was needed in Afghanistan was not counterinsurgency that “our calling, as a blessed country, is to make the world and nation building, but a violent response to the terrorist better.” his Second Inaugural raised the stakes even higher, attacks. however, as the U.S. routed the Taliban in Afghanistan setting an “ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” This and trained its sights on Iraq, it became clear that the problem Progressive streak in Bush’s thought helps us understand Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had identified in Afghan - some of the continuity we see in his successor: President istan—that there were no good targets—was true for the over- Obama’s foreign-affairs rhetoric is less lofty than President all War on Terror. In December 2001, immediately after the Bush’s, but the two are in basic agreement on America’s mis- successful overthrow of the Taliban (a feat accomplished with sion. Obama tells us that “extremely poor societies and weak no more than a few hundred U.S. personnel on the ground), states provide optimal breeding grounds for disease, terror- Charles Krauthammer published an article titled “We Don’t ism, and conflict.” he, too, wants to engage in nation building Peacekeep,” in which he argued that while U.S. military forces to solve those problems, and argues that America must “in - “fight the wars[,] our friends should patrol the peace.” The vest in building capable, democratic states that can establish Bush White house apparently disagreed, defining U.S. objec- healthy and educated communities, develop markets and tives in Afghanistan and Iraq expansively to include the estab- generate wealth.” lishment of viable, modern democracies, growing economies, The problem with the nation-building impulse remains what and equitable judicial systems. it was in the past: This project is rooted in deeply flawed ideas But what had changed? Why was it unwise for the Clinton about man’s ability to reshape society, and exhibits the very administration to seek to remake nations, but wise for the Bush type of “fatal conceit” that Friedrich von hayek scorned long and, later, Obama administrations to seek to do the same? The ago. It is incoherent to believe that the same government that response comes that Washington has national-security inter- can produce neither jobs nor well-educated children at home ests in Central Asia, whereas there were no such security inter- can build viable states in foreign lands with unfamiliar lan- ests at stake in the missions of the 1990s. It is undeniable that guages, customs, and cultures. To oppose such projects at we have important interests in Afghanistan, but it is also true home while supporting them abroad defies the laws of eco- that an ambitious state-building project there is unnecessary, nomics and basic common sense. and unlikely to protect those interests at a justifiable cost. If the It is a peculiar act of hubris to try to build a nation. After all, Obama administration is to be believed, the al-Qaeda presence as edmund Burke wrote, a nation is “not an idea only of local in Afghanistan is fewer than 100 men, and its presence in the extent, and individual momentary aggregation, but it is an idea Pakistani tribal areas “more than 300.” This is a threat we can of continuity, which extends in time as well as in numbers, and deal with in the same way we deal with the al-Qaeda threat in space. And this is a choice not of one day, or one set of peo- in Yemen, Somalia, or elsewhere: intelligence cooperation ple, not a tumultuary or giddy choice; it is a deliberate election (where available), special-operations forces, and drone strikes. of ages and generations.” echoing Burke, George Will argued Consider the following counterfactual: If everything in in 2006 that “when you hear the phrase ‘nation building,’ Afghanistan were the same today, except the U.S. did not remember, it is as preposterous as the phrase ‘orchid building.’ have a large military footprint there, would anyone propose Nations are not built from Tinker Toys and erector sets. They deploying 100,000 servicemen and -women to build the Afghans are complicated, organic growths, just as orchids are. And a government? We should doubt whether the government- they are not built, either.” building project is likely to succeed. There is little precedent Not in Afghanistan; not anywhere.
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The Bent Pin BY FLORENCE KING Heap o’ Nothin’
ACK when August was called the dog days, They don’t call him “No Drama Obama” for nothing. He’s columnists got a break. We were allowed, even even worse than we thought because he has committed the expected, to write about nothing much because ultimate American crime, worse than anything he has been B there was nothing much to write about. “Nothing accused of so far: He has no sense of humor. You can tell just happens in August” was a given. If you pointed out that by watching him at the mike that here is a person who knows World War I and Lizzie Borden both exploded in the first the words but not the tune. You see him standing like a grey- week of August, you were reminded that exceptions prove hound in the slips, straining upon the start, but he can’t sense the rule; as for Hiroshima, that was just a coincidence. where the start comes. Someone has over-coached him on The low-key, upbeat, dog-days vacation column thus the subject of “timing.” He doesn’t really feel it, he just became a journalistic tradition. As with all traditions, there knows that comedians are supposed to have something are certain rigid rules. First, never depress your readers. called timing, so he puts on a little half-smile and waits for Strive for humor but steer clear of wit because while humor it—you can almost hear him counting. goes for the jocular, wit goes for the jugular, and this par - My ultimate prediction is based on the scientific certainty ticular twain must never, never meet anywhere within the of female intuition. I have a feeling that a lot is going to hap- borders of the United States, however porous they may be. pen. I sense that something is gearing up, gathering speed, Second, never predict anything, even an idyll. Frayed Amer - starting to peek from behind the curtain. Lights keep going icans relax when they hear that nothing is happening, but if off in my mind like fireflies in a jar, and I already have a you remind them that nothing might not be happening you poem to go with it all: “Shine, Perishing Republic” by will set them to waiting for the other shoe to drop. Third and Robinson Jeffers. most important, wallow in sweet nostalgia until you sound We are in the throes of rapid, obligatory cultural change, like a poster child for arrested development. Lemonade and to see how bad that can get, imagine that the boy and girl stands, the old swimming hole, the toys your grandfather in The Blue Lagoon had lived to be rescued and brought whittled for you, the lamp you made by catching fireflies in back to civilization. They would have fallen apart. Some tea a jar—the whole family-values menu found in Edgar Guest’s partiers have already reached that point, but most Americans poem, which you must quote, that begins “It takes a heap o’ are still in the tics-and-twitches stage. livin’ in a house to call it home.” One such twitcher is Chris Matthews, whose finicky insis- It takes a heap o’ heapin’ to make a heap, so let’s get tence on correct geographical pronunciations seems to have started. reached the obsessive-compulsive level. Known for being a I predict that banks will never pay interest on savings Philadelphian, he spent much of Campaign ’08 taking care to again, and as soon as they get us resigned to that, they will pronounce Missouri as “Missouruh” as the natives did, and start charging us a fee to keep our money for us. changing the long A in Nevada and Colorado from “ah” to In all the turgid analyses of the “global financial crisis” to the local “eh.” As he was broadcasting from these places, I which we are subjected, nobody ever mentions a critical figured he was taking care not to flaunt his eastern vowels aspect of it: money as a figure of speech. “Penny wise and lest the natives think he was looking down on them and pound foolish,” “a day late and a dollar short,” “don’t take making fun of their flat western accents. any wooden nickels”—the list is endless in every language A reasonable interpretation, yes? No, because he never and there’s nothing global about it. People, miser and spend- stopped; he’s still doing it on his show. He will interrupt him- thrift alike, have an emotional connection to their money self to explain that this is the way to pronounce the place he’s that they don’t even realize until the figures-of-speech col- discussing, and he even corrects his guests, which can disrupt umn turns up blank in their national ledgers. That the euro is their train of thought and distract the viewer. My stomach ties now the coin of the realm in 16 countries is a standing order in knots whenever he cranks up his Ob-Com MapQuest ser- for psychological mayhem. vice. I wondered if he secretly wished he were from some big If the eternal complaint, “There’s nothing on TV,” seems tough state, but he doesn’t seem to have any masculinity truer since the digital conversion, it is. Cable companies are problems. I think his penchant for dialect lessons is his sub- gradually taking the best shows, like Turner Classic Movies, conscious way of worrying about the debilitating effects of and moving them to digital without prior warning, nothing Our Great Diversity. but a fine-print footnote on the back of your cable bill. I pre- Matthews is a liberal with conservative touches, and this dict that the History Channel will be the next vanishing act. is one of them. He is aware that E Pluribus Unum is turn- Even more traumatizing would be the loss of Animal Planet, ing into Ex Uno Plures, but he does not cheer about it as the only place left to find touching evidence of maternal many on the left do. I suspect he believes that people have devotion. Soon we cable hold-outs will have nothing to a right to talk any way they please provided everybody watch except Girls Gone Wild and steam mops. talks the same way, so he has turned his inner conflict into an oblique little ’Enry ’Iggins game that serves him as a Florence King can be reached at P.O. Box 7113, Fredericksburg, VA 22404. safety valve.
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The Long View BY ROB LONG
the basement of the main hall—and Gay ’n’ Grounded we’re celebrating with a picnic! And a stoning! The gay Koran study group at the What to Bring: Frisbees, a boom Ground Zero Mosque has unfortunate- box for listening to audio tapes of the ly disbanded due to the sudden death of The “Grounder” great imams, hot-dog buns, a great atti- all of its members after they sponta- tude! neously burst into flames. We’re trying Congregation Newsletter from the What to Wear: Sweaters in case of to recruit another group. If you suspect Ground Zero Mosque cold weather, heavier burqas. Gals: anyone of being a potential member of Remember to bring the burqas with the this group, please let us know immedi- slightly larger eyeholes for Ultimate ately. What’s Going On at the Frisbee. What You Can Do: Please consider GZM This Week? pitching in, either in the morning be - Blood Drive Next Week! fore the picnic to help set up tables Prayer Rugs for the Needy and chairs and the barbeque, or maybe Next week is the kickoff to our annual you can help gather smooth, tossable Blood Drive, and we’re hoping that all We’re collecting prayer rugs for the stones from the nearby river bank, or members of the congregation will do needy. Please put all gently worn maybe there’s a special person in your their part to make this year’s Blood prayer rugs in the bin right next to the life who you feel needs to be stoned to Drive the Best Ever!!!!! Stoning Wall. We’ll be distributing death (nominees due via e-mail by Please collect as much Jewish blood them next Thursday, so please make Tuesday AT THE LATEST!!!!!!). The as you can!!!! sure to put your donation in the bin key is to get involved!!! The Youth before then. Group is only as strong as YOU make it!!! You get out of it what you put into Announcements: it!!!! Any ?? or thoughts, see us after Newlyweds Social Group morning call to prayer or e-mail youth- Anyone who thinks he saw my wife [email protected]. speaking freely to the UPS man—sign- Just got married? Confused about what ing for a package, showing the top of happens next? It’s hard to make a mar- her right hand as she held the stylus- riage work in 2010, and we’re here to Recovery Programs at the GZM thingy—PLEASE let me know immedi- help. For guys, we talk in an open and ately. Am trying to get Tuesday morning supportive environment about learning Canceled due to eternal damnation. off (my supervisor at work is a real pain) your wife’s name, understanding her to exact an honor killing. Thanks! See limitations, and beating her with a bag Ramzi in the outreach office. full of oranges. For the gals, it’s All Outreach Fellowship Meeting Have two tix to Lady Gaga concert, About Obedience. Tea and cakes are willing to exchange for powdered served (separately) after the sessions. This year, the Outreach Fellowship is ex plosives. Please e-mail pillarof- It’s really a great way to meet other making it a major goal to reach out to [email protected]. newlyweds and to realize that Hey! other local places of worship (that Trying to arrange a marriage for my We’re not alone! aren’t befouled by Jews) in the neigh- 13-year-old daughter. She’s compli - We meet every week in the Crimes borhood (except the Jewish parts). ant and very quiet. Totally illiterate. of Judaism Conference Room. To We’re trying to recruit some outgoing, A great catch. Looking for husband sign up or for more info, just e-mail not-overly-angry folks from the con- somewhere between 60 and 90 years makingmarriagework@groundzero- gregation to appear at local events, old. Dowry negotiable. Interested in mosque.org. town halls, etc. and remind folks that barter. Please e-mail me at cold- we’re just ordinary, run-of-the-mill [email protected]. Your photo everyday types. Neighbors and friends gets hers, although she’s entirely cov- Youth Group Picnic & Stoning! and regular folks. All volunteers will ered. Not into endless e-mailing. MUST receive extensive media training on BE SERIOUS. Where: Ft. Tryon Park how to stay on message, how to speak When: This Saturday to groups, and how to talk to an un - Have an announcement or group you’d like What: The youth group has been covered woman without throttling her us to know about? Just drop us a line at the- doing some amazing work this and calling her a whore. Please e-mail [email protected] and we’ll year—we’ve raised a lot of money [email protected] for be sure to include it in the next issue of The for the new Teen Hangout Center in more information. Grounder! Remember: It’s your GZM!
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have us believe. he was not a radical whites in the area believed that blacks’ believer in Big Government, and he prob- moving in meant “slumification, crime, A ably would have had serious problems bad schools, and punishing drops in real- with Barack obama’s agenda. estate values,” and hence the simple idea Complicated alinsky became famous by organizing of an interracial neighborhood “would ethnic workers in the old chicago stock- destroy the community and the council.” Rebel yards from 1939 to the end of the 1950s, alinsky’s code of loyalty to the Back of where he created the Back of the Yards the Yards council came before his per- RONALD RADOSH Neighborhood council as the vehicle to sonal opposition to segregation. (as von organize them. Because of his work, von hoffman rationalizes it, “the leaders hoffman notes, “what had been an area behind the whites-only policy were his of ramshackle, near-slum housing tilting friends.”) The people pursued a policy he this way and that had been rebuilt into a abhorred; and he had no choice but to model working-class community of neat stand with the people. bungalow homes.” an even more surprising revelation candidly, von hoffman adds that is that alinsky admired sen. Barry alinsky did not challenge the neigh - Goldwater, whose libertarian objections borhood’s pattern of segregation, which to the proposed 1964 civil-rights act he had “become an impregnable fortifica- shared. countervailing power from orga- tion of whites-only exclusionism.” Back nizations, not decisions made by courts, in 1919, these same workers played a part alinsky thought, was the only way to in the famous 1919 chicago-area race achieve permanent change. Thus, von Radical: A Portrait of Saul Alinsky, riots, in which 500 people, most of them hoffman tells us, “he was less than enthu- by Nicholas von Hoffman black, were wounded and 38 killed. siastic about much civil-rights legisla- (Nation Books, 237 pp., $26.95) alinsky did manage to obtain permission tion,” and during Goldwater’s run for the for blacks to have unmolested passage presidency, he had at least one secret icholas voN hoffmaN’s through the Back of the Yards as they meeting with the conservative senator, short, breezy, and infor ma - were on their way to other places—which during which they discussed lyndon John- tive sketch of saul alin - seems little by today’s standards, but, as son’s civil-rights proposal. “saul,” von N sky—and of the decade he von hoffman notes, was a major accom- hoffman writes, “shared the conservative spent with him working as a commu - plishment then. misgivings about the mischief such laws nity organizer—offers us a very different as for the Neighborhood council’s could cause if abused,” but would not take on the legendary activist than the funding, it came not from government publicly oppose the bill, since he had no narrative we are accustomed to. This is largesse, but from—of all things—the better idea to propose in its place. especially the case for those conserva- illegal-gambling activities of alinsky’s alinsky also opposed martin luther tives who consider alinsky close to the partner, Joe meegan. This spoke to alin - King Jr.’s attempted march in chicago in devil. alinsky made the comparison sky’s longstanding friendly relations 1965, criticizing King for not building a himself, invoking lucifer, along with with gangsters, thugs, and the organized- “stable, disciplined, mass-based power Thomas Paine and Rabbi hillel, in the crime syndicates. That source of funding organization.” he saw King as a man epigraphs to his classic, bestselling 1971 meant that any pressure from govern- without local roots, who did not know guide, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic ment to end racial exclusion would come the community, and who did not have Primer for Realistic Radicals. as alinsky to naught. moreover, alinsky’s belief that any idea about how to organize it. von put it, clearly facetiously, lucifer was the people had to determine their own hoffman writes that King led “a little “the very first radical . . . who rebelled destiny meant, for him, that if the people army stranded inside a vast and hostile against the establishment,” and who was wanted an all-white community, they terrain,” whose efforts “accomplished so effective “that he . . . won his own should not be challenged on the matter. nothing except to reinforce the percep- kingdom.” But the reality of alinsky and although he wanted integration, and tion” that King “was an outsider.” his work was significantly different hoped that he could select and induce a But what did alinsky think about the from what this tongue-in-cheek self- few middle-class black families to buy other major liberal ideas of the time—for presentation—and, a fortiori, today’s homes in the Back of the Yards neighbor- example, lyndon Johnson’s Great society con servative attacks on alinsky—would hood and then convince whites to accept program, or Robert f. Kennedy’s pro- them, his partner meegan nixed the idea. gram for the poor? according to David Mr. Radosh, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute “Even public discussion of a Negro fam- horowitz, the conservative activist and and a blogger for PajamasMedia.com, is the author of ily,” von hoffman writes, “would have author—in his very influential pamphlet Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the same effect as news that the bubonic “Barack obama’s Rules for Revolution: the New Left, and the Leftover Left. plague was loose.” Even fair-minded The alinsky model”—alinsky’s radical
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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS organizers had a responsibility to work mental action was the last resort, not shakedowns of large banking and manu- “within the system.” They did not follow the ideal one. facturing firms, and of helping to create the path advocated by the New Left, who the housing bubble by fighting to have preferred to utter meaningless calls for Moreover, according to von Hoffman, community banks grant loans to those “revolution.” Thus, Horowitz writes, they Alinsky also opposed putting community who had no way to pay them back. Many “infiltrated the War on Poverty, made organizers on the government payroll, as of the critics claim that the organization, alliances with the Kennedys and the Bobby Kennedy sought to do, since “it formed in 1970, was inspired by Alinsky’s Democratic Party, and secured funds from made an independent civil life next to methods and concepts—but Alinsky had the federal government. Like termites, impossible.” It also created the condi- nothing to do with its founding. they set about to eat away at the founda- tions by which any administration could This is an important issue, because the tions of the building in expectation that use their work for “social and political great interest Alinsky has for commenta- one day they could cause it to collapse.” control.” It would “stifle independent tors today stems largely from his reputed While the New Left created riots like that action,” and possibly turn paid organizers influence on Barack Obama. One often at the Chicago Democratic convention in “into police spies.” As von Hoffman sees hears critics of President Obama’s poli- 1968, “Alinsky’s organizers were insinu- his mentor, Alinsky opposed not only big cies proclaim that he is acting “straight ating themselves into Johnson’s War on government, but also large corporations out of the Alinsky playbook.” Because Poverty program and directing federal and big labor. What he wanted was not Obama was a community organizer for a funds into their own organizations and revolution—despite his radical rhetoric brief time before going to law school, causes.” meant to appeal to the New Left—but many people have assumed that, as a dis- According to von Hoffman, though, “democratic organizations which could ciple of Saul Alinsky, he was committed Alinsky had nothing but contempt for pose countervailing power against mod- thereafter to apply Alinsky’s principles as activists who gladly took money from the ern bureaucracies.” Thus, in von Hoff - a guide for whatever position he held in government, and hence his own group man’s view, Saul Alinsky was a radical, life. Many therefore assume that he is did not work within or for the govern- but a Tory radical or a radical conserva- now acting on them as president. ment’s War on Poverty programs. Writes tive: a man with a libertarian sensibility It is true that Obama’s mentors were von Hoffman: who supported all the little men fighting trained by Alinsky’s organization. In re - against any large structure, whether it searching a piece for The New Republic Although Alinsky is described as some was the government, a corporation, or in 2007, Ryan Lizza spoke to Gregory kind of liberal left-winger[,] in actuali- organized labor. Galluzzo, one of the three men who ty big government worried him. He had In today’s America, conservatives have instructed Obama when he became a no use for President Lyndon Johnson’s paid a great deal of attention to what community organizer. Galluzzo told Great Society with its War on Poverty. He used to say that if Washington was was—until its recent demise after a series Lizza that many organizers would start going to spend that kind of dough the of scandals—the largest and most suc - as idealists, and that he urged them government might as well station peo- cessful community organization, ACORN to become realists and not be averse to ple on the ghetto street corners and (Association of Community Organi za - Alinsky’s candid advocacy of gaining hand out hundred-dollar bills to the tions for Reform Now). Critics have power, since “power is good” and “pow- passing pedestrians. For him govern- accused the group of electoral fraud, of erlessness is evil.” Galluzzo taught Obama that people have to be organized according to their self-interest, and not on the basis of what Obama himself has ONE 14TH OF JULY characterized as “pie-in-the-sky ideal- ism.” We met them at a block party on Sansom Street In 1992, Obama famously worked for a One Bastille Day, voter-registration group called Project Two Berliners, true believers, Vote, which was an ACORN partner, and Who met when the Wall fell, helped Carol Moseley Braun defeat an A night he remembered incumbent U.S. senator in the 1992 Dem - For the chunk of concrete ocratic primary. A few years later, Lizza He carried home reported, Obama became ACORN’s attor- And they carried with them for several years ney, and won a decision forcing Illinois Until she made him get rid of it. to implement the Motor Voter Law, with It turned out she was from the east what the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund And what was a symbol to him called “loose voter-registration require- Was real to her ments that would later be exploited by And you realized that the Wall ACORN employees in an effort to flood Had two sides voter rolls with fake names.” Obama cited And she tore hers down ACORN first on a list he composed in One night in New Jersey. 1996 of key supporters for his campaign for the state senate. —LAWRENCE DUGAN So Obama’s association with ACORN
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was real, and close. This, combined with scared the city’s elite with, was a sched- the fact that obama taught Alinsky’s uled “fart-in” at the Kodak-sponsored methods when he worked with com - rochester Symphony. He planned to gath- The Greatly mu nity organizers, has led many to er black activists—for whom concert tick- assume that Alinsky himself approved ets had been bought—for a pre-concert Ghastly of ACorN. Von Hoffman, however, dinner made up exclusively of baked challenges this notion. He writes: beans. This would be his substitute for Rand “[ACorN’s] cheekiness, truculence, and sit-ins and picket lines. Alinsky called it a imaginative tactical tropes have an “flatulent blitzkrieg,” and the result of JASON LEE STEORTS Alinskyan touch but the organization’s this threat (along with other tactics, includ - handling of money, embezzlement, and ing the use of proxies at stockholder meet - rom almost any page of nepotism would have drawn his scorn. ings) evidently was a settlement in which Atlas Shrugged,” Whittaker Nor would he have been comfortable the city fathers agreed to the demands. Chambers wrote here 53 with the large amounts of government In Chicago, he threatened a “piss-in” at ‘F years ago, “a voice can be money flowing into the organization.” o’Hare Airport, which im mediately led heard, from painful necessity, command- (Emphasis added.) This conclusion is the city to the bargaining table. That such ing: ‘To a gas chamber—go!’” What he essentially confirmed by the activist and juvenile tactics worked perhaps says more did not write is that Ayn rand throws in writer John Atlas, whose new pro- about the fears of the politicians than the a gas chamber. ACorN book, Seeds of Change: The genius of Alinsky. It’s about two-thirds through, in a chap- Story of ACORN, explains that the group Alinsky had some impressive backers. ter called “The moratorium on Brains,” broke with the Alinsky model in a num- Among them was the old giant of the than which I reread no farther. (our presi- ber of ways—most importantly, by ap- mine workers’ union, John L. Lewis, who dent seems to have inspired—which is not plying for and receiving government advised him and supported him. (Like quite the word—half the country to read contracts. Lewis, he used Communists as orga - miss rand, and I wanted to remind myself According to von Hoffman, Alinsky nizers on his staff. He disdained the what she was teaching them.) A train is car- had nothing but disdain for the New Left Communist Party and its marxist and rying 300 passengers through the rocky with which obama was associated. He pro-Soviet positions, and regarded its mountains to San Francisco. America is thought Bill Ayers was wedded to “petu- members as “servants of an antidemo- falling altogether to pieces, its citizens lant ego decision making,” as well as a cratic foreign power”—but because he starving to death, because the prime “comic-book leftism whose principal valued the organizing skill of individual movers—rand’s term for the productive feature was anger at a government which Communists, he hired them as staffers men and women on whom economic cre- did not do as they bade it. Their foot- anyway.) He also bonded with key fig- ation and therefore life-or-death depend— stamping anger and humiliation at their ures in the Catholic archdiocese of have called a strike. They are hanging failures . . . made them believe they were Chicago. The whites he sought to orga- out in a mountain valley that their leader, justified in taking up violence.” He saw nize were mainly believing Catholics, mr. John Galt, has cleverly hidden from the Weather Underground as a group and thus Alinsky became particularly the world by means of refractor-ray shield. prone to tantrums and “rumpelstiltskin close to Fr. John o’Grady, whom von The world scarcely has diesel locomo- politics.” Hoffman credits with doing away with tives. When the one attached to that train Alinsky’s own approach had some clerically dominated local charities and breaks down, the only replacements are major successes. In rochester, N.Y., he replacing them with charities run by pro- coal-burning, which is a problem, because got Eastman Kodak to agree to hire more fessionals from social-work schools in the train is about to pass through an eight- blacks. In 1965, he had been approached Catholic colleges and universities. Later, mile tunnel that is not properly ventilated by ministers from rochester after martin Alinsky became close to the Catholic for locomotives of this type. It happens that Luther King Jr. had turned down an over- philosopher Jacques maritain, with whom an important looter—rand’s term for the ture from them. This in itself provides he regularly corresponded. He also be - half-wits running and ruining the coun- an interesting contrast with some of the friended Cardinal Stritch and Fr. Jack try—is on the train and has strong feelings activism of later times: Alinsky took Egan, who got the archdiocese to give about getting to San Francisco. His name action after he was asked to intervene by him the money to launch organizing is Kip Chalmers. “It’s not my problem to community ministers. This was quite dif- drives in the 1950s. This constituency is figure out how you get the train through ferent from the kind of shakedown asso- hardly what one thinks of as a force for the tunnel, that’s for you to figure out!” Kip ciated in more recent years with rev. social revolution in America. Chalmers screams at a station agent. “But Jesse Jackson and rev. Al Sharpton, the So what were Alinsky’s goals in the if you don’t get me an engine and don’t kind in which large corporations fill an end? Von Hoffman does not really start that train, you can kiss good-bye to organization’s coffers with money in answer this question, perhaps because your jobs, your work permits and this exchange for a hands-off agreement. Alinsky never did. Before people decide whole goddamn railroad!” Yet, even in the rochester fight, Alin - whether Saul Alinsky was a man with an This is persuasive. “The station agent sky’s methods often appeared rather com- actual revolutionary plan, they owe it to had never heard of Kip Chalmers and did ical, and it is rather hard to believe that themselves to take into consideration von not know the nature of his position. But he they were taken seriously. According to Hoffman’s contrary assessment of the knew that this was the day when unknown von Hoffman, what Alinsky proposed, and father of community organizing. men in undefined positions held unlimited
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NATIONAL REVIEW’S 2010 Sailing November 14–21 on Holland America’s M S Nieuw Amsterdam PPoosstt--EElleeccttiioonn CCrruuiissee Join KARL ROVE, BERNARD LEWIS, VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, ANDREW BREITBART, PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY, TONY BLANKLEY, SCOTT RASMUSSEN, GREG GUTFELD, CAL THOMAS, BERNIE GOLDBERG, JONAH GOLDBERG, ANDREW McCARTHY, ALAN REYNOLDS, JIM GERAGHTY, RICH LOWRY, DANIEL HANNAN, KATHRYN LOPEZ, ROGER KIMBALL, VIN WEBER, JAY NORDLINGER, ROB LONG, KATE O’BEIRNE, RAMESH PONNURU, JOHN O’SULLIVAN, ROMAN GENN, MICHAEL NOVAK, JOHN DERBYSHIRE, EDWARD WHELAN, KEVIN WILLIAMSON, ROBERT COSTA, and PETER SCHRAMM
as we visit the beautiful ports of Grand Turk, Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Half Moon Cay, and Ft. Lauderdale his is your special opportunity to participate in one of the Andrew McCarthy, GOP strategist Vin Weber, scholar Michael most exciting seafaring adventures you will ever experi- Novak, conservative economist Alan Reynolds, New Criterion edi- T ence: the National Review 2010 “Post-Election” tor Roger Kimball, acclaimed pollster Scott Rasmussen, European Caribbean Cruise. Featuring a cast of all-star conservative speak- Parliament Tory star Daniel Hannan, Ethics and Public Policy ers (that will expand in coming weeks), this affordable Center president Ed Whelan, conservative scholar Peter Schramm; trip—prices start at only $1,899 a person!—will take place and from NR: editor Rich Lowry, Liberal Fascism author Jonah November 14–21, 2010, aboard Holland America Line’s MS Goldberg, “The Long View” columnist Rob Long, NRO editor-at- Nieuw Amsterdam, the beautiful new ship of one of the world’s large Kathryn Lopez, NR Institute president Kate O’Beirne, senior most highly regarded cruise lines. editors Jay Nordlinger and Ramesh Ponnuru, Campaign Spot blog- Fast forward to November 3—the morning after the elections. ger Jim Geraghty, former editor John O’Sullivan, “The Straggler” Whether you find yourself bemoaning another two years of columnist John Derbyshire, NR reporter Bob Costa, deputy man- Democrat control of Capitol Hill, or whether you’re flabbergasted aging editor Kevin Williamson, and acclaimed artist Roman Genn. by massive GOP legislature pick-ups, or whether the results are as NR trips are marked by riveting political shoptalk, wonderful mixed as a tossed salad, make sure you’re packing your luggage and socializing, intimate dining with our editors and speakers, making preparing for the Nieuw Amsterdam, your floating luxury getaway new friends, rekindling old friendships, and, of course, grand cruis- for scintillating discussion of the elections and their conse- ing. That’s what’s in store for you on our 2010 sojourn. quences—and on all other major current events and trends. There are countless reasons to come, but none are better than You could spend the week of November 14 raking leaves. the luminaries who will be aboard this luxury trip. This truly extra- Instead, opt for seven sunny days and cool nights sailing the balmy ordinary gathering is one of the best ensembles we’ve ever had on tropics, mixing and mingling with the exemplary speakers we’ve an NR cruise, which guarantees that our seminar sessions (featur- assembled to make sense of electoral matters and the day’s top ing ample audience “Q & A”) will be fascinating. issues. Confirmed speakers for NR’s “Post-Election” Cruise include aWatch Karl Rove, ex-congressman Vin Weber, ace columnist former top Bush-43 White House aide Karl Rove, historian Victor Tony Blankley, and pollster Scott Rasmussen provide expert analy- Davis Hanson, Islam scholar Bernard Lewis, conservative icon ses of the elections and their consequences. Phyllis Schlafly, conservative web guru Andrew Breitbart, liberal- aSome of our primo past cruise experiences have been the media critic Bernie Goldberg, leading columnists Tony Blankley interchanges between Bernard Lewis and Victor Davis Hanson and Cal Thomas, Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld, terrorism expert on the struggle between Islam and the West. These academic giants, and terrorism expert Andy J O I N U S F O R S E V E N B A L M Y D A Y S A N D C O O L C O N S E R V A T I V E N I G H T S McCarthy, will provide their razor- DAY/DATE PORT ARRIVE DEPART SPECIAL EVENT sharp insights on America’s deal- ings in the Middle East and the SUN/Nov. 14 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 5:00PM evening cocktail reception Muslim world. MON/Nov. 15 Half Moon Cay 8:00AM 4:00PM afternoon seminar aCan you find more insightful “Night Owl” session social commentary than from the TUE/Nov. 16 Grand Turk 12:00PM 6:00PM morning seminar likes of Phyllis Schlafly, New late-night smoker Criterion editor Roger Kimball, WED/Nov. 17 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars columnist Cal Thomas, scholars evening cocktail reception Michael Novak and Peter Schramm, THU/Nov. 18 Grand Cayman 8:00AM 4:00PM afternoon seminar (or from esteemed artist Roman Genn)? A more perceptive dissec- FRI/Nov. 19 Cozumel 10:00AM 11:00PM afternoon seminar tion of the liberal media than from “Night Owl” session Bernie Goldberg, Greg Gutfeld, Rob SAT/Nov. 20 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars Long, and Andrew Breitbart, or a evening cocktail reception clearer take on the national econo- SUN/Nov. 21 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 7:00AM my than from Alan Reynolds? Or on our courts from Ed Whelan? Picture carribian 5 cabins_no appl_carribian 2p+application.qxd 8/10/2010 10:51 AM Page 3
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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS power—the power of life or death.” And so To some degree this was inevitable, Randian voice commands “from painful the station officials, knowing that the loss how ever—Roark will conduct himself necessity,” his belief that Rand favors rule of their jobs means the loss of their lives, with a minimum of drama, for Roark is by a technocratic elite, and the title of his call in a coal engine, procure a drunken egoless. I realize that’s a dirty word in The review, “Big Sister Is Watching You,” are engineer, and condemn every passenger Fountainhead, but I’m using it in a special all, therefore, in error.) on the train to death by asphyxiation. sense, one I think Rand could accept. For Most of The Fountainhead’s second- But that isn’t why I stopped reading. Rand, “egoless” means self-negating, handers are mediocrities out to make them- I stopped because Rand thinks they de- sacrificing yourself to something or some - selves feel better by cutting down their serve it. one else. What I will use it to mean is an betters. This isn’t very interesting either. absence of self-consciousness about your Rand doesn’t care enough about many of It is said that catastrophes are a matter ego—a self-esteem secure enough that you these characters to make real people of of pure chance, and there were those don’t compare yourself with others, a focus them, and she draws their personalities in who would have said that the passengers on your work complete enough that you a manner both crude and incoherent. Keat - of the Comet [that’s the train] were not don’t worry whether it will succeed, a gen- ing, for example, is both devilishly calcu- guilty [note that word] or responsible for the thing that happened to them. eral freedom from thinking of your identi- lating—as when he forces out a partner at The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, ty abstractly and trying to justify or glorify the firm, making room for himself, by was a professor of sociology who it. This sense is approximately the antonym accosting him with such violence as to taught that individual ability is of of “egotistical”—the word, Rand explains induce a heart attack—and stupidly inert— no consequence. . . . in her introduction, that she mistakenly as when his mother manipulates him into . . . The woman in Bedroom D, Car used for “egoistical” when writing The not marrying the woman he loves. No. 10, was a mother who had put her Fountainhead. “I don’t make compar- The book finally starts to get interesting two children to sleep in the berth above isons,” Roark says. “I don’t want to be the when we meet its Devil, an architecture her, carefully tucking them in, protecting symbol of anything.” He does not want to critic and public intellectual named Ells - them from drafts and jolts; a mother be a great architect; he wants to build his worth Toohey. Toohey is a second-order whose husband held a government job buildings. That’s egolessness. second-hander: He preaches a gospel of enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, “I don’t care, it’s only the rich Its antithesis is Roark’s foil, Peter Keat- collectivism so as to win power over the that they hurt. After all, I must think of ing, also an architect, whom we meet grad- Keatings. He is out to “collect souls,” and my children.” . . . uating from college as valedictorian and they will consent to his rule because he will . . . These passengers were awake; self-consciously enjoying the fact that secure their egos (in my sense of the word) there was not a man aboard the train who many people are looking at him. The cru- by destroying the egoless. His weapon is did not share one or more of their ideas. cial distinction between these types is that to invert values, so that the creators are only a Roark can be creative. A Keating, a despised. He is witty, urbane, eloquent, Now there are two important defenses man who must justify himself before and ironically colloquial, physically repulsive, of Rand. The first is that it is the looters, in comparison with the world, is essential- smashingly dressed, surgically subtle, and not the prime movers, who make the gas ly derivative. He cannot create anything his purely ruthless. chamber possible and send the train into it. own, because he has accepted a standard Two other characters will come to life. The second is that Rand’s philosophy is not his own. And this principle comes with One is Gail Wynand, the aristocratic news- incompatible with totalitarianism, and a corollary for anyone who wishes to be a paper baron who publishes Toohey’s col- no one who believed it would ever send creator: He must not—as Rand puts it in a umn. Wynand has made a Devil’s bargain anyone to a gas chamber. Both are true. note that her heir, Leonard Peikoff, reprints and his papers have no soul: They print Neither has anything to do with what trou- in his Atlas Shrugged introduction— whatever the public wants, no matter how bles me about this gas chamber, and about “place his wish primarily within others” or indecent, dishonest, or ugly, and it is in - Ayn Rand. And to explain that, I must say “attempt or desire anything that . . . deed ugly. Wynand tells himself he doesn’t something about Rand at her best, which I requires primarily the exercise of the will care, because the ugliness pays for his believe is to be found in the second half of of others. . . . If he attempts that, he is out private gallery of the most priceless and The Fountainhead, a book I did success- of a creator’s province and in that of the exquisite art. But because deep down he fully reread. collectivist and the second-hander.” is an incomparably noble man, his con- In her introduction to its 25th-anniversary This corollary is not, properly speaking, science is tearing him to shreds. He has printing, she says: “This is the motive and a moral imperative, because no obligation long attempted to blast it away by recre- purpose of my writing: the projection of an has been established to try to be creative. ationally forcing honorable men to betray ideal man.” Yet this man—the architect But the Randian hero is creative, and will their integrity. We meet him holding a gun Howard Roark—turns out to be pretty bor- observe the corollary, and that is why, in to his temple and deciding not to pull the ing. He rarely speaks. When he does, it is addition to never sacrificing his interests trigger. rarely interesting (and when it is, it is trans- for another’s, he will never ask others to The other is a beautiful young woman parently didactic). He has no sense of sacrifice their interests for his. Much like named Dominique Francon. Dominique humor. As his enemies try to destroy him, the Nietzschean superman, the Randian seems not to love anyone or anything, but he shows so little emotion that the reader hero cannot be predatory or exploitative; is secretly possessed by a reverence for must rely upon an abstract sense of justice this would not give him what he wants, beauty. Her hobby is to destroy priceless in order to give a damn. Howard Roark is because no one outside himself has it and exquisite art. We meet her shortly a ghost of a protagonist. to give. (Chambers’s statement that the after she has thrown a sculpture down a
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ventilation shaft. She thinks it is too When he does not hold out—when he how he is tricking them into destroying beautiful to be seen by mankind. betrays Roark rather than close his paper— their copper supply. He charms with such Neither of these two is, properly I feel as I do when I dream I have done proclamations as: “The rotter who simpers speaking, realistic, but then neither are something unforgivable. When in his final that he sees no difference between the Dos toevsky’s characters. Wynand and conversation with Roark—whom he feels power of the dollar and the power of the Domi nique remind me of something too guilty ever to see again, whip, ought to learn the differ- Robert Nozick writes in The Examined even though, as atonement, ence on his own hide—as, I Life: “Some literary characters are . . . he has shut down the paper think, he will”; and, of women ‘realer than life,’ more sharply etched, with anyway—he commissions the he has manipulated into falsely few extraneous details that do not fit. In tallest building in New York, claiming affairs with him and the characteristics they exhibit they are a “monument to that spirit so destroying their reputa - more concentrated centers of psychologi- which is yours . . . and could tions: “I gave those b**ches cal organization. . . . They are intensely have been mine,” I feel the what they wanted.” How I concentrated portions of reality.” What relief of redemption. There is a long for the boring Roark, who is intensely concentrated in Wynand and passage in which Roark does is almost incapable of anger. Dominique is a passionate but thwarted not know that something he has said has (“It’s because of that absolute health of idealism. Each is gripped by his concep- given a passing character “the courage to yours,” a friend tells him. “You’re so tion of the beautiful and the good, but each face a lifetime.” Rand’s hymn to integrity healthy that you can’t conceive of dis- betrays it without cease, and ironically out might achieve the same effect. ease.”) of loyalty to it. Which makes it all the harder to take And of course the damnation. Rand calls Roark gives each a chance to redeem Atlas Shrugged. to mind Thomas Aquinas’s notion that the himself. For Dominique, redemption means It’s not just the gas chamber. She piles righteous in Heaven will be able to observe learning not to worry about those who offense upon offense, and they all come the torments of the wicked in Hell, the bet- scorn what she finds beautiful—only when down to this: Instead of bringing forth the ter to enjoy their blessedness, with the dif- she can overcome her ego’s vulnerability best within her, she brings forth the barely ference that Rand, as the creator of this is she able to marry Roark, with whom comprehensible hatred of her derangedly world, is analogous not to the righteous but she has long been in love. For Wynand, insecure ego. to God. One suspects God would feel less redemption means devoting his premier How do we see this? pleasure damning people. You don’t do this newspaper to Roark’s defense as Roark In her contempt for her creation. There with the word “little,” for example, unless stands trial for victimlessly dynamiting a is no Ellsworth Toohey, no villain we can you are really having a good time: “The building that, in violation of a contract, was respect and—as readers—enjoy. These man in Roomette 3, Car No. 11, was a not being constructed according to his looters possess, at best, “the cunning of the sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap specifications. unintelligent and the frantic energy of the little plays into which, as a social message, Such is the public fury against Roark lazy.” Their chief speaks in a voice “high he inserted cowardly little obscenities.” that Wynand’s editorials provoke a reader with anger and thin with fear.” You know What, then, went wrong? How could the backlash and a strike of his staff. He even by looking at them that they are evil, the woman who gave me Gail Wynand give seems to be making Roark more hated. But physical signs of evil being obesity, bald- me this? Rand answers the question her- Roark does not care: ness, round-facedness, and soft- or watery- self, in the notes for Atlas Shrugged (which eyedness. The heroes, by contrast, are was originally to be called “The Strike”): “Gail, it doesn’t matter, as far as I’m flawlessly, violently beautiful. The men concerned. I’m not counting on public invariantly have sharp features; the hero- The Strike is to be a much more “so - opinion, one way or the other.” ine’s hair slashes across her face. This cial” novel than The Fountainhead. The “You want me to give in?” projection of virtue and vice into physi - Fountainhead was about “individualism “I want you to hold out if it takes ognomy and physique disfigures The and collectivism within man’s soul”; it everything you own.” Fountainhead as well, but less. In Atlas showed the nature and function of the Shrugged Rand seems to grow more spite- creator and the second-hander. . . . Their Roark wants Wynand to save his soul, ful with every page turn, so that the looter relations to each other—which is society, men in relation to men—were secondary, you see. Wynand has sinned against the on page 7 has “a small, petulant mouth, and an unavoidable, direct consequence of creator’s code. He has spent his life, not thin hair clinging to a bald forehead,” while Roark set against Toohey. But it is not the bringing forth the best within himself, but the two on page 560 have a “pendulous theme. debasing it for the worst in his readers. face . . . with the small slits of pig’s eyes” Now, it is this relation that must be the Roark sees that he is “the worst second- and a “doughy face . . . that scurried away theme. . . . hander of all—the man who goes after from any speaker and any fact.” Even their . . . I set out to show how desperately power.” And now that he wants to yoke this names are belittling: Buzzy Watts, Chick the world needs prime movers, and how supposed power to his own convictions, it Morrison, Tinky Holloway. viciously it treats them. vanishes: He can lay no claim to the minds Then there is the fact that some of the of others. heroes are first-class haters. Foremost here What I think is that because The I, too, want mightily for Wynand to is Francisco d’Anconia, who is pretending Fountainhead is not primarily a social hold out. He becomes magnificent, awe- to be a worthless playboy so that the loot- novel—because Rand was concerned pri- inspiring, in the discovery of his integrity. ers won’t respect him enough to notice marily with presenting the ideal man’s
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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS soul—she looked into herself and gave arching narrative: The 1990s were a time expression to the finest things she found. of a genuine free-market in oil, with resul- She did this by imprinting them on her fic- Petronoia tant low prices and trouble for the oil tional landscape, which is why even the industry; and the following decade was villains of The Fountainhead possess a IAIN MURRAY dominated by regulation, environmen - measure of dignity and humanity. But in talism, peak-oil theory, and nationalism, Atlas Shrugged Rand instead looked out resulting in high prices—and trouble for and showed us the world of men as she the oil industry. sees them. And she sees them viciously. The other main player in the first chap- There is so much to be said against Rand ter is Lee Raymond, the former head of as an artist. There is the inept dialogue— ExxonMobil. Exxon and its chairman characters begin a great many sentences by come across as all-American, reliable, shouting each other’s names or saying convinced of their superiority because “You know”; the heroes speak, every one their long-established procedures have of them, in exactly the same voice; the been proven to work. Bower depicts the averagely intelligent advance the plot by company’s culture as both stifling and suc- blurting out their secrets. There is the Girl cessful: It entertains an overriding, and Scout banality of Atlas Shrugged’s hero- Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st rather off-putting, belief that there are two ine, who seems to have escaped from the Century, by Tom Bower (Grand Central, ways to do things, the Exxon way and the young-adult section. There is the prepos- 512 pp., $26.99) wrong way; but, time and time again, the terous omnicompetence of the heroes, Exxon way is shown indeed to be the right equally at home on the Harvard faculty or OM BOWER is a British inves- way. By sticking to its norms and proce- in a Vin Diesel movie, and the endless tigative journalist who made dures, Exxon has consistently avoided the gushing about their exalted feelings, his name writing hard-hitting sort of troubles that bedeviled the other Rand’s attempt to steal with treacle what T exposés of the activities of such majors throughout the past two decades. she has not earned with character develop- major British business figures as Robert John Browne, the group chief executive ment. There is that editorial discipline Maxwell, Mohamed Al-Fayed, and Rich - of BP from 1995 to 2007, is portrayed as which gave us John Galt’s speech. ard Branson. He has now turned his atten- flamboyant where Raymond was solid, I don’t care. I don’t require of my artists tion to an entire industry, and he chose and risk-taking where Raymond was risk- that they be perfect craftsmen; I require to start at the top. Oil is a 20-year his - averse. Browne, Bower shows us, was that they inspire me. What is sad to me tory of the oil industry, taking up around clearly a genius, but a flawed one whose about Rand is that she could, but that the 1990, where Daniel Yergin’s Pulitzer genius led BP to disaster as well as tri- creator of Gail Wynand could create only Prize–winning The Prize (1991) left off. umph. It’s a shame that Bower’s book was one; that she could no longer imagine him Those used to Bower’s exposés of corrup- written before the Deepwater Horizon oil when she looked out at mankind; that what tion will not be disappointed, for there is spill, because that calamity can be seen as she showed us instead was her need to plenty of underhanded dirty dealing to a natural consequence of the trail of deci- reassure herself, in terms frankly delusion- be documented. Yet the real villains of sions taken by Browne and his sycophan- al, of her superiority to it. Bower’s tale are not corporate executives. tic management team: BP’s concentration There is a desperately sad moment in Bower makes it clear from the very start on cost-cutting—something that Bower The Fountainhead when Keating, who that all-powerful Big Oil is actually noth- makes clear Exxon would never indulge originally wanted to be a painter and upon ing but a pawn in the hands of govern- in—was instrumental in a string of fatal the collapse of his career has acquired an ments and traders, and the greatest player and/or damaging accidents that bedeviled easel, offers his canvases to Roark and of energy chess is Vladimir Putin. BP toward the end of Browne’s time as asks—though he cannot say the words— This is underlined at the start of the head of the company. whether they’re any good. book. What is generally a chronological In Bower’s account, all of BP’s other narrative from 1990 onwards begins in senior figures come across as, if not out- “It’s too late, Peter,” [Roark] said 2003. In a chapter titled “The Emperor,” right incompetent, mired at some level of gently. Bower tells the tale of how ExxonMobil’s competence below Browne’s. That in- Keating nodded. “Guess I . . . knew bid to take over Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s cludes recently departed CEO Tony Hay - that.” oil company, Yukos, was foiled by then- ward and newly installed CEO Robert When Keating had gone, Roark leaned against the door, closing his president Putin. Shortly afterwards, Kho - Dudley, who had rings run around him in eyes. He was sick with pity. dorkovsky was arrested and Putin’s Russia by the Kremlin and the energy oli- in exorable march toward regaining central garchs. Indeed, the tale of how Dudley This is the feeling that stopped me at the control of Russia’s energy resources was, almost literally, run out of town by gas chamber. I cannot damn Ayn Rand, and began in earnest. It’s a dominant theme of the oligarch Mikhail Fridman is one of the for the too few hours of deep inspiration the latter half of the book. The author thus most revealing in the book, as it illustrates she offered me, I give my thanks. But it set the stage early for the book’s over - just how little power the oil majors have got too painful to look any longer, and so, over the security of massive investments exercising the right of any self-interested Mr. Murray is a vice-president at the Competitive they have made in the non-Western world. reader, I simply closed the book. Enterprise Institute. If the Obama administration succeeds in
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reinstating an offshore-drilling morator - foolish, and that those in Congress who try ium, this will be an indication that, even in to search for one such factor are equally the West, the oil companies have little foolish. This sort of old-fashioned “show, On Thin Ice recourse when politicians turn against don’t tell” journalism is refreshing. MARIO LOYOLA them. So is the fact that much of the book is set If the majors are at the mercy of politi- in Russia. The tale of the rise and fall of the cians, they are equally impotent when it energy oligarchs and the survivors’ rap- comes to the activities of oil traders. David prochement with Vladimir Putin is fasci- Hall, who traded at various organizations nating in itself, and the book is a valuable over the time span of the book, is the cen- window into the overall character of post- tral figure here. Bower shows how Hall Soviet Russia, a country that is desperate and his colleagues and rivals caused the to regain past nationalist glories and is, collapse of oil prices in the 1990s by insti- as a result, suspicious of even genuine tuting a completely free market in oil. In attempts by foreigners to invest in it. fact, the British edition of Bower’s book When it comes to oil, Russia is faced with was called The Squeeze, in reference to the an almost impossible dilemma. It wishes maneuvers the traders engaged in to max- to retain full control over its resources, but imize their profits at the expense of the it lacks the technical abilities to develop Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping majors and the oil-producing countries. them, abilities that only the Western Tomorrow’s Terrorism, by Stewart A. Baker The story of how the traders worked majors can deliver. So it veers between (Hoover, 375 pp., $19.95) around OPEC, the majors, regulators, and a form of “petronoia,” a belief that the journalists to keep the oil-derivatives mar- majors are trying to exploit it, and willing- HuNDRED years ago, Euro - ket profitable makes for fascinating read- ness to deal. peans could not have ima - ing. What is especially interesting is that The tale of Shell, a company that comes gined the horrors that lay illegal activity was usually punished, and across as hapless throughout the book, and A ahead for them. Our current that the traders themselves were always on its troubled investments in Sakhalin, is century was ushered in with an awful the edge of disaster, with even the mighty particularly instructive. Despite bringing demonstration of what may lie ahead for Hall being squeezed himself at points. much to the table, the company consis - us; can we make the adjustments neces- sary to avoid the worst? “I’d like to think we can do that before there’s been a Tom Bower’s old-fashioned disaster,” writes Stewart Baker, “but, really, I’m not sure we can.” ‘show, don’t tell’ journalism That prognosis is more than a little unsettling, given Baker’s résumé. As is refreshing. general counsel to the National Secur - ity Agency (the Pentagon’s foreign- Yet Hall and his colleagues were also tently found itself on the receiving end electronic-surveillance arm) during the guilty, to some extent, of causing the of everything the Russians could throw presidency of George H. W. Bush, he recent spikes in oil prices. Hall became at it. Shell, proud of its environmental was a staunch privacy advocate. As poli- an adherent of peak-oil theory (a theory consciousness, was even the victim of a cy chief at the Department of Homeland Bower obviously thinks little of), and spontaneously generated Russian envi - Security during that of George W. Bush, started laying his bets on the oil supply’s ronmental movement, at least until the he spent years locked in a tug-of-war dwindling in the near future. Aided by Russian government wrung another round with privacy advocates over every initia- nationalism in a number of countries of concessions out of it. Yet the prize of tive to adjust our security strategies. (notably Russia and Venezuela), China’s Russian oil is so enticing that all the majors The title of his new book refers to huge demand for oil in the run-up to the keep going back for more. Only Exxon, accelerating technological change and Olympics (a demand inflated by China’s burned by the Yukos incident, is wary. the new dangers it’s creating. Our soci- inefficiency in using oil), and environ- Oil is a gripping book: Its plots are so ety is advancing, technologically, at a mental restrictions on drilling, Hall and his intertwined that it could have been written very rapid clip; but so, unfortunately, are colleagues were able to cash in on their as a mystery, albeit one that would be dis- the terrorists. “It’s like skating on stilts long positions. With a weak dollar, mas- missed as unbelievable. There are a lot of that get a little longer each year,” he sive numbers jumped on the oil band- names, so many that, at times, the reader writes. “Every year we get faster and wagon, and the number of contracts for will have trouble remembering just whom more powerful. Every year we’re a little delivery held by Nymex traders rose from Bower is referring to; but that’s a relative- more at risk. We are skating for a fall, 850,000 in 2003 to 2,700,000 in 2008. ly minor flaw. For anyone who wants to and the fall grows worse every year.” Bower, to his credit, does not say that this understand just why oil is at the center of If Baker is not precisely a pessimist, proves that speculation was to blame for so many geopolitical intrigues, and for the oil-price spike. He makes it clear that those on the left who still labor under the Mr. Loyola works at the Armstrong Center for there were so many factors in play that delusion that Big Oil runs the world, this Energy and Environment of the Texas Public Policy to say any one factor caused the spike is book is an essential read. Foundation, in Austin.
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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS he is certainly gloomy; but even the the danger to public safety in the dra- that raw data, along with the information most optimistic national-security official matically expanding power of terrorists. we had about two of the 9/11 hijackers, would find himself chronically dispirited This results in a pattern in which safe- would have allowed us to catch all of by the effectiveness of the constituencies guards against even the most hypothe - them before the attacks materialized. In arrayed against all efforts to devise new tical privacy concerns win out over August 2001, the FBI was desperate for ways of protecting ourselves from terror- safeguards against the gravest threats access to that information, which was ists. Baker’s book is a treasury of exam- to public safety. Rather than let pri - available to other parts of the U.S. gov- ples. Readers may be outraged to learn vacy protections be driven reactively, ernment, but lawyers said they couldn’t that European Union officials routinely by actual cases of privacy violations (of have it. Regardless, the Europeans in the threaten not to disclose vital information which very few have been documented post-9/11 era wanted to deny us this kind about threats to the U.S.—information since 9/11), officials too often relegate of information unless the U.S. put back on which the safety of Americans de- national-security measures to after-the- in place the very walls between intelli- pends—unless we conform our specific fact reactions—and ineffectual ones, gence and criminal investigations that privacy standards to theirs, despite the such as the ridiculous banning of liquid the 9/11 Commission had faulted for our fact that no country in Europe offers the containers larger than 3.4 ounces from failure to “connect the dots.” abundance of civil liberty guaranteed by our luggage after the British luckily dis- Fortunately, DHS eventually won the U.S. Constitution. Neither will most covered a plot to destroy airliners over that battle. “Persistence and full-throated readers be happy to be reminded about the Atlantic using common household defense of our program,” writes Baker, the vital intelligence-gathering pro - chemicals. “had won the day.” The book recounts grams that the New York Times has single- No one can point to any privacy abuses some important successes, and in his handedly shut down by revealing their arising from cooperation between the unremitting gloominess Baker is almost existence, motivated by concerns over intelligence and the law-enforcement certainly guilty of not giving himself, or In his unremitting gloominess, Stewart Baker is almost certainly guilty of not giving himself, or the Bush administration, quite enough credit.
legality that proved to be unfounded, and agencies of the United States, while the Bush administration, quite enough taking upon itself vital public responsi- nearly 3,000 graves are a testament to credit. bilities that it had no competence or what can happen when they don’t co- One reason the successes do not mandate to assume (such as determining operate. But as Baker writes, “all the come through more clearly is that there which of the nation’s highly classified Washington-wise knew that the way to is often, in this book, insufficient de - secrets can be revealed at an acceptable bureaucratic glory and good press lay in tail to provide a solid understanding of risk to public safety). defending privacy. Actually, more to the what happened. During my years in Over time, most damaging of all are point, they knew that bad press and Washington, I often heard that govern- the privacy advocates who have allowed bureaucratic disgrace were the likely ment is 90 percent process and 10 per- themselves to be sucked into the blood result if your actions could be character- cent policy, and it is admittedly daunting sport of automatic and absolute oppo - ized as hurting privacy.” Meanwhile, to render bureaucratic process in a way sition to any new security measure. nobody suffers disgrace from failing to that is interesting to popular audiences. Baker’s book is, at root, a narrative of prevent mass civilian casualties, nor But the detail, literary merit, and popular the enormous effort to wrest modest from advocating privacy policies that success of books such as those by Henry protections from these constituencies. made those casualties inevitable. Pri - Kissinger and Dean Acheson show that The privacy advocates include strange vacy advocates are no doubt motivated it can be done. bedfellows of the Left and the far liber- by a healthy skepticism about gov - In his almost flawless 18th Brumaire tarian Right, and in their propagandistic ernment; but their message encourages of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx wrote, hyperbole have an effect far beyond their people to lose faith in government offi- “Men make their own history, but they numbers. cials and institutions that both deserve do not make it just as they please.” As we Because public opinion is the deci- the public’s trust and cannot be effective reach the tenth year after 9/11, and the sive battleground for many of these without it. hindsight of history begins to shed some often excruciatingly esoteric contests of A large portion of the book is devoted clarity on how little we’ve managed to policy, propaganda becomes an espe- to the battle between DHS and the change course, that saturnine observa- cially effective tool. And though you European Union (and between DHS tion is one Stewart Baker might share. would think this tool is equally avail- and other agencies of our government) “In my experience, government rarely able to both sides, in fact it proves much for access to the most basic information offers clear victories,” he writes. But easier to demagogue the dangers to pri- in the airline-reservation systems about “rarely” is not the same as “never,” and vacy in the marginally expanding pow- who is coming to the U.S. Baker ex- therein lies the hope in this frightening ers of government than to demagogue plains that simple pattern analysis on little book.
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bumble. learning is important, but no sufferer knows it better than you). Rarely City Desk one has to learn on you. appropriate are accounts of one’s own a bad doctor can attract bad nurses and treatment. In a time of volunteer armies technicians, but generally the people in and sporadic peace, medical stories are our Cancerland this tier of care-giving are saintly. Remem - war stories. But unless yours contain spe- ber to thank them by name (that may also cific tips, give them a rest. dispose them to move you up in the queue For patients, news bulletins can be a sometime). draining experience. the e-mail urbi et How many of your friends will accom- orbi seems rude, yet how many times can pany you to cancerland? this turns out to you tell your story without feeling like be a strict test. Many come through with leno grinding out another monologue? flying colors, some, from fear of death or Yet cancer can also empower. as my wife pain or responsibility, flunk. Be sure you said, “If you have cancer, make cancer- pass it when it’s your turn to be examined. ade.” she was trying to clear up minor Rules and regulations. Cancerland runs medical business before radiation. Her eye on forms. GPs in black-and-white movies doctor’s secretary gave her a song and RICHARD BROOKHISER carried doctor bags; now they all have lap- dance about how there were no slots for a tops or PCs for all the info they need to check-up. she played the cancer card, and vIsIted cancerland in 1992, and collect. the Health Insurance Portability bingo—read the fourth line please? now my wife is traveling there. I and accountability act alone accounts for Resources. When you pause in the took the testicular tour, she is on one flash drive. You are asked the same lobby of the hospital, and read on the wall I the breast package. Her prognosis questions over and over again. Your an - the names of all the donors; when you is excellent, as was mine. this piece is swers—your medical history, your fam - consider the machinery that probes, not about our particular experiences, but ily’s medical history, your insurance records, and assays; when you reflect on about the country itself. pro vider—become a sing-song, like the the thought and imagination that went into Geography. Cancerland has many Pledge of allegiance. so many aspects of treatment and cure, outposts in the city. every Manhattanite Politics. Politics looms over cancerland, from the decision to administer radiation knows where our great hospitals are; the as over so many places. leave aside the to women face-down so as to spare their far east side is so thick with them you big issue of obamacare. every era has a hearts and lungs, to the discovery of dif- have to be wearing a stethoscope to hail a disease that is the focus of fear and fasci- ferent strategies for inhibiting the flow of cab. But as treatments (and cases?) have proliferated, all of these institutions have spun off satellite offices—by the Mount Within cancerland, some cancers vernon Hotel, a 200-year-old stone build- ing; over the entrance to the Midtown are more popular than others. tunnel; around the corner from NatIoNal RevIeW (a historic district for sure). the nation. In many centuries it was the plague; estrogen to cancer cells—you add up all people ducking in that doorway you pass in the 19th it was consumption. Now it is this money, time, effort, brainpower, and every day might not be ordinary Gotham- cancer. and these days, when medicine good will, and think, suppose this could ites; they may be inhabitants of cancer- cures more people than it kills—when did have been applied to productivity? to land. that ratio tip? disturbingly recently, I bet— beauty? so much genius, heroism, and Population. Who are the inhabitants? attention means research, expenditure, and hard work, spent on patch jobs. Patients, of course. then doctors. one progress. But within cancerland, some can- Theodicy. and we need to patch be - thing the former must do with the latter cers are more popular than others. Breast cause . . . ? the banker’s model of is evaluate them before signing up for is a winner, for many reasons. Feminism Christian salvation (we took out a whop- treatment. this is an anxious process, makes us remember the ladies; breasts are ping subprime mortgage, only Jesus can since doctors by definition know more icons of maternity and sexuality. so there be our Fed), though painfully thin-looking than patients. Yet patients have to make is a market for pink ribbons. What is the and arbitrary from the outside, is clear a choice. a doctor who is too know-it- ribbon color for pancreatic cancer? enough on its own terms. Where does dis- all may not in fact know enough; a doc- Manners. one of the minor arguments ease fit even on those terms? You expect tor who is brusque or anomic maybe for religion is that it gives believers some- Pol Pot from sinful man; do you expect should be working with test tubes, not thing appropriate to say to those who enter cancer from sinful cells? You can make your innards. Get second opinions, cancerland. “I will pray for you” is short poetry out of the side-effects of the Fall compare and contrast, consult your and heartfelt. Not up there with the onto- (“so saying, with delight he snuffed the gut. logical proof, but noteworthy all the same. smell of mortal change on earth”— Many of the city’s hospitals are teach- (But see also below.) Never appropriate Milton). You can’t make sense of them. ing institutions, which means the first are long accounts of acquaintances who We live in a world of random explosions doctor you see on a first visit is likely to died; long accounts of obscure alternative whose maker says he’ll make it up some be a resident, getting his or her feet wet. therapies; long worries about side effects, way or other. I wish him luck. Wish us the don’t hesitate to banish residents if they or the malice of insurance companies (the same.
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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Shat and Scat
V reflects our standards; TV changes our stan- nether parts with great vigor. But maybe that’s just how I was dards. If you want to know where standards are brought up. My dad never said $#*!. heading when it comes to salty lingo on the tube, Foul language has its uses. A well-timed curse can be like T consider the name of a new show: “$#*! My Dad a dash of Tabasco. The ornate and baroque profanity of Al Says.” As we all know from reading comics, the shift- Swearengen in the HBO series Deadwood was probably key/number-key string stands for a naughty word. Or, if you anachronistic, but it was also mesmerizing and vastly enter- like, a perfectly ordinary word used by millions of people, taining, if you enjoy the pleasures of a masterful blue streak. universally known even by those who never employ it, a Sometimes not cursing can seem strange; Norman Mailer’s word with an equivalent in every tongue, and possibly the first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was noted for its use of first word ever spoken by a humanoid after he stood erect, “fug,” which everyone knew meant something else. You looked around, and saw a tiger in the bush about to could do a mental search-and-replace as you read, if you pounce. The word is less fully bleeped in the book title from pleased. which the show derives, and not bleeped at all in the “Fug” has its children, who soldier on in their father’s Twitter account—yes, this is a TV show based on a Twitter stead. In Battlestar Galactica, the humans said “frak,” account—that preceded the book. If there’s a movie, you can which became actual slang for the online crowd. You can expect the title will be “$#*!,” with the possible addition of even find a contribution in the gangster parody film “3D.” Johnny Dangerously, where the crazed Italian mobster The star is William Shatner, a.k.a. James T. Kirk, a moiders the language so he can curse but keep the rating man who had a second career as T. J. family-friendly: “You farging ice hole,” Hooker, and a third career as William he mutters. They’re all meaningless Shatner. Asked about the controversial words—but they have emanations of title, he said he wished they’d use the penumbras, if you like. They put the word. other word in your head without even “The word [$#*!] is around us,” he saying it. That’s what the sitcom title said at a meeting with TV journalists. does—but only if you know what “It isn’t a terrible term, it’s a natural word is being bleeped. function. Why are we pussyfooting Critics aren’t satisfied with the typo- around?” graphic euphemism. The Parents Tele - And now, the obligatory parental vision Council has sent warning letters objection: What about the children? to 300 advertisers, suggesting that they You teach your kids to keep their lan- might want to rethink putting their guage on an elevated plane, you refrain products on the show “unless they wish from using the word at home—many a to associate their hard earned brands dad has shouted OH GOSH! when banging his head into the with excrement.” Said PTC president Tim Winter: “The corner of a cupboard door, then gone in the basement and premise of the show offers potential for good entertainment. shouted something worse into an empty coffee can—but then The question is why CBS feels the need to shove harsh pro- one day you might drive past a billboard with THAT WORD. fanity into the faces of Americans through the program’s title. Fine, some say; it’s part of language; you can’t shield them Their reliance on symbols as a veil is feeble at best.” forever. They’ll pick it up on YouTube when they Google Makes you wonder why they didn’t use $#*! for the name Winnie the Pooh and find someone’s remixed a cartoon of the lead actor. What’s the first syllable of his last name, with a rap video. again? So it’s okay if it’s past-tense? Still, you’d like to think you could set some standards for This isn’t a battle the pro-standards crowd will win. A your kids—but that’s a term that gives hives. Standards are recent Supreme Court ruling requires the FCC to wink at The Man’s way of stifling authenticity! Standards are mani- occasional Grade A cuss words, if dropped by mistake. festations of a bourgeois mentality that confuses repression Satellite and Internet radio will change the rules, inasmuch as for civilization! Slavery was a “standard”! And so on. they don’t have any. The Big Bad Effenheimer will be on a Heaven forbid you want some sort of limit on naughty billboard some day, and our shoulders will slump: Great; words on TV while using them yourself. That is hypocrisy thanks, George Carlin. “Obscenity” will be in the eye of and hypocrisy makes Holden Caulfield cry, ya phony. But the beholder—wherever he looks. there is a public realm and a private realm, and since we all You can object, of course, but someone might well ask, inhabit the former, there doesn’t seem to be a significant loss “Who are you to judge?” As it happens, that question was put if we discourage the verbal equivalent of scratching your to Captain Kirk in an episode of Star Trek, and Shatner’s character snapped back: “Who do I have to be?” Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. It’s a good retort. Certainly beats “%*&@ off!” CBS
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