The Liberal Threat to YUVAL LEVIN & RAMESH PONNURU

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September 26, 2016 $4.99

MICHAEL LIND REIHAN SALAM Against the Post-National Elite How to Sell Immigration Restriction

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SEPTEMBER 26, 2016 | VOLUME LXVIII, NO. 17 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 26 The Liberal Threat Jay Nordlinger on murder and abortion To Democracy p. 20 Hillary Clinton is a mainstream BOOKS, ARTS contemporary liberal, albeit a & MANNERS disturbingly unethical one. It is precisely 40 TALKING MAN in the way in which Clinton seems Peter Augustine Lawler reviews normal that she poses a serious danger to The Kingdom of Speech, by Tom Wolfe. American democracy. The mainstream contemporary liberalism she represents so 42 DEFINING DEMOCRACY DOWN well is itself a threat to constitutional Claire Berlinski reviews Islamic government in America. Yuval Levin & Ramesh Ponnuru Exceptionalism: How the Struggle over Islam Is Reshaping the World, COVER: ROMAN GENN by Shadi Hamid. ARTICLES 44 THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN THE LIBERTARIAN SOCIAL ENGINEER by Kevin D. Williamson John Wilson reviews Reformations: 14 The Early Modern World, Gary Johnson is a flawed candidate, but the Right should woo his supporters. 1450–1650, by Carlos M. N. Eire. TRADE WINDS SHIFT by Eliana Johnson 17 OUT OF THE PAST Public opinion is moving toward protectionism, and politicians are following. 45 Nick Ripatrazone reviews 18 OBAMACARE ON LIFE SUPPORT by Josh Blackman Co mmonwealth, by Ann Patchett. Now its backers will push what they wanted all along. 46 WHEN THE DEAL 20 ‘NO MORE BABY’ by Jay Nordlinger GETS BROKEN A murder in Ohio and the question of abortion. David P. Deavel reviews Losing Susan: Brain Disease, the Priest’s 24 COMMUNITY ON CAMPUS by Ian Tuttle Wife, and the God Who Gives The University of Chicago strikes a small blow for learning. and Takes Away, by Victor Lee Austin. FEATURES 26 THE LIBERAL THREAT TO DEMOCRACY by Yuval Levin & Ramesh Ponnuru SECTIONS Hillary Clinton offers more of the same—and that is the scariest thing of all. 2 Letters to the Editor CITIES WITHOUT NATIONS by Michael Lind 31 4 The Week A pseudo-globalist outlook is dividing Americans by class. 38 The Long View ...... Rob Long Athwart ...... James Lileks BORDERS, BUT WHY? by Reihan Salam 39 34 47 Poetry ...... Sally Cook Immigration ‘restrictionists’ should put aside Trumpian rhetoric. 48 Happy Warrior ...... David Harsanyi

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SEPTEMBER 26 ISSUE; PRINTED SEPTEMBER 9

EDITORINCHIEF Richard Lowry Senior Editors The Wage-Floor Roof of the Richard Brookhiser / Jonah Goldberg / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Working-Class Ghetto Literary Editor Michael Potemra Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy Washington Editor Eliana Johnson Helen Andrews’ review of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir, by J. D. Vance, in the Executive Editor Reihan Salam Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson August 15 issue summarizes Vance’s effort to explain the factors making it National Correspon dent John J. Miller Senior Political Correspondent Jim Geraghty difficult for the Appalachian and midwest white underclass to escape “red- Chief Political Correspondent Tim Alberta neck” ghettos. Government is blamed for a number of factors, such as welfare- Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Deputy Managing Editors supported destructive lifestyles. However, the inability to get work is a key Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Production Editor Katie Hosmer factor and one that deserves greater emphasis. Assistant to the Editor Rachel Ogden Licensing is one obstacle to employment. However, there are many others. Research Associate Alessandra Trouwborst A major element is the inability of wages and employment costs to decline Contributing Editors Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Daniel Foster for employers in such areas. For example, a surplus of labor would attract Roman Genn / Arthur L. Herman / Lawrence Kudlow Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long employers only if other cost benefits existed. Wage laws, both state and federal, Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy tend to equalize unskilled wages and prevent distressed areas from competing Kate O’Beirne / Andrew Stuttaford / Robert VerBruggen

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE on the basis of wage costs. Hence both skilled and less-skilled workers must Editor Charles C. W. Cooke leave established relationships and homes to obtain work instead of waiting Managing Editors Katherine Connell / Edward John Craig Deputy Managing Editor Nat Brown for employers to hire in distressed areas. National-Affairs Columnist John Fund Staff Writer David French This destructive lack of labor-market wage flexibility in “advanced” nations Senior Political Reporter Alexis Levinson retards assimilation, creates ghettos and rural poverty, and, ironically, encourages Reporter Katherine Timpf Associat e Editors Molly Powell / Nick Tell illegal immigration (since wages are high compared with those of developing Digital Director Ericka Andersen Assistant Editor Mark Antonio Wright nations). It prices labor-intensive production out of the domestic marketplace. Technical Services Russell Jenkins It is also necessary to explore the question of how such policies were foisted Web Editorial Assistant Grant DeArmitt Web Developer Wendy Weihs upon us. I suggest labor-union influence on the Democratic party: A labor union Web Producer Scott McKim imposes on its employer in order to survive; Congress and bureaucrats oblige. EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / Kathryn Jean Lopez / John O’Sullivan NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE Alphonse I. Johnson THOMASL. RHODESFELLOW Ian Tuttle Lisbon, Ill.

BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Alexandra DeSanctis / Austin Yack Contributors Hadley Arkes / James Bowman / Eliot A. Cohen It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Duplicity Dinesh D’Souza / Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman James Gardner / David Gelernter / George Gilder Jeffrey Hart / Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune / D. Keith Mano Hurrah for Richard Brookhiser, who points out (City Desk, September 12) the Michael Novak / Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons fallacy behind today’s exaggerated weather-map scare numbers. The first time Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge I saw a TV meteorologist standing in front of a sea of 105s and 108s, I thought: Accountingr Manage Galina Veygman My God, the world is coming to an end! Then, when I started to listen, I found Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya Business Services Alex Batey out that the figures were not actual temperatures but the “heat index”: in other Circulation Manager Jason Ng Advertising Director Jim Fowler words, the real temperature corrected by adding a random number between 10 Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Assistant to the Publisher Brooke Rogers and 20. The only thing lamer than the heat index is the wind-chill factor, Director of Revenue Erik Netcher which uses similar fake precision to inform residents of cold places that wind PUBLISHERCHAIRMAN makes you feel even colder. In order of increasing mendacity, the hierarchy is: Jack Fowler John Hillen (1) government budget figures, (2) car dealers’ list prices, (3) overhyped FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. weather statistics for heat or cold.

PATRONSANDBENEFACTORS Robert Agostinelli Peter Sanders Dale Brott Mr. and Mrs. Michael Conway Norfolk, Va. Mark and Mary Davis Virginia James Christopher M. Lantrip Brian and Deborah Murdock Mr. & Mrs. Richard Spencer Mr. & Mrs. L. Stanton Towne Peter J. Travers Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected].

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n Whoever used that hammer on Hillary’s phones should loan it to Huma Abedin.

n Acting as if it were an arm of the Clinton campaign, the FBI dumped the contents of its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s e- mail practices into the public domain on the Friday afternoon be - fore Labor Day. The files did nothing to exonerate Clinton and instead added key details demonstrating the extent of her recklessness. Her team deleted e-mails even as she publicly called for transparency. She had 13 e-mail devices, yet mysteriously her legal team couldn’t locate a single one to turn over to the FBI. Her aides admitted to “talking around” classified information on unclassified systems, a practice that endangers national security. And Clinton herself claimed not to remember key briefings and not even to understand a common classification marking. All in all, it adds up to an operation that was amateurish at best and a criminal conspiracy at worst, with more than enough evidence to support an indictment. Less prominent people would be busy negotiating a plea bargain, but Hillary continues her run for president. It is indeed good to be a Clinton. See page 13.

n We now learn, after the FBI recommended against prosecut- ing Mrs. Clinton, that the thousands of government files she sought to destroy—destroying just one is a felony—included a key actor in and witness to the conduct under investigation. about 30 related to the Benghazi terrorist attack. That means Under the bar’s rules of professional responsibility, an attorney they were withheld and an attempt was made to destroy them, may not represent a client “in connection with a matter in which even though the attack was the subject of a State Department the lawyer participated personally and substantially as a public internal inquiry, several congressional-committee investiga- officer or employee.” Yet the Obama Justice Department per- tions, one criminal prosecution, and several Freedom of mitted Mills to represent Clinton in the FBI’s investigation. Information Act cases in federal court—in all of which the law Worse, it relied on her status as one of Clinton’s lawyers to bar mandates the production of relevant documents. Clinton, of questioning by the FBI about the process, run by Mills, of course, repeatedly told the public that she gave the State deciding which e-mails would be turned over to the State Department all e-mails related to government business, a claim Department and which destroyed—i.e., the crux of the case. As proved by the FBI’s forensic examination to be false. But the scandalous as Clinton’s behavior has been, in this case the brazen obstruction of justice and official investigations, and the Obama administration’s was worse. Justice Department’s indifference to it, is breathtaking. Obama- administration lawyers, meanwhile, continue to protect Clinton, n Not once, not twice, but three times Anthony Weiner was audaciously telling a federal judge that it would take another caught sending lewd pictures of himself to strange women, month to review the 30 e-mails to ensure that no classified infor- though this was the first time such a picture included Weiner’s mation is revealed—a review that the FBI told us it had already four-year-old son, who had sleepily crawled into bed with him. undertaken, notwithstanding Clinton’s serial false claims not to Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, announced that they would sepa- have transmitted classified information. No wonder Clinton is rate. One can only feel pity for the man debased by such compul- again speaking of the vast right-wing conspiracy. sions, for the woman who stayed with him, and for their child. But Weinergate only distracts from what is publicly noteworthy n When Clinton was interviewed by the FBI, her longtime about Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide. The New York Rasputin, Cheryl Mills, was permitted to participate as her Times reported in 2013 that Abedin simultaneously served as Hil - lawyer. Mindboggling. Mills, who served as Clinton’s chief of la ry’s deputy chief of staff at the State Department and as a paid staff at the State Department, was intimately involved in issues consultant to the Clinton Foundation. Now the latest batch of related to Clinton’s private e-mail setup, discussions with secu- State Department documents uncovered by Judicial Watch shows rity officials about getting Clinton a secure BlackBerry, and that Abedin at State did favors for donors to Clinton-family char- questions raised (including in Freedom of Information Act re - ities—from American rich guys to the crown prince of Bahrain to ROMAN GENN quests) about Clinton’s e-mail communications. Mills was thus rocker Bono. Nothing lewd here: Just the tribute that money pays

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to power, and the lines that the Clintons and their abettors have “Presi dent Likens Dewey to Hitler as Fascist Tool.” That would been blurring for decades. be President Harry Truman, sliming Thomas Dewey, governor of New York. BTW, we don’t think Donald Trump is a fascist— n Clinton is tying Trump to the KKK, white nationalists, con- just a demagogue. You may quote us, Howard, though no doubt spiracy theorists, and something called the “alt-right”—which you will stick with the F-word. turns out to be a tiny group of people who think that both liberals and conservatives have gone astray by failing to uphold a n John McCain and Marco Rubio easily defeated primary chal- racial hierarchy that puts whites and Asians at the top and lengers who tried to run as mini-Trumps. Their victories suggest blacks and Hispanics at the bottom. The ties are thin. Trump that Trump’s success was not reducible to a formula that other should not have gone on Alex Jones’s radio show and praised politicians can employ. His celebrity, his talent for commanding him fulsomely, but wha t are we supposed to infer from Jones’s media attention, and the divisions among his opponents were all theory that the Sandy Hook slaughter was staged? We have no necessary for his victory in the nomination contest. That doesn’t reason to think Trump agrees with this lunacy or knows about mean that Trump’s issues, particularly immigration, were irrele- it. The case against each of the major-party candidates is vant: Neither his celebrity nor his message alone would have car- lengthy. Neither needs to play six degrees of separation to fill ried him to victory. But Trump is a man, not a movement. out an indictment of the other. n Arriving in China for the G-20 summit, President Obama n Trump spoke at a black church in Detroit, the latest in a se - got a frosty welcome. There was no red-carpeted staircase for ries of recent efforts to court black voters. Good for him for him. He had to make do with the airplane’s stairs in the back. asking for black votes: More Republicans should. He is right, Other leaders arriving at the summit—including Vladimir Pu - too, to suggest that many Democratic policies have served tin—got the red-carpet treatment. After Obama and his team blacks, like other Americans, poorly. But he should quit telling disembarked, a Chinese official blocked the way of Susan blacks that they should vote for him because “they have noth- Rice, the national-security adviser, and spoke angrily to her. ing to lose,” a comment that ignores the black middle class. An American Secret Service agent had to step between them. And he should tell blacks the same things he tells everyone Then, this same Chinese official barked at a White House press else. If Black Lives Matter is worth criticizing at mostly white aide, saying, “This is our country! This is our airport!” Yes, in - rallies, it is worth criticizing before black audiences as well. deed. Obama cautioned reporters not to “over-crank the signif- Trump’s talk in Detroit, like many of his Teleprompter speech- icance” of this reception. But let’s not under-crank it either. es, was written by someone who either does not care or is not The ruling Chinese Communists gave the American president able to match his voice. He departed from the text to say “So the back of their hand. And for almost eight years, he has gone true!” at one point, as though running across the words he had out of his way to accommodate them. He is allergic to the sub- said for the first time. Acc ording to the polls, blacks are giving ject of human rights, for example. He has also gone out of his Trump even less support than they gave John McCain and Mitt way to accommodate the Iranian dictatorship and the Cuban Romney. Trump’s new outreach campaign is almost surely dictatorship. For some reason, his eagerness to please has not coming too late to change that. Future Republicans should do engendered respect. this work earlier, and better. n The Obama administration and Beijing signed the Paris agree- n Howard Wolfson is feeling remorseful. Wolfson, a veteran ment—don’t call it a treaty!—on climate change, with China liberal operative, told Frank Bruni of the New York Times that having taken the additional step of ratifying it. President Obama the harsh rhetoric he and fellow Democrats once used against insists this is a mere executive agreement, so it will not be sent to John McCain and Mitt Romney undercuts the harsh rhetoric they the Senate for advice and consent. The discussion of the agree- are using against Donald ment has been almost entirely removed from the relevant eco- Trump now—when they nomic context. The Guardian, for example, points out that the really, really mean it. “It’s United States and China together account for nearly 40 percent of only when you find your- the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, which is true but elides the self describing someone fact that China emits substantially more than does the United who really is the defini- States while creating much less economic value: China produces tion of an extremist—who more than 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions and about 16 really is, essentially, in my percent of world economic output; the United States produces opinion, a fascist—that less than 18 percent of carbon dioxide emissions and about 25 you recognize that the lan- percent of the world’s economic output. Beyond the U.S. and GETTY IMAGES / guage that you’ve used in China, the countries that have actually ratified the Paris agree- the past to describe other ment account for about 1 percent of world carbon dioxide emis- people was hyperbolic and sions. The agreement will not come into force at all until at least

WASHINGTON POST inappropriate and cheap.” 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global carbon THE / Demo crats have been dioxide emissions have ratified it, and countries such as India have playing the fascist card a made it clear that they will go along with the Paris accord only if long time, witness the the United States, Europe, and Japan are forced to bear the brunt New York Times headline of its costs. That’s a high price for an agreement that will prob- MICHAEL WILLIAMSON of October 26, 1948: ably accomplish something within a rounding error of nothing.

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crimination, social-justice hiring). Lincoln told us that the wealth n Colin Kaepernick, NFL quarterback, believes that the built and the blood shed by slaves must be paid. But he thought United States “oppresses black people and people of color.” that terrible debt had been discharged by a terrible civil war. To So he decided to behave badly, and shamefully. The bad blame what black Americans suffer now in poverty or crime on behavior was not to stand during the pregame playing of what Jesuits or other white Americans did in 1838 is to turn the “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Kaepernick’s analysis is study of history into an endless religious rite. arguably simplistic and his action certainly oafish, but it’s a free country, so if he wants to sit, let him; if fans want to boo, n To stop the spread of the Zika virus, scientists are working let them too. The shameful behavior is to develop genetic-engineering techniques to eradicate Aedes wearing socks that depict cops as aegypti, the species of mosquito that is a major carrier of that pigs. Black Lives Matter is depicted deadly disease and others, including dengue and yellow fever. as the modern civil-rights move- Zach Adelman at Texas A&M University, for example, is in - ment—and it is already zooming to ves ti gat ing gene-editing methods for ensuring that all such its Black Panther cop-hating phase. mosquitoes hatched are male, as only the females bite and in - Kae pe rnick’s choice of fect humans, and in any case the suppression of X chromo- hose is a public ser- somes would spell the species’ eventual extinction. In London, vice, presenting an researchers are aiming to write a self-destructive trait into the important aspect of genes of the mosquito species that is most responsible for a movement often ma laria in sub-Saharan Africa. Some thoughtful scientists and obscured by media bioethicists wring their hands. Kevin Esvelt, a researcher at melodrama. MIT, makes the unassailable observation that undertaking to “alter the traits of a wild population” is “not something we should do lightly.” So let’s do it weightily. Killing the disease- bearing mosquitoes would have a minimal effect on the food n The obvious end of a humane society, when it comes to chai n, and it would save human lives. The biology behind the mental-health efforts, should be to mitigate the public conse- endeavor may be delicate and difficult, but the ethical issues quences of serious mental illness, and, as much as possible, to here are not. Kill the mosquitoes. alleviate the suffering of those afflicted. Hillary Clinton’s newly released “Comprehensive Agenda for Mental Health” promises n SpaceX, Elon Musk’s private space-launch company, says an more of the grim status quo. While expressing concern that “our “anomaly on the pad” caused its rocket to fail two days before it criminal justice system is increasingly becoming the ‘front line’ was to launch. Well, that’s one way to put it. While the rocket of engagement with individuals with mental health problems,” was being filled with propellant, a catastrophic explosion she proposes policies that will do nothing to change that fact, destroyed the unmanned spacecraft and its payload (a Facebook instead promoting mental-health insurance-parity policies that satellite that would have provided direct Internet access to are largely irrelevant to serious mental illness, and promoting the remote areas of sub-Saharan Africa) and sent a towering fireball Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness into the Cape Canaveral sky. These things happen—if it were program, which is used to enable people who are not in their right easy, they wouldn’t call it “rocket science”—and we would do minds to avoid treatment. About the provisions in federal law that well to remember that while SpaceX has had its fair share of prohibit Medicaid or Medicare monies from going to mental- highly visible failures, it has also had its triumphs, such as last health treatment in facilities of a certain size—provisions that are May’s successful landing of a Falcon 9 rocket on a floating largely responsible for the shuttering of psychiatric hospitals and barge at sea (the company hopes to reuse the rocket, reducing the increased dearth of care for the seriously mentally ill—Clin - costs). Besides: Facebook Internet-providing satellites? Private ton’s plan is silent, just as it is silent about the failed Sub stance space travel? This isn’t your granddaddy’s space program. The Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the federal future is now—and it looks like it will be brought to you by good mental-health bureaucracy that is largely responsible for the old-fashioned American free enterprise. current situation. Serious mental illness has gone untended for dec ades, with doleful consequences on our streets and in our n The series of sting videos released last summer by the Center prisons that Clinton’s agenda is unlikely to change. for Medical Progress exposed the ghoulish reality of America’s abortion industry. So, naturally, California lawmakers are trying n Georgetown University has addressed an 1838 sale of 272 to deter any future whistleblowers. Under Assembly Bill 1671, slaves, a sale that saved the institution from bankruptcy. Because recording or “intentionally disclos[ing] or distribut[ing] . . . the the Jesuits who did the deal kept careful records, it is possible to contents of a confidential communication with a health care pro - track where the slaves went and who some of their descendants vid er” would be punishable with a fine or imprisonment. But in now are. History lives on in us, both good and bad, and we can their zeal to endear themselves to Planned Parenthood, legislators GETTY IMAGES

/ never know too much about it. But what should now be done? have written a bill so broad that it could potentially ensnare even The Washington Post quoted Barry Bogues, director of Brown lawyers or journalists who share or publish transcripts in the University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice: “Where course of doing their jobs. For that reason, the California branch HENDERSON . questions of diversity of faculty and students have not been given of the ACLU has criticized the bill, and the Los Angeles Times serious consideration, you’re going to see more activity.” In other editorial board—which recently demanded that Congress end its THEARON W words, old sins justify the modern Left’s remedies (reverse dis- “witch hunt for ‘baby body part’ sellers”—has opposed it. But the

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bill was passed by both chambers of the state legislature and, at ate ly clear. Whatever his aim, the initiative seems to have had an press time, was awaiting the governor’s signature. A witch hunt, effect opposite to that intended: Instead of starting a “national directed against less deserving targets, is exactly what Demo - conversation” about the urgent need for feminism, it has reminded cratic politicians in California seem to want. the public what a killjoy looks like in his natural habitat.

n Global fame, which she n Christian clergy throughout the United Kingdom should never sought, began to increase security at churches and take precautions for their descend on Mother Teresa personal safety. That’s the recommendation of Nick Tolson, in the 1970s. For nearly an official at the Home Office. One vicar has told the Mirror half a century she has Online that authorities are urging clergy to avoid wearing been venerated as a de clerical collars in public, although Tolson says he demurs facto Catholic saint, elicit- from that particular advice. A parallel debate has arisen ing awe, gratitude, and among observant Jews over the question of whether men affection for her service to should forgo wearing kippot on the streets of European cities the poorest of the poor. In where anti-Semitism has broken out in bloody violence or middle age, re sponding to threatens to. Having largely eradicated Christianity from the a “call within the call” to Middle East, Islamists have announced in the clearest possi- religious life, the head- ble terms their intention to take their religious war to the West mistress of a convent —and too many in the West have decided that the best de- school in Calcutta left her fense is abject capitulation. comfortable position to tend to the needs of the n The European Commission wants Ireland to collect back taxes destitute who filled the from Apple—back taxes that Ireland does not think Apple owes. neigh boring streets. Big-hearted and tough-minded in equal The commission’s claim is that Ireland is showing Apple prefer- measure, she attracted followers. In 1950 she founded the ential treatment that other companies do not get. It has done little Missionaries of Charity, a congregation whose members now to substantiate the claim. If it does not do so during pending judi- number about 5,000. They serve in 139 countries, where they run cial proceedings, it will confirm several suspicions about the shelters, clinics, schools, and homes for the dying. Mother Teresa European Union: that it is hostile to low-tax states; that it seeks was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979; in her acceptance to harm the American tech industry; and that Britain will be well speech, she caused a stir by defending the right to life of unborn rid of it, as would other countries that wish to protect their right children. She defended it often thereafter. On September 4, Pope to govern themselves. Francis formally canonized her a saint, who with loving kind- ness, as the faithful believe, looks down on us from heaven; but n Conservationists describe handsome, donor-pleasing animals no one has to be Catholic to look up to her. as “charismatic megafauna,” and there are few mega fauna more charismatic than the giant panda. So animal lovers re - n The Olympic Games in Rio distracted attention from the joiced recently when the International Union for Con servation impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil. She of Nature upgraded the black-and-white behemoth’s status has been found guilty of a “crime of responsibility,” in other from “endangered” to merely “vulnerable.” An official from words carelessness about the use of public money. The parlia- the World Wildlife Fund said the news “proves that a united mentarians who finally voted her out of office are themselves approach can bring a substantial difference to threatened mired in accusations of corruption. Rousseff, once a Marxist species, even at a time of great economic growth in China.” guerrilla, says she is the victim of a right-wing coup, and “Even”? Without economic growth, China’s government appeals to her supporters with the words “I know we will all could never have afforded and enforced the conservation fight.” Her successor is Michel Temer, 75, from the Brazilian measures that allowed the giant panda’s resurgence; impov- Democratic Movement party. The Right has replaced the Left, erished rural dwellers will poach or chop down anything that but in Brazil they do things their own way. Since the end of helps them survive. On the other hand, there’s no denying dictatorship 30 years ago, just two of the eight elected presi- that China’s breakneck growth, with the attendant pollution dents completed their turn of office. The Games are over, but and habitat destruction, has killed off innumerable other the crisis isn’t. species, but since these tend to be less winsome than the giant panda, no one ever hears about them. That explains why n Always looking for a new area into which he might push his wildlife activists find charismatic megafauna to be both a nose, British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced in Au - blessing and a curse. gust that he would very much like it if his fellow countrymen stopped drinking after work. His reasoning? That because wo - n This year’s incoming freshmen at the University of Chicago men have babies—and because babies need looking after in the were welcomed with a bracing letter from the dean of students. evenings—post-work outings are contributing to Britain’s ram- It warned that the administration would not condone the sup- pant gender inequality. (Britain’s female prime minister, pression of the free exchange of ideas by means of “trigger

ULLSTEIN BILD VIAConservative GETTY IMAGES Theresa May, was not immediately available for warnings,” “safe spaces,” or the disinvitation of speakers / comment.) Quite how a Corbyn administration would endeavor deemed too controversial by student activists. The letter was PROBST to police the drinking habits of British workers was not im me di - widely circulated online, generating applause in some quarters

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THE WEEK

and backlash in others. (“Who exactly is this letter meant to wel- n The actor Mark Ruffalo, whose exquisite political correctness come?” Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson wanted to defines Hollywood smug, boasted some months ago that he was know.) That such a full-throated defense of open discourse in the producing a “daring” film about a transgender prostitute. (Set in academy now amounts to trend-bucking is as dispiriting as the Los Angeles, of course; “daring” has its limits.) Ruffalo cast as statement was welcome. his lead Matt Bomer, and the part of the entertainment world that is more ridiculous than Mark Ruffalo—they exist—was scan- n This fall, for the first time in 50 academic years, Hadley dalized. Bomer, you see, is merely gay, not transgender. Casting Arkes is absent from the roster of active faculty at Amherst him in the role of a transgender prostitute was not just an act of College. A pillar of its political-science department, he has of - bad taste, according to Jen Richards, an Emmy-nominated direc- fi cially retired. Two years ago he taught what turned out to be tor of transgender-themed entertainment, but an act that “will di - his final class. At a ceremony at the Union League Club in New rect ly lead to violence.” This is the poisonous line of argument York earlier this year, friends and colleagues honored his half that transgender activists deploy in favor of censorship: that century of service. He studied under Leo Strauss at the Uni ver- speech that offends them or fails to comport with their beliefs is si ty of Chicago and developed a special interest in natural indistinguishable from acts of violence. The same argument was rights. For decades, Arkes has argued forcefully against abor- used in the petition to have our correspondent Kevin D. Wil - tion, in a professional environment in which to do so has taken liam son fired from the Chicago Sun-Times for arguing that the courage and independence of mind. In 2010, he converted to transgender actor Laverne Cox is not a woman. (The Sun-Times Catholicism, calling it a fulfillment of the Jewish faith into obliged, which was amusing inasmuch as Williamson did not which he was born. He is a prolific author of books and articles work there.) This is a deeply illiberal and dangerous mode of pitched to general and scholarly readers alike. Con grat u la - discourse, and should be fought even when its target is as richly tions, and thanks, to the Edward N. Ney Professor of American deserving as Mark Ruffalo. Institutions, emeritus. n Imagine a cross between 1930s goldfish swallowing and 1960s n The Hillsdale Collegian is the ninth-best college newspaper in anti-war protests, and you have the current gender-pronoun craze America, according to the Princeton Review, a private company at colleges across America. Vanderbilt has plastered its campus specializing in tutoring and other services for university appli- with gender-usage posters that rival prescription-drug instruc- cants and students. Of the top ten papers in the Review’s 25th tions for length and complexity, detailing the differences between annual ranking, the Collegian represents the smallest school—at ze/zir/zirs and ze/hir/hirs and listing manifold “proactive ways to 1,500, Hillsdale’s enrollment is lower than that of many high affirm Vanderbilt’s commitment to gender inclusion.” Vermont’s schools—and the most conservative one. That latter superlative Champlain College gives new students buttons that say “Hello, may be hard to quantify, but who would dispute it? Through its my pronouns are Xe/Xem/Xyrs” (or “He/Him/His,” “They/ classical liberal-arts curriculum, Hillsdale feeds the cultural con- Them/Their,” or even “My pronouns are Fluid, please ask me”). servatism that is the great garden in which the political ideas of And Wisconsin-Milwaukee has posted a chart listing twelve dif- Locke, Burke, Hayek, et al. can flourish. Celebration of “diversity” ferent pronoun sets, each of which includes five different forms; in higher education these days typically entails an insistence on the administration sternly notes that “it is your job to remember ideological uniformity along left-liberal lines, so it’s refreshing to people’s PGPs” [personal gender pronouns], and that failing to see Hillsdale next to (and, ahem, besting) the likes of the Uni - do so “is not only disrespectful and hurtful, but also oppressive,” versity of Wisconsin at Madison. although the worst thing you can do if you make a mistake is to apologize profusely, which “is inappropriate and makes the per- n Lena Dunham, the daffy young actress whose supraparodic son who was mis-gendered feel awkward.” Who said etiquette self-absorption has made her the sad mascot of the millennial was dead? generation, did not have a very good time at the annual Met Gala. Because she is not slim, she is self-conscious about her n The 1930s were heady times for Chicago. It hosted a body, particularly in the company of the sort of people who at- World’s Fair, the Cubs won the pennant three times, and a tend such events—we can hear you weeping for the Met Gala University of Chicago player was awarded the first Heisman crowd from here—and she responded by attending in drag. She Trophy. The decade also saw the opening, in 1934, of the was seated with the football player Odell Beckham Jr. If Dun - Brookfield Zoo, one of whose original inhabitants was a ham’s reports are to be believed, Beckham had the good sense year-old cockatoo named Cookie. Over the years, Cookie to remain almost entirely indifferent to her presence. What fol- became a symbol of Chicago’s zoo, and of the city’s lowed was a long exercise in pseudo-literary self-indulgence resilience, surviving well past his species’ normal lifespan of and feminist nonsense in which Dunham publicly imagined 40 to 60 years to set a world record for parrot longevity. what must have been going through Beckham’s mind as he con- Visitors loved the pink-headed bird with the one-word vocab- templated the dumpy woman in the tuxedo. Dunham was criti- ulary (his own name), though as he grew older and more frail, cized, partly on inevitable racial grounds, for attributing he was put on display less and less often—sometimes just for misogynistic sexual thoughts to a young black man who had not his birthday celebrations, which always drew throngs and said a word to her one way or the other. Dunham later issued an were well covered in Chicago’s press. In recent years Cookie apology—and, true to form, it was almost entirely about her: was kept in an office behind the scenes, though a sign her insecurities, her anxieties, her feelings. Beckham, for his informed anxious visitors that he was still alive and squawk- part, still seems to be only vaguely aware that Lena Dunham ing up a storm, until late last month, when Cookie finally exists. We envy him. expired. Dead at 83, R.I.P.

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n Gene Wilder in his best stood with him—awkwardly—at a joint press conference screen roles, most of them col- afterwards. Trump has had problems, to put it mildly, convinc- laborations with director Mel ing voters that he has the attributes of a potential commander- Brooks, perfected a blend of in-chief, and it was priceless publicity for him to have a bland good humor and manic diplomatic exchange with the president of a country that he has upset, the shifts between the repeatedly lambasted. two both startling and perfectly Peña Nieto easily could have blown up the joint appearance timed. One of his best bits came when Trump, in response to a journalist’s question, said that in Blazing Saddles: Wilder, a Mexico’s paying for a U.S.–Mexico border wall hadn’t been dis- washed-up gunslinger, con- cussed. Peña Nieto says he told Trump at the beginning of their soles black sheriff Cleavon private meeting that Mexico wouldn’t pay for the wall. Peña Little, dismayed by the racism Nieto let it go (and has since been pilloried in his own country— of the townspeople he is sup- his minister who arranged the Trump visit has resigned). posed to protect. “You gotta A few hours later, Trump clarified his position on immigra- remember,” croons Wilder, “that tion after a couple of weeks of wobbling. He embraced a com- these are just simple farmers. prehensive, cogent enforcement-first agenda that implicitly [Beat] People of the land. [Beat] The common clay of the new dumped his wholly unrealistic pledge to rapidly deport 11 mil- West. [Beat] You know. [Long beat] Morons.” Hilarious. But lion illegal aliens, and at the same time rejected a Gang of that way of dealing with common clay, which goes back to Eight–style amnesty. Instead, Trump promised more enforce- Voltaire and Flaubert, stretched on, in America, through ment at the border and the workplace and said we can decide Norman Lear to The Daily Show. No argument, just derision. whether to legalize remaining illegal immigrants after the ille- The common clay gets the joke too, and sometimes gets tired gal population has diminished. of it. Wilder milked the trope for a laugh, and floated on, glo- This is a sound position, although Trump didn’t quite stick riously, to his next. Dead at 83. R.I.P. the landing. The speech was hazy on the matter of whether illegal immigrants will have to leave before getting legal status in n Phyllis Schlafly was one of the original happy warriors. She the future, and in his public comments Trump has continued to liked to open her lectures by thanking her husband, Fred, for sow confusion on this question. Yet he is on much more solid allowing her to appear. No one who knew her thought anybody ground substantively now than when he supported mass depor- allowed her to do anything; strangely, the feminists never tation to be followed by a touchback amnesty (once deported, stopped hating her for that. Raised in difficult financial circum- the best illegal immigrants would be allowed back), a bizarre stances, she entered Maryville College at 16 and finished three mishmash supported by no serious restrictionist. years later (after transferring to Washington University) with a Trump’s Mexico gambit and speech marked a new effort by political-science degree; nine months after that, she had a his campaign to make him seem more palatable to swing vot- master’s from Radcliffe, followed by a job on an unsuccessful ers. He is still the same Trump—he shouted parts of the immi- Re pub li can congressional campaign and a deep dip into con - gration speech to an enthusiastic crowd at a rally. But he has ser va tive thinking at the predecessor to the American En ter - stopped hurting himself, and has reg ained ground on an ane- prise Institute. In 1952 she was for Robert Taft and in 1964 she mic Hillary Clinton. was for Goldwater, supporting his campaign in her book A Choice Not an Echo, millions of copies of which went into circulation. But it was her campaign against the so-called Equal Rights Amend ment that made her a household name. The passage of the ERA was taken as a foregone conclusion in political and intellectual circles, but Schlafly had other ideas. Likewise, when the best and brightest told the Republican party to cool it on abortion, Schlafly was there to keep up the heat. She man- aged to raise six children along the way. Her hawkishness on immigration and her suspicion of international trade accords made her a natural ally of Donald Trump, and her 27th book, published just barely posthumously, makes the case for his can- REX FEATURES VIA AP IMAGES

: didacy. She was a hard enemy to have and a gracious friend. Dead at 92. R.I.P. TRUMP /

NIETO 2016 ; Trump in Mexico GETTY IMAGES / ONALD TRUMP executed perhaps the most successful strike into Mexico since General Zachary Taylor, and fol-

GEORGED ROSE lowed it up with a tough immigration speech in Arizona. : The Trump team wangled an invitation to visit out of Mexi - Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto and Republican presidential nominee WILDER can president Enrique Peña Nieto and benefited when Trump Donald Trump, August 31, 2016

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hence resistant to radical change, which presumably can be had only through third-party candidates. That’s a difficult argument to make this year: Mrs. Clinton, having been humiliated for the second time in a Democratic primary, is running a candidacy that is in many ways to the left of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, certainly to the left of Barack Obama. The Republicans have, for their part, nominated a populist entertainer with no particular interest in party orthodoxy. If you are in the market for something radical, both of the major parties are in 2016 happy to oblige. And yet there’s Gary Johnson, running far ahead of some earlier third-party challenges that are remembered as historically significant: He is outpolling by a wide margin the 1948 candidacy of segregationist Democrat Strom Thurmond and is within striking distance of the 1968 performance of segregationist Democrat George Wallace. Johnson is, however, trailing the 1980 The Libertarian performance of John Anderson, the candidate he most resembles and the one he Social Engineer probably has in mind. Gary Johnson is a flawe d candidate, but the Right should woo his supporters Anderson, a highly intelligent Foreign Service veteran and Harvard Law gradu- BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON ate, had for years represented an Illinois district as one of the most conservative HE Libertarian party is having a elected president in 2016. He is not going members of the House, but had drifted big year. Its presidential ticket to be a spoiler who costs the Republican or in a libertarian-to-liberal direction. He T is composed of two former Re - Democratic nominee an important state or made a good impression during the 1980 publican governors with rea- throws the election into the House of GOP primary debates, partly as a Paul sonably good records and a great deal Representatives. But he already is the Ryan–style policy wonk (he’d advocated more relevant executive experience most significant Libertarian-party presi- cutting payroll taxes by half and making between the two of them than the Demo - dential candidate in history, at least in raw up the difference with a higher gasoline cratic and Republican nominees com- electoral terms: His 2012 showing of 1.2 tax) and partly as a plain-speaking real- bined. “For once,” the Libertarians joke, million votes set a record for the party, ist. In the same way that Ted Cruz would “we aren’t the crazy ones.” though one might argue that 1988 candi- a generation later distinguish himself In a three-way race against Hillary date Ron Paul and 1980 vice-presidential by taking a stand against ethanol subsi- Rodham Clinton and Donald Trump, nominee David Koch have been more dies in Iowa, where they are popular in Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, for- important as movement builders. Johnson the way that only free money is popu- mer governor of New Mexico, broke the seems very likely to outperform his 2012 lar, Anderson broke ranks with Republi- 10 percent mark in two August polls—far tally, perhaps by a great deal. cans and endorsed Jimmy Carter’s grain ahead of where he was last time around, Why is it in this year that the Libertarian embargo, a retaliatory measure taken far ahead of where Ralph Nader was in party is having such a strong showing? against the Soviet Union after its inva- 2000 and even Ross Perot in 1996, though The number of ideologically driven liber- sion of Afghanistan. But he was far from well behind Perot’s 20 percent standing tarians who understand themselves as sep- a thoroughgoing hawk: Asked about in the summer of 1992, without which all arate from (as, indeed, opposed to) the their worst mistakes in office, the other that probably would have been heard of conservative movement and who gener- candidates hemmed and hawed, but Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016 would ally cannot abide supporting Republican Anderson immediately cited his vote for have been: “Who?” That the Clintons candidates is tiny in electoral terms. the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which might end up owing two presidencies to Usually, the Libertarians and other third deepened U.S. involvement in Vietnam. megalomaniac billionaire dilettantes is a parties benefit from the belief, justified or He also mocked Reagan’s insistence that remarkable thing. not, that the two major parties are mere the federal government could ratchet up Let’s get the pro forma stuff out of the machines driven by their own internal defense spending, cut taxes, and balance ROMAN GENN way: Gary Johnson is not going to be political and economic imperatives and the budget simultaneously.

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That’s the kind of honesty that keeps a usually tries to work within the party, to reality, the Rockefeller Republicans all candidate down in the 20 percent range, embolden Republicans to act on their but disappeared, and the GOP rose to its where Anderson stayed. Eventually, he own program and to inspire or eliminate greatest position of power while advo- withdrew from the Republican race and malingerers. That’s what happened in cating (if not always successfully) a full- ran as an independent. Jimmy Carter did 1980, 1994, and 2010. Other times, ele- spectrum conservatism that is much him a great favor by refusing to share a ments of the Right take up an issue that more strongly pro-life than was the 1980 debate stage with him, which left is outside that conservative–Republican Republican consensus. Young people Anderson in a one-on-one debate with overlap. That usually has to do with for- since that time grew more suspicious of Ronald Reagan, where he turned in a eign policy (the Ron Paul movement abortion and embraced a much more good performance. was more about George W. Bush than it pro-life ethic than their parents had, and In the end, it was not the libertarian- was about Ron Paul) or international Americans also moved closer to conser- leaning conservatives who backed trade, which produced Ross Perot, Pat vative views on gun rights and immigra- Anderson (with the exception of those of Buchanan, and the Reform party. But tion. At the same time, they moved away the Ron Paul persuasion, who viewed the 2016 election is an interesting mess from conservatives on homosexual mar- Reagan as a warmonger, most were in that the same energies that normally riage and have woefully mixed-up views thrilled with the GOP nominee) but liber- would have swelled the ranks of a Perot of related religious-liberty questions. als ranging from the editors of The New or Buchanan (or even George Wallace) Which is to say, ordinary voters continue Republic, who endorsed him, to what was candidacy were, through the instrument to be ordinary voters, not ideologues. left of the Rockefeller Republicans, who of open primaries and the declining real- What is strange, and almost shocking, had no use for ideological firebrands world power of a party “establishment” is that the Republican mainstream has such as Reagan. that exists mainly in rhetoric and fantasy, done so little to appropriate Johnson- You can see the appeal for Gary John - channeled into the transfiguration of Weld’s strengths. The conservative move - son, who is not, despite being aligned Donald Trump, a Hillary Clinton donor ment has long been open to a more with what is arguably the most ideologi- and ally of Chuck Schumer who now, realistic, libertarian, and federalist cally committed of the familiar political oddly, leads the Republican party. approach to marijuana and other drugs, parties, particularly ideological. Almost Libertarian-minded Republicans look- an issue that accounts for a great deal of every good governor has the soul of an ing for an alternative to Trump will be Libertarian-party support. And while the accountant, which is why many fiscal tempted by Johnson, but they will not be GOP is not going to—and should not— conservatives find them attractive as pres- tempted very much. Johnson and Weld embrace a Ron Paul foreign policy, a idential candidates and why most pop- are men out of time (which of you even green-eyeshade approach to rationalizing ulists do not. Johnson may call himself knew that Weld was still alive?), and they our extravagant defense outlays would a Libertarian, but he is in many ways are in part stuck fighting the last genera- assuage the concerns of many voters, an old-fashioned liberal Republican, a tion’s culture wars. Those “damn preach- especially when foreign adventures Rockefeller revivalist. He even went to ers” who gave Barry Goldwater fits still already are the subject of neo-Taftian the trouble of finding the last surviving loom large in their imaginations, which is Republican skepticism. On the other side specimen of the species living in the wild, why Johnson is so very, very bad—and so of the ledger, the “open borders” Repub - William Weld, to be his running mate. very un-libertarian—on religious-liberty licans who so concern Trump voters do And that is why Johnson, who is hav- issues. It takes some acrobatics to run as a not, for the most part, exist beyond a few ing a remarkable year, arguably is having principled libertarian who is pretty excited think tanks and opinion columns. To the less of a remarkable year than he should about weed but also excited about using extent that immigration is a question of be having. the law to punish you for declining on reli- law enforcement—and illegal immigra- What Johnson knows is that conserv- gious grounds to participate on a commer- tion is almost entirely that—it coincides atives have been looking for an alterna- cial basis in the marriage of a homosexual with a traditional Republican strength. tive to the Republican party for more couple. The Rockefeller Republicanism in Trade, for reasons that are more social than 60 years. From the founding of this Johnson’s political DNA makes him hard than economic, will remain tricky. magazine (“Our principles are round where he should be soft and soft where he Gary Johnson and William Weld are and Eisenhower is square”) to the failed should be hard. He’s willing to see unborn both decent, honorable men with fine Reagan insurgency in 1976 to the tea- children butchered in the name of a vague- records in public service and no particular party movement to the Trump cam- ly articulated pro-choice principle but has reason to be elected president and vice paign, the motley coalition that is the fits when illegal immigrants are described president. But the strength of this year’s conservative movement has always had as “illegal immigrants.” Weld, one of the Libertarian-party candidacy is a reminder a Master Blaster relationship with the most charming men in American politics, that there is a substantial number of Republican party, each trying to ride is somewhat worse, with a terrible record Americans who are looking for something piggy-back on the other. on some core libertarian-conservative that the Republican party is not offering, Sometimes, the issues most impor- issues, gun rights prominent among them. neither in its pre-Trump configuration tant to the insurgency are those in the There were a great many people in nor after its disfiguration by Trump and Venn-diagram overlap between the cir- 1992 who argued that a Republican party Trumpism. Johnson is not offering them cle labeled “Conservative Priorities” that became more libertarian in the exactly what they want (still less what they and the one labeled “Republican Policy Johnson-Weld sense—laying off the so- need), but he is thriving for a reason, and Agenda.” In those cases, the insurgency called social issues—would succeed. In conservatives should take note.

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agreements, but last month, as he began to slip in the polls against his Demo - cratic opponent, he too announced his Trade Winds opposition to the TPP because “it is not a good deal for Pennsyl va nia.” PublicShift opinion is moving In the modern era, Republicans have been friendly to free trade as a matter of toward protectionism, and politicians principle, while Democrats, accountable are following to labor unions demanding protection from competition abroad, have been less BY ELIANA JOHNSON so. So this sort of opposition to a major trade agreement from high-profile Re - pub lican lawmakers marks a significant OR the first time in recent memory, break with the past. both major-party presidential Ronald Reagan viewed free trade as a F nominees are positioning them- bulwark against Communism. “The selves against free trade. It’s per- freer the flow of world trade,” he said, haps the lone issue on which Donald “the stronger the tides of human prog - Trump has maintained some consisten- ress and peace among nations.” Donald cy—he has long been hostile to it, and he Trump won the Republican nomination is opposed to the Trans-Pacific Part ner - railing against globalization and blam- ship, the trade deal President Obama ing international trade for “moving our struck with eleven other nations along the jobs, our wealth, and our factories to Pacific Rim. Few believe Hillary Clin ton Mexico and overseas.” His success was when she says she opposes the deal, a warning for many Republicans that the which she once praised as the “gold stan- party’s base had grown increasingly Ensure that dard in trade agreements,” but, as in many hostile to trade. As he rose in the polls, other instances, political necessity called many Republicans, starting with Texas freedom for some dissembling. senator Ted Cruz, who made an about- More interesting than Clinton’s two- face on the TPP in March, have followed rings for her. step, however, are the free-market Re pub- in Trump’s footsteps, making protec- li cans who have come up with reasons to tionist noises in more muted tones. oppose the deal, which on the campaign A ream of data suggests that they are Use DonorsTrust to leave your trail this year has become a proxy for their responding to the sentiments of Re pub li- legacy of liberty. broader views on free trade. While they can voters. A survey of 7,400 registered You have benefited from a heritage of support free trade in principle, they say, voters conducted in May by Deep Root liberty that makes this country great, this deal does not do enough to prevent Analytics, the largest public poll con- but you know our freedoms are under other countries, particularly China, from ducted to date, found that more than half skirting Amer i can laws. Nonetheless, the of the surveyed Republicans—56 per- constant attack. DonorsTrust helps timing is curious. cent—described themselves as “anti- donors support charitable organiza- The Cincinnati Enquirer once dubbed trade” rather than “pro-trade.” The more tions working to preserve liberty for Rob Portman, the Ohio senator who strongly a voter identified as a Republi - future generations to enjoy. Can we served as United States trade representa- can, the more likely he was to express help you? Learn more by calling us tive in the second George W. Bush ad- hostility to free trade: Sixty percent of or visiting donorstrust.org/legacy. ministration, “the face of free trade.” If “hard Republicans” opposed it, while just he was that back then, he isn’t any 28 percent expressed support for it. “Soft” longer. Up for reelection this year, Port - Republicans opposed it by a slimmer man, who has long raised concerns margin, 48 to 40 percent. about China’s currency manipulation, Trump seems to have brought to a released an anodyne statement in Febru - head so me long-simmering resentments a ry announcing his opposition to the among Republican voters, and thanks to TPP because “it doesn’t provide a level his candidacy, trade has loomed over the playing field” for American workers. 2016 election in a way it hadn’t before. Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey, a for- “This has been developing for at least 15 mer president of the free-market Club years,” says Deep Root Ana lyt ics CEO for Growth, is also facing a tough re - Brent McGoldrick. He describes the BUILDING A LEGACY OF LIBERTY

election challenge. At the Club, Too mey anti-trade sentiment among the Republi- DT Philanthropic Services introduced a congressional scorecard can base as “kindling that was sitting -- • www.donorstrust.org against which lawmakers are measured there for somebody to light.” In a 2007 in part on their support for free-trade NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, for

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example, 60 per cent of Republicans said Round of trade negotiations, which led free trade had been bad for the United to the creation of the World Trade States. Other NBC News/Wall Street Organization in 1994, and for the Central Journal polling data suggest that the American Free Trade Agree ment of Obamacare on trend stretches back even farther: The 2005, among others. And even though percentage of those who said free-trade both Barack Oba ma and Hillary Clinton Life Support agreements have hurt the country nearly talked like protectionists on the cam- Now its backers will push what they doubled between 1999 and 2010. paign trail in 2008, Obama has been a wanted all along Behind the political shift are demo- proponent of free trade in office—much graphic and economic ones. Those most to the chagrin of the far left, whose BY JOSH BLACKMAN likely to see free trade as a bad thing? opposition in Congress initially stymied According to the Pew Research Center, the TPP. ESPITE the best-laid plans of our they are whites, men, and people over It’s unclear whether the shift in the GOP central planners, Obamacare is the age of 65. In other words, some of ranks is permanent. Many analysts point D unraveling. In 2009, the Obama the groups that compose the core of the out that the party out of power tends to administration proposed an GOP and have in recent years migrat- inch toward protectionism re gardless of am bitious bill that aimed to seamlessly ed to it in increasing numbers. The the circumstances. That is, Republicans expand health insurance for millions of blue-collar Democrats whom Reagan tend to support free-trade agreements Americans. The uninsurable would be brought into the party, as well as many when a Re pub li can president is pushing guaranteed access to insurance. The in - members of the tea-party movement, them and to oppose them when a Demo- sured would keep the plans they liked. heralded this shift. “What we’ve seen cratic president is. The inverse is true of The uninsured would be penalized. under Trump is the consolidation of the Dem o crats. “Fifteen to 20 percent of each Profitable insurers would transfer their white working class in the GOP, and party fluctuates in its support or opposi- gains to unprofitable competitors. Online those are people, particularly men, who tion to trade,” says Scott Lin ci come, an exchanges—the mechanism to hold these have been most harmed by international international-trade attorney and an adjunct mandates together—would allow cus- trade competition,” says Ted Alden, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute. tomers to choose from a wide range of senior fellow at the Coun cil on Foreign “When Bush was president, over 50 subsidized insurance policies. Or at least Relations who specializes in U.S. eco- percent of Re publi cans supported trade that was the plan. nomic competitiveness. agreements and free trade. When Obama We are only three years into this bold, And those most likely to see free trade came into office, it basically flipped.” persistent experiment, and virtually all of as a boon? According to the Pew Re - Others argue that Trump has had a the experts’ forecasts have already been search Center, they are Hispanics, unique impact on the views of Re pub li can proven wrong. The carefully crafted mea- women, bl acks, and people between the voters but say that public opinion is likely sures designed to stabilize the markets ages of 18 and 29—that is, some of the to snap back once he disappears from the have faltered. The uninsurable are using Democratic party’s core constituencies. political scene. “GOP ap pe tites on trade coverage that is far more expensive than “If you look at the demographics this are following the outspoken voice of the anticipated. The insured lost the plans they election, the Democratic base is young- party’s nominee for president,” says a top liked and are now confronting skyrocket- er, it’s diverse, it’s urban,” says John Republican stra te gist. “In the future, ing premiums and dwindling choices. The Murphy, who specializes in international- when there’s a different Republican pres- uninsured are not signing up, leaving risk trade and -investment policy at the U.S. ident, if he’s not banging the drum against pools skewed toward older and sicker cus- Chamber of Commerce. And while orga- trade—or he’s actually promoting trade— tomers. Insurers are suffering far greater nized labor is declining as a share of the I suspect Republican attitudes will be dif- losses than expected and are rapidly flee- voting public, Murp hy says, “these are ferent than they are now.” ing the exchanges. As I discuss in my new parts of the American population that Such are the voices of the optimists. book, Unraveled: Obamacare, Religious are not threatened by trade.” Those less sanguine about the future of Liberty, and Executive Power, these fail- For those who believe in the merits of free trade suspect that the traditional polit- ings are the entirely foreseeable conse- free trade, the collapse of support for it ical coalitions that have kept free trade quences of the law’s fractious birth, illegal in Republican ranks is a troubling devel- alive for decades are on their way out. “I implementation, and arrogant central opment. Alden points out that virtually think it’s impossible to believe that Re - planning. A careful study of Obamacare’s all of the country’s major free-trade agree - publican support for trade in the future is history leads to a bleak forecast of the ments have passed thanks to a relatively going to be anywhere near as high as it law’s uncertain future. stable alliance between Re pub licans and was in the past,” Alden says. “I think the President Obama recently lamented the a small but shrinking group of interna- only way for the next president to move “hyper-partisanship” surrounding health- tionally minded Dem o crats. Bill Clinton forward on trade will be to construct a care reform. The president’s criticism signed the 1993 North Ameri can Free new coalition, because the old one has ignores his own role in institutionalizing Trade Agreement into law against over- been shattered.” this gridlock. The Affordable Care Act whelming Dem o crat ic opposition, and If he’s right, it’s one of the most was approved in 2010 on a straight party- only solid Re pub li can support allowed important problems free-market Re - the bill to make it through Congress. pub li cans will have to reckon with Mr. Blackman teaches constitutional law at the The same was true for the Uruguay come No vem ber. Houston College of Law.

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line basis, without a single Republican more people out of the insurance market. taxpayers—footing the bill. Blue Cross vote. For a bill of such magnitude, this Though his actions provided a short-term Blue Shield explained that “individuals lack of bipartisanship was unprecedented. analgesic to people who had lost coverage enrolled through special enrollment peri- All of the landmark social-welfare and or who could not afford new coverage, the ods are utilizing up to 55 percent more civil-rights laws in the 20th century were modifications further skewed the risk pool services than their open enrollment coun- passed with significant support from both toward older and sicker customers. But terparts.” United Healthcare reported that sides of the aisle, often through messy those executive-induced distortions were more than 20 percent of its customers political compromises and bargaining. It only the first hints of the reform’s structural signed up during a special enrollment was hubristic of the Democrats to think flaws: The central planners vastly over - period and that this group used 20 percent that after enacting a monumental law, estimated Obamacare’s popularity. more health care than those who enrolled without any buy-in from the opposing In 2015, the government forecast that during the regular enrollment period. party, critics would simply come round. 20 million people would sign up on the As a result of these shortfalls, insurers in As history played out, Republicans had ACA exchanges in the following year. The 41 states lost money. In 2014 and 2015, no problem opposing a law that they had number of confirmed enrollees in 2016 Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina had no part in enacting. Conservatives have was closer to 13 million. Only 10 million lost a combined $400 million. United stopped at nothing to destroy Obamacare: will actually pay their bills through Healthcare lost nearly $1 billion in two They staged a two-week government shut- September—barely half of the govern- years. “We continue to have serious con- down, brought four Supreme Court cases, ment’s recent forecast. Why are so many cerns about the sustainability of the public and tried more than 50 times in Congress people enrolling but not paying their exchanges,” explained Mark Bertolini, the to repeal all or part of it. As the law’s bills? Because the Obama administration, CEO of Aetna. He pointed out that the risk mandates increased cost and decreased desperate to inflate enrollment numbers, pool was older and sicker than planners had choice for millions of Americans, the created more than 30 “special enroll- expected. As more insurers drop out, there GOP mantra remained “repeal and re - ment” periods that allowed customers to is less competition, and premiums go even place,” not “restore and repair.” sign up whenever they wanted. Many of higher. Economist Herbert Stein’s rule In response, President Obama arrogated the tardy enrollees were not required to applies forcefully to the ACA: “If some- to himself unconstitutional pen-and-phone show proof of financial hardship. thing cannot go on forever, it will stop.” powers to delay, suspend, and modify the Unsurprisingly, these Johnny-come- The Obama administration has an - ACA’s onerous mandates. These executive latelies use expensive health care and then nounced that starting this year, it will clamp actions, designed to mollify upset cus- drop their policy. That gap leaves the down on special enrollment periods, but tomers, had the perverse effect of keeping insurance companies—and ultimately the it might be too late. Many insurers are ROCKY PATEL - ALL STAR COMBO Call 1-800-349-8921 or thompsonspecials.com Compare similar at $153.35 RATED

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already pulling out of the destabilized, Further centralization of our health-care unprofitable marketplaces. In 2017, Aetna, system will only accelerate the shrink- Humana, and United Healthcare will exit age of private insurance markets. Seth many of their previous health-care mar- Chandler, a law professor at the University ‘No More kets. As a result, only one insurer will offer of Houston, compared the public option to policies in Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, a “Trojan horse for a single-payer system Baby’ South Carolina, and Wyoming, and in rural that has windows so you can actually see A murder in Ohio and the counties in Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, the troops inside.” The government plan question of abortion Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ten - will simply underprice and undercut any nessee, Utah, and West Virginia. In Alaska, private insurers that remain in the market- BY JAY NORDLINGER the lone insurer threatened to leave after place. The Affordable Care Act, billed as a regulators rejected its proposed rate hike; hybrid of free-market and government N Ohio, a college student killed her to prevent its marketplace from unravel- approaches to health-care reform, didn’t baby, immediately after the baby ing, the state government created a special even make it past year four. The ACA’s I was born. The student was sentenced $55 million bailout fund to keep Blue intricate planning—designed to ensure to life in prison without possibility of Cross Blue Shield from exiting. Calamity the viability of the health-insurance mar- parole. Cases like hers cause many of us was averted, temporarily at least. kets—has already proven unsustainable. to think of abortion. Is the murder of a In at least one area, Pinal County, Ariz., With economic calamities on the horizon, newborn really so different from an abor- there will be zero plans available to pur- the public option is now part of the game tion? Is it so different that it should land chase. Because of Obamacare, people there plan to bail out Obamacare. you in jail, for life? While an abortion is lost the plans they liked, were forced to The next president will face a stark defended—even celebrated—as a right? buy expensive plans for two years, and are political reality: Half the country hates I will return to this in a moment. First, now stuck with no choices on the exchange. Obamacare and wants no part of it; the the recent case. Arizona will probably work out some com- other half thinks that Obamacare didn’t Emile Weaver comes from Clarington, promise with Blue Cross Blue Shield, as go far enough and now wants single- Ohio, a dot on the Ohio River, across did Alaska, but these failures are merely the payer coverage. Efforts to reform the law from West Virginia. Her first name is canary in the coal mine. It will get worse. will have to consider that roughly 14 pronounced “Emily.” She went to Mus - In 2017, two programs designed to million people now rely on Obamacare’s kingum University, in New Con cord. spread the wealth, as the president might expanded Medicaid coverage and about The institution is affiliated with the put it, from profitable insurers to the unprof- 10 million people have purchased subsi- Presbyterian Church (USA). Its most itable ones will wind down. “Reinsurance” dized insurance on the ACA exchanges. prominent graduate is John Glenn. Emile reimburses insurers that enroll sicker cus- These facts make the “repeal and re - belonged to a sorority, Delta Gamma tomers. “Risk corridors” limit how much place” mantra almost impossible to ful- Theta (“a sisterhood dedicated to love insurers can lose and gain in the market- fill. But we should not lose sight of the and loyalty”). places. Both of these temporary redistrib- tens of millions of Americans who were In 2014, she got pregnant. She knew utive measures—crafted to cushion the harmed by the ACA: those whose plans she was pregnant—she was even tested ACA during its infancy—will go away. were canceled or who saw premiums for it—but she was “in denial,” as they The Affordable Care Act, a regulatory increase, deductibles skyrocket, net- say. She denied the pregnancy to others, leviathan forged from empathy and works shrink, or their choice of policies and she denied it to herself. She would hubris, tragically suffers from what decline to one. put it as follows: “I said no so many economist F. A. Hayek described as the I am not sanguine about the opportunity times that, in my mind, none of this “fatal conceit.” Central planners such as for reform. The haughty decision to trans- was happening.” Jonathan Gruber vastly overestimated form almost 20 percent of the American Her sorority sisters suspected she their ability to tinker with the free market economy without any bipartisan buy-in, was pregnant. Emile gained weight, to achieve an optimal balance of low pre- with the expectation that the law’s oppo- naturally, and she tried to disguise her miums, high-quality care, and expanded nents would simply fall in line, has poi- pregnancy: by wearing baggy clothing coverage. Only three and a half years after soned the well for future health-care and holding a pillow or stuffed animal the launch of the exchanges in January reform. The ACA will no doubt muddle in front of her stomach. 2013, the planners’ arrogance is obvious. along for the next few years, until premi- She behaved in ways that suggested True to form, President Obama has called ums grow so high that the consensus builds she wanted to kill her baby. She drank. for further government intervention to cut for a public option. But we should not be She smoked pot. She played dodgeball. through the morass created by his own confident that this centralization will work She took a dietary supplement that can administration. Writing in the Journal of any better than the last one. The same plan- induce premature labor. the American Medical Association, the ners who assured us that the ACA could Why didn’t she get an abortion? That is president recently voiced his support for a operate without a public option cannot a mystery. One day, she and her boy - “public plan to compete alongside private be trusted to reform our health-care mar- friend set out for an abortion clinic. But insurers.” Hillary Clinton has also en - kets with a public option. Soon enough, the weather was bad and some of the dorsed the public option, “to reduce costs Obamacare will unravel and collapse under roads were closed. They headed back. and broaden the choices of insurance cov- its own weight. At that point, we will be on Emile never did abort the baby. Indeed, erage for every American.” the road to single-payer. a mystery.

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did: She named the baby. “Addison Grace Weaver.” She wrote letters to the baby. She picked out a headstone. There was a funeral. Not until the funeral, she would tell the court, did the enormity of her act hit her. Emile was looking at the casket—a tiny casket. And she knew, with full force, what she had done. She was arrested and held on a million- dollar bond. Her trial lasted four days. It took the jury barely an hour to convict her. The sentence was up to the judge, Mark C. Fleegle. Emile said, “I stand before you a broken-down woman, asking for forgive- ness and mercy. Words cannot express how sorry I am to my beautiful daughter Addison.” Judge Fleegle did not believe her remorse. He thought she was insincere. He cited one of the texts she had sent her boyfriend on the day of the murder: “Taken care of.” That was certainly true, he commented. The baby “was an inconvenience, and you took care of it.” He could have sentenced Emile to life in prison with a chance for parole after 20 years. That’s what she and her attorney, R. Aaron Miller, were hoping for. Instead, he gave her the max: life with- Emile Weaver, with her attorney, at sentencing out parole. “I think Judge Fleegle hit it out of the park,” said the prosecutor, D. Michael Unaborted, the baby came due. At detail in this case. The environment of a Haddox. Aaron Miller has filed an appeal. around 8 in the morning on April 22, modern campus is free-flowing. Fourteen years ago, in 2002, there was 2015, Emile went to a bathroom in the The bathroom at Delta Gamma Theta a similar case. A Muskingum student, sorority house. There, she gave birth to a was a mess. The toilet was spattered Jennifer Bryant, killed her newborn, a girl. Another sorority member, Moriah, with blood. Apparently, there had been a son. She wrapped him in a blanket— heard sounds coming from the bathroom. feminine-hygiene problem. The house alive—and threw him in the trash, They were “like a dying cat,” she would manager sent out a text to all the sisters: where he died. She was represented by testify. Moriah heard “three or four Whoever was responsible had better Miller. And prosecuted by Haddox. cries,” each lasting a few seconds. She clean up the mess. “It looks like a mur- The judge was another man, however: figured that someone was on her phone, der scene.” Howard S. Zwelling. He sentenced “playing a game or something.” That night, four of the sisters went out Jennifer Bryant to three years. She was Later, she wished she had broken the for ice cream. They talked about Emile. out in seven months. door down. Has she really been pregnant? How Zwelling had to run for reelection, At some point, Emile went to the about all that blood in the bathroom? which he lost. A big reason was the kitchen to get a knife. She cut the baby’s Could she have given birth this morn- Bryant case: Voters thought the sentence umbilical cord. Then she put her in a trash ing? One of the sisters had a suggestion: too light. No one can say that about Emile bag and took her out to the trash. They should check out the trash bin. Weaver’s. She is 21 years old and facing Emile texted her boyfriend: “No more Others thought the idea was silly. But life in prison. The only greater penalty POOL , baby.” “What?” he said. She repeated, two of them actually went and checked. would be execution.

VIA AP “No more baby.” “How do you know?” They found the bag sitting by itself. It What if she had simply aborted the “Taken care of. Don’t worry about it.” He was heavy. And tied tight. They tore a child? Who would be the wiser, right? rejoined, “I would like to know how you hole in it. And saw a foot. Emile would be graduating with her fel- TIMES RECORDER

/ killed my kid.” An autopsy showed that the baby had low Deltas. DNA testing would prove that the baby died of asphyxiation. The corpse was In sketching this case, I am indebted to was not this guy’s kid. It was another handed over to Emile’s family for burial. the reporting of Kate Snyder, who works CHRIS CROOK guy’s kid. But paternity is not a relevant She did something interesting, Emile for the Zanesville Times Re corder. Let me

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now recall another case—a case that had could destroy it without penalty. It was Deltas at Muskingum hated seeing the an impact on my thinking about abortion. your right. blood in the bathroom. They were trau- In the summer of 1983, I was between What a moron , I thought. A goober, a matized by the whole epi sode, they later my freshman and sophomore years of hayseed. A fanatic. Eagle’s eggs and ba- said. Abortion is usually out of sight and college. I had a job as a camp counselor bies! I was a very sophisticated teen ager. out of mind. Clean. Yet sometimes peo- in Elgin, Ill., a town northwest of Chi- Yet I found that I could not really answer ple see things: for example, garbage bins cago. In the Chicago Tribune , I read the man. Who was the moron now? full of fetuses, outside clinics. They about a case out of Harvey, a town “No more baby.” Isn’t that the point of angrily object when they see them—not straight south of Chicago. an abortion? Isn’t that what you go for, to abortion, but to their exposure to the A baby had been born. His name was when you go? “No more baby”? Judge fetuses. They should be shielded from

John Francis McKay. He was born with Fleegle told Emile that her baby had such sights. a cleft palate, a harelip, and a heart con- been “an inconvenience, and you took But what do people suppose fetuses

dition. His father, Daniel, told the doc- care of it.” Could not the same be said are made of? Fairy dust? You can’t just

tor not to do anything “heroic.” Then, about millions and millions of abortions? blow them away, like dandelions. The

when John was 25 minutes old, his To be sure, there are very hard cases, and flesh and blood has to be disposed of—

father took him to a corner of the deliv- some pregnant women make a desperate, sort of like Emile did.

ery room and bashed his head against anguished decision. But aren’t other We are to regard her as a monster, unfit

the floor. No more baby (to quote Emile abortions simply a matter of . . . you to live among us. She is locked away for Weaver, in one of her texts). know, taking care of it? life. “Emile is not a bad girl,” her lawyer McKay was charged with murder. And Emile Weaver took care of it with her tells me. She did a very bad thing. A a columnist in the Tribune said, in effect, own hands. That is, she killed her baby monstrous and evil thing. But is she “Is what he did so different from abor- herself. Other women—her sorority sis- worse—all that much worse—than her tion? If the baby had been aborted some ters, perhaps—have others do the killing, counterparts who dispose of their babies days or weeks before, everyone would in clinics. Emile could have too. It is earlier and more neatly? I have a hard have understood and applauded. And neater, and it is of course lawful. But is it time buying it. And I think we are a now, a murder charge?” different, really and truly? deeply hypocritical society. I wish I could remember who the columnist was. My researches have not turned up the answer. (They have turned up the case itself.) But I can tell you that

the column made me think.

Lawyers in the case, as they ques-

tioned potential jurors, asked about

abortion. What did the assembled citi-

zens think of abortion? Obviously, the

lawyers thought the issue relevant. Any VISITING SCHOLAR SCHOLAR IN IN CONSERVATIVE CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT THOUGHT AND AND POLICY POLICY honest person would, I think. (After a couple of mistrials, Daniel McKay was

let off.) The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado At 25 minutes, John Francis McKay Boulder invites applications for the position of Visiting Scholar The College of Arts and Sciences invites applications for the was bigger than he had been in gesta- in Conservative Thought and Policy. We seek a highly visible Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy. We tion. When she was murdered, Addison individual who is deeply engaged in either the analytical schol- Grace Weaver was bigger than she had seek a highly visible individual who is deeply engaged in arship or practice of conservative thinking and policymaking, or been before. I must ask, in all sincerity, either the analytical scholarship or practice of conservative

so what? A two-year-old is bigger than thinkingboth. The andVisiting policymaking, Scholar will. orcontinue both. Thea tradition Visiting of fosteringScholar

a one-year-old. A nine-year-old is big- willintellectual continue diversity an open on thedialogue Boulder on campus campus through featuring the Center the

ger than a four-year-old. Are these principlesfor Western ofCivilization, conservatism ThoughtThe and successful Policy. candidate will things important? receiveThe successful a senior candidate professorial will appointment receive a senior without professorial tenure. Another memory from my teens: I was a great watcher of a new political Theappointment term of withoutthe appointment tenure. The is variable, term of thewith appointment a minimum is

show on CNN, Crossfire. One evening, ofvariable, one year. with Specific a minimum duties of include one year. teaching, Specific delivering duties include

they had a pro-lifer on. He was a funny- teaching, delivering public lectures, and inviting further visitors public lectures, and organizing events. The compensation looking guy with a southern accent. Not packageto campus. is competitive. The compensation The University package of is Colorado competitive. Boulder The a polished debater. He said that it was isUniversity committed of Coloradoto diversity Boulder and equality is committed in education to diversity and and illegal to destroy an eagle’s egg. You could go to jail for it. Everyone knew equalityemployment. in education Materials and employment.including a Materialsletter of includinginterest anda let- that whatever was inside the egg would curriculumter of interest vitae and orcurriculum resume vitaecan be or submittedresume can to be submitted become an eagle. Therefore, it was pre- tojobsatcu.com posting number or directly06652 on to: www.cu.edu/careers/. Professor Ann M. Carlos, cious. At the same time, we denied the Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, 275 UCB, personhood of the human fetus. You University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0275. 2 3 3col_QXP-1127940387.qxp 9/7/2016 12:02 AM Page 24

impulse guiding the medieval university’s from ever arising is to prevent, also, the use of scholastic disputation (disputatio), exercise of the virtues that allow two peo- which “excluded no argument and no ple to move from superficial opposition Community partner, and thereby automatically en - into real, fruitful conversation. That is, forced a universality of aspects.” genuine community is forged out of con- TheOn University Campus of Chicago strikes a What did students of these earlier eras flict, not in spite of it. have in common—that is, what grounded Obviously, this is difficult, and facilitat- small blow for learning their “community”? In contradistinction ing the creation of such a community is a to today’s universities, which are gov- distant prospect for many schools. Assert - BY IAN TUTTLE erned by a negative principle of non- ing a single, overarching purpose seems interference, the older academy was regressive; the culture and perhaps the HERE is a crisis of community at marked by a positive, shared orientation. financial incentives seem to be running the modern American university, Teachers and students were voluntary in the opposite direction. But the col- T which is ironic, because the mod- participants in a common project. lapse of community will be the end of the ern American university is all This, I’d suggest, is real communi- university, in time, because there can be about “community”: the “community of ty—and the more intentional and all- no learning in a place where everyone is learners” and the “athletic community,” encompassing the orientation, the more at everyone else’s throat. So universities the myriad “faith communities,” the “Black intense the community. It’s for that rea- should act now to lay the groundwork for Community Services Center.” Freshmen son that arguably the tightest form of substantive, lasting community. at Harvard this year will participate in community in the Western world has been In the short term, this will require artic- “Community Conversations,” which aims the monastery. And it’s surely no coinci- ulating—and enforcing—a dedication to to help students “develop a sense of shared dence that monasteries have been focal the common purpose of unhindered in- responsibility for upholding a compas- points of Western learning. quiry. The University of Chicago has sionate and respectful community.” Of course, the unity of the university done something like that this year, by But there is no surer sign of the absence now exists only formally. The university issuing a letter to incoming freshmen of actual community on the American has been diced up into hyper-specialties reiterating the university’s longstanding campus than the presence of “safe spaces,” that neither have nor want to have any- “commitment to freedom of inquiry and “trigger warnings,” and the other trappings thing to do with one another. The typical expression” and announcing that it will that are as much staples around the typical university is a sort of intellectual shop- not support safe spaces, trigger warnings, quad as bongs and Bernie Sanders T- ping mall: lots of unrelated stores housed and the other devices used to clamp down shirts. Having spent decades making uni- under one roof. Were it not for the foot- on that inquiry and expression. versities “diverse,” progressives are now ball team, the anthropology major and But this must be only a first step toward apparently of the opinion that a diverse the nursing student at State U would reestablishing a unifying purpose in which group of people cannot get along unless have pretty much nothing in common. teachers and students can participate. In the every potential source of friction between There is no shared purpose. long term, this may mean radically recon- them is preemptively suppressed. It should come as no surprise, then, that stituting the academy as we’ve known it. Many institutions now find themselves the university that has renounced its uni- Perhaps it will be advisable to find ways at an impasse. On one hand is the principle versality is suffering a crisis of community to make specialized research a freestanding of academic freedom, long seen as a sine among its students, or that it has repaired to enterprise, so that the college can focus on qua non of the university. On the other is blunt instruments such as “safe spaces” to its traditional core: tutoring undergraduates the need to accommodate the complex of create ersatz peace. After all, the communi- in the liberal arts and sciences. Perhaps we psychological demands students are bring- ty described above—which, put a different will have to dispense with the mantra of ing to campus. But this conundrum is not way, is simply the natural by-product of “college for all” where “college” means a inescapable. One way out is to restore a worship, where the community is stronger four-year liberal-arts degree, instead en - more substantive notion of community. the higher the object of worship—cannot couraging the vast majority of students to In a lecture delivered in Munich in be imposed; it can arise only organically, enter vocational study, whether the voca- 1950, the German philosopher Josef as people come voluntarily to desire the tion be electrical engineering or medicine Pieper contended that the development of same thing. (You can’t impose an appreci- or the law. And because real communities the academy reflected its origins in the ation for a fine wine or a good cigar.) are built around shared ends, perhaps we original academy, Plato’s, the core of Restoring community on campus, then, will have to abandon the cult of selectivity which was a philosophical disposition will require universities’ inducting stu- that dominates today’s higher education, toward every object of knowledge: “an dents into a common purpose and encour- in which “the best” schools are defined by attitude toward the world which is only aging them in the task of making that the percentage of students they reject. concerned with the fact that things reveal purpose their own. Where that happens, However it’s done, the university must themselves as they are—which is what conflict will not have to be stifled; it can address its crisis of community, which is truth actually consists of.” This disposi- be encouraged under the sign of that com- fundamentally a crisis of purpose. Those tion was shared by all members of Plato’s mon purpose. Genuine bonds are formed institutions that do may find a way out of school—it was its animating principle— by people who struggle with one another, the current impasse, creating conditions and it transcended disciplinary bound- but honestly, in good faith, and toward a in which “safety” and free inquiry facili- aries. Some 1,500 years later, it was the shared end. To prevent intellectual tension tate each other.

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BUCKLEY AT HIS BEST.

This collection“ of obituaries and eulogies may well establish WFB as the modern master of this literary form. I have read every single one of my father’s 60-odd books.

I do not exaggerate to

propose that this may prove to be William F. Buckley’s ﬁ nest book“ ever. —CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

Remarkable remembrances of titans of politics, religion, literature, and culture.

ON SALE OCTOBER 4, 2016 DISCOVER MORE AT ATORCHKEPTLIT.COM I I 2col_QXP-1127940309.qxp 9/7/2016 12:09 AM Page 26

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton grants an audience to reporters on her campaign plane, September 5, 2016. The Liberal Threat to Democracy Hillary Clinton offers more of the same—and that is the scariest thing of all

BY YUVAL LEVIN & RAMESH PONNURU

HIS election cycle has left many Americans worried sound like the views of a person with a deep esteem for the about the state of our republic. Vast swathes of the cit- constitutionally limited role of the president or for the delicate T izenry are clearly frustrated, dissatisfied, and increas- balance of our system of government. ingly alienated from the political system. The major But the observers who raise these concerns tend to perceive parties’ primary processes have yielded a nightmare of a general such dangers only with regard to Trump, whom they consider election, featuring two exceedingly unpopular candidates, each a singular menace. Hillary Clinton, they say, is by contrast a of whom exhibits some mind-boggling character problems. run-of-the-mill liberal politician. As the libertarian writer and For some observers, the concern runs even deeper. They worry humorist P. J. O’Rourke put it this spring in endorsing Clinton, that if one of these candidates is elected, our constitutional sys- she may be “wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong tem will be endangered and an effectively autocratic presidency within normal parameters.” will become a real possibility in America. It’s true that Hillary Clinton is a mainstream contemporary This kind of concern has been raised almost exclusively with liberal, albeit a disturbingly unethical one. She stands out for regard to the prospect of a Trump presidency. Many liberals, and decades of brazen and unscrupulous dishonesty wielded to even some non-liberals, have suggested that Donald Trump is a advance her and her husband’s political and financial interests— threat to democratic, constitutional government in America— for curiously lucrative investments explainable only by files that what the Founders and Lincoln called “republicanism.” have conveniently gone missing, for vicious character assassina- They have a point. Trump inclines to autocratic rhetoric about tion against victims of Bill Clinton’s misogynistic abuses of how only he can solve the country’s problems. He clearly admires power, for recklessness with national secrets in the service of pro- foreign strongmen. He is also erratic and unpredictable and tends tecting personal secrets. These would be alarming traits in a pres- GETTY IMAGES / to disrespect the arduous process of democratic decision-making ident. But the constitutional order could likely withstand, as it has and the restraints it involves. He argues that American politics withstood in the past, presidents with similar traits. and government in our time are in a state of such utter dysfunc- Instead, it is precisely in the way in which Clinton seems nor- JUSTIN SULLIVAN tion that they should be blown apart. These certainly do not mal that she poses a serious danger to American democracy.

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The mainstream contemporary liberalism she represents so well This retort was, of course, not an answer at all but an admis- is itself a threat to constitutional government in America. And it sion that the president had exercised a fundamentally legislative is a more concrete and specific threat than Trump—with his power in violation of the basic structure of our constitutional bizarre inclinations, his ignorance and carelessness, and his sheer system. A federal appeals court has since suspended his order, unpredictability—can pose. deeming it unconstitutional, and an evenly divided Supreme Mainstream liberals now advance a vision of American gov- Court has for now sustained that suspension. But the president ernment that is increasingly contemptuous of our system’s demo- and his party continue to insist it is an appropriate use of exec- cratic character and that seeks to break through the restraints utive power. Indeed, Hillary Clinton thinks it doesn’t go far of the constitutional system in pursuit of their policy ends. They enough. “If elected president,” she said in a written campaign advance this vision in three key ways. statement in April, “I will do everything I can to protect the President’s executive actions and go further to bring more people relief and keep families together.” IRST, contemporary liberalism has come to ardently cham- Immigration has by no means been the only arena in which pion executive unilateralism. In some respects, this is President Obama has acted alone and beyond the authority of his nothing new. Modern progressivism has always idolized office. In the implementation of Obamacare, for example, he has theF presidency. Progressivism, as Teddy Roosevelt approvingly repeatedly altered the substance of the statute to bend it to his put it more than a century ago, is “impatient of the impotence will—suspending or refashioning mandates, creating exemptions which springs from over-division of governmental powers, the and waivers where none existed in law, and even providing pub- impotence which makes it possible for local selfishness or for lic dollars to insurance companies without a congressional appro- legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring national priation. In one instance, in 2013, the House of Representatives activities to a deadlock.” It therefore “regards the executive moved to codify in law a year-long delay in the law’s employer power as the steward of the public welfare.” mandate that the president had unilaterally created. But instead of This enthusiasm has waxed and waned, and it is always welcoming the move, the president threatened to veto the mea- stronger when Democrats are in the White House. But in the sure because it was unnecessary in light of his executive action. Obama years, it has reached heights unprecedented since at least “Net neutrality” regulations on Internet-service providers the early days of the New Deal. Voicing the same kind of were the subject of another long-running debate. Congress never Mainstream liberals now advance a vision of American government that is increasingly contemptuous of our system’s democratic character. impatience TR did with the slow pace of American government, showed much interest in enacting them, so President Obama President Obama has repeatedly asserted his power to act alone. directed the Federal Communications Commission to implement “We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to them using the legal pretense that a deregulatory law enacted in make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they 1996 gave the agency all the authority it needed. Over the years, need,” he told his cabinet in 2014. “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a congressional support for a ban on discrimination on the basis of phone,” he continued, pledging to use the federal bureaucracy to sexual orientation has grown—but not fast enough for the Obama advance his agenda on his own if he had to. administration, which has had the Equal Employment Opportu- And he has frequently thought he had to. The starkest exemplar nity Commission pretend that a ban was implicit in the Civil is surely a set of executive actions on immigration, taken in 2012 Rights Act of 1964. and 2014, that sought unilaterally to normalize the immigration This kind of executive unilateralism obviously did not begin status of roughly half of the 11 million or so immigrants who with Obama. And there were certainly times when George W. reside in the U.S. illegally. Their status has been the subject of a Bush also asserted the authority to act (specifically in foreign raging national controversy for well over a decade, and Congress and defense policy) without involving Congress. But these had considered and rejected legislative action on the subject sev- were debatable extensions of presidential power in arenas eral times in this century. But the president decided time was up where the executive was indisputably intended to be most pow- and he would act alone—even though no previous president had erful in our system. In the Obama years, we have repeatedly considered unilateral action on this scale constitutionally permis- seen such assertions in what are plainly legislative realms—and sible, and even though Obama himself had on numerous occa- Hillary Clinton, as the good mainstream liberal she is, would sions expressed agreement with this consensus. surely seek to press those further. In justifying these actions, Obama claimed merely to be setting a policy on how the executive branch would exercise its prosecu- torial discretion. But he repeatedly undercut this justification by HE second way contemporary liberalism threatens our referring to his impatience with Congress and describing his constitutional order is closely connected to the first: own steps as a substitute for legislation. “To those members of Today’s Left is the party of the administrative state, Congress who question my authority to make our immigration Twhich is often the means by which executive unilateralism oper- system work better or question the wisdom of [my] acting where ates but is also far more than that. The term “administrative state” Congress has failed,” he said, “I have one answer: Pass a bill.” refers to the tangle of regulatory agencies that populate the

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executive branch, including agencies that are at least nominally ment of Congress: reach legal settlements that include “volun- “independent.” They increasingly govern beyond the control of tary” donations to selected nonprofit groups. Liberal organiza- the other branches and therefore at times genuinely outside the tions have received millions of dollars from Bank of America confines of our constitutional system. thanks to one such settlement. These agencies frequently operate by issuing rules and regu- The contemporary liberal legislative agenda mostly consists of lations: several thousand of them every year. These rules are granting these agencies more power and making them less supposed to implement federal laws, but both the growing accountable. Much of Obamacare and Dodd-Frank consisted of vagueness of major legislation and the growing assertiveness of open-ended delegations of power to the bureaucracy. The admin- the regulators have increasingly meant that the agencies basi- istration’s contraceptive and abortive-drug mandate, which has cally legislate through their rules. Some of them then also adju- caused so much controversy, began this way. Even the extremely dicate disputes arising from their own implementation of these liberal Congress of 2009–10 that passed Obamacare was not rules, effectively lodging legislative, executive, and judicial willing to say that the Little Sisters of the Poor should have to power in a single institution. cover contraceptives and abortifacients for their employees— “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and and members of the thin majority that voted for that law have said judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and they would not have voted for it had it included such a provision. whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be The law did, however, allow the secretary of health and human pronounced the very definition of tyranny,” James Madison services to make “preventive health care” services mandatory for wrote in Federalist No. 47. Many Americans subject to the juris- employers, and that’s how the administration used its authority diction of particularly aggressive regulatory agencies might well (and how a future administration could decide that coverage of agree. But the power of such agencies has been growing by leaps surgical abortions is mandatory, too). and bounds in the Obama years. The courts cannot, for a number of reasons, be expected to Two especially clear illustrations have been the president’s keep the modern state running according to perfectly Madisonian energy and environmental agenda and his approach to financial procedures. But they have pushed back on many of the Obama regulation. Without congressional authorization, the administra- administration’s dubious legal claims. The administration has tion has used the Environmental Protection Agency, the suppos- lost unanimously at the Supreme Court 44 times, setting a record. edly independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and other But the administration has not just sought to make its policies agencies to pressure energy producers, the auto industry, power independent of Congress; it has also sought to insulate them utilities, and others to toe the president’s preferred line. In one from judicial scrutiny. particularly egregious instance, the EPA moved in 2014 to It has sent “guidance letters” to interfere in the disciplinary require the states to regulate electricity production and consump- policies of schools and universities and, recently, in their policies tion to meet a set of arbitrary carbon dioxide–emission targets— regarding the use of bathrooms and locker rooms as well. These under threat of restricting their residents’ access to electricity. letters are supposedly not regulations and thus not subject to the Meanwhile, the administration’s implementation of the Dodd- notice-and-comment requirements that allow for some modest Frank financial-regulatory reforms has empowered both old and transparency and accountability in the regulatory process. They new agencies to legislate, regulate, and adjudicate immensely are also less subject to judicial review and less transparent in complex and highly significant changes in federal law with very general: They don’t force their recipients to comply, after all; little oversight or accountability. But these are hardly the only they just strongly suggest that the recipients will be safer if they arenas in which the administrative state is operating beyond the do. Deferred-prosecution agreements, whose use is on the rise, limits of our constitutional system. The immense freedom en- are another way to regulate off the books: They are a kind of plea joyed by administrative agencies is a much more concrete and bargain in which a company agrees to undertake whatever the practical threat to our constitutional democracy than even the government asks in return for a reprieve from legal harassment. prospect of an incompetent demagogue in the White House—and The EPA’s power-plant regulations were designed to bypass the it is actively championed and endorsed by Clinton and her party. courts in a different way: The hope was to make them a fait Increasingly, these agencies have absorbed portions of the accompli before they drew an adverse ruling. “power of the purse,” which is supposed to belong exclusively to Congress. Some of them fund themselves through fees. When congressional Republicans sought to use Congress’s funding F Clinton makes less use of such maneuvers, it is likely to be power to prevent the immigration bureaucracy from enforcing for a troubling reason. The attitude of the judicial branch is President Obama’s unilateral policy, one obstacle in their path itself changing in a way that threatens the capacity of the was the fact that the fees that the bureaucracy charges go directly Icourts to defend our constitutional system—and once again it is to it rather than to the Treasury, and so it could continue to oper- the mainstream contemporary liberalism Hillary Clinton repre- ate as it wished without a congressional vote to fund it. The sents that is driving the problem. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was the Left’s most This is the third way in which that liberalism is a threat to prized achievement within Dodd-Frank. Simultaneously with its American constitutional democracy. Liberal judicial philosophy creation, it was given a statutory right to funding from the Federal understands the courts, like the executive branch, to be in the Reserve rather than through congressional appropriation. In business of advancing what is properly understood as a legisla- effect, it is an independent agency within an independent agency, tive agenda. In essence, liberals want everyone but Congress—at well removed from effective congressional oversight. least so long as they do not control it—to advance such an agenda. The Obama administration has also pioneered another way for This preference leaves them with an entirely consequentialist the government to direct money as it wishes without the involve- attitude toward the courts, and they are increasingly uninterested

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even in making a case for such an attitude as a form of constitu- worse in the Obama years. It threatens to get only more so tional interpretation. under Hillary Clinton, who makes no secret of wanting to use In the 2014–15 Supreme Court session, in which both a health- the powers of the presidency to further distort all three branches care-related case (King v. Burwell) and a same-sex-marriage case of our government to better enable liberal governance. (Obergefell v. Hodges) were decided in ways that affirmed And it is not as though we are giving up government accord- important liberal policy goals, the liberals on the Court made for ing to the constitutional template in favor of living under the a kind of silent majority. In each case, they allowed a Republican wise edicts of an enlightened elite. The policies that the liber- appointee who sided with them (Chief Justice Roberts in the first alism of our era yields are deeply unwise and often unjust, and case, Justice Kennedy in the second) to pen a convoluted opinion their unwisdom and injustice are connected to their flouting of that sought to draw some link between the outcome and some constitutional forms. Policies ordered by the courts are likely kind of legal or constitutional principles, and they did not even to be more extreme than the policies that would result from trouble to write in concurrence or to articulate a liberal interpre- democratic give-and-take: Witness our abortion laws, some of tative approach that would independently justify the outcome. the most permissive in the world. Policies developed by Old tropes about judicial “activism” and “restraint” can obscure bureaucracies and imposed through subterfuge are likely to the root issue of judicial lawlessness. Whether in “actively” over- deform the institutions to which they are applied, as when turning acts of Congress or state laws or in showing “restraint” universities start policing professors’ speech to compel com- and affirming a statute or regulatory action they approve of, liberal pliance with the latest missive from Washington. Agencies judges now frequently pursue substantive policy outcomes are less likely to act with restraint when their projects have not rather than advance some particular understanding of our con- been subject to the discipline of winning majority support in stitutional system and its limits. An d those policy outcomes are the House and the Senate as well as approval from the White almost always precisely the same ones liberals pursue through a House. Today’s version of progressive government—the ver- hyperactive presidency and an overreaching administrative state. sion to which Clinton is committed—is bound to be experi- This aggressive progressivism threatens our democratic- enced by millions of citizens as divisive, alienating, out of republican form of government because it begins by seeing the control, and even corrupt. restraints on power inherent in our constitutional system as obsta- This truth hardly negates Donald Trump’s very significant cles to be overcome. It (correctly) perceives that they can best be problems. He, too, is not well suited to filling the role that our overcome by weakening the Congress and strengthening the constitutional system envisions for the federal government’s executive and by using the courts as an instrument for both of chief executive. But it does mean that concern for our constitu- those ends—thereby making the courts both too strong and too tional system and our democracy cannot amount to a case for weak to properly serve the constitutional system. Hillary Clinton. Trump could surely do great harm, though no Such contempt and disregard for Congress (the most democra- one really knows what he would try to do or whether he would tic branch) and for the limits on the powers of the other branches prove capable of doing much at all. Clinton, meanwhile, is an is contrary to the design and aims of our Constitution, and it eager champion of a political vision deeply hostile to American subverts accountable government and thereby leads not only to constitutionalism and, unlike Trump, is also likely to be able to a weaker democracy but also to public policy that is more poorly bring into power alongside her, or to retain in their positions, hun- thought out and less effective. dreds of other committed liberals who share that hostility and have the expertise and experience to do something about it from various politically appointed perches in the executive branch. IBERALS generally justify all of these work-arounds that subvert normal democratic politics and constitutional processes by claiming that they are but responses to the O what is a constitutionalist to do? In this presidential Lalleged dysfunction, extremism, and nihilism of conservatives. election, there are no good options. But this year pre- But such complaints amount to little more than the kind of impa- sents us with more than a presidential election. At the tience with our system—and with the very existence of opposi- Sheart of the Left’s ambitions, and at the core of many of the trou- tion to their ideas—that progressives have articulated since at bles bedeviling our constitutional system today, is the weaken- least Teddy Roosevelt. Conservatives oppose many liberal poli- ing of the Congress. That weakening has been driven in part by cies and do use the mechanisms of our constitutional system to dereliction on the part of members of Congress from both par- attempt to prevent and reverse them. It’s true that our system ties and in part by aggressive hostility from the other branch- greatly empowers such opposition: It is frankly premised on the es—and particularly the executive. notion that most policy ideas are bad ideas and that making Restoring constitutional government will be a long slog. But change slow and difficult is likely to serve the country. it is perfectly clear that it requires a strong and assertive That the Constitution makes the work of progressive ideo- Congress, at the very least to resist the ambitions of the other logues frustrating is not an excuse for ignoring and subverting it. branches but ideally also to restore the prerogatives of the first That the constitutional system will not acquiesce in its own debil- branch—to rein in the administrative state and the increasingly itation is not a justification for debilitating it. Arguments for doing lawless executive and to begin to bring our constitutional system so amount to unprincipled excuses for lawlessness. They make back toward its proper balance. elected officials less responsible, and they are expressions of an However constitutionalists end up voting for president, it is impatience with constitutional democracy, not a defense of it. imperative that they elect a Congress so inclined. This year, This is how mainstream liberalism now subverts and threatens given the options, they may be able to do no more than that. But our democracy. It is nothing new, but it has gotten significantly they must make sure they do no less.

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Onto this admittedly crude but useful map can be laid an equally crude but useful division of four economic sectors: producer ser- Cities without vices; goods production; luxury services; and mass services. Producer services and luxury services are concentrated in what Saskia Sassen has called “global cities,” such as New York and London. Producer services include finance, insurance, accounting, Nations marketing, consulting, and other services whose clients tend to be corporations, including global corporations. Continental and global A pseudo-globalist outlook is dividing markets enrich the most successful individuals and firms in these Americans by class fields beyond the avaricious dreams of the old national producer- service elites. Much of that wealth in the Densitarian cities is spent on luxury services—the Four Seasons, as opposed to Outback BY MICHAEL LIND Steakhouse. The social liberalism of these high-end service mec- cas cannot disguise caste systems reminiscent of Central American REXIT, Trump, the rise of national populism in the republics, with extreme wealth and income stratification and a United States and Europe, and the crack-up of the old largely immigrant, impoverished menial-service class whose com- B center-left and center-right—all of these are manifes- plexions differ from those of the free-spending oligarchs. The gap tations of larger trends in what might be called local between richest and poorest in New York City is comparable to that geopolitics: the politics of place within countries rather than of Swaziland; Los Angeles and Chicago are slightly more egali- among them. tarian, comparable to the Dominican Republic and El Salvador. Until recently, partisan divisions in the U.S. and many other In the vast areas of low-density, low-rise areas between the Western democracies have tended to track geographic and long- hierarchical service-headquarters cities, a radically different time ethnic cleavages: North versus South in America, a similar society has formed. In the U.S. and Europe, the population of north–south divide in Italy, the Anglo-Saxon southeast versus Posturbia is much more native-born and white, though it is the Celtic periphery in the U.K. These older divisions are fading becoming more diverse as immigrants and members of racial in importance compared with new partisan maps on both sides minorities move up economically and out of overpriced cities. of the Atlantic, in which the most important divide is between There are fewer working poor and fewer super-rich. large, stratified, multi-ethnic cities and the less diverse, less Here are found almost all of the goods-producing indus- economically stratified territories that surround them. The tries—factories, farms, mines, and wells. In addition to being county map of national elections in the U.S., with its blue urban the realm of goods production, Posturbia is the land of what dots in a sea of red, looks remarkably like maps of the Brexit might be called “mass services.” In the somewhat idealized era vote in the English portion of the U.K., with the Leave vote of Fordism, the workers in mass-production industries earned dominant almost everywhere outside of London. enough to buy the products they made, such as cars, radios, and Driving the tectonic shifts that are creating the new political television sets. In the 21st century, the workers in mass-provision map have been recent economic and demographic trends. The service industries—say, waiters at chain restaurants such as liberalization of international trade and investment following Outback Steakhouse, unlike those at the Four Seasons—often the Cold War and the abandonment of Communist and Third can afford to purchase the services they provide. World import-substitution polices led rapidly to the development of genuine transnational firms—most of them headquar- tered in North America, Europe, and littoral East Asia—which O date, the public conversation on both sides of the coordinate regional or global supply chains. Atlantic has been dominated almost entirely by the elite At the same time that national capitalism was giving way in inhabitants of Densitaria, interrupted only by occasional part to transnational capitalism, European countries became, for Tpopulist revolts such as the Trump phenomenon or the Brexit the first time, countries of mass inward migration. Meanwhile, fol- vote. In a relatively short period of time, a new elite ideology has lowing a legislated cessation of large-scale immigration from the emerged that contrasts the dynamic, multicultural, libertarian city- 1920s to the 1960s, the U.S. was transformed by a new wave, dom- state with the allegedly anachronistic and immoral nation-state. inated by Latin Americans who qualified for family-reunification This ascendant worldview unites the open-borders economics and quotas or who took up residence in the U.S. illegally. The com- cosmopolitan, utilitarian morality of old-fashioned libertarianism bination of low native fertility and high fertility on the part of with an idealization of the largest cities and their denizens. some, though not all, immigrant diasporas has led to dramatic In the 1970s and 1980s, libertarians made all of the major argu- ethnic and cultural change on both sides of the Atlantic. ments heard from globalists since the 1990s: Favoring citizens The combined trends of globalization and mass immigration over foreign nationals is the equivalent of racism; national bor- have reshaped both economic geography and partisan politics in ders impeding the free flow of labor and goods are both immoral the Atlantic democracies. In an article titled “The Coming Re - and inefficient; the goal of trade and immigration policy should alignment,” published in The Breakthrough Journal in 2014, I not be the relative security or relative wealth of particular coun- described the division of developed nation-states such as the U.S. tries, but the absolute economic well-being of all human beings. into two regions, urban “Densitaria” and exurban “Posturbia.” Until the 1990s, this was an eccentric minority perspective in the U.S. and other democracies, encountered only in small-circulation Mr. Lind is a fellow at New America and the author of Land of Promise: libertarian journals or in the work of the occasional unworldly An Economic History of the United States. academic theorist of cosmopolitan ethics. But in the 2000s, as

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affluent whites from the professional class and their Latino, Influenced by “Why Do Cities Matter?”—a 2015 study by the immigrant, and black allies displaced working-class whites as economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti—many business the base of the Democratic party, the traditional labor-liberal journalists and pundits have argued that the U.S. could be more opposition to low-wage immigration and offshoring of industry productive if land-use restrictions allowed more workers to move was replaced by a new open-borders progressivism distinguish- to cities such as San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Boston, and able from traditional libertarianism only by its unworkable Seattle. The grain of truth in this notion is that agglomeration combination of support for unrestricted immigration with a effects help certain cities dominate particular industries and pro- generous national welfare state. Journalists associated with the fessions. Lost in the hype, however, has been the important qual- website Vox have played a key role in rebranding old-fashioned ification of Hsieh and Moretti: “The assumption of inter-industry libertarian arguments for free-market immigration and trade mobility is clearly false in the short run.” In other words, neither policies as “progressive.” personal nor national productivity will necessarily be raised if a During an interview with Bernie Sanders, the founding editor roboticist moves to Wall Street or a stockbroker moves to Silicon of Vox, Ezra Klein, proposed “sharply raising the level of immi- Valley, while a janitor who moves from a small town to either gration we permit, even up to a level of open borders.” The may be worse off because of the higher cost of living. democratic socialist Sanders, speaking for traditional labor- liberals and nationalist conservatives as well, replied: “Open borders? . . . That’s a right-wing [libertarian] proposal, which HE combination of open-borders “liberaltarianism” and says essentially there is no United States. . . . I think from a moral trendy urbanist hype might lead one to wonder whether responsibility we’ve got to work with the rest of the world to leagues of dynamic city-states should replace moribund address the problems of international poverty, but you don’t do Tmodern nation-states. Benjamin Barber has published a book that by making people in this country even poorer.” titled “If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Klein’s Vox colleague Dylan Matthews wrote a piece titled Cities.” Barber is one of the founders of the Global Parliament of “Bernie Sanders’s Fear of Immigrant Labor Is Ugly—and Mayors, which, according to his website, can help “fill the void Wrongheaded.” Matthews began by praising the late Wall Street left by nation states who [sic] are increasingly dysfunctional.” The Journal editorial-page editor Robert Bartley’s proposed one- economist Paul Romer has proposed boosting Third World devel- sentence amendment to the Constitution, “There shall be open opment by means of semi-autonomous “charter cities,” which to borders,” and then endorsed a well-worn libertarian moral argu- his critics look remarkably like Western colonial enclaves. ment: “I think Bernie Sanders is obligated to weigh the interests Not even Barber and Romer propose actual urban indepen- of a poor potential Nigerian immigrant equally to those of a dence. While cities may teach one ano ther best practices, there much richer native-born American.” is not the slightest chance that leading American cities will The libertarian-inspired demonization of the nation-state as a secede from the United States, link up with other city-states sort of racist gated community is accompanied among the new around the world, and form a new, global version of the globalists by hype about big cities. According to “U.S. Metro Hanseatic League or the Delian League. Economies,” a publication by Global Insight sponsored by the Indeed, framing the issue as nationalism versus globalism is United States Conference of Mayors and the Council on Metro misleading. Apart from a few peripatetic academics and billion- Economies and the New American City, “metropolitan areas are aires with multiple passports and homes in several countries, the engines of the U.S. economy. . . . Indeed, our metro most members of the would-be global elite are actually deeply economies are drivers of the world economy as U.S. economic rooted in their own nation-states, in which they belong to the growth is leading most of the rest of the world.” These metrics dominant local establishments. Few if any of America’s would- give a misleading picture of the importance of urban economies. be globalists really would move to Canada if Trump were elected. The statistics are based on job creation, most of it in the labor- Few if any of the Remainers in the U.K. are likely to renounce intensive, low-tech, non-traded domestic-service sector, and their British citizenship after the Brexit vote. The number of minimize the vast physical output of high-tech, capital-intensive, expatriate tycoons in Belize remains quite small. goods-producing sectors such as manufacturing, mining, and What both sides portray as a struggle between globalists and farming, which are mostly located in low-density Posturbia. nationalists is actually a number of intra-national struggles tak- Notwith standing statistical conventions, insurance offices and ing place simultaneously within particular nation-states between hair salons in Manhattan are not more productive, in any national elites who are pseudo-globalist and fellow citizens meaning ful sense, than Texas oil and gas fields, southern car- whose nationalism and populism are genuine. parts factories, or midwestern farms. Pseudo-globalist rhetoric about a borderless, post-national What is more, global centers of finance and other important world is intended mostly to justify policies undertaken by local business-to-business producer services are almost always national governments, not the United Nations or some other embedded in the most populous industrial nation-states. Not global agency. These policies include making it easier for corpo- coincidentally, populous nation-states are also the homes of the rations to offshore production or services; preserving the ability largest consumer markets and the birthplaces of most globally of some corporations and individuals to avoid paying taxes to successful corporations. Measured by market exchange rates, the the nation-states where most of them are rooted; and suppressing most relevant measure in this case, the largest economies in the wages to the benefit of some employers and some consumers by world in 2015 were those of the U.S., China, Japan, Germany, increasing immigration, both skilled and unskilled. and the U.K. It is no accident that New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Curtailing mass low-wage immigration would not harm, and Frankfurt, and London are leading centers of global finance. In might help, the working classes employed by the mass-service contrast, the Cayman Islands and Jersey are mere tax havens. industries of Posturbian America. Few of them can afford nannies,

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maids, and gardeners. And thanks to “service-sector Fordism,” if tighter labor markets allow waiters at Outback Steakhouse to earn more, they can also spend more, not only on mass-provided services but also on mass-produced goods at the discount furniture outlet at the mall. In contrast, reducing the levels of unskilled, low-wage immigration would have harmful repercussions for elites in cities such as New York and London. Luxury industries, including tourist businesses, which depend on low-wage, low- skilled, foreign-born labor, would face higher costs in a tight labor market. Without a perpetual influx of immigrants to counteract domestic net emigration to other parts of the U.S., the populations of cities such as New York and San Francisco would probably shrink considerably, with consequences for urban markets and tax revenues. The exodus might accelerate if the cost of living for professionals rose with the wages of nannies, apartment doormen, dog-walkers, and the like. An American caste system: Manhattan as viewed from Long Island City, Queens Some defenders of low-wage, low- skilled immigration candidly admit that wage suppression depend on importing poorly paid, poorly educated workers keeps menial services affordable for professional-class employ- from other countries. ers and consumers, especially those who live in expensive What appears to be a debate among globalists and national- cities. According to Dylan Matthews, “increased immigration ists, then, is really a debate about the structure of the 21st- reduces the prices of services provided by immigrants, such as century nation-state. There are real dangers associated with the gardening and housekeeping. There’s some evidence that coalescing elite ideology of post-national globalism or, to be pre- immigration even gets more women into the workforce by mak- cise, national-elite pseudo-globalism. ing it cheaper to hire people to watch after children and elderly One danger is groupthink resulting from the attempt by the relatives, and perform other homemaking tasks.” In a favorable new globalists to equate even enlightened and civic nationalism review of Jason L. Riley’s libertarian tract Let Them In: The with racism. When the economist Larry Summers, nobody’s Case for Open Borders, Ezra Klein pointed out that, without idea of a pitchfork-waving populist, tentatively called for mass unskilled immigration, “you wouldn’t have many Chinese “responsible nationalism,” he was criticized by The Economist, restaurants at all, and folks who like Chinese food would eat at whose open-borders libertarianism, once eccentric, has become home more often.” Matthew Yglesias, also of Vox, has worried near-orthodoxy among the trans-Atlantic elite. that, “in a world without immigrant housecleaners, we wouldn’t Another danger is that the new globalist ideology will allow have an equal number of much-higher-paid native-born maids. scofflaw citizens to disregard national laws and norms with a What we’d have is less housecleaning being done on a market good conscience. The rich, powerful, and post-national can basis and more being done as unpaid work at home. For many comfort themselves with the thought that they are virtuous “cit- middle-class families that would be pure waste. Time spent izens of the world” even as they use foreign tax havens to hide cleaning the toilet could be spent on higher-value labor, on their taxes, profit from brutalized labor forces in tyrannical leisure, or on quality time with friends and family.” regimes, and pay illegal-immigrant servants off the books in vio- What is remarkable about this is not so much the unapolo- lation of U.S. laws. These actions may be violations of the letter getic defense of elite class privilege—imagine, cleaning or spirit of national legislation, but the scofflaws can argue that your own toilet, cooking your own meals, or raising your from a global Benthamite utilitarian perspective they are actually own child!—as the absence of any attempt to argue that promoting the greatest good of the greatest number. unskilled immigrants contribute to productive industry (as The most significant threat is the possibility that the abandon- opposed to the productivity of middle-class journalists who ment of national patriotism by many elite citizens of the nation- can write more blog posts because servants will clean up the state for make-believe cosmopolitanism will weaken national messes they make). To be sure, lobbyists for the agricultural unity, to the benefit of sub-national racism, ethnocentrism, and industry often claim that crops will rot and Americans go regionalism. The loyalties that succeed national solidarity are CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES / hungry if American farmers are not guaranteed a large work likely to be narrower, not broader. If history is any guide, the vic- force of low-wage immigrant farm workers. But as factories tims of tribalism and illiberal populism are likely to include and even farms are increasingly automated, it is becoming would-be citizens of the world who despise the nation-states that RICHARD LEVINE harder to argue that American industry and agriculture make possible not only their wealth but also their security.

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egalitarians believe that porous borders undermine the interests of disadvantaged natives and established immigrants and so want to Borders, reduce admissions of new immigrants. Yet they’re also deeply suspicious of denying those already in the country the right to vote and to organize, partly because they believe that creating a class of guest workers would empower unscrupulous employers But Why? at the expense of ordinary workers, whether native- or foreign- born. Free-market expansionists favor expansive admissions, like Immigration ‘restrictionists’ should put aside cosmo politans, but they’re quite comfortable with limiting the Trumpian rhetoric rights of immigrants by barring them from citizenship and the welfare state. Classic exclusionists, finally, are like nationalist egalitarians in wanting to reduce admissions but unlike them in BY REIHAN SALAM having no objection to limiting the rights of immigrants. While cosmopolitans and free-market expansionists both seek O understand how the immigration debate has unfolded to increase immigration levels, they do so for different reasons. over the past 30 years, it is helpful to consider the language For example, cosmopolitans generally embrace multiculturalism. T we use when discussing it. One often hears of “nativists” They celebrate immigrants who preserve their native language who oppose immigration and who, by implication, and culture, and they see the insistence that immigrants assimilate loathe immigrants. Yet it is rare that we hear of “immigrationists” to American norms as little more than ethnic chauvinism. Free- who are ideologically committed to higher immigration levels and market expansionists split the difference: Some see the United who are quick to dismiss legitimate concerns about the skill levels States as the world’s “first universal nation”; others don’t really and earning potential of new immigrants as nothing more than care about how immigrants identify culturally as long as they veiled racism. Those who advocate increased immigration levels don’t go on strike for higher wages. Nevertheless, cosmopolitans and the granting of legal status to unauthorized immigrants are the and free-market expansionists often work hand in glove. partisans of “comprehensive immigration reform.” But what of Restrictionists also hold clashing beliefs. Nationalist egalitarians those who call for a different comprehensive immigration agenda? tend to hold a melting-pot conception of American national identity, If your goal is to encourage unauthorized immigrants to return to in which people of different ethnic origins blend together into a their native countries and to reduce legal-immigration levels, or at common culture over time. Some classic exclusionists feel roughly least to limit the influx of less skilled immigrants, you are not in the same way. Others, however, believe that some immigrants are favor of comprehensive reform. Instead, you are a “restriction- simply unassimilable, particularly those from non-Western cultures. ist”—a term that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “reformer.” So while a classic exclusionist might maintain that Latin American Why is language so important? The words we use to describe and Asian immigrants are intrinsically inferior to old-stock Ameri - the immigration debate shape how the debate unfolds. If you cans, a nationalist egalitarian might find that notion offensive. casually follow the politics of immigration, and you’ve been told By overlooking these distinctions, we tar all restrictionists with time and again that everyone sensible and humane favors reform the same brush. And as an added bonus, we make reformers seem and that only nativist restrictionist xenophobes oppose it, chances either more noble or more naïve than they really are. are you’ll just leave it there. It is not hard to imagine language that’s more objective. It so happens that throughout U.S. history, many of those who have ESTRICTIONISTS have been losing to expansionists for a supported restrictionist legislation have been immigrant adults long time. Roughly speaking, the story of the immigration with native-born children and have felt that the economic debate in recent decades has involved the growing power prospects of their American daughters and sons would improve if Rand influence of cosmopolitans and free-market expansionists, the the federal government reduced immigration levels. We can call reemergence of classic exclusionists, and the almost complete these immigrants “nativists,” because they are after all seeking to marginalization of nationalist egalitarians. The rise of Donald better the lives of natives (such as their children), but it’s a bit of Trump, as we shall see below, is not a sign of the health of the a stretch. While “restrictionist” isn’t exactly the most felicitous restrictionist movement. Rather, it is a sign of the dire shape it is term, we should at the very least contrast “restrictionists” with in. As nationalist egalitarians have faded from the political scene, “expansionists” and acknowledge that all those who seek to classic exclusionists have become the face of opposition to mass change our immigration laws, whether in a restrictionist or an immigration. And like it or not, the language of classic exclusion- expansionist direction, are reformers. ism has proven repellent to a large number of Americans, particu- We’d be better off still if we adopted a richer vocabulary. larly the naturalized immigrants and younger Americans who are Daniel Tichenor, one of America’s leading intellectual historians, so essential to achieving a durable political victory. offers a more nuanced typology in Dividing Lines (2001), a his- The fundamental reason the expansionist coalition has gained tory of the decades-long conflicts over U.S. immigration policy. the upper hand is that restrictionists are not operating on a level Recognizing that the motivations of participants in that debate are playing field. Although for decades voters who want to see immi- varied, Tichenor identifies four distinct groups, each driven by its gration decreased have outnumbered, often by very wide margins, own political interests and ideological commitments. those who want to see it increased, permissive immigration poli- Cosmopolitans call for expansive admissions and for extending cies create their own constituency. all the benefits of full membership in society, including citizenship Students of U.S. immigration policy tend to focus on the rights and access to safety-net benefits, to newcomers. Nationalist Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (INA) as the watershed

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event in modern American immigration history, and for good rea- during the 1990s, many left-of-center constituencies that had pre- son. The INA brought decades of immigration restriction to an viously opposed high immigration levels—organized labor, civil- end. Yet there’s a strong case that the real watershed came in 1986 rights groups, and environmentalists—flipped on the issue, for with the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). The reasons that continue to be hotly contested. One widely held view IRCA was ostensibly designed to make immigration enforcement among restrictionists is that while many African Americans more stringent. But it also provided for the legalization of almost opposed high immigration levels in this era, the influence of 3 million unauthorized immigrants who had entered the U.S. powerful liberal foundations muffled their dissent. Labor unions, before 1982, a number far higher than lawmakers had anticipated. meanwhile, were in the midst of a transition from being a move- The legislation gained the support of free-market expansionists ment dominated by older working-class whites who belonged to and cosmopolitans, but, because it contained enforcement provi- unions in the private sector to being a younger, more college- sions that expansionists feared, that support was not always educated, and more diverse movement dominated by social liber- enthusiastic. Crucially, the IRCA also gained the support of als who belonged to public-sector unions and who saw less skilled some nationalist egalitarians, who saw amnesty as a way to press immigrants as sympathetic victims and as a potential political con- “Reset” on U.S. immigration policy: Let’s grant legal status to stituency. And according to Philip Cafaro, the environmentalist those who’ve entered the country in recent years so we can help author of How Many Is Too Many?, environmentalist groups them assimilate and achieve upward mobility, and then let’s crack abandoned the cause of immigration restriction mostly out of fear down on employers seeking an exploitable labor force. of being accused of racism. Regardless of why these constituen- Not all of those legalized under the IRCA followed the strict cies flipped, flip they did, and nationalist egalitarians identified letter of the law. Lack of rigorous enforcement turned the IRCA with the political Left are now all but extinct. into a bonanza for shady employers, who made fortunes “laun- dering” late-arriving unauthorized immigrants by corroborating their false claims to have worked in the U.S. prior to 1982. One EVER again has there been as promising a political moment might have expected this to be simply a one-off occurrence or a for restrictionists, in part because of the immigration- lesson that coupling stronger border enforcement with amnesty fueled transformation of the electorate. How is it that doesn’t really work. But something very different happened. The Nhigher levels of immigration beget still higher levels? As a general high immigration levels of the 1980s whetted the appetitef o rule, naturalized citizens favor high immigration levels more than employers and ethnic communities for still higher levels, which native-born citizens do, and recent immigrants are more favor- led to the Immigration Act of 1990, legislation that dramatically ably disposed to new immigration than are those who’ve lived in increased the number of family-based immigration visas while the country for a longer period of time. The most obvious reason also establishing a number of new employer-friendly visa pro- this is true is that recent immigrants are less assimilated than grams such as the H-1B visa for highly skilled guest workers. those who’ve lived in the U.S. for decades (as I noted in “Two Over the next several years, the restrictionist coalition regrouped, Kinds of Patriotism,” NATIONAL REVIEW, August 29, 2016). Over and it came closer than it had in decades to achieving a major polit- time, cross-border connections to loved ones back home tend to ical victory. During his first term, President Bill Clinton appointed attenuate. But this effect can be dulled or even reversed when the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired ethnic communities are replenished by new arrivals. Moreover, by African-American representative Barbara Jordan (D., Texas), a the more immigrants arriving in the U.S. from a given country of leading civil-rights advocate. In its final report, the commission origin, the longer it will take previous immigrants from that recommended that the federal government tighten workplace same country to assimilate into the wider community. enforcement of immigration laws and that it reduce legal immigra- We see a similar dynamic in the labor market. Vernon Briggs, a tion levels by 30 percent, a decidedly modest change that would labor economist at Cornell and a prominent nationalist-egalitarian essentially restore the levels seen before the Immigration Act of voice in the immigration debates of the 1980s and 1990s, once 1990. With an eye toward appealing to working-class whites, observed that the availability of low-wage immigrant workers President Clinton endorsed the commission’s recommendations. “exerts a narcotic effect on employers in low-wage industries.” And in his 1995 State of the Union address, he used language about Whereas a shortage of less skilled workers might lead employers the importance of immigration enforcement that would be almost to either raise wages or deploy labor-saving technology, their avail- unthinkable for a Democratic candidate in 2016. ability allows them instead to keep aging business models intact. In The key reason that restrictionist legislation failed was that the contrast, service-sector employers in countries with relatively low Republicans who won both houses in Congress in 1994 were immigration levels, such as Japan, South Korea, and Denmark, divided between classic exclusionists and free-market expansion- have no choice but to rely on high-wage business models that are ists. Rallying under the slogan “Immigration yes, welfare no,” a more capital-intensive. If they don’t, they go out of business. bipartisan coalition defeated efforts to reduce immigration levels When U.S. employers in aging, labor-intensive industries insist while limiting welfare benefits for non-citizen foreigners. Suffice that paying higher wages or relying more heavily on machines is it to say, many pro-immigration liberals strenuously objected to an existential threat to their firms, they have a point. In the course these limits on the grounds that they were inhumane. But over of free-market competition, they will either have to upgrade their time, a growing number of less skilled immigrants restored their business models or lose out to competitors who do just that. Of eligibility for benefits by becoming naturalized citizens. Further - course, this is also true of employers facing minimum-wage hikes more, many of these limits were either actively undermined by that make labor-intensive business models ruinously expensive or state and local officials or left entirely unenforced. technological advances that render their business models obsolete. Normally, classic exclusionists might have counted on nation- The difference is that when low-wage employers demand that the alist egalitarians to support them in the fight for restriction. But federal government design its immigration policies to prop up

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their aging business models, they’re able to claim the moral high ground—to use Tichenor’s typology, free-market expansionists who care primarily about maintaining a steady supply of low- wage labor can use cosmopolitan language to make their case. Though the immigration-expansion coalition consists of more than just naturalized immigrants and employers, these two constituencies are vitally important. The employers bring lobbying muscle and campaign donations to the table, and the naturalized immigrants bring passion and moral legitimacy. Just as defenders of gun rights tend to be more committed and more engaged than advocates of gun control, expansionists have done a good job of translating their inferior numbers into durable political successes.

LL of which leads us to the present. Is Donald Trump the best thing that could have happened to the cause of restricting immigration, or the worst? To the relief of manyA in the restrictionist camp, Trump has at long last outlined a mostly coherent immigration agenda. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that, regardless of what happens in November, Trump’s rise has already proven a disaster for those who favor a more selective immigration policy and that restrictionists badly need a new playbook. Since the start of his presidential campaign, Trump has offended Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump looms over Mexican president vast swathes of the electorate with his immigrant-bashing rhetoric. Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico City, August 31, 2016. Over the past few weeks, he’s tried to make amends, occasionally noting that a more selective approach to immigration would benefit lawful immigrants as well as natives. He’s claimed that his poli- mean cracking down on those who use unauthorized-immigrant cies would revitalize America’s inner cities and promote upward labor. If restrictionists make their case in these terms, and if con- mobility for working-class Hispanic and black Americans as well servative Republicans echo them in doing so, they will have a as the working-class whites who’ve powered his political success. fighting chance at changing the course of the immigration debate. Not surprisingly, many of Trump’s critics question his sincerity. There is at least some reason to believe that this message could According to a recent Suffolk University poll, 44 percent of resonate. Recently, Gallup found that while Hillary Clinton leads likely voters believe that the Republican nominee is racist while Donald Trump 87 percent to 13 percent among foreign-born 47 percent believe otherwise. The good news, if you can call it Hispanics, she leads Trump by a less imposing margin of 43 to 29 that, is that only 37 percent of whites believe that Trump is a percent among U.S.-born Hispanics. The Pew Research Center racist, a number that would be alarmingly high under almost any has found that while Hispanics who primarily speak English are other circumstances. Among Hispanics, 61 percent believe that split 48–41 in favor of Clinton, those who are bilingual or who Trump is a racist, and the same is true of 83 percent of blacks. primarily speak Spanish favor Clinton 80–11. Considering that The same incendiary remarks that raised Trump’s visibility and support for Trump is literally a worst-case scenario for gauging helped convince a critical mass of GOP primary voters that he restrictionist sentiment among Hispanics, these numbers are a intended to defend their interests—that Mexican immigrants are decent start. In effect, restrictionists need to give naturalized “rapists” and “criminals,” and much else—have badly damaged immigrants and their families “permission” to favor policies that his ability to broaden his support. Trump’s efforts to rehabilitate emphasize the interests of those who already reside in the U.S. his image have yet to bear fruit, and the hour is late. over the interests of low-wage employers. As America grows more ethnically diverse, restrictionists will Pulling this off will take subtlety, intelligence, and compassion, have to embrace a new strategy. To build a durable coalition, they qualities that Trump has utterly failed to demonstrate throughout must convince a larger number of native-born Hispanic Ameri - his campaign. The time has come for other conservatives to step cans that immigration-enforcement efforts are motivated not by up. In an ideal world, the face of the restrictionist movement racial animus but by a desire to protect the economic interests of would be someone who had strong ties to Hispanic-immigrant all Americans, regardless of race. What they need, in short, is a communities and couldn’t be caricatured as a bigot or a sellout. revival of nationalist egalitarianism: a belief that immigration Better still, it would be ideal to find someone who was once a cos- restriction should be part of a larger strategy to better the lives of mopolitan or a free-market expansionist but who has since disadvantaged Americans. Rather than attack unauthorized immi- embraced something like nationalist egalitarianism. One promi- grants, restrictionists ought to train all their rhetorical fire on the nent Republican lawmaker who could potentially fit this bill is MILLS - employers who draw unauthorized immigrants into the country by Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida and second-generation hiring them illegally. Unscrupulous employers who fail to comply Cuban American who outraged restrictionists by serving as one DARIO LOPEZ / with immigration laws tend to violate other laws as well, including of the architects of the Gang of Eight bill. But whether Rubio has minimum-wage laws and overtime and health-and-safety regula- the strength and the foresight to reverse course and to lead a new AP PHOTO tions. Cracking down on rampant wage theft would inevitably restrictionist charge is very much an open question.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

anteed by fitness guru and health expert Sean Hannity walks us through the Steve Bannon. very best and most lucrative small-cap stocks available, many traded on little- 1:00 P.M. and throughout the pro- known exchanges and barely covered gramming day by the “establishment” financial press! Trump TV Great Moments with Mr. Trump Get in on the ground floor! Fall 2017 Lineup An animatronic Mr. Trump reads aloud from his many best-selling books. 12:00–1:00 A.M. (All times Eastern) Viewers are encouraged to read along After Hours with Roger Ailes by purchasing a special collection of A sensual look at news and news- 7:30–9:00 A.M. Mr. Trump’s enduring volumes, avail- makers, trends and happenings of the Morning cartoons, hosted by able in a Deluxe Edition, each volume day. Relax with Roger in a classy and Cap’n Eric “signed” by “Mr. Trump.” upscale venue as he guides viewers A return to the good old days, when through a selection of the very best early-morning television featured safe, 7:00–8:00 P.M. products available for adults and sin- wholesome cartoon fare for children, Mr. Trump Presents . . . gles, available for purchase and deliv- such as Snagglepuss and Speedy Mr. Trump hosts a rotating collection ered discreetly to your door. Most of Gonzales. Hosted by whimsical and of television moments from the past— the products are “naughty,” so this is a fun “Cap’n Eric”—Eric Trump in a some of his favorite NFL games, TV-MA show! For the low price of hilarious sailor costume—and featur- episodes of Gunsmoke, that I Dream of $15 per month, you can join Roger’s ing interstitial entertainment messages Jeannie where you can briefly see part “Club Fantasy” and receive regular from Mr. Trump himself. Kids are of Barbara Eden’s left breast, dirty shipments to your door. Charges will encouraged to join “Trump’s Youth parts of Match Game that never made it appear as “American Patriot Products” Brigade” for the low price of $15 per to air, and of course his favorite out- on your credit-card statement. Member - month, which includes a certificate takes from his ratings smash, The ship cannot be terminated without fil- suitable for framing and a cloth “arm Apprentice. Viewers are also treated to ing a lawsuit. bracelet” that can be worn anytime! sneak previews of some of Mr. Trump’s (Monthly fee is a recurring credit-card most luxurious real-estate ventures and 1:00 A.M. and repeated charge that can be discontinued by con- are allowed to get in on the “Friends & Survive! with Steve Bannon tacting the Better Business Bureau.) Family” insider’s price! TrumpTV’s President of Enter - tainment shows us the best deals in 9:00–11:00 A.M. 8:00–9:00 P.M. survival and preparedness gear, all De Whiew with Ivana Trump The Real (Jewish) Housewife of available for overnight shipping to Ivana Trump is the glamorous host- Trump Tower your home or bunker. Membership is ess of this morning round-robin talk- An up-close and real look at the also available for the Trump Survivors fest, very much like The View—with crazy and fast-paced life of Ivanka Network, which allows members and regulars and drop-in guests (Marla Trump—daughter of Donald, wife of their designees access to Trump Sur - Maples, Melania Trump) and an Jared, mother, business owner, entre- vival Locations across the country. emphasis on fashion, trends, and pop preneur, and a baleboste with chutz- Membership is a $750 initiation fee, culture. Ivana and her “posse” talk pah! Even the most ardent supporters followed by a $30 monthly “Preppers about current events, health and beauty of the Donald Trump campaign are Plus” fee. tips, and the very best products and ser- unaware that Mr. Trump’s daughter vices available for purchase from their converted to Judaism following her 6:00–7:00 A.M. very own fashion and beauty lines! Join engagement to her husband, Jared Law Talk with Mr. Trump’s Legal Team “Mr. Trump’s Ladies” each day and Kushner. Watch as Ivanka moves A fast-paced—and fast-talking— order products directly from them! through her day, utilizing products explanation and disclaimer hour in from her very own housewares and which the legal eagles of TrumpTV 12:00–1:00 P.M. clothing lines! Viewers can “click” on review the offers and products of Feel Great! with Steve Bannon the screen to order products directly to the previous 24-hour programming TrumpTV President of Entertain - their homes! Or join “Ivanka’s Club for period and provide clarification ment Steve Bannon shows you the very Yiddisher Kops” for the low monthly and terms-of-service understandings. best deals in home, health, and fitness price of $25 and get a specially selected Viewing of this hour of programming products—available at steep dis- box sent to you, featuring products is a legally defined “reasonable ex - counts and with easy-pay plans. Steve from Ivanka’s lines. Membership can pectation” of any customers of, “curates” the most cutting-edge equip- be terminated by filing a suit in small- members of, investors in, or other- ment and techniques in the mind-body claims court. It’s a mitzvah! wise patrons of Trump Organization industry to deliver to viewers unparal- products and services described for leled access to the very best products at 9:00 P.M.–12:00 A.M. sale during the TrumpTV program- the very best prices, all personally guar- The Hannity Prosperity Experience! ming day.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS STEAMed about STEM

F you ask the sort of people who are always angry about never a result of individual choices and preferences; they’re other people’s decisions, the wrong people are filling proof that the clammy smothering hand of Society is forcing the jobs in STEM. That’s science, technology, engi- us to think we’re doing what we want. Once a month the I neering, and math. Too many men. A lot of boys have Top-Hatted Capitalists get together at their richly appointed an early interest in STEM, because they’re all about building Secret Lair atop the Empire State Building, enjoy their cigars stuff, blowing up stuff, and building stuff that can blow up and oysters, sing a few bars of “Dixie,” and then get down to stuff. Boys like to sit in front of video-game screens and pre- the serious business of Oppressing Everyone. Let’s consult tend they’re rampaging across a continent with an inex- the minutes from a post-war meeting: haustible supply of ammunition, and for some this leads to an “Gentlemen, the brief experience women had during the interest in computers. The end result? Apparently, it’s college last world war exposed them to the joys of working in loud, campuses with HE-MAN WOMAN HATERS’ CLUB signs on the dangerous factories doing repetitive labor. Now they’ve been engineering building (with the S painted backwards) telling shoved back into the home, of course, but if something isn’t women they’d best steer clear. done, they’re going to demand the right to exchange house- Well, if the right people aren’t going into STEM, then keeping, cooking, and child-rearing for eight-hour shifts at a STEM must become something else. Say, sociology, tick- drill press. I fear this generation is poisoned beyond repair, but ling, encouraging, meth. we can keep upcoming generations stupid and technologi- Obviously that’s ridiculous. Tickling violates personal cally incurious. And so I reveal to you . . . PROJECT BARBIE.” boundaries. And it suggests that girls don’t want to go into Yeah. Well, Barbie’s hypnotic powers have waned in science, which is ridiculous. Many do. One of my daughter’s recent years, but STEM participation still isn’t close to the female friends has been building robots for years and will ideal ratio of 65 percent female to 35 percent male. (That’s probably attend her 20th high-school reunion by flying into the ideal ratio for everything.) So there’s been an alteration. the gym in a custom-made exoskeleton. But she’s not typical. It’s now STEAM. Science, technology, engineering . . . arts, Why? Because women, in general, prefer something else? and math. Nay: Girls are discouraged from pursuing STEM by the Arts. It’s like a BLAT—a bacon, lettuce, aspirin, and patriarchy. Female teachers in the schools run by female tomato sandwich. administrators regularly bark “Susie, put your hand down, Or is it? There’s already art in STEM, in a sense. Building these are boy topics” when a girl wants to answer a question a bridge involves art. Designing the best way for the in science class. And so the girls realize they have to cook innards of a computer or TV or coffee maker or rocket to fit and bake and make Instagram accounts composed entirely of together requires an elegant instinct and imposes restraints pictures of shoes and fancy coffee drinks. no modern sculptor would accept. There’s art in everything It’s a tragedy. My own daughter is very artistic; always has if you do it well. been. I ask her why she’s not interested in science. You suspect that’s not what they mean. A spastic dance “I am,” she says. “It’s just not what I want to do.” You’re devoted to the unsung woman who helped invent blueprints so good at painting, but don’t you think you should stop but was erased from history, that’s what they mean. drawing so much and fill your notebooks with algebra? But say they don’t. Say the proponents of the STEAM “Dad.” There are good jobs at the algebra factory, you know. term want to emphasize the A to let outsiders know there’s “DAD. NO.” already art in STEM. What’s the harm? Well, it’s annoying to She told me she’d just been talking with a friend about the those in STEM, because it suggests STEM is not enough and STEM push in her high school and how incredibly patron- needs embellishment, and it’s insulting to those considering izing it seemed. “Girls can do science, too!” she said in a STEM, as if they needed the step ladder of “personal expres- mocking voice of adult condescension. For her genera- sion” to make tech interesting to them. Don’t worry, you tion—and dare I suggest the one that came before?—the won’t have to do the hard stuff, like figure out how to get into idea that women are to be discouraged from ANYTHING is space. You can draw designs on the rocket! preposterous. If STEM means something else to them, it’s Recently Wells Fargo ran some ads for Teen Financial- “Stop talking empowerment, Mom.” Because they get it, Education Day and made the mistake of suggesting that they really do. some professions might have higher social utility than others. I do note that young girls of my daughter’s generation “An actor yesterday. A botanist today,” said one ad. “A bal- aren’t crazy about signing up for the draft, but that’s lerina yesterday. An engineer today,” another proclaimed. another matter. Not okay, big evil bank. The world needs ballerinas and engi- As with any disparity, the ratio of men to women in pro- neers in equal numbers, preferably apportioned by race and fessions such as “facility manager for warehouse HVAC sys- gender, and until that day comes we will know that every- tem” must be explained by Perfidious Forces. Disparities are thing is horrible and wrong. Wells Fargo apologized and pulled the ads. Whether Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. they’re hiring ballerinas this year, who knows.

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tive that reveals everything in the world these artifacts really are by explaining Talking to be part of a single and suddenly clear them as mere mechanisms for adaptation pattern.” What the beast with speech and survival. always wants is a compelling answer to The superpower isn’t merely technol- Man the question of his origin as a being “so ogy, about pushing back nature in the different from the animals around him.” service of comfortable self-preservation. PETER AUGUSTINE He wants to be integrated into a whole The beast with speech gave himself the LAWLER that includes himself, one that grounds power to ask questions about the signif- and sustains personal significance. None icance of particular lives, to come up of the other animals care about that; with religions and gods, and to change that’s one reason among many that there history with words of hope, with words aren’t dolphin philosophers, scientists, that can control the thoughts and behav- theologians, and poets. ior of millions of people. Homo loquax In pre-scientific cosmogony, “the is the source of not just a kingdom of agent of change” was seen as “alive or (mere) speech, but an Imperium loquax personal,” in some sense a creator. for that displaces “the empire of nature” Darwin, in his enlightened or secular- that used to be the source of being. ized time, change had to be described as Being used to be impersonal, and the some impersonal process capable of theory of natural selection used to be being captured by science. The name true, when there was no one around to The Kingdom of Speech, by Tom Wolfe (Little, Darwin gave his process was “evolution articulate it. But that theory doesn’t Brown, 192 pp., $26) through nat ural selection,” and, not sur- explain much at all in a world that con- prisingly if you think about it, it couldn’t tains scientists and other intellectuals. om Wolfe, one of our best really account for the being with speech. The world of the being with speech novelists and essayists, is also many pre-scientific cosmogonies incor- has no natural explanation. “It certainly a critic of the Darwinian theory porated the being with speech by under- wasn’t scientific experimentation or of evolution. He thinks that standing the world to be created by such observation,” Wolfe writes, “that finally Tthe theory might explain all of nature, all a being. In the scientists’ view, the pre- convinced Darwin that man had no spe- observable reality—up to, but emphati- scientific error was in giving natural cial place in the universe.” His theoreti- cally not including, the human being: the reality such a personal foundation; but cal view caught on because it confirmed “beast with speech” (Homo loquax). In in Wolfe’s view, that alleged error is the atheism of the “clerisy” that had his invigorating 2006 NeH Jefferson really an e rror only in a world without replaced the “clergy” in the 19th centu- lecture, he claimed to explain everything beings with the Word. He contends that ry. Secular thinking became the only we need to know about that singular natural evolution came to an end when acceptable kind of thinking among the beast, and in his new book he ex plains the beast with speech showed up and the wealthy, well educated, and well con- why famous scientists have failed com- artifact of speech allowed him to develop nected. Atheism became the new class pletely to come up with an alternative to an ego—an “internal self,” or a deeply consciousness of gentlemen. the failed Darwinian explanation. To personal orientation. The hugely successful publicity cam- account for the being with speech, evo- Speech is a “superpower” whose origin paign undertaken by Thomas Henry lutionary theorists from Darwin to no scientist can explain, one that has Huxley on behalf of Darwin’s theory Chomsky have concocted just-so stories allowed the beast with it to control or own wasn’t based in Huxley’s belief in the lit- no more empirically credible than those every other animal there is. It isn’t merely eral truth of its cosmological tale. Darwin of Kipling. Darwin, in fact, was a better “an ingenious tool for communication,” was useful support for the atheism that fiction writer than Kipling, even if his says Wolfe; it’s a “nuclear weapon” with Huxley really did believe was true well story couldn’t account for the existence unlimited transformative power. The before he had heard of Darwin. more of fiction writers. Word, as Wolfe shows us, has become generally, the widespread acceptance of In Wolfe’s view, “Darwin had fallen, flesh—and not just human flesh. Insofar Darwin’s theory was part of the disen- without realizing it, into the trap of cos- as the world we experience is an artifact chantment of the world by an intellectual mologism.” Human beings, in their of the being with speech—working all by elite that had become able to disseminate “endless curiosity,” have always been himself, with no divine or natural guid- its views through newspapers and maga- obsessed with devising “an ever-elusive ance—we can call it artificial, as opposed zines. from this viewpoint, while Dar - theory of everything, an idea or narra- to natural. And “the mother of all arti- win, in effect, did proclaim that God was facts” is the Word itself. Any theory of dead, insofar as we now knew through Mr. Lawler is the Dana Professor of Government at natural selection—insofar as it claims to science that each of us wasn’t made in Berry College. His newest book is American explain everything or even just the most God’s personal image, the theory flour- Heresies and Higher Education. significant things—has to scant what ished in a world already marked, as

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Nietzsche said, by God’s absence. Now, ries about the origin of religion and about ing. Speech, dependent as it is on the nat- in Nietzsche’s view, the dissemination of conscience in the experiences of dogs. ural equipment of our distinctive brains, the truth that he expressed as there being Evolutionary psychologists have been might still be understood as an ambigu- “no cardinal distinction between man and spinning such tales about empathy and all ously natural phenomenon: It might be animal” would demoralize humanity. that ever since. And, of course, no novel- not only for power in the service of the Wolfe’s good word is that the allegedly ist or moral or political leader of any con- person, but for the polymorphous flour- deadly truth isn’t really true. sequence has taken them seriously. Wolfe ishing of relational eros. Understanding Wolfe remarks that the Word of Jesus goes on to display the debunking of the speech as too “unnatural” makes each of in one way and Marx in another in - theories of Steven Pinker and Noam us too lonely in a cosmos indifferent to spired widespread hope that human Chomsky that we’re in any sense hard- our particular existences, a cosmos that, progress might culminate in an egalitar- wired—or have some instinct—for a par- in fact, resists our best efforts at conquest ian world—a world where class or sta- ticular kind of language, that language is and control, a resistance that we find in tus had withered away. What we really more natural than artificial. other beings with speech—whom we know about the beast driven by status Whether Wolfe writes as a novelist, a can’t help but love because they elude suggests otherwise. Darwin’s theory journalist, or a critic of science and sci- our control. offers us no hope from science at all, entists, he always seems to be engaged in So a better criticism of the failed when it comes to our longing for per- the project of explaining as much as pos- efforts of our scientists to include human sonal signif icance. Still, the very history sible by the spirited quest for signifi- beings in the theory of evolution is actu- of its acceptance is really about those cance in a hostile environment. More ally given by another southern novelist, who attempted to achieve status by than The Kingdom of Speech by itself Walker Percy, who went beyond Stoic trumpeting popularized science about a would suggest, his quest is to develop pride in the direction of Christian love. cosmos with no special place for any of the science that corresponds to his Why did Wallace go crazy? He experi- us. The ironic hope offered by Darwin’s southern Stoicism, his defense of the enced himself as a dazed and confused theory is the status that would be inward life of the man or woman who leftover in the world he otherwise so well achieved by those who proclaim its has genuine self-control. described. And he didn’t have access to atheistic truth; it’s an atheistic weapon In his novel A Man in Full (1998), for an account of nature that had room for to deprive religious believers of the sta- example, a prisoner completely on his beings like himself and that genuinely tus they used to enjoy. own in a maximum-security prison connected him with beings like himself. Wolfe reminds us that the theory of knows how to act all alone in a desperate It had no room, in other words, for love. evolution as natural selection was first situation because he has accidentally Sure, Wallace was concerned to some articulated by Alfred Russel Wallace. come upon the writings of the Stoic extent about his status, but the bigger His version of it didn’t prevail because it philosopher-slave Epictetus. And in the issue is that he was lonely, or alienated, or was generated by an “outsider” without novel I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004), lost. What we need, Percy suggests, is a connections. Nonetheless, it appears a star basketball player is turned around scientific theory of nature that puts back that Wallace’s relentless curiosity was by taking a course on a very Stoic ver- together European existentialism, spirit- purer than Darwin’s. He wrote an un - sion of Aristotle, regaining his powerful ed Stoic rationalism, Anglo-American justly neglected reflection titled “The self-confidence on the court and treating empiricism, and Christian love. What we Limits of Natural Selection as Applied ladies like persons worthy of respect and need is not another impersonal cos- to Man.” Among Wallace’s truthful con- admiration. In both cases, what we see is mogony but a scientific account of why clusions: The brain is “man’s specially genuinely liberal education in action. the being who wonders inevitably wan- developed organ,” one that is far less Even in The Kingdom of Speech, we ders—why each of us by nature is “lost in about survival than about conquest, and admire the outsider scientists who choose the cosmos.” In an age of unbelief, that’s so it can’t be explained by a theory that the truth over status. Part of being a beast the way out of our dogmatic atheism and makes the being with speech a mere part with speech is being able to distinguish toward being as at home as we can be of some impersonal process. That inex- between those who live in the truth and with our homelessness. plicable power has been both good and those who inauthentically choose control Wolfe and Percy agree, for plenty of bad for man, a being better and worse for its own sake or who merely live in the good reasons, that the theory of evolu- than the other animals. It’s the source of eyes of others. The being with speech, as tion doesn’t say all that much about who our “highest and most refined abilities,” a man in full, is master of his own we are as beings with language. It fails as but also the source of misery, self- domain—and by really ruling himself is an adequate scientific description of destructiveness, and cruelty not charac- able to rule others. being human. And both of these writers teristic of the other animals. One shortcoming of Wolfe the scientist gave, in their Jefferson Lectures, wonder- Wallace’s candid confession of his and Wolfe the novelist is that he down- fully deep and invigorating alternative failure was a prelude to his falling prey plays, quite unrealistically, how much scientific views of who we are. Google to various forms of superstition. Wolfe beasts with speech remain guided by those Jefferson Lectures—and then read says Wallace was driven crazy by his natural social instinct that morphs, with Wolfe’s The Kingdom of Speech and inability to account for the power of the self-consciousness or ego, into relational Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos for very per- Word. Darwin, by contrast, comforted love. Wolfe, perhaps deliberately, doesn’t suasive efforts to rigorously explain himself and saved his “we’re nothing do justice to the truth that it’s not just what we really do experience about who special” theory by developing lame sto- pride, but love, that makes life worth liv- we are.

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Hamid notes that Turkey’s rul- the better part of the secularist old guard Defining ing Justice and Development party, or had been sent to prison or silenced for AKP, calls itself a conservative party, fear of arrest. Turkey’s two Islamist not an Islamist one, and while it is the power centers then turned on each Democracy party favored by the pious, it has not other—and that, not a struggle between behaved in power as if its primary Islamists and secularists, is the recent Down political goal were the Islamization of history of Turkey. Turkish society. After its victory in The rest of the book is similarly con- CLAIRE BERLINSKI 2002, the AKP presented itself as a fused, but we must note, in fairness, faithful advocate of secularism. The that the subject is confusing. It has been story then becomes complicated, with five years since the Arab Spring be- Erdogan growing increasingly power- gan—five years of chaos, coups, re - mad. But Hamid barely skims the sur- pression, terrorism, and war. Ameri can face of this story. I was living in policy toward the region has vacillated Istanbul throughout the period he dis- between support for the ideal of cusses and so had a front-row seat. His democracy, dismay upon discovering treatment of Turkey is shallow, and that democracy brings Islamists to readers might conclude from it—erro- power, and drone warfare. No one really neously—that a struggle between understands our policy toward the Islamism and secularism was that region, and it is not clear that we actu- period’s central conflict, which was ally have one. Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle over not the case. We must begin, Hamid suggests, by t understanding that Islam is different Islam Is Reshaping the World, by Shadi Hamid Turkey no longer has a secularis power center and an Islamist power from the other major monotheisms, par- (St. Martin’s Press, 320 pp., $26.99) center, as Hamid seems to believe. ticularly in its conception of the rela- What it has are two significant Islamist tionship between religion and the state. N July 15, a cabal of rogue power centers: the AKP and the Gulen For both theological and historical rea- officers attempted to over- movement. The latter is an international sons, he holds, it is uniquely resistant to throw the Turkish govern- network of schools, businesses, and secularization. He alludes throughout to ment. Had the putschists media outlets led by the septuagenari- “observers” and an “international com- Obeen staunch secularists, the bloody an preacher Fethullah Gulen. He has munity” who have failed to understand fiasco would have confirmed the the- tens of thousands of followers—some this. He argues against “liberal deter- sis of author Shadi Hamid’s new book: estimates place their numbers as high minists” who Whiggishly believe that The failure of democracy to take root as 5 million—who have for decades history marches inexorably toward a in the Islamic world is owing not to sought to replace secularist cadres in secular, rational, liberal, and democratic the election of Islamists but to the the Turkish state with their own. They end, and who believe that therefore, in panic their ascent to power prompts took advantage of the political opening time, the Islamic world will arrive at the among secularists, who react by stag- afforded them by the AKP’s election to same secular terminus. His case is sin- ing coups. accelerate the pursuit of their own cere, but does anyone actually believe But these coup plotters were not sec- long-term goal of covertly capturing the contrary? ularists—or, at least, no one in Turkey the state. I suspect not. That Whiggish view of thinks they were. What precisely hap- For about a decade, the AKP and the history was last held in earnest in pened is still opaque, but Turkish pres- Gulen movement formed an alliance of 1989. It would be astonishing if the ident Recep Tayyip Erdogan, often convenience aimed at dislodging the news that Islam matters and is different described as an Islamist, is certain that establishment. To a large extent, the from other religions came as a surprise the coup was staged by Islamists of a fictional narrative of a “liberalizing to readers now—after 15 uninterrupted rival camp—loyalists of the preacher Turkey”—widely accepted in the West years of war. “It has become unfash- Fethullah Gulen. All of Turkey’s politi- and accepted, it seems, by Hamid too— ionable to suggest that Islam is in any cians and parties, including the main was a creation of the Gulen movement, way unique,” he writes. It has? opposition party—the “secular idiot which cultivated Western journalists But why, precisely, is it different? elites,” in the words of one of Hamid’s and politicians and spoon-fed them this Hamid’s answer: It is different be - interlocutors—agree that Gulenists story. In reality, much of the liberaliza- cause its founding moment was pro- were to blame. All offered their imme- tion the West applauded had taken place foundly unlike that of the other major diate, wholehearted support to Turkey’s before the AKP came to power, and not mono theisms. Mohammed was not elected Islamist government. much that Westerners would describe as only a prophet but a warrior, mer- “liberalization” took place afterward; chant, state-builder, and ruler. Jesus, Claire Berlinski, the author of Menace in Erdogan very quickly embarked on a in contrast, was a “dissident against a Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is program to silence dissent and arrogate reigning political order,” and this America’s, Too, is crowdfunding a new book, to himself the spoils of power. The prepared Christians—ultimately, at about Europe, titled “Brave Old World.” Gulenists eagerly cooperated. By 2012, very long last—to draw a distinction

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between the realm of faith and the ber to count—although this presumably Islamist governance. Who are we to realm of politics. was not Hamid’s intention. His view decide this? It would be regrettable if Moreover, he notes, Muslims be lieve might also be used to justify squalid the United States ceased even meekly that salvation is impossible without equivocation about human rights. to defend the value of liberal democracy adherence to the law, unlike Christians, Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brook- in the belief that the Islamic world is many of whom believe in salvation ings Institution’s Center for Middle uniquely incapable of it. The case Hamid through faith alone. Judaism, he argues, East Policy, where he works in the has assembled is not strong enough to is more akin to Islam, given the vast Project on U.S. Relations with the warrant this conclusion. corpus of halakhic law, but so long Islamic World. Until recently, he was It is true, as he says, that many parts of were the Jews in exile that minority the director of research at the Brookings the Islamic world are profoundly illib- status and deference to secular law Doha Center in Qatar. The Brookings eral. (For example, some 88 perfcent o became inextricable from their culture. Institution receives a substantial amount Egyptian Muslims support the death In contrast, from the time of Mo - of its funding from Qatar, which in the penalty for apostasy.) Illiberalism, he hammed to the dissolution of the wake of the Arab Spring made itself concludes, is, if not an inherent property caliphate in 1924, Sunni Muslims, at unpopular in Egypt and elsewhere by of Islam, one so widespread that the least, enjoyed an uninterrupted period backing the Muslim Brotherhood. A question makes no practical difference. of legitimate Islamic political order. book such as this is not a purely acade- Hamid adopts a posture of moral detach- (The Shiites receive almost no mention mic exercise; it is meant to influence ment: “I have chosen the word ‘excep- in the book, a strange omission given U.S. policy. Hamid studied at George - tionalism’” to characterize Islam, he its ambitious aims.) town; he worked at the State De - writes, “in part to avoid casting judg- This suggests to Hamid that efforts partment; he was the director of research ment. Exceptionalism, as I see it, has no to drive Islamist movements out of at the Project on Middle East Democracy: intrinsic value in and of itself.” His

For the Westphalian system to survive, Shadi Hamid argues, Islam, and even Islamism, may be necessary to legitimize it.

power are hopeless. He can envision Someone is surely going to try to put argument, he insists, is morally neu- no stable, liberal, democratic, and sec- his ideas into practice. And while tral. “Islamic exceptionalism is neither ular future for the Islamic world; at Hamid is not precisely an apologist for good nor bad,” he argues. “It just is.” best, the state-centric order will be pre- the Muslim Brotherhood, he does come But this isn’t so. If Islam is exception- served, and this will be preferable to awfully close. al in the way he describes it, it is bad— chaos. But for the Westphalian system He has assiduously cultivated access unless we empty the words “good” and to survive, he argues, Islam, and even to Islamists so as better to understand “bad” of all commonsense meaning. Islamism, may be necessary to legit- what they believe, and attempted sym- Executing apostates isn’t “neither good imize it. Driving these movements out pathetically to represent their views, so nor bad.” It’s bad. of politics will only doom these states more-secular Muslims in the region “Islam will need to play a significant to civil conflict. In his view, then, fear that he is in fact an Islamist. The role in the forging of political commu- post–Arab Spring states erred in trying book might easily be taken as an argu- nity,” he writes, “particularly where to marginalize Islamist parties. If ment for dismissing the well-founded political community is weak. . . . To decades of eradicationist policies, concerns of those in the region who exclude Islam or to hope for—or such as Syria’s toward the Muslim see nothing but danger in the legit- worse, im pose—a top-down secular- Brotherhood, failed to stamp out these imization of Islamist politics. His is ism requires yet more violence.” But he ideas, it is because they can’t be part of a larger case for “engagement” fails to acknowledge the converse point: stamped out. Demonizing and margin- with Islamist movements and parties To include Islam or to hope for—or alizing Islamists who attempt to work that has been discussed in American worse, impose—a top-down Islamism within state structures “threatens to foreign-policy circles for more than a also requires yet more violence. It is far radicalize them,” he writes, not so decade. The Turkish journalist Nuray from clear that including Islam pre- much toward terrorism—although that, Mert called this trend “democracy bon cludes violence; just ask the Turks, too—but toward revolution against pour l’Orient,” and democracy that’s whose parliament was bombed in July. the state. “good enough for the Orient” sounds In the end, if we don’t know what This conclusion will please Islamists uncomfortably like what Hamid is policies are apt to preclude violence, and anti-Muslim bigots alike—both proposing here. why not stand on principle? Liberal groups view Muslims who understand Mert has every reason to resent for- democracy has worked reasonably their religion to be a private matter eign pundits and policymakers who well for us—and it is a system we can, rather than a political program as theo- throw up their hands and decide that with a clear conscience, urge others logically confused, or too few in num- the region will have to “live with” to adopt.

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In the canonical account of the Refor - 17th centuries” were interrelated. And The Birth of mation, Luther’s scathing critique of the here we should note the subtitle of selling of indulgences—in effect, sell- Eire’s book: “The Early Modern World, ing God’s mercy—stands for a more 1450–1650.” As Eire tells us at the outset, The Modern thoroughgoing condemnation of eccle- “we cannot begin to comprehend who we siastical corruption and a revolutionary are as Westerners without first under- JOHN WILSON emphasis on Scripture alone as authori- standing the changes wrought by the tative for the Christian life. Moreover, Reformations of the early modern era.” believers were to read the Bible in their Though Eire lays out his argument own language—Luther’s translation of quite clearly, this is not a thesis-driven the Bible into German was as important book. Rather, it is a detail-rich cross- as his theological works. cutting narrative that encompasses the This is the essence of the Reformation “Scottish war on witchcraft” (Chapter as it has long been understood, both by 13), Catholic missionaries to India those who trace their heritage to it and (Chapter 19), the “age of devils” (Chapter by those who continue to deplore its 23), and much more. Whether or not consequences—those for whom the you end up agreeing with Eire that we bumptious individualism (so they see it) should stop talking about “the Refor - Reformations: The Early Modern World, implicit in Luther’s defiance leads mation,” and whether or not you agree 1450–1650, by Carlos M. N. Eire straight through the centuries to Ameri - with his summing up of the impact of (Yale, 920 pp., $40) can Evangelicals’ love affair with Donald this period (see the epilogue and Trump. The story has long been compli- Eire’s concise account of “three revo- HE 500th anniversary of the cated, as Eire acknowledges, by sub- lutionary shifts” that shaped the West Reformation has occasioned a slew of books, lectures, conferences, reenactments, To speak of ‘the Reformations,’ Carlos Tand so on, starting several years ago and scheduled to reach a climax in the Eire insists, is much truer to the reality fall of 2017. Of the books I’ve seen in this cavalcade (there are far too many we are seeking to understand. for any single reader to keep up with), Carlos M. N. Eire’s Reformations is plots: the increasing conflict among as we know it today), you will learn a one of the best. early Reformers such as Luther, Calvin, great deal and be entertained along It’s a very long book, and at first you and Zwingli and the traditions that the way. may be daunted by its sheer bulk. (I flowed from them over the centuries; the Eire is quick to note the “contingency discovered that I couldn’t read it in Anabaptists and the heirs of the so-called of all summations.” Still, in the spirit of bed, my favorite spot: I needed to have Radical Reformation (whose present- his project, which complicates a famil- it lying flat on a desk or table.) But day descendants include the Mennonites iar story, let me complicate the story he unlike all too many books these days, and Amish); the Catholic response to tells in its place. Some of what he says Reformations is not bloated with ver- Luther and his ilk, commonly referredo t about Protestants in the early modern bal filler, lazy repetitions, or self- as “the Counter-Reformation”; and—a era fits very well with my own experi- indulgent digressions. The writing, theme especially strong in recent schol- ence growing up in a Protestant house- while deeply informed by scholarship, arship—the many and wildly varied hold in the 1950s with my mother, my is beguiling, as one might expect from reform movements that preceded Luther, grandmother, and my younger brother. the author of the memoir Waiting for such as that of the Waldensians (begin- (We mostly went to Baptist churches, and Snow in Havana (2003). And the book ning in France in the late 12th century), historians of American religion would is long because it needs to be, to flesh who embraced poverty, rejected the describe our milieu as Evangelical with out Eire’s thesis that we should speak authority of the pope and the veneration some fundamentalist traits.) But in of Reformations, plural, rather than of relics, and argued that the Bible was other respects his summation doesn’t fit “the” Reformation, singular, symbol- the supreme authority. my experience. ized by Martin Luther’s nailing his 95 Still, both in everyday conversation Eire makes a great deal of Protes- theses on the door of a church in and in academic settings, we continue to tantism’s desacralizing and disenchant- Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, speak of “the Reformation.” This vexes ing of the world, especially through its 1517. (Eire, like many historians, de- Eire. He’s convinced that his objection is “rejection of miracles.” But most of the scribes this famous scene as a legend; not merely a matter of scholarly hairsplit- Protestants I grew up with (and certainly in any case, Luther sent his theses to ting. To speak of “the Reformations,” he those in my own family) would have clerical authorities, so the challenge insists, is much truer to the reality we are been loath to reject miracles. My grand- was given.) seeking to understand, one in which “all mother, who had absorbed a good deal of the different reform movements and of dispensationalism (she read every Mr. Wilson is the editor of Books & Culture. churches that emerged in the 16th and day in her worn Scofield Bible), ex-

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plained that “cessationists” believed that arresting. Franny Keating is the book’s miracles were restricted to the period of Out of emotional and dramatic center. Patchett the early Church and that God did not hinges the success of the book on the choose to work that way in the present reader’s interest in Franny’s loves and age, but she—and, again, the vast major- The Past losses, and it works. ity of believers I grew up with—strongly Franny’s christening party begins believed that God still worked miracles, NICK RIPATRAZONE the novel. The setting is California in even as they were skeptical about the the Sixties: a house party full of family claims of faith healers and such. and friends, and “an entire precinct Moreover, my grandmothe r had been a worth of cops,” including Fix Keating. missionary in China (where my mom Fix opens the door to Albert Cousins lived until she was eleven years old), from the district attorney’s office. and we often had missionaries visiting “Other people brought prayer cards or our house in Southern California as well mother-of-pearl rosary beads or a as speaking in church. Many of them pocket-sized Bible covered in white related miracles that they claimed to kid with gilt-edged pages,” but Albert have witnessed. brings something the party needs: a So the world in which I was raised bottle of gin. Patchett writes a nice was emphatically not desacralized and scene of action—one way to test a disenchanted. Both my mother and my writer’s dexterity is to pack a house grandmother spoke without any embar- Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett full of people and watch them move. rassment about the presence of angels. (Harper, 336 pp., $27.99) The gin needs juice, so the kitchen is They were equally matter-of-fact about crammed with lawyers, their “suit the Devil and his minions. I was raised IFE,” thinks one charac- jackets off, ties off, shirtsleeves (and here I will no doubt appall some ter in Commonwealth, rolled up high above the elbow, . . . of my readers) to believe in the per- “was a series of losses. twisting the halves of oranges on two sonal reality of the Devil, a belief I’ve It was other things too, metal juicers.” never been persuaded to abandon. ‘Lbetter things, but the losses were as In the midst of all this talking and (Quite the contrary.) solid and dependable as the earth drinking, Fix asks Albert to find Please be assured, if all this sounds a itself.” Ann Patchett’s new book is Franny, for whose affection Albert bit fantastic to you, that the setting in melancholy without being morose. “would juice every orange in Los which I went to church and Sunday Adultery, illness, separation, jealousy, Angeles County.” It is in Franny’s school was not highly idiosyncratic. resentment, death: She certainly doesn’t dark bedroom that her mother, Of course it was different from grow- grant her characters easy passage Beverly, kisses Albert—quite literally ing up in a Catholic setting, and differ- through life. Commonwealth is a book with the baby “balanced between the ent again from the Lutheran setting I about two families united by a foolish two of them.” came to know when (I was partway decision in a dim bedroom and, later, Albert and Beverly get into a long through fourth grade at the time) my a tragedy. affair and then get married. They mom took my brother and me out of Patchett is a Catholic novelist but leave California for Virginia, where the public school we’d been attending also one with the lowercase “c.” Her the chldren of the two families end up and enrolled us in a Missouri Synod plots do not have the theological sting spending summers together. “Here Lutheran school, even though we of Flannery O’Connor, nor does she was the remarkable thing about the weren’t Lutherans. (There weren’t so write of parishes as did J. F. Powers (or Keating children and the Cousins chil- many Christian schools to choose from as does her contemporary, Erin Mc - dren: They did not hate one another, in those days.) Graw). She does, though, write of nuns, nor did they possess one shred of tribal It was at St. Paul’s Lutheran School in as in the novel The Patron Saint of Liars loyalty.” Patchett focuses on the six Pomona, Calif., that I first learned about (1992) and in several essays, finding children, not the adults, who are only the Reformation and Martin Luther. that they represent what she calls the a secondary presence in the novel. (In the largely ahistorical Baptist best elements of the Church: “charity, The children spend the summers in a churches where we worshiped, the compassion, humility.” Her faith suf- haze: “They did things, real things, Reformation was never mentioned.) fuses Commonwealth not so much with and they never got caught.” Those To this day I remain very thankful for hope as with a sense of perseverance— things involve Benadryls, gin, and my first immersion in another stream of and a bit of perspective. even a gun. Patchett hints at some- the faith. How different many things for- The cast of Commonwealth is large— thing more, but doesn’t reveal it until merly taken for granted looked from that two full families, whose stories span much later in the book. angle. And I am equally grateful to several decades—and readers should Fast-forward a decade: Franny has Carlos Eire for an immersion (no mere not expect all characters to be equally dropped out of law school during her sprinkling) in the Reformations from Mr. Ripatrazone is a staff writer for The third year and now works at a hotel which we have inherited so much, for Millions and a contributor to The Atlantic. bar in Chicago. “With her straight better and for worse. blond hair in a single loose braid, she

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looked like the music-video version “nothing but the jumping-off point of the Catholic schoolgirl she’d once for his imagination,” but it was much When the been.” She loves books and can’t stop more. Albie has no interest in poetic thinking about tort law. Chance brings license. He shoves Leon, saying, “You famed novelist Leon Posen to her bar. have no idea how hard I’m trying not Deal Gets Franny is star-struck; she worships to kill you.” his novels. They flirt. “Going to law Commonwealth moves, and not Broken school had been a terrible error in because of tricks or artificial-seeming judgment that she had made in hopes intrigue. Patchett’s gift is patience: DAVID P. DEAVEL of pleasing other people”; Franny She stays with these families, know- feels “she was in debt like some sort ing that if we watch and wait, drama is of Dickens character.” (Franny was inevitable. Patchett is a born novelist, an English major; her allusions don’t with a natural sense of pacing and feel forced.) scope. Writers of short fiction dig, She loves Leon’s writing, and there- novelists spread. When Franny and fore loves the idea of him, “the bright- Leon’s affair inevitably begins to ness of him, the brightness that she felt fray, Patchett turns back to those lyric standing just on the other side of the summers between the Keatings and bar, [which] was more than she was the Cousinses, and we get the revela- willing to let go of.” Leon drinks too tion that a tragedy occurred there. The much, and in a funny scene, Franny event is murky; there are lies and Losing Susan: Brain Disease, the Priest’s Wife, and the God Who Gives and Takes Away, by Victor Commonwealth moves, and not Lee Austin (Brazos, 160 pp., $19.99)

because of tricks or artificial- T’S the deal we all hope for: career, raising kids, vigor, and seeming intrigue. Ann Patchett’s twilight years. For men, the actu- gift is patience. arial tables tilt the deal. They Iusually die first, having been cared for drags him up and down the hotel look- cover-ups among the children that ex - by their wife in sickness as in health. ing for his forgotten room. tend to adulthood. For women, especially in the case of It comes as no surprise that they Out of this suffering, Franny might someone vibrant, creative, and with the begin an affair that turns into a long- escape—at least, so we hope. “The heart and ability to raise children and term relationship. Leon’s wife is in Los nuns had led her to believe that God manage adults, the deal is that they give Angeles, and the occasional phone call gave preference to people who did life at home and in society and care for and rare visit from his daughter re - things the hard way.” She has taken that those in whom it is ebbing away. minds the reader that the novelist still advice to heart. “Franny couldn’t help Most times, anyway. has a family. He is more focused on his but believe that she had brought every Victor Austin was a budding intellec- work, which brings an endless supply discomfort she experienced down on tual, an Anglican priest and writer with of literary associates to their home. herself.” That might sound harsh as an a beautiful wife and two children. After Franny tires of these literary parties. assessment of a life, but Patchett shows 15 years of marriage, his wife, Susan, The writers, editors, and publicists in masterfully how heavily we feel the past developed a brain tumor. The cancer Commonwealth are insufferable. Franny weigh on the present. was eventually arrested, but the damage entertains Leon’s literary circle with In one scene, Franny, her head in from the tumor and the treatments (in so much attention that her stepbrother Leon’s lap, cries about the novel based cancer treatment, as in lawsuits, the Albie seriously asks her, “Do you on her family: “She had made a terrible process is the punishment) meant that work for them?” Albie is a long-haired error in judgment and he had turned it her ability to care for husband, children, amateur arsonist; not the fullest char- into something permanent and beauti- short-term foster-care children, and her- acter in Commonwealth, but endearing ful.” Patchett has written elsewhere self gradually slipped away. Over the 19 in his own way. He is named after his that “in its first stages, faith is the abil- years of her illness, the usual deal was father, Albert. ity to believe in something, to trust canceled. Plans were put on hold, vigor What is Albie doing with his step- absolutely,” whereas “advanced faith fled, and Victor had to care for her sister and her lover? If Common - is the ability to see God in all things.” physically and emotionally, not only wealth had a tagline, it would be: Commonwealth stays true to that senti- doing unpleasant and somewhat embar- Don’t trust novelists. Leon takes ment, finding reason for hope in every rassing physical tasks for her but super- Franny’s life story and turns it into space and corner, even within a dark, the novel’s title book. He changes quiet bedroom during a loud party—if Mr. Deavel is the editor of Logos: A Journal of names but doesn’t alter emotions and not with the adults, then, perhaps, with Catholic Thought and Culture and teaches at secrets. He claims that their story was a child. the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota).

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vising her care and taking over the a court in which a jury would hear both having to deal constantly with the crisis “executive function” that Susan’s brain the wo man and an attorney who would of the moment rather than “the longer, refused to provide. He had to watch her give the child “a say in the matter of his wider perspective” or even the gift of slowly diminish and die. own life and death.” the present moment. He talks about the A bookish young man from small- WFB thanked her for the “charming painful effort to preserve and acknowl- town Texas, Austin found his way in the and bright letter.” He was forwarding edge the equal personhood of the one mid 1970s to the St. John’s College her letter, he said, to James McFadden for whom you are caring—and the diffi- great-books program in Santa Fe, N.M., of The Human Life Review. And thus culty that this world of evil presents to where he met other students interested began a habit of writing about abortion, religious believers. in the life of the mind. One, Susan family, and children, in which Susan Early on, Austin writes about the Lanier, was an intellectual who actually examined the important truth that the “second-best book in the Bible,” the attended church on Sundays, at an community creates the conditions for Song of Songs, which tells him about Anglo-Catholic Episcopal church. She individuals to experience the rights the divine gift of the love of Susan, “a invited Victor along, and the two began they have. person I could touch and embrace and to walk five miles each way to Holy Susan was a writer, but also the whole speak to and have unbounded inter- Faith parish, where Susan introduced package. She was, to use what is today course with.” But the end of the book the Presbyterian-raised boy to liturgy an unpopular term, a homemaker. Victor is about the “greatest” book, Job, and Marian devotion. Victor found that loved that she kept, rediscovered, and which talks bluntly about the reality desire for a woman and desire for God created traditions that made Christian that God takes gifts from us, brings did not have to be in competition; they faith real for her children throughout the “evils on us,” and yet makes his rather seemed somehow united. After year, especially at Christmas. She was strange presence known. In the wake Susan’s breakup with her boyfriend and able to have only two biological children of Susan’s death, Victor discovered some (Jane) Austenian confusion, the but desired the deal in bigger doses, to that his Christian faith did hold him two married shortly after college, and care for the weak and small again. So as up. He realized he had neither been he became a priest. her own children grew, she and Victor alone nor been tested beyond his Readers will think of C. S. Lewis’s A took in temporary foster children, often capacities by the burdens of a sick, Grief Observed, but a better parallel is crack babies, so that, as “Susan would dying wife. He realized that though he to For You Departed (1969) by the say, deep in their souls they would have had cared for Susan for so long, now South African novelist Alan Paton. The a memory of being held, touched, cra- he could see her as equal, not “needing marriage of Lewis and Joy Davidman dled, cleaned, fed, and in general being him” as she had, but being cared for by was a late-life and relatively short, loved.” This ended when the brain tumor God just as Victor is. The real deal, as though eventful, one. The Austins’, like that would eventually kill her began to he discovered, was how the “strange the Patons’, was long, and full of per- disrupt the Austins’ lives radically. character” we call God changes our sonal, political, and cultural change. Austin’s account of her slow decline lives, through love and suffering bound The Patons’ personal life included chil- presents the difficulty caregivers face in inextricably together. dren, but also his brief adultery, while the Austins’ had childbirth, subsequent infertility, and, to Susan’s delight, temporary foster children. While the Patons faced apartheid in mid-20th-century A MEMORY OF FRANKLIN STREET South Africa, the Austins faced the large and negative changes in abortion Heaven surrounded us, all sweetness then, and family law in the United States. Bright sky and earth, so calm and more than fair; The third child of a mother who later Warm and expansive, welcoming, so when campaigned for women to stop at two We passed a building it seemed more than square children, Susan experienced some cog- Brick and rough timber. I might stop to stare nitive dissonance about such issues. In And wonder at the glow of what had been wrestling with the issue of abortion, Before my time; reach out to touch the bare Susan found she sympathized with And rugged trunk of one great tree again. mothers terrified by the prospective child. At her husband’s behest, she Recall my father once stood with me there wrote an impassioned letter to William F. Buckley Jr. in which she acknowl- As he explained its decades, more than ten, edged that “merely to carry a child is to Of leafing and then shedding. Past repair, have your privacy invaded, not now and Its life had paralleled the lives of men. then, but at every moment of the nine months, and inescapably.” The problem Not his, of course. I see him smiling now was not the unborn child’s lack of per- Through all the drooping leaf and brittle bough. sonhood, but that “he has too much.” She proposed for overwhelmed mothers —SALLY COOK

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Happy Warrior BY DAVID HARSANYI Boot the Reboot

HERE’S an oft-repeated maxim that alleges there Create your own pretend heroes, people. Think about it: are only seven ideas in the entirety of fiction and Nearly every superhero movie—and what is that, around that everything we watch and read is based on 90 percent of film profits these days?—is merely reintro- T them. Well, perhaps. In today’s Hollywood, ducing characters that have been around forever. Captain though, they need only one. It’s called the remake. America, Iron Man, Thor, Batman, Superman, Wonder Not long ago, I heard a rumor that a new version of Woman, Aquaman, Doctor Strange, you name it, we were Ben-Hur—a remake of the Charlton Heston flick, itself a reading those comics when I was a kid. Ant-Man was first remake of the 1925 silent film adapted from Lew introduced to comic-book readers in 1962. Wallace’s 1880 novel—had hit theaters. Skeptical, I For a while, the golden age of television offered Americans headed online to hunt down the trailer, and YouTube, as some respite from this trend. This fall, however, Fox will be is its wont, forced me to watch another ad. It was a pre- reintroducing Lethal Weapon to Americans in series form, view of the remake of The Magnificent Seven, starring while HBO will be reintroducing them to Westworld—a Denzel Washington, based on the 1960 movie starring series based on the Michael Crichton movie. And what say Yul Brynner, which was itself a remake of Kurosawa’s you to another Star Trek reboot on CBS? Because rebooted Seven Samurai. Star Trek movies weren’t enough, evidently. Now, Washington and director Antoine Fuqua had only We already share an entire registry of timeless films that recently teamed up to produce The Equalizer, a not entire- feature either a singular vision of a director or an extraordi- ly awful reimagining of the 1980s vigilante television nary performance of an actor. Think Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. series, so I wasn’t completely turned off by the notion. Strangelove or Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the What red-blooded American doesn’t enjoy a cinematic Cuckoo’s Nest. Granted, it’s comforting to share a few orgy of righteous vengeance from time to time? Bruce intergenerational cultural touchstones. The recent updates Willis is working on a Death Wish remake as we speak. of Jurassic Park and Star Wars—remakes masquerading as I’ll probably see that one, too. sequels—were imbued with a technical proficiency and My only question is, When is Hollywood going to make sophistication that transformed timeless stories into some- something original for the folks in the 21st century? thing more palatable for modern sensibilities. We should not be reflexively opposed to remakes or Then again, these efforts can go horribly wrong. I recently reboots or even rehashes because, let’s face it, most nearly sat through the remake of 1991’s gloriously cheesy, movies are undeserving of sanctification. As a kid, for adrenaline-fueled Point Break, a CGI-laden remake that instance, I heard adults showering films like Spartacus reached into the chest of the original and tore out its heart with accolades. Watching Kirk Douglas lead his sunbaked, the way that pagan priest from Indiana Jones and Temple of shirtless slave revolt was entertaining enough, but it’s got- Doom did to his victims. It is a crime against the ’90s. ten difficult to take the movie seriously. So Hollywood— Please stop. after a couple of cartoonish stabs at remaking the story—is And there are no shortcuts. Technical advances can take now working on a gritty but historically accurate version you only so far. As can shtick. Recasting Ghostbusters of the epic. I’ll see it. entirely with women does not transform your movie into There are plenty of similarly familiar stories that could something fresh. The same trick is now being used for a benefit from a contemporary reset. But the predominance remake of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven—itself a of sequels and remakes has gotten to the point where it’s remake of the 1960 Rat Pack film. starting to feel like our cultural imagination is petering We used to share epochal cinematic moments with out. It’s an accelerating trend. Do we really need another movies like Jaws or E.T. or Pulp Fiction, which changed iteration of A Star Is Born—a remake of a remake— our cultural trajectory for better or worse. What are the directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Lady Gaga? Or 2010s about? The only national cultural phenomenon of the The Wild Bunch starring Will Smith? Or Jumanji starring past five years that I can think of is watching multitudes The Rock? Or how about Mary Poppins with Meryl chase around cute little Pokémon, a Japanese concoction Streep? Or Logan’s Run starring . . . oh, who cares. New cooked up in the mid ’90s. versions of Cliffhanger, Blair Witch Project, Splash (this If movies reflect the national id, we’re in trouble. Is it risk time with merman!), Overboard, and WarGames are also aversion? Is it cultural myopia? The promising news is that on the way. the Ben-Hur remake was a $100 million–budget critical As we speak, producers are spending millions to create and financial disaster. Then again, if the entertainment new adaptations of Porky’s and Police Academy. If a gen- establishment wasn’t hindered by efforts like The Man from eration isn’t even able to conceive its own sex-fueled gross- U.N.C.L.E. or The Lone Ranger, perhaps nothing can stop out comedies, how can it possibly grasp its place in history? them. All I know is that if our grandkids are sitting though the 25th reboot of Spider-Man or Teenage Mutant Ninja Mr. Harsanyi is a senior editor of the Federalist. Turtles, we will have failed them.

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Conservatives are rightly concerned about our colleges and universities, but if they want to actually do something to stop rampant multiculturalism, they should support important programs like NRI On Campus instead of essentially bankrolling leftist professors via their alumni largesse.

JACK FOWLER “ Publisher, National Review David French Trustee, National Review Institute Help NRI bring National Review Institute is bringing the NR mission to college NR writers campuses and empowering them to “stand athwart history” through its to college new college outreach program, NRI On Campus. In its inaugural” year, NRI campuses across hosted events on 19 college campuses featuring top NR talent. the country this This summer, NRI On Campus held three events for students from all school year with over the country, including David French’s talk on ISIS to over 200 Capitol a tax-deductible Hill interns. C-SPAN covered the event, which can be viewed online at donation. www.c-span.org. The enthusiastic student response to NRI On Campus this summer means great opportunities this fall.

The National Review Institute was founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1991, 36 years after he founded National Review magazine. The Institute is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) charitable organization, established to advance the conservative principles Mr. Buckley championed, complement the mission of the magazine, and support NR’s best talent. To learn more about NRI and its educational programs, visit www.nrinstitute.org. EIN #13-13649537

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