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toc_QXP-1127940144.qxp 7/25/2012 1:37 PM Page 1 Contents Amity Shlaes on Calvin Coolidge p. 18 AUGUST 13, 2012 | VOLUME LXIV, NO. 15 | www.nationalreview.com

COVER STORY Page 27 BOOKS, ARTS The Hollow Republic & MANNERS 41 GREEN SHIFT President Obama’s “you didn’t build Steven F. Hayward reviews How that” speech in Roanoke, Va., shows to Think Seriously about the Planet: The Case for an us not only a man chilly toward the Environmental Conservatism, potential of individual initiative, and not by Roger Scruton.

only a man deluded about the nature 42 THE OBAMA FAILURE of his opponents and their views, but Samuel R. Staley reviews Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and also (and perhaps most important) a Growth and What We Can man with a staggeringly thin idea of Do Now to Regain Our Future, by Grover G. Norquist and common action in American life. Yuval Levin John R. Lott Jr.

COVER: ROMAN GENN 44 MAKING SENSE OF INEQUALITY ARTICLES Scott Winship reviews The Great Divergence: America’s 14 WHAT CAN CAPITALISM DO FOR ME? by Ramesh Ponnuru Growing Inequality Crisis and It’s the voter question Romney must answer. What We Can Do About It, by Timothy Noah. CALLING CAL by Amity Shlaes 18 46 A DYNASTY BEGINS Look to Coolidge for inspiration today. Florence King reviews Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of THE ENEMY OF MY FRIEND 20 by Mario Loyola Tudor England, by Thomas Penn. Our foreign policy is rewarding adversaries and alienating allies. 50 FILM: A KNIGHT 24 MASS-MURDER GROUP THERAPY by David Gelernter TO REMEMBER Let’s not pretend we can make sense of what happened in Aurora. Ross Douthat reviews The Dark Knight Rises.

FEATURES 51 COUNTRY LIFE: FLASHES OF LIGHT 27 THE HOLLOW REPUBLIC by Yuval Levin Richard Brookhiser offers Kerouacian Can Obama imagine a middle ground between the state and the individual? haikus.

30 PENNILESS IN PARADISE by Kevin D. Williamson The decline and fall of California. SECTIONS

32 UNLEASH THE MIND by George Gilder 4 Letters to the Editor Capitalism means benevolent creativity. 6 The Week 39 Athwart ...... James Lileks 36 WHO GAVE US OBAMACARE? by Kevin Glass 40 The Long View ...... Rob Long The medical industry provided crucial support. 44 Poetry ...... Richard M. Loomis 52 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

NATIONAL RevIew (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATIONAL RevIew, Inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 2012. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., NATIONAL RevIew, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONAL RevIew, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATIONAL RevIew, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATIONAL RevIew, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 7/24/2012 3:26 PM Page 1

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AUGUST 13 ISSUE; PRINTED JULY 26 Must We Think of the Author to Read?

EDITOR I admired Ryan T. Anderson’s review of Natural Law and the Antislavery Richard Lowry Constitutional Tradition (“Written on the Mind,” June 25), but I found one point Senior Editors unclear. Summarizing Justin Buckley Dyer’s views, Anderson writes that Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Lincoln’s arguments against slavery “require a certain metaphysics of morals,” Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts one according to which moral principles are “binding because of God’s design.” Literary Editor Michael Potemra Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy But “Dyer quickly adds that one need not start with belief in God and then work Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson toward morality. Instead, the intelligible order of nature, our ‘grasp of human National Correspondent John J. Miller Political Reporter Robert Costa goods,’ and the ‘distinction we draw between right and wrong’ are themselves Art Director Luba Kolomytseva ‘evidence for the existence of such a providential God.’” Deputy Managing Editors Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz So people can consider themselves bound by moral law without believing in Robert VerBruggen God. This suggests that, even if it is an intellectual error for such people not to Research Director Katherine Connell Executive Secretary Frances Bronson believe in God, a theistic metaphysics is not, after all, required for a political Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace consensus against slavery (although it might make that consensus more likely, Contributing Editors Robert H. Bork / Shannen Coffin by allowing people who do not directly recognize the moral law as law to Ross Douthat / Roman Genn reason in the opposite direction, from God to morality). Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin I wondered if Mr. Anderson could clarify Dyer’s and/or his own position on Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi this matter. When he says that the metaphysics is necessary, does he mean that Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne David B. Rivkin Jr. / Reihan Salam we need explicit agreement on it to bring about the political result? Or does he

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE acknowledge that we might get the result without the metaphysics but hold that, Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez in this case, some of the people who opposed slavery would be failing to recog- Managing Editor Edward John Craig National Affairs Columnist John Fund nize one of the consequences of their moral beliefs (namely that God exists)? News Editor Daniel Foster Editorial Associates Charles C. W. Cooke / Katrina Trinko Ogden Smith Technical Services Russell Jenkins Ely, Nev. Web Developer Wendy Weihs Web Production Assistant Anthony Boiano

EDITORS- AT- LARGE RyAn T. AnDeRSOn RepLIeS: Justin Dyer’s view, with which I am in agreement, Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan is that knowledge of the content of the natural law does not require one to know Contributors that God exists. But a fully coherent philosophical account of the natural law Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier does require acknowledging a natural lawgiver, God. political consensus, Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans though proving fragile and insecure, would require only knowledge of the Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman James Gardner / David Gelernter natural law, not the broader metaphysic that makes such knowledge coherent— George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart and binding. Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Race to the Finish Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak Claire Berlinski’s review of David p. Goldman’s How Civilizations Die Business Services (“Decline All Around,” June 25) is a model of clarity. My knowledge of demo- Alex Batey / Kate Murdock Elena Reut / Lucy Zepeda graphics is insufficient to challenge Goldman’s thesis that the Islamic world is Circulation Manager Jason Ng also in a population decline. But it may not matter. WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 perhaps you recall the joke about two hikers who are attacked by a huge bear. SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 They run a short distance, then one sits down on a log and exchanges his boots WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 for running shoes. His companion remarks, “you fool! you can’t outrun a bear.” Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd The man replies, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you.” Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet even if the Islamic world is in a population decline, the Western european EXECUTIVEVICEPRESIDENT Paul Dilion population is in a steeper decline, and one that began earlier. PUBLISHER Jack Fowler David C. Stolinsky CHAIRMANEMERITUS Los Angeles, Calif. Thomas L. Rhodes

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

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n They’ll stop at nothing, those Republicans—even quoting the president’s words.

n At the moment, the Obama campaign’s major message appears to be that Mitt Romney is an outsourcer who won’t re lease enough tax returns. Romney argues that if he releases more, the Democrats will distort what’s in them and demand still more. We can’t imagine anything in Romney’s tax returns that would make a rational voter turn against him, which weakens the argument for the public’s right to know. Past can- didates have disclosed more than Romney, either in the form of tax returns or in that of Senate financial-disclosure filings, which strengthens it. Our judgment, expressed on NATiONAl RevieW ONliNe, was that Romney would strengthen his posi- tion by releasing more tax returns. He risks flare-ups of this controversy that will make it harder for him to get his more important points through the media. if he released more, Democrats would indeed take their shots and be unsatisfied, but it would be easier to deflect their demands if Romney matched the disclosure rates of recent candidates. This advice may, however, be moot. Romney has dug in, as have many of botching the task for years. The republic desires recovery, not his supporters, so releasing more information now would look storytime. weak. The point he should make from here on out: His tax returns matter less than what Obama would do to everyone n Five conservative members of the House of Rep re sen ta - else’s. tives, led by Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.), sent a series of letters to the administration alleging that “influence opera- n Speaking to the NAACP, Romney laid out some positions tions” by the Muslim Brotherhood have affected its policies that his audience liked while acknowledging disagreements. and noting that several relatives of Huma Abedin, a longtime The crowd had a positive reaction to his opposition to same- aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have ties to the sex marriage (even though the group officially favors it) and Broth er hood. The letters and accusations were widely de - support for charter schools. His pledge to repeal Obamacare, nounced. Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.) defended Abedin, a on the other hand, drew boos. in our ever more surreal racial friend, on the Senate floor. There are two legitimate issues politics, those boos led the sages of MSNBC to theorize that here, best considered separately. First, congressional Re pub li - Romney had deliberately angered the crowd so as to win votes cans could reasonably make discreet inquiries about how the from racist whites. if Romney had not spoken to the group, State Department handled Abedin’s security clearance. Sec - they would have said he was reprising the Southern strategy. if ond, the administration’s policies touching on the Muslim he had said only things with which it agreed, they would have Brotherhood deserve scrutiny. Bachmann et al. present no evi- said he was downplaying his anti-black agenda. if he had con- dence that the group’s “influence operations” explain any ad - fessed his sin and committed ritual suicide, they might have min is tra tion policies. That they lead with this charge does not found something to like. augur well for the success of their initiative, or reflect well on their judgment. n President Obama, who seems to believe that the work of the president of the United States of America consists in the main n Kathleen Sebelius has announced that she, as secretary of of making speeches, offered a deluded account of his political the Department of Health and Human Services, let states out of troubles: He has spent so much time “getting the policy right” the work requirement imposed on them by welfare reform in that he has neglected “to tell a story to the American people 1996. The work requirement was the central element of that that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism.” bipartisan reform, and what made it successful in reducing Between the composite girlfriends of his memoir and the child poverty and welfare caseloads. Nobody, until now, has “shovel-ready” projects, the president is nothing if not a good ever claimed that the law gave the secretary the authority to storyteller. We do not think he got the policy right: From the waive it. Few discussions of this issue note how weak the work pork-packed stimulus to health care, he outsourced his policy- requirement is. States have to ensure only that 40 percent of

ROMAN GENN making chores to familiar congressional bulls who have been welfare recipients are participating in 30 hours of work (or

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THE WEEK on-the-job training, or similar activities) a week. Federal bene - fits such as food stamps and public housing come with no seri- n A host of celebrities and government officials called for ous work requirements. And if there is any case for changing “gun control” in the wake of July’s horrific shooting in the law, it must be made in Congress, as old-fashioned as that Aurora, Colo. But one among them should have known may sound to this administration. better. Author Salman Rushdie, for whom America’s Bill of Rights has been a great blessing, took to Twitter to n Even many liberal social scientists have largely accepted announce that “the ‘right to bear arms’ is that the intact biological family is generally superior as a locus the real Bane of America.” After his of child-rearing to other family forms: those led by single par- book The Satanic Verses provoked the ents, or those involving divorce or adoption. Same-sex parents Iran ian state into issuing a fatwa are held to be the only exceptions to this rule: They are sup- against his life in 1989, Rushdie sur- posed to yield outcomes at least as good as those of everyone rounded himself with armed guards. else. Hence the controversy surrounding Mark Regnerus’s Their presence may have spared him the recent study casting doubt on this idea. Two hundred acade- fate of one of his translators, who was mics have issued a statement denouncing the study, and four of stabbed to death. (Two others were severely Regnerus’s colleagues on the sociology faculty of the Uni ver - injured in similar attacks.) Rushdie now si ty of Texas at Austin have released their own (they chastise joins a small but vocal clique of celebri- him for “irresponsible and reckless representation of social sci- ties who are unwilling to extend the ence research”). A gay-rights activist has filed an ethics com- courtesy of self-defense that they plaint, which the university is investigating. The study has its enjoy to citizens less prominent than limitations, but it also exceeds the standards of the field. themselves. Nobody filed ethics complaints or started petition drives about the earlier, inferior studies. The mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace said that “the weight of evidence for an extraordinary n As President Obama would have it, the federal government claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.” In the modern said, “Let there be an Internet,” and there was an Internet—only academy, it must be inversely proportioned. to see its mighty benevolence ignored by those who profited from its creation. “Government research created the Internet so n Former FBI director Louis Freeh made a damning report on that all the companies could make money,” he told a crowd in Penn State’s handling of Jerry Sandusky’s child abuse. The Roanoke, Va., in mid-July, in the process of making an unfortu- highest officials, including head football coach Joe Paterno, nate case that businesses ultimately owe their success to the knew of Sandusky’s behavior as long ago as 1998 and chose to state. The contention is false in detail and in principle. The handle the matter quietly, to protect the reputation and the rev- Internet as we know it today was developed by a combination of enue of their cherished program. The NCAA responded to the the U.S. Department of Defense, Xerox, the British scientist Tim report by fining Penn State $60 million, banning it from bowl Berners-Lee, and a wide range of private companies that were games for four years, and wiping out its victories from 1998 to left largely to their own devices. Whatever role the state played, 2011. The last move seems senseless: No one denies that Pa- it did it within its legitimate function as defender of the realm, ter no was a great coach with stellar teams. The other penalties, not as an economic partner seeking to stimulate the economy. Al however, do not go far enough. Penn State should lose its pro- Gore could not be reached for comment by e-mail. gram. The benchmark should be SMU, which lost two years in the Eighties for paying players under the table. Raping boys n While a few miles down the highway the city of San Ber nar- in the shower should cost Penn State two years plus at least di no was declaring bankruptcy, California governor Jerry an oth er year, for emphasis. The values Paterno upheld were Brown signed into law a bill that will commit the state to tens ef fort, teamwork, and athletic excellence. Turning football into of billions of dollars in new spending for a high-speed-rail pro- a golden calf corrupted these ideals, and allowed worse cor- ject, the first leg of which will connect the mighty metropolis- ruptions to flourish. es of Fresno and Bakersfield. The state has no money, several of its cities have gone into bankruptcy, and the finances of its n Senator Patty Murray (D., Wash.), who heads her party’s largest city are perilous; if past is precedent, the projected Senate campaign committee, gave a speech to test out a new $68 billion expense will end up being much more. Ultimately, gambit. The tax cuts enacted at the behest of President George the project will connect Los Angeles with San Francisco, W. Bush expire at the end of this year. Most Democrats be - though to what end is not clear: Air travel between the cities can lieve that the tax cuts that directly benefit investors and high be had for $120 or so and takes just over an hour. As anybody earners should be allowed to expire, while the other tax cuts who has ever languished on the 405 can attest, California’s continue. Murray said that if Republicans block action on leg- acute problem, particularly in the southern end of the state, is islation to this effect by insisting on extending all the tax cuts, travel within its cities, not between them. Governor Brown Democrats should let taxes rise for everyone. Some Dem o - boasts about the jobs that the project will create, but jobs creat- crats believe they will gain leverage over Republicans with ed by spending tens of billions of dollars on superfluous public- AP this threat. We think its main effect will be to remind voters works projects leave the public worse off. / which party is more willing to countenance higher taxes on the middle class. May Murray’s strategy prosper, if not her n Whole towns and villages in Syria have been reduced to

cause. ruin. The dead number 18,000 at a minimum, and 125,000 are LEFTERIS PITARAKIS

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THE WEEK refugees. The rebels—otherwise the Syrian Free Army, and counter any influence the United States might still have in the realistically the Sunni majority in arms—planted a bomb that region. The regime is likely to collapse anyway, and we will killed four of Bashar Assad’s inner circle, including Assef regret not having exerted any influence on the opposition by Shawkat, his brother-in-law and an outstanding thug in this helping it. thugocracy. When the SFA then attempted to build on success by capturing the two main cities of Damascus and Aleppo in n Israeli tourists on a charter flight landed in the Bulgarian what would have been an endgame, Bashar Assad and his resort of Burgas, where a suicide bomber was waiting for supporters—otherwise the Baath Party and realistically the them. He had long hair, probably a wig, and he carried a bulky Ala wite minority—reacted true to form. Helicopter gunships backpack. As soon as the Israelis boarded a bus, the suicide have destroyed yet more districts and sent the rebels flying. bomber exploded this backpack. He himself, five Israelis, and Atrocities are fostering irreconcilable hatred. The violence of the Bulgarian tour operator (who by chance was a Muslim) Bashar Assad has put an end to the Syrian state. Some ob serv - were killed, and some 30 wounded or badly burned. The iden- ers believe that he is driving Sunnis out in order to regroup tity of the culprit remains obscure. One witness says he actual- Alawites into an enclave of their own. The leader of the Kurds, ly had short dark hair, and another that he spoke English with another minority in Syria, says that his people could now gain an Arab accent. His attempt to rent a car failed because his independence very rapidly. Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia prop Michigan driver’s license was fake. There may have been up the Alawite regime in a coalition whose real interest is to accomplices. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu con-

A Dividend for Romney

OINTING to Warren Buffett’s “unfairly” low taxes, tal spending. Through the middle of last year, capital President Obama has called for an increase in the spending contributed about 1 percent on average to P dividend tax that would, after one sifts through the overall GDP growth each quarter. This has dropped fine print, raise it from its current level of 15 percent to steadily in recent quarters, and capital spending con- about 45 percent. This promise could cost him the elec- tributed only 0.32 percent to economic growth in the first tion. quarter of 2012. If capital spending had been normal, It could do so for two reasons. First, the value of equi- GDP growth would have been high enough to let the ties should be approximately the same as the present media ballyhoo the solid Obama recovery. val ue of their expected future after-tax dividends. A huge There is every reason to believe that dividend pay- tax increase makes dividends far less valuable. A bad ments will continue in large numbers through November, stock market is bad for an incumbent, and Obama’s and that capital spending will take a pause. This will keep promise is likely to give us a bad stock market when mar- the weak economy in the headlines between now and the ket participants focus on his policy promises. election. It will be bad news for Obama—but good news Second, and more politically ominous for Obama, firms for Warren Buffett’s taxes. that expect higher dividend taxes in the future should pay massive dividends this year in order to get the returns to —KEVIN A. HASSETT shareholders before the hike takes place. These dividend payments become a near-term substitute for capital in - vest ment. Firms that ordinarily would be using their cash Trough to Present to purchase machines, expand operations, and other- Inflation-Adjusted Change, June 2009–March 2012 wise generate economic growth will mail dividend checks in stead. 40% There are clear signs that this effect is beginning to 35%

take hold. The nearby chart shows the recent history of 30% dividend payouts and compares it with the changes in 25% other types of income since the end of the Great Re ces - 20% sion. While personal income has increased less than 5 percent since June 2009, and wages have increased an 15% even lower 3 percent, dividend payouts have skyrocket- 10%

ed by 35 percent. Even the more robust improvement in 5%

proprietor’s income, or income in owner-operated busi- 0% nesses, does not come close to the growth in dividend Personal Wages Proprietor’s Personal Income* Income Dividend payouts over the same period. Income There are also signs that these many dividend pay- *DOES NOT INCLUDE INCOME FROM DIVIDENDS ments have coincided with a sharp deceleration in capi- SOURCE: BUREAU OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

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fidently laid the blame for the outrage on Iran, which has pre- ing round. He then drowned trying to retrieve them. That cap- viously been caught red-handed trying to kill Israelis in coun- tures something of the allure of golf. The latest Open was tries ranging from Thailand to India to Kenya to Argentina. His played at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, in Lancashire. On defense minister, Ehud Barak, more specifically singled out Sunday, the final round, Tiger Woods was flat. Adam Scott Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy. The likelihood, then, is that here folded. And the veteran Ernie Els, whose career was thought was another front in the undeclared war that Iran’s nuclear by some to be over, charged from behind to win. A heartbreak- program is forcing upon so many, and Israel first of all. ing and thrilling game, golf.

n Of all the Cuban dissidents, in prison and out, Oswaldo n This story will sound like one of Mayor Bloomberg’s fan- Payá was one of the most valuable. He was the head of the tasies, but it is true: There is a New York City saloon that Christian Liberation Movement, and of the Varela Project— serves nothing but water. While you might expect exotic vari- the effort to gather signatures in support of a referendum on eties from New Zealand and France, in fact what the bar stocks basic civil rights. In 2002, Payá won the Sakharov Prize for is regular New York tap water, purified with ultraviolet rays, Freedom of Thought, given by the European Parliament. He ozone, and the ever-popular reverse osmosis. The proprietor was indeed in the tradition of Sakharov. Václav Havel, the late says he doesn’t want “chemicals” in his water, though the bar Czech dissident and president, nominated him for the Nobel is named Molecule. Adventurous types can get their aqua pura Peace Prize, without success. (No Cuban has ever won the spiked with vitamins, and for those who crave the hard stuff, prize.) Payá has now died in one of those “mysterious car Molecule offers libations fortified with various blends of roots, crashes.” His family and many others say the regime finally herbs, fruits, and mushrooms. Our only concern is that fancy killed him. Andrei Amalrik was a Russian dissident who died water could serve as a gateway drug. Down a few vitamin in one of those mysterious crashes (1980). A totalitarian soci- A–and–porcini shots and next thing you know you’re moving ety, he said, is like a soldier pointing his gun at a prisoner 24 on to wine coolers, lite beer, and maybe even crème de men- hours a day. Eventually, his arm will get tired, the gun will the. And people who pay $2.50 for a glass of tap water cer- sag, and the prisoner will escape. The Castros’ arms are infu- tainly would not want their judgment impaired. riatingly strong. n To call someone a fox is a n China’s Catholics, estimated at 12 million, are split. Their high compliment among Arabs, spiritual compass points to Rome—unless it points to Beijing. and Omar Suleiman was a fox The government requires bishops and priests to register with all right. Head of military intel- the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), which for- ligence in Egypt since 1991, he bids members to criticize China’s one-child policy and harass- was the right-hand man of the es and detains Catholics who recognize the authority of the deposed president, Hosni Mu - pope. In July, another Chinese bishop was consecrated without bar ak. A suave figure in beau - the Holy See’s consent. Within days, Thaddeus Ma Daqin, who tifully tailored suits and dark had just been consecrated auxiliary bishop of Shanghai with glasses, he had an air of author- support from both Beijing and the Vatican, avoided the impo- ity and secrecy that went well sition of hands by an illicitly consecrated bishop and an - with his job. In activities that nounced his resignation from the CPA—to long applause, were mostly invisible, he made according to one news report. The government’s Admin istra - sure that Islamists, the Muslim tion for Religious Affairs has confined him to house arrest at a Brothers especially, did not have local seminary, but it should worry what the answer might be their way. He willingly handed to Stalin’s question. Islamists suspected of terror over to American officials for interrogation. Conducting back-channel negotiations between n Ranking high in the category of ideas that are less interest- Israel and the Palestinians, he was appreciated by all sides ing than they sound (and don’t sound very interesting to begin except Hamas, the Muslim Brothers’ branch in Gaza. As revo- with) is the plan by an outfit called Clandestine Classics to lution broke out in Cairo, Mubarak did what he could to make publish new editions of classic novels with sex scenes added. Suleiman his successor, but it was too late, and grounds were A press release promises that they will reveal “what Mr. Darcy found to disqualify Suleiman when he stood for election as really wanted to do to Miss Elizabeth Bennet, and unveil the president. Avoiding the retribution suffered by Mubarak and sexy escapades of Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre,” all while his friends, a fox to the last, Suleiman died rather suddenly at “keeping the original prose and the author’s voice.” Even if the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. R.I.P. this can be accomplished (and the sample that Clandestine offers is not encouraging), we’d rather Mr. Darcy didn’t tell us. n William Raspberry wrote an opinion column for the Wash­- As for Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, we doubt that one reader ing­ton­Post for almost 40 years. He was a decent man; in a pro- in a hundred was panting for the details there. fession, and a city, in which somebody almost always gets rubbed the wrong way, nobody had a bad word to say of him. n The British Open is played on links courses, those beguiling More than that, he wrote with decency: A liberal, he was fair, AP / courses by the sea. When the wind is down, they can be lambs. independent, and plain-spoken enough to use that hoariest of When the wind is up, they can be nasty lions. According to tropes, the everyman cab driver, and make it stick. “I grew up

TARA TODRAS legend, a Scotsman threw his clubs into the sea after a dispirit- in apartheid,” he told one interviewer (he was born in Okolona,

1 1 week_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/25/2012 1:41 PM Page 12

THE WEEK Miss.). “And yet it never induced my parents to teach us any- thing else than that we were responsible for our own behavior, THE CULTURE for our own minds.” Dead at 76. R.I.P. The Aurora Massacre

n Alexander Cockburn was the Christopher Hitchens of the NE would like James Holmes, the presumptive Aurora, late Seventies and Eighties: everyone’s favorite British expat Colo., spree killer, to be lost in oblivion. Empedocles and crossover leftist. His Oxford manner made Americans tug O the philosopher supposedly threw himself into Mount their forelocks and propelled his writing into mainstream out- Etna to prove that he was immortal. Mass murderers, whether lets: the New York Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal. despots or common criminals, hope to be talked about in the Yet somehow it all went sour. His rigid pro-Communism hurt: world. How much better to remember the men who helped oth- He tried to revise Stalin’s death toll downwards and praised ers: Jarell Brooks, who pushed a young mother out of the Brezhnev’s foreign policy. So did his anti-Semitism: He was movie theater despite being shot in the leg himself; Jonathan the enemy of all things Israeli. Sometimes, to stir up the hors- Blunk, Matt McQuinn, and Alexander Teves, who died shield- es, he would feint right: He died attacking global warming. ing companions. But wherever the struggle was hottest, he was on the side What will never be lost in oblivion are the arguments that of mischief and destruction. Journalism became cleaner such crimes engender. Gun control: yes, or no. New York with his late-career shrinkage, and cleaner still with his death, mayor Michael Bloomberg, a devout gun controller, hastened at 71. R.I.P. to make the expected point. Movie violence: no, or yes. The Dark Knight Rises, the brooding conclusion of the latest Batman cycle, offered an inviting hook for that discussion. POLITICS What we must learn anew every day is that brokenness of all Unbuilding Obama kinds, from the little murders of pettiness and cruelty to actual murders, is our lot. Sensible laws, good policing, good train- f Barack Obama loses the election, historians will point to ing, and self-control can hold the worst at bay, but there will his remarks in Roanoke, Va., on July 13 as a cause. Clip the always be slips, falls, and bloody eruptions. Charles Stark - I paragraphs and laminate them: They express his worldview weather and Caril Ann fugate, the models for the teenage with clarity and force. killers of Badlands, committed their crimes in 1958, the hey- Obama began by attacking Mitt Romney’s calls for tax cuts. day of Leave It to Beaver. Many mass murderers, from Jack the “I’m not going to see us gut the investments that grow our Rip per to Timothy McVeigh, used no guns. Guns make killing economy to give tax breaks to me or Mr. Romney.” The word easier, but they also make self-defense easier, which is one of “investments” drew him into a rumination on the way the the reasons gun owners value their weapons. world works. “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there More debate came via ABC’s Brian Ross, who announced on your own. . . . I’m always struck by people who think, Well, that a “Jim Holmes, of Aurora, Colorado” was listed on a tea- it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart party website as a new member. “James Holmes,” however, is people out there. It must be because I worked harder than a common name, and the tea partier Ross slandered had noth- everybody else. Let me tell you something—there are a whole ing to do with the Holmes who allegedly committed the crime. bunch of hardworking people out there.” Ross acknowledged the error within minutes. But consider the Register the meaning of this statement: Obama devalues the mindset that produced it: Some gnome found the tea-party web- talents and virtues of the successful because other people—all site, probably by googling “Holmes” + “Tea Party”; some pro- people?—have them in equal measure. ducer fed the info to Ross; and, without further checking, Ross The president continued: “If you were successful, some- read it, because all parties assume that the Tea Party is a petri body along the line gave you some help.” He gave as an dish for murderous lunacy. The cows are sick—find a witch. Or, example “a great teacher.” But then he called in the helping if you work in the mainstream media, a tea party will do. hand of government. “Somebody helped to create this unbe- lievable American system . . . that allowed you to thrive.” The system of law and property rights? No. “Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that.” What else? Rachel Maddow’s favorite, the Hoover Dam (a mighty structure, but hardly the Erie Canal); the Internet (half-wrong: the Pentagon helped create it, but the crucial work was done by private actors); the GI Bill (a great SPLASH / boon—but then didn’t all those greatest-generation college graduates have to show intelligence and hard work?). In sum, your talents are a trifle, because the government does the lion’s share. “That’s the reason I’m running for president,” Obama con- LONDON ENTERTAINMENT / cluded—“because I still believe in that idea.” That idea is a cradle-to-grave corset of prompts, subventions, and the plans of your betters. Hammer at it, Mr. Romney, and offer an alter-

GREGG SNODGRASS native—the American alternative—and you may win. Brian Ross of ABC News

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made responses that avoid engaging with any point of principle. It says that Rom - ney’s critics have the details of his career wrong, that Obama has outsourced jobs himself, and that Obama has manufac- tured a controversy about Romney’s past in order to distract attention from the president’s responsibility for a dismal present. Rom ney and many of his allies also say that Obama’s failure is the re - sult of his not understanding business. Obama made that line of attack much easier for Romney on July 13, when he riffed, without a teleprompter, about successful people who believe they made it because they are smart and hard-working. No, said Obama: Many people who are smart and hard-working do not succeed. “If you were success- ful,” he continued, “somebody along the line gave you some help.” He then offered examples of this helpful “some- body,” who turned out to be the govern- ment in each case. It provided a “great teacher,” “this unbelievable American system,” and “roads and bridges.” “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen.” What Can Capitalism Romney suggested that Obama was denigrating business owners. Obama’s supporters responded that the Re - Do for Me? publicans were taking his remark out of context: The “that” in “somebody else It’s the voter question Romney must answer made that happen” referred to the “roads and bridges” and the “system,” not to “a BY RAMESH PONNURU business.” Sensing political weakness, Obama retreated even further a week He presidential campaign has identical to Romney’s but different polit- later: “What I said was together we build become, almost by accident, a ical views have been more than welcome roads and we build bridges. That’s the debate about the future of capi- in the Obama White House. It is impos- point I’ve made millions of times, and T talism. What it is not yet, and sible to believe that Obama really thinks by the way, that’s a point Mr. Romney may not become, is an honest, intelli- there is anything wrong with a business- has made as well, so this is just a bogus gent, or productive debate. man’s decision to site operations over- issue.” Perhaps one should not expect more, seas. He has no proposals to stop or If Obama’s clarification were true, it given that the debate was set off by seriously impede the practice. He has would raise the question of why he cheap shots and a gaffe. Both were Presi - called for changing the tax code to ad - thinks it worthwhile to make a non- dent Obama’s, and they dominated the vertise his notional opposition to it, an controversial point “millions of times.” political conversation of mid-July. The idea that will be discarded as soon as it He finished his July 13 riff thus: “We rise president has been hammering Mitt no longer helps him politically. or fall together as one nation and as one Rom ney for enriching himself by immis- Governor Romney refuses to defend people, and that’s the reason I’m running erating other Americans: closing plants, himself by arguing for the legitimacy for president, because I still believe in laying people off, sending jobs overseas, of the common business practices that that idea: You’re not on your own, we’re all while putting his own money in a Obama has attacked. His campaign in this together.” Since by the president’s Swiss bank account. The Obama cam- spokes men have repeatedly dodged admission Romney agrees with him on paign is demanding that Romney release when asked to comment on outsourcing. the point he was making, it would seem more tax returns, and suggesting that his Hence the unsatisfactory nature of the to follow that Obama can now stand refusal to do so means they would reveal debate: Obama is saying things he knows down. something nefarious. to be false, but Romney will not say Obviously Obama was saying more NAMEE/GETTY Almost none of these shots is sincere. things he knows to be true. than that. The remarks about rich people, C

People with business histories nearly Instead the Romney campaign has bridges, and togetherness came right WIN M

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after, and were meant to support, his plan explicitly denies, either, that people have will solve the problem. There are conser- to let the top tax rates rise. Here then is a claim on their own money that has to be vative ideas about how to make health Obama’s argument, with all the context defeated by good reasons to justify their insurance more accessible by reducing his supporters could wish: Rich people being taxed. The purpose of President its costs. Romney has, however, been are rich in important part because the Obama’s argument was and is to lower reticent about what he would do. government has done a lot for them, and the bar of justification: to weaken the Conservatives can respond to public therefore they should pay more to the presumption that people should keep anxiety about trade, too, without suc- government. their own money. cumbing to protectionism. A lot of that That summary is more than fair to President Obama, then, is running as a anxiety is based on voters’ worries about Obama. His actual remarks ignore en- man who is against features of capitalism an economy that has not produced wage tirely the fact that rich people have been usually perceived as its downsides, gains for most people for more than paying taxes to the government, and somewhat critical of the entrepreneurs a decade. They may not approve of make it sound as though government at its heart, supportive of government Obama’s economic record, but they help does more to account for their suc- activism to soften its effects, and un - know that this problem precedes his cess than do their own intelligence and willing to spell out any principled limits presidency—and again they have reason drive. He points out that a lot of smart, to that activism. His rhetorical stance to doubt that individual initiative alone hard-working people aren’t rich; he toward business is more hostile than that can fix it. Romney rarely alludes to this doesn’t note that a lot of people who of the previous Democratic president, concern, let alone suggests in any sus- have had good teachers and roads aren’t Bill Clinton. This is not surprising: tained way that his reforms of monetary, either. Clinton never described working for a tax, budget, and regulatory policy would Even when patched up, Obama’s argu- business as being “behind enemy lines,” allay it. ment is weak. A heart surgeon may save as Obama famously did in his first mem- Many friendly observers of the Rom - many people’s lives and thus enable oir. On the other hand, Obama’s rhetoric ney campaign will at this point have two them to make any future income they falls well short of FDR’s attack on “eco- responses. The first is that Romney has Romney needs to ad vance capitalist solutions to the disappointments of capitalism.

earn. It does not follow that he is entitled nomic royalists” whom he intended to offered many policy specifics. That’s to any share of that income he might “master.” Obama’s campaign marks him true—no previous presidential candidate want. There remains a point at which the as a run-of-the-mill welfare-state liberal. has talked about entitlement reform in as patient can say, reasonably, No, that’s It is what welfare-state liberalism looks much detail as Romney—but it’s also mine and even No, I earned that. It is also like when presiding over a weak econo- true that on a wide range of voter con- the case that much of what the govern- my. cerns he has left the rhetorical and policy ment does—and especially what the fed- Americans do not especially like the field to Obama. People are more likely to eral government does—has no plausible idea of a larger government, and they are give Medicare reform a hearing if the role in making businesses successful. suspicious of Democrats who seem person advancing it seems to care about Medicare does not make the Waltons enthusiastic about taxation. Criticizing making sure people have affordable wealthier; neither does Temporary Assis- these unattractive elements of Obama’s health care. tance for Needy Families. politics is an indispensable part of a cam- Which brings us to the second re - What’s most troubling about Obama’s paign to unseat him. Romney is deliver- sponse, this one usually offered with argument is that it contains no limiting ing this critique with increasing force self-conscious sophistication: Most vot- principle. Impose a 95 percent tax rate on and even deftness. ers are not policy wonks, and offering all of Bill Gates’s income, and it will still What the campaign lacks is a comple- ten-point plans on six issues will not win be true that his remaining income is ment to this attack: a set of policies that any votes. The premise is sound, but the partly the result of the facts that he address the public concerns that Obama conclusion does not follow from it. The learned to read and add, his products can is exploiting in his attack on Romney but political point of offering an agenda, be shipped over roads, and so on. Nor build on the virtues of free markets. Rom - beyond making it easier to govern if does it apply only to high earners, even if ney needs, in other words, to advance the candidate wins, is to affect the way they are the only people Obama current- capitalist solutions to the disappoint- people perceive him. In all kinds of in- ly expresses interest in taxing more. ments of capitalism. direct ways, it makes him look like Microsoft employees are dependent on Obamacare rests on the premise that someone who will be appropriately ac - the roads to make their living, too. markets cannot work in health care, or at tive in office, who cares about voters and Nobody within the mainstream of least that they cannot work without quite understands their concerns, who has American political life denies that peo- a bit of central direction. They will leave solutions. ple, including rich people, have an obli - too many people without insurance. A lot To respond to Obama’s attacks on out- gation to pay taxes to the government of people, even if they are not liberals, sourcing and Bain, Romney ought to so that it can do things that need doing share that worry. They do not believe unveil something more compelling than and no other institution can do. Nobody that increased initiative by individuals another tax return.

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aftertakingoffice.Thelawgavethechief overrideotherCoolidgevetoes,onsuch executivegreaterauthority,includingthe mattersasfarmsubsidies. Calling powertoholdbackalready-appropriated Thousandsoffarms,andthousands cashfromdepartmentsintheexecutive offarmers’banks,failedinthe1920s. Cal branchwhenhedecidedtheydidnotneed Coolidgehimselfownedafarm,buthe theirfullappropriation. nonethelesstwicevetoedlegislationthat Look to Coolidge for Coolidgeputthelawtogooduse. wouldhavedrivencroppricesorfarm inspiration today WhenHardingdiedin1923,Coolidge profitsup.“Well,farmersneverhavemade madeitclearthatthebudgetwashisfirst muchmoney,”hetoldRobertCooperof BY AMITY SHLAES priority.Togetherwithhisbudgetdirector, theFarmLoanBoardatoneofthemany BrigadierGeneralHerbertMayhewLord, meetingsonagriculturethattookplacein epUBLICAns often ask what hereviewedbudgetseachweekandmade theWhiteHouseoverthoseyears.“Idon’t Reaganwoulddo,butitishard cuts.Usingametaphorfromhisrural believewecandomuchaboutit.” toanswerthatquestionabout upbringing,hecalledthis“cheesepar- Stand up to unions.Whilegovernorof R ourcurrentbudgetarysituation. ing.”TheWhiteHouseeitherhaltedor Massachusetts,Coolidgefacedatough WhenReaganwonthepresidencyin managedtodelayspendingonsomelarge challenge.TheBostonpolicehadaffiliat- 1980,thefederaldebtwasathirdofgross items—includingships,tothefuryofthe edwithamoderateunion,theAmerican domesticproduct.nowitisapproximate- military.ButtheCoolidgeadministration FederationofLabor.Thepolicemenwere ly100percent.evenReaganmightnot alsomadethetiniestofcuts;theBudget genuinelyunderpaid,butwhentheywent tryastrategyoftaxcutsbeforebudget Bureauevenwithheldpencilsfromde- onstrike,riotsensued.Thepolicecom- cuttingtoday. partments,andworkerswhodidnotuse missionerfiredthestrikers,andCoolidge ThereisanotherRepublicanpresident theirpencilstotheendwereexpected backedhimup.Coolidgealsocalledout whoseexamplemightbebettersuited toreturnthestubs.“Ouritemofexpense thestateguard,calmedthestreets,and, toourtimes:CalvinCoolidge.Coolidge forpencilsismateriallyless,”aBudget mostimportant,drewalineinthesandfor cametoWashingtonin1921,asvicepres- Office report boasted. The president public-sectorunionswithhisstatement ident toWarren Harding, and became hasn’thadthiskindofauthoritysince that“thereisnorighttostrikeagainstthe presidentuponHarding’ssuddendeathin 1974,whenCongresstookbackpowerin publicsafetybyanybody,anytime,any- Augustof1923.Coolidgethenwonfour the CongressionalBudgetandImpound- where.”Coolidge’stoughhandlingofthe yearsonhisownin1924,stayinguntil mentControlAct.It’stimetogoback. situationcalmednotonlyBostonbutthe Marchof1929. Shame Washington bureaucrats into country. ReaganadmiredCoolidgeenoughto spending less.Twiceayear,Coolidgeand Veto all the time.Inhistermandahalf takeCoolidge’sportraitoutofstorageand Lordsummonedallthedepartmentheads aspresident,Coolidgeissued20standard hangitinthecabinetroom,butinareas andtheirstafftoasessioninMemorial vetoes.Healso“pocketvetoed”30bills, thatarehighlyrelevanttoday—fiscalpol- ContinentalHall—justtoshowWash- meaninghefailedtosignthemafterCon- icyandleadershipstyle—thetwodiffered ingtonthatCoolidgemeantwhathesaid. gressadjourned.Histotalof50vetoes dramatically.WhereReagansoughtgrowth Actingmorelikeadrillsergeantthana compareswithsixforHarding. throughtaxcuts,Coolidgeputbudgetcuts general,Lordharanguedandexhortedhis Cut budgets before cutting taxes.Coo- first.AndwhereReagantookcharisma- captiveaudience.Thelectureshadachill- lidgebelievedhightaxeswerewrong,but ticaction,Coolidgefosteredprosperity ingeffect;nodepartmentwantedtobe hebelievedthatcuttingtaxesbeforecut- throughdeterminedinaction. singledoutasprofligate. tingbudgetstrainedcitizenstobelieve Whileresearchingabiographyof Block new entitlements when you can. thatdeficitsdidnotmatter.IftheAmer- Coolidge,Ikeptimaginingthestepshe Oneofthelargenewentitlementssought icanvoterwasnolongerconcernedabout mighttakeifheweremovingintothe inCoolidge’sdaywasanationalpension deficits,lawmakerswouldnotbecon- OvalOfficein2013.Hisworldisnot planforveteransknownastheBonus. cernedeither,andtheywouldexpandpro- ours,buthismovesweresuccessful,and Coolidgevetoedthelegislation,because, gramsthatgeneratedyetlargerdeficits. theysodifferfromtoday’sreceivedwis- asheputit,“thedesiretodojusticeto TheCoolidgeinsistenceonpairingtax domthatwemayprofitfromareviewof pensioners...mustbeattendedbysome cutswithbudgetcutsextendedevento them. solicitudetodojusticetotaxpayers.”It petnames:WhenasouthAfricanmayor Pass a new budget law.Oneofthetrou- wasaboldmove,sincemanymenhad senttheWhiteHousetwinlioncubs, blestodayisthatCongresswieldsa servedinWorldWarIandathirdhad Coolidgenamedthem“TaxReduction” disproportionateshareofpowerwhenit comebackdisabledinsomeway.The and“BudgetBureau.” comestocraftingthebudget.Itenjoyed vetowasallthemoreunpopularbecause Once you have a surplus, cut taxes with similarpowerinHardingandCoolidge’s Hardinghadletveteransdown:AVet- a vengeance.Harding,likeWoodrow day.Asaremedy,in1921Republicans eransBureauplantoconstructhospitals Wilsonbeforehim,cuttaxrates.Butonce passedtheBudgetandAccountingAct, forthevetshadprovenwildlycorrupt, theywererelativelycertaintheycould whichHardingsignedintolawshortly withmembersofthedepartmentaccept- sustainabudgetsurplus,Coolidgeand ingkickbacksfromcontractors.Congress TreasurysecretaryAndrewW.Mellon Amity Shlaes is the author of the forthcoming book overrodeCoolidge’sveto,butpopular launchedanall-outanti-taxcampaign. Coolidge (HarperCollins) and director of the Four supportforthevetooutsideWashington Overyears,andwithgreateffort,Coo- Percent Growth Project at the Bush Center. hadagoodeffect:Congresswasafraidto lidgeandMellonpushedthetopmarginal

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Paid Advertisement income-tax rate down from 58 percent to 25 percent—lower than the 28 percent of Ronald Reagan’s landmark 1986 Baby Boomers Now Fear law. Delegate. Coolidge’s idea of practicing better government was to delegate re - Memory Loss More Than Cancer ligiously. When Labor Secretary James Davis once sought to run an idea by Mayo Clinic guidelines in medically acclaimed brain health Coolidge, Coolidge said to a Secret Ser- book may help prevent mental decline; reveals natural vice man, “You tell ol’ man Davis I hired discovery shown to ‘help fight memory loss’ him as secretary of labor and if he can’t do SPOKANE, WASHINGTON – the job I’ll get a new secretary of labor.” When do normal, everyday He delegated with greater consequence memory problems become a cause for to Treasury Secretary Mellon and Secre- concern? tary of State Frank Kellogg. Both men That question crosses the minds of millions of Americans 50 and older. enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing major According to a recent MetLife/Harris legislative efforts come to fruition: for survey, baby boomers are more Mellon, the tax laws, and for Kellogg, the concerned with losing their cognitive Kellogg-Briand Pact. abilities than they are about cancer, heart Hide your light under a bushel. Coo - disease or stroke. That’s why one of America’s lidge believed that no news about himself leading brain experts, Joshua Reynolds, is was good news. He also preferred little or offering adults 50-plus a free supply of the no news about his family, a desire for world’s first clinically validated memory which his family paid in fun and freedom. pill along with a free copy of his block- Millions of adults are suffering with progressive mental decline, a mind-robbing form When Grace Coolidge decided to take buster, 20/20 Brainpower: 20 Days to a of memory loss that can rip apart families and lives. Research has identified effective Quicker, Calmer, Sharper Mind. corrective measures that can be used by anyone. up riding—she looked good in riding His top-selling book contains vital remembering things in front of hundreds a i r l i n e . “I find Procera AVH gives me clothes—Coolidge killed the idea, telling information and preventive measures to of people. It was embarrassing. Since greater mental energy throughout the the first lady that “I think you will find help ward off mental decline. During a taking Procera AVH, I feel like my old self flight.” you will get along in this job fully as well lifetime of research, Reynolds discovered again!” if you do not try anything new.” acommonyeteasilycorrectedbrain “To a tired, sluggish mind, Procera Get a FREE Bonus Bottle... condition that, if left untreated, could have AVH is like splashing ice-cold water on and a FREE Book,Too! Coolidge’s extreme modesty struck alarming consequences for every adult. your face,” says Reynolds, “some users Try Procera AVH Risk-Free today everyone he met. Senator Selden Spencer “If you’re over the age of 45, and say it’s like putting on a pair of prescrip- and receive a Free Bonus Bottle along of Missouri was once seeking to cheer have mental fatigue, sluggishness, poor tion glasses for the very first time. with a free copy of medically acclaimed, up the often gloomy Coolidge as they concentration, and forgetfulness,” says Everything becomes clear and focused.” 20/20 Brainpower: 20 Days to A Quicker, Reynolds, “you may be low on neuro- Kasey L. of Kansas agrees. “I was Calmer, Sharper Mind!,a$20value. walked around the White House grounds. transmitters, a vital brain fuel. When the having trouble finding words in my brain Procera AVH is clinically shown to Spencer raised his hand and pointed to level drops too low,” adds Reynolds, “your and remembering things. Now I am as quickly improve memory, focus, the White House and asked: “Who lives brain sputters, and loses power.” sharp as a tack with a memory like an concentration and energy! And it comes there?” Afewyearsago,Reynoldsanda elephant. I will never stop taking it.” with a 90-day satisfaction guarantee so “Nobody does,” replied Coolidge. team of scientists identified three natural Reynolds’ formula helps improve you can experience the long-term results extracts with a ‘powerful, energizing memory, mental clarity, focus, concentra- risk-free, too! “They just come and go.” effect’ on aging brains: acetyl-l- tion, even helps promote a sense of calm But Coolidge’s aversion to the lime- carnitine, huperzine, and vinpocetine. and tranquility. Free Rapid Detox Formula light came not from ill humor but from for First 500 Callers! conviction and experience. In the help- Miracle Memory Molecules Reverses Memory Loss Reynolds is also including, with the lessness of the vice presidency, he had had Using precise amounts and ratios of By 10 – 15 Years! first 500 orders, a FREE supply of his these “three miracle memory molecules,” Brain Sciences Institute, one of the powerful brain detox formula, Ceraplex, to watch as Harding squandered political Reynolds’ team created Procera AVH, leading neuro-cognitive research labs in scientifically designed to help flush away capital with behavior that kept the chief the world’s first clinically validated the world, tested his formula. Researchers environmental toxins from the brain to executive in the headlines—in particular, memory pill. were stunned. help enhance memory and focus even scandals such as the Veterans Bureau Professional speaker, Sylvia P. of His formula not only helped further. This is a special introductory graft. There is no strong evidence that California, found it just in time. “I was improve mental clarity, focus and offer and supplies are limited,so having a hard time staying focused and concentration, but also helped erase up call now. Harding benefited from the scandalous Viagra® One expert has called the memory pill, Procera AVH,“Viagra® to 15 years of lost and illegal behavior of such graft. But for the forthebrain”duetoitsabilitytoperkupatiredsluggish memory power. Harding’s personnel choices for key posts Brain? brain with a natural boost in oxygen-rich blood flow. In a tough Call Toll-Free! were so sloppy they bordered on criminal BEFORE AFTER economy, many users take Procera neglect. The best example was his pick AV H f o r a “ c o m p e t i- 1-800-646-1685 to head the Veterans Bureau, Charles tive edge.” Others Forbes. Forbes was later discovered to appreciate Procera Also available at: have doctored his résumé, and he and AV H ’s f e e l i n g s o f natural energy. friends embezzled $250 million from This product is not intended to diagnose, Roger J. flies treat, cure or prevent any disease. Harding’s showcase bureau in a matter Illustration These statements have not been commercial jets evaluated by the FDA. of years. Harding appointed too many Increased oxygen from one of Procera AVH's natural ingredients – Vinpocetine for a major US

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The Enemy Of My Friend Our foreign policy is rewarding adversaries and alienating allies

BY MARIO LOYOLA

rEsidEnTs who believe in the greatness of America project that greatness in their foreign P policy. They cultivate alliances with countries that share American val- ues, confront adversaries that oppose them, and seek to advance our nation’s long-term strategic interests. so if a president believes that the values that President Calvin Coolidge on the south lawn of the White House circa 1925 made our country great—limited gov- cronies from his Ohio days, and under- good over the long term. Herbert Hoover, ernment, economic liberty, and self- mined his own campaign for law and the president who succeeded him, had a reliance—are merely a recipe for what order by permitting heavy drinking and far more activist temperament and took he calls “social darwinism,” what would partying at the White House in the early steps Coolidge would not have taken, you expect his foreign policy to look years of Prohibition. This in turn made such as insisting employers sustain high like? both him and the presidency appear unse- wages and blaming those who shorted Traditional allies might get short rious. As Alice roosevelt put it, “Harding stocks on Wall street for the downturn. shrift while adversaries found sym - was a slob.” The general uncertainty that resulted from pathy. demonstrations of modesty in Coolidge wanted to restore the status of Hoover’s activist posture, and the even multilateral fora might lead to repeated the presidency by putting the office above more activist measures of Franklin roo - embarrassments (as happened a few the individual. He succeeded. He then se velt, did much in turn to render the weeks ago when russia and China decided not to run for reelection in 1928 depression long and Great. again vetoed a U.n. security Council because “the chances of having wise and An example of the kind of policy resolution on syria). Grandiloquent faithful public service are increased by a Coolidge deemed appropriate was the catch phrases might take the place of a change in the presidential office after a government’s response to the crash of the strong vision for the conduct of foreign moderate length of time.” early 1920s. This was also a dramatic policy. And policy might default to the Eschew change. Coolidge achieved by crash: The dow Jones industrial Average inconsistent management of immediate not achieving. “The White House is dropped by about half, from 119 in crises, leaving history to shape itself extremely sensitive to the first symptoms november 1919 to 64 in August 1921. quite heedless of the administration’s of any desire on the part of Congress double-digit unemployment ensued. But goals. so it has been under President or of the executive departments to do the federal government made it clear it Obama. something,” wrote the journalist Walter would not intervene except to raise inter- This pattern has been clearest in the Lippmann. “The skill with which Mr. est rates, cut taxes, and reduce govern- Middle East, where Obama has presided Coolidge can apply a wet blanket to an ment. The economy recovered so quickly over a dangerous deterioration in Amer - enthusiast is technically marvelous.” My that the crash of the early 1920s is largely ica’s strategic position. For more than favorite line of Coolidge’s is one he wrote forgotten. three decades, former Egyptian presi- to his father in 1910: “it is better to block All of these principles were factors in dent Hosni Mubarak singlehandedly a bad law than to pass a good one.” Coolidge’s success. But as i wrote my upheld Arab commitments in the Camp Don’t pretend you can run the economy. biography of him, it was the importance david Accords and kept the peace with At this point in the discussion, many will of presidential temperament that most israel. He was repaid for this when, after argue that it can’t be wise for republicans struck me. Hoover knew he should be - mob protests in Cairo forced him to to lionize a president whose administra- lieve in markets, but his vanity and past announce he would not seek reelec - tion was followed by a market crash and record of success encouraged him to man- tion, the White House called for him the Great depression. The crash was a age them. Harding planned a government to leave immediately. He was shunted vio lent stock-market correction that Coo - that said no, but he was temperamentally from power a week later. saudi Arabia’s lidge anticipated, as his personal invest- disposed to say yes, and did. Coolidge not ments of the period show. But Coolidge only said no but had the temperament Mr. Loyola is a former counsel for foreign and defense also believed that presidential interven- to make “no” a reality. it is this tempera- policy to the U.S. Senate Republican Policy

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS tion in the market does more damage than ment that we need more of today. Committee.

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King Abdullah was furious and warned idea how to deal with it. But we must Obama that, if the Arab Spring led to start by recognizing that Syria is of par- violent protests elsewhere in the region, ticular concern to the United States. This the Muslim Brotherhood could soon be is not just because the promotion of toppling American allies throughout the human rights is a part of our foreign Middle East. policy, but also because, after Iran, Syria With Iran, the Obama administration’s is the Middle Eastern regime most dan- I M P O R T A N T first move was to offer an open hand. gerous to American interests. The U.S. By all accounts, Obama was resigned should be actively seeking an end to N O T I C E to the fact that it would probably be Assad’s regime, working with the many rebuffed, but to his credit he realized governments that would be thrilled to to all National Review that a rejection of his overture would see him go. We should be focused on help marshal support against Iran. And it stepping up and shaping a provisional subscribers! has: International sanctions—imposed government, making sure that it can be a by the European Union as well as the partner in building a peaceful Middle United Nations—have become undeni- East. ably painful for the regime. But al - Instead, we are focused on coordinat- though sanctions may eventually help ing an international response through       We are moving our bring the regime down, they alone will the U.N. Security Council, where Russia never stop it from getting nuclear wea - and China have veto power. The crisis in subscription-fulfillment      pons. The administration’s policy is there - Syria is none of China’s business, and 
   office from fore proving ineffectual in terms of its Russia is driven only by the most selfish stated goals. calculations. The administration’s efforts Mount   Morris, Ill. Obama’s initial public opening to Iran have combined inaction with diplomatic    to Palm Coast, Fla. was accompanied by an exchange of pri- paralysis. By contrast, when faced with Please continue vate letters with Iran’s odious supreme ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in the late    leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. During his 1990s, President Clinton simply ignored to be vigilant: inaugural address, in an implicit pro - the Security Council and sought NATO      There are fraudulent mise to Iran, Obama declared, “We will action against Serbian forces. extend a hand if you are willing to un - The Obama administration’s worldview agencies
   soliciting clench your fist.” On June 4, 2009, as is shaped by a devotion to the judgment your    National Review this exchange reached perhaps its most of international organizations—the phi- promising point, Obama delivered a losophy that dominates left-leaning subscription !  renewal speech in Cairo that was meant to herald governments and university faculties without    our authorization. “a new beginning” in the Middle East. throughout the West. That philosophy Please reply only to Iran’s response could be seen on tele- conditions the legitimacy of military   vision less than two weeks later, when action on the consensus of multinational National Review the Basij, a government-sponsored mil- bodies instead of the intrinsic merits of   
 renewal notices or i tia reminiscent of the Brown Shirts, the case. It is rooted in a belief that, in a     brutally repressed hundreds of thou- more “just” world, a Parliament of Man bills—make sure the sands of civilians who had taken to the would decide when the use of force is     return address is streets to protest yet another stolen elec- appropriate. But the principle of “one tion. Not wanting to abandon a strategy state, one vote” is anti-democratic when     Palm Coast, Fla. for which he still held out some hope, there are no principled standards for Ignore   all requests for Obama merely expressed “deep con- membership in international bodies and renewal that are not cern” for the protesters and asserted decolonization has been accompanied
    that, “despite numerous differences, by an unfortunate flourishing of un - directly payable     there is still room for cooperation” with dem ocratic states. to National Review. Iran. Pro-democracy activists in Iran Under President Jimmy Carter, and     were dismayed by the lack of support even more during the Reagan ad - If you receive any mail or from America. min istration, the Democratic party telephone     offer that makes Obama called for Syrian dictator abandoned decades of (mostly) firm    you suspicious contact Bashar Assad to step down, but only op position to Communism. Instead, it after waiting for months as Assad oblit- took the position that tensions with the [email protected]@nationalreview.com.. erated whole neighborhoods with heavy Soviet Union were mainly the result of Your cooperation artillery. The civilian death toll in Syria American hostility. As a young senator,     is now well over 10,000, and still the Joe Biden was an early proponent of      is greatly appreciated. Obama administration has done nothing this view. tangible. The Syria crisis is a fearsome President Obama took a similar ap - nettle, to be sure. Nobody has a good proach to our fraught relationship with

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The Shipwreck that Changed America Forever How a “Mistake” Helped Create the United States!

n January of 1784, the Spanish Galleon El Cazador (“The They are known as America’s first silver dollar, as they were the same Hunter”) sailed from Vera Cruz, Mexico on a desperate mission. silver coins used by our Founding Fathers. In fact, the treasure coins IThe economy in Spanish New Orleans was crumbling. If it available today date between 1772–1783 (dates our choice)—the collapsed, the entire Spanish Territory across nearly a million revolutionary years of our nation’s birth. Each of these coins has square miles of what is now the U.S. might be lost. The El Cazador been inspected and authenticated by Numismatic Guaranty was loaded down with enough silver dollars in her hold to potentially Corporation (NGC) and certified to be genuine El Cazador save Spain from financial ruin. But the ship—and its massive silver shipwreck silver. After certification, each coin has been sonically- treasure—never made it to New Orleans. sealed in an acrylic holder for preservation.

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Russia when he offered it a “reset.” them, America’s ambassador to the From the start, he has been at pains to U.N., Susan Rice, publicly condemned make sure the Russians see him as a Israel’s decision to build housing for Mass-Murder friend. Attempts to demonstrate his both Arabs and Jews in Givat HaMatos, friendliness have led him to disregard a village on the southern outskirts of Group the interests of our Eastern European Jerusalem. allies in favor of Russian interests, most Predictably, this intervention in Israeli notably in his administration’s aban- politics failed to mollify the Arabs, but Therapy donment of missile-defense projects it succeeded in offending the Israelis. Let’s not pretend we can make sense of of great importance to Poland and The administration sees a big difference what happened in Aurora the Czech Republic. In this context, between the Israeli government and Obama’s promise to Russian prime Israel itself, and viewed its criticism as BY DAVID GELERNTER minister Dmitri Medvedev that he would directed only at the former; but unfortu- be more “flexible” on missile defense nately the Israelis don’t see that distinc- DON’T care what the Colorado mur- after the November election is hardly tion quite so clearly. Although Obama derer’s message is, or what his goals surprising. claims that he has “Israel’s back,” few were, and for my part he can rot in Our Iraqi allies have been cast by the Israelis believe it. According to one I hell: Forgiveness is central to Judaism wayside. Obama has not visited Iraq recent poll, only 32 percent of Israelis but is the prerogative of the injured and since 2009, and his lack of personal view Obama positively. The U.S. has grieving—and is the proper response to engagement arguably helped get Amer - therefore become largely irrelevant to repentance. But since immediate action is ican forces expelled in 2011. The the peace process that Obama had called for in a moment of national mourn- tragedy is that powerful political fac- hoped to influence. We were uniquely ing, how’s this. Let’s ban “counselors” tions within Iraq had united behind an positioned to serve as mediator in the from anywhere within 50 miles of the alliance with the United States, and conflict only because Israelis trusted injured or bereaved. Likewise “therapists,” many Iraqis viewed the U.S. as a guar- us to underwrite the risks of the con- social workers, psychologists, the lot. antor of stability despite their instinctive cessions that they alone were being Friends and family are needed in such a animosity to occupiers. Those Iraqis had asked to make under the flawed “land crisis; so are ministers, priests, rabbis. fought alongside our forces to defeat for peace” formula. However laudable Amer i cans are not in the habit (thank God) al-Qaeda and the Sadrists; now they his intentions, Obama has thrown that of developing lifelong relations with their are isolated and defenseless, and their trust away. “counselors.” Do you want a social worker influence is waning fast. Obama has let In Latin America, the story is much delivering the eulogy at your funeral? (Let slip through his grasp a crown jewel of the same. At the request of Bolivia’s her read the service too, while she’s at it, or America’s strategic assets, earned at socialist leader, Evo Morales, an ally of make up her own! After all, she’s the pro- a frightful cost in lives: a long-term Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, Obama fessional.) American troop presence in a democrat- cut funds to pro-democracy groups. He The idea that grief can be assuaged by ic Arab country in the heart of the took the side of anti-American factions experts who know and care nothing about Middle East. During the Cold War, the in the Honduras constitutional crisis, the grief-stricken or the dead is loathsome. mere presence of American troops on when the pro-American side was clearly No doubt many religious leaders are partly the periphery of the free world allowed in the right as a matter of Honduran con- responsible, insofar as they encourage their stable institutions of commerce and stitutional law. He embarrassed Panama congregants to think of and address them dem ocratic governance to take root, lift- and Colombia by holding up free-trade as if they were social workers. In any case, ing hundreds of millions of people out of agreements on protectionist grounds. conservatives must come to grips with this poverty and tyranny. But in Iraq, where And he has stood by while former deep problem they have largely avoided: such institutions are young and failing if Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega the secularization, professionalization, they exist at all, we are standing idly by has cemented his grip on power in Nica - tri vialization of grief. It corrodes human as the country slides into Iran’s sphere of ragua. dignity like rust eating steel. The an te - influence. Across the globe, those who have cedent state of mind, which makes grief a The administration’s mistreatment of counted on the United States to defend “condition” to be treated by therapists, our most dependent and loyal allies has liberal democracy, free markets, and happens to resemble the worldview in been most obvious in the case of Israel. national sovereignty have found Obama which criminality is likewise an illness; in Let’s take one example among many. consistently unsupportive. It’s perfectly which mass murderers are crazy automati- Until a settlement of the Arab–Israeli understandable: In Obama’s worldview cally, by definition, and there is no such dispute has been negotiated, the U.S. is those things are a recipe for injustice. thing as evil. almost certain to veto any Palestinian- Who can be surprised if the adminis - For those who are bereaved or badly statehood resolution at the U.N. Last tration treats proponents of our values hurt, there is no possible compensation. year, a U.S. veto of one such resolution abroad—our most natural and commit- The one external fact that might ease this (it would have given member-state ted allies—with ambivalence or even sort of suffering, just a little, is penitence— status to the Palestinian Authority at enmity? And who will feign surprise the criminal’s coming to grips, in dead UNESCO) angered the Arabs and left when those allies refuse to stand up for them suspicious of Obama. To mollify us? Mr. Gelernter is the author of America-Lite.

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You deserve a factual look at . . .    
     

Josef Goebbels, the infamous propaganda minister of the Nazis, had it right. Just tell people big lies often enough and they will believe them. The Arabs have learned that lesson well. They have swayed world opinion by endlessly repeating myths and lies that have no basis in fact.     destroyed all Jewish institutions and houses of worship, used The “Palestinians.” That is the fundamental myth. The reality Jewish cemetery headstones to build military latrines, and is that the concept of “Palestinians” is one that did not exist until renamed as “West Bank” what had been Judea and Samaria since about 1948, when the Arab inhabitants of what until then was time immemorial. Palestine, wished to differentiate themselves from the Jews. Until The attempt, quite successful, was to persuade an uninformed then, the Jews were the Palestinians. There was the Palestinian world that these territories were ancestral parts of the Jordanian Brigade of Jewish volunteers in the British World War II Army Arab Kingdom (itself a very recent creation of British power (at a time when the Palestinian Arabs were in Berlin hatching diplomacy). Even after the total rout of the Arabs in the 1967 plans with Adolf Hitler for world conquest and how to kill all the Six-Day War, in which the Jordanians were driven out of Jews); there was the Palestinian Judea/Samaria and of Jerusalem, they Symphony Orchestra (all Jews, of “The web of lies and myths that the and the world continued to call this course); there was The Palestine Post, Arab propaganda machine has territory the “West Bank”, a and so much more. geographical concept that cannot be The Arabs, who now call themselves created plays an important role in found on any except the most recent “Palestinians,” do so in order to the unrelenting quest to destroy the maps. persuade a misinformed world that they The concept of the “West Bank” is a are a distinct nationality and that State of Israel. What a shame that myth. “Palestine” is their ancestral homeland. the world has accepted most of it!” The “Occupied Territories.” After the But, of course, they are no distinct victorious Six-Day War, during which nationality at all. They are entirely the same — in language, the Israeli army defeated the same cabal of Arabs that had customs, and tribal ties — as the Arabs of Syria, Jordan, and invaded the country in 1948, Israel remained in possession of beyond. There is no more difference between the “Palestinians” Judea/Samaria (now renamed “West Bank”), which the and the other Arabs of those countries than there is between, say, Jordanians had illegally occupied for 19 years; of the Gaza strip, the citizens of Minnesota and of Wisconsin. which had been occupied by the Egyptians but which (hundreds What's more, many of the “Palestinians,” or their immediate of miles from Egypt proper) had never been part of their country; ancestors, came to the area attracted by the prosperity created by and of the Golan Heights, a plateau of about 400 square miles, the Jews, in what previously had been pretty much of a which, though originally part of Palestine, had been ceded to wasteland. Syria by British-French agreement. The nationhood of the “Palestinians” is a myth. The last sovereign in Judea/Samaria and in Gaza was the The “West Bank.” Again, this is a concept that did not exist British mandatory power — and before it was the Ottoman until 1948, when the army of the Kingdom of Transjordan, Empire. All of Palestine, including what is now the Kingdom of together with five other Arab armies, invaded the Jewish state of Jordan, was, by the Balfour Declaration, destined to be the Israel, on the very day of its creation. Jewish National Home. How then could the Israelis be In what can almost be described as a Biblical miracle, the “occupiers” in their own territory? Who would be the sovereign ragtag Jewish forces defeated the combined Arab might. But and who the rightful inhabitants? Transjordan stayed in possession of the territories of Judea and The concept of “occupied territories” in reference to Samaria and part of the city of Jerusalem. The Jordanians Judea/Samaria (often called the “West Bank”) and Gaza is promptly expelled all Jews from the area that they occupied, another of the many myths created by Arab propaganda. Unable so far to destroy Israel on the battlefield — though they are feverishly preparing for their next assault — the Arabs are now trying to overcome and destroy Israel by their acknowledged “policy of stages”. That policy is to get as much land as possible carved out of Israel “by peaceful and diplomatic” means, so as to make Israel indefensible and softened up for the final assault. The web of lies and myths that the Arab propaganda machine has created plays an important role in the unrelenting quest to destroy the State of Israel. What a shame that the world has accepted most of it!

        FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world. Your tax- deductible contributions are welcome. They enable us to pursue these goals and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines. We #"    $## "# have virtually no overhead. Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational  %  ! "
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KARL GEHRING/DENVER POST/AP senselesstragedy. Butthis normal urge is commit murder. to used rarely are they firearms) matic semiauto (like but dangerous,- tentially coursesubwaysautomobilesand po are - Of often. not But buildings. down burn spur of the moment, ram cars into crowds, also push people in front of subways meanon little.the After all, criminals and lunatics o) o ae ht n generalizations any that rare so God) (thankcrimesaresuch Butfind. to easy ably more likely in nations where guns are uine nut cases, on the other hand, are prob- or gasoline and a match. If you can’t find a gun, a bomb will work; you that there are many ways to derkillspree in advance, people.it might have struck you’ve taken mass the trouble If a planned to plancres. your carefully mur- other to beenhave they ascrime, this to vant need capital punishment. about. That’s one important reasonit bringspunishment capital Sometimeswhy we lem, and you’re a moron. offense,takechoosethat’sto prob-your tent who makes clear that if you did in fact toothpasteto cover the bristles, by apeni- repentance is squeezed out grudgingly like one was offended, I’m sorry.” That sort of crude knock-offs of the apologies, real thing.phony “ two-bit with flooded is market the so And apologize!”) You sulky children. (“Apologize!” “I will not! tinelydemandthemfrom eachotherlike modernined society: Public figures rou- sad that apologies have become so degrad- earnest, with the misery he has created. It’s 6 2 It’sonlynatural seektosignificance in Spur-of-the-momentmassacres bygen- Guns appear to be fundamentally irrele- Yet actual penitence is serious business. | .nationalre .com o c w. e i ev r l a n o i t a n w. w w The The Aurora crimescene If any- allowthe antisocial (and the merely high- shutting down a pressure valve that used closingto of the frontier in the 1890s meant the that ago longHistorians outpointed been plenty of deadly violence in alwayscoursetherehasAmerica.time).Ofthe of hearideologicalwillyouopponents and leagues. Lis col- tenher than to violent a more leftistways, some raging against his acceptthatthe United States indeed,is in willingto am I capita?Butviolenceper Americahas;where doesthat leave in us than 1776since wars morestarted have things.Eumeasure suchto sible ro pe ans violencespare(albeittoimpotent—most fellowWestern democracies.It’simpos - Statesinherentlyis moreviolent thanher a Marxist, and anyway he was schizoid.) rebel.” (But at least he only schizoid boy who thought he was a Marxist “a Oswald call to forced reluctantly is he when grievance and disappointment rightistshaddone it.” You sense Wilson’s lunaticthethatpeoplemanywas of that the assassination that “my first thought cultured)and Edmund Wilson wrote soon after left-wing (though highly intelligent, progressdeeply in 1963, not yet a done in deal. still The was intelligentsia card-carrying (startingwith the elite universities) to the handedover that the keys to American revolution culture the although example, famous a is Kennedy John of murder gun-loving,churchgoing population. The thewholeofdamned unwashed, bigoted, NRA, theof conservatives, of barbarism primitive of the the on GOP—iftary not lent crime in America into a sad commen- thinking straight. The Left likes to alsoturn a trapvio- to catch us out when we are not It is widely believed that the United the that believed widely is It thought he was cance? Michaelone, Bloomberg? that of Where is make Left the does What part of the nation cannot trust another part. in fact an outright tragedy, when one large enjoy gun sports feel the same. It’ssuspect,peoplemostthatItoo,als.who too bad, again)theexperts, thetrained profession-come they (here to left be can defense ofdisarming citizens entirely, so that self- hatingguns in general and loving the idea kind of law. I suspect them of bad faith, of trustpoliticalthe groupsthat support this worth discussing . . . but not by me.be would Ithey criminals, againstdon’tforced high- and capacity weapons magazines assault could somehow on be en bans - reach the second question. reason to think they work, so we Un costs. don’t for even tu any nate have don’t we ly believetheirthatbenefitsoutweigh their have any reason to think they work, and we Thatincludes stiff gun-control laws, shouldfight itwith everything we’ve got. oughtto look on passively at villainy: We much good over the centuries. mankinddonewhichhasso weirdos, of topay aprice forourhigh concentration prising if Amer icans themselves have had factor nation in history. It would be bene- unsur- original explosively daring,most most the is StatesUnited The negative. theabnormalityroughlyonbalancedby is side abpositive thatthe on normality ments. It’s a usual pattern in human groupsthebig picture before wemake bigstate- thereisno free lunch. We need tolook at be that onlyto independent-minded;means it bad it’s that means hardly This lawlessness. to finally and eccentricity, antisocial to related sometimes is turn something has withwildness,doto which in independent-mindedness spirited ways. Commonsensesuggests thatsheerhigh-countless in art the of state the nation’s, our innovations and trends define otherfartheranyplorersgonethanhave liberaldemocracy, example),exfor our - arecopied allover theglobe (the modern inventionsOurworlddo.theforthatwe shareoforiginals inthis nation. It’s lucky control. Wesurely just-barely-under- have far more the than our even energetic, the unusual, the for tolerance high and Euro-conformitylockstep for use small tories into wilderness. spirited)toescape from law-abiding terri- Still—ifitwere possible tobelieve that Of course this doesn’t mean that we that mean doesn’t this course Of with nation a been always have We T S U G U A its 3 1 signifi- , if 2 1 0 2 we 2col_QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/24/2012 9:33 PM Page 27

Delivering the ‘you didn’t build that’ speech, Roanoke, Va., July 13, 2012 The Hollow Republic Can Obama imagine a middle ground between the state and the individual?

BY YUVAL LEVIN

reSIDenT oBAmA must surely wish he could undo the bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that, somebody campaign speech he delivered in roanoke, Va., on July else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. 13. That was where he offered up the view that “if Government research created the Internet so that all the companies P you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that, somebody could make money off the Internet. else made that happen.” It is a line that could haunt him right to The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our november, revealing as it does an unwillingness to credit success individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There and a hostility toward the culture of entrepreneurship. But the are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I remark came in the context of a broader argument that was just mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires. as telling on a different point, and no less troubling. So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, After laying out his plans to raise taxes on the wealthiest “You know what, there’s some things we do better together.” That’s Americans, the president said this to his audience: how we funded the GI Bill, that’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. You know, there are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who That’s how we invented the Internet, that’s how we sent a man to agree with me, because they want to give something back. They the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, know they didn’t—look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get and that’s the reason I’m running for president, because I still be - there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always lieve in that idea: You’re not on your own, we’re in this together. struck by people who think, Well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because This remarkable window into the president’s thinking shows I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something— us not only a man chilly toward the potential of individual initia- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. tive, and not only a man deluded about the nature of his oppo- There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody nents and their views, but also (and perhaps most important) a helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have man with a staggeringly thin idea of common action in American

life. AP

that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and / The president simply equates doing things together with doing Mr. Levin is the editor of National Affairs and a fellow at the Ethics and Public things through government. He sees the citizen and the state, and

Policy Center. nothing in between—and thus sees every political question as a DON PETERSEN

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choice between radical individualism and a federal program. ment facilitate people’s access to these drugs—which it does But most of life is lived somewhere between those two today and has done for decades. Rather, the rule required that the extremes, and American life in particular has given rise to Catholic Church and other religious entities should facilitate peo- unprecedented human flourishing because we have allowed the ple’s access to contraceptive and abortive drugs. It aimed to turn institutions that occupy the middle ground—the family, civil the institutions of civil society into active agents of the govern- society, and the private economy—to thrive in relative freedom. ment’s ends, even in violation of their fundamental religious con- Obama’s remarks in Virginia shed a bright light on his attitude victions. toward that middle ground, and in that light a great deal of what The rule implicitly asserted that our nation will not tolerate an his administration has done in this three and a half years sud - institution that is unwilling to actively ratify the views of those in denly grows clearer and more coherent, and even more discon- power—that we will not let it be and find other ways to put those certing. views into effect (even though many other ways exist), but will Again and again, the administration has sought to hollow out compel it to participate in the enactment of the ends chosen by the space between the individual and the state. Its approach to the our elected officials. This is an extraordinarily radical assertion of private economy has involved pursuing consolidation in key government power, and a failure of even basic toleration. It is, industries—privileging a few major players that are to be treated again, an attempt to turn private mediating institutions into essentially as public utilities, while locking out competition from public utilities contracted to execute government ends. smaller or newer firms. This both ensures the cooperation of the When pressed to defend its constriction of the rights of reli- large players and makes the economy more manageable and gious institutions, the administration recast the basic definition orderly. And it leaves no one pursuing ends that are not the gov- and purpose of such institutions. The final HHS rule defined a ernment’s ends. This has been the essence of the administration’s religious employer exceedingly narrowly, as an institution that policies toward automakers, health insurers, banks, hospitals, and primarily serves and employs people of its own faith and has as many others. its basic purpose the inculcation of the beliefs of that faith. This It is an attitude that takes the wealth-creation capacity of our leaves no room for most religiously based institutions of civil economy for granted, treats the chaotic churning and endless society—no room for hospitals, for schools and universities, for The Obama administration treats the endless combat of competing firms as a dangerous distraction from essential public goals, and considers the business world to be parasitic on society.

combat of competing firms (which in fact is the source of that soup kitchens and homeless shelters, for adoption agencies and capacity) as a dangerous distraction from essential public goals, legal-aid clinics. Re li gious institutions may preach to the choir, and considers the business world to be parasitic on society—ben- but otherwise they may not play any role in society. Especially efiting from the infrastructure and resources provided by the when they disagree with those in power, they must be cleared out genuine common action of the state. Of course, the state’s of the space between the individual and the state. benevolence is made possible precisely by the nation’s wealth- iest citizens, but the president seems to see that as simply an appropriate degree of “giving something back.” His words and ndEEd, the president and his administration don’t seem to his administration’s actions imply that he views the government have much use for that space at all. Even the family, which as the only genuine tribune of public desires, and therefore I naturally stands between the individual and the community, seeks to harness the private economy to the purposes and goals is not essential. In May, the Obama campaign produced a Web of those in power. slideshow called “The Life of Julia,” which follows a woman This intolerance of nonconformity is even more powerfully through the different stages of life and shows the many ways in evident in the administration’s attitude toward the institutions of which she benefits from public policies that the president advo- civil society, especially religious institutions involved in the cru- cates. It was an extraordinarily revealing work of propaganda, cial work of helping the needy and vulnerable. In a number of and what it revealed was just what the president showed us in instances, but most notably in the controversy surrounding the Roanoke: a vision of society consisting entirely of the individual department of Health and Human Services rule requiring reli- and the state. Julia’s life is the product of her individual choices gious employers to provide free abortive and contraceptive drugs enabled by public policies. She has an exceptional amount of to their employees under Obamacare, the administration has direct contact with the federal government, yet we never meet her shown an appalling contempt for the basic right of religious insti- family. At the age of 31, we are told, “Julia decides to have a tutions to pursue their ends in accordance with their convictions. child” and “benefits from maternal checkups, prenatal care, and It is important to recall just what the administration did in that free screenings under health care reform.” She later benefits from instance. The HHS rule did not assert that people should have the all manner of educational, economic, and social programs, and freedom to use contraceptive or abortive drugs—which of course seems to require and depend upon no one but the president. they do have in our country. It did not even say that the govern- A similarly creepy lack of boundaries can be found in a

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surprising number of the Obama campaign’s appeals to voters. lems. This is the technocratic promise of progressivism. The On June 21, the campaign sent supporters an e-mail purportedly Right tends to believe that the great advantage of our liberal from Michelle Obama, which read in part: society is that it has evolved to channel deep social knowledge through free institutions—knowledge that often cannot be artic- For the first 10 years of our marriage, Barack and I lived in an apart- ulated in technical terms but is the most important knowledge ment in my hometown of Chicago. The winters there can be pretty we have. For the Left, therefore, the mediating institutions (and harsh, but no matter how snowy or icy it got, Barack would head at times even our constitutional forms) are obstacles to the out into the cold—shovel in hand—to dig my car out before I went application of liberal knowledge. For the Right, the mediating to work. In all our years of marriage, he’s always looked out for me. Now, I see that same commitment every day to you and to this institutions (and our constitutional forms) are the embodiment country. The only way we’ll win this election is if we can rely on of liberal knowledge. one another like that, all the way to November 6th. The Left’s disdain for civil society is thus driven above all not by a desire to empower the state without limit, but by a deeply The nation is thus seen as one big woman married to the pres- held concern that the mediating institutions in society—emphat- ident. The family is nothing that the government cannot be. ically including the family, the church, and private enterprise— This attitude toward mediating institutions is by no means are instruments of prejudice, selfishness, backwardness, and novel or unique to the Obama administration. It has been essen- resistance to change, and that in order to establish our national tial to the progressive cause for more than a century, and indeed life on more rational grounds, the government needs to weaken has been an element of more radical strands of liberalism for far and counteract them. longer than that. As far back as 1791, Thomas Paine, in defend- The Right’s high regard for civil society, meanwhile, is driven ing the French revolutionaries, complained of the distance that above all not by a disdain for government but by a deeply held traditional institutions established between the citizen and the belief in the importance of our diverse and evolved societal regime, which he described as an “artificial chasm [that] is filled forms, without which we could not hope to secure our liberty. up with a succession of barriers, or sort of turnpike gates, through Conservatives seek mechanisms and institutions to bring im plicit which [the citizen] has to pass.” social knowledge to bear on our troubles, while progressives seek The Left’s disdain for civil society is driven by a deeply held concern that private mediating institutions are instruments of prejudice, selfishness, backwardness, and resistance to change.

Conservative voices have defended these mediating layers the authority and power to bring explicit technical knowledge to precisely for creating such barriers, which can guard the citizen bear on them. from direct exposure to the searing power of the state. Alexis de The president’s exceptionally revealing description of America Tocqueville celebrated America’s bewildering ar ray of asso - in his Roanoke remarks thus points to a key dividing line in our ciations, institutions, and corporations of civil society for their politics, and to a central issue of contention in this election year. It’s ability to offer individual citizens some protection from the dom- not a surprise that it turns out to clarify a broad range of the Obama ineering sway of political majorities. administration’s most troubling and peculiar policy choices. Edmund Burke, Paine’s great nemesis, argued that such medi- Mitt Romney has chosen to respond to the president’s remarks ating structures also express in their very forms the actual shape largely by defending the honor of individual achievement and of our society—evolved over time out of affectionate sentiments, initiative in business. This is certainly understandable, since practical needs, and common aspirations. “We begin our public Obama’s statement on that front was an astonishing insult to affections in our families,” Burke wrote. “We pass on to our America’s tens of millions of business owners and entrepreneurs neighborhoods, and our habitual provincial connections. These (including Romney himself). But he should also take the oppor- are inns and resting-places. Such divisions of our country as have tunity the president has handed him to offer a defense of Amer - been formed by habit, and not by a sudden jerk of authority, were ican life—with its dense array of forms of common action, only so many little images of the great country in which the heart a few of them political—against a cold and listless technocratic found something which it could fill.” To sweep them away and vision that promises to smother the drive and energy of our leave only the citizen and the state would rob society of its republic and leave the citizen defenseless against the whims sources of warmth, loyalty, and affinity, and of the most effective of government officials. means of enacting significant social improvements. To ignore what stands between the state and the citizen is to This difference of opinion about mediating institutions is no disregard the essence of American life. To clear away what stands trifling matter. It gets at a profound and fundamental difference between the state and the citizen is to extinguish the sources of between the Left and the Right. The Left tends to believe that American freedom. The president is right to insist that America the great advantage of our liberal society is that it enables the works best when Americans work together, but government is application of technical knowledge that can make our lives bet- just one of the many things we do together, and it is only rarely ter, and that this knowledge can overcome our biggest prob- the most important of them.

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an Bernardino spends about 75 percent of its general- fund budget on salaries, benefits, and pensions, with the S vast majority of those expenses coming from one class of Penniless in employee: public-safety workers, meaning cops and firemen, who earn as much as $230,000 a year with overtime. Their pen- sions, as will not surprise anybody who has been paying attention to government finances in recent years, are extraordinarily gen- Paradise erous. in 2007, a consulting firm warned the city that its budget was in trouble because its personnel costs were growing con - The decline and fall of California siderably more quickly than revenue, and the city’s response was . . . to offer even more generous pensions in the same year. The firemen are fat and happy in the California sunshine, but the rest BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON of San Bernardino is not doing as well: “When times were good, my wife and i didn’t go hog-wild and play the let’s-get-a-bigger- house game,” says Mike Potter, who works for a local construc- San Bernardino, Calif. tion firm. “But now times aren’t good. at my company, 50 n the front door of the San Bernardino city hall is percent of the employees have been laid off, and i’ve taken a 15 a sign that reads: “out of order.” Broke city, bro- percent pay cut. i was the head of engineering, and now i’m ken door: There’s a certain pleasing symmetry in also a part-time receptionist and janitor.” He is one of the lucky O the fact that the San Bernardino city council meets ones—the local unemployment rate runs around 15 percent— behind a door that, like the city government itself, does not and he is blunt on the subject of what encumbers San Bernardino work and is in need of replacement. on this particular evening and other bankruptcy-bound California cities: “The public- in late July, the council has met to make public what every- employee unions are killing us. They are killing our cities, our body already knows: intellectually bankrupt, morally bank- states, and our country.” rupt—the city is under criminal investigation for sundry John Magness, the biggest real-estate developer in San financial shenanigans—San Bernardino is above all old- Bernardino, is bearish on the city’s near-term prospects. “no fashioned bankrupt bankrupt, a pitiful penniless pauper that respectable developer would risk its relationships by getting its cannot even afford a cup of coffee: Seriously—the coffee guy clients to locate in a city with this risk,” he says. He estimates that wants cash up front now and has stopped serving the munici- his company’s projects have added $1 billion to the city’s tax pal office building until the city makes good on its latte liabil- base and about 5,000 jobs over the past decade, but finds himself ities. This is a paddle-free scato-riparian fiscal expedition of “reluctant to encourage customers to come here in this uncertain the first order. environment.” He spoke in favor of the bankruptcy filing and fis- after a great deal of self-congratulatory speechification— cal emergency, arguing that it would give the city an opportunity during which one council member used the phrase “the buck to run a river of reform through the augean stables of its finances, stops” no fewer than five times without once getting it quite renegotiating contracts and rewriting the city charter. The local right, laid out a little Boston Consulting–style two-by-two business leaders were nearly unanimous in endorsing the mea- matrix to explain his analysis of the situation, repeatedly sures. reminded the citizens of how often he had “prayed for The citizens, as usual, were a mixed bag: one argued that the strength” during his four long months in elected office, and city’s economic prospects could be turned around by recruiting a generally made a po-faced spectacle of himself—after all Trader Joe’s to open, while another argued that the city’s most that, the feckless ladies and clueless gentlemen of the San pressing problem was the official harassment of “legitimate Bernardino city council voted to seek shelter under Chapter 9 cannabis-based businesses.” While a bottle of Trader Joe’s of the U.S. bankruptcy code, a law that deals specifically with Three-Buck Chuck and a few bong hits might take some of municipal bankruptcies and grants cities an extraordinary level the sting out of the city’s straits, its problems go much deeper. of protection during financial reorganizations. a phalanx of San Bernardino, like many California cities, like the state of pant-suited she-bureaucrats and the city attorney explained California, and like the United States at large, is finding out the that in addition to filing for bankruptcy, the city needed to hard way that it is not as rich as it thought it was ten years ago. declare a fiscal emergency, because it did not have enough it’s rich, of course—and California is fabulously rich—but it’s money even to last through the 60-day waiting period that like the rich guy who has taken out a $10 million mortgage on a would follow initiating the bankruptcy. The moment was not house that turns out to be worth only $1 million: a million-dollar without levity: When one of the ladies of the city council house is still a lot of house, but you have to make some adjust- inquired as to which court would hear the case, the city attor- ments. in 1999, at the peak of the dot-com stock-market bubble, ney explained that he was pretty sure the city’s filing under California reformulated its pensions and other public-employee- federal bankruptcy law would be heard in federal bankruptcy compensation practices, making them much, much more liberal court. When another council member inquired as to why the than they had been. The state’s democrat-run legislature did this city was filing under Chapter 9 instead of the more famous on the theory that pension investments would keep offering Chapter 11, the city attorney gently explained that the munici- double-digit returns more or less forever, which led elected offi- pality was filing under the municipal-bankruptcy law because cials to make big promises and set aside approximately zilch to it is a municipality, not a guy with hospital bills and a mortgage make good on them. if borrowing money to acquire an asset in default. based on the theory that the appreciation of that asset will more

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than offset the cost of financing the borrowing sounds to you like bankruptcy will be sufficient to deal with that problem. “I ques- the woeful tale of a million subprime mortgages, then they real- tion whether this is a wise move,” he said. “I spent ten years as ly could have used you in the California legislature a decade or chair of the economic-development agency. We were an all- so ago, or at Fannie Mae. In bubble after bubble after bubble, the American city, not all-American buffoons.” country keeps repeating the practice that everybody swore off The buffoonery is epidemic. Little places such as Mammoth after the great market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression: Lakes have gone fiscally toes up, as have bigger cities such as investing on margin. California took out something very much Vallejo. Bankrupt Stockton, one of the most dangerous cities in like an adjustable-rate mortgage, financing present political con- the country, has substantially reduced its police force, and signs sumption by in effect borrowing against future returns on the of disorder are everywhere: garbage, police tape, vandalized assets in its pension system—but the returns didn’t materialize. properties. In the city’s Garden Acres neighborhood—a.k.a. CalPeRS, the gigantic statewide pension system, was until a few “Okieville”—tattooed young men ape the style and mannerisms weeks ago projecting 7.5 percent returns on its investments. Real of Sinaloa gangsters. But like a lot of cities burdened with gigan- returns: just over 1 percent. The entirety of the state’s finances are tic pension liabilities, Stockton is paying so many police so from top to bottom exactly what one San Bernardino resident much not to police that it can’t afford to pay police to police. called his city’s fiscal charade: a shell game. Just outside Los Angeles, the city of Compton is probably bankruptcy-bound, too. Compton, once synonymous with ghetto gangster ism, had been making something of a comeback, but like He results in San Bernardino are pretty much in-your-face. San Bernardino it grossly (and perhaps criminally) mismanaged Once a prosperous and well-scrubbed place, the city is its finances, shuffling money around from special-fund accounts T now in such a sorry state that a local café owner com- to pay general-fund bills, leaving it with a looming deficit almost plained about the hookers tricking near her business. Vagrants are equal to its annual budget. Its bonds are junk, and its auditing a source of constant complaints. San Bernardino is suffering firm, Mayer Hoffman McCann, was fined $300,000 for failing to from crime and slumification—more than a few residents sug- detect irregularities leading up to a 2010 corruption scandal in gested that if the city should need to make budget cuts, low- Bell, Calif. And even that firm won’t sign off on the city’s current The entirety of the state’s finances are from top to bottom exactly what one San Bernardino resident called his city’s fiscal charade: a shell game.

income housing programs are a good place to start, and they financials: It quit rather than publish an opinion on the state- pretty clearly would want them cut even if the city were absolute- ments, citing unresolved fraud allegations. Mayer Hoffman ly flush—and it is widely remarked upon that many of the city’s McCann: Straight outta Compton. most influential businessmen no longer live in San Bernardino, having fled for well-heeled Rancho Cucamonga or other safe havens. With the locals getting gone, outsiders aren’t eager to get He bad news is that there are a lot of Comptons, Stocktons, into the market. A developer described spending six years trying and San Bernardinos out there. Los Angeles may prove to to recruit a Home Depot to open in the city. Whatever the orange- T be one of them. The good news is that things have gone so apron brigade’s reservations about opening up shop in San sour that some California politicians have discovered that it hurts Bernardino, available real estate surely was not among them. The less to act than it does not to act. That is true at the municipal level Carousel Mall across from city hall is one of those sprawling but not yet true at the state level, which makes for some interest- two-story midcentury retail complexes, and it has a grand total of ing mayors-vs.-legislators politics. nine shops open. Most of the top floor is gated and shuttered, “The enemy isn’t Democrats or Republicans,” says San Jose while the lower level has given up on retail entirely and convert- city councilman Sam Liccardo. “The enemy is algebra.” Lic - ed the stores to office space. The garishly painted eponymous cardo, a Democrat, is bracingly honest when it comes to his fel- carousel is still and silent. On the upside, parking is a breeze. low partisans in Sacramento: “The fact is the unions own the While the city faces a great deal of trouble with its personnel Democratic party,” he says, and San Jose’s pension-and-personnel costs, an even more toe-curling potential calamity awaits in the reforms have not made the city’s Democratic elected officials any form of hundreds of millions of dollars of liabilities in economic- friends in Sacramento. “Party orthodoxy is much more strictly development grants, according to Warner Hodgdon, an astringent enforced at the state level, because the unions decide who wins critic of the city government. The city offered the development and who loses,” Liccardo says. San Jose mayor Chuck Reed, also concessions in the belief that the state would be picking up the a Democrat, has been out front on the pension issue, and he’s tab, but Sacramento has some hairy fiscal problems of its own maybe had a little easier time with it than have the authorities in and is getting ready to leave San Bernardino and other cities Compton or San Bernardino. His city is the capital of Silicon twisting in the hot desert wind on those liabilities. Nobody seems Valley, and his base of affluent Northern California professionals to appreciate the irony that San Bernardino’s economic future has are not sending love letters to Paul Ryan, but they know how been nuked by over-ambitious economic-development pro- money works. “They may be liberal,” he says, “but at some point grams, and Hodgdon doubts whether the fiscal emergency and you have to decide: Are we going to provide services or not?”

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reed has formed an unlikely partnership with the republican mayor of san Diego, Jerry sanders; the two authored letters to the legislature defending pension-reform efforts at the city level. Unleash “This isn’t a partisan issue—66 percent of our citizens voted for the pension-reform initiative,” sanders says. “The state has been negligent, and a rift has broken out between the municipalities and the state.” san Diego converted most of its pensions to a The Mind 401(k)-style plan, which, in addition to being more sustainable than a defined-benefit program, has the virtue of encouraging Capitalism means benevolent creativity politicians to be prudent. “The employees can check their accounts,” sanders says, “so we have to make our contributions. BY GEORGE GILDER They get to watch it grow.” While san Diego is not entirely out of the woods—sanders worries that a second national recession is on the horizon—the mayor is understandably proud of the fact merica’s wealth is not an inventory of goods; it is an that the city is projecting budget surpluses for the next five years. organic entity, a fragile pulsing fabric of ideas, expec- On the most critical issue facing california’s struggling cities, he tations, loyalties, moral commitments, visions. To vivi- finds himself in agreement with his Democratic counterpart in A sect it for redistribution is to kill it. as President san Jose: “chuck is absolutely right.” mitterrand’s French technocrats discovered in the 1980s, and President Obama’s quixotic ecocrats are discovering today, gov- ernment managers of complex systems of wealth soon find they aliFOrnia is a state with Hollywood at one end and are administering an industrial corpse, a socialized solyndra. silicon Valley at the other, and driving along route 1 all riches must finally fall into the gap between thoughts and c between the two, you’d think its highways did nothing things. Governed by mind but caught in matter, assets must but connect money with money and success with success: From afford an income stream that is expected to continue. The expec- san Francisco’s financial district down to Big sur, from Beverly tation may shift as swiftly as thought, but things, alas, are all too Hills to the solidly middle-class precincts of Orange county, solid and slow to change. The kaleidoscope of shifting valua- california still is home to some of the richest, most productive, tions, flashing gains and losses as it is turned in the hands of time, most energetic, and most creative people in the world, and watch- in the grip of “news,” distributes and redistributes the wealth of ing the morning fog burn off of the Pacific, you can appreciate the world far more quickly and surely than any scheme of the why every billionaire, rock star, and cult leader with any ambi- state. tion at all makes his way to the Golden state. it’s enough to make The belief that wealth consists not chiefly in ideas, attitudes, a republican take up yoga. But there’s another route between moral codes, and mental disciplines but in definable static things los angeles and san Francisco, too, through the blasted desert that can be seized and redistributed—that is the materialist super- and agricultural backcountry. You don’t have to get very far out stition. it stultified the works of marx and other prophets of vio- of los angeles before you’re in the world of “PiGs FOr sale” lence and envy. it betrays every person who seeks to redistribute signs, low-rent evangelical radio, and those millions of illegal wealth by coercion. it balks every socialist revolutionary who aliens that californians spend their time studiously not talking imagines that by seizing the so-called means of production he can about. Unlike the wannabe sinaloa bad boys up in stockton, the capture the crucial capital of an economy. it baffles nearly every backcountry farmboys have a sense of humor about mexico’s conglomerateur who believes he can safely enter new industries infamous syndicates: One produce-hauling entrepreneur moving by buying rather than by learning them. it confounds every a load of fresh tomatoes up interstate 5 had the wit to call his cart- bureaucrat of science who imagines he can buy or steal the fruits ing business “carTel.” He was running a big diesel, but in the of research and development. more desolate corners of the state you wouldn’t be too surprised even if it wished to, the government could not capture to see a cart being pulled by oxen. it is sobering how empty, run- america’s wealth from its 1 percent of the 1 percent. as marxist down, and poor much of interior california is. Bakersfield and despots and tribal socialists from cuba to Greece have discov- environs is enough to make you wonder why the Joads even ered to their huge disappointment, governments can neither bothered: Tulsa is Paris by comparison. create wealth nor effectively redistribute it. They can only san Jose and san Diego may be havens of relative fiscal sani- expropriate and watch it dissipate. if we continue to harass, ty, but they are surrounded by stocktons, comptons, and san overtax, and oppressively regulate entrepreneurs, our liberal Bernardinos, along with the vast inland expanses that in many politicians will be shocked and horrified to discover how swift- places have a disconcertingly Third World ambiance. Departing ly the physical tokens of the means of production dissolve into los angeles mayor antonio Villaraigosa set many observers on so much corroded wire, abandoned batteries, scrap metal, and edge when he talked about bankruptcy in connection with the wasteland rot. city’s fiscal future. “He says a bankruptcy won’t happen under capitalism is the supreme expression of human creativity and his watch,” says Kevin James, a republican fiscal warrior run- freedom, an economy of mind overcoming the constraints of ning to replace him, “but his watch is over in a few months. He material power. it is not simply a practical success, a “worst of all didn’t say anything about what happens after that.” The bank- ruptcy of the nation’s second-largest city would not be a disaster Mr. Gilder is the author of 15 books, a venture investor, and a co-founder of the in and of itself—it would only be san Bernardino writ large, a Discovery Institute. This article is adapted from the prologue to his Wealth and public confirmation of what everybody already knows. Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century (Regnery).

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systems except for the rest of them,” a faute de mieux compromise only to the extent that they serve it, and thereby serve others, redeemed by charities and regulators and proverbially “saved by rather than themselves. the New Deal.” It is dynamic, a force that pushes human enter- Most of America’s leading entrepreneurs are bound to the masts prise down spirals of declining costs and greater abundance. The of their fortunes. They are allowed to keep their wealth only as cost of capturing technology is mastery of the underlying science. long as they invest it in others. In a real sense, they can keep only The means of production of entrepreneurs are not land, labor, or what they give away. It has been given to others in the form of capital but minds and hearts. Enduring are only the contributions investments. It is embodied in a vast web of enterprises that retains of mind and morality. its worth only through constant work and sacrifice. Capitalism is All progress comes from the creative minority. Under capital- a system that begins not with taking but with giving. ism, wealth is less a stock of goods than a flow of ideas, the defin- ing characteristic of which is surprise. Creativity is the foundation of wealth. As Princeton economist Albert Hirschman has put it, or this reason, wealth is nearly as difficult to maintain as “creativity always comes as a surprise to us.” If it were not sur- it is to create. owners are besieged on all sides by aspir- prising, we could plan it, and socialism would work. Joseph F ing spenders—debauchers of wealth and purveyors of Schumpeter propounded the basic rule when he declared capital- poverty in the name of charity, idealism, envy, or social change. ism “a form of change” that “never can be stationary.” The land- Bureaucrats, politicians, bishops, raiders, robbers, short-sellers, scape of capitalism may seem solid and settled and something that and business writers all think they can invest money better than its can be captured; but capitalism is really a noosphere, a mindscape, owners. In fact, of all the people on the face of the globe, it is usu- as empty in proportion to the nuggets at its nucleus as the expanse ally only the legal owners of businesses who know enough about of the solar system in relation to the sun. the sources of their wealth to maintain it. It is usually they who Entrepreneurship is the launching of surprises. The process of have the clearest interest in building wealth for others rather than wealth creation is offensive to levelers and planners because it spending it on themselves. yields mountains of new wealth in ways that could not possibly Nevertheless, even while dismissing the charge that the “rich” Most of America’s leading entrepreneurs are allowed to keep their wealth only as long as they invest it in others.

be planned. But unpredictability is fundamental to free human indulge in a carnival of greed, we have not fully explained the enterprise. It defies every econometric model and socialist reasons for their great wealth, much less justified it. Some apolo- scheme. It makes no sense to most professors, who attain their gists will say that Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook billions, for positions by the systematic acquisition of credentials pleasing to example, are a reward for his brilliant entrepreneurship and soft- the establishment above them. Creativity cannot be planned ware coding, while penury is just the outcome of alcoholism and because it is defined by information measured as surprise. improvidence. The saintly social worker and even the president of Leading entrepreneurs—from Sam Walton to Larry Page to the United States, for that matter, earn modest salaries by com- Mark Zuckerberg—did not ascend a hierarchy; they created a parison, and they are neither improvident nor necessarily less bril- new one. They did not climb to the top of anything; they were liant than Mark. pushed to the top by their own success. They did not capture the But that whole line of argumentation is beside the point. The pinnacle; they became it. distributions of capitalism make sense, but not because of the In the Schumpeterian mindscape of capitalism, entrepreneurial virtue or greed of entrepreneurs, nor as inevitable by-products of owners are less captors than captives of their wealth. If they try to the invisible hand. The reason capitalism works is that the creators take it or exploit it, it will tend to evaporate. Bill Gates, for exam- of wealth are granted the right and the burden of reinvesting it. ple, already a paper decibillionaire, commented during his entre- They join the knowledge acquired in building wealth with the preneurial heyday that he was “tied to the mast” of Microsoft. power to perpetuate and expand it. If Gates had tried to leave or substantially cash out at any time Entrepreneurial knowledge has little to do with certified exper- during the early decades, the company would have plummeted in tise, advanced degrees, or the learning of establishment schools. value more rapidly than he could have harvested the funds. When The fashionably educated and cultivated spurn the kind of fanati- the founders of Bain and Company attempted to cash out in cally focused learning commanded by the innovators. Wealth all 1991, taking $200 million with them, Mitt romney was faced too often comes from doing what other people consider insuffer- with the likely bankruptcy of the firm. He had to confront a ably boring or unendurably hard. Goldman Sachs effort to close it down. As the once-lucrative The treacherous intricacies of software languages or garbage company collapsed, romney cut the share of his departing part- routes, the mechanics of frying and freezing potatoes, the mazes ners in half in order to save his company and his reputation in of high-yield bonds and low-collateral companies, the murky lore business. David rockefeller devoted a lifetime of 60-hour weeks of petroleum leases or housing deeds or Far Eastern electronics to his own enterprises. Younger members of the family wanted to supplies, the multiple scientific disciplines entailed by fracking get at the wealth and forced the sale of rockefeller Center to for natural gas or contriving the ultimate search engine—all are Mitsubishi. But they will discover that they can keep the wealth considered tedious and trivial by the established powers.

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Most people consider themselves above the gritty and relent - social policies, and litigation. A preoccupation with national less details of life that allow the creation of great wealth. They liabilities diverts attention from the massive political devaluation leav e it to the experts. But in general you join the 1 percent of the of the nation’s assets. 1 percent not by leaving it to the experts but by creating new “Starve the beast” is the new mantra of conservative econom- expertise, not by knowing what the experts know but by learning ics. “Shrink the budget” is the new mandate for prosperity. “Keep what they think is beneath them. what you earn” is seen as the moral foundation for lower taxes. All The competitive pursuit of knowledge is not a dog-eat-dog these formulations bear some truth, but they focus on accounting Darwinian struggle. In capitalism, the winners do not eat the tautologies rather than on the dynamics of creative enterprise. losers but teach them how to win through the spread of informa- Conservatives still urge lower taxes, but many no longer know tion. Far from being a zero-sum game, where the success of some how to defend them, distracted as they are by an economics of comes at the expense of others, free economies climb spirals of austerity that obsesses on the downside of deficits in a way inim- mutual gain and learning. Far from being a system of greed, cap- ical to the supply-side vision of abundance and unpredictability. italism depends on a golden rule of enterprise: The good fortune The first edition of Wealth and Poverty (1981) sprang from a of others is also your own. Applied to both domestic and interna- period of essentially balanced budgets and trade surplus under tional trade and commerce, this golden rule is the moral center of Jimmy Carter and helped launch a siege of deficits and trade gaps the system. Not only does capitalism excel all other systems in the under Ronald Reagan. During the Carter years, the government creation of wealth and transcendence of poverty, it also favors and was mostly in the black while everyone else was in the red. Under empowers a moral order. Reagan, though, the trillion-dollar rise in government liabilities Richard Posner, now an eminent judge, was one of my inspira- was dwarfed by a $17 trillion expansion of private-sector assets tional sources for the idea that capitalism is inherently favorable thanks to creative entrepreneurs. Over the decades following the to altruism. “The market economy,” he wrote, “fosters empathy Reagan revolution, government liabilities continued to expand, but and benevolence, yet without destroying individuality,” because once again private-sector-asset values increased, by $60 trillion for an individual to prosper in a market economy he must under- more. Only over the past ten years or so have liabilities risen faster stand and appeal to the needs and wants of others. As a result of than assets, which have crashed. Improvements in policy and tax my seizing the verboten flag of “altruism” from his hands and rates can instantly upgrade the value of all the assets in the econ- waving it at the head of the supply-side parade, Ayn Rand devot- omy without any physical change in their material composition. ed much of her last public lecture to a case against my ideas. I hugely admired Rand, who flung her moral defense of capitalism in the face of Soviet terror and socialist intellectual tyranny. But PPOSED to the reality of capitalism as a function of knowl- toward Christian altruism she indulged an implacable hostility, edge and creativity is the behavioral dream—implicitly stemming in part from her simplistic atheism and in part from her O accepted even among some supply-siders—of a “Skinner disdain for the leveler babble of sanctimonious clerics. box” economics of stimulus and response, wherein lower tax rates Most of the world, then as now, was engaged in one of its peri- impart a stimulus of reward for more work and risk-taking and odic revulsions against capitalist “greed” and waste. Lester thereby yield more revenues for the government. The implication Thurow of MIT was proclaiming a “zero-sum society,” where is that the mere desire for wealth has something to do with the henceforth any gains for the rich must be extracted from the poor ability to create it. But as Steve Forbes observes in How and middle classes. William Sloane Coffin, the formidable Yale Capitalism Will Save Us, explaining capitalism by self-interest or chaplain, was inveighing against capitalist orgies of greed and greed is like explaining airplane crashes by the force of gravity. environmental devastation. Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky Greed and gravity are general and ubiquitous in regimes of all were denouncing Western capitalism for displacing American sorts and therefore irrelevant to the extraordinary results of capi- Indians and condemning Israelis for displacing Palestinians talist creativity. (rather than praising the settlers in both countries for reclaiming Taxes do yield massively increased revenues as the rates are and redeeming wastelands and hugely enlarging the populations reduced. A successful economy, however, is driven less by the they could support). Edward Said was conducting his Columbia sharp edges of incentives than by the unimpeded flow of infor- classes (fatefully introducing the works of Frantz Fanon to future mation and its conversion into knowledge and wealth through fal- president Barack Obama) on Western psychological colonization sifiable experiments of enterprise. Increasing revenues come not and hegemonic evisceration of the entire Third World. from a mere scheme of carrots and sticks but from the develop- Here we go again, in the New Millennium. The themes of ment and application of productive knowledge. exploitation and zero-sum equality continue to preoccupy the The equation of lower tax rates and higher revenues remains media. Congress remains enthralled with static accounting rules perhaps the most thoroughly documented and widely denied that assume tax-rate reductions will not alter economic behavior. proposition in the history of economic thought. It has been aban- In this model, the only way to expand tax receipts is to raise rates doned even by some former supply-siders who ignore the global on the “rich.” tax revolution beyond our shores while obsessively analyzing For their part, some conservative leaders imply that our nation- ambiguous data from the Clinton era. al crisis is merely some budgeting blunder remediable through a At a generation’s distance, it is clear to me that we, the original balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. The focus on supply-siders, bear some responsibility for the failure to persuade. budgetary issues that will become acute a decade or so from now We were not radical enough—we allowed our own arguments to implies that liberal policies are not already infecting our economy be ensnared by the mechanical economics of Adam Smith and his with a multiple sclerosis of tax and regulatory curbs, destroying heirs. Even Arthur Laffer’s original and brilliant graph, after all, jobs and families with webs of rules and pettifoggery, skewed functioned almost entirely in the realm of rational expectations,

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stimulus and response applied to poor passive Homo economicus. avoiding taxes and interpreting regulations and consulting Let him keep more of the fruits of his labor and he will labor hard- lawyers and accountants. With fewer resources diverted to gov- er, we proclaimed; increase the after-tax rewards of investment ernment bureaucracy, they can conduct more undetermined and more investment there will be. experiments, test more falsifiable hypotheses, try more business By focusing on incentives rather than on information and plans, generate more productive knowledge. creativity, free-market economists have encouraged the idea that It is not the enlargement of incentives and rewards that gener- capitalism is based on greed, although, as we have seen, entrepre- ates growth and progress, profits and capital gains for the entre- neurs cannot in general revel in their wealth, because most of it is preneur and revenues for the government, but the combination of not liquid. Greed, in fact, only motivates capitalists to seek gov- new knowledge with the power to test and extend it. Volatile and ernment guarantees and subsidies that denature and stultify the shifting ideas, not heavy and entrenched establishments, consti- works of entrepreneurs. The financial crash of 2007 and beyond tute the source of wealth. There is no bureaucratic net or tax web reflected orgies of greed among crony capitalists awash in that can catch the fleeting thoughts of Eric Schmidt of Google, government guarantees and subsidies, sitting on their Fannies Jules Urbach of Otoy, or Chris Cooper of Seldon Technologies. and Freddies, feeding in the troughs of Treasury privileges and The key issue in economics is not aligning incentives with government-insurance scams. Greed leads as by an invisible hand some putative public good but aligning power with knowledge. to an ever-growing welfare and plutocratic state—to socialism Business investments bring both a financial and an epistemic and near-fascist corporatism. yield. Capitalism catalytically joins the two. Capitalist economies The secret of supply-side economics is not merely to incen- grow because they award wealth to its creators, who have already tivize people to work harder or accept more risk in order to gain a proven that they can increase it. Their proof was always the greater reward. That could be done under socialism. The reason service of others rather than themselves. lower marginal tax rates produce more revenues than higher ones As Peter Drucker has written, within companies there are no is that the lower rates release the creativity of employers, allowing profit centers, only cost centers. Whether a particular cost yields them to garner more information. They can move more rapidly a profit is determined voluntarily by customers and investors. down the curves of learning and experience. They can learn more Capitalism feeds on information that is outside of the company because they command more capital to use in their trade. With itself and therefore under the control of others. Only an altruistic more capital they can attract more highly skilled labor from orientation can tap the outside incandescence of information and around the globe. They can reduce time and effort devoted to learning that determine the success of capitalism’s gifts.

T H E H U M A N L I F E R E V I E W G e t y o u r F R E E t r i a l i s s u e

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industry groups in these efforts. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), vice chairman of the Subcommittee on Who Gave Us Oversight and Investigations, did a lot of the legwork on that investigation. She tells NATIONAl RevIeW that “throughout 2009 and early 2010, the White House did engage in these closed-door negotiations.” Obamacare? The key White House players were Nancy-Ann DeParle and Jim Messina. DeParle was head of the Office of Health Reform The medical industry provided crucial support (which was created by President Obama) and was colloquially known as the “health-care czar.” Messina, a White House deputy chief of staff, acted as a liaison between health- BY KEVIN GLASS industry groups and the president. DeParle and Messina were at the beck and call of lobbyists, working behind the scenes e can no longer afford to put health-care to secure the goodies that the groups wanted in exchange for reform on hold.” their support. It was on February 24, 2009, a little over a The White House held a series of meetings with the major ‘W month after he assumed office, that President groups in April and May 2009, trying to discern which con- Obama spoke these words to a joint session of Congress. What cessions would win them over. While every group was op - happened next—behind the curtain, in the effort to pass posed to the idea of a government-run insurance plan (a Obamacare—is not pretty. “public option”), they were all cautiously hopeful that they’d Negotiations started almost immediately. In his speech, the somehow be able to protect their interests. Cultivating this atti- president had promised to bring together “businesses and tude was an important goal for the White House: If President workers, doctors and health-care providers” in order to shape Obama could convince people that health-care reform was the massive legislation. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s attempt to inevitable, he would be able to peel off opposition groups by remake the health-care sector was thought to have failed offering specific provisions they desired. The industry was because of industry hostility to their efforts. The Obama being given a choice: Join the team and try to get something administration, therefore, would welcome health-industry lob- out of the legislation or stay on the sidelines and lose. byists to the White House with open arms. “After promising to conduct the health-care negotiations on C-SPAN,” a House energy and Commerce Committee staffer He American Hospital Association was among the first tells NATIONAl RevIeW, “President Obama worked behind to take the deal. In negotiations in late June and early closed doors to cut deals with the various special-interest T July, the White House sought a $155 billion reduction groups.” The health-care industry, for its part, was no longer in subsidies and payments to hospitals for Medicare, Medicaid, focused on resisting a government intrusion into the private and uncompensated-care programs. The AHA agreed, but the economy. It knew that an alliance between big business and big sides soon began sniping at each other, and the AHA started government could bear big fruits, so it loaded up with policy separate negotiations on the same issues with the Senate experts and lobbyists who would help it shape the legislation Finance Committee. This caused Nancy-Ann DeParle to com- to its advantage. The American Hospital Association (AHA), plain to linda Fishman, one of the AHA’s top lobbyists. the American Medical Association (AMA), and the Pharma- DeParle wrote: “We are taking all sorts of incoming from press ceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) about specific things you have sought in the [Senate Finance have their fingerprints all over Obamacare. Committee] deal. . . . We are saying that we are not party to On May 15, 2009, the AHA, the AMA, and PhRMA teamed such an agreement—we agreed to a number, $155 billion. I up—along with the labor union SeIU, the insurance group know you understand that you are much more likely to end up AHIP, and the medical-device manufacturers’ association where you want to be if you don’t box us in.” This veiled threat AdvaMed—to release a joint statement in support of the devel- worked: The AHA suddenly insisted to the press that it wasn’t oping plan. “Health-care reform will not be sustainable,” it pushing for anything outside of the White House agreement said, “unless the nation brings down the rate of growth of and would continue to support the administration. health-care spending. . . . To be successful, we must take action What the AHA wanted most was to preserve the flow of gov- in a public-private partnership. We look forward to offering ernment money to its member hospitals, especially through cost-savings recommendations in the weeks ahead.” What the Medicare and Medicaid. In exchange, the AHA agreed to the public didn’t see was the furious wheeling and dealing $155 billion in payment cuts, spent incredible sums of money between the industry and the Obama administration over these on lobbying, and steered most of its campaign donations “cost-savings” recommendations. It was a “public-private toward Democrats. Despite supporting the White House partnership” that allowed both sides to get much of what they through the legislative process, the AHA never issued an offi- wanted from Congress. cial endorsement of the final Obamacare legislation, but two earlier this year, the House energy and Commerce weeks after President Obama signed the bill, it unrolled an Committee concluded an investigation that revealed a startling unusual million-dollar ad campaign in the districts of 16 degree of coordination between the White House and health- Democratic House members, most of them in vulnerable seats in red states, thanking them for their “yes” votes. Mr. Glass is the managing editor of Townhall.com. The American Medical Association also walked a tightrope.

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Like the other groups, it was steadfastly against a public Deem wrote to DeParle, “We expected and are getting a lot of option, but otherwise it tried to cast itself as a partner of the flak from individual physicians,” but “we do not totally reject administration. And there was a laundry list of items it wanted the concept of an advisory board.” Publicly, the AMA was in the bill. As outlined in a memo from Richard Deem, its head against the IPAB provision of Obamacare as written, but lobbyist, to DeParle, its priorities included medical-liability the organization was refusing to throw its weight behind the reform and the so-called doc fix, a permanent repeal of the doctors’ opposition. AMA support for Obamacare would move payment structure under which doctors are underpaid for ser- forward. vices to Medicare and Medicaid patients. On March 19, 2010, two days before the final vote in The AMA was more trusting than other industry groups in the Congress, the AMA reiterated its endorsement of the bill. Obama administration’s willingness and ability to deliver what James Rohack, the association’s president, expressed reserva- it promised. “It was a bit of naïvety on the part of the AMA,” tions about IPAB and hoped that a permanent doc fix could be Dr. Marcy Zwelling, an AMA member and former president of agreed upon, but claimed that “this bill will help patients and the Los Angeles County Medical Association, tells NATIONAL physicians.” For its trouble, the AMA got a six-month doc fix RevIeW. “They did not understand the politics. They did not in a separate piece of legislation. Another short-term fix was understand that they were being used. And they were used.” passed before the end of 2010, but it will expire this year. AMA Negotiations got off to a rocky start. In early May 2009, lobbyists are still pushing for a permanent solution. AMA representatives met with senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus but found him unhelpful. “[I] don’t think it went well from a health-sector-community perspec- eRhAPs the biggest health-care prize for the White tive,” Deem wrote to DeParle. he also observed that “we are house was the support of the drug industry. PhRMA taking grief from our members because the perception is we P spends tens of millions of dollars on lobbying every are serving them up for payment cuts. . . . It seems like the goal year, and the administration knew that its support would be posts are being moved.” hugely influential. AMA members were becoming uncomfortable with the In the spring of 2009, the White house’s courtship of direction their board of trustees was taking. The AMA’s posi- PhRMA began. After a meeting in May between Joel Johnson, tion on Obamacare “was not representative of the AMA as a a lobbyist who represents drug companies, and White house whole,” Dr. Zwelling says. Doctors were worried that their chief of staff Rahm emanuel, Johnson established the terms of organization was being politicized in the White house’s push their relationship in an e-mail: PhRMA needed “a direct line of for health-care reform. communication, separate and apart from any other coalition.” After its abortive talks with Baucus, the AMA turned to the The drug companies promised to work with the White house White house. On July 7, they struck an informal deal, but to control drug-price inflation, and in exchange they would secrecy was of the utmost importance. “There is some chatter have a seat at the table to help craft the legislation. in the health-policy world about a possible physician agree- It was a rocky road, but the White house would eventually ment [a deal under which the AMA would support Obama - deliver for PhRMA as it had not for the AMA. On June 22, care],” Deem wrote to DeParle. “We [are] treating our 2009, President Obama announced that the White house had dis cussions with you as highly confidential. If asked by reached an agreement in which the drug industry would con- reporters we are providing low-key generic responses.” The cede $80 billion in projected future revenues on drugs sold to way the AMA subsequently went about campaigning for the government (mostly for Medicare). What the president did Obamacare, however, was anything but low-key. In the fol- not announce were the provisions that PhRMA demanded as a lowing weeks and months, it funded ads explicitly backing condition of its agreement. President Obama. When the reform approached passage in The drug lobby had two main policy goals: It wanted to October, the AMA helped the White house identify which make sure that price controls and a “public option” were not senators were persuadable and deployed its lobbyists and forced onto Medicare Part D, and it wanted to make sure the members to influence them. bill didn’t include a provision allowing drug reimportation. But it also became clear in October that the AMA had been Reimportation would allow health-care providers and con- cheated on the doc fix. In order for Obamacare to receive sumers in the United states to bring in American pharmaceuti- a good score from the Congressional Budget Office, the cal products from other countries—such as Canada—in which fix—which would have added more than $200 billion to the drugs are sold at lower prices. This would force pharmaceu - deficit over the next ten years—would have to be removed. tical companies selling in the United states to compete with Privately, Democratic leaders were assuring the AMA that lower-priced versions of both foreign drugs and their own separate doc-fix legislation would still be passed, and the products. This was something that PhRMA obviously wanted AMA took them at their word. But the senate passed a provi- to avoid. sion that created the Independent Payment Advisory Board, an The fight over the public option was long and difficult. unelected commission that would have power over physician- Liberal Democrats in the house worked tenaciously to get one payment rates for Medicare. IPAB would be empowered to cut into the bill, but lobbying by the AMA, PhRMA, and other doctors’ payments, and as the legislation was written, IPAB health-care groups, combined with the White house’s hands- would be tasked with cutting them drastically. off approach, prevented them from succeeding. On reimporta- The AMA had a chance to stand up for its doctors as, after the tion, though, the Obama administration strongly backed the IPAB provision was included in the senate’s bill, it went back drug companies. DeParle wrote to PhRMA lobbyists that to the house for approval. In January 2010, however, Richard Obama’s policy would be, “based on how constructive you

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guys have been, to oppose importation on the bill.” the admin- ith the White house’s blessing, a 501(c)(4) organi - istration also supported PhRMA on price controls on Medicare zation was set up to run a pro-health-care-reform ad Part D. W campaign in April 2009. Explicit in PhRMA’s deal in the weeks after the June 22 deal was announced, however, with the White house was PhRMA’s promise to donate significant it seemed likely to fall apart. henry Waxman, chairman of the amounts of money to this organization, known as healthy house Energy and Commerce Committee, balked at the deal Economy Now. it received over $10 million from PhRMA, along- and claimed that the house’s developing version of the health- side smaller donations from the AMA, the Federation of care legislation needn’t be bound by it. Waxman wanted more American hospitals, the AARP, and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. than the $80 billion in concessions that the drug industry had throughout the spring and summer of 2009, healthy Economy already made. he considered both drug reimportation and price Now spent tens of millions on ads in states whose congressional controls to be on the table. And he claimed the White house representatives were thought to be persuadable. didn’t feel particularly beholden to the deal either. Another group, Americans for Stable Quality Care, was set up Bryant hall, one of PhRMA’s lead lobbyists, leapt into in a joint effort by health-industry groups and received and spent action and worked with Jim Messina to get the White house even more money than healthy Economy Now had. PhRMA and PhRMA on the same page. Multiple media outlets had poured almost $60 million into it. Because the legislation had confirmed that President Obama had backed off of the previ- started to come together in its specifics, this group was even more ous PhRMA deal, but within hours the storyline changed explicit in its advocacy of particular measures in Obamacare, again. hall convinced Messina to tell both Politico and the including the individual mandate, the Medicare expansion, and New York Times that the White house was standing behind the the requirement that insurers cover individuals with preexisting deal and didn’t support Waxman’s attempt to push for more. it conditions. was an incredible display of PhRMA’s political clout, and even Part of PhRMA’s deal with the White house was that it would hall’s colleagues were stunned after he bragged, “i pushed Jim team up with Families USA, an SEiU-connected 501(c)(4) group, Messina to do it.” to bring back “harry and Louise,” a series of advertisements run Just when it seemed everything had been smoothed over, the against the 1993–94 Clinton health-care plan. this time harry and Obama team muddied the waters. On July 21, 2009, President Louise would be staunchly pro-reform, and they would be sup- Obama read a speech off a teleprompter that implied that drug ported by PhRMA and Families USA to the tune of $4 million. companies were part of a cabal of “special interests” working to the American Medical Association, increasingly concerned delay or kill reform efforts. Messina, according to the congres- that its doc fix wouldn’t make it into the final legislation, took to sional investigation, asked the president why he was suddenly the airwaves with some major ad buys separate from the cam- hostile to PhRMA again, and Obama replied, “i was wondering paigns it helped run with healthy Economy Now and Americans the same.” it turned out that someone on the speechwriting for Stable Quality Care. the AMA ran two multimillion-dollar team hadn’t gotten the memo that the White house and the drug campaigns, in October 2009 and January 2010, upping the pres- companies were on the same side. sure on Congress for the permanent doc fix. With no pressure “i guess we didn’t give enough in contributions and media from the White house, however, the campaigns failed, and the ads,” read an internal e-mail from a drug-industry lobbyist at AMA was denied one of its key policy goals. the time. “Perhaps no amount would suffice.” Messina and President Obama signed his health-care legislation on March Emanuel reassured hall that the president’s newest attack on 23, 2010, 13 months after his address on the subject to the joint drugmakers was merely a teleprompter mistake. Yet at the end session of Congress. the process had been messy, but he had suc- of July, President Obama gave a speech implying that drug ceeded where President Clinton had failed, because he had makers had gotten a sweetheart deal and that they might be learned the lessons of the 1990s reform fight. he bought off big asked to make additional concessions. hall complained that business, he played the media, he demanded that the health-care the president “beat the piss out of us again” and worried that industry pony up millions of dollars to support his message—and White house senior adviser David Axelrod was pushing a new, he won. But he has not owned up to his backroom tactics. “the tougher line against the drug companies. administration essentially told the American people that how the his fears were confirmed as, in the first week in August, law was written was none of their business,” a congressional Bloomberg reported that Axelrod had told Democrats there staffer tells NAtiONAL REviEW. Representative Blackburn notes was no deal between the White house and PhRMA. Afterward, that “everybody but the White house has cooperated” with her a furious hall had to be talked down by Messina once again. investigation. they then conducted a joint PR campaign, outflanking industry groups paid up big time, got some things they wanted, Axelrod. and failed to get others. Big business has long tried to steer gov- Messina told a New York Times reporter to reiterate that the ernment policy, but in this instance the stakes were greater than White house was standing behind the original deal, and hall usual. the AMA, the AhA, and PhRMA—all of which declined had a PhRMA spokesperson persuade CBS News not to run a interview requests for this piece—saw a future with an expanded story reporting that the White house wasn’t sticking by its end government role in the health-care industry, and they worked to of the deal and drug reimportation would be back on the table. shape that future with an eye to their own interests. their efforts these efforts finally sealed the deal: While reimportation and helped bring about a new system in which the government has the public option would continue to be mentioned occasional- more power than ever before over the health-care industry, from ly, by the fall the White house had gotten PhRMA behind macro issues to the smallest minutiae. they must accordingly bear Obamacare. a large portion of the blame for this massive and unprecedented Now they just had to sell the thing to the American people. intrusion of government into private life.

3 8 | www.nationalreview.com AUGUST 1 3 , 2 0 1 2 lileks--READY_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/24/2012 9:36 PM Page 39

Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Funeral Audit

ANDERED through a few European museums ning collage of found objects whose careful arrangement last month. You find yourself looking at the reveals the artist’s sensibility; someone else did. All the gov- 435th Annunciation, this time by Giovanni ernment is asking is for people who inherit a billion dollars’ W Battisti Garbonzo DiLavatrini, and the eyes worth of art to pay their fair share, so we don’t go back to the start to glaze. If there’s a modern room, it wakes you up, like Failed Policies of the Past, where the Bush administration chewing ice with a mouthful of cavities; then you get to the deprived the Treasury of revenue with their falsified evalua- most recent works, which are conceptual pieces: a sheet of tions. Remember when Colin Powell went before the U.N. copier paper with nothing on it, framed, titled “Out of Toner.” and said that Peter Max silkscreen was probably worth At that point you’re ready for Annunciation #426. $12,000, at best? Infamy. We need that money so we can in - There’s more art back on the cruise ship, ranging from vest in things like roads and bridges that bring people to competent to kitschy-kitschy-koo. It’s for sale! One night at museums so they can pause by a collage that contains a dead dinner I was seated next to a fellow who’d run a fine-art bird and linger for a second before heading off to the “Art of gallery, and when the subject of ship- Star Wars” exhibit. It has original draw- board art came up, he assumed the ex - ings from the first movie! Darth Vader’s pression of Shelley Duvall in The helmet is totally different. Shining when Jack Nicholson comes The family has already coughed up hacking through the bathroom door. $471 million in estate taxes, paid for by But people buy it. the sale of $600 million worth of art. What’s it all worth? The old standard: This leaves them with over $100 mil- whatever someone’s willing to pay. The lion, so they have no right to complain new standard: whatever the government to anyone about anything. That’s how says it’s worth. A curious case was re - liberals see it, anyway. The estate tax ported in the New York Times in July: A evens things out, averts the concentra- family inherited a sculpture by Robert tion of wealth, and provides opportunity Rauschenberg that includes a stuffed through the magic power of govern- bald eagle. Because you cannot sell any- ment. The moment that $471 million thing that contains bald eagle, they are forbidden to auction check cleared, someone unemployed in Oklahoma got a it off, and the heirs do not want to shuffle off to the big house phone call telling him the plant was opening back up again in leg irons for selling a 70-year-old bird. People like them and the kids wouldn’t have another winter without shoes. are the lowest of the low in the prison hierarchy. Shivs in the “Gosh, mister—thanks!” shower. They’d never make it out. “Don’t thank me. Thank the IRS art evaluators who cor- So far they have escaped prosecution because the bird was rectly discerned the value of that Jeff Koons rabbit sculpture. shot by one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders—that sanc- They’re the real heroes.” tifies it, apparently—and it was plugged before the 1940 law It makes you realize there’s a lot of wealth out there the that protected the bald eagle. It’s probably good that they government could recapture, if only it started sticking heirs can’t sell it, lest people start abusing the law to create Edgy, with tax bills for heirlooms. Set up a Department of Inflated Outside Art that really shocks the bourgeoisie, like a snail Assets and Forfeiture. Grandma leaves you her dusty collec- darter in a jar of urine. tion of Hummel figurines and Franklin Mint commemora- The family says it’s not worth anything, because they can’t tive plates? The DIAF says they’re worth $648,945. You owe sell it. The IRS says—and I’m paraphrasing—HAHAHAHA $221,842. This would work for baseball cards, cigar bands Seriously, pay up. From the New York Times: pasted in binders, a shoebox of trading stamps Mom never cashed in but couldn’t toss because they were worth some- Last fall, the agency sent the family an unsigned draft report thing, somehow. Everything has value to someone, and if that it was valuing “Canyon” at $15 million. After Mr. Lerner you can’t trust the government to set its value for the pur- replied that the children were refusing to pay, the I.R.S. then poses of extracting the maximum tax, whom can you trust? sent a formal Notice of Deficiency in October saying it had increased the valuation to $65 million. Estate taxes are popular because most people don’t pay them. This would change if the government sent around an Meaning: $29.5 million in taxes. If they lose the case, an agent to pry the rings off the body in the coffin during the additional $11.7 million in penalties for having the audacity funeral, which is why they don’t: Tempting from a revenue to demur. Over $41 million in taxes on a stuffed bird that standpoint, but bad optics. So why not tax the heirs on the cannot be sold. value of rings Grandma wore when she was planted? Sure, Fine, the president might say: They didn’t build that stun- you probably won’t sell them, because you’d have to dis inter

. her. But you could. Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. Good enough! Here’s the bill. WARNER BROS

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

That awkward moment when you Thanks, Tweeps. Decided to give tea want to connect with your uncle who to the cat when @unclesung wasn’t is trying to replace your dictator father looking. Then cat disappeared. Weird but you just can’t ever call him “Dad” stuff.

From the Twitter feed Find myself totally into dubstep. Just now read in the paper that @gen- of Kim Jong Un, Cannot get enough. Loving the new eralriyongho has “retired due to health Skrillex. Wish I knew what all of that reasons,” which is weird because @youthcaptain was. right now at this minute I’m using his polished skull as an iPad docking sta- Hey Tweeps! A Twitter request: 1. tion. #reuserecycle Oh, carbs! Why do I love you so What is dubstep? 2. Who is Skrillex? much? Why do you taste so nom #northkoreaneedsspotify Wondering where my cat is. Oh well. nom? #losinglbsishardworkevenfora- It’s #korea after all! #gotsomethingin- supremeleader A long meeting with military types. commonwithbarack People keep asking about the new Not sure why @generalriyongho was “marshal” position and who’s going to I just checked into Pyongyang Military hiding in my armoire, but he certainly get it. Personally, more interested in Detainment Center! I just unlocked gave me a jolt. Also not sure why he @americanidol Unenlightened Despot Badge! had that Luger. Oh well. I’ll ask him when he comes to. @markzuckerberg Did you find it hard They’re dancing all over town to cele- #goodthingIhadmyfreeweights to get people to take a young leader brate my elevation as supreme mar- seriously? Cuz I sure do! #young- shal of the armed forces. I wish I Some songs just hit you like they were dudesrule could feel their joy. #noonetoshare- written just for you. For me that’s mylifewith “Cat’s in the Cradle.” Also “Wind I stand with President Barack Obama Beneath My Wings.” Also “Super and his Plan to Finish the Job! Please Loving #sullivanandson on @tbs! Freak.” #feelinglonely RT! @obamaforamerica Dropped a Milk Dud and when I went Had tea with Uncle Sung today. I Lots of weird conversations with to pick it up, felt a live round zip past think he’s warming up to me. When I @unclesung recently. Keeps asking my ear. Gotta be @unclesung. Why talked about how great it would be to me to take tea with him. I know he’s can’t he just say he loves me and hug kidnap hip-hop sensation Drake to reaching out, but have a hard time me like a normal uncle? Why does he help build up our music biz he was opening up to him. Wish he hadn’t always have to try to kill me? #old- totally silent. I expected him to slap tried to execute me all those years school me. Progress! ago. Makes it hard to get close. Just saw myself on the news. I have Hard to decide which labor camp to Hey! @katieholmes! Very sorry to hear to be honest: I’m looking REALLY visit and which one to liquidate. #sec- about you and @tomcruise. But if you good these days! Lost a lot of weight ondworldproblems like that kind of stuff, why not come to in the face and my pants seem less #nork?? I could make you a very balloon-y. #gottacelebrateyoursuc- I just ousted @SungKimCha as mayor happy First Lady! cess of Pyongyang Military Academy. Not sure why @generalriyongho has Just spoke to adoring military person- Hey, Tweeps, check out my super been such a pill lately. Especially nel. It’s so amazing how much they fresh new tat. It’s of my dad, sipping when I made sure we only executed love me! I hope I can accept it instead ginseng tea underneath a mountain. his wife, who is huge, and not his of doubting myself and my worth like I But instead of tattooing a mountain, daughter, who is smoking hot. always do. #tonyrobbins I’ve just used my . . . well see for #nogooddeed yourself: twitpic.com/kdsa8 Hey, @katieholmes! Please follow me Hey, Tweeps, does this tea look odd so I can DM you. We have a lot to talk Hey! @morganfairchild! Please follow to you? @unclesung just poured it for about. #notasweirdasscientol- me so I can DM you! #haveagreatoffer me. Is it supposed to be cloudy? ogyipromise PLEASE RT twitpic.com/34d80 FF @govjerrybrown @mattyglesias Cure to shortness problem! Have your @ericalterman Great guys, really I will never ever understand why they uncle dismembered and placed into a crushing it in their respective realms. make us wait until the next season box. Then stand on the box to give a (How about a follow back, dudes? begins to be able to download the last speech to the rest of the generals. Good Twittiquette!) season. #hbosux #gameofthrones #looktall #makestatement

4 0 | www.nationalreview.com AUGUST 1 3 , 2 0 1 2 books8-13_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/24/2012 3:23 PM Page 41 Books, Arts & Manners

book deserves to be regarded as the most limited effectiveness of these approaches. important environmental book of the last Many regulatory regimes, such as the Green 20 years. if the environmental movement Clean Air Act, achieve substantial results. takes it seriously, it might find a way out of But they do so, scruton points out, at a cost Shift the dead end into which it has force- that cannot be measured in merely mone- marched itself. And conservatives who tary terms. his central criticism is sweep- STEVEN F. HAYWARD embrace his rich arguments will find a ing and challenging, a richer variation of way of contesting the Left for ownership the “moral hazard” argument: “By confis- of environmental issues that doesn’t de - cating risk the modern regulatory state pend on arid and utilitarian cost-benefit both diminishes human resilience and arguments or the ritual denunciations of expels from our social experience the one the leftist view. Perhaps the most refresh- factor that is needed if future generations ing aspect of scruton’s book is that it tra- are to be protected from our greed, and verses most of the key issues without that is the sense of responsibility—the recourse to the standard clichés of either sense that i, here, now, am answerable to side. Even when he is taking on the worst others, there, then. . . . Public spirit has of fever-swamp environmental leftism, his been confiscated by government, national critique is all the more devastating for his and local.” Against the politicized and calm and understated prose. centralizing tendencies of conventional How to Think Seriously about the Planet: On the surface it may seem counterintu- environmentalism, scruton proposes a The Case for an Environmental Conservatism, itive, if not audacious, to suggest that the different core principle, which he calls by Roger Scruton (Oxford, environment should be a conservative oikophilia—Greek for “love of place.” 457 pp., $29.95) issue, let alone that conservatives could do Before explaining oikophilia in detail, a better job of protecting the environment scruton takes an appropriate detour to his review should begin with a than liberals or the EPA. This common confront the elephant in the room—global confession: i badly underesti- misperception is just one of the perverse warming. it is one thing to set out a Bur - mated Roger scruton. consequences of what scruton calls the kean framework for harnessing the “little T When i heard two years ago “confiscation” of the issue by big gov- platoons” of civil society on behalf of that scruton was coming to the American ernment and the Left. “Conservatism,” local or national environmental tasks, but Enterprise institute to write a book about scruton reminds us, “means the mainte- what about the potential global emer- a conservative view of environmentalism, nance of the social ecology,” which ought gency that is the large-scale byproduct of i was skeptical. Though i had long been a to be easily extended to physical ecology: the industrial Revolution itself? surely fan of his philosophical books, i didn’t “Conservatism and conservation are two this can’t be solved through voluntary think his body of work well suited to a aspects of a single long-term policy, which action. tackling of environmentalism. My skepti- is that of husbanding resources and ensur- While agnostic about the raging contro- cism deepened when i discussed his pro- ing their renewal. . . . it always surprises versies of climate science, scruton under- ject with him: in addition to describing an me that so few environmentalists seem to stands that the principal difficulty with the approach that sounded unpromising, he see this.” whole issue is that it was exalted above all seemed unfamiliar with many of the major While scruton acknowledges that “there other issues and “lifted . . . entirely clear of figures and prominent features of the en- are environmental problems so great that normal politics”; “the ordinary politics of vironmental debate of the last 40 years. only the state can successfully address compromise [was brought] to a sudden After a long conversation, i sent him from them,” for the most part he is firm in stop.” The main proposed solution—sup- my office with a large stack of key books, rejecting politicized solutions to environ- pression of fossil fuels—evinces “a sense recommending that he “might look at” a mental problems. The problem with state of dream-like unreality. Unreal targets, few of them. solutions is that “every solution that seems pursued in ignorance of the means to he not only carefully read them all (and perfect in theory seems to fall apart when achieve them, and without any conception a great many others, too), but has assi - put in the hands of government.” scruton of how the attempt to do so will impinge milated virtually the entire landscape of gives a nimble tour through many of the on popular sentiment, on competing goals, environmental thought into an original well-established conservative criticisms and on the many other factors that wise synthesis so complete and challenging to of bureaucratic regulation, and displays a government must consider, have dominat- the conventional wisdom that his new deep grasp of the alternatives to statist reg- ed the remedies to climate change, both in ulation, such as common-law regimes, the schemes of politicians and in the Mr. Hayward is the author of The Almanac of property rights, and markets. exhortations of activists.” Environmental Trends and Mere But his main reason for deep skepticism scruton is not blind to the bad faith of Environmentalism. He writes daily on of the statist “confiscation” of environ- the environmental Left, which sees global PowerLineBlog.com. mental problems is not the high cost or warming as a vehicle to extend broader

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS control over human beings: “Great emer- comes from being bounded in an academ- gencies require top-down solutions. . . . ic nutshell.” For many people the curbing of human How to Think Seriously about the The Obama activity is the goal.” And “radical egalitar- Planet is not without defects that will irk ians are not satisfied with a policy that many conservative readers. Scruton de - Failure does not have a world-transforming char- fers to some conventional environmental acter.” As such, therefore, environmental- views on urban sprawl, plastic bags, and SAMUEL R. STALEY ists are ironically the chief obstacle to locavorism, though even here he comes to dealing with climate change, whatever these views honestly and without the its dimensions or causes: They will have familiar moralizing and hectoring of envi- to get over their innate hostility to the ronmentalists. To the contrary, one of the Industrial Revolution if answers to climate most reassuring sentences in the book is: change (such as adaptation) are to work. “When I read the ‘wholier than thou’ mor- The heart of the book is the several alizing of the eco-crusaders I confess that chapters that build up a robust understand- the spirit of the hunter rises within me.” ing of oikophilia. At first glance, Scruton’s Amen. Even if some of Scruton’s stances one-word concept might seem a mere on specific issues could benefit from some restatement of well-known land- or place- traditional policy-tradeoff wonkery, the based ethics like those found in Aldo massive strengths of the book more than Leopold, Wendell Berry, and other leg- mitigate these weak points. Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and endary environmental writers. But he Readers won’t find a specific list of pol- What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future, quickly eclipses these classic authors with icy changes, such as how to reform the by Grover G. Norquist and John R. Lott Jr. a philosophical discourse astonishing in its Endangered Species Act, for example. But (Wiley, 228 pp., $27.95) sweep, showing a much deeper under- does anyone really need another trip standing of the defects of conventional through the balance sheet of plastic versus HE political timing for Debacle environmental philosophy and offering a paper? (Scruton rightly notes that most is not coincidental, and Grover way of thinking about individual respon - such treatments are “dry, dull, and calculat- Norquist and John Lott’s book sibility to natural things that transcends ed to lower the rate of the reader’s pulse.” T may well become the most im - portant arrow striking President Obama’s economic policy. They have written an Environmentalists are ironically eminently accessible book that lays out clearly and concisely why Obama’s eco- the chief obstacle to dealing with nomic policies have failed and why more climate change, whatever its of the same won’t reset the U.S. economy. The book adds little that is original to the dimensions or causes. public debate—virtually all the material in it can be found in online and print ver - the sentimental and pantheistic nature Truly environmentalism has displaced sions of the leading free-market publica- worship typical of many environmental eco nomics as the dismal science.) Scruton tions—but Norquist and Lott have done paeans. recognizes that the real problem of envi- something important: They have pulled In contrast to oikophilia, Scruton ex - ronmental thought lies far beyond that kind the most important arguments and data plains how left-leaning environmentalism of dispute. The problem with environmen- together in one place, providing a well- is oikophobic and “morally empty” at its tal thought is its general disposition, and organized polemic against Obama’s eco- core. This part of his argument is difficult Scruton offers a comprehensively different nomic policies, and they have laid out a to summarize or characterize briefly; suf- way to conceive the whole subject. cogent and detailed set of alternative pro- fice it to say that his grand journey in - I doubt that conventional environmen- posals. corporates references to, among others, talists will take Scruton to heart. Today’s The story of the Obama administra- Burke, Dickens, Hans Jonas, James environmental establishment, comfortable tion’s failed policies doesn’t start with the Joyce, Wagner, Homer, John Rawls, and, and prosperous because of its intense stimulus package. Rather, the seeds of the most intriguingly of all, Heidegger. Scru - but narrow membership base and the debacle were sown nearly two decades ton does the best job I’ve ever seen of dis- deep pockets of guilt-stricken Hollywood earlier, in the Clinton administration. Back entangling this problematic thinker from celebrities, is oblivious to the extent to then, many of the people who were to his “convoluted jargon” and derives one which it has squandered the goodwill it devise Obama’s economic policies were of the most original and trenchant obser- enjoyed among middle-class Americans working with Congress to fundamentally vations I’ve ever seen about the radical in the 1970s. But sincere nature-loving shift economic policy to promote home- character of European greens. He thor- conservatives (which should be all conser- ownership—by relaxing lending stan- oughly outclasses those he rightly dis- vatives, actually) should seriously study dards and pressuring private financial misses, such as the egregious Peter this book and then run circles around Singer, as being “armchair philosophers today’s intellectually comatose environ- Mr. Staley is managing director of the DeVoe L. whose mastery of infinite moral space mentalists. Moore Center at Florida State University.

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companies to lend to a broader range of economic policies might not have become Norquist and Lott also properly criticize households that also presented higher risks the political Achilles’ heel of his presiden- Obama’s advisers for sticking to a strik- of default. A key component of this strate- cy if he and his advisers hadn’t been so ingly unnuanced and simplistic Keynesian gy was using the government-sponsored arrogant and duplicitous in the crafting, prescription that focuses on boosting enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Fred - passage, and implementation of the stim- aggregate demand—irrespective of how

die Mac to guarantee the mortgage-backed ulus program. The administration infa- the money is spent, where, or by whom—

securities that included these riskier mort- mously trotted out half-baked economic as the economic rescue plan. In the end, gages, so they could be sold on the sec- models predicting that an $800 billion despite the campaign rhetoric positioning ondary mortgage market. federal-government spending spree would Obama as a pragmatic candidate who Virtually everyone—except, apparent- create more than 5 million jobs. Admin - would let policy be led by sober analysis ly, the Obama administration—recognizes istration economists predicted that unem- of “what works,” the reality has been an in hindsight that these policies helped cre- ployment would peak at 7.9 percent in the ideologically driven economic policy that ate the conditions that allowed the housing summer of 2009. Without the stimulus, centralizes federal-government economic bubble, by fueling demand for housing, they said, the economy’s unemployment power and consciously increases the size expanding the use of exotic financing rate would stay at about 9 percent through- of government on all levels. (such as balloon payments, interest-only out 2009 and over 6 percent through 2012. And Norquist and Lott don’t focus just mortgages, and other subprime instru- Of course, unemployment peaked at 10 on spending. A chapter titled “Regulatory ments), and, most important, obscuring percent in October 2009 even with the Thuggery” at first seems to be a nod to

the inherent risk associated with these stimulus (and subsequent mini-stimulus

assets in mortgage-backed securities programs) and has stayed over 8 percent (which were themselves an innovation through most of 2012. Many states found introduced by the GSEs). their unemployment peaking over or near CAN YOU TRUST The book’s opening chapter lays out this 10 percent. Norquist and Lott do an ad - NATIONAL REVIEW? story. Norquist and Lott effectively show mirable job of dissecting how miserable that the same policymakers who created the administration’s track record is, noting CanW hyou trust National i d Review f dl? the crisis are the ones responsible for that at best the economy may have added Yes. Please do so when planning designing and implementing economic about 840,000 jobs (on net). your estate. Keep us standing policy for the recovery. And their thinking The administration’s response to these athwart history, yelling Stop. hasn’t changed much, despite the collapse dismal numbers is that it underestimated

of the housing market and the financial the depth and breadth of the recession. By remembering National Review industry: The problem, in their view, was This lament is not altogether without in your will, estate, or trust, you that the wrong people, with the wrong merit. Although Norquist and Lott don’t will leave a legacy of continued motives and incentives, were running the delve into the broader issue of the reliabil- housing market and financial industry, and ity of economic forecasting, virtually all support for those conservative they believed that putting the right people macroeconomists and economic modelers causes and beliefs that will be as in key positions would make the economy missed the timing, underlying causes, and vital to future generations as they run properly again. severity of the recession. The fact that the are to ours. Please contact: The rest of the book systematically top economic forecasters misjudged the tears this view apart, while also laying economy on such a grand scale, however, Jim Kilbridge bare the utter empirical failure of Obama’s doesn’t justify the massive deficit spend- National Review economic policies. Norquist and Lott pre- ing promoted by Obama’s policies. If 215 Lexington Avenue sent compelling evidence that the so- anything, the failure of the world’s best New York, NY 10016 called recovery is not much of a recovery experts would seem to argue for caution 212-679-7330 ext. 2826 at all; in fact, it may well be the worst in and circumspection. modern history. While the Obama admin- A particularly compelling series of istration claims that the recession was the charts demonstrates the stunning lack of “worst” since the Great Depression—a correlation between stimulus dollars and plausible-sounding but dubious claim— standard measures of economic distress the reality is that the recovery has been a such as unemployment, bankruptcy, and policy disaster. Long-term unemploy- foreclosure rates. Ultimately, the stimulus ment has been higher, job creation more dollars were allocated politically, and not anemic, and economic growth more spo- on the basis of a professional analysis radic than in any of the recoveries in of the costs and benefits of projects. The recent history. In fact, deep recessions are authors correctly point out the statistical historically known for their quick recov- fiction and politically self-serving nature eries. Not so with the current recovery, of differentiating between jobs “created” NATIONAL REVIEW is

and understanding why is crucial to de - versus jobs “saved,” which allowed the available on iTunes veloping a policy framework for getting administration to claim much higher ben- the economy back on track. efits from the stimulus than could be war- and Zinio. Oddly enough, the failure of Obama’s ranted by reports of real jobs created.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS conservatives who seem to rail ideologi- block-granting means-tested programs, cally against government of any kind, but reforming Social Security, adopting a soon reveals a troubling pattern of legislat- balanced-budget amendment, and so on. Making ing social and economic policies through The value of Norquist and Lott’s book the administrative labyrinth of govern- is in pulling these proposals together in Sense of ment agencies. They delve specifically one place. into the case of health-care regulation to While chronicling the highly politicized Inequality show how the administration has artfully and ideological nature of the Obama ad - used the regulatory state to restrain and ministration’s policymaking, the authors SCOTT WINSHIP direct private behavior and initiative. The have forsaken the kind of economic analy- health-care legislation, they note, created sis that would show why centrally direct- 159 new agencies, commissions, panels, ed economic policy is doomed to fail: The and other implementing bodies. In anoth- simplistic aggregate-demand approach to er example of the political use of statistics, stimulating the economy doesn’t take into they note that the administration and its account the dynamics and complexity of supporters selectively cited data to under- market prices and their role in allocating mine the notion that health-insurance resources to the most productive uses. markets are competitive: Supporters of Simply dumping more money into the Obamacare will point out that sever- economy assumes that all consumers will al states have just a handful of retail spend a certain number of dollars, when pro viders, such as the nonprofit Blue in fact, particularly in highly uncertain Cross/Blue Shield insurers, but in fact times, their preferences are fundamentally more than 900 third-party providers com- changed. To have explained this might The Great Divergence: America’s Growing pete nationwide to provide health-care have taken their book beyond its initial Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It, service to employers. These providers cre- purpose: It’s unlikely that people on the by Timothy Noah (Bloomsbury, ate a competitive insurance market for left, who desperately need to be taught that 272 pp., $25) most of the nation. particular truth, will pick up a book by The final chapter provides readers with Grover Norquist, president of Americans OT long ago, a former col- a way out. Norquist and Lott outline a for Tax Reform, or John Lott, author of league asked me to rec om - twelve-step program for getting America More Guns, Less Crime. In any case, the mend the best accessible back on track. Most conservatives will authors have done an admirable service, N ref erence on income ine - find few of these proposals new: eliminat- by providing a unified and accessible qual ity. I immediately suggested Tim - ing the death tax, selling off unused gov- sourcebook on the failure of Obama - othy Noah’s 2010 series of essays, “The ernment assets, adopting a flat income tax, nomics and the stimulus. Great Divergence,” written for his then- em ployer, Slate. Why, then, do I find Noah’s new book of the same name— IMAGINE THE UNFALLEN an expansion of the award-winning series—so frustrating? If this old fallen world can look so great, The book largely follows the outline of If even fallen birds can have such state the series, with its clearly presented statis- tics on the rise in inequality and Noah’s They land their narrow fingers on a tree, impressive explication of what social sci- And make a stem a stage to sing a glee entists have found regarding its causes. Of unrestricted wild tempestuous notes, The frustrations come, in part, from the Crying command and all command connotes additional space a book provides for Noah To this unvarnished helter-skelter earth, to wade into the perilous business of dot- If robins gather trash to spin a berth connecting. But even the original series For holding open wide the maws of chicks was irksome in the way it (faithfully) con- That squawk for breakfast, just a sodden mix veyed the conventional wisdom about the Of worms and insect tenderloin, and then supposed connections between inequal - ity, economic mobility, and living stan- (Barely with time to feather up by when dards. Both the original series and the They get their cue, their mother’s push and shove), new book are fantastic distillations not They land upright and strut with wondering love only of a messy literature on inequality Upon the moisture-laden April ground, and its causes, but also of a seriously Dispensing prodigal melodious sound— flawed conventional story about their They give—but never poor, not once crestfallen— consequences. Thus so our world—imagine the unfallen. Noah is an engaging and informative

—RICHARD M. LOOMIS Mr. Winship is a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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writer, and the first chapter of the book ing the 1980 numbers to reflect 2005 pur- world, birth rates have declined, marriage shows off his skills (even as it reveals chasing power. But if we ask what share and parenthood have been pushed off the ideological commitments the reader of income gains went to the top before to increasingly older ages, and women will have to be wary of). It provides an taking account of the fact that 2005 in - have had more educational opportunities. improbably captivating overview of what comes bought less for rich and poor alike A June 2000 NBC News/Wall Street we know about inequality trends and because of inflation, the answer is that the Journal poll found that just one-fifth of how we have come to this knowledge. top received just 28 percent of income married parents had a wife who worked He intertwines this history with a broad gains. “to make ends meet” but preferred staying account of how living standards and eco- Piketty and Saez garnered quite a bit of home. Second, husbands’ earnings are nomic security have changed, and it is attention in their latest update, when they likely lower than they would have been here that he falls into the traps of conven- found that 93 percent of the gains from because some of them have reduced the tion. 2009 to 2010 went to the top 1 percent. hours that they work and changed the type The “Golden Age” of the 1950s and But the computation they use also found of jobs they take in response to the money 1960s followed a steep decline in inequal- that 49 percent of the gains from 2007 to their wives now bring in. Finally, hus- ity and preceded our modern period of ris- 2009 went to the top, which is interesting, bands’ earnings would be higher today if ing inequality. In Noah’s view, “there because the total income received by the not for the increased competition from probably was no better time to hold mem- top 1 percent fell over those two years— working wives. bership in America’s middle class.” This by, on average, half a million dollars. It is Reflecting his misguided view that it’s widely held—but wrong—view reveals a strange statistic that indicates that a been downhill for the last 50 years, Noah the extent to which inequality has come to group commanded half of all income titles his first chapter “Paradise Lost.” He dominate the evaluative standards by gains when the data on which it is based writes that the political economy of the which liberals judge the economy. In fact, shows the group losing income. Golden Age “represents a path that would the median American family is twice as As for the income-versus-productivity be abandoned in the late 1970s,” suggest- rich today as it was in 1960, if one takes comparison, that one should be shelved ing that paradise was not so much lost into account changes in family size, for good, because researchers on both left as thrown away. But he never provides government and employer benefits, and and right have shown that, when properly a convincing case that things might ris ing immigration. That much of this analyzed, median family income actually have evolved differently. Economic im provement came before 1979—even tracks productivity very well. Noah cites growth slowed throughout Europe after 1973—hardly negates this central fact. a 2005 paper co-authored by economist the 1960s, and median-income growth Congressional Budget Office statistics Robert Gordon to back up his claim, but since 1980 has been no better in Canada, indicate that the median household was in 2009 Gordon wrote a widely cited France, Germany, or Sweden than in the 35 percent richer in 2007 than in 1979. paper showing that median income and U.S. The bottom fifth of households was about productivity actually aligned closely from Noah says we should worry about ris- 20 percent richer. 1979 to 2007, with the former increasing ing inequality, but he evades the central Noah and other liberals have a series of by 1.50 percent annually and the latter questions: Do gains at the top really come standard (but flawed) arguments that min- by 1.66 percent. On the other hand, male at the expense of the incomes of the mid- imize the extent of this improvement: A earnings have lagged behind productivity dle and bottom? If they do not, do the huge share of gains since 1980 went to the growth over the past few decades. The gains worsen inequality of opportunity in top 1 percent. Family-income growth simple explanation is that in earlier the next generation? Noah’s discussion hasn’t kept up with productivity increas- decades (during the peak union years), hardly even attempts to make the case that es. Income growth is due solely to wives’ male-earnings growth outpaced produc- inequality matters. Instead, he counters supplementing their families’ incomes. tivity increases, and the past few decades various arguments that inequality does Each of these claims is supported by naïve have seen men’s earnings fall back to not matter, which he invariably describes interpretations of readily available data, earth. (Women’s-earnings growth, mean- as “conservative.” He spends a single but a more careful examination belies while, has far exceeded productivity paragraph shrugging off the view that them. increases.) absolute living standards are more impor- Let’s begin with the share-of-gains es - The recent stagnation of male earn - tant to people than equality. timates. Noah plays up a finding that 80 ings has led many analysts to argue that On the question of income mobility, percent of the increase in income from middle-class families have stayed eco- Noah casually dismisses the possibility 1980 to 2005 went to the top 1 percent. nomically afloat only because wives that having a higher absolute standard of This is a figure derived from the work of increasingly bail out the boat. Noah cites living than one’s parents is more impor- Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. But the work of lawyer (and U.S. Senate can- tant to Americans than ending up at a their updates in recent years have used a didate) Elizabeth Warren. There are three higher rank than one’s parents when more appropriate adjustment for inflation, problems with the theory that families’ assessed against peers. But if “absolute and their more recent estimate is not 80 gains have come from the employment of mobility” is what really matters to Amer - percent but 58 percent. economically pressured wives. First, all icans, and if the U.S. looks more impres- Also, for a number of reasons, the signs are that the embrace of work among sive than other countries in this regard, share-of-gains figure is not as straightfor- wives is part of a longer-term story in then the American Dream doesn’t look ward as it would seem. For example, this which women get to lead more fulfilling quite so delusional, nor ambivalence figure looks at income gains after adjust- lives. In developed countries around the about inequality quite so misguided. These

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS are empirical questions that have not been yorkists through his fourth son, edmund answered, but Noah cannot even imagine of Langley, duke of york. a story in which Americans’ conceptions A Dynasty The contest began in 1422 when the of their opportunities are consistent with Lancastrian Henry v, hero of Agincourt, reality. Begins died suddenly at the age of 35, leaving an Noah closes the book with the obliga- infant son, Henry vi, and a young widow, tory policy-recommendation chapter that FLORENCE KING Catherine of valois, daughter of the king so often proves unsatisfactory even when of France. A king in his cradle saddled the written by genuine policy experts. Noah Lancasters with a regency, but there was wants to “soak the rich,” create a public- something else: Catherine of valois was jobs program, “impose price controls” on soon remarried, to a member of the minor colleges, “revive the labor movement,” Welsh nobility named owen Tudor. Their and “elect Democratic Presidents.” This grandson was the Henry Tudor of our tale. last recommendation derives from re - When the infant Henry vi grew up to search by Princeton political scientist exhibit the frittering passivity of the clas- Larry Bartels claiming to show that the sic inadequate personality, the yorkists middle class and poor do better when a decided to depose him. The Wars of the Democrat is in the White House—research Roses were on, and they went on for years debunked, separately, by NATioNAL Re - with all the features of a computer game. vieW contributor Jim Manzi and political Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn First one side mowed the other down and scientist James Campbell as dependent on of Tudor England, by Thomas Penn the losers fled to Brittany to regroup. in the fragile methodological specifications. (Simon & Schuster, 448 pp., $30) next round, the losers were the winners in the course of the book, Noah deftly until the winners lost again. various conti- explains the relative roles of discrimina- eNRy vii is such an unfamiliar nental leaders horned in, with the Duke of tion, rising economic returns to education, historical figure that it is easy Burgundy as a generic marauder. Finally, increased trade and immigration, declin- to mistake him for a misprint: in 1461, the triumphant losers successful- ing unionization, and public policies in H oh, they must mean Henry the ly regrouped and crowned edward iv contributing to rising inequality. Where eighth. A little basic research establishes the first yorkist king, but he died in 1483 the topics are narrower and more clear- his separate identity as Henry Tudor, from eating, drinking, and wenching. cut, Noah is on firm ground in his presen- founder of the Tudor dynasty and father of More chaos ensued. edward iv’s two tation of the evidence and his conclusions Henry viii, but he still doesn’t ring a bell. young sons were sent to the Tower to be about where it points. Where they involve His individuality ought to shine forth in murdered, and their uncle, Richard iii, broad questions of economic and political the story that he was the last english king was crowned the second yorkist king. power, his ideological presuppositions to lead his troops on the battlefield, but he it is impossible to imagine Henry Tudor tend to bring back one’s frustration, even is upstaged there by the hysterical Richard leading his Lancastrian troops at the deci- as his writing remains engaging. i learned iii staggering around on foot screaming, sive battle of Bosworth in 1485. He had a a lot from Noah’s thoughtful mini-history “My kingdom for a horse!” And if we cast in one eye that spoiled his aim, and he of the labor movement, even as i mar- search for an actual description of him, we also had asthma. He had nothing to do with veled at his refusal to concede that there are chronologically jolted by Sir Francis dispatching Richard iii; he was simply is any legitimacy in corporate concerns Bacon’s déjà-vu-ish assessment: “He were there when it happened. Although he was about the fairness of the regime that New a dark prince, and infinitely suspicious, the great-great-great-grandson of edward Deal policy created. His chapter focusing and his times full of secret conspiracies iii, his instincts were never those of a war- on the unique factors behind the diver- and troubles.” Upstaged yet again, this rior king. As a matrilinear claimant through gence of the top 1 percent from everyone time by Richard Nixon. an illegitimate Lancastrian line, he fought else is particularly well done, but readers His identity crisis is over. This long- for acceptance. Guided by his mother’s who are not inclined to view the top 1 per- colorless ruler gets a thorough makeover mastermind strategy and his own low cent as the “stinking rich” will have to get in British author Thomas Penn’s superb testosterone, he aimed for unity through past Noah’s demagogic chapter title. new book. Henry Tudor ascended the symbolism—what a later age would call it is probably too much to ask of an throne as Henry vii after the Wars of the public relations. inequality primer that it be engaging and Roses, the romantic name for the dynastic To show an exhausted england that simultaneously transcend the ideological struggle between the house of Lancaster, Lancaster and york were now one, he commitments that taint so much treatment whose badge was the red rose, and the married edward iv’s oldest daughter, of the topic. inequality, after all, is an house of york, symbolized by the white. elizabeth of york. He liked her well issue that inspires even Nobel laureates to Both had a valid claim to the crown as di - enough, but that part didn’t matter. Though make sweeping arguments that academic rect descendents of edward iii (1327–77): he was only 28, women as women meant research does not support. At least Noah the Lancasters through his third son, John nothing to this heterosexual but uninterest- writes well. But i do hope that in five of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and the ed man, who never had a mistress and years i can refer interested parties to a sec- never wanted one. Luckily for him, eliza - ond inequality primer against which The Florence King can be reached at P.O. Box 7113, beth turned out to be “the embodiment of Great Divergence can be balanced. Fredericksburg, VA 22404. reconciliation,” the answer to his dynastic

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS prayers. Luckily for her, everyone else permanent bail,” writes Thomas Penn. Henry reasoned, was to marry Catherine loved her even if her husband did not. “If [they were] triggered, their victims himself so he could start producing more She got pregnant right away—always a would be ruined.” male heirs for the house of Tudor right valuable symbol of unity—and gave birth Matters got crazily modern, as with the away. (And, having made her his queen, to a son whom his father, in high PR mode, London mercer “who died of ‘an un - he would not have to pay her widow’s por- named Arthur to remind his subjects of an kind thought’—stress, perhaps, or a heart tion and could negotiate a bigger dowry.) idealized England. Five years later, they attack—brought on by prolonged harass- Isabella feigned shocked repugnance, but had another son, red-haired, named Henry ment.” Henry even ran security checks she still wanted the political alliance one after his father, but created duke of York and formed the Yeomen of the Guard to way or another. The “another” in this case in another gesture of reconciliation, this carry them out. If he did not torture his was another daughter, Catherine’s sister, one with a warning behind it. One of the debtors, it was because that was not the known as “Juana the Mad,” the young threats to Henry VII’s dynasty was an low-testosterone way. “Henry VII’s pre- widow of a prince of Burgundy, where the impostor named Perkin Warbeck, later ferred method of punishment, after all, Yorkist duke of Suffolk was living in exile. caught and executed, who had claimed to was death by a thousand financial cuts. It Henry liked this idea. A Hapsburg alliance be Edward IV’s son, Richard, duke of made the idea of disloyalty and rebellion was better than a Spanish one, it would not York, the younger of the princes in the not only unthinkable, but unaffordable.” require the pope’s permission, and catch- Tower. By giving his second son the title He created such a powerful England ing Suffolk was pure gold. As for Juana so soon, Henry effectively announced that that Ferdinand and Isabella eagerly sent the Mad, it didn’t matter that she refused to there was but one duke of York, and he him their daughter, Catherine of Aragon, bury her husband and traveled with his was the son of a Tudor king. to marry Arthur, Prince of Wales, in 1502. corpse in her baggage train. He liked her Now that he had an heir and a spare he Four months later, Arthur died suddenly of well enough. should have felt secure, but the insecure the “sweating sickness” (probably double You know the rest of the story. Henry VII never do. Having known too many years pneumonia) and Henry fell apart. All of never married again but his son Henry VIII of exile and uncertainty, too many contin- his old dynastic insecurities returned, but married Catherine of Aragon and made the gency plans, too many hopes pinned on even worse was in store for him. A year consummation of her first marriage the tip- other people’s whims, he decided that the later, his wife died in childbirth on her 37th ping point of history. What makes this book Thomas Penn is not an academic but a well-known British writer and editor who knows what readers like and how to deliver it.

only way to protect his crown was to have birthday after delivering a stillborn daugh- so endlessly enjoyable is that it serves up bigger and better whims. That required ter. His “embodiment of reconciliation” the pathos, chaos, and human comedy that money, lots of it, enough to make himself with the Yorkists was gone. He nearly died we don’t know a lot about. the most powerful monarch of the time. himself in psychosomatic reaction when Thomas Penn is not an academic but a Taking as his guide his contemporary his asthma flared until he could not well-known British writer and editor who Machiavelli, who advised princes to be breathe. His illness had to be kept secret, knows what readers like and how to deliv- “more feared than loved,” he formed a tri- he gasped, because now he had only one er it. He shows us Julius II, “the warrior bunal called the “Council Learned in the male heir, eleven-year-old Henry, a minor Pope,” getting so infuriated by the in - Law” that proceeded to obliterate Magna whom they would try to depose. cessant letters about Catherine’s virginity Carta. He recovered, and his mask slipped that we visualize him not as an historical It was, simply and plainly, a shake- back on as if nothing had happened. fig ure but as explosive Rex Harrison in down. Using a huge network of spies and Becoming even more of a paranoid miser the Michelangelo movie. The debatable bribed local officials, the Council “trawled than before, he developed an obsession phrase “public intellectual” gets fully the country assessing individual wealth.” with Catherine of Aragon’s financial situ- defined in Penn’s description of Erasmus: If you looked prosperous, you could ation. Spain had not paid all of her dowry, “a crashing name-dropper,” networking ob viously afford to pay up; if you didn’t, so he did not have to pay her widow’s por- like mad, buttering up everybody, drifting you were probably poor-mouthing. The tion, which would have included at least everywhere in search of hospitality and Council issued open-ended subpoenas one opulently appointed castle. He micro- funding. with no precise accusations, just an order managed this to death, going back and Best of all, he gives us the flunky of all “to come and answer to such things as forth, stalling and stonewalling, until time delivering the spin to end all spins. shall be objected against him.” One man Catherine was forced to sell the gold and One of Henry’s aides, writing to Fer - paid 500 pounds to avoid being declared a jewels she had brought with her just to pay dinand in defense of Henry’s possible certified lunatic, a ward of the Crown, and her household’s wages. marriage to Juana the Mad: “In his loving having his lands confiscated. Paying up Ferdinand and Isabella, eager to keep company she would quickly recover her did not end matters, but just made them their alliance with England against France, sanity—besides which, any mental de - worse. “The suspended fines, or ‘recog- wanted Catherine to marry Prince Henry, rangement would hardly affect Juana’s nizances,’ meanwhile, were like being on but he was as yet too young. A better idea, ability to procreate.”

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Gotham “eat each other” without allow- skulking in his mansion while his compa- Film ing him to vindicate that boast. ny circles the financial drain. Rises, on the other hand, has a more enter Bane, a masked and muscled linear, less unwieldy plot, and it pushes mercenary (played by the British actor A Knight to the limits of its comic-book universe a lit- Tom hardy, basically just providing a tle more than The Dark Knight ever did. charismatic voice-over, since we never Remember The Dark Knight was a movie about ter- see his face) who’s hired by one of rorism; Rises is a movie about revolution. Wayne’s corporate rivals but then turns ROSS DOUTHAT The Joker was content to play games with out to have a bigger sort of hostile take - Gotham and its caped defender, but Rises over in mind. his emergence coaxes here the Batman movies are actually brings the city to its knees. Wayne back into the Batsuit, but the bil- concerned, I tend toward The origins of the revolution lie in the lionaire vigilante has lost a step, and he the contrarian. I’m one of moral compromises that closed out the finds himself powerless to prevent Bane W the few people who prefer last movie, when Batman took the fall for from turning the city upside down—first Tim Burton’s garish Art Deco carica - harvey Dent’s sins, turning Dent into a with an assault on the stock exchange, tures to Christopher Nolan’s broody, self- law-and-order martyr and laying the and then with a playbook straight out of serious approach. And now I’m also one foundation for a vast expansion of police the French revolution, complete with of the few people—or so I suspect, based powers that have made the city safe. But emptied prisons, ransacked penthouses, on the initial run of reviews—who think a safe metropolis can still be an unhappy and show trials for the richest 1 percent. that Nolan’s final installment, The Dark one, and as Rises opens, Gotham has The fact that Bane himself turns out Knight Rises, outclasses the two films become a city divided between haves and to have essentially non-ideological and that preceded it. have-nots, plagued by unemployment even nihilistic motives doesn’t change The finale’s strengths will be over- and presided over by a smug and increas- the political resonance of these plot de - shadowed, inevitably and appropriately, ingly out-of-touch ruling class. Leaders velopments. If the way The Dark Knight by the massacre at the film’s midnight such as Commissioner Gordon (Gary portrayed its Gotham version of the war premiere in Aurora, Colo. (Between Oldman) are being eased into retire - on terrorism sometimes felt like an heath Ledger’s untimely death and now ment, idealistic young cops like Joseph implicit defense of George W. Bush, then this larger horror, Nolan’s movies have Gordon-Levitt’s Officer Blake are being the way that Rises evokes and then cri- been as death-haunted as their hero.) But ignored by their self-satisfied superiors, tiques a phenomenon like Occupy Wall they were probably destined to be over- and Bruce Wayne himself (Christian Street feels even more explicitly right- shadowed in any case by the absurdly Bale, still growly and withdrawn) is wing. inflated cult that grew up around 2008’s But not stupidly right-wing: The movie The Dark Knight, which simultaneously doesn’t shy away from depicting the overrated that film and raised expec - existing order’s corruptions, and it seems tations for The Dark Knight Rises far to endorse the judgments that its most beyond anything that a superhero movie charismatic character, Anne hathaway’s could meet. lithe and sexy cat burglar (the word Drop those expectations down a notch, “Catwoman” is never uttered, but we though—below the level of the God - know who she’s supposed to be), passes father saga, let’s say, to cite one of the on the rich people she’s stealing from. implausible comparisons that Nolan fan- The movie’s critique of revolution isn’t boys sometimes make—and you’ll find any kind of Ayn rand–style paean to the that Rises has a coherence and confi- rich and successful, and The Dark Knight dence that make it outstrip its much- Rises never pretends that the order its praised predecessor. hero is defending expresses any sort of There is no performance here that cosmic justice. All it suggests is that even matches Ledger’s turn as the Joker, to be a compromised order is usually prefer- sure. But The Dark Knight was really able to a revolution, and that even an two films stitched together: a two-hour imperfect civilization can be worth dying movie that pitted Batman against the to defend. Joker, and then what should have been I don’t want to overpraise this film, as a sequel—about the corruption, after a too many people overpraised The Dark grisly mutilation, of the heroic D.A. Knight. It’s an imperfect vehicle for its harvey Dent—that was instead shoved self-consciously important themes, and it into a rushed and unconvincing final act. doesn’t quite transcend what seems to be And for all its self-conscious grittiness, the inherent two-dimensionality of the the last Batman movie never quite lived superhero genre. But if you like what . up to its much-touted promise of a “world Nolan has been doing within the genre’s without rules”; it let the Joker talk a good confines, I think there’s a case that you

WARNER BROS game about making the citizens of Christian Bale as Batman should like this movie most of all.

5 0 | www.nationalreview.com AUGUST 1 3 , 2 0 1 2 books8-13_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/24/2012 3:24 PM Page 51

Crash on the thruway Spring peepers Country Life People get out god is with us, of their cars and stretch. we will not die.

Flashes The farmer mows Bean stalk winds round the grass, the earth tomato planter, then back Of Light turns toward winter. to garden fence. Bye now!

Congratulations Bean stalk really thinks Class of 2012 it can go any damn where Now get out of here. it pleases.

90 yr old woman Midnight wind born in Lomontville in February, howling died in Hurley. like Nietzsche.

Little flags College kids wearing at old graves their parents’ tie-dyes. RICHARD BROOKHISER Brother, remember. It’s so hot, I Fireworks in town urINg Jack Kerouac’s life- think I can’t Firing at the gun club think. time, haiku went from being Fireflies over the lawn. a countercultural affectation D to a staple of high-school lit- Looking at a hummingbird All along the thruway through binoculars erary magazines. Kerouac wrote good the same rest-stops. ones, partly because he loosened the 5-7- It came right at me. 5 syllable corset, keeping only the three Cross, flower Possum played chicken lines (when there weren’t two or four). and a balloon with a car More important to him was the shape of mark the crash site. the thought, a moment’s focus that he Not playing dead now. identified with Buddhism. I’m no Bud- It’s so dry, nothing Possum played chicken dhist, but even gaijin goyim can have trickles in the stream pool with a car Frogjump. their moments. Not a good look.

By Independence Day Cough, burp, Took a dead possum I notice the days Bark out of a trap growing shorter. Frog oratory. Away he ran.

The only thing moving Spinout tiremark Every bird I saw in the heat Somebody when I first moved here Snake on a branch with a nest. was drinking. has died.

Taking a breather Woman swimming in her Creeper vines by the stone wall pool, frogs in pine trees Copperhead sliding along. sit motionless in theirs. Larry, Moe, Curly.

Topless sports bars and Catbird newscast Creeper vines Orthodox summer camps Every little thing he’s heard in pine trees all need paint jobs. All day. They fight silently.

The only blue flower is Coyote yowled right Crickets chicory, and it only across the lawn. in the autumn field grows in roadside gravel. That was close. say “I am, I am.”

When all these leaves The frog’s eyes Freed the nuthatch from are dead and gone are big my screen-deck. Saved I’ll see my neighbor. as the Dalai Lama’s. by the merit of my father.

When all these leaves When it snows Freed the nuthatch from are dead and gone I’ll know who you are my screen-deck. I I’ll see bird nests. and where you’ve been. escaped the monster.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN In Search of ‘Why’

He media conventions are pretty much chiseled in If you recall the spate of American school shootings around concrete by now. If a guy guns down large numbers the turn of the century, you may also remember that in the of people while shouting “Allahu akbar!” don’t immediate aftermath of September 11 they ceased—almost as T worry, it’s a one-off, part of no broader pattern, just if, in a nation fired to righteous anger and waging war in a just a “lone wolf” who succumbed to “workplace violence” cause, even the most solipsistic psychos can discern that taking (Major Hasan at Fort Hood) or worries about impending fore- out Grade Six will look like an act of feeble narcissism. But the closure (the Times Square bomber) or any of the other highly years go by, and righteous anger fades to WMD, Abu Ghraib, specific, individual, customized circumstances to which card- Gitmo, Bush lied . . . and the lone-wolf sociopath returns. carrying members of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves When the previous Batman film came out, several of my are prone. But if a genuine “lone wolf” guns down large num- colleagues on the right attached great significance to Alfred the bers of people without shouting “Allahu akbar!” the media butler’s wise old words to Master Bruce—“Some men just herd stampedes to ask the obvious question: want to watch the world burn”—which they seemed to think Why? were an incisive if oblique analysis of al-Qaeda et al. I think And, being dreary groupthink liberals, when they’re seeking not. The jihad boys enjoy, as the Joker does, the body count. a motive for mass murder the first place they look is the liveli- But, unlike him, they have an end that justifies the means. The er factions of the conservative movement: Tucson, Ariz.? Must idea that they simply “want to watch the world burn” is a be “toxic rhetoric . . . coming, overwhelmingly, from the right” Hollywood evasion. For a decade now, the summer block- (according to Paul Krugman of the New York Times). Aurora, busters have avoided saying anything about terrorism, Islam, Colo.? Must be something to do with the Tea Party (according 9/11, Bali, Beslan, the Tube bombers, the Shoebomber, the to Brian Ross of ABC News). Pantybomber, etc. A couple of years back, they made a big- But, of course, there is no “why.” Apart from their feeble and budget thriller in which (stop me if this sounds familiar) a jet predictable biases, the reactions of Brian Ross et al. are emi- is on course to take out a skyscraper. Who’s behind it? Osama? nently understandable: A reporter is a storyteller, and a story Saddam? The mullahs? No. The bad guy is the plane itself, an with no motivation is fundamentally defective. A couple of automatic pilot gone rogue. As much as the press coverage of weeks back, I was in County Down, one of my favorite places Major Hasan, contemporary movie violence eliminates any on earth but one not untouched by Northern Ireland’s three broader context to focus on the “lone wolf.” Film after film decades of “Troubles.” even today, round the Mountains of shows bad men plotting, scheming, disguising, infiltrating, Mourne, in overwhelmingly Loyalist towns huge Jubilee ban- planting, detonating, slaughtering on an industrial scale. But ners of the Queen and the Duke of edinburgh hang over narrow why? Who knows? And so we watch the world burn, with village streets with the in-your-face triumphalism of Saddam explosions and fireballs and shattering glass and screaming posters at traffic circles in Tikrit back in the good old days, civilians unmoored from any recognizable reality. Back in the while down the road in overwhelmingly Republican towns the spring, I passed an amiable couple of hours with Tom Cruise thoroughfares are stark and unadorned. I motored through in Mission: Impossible 4, an instantly forgettable blockbuster. Warrenpoint, a small, somnolent town where on one day two It opens with some bloke blowing up the Kremlin and pro- fertilizer bombs exploded near Narrow Water Castle and killed ceeds to the usual nuclear-countdown finale in a parking 18 soldiers—the British army’s single biggest loss of the entire garage, but it isn’t about anything. It’s like a perfectly exe cuted campaign. Whenever I pass the cozily bucolic setting—the act of mass terrorism for no reason at all. castle is now a prestige venue for wedding rentals—it seems to In that respect at least, the Multiplex Madman is a creature me faintly absurd to have killed that many for so small a cause. of his time. There’s something almost unbearably poignant in But what are we to make of Aurora, where large numbers of that moment when James Holmes bursts through the door of people die for no cause other than a homicidal movie tie-in? the theater to hurl his smoke canisters and everyone assumes Warrenpoint is the natural order of things. If you’re going to it’s a promotional stunt. Just for a second, the film, the killer, persuade impressionable young men to skulk around the neigh- and his victims have achieved an eerie synchronicity in the borhood planting bombs, there ought to be a reason. Which is detachment of violence from meaning. And then reality why Brian Ross & Co. go looking for one. As a Reuters exec- reasserts itself. utive put it after 9/11, one man’s terrorist is another man’s free- If that sounds like a complaint about movie violence, it’s dom fighter. But James Holmes and Jared Loughner were born not; it’s a complaint about something more basic—about in 1987 and 1988 respectively, and the former seems to have movie storytelling. There are all kinds of interesting tales you had no cause while the latter toyed with all the causes of the could tell and still get in the fireballs. But they’re complicated post-cause generation—9/11 conspiracies, Jesus conspiracies, beyond PC shibboleths and they’d require you to engage with international banking conspiracies, New Age conspiracies. One the world as it is. So Hollywood gets more and more techni- man’s terrorist is another man’s bored ADHD stoner. cally accomplished to less and less purpose. As Alfred the butler might say, some studio vice presidents just want to Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). watch the world burn.

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The American Civil War Taught by Professor Gary W. Gallagher      1. Prelude to War 2. The Election of 1860 3. The Lower South Secedes 4. The Crisis at Fort Sumter D TIME E OF 5. The Opposing Sides, I IT F 6. The Opposing Sides, II M E I R 7. The Common Soldier L 8. First Manassas or Bull Run 9. Contending for the Border States 70% 10. Early Union Triumphs in the West 11. Shiloh and Corinth 2 O 1 12. The Peninsula Campaign off R R 13. The Seven Days’ Battles D E ER B 14. The Kentucky Campaign of 1862 BY OCTO 15. Antietam 16. The Background to Emancipation 17. Emancipation Completed 18. Filling the Ranks 19. Sinews of War—Finance and Supply 20. The War in the West, Winter 1862–63 21. The War in Virginia, Winter and Spring 1862–63 22. Gettysburg 23. Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and Tullahoma 24. A Season of Uncertainty, Summer and Fall 1863 25. Grant at Chattanooga 26. The Diplomatic Front 27. African Americans in Wartime, I 28. African Americans in Wartime, II 29. Wartime Reconstruction 30. The Naval War 31. The River War and Confederate Commerce Raiders 32. Women at War, I 33. Women at War, II 34. Stalemate in 1864 35. Sherman versus Johnston in Georgia 36. The Wilderness to Spotsylvania 37. Cold Harbor to Petersburg 38. The Confederate Home Front, I 39. The Confederate Home Front, II 40. The Northern Home Front, I 41. The Northern Home Front, II 42. Prisoners of War 43. Mobile Bay and Atlanta 44. Petersburg, the Crater, and the Valley 45. The Final Campaigns 46. Petersburg to Appomattox 47. Closing Scenes and Reckonings Explore Our Nation’s 48. Remembering the War

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