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TOC:QXP-1127940144.qxp 6/26/2013 2:50 PM Page 1 Contents BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS JULY 15, 2013 | VOLUME LXV, NO. 13 | www.nationalreview.com 39 A NEW BIRTH Mackubin Thomas Owens reviews ON THE COVER Page 29 Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, Remington, U.S.A. by Allen C. Guelzo. 40 LET BURKE BE BURKE It seems nobody told Yuval Levin reviews Edmund the people of Ilion, Burke: The First Conservative, by Jesse Norman and Edmund N.Y., that they were Burke in America: The supposed to join the Contested Career of the Father of Modern decline of American Conservatism, by Drew Maciag. manufacturing. Amid . 42 HINGES OF HISTORY all the bad economic Arthur L. Herman reviews news, Remington and Moment of Battle: The Twenty Clashes That Changed its town present a ray the World, by James Lacey and Williamson Murray. of hope. Charles C. W. Cooke 44 NO HONEY, NO BABY, NO CHURCH W. Bradford Wilcox reviews ARTICLES How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory 16 A SUBNATION OF IMMIGRANTS by Ramesh Ponnuru of Secularization, Social cohesion matters. by Mary Eberstadt.

18 FISA FIASCO by Andrew C. McCarthy 45 THE SIEGE OF MEN A “rubber stamp” court would be an improvement. Carrie Lukas reviews Men on Strike: Why Men Are 21 THE INAPPROPRIATE ‘INAPPROPRIATE’ by Kevin D. Williamson Boycotting Marriage, An adjective abused. Fatherhood, and the American Dream—and Why It Matters, THE EDUCATION OF JUSTIN AMASH 23 by John J. Miller by Helen Smith. How a libertarian gadfly took wing. 47 CITY DESK: TWILIGHT OF THE CONFEDERACY 25 by Allen C. Guelzo THRILL OF THE NEW How Gettysburg changed history. Richard Brookhiser discusses a life of changing technology. 27 BLOWING UP BARBIE by Jay Nordlinger The joy of explosives camp.

SECTIONS FEATURES 4 Letters to the Editor 29 REMINGTON, U.S.A. by Charles C. W. Cooke 6 The Week A storied gun maker and the town with which it thrives. 37 Athwart ...... James Lileks 38 The Long View ...... Rob Long 32 OPEN SKIES AND OPEN SPECTRUM by Christopher DeMuth 43 Poetry ...... Annabelle Moseley The occasional power of simple ideas. 48 Happy Warrior ......

NATioNAl Review (iSSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by , 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., 2013. 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–, 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 6/24/2013 11:48 AM Page 1

Privacy, Property, and Free Speech: Law and the Constitution in IM st ED T E O the 21 Century IT FF E IM R Taught by Professor Je rey Rosen L       70%   

O 6 1. Freedom and Technological Change off 2 R T D S 2. Privacy and Virtual Surveillance ER U BY AUG 3. Privacy at Home 4. Privacy on the Street 5. The Privacy of Travelers 6. Privacy and National Security 7. Privacy in the Courtroom 8. Privacy in the Police Station 9. Privacy in Electronic Communications 10. Privacy in Cell Phones and Computers 11. The Internet and the End of Forgetting 12. Follow-Me Advertising Online 13. Privacy and the Body 14. The Right to Die 15. Privacy and Sexual Intimacy in Marriage 16. The Constitution and Private Property 17. The Supreme Court and Private Property 18. The Roberts Court and Economic Rights 19. Takings and Eminent Domain 20. The American Free Speech Tradition 21. From WikiLeaks to the Arab Spring 22. Google, Facebook, and the First Amendment Is Privacy a Thing 23. The Right to Be Forgotten of the Past? 24. The Constitution in 2040 From Facebook and Google Maps to cell phones that track Privacy, Property, and Free Speech: Law and your daily activity, new technologies are putting unprecedented the Constitution in the stress on America’s protections for privacy, property, and free Course no. 9438 | 24 lectures (30 minutes/lecture) speech that the designers of our legal system could scarcely have imagined. Consequently, many of the privacy and personal rights we think we possess may not actually have a legal basis. SAVE UP TO $185 Get educated about the risks posed by intrusive new technologies in the 24 eye-opening lectures of Privacy, Property, and Free DVD $254.95NOW $69.95 Speech from Professor Jeffrey Rosen of The George Washington CD $179.95NOW $49.95 University Law School. An award-winning legal scholar, +$10 Shipping, Processing, and Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee Supreme Court journalist, and frequent National Public Radio Priority Code: 77831 commentator, he immerses you in the Constitution, the courts, and the new reality of our liberties in the post–9/11 Internet era. Designed to meet the demand for lifelong learning, The Great Courses is a highly popular series of O er expires 08/26/13 audio and video lectures led by top professors and experts. Each of our more than 400 courses is an intellectually engaging experience that will 1-800-832-2412 change how you think about the world. Since ../4 1990, over 10 million courses have been sold. letters--ready:QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/25/2013 10:48 PM Page 4 Letters

JULY 15 ISSUE; PRINTED JUNE 27

EDITOR Richard Lowry Senior Editors Bad Artists Steal, Too Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones In mentioning the works George Lucas “bor- Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra rowed and repurposed” in the making of Star Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy Washington Editor Robert Costa Wars, Ross Douthat omits the films of Japan’s Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson National Correspondent John J. Miller Akira Kurosawa—but I forgive him, because Art Director Luba Kolomytseva he is so spot-on in his criticism of Star Trek: Deputy Managing Editors Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Into Darkness and its director, J. J. Abrams Robert VerBruggen Production Editor Katie Hosmer (“To Boldly Flunk,” June 17). Editorial Associate Katherine Connell Research Associate Scott Reitmeier Today’s filmmakers destroy planets and kill Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace off leading characters as a means of getting Contributing Editors Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat from Point A to Point B. We used to call such Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty ham-fisted plot devices “not having a better / Florence King Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin idea.” Yuval Levin / Rob Long Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy I was also flabbergasted by how shame- Kate O’Beirne / Reihan Salam lessly the film stole from The Wrath of Khan NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez without offering more to justify the larceny. Similarly, Abrams’s film Super 8 is Managing Editor Edward John Craig Columnist John Fund interesting only until we realize we are watching ET in a different wrapper. News Editor Daniel Foster Media Editor Eliana Johnson Political Reporters Andrew Stiles / Jonathan Strong Mike Brown Reporter Katrina Trinko Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke Tulsa, Okla. Editorial Associate Molly Powell Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Developer Wendy Weihs

EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan Nuclear Power Up Close

NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM William Tucker’s “Wasted” (June 17) was right on. Patrick Brennan / Betsy Woodruff Contributors Years ago there was a saying attributed to Peter Fonda: “The worst thing that Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman could happen to America is to find a clean, cheap source of power.” I started work- Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. ing at my first nuclear facility, a Navy training site, in December 1965, and I retired Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner David Gelernter / George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart from the industry in 2012. I saw support for nuclear energy wax and wane during Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune that time. D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak We have enough uranium available to supply all our electricity needs, using Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber breeder reactors, for 2,000 years. If we had unfettered access to nuclear power, we Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge could be virtually energy independent. But as Tucker notes, that option has disap- Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak peared for political reasons. Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu / Lucy Zepeda The article also notes the benefits of recycling nuclear waste. When Yucca Circulation Manager Jason Ng Assistant to the Publisher Kate Murdock Mountain was in its early stages, anti-nuclear activists traveled to cities along WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com potential shipping routes and scared people by exaggerating the possibility of an MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 accident. WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 In all of my 40-plus years of working around reactors, I have received a small Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler fraction of the radiation dose that an airline pilot receives over the same period. Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Frank Brush Director of Development Heyward Smith Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell New Strawn, Kan. PUBLISHER Jack Fowler

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

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n Harry Reid, looking up to the sky from the Senate floor, said that Ted Kennedy would “smile at all of us” when the immigra- tion bill passed. Smile, sure, Mr. Senator, but are you certain you’re looking in the right direction?

n In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which among other things required some jurisdictions—mostly southern states—to get approval from the Justice Department before making even the tiniest changes to their voting proce- dures. The law has been renewed many times without much debate, most recently in 2006. The list of covered jurisdictions has been stuck in a time warp: Why should some states have more freedom of action than others based on what happened when George Wallace was a governor? The Supreme Court has on several occasions urged Congress to update the law, and Congress has ignored it each time. Now the Supreme Court has thrown out the law’s list of covered jurisdictions. Liberals are saying that the justices are acting like legislators, which is rich coming from them. The charge has some sting to it, but in their limited defense, the justices have clearly thought about these “Israeli-Palestinian peace.” Listen to my goals: “a world without issues more than the actual legislators did. nuclear weapons,” “confront[ing] a changing climate . . . the global threat of our time.” All right, there were a few clunkers: n Deciding a legal challenge to a state university’s practice of Describing our efforts against al-Qaeda as “evolving” was pretty discriminating among applicants on the basis of race should be lame. And that riff about “the protection of privacy” was a little, easy: Congress passed a law forbidding it—you may have heard ah, badly timed (thanks, Snowden, you little nerd). But after all, of it; it’s the Civil Rights Act of 1964—and so the university has people, it’s me! I’ve got game! People? Man, it’s hot out here . . . to stop. The Supreme Court is in its fourth decade of making the issue unnecessarily complicated while putting itself at the center n The IRS has thrown up a new distraction in the search for truth of the action. That tradition continues in its decision in Abigail about why it targeted tea-party groups for so long. Under the Fisher’s challenge to the University of Texas for its racial dis- guise of coming clean about the whole unseemly business, acting crimination against whites and Asians. Justice Anthony Kennedy, IRS commissioner Danny Werfel in late June issued a report indi- writing for the majority, ignored the Civil Rights Act (as, alas, did cating that the now-infamous “Be on the Lookout” list included the other justices). He decided that the Constitution allows state liberal groups as well as conservative ones. Odd we haven’t universities to engage in racial discrimination, but only if they heard from any of the former, isn’t it? Yet the treatment was not really have to do so to gain the educational benefits of racial the same. On one such list, IRS screeners were alerted that a des- diversity. Justice Kennedy does not explain exactly how to dis- ignation of 501(c)(3) status, which requires that a group not be criminate in order to get these benefits at an acceptable cost to the engaged in any political activity, “may not be appropriate” for principle of equal treatment. He leaves to a lower court the judg- progressive organizations, while they were told to send the appli- ment about whether the University of Texas passes that test, but cations of “tea party” groups off to IRS high-ups for special implicitly stands ready, as always, to second-guess. Past admoni- scrutiny. The list also noted that tea-party cases were “currently tions from the Court to universities have produced no detectable being coordinated” with a group of tax lawyers in Washington, change to their practice of discrimination. The Court gets to keep D.C.; those of progressive groups were not. Be on the lookout for pretending to lay down the law, and the universities get to keep new excuses. pretending to follow it. n With global warming having slowed—or, by some estimates, n Man, it’s hot out here. Why did I agree to go to Berlin in June? reversed—in the past 15 years, it is an odd time for President Was it cooler five years ago? There were certainly more people Obama to make climate change a new focus of his troubled presi - five years ago—200,000. And now, by invitation only, maybe five dency. But the timing is not about science: Such hotbeds of warm- or six thousand. Maybe I was cooler five years ago. But that can’t ing alarmism as The Economist have published articles noting that be. Listen to what I’m saying: “Intolerance breeds injustice”; we recent climate data are not in line with the models used to predict must “welcome the immigrant” and “stand up for our gay and les- apocalypse. Even our friends at admit as much,

ROMAN GENN bian brothers”; America stands for Europe and “your union,” and writing of the warming slowdown: “Scientists themselves aren’t

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WeWe foundfound ourour mostmost importantimportant watchwatch inin aa soldier’ssoldier’s pocketpocket t’s the summer of harrowing flights in a B-24 bomber and machinery. We then test it for 15 days 1944 and a weath- somehow made it back to the U.S. on Swiss made calibrators to insure t’s the summer of harrowing flights in a B-24 bomber and machinery. We then test it for 15 days ered U.S. sergeant is Besides the Purple Heart and the accuracy to only seconds a day. The I1944 and a weath- somehow made it back to the U.S. on Swiss made calibrators to insure walking in Rome only Bronze Star, my father cherished this movement displays the day and date ered U.S. sergeant is Besides the Purple Heart and the accuracy to only seconds a day. The Idays after the Allied watch because it was a reminder of the on the antique satin finished face and walking in Rome only Bronze Star, my father cherished this movement displays the day and date Liberation. 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He loved the than the smile of a that it will remind you to take time to the complex movement nothing is more beautiful are not completely satisfied, simply way it felt in his hand, and healthy returning GI. remember what is truly valuable. If you inside the case intrigued than the smile of a return it within 30 days for a full the complex movement are not completely satisfied, simply him. He really liked the healthyWe wanted returning to bring GI. this refund of the purchase price. inside the case intrigued return it within 30 days for a full hunter’s back that opened little piece of personal Stauer 1944 Ritorno $147 him. He really liked the We wanted to bring this refund of the purchase price. to a secret compartment. He history back to life in a Now only $99 + hunter’s back that opened little piece of personal Stauer 1944 RitornoS&P thought that he could faithful reproduction of $147 to a secret compartment. 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THE WEEK entirely sure what the evidence means. If scientific models can’t next elections, conservatives will be able to run ads pointing out project the last 15 years, what does that mean for their projections that liberal congressmen voted to permit abortion in circum- of the next 100?” Politics moves on two-year intervals, not 100- stances that supermajorities of the public find abhorrent. What year intervals. The president’s speech was the usual—dreams of will the liberals say in response? That some congressman some- imposing federal regimentation upon the entire economy. Even if where else said something stupid? Two prominent pro-abortion the scientific consensus were still tightly unified behind the do-or- House Democrats, Nancy Pelosi and Diana DeGette, have been die approach, the president’s policy agenda would not flow logi- unable to explain the moral difference that separates the abortions cally from that consensus. And what an agenda it is: new federal they want to protect from the ones Kermit Gosnell committed. controls on power plants, billions in handouts to politically con- Pelosi was reduced to sputtering about how the question nected energy companies, restrictions on heavy trucks—which offended her as a mother and a Catholic and intruded on “sacred are in effect restrictions on every piece of freight—and consumer ground.” It’s not the only ground the abortion lobby is losing. goods, and new rules regarding the construction of factories, com- mercial facilities, even homes. Togeth er, these amount to a radical n Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska, an - expansion of federal power even more significant than the presi- nounced that she favors same-sex marriage because “it keeps dent’s health-care program. Un hap pi ly, the Supreme Court has politicians out of the most private and personal aspects of [peo- misconstrued the Clean Air Act as an open-ended warrant for ple’s] lives—while also encouraging more families to form and action on global warming, meaning that the president can execute more adults to make a lifetime commitment to one another.” She much of this program without congressional approval. This at a adds that “this is a personal-liberty issue.” No, it isn’t. In every time when our country is poised for an energy renaissance based state of the union, two people of the same sex can make a lifetime on its fossil-fuel re sources and new extraction practices—one commitment, live together, and find a church that treats them as that would not only transform the American economy but shift though they were married—all without running afoul of any gov- the global balance of power by drastically reducing the petroleum ernmental prohibitions. What is at stake in these cases is which of imports that are the major driver of our trade deficit and a critical the many relationships among adults should be recognized and source of economic and security vulnerability. The president is regulated by . Murkowski never explains why the wrong on the science, wrong on the economics, and wrong on has an interest in encouraging “lifetime commit- the politics—and Republicans should take the opportunity to ments” as such, or how such encouragement could possibly con- demonstrate as much to the country. stitute getting the government out of people’s private lives. It is a very good thing for people getting married to make sure that they n Oops-time for Marco Rubio. Ryan Lizza, in The New Yorker, really know what they are doing. It would also be a good thing quoted a Rubio aide, saying of a dispute between labor unions for people making pronouncements about marriage policy. and the Chamber of Commerce concerning the Gang of Eight immigration bill: “There are American workers who, for lack of n The Pew Research Center conducted a study finding that news a better term, can’t cut it. There shouldn’t be a presumption that coverage “provided a strong sense of momentum towards legal- every American worker is a star performer. There are people who izing same-sex marriage.” How strong? “Stories with more state- just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. . . . You can’t obvi- ments supporting same-sex marriage outweighed those with ously discuss that publicly.” A Rubio spokesman protested that more statements opposing it by a margin of roughly 5-to-1.” the quotation did not reflect the senator’s views: “[He believes] Sometimes history needs a little nudge. we need . . . to create legal avenues for U.S. businesses to meet labor needs when not enough Americans apply for jobs.” Rubio’s n Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said at a press con- problem then is not that American workers are dumb, but that ference that the Fed expected continued reductions in unemploy- there aren’t enough of them willing to work for low wages. The ment and a beginning of the end of quantitative easing by year’s correction is not much better than the original quotation. end. The stock market sank afterward; the extent to which Bernanke’s remarks caused this is a matter of dispute. The mar- n Hundreds of immigration activists gathered at the home of the ket appears to be worried about a premature tightening. It has rea- Kansas secretary of state, Kris Kobach, a nationally known foe of son to worry, because the Fed has neither behaved predictably in illegal immigration. Their leaders mounted the porch and shout- the recent past nor bound itself in public to a rule to govern its ed speeches through bullhorns. The crowd—mob?—chanted, future actions. The Fed has it within its power to provide the sta- “Sí, se puede,” and the rest of the familiar repertoire. Later, ble monetary framework that is its only possible contribution to Kobach cited what he called “the Klan laws,” which state, in his economic growth. That is the one thing it refuses to do. words, that “you cannot intimidate an official by trespassing on his property or threatening violence.” What “our American sys- n The House of Representatives has defeated a proposed farm tem depends on,” Kobach said, is that “we don’t have mobs, we bill, which would have ended direct payments to farmers for don’t have this kind of pressure put on decision-makers.” Our growing crops while sweetening a number of wasteful subsidies. system depends on it, yes. If voters don’t like Kobach, they can We’d rather Congress got out of the farm-bill business, but that’s throw him out in the next election. Meanwhile, get off his lawn. not why the legislation went down. Many Democrats voted against it because of an amendment that would have given states n The House voted, almost entirely on party lines, to ban abor- the flexibility to tie food-stamp eligibility to work requirements tion after the 20th week of pregnancy. Neither party seems to (an important tool for states trying to combat the effects of wel- grasp the political import of the vote, with the media coverage fare dependency); many Republicans voted against it because dominated by Republican gaffes (some of them invented). In the they thought the cuts to the food-stamp program too modest.

8 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/26/2013 10:49 AM Page 1

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THE WEEK Food-stamp rolls have doubled since 2007, and the program re - a great many legitimate bones to pick with that $1, but the $5 quires greater cuts. But the importance of work is better ground is where the action is. for Republicans to stand on. They must do their best to separate the wheat from the chaff. n Since the Citizens United case stripped the state of a vital tool of censorship, many on the left have harbored the desire to, as n We have our doubts about the use of the word “invest- Nancy Pelosi put it last year, “amend the First Amendment.” ments” to describe federal spending, but the ratios pointed out There is something admirable about the honesty of those who by the self-declared moderates at the think tank find the Bill of Rights lacking. But there is nothing admirable bear consideration: In the 1960s, the federal government spent about their proposals. A new amendment suggested by Senators $3 on so-called investments (meaning infrastructure, educa- Jon Tester (D., Mont.) and Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) that would tion, research, and the like) for every $1 it spent on entitle- deprive corporations of the benefit of the Bill of Rights would, ments. Under current practices, the government will in ten lawyers say, effectively remove all constitutional rights for busi- years spend $5 on entitlements for every $1 on such under- nesses, nonprofits, and churches. As legal scholar Eugene Volokh takings. That is particularly sobering when one considers that observed, America would thus say “goodbye” to constitutional spending on education and infrastructure has continued to “protection for , CNN, the ACLU, the NRA, grow at a steady pace since the 1960s. Entitlement spending, and the ,” among others. Tester and Murphy’s especially on health care, is the main driver of deficits going nasty little amendment follows a similar proposal from Nancy forward, and there simply is no way to stabilize our national Pelosi last year. And they say corporations are a threat to our free- finances without reforming entitlements. Conservatives have dom. Net Worthless

HE Federal Reserve regularly releases data on the net bility facing every American just to cover those deficits was worth of Americans, and newspapers across the U.S. $70,143, with the net of the two values coming to $170,647. T celebrated recently when the latest numbers sug- At the end of 2012, per capita wealth had climbed back gested that our net worth had returned to where it was almost to its 2007 value, but the present value of future tax before the financial crisis. Our wealth collapsed but then liabilities associated with deficits had climbed all the way to recovered, and the hole that the financial market dug for us, $152,216. So, accounting for federal debt, net wealth had so the story goes, has been refilled. dropped all the way to $62,322 per person. That story is a rudimentary one, and requires that we To be sure, a complete accounting would also weigh in ignore several important factors. First of all, there has been the value of government assets such as Yellowstone, the some inflation between 2007 and today. Second, the num- tax liability associated with maintaining a balanced-budget ber of Americans grew from about 302 million in 2007 to level of spending, and many other factors. But, holding about 314 million in 2012; our real aggregate wealth, then, those factors constant, the budget situation has deterio- would need to increase commensurately to bring us collec- rated to such an extent that per capita net worth has tively back to square one. dropped by more than $100,000 in five years. The Fed’s While significant, both of those issues are minor com- net-worth data have a long way to go before they can pos- pared with a third one: The federal government has accu- sibly cover that hole. mulated massive new debt over the past five years, and that debt will have to be paid back eventually. If we will have —KEVIN A. HASSETT to pay higher taxes to do that, then we are carrying, off the books, a large implicit liability. The nearby chart shows how total household wealth in Per Capita Net Worth the U.S. stacks up today compared with 2007, after taking Net worth Future deficits Net worth future deficits into account. excluding deficits per capita including deficits In order to calculate the present value of future deficits for 300,000 households today, I used the CBO’s long-term alternative- 250,000 $240,790 $214,538 fiscal-scenario projections, the first from December 2007 200,000 $170,647 and the second from this May. In 2007, the CBO also pro- 150,000

jected likely deficits out to 2050. For 2012, I generated an 100,000 $62,322 analogous projection out to 2050 based on the most recent 50,000

CBO long-run analysis. The long-run deficits are projected 0

in present-value terms by discounting the future. The num- Dollars 2012 U.S. –50,000 bers are expressed in per capita terms and adjusted for –100,000 –$70,143 inflation. –150,000 In 2012 dollars, household net worth in 2007 was –$152,216 –200,000 $240,790 per person. Even then, we were looking ahead to 2007 2012 high deficits, and the present value of the implicit tax lia-

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THE WEEK n After determining that Bashar al-Assad’s regime had indeed n The defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, gave a speech at his used chemical weapons, the administration announced it would alma mater, the University of Nebraska. During the Q&A, begin to arm Syria’s rebels. We will attempt to bolster the better he said to a questioner—or appeared to say to a ques- elements within the opposition, focusing our hopes in particular tioner—“You’re not a member of the Taliban, are you?” on General Salim Idriss, a defector who runs the Free Syrian This particular questioner was a professor named Robin Army. We should be clear-eyed about this inherently limited Gandhi, born in India. Had the defense secretary just made policy, which comes in the context of the administration’s drift in a crude and nonsensical racial remark? Hagel denied it, the region: It won’t end the Syrian civil war, and it won’t topple saying he had not directed his comment at anyone in partic- Assad. It might give us more influence on the ground, though, ular. He had been talking about the and more insight into the players within the rebellion. Why Taliban, and the Taliban were on his should the Saudis and Qataris do more to shape the nature of the mind. He therefore made some opposition than we do? The problem with more robust interven- sort of vague joke. Professor tion now would be that, given how heavily Islamist the best rebel Gandhi, for his part, said he took fighters are at the moment, it would only help our enemies (Sunni no offense. So, there was no radicals) in the cause of fighting our other enemies (Assad, Iran, scandal. But we can’t help Hezbollah). The Middle East rarely presents many good choices; wondering: the Syrian civil war presents none. What if Hagel were a Repub - n The new president of Iran, the cleric Hassan Rowhani, was lican? Oh, wait a with Ayatollah Khomeini in exile in France planning the final second . . . stages of the overthrow of the shah. This is the all-important fact about the man. He is, and always has been, one of the regime’s core apparatchiks, the Iranian equivalent of a member of the n When Chen Guangcheng came to America, it was to New Communist Party’s Central Committee in old Soviet days. A look York University that he came. He is the “blind peasant at his record confirms his leading role in achieving the ends of the lawyer” and former political prisoner from China. He is one Islamic Republic and the elimination, if necessary by murder, of of the bravest and most admirable people in all the world. Last its opponents. The record also shows him trumpeting his role in April, he and his wife managed to escape to the U.S. embassy Iran’s nuclear program and helping deceive the West on the issue. in Beijing. After weeks of negotiation, they were allowed to Some 700 candidates applied to stand for the presidency, but fly to New York—to NYU, where Chen has been for a year. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei whittled them down to half a dozen. The Now they’re asking him to leave. Chen says that the university ayatollah is the Supreme Leader in any case, and the president is under pressure from China. NYU is building a spanking- serves to do his bidding. What might appear to be Rowhani’s new campus in Shanghai, and they must be on the good side election, then, is in the nature of an appointment. Yet a chorus of Beijing. NYU says this is nonsense, and ungrateful non- arose to sing that here was a reformer, a Gorbachev no less, will- sense at that: Chen has been royally treated, and his fellow- ing to engage with the West, open a new relationship, liberalize: ship has simply expired. It’s impossible for us to tell who is all the well-worn self-deceptions that people fall back on. It’s a right in this case (although we suspect that Chen knows what mind-blowing example of the trait T. S. Eliot long ago put his fin- he’s talking about). What is not at all impossible to tell is this: ger on: “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.” For decades, American scholars, universities, and other insti- tutions have cowered before China, and appeased China, for n Some citizens of Istanbul got together to protest the planned the sake of visas, financial contributions, and other benefits. development of one of the few parks in the city. No big deal, This has tainted our academic life, which already suffers from except that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, enough home-grown ills. sent the police to drive them off with water cannons and tear gas. This heedless response immediately enlarged what would have n Jared Marcum is from West Virginia, a state with a senator been a smallish peaceful demonstration into a nationwide explo- who put a round through President Obama’s cap-and-trade bill sion of rage against Erdogan. Hundreds of thousands of Turks see in a 2010 campaign ad. But the eighth-grader is now facing a him as arrogant and impetuous. He has always wanted to remake $500 fine or up to a year in jail for refusing to take off a T-shirt Turkey into an Islamist state, and he took his victory in three con- bearing the NRA’s logo and a hunting rifle. In April Jared was secutive elections as the signal to go ahead. The military, the judi- in the cafeteria line when a teacher ordered him to turn his shirt ciary, and the media have suffered purges: More journalists are in inside out. He refused. Escorted to the principal’s office, Jared prison in Turkey than in any other country. In the view of critics, was met by the local police chief and two officers who, when the proposed constitutional change to a presidential system of Jared persisted in trying to tell his side of the story, arrested government would say goodbye to hard-won years of democ- him. He is now being charged with obstructing an officer. racy and instead install Erdogan as a sultan with absolute power. Prosecutors have tried to impose a gag order on him to prevent “We take no orders or instructions from anyone except God,” he him from sharing his story with the press, and a local reporter boasted to the demonstrators, also claiming that they are terror- who prepared a petition to intervene with the order was barred ists under foreign influence. By the time the police had finished,

MANUEL BALCE CENETA from entering the courthouse. Jared is 14 years old. Perhaps there were four deaths; over 7,000 people have received hospital / Logan police and prosecutors could pick on someone their treatment. Violence is always just underneath the Islamist pro-

AP PHOTO own size. ject, as the Turks are now beginning to learn.

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n Horace said that his poetry was a monument more lasting property because of its depiction of Italian Americans, which is than bronze, but if he had been bolder, he might have com- rather like Greenwich, Conn., punishing John Updike for his pared his work to Roman cement. From a breakwater built in depiction of the great American WASP. Dead at 51. R.I.P. 37 b.C. near naples and, mirabile dictu, still sturdy, U.S. and Italian researchers have identified how the structure has been n Vince Flynn’s 15th thriller was to be called The Survivor. Its able to withstand more than 2,000 years of saltwater pounding publication is now uncertain, following Flynn’s death on June 19 against its surface. The Romans mixed volcanic ash with lime, to prostate cancer, at the age of 47. The Minnesota-based author which absorbed water and reacted with the ash to form the leaves behind a shelfload of bestselling novels with titles such as highly stable material we now call pozzolan cement, after “Consent to Kill,” “Kill Shot,” and “Protect and Defend.” All but Pozzuoli bay in southern Italy. Pozzolan cement is stronger one of them feature Mitch Rapp, a can-do CIA operative who than Portland cement, the industry standard in modern con- confronted America’s enemies at home and abroad: “He was a struction, and the manufacture of it emits less carbon dioxide, modern-day assassin who lived in a civilized country where such so there’s something in pozzolan cement for environmentalists a term could never be used openly,” wrote Flynn in Memorial as well as for architects and engineers, whose ancient fore - Day. Flynn insisted that he was an entertainer first, but he always runners once again show the way. filled his action-packed stories with prescient warnings about the rise of terrorism, along with heartfelt patriotism and a conserva- n normally, we wouldn’t have a fried corndog in a fight about tive sensibility. His countrymen responded by buying more than Paula Deen, the southern-cooking TV chef. yet the lady is try- 15 million copies of his books. R.I.P. ing to avoid incineration (she has been dropped by the Food network and Smithfield Hams) after an employee suing over NATIONAL SECURITY workplace harassment accused her of using what the polite No Sympathy for Snowden will only call “the n-word.” Some bosses use coarse language to bully and intimidate, and the courts will determine whether ny Americans who were once tempted to lionize or even that was the case here. but some of us use coarse language sympathize with Edward Snowden must be reassessing because we are not, even as this Pharisee, perfect. Meanwhile, A the man as he goes from China to Russia to, perhaps, rappers sprinkle “nigger” through their lyrics like a condiment, Ecuador in search of refuge. He has confirmed that the U.S. to show how echt they are, and everyone yawns. Lincoln said spies on foreign leaders, a comment that can only have been destruction and death were the nation’s punishment for slavery. made to cause diplomatic problems for our government, since What are conniptions and double standards our punishment the fact was surely already understood by every adult in the for? world. The government has charged him with violating the Espionage Act of 1917, and it is hard to see any valid defense he n James Gandolfini was the can mount: He has admitted to breaking the law, and he ought to son of Italian immigrants in be brought to justice. new Jersey, his mother a Debate continues about the surveillance programs whose high-school-cafeteria lunch existence Snowden revealed. It seems to us that the government lady, his father a bricklayer. ought to be allowed to collect information about phone and He parlayed his thuggish Internet use so long as safeguards are in place. The government looks into a notable acting should be able to store basic information about all Americans’ career—with a specialty in phone use in order to be able to detect possible terrorist activity thugs, of course—first on and then ferret out more information about it. It should be able the stage op posite Jessica to monitor foreigners’ Internet usage at the risk of discovering Lange and Alec bald win in some information about Americans’ usage. It should, however, A Street car Named De sire, have to delete any information about innocent Americans that then in film, and most fa - agents accidentally access, as is reportedly the current practice. mously as the new Jersey It is certainly possible to disagree with these judgments and Mob boss Tony Soprano in the highly regarded television series find no safeguards both adequate and practicable. We ourselves The Sopranos. That show launched what was to be a renais- think that the secrecy that surrounded the phone-surveillance sance in narratively sophisticated television programming. program is hard to defend: Short of communicating with tin cans Gandolfini’s performance in the show was smothered in praise, and string, terrorists are not going to be able to do much about and one critic described the program’s 86 episodes as compos- the fact that phone-call data are being collected. Secrecy is often ing the elusive “Great American novel,” praise that is overly necessary to protect national security, but it ought not to be used effusive, but not grossly so: In addition to Gandolfini’s memo- to protect policymakers from a political backlash. And even if all rable work, The Sopranos could boast of being the first televi- the secrecy were justified, Director of national Intelligence sion program in which the writing approached a level of artistry James Clapper told an indefensible lie to the Senate earlier this comparable to the best fiction or drama. Later, Gandolfini pro- year when testifying about the surveillance of Americans. duced two documentaries about the difficulties of veterans Instead of denying the existence of that surveillance, he could

returning from war, and did many of the normal Hollywood have followed witnesses in comparable situations in years past BARRY WETCHER ,

things: raising money for charities, divorcing his wife and HBO in saying that he would not speak in public about such sensitive / marrying a model, etc. He was a target for the usual scolds: matters.

Essex County, n.J., refused to let The Sopranos film on public There are, then, many reasonable criticisms that can be made AP PHOTO

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THE WEEK of how the government has been conducting surveillance. Then align our immigration policy with our economic interests, and, there is former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s comment that most worrisome, invites the continued erosion of the country’s we are “becoming a totalitarian surveillance state.” Edward cultural cohesion. Snowden could not have put it better, and probably would not Amended or not, this bill would simply offer an amnesty and have put it worse. then set about creating the constituency for the next amnesty. The House of Representatives should reject it. IMMIGRATION Ruses in the Senate LAW Justice Kennedy’s Culture War n a final theatrical flourish in the immigration-reform drama, the Senate conducted a hasty vote on the so-called amend- HE Supreme Court declined to rule that every state in the I ment offered by Senators John Hoeven and Bob Corker—an country must recognize same-sex marriage, but do not be “amendment” that, by sprinkling changes throughout the bill’s T fooled. Five justices have taken the position that there is no text, essentially created an entirely new piece of legislation. In rationale other than hostility to homosexuals for defining marriage effect, the Senate wrote a new bill on a Friday and gave itself the as the union of a man and a woman. When they believe the time weekend to consider its 1,200 pages. The amendment passed is right to issue a more sweeping ruling, they will. This issue will with 67 votes, and Senator Corker inexplicably described that no longer be one on which democratic deliberation is allowed. outcome as having “dramatically improved” the legislation. In The specific case in which the Court made its proclivities clear truth, he is not in much of a position to say: As Yu val Levin and concerned the Defense of Marriage Act, in which Congress others have noted, this amounts to another case of passing the bill defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman for the pur- to find out what’s in it. Republicans should not be party to that. poses of federal law. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the Among the many promises he has made regarding this issue, four Democratic appointees and himself, argues that the moti- Senator Marco Rubio averred that he would not support the pas- vation for the law was a “bare congressional desire to harm a sage of a bill without sufficient time for debate, discussion, study, politically unpopular group.” The Court is not saying merely and public input. This is yet another assurance from Senator that supporters of the historic understanding of marriage are Ru bio that has gone by the wayside. That means no score from wrong, or even merely that this understanding runs afoul of the the Congressional Budget Office, though the bill will have hun- Constitution (in some unspecified way: As Justice Antonin dreds of billions of dollars in fiscal consequences. That means no Scalia’s dissent notes, Kennedy’s opinion is hard to pin down on time for detailed analysis of the so-called security triggers in the the question). It is saying that the supporters bring nothing but bill, which are much less robust than the Gang of Eight would bigotry to the discussion. have us believe. The real argument for continuing to treat marriage as the This is, in a word, dishonest. no senator—and especially no union of a man and a woman is that marriage and marriage law Republican—associating himself with this sort of charade de - exist to channel sexual behavior in a way that promotes the serves to escape with his reputation undamaged. Perhaps that is flourishing of children. They exist, that is, to solve a problem no great loss for Senator John McCain, who has for years shown that does not arise in same-sex unions: that heterosexual sex himself to have grievously defective judgment on the subject of often gives rise to children. They exist to uphold the ideal that immigration, but Senator Rubio emerges from this process much children need the mother and father who created them to stay in diminished. a stable relationship together. Recognition of same-sex marriage The fundamental problem with this bill, both in its earlier form means that the institution is no longer about those things. and in the new Hoeven-Corker form, is that it confers an imme- There are, of course, coherent arguments against this view, and diate amnesty on illegals already present in the country in while we do not think them ultimately successful, an increasing exchange for promises of tightened border security at some point number of people clearly disagree with our conclusion. in the future. not very tight, mind you: The bill’s own supporters What should have mattered in court was that weighing that do not contest forecasts that over the next 20 years we would question is not their business. Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent got once again find ourselves with 11 million or more illegal immi- it right. “Same-sex marriage presents a highly emotional and grants, as many as we have now—partly because the amendment important question of public policy—but not a difficult question does nothing to reduce visa overstays. of constitutional law,” he writes. The Constitution is neutral on Stronger security provisions, such as requiring that the bor- whether governmental recognition of same-sex marriage will der fence be completed before amnesty is handed down, were undermine the institution of marriage, strengthen it, or have no rejected. Under this bill, the only purported consequence of effect at all; it does not contemplate the question. failing to secure the borders is delaying the process under which Five justices could not resist the temptation to pretend that the the newly legalized residents would be able to apply for green Constitution picks a side of this battle, and condemns the other— cards and citizenship. Given that many illegal immigrants have Scalia sees this plainly—as moral monsters. The justices have been here for decades—and that they care more about legaliza- not yet decided that we who disagree are to be permitted no influ- tion than about the prospect of citizenship—slowing down that ence whatsoever on the country’s marriage laws, but the clock is process would not matter very much. ticking, and this Court has no patience for self-government. Beyond the questions related to illegal immigration, the bill would establish radically expanded levels of legal immigration, EDITOR’S NOTE: The next issue of NATIONAL REVIEW which are problematic in themselves. It preserves the worst of the will appear in three weeks. old family-based immigration model, does little nor nothing to

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it would be otherwise (a number in line with earlier studies). It says that downward pressure on wages would be concentrated at the top and bottom of the wage scale. But it does not break down the numbers so that we can see the impact on people who are already living here, rather than on aggregates that include newcomers. What would the bill mean for native- born Americans working low-wage jobs? What would it mean for legal immigrants already here in 2013 in the same posi- tion? The CBO does not answer those questions. The deficit estimates are constructed in a way that largely leaves out the biggest federal programs. The CBO is surely right that granting legal status to illegal immigrants here, and admitting new legal immigrants, would generate added revenue in payroll taxes for So - cial Security and Medicare. It is also true that many of these people would start drawing benefits from these pro- A Subnation of Immigrants grams after the 20-year period the CBO considered. These are redistributive pro- Social cohesion matters grams, and the CBO estimates that most of the newcomers would be on the low BY RAMESH PONNURU end of the income distribution. It stands to reason that their lifetime impact on Or some people, the debate over ’s website: “Ul ti - the federal budget would be negative. the immigration bill before the mate ly, the CBO report rips a layer of Further, the bill restricts some govern- Senate ended on June 18. That artifice from the immigration debate. ment benefits for the illegal immigrants it F day, the Congressional Bud get Few critics of immigration reform really grants legal status. The CBO assumes— Office released two reports, one suggest- base their opposition on concerns about as it must, given the directions under ing that the bill would increase eco- the deficit or the economy. Their real which it is operating—that these restric- nomic growth in the U.S. and the other concern with immigration is cultural and tions will hold. One might reasonably suggesting it would reduce the deficit sociological. But that’s dangerous polit- think, however, that they will prove over the next two decades. ical ground.” unsustainable politically and that the pro- Jonathan Tobin, writing for the web- Both of these men are right, I think, to jections even for the next 20 years are site of the conservative magazine Com - say that much of the opposition to the therefore too rosy. men tary , argued that the reports showed legi slation is cultural rather than eco- But there is more to a nation than its that economic issues did not really sup- nomic. It is correct as well that some GNP, or its federal budget. The CBO ply a motive for opponents of the bill. objections to increasing legal immigra- seems to be assuming that roughly 20 Many of them really believe that a new tion are indefensible, such as objections million immigrants would come to this large wave of legal immigration would based on the race of newcomers. But the country over the next decade if the bill be bad for the country, a sentiment suggestion—explicit in Tobin, implicit passed, while 10 million would come if Tobin found “neither defensible nor in Klein—that cultural concerns about it did not. So during the next decade we logical.” immigration are necessarily disreputable would see about twice the level of immi- He continued: “Let’s be honest, if you or suspect is mistaken. It is entirely gration (legal and illegal) that we have are scared by the idea of a large number rational to hold them. had over the last decade. That very high of immigrants coming to this country in Which doesn’t mean that the economic level of immigration would have effects the future, even if the vast majority of and rule-of-law concerns about the immi - on our culture and our politics as well as them are arriving legally, then it’s time gration bill can be dismissed. The CBO on our economy and bud get, and we to admit that this dispute isn’t about the does not tell us what we would want to should neither rule these out of the dis- rule of law or amnesty, but something know to do a full evaluation of the bill’s cussion nor, what amounts to the same else [that] isn’t nearly as attractive.” economics. It says that in 20 years, per thing, assume that they will all be good. The liberal writer Ezra Klein took a capita gross national product would be My own chief concern about this leg-

more restrained version of this view at 0.2 percent higher if the bill passed than islation is its effect on assimilation. Will ROMAN GENN

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thebillmakeitmoreorlesslikelythat samemonth,aCBS/New York Times poll newcomerstothiscountrywillbeable had35percentfavoringthestatusquo,31 tobefullparticipantsinAmericanlife? percentwantinglessimmigration,and25 FISA Thatis,willtheynotonlysucceedeco- percentpreferringmore.Ineachofthese nomicallybutbecomepartofourcom- polls,moreimmigrationwastheleast Fiasco moncultureevenastheircontributions popularchoice.Onthisquestion,atleast, changeit?Willnativesandnewcomers it’sthesupportersofthebillwhoappear A “rubber stamp” court alike,whatevertheirethnicbackground tobeoutofstepwithalargemajorityof orincome,seethemselvesashaving thepublic. would be an improvement commoninterestsandacommonidentity Icannotproveit,thesurveydatabe- ascitizensoftheUnitedStates? ingsoscant,butIsuspectthatbehind BY ANDREW C. M C CARTHY Itisentirelyreasonabletoworrythat thepublic’slackofenthusiasmforin- doublingtheinflowofimmigrantswill creasedlegalimmigrationarethesortof he FISAcourtisarubber makeitharderforthemtoassimilate, culturalconsiderationsthatI’veraised stamp.”TheongoingNSA especiallyifalargeproportionofthem herebutarerarelyarticulatedinthe controversy has revived comefromthesameplace.Thequestion publicdebate.Onereasonthepublicde- ‘T that shopworn talking thislegislationraisesisoneofnational bate is so far removed from public point,relentlesslyrepeatedbyprogres- character,andnoCBOreportcananswer opinionmustbethetendencytocast siveandlibertarianopponentsofnational- it.Weshouldwantthatcharactertobe theseperfectlysensibleconsiderations securitysurveillance.Thenotionisthat welcoming,asproponentsofthelegisla- outofpolitediscussion.Thattendency,it theForeignIntelligenceSurveillance tionsay.Butweshouldnotwantittobe seemstome,isbothunhealthyand, Court,thespecialtribunalcreatedby indiscriminatelywelcoming.Andwhile well,unattractive. Congressin1978tooverseecollectionof weshouldwantittobepluralistic,as Thebillprovidessomerealbenefits. foreignintelligence,routinelyapproves theyalsosay,weshouldwantourplural- Legalizingillegalimmigrantswouldgive JusticeDepartmenteavesdroppingappli- ismtobecompatiblewithsocialcohe- themandtheirfamiliesashotatabetter cations.FoxNewsrecentlyreportedthat sion. life.Theadditionalimmigrantsthebill lastyear,forexample,theFISAcourt Nothingillustratesthewaythelegis- wouldbringtoourcountrywouldalso grantedall1,788requestsforauthoriza- lationcorrodestheseidealsmorethan experiencegains:ParticipationintheU.S. tion.Itisasiftherewerenojudicialover- theguest-workerprogramsitincludes. labormarketisoneoftheworld’sgreat sightatall,criticssay. Thebillwouldcreatealargeclassof treasures.Overthenextfewdecades,they Asafactualmatter,thetalkingpointis peoplewhoareinoursocietybutnotof shouldalsoreducethedeficitsomewhat. sheernonsense.Asamatteroflaw,itisill it:whoprovidetheirlaborbutarenot Native-bornAmericanswillprobably,in conceived,skippingbytheinconvenience expectedtoparticipateinourpolitics aggregate,seetheirwagesgoupbya thatcourtshavenoconstitutionalrolein orculture.Someofthese“temporary” smallamount. thegatheringofforeignintelligence. workers would renew their terms of Theadditionalimmigration,however, Let’sstartwiththefacts.Itwouldbe residencysothattheystayedherefor seemslikelytohavebadeffectsonthe niceifthepresshadalongenoughatten- years.Otherswouldoverstaytheirvisas wagesandassimilationoftheimmi- tionspantodemandthatsurveillancecrit- and become illegal immigrants, and grantswhoarealreadyhereandtheones icsmakeuptheirmindsabouttheFISA thushardtoassimilate.Somewould wewouldletinwithoutthebill.Our court.Priorto9/11,criticsclaimedthat applyforpermanentlegalstatusand countrywouldprobablybelesscohe- thetribunal—madeupofelevenfederal thusaddtothenumberoflow-skilled siveandmoredivided.Thecontinuation judges—wasarubberstampbecauseit legalimmigrantsthebillletsin.None ofillegalimmigration—theCBOesti- green-lightedvirtuallyallofthegov- oftheseoutcomeswoulddoagreatdeal matesthatifthebillpasses,itwillbe ernment’sapplicationstoeavesdropon, to advance our country’s interest in higherinthenextdecadethanitwasin orsecretlysearchfor,foreignterrorists assimilation. thelastone,though25percentlower andspies.Then,afterthe9/11attacks, Theviewthatlegal-immigrationlevels than it would be without passage— whenitwasrevealedthattheNational mightbetoohighhasgenerallybeen wouldmeanthatthemainproblemthe SecurityAgencywasconductingsome treated as illegitimate in our political immigrationbillwasmeanttoaddress surveillancewithoutseekingthecourt’s debates. When Senator Jeff Sessions wouldnotlookanybetter.Demandsfor approval,criticsswitchedgears:TheFISA (R.,Ala.)offeredanamendmentcapping anewamnesty,andreducedrespectfor courtwassuddenlytransformedintothe thatlevelat33millionoverthenext theruleoflaw,wouldbehighlylikelyin noblerobedbarricadestandingbetween decade,itwasdefeated17–1incom- thisscenario. usandGeorgeW.Bush’ssinistershred- mittee.Thisconcernisnot,however, Myfearsmaybeoverstated.Perhaps dingoftheConstitution. confinedtothemarginsofsociety.The peoplewillnotcometothecountryin Totheircredit,libertarians,whilewrong questionisrarelypolled—itselfanindi- anythinglikethenumbersthattheCBO ontheFourthAmendment’sbreadthand catorofthestateofthedebate—butFox assumes.Orperhapsthecountry’sassimi- applicationtoalienoperatives,areconsis- NewsfoundinAprilthat55percentof lativepowerwillprovegreaterthanI tent.Likeme,theyhaveneverbeenfans thepublicwantedtoreducethenumber assume.Theviewthattherisksarelarger ofFISA,butweopposeitforopposite oflegalimmigrantsweadmitwhileonly thanthelikelybenefits,though,seemsto reasons:Ithinkitisanunconstitutional 28percentwantedtoincreaseit.The belogicalanddefensible—andright. intrusiononthepresident’sconstitutional

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You deserve a factual look at . . .

Israel: A Light unto the Nations Those who demonize Israel are either misinformed or malevolent If that proverbial man from Mars came to visit and read the world’s newspapers, especially those in the Arab and Muslim world, he would be convinced that Israel was the most evil nation in the world and the source of all of the world’s strife. former South Africa. But that is so ridiculous, so preposterous, WhatA nation are to be theemulated. facts? The reality, of course, is that Israel it is hard to believe that serious people can countenance it. The is a nation, a society, that should be admired and emulated by exact opposite is the case. Israel is the only country in its many countries in the world. The very fact of how the State of benighted neighborhood in which people of all colors and Israel came into being is one of the most inspiring in history. religions prosper and have equal rights. Israel, expending Born out of the ashes of the Holocaust, it has emerged as one substantial effort, rescued tens of thousands of black Jews from of the most advanced, productive and prosperous countries in Ethiopia. And it has given assistance and absorbed countless the world. Christian expatriates from Sudan, who escaped from being The demonization of Israel, assiduously cultivated by the slaughtered by their Muslim countrymen. Israel’s over one Muslim world, reached a million Arab citizens enjoy the crescendo following Israel’s As the prophet Isaiah presaged: “Israel is same rights and privileges as defensive actions in Gaza. their Jewish fellows. They are Instead of being grateful to the indeed a Light unto the Nations.” represented in the Knesset, hated Jews for having totally Israel’s parliament, and are withdrawn, the Palestinian Gazans showed their “gratitude” by members of its bureaucracy, of its judiciary, and of its almost daily pounding of Israeli towns with thousands of diplomatic service. rockets and bombs. After countless warnings, Israel ultimately All over the world, Leftists, including in the decided to put an end to this travesty. and, sad to say, even in Israel itself, tirelessly condemn and When Israel finally did invade Gaza it took the most elaborate vilify Israel. Why would they do that? First, of course, there is precautions not to hurt civilians. As a first in the history of good old-fashioned anti-Semitism. Second, many of those who warfare, Israel dropped tens of thousands of leaflets, warning hate the United States vent their poison on Israel, which they the population and urging it to abandon areas in which consider being America's puppet in that area of the world. But military action would take place. The Israeli military made Israel should certainly get top grades in all areas important to thousands of phone calls urging people to leave areas that the Left. In contrast to all its enemies, Israel has the same would come under attack. But fighting in a densely populated democratic institutions as the United States. All religions environment is difficult and loss of civilian life is hard to avoid. thrive freely in Israel. Also, in contrast to all of its enemies, Hamas fighters wear no uniforms. It is impossible to tell them women have the same rights as men. The Chief Justice of from civilians. Is a person who allows a rocket launcher in his Israel’s Supreme Court is a woman. One-sixth of the Knesset backyard a civilian or a fighter? And how about using schools, are women. Compare that to Saudi Arabia, a medieval hospitals and mosques as munitions depots and staff centers? theocracy, where women are not even allowed to drive cars, The hue and cry of Israel’s demonizers of using where they cannot leave the country without permission of a “disproportionate force” is totally absurd. The ultimate insult, male relative, and where they can be and often are condemned comparing Israel to the Nazis, is freely bandied about by Israel’s to up to 60 lashes if the “modesty police” deems them not to be detractors. properly dressed in public. Gays and lesbians are totally Israel is not an “apartheid state.” Another familiar tack of unmolested in Israel; in the surrounding Muslim countries Israel’s vilifiers is to call it an “apartheid state,” on the model of they would be subjected to the death penalty. In spite of demonization and vilification by so much of the world, Israel is indeed a Light unto the Nations. The State of Israel is the foremost creation of the Jewish enterprise and Jewish intellect that has benefited every country in which Jews dwell, certainly our own country, the United States of America. Second only to the United States itself, Israel is the world’s most important factor in science and technology, way out of proportion to the small size of its population. Israeli Jews are at the forefront of the arts, the sciences, law and medicine. They have brought all these sterling qualities to bear in building their own country: Israel. By necessity, they have also become outstanding in agriculture and, most surprisingly, in the military. What a shame that the Arabs opted not to participate in this progress and in this prosperity and chose instead the path of revenge, of Jihad and of martyrdom. As the prophet Isaiah presaged: Israel is indeed a Light unto the Nations.

This ad has been published and paid for by FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world. Your tax- deductible contributions are welcome. They enable us to pursue these goals Facts and Logic About the Middle East and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines. We I P.O. Box 590359 San Francisco, CA 94159 have virtually no overhead. Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational 119B Gerardo Joffe, President work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail. To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/25/2013 10:33 PM Page 20

supremacy in gathering intelligence wall by judicial fiat. This resulted in the ing the category of “modifications.” against foreign enemies; they think it is first-ever ruling by the Foreign In telli - Beginning in 2003—i.e., right after the an unconstitutional dilution of the Fourth gence Surveillance (FIS) Court of Re - NSA warrantless program became known Amendment’s warrant requirement. Given view, which reversed the FISA court’s to the chief judge—the number of appli- their position that FISA warrants are lawlessness. cations reported as “modified prior to unconstitutional (because they require The FISA court similarly got its back approval” spiked. There had been two probable cause that a target is a foreign up over Bush’s warrantless surveillance. such applications in 2002; in 2003, there agent rather than that he has committed a Initially, only the chief judges of the court were 79—in addition to four outright crime), they in evitably objected to Bush’s were told about it: Judge Royce Lamberth denials, after no denials the preceding dispensing with warrants altogether. and his replacement, Judge Colleen year. Until the legislative overhaul of On the left, however, the vitriol against Kollar-Kotelly, both of the federal district FISA in 2008, the surge in modifications President Bush’s disregard for FISA was court in Washington. Longstanding prece- did not abate, their annual number rang- patent posturing. When FISA was enacted, dents, including the FIS Court of Review ing between a high of 94 (2004) and a low President Carter’s attorney general, Grif- decision, affirm that, regardless of Con - of 61 (2005). Clearly, judges began refus- fin Bell, sagely observed that the statute’s gress’s framework for judicial review, ing to consider certain evidence, which no passage did not and could not invalidate presidents have inherent power under doubt forced the Justice Department to The FISA court simply leans on the government to modify or withdraw the applications it finds wanting. These are denials by another name.

the executive’s constitutional authority to Article II to collect foreign intelligence— rewrite applications and perhaps even collect foreign intelligence without judi- a statute such as FISA cannot trump the forgo surveillance of suspected foreign cial permission. And when FISA was Constitution. Nevertheless, the chief agents. Moreover, even the FISA over- amended in the Nineties to address phys- judges bristled that the government might haul did not halt the modifications. There ical searches as well as eavesdropping, include evidence gathered without a war- have been a combined 70 in the last two President Clinton’s Justice Department rant in its FISA-court applications, thus years; and since 2009, 16 applications similarly insisted that the president re - infecting the judicially supervised process have been entirely withdrawn. served the authority to order physical with “taint.” Consequently, the govern- Simply stated, the FISA court does not searches of foreign operatives without ment was pressured to remove such evi- formally deny many applications, but that FISA-court approval. dence from its applications. isn’t because it’s a rubber stamp. It simply The Left made nary a peep about any In late 2005, the other FISA judges leans on the government to modify or of this. In authorizing warrantless NSA learned about the NSA’s warrantless- withdraw the applications it finds wanting. eavesdropping after 9/11, Bush was rely- surveillance program when it was dis- These are denials by another name. ing on exactly the same jurisprudence as closed by the New York Times. The Now, about that FISA overhaul in 2008: did Clinton and Carter. The Democrats’ ensuing revolt included a shameful epi- The demand for an urgent legislative fix reaction—their sudden depiction of the sode of judicial leaking to the Washington was triggered by an outrageous FISA- erstwhile “rubber stamp” as our vital in - Post, which reported that “judges who court ruling that claimed jurisdiction over surance against unconstitutional “do - spoke on the condition of anonymity . . . communications between non-Americans mestic spying,” their suggestions that said they want to know whether warrants situated outside the United States. In cre- Bush should be impeached—was dem- they signed were tainted by the NSA ating the FISA court in 1978, Congress agoguery of the most hypocritical kind. program.” This was a jaw-dropping viola- had quite intentionally excluded it from Now Bush is gone, so the FISA court is tion of the federal code of judicial ethics, ruling on intelligence activities outside back to being a rubber stamp. After all, it which directs jurists to refrain from public the U.S.—the idea was to protect Ameri - is easier for the Left to complain about the comment about pending or impending cans inside our country who were sus- judges than to deal with the embarrassing legal controversies—particularly those on pected of being foreign agents. Yet, to fact that President Obama has actually which they might be asked to render deci- enhance its own power, the court had run expanded “domestic spying.” sions. roughshod over this bright line, throwing In any event, the image of a sleepy The FISA-court pushback against the nation’s foreign-intelligence gathering FISA court’s serving as the executive constitutionally permissible surveil- into chaos in the middle of a war against branch’s doormat is an illusion. After lance is seen not only in judicial snark- secretive international terrorists, while we enactment of the Patriot Act, a principal ing but also in the court’s statistics. had troops in harm’s way. objective of which was to raze the infa- (FISA applications are classified, but This remarkable judicial arrogance mous “wall” by which the Justice De - court-disposition statistics are avail- required Congress to rewrite FISA to partment prevented cooperation be tween able publicly.) Critics are quick to point address a challenge the Framers of our national-security agents and criminal to the percentage of applications ulti- government would have found shock- investigators, a breathtakingly activist mately approved: near 100 percent. They ing: how to bring within the judicial FISA court attempted to re-erect the somehow never get around to mention- ambit foreign-intelligence collection—

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an innately political activity carried on, in “inappropriate” is difficult to imagine the main, outside the United States and from the vantage point of anno Domini thus outside federal-court jurisdiction. The 2013. It is the irreplaceable word, five Congress took the easy way out: confer- mustelid syllables without which the ring on the executive branch sweeping Inappropriate conduct of modern government would be authorization for spying, with court ap - all but impossible. proval to be triggered by little or no Bill Clinton was of course the master demonstration of suspicion that the target ‘Inappropriate’ of the inappropriate. During the lead-up was a hostile foreign operative. It was to his confessing to crossing the line with easier than confronting the real problem: An adjective abused a strapping young fellatrix from the in - FISA’s dubious constitutionality. tern pool, President Clinton threw the Foreign-intelligence collection is a par- BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON word “inappropriate” around a good deal. adigmatic executive responsibility. De- Asked by National Public Radio whether cisions about foreign policy and, in ome conservatives believe that he had talked to monica Lew in sky about particular, national defense are the most it was reverence for the Con - her testimony, Clinton did not deny that fundamental ones a nation-state con- sti tu tion that constrained the he had—instead, he said only that it fronts. In our republic, the Framers in - S growth of government in the would be “inappropriate” for him to re - tended them to be made by officials early days of the republic, while the econ- visit his earlier statements about the case. accountable to the sovereign people omist Arnold Kling has argued that the President Clinton was willing to use whose lives are at stake. The judiciary, on frontier—an escape hatch for the ener- the word “inappropriate” to describe the other hand, besides having no special getic and imaginative—kept the state others and to describe actions that he did competence in intelligence matters, is from getting out of hand. my own theory not intend to take, but at the critical quite intentionally insulated from politi- is that political ambition was leashed moment, he could not quite apply it to cal accountability. The point of having a because Americans in the late 18th cen- himself. You remember the video, surely: federal judiciary is to give Americans a tury lacked the word “inappropriate,” the Bill Clinton, dark suit, blue tie, test i ly forum for protecting their rights against earliest usage of which is attested, as the informing America that sitting in this government overreach, not to give foreign etymologists say, in 1804. How politics very office and speaking from this very agents a forum to put our government and was practiced at all without the word chair, he had answered questions from its policies on trial. Government policy is checked at the ballot box, and by the tools the Constitution gives the political branches—the executive and legisla- tive—to check each other. This is why the courts have long acknowledged that foreign policy, in- cluding intelligence collection, is a ple- nary executive responsibility. It is the president who is constitutionally respon- sible for safeguarding national security against threats—a core function of gov- ernment for which a judicial role was not contemplated and remains impractical. Hence the court precedents, relied on by administrations of both parties, estab- lishing that the president has inherent authority to gather intelligence on for- eign operatives—a power Congress can neither reduce nor transfer to the judges. FISA is an anomaly, enacted in overre- action to Watergate and the spying scan- dals of the Seventies. No judge should ever tell a president that the executive branch may not collect intelligence on  suspected foreign spies and alien terror- ists. If the constitutional system were working properly, the FISA court—if it existed at all—would be a rubber stamp. Unfortunately, it is not, and its activism, however well intentioned, portends more harm than good.

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the special prosecutor and the grand jury, propriate.” It also emerged that Generals personal gain a rate that underpins con- including questions about his private Petraeus and Allen both had become tracts worth $350 trillion worldwide is life. “Indeed, I did have a relationship involved in a nasty custody case on rather more than ‘inappropriate.’” with Miss Lewinsky that was”—and behalf of Kel ley’s sister, which Reuters So is the statutory rape of school - here a brief micro-expression of rage judged “inappropriate.” General Allen children, but Michelle Hansen (special-ed mists across his face—“. . . not appro- did not face an “inappropriateness” hear- teacher, California), Amy Beck (middle- priate.” Not “inappropriate,” mind you: ing but a “misconduct” hearing, and he school teacher, California), Abbie Jane We all know that whatever “inappro - was cleared. That’s the great thing about Swogger (former exotic dancer and priate” means, it isn’t the dictionary def- the “inappropriate”—it may be nasty, but teacher’s aide, Pennsylvania), and at least inition. It isn’t just not appropriate, but it doesn’t land you in court. 26 Texas schoolteachers since the be - immoral, unseemly, possibly criminal. Paula Broadwell probably had a better ginning of this year were accused of A guy willing to parse the meaning of handle on what “inappropriate” is sup- having “inappropriate” relationships “is” knows the difference between “not posed to mean in the English language with students as young as 14 years of age. appropriate” and “inappropriate.” than most people in politics and media. Chester the Molester is now Ches ter the “Inappropriate” as a marker of sexual She anonymously advised Kel ley that Inappropriate. The intersection of sex and politics is where “inappropriate” lives and thrives.

misconduct spread through the public she should cease swanning around mili- In 2010, Iranian president Mahmoud discourse like C. trachomatis through a tary bases in pursuit of generals: “You Ahmadinejad went to the United Na tions frat house. When an administrator at the need to take it down a notch.” (How’s and claimed that the terrorist attacks of University of Tennessee was accused of that for slut shaming?) Kelley denied September 11, 2001, had been orches- having “inappropriate” relations with such wrongdoing and—appropriately trated by the U.S. government. In the the basketball team—and fixing their enough—hired the law yer who repre- furor that followed, the U.S. delegation grades—speculation about a “possible sented the Democrats during the Clinton- walked out, joined by those of 27 inappropriate relationship” quickly be- Lewinsky business to look after her European nations, the European Un ion, came speculation about “multiple inap- interests. He says that his client was Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and propriate relationships,” though sources dragged into this scandal simply because Costa Rica. U.S. Representative Scott at the university, home to a well-regarded she and her husband had the bad luck to Garrett (R., N.J.) boldly declared the college of engineering, did not say have been “the subjects of inappropriate statement “inappropriate.” But at least whether those were wired in parallel or and potentially threatening behavior by theoretical barbecues are safe from the in series. someone else.” inappropriateness of the habitually tie- The intersection of sex and politics is As I write, the reports free Iranian moonbat. where “inappropriate” lives and thrives. that Paula Deen has apologized for us ing When the U.S. embassy in Cairo tried When the FBI looked into what it called “inappropriate” language. Ques tion: In to suck up to those who were gearing up “potentially inappropriate” communiqués what context is the word associated with to attack the consulate in Benghazi— between General John Allen and Florida her case appropriate? condemning “the continuing efforts by socialite Jill Kelley, some thousands of The IRS bullying its critics? “In ap pro - misguided individuals to hurt the reli- “inappropriate” e-mails were recovered, pri ate,” according to the internal in - gious feelings of Mus lims”—Mitt Rom - according to London’s Guardian, and vestigation. And “wholly inappropriate,” ney called it “disgraceful.” But after five the Pentagon labeled them “inappropri- according to Jay Carney. You know minutes of the usual Washington how- ate and flirtatious.” General Allen was in you’ve crossed a line when you get to dare-you-sir routine, Romney changed the crosshairs after an investigation into “wholly inappropriate,” which is one his mind: The embassy’s statement was General David Petraeus’s “inappropriate” degree beyond “totally inappropriate.” merely “inappropriate.” Romney being (NBC News) relationship with his bio - The word has migrated to Europe, of Rom ney, he then explained the meaning grapher, Paula Broadwell, was revealed. course, with Italy blazing the trail: Ber - of “inappropriate”: “I think it was not Broad well had sent catty e-mails to lusconi offensivo e inappropriato sulle directly applicable and appropriate for Kelley ac cusing her of having an “inap- donne. Inappropriato is singular and the setting.” propriate” (USA Today) relationship with masculine, like Silvio Berlusconi, while Back in the heyday of Clintonism, the very general with whom she was hav- inappropriate is feminine and plural, like Rush Limbaugh wrote his famous “35 ing an inappropriate relationship. But that his troubles. Undeniable Truths,” of which No. 34 was probably was to be expected: Broadwell Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian, “Words mean things.” No. 35 was “Too wore “inappropriate” clothes in Afghani- bless him, has had enough, writing: “The many Americans can’t laugh at them- stan, according to Forbes—and on the Barclays scandal is not ‘wholly inappro- selves anymore,” which perhaps he’ll Charlie Rose program and The Daily priate.’ It’s a crime. . . . In ap pro pri ate? keep in mind when I note that in his apol- Show, according to a half-dozen other Inappropriate is wearing a tie to a barbe- ogy to Sandra Fluke, he characterized commentators. Naturally, feminist critics cue. Wholly inappropriate is burping dur- describing her with the words “slut” and found this alleged “slut shaming” “inap- ing the wedding vows. Distorting for “prostitute” as “inappropriate.” Which of

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course it was: Pros ti tutes earn their liv- has a strong libertarian emphasis.” He ing, and Fluke is the patron saint of slips into fanboy lingo, referring to the Generation suckle. But still, perhaps not The “Prime Di rective,” which forbids the exactly the right word. Rush was echoing crew of the starship Enter prise to meddle John Boehner, who also called the Education of in the affairs of alien civilizations. “It’s remarks “inappropriate.” closely related to the principle of non- Washington culture is a specialized intervention.” expression of celebrity culture, and, like Justin Amash After law school at the University of their counterparts in Hollywood, the How a libertarian gadfly took wing Michigan, Amash began to receive daily denizens of the Imperial City and its e-mails from the Mackinac Center, a free- media suburbs appear to be at once some- BY JOHN J. MILLER market think tank in Midland, Mich. thing more than human and something “They were always pointing out how less. They are cartoon figures invested s Justin Amash zips along a Democrats and Republicans in Lansing with Olympian powers. But they cannot parade route in Cutlerville, voted the same way on economics,” he quite put together a meaningful English Mich., on June 8, there’s a says. “It seemed like everyone was for sentence or express a normal human sen- A method to his movement. industrial policy—targeted tax breaks and timent. Rather than marching down the middle subsidies rather than lowering tax rates In reality, there is no setting in which of 68th street behind a big red-and- and letting markets work.” Their behavior the Cairo embassy’s statement would white sign that announces him as the violated Amash’s sense of fair play, but have been appropriate. There is no setting area’s congressman, he jogs from side his beliefs were more instinctive than in which it is appropriate for Paula Deen to side, making quick calculations intellectual. “I wanted to learn if any eco- to use racial slurs, for Bill Clin ton to use about who would like to shake his hand nomic philo sophers shared my views,” he the intern pool, for teachers to bed 14- and who would like him simply to get says. “so I entered a few search terms into year-old students, for Gen er al Petraeus to out of the way of the fire trucks, an - Google and found myself on Hayek’s be a general hound dog, for Iranian tique cars, and karate-class students Wikipedia page.” From there, Amash nutters (and their American celebrity that follow. Toward the end of the pro- went on to read The Road to Serfdom and counter parts) to make false and idiotic cession, a man in a portable chair calls other titles in the classical-liberal canon. claims about 9/11, or for agents of the him over and points to the sign: “Change Then he went from reading to running: U.s. government to abuse their powers that sign to ‘senator’!” Amash barely In 2008, at the age of 28, Amash won a to harass their political rivals. Those pauses. “We’ll see,” he says. seat in Michigan’s legislature, where he things are not “inappropriate.” Rather, Over the next few months, the 33-year- witnessed what he previously had only they are, in order: backward and bigoted, old Republican from Grand Rapids must heard about. “Looking at the newspaper adulterous and abusive, criminal and make an important decision: should he stories, you would think the parties dis- exploitative, adulterous and dangerous, run for the senate seat of the retiring agreed all the time,” he says. “But that’s loony and wicked, and a threat to the very Democrat Carl Levin, trying to become not true. Even the Re publicans were cen- architecture of a free constitutional re- next year’s favorite tea-party insurgent? tral planners, believing that any tax break public. “Inappropriate” is not a synonym Or should he continue to build a career in is a good tax break.” Amash found him- for “evil.” the House, where he has already become self voting against measures that received Adultery is like usury: Anything endur- an outspoken member of the GOP’s liber- near-unanimous support. scores of times, ing into modern times but ancient enough tarian wing? “We like him,” says Chris he was the lone dissenter on legislation. to have an Old Testament injunction Chocola of the Club for Growth, which Reporters treated him as a category- against it can safely be assumed to be a funds fiscal conservatives. “If elected, busting curiosity. Amash, however, was part of the human condition. so is lying, he’d be a good senator.” an earnest official who explained each of and so is the temptation to abuse posi- Reason magazine touts Amash as “the his votes on Facebook. “I wasn’t aware of tions of power. All are sins. Not especially next Ron Paul.” A few years ago, how - anybody else in government who did exotic ones, and certainly not unfor giv- ever, Amash wasn’t even familiar with the that,” he says. He continues this practice able ones. But forgiveness requires of us a likes of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von in Congress, writing a short paragraph on certain honesty about our transgressions, Mises—libertarian economists whose each bill or amendment, which he has which is not to be found lurking in the images now decorate his congressional done more than 1,800 times in the last two penumbras of “inappropriate.” office, alongside the more traditional pic- and a half years. “I try to post in real Unhappily, the cultural tide has turned tures of the Found ing Fathers. He had time,” he says, though in June he had in the opposite direction, toward an iron- grown up in western Michigan, the son of fallen slightly behind schedule. “We vote ically self-aware use of “inappropriate.” Christian immigrants from Palestine and way too often,” he complains. In an episode of the television show syria. His father founded a successful When nine-term Republican congress- Scandal, a married political figure is tool-distribution business best known for man Vern Ehlers announced his retire- attempting to seduce a colleague. she its Tekton line of hammers, wrenches, and ment, Amash considered jumping into the protests that the relationship would be screwdrivers. But rather than reading Ayn GOP primary to succeed him in 2010. At “inappropriate.” He re plies: “so let’s be Rand novels as a boy, Amash watched the time, Ron Paul’s brother, David Paul, inappropriate.” Star Trek. “I’ve seen every episode,” he was serving as a pastor at a church in Let’s not. says. “The new movie is good, and it even Grand Rapids. He helped the two men

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connect, and then-congressman Paul ernment should be involved in marriage at encouraged Amash to run. In a good year all.” He would vote to repeal the portion for grassroots activism, Amash beat a of the Defense of Marriage Act that field of older, more es tablished Repub - defines marriage as a union of one man licans, winning the district once held by and one woman and let the states decide Gerald Ford. how to handle the issue. On federal mat- In the House, Amash has earned a Paul- ters such as So cial Security survivor ben- like reputation as a renegade who puts efits and immigration visas for spouses libertarian principle before Re publican of citizens, Amash again would defer to partisanship. This March, an analysis by states. “Are people legally married in the National Journal found that Amash dis- jurisdictions where they live?” he asks. sented from the GOP line more than any “That’s the only question.” He holds other Republican, voting against his similar views on drugs: “The federal party’s majority 31 percent of the time. He government should get out of the drug- even became the only Republican to criminalization business and let state oppose a resolution affirming “In God We laws rule the day.” Trust” as the nation’s motto. “The faith Like many libertarians, Amash pre fers that inspired many of the Founders of this a minimalist foreign policy. At the town country—the faith that I practice—is other two were Senators Ted Cruz of hall in Middleville, a constituent asked stronger than that,” wrote Amash, who Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, the son him about Israel. “I support phasing out belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church of of Ron Paul. foreign aid for all countries,” he replied. Antioch, on Facebook. “Trying to score Amash is quick to point out a few dif- On the civil war in Syria—the homeland political points with unnecessary resolu- ferences between himself and the elder of his mother and a country he visited as a tions should not be Congress’s priority.” Paul. Amash opposes earmarks, supports boy—he urges caution. “Assad is a dicta- Last December, after Amash repeatedly free-trade agreements, and says he’s more tor, but if you take the side of the rebels, opposed Republican budgets, GOP con- willing to use military force to prevent ter- you ally with people allied to al-Qaeda.” gressional leaders booted him from the rorism. “Ron Paul was an important edu- He adds that he’s concerned about the fate House Budget Committee. At a town-hall cational figure, not a typical politician,” of Syria’s Christians, who make up about meeting in Middleville, Mich., on June 8, says Amash. “Today we’re seeing a new 10 percent of the population. Amash turned his ouster into a laugh line: generation of libertarian-minded Repub- On June 14, Republican congressman “I was kicked off the budget committee licans who are better able to communicate Mike Rogers of Michigan announced that for wanting to balance the budget.” Even a message to the broader public.” Amash he would not run for the Senate next year, the blueprint drafted by Paul Ryan and hopes that Rand Paul assumes the lead disappointing Washington’s GOP estab- adopted by the House last year didn’t go among them: “He should run for presi- lishment. Rogers is a prominent defender far enough for him. “We have a $17 tril- dent. He’s exactly what we need.” of NSA surveillance, and a race pitting lion debt and we have to deal with it now,” The controversy over the National him against Amash might have become he says. Unlike many conservatives, Security Agency’s phone surveillance has a gripping contest between the attractions Amash favors cuts in defense appropria- put Amash’s libertarianism on full dis- of freedom and those of security. The tions: “We need to show the Democrats play. “They’re spying on all Ameri cans, only Republican who has declared for that we’re sincere about spending reduc- including members of Congress,” he says. the primary so far is Terri Lynn Land, tions.” “The Fourth Amendment is supposed to Michi gan’s former secretary of state. On Amash is fully capable of criticizing protect us from a generalized search of the the Democratic side, Congressman Gary President Obama: “This is one of the population.” On June 18, he introduced a Peters appears to enjoy a clear path to the worst administrations in history—cer- bill with Demo cratic congressman John general election. For more than three tainly the worst of my life, and I was alive Conyers—a fellow Michigander and one decades, Michigan has elected only De - for Jimmy Carter for a few months.” Yet of the most left-wing members of the mo cratic senators, with the single excep- he draws more attention for his Repub - House—to limit the NSA’s program and tion of Spencer Abraham, a one-termer lican apostasy. In January, Amash refused also to force disclosures about secret court who lost in 2000. to support John Boeh ner’s reelection as decisions. “I’m very concerned about the So will Amash run? “I don’t know yet,” speaker of the House, casting his ballot surveillance state, and I just don’t trust the he insists. His candidacy in 2014 could for Repub lican congressman Raúl Labra - government,” says Amash. “This isn’t a provide a peek into the politics of 2016, dor of Idaho. Sometimes it seems like he Democrat or Republican problem. It’s a testing the ability of a libertarian to win just can’t help knocking his colleagues: “I problem of the executive branch, which over mainstream conservatives—a ques- know a lot of good people in Con gress— keeps taking more power from the legis- tion that must weigh heavily on Rand FILE

a dozen, maybe two dozen,” he says, lature and the people. Unfortunately, too Paul. For Amash, the prudent choice may / without irony. He has even ruffled feath- many Repub licans like executive power be to make more like Ron than Rand, ers in the Senate. In March, Re publican too much.” using his safe seat in the House to propa- CARLOS OSORIO

senator John McCain of Ari zona labeled Amash is pro-life, but he refuses to join gate his ideas. Then again, the most com- / Amash one of three GOP “wacko birds” most social conservatives in re sisting gay fortable course rarely has been Amash’s

for protesting Obama’s drone policy. The marriage: “I don’t think the federal gov- way. Keep an eye on Facebook. AP PHOTO

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threedays’contest,”Webbsaid,“wasa tionsthatfallinPennsylvaniaandOhio;if constantrecurrenceofscenesofself- thosestatesturnedagainstthewar,they Twilight sacrifice,”especially“onthepartofall couldforcePresidentAbrahamLincoln engagedonthethirdandlastday.” eithertobeginpeacetalksortoresign. Ofthe One hundred fifty years later, one Lee’sarmy,some85,000strong,struck mightimaginethatAlexanderWebbwas northwardinthefirstweekofJune1863, suffering from a touch of middle-age crossingthePotomacRiverandsweeping Confederacy myopia.Theword“Gettysburg”isstill inalongarcuptheCumberlandValley How Gettysburg changed history powerful enough to be recognized by untilhisadvanceguardwasperchedon eventhemostindifferentgrade-schooler theSusquehannaRiver.Lee’sgoalwasto BY ALLEN C. GUELZO asabig-boxeventinAmericanhistory. luretheArmyofthePotomacnorthward Butdoesitdeservetostandbeside afterhim,and,assoonastheyhadstrung OOkING back20yearsafterit Waterloo? themselvesoutontheroadsandwere wasfought,AlexanderStewart Itdoes.Gettysburgmayhavebeenthe unabletohelpeachother,toturnand WebbdeclaredthattheBattleof lastsolidchancethebreakawaysouthern smashthempiecebypiece. L Gettysburg “was, and is now stateshadofwinningtheCivilWarand Itnearlyworked.The95,000menof throughouttheworld,knowntobethe theirindependence.Inbattleafterbattle, theArmyofthePotomac,pantingand WaterloooftheRebellion.”Certainly RobertE.LeehadledhisragtagCon- uncertain,setoffafterLee,andassoonas Webbhadearnedtherighttojudge.He federateforces,theArmyofNorthern Leewassatisfiedthattheyhadfrantically wasincommandoftheUnionbrigade Virginia,tovictoryovertheUnionArmy marched themselves into disarray, he thatabsorbedthespearpointofthebat- ofthePotomac.Butthevictorieswereall orderedhisownarmytoconcentrate, tle’sclimaxonJuly3,1863,thegreat wononVirginia’ssoil,andtheyenfeebled readytopounceonthefirstpartsofthe charge of the Confederate divisions theVirginiaeconomyevenastheyde- Army of the Potomac that obligingly commandedbyGeorgeE.Pickett.“This fendedit.Leeknewthatonlybycarrying wanderedintohistrap.Buttheleadele- thewarintotheUnionstatesandleverag- mentsoftheArmyofthePotomacgotto Mr. Guelzo is the author of the New York Times ingthewar-wearinessoftheUnioninto thetownofGettysburgfirst,andwhen bestseller Gettysburg: The Last Invasion. He peacenegotiationscouldtheConfederacy Lee’sownadvanceunitsarrivedthereon teaches at Gettysburg College. hopetowin.Therewouldbestateelec- July1,theyfoundUniontroopsreadyto

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fight for dear life to hold it. There were cited 3,155 of his own men killed, 14,529 words of the Gettysburg Address have not many of them, and on July 1, Lee’s wounded, and 5,365 “captured or miss- been worn so familiar with quotation that army was able to clear them out. At night- ing.” In 1900, Thomas Livermore, who it may be hard now to grasp the depth of fall, though, the Union soldiers were fought in a New Hampshire regiment in meaning in Lincoln’s “few, brief re - still grasping a strategic height south of the battle, painstakingly recalculated marks”—all of 272 words—at that dedi- town: Cemetery Hill. Lee assumed that unit reports for the Army of the Potomac cation in November 1863. In Lincoln’s he could wait for the next day to finish and put the reckoning at 3,903 dead, mind, the fundamental significance of the job. But by the morning of July 2, 18,735 wounded, and 5,425 “missing,” so Gettysburg—and the Civil War—was the five of the seven infantry corps of the that the entire butcher’s bill edged up to survival of democracy itself: whether Army of the Potomac had raced to 28,063. “any nation so conceived and so dedi- Gettysburg, and Lee was forced to mount But much of the Union believed the cated can long endure.” In 1863, liberal an ambitious and bloody assault on a price was worth paying. “What do the democracy looked like anything but “the series of Union positions—the Peach people of the North think now of the end of history.” Every other democratic Orchard, the Wheatfield, Little Round Old Army of the Potomac,” exulted a sol- experiment launched in the heyday of Top—whose idyllic names belied the dier in the 28th Pennsylvania Regiment. popular revolutions had gone up in viciousness of the fighting that raged Richard Henry Dana, the prominent smoke, with the thickest smoke rising around them. Boston lawyer and literary lion, believed from the French Revolution. And how, the In Lincoln’s mind, the fundamental significance of Gettysburg—and the Civil War—was the survival of democracy itself.

Lee’s attack on July 2 came within an that Gettysburg “was the turning-point in monarchs and dictators were eager to ace of succeeding, so on the next day he our history,” not so much because the ask, could it help but be so? Democracies launched what he assumed would be the Union had won a victory as because it had are run by the “consent of the gov - knockout blow against a Union army avoided a defeat that would have proven erned”—they assume that the most ordi- already hanging on the ropes. Lee sent the Army of the Potomac’s—and its nary of their citizens are competent to three divisions of rebel infantry straight own—last defeat. “Had Lee gained that participate in governing. But are they? at the vital nape of the Union army’s battle, the Democrats would have risen Ordinary people can be ordinary in mean, neck, just behind Cemetery Hill. The and stopped the war. With the city of New selfish, and very dull ways, and can allow rebels punched holes in the Union York and Governor [Horatio] Seymour, government to disappear in a dysfunc- defenses—but couldn’t hold them. and Governor [Joel] Parker in New tional maelstrom of money, self-interest, Amazed at the failure of his gambit and Jersey, and a majority in Pennsylvania, as and incompetence. appalled at the cost in lives, Lee ordered they then would have had, they would so Lincoln saw in Gettysburg a rainbow in a retreat back across the Potomac. have crippled us as to end the contest. the maelstrom. Gettysburg and its dead “The campaign is a failure and the That they would have attempted it we at were proof that a great many of those oth- worst failure that the South has ever home know.” As it was, New York City erwise dull and ordinary bourgeoisie were made,” wrote one Confederate survivor: blew up in draft riots ten days after the willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to “No blow . . . has been so telling against battle: If Robert E. Lee had been crossing preserve the solidarity of their nation, the us.” A soldier in the 11th Georgia Regi- the Susquehanna River rather than the nobility of self-government, and the ment wrote his mother that “the Armey is Potomac River on that day, it might have propositions on which it was built. Lin - Broken harted” and now “don’t Care been the Army of Northern Virginia that coln could not look out across the semi- which Way the War Closes, for we have was called in to restore order rather than circular avenues of the dead in that Suffered very much.” In fact, Lee would Union veterans fresh from their victory at cemetery—where fully a quarter of the never again regain the military initiative. Gettysburg. Gettysburg did not end the 3,900 buried men were unknowns—and Although fighting would go on for an - war in one stroke, but it was decisive not feel confirmed in the staying power of other 21 months, the Confederates were enough to restore the sinking morale of democracy. He called on living Ameri - confined to the sort of defensive warfare the Union, decisive enough to keep at bay cans to dedicate themselves “to that cause they could least afford. And no wonder: the forces that hoped Lincoln could be for which” the dead of Gettysburg “gave The costs that Gettysburg imposed on the persuaded to revoke emancipation, and the last full measure of devotion” and to Confederacy included 2,592 killed, decisive enough to make people under- ensure that government “of the people, by 12,709 wounded, and 4,150 “captured or stand that the Confederacy would never the people, for the people, shall not perish missing,” according to the Army of be able to mount a serious invasion again. from the earth.” Gettysburg clearly had Northern Virginia’s chief medical officer, It remained for Lincoln to illumine the great military significance. But even Lafayette Guild. ultimate significance of Gettysburg, in the more, Gettysburg still sings for us be - The cost of the Union’s victory was words he spoke at the dedication of the cause of how Abraham Lincoln translated even higher. George Gordon Meade, who national cemetery laid out on Cemetery the raw experience of battle into an commanded the Army of the Potomac, Hill in the months after the battle. The anthem for democracy.

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wouldn’t need a very large table. And learn first by instruction and then by half the other people would be Worsey’s doing. Worsey and his staff make an Blowing Up onetime students. He has gained some analogy to driving school: You would celebrity, and so has his summer camp: not give a person a license if he had Barbie When I arrive, cameras from a Canadian never been behind the wheel. Simu - television show are just leaving. Worsey lators, books, and lectures can only do so The joy of himself starred in a Discovery Channel much. explosives camp program called “The Detonators.” Needless to say, explosives are risky, He is English-born, and so is his wife, and the camp stresses safety. There is a Gillian, a civil engineer. They met at the certain amount of bravado among explo- BY JAY NORDLINGER University of Bristol. He earned his Ph.D. sives engineers, I find—a devil-may- in Newcastle upon Tyne; she earned hers care attitude—but beneath that is due Rolla, Mo. at Rolla. Barbara Robertson is an admin- awareness. Work with explosives was HERE are many summer camps, istrator, serving as a kind of den mother to dangerous before Nobel, and dangerous something for everyone. But the campers and university students. She after him. there’s no other camp quite like is German-born. You hear some color - Nobel? Alfred Nobel, the father of the T this: an explosives camp. A ful accents in south-central Missouri. prizes, and a pioneer in explosives engi- hands-on explosives camp. Such a thing Paul Worsey is a serious engineer— neering. This genius Swede had 355 would seem impossible in modern working in a very serious field—but he patents to his name. His most famous in - America. These days, kids ride their is free and easy. He laughs frequently. He vention, of course, is dynamite (1867). trikes in protective gear. So, the very wants his students to have fun, and he But his most important one, scientifically, idea of explosives camp is thrilling. wants to have fun himself. He believes in is a blasting cap. Nobel’s inventions Not to all, of course. Before I left the straight talk, despising political correct- made possible what today we call “infra- Upper West Side of Manhattan, I told a ness. He is scalding on the subject of structure”: tunnels, canals, railroads, and dear friend and neighbor where I was government—particularly its regulators. the like. The campers know about Nobel. going. She could not get the look of He is not against regulations; he’s just In fact, Dyno Nobel—an international horror off her face. against silly and ignorant regulations. company born of companies founded by Explosives Camp is an offering of Explosives Camp began in 2004, as a the inventor himself—sponsors an essay Missouri University of Science and recruitment tool for the university. It had competition. This particular week, two Tech nology—formerly known as the almost no advertising. But word spread. of the campers have won, receiving a lit- Uni versity of Missouri–Rolla, formerly The camp takes just 20 students per ses- tle scholarship money. known as the Missouri School of Mines sion, and a session is a week long. There Among the staff, there is a marked and Metallurgy. Rolla is midway be- are two sessions this year. You have to be spirit of independence. I think of a tween St. Louis and Springfield (Spring - at least 16 to enroll, owing to the realities motto, “Don’t Tread on Me.” They be - field, Mo., that is). On the main drag is of insurance. The camp attracts mainly lieve that society has become too risk- The Lord’s Library: “Your Full Service boys, as you would guess. But there are averse, too confining. “Kids tend to be Christian Store.” girls too—five in the session I drop in on, bubble-wrapped,” says a staffer. She is An undergraduate at S&T can minor a full quarter of the bunch. an S&T undergrad from Cheyenne. She in explosives engineering. He can then Most of the activities take place on the seems a typical westerner: open, confi- go on to get his master’s in it. Pretty outskirts of town, at a site that features an dent, capable. I ask her what her family soon, a doctoral program may be com- experimental mine (established in 1913). thinks of her studies in explosives. “My ing. Each year in this country, more The buildings are fairly rudimentary. mom said, ‘Be careful, and come home than 6 billion pounds of explosives are Explosives Camp is not posh. This is not alive.’” used. Someone needs to know how to a country club. New facilities are in the The Fourth of July is approaching, the use them. works, but the camp has an old-style big time of the year for pyrotechnicians. Explosives are used in mining, pri- look, for now. Just up the road is Joe and (A staffer from northeastern Missouri marily. But they also figure in construc- Linda’s Tater Patch. It’s a favorite restau- tells me, “People accord you more re - tion, for example—and demolition. It rant of the mining department. spect when you say, ‘I’m the pyrotechni- can be far safer to blow up a large build- During their week, campers get a cian.’ They may not take you seriously ing than to take it down bit by bit. “smorgasbord” of explosives engineer- enough if you say, ‘I’m the fireworks Cheaper, too. Explosives are also used in ing, as Worsey says. They learn about guy.’”) According to Paul Worsey, the agriculture, from time to time. A farmer blasting—below ground and above big danger for pyrotechnicians on the may wish to clear boulders that way. In ground. They learn about ordnance dis- Fourth of July is heatstroke. He has set days gone by, he could go down to the posal. (This is a task our guys in Iraq up shows in 106-degree weather. The general store and buy some dynamite. had to perform, on roadside bombs.) American revolutionaries should have Those were more relaxed times. They learn about pyrotechnics—a “wall declared independence on May 4 or June Here in Rolla, the explosives guru is of fire,” for example. And they have 4, he says. Dr. Paul N. Worsey. He is also a guru in more normal activities, such as cookouts On the second-to-last evening, the the broader world. You could seat him and pool parties. campers are taught to make three-inch and his true peers at one table, and you Again, this camp is hands-on. You shells—fireworks. Their instructor is

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A day at Explosives Camp (with Professor Paul Worsey at left)

wearing a shirt that says “Pyro Addic - “shoot site,” wearing their hard hats and They look on a little wonderingly. tion.” It occurs to me that he might be safety glasses. They have made the Then there is a barbecue dinner, fol- arrested in Massachusetts. As they sit at shells, but staffers do the actual “shoot- lowed by the grand finale: a fireworks their tables, making their shells, the kids ing,” this time. One girl expresses anxi- show, which the kids have spent the look like they’re doing ordinary arts and ety: “I just know mine’s gonna be a dud.” afternoon setting up (in concert with crafts. But this is different. “Yes,” says After one successful explosion, another staff). The local volunteer fire squad is the young woman from Cheyenne: “arts girl says, “That was really pretty.” A boy on hand, just in case. But they have to and crafts with an edge.” says, “That was cool.” Some of the big - go off, in response to a call. “Oh, well,” One girl says to a fellow camper, “Did gest cheers come when some fallout says Dr. Worsey. “It’ll be okay.” And it I get powder on my face again?” Indeed starts a little fire in the brush. A staffer is. There are plenty of personnel and she did. The powder in question has noth- quickly douses it with a fire extinguisher fire extinguishers, regardless. The show ing to do with pastries or cosmetics. It’s (of which there are many). is loud, hot, and exciting. At the end, the black powder, the milk of explosives. The next morning—the last one— kids roar with pride and satisfaction. Another girl tells me she has written campers look forward to the day’s acti - The adults roar too, though maybe more “an evil laugh” on her shell. How do you vities. These are to include the blowing mildly. write an evil laugh? Something like up of a Barbie doll. She is riding a shark Worsey knows he is doing some- “Mwa-ha-ha.” named Stanley. Why are they going to thing out of step—something incon- She is a petite, brainy high-schooler blow her up, or them up? I learn a stock gruent with an Oprahfied age. He also from Houston. For a number of years, re sponse: “Because we can.” First, though, knows he is doing something enviable. she has been involved in historical reen- there will be an under water ex plosion, “My buddies used to come up to me actment with her family: the Alamo, San coming from a little pond. “Don’t get a and say, ‘I admire what you’re doing, Jacinto, and other trials of the “Tex- crick in your neck,” Worsey quips to me. but don’t tell anyone I said so.’” They ians.” They fire muskets and cannons; The spout goes way high, and I look way hung back, out of fear, or an excess of they cast their own bullets. The girl’s high—and can see what he means by caution. Now they’re more likely to reading plans this summer include “crick.” The explosion also makes a little flatter Worsey by imitating him. He Conan Doyle, Dickens, and Improvised rain, which is welcome in a Missouri has had an emboldening effect. Muni tions. She tells me about a favorite summer. Explosives camp is not for every- T-shirt: “Engineering: It’s Like Math, That evening, parents come to pick up one—nothing is. But it’s a slice of but Louder.” their charges (no pun intended). One boy America, part of our star-spangled di - When it gets dark, it’s time to set off explains to his parents about a mortar. He versity. And for the participants, and

the shells. The campers troop out to the does so with maturity and confidence. their well-wishers, it’s a joy. MISSOURI UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

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Remington, U.S.A. A storied gun maker and the town with which it thrives

BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE

Ilion, N.Y. t is reasonable to assume, I would venture, that nobody ington, “ought to be armed.” Well, America has a lot of free much cares if his toaster was made in China. Nor are we people nowadays, and they appear to have taken Washington’s greatly vexed that our television set was manufactured in words to heart. Demand for guns has never been higher. At I Korea and our khakis stitched together in the Philippines. Remington, as in general, the firearms business is booming. Price, quality, and convenience have long inured even the most this is particularly good news for Ilion, N.Y., where Reming - renitent of Americans to the regularity of free trade. Where once ton’s flagship factory has stood, in one form or another, since possessing foreign-built goods was a sign of sophistication, it is 1816. Ilion, which was evidently named during the general now quotidian. Who, after all, would boast to his guests that his enthusiasm for all things classical that marked the early 19th kitchen furniture is “from Sweden”? century, is a hospitable little town of around 8,000 people. Yet there still exist some products that benefit enormously “Nothing bad happens here,” Remington’s CEO, George from that captivating “Made in America” label. Motorcycles, Kollitides, tells me as we drive around. “And if it does, every- especially in the cruiser market, are one such example. the other body knows about it.” He pauses before those last four words, as is firearms. the term “gun culture” is so widely and indiscrimi- if reciting a joke. On cue, the rest of our party joins in: “Every - nately bandied around American political discourse that it has body knows about it!” A few months ago, I’m told, local police come to mean next to nothing, but it is true nonetheless that since arrested a man at gunpoint in front of the factory gates. People are the first colonists arrived on these shores Americans have still talking about it. enjoyed a uniquely sentimental relationship with personal Ilion has a spa; a shoe shop; a trio of pizza joints (Franco’s, weaponry. Sorrento, and Lombardo’s); a McDonald’s; a bowling alley; and America’s gunsmiths are inextricably connected to the nation’s a few more of exactly the sorts of places that you’d imagine history. Smith and Wesson, Winchester, Springfield—these are you’d find in towns of its size. Pretty much all of the businesses names that inspire romantic reflection on revolutionary victory rely on Remington for their livelihood. “that little shoe shop, and the untamed West. there’s something quasi-religious about for example,” Kollitides says, pointing, “makes all of our safety the firearm’s role in American lore: Simultaneously aping shoes.” Genesis and the Declaration of Independence, a famous line And so Remington tends to get its way in matters civic. holds that “God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal.” “they moved the town so we could expand,” I’m told by plant It is thus fitting that the longest continuously operating manu- manager Paul Merz. “See that factory building there? that used facturer in North America is a gun maker. the Remington Arms to be the center of town.” Later, I’m shown photographs of Co., which has been in business for just shy of two centuries now, houses literally being picked up and transported down the street is also the oldest company in the United States that is still mak- to make way for the plant.

ing its original product. “A free people,” advised George Wash - they moved the Erie Canal, too. In 1827, the company, seek- ROMAN GENN

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ing access to the new waterway and to the expanding domestic of the United Mine Workers Association represents the more than market, switched from its original location in the Remington 1,400 employees. I ask whether this makes a big difference. “No,” family forge at Ilion Gulch to a new position closer to the canal. Kollitides says. “We have a great relationship with the union. The Business boomed. Eighty-eight years later, the tables were UMWA understands that the business needs to run.” I ask why turned: To facilitate the company’s growth, the town altered the that is. “Well, some employees can trace their lineage back four canal’s path. “Ilion has molded itself to Remington,” Kollitides generations. They had great-grandfathers who worked here.” smiles. I meet Joe Pugliese, a value-stream manager who has been with the company for 41 years. One man, Fred Supry, who retired recently, did a half-century. Another, Don Talbot, who will retire O contemporary eyes, Ilion is a peculiar sight. I am from the custom shop next week, has been here since 1971. reminded of Simon and Garfunkel’s uncharacteristically Talbot, who has spent decades perfecting his trade, is an artist. T parochial track “My Little Town,” in which the duo Proudly, he shows me a 1911 handgun that a customer has sent in describes “coming home after school / flying my bike past the for work. He’s engraving a leaf-script pattern onto the barrel and gates of the factories / my mom doing the laundry / hanging our the slide, and adding “Remington” in gold lettering. shirts in the dirty breeze” before qualifying the scene with the “I’m waiting to see if I am picked for jury service next week,” morbid observation that there is now “nothing but the dead and he tells me. “If so, I’ll miss my last week here. It’s not how I dying / back in my little town.” Spend a couple of minutes in imagined retiring!” I ask him whether he’ll miss it. “Of course!” many of America’s once-great manufacturing regions and you Paul Merz, Ilion’s charismatic plant manager and a former will appreciate this report. Yet it seems nobody told the people of Navy engineer, points me toward Talbot’s shirt, which carries a Ilion that they were supposed to join the decline. This remains a “Support Our Troops” message stitched onto the left arm. “On good old-fashioned American success story—and, if anything, Fridays, some of us wear them to recognize those who serve,” it’s getting better. Talbot says, quietly. “It was awful after Vietnam how the soldiers At the heart of the town’s continuing good fortune, as ever, is were treated. It’s much better now.” the factory. “Now compared to six months ago is night and When we’ve left the area, Kollitides asks Merz, “What hap- day,” says Kollitides, who took the reins as CEO of the parent pens when Don leaves?” “We’re not sure” is the response. “How company, the Freedom Group, a little over a year ago. “We do you replace that?” painted the walls, changed the lights, put in machinery, and “We’re big on internal promotion,” Kollitides says. “All of our invested $20 million. Last year, when I took over, we had guys current team leaders were internally promoted. We’re not going in overalls covered in grease from the machinery. Now, we’re to get 40 years of knowledge promoting off the street.” changing everything. This is a real bet on America.” I ask the predictable question: Despite the plant’s history and Walking the Edwardian building’s million square feet is an the cohesion of the town, do New York State’s business envi- unusually pleasant experience. The floors are wooden and the ronment and sweeping new anti-gun legislation tempt the com- halls are, in Paul Merz’s words, “narrow, like an aircraft carrier.” pany to move? Some disgruntled gun enthusiasts believe that The place bustles: Thousands of half-assembled weapons are manufacturers should leave states that are hostile to their inter- urgently moved around on trolleys, ready for the next stage—and ests. Remington produces many weapons that are now illegal the air is filled with the sound of drills, hammers, and hydraulic in New York State. thrust. Last year, Ilion produced a million guns; this year it’s aim- In answer, I am referred to a statement that was released imme- ing to make 1.2 million. Everywhere there are charts showing diately after Governor Cuomo signed the disastrous SAFE improvement and increased production. (Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement) Act in January. An Edward Hopper painting this is not. Aside from anything It reads: “Remington will not run or abandon its loyal and hard else, the prominently soulless McDonald’s and the collection of working 1,300 employees without considerable thought and new pickup trucks and motorcycles outside the plant place one deliberation. Laws can be overturned and politicians voted out of firmly in the 21st century. But those who long for a return to the office, but the decisions we make today will affect our people, heyday of strong community and local manufacturing will find a their families and entire communities for generations.” lot to like here. Most employees live within feet of where they work. They are “PTA members, football and baseball coaches, and churchgoers,” Kollitides tells me. The company prefers to HE company is visibly conscious of its heritage and its manufacture in America, he continues. “We’re undoing out- story, which started, as so many engaging tales of inven- sourcing.” T tion do, with dissatisfaction. In the factory’s museum, I am Where possible, Remington also prefers to “hire military, law shown some artifacts that belonged to founder Eliphalet Reming - enforcement, and first responders.” There is an unspoken expec- ton II, a hunter and competition shooter who in 1816 became tation, too, that employees believe in the importance of the convinced that he could build a better gun than he could buy. Second Amendment, in conservation, and in the shooting sports. Remington set about crafting a barrel at his father’s forge and, “It’s okay if you’re a vegetarian and you don’t agree with hunt- when he was satisfied, added it to a gun kit he had purchased. ing,” Kollitides qualifies. “But it doesn’t make sense for us to Sated, he took the gun to competition, where it made such an have people working here who oppose what we’re doing. We impression that fellow competitors asked if he’d consider build- want passionate people.” ing one for them. Orders began to pour in, and before he quite Surprisingly for a company that operates in such a conserva- knew what had happened, Eliphalet Remington was a gun- tive field, Ilion is a union facility, the only one in Remington’s smith—an American pioneer in an industry that had been domi- collection of factories or that of the Freedom Group. Chapter 717 nated by foreign manufacturers.

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In my naivety, I half-expected to find the Remington fac- weapons. First up is a Modular Sniper Rifle–Lightweight (MSR- tory full of 18th-century gunsmiths sitting around making LW), used by elite outfits in the U.S. military. Remington has just barrels with hammers and hand tools. Unsurprisingly, gun won a $79.7 million military contract to make 5,150 units plus making nowadays is high tech. As part of the company’s new provide ammunition and spare parts. “I can’t tell you exactly who investment, computerized machinery is replacing the old is using these in the field,” Kollitides tells me. “But I think you tools apace. Now, with Remington midway through the tran- can guess.” In its promotional material, the company observes sition, the two generations of machinery sit next to each that rarely in the last two centuries have Americans stepped onto other, like grandparents next to their grandchildren. the battlefield without Remington products in their arsenals. That I’m shown a comparison of parts made on the old tools with this is still true is a clear point of pride. parts made on the new. “With the old machines, a lot of the I am familiarized with the rifle, which sits on a tripod and is time we would have to work on the parts and file them down calibrated toward a target at 200 yards’ range. “This weapon or perfect them,” an engineer explains. “Now it’s rare to have can kill a man from a mile and a half away,” Mike Street, head a dud.” And if there is a problem? “We just call up to the of Remington’s military department, tells me. “These .338 designers and they send down a modified file. Before it could Lapua Magnum rounds cost five dollars each.” (I can see why. take days to recalibrate the machinery.” The improvement is They are huge.) Although a suppressor has been attached, the astonishing. This, it strikes me, is the end of the line—the point rifle still makes one hell of a noise. When I pull its trigger, it at which the transition from bespoke artistry to the exact science recoils fiercely into my shoulder—and, the first time I fire it, the of mass manufacturing can be marked “complete.” Not only scope rams into my face. For my second shot, I push my shoul- can we now mass-produce replacement parts but we can do so der more securely against the stock. This time, I do a little bet- with breathtaking accuracy. ter, but it’s nothing to write home about. Yet inherent in this technology is a challenge. The process After I flick the rifle’s safety back on and stand up, Street’s Remington is using here—in which small, computerized face lights up. “Do you want to go full auto?” he asks me, with machines manufacture parts according to easily refined digital a grin. Of course I do. So we move the MSR-LW out of the blueprints—is really just a larger-scale version of the 3D-printing way and he hands me a select-fire AR-15. After firing a cou- process that currently has authorities in a tailspin. How long will ple of test shots, I flick the switch to automatic and empty the it be before costs come down so much that one can build whole magazine into a nearby target. I laugh: “I can see why these steel handguns in one’s garage? What will manufacturers such as are so popular!” “Fun, huh?!” asks Paul Merz, watching from Remington do to add value then? the next room. You’re damn right it is. I ask what happens if a part comes out wrong. “What does one Criticizing manufacturing, the writer and academic do with a useless gun component?” “Well,” an engineer explains, Jeffrey Eugenides sneered in his book Middlesex that “peo- “people don’t realize how heavily regulated we are. The federal ple stopped being people in 1913.” That, he wrote, “was the government considers the receivers that we make down here to year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his work- be the whole gun. So, whether it’s useful or not, it has to have a ers adopt the speed of the assembly line.” I might humbly serial number. And if we destroy it, we have to cut it in half and suggest that Eugenides go up to Ilion, N.Y., for the people document and photograph that in case they ask. Then we sell it there have certainly not stopped “being people.” Quite the off for scrap metal. But these new machines are significantly lim- opposite, in fact. Amid all the bad economic news and the iting our waste.” (A receiver is the part that contains the weapon’s continued decline of manufacturing, Remington and its town vital operating components, such as the bolt, the magazine port, present a ray of hope. The state government may be doing and the trigger assembly.) everything in its power to make life difficult for gun makers, From the production floor I am taken downstairs to the range, but Ilion looks likely to thrive well into its third century where my guides have promised me a little time to fire some nonetheless.

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the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) protected that order zealously. It prohibited cable-television operators from Open Skies offering programs of their own, lest they siphon viewers from the networks. For the newfangled cellular telephones, it reserved licenses for AT&T alone. Whitehead saw things differently. He realized that the new and Open technologies could supplant, rather than supplement, the status quo. He could not foresee exactly how this would happen, but he knew that the key was communications satellites. At the time, Spectrum these were small, low-power devices, capable of only limited channels of communication with elaborate ground stations. But they were new and few and government-spec. With experience, The occasional power of simple ideas costs would fall and quality would improve; with commerce and competition, new uses would be discovered. Constellations of “radio towers in the sky” might provide a profusion of indepen- BY CHRISTOPHER D E MUTH dent channels of voice, video, and data communication at vastly lower cost and in vastly greater variety than through the existing nest of land wires. All that was needed was to free satellite OlITICS is the competition of interests and the compe - technology from the command-and-control mindset that suf- tition of ideas. The advantage lies with interests that are fused the official task-force reports and regulatory blueprints organized and entrenched (teachers, farmers) and with then in circulation. P ideas that mobilize effective interest groups (green Whitehead’s simple idea was “Open Skies”: Any firm with energy, homeownership). Ideas that lack an organized con- the technical and financial wherewithal should be permitted stituency usually get lost in the shuffle, even when they are very to launch and operate its own communications satellite. The good ideas. proposition was entirely permissive—it involved no central But sometimes a simple idea prevails over politics as usual, planning; no pilot projects; no restrictions, taxes, subsidies, or with spectacular results. That was the lesson of two Washington guarantees; no requirements that anyone do anything. White - events earlier this year—one concerning a historical success, the head thought someone might give it a try. He figured there was other an opportunity before us today. room for 15 to 20 domestic satellites. That might lead, he said, In January, the library of Congress hosted a celebration of the to increased “flexibility” and “innovation,” but he didn’t promise career of Clay T. (Thomas) Whitehead (1938–2008), a young any particular benefits and emphasized the difficulties and White House staffer in the Nixon administration. The occasion uncertainties. was the library’s accession of Whitehead’s papers. This event, Open Skies was a strange and astonishing concept when it was involving a little-known government figure from 40 years ago, first proposed in 1970. Everyone of importance opposed it— attracted an impressive array of public officials, journalists, busi- AT&T, the broadcast networks, the FCC, the Pentagon, influen- ness executives, and policy intellectuals. Many brought their tial members of Congress, and some of Whitehead’s senior White families. A panel of colleagues and academic observers told the House colleagues. Some lobbied vociferously against it; others story of a man of personal modesty and brilliant insight whose thought it (and its author) merely daft. But, precisely because the simple idea baffled the Washington establishment and revolu- idea was permissive and hypothetical, opponents had a hard tionized the communications industry. time writing up talking points against it. It wasn’t illegal (inter- When Tom Whitehead arrived in Washington in 1969, national satellite communications were then a government long-distance communications were government-protected monopoly, but the statute in question was silent on domestic monopolies—the Bell System (AT&T) for telephones, the three satellites). The economies of scale (costs of service decline as a broadcasting networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) for television and single network expands to serve additional customers) that justi- radio. Telephone service, broadcast TV and radio, and the mili- fied the Bell System monopoly seemed not to apply to satellites, tary all depended on Ma Bell’s terrestrial transmission system, so entry and price controls would be unnecessary. If a firm which was well engineered but also expensive and inflexible. mounted a satellite that failed technically or commercially, the Bell labs had made important technical inventions, but the only financial losses would be all its own. new products anyone knew about were color television and color Whitehead was a laconic engineer and systems analyst with no telephones. New technologies were cropping up—cable televi- experience in politics. But his mastery of the underlying tech- sion, mobile cellular telephones, microwave transmission, satel- nology meant that he could not be buffaloed by lobbyists, and lites—but were being treated as appendages to the old systems. his dry, just-the-merits advocacy began to win converts. He skill- Cable television was long extension cords for delivering broad- fully encouraged opponents to consider the upside risks, not just cast TV to rural communities with poor rooftop reception. the downside ones. The Nixon White House, locked in daily Communications satellites were a government monopoly, COM- combat with the network news shows, was excited at the prospect SAT, operated in partnership with Ma Bell. of diverse local TV stations independent of the evil empire of All of this was assumed to be the natural order of things, and ABC, CBS, and NBC. For their part, the networks were excited at the prospect of distributing programs with their own satellites, Mr. DeMuth is a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute and the director of freed of their costly dependence on Ma Bell. As others fell into the Hudson Initiative on Future Innovation. line, AT&T decided to settle for a seat at the table. The FCC

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adopted Open Skies in all essentials in 1972; by then, the only highly complex—and highly partial, in both senses of the term: strong opponent was its own regulatory staff. Each addresses only part of the problem, and does so in ways that Open Skies launched a commercial space race. By the early serve the proponent’s immediate political or economic interests. 1980s, several firms, such as RCA and Hughes (as well as Bell), Into this melee, Furchtgott-Roth tossed an idea as simple and were operating satellites—leasing transmission channels to astonishing as Open Skies had been in 1970. Understanding its the broadcast networks and also to cable upstarts such as power requires a bit of briefing—for although almost everyone HBO, Turner, and CNN. Cable TV had sealed its arrival as an now uses smartphones, laptops, tablets, and similar devices, few independent force by establishing its own public-service sta- of us know much about the invisible infrastructure that supports tion, C-SPAN. AT&T was losing its market power even before them. the 1984 antitrust break-up of its landline-telecommunications Radio waves are the medium for all wireless communication monopoly. (on the electromagnetic-frequency spectrum, they occupy the Today a canopy of several hundred satellites operated by portion with longer wavelengths and lower frequencies than dozens of firms beams hundreds of television and radio channels those of visible-light waves). Radio transmission is regulated by directly to millions of homes, offices, and automobiles. In tan- the FCC through licenses that specify the permitted frequency, dem with fiber optics and cellular and other terrestrial networks, geographic area, time of day, and transmission power and Although almost everyone now uses smartphones, laptops, tablets, and similar devices, few of us know much about the invisible infrastructure that supports them.

satellites relay telephone, video, and Internet communications equipment. And spectrum licenses may be used only for FCC- around the globe. Commercial satellites supply those connec- designated purposes—such as television and radio broadcasting, tions directly in remote locations, and government satellites are mobile-telephone and smartphone service, various satellite links now the content providers for GPS navigation services and real- (satellite to ground, ground to satellite, satellite to satellite), and time weather surveillance. As much as I love my mailman, a a host of narrower purposes such as police radio, maritime navi- USPS satellite service could not have done all this. Competition gation, and meteorological satellite communications. If you want and innovation have produced low costs, high quality, endless to offer a communications service, but the FCC has already allo- variety, and a sheer ubiquity that would have been inconceivable cated all of the spectrum it has “zoned” for that service, you are in 1970—and a degree of democratic interconnectedness that is probably out of luck. Spectrum licenses may be bought and sold, surely the most important development of modern life. but only after case-by-case FCC review and approval—and the Whitehead was responsible for several other policy innova- restrictions on a seller’s spectrum continue to apply to the buyer, tions during his White House years, and for several engineering so that the license of an AM radio station is available, at any price, and commercial innovations in a subsequent business career. only for AM broadcasting by someone else. (Setting up shop in tiny Luxembourg and making use of its Different radio frequencies are better suited to different appli- national allocation of orbital slots, he founded SES Astra, cations, depending on such variables as distance, transmission Europe’s first private satellite operator, which unilaterally dis- capacity, and “propagation properties” (e.g., whether frequencies mantled Europe’s national media monopolies.) But, in retrospect, penetrate walls). The FCC’s zoning scheme takes account of Open Skies was the grand policy stroke: It was certainly a neces- these technical considerations but is also based on estimates of sary condition to the communications revolution, and was prob- market demand for various uses—and that is the source of the ably a sufficient condition as well. At the Library of Congress current problem. The fantastic growth of smartphones, tablets, symposium, the eminent economist Thomas Hazlett, a man who and laptop computers—there were 326 million U.S. wireless chooses his words carefully, concluded that Whitehead had subscriber connections at the end of 2012—and the increasingly made “one of the most brilliant contributions to communica- routine use of videostreaming, personal navigation, cloud stor- tions markets since Morse, Bell, or Marconi.” age, and other spectrum-intensive applications have far out- stripped the FCC’s spectrum allocation for wireless broadband. At the same time, the growth of cable and satellite television, HE second Washington event was a striking echo of the which now reach the vast majority of households, has left a great first. At a Hudson Institute workshop in February, former deal of spectrum for broadcast television underused or dormant. T FCC commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth (now a (The TV-broadcast zone, first established in the early 1950s, still Hudson Institute fellow) presented a paper on today’s hot topic maintains generous allocations for local UHF, or ultra-high- in communications—the shortage of radio spectrum available frequency, television stations; UHF required special, funny- for smartphones, tablets, and other devices that rely on wire- looking antennas—senior citizens may remember them.) The less broadband. The problem has generated task-force reports, spectrum designated for broadcast TV is ideal for wireless broad- agency blueprints, industry white papers, congressional hearings, band, yet much of it is lying fallow. and presidential proclamations. Everyone agrees that the short- The shortage of wireless broadband spectrum is certainly a age, routinely described as a crisis, is seriously retarding a criti- severe problem. It is needlessly raising the costs and retarding the cal sector of the economy. But all of the proposed solutions are speed and quality of personal communications (Onion headline:

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“Internet Collapses Under Sheer Weight of Baby Pictures”). trust—that govern land, real estate, and other tangible assets. The Wireless providers such as Verizon and AT&T have been military, the police, and other government agencies would own obliged to raise prices and reduce speeds selectively for heavy and employ radio spectrum for public purposes and buy and sell users of video and data applications, leading to charges of “dis- increments as necessary, just as they do other resources. The FCC crimination” that the FCC has taken seriously. It is also fostering would operate the national equivalent of a county land-title wasteful commercial strategies, such as AT&T’s ill-fated attempt office, where buyers and sellers could assure themselves of good to acquire T-Mobile, which was really a desperate attempt to title and register rights and obligations affecting other owners. acquire spectrum. At the same time, the shortage is retarding The entire process would be online and searchable—an excellent long-distance learning and medicine, air- and highway-traffic use of spectrum. control, and innumerable business applications, all with immense The question is how to get from here to there, or at least far potential for social betterment. Many on-the-horizon applica- enough along to resolve the current crisis. This is a matter not of tions, such as continuous remote monitoring of medical patients, partisan gridlock, but rather of insiders versus the rest of us. The self-driving cars, and greatly strengthened cybersecurity for per- current system has given rise to many political and economic sonal and commercial information, simply will not get beyond interests that will oppose reforms that threaten them. An example the pilot stage without large additions of wireless broadband is the perennial idea of charging license holders a substantial spectrum. annual fee to discourage hoarding of unused or underused spec- Serious though the shortage of wireless broadband spectrum trum—an idea the license holders reliably quash whenever it is is, it points to a problem that is larger still. A central administra- introduced. The FCC, to its credit, has begun in recent years to tive agency such as the FCC cannot possibly know the relative liberalize its zoning restrictions and procedures for reviewing values, among multifarious and ever-changing uses, of a resource spectrum transactions, and has taken steps to reallocate spectrum as versatile and pervasive as radio waves. The Commission has to wireless broadband from other uses. But the television broad- erred many times in the past. In the 1960s and 1970s, it delayed casters have obstructed many of these moves, fearing that they the introduction of mobile-cellular-telephone service by at least a presage a concerted raid on their treasure trove of spectrum for decade. Even when its judgments are approximately correct for reassignment to the new wireless applications. the time being, it lacks the flexibility to take account of varying The most important reform idea is the spectrum auction. The local circumstances. (Spectrum zones are nationwide, so a given Commission has conducted scores of auctions since 1994, rais- frequency generally cannot, for example, be used both for moni- ing about $60 billion. While a big improvement over the FCC’s toring financial exchanges in Manhattan and for mountain-rescue traditional administrative hearings for dispensing available spec- radio in Durango.) And the FCC’s errors are not random: It is trum, the auctions operate within the established spectrum naturally attentive to incumbent firms that know the agency zones, which are the heart of the misallocation problem. And they ropes and support its budget, and less so to newbies with unfa- are absurdly over-centralized, with the FCC acting as exclusive miliar ideas that could disrupt the settled plans of its licensees and agent for both bidders and sellers and as zoning commissioner to its staff. boot. As a result, the auctions are extraordinarily desultory—in - The system was the brainchild of Secretary of Commerce volving hundreds of pages of rules, arcane restrictions on who Herbert Hoover in the 1920s, and it squelched the development, may bid, and lengthy delays, and yet involving only limited spec- then under way, of property rights in radio spectrum, including trum bands. The Commission is now planning auctions to reallo- legal rules to settle conflicts among different uses. It was a mis- cate some (almost certainly not enough) additional spectrum to take, but an understandable mistake. Radio was then a strange wireless broadband. It is operating under a statutory deadline of new phenomenon, useful mainly for public purposes such as 2022—and, with initial auctions still years away, will probably broadcasting, navigation, and military communications; it was an miss even that. Or, more likely, the auction process will simply invisible frontier that, it seemed, the government should develop collapse as it falls farther and farther behind the growing spec- for the public good. At the time, moreover, the known uses for trum shortage. The FCC process has completely lost touch with radio were few in number, so designating frequencies for partic- the economic and technological dynamics of modern communi- ular uses was a simple matter. But radio has long since become cations. well developed and familiar. Almost everyone uses it several Which brings us to Harold Furchtgott-Roth’s breathtakingly times every day, mostly for purposes that are private and per- simple idea. He calls it “Open Spectrum”: The FCC would allow sonal (searching, networking, scheduling, sharing stuff with license holders to use their spectrum for any valid purpose, and family, friends, and colleagues). And 80 years of experience and permit spectrum to be bought and sold with only minimal restric- discovery have generated innumerable new uses of more and tions. The Commission could do this immediately. (While spec- more spectrum (at progressively higher frequencies), along with trum auctions require authorization from Congress, the spectrum methods for sharing individual frequencies for multiple purposes zones are the Commission’s own handiwork and can be liberal- and combining different frequencies for the same purposes. The ized as it sees fit, as it has done in limited cases in recent years.) effort to assign particular frequencies to particular uses has It would issue a rule, requiring a few pages of text and a few become antediluvian and increasingly retrograde. months to adopt, that removed the use restrictions in practically all spectrum licenses. From that moment on—say, as of January 1, 2014—there would be no spectrum shortages. Broadcast- AREFUl students of spectrum management, from all television licensees could sell spectrum to cellular-service points on the political spectrum, long ago concluded that providers, or not, or some spectrum but not all, depending on C it could and should be a straightforward matter of private which application appeared more valuable. So could licensees in property, subject to the same laws—contract, nuisance, anti- many other areas of misallocated spectrum that are not in the

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headlines and that the FCC doesn’t even know about. Fre - ous improvements that the current system would insensibly quencies could be used for different applications in different obstruct. locales and at different times of day. Or they could be used for Most of all, the economic gains of Open Spectrum would different applications in the same place from minute to minute, begin to be realized almost immediately, rather than years in the relying on technologies that deploy spectrum among different future as under every alternative proposal. They would be large uses in real time according to usage patterns. Or different fre- enough to show up in aggregate measures of national economic quencies could be used in tandem for purposes now forbidden performance. And, because they would arise from the uncorking because some of the frequencies are in the wrong zone. The FCC of new opportunities, they would not be subject to the zero-sum would continue with its auctions of unallocated spectrum, but political wrangling that dooms so many economic-policy re - without restrictions on use. forms (more on this anon). Open Spectrum, like Open Skies, is entirely permissive. It doesn’t require anyone to do anything; it leaves it to license holders to bear the expenses and take the consequences, profit he idea of Open Spectrum is not entirely new with or loss, of whatever they decide to do. It simply opens up new Furchtgott-Roth; he has drawn on earlier research, espe- opportunities. But, unlike Open Skies, Open Spectrum is not T cially that of Thomas hazlett and of the FCC’s policy- entirely hypothetical in its prospective economic benefits. planning staff. But it is the most accessible and far-reaching From the prices paid in recent FCC auctions and private spec- version to date, and sure to generate controversy. Three objec- trum transactions, from the returns on recent investments in tions will be made, all of them flimsy. Flimsy arguments have wireless services, and from empirical data on currently unused been known to prevail in political debate, but perhaps they will and underused spectrum, we can get a glimpse of the benefits not prevail here. The permissiveness of Open Spectrum at once of relieving the wireless-broadband shortage. Academic and exposes the weakness of the objections and provides the vigorish industry studies using these data find short-term economic for turning reform opponents into reform advocates. benefits of many hundreds of billions of dollars. There are The first objection is that license holders, freed of the FCC’s large ranges of uncertainty in these estimates, and probably usage zones, will employ spectrum in ways that create radio some puffery in the industry estimates. But if one looks at ex - interference with other licensees (those in adjacent spectrum penditures and economic value (to both consumers and pro- bands or geographic areas). But interference is legally actionable ducers) in the initial stages of wireless growth, and at the many and can be resolved by direct negotiation among users of adja- high-value, technically feasible applications now under devel- cent spectrum: This happens routinely even with the current opment, the estimates are more than plausible. They certainly zoning scheme. The FCC’s own approach to interference is hor- understate the benefits of Open Spectrum in important re- ribly wasteful, involving the preservation of large amounts of spects—they do not take account of the value of improved “buffer”—i.e., unused—spectrum between active bands. That spectrum use outside wireless broadband, nor that of continu- approach led to the Commission’s 2012 decision, based on inter-

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ference objections from GPS service providers, to revoke returns from Open Spectrum would simply reflect the in - LightSquared’s permission to establish a new wireless broad- creased value to consumers from correcting current spectrum band network—after it had already invested $4 billion in the misallocations (consumers themselves would realize even enterprise. It was a policy debacle of the first order: The social greater returns). The second part is backwards: Open Spectrum value of the new broadband network would have been far would increase government revenues, probably by a great deal. greater, probably by orders of magnitude, than the costs of Tax revenues from capital gains on spectrum transactions, resolving any GPS interference problems. Under Open Spec - sales taxes on goods and services that better-used spectrum trum, spectrum that is now warehoused as buffer would be made possible, and taxes on added personal and corporate deployed, and border conflicts would be left to straightforward income would far exceed the estimated $15 billion in revenues commercial resolution rather than lobbyist-infested political from the FCC’s planned auctions. The tax revenues, moreover, resolution. Spectrum-sharing technology plus the law of con- would come in years sooner, and would continue as Open tract would move much more spectrum into productive use— Spectrum led to continuous improvements in spectrum use and and reveal how and where, in fact, spectrum could be used most to development of new goods and services. The demands of productively. government revenue collection often conflict with private- Open Spectrum holds the promise of correcting in a stroke a terrible waste of one of nature’s most valuable resources, generating profound economic benefits and spurring a new round of technological innovation.

The second objection is that exclusive spectrum rights sector productivity, but there is no such conflict in the choice should not be liberalized but rather abolished—in favor of between spectrum auctions and Open Spectrum, because the unlicensed, open-access spectrum, or “common spectrum.” In gains from Open Spectrum would be orders of magnitude this vision, the unlicensed spectrum now used in such applica- greater. tions as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth would be expanded to replace It remains the case that those who currently hold spectrum the licensed spectrum used in cellular wireless networks and licenses would be among the most important and immediate other proprietary systems. Unlicensed spectrum is indeed use- beneficiaries of Open Spectrum. (The others would be producers ful in low-power, limited-range environments such as homes, who need spectrum now but lack the necessary licenses, and offices, and coffee shops, where it connects wireless devices consumers who would receive new, better, and lower-cost (e.g., baby monitors, TV remote controls) to larger networks or services—that would be almost all of us.) And therein lies the is entirely local. It could not, however, be scaled up to longer- idea’s political genius. For it is current licensees who have been range, higher-power, point-to-point communications among most threatened by previous proposals to improve spectrum large numbers of users without central regulation of impossi- use through annual spectrum fees, claw-backs of underused ble complexity. As the FCC has increased unlicensed spec- spectrum, and reduced spectrum buffers. The licensees have trum, it has had to increase its technical controls over the proven to be highly effective in delaying or defeating those permitted uses of that spectrum, and also its restrictions on proposals and in influencing spectrum auctions to their advan- licensed spectrum that might interfere with the unlicensed tage. But Open Spectrum, by greatly increasing the economic uses. If the trend continues, the result will not be a free and value of currently licensed spectrum, turns the incentives happy spectrum commons but, to the contrary, greater regi- around—transforming licensees into an interest group for what mentation and more frequent shortages. The allure of unlicensed is also in the public interest. As in the case of Open Skies, its spectrum is strong among some academics and business firms, permissiveness turns the attentions of those most directly but that allure will fade as the possibilities for Open Spectrum involved from political rent-seeking to economic opportuni- sink in. Spectrum-sharing technologies can increase the range ties. As in the case of Open Skies, congressional leaders who and utility of “common” unlicensed spectrum—but they can were initially alarmed by the initiative would be assured by do the same for “owned” licensed spectrum. They have already powerful constituents that the Commission was on the right done so in such cases as wireless connections to Kindle book track. readers and GM’s OnStar navigation system, both of which Open Spectrum exemplifies Leonardo’s adage that “sim- piggyback on licensed broadband by private agreement; once plicity is the ultimate sophistication”—which, appropriately, spectrum licenses are opened up to multiple uses, licensees will was also Steve Jobs’s slogan for the first Apple computers. It deploy many more such applications. holds the promise of correcting in a stroke a terrible waste of The third objection is that Open Spectrum would permit one of nature’s most valuable resources, generating profound license holders to profit from spectrum that belongs to the pub- economic benefits and spurring a new round of technological lic, and thereby abscond with the government revenues that innovation. All it requires is a latter-day Tom Whitehead with the FCC’s spectrum auctions could raise. The first part of this the vision and gumption to make the idea his own, master the argument is a fallacy: Licensees have always profited from inside politics, and lead the way so that others might follow. what ever economic value they could produce with spectrum Ideas of such simplicity and power come around infrequently; (from their own use or sale to others), and their increased when they do, they really ought to be seized.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Borderline Crazy

rOM an early draft of the immigration bill: instructed to audit anyone who makes a negative comment 1.223 (b) The government shall construct a about the article in Internet forums, using NSA-collected fence across the entirety of the border. Upon com- data to cross-reference IP addresses and user names. In F pletion of the fence the government may, at its cases where the data cannot conclusively prove someone dis cretion, issue temporary visas to undocumented persons, criticized the article, a severed horse head shall be left in the provided the person pays $37,000 in fines, agrees to wait 17 person’s bed. years for full citizenship, abstains from government bene- E) Should critics point out that the government was fits, and flosses regularly. capable of constructing a nationwide highway in a reason- The government may, at its discretion, halt or delay con- able period of time, the Department of Transportation shall struction of the fence, but only under certain exceptions: begin dismantlement of the interstate system under the A) Someone from Homeland Security went to Home authority of the Inconvenient Analogy Act of 2009. Depot for fence stuff and they were closed. Homeland F) If the plans for the fence describe a 14-foot-tall struc- Security shall interpret “closed” to mean it was unlikely any- ture, the Department of Commerce is hereby authorized to one could complete the purchase of several thousand miles spend an amount equal to the costs of its construction to of fencing material within the store’s posted business hours. promote the 15-Foot-Tall Ladder-Manufacturing Sector in If the agent is unable to go to Home Depot, or doesn’t feel neighboring countries. The ladders shall be easily trans- like it because it’s just a zoo on weekends, then the agent is ported in segments and include the warning “THIS IS NOT empowered to order online. If the agent’s browser should A STEP” on the top rung in English, Spanish, and French. crash during the ordering process, this shall be construed to Note: If the height of the fence is not specified, Commerce be a “good faith” attempt to build the fence, and shall trigger shall, at its discretion, subsidize the trampoline industry, the the complete legalization of all undocumented persons. catapult industry, or both, provided the other side of the B) The Secretary of Homeland Security may define fence contains a line of mattresses at least 30 feet wide. The “fence” to mean “Fictional Entity Not Constructed Ever” tags on the mattresses shall not be removed, under penalty and deem the construction to be complete. Whether a fic- of law, unless removed by undocumented aliens who just tional entity can be declared to exist will be referred to the want a souvenir. philosophy department at Yale University, which shall issue G) The other 1,197 pages of this bill shall be shoved into a paper within ten years clarifying the meaning of “exis- law by legislators who believe they have insulated them- tence.” It shall convene a panel within two years of the sub- selves and their party to criticism of indifference towards mission of the question; the panel’s members shall (a) people who Live in the Shadows. represent all branches of metaphysics, and include (b) the H) People who are living in the shadows will be provid- current head of La raza and (c) Senator Ted Cruz wearing ed access to a portable structure that admits gradually the facial mask and full-body restraint worn by Hannibal increasing amounts of light, so their eyes can adjust. This Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. structure will be towed around neighborhoods by a vehicle C) The construction of the fence may be delayed if an that runs entirely on biomass or solar energy. The bill shall environmental-impact study demonstrates that the structure appropriate $17 billion for the creation of whatever science would significantly interrupt the migratory patterns of thingy that takes. Note: For purposes of the legislation, lizards, insects, birds, tumbleweeds, or people. (The fence “thingy” shall mean a factory in an economically depressed may also be delayed upon the filing of an intent to file an area that shall hire only residents within a two-mile radius; impact study.) Pending investigation of the case, the con- if the resi dents do not possess the technical expertise to struction shall be limited to drawing lines in the desert with derive sufficient electrical power from discarded vegetable a stick, although this may be halted if the EPA and the matter or the sun, college educations will be provided. Department of Commerce receive information that the stick Construction of the fence shall commence when all local is made of endangered Indonesian hardwood, requiring con- workers have their degrees, allowing for Ph.D. programs fiscation of all sticks and fines in an amount equal to, but not and a year’s sabbatical in Tuscany. exceeding, what had been budgeted to build the actual I) Persons who are living in the shadows shall also be fence. understood to include vampires. Employers shall be given D) The provision requiring undocumented U.S. Persons incentives to hire them, and shall be required to remove to pay fees and fines shall be waived upon publication of crosses and garlic from the workplace. Note: This includes one heart-tugging New York Times story about an immi- workspaces previously known as the “nave” or “altar.” grant family’s struggle to pay the total cost. (Said piece Other than that, a fence shall be built. Note: The above shall be between 12 and 24 inches in length.) Upon publi- refers to a fence on the Canadian border. Once its construc- cation of the article, the Internal revenue Service will be tion is complete, including a segment through the Great Lakes, then construction will proceed on the Mexican border Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. fence. Unless it doesn’t.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

22 the President; not of the United States, 15 inserting “Director, U.S. Citizenship but of Ecuador. and Immigra- 22 Also: I put a wheel of brie cheese some- 16 tion Services, the Assistant Secretary, where in Chuck Schumer’s office. U.S. Immi- 22 Hope he finds it before it really starts to 17 gration and Customs Enforcement, and PASSED BUT NOT READ: stink. the Commis- Senate Bill 744: Border Security, 23 (B) 2 members who shall be appointed 18 sioner, U.S. Customs and Border Economic Opportunity, and Immi - by Protection”; and the gration Modernization Act. 23 the first person who finds the tiny 18 surviving members of the original cast With Amendments and Revisions wooden bird we hid of TV’s 23 in the Senate cloakroom and who 18 “The Facts of Life.” FULL TEXT EXCERPTS: appears on national 18 Maybe next time read this stuff before From Title I: 23 television saying, “I have the tiny bird! you vote I am now in charge 9 SEC. 4. SOUTHERN BORDER SECU- 18 on it. RITY COMMISSION. 23 of all immigration policy!” 10 (a) ESTABLISHMENT.—If the 24 the President pro tempore of the (b) TECHNICAL AND CLARIFYING Secretary certifies that Senate, of AMENDMENTS.— 11 the Department has not achieved effec- 25 which— 21 (1) NONIMMIGRANT STATUS.— tive control in all Section 12 high-risk border sectors during any fis- 1 “SEC. 452. DEPARTMENT OF 22 101(a)(15)(P) (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15) cal year beginning HOME LAND SECURITY IMMI- (P)) is amend- 12 Hey! We’re interns! Putting this thing 2 GRATION OMBUDSMAN.”; 23 ed— together late! Nobody 3 (2) in subsection (a), by striking 24 (A) in clause (iii), by striking “or” at the 12 is going to read this! We’re like, the “Citizenship 25 end; 788 most powerful people 4 and Immigration Services Ombuds man” MDM13313 S.L.C. 12 on earth because they’re going to pass and insert- 1 (B) in clause (iv), by striking “clause (i), this thing without 5 ing “DHS Immigration Ombuds man”; 12 knowing what’s in it. And what’s in it is and “Paula Deen, television 2 (ii), or (iii),” and inserting “clause (i), (ii), (iii), this: Be it hereby 5 chef and celebrity spokesperson”; 3 or (iv)”; 12 decreed by this amendment that Friday 6 (3) in subsection (c)(2), by striking is now “topless “Director 4 (C) by redesignating clause (iv) as clause 12 Senate intern day” which requires all 7 of the Bureau of Citizenship and 5 (v); and female interns to, like, Immigration Serv- 6 (D) by inserting after clause (iii) the fol- 12 go totally topless. This is now the law, 8 ices” and inserting “Director, U.S. 7 lowing: okay? Citizenship and 8 “(iv) is a ski instructor, who has been 13 before the date that is 5 years after the 9 Immigration Services, the Assistant 9 certified as a level I, II, or III ski and date of the enact- Secretary, U.S. 10 snowboard instructor by the Pro - 14 ment of this Act, not later than 60 days 10 Immigration and Customs En force - fessional after such certifi- ment, the Com- 11 Ski Instructors of America or the 14 The Congressional Medal of Freedom 11 missioner, U.S. Customs and Border Amer- is hereby awarded to Protection”; 14 pop superstar Kanye West and the 11 Also, herewith, the girl who works at 12 ican Association of Snowboard mother of his child, the DOJ who Instructors, 14 Kim Kardashian. This is now the law. 11 has been helping us put together the 13 or received an equivalent certification 15 cation, there shall be established a com- enforcement section in mission to be 11 of this bill is required, by law, to 14 the alien’s country of origin, and is 16 known as the “Southern Fried Border become my girlfriend until seeking Security Commission” 11 such time as it becomes, like, an expec- 15 to enter the United States temporarily 17 (referred to in this section as the tation thing from here to “Commission”). 11 that we get married. To continue: 16 perform instructing services”; 18 (b) COMPOSITION.— 12 (4) in subsections (d)(4) and (f), by 17 This isn’t something I put in, by the 19 (1) IN GENERAL.—The Commission striking way. shall be 13 “Director of the Bureau of Citizenship 18 It’s in the actual bill. 20 composed of— and Immi- 19 Fingers crossed that the House doesn’t 21 (A) 2 members who shall be appointed 14 gration Services” each place such term read this by appears and 20 either and passes it.

3 8 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 1 5 , 2 0 1 3 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/25/2013 7:01 PM Page 39 Books, Arts & Manners

one of our most accomplished Civil War peripheral. It is true that union armies historians and Lincoln scholars. He is in the west were able to penetrate deep A New the only two-time winner of the Lincoln into the Confederate heartland early in Prize, in 2000 for Abraham Lincoln: the war, opening the way to Chatta - Birth Redeemer President and in 2005 for nooga and Atlanta on one hand and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: gaining control of the Mississippi river MACKUBIN THOMAS The End of Slavery in America, the on the other. From a strictly military OWENS definitive treatment of that document. standpoint, this “western consensus” He is a most graceful prose writer and may be right—but war has a political his work is always a pleasure to read. goal that transcends military success. Although Guelzo’s focus in the past Guelzo describes the panic that Lee’s has been on the politics of the war, his invasion caused; had he prevailed in new book makes it clear that he is a mas- Pennsylvania, it is very likely that the ter of 19th-century military matters as union would have sued for peace, not - well: His understanding of the military withstanding its successes in the west. dynamics of Gettysburg is equal, if not the Confederacy’s best chance for inde- superior, to that of many specialists. He pendence lay in the east, with its best provides many insights that other writers army under its best general. have missed or downplayed, and he is an Guelzo excels at describing the “mili- iconoclast concerning many issues that tary politics” of the two armies. the divi- Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, have become part of the standard narra- sions within both armies were the source by Allen C. Guelzo (Knopf, 632 pp., $35) tive of the battle, indeed of the war as a of many of the controversies arising whole. from the battle. On the Confederate side, ettysburG remains the For instance, he rejects the characteri- these controversies concern the failure of great est clash of arms ever to zation of the Civil War as “the first mod- General richard ewell to exploit his suc- occur in North America. It is ern war” or “the first total war.” He takes cess on the first day of the battle; the G also the most studied battle issue in particular with the conventional absence of J. e. b. stuart’s cavalry and in American history. In 1900, a historian wisdom that the heavy Confederate its effect on the fight; the performance of remarked that “another history of Gettys - casualties at Gettysburg were the result General James Longstreet; and Lee’s burg may seem superfluous and pre- of Lee’s failure to understand the impact decision on the third day to attack the sumptuous.” Nonetheless, every year, of technology or to recognize the power union center on Cemetery ridge. On the new books are published on it. A 2004 of the defense. Guelzo argues that the union side, they involve the charge lev- bibliography lists 6,193 books, articles, rifled musket did not have the impact eled by Major General Dan sickles that chapters, and pamphlets. often attributed to it. Improvements in the commander, Major General George In recent times, many of these studies accuracy and range really made a differ- Meade, was forced by his corps com- have been micro-histories that divide ence only under ideal conditions: Mini- manders to stand and fight rather than the battle into days, parts of days, or mally trained volunteers could not load retreat after the second day; and Meade’s particular clashes on a specific piece of as quickly as the manual posited and, in failure to pursue Lee after the battle. terrain, e.g., Little round top. this trend the heat and confusion of battle, could not the union’s Army of the Potomac was confirms James McPherson’s observa- deliver accurate fire. “What ran up the divided between, on one hand, the pro- tion that historians are tending to write Civil War’s enormous casualty lists,” he McClellan generals and opponents of “more and more about less and less.” writes, “was not expert marksmanship or emancipation, including Meade, and, on there have also been some fine recent highly refined weapons, but the inability the other, the pro-Lincoln and anti-slavery studies of the Gettysburg campaign as of poorly trained officers to get their generals, as well as opportunists such as a whole, the most recent of which is poorly trained volunteers to charge for- “Democrat Dan” sickles. Allen C. Guelzo’s contribution to the ward and send the enemy flying before In the Confederates’ Army of Northern battle’s sesquicentennial. the bayonet, instead of standing up and Virginia, non-Virginians and those who Guelzo, the Henry r. Luce Professor blazing away for an hour or two in close- followed their states out of the union of the Civil War era and Director of Civil range firefights where the sheer volume despite being opposed to secession were War era studies at Gettysburg College, is of lead in the air killed enough people to at a disadvantage vis-à-vis Virginians and be noticed.” pro-secession officers. the most promi- Mr. Owens is a professor of national-security affairs Guelzo also swims against the tide of nent target of the Virginians after the war at the Naval War College in Newport, a senior fellow the growing consensus among histori- was south Carolina–born and Georgia- at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a senior ans that the Civil War was won in the raised James Longstreet, who was ac- fellow at the Ashbrook Center in Ohio, and the editor west and that Gettysburg and other cused of losing the battle of Gettysburg of Orbis, a foreign-policy journal. engagements in the east were militarily by insolently refusing to mount assaults

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS on July 2 and 3. Longstreet suffered an to his north. Longstreet’s echelon attack ironic fate. Had he died from the serious exploited the defects in Sickles’s deploy- wounds he suffered during the Battle of ment and, as previously noted, came Let Burke the Wilderness in May 1864, he would very close to cracking the Union posi- have been enshrined along with Lee and tion. By his actions, Sickles lost his leg, Be Burke Jackson in the pantheon of great Con - his corps, and nearly the whole Union federate generals. Instead, he had the mis- line. While most observers have criti- YUVAL LEVIN fortune to survive his wounds and, after cized Sickles’s decision as militarily dis- the war, commit three sins that were astrous, Sickles claimed that in fact he unpardonable in the eyes of southerners: had forced Meade to fight at Gettysburg, He became a Republican, he renewed his paving the way for a great Union victory. friendship with Grant, who was elected But Guelzo contends that John Rey - president in 1868, and—most unforgiv- nolds, and not Sickles, was the true ably—he dared to criticize Lee. architect of the Gettysburg battle: By As a result of his post-war apostasy, ignoring Meade’s “Pipe Creek Circular” Jubal Early and the Virginia-dominated (which envisioned taking up a defensive Southern Historical Society unjustly position in Maryland) and deciding to made Longstreet, whom Lee called his move his corps north rather than south, “War Horse,” the scapegoat for the defeat Reynolds—who would die on the first at Gettysburg. Longstreet’s responses day—precipitated the battle. Guelzo to his critics were often indiscreet and agrees with Meade’s critics that Meade intemperate, which engendered further wanted to retreat on July 2 but was dis- attacks on his character and generalship. suaded by his corps commanders. (The But despite his disagreement with author cites Horatio nelson’s maxim Edmund Burke: The First Conservative, Lee’s decision to attack the Union posi- that “if a man consults whether he is to by Jesse Norman (Basic, 336 pp., $27.99) tion on July 2 and 3, there is no evidence fight, when he has the power in his own that, in mounting his assaults on those hands, it is certain that his opinion is Edmund Burke in America: The Contested Career two days, he did so with anything short against fighting.”) Guelzo is also critical of the Father of Modern Conservatism, of a full effort. Indeed, his attack en of Meade’s decision not to pursue Lee by Drew Maciag (Cornell, 304 pp., $29.95) echelon on July 2 came extraordinarily with alacrity. But Meade was in no con- close to breaking the Union line. The dition to pursue; indeed, the Army of the assault was on the cusp of success when Potomac was in only marginally better EnERAL readers in search of a it broke down, just as Major General shape than the Army of northern Vir - reliable and readable single- William Pender’s division from A. P. ginia. volume biography of Ed - Hill’s corps was to take it up. For some not everyone will agree with some of G mund Burke have had few reason, Pender’s rightmost brigade Guelzo’s conclusions, especially since options in recent decades. Al though refused the order to advance. Despite he has butchered many sacred cows. For some significant new material (includ- what Longstreet called “the best three instance, those who have learned what ing especially Burke’s complete per- hours’ fighting done by any troops on they know about the battle from Michael sonal correspondence) has become any battlefield,” the attack ground to a Shaara’s historical novel The Killer available since the middle of the 20th halt, permitting Meade to avoid what Angels and the film Gettysburg, which century, no authoritative biography has would likely have been a disastrous was based on it, will be disappointed by made his story widely accessible. This nighttime retreat south toward Mary- his treatment of Joshua Chamberlain. is odd, given Burke’s im portance to land. “The drama of Little Round Top,” writes Anglo-American political thought, and On the Union side, the central contro- Guelzo, “has been allowed to run away especially to English and American versy was the claim that Meade had to be with the reality. Credit for defending it conservatives who tend to be fertile in forced to fight at Gettysburg. The accu- belongs primarily to [Major General] producing books about their heroes. sation was leveled primarily by Sickles Gouverneur Warren, [Colonel] Strong But precisely Burke’s importance in conjunction with the Joint Committee Vincent, and [Colonel] Patrick O’Rorke, and relevance may have stood in the on the Conduct of the War, a creature of and only after them to Chamberlain. . . . way of a definitive short biography. the radical Republicans. It was the ex-professor’s considerable Writers telling his story have tended to Early on the afternoon of July 2, flair for self-promotion that vaulted him use it to make points of their own— Sickles, dissatisfied with his position at ahead of the others.” from Russell Kirk’s effort to make the base of Cemetery Ridge, advanced It is impossible to do justice to Gettys - his III Corps without orders to a location burg in a short review. Suffice it to say Mr. Levin is the editor of National Affairs in a wheat field and peach orchard just that, once again, Guelzo has produced a and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy east of the Emmitsburg Road. In so first-rate work of historical interpreta- Center. His next book, The Great Debate: doing, he not only formed a salient in the tion. Even those who think they know Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the federal line but also created a gap be- everything about Gettysburg will learn Birth of Right and Left, will be published in tween his right and Hancock’s II Corps something new. December.

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Burke the Christian moralist he needed and political life and an analysis of his right through Conor Cruise O’Brien’s political ideas. mission to prove that Burke, like all This makes possible a separation THE END IS NEAR good things, was first and foremost between a superb biography of Burke, Irish. This has yielded some great very much including his ideas and books, including Kirk’s and O’Brien’s, arguments (in the book’s first section), but no great, straightforward overview and a far less impressive employment of Burke’s life and work. So while of Burke in defense of Norman’s prior- some superb academic biographies ities (in the second section). have appeared, most notably F. P. In the biographical first section, Lock’s two-volume masterpiece (in which takes up well over half the book, 1999 and 2006), there has been noth- Norman finds just the right balance ing of the sort for the non-specialist between fast-paced storytelling and reader. gripping historical detail, and he shines Jesse Norman has set out to change a light both on Burke’s great strengths that, and he has largely succeeded. as a thinker, writer, and orator and on Edmund Burke: The First Conserva tive his great weaknesses—especially his is an engaging, highly readable, and tendency to get carried away by his impressively comprehensive over view. political passions. The essential fea- It handles the intricacies of English tures of Burke’s political thought—his history and politics with great mastery organic notion of society, his incremen- AND IT’S GOING TO BE and conveys Burke’s character and per- talism, his resistance to both radical sonality as few of his biographers have change and abuses of power, his love of managed to do. Although its treatment the emergent order of the British consti- AWESOME! of Burke’s life and times is far stronger tution—are interwoven in this tale with “Quite possibly the best indictment of the than its assessment of his ideas, the grace and subtlety. State since Our Enemy, the State appeared book powerfully illustrates how the The book’s second section, which is some eight decades ago. It is a lovely, bril- liant, humane, and remarkably entertaining two were connected—how a political nominally devoted to Burke’s ideas, is, work.” actor can be a political thinker too. however, both less engaging and less —Jonah Goldberg Norman is uniquely well suited to useful. Norman pulls out a few promi- “At last, a conservative treatise that isn’t the latter task. He is a Conservative nent themes of particular relevance to too bilious to taste—and that is often member of the British House of Com- contemporary British politics—a case entertaining even as it is provocative. . . . Williamson is eminently reasonable mons with a Ph.D. in philosophy. And for community, a defense of party poli- throughout, even when he’s burning down in the past few years he has made it his tics—but fails to show what makes them city hall. . . . It’s a pleasure to find so even and logical a voice in these pages, which mission to give the Conservative party central to Burke’s thought or how they deserve broad airing.” a coherent governing vision—one that are connected to one another. —Kirkus Reviews emphasizes the importance of commu- As a result, Norman sells Burke Order The End Is Near and It’s Going nity and culture, in contrast to the more somewhat short as a political thinker, To Be Awesome: How Going Broke individualistic conservatism of the age and therefore also sells short his own Will Leave America Richer, Happier, argument—the case for a communi - and More Secure right now at of Thatcher (and Reagan). http://store.nationalreview.com Norman clearly sees Burke as the tarian, non-libertarian conservatism. patron saint of his more communitarian He fails to bring out the nature of the National Review, 215 Lexington Avenue, NY, NY 10016 brand of conservatism, and the portrait challenge that Burke posed to the En-  "    #  " !$ "# # of Burke that emerges from his book lightenment liberalism of his day, and %# # offers ample support for that view. therefore the challenge Burke could 

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people want most is “to live together our day. #% ## 

according to shared rules and norms in Norman insists that Burke’s key 

a moral community.” argu ments are at their core directed   By emphasizing this element of against the radicalism of Jean-Jacques Burke’s political thought—which Rousseau, whom the French revolu- PAYMENT METHOD: happens to be of particular use to the tionaries saw as their intellectual pa - Check enclosed (payable to National Review) contemporary Conservative party’s tron. There is no question that Burke Bill my MasterCard Visa

aims—Nor man does run the risk of thought Rousseau was profoundly in Acct. No. subsuming Burke’s story under his own error in some important respects. But to agenda. But he saves the reader from focus on his differences with Rousseau Expir. Date the worst consequences of that com- is to ignore his differences with the Signature mon vice of Burke biographers by mainstream of British Enlightenment dividing his book into two sections: a thought—from Thomas Hobbes and       narrative recounting of Burke’s personal John Locke onward.     

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS In fact, Burke offers a liberal alter- the early and mid 19th century) rather native to Enlightenment liberalism. He than when discussing either of its pur- argues that reasoning about politics ported subjects—Burke and the Ameri- Hinges of from a theory about some pre-political can Right. human condition (like the “state of The book also suffers from the fact History nature” theories employed by Hobbes that Burke’s name and work were sim- and Locke and their successors) is ply not very prominent in American ARTHUR L. HERMAN absurd, that society is not a product of political debates for most of the nation’s anyone’s choice and does not exist pri- history, so that tracing his appearance marily to protect people’s rights to in public debates does not reveal as make choices, and that political liber- much as Maciag would like—especially alism was not an application of ideas given Maciag’s strikingly ideological discovered in the Enlightenment but approach to American political devel- the culmination of a process of political opment. development that had been going on in He describes American social and Britain for many centuries. Burke’s political history in almost Hegelian vision of politics is an almost point-by- terms as a “historical process” that point rebuttal of the radicalism of the moves through stages in which the age of revolutions—the radicalism that competition of opposing ideologies yielded the excessive individualism ends with a significant step toward Moment of Battle: The Twenty that (in different forms) is the scourge greater democratization. He surveys Clashes That Changed the World, of both the Left and the Right today. this trajectory by seeking out indivi - by James Lacey and Williamson Murray But Norman’s Burke evinces little of duals (usually, but not always, on the (Bantam, 496 pp., $30) this. losing side of history) who happened to The first section of Norman’s book is refer to Edmund Burke or draw on his thus well worth the price, and stands on ideas or reputation in some way. The ERAcLITus called war “the its own as a superb general biography of result is a rather random assortment of father of all things”; James Burke. But the second section offers historical figures whose roles and Lacey and William son Mur - another instance of how easily Burke views are explained not in their own H ray see war as the father of lends himself to being used as a political terms but in relation to Maciag’s larger civilization and, more specifically, of prop, and how frequently even the best story. major global shifts of power. scholars of his work succumb to this Maciag insists, moreover, that essen- That’s a less obvious approach to the temptation. tially none of these figures—and espe- study of war than it first seems, especially A far clearer illustration of this recur- cially not the more recent among in the bold way the authors go about it. ring pattern in Burke scholarship is them—understood Burke properly. He some battles and campaigns in their Top offered by another book published this points to the fact that Burke was no reac- 20 seem all too familiar: Marathon, the spring: Edmund Burke in America, by tionary but a complex traditionalist re - spanish Armada, D-Day, and the Battle historian Drew Maciag. Maciag uses former and then notes with perplexity of Britain. Others do not: Yarmuk (the Burke as a lens through which to view that later conservatives (in cluding those Arab defeat in 636 of the Byzantine American political development, and of our day) have nonetheless repeatedly Empire, a battle that meant Islam was especially the story of conservative reached for his name and writings in here to stay), Breitenfeld (the 1631 clash thought in our country. advancing their causes. It seems never to between sweden’s King Gustavus Adol - The conceit of the book has real occur to him that maybe these later con- phus and the armies of the imperial promise: Maciag sets out to learn about servatives haven’t been fools or reac- Habsburgs that set the stage for the emer- the history of American political tionaries either—that perhaps Burke’s gence of professional national armies), thought by tracing the different ways deep and complex vision is precisely and the last battle on their list, Operation that Burke’s name and ideas have been what appeals to them, and what they are Peach, the American invasion of Iraq in used in our political debates since the trying to advance. 2003. some might quibble about their Founding. But there is simply not Maciag would have done well to idiosyncratic choices. Why Marathon enough material for Maciag to work consider more carefully the real depth instead of salamis, for instance, and why with, and he never quite overcomes his of Burke’s vision of politics and to take 1066, the Norman invasion of Britain prejudices. more seriously the possibility that con- and the Battle of Hastings, instead of The story he tells is often well re - temporary Anglo-American conser- 732, when the Battle of Poitiers halted the searched, and at some points is insightful vatism is well aware of the challenge remorseless Arab advance into Western and illuminating. But it begins from a of balancing freedom and order, tradi- Europe (until recently, that is)? weak and partial grasp of Burke’s ideas tion and progress, and looks to Burke On that point, some might find Lacey and a profound hostility to American precisely for help in doing so. conservatism, and so is at its best when it He would have done well, in other Mr. Herman’s most recent book, Freedom’s Forge: recounts little-understood chapters of words, to consult Jesse Norman’s fine How American Business Produced Victory American political history (especially in new book. in World War II, is about to appear in paperback.

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and Murray’s selection rather Euro- Adrianople in 378 A.D. spelled that takes over. centric, and even Anglocentric. Seven of empire’s end? For example, it’s fair to argue that the the 20 battles they pick, including But with the battle of Teutoburger American victory at Midway in 1942 Hastings, involve English or British Wald in 9 A.D., when Caesar Augustus’s took the pressure off President Roose - fighting forces, while no fewer than ten finest legions were crushed by barbarian velt to focus resources on the war touch on wars involving Britain and chieftain Hermann (no relation as far as against Japan, opening the possibility America, from Hastings and Saratoga to I know), we start to see Lacey and for American troops’ going on the Vicksburg and Operation Peach; and Murray flexing their historical muscles. offensive in Europe, first in Operation American president Dwight Eisenhower Teutoburger wasn’t just a major setback Torch and then in Italy and D-Day, and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles for Augustus’s hope of extending Ro - which led to V-E Day as well as V-J hover heavily in the wings of the fight man rule beyond the Rhine, they argue; it Day. All the same, how does one assess for Dien Bien Phu in 1954 that ended also “marked an end to the opportunity to the claim that Midway so far advanced France’s empire in Indo-China and establish a united Europe”: “From that Americans’ ability to win the war in the opened the way for American interven- point on, Germany would stand separate Pacific on their own that they could tion in Vietnam (of which none of the and apart from the rest of non-Slavic” “exclude the Soviets from participating battles made the Top 20). Europe. It has been a source of contention in the occupation of Japan” and from Overall, though, the reader has to con- ever since. dividing the country as Russia did cede the authors their choice of battles Similarly, while the Battle of Britain in Germany after 1945? One could just as and, more important, their overall thesis, the summer of 1940 decisively halted well argue that the really decisive mo - that “the impact of military factors has Hitler’s conquest of Western Europe and ment was the dropping of the atomic changed the course of history not only in gave Franklin Roosevelt time to rally bomb on Hiroshima, which ended the war the short term, but in the long term as America on the side of Britain against before Russia’s help was needed to launch well.” the Axis—a pretty significant legacy—it a full-scale invasion of Japan—Midway From that point of view, some selec- also, the authors point out, “ensured that or no Midway. tions seem self-evident. It’s hard to chal- the British Isles provided the base on In the end, what’s missing is a specific, lenge the conclusion that the Athenian which the great Anglo-American part- compelling theme or argument, like that victory over the Persians at Marathon in nership not only defeated Nazi Germany in Victor Davis Hanson’s Carnage and 490 B.C. rallied the other city-states and but also developed into the great alliance Culture, which I reviewed in these pages kept Athenian democracy and Greek civ- that would hold Western Europe against (“The Western Edge,” October 15, 2001). ilization alive for another generation—in the Soviet tyranny until Communism And, at times, the authors’ boldness turn laying the foundations for the emer- collapsed.” seems to desert them completely. This is gence of a distinct . And The reader soon gets the general idea. most evident in the last chapter—which who can doubt that the Roman victory The real fun of Moment of Battle is might actually be the best chapter of the over Hannibal at Zama in 202 B.C. made guessing how far the authors can stretch book—on the American invasion of Iraq. Rome mistress of the Mediterranean and a battle or campaign’s long-term impact After a strong and suspenseful account of empress of the world—just as Rome’s on world events—and where historical the drive to Baghdad in 2003, Lacey and defeat at the hands of the Goths at insight stops and conceptual overreach Murray assert that “the war has set the world on a new and radically altered course”—but then they don’t say what it is. Instead, the chapter ends abruptly, with no conclusion, as does the book. The THE TEDDY BEAR reader is left hanging, and not just over the final verdict on Iraq. That is a human curiosity— This is unfortunate, because every endear what might destroy you in the wild. indication is that military history, after a Give children emblems of ferocity decades-long vogue triggered by John to cuddle when they’re frightened, sad, or riled. Keegan’s The Face of Battle (1976), is Take what is fierce and form it from tame cloth. on the way out. Like college students in Forget that in the wild it would bite. the Sixties, Americans want to lay down Forget its claws; forget its teeth, like froth their sword and shield and not study war glinting against the oceans of the night. no more. They think they got more than Then stuff it up with cotton, as you stuff their fill with Iraq and Afghanistan. In all that is raw and frightening in life; fact, their agony may be just beginning. in nursery rhymes, reducing fears to fluff— It would be helpful, even vital, to have a reach for a bear to calm a child’s strife. book explain how wars, including the A bear and not a mouse to cling to, hold— ones we are fighting today, have historical illusion that the fierce can be controlled. consequences far beyond their immediate destruction and death toll. Lacey and Murray point the way—but they don’t —ANNABELLE MOSELEY close the deal.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS ence and power of the traditional family fold. Now, however, as men and women in the lives of ordinary citizens. generally take a decade or more to start No Honey, Americans are forgoing or postponing their own family after leaving their par- marriage and parenthood in record num- ents, these years unencumbered by fam- No Baby, No bers, divorce remains high, and cohabita- ily life mean that young adults feel freer tion and illegitimacy keep climbing. to cultivate habits, views, and friends— Church Today, for reasons both cultural and eco- and to find spouses—that diminish the nomic—the sexual revolution and the odds they will return to the fold. W. BRADFORD WILCOX eroding economic for tunes of men being Third, the experience of marriage and two—marriage and conventional family parenthood makes particular vir tues— life are much less likely first to anchor e.g., sacrifice and fidelity—and values and then to guide adults’ lives and the especially attractive and compelling. In lives of their children. many people, the birth of a child engen- All this matters for the fortunes of reli- ders a sense of love and wonder that leads gion in America, for at least three rea- them in supernatural directions. Like - In today’s world, weak families mean that religion is not effectively reproducing.

sons. First, a large percentage of adults How the West Really Lost God: A New wise, writes Eberstadt, the “kinds of sac- now spend substantial portions of their rifice of self that are often part of family Theory of Secularization, by Mary Eberstadt lives regularly engaged in behaviors— life are fully consonant with the emphatic (Templeton, 268 pp., $24.95) premarital sex, cohabitation, and non- Judeo-Christian call to die to self and marital childbearing—that put their lives to care for the sick and weak”; these or decades, the United States “on a collision course with certain funda- family-related sacrifices make faith has largely dodged the secular mental teachings of the Christian faith.” more attractive and comprehensible to tide that has engulfed Eu rope. At best, religious teachings about sex, men and women who are striving and F Indeed, for much of the last marriage, parenthood, and divorce now struggling to be good parents and spous- half-century, religion has continued to seem quaintly outmoded; at worst, they es. But when marriage, parenthood, and play a notable role in the public and pri- seem downright offensive and insensitive family life no longer play a central role vate life of this nation, even as the public to the complex realities of contemporary in people’s lives, the values and virtues power of in Europe, not to relationships and family life. Moreover, associated with faith seem stranger, mention the private piety of its citizens, these tensions are amplified by pop- less necessary. retreated in the face of this tide. culture and media icons—think Bill For all these reasons, then, “family and No more. The secular tide has crossed Maher—who mock, attack, or otherwise faith are the invisible double helix of soci- the Atlantic in full force. religious atten- seek to discredit the moral teachings of ety—two spirals that when linked to one dance, religious affiliation, and religious the Abrahamic faiths. Thus, one reason another can effectively reproduce, but arguments in public life are fast losing young adults today are more inclined to whose strength and momentum depend ground in the U.S., especially among steer clear of the churches is that they on one another.” And, in today’s world, younger Americans. The dramatic rise in find their teachings regarding sex, mar- weak families mean that religion is not the number of religious “nones” among riage, and family life anti quated or hate- effectively reproducing. young adults is but one sign of the secu- ful. If Eberstadt is right about the tight lar times. According to the Pew Forum, a Second, the fact that most Ameri cans links between family and religion, and record 32 percent of today’s young adults are postponing marriage or parenthood to I am largely persuaded she is, then the (aged 18–29) re port no affiliation. their late twenties and thirties means that short-term future of religion in the What is the single factor most re - they take longer to arrive at the two U.S., and the West more generally, is sponsible for this rising secular tide? It’s milestones that have long pointed young not bright. Marriage is likely to contin- not the Enlightenment, the growth of the adults in the direction of the nearest ue to lose ground as the central vehicle welfare state, or urbanization, argues church. of course, teens and young adults for bundling together sex, intimacy, Mary Eberstadt in her powerful and have often spent some time away from property, mutual aid, and parenthood. provocative new book, How the West their religious tradition as prodigals, liv- More adults seem likely to postpone or Really Lost God: It’s the shrinking pres- ing apart from the religious community forgo parenthood. The fundamental within which they were raised. But in pre- family factors that have often pushed Mr. Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project vious decades, an early-twentysomething people toward religious faith are peter- at the University of Virginia, is the author of marriage, soon followed by the arrival ing out. Gender and Parenthood: Biological and of a baby, would bring many a young Accordingly, we should expect to see Social Scientific Perspectives. man and woman rushing back into the continued declines in mainstream reli-

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gion in the U.S., especially in left-leaning other works—from conservative Kay religious traditions—such as Reform Hymowitz’s Manning Up: How the Rise Judaism and the United Church of The Siege of Women Has Turned Men into Boys to Christ—that have accommodated the liberal Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men family and sexual revolutions of the last Of Men and the Rise of Women—have lamented half-century. What these traditions did the sorry state of the American male. Yet not realize is that accommodating the CARRIE LUKAS Smith, a Knoxville-based psychologist values and virtues of cultural liberalism specializing in men’s issues, takes a dis- has undercut the family-centered values tinctly different tack: She looks beyond and virtues that have long lent vitality to the evidence that men are in decline to the their communities. Eberstadt points out reasons for that decline. that they “failed to protect their base: Instead of blaming men and ridiculing thriving families whose members would the lifestyle of those who have “failed to then go on to reproduce both literally and launch,” Smith explores the idea that in the figurative sense of handing down men may be making a purposeful, even their religion.” rational, choice in rejecting a society But the long-term future of religion and that already has rejected them. family life in the West is less clear. After Smith draws heavily from the actual all, sustainable societies depend on strong Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting experiences of men, using their stories families that have children, raise them Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream— and comments to illustrate the disaffec- well, and prepare them to be productive and Why It Matters, by Helen Smith tion, anger, and sorrow that many feel. workers and responsible citizens. By con- (Encounter, 176 pp., $23.99) The anecdotes she provides—the voices trast, when the family breaks down, or of the men themselves—are powerful. As fails to form in the first place, states incur OMETHIng fundamental has Smith notes, experts often call men poor burdensome welfare and entitlement changed about American soci- communicators, but she’s found that costs that are not sustainable over the long ety, and it’s weakening our “men often know their minds very well, term, and nations see their growth rates S na tion, both economically and but they are reluctant to communicate in stagnate. The current fiscal and financial culturally. interpersonal and political settings for travails of Europe and Japan, for instance, Analysts have worked to identify po- fear of coming across weak or, worse, derive in part from the fallout of decades tential causes, and have come up with being accused of being sexist or misogy- of below-replacement fertility in these many suspects: the growth in govern- nistic. Or sometimes, they are communi- regions, which has undercut economic ment dependency; the explosion in the cating, it’s just that no one is listening.” growth and made public pensions for the share of children raised by single parents; Smith lets us listen, and walks the elderly difficult to pay for. the increase in casual sex; the declining reader through some of the ways men’s Thus, particularly as fiscal and finan- birthrate; the increasingly self-centered, rights have been constricted. One notable cial pressures mount, and as the state’s even nihilistic, culture; a static, ineffec- chapter is devoted to the “decline of male capacity to provide basic social welfare tive public education system; and the space.” She effectively illustrates the lim- to its citizens slips, societies across the labyrinth of government regulations and itations on how men are allowed to live West—including the U.S.—may revisit taxes that strangles entrepreneurship and and interact, concluding that “our culture their laissez-faire approach to marriage discourages hard work. has steadily made it almost obscene for and family. By force of necessity, they But there’s another factor that many men to congregate on their own together.” may rediscover the power and beauty overlook, one that’s driving many of these The facts back this assessment. Fra - of the strong, stable, and child-rich other symptoms. American culture, as ternal organizations—such as the Elks family, otherwise known as the original expressed through its laws, media, and club or the Freemasons—have dwindled; department of health and human ser- educational system, has become hostile to countless university-level male sports vices. If they do, they are likely to also men and boys. As a result, a growing have fallen victim to mandated “equality”; rediscover the beauty and power of number of men are opting out of—though male-only clubs essentially have been religious faith, especially among those “shrugging off” may be the more apt outlawed as discriminatory; and while traditions that continue to celebrate the term—some of their traditional roles. fraternities remain on college campuses, values and virtues of strong families. They are less likely to be pursuing mar- they are publicly demonized, or, as Smith Only time will tell whether what riage, fatherhood, education, and even puts it: “Look at how colleges treat frater- Matthew Arnold called the “Sea of Faith” economic success than in days past, and nity guys; they are all looked at with sus- will continue its “melancholy, long, with- as a result, the country is being drained of picion and treated like they are one step drawing roar” from the West, pushed necessary resources and talent. away from gang-raping the next girl who away by the declining cultural and prac- This is the case Helen Smith makes in walks by their frat house.” tical power of strong families. Or perhaps her new book, Men on Strike. Of course, Men’s existence is curtailed not solely the Sea of Faith will return, driven by a in the public sphere, but also often in their new tide of familism, uniquely suited to Carrie Lukas is the managing director of the own homes. While women control the revive the functions and fortunes of the Independent Women’s Forum and a co-author of main living space in most houses, men family for this century. Liberty Is No War on Women. and their interests and hobbies are often

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS relegated to the basement, to what com- a reference to Ayn Rand’s classic novel, monly is referred to as a “man cave.” Atlas Shrugged, in which the best and While the practice of forcing men to take brightest of society withdraw from the refuge in a corner of their own homes is world—by opting out of societal institu- snickered at, Smith makes a compelling tions that mistreat them. case that this is a demeaning, and telling, At times I found myself wishing Smith trend. had more time for a deeper dive into vari- I M P O R T A N T This is just one reason Smith identi- ous issues. In the education arena, for fies to explain why fewer men are racing instance, she focuses primarily on how N O T I C E to the altar. More fundamentally, as she young men are failed by colleges and highlights, our public policies and a denied basic due-process rights when fac- to all National Review family-law bias toward women also make ing sexual-harassment charges. She also marriage radically less attractive to men. could have lingered on biases in K–12 subscribers! Smith highlights eyepopping statistics education and highlighted efforts to apply on paternity fraud, such as studies sug- Title IX (the de facto quota system used gesting that around 3.5 percent of men to justify eliminating men’s sports pro- actually have no biological relation to the grams) to university academic depart- child they believe is theirs. And even ments, but only to those few disciplines in       We are moving our when paternity is disproven, a man may which men outnumber women. still be on the hook for 18 years of finan- In the area of child support, Smith subscription-fulfillment      cial support for someone else’s offspring. focuses on shocking abuses, such as forc-    office from The double standard is unmistakable. ing men to support other men’s children. Smith tells the story of a 15-year-old boy She might have further explored other Mount   Morris, Ill. who had sex with a 34-year-old woman: unfair aspects of this system, such as how    to Palm Coast, Fla. “The woman got pregnant and, although noncustodial fathers have little say over Please continue in the state of California a minor under the how the resources they provide for chil-    age of 16 cannot consent to sex, the court dren are used, their lack of recourse when to be vigilant: saw fit to force Nathaniel to pay child sup- visitation or other rights are denied them,      There are fraudulent port to the woman who committed statu- and the pressure placed on men to maxi- tory rape against him.” mize income over everything else. agencies   soliciting How did we get to this point? Among But these are really just the minor your    National Review other causes, Smith points to a feminist quibbles of a policy junkie, and each movement that went from fighting for could fill a complete book. Men on Strike subscription !  renewal equality for women to advocating laws to is a compelling work that may succeed in without    our authorization. privilege women at men’s expense. She launching a much-needed conversation Please reply only to characterizes men who collude in perpet- about the treatment of men in America.   uating this system as “White Knights” As Smith observes, often conversations National Review who instinctively support policies pur- about the state of men are considered    renewal notices or porting to protect the “weaker sex,” and necessary solely because men’s prob-     as “Uncle Tims”—her play on the iconic lems spill over to affect women, chil- bills—make sure the “Uncle Tom” character—who for their dren, and society more broadly. The men     return address is own gain embrace the noxious notion that themselves are just an afterthought. men are inherently flawed and need to be Because I work at a women’s organiza-     Palm Coast, Fla. constrained. tion, I know that it can sometimes be dif- Ignore   all requests for Also setting Smith’s book apart from ficult to guard against this ever-present renewal that are not other treatments of the plight of men is her feminist premise. But we do need to resist     advice on how they can, as individuals it—because the interests of the sexes are directly payable     and as a gender group, work to restore a not naturally in conflict, and women need to National Review. more balanced society. She calls for men men to thrive. The growing perception     to organize a men’s movement to advance that what’s bad for men is good for If you receive any mail or specific policy changes, such as laws to women is nothing but a recipe for societal telephone     offer that makes protect men from obligations to pay sup- decline and mutual misery. And even if    you suspicious contact port for children who are not biologically men’s problems didn’t have repercussions theirs. She encourages individuals to be for women, basic concepts of justice and [email protected]@nationalreview.com.. proactive in their relationships, to call fairness would dictate the urgent need to Your cooperation women out for denigrating men, and to end systematic discrimination against     reject a media culture that casts virtually and mistreatment of them. Our sons, hus-      is greatly appreciated. all men as either Homer Simpson or Jack bands, fathers, brothers, and male friends the Ripper. Finally, she concedes it might deserve the same chances and respect that make sense for some men to “go Galt”— women demand for themselves.

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City Desk was never much development; a mail boat clubs. They were called the funky four. came in once a week. The settlement he There exists a photograph of Shawn taken Thrill of lived in, on a bluff overlooking the ocean, at that time, which he says no one now was called the Bluff. The hill his family may see. i too lived through the era of lived on was named after them. Unfortunate Hair; i understand. Shawn The New if i could describe it the way he recalls hung out briefly with Rastas. “What hap- it i would be Derek Walcott. The blue pened to that?” i asked. “My mother had hole, a saltwater pond connected to the other ideas.” He took up weightlifting, ocean by an underground channel. fish- became a cop, became a father. ing boats carved from kamalame trees. Then an uncle who had moved to Net fishing in the surf. Spear fishing in Queens offered him a job in the city. As deeper water. Sometimes the fish fished the capital was to the Bluff, so the city for you; one of his uncles lost several was to the capital. He described the first fingers to a shark. There was one truck time he took the subway to Times Square; on the island, and no electricity. At night as he came up from the station to the side- you lit kerosene lamps, or saw glowing walk, the buildings seemed to be hanging spirits sitting on graves in the cemetery. overhead; he almost backed down. But RICHARD BROOKHISER Once when a helicopter ap peared out of over time, technology and media helped nowhere, it seemed like the end of the untangle some of the conun drums that ife is change. What could be world. they themselves presented. He lost his more obvious? i grew up with Shawn’s grandmother did have a island accent (t’ing for thing) by listening a phone number that had let- battery-operated radio that pulled in to ed Bradley on 60 Minutes. (The city’s L ters in it: fillmore 2-3769 (the Miami. (She was a woman of charac- smallness allowed him to meet ed Brad - number finally died when my father ter, who practiced bush medicine and ley, when he worked in a health-food moved to his last nursing home). Now smoked a pipe; in later years Shawn store on the Upper West Side; Bradley the only people who use the telephone wondered whether she put weed in it.) was one of the customers.) He would go are campaign robocallers and the phone On Sundays, she turned on her radio to Barnes & Noble to study maps in order company, dunning me to switch to their to listen to Herbert W. Armstrong, a to understand the layout of the city and new wireless plan. everyone else has British israelite, and Walter Cronkite. its surroundings. To this day he cannot migrated to the interverse. Their accents sounded alien to understand his children’s friends A life of change also means a life of not Shawn—he assumed they were who lack this curiosity. in their changing enough. Who can keep up? British. He also assumed they defense, they may not have During the last blackout i went to an were black—everyone he come so far. Apple store in a still-powered part of town knew was. There were no Now technology and and asked one of the eloi how to call up magazines or newspapers media, his sometime ser- AOL. He smiled and said “No judg- to suggest other possi- vants, sweep past him. One ments!” before helping me; i felt like bilities. day his son, who had been Homo erectus, asking him to clean the When he was ten, he looking around in a closet, hard drive of my flint. moved to the capital, came to him and asked, When my father was nine years old, he on another is land, to “What is this black disc?” listened to the second Tunney–Dempsey live with his mother. it was Michael Jack son’s fight on a radio in a store on the main Here was the modern Thriller. Shawn’s son had street of his town. When Tunney was world—a port, tour ists. never seen an LP. Shawn is knocked down in Round Seven, Dad, He saw his first white on face book, but doesn’t who was rooting for him, left disconso- people. “i thought, use it much. He and i late. But as he walked home he heard, on ‘How do they do lament to gether the neighbors’ radios through open windows, that?’” “it’s a se - music that plays in the that the fight had resumed (after the cret,” i told him. gym, and everywhere “long count”). Radios then were com- His mother had a else, so little of it to mon enough to be ubiquitous, too big to television, which our taste. be portable. When he was 52 years old, also pulled in Miami; when the But he keeps up (more he watched the Apollo 11 landing. Men picture went snowy, one of his brothers than i do, who am ten years older). and their cameras had become portable to had to clamber onto the roof to adjust the One day he took out his iPhone to show the Moon. antenna. Her favorite show was General me a new app. “Check it out.” He point- The man of my acquaintance who has Hospital. “There were lots of white peo- ed it in the general direction of the gym’s traveled the longest arc, thanks to acci- ple. And if you changed the channel, there speakers. The ethereal synapses clicked, dent of geography, is my trainer. Shawn is were more of them.” and the lyrics of the song that was play- from the islands, and the island he grew Some nights Shawn would be taken to ing began scrolling down the screen. A up on, from the mid Sixties to the mid Miami in a cigarette boat as part of a karaoke crib, at your fingertips. Tiny Seventies, has no deep-water port. There dance group that opened for bands in wonders of the 21st century.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN The Graffiti on the Wall

IMING is everything, even in apocalyptic doom- post-Christian Europe? So, even when the writing is all over mongering. When my book America Alone came every wall, nobody sees it. out in 2006, the conventional wisdom was that Once upon a time, Portugal was an empire that reached T its argument about Europe’s demographic death as far as Brazil. Now the empire is a backwater, and soon it spiral was “alarmist” (The Economist). Seven years on, it’s will be a graveyard, and then an untended graveyard. I so non-alarmist that even the Washington Post is running wrote in these pages four years ago that this was the first stories about the Continent’s “plummeting” birth rates. The demographic recession, a valse macabre between economic Post’s focus was on a small corner of the Portuguese inte- sclerosis and . Eurostat, the European rior, wherein their reporter met Maria Jesus Rodrigues, 87, Commission’s official statistics agency, is now singing the who recently moved into the old folks’ home from her same mournful dirge: In May, they released a report titled nearby village. The youngest resident is 57. “Towards a ‘Baby Recession’ in Europe?” Not in the old folks’ home, but in the vil- By 2011, the fertility rate had fallen in two lage. That’s to say, the entire parish quali- “Retirement” dozen countries, and in none is it at replace- fies for membership in the AARP, which ment rate. regards you as a potentially “retired person” is an inven- The Eurostat report makes much of the dif- from the age of 50. tion of the ference between fertility rates varying from “Retirement” is an invention of the 20th 2.05 in Ireland to 1.2 in Romania. But the century, and will not long outlive it. When 20th century, easiest way to get the picture is to take a map everyone’s a senior, nobody is—because, if of the Continent and draw a diagonal line there are no young people around to pave and will from northeast to southwest. In northern and the roads, police the streets, weed your gar- not long western Europe, obstetrics is still just about den, fix your roof, give you a bed bath, and a viable profession; in eastern and southern change your feeding tube, you’re going to outlive it. Europe, the maternity wards are out of busi- have to do it yourself. In The Children of ness. One can speculate about the reasons Men, P. D. James’s dystopian novel of a world turned mys- for this difference: The Left argues that it’s because of a teriously barren, the roads are potholed and broken, and the more generous social safety net in the northwest than in the buildings crumbling, for want of a sufficiently able-bodied Mediterranean states and the recovering Soviet satellites. On population to maintain them. By 2021, the year Lady the other hand, it’s obvious that Denmark, Belgium, France, James’s story is set in, much of inland Portugal will be and Britain’s healthier fertility rates owe something to the approaching the same condition—not through biological fecund Muslim populations they’ve attracted. A united affliction, but through a kind of silent mass consensus that Germany has a foot in both camps, being both prosperous this is no longer a world worth bringing children into. “A with generous maternity benefits and a large Muslim pop- country without children is a nation without a future,” ulation, and well down the demographic death spiral. warned Aníbal Cavaco Silva, Portugal’s president, in 2007, Setting Islam to one side, there is a horrible enfeebling since when the fertility rate has nosedived. Why would you fatalism on both sides of that demographic line. As I wrote in have a kid in Portugal? The country’s youth-unemployment my “alarmist” book seven years ago, the future belongs to rate is over 40 percent. In Spain it’s 57 percent, and in those who show up for it, and the nations that built the mod- Greece just shy of 63 percent. ern world—which is to say the last half-millennium of I don’t know the rest of the country terribly well, but I human history—have collectively checked in to one of those love Lisbon, and I love returning there. There is something Swiss euthanasia clinics. In 1905, Theodore Roosevelt spoke about the jacarandas in bloom that always reminds me of a to the National Congress of Mothers about the citizen who brief youthful fling long ago. Because I was young, and she consciously forgoes “the blessings of children”: “Why,” he was young and lovely, I find it sad to think of Portugal as a declared, “such a creature merits contempt as hearty as any geriatric ward with insufficient “carers” to change the bed- visited upon the soldier who runs away in battle, or upon pans. Today, Lisbon remains an architecturally splendid the man who refuses to work for the support of those depen- city—a beautiful museum, as one Commonwealth foreign dent upon him, and who though able-bodied is yet content to minister described it to me after a flying visit. But the build- eat in idleness the bread which others provide.” ings are defaced from top to toe with graffiti, which the Today, millions of able-bodied citizens are content to eat stylish Portuguese ladies bustling through the upmarket in idleness the bread provided by others, and it is a long boutiques no longer even notice. Even as a beautiful time since Europeans were called on to fight any battle. But museum, Lisbon is already decaying. “The writing on the a society that has nothing to die for has nothing to live for. wall” is from Belshazzar’s feast, but who knows his Bible in Only the Portuguese can change the destination they’re headed to: have a kid, have two or three, and vote for the Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). possibility of a future.

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