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December 16, 2013 $4.99

TOLLEFSEN THE OBAMACARE DEBACLE: PONNURU w ROY w THE EDITORS ON C. S. LEWIS NORDLINGER SPECIAL SECTION ON CIGARS & DRINK ON MOZART

TheThe TragedyTragedy of the HollowsHollows

A REPORT FROM APPALACHIA, WHERE THE COUNTRY IS BEAUTIFUL AND THE SOCIETY IS BROKEN Kevin D. Williamson

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Human Space Flight

Satellites

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TOC:QXP-1127940144.qxp 11/26/2013 2:24 PM Page 2 Contents

DECEMBER 16, 2013 | VOLUME LXV, NO. 23 | www.nationalreview.com Jay Nordlinger on Mozart p. 52 ARTICLES

17 OBAMA’S IRAQ by Ramesh Ponnuru The Affordable Care Act is an administration-defining failure. BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS 18 OBAMACARE EXCUSES by Avik Roy Refuted, one by one. 50 THE TAO OF ENCHANTMENT Christopher Tollefsen on the life of C. S. Lewis. 21 RAISING SAVING by Allison Schrager The alternative is a much larger entitlement state. 52 MOZART BY JOHNSON Jay Nordlinger reviews 24 PASS THE SNAIL SYRUP by Anthony Daniels Mozart: A Life, by Paul Johnson. An 18th-century recipe for longevity. 54 THE WEST’S DYNAMIC TENSION FEATURES Brian C. Anderson reviews The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for 26 LEFT BEHIND by Kevin D. Williamson the Soul of Western An elegy for Appalachia. Civilization, by Arthur Herman.

33 THE DRONE WARS by Arthur Herman & John Yoo 56 LOOKING ON THE International law will not make them humane. BRIGHT SIDE Andrew Stuttaford reviews The Myth of America’s Decline: 35 MEN WITH PLANS by Jay Nordlinger Politics, Economics, and a Half A look at an extraordinary prison in Texas. Century of False Prophecies, by Josef Joffe.

SPECIAL SECTION ON CIGARS & DRINK 58 FILM: THE PERILS OF KATNISS Ross Douthat reviews The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. 40 DEMOCRACY IN THE TOBACCONIST’S by Jonah Goldberg A varied crowd united by a small pleasure. 59 CITY DESK: THE VIEW FROM MEDILAND 41 THE NEUTRAL SPIRIT by James Lileks Richard Brookhiser discusses our With or without lard. health-care system.

42 IN SEARCH OF LOST WINE by Charles C. W. Cooke Childhood among the vineyards. SECTIONS

44 HYPE AND HOPS by Charlotte Allen 4 Letters to the Editor Two generations of beer fads. 6 The Week 48 The Long View ...... Rob Long 46 IMBIBING WITH BILL by Charles R. Kesler 49 Athwart ...... James Lileks Red and white and much else too. 56 Poetry ...... Donald E. Hampson 60 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

NATIoNAl RevIeW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATIoNAl RevIeW, Inc., at 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 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–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATIoNAl RevIeW, 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. PoSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATIoNAl RevIeW, Circulation Dept., P. o. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 11/22/2013 1:40 PM Page 1 letters:QXP-1127940387.qxp 11/26/2013 2:28 PM Page 4 Letters DECEMBER 16 ISSUE; PRINTED NOVEMBER 27

EDITOR Richard Lowry Senior Editors Humane on the Range Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Many thanks to NatioNal Review and Matthew Scully for his excellent article, Literary Editor Michael Potemra Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy “Pro-life, Pro-animal” (November 25). our working cattle ranch produces Washington Editor Robert Costa Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson grass-fed beef and operates humanely in affiliation with animal welfare National Correspondent John J. Miller approved. we work under the assumption that what is good for the animals, Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Deputy Managing Editors from chickens to cows, is good for us as stewards of them. we are rewarded Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Associate Editors with a pleasant life among animals that experience a minimum of pain and vio- Patrick Brennan / Katherine Connell lence and thus exhibit a minimum of fear and conflict. the beef and eggs are Production Editor Katie Hosmer Research Associate Scott Reitmeier excellent; they would not be improved by abusing the creatures that produce Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace them. Contributing Editors Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn a good person has a natural inclination to minimize the suffering of fellow Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg / Florence King Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin human beings and the animals we call pets. as Mr. Scully points out, it is most Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi natural that this mercy should extend to the creatures that feed us as well as Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne Reihan Salam / Robert VerBruggen those that serve us.

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editor Edward John Craig William H. Heard National-Affairs Columnist John Fund Lazy A Ranch Media Editor Eliana Johnson Political Reporters Bellville, Texas Andrew Stiles / Jonathan Strong Reporter Katrina Trinko Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke Associate Editor Molly Powell Editorial Associates People First Sterling C. Beard / Andrew Johnson Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Developer Wendy Weihs like Matthew Scully, i am pro-life and pro-animal, but his discussion of Web Producer Scott McKim the cruelty of meat production avoids a key point. as the U.S. and the EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan world see continuing increases in population, traditional methods of ani- NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE mal husbandry are not sufficient to provide animal protein that is afford- BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Alec Torres / Betsy Woodruff able even to low-income families. Modern farming methods are not Contributors necessarily driven by greed and indifference to animal suffering, but by Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza high demand. Society accepts these methods, perhaps with reluctance, M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. rather than having meat availability limited to the well-to-do. Until bio- Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner David Gelernter / George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart engineering can produce animal protein without living animals (perhaps a Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune few decades from now), the choice society faces is between industrial- D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak farming methods and restricting the availability of meat due to high price. Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber this would be a difficult choice, but one where the morality of animal Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge treatment is balanced against the morality of making meat affordable to Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak low-income families. Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu / Lucy Zepeda J. A. Penkrot Circulation Manager Jason Ng Pittsburgh, Pa. Assistant to the Publisher Kate Murdock WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 Correction ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler an item in the week (November 11) asserted that “in February 1962, Scott Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Carpenter became the fourth american in space, the second to orbit the earth.” Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Director of Development Heyward Smith in fact, John Glenn was the pilot and sole crew member of the Friendship 7 Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell craft that February. Carpenter was the back-up pilot, but he piloted the PUBLISHER Jack Fowler Aurora 7 craft in May 1962.

CHAIRMAN John Hillen

CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected]. FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. 4 | www.nationalreview.com DECEMBER 1 6 , 2 0 1 3 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 11/22/2013 1:35 PM Page 1

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n We have long questioned the wisdom of nuclear negotiations with a party that has a history of promise-breaking and duplicity. So Harry Reid’s actions come as no surprise. See page 14.

n There are assassins who are crazy, and assassins who are ideologues. Among the former: Charles Guiteau, who shot James Garfield; Squeaky Fromme, who tried to shoot Gerald Ford. Among the latter: John Wilkes Booth, self-described Con federate; Leon Czolgosz, anarchist; Sirhan Sirhan, Pal es - tin ian na tion alist; and, of special relevance this November, Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist who moved to the Soviet Union, married a Soviet wife, and admired Castro. Then there are crazy attempts to interpret the ideology of assassins: As James Piereson has pointed out, liberals who could not stand to see Kennedy as a casualty of the Cold War made him the casualty of Dallas’s right- wing climate of hate instead. They are still at it: Steven L. Davis, co-author of the new book Dallas 1963, accuses the Tea Party of spewing the same hatred at Barack Obama; the New York Times has recently run several stories on this theme. Gentlemen: Get your ideology straight. Oswald et al. at least did that, however destructive and monstrous they otherwise were.

n Sarah Palin has a gift for vivid rhetoric and a talent for driving always tried to be compassionate towards them. I believe that is all the right people crazy. Commenting on our nation’s exces- the Christian way to behave.” Supporters of same-sex marriage, sive debt, she told Fox News that when the bills come due, especially these days, treat the opponents as bigoted and inde- Americans will “be beholden to a foreign master” and the cent, as though second-class citizenship is what we are after. result will be “like slavery.” MSNBC’s perpetually outraged Some of those supporters also hold it against us when we do not Martin Bashir responded to Palin by recalling an 18th-century act the part. slaveowner named Thomas Thistlewood, who punished mis - behaving slaves by forcing others to defecate or urinate in their n The knockout game suddenly made the major media, though mouths. He went on to say that Palin deserved “a dose of disci- the phenomenon—anomic gangs of punks, one of whom pline from Thomas Thistlewood.” Bashir has offered an apology, punches a passerby without reason—has been going on for years. which Palin has accepted. But Bashir has a long record of com- The reason the “game” proceeded under the radar is that the paring Republicans to the vilest demagogues and dictators and gangs are invariably black, and their victims are not. Sometimes making juvenile personal attacks on those who disagree with the reason they were felled was that they were gay, or Hasidic, or him. Potty-mouth, heal thyself. Asian, or just plain white. But the racial difference is always pre- sent, and since blacks are not the victims, the racial difference n Supporters of Senator Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.) ran an ad saying fits no recognized narrative of oppression. Is racism the only, or that his primary rival, Elizabeth Cheney, “aggressively pro- even the main motive? Probably not: Plain old thuggery always motes” same-sex marriage. Cheney said that in fact she does not calls out to the anomic. But racial difference makes clobbering support it at all, unlike her father. Her sister, a lesbian, and her a stranger easier and a sense of grievance—punch a cracker for partner—her wife according to the District of Columbia and, Trayvon—makes it easier still. If only some well-spoken black thanks to the Supreme Court, therefore the federal government— intellectual rose to prominence—say to the White House—and took to Facebook to blast her as a two-faced opponent of civil brought us together, then all would be well. rights, someone who had always been welcoming to her family members but now wanted to treat some of them as “second-class n Oprah Winfrey, who became a billionaire in spite of the best citizens.” The sisters’ parents, Dick and Lynne Cheney, then efforts of the Man to keep her down, said in a recent interview issued a statement saying that Elizabeth had long maintained the that racism explains “in some cases and maybe even in many traditionalist view, that it had long been a source of painful con- cases” criticism of Barack Obama, who became president of the flict within the family, and that her past acts of kindness should United States of America in spite of the best efforts of the Man to not be held against her. In a recent interview, Cheney explained keep him down, presumably throughout the course of his prep-

ROMAN GENN her conduct thus: “I love my sister and her family and have school and Ivy League education and on through his cursus hon-

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THE WEEK orum leading up to his tenure in the White House. “It’s the kind though, is higher taxes on corporate investment. Older, estab- of thing that nobody ever says but everybody is thinking,” lished businesses that are living off past investments would come Winfrey said. Never mind that this thing that nobody ever says out ahead; start-ups would pay higher taxes than they do today. is said by practically everybody sharing Winfrey’s political Republicans should want no part of that deal. preferences. Is there anything that better describes the state of American racism than a black billionaire contemplating a black n Trans fats are liquid fats that have been treated to make them president and seeing a victim of racism? solid. They used to be found in products like vegetable shorten- ing and margarine, along with many other processed foods, until n James O’Keefe, vanquisher of ACORN, NPR executives, and research showed that they can be as bad as animal fats in causing Planned Parenthood staffers, has turned his attention to Obama- heart disease and possibly a bit worse. In 2006 the FDA made care—and homed in on the Department of Health and Hu man food manufacturers list trans-fat content on their labels, and this Services’ “navigator” program. labeling plus widespread publicity about the health risks caused Under that program, HHS doled most big manufacturers and fast-food chains to switch to other out $67 million to 105 organiza- substances (the stragglers are mostly small businesses that tions across the country, includ- lack the resources to reformulate their products). As a result, ing Planned Parenthood, to hire Americans’ consumption of trans fats has plunged from 4.6 “navigators” to help Americans grams a day to around 1 gram over the past decade. It’s a classic enroll in the federal health-care case of free markets (and market-friendly regulation) at work— exchange. The events O’Keefe but that reduction to 1 gram isn’t enough for Barack Obama’s caught on tape at a Texas naviga- FDA, which now wants to ban trans fats entirely (the agency is tion site under the auspices of the developing tests to detect trans fats at levels as low as 0.1 grams National Urban League, which per serving). The FDA lacks jurisdiction over naturally occurring received $376,800 from the fats, so at press time it was still legal to order a cheeseburger, but feds, will shock nobody familiar there’s no telling what’s next for the grim absolutists of the FDA. with prior videos: Government- paid workers are seen urging n Americans with no interest in competing for the votes of consumers to lie, cheat, and steal Iowans in years divisible by four have long agreed that federal from the federal government. support for making ethanol fuel from corn is a costly and ineffi- “You lie because your premiums will be higher,” one navigator cient way to help the environment. It may not even be green at advises O’Keefe’s undercover investigator, who says he some- all. A new investigative report by the Associated Press reveals times smokes. “Don’t tell them that. Don’t tell ’em.” The inves- the extent to which government support for ethanol, a fuel only tigator then poses as a low-income worker who has un reported slightly cleaner than gasoline, has hurt the environment by push- cash income on the side. He worries that the additional income ing farmers into marginal and once-protected cropland in the might prevent him from receiving Obamacare subsidies, but Midwest, a shift that has a range of ancillary environmental costs. that’s no obstacle for the navigator, who says, “Don’t get yourself Subsidies for ethanol have been a longstanding feature of U.S. in trouble by declaring it now.” Another chimes in: “Never report environmental policy; their main form now is a mandate that it.” If they are ever called to account, the navigators should plead transportation fuel in the U.S. must contain a certain percentage that they are following the spirit of the law. of ethanol: a requirement instituted by the Bush administration and expanded by the Obama administration in 2010. The man- n As of mid November, Colorado had reportedly enrolled 6,001 date is now so onerous that the EPA is considering scaling it back people on its health-care exchange—and one previously unin- for 2014, market developments having varied from the projec- sured pooch. Baxter, a 14-year-old Yorkie, received a letter from tions on which its policy relied (fancy that). Ethanol subsidies are Connect for Health Colorado congratulating him on successfully the epitome of wastefulness, which turns out not to help the envi- opening an insurance account. His bemused owner, Shane Smith, ronment. had attempted to sign up for a health plan over the phone after Obamacare caused his old plan to be canceled; the mix-up came n Congress is considering the U.N. Convention on the Rights of about, he presumed, because he had given Baxter’s name as an Persons with Disabilities. The treaty has one feature that by itself answer to one of the security questions. “Typical Obamacare, that merits opposition: It purports to guarantee “free or affordable” they would insure your dog by mistake,” Smith told a local news access for disabled people to “sexual and reproductive health and outlet. Connect for Health Colorado commented, “As with any population-based public health programmes”—euphemisms that new system, mistakes are possible.” When we said health insur- encompass abortion, according to the State Department. The dis- ance in this country was going to the dogs . . . abilities treaty would thus be the first compact the U.S. has signed that enshrines free access to abortion in international law. (It n Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.), would be especially macabre for this line to be crossed in a treaty more than anyone else, wrote the “health-care reform” that is cur- seeking to help the disabled.) Treaty advocates argue that U.S. rently deforming Americans’ medical system and budgets. Now ratification will pressure other countries to extend the protections he has offered a “corporate tax reform” that should also be setting we take for granted, thus helping disabled Americans who travel

BILL HABER off alarms. Like his earlier legislation, this one comes with some or live abroad. Yet a range of evidence confirms that new U.N. / attractive-sounding features: In this case, a reduction in the cor- treaties do nothing to improve human-rights policies. If the

AP PHOTO porate tax rate. The trade for lower taxes on corporate profit, treaty sounds like a sensible, effective way to protect disabled

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THE WEEK Americans, then we have an ADA-compliant office complex on voters. “I care about the life of every child,” she explained. the East River to sell you. “Every child that goes to bed hungry, every child that goes to bed without a proper education, every child that goes to bed without n “I am pro-life,” Wendy Davis told a group of college students being able to be a part of the Texas dream.” Every child that in November. They may have been surprised to hear it: Davis makes it out of the womb alive. owes the political celebrity that launched her Texas guber- natorial campaign to her eleven-hour filibuster in June to prevent n Speaking of Texas, they had a gala ribbon-cutting ceremony abortion from being restricted after 20 weeks of fetal develop- for the new abortion clinic in Fort Worth. A Planned Parenthood ment. She seems to have grasped, though, that while her impas- clinic, it cost $6.5 million and is “state of the art,” as news reports sioned stand for women’s “reproductive health” electrified have said. Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Par ent - Democratic donors nationally, it does not enthuse most Texas hood Federation of America and the daughter of the late Texas Judging the Parties

HY did Senate Democrats take the unprece- Lott adds that the lags to a vote on confirmation are dented step of ending filibusters for presidential just part of the story. Indeed, fully 85 percent of President W appoint ments, including nominations to the ju - Obama’s circuit-court nominees have now been con- di ci ary? According to President Obama and his cheer- firmed, a much higher percentage than that enjoyed by leaders, it’s a matter of desperate times calling for President Bush, who saw only 72 percent confirmed. The desperate measures. In a speech before the Senate vote, data, then, suggest that Republicans have been on bal- Obama said that “over the past five years, we’ve seen an ance less of a political obstacle to President Obama’s un pre ce dent ed pattern of obstruction in Congress that’s nominees than Democrats were to President George W. prevented too much of the American people’s business Bush’s. from getting done. . . . Today’s pattern of obstruction just This is the second time this fall that the president has isn’t normal.” The New York Times heralded the move as lobbed the transparently incorrect assertion that Re pub - “long overdue” and “a return to the democratic pro cess.” li cans are acting in an unprecedented fashion and re - If we have learned anything about this president, it is that ceived roaring confirmation from most in the media. his factual assertions need to be scrutinized. So what do Recall that the same was said of the GOP’s desire to the facts say? Have Senate Republicans’ actions really attach strings to the increase in the debt limit, despite the been unprecedented, as the president and Democrats fact that 27 out of 53 debt-limit increases had included claim? strings, and 60 percent of those were attached by Demo - A landmark new book provides the data we need to cratic Con gresses. That the familiar falsehood and its check this claim. In Dumbing Down the Courts: How echoes should accompany an assault on a centuries-old Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off the Bench, pub- Senate tradition suggests that this president is sure to lished this September, economist John Lott collects and find more “unprecedented” obstacles that require extra- examines the most complete data ever assembled regard- ordinary responses in the months to come. ing the judicial-nomination process. He sifts through data —KEVIN A. HASSETT on all nominations to circuit- and district-court judgeships for every president since Jimmy Carter. The nearby chart shows the number of days between judicial nominations Average Number of Days between and confirmations during different presidential administra- Nomination and Confirmation tions, for nominees to both circuit and district courts, based 400 on Lott’s analysis. Circuit-Court Nominees 350 If President Obama’s story were correct, we would District-Court Nominees expect the data to show that filibustering tea partiers had 300

pushed delays through the roof relative to earlier periods. 250

But the data do not bear this out. The experience of judicial 200

nominees under Obama has not been appreciably different Days 150 from the trend under previous administrations. Since the presidency of George H. W. Bush, the lag between nomi- 100 nation and confirmation has steadily increased under all 50

administrations, especially for circuit-court nominees. And 0 Carter Reagan Bush I Clinton Bush II Obama although the delay for district-court nominees was longer (First Term) during Obama’s first term than during George W. Bush’s Presidency administration, the average lag for the circuit courts has SOURCE: LOTT, JOHN. 2013. DUMBING DOWN THE COURTS: HOW POLITICS KEEPS THE SMARTEST JUDGES OFF THE BENCH. BASCOM HILL PUBLISHING actually fallen. GROUP, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

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governor­Ann­Richards,­attended­the­gala­ceremony.­In­an di­ans­do­well­in­comedy,­which­is­not­for­nice­guys­(just­ask­the interesting­twist­of­fate,­the­abortion­clinic­is­next­to­an­adop- Irish­and­the­Jews);­and­now,­Rob­Ford.­Ford,­who­has­been tion­center:­the­Gladney­Center­for­Adoption.­Here­we­see­two may­or­of­Toronto­since­2010,­has­recently­become­a­celebrity completely­different­views­of­life,­morality,­and­man.­What­a­dif- for­ex­plain­ing­that­he­had­used­crack­“probably­in­one­of­my ference­a­door­or­an­address­makes. drunken­stupors.”­Some­of­his­other­prize­comments­are­not printable­in­a­family­magazine.­Ford’s­big­bluff­smiling­face­adds n In­what­a­former­U.S.­diplomat­calls­a­“massive­downgrade” an­extra­jolt:­He­is­the­hellion­teddy­bear.­Canadians­must­make to­the­U.S.­embassy­to­the­Holy­See,­the­State­Department­has their­own­judgments­about­propriety,­sobriety,­and­law-breaking. decided­to­move­it­from­the­Villa­Domiziana,­a­stately­edifice But­it­should­be­noted­that­Ford­won­office­as­a­populist­promis- overlooking­the­Circus­Maximus,­to­an­annex­that­will­be­built ing­to­cut­taxes­and­spending,­which­would­have­made­him­a­tar- onto­the­U.S.­embassy­to­Italy.­The­reason­for­consolidating get­of­Canada’s­MSM­if­he­had­been­a­teetotaler.­Perhaps­Ford operations­is­primarily­to­enhance­security,­say­the­current­am­- will­go­down;­or­perhaps­he­will­go­down­with­John­A.­Mac­- bas­sa­dor­and­his­immediate­predecessor,­both­of­them­Obama donald,­first­prime­minister­of­Canada,­off-and-on­drunkard,­and appointees.­Five­former­ambassadors­to­the­Holy­See,­including master­politician.­ James­Nicholson,­Mary­Ann­Glendon,­and­Raymond­Flynn,­have objected­to­the­plan.­Of­the­80­countries­with­embassies­to­the n At­the­United­Nations,­it­was­business­as­usual:­The­General world’s­smallest­sovereignty­in­area­and­population,­though­obvi- Assembly­adopted­nine­resolutions­condemning­Israel­and­none ously­not­in­influence­(you­may­recall­its­role­in­the­dissolution against­any­other­country.­A­U.N.­interpreter­made­some­remarks of­the­Soviet­Union­and­its­empire),­only­two­make­their­Vatican about­this,­not­knowing­her­microphone­was­live.­What­she­said ambassadors­work­out­of­their­Italian­embassies.­There­is­no went­into­the­ears­of­every­U.N.­delegate­and­a­webcast­audience good­reason­for­the­United­States­to­become­the­third. around­the­world.­“C’est­un­peu­trop,­non?”­In­other­words,­the singling­out­of­Israel­“is­a­bit­much,­isn’t­it?”­Then,­continuing n Since­his­election­nine­months­ago,­Pope­Francis­has­often in­English:­“There’s­other­really­bad­s***­happening,­but­no­one found­occasion­to­demonstrate­the­stubborn­truth­of­the­Bible says­anything­about­the­other­stuff.”­Whether­the­interpreter­still verse­that­“the­tongue­can­no­man­tame,­it­is­an­unruly­evil” has­her­job­is­unknown.­In­Israel,­Prime­Minister­Netanyahu­said, (James­3:8).­He­has­made­statements­that­some­have­taken­to “Sometimes­the­veil­of­hypocrisy­over­the­incessant­attacks mean­he­would­like­to­remake­the­Catholic­Church­in­the­image against­us­is­ripped­off,­and­this­interpreter­did­that.”­He­also of­the­New York Times editorial­board.­His­own­rhetorical­care- offered­her­a­job,­in­the­event­she­had­need­of­one.­In vino veritas, lessness­has­sometimes­reinforced­this­impression.­He­walks goes­an­old­saying.­The­truth­can­come­from­“hot­mics,”­too. the­walk­better­than­he­talks­the­talk.­His­warm­embrace­of­a severely­disfigured­pilgrim­in­St.­Peter’s­Square­in­November n In­Cuba,­there­is­a­rap­artist­named­Ángel­Yunier­Remón­Ar­- needed­no­commentary.­The­image­went­viral.­“It­was­like­being zu­a­ga,­a.k.a.­“El­Crítico”—“The­Critic.”­The­Cuban­dictatorship in­paradise,”­the­afflicted­man,­Vinicio­Riva,­later­said.­“Here­I does­not­take­kindly­to­critics.­That’s­why­Remón­is­in­prison.­He leave­my­pain.”­Only­days­later,­encountering­a­gentleman­whose has­been­there­since­March,­without­a­trial,­though­with­an­eight- face­was­almost­entirely­missing,­the­pope­did­it­again,­reaching year­sentence.­In­October,­he­went­on­a­hunger­strike.­His­wife, out­to­hug­someone­most­of­us,­sad­to­say,­would­treat­as­untouch- Yudisbel­Roseyo­Mojena,­asked­American­rappers­and­singers­to able.­Wordless­preaching­is­the­most­powerful­kind.­Pope­Francis speak­out­in­his­behalf.­“I­would­be­grateful­a­million­times­over,” may­have­finally­found­his­voice. she­said.­She­did­not­have­many­takers.­It­would­have­been­espe- cially­helpful­to­have­the­support­of­Jay-Z­and­his­wife­Beyoncé, n Xinhua,­the­Chinese­news­agency,­ran­a­headline­that­echoed who­are­close­Obama­friends­and­major­fundraisers.­They­cele- around­the­world:­“China­to­Ease­One-Child­Policy.”­From­now brated­their­fifth­wedding­anniversary­this­year­by­vacationing­in on,­couples­could­have­a­second­child­if­either­parent­was­an­only Cuba­about­a­week­after­Remón­was­arrested.­After­27­days,­near child.­Evidently,­China­was­feeling­the­pinch­of­a­shrinking­labor death,­Remón­suspended­his­hunger­strike.­This­practice,­hunger- force,­a­burgeoning­elderly­population,­and­a­severe­imbalance striking,­is­problematic,­morally.­But­prisoners­of­conscience between­the­sexes.­After­some­international­excitement,­Xinhua have­been­doing­it­for­many­decades,­and­they­do­it­because ran­a­second­report­under­the­headline­“Birth-Policy­Changes vi­cious­regimes­drive­them­to­this­terrible­extreme.­ Are­No­Big­Deal.”­The­relevant­official­said­that­“the­number­of couples­covered­by­the­new­policy­is­not­very­large­across­the n Ukraine,­the­most­populous­of­the­former­Soviet­republics country”­and­that­there­were­several­contingencies.­In­sum,­“the af­ter­Russia,­abruptly­canceled­a­planned­trade­pact­with­the­Eu­- basic­state­policy­of­family­planning­will­be­adhered­to­over­a ro­pe­an­Union,­two­weeks­after­an­all-night­meeting­in­Moscow long­period­of­time.”­Reggie­Littlejohn,­the­president­of­a­group between­Presidents­Viktor­Yanukovich­and­Vladimir­Putin.­No that­monitors­the­one-child­policy­and­its­inhuman­effects, details­of­the­meeting­have­leaked­(except­for­Russian­gloating: Women’s­Rights­Without­Frontiers,­said­it­right:­The­funda- “like­stealing­the­bride­at­the­altar,”­an­unnamed­source­told­a mental­problem­is­that­“the­CCP­[Chinese­Communist­Party]­is Russian­business­newspaper),­but­Putin­clearly­threatened­to­shut telling­women­how­many­children­they­can­have­and­then­enforc- off­Russian­supplies­of­natural­gas­if­Ukraine­went­with­the­EU. ing­that­limit­through­forced­abortion,­forced­sterilization,­and The­collapse­of­a­similar­EU­deal­with­Armenia­shows­Putin’s infanticide.” determination­to­restore­a­shadow­Soviet­Union,­replacing­literal control­with­economic­influence­and­an­expectation­that­local n Canadians­like­to­pretend­that­they­are­nice,­but­there­are­sev- media­will­observe­Russian­norms­of­discretion.­Putin’s­empire eral­giveaways:­The­national­game­is­fast,­violent­hockey;­Can­a­- rests­on­shaky­foundations—Russia’s­economy­depends­on­high

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THE WEEK world oil prices, which North American production will cut—but by 90 percent over the past half-century, as the population has while the going is still pretty good, Putin wants to grab what doubled. It’s a public-health crisis. The instinct may be to look he can. the other way, but we can’t afford to, as the harm and the loss suf- fered by the Deeds family so starkly remind us. n If you have a few spare minutes, go to the Internet and read the speech delivered by John Howard in London on November 5. n Looking at the research on gay parenting, Mark Regnerus Howard is a former prime minister of Australia. He titled his noticed that the samples of most studies were small and unrepre- speech “One Religion Is Enough.” He said he did so “largely in sentative, so he collected a sample that was random and large. reaction to the sanctimonious tone employed by so many of those His team interviewed 15,000 people. Among his findings, pub- who advocate quite substantial, and costly, responses to what lished in the journal Social Science Research in July 2012, were they see as irrefutable evidence that the world’s climate faces cat- that children raised by parents with same-sex romantic relation- astrophe.” To these people, he said, “the cause has become a sub- ships fared worse than average on various “social, emotional, and stitute religion.” He went on to explain the pressures he faced, as relational outcome variables.” A campaign to discredit his work prime minister, to “do something.” He gave a fascinating look at led to an inquiry by the University of Texas at Austin, where what government is like from the inside. He warned against Regnerus teaches sociology. UT found no evidence of scholarly knuckling under to enviro-bullies such as Al Gore. In short, he misconduct. So an independent journalist, John M. Becker, sued delivered a bracing, brutally frank, somewhat brave speech. for access to the private correspondence of the editor of SSR. In November, circuit judge Donald Grincewicz of Orange County, Fla., ruled in his favor, reasoning that, because the n Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, whose editor is an employee of a public university, the University of Social ist party will face local elections in December, offered Central Flor i da, his e-mails are public records. The presumed something better than “a chicken in every pot”: “We will confidentiality of the peer reviews he solicited is now nullified, guarantee everyone a plasma television.” To this end, he has and scholars and editors are effectively warned against pursuing encouraged and facilitated the looting of stores, though the ideas that could call reigning academic orthodoxies into question. problem with looting is that it usually works only once. Now This is a message that does not seem to bother some people. the Socialist-controlled legislature has given Maduro power to rule by decree, but he will learn soon enough that one n A national atheist group has announced that it will be seeking cannot decree expensive electronic goods (or food, or health to create “secular safe zones” on college campuses across the care for that matter) into existence. His plasma-TV promise country, on the theory that nonbelievers are an embattled and per- may be less popular with the public than it sounds, since in secuted minority. “Every time the Pledge of Allegiance is said or between the telenovelas Venezuelans are a sports team says a prayer before a game, secular students are subjected to mandatory government pushed to the margins of society,” the Secular Student Alliance broadcasts, with the licenses of says. What is striking about the so-called secularist movement is opposition stations liable to be not its members’ nonbelief—nonbelievers and skeptics are part revoked. Perhaps his most auda- of a very long tradition—but its smallness and its meanness. To cious scheme has been changing the confess to being threatened by the Pledge of Allegiance is to date of Christmas, so that workers admit a serious deficit of intellectual confidence in one’s beliefs, will receive their holiday bonuses or nonbeliefs. The campaign against the phrase “under God” is before the election—but even here, not inspired by constitutional scrupulosity, but by the desire to he lacks the proper ambition. engage in cultural vandalism: of the Pledge of Allegiance, of Maduro should just do the Ten Commandments, of “In God We Trust,” of such shared what other social- traditions as group prayers. Atheists are as safe as anyone else in ists do, and tell this country. But they might do with a dose of courage. the voters that it’s Christmas n On the subject of “under God,” Barack Obama omitted those every day. words when reciting the Gettysburg Address on the occasion of its 150th anniversary. There was a consequent kerfuffle as some of the president’s more energetic critics complained that this was n Creigh Deeds, a state senator and the Democratic nominee for an intentional slight to believers and a sop to his secularist base. governor of Virginia in 2009, was stabbed in the head and chest Ken Burns, an intellectual princeling of self-regarding liberalism, by his 24-year-old son Gus after an altercation. His son then shot attempted to quash that criticism, claiming that the president had himself to death. Only the day before, he had been evaluated for specifically been asked to deliver the first draft of the address, psychiatric treatment, but was released because no psychiatric which does not include the words “under God.” But even if that beds in the area were available, according to the executive is true, it is hardly an explanation: Why prefer the first draft to the director of the Rockbridge Area Community Services Board. finished product, the version that Abraham Lincoln actually He add ed that it was rare for a patient to be turned away for that delivered? President Obama, a man who does not suffer from a reason, but the Treatment Advocacy Center claims that Virginia’s deficit of self-esteem, may indeed believe that he is in a position psychiatric hospitals can accommodate only 37 percent of its to improve on that other president from Illinois—perhaps he also population in need of their services. And the scope of the prob- has some opinions on the revisions that were made to King Lear.

GDA VIA APlem IMAGES is national. Beds for mentally ill patients have been reduced A wiser man would defer to Lincoln, in word and in deed.

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THE WEEK n Oxford Dictionaries announced that the word of the year for that number is a huge underestimate). But the real economic 2013, beating out “twerk” and “bitcoin,” was “selfie.” According value lies elsewhere. This deal makes it known that our Western to the lexicographers, the word, coined by an Australian posting leaders view Iran as a legitimate negotiating partner—in fact, one on an online forum in 2002, was used 17,000 percent more this that they expect will agree to a final deal in six months. Thus it year than in 2012. Proof that social media are the pool of signals to the many foreign firms interested in business with the Narcissus? So it can be—but so has every form of self-expression regime that the West is growing more tolerant. been. Kodak and Polaroid allowed ordinary people to snap pic- All of this is negotiated away just to set the table for an actual tures of each other (arm’s-length selfies). The daguerreotype agreement, a strategy that failed the Clinton and Bush adminis- required a professional, but was put to the same use. And what trations completely in North Korea. about writing and publishing as mediums of confession and self- The White House has boasted that Iran will give the exposure, from Rousseau to Montaigne to (pre-Gutenberg) Saint International Atomic energy Agency unprecedented levels of Augustine? Most self-portraiture is worthless because most self- access, including daily inspections of facilities. While Iran’s portraitists—that is, most of us—are ordinary. But God sees the agreeing to marginally more IAeA access is welcome, it’s worth uniqueness of each soul; and sometimes an intelligent and sensi- remembering that the IAeA is being asked to monitor an agree- tive soul can convey a glimmer of it. So click away, net heads; if ment that, by allowing the continuation of enrichment, violates you ever look back on your files, you may be surprised by what six existing U.N. Security Council resolutions and the agency’s you see. own repeated requests, and makes no mention of halting work on nuclear-weapons technology. n In 1946, Frank Capra changed American cinema—and One step Iran has successfully taken toward a bomb—enrich- Christmas—with It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart ing some uranium above the level necessary for use in a reactor, and Donna Reed. The beloved film tells the story of the suicidal though below that necessary for making a bomb—will be George Bailey, whose guardian angel Clarence comes to earth to reversed, by processing the material into an unusable form. But show him how much worse off his hometown of Bedford Falls that step can itself be reversed. Unlike previous deals the Obama would be if he had never been born. “No man is a failure who has administration offered, this one entails that we will trust the friends,” the film’s wisdom goes. A few weeks ago, Star Partners Iranian regime, rather than the West, to handle the process. and Hummingbird Productions announced a sequel to the film, to All of Iran’s other progress toward a nuclear weapon—the be released in the 2015 holiday season: It’s a Wonderful Life: The partial construction of a plutonium-producing plant at Arak, the Rest of the Story. If the film’s title weren’t enough, here’s the plot: construction of thousands of centrifuges, the amassing of reactor- George Bailey’s grandson, an unlikable fellow also named grade uranium—will be preserved. And it will not quite be George Bailey, is visited by an angel who shows him how much halted: Some construction work, but not all, will be halted at better the world would be if he had never been born. It’s a Arak, and centrifuges can be repaired. Wonderful Life devotees are outraged, and Paramount, which The existing centrifuges will not be frozen, but allowed to con- holds the rights to the original, has vowed to block production. If tinue spinning away, creating reactor-grade uranium (up to 5 per- the sequel is killed, the story of It’s a Wonderful Life will become cent enriched), in an energy-rich country that has no capability just a little more heartwarming. for turning that material into fuel rods for a reactor. enshrining this in an agreement is a key victory for Iran. Secretary Kerry THE MIDDLE EAST claims that the deal does not recognize the right to enrichment, An Awful Deal while his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, has told the Iranian people it does. For once, trust the Iranians: The agreement says eHRAN appears to be delighted over the so-called interim they can continue to enrich uranium. deal over its nuclear program, and it should be. Congress should pass more sanctions, to take effect if Iran fails T The Obama administration says the agreement will to adhere to this agreement. Meanwhile, leaders in Congress and degrade Iran’s nuclear capacity, halt its current progress, and lay in other countries should continue to try to impress on President the groundwork for a final deal, in exchange for discrete conces- Obama and Secretary Kerry that there can be no real progress sions on sanctions. But this “freeze” is incomplete and reversible without more pressure and a credible military threat. Absent (as the term “freeze” suggests), and the effect of the loosening of those, a permanent deal in six months’ time will require even the sanctions will be far-reaching. more wishful thinking and deception. Alas, this administration Reminiscent of his claim that a strike on Syria to deter future seems to have a limitless supply of that. chemical-weapons use would be “unbelievably small,” Secretary Kerry said that the deal’s concessions translate into “very little PUBLIC POLICY sanctions relief.” This is an odd description for measures that take up a full page of the agreement’s four-page outline and extend to Cancel Obamacare suspending sanctions on petroleum and gold, authorizing new NDeR this president, even if you like the law of the land, shipments of auto and aircraft parts (which are of military and you can’t keep it. His administration, no stranger to economic use to the Revolutionary Guard), allowing U.S. and U ignoring or refusing to enforce pages of the Federal eU companies to insure oil shipments, increasing the caps on eU Register, has now rewritten another key part of the Affordable trade in non-sanctioned goods, and more. Care Act to escape the political fallout from the insurance can- The White House estimates the value of these particular adjust- cellations that are an integral part of its design. ments to be about $6–7 billion, which is no paltry sum in Using its preferred legislative tool, lawless executive decree, exchange for so little from Iran (and reports already indicate that the administration has decided not to enforce some of Obama -

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THE WEEK care’s costly mandates in 2014, allowing insurance companies, in gressmen to amend the law to make it possible. The number of theory, to renew plans that don’t meet them. Insurers may cancel Obamacare-driven cancellations is still increasing, and Re - many of the plans anyway on the grounds that it is too compli- publicans should keep doing what they can to oppose them. cated and expensive to go back now, and because following the The insurance industry understandably feels as though it is get- law—the actual law, not the law “enacted” by a press confer- ting yanked back and forth, but excuse us if our sympathy is lim- ence—is the safest way to protect themselves from lawsuits. ited: The insurers got into bed with Obamacare and are still The White House knows that the viability of the exchanges invested in the exchanges and their promised federal subsidies. depends on younger, healthier people’s getting forced out of their At the same time, of course, Republicans can and should plans and onto the exchanges. As the president admitted in a explain that there is only one real fix for the problems that November press conference, he realized at the time that his Obamacare has caused: repeal and replacement. promise about keeping your insurance would not apply to every- one, and he is giving insurers only a brief escape hatch because THE SENATE he ultimately needs and wants “non-compliant” policies can- Majority Misrule celed—notwithstanding his infamous promise and his semi- apologies about it now. HAT is the filibuster? It is “a time-honored Senate pro- Thus he has offered a “fix” that he knows will not work. cedure that prevents a bare majority of senators from Several states have already suggested they will ignore it and W running roughshod,” according to our friends on the enforce the ACA’s regulations. The White House does not mind, New York Times editorial page. But that was in 2005, when since its entire purpose in announcing it would ignore the law Republicans frustrated over Democratic filibusters of President was to stop panic from moving congressional Democrats to sup- George W. Bush’s judicial nominations were (with NATIONAl port a real change to the legislation. REvIEW’s support) considering the so-called nuclear option, the Fred Upton (R., Mich.), the chairman of the House Energy and overblown name of which suggests that it is rather more than a Commerce Committee, had offered a bill to let insurance com- change in the Senate’s procedural rules. The Times denounced panies offer plans eliminated by Obamacare for another year and the Republicans’ “rank hypocrisy” in 2005, as did any number of let them sell the plans to people who don’t already have them. Democrats. Having reversed themselves at the dictates of conve- That freedom would be a step toward dismantling Obamacare— nience, they show themselves to be hypocrites on the matter at it would draw people out of the exchanges and keep people from hand and also on the subject of hypocrisy: Call it hypocrisy entering them in the first place—and the pressure to renew it after squared. a year would have been irresistible. If 100 Democrats had backed The Democrats here are helping themselves to ill-gotten gains. it, the vote would have marked the end of the Obamacare coali- Using the filibuster and other stalling techniques, they kept judi- tion in Congress. Obama’s move kept defections below 40. cial vacancies open by closing them to Bush nominees. Miguel Republicans should put political pressure on the insurers to do Estrada was kept off of the D.C. Court of Appeals by a filibuster. what they can to let more people keep their policies, and on con- later, when D.C. Circuit judge John Roberts was named to the Supreme Court, Democrats blocked George W. Bush’s nominee for his replacement, Peter D. Keisler. Democrats had previously blocked Roberts’s own nomination to the circuit, and he got on it only after Republicans took control of the Senate—something that Harry Reid in his hubris seems to think will never happen again. The filibuster is not sacred writ, and we are on record support- ing procedural changes to overcome partisan obstruction. The more serious concern here is that the Democrats are attempting to fill the courts, especially the D.C. Circuit court, with a rogue’s gallery of far-left nominees. That is worrisome in and of itself, but there is a deeper agenda: Much of what President Obama has done in office is of questionable legality and constitutionality. The president no doubt has in mind the sage advice of Roy Cohn: “Don’t tell me what the law is. Tell me who the judge is.” He is attempting to insulate his agenda from legal challenge by installing friendly activists throughout the federal judiciary. That is precisely what he means when he boasts, “We are remaking the courts.” The voters missed their chance to forestall these shenani- gans in 2012. They made the wrong decision then, and have a chance to make partial amends in 2014, when they will be decid- ing not only what sort of Senate they wish to have, but what sort FILE

of courts, and what sort of country. ,

DITOR S OTE ATIONAL EVIEW EVAN VUCCI E ’ N : The next issue of N R / Representative Fred Upton (R., Mich.), will appear in three weeks.

chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee AP PHOTO

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by the administration, as by the world’s intelligence services, and thus not a knowing falsehood. The untruths involved in selling Obama care were smaller but more delib- erate. The president continually said that the law would cause insurance premiums to drop by $2,500 per family. He surely hoped that it would restrain the growth of costs so that families would be spared a $2,500 increase that would take place in the law’s absence. But that’s not what he said. Whether his hope has come true is a matter of fierce debate among experts, with the balance of evidence on the neg- ative side. His actual statements were clearly false. Obama also repeatedly promised that people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it under his plan. On at least one occasion he added a ver- bal “period” to the promise, meant to convey that no lawyerly dodge was being Obama’s Iraq executed. The administration knew bet- ter. The law’s requirement that all health- The Affordable Care Act is an administration-defining failure insurance plans cover certain “essential benefits” made some insurance plans BY RAMESH PONNURU illegal whether or not customers liked them. The law also will create incentives BAMA lied, insurance plans But if the Iraq venture reached greater for some employers to drop their health died. heights of support than Obamacare, even- plans even if some or many employees Okay, it’s not as catchy as tually it also hit lower depths than would prefer to keep them. O the equivalent Bush-era slo- Obamacare so far has. The administration reportedly consid- gan. The thought—that there are paral- In both cases, as well, the president ered weakening its statements in light of lels between the signature initiative of governed differently than he had cam- these features of its bill. It decided instead the George W. Bush administration and paigned. George W. Bush said he would to keep making them. The bill ended up that of the Obama administration—has advance a “humble” foreign policy when barely passing the House, and its chances nonetheless occurred to a lot of people, he was running. The attacks of September of passage probably could not have borne especially in recent weeks, as Obama - 11, 2001, changed his agenda. Obama much more truth. care’s exchanges have failed to launch. made clear he wanted to reshape health Some liberals react angrily to any com- In both cases, presidents undertook care. But he opposed what would become parison of Obamacare to the Iraq War, ambitious projects: to remake part of the the least popular part of his health-care saying that their project is not getting any- world, or a huge portion of the economy, law, the requirement that all people buy one killed. The point should be conceded along the lines that our government insurance. His opposition to it was one of to them, but not too hastily. They have wanted. Redesigning Iraq proved to be the few differences of policy he had in the maintained, with more vehemence than impossible, and reorganizing health care Democratic primaries with the second- evidence, that Obamacare will save lives may prove impossible as well. It is at place finisher, Hillary Clinton. During the by extending health insurance to people least proving to be very difficult. fall campaign he relentlessly attacked the who lack it. If their premise is right but The Iraq War contributed to Re pub - Republican candidate, John McCain, for their plan ends up reducing the number of licans’ losing control of Congress in proposing to tax employee health bene- people with insurance, then they will 2006. Obamacare contributed to Demo - fits. The law Obama eventually signed indeed have caused deaths. Anyway, an crats’ losing control of one of its cham- included such a tax. analogy is not an identity. bers in 2010. But the political trajectory Once the Iraq conflict became unpopu- There is a final parallel between the of these projects was different. The Iraq lar, Bush’s critics said he had “lied us into troubles that beset the Iraq and Obama - War started with a level of bipartisan war.” The administration had rested its care projects that has not received much and popular support that Obamacare case on the claim that Iraq was developing attention in the partisan debate. Both sets never had. Most Senate Democrats weapons of mass destruction. That’s the of troubles were not really predicted by

PABLO MARTINEZvoted MONSIVAIS for the authorization of force in / main reason it went to war, and the reason the opponents who later claimed vindica- Iraq, while Republicans were nearly the public agreed to it. And the claim tion because of them. The anti-war move-

AP PHOTO unanimous in opposition to Obamacare. turned out to be false. But it was believed ment warned that fighting in Iraq would

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produce blowback terrorism against that people purchase directly, the “indi- American civilians and chemical-weapons vidual” or “non-group” market. deaths among American troops. What Obamacare These new regulations include the key actually happened—the disintegration of requirement that plans not only insure the Iraqi state followed by America’s des- Excuses everyone regardless of preexisting condi- perate attempt to pick up the pieces—did tions, but also charge everyone the same not feature heavily in the opposition’s Refuted, one by one price irrespective of health status. They arguments. force healthy and young people to pay a The foes of Obamacare argued that it BY AVIK ROY lot more for plans than they cost to insure, would increase rather than decrease costs, in order to partially subsidize the cost of reduce access to doctors, and so forth. F you like your health-care insuring others. Very few of them, however, foresaw that plan, you’ll be able to keep In other words, not only does Obama - the federal government (and many state your health-care plan, period. care not necessarily let you keep your governments) would be incapable of ‘I No one will take it away, no plan in the individual market, but its very developing the websites the program matter what.” It surprised no one—at success hinges on forcing many people required in the requisite time. They least no one who closely followed the out of their plans. thought that the “markets” that Obama - passage of Obamacare—that the presi- Section 1251 of the health-care law care created would be misshapen and dent’s iron-clad guarantee was more like does assert that “nothing in this Act . . . irrational. They did not doubt that the tinfoil. But the president’s problems shall be construed to require that an indi- admini stration would be able to create with the law, already serious, are going vidual terminate coverage under [a plan] them at all. to grow deeper. in which such individual was enrolled on Thanks to the law and its implementa- In the Nixon days they used to say that the date of enactment of this Act.” But, as tion, many Americans are finding them- “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” the Obama administration explained a selves without the old insurance plans So, too, are the excuses Mr. Obama is few months later in the Federal Register, they were told they would have, unable to making for health-insurance cancella- every insurance plan makes some minor buy replacement plans, and liable to pay tions: Over the course of explaining away changes from year to year, as the health- the fines for not getting them that Obama the first fabrication, the president has care system evolves. For example, if a opposed in 2008. That is not a scenario uttered four more that will come back to major branded drug goes off-patent, an even the most committed enemies of haunt him. insurer is likely to tweak its co-pay struc- Obamacare expected. It was an accident, I swear. At a mid- ture to encourage patients to use the The websites may be fixed eventually, November press conference, President generic version of the drug. The admin- but even if they are, the program may be Obama issued an explanation for the gulf istration decided that most of these lastingly handicapped by their early diffi- between his promise and the millions of tweaks would strip a plan of its grand - culties. Those difficulties may very well cancellation letters that Americans are father status. Some regulatory language mean that the initial pool of people in the receiving from their health insurers: on changes to such plans would have exchanges is much sicker and older than “There is no doubt that the way I put that been necessary in any case, so that they the administration hoped, and that premi- forward unequivocally ended up not couldn’t be altered beyond recognition, ums and subsidies will therefore have to being accurate. It was not because of my but the administration could have given be much higher. And that in turn will intention not to deliver on that commit- insurers much broader room than it affect for the worse how those risk pools ment and that promise. We put a grand - ended up doing. develop in the future. father clause into the law, but it was As a result, federal agencies predicted Supporters of the Iraq War, many of insufficient.” While he genuinely intended in 2010 that “a reasonable range for the them, could hardly believe what they read to keep his promise that all Americans percentage of individual policies that and saw from 2004 through 2007. Surely could keep their plans, the president now would . . . relinquish their grandfather sta- there were smart people in our govern- claims, he was foiled by some sort of reg- tus is 40 percent to 67 percent.” In other ment who knew what they were doing. ulatory mix-up. words, the administration has known for Surely they had plans for all contingen- This is poppycock. Obamacare was over three years that the grandfather cies. The Obama administration, judging never intended to allow Americans to clause wouldn’t apply to most individu- from some of the recent reporting, had a keep their plans if they liked them—it ally purchased coverage. And yet, as similar faith that the smart tech experts was intended to allow people to keep recently as this September, the president within its orbit would be on top of imple- their plans if President Obama liked was still promising Americans could keep mentation. them. Title I of the Affordable Care Act their plans. If there is a wider lesson here, it is imposes a blizzard of new federal regu- We’re talking about 5 percent of the that the grand designs of governments, lations on the private health-insurance population. The president’s next go-to left or right, can go wrong in many market, which most drastically trans- excuse is that the cancellations aren’t a more ways than they can go right, than form the market for insurance plans big deal because they’ll hit only about 5 anyone can foresee, and than even the percent of the population. This is an “best and the brightest”—as Obama Mr. Roy is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute inadequate defense on two fronts. First recently, and without irony, called his and the author of How Medicaid Fails the of all, “5 percent” of the American pop- Web designers—can fix. Poor. ulation refers to a group of 13 million

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people; by way of comparison, it’s esti- the old plans weren’t good enough. Furthermore, if we’re going to start mated that we have 11 million illegal Obamacare serves to protect consumers talking about “substandard” insurance, immigrants in the United States. The from these “substandard” plans—you the discussion ought to begin with status of the illegal-immigrant problem should be glad your old plan is now ille- Medicaid, the industrialized world’s is a crisis regarding urgent attention, gal. worst health-insurance program. Earlier according to the president, but 13 mil- But this isn’t true. If you already have this year, in a study published in the lion citizens’ losing the plans they like is insurance, you don’t benefit from a pro- New England Journal of Medicine, no big deal. vision that forces insurers to cover Medicaid was found not to result in More important, the true share of everyone regardless of preexisting con- better physical-health outcomes than Americans affected is much larger than 5 ditions. That provision doesn’t benefit having no insurance at all. That’s in part percent. In the same Federal Register most people; there are fewer than 1 mil- because the program pays pro viders so report discussed above, the Obama ad - lion Americans with whom insurers little that an increasing number of doc- mini stration predicted as a “mid-range won’t do business because of their tors refuse to accept Medi caid patients. estimate” that 51 percent of all employer- health status. And if you’re reasonably Given the president’s opposition to sponsored health plans would lose their healthy, you don’t benefit from Obama - “substandard” insurance, you’d think grandfather status by the end of 2013. The care’s rule forcing insurers to charge the he’d want to move poor people off problem would affect small-employer healthy the same prices as the sick. And Medicaid and onto higher-quality pri- plans (66 percent) more significantly than regardless of the state of your health vate insurance. But no. Obamacare sub - large-employer ones (45 percent). That stantially expands the Medicaid program; adds up to 80 million Americans with indeed, the law depends on employer-sponsored coverage whose old Medicaid to provide half of the plans will now be illegal, on top of the new coverage that it extends to millions whose individual coverage will the uninsured. So far almost 80 end. percent of the law’s new insur- Obamacare’s disruption to ance enrollees have been in the the employer-sponsored mar- program. ket won’t be as severe as that to Better care at the same cost or the individual market, because cheaper. The biggest lie of all is the employer-sponsored mar- the law’s official name: the ket is already heavily regulated. Patient Protection and Afford - Most em ployers will choose to able Care Act. Its trillions of dol- continue to offer coverage to lars of insurance subsidies will their workers, and their employ- make health insurance cheaper for ees, unlike individual customers, some individuals, whose in come bear only part of the costs of such is near the poverty line. But every- plans. But the new, Obamacare- one else will pay more, or get compliant plans will be substan- less, or both. tially more expensive—15 to 25 The law raises taxes by $1.2 tril- percent more, on average, according lion, and cuts planned Medicare to insurance executives—than the spending by $716 billion, in order pre-Obamacare ones. to spend $1.9 trillion on the unin- This is why Delta Air Lines wrote a sured—and it still makes insurance letter to the Obama administration today, Obamacare imposes more expensive. reporting that they will be spending a laundry list of taxes and fees on your A study I helped conduct for the $100 million more on health coverage in insurance plan that doesn’t do anything Manhattan Institute found that the aver- 2014 than they did in 2013, a difference to make it better—just costlier. age state will see underlying individual- that, for the most part, is driven by In fact, it’s the new plans under market premiums go up by 41 percent. Obama care. At the AFL-CIO quadrenni- Obamacare that can rightly be called And that’s the average—healthier and al convention, unions passed a resolu- “substandard.” Plans sold on Obama - younger people, especially men, will see tion declaring that Obamacare “will care’s exchanges tend to narrowly limit much steeper increases. drive the costs of collectively bargained, your choice of doctors. They have high- Conservatives’ main objection to union administered plans, and other er deductibles. In a free market for Obamacare has been ideological: The plans that cover unionized workers, to health insurance, people might choose law expands the role of the state; it is unsupportable levels.” such plans because they would come likely to increase the federal debt; it The canceled plans were “substan- with lower premiums. But under Obama - violates the Constitution. All of these dard.” The president has also tried to care, these plans come with higher pre- arguments preach to the converted. Where argue that, yes, it’s not true that you can miums. In other words, Obamacare the law will finally founder is on its own keep your plan, and yes, it’s not true that forces millions of Americans to pay terms: the broken promise that it would only 5 percent of Americans can’t keep more for health insurance that covers make health coverage more affordable theirs, but none of this matters, because less than their old plans did. for every American.

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ernment has borrowed more from According to University of Pennsyl- abroad to make up the difference. Even vania economist Olivia Mitchell, Baby Raising if borrowing indefinitely were possi- Boomers, who are at their peak of life- ble, households, which make up the time wealth, are approaching retire- Saving foundation of the economy, would ment with more debt than any previous remain fragile. generation. in 1992, 64 percent of peo- The alternative is a much Over the long term, if people don’t ple on the verge of retirement held larger entitlement state save enough for retirement, they’ll con- debt. in 2008, 71 percent did, and the sume less when they stop working. As median amount of debt had quadrupled they face health problems with inade- in real terms, to more than $28,000. BY ALLISON SCHRAGER quate savings, more retirees will qual- Boomers have been spending more on ify for Medicaid, putting more upward housing, and many have credit-card MERiCAnS don’t save enough. pressure on future entitlement spend- debt as well. in 1960, the personal-saving ing and increasing the burden on future no single factor explains the decline rate—the share of people’s workers. in saving. From the mid 1980s until the A after-tax income that they The saving rate has been declining Great Recession, credit was plentiful, save—was 11 percent. By 2007, it was since the 1970s. According to the recessions were shallow, and periods of under 3 percent. Saving rebounded fol- Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer joblessness were short, all of which lowing the recession, but not by much: Finances, despite low saving, the median may have led people to perceive less in August 2013, the saving rate was just net worth of middle-income Americans risk and choose to save less because 4.6 percent. A 2009 survey conducted increased 5 percent be tween 1989 and they thought they didn’t need much by market-research firm TnS found 2007. Then it fell 18 percent by 2010. financial protection. that nearly half of Americans don’t The rise and fall of house prices Another culprit may be stagnating believe they could come up with $2,000 accounts for nearly all of these fluctua- income. Median real take-home pay in 30 days if they had to. tions. Housing wealth became a larger has barely grown since the 1980s. Yet This is a big problem, because a low- share of household portfolios between many Americans have still expected saving economy experiences less stability 1989 to 2007, at the expense of more rising living standards and consumed and growth, and a low-saving society is liquid financial assets. The value of net more, saving less to make up the differ- less resilient. When households have financial assets fell 38 percent from 1989 ence. There have also been few rewards more debt, recessions are worse and it to 2007, despite record-high stock and to saving: Returns on safe assets (bonds, takes more time to recover. Debt- bond prices. Since the recession, house- deposits, and CDs) have declined, and plagued recessions are inevitable in a holds have shed their debt and saved credit has been cheap. low-saving economy: People who have more, but their net financial assets were Another reason for the decline in no financial cushion must take on debt still down 19 percent in 2010 compared saving—other than in real estate—is to finance any economic setback. with 1989. government policy, though anti-saving According to economists Atif Mian, Another remarkable trend is how policies pre-date the decline. The fed- Kamalesh Rao, and Amir Sufi, indebted much more debt Americans now owe. eral government taxes asset returns but households were much more affected Median earners’ average leverage ratio not consumption. The social safety by the recent recession than households (the ratio of debt to assets) nearly dou- net—including unemployment insur- without debt. Households in high-debt bled between 1989 and 2010, from 14.5 ance, Medicaid, and Social Security— areas experienced more unemployment percent to 26.5 percent. This trend has gives households fewer incentives to and larger wealth effects (changes in not been limited to young people, who save. in a 1996 paper, Larry Kotlikoff, consumption as a result of perceived have more student and housing debt. Jagadeesh Gokhale, and John Sabel - changes in wealth). And, because their haus argued that massive wealth trans- homes made up a greater share of their fers through entitlement programs savings, they also faced tighter credit accounted for most of the decline in constraints. This forced them to cut American saving. consumption, regardless of interest Some government policies in the last rates. 30 years have encouraged saving, main- Saving provides the capital that fuels ly through the creation and broader economic growth. in every economy adoption of tax-deferred retirement there exists a certain level of saving accounts. There’s some debate about that maximizes growth. Recently, the whether this has resulted in more sav- American economy has run below that ing overall or simply led people to save level. Corporate saving has increased, less in other ways. Yet even if personal but not enough to compensate for the retirement accounts—which have decline in household saving. The gov- largely replaced firms’ saving through defined-benefit pensions—have in - Allison Schrager is a writer and economist who focus- creased household saving, they haven’t es on pension finance and saving. “I’d love to, but I live in a very small apartment.” been effective enough. The median net

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worth of households on the cusp of sumption and more household lever- less. In this respect, the low-rate policy retirement is just $173,000. That trans- age. may be self-defeating. lates into less than $700 a month of real Since the recession, monetary policy Meanwhile, savers who complain income. has tried to boost consumption through about meager returns are practically Policies that encourage retirement low interest rates. While Fed chairman vilified. New Yorker columnist James saving have been overwhelmed by the Ben Bernanke acknowledges that low Surowiecki wrote a column earlier this policy goal of increasing home owner- rates harm savers, he is quick to argue year titled “Shut Up, Savers!” in which ship, which has encouraged debt. The that the benefits of the improved econ- he claimed that too much sympathy for 1986 tax reform limited the tax exemp- omy will outweigh that cost. Although the plight of savers is “dangerous.” He tion of interest payments but preserved low rates have helped households re - argued that low rates aren’t a big prob- it for mortgages. In 1997, Congress ex - duce debt (by reducing their interest lem because many people are net empted from taxes most capital gains payments), it is not clear how effectively debtors, but neglected to mention that from the sale of owner-occupied homes. the Fed’s low-rate policy has boosted low rates contributed to that undesir- People can even withdraw money from consumption. If people are barely able situation. retirement accounts without penalty to saving to begin with, they have little The problem of inadequate saving is buy a home. capacity to consume more. In addition, being confused with worsening income Financial technology has also evolved. the non-rich saving population tends to inequality. We are seeing more calls Mortgage securitization, propelled and be middle-aged households approach- from left-wing economists like Paul supported by quasi-government enti- ing retirement. Low interest rates are Krugman to increase taxes on capital ties, made mortgages cheaper and supposed to encourage savers to invest gains, the preferential treatment of which more available. It also made it easier to in riskier, higher-yielding assets, an mainly benefits wealthy individuals. In take out a home-equity loan on a inadvisable decision for these non-rich 2013, capital-gains taxes rose only on house’s rising value. Even if they were savers. If they stick to low-risk assets higher earners, while President Obama’s leveraged, households’ net worth in- as they should, the low rates could have 2014 budget plan includes a proposal to creased because house prices rose the wrong kind of wealth effect on limit the size of tax-advantaged retire- faster than the value of their debt. This them: By making them feel poorer, it ment accounts to about $3.4 million. wealth effect encouraged more con- could induce them to consume even Both of these policies discourage sav-

   


            

  
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You deserve a factual look at . . .       

   

The United States is without question Israel’s most important ally. Also, without question, Israel is the staunchest and most reliable friend of the United States. But there are some who believe and vigorously advocate that Israel is a burden to the United States and that, were it not for Israel, peace would prevail in the Middle East.

   
Israel is the major strategic asset of the United States in an The “Israel lobby.” There are indeed those who claim that area of the world that is the cradle of Islamo-fascism, which is Israel is a liability, a burden to our country. Professors from dominated by tyrants and permeated by religious obscurantism prestigious universities write essays in which they aver that the and shows almost total disregard for human rights. During the United States is in thrall to the “Israel lobby.” This lobby is said decades-long Cold War, Israel was America’s indispensable to pull the strings of American policy. Its supposed main rampart against the inroads of the Soviet Union. It is now the promoters are AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs bulwark against the aggressive intentions of Iran. During Committee) and the so-called “neo-cons,” some of whom are Desert Storm, Israel provided invaluable intelligence, an indeed Jewish. They are said to umbrella of air cover for military exert an almost magical spell over “Israel and the United States stand cargo, and had personnel planted in policy makers, including the together in their fight against Islamo- the Iraqi deserts to pick up downed leaders of Congress and the American pilots. President. Some even say that the fascist terrorism. These shared values will Gen. George Keagan, former head Iraq war was promoted by this bind Israel and the United States forever.” of U.S. Air Force Intelligence, stated omnipotent “Israel lobby,” that publicly that “Israel is worth five President Bush was flummoxed into declaring war on Saddam CIAs,” with regard to intelligence passed to our country. He Hussein, not in order to defend the United States or to promote also stated that the yearly $3.0 billion that Israel received in its interests, but in order to further the interests of Israel. military assistance was worth $50 to $60 billion in intelligence, Israel is indeed a major recipient of U.S. aid. Israel receives R&D savings, and Soviet weapons systems captured and yearly $3.0 billion, all of it in military aid – nothing in transferred to the Pentagon. In contrast to our commitments economic aid. 75% of this military aid must be spent with U.S. in Korea, Japan, Germany, and other parts, not a single military contractors, making Israel a very large customer of American serviceperson needs to be stationed in Israel. those companies. Considering that the cost of one serviceperson per year – America’s staunchest ally. A good case can be made that aid including backup and infrastructure – is estimated to be about to Israel, all of it military, should be part of the United States $200,000, and assuming a minimum contingent of 25,000 defense budget, rather than of the aid budget because Israel is, troops, the cost savings to the United States on that score alone next only perhaps to Britain, by far the most important ally of is on the order of $5 billion a year. the United States. Virtually without exception, Israel’s Israel effectively secures NATO’s southeastern flank. Its government and its people agree with and support the foreign superb harbor, its outstanding military installations, the air policy objectives of the United States. In the United Nations, and sea lift capabilities, and the trained manpower to maintain Israel’s votes coincide with those of the United States over 90% sophisticated equipment are readily at hand in Israel. It is the of the time. The Arabs and other Moslem countries, virtually all only country that makes itself available to the United States in of them recipients of American largess, almost reflexively vote any contingency. Yes, Israel is not a burden, but a tremendous against the United States in most instances. asset to the United States. Israel is indeed America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East and the indispensable defender of America’s interests in that area of the world. The people of the United States, individually and through their Congressional representatives, overwhelmingly support Israel in its seemingly unending fight against Arab aggression and Muslim terror. But that support is not only based on the great strategic value that Israel represents to the United States. It is and always has been based on shared values of liberty, democracy, and human rights. America and Israel are aligned by their shared love of peace and democracy. Israel and the United States stand together in their fight against Islamo-fascist terrorism. These shared values, these common ideals, will bind Israel and the United States forever.

This message has been published and paid for by FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world. Your tax- deductible contributions are welcome. They enable us to pursue these goals and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines. We Facts and Logic About the Middle East have virtually no overhead. Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational P.O. Box 590359 San Francisco, CA 94159 work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail. Gerardo Joffe, President 99A To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 11/25/2013 11:48 PM Page 24

ing, but they are justified on the grounds that they affect high-income scarce is, / His Farces are Physick, his individuals. Pass the Physick a Farce is.” Such policies ignore the normal life But in fact he was a more consider- cycle of asset accumulation. The Snail Syrup able figure than Garrick allows. wealth of most people peaks as they Among the more attractive titles of his near retirement, and this is also when An 18th-century voluminous botanical works, much re - their lifetime earnings are highest. spected by Linnaeus, the great founder Discouraging saving at this stage of recipe for longevity of modern taxonomy, is The Sleep of life would be a mistake. Instead, we Plants, and Cause of Motion in the need policies that encourage all BY ANTHONY DANIELS Sensitive Plant; and the fact that he Americans to save more throughout was possibly the first to associate their lives. tobacco with cancer, in his Cautions America must either make a greater y tailor gave me the good against the Immoderate Use of Snuff, commitment to encouraging saving or news first: My measure- suggests that he might have been wiser adopt a more comprehensive safety net ments hadn’t changed in than some of his detractors. Per haps that will replace individual saving. If M more than 20 years. The he really did know the secret of a people lose their jobs, they’ll rely bad news was that he thought that the healthful old age. exclusively on unemployment benefits. suit he was going to make me was of Of course, one has to overlook some If they need to move or retrain, the gov- such good cloth that it would see me of his less sensible warnings, such as ernment will finance it. When they out. He added that it would be suitable that concerning the extreme harmful- grow old, they’ll depend wholly on the for every occasion, from conferences ness to the old of pineapples, the “most government for their consumption and to funerals (not all that far, in my pleasant of all fruit” but, alas, “the most health care. experience). “In cluding my own, I dangerous.” (Followed closely by raw A government-provided safety net suppose,” I said. He did not disagree; pears. Who would take any notice of ensures that the poor and most vulnera- and it is best to plan ahead. One cannot any medical advice that was altogether ble are protected, but a far-reaching one be buried, or even cremated, in Prince without the prohibition of pleasures that takes the place of middle-class sav- of Wales check. and natural inclinations?) According to ing creates great inefficiencies. House - Old age comes to us all, and sooner Hill, the “sharpness [of pine apple] holds have varying needs, and each than one thinks, at least when one has flays the mouth” and so it is all too easy household faces unique shocks in its al ready aged. That is why, looking for to imagine what its acidity does to the lifetime. Personal saving, not a govern- tips on how to outlive my new suit, I stomach and bowels. He had known it ment safety net, is best suited to protect decided to read The Old Man’s Guide to “bring on bloody fluxes [diarrhea], most people. to Health and Longer Life with Rules which have been fatal.” And for old Thus, public policy should encour- for Diet, Exercise and Physick for people, better “costiveness” (constipa- age saving through the tax code and Preserving a Good Constitution and tion) than “a flux.” reduce the code’s current disincentives Preventing Disorders in a Bad One, by For Hill healthy old age, at least to save. It should increase the limits on Dr. John Hill. As it was first published where men are concerned (and for contributions to tax-advantaged retire- in 1750 it might be thought a little out whom, as we shall see, women are a ment accounts and make it easier to of date, especially as Hill was widely snare and a delusion), “is the most valu- take hardship withdrawals, but elimi- re garded as a quack and a charlatan able and happy period of human life,” nate the option to use the money in even at the time; but quackery springs for “experience has render’d the ancient these accounts to buy real estate. This eternal, as a glance at the health section more able than those with less experi- would enhance the incentives to save of any bookshop should be enough to ence to conduct themselves . . . and for both retirement and life shocks. We convince anyone, and it thrives by the being freed from the empire of the pas- should also lower or eliminate capital- suspicion that quacks might just know sions, they enjoy quiet.” gains and dividend taxes and introduce something that is undreamt of in doc- I look forward to liberation from my a progressive, federal consumption tax. tors’ philosophy. passions, of course, but it has not hap- Congress should revisit housing policy, Hill (1714–75) was an interesting pened yet and I suspect that such liber- too—in particular, the tax deduction on figure; he was an actor and playwright ation is now more difficult to achieve mortgage interest. The merits of home as well as a doctor, botanist, and geol- than ever; for in an information age, in ownership as a policy goal are debatable, ogist, and he had a talent for antago- which everyone lives in an inescapable but it’s hard to justify many households’ nizing most of the people he knew. miasma of news, as it were, it is diffi- holding only a single, illiquid, highly David Garrick, the actor and friend of cult not to find oneself in a state of leveraged asset. Doctor Johnson, wrote of him: “For constant irritation or even of righteous Such policies may mean less growth Physick and Farces, his Equal there indignation. He who will attend to the in the short term as the American econ- motions of his own mind (as Doctor omy weans itself off overconsumption, Mr. Daniels is the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Johnson put it) will soon acknowledge but they would provide more stability Manhattan Institute and the author of Utopias that, of all the passions, righteous and growth later on. Elsewhere and other books. indignation is perhaps the most gratify-

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ing, the longest lasting, and the most The primary purpose of breakfast in easily transferable from one object to Dr. Hill’s regime for old men is to take another, and so the hardest to abandon. the edge off the appetite for “dinner” The problem with the passions, said (lunch), so that they do not then Hill, in his chapter “Of the Regulation overeat. “A thin slice or two of good of the Temper, and of the Passions,” is bread, with a little butter,” is permissi- that “the motion of the blood in circu- ble, along with a little tea. For those lation is greatly affected and altered who cannot digest solids a “broth by them, and the nerves suffer more.” breakfast” is excellent, but Dr. Hill The effects of the passions in old men warns against broth of vipers, Eng - are of the worst: “The whole frame is land’s only poisonous snake, which is disordered and I have often seen dis- falsely reputed excellent. But if an old ease, and sometimes immediate death man suffers from “a sharp humour,” the consequence of giving full way to consisting of various evacuations, he them.” So if the news gives rise to pas- should take every morning “two spoon- sion, Hill might tell us that where fuls of syrup of snails,” which is made ignorance is health, ’tis folly to be by “bruising them with sugar and hang- informed. And it is true that studies ing them up in a flannel bag until the show that those who follow the news juice runs out.” tend to be more depressed, that is to say The habit in Anglo-Saxon countries wretched, miserable, discontented, and of treating meals as medical proce- unhappy (to use just a few of the words dures rather than social occasions is that anti-depressants have successfully obviously an old one: Our journals, driven from our lexicon), than those medical and lay, are still full of advice who do not. Old men should therefore about the diet that will secure longevity. avoid newspapers and the electronic The latest dietary panacea, according media. to a paper in a recent edition of the Hill then utters a very modern sen- New England Journal of Medicine, is timent: “Nothing in this world is nuts (I mean “nuts” as a noun, not an worth the distress men bring upon adjective). themselves about it. . . . Life is the But the greatest danger for old men greatest blessing, and health the next, is women, for whom they should and these suffer by that fond indul- “avoid a foolish fondness.” This is gence [in immoderate passions].” The because “the appetite decays with the question arises as to whether anything power, but if he solicit that which he is worth living for if nothing is worth cannot enjoy, he will disturb his con- dying for. Without passion, can life stitution more than by any other means have a meaning? And though I am by whatever.” Moreover, “while he is no means a gourmet or given to the shortening his life” thereby, and “rob- pleasures of the table, the diet that bing the poor remainder he allows of Hill recommends for old men such as peace, he will be only making himself I would certainly suffice to make life the ridicule of those who seem to seem longer, if not actually last favour his vain and ineffectual de - longer. sires.” In the chapter “Of the Diet of Old In short, an old man should be mod- Men,” Hill tells us, or me, that we—I— erate in his appetites, his ambitions, should eat little in the evening because and his habits. But it is easier to give old men’s “digestive faculties” are less good advice than to take it. Hill him- powerful than those of the young; a self remained irascible to the end, “small toast” with “a pint of asses’ which was not very long delayed, and milk” taken two hours before bedtime his wife inherited his temper, spending will “sit easy on the stomach.” If an old her widow hood trying unsuccessfully man should prefer cow’s milk, he to extract money from her hus band’s should water it down, though if he lives patron, the Earl of Bute, and then in London this is unnecessary because writing a book to condemn his mean- “those who sell milk do it for him.” ness. And if he grows tired of life on such For myself, I have always found fare, he may (occasionally) take broth equanimity to be an excellent thing in of veal, chicken, or mutton provided theory but somewhat more difficult to they be weak. achieve in practice.

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Left Behind An elegy for Appalachia

BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

Owsley County, Ky.

here are lots of diversions in the Big White Ghetto, the man in Fairfax County, Va.—and they are getting shorter, vast moribund matrix of Wonder Bread–hued women’s life expectancy having declined by nearly 1.1 percent Appalachian towns and villages stretching from north- from 1987 to 2007. If the people here weren’t 98.5 percent T ern Mississippi to southern New York, a slowly dissi- white, we’d call it a reservation. pating nebula of poverty and misery with its heart in eastern There is here a strain of fervid and sometimes apocalyptic Kentucky, the last redoubt of the Scots-Irish working class that Christianity, and visions of the rapture must have a certain picked up where African slave labor left off, mining and crop- appeal for people who already have been left behind. Like its ping and sawing the raw materials for a modern American econ- black urban counterparts, the Big White Ghetto suffers from a omy that would soon run out of profitable uses for the class of whole trainload of social problems, but the most significant people who 500 years ago would have been known, without any among them may be adverse selection: Those who have the derogation, as peasants. Thinking about the future here and its required work skills, the academic ability, or the simple desper- bleak prospects is not much fun at all, so instead of too much ate native enterprising grit to do so get the hell out as fast as they black-minded introspection you have the pills and the dope, the can, and they have been doing that for decades. As they go, busi- morning beers, the endless scratch-off lotto cards, healing meet- nesses disappear, institutions fall into decline, social networks ings up on the hill, the federally funded ritual of trading cases of erode, and there is little or nothing left over for those who remain. food-stamp Pepsi for packs of Kentucky’s Best cigarettes and It’s a classic economic death spiral: The quality of the available good old hard currency, tall piles of gas-station nachos, the occa- jobs is not enough to keep good workers, and the quality of the sional blast of meth, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, petty available workers is not enough to attract good jobs. These little MARIO TAMA crime, the draw, the recreational making and surgical unmaking towns located at remote wide spots in helical mountain roads are / of teenaged mothers, and death: Life expectancies are short— hard enough to get to if you have a good reason to be here. If you

the typical man here dies well over a decade earlier than does a don’t have a good reason, you aren’t going to think of one. GETTY IMAGES

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Appalachian places have evocative and unsentimental drive-in. Both are long gone. The nearest Walmart is nearly an names denoting deep roots: Little Barren River, Coal Pit hour away. There’s no bookstore, the nearest Barnes & Noble Road. The name “Cumberland” blankets Appalachian geogra- being 55 miles away and the main source of reading matter phy—the Cumberland Mountains, the Cumberland River, being the horrifying/hilarious crime blotter in the local weekly several Cumberland counties—in tribute to the Duke of newspaper. Within living memory, this town had three grocery Cumberland, who along with the Ulster Scots ancestors of the stores, a Western Auto and a Napa Auto Parts, a feed store, a Appalachian settlers crushed the Young Pretender at the Battle lumber store, a clothing shop, a Chrysler dealership, a used-car of Culloden. Even church names suggest ancient grievances: dealership, a skating rink—even a discotheque, back in the SEPARATE Baptist, with the descriptor in all-capital letters. 1970s. Today there is one grocery store, and the rest is as dead (“Come out from among them and be ye separate”—2 as disco. If you want a newsstand or a dinner at Applebee’s, gas Corinthians 6:17.) I pass a church called “Welfare Baptist,” up the car. Amazon may help, but delivery can be tricky—the which, unfortunately, describes much of the population for nearest UPS drop-box is 17 miles away, the nearest FedEx miles and miles around. office 34 miles away. If you go looking for the catastrophe that laid this area low, you’ll eventually discover a terrifying story: Nothing hap- HERE is not much novelty in Booneville, Ky., the seat of pened. It’s not like this was a company town in which the busi- Owsley County, but it does receive a steady trickle of ness around which life was organized went toes-up. Booneville T visitors: Its public figures suffer politely through a per- and Owsley County were never economic powerhouses. They verse brand of tourism from journalists and do-gooders every were sustained for a time in part by a nearby Midsouth plant, time the U.S. Census data are recalculated and it defends its which manufactured consumer electronics such as steam irons dubious title as poorest county in these United States. The first and toaster ovens, as well as industrial supplies such as refrig- person I encounter is Jimmy—I think he’s called Jimmy; there erator parts. A former employee estimates that a majority of is so much alcohol and Kentucky in his voice that I have a hard Owsley County households owed part of their income to time understanding him—who is hanging out by the steps of the Midsouth at one time or another, until a mishap in the sanding local municipal building waiting for something to happen, and room put an end to that: “Those shavings are just like coal what happens today is me. Unprompted, he breaks away from dust,” he says. “It will go right up if it gets a spark.” Operations the little knot of men he is standing with and comes at me smil- were consolidated in a different facility, a familiar refrain ing hard. He appears to be one of those committed dipsomani- here—a local branch of the health department consolidated acs of the sort David Foster Wallace had in mind when he operations in a different town, along with the energy company observed that at a certain point in a drunk’s career it does not and others. But Owsley County was poor before, during, and matter all that much whether he’s actually been drinking, that’s after that period. Coal mining was for years a bulwark against just the way he is. Jimmy is attached to one of the clusters of utter economic ruination, but regulation, a lengthy permitting unbusy men who lounge in front of the public buildings in process, and other factors both economic and geological pushed Booneville—“old-timers with nothing to do,” one observer what remains of the region’s coal business away toward other calls them, though some of those “old-timers” do not appear communities. After they spend a winter or two driving an to have reached 30 yet, and their Mossy Oak camouflage out- hour or two each way over icy twists of unforgiving moun- fits say “Remington” while their complexions say “Nintendo.” tain asphalt, many locals working in the coal business decide Mossy Oak and Realtree camo are aesthetic touchstones in it is easier to move to where the work is, leaving Owsley these parts: I spot a new $50,000 Ram pickup truck with an exte- County, where unemployment already is 150 percent of the rior as shiny as a silver ingot and a camouflage interior, the use- national average, a little more desperate and collectively job- fulness of which is non-obvious. less than before. It’s possible that a coal worker’s moving I expect Jimmy to ask for money, but instead he launches into from Booneville to Pikeville would lower the median income a long disquisition about something called the “Thread the of both towns. Needle” program, and relates with great animation how he con- Some hope that a long-awaited highway-improvement pro- vinced a lady acquaintance of his to go down to the county gram will revitalize the town by making the drive a little less building and offer to sign up for Thread the Needle, telling her terrifying—the local police chief admits with some chagrin that she would receive $25 or $50 for doing so. that he recently found himself heading down the road in pan- “‘Thread the Needle!’ I told her,” he says. “Right? Right?” icked spins after encountering a patch of early-November He pantomimes threading a needle. He laughs. I don’t quite get black ice, which clings to the high and shady places. But the it. So he tells the story again in what I assume are more or less fact is, KY-30 is a two-way road, and there are still more rea- the exact same slurred words. “Right?” sons to leave Owsley County than to go there. “Right . . .” A few locals drive two hours—on a good day, more on others— “But they ain’t no Thread the Needle program! I play to report for work in the Toyota factory at Georgetown, Ky., pranks!” which means driving all the way through the Daniel Boone I get it: Advising friends to go down to the county building to National Forest and through the city of Lexington to reach the sign up for imaginary welfare programs is Jimmy’s personal suburbs on the far side. As with the coal miners traveling to entertainment. He’s too old for World of Warcraft and too drunk Hazard or farther, eventually many of those Toyota workers for the Shoutin’ Happy Mission Ministry. decide that the suburbs of Lexington are about as far as they It’s not like he has a lot of appealing options, though. There want to go. The employed and upwardly mobile leave, taking used to be two movie theaters here—a regular cinema and a their children, their capital, and their habits with them, clean

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clear of the Big White Ghetto, while the unemployed, the depen- merely changing hands ceremonially to mark the real exchange dent, and the addicted are once again left behind. of value, pillbilly wampum. “We worked before,” the former Midsouth man says. “We’d work again.” h, we’s jes’ pooooor folllllks, we cain’t afford no cornbreaaaaaaad!” So says Booneville police chief eLL, you try paying that much for a case of pop,” ‘O Johnny Logsdon, who has an amused glint in his says the irritated proprietor of a nearby café, who eye and has encountered his share of parachuted-in writers on ‘W is curt with whoever is on the other end of the the poverty beat. A former New York City resident who made telephone but greets customers with the perfect manners that his career in the U.S. Navy before following his wife back to small-town restaurateurs inexplicably develop. I don’t think her Kentucky home, Chief Logsdon is an outdoorsman and a much of that overheard remark at the time, but it turns out that gifted nature photographer (his work adorns the exterior of the the local economy runs on black-market soda the way Baghdad municipal building) who speaks fondly of Staten Island but is ran on contraband crude during the days of sanctions. clearly in his element in the Kentucky countryside, much of It works like this: Once a month, the debit-card accounts of which is arrestingly beautiful. those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with Chief Logsdon has time to indulge his hobbies because the There’s a great deal of drug use, welfare fraud, and the like, but the overall crime rate throughout Appalachia is about two-thirds the national average.

a few hundred dollars—about $500 for a family of four, on Big White Ghetto is different from most other ghettos in one average—which are immediately converted into a unit of very important way: There’s not much violent crime here. exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts There’s a bit of the usual enterprise one finds everywhere there are credited, local establishments accepting eBT cards—and all are drugs and poor people, which is to say, everywhere: Police across the Big White Ghetto, “We Accept Food Stamps” is the have just broken up a ring of car burglars who had the inspired new E pluribus unum—are swamped with locals using their idea of pulling off their capers during church services, when all public benefits to buy cases and cases—reports put the number the good people were otherwise occupied. (The good people? at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers—of soda. Those cases of soda One victim reported $1,000 in cash missing from the trunk of then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents his car, and I’m putting an asterisk next to his name until I know on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits where that came from.) But even the crime here is pretty well into $250 in cash—a considerably worse rate than your typical predictable. The chief’s assistant notes that if they know the organized-crime money launderer offers—or else they go into nature and location of a particular crime, they can more or less the local black-market economy, where they can be used as cur- drive straight to where the perpetrator, who is likely to be rency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescrip- known to them intimately, is to be found. In Owsley County, tion painkillers—by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the finally there is a place in which “the usual suspects” is some- sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business thing more than a figure of speech. with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus There’s a great deal of drug use, welfare fraud, and the like, service is nicknamed the “OxyContin express.” A woman who but the overall crime rate throughout Appalachia is about two- is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that thirds the national average, and the rate of violent crime is half the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop— the national average, according to the National Criminal Justice some dealers will accept either—is about 1:1, meaning that the Reference Service. Chief Logsdon is justifiably skeptical of the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is area’s reputation for drug-fueled crime. But he is not blink- about $12.99 at Walmart prices. ered, and his photos of spectacular autumn foliage and delicate Last year, 18 big-city mayors, Mike Bloomberg and Rahm baby birds do not denote a sentimental disposition. “We have emanuel among them, sent the federal government a letter ask- loggers and coal producers,” he says, dropping the cornpone ing that soda be removed from the list of items eligible to be accent. “We have educators and local businesses, and people in used for eBT purchases. Mayor Bloomberg delivered his stan- the arts. And we have the same problems they have in every dard sermon about obesity, nutrition, and the multiplex horrors community.” he points out that the town recently opened up a of sugary drinks. But none of those mayors gets what’s really $1 million public library—a substantial investment for a town going on with sugar water and food stamps. Take soda off the in which the value of all residential property combined would list and there will be another fungible commodity to take its not add up to the lottery jackpot being advertised all over. place. It’s possible that a great many cans of soda used as cur- (Lottery tickets, particularly the scratch-off variety, are ubiqui- rency go a long time without ever being cracked—in a town this tous here.) he does not deny the severity or scope of the small, those selling soda to eBT users and those buying it back region’s problems, but he does think that they are exaggerated at half price are bound to be some of the same people, the soda by visitors who are here, after all, only because Owsley holds

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the national title for poorest county. Owsley’s dependent his isn’t the Kentucky of Elmore Leonard’s imagina- underclass has many of the same problems as any other depen- tion, and there is nothing romantic about it. These are no dent underclass; but with a poverty rate persistently at the 40 T sons and daughters of Andrew Jackson, no fiercely inde- percent mark—or half again as much poverty as in the pendent remnants of the old America clinging to their homes Bronx—the underclass plays an outsized role in local life. it is and their traditional ways. having once been downwind of a not the exception. plate of biscuits and squirrel gravy does not make you Daniel Two towns over, i ask a young woman about the local gos- Boone. This is not the land of moonshine and hill lore, but that sip, and she tells me it’s always the same: “Who’s growing of families of four clutching $40 worth of lotto scratchers and weed, who’s not growing weed anymore, who’s cooking meth, crushing the springs on their beaten-down Camry while getting whose meth lab got broken into, whose meth lab blew up.” dinner from a Phillips 66 station. This is about “the draw.” Chief Logsdon thinks i may be talking to the wrong people. “The draw,” the monthly welfare checks that supplement “Maybe that’s all they see, because that’s all they know. Ask dependents’ earnings in the black-market Pepsi economy, is somebody else and they’ll tell you a different story.” he then poison. it’s a potent enough poison to catch the attention even gives me a half-joking—but only half—list of people not to of such people as those who write for the New York Times. talk to: Not the shiftless fellows milling about in the hallways Nicholas Kristof, visiting nearby Jackson, Ky., last year, was on various government-related errands, not the guy circling the shocked by parents who were taking their children out of liter- block on a moped. instead, there’s the lifelong banker whose acy classes because the possibility of improved academic brother is the head of the school board. There’s the mayor, a performance would threaten $700-a-month social security sharp nonagenarian who has been in office since the Eisen- disability benefits, which increasingly are paid out for nebulous hower administration. afflictions such as loosely defined learning disorders. “This is And that, too, is part of the problem with adverse selection painful for a liberal to admit,” Kristof wrote, “but conservatives in the Big White Ghetto: For the relatively few smart and have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can enterprising people left behind, life can be very comfortable, sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency.” with family close, a low cost of living, beautiful scenery, and a There is much here to confound conservatives, too. Jim very short climb to the top of the social pecking order. The rel- DeMint likes to say that marriage is our best anti-poverty ative ease of life for the well-off and connected here makes it program, and he also has a point. But a 2004 study found that easy to overlook the real unpleasant facts of economic life, the majority of impoverished households in Appalachia were which helps explain why Booneville has a lovely new golf headed by married couples, not single mothers. Getting and course, of all things, but so little in the way of everyday neces- staying married is not a prophylactic against poverty. Neither sities. The county seat, run down as parts of it are, is an outpost are prophylactics. Kentucky has a higher teen-motherhood rate of civilization compared with what surrounds it for 50 miles in than the national average, but not radically so, and its young every direction. stopping for gas on KY-30 a few miles past the mothers are more likely to be married. Kentucky is No. 19 in Owsley County line, i go looking for the restroom and discov- the ranking of states by teen pregnancy rates, but it is No. 8 er instead that the family operating the place is living in when it comes to teen birth rates, according to the Guttmacher makeshift quarters in the back. Margaret Thatcher lived above institute, its young women being somewhat less savage than her family’s shop as a little girl, too, but a grocer’s in Grantham most of their counterparts across the country. Kentucky and is a very different thing from a gas station in Kentucky, with West Virginia have abortion rates that are one-fourth those of very different prospects. Rhode island or Connecticut, and one-fifth that of Florida. Owsley County had been dry since Prohibition. A close elec- More marriage, less abortion: Not exactly the sort of thing out tion (632–518) earlier this year changed that, and the local of which conservative indictments are made. But marriage is authorities are sorting out the regulatory and licensing issues less economically valuable, at least to men, in Appalachia— related to the sale of alcohol. Chief Logsdon thinks that this is, like their counterparts elsewhere, married men here earn more on balance, a good thing, because local prohibition meant that than their unmarried counterparts, but the difference is smaller local drunks were on the local roads coming back from bars or and declining. liquor stores. “They aren’t waiting until they get home,” he in effect, welfare has made Appalachia into a big and sparsely says. “They’re opening the bottle. They’re like kids at Christ- populated housing project—too backward to thrive, but just mas.” Obviously, prohibition wasn’t getting the job done. At comfortable enough to keep the underclass in place. There is no the same time, the scene in Owsley County might make even cure for poverty, because there is no cause of poverty—poverty the most ardent libertarian think twice about drug legalization: is the natural condition of the human animal. it is not as though After all, these addicts are hooked on legal drugs—OxyContin labor and enterprise are unknown here: Digging coal is hard and other prescription opioid analgesics—even if they often work, farming is hard work, timbering is hard work—so hard are obtained illegally. in nearby Whitley County, nearly half of that the best and brightest long ago packed up for Cincinnati or the examined inmates in one recent screening tested positive Pittsburgh or Memphis or houston. There is to this day an for buprenorphine, a.k.a. “prison heroin,” a product originally Appalachian bar in Detroit and ex-Appalachian enclaves around developed as a treatment for opiate addiction. (such cures are the country. The lesson of the Big White Ghetto is the same as often worse than the disease: Bayer once owned the trademark the lessons we learned about the urban housing projects in the on heroin, which it marketed as a cure for morphine addic- late 20th century: The best public-policy treatment we have for tion—it works.) Fewer drunk drivers would be a good thing, poverty is dilution. But like the old project towers, the but i have to imagine that the local bar, if Booneville ever gets Appalachian draw culture produces concentration, a socio - one, is going to be a grim place. economic salton sea that becomes more toxic every year.

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“The government gives people checks, but nobody teaches them how to live,” says Teresa Barrett, a former high-school principal who now publishes the Owsley County newspaper. The Drone “You have people on the draw getting $3,000 a month, and they still can’t live. When I was at the school, we’d see kids come in from a long weekend just starved to death. But you’ll see those parents at the grocery store with their 15 cases of Pepsi, and Wars that’s all they’ve got in the buggy—you know what they’re doing. everybody knows, nobody does anything. And when International law will not make them humane you have that many people on the draw, that’s a big majority of voters.” BY ARTHUR HERMAN her advice to young people is to study for degrees that will & J O H N Y O O help them get jobs in the schools or at the local nursing home— or get out. “I would move in a heartbeat,” she says, but she stays he most important military revolution of our time, the for family reasons. development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is well under way. In 2000, our military had 60 UAVs. T Today it has at least 6,000, with more to come. From heRe is another Booneville, this one in northern the hellfire-missile-carrying Predator to the Global hawk with Mississippi, just within the cultural orbit of Memphis its wingspan of 130 feet to the tiny Raven, which carries a T and a stone’s throw from the two-room shack in which camera the size of a peanut, UAVs are becoming ubiquitous, and was born elvis Presley, the Appalachian Adonis. There’s a lot drone strikes increasingly precise. Many people wonder where of Big White Ghetto between them, trailers and rickety homes this technology is heading—and whether we need new laws and heated with wood stoves, the post-industrial ruins of old mills international agreements to keep the drone revolution from fly- and small factories with their hard 1970s lines that always ing out of control. make me think of the name of the German musical group Former New York Times editor Bill Keller has proclaimed that einstürzende Neubauten—“collapsing modern buildings.” drones are “propelling us to the day when we cede . . . lethal (Some things just sound more appropriate in German.) You authority to software,” while legal scholars question whether swerve to miss deer on the country roads, see the rusted hulk death by drone might violate international law. Radford of a 1937 Dodge sedan nestled against a house and wonder if University philosophy and peace-studies professor Glen T. somebody was once planning to restore it—or if somebody Martin has written that this technology is “attacking the heart of just left it there on his way to Detroit. You see the clichés: cars civilization itself,” while two authors recently opined in the Wall up on cinderblocks, to be sure, but houses up on cinderblocks, Street Journal that, thanks to drones, “the West risks, however too. And you get a sense of the enduring isolation of some of inadvertently, going down the same path” as the one that led to these little communities: About 20 miles from Williamsburg, Auschwitz. These fears are misplaced and overstated. history Ky., I become suspicious that I have not selected the easiest shows that the best safeguards against the abuse of new tech- route to get where I’m going, and stop and ask a woman what nologies are new technologies themselves. the easiest way to get to Williamsburg is. “You’re a hell of a China, the europeans, and the Russians are all anxious to build long way from Virginia,” she answers. I tell her I’m looking their own UAV fleets and make up for time lost to the United for Williamsburg, Kentucky, and she says she’s never heard of States and Israel. Worldwide spending on drones is expected to it. It’s about the third town over, the nearest settlement of any double by 2023. As innovation in UAVs and similar devices interest, and it’s where you get on the interstate to go up to accelerates, it will be more important than ever that the United Lexington or down to Knoxville. “I went to hazard once,” she States maintain its current edge. offers. The local economic-development authorities say that General Atomics, creator of the now-notorious Predator, is the answer to Appalachia’s problems is sending more people already replacing it with the MQ-9 Reaper, which has three times to college. Sending them to Nashville might be a start. the cruising speed and carries 15 times the deadly ordnance. The eventually, I find my road. You run out of Big White Ghetto Russians are building their own counterpart to the Reaper, which pretty quickly, and soon you are among the splendid farms is expected to be in production by 2016. and tall straight trees of northern Mississippi. Appalachia Today’s Predator will look like a World War I Sopwith Camel pretty well fades away after Tupelo, and the Mississippi River compared with the UAVs that military researchers will unveil in begins to assert its cultural force. Memphis is only a half- just a decade or two. Boeing is currently at work on an unmanned hour’s drive away, but it feels like a different sort of civiliza- glider—called the Phantom eye—with half a football field’s tion—another ghetto, but a ghetto of a different sort. And if worth of wing span and powered by solar energy and liquid hydro- you stand in front of the First Baptist Church on Beale Street gen that will keep it aloft for four days at a time (today’s Global and look over your shoulder back toward the mountains, you hawk can manage 35 hours). The Defense Advanced Research don’t see the ghost of elvis or Devil Anse or Daniel Boone— you see a big sign that says “Wonder Bread,” cheap and white Mr. Herman, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and former visiting scholar at the American and empty and as good an epitaph as any for what remains left Enterprise Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Cave and the Light: behind in those hills and hollows, waiting on the draw and try- Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western ing not to think too hard about what the real odds are on the Civilization. Mr. Yoo is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University lotto or an early death. of California at Berkeley and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

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what eventually became known as the Curtiss-Wright Company, which produced the World War II P-40 fighter, among other aircraft. Air power’s first real test came in the Great War, when Allied and German planes not only undertook reconnaissance missions but dropped the first aerial bombs and fought one another in the skies. Some international lawyers argued at the time that air strikes against ground tar- gets were illegal because the pilots fought at a dis- tance without putting themselves at personal risk (an early version of one of the current arguments against drones). But the nations at war kept pressing for the development of weapons in the air, and restraints on the destructiveness of aircraft came from new anti- aircraft weapons and fighter planes. International lawyers next argued that air attacks must not target population centers, but the Spanish Civil War and then the German, British, and American bombing runs on European and Japanese cities Projects Agency has been designing drones that will be able to displayed the futility of attempting to outlaw such strikes. Inter- stay on mission for five years without returning to earth. national treaties on the laws of war today prohibit directly target- The most sophisticated unmanned systems will fly at super- ing civilians, but the United States and its allies will continue sonic speed and employ stealth technology and miniaturization. to launch attacks on military targets that cause civilian collateral Northrop Grumman’s X-47 unmanned stealth bomber lands by damage and even hit non-military targets (such as office buildings itself on aircraft carriers and is already in prototype. Drones that and electrical plants) that support a regime. fit in the palm of the hand and can fly like a bird and hover like A similar story played out with submarines. In World War I, an insect are already in use, for example TechJect’s Dragonfly, submarines gave the German Empire a new weapon with which a UAV developed for the Air Force and available for purchase to combat the Allied blockade and to enforce a blockade of its at $119 apiece. Lockheed Martin is working on a drone the size own. The Allies sought to neutralize this innovation by claim- of a maple-tree seed that can perch and look into windows, ing that international law required submarines to surface and climb walls or pipes, and insert a poisonous syringe into an provide civilians a chance to escape before sinking their ves- unsuspecting target. sels. Submarines, however, were not defeated by international Meanwhile, the development of Unmanned Underwater law, but by the convoy strategy and new methods for detecting Vehicles (UUVs) is also proceeding, from surveillance surface and attacking undersea craft. And once the Allies had devel- craft able to detect mines and protect naval installations to oped their own submarines, they showed no commitment to miniature unmanned submarines and underwater attack craft. their claims about international law. When World War II came, Unmanned seacraft that mimic the swimming motion of fish the United States Navy used submarines to great effect, virtually have been under development for a decade; the Office of Naval wiping out Japan’s merchant marine and handicapping its navy. Research has a project for creating robotic jellyfish that can Advances in technology, rather than treaties, have limited the drift unseen with sea currents and attach themselves to an scope of submarine warfare. enemy vessel or installation before detonating. Before the Efforts to restrain the advance of military technology have decade is out, the UUV revolution is going to cause almost as sometimes disadvantaged democracies, which tend to observe many headaches for maritime lawyers as the UAV revolution treaties more faithfully than authoritarian nations do. After already has for experts on the laws of war. World War I, the great powers entered into the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 to forestall competition in building up naval fleets. The treaty sought to freeze the sizes of the fleets of O are we about to enter a killer-drone nightmare, in Great Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and Japan which only international agreements and control can and to prevent the development of larger ships and better arma- S stop a global Terminator-style armageddon? ments. While the democracies obeyed the agreement, Germany Sadly, the historical record of international agreements in and Japan cheated by secretly developing new and larger bat- keeping the peace and limiting carnage is weak. A close exam- tleships. The treaty restrictions also encouraged Japan to develop ination of efforts to control new technologies suggests that aircraft carriers and naval aviation, which were not covered by deterrence through technological progress is more likely to pre- the agreement, while Britain and the U.S. slept. vent misuse of UAVs. When restraint in arms build-ups has occurred, it has come National leaders and international lawyers have often responded primarily from deterrence. Chemical weapons were another of to innovations in the field of arms with efforts at regulation. Most World War I’s horrifying innovations. They inflicted a level of of these efforts have simply failed. Take, for example, the emer- suffering and terror that could not be strategically justified. But gence of air power. After the Wright brothers launched the first during the interwar years, the great powers failed to reach any airplane at Kitty Hawk, nations began to develop rudimentary agreement to limit their use in combat—the Chemical Weapons

military aircraft. The Wright brothers themselves established Convention would not come into existence until the 1990s. ROMAN GENN

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nevertheless, the Axis and Allied powers did not resort to chemical weapons in a war of ideologies that caused more death and destruction than had the preceding world war. Why? Men with Historical research has shown that Hitler’s Germany never deployed its chemical-weapons arsenal because it knew that the Allies would respond in kind. The same went for the super- powers’ nuclear arsenals during the Cold War. Treaties did not Plans stop the development of fission and then fusion weapons, strategic bombers, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. only A look at an extraordinary prison in Texas the competition of the U.S. and the USSr to match each other’s stockpiles prevented a nuclear exchange. BY JAY NORDLINGER While the politicians, lawyers, and bureaucrats debate and dither, the rate of technological advance increases. The record of deterrence and counter-technologies in limiting the destructive Houston, Texas potential of new technologies is strong. rather than try to stop veryone he meets,” says a friend of Brent John - development with parchment barriers that hinder us more than our son’s, “winds up going to prison.” Johnson is a enemies, we should recognize that UAv technology itself may Houston businessman. And he volunteers in a help us achieve the fundamental goal of the laws of war: to spare ‘E prison. Those he meets, he encourages to volunteer civilians and to reduce death and destruction on the battlefield. as well. They often do, and they wind up enjoying it. There are some 1,200 volunteers in this particular prison—and only 300 prisoners. That is an astonishing ratio. IrTUAlly all technological evolution in UAvs makes The prison is the Carol S. vance Unit, in richmond, outside them not only more stealthy but also more precise— of Houston. The prison is dedicated to the InnerChange Freedom v which means less loss of innocent life and less unin- Initiative, which is part of the Prison Fellowship started by tended physical destruction. Far from making war less Chuck Colson in 1976. IFI began in 1997. It started with 25 pris- civilized, drones are part of a trend toward “smart” weapons oners and five volunteers. In a biography of Colson, Jonathan that has steadily made warfare less indiscriminate over the past Aitken, the British politician and ex-con, makes a large claim: half-century. This trend will continue. Instead of blowing up a IFI is the most successful prisoner-rehabilitation program in carful of people in order to take out an identified terrorist, as America. It may well be true. The program has many compo- today’s Predator does, a device like lockheed Martin’s maple- nents, and one of them is a Business Plan expo: Inmates present seed-sized drone will be able to detect and kill that single pas- plans for businesses they’d like to start once they’re on the out- senger, leaving the rest unharmed. side. Pros like Brent Johnson serve as judges. What about the danger that fully automated systems might take Colson got the idea for IFI when he visited a Christian-run the decision to kill away from human beings and leave it to the prison, Humaitá, in Brazil. He thought there ought to be similar robots themselves? As Werner Dahm, former chief scientist of prisons in the United States. The governor of Texas, George W. the Air Force, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, we should “expect Bush, accepted, and with alacrity. He ordered that such a prison to see humans ‘in the loop’ for a long, long time to come.” This be up and running in 90 days. It was. IFI is one of the “faith-based is because deciding when actually to kill a target is the simplest initiatives” associated with Bush. This particular initiative, in the link in a UAv’s so-called kill-chain sequence—much simpler words of Prison Fellowship’s website, “is a reentry program for than detecting a target and delivering the lethal ordnance accu- prisoners based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.” rately and on time once the kill decision has been made. The mil- Inmates begin the program 18 to 24 months before their release itary doesn’t want fully automated systems because, as Dahm date, and they stay in it for a year afterward. IFI offers “a prison notes, “we don’t gain anything” from them if they work—and like no other,” says a brochure. Darrin Clifton, a “graduate” of the there’s plenty of pain if they don’t. even so, Georgia Institute of program, says it’s true. “I got culture shock when I went in there.” Technology’s ronald Arkin predicts that future technology will He had been in other prisons, but the atmosphere in this one was be able to give us robot soldiers that perform more “ethically than entirely different. Missing were the norms of prison life: decep- human soldiers are capable of,” since they’ll perform on the bat- tion, hostility, gambling, porn, and so on. tlefield without anger or a desire to punish or take revenge. A big aim of IFI is to “break the cycle of criminality.” Tommie on the other hand, a truly inhumane robot weapon—one Dorsett, the director at the vance Unit, has a memory. (By the way, designed to cause the most collateral damage and whose devas- he is considered a hero by some in Texas, but he is not to be con- tating psychological impact on a civilian population is enhanced fused with another hero, Tony Dorsett, the ex–Cowboy running by remote automatic detonation—is precisely what our military back. But confused with him, he has often been.) He once saw is least likely to create but a rogue nation or terrorist group is three generations huddled together in prison: grandfather, father, most likely to want and develop. Protection from that kind of and grandson. All were inmates, and “they thought it was kind of attack can come only through a superior knowledge of drone cool, which broke my heart.” The recidivism rate for IFI graduates technologies—from knowing how to detect and shoot them is 10 percent. The rate for American prisoners in general is some- down to having the ability to hack and electronically jam them. where between 68 and 72 percent. There is one other IFI prison, It wasn’t treaties or agreements that protected Britain from located in Minnesota. There used to be one in Iowa, but it fell to Hitler’s luftwaffe in 1940, it was the Spitfire fighter—and some- its opponents: A group called Americans United for Separation of thing similar will be true in the brave new world of UAvs. Church and State waged a political and legal battle against it.

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The Carol S. Vance Unit, however, still stands, and tall. It is For five to eight months, those inmates who choose—this is an named for someone who was instrumental in the establishment of “elective”—work on their business plans. These plans are metic- the prison. Though the first name may mislead, Carol Vance is a ulous, nearly exhaustive. The inmates have been coached by man, and a man and a half: In the 1960s and ’70s, he was the dis- Capital One. In addition to mentors, Capital One provides loans, trict attorney in Harris County, i.e., Houston, and he has since once the prisoners are out. This year, the expo was held on devoted himself to prison reform. He was chairman of the board October 23. There were 44 participants and 30 judges. Capital of directors of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice when One paid for the lunch—a Texas barbecue, naturally. The parti - Colson had his idea. He sold Vance on it. Vance figured he could cipants proposed businesses of many sorts: lawn service, a tattoo sell Bush on it, which of course he did. In 1999, the prison was studio, commercial refrigeration, barber shops, a bakery, a car named after Vance himself. He still volunteers there, and in other wash, a pizzeria ... Ads for these businesses are already made up, prisons. as if the businesses already existed: “If you don’t want to do it, Inmates have to apply to IFI, from elsewhere in the Texas sys- call Snap 2 It!” (That’s a painting company.) All the ads identify tem. They do not have to be a Christian, or a believer, before they who the owner is: “Alan Parker—Owner.” This suggests a cer- enter or after. Or during. But they have to want what the program tain pride or expectation. You can tell by the participants’ names has to offer, and they have to want a “spiritual or moral transfor- alone that there is a mixture in the Carol Vance population—a mation,” as the above-quoted brochure says. Many prisoners mixture of races and ethnicities: David Buckingham, Jonzz Re’ have no interest at all, says Dorsett. They just want to do their Banks, Ernesto Aguilar, Success Nwosu, Nam Luong. (The last time and not be bothered. The IFI prisoners want to be bothered. of these, in fine Vietnamese-American tradition, has proposed a They are willing to give up some things—not just the obvious nail salon.) vices, but television and recreation, too. Judges come from the Houston business community. They fill A person might assume that IFI prisoners are the cream of the out evaluations, ask questions of the presenters, and give them crop, relatively upstanding gentlemen who committed minor their advice. The judges are to be frank and honest. “They’re not crimes and are ready to put on a suit and tie and go back to work. supposed to be cheerleaders,” says Clifton. “The worst thing you It’s true that there are no sex offenders in the Vance Unit—Texas can do to a con is lie to him. Don’t spare a con’s feelings.” Tony has a separate program for that. But everyone else is present, Masraff has served as an expo judge. Some of the presenters are “from check-writers to murderers,” as Dorsett says. The average off base, he says. Others propose businesses that he himself sentence of IFI prisoners is 19 years. There is a range of ages, would like to invest in. Dru Bennett says that IFI grads have suc- from 21 to 58. The goal is rehabilitation, but as Dru Bennett, a ceeded in leatherworking, plumbing, and landscaping, among volunteer, says, some of these men have never been “habilitated” other endeavors. They might have to do some day-laboring at in the first place. (There are no women in the Vance Unit.) She’s first—but some will get their businesses off the ground. not really joking. They never had a foundation from which they Arriving in town a little late, I visit the Carol Vance Unit a could grow. Probably, they never knew a father, and if they had a week after the expo. From the outside, the prison looks to me like mother, she might have been a drug addict or prostitute, or both. a lot of other prisons. (I’ve been in a few.) But inside, it is much They keep busy in the Vance Unit, engaged in the program different. I’d heard the praise for this unit—the hype, if you from 6:30 in the morning till 9 at night. They study a variety of will—but I may not have believed it if I hadn’t come to see for subjects. They learn to reconnect with their children, or connect myself. The prisoners are wearing white uniforms. Otherwise, as with them for the first time. They hear from victims of crime, people have said, you might think you were in a Bible college. who explain how those crimes have affected their lives. In a The prisoners do not have the usual demeanor: the shuffle, the steady stream, visitors, volunteers, mentors, come in from the swagger, the glower, the smirk. They look you in the eye, tell you outside. Darrin Clifton says that inmates in most prisons have lit- their name, give you a firm handshake, and thank you for com- tle contact with “regular people,” or people in the “free world.” ing. I find it somewhat unnerving at first. Several of the inmates They may have forgotten how to relate to such people (or perhaps reprise their business-plan presentations for a group of us. they never knew). It’s important to have these contacts, so that They’ve already done it, but they welcome the practice. One or reentry into the free world is less shocking. Experts from two seem nervous. All are eager to do their best. There seems to Toastmasters come into the Vance Unit, to prep inmates on how be no resentment of us outsiders, just genuine appreciation. to speak in public. Capital One, the banking corporation, comes The presenters tend to be nicely theatrical, having a touch of in to tutor inmates in their business plans. showbiz about them. They say that they are “soon to be the owner-operator” of this or that business. Then they speak as if the businesses were already in operation: “We do this,” “We do USINESS Leaders of Tomorrow,” is how the annual that”—and by “we,” they may mean themselves alone. They expo is billed. The entrepreneurial talents of inmates think ambitiously. ‘B are called forth. As Clifton says, many of these guys One presenter is Benjamin Seawright, who proposes the Tejas have been entrepreneurs their whole lives: dealing drugs, which Buckle Company—belt buckles depicting historical events and takes a certain amount of planning and energy. Dru Bennett helps institutions in Texas. “Commemorating Texas History One Hand to coordinate the expo. She got into prison work when she pon- Made Buckle at a Time,” is the motto. Seawright has been mak- dered the Biblical admonition to visit those in prison (as well as ing these buckles for many years: for wardens, police officers, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc.). Her family is still not and others. One of his buckles honors the Texas Rangers, not the comfortable with her forays into prison, but she seems very com- baseball team but the “iconic law enforcement organization that fortable. A financial officer in a company, she’s a natural for the represents Texas heritage at its finest.” (I’m quoting from his Business Expo. plan.) The Ranger buckle is on display in the Texas Ranger

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Museum. After his presentation, Seawright tells us that he has ask. So Masraff asked the first guy, “What are you in for?” been in and out of prison since he was 17, and is now 55. Till now, Murder. The man had killed a drug dealer. That was one thing— he says, he has not been able to “shake the cycle”—the cycle of but Masraff asked the second guy, “What are you in for?” crime. But he is discovering that “you can teach an old dog new Murder again—but this man had killed a cop. Naturally, this tricks.” He says that IFI has shown him “more grace and mercy gave the visitor pause. Masraff had always believed that if you than I deserve.” took a man’s life, you had to forfeit your own. His views have While behind bars, and in IFI, Darrin Clifton learned about changed, though, in the course of his involvement with IFI. videography. (Incidentally, he was named after the character in Johnson has volunteered at Carol Vance for twelve years, and Bewitched, the old sitcom.) He finds it amazing that he was able has had six “walkouts”—six opportunities to walk out of prison to “explore my passion,” namely videography, while in prison. with an inmate on Release Day. These are exciting occasions, The offense that landed him there was aggravated assault with a says Johnson: “to see them in their street clothes for the first deadly weapon, plus kidnapping. He says of IFI, “They prayed time, to treat them to a meal of their choosing.” Condemned for me when I couldn’t pray for myself.” These days, he is get- prisoners get to choose a last meal, he points out; released pris- ting some videography gigs. Tommie Dorsett tells me that an IFI oners should be able to choose a first meal, on the outside. grad recently got married. Another IFI grad was the best man. Personally, I am not dewy-eyed about prisoners and prison Clifton shot the wedding. Dorsett attended. Clifton’s admiration reform. I feel sure I have more sympathy for prisoners than do of Dorsett is boundless, and this admiration is shared by everyone else, as far as I can tell. When I relate this to Dorsett, he will have none of it: “It’s not me, it’s God.” The day after my visit to the prison, I see Dorsett at an event in Houston. I ask him about eruptions of violence. How many times has he himself been attacked (and he has been at the prison since it opened, 16 years ago)? Not once, is the answer. There have been no attacks at all, on anyone. When I express surprise at this, Dorsett says it’s the atmosphere: There is no need for a “game face,” an attitude, machismo. This makes perfect sense: Just as there is pressure to conform to the bad, there is pressure to conform to the good. Later, I ask Business Plan Expo 2013 Dorsett about a dog not barking: I have heard not one word about race, in connection with the Carol most people; but, like most people, I have yet more sympathy for Vance Unit or IFI. This is very unusual, not just for prison but for their victims. I know full well that cons are good at conning— this country. Is race an issue at Carol Vance? Is there tension? the cleverest of them could persuade the warden to drive the get- Almost none, says Dorsett: “We make a big push for unity, and away car. I have long harbored skepticism about prison reform. we support each other.” Years ago, I heard a weary criminologist say that the only thing that cured a criminal was the passage of time—old age. But the wild card of religion is a wild and fascinating card indeed. IFI oT everyone is able to embrace a prisoner. one who can, prisoners can cite such criminals as Moses (who killed a man, literally, is George W. Bush. He attended the prison’s though the man was a slave-whipper), David (who committed N opening ceremony 16 years ago. The men started to sing assorted crimes), and Paul (ditto). There is no question that “Amazing Grace,” and he joined in. He put his arm around one some, or many, IFI prisoners are transformed. of them. As Dorsett tells me, someone muttered, “That guy will To borrow language from the first Bush, the InnerChange never get elected president. They’ll call him soft on crime. The Freedom Initiative at the Carol S. Vance Unit is a “point of light.” headlines will read ‘Bush Hugs a Thug.’ He just put his arm To borrow language from the second Bush, it is a prize example around a murderer.” That murderer was George Mason, whom of “compassionate conservatism”—a term much derided, espe- Bush later invited to the White House, three times. Mason would cially by conservatives, but one with obvious substance. People move in to hug the president; the Secret Service’s eyes would get have come up with various eu phemisms for prisons. We call them wide. rehabilitation centers, but no one is ever rehabilitated. We call The first thing Tony Masraff ever did at Carol Vance was them correctional facilities, but no one is ever corrected. We call attend a Christmas party. The men, surrounded by their families, them penitentiaries, but no one is ever penitent. IFI is something seemed so normal: friendly, articulate, poised. What could they rare and good under the sun. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind investing have done? Brent Johnson assured him he could go ahead and in some of those proposed businesses myself.

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frowned upon to smoke cigarettes in a cigar shop. Pipes may be welcome (I for one think they have the best aroma), but I don’t think I have ever seen one smoked in a cigar shop, even though nearly all good tobacconists sell pipes and their associated sundries. In football (a subject of near-constant discussion at the cigar shop) there’s a saying, “Watch the ball, not the man.” With cigars, something similar is at work. The camaraderie follows the leaf. On the road, I will often be seen outside my hotel preparing for a speech or writ- ing a column with cigar in hand. In - variably another cigar smoker will catch the scent and, at a minimum, nod his appreciation. Often he will strike up a conversation about what I’m smoking or where there might be a good cigar shop in the area. One thing he will never do is ask for a cigar. Cigars are things of real value, emotionally and financially, and when they are given away, it’s as a Democracy in the gift. Cigarettes are filthy commodities shared among a lesser genus of addicts. Tobacconist’s There’s a reason it’s called “bumming a cigarette.” A varied crowd united by a small pleasure Indeed, the similarities between ci gars and cigarettes are more limited than you might think. for starters, you don’t inhale BY JONAH GOLDBERG the smoke from cigars, at least not inten- tionally, which is one reason why the “If I cannot smoke cigars in heaven, wouldn’t say it “looks like America.” A risks of lung cancer for cigar smokers are I shall not go!” large proportion of the African-American tiny when compared with those for ciga- —attributed to Mark Twain regulars are D.C. cops. In terms of pro- rette smokers. Sadly, this fact often causes fessions, the crowd leans a bit too heavily cigarette smokers to take up cigars, only f you have read my articles for this toward lawyers (as does the nation’s to discover that they can’t kick the habit magazine, or if you perused my last capital). But there’s no shortage of con- of inhaling, a practice that horrifies cigar book, you may have detected the tractors, manual laborers, college stu- aficionados and doctors alike. I vague scent of tobacco wafting up dents, and retirees. So, what defines a good cigar? frank ly, from it. That is because I can often be Politically, there are all types. As far as I am the wrong man to ask. The best found at my office away from the office: I can tell, the most ideologically conserv- short answer to that question is, “What - the cigar shop (specifically, Sig nature ative regular (me included) is a federal ev er you enjoy.” As with anything of Cigars in Washington, D.C., the capital’s employee. The gender mix is thoroughly beauty, much depends on the tastes of best tobacconist). When not there, I can lopsided, of course. Women do occasion- the beholder. But everyone agrees on a often be found on the twelfth-floor bal- ally come into the shop, but when they few hallmarks of an excellent cigar, just cony of the American Enterprise Institute, do, all eyes go up as if a unicorn had as everyone agrees on what makes a bad also with stogie in hand. A friend and for- sauntered into a library. Den nis Prager, one (commonly referred to in the trade mer colleague and I gave this balco ny a another gentleman of the leaf, has written as a “sh*t stick”). nickname, “The Remnant,” in homage to that cigar shops may be the last place in A good cigar must be well constructed Albert Jay Nock’s notion of an irreducible America where men can congregate and and consistent. A well-constructed cigar sliver of right-thinking humanity separate talk as men. It’s not discrimination, mind is one that burns properly and draws well. and apart from the “Neolithic” masses. you, it’s just that cigar smoke tends to If it is not rolled properly, a cigar will Nock’s was a thoroughly elitist con- have the same effect on the fairer sex that burn unevenly and it will be hard to draw ception, which is ironic, since smoking it has on mos qui toes. smoke through. I’ve had a few cigars that cigars may be the most democratic thing What unites us all is a fondness for—or were so poorly rolled I nearly gave I do. At the cigar shop, the clientele is craving for—cigars, not tobacco per se myself a hernia trying to pull flavor out of

mixed in nearly every way, though you mind you, but cigars. It is generally them. Consistency is also important: As ROMAN GENN

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with a fine single-malt Scotch (there’s no G. K. Chesterton, a devout cigar such thing as a fine blended Scotch, if smoker in every sense, was a great hater you ask me), each pour must meet your of the impulse to politicize that which The Neutral expectations. should remain outside politics. In the What makes cigars enjoyable? Speak- late 1920s, Chesterton rejected the idea Spirit ing only for myself, I think it is both the that you could discern anything of con- yin and the yang. There are few more sequence about a man’s morality from With or without lard relaxing things in life than reserving an the fact that he smoked: hour or so to enjoy a fine cigar. But unlike To have a horror of tobacco is not to have BY JAMES LILEKS alcohol—against which I have no brief, an abstract standard of right; but exactly in moderation of course—nicotine is a the opposite. It is to have no standard of stimulant. It heightens my concentration right whatever; and to take certain local OMeWHeRe in St. Petersburg; and allows me to focus on whatever I am likes and dislikes as a substitute. . . . don’t ask. Dark, stone walls, reading, saying, or writing. It is the com- Nobody who has an abstract standard of thick wooden tables. The wait- bination of these two effects—steadying right and wrong can possibly think it S ress puts down a plate of coarse the nerves and electrifying them at the wrong to smoke a cigar. . . . [American black bread, a slab of lard, and three same time—that makes a cigar so agree- culture] has a vague sentimental notion shots. Points and names: Berry. Pickle. able. that certain habits were not suitable to Horseradish. But there is a third variable at work, the old log cabin or the old home-town. I know I’m supposed to slam them. one I alluded to already. Cigars arouse It has a vague utilitarian notion that cer- When in Rome, develop an ulcerated tain habits are not directly useful in the stomach lining like the Romans, and passions in people. Those who hate them new amalgamated stores or the new tend to stay away from them. So when financial gambling-hell. If his aged mo - all that. Toss it back, gasp, have the you smoke one, you are either left alone ther or his economic master dislikes to bread, plot revolution, repeat, quote to your own enjoyment or surrounded by see a young man hanging about with a Pushkin, weep. But I sipped. Pickle. kindred spirits who share your passion. I pipe in his mouth, the action becomes a Delicious. cannot stand it when people smoke cigars sin; or the nearest that such a moral phi- Purists scoff: Flavored vodkas are for in mixed company just to prove they can, losophy can come to the idea of a sin. A the weak who cannot take the truth of or in some other way pretend they are man does not chop wood for the log-hut the thing without dressing it up in the sticking it to the Man. One does not have by smoking; and a man does not make sugared raiments of fruit. Really? The to subscribe to the cultivated hysteria dividends for the Big Boss by smoking; great vodka king of Russia, Pyotr Smir - and therefore smoking has a smell as of about secondhand smoke to understand nov, made his fortune by selling vodkas something sinful. that smoking in front of people who do that had two innovative attributes: not wish to be around smoke is rude. Life A few years ago, the share of Amer i - high-quality flavor, and purity. Once he is too short, and cigars are too expensive, cans who buy bottled water eclipsed the had perfected a product that did not to smoke them for any reason other than share who buy beer. It was a watershed make the head clang like St. Basil’s on enjoyment. moment. Beer is by nature a social lubri- Christmas, and did not make the aver- I am a conservative in large part be - cant. Bottled water is something you age drinker sip and think “Horse nos- cause I believe that politics should imbibe all on your own. In today’s health- tril, with top notes of turpentine and old intrude on life as little as possible. Con - obsessed culture, where progressives see beets,” Smirnov sent around agents to ser va tives surely believe that there are themselves as masters of a sin-eating bars in distant towns to demand Smir - times when the government should Leviathan determined to tell you how to nov vodka, and nothing else. What, you meddle in the daily affairs of the people, live “for your own good,” cigar smok- don’t have it? I’ll take my business but they normally reserve those times ing—smoking of any kind, really, save for elsewhere. for large questions of right and wrong, the incense of can na bis—is seen as sacri- This raised eyebrows: The man turns good and evil. Most conservatives, for legious, like using a church as a stable. down the possibility of vodka because in stance, may want to restrict abortion Cigars are like a mobile atmospheric they don’t have the right brand? What on grounds rooted in the Dec alogue, but catacomb, where dissidents from that angel’s breath kissed the still? What few want the government to stop you health-obsessed culture can hide. Peo ple magical gust must erupt from the bot- from drinking raw milk. So much of lib- of any political stripe who hate ci gars are tle? Smirnov! I too demand it! eralism is about unleashing the Joy repulsed by their odor and even their And so Pyotr died spectacularly Police on us, politicizing our prosaic appearance. Those left behind come from wealthy. Alas, the scolds demanded that wants and desires because some expert every walk of life and partisan affiliation, something be done about drunkenness, somewhere thinks he or she knows bet- but the one thing I know about them is given that 57 percent of the country was ter how to live your life than you do. The that they reject—at least in some small, usually face-first in the haystack by result is to scrub the Hob bit warrens of personal way—the urge to scrub the joys noon, so the state gradually national- our daily lives of the simple pleasures out of life. They may be wrong, even hyp- ized the vodka business in the waning and to make many of those simple plea- ocritical, but there’s something in them days of the czars. It was wrong for the sures “political” even when properly that tells me they are a Remnant I can deal speaking they are not. with, at least for an hour or so. Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com.

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parasites to profit from misery! That is bers: “In wartime when Russians were the job of the state. But since the gov- short on vodka, they would bleed off ernment’s budgets had been funded by antifreeze from trucks and tanks.” You In Search of vodka taxes—up to 40 percent of state never read this: “In Great Britain, when revenue was from the stuff, by some wartime deprivations curtailed the supply Lost Wine accounts—this meant they had to pro- of whisky, Scots resorted to drinking mote it to keep the government hale. It’s ‘motor-ichor,’ a combination of industrial Childhood among a tough situation: You have to sell enough lubricant and spoiled moss.” the vineyards vodka to afford a good army, but it’s too If you drink antifreeze because you’re hung over to fight. out of vodka, it’s because vodka has pre- BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE Miserable joyless prude that he was, pared you for antifreeze. If something Lenin tried to outlaw it. Canny godless has a distinctive taste, a bewitching demon that he was, Stalin ordered all to aroma, a rich amber hue that looks like S we all learned young from DRINK VODKA to capture more the distillation of wisdom, the natural Peter Pan, human beings have rubles for the state. In the end days of temptation of the temperate soul is to somewhere within them a the USSR, Stolichnaya was swapped sip, experience, parse the notes, sigh, A happy thought that is suffi- for Pepsi with the West, Smirnov hav- and place the glass on the table. The tra- ciently delicious to enable them to fly. ing been driven out of the country dition behind vodka—the way the real Strangely for such an Americaphile, mine decades ago. When the Wall fell the vodka drinkers do it, you’re told—is to is a memory of France. Russians couldn’t get Smirnoff—as it slam it back so fast the tongue has no I was 21 years old, lying in a hammock was now known—and once again it had time to object and the throat can do with a good book on my knee. To my a cachet. naught but hasten it down below, where right were endless rows of vineyards, the I asked a certain brilliant Russian it unfurls a sheet of flame. You slam stalks shifting slightly in the breeze; to caricaturist of our acquaintance what down the glass like a gavel, gasp, shud- my left, I could see down the old, broken, he thought of the stuff, and got a glow- der, and grin. The man across the table cobbled streets behind the house that we er and an unprintable critical opinion. pours another. It is a hard business, my had rented. And in my right hand was a I knew better than to ask him about friend, but we will get through this glass of wine. non-Russian varieties. The Swedes together. The wine had been poured from a bot- have a version they call “burn-wine.” You say: Seriozhka, this only burns tle without a label, and that bottle had Sounds about right. The French market my stomach. Have you something that been filled by a wizened but handsome a vodka today, which somehow seems also scours my nose? He grins—a wide old man whom my parents referred to like Catherine Deneuve marketing smile stained by tobacco—and gets out simply as “monsieur.” He was the local white bread and margarine. Iceland the horseradish vodka. winemaker and busybody, and he had produces Reyka, filtered through lava In the St. Petersburg bar the rest of come around to meet us—as he did to rock. It is my favorite—crisp, with a the patrons assembled for the taste meet whoever borrowed the house—and mineral finish. test wrinkled their noses at the horse- to let us know that he had a few full bar- Or do I imagine that? Surely I do. radish stuff, perhaps glad they still rels out in front of his property from The exact legal definition is “a neutral had noses to wrinkle. I tossed mine which, for a couple of euros a time, he spirit without distinctive character,” off as the customs required, felt the would be happy to pour his wine. My which makes vodka sound like a timo- walls of my sinuses liquefy, and friend and I had taken him up on this offer rous middle-aged man with thinning reached for the plate, thinking, for the with particular enthusiasm, bringing the hair and a slight paunch, indifferent to first time in my life, A little lard will empty bottles from dinner the night the issues of the day. But every vodka help with this. before to his makeshift bar and replenish- lover knows there are ineffable qualities I looked for horseradish vodka when ing them for a few of the loose coins in that set apart the finer examples from I got home, but no. The vodka aisle is our pockets. the rail-pour swill. A velvety annuncia- full of candy flavors—there’s marsh- “Now, you must go there,” he had said tion as it touches the tongue. A whisper mallow vodka, for heaven’s sake. One when we had filled the sixth and final of pepper. An ability to inhabit the has to go to the modern Stolis, with bottle. He pointed up the road in the gen- things with which you mix it, not stand their classic Soviet-era graphics, to eral direction of the boulangerie or the out like a sullen brute. Ordinary vodka find something of the flavoring arts of boucherie or the pâtisserie—it wasn’t in a fancy cocktail is just the part that yore. There are fine American vodkas, clear. “You must go and get some food to makes you cross-eyed and painless. like Tito’s, but most are silly sweet go with the wine.” This hadn’t so much Great vodka in a simple drink is the soul things in clever bottles, wolfhounds been a suggestion as an instruction—a of the sip. styled like poodles. local rite of passage, perhaps—and we Or not. This could be nonsense. Mar - Happy cocktail sauce today; the balm had obediently taken him up on it. We keting! Myth! No one says: “I’m in the of Honest Suffering then. At its heart, a bought saucisson sec and pâté and a few mood for a quality cocktail. Let me find neutral spirit. At first, anyway. Friend of those long, pale loaves of bread that something based on a cheap intoxicant or foe after a while. It depends on how only the French appear to be able to make favored by serfs.” No one ever remem- things go, but doesn’t it always? so soft. Someone once told me that the

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bread is that way because of the butter adored to watch and found inexplicable. us all for approval and say some things I they use. But I am not convinced, and I For him, wine-tasting was an almost reli- didn’t understand to my mother. Being occasionally wonder if somewhere there gious experience, and the labels on the somewhere between my not caring and is a secret recipe upon which Western various bottles were his holy texts. He his caring an awful lot, she would say modernity has been unable to intrude. liked the wines that “tasted of some- that it was very nice. France, and its astonishing wine cul- where,” and he was keen to point out that France is perpetually sybaritic, and it ture, has been a part of my life for as long the different shapes of the bottles were an can certainly be irritating to spend time in as I can remember. As a child, I spent indicator of origin. So too the line “Mis a place in which shopkeepers simply most of my summers in ramshackle en bouteille au château” or “. . . au close up for the day if they have hit their houses along the vineyards of the domaine” or “. . . à la propriété,” each of targets and in which you are unable to get Dordogne River—houses that were which translates roughly to “Bottled at hold of anything necessary during the owned by lovely, doddering old widow- the château.” This he compared favor- afternoon. Yet it is this attitude that ers in berets with whom we tried to con- ably with mass-produced wines—those affords it a love affair with food and with verse as best we could, and to whom we that had been “mis en bouteille dans la wine that no other culture can match. The were forced routinely to apologize with a région de production” or, worse, that French think nothing of sitting for three, thousand repeated cries of “Je suis merely read “Mis en bouteille par . . .” four, five hours and eating lunch. It is désolé” when we had done something These, he would proclaim, “hadn’t been almost impossible to get a bad meal in silly like draw a face on the side of the loved.” France. barn in shaving cream or throw a ball Truth be told, as a child it was all the Some things you understand only against a window pane with a little bit too same to me. Before I was 13 I would when you grow up. Gastronomically at much force. have a little wine with dinner, perhaps. least, for me these included mushrooms, Almost every year, we would pack my And a little more than I was supposed to black olives, and—eventually—wine small family, a couple of friends, and a if I could get away with it. But I cer- that came from somewhere. And the month’s worth of clothes into my mother’s tainly didn’t care what it was or whence zeal of the convert is fierce. As a child, I car, and drive from our house in England it came. needed entertaining when on holiday, to take the ferry—or, later, the Euro - Tasting, my father would lift the glass but in my late teens I began to grasp that tunnel—over to Calais or Cherbourg. And to his nose and comment first on the imperceptible rhythm that makes cul- then we would head for wine country. color. Then he would smell it. And, tures unique, to embrace one at odds During the days, we would visit vine- finally, having swirled it around, he with my own, and—for a few weeks a yards and châteaux, and my father would would take a sip. After putting the wine year, at least—to live life at the pace of behave in a manner that I simultaneously down and smiling, he would look over at the vineyard. LAUDY PHOTOGRAPHY - PHILIPPE SAINTE / GETTY IMAGES

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single one of the jingles by heart, memorized off the radio, my Hype and favorite electronic medium. “what’ll you have? pabst Blue Hops Ribbon!” “schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee fa mous.” The Two generations print-media ads were equally of beer fads enticing. I relished the annual Miss Rhein gold contest, where you could mail in your top BY CHARLOTTE ALLEN choice among five ale-haired, apple-cheeked beauties (on the was a tiny child a decade and a radio, it was “My beer is Rhein - half below legal drinking age gold, the dry beer”—whatever a when I discovered the most dry beer was). Universal house- I important thing about beer: It is hold television brought us the mostly about fads and hype, not what Hamm’s cartoons, with the the stuff actually tastes like. Beer is Hamm’s-beer bear dancing to a the liquid equivalent of restaurant beef, now politically incorrect tom- as in the sentence “we’re not selling tom beat, “From the land of sky- the steak; we’re selling the sizzle.” blue waters . . . Hamm’s, the with beer, it’s “we’re not selling the beer refreshing.” brew; we’re selling the head.” Like in all of those beers were, as I those stella artois commercials, where later found out when I tried them, the Old world but youthful-looking terrible. This was strange, be - barkeep in his Old world but new- cause all of them were manufac- looking wood-paneled saloon verry tured by German ameri cans who carefully pours just the exact, precise hailed from a country whose fine quantity of stella into the special red- brewing traditions dated back to starred stella glass and then verry the Middle ages. Yet when those carefully levels off the head to the brewers got to america—maybe exact, precise rim. it was that vast, diluting ocean— I discovered beer as a near-toddler not everything they made tasted because I was exposed to it at home. I mostly like sky-blue waters. The wasn’t. My parents, New Yorkers trans- very worst was Brew 102, man- planted to southern California, were ufactured by a brewmeister quintessential aspiring sophistos 1950s- family called Maier, whose plant on the bars, where the aim was to pass fraud- style. They maintained a capacious Los angeles River was about ten miles ulently for age 21 and thus be marked liquor cabinet stuffed to the swinging from my childhood home. The idea was as one of the knowing, not to be obliged door with every sort of hard stuff and that the Maiers had tried 101 times to actually to consume that frosty mug of attendant mixer you could imagine, craft the perfect beer and then hit pay tasteless “draft” brought to your table especially gin, because every sophisto dirt. Their radio jingle touted by the bamboozled waiter. household of the 1950s featured a brace “wonderful, wonderful Brew 102.” Brew That was Beer Hype 1.0. we now of martinis hitting the coffee table 102 died ignominious and unlamented live in the age of Beer Hype 2.0. Beer between the time Dad got home for din- in 1972. Hype 2.0 is Beer Hype 1.0 turned ner (5:30 p.M.—this was the lost era of My next beer-hype experience was upside down. whereas the beer of Beer the 20-minute commute) and dinner college. Beer then signified a gigantic Hype 1.0 was mass-produced to appeal itself, served in good time (6 p.M.) for the keg of “suds” positioned next to the hi- to the tastes of the working class (and kids to get their homework done and fi turntable on the ground floor of a remains to that class’s taste in the form themselves into bed, followed by Mom fraternity house or, sometimes, a hip of Bud, Miller, and their unspeakable and Dad making more Baby Boom group house off campus. The point “lite” versions), the beer of Beer Hype LEW ROBERTSON / babies. was, in terms of social status, not to 2.0 is “microbrewed” in tiny factories My upper-middle-class parents did not drink the pallid, urine-like liquid to appeal to the stuff white people S CHOICE ’ stock beer in their fridge—please! Beer sloshing into paper cups or, more com- Like crowd. while the beer of Beer was for Okies and other riffraff. But beer monly as the evening wore on, onto the Hype 1.0 was laughably under-flavored, commercials! I loved them. I knew every floor in slatternly streams. It was to be the beer of Beer Hype 2.0 days is— PHOTOGRAPHER / invited to the frat party in the first frighteningly over-flavored. The idea Charlotte Allen is the author of The Human place. The same ethos of pure beer seems to be that powerful “notes” of

GETTY IMAGES Christ. symbolism prevailed at off-campus some eccentric beer ingredient—black

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malt or hops overload or whatever— at the White House Easter Egg Roll. a now-defunct bratwurst palace. On will serve to distinguish the discerning News flash for all you who aspire to be Saturday night after closing, everyone palates of the SWPL set from the trailer- the Miles “No Effing Merlot” of micro- on the staff got to drink a bottle on the trash tastes of Those Other White brews: IPAs were the Brew 102 of their house from the hundreds of different People from whom SWPLs are ob- time and place of invention, Victorian beers from every nation on the planet sessed with setting themselves apart. England, where resourceful brewers in that the restaurant sold. I used the Thus was born—in 1980 or so—the era Old Blighty figured out that their beer opportunity to sample a range of brews of beer snobbery. would survive the long sea voyage to and discovered that beer could be deli- Like all forms of snobbery, beer the yobbos serving as troops and cious. They were beers that genuinely snobbery is highly susceptible to anoth- bureaucrats in the Jewel of the Crown preserved their Old World brewing er syndrome: The Emperor Has No as long as they pumped up the hops traditions or carried them unaltered to Clothes. The first microbrew fad was ratio past all standards that had previ- newer worlds. They tasted rich and for stout. That fad passed quickly, ously prevailed. The problem: The robust but also rounded and refined. because it was hard to pass off as a aftertaste of a typical microbrewed IPA, That’s why, whenever I order beer in a gourmet treat the acrid undertaste, the simultaneously bitter and sour, lingers bar, I tend to skip the microbrews and raw-sewage color resulting from the in your mouth until you get around to stick to familiar names that offer per- black-malt infusions, and the creepily brushing your teeth the next morning. fectly crafted products: good old Hein - viscous texture of the “craft” stouts, Not all microbrews are lousy, but eken or Beck’s or, yes, Stella. I’ve porters, and Guinness clones that enough of them merely taste . . . strong added some American brews that have surged out of the fermenters of the enough to give the whole genre a bad grown on their merits from micro- to weensy new breweries. After all, the name. mass-production levels: Sam Adams, original Guinness is loathsome enough. You might think that my problem is Sierra Nevada. Beer is about tradition, The rage now is for India pale ales fea- that I detest beer, but I don’t. One sum - and those who tamper with tradition do turing more hops than the Easter Bunny mer long ago I worked as a waitress at so at their peril.

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Special Section on Cigars & Drink

As we left he recalled, fondly, spend- diversion after lunch (tennis, a walk ing the night as an undergraduate in the along the coastal rocks; Bill would Imbibing Cambridge jail. He and his pals had often work for a few hours), cocktails, been arrested for disorderly behavior dinner, followed by a movie on the With Bill after a friend’s bachelor party. The home screen and, for hardy males, a charges, I think he said, were dropped nocturnal swim or hot tub in the base- Red and white the next day, when everyone sobered ment mancave (as WFB would not and much else too up. have called it). A slow beginner, I resolved to get the It turned out that Bill was a more eclec- hang of this drinking thing. tic drinker than that run of G&Ts sug- BY CHARLES R. KESLER At Bill’s invitation, I developed the gested. He enjoyed Scotch and vodka, habit of taking the train from Boston to too—whether in highballs or cocktails: Ill BuCkley introduced me to Stamford once or twice a semester to both the long and the short of it—as well a lot of things over the years, spend the weekend with the Buck leys. as aquavit, port, Cognac, and other forms including drink. Alco holic It’s difficult to convey what uproarious of beverage alcohol. B beverages, I mean—what the fun that was. As Tom Wolfe put it, vis- The Buckleys liked to prepare the late senator John Tower, in the hearings iting Pat and Bill was like dropping drinks themselves, sometimes offering a on his abortive nomination to be defense into one of the Thin Man movies. The house cocktail, e.g., Pat’s Bloody Mary, secretary, referred to as “beverage alco- repartee was lightning-fast, the compa- one of the world’s best. The Bullshot hol,” as distinct, one supposes, from ny high-spirited in every sense of the (essentially a Bloody Mary made with rubbing alcohol. word. The schedule might appear beef bouillon rather than tomato juice) Drink was a faithful part of our long hedonistic, but actually the days was another house specialty. I can still friendship. Ours was what Aristotle passed in a kind of noble elation: remember Bill bounding down the would have called a friendship be- breakfast whenever one called for it, a lawn one sunny afternoon, exclaiming, tween unequals: When we met I was a swim or an adventure of some sort, “Bullshot, any one?” At Pat’s memorial teenager and WFB, in 1973, was at the drinks leading to lunch, some other service at the Temple of Dendur in the meridian of his fame. After he had delivered a speech and endured a quick interview for my high-school newspaper (the ostensible reason for our meeting), I accompanied the great man to his plane. He had a gin and tonic, two actually, and I a Coke, in the Charleston, W. Va., air- port bar. So far as I remember, I had never seen anyone drink a gin and tonic, except per- haps on television. My mother’s family hardly drank, and though my father kept a few bottles of bourbon and a pint of moonshine in the china cabinet, they rarely left their cloister. With out quite realizing it, I had stumbled onto a new world. The next year I was a freshman in col- lege. Bill called one September evening to announce he was at the Boston airport and would like to drop by, and where could we meet for a drink? A drink! I had no idea where a bar was. Rummaging desperately through the yellow Pages, I found one, where we met up and he had a few more gin and tonics. I was still hit- ting the carbonated syrup.

Mr. Kesler is the editor of the Claremont Review of Books and a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism.

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Metropolitan Museum, they served wine. When later I encountered Auberon to accompany him. The cellar as I Bull shots and Bloody Marys by the Waugh’s quip that the three most fright- recall was dimly lit, with homemade pitcherful. ening words in the English language are shelves of plywood; nothing fancy. He Bill’s favorite nightcap was the “red or white,” I knew exactly what he liked to buy in quantity, 20 cases or Greyhound (vodka and grapefruit juice). meant. Bill served white and red at more at a time. This penchant, togeth- Mine, too. It puts a splendid finishing lunch and dinner, and he didn’t repeat er with a Yankee thriftiness that be - touch, both refreshing and soothing, the wines, so every day was a came more pronounced in his later on an evening. The Buck leys’ bar- tasting party. years, led to a gradual decline in the tending did not extend be yond the Before lunch on a hot day I quality of his holdings, but in the classics, and never more than three recall staring in wonderment at a 1970s they were top-notch, certainly to or four ingredients at most. They glistening bottle, emblazoned my palate. On a quiet weekend he’d would have mocked “mixology.” with crossed keys or some such sometimes ask me to select a wine, They drank for the civilized plea- heraldry, from which poured steering me towards one of the older sure of it, not as a science ex - “liquid gold,” I said at the time, bottles, which he would send home with periment. the most delicious wine I had me on the train. At the Buckleys’ table the ever tasted. Bill merely smiled. In his autobiographical Miles Gone greatest civilized pleasure It was a white Châteauneuf-du- By, WFB wrote of the pleasures of was the conversation, fol- Pape, a kind I love still and drinking from his father’s excellent lowed closely by the wine. never drink without thinking of cellar year after year, for over 20 years Grateful as I am for the that moment. after his father’s death. “It is a wonder- incomparable introduction On Friday afternoon or Satur - ful way to remember one’s benefac- to spirits he afforded me, I day morning, Bill would de - tors, isn’t it?” he asked. “To drink wine appreciate even more how scend into the cellar to select the in their memory?” he awakened my taste for weekend’s wines. He’d order me Here’s to you, Bill. YOU KNOW GROUCHO But isn’t it time you finally learned about KARL?!

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

Political Consultant Salil Faqtb: among the cushions of a hotel suite May I speak now? Is it possible to be in Geneva like some kind of dancing heard here in this steamy hammam boy, while syphilitic West ern diplo- where immoral acts are committed mats whisper instructions and com- in the shadowy corners? Can I mands, is not a win! please? Okay. Al-Irshad, the premise Ba’ath Party Strategist Ali Transcript from the Al of your question is incorrect. As Ba’Nasri: I think that’s a very sim- Jazeera political talk show long as the Western powers refuse to plistic and highly irrational view. accept the inevitability of a world- Political Consultant Salil Faqtb: The Al-Irshad Group wide Islamic kingdom governed You think that’s an insult, ladyboy? I under sharia law, every deal we regard that as the highest compli- Sunday, December 1, 2013 make with them will be as if dress- ment. Now, die! Die! Die! ing one’s goat in silks and jewelry Host Al-Irshad: Please! Salil Host Al-Irshad: Issue One! I Ran and treating it as a beloved wife. It Faqtb, extinguish that flame immedi- into a Good Deal! Following the will be as if the goat, by its adorn- ately! negotiations between the Islamic ments, becomes a beautiful and volup- Political Consultant Salil Faqtb: Republic of Iran and a collection of tuous woman, resting seductively You will be burned alive for your degenerate Jew-controlled so-called upon the divan as her husband dis- blasphemies! world powers, what emerged was a robes and— Syndicated Columnist Qu’Turush: deal that, in every possible way, is a Host Al-Irshad: Exit question! This is the problem with the conserv- total and complete humiliation for Political Consultant Salil Faqtb: ative wing. It’s all-or-nothing. There’s the prancing homosexuals of the Do not interrupt me, dog! I had a middle ground here. Yes, the deal West. Question: Is this the beginning point! I was getting somewhere. does delay some aspects of the of the end of world hegemony for Host Al-Irshad: I know. That’s Iranian nuclear program. But it still the diseased whore of the West, the what worried me. Exit question! Is leaves room for Iran to build a United States? I ask you, Syndicated the internal hand of Iranian president nuclear weapon and use it on Israel. Columnist Qu’Turush. Rouhani stronger or weaker because That’s why this is a win for the mod- Syndicated Columnist Qu’Turush: of this agreement? erates, Al-Irshad. Seriously, Al-Irshad? The West is, Ba’ath Party Strategist Ali Ba’ath Party Strategist Ali what? A whore and a homosexual and Ba’Nasri: Considerably stronger. Ba’Nasri: Qu’Turush is correct. Salil controlled by Jews? Can we please Look, all along President Rouhani Faqtb and his radical friends may move into the 21st century? has said that the Iranian nuclear hate to admit it, but the moderate Political Consultant Salil Faqtb: program will go forward. And this middle-of-the-road nature of this deal Perhaps you would like to move into deal allows him to hit pause on is the right one. the blade of my dagger! Die, dog! some aspects of it, in exchange for Political Consultant Salil Faqtb: Syndicated Columnist Qu’Turush: a lifting of key sanctions. I don’t I cannot remain in the presence of Can I finish? Can you please put your see how this is anything but a win these devils! I will cover myself squiggly knife away? As I was say- for Rouhani. with gasoline and light myself with ing, Al-Irshad, what we see here is Host Al-Irshad: Qu’Turush? Win? a purifying flame! nothing less than a total realignment Loss? Host Al-Irshad: Exit question! of the powers in the region, and an Syndicated Columnist Qu’Turush: What’s with John Kerry’s face? Is it acceptance in the West of Iran’s right I’d say it was a win. But a small one. Botox or what? to develop—and, probably, use— The key thing here is that the two Ba’ath Party Strategist Ali nuclear weapons. It’s a great day for sides sat down together and met as Ba’Nasri: No idea. It’s weird, isn’t the region. equals. I think that’s the major take- it? Ba’ath Party Strategist Ali away. Syndicated Columnist Qu’Turush: Ba’Nasri: If I could jump in here. It’s Political Consultant Salil Faqtb: You’d think he’d have enough money a great day for most of the region. This is nonsense. My mind explodes to get good work done. Hate to be Saudi right now. with contempt listening to this. Political Consultant Salil Faqtb: Syndicated Columnist Qu’Turush: There will be no peace, no “take- It’s creepy. But, I mean, it’s work, Correct. Or the Emirates. Or, you away,” to use your homosexual Jew right? It’s not like it ever looks right know, anyone but Iran. term, until the Western so-called on anyone. Ba’ath Party Strategist Ali powers are brought under the lash of Host Al-Irshad: You are all cor- Ba’Nasri: Israel is not looking great. Islamic justice. Reclining seductively rect! Bye-bye!

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Puttin’ in the Ritz

HEN I made my daughter’s lunch for White Bread Privilege, if you like. “What about Somali school, I occasionally included the Sac ri - or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” fi cial Carrots, or some variant. You put in Gutierrez was quoted as saying by the local paper. W a veggie to do your part as a good parent If a child offers a PB&J Uncrustable to a kid whose who tried, knowing the bag will come back with two culture is more pita-centric, this would have to be warm carrots gnawed like a beaver who tests his teeth on marked down in the child’s permanent record, which fol- a steel light pole and quickly gives up. lows him for the rest of his life, even to his oral finals in Sometimes I’d toss in an Uncrustable: a miracle wad college. Well, you’ve given a splendid defense of the idea of prefab goo that went from frozen to pliable by lunch - that Shakespeare was married to the Earl of Oxford, but time. The spongy white exterior was “bread,” although it it says here that you offered a peer a sandwich whose tasted like mashed-up hydrated Communion wafers; the cultural assumptions marginalized the child’s identity. peanut butter provided “protein”; and the jelly provided We’re very sorry. “fruit,” in the sense that an electron microscope could There was a time when we’d say, “But of course that’s detect two or three atoms of actual grape. The reason that ri dic u lous.” But of course it’s not. In England, where no one called it the Loaf o’ Kiddie Crack is that crack has sensitive school officials probably ban the films of Kevin more vitamins. I used them only in emergencies, and felt Bacon because the posters might be offensive to 16 as if I’d failed to keep my daughter’s corn-derived su - perpetually outraged storefront imams, a teacher decid ed crose consumption below an acre a year. to take kids to “a religious workshop about Islam,” as the Turns out I was father of the year. From the Canadian Telegraph put it. Don’t want your kid to go? Here comes Broadcasting Company website: “A Manitoba mom is the stigma: “Headteacher Lynn Small wrote to parents steamed after she packed lunches for her children in day- and said if kids did not attend a ‘racial discrimination care and was slapped with a $10 fine for not including note’ would be made on the pupil’s records and would grains in the meal. Kristen Bartkiw said the Rossburn remain there for their school careers. On top of that, they area daycare supplemented her children’s meals with were also ordered to pay £5 towards the cost of the trip.” Ritz crackers.” That should cover the Ritz snack for others. Ritz? How many kids slump over at 2 P.M., eyes glazed, Our grade school took a trip to the local sugar-beet- pencil sliding out of their boneless hand, because they processing plant, perhaps to demystify the source of the didn’t have a Ritz for lunch? Will Child Protective nauseating fog that settled over town when the factory Services put the child in a house where everyone puts on was going full blast. All I remember is one kid heaving a feedbag at lunchtime and masticates a mouthload of up the Wheaties on the factory floor, and everyone else salt-dusted processed grain? being ushered out before 30 kids involuntarily relin- It’s the fine that really makes it special, though. It’s quished their breakfasts. So it’s unlikely any kid who necessary to give the dietary requirements some teeth; if goes to see tapestries and old Korans spotlit under glass you don’t penalize parents, they might choose their will come home and ask the folks to swap out the trip to lunches based on what they want their kids to eat. A stick Euro Disney for a hajj to Mecca. But shouldn’t a parent of celery and some lug nuts. Three sheets of paper, each have a right to decide? with “pie” written in a different language. One single Hahaha! Yes, I know. Well, besides the high-handed Ritz, which is downright provocative: Obviously they insistence that the parents not curse their child with her ed - know about the Ritz Rule, yet this is an insubstantial itary Thoughtcrime, there’s another idiocy embedded in portion. How do we prorate the fine? the teacher’s decision: a belief system is not a race. But Let’s just cut to the chase: Parents have no right to obviously the cretins in England—you know, the ones pack their kids’ lunches, because they might contribute clinging bitterly to their lack of guns and absence of reli- to the Obesity Epidemic, which leads to fat kids, which gion—think it’s a race, so the school must visit the sins leads to poor self-image because everyone should be of the father on the tots. thin like the people in magazines, which contribute to In the modern world a parent has no more right poor self-image because people compare themselves to object to a field trip than he has the right to send a with the pictures, which—hold on, something’s missing. lunch that fails the state’s mandatory guidelines for Well, never mind. Broccoli rocks! Smiling kids in a reconstituted-grain squares. It’s almost as if cultures stock photo in a brochure prove it. with state-run medicine have a proprietary attitude The Uncrustable PB&J could be racist, of course. towards children. As if the doctor who hands the parents Verenice Gutierrez, Portland, Ore., principal, says men- the kid after it’s been delivered is doing them a favor. We tioning PB&J could constitute White Privilege. Or can take it from here, you know. No? Well, fine. We’ll get them at college. Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com.

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in a world with no “Tao”—the concept But even Lewis’s nonfiction writing Lewis uses to indicate an objective way does not disappoint on the subject of The Tao of that things, including human things, God. Lewis was no professional theolo- ought to be. gian, as he reminds his readers often, Enchantment Lewis shows us, in Abolition, and in and while it is not quite accurate to say the novel That Hideous Strength, how a he was an amateur philosopher (his world with no Tao is one in which there first academic position was in philoso- CHRISTOPHER TOLLEFSEN is only a struggle for power, for might in phy), he was not quite a professional the absence of right. In the end, those either. Lewis was reminded of this to IFTy years after his death, C. S. with the power to determine what ends notable effect in his famous exchange Lewis is still with us. Almost will be pursued, and what means uti- with Elizabeth Anscombe. yet both his every serious Christian student lized, will in fact be both a minority and theological and his philosophical en - F I have had at my university, for the effective enslavers of the rest of the deavors have had a significant influence example, has had some familiarity with human race, treating them as no more across the years, seemingly out of pro- Lewis, even beyond the Narnia series. than material over which to exert their portion to their oft-perceived technical Many of those students would say that domination. This is a narrative Lewis deficiencies. Lewis has been instrumental to the presented on a grand scale in his Space Consider Lewis’s famous trilemma: development of their faith, and a fair Trilogy, of which That Hideous Strength Jesus, because he announces himself as number would also attribute any interest is the concluding volume. Today’s in divine, must either be such, or be mad, in philosophy to Lewis’s influence as vitro creation, manipulation, and de - or be wicked. Because he is neither mad well. struction of human beings in their earli- nor wicked, he must therefore be divine. Will the same be true in another 50 est stages shows the lessons of this This argument has been criticized for its years? I suspect so: Lewis’s achieve- narrative played out in miniature, though failure to recognize other options, and ments as a defender of faith, a popular to no less horrific effect. for its lack of historical awareness. yet philosopher, and a novelist were timely, For those seeking relief from the dis- the argument still finds its way not just to be sure—but the ills that he diag- enchanted world, Lewis’s Narnia de - into blog discussions, but into journal nosed, and for which he hoped to provide lights, and will continue to delight (and articles in the philosophy of religion, an antidote, have become, if any thing, the dead world of Charn from that perhaps because something about it is even more entrenched in the years since. series’s The Magician’s Nephew will right. Lewis is on to something in sug- For those seeking a better way forward, continue to haunt). Lewis’s aesthetic gesting that Jesus could not simply have then, his influence is sure to continue. achievement in both the Narnia series been a “great moral teacher.” What are the characteristic evils that and the Space Trilogy is judged by some Similarly, Lewis’s famous argument Lewis recognized? At the root was an to be inferior to that of Tolkien’s fic- in Miracles that naturalism is self- intellectual image of humanity, and the tions; but Lewis’s fiction nevertheless refuting was arguably question-begging, cosmos, as entirely disenchanted, as no has a charm and earthiness that, like the assuming the truth for which it argued. more than material stuff. That picture best of his nonfiction, makes recogni- yet variations of the argument are still was complemented by the view that tion of the enchantment of human life with us, as presented by figures as the mastery of nature by technological attractive. Lewis’s most human charac- estimable as Alvin Plantinga. Again, means is the only real imperative for ters (even the animal ones) eat, drink, Lewis may not have had the final form enlightened humankind. There are, among dance, joke, and love; the evil characters of the argument worked out, but he Lewis’s opponents, no principled limits of the Space Trilogy consume primarily points us in an important direction in to the use of that technology; to think one another, and dance and joke not at questioning whether the naturalist really otherwise is to fall prey to merely senti- all. can assert his view, with all that such an mental objections. The worldview against which Lewis assertion entails, in a way that does not Of course, as Lewis argued in The set himself was one in which the undercut the intelligibility of the asser- Abolition of Man, in the nakedly materi- enchantments, not just of nature and tion. alistic world, talk of an “imperative” is humanity, but also of divinity, were Or, to give a final example: Though ultimately unintelligible. Imperatives stripped away; there can be no room hardly unique to Lewis, his argument in direct us to ends, and the ends for which for God in a world without the Tao. Mere Christianity that there is a route technology may be used, even including Lewis’s fiction was intended to pro- from moral truth to a being who makes the betterment or saving of the human vide a counter-image to this world- that truth possible is one of the better, race, are ultimately without justification without-God. The effectiveness of the and certainly one of the most accessible, Narnia series is a reason both for its statements of this idea. And again, one Mr. Tollefsen is a professor of philosophy at the massive success and for some of the reasonably wonders with Lewis how a University of South Carolina and the author of the otherwise inexplicable hostility it occa- thoroughly disenchanted universe could forthcoming book Lying and Christian Ethics. sionally engenders. possibly be such as to give sense to our

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moral knowledge. When the naturalist- This last desire is perhaps also at the atheist convicts the theist of unreason- heart of Susan Pevensie’s abandonment able belief, he surely adverts to a standard of Narnia, which remains one of the that is unavailable in the world of (at most controversial aspects of the Narnia best) merely efficient causation. series. Lewis’s detractors, and some- Lewis’s theological musings are often times his friends, unfairly think of presented quickly, with less context and Susan’s absence from Narnia in The argument than one would like. Yet they Last Battle as definitive proof that equally often suggest real depths for fur- Lewis was both sexist and anti-sex. Yet ther inquiry. Lewis clearly believed in a if her vice was that of wanting to be non-empty hell; yet the basic idea of The part of the “in” crowd, then she, like Great Divorce is that we keep ourselves Studdock, is plausibly a stand-in for the there through our own rejection of God. young Lewis himself, at least as depicted Similar claims are to be found more in his memoir Surprised by Joy. Not recently in the thought of Pope John hell, as Philip Pullman asserts, but “re- Paul II and the language used by the conversion” most likely awaits Susan. 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church I will mention briefly two further fea- to describe hell as a “state of definitive tures of Lewis’s moral writings that make self-exclusion from communion with him still a force to be reckoned with. God.” The first is that Lewis might deserve Or, consider Lewis’s suggestions to be considered one of the founding that some corruption of the animals by figures of the 20th century’s virtue- Satan is responsible for animal suffer- ethics movement. Drawing on the same ing, that animals are available to be classical background as Elizabeth perfected as animals by their relation- Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre, he ships to humans, and that, as part of their was deeply attuned to the importance of relations to humans, animals might find the virtues: Without them, the two other a place in the heavenly kingdom. Taken parts of morality—fairness to others, together, perhaps in conjunction with and the pursuit of our final end—are Lewis’s arguments against vivisection, destined to failure. Lewis’s writings, they could constitute a start to a theol- both fiction and nonfiction, are espe- ogy of animal life that remains to be cially good at giving brief descriptions completed by some adventurous young or portrayals of what life with or with- scholar. out a particular virtue is like; this aspect C. S. Lewis Lewis lived, as we do too, at a time of his work will, I expect, never grow when “traditional” morality was (is) old. ism.” And, in That Hideous Strength and increasingly seen as bunk. Part of this The second feature concerns Lewis’s elsewhere, he demonstrated a remarkable was occasioned by the disenchantments understanding of sex and marriage. sense of the challenges that a marriage I have already mentioned. Part was also Lewis is old-fashioned, but not because could, and in the modern world would, an inevitable, I think, outgrowth of the he writes at a time when everyone is old- face. combination of technological achieve- fashioned. He knows, in Mere Christi - Lewis’s recent biographer, Alister ment, by which human beings have anity, that what he is saying is going out McGrath, notes the hostility Lewis suf- been allowed to escape the natural con- of vogue: He actually gives a defense of fered at Oxford for being a “popular” sequences of their worst excesses, and patriarchy. But his defense is not an writer, despite a scholarly track record democracy, with its occasional anti - apologia for male privilege, and readers that is quite admirable. No doubt Lewis pathies to excellence, authority, disci- should not fail to note the need for could have generated more scholarship pline, and suffering. mutual submission of spouses to some- without the novels, or done better phi- Lewis is, I think, at his very best thing beyond themselves. losophy (or theology) had he devoted (and, to some, most infuriating) when Lewis has a sympathetic sense of the his life more single-mindedly to these he is articulating the principles and power of the sexual drive, and a realistic disciplines. But these possibilities can- rationale of traditional morality. He is sense of the way in which sexual desire not be serious opportunities for regret: one of our great depicters of tempta- can distort our reason. He is solid on The world was, and remains, a better tions of the most ordinary sort: of the chastity, and very interesting on mar- place for the C. S. Lewis it actually impetus to feel inordinate pride in hav- riage. Lewis was, I would argue, mistaken possessed. The very multiplicity of his ing done well, or resentment at the suc- in drawing as sharp a line as he did be - talents and achievements is a reminder, cess of others; of the desire to be tween Christian and civil marriage. But 50 years later, that the world really is needed by others; and, as in the charac- he prefigures contemporary natural-law enchanted, and that we need to seek the ter of Mark Studdock in That Hideous work on marriage in his claim (in Mere ultimate source of that enchantment

LEWIS FOUNDATION Strength, of the desire to be one of Christianity) that through marital inter- with the same energy and honesty with . S .

C those “on the inside.” course spouses become “a single organ- which he did.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Mozart by Johnson JAY NORDLINGER

Mozart: A Life, by Paul Johnson (Viking, 176 pp., $25.95)

aul Johnson, the British his- have I been so happy to have given the Mozart’s father, leopold, a musician torian, has written many big, “right” answer. himself, regarded his young son as a mir- magisterial books: A History of By the way, Bruckner dedicated his acle—quite literally, a miracle. Johnson P Christianity, A History of the symphony no. 9 to “God the Beloved.” quotes him to this effect. It is hard to Jews, Art: A New History, and so on. That is a hard dedication to beat. Johnson fathom Mozart’s ability. some years ago, Modern Times, his history of the 20th dedicated his biography of Jesus in a I did a public interview of Benjamin century, has shaped the thinking of touching way: “To my mother, anne schmid, an austrian violinist. I asked if countless readers. I was pleased to learn, Johnson, who first taught me about Jesus.” he did not agree that Bach was the great- last summer, that a young friend of mine In my kitchen, there is a painting by est composer. Probably, he said—“but was required to read Modern Times Johnson, of an abstract nature. “listening Mozart may have been the most talented.” before beginning an internship at the to schumann,” it’s called. Johnson also I thought that was an interesting and just Wall Street Journal. listens to Mozart. last year, he was a way of putting it. In recent years, however, Johnson has “castaway” on Desert Island Discs, the he lived a fairly short life, Mozart did. been writing slender books, brief biog - BBC program that asks guests to name he was a month and three weeks shy of raphies, and gems they are: Johnson can music they would take with them to a his 36th birthday when he died. (With paint on canvases large and small; he desert island. The first piece that Johnson Mozart, every moment counts.) But he can compose Brucknerian symphonies named was Ave verum corpus, Mozart’s had a wonderful, full, and productive life, and graceful minuets. Those “minuets,” brief, sublime motet. (he also named Kern as Johnson says. he started composing the recent biographies, have been on & Desylva’s “look for the silver lining,” when he was about five; he kept going Churchill, Jesus, socrates, Darwin, and sung by Margaret Whiting.) until the last breath. and “those thirty now Mozart. since his death in 1791, Mozart has had years were crammed with creation.” (That Vikram seth, the anglo-Indian novelist many biographers, one of the first of is a typically felicitous Johnsonian phrase: and poet, once wrote, “Music to me is whom was Georg nikolaus nissen, who “crammed with creation.”) dearer even than speech.” I believe the married Mozart’s widow. If you want on the first page, and throughout the same may be true of Johnson. Music is extensive and scholarly writing about book, we glimpse Johnson’s breadth as a higher than speech, or at least a departure Mozart, you can go to alfred Einstein and historian and man of culture. he says that from it. There is an old saying, hard to stanley sadie, to give two examples. If Mozart’s life, short as it was, “spanned the trace: “Music begins where speech leaves you want multiple volumes on Churchill, end of the Enlightenment, the american off.” you can go to Martin Gilbert. But Johnson Revolution and the birth of the united at lunch one day, Johnson asked me, distills these men (and others) to their states of america, and the beginning of “Which do you consider the greatest of essence. Interestingly, he does not feel the French Revolution.” a few pages Bruckner’s symphonies?” (speaking of slight. To take this latest book, he packs a later, he cites George Washington and those). after some hemming and haw- lot into his pocket Mozart. napoleon, both of whom are subjects of ing, I said the ninth, the last one. It is let me caution you that, if you want to other Johnson biographies. still later, we incomplete—the composer died before find Mozart, you will not find him in get apt references to leonardo, Vermeer, he could finish it—but it is complete in Peter shaffer—the playwright who wrote and Victor hugo. a sense: It sums up all of Bruckner’s Amadeus, which was turned into a hit and here is Johnson in the course of life and work and thought. Johnson movie. That may be an enjoyable tale, but describing Mozart’s last three sym- beamed and said, “I agree.” seldom it is a fiction from beginning to end. phonies, which are diverse as well as

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS mighty: “Imagine symphonies being Mozart had “brief spasms of hot temper written, respectively, by Falstaff, Keats, and outbursts of grievances,” but these and Lincoln!” were “mere cloudlets racing across a The West’s Johnson argues that some of what sunny view of life.” people “know” about Mozart is wrong. In his final paragraph, Johnson writes, Dynamic Mozart’s life, though short, and acquainted “He had misfortunes and many disap- with grief, was not especially tragic. pointments in a life of constant hard Mozart had troubles with money, yes, but work lived at the highest possible level Tension he was far from poor and in fact lived very of creative concentration. But his warm BRIAN C. ANDERSON well. Furthermore, people make too little spirit always bubbled. He loved his of the religious element in his life: He was God, his family, his friends, and above a religious man (as well as a Mason). all, his work—which he equated with I had expected Johnson to write as a God-service.” generalist, and a brilliant generalist, but I do not say that Johnson is Mozart, or a often he comes across as a music scholar. Mozart. No one is. I do say that he under- Frankly, there is too much technical infor- stands this little Salzburger, intimately. mation about instruments for my taste. All That final paragraph appears in an epi- through his writing life, Johnson has logue, and the epilogue is followed by an shown an uncanny ability to slip into the appendix, which consists of an essay skin of his subject. When he writes about titled “Mozart in London.” It is by a son economics or warfare or music, he writes of Johnson’s, Daniel Johnson, who is the from deep understanding. editor of Standpoint, the monthly politi- The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, For a long time, David Pryce-Jones and cal and cultural journal. This essay is an and the Struggle for the Soul of Western I used to say, “Paul is a kind of genius.” At adornment as well as an appendix—sort Civilization, by Arthur Herman some point, however, we dropped the of a learned after-dinner mint. (Random House, 704 pp., $35) qualifier “kind of.” To look over his bibli- Speaking of treats, Paul Johnson records ography is to be reminded of what this this, in his biography of Mozart: After a HIS book is unfashionably am - mind can produce, and has. He can write stretch of difficult work in Paris, Mozart bitious history, with a sweep about “modern times,” sure—but also walked to the “famous ice-cream parlor in and drama worthy of Arnold about ancient Egypt. He can write about the Palais Royale, where they served the T Toynbee. It tells the story of politics, sure—but also about cathedrals. best tutti-frutti in the world, and treated Western civilization––a term Arthur He can write about Hitler and Pol Pot— himself to one.” The parlor is no longer Herman uses without irony—as an ongo- but also about Mae West. there, says Johnson. But in the same ing struggle between the philosophies of In his current book, he says, “It is an space is a restaurant that serves “excel- Athens’s giants, Plato and Aristotle. The extraordinary fact that Mozart, despite his lent ices,” and “if I live to finish this rivalry of their worldviews, manifesting enormous output and the speed at which book satisfactorily, I shall eat one there itself in different nations and across time, so much of it was composed, is never in honor of Mozart.” He has. And the ice has given the West its unequaled spiritual guilty of a serious lapse of taste.” Much was excellent, he told me. and scientific dynamism, says Herman. the same can be said of Johnson. And we There are more books in the pipeline: At The two thinkers’ influence “is reflected have not mentioned, at this juncture, his least three have been written, and await in every activity and in every institution” political importance. He is a major voice publication. I suspect Johnson will be eat- of our lives. against tyranny and for liberty. In 2006, a ing celebratory ices for years to come. The Cave and the Light opens with leader from across the ocean, George W. One more word concerning him and the trial and demise of the “first philo s - Bush, hung the Presidential Medal of music—and Brahms this time, not Mo - opher.” Condemned to death by his Freedom around his neck. zart. I interviewed Marilyn Horne, the Athenian enemies for corrupting the More than once, when reading the great mezzo-soprano, five years ago on city’s youth, Socrates took the lethal Mozart, I thought, “This could apply to the her 75th birthday. I asked her what hemlock, fulfilling his death sentence, author as well.” In fact, I thought it regu- music she was feeling especially close without fear. His final lesson, delivered larly. I will provide just a few more exam- to. Brahms, she said. “He makes me feel to his assembled followers, overcome ples. Johnson writes that Mozart “had the good”—and there she put her finger on an by the imminent loss of their teacher, great gift of being able to start as soon as important point: the warm, humane, con- claimed that everything we see around he sat down to write, as well as terrific soling quality in Brahms. He makes you us, or taste, or hear, is only a wan reflec- powers of concentration. Worry about feel good. He is on your side. This same tion of a higher, more “real,” reality; so, what he had written was unknown to him, quality exists in Johnson’s books and arti- too, are all the virtues and things we and there was never a case of endless revi- cles, even when the subject is unpleasant. sion in his entire oeuvre.” Mozart is pleasant, and after you read Mr. Anderson is the editor of City Journal and the Mozart liked the high and the low, an this biography, you might listen to the author of Democratic Capitalism and Its exalted Mass and a ribald joke. “Nobody piece that Johnson considers the most per- Discontents. He is also the editor of the recently took music more seriously,” writes John- fect Mozart work of all: the Clarinet published The Beholden State, a collection of son. “Nobody got more jokes out of it.” Concerto in A major, K. 622. essays on California.

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admire and find beautiful. After his phys- most decisive influence on our modern balance between these tendencies “lies at ical body died, Socrates believed, his understanding of politics, morals, and the core of the American ‘genius’ for spirit—he was, claims Herman, the first society,” writes Herman, while Aristotle’s high-minded purposeful action that to assert the existence of “an individual Politics “marks the birth of a democratic Jefferson noted,” Herman writes—a rational soul”—would at last gain full individualism that draws its pragmatic genius that “has dazzled, puzzled, and access to that invisible, perfect universe. principles from sometimes hard-won exasperated foreign observers ever Socrates could then contemplate the experience.” Aristotle founded his own since.” True, the Good, and the beautiful as school, the Lyceum, to further his doc- The West witnessed the birth of a new they were in themselves, not as inferior trines; it lasted until the Roman general and destructive intellectual current, copies. Why, then, should a lover of wis- Sulla conquered Athens in 86 b.c. which remains forceful today, especially dom, as he undoubtedly was, be afraid of Over hundreds of pages, vaulting on campus, with the publication of death, however unfair the charges against from early christianity to the Middle Nietzsche’s first book in 1872. Whatever him? Ages to the Renaissance to the Refor - separated Plato and Aristotle, the two Socrates’s greatest student and literary immortalizer, Plato, illustrated this idea of Herman has given us a wonderful two realms—one illusory and material, the other ideal yet intensely real—with introduction to the intellectual history of the Republic’s famous allegory of the cave. Unenlightened, the allegory goes, the West. In a saner era, it would be on men lived in grotto-like darkness, mistak- every college freshman’s reading list. ing mere shadows for reality; only philo- sophical reflection could shine a path mation to the Enlightenment to the total philosophers agreed on reason’s impor- out of the cave and toward the burning wars of the 20th century, Herman nar- tance—“both assumed that distinguishing light of rational truth. This powerful rates the influence of these rival philoso- truth from falsehood was man’s most vision, Herman argues, became “the guid- phies in Western history. We meet Stoics important mission, and that his mind was ing spirit of Western idealism and reli- and Skeptics, Euclid and Archimedes, the surest guide for doing it,” as Herman gious thought,” finding “its strength in Saint Paul and Saint Thomas Aquinas, puts it. For Nietzsche and his acolytes, by the realm of contemplation and specula- Plotinus and boethius, bacon and Ock - contrast, the will was what was crucial; tion.” but in The Cave and the Light’s ham, Luther and Erasmus, Machiavelli we created our own values, our own account, it also encouraged political and Locke, Newton and Einstein, Thomas “truths,” and imposed them on the cease- madness, as fanatics from Robespierre to Jefferson and Karl Marx, John Dewey less flux of experience. Reason has no Lenin sought to achieve, through the rule and Karl Popper, and many more impor- purchase in such an anti-Platonist, anti- of “philosopher kings”—an idea first tant figures—all seen as advancing or Aristotelian universe. Herman shows mentioned in the Republic—the perfec- reacting to Plato or Aristotle, and often where this “death of reason” leads. tion of the ideal (as they saw it) in the captured with a deft biographical minia- Herman’s pursuit of his thesis at times messy complexity of the human world. ture. Like Herman’s earlier histories, leads him to ignore or downplay signifi- countless numbers died as a result. which include the classic How the Scots cant distinctions. Machiavelli may have The Athenian Academy, which Plato Invented the Modern World, The Cave been more Aristotelian than Platonist, but founded in 387 b.c., lasted, in one form and the Light displays the author’s im - to see him simply as an updated Aristotle or another, until the sixth century A.D., pressive erudition and his clear and force- in defending civic freedom and empirical propagating the Socratic and Platonic ful style. sensibility, as Herman (following J. G. A. philosophy. Its most famous student, The dynamic tension between the Pla- Pocock) does, is to de-radicalize the though, rejected key parts of the school’s tonic and Aristotelian world views—one Florentine’s dark and cynical art. And is approach. If Plato emphasized a tran- pointing to heaven, the other pointing to Aristotle really a “bourgeois” thinker, scendent realm, Aristotle intensely en - the world; one rationalist or mystical, as Herman asserts? The author’s judg- gaged with the world around him. the other empirical—finds a particularly ment about particular thinkers is usually Whether it was political regimes or productive resolution in America, the sound, but it isn’t infallible: He describes household economies, the life cycle of “common Sense Nation,” as Herman Rousseau as a lightweight, for exam- gnats or the guts of chameleons, Ari - deems it. He turns to Alexis de Tocque - ple—Allan bloom and bertrand de stotle was constantly observing, classi- ville as a guide to the Aristotelian Jouvenel certainly didn’t think so, to say fying, and exploring. Herman rightly America: “Americans are more addicted nothing of Tolstoy—yet he devotes sev- deems him “the true father of science to practical than to theoretical science,” eral uncritical pages to Ayn Rand. and scientific method.” Many scientific the Frenchman observed. “They adhere but any book as bold as The Cave and terms used today—genus, species, hypo - closely to facts, and study facts with their the Light is bound to provoke disagree- thesis—were Aristotelian in origin. own senses.” The Pilgrims are Herman’s ments and contrary assessments of par- Rejecting Plato’s philosopher rulers, paradigmatic American Platonists, reach- ticular individuals and eras. Herman has Aristotle also explored how citizens can ing for the divine and filled with fervent given us a wonderful introduction to the flourish in a free society, taking turns rul- hopes of making their new home a shin- intellectual history of the West. In a saner ing and being ruled. Aristotle’s Nico - ing “city upon a hill” (to use the famous era, it would be on every college fresh- machean Ethics “may still be the single phrase of the Puritan John Winthrop). The man’s reading list.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS tory of “declinism.” Predictions of an The starting point of his enjoyably American tumble, he argues, frequently iconoclastic take on this latest contender Looking on owe more to the dreams, fears, or am- is a blend of math and history—“as the bitions of those who made them than to baseline goes higher, as economies The Bright any reasonable calculation of what the mature, growth slows”—but it quickly future might hold. There have always evolves into a perceptive critique of Side been those, abroad, who have taken authoritarian modernization (and partic- comfort in the thought that this over- ularly its Chinese variant) that would ANDREW STUTTAFORD mighty giant—and dangerous inspira- make Thomas Friedman very unhappy tion—might be faltering. here at home, indeed. Imagining a Chinese Sorpasso however, prophecies of doom are often any time soon is, maintains Joffe, an intended to be self-defeating, designed extrapolation too far. to change behavior—enough already What is true of the economic contest with the twerking, enough already with is, broadly, true of the military race the neglect of missile defense—that too. Joffe acknowledges, as he must in would otherwise lead to catastrophe. the wake of 9/11, “the power of the And declinism is a powerful political weak,” but concludes—too sanguine, tool (fear sells) that has long been used perhaps, about the equalizing effects of and abused. Joffe relates how insurgent technology—that America is so far presidential candidates have a habit of ahead of its rivals “that it plays in a basing their campaigns on existential league of its own,” and it does so more The Myth of America’s Decline: Politics, Economics, threats that have a way of disappearing cannily (“on top, not in control”) and, and a Half Century of False Prophecies, by the time, four years later, that the if not exactly on the cheap, more fru- by Josef Joffe (Liveright, 352 pp., $26.95) insurgent-turned-incumbent, “first Jere - gally (amazing, but true, despite those miah, now redeemer,” is seeking reelec- famous Pentagon toilet seats) than the here is usually a moment in tion by a country where it is, again, alpha nations that preceded it. America the course of a typical english morning. This record of apocalyptic may one day abdicate (Joffe highlights picnic of drizzle, hard-boiled bunkum does not mean that every Obama’s combination of “reticence” T eggs, and chill, when some- politician’s prediction of approaching abroad with “nation-building” at home), one looks up at the gray, unyielding sky Armageddon can safely be ignored, but but it is unlikely to be imperial over- and brightly announces that the weather skepticism is generally a better response stretch that brings it down. is “clearing up.” If Josef Joffe attends than panic. A drawback of Joffe’s focus on the english picnics, he would be that some- Next, Joffe asks if there is any coun- competition is that it allows relative one. try in a position to topple America strength to obscure absolute decay, an In this cheery take on America’s from its “towering perch,” a perch that error avoided by Alan Simpson when prospects, Joffe, the editor of Die Zeit, is, he shows, far loftier than widely the former senator compared the fiscal looks around and ahead and decides imagined. By contrast, Britain, even at condition of the U.S. with that of some that, for all its problems, the U.S. will its imperial peak, was merely first european nations. America was, he do just fine. he reminds us that pundits among some fairly grand equals. Joffe said, the “healthiest horse in the glue and politicians have been awaiting the again buttresses his argument with the factory,” an ugly truth not inconsis- end of America since its beginning. In wreckage of earlier predictions—that tent with the broader observation by itself, of course, this proves nothing: Japan would overtake America, that Joffe (who, we should note, also frets Time passes, facts change; what once europe (Europe!) would fly by, that about deficits) that “only the United was set in stone ends up slithering on the Soviets would bury us—before States can bring down the United sand. Joffe takes care to say that the turning a bracingly cold eye on China. States.” failure to come true of previous prophe- cies of America’s decline “does not mean that [one] never will,” but, given the broader themes of this book, those words—and a handful of others like AUTUMN them—are the equivalent of the quick- Autumn is the reflective season, fire muttering that accompanies some Its cast of light a major reason; car commercials, caveats that no one is Another, the surcease of photosynthesis meant to notice. That leaves green leaves in a splendid parenthesis Joffe, a shrewd and subtle analyst, is Of curtained colors that wondrously on firmer ground when he turns his Were always there, though we could not see attention to the nature, origins, and his- Those lustrous reds and glorious yellows concealed Till death their patient beauty revealed. Mr. Stuttaford is a contributing editor of NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE. —DONALD E. HAMPSON

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But an even more profound menace to floor, squeezing cleverer, well-educated this country’s future may come from a Americans of a type who have only transformation that owes little to foreign rarely been squeezed before. And they plotting or domestic excess and quite a won’t like it one bit. bit to free trade, free enterprise, and tech- In his fascinating and, in its implica- nological progress, features—rightly tions, terrifying new book, Average Is applauded by Joffe—of the American Over, economist Tyler Cowen surveys system that have done so much to this scene and predicts the arrival of a I M P O R T A N T make the country what it is today. That “hyper-meritocracy” in which a com- America’s generosity and optimism, in paratively small segment (maybe 10 to N O T I C E the form of an immigration policy—nut- 15 percent) of the population does tily cheered on by a Joffe still in thrall to extremely well, most people eke their to all National Review ancient Ellis Island myth—may make way along, and there are few in the mid- things even worse only sharpens the dle: a vision that may be exaggerated, subscribers! irony still further. but not by enough to save what’s left of The exceptional nation has undeni- Bedford Falls. ably been exceptionally successful. Yes, Unlike many apocalypticians, Cowen America is an idea and a dream and all has room for a little relief (of sorts). He that, but above all, it has worked. As accepts that there will be “some out-       We are moving our Joffe recounts, there have been busts, bursts of trouble” but anticipates a panics, and slumps, but overall this has future that is “downright orderly.” The subscription-fulfillment      truly been a land of opportunity. The country will be older, and shared pride 
   office from result has been a nation held together in in America’s leading position in the no small part by the shared belief that a world (Joffe would not disagree) will Mount   Morris, Ill. better life is there for the taking by those throw additional social cement into the    to Palm Coast, Fla. who work hard, a belief fed by the fact mix, while “cheap fun” distracts the Please continue that it was true enough for enough peo- potentially restless.    ple for enough of the time, a belief that “Revolts,” writes Joffe, “are the hard- to be vigilant: may now be becoming a delusion. est part of the soothsaying business.”      There are fraudulent Inflation-adjusted household median I’m not so sure. Smashed expectations, income has yet to return to its 1999 a large cohort of well-educated (and agencies
   soliciting peak—14 years ago, in case anyone is often young) underemployed, high your    National Review counting—and now stands at only a frac- numbers of unemployed men looking tion more than the level a decade before for work in factories that no longer subscription !  renewal that, a stagnation that cannot (despite exist, ethnic and cultural fragmentation without    our authorization. some wishful thinking to the contrary) be (the last apparently not a concern to Please reply only to explained away by changes in household Joffe or Cowen, immigration enthusi-   size. It is no coincidence that the per- asts both), and the window that the National Review centage of Americans in work also Internet provides into the lives of the   
 renewal notices or peaked around the turn of the century, rich are a recipe for disorder that it will     before going into a decline that the Great take more than Grand Theft Auto to bills—make sure the Recession has only intensified: Work- head off.     return address is force participation is back to levels last And the increasing emphasis on grow- seen in the disco era, a regression with ing inequality (the inequality is real     Palm Coast, Fla. ominous ramifications for the sustain- enough, but it is a symptom, not a cause, Ignore   all requests for ability of Social Security, Medicare, and of middle-class woes) in today’s political renewal that are not all the rest. debate—from Occupy to Obama—is
    directly payable The tentative nature of the current characteristic of a society in which the     recovery, and its particular shape—hir- focus has shifted away from growing the to National Review. ing at the top and bottom of the wage pie to slicing it up. That’s a harbinger of a     scale has picked up, in the middle not so crisis within the American model, and, I If you receive any mail or much—looks a lot like yet more evi- suspect, an early taste of an Argentinian telephone     offer that makes dence that happy days will not be here future to come.    you suspicious contact again for the American middle class Joffe dismisses a mid-’90s prediction anytime soon. Its labor is simply not as of a coming automated dystopia as “a [email protected]@nationalreview.com.. valuable as it was. As technology gets stew of Malthus and Marx.” He would Your cooperation ever smarter, and as workers in lower- be unlikely to be much kinder about     cost emerging markets upgrade their Cowen’s Skynet lite. That’s a mistake.      is greatly appreciated. skills, opportunities will narrow in the The clouds aren’t clearing. They are get- office suite as well as on the factory ting darker.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS miss some of that shaky-camera work and and too honest to adequately play the Film think Fire has a little too much bombast lovestruck stooge. the complications that and ticky-tack in its set pieces, overall the follow lead to a further government crack- The Perils most striking thing about the two movies down—which puts the third point in the is the continuity between them, in form story’s love triangle, Katniss’s hometown and tone and quality alike. (And in their suitor Gale (Liam Hemsworth), in the Of Katniss MPAA ratings: Nobody, but nobody, was regime’s crosshairs—and then to the ROSS DOUTHAT going to kill the golden goose of teenage slightly strained big twist, which throws box office by making a Hunger Games our heroine back in the arena for a kind t’s not quite reasonable to describe movie that’s rated R.) of tournament of Champions, facing off a movie that made $700 million that continuity is a sign that, for all the against past winners from the Hunger worldwide and turned its leading carping about his work, Ross won’t be Games’ 75 years. I lady into one of the planet’s biggest remembered the way, say, Chris Colum - the casting has the same weaknesses stars as “underrated.” But even so, last bus is for his clumsy efforts in the first and strengths as the first go-round. As year’s adaptation of The Hunger Games, two Harry Potter films—as a director Katniss’s teenage love interests, Hutcher - book one in suzanne Collins’s mega- whose plodding literal-mindedness son and Hemsworth are still a little too selling teenage dystopia, reaped more needed to be abandoned to make the Tiger Beat–ish for their post-apocalyptic backlash from critics than its pop- story come to full-fledged life. In fairness, setting, but fortunately the adult players blockbuster excellence deserved. the though, it’s also a sign that Collins’s tril- more than make up for that deficiency: peanut gallery didn’t like director Gary ogy—in the first two volumes, at sutherland, stanley tucci, Elizabeth Ross’s handheld camerawork, they least—is much more movie-ready than Banks, and Woody Harrelson are all back thought his PG-13 movie didn’t make the the J. K. Rowling saga, with less fat to in action, and they’re joined by Philip titular games’ teen-on-teen violence suffi- trim, fewer subplots to discard, and a seymour Hoffman as the ambiguously ciently grisly (because watching kids kill fairly obvious, no-need-to-overthink-it motivated new head gamemaker and an each other isn’t horrifying without gush- path from page to screen. array of interesting actors (including ing arteries, apparently), and without And even though I didn’t think the Jeffrey Wright and Jena Malone) as the panning the movie outright, they deemed result packed quite the same punch this Victors summoned unwillingly back to his effort merely . . . satisfactory. time around, that too is mostly on Collins combat. Well, now Ross is gone—thanks for the rather than her adapters, because the then, of course, there’s Lawrence, so $700 million, don’t let the studio gate hit biggest shock in her trilogy is frontloaded transparent and charming and girlish on you on the way out—and the task of adapt- and pre-advertised. Once you’ve watched the red carpet over the last twelve months ing the sequel, Catching Fire, has fallen to a group of unlucky teenagers from the (even if her Silver Linings Playbook Oscar Francis Lawrence, a successful music- conquered provinces of a future North wasn’t exactly deserved), and so steely video director with a few mediocre big- American tyranny get lotteried into a tele- and prickly and well defended as Katniss, budget movies (Water for Elephants, I Am vised death match commemorating their who has every eye on her and knows it. As rebellious ancestors’ defeat, there really an exercise in world-building, the Hunger isn’t much a sequel can do to raise the Games trilogy has various weaknesses, stakes. which I’m afraid that the profit-hungry What this sequel does, instead, is broad- decision to split the final volume into two en them. After winning through to the end movies will expose. But its great strength of the last movie’s games and keeping her is its harrowing, entirely believable depic- teammate/rival/besotted suitor Peeta (Josh tion of the price its heroine pays for Hutcherson) alive as well, Jennifer Law - becoming a symbol of a revolution—her rence’s Katniss Everdeen finds herself honesty carapaced, her happiness sacri- trapped by other people’s movements ficed, her agency forfeited, her loves and and machinations. she’s a heroine to the friendships buried. oppressed, restive citizens of her country’s Precisely because she can be so natural, 13 districts, and a danger to its overlords in so forward, so direct and self-assured, the Rocky Mountain–swaddled Capitol. Lawrence is exactly the right actress for But as a capital-V Victor in the Games, she such a part—because we can sense can’t be disposed of without sparking even what’s being taken from her, what she’s more unrest, and so instead the bearded giving up. And here I’ll close with a Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games: President snow (Donald sutherland) de - warning for viewers who haven’t read the Catching Fire mands that she play the dutiful subject and books, and who may come away from the Legend) on his résumé. I’ve already read travel the continent pretending that she not-exactly-happy end of Catching Fire more than a few reviewers saying good and Peeta are happy lovers with no politi- thinking that they’ve watched the equiv- riddance to Ross and hailing Lawrence’s cal agenda whatsoever. alent of The Empire Strikes Back—a dark approach, and so, as an apologist for the this tour does not go well, not least middle installment that precedes a rah- first movie, I suppose I should make the because while Katniss genuinely isn’t bent rah, Return of the Jedi–style finish.

opposite case. But even though I really do on igniting a revolution, she’s too prickly Don’t get your hopes up. LIONSGATE

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I spent the next week boasting of my Jewish man who had fallen from his City Desk misadventure, as we will if the ending is crutches and spent the evening telling happy, when the second moderately the nurse where he and his wife spent The View unpleasant episode unfolded. I was see- their winters in Florida. I had my wife’s ing my internist in the city to have my iPod so I listened to Bach played by staples removed and told him that all of Glenn Gould, Jesus’ younger brother From a sudden urinating hurt (I shall spare with Asperger’s. you the details). Next morning I had a Dawn was spectacular. First the lights Mediland fever, and the internist checked me into on the 59th Street Bridge went out, then urgent care. the eastern sky showed rose; then you RICHARD BROOKHISER Triage in the city has no true slack could pick out the stubs and tails of jet periods. I was deposited into the canvas trails, like punctuation. After breakfast he first moderately unpleasant of a Flemish master, a little bit of (I did get breakfast out of the deal) my episode began when I noticed Brueghel, a lot of Bosch. Our ward was fever had fallen; they plucked out my that one of the end caps of the presided over by a high-spirited Filipina IV, gave me discharge papers to sign, T front gutter was leaking. So I nurse (after the typhoon I wondered and sent me home. went up the stepladder to see if the gutter what island she had come from). The I want to use my moderately unpleas- pipe was blocked. I have done it 20 nurses, PAs, and attendants all shared an ant episode to talk not about our health- times—I know the ground there is esprit that I have often noticed in eRs, care system, though my two hospital uneven—yet this time, from haste or dis- and that is both the adrenaline rush of visits surely make me more knowledge- traction, I did not ground the ladder prop- doing good with comrades and a carapace able than our president and his minions, erly. I went four or five feet up, then I was against the long grind of woe. My gurney but about our living system. So much of on the sidewalk. was a magic carpet—I was pushed here living is a set of repeated actions that not Thirty-two feet per second per second, and there, sometimes into rooms, some- only accomplish their proper tasks but the rate of acceleration of falling bodies, times into the hall. also create a sense of fullness. What we is pretty quick. I landed on my hands and Somerset Maugham supposedly said do is what life is—and so it is, until knees, but I must have turned as I fell, that if you sit long enough at the Café de sometimes quite suddenly it is some- smacking the back of my head on the rain la Paix the whole world will pass by. It thing else. We do not normally wear barrel. I did what any red-blooded home- passes by much more rapidly in an eR. plastic hospital ID bracelets. But then owner does when he injures himself—I Babies wailed. A woman was waiting to we do. And equally suddenly we don’t. called for my wife. She said I was show- be moved into the psych ward after a sec- Snipping those bracelets with a scissors ing a lot of red blood. Our friend Doug, ond suicide attempt (in the first she had and throwing them away is one of the the builder/artist, offered to come over jumped off a bridge at night—at night great moments of homecoming. But you with his staple gun. We went to the emer- somehow adds an extra squeeze to the are not really home yet, because home gency room of the local hospital instead. dark embrace). A ha sid in The hospital is in the nearest town of a dress frock coat, what any size, maybe 20 minutes to the south. the Polish nobleman was It was built by the local rich guy, who wearing in 1713, asked made his money by making television the Filipina to press the antennas. The rich guy became a politi- elevator button for him: cian (liberal D.), then the factory moved “It’s shabbos.” A Chinese to South Carolina, then the town went wo man waiting on her into its long slow slide. Mass culture, husband wandered up and wealth, taxes, no wealth: a koan for the down, with no place to history of upstate. sit. There was no place— These pious reflections came later; in unless you made one. the moment I was moving through medi- Inertia is the most preva- land. We hit the emergency room in the lent illness in hospitals. sweet spot of a slack period. Registration They will give you a chair and triage went as smoothly as a double if you ask, but you must play. The physician’s assistant briefly ask, and if they do not weighed the merits of sutures and staples find one for you, you and plumped for the latter: The gash was have to find one and commandeer it. has become momentarily strange. We deep, the scar would not be on my cover- This is no country for passive men. are completely comfortable only with girl face. After a little lidocaine in went My fever spiked at 103, and I was what we do not notice. The prayer of the the staples, sounding much like home given a shared room for overnight with world is, So teach us to fill our days that repair (so Doug’s instincts were correct). a grand river view. I had had the same we need not apply our hearts unto wis- We were back at our front door, beneath view when I was taking chemotherapy dom. But wisdom like beauty will break the offending gutter, only an hour and 45 21 years ago. My roommates were a through at 32 feet per second per sec- minutes after setting out. Russian getting a stress test and an old ond.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Sharia’s Protector

OHullAH QARIzADA is one of those Afghans Seven years ago, in my book America Alone, I quoted you used to see a lot on American TV in the a riposte to the natives by a British administrator, and it immediate aftermath of the Taliban’s fall. proved such a hit with readers that for the next couple R Trimly bearded, dapper in Western suit and tie, of years at live stage appearances, from Vancouver to he heads the Afghan Independent Bar Association in Vienna, Madrid to Melbourne, I would be asked to Kabul. Did you know Kabul had a bar association? A few reprise it—like the imperialist version of a Beatles years back, I ran into one of the u.S. prosecutors who cover band. The chap in question was Sir Charles helped set it up, with a grant from the Swedish foreign Napier, out in India and faced with the practice of sut- ministry. Mr. Qarizada currently sits on a committee tee—the Hindu tradition of burning widows on the charged with making revisions to the Afghan legal code. funeral pyres of their husbands. General Napier’s What kind of revisions? Well, for example: “Men and response was impeccably multicultural: “You say that it women who commit adultery shall be punished based on is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have the circumstances by one of the following punishments: a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope lashing, stoning.” around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral As in stoning to death. That’s the proposed improve- pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You ment to Article 21. Article 23 specifies that said punish- may follow your custom. And then we will follow ment shall be performed in public. Mr. Qarizada gave an ours.” interview to Reuters, explaining that the reintroduction of India is better off without suttee, just as Afghanistan stoning was really no big deal: You’d have to have wit- would be better off without child marriage, honor killing, nesses, and they’d better be consistent. “The judge asks death for apostasy, and stoning for adultery. What my each witness many questions,” he said, “and if one answer readers liked about my little bit of Napier karaoke at live differs from other witnesses then the court will reject the appearances was its cultural cool. It wasn’t an argument claim.” So that’s all right then. for more war, more bombs, more killing, but for more cul- Stoning is making something of a comeback in the tural confidence. In the long run, that’s more effective world’s legal codes—in October the Sultan of Brunei than a drone. For the least worst two-thirds of a century in announced plans to put it on his books. Nevertheless, its history, the vast fractious tribal dump of Sudan was run Kabul has the unique distinction of introducing the prac- by about 200 British civil servants. These days, I doubt tice on America’s watch. Afghanistan is an American pro- the smallest Obamacare branch office makes do with tectorate; its kleptocrat president is an American client, fewer than 200 “navigators.” Yet, alert to the obsoles- kept alive these last twelve years only by American arms. cence of the mid-20th-century social programs, the Right The Afghan campaign is this nation’s longest war—and remains largely blind to the similarly too-big-to-fail our longest un-won war: That’s to say, nowadays we can’t model of the American way of war. No serious person can even lose in under a decade. I used to say that, 24 hours argue that we’re not spending enough money. The prob- after the last Western soldier leaves Afghanistan, it will be lem is we waste so much of it—to the point where in as if we were never there. But it’s already as if we were Afghanistan the Western occupation accounts for 97 per- never there: The last Christian church in the country was cent of GDP, and all we have built is another squalid razed to the ground in 2010. sharia state. At this point, Americans sigh wearily and shrug, The American way of war is to win the war in nothing “Afghanistan, the graveyard of empire,” or sneer, “If they flat, and then spend the next decade losing the peace. The want to live in a seventh-century s***hole, f*** ’em.” American people have digested that to the point where But neither assertion is true. Do five minutes’ googling, they assume that, no matter how “unbelievably small” (as and you’ll find images from the Sixties and early Kerry promised of Syria) the next intervention is, it’s a Seventies of women in skirts above the knee listening to fool’s errand. The rest of the world grasps it, too. If Hamid the latest Beatles releases in Kabul record stores. True, a Karzai treats Washington with contempt and gets away stone’s throw (so to speak) from the capital, King zahir’s with it, why expect the Iranians to behave any differently? relatively benign reign was not always in evidence. But, A nation responsible for almost half the planet’s military even so, if it’s too much to undo the barbarism of cen- spending goes into battle with the sentimental multiculti turies, why could the supposed superpower not even fantasist twaddle of Greg Mortensen’s Three Cups of Tea return the country to the fitful civilization of the disco as its strategy manual—and then wonders why it can’t era? The American imperium has lasted over twice as beat goatherds with fertilizer. long as the Taliban’s rule—and yet, unlike them, we left Incidentally, I’d be interested to know which particular no trace. fellow at the Pentagon ordered that a copy of Three Cups of Tea be included in every Kandahar-bound kitbag. He should Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). be fired. Come to think of it, he should be stoned.

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The Queen of the Sciences: A History of Mathematics Taught by Professor David M. Bressoud   TIME ED O   T FF I E IM R 1. What Is Mathematics? L 2. Babylonian and Egyptian Mathematics 70% 3. Greek Mathematics—Thales to Euclid 7 4. Greek Mathematics—Archimedes to Hypatia O 2 R off 5. Astronomy and the Origins of Trigonometry D Y R 6. Indian Mathematics— ER A BY JANU Trigonometry Blossoms 7. Chinese Mathematics—Advances in Computation 8. Islamic Mathematics—The Creation of Algebra 9. Italian Algebraists Solve the Cubic 10. Napier and the Natural Logarithm 11. Galileo and the Mathematics of Motion 12. Fermat, Descartes, and Analytic Geometry 13. Newton—Modeling the Universe 14. Leibniz and the Emergence of Calculus 15. Euler—Calculus Proves Its Promise 16. Geometry—From Alhambra to Escher 17. Gauss—Invention of Di erential Geometry 18. Algebra Becomes the Science of Symmetry 19. Modern Analysis—Fourier to Carleson 20. Riemann Sets New Directions for Analysis 21. Sylvester and Ramanujan—Di erent Worlds 22. Fermat’s Last Theorem—The Final Triumph 23. Mathematics—The Ultimate Physical Reality 24. Problems and Prospects for the 21st Century

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