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May 18, 2015 $4.99

WILLIAMSON: The Case for Free-Range Kids MCCARTHY on Domestic Terrorism FRENCH on Ponnuru & Salam: A Constitutionalist Agenda Sci-Fi

THE Castro Regime’s JAMES KIRCHICK from Cuba Windfall

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MAY 18, 2015 | VOLUME LXVII, NO. 9 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 31 The Castros’ New Friend The relaxed travel policies, the Charles C. W. Cooke on the Bill of Rights pending opening of embassies, p. 18 the removal of Cuba from the State Department’s list of ter- rorism sponsors, the restora- BOOKS, ARTS tion of limited economic & MANNERS activity—all longtime goals of the Cuban regime—were 41 A NOT-SO-DISTANT MIRROR Andrew C. McCarthy reviews Days declared without any corre- of Rage: America’s Radical sponding demands that Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Havana change its conduct. James Kirchick Violence, by Bryan Burrough.

COVER: ROMAN GENN 43 IT’S THE PARENTS Reihan Salam reviews Our Kids: ARTICLES The American Dream in Crisis, by Robert D. Putnam. 16 THE PARANOID STYLE IN AMERICAN PARENTING by Kevin D. Williamson In Maryland, Big Brother plays Big Mommy. 45 THE CASE OF CLINTON VS. CHEN REMEMBER THE BILL OF RIGHTS? by Charles C. W. Cooke 18 John R. Bolton reviews The Judging by today’s political climate, we don’t. Barefoot Lawyer: A Blind Man’s PUTIN’S HYBRID WAR AGAINST EUROPE by Edward Lucas Fight for Justice and Freedom 22 in China, by Chen Guangch eng. Will NATO ever rouse itself? DROWNING IN PROPAGANDA by John O’Sullivan 50 FILM: I, AVA 25 Ross Douthat reviews Ex Machina. How a migrants’ tragedy has been used and misused. 27 A QUESTION OF HONOR by Jay Nordlinger 51 HORNS OF PLENTY As the wolves circle, Iraqis who helped us are pleading for visas. Richard Brookhiser discusses the urban supermarket. 29 SCI-FI’S SAD PUPPIES by David French A literary revolt against political correctness.

FEATURES SECTIONS THE CASTROS’ NEW FRIEND by James Kirchick 2 Letters to the Editor 31 The Week Obama’s change of policy helps Cuba’s oppressive regime, 4 Athwart ...... James Lileks not its democratic dissidents. 39 40 The Long View ...... Rob Long 37 A CONSTITUTIONALIST AGENDA by Ramesh Ponnuru & Reihan Salam 44 Poetry ...... William W. Runyeon Five priorities for the GOP. 52 Happy Warrior ...... Jonah Goldberg

NATIONAL REVIEW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by N ATIONAL 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., 2015. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to Editorial Dept., N ATIONAL REVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONALREVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00A.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., NATIONALREVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to N ATIONAL REVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATES: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters_QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/29/2015 3:04 PM Page 2 Letters

MAY 18 ISSUE; PRINTED APRIL 30

EDITOR Richard Lowry Senior Editors The Germ of Corruption Richard Brookhiser / Jonah Goldberg / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra In his review of my book A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy American Political Corruption (April 20), Matthew Spalding states that I offer a Washington Editor Eliana Johnson Executive Editor Reihan Salam “neo-anti-federalist account” of corruption, and that the Bank of the United States Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson National Correspondent John J. Miller heralded an era of “living constitutionalism,” facilitating a “slippery slope” of Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Deputy Managing Editors “rampant corruption.” This inaccurate characterization elides key points of my Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz theory and ignores most of my research. Production Editor Katie Hosmer Assistant to the Editor Carol Anne Kemp The Anti-Federalists thought the new government was too powerful and Research Associate Alessandra Haynes Contributing Editors removed from the people, whereas I am concerned with the process by which Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn government authority increases. This self-consciously Madisonian approach is Jim Geraghty / Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long hardly the stuff of Brutus or Federal Farmer. At one point I even recommend Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy Kate O’Beirne / Andre w Stuttaford / Robert VerBruggen Hamilton’s quasi-monarchical plan, given the powers the government eventu- NATIONALREVIEWONLINE ally acquired. Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editors Katherine Connell / Edward John Craig Moreover, my treatment of the Bank explicitly avoids constitutional Opinion Editor Patrick Brennan National-Affairs Columnist John Fund hermeneutics. My modest point is that because the Framers did not anticipate Staff Writers Charles C. W. Cooke / David French the Bank, they did not build institutions to ensure it would behave well. Even Political Reporters Joel Gehrke / Brendan Bordelon Reporters so, I aver that the Bank was hardly corrupt in the grand scheme, and I cele- Andrew Johnson / Katherine Timpf Associate Editors brate Hamilton’s “sound and sure management.” It is a relatively benign Nick Tell / Molly Powell / Nat Brown Editorial Associate metaphor for my theory: an early indication of a process that would eventu- Christine Sisto ally cause problems. Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Developer Wendy Weihs Per Spalding, I see the Framers as the “fathers of big government.” I would Web Producer Scott McKim never make such a claim. My analysis of the early Republic has less to do with EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan the (small) size of government or the (modest) level of corruption; rather, it out- NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE lines the early development of a methodology that, “perfected” over time, would BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Ryan Lovelace / Ian Tuttle eventually yield corruption. Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman The early Republic takes up only about a tenth of my book, which focuses pri- Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza marily on the progressive era and beyond. This is when government truly broke Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman James Gardner / David Gelernter free of its restraints. Spalding glosses over the bulk of this research and misun- George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler derstands the role that the early Republic plays in my analysis. David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Jay Cost Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman ATTHEW PALDING RESPONDS Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya M S : Jay Cost’s fine book is best when it describes the Business Services corruptions of the Gilded Age and the rise and proliferation of modern liberalism Alex Batey / Alan Chiu Circulation Manager Jason Ng and interest-group politics. But a key question for both history and future policy WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 is, How did we get here? Cost is right that the progressive movement was “a SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 reimagining of American republicanism,” and what comes after the New Deal is ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd “an inflection point” in the story. But throughout he presents Hamilton’s bank Advertising Director Jim Fowler and its early embrace of expansive government as “a microcosm of the argument Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Assistant to the Publisher Emily Gray in this book,” which leaves the general narrative on a downward slope from the Director of Philanthropy and Campaigns Scott Lange very beginning. This suggests that an extended but limited republic may not be Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Director of Development Heyward Smith possible after all, just as the Anti-Federalists predicted. The alternative is a fun- Director of Revenue Erik Netcher Vice President, Comm unications Amy K. Mitchell damental break in thought and practice between the Founders’ constitutionalism PUBLISHER and the progressive project. This analysis also helps us see the possibility of a Jack Fowler Madisonian solution to our current dilemmas rather than accept an inherent cor- CHAIRMAN John Hillen ruption in republican government that is here to stay. CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes

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

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WHAT KIND OF COUNTRY WILL MY GRANDCHILDREN INHERI T?

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n When Clinton became secretary of state and said she would build stronger relations with foreign countries, she really meant it.

n On the morning of April 12, Freddie Gray was arrested after fleeing from police near the Gilmor Homes housing project in Baltimore. He was hauled into a police van to be transported to the local police station. When he arrived, less than half an hour later, he required urgent medical treatment. He died at Baltimore’s Shock Trauma Center one week later, his spine “80 percent severed” at the neck, according to his family’s attorney. How that happened is the outstanding question that has much of Baltimore’s black community out- raged—and, indeed, it is difficult to envision a scenario in which the police were not, at best, grossly negligent. (Re - quests by Gray, during his arrest, for medical attention were ignored by the arresting officers.) As in Ferguson and Staten Island and elsewhere, however, the Black Lives Matter crowd had no interest in allowing the investigation to run its course, and, predictably, peaceful protests did not remain so. On Saturday, April 25, hundreds of protesters shattered storefronts, threw trash cans into police cruisers, and brawled in the streets, while a mob of “youths” assaulted a Russia Today camerawoman and robbed her of her handbag. Two days later, the city was engulfed in riots; stores were looted and burned, and the police force was beaten into retreat. Such violence has nothing to do with Freddie Gray, the Court to rule that all states must recognize same-sex mar- with “anger,” or with “justice.” It is “rioting mainly for fun riage. That expectation ought to offend Justice Kennedy, and profit,” in Edward Banfield’s famous phrase. And it’s no since it assumes that all his rhetoric about the dignity of coincidence that it is happening in a city ruled for nearly half states two years ago—when he voted to strike down the fed- a century by Democrats. Look on your works, ye mighty, eral government’s definition of marriage as the union of a and despair. man and a woman for the purposes of federal programs— was for show. n President Obama responded to the rioting in Baltimore by condemning the rioters, calling for criminal-justice reform, n The Democrats have been working overtime to gut the lamenting such problems as fatherlessness, and then, in a long First Amendment. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumptive riff, urging Americans to do some “soul-searching.” We know Democratic front-runner for the 2016 presidential nomina- how to fix Baltimore and other troubled communities, he said, tion, has endorsed this effort. The Democrats have repeatedly and would make the large investments necessary if we saw attempted to use federal law to stifle the political speech of their children as ours. This is, of course, delusional. If Obama activist groups and independent parties, and the Supreme knows how to revivify marriage or compensate for its decline, Court has repeatedly told them that they may not do this, he should share his insight. In reality, his confidence that he most notably in the Citizens United case—a case that turned has the answers, and that the rest of us do too but are too cal- on the question whether people showing a film critical of lous to act on them, is a reminder that his worst personal fail- Hillary Rodham Clinton should be prosecuted as criminals ing is the same as his worst ideological one: vanity. for doing so. The courts keep telling the Democrats that the First Amend ment exists primarily to protect political speech, n Everyone supports “marriage equality,” including oppo- but the Democrats seem to think that it’s about pornography, nents of same-sex marriage. Americans gay and straight and keep trying to criminalize the act of criticizing politi- have all lived under exactly the same marriage rules since cians in unapproved-of ways. That culminated last year in the founding of the Republic. When the Supreme Court Harry Reid’s attempt to pass a constitutional amendment heard oral arguments in the same-sex-marriage cases, then, that would exempt political speech from First Amendment it wasn’t considering “marriage equality” but rather “mar- protections—which is to say, that would effectively repeal ROMAN GENN riage redefinition.” Ob servers nearly unanimously expect the First Amendment—an effort that received the support of

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every Democrat in the Senate. Mrs. Clinton makes it official: way—because Reisner is gay, while Cruz wants the Supreme The Democrats are now an anti–First Amendment party. Court to let states decline to recognize gay marriage. The gay Left jumped on Reisner—a Facebook call to boycott his busi- n Marco Rubio and Scott Walker traded shots, with Rubio nesses (he is a hotelier) got 8,200 likes. Reisner promptly saying that governors could not be prepared to handle foreign crumbled (“I am shaken to my bones. . . . I made a terrible mis- policy and Walker noting that this standard would have dis- take”). The new Stalinism politicizes the political, and is utterly qualified Ronald Reagan. It’s not the first time Walker has unforgiving. All that is needed to complete the picture is a cited Reagan in making the case for his foreign-policy cre- photo of the fireside chat, photoshopped to remove Cruz. dentials: He has also said that his battles with the unions proved his readiness just as Reagan’s firing of the striking n On April 27, Loretta Lynch was sworn in as the first female air-traffic controllers showed he was serious. Walker’s re - African-American attorney general in U.S. history—a tri- sponse nicely shows that Rubio’s claim is too categorical. umphal moment for those who care passionately for such mile- But Reagan was more like Rubio than like Walker in one re- spect: He had spent years thinking and talking about foreign policy; the Soviets already knew what he thought before they were sure he would follow through. If Walker knows what he thinks about foreign policy, he should share it with the pub- lic—which would also give Rubio something better to talk about than the candidates’ résumés.

n Walker has not come out “against legal immigration,” as some reports have put it. He has said that he thinks immigration policy should be set with an eye on its impact on wages, and should welcome more newcomers when labor markets are strong than when they are weak. He has said, as well, that he is listening to Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), the leading con- gressional advocate of lower legal-immigration levels. Walker is taking a lot of flak for these com- ments, some of it from stones. Far more important was the swearing in of an attorney Re publicans. But his gen- general who declared in hearings before the Senate Judiciary eral statement is inar- Committee that she had no concerns about the constitutionality guable—what’s the case of, or the alarming precedent set by, President Obama’s No - for ignoring labor mar- vem ber executive amnesty, and that she would happily give kets?—and the implied her imprimatur as America’s chief law-enforcement officer to position is reasonable. its implementation. Ten Republican senators, including Senate Immigration in creases majority leader Mitch McConnell, voted to confirm Lynch. national wealth, but most Even Republicans who voted against her made a point of say- of that increase accrues, ing that she was qualified for the job: a testament to their naturally, to the immi- unclear thinking, since adherence to the Constitution is among grants themselves. The the most important qualifications an attorney general can have. average impact on people already here is negligible. n Obamacare was carelessly designed and lawlessly imple- When more low-skilled immigrants come here, however, mented. A Supreme Court decision imposing legal limits on people in low-wage jobs—many of them immigrants them- Obamacare this summer could lead to millions of people see- selves—come under more economic stress. In this way and ing their premiums rise or their coverage disappear. Senate others, high levels of immigration can retard assimilation. Re pub li cans do not believe that these people should pay the STAFF / These points may ex plain why 39 percent of Ameri cans in a price for the administration’s recklessness, so Senator Ron recent Gallup poll fa vored reducing immigration. Only 7 per- Johnson (R., Wis.) and 29 of his colleagues have introduced

MARK WILSON cent wanted more. Yet the “comprehensive immigration re - legislation to extend subsidies to the affected people until : form” that all the great and good in Wash ing ton have been 2017, when a new president could revisit health-care policy. LYNCH ; seeking for years includes much higher immigration levels. It is At the same time, the Republican bill would eliminate some a mark of how out of touch American elites are that, in all those of Obama care’s regulations. That’s not a bad place to end years, that feature of the plan has occasioned less debate than up—but it might be a bad place to start. We think Republicans CONTRIBUTOR / Walker’s remarks have in a few weeks. would be better off allowing states to opt out of Obamacare. Extend subsidies, yes, but let people use them outside of

RICHARD ELLIS n Ian Reisner, a strong supporter of Israel, held a “fireside Obamacare’s exchanges. And let these states convert most of : chat” in his Manhattan duplex for presidential candidate Ted their Medicaid funds into cash assistance for low-income peo- WALKER Cruz, another strong supporter of Israel. Politics as usual? No ple buying regular health insurance. Five years after Obama -

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care became law, Republicans have an opportunity to stand, nation as a private citizen.” We trust he will do this well. And at long last, for a model of health-care policy that puts mar- who among us is unspotted? Also, his Army service was stel- kets and states, rather than the federal government, at the cen- lar, even invaluable. Still: The charge made by MoveOn.org, ter of the action. the left-wing organization, in 2007 has a creepy ring now. That charge was “General Betray Us.” n Democrats finally surrendered in a standoff over bipartisan legislation intended to toughen penalties against human traffick- n In Washington, D.C., residents who wish to exercise their ing. They had filibustered the bill because it included a provi- right to own a firearm are subjected to an absurdly draconian sion that would prevent money from a victims’-compensation permitting process, and then to a set of harsh, often irrational, fund from going to abortion services; they contended that this restrictions that govern which models they may own in their was an expansion of Hyde-amendment precedent that gener- homes. These rules, however, do not apply to members of ally bars funding for abortion. As a practical matter, it wasn’t, Congress, who may possess and transport whatever guns they but the abortion lobby, presumably, was worried about legisla- please. When Representative Ken Buck (R., Colo.) was recently tive penumbras. Both parties finally agreed to fund health seen holding an AR-15 in his Capitol Hill office, onlookers services for victims from other, existing federal funding that reasonably wondered whether he had broken the law. But the is already subject to the Hyde Amendment, and to restrict the Metropolitan police were swift to confirm that he had not, and new victims’ fund to non-health services. Thus, no (mean- to note that the rules don’t apply to the lawmakers who wrote ingless) expansion of Hyde precedent, and (meaningfully) them. The District’s gun laws are thus a double offense against no more money for abortion. It was a small victory for Re - republican government. pub li cans, and a reminder that picking their battles shrewdly on life issues can force Democrats to defend a decidedly un - n A deranged woman named Dynel Lane lured Michelle popular position. Wilkins to her home and cut her unborn child, Aurora, from her womb. Aurora died, but under Colorado law an assault n Standardized tests in the schools can serve useful roles, that results in an unborn child’s death does not count as a especially in letting parents, voters, and policymakers know homicide. The Colorado legislature is aiming to change that how well schools are doing. But testing can be taken too far, as and join the federal government and 37 other states in recog- well, and many parents have come to believe that schools are nizing that unborn children can be victims of crime. The making that error as part of their states’ implementation of abortion lobby is resisting. In the New York Times, one oppo- Common Core. Many parents are opting out of tests for their nent of the law opined that the “core harm” of crimes like kids in New York and New Jersey. Much of the unhappiness Lane’s is that “reproductive freedom is trampled.” If Wilkins appears to stem from a sense that the testing regime, like Com - is like most victims of such crimes, she probably takes a mon Core generally, was adopted without input from them. clearer view of the crime against her and her daughter. So That sense is justified. Common Core resulted from an elite should the law. consensus, not a public debate, and solidified because the Obama administration made federal funding and regulatory n In California, the health committee of the state assembly waivers contingent on its adoption. Supporters of the tests are recently passed a bill that would require staff at crisis-pregnancy now lashing out at the opt-out parents, calling them irrational centers to tell clients how they can get state-funded abor- and enemies of civil rights (on the theory that it is harder to ad - tions. Eighty witnesses testified against the proposed legis- dress failing schools without widespread testing). Tests show lation. Federal courts have struck down similar laws in New whether learning is taking place; Common Core’s supporters York, Texas, and Maryland. Jor-El Godsey of Heartbeat are failing theirs. International, a pro-life group, notes the lack of evidence that clients of pregnancy centers in California have been n As an Army general, David harmed. He suggests that one motive behind the bill is to Petraeus was a hero of the make the centers spend time and money defending them- Iraq War. As CIA director, he selves in court. As usual, there seems to be only one choice had an affair with his biogra- that pro-choicers are pro. pher and gave her classified information. With FBI inves- n As the American Civil Liberties Union is demonstrating tigators and others, he was anew. When some 60,000 unaccompanied minors poured ap parently untruthful. He has across America’s southern border last year, the U.S. Con - now gotten off with a slap on ference of Catholic Bishops took seriously Christ’s call to feed the wrist: two years’ proba- the hungry, clothe the naked, and harbor the harborless, part- tion and a $100,000 fine nering with the federal government to tend to the least of these. (which Petraeus, who has But no good deed goes unpunished. In April, the ACLU filed landed handsomely in the pri- suit, seeking to end the partnership because Catholic agencies

STRINGER vate sector, can easily afford). do not offer contraception or abortions to unaccompanied / He said, “I now look forward minors in their care. This lawsuit is not unprecedented: In

ADKISSON to moving on with the next 2009, the ACLU sued the Department of Health and Human . phase of my life and to con- Services for contracting with the USCCB to provide help to JOHN W tinuing to serve our great victims of human trafficking. The ACLU opposed the bishops

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on the same grounds. Its stand has nothing to do with liberty, natories—which include Canada, Singapore, Australia, and and less with compassion. New Zealand—the most significant currency manipulator is the United States, which through quantitative easing has n The full Senate has taken up legislation, known as the exnihilated digital dollars equivalent almost to the GDP of Corker-Menendez bill, that would require President Obama Japan, another TPP party. One almost suspects—is it possi- to submit a nuclear deal with Iran to Congress. The problem, ble?—that Beijing’s monetary policy is not the real issue and the reason the Senate Foreign Relations Committee here. Experts disagree about the extent and significance of passed it unanimously and President Obama promised he Chinese efforts to keep the renminbi cheap relative to the would sign it: The current bill would effectively require a dollar, thereby boosting Chinese exports at the expense of two-thirds majority to reject a deal. That risks making a con- Chi nese consumers. But there is no disagreement about the gressional failure to reach that high threshold look like a tacit fact that the left wing of the Democratic party hates trade endorsement of a deal. So what to do? The Senate should pacts categorically on ideological grounds. Thus Senator consider strengthening the bill by passing amendments that Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) is on the warpath against TPP, require any deal with Iran to include certain reasonable mea- while Hillary Rodham Clinton, hoping to split the difference sures, such as unfettered inspections access and only phased between the anti-TPP Warren camp and the pro-TPP White relaxation of sanctions. Perhaps that will send a message to House, is walking sideways away from a deal she strongly Iran that the West will not be as pliant as Obama would like supported until the day before yesterday. The Democrats’ it to be. The virtue of the Corker bill is that it would at least retreat into naked xenophobia has been something to behold, force President Obama to submit the text of a deal to Con- but playing the “Yellow Peril” card when China’s not even gress, which he had hoped to avoid. But Congress should in- part of the deal? That’s new. sist on more: The Iranians shouldn’t be the only ones to win concessions from Obama. n Stalin was wrong: The recent drowning of more than 900 migrants fleeing to Europe in a boat that capsized in the n Over and over, President Mediterranean is more a tragedy than a statistic. Regrettably, Obama has said that Ali Kha - statistics do, however, affect decisions that Europe and the menei, the “supreme leadfer” o West must make about mass illegal immigration. If the 900 Iran, has issued a fatwa that pro- were the forerunners of more hundreds or even thousands, hibits Iran from developing a Europe and the world could make reasonable provision for nuclear weapon. Trustworthy receiving them. It is because they may be the forerunners of authorities say that there is no millions that the West must resolve to prevent further influx. such fatwa. If there is no such Relatively stable countries should agree on specific numbers fatwa, Obama should stop pro- of political refugees to whom they will grant asylum. Apart claiming the existence of one. If from that, they should make it unmistakably clear that no there is such a fatwa—what are illegal immigrant will be admitted under any circumstances we negotiating about? Is the and that those who make it halfway will be returned to the Iranian government defying its countries from which they embarked. It sounds harsh, but supreme leader? Someone, pref - anything short of that measure is incentive for desperately er ably the U.S. president, should poor people to take the terrible risk of setting sail in unreli- clear this up. able craft.

n In the aftermath of a drone attack that inadvertently killed n The PEN American Center is giving its annual free- two hostages—an American and an Italian—commentators speech award to Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical news- immediately decried American “failures” in the drone war, paper whose staff was massacred by Islamists in Paris. This thus suggesting that anything but the most surgical strike is has, remarkably, led to protests, with six writers—Peter unacceptable. This is a dangerous notion, one that is incom- Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, patible with the laws of war. When terrorists hide among Rachel Kushner, and Taiye Selasi—withdrawing from the ci vil ians and surround themselves with human shields, their awards gala. Kushner, hilariously, cited the newspaper’s actions make civilian deaths inevitable. To avoid those deaths “intolerance” for her decision: Charlie Hebdo’s “intoler- at all costs would tie the hands of our men and women in uni- ance” was expressed through cartoons of dubious taste, form, empower terrorists, and cost American lives. Ameri - which were met with intolerance of a rather more robust cans weep for the lost hostages and their families, but our sort. Meanwhile, the cartoonist Garry Trudeau dismissed mourning must turn not into self-doubt but into a renewed Charlie Hebdo as an example of “hate speech,” declared resolve to find and kill terrorists—no matter how, or behind that free speech is “its own kind of fanaticism,” and blamed whom, they hide. the murdered for having “brought a world of pain to France.” PEN calls its prize the “Courage” award—better n The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade pact, is that these supine members of the literary establishment stay CONTRIBUTOR

/ being threatened by demands that measures intended to curb away. Far away. Chinese currency manipulation be inserted into the deal. This is curious for many reasons, not least of which is that China n Speaking of Rachel Kushner: We found uniquely nauseat- ULLSTEIN BILD is not a party to the TPP, and that, of the pact’s potential sig- ing Ms. Kushner’s valentine to Cuban dictator (ahem, “presi -

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dent”) Raúl Castro in Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential fugitives, one of whom is among the FBI’s ten most-wanted People” issue. Kushner, whose qualification for estimating terrorists. We could go on. The point is, the Castros have the Cuban leader is having written a reasonably successful not repent-ed or reformed. Obama is simply determined to novel about Cuba a few years ago, neglected to mention the ro mance them. dissidents daily tortured on the island, or the gulag archipel- ago where that torture occurs. But she did make sure to note n The massacre of up to a million and a half Armenians 100 Cuba’s “main achievements, such as education and universal years ago was not the first ethnic cleansing of Christians in health care,” the “insulting, cruel, and utterly failed 50-year the Middle East, but it was the grossest in modern times; ISIS U.S. embargo,” and the prospect of “the destabilizing influx is doing its best to emulate it now. Armenians worldwide of foreign capital,” now that the U.S. and Cuba have reached insist on calling it “genocide,” as if this were a post-graduate a “historic rapprochement.” Only a true leftist could look on degree in suffering. The Young Turks who tried to save the Cuba and declare the most urgent concern the possibility of Ottoman Empire did not start out wishing to slaughter Ar me - gentrification. nians, but after rushing into World War I they willed that re - sult, and many of the Armenians’ neighbors threw themselves n President Obama is determined to normalize relations into the bloodletting. Ancient communities were wiped out; with the Castro dictatorship in Cuba. Naturally, the Castros survivors had to change their names and their religion. One have some conditions. One of those conditions is that Cuba good consequence of Recep Erdogan’s campaign to remake be removed from the State Department’s list of terror spon- Turkey in his own image was his willingness to nod to Ar me- sors. Obama has obligingly moved to do this. Does Cuba ni an suffering, though as the centennial approached he re - deserve the removal? Have the Castros repented? They vert ed to denial. Acknowledgment cannot bring back the support the FARC in Colombia, ETA in Spain, paramili- dead, but modern Armenians deserve it and modern Turks taries in Vene zue la, and other such actors. They harbor a would benefit from offering it. man who plotted to kill Álvaro Uribe, the former president of Co lom bia. They were recently caught smuggling arms to n “Do as I say, not as I do” has long been a progressive man tra, North Ko rea. Even more recently, they were caught smug- but rarely has the chasm between the Left’s piety and the gling arms from China. They harbor some 70 American Left’s behavior been as poignantly exposed as it was in April, O JAY, CAN YOU SEE? And does he ever see in his acclaimed collection — you will, too!

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in which month NATIONAL REVIEW discovered that more of to be a fiction of a piece with the rape hoaxes seen of late at MSNBC’s rabble-rousing hosts are behind on their taxes, other campuses. His accuser, Emma Sulkowicz, embarked on making four in total. According to the State of New York, a theatrical campaign to ruin Nungesser’s life, and did so with liens have been leveled against Touré Neblett ($59,000), the effective sponsorship of Columbia, which blessed her pro - Melissa Harris-Perry ($70,000), and Joy Reid ($5,000). Al test—carrying a mattress around on her back like Christ with Sharpton, meanwhile, owes almost $4.5 million. When this His cross—as approved coursework, and which published crew says taxes are too low, perhaps they’re generalizing ma te rial that depicted Nungesser as a rapist, though he was from experience. acquitted by a campus tribunal; Sulkowicz, perhaps conscious of the fact that lying in court is more consequential than lying on campus, declined to make a criminal complaint. Subsequently n Bruce Jenner won the 1976 Olympic gold medal in the released e-mails and social-media messages—with at least one decathlon, and a place on the Wheaties box. More recently declaration of love from the purported victim to the man she and dubiously, he married into the Kardashian clan. Now says forcibly sodomized her, along with an invitation to “chill” he has announced that he is a woman. He has had minor an d a great deal of small talk—show Nungesser and Sulkowicz cosmetic surgery and expects to adopt new pronouns and a maintaining a close, affectionate relationship after the alleged new name soon. There are people so cross-wired by nature sexual assault. Nungesser is charging gender-based defama- that they feel they are in the wrong body; the desire to remake tion and harassment, in an effort to make Columbia live up to one’s gender, however, is often a mask for extreme unhap- its own pieties. piness or madness, which no change of war drobe or genitals can cure. As n To peruse the prospectuses of America’s many liberal-arts col- trans be comes the flavor du jour— leges is to be invited into a world of learning, of open-mindedness, gay is so 20th-century—cases of and of rambunctious debate. The reality, alas, is a long way gender confusion will only in - from the promise. In April the mere presence of a dissenting crease. En cour ag ing children to act voice on campus was enough to send some students into on these impulses is the height paroxysms. At Oberlin and at Georgetown, the visit of the “fac- of irresponsibility: People tual feminist,” Christina Hoff Sommers of the American should not think of changing Enterprise Institute, prompted the creation of “safe spaces” into sexes before they can drink which those who disagreed fled. Outside the lecture hall, pro- or drive. Adults will find testers called Sommers names and accused her of being an doctors to supply every need “apologist” for rapists; inside, they interrupted her, and some and cater to every whim. But taped their mouths shut in dissent—a reflection of their convic- let them read Horace before tion that, by speaking to a voluntary crowd, she had “silenced” they take their hormones: them. And, of course, silencing people is the protesters’ job. You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she n In a show of exquisite sensitivity joined to galloping imagi- still will hurry back. nation, students at Stevenson College at the University of California, Irvine, reportedly protested that Mexican food was served at an “Intergalactic” campus party. “The program plan- n NPR’s Ira Glass recently declared Shakespeare to be “unrelat- ners made a poor decision when choosing to serve a Mexican able.” If he were in college today, he would likely be spared the food buffet during a program that included spaceships and bother of trying to relate. A survey of 52 top-rated American col- ‘aliens,’” Carolyn Golz, a college administrator, explained in leges and universities shows that only a widely assorted four— an apology e-mailed to students. Because “this incident caused Wellesley, UCLA, the Naval Academy, and Harvard—require harm within our community,” she would “require cultural English majors to take a course in Shakespeare. To be sure, some competence training for Programs staff.” She was “working colleges feel a Shakespeare requirement would be superfluous, closely” with the coordinator for diversity and inclusion “to like requiring poetry majors to smoke Gitanes; others include the continue to increase the cultural intelligence (CQ) of our Bard in required survey courses, or strongly recommend a staff.” Concerned students were directed to the office of coun- Shakespeare course without making it mandatory. But too many seling and psychological services as well as to a couple of English departments now have requirements like those of offices whose names included the words “diversity,” “inclu- Northwestern, which make no mention of Shakespeare but sion,” “bias,” and “hate.” No word yet on whether the college include “one course in Transnationalism and Textual Circulation has plans for a human-rights conference where the food and one course in Identities, Communities, and Social Practice.” catered will be Chinese-Cuban. In the bad old patriarchal days, English departments didn’t care whether Shakespeare was relatable or not; you read it because it n Johns Hopkins University had no apparent plans to lease AP / was the foundation for centuries of classic English literature. space in a mixed-use development, currently under construc- INVISION

/ Nowadays, evidently, that’s considered a bad thing. tion, to a Chick-fil-A franchise, but that did not deter the student- government association from declaring against the possibility. n Former Columbia student Paul Nungesser is suing the In a resolution passed by a vote of 18–8, they noted that Dan school, and good on him. Nungesser was accused of raping Cathy, president and CEO of the fast-food chain, op poses MARK VON HOLDEN another student, and was exonerated, the accusation appearing same-sex marriage. Somewhere between the parts about “a

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safe, supportive environment” and being “subjected to micro - aggression,” the resolution included the accusation that Cathy “has publicly stated divisive statements.” The students thus prevented themselves from ever having to seek a “safe space” from politically incorrect chicken sandwiches and waffle fries.

n A hundred years have passed since British and Allied troops landed at Gallipoli, a bleak shore on the Dardanelles. Turkey had made the fateful decision to side with Germany in World War II, and this campaign was intended to knock it out. The incompetence of the admirals and generals in command was matched by the bravery and endurance of the men. Led by Ger- man officers and Mustapha Kemal, the future president of his country, the Turks held their ground. Trench warfare and hand- to-hand fighting over a period of eight months left more than 34,000 British, and about 87,000 Turks, dead. In addition, almost 9,000 Australians and 3,000 New Zealanders were killed, so high a number that the British have been accused of Peter Schweizer callousness toward the Anzacs, as they then began to be known. Gallipoli has numerous gravestones and the Anzac During Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, the Memorial. For this centenary, tens of thousands came to re - State Department okayed a deal whereby a Russian company member the fallen, and reports quote one of them expressing acquired a majority interest in Uranium One, a Canadian firm what has been something of a general view: “All those brave that owned a string of uranium mines stretching from Wyo - lads who sacrificed their lives at the behest of Britain.” At one of ming to Kazakhstan (the American mines triggered U.S. over- the several church services held there, Tony Abbott, Aus tral ia’s sight). Uranium One executives gave the Clinton Foun da tion prime minister, spoke for many when he said that the “baptism millions over the years—not all of it d isclosed by the founda- of fire” had given the nation its identity. Winston Churchill, tion. While the deal was going forward, Bill Clinton was paid then First Lord of the Admiralty, was long held re sponsible for $500,000 by a Kremlin-linked bank for giving a speech in Gallipoli, which could have altered the course of history by Moscow. In sum: Hillary did her part to let Vladimir Putin putting an end to his career. scoop up uranium properties here and abroad; Putin gave her charitable donors and her husband a payday. n The sesquicentennial of the Civil War has ended. Previous Once more, the Clinton songbook. These tireless strivers— commemorations brought presidents to Gettysburg, hoping no “dead broke,” Hillary claimed, when Bill le ft the White House doubt to share Lincoln’s luster: Woodrow Wilson spoke at the —show that their appetite for acquisition is undiminished. Not 50th anniversary, and FDR at the 75th; for the 100th, President that the money is all or even mainly for whoopee. The Clinton Kennedy was in Europe, though he had toured the battlefield Foundation, besides its charitable work, is a parking lot for earlier that year. President Obama did not speak at the 150th loyalists who can be moved to the next Clinton campaign. (Bill anniversary of Gettysburg, though he did something equally Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog meaningful, awarding a belated Medal of Honor to First Lieu - for charities, called it “a slush fund for the Clin tons.”) Do na - ten ant Alonzo Cushing, killed on Cemetery Ridge while help- tions support politics, and serve as down payments for current ing to repel Pickett’s charge. In “Little Gidding,” T. S. Eliot and future access. wrote of the English Civil War that “we cannot restore old poli- After sleaze comes demagogy. Mrs. Clinton is a Democrat, cies.” But this must not be true of a nation founded on princi- a member of a party that, since its inception, has demonized the ples, as the United States is. Many of our struggles, from daily rich, especially when they support other parties (James Mad i - politics to civil strife, have been over those principles and how son called them “the opulent”). She cannot switch modes as they should guide us now. Alonzo Cushing and hundreds of smoothly as her husband, but even she can leave fundraising thousands of other men gave their lives for them; keep them long enough to stop at a midwestern Chipotle to show solidarity bright in the new millennium. with the middle class. Her minions carry the refrain of parsing and partisanship. 2016 George Stephanopoulos, grilling Schweizer on ABC, insisted A Global Clinton Slush Fund that he had found no “smoking gun.” There’s a ringing en - dorsement: The woman who would be president has not yet ETER SCHWEIZER, author of the forthcoming book Clin - committed Richard Nixon’s crimes. He went on to implicitly ton Cash, did the country a favor by delving seriously accuse Schweizer of bias, noting that he had written speeches P into the foreign money sloshing around the Clinton for George W. Bush. This is rich, coming from a former flack Foundation. Schweizer’s story was picked up, pre-publication, for the Clinton White House. by the New Yor k Times, which delved into the matter as well, After a quarter century in public life, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton adding details of its own and giving the story the credibility it are who they are. They cannot change their spots. May the first might have lacked with the rest of the media. Clinton White House be the last.

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way home, etc. That availed the Meitivs nothing. They are, so far as the State of Maryland is concerned, neglecters of children. “Children have the right to some unsupervised time, and parents have the right to give it to them without getting arrested.” So declares Lenore Skenazy, advocate for “free-range kids” and for- mer host of World’s Worst Mom on Discovery Life. Danielle Meitiv had written to Skenazy s ome years ago with a parenting question, and the subsequent developments are an excellent illustra- tion of Skenazy’s view: “This isn’t about parenting. If I knew anything about parenting, I could make my kids clean up their rooms or go to bed on time. This has nothing to do with parent- ing—this is about fear.” The United States and much of the developed world is in the grip of an irrational panic The Paranoid Style in directed at our children. From paranoia over vaccinations to Whole Foods shop- American Parenting pers’ ruthlessly eliminating gluten from In Maryland, Big Brother plays Big Mommy their toddlers’ diets to those who are scandalized by parents’ allowing their children to play in the park unsuper- BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON vised, anno Domini 2015—arguably the safest time in human history to be a T may not yet have congressional their parents, who received a letter child in the English-speaking world—is recognition, but May 9 is the red- from Child Protective Services a few an age of terror for parents. I letter day on the calendar for a months later informing them that they And that terror has real-world con- growing national observance: were guilty of “unsubstantiated sequences: “It’s fantasy as policy,” “National Take Your Kids to the Park . . . neglect,” the Orwellian term that the Skenazy says. The end product is what and Leave Them There Day.” Owing to CPS bureaucracy uses when it wants to she refers to as “salvation by regulation,” recent very stupid events in a tony convict parents of an offense for which with laws named for unfortunate chil- Maryland community, this year the there is no real evidence. But the dren who are victims of vanishingly rare theme has been slightly revised: Meitivs were determined that their chil- traumas. “If a child dies in a horrible way “National Take Your Kids to the Park . . . dren would not be raised as prisoners, and it’s been on TV for more than two and Let Them Walk Home by Them - and, after a six-hour drive from upstate nights, then they’ll want a law named selves Day.” New York in April, they dropped them after that kid. It’s a way to make these The Meitiv family resides in Silver off at another park to give them a events seem less terrible. It has to do Spring, Md., a comfortable suburb chance to play and unwind from the with superstition—it’s a way to appease directly adjacent to the District of long ride. They were given instructions the gods.” Columbia with a median family income to be home at 6 P.M. By 6:30 P.M., the Skenazy isn’t a home-schooling Evan - pushing $90,000 and a crime rate well parents were quite worried. It was not gelical in Wyoming; she’s a Jewish liberal under the national average. The Meitivs, until 8 P.M. that they received a call from New York. But on this subject, she Alexander and Danielle, had their chil- from CPS informing them that their sounds like a Rick Perry voter despairing dren, Rafi and Dvora, taken into police children were in custody. They had once at the nexus of suburban yuppie para- custody and now find themselves on the again been picked up by police, but this noia, American litigiousness—“In a liti- wrong side of Child Protective Services time delivered to CPS rather than to gious society, everybody starts to think as offenders—repeat offenders—whose their parents. like a trial lawyer,” she says—excessive crime is letting their children play in the Mindful of the paranoid style of solicitousness toward “expert” opinion, park and walk home by themselves. American parenting, the Meitivs had and an absurd level of risk aversion. “It’s In December 2014, the Meitivs dropped instructed their children in how to deal as though the choice were between being their children off at a park less than a with inquiring police or assorted do- home and safe or free and dead,” she mile from their home; police picked up gooders, to inform them that they are says, “as though there were something the children, ages ten and six, during not lost, that they have permission to inherently wrong with something that their walk home. They delivered them to play on their own, that they know their isn’t 100 percent safe. In Richmond, LUBA MYTS

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Wash., they’re getting rid of the swings, proceedings that followed his client’s because they’re the most dangerous being acquitted in an assault case. This piece of equipment on the playground. wasn’t an acquittal on a technicality, but Of course they are: You already got rid of a case in which the prosecution dropped Remember the teeter-totter! What’s next?” the charges because the prosecutor Silver Spring is, affluence aside, a rel- became convinced that the assault in The Bill atively high-crime part of Montgomery question hadn’t actually happened, that it County, Md. Which is to say, it has a was a fiction. CPS never reviewed the Of Rights? crime rate that is 25 percent below the facts of the criminal case, and informed Judging by today’s political national average rather than half the the mother that she’d made things climate, we don’t national average. There’s a lot of that unnecessarily hard on herself by bring- sort of good news going on in the ing a lawyer to the hearing. The CPS BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE Washington suburbs: Nearby Fairfax worker “generally undertook the role of County, Va., in April reported its lowest grand inquisitress with zeal that would level of crime since it has been keeping make Mike Nifong blush,” Matt Brown, AVING watched closely the records. Across the country, child abduc- an attorney assisting the mother, wrote manner in which questions of tions and child homicides are at record about the case. In the end, CPS took cus- H liberty and power are batted lows. Almost all of the missing-person tody of her daughter and informed her around in the first part of the cases involving children turn out to be that any visitation would be at CPS’s dis- 21st century—most recently during the runaways—less than 1 percent are ab - cretion. “I can’t believe what I saw,” disgraceful contretemps that Indiana’s ductions. The risk of premature death of Brown says. “I can’t believe CPS can rather tame Religious Freedom Re stor a - any kind for an American child between take kids based on nothing, can’t believe tion Act provoked across the land—I have five and 14 is one in 10,000, while deaths the facilitator and the caseworker could come to wonder of late whether the Bill of for children between one and four have do something like that to a family, and Rights could be ratified today. plunged by 93 percent over the past sev- can’t believe that any human being could In its classical mode, liberalism re - eral decades. be so willing to make a life-changing quires the citizenry that it serves to respect The Meitivs could very well lose cus- decision so callously. It’s the kind of the crucial distinction that obtains be - tody of their children, though that seems thing I’m going to have nightmares tween the principle of a given rule and the unlikely to happen in this case. Their about for years to come.” consequences that the rule might feasibly story was picked up by talk radio and Social workers in arms—the stuff of yield. Simply put, a country in which the other media and has become something nightmares indeed. people regard certain individual rights of a cause célèbre. Petitions are being cir- But after a generation’s worth of “IF IT as inviolable axioms of nature—and who culated and solidarity is being affirmed. SAVES ONE CHILD’S LIFE!” rhetoric, we’ve accept with alacrity, therefore, that they When you have the opportunity to begun to take that sort of thing literally. will often be used for ill—will be a coun- make your case in the Washington Post And the change came with amazing try that boasts protections of those rights and on Fox News, that makes an enor- alacrity: A generation of people who’d within its national charter. A country in mous difference. never so much as seen a bicycle helmet which the people are focused primarily on But most families do not have that outside of competitive racing became what might be done with those rights, by chance. parents and suddenly insisted that their contrast, will be a country that prefers to The worrisome fact is that the great own precious snowflakes could not pos- elevate and to abide by the whims of tran- threat to American children comes not sibly be expected to pedal a Huffy with- sient majorities—or, perhaps, by the dis- from lurking trench coats or rusty play- out headgear. People who were taught to cretion of a supposedly enlightened few. ground swings, but from the people handle firearms safely as children are In Indiana, we were given an insight into entrusted with looking after children’s having their own children instructed to which of these countries the people of the interests when their families fail to do so. report them to the Man for legally keep- United States would rather live in. As domestic terrors go, the nation’s ing guns in the home. Edward R. Speaking at the Virginia Ratifying CPS agencies might be the only branch Murrow used to smoke while delivering Convention of 1788, the anti-federalist of the budding American police state the news; today Broadway shows warn Patrick Henry insisted that Americans that gives the IRS a real run for its grown men about the presence of “thea- should expect the refurbished national money. A boy shows up at school with a trical smoking,” which makes one government to provide a framework for bruise from the usual roughhousing and think of Cruella de Vil—or not, given ordered liberty, and not to guarantee a par- sets off a chain of events that finds his that British authorities threatened to slap ticular set of outcomes. “You are not to parents under investigation for child an “adults only” rating on 101 Dalma - inquire how your trade may be in creased,” abuse. Single mothers and poor fami- tians because of the arch-villainess’s Henry advised, “nor how you are to lies, sometimes poorly educated, find tobacco habit. become a great and powerful people, but themselves dragged into Kafkaesque “It’s a genuine national psychosis,” how your liberties can be secured; for lib- proceedings that they can neither escape Skenazy says, “and an international one, erty ought to be the direct end of your nor comprehend. too.” But it’s nothing a little sunshine Government.” In creas ing ly, alas, we seem A criminal-defense attorney in Ari - and fresh air couldn’t do wonders for, if to be more interested in trade and power zona tells of being shocked by the CPS that were still permitted. and prescription than we are in liberty.

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one can only suppose that John McCain and Lindsey Graham would put up quite the fight. Worst of all, rather than discussing any of these questions in terms of their effect on individual freedom and the limitation of the state, we would be subjected to an endless set of graphs and numbers and pseudo-meaningful jargon, all medita- tions on the essential question of capital- L Liberty having been replaced by dry lectures delivered by 29-year-old UCLA graduates with no life skills at all. Oscar Wilde once complained that in the indus- trial era we have come to understand “the price of everything and the value of nothing.” There is, I’m afraid, a little truth in this. Last month, the left-leaning magazine Mother Jones attempted to put a financial “cost” on the Second Amend - ment. The right of the people to keep and bear arms, the magazine contended ra - ther unconvincingly, costs the Trea sury more each year than does Med i caid and should therefore be abolished or seriously restricted. Re spond ing to the ruse, one wag on Twitter observed wryly that “the future of policy debates is argued with spreadsheets and calculators to show individual rights ‘burden’ the masses.” He is right. Sor ry, Mr. Jefferson, your insights aren’t needed here. At the time when it was demanded, there was little to no serious argument One can only imagine the attack ads To run down the list is to see the mod- over whether the individual protections that would today be marshaled against ern objections fall neatly into place. As contained within the Bill of Rights were the Bill of Rights. Posited in 2015, the it is so often, the Second Amendment worthwhile in and of themselves. Rather, First Amendment’s speech protections would be cast as a recipe for “Wild West” the contemporary dispute was over struc- would likely be characterized as “anti- anarchy, an open invitation to sedition ture, the vast majority of opposition to the gay” or “pro-racist” measures that had for those white, mountain-dwelling racists insertion of explicit protections coming been cynically contrived to protect the of the South ern Poverty Law Center’s not from those who feared that such pro- capacity of bigots to say disgraceful nightmares, and an overture to the execu- tections would hamstring government’s things with impunity and to reinforce tion of children. The Fourth, the Fifth, capacity to act, but from those who were the various power structures and privi- and the Eighth would be denounced by worried that they would destroy the over- leges that are at present claimed to be both overzealous law-and-order types arching logic of the Constitution and destroying America. The “freedom of and totalitarian feminists as damnable therefore serve to undermine it. the press,” meanwhil e, would be openly “soft on crime” provisions intended to This was a reasonable objection. In its disdained as an overture to the corporate help dastardly types get away with raping original form, at least, the Con sti tu tion purchase of elections; the “right of the college students and selling drugs to the that had been drawn up in Phil a del phia people peaceably to assemble” would be vulnerable. And the Ninth and Tenth was a charter of enumerated powers that regarded as a direct threat to the sanctity would be attacked viciously by our seem- granted to the national government a lim- of the land around the entrance to abor- ingly endless plague of ambitious public- ited and clearly delineated role in the tion clinics; and the wide-ranging con- policy graduates, almost all of whom nation’s political life. As James Madison science protections contained within believe down to their ill-fitting boots that recorded in Federalist 45, “the powers both the establishment and the free- there is no problem so small or so personal delegated by the proposed Constitution to exercise clauses would be cast as a that it cannot be solved nationally. Pre - the federal government are few and de - devilish recipe for theocracy tha t would cisely because it has such a limited effect fined.” In other words, what it was not allow the irrational to operate without in restraining the government, the only clearly permitted to do, it could not do. oversight and the backward to under- provision that would remain would be the That being so, a Bill of Rights made little LUBA MYTS mine the great cause of Science. Third, about quartering soldiers, although sense, for, if the federal government had

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been accorded the opportunity to do only place for conservatives to note that in a certain number of things, listing what it most of the world’s countries, key indi- could not do was superfluous. Under - vidual rights are routinely ignored. It is scor ing this point, Alexander Hamilton less usual, however, to hear it observed submitted in Federalist 84 that a list of that this is true even in more liberal nations specific prohibitions would represent such as Britain, Canada, Australia, and “various exceptions to powers not grant- New Zealand. In my own country of I M P O R ed; and, on this very account, would afford birth, free speech is now violated with- T A N T a colorable pretext to claim more than out thought; the right to keep and bear N O were granted.” “Why declare,” Hamilton arms is, to borrow a phrase from the T I C E asked, “that things shall not be done which 19th-century jurist William Rawle, there is no power to do?” “allowed more or less sparingly, accord- to all National Review The answer to this question was a sim- ing to circumstances”; there are few ple one: The naysayers did not trust the meaningful rights of conscience left; and subscribers! dam to hold. Rather, they were sincerely the criminal-justice system is showing worried that the national government signs of cracking at the edges. Shock - would expand beyond all recognition, ingly, even the Magna Carta has been and that, in its broadened form, it would undermined. Not only is the British gov- inevitably begin to encroach upon the ernment allowed to lock up suspects #1><>?=<>?0<=5/57>6:We are moving our rights of the people. To help prevent this without charges for up to 28 days, but in subscription-fulfillment=+>649>8?8;7949:96+? from happening, they sought a parch- 2009 the Crown Pro se cu tion Service ment backstop to which they might invoked a 2003 law and held its first 3;56>,=7?,9:1;5:to Palm Coast, Fla. ten of which made it in. There is a cer- Rights is the only thing standing between Please continue tain logic to their order. For the protec- the little guy and majoritarian tyranny, ;5=8>?<>273?;673?There are fraudulent First Amend ment. For the protection of thanks to Supreme Court decisions and :;?agencies
'$)#"'! soliciting (%)(& their Lockean physical rights, they not to public opinion that America acquired the Second, Third, and Fourth. remains an outlier. It is because judges your<>6>,=7?6;:94>8?National Review For the protection of their legal, civil, and have stepped in that it is legal to burn the subscription renewal criminal safeguards, they obtained the American flag in protest; that the ;? Fifth through the Eighth. And, in order to Westboro Baptist Church may stage its without85<>?:1>?<>:5<6? our authorization. ensure that the inclusion of such prophy- execrable funeral demonstrations with- Please=//<>88?98? reply only to lactics did not adversely alter the docu- out fear of tort liability; that seditious National Review ment’s structure, they garnered the Ninth speech may not be punished by the (=7.?!;=8:
?"7=-? and the Tenth. government; that disgusting videos renewal notices or In the year 2015, it is difficult not to may not be banned; that conservative '+6;<>?=77?<>&5>8:8?bills—make sure the conclude that this was a smart and pre- Christians have been spared the indig- scient move. Because the commerce nities of the Obama administration’s 0;6>,=7?:1=:?return address is clause has been expanded so drastically— contraception mandate; that collections =<>?6;:?/9<>4:73?Palm Coast, Fla. and because the Supreme Court does not of citizens may engage in political criti- effectively police its limits—the Bill of cism; that parents caring for their chil- Ignore2=3=*7>?:;? all requests for Rights is now the only serious check left dren may not be forced by the state to
'$)#"'!renewal that (%)(&are not-? on the power of a federal government join a union; that the residents of Wash- directly payable that has slowly come to enjoy the ple- ington, D.C., Chicago, and other “blue” '0?3;5?<>4>9 >?=63? nary powers that were intended to be cities may buy and own handguns for to National Review. reserved to the states. As the dissenters their protection; that the government is If you.=97?;7>21;6>? receive any mail or feared, Americans now live in a country prohibited from searching cell phones ;00>8? in which it is presumed that the national without a warrant; and so on and so telephone offer that makes authorities can do whatever they wish forth. Looking around the country—and 3;5?8582949;58?4;6:=4:you suspicious contact unless they are checked. examining the attitudes that prevail in Worse still, they live in a country in Washington, D.C., on our college cam- [email protected]@nationalreview.com.. which the majority is not upset by this puses, and in our hopelessly excitable $;5<=:9;6?98Your cooperation development. Indeed, without a Bill of media—ca n we honestly conclude that is greatly appreciated. Rights to serve as a bulwark, one imag- three-fourths of We the People would +<>=:73?=22<>49=:>/- ines that the United States would look vote today to so restrain ourselves? We more like everyplace else. It is common- are living on borrowed wisdom.

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The Kremlin’s arsenal includes eco- demoralized and confused the leadership nomic pressure (especially the use of in Kiev through a mixture of subversion, gas, oil, and nuclear energy), corrup- propaganda, and special opera tions Putin’s tion, subversion, propaganda, and mili- (sometimes called “hybrid war”) that it tary saber-rattling. Russia deploys these was able to seize the strategically Hybrid War weapons against the frontline states in important peninsula of Crimea in Europe’s new cold war. March 2014. Against The new arc of instability reaches from Ukraine failed to play its diplomatic the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and cards. It could have raised an interna- Georgia) across Ukraine and Moldova to tional storm over Russia’s actions. It Will NATOEurope ever rouse itself? southeastern Europe (Bosnia, Bulgaria, did not. Moreover, Ukrainian forces in Croatia, Macedonia, Monte negro, Ro - Crimea could have resisted. They could mania, Serbia, and Slovenia), through have blocked the airfields and ports BY EDWARD LUCAS Central Europe (Austria, the Czech Re- used by the Russians, paralyzed their public, Hungary, and Slovakia) to the communications, taken control of road UROPE “whole, free, and at Baltic littoral (Denmark, Estonia, Fin- junctions, and knocked out the Russian- peace” was the mantra of the land, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, language media. They could have made E glory days of Euro-Atlanticism, and Sweden). All these countries face it impossible for Russia to seize the ter- when Russia was docile and Kremlin attacks on a spectrum ranging ritory without waging a full-scale war. history was ending. It was never a state- from clandestine influence-peddling to But they didn’t. Ukrainian military ment of reality. Europe was not whole direct Russian military pressure. commanders had inadequate supplies, (countries such as Moldova were indu- The elements of the problem have no orders, no contingency plans, and no bitably European and clearly not where long been clear, but we have failed to secure communications. One even con- they wanted to be). It was not free (Bela - see how they combine. We bemoaned tacted me on Facebook asking for rus). It was not at peace (half-frozen con- the thuggish and repressive behavior advice. They retreated with their morale flicts scarred the map of Europe from of some supposed allies (the Aliyev in tatters. Cyprus to Azerbaijan). regime in Azerbaijan, and the hot- That set the scene for Russia’s next Now that aspiration is in tatters. Eu- headed and heavy-handed Mikheil offensive, in the eastern Ukrainian re - rope is not marching toward prosperity Saakashvili in Georgia), the Bulgarian gions of Luhansk and Donetsk. Here, and freedom. It is retreating to a harsh feebleness toward gangsterdom, the dis- Russia raised the stakes, using its regu- world of power politics, where might is respect that Viktor Orbán in Hungary lar forces (disguised lightly or not at right, truth withers in the face of propa- and Robert Fico in Slovakia showed for all) in a more traditional war. The con- ganda, and the ethnos—old ideas about the rule of law, Czech weakness on cor- flict in eastern Ukraine rumbles on, blood, language, and soil—matters ruption, and the persistent Polish failure largely ignored by Western news out- more than modern rules of democracy to deal with overbearing and incompe- lets, which hew to the idea that the and international cooperation. tent bureaucracies. “cease-fire” declared in February in the The Kremlin clock is sounding the But we assumed, wrongly, that we Belarusian capital of Minsk marks the death knell of Euro-Atlanticism. Not were in competition with the ghosts of end of the conflict. because Russia is strong—it is not—but the past, not the demons of the future. Russia has by now achieved its main because the rest of Europe is weak and And we failed to see how Russia was goals in Ukraine. It has shown it can the glue that holds the United States to stoking and exploiting these weaknesses. destroy the European security order the continent’s security arrangements After the spectacular failure of the that dates back to the Helsinki agree- has aged and grown brittle. Soviet empire in the late 1980s and the ments of 1975. It has repudiated the At first sight, it is perplexing that chaos of the 1990s, it was hard to imag- Budapest Memorandum of 1994, in Russia—a country of 140 million, with ine that the Kremlin could ever again which Russia, along with Britain and a $2 trillion GDP—can threaten Europe call the tune in the old “bloodlands”— the United States, solemnly promised to (with a population of 600 million and a the swathe of territory, be tween the respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity $20 trillion GDP), let alone NATO (950 Baltic and the Black Seas, that under and re frain from any kind of coercion, million and $40 trillion). But Russia Hitler and Stalin suffered the greatest in return for the Kiev authorities’ agree- has three advantages: It is willing to mass killings in European history. But ment to give up their Soviet-era endow- accept economic pain; it is willing to the Cold War did not end. It just took a ment of nuclear weapons. threaten (and use) force; and it is will- few years of recess. Russia remains a Those promises are now revealed as ing to lie, prolifically and expertly, geopolitical contestant and antagonist. worthless paper. That opens a broad about what it does. The situation of each country is and inviting avenue of attack for Russia unique, but the overall picture is that in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, Mr. Lucas, a senior editor of The Economist and the West is in retreat and Russia is win- and Lithuania. Snap drills—often a senior vice president of the Center for European ning. The sharpest conflict is over involving nuclear weapons—have been Policy Analysis, is the author of, among other books, Ukraine. Russia decapitated and dis- met with a puny Western response. If The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the membered its closest and most impor- America is not willing to risk World Threat to the West. tant neighbor without firing a shot. It so War III with Russia over a provocation

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ction The Bent Pin Colle withering by florence king The new, complete, and unabridged collection of the popular slightsmonthly NR magazine column by America’s most revered misanthropic writer he hallmark of National Review is that it has been home to some of America’s very best writers, and few will argue that there are any of greater style, wit, and caustic wisdom than Florence King, whoseT beloved “second” column, “The Bent Pin,” graced the magazine in every other issue from 2007 to 2012 (her previous column, “The Misanthrope’s Corner,” held NR’s back page for a glorious decade). King fans (who isn’t?!) have so craved her timeless works that over the years NR has published two collections, STET, Damnit! and Deja Reviews. And now we’re delighted to announce a third treasure trove of unrivaled prose à la Florence—Withering Slights: The Bent Pin Collection, 2007 to 2012. On every page of this brand-new, handsome hardcover book is proof positive that in Miss King’s deft hand, the pen is mightier than any sword, and the pin of prose finds and pricks the many inanities bal- looning across the fruited plains and foggy moors—which is why you must get your first-edition copy of Withering Slights right now, hot off the press. The cost is just $24.95, direct from (and only from) NR, hap- pily shipped and handled at no cost to you. Admit again what you’ve admitted every time you’ve read a King column or r eview: that through the laughter you’ve chortled, “I wish I’d said that.” Which is what you indeed will say, without end, when you climb the lofty heights of Withering Slights. Conservatives, curmudgeons, and anyone who thrills to superior writing will delight at this complete “Bent Pin” collection, a 200-proof, rip-roaring, bombs-away exposition of La Firenze at her very best. Brandishing sharp, crafted, tight prose that dazzles and endures, Miss King’s dead-on, no-punch-pulled take on the American scene and its many cultural peccadillos will elicit gasps and guffaws, head-shakes and table-slams, Heck-Yeahs and Damn-Straights (and maybe even a Darn-Tootin’). From her first “Bent Pin” column in 2007 (“Grosser and Grosser”) to her 2012 adios (“Something Ere the End”), and some five dozen more beauts bet ween them (including clas- sics such as “A Broad at Home,” “Facial Politics,” “Softboiled Speech,” “The Defenestration of the Shmoo,” and “With Liberty and Pug Noses for All”), King holds nothing back, letting loose her pen on anyone and anything from atrocious trends (Neo- Cleavage!) to irksome types (Weeping Wardens, LibProgs, TempCons, Pixies, New Changers, and many more)—all of it refreshing and g uffaw-inducing. And as ever, you’ll relish the THWACK! when Florence gets National Review w 215 Lexington Avenue w New York, NY w 10016 her grump on to land a two-by-four of con- tempt upside many a deserving noggin. Send me ______copies of Withering Slights: The Bent Pin Collection. My cost is $24.95 It’s beautiful, brand new, only $24.95, and each (shipping and handling included!). I enclose total payment of $______. Send to:

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in the Baltics, NATO will be over by dummy nuclear attacks on Sweden and academics, and officials—not just in the breakfast. That is a huge and tempting Den mark. Both countries, having re - frontline states but also in citadel coun- prize for the Kremlin. duced their defense capabilities below tries. Some is public—such as the €9 Vladimir Putin knows this. So do the threadbare, are now scrambling to million loan to Marine Le Pen’s America’s European allies. The ques- restore the naval, aviation, armored, National Front in France, or the hefty tion is not whether Russia menaces the and intelligence assets that they so stipend paid to Germany’s Gerhard Baltics, but when and how it will fol- recklessly discarded. Estonia, likely the Schröder, who as chancellor endorsed low through on that menacing. Already only country in Europe to spend even 2 deals with the Russian gas company Estonia has experienced the humilia- percent of its GDP on defense in 2015, Gazprom and, after leaving office, took tion of having a senior official kid- is grimly waiting for its allies to follow a job with that same company. America napped on its territory and abducted to suit. Poland, Lithuania, and even lag- applies higher standards: Amid stormy Mos cow, only days after President gardly Latvia are scrambling to controversy, former Republican repre- Obama, speak ing in Tallinn, vowed that increase their defense budgets. Po - sentative Curt Weldon was investigated an “attack on one is an attack on all.” But land—the only economic heavyweight by the FBI in 2006 over his ties with after the seizure of this official—Eston in the region—is following Finland’s Russia; the scandal may well have cost Kohver, a high-ranking police officer in lead in buying joint air-to-surface him his office, as he lost his reelection Estonia’s internal-security agency—the standoff missiles, the closest thing to a bid that year. No public figure anywhere West did nothing. nuclear deterrent for a non-nuclear coun- in Europe has yet paid a price for taking Russian warplanes regu- try. It is also buying the American-built money from the Kremlin. larly intrude into Baltic air- Patriot missile-defense system. Even the most powerful politician in space. One recently harassed But Poland stands almost alone. Europe, Angela Merkel, is struggling to an American reconnaissance NATO plans require Poland to take maintain European solidarity on sanc- plane flying over the Baltic the brunt of reinforcing the Baltic, tions over Ukraine. Politicians in Cyprus Sea. When the United States deploying a third of the Polish army say openly that they share confidential protested, Russia replied there, pending the arrival of other European Union documents with Russia: menacingly—“America is allies. But arrival with what? After Brussels is far away, but Moscow is a not a Baltic power. Russia 20 years of scrimping on defense friend. Hungary, despairing of EU soli- is”—laying the rhetorical budgets, no European country has darity on energy, has signed a sweet- foundation for a no-fly enough deployable, mobile, high- heart deal with Russia for nuclear- zone should the United readiness forces to fill this role. power stations. States wish to rein- NATO has ditched its taboos The tide is slowly turning. Germany, force its NATO about Russia and now talks a for example, is changing its post–WWII allies in a hurry. good game about rapid-reaction pacifist posture, bringing 100 tanks out The military forces, but its real capabilities of storage and tweaking its defense se curity of north- are painfully reduced. The plans. Ireland, which has no air force, eastern Europe United States is indispensable is worriedly awakening to its depen- hangs by a to Baltic security. But is Baltic dence on the aging warplanes of thread. Russia se curity indispensable to the Britain’s RAF to intercept the Russian has carried out United States? bombers that buzz its airspace. Russia For all NATO’s weak- does not seem to care that Ireland is ness, it still retains a sym- not a member of NATO—any more bolic power that may be than it has refrained from bullying enough to deter Russia. non-NATO Sweden and Finland. Those But Russia does not need two Scandinavian countries, together to outgun the West mili- with their Nordic partners Denmark, tarily. It just needs to Iceland, and Norway, have issued an outspend it on other un precedented joint declaration, de - fronts. That is the crying Russia’s war games, military Krem lin’s real vic- buildup, and dangerous aviation stunts. tory. Mo ney, not That prompted a rebuke from the hardened st eel and Russian foreign ministry. Russia is high explosives, offended when foreigners do not take it is what matters seriously. It is even more offended most in the new when they do. cold war. Rus - The hard truth is that Europe won’t sian money bear the cost or the military risk for the buys politi- defenses it needs. That won’t change cians, political until Europeans are a lot more scared or parties, think angry than they are now—which may tanks, media, be too late.

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the courts interpret broadly; ethnic hire crews, and sell passages to them. lobbies that both shelter them and Not all reach their destination. The demand residence and citizenship International Organi zation for Migra - Drowning in rights for them; NGOs that provide tion (IOM) estimates that more than them with legal and other forms of 3,000 migrants died last year attempt- Propaganda assistance; media that report their ing to enter Europe by sea. No one How a migrants’ tragedy has been plight sympathetically in a discussion really knows how many migrant deaths used and misused that rarely covers the costs of welcom- by drowning there have been in the ing them; governments afraid of being years since the East Sea, but the IOM’s accused of racism if they enforce estimate is 22,000. BY JOHN O’SULLIVAN immigration laws; and so on. Migrants That is an enormous human tragedy, and potential migrants now realize but there is a deep division in Europe In February, a rusty, decrepit freighter that once they make it across the bor- and elsewhere on what should be done named the East Sea ran aground on der or the ocean into the West, they about it. the Côte d’Azur near Saint-Tropez. can stay indefinitely. And because European governments, nervous of Its captain and crew fled, and when much of Europe is in the “Schengen electorates that want immigration con- police and medical teams arrived on the vessel, they found 900 peo- Area”—i.e., lacks internal immigration trolled, have adopted a half-hearted ple—250 men, 180 women, and 480 and border controls—an illegal migrant policy that aims to rescue migrants at children—cooped up in the hold. who has sneaked off a freighter in Nice sea but to keep them outside mainland Mainly Iraqi Kurds, they had paid or Naples at dawn can be in Paris or Europe while processing their refugee- gangs approximately $4,500 per adult Berlin by nightfall. asylum applications in offshore loca- and $2,000 per child to be smuggled That, essentially, is why almost 900 tions. Its first implementation was the into Western Europe. In return for this people drowned in April when their Mare Nostrum operation, in which the money, they had squatted in a hot, overcrowded boat overturned and sank Italian navy intercepted boats and landed filthy, pitch-black hold, with no venti- in the Mediterranean. They know that their migrant passengers in offshore lation and almost no food or water, for if they get to Europe, they can stay camps on the island port of Lampedusa. a voyage of eight days. About a dozen there. And a sophisticated mass indus- But other European governments refused swam ashore and disappeared. try of people-smuggling has grown up to admit large numbers of refugees or HE paragraph above is the around the Mediterranean to rent ships, share the costs. Italy eventually aban- opening of a NATIONAL RE - T VIEW article, “Invasion of a Certain Kind,” published in the issue of April 30, 2001. Other items in its first few paragraphs included the sentencing of a Dutch truck driver for the murder of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants found dead of suffocation in Dover when his con- tainer was opened in 2000; the murder of babies thrown into the Adriatic by people-smugglers evading pursuit; and, in 1993, the discovery near New York of a ship, the Golden Venture, carrying 300 Chinese illegal migrants, who had paid between $20,000 and $30,000 each for their passage. Most of the illegal arrivals on the Golden Venture sought asylum and did so successfully. Eight years after they were detected, none of those on the Golden Venture had returned home. We had not the heart to send back people who had sacrificed and suffered so much to flee poverty, to escape persecu- tion, or simply to “better themselves.” This tenderness was (and still is) reflected in a set of social and political arrangements that make it hard to deport illegal migrants: treaties on asylum, torture, human rights, etc. that

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doned Mare Nostrum. Following the the post–Second World War world by economic ambition, as seems likely, recent mass drownings, the EU decided future historians. then for practical purposes the pool of to give more money and more ships to a The humanitarian catastrophe and them is a bottomless one. Demanding successor program called Triton. That mass murder of refugees at sea is ulti- that Europe admit potentially limitless may now mean more migrants rescued, mately a direct consequence of EU numbers of migrants or be found guilty politics—even if actual deaths are but—since EU governments have not of mass murder is not a very sensible also caused by smugglers who in the promised to admit more refugees—it pre- past have locked refugees in below approach, especially when Britain and sumably means more overcrowded off- deck or thrown them overboard. France already have foreign-born resi- shore camps, which amounts to a dif ferent dents amounting to 13 and 12 percent humanitarian crisis. To assert that “we”—and she speci - of their populations. Hence the idea of a second policy, fically includes U.K. voters—are The broad outlines of a sensible pol- advocated by bien-pensant opinion and guilty of the mass murder of people icy for the immediate crisis are clear: NGOs specializing in refugee and asy- whom criminals deliberately drown establish refugee-processing centers lum rights, that the migrant vessels be because “we,” though willing to res- in North Africa and the Eastern Medi - intercepted and their passengers taken cue them, are not prepared to admit terranean; obtain international agree- to safe EU ports where—in the words them unconditionally to our society is ment on the settlement of genuine of Kenneth Roth of Human Rights silly and shameful. But Ms. Müller refugees worldwide; negotiate with

Demanding that Europe admit potentially limitless numbers of migrants or be found guilty of mass murder is not a very sensible approach.

Watch—“their claims can be processed and others expressing similar outrage third countries on the settlement of in an orderly manner with all their may be vulnerable to their own logic. other migrants in return for aid; seize rights respected and protected.” What She is relying on consequentialism for and destroy the ships and property of that would mean, of course, is that the her charge of the voters’ complicity in the people-smugglers; above all, “stop migrants—whether genuine refugees mass murder: The murders are “ulti- the boats,” or, in the context of the able to claim asylum under various mately a direct consequence of EU poli- Mediterranean crisis, return the boats treaties, or economic migrants, or in tics.” But a third viewpoint—advanced to their point of departure. If Europe is some cases jihadists and criminals— by Rod Liddle in the London Specta - not going to adopt open borders—and would immediately benefit from the tor—argues that migrants are more likely it plainly isn’t—it should do nothing nexus of legal, political, ethnic, and to attempt the dangerous voyage across to foster false hopes that can lead to a media pressures in favor of their per- the Mediterranean if they believe they watery grave. manent settlement. They would have have a good chance of remaining in The 2001 NR article, written by me overcome the main obstacle to their Europe. And the more migrants set sail, (but you knew that), was mainly a reflec- European dream: Having got there, the more perish. Australian experience tion on two works depicting a Third they could remain there. supports this argument: There are World invasion of Europe—namely, From the standpoint of the NGOs, of believed to have been almost 2,000 Jean Raspail’s novel The Camp of the course, this would achieve a longstand- deaths of migrants to Australia in the Saints, which was hostile to it, and a ing ambition: to make an end run around past 14 years, but the number of deaths BBC documentary, The March, which the restrictive immigration policy that has declined to basically zero since sympathized with it. Both are illuminat- European voters want but that progres- Australia’s conservative government ing on the present crisis. The March sive NGOs, human-rights lawyers, and “stopped the boats.” Someone drunk on depicts the EU as psychologically para- ethnic lobbies strongly and bitterly a cocktail of consequentialism and self- lyzed because its bureaucrats feel justice oppose. This clash of interests was laid righteousness might argue that Ms. is on the side of the invaders. Camp tar- out clearly, indeed extravagantly, by Müller is complicit in the mass murder gets less the poverty-stricken invaders Tanja Müller, a senior lecturer in inter- of migrants because her urging a more than what it calls “The Beast”—the vast national development at the University liberal policy encouraged them to retinue of progressive opinion-mongers of Man chester, as follows: embark on death trips. in politics, journalism, and other insti- If all migrants were genuine refugees tutions who come up with the same In the forthcoming British election, anti-immigration themes feature among fleeing war in countries such as Syria, analyses, condemnations, and slogans most major parties. British political there would be a natural limit to their (“We are all from the Ganges now”) to engagement to the deaths in the Medi - number. It would be practicable to set- advance their civilizational masochism. terranean is almost absent. This makes tle them around the world, with each Western policy should be dictated by ‘us’ silent accomplices of what might nation taking a reasonable number. But practical goodwill and not by the neu- one day be called the greatest crime in if many or most migrants are driven by roses of our leaders.

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Iraqis exactly like the nine. Frustrated with bureaucratic slowness, Congress A PEACEFUL WORLD AWAITS issued a further instruction in 2013: A Question Visa applications should be acted on YOU BEYOND ALL RELIGION within nine months. Most religions are based upon a bedrock of lies. Of Honor Since 2008, 6,000 visas have been Christianity was invented by Emperor Constantine, for political purposes, based As the wolves circle, Iraqis who helped issued, but something like 1,800 Iraqis upon the myth of Mithra, a Persian savior remain in limbo. The nine plaintiffs god born on December 25, son of a virgin. us are pleading for visas Mithra performed miracles and was later have been waiting an excruciatingly crucified. Pope Leo X (died 1521) called long time: an average of four and a half Christ a “Fable”. Later Pope Paul III expressed similar sentiments. BY JAY NORDLINGER years. One has been waiting for more than five and a half. Moses is based on the Sumerian life and leg- ends of Sargon I, King of Akkad, “set in a basket Already, thousands of Iraqis have of rushes and “cast into the river”. Egyptians N 2008, Ryan Crocker, then serv- been killed in reprisals. No one knows kept exhaustive hieroglyphic records. There is a complete absence of any record of Moses lead- ing as U.S. ambassador in Iraq, the exac t number. But if you helped the ing over 600,000 men, women and children I met with a group of visiting jour- Americans—and are known to have away from Pharaoh’s army. nalists. He addressed the question done so—you’re in danger. By helping Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, was convicted in a court of Law of being an of public opinion back home. “People the Americans, of course, the Iraqis “impostor”, today a fraud, con man, in 1826. are tired of Iraq,” he said. “They say, were helping themselves, certainly as He wrote the Book of Mormon soon after. ‘Let’s get it over and done with. We they understood it: They were working Question: You decide: Does the text of the verses of the Qur’an correspond exactly to don’t want to watch the Iraq movie any- for a better Iraq. those revealed to Muhammad directly as the more.’ But the Iraq movie will go on for Each of the nine plaintiffs—plus the words of God, delivered to Muhammad many more reels, with or without us. 1,800 others who are waiting—has a through the angel Gabriel, as claimed?

And it will have a big effect on us, story. They worked alongside the Ameri - Order book “Beyond All Religion”, 152 pages, whether we like it or not.” cans as interpreters, doctors, engineers, $9.95, at www.amazon.com or send mailing address and $9.95 payable to: There is another reel in the movie, so and so on. In the lawsuit, they are Sam Butler to speak. Or a late scene in the movie. In known by nicknames or pseudonyms. SB 197, PO Box 25292 February, a lawsuit was filed in a U.S. Obviously, they have to lie very low. Miami, FL 33102 district court on behalf of nine Iraqis One interpreter, the Americans nick- who helped American forces in the war. named “Frodo.” He was part of some 20 The lives of those Iraqis are in grave firefights during the war. He, like the danger. ISIS and other such elements others, stuck his neck out. An American are threatening to kill them for the help captain, Doug Vossen, considered Frodo is a good and vexing question. Bureau - they rendered us Americans. According his protector and adviser. Vossen told cratic lassitude? Too great a backlog? to U.S. law, the threatened Iraqis are CBS News that, without him, “I’d have Indifference? Even a little hostility entitled to visas, and refuge in America. been dead.” toward all things having to do with the But they have not received what they Another interpreter, called “Alpha” in Iraq War? Each of those explanations is are due. the lawsuit, was shot in the back during possible. It may also be that people in The nine are being represented by the war. Upon recovery, he rejoined the government are worried about letting in the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project effort. In 2008, someone threw a bottle a terrorist and later being blamed. and a law firm, Freshfields Bruckhaus of gas into his home, burning it down. There is no disagreement about the Deringer. IRAP was founded in 2008 by Alpha and his son were injured but sur- bona fides of the plaintiffs, by the way. a group of Yale Law School students vived. He now, like the others, receives The State Department has already found (one of whom was a veteran of the Iraq regular death threats. that the nine Iraqis did indeed serve and Afghan wars). They have helped to Last October, a logistics contractor alongside us, faithfully, and that their resettle more than 3,000. I regard IRAP who worked with the Americans was lives are in danger. Yet their visa applica- as a “point of light,” to borrow language driving in Baghdad. Men pulled up tions molder. The departments’ typical from the first President Bush. beside him and shot up his car. He sur- reply is that the applications are in On behalf of the nine Iraqis, IRAP vived. In November, someone texted “administrative processing.” and Freshfields are suing Secretary of him and said, “Don’t think we forget What’s more, the law says that our State John Kerry and his department, you, dog.” government “shall make a reasonable and Security of Homeland Security Jeh All of the others have similar stories, effort” to protect our Iraqi allies while Johnson and his department. These are each more horrifying than the story their visas are pending. If we cannot the people charged with carrying out before. One plaintiff said, “I exist in a protect them on their native soil, we the SIV program, established by Con - middle world between death and life.” must arrange for their “immediate gress in 2008. “SIV” stands for “Special He applied for his Special Immigrant removal from Iraq, if possible.” Cur - Immigrant Visas.” These visas are Visa in 2009. He says he prays that it rently, the visa applicants have no pro- intended to go to Iraqis who helped will be granted “before it’s too late.” tection whatsoever. U.S. forces and are now threatened Why have the State and Homeland As Saigon fell, we airlifted thousands with death for it—in other words, Security departments not moved? That of Vietnamese—not a couple thousand

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but 130,000—to bases in the Philippines down and killed them (a small fraction of in early October 2008, just a month and elsewhere. They were our allies, the million they ultimately killed). before the U.S. presidential election they had counted on us, and we felt we In those last days, we ferried as many as pitting two senators against each other: owed them protection from slaughter. possible in helicopters. Dorothy Martin, Barack Obama and John McCain. In my view, nine months is too long a the wife of our ambassador, Graham They had starkly different positions on time to sit on a threatened Iraqi’s visa Martin, left her suitcase be hind so that a Iraq. Obama was itching to get out; application. Should it really take the Vietnamese woman could squeeze in McCain wanted to secure victory, or length of a baby’s gestation? But our beside her. something like it. He wanted to keep government is not acting on the applica- South Vietnamese came in their own Iraq stable. tions in four, five years. Our allies’ situ- helicopters, to our fleet at sea. After the The group of journalists of which I ation is all the more serious since the pilots and their families disembarked, was part met an Iraqi colonel named rise of ISIS last summer. we pushed the helicopters overboard, to Abbas. He was more pro-American At stake is American credibility—do make room for more. On the Midway, than the most patriotic American, I we keep our promises or not?—and we pushed our own helicopters over- think. He was fighting for a new Iraq, also our honor, which is related. Some board—$10 million worth—so that a one free of tyranny. I suggested to him of us believe that our pullout from Cessna could land. A Vietnamese major, that Americans might not stick with the Iraq, before the country was secured, his wife, and their five children were program. He was indignant: He knew was dishonorable. In the matter of the thus saved. I suppose we did what we Americans, and they would never aban- visas, we are compounding dishonor could, in those terrible hours. don Iraq, he said. with dishonor. Three weeks later, President Ford At some point in our discussion, I We did not save all the Vietnamese signed the Indochina Migration and asked the colonel to indulge me in a who helped us, obviously—that would Refugee Assistance Act. This turned hypothetical question: What would have been much of South Vietnam. out to be the precursor of the Refugee he do if we Americans, in fact, Before we left, in that panicked evacu- Crisis in Iraq Act and the SIV program, a departed Iraq too soon? “I would STAFF / ation, our personnel did not have a little more than 30 years on. Ulti mately, leave the country with my family,” he chance to destroy all sensitive records. we welcomed some 750,000 Vietnamese said. “Otherwise, we’d be killed.” He The conquering Communists found a as refugees. had already had an infant daughter list of 30,000 Vietnamese who helped us. In a visit to Iraq, I found myself killed, when the Mahdi Army attacked FILIPPO MONTEFORTE They systematically hunted those 30,000 thinking a lot about Vietnam. This was his house.

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Lately, I’ve wondered what happened to Colonel Abbas and his family. Campaigning in 1980, five years after Saigon fell, Ronald Reagan said that Sci-Fi’s Vietnam had been a “noble cause.” This caused a ruckus. Yet nothing could be Sad Puppies more obvious, to me, than that Vietnam A literary revolt against was a noble cause, whatever the mis- political correctness takes of the war. The same is true of Iraq, I think. Yet it’s understandable that BY DAVID FRENCH Americans want to wash their hands of it. We are tired of the movie, and long ago were. T turns out that pop culture doesn’t In the first year of his presidency, inexorably drift toward political 2009, President Obama won the Nobel I correctness. The forces of “social Peace Prize. In his lecture, he noted the justice” are not invincible, and con- incongruity of being both a peace laure- servative artists do have cultural power. ate and the leader of a country engaged Just ask the very angry, very frustrated in two wars. “One of these wars is members of the science-fiction Left. winding down,” he said. He did not Conservatives are by now familiar even utter the word “Iraq.” He defended with the depressing pop-culture script. our war in Afghanistan. Angry at perceived injustice or exclu- Two months later, Vice President sion and eager to spread their particular Biden said, “I am very optimistic brand of “social justice,” the Left tar- about Iraq. I mean, this could be one gets for transformation an artistic medi- of the great achievements of this um that was previously not overtly or administration.” It has not proven so. intentionally politicized. Within a few In a recent interview with me, Senator short years, the quality of art—or its McCain said, “Barack Obama wanted popularity—becomes far less relevant out.” And when administration offi- than either its message or the identity of cials say that “they tried to leave a the artist. As part of this process, presti- decent force behind, a stabilizing gious awards are no longer a means of force, they are lying, and I don’t say rewarding the best work but rather a that very often.” means of rewarding the best work from The whole of my life, I’ve heard con- the list of acceptable choices. servatives say, bitterly, “It’s dangerous There are few better recent examples of to be a friend and ally of the United this phenomenon than the film industry States.” The Iraqi visa-seekers most and the Oscars. The movies Zero Dark likely agree. There are lots of immi- Thirty and American Sniper both faced grants in this country, including mil- successful campaigns to deny them best- lions of illegals from Mexico and picture awards not because of any artistic Central America, who are on track to be deficiencies but because critics hated the amnestied. Surely we can find room, in messages. And who can forget the recent our vast country, for a few thousand outrage over the fact that all 20 Oscar Iraqis who risked their lives alongside acting nominations went to white actors? us and, for their pains, are now threat- While Oscar nominations are always ened with murder? debatable, a person’s pigmentation does Soon, we will have desperate Af- not render his acting better or worse. ghans to think about, or ignore. The Through it all, conservatives have Iraqi Refu gee Assistance Project helps largely been bystanders. While there are them, too. IRAP’s website says, certainly conservatives who thrive in “Every day we receive emails and film, in television, and in literature— letters from Afghan interpreters and and produce marvelous works of art in former and active-duty U.S. Service the process—they have been unable or Mem bers concerned about their inter- unwilling to mount a systematic counter - preter’s fate.” IRAP also cites a “recent attack to the leftist politicization of news estimate,” and a painful estimate entire industries. it is: One Afghan is killed every 36 Until now, that is—until the so-called hours owing to his affiliation with the social-justice warriors attempted to co- United States. opt the world of science fiction. Science-

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fiction literature has long been home to Correia, author of the popular Monster Entertainment Weekly ran a story with the wildest kinds of ideological, social, Hunter series—mainly because of their the same theme, until reality intruded. It and religious imaginings. With no re - perceived ideologies. was soon forced to append the follow- quirement to reflect the world we live in It turns out, however, that conservative ing correction: (indeed, the writers’ mandate is often to nerds have spine. Rather than watch, After misinterpreting reports in other create entirely new worlds and new helplessly, yet another arbiter of pop cul- news publications, EW published an social mores), science-fiction and fantasy ture transform itself into a leftist playpen, unfair and inaccurate depiction of the Sad writers can and do conjure up everything Correia struck back with his own move- Puppies voting slate, which does, in fact, from Star Trek’s and Star Wars’ utopian ment. He called it “Sad Puppies.” Why? include many women and writers of versions of an intergalactic U.N. (the Because, in Correia’s words, “boring color. As Sad Puppies’ Brad Torgerson United Federation of Planets and the message fiction is a leading cause of explained to EW, the slate includes both Galactic Republic, respectively), to Puppy Related Sadness.” (Never let it be women and non-caucasian writers, Robert A. Heinlein’s classic imagin- said that conservatives can’t fight the including Rajnar Vajra, Larry Correia, ing—in Starship Troopers—of a future culture wars with humor and verve.) Annie Bellet, Kary English, Toni where soldiers rule, to George R. R. Assisted by a few al lies, Correia pro- Weisskopf, Ann Sowards, Megan Gray, Sheila Gilbert, Jennifer Brozek, Cedar Martin’s unrelentingly grim Song of Ice posed his own slate of Hugo candidates. Sanderson, and Amanda Green. In recent years, the social-justice Left has increasingly attacked science fiction as a “white nerds’ club” and has sought to elevate writers with more politically correct messages—and identities. and Fire series, in which great houses vie In 2014, a number of them actually re - With one magnificent correction, EW for a throne in a world where morality ceived nominations. The leftist response demonstrated not only its own bias and gets you killed. And those works repre- was predictable and familiar. Correia lack of journalistic competence but also sent the mainstream. At the edges, sci- described the backlash: the many ways in which conservative ence fiction is wilder still. artists defy the Left’s stereotypes. They Many of you have never heard of me In other words, creativity rules. Or it before, but the internet was quick to are not, it turns out, merely a white did. In recent years, the social-justice Left explain to you what a horrible person I nerds’ club. has increasingly attacked science fiction am. There have been allegations of fraud, To applaud the Sad Puppies is not to as a “white nerds’ club” and has sought to vote buying, log rolling, and making up endorse all their work or to endorse elevate writers with more politically cor- fake accounts. The character assassina- each author’s worldview. As with any rect messages—and identities. There is, tion has started as well, and my detractors collection of human beings, some of the of course, nothing wrong with trying to posted and tweeted and told anyone who Sad Puppies are admirable, and I’m introduce audiences to new voices. Nor is would listen about how I was a racist, a sure that some are not. No one has there anything wrong with attempting to homophobe, a misogynist, a rape apolo- offered a definitive critique or evalua- use new voices to expand the audience. gist, an angry white man, a religious tion of their work in the aggregate— fanatic, and how I wanted to drag homo- But the social-justice Left is never content Hugo voters consider a work only in sexuals to death behind my pickup truck. with the marketplace—with competing relation to the other works in its category. on equal terms for market share. It instead In other words, the quality of the Indeed, to endorse the Sad Puppies has to exclude in the name of fighting Sad Puppies slate was less important merely because of their presumed ideo - exclusion, silence dissent in the name of than its identity. Too white. Too male. logies is to commit the same error as the dialogue, and demonstrate intolerance in Too conservative. Left, to presume that message and iden- the name of tolerance. Correia and his allies were undeterred. tity substitute for quality. And so it was in science fiction, as left- In 2015 their Sad Puppies slate dominated It is, however, worth applauding their ist writers commandeered the awards the nominations, sending the social-justice resistance to the notion that all artistic cre- process to turn the Hugo Awards—among Left—facing a setback after so many ation must be political, that the color of science fiction’s most prestigious—into years of cultural success—into almost one’s skin trumps the content of one’s an exercise in ideological back-patting, comical hysterics. Once again, the quality work, and that art always and everywhere honoring the “best” that political cor- of the nominees was far less important must conform to the Left’s intellectual rectness had to offer. Members of the than their racial and gender identity. And fashion of the moment. The Sad Puppies’ World Science Fiction Convention, bet- this time, the hysterics spilled over into victory does not represent a permanent or ter known as “Worldcon,” vote on the publications not known for following the even necessarily an enduring triumph. Hugo Awards, and leftist writers began ins and outs of science-fiction literature. Science-fiction literature is still a work in not just lobbying voters to elect their own A writer at The New Republic declared, progress. But at least now the story arc favorites but also campaigning against “Science fiction’s white boys’ club strikes has changed, and readers can’t know how notable conservatives—including Larry back.” (Correia, by the way, is Hispanic.) the tale will end.

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The Castros’ New Friend Obama’s change of policy helps Cuba’s oppressive regime, not its democratic dissidents

BY JAMES KIRCHICK

Havana ’VE visited more than my fair share of dictatorships, but remains prohibited. But since January, travelers to Cuba need Cuba is the only one where travelers at the airport must not obtain any OFAC license at all. This essentially means that I pass through a metal detector upon entering, in addi- any American who wants to venture to Cuba, including those tion to leaving, the country. Immediately after clearing who plan to do nothing but sit on the beach all day and dance customs at José Marti International Airport, visitors line up salsa all night, are now free to do so. for a security check. Anyone found carrying contraband— The foremost concern of the 56-year-old Castro junta—the counterrevolutionary books, say, or a spare laptop that might world’s oldest continuous regime—is self-perpetuation. be given to a Cuban citizen—could find himself susceptible Preventing anything that may pose a threat to its continued to deportation. existence—any material that might germinate the seed of Contrary to popular conception, traveling to Cuba as an independent thought within an individual Cuban’s mind— American was not difficult before President Barack Obama’s from making its way onto the island is therefore a priority. In announcement last December of “the most signif icant changes light of the increased number of tourists visiting Cuba since in our policy in more than 50 years.” All anyone had to do was the Obama administration lightened restrictions on American transit through a third country and not disclose his visit to Cuba travel, a number that is expected only to grow with time, the upon reentering through U.S. customs. It was the aura of the Castro regime has had to beef up its capabilities in this field. embargo that dissuaded Americans. Moreover, there have long But judging from the headlines of the Cuban Communist- been myriad legal exceptions for Americans to travel to Cuba: party newspaper, Granma, which boasted of the dramatic rise They merely had to obtain a license from the Treasury in tourism on a recent cover of its weekly English edition, Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) under Havana doesn’t seem to mind. one of twelve broad, rather vague, permitted categories, such Some four months after President Barack Obama made his as “educational” and “research.” “Tourism” as such was and announcement, I visited Cuba, wanting to find out what its democratic dissidents had to say about the new winds from Mr. Kirchick is a fellow with the Foreign Policy Initiative, a correspondent for the Washington. Given the course of American foreign policy Daily Beast, and a columnist for Tablet. over the past six years, which has seen Washington “reset” ROMAN GENN

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relations with a variety of implacably hostile regimes, the OT only were American diplomats with expertise in proclamation of a new policy toward Cuba was hardly sur- the region excluded from the negotiations (the better prising. Obama had signaled his intention to effect such a to prevent them from leaking against a policy shift transformation as early as the 2008 presidential campaign, Nsome of them might have considered ill advised), so were when he vowed to negotiate directly with a host of American many of the island’s political dissidents and independent jour- adversaries and declared that “we’ve been engaged in a failed nalists. “I can’t understand why they didn’t ask for precondi- policy with Cuba for the last 50 years, and we need to change tions,” Antonio Rodiles says of America’s negotiating posture. it.” Though Cuba-watchers assumed a shift of some sort was I spoke with the American-educated political activist at his coming, the way in which the new policy came about and its home. As with most of the meetings I had with dissidents, I list of particulars took many by surprise. showed up at his front door unannounced in the evening. Obama’s December 17 declaration followed 18 months of Planning appointments in advance is logistically difficult and secret negotiations between the president and his Cuban counter - inadvisable security-wise. Internet access is extremely limited part, Raúl Castro, who took the reins of power after his older (Cuba has the lowest ratio of computers to inhabitants in the brother Fidel fell ill in 2008. Even senior State Department Western hemisphere) and is available almost exclusively in officials involved in Latin American affairs were kept in the hotels and embassies. At a price of about $4.50 per hour, it is dark about the negotiations, which were led by Ben Rhodes, a far beyond the means of most Cubans. Arranging meetings deputy national-security adviser in his mid 30s with no official beforehand by phone, meanwhile, attracts the attention of the diplomatic experience but who does possess an MFA in crea - security police, who are presumed to listen to everything. tive writing from New York University. This was the man Rodiles did not seem at all surprised that an American jour- Obama put in charge of negotiations with Cold War–hardened nalist would visit him at 10 P.M.; late-night knocks on the Cuban Communist apparatchiks, and it shows. door (from foreign well-wishers or worse) seem to be a regu - In exchange for the release of Alan Gross, an elderly lar occurrence. USAID contractor arrested and accused of espionage in 2009, It’s not only the Cuban security services that monitor dissi- the United States released the remaining three members of dents; nearly all of Cuban society is primed to serve as the the “Cuban Five,” a posse of spies sent to infiltrate the regime’s eyes and ears through the proliferation of local Miami Cuban-exile community in the late 1990s. Wash - Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Established by ington insisted that Gross was not a spy, and so in order to Castro in 1960 shortly after he took power, they are dubbed avoid tying his release to the freeing of the Cuban agents, the “civil rearguard for the vanguard of the militias . . . in the Havana agreed to deliver a longtime American-intelligence struggle against the internal and external enemy.” Combining asset it had imprisoned. Gross’s release from a prison sen- elements of both the Gestapo and the Stasi (children are tence he ought never to have served in the first place and that encouraged to report on their parents if they see anything sus- nearly killed him was officially presented as an unrelated act picious, and neighbors are expected to rat out friends who might of goodwill. be planning an escape), CDRs exist on literally every block This swap of prisoners was the only part of Obama’s rap- across the country (over 8 million of Cuba’s 11 million citizens prochement in which Havana had to reciprocate, and lopsid- are members) and monitor the activities of each and every indi- edly at that. Moreover, it was just a prelude to the real meat vidual in a neighborhood. The CDR emblem could not be more of the Obama announcement: a loosening of the trade and blatant: a cartoon Cyclops with a giant eye raising a sword travel restrictions America has imposed on Cuba, a collec- above his head. Initially, Castro praised his cederistas, as com- tion of measures enforced through six statutes colloquially mittee members are known, as “1 million gags” for their ability known as the “embargo.” The relaxed travel policies, the to silence regime opponents, whom he ritually describes as pending opening of embassies, the removal of Cuba from the subhuman. “It is impossible that the worms and parasites can State Department’s list of terrorism sponsors, the restoration make their moves if, on their own, the people . . . keep an eye of limited economic activity—all longtime goals of the on them,” he has declared. One sees CDR signs on all types of Cuban regime—were declared without any corresponding buildings across the country. demands that Havana change its conduct. Indeed, in his Cuban dissidents are used to receiving guests and know that speech announcing the new Cuba policy, Obama essentially they’re being watched, and I was generously welcomed by the admitted that he would have ushered in these unilateral Cubans I met. The one exception was a young activist who changes much earlier had it not been for the “obstacle” that was obviously afraid when I showed up at his door on a the imprisonment of an American citizen presented to his Sunday evening. He politely made it clear that he wished for grand plans. To fend off accusations that it was giving away me to leave his home immediately. He had somewhere to be, something for nothing, the administration claimed that the he said, an assertion that, judging by my finding him shirtless regime would release 53 political prisoners identified on a on the couch watching television, was highly unlikely. But it State Department list. In January, after weeks of saying it was his home I had entered, and his life he was risking, and so would not publicize the list, State provided the names to I didn’t protest. select members of Congress, revealing that some of the Rodiles studied physics and mathematics at Florida State indivi duals had been freed before December 17, others were University in Tallahassee yet ultimately decided to return to his close to finishing their sentences, and a few had already been homeland to fight for democracy. He is the main coordinator of rearrested. Indeed, in Cuba, as in all authoritarian societies, a civil-society group composed of writers, artists, and other the door to prison is a revolving one. In March, 610 people professionals called “Citizen Demand for Another Cuba,” were arrested on political charges. aimed at persuading the Cuban government to ratify a series of

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United Nations covenants on human rights. “They just started prisoned political dissidents. Their protests are regularly met negotiating,” he says of the American government in a be- with violence by regime-backed mobs, which drag the women wildered tone. “They didn’t involve the Cubans from outside by their hair through the streets. (The regime exports this sort or here inside, and I didn’t understand why they did it that way. of thuggery; at last month’s Summit of the Americas in If they really want a change they’re going to see that nothing’s Panama, a horde of Castro supporters descended on a group going to change.” of Cuban non-governmental activists, beating them to the Rodiles takes inspiration from the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, point that Panamanian police had to intervene.) The organi- which inspired the Charter 77 movement in Czechoslovakia zation’s founder, Laura Pollán, created the group after her and other human-rights groups to form behind the Iron Cur - husband, a leader of the outlawed Cuban Liberal party, was tain. That accord, at least officially, committed the Soviet arrested during the 2003 crackdown known as the “Black Union and its satellites to respect human rights, and it provided Spring.” Pollán died under mysterious circumstances in dissidents such as Václav Havel and Lech Walesa a public 2011, the famed Cuban health-care system having failed first benchmark by which to hold the Communist regimes to to accurately diagnose her dengue fever and then to provide account. Genuine political change in Cuba would require consti- her adequate care. tutional reform, as the Cuban constitution permits individual Like many of the Cubans I meet, Soler takes great pride in freedom only insofar as such liberties don’t threaten the making the most of what little she owns: Her tiny flat is deco- Communist party as “the superior leading force of society and rated with plants and various other tchotchkes. A framed

One way to think of Cuba is as a giant public-housing project. A place where everyone is a ward of the state, and where private enterprise is next to nonexistent, the country breeds similar social pathologies.

of the state.” Wilfredo Vallin, a leader of the non-governmental photo graph of her meeting with Pope Francis outside St. Cuban Law Association, told me that, “if Cuba ratifies the Peter’s Basilica graces the wall; her dog nips at my feet. A pacts it would be forced to change its constitution.” Rodiles vivacious Afro-Cuban, Soler lives in a decrepit, concrete hous- despairs that there will be no such American pressure put upon ing block, part of an expanse of apartments on the outer reaches Cuba to do so, however, as Obama’s aspiration seems to be of Havana so vast that neighborhoods are divided by “zone” normalization at all costs. Restoring full diplomatic ties with numbers. The crumbling scenery stretches in all directions, Havana has come to be a legacy project for the president, who bleak and limitless, like a setting for one of J. G. Ballard’s views it as his duty to right America’s many perceived wrongs. dystopian short stories. “The Obama administration already has an agenda, and they One way to think of Cuba is as a giant public-housing pro- don’t want to change,” Rodiles sighs. “They got advice from ject. A place where everyone is a ward of the state, and where some people that they think the better way is to, in some way, private enterprise is next to nonexistent, the country breeds legitimize the totalitarian system.” similar social pathologies. Walking through the outskirts of In light of his own predicament, Rodiles is right to be suspi- Havana and other unfashionable places where tourists rarely cious of the administration’s tactics. Less than two weeks after tread, one sees a great number of aimless people without any Obama triumphantly announced a new chapter in America’s sort of vocation. They just hang out. “Cubans don’t go to relationship with Cuba, Rodiles was arrested steps from his work to produce but to sustain,” Soler says. This is not an front door on the way to a free-speech demonstration in central indictment of the individual Cuban, who would work were Havana. A high wall surrounds his home, but it’s not high meaning ful work available, but of a regime that wants to keep enough to block the two cameras posted on telephone poles its people listless. across the street that he says monitor his house 24/7. “The government sells a lot of alcohol to occupy the minds I ask Rodiles how his campaign is progressing, and he says of the people,” Soler tells me, an observation that makes a lot that about 2,000 people have thus far signed a petition to the of sense once you’ve spent a few days in Cuba. Alcohol is government insisting upon its ratification of international plentiful and cheap. In the poor provincial city of Pinar del Rio, human-rights agreements. It’s a relatively small number for a about a two-hour drive west of Havana, I saw a boy no older country with some 11 million inhabitants, though Charter 77, than 13 walking the streets with a half-empty bottle of beer. A it should be noted, had only 242 initial signatories, in a country discotheque there was, on a Saturday night, full of people rang- that was a few million people larger. Simply signing such a ing in age from mid teens to 40s; a bottle of Havana Club sets document immediately brings one under suspicion; it is an act you back $6. Subsidizing the production of cheap alcohol so requiring remarkable courage. as to keep the population inebriated (and therefore distracted) One of the most courageous people I met on the island was is one of many tools that the Cuban regime learned from its Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White. Formed in 2003, erstwhile Soviet benefactor. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev Damas de Blanco, as it is known in Spanish, is a coalition of drastically cut production of vodka, increased its cost, and pro- wives, sisters, daughters, and other female relatives of im - hibited the sale of it before lunchtime. Some historians have

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speculated that reducing alcohol consumption, a cushion to dull the CUC. Few Cubans, however, receive CUCs. In addition to the pain of everyday life, led Russians to more quickly under- their ration books—used to acquire a meager amount of sta- stand the misery of their plight, unintentionally accelerating the ples such as rice and cooking oil—Cubans also receive Soviet Union’s demise. monthly salaries, averaging $19 (less than half the cost of liv- Like Rodiles, Soler is highly critical of the Obama adminis- ing). They are paid in the Cuban peso (CUP), equivalent to tration’s caving in to the Castros. “Every deal should be condi- about 4 cents. These CUPs can be used to splurge on the occa- tioned. America has to put conditions. If you are giving, you sional extra pair of underwear or to purchase pizza at a food have to receive, and for the moment the American government stand. As they are convertible only into CUCs, CUPs are is receiving nothing,” she says. Soler says that there has been no worthless outside the country. letup in the harassment of dissidents; regime agents smeared The dual-currency system is the basis of the country’s two- one member of her group with tar at a peaceful protest held in tiered economic structure, dividing Cubans with access to the February. “We are in the same position or even worse,” she far more valuable CUCs from those who earn only CUPs. thinks, as the Obama administration steamrolls forward with “Those in the peso-only economy are completely dependent on its normalization plans while asking for nothing in return. the government, which is in control of more than 85 percent of Supporters of restoring relations with Cuba insist that, in the total economy,” John Kavulich, president of the U.S.–Cuba the long run, it will prove detrimental to the Castro regime by Trade and Economic Council in New York, told Bloomberg opening up the country to Western influences and economic Businessweek recently. With these two currencies, and with investment. This has long been the point made by liberals, government ownership of industries as well as of the tourist libertarians, and even some conservative opponents of the trade, the regime has ensured that the coming influx of embargo, who, unlike many leftist opponents of longstanding American dollars will fall into its coffers. “The system is clev- American Cuba policy, harbor no sympathy for the regime. But erly and cynically designed to guarantee the fullest exploita- when I ask Soler whether increased American investment and tion of every Cuban worker for the benefit of the Castro more visitors will help people such as herself, she is adamant pocketbook,” says Thor Halvorssen, president of the Human in her response. Lifting the embargo in exchange for concrete Rights Foundation, which for years has sent small undercover reforms like legalizing independent media and ending re - delegations into Cuba with laptops, cell phones, cameras, and strictions on free speech would make sense, she avers. But other technical equipment to distribute among dissidents and lifting it without such conditions, she tells me, is “beneficial local journalists. (Raúl announced in 2013 that the regime will to the government, not the Cuban citizens. Money is coming scrap the CUC and make the CUP the country’s sole currency, in and it’s going straight to the government. Regular Cubans though it is unclear when, or even if, this reform will happen.) don’t touch it.” Though the Castro regime and its defenders like to blame In his speech announcing the policy shift, President Obama America for its problems, pointing to the embargo as chief declared that, “through a policy of engagement, we can more culprit, it is not for lack of American investment that Cuba is effectively stand up for our values and help the Cuban people so poor. Cuba under Castro has always been a client of another, help themselves as they move into the 21st century.” The more economically powerful state that is happy to subsidize it impracticality of this assertion do es not become fully apparent for propagandistic or strategic purposes. For decades, that until one visits Cuba and comes to appreciate how its peculiar sponsor was the Soviet Union, which initially saw value in economy functions. Cuba as a military outpost (and irritant of America) 90 miles off Florida’s coast. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba entered a period of sustained economic decline, which HE first thing to understand about the Cuban economy lasted until the arrival of Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian regime in is that the government controls nearly all forms of Venezuela. Subsidies (amounting to about 100,000 barrels of economic activity, with the exception of some black- oil a day at half the market price) from the oil-rich Venezuelans marketT activities like prostitution. “In Cuba, nobody does busi- managed to help Fidel right the ship, but as the collapse in ness with Cubans. They do business with the Castro family,” commodity prices and disastrous economic mismanagement says Frank Calzon, executive director of the Washington- have drastically reduced Caracas’s support for its comrades in based Center for a Free Cuba. Foreign companies do not hire Havana, the Castro regime has drifted about searching for their own workers but are assigned them by the government, another patron. Barack Obama could not have arrived at a which acts as middleman. Furthermore, companies do not pay more opportune time. their workers directly, but rather compensate the government, which decides how much money to dispense to its subjects. The Cuban economic system is essentially one of indentured HE initial charm of Havana is undeniable. To the servit ude, with the government loaning out its citizens for mas- American, for whom it has long been a forbidden sive profit. place, the city exudes mythology and mystique. The In order to prevent ordinary Cubans from acquiring and vintageT cars (over whose noisy engines one must shout the des- accumulating capital, the regime has cleverly instituted a two- tination to drivers), the music of Buena Vista Social Club, an currency system. One currency, the convertible peso (CUC), atmosphere evocative of Hemingway, women singing in the is pegged to the dollar and used by tourists to pay for hotels, str eets to sell their wares—all these cultural touchstones com- meals, taxis, and luxury goods available only in special stores bine to make a heady experience. Foreign tourists rave about inaccessible to regular Cubans. Visiting Cuba, foreigners will the city’s rustic and “authentic” atmosphere, laud the salsa never need to come into contact with any currency other than dancing, and gawk at the 1950s Mercury Sun Valleys that clog

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the roads (for some reason, the plethora of Soviet-era Ladas devoted to the concept, which urge explorers to be eco-friendly, don’t make it into the colorful photo albums extolling Cuba’s patronize local businesses rather than international hotel retro urban cool). Few visitors bother to visit an actual Cuban chains, and generally try to leave the destination better than home, and so you won’t hear them coo about the “classic” they found it. This altruistic pursuit is next to impossiblen i 1950s-era refrigerators—that is, if the house is lucky enough to Cuba, ironically one of the most popular pilgrimage destina- have one. Aside from a few carefully well-preserved plazas tions for the progressive traveler. My first two nights in outside the main tourist hotels, Havana is much dirtier and Havana, I stayed at a casa particular, a private home whose more run down than I imagined. Walking down its narrow owner has been permitted to rent out extra rooms to tourists. streets, I was reminded of bombed-out sections of Beirut, The landlady, a former Russian teacher, related how the gov- heaps of rubble and trash strewn about the decaying buildings. ernment imposes a huge monthly tax consisting of a percent- Steps from a billboard splayed with Castro’s visage and some age of her earnings in addition to a levy that is fixed regardless revolutionary verbiage, a woman picked through garbage. At a of how many guests she hosts. pharmacy, I watched a man purchase Band-Aids—individually, Aside from the meager number of CUCs that operators of not by the package. casas particulares get to keep, as well as the occasional tips “Sometimes when you have money you want to go to the accumulated by hotel bellboys and the like, practically all of market and buy meat and there’s nothing there,” Berta Soler the money that foreign tourists spend in Cuba winds up in told me. “If you’re able to find it, it’s bad quality. We wake up the pockets of the regime. The government owns outright every day thinking, ‘What am I going to eat today?’ and go to most of the hotels and maintains at least a 51 percent stake sleep thinking ‘What am I going to eat tomorrow?’” I dined at in resorts that are nominally the property of major foreign a variety of Cuban establishments, from the restaurant of a chains. Taxi drivers are obliged to turn over a fixed amount moderately priced tourist hotel to a relatively upm arket café to of cash to the government every month, as are the seemingly a canteen in a small, extremely poor provincial city. Across the independent mom-’n’-pop dining establishments. “When board, the quality of food was horrendous, and never before you see a private business and you see it’s prosperous, they have I been more eager to consume airplane cuisine. have some relationship with people from the elite,” Rodiles Experiencing socialism as pure as it exists in the contem- explains to me. “Without, it’s impossible.” Socially respon- porary world, one finds something vile about the tendency of sible tourism to Cuba is not only a chimera but a perversion so many First World leftists, out of a perverse belief that there of the concept. exists a thrilling nobility in involuntary (as opposed to delib- The Cuban embargo is not a hardship for the ordinary erate) poverty, to romanticize Cuba. For a state that claims to Cuban. It is, at most, an inconvenience for American travelers be classless, Cuba ironically has a highly stratified class sys- to Cuba, who cannot use their credit or ATM cards in the tem. Cuba’s wealthy elite represents a smaller and much richer country and must therefore prepare for their visit by making percentage of the country’s population (combined net worth all of their arrangements in advance over the Internet and also of the Castro brothers: $900 million) than the elite of a typical bring a large amount of cash (preferably euros). This was a CONTRIBUTOR

/ developed nation; its poor, consisting of the vast majority, lesson I learned the hard way, forcing me to ration the relatively meanwhile, are much more destitute. small amount of cash I brought to the island. The administra- “Socially responsible tourism” has long been a fashionable tion has said that it will ease restrictions on American financial RAUL TOUZON concern. There are countless travel websites and guidebooks institutions operating in Cuba, which will make things more

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convenient for American travelers and allow them to spend tration erected a Times Square–style ticker visible across 25 money on the island more easily. But few Cubans will ever windows on the top floor and displaying blunt, pro-democracy see that cash. messages in bright red letters. Its components smuggled into That American policy toward Cuba over the past half century Cuba via diplomatic pouch, the makeshift display flashed has “failed” is a widely held assumption. It is accurate, how- quotes ranging from the anodyne (“Democracy in Cuba”) to the ever, only insofar as “success” is characterized by the transfor- mildly provocative (Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream mation of Cuba into a liberal democracy. (By this standard, that one day this nation will rise up”). why is not the rest of the world’s policy toward Cuba—which This obviously annoyed the regime, and in response, it erected consists of treating it like any other country—also judged a 138 poles topped with black flags to obstruct the ticker’s visi- “failure”?) Proponents of engagement laud Raúl Castro’s eas- bility (Castro also ordered the parking lot of the interests sec- ing of travel restrictions, slight opening of the economy, and tion be dug up). The poles were installed at the end of the other reforms instituted since he took power in 2008, but they José Martí Anti-Imperialist Platform, a plaza directly outside never acknowledge the possibility that all of the American the interests section consisting of a stage and large concrete pressure and isolation leading up to that point might have had slabs on which are painted the ubiquitous revolutionary something to do with the changes. buzz phrases “Patria o Muerte” (“Homeland or Death”) and To be sure, not all of Cuba’s democratic dissidents oppose “Venceremos” (“We Shall Overcome”). Fifteen years ago, in the Obama administration’s opening. “[The embargo] is only the midst of the Elián González affair, the Cuban govern- helpful for the government,” Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, ment erected a statue of Martí—a leader of the movement co-founder of a small, independent news agency called seeking Cuba’s independence from Spain—clutching a small Hablemos (Let’s Talk) Press, tells me. Pérez gathers informa- child (meant to be González) while pointing his finger tion from correspondents across the country and regularly accusatorily at the American building. Over the years, when- uploads it onto the agency’s website during the two-hour ever the Cuban regime has wanted to gin up anger at the United daily timeslot he’s allotted by the regime to use a foreign States, it has bused tens of thousands of supporters to the Anti- embassy’s Internet connection. His colleagues occasionally Imperialist Platform, where they can spit venom at the building distribute printed newsletters; two of them served jail terms Fidel has called a “nest of spies.” for passing out samizdat literature. Yet Pérez’s wife, Margaly, In 2009, several months after Obama assumed office, the a member of the Ladies in White, disagrees with her husband, State Department removed the ticker, deeming it confronta- noting that such division of opinion is common in dissident tional. It was a sign of things to come. Today, the heavily households. This, in itself, is a testament to the vitality of the forti fied interests section and the vast plaza outside are no civil, democratic debate that already exists among Cuba’s longer the sites of dueling slogans, the respective physical independent thinkers. representations of American democratic freedoms and The embargo (long falsely referred to as a “blockade” by the Cuban Communist obfuscations. The administration’s deci- Cuban regime and its Western sycophants) has been portrayed sion to abandon its predecessor’s robust, if piquant, provoca- as the tool of ruthless, embittered Cuban exiles. The “right- tion can be seen as a metaphor for the broader policy changes wing Miami Cubans” of lore, whose “right-wing” views in - it has implemented over the past four months, deserting the clude support for mult i-party democracy, freedom of speech, island’s democrats in pursuit of a no-conditions deal with and an end to the statist economic system in which a family- their oppressors. While the rest of the world—with a few cum-military syndicate owns practically everything, allegedly noble exceptions, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, have, out of vindictiveness, inflicted the embargo upon those ex-Communist countries that reversed their pro-Castro poli- benighted Cubans who stayed behind. But that’s not the way cies almost immediately after the Cold War transitions and the dissidents I met see the situation. “The problem that Cuba began providing vigorous support to the dissidents—has has had isn’t the embargo,” Soler tells me. “It’s the system accepted the regime and resigned itself to its perpetuation, that’s not working. Fidel and Raúl just sold a story that’s not America long stood as the most outspoken supporter of true, internationally and domestically.” democracy in Cuba. Changes to another edifice also signal something ominous about politics on the island. On my first day in Havana, I HE outsize role America plays in the Cuban popular walked past El Capitolio, the pre-revolutionary parliament imagination is apparent in its embassy, which is unique modeled on the U.S. Capitol. Early in his rule, Castro found in ways other than that it is officially called an “interests that he didn’t have much use for the building (“true democracy” Tsection,” denoting the lack of official diplomatic relations. Most would be expressed through voting by a show of hands in the of the foreign legations in Havana are located in Miramar, a tony city’s Plaza de la Revolución), and so it was converted into the area several kilometers from the capital’s center. There, the Cuban Academy of Sciences. El Capitolio is set to reopen embassies are housed in giant villas that belonged to the elite later this year, once again serving as a legislative body, hous- who ruled in the era of dictator Fulgencio Batista. The American ing the rubber-stamp, single-party National Assembly. interests section, however, is a heavily guarded compound on Walking past, I noticed that the building’s exterior granite the Malecón, the stone embankment abutting the strip of road walls were halfway through a resurfacing, an overhaul well along the Caribbean Sea. And unlike the old mansions of timed for the huge number of American tourists expected to Havana’s Miramar district, it consists of a seven-story, non- descend upon the island over the coming year. When it’s fin- descript office tower. In 2006, in an inspired bit of diplomacy ished, the regime will have put a gleaming new façade on its that today cynics might refer to as “trolling,” the Bush adminis- artificial house of representatives.

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and federal responsibilities, a division that enabled competition and accountability. The best way to move back in that direction A Constitutionalist would be for the federal government to cash out most of its spending on Medicaid and give it to the beneficiaries to help them buy insurance in the private market. The federal govern- Agenda ment should simultaneously make it easier for states to do the same thing with most of their Medicaid spending. And the federal Five priorities for the GOP contributions should no longer reward states for higher spending. People with low incomes would have better insurance that still provided them financial security, and the individual-insurance BY RAMESH PONNURU market would be strengthened by their participation in it. At the & REIHAN SALAM same time, we would have no more federally induced state- budget crises, the program would no longer grow on autopilot, and its design would be simpler and more transparent for voters. OR Republicans, defending the Constitution is like the 2) The REINS Act: Many Republicans have, to their credit, weather: They all talk about it, but nobody ever does advocated legislation requiring a congressional vote before F anything. Or, at least, does anything practical. major regulations can take effect, and it was one of the first bills Conservatives think that modern government has House Republicans passed when they took Congress in 2011. drifted far from the constitutional design, to the country’s detri- Republi cans have mostly described the legislation as a way of ment. Too often, though, the remedies they offer are either fanci- safeguarding economic growth and economic liberty, but it too ful or plainly inadequate. In the former category are proposals for has a constitutional dimension: It is a means of countering the constitutional amendments to provide more structural protection tendency of modern government to vest legislative power in for constitutional principles that have fallen by the wayside: unelected agencies. supermajority requirements for tax increases, for example, as a Congressmen might well shrink from having to vote on major means of restoring limits on the federal government. Whatever regulations: Over the last few decades they have increasingly the merits of these ideas, the very high bar the Constitution erects preferred to enact statutes with vague goals and leave agencies for formal amendment limits their utility. In the latter category to develop the controversial implementing regulations. The are pledges to appoint only originalist judges. That goal is cer- congressmen can then support, oppose, or keep quiet about tainly an important one, but it sometimes causes conservatives to those regu lations without having to take responsibility for neglect the duties of the other branches of the government, and of them. The REINS Act would make it harder for Congress to citizens, in preserving the constitutional order. dodge its duties, and a more accountable regulatory state would A practical constitutionalist agenda for the Congress would probably be at least a modestly less intrusive one. attempt both to strengthen constitutional principles such as fed- 3) Bring agency spending under congressional control: eralism and the separation of powers and to habituate legislators Another step toward reining in agencies would be to make their to the idea that they have a role to play on these questions. The funding depend on Congress. Congressional power over spend- agenda would also illustrate how these principles would make for ing—a powerful protection for self-government that predates the better government. Here are a few ideas that conservative con- Constitution—has been eroded as government agencies have gressmen, and presidential candidates, should be considering. been given independent funding streams. The immigration 1) Medicaid reform: Medicaid is usually, and understandably, bureaucracy gets its funding from customs fees and the like; the discussed in terms of the budget and health care. It is the second- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a statutory right to largest item in most state budgets, and overall spending on it funding from the Federal Reserve, which makes it an indepen- totaled $449 billion in 2013. Most of the expansion of insurance dent agency within an independent agency, self-government coverage that has taken place under Obamacare has come in the buried under several layers of bureaucracy. form of larger Medicaid rolls. The program has repeatedly caused It’s fine for specific fees to be dedicated to specific govern- state-budget crises, but for all its cost it does not appear to have ment programs, but how the money is spent has to be subject to done a lot to improve the health of its low-income beneficiaries: ongoing congressional review. Changing the law to that effect Mostly it seems to provide them with financial security and its would not guarantee that Congress would get its way every time attendant psychological benefits. it fought the president over the conduct of an agency. Still less The program’s joint federal–state structure has abetted its would it guarantee that Congress would use its spending growth while making it immune to reform. State governments authority wisely. It would, however, bring Congress closer to have been able to increase benefits and expand eligibility while having the leverage it should have. the federal government has picked up more than half the tab. That 4) Eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes: Believers is a formula for spending more money on the program than either in federalism should loathe the state- and local-tax deduction, the federal government or the states would spend if it were either which in effect transfers resources from taxpayers living in low- a purely federal or a purely state responsibility. It is also the set- tax states to those living in high-tax states and, worse, raises the up for all kinds of squalid behavior. (States, for example, enact average state tax rate. Getting rid of it entirely would have a num- “hospital taxes” to spend on Medicaid, get matching money from ber of beneficial effects. In 2015, the deduction will reduce fed- the feds, and then give the tax money back to the hospitals.) eral revenues by $80.6 billion, a price tag substantially higher As Michael Greve has argued in The Upside-Down Consti - than that of the much-maligned mortgage-interest deduction. tution, the Founders envisioned a sharper division between state This revenue could be used to finance a large tax cut that would

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benefit all taxpayers, not just those in high-tax states. Alterna - that the failure to regulate in-state commerce in marijuana will tively, it could be used to reduce deficits. Eliminating the deduc- lead to negative spillover effects that cross state borders. If a state tion would also make voters in states such as New York, New can demonstrate that it is capable of regulating its in-state mari- Jersey, and California more tax-sensitive, as they would no juana market effectively, however, the justification for federal longer be shielded from the full impact of their tax bills. interference is greatly weakened. 5) Allow states to go their own way on marijuana: Public With this principle in mind, Congress could pass a law formally opinion on marijuana is changing rapidly. A narrow majority declaring that the federal government would recognize the legal of Americans now favors marijuana legalization, and a num- status of marijuana businesses under state law as long as in-state ber of states are experimenting with creating their own legal marijuana markets met certain requirements. The same principle marijuana markets. The problem is that while there are a num- could extend to other policy questions as well, such as the federal ber of new marijuana businesses that are legal under state law, role in establishing a minimum drinking age. If a state moves to they remain illegal under federal law. This has led to a great lower its drinking age while pursuing various other steps that deal of uncertainty and confusion, yet it also creates an oppor- would reduce the harms associated with alcohol consumption, tunity for conservatives. should the federal government try to make states keep their mini - The current marijuana debate highlights the important but mum drinking age at 21? By limiting federal interference in the much-neglected constitutional distinction between interstate regulation of in-state markets to what is strictly necessary to commerce and in-state commerce. In Gonzales v. Raich, the achieve legitimate constitutional purposes, we will foster more Supreme Court ruled that Congress had the power to criminalize creativity and experimentation at the state level. the local cultivation and use of marijuana under the commerce These ideas, and others like them, cannot of course be the clause even if state law authorized it. In his concurring opinion, entirety of Republicans’ legislative agenda over the next few Justice Antonin Scalia observed that Congress has the power to years or their campaign platform in 2016. They do not need to regulate in-state activities that do not have an impact on interstate be the first items on which Republicans act in 2017 should they commerce when doing so is “necessary to make a regulation of have control of the government then. But they ought to be part interstate commerce effective.” But what if regulating in-state of the party’s agenda. Shoring up the constitutional architecture activities is not necessary to achieve this goal? Recently, William is a unify ing theme for conservatives, and the past few years have Baude, a law professor at the University of Chicago, has argued given conservatives increasing reason to be concerned about that constitutional doctrine should recognize that though government lawlessness. What Republicans have so far lacked is Congress has the right to regulate interstate commerce, it can reg- an agenda that demonstrates that they take seriously the concerns ulate:: in-state commerce :only :: insofar :: as :doing :: so is : essential to they voice and won’t just drop their rhetoric as soon as they take achieving a legitimate constitutional purpose. One could argue power. That’s something they can change.

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3 8 | www.nationalreview.com MAY 1 8 , 2 0 1 5 lileks--READY_QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/28/2015 10:29 PM Page 39

Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS The More You Know

EWS BRIEF: Kraft Foods, after a prolonged cam- Anyway cylinders are what’s bad for you. But, you say, paign by a “healthy food” blogger, announced aren’t cucumbers natural, and aren’t they cylinders? it would remove the chemicals that give mac & Cucumbers are turned into relish. I know, I know: MIND N cheese its distinctive hue. BLOWN, but there it is, the connection Monsanto doesn’t For a long time I’ve been nervous about peanuts. I’d eat want you to see or their whole billion-dollar death scheme some, and then six months later I’d have a cold. Like would go down the tubes. Also I think most of the preser- clockwork! I try to detox every fortnight with a diet of vatives they put into pickle relish are so deadly they cause nothing but filtered water and celery suppositories—my lab mice in cancer. That’s right. Cancer just grows a lab gracious, they’re long things—but still I felt like I was full mouse inside it. of peanut chemicals. I even went to the doctor a week One of the things I don’t eat is sugar of course because ahead of my monthly checkup and asked if she found any sugar makes you hyper and run on and on and on and chemicals in my bloodstream. She hesitated for a moment sound like some crazy person obsessed with an issue no before saying, Well, yes. There’s iron, for starters. one else knows enough about because they’re blinded by Iron? Like the metal? When I got home I looked up iron on corporate advertising and maybe get Monsanto money the Internet and found it was not only connected with certain possibly through a check I don’t know but my neighbor components in nuclear weapons but can also be fatal if drives a nice car and I know they eat Lucky Charms ingested, especially in sword form. A lot because I saw his wife buy it and I said of people blame “sword-form iron” for something and we don’t talk now except blood loss and concussions—well, their when my cat gets out and it’s 3 A.M. and surviving relatives blame it—and Euro - I’m in the neighbor’s backyard, on all pean legislators have proposed banning fours, like a cat would be? To get her to iron in “chunk form” from soft cheeses come back? You know? But sugar is in and various relishes. Which reminds eve rything. It’s in SALT. I swear it’s in me—have you seen how green American salt and you know salt is a chemical that relish is? Doesn’t that make you wonder? ends in -ide and what else ends in -ide? Are they using a green-intensifying Right right suicide. And that’s been agent, like chromalycanolide, which I linked to— think was used to enhance old Techni - Sorry, sorry, I was talking about color movies, like that one shot in the peanuts! That’s what got me started! desert near an atomic test where everyone Sorry, I just have so much energy on later got cancer? John Wayne too. this new diet, it’s wonderful, it’s like living inside a fire- Anyway relish probably causes low-level fatigue and a works display without any of the gunpowder vapor— mild, constant form of paranoia, which is what I usually you know, that falls on rice paddies in China and has feel. But it can’t be from pickles because I cut them out of decreased their fertility 95 percent? Anyway peanuts, my diet years ago. like I said I got a cold within six months of eating these Actually I just cut out hot dogs. Actually I cut out tofu peanuts. It was at my friend’s house—well, we used to hot dogs, because research suggests that it’s not the content be friends—and I asked if they were organic, and she of hot dogs that makes them so deadly but the shape. The said if you mean did they come out of the ground and body is not meant to absorb cylindrical shapes. It’s un - were they once an organism, yeah, they’re organic. They natural. Nature is round and perfect. Nature sometimes were so tasty! I thought it was that natural salt they use, makes a nice oval, like an egg, but modern eggs come from the one they get by distilling and reducing the sweat of factory farms where chickens are injected with a poiso- Native Americans. But then six months later I get this nous substance called Poison—I think it’s a trade name— cold, and I start to wonder. to make the birds die so that they don’t have to spend Turns out the kind of peanut was “GoldenRoast.” money on killing machines. It’s true. I saw a video about it Studies have linked gold to wars and economic fluctua- on the Internet intercut with pictures from Auschwitz, and tions!!! Anyway I’m off gold now for good, which reminds your heart just broke. All those dead chickens. Also, what me. Did you see where FoodBabe, that AMAZING woman were they feeding them at Auschwitz? Those people on the Internet who blogs about how al l the chemicals in looked terrible. Anyway eggs are bad unless they’re local things are making our kids rashy and sick—she got Kraft and the vendor brought them to a market on a bike, not a to change the food coloring in mac & cheese so it’s slightly truck or anything that releases Xhaustohydrates or causes less yellowy! All by raising awareness about chemicals asthma in my cats. I would do anything for my cats. and making people like me send them a letter every day asking why they poison kids! Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. Isn’t science wonderful?

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

10:45 Signing ceremony for the campaign promises of a flat tax, 2017 Tax Reduction and Elimination rapid military buildup, the total dis- Act. During photo op, President mantling of Obamacare, and the abo- Jenner reminded her advisers that she lition of the Department of Edu cation. won the 2016 presidential election Doctors reported strange brain activity primarily on an economic and “oppor- following the visit consistent with March 22, 2017 tunity” platform and demanded that another aneurysm. POOL REPORT they “move quickly to undo the sti- 17:30 Photo session with Vanity WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS fling regulatory state implemented by Fair photographer Annie Leibovitz my predecessor.” for an upcoming Vanity Fair cover. 06:30 President Jenner enters the 12:30 Slow-carb lunch with President Jenner was given a selec- White House gym for her usual calis- Representative Paul Ryan followed tion of outfits to try on, and ended up thenics ritual. Your pool reporter wit- by light afternoon workout. During choosing an Alexander Wang evening nessed a strenuous treadmill workout press availability, President Jenner sheath in size 24. While the outfit was followed by a set of kettlebell swings. strongly pushed back against criti- being tailored and adjusted to Presi - President Jenner wrapped up her work- cisms that her recent crushing vic- dent Jenner’s specific requirements— out with two sets of Kegel exercises. tory in the Republican Women’s pool reporter has no confirmed details She reported being slightly sore. Annual Golf Tournament was some- on what those adjust ments were or 08:00 Call with National Rifle how unfair. where they were required on the gar- Association president Wayne LaPierre 14:30 President Jenner meets with ment—the president was directed to about fighting pending legislation in Pentagon officials to push for a faster hair and makeup before the shoot several states that would limit or cur- military buildup. No photo op. could begin. tail the sale of firearms. President 15:00 President Jenner meets with 19:30 After two hours of hair and Jenner pledged her total support. energy officials, executives, and makeup—and what White House 08:15 Coffee and national-security entrepreneurs as they celebrate the sources described to the pool reporter briefing with NSC staff and National rapid construction of the Keystone as a “hot-towel shave”—President Intelligence advisers. Vice President XL pipeline. No press avail. Jenner was photographed in three Cruz in attendance. President Jenner 15:45 Formal signing ceremony separate outfits: the Alexander Wang asked for a more detailed assessment with chief of staff Mitt Romney and sheath, a simple pantsuit, and week- of threats against domestic targets. Vice President Cruz. President end gardening-type blue jeans with a Vice Presiden t Cruz was mostly silent Brianna Jenner signed the executive bright gingham shirt. Sources tell and was observed doodling angrily. order formally pardoning former sec- pool reporter that President Jenner 09:30 Photo opportunity with retary of state Hillary Clinton for her refused to wear a replica of the run- EMILY’s List leaders. Pool reporter conviction for accounting fraud, ning shorts she wore when she won witnessed some awkward and uncom- fundraising illegalities, influence the men’s decathlon gold medal at the fortable moments as EMILY’s List peddling, racketeering, tax evasion, 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. leaders referred to President Brianna evidence tampering, and violations 20:30 State dinner. President Jenner Jenner as the “first almost totally of the Trading with the Enemy Act. escorted to the dinner by California female president of the United States.” “It’s not easy being a woman in poli- governor Gary Sinise. Pool reporter was rebuffed by Repre - tics,” the president said as she signed 23:00 President Jenner watches sentative Nancy Pelosi when asking the pardon. the tearful apology of Repre - her about the weirdness of the first 16:15 Hospital visit with ABC sentative Nancy Pelosi on CNN for male-to-female transgender president News personality Diane Sawyer. her “insensitive and hateful remarks being a Republican. “What’s weird,” Photo op with Sawyer and her neuro- toward transgender Americans” at she said, “is that the failed policies of logical team. Sawyer has been in what the earlier EMILY’s List event, and the past are now back. It’s Ronald doctors described as an “irreversible her use of “drag” as a pejorative. She Reagan in drag.” coma” following a massive aneurysm calls the congresswoman and accepts 10:00 Meeting with Republican the night of the landslide victory of her apology while at the same time National Committee chairman Reince President Jenner in November 2016. asking for her vote next week on Priebus about next year’s midterm President Jenner noted that she seems the Social Security Privatization elections. Priebus thanked President more animated than ever and, despite Act of 2017. Jenner for her “tireless efforts” in assurances that Sawyer can’t hear 23:30 The president retires for the fundraising and noted her soaring pop- anything, told her immobile body that evening after applying an all-night ularity with female voters. she was pushing through with her moisturizing masque.

4 0 | www.nationalreview.com MAY 1 8 , 2 0 1 5 books_QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/28/2015 5:27 PM Page 41 Books, Arts & Manners

ism and anti-police violence in modern It is a damning indictment, but not a A Not-So- American history. That is amply demon- frivolous one. It is faithfully reported strated by Bryan Burrough’s engaging by Burrough, but not resolved. That is new history of the era. consistent with the author’s stated mis- Distant In 1972 alone, there were 1,900 bomb- sion to provide “a straightforward nar- ings in the United States, virtually all of rative history of the period and its Mirror them carried out by domestic groups and people,” with judgments about politics individual American citizens. Yet the kept “to a minimum.” ANDREW C. M C CARTHY staggering number of explosives deto- The book is indeed a comprehensive nated, along with other incidents of tour of the era’s radical groups, concen- politically motivated violence that began trating on those that went “under- in the late Sixties and bled into the ground.” Burrough is at pains to define Reagan years, is largely forgotten today. this term as, essentially, living under The most obvious explanation for this pseudonyms; he cannot say it inevitably amnesia, if not the best one, is the means living on the run, because he has dearth of death that resulted from these turned up too much evidence of notori- hundreds of bombs (to say nothing of ous terrorists’ hiding in plain sight, the duds). The aging radicals now risi- some in comfortable abodes for years at bly spin that fortuity as the result of a stretch. their humanitarianism—“responsible The exploits of several radical cadres terrorism,” they smarm. Burrough con- are traced. Three groups stand out, firms, though, that it had more to do however, as the decade’s main players: Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, with their incompetence. the black avatars of anti-establishment the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary There was no Weather Underground violence; their adoring white, Ivy Violence, by Bryan Burrough 9/11. Despite scores of explosions at League–educated allies, who turned to (Penguin, 608 pp., $29.95) targets including the Empire State “the armed struggle” largely out of a Building, the Pentagon, and the U.S. craving for “black authenticity”; and EE here: a war against the Capitol, the era’s iconic image is not of the Nixon-era FBI, whose disregard United States waged by some smoldering skyscraper’s collapse, for the law was so thoroughgoing that apocalyptic ideologues who but of gun-toting newspaper heiress it became a threat more ominous than condemn the nation as in - Patricia Hearst robbing a bank. the terrorists it pursued—at least as Scorrigibly immoral, the cause of the Still, the sparse death count explains the history has been written by the vic- world’s woes. See there: a cross-country only so much. In countless ways, to - tors, the terrorists who literally got war against the police, ruthlessly day’s terrorists echo the grievances of away with murder, many going on to attacked—a number of them murdered the Seventies. In addition, the controver- become influential, politically con- in cold blood—because they happen to sies that engulf today’s terrorism inves- nected academics. be wearing uniforms that identify them, tigations trace to protocols imposed Predominantly, Days of Rage is a his- in the eyes of race-obsessed assailants, after renegade law-enforcement tactics tory driven by race. We often wonder as the muscle end of oppressive govern- undermined terrorism prosecutions in the why today, over half a century after the ment. See all around: a coterie of radi- Seventies. So why has the history—who Civil Rights Act, race consciousness cal lawyers fighting passionately for the terrorists were, what they did, and continues to pervade the public dis- sociopaths, blurring the lines between why—seemed to vanish? course of a nation that has twice elected zealous representation and complicity Joe Connor believes he knows the a black president, now has its second and skewering the government for law- answer, having had 40 years to think black attorney general, and features less surveillance and the shredding of about it. It was on his ninth birthday, in African-American men and women in due process. 1975, that Puerto Rican FALN terrorists positions of high office at every level of Is that a synopsis of post-9/11 America, murdered his father when they bombed government, in addition to prominence perhaps with special focus on the recent, Fraunces Tavern, a popular Wall Street in elite journalism and popular culture. violent fallout of racially charged inci- haunt. “The media,” he tells Burrough, It is, in fact, the shameful legacy of dents involving young black men and were “more than happy to let all this racial prejudice that ignited the Sixties police officers? We could be forgiven for go.” While not claiming that the media radicalism. That, in turn, devolved assuming so. Memories are short, after support savage methods, he maintains into the revolutionary violence of the all, and our own times deeply troubled. that today’s journalists share “a lot of Seventies. It was in that cauldron that In truth, though, the synopsis just as the same values” as the terrorists, and contemporary political and cultural aptly captures the 1970s, the most sus- thus prefer that we not remember them trendsetters came of age—and they’ve tained period of anti-American terror- as terrorists. never “moved on.”

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Beginning in 1959, what Burrough of state power who would remain the tar- The raves were short-lived. Jackson’s alternatively describes as the “torch of get of Black Power wrath. Still, Burrough adoring brother Jonathan, who was ‘self-defense’” and the legacy of Black contends, Newton and Seale essentially known to have received guns from Power passed through five iconic black used talk of “armed self-defense” as a Angela Davis, was killed in a shootout men. The first, and least remembered, recruiting tool to staff the Panthers’ after murdering a state judge he had was Robert F. Williams, a North Carolina social-welfare programs. taken hostage during a botched attempt NAACP leader who rose to minor inter- It was Eldridge Cleaver, “Black to extort Jackson’s release. Jackson him- national fame spearheading the defense Power’s fourth great voice,” who took self was later killed by police snipers of young black boys arrested and beaten the rhetoric seriously, seeking a gen- after leading a riot at San Quentin State for joining a white girl in a schoolyard uine revolution forged by guerrilla Prison during which five hostages— “kissing game.” Williams blazed what warfare. The story of the violent radi- most of them guards—were found mur- became a well-trod path. Upon drawing cal underground is that of the world dered in his cell. He became a martyr of plaudits from such progressive emi- wrought by Cleaver. He became the victimology for convicts, terrorists, and nences as Eleanor Roosevelt, he grew guiding force behind the murderous other leftists who claim that endemic bold, calling for blacks to use deadly Black Liberation Army (BLA), which American racism justifies crime and is force in self-defense—indeed, in main- splintered from the Panthers. He also the real cause of high black incarcera- taining that American law protected inspired the Symbionese Liberation tion levels. blacks only after they armed themselves. Army (SLA), the small but rabid con- Weatherman was an apocalyptic, over - Then, after crossing the law (he was federation of black convicts and ne’er- whelmingly white, and innately elitist dubiously charged with kidnapping do-well white radicals that abducted radical group, spawned by the Students white supporters he was probably pro- Patty Hearst and turned her into a will- for a Democratic Society (SDS). And tecting from an angry black crowd), he ing accomplice in their heists. Across of course they had a theory—what Ivy fled to Castro’s Cuba, which happily the spectrum of Seventies underground League Marxist would be without provided a stage for his now-virulent groups, robberies, especially of banks, one?—derived from French philoso- anti-Americanism and calls for armed were rationalized as Robin Hood exer- pher Régis Debray, a confidant of their insurrection by black U.S. servicemen. cises necessary to sustain the revolution. hero, Che Guevara. The “foco theory” Williams led seamlessly to the searing Cleaver boldly proclaimed that black held that if a revolutionary movement’s rhetoric of Malcolm X, the most charis- prison inmates, whose incarceration was politically advanced vanguard formed matic and influential of Black Power’s relentlessly limned as an indictment of into small guerrilla cells, it could spark a voices. His summons to bloody revolu- the American system, not of their own grassroots rebellion that would draw in tion tapped into black discontent with criminality, would form the leading the entire working class. institutional racism and impatience with edge of the revolution. No surprise then Nevertheless, there was a baleful the peaceful-resistance approach of that, when he fled to Algeria (whose left- irony for Weatherman. The perception Martin Luther King Jr. Here is a useful ist government recognized the “inter - of “Amerika” as incorrigibly racist is measure of American social progress: In national” BLA diplomatically and even what drove them to evolve into the our time, outrage was the common reac- gave Cleaver his own embassy for a “Weather Underground” and take up tion to pastor Jeremiah Wright’s glee time), the baton of black militancy was “the armed struggle”—after a few that the 9/11 attacks were a case of passed to George Jackson, a legendarily futile episodes of rioting and vandal- “America’s chickens coming home to fierce inmate who spent his short adult ism that became known as the “Days roost.” Even Wright’s most famous life in California prisons. of Rage” operation. But the racial insu- acolyte, Barack Obama, distanced him- Under Jackson’s tutelage, the decision larity of Carmichael’s Black Power self. Yet, virtually word for word, was made to retaliate for state abuses movement, coupled with the rise of Malcolm X said the same thing about against black inmates (includ ing racially the Panthers and the BLA, effectively John F. Kennedy’s assassi nation; at the motivated killings) by the retaliatory relegated white supporters to subordi- time, it was taken as a rally cry typical of killing of white prison guards. When nate status and, at times, outright the firebrand’s rhetoric (he also mocked Jackson was implicated in the murder of ostracism. This was excruciating for Martin Luther King as “a chump, not a a guard at Soledad Prison, his hard-left arrogant twenty-somethings who saw champ”), and it has not diminished him lawyer Fay Stender—with the help of such themselves as the intellectual leaders in the Left’s reverential eyes. “radical-chic supporters” as Jane Fonda, of an ideology that lionized the very The rhetorical shift from protest to Tom Hayden, the Grateful Dead, and blacks who regarded them as insuffi- resistance to incitement proceeded when UCLA professor Angela Davis—inflated ciently authentic. Malcolm X’s “mantle of black militancy” Jackson’s letter-writing prowess into inter- The seeming escape from this conun- was passed to Stokely Carmichael. His national celebrity. The New York Times drum was opposition to the Vietnam “Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com - proclaimed Soledad Brother, a heavily war. As former Weatherman Howard mittee” was an Orwellian designation: edited collection of the sociopath’s mis- Machtinger told Burrough, “We related The SNCC evolved into the Black sives—with, naturally, an introduction to the war in a purely opportunistic Panthers, the Oakland-based militants led by Jean Genet—“one of the most signif- way.” They used it to recruit and as a by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The icant and important documents since the rationale for levying war against an Panthers infamously carried weapons first black was pushed off the ship at imperialist regime. But the struggle openly and faced down police, the agents Jamestown colony.” was never about the war; it was about

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race. And emphasizing the war had the townhouse that the Ivy Leaguers real- unintended effect of marginalizing ized they lacked the stomach and were It’s the Weatherman: Its Marxist tropes about deficient in the skill needed for mass galvanizing the working class paled murder. The leaders, moreover, real- beside the obsessions with racial injus- ized they liked living in comfort and Parents tice and women’s rights that catalyzed relative stability—a luxury not afford- black revolutionaries and feminists. ed to murderers, especially cop killers, REIHAN SALAM Plus, it reduced Weatherman to a spent as shown by the frenetic lives of BLA force once the war wound down in the and FALN fugitives. So the Weather early Seventies. Underground changed course and Though the story of the Weather avoided killing people with their Underground has been told repeatedly, bombs—a strategy that made their Burrough offers several news-making “armed struggle” even more pointless. contributions. Former terrorists reveal Before the townhouse, though, they new details about their largely unex- were all in. plored life underground. We learn that Ultimately, the radicals won in the the leaders, particularly Bernardine sense that few of them—besides the Dohrn, Bill Ayers, and Jeff Jones, lived operatives convicted of homicides and very comfortably—and often quite mass-murder plots—did significant jail openly—while their subordinates scraped time. Many, like Ayers, were not even Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, by. They also staged a duplicitous plot prosecuted. Principally, this was because by Robert D. Putnam (Simon & Schuster, to reclaim leadership of the radical Left of FBI malfeasance. In its panicked reac- 400 pp., $28) when they emerged from underground, tion to the social upheaval, the anti-war only to be humiliated and shunned by rioting, and the brazen targeting of LMOST all Americans agree black revolutionaries and the rump of police, federal law enforcement went that our society ought to the movement. rogue—and it stayed rogue even after the strive for equality of oppor- Burrough also spotlights the previ- Supreme Court, in 1972, dramatically tunity—that no child’s ously little-noticed Ron Fliegelman, curtailed the government’s authority to Aprospects should be limited by the cir- who became the Weather Under - conduct warrantless surveillance of cumstances of his or her birth. Yet ground’s bomb technician after the cat- domestic subversives. Ultimately, the achieving equality of opportunity in this astrophic 1970 accidental bombing of a lawmen’s lawlessness made cases sense is quite a bit harder than you might Greenwich Village townhouse (the unprosecutable. Ayers, to borrow his think. Throughout human history, par- home of Weatherman Cathy Wilker - own words, was left “guilty as sin, [but] ents have been motivated by a desire to son’s wealthy parents). We learn that free as a bird.” better the lives of their children, and to Fliegelman’s sound bomb-construction In a final irony, it was not the terror- this end parents routinely make sacri- method became a model for other ists but three senior FBI officials who fices. It’s often said that fatherhood is a Seventies terrorist groups, and that the were pursued: Director L. Patrick Gray, force that restrains the worst impulses of Weather Underground also provided against whom charges were eventually men, and that motherhood fills women training for the FALN, the era’s most dropped, and top supervisors Edward with a powerful urge to protect their chil- disciplined, effective, and long-lasting S. Miller and W. Mark Felt (the late dren from the dangers of the wider revolutionaries. Felt is more famous now as “Deep world. Parents save, in the hope of build- Days of Rage is most valuable, how- Throat,” Woodward and Bernstein’s ing wealth that they can pass on to their ever, in destroying the myth, tirelessly Watergate source). The latter two were offspring, when they’d prefer to spend. spun by Ayers in his afterlife as an aca- pardoned by President Reagan after a They withstand petty indignities rather demic and unrepentant “small-c com- skeptical judge imposed small fines than lash out violently at those who munist,” that the Weathermen were and no jail time. Meanwhile, Demo - insult or otherwise undermine them, to “responsible terrorists” who really just cratic presidents Carter and Clinton avoid landing in jail or worse, all to help engaged in “armed propaganda”—tar- pardoned several of the handful of ensure that they can continue to meet geting buildings of symbolic value but Weatherman terrorists who drew seri- their familial obligations. The parental sparing people. Prior to the townhouse ous federal sentences. desire to fulfill these obligations hasn’t catastrophe, in which the clueless Notwithstanding all the tumult, the always been motivated by love or gen- bomb-makers Terry Robbins, Teddy revolutionary age seemed to fade away erosity of spirit alone: Fear of social dis- Gold, and Diana Oughton (Ayers’s in a mix of exhaustion and politically approval has also played a role. girlfriend) were killed, Weatherman tinged ambivalence about what it all But what if parents were promised blithely planned to murder police. In meant. That ambivalence endures. In that, regardless of the choices they made, fact, the powerful explosives acciden- Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage, how - regardless of whether they planned care- tally set off at the townhouse were nail ever, we now have the benefit of a lively fully for the future or indulged in this or bombs intended for a military dance at factual account of a largely forgotten era, that vice, they could rest assured that it Fort Dix; they would have killed hun- one that can teach us a great deal about was the job of society to provide for dreds of people. It was only after the our own contemporary strife. their children? What if all parents came

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to believe that their own contributions same spiritual nourishment? Even con sequences of growing up in a de - to the well-being of their children were children raised by loving parents can prived community appear to be transmit- ultimately immaterial? According to find themselves overwhelmed by ma- ted from one generation to the next, while this logic, one ought to expect the for- terial deprivation, which is one of the the same is true of the positive conse- tunes of children with absent fathers many compelling arguments for a social quences of growing up in a more prosper- and those with attentive fathers to be safety net. Yet one wonders whether ous and well-functioning community. essentially the same. Wouldn’t you we’ve led recent generations of parents According to Putnam, these positive expect that the texture of society would astray by suggesting that the life consequences flow from the fact that start to change if people came to take chances of their children aren’t ulti- non-poor neighborhoods tend to be more this idea seriously, and that many par- mately in their hands. cohesive than poor neighborhoods, and ents would free themselves from the To Robert Putnam, the renowned community members are more likely to straitjacket of guilt, deferred gratifica- Harvard political scientist, the gap cooperate with one another to advance tion, and exhaustion that has long between the life chances of children their collective interests—a phenome- been at the heart of child-rearing? raised in rich households and those non sociologists have dubbed “collec- Could it be that the goal of equality of raised in poor ones is a matter of grave tive efficacy.” “Collective efficacy, opportunity is fundamentally confused, concern. He is right. One can’t read Our reflected in trust in neighbors, is higher as the prospects of children raised by Kids, his latest book, without being in richer, more educated neighbor- nurturing parents will necessarily deeply moved by the challenges facing hoods, and that collective efficacy in tend to be brighter than those of chil- the poor children he describes, in a turn helps all the young people in the dren raised by parents who for what- series of vivid portraits drawn from neighborhood, regardless of family ever reason can’t or won’t provide the across the country. Putnam’s central resources,” writes Putnam. If growing observation is that because of rising up in communities defined by high inequality, the fates of rich and poor levels of trust benefits all children, re - children in America are diverging. gardless of income, it seems vitally CATHEDRAL Though he acknowledges that it will important that we do what we can to take years before we have definitive cultivate trust. So it seems worth noting The inner light grandeur of the cathedral, proof that upward mobility for poor that in 2007, Putnam famously, and muted but still present, even on cloudy days; children is declining, and not just stag- reluctantly, concluded that more- its immensity, its echoes, silence, nant, he insists that we act now before diverse neighborhoods tend to be its music, shifting uplift of daylight, it’s too late. defined by lower levels of trust than its faithful, its tourists, clergy, its In making his case, Putnam observes less-diverse neighborhoods. Though pattern of life; deliberately, artfully that while race is growing less power- Putnam expresses the hope that this distinct from the outside world, ful as an obstacle to upward mobility, distrust can be overcome, he’s never a space too big for man, its class is growing more so. Neigh bor - offered a compelling roadmap as to compelling union of theater and truth; hoods are less likely to be racially seg- how it can be. something comes from its sepulcher of regated to day than in past decades, yet Notably, Putnam generally defines saint and martyr, of ancient decency, they are more likely to be segregated “rich” parents as those who finished col- by income. Because children raised in lege and “poor” parents as those who did the love of God: the scrubbed, musty poor neighborhoods tend to fare worse not, a definition that in a sense stacks the solemnity of it all, a continuity beyond than children raised in non-poor neigh- deck. Finishing college takes enormous the genealogy of rulers, the history of nations; borhoods, the rise of class segregation self-discipline, particularly for those the stones, the light, the mystery and memory. has profound consequences. Putnam who weren’t raised in stable families, or draws on the work of Patrick Sharkey, a great deal of support from family and Something that lies close to the generations a New York University sociologist and friends. If finishing college is best of the faithful, pilgrims, clergy, even the author of Stuck in Place, a land- understood as a proxy for the combined tourists of the modern era. Any echoes mark study of neighborhood inequality. effect of self-discipline and strong social from the old souls, the meaning of the music One of Sharkey’s most striking find- networks, one wishes that we could of the ancient hymns, each its own prayer, ings is that children raised in non-poor more rigorously study the lives of those lie closer still; but it is the new souls, neighborhoods by parents raised in who don’t attend college, or who fail to believers, nonbelievers, the merely hopeful, poor neighborhoods fare roughly as finish, yet who are embedded in strong, that give this place its continuing life, well on cognitive tests as children supportive social networks. that create a meaning of place, an idea raised in poor neighborhoods by par- Cultivating self-discipline and with wings, a separate way, a ents raised in non-poor neighborhoods, strengthening social networks have separate life, something of a world and that both groups of children fare always been the work of families and unto itself, lifting through stone better than those raised in poor neigh- communities. Now, however, as we see and glass unbroken, the sweep of borhoods by parents raised in poor intensifying class segregation, and as wings silent, cloud like, a holy neighborhoods—and far worse than fewer children are raised in neighbor- light also unbroken, and ever hopeful. children raised in non-poor neighbor- hoods with high levels of trust and col- hoods by parents raised in non-poor lective efficacy, government must act to —WILLIAM W. RUNYEON neighborhoods. That is, the negative ensure equality of opportunity, Putnam

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argues. He touts the virtues of wage sub- strate that Communist Party brutality and sidies, investment in early-childhood The Case of repression, akin to those from Mao’s education, and community colleges, Cultural Revolution, persist to this day. among other fairly modest ideas. All Blind since early childhood, Chen suf- of these programs are expensive, and Clinton vs. fered enduring cultural biases against the chances are that they’d be even more disabled, but he refused to accept being expensive if government were to Chen marginalized into a life of poverty and make a serious effort to use them as a uselessness. Gaining a modest education substitute for the social support that JOHN R. BOLTON through strenuous family efforts, he be - only strong families and communities came an advocate for the disabled against can provide. the extraordinarily rigid Party bureaucracy. Yet it’s not at all clear that even the As his “barefoot lawyer” reputation grew, most generously funded social programs both in China and internationally, he will address the deeper problem, which attracted cases with wider implications. is that our cultural turn away from Particularly noteworthy was his work harshly judging those parents who fail against China’s barbaric “one child per their children to averting our eyes from family” policy, which too often resulted in their shortsightedness and neglect has forced abortions and sterilizations, beat- proven disastrous. Putnam himself is ings, and other cruelties imposed on those reluctant to blame parents, emphasizing The Barefoot Lawyer: A Blind Man’s Fight for disobeying the Party’s diktat. instead that “to hold kids responsible for Justice and Freedom in China, by Chen Chen and his family were viciously their parents’ failings violates most Guangcheng (Henry Holt, 352 pp., $30) treated, physically and psychologically, Americans’ moral sensibility.” This an abuse that culminated in four years in strikes me as a dodge. We imprison vio- NCE again a declared presi- prison for Chen, followed by house arrest lent criminals, despite the fact that their dential candidate, Hillary in his native village. It is hard to say aggression can often be traced to chaotic Clinton now faces prospects which punishment was worse. Convinced childhoods. We don’t do business with for election (or even nomina- that the Party’s ultimate objective was his people who are dishonest and unreli- Otion) that are not as bright as had once been death, Chen and his wife plotted his able, though these traits may well have thought. She may turn out to be even less escape from the village to seek safety in been survival mechanisms they devel- inevitable than she was in 2008. Among the wider world. oped as the children of neglectful par- many reasons Clinton is not a sure thing is Clinton’s Hard Choices devotes an ents. There is no way around holding her weakness for being economical with entire chapter to Chen’s drama, signaling kids responsible for their parents’ fail- the truth, especially when encountering Clinton’s concern over its continuing ings, which is why it is so essential obstacles to her ambitions. saliency and damaging political impli - that we remind parents of that fact at Hard Choices, her memoir of her years cations. Chen’s danger-filled story of every opportunity. as secretary of state, did nothing to dispel escape, asylum, betrayal, and then emi- And finally, one wonders why Put - that notion, even though the book’s main gration to America is riveting. Clinton’s, nam never makes an obvious but impor- purpose was to build preemptive defenses by contrast, has all the candor of spin tant point: Given the large number of against criticisms of her unimpressive artists working overtime, highlighting poor children already residing in the tenure. (I reviewed Hard Choices in her penchant for slippery, selective recall. United States, should we at the very NATIONAL REVIEW’s July 21, 2014, issue.) Chen was seeking freedom and security; least consider limiting future immigra- The danger in writing first is that others Clinton throughout was trying to erase a tion to families that can more than ade- with differing memories later produce pesky political problem. quately provide for their children? their own accounts, to embarrassing On April 25, 2012, Chen contacted Immigration contributes enormously to effect. Some will come from political ene- America’s Beijing embassy seeking asy- America’s economic dynamism. Yet not mies or disgruntled former colleagues with lum. Clinton’s first “hard choice” was not all immigrants are the same: Some their own agendas. But others will come just whether to agree, but also whether to immigrants arrive in the U.S. with the from those with no scores to settle, seeking send a U.S. car and personnel to spirit him skills and connections they need to only to tell their stories about crossing into the embassy compound. Because the enter the middle class, while others find paths with the author at decisive moments. embassy is surrounded by Chinese security that, while they’re better off than they One such powerful competing narrative personnel, the chances of a blind fugitive’s were in their countries of origin, they is Chen Guangcheng’s autobiography. entering on foot were essentially zero. lack those same skills and connections, Despite repeated sightings of China’s “lib- Clinton says that “in the end it wasn’t a and their only hope of leading dignified eralizing,” Chen’s experiences demon- close call,” but, given the case’s subsequent American lives is to rely on substantial, publicity, what else could she say now? ongoing public assistance. If we as a Mr. Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Nervous White House aides, informed society are struggling to provide poor Enterprise Institute and a former U.S. ambassador to only after the fact, wanted the problem to children with the resources they need to the United Nations. He is the author of Surrender “go away.” Clinton clearly understood that thrive, we should stop biting off more Is Not an Option: Defending America at the pressure came directly from Obama, than we can chew. the United Nations and Abroad. whose message, she says twice, “was clear:

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FRI/July 24 Victoria, B.C. 6:00PM Midnight morning seminar evening cocktail reception

SAT/July 25 Seattle 7:00AM Alaska 2015 cruise May 18 2015 issue ad_Panama cruise.qxd 4/27/2015 2:57 PM Page 3

indulgent staff, superior cuisine, and top- A GREAT FAMILY VACATION AWAITS! notch entertainment and excursions. And then there is the spectacular itiner- Superior service, gourmet cuisine, elegant accommodations, and ary, starting with beautiful Seattle, and fol- great entertainment await you on the beautiful Westerdam. Prices lowed over the next week with these top destina- are per-person, based on double occupancy, and include port tions: fees, taxes, gratuities, all meals, entertainment, and admittance to and part icipation in all National Review functions. Per-person GLACIER BAY National Park protects a unique rates for third/fourth person in cabin (by age and category): ecosystem of plants and animals living in concert with a chang- Categories J & C 17-younger: $ 736 18-up: $1451 ing glacial landscape. You’ll be awed: mon umental chunks of ice Category VC 17-younger: $1301 18-up: $1501 split off glaciers, crashing into the sea, roaring like thunder, water Categories SS & SA 17-younger: $1354 18-up: $1554 shooting hundreds of feet into the air. Glacier Bay has more actively calving tidewater glaciers than anyplace else in the world. DELUXE SUITE Magnificent luxury quarters (from 506 sq. ft.) features use of exclusive Neptune Lounge and JUNEAU is the place to let your imagination run wild. Explore the personal concierge, complimentary laundry/dry- lush Tongass National Forest. Visit the rustic shops in town. Or get out cleaning service, large private verandah, king- and kayak, dogsled, raft, whale watch, flightsee or fish. There’s no end size bed (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool bath/shower, dressing room, large sitting to the adventure because we’re in port long enough to truly take area, DVD, mini-bar, refrigerator, safe, advantage of the long daylight hours. and much more.

SITKA The onion domes of St. Michael’s Cathedral are your first clue Category SA that Sitka was once a Russian settlement. Today, be greeted by Tlingit DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,499 P/P native people and astonishing marine life. SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 9,799

KETCHIKAN clings to the shores of Tongass Narrows and drapes the SUPERIOR SUITE Grand stateroom (from 273 mountains with a cheerful air. The main attractions include Creek sq. ft.) features private verandah, queen-size Street, the Tongass Historical Museum, and Totem Bight State Park bed (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool (and a floatplane flightseeing trip to Misty Fjords National Monument bath/shower, large sitting area, TV/DVD, is a transforming adventure not to be missed). mini-bar, refrigerator, floor-to-ceiling win- dows, safe, and much more. VICTORIA, B.C. A touch of England awaits in this beautiful port: afternoon tea, double-decker buses, and the famed Butchart Gardens Category SS DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,399 P/P (a brilliant tapestry of color spread across 50 bloom ing acres). SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 7,499 Use the application on the following page to sign up for what will be seven of the most fun-filled days you’ll ever experience. Or DELUXE OUTSIDE Spacious cabin (from 213 sq. you can reserve your stateroom at www.nrcruise.com (or call ft.) features private verandah, queen-size bed The Cruise Authority at 800-707-1634). Remember, there’s a (convertible to 2 twins), bath/shower, sitting cabin to fit your taste and budget, but don’t tarry: all cabins are area, mini-bar, TV/DVD, refrigerator, and floor-to-ceiling windows. available on a first-come, first-served basis, and supply is limited. Join us this July on the Westerdam, in the company of Daniel Category VC Hannan, Mary Katharine Ham, John Sununu, Stephen Moore, DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,799 P/P Kevin Hassett, Michele Bachmann, Pat Caddell, Yuval Levin, SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,999 Katie Pavlich, Naomi Schaefer Riley, James Lileks, Andrew Klavan, Pete Hegseth, James O’Keefe, John Hillen, Daniel LARGE OCEAN VIEW Comfortable quarters Mahoney, Jonah Goldberg, John Fund, Rob Long, Roman (from 174 sq. ft.) features queen-size bed (con- Genn, Jay Nordlinger, Ramesh Ponnuru, Kevin Williamson, vertible to 2 twins), bathtub/shower, sitting area, Eliana Johnson, Jim Geraghty, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Charles TV/DVD, large ocean-view windows. Cooke, John J. Miller, Patrick Brennan, Jillian Melchior, Joel Gehrke, Reihan Salam, Katherine Connell, and Kat Timpf on Category C DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,999 the National Review 2015 Alaska Summer Cruise. P/P GET YOUR CABIN! CALL 800-707-1634 SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,299 NOW OR VISIT WWW.NRCRUISE.COM LARGE INSIDE Cozy but ample cabin quarters (from 151 sq. ft.) features queen- size bed (convertible to 2 twins), shower, sitting area, TV/DVD.

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‘Don’t screw up.’” (Doubtless, both bring Chen’s family to the capital. and Chinese friends and supporters were Obama and Clinton would be pleased to Clinton thought “now all we needed was kept away. The White House reaction, know that this was also Donald Rums - for Chen to walk out the [embassy] according to Clinton: “Full damage- feld’s favorite admonition.) door”—to stay in China, and be treated at control mode. The guidance to us in From embassy staffers, whom he praises a Beijing hospital for injuries sustained Beijing was simple: Fix this.” for consideration and kindness, Chen heard while escaping his village. Clinton takes credit, at length, for that U.S. policy changed after an April 27 Further critical differences emerge. reversing the damage done by ejecting NSC meeting, chaired by Obama. Chen’s Clinton writes that, after speaking by Chen from the embassy by getting him “situation should be resolved immedi- phone with his wife, “Chen jumped up, full out of China to America. Chen has a dif- ately,” i.e., he must leave the embassy of purpose and excitement, and said, ‘Let’s ferent view, crediting American public without delay. Clinton’s memoir never go’”—emphasizing his supposed enthusi- opinion, graphic news coverage of his mentions any April 27 NSC meeting, much asm to stay in China and receive treatment. daring dash for freedom and the abuses less whether she attended or what she said. In his account, Chen says otherwise. against him, and congressional pressure Intense negotiations with Chinese offi- Koh continued to press the urgent need to from, among others, Nancy Pelosi, Frank cials began on Sunday, April 29. Clinton’s decide. “The first time we met,” Koh said Wolf, and Chris Smith for essentially subordinates unquestionably acted on her to Chen, “I told you that time was of the forcing Beijing into allowing his depar- direct instructions throughout, so the strik- essence. I don’t think you should refuse an ture. Even if we grant Clinton some credit ing variances between Chen’s and Clin - offer that’s already in hand [i.e., to stay in for Chen’s leaving China, she made hash ton’s versions are telling. Clinton strikes China and study law at NYU Shanghai]. of matters until then. You wouldn’t know first, complaining that Chen was “unpre- This is a good proposal.” Chinese officials it from Hard Choices. dictable and quixotic, as formidable a “are quite angry with you, and also angry If one chapter of Clinton’s memoir is negotiator as the Chinese leaders outside.” at the U.S.,” Koh opined, hardly comfort- so vulnerable to evisceration, what does Chen’s alternatives were returning to ing to a man fearing for his life from those that say about the rest? And she recently Chinese soil or leaving China entirely— very officials. suffered, even before declaring her 2016 and there is no doubt about Clinton’s Clinton’s aides “kept encouraging me, candidacy, doubts about her veracity re - preference. So much for refuge in our as if I were a child, to see just how bene- garding using insecure phones, computers, em bassy, which Chen calls “the one safe ficial the Chinese terms were,” Chen and private e-mail accounts at the State place in all of China.” Beijing diplomats writes. America, Campbell soothed, would Department. Since her tenure as secretary worked to persuade Clinton’s aides, who be his “big brother.” And besides, said is ostensibly her most significant qualifi- responded by working to persuade Chen. Campbell, “we have guarantees from the cation for the Oval Office, her State Clinton admits, for example, that State’s Chinese government.” record will receive extraordinary scrutiny. top lawyer, Harold Koh, “spoke movingly Still Chen would not agree. Campbell She must hope she fares better with Hard of the difficulties Chen would face if he threw up his hands, saying, “I’m so upset, I Choices’ other 24 chapters. decided to leave China,” suggesting that don’t know how else to help you,” break- U.S. national security will likely be at Chen study law at NYU’s Shanghai cam- ing into tears, and then “storming out of the very center of the 2016 campaign. pus. (This was a far more dangerous offer the room.” Chen himself was clear-eyed: After six-plus years of Obama’s “engage- than what Chen says NYU actually pro- “American hearts might be in the right ment” with our adversaries, whatever posed—that he study at the school’s Man- place, but what was needed now was an minimal global order and stability existed hattan campus, in safety in America rather iron will to persevere and negotiate hard.” is disintegrating, and our adversaries than under a Chinese gun.) Instead, Chen says, “the American negotia- know it. We are seeing the results of the Clinton complains that Chen hardened tors were unrelenting” on him. Obama-Clinton policies, and Clinton has his tone, insisting his vulnerable family Finally, Koh told Chen he has 20 min- much to answer for. be brought to Beijing before any final utes to decide, or Beijing will declare Those who believe that the Chinese decisions. She writes that Kurt Campbell, him a traitor. Chen asked himself, “At Communist Party is a reforming, increas- her regional assistant secretary, was not this point, what could I do?” U.S. ambas- ingly democratic institution should heed happy: “Kurt dreaded going back after sador to China Gary Locke then issued a Chen’s penetrating insight: “I firmly the Chinese had already conceded so quasi–Miranda warning: “Are you ready believed—as I still do—that if you bow much.” (Ap parently he did not dread to leave the embassy of your own free your head before the Communist Party, it Chen.) Chen says Campbell continuously will?” Chen says that was when he used will soon make you get on your hands and stressed that “our time is extremely lim- the phrase “Let’s go”: “Suppressing the knees, and next it will stomp on your ited.” But in fact, the “limit” was entirely emotion in my voice, I said, simply, ‘Let’s crouching body until it destroys you.” This one of political inconvenience: Clinton’s go.’” This is hardly Clinton’s account of is why he refused to give up his human- imminent arrival in Beijing for annual Chen “full of purpose and excitement.” rights work, and why he was such a threat bilateral consultations. And no wonder, given the Communist to the Party itself. Having “undergone over seven years Party’s prior brutality and what he could Do we think Clinton has the slightest of abuse at the hands of the authorities therefore readily predict. idea what Chen is trying to explain to us with whom the Americans were now Once outside the compound, Chen was regarding China’s current leadership? Or negotiating,” Chen resisted the pressure again vulnerable, surrounded by up to 400 how it applies to Russia? Iran? North to seal a deal. And Campbell’s “dread” Chinese police officers after arriving at Korea? Cuba? In 2016, this too should be was misplaced: The Chinese agreed to the designated hospital; embassy staffers at the center of attention.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Film I, Ava

ROSS DOUTHAT

ERHAPS the most surprising thing about Ex Machina, a claustrophobic science-fiction movie in which two very dif- Pferent men orbit the female artificial intelligence one of them created, is that the she-A.I. is played by someone other than Scarlett Johansson. Over the past Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina few years, we’ve had a run of movies that have engaged with the idea of strange world, is Caleb (Domhnall Shyamalan-level twist (maybe they’re post-human consciousness through a Gleeson), a bright young techie who all robots . . . !) without actually veering female face or voice or form, and no thinks he’s won a contest inside his that far from a more predictable trajec- matter the story or its tone—twee in Her, company, a Google–Facebook hybrid tory. Which is something I respected trashy in Lucy, darkdarkdark in Under called Blue Book, to come hang out about the movie: It’s confident enough the Skin—it’s been Johansson who’s been with its reclusive CEO. The reality is in its story and its smarts that it doesn’t asked to lend her absolute womanhood to obviously somewhat different: It’s need to trick or befuddle or otherwise the not exactly human part. Indeed, one immediately clear that there can’t have deceive to entertain. might be forgiven for assuming that there been anything random about the con- That confidence probably reflects was an industry-wide flow chart for every test; that Caleb—orphaned, single, ner- the prior experience of the director, sci-fi script, with an arrow pointing to vous, well-meaning—must have been Alex Garland, who is new to the big “Call Scarlett’s agent” whenever a trans- selected by Nathan for a very particular chair but who has been working on human female role comes up. task or role. The only question is what smarter-than-average speculative cine- But now the string is broken, and we that part is really meant to be. ma as a screenwriter for many years, can contemplate the post-human femi- Officially he’s there to test the allur- mostly in partnership with the prolific nine in the form of Alicia Vikander, ing Ava, to conduct some version of the director Danny Boyle. The two men the mostly unknown actress starring in Turing Test to figure out whether she’s joined forces for The Beach, 28 Days Ex Machina. Though it’s not really her actually self-conscious or just a really Later, and Sunshine, and Garland also form, at least at first: When we meet clever program designed to ape the way wrote the screenplay for Never Let Me Vikander’s Ava, she has a human face that human beings talk and smile and (in Go. Given the preoccupations in those and silhouette, but her body is a mix of this case) flirt. But nothing that happens movies—failed utopias, zombies, space steel and mesh and sleek clear plastic, feels in any way rigorous: not his first travel, cloning—it’s not surprising that through which networks of lights and tentative, then captivated conversations Garland turned to A.I. for his directorial wires and cords can be discerned. with Ava; not his encounters and argu- debut; given their overall quality, it’s Ava inhabits a sealed-off set of rooms ments with the sometimes buddy-buddy, not surprising that he got the mood and in the most isolated of houses: a mod- sometimes bullying Nathan; not Nathan’s tone and plot just right. ernist hacienda perched over a river and strange world (which includes a mute So long, that is, as you keep your beneath an Andean mountain range, far servant named Kyoko who doubles, in expectations reasonable. I’ve seen re - from roads or neighbors and accessible the film’s strangest and strongest scene, views that lavish a little too much praise only by helicopter from the distant out- as a disco-dancing partner); and defi- on this movie’s philosophical forays, its side world. The owner is a tech mogul nitely not the atmosphere of unreality take on the patriarchy or the eternal and supergenius named Nathan, played created by deep isolation, constant sur- feminine, its of-the-moment gestures by my favorite actor of the moment, veillance, heavy drinking, and basic toward controversies about mass sur- Oscar Isaac, as a bulked-up, bearded metaphysical instability. veillance or Silicon Valley sexual poli- brogrammer who gets hammered by Eventually that instability becomes tics. All of that is there, certainly, but night and detoxes by day, and in be - quite physical as well. The violence, not all (or even most) of it is particular- tween finds time to experiment (in sev- when it comes, is occasionally shock- ly groundbreaking. Ex Machina is a eral senses of the term, perhaps) with the ing, but the revelations that precede it thinking person’s monster movie, but artificial consciousness he’s whipped up aren’t that surprising: If you know let’s be clear: It’s still primarily a movie in his digital lab. your Frankenstein and your “Blue - about those old reliables, mad scientists Nathan’s guest, the Marlowe-in- beard,” you’ll be able to map out a lot and killer robots, and the more you Africa or Harker-in-Transylvania figure of the territory, and Ex Machina occa- accept that going in, the happier you’ll UNIVERSAL PICTURESthrough INTERNATIONAL whom we’re introduced to this sionally makes you expect some wild, be when you come out.

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Kardashians and the dead (Diana, highways, the shelves follow one City Desk Natalie Wood); the dead of the future another like midwestern states, the (Oscar favorites); women’s maga- carts are as big as argosies. You wheel Horns of zines (214 Sex Positions that Will your spoil to your vehicle and drive Drive Him Wild, also known as The two, five, ten miles home, no problem. Triumph of Feminism). In season In the city the only way to have no Plenty there are special-issue one-offs about problem is to have a supermarket in Jesus. The manager is surly, but the your building. It is there when you customer can ignore him because he is want to lay in supplies, and it is there incomprehensible (thick accent + for impulse buys and last-minute slurred speech = say what?). The emergencies. You need paper towels women who work for him at the cash and there is a sale on 16-packs? You registers are friendly even so. A thirst and the only way to quench it is young one complains that her arms seltzer? Your wife is cooking up a are fat (they aren’t). Her colleague storm but lacks the indispensable grips her own belly (see that?) and cloud-seeding of a bunch of dill? Get laughs her to scorn. in the elevator, go through the lobby City dwellers feel underserved if and around the corner; reverse. RICHARD BROOKHISER they lack multiple options. Two blocks So it was for the 20-some years the away there is a supermarket belonging supermarket sat in our building, but HE ground floor of our apart- to a chain from the West Coast; it car- some weeks ago word went out that it ment building in the city pre- ries its own brands of pretty much was closing. The rumor found confir- sents a row of storefronts to everything, the checkout men and mation in a slow winnowing of items the avenue: a pizzeria, a nail women wear flowered shirts and ring on the shelves as this, then that, was not Tsalon, a walk-in medical clinic, a super- ship’s-bells when they need to sum- replaced. The most conspicuous casu- market, and a 24-hour diner. In The mon a manager, good offerings and alty, interestingly, was the reading Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis scorned bright presentation make the lines material. Suddenly the checkout lines those who think that the ultimate snake forever. In season farmers come were bare. How will we know what source of bread is the baker’s van. Of to the park bearing the produce of Lena Dunham will do next? We won’t, course not: The ultimate source of upstate and out-of-state. All year Turks not in this store anyway. Then came a bread is the supermarket. man carts at the subway entrances, hand-lettered note on the door making Ours is one of a chain based in the selling fruits and vegetables gotten it official, then the realtor’s ad for city. It is a scrappy venue—not dirty (I who knows how. And on the short hid- space available. The surly manager never saw it closed by the Board of den street is the store of mystery: for- may find other work in the chain, un - Health) but stressed. The space is eign artisanal cheeses, each with a less he is ready to contemplate human tight—slightly longer than it is deep— description as detailed as a write-up in baseness in retirement. The girl with which means the aisles are narrow and the Dictionary of National Biography; the not-fat arms and the girl with the the carts small. Fresh vegetables are amuse-bouches from around the world— belly fat will have to seek other check- its weakest link; they were fresh, once, Portuguese sardines, Irish soft drinks, out lines. but they have come a long way from chocolate from Madagascar. The mys- What will take the supermarket’s Hunts Point, and a longer way from tery is, how does it stay in business? place? Normally I would say one of the the Central Valley. Meat used to be The prices are steep, there are never big-chain drug stores, except there is positively dodgy: When the store more than three people in there, and already one two blocks south and opened, one saw pigs’ feet and other yet it stays open. The city: something another one block north. My next guess items geared to ethnicities that live for everyone, including the curious and would be a nail salon, except for the elsewhere, though over time the super- elusive rich. one that is already in the building. Bars market took better stock of its demo- But all these options involve a walk are always good; a famous university graphic. Berries, in their clear plastic out of the way. City dwellers are walk- has dormitories in the neighborhood, coffins, are fine, if bland. Everything ers, but walking to shop for groceries and who ever went broke selling liquor else, boxed, bottled, and canned, is means a walk home with weight, and tinnitus to young people? what you find everywhere else. The which in turn means pushing your own Or there could be a surprise. Two canned vegetables aimed at Spanish cart over bumpy sidewalks (rickety weeks ago I discovered around the cor- speakers, I noticed long ago, are much wheels, slow in good weather, grim in ner a café/bakery from Georgia (as in more expensive than their English- snow), or Paul Robeson totes that bale, Balanchine, not Ray Charles). “Try labeled counterparts: Does brand loy- or you pay for delivery as if prices Some thing Different,” the menu suggest- alty enable gouging? were not high enough to begin with. ed, then offered pkaly, chiqirtmá, bazhé, On the way out, what most catches Anywhere else—burbs, country—who chaqapúly, chahohbily, chabostnily, and my eye: reading material. The three cares? Everything there is built for jibé. This is in our alphabet; theirs newspapers (the royal barge and the space, and traversing space. The aisles makes Cyrillic look like “See Spot run.” two tabloids) and the magazines: in the supermarkets are as wide as Welcome to the neighborhood.

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Happy Warrior BY JONAH GOLDBERG From Reason to Treason

UR age,” Julien Benda wrote in The Intellectuals, for the first time, sided with the mob over Treason of the Intellectuals, “is indeed Socrates. Indeed, the mob itself, with its particular appetites the age of the intellectual organization and desires, became the new beau idéal. “Those who for ‘O of political hatreds.” centuries had exhorted men, at least theoretically, to deaden That came to mind recently when I saw the following the feeling of their differences . . . have now come to praise headline on Salon: “A guy most famous for saying ‘F*** them, . . . be it ‘fidelity to the French soul,’ ‘the immuta- You Michael Moore’ is now marrying Bristol Palin.” bility of their German consciousness,’ [or] . . . the ‘fervor Now, whatever you may think of Moore, Palin, or “the of their Italian hearts.’” The Christianity that proclaimed guy” in question, the asininity of this statement transcends in Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is nei- time and space. For you see, “the guy” in question is ther bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye Dakota Meyer, the second-youngest living Medal of are all one in Christ Jesus” gave way to the Aryans and Honor recipient and the first living Marine to earn the socialists alike who proclaimed Jesus their blue-eyed savior medal in nearly 40 years. or the “first socialist.” Even if Michael Moore didn’t deserve the verbal equiv- Benda was writing in 1927 and yet he foresaw the terri- alent of a bird-flipping—though what twisted soul would ble war that such thinking would yield barely more than a argue that?—you would think earning the highest military decade hence. The good guys—not counting the Soviets, honor for valor above and beyond the call of duty might of course—won that war, but today’s intellectuals are con- rank a bit higher on one’s c.v. tent to continue losing the peace. In a sense, the intellectuals Whether the staffers at Salon count as intellectuals is of are no longer treasonous, because treason can be committed course open to debate, but it’s worth recalling that the only against a regime still in power. original French title of Benda’s cri de coeur was “La One need only look at the universities—for a thousand Trahison des Clercs.” What Benda meant by “clercs” years the home of the clercs—to see that universalism is the were “all those who speak to the world in a transcendental new sedition. Free speech is now openly derided as oppres- manner,” or those known in medieval times as “scribes.” sive wherever and whenever it is deemed a threat to the Or as our friend Roger Kimball writes, “academics and jour- sovereignty of particularism that today flies under the nalists, pundits, moralists and pontificators of all varieties coalitional banner of “diversity.” Universal truths must are in this sense clercs.” Surely under an umbrella this give way to “personal truths,” and inconvenient facts are broad, even the cast at Salon can find shade. the disposable inheritance of privilege. And not only they; the democratization of the media, Economic freedom, every bit as much a gift of the En - often something to be celebrated, has had the more dubi- lightenment as free speech or freedom of conscience, is ous effect of making clercs of us all to one extent or another. every day seen as an enemy of decency and justice. Spelunk the subterranean depths of the Internet and you Even Mrs. Clinton, that most implausible champion of will find a seemingly infinite number of self-styled clercs the little guy, has begun talking about the need to “topple” shining their moralizing lamplight on the issues of the day the “1 percent,” as if the highest percentile out of 100 (as with many creatures living in the darkness, their eyes were not an unconquerable mathematical abstraction grow larger and their ears more acute, the better to spot but a caste of overlords like the Polish szlachta in the their prey). 14th century. Benda’s diagnosis of the West’s intellectual betrayal— The perverse irony is that defenders of the Enlighten- or rather his diagnosis of the intellectuals’ betrayal of the ment are now just another identity-politics group—and West—is an underappreciated marvel. From Socrates one of the very few kinds of people one is permitted to be until the end of the 19th century, according to Benda, it bigoted against. In a much-ballyhooed interview with was the job of the clercs to uphold universal ideals for all ABC’s Diane Sawyer, former Olympian Bruce Jenner mankind. Humanity “did evil for two thousand years, but made a brave admission: He’s a conservative. “I believe in honored good. This contradiction was an honor to the the Constitution,” he explained. He also admitted he’s now human species, and formed the rift whereby civilization a woman, or on his way to becoming one. As NATIONAL slipped into the world.” REVIEW’s Katherine Timpf noted, it was the former confes- In other words, our hypocrisy is what made our humanity sion that horrified many liberals. “I’m open-minded but recognizable. Barbarians are rarely hypocrites; animals I’m not sure I can accept #BruceJenner as a Republican,” never fall short of their ideals—for they have none. film critic Bill McCuddy announced on Twitter. But according to Benda, the intellectuals could not bear Benda’s age was marked by intellectual organization the burden of this contradiction. The rise of nationalism, of political hatreds. It has given way to the age of polit- socialism, and all the ethnocentrisms that disguised them- ical organization of intellectual hatreds, and in such an selves in such cloaks amounted to a rejection of universal age, lovers of liberty are the new traitors. Be happy in ideals in general and of the Enlightenment in particular. thy treason.

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