Reckoning with Vietnam a Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship

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VOLUME XVIII, NUMBER 2, SPRING 2018

A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship William Charles R. Voegeli: Reckoning with Vietnam Kesler: Arthur M. inking Schlesinger, Jr. Essays by Martha Bayles about Catesby Leigh and Trump Mackubin Anthony Thomas Esolen: Owens Peter C. When Myers: Harry Race Became Talk Sally

Angelo M. Joseph Codevilla: Postell: e Natural e Trouble Law of War with Congress & Peace

Michael Burlingame: David P. Ulysses S. Goldman: Grant Sigmund Freud Paul A. Rahe: John James Fonte: Madison’s American Notes Sovereignty A Publication of the Claremont Institute PRICE: $6.95 IN CANADA: $8.95 H C VAN ANDEL GRADUATE SCHOOL OF STATESMANSHIP

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FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK William Voegeli: When Your Neighbors Are Passive-Progressive: page 5

CORRESPONDENCE: page 6

ESSAYS Charles R. Kesler: Thinking about Trump: page 10 Catesby Leigh: These Honored Dead: page 42 Morality, politics, and the presidency. How the Vietnam Veterans Memorial succeeded despite itself.

Angelo M. Codevilla: On the Natural Law of War and Peace: page 25 Joseph Postell: What’s the Matter with Congress?: page 56 A guide for statesmen and warriors. Why it’s hard to make Congress great again.

Mackubin Thomas Owens: The Vietnam War Revisited: page 37 Joseph Epstein: Hail, Mommsen: page 75 Why the conventional history is wrong. A German historian’s tribute to Rome.

Algis Valiunas: The Tragic Sense: page 88 What Joseph Conrad knew.

REVIEWS OF BOOKS David P. Goldman: The Prophet of Ordinary Unhappiness:page 18 Michael Burlingame: Rehabilitating Grant: page 67 Freud: The Making of an Illusion, by Frederick Crews. American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant, by Ronald C. White; Grant, by Ron Chernow; and The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses Anthony Esolen: Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?: page 22 S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition, edited by John F. Marszalek. When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, by Ryan T. Anderson. Paul Kengor: The Great Dismantler:page 70 Gorbachev: His Life and Times, by William Taubman. John Fonte: One Nation: page 31 The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World, Charles Horner: The Past Is Prologue:page 72 by Stewart Patrick. Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power, by Howard W. French; and The China Order: Michael Auslin: Imperialism, American-Style: page 35 Centralia, World Empire, and the Nature of Chinese Power, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth by Fei-Ling Wang. of American Empire, by Stephen Kinzer. Rafael Major: Slouching Toward Bethlehem: page 79 Peter C. Myers: An Honest Conversation about Race: page 48 Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire, by Paul A. Cantor; Reckoning With Race: America’s Failure, and Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy: The Twilight of the Ancient World, by Gene Dattel. by Paul A. Cantor.

William Voegeli: He’s History: page 51 Diana Schaub: The Figure in the Carpet:page 81 Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian, by Richard Aldous. Naïve Readings: Reveilles Political and Philosophic, by Ralph Lerner.

Paul A. Rahe: Missing the Point: page 61 David Lewis Schaefer: Misreading Montaigne: page 84 Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention, Montaigne: A Life, by Philippe Desan, translated by Steven Rendall by Mary Sarah Bilder. and Lisa Neal.

Sally C. Pipes: A Man of Accomplishment: page 87 Entrepreneurial Life: The Path from Startup to Market Leader, by Robert L. Luddy.

SHADOW PLAY Martha Bayles: The Dark at the End of the Tunnel: page 95 Ken Burns’s The Vietnam War does not take sides.

PARTHIAN SHOT Mark Helprin: The Guillotine of Sophistry: page 98

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from the editorial desk When Your Neighbors Are Passive-Progressive by William Voegeli

iversity and inclusion” is the moral benchmark of our ticket those cars. Little wonder that despite the District’s affordable hous- time, “social justice” distilled to its essence. Every corporation, ing policies, Shaw went from being 90% black in 1970 to 30% in 2010. “Dcollege, and government agency, along with a growing number “Our new neighbors” proved unwilling to “collaborate, cooperate, or even of bowling leagues and bait-and-tackle shops, has an Office of Diversity converse,” said Metropolitan’s pastor. After 150 years in Shaw, Metro- and Inclusion. politan Baptist has relocated to Maryland. Many places that preach diversity and inclusion, however, do little A big reason gentrifiers move into cities, Hyra writes, is that they “crave to practice it. The website WalletHub has released its annual diversity a variety of ‘authentic’ urban experiences.” Hyra describes the newest Shaw rankings of American cities. Portland, Oregon, ends up as 270th out of residents as “tourists in place” who want things both ways: expensive res- 501 cities in terms of ethnic diversity, no surprise given that the 2010 taurants and condominiums, but also the “drama of living on the edge.” census showed Portland’s population to be 76.1% white, 9.4% Hispanic, 7.1% Asian, and 6.3% black. Despite this demographic resemblance to the e may safely assume that shaw’s gentrifiers not only past’s more monochromatic America, the one Donald Trump is allegedly don’t consider themselves racists, but take pride in the en- determined to restore, Multnomah County gave Trump only 17% of its Wlightened views that set them apart from the bigoted reac- votes in 2016. (Four-fifths of the county’s residents live in Portland.) tionaries who elected Trump. But politically, too, they want things both Even thorough, geographic intermingling of different ethnic groups ways. TheUrban Dictionary defines “passive progressives” as “pseudo- doesn’t guarantee that diversity will be inclusive. Consider gentrification, liberals,” holding all the right opinions and attitudes while reliably ad- wherein significant numbers of prosperous people move into and then vancing their own interests. change the character of city neighborhoods previously home to the urban Perhaps, however, the problem is not that Shaw’s newcomers are poor. Although a global phenomenon, American gentrification usually pseudo-liberals but that they’re…well, authentic liberals. In 1962, long entails white professionals transforming black neighborhoods. before anyone worried about gentrification, James Baldwin lamented “the In Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City (2017) sociologist incredible, abysmal, and really cowardly obtuseness of white liberals,” as Derek S. Hyra studied gentrification in Washington, D.C.’s Shaw neigh- a result of which “they could deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim borhood. Because of Washington’s affordable housing policies, including but had no sense of him as a man.” rent control and subsidized housing, gentrification there does not, to the It is possible to feel both contempt and sympathy for today’s urban pro- extent common in other cities, price people out of the neighborhoods gressive. An article on gentrification in Philadelphia noted that white flight where they grew up. In that sense, gentrification in D.C. should have as was supposed to have devastated big cities 50 years ago, just as gentrifica- good a chance to go smoothly as could be hoped for. tion is said to be ruining them now. “Where do we want the upper middle What Hyra found instead of social integration, however, was “micro class people to live?” asked one recently arrived Philadelphian. “Anywhere?” segregation” or “diversity segregation.” The Shaw he describes is two soci- It seems there can be guilt fatigue as well as compassion fatigue. ological neighborhoods simultaneously occupying a single geographic one. And, ultimately, the anti-gentrification argument culminates in sanc- White millennials and black residents “interact little and frequently chafe tioning segregation. If black cultural and political power requires geo- with each other,” in the Washington Post’s summary of Hyra’s argument. graphic cohesion, then any trend that disperses rather than concentrates Pressure from new residents, for example, prevented the Metropolitan black people becomes objectionable. Baptist Church, founded by former slaves in 1864, from using a nearby For all that, our diverse country will be more inclusive when white public-school playground as a parking lot on Sunday mornings. (They re- liberals start seeing members of minority groups as fellow Americans, not garded the long-standing practice as violating the separation of church symbols (of authenticity) or victims (who can bestow redemption). In the and state.) When some worshippers then double-parked on the street 1985 comedy Lost in America, Albert Brooks implores his wife to quit during church services, a common practice in many black neighborhoods, their bourgeois lives for an endless motorhome tour: “We have to touch Shaw’s newcomers were “furious,” Hyra says, and demanded that police Indians.” Find out first, though, if they want to touch you. nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Claremont Review of Books, Volume XVIII, Number Price: $6.95 per copy; $27.80 for a one-year Editor: Charles R. Kesler 2, Spring 2018. (Printed in the United States on subscription; $55.60 for a two-year subscription; May 2, 2018.) Senior Editors: $83.40 for a three-year subscription. Add $17 Christopher Flannery, William Voegeli for all foreign subscriptions, including those Published quarterly by the Claremont Institute for Managing Editor: John B. Kienker originating in Canada and Latin America. the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, Production Editor: Patrick Collins To subscribe, call (909) 981-2200, or contact 1317 W. Foothill Blvd, Suite 120, Upland, CA [email protected]. Assistant Editor: Lindsay Eberhardt 91786. Telephone: (909) 981-2200. Fax: (909) 981-1616. Postmaster send address changes to Editorial Assistant: Alex Sanchez-Olvera Visit us online at www.claremont.org/crb. Claremont Review of Books Address Change, 1317 Contributing Editor: Joseph Tartakovsky Opinions expressed in signed articles do not nec- W. Foothill Blvd, Suite 120, Upland, CA 91786. Art Director: Elliott Banfield essarily represent the views of the editors, the Unsolicited manuscripts must be accompanied by a Publisher: Ryan P. Williams Claremont Institute, or its board of directors. self-addressed, stamped envelope; or may be sent via Nothing in this journal is an attempt to aid or hin- email to: [email protected]. Publisher (2000–2001): Thomas B. Silver der the passage of any bill or influence the election of any candidate. All contents Copyright © 2018 the Send all letters to the editor to the above addresses. Claremont Institute, except where otherwise noted.

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CORRESPONDENCE

Constitutional and, hence, contestable concepts. that requires those structural Finally, I do not think ad- “Administration,” too, is one of “inventions of prudence” (as The ministration can be understood Bureaucracy? these concepts, as Marini con- Federalist put it) as anchors in as an abstract concept that can cedes: “No one would deny the support of limited government. be made compatible with the In “How the Ruling Class importance of administration as They remain embedded in the restraints required by a limited Rules” (Winter 2018), John a practical necessity for all gov- Constitution only as long as constitutional government. It Marini, quoting Paul Moreno’s ernments.” (For what it’s worth, they contribute to those ends presupposes a kind of author- The Bureaucrat Kings, points out the word “administration,” not required by the principles which ity that is not derived from the that neither bureaucracy nor including its derivatives, occurs necessitate a Constitution in the political authority of the people. the administrative state is “men- 91 times in The Federalist.) So the first place. The autonomous science of ad- tioned in the U.S. Constitution.” question Marini should have em- I agree with Zug that the im- ministration rests on an author- A few lines later, Marini praises phasized in his otherwise help- portant question “is not whether ity outside politics. It is estab- “federalism” and “separation of ful review—and which Professor administration, but adminis- lished on an empirical or scien- powers”—despite the fact that, Moreno should have spent more tration for what ends.” What’s tific foundation, adaptable to any strictly speaking, these are not time discussing in his otherwise more, he’s right to suggest that form of rule. It presupposes the mentioned in the Constitution, admirable book—is not whether the defense of constitutionalism necessity of separating theory either. Indeed, the 10th Amend- administration, but administra- requires more than adherence to and practice, means and ends, ment is the closest we get to an tion for what ends. the text of the Constitution itself. politics and administration, as explicit reference to federalism; The Constitution is a political well as facts and values. Because and, as for separation of powers, Charles Zug defense of popular government. they denied that the power of why does the president, our “ex- Austin, TX It is a social compact established government could or should be ecutive,” play any role in our “leg- before the institutions of govern- limited, the Progressives ob- islative” process if the executive John Marini replies: ment are created. An abstract or jected to those constitutional re- and legislative powers are to be theoretical view of justice is nec- straints. If those limitations on constitutionally separate? Surely Charles Zug raises a reason- essary to determine the ends of the power of government are un- Marini knows it is an oversim- able, perhaps common, objection government. It was the abstract necessary, a written constitution plification to maintain, as he to my review of Paul Moreno’s ideas of equality and liberty that is not only unnecessary but an does, that the modern admin- book. As he points out, I decry established the principles of self- obstacle to social progress. For istrative state can be dismissed bureaucracy, or the administra- government and made a constitu- the Progressives, government on the grounds that the Consti- tive state, which is not “men- tional compact necessary. Those and politics alone would estab- tution doesn’t call for it. Ideas tioned in the U.S. Constitution,” principles in defense of self-gov- lish the ground of both theory like federalism and separation but applaud federalism and ernment also required limits that and practice, law and legitimacy. of powers are embedded in our separation of powers, although must be imposed upon govern- It is impossible to reconcile ratio- Constitution, not as passages of they too go unmentioned in the ment itself. The primary political nal and political rule, or to legiti- a prolix legal code but as abstract Constitution. Zug assumes that purpose of the social compact is mize the administrative state on “ideas like federalism and sepa- to protect the liberty of the peo- the ground of constitutionalism. ration of powers are embedded ple by institutionalizing the sov- Please send all in our Constitution, not as pas- ereignty of the people. Hence, the correspondence to: sages of a prolix legal code but need for a written constitution. Hayek and as abstract and, hence, contest- The political powers of govern- the E.U. Claremont Review of Books able concepts,” and insists that ment derive their authority from Attn.: Letters to the Editor “administration,” too, is “one of the Constitution. And those pow- 1317 W. Foothill Blvd, Suite 120, these concepts.” I agree that fed- ers are circumscribed by constitu- The international dimension of Upland, CA 91786. eralism and separation of powers tional and institutional restraints, Friedrich Hayek’s work is often can be understood as abstrac- in order to preserve the limits on overlooked, because he himself Or via e-mail: tions apart from a legal code. But the power of government. Unlike was divided about it even in The [email protected] are they contestable? Or are they Mr. Zug, who thinks that separa- Road to Serfdom. He must have dictated by practical necessity? tion of powers and federalism are realized when writing during We reserve the right to edit They are not mentioned in the embedded in the Constitution, I the Second World War that a for length and clarity. Constitution because they arise would suggest that those struc- major cause of that war was to out of the political necessity of tural features no longer establish be found in nationalistic com- Please include your combining limited government meaningful limits on the power petition. That led him in his last name, address, and with the consent of the governed. of the central government. As chapter to call for an interna- telephone number. And they are established on the a result, they no longer provide tional order to prevent the most foundation of a political theory support for limited government. catastrophic malfunctioning of

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a world based on nation-states, ation of international economic can is much more violent today i.e., war. Unfortunately, Samuel organizations like the Interna- than in the 1970s—and I think Gregg in his review overlooks tional Monetary Fund and the it’s pretty clear that the Millen- this part of Hayek’s work, too World Bank Group at Bretton nials are distinctly less violent (“Stimulating Debate,” Winter Woods, as well as his skepticism than the similarly-aged Boomers 2018). In my book, I argued that about monetary orders like the were in the ’70s—then the scale the European Union we have to- pre-1914 gold standard, which re- of incarceration is again hard day is as close as it gets to what lied upon nation-states voluntari- to justify purely on crime-rate Hayek asked for: a non-coercive ly adhering to established rules, terms. integration of free people who would likely have inclined him As the criminologist Franklin willingly accept that they want to support a supranational entity Zimring has argued, perhaps we to work together, with the in- like the contemporary European are punitive in part because we stitutions moderating between Union. always fear that any crime could them. We see in the E.U. both result in death. The chances of Keynesian and Hayekian sugges- Crime and that are actually fairly low but, tions for improving the workings tellingly, Americans consistently The of the economy. Here is a reason Punishment think that crime has risen every Claremont for hope of gradual improve- year since 1991, despite steady Review of Books ments in the way our economies, Joseph Bessette’s practical and dramatic declines since then. Publication and with them our societies, are criticism of my book Locked In When it comes to clearance run—clearly not perfect, but the is that we need prisons to fight rates, Bessette’s argument is on Committee best we have for the moment. crime, and violent crime in par- its strongest empirical footing. ticular (“More Justice, Less Our clearance rates are low, often Thomas Hoerber Crime,” Summer 2017). As he appallingly so. Yet this point in École Supérieure des Sciences puts it, we have a “crime problem” no way justifies the use of incar- Commerciales d’Angers more than a “prison problem,” ceration. If we under-police—or, Angers, France and thus discussions like mine more accurately, -police, fo- mis William J. Bennett about how to cut prison popula- cusing too much on lower-level Samuel Gregg replies: tions are misguided. crimes while major offenses like Summarizing quickly, Bes- homicide and rape go under- Robert Curry Friedrich Hayek certainly dis- sette’s argument for prisons enforced—then the solution approved of nationalism. But for rests on a few, straightforward should be to improve policing, Gary and Carol Furlong Hayek, evil ideologies and erro- points: (1) we have a lot of crime, not to rely more on prisons. The neous economic policies caused violent crime in particular; (2) evidence is clear that if anything Michael W. Gleba war, not nation-states per se. our clearance rates—the rates deters, it is the risk of detection While interested in promoting at which people are arrested for and arrest, not the threat of long, Charles W. Kadlec peace between nations, Hayek— crimes—are low, requiring us to far-off punishments that are im- like Adam Smith—recognized be harsh to those we do punish; posed only on the off-chance that Kurt A. Keilhacker that people find it hard to develop and (3) the recidivism rates of the offender gets arrested in the attachment to entities beyond the those we release from prison are first place. linguistic groups at the heart of high, demonstrating the need to This shouldn’t surprise us. Thomas D. Klingenstein most nation-states. We also know keep them locked up for longer There’s long been evidence that that, although Hayek was inter- periods. those who tend to engage in crim- Larry G. Mattson ested in promoting something Each of his points is fairly inal and anti-social behavior are like a European free trade federa- sound empirically, although very present-minded—partly be- Robert W. Nelson tion, he was deeply skeptical of each is also somewhat more cause they tend to be young, but international organizations like complicated than he suggests this seems to be true even when Bruce C. Sanborn the League of Nations and the when we dig a little deeper into controlling for age. The immedi- United Nations, and positively the numbers. These points, how- acy of the officer down the block Dianne J. Sehler detested the International Labor ever, do not entail the conclu- arresting them is always going to Organization. It is very safe to say sion he draws from them: that be a more forceful deterrent than Paul E. Singer that he would have regarded the we need to rely on prison to (at some sort of delayed punishment. present European Union as an- least roughly) the extent that we And it certainly means that mak- other example of many continen- do today. ing sentences longer than they al- Patrick M. Sullivan tal Europeans’ penchant for top- Our crime rate today is about ready are will barely budge what- down centralized bureaucratic what it was in 1970, but our in- ever deterrent effect the original solutions to problems. carceration rate is about five sanctions had. By contrast, John Maynard times higher. Unless you think I argue that prison is a bad bet Keynes’s involvement in the cre- the average crime-aged Ameri- from an incapacitation perspec-

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tive as well. People age into and Statistics (BJS) indicating that sette may have the causation mediately assume it must mean age out of offending—a wealth of in a nationwide sample, 69% of backwards: even if he’s right we aren’t being tough enough. evidence demonstrates that peo- all those released from prison that those leaving prison when Perhaps, though, it means we are ple start criminal careers in their over the age of 40 are rearrested old reoffend at high rates, per- being too tough, or at least inept- early teens with property crimes, within five years, a rearrest rate haps that is because they were in ly tough. turn increasingly violent in their not much different than that for prison. Prison can be traumatic Now, to be clear, my points latter teens and early twenties, those much younger (there isn’t both mentally and physically, it here do not compel someone to and then generally subside in room to go into the tension be- can sever social ties needed to be an abolitionist, even from a their late twenties or early thir- tween the BJS and California re- successfully re-enter the outside purely public safety perspective; ties. So long sentences needlessly sults). This leads him to conclude world, and people’s skills, tal- I myself am not one. There are detain people. that perhaps those we send to ents, and health often decline some people who pose serious, Worse than that, we rarely im- prison don’t actually age out of while locked up. Two additional ongoing risks that require us to pose long sentences on people un- offending, even if people generally reasons why older people offend confine them (although we could, til they are in their thirties—just do. I disagree. less is that they are more likely and I believe should, do so far as they are likely to start aging Bessette says that of that 69% to be married and to have a job, more humanely). And some evi- out of crime. The average age in of older people who are rearrest- both of which appear to reduce dence suggests that short, quick- California of a person receiving a ed, we don’t know how many are the risk of offending. Time in ly-imposed sentences (more often third-strike sentence, for example, rearrested for violence. But we prison clearly interferes and un- in local jails than state prisons) is 43! When California recently do: the BJS reports that 14% of dermines both pathways out of can have powerful deterrent ef- granted over 2,000 third-strike those over 40 are rearrested for crime. And research indicates fects for specific problems related inmates early release, their recidi- violence, compared to 28% for that rehabilitation programs to drug abuse. vism rate was one tenth the state those 24 and under. Even those consistently work less well inside But if public safety is the goal, average (5%, versus 50%)—in who have been to prison age out prisons than outside their walls. none of the numbers that Bes- no small part because they were of crime, and out of violent crime This causal misstep is com- sette raises require us to turn to older. in particular. mon in criminal justice policy: the prison as the primary solu- Bessette, however, points to a But there is a deeper con- we impose tough sanctions, ob- tion, or even a central one. The study from the Bureau of Justice ceptual issue to address. Bes- serve a person reoffend, and im- best estimates suggest that the

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crime-reducing impact of prisons it plausible that burglaries would fining trait,” what period of time Nonetheless, it may well be today is close to (though not at) not increase? Prosecutors like constitutes a “transitory state” (5 that crime for crime, offenders zero. There are other approaches Mike Hestrin in California’s years, 10, 15, 20?), nor at what in the United States are some- that not only work better, but are Riverside County have been ar- age “almost all people who com- what more likely to be sentenced more humane, less expensive, and guing that this is precisely the mit violent crimes” cease to be- to incarceration or to serve longer impose fewer social costs on the effect that new laws in his state come dangerous. behind bars. Yet it is not obvious communities that bear the brunt have had in sending convicted of- Now, as the BJS data show, what the relevance of such a differ- of enforcement. fenders, who used to go to state there is, indeed, an aging effect. ence would be to American crimi- prison for at least a year, to local No one who studies criminal jus- nal justice policies. Europe has John Pfaff jails instead, where overcrowding tice would deny that when crimi- abolished the death penalty, but Fordham University results in just weeks or even days nals age beyond their twenties 31 American states retain it. But Law School behind bars. As reported in the their criminal activity decreases. this hardly proves that Europe is New York, NY Valley News, he tells the story of “a But do the reported data show right and the American states are known thief who had been steal- that “almost all” violent offend- wrong. More than a few European Joseph M. Bessette replies: ing from the merchant’s store was ers in prison age out of violence nations punish murderers much caught stealing again and work- by their mid-thirties or even less severely than does the United John Pfaff attributes to me po- ing a calculator on his phone. The their forties? Surely not. For ex- States. Anders Breivik killed 77 sitions regarding clearance rates arresting officers found out the ample, while a fourth of those in Norway in 2011 and received and recidivism that I didn’t take thief had been adding up what released from prison in their late a 21-year sentence, which will ex- in my review, and he then devotes he was stealing to make sure he twenties were arrested for a vio- pire when he is 52 (though a spe- much of his response to attempt- was not taking more than $900 lent crime within three years, so cial preventive detention provi- ing to refute these positions. More in merchandise so, if caught, he were a fifth of those in their late sion of Norwegian law may allow significantly, he avoids the central would only be charged with a thirties. While this is progress, it his indefinite confinement if he is element of my criticism by failing misdemeanor, no matter how hardly shows the dramatic aging- judged to be a continuing danger). to detail the kinds of large-scale [many] times he was caught.” The out effect that is so important to Volkert van der Graaf assassinat- reductions in punishment that he result: a few days in jail and virtu- Pfaff’s argument. Even those 40 ed the Dutch politician Pim For- calls for in his book for both non- al impunity to steal again. Pfaff’s and over (which, of course, would tuyn during a political campaign violent and violent offenders. proposal in his book to bring U.S. include some in their fifties and in 2002 and though found to be Let’s start with the second incarceration rates more in line sixties) had an arrest rate for vio- of sound mind was sentenced to point in his quick summary of my with those in Europe will effec- lent crimes equal to 58% of the just 16 years in prison and was position: “clearance rates.” No- tively sweep all non-violent of- rate for those in their late twen- then freed after 12. He now lives where in the review did I argue fenders from our prisons and jails, ties. Put another way, BJS found as a free man in the Netherlands. that low clearance rates call for as well as many violent offenders. that fully one in seven of the Such punishments for mass mur- “harsh” punishment. (Indeed, I On his third point, recidivism, oldest released inmates (40 and der and political assassination are did not advocate “harsh” punish- once again my discussion was older) were arrested for a violent inconceivable in the United States, ment on any grounds.) I do not very brief and did not draw the crime within three years. It seems even in the states without the believe that the burglars we catch conclusion that high recidivism likely that the true violent offend- death penalty. I have not heard should be punished more harshly rates “demonstrat[e]…the need ing figure over a five-year period any responsible public figure in because so many others get away to keep [prisoners] locked up for (recognizing that about half of the United States argue that we with the same crime. (Note that longer periods.” I introduced re- violent crimes never result in an should take our direction in pun- although no one is arrested in cidivism rates to raise a caution arrest) is more like one in five (or ishing murderers from Norway 87% of the burglaries in the Unit- about a key argument in Pfaff’s possibly higher). According to and the Netherlands. ed States, it does not follow that book: “For almost all people who the BJS report fully 69% of those If Europe is to be Pfaff’s guide, 87% of burglars are never arrest- commit violent crimes…violence at least 40 years old at the time he owes us some account of just ed for burglary. Burglary is a clas- is not a defining trait but a tran- of release were rearrested for a how he would bring U.S. incar- sic recidivist crime, and the more sitory state that they age out of. new crime within five years—not ceration rates down to European burglaries a criminal commits They are not violent people; they much lower than the 77% for all levels without utterly undermin- the more likely he is eventually to are simply going through a vio- offenders. ing the deterrent and incapacita- be arrested.) The burglars we do lent phase.” Now, since the con- So, why then are U.S. incar- tive effects of our criminal laws, arrest and convict should be pun- text of the discussion is all about ceration rates so much higher and without destroying public ished as much as they deserve for incarceration, Pfaff seems here than the European ones Pfaff confidence in our governing insti- the crime(s) for which they were clearly to be discussing violent points to in his book, even ad- tutions for failing to justly punish convicted, adjusted by consider- offenders in prison—that is, the justing for differences in murder the guilty. ations of prior record. one half of all state prisoners rates? Much of the answer lies If, say, a state reduced the who were convicted of murder, in the simple fact that even apart For more discussion of incarcera- maximum sentence for burglary rape, robbery, or aggravated as- from murder, the United States tion with Joseph Bessette and John from several years in state prison sault. Unfortunately, Pfaff does remains a more violent place than Pfaff, please visit CRB Digital at to a few weekends in local jail, is not tell us what he means by “de- your typical European country. www.claremont.org/crb.

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Claremont review of books Volume XVIII, Number 2, Spring 2018

Essay by Charles R. Kesler Thinking about Trump

wo months before the 2016 presi- ment of exaggeration for effect. After all, in a nents who now seem to be eyeing the cock- dential election, the Claremont Review democracy free speech often aims to awaken pit, nervously. And not merely in anticipation Tof Books published (in its digital pages) the public to a danger to which it is presently of a heated 2020 get-out-the-vote campaign. an essay that began: “2016 is the Flight 93 blind or complacent. A free people under- Some of them fantasize, rather openly, about election: charge the cockpit or you die.” The stands this and enjoys, in both senses of the congressional “interventions,” “Amendment author, Publius Decius Mus, a pseudonym for term, the exuberance of political argument, 25” putsches, and other desperate steps that Michael Anton, who recently served as direc- which is its birthright. could be taken to remove the constitutionally tor of communications for the National Secu- During the Cold War, with the danger of elected president before he crashes Air Force rity Council, noted that “you may die anyway” nuclear annihilation hanging heavy in the One into the special counsel’s office. because there were no guarantees except one: air, fellow-traveling leftists often deployed They are letting off steam, mostly. But “if you don’t try, death is certain.” a surrender slogan, “better Red than dead,” what’s remarkable is how little light they have He allowed that his metaphor might strike to which American conservatives liked to re- shed on the object of their ire. After almost many readers as “histrionic.” It did; but it tort, jauntily, “better dead than Red!” That three years, American progressives and the struck many more as galvanizing, especially qualified as an exaggeration, inasmuch as conservative Never Trumpers are no closer when Rush Limbaugh devoted virtually an they were not looking forward to Mutual to understanding the man and the politi- entire radio program to reading “The Flight Assured Destruction, nor counseling, say, cal situation he’s helped to create than they 93 Election” excitedly to his listeners. mass suicide in the event of a Soviet victo- ever were. If we wish to make some progress Not long after, a Never Trump friend took ry. More carefully stated, the slogan meant in understanding him and the state of the me aside to warn that the essay was “dangerous,” it was better to face the possibility of being country, we need to start from a different by which he meant irresponsible, “the kind of dead than the certainty of being Red: it was point of view. argument that could be used to justify….” He a rallying cry to resist the Communists. And didn’t finish the thought, but I suppose he by means of a vigorous, anti-Communist for- Breaking Bad meant a calamity like a coup or the election of eign policy, it would be possible, God will- Donald J. Trump, assuming he could tell the ing, to end up being neither dead nor Red, eddy roosevelt once congratu- difference. I pointed out the obvious, which which was indeed how the Cold War played lated his countrymen for never having is that the only non-metaphorical action the out not only for us but, more remarkably, for Telected a bad man as president. More author urged Americans to consider was vot- the Russians, too. than a year into his presidency, the critics’ ba- ing for the Republican presidential candidate. Is such freewheeling speech allowed any- sic indictment of Donald Trump, delivered Nothing illegal about that, is there? more? That is a question for the Trump with several variations, is that he is a bad The broader point, of course, is that almost years, as we shall see. How amusing, in the man, so bad as to be unfit for the presidential any spirited political appeal involves an ele- meantime, that it is the president’s oppo- office. For most his badness bespeaks moral

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 10 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm vice, others cry up what might be called tem- original justice and holiness God intended us they could, that is, as far as circumstances peramental or psychological failings, while a to have. From this crooked wood of human- would allow, Abraham Lincoln liked to ap- few insist the disorder is intellectual. Among ity—for there is no other—has come every peal to the verse, “Be ye perfect as your Father the Never Trump oddsmakers, the theory so-called good, or even great, president. It in heaven is perfect.” But in accepting politi- that he aspires consciously to be a tyrant shouldn’t be surprising, then, that many old- cal allies among Know-Nothings and other seems to have faded, to be replaced by a more fashioned readers of the Bible, and evangeli- unsavory elements, Lincoln resisted counsels workaday worry over his “authoritarian per- cal Christians in particular, have made their of perfection and appealed to another verse, sonality,” which might be said to combine all peace with President Trump more easily “by their fruits ye shall know them.” That is, three complaints. than outside observers might have expected. the test of practical good should be: will bad The structure of the Never Trump argu- Christians are commanded to hate the sin but or flawed men cooperate in delivering sound ment is worth examining. Bad men make love the sinner. That doesn’t mean they have public policy (as measured by his, not by their, bad presidents; Trump is a bad man; there- to support Donald Trump. But his religious standards), regardless of their moral and in- fore, Trump is, or will be, a bad president. For friends find it instructive that in the Bible God tellectual failings? the syllogism to hold, both the major and the repeatedly found ways to use even very flawed The leap from bad men to bad presidents is minor premises must be true. Let us stipu- human beings for His purposes—from King not easy or automatic. Particulars matter. Bad late, for the moment, that his critics are right David, who procured her husband’s death so character may be merely a distraction, or it may in their commitment to the minor premise: he could enjoy adultery with Bathsheba, to amount to a fatal flaw. If we are talking tyranny, Trump is a bad man. Does it follow that he Saint Peter, who fearfully lied about his asso- or treason, or bestial depths of viciousness, or must be a bad president? ciation with Jesus. psychological or mental incapacity—these and There is certainly a lot of truth in the ma- Though commanded to strive for godliness, similar species of badness clearly make for bad jor premise. As the ancient Greeks used to Jews and Christians do not expect to reach rulers and bad presidents. But the inability of say, “ruling shows the man.” That is, a man’s it, at least not in this world. But presumably moral virtue to rule the world is an old dis- virtues and vices are clarified and magnified that is not quite the point being raised by “bad covery, understood by none more profoundly by his public actions and words, especially in men make bad presidents.” All men, and all than by the truly magnanimous statesmen like the case of a president. “Character is destiny,” presidents, are not equally bad, nor bad in the Lincoln who were keenly aware of the rarity of as the saying goes. same way. Many of Trump’s most well-mean- their greatness and goodness. Yet two doubts or qualifications arise im- ing critics are thinking “bad” not in the sense mediately. First, it is possible for a bad per- of falling short of God’s glory but of falling Hard and Soft son to do good accidentally, as it were, either short, through turpitude or vice (e.g., vanity, without intending to, or by intending quite untruthfulness), of attainable human mo- ood character remains more deliberately to do so but for the sake of an- rality. Along these lines one of the less well- desirable and honorable than bad other, further end that is immoral or amoral. meaning critics, James Comey, the former Gcharacter—even if bad character As Machiavelli argued (he wasn’t the first), the FBI director, has said over and over, Trump does not necessarily make for a bad president, prince may be persuaded to serve the people is “morally unfit to be president.” These crit- nor good character for a good president. Based for the sake of his own personal glory. That ics are scandalized that Trump is not scandal- on his critics’ account of him, the question isn’t virtue as Christian or classical ethics ized by his own misdeeds, especially involving about Trump would seem to be, at least from would define it. But it can be productive of women. the conservative point of view: how comes much public good, not as an intention but as It’s not uncommon, however, for bad men in such a bad man to do so much good? That is, a byproduct. this and similar senses to do good by the public. is it really the case, as the Never Trumpers’ As it happens, the U.S. Constitution fa- Gouverneur Morris, “the rake who wrote the minor premise asserts, that Trump is such a mously set up a series of institutional checks Constitution,” as Richard Brookhiser calls him bad man? So bad that it was morally impera- and balances to encourage ambitious men to in his excellent biography, felt a kind of call- tive to usher Hillary Clinton to the White vie against other ambitious men to serve the ing to sleep with other men’s wives. Martin House in his stead? public good. The framers intended to enable Luther King, Jr., was a serial adulterer, as the I’m reminded of Winston Churchill’s line men of good character to have the powers and tireless public servants in the FBI of his day about the socialist Stafford Cripps: “He has duties they needed in office to put their vir- knew well. These sins, which were habitual all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I tues and talents to work, consciously pursuing enough to be called vices, did not prevent— admire.” The Never Trumpers see no virtues justice and the common good; and at the same and detracted from, if at all, only slightly— in Trump, and admire none of his vices. The time, the framers intended to compel bad men the enormous public good they did. resulting portrait is a caricature, a rough, un- to serve the public even if they would prefer Andrew Jackson killed a man in a duel, and revealing one. No one would ever call him a not to. When working properly, the Constitu- would have killed more if he could. Ulysses moral paragon—not even the president him- tion’s incentives would, by repetition, help to S. Grant was a drunkard, at least for long self. But the Trump universe theorized by the make such service habitual, and thus improve stretches of his life. Grover Cleveland, an Never Trumpers is all dark matter; it doesn’t the character of some, at least, of the imper- out-of-wedlock father through a dalliance acknowledge the traits we see with our own fect human beings who would get elected in that was Clintonian in its impetuousness, en- eyes, including some admirable vices, but also this democratic republic. tered the presidency with chants of “Ma, Ma, his distinctive virtues, whether we choose to Second, as these considerations suggest, where’s my pa?” ringing in his ears, only to be dislike them or not. The critics seem to prefer a lot depends on what “bad men” actually defended by his fellow Democrats who chant- an explanation of Trump that is, as the cos- means. Let’s begin from the beginning, as it ed, “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!” mologists say, non-luminous. were. From the point of view of original sin, Exhorting Americans to live up to the Dec- Michael Barone’s Hard America, Soft we are all bad, that is, fallen—deprived of the laration of Independence’s principles as far as America: Competition vs. Coddling and the

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Battle for the Nation’s Future (2004) is a short Trump comes from a different neighbor- Like Trump, he practiced a kind of creative book with a useful distinction that begins hood. They divide along recognizable lines destruction, but one that was planned, mod- to illuminate the phenomenon of Trump. It that until 2016 did not seem that interest- eled, and financed as taught in the business describes two countries, as it were. “Hard ing, because most commentators simply as- schools (Romney is a joint Harvard J.D.- America” is shaped by the marketplace forc- sumed that Romney’s neighborhood had MBA). It was this spirit of cool expertise and es of competition and accountability. “Soft forever displaced Trump’s. They pose sharp willingness to sacrifice factories and jobs that America” is the realm of public schools, self- contrasts within the world of hard America: helped to make so damaging Romney’s leaked esteem, and government social programs. construction versus consulting, blue-collar remark in 2012 about the “47%” who pay no The latter, according to Barone, produces versus white-collar, “deals” versus mergers income tax, whom he could never persuade incompetent and unambitious 18-year-olds, and acquisitions. “they should take personal responsibility and the former hard-charging and adaptable For most of his life, Trump ran a pros- care for their lives.” The only thing missing in 30-year-olds. Somehow, uneasily, modern perous and famous family business. Though his assessment was “deplorables.” America includes both. he’s had clients, partners, and customers, he’s Trump also knows his way around a tele- Donald Trump considers himself a kind never had to report regularly to a board of division studio. The hard reality of being a of ambassador from hard America to soft rectors or to public shareholders or to regular builder and landlord is combined, in his case, America. Many (not all) of the asperities of capital markets, and it shows. He’s used to be- with being a longstanding reality-TV star. If his character are related to his career path. ing the boss, to following his intuition, to try- the preceding president cast himself in the He calls himself “a builder,” and America “a ing one thing and then another, to hiring and role of “no-drama” Obama, the current one nation of builders.” He knows his way around firing at will (and to hiring family members at plays all-drama-all-the-time Trump. From a construction site, and his virtues and vices will), to promoting himself and his companies the beginning his kind of real estate verged on skew to that hard, brazen, masculine world of shamelessly. Not every family entrepreneur is show business. Branding and selling his name, getting things built quickly, durably, beauti- like this, but most could probably recognize a which have constituted the largest part of fully if possible, and in any case profitably. He bit of themselves in Trump’s exaggerated por- his business for a while, represented for him wants to revive hard America’s mines, facto- trait. Whereas Trump is a wildcatter at heart, another step in the direction of show busi- ries, and building sites, in the face of what he Rex Tillerson, his first secretary of state, the ness. Show business is a business, however, knows is the growing power of its despisers in former CEO of Exxon, was Big Oil; it wasn’t and Trump likes to interpret what might be soft America. hard to predict they would clash. considered the softer side of his career in the Still, there are different districts in As the quintessential Bain Capital pri- hardest possible terms. He emphasizes num- hard America. For example, Mitt Romney vate equity guy, Romney shunned big, old- bers—the ratings, the advertising dollars, the is a very successful businessman, too. But line companies unless they were foundering. size of his crowds. He has survived in several

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cutthroat industries, and intends to add poli- are said to trace to his populism, whatever As a result, there are fewer and fewer levers tics to the list. that means. In the age of big government or, by which the governed can make its consent Whether in business or in politics, Trump more precisely, of administrative government, count, by which an indignant people can exert disliked the airs and claims of “experts,” de- the word appears in country after country but control over its own government. In the ad- tached from and above the subjects of their always elusively. It responds to a need but nev- ministrative state there is little room for pop- experiments. He distrusted their glibness, too. er satisfies that need. ulism because there is no room for an inde- He identified with working men and women, When the original American populists pendent people. The “people” has been broken and promised (at least) to add jobs, to boost organized the People’s Party in time for the down into claimant groups, and every group economic growth, to “win” for pipe-fitters 1892 election, their rallying cry was the people has been organized, the better to mesh with and waitresses, too. He defended their Social versus “the interests,” meaning the railroads the gears of the state. The only escape would Security but blasted the fraud of Obamacare, and large corporations that were squeezing be somehow to revive the older political sys- whereas Romney had scorned the 47%’s “en- farmers and small businessmen, and that al- tem, which limited government enough so that titlements” but gave Obamacare (based, you legedly dominated the two main political par- the people could responsibly control the gov- may recall, on Romneycare) a pass. Romney ties. So they started a new party calling for ernment, directly via elections and indirectly lacked perhaps what Kanye West would call silver money and lots of it, nationalization of through the Constitution. The only populism “dragon energy.” When in a primary election the railroads, a federal income tax, and other that could make a difference, in other words, he had done well among voters without a high reforms including the initiative, referendum, has at its heart a return to constitutionalism. school degree, Trump memorably declared, “I and direct election of senators. That’s a very daunting goal, not particu- love the poorly educated.” You’d never hear But in an age when the vast majority of fed- larly clear in its ultimate demands. How to Romney, nor any other mainstream Republi- eral laws are regulations passed by unelected get there is just as daunting. In 2010 the can, say that! bureaucrats, when state and federal courts Tea Party cheered the ends but remained Romney is certainly not a bad man, but freely strike down state initiatives they dislike, baffled by the means, and then offered to let he was portrayed in the 2012 presidential when the money supply is controlled by the the Republican Party take over its thinking, campaign as cruel to animals, a bully, a liar, which was a fatal mistake. The GOP never a religious fanatic, a sexist (“binders full of got beyond opposing Obamacare…without women”), a warmonger, and many other evil Trump alone among ever having thought, at least seriously, of a things by the campaigning Left. These days substitute. the Left is always campaigning; as is the the 2016 candidates Elections remain the people’s primary Right. Under those conditions, moral criti- means to control the government, and it was cisms shade quickly into aesthetic-political took an unflinching, through that door Trump entered our politi- ones, and vice versa. It is not entirely clear a proud stand against cal life, at the head of a popular movement whether his liberal and conservative critics that gradually gathered to oppose the existing disapprove of Trump because he violates the multicultural Republican establishment, the torpor of the moral law or because he is infra dig. The ease dissolution and loathing conservative movement, and the politically with which the one yields to the other might correct, and increasingly anti-American, Left. suggest that his conservative opponents in of America. Several times Trump has pointed out that the particular should take pains to specify their movement he led lacked a name, and lacks one objections and check their own prejudices. still. This reflects probably the sheer confu- Their favorite medium for getting these off unelected members of the Federal Reserve, sion of the political moment, as the popular their chest—Twitter—suggests that pains- when campaign finance laws make it diffi- resistance to the consolidation and expan- takingness is not the point. cult for new parties to form, and when there sion of progressivism—to eight more years At any rate, Trump was neither the first nor is already a federal program for almost every of Obama-style transformation—measured the last GOP presidential candidate to be car- imaginable social problem—what is “popu- its lofty, desperate goals against the field of icatured as a very bad, very rich man. The ease lism” supposed to do? 17 contenders for the 2016 GOP presiden- with which businessmen of whatever precinct The post-1960s bargain that Americans tial nomination. It reflects also, however, that may be caricatured as immoralists shows that made with their government, not quite know- Trump was not the origin of the discontent, soft America is perhaps not as soft as Bar- ingly to be sure, was to exchange more and however vital he was to its crystallization. one thought. Soft America, centered on our more aspects of popular control over govern- In the beginning it looked like a very im- schools, is hard enough to have come up with ment for a guarantee to the people of new, pressive field, until Trump began to cam- political correctness, now the cutting edge of constantly updated rights, assigned by the paign against it. He announced his candidacy American progressivism. And hard America, government to economic, social, ethnic, rain June 2015, on the day after Jeb Bush did. at least its Fortune 500 slice, has proved soft cial, gender, and transgender groups. The ex- Bush already had raised $120 million, col- enough to become the chief disseminator of change of power for rights has left us addicted lected binders full of endorsements, muscled political correctness to middle America. to the rights but frustrated at the loss of power. Romney out of the way, and stood near the The whole bargain seems increasingly hollow. top of every poll. Within a month Trump had In Search of Populism And it could get worse if the next Democratic overtaken him. Trump stayed at the top the administration resumes President Obama’s rest of the way, with the exception of a few rump is often called a populist, efforts to use treaties and international or- weeks of jockeying with Ben Carson. though it isn’t a word he uses very often ganizations to upload more power to foreign The story of Trump’s rise was also the Tor to describe himself. Yet many of his courts and bureaucrats, even further removed story of Jeb’s fall—of the whole Bush es- alleged moral and political disqualifications from the American people. tablishment’s fall. Republican voters came

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 13 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm gradually to realize that George W. Bush’s building, the wave that Trump would ride to were winning in a post-Soviet, post-socialist presidency, despite some glorious moments, the White House. world. The GOP took the House of Rep- looked more and more like a failure. The resentatives in 1994, for the first time in 40 administration’s occupation of Iraq and Af- Conservative Torpor years. Didn’t Bill Clinton declare that “the era ghanistan had curdled into endless war and of big government is over?” self-deluded democratization. Its domestic rom george h.w. on, bush family pol- Conservatives sunk into a self-satisfied agenda of compassionate conservatism had iticians had fancied themselves not only contentment, confident that what, in his brief proved underwhelming, leading to a bigger Fas post-Reagan Republicans, though heyday, Newt Gingrich called “the third wave” federal role in education, a new Medicare their eagerness in that respect was revealing would conduct them safely and inevitably to entitlement, and failed efforts to implement enough, but as supra-Reagan, a more public- shore. When the emerging Republican re- “comprehensive immigration reform,” mean- spirited, morally grounded class of leader- alignment did not emerge, many conservatives ing more immigration, multiculturalism, ship. The story, probably apocryphal, has adjusted their timelines but did not despair. and Democrats. At the end of his tenure the Nancy Reagan listening to H.W.’s acceptance In the long run, they reflected, the alternation economy collapsed into the Great Recession, speech, in which he vowed to seek a kinder, in power of conservatives and chastened liber- prepared in part by his administration’s com- gentler America. Afterwards she asked Ron- als would produce an orderly progress toward passionate distribution of mortgages to un- nie, “Kinder, gentler than who?” Exactly. The moderate conservatism—or moderate liberal- creditworthy borrowers. history of the GOP post-Reagan, through its ism, but in any event toward moderation. The Trump awakened the Republican Party to presidential avatars Bush 41, Dole, Bush 43, price of this bargain did not seem high: the how alienated it was from its own titular lead- McCain, and Romney, is a history of barely Left insisted on dictating the moral rules of ers and their agenda, which had been officially contained jealousy, disparagement, and imag- the road, including the complete rulebook of ratified by the Republican National Commit- inary transcendence of Reagan conservatism. racial and gender etiquette. Affirmative -ac tee in its “postmortem” on Romney’s loss in In terms of its public policy successes, the tion, in particular, was here to stay in college the 2012 election. The RNC recommended— conservative movement peaked in the Reagan admissions and business hiring. Republicans demanded—more of the same, and especially years, launching a generation-long rejuvena- hardly objected: what were Human Relations a healthy dose of immigration “reform,” for tion of the economy and preparing the defeat departments for, after all? which Jeb, the former governor of Florida, was of Soviet Communism. The Berlin Wall, and It was business as usual for the GOP and, the perfect standard bearer. The only prob- soon after the Soviet Union itself, fell during to a lesser but still significant extent, for the lem was that the party elites had completely H.W.’s watch, though mostly as the result of conservative movement throughout the Bush misread the party base. They missed the huge his predecessor’s policies. After that, conser- era, from H.W. to Jeb. That era ended when popular (or was it populist?) wave that was vatives relaxed their vigilance, confident they Trump descended the escalator at Trump

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Lost in Translations The Celebrated Marquis Roman Law Scholarship and Translation in An Italian Noble and the Making of Early Twentieth-Century America the Modern World Timothy G. Kearley, University of Wyoming School of Law, Emeritus John D. Bessler, University of Baltimore Forthcoming June 2018, ISBN 978-1-5310-0722-5 School of Law 2018, 568 pp, ISBN 978-1-61163-786-1 $63.00, Lost in Translations focuses on five Roman law scholars (all but one of whom paper were trained as lawyers) who worked early in the twentieth century. Among them, they produced the first English translations of the Codex Theodosianus and Justin- Called the “Italian Adam Smith” for his ian’s entire Corpus Juris Civilis, as well as other ancient Roman laws. In describing pioneering work as an economist in Milan, Cesare their heroic and often solitary labor, Kearley also addresses the history of American Beccari pushed for social and economic justice, mon- education. etary and legal reform, conservation of natural resources, and even inspired France’s adoption of the metric system. Bessler discusses the history of economics and shows how Beccaria’s ideas shaped the American Declaration of Independence, constitutions and laws around the globe, Communicators-in-Chief and the modern world in which we live. Lessons in Persuasion from Five Eloquent American Presidents Send Them Back Julie Oseid, University of St. Thomas School of Law Irwin Stotzky, University of Miami School of Law 2017, 274 pp, ISBN 978-1-5310-0388-3, $29.00, paper Forthcoming June 2018, ISBN 978-1-61163-849-3 Oseid examines why Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Send Them Back highlights several of the cases that civil rights lawyers, working Ulysses Grant, and Teddy Roosevelt—though vastly different— were so persuasive. directly with Haitians and other activists, ﬁled and litigated for Haitian refugees, Each featured president had some natural writing talent, but each also worked hard and the legal, social, and political aspects of such litigation. The litigation fostered to hone his writing. The book provides examples of each president’s writing; dis- both structural legal changes — and a determined political opposition — to unfair cusses the characteristic style of each; lists each president’s favorite books, and shows and illegal immigration decisions. how the presidents influenced each other’s writing styles.

Save 20% when you use the discount code CROBFA18 through September 30, 2018 For more information and to order these titles, please visit cap-press.com.

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Growing a Sustainable City? The Internet Trap The Question of Urban Agriculture Five Costs of Living Online by Christina D. Rosan and Hamil by Ashesh Mukherjee Pearsall The Internet Trap provides a new In this book, Christina Rosan and perspective on the dark side of Hamil Pearsall reveal how growing the internet, and gives readers the food in the city has become a symbol tools to become smart users of the of urban economic revitalization, internet. sustainability, and gentrification.

The Rise and Fall of Moral Conflicts in the United From Wall Street to Bay States and Canada Street by Mildred A. Schwartz and The Origins and Evolution of Raymond Tatalovich American and Canadian Finance This book highlights how both the by Christopher Kobrak and Joe United States and Canada have dealt Martin with some of the most contentious moral issues, including abortion, Why did the American banking gun control, capital punishment, system experience massive losses but marijuana, and same sex relations. the Canadian system withstood the 2008 financial crisis? This book traces the roots and different paths taken by the two banking systems.

Toward a Better World Memoirs of a Life in International and Development Economics Green Japan by Gerry Helleiner Environmental Technologies, In this memoir, Gerry Helleiner, Innovation Policy, and the Pursuit of Canada’s leading development Green Growth economist, recounts how his early by Carin Holroyd experiences in Africa propelled him Green Japan offers a nuanced and into a career devoted to teaching hopeful account of Japan’s attempts economic development and the at linking environmental sustainability reduction of global poverty. and continued prosperity.

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Tower to announce his candidacy. It’s far from Trump is the real thing: a complete novice thing—the more dramatic the better—and clear that the Trump Administration will end in politics. Lacking experience or a deep ac- see what happens next. well, but it’s perfectly clear that the Bush era— quaintance with history, he is forced to im- His campaign was a case in point. It wasn’t one might almost say, the Bush-Clinton era— provise. Sometimes that scrambling has the an accident that his children filled so many is over, for good or ill. character of the best kind of entrepreneur- key positions in the early going. That wasn’t Perhaps only a genuine outsider could ial innovation, sometimes it seems like the nepotism, it was desperation. Trump didn’t have smashed it. Although presidential can- worst kind of reality-TV blather, when the know the experienced strategists, fundraisers, didates often present themselves as outsiders, unscripted imperative is to say or do some- pollsters, and politicos that a normal presidential campaign requires to operate. Most of the outsiders who were attracted to him early were either complete unknowns or has-beens. HOW LIBERTY CREATES (Everyone you’d ever heard of was working for A MORE CARING WORLD one of the other 16 GOP contenders.) Steve Bannon was virtually unknown then, and certainly had no political experience. It’s possible to be a “populist” while being unknown by the POPE FRANCIS people, but it isn’t exactly a recommendation. and the Through Bannon’s activities at Breitbart the term “alt-right,” also hitherto virtually un- CARING SOCIE Y known, began to circulate. This was a boon to Edited by ROBERT M. WHAPLES the liberal press, who needed a MacGuffin to Foreword by MICHAEL NOVAK pursue for the rest of the campaign. It was a mess, but competent people even- Pope Francis’s call for uplifting the poor and tually were found, and amid the confusion protecting the environment has inspired discussions Trump’s indictment of the torpid party leaders worldwide: What is the most effective way to ﬁght continued to be heard, and welcomed. He had poverty? And what value does a religious perspective two conspicuous virtues that his Republican offer in addressing moral and economic problems? opponents, and Hillary Clinton too, lacked. One was a sense of humor. To address rallies Pope Francis and the Caring Society shows for an hour at a time off the cuff and keep them that compassion without comprehension is folly, laughing is very hard to do. His humor was not objective analysis is a prerequisite of moral insight, gentlemanly or self-deprecating like Reagan’s; and a market economy is an essential ingredient for it was cutting, bold, outrageous, and usually at human ﬂourishing. the expense of his opponents and the press. But Trump connected with his audience as Reagan did, because each spoke as a citizen to fellow 256 PAGES | 6 X 9 INCHES | 7 FIGURES | INDEX | HARDCOVER: $24.95 | ISBN: 978-1-59813-287-8 citizens, without a trace of the policy expert’s condescension, cosmopolitanism, or crocodile tears. The press never got Trump’s humor. His second virtue was a kind of courage in “We are all called to serve and care humbly for others, especially those most in need, defense of one’s own. This was a courage nev- but how we do so is crucial in guiding our moral responsibility. Firmly rooted er tested in war or physical emergency, to be in our Christian tradition, the incisive and timely book, Pope Francis and the sure, but it was a large, and impressive, politi- Caring Society, carefully examines this vital issue by applying natural-law ethical cal fact. He was prepared to stand up for his family, his company, his campaign, his coun- and economic principles.” try, and for his country’s jobs, workers, facto- —Michael C. Barber, S.J., Bishop, Catholic Diocese of Oakland, California ries, and products. Courage never demands that one be perfect or morally pure, and he “Pope Francis and the Caring Society provides the sound economic and ecological isn’t, so this virtue fit his rhetorical needs and teaching that is missing. . . . the book initiates a debate that has the added benefit strength. America does not have to be perfect of educating its readers on the Church’s teaching on many issues like natural law for him to defend her wholeheartedly against and other moral and economic principles that would otherwise remain clouded.” her enemies. He does not have to be perfect to —Crisis Magazine seek or to assert the privilege of defending her. Warts and all. It’s necessary only to love her. Obama was constantly apologizing for ORDER ONLINE America’s past, present, and future sins. Hill- www.independent.org/popefrancis ary promised more of the same, only more gratingly. Trump regards this duty as, at best, ORDER TOLL FREE a very small slice of the presidential portfolio; 800-927-8733 100 SWAN WAY, OAKLAND, CA 94621-1428 when vastly overdone, it becomes a moral nul- lity and a political con game.

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One effect of his courage in defense of she is something noble or capable of being middle America, and hence from America, our own was to neutralize the effects in the noble. has been remarked and resisted in a series of campaign of what used to be called “liberal These notions, which used to be the com- major liberal books in recent decades: Arthur guilt.” In truth, liberals long ago spread it to mon sense of American politics, are now Schlesinger, Jr.’s The Disuniting of America Republicans and conservatives. Part of the highly controversial. They are politically in- (1991), Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Coun- Bush dynasty’s high self-regard had to do correct, rejected as “offensive” on many col- try (1998), and Mark Lilla’s The Once and with its presumed sensitivity on this ques- lege campuses and increasingly in American Future Liberal (2017). What these estimable tion. Why Republicans should feel so guilty politics. Today’s freshmen, who are tomor- volumes also have in common, alas, is inef- over historic Democratic policies like slavery row’s voters, soon learn (if they hadn’t been fectiveness. They didn’t stop or even slow the and segregation is itself a good question, but taught already) to believe in the ubiquitous Left’s self-alienation. the tactic has worked for decades to paralyze malevolence of “white supremacy” in Ameri- Increasingly, therefore, the effect of higher conservatives’ self-confidence and pride, and can politics as earnestly as Protestants believe education is to turn our own children into to induce them to take compensating posi- (or used to) in the depravity of human nature aliens, and hostile ones at that. In truth, the tions on, say, immigration “reform” to prove after Adam’s fall. Needless to say, it’s a very difficulties of assimilating today’s immigrants their bona fides. Trump was the first GOP different thing to believe that human nature are due mainly to us, not to them; they are candidate and president in a long time to is inherently warped, and that white nature is. reluctant mostly because they are learning prove immune to this gambit. He appeared To disbelieve this racist canon is itself, in con- from us that America is not a country worth in public guilt-free. temporary parlance, proof of racism. assimilating to. Trump alone among the 2016 In his confidence in America’s principles Trump has his eye on the contemporary candidates took an unflinching, aproud stand and in the ultimate justice of the people, and Left’s extremism, but this is not so much the against the multicultural dissolution and his refusal to indulge in racial and sexual guilt- statist Left that the libertarians oppose, nor loathing of America. In that sense he was, as mongering, Trump resembles those brave the values-and-autonomy Left resisted by he occasionally indicated, a pro-immigration conservatives like Clarence Thomas, Shelby the religious Right, but the anti-American politician: great again, America would be a Steele, and Thomas Sowell, who have turned Left. This Left plunged its knife into our country worth immigrating to. “To make us their face against the contemporary politics politics in the 1960s and has been twisting love our country, our country ought to be of liberal guilt, including its insistence on it ever since. lovely,” as Edmund Burke observed. To be never-ending affirmative action. Like them he The Old Left had opposed American citizens again, Americans of all sorts must re- believes in equal opportunity, which means a capitalism, the Progressives had condemned discover their country’s loveliness. chance for anyone, male or female, black or American plutocracy, but not until the ’50s and That stand on behalf of America took white, to prove up to the job. But that requires ’60s did a significant faction of the Left begin not only courage but also a certain justice, the same standards for everyone. Like these to blame the American masses, not the elite, which he expressed in very American terms. prominent black thinkers, he doesn’t mind for the country’s sins. The people became the “When you open your heart to patriotism,” that that makes him politically incorrect. In problem. They were racist, materialist, imperi- he said in his inaugural address, “there is fact, he seems to enjoy it. alist, sexist, and sexually inhibited, according no room for prejudice.” Donald Trump has to the original catalogue of sins; later the pho- gotten little credit for such virtues, but they Great Again bias were discovered—homophobia, Islamo- are present amid the hurly-burly, the distrac- phobia, transphobia, and so forth. Together tions, the mistakes, the tweets, the investiga- ake america great again,” these comprise pretty much the irredeemable tions, the exhaustion, and the shrewd public Trump’s slogan, presupposes of sins Hillary had in mind when she condemned policy of the Trump Administration so far. “Mcourse that America once was Trump’s voters as deplorable. His voters weren’t His good qualities are the quietest part of his great, and might be again. His courage in de- the whole country, but they were close enough. presidency. fense of her is thus not entirely blind to her (And to be fair, she said she meant to denounce faults and her glories. (You can love someone only about half his voters.) and still see the warts.) He assumes that her Far from being Trump’s authoritarian Charles R. Kesler is the editor of the Claremont citizens ought to be proud of America, that fantasy, the Left’s growing alienation from Review of Books.

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Book Review by David P. Goldman The Prophet of Ordinary Unhappiness Freud: The Making of an Illusion, by Frederick Crews. Metropolitan Books, 768 pages, $40

rederick crews pioneered psycho- remains—and has arguably grown. A genera- compel perverse behavior. Soon Freud analytic literary criticism in the 1960s. tion ago one could speak of America as a ther- would drop the idea that neurotics had FBy 1980 he had concluded that Sig- apeutic society. Today we resemble a gigantic been molested and would assert, rather, mund Freud was a charlatan. Now professor asylum. that their own incestuous thoughts had emeritus at Berkeley, he has devoted much of made them sick; in so doing, he would his career to debunking Freud, taking shots y 1897 freud had concluded that be rending his theory more medieval along the way at the whole repertoire of post- all neurotics repressed memories of in spirit. He realized that fact and em- modern literary fads. In Freud: The Making of Bchildhood molestation. The shame- braced it. As [Freud] would write in an Illusion he has given us a summa contra psy- ful witch trials of the 1980s that sent Kelly 1923, “The demonological theory of choanalysis, digesting the enormous literature Michaels, the Amiraults, and many others to those dark times has won in the end refuting Freud and adding some of his own prison on fabricated child molestation charg- against all the somatic views of the pe- discoveries and conjectures. So overwhelm- es marked a new summit of Freud’s influence. riod of ‘exact science.’ The states of posing is the evidence Crews assembles of Freud’s Tireless reporting by Dorothy Rabinowitz session correspond to our neuroses, for professional charlatanry and personal turpi- (reprised in her 2003 book, No Crueler Tyr- the explanation of which we once more tude that the reader finishes his book baffled annies) and others publicly discredited the have recourse to psychical powers.” that this prevaricating, mercenary, self-pro- theory of recovered childhood memory—but moting lout ever managed to put one over on not before hundreds of lives were ruined and Child-abuse hysteria has abated, but the the whole educated world. scores of communities traumatized. public is still consumed by witch hunts against Freud’s reputation, to be sure, has been The resemblance of the ’80s molestation micro-aggressions, triggering, sexual harass- in tatters for a generation. Psychoanalysis is cases to medieval witch trials was no coinci- ment, and so forth. To remedy the dysfunc- nearly extinct; the last practicing Freudian I dence, Crews reports: tional sexual life of millennials, the abysmally knew died several years ago. In any word-as- low college graduation rate of minority men, sociation test the name “Freud” would elicit Psychoanalysis would remain a theo- and other perceived ills, whole universities the response “fraud.” Thanks to Crews and ry about possession, not by the Devil have been transformed into controlled thera- other researchers, the reading public is aware but by bad thoughts that would take peutic environments, subjecting every aspect of Freud’s malignance. Yet Freud’s influence up residence in the unconscious and of life to inquisitorial control.

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Political correctness is a generalization of pugnant was his treatment of “Anna O.” (Ber- Freud’s crisis of confidence, though, inspired Freudian theory; it presumes that the wak- tha Pappenheim) in 1880–1882, presented a great leap from the world of clinical documen- ing consciousness of women as well as eth- in Freudian apologetics as “the foundation of tation—where nothing ever went right—to the nic, racial, and sexual minorities consists of psychoanalytic therapy,” the first supposed grand assertion of theories that could not be a minefield of traumatic memories. Public cathartic cure reported in Freud’s Studies on proven. He abandoned the molestation theory policy must prevent the triggering of these Hysteria (1895). of neurosis, which required the identification minds. Public institutions, starting with uni- Freud’s coauthor Josef Breuer, who treated of specific sexual acts perpetrated upon the pa- versities, must be converted into the func- Pappenheim, turned the unfortunate young tient during childhood, to a general theory of tional equivalent of psychiatric hospitals and woman into a morphine and chloral hydrate sexuality that framed all human relationships all communications censored to minimize addict. Crews concludes that “her most seri- in terms of libido. The Oedipus complex was trauma. ous debility, as of the summer of 1882, and the cornerstone of this new theory. for five years thereafter, wasn’t hysteria but rews’s lengthy book never lags. the horror of attempted and failed with- rews so badly wants to expose So depraved is Freud’s villainy, so drawal.” Freud and Breuer claimed in Stud- both the revised theory and its en- Cpreposterous his assertions, so ca- ies on Hysteria that Pappenheim’s symptoms Cshrinement in the Freudian narrative lamitous the human woe he left behind in his were “permanently removed by being given that he gives scant attention to an important pursuit of status and money, that morbid cu- utterance in hypnosis,” yet Pappenheim was question: at what point did Freud transform riosity commands the reader’s attention until committed to a sanatorium only five weeks himself from an obscure, impecunious clini- the end. It is an exemplary piece of polemical after Breuer stopped treating her. cian into psychiatrist-to-the-world? In sci- composition. No one who came of age in the entific terms it was “the breakthrough that West before the mid-1980s escaped Freud’s he pappenheim case was “the wasn’t,” as Crews entitles a chapter, but it baleful influence, and it is cathartic (pardon founding deception of psychoanaly- surely was a breakthrough for Freud’s influ- the word) to hear just how gullible we were. Tsis”—the breakthrough that suppos- ence. Freud’s claim to have derived the Oedi- Freud didn’t heal his patients. He knew he edly unlocked the psyche’s secrets. The final pus complex from clinical work was humbug; didn’t, but he didn’t care: rather, “Freud had ‘discovered an Oedipus complex’ in his own mind.” Nonetheless, it Freud knew that his claims of heal- was his conjecture about neurosis and sexual- ing power for psychoanalysis lacked The stink of ity that catapulted him into the first rank of any basis in fact. From time to time he deceitfulness influence. even intimated, amid many claims to Freud later told Carl Jung that neuroses’ the contrary, that patients ought not pervaded every step sexual origin was to be defended as a “dog- to expect good results. Therapeutic ma” of psychoanalysis (Jung split from Freud success, he wrote in his “Little Hans” of Freud’s career. over this issue). If psychological distress had case history of 1909, “is not our pri- sexual causes, sex must be the cure. Freud mary aim. We endeavor rather to en- would’ve been shocked by the 21st century’s able the patient to obtain a conscious chapter of Studies on Hysteria, Crews reports, polymorphous perversity—his condemnation grasp of his unconscious wishes.” In a declared that of homosexuality followed the convention of 1912 letter to a fellow analyst he ob- his time—but he stood godfather to the sex- served, “The therapeutic point of view… the resistance encountered in therapy ual revolution. “I stand for an infinitely freer is certainly not the only one for which was “no doubt” the same psychical force sexual life,” he wrote to the neurologist James psychoanalysis claims interest, nor is that had generated the patient’s symp- J. Putnam, and, later, “I thought it the good it the most important.” Freud’s pupil tom. Again the intrusion of irrelevant right of every human being to strive for sexual Abram Kardiner recalled his declaring, matter into a patient’s association “never gratification and tender love if he saw a way to “I have no great interest in therapeutic occurs.” When we search for a trauma attain them, both of which he had not found problems…. I am much too occupied with the pressure technique, “we shall with his wife.” As Crews documents, Freud with theoretical problems all the time.” find it infallibly.” The procedure never“ took his own advice. After marrying Martha Finally in 1932, when he felt himself fails;” it has “invariably achieved its aim;” Bernays, he took her younger sister Minna as to be generally revered, he admitted and in one instance Freud’s confidence a live-in concubine. to the world that he had “never been a in it was “brilliantly justified.” Crews’s indictment is crushing, his narra- therapeutic enthusiast.” tive relentless. The stink of deceitfulness per- Crews contrasts these bravado assertions vaded every step of Freud’s career, every case “Some of Freud’s later patients did aver, with Freud’s correspondence with Wilhelm history, every publication, and all his personal vaguely, that they had benefited from their Fliess, his closest friend and collaborator dur- and professional relations. He sustained the analyses,” Crews allows. “Already by 1910, ing 1897 and 1898: “The cases of hysteria are deception because a coterie of apostles in the such was his shamanic aura that a stroll proceeding especially poorly. I shall not fin- psychoanalytic movement, including his of- around the city of Leyden with Gustav ish a single one this year either; and as for the ficial biographer, Ernest Jones, conspired to Mahler was said to have permanently cured next one, I shall be completely without patient airbrush his record, eliminating lies, incon- the composer of impotence. But this was faith material.” And: “My work now appears to me sistencies, and betrayals. All that’s missing healing, not psychoanalysis.” to have far less value, and my disorientation to from Crews’s account is an explanation of Freud’s methods did no good. They some- be complete,…another entire year has gone by why so many clever, energetic men and wom- times did a great deal of harm. Especially re- without any tangible progress in the theory.” en should have rallied to Freud’s cause in full

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 19 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm knowledge of his foibles, and why this char- gests that this is the source of Freud’s theory of Helen of Troy—all fail to seduce Faust, latan and mountebank should have arrived at of Thanatos, the death wish. who dies exclaiming, “Only he earns freedom the second decade of the 20th century with Nietzsche himself had composed a varia- as well as life who must conquer them every “the whole world as a patient.” tion on Goethe’s Faust (1829), the first mod- day.” Faust without the wager is like Hamlet A second book gestates inside Crews’s ern literary work to raise the existential ques- without the Ghost. exposé—the story of Freud the German tion that has dominated modernism: what Freud was Mephisto rather than Faust. philosopher, following in the footsteps of makes life tolerable? Crews knows that Freud From Goethe and Nietzsche he learned that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich immersed himself in Faust, but he does not mortals can’t digest life’s sourdough. That’s Nietzsche. Crews did well to relegate this to appear to have read the work himself. His the nub of the Studies on Hysteria’s celebrated a sidebar, for he is less at home among the summary is top-to-bottom wrong: dictum: “Much will be gained if we succeed German sources than he is with Freud’s in transforming your hysterical misery into clinical record. Freud’s intellectual back- On Walpurgisnacht in Goethe’s Faust, common unhappiness.” Freud didn’t discover ground is less interesting to American read- Mephistopheles offers the hero a magi- Eros and Thanatos; Europe had been besotted ers than the debunking of his therapeutic cal elixir that grants him both sexual on Liebestod since Richard Wagner premiered approach, which perhaps is unfortunate; and intellectual mastery. Faust was al- Tristan und Isolde in 1865. Wagner’s heroines as Allan Bloom argued 30 years ago in The ready Freud’s favorite work of serious expire in an erotic paroxysm; Freud’s wake Closing of the American Mind (1987), behind literature, and it would remain so. The up the next morning hysterical and hope to every baneful idea in the popular culture figure of Dr. Faust, risking his soul for be guided back to the ordinary unhappiness there lurks a German intellectual. A closer freedom from the ethical constraints of everyday life. He might’ve been a snake-oil reading of Nietzsche would help explain why that render the experience of other mor- salesman, but he sold a potion to cure what Freud’s influence flourishes no matter how tals so impoverished, would become ailed the world: disgust at life disenchanted. thoroughly he’s debunked. central to his later self-conception as That explains why Freud’s influence grows in the founder of an anti-Christian science inverse proportion to his credibility. The post- rews observes shrewdly that that could penetrate forbidden realms. religious world is not in the market for clinical Freud’s appeal was literary rather proof or historical consistency. What it wants Cthan clinical. It’s hard to understand Crews seems to have in mind Christopher is a palliative for the hysterical misery it de- why Freud’s appeal was irresistible to his con- Marlowe rather than Goethe. In the latter’s rives from unrestricted sexual gratification temporaries without knowing the literary drama, Faust eschews Mephistopheles’s offer and arbitrary self-invention. context. When Crews ventures out from the of women, money, and fame to ask for life. In confines of his prosecutorial brief into Freud’s Walter Arndt’s translation: here is another aspect of crews’s cultural context, he is less sure-footed. He account that bears mention: his dis- believes Freud’s inspiration for the Oedipus What to all of suffering mankind is Tcomfort with Freud’s Jewishness. He complex came from Nietzsche’s Birth of Trag- apportioned writes, for example, that edy from the Spirit of Music (1872). I do not I mean to savor in my own self’s core, think that true—if anything, Freud’s mature Grasp with my mind both highest and [i]t may be asked why Freud continued theory is a riposte to Nietzsche, who toppled most low, to accept patients at all. The answer can the twin pillars of 19th-century German ra- Weigh down my spirit with their weal be stated in one word, but it is the word tionalism. The first was Immanuel Kant’s and woe. that, in most Freud studies, dare not claim that reason alone could derive an eth- speak its name: money. A critic who so ics. To this Nietzsche’s Zarathustra replied To which a bemused Mephisto replies: much as mentions the topic is regarded that once humanity (namely Kant) had killed as having displayed anti-Semitism or God, everything is permitted. The second Oh, take my word, who for millennia “Jewish self-hatred.” is the classical ideal of beauty. Against this past Nietzsche offered the story of King Midas, Has had this rocky fare to chomp, Crews believes that Jewish rancor against who was told that the demigod Silenus pos- That from his first breath to his last Christianity was Freud’s primary motiva- sessed the ultimate secret of wisdom. Midas No man digests that ancient sourdough tion. “Christianity, for Nietzsche, was the in- trapped Silenus and demanded to know the lump! stitutionalized revenge of the weak upon the secret. The demigod replied, Believe the likes of us; the whole strong, who were now encouraged to cast it Is made but for a god’s delight! aside,” he avers. Oh, wretched race of a day, children of chance and misery, why do ye compel me ephisto bets that no man can That counsel was emboldening for Freud. to say to you what it were most expedient digest the “sourdough” of ordinary It is hardly news, by now, that psycho- for you not to hear? What is best of all Mlife. Faust dares the devil to show analytic theory constituted a thorough- is for ever beyond your reach: not to be him a moment so rapturous that he will want going inversion of Christian principles, born, not to be, to be nothing. The second to hang onto it, rather than continue to strive. with sexual gratification triumphant best for you, however, is soon to die. Mephisto gives him an elixir (and not on Wal- over virtuous sacrifice for heaven, and purgisnacht, but in a witch’s kitchen) to restore with the clinical interview serving as a Classical beauty was a palliative that man- his youth in the hope that love will spellbind mock confessional in which absolution kind invented to distract attention from its his prospective victim. The illusions he of- could be granted without any need for horror in the face of nothingness. Paul Gor- fers—the innocent love of Gretchen, the pow- repentance. Only gradually has it been don, in Tragedy After Nietzsche (2001), sug- er of the imperial chancellery, the ideal beauty realized, however, that this remissive

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order, instead of having been deduced brought blessing and victory to the theistic. They have not yet overcome from efficacious treatments of neurot- poor, the sick, the sinners—what was their grudge against the new religion ics, answered to Freud’s craving to pull he but temptation in its most sinister which was forced on them, and they down the temple of Pauline law [empha- and irresistible form, bringing men by have projected it on to the source from sis added]…. [H]e meant to overthrow a roundabout way to precisely those which Christianity came to them. The the whole Christian order, earning Jewish values and renovations of this fact that the Gospels tell a story which payback for all the bigoted popes, the ideal? Has not Israel, precisely by the is enacted among Jews, and in truth sadists of the Inquisition, the modern detour of this “redeemer,” this seem- treats only of Jews, has facilitated such promulgators of “blood libel” slander, ing antagonist and destroyer of Israel, a projection. The hatred for Judaism is and the Catholic bureaucrats who had reached the final goal of its sublime at bottom hatred for Christianity, and held his professorship hostage. vindictiveness? it is not surprising that in the German National Socialist revolution this close rews has here misread both Freud reserved his deepest rancor for Ju- connection of the two monotheistic Nietzsche and Freud. The refer- daism rather than Christianity. Crews notes religions finds such clear expression in Cence to “Pauline law” is a (pardon in passing that Freud’s last book, Moses and the hostile treatment of both. the term) Freudian slip. Saint Paul offered Monotheism (1939), claims Moses was an freedom from the “curse of the law” to Chris- Egyptian priest who invented the Jewish re- That is hardly the declaration of a Jew con- tians who were adopted into Israel by love ligion to control a slave rabble. The slaves sumed by hatred of Christianity. On the con- and faith rather than observance of the law. murdered Moses and out of guilt mytholo- trary, Freud’s argument that “hatred for Juda- Nietzsche did not say that Christianity was gized him. Freud cribbed this canard from an ism is at bottom hatred for Christianity” in the revenge of the weak against the strong; 18th-century German Jesuit made famous by my view is on the mark. he wrote (in 1887’s The Genealogy of Morals) Friedrich Schiller. One might say that Freud’s Frederick Crews’s Making of an Illusion that Christianity was Jewish revenge on the attitude towards Judaism was (pardon the lays bare Freud’s mendaciousness. Sigmund pagan world: term) Oedipal. Freud was a dreadful physician but a brilliant salesman who understood all too well what From the tree trunk of Jewish ven- reud read nietzsche more care- the world wanted to buy. After two centuries geance and hatred—the deepest and fully than Crews; like Nietzsche, he of the Age of Reason, he grasped that a world sublimest hatred in human history, Fdiscerns Jew-hatred at the foundation that had given up its religion wanted permis- since it gave birth to ideals and a new of pagan disdain for Christianity. He wrote in sion to be irrational once again. The world set of values—grew a branch that was Moses and Monotheism: wallowed in hysterical misery; he offered to equally unique: a new love, the deepest replace it with ordinary unhappiness. Thanks and sublimest of loves.... But let no one We must not forget that all the peo- to scholars like Crews, we no longer believe in surmise that this love represented a de- ples who now excel in the practice Freud, even if we remain, unwittingly, under nial of the thirst for vengeance, that it of antisemitism became Christians his thrall. contravened the Jewish hatred. Exactly only in relatively recent times, some- the opposite is true. Love grew out of times forced to it by bloody compul- David P. Goldman is a columnist for Asia the hatred as the tree’s crown, spread- sion. One might say they are all “badly Times and PJ Media, a senior fellow at the Lon- ing triumphantly in the purest sun- christened”; under the thin veneer of don Center for Policy Research, and is the author light.... Jesus of Nazareth, the gospel Christianity they have remained what of How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam Is of love made flesh, the “redeemer,” who their ancestors were, barbarically poly- Dying Too) (Regnery Publishing).

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Book Review by Anthony Esolen Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man? When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, by Ryan T. Anderson. Encounter Books, 264 pages, $27.99

hen the great postmortem on yan anderson has written one of tion that sex is a superficial thing, a matter of a our society of delusions has been those books. When Harry Became Sally: few organs down below. On the contrary: sex is Wwritten—as it undoubtedly will, RResponding to the Transgender Moment the means by which sexed species survive: because human nature does not change, and is thoroughly researched, relentlessly logical, biological realities no more than gravity or sensitive to the needs and the confusions of Sex as a status—male or female—is the phases of the moon are bound to heed people who wish—or believe they wish—they a recognition of the organization of a what we may say about them—there will be were members of the other sex, and filled with body that has the ability to engage in a large category of works by strong-minded the startling claims of the activists and with sex as an act. More than simply being men and women that shouldn’t have had to the stories of people abused by doctors all too identified on the basis of such organiza- be written. Works on the sexes will be para- quick to drug and mutilate. Yet the book is tion, sex is a coherent concept only on the mount among them, for instead of using the hopeful, because in point of fact the transgen- basis of that organization. The funda- far-reaching cultural and scientific means der house is built of sand, and only social coer- mental conceptual distinction between at our disposal to revel in the beauty of the cion from on high can prevent ordinary people a male and a female is the organism’s sexes, male and female, we must instead de- from noticing it and saying what is obvious. It organization for sexual reproduction. fend the very idea that there are sexes at all. is a brilliant book in a bad time. At the same time we must defend our minds Let me focus on four errors that Anderson, The sexes as such are for one another, in and our children’s minds from the incoher- a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foun- their unique cooperative function, which is ent claim that, although “male” and “female” dation and the founding editor of the online the bringing of new human beings into the are supposed to be arbitrary terms devised journal the Public Discourse, scouts and, with world. There is no third sex—not even clergy- by “society” with ill intent, a person can actu- firmness and temperance, exposes as shallow, men, as George Bernard Shaw jested. There ally be a male born in a female body, or vice illogical, and utterly inconsistent with what is no sexual spectrum (Anderson deals with versa, and, what is more, a child as young as we know, both from biological investigation the exceedingly rare cases in which a genetic three can penetrate the mystery of this inco- and from common observation. defect results in someone’s having a latent or herence. It is like saying that Napoleon does The first is that sex is “assigned,” as it were ambiguous sex; to say that these are merely not exist, you are Napoleon, and you knew arbitrarily, as if you might put a pink or a blue normal variations is rather like saying that that you were Napoleon shortly after you wristband upon the newborn baby in the hos- the human race is not essentially two-legged, stopped wearing diapers. pital, on a whim. Related to this error is the no- because some people are born with one leg

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 22 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm or none). “And this really isn’t controversial,” Human beings are creatures of nature writes Anderson. and of culture, but a healthy culture does not attempt to erase our nature as Sex is understood this way across spe- male and female embodied beings. In- cies. No one finds it particularly diffi- stead, it promotes the integrity of per- cult—let alone controversial—to iden- sons, in part by cultivating manifesta- VOL 7 NO 1, WINTER 2018 tify male and female members of the tions of sex differences that correspond bovine species or the canine species. to biological facts. It supports gender Reading Tocqueville Farmers and breeders rely on this easy expressions that reveal and communi- behind the Veil: distinction for their livelihoods. cate the reality of our sexual nature. African American Only man can have a stake in obfuscation. We can believe otherwise only if we adopt Receptions of what Anderson, following his teacher Robert Democracy in ut even so, aren’t the distinctions P. George, has called a “new Gnosticism.” This America, 1835–1900 trivial? If they were trivial, one might ask is the belief that the “real self” is something Alvin B. Tillery Jr. why all the need then for amputations, free-floating, maybe three feet over your head B The Isolated pin-on prostheses, plastic surgery, sterilization, and two feet to the right, which uses the body and hormone pumping? But the distinctions as a mere instrument for procuring its desires. Presidency: John Tyler are not trivial. As Anderson shows, citing what But “if a soul has an inner sense of something, and Unilateral we know from genetics, physiology, and neurol- it is of and through the body,” explains An- Presidential Power ogy, we are sexed beings all the way down to the derson. “Souls aren’t radically detached from Jordan T. Cash cell, and, from instructions encoded in the zy- bodies; they are the principle that informs gote, up to every organ and their interrelations, them, organizes them, and grounds their root Moral Suasion and including the brain. It is imperative that physi- capacities.” I cannot know what it is like to be Political Action cians and psychiatrists know this. A man’s typ- a bat, says Anderson, taking his cue from the Adam Chamberlain ical metabolism is not a woman’s. A woman’s philosopher Thomas Nagel, because I am not bones are not the same as a man’s. Diseases af- a bat. I am a man, and therefore cannot know Anti-German Hysteria flict the sexes at different rates and in different what it is like to be a woman. What Bruce Jen- and the Making of the ways, and this is why, Anderson notes, medical ner wants instead is that others perceive him as “Liberal Society” researchers must now separate their results for a woman; he is out of kilter with the reality of Duncan Moench sex. Surgeons know it, too: the woman’s heart his body, and he demands that others join in. is smaller than the man’s and presents its own Nor is there any evidence that “transgender” A Covenant of the array of issues to deal with. Feminists them- people as a group have brains that are innately Heart: Martin Luther selves long complained that men and not wom- different from members of their own sex as a King Jr., Civil en were taken as the paradigmatic recipients group: Disobedience, and the of medical care. Yet we are now to believe that Beloved Community some plastic surgery and some influx of artifi- There are no brain studies demonstrat- James M. Patterson

cially administered hormones or suppressors of ing “predictive power” in any of the THOUGHT POLITICAL AMERICAN A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture hormones can magically work a fundamental biological differences examined, and and complete change. this lack of predictive power is a seri- Book Reviews Which brings me to a second error that ous weakness for a scientific theory. So Anderson exposes, that “sex” and “gender” are there is no warrant for the claims in READ AT bit.ly/2tYs5LI independent of one another. We have long popular media outlets that biological heard from feminists that “sex” is biological, differences located in the brain deter- but “gender” is social, and since it is social, it mine gender identity. is merely a matter of custom; though now, as Anderson notes, citing gender theorist Judith herefore, to move to the third Butler, some people say that sex itself is a so- error, there is no reason to suppose cial construction, but that gender, what you feel Tthat a mere child can know what his about yourself, is fundamental and immuta- “real” gender is. Anderson asks a form of this ble. That is complete madness. Try to apply question again and again: “On what other it to any of your other bodily systems beside subject is the assertion of a two-year-old the sexual; try saying that your stomach, liver, ‘no less valid’ than that of an older child or bladder, intestines, and the entire physical ap- an adult?” When we examine what a child paratus for converting food into energy and means when he or she says he is “really” of nutrients are socially constructed, but your the other sex, we see that the child is either taste for poached eggs is fixed, innate, and interpreting things according to superficial, absolute. Anderson argues, correctly, that our inexperienced knowledge of the sexes, or is social lives are expressions of our biological responding to the actions of adults—some- being: we are, biologically, the kinds of crea- times to abuse by adults. In other words, the LEARN MORE AT bit.ly/2n5Aaz8. tures that form the kinds of societies we form: child’s notion of the other sex is, if anything,

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“socially constructed,” and it tends to be shal- man who cared nothing for sports and for When it comes to speaking the truth, An- low and full of mistakes. what he considered to be the typically mascu- derson yields not a millimeter. When we deal Sometimes a boy, Anderson shows, has an line things, who was, in his bearing, his speech, with persons, he reminds us always to be unusually low “activity level,” which depends and his rather forceful encounters with others, merciful, and to try to understand what may upon his metabolism, environment, and gen- masculine to the last drop of his blood; yet he underlie the delusion. Here I’ll end with an eral temperament, and this may lead him to was surprised and gratified when I told him so, observation that is implicit in this superb and shy away from roughhousing. He may then and told him also that it was obvious. honest book. If there are boys who long to be prefer, for a while, to play with the girls. This girls, and girls who long to be boys, it is less isn’t cause for concern. It doesn’t actually hat brings me to my final point. because of some reality they know about than mean anything, unless others force the issue: No politically-moved violation of re- because of a reality they have been taught to his peers, by abusing him, or our new and im- Tality can be harmless, and Anderson hate. Men and women in our time have very proved monsters in social work, who do worse, shows the harm in many ways and at many little good to say about the opposite sex as and tell him that he might “really” be a girl. levels. We have what anyone in his right mind such, and we should not attribute their acer- No one tells him that he is going through a would call, and shall call, child abuse, on a co- bity to ingratitude alone. The fact is: men and stage, and that he will very possibly grow to lossal scale. We have the coercion of ordinary women have always abounded in ways of mak- like football. As Anderson shows, 80 to 95% people, evident in punitive speech codes. We ing miserable the lives of the other, especially of children with serious gender dysphoria have a mandated dismissal of concerns for in the aftermath of the sexual revolution. Bad grow out of it: their minds come into accord the safety of women and girls in bathrooms things have become the norm. So we should with their bodies. and locker rooms, and the loss of female-seg- expect in the near future that more young Sometimes all it takes is a parent who regated sports teams. We have the perpetu- people, not fewer, will respond in irrational shows the boy—and we are far more frequent- ation of, and professional participation in, a and destructive ways to the poisonous disaf- ly speaking of boys than of girls—that there’s severe mental illness: for my perception that I fection, suspicion, resentment, and contempt a wide range of ways in which his boyhood is am “really” a girl is like a thin girl’s perception that now dominate the converse of the sexes made manifest, and so he is a real boy after that she is “really” fat, or an attractive wom- with one another. May Ryan Anderson’s all. The boy who can’t stand football has read an’s perception that she is “really” ugly, or any When Harry Became Sally help lead us back everything on World War II. The boy who is other tangle of thoughts and obsessions that from this self-ruination. bored by war stories likes to draw maps of the are not in accord with reality. If sanity is the United States. The boy who can’t draw likes adaequatio mentis ad rem, what we have in the Anthony Esolen is professor of English Renais- to spend his afternoons tinkering with ma- transgender movement is an attempt to coerce sance and classical literature at the Thomas chines. The boy who doesn’t care for machines reality to fit someone’s imagination, and since More College of Liberal Arts, and the author, wanders the woods with his dog, searching for reality resists the coercion, there can never be most recently, of Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding new discoveries. I have spoken with a young an end to the attempt. Nothing will suffice. American Culture (Regnery Publishing).

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Essay by Angelo M. Codevilla On the Natural Law of War and Peace

Second Infantry Division World War I Memorial, Washington, D.C. (before alteration)

The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent Physics and chemistry remind us that and reproducing to take optimal advantage upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; natural law is inflexible and self-enforcing. of weather and food sources. They can’t help and the way of a man with a maid. You may “identify” as a bird, eat bird food, doing the right things for themselves. So far —Proverbs 30:19 and wear feathers. But if you jump off a cliff as we know, human beings are the only part chirping and flopping those feathers, Moth- of creation capable of doing the wrong things n order to understand what guid- er Nature’s laws regarding mass and motion for themselves. But that freedom doesn’t af- ance natural law gives us about war and will punish you. Nor will she let you make fect nature’s peculiar requirements for human Ipeace in our time, it is first necessary to salt out of two sodium atoms, regardless of beings to survive and thrive. Human survival, have some understanding of what “natural law” your commitment. like that of other mammals, starts with food is. Far from being a hazy concept peculiar to Plants are just as subject to laws. Regard- and community. But the happiness of these some philosophers, natural law is quite simply less of anybody’s opinion, apples, oranges, and creatures, who are more than animals but less how the world works. It is reality. Our very civ- avocados require different conditions to thrive. than gods, requires more. ilization is based on understanding that nature That is why judgments about farming have to and man exist and behave according to laws be right by nature, or else. Not so long ago, the User’s Manual that our minds can grasp by observation and Soviet government, following a scientific con- study. Only recently has it become customary sensus that acquired characteristics are inheri- he ten commandments are the to distinguish between facts and values—that ted, wasted millions of tons of seeds trying to most common and concise compendi- is, between what is and what we want. Former- modify wheat to grow in Siberia. In America Tum of natural law regarding man. But ly, the fundamental distinction was between today, scientific consensus has it that the globe aren’t they, one might object, a set of peculiar- truth (reality) and opinions (the thoughts we is warming, and yet citrus growers are moving ly Jewish ideas that draw their authority from winnow to understand reality). The people who their operations southward because the trees the claim that Moses received them from built the United States believed that attention don’t share that consensus. Mother Nature God? Think again. Try reversing each of the to the laws of nature and of nature’s God was does not care what anybody thinks. Commandments, and ask how humans would the key to thriving because they knew that ig- Wild animals are, as the saying goes, fare living by the reversed list: have many gods noring or flouting reality does not turn out well. “hardwired” to survive and thrive, moving and disrespect them all; never stop to rest or

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 25 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm to consider whence you came or whither you are bad for him. The same goes for very rich internal peace. Indeed, just as peace seems to go; dishonor your father and your mother; kill people. Dictators and rock stars routinely be the natural end of statesmanship, the inca- as you please; take what you can from whom- make themselves powerfully miserable. Pow- pacity to rest from war really does seem to be ever you can; fornicate with whomever you erful men differ from powerless ones in the the punishment Mother Nature imposes for can; lie and betray; envy and scheme against number of people they make miserable. If incompetent statesmanship. those around you. Not even criminal gangs they do well, it is not because they have the If peace is so essential to well-being, why could survive on that basis. Nor could any in- power to please themselves but because they then is mankind so often at war? Simply be- dividual be happy who lived by such counsels. learn what really is good. cause, by nature, each of us wants his or her At best, he might become a tyrant. His choice What, then, should we expect from states- way. We human beings share in Eve’s appe- would be whether to die like Stalin or like men and warriors? tites and in Adam’s irresponsibility. Individu- Ceaușescu. We are forced to conclude that, ally and collectively, we want to be a law unto whatever their provenance, the Ten Com- Why Peace? ourselves. Statecraft is the art of reconciling mandments just happen to be a pretty good all sides’ claims to their own desires, and per- summation of what nature requires for hu- ver the past century, as ameri- haps to their own peace. We fight wars so that man beings to live human lives. can power has grown, the Ameri- we may have our version of peace. That is why Moses’ precepts concerning magic, sod- Ocan people’s peace and security have any peace is what one side earns for itself by omy, and much else, also invite us to consider diminished. Even though America’s armed defeating the other side’s attempt to get the the consequences of violating them. But the forces have won essentially all their battles, peace it wants. Still, although war is the most point here is not that the Torah is the apex Americans have enjoyed peace for only about intense of activities, it aims naturally at a state of natural law about man. Aristotle, Cicero, 30 of the past hundred years. Common sense of rest neither more nor less than any other and many others have delved into the subject tells us that winning battles naturally leads activity. systematically and more deeply. Rather, the to winning wars, and hence to earning peace point is that our civilization is full of pretty and security. Results so contrary to common Law of War accurate descriptions of what happens when sense and intentions do not happen because humans disregard Mother Nature. his is why approaching war as any- In fact, all actions can only be understood thing other than the pursuit of peace is in light of their natural consequences. Natu- Progressive politicians Tnaturally self-defeating. Consider how rally, all voluntary movement aims at some two of history’s greatest warriors failed. Dur- state of rest. We move, walk, speak or shut up, of both parties have ing the Second Punic War, Hannibal sub- for certain purposes. When an action aims pursued concepts of ordinated strategic logic to operational logic at a purpose other than, or even opposite to, by staying on the offensive even after having what may reasonably be expected from it, the peace that are literally failed to break Rome or force it to negoti- effort is wasted at best, or counterproductive. outside the realm ate. Napoleon never thought of an end to his All actions make sense insofar as they serve string of battlefield victories. His failure to their proper ends. As the saying goes, “not of possibility. aim at peace nullified his valor as a warrior. even a dog wags his tail for nothing.” Human As Charles de Gaulle wrote, Napoleon “broke action follows the same logic. The farmer France’s sword by striking it unceasingly.” fixes the tractor to till the ground, to grow the of errors in policy. They happen only from Hannibal’s and Napoleon’s victories in battle crops, to help maintain family and country. mistakes regarding first principles, regarding contributed to defeat in war because the victo- This is what philosophers mean by “teleology.” the natural laws of war and peace. ries were not aimed intelligently at war’s natu- What is the natural law concerning trades Just as nature obliges shoemakers and ral objective: an end to the fighting. Victory in or professions? They are naturally about pro- shipwrights to produce certain goods, so it war means forcing the enemy to acquiesce to ducing certain things. Yes, all of them bring obliges statesmen to produce certain results. one’s enjoyment of one’s own peace. advantages to the tradesman. Yet, by nature, What are the goods or natural ends of states- Aristotle noted that such peace is the natu- each is about producing a good peculiar to manship? The Chinese empire’s millennial ral end of the statesman’s art and victory the itself: buildings that stand, ships that float, claim to rule has been to provide tien an men, natural objective of the warrior. Fact is, your plumbing that doesn’t leak, shoes that fit and heavenly peace. Caesar Augustus’ claim to the victory is what makes possible your peace. last, medicine that heals, banks that serve power that replaced Rome’s raucous republic Victory, of course, comes in different forms— lenders and borrowers. When human activi- was that he was the princeps pacis, the prince everything from the enemy’s annihilation or ties aim at results other than the ones proper of peace. As the Roman Empire was falling, enslavement, as was the rule in ancient war- to them, nature makes humans suffer the Saint Augustine defined statesmanship for fare, to sovereignty over border provinces, as consequences. Trades exercised primarily for the next thousand years in terms of tranquil- was common in 18th-century European war- the tradesman’s profit tend to produce build- litas ordinis, “the tranquility of order.” The fare. But victory in all its forms means the ings that fall down, ships that leak or capsize, temporal ruler was to be the defensor pacis, vanquished no longer disturbs the winner’s shoes that chafe and fall apart, financial sys- “the defender of the peace.” Fourteen hundred enjoyment of his peace. But to establish and tems that defraud. years later, Abraham Lincoln summarized his maintain one’s own peace naturally presup- That is why human activity cannot be un- objective as “peace among ourselves and with poses a coherent understanding of that peace. derstood in terms of power-seeking or plea- all nations.” Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas If you have made war—killed and destroyed— sure-seeking as ends in themselves. Consider Hobbes were, if anything, more insistent on and yet you cannot enjoy peace, it means that the successful tyrant. He can have anything judging any exercise of statesmanship by the you have been fighting the wrong battles, kill- he wants—including all sorts of things that degree of peace that it produces—especially ing the wrong people.

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During the past hundred years, American of progress. For him, America itself existed sence of statecraft. That is why, far from pro- statecraft has not produced peace because to defeat such enemies. To improve America, ducing peace, the past hundred years’ efforts Progressive politicians of both parties, be- he pushed Prohibition, which started a war at have got us less peace, and more war. ginning with Woodrow Wilson, Charles Ev- home. To improve the world, he invented the ans Hughes, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin League of Nations. For him, Washington’s Nature’s Penalties Roosevelt, have pursued concepts of peace (and the Gospel’s) admonition to mind one’s that are literally outside the realm of possi- own imperfections, looking not for specks in ach departure from the essence bility. Indeed, the enemies these statesmen others’ eyes, was priggishness. When sena- of statesmanship has earned the pen- designated were purely creatures of their tors asked him how his commitment to ev- Ealties imposed on unnatural behavior. own minds, whether “autocracy,” “war itself,” erlasting peace differed from a commitment Let us see what truths nature has been trying “world disorder,” or “ancient evils, ancient ills.” to perpetual war, he was unable to answer. to teach us. Who would we have had to kill in order to Wilson erased the distinction between war In 1921, Secretary of State Charles Evans defeat those enemies? and peace. American statesmen have yet to Hughes brokered three major treaties that Hence, for a century American blood and redraw it. scrapped more naval tonnage than all of his- treasure has been committed to kill and de- In short, the peace at which Teddy Roosevelt tory’s wars had ever sunk, and fixed the ma- stroy certain people as if they embodied the aimed was America’s peace, to be secured by jor powers’ ratios of naval power. Japan also abstractions in our leaders’ own minds. But minding America’s business, that is, by speak- agreed to respect China’s integrity and sover- who are the people whose death would end ing softly to foreigners and carrying a stick eignty in exchange for America’s promise not war itself, bring about world order, establish big enough to bash whoever would interfere to fortify our Pacific bases. America disem- liberal democracy, end ancient evils, rec- with us. George Washington, John Quincy powered itself from securing that objective. oncile historic enemies? The conjuring of Adams, and T.R. had taken for granted that Our best and brightest believed that the trea- unreal enemies makes it impossible to ask America’s business came first—always—and ties secured peace because they were sure that who might be the real persons who actually that this business requires jealous attention all peoples shared their consensus that ar- trouble our peace, whose killing or constraint to squaring ends with means. Words had to maments caused war. Hence, their logic said, would restore it? This unnatural understand- be smaller than the stick. Wilson, however, limit the means of war and you will limit the ing of what troubles our peace is the reason collapsed the distinction between America’s will to war. That was not true. In fact,the nat- why America’s military campaigns have been business and everybody else’s business. Voic- ural chain of logic leads in the opposite direction: waged without reasonable plans for achieving ing limitless objectives, he gave little if any from ends to means. That is why these treaties peace. Unnatural objectives lead to unnatu- thought to how America’s armed forces could secured not peace but Japan’s supremacy in ral operations. Since Korea in 1950, the U.S. actually achieve them. the western Pacific, China’s dismemberment, government has explicitly disavowed seeking The American people rejected Wilson. Pearl Harbor, Corregidor, and so on. military victories. Yet he won the hearts and minds of the Herbert Hoover believed that the world subsequent century’s statesmen. Reading had outlawed war by the 1929 Kellogg- The Old Way vs. the New Way Charles Evans Hughes, Herbert Hoover, Briand Pact. That was not true. Franklin Franklin Roosevelt, Dean Acheson, John Roosevelt spent the first seven years of his nderstanding this hundred- F. Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, George H.W. presidency lecturing America and the world year divorce of force from purpose re- Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, about the need to act as if it were. His last- Uquires looking again at the argument we might imagine that the world had united ing legacy was to fight World War II while between Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow in disarming, in outlawing war, or in elimi- trying to persuade the American people Wilson. nating ancient evils, ancient ills; that it was that Stalin understood good and evil in the T.R., who advocated “the big stick,” re- policing the world through the U.N.; that same way Americans do. That was not true joiced in America’s emergence as a great nothing could stand in the way of freedom; either. Naturally, because untruths necessar- power because he believed that the U.S. that satisfying the Soviet Union had tamed ily cause confusion, they produced divisions could and should use this power to secure it; that a New World Order was aborning; among Americans. These divisions plague us Americans’ enjoyment of domestic peace that democracy was conquering the Middle to this day. and tranquility. Like George Washington, East; or that Islam was terrorism’s solution. FDR, and especially Dean Acheson and who he called “the best of great men and the None of this was true. Although most of Harry Truman, fostered a consensus that, greatest of good men,” T.R. wanted to mind these men were not shy about sending Amer- finally, the United Nations had brought law America’s business, as (in Washington’s icans to fight abroad, none explained how and order to international affairs. So precious words) “our interest guided by justice shall doing so could realize the marvelous vistas was that consensus-in-illusion that in order to counsel.” He regarded power as a means of they sketched. preserve it they sent some 50,000 Americans keeping trouble away from America. The en- From Washington to T.R., American to die in Korea in what they called a “police emy was whoever troubled America’s peace. statesmen had known that the world is made action.” Naturally, that sacrifice resulted in War was a temporary measure to secure that up of different folks who want incompatible preserving an enemy that today targets nucle- peace. things. That is why the essence of statecraft is ar weapons on America. Douglas MacArthur By contrast, Wilson had started his ca- jealous attention to what our own power can had protested, “in war, there is no substitute reer denouncing the hurdles that America’s do to secure our own interests. But because for victory.” The ruling consensus, denying founders had placed in the way of forceful men from Wilson’s time to our own have been nature, deemed McArthur a dinosaur. human improvement. He believed the en- certain that all civilized peoples share the Under presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon emy at home and abroad was anything and same objectives of peace and progress, they Johnson, and Richard Nixon the practice everything that stood in the way of his vision have felt justified in dispensing with the es- of defeating global evils by committing U.S.

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military forces without intending to defeat siles targeted on America. Accordingly, the enemy of America. Five hundred years ear- the enemy became explicit. JFK redeemed U.S. government built strategic forces fit for lier, Machiavelli had cautioned that “[p]eople his promise to “bear any burden” in free- killing Soviet civilians rather than for pro- ought to be caressed or extinguished.” Presi- dom’s defense—presumably against the So- tecting Americans in case of war. The So- dent Bush just assumed that “a new world or- viet Union—by sending Americans to fight viets would follow suit. In 1972 Kissinger, der” would follow his unfinished war. Instead, in Vietnam. Johnson identified the enemy as presenting to the Senate the treaties that by harming Saddam without eliminating him, “poverty, ignorance, and disease.” He, Kenne- embodied this vision, spoke of having ban- he helped make him the Middle East’s pala- dy, and Nixon were unanimous that military ished nuclear war. Eight years later Harold din of anti-Americanism. The troops Bush victory in Vietnam was impossible—perhaps Brown, Jimmy Carter’s secretary of defense, then stationed on Saudi soil to deal with this because they stipulated that U.S. efforts there had to tell America that the Soviets’ prepara- newly menacing Middle East ended up ener- must not unduly upset the Soviet Union. In tions to fight, survive, and win a nuclear war gizing Muslim jihad against America. the service of such illusions, they rotated some were well advanced. Those who pay atten- George W. Bush and Barack Obama dif- 12 million Americans in and out of Southeast tion to natural law, you see, build things to fered only verbally and quantitatively in their Asia. Some 58,000 never came home. Ho Chi do themselves some good. Dogs do not wag approach to this jihad. Essentially, each or- Minh and the Soviets had other ideas more tails for nothing. American politicians do. dered the U.S. armed forces to do the same in tune with nature. So did the North Viet- As the Soviet monster was dying of disaf- things they had done in Vietnam: hunt down namese soldier who drove his tank through fection, the first President Bush tried to save groups and individuals while the rest of the the U.S. embassy gate in Saigon in 1975 as it by massive transfusions of U.S. cash in un- government infuses these societies with eco- U.S. Marines were beating doomed allies off tied loans (never repaid). He also told a crowd nomic aid and social reform. They did so the last helicopter escaping from the roof. in Ukraine’s capital that they should be good while explicitly eschewing any plans for end- Soviet citizens. Drafted by Condoleezza Rice, ing the conflict, never mind winning it. With Unnatural Consensus this speech was the voice of the U.S. establish- various degrees of emphasis, each bent ever ment, which valued the dream of U.S.-Soviet backwards to counter suggestions that the he same unnatural consensus cooperation over the real prospect of undoing Muslims who attack America do so for rea- spoke through Kissinger and Nixon a real enemy. Ukrainians shook their heads in sons related to Islam. In fact, neither would Tto the effect that nuclear weapons had disbelief. identify any causes of anti-American terror- sobered the Soviet politburo. All America The same president and consensus decided ism. Bush’s proposal for the Department of had to do for the Soviets to join in Wilson’s that since Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had violat- Homeland Security stated that terrorism will dream of world order was to make U.S. nu- ed world order by absorbing Kuwait, the U.S. be with us indefinitely because of “modernity clear forces incapable of targeting the Soviet would conduct a police action to reestablish itself.” Obama’s use of the term “violent ex- military or of interfering with Soviet mis- the borders. At the time, Saddam was no tremism” moved further into abstraction. But The Catholic University of America Press cuapress.org

Leo Strauss and Sin: A Thomistic Human Embryos, His Catholic Readers Psychology Human Beings Edited by Geoffrey M. Vaughan Steven J. Jensen Samuel B. Condic and Maureen L. Condic

Cloth $75.00 Paper $34.95 Paper $29.95 New Books for Spring & Summer 2018

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 29 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm the blood of hundreds of innocents and the sponsible for ourselves, decisions about how insufficient support of the elite’s long-range fears of millions are not abstract. to mind such business as we decide is our own policies and for “isolationism.” But the dis- come first, while foreigners’ needs, desires, and crepancy between the declared objectives, the Natural Resentment views are naturally incidental. Like everybody sacrifices, and the results has been impos- else, we are the only ones on whom we can sible to hide. Actions in Korea, Vietnam, and rdinary americans’ desire to count to defend our lives, our fortunes, and the Middle East make sense only to those live peacefully is natural. So is re- our sacred honor. Hence, alliances are subject few thoroughly trained to suppress ordinary Osentment of a consensus that has no to the same rule of nature as bank loans: the human beings’ natural revulsion. Ordinary plan for delivering peace. Though the estab- more you need them, the less they avail you. Americans’ revulsion at their own government lishment has become shy of voicing support In short, nature seems to dictate that we must is no small tragedy. for more “nation-building” or “engagement make only such commitments as we can and Fifth, and finally, our experiences with na- with moderate local allies,” it cannot imagine intend to keep with our own resources no mat- ture tell us that those old simpletons George anything other than what it has been doing. ter what. Even questioning whether our own Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Thus the question must be asked: what has it interests should come first is unnatural. Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt were right: been missing? What has Mother Nature been Third, earning the respect necessary for liv- don’t go looking for trouble and make nice trying to teach us about how to deal with war ing peacefully as we please requires fulfilling with everybody. As Jeanne Kirkpatrick reso as to obtain peace? The lessons are neither commitments, and especially dealing harshly minded her fellow neoconservatives: “There is new nor complex. They will startle only those with whoever disrespects us. Respect is the no inherent or historical ‘imperative’ for the whose intellectual horizon is the same old practical meaning of “honor” in international U.S. government to seek or achieve any other consensus. affairs; it is hard-earned and easily lost. Words goal—however great—except as it is man- First, foreign relations involve dealing with bigger than actions, dropping allies in their dated by the Constitution or adopted by the foreigners, that is, people whose cultures, hour of need, responding to injuries with com- people through elected officials.” By nature, priorities, and interests are their own, not plaints rather than with disproportionate rec- no society exists to conduct foreign policy. ours—above all, whose business is their own. ompense, are the most common ways in which Rather, foreign policy naturally exists to al- The sine qua non of peace is to recognize dif- modern America’s leaders have dishonored low the society to live in peace. But if you have ferent peoples’ natural, ineluctable focus on their country. How precious honor is may be to fight to preserve or reestablish your peace, themselves, and then distinguish what is our seen in a 1791 memo from Alexander Hamil- then fight with all you’ve got to accomplish business from what is their business. Others ton to President George Washington on how that as quickly as possible. Partial commit- may not like what we do in pursuit of our own to respond to Britain’s possible movement of ments, “sending signals,” or “shows of force” business. They are less likely to forgive intru- troops across U.S. territory to attack (former convey stupidity and invite contempt. sions into theirs. U.S. ally) Spain in New Orleans. The disasters Yes, all wars are foggy and require adjust- By nature as well, statesmen are their of war with Britain at stake, Hamilton out- ments. But nature supplies a compass by people’s fiduciaries. Minding the business of lined the ways in which Washington could ig- which to navigate the fog. Its needle keeps one’s own nation is a task that stretches the nore or color Britain’s affront. But he ended by pointing straight to the reason you fought capacity of the very finest statesmen. Just as it counseling that, were Britain’s transit to have in the first place: your understanding of the is impossible to serve two masters, it is impos- violated America’s honor, disasters would have peace you are seeking. The path to that peace sible to serve more than one nation at a time. to be suffered for the sake of that honor. In fact, is victory. Nor is the attempt to do so legitimate. John nations exist only insofar as they are honored— Quincy Adams rightly reproved suggestions especially by their own people. Angelo M. Codevilla is a senior fellow of the that the U.S. help one side or another in con- Fourth, while America’s armed forces have Claremont Institute and professor emeritus of flicts within or among foreign peoples by ask- earned more honor perhaps than any in his- International Relations at Boston University. ing “who appointed us judges in their causes?” tory, our leaders’ failure to draw peace from This article originated as a lecture, sponsored by By nature, they alone get to decide what they their victories has drawn down the reservoir St. John’s College and the U.S. Naval Academy, want for themselves. of respect for America among foreigners in memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Second, by that very nature, we alone get to and, most importantly, among Americans as Kristensen, a graduate of both institutions, whose decide how important anything is to us and well. The consensus—from Henry Kissinger life and death testified to the interdependence of what to do about it. Because we alone are re- on down—blames the American people for war, peace, and philosophy.

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Book Review by John Fonte One Nation The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World, by Stewart Patrick. Brookings Institution Press, 352 pages, $29.99

n 1993 the president of the american World, by Stewart Patrick, director of CFR’s Though these three aspects of sovereignty Society for International Law called for International Institutions and Global Gover- are “often in tension,” sovereignty itself can be Ia “campaign to extirpate the term [‘sov- nance program. “disaggregated” when we “voluntarily trade off ereignty’] and forbid its use in polite political one aspect of sovereignty for another.” These and intellectual company.” Such a proscrip- atrick writes well, is knowledge- “sovereignty bargains” will be “required” if the tion would have been in keeping with the able, informative, a pleasant fellow, but United States is to exert influence and shape bien-pensant consensus at the end of the past Phe is wrong on the most important is- the future of globalization. Indeed, it is “coun- century and beginning of the present one: sov- sues concerning democratic sovereignty and terproductive” for sovereigntists to worry too ereignty is becoming obsolete and needs to be the right of a free people to rule themselves. much about autonomy or even authority— diluted or shared as mankind progresses to- His first priority, in effect, is to deconstruct the the supremacy of the Constitution—because ward global governance. concept of sovereignty into its constituent but influence is what America most needs “to Nonetheless, Donald Trump, Brexit, and discordant elements, which he sees as threefold. shape its destiny in a global era.” Patrick con- the growing resistance to increased centraliza- At the top of his framework, “the Sovereignty cedes that a “liberal internationalist” would tion by the European Union from its member Triangle,” is authority, which, with respect to prioritize “solving a global problem” through nations show that sovereignty has returned America, “implies that the Constitution is the multilateral action “even if that implied a loss with a vengeance. This interruption of the in- supreme law of the land and no external con- of autonomy or, conceivably, even authority.” evitable march to globalism creates a problem straints should limit Americans’ right to gov- Sovereignty Wars, and transnational pro- for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), ern themselves.” The triangle’s second vertex is gressivism generally, argue that in an inter- central command for “liberal international- autonomy, which “implies that the U.S. govern- dependent age American interests and values ism,” more accurately described as “transna- ment, acting on behalf of the people, should are best advanced in a global order wherein all tional progressivism.” From the CFR perspec- have the freedom of action to formulate and nations, including the United States, are con- tive, the issue is how to defeat the American pursue its foreign and domestic policies inde- strained by global rules. Patrick and his allies sovereigntists and their case for democratic pendently.” The final corner isinfluence , “the decry what they call “American exemptional- self-government. This task is taken up inThe state’s effective capacity to advance its interests,” ism,” the attempt by sovereigntists to exempt Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the hence, America’s ability to influence others. Americans from global rules that others alleg-

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edly adhere to. American “leadership” is to be tions. In the words of American John Ruggie, judged by how well our nation “leads” in the the United Nations Secretary-General’s Spe- New From creation and formulation of these transna- cial Representative for Business and Human tional and sometimes supranational “rules” to Rights, “We have entered a global world” as op- which all states are supposedly bound. posed to simply an inter-national world. Thus, it SUNY Press To be sure, Patrick tells us that “a global is necessary “to devise more inclusive forms of state is a terrible idea,” neither achievable nor, global governance.” Philosophy, History, given the enormous practical barriers to cre- Transnational progressivism is connected and Tyranny ating a single world democracy, desirable. The to influential institutions and organizations Reexamining the Debate between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève attainable solution is global governance under like the U.N., E.U., World Trade Organiza- a rules-based order. He notes that “even Im- tion, International Criminal Court, World manuel Kant based his vision of perpetual Council of Churches, and powerful corpo- peace not on a single world state but on a con- rations and NGOs (non-governmental or- federation of independent liberal republics.” ganizations). Patrick makes no reference to globalist ideology, its material interests, or to espite sounding reasonable the transnational superstructure that forms enough, the reconciliation with its support network. Instead, he stacks the Edited by Timothy W. Burns and Bryan-Paul Frost Dthe world Patrick proposes is de- deck by framing a debate between “suspi- terminist, partisan, and, most importantly, cious,” “inward-looking” sovereigntists and The first comprehensive examination challenges America’s constitutional self-gov- “optimistic,” “outward-looking” globalists. He of the debate between Leo Strauss ernment. Because of his determinism, the mischaracterizes the sovereigntist support and Alexandre Kojève on the subject author’s favorite word appears to be “require.” for constitutional supremacy and democratic of philosophy and tyranny. Thus, increasing interdependence and global self-government as “alarmist,” “hyperventilat- integration “will require more extensive mul- ing,” “overblown,” “imaginary,” “exaggerated,” leo strauss on science tilateral collaboration in negotiating new and “overwrought.” thoughts on the relation between natural science and political philosophy legal obligations.” The future will require“ sovereignty bargains whereby the United he book’s main substantive argu- States…trades off…autonomy for the prom- ment is that delegating aspects of our ise of effective multilateral action.” EvenT democratic sovereignty to multilat- American immigration policy “may require eral institutions serves American interests some psychological adjustments on the part and values by gaining the good will of others. of Americans” because controlling our bor- Since the United States is declining in power, der, according to Patrick, is not something relative to other nations, it is best to get on that nation-states like the U.S. can do uni- with these multilateral agreements. The reali- svetozar y. minkov laterally but “is likely to require bilateral and ties of multilateral rules and their implemen- multilateral cooperation.” He is apparently tation are, however, far less reassuring than The first study of Strauss’s confrontation unfamiliar with Israel’s successful unilateral Patrick’s theory. with modern science and its methods. border enforcement. Consider some treaties that the U.S. has This framework is a direct challenge to a refused to join, but that Patrick insists would core premise of the American experiment in promote “our interests” and “our values.” The self-government. In the very first paragraph of U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child The Federalist, Publius repudiated determin- declares that a child has the right “to seek, re- ism, suggesting that Americans would decide ceive, and impart information and ideas of all the important question whether “societies of kinds…through any other media of the child’s men” are capable of “establishing good govern- choice” including correspondence with any- ment from reflection and choice,” rather than one in the world without interference from having these questions forever determined for the child’s parents. them by “accident and force.” The U.N. Convention on the Rights of Behind Patrick’s determinism is transna- Persons with Disabilities does not define tional progressivism, which holds that national “disabilities” but simply calls it an “evolving” Presents strikingly original and sovereignty (including democratic sovereignty) concept. The treaty requires the enforcement contemporary answers to the most must be attenuated because “global problems of positive rights (rights promoted by govern- traditional philosophical problems require global solutions.” Hence, global or su- ments) including “political, economic, social, in epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, pranational institutions and a binding “global cultural, civil or any other” rights. American and political theory. rule of law,” are necessary in the coming in- homeschooling groups, cognizant of how U.N. terdependent world to achieve “global gover- mandates are enforced, believe that the treaty nance.” This globalist order is different from an would threaten parental rights and existing internationalist framework built on relations state laws on homeschooling. They point out between sovereign nation states: in the former, that the U.S. already has the strongest laws Available online at www.sunypress.edu nations cede crucial elements of sovereignty against discrimination for the truly disabled, or call toll-free 877-204-6073 to transnational and supranational institu- notably the Americans with Disabilities Act.

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The U.N. convention on the Law of the the treaties, rather than of the American pub- formulating an “evolving” principle of inter- Sea stipulates that maritime disputes be- lic. For good measure, Patrick also believes national law as interpreted by a European or tween the U.S. and other nations will be that the U.S. should adhere to several dubi- American academic now serving on, say, the settled by “mandatory” arbitration, with ous multilateral agreements and retain mem- staff of the U.N. High Commissioner for Hu- final decisions made by a 21-member inter- berships in several flawed U.N. institutions, man Rights. national tribunal. Currently, that tribunal including the Paris climate accord; President The transnationalists’ arguments that glob- is packed with progressive-left judges from Obama’s agreement with Iran on nuclear al governance is really about American inter- around the world, including some from un- weapons; the U.N.’s New York declaration for ests and values, and is therefore required by friendly states. refugees and migrants, which endorses mass American “leadership,” has been with us for The U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Third World immigration to the West; the decades. Just before the 1992 election, Strobe All Forms of Discrimination against Women U.N. refugee program, which discriminates Talbott (later the president's deputy secretary (CEDAW) explicitly rejects legal equality and against Middle Eastern Christians; and the of state and currently a Brookings Institu- equality of opportunity for women in favor U.N. Human Rights Council, dominated by tion scholar after serving for many years as its of “substantive equality” or “de facto equality,” dictatorships. president) told his old Oxford roommate Bill i.e., equality of result based on proportional Clinton that Americans “are mighty chary representation in the population. CEDAW revealing section of sovereignty about any arrangement that smacks of pooled calls for gender quotas in public and private Wars notes that the United States, national sovereignty,” but that the “way to institutions, including in elected legislatures A more than other nations, attaches counter this resistance” is to “sell multilateral- where women receive fewer than 50% of the “Reservations, Understandings, and Declara- ism” as a means of “preserving and enhancing seats. tions” to many treaties, which limit our na- American political leadership in the world.” In The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty requires nation’s obligations under those treaties. Patrick other words, America will “lead” by following tions to “establish and maintain a national frets, for example, that in signing the U.N. transnational progressivism as promulgated control system” including a “national control Convention Against Torture, “the United by the “High Minded,” in John Bolton’s term, list” for small arms. Several years ago, John States insisted that it would interpret the at places like the U.N., E.U., The Hague, and Bolton and John Yoo argued that if the U.S. convention’s prohibition on ‘cruel and degrad- Davos. This sounds like the worst kind of joined the treaty, gun control advocates could ing treatment’ according to the Fifth, Eighth, leading from behind. use its provisions to restrict Second Amend- and Fourteenth Amendments to the Consti- ment rights. tution.” In other words, Americans insist on John Fonte is a senior fellow at the Hudson Insti- In short, these treaties serve the interests interpreting our treaty obligations within the tute and author of Sovereignty or Submission: and values of the global progressive elite who framework of the Constitution—as opposed Will Americans Rule Themselves or be Ruled promote, implement, interpret, and enforce to the preferred global progressive method of by Others? (Encounter Books).

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 33 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Newspaper cartoon by Frederick Opper, 1905 c.

A Fourth of July Soliloquy: "My how I have grown since 1776."

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Book Review by Michael Auslin Imperialism, American-Style The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire, by Stephen Kinzer. Henry Holt and Co., 320 pages, $28 (cloth), $17.99 (paper)

he cheers greeting theodore Spanish government. Cuba’s Ten Years’ War, The dominant understanding of these Roosevelt on his triumphant return from 1868 to 1878, was followed in 1895 by events was set by the dean of American dip- Tfrom a few days of battle in Cuba in the War of Independence, in which at least lomatic scholars, Samuel Flagg Bemis, whose summer 1898 were as much for America it- 200,000 Cubans died when herded into con- landmark work, A Diplomatic History of the self as for him. The swift, predictable defeat centration camps under the orders of Span- United States, published in 1936, included of Spanish forces confirmed what had been ish general and governor Valeriano Weyler. a chapter entitled “The Great Aberration of evident for decades, namely, that the United Publicity in the United States of Spanish 1898.” The same year, Julius W. Pratt’sExpan - States would be among the dominant pow- atrocities made a cause célèbre, and pushed sionists of 1898, which focused in particular on ers of the 20th century. Roosevelt’s charge President William McKinley into sending the question of annexing Hawaii, emphasized up San Juan Hill with his Rough Riders the U.S.S. Maine on its ill-fated mission to the steady shift from imperial hesitation to may have been a modest contribution to the protect American property in Havana in imperial advocacy by business and religious American victory, but it was symbolic of the early 1898 in the midst of uprisings against leaders, and finally by President William ferocious, unrestrained energy that the U.S. a new, autonomous colonial government. McKinley and his inner circle. Two decades promised to bring to the world. Though revenge for the (probably accidental) later, Howard K. Beale, in Theodore Roosevelt The Spanish-American War came just five explosion and sinking of the Maine drove and the Rise of America to World Power (1956), years after historian Frederick Jackson Turner U.S. public opinion in favor of war in Cuba, came out even more strongly for what might penned his famous essay on the closing of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore be labeled the “conscious disruption” thesis: American frontier. Jackson’s thesis—that cen- Roosevelt took advantage of the run up to that T.R.’s will to power in the internation- turies of American expansion had come to an hostilities to issue orders to Commodore al arena marked an abrupt transition from end with the full settling of the American con- George Dewey to prepare to destroy the America’s traditional approach, even if the tinent—seemed perhaps even more important Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. On May 1, 1898, new policy was conditioned by shifts in late culturally, in terms of the country’s long-stand- before any significant combat action in Cuba, 19th-century global power. This view of 1898 ing image of itself as a pioneer nation, than it Dewey’s squadron destroyed the Spanish and as a consciously adopted radical change in did in a political and economic sense. But if plunged America on the road to colonialism. U.S. policy has retained its appeal, and can be America indeed had run out of continent to In less than three months the spoils of the found in Walter McDougall’s Promised Land, settle, it would soon prove itself an expansion- Spanish-American War, combined with the Crusader State (1997), Warren Zimmerman’s ist nation still, only its manifest destiny would annexation of Hawaii, presented America First Great Triumph (2002), and other books. henceforth radiate outward, and in particular with an empire—modest in size compared to Other scholars have offered a different -in into the vast Pacific in a seamless flow from the the massive holdings of the British or French, terpretation. Among them, Harvard’s Ernest now-pacified American West. A clear sign of but one that placed 11 million people from May argued in his 1961 study, Imperial Democ- this national feeling was the adulation accord- the Philippines, Cuba, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, racy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power, ed to Commodore George Dewey, whose de- and Guam (and soon Samoa) under U.S. con- that “in the 1890s the United States had not struction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on trol. The events of 1898 were as decisive in sought a new role in the world.” In May’s view, May 1 not only opened hostilities with Spain their own way as the American Revolution, foreign issues—including Hawaii and Cuba— but announced unmistakably America’s ability the Civil War, and, later, the two world wars. had “intruded almost of their own accord” into to dispatch its military force halfway around the consciousness of policymakers who were the world. he magnitude of america’s inau- concerned almost exclusively with domestic The Spanish Philippines, of course, had guration as an imperial power was not concerns. “Some nations achieve greatness,” never been coveted by America. On the oth- Tlost on observers at the time or since. May memorably concluded, “the United States er side of the Pacific, they were too isolated A small cottage industry of historians has had greatness thrust upon it.” And from an en- from the U.S. mainland to be of serious in- steadily churned out volumes over the past tirely different position, Robert Kagan, in his terest. Even Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of century on the significance of 1898. None dis- Dangerous Nation (2007), also disagreed that state, William Seward, had ignored the Phil- putes the importance of the moment; rather, 1898 marked anything different in U.S. foreign ippines in his rhetoric that portrayed the Pa- the debate is over what led to it. Was Ameri- policy: America from the beginning had been a cific as a “great highway” for American trade can overseas expansion pushed by a cabal of state driven to conform the world to its radical to Asia. Spanish Cuba, on the other hand, aggressive imperialists, or was it an empire vision of liberty. had for decades been a major part of the acquired absentmindedly? Is our tradition American political debate, first as a potential mainly to build a virtuous society at home, tephen kinzer, a former new york target for acquisition by antebellum slave- or to “set out into a sinful world and redeem Times correspondent who has written holders in the South, and afterwards as a it,” as Stephen Kinzer puts it in his new book, Sseveral books on America’s involvement moral cause when indigenous independence The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, in South America and the Middle East, could movements were brutally suppressed by the and the Birth of American Empire? not disagree more, not only about how Amer-

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 35 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ica achieved its global position, but about major role in ensuring what might be called need to intervene abroad, and his assertion whether that position constitutes “greatness.” the “settlement of 1898”—this time by losing that “we cannot agree…what foreign policies Into this already crowded field, which in- the election of 1900, thereby saving McKin- truly are in our interest,” simplifies far too cludes H.W. Brands’s Bound to Empire (1992) ley’s imperialist course from reversal. much. and Evan Thomas’sThe War Lovers (2010), This is not newly plowed ground, and even among others, Kinzer offers another look at if it were, Kinzer’s narrative shows that there ike america in 1898, we stand to- the imperial moment, one focused less on the really wasn’t that much to the debate. Despite day at a crossroads, but a different one. mechanics of empire creation and more on the the subtitle, Mark Twain shows up only near LHow far to withdraw from the world domestic debate surrounding it, a timely ap- the end of the book, while the bulk of the is our debate today, not how far to plunge proach given the bitter debates since 9/11 over tale turns on congressional debates over an- in. Few are the voices after Iraq that call for America’s role in the world. nexation, war, and peace treaties, and on the American boots on the ground anywhere Although Kinzer focuses on Teddy Roos- unsuccessful activities of the American Anti- and at any time. The current disorder abroad evelt’s aggressive imperialism, he acknowl- Imperialist League. Less detailed than Beale’s doesn’t require such profligate intervention, edges that the desire for overseas glory was or Zimmerman’s accounts, Kinzer’s book re- nor is a war-weary American public willing to widespread. The American people and their lies heavily on economic explanations for ex- support it. Yet equally unrealistic are the de- representatives supported the new global pansion while downplaying serious strategic mands to pull up the drawbridges and ignore role, though imperialist policy was at times a arguments. threats to our interests, particularly in strate- near-run thing. If there is a moment of high At times judgmental and flippant, he re- gic regions of the world. drama in Kinzer’s account, it is the ratifica- ally comes out swinging in his final chapter, As Beale and Zimmerman demonstrated, tion of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the “The Deep Hurt.” Galloping through the sub- once Theodore Roosevelt swallowed his first war with Spain and confirmed the taking of sequent century of American involvement in big imperial meals, he refrained from further the Philippines. Seemingly doomed to defeat the world, he links Manila Bay to the Bay of gluttony. Perhaps 1898 should be viewed as in the Senate, the treaty was saved when Wil- Pigs, the Battle of Santiago to Baghdad, and the opening act of a strategy that ultimately liam Jennings Bryan inexplicably withdrew so on. America got hooked on intervention- found an equilibrium. Recovering that equi- his opposition and argued in favor of annexa- ism in 1898, Kinzer argues, and has never librium—recognizing that involvement in the tion, due in part to belief that it was the sur- been able to kick the habit, despite repeat- world provides both benefit and danger—is est way to get independence for the Filipinos, edly getting burned in the process. “Violent the real challenge we face. and in part due to political calculations that intervention in other countries always pro- a defeat of the treaty would be held against duces unintended consequences,” he solemn- Michael Auslin is a fellow at the Hoover Institu- him in the coming presidential election. De- ly intones. Well, yes, but that doesn’t help in tion, and the author of The End of the Asian spite such strategizing, Bryan again played a figuring out precisely where and when we do Century (Yale University Press).

N E W B O O K S from Notre Dame Press

“In The Red Wheel, Solzhenitsyn The profoundly beautiful New edition of memoir by Sheds new light on editor produced a masterpiece . . . story of John Wu’s conversion Gerry Adams, one of the most Robert Giroux’s and a worthy companion of is available for a new generation recognizable and controversial Flannery O’Connor’s relationship, Dostoevsky and rival of Tolstoy.” of readers. figures in Irish politics. including never before —Law and Liberty Available in the U.S. & Canada published letters.

Evaluates the work of ". . . poignant in describing and "Barefoot is one of Kevin Hart’s "Wells is a writer Reframes the history Jean Bethke Elshtain, one of lamenting the destruction finest achievements.” like no other." of Irish and Welsh America's most prominent of Iraqi culture." —John Koethe —Kirkus Review nationalism. public i ntellectuals. —Publishers Weekly

AVA I L A B L E W H E R E V E R B O O K S A R E S O L D

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Essay by Mackubin Thomas Owens The Vietnam War Revisited

hough north vietnam defeated Third, Burns and Novick do not do justice to But by far the biggest problem with the and absorbed South Vietnam 43 years the war’s purposes, which were serious despite PBS series is that it ignores much of the re- Tago, Americans remain divided over the flawed strategy to achieve them. Vietnam’s visionist scholarship that casts the Vietnam their role in that country, as responses to last geographic position and cultural strengths war in a different light. These interpretations year’s ten-part PBS documentary, The Vietnam made it, as historian David Halberstam wrote contend that the United States, far from be- War, made clear. A veteran proud of my service years ago, “one of only five or six nations in the ing destined to lose the war, had a number of in Vietnam, I watched the series—purportedly world that is truly vital to U.S. interests.” opportunities to win it. an even-handed examination of the war—and Fourth, The Vietnam War persists in de- According to the conventional assessment, saw one more rendition of the antiwar case, scribing the conflict as a civil war. But as surely embraced by Burns and Novick as if there made by those who didn’t even acknowledge as North Korea invaded South Korea, North were no alternative, the United States could the existence of counter-arguments. Vietnam invaded South Vietnam. The North never have won, given the nature of the war The series, produced by Ken Burns and Vietnamese and their American supporters and the determination of the Vietnamese Lynn Novick, has several problems. First, it have consistently dismissed American scholars, Communists. The key contentions are drea- isn’t really about the war. At the end of the such as the late Douglas Pike, who long ago rily familiar: Southeast Asia in general, and program, the producers tell us, “The Vietnam stated this fact. But in 1983, Vo Nguyen Giap South Vietnam in particular, were not vital War was a tragedy,” one they call “immeasur- and Vo Bam, North Vietnam’s chief strategists strategic U.S. interests. The “domino theory” able and irredeemable.” Still, “meaning can be during the war, admitted that the country’s was false—the fall of South Vietnam to the found in the individual stories.” Communist Party decided in 1959 to begin the Communists would not lead to the collapse Second, the documentary downplays the armed struggle against the Saigon government. of other non-Communist regimes in South- patriotism of those who fought. Contrary to The North Vietnamese subsequently built the east Asia. The South Vietnamese govern- Burns, Novick, and most interpretations, the “Ho Chi Minh” trails to move men and supplies ment, utterly corrupt, never commanded the U.S. military in Vietnam was not an army of to South Vietnam through Laos and Cambo- allegiance of South Vietnam’s people, which unwilling draftees, in which minorities were dia, violating those countries’ neutrality. These meant it was always destined to lose a civil seriously overrepresented. In fact, two thirds events, long before American combat units war to the indigenous Viet Cong. Finally, Ho of those who served—and 73% of those who came to Vietnam in 1965, confirm the U.S. Chi Minh was more of a nationalist than a died—were volunteers. justification for its action in Vietnam. Communist.

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In short, the Vietnamese Communists were Triumph Forsaken demonstrates that one ing control of his country, a Catholic running too resolute, the South Vietnamese govern- of the main weaknesses of the orthodox view roughshod over a predominantly Buddhist ment too corrupt, and the Americans too clue- is its constricted historical horizon. For the populace. Moyar contends that, in fact, Diem less to fight the kind of war that would have most part, the historians whose views shape was an effective leader who put down the or- secured victory. Vietnam was destined to be the PBS series have assessed the war as if the ganized crime empires that had thrived before a quagmire, and America was destined to lose only important decisions were made in Wash- his rise to power. He was no democrat, but there. As one American veteran, a lieutenant ington and Saigon, neglecting those made in his legitimacy in the eyes of the Vietnamese who fought in Vietnam in 1965, told Burns Hanoi, Beijing, and Moscow. Moyar demon- people rose from his ability to wield power ef- and Novick, “We have learned a lesson…that fectively and provide security for the targets of we just can’t impose our will on others.” Communist insurgency. Indeed, under Diem’s But, of course, war’s only purpose is to im- Discussed in this essay: leadership, the insurgency had been largely pose one’s will on the enemy. A nation that stymied by 1960. directed by Ken does not intend to do so, in the expectation of The Vietnam War, Moyar cites Communist documents that Burns and Lynn Novick. Screenplay achieving a more secure, more just peace, has by Geoffrey C. Ward. Public acknowledge the North’s lack of success in no business resorting to war. Broadcasting Service the period leading up to November 1963, Over the past 20 years, however, observers when Diem was deposed and assassinated in have challenged the conventional assessment. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam a military coup. Diem’s government had been Some have traced our defeat to a flawed na- War, 1954–1965, by Mark Moyar. killing and capturing Communist cadres in tional strategy devised by civilian policymak- Cambridge University Press, 512 pages, unprecedented number, which had caused ers, especially by Robert McNamara, secre- $56 (cloth), $31.99 (paper) many survivors to defect. Moyar argues that tary of defense from 1961 to 1968. Others by far the greatest U.S. mistake was to acqui- have indicted U.S. military leadership, both A Better War: The Unexamined esce in the coup, a decision that “forfeited the in Washington and Saigon, for adopting a de- Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s tremendous gains of the preceding nine years fective operational strategy. Last Years in Vietnam, by Lewis Sorley. and plunged the country into an extended pe- The producers of the PBS series appear Harcourt, 507 pages, $17.95 (paper) riod of instability and weakness.” oblivious to the revisionist views of writers “I can scarcely believe that the Americans such as Mark Moyar, whose groundbreak- Westmoreland: The General Who could be so stupid,” Ho Chi Minh said of the ing work on the Vietnam war poses the most Lost Vietnam, by Lewis Sorley. coup, understanding its import immediately. important challenge to the assumption that Harcourt, 416 pages, The Hanoi Politburo recognized the opportu- America’s defeat in Vietnam was inevitable. $30 (cloth), $15.95 (paper) nity that the coup afforded the Communists. Lewis Sorley appears briefly in the series, but “Diem was one of the strongest individuals his assessments of Generals William West- First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. resisting the people and Communists,” it moreland and Creighton Abrams are not Marine Corps, by Victor H. said. “Everything that could be done in an at- deemed worthy of discussion. Krulak. Naval Institute Press, tempt to crush the revolution was carried out The most astute American observer of 272 pages, $21.95 (paper) by Diem. Diem was one of the most compe- Vietnamese Communism, Douglas Pike, tent lackeys of the U.S. imperialists.” And in- , by William doesn’t get a mention despite the fact that his A Soldier Reports deed, the coup encouraged the Communists Westmoreland. Doubleday, analysis of Communist strategy goes a long to push for a quick victory against the weak 446 pages, out-of-print way in explaining the dynamic of the war. As South Vietnamese government before the these scholars show, the United States was not Americans intervened. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and destined to lose in Vietnam. America’s defeat As conditions continued to deteriorate, Lessons of Vietnam, by Robert S. was the result of bad strategy and bad deci- McNamara. Crown Forum, 414 pages, John Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, sions at all levels, from Washington to Saigon. $27.50 (cloth), $18.95 (paper) was forced to consider an American escalation of the war in order to save South Vietnam. He Lacking the Will PAV N: People’s Army of Vietnam, did not, as many have argued, use the August by Douglas Pike. Da Capo Press, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident as an excuse to n triumph forsaken, one of the most 384 pages, out-of-print escalate U.S. involvement. That claim is belied important books written on the Vietnam by the fact that Johnson saw intervention only Iwar, Mark Moyar, now a senior advisor at After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam, as a last resort to avoid defeat in South Viet- the U.S. Agency for International Develop- by Ronald Spector. Free Press, nam and, he thought, the subsequent toppling ment, posed a stark challenge to the conven- 400 pages, $29.95 of the Southeast Asian dominoes. Indeed, most tional view. Published in 2006 by Cambridge observers at the time criticized Johnson for not University Press, the first of two projected responding forcefully enough to the Tonkin volumes, Triumph Forsaken focuses on the pe- strates the Clausewitzian principle that war Gulf incident. Major U.S. ground intervention riod from the defeat of the French by the Viet is a struggle between two active wills, show- did not begin until nearly a year later. Minh in 1954 to the eve of Lyndon Johnson’s ing that the North Vietnamese strategy was Moyar argues that Johnson rejected several commitment of major U.S. ground forces in greatly affected by U.S. actions. aggressive strategic options formulated by the 1965. Moyar’s thesis is that the United States Nothing illustrates the orthodox-revisionist Joint Chiefs of Staff. These included offensive had ample opportunities to ensure the surviv- divide more than the respective treatments of ground operations by South Vietnamese forces al of South Vietnam, but failed to develop the South Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem. in Laos to interdict the People’s Army of Viet- required strategy. In the orthodox view, Diem was a tyrant los- nam (PAV N) lines of supply down the Ho Chi

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Minh Trail and similar actions north of the Marine Force, Pacific. But the most influen- war. They were assiduously combing the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The chiefs also tial historical criticism of Westmoreland’s countryside within the beachhead, try- recommended major airstrikes. But Johnson conduct of the war has come from Lewis ing to establish firm control in hamlets instead accepted the advice of civilian advisers Sorley, a career Army officer who served in and villages, and planning to expand the who were enamored of academic “limited war” Vietnam, earned a doctorate in history from beachhead up and down the coast. theories such as the one espoused by Thomas Johns Hopkins, and is the author of A Bet- Schelling, who advocated gradual escalation as ter War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Westmoreland believed the Marines should, a means of signaling U.S. intentions. Reject- Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam instead, “have been trying to find the enemy’s ing these more aggressive options meant that (1999) and Westmoreland: The General Who main forces and bring them to battle, thereby Johnson was left with the choice of abandon- Lost Vietnam (2011). putting them on the run and reducing the ing South Vietnam, a step fraught with grave The PBS documentary ignores the critical threat they posed to the population.” international consequences, or fighting a de- debate between the Army and the Marines The Marines employed an approach in fensive war within South Vietnam at a serious over how to fight the war. Westmoreland’s Vietnam, the “Combined Action Program,” strategic disadvantage. operational strategy emphasized the attrition first used in Haiti, Nicaragua, and Santo Do- Would more aggressive actions have suc- of the PAV N in a “war of big battalions”— mingo in the 1920s and ’30s. “Marine Corps ceeded? We don’t know for sure, but I was multi-battalion, and sometimes even multi- experience in stabilizing governments and personally persuaded in 1983 by Douglas division sweeps through remote jungle areas combating guerrilla forces was distilled in lec- Pike, then director of the Indochina Archive in an effort to fix and destroy the enemy with ture form at the Marine Corps Schools…beat U.C. Berkeley, based on a paper he deliv- superior fire power. The battle of the Ia Drang ginning in 1920,” Krulak wrote. The lectures ered at a Wilson Center symposium on the Valley in November 1965 was an example of appeared in Small Wars Manual in 1940, later war. He observed that “the initial reaction his preferred approach. adopted as an official publication. of Hanoi’s leaders to the strategic bombings The battle convinced Westmoreland that According to Krulak, the Marine Corps and air strikes that began in February 1965— his concept was correct. In a head-to-head approach in Vietnam had three elements: em- documented later by defectors and other wit- clash, an outnumbered U.S. force spoiled phasis on pacification of the coastal areas in nesses—was enormous dismay and apprehen- an enemy operation and sent a major PAV N which 80% of the people lived; degradation of sion. They feared the North was to be visited the ability of the North Vietnamese to fight by intolerable destruction which it simply by cutting off supplies before they left North- could not endure.” But as it became increas- ern ports of entry; and engagement of PAV N ingly apparent to Hanoi that the air campaign Was America’s and Viet Cong main force units on terms fa- was severely circumscribed, North Vietnam- defeat vorable to American forces. Westmoreland, ese leaders concluded that the United States according to Krulak, made the “third point lacked the will to do what victory required. in Vietnam the primary undertaking, even while deem- Pike then made an extraordinary claim, phasizing the need for clearly favorable condi- comparing the 1965 air campaign to the inevitable? tions before engaging the enemy.” “Christmas bombing” of 1972. Officially The Army-Marine Corps debate can best known as Linebacker II, this massive, around- be understood by looking at the PAV N strat- the-clock attack far exceeded in intensity any- force reeling back in defeat. But for Krulak, Ia egy, another element the PBS series ignores. thing that had gone before. Hanoi was stunned. Drang represented an example of fighting the According to Douglas Pike’s PAV N: People’s “While conditions had changed vastly in seven enemy’s war—what North Vietnamese gen- Army of Vietnam (1986), the Vietnamese years,” Pike continued, “the dismaying conclu- eral Vo Nguyen Giap predicted would be “a Communists followed a strategy they called sion to suggest itself from the 1972 Christmas protracted war of attrition.” As Krulak noted dau tranh (struggle) consisting of two opera- bombing was that had this kind of air assault in First to Fight (1984), by 1972, “we had man- tional elements: dau tranh vu trang (armed been launched in February 1965, the Viet- aged to reduce the enemy’s manpower pool by struggle) and dau tranh chinh tri (political nam war as we know it might have been over perhaps 25 percent at a cost of over 220,000 struggle). These operational elements were within a matter of months, even weeks.” U.S. and South Vietnamese dead. Of these, envisioned as a pincers designed to crush the 59,000 were Americans.” enemy. Armed struggle had a strategy “for General Westmoreland For his part, Westmoreland was critical regular forces” and another for “protracted of the Marine Corps approach in Vietnam, conflict.” Regular-force strategy included nother revisionist argument, which unlike his own, took counterinsurgen- both high tech and limited offensive warfare; also ignored by the PBS documen- cy seriously and emphasized small wars. In his protracted conflict included both Maoist and Atary, holds that even with the mistakes memoir, A Soldier Reports (1976), Westmore- neo-revolutionary guerrilla warfare. Political which hamstrung U.S. policy and strategy in land writes: struggle included dich van (action among the Vietnam, the United States came close to vic- enemy), binh van (action among the military), tory after 1968. This argument turns on op- During those early months [1965], I was and dan van (action among the people). erational strategy—how the war was actually concerned with the tactical methods that As Pike observes, to resist dau tranh both fought in Vietnam. The focus of this debate is General Walt and the Marines employed. arms of the pincer had to be blunted. U.S. General William Westmoreland, commander They had established beachheads at Chu and South Vietnamese forces decisively de- of U.S. Military Assistance Command, Viet- Lai and Da Nang and were reluctant to feated armed dau tranh. Pike contends that nam (COMUSMACV). go outside them, not through any lack of “the American military’s performance in this An early Westmoreland critic was Marine courage but through a different concep- respect was particularly impressive. It won ev- General Victor Krulak, commander of Fleet tion of how to fight an anti-insurgency ery significant battle fought, a record virtually

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unparalleled in the history of warfare.” But Fighting was still heavy, as exemplified by the Allies never dealt successfully with politi- two major actions in South Vietnam’s A Shau cal dau tranh, which led ultimately to defeat. Valley during the first half of 1969: the 9th Ma- NIU PRESS Pike observes that a constant struggle ex- rine Regiment’s Operation Dewey Canyon and isted between Giap and the professional gener- the 101st Airborne Division’s epic battle for als, on the one hand, and party leader Truong “Hamburger Hill.” But now PAV N offensive BESIEGED Chinh and the political generals, on the other. timetables were being disrupted by preemptive LENINGRAD From 1959, when the Lao Dong Party in Ha- allied attacks, buying more time for “Vietnam- noi decided to launch dau tranh in the South, ization,” the shift of military responsibilities Aesthetic Responses until 1965, the political was dominant. The from the U.S. to South Vietnam. to Urban Disaster emphasis on armed struggle became prevalent In addition, rather than ignoring the insur- afterwards, until mid-1968. Four more shifts gency and pushing the South Vietnamese aside Polina Barskova in emphasis would occur between 1969 and as General Westmoreland had done, Abrams “[This] is a sophisticated, 1975, according to Pike. followed a policy of “one war,” integrating all immensely rich explora- aspects of the struggle against the Commu- The Later Years nists. The result, says Sorley, was “a better war” tion of what the author in which the United States and South Viet- calls ‘siege spatiality.’ . . . The prose is lively, precise, uring his time as commander in namese essentially achieved the military and and elegant.” Vietnam, Westmoreland focused U.S. political conditions necessary for South Viet- —Andreas Schönle, coeditor of The Europeanized Dattention on military victory, especial- nam’s survival as a viable political entity. Elite in Russia, 1762–1825 ly the part of the strategy that relied on regu- Many commentators, including some au- lar forces. But he ignored the political struggle thors of official Army histories, argue that the ISBN 978-0-87580-772-0 232 pp., paper, $49.00 and the “protracted conflict” element of armed changes from Westmoreland to Abrams were struggle. Accordingly, he did little to train the evolutionary, primarily stemming from the fail- STATE OF Vietnamese army, a policy endorsed by Secre- ure of the Tet Offensive, which cost the PAV N tary of Defense McNamara, who claimed that and Viet Cong so many casualties that they MADNESS by the time the Vietnamese were trained, the had to change their strategy and tactics. But Psychiatry, Literature, Americans would have won the war. extensive recordings that Sorley used to write In A Better War, Sorley examines the largely A Better War conclusively refute such an in- and Dissent After Stalin neglected later years of the conflict, conclud- terpretation. After Tet, the PAV N tried three Rebecca Reich ing that the war in Vietnam “was being won times in the next 12 months to achieve major on the ground even as it was being lost at the military victories through general offensives, “Reich demonstrates the peace table and in the U.S. Congress.” Sorley even though it continued to suffer very heavy truly insidious nature argues that Westmoreland’s tactics, which em- casualties with nothing to show in return. It of state-sponsored phasized the attrition of PAV N forces in a “war was not until after Tet 1969 that Vietnam’s psychiatric discourse and practice after Stalin.” of the big battalions,” squandered four years of Communists abandoned this approach. —Angela Brintlinger, coeditor of Madness and the public and congressional support for the war. Unfortunately, the specter of Robert Mc- “Search and destroy” operations, that is, were Namara has led analysts to over-emphasize Mad in Russian Culture usually unsuccessful, since the enemy could the early years of the war at the expense of the ISBN 978-0-87580-775-1 280 pp., hardcover, $60.00 avoid battle unless it was advantageous for him fighting after Tet 1968. All too often, the his- to accept it. But they were also costly to the tory of the war has been derailed over the ques- American soldiers who conducted them and tion of when McNamara turned against the NEW IN PAPER the Vietnamese civilians who were in the area. war and why he didn’t make his views known HITLER’S Creighton Abrams succeeded Westmore- earlier. But as Colby observed in a review of land as commander shortly after the 1968 Tet McNamara’s disgraceful memoir, In Retrospect PRIESTS Offensive, joining Ellsworth Bunker, who (1995), by limiting serious consideration of the Catholic Clergy and had assumed the post of U.S. ambassador military situation in Vietnam to the period to South Vietnam the previous spring, and before mid-1968, historians leave Americans National Socialism William Colby, a career CIA officer who -co with a record “similar to what we would know ordinated the pacification effort. Abrams’s if histories of World War II stopped before Kevin P. Spicer approach was similar to that of Krulak and Stalingrad, Operation Torch in North Africa, “Deeply researched the Marines, emphasizing not the destruc- and Guadalcanal in the Pacific.” and deeply disturbing. tion of enemy forces per se but protection of Most studies examining the period after Spicer’s treatment of the South Vietnamese population by con- Tet emphasize the diplomatic attempts to ex- trolling key areas. He then concentrated on tricate the U.S. from the conflict, treating the ‘Hitler’s priests’ is absolutely convincing.” attacking the enemy’s “logistics nose” (as op- military effort as nothing more than a holding —The Washington Post posed to a “logistics tail”): since the North action. For example, historian Ronald Spec- ISBN 978-0-87580-788-1 385 pp., paper, $25.00 Vietnamese lacked heavy transport within tor’s After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam South Vietnam, they had to pre-position (1993), compares Vietnam to World War I: supplies forward of their sanctuaries before each conflict was a “stalemate” but “neither (800) 621-2736 www.niupress.niu.edu launching an offensive. side was prepared to admit this fact.” Both

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 40 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm the Communists and anti-Communists, he and Richard Nixon’s administration threw forces to remain in the south. Then, in an observes, made maximum efforts to break the away the successes achieved by American and act that shames the United States to this day, stalemate during 1968. South Vietnamese arms. Congress cut off military and economic as- Sorley disagrees, arguing that to truly un- sistance to South Vietnam. Finally, President derstand the Vietnam war, it is imperative to Chances of Survival Nixon resigned over Watergate and his suc- come to grips with the years after 1968. He cessor, Gerald Ford, constrained by Congress, contends that far from constituting a mere he proof lay in the communists’ defaulted on promises to respond with force holding action, the approach followed by 1972 Easter Offensive, the biggest of- to North Vietnamese violations of the peace the new team constituted a positive strategy Tfensive push of the war, greater in mag- terms. for ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. nitude than either the 1968 Tet Offensive or We cannot say with assurance that South Bunker, Abrams, and Colby operated from a the final assault of 1975. The U.S. provided Vietnam would have survived after 1975. But different understanding of the war. They -em massive air and naval support and there were its chances of survival were much improved ployed diminishing resources in manpower, inevitable failures on the part of some Army by Abrams’s approach. It is impossible not to materiel, money, and time as they raced to of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) units. speculate about the opportunities and advan- render the South Vietnamese capable of de- But all told, the South Vietnamese fought tages that were lost by not pursuing Abrams’s fending themselves before the last American well, blunting the Communist thrust, then re- approach, rather than Westmoreland’s, from forces were withdrawn. In the process, they capturing much of the territory that had been America’s entry into the war. came very close to achieving the goal of a vi- lost to Hanoi. The point is not that the Vietnam revi- able nation and a lasting peace. Finally, so effective was the 11-day “Christ- sionists’ argument is unassailable. It is, rath- The dominant assessment’s defenders have mas bombing” campaign (Linebacker II) later er, that a major public television documen- replied that Sorley’s argument is refuted by that year that the British counterinsurgency tary series that never even acknowledges the the fact that South Vietnam did fall to the expert, Sir Robert Thompson, commented, existence of more than one interpretation of North Vietnamese Communists. They have “You had won the war. It was over.” But three the war is either lazy or dishonest, doing a repeated the claim that the South Vietnam- years later, despite the heroic performance of disservice to the program’s subject and view- ese lacked the leadership, skill, character, and most ARVN units, South Vietnam collapsed ers, as well as to the troops who fought in endurance of their adversaries. Sorley has ac- against a cobbled-together PAV N offensive. that conflict. knowledged the shortcomings of the South What happened to cause this reversal? Vietnamese and agrees that the U.S. would First, the Nixon Administration, in its Mackubin Thomas Owens is a senior fellow of have had to provide continued air, naval, and rush to extricate the country from Vietnam, the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in intelligence support. But, he contends, the forced the South Vietnamese government Philadelphia and editor of Orbis, FPRI’s quar- real cause of U.S. defeat was that Congress to accept a cease-fire that permitted PAV N terly journal.

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Essay by Catesby Leigh These Honored Dead

n april 1979, 30 or so vietnam veter- the National Mall and designed by a Chi- ual donations—in a campaign to which Uncle ans gathered at the Washington, D.C., of- nese-American architecture student, Maya Sam contributed not one dime. A Rift in the Ifice of the U.S. Conference of Mayors to Lin, the chevron’s tapering arms point to Earth (2017), by the prolific (and ardently talk about the problems some veterans were the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington anti-war) writer James Reston, Jr., provides an having adjusting to civilian life. The discus- Monument, and are inscribed with the names engaging, impressively researched narrative sion revolved around the need for improved of over 58,000 Americans who lost their lives that usefully fills out Doubek’s account in cer- federal benefits and services, including psy- in the nation’s most divisive 20th-century tain particulars. Neither book, however, can chological counseling. Out of the blue, an war. Construction of the wall, which marked be said to offer much insight into the project’s informally-attired vet with drooping shoul- its 35th anniversary in November 2017, took artistic and cultural ramifications. ders, slouching posture, and a redneck accent place during President Reagan’s first term, stood up and proposed a memorial. The vet, as did the addition two years later of sculp- The Troika Jan Scruggs, was a former Army rifleman who tor Frederick Hart’s Three Servicemen and a had been wounded in Vietnam. His sugges- bronze flagpole decorated with the insignia he vvmf was run by a troika com- tion was dismissed as irrelevant. of the armed forces. prising Doubek and Scruggs, who was But not by everyone. A lawyer in atten- Though some of the information he pres- Temployed as a Labor Department bu- dance who had served in-country as an Air ents has appeared elsewhere, Doubek’s “in- reaucrat at the time of the veterans’ conclave, Force intelligence officer, Robert Doubek, side story,” Creating the Vietnam Veterans and John Wheeler, a lawyer at the Securities approached Scruggs, told him he needed to Memorial (2015), provides the best account of and Exchange Commission. The three came launch a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to build the me- how the minimalist wall got built, painting a from contrasting backgrounds and had had morial, and gave him his card. Three and a vivid picture of the challenges involved in get- different Vietnam experiences. Scruggs was half years later, the Vietnam Veterans Me- ting a legislative mandate for a superb site in raised in suburban Prince George’s County, morial Fund (VVMF) which they co-found- the Mall’s Constitution Gardens, organizing Maryland, the son of a milkman and a wait- ed would dedicate the nation’s most signifi- a major design competition, confronting the ress. Born in 1950, he enlisted in the army cant postwar work of commemorative art, a bitter political and cultural conflict in which straight out of high school so he could attend chevron-shaped retaining wall clad in panels the memorial became embroiled, and raising college on the G.I. Bill. During his tour of duty, of highly reflective black granite. Situated on more than $8 million—mostly from individ- he saw half his company killed or wounded.

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Neither Doubek nor Wheeler, who were both in Vietnam. This memorial broke ranks with Mall. The federal Commission of Fine Arts six years older than Scruggs, saw combat. Tall the heroic genre of statuary monuments, han- rejected the scheme as too visually intrusive, and square-jawed, Doubek hailed from the dled with increasing incompetence at the Point and only years later did a completely differ- Chicago area, where his parents owned a suc- and elsewhere by the likes of Felix de Weldon ent landscape-oriented design for the FDR cessful bakery business. He studied Russian and Donald De Lue. Wheeler was not only memorial get built. A horizontal orientation and German at the University of Illinois be- influenced by the therapeutic culture but was for the Vietnam memorial was thus antici- fore entering the Air Force, and subsequently himself in serious need of healing. Whereas pated from the outset. It would be designed earned a law degree at Georgetown. Wheeler Scruggs proved to be a cocky, driven egomani- to inspire contemplation and would make no came from a distinguished, blue-blooded ac, Wheeler was more seriously unhinged, his political statement on the war. And it would military family. After graduating from West moods swinging from sympathetic and kindly have to be relatively inexpensive because of Point and before working in logistics and sup- to insufferably arrogant and temperamental. its exclusively private funding. ply at the army’s headquarters at Long Binh, He was bipolar, and also wracked by guilt for Guided by a professional adviser, an ar- he took an MBA at Harvard. He also had a having steered clear of combat in Vietnam, chitect named Paul Spreiregen, the VVMF Yale law degree as well as an impressive array where 30 of his West Point classmates were opted for a competition juried by eight de- of contacts. killed in action. sign professionals (including the editor of a None of the three was a hawk or a peacenik. Doubek, who was fired by his law firm landscape architecture publication)—all of They shared an abiding respect for the bravery soon after the VVMF’s creation, was merely them modernists. There were no laymen and American servicemen had demonstrated in afflicted with social as well as professional -in no Vietnam veterans on the jury, though it Vietnam. Nor was the controversy surround- securities. He resented the disdain for Viet- did include two World War II vets and an ing the wall a simple matter of hawks who op- nam veterans exhibited by his contemporaries Italian-born combat veteran of World War posed it contending with doves who support- in Washington’s smart set, who had found I—the latter being Pietro Belluschi, a for- ed it. TheVVMF managed to win the moral ways to elude the draft. Doubek was directly mer dean of MIT’s architecture school and or monetary support of prominent hawks in charge of building the memorial and he was a member of the jury that had fallen for including General William Westmoreland, Instant Stonehenge. Several jurors had op- the former American military commander posed the Vietnam war, and it later turned in Vietnam; Ellsworth Bunker, the former Books discussed in this essay: out that one of them had failed to disclose ambassador to Saigon; Henry Kissinger; and his active involvement in the anti-war move- the conservative pundit James J. Kilpatrick, Creating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial: ment. Even though the VVMF regarded in- whose syndicated columns in support of the The Inside Story, by Robert W. Doubek. clusion of realist sculpture as a strong pos- memorial brought the Fund over $80,000. McFarland, 324 pages, $35 sibility, none of the jury’s three sculptors was Scruggs emerged from his undergradu- known for figurative work. At first glance, it ate and graduate studies at American Uni- A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and was not a terribly promising group. versity as an authority on post-traumatic the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial, The memorial competition nevertheless at- stress disorder. He was a hybrid: respectful by James Reston, Jr. Arcade, tracted an unprecedented 1,421 entries, most of the martial virtues, but immersed in the 304 pages, $24.99 of them submitted by students, recent gradu- therapeutic culture heralded by Philip Rieff ates, or rank amateurs. The FDR competition, in his landmark The Triumph of the Thera- by contrast, had attracted 574 submissions, peutic (1966). As the VVMF’s president and the most even-keeled of the troika. He makes with a larger proportion of designs from es- the project’s public face, Scruggs advocated it clear that working with the other two could tablished architects. “Most” of the Vietnam the memorial as a means not only of promot- be extremely unpleasant. Still, the memorial entries, Doubek acknowledges, “were junk.” ing national reconciliation but also of heal- would never have been built without them. One entry that stood out from the postmod- ing psychologically wounded veterans whose ern smorgasbord of mediocrity (or worse) and traumatic experience of war had been aggra- Minimalist Design wound up placing third consisted of a low, vated after their return by the indifference white, name-bearing granite wall forming two or outright hostility of their fellow citizens. he vvmf had one big advantage thirds of a vast circle, the main open portion He also intended to include the names of from the outset: the idea of a Vietnam facing east, with the wall configured as an America’s Vietnam dead on the memorial, as Tmemorial enjoyed bipartisan support inverted cove. Minor openings would frame he made clear in a Washington Post commen- in Congress. Senator Charles Mathias, a lib- points of entry and views of the Lincoln Me- tary written before the VVMF’s foundation, eral Maryland Republican who had opposed morial and the Washington Monument. Wa- in order “to remind an ungrateful nation of the war, encouraged the Fund to seek a site ter would emerge from cuts in the wall to be what it has done to its sons.” Along with the on the Mall rather than allow the memorial channeled along its base. At each end of the names, however, he anticipated a soldier stat- to be stashed across the Potomac River. The wall sculptures faced one another—on one ue as a tribute to the service rendered by the VVMF settled on Constitution Gardens’s side a soldier holding up a wounded comrade nation’s fighting men. Oddly enough, that’s gently rolling landscape. The two-acre site and beckoning for help; on the other, a soldier pretty much what he ended up with. mandated deference to the nearby monu- rushing to their aid. Reston, a fervent admir- Wheeler had already been involved with ments to Lincoln and Washington. Two er of Lin’s wall who also is very respectful of the creation of a low-key, landscape-oriented decades before, a bizarre, neo-neolithic ar- Hart’s “classical” oeuvre, helpfully includes a Southeast Asia Memorial at West Point, which rangement of concrete slabs, famously derid- two-page color reproduction of this beauti- features a granite boulder decorated with a ed as “Instant Stonehenge,” had been select- fully rendered submission by a team of land- bronze plaque paying tribute to the members ed in a competition for a memorial to Frank- scape architects led by Joseph Brown. Freder- of the Classes of 1960 through 1969 who fell lin Delano Roosevelt in a park south of the ick Hart designed those sculptures, too.

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A jury including Vietnam veterans might The inspiration was not Lin’s alone. And people the wall attracted—and this resulted well have opted for this design and relegated the way the wall is experienced as built is quite in a major modification of her design. She Lin’s entry to the junk pile. Maya Lin was a different from what she imagined in her com- had envisioned visitors descending to the me- senior at Yale, an architecture major who did petition submission. Lin was taking a studio morial’s vertex from the grassy slope in front. not yet know how to draft. Her delineations course on funerary architecture when the Viet- There the sheer quantity of names, receding of plan, elevation, and section were not drawn nam memorial competition was announced. into the distance in either direction, would to the scale specified in the competition pro- The professor, architect Andrus Burr, assigned impart “a sharp awareness of such a loss.” gram. And as she demonstrated with her three the memorial as a design project and Lin vis- Apart from the obvious drainage issue her de- reductive, almost diagrammatic pastel render- ited the Constitution Gardens site with three sign presented, however, the sod on the slope ings of the wall, she did not know how to pro- classmates late in 1980. There she conceived could not withstand crowds. And the wall’s duce a perspective image a layman could read. the wall as “a rift in the earth”—to quote her main approach soon turned out to be the path Crucially, however, her submission included a competition statement—“a long, polished from the Lincoln Memorial, which led to the compelling, jargon-free statement of how her black stone wall, emerging from and receding chevron’s western tip, not its vertex. Within a memorial would be experienced. into the earth.” In an autobiographical over- decade of the wall’s dedication, the slope was The jurors were smitten. Her design was view of her oeuvre, Boundaries (2000), Lin says cordoned off at its foot, so that the wall would unambiguously contemporary, and they saw her initial concept “almost seemed too simple, thereafter be approached exclusively from it as having no determinate meaning—a too little,” and that she “toyed” with the addi- each end. minimalist quality to which they were very tion of “some large flat slabs” in front of the Expansion of the narrow pavement initial- receptive. But at the unveiling of her winning wall to fill out her design. Her account con- ly laid over a gutter running in front of the entry in an Andrews Air Force Base hangar ceals as much as it reveals. Reston reproduces chevron left not even a strip of grass between on May 1, 1981, Scruggs and Doubek were a drawing by Burr depicting Lin’s initial studio it and the pavement. These changes endowed baffled, with Scruggs, as he recounts in his design: a long arc of tilted slabs descending the the experience of the wall, especially for visi- memoir, seeing her chevron as “a big bat.” slope to her wall. In other words, Lin’s initial tors not seeking out a particular name, with Wheeler, on the other hand, quickly gleaned design concept was a political gag—a post- a processional formality that diverges very a critical aspect of her design—that visitors modern send-up of the “domino theory” that significantly from the grassy, naturalistic en- would descend into rather than step up to her counter Lin imagined. This formal quality memorial. He broke the ceremony’s uncom- enhances the memorial’s dignity, as does its fortable silence by proclaiming her entry “a The wall engaged inflection to the great monuments nearby—a work of genius.” contextual gesture that is one of the principal veterans not as strengths of Lin’s design. The panorama nar- Inspiration citizens but rows as one descends to the vertex, where the wall attains a height of ten feet, and where as it? in the annals of west- as atomized, the magnitude of the war’s toll resonates most ern art, “genius” has most often traumatized selves. deeply. It expands as one ascends alongside Wbeen ascribed to works exhibiting a the other wing, with one of those monuments high order of formal complexity as well as for- coming into focus. The deep vertex provides mal invention: the sculptures of Ictinus and largely motivated America’s Vietnam war pol- the vertical integration that resolves the me- Michelangelo, the paintings of Raphael and icy. Reston pronounces the pun “a brilliantly morial’s emphatically horizontal orientation. Caravaggio, the cathedrals and churches of devastating political commentary.” the medieval master builders and Sir Christo- During a studio critique involving Burr, Opposition pher Wren. By this measure, we might by all two other architects, and her classmates, Lin means admire the Washington Monument— was advised to scrap the slabs and concentrate ell before the design competi- a simple, unornamented obelisk—but we on the chevron wall. She was also urged to tion, Doubek had rejected a P.R. wouldn’t expect to hear it described as “a work exploit its vertex as the focus of her design. Wexecutive’s suggested fundraising of genius.” Lin’s wall lacks formal complexity, As a result, instead of the names of the dead letter headline, “Their Turn on the Mall.” He and the level of artistic skill demonstrated in extending, in the chronological order of their saw it as politically confrontational and inher competition submission was, well, mini- deaths, from one end of the chevron to the consistent with the reconciliation the VVMF mal. Her design’s aesthetic power—perceived other, as Lin had intended, the names start wanted the memorial to promote. Of course, not just by lefties and artsy types but by the at the top and just to the right of the vertex, the idea behind the headline was that anti-war likes of Kilpatrick and even the VVMF’s key extend to the end of the chevron’s right wing, protesters had had their turn and now it was adversary, Secretary of the Interior James and then pick up again at the opposite end and the veterans’. The Fund’s problem was that Watt, who would later pronounce the wall terminate on the vertex’s bottom, left-hand an important coterie of early supporters saw “very beautiful”—had an essentially concep- side. The years 1959 and 1975 are inscribed the memorial project in precisely those terms, tual basis typical of much modernist art. In above and below the names’ beginning and and this is what caused the ensuing imbroglio. short, Lin’s wall could only be considered “a end, respectively. These erstwhile supporters—foremost among work of genius” within an eminently question- Burr regarded Lin as a lackluster student whom were H. Ross Perot and the highly dec- able modernist frame of reference. But it is an on the whole and gave her a B+ for the course, orated Marine, respected author, and future inspired work in its way, and one of the most provoking her enduring animosity. Later on, U.S. senator James Webb, both of them Naval important of all modernist creations if only the visitor circulation pattern Lin anticipated Academy graduates—were not only extremely because of the millions of people who have in her competition entry proved unwork- unhappy with Lin’s winning design but well been moved by it. able—partly because of the huge number of positioned to impede its execution. Webb

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(who thought up the “Their Turn on the Mall” Partnership, a Washington firm which took a good memorial. The placement issue still slogan) emerges in Doubek’s book as the most her on as a $15-an-hour consultant on the wasn’t settled when the dedication of the wall thoughtful opponent—more thoughtful, in memorial project. She displayed consid- drew an emotional crowd exceeding 150,000 fact, than Doubek realizes—but consumed erable poise under pressure, keeping her people. The public’s response to the memorial by a burning resentment of those prepared cool during a 15-minute exchange with Pe- was overwhelmingly positive. The line about to accommodate Lin’s wall, starting with the rot, who had contributed $160,000 for the Lin having designed a “tribute to Jane Fon- VVMF leadership. Senator Warner, the Vir- memorial competition, when he inspected da,” which was employed by Phyllis Schlafly ginia Republican who proved to be the Fund’s a model of the wall in the basement of the and Tom Wolfe but originated with Carhart, indispensable congressional supporter, called Cooper-Lecky office. And she had definitely quickly lost traction. So did the placement of Webb “a troubled man.” upped her high-profile interview game by the the sculpture and flagpole advocated by the The most outspoken and voluble of Lin’s time she appeared in a 60 Minutes segment Fund’s opponents. Though Watt pronounced detractors, however, was Tom Carhart, a at the height of the memorial controversy. himself ready to delay a decision on the mat- West Point classmate of Wheeler’s who had Morley Safer: “How Chinese are you?” Lin: ter for a year or more—emphasizing that it earned two Purple Hearts in Vietnam, where “As apple pie.” was a matter of politics, not aesthetics—the he had served as an infantry platoon leader. Lin’s witty reply is the more notable be- White House again ordered him to stand Carhart had provided crucial volunteer as- cause it was said her design was “Taoist” or at down. Shortly afterward, the Commission sistance to the VVMF early on, facilitating least imbued with an East Asian vibe. But it of Fine Arts directed that the sculpture and a $30,000 bank loan for the mass-mailing of is the work of American minimalist sculptors the flagpole be placed in a leafy entry area a fundraising appeal. His virulent denuncia- like Michael Heizer and Richard Serra that between the Lincoln Memorial and the wall. tion of Lin’s design at a Commission of Fine relates most directly to her wall. Serra’s mini- They were dedicated in November 1984, at Arts hearing in October 1981—“black in- malist, site-specific black steel installation a ceremony attended by President and Mrs. stead of white, hidden in the ground instead in St. Louis, Pulitzer Piece: Stepped Elevation Reagan which itself attracted some 150,000 of raised above it…a black gash of shame and (1971), strikingly resembles a wing of Lin’s people. sorrow”—set the tone for much invective in chevron “emerging from and receding into the Hart’s three bronze soldiers gaze warily at the following months. In private, Carhart earth.” the wall from across the Vietnam memorial slurred Lin as a “gook,” and he had plenty of landscape, as if taking stock of the terrible company, according to Doubek. No doubt Compromise concatenation of names. The sculpture was Lin’s race, sex, youth, and Ivy League pedi- designed to complement the wall, not upstage gree deepened many veterans’ suspicions y early 1982, it was clear to sena- it. Stylistically, it belongs to a highly realis- about her design. Press interviews she gave tor Warner that the VVMF needed tic sculptural vernacular that has appeared after her competition victory certainly didn’t Bto reach a compromise with its an- in countless memorials in recent decades. It improve matters, as she evinced little or no tagonists. While Perot, Webb, and company is one of the best examples of this vernacu- interest in honoring the veterans’ service. “I had limited backing in Congress, the White lar—the figures’ tacky polychromatic patina- wanted to describe a journey—a journey House did not want to offend their supporters. tion notwithstanding—but falls well short which would make you experience death,” Nor did it wish to anger the American Legion of a classical grasp of form. Moreover, latter- she told the Los Angeles Times at the press and Veterans of Foreign Wars, which wanted day identity politics made short shrift of any conference introducing her winning design. Lin’s competition-winning design executed on idea that the three soldiers could stand for all Months later, she regaled a Washington Post schedule. (The Legion alone contributed over Americans in uniform who served in-country. reporter with solipsistic revelations: $1 million to the VVMF campaign.) During Within a decade of the unveiling of Hart’s two tense meetings between the VVMF and sculpture, a Vietnam Women’s Memorial I don’t read the papers. I just ignore the its adversaries at which Warner presided, the consisting of a bronze sculpture of three nurs- world. It’s like everything is up in my deal committing the Fund to inclusion of the es and a wounded soldier appeared within the head with no real, concrete experiential sculpture and flagpole was struck. But Inte- memorial precinct. The number of women reality. It’s all what I feel. rior Secretary Watt, the antagonists’ prin- whose names are inscribed on the memorial cipal Reagan Administration ally, intended wall is eight. And regarding her fascination with death and to withhold the building permit for the me- cemeteries: “Everyone knows I’m morbid.” morial until he was certain the compromise An Anti-Monument She knew nothing about the Vietnam war, would be implemented to their satisfaction. In never asked questions about veterans’ wartime March, with completion of the wall in time for teven silver, a veterans adminis- experiences or military life in general, and act- a four-day “National Salute to Vietnam Vet- tration expert on post-traumatic stress ed as if the Fund existed simply to implement erans” in November at risk, the White House Sdisorder who flew hundreds of missions her design in all its sublime purity, without ordered him to issue the permit. as a Marine pilot during the war, testified be- modification. She resisted essential changes: Although the two sides soon settled on fore the Commission of Fine Arts early in the addition of commemorative inscriptions Frederick Hart as the sculptor, the VVMF 1983 on his experience with bringing groups alongside the years on each side of the wall’s never agreed to the Perot-Webb faction’s in- of veterans to the wall for therapeutic pur- vertex, paved pathways at the memorial site, sistence that his statue be placed in front of poses. “The memorial serves magnificently in and most of all (and most understandably), the wall, facing away from it so that the wall eliciting much which was buried within them,” Hart’s sculpture. would serve as a backdrop, with the flagpole he said. The purpose of his testimony was to Needless to say, Lin’s relations with the perched above its vertex. Hart himself did oppose the location of the sculpture and the VVMF were chilly, though the Fund did hire not support that arrangement, which would flagpole theVVMF ’s opponents sought. The the architects she wanted, the Cooper-Lecky have ruined Lin’s design without producing wall in itself, Silver asserted,

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is sufficient—these carved names per- portrayed Vietnam veterans’ service as being Hart competition entry that placed third. mit no denial, no hiding. To make that in line with the service rendered by the na- Had it been chosen, the identity politics that structure more specific would begin to tion’s fighting men throughout our history. led to the women’s memorial might never have weaken its power. As is understood by What they got asserts in no uncertain terms come into play. both Western psychology and Eastern that the Vietnam conflict stands apart from Over the last three decades, Maya Lin has Zen, the greater the effort to portray a other wars. worked mainly as an environmental artist and specific reality, the less real the portray- “It is a formalized mass grave,” an under- architect. But one of her most important ar- al becomes because of what is forced to whelmed David Douglas Duncan, the veteran tistic roles since winning the Vietnam memo- be excluded. Life photographer, declared during a visit to rial competition has been serving, in 2003, as the wall, partially echoing Webb’s vitriolic an influential juror in the competition for a The problem with this line of argument is characterization of it at a press conference as 9/11 memorial in lower Manhattan. She sup- that in commemorative art, “less” is far more “this sad, dreary mass tomb nihilistically com- ported the unambiguously minimalist and likely to turn out really to be less than “more.” memorating death.” (Webb obviously had literally abysmal winning design by Michael Is the Lincoln Memorial’s architecture and read Lin’s press interviews.) Over time, visi- Arad, a young architect with New York’s pub- sculpture really “less real” because of its formal tors have in fact left hundreds of thousands lic housing authority. The central problem, specificity? Do you have to be a Bonapartist of tokens of love and remembrance—poems, however, wasn’t Lin’s influence; it was that the to be moved by the Arc de Triomphe and its flowers, G.I. boots, teddy bears, bottles of therapeutic culture defined the parameters sculptural decoration? whisky—as if the dead were somehow there for the memorial and accompanying museum, Perhaps most importantly the wall en- to receive them. Anecdotal accounts suggest thereby disqualifying any symbolic assertion gaged Silver’s veterans not as citizens—not that loved ones of the fallen, encountering not of national dignity or resolve. What resulted, as members of a political community whose only their names but their own reflected selves at a staggering cost of $700 million, was the survival depends on adherence to abiding in the granite, sometimes imagine the dead in biggest single disaster in the annals of Ameri- ideals of patriotism and courage on the part animate form on the other side of the wall. can civic art. of those to whom its defense is entrusted— At the end of the day, the Vietnam memo- Although the Mall is enhanced by Lin’s but as atomized, traumatized selves. In an rial succeeded in being more than a therapeu- wall, the nation might have been better served interview with a Washington Post reporter tic memorial, resonating with people with di- by a Vietnam memorial that, while eschewing after the wall’s completion, Jim Webb la- vergent perspectives on the war. Nevertheless, any intimation of triumph, engaged with the mented the lack of “historical context in [the the wall and the vast amount of media cover- monumental tradition, as the Brown-Hart VVMF’s] thinking, historical or metaphysi- age it has generated appear to have played a competition design did. There is reason to cal.” His admittedly vague remark, which significant role in mainstreaming the thera- suspect the Vietnam memorial wall is a mini- mystifies Doubek, would seem to refer to peutic culture, with its literally self-centered malist one-off—a uniquely successful artifact the fact that historically, war memorials notions of psychological or spiritual “healing” of its kind—and still more reason to wonder have had the metaphysical role of affirming as the highest good. It is also important to whether the therapeutic culture will ever gen- or even embodying patriotism and courage. bear in mind that the Vietnam memorial, as a erate an aesthetically resonant commemora- What Webb and his cohorts wanted was whole, is an inorganic, adventitious, spatially tive idiom of its own. a Vietnam memorial in the monumental dispersed hybrid including figurative sculp- tradition. What they got, even taking the tures and the flagpole along with the wall. Catesby Leigh, a research fellow of the National Three Servicemen into account, was an anti- By contrast, architectural and sculptural ele- Civic Art Society, writes about public art and monument. They wanted a monument that ments were organically wedded in the Brown- architecture, and lives in Washington, D.C.

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Book Review by Peter C. Myers An Honest Conversation about Race Reckoning with Race: America’s Failure, by Gene Dattel. Encounter Books, 352 pages, $27.99

mericans, it seems, can never get race,” but advances the conversation in ways • The failure to make this commit- enough race talk. We speak of race in- that defy expectations. A former managing ment is America’s failure, belonging Acessantly, yet continue to call for more, director at Salomon Brothers and Morgan to the country as a whole—not to in the persisting hope that more talk will yield Stanley turned scholar, Dattel is free from any particular region, class, party, better talk. What we want—or so we say—is the academy’s pressures and pieties. His or generation. an honest conversation about race. powerful new book, Reckoning with Race: • The crucial condition for assimilation That we call almost metronomically for a America’s Failure, aims to replace our ritual- is a concerted effort in self-help or cul- conversation we do not expect to have attests ized race talk with a true national self-exam- tural renewal by black Americans. both the importance and the sensitivity of the ination. There is something in his survey of subject. An honest conversation about race is black-white relations from the founding to Dattel is particularly concerned to dispel important as a means for healing and unity, the present to discomfort nearly everyone. the myth of Southern exceptionalism—the even more so as an imperative of national His proposed remedy is at once edifying and supposition, widely held outside the South, honor; America cannot be America, in the challenging. that “the South [is] the exclusive and durable” full and proper sense, until our race problem Dattel’s story unfolds chronologically but cause of “America’s racial ordeal.” Though he is resolved. Given, however, the unique sensi- may be summarized in three general claims: objects to viewing the South as an exclusive tivity of the subject, we expect our race talk scapegoat, he is no apologist for the Con- to be clouded by evasion or dishonesty; for in • America’s race relations failure is federate cause. He means only to apportion the matter of race, everyone has something to above all a failure to commit the na- blame fairly by pointing out that 19th-century hide. tion to full integration or assimila- Northern whites were never so much anti- Historian Gene Dattel agrees that “[w]e tion (Dattel insists on using the latter, slavery as anti-black, and that for most of the need a frank and honest discussion about lately more incendiary term). 20th century opposition to racial equality and

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 48 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm integration was hardly less powerful outside ended regional containment in the early 20th nent advocates, including 19th- and early the old South than in it. century, the states into which blacks migrated 20th-century emigrationists such as Martin in large numbers soon contrived a substitute— Delany and Marcus Garvey, and, in the Civil attel substantiates these residential segregation—and thus originated Rights era, black nationalists such as Mal- claims in abundant detail. “Blacks the urban ghettos in which many blacks lan- colm X and Stokely Carmichael. Recently, Dconstituted a mere 2 percent of the guish to this day. attenuated or disguised variants have gained North’s antebellum population,” he notes, Life in the North had its own demoralizing mainstream legitimacy through the insinua- “and 94 percent of them were not allowed to and radicalizing effects, beyond the residuals tion of diversity and multiculturalism into the vote.” From the founding onward, Northern of Southern conditions. Dattel recounts the integrationist cause. whites from the Great Lakes region to New emergence of Northern ghettos via brief but Racial separatism, Dattel argues, is a England objected to the presence of even revealing case studies of Chicago, Detroit, and chronic danger to our unity and stability, and small numbers of blacks in their communi- New York. Residential segregation also meant gravely endangers the cause of black eleva- ties. They imposed legal disabilities on those school segregation, which obstructed the only tion. He observes among blacks in the Civil already present and labored to prevent further viable path for black advancement. “[W]hite Rights era and beyond an increasing tendency migration. When Stephen Douglas tarred flight,” writes Dattel, signified a Northern “to view matters exclusively through a racial Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln’s party with “form of massive resistance to racially mixed lens,” accompanied by a deep sense of alien- the name “black Republicans,” he accurately schools.” More generally, he observes that in ation and a spreading hostility to assimila- saw the political advantage in it. Dattel quotes Chicago as elsewhere, “blacks met with dis- tion. Among the urban poor, this alienation Republican Senator John Sherman affirming, crimination and ostracism” in “every aspect” appears in young males’ disengagement from on the floor of the Senate in 1862, that blacks of life. “Vice and crime proliferated,” and “ra- school and work, and most glaringly in the in- were “spurned and hated all over the country cial friction escalated.” Race riots broke out in cidence of violent crime. Among elites, it ap- North and South.” Chicago in 1919, in Harlem in 1935, and in pears in the reverence accorded socialists and Such sentiments did not materially change Detroit, Los Angeles, and Harlem again all illiberal black nationalists such as W.E.B. Du in the post-Civil War years—indeed, they in 1943, precursors to those that erupted in Bois and Malcolm X, and, recently, in the gen- remained powerful a full century later. The hundreds of American cities in the mid-1960s. erally uncritical approval of the Black Lives prewar policy of containing slavery, as Dattel Matter movement. On campus, it appears in observes about the Wilmot Proviso, was for he villains in dattel’s story are a rising incidence of self-segregation (both most of its supporters a policy for contain- the separatists, whether white or black. residential and curricular), and, at the K-12 ing America’s black population in the South. TIn its strict, nationalist form separat- level, in rejections of common academic and That policy persisted well beyond the Recon- ism has never been a majority position among disciplinary standards as racially or culturally struction years. Though the Great Migration black Americans, but it has long had promi- biased.

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Racial separatism is doomed to fail, Dattel remedy he prescribes. The story of America’s although much of our history may aggravate argues, even when accompanied by a spirit of chronic resistance to full integration may the malady Dattel diagnoses, other portions industry and economic self-reliance, as in the highlight the need for it, but it may also bol- can help ameliorate it. His history might laudable efforts of Booker T. Washington and ster the racial pessimists who see in that story be usefully leavened by more of the spirit of the Montgomery family (the late 19th-century the futility of hoping for a post-racial America. hopefulness that animated the black lead- founders of Mound Bayou, a briefly prosperous Such pessimism is not exclusive to the ers he most admires, Booker T. Washington all-black community in the Mississippi Delta). likes of Derrick Bell and Ta-Nehisi Coates. and Frederick Douglass—a spirit that surely It is particularly self-destructive in post-Civil When Thomas Jefferson explained in his holds a more solid historical grounding now Rights era America, in which opportunity is Notes on the State of Virginia why he believed than it did during their lives. widespread and “values count more than race” the incorporation of blacks into American America’s founders temporized and as determinants of success and failure. society was impossible, the first two and the equivocated on race, and later generations strongest of the causes he noted were “deep of reformers, including abolitionists, Recon- eckoning with race is well re- rooted prejudices entertained by the whites” struction-era Republicans, and Civil Rights- searched and loaded with illuminating and “ten thousand recollections, by the era leaders, were in their own ways imper- Rdetails. Better still, Dattel writes to blacks, of the injuries they have sustained.” fect as apostles of justice for all. Even so, revitalize a venerable tradition of wisdom on Those two factors would operate in symbi- the founders dedicated the nascent repub- race, guided by two lodestars: full integration otic relation: prejudices would persist, injus- lic to principles that, as Douglass observed, across color lines—equal rights under law as tices would accumulate, and the “ten thou- “would release every slave in the world.” Their well as cultural assimilation—is a moral im- sand recollections” of injury would generate successors drew vital inspiration from those perative; and integration requires a struggle among blacks a simmering stew of humilia- principles as they collaborated, over time, in on “two fronts,” as Martin Luther King, Jr., tion, indignation, and anger. the accomplishment of momentous and by put it, both for liberty and for the virtue re- all appearances irreversible reforms. In the quired for liberty’s fruitful exercise. Recent ong after subjection to actual in- wake of those reforms, black Americans have failures stem from a refusal to accept victory justice has been overcome, its memory achieved unprecedented success in unprece- on the first front and a demoralized retreat Lendures. Here is the destructive op- dented numbers. Writing in the late 1990s, from the second. eration of what Shelby Steele has called the the sociologist Orlando Patterson extolled The great question, then, concerns how we “enemy-memory,” also recognizable as an up- the brighter side of the country’s history on might redirect opinions and energies to repair dated expression of the psychological divid- race: “The achievements of the American mores and reconstruct civil society. This ques- edness that Du Bois both decried and propa- people”—black and white—“over the past tion points to my one significant reservation gated—the sense that to be “a Negro” and half century in reducing racial prejudice and about this excellent book. to be “an American” signify “two warring discrimination and in improving the socio- In his concluding remarks Dattel sensibly ideals.” For many blacks in what should be a economic and political condition of Afro- observes that the lately prevalent “reinterpre- golden age of integration, the release of long- Americans are nothing short of astonishing.” tation of American history as one extended harbored, long-suppressed resentments pro- Race, as Gene Dattel argues, is America’s nightmare of grievances is psychologically re- duces a profound psychological conflict be- failure—to which one must add, it is also tarding”—fostering debilitating sentiments of tween pride and interest, with the latter dic- among America’s great successes. That suc- futility and alienation. In his telling, however, tating assimilation into the American main- cess has been achieved fitfully and incomplete- the story of America’s failure on race is one of stream and the former fueling resistance to ly, with advances and reversals and no small unbroken resistance to full integration across it. The proposition that blacks should adopt incidence of violence. It supplies no cause for color lines, and most of that history—re- the values, even the virtuous and beneficial complacency. Yet the nation’s success in this counting the rejection of integration by ruling ones, of those who had tyrannized them stirs monumental task must not be downplayed or majorities of racist whites—closely resembles a powerful sentiment of revulsion. obscured, for its recognition is an indispens- the “extended nightmare of grievances” whose To note the demoralizing effects of those able stimulus for further efforts. demoralizing effects rightly concern him. “ten thousand recollections” is not to recom- The difficulty, in short, is that the history mend any whitewashing of the nation’s his- Peter C. Myers is professor of political science at Dattel presents stands in tension with the tory as a remedy. It is instead to suggest that the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.

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Book Review by William Voegeli He’s History Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian, by Richard Aldous. W.W. Norton & Company, 496 pages, $29.95

ccording to its publisher, and The Age of Roosevelt (1957-60) seemed, when he was 28 for The Age of Jackson, the first Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian is even before the Age of Trump, a less-than- of many books over his long career to garner A“the first major biography of preeminent major figure from a distant, receding past. praise and awards, to climb the bestseller lists historian and intellectual Arthur Schlesinger, Some of Aldous’s choices are puzzling. For while being taken seriously by other scholars. Jr.” Will there ever be a second? In another gen- example, he never unpacks the subtitle’s claim Amidst all this he was politically engaged, not eration, when those who recollect Schlesinger that Schlesinger was a, much less the, “impe- only advancing liberal arguments but causes as a writer who was unusually famous and well- rial” historian. It amounts to nothing more and candidates. Schlesinger helped found connected have also passed from the scene, will than an opaque reference to one of Schlesing- Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) in anyone care to read about him? er’s most prominent books, The Imperial Presi- the 1940s, wrote speeches for Democratic Historian Richard Aldous does a surpris- dency (1973), published during Watergate. presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson in the ingly good job of making Schlesinger interest- The brief epilogue is also peculiar. In it, we 1950s, and was a White House advisor to Pres- ing, no small feat when writing a biographer’s are given to understand that Schlesinger’s story ident John Kennedy in the 1960s. biography. He does not, however, succeed or proves—despite the warnings of many histori- even try very hard to show that Schlesinger’s ans, including Schlesinger’s father, a Harvard ut if the point of aldous’s story life and work were important. Aldous’s book professor—that an “action-intellectual” can about Schlesinger is proving the fea- was published ten years after Schlesinger died indeed both write and shape history. Undeni- Bsibility of being a participant-observer, at the age of 89. A decade is not so long a time, ably, Schlesinger’s accomplishments in each this modest contention hardly justifies either yet the author of The Age of Jackson (1945) field were formidable. He won a Pulitzer prize man’s efforts. For one thing, Schlesinger was

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 51 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm in the vicinity of political action more than his abiding concern after Dallas, Schlesinger or all that, aldous’s biggest mis- he was an actor of any consequence. Attorney would later contend that those who thought step is devoting just 48 out of 389 pages General Robert Kennedy’s recollection of the about Mary Jo Kopechne’s drowning in just Fof text to the final 42 years of his sub- historian’s role in his brother’s administration the right way would ultimately realize that it ject’s life, from the publication of A Thousand was cutting: “He didn’t do a helluva lot, but he was one more reason to vote for Ted Kennedy Days, when its author was only 48, to his was good to have around.” in a presidential election: death in 2007. This choice prevents Aldous And, as Aldous shows, Schlesinger’s case from engaging questions that might have ren- is especially problematic because his promi- Ever since Chappaquiddick, he has been dered his book quite different, and far more nence and political engagement often di- spending his life trying to redeem him- significant: Why did Schlesinger say so little minished his credibility, rendering even the self for those hours of panic. He has be- about liberalism’s dramatic, protracted de- most serious writing suspect. In 1957 a critic come ever more serious, more senatorial, scent from the intellectual and political domi- used the term “hagiography” to describe more devoted to the public good. I think nance it had achieved by 1965? And why did Schlesinger’s first book on FDR. Similar as- this ceaseless effort at self-redemption Schlesinger’s thoughts on this question, when sessments, such as “court historian,” would may be for Teddy Kennedy what polio offered, do so little to halt liberalism’s decline, dog Schlesinger for the rest of his life. Chris- was for FDR. or even make sense of it? topher Hitchens, for example, described In 1998 journalist Nicholas Lemann wrote Schlesinger’s book on the Kennedy presiden- One can be a scholar. One can, out of ca- that it was “amazing, in retrospect, what a long cy, A Thousand Days (1965), as “the founding reerism or conviction, be a publicist. But ulti- string of presidents—from Truman all the way breviary of the cult of JFK.” mately one must choose between those profes- to Carter—felt a twinge of terror at the pos- Schlesinger wouldn’t, or couldn’t, dis- sions. The large but finite reservoir of prestige sibility of, to put it in shorthand, incurring the prove such characterizations. A Thousand Schlesinger filled as a historian was drained disapproval of Arthur Schlesinger.” Writing Days offers breathless puerilities that a stern dangerously low by his determination to in- this claim out in longhand means that for some editor would have removed from a high terpret every political event he commented on 30 years Schlesinger was the most reliable ba- school valedictory speech. Kennedy, we are as a vindication of liberalism and its leaders. rometer of, in Lemann’s words, the “good opin- told, “gave the world for an imperishable mo- Nor could Schlesinger and his defenders re- ion of the centrist-liberal establishment,” shap- ment the vision of a leader who greatly un- ally be surprised, given the frequency and zeal ing its thoughts and reflecting its sensibilities. derstood the terror and the hope, the diver- of his advocacy, that the people who came to But as the 20th century wore on, that estab- sity and the possibility, of life on this planet read his historical writings as part of this life- lishment lost its sway and self-assurance, to and who made people look beyond nation long political project strongly suspected that the point where, as Lemann accurately states, and race to the future of humanity.” Having the entire oeuvre had the heft and reliability President Ronald Reagan “couldn’t have cared made the Kennedy family’s political success of a collection of press releases. less” about Schlesinger’s pronouncements. New in Paperback New from KANSAS

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Schlesinger made his reputation between society.” To sustain free societies required go- the Stalinist Old Left. But in the 1960s they 1945 and 1965, when liberalism was at high ing beyond such moderation, however. Liberal- never solved the problem posed by the New tide. He lived off that reputation after 1965, ism’s duty was to forge a “new radicalism” that Left, which jettisoned the Old Left’s turgid the point at which Aldous loses interest in his aspired to “reunite individual and community ideological consistency in favor of denouncing subject. But none of the hundreds of thou- in fruitful union,” thereby healing modern life’s America’s racism and imperialism with stri- sands of words Schlesinger wrote in his final “savage wounds” with a “conviction of trust and dent, often incoherent, fury. Those few liber- four decades did anything to restore liberal- solidarity with other human beings.” als who rejected the New Left categorically ism’s mid-century hegemony. In that respect, It is, to put it gently, unclear what such became ex-liberals: the neoconservatives, such liberalism’s failure was Schlesinger’s failure— bromides mean, or whether they mean any- as Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and not because he could have single-handedly thing at all. After the Great Society, liberal- ADA cofounder John P. Roche, who emerged effected a different outcome, but because ism would face the accusation that its practi- as a force—more intellectual than political— even its most talented expositor could neither cal implementation meant throwing money at in the late 1960s and 70s. gauge nor repair what was missing and mis- problems. The Vital Center betrays a similar Liberals who disdained that path at- taken in the liberal worldview. defect: when it comes time to explicate basic tempted, instead, to retain the ability to purposes and principles, liberalism’s powerful function while holding two opposed ideas in remain to this day a new dealer, inclination is to throw rhetoric at the problem. mind at the same time. One was that liber- unreconstructed and unrepentant,” Schlesinger’s forensic gifts aggravated rather als should not execrate the New Left as they “I Schlesinger wrote in the memoir cover- than solved this shortcoming. had the Old, because there really was a good ing his first 33 years,A Life in the Twentieth Even before the tumult of the 1960s, The deal of truth, painful but bracing, in the for- Century (2000). He strove to vindicate the Vital Center’s glittering generalities proved mer’s indictment of America as a nation with New Deal by establishing its antecedents in a increasingly inadequate to liberalism’s needs. a shameful history, leaving it a society with useable past. The Age of Jackson, Aldous writes, Schlesinger tried, with little success, to apply fundamental, debilitating pathologies. The “presented the New Deal as the culmination of the New Deal’s spirit of bold, persistent ex- other idea was that although these problems the liberal tradition,” whose deepest commit- perimentation to the realities of the postwar appeared profound, they were really just like ment was to what Schlesinger called “executive economic boom. Instead of the 1930s’ bread- all other problems: amenable to solution, vigor and government action,” which would or at least mitigation, by rational, idealistic help the people and constrain the powerful. On liberal reformers who would rely on exper- the book’s last page, a Franklin Roosevelt quote tise, executive vigor, and government action supplies a benediction: the Jacksonian “heri- Is liberalism’s to make Americans the custodians of their tage” is “the American doctrine that entrusts raison d’être to own destiny. the general welfare to no one group or class, but fulfill America’s No one achieved, and very few attempt- dedicates itself to the end that American peo- ed, a synthesis of the views that America ple shall not be thwarted in their high purpose promise or expiate was improvable despite being irredeemable. to remain the custodians of their own destiny.” America’s sins? Schlesinger, like most liberals, lurched be- Even as the Jacksonian heritage had ani- tween the two positions. A collection of his mated the New Deal, liberalism’s mission was essays published in 1963 was titled The Poli- to meet America’s postwar challenges by hon- and-butter issues, however, he called on the tics of Hope. One 1960 article it contained oring and elaborating the New Deal’s heritage government to address “the general style and looked to the coming decade being “spirited, of activist government. Schlesinger made this quality of our civilization,” without ever ex- articulate, inventive, incoherent, turbulent, clear in The Vital Center (1949), his most explaining what that would mean or how it was with energy shooting off wildly in all direc- plicitly prescriptive book of political theory. possible. Schlesinger opined at one point that tions. Above all, there will be a sense of mo- The “Vital Center” was central in the sense Billy Graham’s popularity showed that liberals tion, of leadership, and of hope.” that it maintained a space for vigorous but needed to address Americans’ dissatisfactions sensible reforms between the business com- amidst their unprecedented affluence, an omi- he subsequent collection of his munity on the right and Marxism on the left. nous and mystifying failure to differentiate the writings, titled The Crisis of Confidence, The book was, in that respect, closely related needs served by politics from those pursued Twas published in 1969 at the end of to the ADA’s repudiation of Henry Wallace’s through religion. His disdain for the style and a decade that had proven more volatile but 1948 presidential campaign, which had in turn quality of America’s civilization during the also more harrowing than Schlesinger had embodied the 1930s Popular Front conviction 1950s sometimes equated liberalism with dy- predicted. In it, he asserted that Americans that because Communists were just “liberals in namism, valued for its own sake rather than for had become “the most frightening people on a hurry,” New Dealers should want nothing to advancing any particular goal. John Kennedy’s this planet,” because “the atrocities we com- do with an anti-Soviet Cold War abroad, work- 34-month presidency, Schlesinger implausibly mit, at home or abroad, seem even now harding instead for ever more socialism at home. declared, “transformed the American spirit,” ly to have touched our official self-righteous- Schlesinger’s Vital Center was vital in that thereby “wiping away the world’s impression ness or dented our transcendent conviction he called for liberals to summon a “fighting faith” of an old nation of old men, weary, played out, of moral infallibility.” We must recognize, he in defense of their middle ground between the fearful of ideas, change, and the future.” admonished, Chamber of Commerce and Joseph Stalin. This challenge was permanent, since the experi- n the years following kennedy’s as- that the destructive impulse is in us ence of life in liberal democracies inclined men sassination it became painfully clear that and that it springs from some dark in- “toward compromise, persuasion and consent in Ithe Vital Center could not hold. In the tolerable tension in our history and our politics, [and] toward tolerance and diversity in 1940s ADA liberals had forcefully rejected institutions.

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We began, after all, as a people who the Silent Majority’s populism. That force grew to advance the Vietnam war than the civil killed red men and enslaved black men. stronger over the ensuing decades, elevating rights movement. The consequences included No doubt we often did this with a Bible Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, protests and threats at his public events, and and a prayerbook. But no nation, how- and Donald Trump. As Walter Russell Mead even being “harangued and denounced,” in ever righteous its professions, could wrote at the beginning of the 2016 presidential Schlesinger’s words, while going about his act as we did without doing something campaign, the essence of Jacksonian populism daily life. The Stalinists of the 1930s, he wrote fearful to itself—without burying deep is “honor-driven egalitarianism and fiery na- in his diary in 1970, were as “rigid, dishonest, in itself, in its customs, its institutions, tionalism.” Modern-day Jacksonians and fanatical” as the New Leftists, but less its conditioned reflexes and its psyche, malignant by virtue of harboring neither a a propensity toward violence. However loathe the interfering busybodies of “cult of violence, nor the associated contempt much we pretended that Indians and the progressive state, believe that gov- for the mind.” Negroes were subhumans, we really ernment (except for the police and the Ultimately, in a surprising coda to his ca- knew that they were God’s children too. military) is a necessary evil, think most reer as a political disputant, Schlesinger wrote It is almost as if this initial experience “experts” and university professors are these misgivings for public consumption. The fixed a primal curse on our nation—a no smarter or wiser than other people, Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multi- curse which still shadows our life. and feel only contempt for the gender cultural Society was published in 1991, the year theorists and the social justice warriors he turned 74. Amidst the recently declared Schlesinger was hardly unique among that of the contemporary classroom. “culture wars,” Schlesinger revisited questions era’s liberals in employing overwrought gener- raised by the kind of analysis he had offered in alizations and hysterical verbiage. In 1967, for Indeed, Schlesinger’s commitment to mak- Crisis of Confidence. The new book recognized example, Senator Robert Kennedy berated a ing ordinary Americans the custodians of that jeremiads about founding atrocities im- college audience for not condemning the war their own destiny was always embedded in posing a primal curse had been extended and in Southeast Asia. “Don’t you understand that a liberalism that required the leadership of systematized in the dogma of multicultural- what we are doing to the Vietnamese is not charismatic figures who would mediate, di- ism, which held that European civilization is very different than what Hitler did to the Jews?” rect, and implement the people’s will. All of the source of all the planet’s abominations: Schlesinger’s Democratic heroes, in particular, slavery, racism, imperialism, colonialism, and aving abandoned hope and were exceedingly rich, socially prominent, or environmental degradation. “Is the Western lost confidence during the 1960s, both: Franklin Roosevelt, Averell Harriman, tradition a bar to progress and a curse on hu- HSchlesinger and the centrist-liberal Adlai Stevenson, and the Kennedys. By con- manity?” Schlesinger asked, summarizing the establishment thrashed about for the next trast, Harry Truman’s domestic and foreign multiculturalist indictment. “Would it really four decades trying to regain them. Few of policies aligned with Schlesinger’s preferences do America and the world good to get rid of their efforts improved the Democratic Party’s in every important respect…but he was also the European legacy?” fortunes. Liberals in this era were endlessly a man of humble origins, decidedly rough non-judgmental about blacks who rioted in rather than polished, and the only American is answer, worth quoting at cities (because of their victimhood) and stu- president of the 20th century without a col- length, rejected multiculturalism dents who rioted on campus (because of their lege degree. During his presidency Schlesing- Hcalmly but decisively: idealism). Institutions like Berkeley and Co- er disparaged Truman as “a man of mediocre lumbia, Schlesinger wrote in The Crisis of and limited capacity” who has “managed to No doubt Europe has done terrible Confidence, would be “wiser and better univer- surround himself with his intellectual equals.” things, not least to itself. But what cul- sities as a result of the student revolts.” That ture has not?… The sins of the West are volume also went out of its way to disparage ncreasingly, the jacksonian populism no worse than the sins of Asia or of the the biggest single component of the New Deal described by Mead has worked against Middle East or of Africa. coalition. It was, Schlesinger said, “the less ed- Irather than through the Democratic Party, There remains, however, a crucial ucated, low-income whites who tend to be the culminating in 2016’s earthquake. The theo- difference between the Western tradi- most emotional and primitive champions of retical problems in Schlesinger’s work corre- tion and the others. Unlike other cul- conservatism.” By contrast, “The affluent and spond to political vulnerabilities in the world. tures, the West has conceived and acted better-educated…tend to care more about “The political and cultural snobbery that in- upon ideals that expose and combat its rationality, reform and progress.” If the less forms The Vital Center has proved the undo- own misdeeds. No other culture has educated rejected the acquiescence of the bet- ing of American liberalism,” Fred Siegel wrote built self-criticism into the very fabric ter educated in riots and crime, these objec- in 2005. Hillary Clinton was the perfect foil of its being. The crimes of the West tions only proved how bigoted and primitive for Donald Trump, a model of what Siegel de- in time generated their own antidotes. the low-income whites really were. The pos- scribed as those “professional liberals, in both They have provoked great movements to sibility that their concerns had some merit or senses of the term, who expect, given their pu- end slavery, to raise the status of women, deserved respect was ruled out of order. tative expertise, to be obeyed.” to abolish torture, to combat racism, to Such commentary, representative of Schlesinger’s concessions to the New Left promote religious tolerance, to defend Schlesinger’s thinking and a good deal of lib- did him little good. Even as some Old Left- freedom of inquiry and expression, to eral discourse in the late 1960s and early ’70s, ists never forgave his ADA anti-Communism, advance personal liberty and human is an archival entrant in any “This is Why the New ones reviled him, Aldous writes, as rights. Trump Won” compilation. It’s striking that the “a mealy-mouthed Establishment stooge,” dis- Whatever the particular crimes historian who launched his career with a study daining Schlesinger as a member of a Ken- of Europe, that continent is also the of Jacksonian democracy was so obtuse about nedy Administration that had done more source—the unique source—of those

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liberating ideas of individual liberty, ery soul to live in freedom. That is who that he had nothing to do with the latter, political democracy, equality before the we are. Those are the priceless ties that Schlesinger described them as “hyperpatriots, law, freedom of worship, human rights, bind us together as nations, as allies, fundamentalists, evangelicals, laissez-faire and cultural freedom that constitute and as a civilization. doctrinaires, homophobes, anti-abortionists, our most precious legacy and to which What we have…inherited from our pro-assault-gun people, and other zealots”— most of the world today aspires. These ancestors has never existed to this ex- basically, Hillary Clinton’s whole basket of are European ideas, not Asian, nor Af- tent before. And if we fail to preserve deplorables, along with the charge repeated rican, nor Middle Eastern ideas, except it, it will never, ever exist again. So we from his work more than 20 years earlier that by adoption…. cannot fail. they were “primitive” and “emotional.” There is surely no reason for West- Schlesinger contended, moreover, that ern civilization to have guilt trips laid wenty-seven years after the dis- “left-wing political correctness” is nothing on it by champions of cultures based on uniting of America was published, it is worse than “an irritation and a nuisance,” despotism, superstition, tribalism, and Tclear that Schlesinger lost this argu- since it “operates in higher education,” where fanaticism…. ment, at least among Democrats and liberals, students “are mature enough to take care of It was the French, not the Algerians, where he had hoped to win it. His older writ- themselves.” This assessment was dubious who freed Algerian women from the ings about America’s singularly monstrous even in 1991, and is now refuted on a weekly veil…; as in India it was the British, not crimes, not his later arguments against mul- basis by stories coming out of academia. the Indians, who ended (or did their best ticulturalism, represent the consensus that to end) the horrible custom of suttee— animates modern liberalism’s growing ob- he disuniting of america was the widows burning themselves alive on their session with identity politics, diversity, privi- last occasion where Schlesinger was husbands’ funeral pyres. And it was the lege, and intersectionality. If one accepts the Table to, in Aldous’s words, “shape and West, not the non-Western cultures, that premises that America’s transgressions are so enflame national debate as a public intellec- launched the crusade to abolish slavery— enormous and wicked they can never be fully tual.” The tensions between its arguments and and in doing so encountered mighty re- gauged, and that atoning and compensating ones he had made as a younger man reflect sistance, especially in the Islamic world for them should consume the country for as tensions in the American liberalism he cham- (where Moslems, with fine impartiality, many centuries as it has committed and ben- pioned throughout his life. Though utterly enslaved whites as well as blacks). Those efitted from these sins, it follows that white confident of its good intentions, liberalism many brave and humane Africans who guilt can never be pushed too far. remains unsure of how best to assemble a reli- are struggling these days for decent so- Heather MacDonald praised The Dis- able majority in a vast, diverse country, and of cieties are animated by Western, not uniting of America in Commentary for its the purposes and commitments that liberals by African, ideals. White guilt can be “eloquence and erudition,” while Henry stand for. Is it essential to include fiery Jack- pushed too far. Louis Gates, Jr., condemned arguments like sonian nationalists in a Democratic coalition, Schlesinger’s as a “dream of an America in or to make clear that they are unwelcome? Is It would discomfit Schlesinger to know cultural white face.” Clearly, that moment liberalism’s raison d’être to fulfill America’s that President Trump made a similar point presented Schlesinger the opportunity to promise or expiate America’s sins? For all his last year in a speech in Warsaw: change teams, to become a culture warrior professional success, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s fighting alongside William Bennett and Al- political failure to solve or clarify these ques- We empower women as pillars of our lan Bloom. He declined, choosing to singe tions is the most significant thing about his society and of our success…. And we rather than burn his bridges. career. Showing how he came up short, and debate everything. We challenge every- To reassure his lifetime allies, Schlesinger what that failure means for liberalism and thing. We seek to know everything so tacked on a few paragraphs in an epilogue to the country, might someday make for a good that we can better know ourselves. the book, in which he sketched out a new Vi- book. And above all, we value the dignity of tal Center, fully and equally opposed to the every human life, protect the rights of multiculturalists of the Left and the “mono- William Voegeli is a senior editor of the Clare- every person, and share the hope of ev- culturalists” of the Right. To make clear mont Review of Books.

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Essay by Joseph Postell What’s the Matter with Congress?

resident james buchanan is cred- tives. We are all aware of the periodic “show- the teens since Barack Obama’s first term ited with being the first to call the U.S. downs” over government “shutdowns” over in office. Philip Wallach of the R Street -In PSenate “the world’s greatest delibera- the debt limit or whatever—which have be- stitute opened a recent article on Congress tive body.” This designation has been repeated come a common rather than an extraordinary with this simple statement: “Congress is a frequently in the years since, almost always by feature of congressional life. The floundering mess.” He later acknowledged that there is senators themselves. These days the epithet was on full display in Republicans’ attempts disagreement among scholars regarding why rings hollow, and the senators know it. last year to reform health care. The legislative Congress is mess. Those who analyze Con- Speeches in the Senate are typically given process was so secretive in that instance that gress are like doctors who can agree that a to a room of two or three senators, and no ordinary citizens could not be expected to un- patient is sick, but can’t explain what caused one is listening. When Senator Jeff Flake derstand how the bill to “repeal and replace” the sickness or prescribe a treatment. But if (R-AZ) condemned President Trump’s Obamacare was amended or debated. Even we cannot answer these questions, we will be criticism of the press in a dramatic speech many House members seemed to be in the ill-equipped to respond to the growing cho- on the Senate floor in January, only a few dark about what they were actually voting on. rus calling for reform of our most republican senators bothered to show up. He was, in es- Things became so unpleasant for John institution. sence, speaking to the media and not to his Boehner by 2015 that he resigned from the colleagues. The Senate’s presiding officers Speakership and from Congress, leaving Paul Deliberation in Decline spend more time on their phones than pay- Ryan, who now himself has one foot out the ing attention to the debates, because debate door, to deal with the messy business of pre- ongress is complex, so it is much is mostly nonexistent. siding over the House. Ryan had to be cajoled harder than it is with the presidency Nowadays when senators invoke the ide- by members of his own party to take the job, Cor the courts to pinpoint the source al of the “world’s greatest deliberative body” which nobody seemed to want. Aside from of its failings. The Constitution sets out few they talk about restoring deliberation rather repealing 15 major Obama regulations, last guidelines for the legislative process. His- than preserving it. Senators Orrin Hatch December’s tax reform remains the sole sig- tory and custom play a significant role in how (R-UT) and John McCain (R-AZ) have in nificant legislative reform since Republicans Congress works (or fails to work) today, and recent years delivered floor speeches (again, took control of the House, Senate, and presi- institutional rules channel behavior in a more unattended by other senators) on restoring dency in the 2016 election. More members fundamental way. Senate deliberation. Members’ contempt for are declining to run for reelection with each Constitutional theory, however, is the nec- their own institution is bipartisan. When election cycle. essary starting point for understanding our Democratic Party leaders pleaded with Joe Americans continue to have a low opin- dysfunctional legislature. The Constitution Manchin (D-WV) to run for reelection, he ion of Congress’s performance. At the start shapes legislators’ behavior in ways we don’t told them simply, “This place sucks.” (He’s of 2018, Congress’s average approval rat- often perceive. It creates a Congress at odds running anyway.) ing from RealClearPolitics was 15%, with with itself, seeking representation that is both It’s not going any better on the other side 75% disapproval. Nor is this a recent trend: diverse and deliberative. On the one hand, of Capitol Hill in the House of Representa- Congress’s approval rating has barely left members should represent different inter-

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 56 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ests, and must bargain and compromise to get Death of Deliberation (2013) that, through tees used to receive deference from members things done. On the other hand, the founders most of the 20th century, this is precisely when they reached the floor. The chairs of also clearly intended to create a Congress that what happened. In the House, membership committees were selected by seniority and be- could come to a consensus by carefully consid- on policy committees remained relatively came “barons” controlling their specific areas ering which policy decisions would best serve of policy, governed only loosely by a “feudal” the public good. The wide variety of interests Speaker who did not infringe their autonomy. reflected in the legislature should promote not Books discussed in this essay: These committees were the locus of delibera- just bargaining but “deliberation and circum- tion until relatively recently. In the Senate, as spection,” as The Federalist put it. Leading Representatives: The Agency of in the House, committee chairs dominated As the late Emory political scientist Ran- Leaders in the Politics of the U.S. House, the agenda until the 1960s. Norms of colle- dall Strahan explained in Leading Represen- by Randall Strahan. Johns Hopkins giality and deference, rather than strict rules, tatives (2007), University Press, 256 pages, prevented senators from stepping on their col- $52.95 (cloth), $29.95 (paper) leagues’ toes. while the Founders attempted to design legislative institutions that would The Mild Voice of Reason: Deliberative The Congress that Wasn’t foster deliberation, they were well Democracy and American National aware that these [quoting The Federal- Government, by Joseph M. Bessette. his model of congressional action, ist] “various and interfering interests” University of Chicago Press, 306 pages, in which deliberation occurs at the would not always be reconciled through $64 (cloth), $34 (paper) Tcommittee level and different lawmak- disinterested reason or deliberation ers specialize in various policy areas, is of- about the public good…. Negotiation The Death of Deliberation: Partisanship ten referred to as the “textbook” Congress. and bargaining would also be involved and Polarization in the United States Given how poorly Congress functions today, in assembling House majorities among Senate, by James I. Wallner. scholars are increasingly viewing the text- legislators whose motivations would Lexington Books, 178 pages, book Congress nostalgically. We should not often be narrower than considerations $88 (cloth), $41.99 (paper) romanticize it. In theory, committee govern- of the public good. ment allows Congress to become an expert Congress: The Electoral Connection, by body equipped with all of the relevant infor- But what does it mean to deliberate? For David R. Mayhew. Yale University mation necessary to make policies that pro- Joseph Bessette, a professor of government Press, 180 pages, $18 (paper) mote the good of the whole nation. In prac- at Claremont McKenna College and the au- tice, as political scientists admit when they thor of The Mild Voice of Reason (1994), de- Congressmen in Committees, by Richard describe the “distributive” model of com- liberation is “reasoning on the merits of public Fenno. Little, Brown and Co., mittees, representatives seek membership policy.” This reasoning requires members to 302 pages, out-of-print on the committees that help them distribute be “open to the facts, arguments, and propos- benefits to their constituents. If committees als that come to their attention” and willing Congress: Keystone of the Washington are given deference by outside members, and “to learn from their colleagues and others.” It Establishment, by Morris P. Fiorina. Yale they are composed of members with concen- would seem that deliberation threatens the University Press, 169 pages, $23 (paper) trated interests, they can delegate power to mere bargaining or “logrolling” approach to bureaucracies and then use their oversight representation. After all, if John C. Calhoun The Imperial Congress: Crisis in the powers to ensure that the agencies make pol- was truly open to Daniel Webster’s anti-slav- Separation of Powers, edited by icy in their constituents’ favor, rather than ery arguments during the sectional crisis of Gordon S. Jones and John A. Marini. promote the common good. the mid-19th century, could he adequately ad- World Almanac, 384 pages, $24.95 The most famous scholarship on Congress vance the interests of South Carolina? prior to 1990 described, essentially, this kind But Bessette argues that this is, to some Party Discipline in the U.S. House of of Congress. David Mayhew’s seminal work, extent, a false choice. It is true that members Representatives, by Kathryn Pearson. Congress: The Electoral Connection, published of Congress can pursue reelection effectively University of Michigan Press, in 1974, flatly stated that “no theoretical treat- by shunning deliberation and merely reflect- 224 pages, $70 ment of the United States Congress that posing the views of their constituents. But they its parties as analytic units will go very far.” can also gain reelection and advance in Con- Is Congress Broken? The Virtues and Members operated in a decentralized envi- gress by engaging in deliberation. A member Defects of Partisanship and Gridlock, ronment in which they promoted the narrow who represents wheat farmers may become a edited by William F. Connelly, Jr., interests of their constituents without being better advocate for his constituents by educat- John J. Pitney, Jr., and Gary J. Schmitt. subject to party discipline. Richard Fenno, ing himself on the issue, and by defending his Brookings Institution Press, the other great scholar of Congress in this constituents’ position before other members. 272 pages, $34.99 (paper) period, wrote Congressmen in Committees the “If these arguments are taken seriously by oth- year before, describing how the committee ers, then the congressman has contributed to system in Congress enabled members to pur- a broader deliberation on the issue at hand.” static over several congresses, meaning that sue their electoral interests. In this way, “the reelection incentive itself may the members of those committees were able to This cynical description of the textbook promote genuine deliberation.” specialize in, and engage in effective oversight Congress was perhaps best captured by Mor- Like Bessette, James Wallner, a senior fel- of, the programs under their committee’s juris Fiorina’s justly famous Congress: Keystone low of the R Street Institute, observes in The risdiction. Measures emerging from commit- of the Washington Establishment, first pub-

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lished in 1977. The decentralization of power when he didn’t alter the committees, he sim- Wallner argues, however, that the Sen- to autonomous committees, Fiorina showed, ply bypassed them with ad hoc “task forces” ate operates under a different model: that enabled members to gain reelection by avoid- charged with writing legislation on important of “structured consent” rather than straight- ing lawmaking and relying instead on bureau- matters like Medicare reform. The “Contract forward majoritarianism. In order to accom- cratic oversight. These were the scholars who with America” also produced six-year term plish anything in this environment, the ma- introduced the phrase “iron triangle” into the limits on committee chairs, further reducing jority and minority leaders confer, negotiate, American political lexicon to describe the the committees’ independence from party and broker a deal before debate or delibera- policymaking relationship among represen- leaders. tion even occurs. Decisions are made behind tatives, interest groups, and bureaucrats. The As a result of all of these reforms, Pearson the scenes and rank-and-file members are textbook Congress, it turns out, wasn’t much argues, committees have steadily declined in increasingly shut out of the process, but it of a Congress at all, but a bunch of autono- importance, and “party leaders in the con- does allow the Senate to remain productive mous oversight bodies. National party leaders temporary House of Representatives have in a difficult political environment without were minimal players in this structure, and accrued considerable power.” Strahan con- resorting to the so-called “nuclear option” to they acknowledged it. Speaker John McCor- curs, writing that “Gingrich engineered rules end debate. Wallner argues that this is a dan- mack (D-MA) advised freshmen members of changes that helped establish a new form of gerous tradeoff: “the contemporary Senate the House during the 1960s, “Whenever you party government in the House in which may be viewed as broken. While it continues pass a committee chairman in the House, you standing committees were more subservient to produce significant legislation at relatively bow from the waist. I do.” to the majority party and its leadership at consistent rates…it has done so largely at the That’s not to say that the textbook Con- any point since the era of powerful speakers expense of the institution’s deliberative func- gress was weak. As Fiorina’s title indicated, during the late nineteenth and early twenti- tion.” Deliberation in the Senate is replaced Congress had become the centerpiece of the eth centuries.” by party leaders brokering compromises. modern state. Many scholars affiliated with James Wallner describes similar trends in According to this account, not merely the the Claremont Institute also argued this in the post-reform Senate. Although some lead- Senate but also the House is governed today their 1989 volume, The Imperial Congress, ed- ers (especially Lyndon Johnson) played a stron- by centralized party leadership rather than ited by Gordon Jones and John Marini. But committees or rank-and-file members. Congress played this role behind the scenes in There seems to be some validity to the the- order to avoid the responsibility that should Those who analyze sis that in today’s Congress members are led accompany power in a republic. Congress are like by party leaders. But we must pause to ask: are Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell really Leaders without Followers doctors who agree running the show? A little over a century ago, House Speakers were called “czars.” Using the s the last several years have that a patient is sick, same term to refer to Paul Ryan fails to pass shown, this textbook Congress no but can’t prescribe the laugh test. Alonger exists. So what replaced it, and a treatment. why does it matter? The standard argument is Irresponsible Party Government that in the “post-reform” Congress party leaders drive the agenda and rank-and-file mem- ger role in directing the Senate prior to the ven those who believe that par- bers sit around helplessly, waiting to be led. 1980s, the majority leader did not emerge as a ties and their leaders are dominant in After announcing his retirement in 2016 from strong leader until the ’80s and ’90s. Between Etoday’s Congress admit the limits of the House of Representatives, Reid Ribble the textbook Senate and the emergence of par- this hypothesis. In Is Congress Broken? (2017), (R-WI) blasted the concentration of power ty leadership, the Senate operated under a “col- an excellent collection of essays edited by Wil- in party leaders’ hands: “The leadership has legial” model, according to Wallner, in which liam Connelly, John Pitney, and Gary Schmitt, 100% say on everything and they drive and di- all members were free to offer amendments to University of Richmond political scientist rect every decision.” legislation and debate on the floor. The passage Daniel Palazzolo writes that “institutional Many political scientists agree with Rib- of the Clean Air Act amendments in 1990 by reforms have strengthened party leaders and ble’s assessment. Among others, Randall a wide bipartisan majority, after both parties weakened committee chairs,” suggesting that Strahan and the University of Minnesota’s offered dozens of amendments to the bill, re- this is an important cause of Congress’s in- Kathryn Pearson, in her book Party Discipline flected this collegial environment. ability to deliberate effectively, although he in the U.S. House of Representatives (2015), As Wallner sees it, over time growing quickly qualifies this claim. have described this shift back to party leader- polarization forced the Senate to move to a Pearson, too, emphasizes the tools party ship in the House. Reforms first pressed by “majoritarian” environment in which the ma- leaders have in the post-reform Congress. Democratic members in the 1970s gave party jority leader blocked senators from offering Leaders can punish or reward members “in leaders—and therefore the party caucus as amendments and moved to end debate quick- the allocation of limited committee posi- a whole—more authority over committee ly—methods utilized extensively by Harry tions, legislative opportunities, and financial chairs. These reforms accelerated under Newt Reid (D-NV) when he served as the majority resources.” But although “party leaders have Gingrich in the 1990s, whose brief tenure as leader from 2007 to 2015. This is the Senate a growing arsenal of carrots at their disposal Speaker dramatically altered the structure of we are accustomed to seeing: an increasingly- with which to reward members,” she insists power in the House. Gingrich took greater majoritarian institution where filibusters are that “their sticks are more limited,” a point control of committee assignments, rather common and the majority party tries to gov- which Gingrich himself acknowledged: “I’m than allowing committee chairs to remain au- ern without letting the minority party play not big on punishments, I’m very big on re- tonomous due to the seniority principle. And much of a role. wards.” Moreover, her central thesis is that

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 58 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm party leaders must balance the need to And you learn that a leader without followers prioritize policy control with the need to is simply a man taking a walk.” ALGORA PUBLISHING maintain majority control. Leaders need to This paradox in which we have stronger party Nonplussed by World Events? retain their majority, both in the chamber leaders who remain weak is a significant source as a whole and within the party, in order to of Congress’s dysfunction. Americans are led retain their power. This places considerable to believe that party leadership is the cause of KOREANS IN IRAN: constraints on their discretion, even forc- gridlock and polarization, but leaders are more MISSILES, MARKETS AND MYTHS Shirzad Azad ing them sometimes to use their carrots to frequently led into political conflict rather than 178 pages $19.95 strengthen vulnerable members who don’t the cause of it. The centrifugal forces that char- The two Koreas have had politi- vote with the party consistently. acterized the textbook Congress—indepen- cal, cultural, and above all com- Wallner acknowledges similar constraints dent and autonomous members, responding to mercial ties in Iran since the 1960s. An Iranian expert on on party leaders’ power in the Senate. The their own constituencies rather than to their Iranian–East Asian relations out- structured-consent model he describes, in party leaders—are still present. We think that lines the scope of such relations, with statistics and examples, in which the majority and minority leader work the centripetal forces of centralized leaders are the context of the countries' things out behind the scenes, “is dependent on more powerful in offsetting these forces than apparent dissimilarities and divergent interests. relatively cohesive parties, as well as majority they actually are. Members are increasingly and minority leaders that are capable of mol- pulled in both directions—toward national BACHELORS ABOUNDING: THEIR MUTINOUS MARCH ON MATRIMONY lifying the demands of their most ideological constituencies reflected in national parties and Terry Reed members without upsetting their [own] nego- national politics, and toward the local interests 188 pages $19.95 tiations.” But McConnell seems increasingly and constituencies they still serve as the source An authority on the Indy 500 and incapable of holding his own ranks together, of their authority. Congress cannot remain di- the dry martini as well as having published numerous intellectual and the structured-consent model seems un- vided against itself if it is to hold the public’s works, Mr. Reed examines the sustainable as a result of the forces that incen- confidence. tension between a man's need for independence and society's tivize members to go their own way. apparent need to break him in. In the end, although party leaders have Madison vs. Wilson He draws on history, mythology, regained some authority to control the pro- sociology, anthropology and psychology to make his case. Citing ceedings of the House and the Senate, both ut which direction to go? two writers from Schopenhauer to the external environment and Congress’s chapters in Is Congress Broken?, one by P.G. Wodehouse and Danielle Steel, the book is internal environment limit their control sig- Beditors Connelly and Pitney and one by comical, outspoken, and outrageously entertaining. nificantly. Externally, members are simply the Hewlett Foundation’s Daniel Stid, frame THE CIVIL WAR INCOME TAX more accountable to their constituents than that question as a contest between James AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, 1861-1872: to their party’s leadership—as the founders Madison and Woodrow Wilson. The editors Christopher Shepard intended. Internally, party leaders are cho- of the book write that contemporary criticism 206 pages $23.95 sen by the members, and are their agents. of Congress is too rooted in a Wilsonian dis- The economic principle of Randall Strahan’s position in favor of rapid, unified government income tax elimination among Leading Representatives Republicans can be traced back sought to take on the notion that party lead- action rather than slow, deliberate legislation at least to the Civil War and ers are simply agents of the parties they rep- under a system of divided powers. Connelly Reconstruction. The author brings to life the multifaceted resent. Yet he admitted that party leadership and Pitney “seek to revive a more traditional debate and traces the anti-tax was always conditional. The institutions may Madisonian perspective on Congress,” one view back to Alexander Hamilton. This book shows that modern attacks by members provide an opening for leaders to exert their which defends partisan conflict and friction in of the Republican Party on the income tax have own influence. Leaders like Gingrich found the legislative branch. “By Madisonian stan- their roots in the rhetoric and actions taken by the that opening (for a short time), but Boehner dards,” they argue, “there is nothing inher- first Republicans in Congress. and Ryan appear to have had no such luck. ently wrong with strong opinions and strong THE NEW COMMONWEALTH In the end, Strahan concluded, “Leaders who words,” such as those which characterize our From Bureaucratic corporatism to socialist capitalism neglect representation and deliberation to polarized Congress today. The key is to attach Claudiu A. Secara 296 pages $24.95 orchestrate legislative action they favor may members’ interests to their office, encouraging Brexit, NATO expansion and the be consequential…in the short term, but the them to engage in serious deliberation, care- SCO reflect major shifts in alliances structure of the institution and its place in ful legislation, and effective oversight—not to in the global power game, but an even greater tectonic force is at the American constitutional system make it place partisanship over institutional attach- work as well. unlikely they will remain leaders in the long ment. “We need Madisonian republican re- That's dialectics: the Soviet Union evolved from socialism to capital- term.” forms,” the editors conclude, “not Wilsonian ism and back to socialist capital- Over the past 20 or 30 years, in other democratic reforms.” ism. This book provides a unique words, party leaders in Congress may have Stid sees the two paths available to Con- interpretation of events unfolding in Europe and around the world within broad his- become stronger, but they still remain rela- gress in the same terms. He draws from two torical, economic, military and political contexts. tively weak because parties in America are important reports generated by the American The author shows how the US, bastion of "free markets," finds itself constrained to move toward weak. As John Boehner explained to Jay Leno Political Science Association (APSA) in the socialistic policies just as the Communist nations on The Tonight Show in 2014, he did not lead middle of the 20th century. The first, focusing inevitably integrated more elements of capitalism. the Republican Conference into a government on Congress, argued for expanding Congress’s shutdown showdown, but was dragged into institutional capacity to oversee and govern Nonfiction for the Nonplussed ! the fight reluctantly. In his words, “When I the complex modern state it had created. It ad- Available from www.algora.com looked up, I saw my colleagues going this way. vocated investing in more congressional staff and Amazon.com

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 59 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm and strengthening the committees to engage and to facilitate action rather than inhibit it. doxically, those developments have not given in oversight. As Stid explains, this report em- Like Connelly and Pitney, Stid prefers the us strong party leadership or deep party loy- phasized that “Congress was an autonomous Madisonian option. We should work “with alty. Instead, Congress finds itself between branch of government that needed to preserve the grain of our system by developing the these two models, neither entrusting power and enhance its primary constitutional func- capacity for deliberation, negotiation, and to its leaders nor decentralizing power to its tion of deliberation” by investing in itself. compromise in Congress,” rather than work- members. The other report—APSA’s famous defense ing against it by introducing parliamentary- Major changes in the way Congress con- of “responsible party government”—called style reforms. ducts business seem inevitable. Historically, for a more parliamentary-style Congress gov- every period of congressional reform has erned by party leadership that bridged the The Storm before Reform been preceded by a lengthy decline in Con- divide between House, Senate, and president. gress’s effectiveness and popularity. In 1910, Such a system would enhance government t is certainly true that the calls party leadership was overthrown because it responsiveness by giving voters a clear choice for responsible party government are easi- had become too powerful and the American between candidates from two distinct and in- Ily traced back to the thought of Woodrow people (spurred by Progressive reformers) ternally consistent parties. Presumably, voters Wilson. But is the fragmented, disjointed, and revolted against political parties. In 1946, would cast ballots for individual candidates, gridlocked Congress truly the Madisonian al- committee government was established be- based mainly on their party affiliation rather ternative? Madison, after all, was among the cause Congress had become irrelevant, un- than their individual merit. Such a system first organizers of America’s two-party system, able to oversee the vast bureaucracy created would provide collective responsibility; voters and as a member of the House of Representa- during the New Deal. In the 1970s, commit- would tend to choose consistently one party tives he contributed to the rise of party unity tee chairs were overthrown because they had or the other, rather than splitting their tick- in Congress from the very beginning. One of accumulated too much power and younger, ets, and, thus, it would be more likely for one his mentors, Thomas Jefferson, relied on party more liberal Democrats wanted more of the party or the other to control all branches of unity to bridge the divide between Congress action. the government. That party would then rely and the presidency during his administration, In each of those periods, reformers knew on its leaders to enact the agenda it offered even going so far as to send bills over to Con- what the problem was and how it needed to during the election. gress to be passed by his allies. The call for a be fixed. Congress today has reached an ebb Stid argues that “[i]f James Madison more responsive system has significant roots similar to those it experienced before. But as served as the intellectual forebear for the in Madisonian republicanism as well as Wil- the scholarship on Congress attests, we still Committee on Congress, then Woodrow sonian democracy. don’t agree on whom we need to overthrow Wilson did so for the Committee on Politi- Congress today follows neither the re- and whom we need to empower. cal Parties.” The contributors toIs Congress sponsible party government model, with Broken?, therefore, set up a contrast between party leaders using majoritarian institutions Joseph Postell is associate professor of political the Madisonian legislature and the Wilso- to rapidly translate election results into law, science at the University of Colorado, Colora- nian. The former embraces the checks and nor the model of independent lawmakers do Springs, and the author of Bureaucracy in balances which often appear to produce grid- who simply reflect the local constituencies America: The Administrative State’s Chal- lock as necessary to produce deliberation and that send them to D.C. Congressional elec- lenge to Constitutional Government (Univer- to limit majority will in a pluralistic society. tions have become more nationalized, and sity of Missouri Press). He is currently a visiting The latter, by contrast, seeks to make the parties have become more homogeneous, as fellow in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Prin- legislature an agent of the national majority Congress scholars correctly note. But para- ciples and Politics at the Heritage Foundation.

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Book Review by Paul A. Rahe Missing the Point Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention, by Mary Sarah Bilder. Harvard University Press, 384 pages, $36 (cloth), $22.50 (paper)

he american revolution was a names, he rejoiced, describing the gathering to the world, the first instance, as far as we world-historical event, widely recog- as “an assembly of demigods.” When Adams can learn, of a nation, unattacked by external Tnized as such at the time in Europe as reflected on the Convention’s achievement force, unconvulsed by domestic insurrections, well as North America. In consequence, the a few months after its conclusion, he was in assembling voluntarily, deliberating fully, and process of constitution-making in the Ameri- high spirits. “The conception of such an idea,” deciding calmly, concerning that system of can states gave rise to a great deal of discussion he wrote, “and the deliberate union of so great government, under which they would wish in England and on the European continent; and various a people in such a plan, is, without that they and their posterity should live.” and it was in response to this that John Adams all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest Alexander Hamilton made the same point penned his three-volume Defence of the Con- exertion of human understanding, the great- in The Federalist: stitutions of Government of the United States of est single effort of national deliberation that America in the late 1780s. It should, then, be no the world has ever seen.” It has been frequently remarked that surprise that the news that a convention was to it seems to have been reserved to the be held in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 he same opinion was repeatedly people of this country, by their conduct to frame a new constitution for the American voiced in North America. Speaking and example, to decide the important confederation stirred even greater interest. Tto the Pennsylvania Ratifying Con- question, whether societies of men Though stationed abroad as ministers, vention, James Wilson asserted that “Gov- are really capable or not of establish- Thomas Jefferson in Paris and Adams in Lon- ernments, in general, have been the result of ing good government from reflection don faced frequent inquiries. Ill-informed force, of fraud, and of accident.” But this was and choice, or whether they are forever initially concerning the Federal Convention, not true with regard to the government under destined to depend for their political they were no less attentive to unfolding de- consideration. “A period of six thousand years constitutions on accident and force. If velopments than were their compatriots back has elapsed since the Creation,” he proudly there be any truth in the remark, the home. When Jefferson learned the delegates’ observed, and now “the United States exhibit crisis at which we are arrived may with

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propriety be regarded as the general If I belabor what ought to be obvious— keep detailed notes of the entire proceed- misfortune of mankind. the significance of the American Consti- ings.” But Madison did not know that tutional Convention—and if I go to what they were going to write the Constitution. James Madison shared the opinion voiced might seem inordinate lengths to show that by Adams, Wilson, and Hamilton. In The its significance was widely recognized at the From an accurate observation—that no one Federalist he noted that “in every case report- time, it is because Mary Sarah Bilder seems knew at the time whether their joint enterprise ed by ancient history, in which government unaware of the latter fact, and her ignorance would succeed—Bilder draws a conclusion that has been established with deliberation and in this particular leads her astray. Her book, does not follow: “The significance of the Con- consent, the task of framing it has not been Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitution- vention was only obvious in retrospect.” committed to an assembly of men, but has al Convention, focuses on the rough notes Had Bilder written “full significance,” she been performed by some individual citizen Madison jotted down concerning the delib- would have been closer to the truth. But had of pre-eminent wisdom and approved integ- erations that took place at the Convention she carefully qualified her claim in this fashion, rity.” Then, after alluding to the tales told and on the stages by which these notes were she could not have denied that Madison was regarding Minos, Zaleucus, Theseus, Draco, turned into a polished, published report. As inspired by the conviction that what he and Solon, Lycurgus, Romulus, Numa, Tullus she observes, what we can, in fact, surmise his colleagues were up to was of great histori- Hostilius, Servius Tullius, and Brutus, he concerning those deliberations we are aware cal importance. Nor could she have asserted expressed his admiration for “the improve- of in large part because of Madison. Others that he took his notes first and foremost for his ment made by America on the ancient mode for a time took notes, but their efforts were own strategic use as “a legislative diary” or aide- of preparing and establishing regular plans haphazard. Madison’s were anything but. If memoire and secondarily as a source of infor- of government.” Bilder badly misjudges the Virginian’s aims mation for his friend Thomas Jefferson, while in this particular, it is because she ignores firmly denying that the young statesman did so adison never changed his his testimony and that of his contemporaries from the outset with an eye to posterity. mind. He knew better than to sup- with regard to the significance of the consti- At times, especially when she is examining Mpose that he was himself America’s tution-making process. the stages by which Madison’s rough notes Lycurgus—“the father of the Constitution.” were revised, Bilder’s “biography of the Notes” He had played an outsized role in rallying reads like a scrupulously careful, scholarly support for summoning a convention, in Like a prosecutor attempt to get at the truth. At other times— studying ancient and modern confedera- above all when she tries to chart Madison’s cies, in ruminating on the American confed- trying to pull a fast aims and to characterize the revisions he eracy’s defects, and in pondering the means one, Bilder simply made—her book reads like a lawyer’s brief. In for rectifying the situation. In concert with these circumstances, like a prosecutor trying his fellow Virginians, he had managed to set suppresses the to pull a fast one, she simply suppresses the the agenda for the gathering. But, although exculpatory evidence exculpatory evidence that is fatal to her case. he had actively participated in the deliberations, his counsel on matters he considered fatal to her case. er treatment of madison’s own quite important had often been rejected. To testimony concerning his aims tells his dismay, his fellow delegates had opted to Hthe tale. If scholars have long as- have the Senate chosen by state legislatures ilder’s misjudgment reflects her sumed Madison as note-taker was “inspired and to provide for equal representation in discipline’s narrowly parochial interest by a keen sense of history-in-the making,” it that body from each of the states; they had Bin the Convention. A Boston College is because, in the preface he prepared for the rejected the institution of a council of legisla- law professor, she is far less curious about the published work, he tells us as much himself: tive revision made up of the executive and se- history of the American Revolution and the lect members of the judiciary; and they had early republic than about the role that Madi- The curiosity I had felt during my re- denied to the federal government a veto over son’s notes eventually came to play in consti- searches into the History of the most state legislation. tutional interpretation. Thinking that Madi- distinguished Confederacies, particular- Despite his disappointment, Madison son had the mindset of a 21st-century law ly those of antiquity, and the deficiency I fought for the instrument’s ratification. He professor, she asserts that, in the summer of found in the means of satisfying it more had enormous respect for his colleagues, and 1787, he cannot have supposed that he and his especially in what related to the process, was even prepared to contemplate the possi- fellow delegates were engaged in an endeavor the principles—the reasons, & the an- bility that their collective judgment was supe- of profound importance worth cataloguing in ticipations, which prevailed in the for- rior to his own. “There was,” he wrote near the detail: mation of them, determined me to pre- end of his long life, “never an assembly of men, serve as far as I could an exact account charged with a great & arduous trust, who were Madison did not take his notes because of what might pass in the Convention more pure in their motives, or more exclusively he wanted to have a record of the pro- whilst executing its trust, with the mag- or anxiously devoted to the object committed ceedings of the Convention that wrote nitude of which I was duly impressed, as to them, than were the members of the Federal the Constitution. This implicit assump- I was with the gratification promised to Convention of 1787, to the object of devising tion that his audience must have been us future curiosity by an authentic exhibi- and proposing a constitutional system which appears in accounts of the Convention tion of the objects, the opinions & the would best supply the defects of that which it and of the Notes. As a recent introduc- reasonings from which the new System was to replace, and best secure the permanent tion explains, “Inspired by a keen sense of Gov[ernmen]t was to receive its pecu- liberty and happiness of the country.” of history-in-the-making, he decided to liar structure & organization. Nor was I

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unaware of the value of such a contribu- outlines of the speeches they had delivered, tion and to a study of what its author meant to tion to the fund of materials for the His- and he incorporated these in his notes. In the teach us concerning the founding of a republic tory of a Constitution on which would time subsequent to the Convention, this task and the human capacity for rational delibera- be staked the happiness of a people great came to occupy him again when he borrowed tion. Paul Eidelberg did something of the sort even in its infancy, and possibly the cause and copied the official journals of the Con- in The Philosophy of the American Constitution of Liberty throughout the world. vention and then inserted information from (1968), which goes unmentioned in Bilder’s the journals into the semi-polished version of bibliography, and the year before Bilder’s Bilder never mentions this passage, but his notes. And it occupied him again later in book came out Gordon Lloyd laid the founda- she cannot have been blissfully unaware of life when he revised the notes one last time tion for further work by publishing Debates in its existence, for she quotes liberally from the in preparation for their publication. The only the Federal Convention of 1787 by James Madi- next two paragraphs of Madison’s preface, in plausible justification for engaging in so great son, a Member (2014), a careful transcription which he writes: an effort is the one Madison provided in his of the version that Madison himself prepared preface; and the fact that others supplied him for publication. In pursuance of the task I had assumed with pertinent materials suggests that they Instead, however, Bilder produced a sec- I chose a seat in front of the presiding were fully aware of the historical character ond lawyer’s brief—one designed to per- member, with the other members, on my of his project. The “biography of the Notes” suade her readers that the Virginian had a right & left hand. In this favorable posi- supplied by Bilder refutes the hypothesis she nasty disposition and was an unscrupulous tion for hearing all that passed, I noted advances and confirms Madison’s own claims partisan. Here again her treatment of the in terms legible & in abbreviations & regarding his purpose. evidence leaves much to be desired. She tells marks intelligible to myself what was The remainder of Bilder’s argument—that us, for example, that in the notes Madison read from the Chair or spoken by the Madison as a reporter of the proceedings was appears “on occasion catty, aggravated, frus- members; and losing not a moment un- anything but objective and impartial—col- trated, annoyed, and even furious.” That he necessarily between the adjournment & lapses when one recognizes that his primary experienced disappointment is, indeed, obvi- reassembling of the Convention I was aim was not strategic, as Bilder repeatedly as- ous. But that Madison was catty is not at all enabled to write out my daily notes dur- serts, but historical and that from the outset clear. ing the session or within a few finishing he was genuinely interested, as he claimed, in Bilder’s favorite example, which has to do days after its close in the extent and form providing future generations with an accurate with George Washington’s election as the preserved in my own hand on my files. record of the deliberations that had given rise Convention’s presiding officer, is not persua- In the labor and correctness of doing to a frame of government for the world’s first sive. Here is what Madison recorded: this, I was not a little aided by practice, modern republic. and by a familiarity with the style and I do not mean to suggest that Madison [Washington’s] nomination came with the train of observation and reason- never erred. He was not a stenographer who particular grace from Penna, as Docr. ing which characterized the principal recorded, then reported word for word what Franklin alone could have been thought speakers. It happened, also, that I was was said, and surely, in the heat that beset of President [illegible words] of obtain- not absent a single day, nor more than a Philadelphia in the sultry summer of 1787, he ing the [illegible word] of Genl. Wash- casual fraction of an hour in any day, so sometimes nodded. Moreover, though he may ington. The Docr. was himself to have that I could not have lost a single speech, have listened to nearly every speech, he was the nomination of the Genl. but the sea- unless a very short one. undoubtedly selective, and he was perfectly son of rain did not permit him to ven- prepared to summarize. His aim was not un- ture to the Convention chamber. Bilder’s failure to address Madison’s forth- like that of Thucydides. In picking and choos- right statement concerning his purpose is ing what to report, he attended chiefly to the There is nothing catty about this. Franklin shocking—for, though there were others at speeches that mattered the most; he extracted was old, obese, and ill. We learn later that he the Convention who occasionally kept legis- from the reported speeches their rational core; was still able to write out speeches on various lative diaries for their own use, there is not and, in deciding what to omit, he exercised his topics, but that he did not have the stamina a shred of evidence that this was ever Madi- judgment. The value of his account is like the to stand up and deliver them himself (James son’s aim. He had done the like at meetings of value of any historical account—a function of Wilson did so on his behalf). Madison’s ac- Congress, but neither he nor anyone else had the author’s attentiveness and discernment. count of Washington’s selection is not a dis- ever tried to keep a full record of that body’s Was there anyone at the Convention who missal of Franklin. It is a nod to him, a ges- debates. Nor is there any evidence to suggest combined these two qualities as well as the ture of respect, and a gentle indication of the that he took his notes at the Convention solely young man from Virginia who had played so reasons why he could not have presided over or even primarily for Jefferson’s edification. signal a role in promoting that assembly and such an assembly. The fact that Madison gave in setting its agenda? I think not. Franklin the final word at the Convention is he task madison took on was im- an even more emphatic expression of respect. mense. When he later told a young iven what she learned concern- Towards the great men of the previous genera- Tfriend that “the labor of writing out the ing the process by which Madison tion, the 36-year-old Virginian was more apt debates…almost killed” him, he was no doubt Gdistilled the surviving notes from the to display deference than to play the cat. exaggerating. But that he found it taxing we rough notes he took on the Convention floor need not doubt. During the Convention, it oc- and then polished and rewrote the former for n a similar spirit, bilder tells cupied him not only during the sessions but publication, Bilder might have dedicated the us that Madison spoke “dismissively” also in his free time. Sometimes others, aware remainder of her book to an examination of Iwhen—after reporting that the dele- of his enterprise, supplied him with copies or Madison’s final report as a literary composi- gates from New York and Connecticut sup-

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 64 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ported the New Jersey Plan for one reason from the man who drafted the Virginia Reso- Hutson, and to compare Madison’s notes with and those from New Jersey and Delaware lutions in 1798. those taken by others the same day on the for another—he observed that Luther Mar- presumption that none of the reports is all- tin of Maryland “made a common cause on n any case, madison was too busy inclusive and that something can be gleaned different principles.” Here again Madison speaking on the floor of the Convention from each and every one of them. is simply conveying the truth. Martin, who Ito be able to make rough notes of what comes across as a man of considerable intel- he himself said at the time. In the pertinent ilder’s indictment of madison ligence and eloquence in the remarks Madi- cases, he may well have outlined his talk be- should be regarded with extreme skep- son reports, was a hardcore defender of state fore he delivered it; and, under the pressure Bticism. Her judgment of the Virgin- sovereignty. The delegates from New Jersey of time, he may have simply retained the out- ian’s aims is clearly wrong; she persistently and Delaware were angling for equal rep- line (which would be clearer and more sub- mischaracterizes his tone in what he says re- resentation in the Senate, and those from stantial than his rough notes), intending to garding his fellow delegates; and the charge of Connecticut eventually rallied in support of copy it out more fully later and then to insert dishonesty that she directs at him is not sup- the constitution on which the Convention it (as he did). The fact that no such outlines ported by the evidence she cites. One is left settled. No one ever supposed that Martin survive means nothing. Once copied, they wondering whether any of the suspicions that would do the like. Madison was more than would have been discarded—as were Madi- she voices when she resorts to words such as capable of treating with respect those with son’s rough notes. “perhaps,” “likely,” and “may have” is worthy of whom he was at odds. The notes taken by Robert Yates, William consideration. No one should cite as authori- Bilder also accuses Madison of outright Pierce, Rufus King, James McHenry, John tative any controversial claim advanced within dishonesty. Madison recorded his semi- Lansing, and the like regarding particular this book without closely examining the per- polished notes on fine paper produced by speeches were nearly always shorter than the tinent evidence. the English papermaker James Whatman, versions recorded by their more diligent col- This is a great shame and a tremendous which he appears to have acquired in the af- league. With regard to Madison’s speeches, waste. Bilder is obviously talented, and her termath of the abortive Annapolis Commer- the discrepancies are apt to reflect a lack of in- investigation has opened up a question of cial Convention. Interspersed among these terest on their part in much of what the Vir- real importance. What, we must ask, are we bifolia are a handful of sheets of paper of a ginian said or an interest in passing remarks to make of Madison’s revisions? The posing different provenance which Madison appears he regarded as inconsequential. One cannot of this question is an opportunity for a fair- to have made use of after he borrowed and properly say, as Bilder does, that King and minded scholar blessed with discernment copied the journals of the Convention. On McHenry did not “hear” Madison say some- and a literary disposition. My guess, based on these interspersed sheets, Madison recorded thing in a speech that the Virginian records passing observations made by Bilder that are a number of the more important speeches when King’s account of what was purportedly in no way related to the various charges she that he had himself delivered at the Conven- a long disquisition consists of a single para- tries to justify, is that we will eventually learn tion. Bilder regards this as highly suspicious. graph and McHenry summarized the Virgin- that, as he repeatedly revised his notes, James She treats the sheets inserted as replacement ian’s intervention by appending the following Madison rendered his colleagues more rea- sheets, and she draws attention to discrep- to his report of another speech delivered by sonable and less obstreperous than they really ancies between what others who took notes Gouverneur Morris: “Mr. Maddison sup- were by separating the wheat from the chaff on particular days record Madison as saying ported similar sentiments.” In short, it is not and focusing on the more compelling of their and what he himself records. It is her claim Madison who merits distrust. It is the author arguments. If that is what he did, it was a ser- that he falsely attributed to himself argu- of Madison’s Hand. vice of sorts—to them, of course, but to us as ments better suited to the partisan political Bilder’s account of the stages in which well. What we would most like to have from atmosphere of the 1790s than were in the Madison’s report gradually took shape may the Federal Convention is not a stenographic speeches he actually delivered. well be accurate, and she is surely right in sup- record of every silly word uttered but what This assertion, like Bilder’s other more proposing that he sometimes stumbled. For ex- Madison himself claims he strove to provide: vocative claims, does not stand up to scrutiny. ample, the speech he claimed to have given on “an authentic exhibition of the objects, the Had Madison really wanted to downplay the June 6, 1787 was almost certainly a conflation opinions, & the reasonings from which the distrust of state governments he displayed of speeches he delivered on June 4 and 6. His- new System of Gov[ernmen]t was to receive at the Convention, he would certainly have torians seeking to understand what happened its peculiar structure & organization.” done so in a more systematic fashion. No one at the Convention will want to continue doing who reads his semi-polished notes can fail to what they have long done—which is to read Paul A. Rahe is a professor of history at Hillsdale discern the gulf that separated the man who, Max Farrand’s classic edition of The Records College, and the author, most recently, of The at the Convention, favored giving the federal of the Federal Convention and the supplemen- Spartan Regime: Its Character, Origins, and government a veto over all state legislation tal volume added some years back by James Grand Strategy (Yale University Press).

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Cartoon by Thomas Nast, engraving from the cover of Harper’s Weekly, c. 1874

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Book Review by Michael Burlingame Rehabilitating Grant American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant, by Ronald C. White. Random House, 864 pages, $35 (cloth), $20 (paper)

Grant, by Ron Chernow. Penguin Press, 1,104 pages, $40

The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition, edited by John F. Marszalek. Belknap Press, 816 pages, $39.95

lysses s. grant long occupied tory at San Francisco Theological Seminary; their sons and overpower them instead.” As one of the lowest rungs on the lad- Grant is a detailed, vivid, sophisticated life by a result, Ulysses “developed a deeply en- Uder of presidential reputation. As Ron Chernow, the justly acclaimed biogra- trenched modesty” and a profound distaste Grant’s second term drew to a close in 1877 pher of Alexander Hamilton, George Wash- for boasting and egotism. Recounting one of the Nation’s influential editor, E.L. Godkin, ington, and John D. Rockefeller, as well as the the most discreditable episodes of Grant’s described the president as “an ignorant soldier, chronicler of the J.P. Morgan banking house. military career, Chernow offers a psycho- coarse in his taste and blunt in his percep- logical explanation of the general’s infamous tions, fond of money and material enjoyment hernow describes grant as “a sen- order (which President Lincoln promptly and of low company,” whose administration sitive, complex, and misunderstood overruled) expelling all Jews from his large was “deplorable, coarse and venal.” Henry Cman with a shrewd mind, a wry wit, a military department. According to Chernow, Adams quipped that Grant’s first two initials rich fund of anecdotes, wide knowledge, and Grant promulgated that order “in a fit of stood for “uniquely stupid” and observed, in penetrating insights.” As a general Grant was Oedipal rage against his father,” who, along The Education of Henry Adams (1918), “That, no “butcher” or “plodding, dim-witted com- with some Jewish merchants, had sought two thousand years after Alexander the Great mander who enjoyed superior manpower and to obtain cotton-trading permits. Hardly a and Julius Caesar, a man like Grant should be materiel and whose crude idea of strategy was bigot, Grant regretted his action; during his called…the highest product of the most ad- to launch large, brutal assaults upon the en- presidency he tried to atone for the order. vanced evolution, made evolution ludicrous. emy.” If he “never shrank from sending masses The progress of evolution from President of soldiers into bloody battles, it had nothing rant’s pious, frugal, strait- Washington to President Grant, was alone to do with a heartless disregard for human life laced, and reserved mother, Han- evidence enough to upset Darwin.” Historian and everything to do with bringing the war Gnah, was so “emotionally arid” that William McFeely, whose Grant: A Biography to a speedy conclusion.” Chernow approvingly her son “was starved for outright maternal won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982, dismissed his quotes military historian John Keegan, who affection.” His failure to receive it left him subject as a man who deemed Grant “the towering military genius “emotionally blocked,” “prone to depression,” of the Civil War” and “the greatest general of “hypersensitive” to criticism, and hungry for had no organic, artistic, or intellectual the war, one who would have excelled at any emotional nourishment, which he sought specialness. He did have limited but by time in any army.” As president, Grant was from friends, many of whom betrayed his no means inconsequential talents to ap- neither “a rube in Washington, way out of his trust. Though Grant himself was honest, his ply to whatever truly engaged his atten- league” nor “an inept executive presiding over cronies were often not. During his presidency, tion. The only problem was that until a scandal-ridden administration” but rather his private secretary, Orville E. Babcock, and he was nearly forty, no job he liked had “an adept politician” whose most noteworthy some cabinet members (including the secre- come his way—and so he became a gen- achievement was “safeguarding the civil rights taries of war and the interior) caused national eral and president because he could find of African Americans.” Indeed, Chernow scandals. Their scandals became the main nothing better to do. states that “Grant deserves an honored place thing people remember about Grant’s eight in American history, second only to Lincoln, years in the White House. He could have re- Since McFeely’s book appeared, the his- for what he did for the freed slaves.” Similarly, lated to President Warren G. Harding, who toriographical tide has been turning. Works White regards Grant as “an exceptional per- in 1923 reportedly told a journalist: by Brooks D. Simpson, Richard N. Current, son and leader” who “combined modesty and Jean Edward Smith, Josiah Bunting III, Geof- magnanimity” and possessed “moral courage.” I have no trouble with my enemies. I frey Perret, and Joan Waugh portray Grant Chernow examines Grant’s childhood in can take care of my enemies all right. far more positively than had McFeely. Two re- depth, sensitively analyzing his psychological But my damn friends…my God- cent full-scale biographies give Grant his full makeup. Jesse Grant, Ulysses’s adoring, vain, damned friends, they’re the ones who due, both as a general and as president. Amer- overbearing father, was “a self-assertive wind- keep me walking the floor nights! ican Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant, is a sol- bag and congenital striver,” a “self-important Cartoon by Thomas Nast, engraving from the cover of Harper’s Weekly, c. 1874 id, workmanlike effort by Ronald C. White, busybody” who “committed the common er- Grant’s craving for emotional nutrition professor emeritus of American religious his- ror of willful fathers who try to stimulate was satisfied not only by (often untrust-

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worthy) friends but also by the woman he feat as impressive as any of his wartime victo- UNIVERSITY OF married, Julia Dent, who provided what ries.” Rawlins also curbed his boss’s tendency MISSOURI PRESS Chernow calls “the deep bond craved by to make impulsive, politically inept decisions. Columbia | upress.missouri.edu | 1958–2018 bashful men who need the unconditional After Rawlins’s death—soon after Grant’s devotion of one loving, loyal woman.” Their inauguration—the president had no aide to marriage was a happy one. help him avoid blunders.

n addition to the scandals, grant’s hough chernow maintains that drinking has marred his reputation. Cher- President Grant deserves high marks Inow calls Grant “an alcoholic with an as- Tfor championing black civil rights, this tonishingly consistent pattern of drinking,” a praise needs tempering. To be sure, Grant “solitary binge drinker who would not touch helped secure the 15th Amendment’s rati- a drop of alcohol, then succumb at three- or fication guaranteeing black voting rights, as four-month intervals, usually on the road.” well as passage of strong legislation enforcing When drunk, he “underwent a radical per- that amendment. He also appointed an at- sonality change and could not stop himself torney general, Amos Akerman, who relent- once he started to imbibe.” For Grant, drink- lessly enforced those laws and thus dismem- ing was “a forbidden impulse against which he bered the Ku Klux Klan in 1871-72. But if struggled for most of his life.” Though it “al- Grant were truly a paladin of racial justice most never interfered with his official duties,” it is hard to understand why he fired Aker- at 32 he was forced out of the army because of man soon after his suppression of the Klan, 978-0-8262-2123-0 his “alcohol problem.” or why he lent himself to President Andrew $45.00 $22.50 After this involuntary resignation in 1854, Johnson’s scheme to discredit Carl Schurz’s Grant spent years as a quasi-failure, reduced extensive 1865 report on the widespread to peddling wood on the streets of St. Louis persecution of African Americans and the and clerking in his father’s leather goods store. determination of whites to maintain a sys- His lack of success in civilian life, according tem of quasi-slavery in the South. Johnson to Chernow, “implanted in him a high level of sought to undermine Schurz’s report by dis- motivation” and an “indomitable will” to over- patching Grant on a brief tour of the South, come failure. Along with his “glandular opti- which the general described in what Cher- mism,” Grant’s willpower helped make him now calls “a remarkably naïve, anodyne re- a successful military commander—but not port” that contrasted sharply with Schurz’s. one without flaws. “Intent on his own offen- And why would Grant feud with leading sive strategy,” Chernow concludes, “he often political abolitionists like Charles Sumner, failed to anticipate countermoves from oppos- chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations ing generals, leaving him vulnerable to dra- Committee, and James Ashley, a principal matic surprises.” No lapse was more striking leader in the fight to pass the constitutional than his decision not to have his troops fortify amendment abolishing slavery, or so readily 978-0-8262-2135-3 their position at Shiloh, rendering them open abandon the cause of black civil rights dur- $45.00 $22.50 to a nearly disastrous Confederate attack on ing his second term, or support a move to ex- the first day of that epic 1862 battle. Later, pel black cadets from West Point? his “unquenchable fighting spirit” sometimes The quarrel with Sumner over Grant’s led to poor decisions, like his ill-fated assault misguided attempt to annex Santo Domingo at Cold Harbor in 1864. But overall, Lin- (modern-day Dominican Republic) in 1870— coln was correct when he remarked, “It is the a diplomatic démarche from which his assis- dogged pertinacity of Grant that wins.” tant, the corrupt Orville Babcock, stood to Lincoln also appreciated Grant’s grasp of profit—badly split the Republican Party, pit- overall strategy. Like the president, Grant un- ting spoilsmen against civil service reformers. derstood that in order to prevail, the Union Personal pique at the often exasperating Sum- had to apply pressure on all fronts simultane- ner led a spiteful Grant to dismiss some of the ously. Lincoln had long urged his commanders senator’s friends from important positions, to to adopt such a coordinated, full-court press wage a hopeless battle for ratification of the policy, but only when Grant took control of annexation treaty, and to condone Sumner’s all Union armies in 1864 was the approach removal from his committee chairmanship. implemented. Chernow compares Grant fa- By driving Sumner and many other Radical 978-0-8262-2156-8 vorably to Robert E. Lee, who was brilliant as Republicans into opposition Grant imperiled $40.00 $20.00 a tactician but not as a strategist. the whole enterprise of Reconstruction. Re- By the time Grant reached the presidency formers seeking to eliminate the spoils system READERS OF THE CLAREMONT REVIEW in 1869 he had, with the help of aide John rightly suspected that corruption underlay the RECEIVE A 50% DISCOUNT ON THESE TITLES Rawlins, “managed to attain mastery over Santo Domingo annexation movement. They WITH DISCOUNT CODE UMPCR TO ORDER VISIT UPRESS.MISSOURI.EDU alcohol,” an achievement Chernow deems “a broke with Grant and founded the Liberal

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Republican Party in 1872. Though Grant eas- more vigorously and freed himself from the hite’s biography is not as well ily defeated the insurgents, the split between onus of patronage.” written, insightful, or detailed as reformers and spoilsmen persisted, badly un- Chernow’s prose is sparkling; his sketches WChernow’s (it is 300 pages short- dermining the Reconstruction-era attempt to of people important in Grant’s life (like Wil- er), but White, a graduate of the Princeton guarantee African Americans’ civil and politi- liam T. Sherman, Henry W. Halleck, and Theological Seminary, sheds a brighter light cal rights. John Rawlins) are pithy and incisive; his de- on “Grant’s religious odyssey.” He emphasizes Scandal dominated Grant’s second term. scription of battles is thrilling (though more that Grant was “a son of Methodism,” heavily The most prominent one involved a “whiskey maps are needed); and the narrative flows influenced by his devout mother, who “taught ring” of distillers who bribed government gracefully, with novelistic details, striking Ulysses an ethic of self-effacing Christian agents to reduce their taxes. Babcock, whom turns of phrase, and vivid images. The prose love,” and by John Heyl Vincent, his pastor Grant long defended in spite of compelling ev- is marred only by occasional clichés like “fell during his brief residence in Galena, Illinois. idence of guilt, was deeply involved. The presi- on his sword,” “stacked the deck,” “had a field Grant’s “piety was practical”; he contributed dent’s blindness to the flaws of such friends, day,” and “pulled no punches.” funds to foreign missionaries “because he and his paranoid tendency to ascribe unwor- Chernow’s one thousand-page book con- supported their efforts not only to preach the thy motives to critics like Sumner, crippled his tains only a few historical errors: Grant’s vic- gospel, but to teach agriculture.” Regarding presidency. He took criticism personally, wal- tories in late November 1863 followed and “the future of Indians, he told his Presbyterian lowed in self-pity, and retaliated against critics did not cause Republican electoral triumphs friend George Stuart, ‘I do not believe our in a manner petty and spiteful, harming both early that month; Confederate general Braxton creator ever placed different races of men on his reputation and his ability to achieve noble Bragg lost, not won, battles at Perryville and this earth with the view of having the stron- ends, including justice for Native Americans Stones River; John C. Frémont’s emancipation ger exert all his energies in exterminating the and African Americans. order was not limited to “rebel slaves who took weaker.’” Grant’s religious sensibility helped up arms for the Union”; Lincoln did not man- shape his “reimagined Indian policy,” which hernow’s conclusion that grant age Richard Yates’s campaign for governor of replaced corrupt Indian agents with Chris- “got the big issues right during his Illinois in 1854; Lincoln admired Grant but tian missionaries, established reservations, Cpresidency, even if he bungled many did not say “I can’t spare this man. He fights.” deemphasized military action, and promoted of the small ones” is perhaps too generous; di- Chernow’s research in primary and sec- assimilation. White quotes Frederick Doug- viding the Republican Party over side issues ondary sources is admirably broad and deep, lass’s conclusion that to Grant “more than any like Santo Domingo, retaliating against hon- though he tends to rely on the latter when other man the Negro owes his enfranchise- orable critics, overlooking corruption among the former are readily available. Like other ment and the Indian a humane policy.” his friends and appointees, and waffling on Grant biographers he uses Grant’s famous The admirable biographies by Ron Cher- civil rights were not “small things.” And yet memoirs, which he points out are not always now and Ronald White go far to consolidate Chernow is no apologist. He acknowledges accurate and omit many important aspects the long, slow process of rehabilitating U.S. Grant’s flaws and makes them understand- of the story. (The new version of the memoirs Grant and should help elevate him in the eyes able by examining not only his subject’s from Harvard University’s Belknap Press, of presidential scholars. Grant was a great psyche but his times, placing Grant in proper edited by John Marszalek, is most welcome, general and at least an average president. His historical perspective. Tellingly, he observes for it is far more comprehensively annotat- reputation should be enhanced when Brooks that “the main cause of the corruption under ed than earlier additions. Alas, it contains Simpson releases the long-awaited concluding his aegis was the postwar expansion of the no maps, which is a shame, for much of the volume of his Grant biography. federal government with its myriad oppor- text describes hard-to-follow military move- tunities for graft. Although Grant took the ments.) In sum, Chernow’s Grant is a master- Michael Burlingame is the Naomi B. Lynn Dis- first halting steps toward civil service reform, ful, highly readable, and worthy companion tinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the Uni- he should have championed the movement to his earlier biographies. versity of Illinois, Springfield.

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Book Review by Paul Kengor The Great Dismantler Gorbachev: His Life and Times, by William Taubman. W.W. Norton & Company, 880 pages, $39.95 (cloth), $24.95 (paper)

f there’s a better english-language Gorbachev’s reforms “conservatives.” To his an icon. Regrettably, not a word of such prac- biography of Mikhail Gorbachev than credit, Taubman also calls orthodox Com- tices is found in this book. Ithis one, I’m unaware of it. munists and Kremlin stalwarts “hard-liners,” It’s especially bizarre as there is evidence An emeritus professor of political science which is a much better fit than “conserva- that Gorbachev has spent his entire life grap- at Amherst College, William Taubman dis- tives”—though at one spot he laughably re- pling with questions of faith. In March 2008, plays a strong affinity for his subject and an fers to anti-Khrushchev forces as “Commu- a British reporter discovered him on his odd affection for Soviet officials, including nist conservatives.” knees for 30 minutes at St. Francis of Assisi’s shameless propagandists like Georgi Arbatov tomb. “I feel very emotional to be here at such and Valentin Falin. He cautions at the outset greater flaw involves taubman’s an important place not only for the Catho- that “Gorbachev is hard to understand,” but lack of curiosity about Gorbachev’s lic faith, but for all humanity,” Gorbachev he seems to get the man mostly right. He A religious faith. Taubman describes told the Daily Telegraph. “It was through also ably outlines some unintended conse- in detail Gorbachev’s boyhood, his upbring- St. Francis that I arrived at the Church.” quences of Gorbachev’s actions, above all that ing, his beloved parents and grandparents, (Church? Which church? The article didn’t his “dream of transforming the USSR came his arduous work with his father on a collec- say.) After praying before the bones of Fran- crashing down around him.” tive farm, his time at Moscow State Univer- cis, Gorbachev toured the basilica with the One bothersome flaw of the book is sity, and his meeting Raisa, the love of his life friars. He asked them for theological books Taubman’s frequent use of the term “con- and second-most profiled person in the book. to better understand the saint. “His story servatives” to describe Soviet officials who But there is no material on the faith of Gor- fascinates me and has played a fundamental resisted Gorbachev’s reforms, and “liberals” bachev and his family. The reality is that Gor- role in my life,” Gorbachev said. for market reformers, freedom-lovers, and bachev was secretly baptized by his mother How so? Unfortunately, Taubman is silent anti-Communists. This annoying practice is and grandmother, who daringly read him the on this or any similar encounters Gorbachev common among Western progressives, let- Bible at the height of Stalin’s rule. His mother, had. This exclusion is all the more remarkable ting them conveniently call the Soviet good Maria, had been a deaconess in the Russian because Taubman otherwise leaves no stone guys who took down the USSR “liberals” Orthodox Church. When they were alone, unturned in his remarkably comprehensive and the recalcitrant Stalinists who opposed she would surreptitiously bless her son with book. He interviewed not only Gorbachev

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(more than once) but numerous other officials viet Union and out, blame Lenin for founding dom of conscience to a people who had never and knowledgeable sources, in both English the totalitarian system that Stalin perfected.” known it. He “succeeded in destroying what and Russian. He powerfully captures Gor- Precisely. I had long attributed Gor- was left of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union” bachev’s courage, brashness, outspokenness, bachev’s Lenin devotion to ideological brain- and “dismantled an empire (or acquiesced high self-esteem, temperament, and charac- washing received in his youth, or mere party- in its dismemberment) without the orgy of ter—both good and bad—emphasizing his line rhetoric to keep hard-liners at bay. Quite blood and violence that has accompanied the aversion to violence. Here, mercifully, was a the contrary: as Taubman shows, Gorbachev’s breakup of so many others.” Soviet dictator who would not purge, orches- reverence was based on his own reading of the But quite unintentionally, in doing these trate mass killings, or otherwise seek to physi- Bolshevik founder, whom Gorbachev hailed things to preserve the USSR, Gorbachev en- cally harm scores of rivals or dissenters. Stalin as “a great man who played a huge role in the abled the regime’s collapse: “the forces he let would have had the organizers of the August history of humanity.” loose and the people he helped free both at 1991 coup that brought down the Soviet em- home and abroad overwhelmed him in the pire shot on the spot, with bloody pictures for hough gorbachev’s esteem for the end,” writes Taubman. Gorbachev had tried his personal photo album. brutal Lenin never wavered, his think- to “give Communism a human face,” but it Taubman does report, however, on the Ting evolved in other important ways. proved an impossible makeover. disturbing use of force apparently authorized What Gorbachev believed and seemed to want or allowed by Gorbachev in republics look- in 1985 gradually changed, ultimately leading anging over the ussr’s tumul- ing to break from the Soviet orbit in 1990-91, to the unwinding of the Communist system tuous final moments was the explo- such as Latvia, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, and and Soviet state. Looking back, Gorbachev’s Hsive rivalry and astounding political Armenia. People were killed, sometimes by penchant for bold action first manifested itself theater between Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Red Army troops. Taubman treats this even- with his openness to Communist Party Sec- Yeltsin is often accused of not giving Gor- handedly, but doesn’t resolve the dispute over retariat Alexander Yakovlev’s extraordinary bachev due credit. As Taubman shows, how- Gorbachev’s exact culpability. “Much as he reform ideas, submitted privately in Decem- ever, Gorbachev and his cronies (including abhorred the use of force, Gorbachev justified ber 1985. Yakovlev’s objectives included the Raisa) were vicious to Yeltsin, berating and it this time,” writes Taubman of a deadly case belittling him. In turn, Yeltsin struck back at in Armenia, which Gorbachev called “a last Gorbachev not with words but bold physical resort in extreme circumstances.” He tried to give gestures: walking out, staring down, brooding at him on live television, getting in his face orbachev: his life and times ca- Communism a human at a podium, sticking his finger at him. High pably describes its subject’s struggles face, but it proved an spectacle, always. Gthroughout his tenure as general sec- By 1991, Communism had shoveled its retary (1985–1991) to reconcile his lingering impossible makeover. own grave. The only place for the USSR was Leninist ideas with his desire to reform the the cemetery of history. Gorbachev, notes USSR: Taubman, effectively “helped bury the Soviet Communist Party’s giving up its monopoly system by trying to make it worthy of praise, Stalin’s crimes and Brezhnev’s “stagna- status, introducing competitive elections, pri- by seeking to make it live up to what he saw as tion” mocked Marxist ideals, but Gor- vate property, freedom in personal communi- its original ideals.” bachev thought Soviet socialism could cations, an independent judiciary, and separa- The often-puzzling Gorbachev zigged and be saved by being “reformed.” It was tion of legislative and executive branches. As zagged, based not only on what he could “only after 1985,” he recalls, “and not im- Taubman notes, “These weren’t just reforms; get away with, but also on his own shifts in mediately then, that I ceased to believe they would revolutionize the Soviet political thinking. Unlike Ronald Reagan or Margaret this.” system.” Thatcher, who came into office with a bedrock Gorbachev believed in Lenin long af- Gorbachev greeted these intrepid strokes of political principles forged through decades ter that. “I trusted him then and I still with enthusiasm, though he judged (correctly) of thinking and fighting, much of Gorbachev’s do,” he wrote in 2006. that “[i]t’s too early, too soon.” He had to be learning came on the job. Though we can de- cautious: “Gorbachev was convinced his Polit- bate whether he was a “visionary” (Taub- Taubman quotes a close friend of Gorbachev, buro colleagues would move to oust him, just man’s word) or even a great statesman, there who was amazed to hear that he was vora- as Khrushchev had been deposed in 1964,” is no question that he dismantled what had ciously reading all 55 volumes of Lenin’s “col- writes Taubman. “And he was probably right.” indeed been an Evil Empire. For this alone, lected works.” Gorbachev insisted that Lenin Regardless, Gorbachev would oversee a Mikhail Gorbachev deserves praise, as does wanted to develop “the living creativity of the glasnost of freedom of speech, press, assembly, William Taubman for helping us make bet- masses,” and even a form of “democracy.” and religion; introduce key market freedoms; ter sense of it. Lenin indeed wrote of “democracy” (see, and would strip Article 6 from the Soviet for example, his The State and Revolution), but, Constitution, which had made the Commu- Paul Kengor is professor of political science and as Taubman concedes, he “was never a demo- nist Party the only permissible political party. executive director of the Center for Vision & Val- crat in the way that Gorbachev proved to be.” This latter move, noted his aides, was nothing ues at Grove City College. He is the author, most “Many scholars would say Gorbachev was ac- less than a “wholesale change” of the political recently, of A Pope and a President: John Paul tually misreading Lenin,” writes Taubman. system. Gorbachev introduced free elections, II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary “By now most historians, inside the former So- parliamentary institutions, and brought free- Untold Story of the 20th Century (ISI Books).

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Book Review by Charles Horner The Past Is Prologue Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power, by Howard W. French. Alfred A. Knopf, 352 pages, $27.95

The China Order: Centralia, World Empire, and the Nature of Chinese Power, by Fei-Ling Wang. SUNY Press, 342 pages, $95

n 1959, as part of well-scripted tenth 1949. But why start in 1840? Why not 1640, capitalism as an evil imposed by foreign impe- anniversary celebrations of its founding, when a hitherto obscure Inner Asian people, rialists. After Deng Xiaoping’s semi-capitalist Ithe People’s Republic of China (PRC) the Manchus, began their campaign to gain reforms of the 1980s, capitalism became a opened the National Museum of Chinese control of China proper after toppling a home- phenomenon with many homegrown sprouts. History in central Beijing where it now occu- grown despotism, the Ming Dynasty? Two and Older texts also taught that the USSR was pies a piece of choice real estate on Tiananmen a half centuries later, 2 million Manchus were China’s best ally—until it wasn’t. Then the Square, opposite the Great Hall of the People. still ruling 400 million Chinese. That was the United States, once China’s implacable enemy, Here, in this enormous place with countless humiliation for the Chinese revolutionaries became a friend. Now the United States is artifacts, the Communist Party of China tells who overthrew the Manchus’ dynasty and who again said to be determined to subvert—in- its story in the best tradition of the Ministry regarded the Western way not as a humiliation deed, to humiliate—China. Our own chal- of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984: “Who but as an inspiration. They founded a revolu- lenge in the face of this always-changing cur- controls the past controls the future: who tionary Western-style republic, not just anoth- riculum is to figure out which, if any, of its controls the present controls the past.” er traditional tyranny. lessons of history will be a reliable guide to The party frequently changes the past to help The Communist Party once liked this an- Beijing’s future actions. preserve its monopoly on power in the present. ti-Manchu story, but today it celebrates the These days, its obsession is China’s “century empire of the Manchus, which annexed Ti- oward french, a veteran for- of humiliation” at the hands of the West and bet and East Turkestan (“Xinjiang” in official eign correspondent and now a pro- Japan, beginning with the first Opium War parlance). The PRC, having done the same, no Hfessor of journalism at Columbia, has of 1839–1842 and ending, as one might guess, longer has a quarrel with those once-villain- reported from around the world. He worked with the founding of the People’s Republic in ous colonialists. Another old story portrayed in Africa where he saw firsthand what it was

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 72 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm like to be on the receiving end of rising Chi- the heavens”—well, maybe not everything— The problem that American strategic plan- na’s global outreach. In China’s Second Conti- belongs to the People’s Republic of China. ners have in understanding the PRC’s grand nent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a strategy today is that it too embodies polar New Empire in Africa (2014) he described the Ideology explains little about Beijing’s opposites. It has a conspicuous naval and extraordinary energy with which Chinese mi- strategic choices in the region. China’s maritime focus, but it also has a continental grants of all sorts were replicating the efforts real motives stemmed from a calculus and Eurasian one. The party’s current head, of 19th-century white imperialists on the “dark that was far older and ran much deeper. Xi Jinping, who became president in 2013, continent”—and not just ordinary migrants, Its basic instinct, which is still operative has been a tireless advocate of the “One Belt, but also massive state-backed petroleum, tele- today, was to cling to and shelter states One Road” initiative, which calls for invest- communications, and construction enterprises. that behaved like tributaries and to op- ing about $1 trillion to build infrastructure in Here was China, Inc., on the move. pose, cajole, subvert or subdue those dozens of countries. Not only has Beijing es- French’s later assignments in Asia no that stood in the way of its project to tablished an Asia Infrastructure Investment doubt inspired his study of the deeper origins hold onto an old-fashioned realm. Bank with an initial capital of $100 billion, it of “China’s push for global power,” and in his is also relentlessly pursuing investors from all new book, Everything Under the Heavens, he This is a very common view of what Beijing over the world. has homed in on East Asia: is up to, and it may even be right. After all, we But this is not big-hearted nation-building. have no way of knowing whether the Politburo “Its ultimate aim,” TheEconomist explains, “is There are many ways to try and grasp actually believes this view of China’s strategic to make Eurasia (dominated by China) an the enormity of China’s ambitions in the history, or whether it has another view entirely, economic and trading area to rival the trans- East Asian realm that it once fancied as or whether it has no fixed view at all but in- atlantic one (dominated by America).” Put being entirely its own. They all center stead—as a self-described Leninist regime— another, more “strategic” way, it is nothing on the sea. Soon after 2010, Beijing be- maneuvers based on the exigencies of the less than an effort to create a great land-based gan a concerted push toward something moment. What we do know, however, is that empire like the ones rendered obsolete by that, if it succeeds, will constitute the there were many dynasties in China’s history— the world-transforming maritime revolution, biggest grab of territory the world has some the creations of Chinese and some the which began in the 15th century and led to seen since Japan’s imperial conquests of creations of non-Chinese—and that whatever the creation of several great seaborne empires. the 1930s and 1940s. their inbred instincts, each dynasty had its own If only in its method, Xi’s imperial plan is a far peculiar sense of how to gain and hold power. cry from that of his hero, Mao Zedong. In the rench offers an account, rich in Indeed, the last two of China’s dynasties, Ming 1950s and ’60s, Mao’s ideology was “proletar- informative detail, about why the Bei- (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912), had al- ian internationalism” and his technique “peo- Fjing regime thinks “everything under most opposite approaches to grand strategy. ple’s war.” To this end, cheered on by admirers New and Noteworthy from AEI Scholars

Rise of the Revisionists Russia, China, and Iran Edited by Gary J. Schmitt

In Rise of the Revisionists: Russia, China, and Iran, Gary Schmitt, codirector of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, with AEI scholars Frederick W. Kagan and Dan Blumenthal, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Senior Fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht, and Walter Russel Mead, distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute, analyzes the threats posed by Russia, China, and Iran as they challenge the liberal international order. In the volume’s five chapters, the authors examine the strategic objectives of the three states and, in turn, America’s potential response. Rise of the Revisionists combines in-depth historical and strategic analysis with recommendations for US policymakers.

April 27, 2018 • Publisher: AEI Press • ISBN: 9780844750132

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE aei.org

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 73 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm all over the world, Mao invested heavily not in 20th century as “everything within the state, state political control since the 1989 Tianan- infrastructure but in armed insurgencies and nothing outside the state, nothing against men massacre. guerrilla movements. the state”—has been the aspiration of almost In the country’s long history there were all of China’s greatest state builders. A fear verall, argues wang, those who regimes which followed a land-based way, a of an unbendingly hostile outside world was thought they were resurrecting some sea-based way, or a radical transformative also needed to “sustain the power concentra- Oprior golden age were mistaken. For way—sometimes even a bit of all three. Any tion, top-down command of socioeconomic “contrary to the official narratives of Chinese one of them can be taken as an example of and cultural lives, mass mobilization and history, the real golden eras have been the few how some actual rulers of China—as dis- extraction, censoring of information, total centuries before Qin’s unification of the Chi- tinct from the thing called “China”—have obedience and elimination of opposition and nese world, the Song Era [960-1279] when thought about world order. We can and critics, atomization of the society with the the peoples of the Chinese world departed should ask: why did each choose one vision state as the only internal organization, harsh from the China Order, and the time since the and not another? dictatorship and brutal use of force, and end- late 19th century when China was forced into less sacrifices of human rights and human the Westphalia system of international rela- ei-ling wang’s book, the china or- life.” tions.” Thus, he writes, der, is a magisterial history of what the FChinese people, and both their Chi- o be sure, the actual history of the 1840s–1940s held much more than nese and non-Chinese rulers over the centu- China shows that unremitting totali- defeat and disgrace for the Chinese. It ries, have thought about how the entire world Ttarianism of this sort came closest to was indeed a long century of humilia- should be arranged. China-born and with an being realized only briefly in Qin times and tion for the Qin-Han ruling elites and American Ph.D., Wang teaches at Georgia also briefly during the ascendency of Mao their indoctrinated subjects. But it re- Tech; he has also taught at West Point and in Zedong, a self-proclaimed admirer of the defined and remade China with great Japan, South Korea, and China itself. Wang first emperor and his policy of, as Mao put it, experimentation and comprehensive is one among many Chinese scholars, as dis- “burning the books and burying the scholars.” progress…. The second half of China’s tinct from an older generation of American- He was also an admirer of Zhu Yuanzhang, great Century of Experimentation and born and educated ones, who are rapidly the founder of the Ming Dynasty (1388– Progress [i.e., 1900–1950], as opposed becoming our country’s primary interpret- 1644), notorious for his brutal and autocrat- to the Chinese official narrative of the ers of the Chinese world. Beijing has chased ic ways. On the other hand, the last dynasty, Century of Humiliation, rivals any oth- away many brilliant scholars and intellectu- the Qing (1644–1912), was multicultural er period in Chinese history. als; some now live in the United States and and multiethnic, unlike its predecessor. The are deepening America’s understanding of Qing also governed lightly by comparison Regrettably, the Communists’ victory caused their homeland. This resembles the Eastern with the Ming. Its subjects appreciated its “both Chinese internal politics and foreign Europe-born academics—Richard Pipes, low taxes and small bureaucracy, but they policy to take a giant leap backward.” Adam Ulam, Zibigniew Brzezinski, Henry also feared its efficient secret police. Wang’s views will be welcomed neither Kissinger, and others—who taught us about In March 2018, the ruling Communist in the upper reaches of the Beijing regime Communist ideology and about Russian Party changed rules of succession for the nor among those who think they are dealing history, and how Soviet foreign policy was country’s leaders that had been in place since with a regime so inherently “Chinese” that shaped. None of these men was an admirer the 1980s. To prevent a recurrence of an unit can never be superseded by one commit- of the Soviets, and Wang is no admirer of bounded personal dictatorship of the sort that ted to a genuinely civilized, humane order the Chinese Communists. enabled Mao Zedong to do serious damage to at home and abroad. It is one thing for the “The China order,” in Wang’s account, the country, Deng Xiaoping instituted term ruling dictatorship to say repeatedly that it “was first created by the Qin Empire (221-207 limits, so that the paramount leaders who alone embodies Chinese-ness, that it alone BCE)…. [It] peaked in thoroughness, rigid- followed him could serve two five-year terms, can express the political genius of the Chi- ity, and power” between 1279 and 1912. The but would then have to retire. Now that those nese people, that it is seeking not only the regime of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, limits have been lifted, there is no formal bar- best of all possible Chinese worlds but the lasted only a few years, but its grip on the rier to Xi Jinping, like Stalin and Mao, hold- only possible Chinese World. It is another— Chinese imagination has been so powerful ing power for life. This change confirms, in quite dangerous and ignorant—for the rest that subsequent regimes took it as their first its own way, the bad trends already underway of the world to believe it. point of reference, each deciding how much during Xi’s ascendancy. He may not be a first it should, or would, or could, emulate it. For emperor, Ming founder, or Chairman Mao, Charles Horner is senior fellow at the Hudson Wang, Qin rule was totalitarian and, ever but Xi’s brutality exceeds that of his imme- Institute, and author of Rising China and Its since, a longing for totalitarianism—defined diate predecessors, and he is carrying out the Postmodern Fate, volumes 1 (University of by Giovanni Amendola at the turn of the most thoroughgoing effort to establish total Georgia Press) and 2 (E.J. Brill).

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Essay by Joseph Epstein Hail, Mommsen

heodor mommsen’s fame during professor of law and of Roman history, serv- His great general work was his three-volume his lifetime was such that it earned the ing for a time in the Prussian and German History of Rome, running from the putative be- Tawe of even so skeptical an observer parliaments. His most significant work of ginning of Rome in 753 B.C. to the victory of as Mark Twain. In one of his newsletters to pure scholarship was his editing of the Corpus Julius Caesar over his adversaries in 48 B.C. A America, Twain, while in Berlin, describes at- Inscriptionum Latinarum, a multi-volume col- planned fourth volume on the Roman emper- tending a student dinner when Mommsen ar- lection of all the Roman inscriptions found ors was never completed. Some say Mommsen rived in the hall. Twain writes: on material objects, an editorial enterprise failed to complete it because he feared he could that was the foundation of modern epigra- never rival Edward Gibbon, whom he much Then there was an excited whisper at phy (the study and interpretation of ancient admired and who set his indelible stamp on our table—“Mommsen!”—and the inscriptions). But Mommsen’s fingerprints this portion of Roman history; others because whole house rose. Rose and shouted are all over the study of Roman history, from Mommsen felt himself depressed, in his words, and stamped and clapped, and banged Roman law to the Church Fathers, and more. by the “leaden dreariness” and “empty desert” the beer mugs…. Here he was, clothed His bibliography runs to more than a thou- of the Roman emperors after the grandeur of in a Titanic deceptive modesty which sand items. In a too brief biographical article the Roman Republic. Mommsen also claimed made him look like other men. Here he the Encyclopaedia Britannica calls Mommsen that, at this stage in his life, he preferred re- was, carrying the Roman world and all “one of the greatest of the 19th century Ger- search to writing. He did, nevertheless, publish the Caesars in his hospitable skull, and man classical historians,” cites his uniting a fifth volume,The Provinces of the Roman Em- doing it as easily as that other luminous in his work “jurisprudence and history, phi- pire from Caesar to Diocletian. Another volume, vault, the skull of the universe, carries lology and archeology,” and ends by noting The Roman Emperors, composed out of student the Milky Way and the constellations. that “he achieved an unequaled grasp of the notes from his lectures on the subject, was pub- totality of history.” In what must have been lished in English in 1992. After earning a doctorate in Roman law, his highly limited leisure, Mommsen also fa- Mommsen won the Nobel Prize in 1902, Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) became a thered 16 children. not for History, in which no prize is awarded,

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 75 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm but for Literature. Despite the nearly scien- guilt and earthly punishment into relation militarily, in a net whose meshes could not tific scrupulosity with which he wrote history, with the world of the gods, and to view the be broken.” The old saying had it that “If Mommsen could not have been in the least former as a crime against the gods, and the Rome conquered Greece, the Greeks van- disappointed to have his work honored for its latter as its expiation.” quished her rude conqueror by art.” Yet, as literary value. Early in The Provinces of the Ro- After comparing Roman and Greek reli- Mommsen wrote toward the close of his sec- man Empire, he wrote that imagination “is the gion, he writes: ond volume, “Rome was, what Greece was author of all history as of all poetry.” By align- not, a state,” and it was because the commu- ing the two, history and poetry, he surely meant It is time therefore to desist from that nity, the state, was always primary in Rome, that documents, inscriptions, accurate chro- childish view of history which believes the individual secondary. nology alone are never sufficient in themselves that it can commend the Greeks only at As for that state, Mommsen writes: to explain the past. Imagination is required to the expense of the Romans, or the Ro- connect the dots, fill in the background, limn mans only at the expense of the Greeks; [T]he imperial period marks a climax of the characters of key actors, discover and reveal and, as we allow the oak to hold its own good government, very modest in itself, complex motivation, grasp larger movements. beside the rose, so we should abstain but never withal attained before or since; All these things Mommsen did consum- from praising or censuring the two no- and, if an angel of the Lord were to strike mately, always with certain knowledge that a blest organizations which antiquity has the balance whether the domain ruled by complete picture was never fully available to produced, and commend the truth that Severus Antoninus was governed with the historian. He would have subscribed to their distinctive excellences have a con- the greater intelligence and the greater Lewis Namier’s aphorism that “we study his- nection with their respective defects. humanity at that time or in the present tory so that we can learn how things didn’t day, whether civilisation and national happen.” Mommsen’s work is studded with Of course it is against the Greeks that the prosperity generally have since that time disclaimers: “cannot be determined”; “we can- Romans, in Mommsen and elsewhere, are in- advanced or retrograded, it is very doubt- not tell”; “conjectures that wear an aspect of evitably compared. “Hellas is the prototype ful whether the decision would prove in probability”; “the information that has come of purely human,” he notes in his first vol- favour of the present. to us gives no satisfactory answer”; “like a dis- ume, “Latium is not less for all time the pro- tant evening twilight in which outlines disap- totype of national development.” Only the Mommsen’s talent for arresting aphorism pear”; “our information regarding it comes to Latin Romans attained national unity and plays throughout his History. A sampler: “To us like the sound of bells from a town that has ultimately empire, which they commanded continue an injustice is to commit injustice.” been sunk into the sea.” for centuries, while the Greeks, endlessly “The world, however, belongs not to reason but quarrelsome among themselves, could not to passion.” “In ancient times it was necessary Daring Summaries adhere as a nation apart from such times to be either anvil or hammer.” “History has a of national peril as the Persian Wars. “In Nemesis for every sin—for an impotent craving ommsen was among that small Latium,” Mommsen writes, “no other influ- after freedom, as well as for an injudicious gen- but select line of historians, includ- ences were powerful in public and private erosity.” “Political orthodoxy knows nothing of Ming David Hume, Edward Gibbon, life but prudence, riches, and strength; it was compromise and conciliation.” This talent is all and Thomas Babbington Macaulay, known, reserved for the Hellenes to feel the blissful the more extraordinary for Mommsen’s having in Gibbon’s phrase, as philosophic. These ascendancy of beauty.” written his History as a young man (by today’s historians are philosophic in the sense of be- Inward art, Mommsen held, was not standard); his third volume was published in ing interested in human nature as it plays available to the Romans. For the Romans 1856 before he was 40. itself out on the ample fields of political and art was always of subordinate importance, military affairs, of culture and economics; for the artist himself scarcely above the arti- Greatness and Fate them history is centered as much in character san in status. Science—physics and math- as in event. Owing to this interest in human ematics—were little studied in Rome. “For ommsen the brilliant histori- nature and the character of great men (most- centuries,” Mommsen reports, “there were cal portraitist doesn’t fully emerge ly) and women, they themselves have found a none but Greek physicians in Rome,” and Muntil his pages on the Punic Wars prominent and well-deserved place not merely the most sought after teachers tended to be in the 3rd century B.C. First, though, he fills in historiography but in literature. Greeks. He writes: “The Italian is deficient in the background by noting that “the policy Ambitious, even risky, generalization at- in the passion of the heart, and in the long- of the Romans was always more remarkable tracted them all. Thus Mommsen describes ing to idealize what is human and to give life for tenacity, cunning, and consistency than Roman religion—with “the peculiar char- to things of the inanimate world, which form for grandeur of conception or power of orga- acter at once of shallowness and of fervor,” the very essence of poetic art.” In the realm nization.” In Rome, as elsewhere, grandeur of its augurs and Vestal Virgins, yet in which of art, Romans seemed to respond best to conception, the plans of “wiser, more resolute, “oracles and prophecy never acquired the irony, comedy, and farce, and consequently and more devoted men…always find them- importance in Italy which they obtained in did without their own Homer, Euripides, or selves hampered by the indolent and cowardly Greece”—as a religion better “fitted rather Phidias. mass of the money-worshippers, of the aged to stifle than to foster artistic and specula- Yet it was Rome that, as Mommsen wrote, and feeble, and of the thoughtless who are tive views.” But this same religion, he recog- “pursued her purpose with undeviating minded merely to gain time, to live and die in nizes, lent its imprimatur to the moral na- steadfastness, and displayed her energetic peace, and to postpone at any price the final ture of Roman law. “At the very core of the far-reaching policy—more even than on the struggle.” Latin religion there lay that profound moral battlefield—in securing the territory which Wiser, more resolute, more devoted men do impulse which leads men to bring earthly she gained by enveloping it, politically and from time to time arise, and in the Punic Wars

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 76 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm notable among them were the two great gen- manners and arts of the Romans at different plays out. Honorable patriotism struggles erals, Hannibal and Publius Cornelius Scipio stages in their history. Played against these against short-sighted selfishness, with the (later Africanus). Both men are rendered in are those devoted to Roman violence and cru- former nearly always going down in defeat. The History of Rome with an admirable artis- elty. The latter may have set in with the ad- Great careers are no longer founded on ac- tic distance and detachment. Of Hannibal, vent of what Mommsen calls “the detestable tion in battle but in the Roman equivalent Mommsen writes that “every page of the his- amusement of gladiatorial combats—the gan- of backroom dealings, or “the ante-chambers tory of the period attests his genius as a gen- grene of the later Rome and of the last epoch of influential men.” Soon the Roman army eral,” and “the power which he wielded over of antiquity generally.” He recounts the sale at itself will change from a citizen to a profes- men is shown by his incomparable control over one go, from the seven townships in the Epi- sional army. Extravagance—in dining, con- an army of various nations and many tongues— rus, of no fewer than 150,000 slaves, the larg- cubinage, displays of vulgar opulence—is an army which never in the worst times muti- est slave sale in recorded history. The Greeks, rampant. Mommsen records the story of the nied against him. He was a great man; wher- he reminds us, treated their slaves as servants, Roman aristocrat “who cried over the death ever he went, he riveted the eyes of all.” the Romans as property, with all that implies of his favorite fish but not over the death of The modern military historian B.H. Lid- of the savagery implicit in the Latin word do- three wives.” dell Hart awarded the highest possible minus. Mommsen writes that “it is very pos- Of the ancient historians, Mommsen is marks to Scipio Africanus, placing him, as sible that, compared with the sufferings of the high on Plutarch (A.D. 46-120), “one of the a strategist and tactician, above Alexander, Roman slaves, the sum of all Negro suffering most charming, most fully informed, and Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and all other mili- is but a drop.” withal most effective writers of antiquity.” tary commanders, and staking out the addi- Under the rule of Sulla (81 B.C.), Momm- Others may have greater depth or stronger tional claim that he was a man of the highest sen notes that “the times of mercy were past.” talent, “but hardly any second author has personal character. Mommsen is less chari- The hands of entire male populations of cap- known in so happy a measure how to recon- tably disposed: “But Publius Scipio also, al- tured towns were sometimes chopped off, cile himself serenely to necessity, and how to though setting the fashion to the nobility in women and children sold into slavery. Before impress upon his writings the stamp of his arrogance, title-hunting, and client-making, tranquility of spirit and his blessedness of sought support for his personal and almost life.” Of Tacitus, Mommsen says little, refer- dynastic policy of opposition to the senate in Mommsen’s fingerprints ring to him chiefly in footnotes, where, among the multitude, which he not only charmed other comments, he is critical of his account by the dazzling effect of his personal quali- are all over the study of the Roman war in Britain. (“A worse nar- ties, but also bribed by his largesses of grain… of Roman history, rative than that of Tacitus concerning the war, [and] only the dreamy mysticism, on which Ann. Xiv. 31-39, is hardly to be found even in the charm as well as the weakness of that from Roman law to this most unmilitary of all authors.”) Later remarkable man so largely depended…al- he remarks that Tacitus’ “pen was frequently lowed him to awake” others to his belief that the Church Fathers, driven by hatred.” Livy gets scant mention. among all Romans he was the primus inter and more. Polybius (200-118 B.C.), like Plutarch a pares, and this by a long stretch. Greek, is the historian who gets the highest The fates, as Mommsen understood, are marks. Present at the destruction of Corinth not cowed by greatness, real or assumed. Sulla the city of Corinth was captured, its and Carthage, he seemed educated, Momm- Hannibal was “constrained at last to remain male population put to death, all its women sen writes, “by destiny to comprehend the his- a mere spectator while Rome overpowered and children sold into slavery, the city itself torical position of Rome more clearly than the the East as the tempest overpowers the ship burned, an act Mommsen describes as “a Romans of that day could themselves.” Momm- that has no one at the helm, and to feel that he dark stain on the annals of Rome.” Corrup- sen is not without criticisms of Polybius: his alone was the pilot that could have weathered tion was ubiquitous. More imagination was treatment of questions “ in which right, honor, the storm.” When Hannibal died in 183 B.C. spent on torture than on the arts, and not religion are involved, is not merely shallow, but “there was left to him no further hope to be in Rome alone. When Mithradates captured radically false.” His narrative is “correct and disappointed.” Scipio Africanus’ final act was the Roman general Aquillius in 88 B.C. “mol- clear, but flat and languid, digressing with scarcely more rewarding. Earlier Mommsen ten gold was poured down his throat—in or- undue frequency into polemical discussions writes that the senate (the “somewhat boorish der to satiate his avarice,” an act, Mommsen or into biographical, not seldom very self- fathers of the city”) was put off by “his Greek writes, that “alone suffices to erase the name sufficient, description of his own experiences.” refinement and his modern culture and tone of its author from the roll of true nobility.” Yet Mommsen closes his pages on Polybius on of thought.” Even after his impressive military this high note: victories, “he too spent his last years in bitter Major Players vexation, and died when little more than fifty Polybius is not an attractive author; years of age in voluntary banishment, leaving he cavalcade of major players but as truth and truthfulness are of orders to his relatives not to bury his remains in the drama of Rome march past more value than all the ornament and in the city for which he had lived and in which Tin Mommsen’s pages: the Brothers elegance, no other author of antiquity his ancestors reposed.” Hannibal and Scipio Graachi (Tiberius and Gaius), Marius, Sulla, perhaps can be named to whom we are were two exemplars of Solon’s admonition Marcus Livius Drusus, and lesser figures, indebted for so much real instruction. never to say you have had a fortunate life until the acts of each assessed, their strengths and His books are like the sun in the field of you have breathed your last. weaknesses recounted. The endless struggle Roman history; at the point where they Some of the liveliest pages in Mommsen between senate and people, the optimates begin the veil of mist which still envel- are those that end each of his volumes on the (aristocrats) and the populares (populists), ops the Samnite and Pyrrhic wars is

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raised, and at the point where they end personage, who did not deserve to become a and that the future belonged to the empire a new and, if possible, still more vexa- leader either in council or in the field.” The of Caesar. When queried about whether the tious twilight begins. counsel Servius Sulpicius Rufus, was “a very American Founders had given the people a timid man who desired nothing but a quiet monarchy or a republic, Benjamin Frank- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), the death in his bed.” Marcus Cato he calls “the lin famously replied, “A republic, if you can first known intellectual in politics, is thor- Don Quixote of the aristocrats.” Gnaeus keep it.” The Romans couldn’t keep theirs, oughly trashed in The History of Rome. He is Pompeius, known to his contemporaries as though it had a good run, lasting more than characterized by Mommsen as “notoriously Pompey the Great, was, in Mommsen’s view, 500 years throughout Italy and in the coun- a political trimmer,” “a dabbler,” without far from great: “neither a bad nor an incapable tries on the Mediterranean. Through Mom- “conviction and passion,” and later a coward. man, but a man thoroughly ordinary, created msen’s magisterial prose, we see “it brought “As a statesman without insight, opinion, or by nature to be a good sergeant, called by cir- to ruin in politics and morals, religion and purpose, he figured successively as democrat, cumstances to be a general and a statesman.” literature, not through outward violence, but as aristocrat, and as a tool of the monarchs, through inward decay, thereby making room and was never more than a short-sighted Master of the World for the new monarchy of Caesar.” Rome un- egotist.” Cicero the writer is shown even less der the monarchy lived on another 300 or so sympathy: “In the character of an author, on iven mommsen’s hyper-critical years, until finally eroded and undermined by the other hand, he stands quite as low as views of the pretensions of Roman the departure of the Emperor Constantine in that of a statesman.” Mommsen writes Gleaders, one is brought up by his— to Byzantium and the subsequent spread of that Cicero’s correspondence “mirrors most it is not going too far to say—adoration of Christianity. faithfully his character,” which is to say that, Julius Caesar. This is the Caesar whose mas- “It is true,” Mommsen wrote, “that the “where the writer is thrown back on his own terly command of his army transferred to it history of past centuries ought to be the in- resources…it is stale and empty as was ever “his own elasticity,” but in whom “the officer structress of the present; but…it is instruc- the soul of a feuilletonist banished from his was thoroughly subordinate to the states- tive only so far as the earlier forms of culture familiar circles.” His dialogues “are no great man.” This Caesar “was monarch; but he reveals the organic conditions of civilization works of art, but undoubtedly they are the never played the king,” a man “who finished generally—the fundamental forces every- works in which the excellences of the author whatever he took in hand.” He was “the sole where alike, and the manner of their com- are most, and his faults least, conspicuous.” creative genius produced by Rome, and the bination everywhere different—and leads As for Cicero the great orator, “if there is any- last produced by the ancient world, which ac- and encourages men, not to unreflecting thing wonderful in the case, it is in truth not cordingly moved on in the track that he had imitation, but to independent reproduction.” the orations, but the admiration which they set out for it until its sun had set.” His was In his History of Rome Theodor Mommsen excited.” That admiration was extinguished “a nature so harmoniously organized [that brings the past strikingly to life. If its lessons by the generation that followed, who “found if] there is any one trait to be singled out as for the present may be limited, through its Cicero’s language deficient in precision and characteristic it is this—that he stood apart author’s vivid eye we, his readers, neverthe- chasteness, his jests deficient in liveliness, from all ideology and everything fanciful. As less achieve glints of freshened understand- his arrangement deficient in clearness and a matter of course Caesar was a man of pas- ing of the intricate relation between event articulate division, and above all his whole sion, for without passion there is no genius; and character, and a renewed sense of how eloquence wanting in the fire which makes but his passion was never stronger than he richly fascinating the world is and always has the orator.” So damaging was Mommsen’s could control.” He was no less than “a master been. attack on Cicero’s reputation that, according of the world.” to Anthony Grafton, it did not fully recover The oddity of this is that, as Mommsen Joseph Epstein is an essayist, short story writer, until the 20th century. acknowledges, Julius Caesar put paid to the and a contributing editor for the Weekly Stan- Mommsen can kill a historical figure with end of the Roman Republic, which at its best dard. His most recent books are Frozen in Time: a single sentence. Marcus Aemilius Lepi- the historian much admired. But Mommsen Twenty Stories (Taylor Trade Publishing) and dus he calls “an insignificant and indiscreet thought the era of the Republic had ended, Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays (Axios Press).

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Book Review by Rafael Major Slouching Toward Bethlehem Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire, by Paul A. Cantor. The University of Chicago Press, 240 pages, $22.50

Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy: The Twilight of the Ancient World, by Paul A. Cantor. The University of Chicago Press, 320 pages, $30

avid lowenthal, now at assump- he has something to teach us, and we have be rigorously analyzed as serious works of in- tion College but then teaching politi- something to learn. What if William Shake- tellectual history. Dcal science at Boston College, identi- speare was actually more thoughtful than For example, one of the most interesting fied a school of literary criticism emerging in virtually every generation since his death al- aspects of Rome presented by Shakespeare the 1970s and ’80s, which he christened “The ready has told us? If so, his teaching could is the transition from the ancient virtues New Shakespeareans.” These scholars, fol- then be compared with other thinkers’ be- extolled in the republican period in Coriola- lowing the lead of Allan Bloom and Harry fore and after him to create a dialogue across nus to the new empire of love in Antony and V. Jaffa in their book,Shakespeare’s Politics the centuries about the perennial issues that Cleopatra. Romans’ self-understanding, the (1964), were not united by ideology or politi- still perplex us. types of political issues they faced, and their cal purpose but by a novel approach toward adherence to pagan religion were all in flux as the Bard’s plays, reading them as if they were mong the very best examples of the modern world approached. Shakespeare as serious and thoughtful as the greatest phil- the New Shakespeareans’ ground- presents a careful consideration of the con- osophical works known to mankind. The New Abreaking scholarship is Paul Cantor’s ditions that led to the single greatest revolu- Shakespeareans, which included John Alvis, Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire, first tion in the West: the conversion of the known Jan Blits, and Michael Platt, offered interpre- published in 1976 and now newly reissued. A world to Christianity. If this reading seems tations that were intrepid—even swashbuck- professor of English and comparative litera- obvious now, it is only because Cantor and the ling—yet based on scrupulous attention to ture at the University of Virginia, Cantor suc- New Shakespeareans have made it so. textual evidence that could not be dismissed. cessfully shows that Shakespeare’s treatment More than a dozen examples of this rich new of Rome in Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Ant- ow did shakespeare himself criticism were collected by Alvis and Thomas ony and Cleopatra is purposeful and system- regard the triumph of Christianity? West into the volume Shakespeare as Political atic, and yields fascinating political and philo- HWas it merely coincidence that a new Thinker (1981). sophical implications. In order to understand universal religion arose at the moment the en- It is difficult to recapture the excitement, the difficulty of Cantor’s accomplishment, tire Mediterranean world was under universal but imagine suddenly discovering that the one must recall that virtually everyone in the political rule? What accounts for the under- autobiographical details, historical back- field of literature at the time simply assumed lying moral revolution that replaced Roman ground, source materials, and other external that Shakespeare had only a passing famil- honor with selfless love as the new highest call- evidence normally used to aid readers in ap- iarity with the real historical Rome. Cantor ing? These tantalizing issues were addressed in preciating Shakespeare are actually far less devotes considerable attention to establishing Shakespeare’s Rome, but as is the case with any interesting than simply reading him as if the possibility that Shakespeare’s plays could good book, Cantor resolves many questions but

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 79 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm also raises others. Identifying Shakespeare’s in- certain about the purpose of human action. comparison of Shakespeare with Nietzsche all terest in the rise of Christianity is only a first There is much talk of dedication to the gen- the more provocative. In Shakespeare the rise step to seeing how he compares with thinkers eral good of Rome, but their resolve to act is of Christianity comes about through slow, dis- such as Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Gibbon, repeatedly haunted by soothsayers, auguries, cernable changes within Rome’s political life. Hegel, and Nietzsche, who devoted so much dreams, omens, and a ghost. The obvious ben- Nietzsche’s published writings are famous attention to the same subject. efits of establishing a successful empire have (and infamous) for making the opposite claim. Fortunately, Cantor has now published the come at the price of undermining the single- In his view, Christianity was not the result even more ambitious sequel to his earlier work, minded loyalty that made success possible. of unintended changes brought about by the Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy: The Twilight of These characters speak and attempt to act in shift from republic to empire, but rather by the Ancient World. Here, he retraces Rome’s defense of the ancient republic, but Shake- the sudden attack of “renegade” aristocrats political evolution in Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, speare allows readers to see that they have al- who crassly used new religious teachings to and Antony and Cleopatra, but provides a po- ready ceased to be Roman in their hearts. Ac- their own advantage. They succeeded by em- tentially deeper and more persuasive analysis, cording to Cantor, by the end of Julius Caesar ploying a new moral teaching in which obe- which offers a new layer of complexity to the Rome “is dead in principle.” dience, forgiveness, and humility are man’s changing character of Rome and the subtle highest aspirations. The older Roman virtues efforts Shakespeare employs to indicate his fter reading the first two ro- grounded in manly assertion were only pos- own intentions. The heart of the book is a man plays, the world of Antony and sible in practice for a small minority of aris- tour de force of a mature scholar in command ACleopatra seems altogether new. In the tocrats, but the new moral teaching and its both of his material and of the vast amount short span of time since Antony’s artful rise to appeal to the vast majority of mankind—al- of secondary literature surrounding an author power after Caesar’s assassination, he is now ready in servitude—proved unstoppable. The like Shakespeare. Cantor’s ultimate purpose, uninterested in political life. (As Harry Jaffa unarmed and weak were able to overcome the however, is not simply to confirm the argu- once put it, Antony has become “Chairman armed and powerful once they were united ment of his previous book. Unlike his earlier, of the Bored.”) “The time of universal peace by the manipulation of a new priestly class. more esoteric presentation, he now makes an is near,” proclaims Augustus Caesar, and, According to Cantor, Shakespeare’s version explicit and often provocative effort to dem- for Antony, the private pleasures of love and of events is more plausible because it demon- onstrate a deep intellectual kinship between feasting with Cleopatra do seem more fulfill- strates the slow softening of Rome that pre- Shakespeare and Friedrich Nietzsche. He is ing. When we remember the degree to which pared the path for Christianity’s success. The not attempting to prove Shakespeare’s influ- Coriolanus’ family was dedicated to the city of upending of martial virtues was less the con- ence on Nietzsche, but rather to demonstrate Rome, Antony’s all-consuming extra-marital sequence of a slave revolt in morality than it that both authors were engaged in a kind obsession with an Egyptian princess is star- was an invisible shift that had already taken of “imaginative archaeology” to recover and tling. Their love affair is unstable and some- place within the ruling class itself. understand what the world was like prior to times volatile, but this volatility makes it all Cantor’s new book ends with a reconsider- Christianity’s influence. the more exciting. According to Cantor, their ation of Nietzsche based on the philosopher’s Shakespeare’s Coriolanus begins at the eros has been liberated from the city in a way unpublished writings, and purports to show pivotal moment when ordinary Romans (ple- that was unthinkable before. As the play pro- that he independently came to share a view bians) gain political representation with the gresses, and the political pressures increase, more similar to Cantor’s Shakespeare. Read- creation of the office of the tribunes. There their love sometimes becomes the source of an ers will have to decide for themselves whether is a strong impression that there is nothing infinite hope for fulfillment. or not Shakespeare and Nietzsche share simi- more important than participation in tradi- By the end of the play, the love of Antony lar views on the origins of Christianity and its tional civic life. Dedication to Rome and to and Cleopatra becomes so “transpolitical” political consequences, but, in my view, Can- its defense is the highest calling of every man, that they contemn this world and begin to tor does prove that Shakespeare deserves to woman, and child. It is therefore striking that focus exclusively on the world to come. They be taken seriously as a thinker. It should go the opening of Julius Caesar is filled with indi- die in desperate faith that they will live to- without saying that these Roman plays have cations of a new horizon in politics. The plebs gether in an eternity of perfect love. The been, and will continue to be, enjoyed by audi- are now more interested in following individ- immortality sought by Coriolanus and Bru- ences with no interest in political thought or ual leaders than in being citizens. Dedication tus—to be the most honorable or noble Ro- philosophy. But there is also something “sys- to Rome has become dedication to Caesar. man—has been effaced by a new afterlife tematic and comprehensive” in Shakespeare’s The remaining office-holders of the ill-fated with promises that no dull city of man could plays for those with the patience to look more republic are trying to preserve the old order, bestow. Given the historical moment of the closely. For this discovery, ordinary readers but it is almost impossible to tell whether they setting, the numerous references to Herod of like me are indebted to Paul Cantor and the are acting on behalf of the city or themselves. Judea, and the spiritual language of their dy- New Shakespeareans. As Cantor points out, the change that oc- ing words, Cantor’s argument that this play curs between the two plays runs much deeper. (and the entire trilogy) is a deep and serious Rafael Major is senior lecturer in the Honors The patricians inJulius Caesar who champion meditation on the origins of Christianity is College and Political Science Department at the ancient republic no longer speak in Latin persuasive. the University of North Texas, and is currently amongst themselves, they have debates about Reading Shakespeare’s Rome and Shake- completing a book-length study of Shakespeare’s Greek philosophy, and they no longer seem speare’s Roman Trilogy together makes Cantor’s comedies.

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Book Review by Diana Schaub The Figure in the Carpet Naïve Readings: Reveilles Political and Philosophic, by Ralph Lerner. The University of Chicago Press, 240 pages, $45

or a critic to lay claim to naïve- it levels off, so to speak, the controversy about tion, unglimpsed despite its palpable pres- té is unusual. The tribe of scholiasts esotericism. In the Afterword, Lerner says ence. The fascinated critic asks: “Is it a kind Fprides itself on its super-subtlety, its explicitly that his aim has not been “to un- of esoteric message?” to which the crestfallen powers of penetration, its ability to get at earth and display secret thoughts” but rather author replies: “Ah my dear fellow, it can’t be an author or into him. That professional as- to highlight “the message or teaching that is described in cheap journalese!” Begging for sumption of knowingness can, however, in its lying out in the open.” This planar openness, a clue to guide his new research agenda, the haste to “dig deep, dissect, and deconstruct,” however, is rarely the openness of plain asser- critic is told: interfere with real knowing, of the fuller tion, being instead “the very movement and and more intimate kind. In the introducto- action of the argument itself.” His readings, My whole lucid effort gives him the ry chapter to Naïve Readings, Ralph Lerner thus, are tracings—as he follows the shape clue—every page and line and letter. makes the case for “patient attentiveness” to of things that might initially seem incidental, The thing’s as concrete there as a bird in the surface of a text, especially when the text from the “choice of form” and the “order of a cage, a bait on a hook, a piece of cheese in question is notoriously difficult or elusive. presentation,” to a “peculiar mode of opening in a mouse-trap. It’s stuck into every This is what he means by that strange adjec- and reopening its sundry themes,” and even volume as your foot is stuck into your tive in his title (titles being one of the surface “irregularities and idiosyncrasies.” shoe. It governs every line, it chooses ev- features about which he is careful): “In pro- ery word, it dots every i, it places every posing that we approach such works naïvely, lthough lerner doesn’t mention comma. I am suggesting that we not give short shrift it, the title of his very short introduc- to the obvious.” Atory chapter, “Looking for the Figure One couldn’t ask for a better description Lerner demonstrates by doing. In nine in the Carpet,” is, I assume, beholden to the of “logographic necessity”—a term that Ler- chapters, each of which is dedicated to read- wonderful short story “The Figure in the Car- ner does employ, just as he skirts the term ing one author (and curiously, reading one pet” by Henry James, who understood a great “esoteric.” James’s critic, uncomprehending, particularly favored author twice), Lerner deal about authorial intention and the pitfalls tries to bring to bear the categories of liter- gives all the needed proof that his “experi- of interpretation. A character in the story, ary analysis: “Is it something in the style or ments in reading complex texts” have been a novelist, Hugh Vereker (vērē is Latin for something in the thought? An element of successful. His way of reading yields “read- “truly”), complains of his reviewers, who are form or an element of feeling?” The author ings” (the other term of the title), which is to all “little demons of subtlety,” that they miss rejects the hermeneutic distinctions: “Well, say interpretations that bring into view “the his point (and this whether patting him on you’ve got a heart in your body. Is that an ele- figure in the carpet”—the figure that has been the back or kicking him in the shins). Unbur- ment of form or an element of feeling? What present all along, “somewhere in that dazzling dening himself to the reviewer for a literary I contend that nobody has ever mentioned array of colors, curves, and lines.” This Persian journal called (perfectly) The Middle, Vereker in my work is the organ of life.” This James- rug metaphor is a good one for Lerner, since reveals that his works contain a general inten- ian exchange echoes the passage from Leo

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Strauss that Lerner places as the epigraph to based on the proverbs of Poor Richard and de- timent, not only strengthening the anti-slav- Naïve Readings: livered to an unregenerately profligate crowd, ery convictions of his audiences, but setting as related by the fame-seeking almanac-mak- those convictions in a political (and pruden- There is no surer protection against the er Richard Saunders, himself (like Father tial) frame. Lincoln frequently speaks to the understanding of anything than taking Abraham and dozens of other personae) the public about the nature of public sentiment, for granted or otherwise despising the creation of Franklin. “The Way to Wealth” the public mind, and public opinion. The best- obvious and the surface. The problem may be “the first American book on personal known instance, quoted by Lerner, is from the inherent in the surface of things, and finance” (as the website Goodreads claims), Lincoln-Douglas debates: only in the surface of things, is the heart but none other is so satirically distanced, so of things. aware of the internal obstacles to real reform. In this and like communities, public Sermons against this-worldly fecklessness sentiment is everything. With public While James’s narrator fails—humorously are about as persuasive as sermons against sentiment, nothing can fail; without (“I not only failed to find his general inten- other-worldly fecklessness (a.k.a., sin). And it, nothing can succeed. Consequently tion—I found myself missing the subordi- while Father Abraham delivers a sermon, he who moulds public sentiment goes nate intentions I had formerly found”), then Uncle Ben never does. It’s not that he doubts deeper than he who enacts statues or obsessively, and finally pitifully and cruelly the salutary consequences of “early to bed, pronounces decisions. He makes stat- (through various twists and turns of love and early to rise…” or any other of his wonderful utes and decisions possible or impos- death)—Lerner does immeasurably better. apothegms but that he seeks richer, more suc- sible to be executed. Problematizing the surface, he helps us to see cessful modes of communication. Franklin is what James calls “the primal plan, something the inventor of a voice (really a cornucopia of This passage certainly explains how the like a complex figure in a Persian carpet.” voices) better able to entertain and educate a highest statesmanship (and the most danger- people in their independence. ous demagoguery, as well) could indeed issue ittingly, the benjamin franklin from a non-officeholder, an “outsider.” Lerner Professor Emeritus at the University of art 1 of naïve readings, designat- considers this “nurturing of an opinion about FChicago begins with two chapters on ed “American Originals,” is rounded the signal importance of opinion” to be one of his namesake, exploring Bifocal Ben’s “plea Pout by two chapters—one on Thomas Lincoln’s greatest accomplishments. In mak- for human providence” and his strategy for Jefferson, one on Abraham Lincoln—that ing citizens aware of the phenomenon of pub- evangelizing future generations in his new continue the theme of the formative, origi- lic sentiment and its “moulding,” he guides gospel of self-improvement. One of the many nating role of democratic persuasion. The Jef- them to assume more responsibility for their delights of Lerner’s writing is that he moves so ferson chapter explores the rhetorical trajec- own formation, and especially to be aware of adeptly from close analysis of particular pas- tory and purpose of Jefferson’s “A Summary the threat of mis-formation (emanating from sages—like the opening paragraph of Frank- View of the Rights of British America” (1774). those who would undertake “an insidious de- lin’s Autobiography or its many references to While Franklin tells stories that reorient the bauching of the public mind”). As far back as religious belief—to larger insights about an occupations and habits of Americans, Jef- the Lyceum Address in 1838, Lincoln’s states- author’s full ensemble. Naïve Readings con- ferson tells a story “of the origins and char- manship had been directed toward raising the tains quite short pieces, most of them under acteristics of those who first transplanted “general intelligence” of the American elector- 20 pages, but they are clearly distillations of themselves to America,” with the aim of gen- ate. In the 1850s, that project assumed its long, long experience with each of these au- erating a new American self-consciousness. ultimate focus: “making ordinary Americans thors. Lerner may be engaged in naïve reading, Jefferson’s discourse understand that the founders’ ‘central idea’ but he is no naïf. was indeed central to national identity.” Interestingly, one of the first vignettes invokes the existence of the very audi- from Franklin that Lerner selects as illustra- ence it means to address. Before there y the end of part 1, the meaning tive shows an adolescent Franklin learning can be a nation there must be a people. of Lerner’s subtitle, “Reveilles Politi- about the “dunce head” kind of naïveté, as the In this case that people must be roused Bcal and Philosophic,” starts to dawn Philadelphia apprentice observes the out-of- to a sense of their special being, distinc- on the reader. The volume explores various town father of a local printer (the Bradfords, tiveness, and self-respect. That arousal sunrise signals to “get woke” (as today’s slang père et fils) trick a rival printer (Keimer) into is already in itself a revolutionary act. It puts it). Whereas the buglers of Part 1 sum- revealing trade secrets simply by address- is the first step they must take toward mon Americans to their matutinal tasks, the ing him, falsely, as “Neighbor.” Keimer is “a positioning themselves to assume a sep- buglers of Part 2 (Francis Bacon, Edward congenital believer”—a disposition toward arate and equal station among the pow- Gibbon, and Alexis de Tocqueville) call to the world that “leaves this naïf naked and ers of the earth. different audiences and employ different reg- exposed” to the machinations of “a crafty old isters. Although the new pitch might seem Sophister.” Lerner’s version of naïve reading We might say, with respect to these par- to move from the political to the philosophic, is not similarly gullible; it interrogates the ticular writings at least, that Jefferson acts as that distinction is too sharp, or maybe too flat. surface presentation, resulting in a dialectical Romulus to Franklin’s Numa Pompilius. In any case, the most obvious candidate for conversation between “attentive reader and Where then does Lincoln fit in the tri- the title of philosopher in Lerner’s pantheon artful author.” umvirate of “American Originals?” Lerner’s of authors, Bacon, is shown to be rather more Thus, Lerner demonstrates that the much- essay argues for an affirmative answer to an fixed on Command (over nature and men) reprinted extract from Franklin, often titled unusual question: can a private citizen ex- than Truth. Examining minutely two of 18 “The Way to Wealth,” can’t be understood hibit statesmanship? Throughout the 1850s, late additions to The Essayes or Counsels, Civ- without taking account of its complex-frame: while he was out of office, Lincoln very self- ill and Morall, Lerner shows how the opening the admonitory speech of Father Abraham, consciously endeavored to shape public sen- and closing essays (“Of Truth” and “Of Vicis-

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 82 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm situde of Things”) serve as “pillars or portals” giving it on all occasions their effectual from Judah Halevi and Moses Maimonides. to the work and how they frame and answer support. These Jews are not the “tropes” of Gibbon or the question of the choiceworthiness of the the fellow citizens of George Washington, life of contemplation as compared to the life Lerner concludes: “Men of greater learn- but the greatest of Jewish sages pursuing the of action. Bacon steps through his portals as ing and sophistication in Europe had yet to deepest matters of faith and reason. Despite a new sort of philosophic “founder-legislator.” stretch themselves to reach that level.” having studied both authors with Professor Lerner at the University of Chicago, I remain ibbon and tocqueville, also, al- dmund burke is a kind of bridge a perplexed pupil, tremendously grateful for though referred to as “philosophic between the Gibbon and Tocqueville another round of his teacherly patience. Le- Ghistorians,” are shown to have awak- Echapters, since he shares Gibbon’s rner approaches Halevi’s Kuzari, which he ening (or enlightening) political intentions. “Jewish Problem,” and is a “brooding pres- characterizes as a “protean” and “sprawling” Lerner follows the scattered references to ence” in the first volume of Tocqueville’sAn - maze, through its dialogic form. Reading it that singular people, the Jews, as they pop up cien Régime and the Revolution. Lerner again as one would a Platonic dialogue—attentive in Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of pursues a highly specific question: what “po- to argument and action, tensions and charac- the Roman Empire. During the 18th century, litical or rhetorical necessity” led Tocqueville ters—Lerner wends his way, or Halevi’s way, “the evocation of ‘Jews’ or ‘Judaism’ offered a to use Burke as a “foil,” as if “he and Burke through the nature of the divine, what can trope at once versatile and flexible, rich with are engaged in a kind of winner-takes-all be known of the life pleasing to God, and the connotations, and ready for use in tarring contest” as analysts of the French Revolu- opinions of the philosophers. ThroughoutNa - others by insinuation”—those “others” being tion? His answer leads to important insights ïve Readings, religion has been a visible thread, Christians who manifest a similar “spirit of into the respective situational “urgencies” of but now the question of God’s providence intolerant exclusivity.” Although this form Burke and Tocqueville and the resulting dif- (and its relation to man’s providence) comes of displaced criticism was common, Gib- ferences in their judgment about the sort of into view as the central and most ornate me- bon’s version differed from that conducted public sentiment necessary to sustain the dallion of the carpet. by zealously anti-Christian and virulently political liberty of their compatriots. Their anti-Jewish philosophes like Pierre Bayle and common quest for “a useable past” leads imilarly, with the guide of the Voltaire. Lerner presents a Montesquieuan Lerner to the larger question of how readers Perplexed, Lerner escorts us into and Gibbon who made “prodigious efforts in should regard this “admixture of edifying in- Sthrough Maimonides’s “perfected leading his readers to recognize and reject tent” which turns an unvarnished historical whole”: the “product of his vast ambition immoderation and hatred in all their guises,” account into a re-varnished political account, to transmit his coherent understanding of including, it seems, hyper-progressive ones. for which Lerner employs the medieval term matters human and divine.” Maimonides Nonetheless, Lerner expresses a reservation kalām. Fittingly, the title of Part 2 is “Stories explodes popular conceptions of God’s cor- about Gibbon’s easy resort to Jewish tropes to Live By.” poreality. Those idolatrous misconceptions (“characterizations and images that had been Although some of the essays included in have been at least partially encouraged by the used to stigmatize Jews and Judaism through this volume have been previously published, Bible’s figurative language—language that the ages”), even when those stereotypes are the collection is no jumble; it has a warp Maimonides explains as a necessary but risky turned to humane and tolerant purposes. and woof of its own. For instance, there is rhetorical concession to the limits of ordinary Accordingly, he declines to award Gibbon (or a striking parallelism between the respective human understanding. At least for those few his fellow moderate Edmund Burke, whom sequences of Parts 1 and 2. Bacon’s project who can pursue rigorous clarity of thought, Lerner also examines) the highest accolade. for mastery is surely connected to Franklin’s Maimonides intimates the compatibility of That distinction goes, in the chapter’s final own “bold and arduous Project.” In telling Scripture, now properly understood, with paragraph, to their American contemporary his “memorable tale…of one man’s radical essentially Aristotelian physics, metaphysics, George Washington, “a public man with no self-assertion,” Franklin is perhaps one of and political science. The gulf between Jeru- pretensions to philosophy—who had the vi- Bacon’s “like-minded managers and pro- salem and Athens closes. sion and fortitude to declare openly an en- moters.” Then we have the “history as story” Lerner has chosen his own figurative lan- larged and liberal policy that he commended tag-teams of Jefferson-Gibbon and Lincoln- guage (and cover art featuring two bugles) to the rest of mankind as deserving of imita- Tocqueville. Gibbon’s use of the early Jews very carefully. The bugle is an instrument that tion.” Lerner quotes from Washington’s let- to correct Christian zealotry is not unlike plays only pure notes—notes that belong to a ter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Jefferson’s use of the early Saxons to attack harmonic series. Lerner ends his final chapter Rhode Island: British tyranny. Tocqueville constructs his at his highest harmonic pitch: “The philoso- retrospective study of the French Revolution phers, ancient and modern, have made this It is now no more that toleration is spo- in order to revive and redirect the danger- clear; and the prophets too have said as much: ken of, as if it was by the indulgence ously diminished French spirit just as Lin- the true human perfection consists in the ac- of one class of people, that another coln resurrects the meaning of the American quisition of the rational virtues.” At 90 years enjoyed the exercise of their inherent Revolution in order to meet the crisis divid- of age, Ralph Lerner is still wide awake; his natural rights. For happily the Govern- ing the people of his nation. stirring reveilles call us to join him in an ac- ment of the United States, which gives Part 3 beckons. but unfortunately, as tive regimen of concentrated reading, think- to bigotry no sanction, to persecution Lerner’s treatments get longer, my summaries ing, and writing. no assistance requires only that they must get shorter. The final section, “In Aid of who live under its protection should Lost Souls,” contains only two chapters, tak- Diana Schaub is professor of political science at demean themselves as good citizens, in ing us back to the 12th century for guidance Loyola University Maryland.

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Book Review by David Lewis Schaefer Misreading Montaigne Montaigne: A Life, by Philippe Desan, translated by Steven Rendall and Lisa Neal. Princeton University Press, 832 pages, $39.95

ichel de montaigne’s essays is taigne’s public career. Desan’s is the most com- undertook so vast an enterprise for such a re- one of the most widely read French prehensive life of Montaigne yet published, ward, especially one who disparaged the pur- Mliterary and philosophical clas- supplanting Donald Frame’s Montaigne: A suit of public renown. sics. It is certainly one of the most quotable. Biography (1965). Without textual evidence, Desan main- The first book with that title, theEssays was tains that Montaigne avoided “philosophical published in some four successive, revised, egrettably, desan’s account of introspection” until he abandoned his hopes and expanded editions from 1580 until after Montaigne’s life and thought is dis- of a high-level political career, four years be- the author’s death, at the age of 59, in 1592. Rtorted by his intention to debunk the fore his death. He misrepresents the Essays Monumental in size, it is mysterious in form Essays itself, the one thing that would reason- as “a mixture of…erudition and a knowledge and content: its final version comprises three ably interest serious readers today. While of ancient culture,” such as was possessed by books containing 107 chapters of widely vary- acknowledging that Montaigne is “known to “members of parlement,” with “a significant ing length, addressing in no apparent order history” only because of his book, Desan tar- number of reflections on war, horsemanship, such diverse subjects as “thumbs,” “virtue,” gets a straw man by claiming that “the great dueling” and other gentlemanly concerns— and “sleep,” often rambling far beyond their majority” of Montaigne’s biographers aim “to all designed to show his suitability for royal titles. demonstrate the coherence and unity” of the service. Desan also maintains that the Essays Montaigne’s preface presents the Essays Essays “by playing down the role of political in the 1580 edition display an “attitude of as a work of self-portraiture intended for and religious turmoil, which are supposed to submission and allegiance to the power that his friends and relatives, and warns others have left the essayist indifferent.” Although employs him,” when even in that first edition against wasting time reading it. In fact, its Montaigne once professed to have spent his Montaigne expresses his disdain for “the ser- wide audience over centuries; the author’s life tranquilly amid his country’s “ruin,” the vitude of courts.” extensive discussions of moral, theological, Essays contain numerous denunciations of and political issues; the admiration or imita- that turmoil and its perpetrators. n reality, little of montaigne’s tion it won from Bacon, Descartes, Rousseau, Desan properly rejects readings of the Es- original text was devoted to such subjects and Nietzsche; and the thousands of classi- says that treat it as a purely literary work of Ias war, horsemanship, or dueling. In fact, cal quotations it contains attest to the ironic, private reflection. But he overlooks the pos- careful reading will demonstrate that essays misleading character of that description. On sibility that Montaigne aspired to shape the ostensibly devoted to military matters are numerous occasions Montaigne hints that politics of the future, rather than recapitulate actually concerned with far different topics. the naïve openness he professes in the begin- the conventional political attitudes of his time Besides careerism, Desan offers a supple- ning is insincere, and that the apparent dis- and class. mental rationale: having seen all but one of order of his book masks a hidden plan that Only one of Desan’s 11 chapters focuses on his children (a daughter) die in infancy during requires thorough study to understand. the text of the Essays, which he regards as sec- the 1570s, Montaigne conceived the Essays I argued in The Political Philosophy of ondary to the political career to which Mon- as an alternative means of perpetuating his Montaigne (1990) that Montaigne deserves taigne originally aspired. He suggests that the name. Because this explanation is in tension to be recognized as one of the philosophic reason for Montaigne’s resignation from the with the modest “literary” aspirations Desan founders of modern liberalism. But he also Bordeaux parlement was that partisan contro- maintains Montaigne originally had, he sur- played an active role in the political affairs versies blocked his promotion to higher judi- mises that the “success” of the 1580 edition of his time. Having served in the Bordeaux cial office. Indeed, continued membership in “allowed Montaigne to glimpse the possibility parlement, he resigned in 1571 to devote the the parlement might have made him a “poten- of an illustrious fame” without putting him at rest of his life to the Muses, according to his tial hostage,” given allegations that he sympa- the mercy of hypothetical descendants or the account, eventuating in the publication of thized with the Protestants. chances of war. the Essays. But he later served two terms as Remarkably, Desan argues that Mon- This time, Desan is on to something, but mayor of Bordeaux, and negotiated between taigne originally conceived the Essays itself he inverts Montaigne’s priorities. Montaigne rival claimants to the French throne amid “as a kind of curriculum vitae” designed to dis- not only notes the arbitrariness of military horrifying civil warfare growing out of the play his credentials to the court, so as to win glory, he scandalizes critics by professing such Reformation. higher office. Were Desan’s interpretation indifference regarding the deaths of his in- In Montaigne: A Life, Philippe Desan, a correct, the Essays would surely be the longest fant children that he can’t recall their number. native Frenchman who teaches Renaissance C.V. ever, running 857 tightly-printed pages And in “Of the Affection of Fathers for Their literature and the history of culture at the in the best English translation (by Donald Children,” having identified the begetter’s af- University of Chicago, and who is the author Frame). Its size, the scope of its learning, and fection for his begotten as the second most or editor of numerous studies of Montaigne the subtleties of its argumentation would likely natural instinct after self-preservation, and his time, painstakingly illuminates Mon- compel us to doubt the sanity of anyone who Montaigne disparages the former attachment

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 84 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm by comparison to love of “the children of our mind,” to whom “we are father and mother both.” If worthy, these offspring honor us more than do “our other children,” in whose achievements we share little. The implied linkage between achieving immortality through authorship and through lawgiving is of the greatest importance for understanding Montaigne’s philosophic and political intent. As such scholars as Pierre Manent and Benjamin Storey have recently reminded us, Montaigne’s ostensible self-portrayal indeed became a new model of gentlemanship in the following century and beyond that of the frank, unpretentious honnête homme. Additionally, despite deprecating the usual means of seeking glory, Montaigne explains his devotion to the cause of “the little people,” “whether because there is more glory in it, or through natural compassion” (emphasis added). The

Essays is the means by which Montaigne will Facsimile of Page 1 of Michel de Montaigne ’ s Essays achieve posthumous glory, not as a stylist but as a revolutionary moral and political thinker, whose teaching will elevate the common people’s condition while securing freedom for philosophy.

n writing the essays, montaigne sought and ultimately achieved far more Ithan a historicist scholar like Desan can imagine, given his assumption that every thinker is inevitably the prisoner of his era’s biases. Far from giving voice to monarchi- cal or aristocratic prejudices, Montaigne mocked their foundations, and even called “popular rule…the most natural and equita- ble” form of government, if only it could be purged of the people’s susceptibility to reli- , Paris, 1588 gious superstition. His political egalitarianism and warfare against religious fanaticism are both aspects of his secularized compassion, in contrast to the cruelties perpetrated in the name of the Christian God, making him the hero of political theorist Judith Shklar’s celebration of liberal morality, Ordi- nary Vices (1984). Desan helps combat the misrepresentation of VI, knew how to deceive men into thinking That Desan has misunderstood Mon- Montaigne as an apolitical memoirist. him plainspoken. Far from an idealistic in- taigne’s thought and authorial intent, how- nocent, Montaigne warns against “depriv[ing] ever, does not mean that his exploration of ut in the end desan’s biography deceit of its proper place.” Montaigne’s immediate political activities supplies no reason, beyond amuse- Thinking Montaigne a failure in his at- lacks value. He elucidates, for instance, Mon- Bment, to concern ourselves with the tempt to reform political life through hon- taigne’s relation to his local political patron, Essays. Only at one point does he attribute esty, just as he had failed in his other politi- Gaston de Foix, and his dealings with the a transformative political intent to the book, cal ambitions, Desan represents his life as queen mother, Catherine de Medici. He il- that of “propos[ing] a different way of practic- ending in disappointment. His penultimate luminates Montaigne’s judicial career, and ing diplomacy and politics” from the accepted chapter concerns Montaigne’s “marginaliza- provocatively argues that his extended visit to one. But here he seems to be alluding only to tion” in his final years. “Convincing himself Rome may have been intended to win a posi- Montaigne’s account of his supposedly “art- that he had to live a private life, for lack of tion as ambassador to the Vatican. And he of- less” mode of negotiating among “our princes,” something better” in Desan’s interpretation, fers evidence that Montaigne’s mayoralty was when a close reading demonstrates that Mon- the author finally turned himself into the less successful than he maintained. In short, taigne actually, like Machiavelli’s Alexander Montaigne “we treasure most today, because

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 85 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm he is self-sufficient and accepts his subjectiv- texts do create an overall, if uneven, appear- of the Essais asked were also our questions.” ity as an end”—whatever that might mean. ance of evolution. But that impression reflects In response, he highlights “the dangers of a Desan most appreciates the overtly “person- a rhetorical plan of gradually moving readers strictly philosophical approach that would al” character of Montaigne’s last additions, from conventional admiration for classical reinforce the myth of a universal subject,” i.e., which led some 20th-century interpreters to learning, piety, and political submission to a a permanent human nature, “to the detri- argue that the essayist’s thought as well as more liberal, even libertine view of life that ment of its purely historical and political di- style had “evolved” from the relatively non- the author espouses most openly in Book III, mension.” This criticism would apply against judgmental, third-person sheen of the 1580 in conjunction with a lowered, more limited Montaigne himself, who frequently cites the text, filled with classical quotations and an- conception of the purpose of government. variability and diversity of human behavior, ecdotes, to the freer, franker persona who but also remarks that “each man bears in discoursed at length on such themes as his esan’s explanation of mon- himself the entire human condition,” so that licentiousness and his dining, sleeping, and taigne’s turn towards “subjectivity” in ostensibly portraying himself, he is actu- bowel habits. Dduring the years of political margin- ally examining human nature. Desan thinks that only in Montaigne’s alization at the end of his life fails to account Anyone wondering why the serious study final years did he take “an interest in the for the fact that Book III, the most consis- of great philosophic and literary works has human condition in its universality and tently personal book, had already appeared fallen into decline in our time can find an ex- atemporality”—a judgment that can hardly in 1588, and must have been in preparation planation in works like Philippe Desan’s bi- be supported by any open-minded assess- prior to the author’s supposedly abandoning ography. He largely resists the temptation to ment of the book as a whole. In effect, Desan his hopes of high office. It also fails to explain subject Montaigne to politically correct judg- wants to make scholars like himself gate- why the original preface claimed the book to ments, despite insisting that “[t]he ahistorical keepers to the Essays: you’ll never under- be a mere enterprise in self-portraiture, de- view of human thought” reflects the “ideology” stand the book unless you first study ancil- spite the first two books’ deviating from that of “[e]conomic liberalism.” But students hop- lary materials as I have spent my career do- claim. Without elaboration, Desan simply ing to find meaningful guidance by studying ing—even though Montaigne never tells his asserts that “on rereading the preface…when the classics are simply told by Desan that such readers to do this. the Essais of 1588 was published…Montaigne books can’t answer their questions. Why then The evolutionary interpretation cannot identified himself…with the new practice of a waste time reading them? account for some crucial facts. Montaigne much more private writing.” denies having altered his thought, for one. Desan mocks the 20th century’s sup- David Lewis Schaefer is professor of political sci- Moreoever, numerous views that scholars at- posed “preoccup[ation]” with viewing the ence at the College of the Holy Cross, and the au- tribute to the “late” Montaigne were present Essays as “the first great text of modern phi- thor of The Political Philosophy of Montaigne inDouglass_Claremont_4C.qxp_Layout the first edition, and vice 1versa. 1/18/18 2:30The laterPM Pagelosophy,” 1 as if “the questions that the author (Cornell University Press). New from the Cato Institute

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Book Review by Sally C. Pipes A Man of Accomplishment Entrepreneurial Life: The Path from Startup to Market Leader, by Robert L. Luddy. Lulu, 192 pages, $27.99

obert luddy’s new autobiography, ucts, manufacturing processes, sales practices, Ben Franklin), the public charter school he Entrepreneurial Life, is chock-full of and internal operations. founded in 1997; St. Thomas More Academy, Raphorisms that any entrepreneur—or Luddy tells of one meeting in 1986 where he the independent Catholic school he launched anyone looking to succeed in business—would and two young engineers revamped the manu- in 2001; and the six campuses of the inde- be wise to post on his office wall. One in par- facturing process for CaptiveAire’s ventilation pendent, secular Thales Academy (named ticular stood out: “Execution is the most dif- hoods in 90 minutes. The following morning, after Thales of Miletus, the pre-Socratic phi- ficult part of management.” It certainly rings they implemented the new protocol. Within a losopher and businessman) that he started in true—the world seems to be long on think- few months, they’d increased output by 50%. 2007. Five more locations of Thales are cur- ers and talkers, and short on doers. But it’s an rently under development. Luddy’s schools fo- odd thing for Luddy to say. All he’s done for he second half of the book cov- cus on outcomes, he says, just as CaptiveAire decades is execute, and he’s made it look easy. ers six disciplines Luddy believes are does in all its endeavors. Teachers are subject Entrepreneurial Life chronicles, in refresh- Tcrucial to successful entrepreneurial to yearly performance reviews and cannot re- ingly direct prose, Luddy’s journey from his management: mentorship, leadership, in- ceive tenure. The curriculum focuses on de- first paid gig, on a bread delivery truck at age novation, finance, sales and marketing, and veloping not merely students’ thinking, learn- 11, to his current job as founder and president education. Luddy’s chapter on leadership is ing, and communications skills but also their of CaptiveAire Systems, Inc., North America’s the most compelling portion of the book. He character and work ethic. leading manufacturer of commercial kitchen names execution—actually accomplishing ventilation systems. But it is also the story of something, and fast—as “our highest prior- t the heart of that curriculum his work as a visionary educational reformer. ity.” He favors decentralized management, is the “Direct Instruction” method of Entrepreneurship has been a way of life with decisions “made at the lowest level pos- Ateaching. For someone as committed for Luddy since his youth. He started his first sible and quickly.” Employees are encouraged to outcomes as Luddy, one would expect, as business in college in the 1960s—a fiberglass to improve the company’s operations on their he writes, that “the effectiveness of this in- manufacturing firm. He had to sell it after be- own—and rewarded when their ideas yield structional method has been demonstrated ing drafted into the army in 1967. Upon re- positive change and corporate growth. Em- in numerous educational studies over the past turning stateside, he worked selling fiberglass powering employees gives them ownership half century.” components and then fire and safety equip- over their work. That leads to improvements Teachers lead scripted lessons presented in ment. In 1976, he struck out on his own, sell- in employee retention, work ethic, and overall small increments. Research determines which ing and installing his own fire suppression sys- productivity. He attributes this decentralized methods, materials, and lessons work. Those tems in restaurants. He started Atlantic Fire approach to one of his mentors, former Nucor are then codified and reproduced, so that other Systems with just $1,300; that firm eventually Steel president Ken Iverson. But it has an aw- teachers can use them. Students must master became CaptiveAire, which boasts $450 mil- ful lot in common with the ideas of the Aus- skills before they can advance; classrooms are lion in annual sales today. trian economists Luddy has long championed. organized according to ability rather than age. In the first half of his book, Luddy relates He ends his book with a description of Students at his schools are expected to the history of his company. A few themes his approach to education. In Luddy’s view, a master Luddy’s “Top 15 Outcomes,” which stand out. First, the successful entrepreneur commitment to lifelong learning is every bit as cover everything from acting with integrity to must maintain a “fanatical focus” on his cus- important to the success of an entrepreneur as embracing traditional American mores and tomers. Luddy points to specific sales and a sound sales strategy or continuous improve- entrepreneurship to working toward a healthy customers that enabled him to make payroll ment of his products. As he puts it, “Simply mind, body, and spirit. or provide the funding he needed to expand. earning a degree is not sufficient because the Robert Luddy’s life truly has been an en- His gratitude and devotion to his custom- world of knowledge is constantly changing…. trepreneurial one. He’s built multiple institu- ers leaps off the page. Second, entrepreneurs Entrepreneurs must be curious about every- tions that have created thousands of jobs— must be men or women of action. Many busi- thing relevant to their business.” and prepared people for thousands more. His ness books challenge readers to be bold, to Luddy’s approach to education is one that autobiography is a fitting summation of his make decisions with daring. And Luddy does, emphasizes problem-solving and learning remarkable career—and should inspire any- too. But his matter-of-fact instruction to “do how to think and master disciplines, rather one interested in building an entrepreneurial it now” breaks down some of the mystique as- than specializing in one area. He’s taken to life for themselves. sociated with decision-making that can slow evangelizing because the educational status us down. He’s not an Übermensch; he’s a man quo has not produced enough “candidates Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and Thomas W. committed to reaching his goals quickly, with- with the appropriate sets of skills” to succeed Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific out wasting time. Third, entrepreneurs must at a company like CaptiveAire. Research Institute. In April she received an honor- relentlessly pursue perfection. The history of That approach is on display in his remark- ary doctorate in humane letters from Pepperdine CaptiveAire is in many ways a story of incre- able and multifarious work as an educational University, in recognition of her many years of mental improvements in the business’s prod- founder: at Franklin Academy (named after leadership in the health care policy arena.

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Essay by Algis Valiunas The Tragic Sense

oseph conrad (1857–1924) remains the of by some as an exotic, a mere curiosity. Vir- stevedore fall under the fateful influence of greatest English language novelist since ginia Woolf denigrated his claims to high a silver mine seemingly inexhaustible in its JCharles Dickens, and many of the best seriousness and—equally important in her wealth and malevolence, to a seedy shop in writers of the 20th century, including H.L. snobbish milieu—to Englishness: his princi- the imperial city of London in The Secret Mencken, Ernest Hemingway, and T.S. El- pal appeal was to “boys and young people,” he Agent (1907), where idiot anarchists and so- iot, paid homage to his excellence or came couldn’t properly speak the language he wrote cialists meet to plot their assault on civiliza- under his influence. And as one learns from in, and he had the “air of mystery” of the per- tion; from comfortable bourgeois Geneva in the Harvard historian Maya Jasanoff’s new petual exile, a person of no fixed address. Under Western Eyes (1911), where an English book, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a But what Conrad really possessed was expatriate struggles to understand the alien Global World, Conrad was a hero to William an imagination of global reach, a far depar- sensibilities of Russian expatriates connect- Faulkner, André Gide, and Thomas Mann. ture from Woolf’s Bloomsbury insularity. ed to a political assassination in explosive St. What’s more, “He has turned up in the pages His mind roved from the Congo in Heart Petersburg, and back again to Java in Victory of Latin American writers from Jorge Luis of Darkness (1899), where a representative (1915), where an itinerant Swedish business- Borges to Gabriel García Márquez, Mario of pan-European moral genius encounters man with a taste for fashionable nihilism Vargas Llosa, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez. He’s primitive savagery and discovers the dark- believes he has found earthly salvation in a been cited as an influence by Robert Stone, ness in his own heart, to Java and Borneo in romantic misalliance with a traveling musi- Joan Didon, Philip Roth, and Ann Patchett; Lord Jim (1900), where an English country cian but runs up against incarnate evil. by W.G. Sebald and John le Carré.” parson’s son flees disgrace and finds a second Wherever the plot takes Conrad, the imag- A Pole by birth, for 20 years a merchant chance at fantastic heroism; from a South ined world remains always distinctively his seaman by profession, a late-blooming novel- American country of the author’s own inven- own: a place of darkness penetrated intermit- ist for whom English was his third language tion in Nostromo (1904), where a native-born tently by shafts of heroic light, which tend to (after French and his native Polish), a spinner Costaguanero entrepreneur of English heri- be extinguished in the end, for irony and trag- of yarns about seafaring ordeals and romances tage, together with a San Francisco finan- edy set the terms of existence here, and any with dusky beauties, Conrad has been thought cier, a Parisian boulevardier, and an Italian brighter spirits can last only briefly in this sti-

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 88 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm fling atmosphere. The sculptor Jacob Epstein, Konrad fell frightfully ill on the road, but the To London whose 1924 bronze bust is the iconic render- authorities kept them on the move despite the ing of Conrad, saw in his subject a tragic fig- danger to the boy, with the encouraging re- adeusz bobrowski became kon- ure with a moral resemblance to his fictional flection that “children are born to die.” rad’s guardian, and set about trying to heroes: “Conrad gave me a feeling of defeat; Desperate times ensued: the Russians beat Teradicate the feckless self-destructive but defeat met with courage.” That is the best down an ambitious Polish uprising in 1863, dreaminess that he saw as Apollo’s legacy one can customarily hope for in Conrad’s and both sides of Konrad’s family were rav- to his son. The uncle’s not exactly avuncular world, the closest one comes to victory. aged by history’s violent imposition—a host moralizing met with resistance. Reading sea of uncles and aunts killed or imprisoned or stories, beginning with Apollo’s translation History and Romance exiled. Unable to man the barricades, Apollo of Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea, provoked wrote in a torrential rage against tsarist autoc- the youth’s maritime wanderlust. When onrad’s bleakness was his birth- racy that his son would inherit: “We [Poles] he informed Tadeusz of his intention to right; his courage was earned over a have perished by their sabres, bayonets, and become a sailor, his guardian went all out Clifetime. (For the facts of Conrad’s guns. We are familiar with their truncheons, to dissuade him. But at 17 Konrad went to life I have relied on Jasanoff’s book—strong knouts, and nooses.” Despair gnawed at Kon- Marseille and thence to sea. He shipped out on biography, lackluster as literary criti- rad’s mother, Ewa, and there was little enough happily on three voyages to the West Indies cism—and on Jeffrey Meyers’s 1991Joseph left of her by the time she died in 1865. Apol- and was certain he had found his life. In Conrad: A Biography.) Born Józef Teodor lo sent Konrad to live with his uncle Tadeusz 1877, however, with Russia at war with Tur- Konrad Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, Bobrowski, the prudent member of the family, key, the previously lenient Marseille port in- in Berdychiv, Ukraine, then part of the Rus- who had kept clear of the political tumult and spector cracked down on the 19-year-old for sian Empire (plus ça change…), he was wel- was getting on nicely in Ukraine. A year later, lacking the Russian consul’s approval to sail comed into this world by a poem his father the moribund Apollo, who had been granted on a French ship; no such approval could be wrote, “To my son born in the 85th year of a visa to leave the Russian Empire, took Kon- expected, for Mother Russia coveted Konrad Muscovite oppression”: as cannon fodder. He needed to find a ship under another flag, or to renounce his Rus- Baby, son, tell yourself, sian citizenship and find a more congenial You are without land, without love, Books discussed in this essay: homeland. The most enticing prospect to his Without country, without people, mind was the British merchant fleet; but he While Poland—your Mother is in her grave. The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in didn’t speak English, and anyway Uncle Ta- a Global World, by Maya Jasanoff. deusz was dead set against that option. Ready Thus metaphorically orphaned and dispos- Penguin Press, 400 pages, $30 to give up all hope of the seafaring life, Kon- sessed at birth, Konrad, as everyone would rad idled and fell into serious debt; and after call him, was blessed and cursed with a name Joseph Conrad: A Biography, he blew a friend’s large loan gambling at Mon- resonant of nationalistic exaltation and sor- by Jeffrey Meyers. te Carlo, he tried to commit suicide by shoot- row. The Polish Romantic arch-poet Adam Scribner, 428 pages, ing himself in the chest. Responding to an ur- $27.50 (cloth), $18.95 (paper) Mickiewicz, in the 1828 poem Konrad Wallen- gent telegram, Tadeusz came to Marseille and rod, sings of a Lithuanian knight’s vengeance found the hardy Konrad already on the mend. on Teutonic oppressors, and in Mickiewicz’s Return to Krakow, Tadeusz insisted, and play Dziady another Konrad beholds Poland rad to Austrian Galicia, where the overlords give up this preposterous adolescent romance. “as a son would gaze / Upon his father broken tolerated Polish folkways more generously Once Konrad was well enough, though, he upon the wheel.” So young Korzeniowski was than in Russia. Apollo took an editorial job shipped out aboard a British steamer. He got thrust into the great world of history and po- in Krakow, where he intended to raise Kon- on badly with the captain and crew, left the litical romance without asking for the privilege. rad, not as an adherent to any political faction, ship in Norfolk, and made for London. He would dwell there, not exactly willingly, all “but only as a Pole.” The idyll did not last long; Passionate reading, in Polish translation, his days. Apollo died in 1869, when Konrad was 11. It had introduced Konrad to the London of His father, Apollo, a proud member of the seemed that all the Poles in Krakow, except Dickens’s incomparable imagination, which Polish nobility, the szlachta—numerous as for the wealthiest and most genteel, gathered proved to be the London of wondrous fact. Saudi princes but not nearly as prosperous— to pay tribute to Apollo, and Konrad led the Jasanoff quotes judiciously from his sub- felt duty-bound to lend his talents to the Pol- long funeral procession of Polish patriots ject’s essay “Poland Revisited” in Notes on ish independence movement. His talents were honoring the faithful native son and martyr. Life and Letters (1921): “He stumbled out of chiefly literary, and in 1861 he became editor Faithfulness to one’s calling and to one’s idea Liverpool Street Station to discover his ship- of a Warsaw journal of politics and culture. of oneself would be a prominent theme of ping agent in ‘a Dickensian nook,’ perched in But the national liberation underground al- Conrad’s writing; he saw it as the only effec- a ‘Dickensian’ office, eating a mutton chop lured him, and he joined the most radical rev- tive stay against darkness, chaos, nothingness. bought ‘from some Dickensian eating-house olutionary faction. Late one night came the As he explained himself in “A Familiar Pref- around the corner.’” The storm-driven wan- inevitable knock on the door, and Apollo was ace” to the autobiography A Personal Record derer knew he had come home. In an 1885 frog-marched to the jail for political prison- (1912), “Those who read me know my convic- letter to a Polish acquaintance he wrote, “In ers. Six months later, without trial, a military tion that the world, the temporal world, rests a free and hospitable land even the most per- tribunal sentenced the insurrectionist and on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they secuted of our race may find relative peace his family to exile. The fabled hospitality of must be as old as the hills. It rests notably, and a certain amount of happiness.” In 1886, Russia’s northeastern provinces awaited them. among others, on the idea of Fidelity.” at age 28, Konrad became a naturalized

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British citizen. “He never lived more than an ny expects great things. The novella unrolls as a ing mission proves a useless lie. He is help- hour or two away from London again,” ob- story within a story: an unnamed narrator, one less against “the fascination of the abomi- serves Jasanoff. of a handful of friends, representatives of Eng- nation”—and he becomes the abomination. That did not mean he did not rove far and lish commercial power and address, on a plea- Primitive tribesmen worship him and do his wide. Britannia ruled the waves, and to Kon- sure cruise on the Thames one evening, retails fearsome bidding. Shrunken heads on stakes rad the seven seas were as comfortably Eng- the Congo misadventure that Charles Marlow, adorn the exterior of his dwelling. A native lish as the home counties. As Jasanoff writes, an uncommonly meditative sailor who has seen beauty, “savage and superb, wild-eyed and “He learned to speak English on British ships.” most everything the world holds, recounts with magnificent,” mourns her dying white lover Now going by the Anglicized “Conrad,” he a prolonged shudder. and lord. As Mr. Kurtz dies in agony, his last wrote in A Personal Record, “I had thought Their England too, Marlow says, “has been words are the summation of his wholesale to myself that if I was to be a seaman, then one of the dark places of the earth.” Nineteen moral collapse, the primeval malignity of the I would be a British seaman and no other.” hundred years earlier there, the conquering wilderness human and inhuman, and the From 1878 to 1894 Conrad sailed on a dozen Romans “grabbed what they could get and for terror of extinction: “The horror! The hor- ships of the British merchant marine, round- the sake of what was to be got.” These ancient ror!” Marlow, who cannot abide a lie, goes ing both Cape Horn and the Cape of Good imperialists were unabashedly out for plun- to the unnamed imperial city like a whited Hope, seeing Southeast Asia, and even ven- der; modern imperialists propose a nobler sepulcher (it is Brussels) and calls on Kurtz’s turing up the Congo River aboard a Belgian rationale. lovely and innocent Intended; she is more steamer; he thereby collected abundant mat- convinced than ever before of her late fiancé’s ter for his second career. The conquest of the earth, which mostly moral splendor, and Marlow cannot bring His first novel wasAlmayer’s Folly: A Story means the taking it away from those who himself to disabuse her: when she asks him of an Eastern River (1895), and the folly of this have a different complexion or slightly for Kurtz’s last word, he tells her it was her Dutch trader in the wilds of Borneo is that he flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pret- name. “She knew. She was sure.” thinks too well of himself for simply being a ty thing when you look into it too much. Jasanoff reads Conrad as preparing a white man. Kaspar Almayer had bitten back What redeems it is the idea only. An idea comprehensive indictment of so-called civi- his racial pride and married a Malay woman, at the back of it; not a sentimental pre- lization: “While Kurtz’s stockade evoked the adopted daughter of Captain Thomas tence but an idea; and an unselfish belief head-hunting, the archetypal ‘savage’ practice Lingard, who had saved her from pirates and in the idea—something you can set up, of Borneo, when Conrad later wrote a story had seduced Almayer with the prospect of an and bow down before, and offer a sacri- (‘Falk’) about the archetypal ‘savage’ practice immense inheritance. Lingard’s promise of fice to…. [Conrad’s ellipsis.] of Congo—cannibalism—he set it in Asia. In riches falls through, and Almayer is burdened both stories, the savages were white.” Evident- with a wife he despises for her half-savage Marlow takes very seriously the redeem- ly at Harvard civilization has reached such a ways; but he dreams of a glorious future for ing idea of empire. But there can be no re- pass that head-hunting and cannibalism can- their daughter, Nina, a beauty for whom he demption for the imperial enterprise he sees not straightforwardly be called savage, unless intends a suitable husband—which is to say in the Congo; there the idea, the eloquent white men are practicing them. Fortunately a white one. When Nina runs off with a Ma- profession of benevolence, of bearing light to Conrad was not so sensitive and subtle as the lay instead, Almayer is devastated. He had the benighted savage, is unforgivably corrupt postmodern professoriate. Jasanoff goes on, placed his faith in her, and now “only one idea at the root. Naked greed, violent injustice, remained clear and definite—not to forgive flagrant self-deception: these are the idols By nesting Marlow’s experience in Afri- her; only one vivid desire—to forget her…. of the Company, the ostensible agent of im- ca inside the telling of his story in Eng- That was his idea of his duty to himself—to perial progress, named with an ironic Kaf- land, Conrad warned his readers against his race—to his respectable connections; to kaesque brevity. any complacent notion that savagery the whole universe unsettled and shaken was as far from civilization as there was by this frightful catastrophe of his life.” Al- The word “ivory” rang in the air, was from here. What happened there and mayer’s warped racial fidelity, a gross parody whispered, was sighed. You would think what happened here were fundamental- of honorable devotion, consumes him, and he they were praying to it. A taint of im- ly connected. Anyone could be savage. kills himself. becile rapacity blew through it all, like Everywhere could go dark. a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I’ve Savagery and Subtlety never seen anything so unreal in my It is true enough that European civilization life. And outside, the silent wilderness in the 20th century saw appalling darkness and ear and the utter perversion of surrounding this cleared speck on the savagery; and the Final Solution and the Soviet honorable devotion are of the essence earth struck me as something great and terror state may well have been more appalling Fin Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s fourth invincible, like evil or truth, waiting pa- than, say, reciprocal tribal genocide practiced novel and the work by which he is best known tiently for the passing away of this fan- with clubs and machetes in Rwanda, precisely today. His sardonic virtuosity is nowhere more tastic invasion. because the nations that had produced Goethe evident than in the slowly gathering menace and Tolstoy were now the brutes. Conrad, of the thousand-mile journey up the Congo As T.S. Eliot recognized, Mr. Kurtz is however, does not make his story bear quite River to the trading station of Mr. Kurtz—the a hollow man. The wilderness searches his as onerous a weight as Jasanoff would have it. universal genius, poet, painter, orator, emis- emptiness and fills it with monstrosity. He Marlow distinguishes between the yellow por- sary of civilization’s sacred light, who has the has collected a vast trove of the coveted ivory, tion of the map of Africa—the Congo Free rich blood of several European nations flowing the Company’s real reason for being. His State, the preserve of Belgium’s King Leopold through his veins, and from whom the Compa- vaunted eloquence in the name of the civiliz- II, who oversaw a notorious virtual slave colony

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Farrar, Straus and Giroux www.fsgbooks.com mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm for his personal aggrandizement—and the red love with the mixed-race beauty he calls Jewel: work. Communities fractured. People portion, where the British were the colonists— at last redemption and a life worthy of Jim’s broke promises. “good to see at any time, because one knows romantic dreams are his. He is the illustrious that some real work is done in there.” Marlow, Tuan Jim: Lord Jim, said to be invincible, and But the real reason Jim is destroyed lies in the man who has seen everything, remains the most revered man in Patusan, which is an his own legitimate sense of guilt and of shame, convinced of British imperial rectitude, which anagram of Patna plus us. which leads him to treat Gentleman Brown has not disgraced the redeeming idea of empire Yet the knowledge that he is where he is be- like the gentleman he is not. Jewel had asked as other nations have; and Marlow himself is cause he is a catastrophic failure exiled from Marlow why he was so sure Jim would never a man of moral substance, quite unlike the the world he really belongs to haunts Jim, and leave her and go back to the world he had come empty shell, Mr. Kurtz. Conrad sets the real undoes him. The “latter-day buccaneer” Gen- from, the world of white men. Not wanting thing against the gimcrack simulacrum of the tleman Brown, reputed perhaps to be the son to answer but pressed to exasperation, Mar- civilized man; and there is no suggestion that of a baronet, and his crew of gun-running rep- low had exclaimed: “Because he is not good upstanding Britain is in danger of falling once robates wash up in Patusan, and there is may- enough.” She answered that Jim had told her again into the primitive darkness two millen- hem, with dead and wounded on both sides. the very same thing; she refused to believe ei- nia in the past. The desperadoes are outnumbered 200 to ther of them. They were right, however. Con- one, and Brown parleys with Jim to gain safe rad knew there are some moral failures that Put to the Test passage back to their schooner. Marlow hears mark a man indelibly. The tragedy ofLord Jim this part of the story from Brown, who with is that dishonor, like hell, is everlasting. ord jim is conrad’s most romantic his “satanic gift of finding out the best and the tale, and it trembles with the seismic weakest spot in his victims” senses Jim’s dis- Imperialism without Empire Lperils of the rather too romantic imagi- composure. “These were the emissaries with nation; for Jim had dreamed of a seafaring life, whom the world [Jim] had renounced was ostromo is conrad’s most ambi- not merely of honorable devotion, but of heroic pursuing him in his retreat. White men from tious novel, the most extensive in magnificence on the order of the most outland- ‘out there’ where he did not think himself good Nscale, but also the most tendentious, ish swashbuckling adventure stories for unduly enough to live.” Brown with his uncanny cun- in a manner that makes it most pleasing to impressionable boys of all ages. When put to readers eager to think the worst of gringo the test, he fails abjectly. He is chief mate of the imperialists whose idols are “material inter- Patna, an old rust-bucket carrying eight hun- Defeat met with ests.” The strength of the novel rides on the dred Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca, unsparing depiction of a South American na- when the hull scrapes bottom in the midst of a courage is the closest tion crushed under the blood-soaked history fierce storm and the bulkhead appears about to one comes in in which a new tyranny has always superseded burst. With the derelict German captain and the old one. Costaguana—the redolence of the rest of the unsavory crew, he abandons ship Conrad to bird dung is pungent—suffers from the en- and leaves the passengers to drown. However, victory. demic disorder and danger that bespeak gen- the Patna is found still afloat some days later, erations of masters whose ruling passions are and the cowardly sailors are now infamous. power and greed: it was “as though the gov- Marlow, Conrad’s alter ego, reappears in this ning “took care to show himself as a man con- ernment of the country had been a struggle of novel, as he will again in Chance (1914); he fronting without dismay ill-luck, censure, and lust between bands of absurd devils let loose narrates much of Lord Jim as an oft-told after- disaster,” and Marlow thus suggests that Jim upon the land with sabres and uniforms and dinner story and in letters. Marlow attends a feels Brown to be a man as good as himself grandiloquent phrases.” Officialdom amounts public hearing on the incident where Jim is tes- or better, and therefore treats him more hon- to the “nightmarish parody of administration tifying, and although Jim’s unpardonable fiasco orably than he deserves. To Doramin, who is without law, without security, and without repulses him, he is drawn to the young man dubious about letting the enemies go free, Jim justice.” When there is a “military revolt in and comes eventually to befriend him. promises to forfeit his life should anything the name of national honour,” Conrad means Jim drifts from one humble job to another, go wrong. Things go seriously wrong, the de- that the forces of native avarice are gathering until the merchant Stein, a fellow romantic parting scoundrels open fire from their canoe, under the banner of expropriating the gringo obsessed with exotic butterflies, offers him and Dain Waris, Doramin’s son and Jim’s best expropriators. A familiar picture, true as ever. the chance to begin again, in the remote friend, is killed. Jewel entreats her beloved to Familiar, too, is the contemptuous treat- jungle settlement of Patusan, where no one fight for his life but he refuses. As good as his ment of the English and American represen- has heard of his humiliation and dishonor. word, Jim presents himself to Doramin, who tatives of material interests who effectively Imprisoned upon arrival by the rajah, a local shoots him dead. Romantic idylls, as Conrad become the new rulers. Charles Gould, owner warlord protective of his business interests, learned long ago, inevitably die hard. of the San Tomé silver mine, believes that his Jim makes a daring escape and finds shelter To explain Jim’s destruction, Maya Jasanoff money-making concern will be the founda- with the rival chieftain, Doramin, a peaceable once again finds hopelessly fouled civilization tion of a sound political order: man suffering the rajah’s predations. With at fault. pluck, muscle, and ingenuity, Jim mounts a What is wanted here is law, good faith, host of cannon rescued from desuetude on a The tragedy ofLord Jim was that what order, security. Anyone can declaim strategic hill, and leads a successful war party passed for “civilization” was coming for about these things, but I pin my faith to to drive the rajah’s henchman Sherif Ali out Patusan. The steamship edged out the material interests. Only let the material of the country. Adventure, friendship, popu- sailing ship. Hypocrisy, selfishness, and interests once get a firm footing, and lar adulation, honor apparently restored, and greed triumphed over honesty and hard they are bound to impose the condi-

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tions on which alone they can continue and Conrad agree, is the American financier doing no more but seeking for peace in com- to exist. Mr. Holroyd, whose sinister expansion of mon with the rest of mankind—the peace manifest destiny projects an entire world cor- of soothed vanity, of satisfied appetites, or The revolution supported by Gould that roded by the imposition of Yankee “industry, perhaps of appeased conscience.” This choice brings about the secession of the relatively trade, law, journalism, art, politics, and reli- mockery of high-minded revolutionary as- prosperous province of Sulaco from the hope- gion.” Conrad, she writes, “anticipated the piration comes in a description of the Pro- less Costaguana actually does protect his ma- ascent of an American-led consortium of ‘ma- fessor, who roams the London streets with terial interests and introduces good govern- terial interests.’ ‘Material interests’ would dic- his hand in his pocket and on the detona- ment for the first time. Yet the future looks tate the futures of new nations. They would tor of the explosive he always carries with forbidding nevertheless, as the more enlight- make imperialism continue to thrive whether him; “miserable and undersized,” driven by ened Dr. Monygham, who is Conrad’s mouth- or not it had the word ‘empire’ attached to it.” “vengeful bitterness.” In his willingness to kill piece here, warns the idealistic Mrs. Gould: Imperialism without empire; that too sounds and die “procur[ing] for himself the appear- familiar. Jasanoff cites with approbation the ances of power and personal prestige,” he is There is no peace and no rest in the de- relevant definition of imperialism as “the ex- the classic man of ressentiment whom Fried- velopment of material interests. They ploitation of an increasing number of small rich Nietzsche etched in acid—the man for have their law, and their justice. But it or weak nations by a handful of the richest whom the world is not good enough because is founded on expediency, and is inhu- or most powerful nations.” That definition is he is not good enough for the world. And the man; it is without rectitude, without Lenin’s. Conrad, Jasanoff allows, would have Professor is the least contemptible specimen the continuity and the force that can been appalled by any suggestion of comrade- of the revolutionary character in Conrad’s be found only in a moral principle. Mrs. ship with this revolutionary founding father; novel. Gould, the time approaches when all she evidently cherishes it. The other socialists and anarchists of sev- that the Gould Concession stands for eral nationalities, who meet in Mr. Verloc’s shall weigh as heavily upon the people Most Ardent of Revolutionaries apartment behind his shop that sells revolu- as the barbarism, cruelty, and misrule of tionary literature beside pornography, are var- a few years back. ith suave irony conrad deliv- iously paragons of incapacity or self-seeking ers his opinion of revolutionaries or “underhand malevolence.” And they are as Jasanoff is exultantly in her element with Win The Secret Agent: “in their own well-fed as the most voracious capitalist: these this novel. The arch-villain ofNostromo, she way the most ardent of revolutionaries are are fat men, apostles of supposedly noble, aus-

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- 2018. 1 3262018 44455 Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 93 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm tere ideas whose physiques display their pure- amount of policing would keep Britain revolutionary violence. That is Conrad’s ly material interests. safe, detectives warned, while people of teaching in this savage story. Mr. Verloc, who has been a police infor- “very unsafe tendencies” were allowed Jasanoff’s strained attempts to claim Con- mant because he needed the money, under- “to land on our shores practically with rad as a prototype for the real modern literary takes to blow up the Greenwich Observatory no questions asked.” hero—the globally aware intellectual with the because he is afraid of losing the favor of his correct political disposition—tend to misread meal ticket, Mr. Vladimir, official of an -un Pity the poor immigrant Conrad: “There’s his novels, or to ignore them in the pursuit of named embassy that is clearly Russian. But no place that’s home,” Jasanoff laments. All deeper truths that the novelist was apparently Verloc entrusts the delivery of the bomb to this ironic boilerplate is of course the familiar too obtuse to recognize. The Dawn Watch is his mentally retarded brother-in-law, Stevie, progressive electioneering for more compas- the kind of book that garners accolades from who stumbles on the way and blows himself sion. But Jasanoff in her long plot summary all the right people and wins the choicest priz- to pieces. Fecklessness and viciousness pull of The Secret Agent fails to remark that Ste- es; and it surely deserves them. in tandem to propel Conrad’s plot, and the vie’s boundless compassion is feeble-minded Joseph Conrad will survive the ministra- author manages to be at once sorrowing and folly that makes him susceptible to Verloc’s tions of the professors, and will endure as the blackly amused as he tells his tale, one of his murderous program. The suffering of a poor modern master of the tragic sense of life. Hav- best. horse drawing a cab and being beaten by the ing searched the world and found moral con- Turning from the novel’s concern with driver, and the suffering of the cabman him- fusion everywhere, he spares but a select few alien revolutionaries to Conrad’s biography self who complains to Stevie that he too is a his bitter yet savory irony, and those few are and the temper of his time, Jasanoff flies off poor beast, raise Stevie to the threshold of the ones who live by the several simple ideas into the anti-immigrant fever of 1907: higher political consciousness: “Bad world that hardly seem like ideas at all to those who for poor people.” Stevie’s sensitivity and fury are proudest of being thought serious think- An “alien invasion” was consuming Lon- make him an embryonic revolutionary. “In ers: honor, courage, fidelity, attention to the don, warned anti-immigration activists. the face of anything which affected directly work at hand. Without these life is nothing They claimed (contrary to statistics) or indirectly his morbid dread of pain, Ste- at all; and Conrad knows the perils of looking that immigrants lowered wages, raised vie ended by turning vicious…. The anguish too long into nothing. rents, and introduced vice and crime. of immoderate compassion was succeeded When you think a foreigner might take by the pain of an innocent but pitiless rage.” Algis Valiunas is a fellow at the Ethics and Pub- your job, you protest. When you think a The mental defective whipped into a frenzy lic Policy Center and a contributing editor of the foreigner might kill you, you panic. No of compassion becomes the pliable tool of New Atlantis.

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The Dark at the End of the Tunnel

The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor mean that we can finally put the passionate in- upon receiving the beefy companion book, I was it lost on the front pages of the New York tensity of the Vietnam era behind us? On the turned first to the index, asking: Who got in- Times, or on the college campuses. It was lost in one hand, gazing into the dark chasm grown terviewed? Whose perspective got played up Washington, D.C., even before Americans as- from the political and cultural fissures of that or down? How many radical social critics got sumed sole responsibility for the fighting in 1965 era, I am inclined to agree with Phil Gioia, a invited to enlighten the rest of us on how the and before they realized the country was at war; veteran who served two combat tours between horrors of Vietnam were an expression of the indeed, even before the first American units were 1968 and 1970: “The Vietnam War drove a sickness of America’s soul? deployed. stake right into the heart of America…and The short answer is: none. The grizzled we’ve never recovered.” Next to the Civil War, hawks and doves of the war generation are men- hese forceful words are from der- tioned but not featured, and the same is true of eliction of Duty, the 1997 bestseller by their squabbling progeny. Instead, Burns and TU.S. Army Lieutenant General H.R. Discussed in this essay: Novick spent ten painstaking years blending McMaster. Re-issued in 2017, when McMaster together a stunning wealth of archival visual became President Trump’s second national se- The Vietnam War, material; a crisp narration written by Geoffrey curity advisor, the book offers a blow-by-blow, directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. C. Ward (who has collaborated with Burns on or rather blunder-by-blunder, account of how Screenplay by Geoffrey C. Ward. several previous series, including The Civil War, two successive Democratic administrations Public Broadcasting Service Baseball, Jazz, and The Roosevelts) and spoken led America into a conflagration that lasted by the actor Peter Coyote; and most important, 20 years; cost $139 billion (by official estimate; the testimonies of 80 men and women who ei- the true figure is doubtless much larger); and the Vietnam war roused more agony, rage, and ther participated in the hard fighting or were resulted in the deaths of 58,000 American frustration than anything else in American directly affected by it. soldiers, 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers, history. The intensity of those passions may Some of these participants are warriors for 5,000 soldiers from U.S.-allied nations, 1.1 wax and wane, but their residue persists. whom Vietnam became a Dantean inferno: million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong On the other hand, after my 18-hour im- Everett Alvarez, Huy Duc, Roger Harris, fighters, and 2 million civilians. mersion in The Vietnam War, the ten-part Hal Kushner, John Musgrave. Some are sol- McMaster’s account is strangely satisfying, documentary series that premiered on PBS diers who became poets and fiction writers: because while not quite a conspiracy theory, it last September, I am tempted to say yes, some Philip Caputo, Bao Ninh, Nguyen Ngoc, Tim relieves the mental strain of sorting through the Americans have made their peace with Viet- O’Brien. Others are military, intelligence, and myriad reasons why the Vietnam war turned nam. Produced by PBS stalwarts Ken Burns government officials who struggled to build a out so badly. His list of culprits is refreshingly and Lynn Novick, the series was the public viable political system in the South: Bui Diem, short: neither the warriors fighting the war, nor network’s highest-rated program of 2016-17. Rufus Phillips, Frank Snepp, Tran Ngoc the media covering it, nor the protesters march- During the first broadcast it was streamed Chau. Still others are family members who ing against it, nor even the enemy, come in for more than 8.4 million times, including a Viet- lost loved ones: Carol and Jean-Marie Crock- much blame. Instead, the waste and tragedy are namese-language version that was streamed er, Duong Van Mai Elliott, Victoria Harrison. laid at the feet of two presidents, John F. Ken- 620,000 times. Today the DVDs and down- And finally, several participants are former en- nedy and (especially) Lyndon B. Johnson, and loads are selling briskly. emies: Ho Huu Lan, Le Quan Cong, Nguyen their top military and civilian advisors, whose That’s all very well, you might say. But the Nguyet Anh, Nguyen Thanh Tung. “failings were many and reinforcing: arrogance, steady decline of the PBS NewsHour, plus a Very few of these names will ring a bell, weakness, lying in pursuit of self-interest, and, good deal of politically tendentious program- but that is the point. The war as experienced above all, the abdication of responsibility for ming made possible by the Corporation for by these people is not red (or blue) meat for the American people.” Progressive Broadcasting and Viewers Not today’s polarized politics. It is not a political It is now 43 years since the last American Like You, might lead conservative or middle- football to be tossed back and forth between was helicoptered out of Saigon, and McMas- of-the-road viewers to expect The Vietnam the yakking heads on cable TV “news.” It is ter’s culprits have departed this life. Does this War to be a left-wing screed. That is why, more real than that—more like a live grenade.

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In short, The Vietnam War is a masterpiece of tious way? My answer is no. The soundtrack documentary filmmaking. contains three main elements: a dark elec- tronic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Weight and Velocity which evokes multiple fine gradations of fear, in the suspicion, and aggression; an Asian-influenced nfelicitously, this masterpiece starts instrumental score by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk next issue with a gimmick: a half-dozen clips of famil- Road Ensemble, which lends beauty and gravi- Iiar news footage—a helicopter discharg- tas to scenes of horror, heroism, and sorrow; ing soldiers into a rice paddy, elliptical napalm and a brilliantly selected playlist of rock and bombs tumbling down through the clouds, soul hits from the 1960s, which creates a mag- etc.—played backward as if to say: Here we go, netic field holding the whole thing together. folks, we’re rewinding into the past! Mercifully, There is certainly no musical support for CRB Summer 2018 this lasts only a minute or so, and then we are the “Days of Rage” rampages that disrupted transported to French Indochina, tracing the downtown Chicago in October 1969. The nar- murky life story of Ho Chi Minh and witness- rator states clearly that these would-be mili- ing the arrival, in 1945, of a quartet of Ameri- tant actions, organized by the Weathermen Dennis Hale and can OSS officers seeking local allies against the faction of Students for a Democratic Society Marc Landy occupying Japanese. The Americans promise (SDS), drew only a couple of hundred people, Did Liberalism Fail? to support Vietnamese independence after because most of those who turned up on the World War II; Ho presents himself as a lover first day were scared off by the large number of American-style liberty, not a Soviet-trained of police. Bill Zimmerman, the series’s resi- David P. Goldman Communist. Both break their word. dent leftist, chalks up the chaos to “infantile the Left’s Foreign Policy At that point most viewers will be swept into fantasies” of violent revolution. The narrator a forward momentum that gathers weight and also quotes a passing “Chicago citizen” telling Helen Andrews velocity by the hour. Some critics have com- one rioter, “I don’t know what your cause is, Conspicuous Consumption plained of jarring transitions between the in- but you have just set it back a hundred years.” tensity of combat on the field of battle and the Then there’s Jane Fonda, whose two-week R. Shep Melnick inanity of life on the home front. But the fact is, visit to North Vietnam in July 1972 included Federal Entitlement those transitions were jarring in reality. In no a visit to an enemy anti-aircraft emplacement, Programs previous American war had the movement of where she allowed herself to be photographed soldiers in and out of the conflict been so rapid; wearing an enemy helmet, and ten broadcast Karl Walling or the news coverage so unfiltered and grisly; or appearances on Radio Hanoi, during which Alexander Hamilton’s the return of wounded, exhausted, sometimes she denounced American imperialism and traumatized soldiers so marred by indifference, called U.S. bomber crews and POWs war Politics hostility, and (on occasion) protest. criminals who should be tried and probably Speaking of protest, other critics have ac- executed. “I’ve always thought the anger di- Ilya Shapiro cused the series of taking sides in the bitter rected at Jane Fonda was overblown,” writes Keeping the Constitution conflict that developed between young Ameri- former Air Force Colonel James Barber, re- cans fighting the war and young Americans op- viewing the series on the website Military. Allen C. Guelzo: posing it. The Left charges thatThe Vietnam com. But then he continues: Reconstruction War is a corporate-funded whitewash of an im- & Republicanism perialistic genocide, the Right that it is a paean I was wrong. The filmmakers have -un to the 1960s counterculture and the radical earthed some footage of Jane Fonda that Daniel J. Mahoney New Left. Both sides need to think again. will shock anyone who doesn’t remem- Roger Scruton In particular, conservatives might consider ber seeing it on the news back in 1972. that the very first image of the counterculture She’s been accused of many things re- Theodore Dalrymple to appear in the series—an anonymous pair lated to that trip to North Vietnam of stoned hippies dancing in a park—is defi- and there’s been an extraordinary effort Leonardo da Vinci nitely not flattering. What’s more, this image to prove that most of them are untrue. appears right after a sequence showing the What she actually did will now be out A.M. Juster: funeral of U.S. Army Sergeant Pascal Poolaw, there for everyone to see for themselves. The Aeneid a Kiowa Indian and much-decorated veteran of World War II and Korea, who served in The series has one clear bias: nearly every Vietnam along with his three sons. The infor- veteran interviewed turns out to have become mation that Native Americans were the most openly critical of the war. But here we must Subscribe today. decorated ethnic group to serve in Vietnam tread carefully, because none of their criticisms does not seem calculated to evoke sympathy is ideological, anti-American, or pro-Commu- www.claremont.org/subscribe for hippies, no matter how many headbands nist. John Musgrave, who suffered a near fatal and beads they might be wearing. chest wound and now helps veterans of Iraq Nothing manipulates emotion better than and Afghanistan cope with PTSD, praises music, as every propagandist knows. Does The John Kerry’s 1971 testimony before Con- Vietnam War use music in a politically tenden- gress as “incredible” and “extraordinary,” even

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 96 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm though Kerry regaled his listeners with a long terviewed for the series, “Nothing could have munist massacres of South Vietnamese civil- list of “day-to-day” atrocities committed by U.S. prepared us for a battle like that.” It also shows ians in Hue during the 1968 Tet offensive, its soldiers, at one point comparing their “ravages” Moore’s emotional tribute to the “tremendous first-hand accounts of ‘war-weariness, anti- to those of Genghis Khan. But others strongly fighting man” he had the honor of command- war feelings and corruption in wartime North object. For example, Phil Gioia says, ing: “He’s courageous, he’s aggressive, and he’s Vietnam,’ and the accounts by Vietnamese kind.” But in a cold-blooded coda, the series of the harsh ‘treatment of the people in the What I saw in Vietnam was not the quotes a different North Vietnamese com- South following [Hanoi’s] 1975 victory.’” soldier that Mr. Kerry or his colleagues mander on the lesson his army learned at Ia Stein also quotes Ben Wilkinson, the cur- were describing…. There was no wide- Drang: “The way to fight the American was to rent head of the U.S.-founded Fulbright Uni- spread atrocity. There were a couple of ‘grab him by his belt.’ To get so close that his versity in Ho Chi Minh City, stating that “the units that went right off the rails and we artillery and airpower are useless.” party and the government are really jealously can talk about that. But they were not protective of their master narrative of the out-of-control animals…. I’m still very Truth and Propaganda war.” By “master narrative” Wilkinson clearly angry about that. means propaganda, because, as he adds, the n their introduction to the com- regime has always “glorified the great victory” More than anything, these veterans de- panion book, Burns and Novick write, of the Vietnamese people against “foreign plore the same type of high-level chicanery I“There is no single truth in war.” That has aggression and an invasion from the United and low-level incompetence that McMaster a nice ring to it, but surely some truths are States,” while suppressing public knowledge deplores in his book. We see this in Episode more important than others. In the case of of that victory’s cost in “death and destruc- 2’s painful account of the Battle of Ap Bac the Vietnam war, one important truth is that tion.” Stein adds that when the PBS series (1963), when to the dismay of their U.S. advi- the Communist victory did not relieve but was screened for a more general audience in sors the Seventh Division of the Army of the rather exacerbated the suffering of the Viet- Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, its realistic Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) got outwitted namese people. The producers spend a lot of portrayal of the war was “really shocking.” and decimated by the Viet Cong. We see it time detailing the April 1975 exit of Ameri- In Washington, too, there are doubtless again in Episode 8’s even more painful ac- can personnel from Saigon. But they show some powerful figures who are deeply unhap- count of the Battle of Hamburger Hill (1969), very little of the “Vietnamized” war that had py with The Vietnam War. Possible reasons when a combined force of U.S. and ARVN been grinding away for the previous two years. for their displeasure include its description troops spent 11 days assaulting the steep Even less attention is paid to the war’s af- of American G.I.s killing defenseless civilians slopes of Dong Ap Bia, a 3,000-foot massif termath. To be fair, the narrator does mention at My Lai, its first-hand accounts of anti-war near the Laotian border, only to find the ene- the incarceration of roughly 300,000 South sentiments in wartime America, and its re- my vanished and the sole definition of victory Vietnamese in so-called “re-education camps.” porting of harsh treatment toward African- a ten-to-one “kill ratio.” But rather than provide a full account of the American soldiers. But the U.S. government Other victories were more tangible. For ex- torture, starvation, disease, and death that oc- has never suppressed public knowledge of ample, the series does a brilliant job of recount- curred there, Burns and Novick run footage these things for the sake of a jealously pro- ing the Battle of Ia Drang (1965). Fought in the from a North Vietnamese propaganda film tected master narrative. And the American forbidding landscape of the Central Highlands, in which a couple of hundred healthy-looking people don’t want it to, because last I checked, where the Americans’ only access was by heli- men are shown taking instruction in a pleas- we still dislike propaganda and believe in the copter, the grueling three-day ordeal was the ant outdoor classroom. Much as I admire this First Amendment. first direct encounter between the U.S. army series, I am troubled by the way it uses North Does America need a master narrative and North Vietnamese regulars, and one of Vietnamese propaganda to illustrate events— about the Vietnam War? In the introduction the bloodiest battles of the war. without labeling it as such, much less noting to the companion book Burns and Novick In 1992 the Battle of Ia Drang was memo- the contrast between its carefully sanitized also declare, “Each of us can only see the rialized in a book, We Were Soldiers Once… images and the raw, unfiltered view of the war world as we are; we are all prisoners of our and Young, by Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore, found in the archives of American and other own experience.” Okay, but this goes to the who commanded the First Battalion of the Western news outlets. opposite extreme. If the 80 individuals inter- Seventh Cavalry, and United Press reporter We must keep things in perspective, how- viewed for this series are all prisoners of their Joe Galloway. The book was a bestseller, and ever. While making the series Burns and own experience, then why bother to interview in 2002 it was made into a film,We Were Sol- Novick gained access to a fair amount of them? What could they possibly say to us? Or diers, starring Mel Gibson. The film is one of North Vietnamese propaganda. But that to each other? the few ever made by Hollywood that sup- doesn’t mean they bought into its message. If Perhaps we should remind ourselves that ported the Vietnam war, and along with its they had bought into it, then the Communist it takes a lot of blather to raise $30 million. flag-rippling patriotism and graphic but real- government of Vietnam would be pleased But I do wish Burns wouldn’t say things like, istic gore, it depicts Ia Drang as a total victory with the result—and it’s not. As reported by “What we try to do in the film is create a space for the Americans. No doubt this pleased a Jeff Stein ofNewsweek , “Powerful figures in where all of these diverse perspectives could lot of Americans who agreed with Moore’s the Hanoi government are…deeply unhappy be represented and feel in some ways that they statement, in his book, that “every damn Hol- with the series, so much so that they ousted could be safe.” Better to let the work speak for lywood movie got it wrong.” officials in the foreign ministry’s press opera- itself—and to trust that the cumulative ef- By contrast, The Vietnam War does not tion who helped the filmmakers set up inter- fect of so many vividly told memories is not depict Ia Drang as a total victory. To be sure, views.” Quoting a former CIA officer fluent to blur the history of the war, but to deepen it measures the grave losses suffered by the in Vietnamese who assisted with the series, it to the point where the ideologically tenden- North Vietnamese: in the words of Lo Khac Stein lists the possible reasons for Hanoi’s tious voices of both Right and Left become as Tam, a North Vietnamese platoon leader in- displeasure: “[The film’s] description of com- sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2018 Page 97 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

The Guillotine of Sophistry

he trump tower has 58 floors, but, mirabile dictu, the If an unborn child were not, as in fact it is slightly more than half Trumps’ apartment is on 68. And, presumably, the president the time, of a different sex than the mother; if it did not have a com- Tcan take down his faked Time magazine cover portrait at Mar- pletely different and unique DNA; if it were not viable from the start a-Lago now that he has a real one. As one might expect from some- and would not survive to term and then, statistically, for 80 years one so unstuck from fact, though he is capable of breathtaking dou- more thereafter given only the absence of an act of destruction; if blespeak, he does it with such unimpeachable (no allusion intended) abortion opponents were consistent in using the emotive, Anglo- and genuine sincerity that it is no more shocking than if a homeless Saxon word woman and not switching to the Latin fetus instead of person claimed to be Napoleon. baby or child; if the stupidity of the question “When does life begin?” When doublespeak is less, shall we say, looney, and uttered or writ- was not affirmed by the fact that the sperm and the egg are alive -be ten in such a way as to pretend to thought, reason, logic, or law, it is fore the question is unnecessarily formulated; if only one body, not an aggression against general intelligence and should be an occasion two, gave rise to the conflict; if in common and statute law there for anger. Particularly in politics, no reason exists not to be livid in were not long-standing strictures upon what we may do even with reaction to the rhetorical methodology of thieves, con men, grifters, our own bodies; and if the destruction of one’s progeny were not con- cheats, liars, and three-card monte dealers. And yet such language is trary to every biological imperative, decent human impulse, and civi- employed, at what used to be the highest levels of political discourse, lized principle, only then—and perhaps not even then—the question by the arrogant, grasping worms (I am told that worms cannot grasp, would not be, is this the taking of an innocent human life, or is it not? but what about Dick Durbin?) who would presume to lead us. For example, because abortion on demand and without restric- ut as it is the question, it does not warrant assign- tion—the holiest sacrament of modern liberalism—has so divided ment to the logically and philosophically specious category of the electorate, it is a problem for politicians who are for it but would Binconsequential and morally irrelevant preference. The next ostensibly be against it, and those who are against it but would osten- time a spineless politician says, “I’m personally against abortion, but I sibly be for it. Less-than-courageous political aspirants must thread think it’s a decision that should be left up to a woman and her doctor,” this needle, especially in heavily Catholic “blue” districts, and doubly you might express your agreement as follows: so if they themselves are Catholics. To do so, they have come up with an exquisitely pusillanimous Indeed, I myself am personally against racism, but I think it’s a straddle so common that purely by formulaic repetition it generally decision that should be left up to a woman and the Ku Klux Klan. fails to produce the contempt and derision it deserves. They imagine I’m personally against discrimination against homosexuals, but I they can get away—and mostly they do get away—with being the think it’s a decision that should be left up to a woman and Islamic face of Janus, Doctor Dolittle’s pushmi-pullyu, or the human mani- State. And I’m personally against pollution, but I think it’s a de- festation of the late Senator Arlen Specter’s “Scottish verdict” (in cision that should be left up to a woman and the Exxon Valdez. order to avoid voting guilty or not guilty) in President Clinton’s im- peachment trial. A more contemporary cultural reference might be And so on…. to the comedy show Little Britain’s Vicky, the eye-darting, lumpen- Although most political and ethical issues present opportunities proletaria-esque, fat girl whose answer to every challenging question for nuance and compromise, some do not. When politicians engage is “Yeah, but no, but yeah but no, but yeah but no but yeah.” in doublespeak, they attempt to rob democracy and reason of the el- That is, like Mario Cuomo as described by Vincent Cannato in the ement of choice, something that otherwise they inappropriately and Winter 2018 CRB (“A New York State of Mind”), they claim to be promiscuously endorse in an effort to evade moral clarity. “personally” against abortion, but would leave it up to “a woman and Unfortunately, it may not be practical to send all such politicians, her doctor.” This assumes the division of oneself into personhood, and and grief counselors, to a renovated (though not too renovated) Devil’s what else? Granted, one would not want to force into law one’s per- Island. But they can be called out, and they can be ridiculed; such as sonal preference or distaste for or against, let’s say, chipotle peppers or when, in response to Megyn Kelly, Stormy Daniels’s lawyer asserted disco music, but to treat abortion as a matter of inexplicable, anachro- that his client was “a principled woman,” and the studio audience burst nistic religious doctrine; arbitrary preference; or capricious taste is to into laughter. As Mario Cuomo never said, but a (late) 18th-century demonstrate conceptual blindness or bottomless moral cowardice. French aristocrat might have, ridicule is the guillotine of sophistry.

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