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April 17, 2017 $4.99

RAMESH PONNURU ROBERT D. ATKINSON Anatomy of a Health-Care Debacle In Defense of Robots

‘Secession,‘Secession, Dude!’Dude!’ KEVINKEVIN D.WILLIAMSON D.WILLIAMSON on the folly of Calexit

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APRIL 17, 2017 | VOLUME LXIX, NO. 7 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 27 Andrew Cline on Chuck Berry No, California p. 24 The movement for Californian independence expects to have an BOOKS, ARTS initiative on the 2018 ballot, which & MANNERS would in turn lead to a 2019 40 REAGAN IN THE WILDERNESS referendum. The organizers of the Clark S. Judge reviews Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, “Yes California” campaign say 1976–1980, by Craig Shirley. that winning the referendum would 42 PRESERVING AMERICAN be only the first step in the long POWER and complex process of Paul Lettow reviews Earning the establishing a free and Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the independent California. Kevin D. Williamson World, by Robert D. Kaplan.

COVER: ROMAN GENN 43 THE POWERHOUSE ON FIFTH Kathryn Jean Lopez reviews Sons of ARTICLES Saint Patrick: A History of the THE HEALTH-CARE CRACK-UP by Ramesh Ponnuru Archbishops of New York from 16 Dagger John to Timmnytow, The Republicans stumble. by George J. Marlin and Brad Miner. STOP SUPPORTING PALESTINIAN TERROR by Elliott Abrams 20 44 RISE TO DOMINANCE Why Congress should pass the Taylor Force Act. Donald T. Critchlow reviews A DEFENDER OF HIS COUNTRY by Jay Nordlinger The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 22 1815–1914, by Richard J. Evans. Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Russian democracy leader who has escaped death twice. 24 FOUNDING ROCKER by Andrew Cline 46 BACK TO THE WELL We all live in Chuck Berry’s world. Ross Douthat reviews Logan and Beauty and the Beast.

FEATURES 47 CENTER OF THE WORLD Richard Brookhiser sees history 27 NO, CALIFORNIA by Kevin D. Williamson in Jerusalem. Shady Russians, troubled dreamers, and the daft campaign for Calexit. 30 FRANCE VOTES by Charles C. W. Cooke As a strange cultural politics pushes it rightward. SECTIONS 32 MALIGN MARCUSE by David French 4 Letters to the Editor Much of what afflicts the modern university can be traced to a 6 The Week single influential essay. 38 The Long View ...... Rob Long Athwart ...... James Lileks IN DEFENSE OF ROBOTS by Robert D. Atkinson 39 35 43 Poetry ...... Jennifer Reeser Why we should not reject technology in order to ‘protect’ workers. 48 Happy Warrior ...... David Harsanyi

NATIONAL REVIEW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by N ATIONAL REVIEW, Inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 2017. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to Editorial Dept., N ATIONAL REVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONALREVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00A.M . to 10:30 P.M. Eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATIONALREVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to N ATIONAL REVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATES: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. base_new_milliken-mar 22.qxd 3/28/2017 11:46 AM Page 1 letters-READY_QXP-1127940387.qxp 3/29/2017 2:22 PM Page 4 Letters

APRIL 17 ISSUE; PRINTED MARCH 30

EDITORINCHIEF Richard Lowry Senior Editors Faster and Faster Richard Brookhiser / Jonah Goldberg / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Health care is a deeply complicated subject, and the same goes for economics, Literary Editor Michael Potemra Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy and when the two collide, the results can get pretty technical. Despite all this, Executive Editor Reihan Salam Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson in your April 3 issue, Yuval Levin (“Scoring the GOP Health-Care Plan”) does National Correspondent John J. Miller Senior Political Corre spondent Jim Geraghty an excellent job of explaining the ill-fated plan’s virtues and flaws. Still, there Art Director Luba Kolomytseva were points in the piece where even this highly motivated reader had trouble Deputy Managing Editors Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz following all the math. Consider, for example, this sentence (emphasis added): Production Editor Katie Hosmer Assistant to the Editor Rachel Ogden “Second, it assumes that Medicaid spending growth will accelerate much Research Associate Alessandra Trouwborst faster than overall health spending in the coming years . . .” If I understand Contributing Editors Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Daniel Foster properly, this means that the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of Roman Genn / Arthur L. Herman / Lawrence Kudlow change of Medicaid spending will be a lot bigger than the same figure for over- Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCart hy all spending. Yikes! I don’t know what that means, but it sounds almost as Kate O’Beirne / Andrew Stuttaford / Robert VerBruggen scary as single-payer. NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor Charles C. W. Cooke Managing Editor Katherine Connell Patricia C. Ellison Deputy Managing Editor Mark Antonio Wright National-Affairs Columnist John Fund St. Petersburg, Fla. Staff Writer David French Reporter Katherine Timpf Associate Editors Molly Powell / Nick Tell Digital Director Ericka Andersen Manager, Office & Development Russell Jenkins Web Editorial Assistant Grant DeArmitt Web Developer Wendy Weihs Crisp Cal Web Producer Scott McKim EDITORS- AT- LARGE David Harsanyi’s piece “Sensitive Senate” (March 6) reminded me of a funny Kathryn Jean Lopez / John O’Sullivan story told about Calvin Coolidge. When he was governor of Massachusetts, two NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE THOMASL. RHODESFELLOW of the state senators had a bitter argument, which ended with one telling the Ian Tuttle other, “Go to hell.” The offended politician went to see Coolidge to ask him to BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Alexandra DeSanctis / Austin Yack address the matter. Coolidge told him, “I have looked up the law, senator. You don’t have to go.” COLLEGIATENETWORKFELLOW Paul Crookston Contributors Isaiah Teichert Hadley Arkes / James Bowman / Eliot A. Cohen Big Sur, Calif. Dinesh D’Souza / Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman James Gard ner / David Gelernter / George Gilder Jeffrey Hart / Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune / Alan Reynolds Tracy Lee Simmons / Terry Teachout / Vin Weber

Vice President Jack Fowler Pennsylvania Avenue Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya Your March 20 issue (the Week) Business Services Alex Batey Circulation Manager Jason Ng calls the game of Monopoly “per- Head of Integrated Sales Jim Fowler fect for the age of Trump.” In Senior Account Executive Kevin Longstreet some ways, perhaps, it is; yet there are also key differences. To wit: In PUBLISHERCHAIRMAN Garrett Bewkes John Hillen Monopoly, property has to be FOUNDER bought at the stated price, instead William F. Buckley Jr. of getting it condemned with emi- PATRONSANDBENEFACTORS Robert Agostinelli nent domain; and when you go bankrupt, you have to actually stop playing. Dale Brott Mr. and Mrs. Michael Conway Mark and Mary Davis Ralph Cromwell Virginia James Linden, N.J. Christopher M. Lantrip Brian and Deborah Murdock Mr. & Mrs. Richard Spencer Mr. & Mrs. L. Stanton Towne Peter J. Travers Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected].

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n Carlos the Jackal, the notorious Marxist terrorist, has just See page 13. received his third life sentence in France. If he is getting bored with those, the United States does offer an exciting alternative.

n The chairman and the ranking member of the Senate In tel - ligence Committee, FBI director James Comey, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes are all in agreement: Donald Trump’s accusation that his predecessor ordered the “wiretap- ping” of Trump Tower in the final weeks of the presidential campaign was baseless. Nunes provided a twist in this convo- luted saga, though, when he informed reporters that there is reason to believe that the intelligence community “incidental- ly collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition”; that some of that information was “widely disseminated” inside the executive branch even though it had no foreign-intelligence value; and that certain individuals’ iden- tities were revealed (“unmasked”), potentially in violation of intelligence protocols. If Nunes’s information is accurate, it is deeply troubling. Un for tu nate ly, its importance has been over- shadowed by Nunes’s foolish decision to disclose his news to the White House before he disclosed it to his own committee, and by his evasiveness about where he is getting his informa- tion. We have repeatedly encouraged the congressional intelli- n The White House’s proposed budget has the usual suspects gence committees to conduct a thorough and, to the extent enraged. The president would, among other things, end funding possible, transparent investigation of the various allegations of liberal favorites such as the National Endowment for the Arts tying the Trump campaign to Russia, and into the leaks that and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and impose deep have fueled those allegations. If those committees are not up cuts on the Environmental Protection Agency. Unable to accuse to the task, Congress ought to form a select committee. The the president of wanting to kill Big Bird, whose nest is currently president’s reckless accusation may have been discredited, being feathered by HBO, left-wing pundits pounced on news that but important questions clearly remain, and there’s no excuse the president’s budget would also end community-development for not getting to the bottom of them. block grants, which are sometimes used to supplement other fed- eral funds to the charity Meals on Wheels, and accused him of n The Associated Press reports that, a decade before becoming wanting to kill the elderly. (In fact, much of the organization’s the short-lived manager of Donald Trump’s presidential cam- funding comes from private donations, and the budget does not paign, Paul Manafort was paid $10 million for lobbying work cut the main source of federal funding to the program: the Older on behalf of aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Americans Act.) Theatrical outrage surrounding discretionary- Vladimir Putin. In a 2005 proposal, Manafort suggested that spending cuts has become a ritual of American public life not his work could “greatly benefit the Putin Government” and because these programs depend on federal spending or because “re-focus, both internally and externally, [its] policies.” There there is much money at stake (the NEA’s budget is a microscopic is no indication that Manafort did anything illegal, and his $148 million), but because the real sources of our fiscal discon- work on behalf of shady regimes has long been known on K tent—the entitlements and interest on the debt that together Street. But with Con gress pursuing investigations related to constitute 70 percent of the federal budget—are considered sac - potential Russian influence in last year’s presidential election, ro sanct. Until the parties address that problem, we’re doomed to these latest revelations have raised eyebrows. The White furious fights over pocket change. House, clearly uncomfortable with the news, has tried to dis- tance itself from Manafort; spokes man Sean Spicer risibly n Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced that to be eligi- claimed that Manafort was a “volunteer” who played a “limited ble for Department of Justice grant money, local jurisdictions will role [in the campaign] for a very limited amount of time.” Few have to certify that they are in compliance with federal immigra- people who have worked with him would suggest that Paul tion law. The announcement reiterates an element of President Manafort is the “volunteering” type, so some hard questions Trump’s executive order aimed at “enhancing public safety in ROMAN GENN are clearly in order. the interior of the United States,” signed on January 25. The new

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THE WEEK

administration is right to use its powers to push back on sanctuary police officer was immune? Because the homeowner answered cities. The more than 300 sanctuary jurisdictions across the coun- the door holding a gun, which he unquestionably had the consti- try release thousands of illegal immigrants subject to deportation tutional right to do. The Eleventh Circuit is now the second fed- back onto the streets every year, at a risk to public safety; but, eral court of appeals (the Fourth Circuit was the first) that has more to the point, it is impossible to have a truly effective regime held that lawful gun ownership can actually diminish your other of interior enforcement if localities aren’t willing to cooperate constitutional rights, such as your Fourth Amendment right to be with the federal government even when it comes to illegal immi- free from unreasonable search and seizure. Yet exercising one grants who have been arrested for committing crimes. The Jus - constitutional right should not limit the exercise of other consti- tice Department has not issued a blanket prohibition on all tutional rights. It’s time for the Supreme Court to step in. pol i cies associated with sanctuary cities. But localities that spe - ci f i cally forbid their officials to provide information to federal n The Mid-Atlantic Liberty Festival was to be one of those im mi gra tion authorities are deliberately making one of the fed- familiar libertarian gatherings: Austin Petersen and various eral government’s basic jobs harder. It is not too much for the Libertarian-party candidates were speaking, with former vice- federal government to refuse to subsidize this behavior. presidential candidate Will Coley debating a former U.S. Senate candidate from Florida called Augustus Sol Invictus, who on n The Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan already was Election Day was not, in fact, invictus. (He lost the primary.) Mr. on the rocks—with half the nation’s attorneys general suing to Invictus is the kind of fruitcake one runs into on the fringes of stop it, enforcement had been suspended by the Supreme Court politics: His stated aim is to start a civil war, he once advocated a until the case could be heard. President Trump has put it out of eugenic approach to social issues but has repented, and he denies our misery, and it is well done. The Clean Power Plan was an that the pagan goat sacrifice he once performed after returning outgrowth of misguided efforts to regulate carbon dioxide emis- from a Thelemite pilgrimage was “sadistic.” He is supported by sions as air pollution under the Clean Air Act in a bid to curb some white supremacists, though he himself disavows that view. climate change. Even those who prefer a more aggressive On an ordinary day, this would be no more than a reminder of approach to climate change agree that the Clean Air Act is the why libertarians find it hard to get dates, but the so-called Antifa wrong legislative tool for the job (it is designed for local rather —the leftist terrorists who justify their violence by insisting that than global issues), and the EPA has long argued that the law they are battling something like the Third Reich—threatened to does not give it the tools to execute a wide-ranging climate- bomb the event, which was canceled after the Harrisburg Hilton change agenda. If the Democrats want a climate-change law, denied the organizers use of its conference rooms. There is a then let them en act one in Congress—or at least try. As some- measure of juvenile play-acting here, but shutting down free one once said, “Elections have consequences.” speech, even dopey free speech, with terroristic threats is a trou- bling business. It is also the Left’s current operating model, from n Michael Scherer of Time magazine interviewed President the Berkeley campus to the Harrisburg Hilton. Trump about the many claims he has made without a shred of evi- dence to support them. Trump stood by all of them. That Senator Ted Cruz’s father had a hand in the assassination of President n U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley demanded that Kennedy? Trump said he was just repeating “a newspaper” (the the U.N. Secretariat withdraw a report, issued by the U.N. National Enquirer, to be precise). Three million illegal votes in Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia the last election? I’ll be “proven right,” he says, citing no reason (ESCWA), accusing Israel of be- to believe him. His claims that President Obama had him wire- ing “guilty of the crime of tapped? He had put “wiretapped” in quotes, he said, not meaning apartheid.” After Haley as - to be taken literally. (He had not used quotation marks in all his serted her authority, U.N. accusations, and in any case he had no basis for attributing per- secretary general António sonal responsibility to Obama for whatever it is he meant to say Guterres agreed to with- had been done.) When Scherer noted that the editors of the Wall draw the report; his decision Street Journal had criticized Trump for sticking with this baseless resulted in the resignation accusation, Trump called the criticism part of the “fake media” of Rima Khalaf, the ex- but offered no rebuttal. Trump finished the interview by telling ecutive secretary of Scherer, “I can’t be doing too badly because I’m president, and the ESCWA. If Haley you’re not.” That wasn’t a real defense of a stubborn indifference keeps this up, the to truth. But it was at least factually accurate. population of Turtle Bay could plummet. n It’s becoming increasingly clear that multiple federal courts are fundamentally hostile to gun rights. In March, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals let stand a ruling that held that there was no right to sue a police officer who killed an innocent man in his n It was the non-handshake heard round the world. The president own home, even though the officer was at the wrong house, did of the United States and the chancellor of Germany sat in the not have a warrant, pounded on the door late at night, failed to Oval Office, as photographers snapped pictures. The photogs CQ ROLL CALL / identify himself as an officer, failed to turn on his car’s emer- started to ask, loudly and repeatedly, for a handshake. Trump did gency lights, and misunderstood a neighbor’s directions pointing not respond, staring straight ahead. Merkel turned to him and said, BILL CLARK him to a different door entirely. Why did the court hold that the “Do you want to have a handshake?” The president continued to

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stare straight ahead, not responding. Merkel sort of shrugged. presidential election but lose the second and decisive round to Did the president snub her? Or had he not heard? There is a Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year-old who broke away from the rul- debate about that. Later, he tweeted that “Germany owes vast ing party to stand as an independent. In the right corner, then, a sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more classic nationalist, in the left corner a classic progressive. Invited for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Ger - to Moscow by Russian lawmakers, Le Pen enjoyed a moment of ma ny!” We agree that our European allies should spend more on mutual admiration with Vladimir Putin, seen everywhere as the their own defense, although they do not owe us any money. Per - nationalist figurehead of the moment. With a straight face Putin haps Merkel can work on it, Trump can offer our allies more re - said, “We do not want to influence events in any way,” though a spect, and the two can shake on it. Russian bank happens to have loaned 9 million euros to the National Front. If elected, Le Pen holds out the prospect of lifting n On March 22, Khalid Masood drove an SUV at more than 70 sanctions on Russia, cooperating against terrorism, and bidding mph across Westminster Bridge on the sidewalk, crashed it past farewell to NATO and the European Union. “A new world has Big Ben, and stabbed a policeman to death, before being shot. emerged in these past years,” she says, and it appears to be one Masood’s vehicular rampage killed four, including Kurt Coch - very much to the FSB’s liking. ran, an American tourist, and injured 50. “There is a possibility we will never understand why he did this,” said one London top n Alexei Navalny is in the heroic line of Russian dissidents who cop. Time for some sleuthing, sir. Masood, born Adrian Elms, protest against injustice, no matter what the cost to them. United converted to Islam in prison and lived for several years in Saudi Russia is the party of Vladimir Putin, and Navalny calls it “the Arabia. Neighbors reported that he was a fan of drugs and hook- party of crooks and thieves.” He has published a report that turns ers, but no doubt he expected to be purged of such sins in his the corruption of Putin and his crony Dmitry Medvedev into a final act of devotion. His deed was embraced by ISIS. It was weapon against them. In March he organized a protest involving symbolically fitting that an acolyte of DIY theocracy should an estimated 60,000 demonstrators, with processions and gather- attack the Mother of Parliaments. When will Parliament’s ser- ings planned for no fewer than 99 Russian cities from Kal in in - vants understand? grad to Vladivostok. “It is all a provocation and a lie,” according to an official spokesman. Moving in without restraint, the riot n The likelihood that Geert Wilders would come out the winner police arrested an unknown number, about a thousand in Mos - in the Dutch general election had the great and the good through- cow alone. First manhandled, then detained and brought to court, out Europe in a complete panic. The man has been making the Navalny was fined and sentenced to 15 days in prison. He com- life of Mark Rutte, the respectable but dull Dutch prime minister, mented on the court, “Even the slightest semblance of justice is absolute hell. Neither respectable nor dull, Wilders says loud and totally absent here.” The purpose of the presidential elections due clear what he thinks, namely that Islam is a totalitarian ideology, in 2018 is to extend the 17 years Putin and Medvedev have al - the Koran is the equivalent of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the borders ready been in power, but Navalny hopes to run against them. The ought to be closed and there should be fewer Muslims in the last dissident with that objective was Boris Nemtsov, shot dead in country, and the Turks can forget about ever joining the European 2015 walking home at night past the Kremlin. Union. Voters evidently did not mind Islamization as much as he did. In a parliament of 150 seats, Rutte’s party obtained 33 (eight n In a television interview, John McCain said that “China is the fewer than in the previous parliament) and Wilders’s party 20 only one that can control Kim Jong-un, this crazy, fat kid that’s (fewer than anticipated). The two parties refuse all ideas of mutual running North Korea.” Someday, Senator McCain’s bluntness coalition, which gives Wilders the chance to throw down the gaunt- ought to be in the Smithsonian. let again: “Rutte is far from rid of me.” The great and the good have had more of a narrow squeak than a significant victory. n Charles Murray is the author of 13 books, one of which, The Bell Curve, provoked an authentic national controversy, maybe n The battle to retake Mosul has entered a new and deadlier the last time a high-minded book has done so in the English- phase. American forces are closer to the front, ISIS is making its speaking world. The Bell Curve, which deals with the role of last stand, and the fighting is taking place in the streets of one of intelligence in society and questions of its heritability, produced Iraq’s largest cities. In such circumstances, civilian casualties are an effect that will be immediately familiar to anyone who has inevitable, and in March came the sad news that a single American dealt with genuinely complex issues: The strength of people’s air strike may have inadvertently killed as many as 200 Iraqi civil- opinions about the subject is inversely proportional to their ians. While reports vary, it appears that many of the civilians had knowledge of it. Murray is to this day hounded by protests, most taken shelter in a basement of a building that ISIS forces were recently having been chased—literally chased—off the campus using as cover for attacks on coalition forces. By using human of Middlebury College, much to the shame of that institution and shields, fighting from civilian positions, and concealing them- its students. We strongly doubt that the protesters have read The selves within the civilian population, ISIS is in clear violation of Bell Curve, much less the well-informed criticisms of it and the the laws of war. Iraqi and American forces have the legal right and responses to those criticisms, which could fill—and have filled— strategic responsibility to expel ISIS from Iraq, and human shields volumes. Mainly what they have read is the Southern Poverty do not grant ISIS immunity from the laws of armed conflict. Law Center’s webpage about Murray, in which it libels him as a When those human shields tragically die, ISIS is to blame. racist, a white nationalist, and more. If Murray were a student at Middlebury, he might have responded by blocking the entrance n Polls in France are consistently predicting that Marine Le Pen to the SPLC’s offices. If he were a different sort of man, he might and the National Front will win the first round in the forthcoming make a good legal case against the SPLC. But he is an intellectual

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and has responded like one: He copy-edited the SPLC’s entry on That was the question confronting participants in Eden, a Brit - him to hilarious effect, with the result being published on the ish reality series, when they recently emerged from the Scottish American Enterprise Institute’s website. It is worth taking the time island they had inhabited for a year, growing their own food and to read it—and The Bell Curve, too, if you haven’t. endlessly squabbling and swatting gnats and trying to work out a set of laws, all in the belief that their doings were being broad- n For purportedly flirting with a white woman, Emmett Till, age cast—only to be told that the show had been canceled last Au - 14, was killed in Mississippi in 1955. He was black. His murder- gust, after viewers unexpectedly tired of watching people shiver ers were white. They mutilated his body, which was found in the on windswept moors. The only thing missing was a cameo by Tal la hat chie River days later. His mother arranged for an open- Rick Astley. Even though a special is being prepared with high- casket funeral as a statement against the wrong not just to him lights of the participants’ unbroadcast months, their disappoint- but to all who lived under Jim Crow. Tens of thousands showed ment at not being watched is justified. As our reality-show up to pay their respects. Last year, working from an iconic photo president well knows, Esse est percipi is as true today as it was of Till’s funeral, Dana Schutz, a Brooklyn artist, painted Open three centuries ago. Casket, which is on display at the Whitney Museum of Amer i - can Art in New York City through June 11. Schutz is white. Crit - n Loraine Maurer, 94, has been working behind the counter at a ics on the left accuse her of “cultural appropriation” and demand McDonald’s near her home in Evansville, Ind., for 44 years. She that the museum remove the work from view. No, say curators first took the job in 1973 after her husband retired and she was in there, to their credit: It’s staying. Schutz explains that she was in- search of something to do. Currently, she works the breakfast spired by empathy for Till’s mother. Those who rail that she has shift on Fridays and Saturdays, beginning at 5 A.M. At a party in no right to express that emotion because of her race are lashed to March honoring her for her years of service, she told local media a belief in identity politics. Its logic is akin to that of the white that she’s thought about retiring recently (several of her children supremacism they think they’re decrying. have done so) but would miss it too much. She regards her co - workers and regular customers as friends: “That’s why I work, n New York has a Havana Film Festival, which is devoted to because I love them all.” Here’s to a job well done. Latin American cinema. The festival includes a competition, in which a film by Carlos Lechuga was entered. The Cuban gov- n David Rockefeller was the last surviving grandchild of John D. ernment does not like this film. Called “Santa y Andrés,” it has He spent his life in banking and philanthropy. He did many good to do with the treatment of homosexuals under the Castros. In a works for New York City in particular. He was also something rel- move that distressed human-rights activists, and true lovers of atively rare, for an inheritor of wealth: a man who understood and movies, the Havana Film Festival yanked Santa y Andrés from defended capitalism. “American capitalism has brought more the competition. For almost 60 years, many in the free world benefits to more people than any other system in any part of the have chosen to comfort the Castro regime rather than give a fair world at any time in history,” he said. Yes. He earned a Ph.D. in hearing to its victims. economics from the University of Chicago. Elsewhere, he studied with Schumpeter and Hayek. David Rockefeller had many priv- n In a trailer for a forthcoming fea- ileges—but that was certainly one. He has died at 101. R.I.P. ture film about Wonder Woman, the DC Comics character, Israeli actress n Tom Wolfe compared Jimmy Breslin, his partner in the New Gal Gadot is shown as the titular Journalism, to Charles Dickens. Breslin’s vices were Dickens’s: character, raising a car above her cheap outrage, cheap sentiment. Breslin’s virtues were the oldest head and tossing it down a crowded in journalism: getting out and talking to people. His knowledge of street. Some Internet commentators New York City was encyclopedic; he met hundreds—thousands? complained that the shot was unre- —of New Yorkers, of every stripe, and let them speak in his alistic: Gadot’s armpits, visible for a columns. When the ’70s serial killer David Berkowitz, a.k.a. the moment, appeared implausibly free Son of Sam, decided to write a letter to a journalist, it was naturally of any vestige of hair. After all, they Bres lin to whom he wrote. Breslin’s most famous column was asked, would Wonder Woman, who about JFK’s funeral. He interviewed the gravedigger at Arlington was supposed to have been raised as an Amazonian warrior Cemetery. It was obvious (except that no one else had thought of princess, really shave her pits? Worse, it was a missed opportuni- it), corny as a WPA mural, and indelible. Dead at 86. R.I.P. ty for a feminist statement. “With Wonder Woman standing in as an example of female strength,” wrote one blogger, “it would have n In 1963, a newspaper strike shut down New York City’s daily been exciting to see her with a little hair under her arms.” Luckily newspapers, thus silencing the New York Times Book Review. It the vital question of whether Wonder Woman would, or would not, was a crisis for the authorial class; who (that counted) would have armpit hair were she a true feminist was settled by the review their books? To plug the gap, Robert Silvers, a veteran of response of a plurality of respondents to a New York Times/Women The Paris Review and Harper’s, and Barbara Epstein launched in the World online poll: “Who cares? She’s not real.” the New York Review of Books. With feline caricatures by David Levine, it was an instant hit. Its politics were often shameful: On n . What is reality? Good question. Nowadays the answer seems one notorious Sixties cover it published a diagram showing how to be that reality is what is created by a reality show. But if a to make a Molotov cocktail. It was of course fiercely critical of reality cast spends a year building a new society in the forest the Vietnam War, and of Ronald Reagan. And yet, it covered WARNER BROS and no one watches it on television, did the society really exist? Eastern European dissidents, and published the work of Robert

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Conquest. So although the Review was for Communism on the The embarrassment of having to pull the bill from the House way up, it criticized it on the way down. Politics apart, every floor makes it hard to see the opening that remains for Repub li - issue had at least one piece on some arcane subject that was sur- cans. But the fact is that Republicans reached a fair degree of con- prising and fascinating. Epstein died at 2006, and Silvers, age 87, sensus during this process. Moderate Republicans largely agreed has now followed. R.I.P. to restructure Medicaid, even if they wanted to let more people have eligibility for the program than their colleagues did. And n The recipient of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature, Derek while the House Freedom Caucus is being excoriated by Trump Walcott was a native of the island of Saint Lucia, and his was a as well as by allies of Ryan for its inflexibility, most of its mem- self-conscious poetry of the sea. “The sea is always present. It’s al - bers made their peace, whatever their misgivings, with the idea ways visible,” he told The Economist once. “All the roads lead to of providing tax credits to help people who otherwise could not it. I consider the sound of the sea to be part of my body. And if you buy health insurance. They insisted only that those tax credits be say in patois, ‘The boats are coming back,’ the beat of that line, its coupled with deregulation to lower premiums. metrical space, has to do with the sound and rhythm of the sea House Republican leaders insisted that they would like to itself.” He gloried in tropical sunshine, but he was also acutely see more deregulation, too, but feared that the Senate parlia- aware of the sea’s fearsome power. His most ambitious work, the mentarian would rule that any bill with it would be subject to 300-page poem Omeros, recast Homer’s epic poetry in the Car ib - a filibuster. According to multiple sources, however, the parlia- be an. Here, the sea’s power is as much social as natural; the sea is mentarian has said that she was not consulted about several the medium for the great movements of history that have shaped possible deregulatory steps. the region, such as colonialism and the African slave trade. Cutting regulations could be key to finishing the unification Because of his attention to these issues, Walcott is often consid- of the party. The Congressional Budget Office has previously ered a “political” poet, and in certain respects he was. But he was found that cutting down on Obamacare regulations would more than that. He was, finally, writing about love—for a people increase coverage, since it would make it possible for people to and a place. “The fate of poetry,” he wrote, “is to fall in love with buy low-premium coverage if they prefer. While some specific the world.” Joseph Brodsky said of Derek Walcott, “He is the de reg u latory measures make moderate Republicans jittery— man by whom the English language lives.” Dead at 87. R.I.P. even a careful relaxation of the rules governing preexisting con- ditions would induce some queasiness—improving the coverage n “So let’s a-rock and roll till the break of day,” sings Chuck Berry numbers would allay their main concern about replacing Obama - on “Big Boys,” a song that will appear on Chuck, a posthumous care. Expanding the tax credit for people making a little bit too album scheduled for release in June—and also a three-minute much money to qualify for Medicaid could allay it more. ditty that captures the spirit of his best work, with lyrics about love, This basic approach would be compatible with a variety of leg- ambition, and “the school dance.” Rockers like to say it’s better islative tactics. House Republicans could try to pass an aggres- to burn out than to fade away. Berry did both. He burned brightly sive bill without much regard for whether it can pass the Senate: in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when he wrote and recorded a At least they would have outlined and stood for a set of health- series of classic songs with signature guitar licks and creative care policies that make sense, that offer something for conserva- lines: “Maybellene,” his first hit; “Roll Over Bee tho ven,” covered tives and moderates, and that can serve as the basis for future by the Beatles; and “Johnny B. Goode,” the song that just about action. Or they could work with the parliamentarian and with everyone knows. Then he faded away, remaining active with tours senators to see whether they could get a bill better than the one and performances but not new music. Legal trouble dogged Berry that just died past the finish line. for much of his life, but he benefited from a loyal wife, Themetta, If they went this route, Republican leaders would not spring a who survives him. They married in 1948, before Berry learned to new bill on their followers and allies and tell them they have to “play a guitar just like a-ringing a bell.” Dead at 90. R.I.P. vote for it posthaste. There would have to be more patient cajol- ing and less last-minute bullying. We know that many Re pub li - HEALTH-CARE REFORM cans on the Hill and inside the White House feel that they have Repeal, Replace, Reboot already spent enough time on this issue. It is a complaint for which we have no sympathy. They have spent seven years saying EBACLE” does not have to be the last word on Re - they were going to replace Obamacare. They didn’t say they were publican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. going to spend a few weeks on a half-baked plan and then give ‘D They can still improve the health-care system, reduce up. Back to work, ladies and gentlemen. the power of the federal government, and make good on important campaign promises—but only if they start over on health care. THE LAW Republicans more or less fell into a losing strategy. They began The Democrats v. Gorsuch by thinking they could quickly repeal Obamacare and then re - place it at leisure. To their credit, they substantially modified UDGE Neil Gorsuch is a mainstream conservative their plan in response to criticism, attempting to do portions of judge who has earned the respect of liberals in the both repeal and replace in one bill. But this new approach was J legal world, and this fact has caused no end of frustra- a bad fit for the old schedule. A viable repeal-and-replace plan tion to Democrats who are resolved to block a vote on his could not be slapped together as fast as Republicans wanted to nomination to the Supreme Court. Since they do not control move. The bill that resulted had crippling weaknesses. Com - the Senate, they could not do what the Republicans did last pound ing the problems were Speaker Ryan’s high-handedness year and refuse to consider the nomination of a president and President Trump’s erratic leadership. they op pose. Hearings took place, and Gorsuch acquitted

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Garland. It gives the Democrats the right to complain about it, and even to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination in response. It also gives the Senate Republicans the power to end filibusters of Supreme Court nominees. Gorsuch is a good enough nominee, and the cause of getting judges committed to the rule of law is sufficiently important, that Republicans should exercise that pow er should it prove necessary.

OBITUARY Linda Bridges

INDA BRIDGES came to NR in a way that was characteristic Judge Neil Gorsuch both of her and of WFB. The literary critic Hugh Kenner, L polymath and archpriest of high modernism, had written himself well. Democrats are having to invent spurious justifi- Bill criticizing the lede of one of his columns as too rambling. cations for their opposition. Bill published Kenner’s letter, and a detailed defense of his They have highlighted, and distorted, three of the judge’s deci- handiwork. Into this smackdown waded Miss Bridges, a junior sions. Cecile Richards, the head of Planned Parenthood, says that at USC, majoring in English and minoring in French, who forth- Gorsuch “believes that actually bosses should be able to decide rightly offered her own opinion. Bill knew a good thing when he whether or not women should be able to get birth-control cover- saw it and offered her a job when she graduated in 1970. age.” We have no evidence that he believes any such thing. He Linda wrote (about the arts, most passionately) and cleaned up did not rule that businesses should be able to refrain from provid- other people’s writing, which she did with unerring care. She ing insurance coverage for forms of birth control to which they loved the sheer mechanics of putting out a magazine: She used a object; he ruled that under the religious-freedom law Congress manual typewriter to the last (and acquired one in Cyrillic), and enacted, they may refrain. (He did not rule, either, that the law sometimes daydreamed about owning her very own linotype allows employers to stop their employees from buying whatever machine. But when the computer age bore down like a glacier, coverage they like.) she mastered its techniques too. She served John O’Sullivan as Senator Al Franken (D., Minn.) says that Gorsuch “sided with” managing editor and WFB as his primary late-life amanuensis, a trucking company that fired an employee who disobeyed a deciphering his handwriting and typing, checking the details of company directive by driving his vehicle to escape freezing con- his multitudinous books. Along the way she co-wrote two of her ditions. But Gorsuch did not say that the company made the right own, with NR vets: The Art of Persuasion: A National Review decision or even that the law should have allowed it to fire the dri- Rhetoric for Writers, with William F. Rickenbacker, a guide to ver; he merely said that the law as it stood did allow it to fire him. usage that was, like its co-authors, learned, eccentric, and delight- Finally, several senators have excoriated a decision in which ful; and Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Gorsuch ruled against the family of an autistic child who sought Conservative Movement, with John Coyne Jr., informed by her help beyond what the local schools were willing to provide. The unmatched knowledge (and love) of its subject. Democrats claim that a Supreme Court ruling that came down Linda was a devout parishioner of St. Mary the Virgin, that dur ing the hearings repudiated the legal standard Gorsuch ap - highest of Anglo-Catholic churches (her church would have to be plied. They neglect to mention that Gorsuch was applying a pre - beautiful, and detailed). In her free time she traveled, often with ce dent of his circuit, as he was bound to do; that the Supreme her long-time roommate Alice Manning, from Cortina, Italy, for Court itself mentioned that it had left the law in this area con- skiing, to the Orient Express. On her office door and around her fused, something only it could resolve; and that a liberal Dem o - desktop she pinned cut-out cartoons she found particularly amus- crat ic appointee had joined in Gorsuch’s decision. ing; there were many. Her smile lit up a room, her laugh filled it. The theme running through all of these criticisms is that Dem - She died, a month before her 68th birthday. R.I.P. And, --30--. o crats want Gorsuch to reach results that run counter to the law —a point that Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) put with char- ac teristic artlessness in complaining about Gorsuch’s attention to “legalisms.” These criticisms thus testify to the judge’s fitness for the Supreme Court. When they are not distorting cases, the Democrats have been unable to mount a coherent case. Thus they say that Judge Gor- such is simultaneously too deferential to President Trump (be - GETTY IMAGES / cause he has failed to denounce the man who nominated him) and not deferential enough (because he has said that executive- branch agencies have too much leeway to apply their own inter- CONTRIBUTOR / pretations of the law). And they have complained, oh have they complained, about BLOOMBERG : the Republicans’ refusal to allow President Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, to sit on the Supreme Court. The Con sti - GORSUCH tu tion gave the Republicans the right not to schedule hearings for

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finally. after 22 years sailing the high seas, NR HAS come to the trip that many saY sits high atop their BUCKET LIST: an I-can’t-believe-we’re-doing-this trans-atlantic crossing on the queen mary 2 (which just this year has emerged from a spectacular retrofitting!) so here’s what’s in store for smart wanna-sailers (we don’t call them “cruisers” because this ai n’t a cruise ship!) on this majestic liner, we’ll sail on August 31 from lovely southampton yep, in the u.K., having spent a few nights prior revelling in the delightful english countryside, then enjoying 7 days and nights of luxury ocean sailing and brainy discussions of the day’s top issues, from politics and policy to the economy and foreign affairs, arriving september 7th in BROOKLYN tom coburn, Michael mukasey, brent bozell, rich lowry, FOLKS douglas murray, charles kessler, rob long, cleta mitchell, jonah goldberg, john o’sullivan, sally pipes, jim geraghty, LIKEmark helprin, jay nordlinger, ramesh ponnuru, & many more will be aboard. wow! a great time awaits, nrcruise.com So right now go visit to get complete information about this spectacular atlantic-crossing voyage per-person prices start at only $2,577! single cabins start at $3,916 for this once-in-a-lifetime experience. listen: your bucket list says ‘do it!’ now if you’re the kind of person who would prefer to talk to a traveL expert first, then call monday to friday, 9 am to 5 pm, eST: the good 888-283-8965 people at the cruise & Vacation authority will get you in a stunning stateroom see you on the glorious atlantic this on the historic queen mary 2 that Will meet your standards, taste, and wallet. summer! 3col_QXP-1127940387.qxp 3/28/2017 11:48 PM Page 16

allow legislation to include regulatory changes, even changes with incidental effects on the budget. If the bill included enough regulatory changes, the parlia- mentarian could rule that the Democrats could use a filibuster to keep the Senate from taking it up at all. But if Obama - care’s regulations were to stay in place, then its subsidies and taxes could not simply be eliminated. So Speaker Ryan adopted a new plan, in which the first bill would replace as well as repeal much of Obamacare. Crucially, though, he continued to seek fast action even though it required com- ing up with a new bill rather than taking one off the shelf. The House leaders devised a bill that they said accom- plished as much of both repeal and re - placement as the parliamentarian would allow. Without giving much in the way of advance notice of its content to their normal allies, they released this bill and fast-tracked it for committee votes and floor consideration. The most conservative Republicans in the House, many of them affiliated The Health-CareThe Republicans stumble Crack-Up with the House Freedom Caucus, balked at the legislation. The bill scrapped Obamacare’s tax credits for BY RAMESH PONNURU people without access to Medicare, Medicaid, or employer-provided insur- EPUBLICANS are showing more led by Senate majority leader Mitch ance, but created its own credits for eagerness to blame one anoth- McConnell—decided on a two-part them—a feature that many previous R er for defeat on health care strategy. Republicans would repeal Republican plans had also included. than they ever did to gain a much of Obamacare early, using “rec- But many of the conservative critics, at victory. After the House leadership’s onciliation” procedures to allow a least by the end of the debate over the health-care bill had to be pulled from simple majority of the Senate to act bill, were willing to accept that tax the floor for lack of votes, the party’s without being filibustered by the credits were necessary. What contin- various factions read from their famil- Democratic minority. Later, they would ued to concern them was that so many iar scripts. Speaker of the House Paul repeal the rest of Obamacare and enact of Obamacare’s regulations were left Ryan’s allies lashed out at the conserv- a replacement. One attraction of this in place. ative die-hards in the House Freedom idea was that repeal was a relatively Republican moderates had a differ- Caucus for rejecting the bill. Those simple matter. Republicans had already ent set of concerns. The Congressional conservatives blamed Ryan in return, passed a reconciliation bill repealing Budget Office reported that the number saying he had given them a lousy Obamacare’s taxes and subsidies when of people with health insurance would bill—one that a significant number of Presi dent Obama was in office. (He drop precipitously under the bill. The Republicans on the left and in the mid- vetoed it, of course.) Replacement would, insurance rolls would shrink by 14 mil- dle of their House conference had also on the other hand, require Republicans lion people in 2018. While the CBO’s rejected. Trump critics blamed Trump to overcome their disagreements. numbers were exaggerated—it has for his erratic leadership. It became clear, however, that repeatedly overestimated the effective- None of these groups is entirely right. McConnell’s plan would not work, in ness of Obamacare’s fines on people But a just apportionment of blame large part because insurance markets without insurance as a means of getting should be secondary to moving health could collapse in the interim. This them to buy it—the basic forecast of policy in a conservative direction, which danger arose because the initial bill in severe disruption in insurance arrange- is still achievable in this Congress if the plan would not touch Obamacare’s ments was plausible. Republicans turn their attention from regulations. The reconciliation proce- That problem could have been their rivalries to that task. dure was invented to deal with budget addressed by being less aggressive in After being surprised by Trump’s bills, and it was thought that the rolling back Obamacare’s expansion ROMAN GENN Election Day victory, Republicans— Senate parliamentarian would not of Medicaid, the health program for

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the poor, and by making the tax credits they had no choice but to support the else. Ryan and McConnell, meanwhile, more generous to people with incomes bill. These tactics failed. should have adopted a slower and more a little too high for Medicaid and peo- With the legislation stuck about a deliberate pace. The House Freedom ple nearing retirement. But these steps dozen votes short of a majority, Trump Caucus, while it made some reasonable would have driven conservatives fur- and Ryan then canceled the vote and arguments against the leadership’s bill, ther away from the bill. Alternatively, announced that, in Ryan’s words, “we’re leaned too heavily on its not being a full the bill could have eliminated or eased going to be living with Obamacare for repeal. That was true, but a bill could Obamacare regulations. The CBO had the foreseeable future.” Republicans have been a major improvement with- said that a repeal of Obamacare’s reg- moved on to finger-pointing, and out meeting that description. ulations as well as its spending would Democrats to gloating. The survival of The party’s worst mistake on health lead to higher coverage levels than just Obamacare, the latter said, proved that care, though, would be to quit at the first a repeal of its spending, presumably the law was sensible and moderate, that sign of difficulty. Flawed as the bill was, because more people would find it Republicans’ attacks on it were dema- it did help to bring the Republicans worthwhile to buy the cheaper policies gogic, and that their alternative health- closer to a common policy. The most that getting rid of the regulations care ideas were either bad or unpopular conservative Republicans accepted a would enable. But further deregulation or both. tax credit, and the least conservative appeared to be blocked by the Senate’s What it really shows, above all, is ones accepted a restructuring of Medi - reconciliation rules. that legislating is easier when you caid. Nothing is stopping the Re - The result was a bill that satisfied have 60 rather than 52 senators on publicans from spending the next year nobody and was deeply unpopular. your side. The Democrats had a much hammering out a bill that they like bet- Republicans who voted for it would be freer hand in making regulatory ter, refining it as they go so that it responsible for lower levels of insur- changes when they passed Obama - enables more people to buy coverage ance coverage and a short-term in - care and did not need to structure they actually want. crease in premiums (if the CBO was to their bill around the reconciliation Many Republicans, including Presi - be believed), and would not even be process. They also had more votes to dent Trump, are rationalizing inaction The party’s worst mistake on health care would be to quit at the first sign of difficulty. Flawed as the bill was, it did help to bring the Republicans closer to a common policy.

able to say honestly that they had spare in the House. And they didn’t on health care on the ground that Obama - repealed Obamacare. have these majorities primarily be - care is collapsing as it is. Re publicans Then Senator Mike Lee of Utah, an cause their health-care ideas were so have used this excuse before. But it’s not ally of the Freedom Caucus, reported popular. When President Obama was clear that Obama care’s exchanges are that the parliamentarian had told him elected, he was opposed to one of the collapsing, as opposed to performing that nobody had asked her about the main components of his law: the fines badly. And if they are, it is all the more permissibility of some specific dereg- on uninsured people. (He was also important to have legislation ready to ulatory steps. (She appears to have opposed to taxing employer-provided limit the damage their failure can inflict spoken similarly to others.) This added insurance plans, which became part on vulnerable people. Medicaid, mean- to the caucus’s skepticism of the bill. of the law as well but has never been while, is capable of continuing indefi- House Republican leaders threw in a implemented.) nitely to deliver poor results for the bit more deregulation to appease them, But it’s also true that Republicans money spent. but lost some moderates. could have done better. A presidential Most Republicans now embrace Throughout this process President candidate who ran on a health-care plan moving toward a market in which all Trump remained supportive of the leg- might have been able to unify his party Americans have the option to buy islation both in public statements and behind it in the process of winning the renewable catastrophic coverage and in in private conversations with legisla- election. Trump, who has never shown which such coverage competes with tors, even as some of his biggest fans in much interest in health-care policy, was more comprehensive plans on a level the media blasted it as the misbegotten not going to be that candidate. During playing field. That was the right stance handiwork of Ryan. He was, however, the campaign he had a brief outline of a to take before President Obama got incapable of horse-trading on policy, plan that made little sense, and he elected, and it remains the right one knowing as he did few specifics about dropped it in favor of letting the after the failure of Speaker Ryan’s the legislation. Grow ing tired of cajol- Congress come up with something. He bill. Once that failure recedes a bit ing congressmen on the issue, he said consented to putting the bill at the top into the distance, they will see that that he was pushing for an immediate of the agenda even though he lacks they have no reason to let a few weeks vote. His top aide, Stephen Bannon, interest in it, because he also has no of clumsy legislating doom that cause reportedly told the conservatives that serious legislative agenda on anything for all time.

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March, the official PA daily, Al-Hayat al- between the PA and the PLO is, for these Jadida, carried an op-ed by one of its reg- purposes, nonexistent; Palestinian presi- ular columnists stating that the late Israeli dent Mahmoud Abbas heads both. Stop prime minister Ariel Sharon had mur- Well, it is meaningless except in one dered Yasser Arafat by having him poi- regard: There is a PLO office in Wash - Supporting soned. PA television carries program ington. Under a 1987 law, the PLO is not after program, speech after speech, call- permitted to have an office in Wash ington Palestinian ing Jews “apes,” “pigs,” and “barbaric unless the president signs a waiver, every monkeys.” None of this can be defended six months, stating that it is in the national- as a matter of simply allowing speech: security interests of the United States to Why CongressTerror should pass the Taylor Official PA television and radio stations allow the office to remain. The PLO Force Act carry such programming, and PA publica- requires such a waiver because of its sup- tions print such language, so this is clearly port for and engagement in terrorism, but BY ELLIOTT ABRAMS a matter of official policy. Groups such every president over the past several as Palestine Media Watch keep careful decades has signed a waiver. Today, the INCE the “Middle East Peace records of these PA and PLO practices. waiver is indefensible: The PLO is now Process” began in 1993 with the Second, the PA and PLO foster, honor, making direct payments to terrorists, S Oslo Accords, the United States and celebrate terror by actually paying rewarding them for their violence. How has permitted the two key money to those who commit crimes of can it be in the interests of the United Palestinian organizations—the Palestine violence against Israelis—and the greater States—with a new president who has Liberation Organization (PLO) and the the crime, the more you get paid. There is campaigned on stopping “radical Islamic Palestinian Authority (PA)—to get away a sliding scale, and the longer your sen- terrorism”—to permit the PLO to have a with murder. Well, let’s not exaggerate: tence, the higher the stipend. Murderers diplomatic office here? Not precisely to get away with murder, can get up to $3,500 a month. Those con- In 2015, the State Department defended but to get away with fostering, celebrat- victed of lesser crimes and sentenced to the waiver this way: “We believe the PLO ing, and honoring murder. It’s time to end five years in prison or less receive a base is an important partner in advancing the this scandalous American policy and stipend of $350 per month. Two examples two-state solution. We believe closing the insist that the Palestinians meet standards of those getting the maximum: Issa Abed PLO office would be detrimental to our we would apply to any other aid recipients Rabbo, who shot to death two Hebrew ongoing efforts to calm current tensions anywhere else in the world. University students he found hiking, and between Israelis and Palestinians, advance In what sense are they getting away Abu-Musa Atia, who used an axe to mur- a two-state solution, and strengthen the with “fostering, celebrating, and honoring der Isaac Rotenberg, an elderly Holocaust U.S.–Palestinian partnership.” So a group murder”? Two ways. First, Palestinian survivor. The excuse that these payments that now pays millions of dollars to official bodies celebrate those who kill are meant only to help prisoners’ families reward terrorism is cast as a key element Israelis by naming streets, schools, and survive does not wash, because if that of making peace. It makes no sense. parks after them. The message to young were the goal, the stipend would depend That is why there is growing support for Palestinians is clear: This is the behavior on family size. Instead, the worse your S. 474, a bill—introduced by Senator we honor and these are the models you crime, the more money you get. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and supported should follow. The best, in other words And who is paying for all this? In part, by Senators Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), Ted the worst, example is Dalal Mughrabi, the United States. While president after Cruz (R., Texas), Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), the terrorist who led the 1978 “Coastal president has since the 1990s demanded an and others—that would restrict funds Road massacre,” which killed 38 Israelis, end to “incitement,” little has been done to “available for assistance for the West Bank including 13 children. Two girls’ high change Palestinian political culture. So and Gaza” unless the president certified schools, a computer center, a soccer generation after generation is raised to that the PA was “taking credible steps to championship, two summer camps, and a view terrorists as their society’s most hon- end acts of violence against Israeli citi- public square are named after her. ored members. U.S. aid to Palestinians zens” and that it had “terminated pay- Meanwhile, Palestinian official media now runs at about $400 million a year. To ments for acts of terrorism against Israeli continue what is now known as “incite- some extent, all aid funds are fungible, and citizens.” (The bill does need one amend- ment,” in other words, the teaching of Congress has noticed—so the Palestinians ment: Given the overlap between the PA hatred and the provision of a vast flow of took action to protect their flow of funds. and the PLO, the PA should not be eligi- lies to Palestinians about their situation The Congressional Research Service noted ble for funding merely because it assigns and that of Israel. To take one minor and that “in 2014, the Palestinians reportedly the job of paying terrorists to the PLO.) very recent example, in the first week of shifted the responsibility for making these Is this legislation wise? The usual payments [to terrorists] from the PA to the defenses for maintaining aid to the Mr. Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser in the PLO budget.” Why? Because foreign aid, Palestinians are two: protecting the “peace George W. Bush administration, is a senior fellow for including American aid, goes to the PA; process” and preventing the PA’s col- Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign the shift was an effort to isolate the PA lapse. As to the former, what “peace Relations. He is the author of Tested by Zion: from these terrorist payments. But that process”? The eight Obama years saw no The Bush Administration and the Israeli– change from the PA to the PLO was essen- serious Israeli–Palestinian negotiations. Palestinian Conflict. tially meaningless, because the distinction Palestinian politics are frozen today, with

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the 82-year-old President Abbas hanging of the PA budget and reach somewhere on to power and completely unwilling to between $200 and $300 million, perhaps take the risks and make the compromises more, each year. that serious peace negotiations would S. 474 is known as the Taylor Force Act, A Defender entail. The notion that fear of damaging in honor of the young American student the “peace process” should lead us to and U.S. Army veteran Taylor Force, who Of His continue to support payments to terrorists was murdered last year by a Palestinian and their families is both completely terrorist. In a grotesque example of glorifi- Country unpersuasive and a formula for perma- cation of terror, official PA television cov- Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Russian nent inaction. We would find ourselves ered the murderer’s funeral and referred to democracy leader who has escaped paying yet another generation of terror- him as a “shahid” (an Arabic word clearly ists for their crimes decade after decade. meaning “martyr” in this context) eleven death twice The notion of preventing the PA’s col- times; the official PA newspaper also said lapse is also a weak defense for the status he “died as a martyr.” In fact, he was BY JAY NORDLINGER quo. The fear is that the PA’s collapse killed by Israeli police after he killed would force it to take up greater responsi- Taylor Force and wounded eleven others. N May 2015, Vladimir Kara-Murza bilities and bear greater costs in the West Isn’t it still true that if we cut aid, some was poisoned and fell into a coma. Bank (though not in Hamas-controlled innocent Palestinians will be deprived of I The doctors told his wife he had just Gaza). In fact, S. 474 would, if passed, good projects that benefit them, and that a 5 percent chance of surviving. He not collapse the PA. It is, first, restricted some real creditors, including Israeli survived. Almost two years later, in to limiting or stopping the “Economic companies, won’t get paid? That is true, February 2017, Kara-Murza was again Support Fund,” just one aid account. and many people, including some Israeli poisoned. Again, they told his wife he Assistance to Palestinian security forces officials, will say that practical consider- had just a 5 percent chance of survival. that work with Israel against Hamas and ations argue for continuing our aid. Once more, he survived. other terrorist groups could continue. Aid But principle argues against it. There “I’m very happy, and very grateful, to to the Palestinians through the United will never be peace if generation after gen- be sitting here with you,” he tells me, in Nations Relief and Works Agency for eration of Palestinian youth are reared to a Washington, D.C., restaurant. “Same Palestine Refugees in the Near East honor terrorists. The greatest barrier to here,” I respond. (UNRWA), the U.N. agency that sup- peace is a Palestinian political culture that The poisonings—the attacks—took ports Palestinian “refugees”—now run- elevates violence against Israelis above place in Moscow, where Kara-Murza is ning about $250 million a year—could any positive achievements, including even the vice chairman of Open Russia, a also continue. (UNRWA should itself be democracy, national sovereignty, and eco- civil-society group. One by one, his col- eliminated and folded into UNHCR, the nomic development. There will never be leagues have been exiled, imprisoned, or U.N. refugee agency for every group in an end to such glorification of murder killed. He is determined to press on, the world except Palestinians, but that’s unless there is a heavy price to be paid for though, believing that he has important another story.) it. We’ve tried lecturing the PLO and PA work to do. And if people shrink from What would be limited or stopped are leaders, and we’ve tried changing our aid doing it, how will it get done? two forms of aid: project assistance from cash to targeted grants—and we’ve He was born in 1981 to a distinguished undertaken by the U.S. Agency for Inter - failed. It’s entirely plausible that the family. That peculiar name, “Kara- national Development and direct pay- Taylor Force Act will also fail: Perhaps Murza,” means “Black Prince,” and it ments to PA creditors. Prior to 2014, in Palestinian leaders will find other donors probably comes from Golden Horde the Bush and Obama years, there was to make up the shortfall, or perhaps they days, centuries back. He was just shy of some direct budget support (in other and a majority of Palestinians would ten in August 1991. That was when hard- words, cash) for the PA, but that has been rather forgo the assistance than stop hon- liners in the Soviet government attempted discontinued—and rightly so. Now, pay- oring terrorists like Taylor Force’s killer their coup against Gorbachev. Kara- ments are directed to PA creditors such as as “martyrs.” But we will have taken a Murza will never forget it. Those few the Israeli electric company or suppliers stand; we will have made it clear that we days are stamped on him indelibly. of medical care. Recently the United find such conduct intolerable. Tanks were in the streets of his home- Kingdom, which had been making cash The Taylor Force Act will show that town, Moscow, just as they had been sent grants to the PA, moved to paying teach- we do not find glorification of terrorism to Budapest (1956), Prague (1968), and ers and suppliers of medical care directly to be unfortunate or distasteful—we find Vilnius, earlier in the year (January 1991). after it concluded that PA cash was being it unacceptable and will impose a pun- Thousands and thousands of people used to pay salaries of terrorists. ishment if it continues. That is the right poured into the streets, armed with noth- Why stop such assistance? Money is policy for the United States everywhere, ing. They were fed up with oppressive fungible, and when the United States including the case of the Palestinians. rule. They stood in front of the tanks, pays a bill for the PA, it frees up funds In a world where we are fighting the which turned around and left. At the end that can then be directed to payments to scourge of terrorism, we cannot allow the of the year, the Soviet Union dissolved. prisoners and their families. These pay- West Bank to become a small bubble in “No matter how powerful the forces ments now total about 6 percent (and there which terrorism is honored at American against them,” says Kara-Murza, “when are higher estimates, up to 10 percent) taxpayers’ expense. people are prepared to stand up for what

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they believe, they succeed. That’s the view, they did exactly the right thing.” Kara-Murza made a film about basis of my hope for the future of Russia.” Nemtsov was by far the most effective Nemtsov. He felt he had to do it, in His father, also named Vladimir Kara- opposition leader in Russia. “He was order to counter the Kremlin’s constant Murza, is famous. In the 1990s, he was unique. It’s hard to imagine that he can propaganda against the late leader. He an anchorman for NTV. Then came be replaced.” was screening the film in various Vladimir Putin, and away went indepen- Three months after Nemtsov’s murder, Russian cities when he was poisoned dent media. NTV still exists, but it is Kara-Murza was poisoned. One after the the second time. another arm of the Kremlin. other, his organs shut down. The experi- “When the symptoms began, I knew. I Young Kara-Murza went to Cambridge ence was, of course, terrifying and brutal. didn’t want to admit it, but I knew in England. He studied history at Trinity He was shuttled from hospital to hospital, straightaway what it was, because the Hall. Then he embarked on a career in as doctors tried to figure out what was symptoms were the same as before. I journalism and politics, doing all sorts of going on. Finally, they realized that Kara- knew I had only a few minutes before things, all with an eye to helping Russia Murza had been attacked by a poison, of I would become completely incapacitat- be free and democratic: a country where an extremely sophisticated nature. ed. And I used those minutes wisely.” the rule of law governs, and human rights When he was able, he resumed his He called his wife in America, who are respected. work. There was always a threat over messaged a doctor in Russia—Denis He worked closely with Boris Nemtsov, his shoulder. In early 2016, Ramzan Protsenko, who had been Kara-Murza’s the liberal politician. (“Liberal” mean- Kadyrov did something charming. He main doctor before. ing democratic, pro-market, and anti- is the head of the Chechen Republic, On the floor of the Senate, John despotic.) Nemtsov held many positions, and Putin’s man there. To his Instagram McCain made a statement about Kara- including deputy prime minister page, he posted a video showing two Murza, a friend: “Vladimir has once under Yeltsin. men—two Putin critics—in the cross- again paid the price for his gallantry and Together, Nemtsov and Kara-Murza hairs of a sniper. Those men were integrity, for placing the interests of the urged the U.S. Congress to pass the Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime min- Russian people above his own interest.” Magnitsky Act. This is the law that ister, and Kara-Murza. Congressman Ed Royce, the chairman of imposes sanctions on Russian officials who abuse human rights. It’s named for Sergei Magnitsky, the whistle- blowing lawyer who was tortured to death in 2009. It passed the House on November 16, 2012, the third anniver- sary of Magnitsky’s death. Nemtsov and Kara-Murza were sitting in the vis- itors’ gallery, watching. On many occasions, Nemtsov said, “The Magnitsky Act is the most pro-Russian law ever passed by a foreign legislature.” He was Kara-Murza’s closest friend. He was godfather to one of his daugh- ters. “In Russia, that makes you family,” notes Kara-Murza. For a number of years, Kara-Murza’s wife and children have lived in the United States. His col- leagues thought it would be prudent not to have them in Russia. Kara-Murza thought they were being overly cau- tious. He doesn’t think that anymore. On February 27, 2015, Boris Nemtsov was murdered as he walked on a bridge in sight of the Kremlin. “Who did it?” I ask Kara-Murza. He can’t tell you who pulled the trigger or triggers. But, in his mind, there is no doubt who bears ulti- mate responsibility: Putin and his regime. I ask an awkward question: “Did they make a mistake? Did Nemtsov’s murder backfire on them?” Kara-Murza gives an awkward answer. They did not make a mistake, he says. “They knew whom they were killing. From their point of Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Kara-Murza, Moscow, September 2014

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the House Foreign Affairs Committee, First, Putin has control over the police, called Kara-Murza “one of the bravest the judiciary, and the media. Good luck people I know.” convicting him or his agents. Second, we Kara-Murza says he now has three should ask the old question Cui bono? Founding birthdays: “the one my parents gave Who benefits from these killings and me, and the two that Dr. Protsenko has maimings? Third, there is an unusually RockerWe all live in given me.” high mortality rate among people who Does he have any doubt that it was oppose Putin or work as independent Chuck Berry’s world his government that tried to kill him, journalists in Russia—a mortality rate twice? No. This kind of poison is not that defies any statistical model. BY ANDREW CLINE your garden-variety weapon. “You can’t According to Kremlin propaganda, the go into a pharmacy and buy it.” The likes of Kara-Murza are “national trai- Russian security services have been tors.” According to the likes of me, they ESTERN cultural history developing these poisons for years. are Russian patriots. Kara-Murza agrees, can be divided into two They have used them all over the world, but will not speak of himself. Instead, he W eras: B.C.B. and A.C.B. not just in Russia. One of their most speaks of Nemtsov. For those of us raised in famous hits was in London: Alexander “He was a great Russian patriot. He the A.C.B. era (after Chuck Berry), the Litvinenko, the Russian security agent gave his life for his country. What old world can never come into focus. who turned whistleblower. more can you do than that? So many It appears as through a lens whose And the hit, or hits, on Kara-Murza? He other people who are supposedly liber- edges are softly vignetted. It can be can’t tell you the “who” or the “how.” als or democrats from the ’90s chose to neither experienced nor understood. He has no idea who, specifically, carried settle for a quiet and comfortable exis- The July 1955 release of Chuck out the attacks on him, or how he (or she tence under the Putin regime, either Berry’s “Maybellene” did more than or they) did it. But he’s sure of the “why”: working for it or keeping their distance define rock ’n’ roll: It changed West - These attacks were retribution for his from the opposition.” ern culture. work in the political opposition, espe- Many in the West—including President On The Mike Douglas Show in cially his support of the Magnitsky Act. Trump—claim that Putin is popular in 1972, John Lennon met Chuck Berry You can read long lists of Putin critics Russia, citing opinion polls. Those polls for the first time. When Douglas asked who have died in mysterious ways. are farcical, says Kara-Murza: It could be Berry whether the latter had invented Strange suicides and the like. In the past bad for your health if you tell a stranger rock ’n’ roll, Lennon quickly interject- couple of weeks, there have been at least taking a poll that you oppose President ed, “I’ll answer for him. He did.” three incidents that have made the interna- Putin. Moreover, says Kara-Murza, if a Music historians might scoff at the tional news. leader is so popular, why does he have to assertion that Berry invented the Yevgeny Khamaganov, a journalist, 35 censor the media, rig elections, and exile, genre, noting that Ike Turner, Bill years old, died in an emergency room. No imprison, or kill opponents? Haley, Big Joe Turner, and many others one seems to know why. Two years earli- Kara-Murza rejects, emphatically, the were banging out jump blues, boogie- er, thugs jumped him and broke his neck. idea that Russians are unfit for democ- woogie, and rockabilly in the early In Kiev, Denis Voronenkov was shot racy, or undesirous of it—that they like a ’50s (and even the late ’40s). But dead in the street. Once a member of the strong autocratic hand. He regards this as Lennon understood what Chuck Berry Russian parliament, he had fled to a smear and a lie, cherished by those who had created with “Maybellene.” Al - Ukraine and was a key witness in the are loath to see an open Russia. though some of that earlier music might treason case against Viktor Yanukovych, Despite all that he has experienced, have been called “rock ’n’ roll” at the the Putin ally who was deposed as he is going back to Russia, once he time, each kind remained a distinct Ukraine’s president in 2014. regains his health. He will resume his ingredient until Chuck Berry blended In Moscow, Nikolai Gorokhov was work in his homeland. If he wanted to them together. tossed from the fourth floor of his apart- hang back, anyone would understand: As Lennon put it, “If you tried to give ment building. He is the Magnitsky fam- Two poisonings is enough. If there is a rock ’n’ roll another name, you might ily’s lawyer. The next day, he was to third one, his doctors have told him, he call it ‘Chuck Berry.’” make an important court appearance. He won’t survive it. But Kara-Murza feels Within weeks of the release of survived the fall and, at this writing, is compelled to return and defend his “Maybellene,” Elvis Presley was cov- still breathing. country, as he sees it. ering the song in his live shows. Bill People will tell you that these endless His wife, Yevgenia, is supportive. If Haley, who had scored big hits with incidents can’t be pinned on Putin and you ask her, she’ll say that she knew his rockabilly numbers “Crazy Man, his men. While running for president, what she was signing up for, when she Crazy” and “Rock around the Clock” Donald Trump defended Putin, saying, married this man. He says, with a hint of in 1953 and 1954, all but vanished “It’s never been proven that he’s killed a blush, “I’m grateful to have such a from the top of the charts after Berry anybody. So, you know, you’re supposed woman in my life.” to be innocent until proven guilty, at least Before we part, I tell him how much I Mr. Cline is a writer in New Hampshire. He co-hosts in our country.” Vladimir Kara-Murza admire him, how astounding he is. He will the alternative-rock podcast and radio show makes several points. have none of it. “I’m just stubborn.” Suburban Underground.

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broke through. Haley’s fusion of swing and country was polished and un - threatening. There was no masculine, sensual growl in his guitar. Rock gets that from the electrified fingertips of Chuck Berry. A look at the B.C.B.-era charts illus- trates this perfectly. The No. 1 Billboard hit of 1954, Kitty Kallen’s “Little Things Mean a Lot,” is a violin- streaked waltz that sounds as though it were written for a Disney princess movie but didn’t quite make the cut. That year’s top-ten hits were all soft, safe, and breezily innocent. Not a song on the list has a hint of testosterone. “Maybellene” was different. No one had ever recorded a song quite like it. Not Bill Haley. Not Elvis. Not even the great Muddy Waters. The country tune “Ida Red,” on which it was based, shows only how innovative Berry’s creation was. The distinctive voice, the aggressive guitar, the driving rhythm, the “motorvatin’” tempo, the bent dou- ble notes all combined to form some- thing unheard before. For the next five years, Chuck Berry pioneered a sound. The Berry creations “Thirty Days,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “School Days,” “Rock and Roll Music,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Reelin’ and Rockin’,” “Little Queenie,” “Memphis, Tennessee,” “Carol,” and Berry’s mas- terpiece, “Johnny B. Goode,” form the foundation of A.C.B.-era music. The Elvis phenomenon deserves its place in cultural history, but to get a sense of why the King of Rock ’n’ Roll could never be considered its father, imagine Back to the Future’s climactic school-dance scene ending with an Elvis song. Any Elvis song. It doesn’t work. “We didn’t have an alternative,” producer Bob Gale said of Michael J. Fox’s performance of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” In the 60 years since Berry’s break- through, the term “rock ’n’ roll” has Chuck Berry, 1969 become antiquated. It’s now just “rock.” Bill Haley’s swing is gone. GETTY IMAGES / Muddy Waters’s blues are nurtured by raw, animal id. Elvis made R&B 1970s would instinctively understand. “roots rock” bands but otherwise acceptable to white audiences, but it It was fast, electric, raw, edgy, even a appear only in hints and echoes. Elvis was Berry who brought white kids to little dangerous. is remembered as a lounge act. What black shows. It was Berry who opened Five months before Rosa Parks remains is Chuck Berry’s aggression, millions of white teenagers’ bedrooms refused to give up her bus seat, a highly MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES / screaming guitar, raw sensuality, and to black LP records, who turned rock- intelligent, well-spoken black ex-con outsider ethos. abilly into rock ’n’ roll by killing the (armed robbery) was reaching the souls When Berry bent his electrified jazz out of it and teaching it how to of white, middle-class teenagers. Two ROBERT ALTMAN double notes, he vibrated the world’s rock in the way metalheads in the of Berry’s first three songs are about

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racing cars (one in pursuit of a woman, The Stones covered 13 Chuck Berry covered that students who boasted of one outrunning the law). The third is songs. Their first single was a cover of having no heroes secretly had a passion about sending his wayward woman to “Come On.” The Beach Boys stole to be like Mick Jagger, to live his life, prison. As the civil-rights movement “Sweet Little Sixteen” so blatantly they have his fame.” was getting started, Berry was doing had to give Berry songwriting credit on The electrification of the id at a more than making it acceptable to lis- “Surfin’ USA.” Buddy Holly and Elvis young age doomed students to an ten to black music. He was main- covered him. So did AC/DC and the Sex impoverished spiritual and intellectual streaming racial mixing, lawbreaking, Pistols. Hard rock was invented in 1964 life, Bloom believed: “Rock music pro- and nonconformity. when the Kinks released “You Really vides premature ecstasy and, in this In 1956, he released a song (“Brown- Got Me.” It was the last song on side respect, is like the drugs with which it Eyed Handsome Man”) about white one of their debut album. The opening is allied.” women running off with dark-skinned track was a cover of Chuck Berry’s Whether rock is so malign an influ- men. White kids in America—and, “Beautiful Delilah.” Joe Strummer, lead ence is a debate for another day, but it’s soon, across the Atlantic—were taking singer of the Clash, covered Berry’s hard to deny that the creation of pre- social cues from this larger-than-life “Monkey Business” with his first band, mature ecstasy is rock’s effect. Rock black man who was standing defiantly the 101ers. produces this rush before maturity, and proudly against convention. “I Berry’s sound was so far ahead of its creating a demand for ever greater have found no happiness in any associ- time that his own band wasn’t sure stimulation. It creates a state of ex - ation that has been linked with regula- what to do with it. The great blues tended adolescence in which the tions and custom,” Berry wrote in his bassist Willie Dixon was a producer search for satisfaction becomes a more autobiography. “In other words, con- and session musician at Chess Records powerful motivating force than the formity is not the fragrance found in when Berry arrived. He found himself future rewards of adhering to social my fantasies.” stuck playing a traditional walking bass norms. We grow up seeking to be cool, Without Chuck Berry’s breakthrough sound, there could have been no Rolling Stones, no Beatles, no Kinks, no Beach Boys.

That attitude was unmistakable, line on “Johnny B. Goode.” It’s out of aloof, and regularly stimulated. That and the kids were paying attention. place, reluctantly tethering the song to does not preclude the pursuit of honor Berry “was writing good lyrics and the old blues of the B.C.B. era. But what and truth, as Bloom believed, but it intelligent lyrics in the 1950s when was Dixon to do? There was no blue- does precede it. For many, it diverts people were singing ‘Oh baby, I love print. Like the Starlighters, the fictional what might have become an impulse to you so,’” Lennon said in that Mike band that found itself backing Marty higher pursuits. Douglas Show interview. “It was peo- McFly’s “Johnny B. Goode” in Back to A culture influenced by rock is fun- ple like him that influenced our gen- the Future, you just had to find the right damentally different—more individu- eration to try and make sense out of key, watch for the changes, and hope to alistic, more pleasure-centered, more the songs rather than just sing ‘Do keep up. rebellious—from what prevailed be- wah diddy.’” Without Chuck Berry’s breakthrough fore 1955. Obviously, the culture was Berry’s poetically articulated rebel- sound, there could have been no Rolling already shifting before Berry recorded liousness was soon vibrating teens all Stones, no Beatles, no Kinks, no Beach “Maybellene” that May. Playboy mag- over the West. On October 17, 1961, Boys. Without the Beach Boys, there azine was first published in 1953. 18-year-old Mick Jagger stood on the would have been no Ramones. Without Rebel without a Cause was released in Dartford Station platform waiting for a the Kinks and the Rolling Stones, no October 1955. The Man in the Gray train into London. In his arms were two hard rock. Berry gave a yawping but Flannel Suit was published that year, records, The Best of Muddy Waters and undefined new musical spirit its form. too; Peyton Place the following year. Chuck Berry’s Rockin’ at the Hops. A Before Chuck Berry, there was R&B, But nothing was as explosive as the childhood friend, 17-year-old Keith country swing, blues, jump blues, jazz, music Chuck Berry put out in the Richards, saw the records and struck up rockabilly, and boogie-woogie. After years 1955–59. a conversation. A year later, they were Chuck Berry, there was rock ’n’ roll. Today, rock as a genre has faded, rehearsing Chuck Berry and Muddy And the sound Berry shaped had replaced by hip-hop and pop. But the Waters songs as the Rolling Stones. immense consequences. culture it created is dominant. We live Their bad-boy image, which came to In The Closing of the American Mind, in the lyrical and spiritual universe of define the rock ’n’ roll counterculture, Allan Bloom writes of the Stones’ Mick the Chuck Berry song. More than any was not original to them. It came, like Jagger, “He was the hero and the other figure, it was Berry who, in his their blues-based guitar rock, from model for countless young persons in phrasing, delivered us from the days Chuck Berry. universities as well as elsewhere. I dis- of old.

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No, California Shady Russians, troubled dreamers, and the daft campaign for Calexit

BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

HE Irish Republican Socialist party and Sinn Fein still grasp of Washington and, especially, of the military-industrial dream of a unified Irish republic. The Catalan Solidarity complex. “Peace and Security” is, in fact, Exhibit A in the T for Independence coalition would see the Estelada flag case for Calexit, and the organizers complain that the U.S. raised over an independent Estat Català, and there are government “spends more on its military than the next several independence-minded movements as far-flung as the western countries combined. Not only is California forced to subsidize Sahara. The Uhuru Movement is a kind of separatist movement this massive military budget with our taxes, but Californians standing on its head, looking to transcend national borders are sent off to fight in wars that often do more to perpetuate (with their colonial histories) and unite African people in a sin- terrorism than to abate it. The only reason terrorists might gle African identity. The United States has the Texas Nationalist want to attack us is because we are part of the United States Movement hoping to restore the Republic of Texas, and some- and are guilty by association.” where out there is a very committed fellow who believes him- If that sounds like it could have been written by Ron Paul or self to be the rightful king of Hawaii. There is a more plausible some lonely disciple of Murray Rothbard, that is no accident: movement for an independent Puerto Rico and a much less The leadership of the California-independence movement has plausible movement for an independent California. All of these a distinctly paleo smell about it. have something in common. “When I talk to people about California independence, they Russians. always say: ‘Well, what would you do if China invades?’ ” Weird, right? says Yes California president Louis Marinelli from his home The movement for Californian independence expects to in . . . Yekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk (city motto: DON’T have an initiative on the 2018 ballot, which would in turn lead CALL US SIBERIA), an industrial center on the edge of the Ural to a 2019 referendum. The organizers of the “Yes California” Mountains in Russia. “Seriously,” he asks, “when’s the last campaign say that winning the referendum would be only the time China invaded another country?” I mention the obvious COM . first step in the long and complex process of establishing a ones: Tibet, India, and the Soviet Union. There’s Vietnam and REDDIT free and independent California, finally liberated from the Korea. Marinelli is a young man; perhaps much of this seems

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like ancient history to him. It does not to the Indians, or the African-American president just because, and a woman presi- Russians, or the Vietnamese, or many others. “No, I mean: When’s dent just because, and every demographic just because.” Mrs. the last time China crossed an ocean to invade another coun- Clinton won nearly twice as many votes in California as Trump try?” he clarifies. “Only the United States does that.” did. Marinelli goes on to cite the Republicans’ recent failure to Only? repeal the Affordable Care Act and “gridlock” in Washington The American war machine must surely be of some intense as evidence that California would be better governed by concern to California’s would-be Jefferson Davis, inasmuch as Californians. California is in fact one of the states where resi- there is no legal or constitutional process for a state’s separat- dents on balance think themselves better off with the Affordable ing from the Union, a question that was settled definitively if Care Act than without it, according to a Hoover Institution poll. not in court then just outside the courthouse at Appomattox. Which is to say, the leader of the California-independence movement is politically at odds, deeply so, with the great majority of Californians. ARINELLI comes from the West Coast of New York, On the up side, the great maj ority of Californians haven’t the part of California on the shores of Lake Erie heard of him. that is known as Buffalo. He says that California is Ma land of immigrants, and he is proud to think of himself as one of them. He is a relatively recent arrival, having moved SUPPOSE it has a certain romantic appeal,” says Judith to San Diego in 2006, following stints in Ohio, Iowa, and Montgomery, a Bay Area math teacher who, like Russia, where he studied in St. Petersburg and where he cur- many Californians, is aware that there is a vote com- rently teaches English at a language institute. He believes ‘Iing on a quixotic independence campaign but finds the notion that Californians are a culturally distinct people who simply impossible to take seriously. She mentions Ecotopia, Ernest live and think differently from the people of the other 49 Callenbach’s influential 1975 novel about a different version states. It does not seem to have occurred to him that this rep- of California secession, one in which the state joins with resents the California that exists between San Diego and San Oregon and Washington to form a new “stable-state” nation Francisco west of Interstate 5. I ask him whether he believes based on environmental principles, which in 1975 apparently

Louis Marinelli believes that Californians are a culturally distinct people who simply live and think differently from the people of the other 49 states.

that people in Baker and Afton really are part of a single cul- included Bhutanese-style isolation and autarky—the novel’s ture that includes the people in the Bay Area but excludes near- premise is that the green utopia is receiving its first American by Searchlight, Nev., and Bullhead City, Ariz. He does not visitor in 20 years. “Ecotopia was my favorite book when I was quite seem to know where Baker or Afton is, but speaks 21,” she says. “I’m in my sixties now, and the world doesn’t vaguely about “the interior.” Sure, it is different, but “we’re all work like that.” West Coast people,” he says. People from Calada, Calif., are West The secession talk, she says, is a waste of time and—more Coast people in the sense that people in Las Vegas are West Coast objectionable, in her view—a waste of money that might be people, residing as they do in the Pacific Time Zone. But the better used elsewhere. She insists that she’s “not the best- folks in Calada are a lot closer to St. George, Utah, than they are informed person,” but her concerns are the concerns of people to San Diego. who are paying attention, e.g., California’s grossly wasteful Perhaps we can chalk this up to the fact that Marinelli’s duplication of administrative jobs in education, something immersion in Californian culture is fairly recent. He has been Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to address but involved in politics and public affairs for some time, most failed to deliver on. That’s the stuff out of which actual gover- prominently at the National Organization for Marriage, work- nance is made, and it isn’t very exciting. ing against gay marriage “as if it were a disease,” as he put it. Redrawing the map is exciting. It is so exciting that Yes After boasting of being “the one behind the 2010 Summer for California not only isn’t the only secessionist movement under Marriage Tour,” he quit NOM in a sort of dramatic fashion, way in the United States, it isn’t even the only active campaign repudiating his previous work, apologizing for it, and publicly to redraw the map in California. Former UK Independence declaring his support for same-sex marriage, only to be party leader Nigel Farage, of all peo ple, is involved in a project mocked by New York magazine as a confused young man to split the state into a western and an eastern California, liber- going through a “homophobic strategist for an anti-gay mar- ating the more conservative and agrarian half of the state from riage activist organization phase.” He is a Trump voter, albeit the half of the state where the money and the people are. And one who voted for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, there is the longstanding dream of Jefferson, a proposed state which he dismisses as—the inevitable word—“rigged.” that would strip away several of California’s northernmost “I couldn’t vote for Hillary,” he says. “She was the anointed counties (the proposed capital is Yreka) and some of southern candidate from the get-go. It’s like we’re supposed to have Oregon’s to form a new state—one with a very high regard for affirmative action in the White House now. We have to have an the Tenth Amendment.

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They hotly dispute any comparison to Yes California—“We want to add a star to the flag, not take one away!” insists Jefferson supporter Terry Rapoza—but there is at bottom a set of commonalities: the sense that the ordinary democratic insti- tutions as currently configured are insufficient for the times; the feeling that some people are effectively unrepresented, a relatively small group of broadly like-minded people who form only a few drops in the vast sea of American democracy; the belief that radical action oriented toward separation is required. “I don’t want to do this,” says Rapoza. “Show me a way not to do this.” He is in regular touch with his state senator and other California elected officials, and says his message for them is: “Help us to help you help us.” But Rapoza is pessimistic about the chances of California’s Democratic majority—“the monoparty,” he calls it—getting serious about things like the rule of law and fiscal responsibility. He recites the familiar litany: high taxes and fees that contrast dramatically with crumbling roads and infrastructure—the Oroville-dam emergency seems to have opened a great many eyes—poor schools, unfunded pension liabilities, crime, sanctu- Yes California president Louis Marinelli ary cities that encourage illegal immigration. “We have one sen- ator. Los Angeles has eleven. Who wins that football game?” Rapoza asks. He takes a moment to reconsider the metaphor. He is getting some help—from the Anti-Globalization Move - “Maybe if you had Tom Brady.” ment of Russia, which is, depending on whom you ask, either a group that enjoys some financial backing from the Kremlin or an outright Kremlin front. It provides Marinelli with office space in IKE the leadership of Yes California, the 21 counties Moscow, where he has opened a kind of California embassy, a that would form the State of Jefferson went over- cultural center whose most recent exhibition was on civil rights. whelmingly for Trump. Mrs. Clinton pounded Trump (Short version: California good, United States bad.) It provided inL California and reduced him nearly to third-party numbers travel expenses for those far-flung separatists from around the in places such as San Francisco, but Trump outperformed her world to attend the conference it organized in Moscow, although in the Jefferson counties by an even larger margin than the the King of Hawaii was unable to attend in person and sent video one she enjoyed in California as a whole. The Jefferson greetings. Marinelli says he supports the Texas Nationalist activists are old-fashioned patriots who sound like tea-party Movement and others who attended the event in Moscow. And he guys: Tenth Amendment, high taxes, too much debt, too scoffs at the notion that the Kremlin might be attempting to use much regulation, too much welfare spending on too many him and his daft little crusade for its own ends. “Meddling in illegal immigrants. Yes California’s Louis Marinelli has a other countries’ elections is the sort of thing the United States pretty right-wing outlook and history, albeit one that is more does,” he says. His anti-Americanism is deep and it is reflexive. Robert A. Taft than Ronald Reagan. What’s funny is that his He says it would be “hypocrisy” for Americans to complain Calexit campaign wasn’t doing very much until something about Moscow’s meddling in the internal affairs of other coun- happened that almost nobody in California was expecting. tries. I ask him to consider that even if it were hypocritical, that Marinelli cast a protest vote for Donald Trump, but the guy would not make it untrue. He responds as subtly as people who turned around and won. believe as he believes always respond. “The United States sup- Suddenly, secession started to sound more promising not to ported the Taliban.” paleo-libertarian Californians hiding out in Big Sur cabins but His Russian friends and allies share his belief that the to ordinary, progressive, Democratic-voting Californians of United States should not be in a position of “dominating the the familiar variety. Shervin Pishevar, a big-money tech world,” he says, and adds that they share his belief in the self- investor with a hand in everything from Uber to Hyperloop, determination of peoples. That would come as news to, among declared himself a California separatist after Trump was elected many others, Rafis Kashapov, a Tatar dissident imprisoned for and said he was “funding a legitimate campaign for California criticizing Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. He was found to become its own nation.” Other Silicon Valley figures suchs a guilty of advocating separatism—which of course is illegal venture capitalist Jason Calacanis joined in. And Marinelli’s in Russia. He did not join Marinelli and the others at the phone started ringing. Moscow Ritz-Carlton. “We have thousands of people literally waiting for us to even The Russian oligarchs are awash with money and in thrall to get the opportunity to contact them by phone,” Marinelli says. a kind of atavistic nationalism, and they have a lot of cash to “There are 60 chapters, and each has a chapter leader. We have throw around at things like separatist movements in California 8,000 registered volunteers.” He says he received more than or Spain or Ireland or any other place they think they might 17,000 e-mails in November and December following the wrong-foot the West, however slightly. And where the West ORG . election. “Som e of them are hate mail, but a lot are people who comes to an end on the sunny beaches of the Pacific, they have KOSU want to help.” an ally. At least when he’s visiting from the edge of Siberia.

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to be a footnote but after Fillon’s implosion is now the odds-on favorite to win the whole thing. Perilously untested, chronically France Votes vacuous, and ostensibly tarred by his work under the incumbent president, François Hollande (the most unpopular the Fifth As a strange cultural politics pushes Republic has ever had), Macron nevertheless seems set to take the lion’s share of a political middle that is sorely lacking in it rightward credible representatives. Cosmopolitan, pro-immigration, and publicly insistent that “there is no such thing as French culture,” BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE Macron is precisely of whom Marine Le Pen is thinking when she lambastes the “savage globalization that has been a night- mare” for France. France Politically, France is in a bad place. Under Hollande’s feck- ACT is stranger than fiction. In France, doubly so. On the less leadership, the country has been attacked from both without day I leave for Paris, the following headline adorns Le and within and seen an average of 1 percent growth for almost F Monde’s front page: “Fillon Received $50,000 to half a decade. Unemployment among 15-to-24-year-olds is now Introduce a Lebanese Industrialist to Putin.” at a staggering 25 percent and has led to an exodus that has ren- Alors. A scandal to mar the French election. Anything less and dered London the sixth-largest French-speaking city in the they wouldn’t really be trying, would they? Of all the world’s world. The reflexively proud French are no longer sure that they political gods, those that serve the French are the most puckish. have a future. They are afraid for their economy. They are afraid And yet, the persistent rumors that have engulfed François of immigration. They are afraid of technology. There is, almost Fillon are, in truth, the least interesting thing about this extra- everywhere you go, a tangible sense of ennui. It is an uncertainty ordinary election cycle. That Fillon’s descent has left a gaping that does not suit the people that produced de Gaulle. political void is interesting, certainly. But what’s really fascinat- For the establishment, the consequences have been grim. As ing is how it’s being filled. Late last year, it seemed all but cer- The Economist put it, this year’s primaries brought a “bonfire of tain that France would have a sensible, center-right president of the elites.” To have a familiar name in 2017—be it “Hollande,” the sort you could take home to your mother. Today? Heaven “Sarkozy,” or “Juppé”—is to carry a heavy weight around your only knows. neck. As in America, many voters are in a burn-it-down mood. On paper, Fillon was perfectly placed. He had the experience, And without a strong, “safe” option that can hoover up the having been prime minister under Nicolas Sarkozy, and he had middle, the extremists and opportunists have pounced. the novelty value, having become the North Star of a new Blame it on what you will—“populism,” “nationalism,” the French conservatism that has embraced Catholicism in spite of revolt of the forgotten—the traditional French alliances are dis- laïcité, turned happily toward “Anglo-Saxon” free markets, and integrating before our very eyes. Why is it that so many are so even rebranded its flagship party as “the Republicans.” In addi- worried that, this time, the execrable Le Pen family might finally tion, he was well suited to bridge the gap between the sects in a get its hands on power? Because, this time, the support is com- country that remains as divided as ever—“How,” Charles de ing from a variety of different places. The Front National has Gaulle asked, “can you govern a country that has 246 different always had strongholds in the rural, revanchist South, but it is sorts of cheese?”—but has become steadily more right-leaning now converting the socialists in the Northeast, appealing to an as the years have gone by. Astonishingly for a French politician, unprecedented number of voters under 30, and winning over Fillon is running on a platform would be familiar to voters in the some key blocs of social conservatives who would historically Un ited States: Inter alia, he wants to reduce the number of civil have gone elsewhere. And, crucially, it is making its gains for a servants, abolish France’s “wealth tax,” abolish the 35-hour host of different reasons. work week, reform the health-care system, and raise the retire- As France’s flagship pollster, IFOP, has shown, there is agree- ment age; and, while he has promised to protect the legal status ment among fans of Le Pen and Co. that the streets are too dan- quo, he is vocally pro-life and opposed to gay marriage. For gerous and that there are too many immigrants. But, outside that, once, the stars seemed to have aligned: The most credible, elec- the coalition is intriguingly divided. For the young, the main table option was also the most sound. issue is the economy—remarkably, between a quarter and a third But, damn those puckish gods, it was not to be. And, alas, the of young voters now claim to support the FN. In the South, it is alternatives to Fillon are markedly less appealing than is he. culture and taxes that drive passions, as well as a latent opposi- There is Marine Le Pen of the Front National (FN), who, despite tion to gay marriage that its entrenchment in the culture and the having distanced herself from her father and swapped open- law has not dispelled. In the North, the stories echo those from handed racism for implication-heavy populism, is still rather the American Rust Belt: Having seen their industrial jobs disap- unpleasant. There is Benoît Hamon, the most left-wing candidate pear, lifelong left-leaners are looking elsewhere. For the first time within the Parti Soc ialiste, whose big ideas are to tax robots and in their history, reports the news station France 24, the FN’s to add a universal basic income on top of France’s creaking wel- politicos “have been tailoring their message.” fare state. There is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a cerebral left-leaner whose destiny is to be the best-spoken also-ran in French history. And there is Emmanuel Macron, a self-described post-ideological UTSIDE Marseille Provence airport, in France’s south- moderate who is a leading contender for Luckiest Man in France. ernmost region, there are Le Pen posters on every pillar. Macron, an independent with no party apparatus around him, Some feature the veteran fascist Jean Marie Le Pen, and is a former Rothschild banker who at one point seemed destined readO Avec Le Pen. Contre l’arnarque Européenne! (With Le Pen,

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against the European scam!). Others show Jean-Marie’s daugh- Front National mayor in ’95. This year, it will almost certainly ter, Marine, and carry a populist slogan: Au Nom du Peuple. go for Le Pen. Next to them are flyers for another hopeful, an anti-American In a backstreet near the center of town, I meet a man putting conspiracy theorist named François Asselineau. His taglines are up flyers that are covered in tall capital letters: IMMIGRA- more paranoid in nature—Suivez votre intuition! (Follow your TION! TERRORISME ISLAMIQUE! FRANCE! intuition!)—and there is a contrived heroism in his language. I introduce myself and again ask whether Le Pen has a chance. Participer à l’histoire! reads one of Asselineau’s affiches. That’s “Oui,” he says, looking around. History with a capital H, one suspects. I encourage him to say more. As he speaks, I am again struck Along both the Autoroute du Soleil and the hairpin roads that by how seedy the whole thing feels. This is a man who is flirt with the imposing Mount Faron, this pattern continues. For putting up political posters on the street, and yet his eyes dart mile after mile I see craggy mountains of chalk and green; the nervously as he talks, he declines to give me his name, and he usual array of Tuscan-orange roofs; and, everywhere, posters speaks of the candidate he supports as Mr. Rochester spoke to for the Front National. In the South, this disposition seems to be Jane Eyre about his wife. The flyers behind him say “For the more ideological than anything else, for there is little obvious people!” and, in this town at least, a majority of those peuple poverty in this region. (A decade or so ago, my Malawian seem to agree with the complaints his literature is making in cousin was turned away from a restaurant in this area on the unabashed 60-point solid caps. And yet he behaves like a open grounds that she was “noire.”) My fellow drivers are naughty schoolboy who has been caught watching pornography retirees, soccer moms, and businesspeople, and they are safely in his bedroom. The New York Times tells me that the Front ensconced in Audis, BMWs, and Mercedes. While rural, the National is “no longer spat upon,” and I see ample evidence of area is no backwater. Nearby Toulon has an important enough this. Still, there’s a defensiveness at play in the South that port to have hosted the scuttling of the French fleet in both 1942 smacks more of la résistance than la majorité. and 1793, and figures prominently in both Victor Hugo’s Les It is a different story in Hénin-Beaumont, a former mining Misérables and Joseph Conrad’s The Rover. town near the Belgian border that once reliably voted for the A few miles from the city border, I stop for a break at one of Parti Socialiste but has turned lately to the Front. As of 2014, the many pizza places that litter the roadside. The owner of the Hénin-Beaumont has a Front National mayor, Steeve Briois. In

I am again struck by how seedy the whole thing feels. This man speaks of the candidate he supports as Mr. Rochester spoke to Jane Eyre about his wife.

joint has pasted a Marine Le Pen poster onto an electrical box an interview with Paris Match, a town assemblyman described outside his property. After ordering a Coke, I ask casually about meetings under the mayor as a “circus” but conceded that Briois the election: “You think Le Pen has a chance?” had been tactically flexible enough that “a very large majority of This should have been a straightforward question. Toulon, the population has no objective reason to complain.” after all, has a long history with the Front: In 1995, it was one Even the Communists are impressed. Jacques—I’m calling of the four French cities that shocked the world by electing a him Jacques because he doesn’t trust me and won’t give me his Front National mayor. And yet, to my immense surprise, I real prénom—tells me that he is voting for Le Pen, whom he immediately regret the inquiry. calls “Marine,” as if they are friends. But, as a former member “Who wants to know?” the proprietor asks immediately, of the now-routed Parti Communiste, he also likes Benoît cocking his head to the side. Hamon’s idea of taxing robots, which he regards as insidious I tell him that I am a British journalist who lives in America, traitors that are stealing human jobs. Jacques seems smart and and that I’d seen his sign and been intrigued. put together, and in trying to figure out how someone as lucid as “What do they think in America?” he asks, trying to change he is could have arrived at the viewpoints he has, I have to the focus. remind myself that this is a country in which SWAT teams go on I say that America probably hasn’t given the French election strike if they aren’t permitted to drink at lunch. much thought, which is half true and half a dodge designed to Jacques is typical. Writing from Paris in 2007, Christopher leave me on the fence. Hitchens observed that “there is a reason why the French “D’accord,” he says, deftly. “So what do you think?” Communist Party, which used to dominate the working class, the Busted. unions, and much of the lumpen intelligentsia, is now a spent I flirt with the idea of explaining that I loathe Marine Le Pen, force that represents perhaps 3 percent of the electorate. And that I’m one of those dastardly Anglo-Saxon Atlanticists, and that reason, uncomfortable as it may be, is that most of the that I haven’t truly liked a politician since Coolidge. But, want- Communist electorate defected straight to the National Front.” ing to stay alive for a few more years, I think better of it, pay for Indeed. And in getting there, many have walked straight past the drink, and move on. center-right candidates such as Sarkozy and Fillon, just as many An hour away in Orange, a similar dynamic obtains. Once a Rust Belt Americans skipped past Mitt Romney on the way to major seat in the Roman Empire and home to the best Roman Donald Trump. Realignments, lest we forget, tend to change theater in Europe, Orange is another of the towns that elected a things from the ground up.

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NE can overstate the case. Marine Le Pen is unlikely to become president of France, if just because the system is explicitly designed to prevent people like Marine Le Malign OPen from becoming president of France. According to polling aggregated by The Economist, Le Pen has an excellent shot of getting to the second round—a 93 percent chance, in fact—but after that her odds drop to just 5 percent. The reason for this is Marcuse simple: In the first round of French presidential elections, the sheer number of non-FN candidates serves to fracture the “nor- Much of what afflicts the modern university mal” vote into small pieces. In the second round, however, that can be traced to a single influential essay vote regroups behind the most palatable non-FN candidate and vastly outstrips the FN’s 25 percent average. This is, make no mistake, a Good Thing. Marine Le Pen is not BY DAVID FRENCH her father, but she is not much better, all told. Like Nigel Farage in Britain, she has a point on the EU, and she is sensible to express concerns about crime and immigration that nobody else O get to know the modern campus radical is to lose will touch. And yet she has an emetically close relationship respect for him. When you’re face to face and he’s with Vladimir Putin, takes skepticism toward immigration and T screaming, there’s a certain strange gleam in his eye. trade to unpalatably farcical levels, and, as a Gaullist admirer of It’s something beyond moral certainty. Anyone who dirigisme, is no friend to the market reforms that France so des- has spent time around the “most religious” person in church has perately needs. She is, in short, bad news. seen that look. No, it’s moral certainty linked with ignorance, And yet that so many “what if?” stories are being written in combined with an odd kind of pain, and culminating in a kind of earnest should indicate that something is afoot. The socialists are feral desire to hurt you, to cause as much pain as he can. no longer winning their voters. The young are becoming radical- I saw it in my worst “arguments” (if you can call them argu- ized. The political are giving up on politicians. To combine a ments) during my time at Harvard Law School in the early lack of economic growth with an impermeable elite class is, we 1990s. This was the time between the violent campus unrest of are learning, to develop an especially toxic brew—especially the 1960s and the “intersectional” unrest of the 2010s. This was when that elite class is perceived to disparage all that the voters the time when campuses actively and proudly discussed imple- hold dear. And in France, of all places? menting “speech codes,” when the in-class shout-down was a On the plane from New York, I am struck again by the chasm favored tactic of the radical Left, and when your own colleagues that has opened between the jet set and everybody else, and by the and classmates would do their best to ruin your career if they scale of the opportunity that has presented itself to the iconoclasts. found you sufficiently odious. I am on a British airline, and the in-flight magazine is aggressively In many ways, I got off easy. Sure, there was the day when my cosmopolitan. The “Editor’s Note” celebrates, among other own professor started shouting at me—that same gleam in her things, that a third of Londoners were born abroad. The featured eyes—when I politely objected to her calling an unborn child a interviewee argues that British television should shed its famous “clump of cells.” There were the many days when my class- and traditional period dramas in favor of shows about immigrants. mates hooted, hissed, and yelled as I tried my best to hold high And the most prominent advertisement describes “dual citizen- the standard of Burkean conservatism. And I imagined that same ship” as “the insurance policy of the 21st century.” If “globaliza- gleam when my classmates scribbled feverish notes in response tion” were to be parodied by the sharpest minds in the West, it to my pro-life advocacy, calling me a “fascist” and asking, “Why would look a little like this. This, to paraphrase an American don’t you die.” refrain, is how you got Brexit. It’s how you’ll get Frexit, too. That was nothing, however, compared with what a few fel- Which brings us to Monsieur Macron, the likely next presi- low members of the Federalist Society endured. One person dent of France. There seems little doubt that, for now, the French had his fa ce pasted onto pornographic pictures and plastered will choose the bloodless option over the crazy option—as well around campus. In a few instances, campus radicals bombard- they should. But that Macron will likely prevail will make him ed future employers—judges and law firms—with phone calls, no less bloodless, and that he will remain bloodless will, in turn, demanding to know how they could possibly in good con- create a new set of frustrations in a French polity that is moving science hire racist sexist homophobes. The campus was over- inexorably rightward. Over dinner in Paris, an anti–Le Pen run with protest, and every time the administration hired friend of mine puts it this way: “There is no question that if we another “white male,” the student body exploded. If we had get Macron, we will get a Trump, because Macron is the worst had i Phones and YouTube back then, it would have been full of possible person for this moment.” yelling, screaming meltdowns. And so he is, which is why even in Paris you see dismissive, Even without the Internet, the nonsense grew so notorious desperate signs—Tous sauf Macron! (“Anyone but Macron!”)— that GQ magazine exposed the factionalism in an embarrassing and why otherwise sober people are muttering about the com- article titled “Beirut on the Charles.” The piece hardly made the ing end of the Fifth Republic. Had his scandals never surfaced, campus look good. What within the ivy-covered walls seemed one suspects that Fillon could have taken some of the sting out like justifiable outrage appeared, to those not so fortunate as to of this peculiar moment. In his absence, there seems to be attend Harvard, a lot like privileged people pitching fits. So, for nobody else who can. What that means for the French and their a time, the campus calmed. Hearts didn’t change, but the radi- system remains to be seen. cals retreated, snarling back into their corner.

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Each generation of campus conserv- atives can play its own game of “Can you top this?” A recent Yale grad can hear me tell a tale of conflicts about abortion and other weighty issues and say, “You think that’s bad? My campus melted down over Halloween cos- tumes.” A grizzled veteran of the Sixties looks at both of us and says, “Sure, we didn’t have speech codes, safe spaces, or trigger warnings, but on my campus, buildings burst into flames.” But while we can argue over who had it worst (the Sixties still win), to greater or lesser degrees we all owed our plight to the ideas of one man, captured succinctly in one 1965 essay that rocketed around the Left during his time and that today afflicts the body politic like a recurring cancer. The man is German-American philoso- pher Herbert Marcuse. The essay is “Repressive Tolerance.” I make no pretension to being a scholar of Marcuse or of the so-called Frankfurt School of critical theory. Others can write (and have written) about the malignant effects of critical theory on the American academy. I Herbert Marcuse want to focus instead on a simple idea of his that still resonates with the Left today—unleash the forces Critically, Marcuse also believed that the “distinction of censorship and repression for the sake of the new tolerance to between true and false tolerance” could be made “rationally on come. It is good (necessary, even) to be intolerant in the name of empirical grounds.” Grounding his ideology in rationality tolerance. There is no virtue in what the mainstream culture meant that Marcuse saw his opponents as inherently irrational. defines as “tolerance” if that tolerance will preserve the status Labeling opponents as irrational makes it all too easy to reach quo. Instead, achieving true, new tolerance will require driving his conclusion, that liberating tolerance means “intolerance out the old. Here’s how Marcuse began: against movements from the Right and toleration of move- ments from the Left.” This essay examines the idea of tolerance in our advanced indus- When Marcuse wrote his essay, he lamented that “no power, trial society. The conclusion reached is that the realization of the objective of tolerance would call for intolerance toward prevailing no authority, no government exists which would translate liber- policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to poli- ating tolerance into practice.” In other words, since his ideas cies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed. challenged entrenched power, by definition no power yet existed to impose this new tolerance. He was merely laying an intellec- What followed was a dense and wordy exploration of a few tual foundation. Others had to make his dream real. central themes. Among them: Toleration of free speech is empty if there is intolerance of revolutionary action. That toleration of free speech ends exactly when speech contradicts or inhibits rev- NTER the campus radical. In the 1960s, the mob was the olutionary goals: instrument of intolerance. By the 1990s, the mob had gained tenure. By the 2010s the mob and the mob’s chil- This tolerance cannot be indiscriminate and equal with respect to drenE possessed enormous power and influence throughout the the contents of expression, neither in word nor in deed; it cannot higher-education establishment, and that power and influence protect false words and wrong deeds which demonstrate that they passed into Hollywood and into corporate America. contradict and counteract the possibilities of liberation. Such In some instances, the nods to Marcuse were quite explicit. indiscriminate tolerance is justified in harmless debates, in conver- sation, in academic discussion; it is indispensable in the scientific In 2003, when I was a young lawyer in the volunteer network enterprise, in private religion. But society cannot be indiscriminate of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, I filed a where the pacification of existence, where freedom and happiness First Amendment challenge to a speech code—“Acts of intol- themselves are at stake: here, certain things cannot be said, certain erance directed at other community members will not be con- ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed, doned,” it read—at Shippensburg University, a small public certain behavior cannot be permitted without making tolerance an university hardly known as a hotbed of radical thought. In ROMAN GENN instrument for the continuation of servitude. 2006, when I was the director of the Center for Academic

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Freedom at the public-interest organization Alliance De - Intersectionality puts a premium on “experiential authority.” fending Freedom, I filed suits against Pennsylvania State That is, the person experiencing the “oppression” gets to University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Penn define both the oppression and the remedy. The role of less- State’s speech code was even more blunt, declaring that “acts oppressed allies, typically white progressives, is to defer to the of intolerance will not be tolerated.” Georgia Tech had an experience of the more oppressed, learn from t hem, and sup- “acts of intolerance” policy that, among other things, banned port their struggles. That can mean that even liberals in good “injurious” communications directed at persons “because of standing are blindsided by controversy, such as the Claremont their characteristics or beliefs.” McKenna dean who resigned amid protests and hunger strikes I raise these examples not because they were extraordinary when she had the audacity (in a sympathetic e-mail) to tell a but because they were typical. This was Marcuse made law. Latina student that she strove to serve those students who Intolerance of alleged intolerance was the very definition of the “don’t fit our CMC mold.” “liberating tolerance” that Marcuse dreamed of. Fortunately for You cannot question the victim. You must support the victim. the First Amendment, the federal courts have thus far been And (here’s the hidden shout-out to Marcuse) intolerance in the unwilling to “translate liberating tolerance into practice” and name of tolerance works to advance social justice. have struck down every Marcusian speech code they have It’s entirely possible, however, that the very subjectivity and directly addressed. capriciousness of intersectionality may be its downfall—and Universities were rebuffed, but the radicals were undeterred. that Marcusian intolerance could once again go into remission. Whether explicitly conscious of Marcuse or not (likely not; you The power and limits of Marcuse’s grandchildren were on full can read any number of modern apologetics for campus censor- display at Middlebury College in March, when student demon- ship without seeing his name), the concept of intolerance for the strators disrupted a speech by American Enterprise Institute sake of true tolerance had struck, and if the Constitution meant scholar Charles Murray, attacked him after the event, gave a that public agencies, including state universities, couldn’t be Middlebury professor a concussion, and tried to block Murray’s instruments of “liberating tolerance,” then private citizens and departure from campus. private corporations most certainly could. The Middlebury incident came hard on the heels of a riot in A university may be unwilling to fire a dissenting professor, Berkeley that forced the university to cancel a speech by alt- but how many dissenting professors are willing to stay at jobs right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. A group of “antifa” (anti- where they may face—as Nicholas and Erika Christakis did at fascist) protesters set fires, vandalized buildings, and even beat Yale when Ericka had the audacity to defend the right of adult people in the streets. college students to wear the Halloween costumes of their In both incidents, arrests were few and far between (only one choice—screaming gangs of furious students demanding that arrest was recorded at Berkeley; no arrests have been reported they leave the school? In corporate America, how many conser- at Middlebury), and at Middlebury the administration hardly vatives are willing to risk their mortgage or their kids’ college seems eager to hold students accountable for disrupting tuition to raise even the slightest objection to uniformly ortho- Murray’s event. In this sense, campus radicals still have an dox expressions of progressive values? unhealthy hold on college administrators. At the same time, In many ways, however, the modern Marcusian intolerance is however, there is a growing recognition that the radicals went even worse than it was 25 or 50 years ago. Then, the subjects too far. Middlebury professors united to pen a strong statement were more predictable—the Vietnam War, the Johnson adminis- in favor of free speech, and apologists for the student radicals tration, and then Reagan and Bush, the Cold War, abortion and were scarce. Murray later held events at Columbia and New homosexuality. The lines were clear. Now they’re not, and even York University (hardly bastions of conservatism), largely some liberal professors tremble at the unpredictable potential without incident. wrath of their radical students. A sense of unease pervades the campus culture. Do the riots at Berkeley and the attacks at Middlebury represent the natural progression from the screaming protests that disrupted Yale OR that, they can thank “intersectionality,” one of the and so many other campuses in 2015? Will the age of Trump most incoherent and pernicious of the gifts the modern give the radicals an even longer list of grievances and an even academy has given our contemporary culture. In a way, greater sense not just of moral certainty but of moral urgency? Fintersectionality is a joke made real. Back when I was applying Will we see buildings burn, as during the Vietnam War, or will to law schools, white students used to say that their application a blaze of bad publicity lead to a temporary retreat, as at my had a chance “unless it’s up against a lesbian quadriplegic from law school in 1993? Nairobi.” The greater the number of victim categories, the We simply don’t know. But this we do know: that Herbert greater the affirmative-action boost. Marcuse still afflicts America, and even activists who have Intersectionality, in a nutshell, holds that your cultural and never heard his name live in the activist culture he helped create. political power increases with the number of victim categories Every shout-down, every screaming fit, every hunger strike, every you belong to. As Nathan Heller of The New Yorker put it in an economic boycott, every social-media shame-storm, and excellent exploration of the phenomenon at Oberlin, intersec- every riot furthers his legacy. It turns vice into virtue, makes hate tionality “sees identity-based oppression operating in cross- great again, and creates new generations of men and women hatching ways. Encountering sexism as a white, Ivy-educated, who want to hurt their enemies and feel morally righteous as middle-class woman in a law office, for example, calls for dif- they do it. Lurking behind the rage is his singular idea, which we ferent solutions than encountering sexism as a black woman should not allow to curse us forever, that America’s “tolerant” working a minimum-wage job.” citizens should be the most intolerant of all.

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wonderful machines that produce efficiently and cheaply. Let us control them. Let us profit by their efficiency and cheapness. Let In Defense us run them by ourselves. That, gentlemen, is socialism.” These days, Harvard economists are as likely as not to worry that automation is hurting too many people. Larry Summers wrote in the Financial Times that “it is widely feared that half the Of Robots jobs in the economy might be eliminated by innovations such as self-driving vehicles, automatic checkout machines and expert Why we should not reject technology in order systems that trade securities more effectively than humans can.” to ‘protect’ workers Summers, a macro economist who has in the past expressed faith in the Fed’s ability to achieve near-full employment, now BY ROBERT D. ATKINSON believes that one-third of men between the ages of 25 and 54 could be unemployed because of technology by midcentury. Such voices have been growing louder in recent decades. HERE was a time in America, not too long ago, when Artificial-intelligence scientist Nils Nilsson was in the advance most people, including journalists, business leaders, guard when he warned in 1984 that “we must convince our lead- T politicians, and scholars, were full-throated advocates ers that they should give up the notion of ‘full employment.’ . . . of technologically powered productivity growth. They The pace of technological change is accelerating.” But what’s understood that through mechanization, automation, and other different today is that such thinking has become a common, forms of innovation, we can produce more, better, and cheaper widely repeated narrative, greatly amplified by a supercharged goods and services, and have higher incomes. It was understood media landscape and a packed calendar of “thought leader” that some workers might lose their jobs after we figured out how events. You cannot attend Davos, a G20 summit, or a TED talk to do them more efficiently, but most Ameri cans believed, to without being told that the pace of technological change is accel- quote Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, that “the needs of the many out- erating and the days of “work” as we know it are numbered. weigh the needs of the few.” Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum, predicts Those days are gone, though. Current opinion now routinely that robotics and artificial intelligence will destroy 5 million jobs echoes the mythical 19th-century machine destroyer Ned Ludd, by 2020. Paul Krugman warns that “highly educated workers are warning in a growing avalanche of books, academic theses, mar- as likely as less educated workers to find themselves displaced.” ket forecasts, and op-eds that technology is leading us to a world The Economist, a publication that once served as a voice of of mass unemployment, that it is creating a newly idle lumpen- restraint, says “brain work may be going the way of manual proletariat, and that we had better put in place a universal basic work.” And if that’s not bad enough, Martin Ford, author of the income (UBI), under which the state cuts a check to everyone, New York Times best-seller The Rise of the Robots, warns of 75 regardless of their income or work status, if we are to have any percent unemployment by 2100. But why settle for 75 percent? hope of avoiding mass unrest. Silicon Valley gadfly Vivek Wadhwa tells us that 80 to 90 per- This kind of worry, verging on “robophobia,” represents a cent of jobs will be eliminated in just the next ten to 15 years. remarkable reversal from a long period in American history The job-destroying technological leviathan is so unrelenting —stretching from the 1890s to the early 1970s—when most and all-powerful that even sex workers are being warned that they Americans sang the praises of technology as an engine of could find themselves on the UBI dole as robots outperform the progress that not only raised our living standards but also made most seductive prostitutes. As computer-science professor Moshe America great. Exultantly titled books such as Tri umphs and Vardi writes, “Are you going to bet against sex robots? I’m not.” Wonders of the 19th Century, The Marvels of Modern Mechanism, Most of these predictions cite one of three studies in particu- Our Wonderful Progress, and Modern Wonder Workers were lar: one by Oxford researchers Michael A. Osborne and Carl com mon. When Henry Adams viewed the huge dynamo for pro- Benedikt Frey, who warn that 47 percent of U.S. jobs could be ducing electricity at the 1900 Great Exhibition in Paris, he wrote eliminated in 20 years; another by the McKinsey Global In sti tute, (in the third person) of his reaction: which contains the often-repeated assertion that 45 percent of jobs will be automated; and a third by Price water houseCoopers As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began (PwC), which predicts that 38 percent of U.S. jobs could poten- to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early tially be eliminated by 2030. Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm’s length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring. ET’S begin by recognizing that much of what sounds scary may actually be quite minor. For instance, Klaus Harvard economist Benjamin Anderson spoke for many when Schwab finds that robots and AI are poised to eliminate 5 he wrote 40 years later that “on no account, must we retard or Lmillion jobs in 15 major developed and emerging econ o mies by interfere with the most rapid utilization of new inventions.” And 2020—which amounts to just 1.25 percent of the total jobs in it wasn’t just defenders of capitalism who saw technology as a those economies. progressive force. Socialists did too, as when Jack London And what about the Oxford and McKinsey numbers? Sure ly praised automation, proclaiming, “Let us not destroy these they should put the fear of robots in us, right? Well, the McKinsey study actually says that less than 5 percent of jobs can be fully Mr. Atkinson is the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. automated. The 45 percent figure comes from the share of

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employee time that technology could save. For example, IBM’s truckers have higher rates of obesity, diabetes, an xi ety, depres- Watson cognitive-computing system could help doctors make sion, cardiovascular disease, divorce, and drug use than the aver- faster and better medical diagnoses, and 20 percent of a typical age American.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and CEO’s time could be replaced by technology such as artificial Prevention, truck driving is among the top five professions in the intelligence. McKinsey doesn’t think doctors and CEOs will be country for suicide rates. And if the stressful working conditions put out of work by technology, only that the nature of their work are not bad enough, the average annual income of $40,260 is 17 will change, and they will be able to use their time to do more percent below the national median for all jobs. No wonder there interesting work and more productive things. is a truck-driver shortage. As for the Oxford study? Well, it is just plain wrong. The authors Yet many people think that showing sympathy for blue-collar of this non-peer-reviewed study didn’t actually examine all 702 dif- workers who may lose their jobs requires opposing, or at least ferent occupations in their survey and assess in each case how likely questioning, the benefits of self-driving trucks. Andy Stern, for- technology was to substitute for a human worker. Instead, they took mer head of the Service Employees International Union, warns a shortcut: They relied on task measures from the U.S. Department that “there will be disruption in different places. You can imagine of Labor that assessed occupations based on various factors, such as people ringing state capitals with their trucks.” Former New York how much manual dexterity and social perceptiveness an occupa- Times technology reporter John Markoff weighed the pros and tion requires. If their calculated risk index was above a certain arbi- cons of AI-enabled autonomous vehicles: “More than 34,000 trary figure, the job was assumed to be headed for elimination. people died in 2013 in the United States in automobile accidents, The only problem is that their methodology produces nonsense. and 2.36 million were injured. Balance that against the 3.8 mil- How exactly are robots going to send fashion models, manicurists lion people who earned a living by driving commercially in the and pedicurists, carpet installers, and barbers the way of the buggy- United States in 2012.” whip maker, as they suggest? Versace is not going dress up a sexy Balance? What’s there to balance? Autonomous vehicles will robot in a $3,000 dress and parade “her” down the runway, nor will save more than $1 trillion a year, much of that due to significantly we inhabit a Jetsons world where you sit down in the robot chair reduced traffic accidents, and those savings will go directly into and get your hair cut automatically. When the Information higher living standards for Americans. That, plus the benefits from Technology and In no va tion Foundation, of which I am president, saving tens of thousands of lives yearly, is simply not comparable analyzed these 702 occupations manually, using a very generous to the costs to truck drivers, most of whom would take a few assumption about how technology could eliminate jobs, we esti- months to find a different and probably equal or better job. This mated that at most about 10 percent of jobs were at risk of automa- situation is likely to be quite different from the manufacturing- tion. Instead of fretting about technology killing jobs, we should be job loss over the last two decades resulting from trade and tech- worrying about how we are going to raise productivity-growth nology. Manufacturing wages were higher than average, so on rates, which have been at all-time lows over the last decade. average a displaced worker’s new job would be worse. Trucking As for the PwC study, it relies in part on the same flawed wages are lower than average, so truck drivers could probably get Oxford methodology, and its prediction is based on the assump- a job that pays at least as much, particularly as the reduction in tion that the price of “robots” will fall significantly and their func- trucking costs frees up money that will be spent on other activi- tionality will improve dramatically. Both of these are uncertain ties, creating other jobs. (For example, truck mechanics make 15 bets, to say the least. percent more than truckers.) One reason why so many pundits overestimate the impact that An additional reason for the focus on truckers and other work- technology will have on work is probably that few are really ers who supposedly face the automation axe is that commenta- familiar with what goes on in many occupations. They think: tors want to divert blame for job loss away from globalization. How hard can it be for a robot to install carpets? As someone who For them it is an article of faith that technology, not trade, has has actually installed carpets, I can tell you that the movements decimated blue-collar manufacturing jobs. Never mind that for- and subtle adjustments that are involved amount to a prohibitively eign mercantilist trade practices, not computers, were responsible hard math problem, not a task that even the most expensive for more than half the manufacturing jobs lost in the 2000s. advanced robot could be designed to do with any reliability. Likewise, these critics are loath to concede that the big spike in This comfortable distance from the work that many other peo- low-skilled immigration over the last two decades could have ple do informs another aspect of their thinking. For most elites, something to do with the contemporaneous stagnation in busi- work is interesting and satisfying, not to mention well paid. But ness investment in new machines. As Maya Kosoff wrote in for most Americans, work is hard, tiring, often boring, and some- Vanity Fair, “Robots, not foreigners, are the top long-term threat times dangerous. Take truck driving, the occupation many pun- to employment and wages.” Never mind that when labor is dirt dits are desperate to protect from the menace of self-driving cheap, installing automation, such as machines to harvest crops, trucks. Sure, some drivers enjoy the work, including being their makes much less economic sense. own boss out on the open road. But being a long-haul trucker is not a great job by any means. Accord ing to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, truck drivers had a workplace fatal-injury rate seven NOTHER reason for growing robophobia is that many times as high as the overall workplace average, and a non-fatal- believe today’s rate of technological progress is unprece- injury rate three times as high. And given their extended periods dented. With authors tripping over themselves to devise on the road, most long-haul truckers spend way too much time Atitles conveying the biggest transformation, we have books such as away from their family and friends. The Singularity Is Near, The Second Machine Age, The Third One study found: “Truck driving is, without a doubt, one of the Wave, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, and The Fifth Technology most brutal jobs a person can do. Across the board, long-haul Revolution. There will even be Infinite Progress—a blissful state

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of harmony in which “the Internet and technology will end igno- lose his job. Saying that this might be in the service of American rance, disease, poverty, hunger, and war”—which, don’t get me progress is somehow tantamount to saying you support randomized wrong, sounds great, except that they won’t. For these dystopian euthanasia. If we want to “save” jobs by stopping innovation, then utopians, it all comes down to exponential progress powered by why not get rid of technology altogether and bring back old jobs, as “Moore’s law,” which predicts the doubling of computer power Washington Post business columnist Allan Sloan would have us do? every two years. Enthusiasts breathlessly tell us we are only a few Sloan actually urges Trump to pressure companies to scrap self- more of these doublings away from techno-transformation. checkout kiosks in stores so we can bring back cashier jobs. He cites But the truth is that instead of accelerating, progress in computing New Jersey as the perfect model, because it is one of two states speed is slowing, and the number of transistors one can buy for where it is still illegal for consumers to pump their own gas. We all a dollar is actually falling. Like Woody Allen turning to Marshall know what a great job pumping gas is, especially if you don’t mind McLuhan in Annie Hall, I can’t resist quoting Gordon Moore him- the health hazards from breathing benzene fumes all day. self, who says his law “can’t continue forever. The nature of expo- Sloan writes that if Trump used the bully pulpit to cow retailers nentials is that you push them out and eventually disaster happens.” into techno-submission, “we’d keep cashiers working instead of But the robophobes are not deterred. Technology marches on, having to live in poverty or go on welfare or file for disability.” they say, driven by disruptive Silicon Valley nerds and greedy (Never mind that the median wage of cashiers is just 37 percent capitalists interested only in maximizing their profits, both insen- higher than the poverty level for a family of two, so they are not sitive to the pain and hardship they will be sowing along the way. far from poverty to begin with.) Sloan goes on to note that this Thankfully, robophobes have a plan to save us from this horrible, would be great because “we’d all win.” Really? Since when do we more productive and more prosperous future. The United all win by lowering productivity and slowing GDP growth? Sloan Nations Committee on Trade and De vel opment (UNCTAD) pro- and his fellow travelers call to mind the government officials poses to advance trade and development by calling for “a major Milton Friedman met while visiting a developing Asian country tax on robots,” as does Bill Gates, who recently argued that “right where a canal was being built in the 1960s. Friedman was sur- now, if a human worker does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a prised to see that instead of using tractors and earth movers, the In the past, higher productivity meant lower unemployment as it spurred more spending and more rational exuberance. The future will be no different, unless we smash the machines.

factory, that income is taxed. . . . If a robot comes in to do the workers had shovels. When he asked why there were so few same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.” machines, the government bureau crat explained: “You don’t Even econ o mists who should know better, such as Yale professor understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Friedman re plied: Robert Shiller, have fallen prey: Shiller argues that robots are like “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you alcohol, something harmful that society should tax so that we will want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.” consume less of it. Economists have a term for such fuzzy think- To save workers from this modern-day bulldozer fate, many ing: they call it “the lump-of-labor fallacy”: the view that there is now call for Congress to establish a universal basic income. But only a fixed amount of work to be done in the economy, and once this would lead to the very thing the robophobes warn us technol- a job is gone, no others are created. ogy will bring: large-scale unemployment, with people’s spending But when companies started using typewriters on a wide scale at diverted from job-creating consumption to the support of the per- the turn of the 20th century, which made secretaries more efficient, manently unemployed. no one called on the feds to impose a typewriter tax to compensate To be sure, the alternative should not be a call for the for the lost taxes from unemployed secretaries. That’s because there Hobbesian, dog-eat-dog world of the 1800s, where, if you lost were no unemployed secretaries. The higher productivity from your job, you were completely on your own. We can and should those typewriters meant lower prices for the goods and services sold do a better job of providing temporary income support for workers by companies using them, and consumers used the resulting savings who lose their jobs through no fault of their own (how about to buy more goods and services, which created more new jobs to expanding unemployment insurance but having the benefits replace the secretarial positions that were no longer needed. That is decline every week, so that workers have strong er incentives to why, over the last century, there has always been a negative, not pos- get back into the work force?), and we should establish a better itive, relationship between productivity growth and unemployment system of lifelong learning and retraining (how about tax-exempt rates. In other words, higher productivity meant lower unemploy- “Lifelong Learning” accounts, akin to IRAs and 401K plans, to ment as it spurred more spending and more rational exuberance. which both workers and employers could contribute?). The future will be no different, unless we smash the machines. If the elites really want to help low-wage workers, they can start UNCTAD, Gates, Shiller, and other worry-warts are so con- by once again becoming full-throated advocates of technology-led cerned with the well-being of workers that they forget the well- automation and productivity growth, coupled with stricter limits on being of consumers, who can buy more goods and services when low-skilled immigration and better labor-market-adjustment poli- companies use technology to improve productivity. Yet for many cies for workers displaced by productivity improvements. That, people today, the last thing they would ever want is for a worker to rather than robophobia, will help everyone get ahead.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

sis, protection, and big-picture important initiatives through chal- understanding of the many threads lenging buy-in phases with other and sources of intelligence current- coequal organizational bodies, and ly flowing into a large administra- be able to show past experience tive body. These candidates will working with and reporting to the LINKEDIN JOB SEARCH: have excellent communication emotionally unstable. Please send skills and a proven record of inter- résumé and personal statement to (search by job title, industry, company) personal-relationship-management the recruiter listed. Please also 0 Saved Jobs See All success and will be able to convey include all current medications. The We found 12 relevant jobs total mastery of the many facets of successful candidate’s first deliver- international intelligence. The can- able will be to terminate the current Companies and Organizations in didates will have one central re - operations chief. Your Network: sponsibility, to serve as the chief and only liaison from the organiza- MAJOR LEGISLATIVE BODY tion to the chief executive of the VISUAL-EFFECTS EXPERT A major legislative body located in entire operation. The ideal candi- A major top-tier executive seeks a dynamic and cosmopolitan world dates will be female, under 35, and an enthusiastic and energetic visual- capital seeks a tireless, solutions- willing to express their personal effects expert to lead a team of oriented go-getter type to serve as openness to their direct supervisor. first-rank video and visual-effects Speaker of one of its main organi- Please note: The successful candi- professionals in a visual-documentary zational units. Candidate should dates SHOULD NOT have any real project chronicling a major con- have a basic familiarity with the or field experience in any intelli- struction project about to begin in nuts and bolts of legislation and a gence-gathering organization. No the southwestern part of the United willingness to work with others in a security clearance is required or States. Candidate should be expert collaborative fashion. In addition, allowed. This position is strictly lim- with current trends and technology candidate should possess physical ited to candidates who can proficient- in the video and image-capture and communication skills necessary ly create the illusion of delivering real fields as well as be conversant in to keep the team motivated and on and vetted intelligence to the chief Spanish. A successful candidate will track to achieve its fiscal and orga- executive, while at the same time have a proven track record in team- nizational goals. Candidate should wearing low-cut, revealing, semi- building and leadership, and will be be able to work within—and with- businesslike attire. Open to several proficient enough to be able to visu- out—the normal and customary candidates for this position. Candi - ally depict a constructed wall of no tethers to reality, and should exhibit dates will be expected, at times, to more than nine miles in such a way in past experience some success in work closely together. that it appears to span the entire dealing with irrational or unpre- southern border of the United dictable chains of events. Strong States. Further, the candidate should preference given to candidates who C-SUITE-LEVEL OPERATIONS be able to accurately estimate the total are satisfied with remaining friend- CHIEF cost of all visual effects, computer- less, and who have a demonstrated A major first-rank executive and generated imaging, and digital- ability to work with the (functional) administrative body seeks candi- element development in order to mentally ill. Please send relevant dates for its soon-to-be-vacant posi- make it seem to viewers in Ohio, information (résumé, personal tion of operations chief. The Indiana, West Virginia, Michigan, statement, etc.) to the recruiter list- position is a complicated and chal- Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Pennsyl - ed above. Interested in all genders lenging one, interfacing directly vania that a giant border wall exists, and ethnicities. with the chief executive of the that it’s huge, and that it works. administrative body and his many Possible follow-on work on a con- direct reports. An ability to work tract basis to digitally include tiny WORLD-CLASS INTELLIGENCE- with mildly dysfunctional family human figures being deterred by the GATHERING ORGANIZATION members is a plus. In addition, a “wall” or falling off its 100-foot A world-class intelligence- successful candidate will be able to sheer surface. Please include previ- gathering organization seeks candi- juggle multiple boxes on an organi- ous salary history. dates to act as if they are intelligence zation chart, plot out and strategize analysts with vast and broad effective methods of communica- Page 2 or See All on One Page experience in the collection, analy- tions and public relations, guide

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS The Razor’s Edge

ONDER WOMAN, who does not exist, is get- we will confine ourselves to celebrating events and lore ting her own movie. Some feminists have from European cultures.” been perturbed on social media—I know, I They would be called Nazis by the very people who want W know, who saw that coming?—because her to burn paintings for political reasons. fictional armpits are shaved. Many years ago at a Biennial I saw a big block of choco- It doesn’t matter if the quantity of people who are con- late sitting on the floor, with teeth marks engraved on the cerned about Wonder Woman’s armpit foliage number in the edges. Nearby, a plastic simulacrum of vomit. It was in - high hundreds. It becomes a thing on the Internet and gets tended as a comment on the culture’s unrealistic body images amplified and discussed because social media need to be and how some women hoovered up the Hershey’s and barfed righteous about something all the bloody time. it back out so they wouldn’t get fat. It starts with Lyndx Myspttixlic (née Susan Johnson) First of all, art that’s a comment on something, or meant to writing a blog post about how the whole notion of hairless- start a conversation, is usually your first clue that the artist ness is oppressively gender-conformative in the context of can’t draw. the historicity of the male gaze. Right? Any fool can see that. Second, if you didn’t know what the tableau was about, The culture needs strong, positive role models of women you could assume it was two different pieces: The chocolate who can deflect bullets and also have French-level lady fur. was about Western plenty, and the floor-barf was a medita- You want to ask these people: Will you finally be happy tion on our faith in janitors. Why has he not arrived to throw if Wonder Woman forswears daily depilation? If not, when sawdust? Do we really see janitors as people? Were janitors will you be satisfied? Seriously. Wave a wand, the world’s not depicted in old movies as being Swedish immigrants, yours. What does it look like? and is this not a reminder that the immigrant experience is For starters, it would be a place where white women always involved in the messes made by so-called real can’t paint a picture of black history. The recent Whitney Americans? Or maybe some kid just hurled a hot dog, I don’t Biennial featured a Dana Schutz painting of Emmett Till, know. It’s gross, whatever it is. the African American lynched because the locals thought Back then, in the Nineties, it was still permissible to be a he’d talked to a white woman—he hadn’t, she’d lied, and male-type guy who said, “Sure, it’s art, but it’s lousy art.” he paid with his life. Now your gender invalidates your response. Many demanded the painting be removed; one artist “That vomit is bad art,” the guy says. “I mean, my kid demanded it be burned. A writer asked in the New Republic could do that. Hell, my kid has done that.” whether Schutz should be allowed to paint such a work— “You’re not a woman so you can’t have an opinion.” the answer, of course, being nope: “But I do! I’m standing here with an opinion. Several, in fact. I don’t even think it’s well-done vomit. Technically, For a white woman to paint Emmett Till’s mutilated face the color—” communicates not only a tone-deafness toward the history of his murder, but an ignorance of the history of white women’s “Shut up! Get out! Only women who understand the vomit speech in that murder—the way it cancelled out Till’s own are allowed to speak about it! Your opinion is violence!” expression, with lethal effect. If someone overhears, takes a video, and posts it on Face - book, in three days you’ll be all over social media as the guy As art criticism goes, it’s characteristically gaseous and who denies bulimia exists or who thinks women should be overwrought, but there’s an interesting sleight of hand. The sick in private, and then there’s a movement that stresses white woman’s speech that got Till murdered becomes the Vomit-Positive messages, and then there’s a march where history of white women’s speech, thereby eliminating the everyone synchronizes their up-chucking and it’s so empow- right of an entire group of people to address a historical event. ering. T-shirts: I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME RALPH. Chelsea Clinton This is what they want, then: rules, enforced to the mol- tweets out a picture of herself with her finger down her throat. ecular level, about who may say what about what. Art may So that’s what they want, maybe—Hollywood putting not explore the human condition, because that is simply an out a special edition of Wonder Woman that digitally excuse for concealing a narrative of power and exploita- adds leg hair, and universities with free tuition that give tion. Art must identify skin color, gender, sexual interests, degrees for theses titled “It Just Makes Me Sick: Nausea and perhaps the shape of one’s eyes and assign permissible and the Purgative Impulse in 17th-Century South American subjects according to those criteria. Midwife Poetry” or something. You can imagine a White Biennial, no? Complete with This will be a sign of enlightenment. They’re welcome to manifesto. “We, the undersigned, being pale in hue, realize it. The rest of us will be over here listening to a performance that any attempt to depict a situation outside our privileged of an Asian conductor with an African-American pianist experience is an act of cultural appropriation, and therefore performing a concerto written by a Jew in the tradition of German music. Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. You know, like Nazis do.

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and his twilight years after leaving the had been designated Air Force One when Reagan nation’s highest office following two he was president, that he was game for terms comparable in achievement only to another try at the White House in 1980 those of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. and that ‘I don’t want anyone to preempt In the Now Shirley has taken on the 40th presi- the Republican presidential nomina- dent’s equivalent of Winston Churchill’s tion.’” “Anyone” meant Reagan. Wilderness “wilderness years”—the time out of Shirley is surprisingly sympathetic to office, when many doubted his ability to Carter, who, like Reagan, was cut from CLARK S. JUDGE return in any serious way to the stage, populist cloth. As he explains: much less take center stage. This was the period whe n Reagan’s culminating run Rural populism had sprung up in for the presidency was born. Carter’s South and Reagan’s Midwest in While it revolves around Reagan, the 1890s, and was mostly focused on Shirley’s story also focuses on three the power of moneyed eastern interests, especially large banks, railroads, and other men—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, manufacturers. . . . Big government was and George H. W. Bush. also a focus of populists’ ire, which It is widely forgotten now how bitter Carter acknowledged. . . . Though some the division between the Ford and racists were involved in the populist Reagan forces was in the mid 1970s. movement in its earlier years, both Shirley takes readers through a com- Carter and Reagan abhorred racism. pressed account of the 1976 campaign for the GOP nomination—“the tightest two- Shirley highlights another similarity way race for a major-party nomination in between Carter and his successor. Wash - Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976–1980, modern political history,” Newsweek ington, he says, by Craig Shirley (Broadside, 432 pp., (quoted by Shirley) called it—and the fall $29.99) campaign that followed. Some thought did not understand how close Carter was that after Reagan’s strong challenge, to his wife, Rosalynn. They underesti- HUCYDIDES had a great ad - Ford should offer him second spot on the mated this steel magnolia, and for the vantage over later historians ticket. Such was the personal animosity oft-divorced sophisticates who made up the Washington intelligentsia, such per- in telling his tale of the that Ford refused. sonal closeness between married cou- Peloponnesian War: As a gen- With his brilliant, semi-extemporaneous ples was deemed peculiar. . . . A cultural Teral in the Greek army, he had been speech on the convention’s last night and rift was developing between the uncom- there. Craig Shirley, who is emerging as impressive appearances before state del- plicated Georgians and the unctuous the most prolific and, in some respects, egations over the previous week, Reagan Georgetowners, who would bedevil most insightful chronicler of Ronald emerged as, in the words of prominent Carter all through [his presidency]. Reagan’s political rise, shares that ad - columnist Jack Germond, the GOP’s vantage. He was there. “heir apparent.” But though, in cultural respects, they As a young political operative, in Yet Ford was far from out of the game. were more like each other than like the roles ranging from press secretary for He disliked Reagan, who represented a establishment of the federal city, Reagan the surprise winner of a long-shot U.S. rising but, in the view of moderates, dys- and Carter could not have been more Senate bid to a similar position with a functional part of the party, and he felt unlike in politics or political ability. prominent governor to heading up a piv- that Reagan had not given his full ener- Reagan celebrated the American spirit otal independent-expenditure commit- gies to the general-election campaign, and the American character and looked to tee backing Reagan in 1980, again and facilitating Carter’s victory. Reagan in restore vibrancy to an economy that was again Shirley was perfectly placed to see turn was disgusted at Ford’s hardball tac- increasingly enmeshed in stagnation and and understand all that went into one of tics during the nomination fight and inflation. Carter was soon looking to the most remarkable—and, once in opposed Ford’s moderate-Republican impose a heavy tax on gasoline, halt office, successful—political careers in approach to the Soviets, the economy, dozens of western water projects, and American history. and much else. The rivalry hung over the embrace an era of limits. Within months In earlier volumes, Shirley detailed Republican party even into the 1980 of Carter’s inauguration, columnist Reagan’s failed 1976 run for the presi- GOP national convention in Detroit. As George Will would write that he had dency, his successful bid four years later, Shirley tells it, on Carter’s inauguration “opened a multi-front war on numerous day, as Ford “jetted off to California” American practices, habits, and mores.” Mr. Judge is the managing director of the White after the ceremonies, he “told a reporter, At about the same time, Carter, who House Writers Group and the chairman of the Pacific after dining on shrimp and steak and a had suggested during his campaign Research Institute. couple of dry martinis on the 707 that that Nixon’s détente policy was too

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Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush leave the stage following a Republican presidential debate in Nashua, N.H., February 1980.

weak-kneed, lectured Notre Dame’s Across the nation and particularly in commencement audience to beware of Iowa, Bush and his impressive and what he called an “inordinate fear of equally energetic family were every- Communism.” Soon he was calling for where, with the result that Bush won the normalization of relations with China, Iowa caucuses. The next big prize was Cuba, and Vietnam, even as he was New Hampshire, five weeks after Iowa. cracking down on authoritarian regimes Losing patience with Sears, Reagan took that were, nevertheless, American allies. control of his organization and cam- Reagan bristled at all of this, but it was paigned even more intensively in the Carter’s signing of the treaty (largely Granite State than Bush. Then, the negotiated under the Ford administration) Saturday before the primary, in a show- turning control of the Panama Canal over down debate with Bush, Reagan dis- to the Panamanian government that gave played the same steel and fire that had him an opportunity to act. Almost alone marked his Panama Canal advocacy. As among major American political figures, a local newspaper editor, who was the he opposed the pact and campaigned debate’s moderator, tried to turn off his against it—and though the pro-treaty microphone over a dispute about the forces prevailed in the Senate, Reagan role in the debate of other candidates, won in the country. The nation had seen a Reagan, who was sponsoring the forum man unafraid to take on all comers in himself, sternly stopped him with the defense of what he saw as right. now famous remark, “I am paying for Despite numerous hints and feints this microphone, Mr. Green.” By Tues - over the next two years, Ford never day night, the nomination was all but in entered the 1980 race. Instead former Reagan’s hands. congressman, ambassador, Republican As he concludes, Shirley offers this National Committee chairman, and CIA assessment of his subject: chief George H. W. Bush e merged from a crowded field to become Reagan’s Reagan remains one of the most fascinat- chief rival. In 1979, Bush campaigned ing figures of history and the American vigorously and effectively while Reagan presidency, in part because he was a con- stayed off the campaign trail, skipping stantly evolving individual. His world- view in 1964 was not his worldview in major events and sticking to his radio 1980. His conservatism had changed, commentary, columns, and paid appear- from being simply against the intrusion ances. The reason for this reticence was of big government to the more positive GETTY IMAGES / John Sears, Reagan’s 1976 campaign advance of individual freedom. manager and the man initially in charge of the 1980 run. Shirley is highly criti- Reading Craig Shirley has become CONTRIBUTOR / cal of Sears’s strategy of aloofness, essential for any Ronald Reagan student. which came within a breath of killing Reagan Rising strengthens his already high BETTMANN Reagan’s candidacy. standing among Reagan biographers.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

Kaplan’s constant theme is the combina- to be rooted in “a mature sense of the trag- Preserving tion of good fortune, ruthlessness, and ic—of all the things that can go wrong in ingenuity that has given the United foreign policy, so that caution and a States the most favored geography in the knowledge of history are embedded” in American world—and the consequences thereof. the policymakers’ mindset. He is tem- It is, notes Kaplan, a geography “per- peramentally a realist and therefore has Power fectly apportioned for nationhood and urged restraint and prudence, arguing global responsibility.” against dissipating our strength in unnec- PAUL LETTOW Kaplan is clear-eyed about the economic essary endeavors abroad. He is also and cultural upheavals of the past few forthright that our idealistic pursuits in Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes decades and their impact on American the world are made possible by amoral America’s Role in the World, by Robert D. society. He emphasizes the vibrancy and means, including the globe-spanning U.S. Kaplan (Random House, 224 pp., $27) cosmopolitanism of communities across Navy, and that we must not misuse and the country that are connected with and diminish our hard power, which is the N his most recent book, World feed into the larger world—for example, basis for the good we do in the world. Order (2014), Henry Kissinger through colleges, manufacturing, and agri- But Kaplan urges restraint in another made an observation that serves as cultural production—and the profound sense. Our ability and willingness to pro- a warning. In leading a nation struggles of communities that have lost ject and sustain our military abroad, and I“from where it is to where it has never manufacturing or mining jobs and have yet our worldwide network of alliances, been,” a maker of foreign policy must to regain their footing. Kaplan’s dispas- enable freedom of navigation and com- first analyze his own nation: where it sionate analysis of those trends as they play merce and underpin the (relative) peace. finds itself, and why. Essential to that out across the country, and of their ramifi- Do not take that for granted, Kaplan cau- analysis, just as it is to an analysis of other cations for domestic politics and U.S. for- tions. He notes, as Princeton professor nations, Kissinger emphasized, is an eign policy, is both admirable and jarring. Aaron Friedberg and others have, that understanding of history and geography. Kaplan spotlights what others often when the British Empire entered into rel- Robert Kaplan, the foreign-policy overlook. In his view, Indiana, Iowa, and ative decline, the United States stepped in thinker and journalist, has in his numer- other black-soil states lay the foundation to protect the freedom of the commons ous books and dispatches illuminated the for U.S. economic might. Their astonish- and to enforce something of a peaceful historical and geographical forces that ing agricultural production and related off- order. The global dynamics are now very shape regions around the world, from the shoots work in a virtuous cycle with state different. The dangers if we try to with- Balkans to the South China Sea. In his universities, where “much of the scientific, draw from the world, or if, with little book The Revenge of Geography (2012), technological, and engineering research regard for the long-term consequences, he took a global view. He explored the and training of America takes place, on we choose to break apart what we have past, present, and future of China, Russia, which postindustrial society depends.” The helped build, would be grave indeed. India, the former Ottoman Empire, and cycle of innovative higher education and Kaplan knows and conveys that the other geopolitical hinge points with gen- applied technology that underpins Ameri - world is competitive, rough, and unfor- uine insight and often with discomfiting can power, Kaplan reminds us, occurs not giving, and that America today is fractious implications for U.S. foreign policy. The just or even mainly on the coasts. And and wary. Two facts illustrate what Kaplan book remains one of the richest sources of although he does not say so explicitly, that narrates. A large majority of Americans foreign-policy wisdom today. power derives less from fortune than from believe that their children’s lives will be In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan now foresight. There is a reason so many cam- worse than their own. And if we maintain turns his attention to the United States to puses across the country have a Morrill our current trajectory, within a few decades understand how we got to where we are in Hall. They are named after Justin Morrill, spending on entitlements and interest on the world and to shed light on the different the Vermont representative who spon- the debt will consume all federal revenue. paths in foreign policy that lie ahead. sored the 1862 Land-Grant College Act. Every penny spent on anything else, Kaplan is neither reticent nor apologetic The end of Kaplan’s journey is the including the military, will be borrowed. about his perspective: This is a book about naval base in San Diego, facing west to The United States faces two related, the United States, written to help compre- Asia. The Pacific Fleet, homeported more simultaneous challenges. First, we must hend and advance its interests in the world. than 2,000 miles away from the nation’s conduct a judicious foreign policy that Kaplan recounts his journey from capital, symbolizes the responsibilities aims both to compete and to lead. Massachusetts to California, a narrative and the trials that lie ahead for the United Second, our domestic policy must focus interspersed with observations on the States. In the last chapters of the book, on ensuring that our power is sustain- material wealth of the continent, the his- Kaplan provides a sobering prescription able over the long haul. Each of those torical importance of America’s network for how we ought to think through our challenges will require hardheadedness of navigable inland waterways, and the foreign-policy choices. He also develops and decisions with difficult trade-offs. historiography of the nation’s expansion. what has become a prominent theme in Anyone who doubts the urgency or his work: the need to recapture a tragic importance of those tasks needs to be Mr. Lettow was the senior director for strategic planning sensibility in foreign policy. reminded of Kaplan’s wisdom: Don’t on the National Security Council staff from 2007 Kaplan has emphasized, sagely and ever think that things can’t get worse, to 2009. necessarily, that U.S. foreign policy ought because they can, and quickly.

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golden age of the Church in the United human-rights group focused on helping The States. . . . Throughout his record- Catholics who are victims of religion- breaking, 28-year administration, Cardi nal based violence and oppression.) A “Mo - Spellman leveraged this power to become hawk hunting party” submitted Isaac Powerhouse the nation’s leading religious spokesman Jogues, a Jesuit missionary, to torture in and advisor to presidents, governors, captivity in Auriesville in upstate New On Fifth members of Congress, and mayors. His residence at 452 Madison Avenue was York. They found him “hard to kill,” and he ended up being rescued by Dutch KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ rightly called the Powerhouse, and politi- cians of every stripe visited to seek the Calvinists. The authors quote historian cardinal’s blessing on bended knee. William Harper Bennett’s description of Jogues: “A bronzed, dark bearded face, The rich history—immigrant, coura- lined and drawn with suffering, but in the geous, missionary, feeding, educating, eyes and expression ‘that peace which the serving, healing, leading, praying—of world knows not of.’ Of the forefingers Catholicism in New York is displayed on and the left thumb of his hands only the the bronze doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral jagged red stumps remain. Every finger in Manhattan, in the persons of Saints shows a partially healed wound and from Isaac Jogues, Kateri Tekakwitha, Mother all, the nails are gone.” Sons of Saint Patrick: A History of the Archbishops Cabrini, and Elizabeth Ann Seton. They The Calvinists weren’t heroes of reli- of New York from Dagger John to Timmytown, remind us that the Church has always had gious freedom, though: In what would by George J. Marlin and Brad Miner different flavors of leadership: male and become “America’s largest and most (Ignatius, 506 pp., $34.95) female, religious and lay. Before he was Catholic city,” Marlin and Miner write, Cardinal “Dagger John,” John Hughes “Dutch tolerance went only so far”: N a manner of speaking,” the was turned down as a seminarian at archbishop of New York Mount St. Mary’s in Maryland and “got a It was the rule . . . that in New Netherland “becomes the leader of the job nearby working for Mother Elizabeth only one religion was to be practiced: world, or at least of a world,” Ann Seton and the Sisters of Charity at St. Calvinism. No Masses could be said in Catholic World magazine editorialized in Joseph’s School.” Mother Seton “not only the colony, and the turmoil of the late- ‘I Reformation period in the Netherlands 1939. “He has a greater opportunity to hired Hughes as her gardener, but she lis- was reflected in laws that essentially battle evil and to amplify good than any tened to him describe his longing to be a gave second-class status to all religions other one man except the Holy Father. priest and she admired his passion for but the one established. . . . The vaunted There is no see in Christendom with such serving God.” She wound up successfully Dutch tolerance towards Catholics was potentialities as New York.” making the case to the seminary’s rector, in some measure due simply to the That world is in transition, to say the and the rest is history. (There were mixed scarcity of Catholics. least. No less than the current leader of New reviews as to whether this was a blunder York Catholics, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, on her part or her first miracle.) The Dutch were still the least of a St. Louis native, has said that “in the pub- Sons of Saint Patrick begins with an Catho lics’ problems. “After a brief con- lic square, . . . the days of fat, balding Irish account of religious persecution. (Marlin valescence in France,” Jogues, who had bishops are over,” acknowledging both a chairs Aid to the Church in Need USA, a been dubbed “the indomitable one” by changed culture and a more diverse Church. In their new book, Sons of Saint Patrick, George J. Marlin, a former exec- ‘PREFERRING THESE BRIEF, utive director of the Port Authority of TEMPERATE WINTER SESSIONS . . .’ New York and New Jersey, and Brad Miner, a former NATIONAL REVIEW liter- Preferring these brief, temperate winter sessions ary editor, write that the question of Beyond the dawn to any in the seasons, whether the influence of New York arch- But realizing they will leave impressions, bishops “is currently waxing or waning is Not memories, for temperamental reasons, a matter for debate.” But that quote from I linger on my way, while wind drives brown, Catholic World about the archbishops’ Long, desiccated maple leaves across potential is one of many archival treasures A south where distant traffic whispers drown Behind hale houses, shaded with Spanish moss. that jump off the pages of this book— telling us that we might find, in the past, My adult mind from childhood retains some clues about what the future will look No images of these, but merely hearkens like. Marlin and Miner have done a great To fledgling feelings, like the yellow stains service of recovered memory and identity. On handkerchiefs as ichor dries and darkens. They write about Cardinal Spellman: Reaching into my pocket, I retrieve The ones he left to soothe me, and bel.ieve Francis Joseph Spellman had the good fortune to head the archdiocese during the —JENNIFER REESER

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

the Mohawks for his courage, returned to powerful state on the Continent, but have “his neck . . . hacked through with Rise to hopes for a balance of power in Europe a tomahawk” and be thrown into the eroded owing to the emergence of a Mo hawk River in 1646. “All in all, it powerful and unified Germany and was not an auspicious beginning for Dominance nationalist rebellions in Central Europe. Catholics in New York.” Greece and Italy became unified The ancient assertion that “the blood of DONALD T. CRITCHLOW nations. Poland, divided by the great martyrs is the seed of the Church” is more powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, relevant now than ever. There have been, was the most notable nation that failed by some counts, more martyrs in the to find independence. tyrannical regimes of our time than there The French Revolution left a legacy were in the early days, when Christians of social conflict, social equality, and were thrown to the lions. revolutionary outbursts in 1848 and Even in today’s developed and relative- again in the 1870s. Utopian socialism ly free countries, there is a hostility to the expressed itself in French thinkers Church’s teaching. This opposition tends such as Fourier and Saint-Simon, while to focus on Catholicism’s teachings about revolutionary Communist ideology the nature of men and women and family. was given powerful coherence by Karl The witness of the likes of Jogues sug- Marx; and Mikhail Bakunin provided gests that truth is worth living and dying The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815–1914, justification for terrorism by anarchists for, out of love. In a day when “spiritual, by Richard J. Evans (Viking, 848 pp., $40) and nihilists. not religious” is a mantra of the mayor, Liberals across Europe called for and is subscribed to by many Millennials, legal and constitutional reform to the Church alive in “love for one another” T the end of the Napoleonic expand the electorate and allow free- (John 13:35) is the only compelling way wars in 1815, Europe lay dom of the press and recognition of forward. Marlin and Miner close their devastated. A century later, political parties. These reform efforts book with a quote from an Independence a new Europe had been cre- were most successful in England and, Day message of Cardinal Dolan: Aated, organized around powerful nation- for a brief period in the 1840s, in states. It featured expanded suffrage; France. Revolutionary upheavals that Amid the culture of death that we find all better diets and health for its citizens; swept across Europe in 1848 brought around us, our faith is something that our greater rights for the majority of the moderate liberals and diehard conserv- neighbors will find compelling and may rural population, women, and religious atives “closer together,” Evans ob - even be something they want for them- minorities, notably Jews; in creased serves, “in a shared fear of the masses.” selves. We must show the culture that seeks levels of literacy for the masses; and A new breed of politicians, such as to marginalize us that our faith is a living and life-changing reality. The more fun- advanced transportation, communica- Cavour in Italy, Bismarck in Germany, damental challenge needed for us to pre- tion, and technological systems. By Louis Napoleon III in France, and serve our American ideals is to boldly live 1914, Europe stood as a global power, Disraeli in England, realized that, in our faith, to boldly proclaim it, and to bold- with colonies all over the world. Little Evans’s words, “the preservation of ly love God and our neighbor. As Jesus did Europeans know—as British histo- order and stability required radical taught, “Let your light shine before all.” rian Richard Evans observes in his mag- measures to co-opt the masses into sup- isterial, nearly encyclopedic study of port of the state”; “nationalism was That’s not real estate; that’s life and cul- their continent’s 19th-century rise—that becoming increasingly powerful, in - ture changing. the world stood on the verge of an in - deed unstoppable, and in their different A few blocks down from Trump Tower, comprehensible catastrophe. ways they sought to exploit it for their St. Patrick’s Cathedral still stands in the An estimated 5 million people per- own purposes.” center of everything. Its location—before ished during the Napoleonic wars, The rise of nationalism proved inte- the skyscrapers, you could see both the including one in five Frenchmen born gral not just to national-unification East and the Hudson Rivers from it—was between 1790 and 1795. This was fol- movements but also to the strength of the result of what Marlin and Miner right- lowed by a devastating harvest in colonialism and empires. This coincid- ly identify as a “genius” move on the part 1816, which caused grain prices to ed with reorganized armies and arms of Hughes. In recounting the monumental skyrocket. Cholera, spread from trade races. The Franco–Prussian War re - achievements and losses, the saints and and troop movements in India, broke vealed the superiority of the Prussian sinners, Sons of Saint Patrick serves not out in Europe in the 1820s and returned military. The Prussian king, Wilhelm I, just as history but also as a call for an exam- in 1848–49; typhus and other diseases and his prime minister, Bismarck, used ination of conscience. A healthy Catholic remained persistent public-health prob- the war to unify Germany, setting the culture has implications beyond anything lems. In 1815, Austria stood as the most stage for the First World War. institutional. What will they say of our In this century of political turmoil, time? It is decisions made in faith, actions Mr. Critchlow, a professor of history at Arizona State Europe also underwent a technologi- taken today—and not just by archbish- University, is the author of Future Right: The cal and economic transformation, with ops—that will determine our legacy. Forging of a New Republican Majority. England playing a critical role in

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industrial innovation, international equality and the pursuit of empire, the Evans maintains that, in the course of trade, and finance. By 1890, Britain latter of which he roots in xenophobia mass emigration to other parts of the had a greater tonnage of shipping than and racism. He dedicates The Pursuit world, “Europe’s social and cultural the rest of the world put together. of Power to the late Eric Hobsbawm, limits became blurred.” Perhaps, but at British capitalists and engineers a Marxist historian who was quick to the same time British, French, and financed and supervised the building of note the barbarities in modern Euro - German literature spread to Asia, an extensive railway system through- pean culture and the social inequalities Africa, and Latin America; European out Europe. Chemical and pharma - produced by capitalism. Few historians educational systems were implemented ceutical industries boomed in England, can match Hobsbawm in literary abili- throughout the world; and ideas of Germany, and France. Electrical com- ty, but Evans provides a wider histori- Western democracy and the rule of law panies produced new sources of cal understanding of the long 19th inspired national reformers in India, power for industry and for private cit- century by reaching beyond Europe’s China, and Japan, and throughout izens. Cities, once squalid and dis- great powers to include the whole con- Africa and the Middle East. Scientific ease-ridden, were provided with tinent as far as Russia. and medical knowledge developed in hygienic water supplies and improved Drawing on recent scholarship on Europe transformed the world. The public health. The middle class grew private life, popular and literary cul- impact of European literary, political, in numbers and influence as European ture, and the environment, Evans technological, and scientific contribu- economies grew. weaves a rich tapestry of unparalleled tions suggests less a “cultural blurring” Evans maintains that Europe surged historical transformation. In detail than a clear, sharp transformation. ahead owing to “specific historical and inclusiveness, Evans exceeds The nation-state and the corre- circumstances”—not to its “intrinsic Hobsbawm. Evans is neither a historical sponding rise of nationalism charac- superiority” (Evans’s phrase describ- materialist nor an economic determinist; terized the 19th century. Patriotic ing the opinion of some other histori- he understands the role of freedom and spirit within the masses of each nation ans, including Niall Ferguson). Evans accident in history. presented the Left in Europe (and the

Evans is neither a historical materialist nor an economic determinist; he understands the role of freedom and accident in history.

discusses Europe’s rise with much His focus, as far-reaching as it is, United States) with a political prob- erudition and at great narrative length does tend to downplay the positive role lem: For all their talk of international but does not actually detail what he played by religion in this period. Evans solidarity, socialist parties and left- means by the “specific historical cir- emphasizes the growth of secularism wing intellectuals confronted a cumstances” that were crucial to this that came from the advancement of sci- deeply rooted patriotic spirit within advancement. Here he might have ence, Darwinian evolutionary theory, the masses, tapped by right-wing and turned to historian David Landes, and literary and cultural criticism. He centrist parties. However much who named three factors that enabled pays less analytical attention to the role nationalism was founded on what Europe to become a global economic that religion, especially Protestant Hobsbawm called “invented tradi- power in this period: a deeply rooted Evangelical revivalism, played in tem- tions” and created national myths, it sense of individualism, the rule of pering capitalist greed and inspiring presented an intractable problem for law, and property rights. Evans often social reform. The 19th century, partic- the Left, as evidenced in the First passes over these factors or suggests ularly in England, was swept by reli- World War—and today: Nationalism them only by implication. In The gious revivals. This religious spirit has found new expression in politics Wealth and Poverty of Nations fostered moral reform, including anti- following the Great Recession of (1998), a work not cited by Evans, slavery, temperance, women’s-rights, 2009 and is manifested in Brexit in Landes provides great evidence that and anti-animal-cruelty movements. The Britain, Marine Le Pen in France, and Europe’s economic advancement was wealthy were inspired with a philanthrop- anti-immigrant and anti-EU politics the direct result of a unique culture ic impulse to create benevolent societies throughout Europe. founded on political competition, eco- and to promote better conditions for If the 19th century can be character- nomic freedom, and favorable atti- workers, the indigent, and the ill. Polish ized by the rise of the nation-state and tudes toward science and religion, as national identity survived in large part nationalism, the 21st century, at least well as the comparative advantages of because of the Catholic Church. Evans in its first decades, illustrates the its climate. discusses these efforts but overlooks power of patriotic expression, a power Evans balances descriptions of the possibility that the 19th century not easily erased by the global eco- material advances in Europe with dis- was as much an age of religion as one nomic integration set in motion two cussion of growing economic in - of secularism. centuries earlier.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Film Back to The Well

ROSS DOUTHAT

OU go to the movies with the Hollywood you have, and these days that means look- ing for the good in franchises Hugh Jackman in Dan Stevens and Emma Watson in Beauty and Logan the Beast Yand remakes, looking for pre-sold films in which corporate predictability gives way and real creativity shines through. With years ago, are now slowly poisoning him two, 2015’s Cinderella and last year’s that in mind, let’s consider two of the from within. But that’s a better fate than Jungle Book, were actually pretty good. biggest hits of the winter-into-spring: the one claiming Professor Xavier But they also reached further into Disney’s Logan and Beauty and the Beast, one an (Patrick Stewart), his longtime mentor, past and did more to make themselves object lesson in how to make a franchise whose superbrain is decaying toward original. The animated Beauty and the story that’s also a real movie, the other a dementia, causing an occasional psychic Beast is one of the studio’s modern peaks, lesson in how to just cash in without doing flare that paralyzes anyone in the vicinity. only a generation old, and the remake’s anything to justify your grab. As they face the death of their powers, makers apparently didn’t want to take the “Logan,” for non-adepts, is the real these men are suddenly given purpose by risk of doing anything too boldly creative name—technically the adopted real name, the appearance of a young mutant, Laura lest it look disappointing by comparison. but let’s not go too far down the rabbit (Dafne Keen), a feral child who seems to So instead we’re just being sold the same hole—of the fierce, mutton-chopped have Wolverine’s abilities and perhaps a exact story as the animated version, the mutant better known as “Wolverine.” He share of his DNA. They have to get her to same characters and twists and songs, with has been played by Hugh Jackman in a some sort of promised Canadian safety, a few middling musical numbers added quite remarkable number of X-Men while hunted by a corporate–governmental and a little narrative padding stuffed in. films now—six group outings (counting alliance embodied by Richard E. Grant, And stuffed is the word to describe the cameos) and two Wolverine-specific Boyd Holbrook, a host of disposable result. Nothing that’s added feels fresh or titles—with Jackman each time contriv- henchmen, and one rather more memo- particularly worthwhile (including, yes, ing to bare his rugged chest as he deals rable heavy. Along the way they stop at a the barely there “gay moment” involving out justice with adamantine claws. The hotel and Logan watches Shane, an on- Josh Gad’s LeFou), and the extra material character has a detailed and tormented the-nose callback but st ill an appropriate and extra running time just add to the backstory, so Jackman has also occasion- one for a movie that’s more of an ultra- claustrophobia induced by attempting to ally contrived to show his acting chops in violent western than a standard-issue recreate beloved animated scenes with the part—but only intermittently, in sto- superhero flick. And the cast of Logan, more clutter and less art. ries that aren’t particularly interested in Jackman and Stewart especially, seem Each performance is fine on its own but the human element inside their money- eager to prove that something human wanting compared with the original: It’s making fantasy machine. need not be alien to stories about mutants, not Ewan McGregor’s fault that a talking This movie is different. Directed by mining real pathos from their respective candlestick is more fun illustrated than James Mangold, it’s set in a near-future characters’ dying of the light. made “real,” or Emma Thompson’s that America that hasn’t been made great The film as a whole is still imperfect, a Angela Lansbury’s immortal take on Mrs. again: It’s got Trump’s wall marching little too pleased with its own violence— Potts is daisy-fresh in memory, or poor along the Mexican border and self- but it is both surprising and moving as Emma Watson’s that, as game and pretty

WALT DISNEY PICTURES driving trucks tearing down the highway, genre pictures go, and it makes the view- as she is, she doesn’t have quite the pipes : but otherwise it just seems like today’s er grateful it exists. Which is not at all the or the beauty for the part of Belle. Luke United States on a hollowed-out, cynical, reaction provoked by Disney’s big, expen- Evans, as the cleft-chinned bad guy, gets and stagnant sort of day. Of course, the sive new Beauty and the Beast, in which close to filling Gaston’s outsize shoes, but movie is actually set in the X-Men uni- the whole gang from the 1991 classic is the rest is just a talented cast’s imitation of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST ; verse, not ours, but it’s a timeline from back, but this time as flesh-and-blood—or, a classic, an homage that exists only to tug which mutants are in the process of being in the case of the enchanted candlesticks at our nostalgia and make bank. banished: The famous X-ers are getting and teapots, computer-generated—char- Reinventing classics isn’t unique to old, and no new mutants have been born acters rather than as animation. our age of remakes; it’s a trick as old as

MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT in 20 years. Logan’s claws, welded into Big-budget live-action remakes of its time. But in this case, when the lights : his quick-healing and thus all-but- classics are the latest way for Disney to come up, you’ll realize that there was no LOGAN impervious body by government scientists create all-but-guaranteed hits, and the first magic in the trick.

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and Independence Hall a blink. We At the first or second station of the City Desk stayed in a hospice of the Church of cross (they have blurred in my mind) is Scotland, dedicated to the memory of a church where Jesus was flogged. On Center of Robert the Bruce, whose dying wish one of the paving stones is the scratched was that his heart be carried there grid of a Roman-era board game: (they tried, but it was lost en route). backgammon or tic-tac-toe (or maybe The World Robert died in 1329. Yesterday! Out hangman). Archaeologists now seem to the window of our room was Mount th ink it is second century. Contemporary Zion, just on the other side of Gehenna. or anytime, it represents the world’s If the Bible is the book for a billion point of view: We are just doing our jobs people (and the unacknowledged book here. Why is the governor taking so for a few million atheists and Euro - long? “The torturer’s horse,” wrote peans), think where it is set. Eden and Auden, “scratches its innocent behind Egypt have their innings, and Bethle - on a tree.” While the bored torturers say, hem and Patmos make late bows, but roll ’em. its Elsinore and plains of Troy is The Via ends at the Church of the Jerusalem. So much that is in your head Holy Sepulchre, location of Golgotha is here. and Jesus’ tomb. Because it was the start RICHARD BROOKHISER Including the climax of the great of Lent, the patriarchs of Jerusalem’s biography. Sorry, Jews: Lots of fasci- churches—Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, E call our city “the city,” nating folks in your T, but the hero of Armenian—were arriving in proces- yet even we occasionally the NT tops them all. Among a million sions. The Greek Orthodox was most acknowledge the exis- other things, we owe Him the politics grand, accompanied by six Muslim tence of others, especial- of woe. Because we once worshiped guards in Ottoman fezzes, beating silver- Wly when one of them is the center of the the man of sorrows, the suffering situa- tipped staves on the pavement. Be - world. You have all seen the medieval tion still commands our deference. cause the Greek Orthodox have charge map that shows the world as a three- Hence the wrangles: Which was worse, of the church’s bells, their patriarch lobed plant, Europe, Asia, and Africa, the Middle Passage or the Holocaust? gets a deafening peal, reverberating in with Jerusalem at the pistil. This is (The poor Ukrainians pitch for the the stony courtyards. It was sumptu- confirmed in the Church of the Holy Holodomor.) The contests are ludicrous, ous, barbaric, oriental. Israeli cops Sepulchre, where, on the floor of one of beyond tragic, inescapable. And all directed traffic (the officer in charge the chapels, there is a mark noting the thanks to Jesus. was an Israeli Arab). Definitely worth center of the world. That beats even the The Via Dolorosa is for the most part seeing, though it had nothing to do globe in the lobby of the old Daily a dull walk. Art has done almost noth- with Christianity. Neither did the inte- News building. ing to improve it. That is as it should rior of the church, a compound of con- Admirers over the centuries, and all the be: You must earn it in your thoughts. fusion, gloom, sectarianism, and guidebooks now, speak of Jerusalem’s Devotion does more. Seeing the pil- ugliness. Each church squats at its altar beauty. But beauty is not what struck this grims from Nigeria, Sri Lanka, West or eyrie, like homeless men on card- tourist’s eye. A coach-class flâneur can Virginia singing, touching, kissing is board mattresses. Penn Station is bet- think of eight or ten cities that are more like an after-image of the thing itself. ter organized. lovely, including several here at home. Three thoughts of mine: A detail of one newish mosaic caught Nor is it particularly exotic. It has its About a third of the way down the my eye: beneath Christ’s crucified feet, nowhere-else rituals—see below—but slope of the Mount of Olives, east of a gray skull. I thought it was an allego- its daily life is surprisingly ordinary. the old city walls, is the supposed site ry of death vanquished. But my guide, The modern city is modern, the bazaar of the garden of Gethsemane, where an archaeologist’s daughter and city in the old city is the cheesiest I have Jesus spent his last watchful night. In native, told me of a tradition I had not ever seen. Olivewood Last Suppers, one churchyard stands a collection of known: that Adam’s skull was brought cheapo shofars, Pika-Jew T-shirts: Are eight or ten olive trees, reportedly over to Golgotha, and Jesus’ blood trickled they made separately, or is there one 2,000 years old: bulky, twisted, stunted down to it. giant factory, DrekInc., that churns trunks, some mere shells, with living On the one hand, what a farrago (the them all out? Some, finally, love it branches poking out. Jesus asked the skull was on Noah’s ark, like an heir- because they are conflict-heads, end- disciples to keep watch, and they all fell loom, whence Shem fetched it). On the lessly balancing the weight of this old asleep. So these trees would have been other hand, if you have an incarnation, claim versus the verdict expressed in His sole companions. Trees, we now this also should happen. The Son’s the American gambler’s ballad: “When realize, are more active and reactive blood saves, in the first place not every- you lose your money, learn to lose.” I than science once gave them credit for. one in general, but the failed father. cede the task to politicians, terrorists, They think, just slowly. These have had This is a story of which we can literally and think-tank panelists. a lot of time to think about that night, if say, it is touching. What Jerusalem has is history, of a they remember flitting men. They repre- After the church, we went and had density and depth that makes Gettysburg sent Jesus’ point of view. Arab coffee.

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Happy Warrior BY DAVID HARSANYI In the Groove

S I’ve slipped into the heart of middle age, I’ve These days, of course, people can listen to virtually any- noticed myself becoming irritatingly suscepti- thing they desire on any device they want wherever they are ble to bouts of nostalgia. The latest episode and whenever they please. This access to artists, to which I A occurred when, rummaging through some have completely submitted, is astonishing. So I’m certainly boxes in the basement, I came across the tattered remnants not a technophobe. But it doesn’t feel quite like we own of my once-great record collection. music anymore; we’re merely given temporary access to it. In the romanticized version of my life, the first record I I realize it’s irrational and archaic to think this way, but I ever purchased was one that reflected admirably on the sen- would never consider myself an “owner” of a book that sits sibilities of a self-styled twelve-year-old tastemaker— on a device in digital form. A genuine collection is cherished something, say, in the vein of the Ramones or the Velvet precisely because it’s perishable. Underground. Deep down, of course, I’m pretty sure what Modern vinyl fans talk about the warmth and the crack- I bought was inexcusably synth-y, saccharine, bouncy, and ling quality of a record. It’s true. There’s that. They tend to very popular. emphasize the artistry of the covers. Also true. Records can Now, in fairness, I would go about making up for this ini- be beautiful to look at. Some fans talk about how the ritual tial populist misstep by meticulously assembling hundreds of extracting them and caring for them is satisfying in ways of hard-to-find vinyl records, cassettes, and even, for still- that opening a “streaming service”—such antiseptic inexplicable reasons, a few eight-track words—is not. True. tapes (though I owned no means of lis- My sentimentality is driven by all tening to them). Finding a great record these things. The ritual, but also the hunt. was always my favorite high. There was no YouTube. No Spotify. No Snobbish as this sort of thing was, my sampling of songs. With only a few dol- collection was a central part of my iden- lars to his name, a curious teen would tity as a kid. Much of my allowance, often make a decision after hearing only and the preponderance of my teenage one song on the radio, or perhaps none income, would be plowed into this at all. Perhaps he had read a glowing endeavor, often on “indie,” college rock, review in a rock magazine or caught a and “imports.” The last were records that snippet of sound on the fringes of the national chains like Sam Goody’s would dial. Perhaps he trusted a label because sheath in thicker plastic jackets to create the perception of of its immaculate history. He might have seen a band live and scarcity. They would then charge suckers like me five extra been impressed. Or, often, aesthetic clues on the back of the dollars for music that was likely pressed in the same record were too tempting to pass up. I spent many hours of Taiwanese factory as Madonna’s latest record. my life holding two records in my hands, weighing which Nevertheless, I eagerly surrendered to the gouging. In was more deserving of my seven or eight dollars. some ways I even appreciated it. After all, owning what were Occasionally your record would forcefully exert itself at ostensibly rare records demonstrated my cultural sophistica- the drop of the needle, creating immediate euphoria. tion—or pretentiousness, depending on how one looked at it. However, records that didn’t make an immediate impact And, admittedly, the only person looking at any of it was me. would still be given full consideration. You sit in one place. Whereas I was intractably lazy as a teenager in almost You listen to one song and one side at a time. It takes little every consequential way, I never took even the smallest effort to click past a song or an artist who doesn’t offer you shortcut when it came to my collection. For example, no sin- instantaneous musical gratification. Some of the best music gles allowed. If an artist could muster only one decent song needs time to boil. Procedurally speaking, a record demands at a time, he might become famous and stupendously rich, your attention. but he wasn’t worthy of a place in my milk crates. Nor did I Of course it’d be nice to relive those days. Mostly, I’ve ever slide a “greatest hits” album next to a disc of integrity. been resistant to the vinyl revival because it reeks of Albums, like books, were meant to be cohesive and unique. Millennial retro trendiness. Buying an old record player Now all that’s left of my efforts can be housed in a single is now an expensive proposition. I’ll probably give it a box. Around 20 records, preserved with their scratches, shot anyway. The truth is, it will likely be a fun hobby, nicks, and frayed corners—my collection was intended to be but it’ll never be the same. Not merely because I’ve got- played, not saved. Funny thing is that I don’t recall ever giv- ten older and less patient, but because the music-listening ing or throwing away a single one of them. Yet the collection experience has been forever altered by technology. There has been distilled over two decades of adulthood into 20 of are approximately 8 trillion songs on my phone. And the most important records. that’s fine. Every generation gets to enjoy its own small pleasures. The record collection just happened to be one Mr. Harsanyi is a senior editor of the Federalist. of ours.

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