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STEORTS on HENRY OLSEN: Jeb Bush’s Prospects Beethoven NORDLINGER on KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: THE MISERY OF AIR TRAVEL Franco

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TOC:QXP-1127940144.qxp 1/7/2015 2:34 PM Page 1 Contents

JANUARY 26, 2015 | VOLUME LXVII, NO. 1 | www.nationalreview.com Henry Olsen on Jeb Bush p. 16

ON THE COVER Page 30 BOOKS, ARTS Nice Non-Work If You Can Get It & MANNERS “Labor-force dropout”—jobless people giving up on 40 BEETHOVEN’S ‘LANGUAGES’ Jason Lee Steorts reviews Beethoven: finding work—has received renewed attention. Anguish and Triumph, Neither policy researchers nor by Jan Swafford.

policymakers nor media 42 FRANCO IN FULL commentators have Jay Nordlinger reviews Franco: A Personal and Political understood this problem Biography, by Stanley G. Payne sufficiently. How concerned and Jesús Palacios.

should we be? Scott Winship 47 BRITAIN AND THE ARABS David Pryce-Jones reviews Fighting the Retreat from COVER: ROMAN GENN/BETTMANN/CORBIS Arabia and the Gulf—volume 1, The Collected Essays and ARTICLES Reviews of J. B. Kelly, and The O il Cringe of the West— 16 JEB’S PROSPECTS by Henry Olsen volume 2, The Collected Essays He currently lacks the makings of a 2016 victory. and Reviews of J. B. Kelly.

20 WHAT WOULD REAGAN SAY? by Ramesh Ponnuru 48 NO ‘MAO MOMENT’ GOP presidential hopefuls should make a case for their beliefs. Arthur L. Herman reviews China 1945: Mao’s Revolution and 21 THE PERSECUTION OF GORDON COLLEGE by David French America’s Fateful Choice, Traditional Christian education is under attack. by Richard Bernstein.

24 OPEN HEARTS, OPEN BORDERS by Tino Sanandaji 50 FILM: MARRIED TO THE MOB Immigration chaos brings down Sweden’s libertarian Right. Ross Douthat reviews A Most Violent Year. 28 UNHOLY ALLIANCES by Kevin D. Williamson U.S. airlines test even the patience of a monk. 51 COUNTRY LIFE: CLOSING TIME Richard Brookhiser comments on the FEATURES arrival of winter. 30 NICE NON-WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT by Scott Winship Labor-force participation among men is declining as disability claims rise. SECTIONS

33 THE CONVALESCING MAN OF EUROPE by Michael Bird 2 Letters to the Editor A comparison of the U.S. and U.K. labor markets. 4 The Week 38 The Long View ...... Rob Long 35 ON THE RIGHT TRACK by Stephen Smith 39 Athwart ...... James Lileks Private passenger rail returns to Florida. 47 Poetry ...... Stephen Scaer 52 Happy Warrior . . . . Jonah Goldberg

NATIONAL RevIew (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATIONAL RevIew, Inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 2015. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., NATIONAL RevIew, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONAL RevIew, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATIONAL RevIew, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATIONAL RevIew, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters:QXP-1127940387.qxp 1/7/2015 2:33 PM Page 2 Letters

JANUARY 26 ISSUE; PRINTED JANUARY 8

EDITOR Richard Lowry Senior Editors Against a LARC Richard Brookhiser / Jonah Goldberg / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts I am writing in regard to Robert VerBruggen’s article, “On a LARC,” in the Literary Editor Michael Potemra AtIONAL eVIew Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy December 31, 2014, issue of N R . Washington Editor Eliana Johnson I would like to thank Mr. VerBruggen for being honest about his present state Executive Editor Reihan Salam Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson of mind. However, I think it is incorrect to raise questions about the “value” or National Correspondent John J. Miller Art Director Luba Kolomytseva the “worth” of protecting an unimplanted human embryo. Deputy Managing Editors Katherine Connell / Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz An unimplanted human embryo is still a human being. to claim the right to Production Editor Katie Hosmer decide to cause its death amounts to a claim of ownership of another human Assistant to the Editor Carol Anne Kemp Research Associate Alessandra Haynes being. Ownership of human beings is forbidden by the 13th Amendment of the Contributing Editors Constitution of the United States. Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn Jim Geraghty / Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy Barbara Hoffman Kate O’Beirne / Andrew Stuttaford / Robert VerBruggen Fond du Lac, Wis. NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editor Edward John Craig OBeRt eR RUggeN ReSpONDS News Editor Tim Cavanaugh R V B : Ms. Hoffman does not address my primary Opinion Editor Patrick Brennan argument on the question of how we should treat unimplanted embryos: If National-Affairs Columnist John Fund Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke we are to treat them with the same respect we give to any other human life, we Political Reporter Joel Gehrke Reporters can’t just make it illegal to harm them; we also need to save them from natur- Andrew Johnson / Katherine Timpf Associate Editors al death when possible. thousands upon thousands of embryos fail to implant Molly Powell / Nat Brown naturally in the United States every year. If she is willing to advocate taking Editorial Associates Brendan Bordelon / Christine Sisto steps to address this, she has my respect for her intellectual consistency. Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Developer Wendy Weihs Regarding the Constitution, the 13th Amendment makes no mention of Web Producer Scott McKim “human beings” (it bans “slavery” and “involuntary servitude”). As for what EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan the document says about abortion elsewhere, I’m with Antonin Scalia: “when

NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE the Constitution says that persons are entitled to equal protection of the laws, I BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Ryan Lovelace / Ian Tuttle think it clearly means walking-around persons.” States should be free to restrict Contributors abortions, including the very earliest abortions, but nothing in the Constitution Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza requires them to. M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner David Gelernter / George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak A Post-Apocalyptic Union Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber I admit that I am a sucker for end-of-the-world books. I got started with an Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman obscure one called “Swan Song” by Robert R. McCammon many years ago. So Accountant Zofia Baraniak Business Services it was with rapt attention that I read Ian tuttle’s article “to Carry the Fire” Alex Batey / Alan Chiu Circulation Manager Jason Ng (December 31, 2014). His writing is pure poetry, probably better than the books WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com he mentioned. I particularly like the twist that apocalyptic events might bring MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 about the best rather than the worst in people. I have often wondered about this. WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Could people band together (as they do not in the apocalyptic stories I have Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler read)? I assume it would make for boring reading. After all, what fun is it if Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Assistant to the Publisher Emily Gray every one gets together and tries to make the best of things, i.e., to carry the fire? Director of Philanthropy and Campaigns Scott Lange I would love to see this tried. I admit that Stephen King did this in The Stand, Associate Publisher Paul Olivett but, still, half the survivors were evil. perhaps, because of his wonderful writing Director of Development Heyward Smith Director of Revenue Erik Netcher ability, Mr. tuttle might want to try his hand at this. Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell

PUBLISHER Jack Fowler Deborah Oliver CHAIRMAN Oklahoma City, Okla. John Hillen

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

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week:QXP-1127940387.qxp 1/7/2015 2:35 PM Page 4 The Week

n Free advice to Jeffrey Epstein: If you’re trying to overcome your reputation for being a sexual creep, spend less time with Bill Clinton.

n According to CNN, they shouted “God is great!” One suspects that what the gunmen actually shouted was “Allahu akbar!” as they murdered a dozen staffers at Charlie Hebdo, the Paris-based satirical magazine whose offices were burned a few years back in retaliation for its humorous depictions of Mohammed and con- temporary Islamic figures. (Mohammed sternly promised Charlie Hebdo readers “100 lashes if you’re not dying of laughter.”) The magazine recently published a cartoon of ISIS boss Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi, and then the local jihadists did their best impersonation of his followers. From Denmark to Norway to France, Islamic ex - tremists have waged a campaign of violence against free speech, and especially against criticism of Muslim terrorists and the back- ward, primitive culture that indulges them. After the attack, those n How would John Adams, founder of America’s first presiden- expressing solidarity with the magazine and the people of Paris tial family, handicap Jeb Bush’s run for the White House? As an took “Je suis Charlie” as their motto. These days, that’s as much a old man, writing to his friend Thomas Jefferson, Adams identified statement of dread as one of sympathy. We don’t always agree “five pillars of aristocracy”—beauty, wealth, birth, genius, and with Voltaire, but where holy animals are concerned, his words virtue—which, he believed, lifted those who possessed them to will do nicely: Écrasez l’infâme, crush the infamous thing. the top in all political systems, since all men honored them. Some pillars, Adams went on, were stronger than others: “Any one of n Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who ran for the the first three can at any time overbear any one or both of the two Republican presidential nomination in 2008, gave up his Fox last.” Adams summed up: “Call this principle, prejudice, folly, show to consider making another bid. Huckabee tends to polarize ignorance, baseness, slavery, stupidity, adulation, superstition or conservatives. Many social conservatives, especially Evan gel - what you will. I will not contradict you. But the fact . . . I cannot icals, admire him while many economic conservatives cannot deny.” If that reads like an endorsement, Bush 45 is welcome to it. stand him. To win the nomination he will have to do several things he did not do last time: raise a lot of money, build a national orga- n The excuse for the Obama administration’s complete with- nization, and reach beyond his Evangelical base. If he cannot do drawal from Iraq was that we couldn’t obtain a so-called status-of- those things but wins the support of a significant minority of forces agreement from the recalcitrant Iraqis. In Afghanistan, we Republicans, then his main effect will be to make it impossible for have a basing and a strategic-partnership agreement in hand, as anyone else from the right of the party to take the nomination. If well as a government begging us to stay, and yet President Obama he can run a much stronger campaign than he did last time, on the is still determined to remove all our troops. At the end of De - other hand, he could make the next two years more interesting cember, he announced the end of our “combat mission” in than a lot of handicappers now expect. Afghanistan (with the exception of fighting al-Qaeda, training Afghan forces, and aiding them when they are in extremis), a way n Representative Steve Scalise (R., La.) is the House majority station to the complete liquidation of our presence in 2016. We whip in the new Congress, notwithstanding a media blow-up over saw how this sort of exit worked out in Iraq. ISIS rose from noth- the holidays. It was reported that as a state legislator in 2002 he ing to take over swaths of the country and the Iraqi security forces had addressed a white-supremacist group. His office said he prob- nearly fell apart, necessitating the return of U.S. troops in much ably had, but (1) he did not know the nature of the group at the more dire circumstances than those they had left. With apologies time and (2) he was talking about stopping tax increases to any- to Einstein (or whoever actually said it), doing the same thing over one who would listen. Then the story got blurrier, with one of the and over again and expecting different results is the definition of event organizers denying that he had spoken at it. At this point the Obama’s foreign policy. balance of the evidence points to his not having spoken there, and to his office’s having had poor judgment in advancing the story. n President and Mrs. Obama gave an interview to People maga- Scalise’s colleagues, including at least one black Democrat, say he zine, in which they talked about racial slights they had suffered. has shown no signs of racism. If that’s right and his aides do a Probably every person suffers slights, of one kind or another. better job in the future, there will be no more of these stories and President and Mrs. Obama are at the top of the American heap.

ROMAN GENN he can start rounding up votes for conservative legislation. They are hard to see as victims, except perhaps of dizzying self-

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THE WEEK regard. Mrs. Obama said, “I tell this story—I mean, even as the embarrassing findings onto the public on Christmas Eve in first lady—during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to transparent hopes that the timing would minimize the attention Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me paid to them. It’s bad stuff: There was active malfeasance, in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take some- notably a penchant among NSA agents for using the infrastruc- thing off a shelf. Because she didn’t see me as the first lady, she ture of national security to spy on their spouses and romantic saw me as someone who could help her.” Listen, we’ve been partners. One agent entered the numbers from her husband’s telling Americans all along not to make the mistake of thinking personal mobile-phone directory as targets for monitoring; that the Obamas can help them. another used an NSA system to check up on his wife. In re - sponse, the NSA offered the gentlest of admonitions: two weeks n Two Army captains, Edward Mallue Jr. and Natalie Heimel, without pay here, a minor demotion there. In other cases, inves- had scheduled a wedding in Hawaii. They were going to have it tigations were dropped for reasons such as retirements. These on the picturesque 16th hole of a golf course. But on the day of are not petty violations of NSA policies: These are serious their wedding, President Obama wanted to play that golf course. crimes. In some ways, though, the errors are worse than the So, with hardly any notice, the couple was told that they would crimes: The NSA report detailed how the agency conducted have to have their wedding somewhere else. It was no tragedy. surveillance on targets for whom it had no legal authorization, Their wedding came off regardless, and they even got a congratu- how classified information was mistakenly transmitted to peo- latory call from the president, along with an apology from him. ple not authorized to receive it, how national secrets were stored (He almost certainly did not know the wedding was taking place on unsecured computers, etc. The NSA is entrusted with a criti- beforehand.) Still, imagine that a conservative Republican presi- cal responsibility, and it is invested with sweeping powers to dent wanted to play golf, forcing a pair of Army captains to alter carry out its task. In return, it owes the nation adherence to a very their wedding plans at the last minute. Do you think the national high standard of professionalism and competence. The NSA media would have been blasé about that? isn’t holding up its end of the deal.

n In late November, Morgan State University, in Baltimore, held n A Republican initiative threatens to make Obamacare worse. its second annual “Black United Summit International.” The sum- The law’s employer mandate kicks in when employees work 30 mit had a theme: “Re-Claim, Re-Pair, Re-Form, Re-Produce— hours a week or more. Congressional Republicans are rightly con- REPARATIONS NOW!” The keynote speaker of the affair was cerned that employers are thus encouraged to cut back workers’ Louis Farrakhan, who spoke for more than two hours. He was hours to less than that. They want to change the mandate so that it especially interested in talking about recent police cases that had kicks in at 40 hours a week. The trouble is that there are more inflamed the nation. He was interested in more flames. Farrakhan people who work a little more than 40 hours a week than there said that both the Koran and the Bible contained a “law of retali- are who work a little more than 30 hours a week. The result of ation,” “a life for a life.” “As long as they kill us and go to Wendy’s changing the law this way, that is, could be more hours cut. And and have a burger and go to sleep, they’ll keep killing us. But the legislation is unnecessary. The employer mandate itself, like when we die and they die, then soon we’re going to sit at a table the individual mandate, is unpopular, and even some Democrats and talk about it! We’re tired! We want some of this earth or we’ll oppose it. Republicans should fight the mandates, not fiddle tear this goddamn country up!” He scolded parents who told their with them. children about “compromising.” He scolded preachers for “being the pacifier for the white man’s tyranny.” In attendance, by the n At Harvard, there is wailing and rending of garments from the way, were 40 students from a local middle school, ranging in age faculty as provost Alan M. Garber puts their money where his from eleven to 15. There was once a song, beloved on the left: mouth is. Garber, a physician and economist, signed that famous “Teach your children well.” letter from economists endorsing the cost-control measures of the so-called Affordable Care Act; he is now implementing similar n The Sony-hack saga jumps to its second reel. In the first, a trove measures at Harvard, and the professors do not like it. Obamacare, of Sony’s private data was spilled online. Motive and circumstan- including its “Cadillac tax”—the levy on generous health plans— tial evidence pointed to North Korea, since Sony was scheduled is making Harvard-style arrangements difficult to sustain, and so to release The Interview, a comedy in which Kim Jong-un was the Dickensian squalor in which Ivy League professors toil is to mocked and indeed assassinated. Fearful theaters declined to be deepened by copays and deductibles. The deductible will be screen the movie, and the studio pulled it. Then at year’s end $250; the average salary for a full professor at Harvard is more President Obama slapped North Korea with sanctions, at which than $200,000. Obamacare is a redistributive program, and the Norks fulminated—even as private cyber-security experts Barack Obama has often insisted that government should take speculated that the hack may have been an inside job, though they from those earning in excess of $200,000 to redistribute to others. admitted that the FBI had not released all the evidence it says it Harvard’s most celebrated public intellectuals have in large mea- has of North Korean involvement. Meanwhile, The Interview was sure celebrated that approach, perhaps forgetting that a couple of released. The flick sounds so-so, which is hard to understand— married Harvard professors are likely to exceed the infamous “1 what could be funnier than a pomaded fat man with nuclear percent” threshold. (In this case, calling it a “Bentley tax” would weapons and 25 million slaves? Still, call it a belated victory, if be more fitting.) Democrats talk as though we could finance the not for the muse of comedy, then for gumption. sort of welfare state that Obama et al. contemplate simply by bushwhacking a few Wall Street oligarchs. The professors are n In response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, the finding out that when it comes to redistribution, they are the ones National Security Agency dumped a heap of worrisome and they have been waiting for.

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THE WEEK n White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that President n The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the Obama would veto a bill to approve the Keystone oil pipeline. Dodd-Frank financial-reform act, has turned its regulatory The administration says that the normal bureaucratic approval sights to a new industry: payday lending. Payday lending had process—it’s actually been protracted beyond normal—should as much to do with the financial crisis that prompted Dodd- be followed. Obama has said the pipeline will create few jobs. Frank as do Congolese cobalt miners, you might say . . . but Perhaps; but its impact on the environment will be even small- Dodd-Frank concerns itself with Congolese cobalt miners, er. The oil is still coming to market, with or without this pipe - too. (It includes sanctions on them.) The case against payday line. By vetoing this bill, Obama will be saying that he believes lending, already a locally regulated business, usually cites that the most notional environmental concerns trump every- annual interest rates running to 100 or even 1,000 percent. But thing else—and that he is willing to stand against many Dem - payday loans aren’t annual loans; they’re a way someone with o crats and public opinion for this cause. Hillary Clinton, poor or no credit can obtain cash for a month or two. The pre sumably, will follow Obama. The public may well conclude, CFPB’s new scrutiny of the industry seems to be due in part rightly, that this is not after all a small matter. to the fact that the regulator is run by advocates of public alternatives to the industry, such as getting the Postal Service n Call him Pontius Petroleum: Having engineered a ban on into lending, and by former subprime lenders who compete modern techniques for extracting natural gas in New York with payday loans. The CFPB was supposed to be a new kind State, Governor Andrew Cuomo immediately sought to wash of federal agency. Pushing liberal hobbyhorses and being cap- his hands of the decision, citing the evidence of health risks tured by industry groups? Sounds like the old kind of federal contained in a study overseen by acting health commissioner agency. Howard Zucker. Zucker himself is less sure: “We don’t have the evidence to prove or disprove the health effects,” he said. n The attorneys general of Nebraska and Oklahoma are suing The dispute here is nominally about “fracking,” a high-tech Colorado for legalizing marijuana. They say its policy is un - method of gas drilling used around the country that is in many dermining the federal laws against marijuana, which makes it ways safer than traditional drilling methods; among other illegal, and their ability to enforce their own marijuana laws, things, it is less likely to contaminate drinking-water wells. which gives them an interest. The Supreme Court’s case law But fracking is not the real issue, just as the Keystone pipe line is may give the complaining states a shot; a proper understanding not the real issue in that dispute: The issue is that the environ- of the Constitution and federalism would not. States have no mental movement, to which Cuomo and other Dem ocrats are obligation to assist in suppressing whatever the federal gov- hostages, intends to oppose all traditional energy-infrastructure ernment has deemed a crime. The federal government may projects, categorically. New York’s environmentalists have made legitimately enact and enforce laws to protect states from the it clear that, having won the fracking round, they will move on spillover effects of other states’ policies, up to a point. If the toward restricting or banning the train traffic that moves feds aren’t doing that in this case, Nebraska and Oklahoma Bakken crude through New York and to restrict growth at should take it up with them rather than sue Colorado. crude-shipping facilities in Albany. New York’s economically depressed Southern Tier, where much energy might be pro- n Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s speech calling for duced, is politically weaker than the well-heeled environmen- a religious revolution against intolerance is roughly the equiv- talists who summer in the Hamptons, where much energy is alent of a bayonet charge across open ground. There he was in consumed. Governor Cuomo has just written off those strug- Al-Azhar, Cairo’s main mosque and Islamic university, telling gling Southern Tier counties, and Albany, which has enjoyed assembled clerics that Islam with its sacred texts is “a source some petroleum-driven growth despite the governor, should of anxiety, danger, killing, and destruction,” antagonizing the expect the worst. entire world. No doubt killing and destruction are already being planned in response to it. n Conservatives got a Christ mas present from an unlikely source this year, the Vermont state government. Governor Pete n Hamas has not so far achieved its purpose of replacing Israel Shumlin, who is technically still fighting for reelection, finally with Palestine, but at least it has thrown the European Union abandoned his plan to build a into confusion and double-think. Over a decade ago, the EU’s single-payer health system. foreign-policy makers classified Hamas as a terrorist organi- But Shumlin never had plans to zation. Firing missiles and killing or kidnapping as many make its financing plausible Israelis as possible, Hamas has made sure to live up to this (the state would have potential- classification. Last summer’s clash with Israel ended any ly had to double its revenues) chance of a peace process. The European parliament has just or to get hospitals and doctors passed a vote in principle recognizing Palestinian statehood, to agree to cost control. The that is to say, rewarding Hamas, which controls much of the Obamacare architect and MIT area. At the same time, the General Court, one of the EU’s judi- economist Jonathan Gruber got cial bodies, has ruled that Hamas is not a terrorist organization himself attached to Shumlin’s after all. Shaken by the anger aroused in Israel and the United project. Apparently, though, he States, the EU issued the oracular statement that this is “a legal forgot to share the lesson of the ruling of a court, not a political decision taken by the EU gov- federal law: You’ve got to hide ernments.” Or in straightforward language, they haven’t a clue WILSON RING /

AP the costs. Pete Shumlin about what they are doing.

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THE WEEK n In midmorning in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, the long- fense, Venezuela’s Tourism Ministry says that two other ice- drawn war between the Taliban, an al-Qaeda offshoot, and the cream parlors in Merida are still open (though customers may be army reached a depth of horror that is unimaginable, never mind unable to obtain trout or Viagra flavor, both Coromoto special- understandable. Seven Taliban gunmen wearing suicide vests ties) and points out that the closed shop’s owner is “an opposition and shouting “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” burst into the supporter.” OK, now we’re starting to get it. Army Public School, attended by about a thousand pupils, chil- dren of the military. In dreadful scenes of murder, the gunmen n A professor at Wisconsin’s Marquette University has dis- shot dead 132 children, ten school staff, including the head covered what happens on the modern American college cam- teacher, as well as three soldiers. They also set fire to a number pus when one stands up for free expression and the right of of corpses. About 120 wounded pupils were hospitalized. All conscience. Professor John McAdams, who teaches political seven gunmen also died. On behalf of the Taliban, a spokesman science, was suspended in December after he criticized a col- said that the army had put the group and its tribesmen through league for her refusal to permit the discussion of same-sex such heavy nights that it was time for the army to suffer a heavy marriage in class. “Some opinions,” the teacher who invited night. However, this attack has been counter produc tive. There McAdams’s ire had told her students, “are not appropriate.” As are calls to execute the several hundred Tali ban gunmen in jail. McAdams found: He was also barred from the campus, and The Afghan Taliban has dissociated itself from the crime, and “relieved of all teaching duties and all other faculty activities, Pakistan’s army may at last take the decisive steps against the including, but not limited to, advising, committee work, facul- Taliban that it has always promised. ty meetings and any activity that would involve your interac- tion with Mar quette students, faculty and staff.” McAdams’s n On February 1, French citizens will bid a relieved adieu to behavior, the authorities claim, was akin to an “attack.” A pri- Socialist president François Hollande’s “supertax.” Following a vate institution, Marquette is not bound by the First Amend - court decision that found an earlier version of the proposal uncon- ment, nor are there any laws on the books in Wisconsin that stitutional, a revised 75 percent levy on France’s highest earners prohibit such censure. For a center of learning to take such a took effect at the beginning of 2014. In the ensuing months, the measure, however, is nothing short of appalling. tax has managed only further to alienate France’s wealthy—actor Gérard Depardieu renounced his citizenship and moved to Russia n Dario Raschio evaded before the law even took effect—and to contribute to France’s the Japanese in 1944, but economic woes: In May 2014, the French government confessed he was successfully taken that its €30 billion in expected tax revenue was optimistic—by hostage at his own medal some €14 billion. The political effects for Hollande have been ceremony 70 years later— predictably grim: French Socialists performed poorly in local by protesters shouting elections last spring, and Hollande’s own approval rating is in the “Hands up, don’t shoot!” teens. It seems people do not like economic depression or confis- The 100-year-old World catory taxation. Who would have guessed? War II veteran was set to receive a swath of honors n “Pegida,” in German, is an acronym for Patriotic Europeans for his service in the Pacific Theater when more than 100 pro- against the Islamization of the West. Pegida rallies in Dresden and testers began to bang on windows and push through the doors at other German cities have brought counter-rallies and condemna- Oregon senator Ron Wyden’s town hall at Portland Community tion from politicians, beginning with Chancellor Angela Merkel. College. Wyden was able to quiet the demonstration long enough Pegida organizers strive to keep neo-Nazis out of their ranks, but for Raschio to receive his medals—only to have protesters begin get called neo-Nazi anyway. A populist surge has also bent shouting about America’s continued military presence in Iraq Swedish politics. The Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigrant when Raschio himself took the podium. After a short speech, in party with unsavory roots, have been making gains (as Tino which he accepted the medals on behalf of his fallen comrades, Sanandaji discusses on page 24). In December, the established— he ended: “God bless America. And you people that are here for and pro-immigration—Right allied itself with the governing left- a cause, whatever it might be—show respect to Senator Wyden.” wing coalition rather than make any accommodation with them. Yes, and to even more deserving recipients of it. Meanwhile arsonists burned three Swed ish mosques. Europe’s liberal asylum policies, and its refusal to encourage immigrants n Serving in Afghanistan, an American soldier, Brian Mast, lost to assimilate, have turned European neighborhoods and even both of his legs. He is now a student at Harvard. On that campus, cities—Malmö—into sharia slums. If mainstream parties will not he observed anti-Israel demonstrations, as Israel was under attack address popular unease with these developments, then that unease from militants who want to destroy it. The demonstrations moti- will be exploited by parties and people outside the mainstream. vated the ex-soldier: to volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces. The way he put it was, “I decided I needed to find a way to go n Under normal circumstances, the ice-cream shop Heladeria help however I can and however Israel would have me.” A news Coromoto, in Merida, Venezuela, offers 900 different flavors, a article noted the following: “Mast, who grew up in a Christian world record. But now it offers zero flavors, because it can’t home in South Florida, said that his parents had impressed upon obtain the milk it needs. The store’s management blames the him the importance of the U.S. alliance with Israel. He remains socialist economic policies of the late, boorish dictator, Hugo intensely committed, he added, to promoting ‘liberty and free- Chávez, and his chosen successor, Nicolás Maduro, who might dom from tyrannical regimes.’ ” With that kind of mindset, he

be summed up as Chávez without the charm. In Maduro’s de- will surely find the IDF a better fit than Harvard. BREITBART

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THE WEEK n Jack Hawkins, the chancellor of Troy University, sent a n Edward Brooke was, ex cept campus-wide e-mail in which he attached and recommended a for one thing, an unmemo- 90-second video of a Mormon business-school professor argu- rable public figure. A two- ing that religion is vital to the functioning of democracy. As if term senator (1967–79), he on cue, the president of American Atheists, an organization was a liberal Republican, whose address is a post-office box, sent Hawkins a letter to New England division, who “educate you about atheists and morality.” Did Hawkins real- blocked Richard Nixon’s ize that “atheists have higher IQs”? And fewer STDs? “We ask judicial appointments and for a public apology,” the letter peevishly concluded, implying supported arms control and that the Founders were not just wrong but beyond the pale abortion. Brooke served his when they wrote that “our Constitution was made only for a country honorably in World moral and religious people” (John Adams) and that “religion is War II, and concealed his the only solid base of morals and . . . morals are the only pos- finances dishonorably during a divorce. But Brooke was sible support of free governments” (Gouverneur Morris). black—a very memorable fact, especially during his Senate Atheists are well within their rights to dispute the message of years: He was only the third black senator in history, following the video. Perhaps, though, they should make their case with- in the footsteps of two other Republicans who represented out seeming to be on a hunt for heresy. Reconstruction-era Mississippi. Because civil rights was the project of modern liberalism, the Republican party became n In Ohio, on the outskirts of Toledo, there’s a city of 20,000 alienated from its glorious history. Liberal attempts to recap- called Oregon. According to an official proclamation, when the ture it, à la Brooke and Colin Powell, failed; conservatives sel- NCAA football championship came down to Ohio State vs. dom made the attempt. But freedom is colorblind; it is for all, University of Oregon, officials were “petitioned by residents of and benefits all. Perhaps now the GOP can reconnect with its the City to make it clear that we are not associated with Oregon roots. Brooke died, age 95. R.I.P. University Ducks Football.” The document is vague on exactly how many people were confused by this similarity in names (the local scarcity of goatees and Moe T-shirts should have been LAW ENFORCEMENT a tipoff), but just to make sure, the municipality—officially Incitement to Kill called “Oregon on the Bay, City of Opportunity”—changed its name for a week before the championship to the even catchier IVE days before Christmas, Ismaayil Brinsley, a hard- “Oregon, Ohio Buckeyes on the Bay, City of Duck Hunters” ened thug, shot and killed two New York City police (the University of Oregon’s team is called the Ducks). Some - F officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, as they sat in where Woody Hayes is admiring the Buckeye spirit. their patrol car in Brooklyn; Brinsley shortly thereafter killed himself. n Aggression tinged with Ramos and Liu were assassinated at the height of a nation- mel ancholy: The former gave wide orgy of protests against police officers that accused spe- Mario Cuomo force, the latter cific cops of murder in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric gave him the semblance of Garner, and most cops of being actual racists and potential poetry. Cuomo, governor of murderers. George Orwell wrote of the “two minutes’ hate.” New York from 1983 to 1994, Ramos and Liu died after a weeks-long hate. became liberalism’s hero in Brinsley pulled his own trigger; there is no evidence that he the Reagan years thanks to his had accomplices. He was an unstable, self-hating loser (before keynote speech at the 1984 driving to Brooklyn to commit murder he shot an ex-girlfriend San Francisco convention. He in the stomach). But he did not pull his deed out of thin air. described America as a tale of “I’m Putting Wings on Pigs Today,” Brinsley posted to Insta - two cities, blasted by inequali- gram before his bloodbath. “They Take 1 of Ours, Let’s Take ty. His audience loved the message, and loved even more the 2 of Theirs.” The Brown/Garner protests, drenched in media presentation: Cuomo overrode applause to set his own winged coverage—the hands in the air, the “I CAN’T BREATHE” T- tempo. Months later, at Notre Dame, he twisted Catholicism into shirts—gave Brinsley his last mission in life. CHARLES TASNADI /

a Möbius strip in order to square his support for abortion with his The rent-a-mobs that clogged streets and public spaces with AP faith. Cuomo’s rhetoric was not all high spots: In two primary marches and die-ins were the backdrop for Brinsley’s kill-in. : races against Ed Koch, posters saying “VOTE FOR CUOMO, NOT More shameful than the average protester were those who THE HOMO” appeared in blue-collar Democratic neighborhoods; engaged in violence or incitement themselves—the New York in a debate with Republican Lewis Lehrman, Cuomo seized on college professor accused of trying to throw garbage cans on JOE RAYMOND BROOKE Lehrman’s expensive wristwatch—Democratic-party dema- cops at a Brooklyn Bridge demo; the occasional cohorts that / gogy going straight back to Jefferson and Madison. Cuomo’s chanted “What do we want? Dead cops!” record had hardly any high spots. His only remedy for a falter- Far and away the most culpable is that stormy petrel, Al ing state economy was to balance the budget with high taxes. Sharpton. Ramos and Liu join the long list of victims of his SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE His party all but begged him to run for president in 1988 and street theater—Yankel Rosenbaum (killed in the Crown / AP 1992, but he passed. His melancholy was not for show, but the Heights pogrom), Angelina Marrero, Cynthia Martinez, Luz :

product of deep insecurities and conflicts. Dead at 82. R.I.P. Ramos, Mayra Rentas, Olga Garcia, Garnette Ramautar, CUOMO

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THE WEEK Kareem Brunner (shot and burned at Freddie’s Fashion Mart). Also, the Castros were supposed to release 53 of their po litical Sharpton does not will the deaths that trail in his wake; he is no prisoners. Where are they? As of this writing, none has been Black Panther. But he does will frenzy and fury; they are his released. On the contrary, the dictatorship has picked up the pace raison d’être. Any responsible man would recognize that his of arrests and imprisonments. The Obama administration and its actions have predictable, if erratic, consequences. Why does supporters seem faintly embarrassed. such an incendiary have a TV s how? Why does the network Obama’s swapping is quasi-defensible, even if it entails a risk: that carries him have sponsors? Will other hostile regimes conclude that taking an Amer ican Less bad only by degree are the politicians and officeholders hostage pays off? Certainly the seizure of Alan Gross paid off for who make use of Sharpton—President Obama, Attorney Gen - the Castros. Already, the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, is er al Holder, Mayor de Blasio. They appear with him on public talking about the potential swaps he could make with Wash - platforms and consult him as an ally and soulmate. They en - ington. cour age his rabble and reward his efforts. Equally shameful is Very hard to defend is Obama’s normalization of relations. it the New York Times, which amplifies Sharpton’s arguments comes cost-free to the Castros. Previous administrations offered in mush-mouthed journalese (a Times article characterizing Brinsley’s murders as random acts was a classic of misdirec- tion). When Mayor de Blasio, clearly shaken, appeared at the hos- pital where the dying officers had been taken, New York policemen turned their backs on him—a gesture repeated at the funerals of Ramos and Liu. Outraged nature might explain the first protest; repeated, it dragged the police, who must be neu- tral enforcers of the law, uncomfortably into politics. Reports that cops, in a work slowdown, are deliberately writing fewer summonses, represent, if true, dereliction of duty. Police com- missioner Bill Bratton, who must report to the mayor, lead his force, and fight crime, is in the position of a man juggling hatchets on a tightrope. One glimmer in this maelstrom: Bowdoin College, where Officer Ramos’s eldest son, Justin, is in the class of 2017, will waive the remainder of his tuition.

CUBA ‘Castroism Has Won’

RESidENT OBAMA has now given the Castro dictatorship something it has wanted since 1959: full diplomatic P rec og nition by the United States. Yoani Sánchez, the incentives: relaxation of U.S. policy in exchange for Cuban lib- famed Cuban dissident, said, “Castroism has won.” Unfor tu - eralization. Obama has acted unilaterally, giving the dic tatorship nate ly, it is hard to argue with her. not just relaxation but the ultimate prize, normalization. On the day he announced diplomatic recognition, Obama His new policy will mean dollars to the dictatorship—exactly also announced a swap: We were returning three convicted the oxygen it needs. The timing could not be better for the spies for two of our own people. One of our people was Alan Castros. Their lifeline for the last 15 years has been Venezuela, Gross, the aid worker whom the Castro regime took hostage in with its vast oil wealth. Now Venezuela is on the brink of eco- 2009. Previously, the Obama administration said that we nomic and political collapse. And a lifeline has come from an would never trade the Castros’ spies for this aid worker. The interesting quarter, the White House. moral imbalance would be grotesque, the precedent awful. As if that weren’t enough, Obama is signaling that he will Evidently, the administrat ion had a change of mind. it claimed remove the Cuban dictatorship from the State department’s list that Cuba was releasing Gross on humanitarian grounds, but of terror sponsors. The dictatorship is very close to the North this was the merest diplomatic fig leaf. Korean regime and to Colombia’s FARC. if the Castro brothers The Cuban spies, incidentally, were part of a network that are no longer sponsoring terror, they have undergone a hard-to- helped the dictatorship kill four members of Brothers to the see transformation. Rescue in 1996. Three of the dead were U.S. citizens, and the Obviously, Cuban democrats have no say in U.S. policy, fourth was a permanent resident. They were blown out of the which is strictly a matter of U.S. interest. But sensitive people sky while in international airspace. will note the extreme dismay of those democrats. Óscar Biscet in the recent swap, we also got an intelligence asset of our spoke for many of them. He is the Afro-Cuban physician whom own: a Cuban national. His identity and the role he played for George W. Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in us, however, are clouded in mystery. Critics of the swap have 2007. After Obama made his move, Biscet said, “i feel as though a suspicion that he was not the asset we are told he was. They i have been abandoned on the battlefield.”

suspect that the administration has played up his role, falsely. We would love to tell him he is wrong. But he knows better. AP

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Huckabee, and Rick Santorum, all of them vocal about their religious commit- ments. Once the race narrowed down to two serious candidates, each was defeat- ed as voters not primarily motivated by religion lined up behind an establish- ment favorite who seemed more elec- table. This cycle, however, the most conservative candidate is likely to be someone such as Ben Carson, Rand Paul, or Ted Cruz. Each of these can - didates will strike themes pleasing to religious conservatives, but none is so defined by his religiosity or his views on social issues as to be considered unac- ceptable by less religious conservatives. In the race’s later stages, that person should pose more of a threat to the estab- lishment choice than have previous con- servative favorites. Bush faces another challenge in get- ting the nomination: serious competition from his left. The modern GOP is a con- Jeb’s Prospects servative party, but even now about 30 percent of Republican-primary voters He currently lacks the makings of a 2016 victory describe themselves as moderates or lib- erals. The percentage is higher in key BY HENRY OLSEN states such as New Hampshire and in the Midwest. Moderates are the largest ideo- N the Book of Exodus, God takes the more conservative voters to other likely logical faction in the New Hampshire form of a burning bush to reveal him- candidates. A recent McClatchy-Marist Republican presidential primary, for self to Moses. Today’s GOP estab- poll showed Bush getting only 8 percent in stance, forming between 45 and 49 per- I lishment seems to be revealing its of the vote among Republicans who sup- cent of the electorate since 1996. Candi - agenda by way of a Bush, too. What port the Tea Party, leaving him behind Ben dates who appeal to this group may have worked for the Israelites, however, may Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Ted Cruz. a hard time winning the nomination, but not turn out so well for the GOP. While the choice of the party’s base they could cause Bush serious trouble in That’s because the establishment agen- normally doesn’t win the nomination— the early going. da Bush seems poised to offer is strik- the victor tends to be the favorite of the Two candidates so far seem able to ingly out of step with the voters who will establishment and “somewhat conserva- compete with Bush among such voters: decide the 2016 Republican nomination tive” types—2016 could be different. Rand Paul and Chris Christie. The most and the general election. Very conservative voters tend to domi- recent Washington Post poll showed The GOP’s base voters are deeply nate primaries in the Deep South and Paul running even with Bush among mod- unhappy about the establishment’s sup- caucuses in the Midwest and Rocky erate Republicans, and the McClatchy port for high levels of immigration, Mountain states. New GOP rules this poll showed Christie running a strong while working-class whites and Hispan - cycle require delegates in caucus states second to Bush among Republicans who ics have generally been underwhelmed to be pledged in proportion to the num- are not tea-party supporters. Since the by the establishment’s economic mes- ber of votes a candidate receives in that states with high numbers of moderates sage. Jeb Bush’s best chance to become caucus’s straw poll. In previous nomina- also permit independents to vote in the president therefore seems likely to be tion contests, the establishment often had Republican race, a candidate who in - running as the sort of innovative, princi- influence over the state conventions that spires non-traditional Republicans to pled conservative he was as governor of actually select the delegates, depriving vote (as John McCain did in 2000) can Florida, crafting his own distinct, more conservative candidates such as Rick wreak havoc. Caught between charis- populist, message. That will require Santorum of the full benefits of winning matic candidates to his right and his some transfiguration. a caucus state. left, Bush may not survive the early Bush’s unpopularity with the conserv- The base’s choice is also likelier to con tests. ative base is well known. National polls win the nomination this time because he Nevertheless, running a bland, FILE consistently show him losing among the probably won’t be stereotyped as a reli- establishment-Republican campaign / gious conservative. In 1996, 2008, and has traditionally been the ticket to the Mr. Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public 2012, the favorites of the most conser - nomination. The early indication is that WILFREDO LEE /

Policy Center. vative voters were Pat Buchanan, Mike Bush will run a similar race. Indeed, in a AP

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letter to Iowa voters sent in the month Surveys from the Public Religion Re - who seems to value bosses over workers. before he formally announced he’d con- search Institute found that when asked Pew analysis from 2011 and 2014 shows sider running, Bush nodded toward the to choose which approach is likelier to that the group dominated by less edu- establishment’s domestic priorities: com - produce economic growth, raising taxes cated whites is much farther to the left on prehensive tax reform, cutting entitle- on the wealthy to increase spending on domestic economic issues than are estab- ments such as Social Security and transportation and education or cutting lishment, business-oriented Republi cans. Medicare, an accommodating policy on taxes and government spending, only 33 Compared with the GOP establishment, immigration, and federal efforts to im - percent of Hispanics chose the second working-class whites are much likelier prove public education. Presumably he path, not much more than the 27 percent to favor tax increases on the rich and sees these policies as likely to help pre- of Hispanics who voted for Romney. more spending on the poor (even if such sent the “more uplifting, more positive” Adding six points to Romney’s share of spending increases the debt). They are agenda that non-core Republicans will the Hispanic vote in each of these four much less likely to want to see entitle- rally to. If so, he will probably find him- states would have moved only Florida ments such as Social Security or Medi - self to be sorely mistaken. into the Republican column. care touched at all, and are much less Any Republican nominee faces the Attempting to regain the presidency favorable to new free-trade agreements same basic challenge to win back the by significantly increasing the Repub - and a path to citizenship for illegal immi- White House: hold every state won by lican share of the Hispanic vote will face grants. In short, many of them are suspi- Mitt Romney and pick up enough of the another serious problem: There aren’t cious of virtually every plank in Bush’s small number of swing states to get to enough electoral votes in heavily His - nascent economic agenda. 270 electoral votes. Those states have panic swing states to push Bush over Moreover, in a 2012 exit poll, a major- remained roughly the same since the the top. Even if one optimistically adds ity of voters in each of these working- 2000 election: Florida, Virginia, Ohio, the five electors of New Mexico to the class-white states believed, as do a Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, and 57 from the four foregoing states, the majority of Americans, that the econom- New Hampshire. Extending the list to total is still six votes short of the 68 a ic system is tilted toward the rich. An slightly more-Democratic states that are Republican candidate will need in order October 2014 Washington Post poll still within reach adds New Mexico, to succeed where Romney failed. found that voters overwhelmingly think Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. So Jeb will have to win at least one the GOP’s economic policies would pri- These states break into roughly three state in the third group—Iowa, New marily benefit that same group; even a groups, each with similar categories of Hampshire, Ohio, and Wisconsin—to plurality of Republican voters think their swing voters. become Bush 45. But his agenda is not party favors the rich. The first group is the smallest. To - well suited to appeal to those states’ Working-class whites have been eco- gether, Virginia and Colorado have 22 swing voters. nomically hard hit for well over a decade. electoral votes. They have moved from The third group comprises 38 elec - Census data show that Americans with- being GOP bastions to being swing states toral votes—rising to 84 if one includes out a four-year college degree have seen because of the rising numbers of two Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsyl - their real incomes decline since hitting a groups, left-of-center educated whites liv- vania—and it is dominated by whites peak in 1999. Their incomes did not ing in the Denver and Washington, D.C., without college degrees. These voters increase even during the years the econ- areas and Hispanic and Asian immigrants. form the largest share of the electorate, omy grew under Jeb’s brother. It would There’s little in Bush’s expected agenda between 45 and 50 percent, in Wiscon- be foolish for Hillary Clinton not to that is going to pull the educated whites sin, Iowa, Ohio, and Michigan, and the argue that, when she and her husband away from the Democrats, so he is effec- second-largest share in Minnesota, New were in the White House, higher taxes on tively staking his hopes on significantly Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. They the rich coincided with rising worker increasing the Republican share of His - voted Republican in 2010 and 2014 in incomes. When Jeb’s brother was presi- panic and Asian voters. large numbers, but went for Obama or dent, she can say, taxes on the rich The second group of states, Florida only narrowly for Romney in 2012. Scott dropped and so did working-class in - and Nevada, has 35 electoral votes. They Walker, Rick Snyder, and Joni Ernst got comes. Hillary Clinton has been accused also have turned toward the Democrats massive boosts from these voters—espe- of many things, but foolishness is not because of the rise in Hispanic influence. cially among whites who never even one of them. The establishment believes that Romney enrolled in college—enabling them to be Bush still has time to correct these lost these states primarily because of his competitive in what are considered problems. The exploratory phase of his hard-line stance on immigration. Re- tough swing states. While such voters campaign should be much more wide- move this barrier, the thinking goes, and play a bigger role in midterm years than ranging than the usual staff-hiring and a Republican candidate could do much presidential ones, they still dominate this donor-herding. He is more deeply inter- better among these groups. group of northeastern and Midwestern ested in the details of policy than the This belief rests on very shaky ground. states in any year. What working-class average high-level politician. He should Polls consistently show that Hispanics, whites want, therefore, may be the most play to this strength over the next few especially the Mexican population that important factor for a Republican nomi- months, devising conservative solutions dominates the Hispanic vote in Colo - nee to consider. for the problems of the working class. rado and Nevada, do not agree with It’s clear enough what they do not Unless he does that, he isn’t about to establishment-Republican economics. want: a business-oriented Republican lead his party to the Promised Land.

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should be reformed without tax in - But they’re largely staying away from creases (November 1977). national issues. The one who is being What Would Gun control was less popular than a most candid about this avoidance is superficial reading of some polls sug- Christie. Asked about immigration dur- Reagan Say? gested, he argued (August 1978). He ing a campaign stop last summer, he plumped for the Kemp-Roth tax cut straightforwardly said he was going to GOP presidential hopefuls should (November 1978). He urged a free duck the question: “I’m not going to dis- make a case for their beliefs market in agriculture (March 1979), cuss a complicated issue like immigra- condemned “bilingual education” for tion here in Marion, Iowa.” Christie BY RAMESH PONNURU keeping kids ignorant of English (April added that he had “no role in the immi- 1979), asserted that sex education gration debate except for how it may FTER narrowly losing the Re - should present information in a moral affect the citizens of New Jersey” and publican presidential nomina- context (May 1979), and came out for that he would address it only “if and tion in 1976, Ronald Reagan abolishing Amtrak even though he loved when I become a candidate for president A immediately resumed his trains (July 1979). And he suggested of the United States.” He repeated these newspaper column and radio commen- that Madalyn Murray O’Hair should not lines later in the summer during a trip taries. He continued them well into make a federal case of “the pain of car- to Mexico. On a fall campaign trip to 1979. He used those venues to express rying coins which carry the inscription Arizona, a reporter asked him about opinions on all the major issues of the ‘In God We Trust.’” securing the border, and by way of re - day, and quite a few minor ones. None o f the contenders for 2016 has a sponse Christie first looked at him and It is a precedent that most of the Re - regular column or radio gig. They com- then walked away. pub licans who are trying to be his heirs have not chosen to follow. The Repub li - cans who are running for president in 2016, or thought to be running for it, or to be considering it, will all say that they have Reagan’s principles and his spirit. They will all defend their policies as in keeping with his. Most of them, how - ever, seem intent on minimizing their involvement in controversies. It is the opposite of the approach that Reagan took in the run-up to the 1980 presiden- tial campaign. Reagan in His Own Hand collects (among other things) his pre-presidential radio commentaries, most of which he wrote himself in longhand. It also shows Reagan on the radio in 1976 how he revised the drafts to better make his points. They are blunt, often funny, municate via press releases, sporadic Bush has been almost entirely absent and wide-ranging. Many of them con- speeches and op-eds, and interviews. from the political debate during the cerned foreign policy. The week’s radio Most of them seem to be striving to Obama administration. He left office at address might be about Namibia, or avoid using these media to weigh in on the start of 2007 and has been working in Vietnam, or Chile; it would take a strong issues unless they have to. the private sector since then. He has made anti-Communist line on any foreign The trend is most pronounced among news involving political controversies topic. In June 1977, he complained the governors and ex-governors who are three times in the Obama years. He said that the Carter administration’s policy thinking about 2016. It would be unfair that Republicans should be willing to toward China did not match its rhetoric to say that these men have been trying trade tax increases for spending cuts. He on human rights. He did a series of to live q uiet lives. As governor of Flori - supported the Common Core initiative to talks about arms-control negotiations in da, Jeb Bush was at the center of two create uniform standards for schools. And October 1978. national conflagrations—over the state’s he spoke and wrote in favor of an immi- He offered a full domestic platform, disputed electoral votes in 2000 and the gration reform that includes legal status too, taking on topics that he could easily starvation of Terri Schi avo in 2005— for many illegal immigrants. Breaking the have ignored. He talked about public- and innumerable local ones. Governor immigration laws, he suggested, is often sector unions, urging California to bar Scott Walker of Wis con sin became Pub - “an act of love” for one’s family. them from being able to strike (May lic Enemy No. 1 for the Left nationally In each case, Bush’s remarks were 1977). He made the case that raising by reducing public-sector-union privi- more controversial among conservatives CORBIS

the minimum wage would keep a lot of leges. Chris Christie has been no one’s than among liberals. Reagan, too, was / teenagers from getting jobs (September idea of a shrinkin g violet as governor of willing to disagree in public with other

1977). He said that Social Security New Jersey. conservatives: He debated Wil liam F. BETTMANN

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Buckley Jr. and George Will about the ing that many people of good will dis- Panama Canal. Most of the time, though, agree. Instead, most of them were silent. he was trying to win converts to the posi- Governor Walker said that the debate The tions that most conservatives held. For over marriage is “over in Wisconsin,” whatever reason, that’s not a way Bush where the Su preme Court’s decision Persecution has spent much time in recent years. meant same-sex marriages had to be of- On the other side of the spectrum are— ficially recognized. in rough, and admittedly impressionistic, If you asked the quieter candidates Of Gordon order—Senator Ted Cruz of Texas (who why they have spoken out so little, and has been a friend of mine since college), they broke their pattern by answering the College Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Gov - question, they might plead that they were ernor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, and being prudent, picking their battles, keep- Traditional Christian education Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. It’s not ing their powder dry. Con ser va tive voters is under attack surprising that the senators are being should not, after all, be looking for can - more vocal about national issues than the didates who make incendiary remarks BY DAVID FRENCH governors, since they deal with them in when none are called for, or create con- their daily jobs. Jindal, who is generally troversies where they do not exist. n the new climate of liberal intoler- seen as having worse odds of getting But it is possible to engage issues win- ance, conservative Christians can’t the nomination than Bush, Christie, or somely and judiciously. Reagan mostly even find refuge by agreeing with Walker, is using any issue he can to did that. He went out of his way to share I Elizabeth Warren. Just ask Michael punch his way into the top tier of candi- his opinion on issues, and did not refrain Lindsay, president of Gordon College. dates. Paul is a little like Bush in that a lot from doing so by invoking the excuse On July 1, 2014, he signed a letter to of the controversies in which he has that he was not currently a presidential President Obama—writing as an indi - engaged have been disputes with other candidate. If he held his tongue on some vi dual rather than in his institutional ca - Republicans. matters, the presumption was nonethe- pacity—exercising his most basic First An example of the field’s reticence less that people had a right to know where Amendment right to “petition the gov- came in October, when the Supreme he stood. Speaking his mind helped him ernment for a redress of grievances.” The Court declined to rule on whether many to develop his ideas, and probably made letter, signed by a number of Christian lower federal courts are correct in say- it easier for him to hold his ground as leaders and scholars—including the ing that the Constitution requires state president—when, for example, he acted CEO of Catholic Charities and Rick governments to recognize same-sex on his convictions about public-sector Warren, famous pastor of Saddleback marriages. Those lower courts had cited unions during the air-traffic controllers’ Church—dealt with the president’s then- a previous, ambiguous ruling by the strike. imminent executive order banning Supreme Court in reaching their conclu- The candidates could also say, fairly, sexual-orientation discrimination by sion. The effect of the Court’s silence was that Reagan was an outlier in this respect federal contractors. to displace the democratically enacted as in others. They are certainly no less The letter made a simple request: It laws of eleven states. forthcoming than Hillary Clinton, who asked the president to add a “religious Senator Cruz blasted the courts for pipes up now and again but usually hides exemption” to his planned executive or- indulging in judicial activism, said states behind the fiction that she is a private cit- der. Lindsay wrote: should be allowed to define marriage as izen. Perhaps the nature of the modern the union of a man and a woman, and said media, or of Americans today, in some We have great appreciation for your com- he would offer a constitutional amend- way militates against Rea gan’s style of mitment to human dignity and justice, ment to that effect. Jindal said he agreed engagement. and we share those values with you. With with Cruz. Former Arkansas governor A willingness to speak out on the respect to the proposed executive order, Mike Huckabee said that elected state issues of the day, even at the risk of at - we agree that banning discrimination is a good thing. We believe that all persons officials should ignore the courts and tracting criticism for it, seems like some- are created in the divine image of the cre- continue to stand for the traditional defi- thing Republican primary voters should ator, and are worthy of respect and love, nition of marriage. Former Pennsylvania count in a candidate’s favor—in part so without exception. Even so, it still may senator Rick Santorum complained that that they can go on to make further judg- not be possible for al l sides to reach a “the courts continue to exceed their au - ments about whether the candidate can consensus on every issue. thority.” do it deftly. It is not the only thing that The other potential candidates obvi- voters should consider, of course: Some not much hate there. ously did not wish to go as far as this of the most reticent members of the field Indeed, the letter did not ask the presi- quartet. All of them are aware that most have records of accomplishment that dent to halt the planned order. Instead, it polls show that a majority of voters now should not be ignored. But primary voters merely asked for an exemption for reli- favor same-sex marriage, and that sup- should also remember which candidates gious institutions contracting with the port for it has been rising rapidly. Still, have fought the rhetorical fights of recent federal government—an exemption that the other candidates could have reiterated years as they watch all of them declare their position on marriage and self- how much Reagan’s example means to government while, perhaps, acknowledg- them.

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was actually narrower in its impact than Religious liberty—once a thoroughly assume about members of the Gordon one Democrats had passed overwhelm- bipartisan cause—was now out of favor, community is that they’re doing their ingly through the Senate, with the sup- at least if it conflicted with the Left’s best to follow Christ. Beyond that, as - port of none other than Elizabeth Warren, reigning sexual orthodoxy. sumptions are dangerous. Massachusetts’s junior senator and un- So Gordon College had to pay the price But while Gordon is intellectually rig- disputed champion of the Left. for its president’s impertinence—through orous and ideologically diverse, it is cul- In 2013, Warren voted for the Employ - a wave of illiberal anti-religious provoca- turally isolated. Its Evangelical ortho doxy ment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), tions driven by establishment-leftist vitri- would fit in well in my home state of a proposed federal law that would ban ol that, left unchecked, could threaten the Tennessee, right alongside Christian sexual-orientation and gender-identity very existence and viability of Christian colleges such as Lipscomb University discrimination in workplaces across higher education in the United States. (my alma mater), Union University, Tre - the United States, encompassing tens In many ways, Gordon is an unlikely vecca Nazarene University, Lee Univer- of thou sands more employers than target for the Left’s latest “two minutes’ sity, Covenant College, and any number President Obama’s planned executive hate.” First, its academic reputation is of theologically orthodox Protestant order. Yet ENDA contained a robust re- sterling. If there were such a thing as a schools. ligious exemption, flatly exempting “Christian Ivy League,” then Gordon But on the outskirts of Boston, Gordon houses of worship and providing broad would be at the top of the conference, stands alone—alone and vulnerable to protections for religious employers who right along with its better-known cousin, the leftist mob. require employees to adhere to state- Wheaton College, in Illinois. Unable to punish President Lindsay ments of religious orthodoxy. Second, Gordon is hardly a hotbed of personally, activists targeted Gordon, dis- ENDA passed the Senate (it has made right-wing reactionaries. My own memo- covering that—lo and behold—it had a no progress in the House) in November ries of Gordon go back to my law-school policy (like virtually every orthodox 2013. President Lindsay signed his letter days, when the few Harvard Christians Christian school and church in the United eight months later. A lot can change in would occasionally car-pool up to Gor- States) that required students and em - eight months. The arc of leftist social his- don (it’s located just north of Boston) to ployees to limit sexual activity to mar- tory moves quickly, and it bends towards enjoy concerts or lectures. We found it riage, defining marriage within the intolerance. a haven of Evangelical Christianity, but Judeo-Christian tradition, as the union By the following July, the Elizabeth we could never presume the professors’ of one man and one woman. Warren position (and the position of 51 or the students’ politics. Devout, yes. Never mind that the policy allows any other Democratic senators) was an in- Thoughtful, yes. But conservative? Only person of any sexual orientation to attend tolerable outrage. Religious exemptions sometimes. Gordon, teach at Gordon, or serve in its were tainted by the Hobby Lobby case, in And so it is today. For the better part of administration. The fact that its Life and which the Supreme Court interpreted the last two years, I’ve provided occa- Conduct Policy prohibits “sexual rela- the Religious Freedom Restoration Act sional legal counsel to President Lindsay tions outside marriage” and “homo sexual to permit Hobby Lobby to exempt itself and the college’s board, and I find that practice” (explained as “sexual inter- from aspects of the Department of Health Gordon is the same thoughtful but course”) was enough to take action, to and Human Services’ so-called contra- difficult-to-categorize place I knew 20 declare it bigoted and not fit for inclusion ception mandate. years ago. The one thing you can safely in society. The response was swift. In an act of pure moral grandstanding, in July—just eight days after President Lindsay signed the letter to President Obama—the city of Salem suspended a long-term contract with Gordon that had allowed the college to use the city-owned Old Town Hall—a spiteful act, but one of little consequence to the college. But then the spite became harmful. In late August, the Lynn School Com - mittee—a nearby school district—ended an eleven-year relationship with the school and refused to accept Gordon College students as student-teachers in its system. This action—in addition to being destructive (teaching programs can’t function without student-teacher place- ments)—is grotesquely unconstitutional, violating students’ rights of free associa- ELISE AMENDOLA /

Michael Lindsay, president of Gordon College tion, free speech, and religious liberty by AP

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punishing them for merely attending that “the agency must consistently apply Gordon College, even without evidence and enforce standards that respect the the students themselves have engaged in stated mission of the institution, includ- Open Hearts, any “discriminatory” acts or even agree ing religious mission” (emphasis added). with Gordon’s policy (there are dissent - There is a pattern to recent public battles Open Borders ers who attend the school). over leftist intolerance. If the con serva - Then, in September, Gordon’s accredi- tive target is culturally or geo graphically Immigration chaos brings down tor, the New England Association of “red,” the conservative backlash over- Sweden’s libertarian Right Schools and Colleges, announced that it whelms the Left. Chick-fil-A and Hobby had met to consider whether “Gordon Lobby have taken the Left’s best punch BY TINO SANANDAJI College’s traditional inclusion of ‘homo- and have emerged unbloodied and un - sexual practice’ as a forbidden activity” bowed. N 2006, Fredrik Reinfeldt led the violated the association’s standards But Gordon isn’t well-known in Red Swedish Right to power after more for accreditation. The Association gave America. Tucked in the Northeast, it than a decade in the wilderness. His Gordon one year “to ensure that the doesn’t enjoy the support of any national I star reached its peak as fiscally pru- College’s policies and procedures are conservative constituency. So it has faced dent Sweden weathered the euro-zone non-discriminatory.” its crisis supported only by the small crisis well. In the United States, Rein - The implication was clear: You have community of writers and bloggers who feldt’s success was closely monitored one year to choose between your con- monitor religious freedom in higher edu- by Henry Olsen at NATIONAL REvIEW science and your accreditation. cation. ONLINE and by Republican political stra t - For Gordon, the death penalty now The new conservative congressional egists. The Economist predicted that looms. A college cannot exist without majority must put the Department of “by 2014 Mr. Reinfeldt will have been in accreditation. The number of programs Education on notice that it will not be power for eight years. Given the econo- and benefits that are conditioned upon permitted to “recognize” any accrediting my’s strength, few would bet against his accreditation are simply too numerous to agency that seeks to impose an ideologi- winning again.” mention. Simply put, a student with any cal litmus test on private, religious col- Far from winning again, Reinfeldt and ambitions to participate in the commer- leges. If the New England Association his coalition parties on the right suffered cial life of this country or to pursue a has given Gordon College a year to toe a crushing defeat in the 2014 elections. graduate or professional degree would be the leftist line, Congress should give the The combined Right received only 39 foolish to attend an unaccredited college. Department of Education and the New percent of the vote, its lowest share ever recorded. But neither were there many smiles on the faces of the victorious For Gordon, the death penalty now Social Democrats and their allies. The looms. A college cannot exist without Left coalition started its election cam- paign with a massive lead. When the accreditation. votes were counted, it was stunned to see that it had made zero net gains. The only Gordon—like all other major Christian England Association six months to reaf- victors were the Sweden Democrats, a universities—has been accredited with- firm its regulatory requirement to respect one-issue, anti-immigration party that out incident for generations. And for Gordon’s religious mission. more than doubled its vote share, to 13 good reason. Accrediting agencies are The true legal battle for religious liber- percent. traditionally concerned with the quality ty isn’t won by prevailing only where the After Reinfeldt fell, a new coalition of of the academic programs and the finan- faith is strong. In those areas, the popu- Social Democrats and Greens came to cial health of the college, not with the col- larity of Christianity becomes its best power. The latter view open borders as lege’s commitment to any given version defense. Rather, it’s won by prevailing a h uman right. Like Reinfeldt, the left- of ideological purity. where the faith is culturally weak— wing government has declared im - Not only is this respect for religious where the faithful can’t rely on “buy- mi gration policy non-negotiable. The liberty a matter of tradition, it’s also man- cotts” or multi-million-person Facebook eco nomic strains and the growing divide dated by federal law. While accrediting campaigns, but must instead appeal to the in opinion between the public and the agencies such as the New England Associ- rule of law and to the constitutional political elites is tearing Sweden apart. ation are private, their decisions have obligations of lawmakers. Despite relentlessly pro-immigration power because the accrediting agency is Gordon College’s case may never be - media, only 18 percent of Swedish vot- “recognized” by the Department of Edu- come a popular cause. The college is ers consider it a good proposal to take in cation. To be recognized, an accrediting unlikely ever to enjoy the pop-culture more refugees, according to a recent agency must satisfy a host of “eligibility power of chicken restaurants and craft poll. A reticent yet defiant plurality of requirements,” and none of those require- stores. But few battles will have more 50 percent state that doing so would be ments give the accreditor the ability to dic- enduring meaning than the fight for a bad idea, with the remaining respon - tate a Christian college’s religiously Christian education, for the very ability dents declining to state an opinion. A few motivated policies on sexual conduct. to transmit knowledge and values from To the contrary, those policies dictate one generation to the next. Mr. Sanandaji writes from Stockholm.

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weeks ago, budgetary chaos brought Swedish media because bringing atten- the World Economic Forum in Davos, on by the new political situation forced tion to them is easily perceived as big- Switzerland, Reinfeldt stated that immi- the Social Democratic government to otry. The media and a deep-pocketed grants to Sweden “worked more” than announce a snap election, the first since business lobby campaigning for addi- natives. He might even believe this 1958. Far from having been thwarted, tional migrants and guest workers have demonstrably false claim. Bringing up the Sweden Democrats now enjoy in- instead bombarded the public with the negative aspects of immigration is taboo, creasing support, according to recent message that immigration from develop- while presenting uplifting claims about polling. ing countries is somehow profitable, it is rewarded, regardless of the claims’ But this was not the end of political even necessary. Hugh Eakin of The New accuracy. The immigration policy de - upheaval. After secret negotiations York Review of Books, writing in the New vised by a consensus of Swedish liber- between the Right and the Left, the prime minister and the leaders of the opposition gave a joint press conference Bringing up negative aspects of and announced that the snap election had immigration is taboo, while presenting been canceled. The Swedish opposition on the right instead agreed to support uplifting claims about it is rewarded, every budget put forth by the left-wing government until 2022, with the Left regardless of the claims’ accuracy. giving the same guarantee should the Right come to power. Such a cartel to York Times, has noted that “in Sweden, a tarians and socialists in this intellectual circumvent parliamentarianism is un - closely patrolled pro-immigration ‘con- climate is correspondingly radical. precedented in Scandinavian political sensus’ has sustained extraordinarily lib- Sweden constitutes less than 2 percent tradition and has caused a sharp back- eral policies while placing a virtual taboo of the population of the European Union lash. The immigration crisis has trans- on questions about the social and eco- but, according to Eurostat, accounted for formed Sweden’s boringly stable politics nomic costs.” approximately 20 percent of all asylum into something reminiscent of southern This blackout on facts thought to cast approvals granted by European Union Europe. immigration in a negative light has countries in 2014. When Reinfeldt took It may be useful to look closely at the trapped the elites in a cocoon of willful over, the immediate cost to taxpayers of background to these events. Sweden is ignorance. At the most recent meeting of processing and settling new arrivals was not a nation of immigrants. Geograph - ically isolated and culturally insular, Scandinavia was until recently among the world’s most homogeneous regions. Reliable, Carefree, Expertly Run Travel since 1967! In 1900, only 0.7 percent of Sweden’s population was foreign-born. Today, Sweden takes in more immigrants rela- tive to its population than the U.S. did at the peak of the transatlantic migration. Swedes have been better at admitting refugees than at integrating them into National Parks Tour their society. Around 82 percent of Explore the Spectacular Golden West working-age native-born Swedes are 14 days from $1299* employed. The figure is only 58 percent Departs May - September. Fly into fabulous Las Vegas for one night. 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around $1 billion per year. This year the believer in the libertarian open-borders For the record, Swedes who arrived cost will be $3 billion, and it is projected ideology. In one speech to Middle East - four generations ago are trivially few. to reach $5 billion soon. ern immigrants, he declared that “the Sweden was historically an isolated At first, the media simply did not fundamentally Swedish is merely bar- country, hardly one recently populated report the cost increase. But, as Philip K. barism. The rest of development has by immigrants. The ancestors of most Dick quipped, reality is that which, when come from abroad.” ethnic Swedes have lived there for hun- you stop believing in it, doesn’t go Following his defeat, Reinfeldt has dreds or even thousands of years. Until away. Runaway costs reduce available become even more open-hearted in his recently, this indisputable fact made it resources whether the media report them political philosophy, raising eyebrows difficult even for Marxists to question or not. both in Sweden and abroad. In one wide- the moral legitimacy of Sweden and its As the 2014 election neared, Reinfeldt ly ridiculed interview, dismissing the borders. Today, elderly Swedes who lit- was down in the polls and needed a strains that record levels of immigration erally participated in building the coun- game-changer. In a notorious speech, he have put on the country’s economy and try are forced to listen to the political

Fredrik Reinfeldt decided to report the budgetary projec- social fabric, he offered this analysis: leader of the Right deny their historical tions, partly because they were simply legitimacy. As a Kurd, I am particularly becoming too large to ignore. The prime What does the word “enough” mean? Is sensitive to attempts to use revisionist minister referred to Sweden as a “hu - Sweden full? Is the Nordic region full? history to delegitimize a people. manitarian superpower” and pleaded Are we too many people? We are 25 mil- The bipartisan consensus on immigra- with the Swedish public to “open their lion people living in the North. I often fly tion in Sweden did not produce success- hearts.” His speech was hailed as a suc- over the Swedish countryside. I would ful policy. The ironclad cartel merely recommend more people to do the same. cess by the media but was followed by a There are endless fields and forests. allowed the elite to override the market- record loss of votes from the Right to the There’s as much space as you can imag- place of ideas and pursue a course that Sweden Democrats, a scandal-plagued, ine. Those who claim that the country is has so far proven disastrous. This holds deeply unpopular party with xenophobic full, they must demonstrate where it is full. lessons for Americans as well as for roots. This did not signify any newfound Swedes. The conservative establishment enthusiasm for the Sweden Democrats. Reinfeldt recently questioned the right of in the United States increasingly con- Rather, when immigration became more Sweden to enforce its borders, bizarrely sists of “Davos men,” who identify more salient as an issue, its opponents found suggesting that ethnic Swedes also tend with elites in other countries than with their way to the only available alterna- to be recently arrived immigrants: domestic non-elites. Their interests and tive. values increasingly differ from those of Reinfeldt’s party, Moderaterna, once What is Sweden as a country? Is this the people who have delegated power to offered a more moderate immigration nation owned by those who have lived them and elevated them to office. This here for four generations, or by those POOL / platform, but its libertarian wing has makes elite collusion a real danger to the who invent some borders? Or is this an since gained control of immigration pol- open country made up of people who popular legitimacy of the ifnstitutions o icy. The party has now followed its open- arrive here, in midlife, perhaps born in representative democracy, a problem borders ideals to their logical conclusion. another country? And it is what they that is not limited to the immigration LEFTERIS PITARAKIS /

AP Reinfeldt himself appears to be a true make of Sweden that is Sweden. issue.

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ture cruelly contrasting with the paleo- Me of the Austin Powers films—a two- primitivism of what goes on inside. It foot, eight-inch man who uses a mobility Unholy is the sort of airport that gives one the scooter and does not seem a very likely feeling that the baggage carousels are hijacker. The ordinary crimes routinely Alliances run by some sort of Flintstones-style committed by its agents—illicit scanner prehistoric-hamster-on-a-giant-wheel porn and looting passengers of cash, elec- U.S. airlines test even the apparatus. JFK and LaGuardia are in fact tronics, jewelry, and prescription drugs— patience of a monk the only two institutions known to man do not make many headlines. capable of inspiring a modern Homo Clearing the TSA gauntlet can be made BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON sapiens to utter the words, “I hope I go a little easier by sitting for an interview through Newark.” And that’s taking into and paying a fee for “pre-check” status— UddeNLy, the South Korean consideration that there is a Blue Smoke i.e., paying the government for the privi- macadamia-nut market is on barbecue restaurant in JFK’s Terminal lege of having an opportunity to convince fire. Most residents of the Re - 4—a not-inconsiderable factor. the TSA that you are less likely to hijack S public of Korea had not so For those who generally travel in a bit an airplane than is Mini-Me—but that is much as heard of the macadamia nut less style than HRH Princess Cho Hyun- not bulletproof, either: Many airports, until a few weeks ago—their northern ah, domestic flight is a nightmare. In fair- including large hubs such as Las Vegas’s cousins would be grateful for any sort of ness, that is only partly the fault of the McCarran International, simply do not nut not going by the title “supreme airlines. Our domestic carriers are incom- offer TSA pre-screening lines when they leader” and inclined to herd them into petent, and they give every indication of do not feel like it. There is no particular prison camps—but today the delicious hating their customers, but they are not reason, pattern, or schedule at work—it seed of M. tetraphylla accounts for half directly responsible for the fact that trav- is, like so many aspects of air travel, en - of the nut consumption in South Korea, elers are generally required to take off tirely arbitrary, at least from the cus- with sales having jumped twentyfold in a their shoes and be groped by a TSA agent tomer’s point of view. In reality, none of matter of days. For that, the world’s maca- with a neck tattoo reading “GANGSTeR.” this is arbitrary: TSA screenings, like damia growers may thank Cho Hyun-ah, The TSA received a good deal of unwant- practically every government function a Korean Air executive—and daughter of ed publicity earlier this year when photos not carried out by men with rifles and very the airline’s chairman—who inflicted were released showing its agents man- short hair operating in exotic locales, are superfluous chaos on New york’s al - handling the actor Verne Troyer—Mini- organized for the convenience of the ready chaotic John F. Kennedy Airport when she ordered a Seoul-bound flight to exit the runway, return to the gate, and expel a flight attendant—who was at the time being forced to ritually kneel in shame—for the crime of serving the first- class princess’s macadamia nuts in a plastic bag rather than a warm bowl. Cho was arrested in New york and charged with violating air-safety laws, forced to resign from her various po - sitions with the airline, and publicly humiliated, though travelers who fly fre- quently into JFK might wish for a more Singaporean model of punishment, e.g., a good, thorough flogging. The lesson that South Koreans have taken from this: Macadamia nuts must be truly fantastic. It had to be JFK, of course. According to the Port Authority of New york and New Jersey, the New york airspace is the root not of all evil when it comes to U.S. flight delays, but of about half of it: Between 40 percent and 50 percent of the flights held at the gate or delayed in the entire country are snarled up because of delays at JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, and the smaller airports in the area, which affect flights around the country. JFK is an especially hideous mess of an

LUBA MYTS airport, its awesome modernist architec-

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government agents, not the public that If you fly enough—and once a month they purport to serve. is more than enough—you will feel the The TSA, the airport authorities, the homicidal temptation. I have seen it hap- NTSB, the various shady union goons pen to the gentlest of souls: the progres- who have their grubby meat mittens in sive San Francisco executive stranded in every aspect of air travel—all are culpa- Syracuse, the mellow Seattle craft-beer ble. And at JFK the buffoonery is com- enthusiast who gets six bonus hours in pounded by U.S. Customs, which is in Detroit, the generally reasonable roving the habit of greeting both American citi- correspondent who cannot for the life of zens and visitors from abroad with hours- him figure out why it takes 16 hours to long waits and bristling hostility that one complete a four-hour trip from Grand might be tempted to describe as “Third Rapids to New York, or why traveling World” if places such as India and Haiti between Denver and Los Angeles is so didn’t do it better. I once watched the much harder and more unpleasant than actor Steve Buscemi wait very patiently, flying from Amsterdam to Berlin, which posing for pictures and pulling exactly aren’t even in the same country . . . zero in the way of do-you-know-who-I- It is enough to rile up even a Bene- am? shenanigans, as he spent the better dictine monk. part of two hours at JFK getting official In November, Brother Noah, a monk permission to return from London; Mr. belonging to the Subiaco Congregation of Pink turns out to be a decent guy. But for Benedictines at the Monastery of Christ in the more than 3 million visitors who get the Desert, just north of Santa Fe, N.M., their first taste of American life at the suffered the monastic version of blowing JFK Customs facility each year, the expe- a head gasket when, after four hours on rience must be perplexing. 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Nice Non-Work If You Can Get It Labor-force participation among men is declining as disability claims rise

BY SCOTT WINSHIP

hE Great Recession amplified the economic anxieties ing a growing number of men who are able to work to drop out of that Americans experience in good and bad times. It also the labor force. focused policy and media attention on economic prob- Bureau of Labor Statistics data on labor-force participation— T lems that predate the downturn by decades. These long- the fraction of Americans working or looking for work in a typi- term issues were “rediscovered” as recent structural problems, cal week—start in 1948. Among men, that year has the highest such as “secular stagnation” and Thomas Piket ty’s r (the return on participation rate on record: 87 percent were in the labor force. By capital) moving closer to g (the economic growth rate). Income 2013, male labor-force participation had fallen to just 70 percent. inequality became the defining challenge of our time, even though That the concern over labor-force dropout is properly focused it had been high and rising during the 1990s boom and the finan- on men is easily seen in the labor-force participation figures for cial crisis lowered it significantly (if temporarily). women. Female participation rose steadily until 1999, as more But “labor-force dropout”—jobless people giving up on find- and more women—especially married wo men—entered and ing work—has also received renewed attention. Neither policy remained in the work force. Only one in three women were work- researchers nor policymakers nor media commentators have ing or looking for work in 1948, but 60 percent were doing so in understood this problem sufficiently. how concerned should we 1999. As recently as 2008, the figure was still between 59 and 60 be about labor-force dropout and its sources? percent, though it fell to 57 percent by 2013. In one sense, we have been overly concerned. Much of the What is more, if we have a problem with labor-force drop out, it increase in the share of Americans who are neither working nor is largely confined to prime-working-age men specifically, as looking for work may be attributable to positive or benign trends noted above. (such as increased school enrollment, earlier retirement, or greater Labor-force participation among men under 25 years old was sharing of household duties by couples), especially among 75 percent in 1978, down only slightly from 76 percent in 1948. It younger men and women and older men. Among men of prime declined at an accelerating clip after that, falling below 57 percent working age (25 to 54), however, nearly all of the increase is by 2013. But increasing school enrollment explains most of this attributable to a rise in the share who do not want a job. One-third drop. Department of Education statistics show the enrollment rate of the drop in the share of men in the labor force is accounted for among male 16- to 24-year-olds rising by about 13 percentage by an increase in men who say they are sick or disabled. That points from 1980 to 2012. Their labor-force participation fell by group’s health status has not deteriorated over time, however, and 18 percentage points over the same period. evidence suggests that federal disability programs may be induc- And among older men, labor-force participation has actually been on the rise. Among men ages 55 to 64, participation bot-

Mr. Winship is the Walter B. Wriston Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. tomed out in 1994 at 66 percent (down from 90 percent in 1948). ROMAN GENN

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That large decline partly reflects a fall in the typical age at retire- unsuccessful job searches and a weak labor market. Not only do ment. After 1975 it is possible to disaggregate this group into men just a minority of men who are out of the labor force want a job, 55 to 59 years old and men 60 to 64 years old. From 1976 to 1994, but the fraction who say they want one responds fairly weakly to labor-force participation fell by seven points among the younger changes in the strength of the labor market, fluctuating within a group and by eleven points among the older group (and the older 15-percentage-point band that remains below a majority. And group grew faster than the younger group). Since 1994, labor- changes in the number of men who want to work have almost force participation among male 55- to 64-year-olds has risen to nothing to do with the rise in male labor-force dropout. 70 percent. Most of this increase was due to rising participation Nevertheless, whether we should worry about these trends is among men ages 60 to 64. These trends predate the Great Re- not immediately obvious from these estimates. If all the men unin- cession by well over a decade and have held steady through peaks terested in work were students, early retirees, or filthy rich, we and troughs, so they are unlikely to reflect growing pressure from would celebrate the decline in male labor-force participation as an economic hardship to delay retirement. indicator of rising prosperity. If it instead reflected an increase in That leaves men in the prime working-age years—between 25 non-working men who were unengaged in productive activity and and 54. Labor-force participation in this group peaked in 1951, at reliant on safety-net programs, that would be cause for concern. 97 percent. By 1970, it was still at 96 percent. But it soon began a Unfortunately, determining why these non-working men do not steady decline, falling to 88 percent by 2013, nine points below its want to work and how their reasons have changed over time is not peak. What happened? possible using the May or March CPS. Still, the answers that Using the survey data on which these BLS estimates are based, respondents gave when asked why they were not working or look- it is possible to begin teasing out why the labor-force participation ing for work can provide some clues. Since 1996, CPS respon- of working-age men declined. The Current Pop u la tion Survey dents have been able to indicate that a disability prevented them (CPS) is conducted monthly, with questions varying somewhat in from working, though they are not asked whether they would take different months. Using May surveys, one can go back to 1969 to a job if they could. In the May surveys between 1996 and 2012, explore what men were do ing in a typical week and whether those roughly half of men who were outside the labor force blamed a who were not working wanted a job. The March surveys let us disability. That was much higher than the share who said they look at men who did not work at all in the previous year and deter- were keeping house (13 percent in 2012), in school (13 percent), mine why they were not employed. or retired (10 percent). (Twelve percent gave the response One way to start is by looking at working-age men in May who “Other.”) were neither working nor looking for work and determining how Using the March CPS, we can look at trends farther back in many of them said that they wanted a job. It turns out that only a time, though survey changes again frustrate comparisons between minority have ever been interested in work. The fraction saying the past and the present. The share of out-of-the-labor-force men that they wanted a job, might be interested in one, depending on who said they had not worked at all in the previous year because the details, or didn’t know was 28 percent in 1969 and showed no of a disability rose from 41 percent in 1969 to 54 percent by 1976. trend of change until the mid 1970s. It rose from 26 percent in It fell to 44 percent by 1984 and then increased only slightly 1974 to 38 percent in 1985 before falling back to 26 percent in through 1993 (when it was 45 percent). At this point there is a 1989. By 1993 it was back up to 30 percent. break in the series, but the share of working-age men reporting Unfortunately, 1993 was the last year this question was asked that a current disability kept them out of the labor force rose from of a representative group of men not in the labor force. We can say, 54 percent in 1994 to 57 percent in 2001. It then fell, getting down however, that among non-retired, non-disabled working-age men to 41 percent by 2013. not in the labor force, the share open to taking a job fell from As a share of all men (in or out of the labor force), the number 44 percent in 1994 to 27 percent by 2006. (The 1994 estimate is reporting a disability grew steadily, except for a brief decline in the much higher than the 1993 estimate, probably because retirees late 1970s and early 1980s. This pattern roughly follows trends in and disabled men—who were excluded from the survey begin- the share of the working-age population receiving Social Security ning in 1994—are less likely to want to work than other men who Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits. SSDI receipt first rose dur- leave the labor force.) The implication is that 2006 was almost cer- ing the 1970s, for reasons mostly related to public policy and the tainly a historical low for interest in work among non-working state of the economy rather than to health factors. During this peri- men. By 2013, the share open to working was back up to 36 per- od, disability benefits became more generous and federal over- cent, though that was probably still below pre-1994 levels. sight of new awards and changes in disability status deteriorated. In short, it is likely that among working-age men who are nei- In addition, a new program for the disabled who had low ther working nor looking for work, no more than 40 percent (the incomes—Supplemental Security Income, or SSI—was intro- pre-1994 peak) have ever been interested in a job. That share fell duced in 1974. The deep recession of 1974–75 also increased before the Great Recession, probably to below 30 percent. I esti- SSDI receipt, showing that “ability to work” could diminish not mate that between 1979 and 2006—two years that were at or near just because of a worker’s health, but because of the health of business-cycle peaks—the increase in men out of the labor force the economy. who were uninterested in working explains 94 percent of the over- In 1977 and again in 1980, Congress legislated changes to SSDI all decline in working-age-male labor-force participation. that made benefits less generous and tightened federal oversight. However, after a string of widely publicized cases of beneficia- ries’ being kicked out of the program, a beleaguered Congress N its face, this is a big problem for the standard story about passed new reforms in 1984 that in time made it much easier to “labor-force dropout,” a phrase that suggests that declin- receive SSDI benefits and keep receiving them until retirement. O ing labor-force participation reflects frustration with With these changes, SSDI receipt has steadily increased, particu-

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larly since 1989, and SSI receipt among adults has also grown without interruption. We can also use the March CPS to see how the increase in men The Convalescing reporting disabilities is related to the decline in working-age-male labor-force participation. I estimate that the rise in disability accounted for about 35 percent of the decline. That was over twice Man of Europe the fraction of the decline accounted for by increases in the shares of men who keep house and take care of a family, who go to school, or who are retired, which each explained about 15 percent A comparison of the U.S. and U.K. of the decline. (Various other reasons for being out of the labor labor markets force accounted for the remainder of the drop.) Richard Burkhauser and Mary Daly, of Cornell University and BY MICHAEL BIRD the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, respectively, have shown that a rising share of adults are receiving federal disability payments, from either SSDI or SSI. This increase in the disability he sick man of europe” is a moniker that has been rolls has not corresponded to a deterioration in health status. applied to every nation of any significance on the Rather, Burkhauser and Daly show how legislative and adminis- Continent in the last 40 years. From the 1970s trative changes have made it easier to qualify for benefits, while ‘T onward, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, incentives for employers to accommodate employees with work France, Germany, and Italy have all been deserving of it for a limitations rather than pointing them to federal disability pro- time. At least half a dozen countries could stake a strong claim to grams have remained low. it today. These repeated economic crises made the United States To be sure, the growth of disability rolls may reflect weak in the late 20th century the envy of the developed world. The demand for workers with limited skills. But this possibility ignores robust U.S. labor market was an object of desire, and every large the fact that, as shown above, falling labor-force participation european country would have swapped its unemployment rate among men results nearly entirely from an increase in those who for that of the U.S. during most of the last 40 years. Most would say they do not want a job. In the March CPS, just 14 percent of still take that trade in a heartbeat. But behind a tumbling unem- working-age men who were out of the labor force in 2013 and also ployment rate, the United States’ labor force is walking with a had done no work in 2012 said that an inability to find work was limp. however it’s measured, the share of Americans in work is what had kept them from working the previous year. That was the shrinking. least common response given, behind not only disability (20 per- The United Kingdom is probably the most relevant country to cent) and retirement (19 percent) but also keeping house and tak- compare with the U.S. A wise decision not to adopt the euro kept ing care of family (20 percent) and going to school (23 percent). Britain’s economy from being stymied by the common currency, Moreover, the last time the weakness of the economy was used and its relatively laissez-faire labor market looks more like that to argue against safety-net reforms was in the 1990s, during the of its American cousin than that of its immediate neighbors. On welfare-reform debate. As things turned out, child poverty and the face of it, the two labor forces look pretty similar. Since the poverty among single-parent families actually fell after welfare start of 2012 the benchmark unemployment rates in the U.S. and reform. The strength of the late-1990s economy was a lucky the U.K. have moved downward in tandem. In January 2012, break, but since then poverty has remained lower than its pre- both were at 8.2 percent, falling to about 6 percent at the end of welfare-reform levels when measures that correct shortcomings 2014. But there are major differences beneath the surface. The of the official poverty rate are consulted (benefits from most of the slumping American labor-force participation rate has become a big anti-poverty programs, including food stamps, Medicaid, and popular conservative talking point, and a comparison with the the earned Income Tax Credit, are not counted as income in the U.K. is unflattering. In the U.S., the participation rate is down by official measure, and when the Census Bureau updates the pover- three percentage points since 2008 and is hovering at its lowest ty line each year for increases in the cost of living, it does so using level since the late 1970s. During the summer of 2014, the U.K.’s an adjustment that overstates inflation). Increases in child pover- participation rate surpassed the United States’ for the first time in ty during the 2001 recession and the Great Recession were more three and a half decades. modest than those in the early-1980s and early-1990s recessions. Despite the popularity of the participation rate as a labor- There is no reason to think that reforms to SSDI and SSI that market thermometer, other measures offer a fuller explanation of include tougher eligibility requirements, as well as greater what’s happening in the United States. Labor-force participation rewards for working and sanctions for not working, would not isn’t a perfect measure because, for one thing, it includes work- similarly benefit less-skilled men who are able to work (and who ers who are retiring. The working-age economic-activity rate is a would have worked in the past). As was true with welfare reform, better yardstick: It includes everyone either working or looking it should be possible to help them do so while retaining an ade- for work aged between 15 and 64 for the U.S., and between 16 quate safety net for those who cannot work. and 64 in the U.K. In the United Kingdom, the figure ticked up experimentation with disability reforms at the state level to 78 percent this year, above the January 2008 level. It has been would provide invaluable evidence about whether rising disabil- higher in the post-war period by only a fraction of a percentage ity rolls primarily reflect a problem with the demand for labor or point. In the U.S., the situation is comparatively bleak. The with the supply of it. What is clear, however, is that falling labor- force participation by itself should not be taken as an indicator of Mr. Bird is a London-based reporter on markets and economics for labor-market weakness. Business Insider.

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working-age­activity­rate­is­down­from­75.4­percent­at­the­start claim­ing­long-term­disability­benefits,­and­the­results­are­now of­2008­to­72.8­percent­now.­­ clear. That­might­sound­like­small­beer,­just­a­few­percentage­points In­2013,­the­proportion­of­working-age­Britons­who­were­eco- here­or­there.­But­with­203­million­people­in­the­U.S.­in­the nomically­inactive­because­of­long-term­sickness­dropped­to­a 15–64­age­bracket,­raising­the­U.S.­activity­rate­to­current­British 20-year­low.­The­proportion­of­the­working-age­population levels­would­bring­more­than­5­million­Americans­back­into­the claiming­disability­benefits­had­begun­accelerating­in­the­late labor­force.­That’s­roughly­the­size­of­Colorado’s­population. 1980s­and­had­peaked­in­the­late­1990s.­Disability-benefit This­is­not­just­a­post-financial-crisis­development,­either:­The reforms­beginning­in­1995­aimed­to­slow­the­flow­of­workers activity­rate­peaked­at­77.5­percent­in­1998,­and­has­been­sliding moving­out­of­the­labor­force.­In­the­mid­2000s,­increased­efforts or­stalling­ever­since. (known­as­Pathways­to­Work)­were­made­to­return­people already­in­receipt­of­disability­benefits­to­the­labor­force­if­they expressed­an­interest­in­working.­Junior­legislators­in­the­Labour nE of­the­more­positive­explanations­for­the­falling­par- governments­between­1997­and­2010­were­not­enthusiastic­about ticipation­rate­in­the­U.S.­is­that­young­people­who­would these­later­reforms,­which­were­largely­driven­by­the­party’s­lead- O previously­have­worked­are­increasingly­staying­in­full- ership.­Since­2010,­under­the­Conservative–Liberal­Democrat time­education.­Increased­college­enrollment­and­a­decline­in coalition,­welfare-reform­efforts­to­move­people­off­benefits the­number­of­high-school­dropouts­have­driven­the­economic- have­been­redoubled. Over­the­past­30­years­in­the­U.S.,­the­over- activity­rate­in­the­U.S.­for­15-­to­24-year-olds­from­65­percent­in all­trend­has­been­in­the­opposite­direction:­Since­the­Disability 2000­to­around­55­percent­today.­That­may­explain­a­little­of­the Benefit­Reform­Act­of­1984,­the­proportion­of­working-age divergence­from­the­U.K.,­though­the­U.K.’s­young­people­are Americans­in­receipt­of­Social­Security­Disability­Insurance­has also­increasingly­staying­on­in­full-time­education­after­their more­than­doubled.­ compulsory­schooling­finishes. There­is­a­plain­correlation­between­the­unemployment­rate The­increase­in­part-time-employment­opportunities­in­the and­the­number­of­people­applying­for­disability­benefits,­as U.K.­after­the­financial­crisis­seems­like­a­superficially­plausible research­by­MIT­economist­David­Autor­shows,­and­as­Scott explanation­for­some­of­the­divergence.­Part-time­jobs­grew­to Winship­discusses­elsewhere­in­this­issue.­Over­the­quarter­of­a take­up­about­three­percentage­points­more­of­the­total­employ- century­running­up­to­2010,­every­rise­or­fall­in­unemployment ment­share­after­the­recession­hit.­But­the­U.S.­mirrors­that has­been­tracked­closely­by­a­similar­rise­or­fall­in­claims.­As­in change­almost­exactly.­Severe­recessions­in­both­countries­drove the­U.K.­and­many­other­European­countries,­disability­benefits part-time­employment­up,­as­people­who­would­have­preferred have­become­an­increasingly­tempting­option­for­American to­work­full­time­or­not­work­at­all­scrambled­to­replace­lost­fam- workers­who­are­pinned­in­long-term­unemployment­or­who­face ily­incomes.­As­solid­growth­began­again­in­both­countries­(a­lit- transfer­to­lower-paying­or­lower-status­jobs.­There­is­one­strange tle­later­in­the­U.K.),­the­part-time-employment­share­started­to upside­to­Western­Europe’s­earlier­economic­turbulence:­Many tick­downward­again.­This­similar-sized­movement­in­both countries­have­been­through­this­territory­before,­and­so­have countries­doesn’t­seem­to­explain­the­divergence.­ already­made­significant­reforms­to­their­long-term-disability- So­what’s­happening?­British­leftists­have­complained­for benefits­system.­The­connection­between­economic­factors­and years­that­new­Labour­and­Conservative­administrations­have disability­claims­is­a­reality­that­is­recognized­by­both­academia Americanized­the­U.K.’s­labor­market.­In­two­ways,­those­ad­- and­European­policymakers,­but­that­U.S.­policymakers­seem ministrations­have­done­so­well­that­U.S.­policymakers­should more­reluctant­to­acknowledge.­In­their­work­on­the­subject, EYEEM

now­be­taking­an­interest.­First,­U.K.­self-employment, American­economists­Richard­Burkhauser­and­Mary­Daly­stress / particularly­among­women,­has­boomed­with­falling­un­- that­many­of­the­forces­driving­disability­claims­have­little­to­do employment, while­only­formal­employment­has­been­rising with­the­health­of­the­population.­The­ease­of­claiming­benefits, in­the­U.S.­Second,­successive­governments­of­different­po­- the­structure­of­the­benefit­programs,­and­the­general­state­of­the

litical stripes­have­tried­to­bring­down­the­share­of­people economy­are­all­major­factors­too.­ ERNESTO CHIEFFALLO

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he most obvious lesson from Britain’s reforms is that the United States should first look to stem the tide of people T applying for such benefits, albeit without doing precisely On the as the U.K. has. British attempts to reduce the number of people receiving disability benefits have been checkered at best. “Work- capacity assessments” intended to weed out those who are actu- ally able to work have proved to be expensive, controversial, and Right Track sometimes cruel. Around a third of the benefit recipients subject to such assessments who were designated fit for work have Private passenger rail returns to Florida appealed their removal from the rolls, and a third of those appeals have been successful. Several have died shortly after being pushed into searching for work. Atos, the firm that conducts the BY STEPHEN SMITH assessments, negotiated an early exit from its contract after tremendous criticism. (Britain’s earlier experience with reducing IAMI, like many cities in America, was created by a the number of new benefit recipients had been much more posi- railroad. Standard Oil founder henry Flagler cobbled tive.) together several existing railroads to make the Self-employment can explain another large portion of the dif- M Florida east Coast (FeC) Railway in the late 19th ference between the U.K. and the U.S. From January 2008 to century, and then he drove the line from Daytona Beach to the November 2014, the number of self-employed people in the U.K. city that would eventually become Miami. Not content with swelled by 16 percent. There are still 5 percent fewer self- reaching the bottom of the mainland, Flagler continued the line, employed workers in the United States than there were before the which became known as the Overseas Railway, to Key West, financial crisis began. All else being equal, a U.K.-like upswing nearly reaching the southernmost tip of the contiguous United would have brought more than 3 million Americans into work. States. For many years, rail was the travel mode of choice for The entrepreneurial spirit of the United States is dampened, in vacationers and migrants making their way to what was then a particular, by difficulty in acquiring health insurance (a subject fast-growing paradise. whose adequate discussion would require a separate article). Today, of course, South Florida is a very different place. Rising female self-employment has also been an important Private passenger rail declined throughout the industrialized factor in Great Britain. In both the U.S. and U.K., the proportion world after World War II, but the United States has had a partic- of men in work has been declining for decades. At the start of the ularly difficult time transitioning from being a market-driven rail 1980s, the rate of economic activity—defined, again, as working system to being one run by politicians. The great railroads of the or looking for work—among men in prime employment age (25 19th and early 20th centuries practically invented American cap- to 54) in the U.S. was still at about 94 percent. That figure had italism, but they struggled to survive the rise of the automobile. dropped to 88 percent by the end of 2013. The female economic- America’s suburban zoning patterns make viable mass transit activity rate moved in the opposite direction, climbing from 64 difficult, and agencies such as Amtrak and their regulators have percent in 1980 to 77 percent at the turn of the millennium. But shown a unique ability to drive up costs while driving down the the growth of the female work force stalled and reversed soon quality of service, reducing what demand still exists. South afterward. Last year it was back down below 74 percent, and both Florida is now a largely car-oriented region, with Amtrak trains sexes are now adding to the American work force’s great con- arriving in Miami, unreliably, at a station many miles from down- traction. In the U.K., things are different. The female economic- town, far from the Florida east Coast terminal, around which the activity rate has continued to move upward, due particularly to city grew. the astonishing boom in self-employment among women. But nearly half a century after the Florida east Coast Railway Between March 2011 and March 2014, a period in which British stopped carrying passengers, its owners think the business might economic growth was less than stellar, the number of self- once again be profitable. The storied FeC shocked the world of employed women grew by a fifth. The U.K.’s entrepreneurial railroading when its parent company announced in 2012 that it boom is recent and conclusions can only be tentative, but the intended to start a private passenger-rail service between Miami scale of the expansion has been huge and deserves some attention and Orlando, with long-term designs on Tampa and Jacksonville. from Washington. With vanishingly few government favors, All Aboard Florida, The United States’ labor market has its strengths. Wage as the project is known, will test whether private passenger rail growth, which has been weak in the United States, has been total- can return to the United States—in Florida but also in Texas, ly absent or negative in real terms in the U.K. A benign explana- California, and perhaps one day the Northeast Corridor—mirror- tion for Britain’s weakness is that self-employed workers earn ing the trend toward privatization in europe and Japan. If markedly less than employees on average, and people who might successful, it will also make Miami a leader in conservative otherwise claim disability benefits are unlikely to be going into urbanism. The city already has fairly laissez-faire zoning policies highly paid work. And those U.S. workers who have fallen out of and a thoroughly Republican political establishment. Add to this, the labor market entirely and would be happy to return make the in a few years, a privately run intercity passenger-rail service, wage picture appear somewhat better than it really is: Incomes heir to a company with a daring capitalist legacy, with a station in of zero are not counted in the average. the heart of the city and ambitions for development that can be The U.S. labor market is still worthy of some envy from across the Atlantic, but the U.K. is looking a little less green today, Mr. Smith is the editor of New York YIMBY, an online trade publication and American policymakers should take note. devoted to real-estate development in New York City.

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likened only to the New York Central Railroad’s Grand Central recession, when Florida road and home builders stopped con- Terminal in Manhattan. struction. All Aboard Florida, Frailey speculates, was edens’s way of trying to make good on his investment. Wesley edens doesn’t have the hard-right tack of ed Ball, and he modern Florida east Coast Railway was born in the All Aboard Florida is a commercial rather than an ideological 1960s, amid commercial and labor turmoil. emerging enterprise, but it has attracted a more conservative cast than most T from a bankruptcy that started during the Great De - rail projects. Among FeC’s executives are husein Cumber, a pression, the railroad reinvented itself in the 1960s as a nimble George W. Bush campaign bundler and Department of Trans- and tightly run freight carrier. Alfred I. duPont’s philanthropic portation official, and Rusty Roberts, a former Republican staffer trust, led by archconservative ed Ball, bought the FeC out of for Representatives Ileana Ros-lehtinen and John Mica. bankruptcy and endured a bruising, sometimes violent 14-year All Aboard Florida has also won over the people who killed an strike that began in 1963. Ball managed to impose efficiencies on earlier government-led Florida rail project: Governor Rick Scott intransigent unions—primarily work-rule reforms such as paring and Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the libertar- crews down to just two people—that would eventually become ian Reason Foundation. In 2011, Scott rejected $2.4 billion in standard throughout the industry. The railroad gained a reputa- federal funding for a high-speed rail line from Tampa to orlando, tion for effectiveness and pioneered a number of 20th-century with South Florida targeted for a later phase. The plan would freight-rail innovations. have required $280 million from the state, but Scott, backed by a We can now put, along with henry Flagler and ed Ball, the Reason Foundation study, claimed that Florida would probably name Wesley edens on the list of venturesome executives at the be liable for $1 billion in cost overruns.

Florida east Coast. Co-founder of Fortress Investment Group, All Aboard Florida is about as close to unsubsidized as a proj - edens is the driving force behind the railroad’s return to passen- ect of this sort can be. edens’s original plan was to seek a $1.6 ger service, according to Fred Frailey, who profiled the railroad billion low-interest loan from the federal government, but the in the January 2015 issue of Trains magazine. railroad, sensing the government’s reluctance, has changed “Nobody in the railroad business would even think of doing course and now intends to sell $1.75 billion in private bonds to this,” Frailey tells NATIoNAl RevIeW. “American [freight] rail- finance the construction of the line to orlando. roads are too timid to bet against the conventional wisdom on To be sure, All Aboard Florida has not forgone all government passenger rail. And the conventional wisdom is that no matter favors. The private-activity bonds that the FeC is issuing to build how hard you try, it won’t work.” the line from South Florida to orlando are tax-exempt, of the sort But edens didn’t come from a rail background; he came from that airlines use to finance terminal-expansion projects. (on the a $66 billion investment-management firm. And given the rail- other hand, the $405 million in debt sold in June for the first way’s invaluable right-of-way through the heart of South Florida, phase of the project did not include any tax breaks or benefit from the growing congestion on Florida’s highways, downtown government incentives.) The company is also getting a break on Miami’s rising stature, and the FeC’s reputation for good man- its orlando terminal, with Governor Scott spending $214 million agement, edens figured (and seasoned rail administrators appar- on a rail station at the orlando International Airport to be used by ently confirmed) that private passenger rail could be financially a number of services, including All Aboard Florida’s. And South viable. Florida politicians are eager to move the Tri-Rail regional com- Fortress Investment Group took control of Florida east Coast muter service from the current inland route to FeC tracks, which Industries in 2007, when the railroad was riding high with the rest run through areas that are more densely populated. But relative to of the state at the height of what turned out to be a tremendous government-led road and rail projects, All Aboard Florida is real-estate-fueled bubble. Florida east Coast’s finances declined remarkably unaided by the government, with billions staked by

ALL ABOARDp FLORIDA recipitately as its rock-hauling business dried up during the private investors.

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HE project has a few natural advantages, chief among on a failing infrastructure base in the road system,” says Rein- them its right-of-way, which cuts through the heart of inger. “And the macro trend is for people to want to move back t South Florida’s urbanized area. this would be impossible into the urban centers of our existing cities.” to assemble at any reasonable cost today. the railroad’s operating style—fast and on time—also makes it better suited to passenger traffic than are other lumbering till, the challenges facing All Aboard Florida are formi- freight carriers. the standard speed on the FEC is 60 miles per dable. large infrastructure projects, public and private, hour, a fact that did not go unnoticed by a pair of face-tattooed, S are often subject to cost overruns. the estimated capital freight-hopping, crust-punk hobos i met last year on the train in cost of All Aboard Florida is $2.5 billion (including $1.5 billion New York. their faces lit up when i asked whether they’d ever for the tracks and related infrastructure, and another billion for hopped the trains of the Florida East Coast: they declared it things such as rolling stock and stations)—even aside from any the fastest freight railroad they’d ever ridden. real-estate development. All Aboard Florida will also emulate the real-estate- But if successful, the project could usher in a new wave of development strategy of America’s old private railroads and private investment in rail in the United States. An entity linked those in East Asia today, as new office towers, retail shops, to the Central Japan Railway Company is planning a high- hotels, and housing spring up along the line. the plan is for the speed rail line, called the texas Central Railway, that will run passenger service to be operationally profitable on its own, says between Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth. that project has P. Michael Reininger at All Aboard Florida, but real estate should much higher hurdles to jump—it will have to be built from also drive profits. Much like Grand Central terminal in Man - scratch—but the success of All Aboard Florida would aid the hattan and the hotels and office towers that the New York Central texas Central in attracting investors. (it also helps that Houston Railroad built above its tracks, All Aboard Florida will develop a has no zoning code, offering opportunities for the railroad to number of buildings on top of and around the rails at its Miami make money through real estate and a fast-growing pool of Central downtown terminal, with smaller projects in the other potential riders.) cities served. the California High Speed Rail Authority similarly intends to in much of America, mass transit is hobbled by tight zoning attract private capital to build and operate its line, but it has shut codes that restrict the potential pool of customers for travel with- down attempts by at least one private operator to straighten out in and between urban cores. But in Miami, planners have long the route between los Angeles and San Francisco. instead, the been eager to allow growth in the core—not coincidentally, Authority opted for a circuitous tour of California that includes, around the new rail terminal—and a number of builders have among other things, a detour through the Mojave Desert. already hitched their wagons to the private passenger service, All Aboard Florida, by contrast, will have only four stops: planning large projects nearby. Miami, West Palm Beach, Fort lauderdale, and Orlando Why Miami is so pro-development is tough to explain, but the international Airport. “Because it was designed by businesspeo- city’s conservative Cuban elite probably has something to do ple and not by politicians, it doesn’t have stops every 20 miles,” with it. South Florida’s latino conservatives differ from the says Reason Foundation’s Robert Poole. mainstream American Right in their support for immigration and the developments in Florida and texas mirror recent global their liberal views on social issues, but they share an interest in trends in rail toward a return to private operation and ownership. limited government and free markets. Cuban émigrés and their Japan, which has always had private suburban railways, priva- offspring dominate the construction industry, and the latin tized many of its remaining public intercity and commuter lines Builders Association is a powerful force in local politics. two decades ago. the success of private ownership has led the “i’m not a sociologist,” says Xavier Suárez, Miami’s first Central Japan Railway Company, which owns the country’s Cuban-born mayor. “But you can read the books on it. A lot of flagship Shinkansen line between tokyo and Osaka, to embark them attribute [Cuban-American conservatism] to a very enter- on an incredibly ambitious scheme to build a magnetic levitat- prising character and history and tradition for Cubans, and maybe ing train line along the route, funding the project—estimated to [Cuba’s] nearness to the U.S.” cost more than 9 trillion yen, or $76 billion at today’s exchange the loose restrictions on supply have met with an explosion of rate—almost entirely without government aid. demand, as Miami has rebounded from its old role as a violent Europe, especially the United Kingdom, has also taken steps way station for cocaine traffickers to become the de facto capital toward liberalizing the rail sector through open-access rules, of latin America. the elite from Argentina, Brazil, and Russia which allow competition by operators on infrastructure owned fund frothy real-estate ventures, building apartments in Miami by the government. that are often rented or sold to Millennials and others following America certainly is not as conducive to mass transit as Japan the nationwide movement toward urban living and a preference and Europe, which both have a dense urban environment, but for hip inner-city neighborhoods. some very wealthy investors apparently believe that there is Miami isn’t the only city along the rail route that’s booming. enough demand to make All Aboard Florida viable. the thought Florida has recently edged past New York to become the third- of private passenger service in Florida seemed outlandish at most-populous state in the union, and All Aboard Florida is first, but the project has moved very quickly—faster than some banking on the revival of urban living in a state that has almost skyscrapers are built in New York City. it has now passed the completely suburbanized—a common urbanist talking point, point of no return. Bonds have been sold, ground has been bro- but one that’s finally being echoed by investors with billions in ken. the project will go forward, and Florida will soon find out backing. whether passenger rail, once the driving force behind the state’s “Absent what we’re doing, [Floridians] are entirely dependent growth, can again turn a profit.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

senator Ted Cruz is available all great time to get to know your fellow week for informal counseling and congressmen and get some tips and drop-in services. pointers from media professionals on hair care, weight loss, anger conceal- The Deniably erotic Book Club will ment, and proper wardrobe fit. The Welcome to the not meet this week. it’s just too crazy. event starts at 6:30 p.m., but get there We will meet NexT Week in the early for the famous Bret Baier New Congress! Charles Frederick Crisp language Blooming-Onion Toss. NOTe: This arts Center in Rayburn. please come iNviTaTiON is a plus-ONe. with some suggestions for this Con - Congratulations on being a Member gress’s book list. past books are on like to craft but don’t know where? of the 114th Congress. We’re off to an our Facebook page—invitation re - Join the Republican Caucus Crafters exciting start! quired—so please DONOT suggest Guild, meeting in howell Cobb books that have been read in the pre- Craft ing Nook in longworth. Bring If you’re a Member of the Republican vious TWO Congresses. New mem - your materials and your projects and Caucus, please continue reading. If bers welcome! session begins with get to know your fellow crafters! you’re a Member of the Democratic some light Bible study. session begins with some light Bible study. Caucus, please skip this section and your caucus now has a media hub for go directly to the “To Members of the podcasting and social-media opera- The “Boehner Now Boehner Forever Democratic Caucus” section below. tions! Don’t know what that means? Team” will be meeting continuously Come to the media Open house and in the William Brockman Bankhead find out! Drop by between 12:00 p.m. hall in the Congressional power To Members of the and 5 p.m. anytime this week to be plant (map attached). Drop in any- introduced to the equipment and the time this week for informal conversa- Republican Caucus: staff. located in the old Nancy pelosi tion, professional chair massages, yoga studio in Cannon. fundraising tips and techniques, a We’re pleased to have you here. We Welcome packet including valuable know the first few days of any Con - The “Team Dump Boehner” group coupons and giveaways, and a casu - gress can be hectic and confusing, so will be meeting for an informal get- al “smoke ’em if you got ’em” town- feel free to reach out to any Welcome to-know-you ice-cream social this hall-style “talkback” with the speak er staff person—in the american-flag T- afternoon at 4 p.m. in the Card Room and his staff. Come with questions, shirts—for anything. in longworth. mix and mingle with problems, whatever’s on your mind. other members of the Dump Boehner Curious and undecideds are TOTally sOme aNNOuNCemeNTs: coalition, have some scrumptious ice welcome! all we ask is that you come cream, and relax with new and old with an open mind—and an appetite! packing boxes are collected at the colleagues. all are welcome, includ- Come see the famous 25-foot-long end of the day. please direct your staff ing the undecided and the simply sub sandwich!! to place all empty boxes in the hall- curious. No judgments and no expec- ways in front of the collection points. tations. Collection points are clearly marked, directly in front of the office doors of Need a new intern? Want to swap out To Members of the members of the Democratic Caucus. your old ones? Come to the intern Democratic Caucus: swap with interns to trade and/or The “how to spot a White supre - replace. please arrive before 3 p.m. 1. No seconds on desserts in cafeteria. macist Organization” seminar is re - with all of the interns you’re swap- (Jell-O™-type desserts excepted.) quired for all new and returning ping in order for the organizers to members of the Republican Caucus. make the right arrangements. please 2. please park in the specially desig- This seminar will help new and old NOTe: intern swap has been resched- nated “Democratic Caucus” area, members avoid embarrassing fund - uled to next week due to budgetary which is currently in Baltimore, md. raising events. it will be held hourly issues. (shuttle service available.) in the Frederick muhlenberg Room in Rayburn. please note: DO NOT seND a New members are cordially invited 3. The boxes stacked in front of your sTaFFpeRsON. memBeRs musT COme to the sixth annual Fox News steak office do ors are a fire hazard. please iN peRsON. session begins with some and shake mixer at Del Frisco’s remove them immediately or you will light Bible study. steakhouse, 950 i street NW. This is a be fined.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS The Floppy-Disk Technocracy

AST August the White House announced a new ini- We bring this up now because the New York Times just ran tiative to improve the federal government’s techno- a profile of one of the people tasked with upgrading—sorry, logical infrastructure. You might think this means helping to upgrade—the government’s IT: “The woman L upgrading all the high-tech computer rooms with whose division at Google dreamed up Google Glass and the 4K monitors and solid-state EMP-hardened storage. More driverless car is facing culture shock in a federal bureaucracy likely, an “upgrade” means sending someone out with a damp ruled by creaky technology and run in part on the floppy cloth to wipe the dirt off the Morse signal lamps. Maybe a disk.” drop of 3-in-1 oil on the telegraph key. Let that sink in. Floppy disks. Apple stopped putting them Let’s go to the press release. It begins with an inspirational in computers around the time Monica Lewinsky was flashing quotation from Our President: “I want us to ask ourselves her thong at the boss. This is like reading a newspaper article every day, how are we using technology to make a real dif- in 1982 about the White House’s determination to use this ference in people’s lives.” new “FM radio” technology for better communication. Every day. How many federal employees have been whist - The press release contains a link to the U.S. Digital ling on their way out the door, looking forward to an easy Services Playbook, which contains this somber lamentation: commute and a nice supper, and stopped dead because they “Today, too many of our digital services projects do not work hadn’t asked themselves that question today? I’ll ask myself well, are delivered late, or are over budget.” So everyone on the way home, the employee thinks. During a commercial involved was fired, right? Haha, sorry, joke. But there’s on the radio. But there aren’t any commercials on NPR, the hope: Play No. 6 notes that a project should have one boss conscience says. This is how it starts, you know. Ignore the and that that person should be held accountable. president’s wise request, and the next thing you know you’re Translation: Outsource as much as you can, because we taking ballpoint pens home “by accident.” So he goes back can’t fire old Pete. He was hired in ’64 to handle IBM- upstairs and turns on the computer and thinks: How can I use mainframe data analysis of B-52 fuel consumption; now this computer to make a real difference in people’s lives? he’s in charge of the user interface for the HUD site, and he He goes to a friend’s Facebook page and finds a picture of wants people to register by mailing in a punch card. her Cuban vacation and clicks “LIKE.” There. That should The Playbook is long and detailed and succeeds at its count. primary function: the completion of Project U.S. Digital Of course, making “a real difference in people’s lives,” Services Playbook, which carries no force of law and hence according to some in the government, could be defined as can now be ignored. using NSA data to find out whether leaders of conservative The press release, having assured us that Top Minds are 501(c) groups ever shared an elevator ride and discussed pol- here to eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive itics, which would suggest coordination. Jail ’em! That’ll user-focused platform-responsive developmental structures, make a difference in their lives. suddenly rips off its mask and shows the hideous face of D.C. Back to the press release: bureaucracy, buzzwords waving around like snakes on a gor- gon’s head: The process, we’re told, will use “Agile Processes Late last year, a team of digital and technology experts helped to Procure Digital Services with the TechFAR Handbook.” to turn-around HealthCare.gov. Sigh. You know, once upon a time NASA said it would go Wow: Digital experts and technology experts? Imagine the to the moon by the end of the decade. Today they’d say: day in the foreseeable future when one could be both. Imagine NASA will, by the end of a preset time frame utilizing time- the day when the government hires them in the first place honored, consumer-familiar calendrical structures, enable a instead of dumping a billion dollars into Bob’s Donuts ’n’ process for determining a strategy to develop the organiza- Code. tional awareness for logistically assisted, dynamic acquisition of temporary lunar occupation. Today, building on the same proven strategic approach that ulti- Last year an EPA worker was caught spending lots of time mately enabled millions of Americans to sign up for health on porn sites, and he’s probably not the only government insurance, the Administration is launching the U.S. Digital employee to do so. But it’s obvious now why this was a prob- Service. lem. They had old modems that topped out at 300 baud. Give This is like building on the same strategy that eventually these lads some high-speed access, and they can hoover up encased Chernobyl in concrete, but let’s continue. their saucy photoplays over lunch and get right back to micro- regulating the U.S. economy. Yes, thanks to the U.S. Digital This small team of America’s best digital experts will work in Service thing, you’ll be able find out in minutes whether new collaboration with other government agencies to make web- regulations protecting the endangered spotted ditch leech will sites more consumer friendly, to identify and fix problems, and put you out of business. Used to take weeks before the feds to help upgrade the government’s technology infrastructure. would reply. Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. Now there’s a real difference in people’s lives.

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offering in-depth musical analysis and calls him a solipsist, and of his intermit- the other mainly telling Beethoven’s tent self-absorption, too, there can be no Beethoven’s story. doubt. But it takes a genuine understand- Telling Beethoven’s story, Swafford ing of others to do this: ‘Languages’ offers a mass of fact and anecdote rather than a small and judicious selection, When [the Baroness Dorothea von JASON LEE STEORTS which is why his book is so long. His Ertmann] had lost a child, Beethoven voice is often intimate, as if channel - invited her over, sat down at the piano, ing Beethoven’s interior monologue. In and said, “Now we will converse in places this gets a little speculative, albeit music.” For more than an hour he im - provised for her. “He said everything plausibly so, and a little melodramatic: to me,” Ertmann later told Felix Beethoven “would find a cure [for his Mendelssohn, “and finally gave me deafness]. He must find a cure.” (He did consolation.” not.) But on the upside—and for me the net was very positive—the accumulation Swafford discusses at length the intel- of detail and novelistic style conjure up a lectual and cultural atmosphere of Bonn most vivid Beethoven. in the late 18th century, when Beethoven In personality, Beethoven was not the was growing up there, and from this dis- ur-Romantic a later generation made cussion emerges one of his main theses: of him. This image is due largely to his that Beethoven was a “radical evolution- Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, friend and admirer Bettina Brentano, ary, not a revolutionary.” Beethoven was by Jan Swafford (Houghton Mifflin, who, writing to Goethe to arrange their a lifelong believer in the Enlightenment, 1,104 pp., $40) meeting, put into Beethoven’s mouth or rather in its German iteration, the such florid absurdities as “Music is a Aufklärung, which differed from the o much has been written about higher revelation than all wisdom and French version mainly by its patience Beethoven that we might ap - philosophy, the wine which inspires one with benevolent despotism. Much too proach Jan Swafford’s new to new generative processes, and I am the much has been made of Beethoven’s S biography of him with a what’s- Bacchus who presses out this glorious refusal to yield a path to the empress of left-to-say skepticism. That would be a wine for mankind.” Austria and a group of dukes, as if that mistake. This book offers an unusual Brentano is known to have fabricated summed up his whole attitude to politi - richness of detail concerning both Bee- elements of her published correspon- cal authority. (He was showing off for thoven’s life and his works. dences; Swafford notes this but thinks Goethe, with whom he was walking, and A writer of music when he is not that, “in his heart, Beethoven was as he had a point besides: Why should the writing books, Swafford analyzes Bee - extravagantly idealistic as the man right of way be hereditary?) Here is a thoven’s major compositions with an X- [Brentano] painted, but ordinarily he more amiable sort of protest, in a note ray ear for thematic, motivic, rhythmic, articulated it only in music.” In music, to his friend the Baron von Zmeskall: and key-signature relationships. Many though, Beethoven wasn’t talking about “Will the very high born personage, the score excerpts support these discussions, Beethoven. Brentano’s letter ends with Zmeskality of H[err] von Zmeskall, gra- and musically trained readers will appre- her reading Beethoven’s supposed mus- ciously condescend to decide where he ciate Swafford’s sundry insights. ings back to him and his replying, “Did I can be spoken to tomorrow—we are Perhaps for the benefit of untrained say that? Well, then I had a raptus!” damnably devoted to you.” readers, who will be skimming these pas- “Raptus” was Beethoven’s word for his Beethoven’s music, too, was evolu- sages anyway, Swafford largely eschews creative trances, and Swafford takes its tion, not revolution. In The Birth of the analysis of harmonic function. This deci- appearance here as evidence of Bren - Modern, Paul Johnson presents Bee - sion occasionally impoverishes his dis- tano’s veracity; but could not Beethoven thoven as “the supreme musical innova- cussion. The concept of a pivot chord, have been diplomatically distancing him- tor,” but there is no single supreme. for example, would have enriched self from her invention? In any case, this Schoenberg, Debussy, Wagner, Berlioz, his remarks about the beginning of the “Bacchus” stuff has “a tone . . . that and Haydn were as innovative as Bee- “Waldstein” piano sonata; consideration [Beethoven] never, as far as history thoven, and the first four broke more of the harmonically ambiguous choral would know, quite wrote or spoke with readily than he with musical tradition. In cadence at the end of the Missa solemnis on any other occasion.” To my ear, it analysis of composition after composi-

(is that an incomplete vi6 chord or an sounds nothing like him. tion, Swafford shows that Beethoven incomplete I?) would have complement- of Beethoven’s tempestuous pride expanded and reshaped existing forms ed his mention of the cadence’s irresolute there can be no doubt, but he could also rather than discarded them. He obsessed soprano line. Swafford should consider remark: “Everything I do apart from mu - over mastering counterpoint—widely revising his book into two volumes, one sic is badly done and stupid.” Swafford dismissed in his day as “the old style”—

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and turned away from Haydn (and phy, but the emotional analogue remains. credos and dogmas of the Holy Roman toward Albrechtsberger) as his counter- And of course all these ways of mean - and Apostolic Church.” But its text is point teacher because Haydn corrected ing can be combined. Beethoven’s opera, an assertion of those things, and many his exercises too laxly. Like Mozart and Fidelio, once seemed to me in live per- Catholics no doubt appreciate it partly for Haydn, Beethoven tried to give a new formance to be a series of revelations of that reason. Swafford might more care- kind of expressive power to fugal forms deeper layers of meaning, so that what fully have distinguished the ways in by incorporating them into classical began as a cheesy comedy gave way to a which music conveys meaning. structures. Even the novelty of introduc- psychodrama about freedom and tyranny He discusses with great fluency the ing a choir and vocal soloists into a sym- and love, which in turn gave way to an Missa’s symbolic representations of phony can be considered a rethinking of ecstatic sermon as if from Beethoven abstract and concrete things, its way of the cantata, as Lewis Lockwood observes himself, the characters onstage his mere “subsum[ing] the doctrines and the phys- in his own book on Beethoven. mouthpieces. It was unbelievably mov- ical rite of the church, the very gestures of Beethoven’s way of consoling the ing. the priest and the preluding of the or - Baroness von Ertmann raises a question The Missa solemnis, which Beethoven ganist.” “The preluding of the organist” about his music, and about music gener- judged to be his greatest composition, refers to one of the most striking timbres ally; for of course Beethoven did not say has an explicit textual meaning, and so in Beethoven’s music, a passage “with anything as he played. Why then did she does what Swafford calls its “sister divided violas and cellos”—and bas- use that verb? How did he console her? work,” the Ninth Symphony. “There soons but no violins—“the texture made How does music mean? were two streams in Beethoven’s music, ethereal by low flutes”: orchestral mimic- Sometimes it offers an analogical sym- the secular-humanist and the sacred,” ry of an organ. Beethoven had been a bol for some abstract concept. This Swafford writes. Both of them flow church organist in his youth, and his happens in a lot of church music, includ- through each of these works, which “organ” now plays at just the time when ing Beethoven’s, for example as the together constitute the mature expression Austrian organists sometimes impro- choir in the Missa solemnis sings higher of Beethoven’s ideals and beliefs. vised during the Elevation of the Host. and higher on “Gloria in excelsis Deo” We have not yet considered that second Swafford does not mention the over- (“Glory to God in the highest”). And stream. What was sacred to Beethoven? whelmingly sad, almost funereal qual - sometimes composers try to symbolize As Swafford puts it, he came to believe in ity—despite the major key—of this concrete things and events. Examples a God who “was present and all-seeing, passage as it descends into the lower reg- abound in Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, who listened to prayers.” Nominally isters of the orchestra. This deathliness is whose movements bear such headings as Catholic, Beethoven had little use for appropriate to the idea of the Eucharist, “Scene by the brook” and “Thunder. priests or churches, and “by the mid- and it might make the listener reflect on Storm.” 1810s, [he] was reading Eastern religious his own inevitable demise. The Credo But the Sixth as a whole appears under texts, . . . most having to do with Hin - movement clearly emphasizes the experi- the inscription “More expression of feel- duism.” Following Maynard Solomon, ence of the “individual reaching toward ing than tone painting.” Beethoven is giv- Swafford identifies mankind, God, and God.” The words summarizing the life of ing us an emotional soundtrack, so to nature as Beethoven’s trinity. The middle Jesus are set in a declamatory, sometimes speak, for a scene by a brook more than term seems to have elevated the outer two monophonic style, with comparatively he is trying to portray a scene by a brook, rather than been diminished by them, and little development of any musical motif. and that is mainly what he does: offer Swafford plausibly categorizes the Sixth But when the text expresses the be - musical analogues of emotional corre- Symphony, Beethoven’s most substantial liever’s expectation of a “life to come,” lates of things and events. Swafford reflection on nature, as a sacred work. Beethoven sets the relevant words to an appropriately puts quotes around “nar - We might also mention “Die Ehre Gottes astonishing double fugue. Swafford will ratives” when he finds the “feelings and aus der Natur” (“The Glory of God in conclude that the Missa solemnis is “a ‘narratives’ i n [Beethoven’s] instrumen- Nature”), Beethoven’s blazing, simple statement of faith and also of doubt,” but tal music” to be “more transparent than setting for voice and piano of a poem in this fugue, certainly, no doubt is to be in Mozart and Brahms,” and there could by Christian Gellert. “Who supports the heard. be quotes around “language,” too, when uncountable stars of heaven?” Gellert Where does Swafford hear it, then? In Swafford calls music “an emotional lan- had asked. “Who guides the sun from its the Mass’s Agnus Dei, a movement that guage beyond words.” Beethoven some- canopy?” appears under the inscription “Prayer for times composed with a particular story In the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven’s inner and outer peace.” The words “Dona in mind, but rarely did he say what it humanism is primary, but the choral nobis pacem” usher in a gentle fugato, was, and in truth it doesn’t matter, for in finale proclaims that “over the starry but truth instrumental music doesn’t tell canopy a loving Father must dwell.” stories. (Again the stars. Beethoven was also that is interrupted by something wrench- ingly alien: throbbing drums, flurries of When music has a sung text, on the much impressed by Kant’s remark about strings like gusts of wind presaging a other hand, it can acquire a story or a con- their awesomeness.) storm. Suddenly out of nowhere there cept as a sort of official meaning. With As for the Missa solemnis, Swafford are bugle calls. The soloists take up a Beethoven the texts tend to have moral calls it an expression of “Beethoven’s cry marked “anxiously”: “Lamb of God! and intellectual weight, as if he had personal faith as an individual reaching Have mercy on us!” The drums and entered into a partnership with philoso- toward God, not an assertion of the bugles return, fortissimo, under which

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS should consult a Cuban who lived the soprano’s cry for mercy can hardly through both Batista and Castro. Or an be heard. . . . Armies have disrupted the Franco in Iranian who experienced both the shah rite, destroyed the peace. It is war. and Khomeini. Or a Chinese person who Full lived under Mao—survived Mao—and Eventually something like peace re - then could breathe more easily under his JAY NORDLINGER turns, but insecurely: As if threatening successors. from afar, the timpani sound quiet notes We now have a biography that is a belonging to a harmonically distant key, huge gift to anyone wanting to know and then the choir and orchestra abruptly what to th ink about Franco. The book is terminate the Mass. “God has not an - co-authored by Stanley G. Payne and swered humanity’s prayers, its demands, Jesús Palacios. About the latter, I know its terrified pleas for peace.” little: He is a veteran historian and jour- My take is different: I think the Missa nalist in Spain. In 2008, he and Payne solemnis ends with an expression less of conducted extensive interviews with doubt than of responsibility. When one of Fran co’s daughter, his only child, Car - Beethoven’s pupils, having completed a men. Those were published in a book piano arrangement of Fidelio, wrote called “Franco, mi padre.” Professor “Finished with the help of God” at the Payne is an American, born in 1934. He bottom of the score, Beethoven added in Franco: A Personal and Political Biography, is a professor emeritus at the University reply: “O man, help yourself.” In isola- by Stanley G. Payne and Jesús Palacios of Wisconsin. He is one of the foremost tion, the comment might sound faithless, (Wisconsin, 632 pp., $34.95) historians of Spain in the English lan- but considered in the light of Beethoven’s guage. When it comes to his peers, I evident if anti-dogmatic faith it provides IllIAM F. BUCKlEY JR., can think of two Britons: Raymond Carr an insight into the enigma of the Agnus the late founder of this and Hugh Thomas. Dei (as also into the meaning of the Ninth magazine, used to tell a Reviewing an earlier book by Payne, Symphony, with which Swafford con- W story. In 1962, let’s say, a Carr said, “Its tone is gruff, its learning nects this anecdote). Having conveyed in foreign reporter in Madrid approached a staggering.” Payne’s learning is indeed the Missa’s first four movements the inner man on the street. “What do you think of something to behold, almost intimidat- peace of faith, Beethoven now affirms his Franco?” he asked. The man looked ing. I had a personal encounter with him Enlightenment belief that the realization around furtively and motioned for the once. I was astonished at the wide array of outer peace is our own duty—a duty reporter to follow him. They went to the of facts at his command—and even more owed to God and mankind both, and one central train station, where they boarded at his cool ability to evaluate them. that no church is competent to discharge. a train for a remote town. In this town, His new book with Palacios is called The Missa solemnis and the Ninth they boarded a bus, going deep into the “Franco: A Personal and Political Bio - Sym phony, then, are not “question and countryside. At some point, they got off graphy.” I might add a third adjective: answer,” as Swafford puts it, but answers and rented a canoe. “military.” There is a fair amount of to different questions. More, the ques- They paddled to the middle of a lake. military history in this work, particular- tions and answers frame each other, if we There was no one in sight. There was ly in the chapters on the Spanish Civil may indulge an Escherian metaphor. The scarcely a bird overhead. Once more, the War. Payne and Palacios had rare access Ninth exhorts us to create a joyful society Spaniard looked around furtively. Then to the Franco archive, plus the coup of in which “all men become brothers” but he leaned in to the reporter and whis- those lengthy, leisurely interviews with does not say anything about mankind’s pered, “I like him.” Carmen. The authors are loaded for relation to the “loving Father” above the Do you like him? Do you like Fran - bear. stars; the Missa solemnis does not tell us cisco Franco, the dictator of Spain from In their preface, they say, “There are what constitutes a good society but does 1939 until his death in 1975? What many accounts of Franco, but the most speak to the fear of nothingness that to think about Franco is an important extensive biographies are strongly pola - might undermine our resolve to create matter to settle, especially for conserva- rized between extreme positive and neg- one, or to do anything else. tives, I would say: As an important fig- ative portraits.” They, on the other hand, When I listen to these works, I am ure of the Right, he is often thrown in will aim for balance and objectivity. As struck by the goodness and power and our face. He is a particular challenge for far as I can tell, they have succeeded. It unity of the “statement” that Beethoven the Catholic Right, I would say: Franco seems to me they write with genuine made to posterity. As at that performance was the embodiment of Catholic right- detachmen t, over their 600 pages. At the of Fidelio, I feel as if he were present, ism. same time, they are not bloodless or “saying” everything in the “language[s]” He was a dictator, and that should set- sterile. beyond words that he “spoke” with un- tle the matter, as we are good liberal Do they have politics, these authors? surpassed articulacy. Jan Swafford has democrats. But does it? There are dicta- I’m sure they do. You and I do. But heightened my sensitivity to some of his tors and there are dictators, and mature they do not wear their politics on their characteristic “utterances,” and for that I people acknowledge degrees. Anyone sleeve. will remain grateful. who thinks that a dictator is a dictator Still, I read a few passages and

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thought, “No one left-of-center could invoked the phrase “social justice” fre- So, what do I think about Franco (not have written that.” Let me give you an quently—as often as any “progressive” that you asked)? A proper answer would example. In 1975, the last year of the politician does today. His economics take several pages, but I will spend a Franco dictatorship, eleven Basque and were statist and stultifying. Fortunately paragraph or two. I think, first and fore- other terrorists were sentenced to death for Spain, he learned to liberalize. most, that he was a dictator—but, again, for their murder of policemen. Payne This liberalization was admirable, that is not the end of the question. I think and Palacios write, “These sentences you might say. What else was admirable it fortunate that he won the civil war, occasioned the biggest international about Franco? Well, there was his per- thus sparing his country the nightmare campaign against the regime ever waged sonal life, or private life. His father had of Stalin-style Communism. There was by the European left, some of whom been a cad and a brute, who abandoned no democratic alternative, as Payne and exhibited greater indignation over the the family. Franco apparently deter- Palacios make clear. They also make punishment of these killers than they mined to be very different. He was a clear that, in the first years of his dicta- had, for example, over the Soviet inva- completely devoted husband and father. torship, he engaged in standard dictator- sion of Czechoslovakia or would, subse- Also, he had a possibly unique aversion ial repression: political killings and the quently, over the Communist genocide to corruption. He went around his palace like. That is forever a black mark on his in Cambodia.” I don’t know about you, turning off lights, to save energy. He record. Then there is his dalliance with but I have almost never met anyone on was maybe the poorest dictator in his - Hitler. the left who could say or write those tory. He amassed less wealth in 36 years If I had my way, Franco would have words. than some do in 36 days. I mean that won the civil war and found a way for a When Franco is wrong—or preten- seriously. transition to something like democra- tious or self-deluded—the authors call At the end of their book, the authors cy—with some speed. When Britain’s him on it. But they also call out his crit- have a chapter called “Conclusion: Fran- George III heard that the American ics, when they are wrong. The authors co in the Perspective of History.” They George, Washington, was planning to puncture many myths about Franco, be do their summing up and toting up, give up his commission as commander- those myths large or small. In at least recording the good and bad of Franco. in-chief, he remarked, “If he does that, one instance, they do so with humor He was the most dominant figure in he will be the greatest man in the Franco is that dread thing, ‘complex.’ He will frustrate a desire for black-and-whiteness.

(whether intended or not): “[Franco] has Spain since Philip II, they say. They fur- world.” Franco was not a Washington. frequently been denounced as the gener- ther cite Alan Bullock’s famous study of But there are very few of those. al who led a Fascist coup d’état against Hitler, which ends with a description of Early on, Franco said he would go a democratic republic, but this allega- Germany in ruins. Bullock calls on the nowhere after power except to the tion is incorrect in every detail. The only classic expression “If you seek his mon- grave. He kept his word. It must be accurate part of this claim is that he ument, look around.” And what was acknowledged, though, that, after World was a general.” As I see it, Franco did around Franco when he died? A Spain War II, his dictatorship got tamer and enough that was damnable: You don’t immensely improved since he took it over. tamer. It must also be acknowledged have to make things up. That is not excusing, or all-excusing, of that he managed a pretty nifty transition What is most damnable about him? course. to a royal of his choosing and grooming, In a 36-year dictatorship, there is a lot This book is a tome, and may give you Juan Carlos. From there, it was a fairly to choose from. But I am especially more than you want. It is not beach read- short step to constitutional monarchy. repulsed at his relations with Hitler. ing. Rather, it is The Record. And the Spain’s fate in the middle of the 20th Franco did not enter the war, full bore, authors know so much—about Franco, century could have been far worse than but he played footsie with Hitler and Spain, and history at large—you can it was. supported him. He said, appallingly and hardly begrudge them the time they I’m afraid that Franco is that dread crazily, that the Nazis were fighting take. thing, “complex.” He will frustrate a de - “the battle that Europe and Christianity They give you the grand sweep and sire for black-and-whiteness. Churchill have long hoped for.” In 1942, he said, minute details. Here is an offbeat fact: said that, if he himself had been a “The liberal world is going under, a In 1926, Franco acted in a silent film. Spaniard, he would have supported victim of the cancer produced by its (That was better than a talkie, because Franco. own errors, and with it is collapsing Franco’s speaking voice was high and You can forget everything I have commercial imperialism and financial soft, the object of mockery.) Sometimes said—except this: The new biography capitalism, with its millions of unem- the authors put Franco “on the couch,” by Stanley G. Payne and Jesús Palacios ployed.” which is to say, they indulge in some will tell you what to think about Franco. Franco hated Anglo-American dem - psychologizing. But they are never Even better, it will tell you how to think ocracy, at least for a time. He also hated stupid about it. This is rare in history- about him. That is a huge gift to an in - capitalism, along with Marxism. He writing, I find. terested reader.

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THE NATIONAL REVIEW 2015 AlaskaAlaska CruiseCruise Sailing July 18-25 aboard Holland America’s luxurious MS Westerdam with

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

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particular issue are so clear cut that he some militant Arabs as “a small and dis- rarely commented on them. Arabia and the putatious band of rootless intellectuals, Britain and Persian Gulf were his area of special study, measuring out their lives with coffee and he knew more about it than anyone spoons in the clubs and cafés of Beirut.” The Arabs else alive. Everything there was unsettled. In theory, nationalist movements were Borders and treaties meant different things liberating Arabs from the British and the DAVID PRYCE-JONES to different people. The tribe overrode the French in order to set up nation-states of state; the strong overrode the weak. His- their own. The Left always represented tory itself was often a matter of hearsay imperialism as the worst of crimes, and through which only a scholar as careful therefore nationalism, its opposite and its as John could find a way. bane, by definition had to be “progres- Born in New Zealand in 1925, John sive.” Deluded and wishful, the Left was was 24 when he reached England, then celebrating destructive forces; as John put deep in post-war socialist gloom. Ac - it, “losing is acceptable to enlightened cording to his son saul, the editor of these opinion these days.” Not what they might two volumes of essays and occasional seem, however, nationalist movements in writings from the 1960s and ’70s, John fact became vehicles for officers such as Fighting the Retreat from Arabia and the left almost immediately for Egypt “in Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt and Abd al- Gulf—volume 1, The Collected Essays and search of sun, warmth, and a job teaching Karim Qasim in Iraq to manipulate them- Reviews of J. B. Kelly (New English Review, in the British Boys school in Alexandria.” selves into power as absolute rulers. For a 356 pp., $24.95) Further travels in Iraq and the Trucial thousand years, John pointed out, it had states familiarized him with Arabs and been the Arab way for military comman- The Oil Cringe of the West—volume 2, The their way of life. A doctorate in 1956 from ders to stage coups, and they “doubtless Collected Essays and Reviews of J. B. Kelly the University of London led to a research will continue to do so for another thou- (New English Review, 354 pp., $24.95) fellowship in the Institute of Colonial sand.” To think anything else was pure studies at Oxford. John greatly respected sentimentality. “The Arabs are really a s a correspondent covering its director, sir Reader Bullard, a robust very decent bunch of chaps,” John wrote the six-Day War of 1967 and self-made man whose postings as consul in a typically sarcastic review of a book its aftermath, I had observed in Leningrad and ambassador in Tehran by one of the more prominent romancers. A Yasser Arafat mobilizing the had left him with no illusions about Com - A book that claimed the superiority of Palestine Liberation Organization for a munism or Islam. Islam to Christianity he dismissed as “in - guerrilla campaign on the West Bank and In person, John was courteous and soft- solent nonsense.” in the Gaza strip. According to Chairman spoken, ready to laugh at folly. On paper, John insisted on the reality in front of Mao, then still much admired by left- though, scorn came readily. Lawrence of him. saudi Arabia had “a record of blood- wing intellectuals, power was supposed to Arabia’s famous Seven Pillars of Wisdom shed, terrorism, and extortion.” Yemen come from the barrel of a gun. The Face is “this dreary flow of disguised rodo - had been “sunk for centuries in a squalid of Defeat (1972) is the book in which I mon tade.” For years Egypt had suffered medievalism.” Civil war had already expressed the view that nothing could “a grotesque Jacobean melodrama, or an destroyed Lebanon. The old order in come from this course of armed action opéra bouffe staged by a troupe of gulli- Arabia had plainly broken down, replaced except endless and probably irrevocable gulli men or conjurors.” He speaks of by spite, dissension, and suspicion. Events harm to the Palestinians. Determined to keep with the trend, the Times Literary Supplement made sure to give it a dis- TO MY HIKING PARTNER paraging review. Out of the blue, the mail then delivered the offprint of an article Your pack looks like the one John Denver wore by J. B. Kelly in a learned journal with when he was getting Rocky Mountain high. the apt title “‘TLs’ in the Desert.” The The frame is bent, the straps can’t take much more. opening sentence had a reference to this Your jeans and flannel coat will never dry book of mine. John Kelly had come to my if they get wet. Let’s hope we don’t get caught defense, with a critique of the selective by squalls on Thunder Ridge this afternoon. quotations and omissions that had misrep- Bold move to hike in boots that you just bought. resented what I was saying. For the next Don’t whine—we’ll stop to treat those blisters soon. 30 and more years, John was to be a gen- So far your luck has held, thoug h you don’t care erous friend and guide to the complexities for maps and packing lists. But will you keep of the Middle East. your winning streak? My money’s on the bear At the time, John was a professor of if you continue eating where you sleep, imperial history at the University of Wis- and leaving dishes close enough to touch. con sin. On a par with India and Ireland, My friend, God loves a fool, but not that much. Palestine was one of the British Empire’s failures, and the rights and wrongs of that —STEPHEN SCAER

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS have more than justified the Orwellian victory for the Left. Losing the power that vision of the region’s future that he pro- had hitherto protected them, Bahrain, jected. Kuwait, and the other petty sheikhdoms No ‘Mao In one of his essays, John puts the ques- were now at the mercy of several aggres- tion closest to his heart: “Who can say that sors, among them the Soviets, Saudi Moment’ empire is not better than the nation-state?” Arabia, and Iran. The rulers’ offer to pay ARTHUR L. HERMAN Britain had a record of protecting the Gulf the costs of maintaining a British garrison sheikhdoms and their independence for was rejected out of hand. The Iran–Iraq over 150 years and therefore a moral war, the Marxists in Aden, the fighting responsibility “to continue to contribute in Dhofar, and the expeditions led by to the upholding of peace, order, and the Bushes I and II all testify to the instabili- rule of law in an area to which she, and ty the British were happy to leave behind. she alone, brought all three.” Published in Thanks to his expertise in treaties and 1968, his book Britain and the Persian boundaries, John was retained to advise Gulf, 1795–1880 takes the measure of the both Sheikh Zaid of Abu Dhabi and imperial achievement. Based on a com- the Sultan of Oman, who were defending prehensive reading of the archives of the themselves against land grabs by a Saudi Foreign Office and the India Office, it is a Arabia eager to bolster oil reserves, by masterpiece of historiography, all 911 force if necessary. John said that one look pages of it. The actors in this narrative at the faces of officials in the Whitehall China 1945: Mao’s Revolution and America’s are Indian governors, Persian Qajars, the room where they met to adjudicate on Fateful Choice, by Richard Bernstein Wah habis of Saudi Arabia, the sultan of the Saudi seizure of the Buraimi oasis (Knopf, 464 pp., $30) Oman, tribal sheikhs, the British residents belonging to his sponsor Oman was in the Gulf, and, of course, the naval offi- enough to tell him that his cause was lost: hERE’S a longstanding myth cers of the fleet. They had long since become accustomed among leftist Cold War revi- The Qawasim were assorted Gulf to appease whoever was the strongest sionists that America missed a tribes men, fierce marauders and pirates party. hardly ever attributed to him, but T big chance in July 1944, when who attacked shipping, took hostages, all the same a fixture in current political eight American diplomats, soldiers, and and gave no quarter. They had to be sub- vocabulary, “preemptive cringe” is the OSS agents—the “Dixie Mission”—land- dued in the interest of trade. Slaving was phrase that John hit upon to sum up this ed in Yenan, China, to open talks with an altogether more difficult issue to collective feebleness. Mao Tse-tung about supplying his Com - resolve. Every year at the right season, Published in 1980, his book Arabia, the munist guerrillas with arms and supplies Arab traders would set off to round up Gulf, and the West is another classic, a for the fight against Japan, and found slaves in East Africa. What should be white-hot 530-page polemic against themselves welcomed with open arms. done about it was the subject of fraught British policy in the Gulf. As prime min- For a brief shining moment—so goes debate. The tr affic was essential to the ister, an informed Mrs. Thatcher spoke the myth—the United States had an op - economy of the ruling few, and if it were to the Foreign Office about it and received portunity to forge an alliance with the to be suppressed they would demand a memorandum: “In the opinion of the future leader of the People’s Republic of financial compensation. Valuable, the Office, this man is not sound.” Wash - China, and to shake off our misbegotten slaves were apparently treated quite well, ington was no better. Visiting with various support for his rival, Chinese National - but many in England, including Lord think tanks, John criticized “the slow ist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Instead, Palmerston as foreign secretary, were paralysis of American foreign policy Chiang’s pals in the so-called China determined to put slaving down on hu- which has today almost reached a termi- Lobby foiled the outreach to Mao, whom manitarian grounds. Lord Aberdeen, nal stage.” Between the United States and they portrayed as an unabashed Red. another foreign secretary, hesitated to Saudi Arabia was a “strange love affair” Crestfallen and disappointed by our interfere with local custom and Islamic bound to end in tears one day. he intend- betrayal, Mao then jumped headlong into precepts. The topics have changed, but ed to write one last blockbuster to expose the Soviet Union’s camp instead, just in the ambiguity of Western intervention in the Saudis as the bullies of the Gulf, and time for victory in the struggle for China the Arab world remains constant. A mem- arch-hypocrites as well. That work was in 1949. orable scandal broke out when Professor never completed, partly because editors So when Joe McCarthy and others later Ali Mazrui from Mombasa used the pres- of journals and newspapers, not least clamored to know “who lost China,” re - tigious Reith lectures on the BBC to NATIONAL REVIEW, badgered him for con- visionists could answer back: You did. deliver a diatribe against the West for the tributions, and partly because he and his America’s penchant for anti-Communist slave trade. For centuries, the Mazruis wife had retired to France. Still, he had paranoia had cost us a crucial future were the principal slave dealers on the absorbed the past so thoroughly that he east coast of Africa, John pointed out, could predict the future with accuracy. As Mr. Herman is a senior fellow at the Hudson publicly refusing to take moral instruction timely and cogent as ever, these two vol- Institute and the author, most recently, of The Cave on slaving from anyone of that name. umes of his collected essays and oc - and the Light: Plato versus Aristotle and Britain’s decision in 1971 to remove all casional writings ought to make him a the Struggle for the Soul of Western military presence east of Suez marked a household name. Civilization.

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ally—a “mistake” we would repeat with As long as the war against Japan disastrous advice from the so-called Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh. dragged on (a war that started for Amer - China Hands, Foreign Service diplo- Now former Time Peking bureau chief icans with the attack on Pearl Harbor in mats—including Service, Davies, and Richard Bernstein takes apart the Dixie 1941, but began for the Chinese in 1937), John Carter Vincent—who, for all their Mission myth, by moving the pivotal date Mao and his aide Chou En-lai were con- purported deep understanding of China up from July 1944 to September 1945, tent to make happy noises to the Dixie and command of Chinese, never grasped when the war against Japan ended. Far Mission about wanting American support, the mortal threat Mao’s regime posed to from driving Mao into the arms of Stalin, even at one point saying, “We would the civilization they claimed to revere, as Bernstein demonstrates once and for all, serve with all our hearts under an Amer- well as the influence of real Soviet spies our policy in China made virtually no dif- ican general. . . . That is how we feel in the U.S. government. (For example, the ference in resolving the future dictator’s toward you.” All that warm, comradely Treasury Department’s Harry Dexter mind to take China down the road to feeling changed, however, when the war White worked from within to undermine Communism at the cost of some 50 mil- ended—and whatever hopes the original Chiang’s government and to promote lion lives. Dixie missionaries, including John Paton Mao’s triumph, by devaluing the Na - Bernstein reminds us that American Davies and John Stewart Service, had of tionalist Chinese currency.) wartime policy in the China-Burma-India forging an alliance with Mao and his If the China Hands never understood (CBI) theater had always centered on sup- “agrarian reformers” (Service’s immortal Mao’s real position as Stalin’s agent, porting Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist succes- phrase) faded quickly. As Bernstein tells Bern stein, at least, does. And as for the sor, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. But the story, the next U.S. mission to Mao, in revisionist myth about the United States’ severe doubts about Chiang’s suitability 1945, found a decidedly chilly reception, opening to Mao, Bernstein flattens it in a as an ally had grown as the war went on. even as 1.2 million Russian soldiers were single decisive paragraph: Time magazine was the sounding board of pouring into Manchuria. When U.S. offi- arch–China lobbyist Henry Luce; “by the cial Patrick Hurley (whom Bernstein The dominant force shaping China and beginning of 1945,” Bernstein writes, unfairly pillories as an incompetent oaf) China’s future relations was not the “Chiang’s reputation as China’s man of arranged for post-war talks between Mao American choice; it was the nature and the hour, Time’s gallant knight on the and Chiang on unifying China, Mao made actions of the Soviet Union and of Mao . . . [and] the Soviet Union’s invasion of white horse, became mixed with some- a good face of going along. But back with northeast provinces in August 1945. thing close to its opposite, a reputation his henchmen in Yenan, Mao made it Once that occurred, there was no further as a petty-minded, obstructionist, and clear that the agreement “was only on chance that Mao and the Communists de ceitful dictator.” At one point, accord- paper” and “not equivalent to reality.” He would settle for a political deal with the ing to one eyewitness account, President had already made up his mind to throw in [Nationalist government], despite the Roo sevelt and arch–Chiang critic and his lot with Stalin and gamble on Soviet concerted efforts of American mediators American CBI-theater commander “Vin - support for his taking sole control of to bring that about. . . . It was not egar Joe” Stilwell even raised the pos - China. Mao understood that power comes American support for Chiang that deter- sibility of assassinating Chiang and from the barrel of a gun, and in August mined the future of the Sino-American installing someone more pliant, but also 1945 that gun was a Russian Kalashni - relationship; it was Mao’s ideological closeness to Stalin and his need for more competent, in his place. kov. Soviet help. In fact, as we now appreciate, both ver- It took a long while for American poli- sions of Chiang, as hero and as heel, were cymakers, including General George In that sense, Bernstein’s subtitle is incorrect, or at least incomplete. Chiang Marshall, whom Truman sent to China in misleading. There was no choice for understood the advantage China’s vast 1945 to continue the negotiations, to catch the United States to make in China; it size gave him in fighting the better-led on. Marshall, for one, sincerely believed was Mao, Stalin’s loyal acolyte, who and better-equipped Japanese and so was Mao and Chou’s lies that they wanted a held all the cards. Mao’s tragedy—and reluctant to commit his troops in head-on peaceful end to the conflict with Chiang, China’s—was not that he lost the U.S. as battles with the enemy, much to Stilwell’s when they in fact had just begun to a partner in 1945, but that he lost the frustration and fury. Chiang also deeply destroy any alternative to a Communist- USSR a decade later. It was, after all, with resented America’s desire to provide run China. In addition to his own native Russia’s help that he was able to seize minimal material support in exchange gullibility, Marshall also suffered from power in the first place, and then drag for maximum U.S. leverage over his China onto the world stage as a great regime—a resentment future American power in the Korean War. But then he allies such as Presidents Diem of South decided to break with his Soviet masters; Vietnam and al-Maliki of Iraq would he turned his back on their advisers share. as well as their model for economic- So it was not surprising that the Army industrial development, which, however and the State Department, with the sup- inefficient and outmoded, was at least port of the CIA’s predecessor, the Office grounded in reality. Instead came the of Strategic Services, would eventually Great Leap Forward, when, with the reach out to Chiang’s rival, Mao Tse-tung, Soviets as well as the Americans out of and his embattled Communist guerrillas “ . . . And now, some bad news for those of you who the picture, Mao finally let his devils in the mountain fastness of Yenan. still have a moral compass . . . ” run free.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS career resisting the professional implica- man on the fine, not perfectly ethical art of Film tions of that choice. his Abel Morales is a persuading customers to switch their loy- Spanish-speaking striver who wooed and alties) and then watching other people, wedded the daughter (Jessica Chastain) from his wife to his business partner (a Married to of some sort of Brooklyn gangster, bought mordant Albert Brooks) to a range of sec- a modest heating-oil company off his ondary players, try to persuade him or The Mob father-in-law (for whom it was probably pressure him into drawing different ones. the equivalent of Tony Soprano’s waste- As with Michael Corleone’s trajectory, the ROSS DOUTHAT management company), and has tried to audience’s rooting interest is divided: We run it as an honest, up-and-up concern want to see Abel keep his honor, resist his he pattern of this Christmas sea- ever since. milieu’s downward pull, but as obstacles son at the movies, at least in the even without direct mob ties, this isn’t and complications mount—his trucks are prestige releases that I caught, exactly easy, because the heating-oil busi- getting hijacked, shadowy figures are T seemed to be “films that aren’t ness as Chandor portrays it is itself a kind menacing his family, his decision to bor- quite as good as their leading male per- of tribal, ethically compromised world of row heavily to buy a huge oil-storage former.” This was true of Clint east- clan-owned companies and turf wars, in facility may bankrupt him—we also have wood’s American Sniper, in which a which Abel’s rectitude is regarded as a rooting interest in seeing him give up beefed-up Bradley Cooper inhabited a leg- either a liability (by his rivals, and some- on rectitude and just somehow go to the endary Iraq War marksman so effectively mattresses instead. that you could almost forgive the movie’s Chandor deals with this tension differ- reliance on war-movie cliché and rote ently than did The Godfather, which is homefront melodrama. It was also true to wise, but unwisely he decides that his some extent of Ava DuVernay’s Selma, a story doesn’t actually need a comprehen- very solid, somewhat overpraised civil- sive resolution, that he can leave narrative rights drama elevated above its conven- strands dangling and important-seeming tionality by David Oyelowo’s richly characters offstage or underdeveloped. magnetic turn as Martin Luther King Jr. We never meet the mobster in-laws, for And it’s true, unfortunately, of the instance, depriving us of a useful (at the movie I was most eagerly anticipating: very least) swath of backstory; interesting A Most Violent Year, J. C. Chandor’s minor characters (a neophyte salesman, a chiaroscuro-rich drama about a would-be tough Teamster captain) are given meaty- heating-oil tycoon in the crime-ridden seeming introductions and then dropped; New York of 1981, which reaches for the great Alessandro Nivola has two greatness but doesn’t quite surround its portentous scenes as a mentor-cum-rival leading man, Oscar Isaac, with the story that don’t deliver any kind of payoff. In that his riveting performance deserves. Chekhovian terms, Chandor puts several I last wrote about Chandor and Isaac a threatening-looking guns on the wall, but little less than a year ago, when their 2013 has only one of them—belonging to an efforts—the former directing Robert impetuous delivery-truck driver—actual- Redford in the seafaring movie All Is Lost, ly get fired. the latter starring as a Beat-era musician Perhaps the director, like his rectitude- in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac in obsessed protagonist, committed to a cer- Davis—were unjustly passed over for A Most Violent Year tain path and didn’t want to budge—an Aca demy Award nominations. At the times by his wife) or a necessarily bogus austerity of plotting, a deliberate withhold- time, I suggested that by teaming up for A pose (by the indictment-preparing district ing of satisfaction, that mirrors the un - Most Violent Year, they would give this attorney, played with cool restraint by the finishedness of actually existing life. But year’s Oscar voters the chance to right same Oyelowo who dominates Selma). he chose poorly: The movie, so great in the both wrongs at once (as well as the snub But for the man himself, glowering and early going, ends up feeling like it’s miss- of Chandor’s phenomenal first movie, yet contained, some kind of moral code ing 30 minutes, and its accumulated mo- OLD BULL PICTURES / Margin Call). And for much of its running is clearly essential to his vision of the mentum dissipates in the (insufficiently) time, their new collaboration delivers American Dream: Abel simply cannot be climactic scenes. exactly what I had hoped for—a great, himself, and cannot win the success that Now of course, the Academy has a long even pantheon-level New York City mo - self is capable of winning, unless he’s con- tradition of snubbing A+ work from great vie, with direction evoking Coppola or vinced he’s taking what he calls the “most directors and then making up for it by WASHINGTON SQUARE FILMS / Lumet or Scorsese and an anchoring per- right” path. garlanding a B+ effort later on, so maybe formance that calls to mind the younger, That “most” allows some room for Chandor will still earn some Oscar recog- somber Al Pacino. compromise, of course, and a lot of the nition (recognition he deserves) for A Instead of a Mafia scion, though, Isaac interest of the story involves watching Most Violent Year. But between the mo - is playing a man who technically married where Abel draws his own lines (there’s a vie’s writer-director and its star, only one

BEFORE THEinto DOOR PICTURES the mob, but who has spent his entire great scene where he instructs his sales- delivers his absolute best work.

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ones. Some weeks a would-be diner-out did not make it. (But sometimes they thaw Country Life can bumble around from one old standby in the spring and come back to life: an icy to another before finding one that has not staycation.) Only the indoor bugs stay closed its doors. active: the noiseless patient spider; the Closing The big resort on the ridge does not pantry moths in the flour. close. But after the full houses of Christ - Other species move their bases of oper- Time mas and its mad bastard child, New Year’s ation. You did not advertise for mouse RICHARD BROOKHISER Eve, comes what the owners call with stiff tenants, but in the winter they come. They upper lips “the cliff.” It is not that the make homes in the best flannel sheets, OMES the solstice the old year grounds, the size of a small township, are they leave tiny feces all over the roasting closes. Many men (and not any less lovely. If you live in the woods pan in the drawer beneath the oven, they only men) follow its lead. for a few winters you learn how beautiful fill unused boots with seeds. In the watch- C Farmers and their farm stands that season is. When the trees are leaf - es of the night, when the radiator is taking are the most obvious candidates for clos- less you can appreciate their bark and a break and if you listen through the blub ing. Months ago the first frosts ended their bending. Spring, summer, and fall of the humidifier, you can hear their feet, most growing, but there was still produce are fashion shows; winter is a parade of or is it their teeth? Sometimes snap, and in to be sold. Apples and cider; pumpkins for nudes. Creatures without roots are also the morning there is the late freeloader, Halloween; roots and tubers—anything worth studying. Birds sing less but they snout pinned under the bar of the trap. that stored well, wore a rind, or lived are seen more; animals leave tracks like You toss the body into the woods, spread underground could march on until the sociologists’ flow charts. It’s a hard sell more peanut butter on the bait area, and snow piled up and the soil itself froze. to the public though. The warmest parka wait for his brother. Mice are the most Even black kale, whose broad leaves look in the world is no match for the USVI. So common houseguests; once I was afflict- like palm fronds in an old Bible illus - the resort sails over the cliff, hoping to ed with rats. Twice, a tiny black snake tration, can last, in a mild season, after touch down briefly on Valentine’s Day. crept up between the floorboards. Each Thanks giving into December (the longer They close the big dining room with the one crept back down, before I had to take it lives the better it gets, but don’t tell 30-foot ceiling; business relies (they stern measures. Since I have never had a old congressmen). There comes a time hope) on conferences; the 19th-century cat, I must do all my killing myself. though when the gourds look haggard and worthies whose photographs line the hall- Outside the stars see everything (or all the monstrous carrots seem merely freak- ways are less distracted by selfies. that they care to see). ish. Christmas trees are the stop crop, the You understand why the farmers go “Attention Shoppers” announcement that indoors to study their seed catalogues and the earth store will be closing in ten min- their mortgages. But people still get hun- utes. For three weeks the cars with Jersey gry, and they still need to relax. So why plates roll homeward down the valley does so much hospitality simply come to with fresh-cut ornament holders strapped an end? Cold obviously. Yes, cold is un - to their roofs. Then it ends. One farm pleasant. But cold also represents effort— stand on the state route shuts down com- to keep it off, to prepare to meet it. Isn’t it pletely; the other stays open half time better to give up—either to flee, or just to PUBLICIC (they realized a few years ago that they stay home? could do some winter business with bird Whole species flee, die, or otherwise SCHOLARSCHOLAR seed and animal feed). Empty fields lie disappear. In the warm three quarters of brown, then white; silos stand like aban- the year even most of us who are not natu- doned watchtowers. ralists realize that there are many, many At the edge of town an enterprising soul times more insects in the world than verte- set up a barbecue stand in a corner lot at brates. They buzz around our faces when an intersection. Stove, fridge, and sales we sweat; they scurry angrily when we lift counter were in a large stationary wagon; up a rock and disturb them at their labors; you parked your car on the grass; cus- they crawl into flowers unconcerned that tomers who weren’t taking out could sit a monster thousands of times bigger than on picnic tables. Texas wasn’t worried, they are is only inches away. They build but Texas is hundreds of miles away. elaborate traps for each other and lay eggs g p Stoves and barbecue are warm, so chefs in their fellow insects’ bodies. They fly to *UDQWVIRUVHULRXVQRQÀFWLRQELRJUDSK\*UDQWVIRUVHULRXVQRQÀFWLRQE LRJUDSK\ and diners carried on bravely through night lights as if they had something to DDQGKLVWRU\ZULWWHQIRUSRSXODUDXGLHQFHVQGKLVWRU\ZULWWHQIRUSRSXODUD XGLHQFHV shrinking days and the first flurries. But offer. They propagate the first skunk cab- past a certain point what should be a bage and the last black cohosh (both plants $$50,40050,400 fforor 1122 momonthsnths simple meal would become heroism, so that, disconcertingly, smell like rotting DeadlineDeadline MarchMarch 3,3, 20152015 up went the sign ClOSED BACk AprIl 1. meat). Then insects are gone, done for, fin- This isn’t the only eating place to shut ished. I noticed on my back deck the other MoreMore infoiinnffoo at:att:: down. restaurants with four walls and a day a frozen Woolly Bear caterpillar; www.neh.gov/commongoodwwww..neh.govv///cocommonggood roof take winter breaks, often quite long wherever he was going for the winter, he

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Happy Warrior BY JONAH GOLDBERG The Grievance Game

efORe Christmas break, law-school students at He continued: “Where some commentators see weakness Harvard, Columbia, and other prestigious insti- or sensitivity, perhaps they should instead see strength—the tutions insisted that they should be allowed to strength to know when our cups of endurance have run over B postpone their exams. Outrage over the eric and when the time for patience has ended. Perhaps they Garner and Michael Brown cases simply made it impossible should instead see courage—the courage to look our peers to study for a mere test. The dog of racial injustice ate their in the eyes and uncomfortably ask them to bear these bur- homework. dens of racism and classism that we have together inherited “In being asked to prepare for and take our exams in this from generations past . . .” Sing along, you know the words. moment, we are being asked to perform incredible acts of But what if the cynics were right? What I mean is: What disassociation that have led us to question our place in this if our mistake lay in not being cynical enough? What if school community and the legal community at large,” pro- Desmond & Co. are a bunch of Bernie Bernbaums? claimed one letter, written to the administration of Columbia In the Coen brothers’ masterpiece Miller’s Crossing, John Law School and echoed in a similar letter sent to the Har - Turturro plays Bernie Bernbaum, a seedy grifter who’s vard Law School administration and signed by the entire always looking for an angle. Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) coalition of the oppressed, including but not limited to the has been ordered to murder Bernie. Out in the woods, at Harvard Law student associations for Miller’s Crossing, Bernbaum begs for his Asian-Pacific Americans, blacks, Middle life. “You can’t kill me. I’m praying to easterners, Muslims, Native Americans, you! . . . Look in your heart!” he says over feminists, and Hispanics, as well as the and over. Reagan relents. He shoots his Harvard Law Students for Reproductive gun into the air so that those listening will Justice and—of course—Harvard Law think he’s done the deed. He then tells School Justice for Palestine. Because who Bernie to scram: “You have to blow, for has a better appreciation for the rule of good. Nobody can see you, nobody can law than apologists for the PLO? know.” Bernie gratefully agrees. The earnestness of the appeal was But later—spoiler alert!—Bernie re - demonstrated by the letter’s emptying of turns to work an angle. Reagan is furious. the rhetorical cupboard. Bernie Bernbaum begs for his life But Bernie now has the upper hand. Be - “Your silence denies humanity to the sides, Bernie says, “what were you gonna lives lost and minimizes the gravity of the palpable anguish do if you caught me? I’d just squirt a few [tears] and then looming over campus,” the signatories told the Harvard you’d let me go again.” Powers That Be. “Like many across the country, we are trau- There’s a very simple reason we have so many victims matized. Just because this racial terror is systemically repro- today. You get what you reward. And in America today, par- duced and normalized through repeated fidelity to the so ticularly on university campuses, we reward victimhood called rule of law, it does not mean the disruption is any less with enormous emotional and political prestige. This simple traumatic than a tragic bombing. The fact that you refuse to insight explains why there are so many hate-crime hoaxes openly acknowledge this adds to our distress . . .” on college campuses. It probably explains at least some of The letter goes on—and on—but you get the point. the motivations swirling around the bogus University of Naturally, the effort invited ample and deserved mockery. Virginia rape story and the fraudulent statistics therein. It even supposing that the facts of Garner’s and Brown’s certainly partly explains the rhetoric and policies of the deaths fit the students’ theory, if the legal larvae at America’s Democratic party (and of too much of the Republican foremost shark hatcheries can’t keep their heads straight for party). finals, what good will they be when they have skin in the Victim status purchases special privileges. There are real game? I don’t recall Atticus finch weepily demanding a victims, because that is the nature of things. “You’re on delay in the trial so he could have some me-time. earth,” Samuel Beckett explained. “There’s no cure for Harvard Law Review editor William Desmond didn’t like that.” And no doubt there are many, many others who the mockery and tried to turn the tables on the hard-hearted believe themselves to be greater victims than the truth war- cynics. “The hesitancy to recognize the validity of these psy- rants. But the fact remains that our good and decent society chic effects demonstrates that, in addition to conversations on is in the midst of a kind of auto-immune crisis in which vic- race, gender and class, our nation is starving for a genuine dis- timhood demands an exaggerated response. And in such a cussion about mental health,” Desmond wrote in the National society, the very smart and very ambitious will exploit this Law Journal. “Speaking as one of those law students, I can fact as best they can. say that this response was misguided: Our request for exam In a more truthful, Bernbaumesque moment, young TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX / extensions was not made from a position of weakness, but Desmond might have said: Don’t hate the player, hate the rather from one of strength and critical awareness.” game. CIRCLE FILMS

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