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June 1, 2015 $4.99 COOKE on SALLY SATEL: The CDC’s E-cigarette Panic Pamela Geller MAC DONALD on Henry Olsen: Scott Walker’s Populist Appeal Baltimore

LISTEN UP, LADIES The Unlikely Traditionalism of Millionaire Matchmaker PATTI STANGER by ELIANA JOHNSON

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JUNE 1, 2015 | VOLUME LXVII, NO. 10 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 29 Tocqueville’s Matchmaker Henry Olsen on Scott Walker Patti Stanger, host of Bravo TV’s The p. 22 Millionaire Matchmaker, looks like a feminist hero. She’s single, she’s rich, and she, as they say, has it all. It’s in BOOKS, ARTS her work as a matchmaker that things & MANNERS get tricky. The laws of love, she has 42 THE SOURCES OF AMERICAN found, have not bent to the arc of CONDUCT the feminist movement. Eliana Johnson Mario Loyola reviews The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today, by Colin Dueck. COVER: RANDEE ST. NICHOLAS 43 LOST, NOT FORGOTTEN ARTICLES Joseph Postell reviews Our Lost Constitution: The Willful 18 FREE SPEECH WITHOUT APOLOGIES by Charl es C. W. Cooke Subversion of America’s When bullets start to fly, who cares who is their target? Founding Document, by Mike Lee. 20 A 2016 POLICY PREVIEW by Ramesh Ponnuru Taking a look at the GOP hopefuls’ nascent agendas. 45 RECLAIMING CITIZENSHIP Edward Whelan reviews SCOTT WALKER’S TAX POPULISM by Henry Olsen 22 The Constitution: An The Wisconsin governor has wisely jettisoned supply-side orthodoxy. Introduction, by Michael Stokes Paulsen and Luke Paulsen. 24 A TIME FOR RESCUE by David Pryce-Jones In Israel, a play casts light on a crisis. 49 THE WOEFUL WHITNEY Roger Kimball discusses Renzo Piano’s HOMAGE TO MACEDONIA by Jay Nord linger 27 latest creation. Shaky times in a gutsy Balkan state. 51 FILM: A RIGHT QUADRANGLE Ross Douthat reviews Far from the FEATURES Madding Crowd. 29 TOCQUEVILLE’S MATCHMAKER by Eliana Johnson Patti Stanger teaches anew an old lesson about the sexes. 32 THE RIOT SHOW! by Heather Mac Donald SECTIONS News media glamorized anarchy and reinforced lies in Baltimore. 4 Letters to the Editor 35 THE TARRING OF E-CIGARETTES by Sally Satel 6 The Week At the Centers for Disease Control, perfect defeats good. 40 The Long View ...... Rob Long Athwart ...... James Lileks WHAT’S LOVING GOT TO DO WITH IT? by Matthew J. Franck 41 37 44 Poetry ...... Lee Oser Gay-marriage supporters misuse a precedent. 52 Happy Warrior ...... David Harsanyi

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JUNE 1 ISSUE; PRINTED MAY 14

EDITOR Richard Lowry Senior Editors Robot Labor Richard Brookhiser / Jonah Goldberg / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra Danny Crichton’s essay “Fear Not the Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy Washington Editor Eliana Johnson Robot” (May 4) is optimistic about Executive Editor Reihan Salam Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson robots, but even more optimistic about a National Correspondent John J. Miller Art Director Luba Kolomytseva basic law of economics: Jobs are created Deputy Managing Editors by the money to pay for them. Robots Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Production Editor Katie Hosmer generate productivity, productivity trans- Assistant to the Editor Carol Anne Kemp Research Associate Alessandra Haynes lates into money, and money creates jobs. Contributing Editors We don’t have to worry about what kinds Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn Jim Geraghty / Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow of jobs or how much they may or may not Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy pay. We may assume robots will create Kate O’Beirne / Andre w Stuttaford / Robert VerBruggen low-paying jobs, but the price of jobs is NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez determined mainly by social convention Managing Editors Katherine Connell / Edward John Craig Opinion Editor Patrick Brennan rather than by their presumed productivi- National-Affairs Columnist John Fund ty. Robots are not consumers of anything Staff Writers Charles C. W. Cooke / David French Political Reporter Joel Gehrke except the energy to run them (and of Reporters Andrew Johnson / Katherine Timpf course the labor to build them and repair them), so the productivity they create Associate Editors Nick Tell / Molly Powell / Nat Brown has to go into jobs for consumers. Editorial Associates Even if robots do create low-paying jobs, at some point they will generate B rendan Bordelon / Christine Sisto Technical Services Russell Jenkins more jobs than there are workers to fill them. Competition for scarce labor will Web Developer Wendy Weihs Web Producer Scott McKim then raise wages—no matter what the jobs are. And we don’t even have to be EDITORS- AT- LARGE able to imagine them. We have always been creating unimaginable jobs. Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan We don’t have to worry about all the money going to the owners of the robots. NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE BUCKLEYFELLOWINPOLITICALJOURNALISM If they have income, they will buy things with it, and what they buy, no matter Ian Tuttle Contributors what it is, will translate into labor. The richer one is, the more labor one purchases Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman in relation to goods. Evidence of this is amply provided by history. In the era (and Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman in the countries) of low productivity, wealth accumulated for the powerful, and James Gardner / David Gelernter George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart the poor were poor simply because there was not enough productivity to generate Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune money to pay for jobs. But in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, though D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak the “robber barons” were obscenely rich, the income of the working class rose Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber steadily. This was true in England and America as they industrialized in the 19th Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman century, and Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea in the 20th. And now we are Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya seeing it in Thailand, China, and India. This is all due to mechanization of one Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu sort or another, and will continue as long as robots raise productivity. Circulation Manager Jason Ng WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 Richard Davis ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Marietta, Ohio Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Assistant to the Publisher Emily Gray Director of Philanthropy and Campaigns Scott Lange Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Director of Development Heyward Smith Director of Revenue Erik Netcher CORRECTION: Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mi tchell “The Week” (May 18) asserted that the Battle of Gallipoli was fought as part PUBLISHER Jack Fowler of World War II. In fact, Turkey’s decision to side with Germany, and the CHAIRMAN resulting campaign to “knock it out,” happened in World War I. John Hillen

CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes JOE DRIVAS

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

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n Raúl Castro, after meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican, said he might very well “go back to the Church.” That will be one long confession.

n Jeb Bush got tripped up on a question about Iraq. Asked by Megyn Kelly if he would have authorized the invasion of Iraq given what we know now, Bush said absolutely, and Hillary Clinton would have as well. The political and media world promptly crashed down around his head for his purportedly pig- headed, tone-deaf backing of the war. As Bush explained after- wards, he misinterpreted the question and gave an answer based on what we knew in 2003 (when, indeed, many prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, voted to authorize the war). Bush dismissed the question Kelly had really asked as a hypo- thetical. This is all a bit of a tangle, but clearly, if we had known with certainty in 2003 that Saddam wasn’t close to having func- tional weapons of mass destruction, we never would have invaded. The world doesn’t run on counterfactuals, though (if we knew then what we know today, we also would have implemented the surge years earlier and never would have pulled out of Iraq entirely). Perhaps Governor Bush should say that the next time he gets this question—because he can be sure there will be a next time.

n The racial politics of American cities typically pits minorities against the Man—City Hall, or the police department, or both. should be prosecuted when good-faith arrests are second-guessed But it’s worth keeping in mind that the Man is usually Demo- by prosecutors or courts. Meanwhile, new U.S. attorney general cratic Man. In the last century, Baltimore has had two Republican Loretta Lynch announced another administration investigation mayors. The second one left office 48 years ago. It is the closest into whether Baltimore police engage in a “pattern or practice” of thing to a one-party city north of Havana. Sometimes the one violating civil rights, even though the White House praised the party shows inklings of self-reform, though not for long. In 2000, city’s department as a model just two months ago. Police miscon- Mayor Martin O’Malley, now running for president, brought in duct is not cured by prosecutorial misconduct. Ed Norris, a veteran of the NYPD, to tackle crime. Norris made some gains but left in disgust after two years because of pres- n The Senate passed a bill that would require President Obama sure to massage statistics. Now we have Freddie Gray. There to submit the text of a deal with Iran to Congress, where it could will always be tension, because race hustlers live to enflame it, be rejected with a two-thirds vote. Some Senate Republicans, because even good police departments must arrest people and including Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton, had hoped to strengthen sometimes make mistakes—and because some cops are genu - the bill significantly by offering amendments that would have inely bad. But when has Baltimore enjoyed the sort of progress required a deal to include Iranian recognition of Israel or disclo- made by a Giuliani or a Bloomberg in New York? Not under the sure of the country’s past nuclear work. Senate majority leader old management, evidently. Mitch McConnell rejected an attempt by Cotton to force a vote on those amendments, in part because Democrats threatened to n Freddie Gray’s death in the custody of Baltimore police raises make considering them an impractically long endeavor. An harrowing questions, but the search for truth is ill served by an active debate about the Iran bill would have been good, but might ambitious prosecutor of questionable competence. Although have resulted in no legislative constraints at all on the president’s investigators were not close to completing their probe, state’s ability to reach a deal and ease sanctions. In any case, this was attorney Marilyn Mosby filed charges that appear thin and inter- just one skirmish in a larger battle that will probably take the next nally inconsistent, combining involuntary manslaughter, i.e., election to resolve. accidental homicide, with “depraved heart” murder, an overreach that requires proving reckless indifference to life. She also n Jade Helm 15 is a military exercise scheduled to take place in alleges false imprisonment based on the claim that the switch- seven southwestern states this summer. But to hear some Texans, blade police found on Gray was legal to possess. This may well it’s the return of Santa Anna (the feds are coming to take every- ROMAN GENN be wrong under municipal law; worse, it presumes that cops one’s guns, etc.). These fears have not been sufficiently dis-

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THE WEEK

missed by certain conservative Texans. Governor Greg Abbott imagine a worthier recipient: Most of the magazine’s contribu- ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor the exercise. Senator tors were murdered by Islamists in January, yet it marches on. Ted Cruz said he understands “the reason for concern and un - The award was tainted, however, by a craven protest, led by six certainty because the federal government has not demonstrated PEN members—Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, itself to be trustworthy in this administration.” Gentlemen, this Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Taiye Selasi—and joined by almost will not do. If constituents have crackpot fears, they should be 140 others (e.g., Joyce Carol Oates). They accused PEN of “val- told to go home and sleep it off. Period. orizing . . . anti-Islamic, anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments.” Some Charlie Hebdo supporters responded by pointing out that n “Do you have a favorite Cuban food?” Mark Halperin asked it most often attacks the National Front or the Catholic Church. Cruz on an online Bloomberg show in April. “Do you like Cuban But this misses the point. All expression in the Western world— music?” Several more questions on that theme followed. Halperin left, center, right—is threatened by Dark Age trolls wielding a asked them rat-a-tat; Cruz won points for treating them lightly murderer’s veto. They are abetted by self-hating multicultural- and playing along. In his apparent effort to embarrass the ists, cowed by their rage: Call it the boot-licker’s veto. All honor Republican presidential candidate by challenging him to prove to PEN, and the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, for drawing the the authenticity of his Hispanic identity, Halperin embarrassed right conclusions. only himself. He apologized after the interview he conducted was excoriated by a columnist in the San Jose Mercury News n Hillary Clinton, who said in 2003 that she was “adamantly and then roundly mocked on the Internet and social media. Even against illegal immigrants,” now sees political advantage in tak- the website ThinkProgress, no friend to conservatives, described ing the leftmost position possible. Almost all the Republican Halperin’s interrogation of Cruz as “cringe-worthy” and “racist.” presidential candidates have said that they are open to providing More pressing than whether Cruz is Hispanic enough is whether legal status to many illegal immigrants, at least after it is clear that journalists are professional enough to cover him. we have the capacity and will to enforce the laws going forward. Clinton criticized those Republicans: Legal status is “second n And as with one voice, the American media cried: “But she class,” and only citizenship will do. She urged that we welcome was asking for it!” Pamela Geller, provocatrix, put out the call: back some of the illegal immigrants we have already deported. We are holding a Mohammed-cartoon contest to highlight And she said that if Congress did not cooperate with her immi- Islamic radicalism. Islamic radicals put out the call, too: Geller gration ideas during her presidency, she would go farther than Obama in setting policy herself. Never mind that Obama is already stretching the law, as a federal judge has concluded (and as Obama himself used to say). The upshot of Clinton’s remarks for her Republican rivals is threefold: They have to be careful not to appear anti-Hispanic, they cannot outbid the Democrats on amnesty, and the Democrats’ unreasonableness may give them an opening with the public at large. All of which those candidates should have already known.

n Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, and Mike Huckabee—to list them in order of increasing political experience—entered the presiden- tial race. Only Huckabee is given any chance of winning the Republican nomination, and that a slim one. In 2008, he won

/ strong pluralities of Evangelical primary voters, which was HTML . enough to win him some state contests. But he has no plausible path to the nomination unless he appeals to other types of CONTEST - Republicans. He appears to believe that attacking trade and defending entitlements will broaden his appeal; we hope that he CARTOON - and the cartoonists must be massacred. Two would-be terrorists quickly finds that he has to try something else. Carson has said AND - showed up at Geller’s event in Garland, Texas, with semi - that he will try to avoid sentences that put the present-day United EXHIBIT - automatic rifles and body armor, intent on mass murder; a traf- States in close proximity to Nazi Germany and Obamacare to ART - fic cop with a standard-issue service sidearm killed them both. slavery. However hard he tries, he should try harder. Carson has Naturally, for a certain kind of liberal, this was all Geller’s fault: had a very impressive career in medicine and Fiorina a debatably MUHAMMAD - Juan Williams likened her to a “pyromaniac,” while CAIR, the impressive one in business; both will have to dispel the impres- faux civil-rights outfit, complained that she sought to provoke sion that they are merely trying to add lines to their résumés. LIVESTREAM

/ “mutual hostility and mistrust.” Geller sought to bring attention 05 / to the fact that Islamic radicals are in the habit of murdering n Senate Democrats blocked a vote on “trade-promotion au - 2015 / cartoonists, their crosshairs having landed on everybody from thor i ty,” a priority of President Obama’s. The bill would have COM . Jyllands-Posten to Charlie Hebdo. You can’t say her point has committed Congress to an up-or-down vote on trade pacts, been disproved. including the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which is close to being finalized. The bill is necessary because if Con - PAMELAGELLER :// n PEN American Center presented its Freedom of Expression gress can amend trade deals, other countries will be less likely HTTP Courage award to Charlie Hebdo at its annual gala. It’s hard to to make them in the first place. The vote showed how hostile

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to trade Democrats have become, and how weak Obama is authority, and it lapsed until there was a Republican adminis- within his party. And how unpersuasive, as well: His ar gu - tration and Congress. The best hope for a trade deal may be ment to balking Democrats was that they should trust him to that this history repeats itself. send them only worthwhile deals. Like the last Demo crat ic president, Bill Clinton, Obama has freed trade only when fin- n Important parts of the Patriot Act are up for congressional re - ishing deals mostly negotiated by Republican predecessors, authorization, including the provision that gave rise to the NSA’s and has been unable to initiate any liberalization of his own controversial “metadata” program (section 215). A federal ap - because of opposition from his party. Clinton, too, was un - peals court has invalidated this program, which collects phone able to get House Democrats to give him trade-promotion records—not the content of communications, but data showing

Equality vs. Recovery

ORTY years ago, the economist Arthur Okun wrote a averaged during the four years between 2008 and 2012. In seminal book with a self-explanatory title: Equality some sense, then, the chart asks the question, “To what F and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff. America, Okun extent does variation in the size of the welfare state in noted, has a “system of rewards and penalties that is 2008 explain variation in how economies recovered from intended to encourage effort and channel it into socially the crisis between 2008 and 2012?” productive activity. . . . But that pursuit of efficiency neces- As one can see in the chart, which contains the raw data sarily creates inequalities.” and a highly statistically significant regression line through Okun’s tradeoff seems to be forgotten by many on the the data points, the data show a clear pattern: The heavy left, who advocate expanded government spending at redistributors have done much worse. Indeed, the statisti- every turn and seem to blame austerity for every data hic- cal relationship suggests that moving a nation’s redistribu- cup. Behind this charge lurks a tricky scientific problem: tive apparatus from that of the typical country in the sample how to quantify the tradeoff. We cannot directly observe to that of the U.S. would have increased the expected whether a society would have been richer had it been less growth rate of per capita national income over this period devoted to egalitarian policies. by a full percentage point. What is needed is some kind of controlled experiment, and Today’s Left, unlike Arthur Okun, seems to live in a world the nearby chart suggests a simple one. When the financial where trade-offs and incentives no longer matter. In the crisis began, countries varied tremendously in the extent to next presidential election Democrats are likely to claim that which they redistributed income. Some, such as Ireland and increasing redistribution in the U.S. is the key to economic Sweden, redistributed a lot; others, such as the U.S. and growth. This chart should give them pause. Switzerland, not so much. Now, seven years later, some countries have recovered smartly. Others have not. If we go —KEVIN A. HASSETT back and sort countries by how much they redistributed before the crisis, how does the growth experience compare? From the World Bank, we compiled data on the growth Inequality and Growth rate of per capita national income, adjusted to reflect varia- Sweden tion in local price levels and exchange rates. We matched Germany France these numbers with data on inequality from the Standard - 20 U.K. ized World Income Inequality Database maintained by Greece Professor Frederick Solt of the University of Iowa. 15 That database uses a standard measure of inequality, the U.S.A. Gini coefficient. A Gini coefficient value of 100 would corre- spond to one individual earning 100 percent of a country’s 10 income, and a Gini coefficient value of 0 would correspond

to a perfectly even distribution of income. 5 Singapore To measure how much a country redistributes, we looked Gini-Coefficient Spread in 2008

at how much government policy changes that coefficient. 0 The more taxes and transfers from the government reduce the coefficient, the more redistributive that government is. –5 The chart examines the recent experience of national –4% –2% 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% economies in the wake of the financial crisis for the 47 Average Annual Real-Growth Rate of Per Capita National Income, 2008–2012 countries for which there were sufficient Gini-coefficient

data. The vertical axis plots how much redistribution there SOURCE: WORLD BANK; STANDARDIZED WORLD INCOME-INEQUALITY was in each country in 2008. The horizontal axis plots the DATABASE, VERSION 5.0. THE GINI-COEFFICIENT SPREAD IS THE DIFFER- ENCE BETWEEN THE PRE-TAX-AND-TRANSFER AND THE POST-TAX-AND- rate of per capita national-income growth that each country TRANSFER GINI COEFFICIENTS.

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which subscriber numbers were in contact, when, and for how dum for Puerto Rico doesn’t seem necessary, but if it hap- long—in bulk. The three-judge panel ruled that the Patriot Act pens, it should require supermajority approval—we don’t provision did not authorize the program. The provision requires want ambivalent states. Bush also said he liked the idea on that the records collected be “relevant” to a terrorism investi- the merits, and he’s wrong there, too: Applying policies gation, and the government concedes that only a statistically meant for the mainland, such as the federal minimum wage, negligible quantum of the records gathered involve terrorist has been disastrous for Puerto Rico. Its ailing economy needs communications. It argues, nonetheless, that a complete set of reforms, not statehood. data is necessary to detect patterns of terrorist communication. The program involves minimal privacy intrusion, but given the n After failing to pass its fitness test, a 33-year-old woman controversy, the government must do a better job of explaining was nonetheless hired by the Fire Department of New York, the need for it. Ideally, the 215 program will be renewed in a way which has assigned her to Engine 259 in Sunnyside, Queens. that more clearly authorizes its current work. Disarming the “Fitness has to be a part of your life,” the president of the fire- intelligence community, on the other hand, would make us no fighters’ union reminded the 304 graduates at the Fire freer and a little less safe. Academy’ s commencement ceremony in May. Some heard his remarks as veiled criticism of the department’s controversial n House Republicans have revived a bill that would ban abor- decision. “A lot of the girls in the field are [upset] because they tions after 20 weeks, a measure that polls show a strong ma- feel like they’re getting lumped into the same category of a jor i ty of Americans support. As we went to press, leadership female getting special treatment and not meeting the same planned to put the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act standards as the males,” an insider told the New York Post, to a vote on the second anniversary of abortionist Kermit which reported that the FDNY was under pressure from the Gos nell’s conviction for murdering infants born alive. The bill administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio to hire more women. In had stalled in January after a dispiriting dispute among Re - general, hiring policies should be as blind to the sex of the job pub li cans about a reporting requirement in its rape-exception applicant as fire is. provision. The new version represents a compromise on that point with which pro-life activists are generally satisfied. It n This story has a happy, now requires that women seeking late-term abortions after or happyish, ending, but being raped receive outside counseling or medical treatment it was ugly for a while. before undergoing an abortion, and that any rapes of minors Sister Diana Momeka, a be reported to authorities. It also would require that a second leader of Christians in physician attend the procedure to ensure that medical assis- Iraq, was scheduled to tance be given to any baby born alive in a botched abortion. come to the United States Should the bill reach President Obama’s desk for his in ev it - to meet with congressmen able veto, he will have another chance to explain his support and others. She wanted to for infanticide. tell them about ISIS— what it was doing to her n “I’m hearing from a lot of customers, ‘I voted for that, and community in particular. I didn’t realize it would affect you.’” So says Brian Hibbs, Other religious leaders owner and operator of Comix Experience, an iconic San were to come as well, in - Fran cis co comic-book and graphic-novel shop, of the city’s cluding a representative of the Turkmen Shiites. All of them new minimum-wage law. San Francisco’s Proposition J, were granted visas—except for Sister Diana. The State which 77 percent of voters approved in November, will incre- Department said it could not be sure that she would return to mentally raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 by 2018; Iraq rather than stay in the United States. Sister Diana’s allies the first of four installments went into effect on May 1. in America were incensed at this treatment, and spoke out for “Despite being a progressive living in San Francisco, I do be - her. Prominent a mong them was Nina Shea, the human-rights lieve in capitalism,” says Hibbs. The new minimum wage lawyer at the Hudson Institute, who wrote about the issue for threatens to force hundreds of shops out of business and thou- NATIONAL REVIEW’s website. After this hue and cry, the State sands of employees out of their jobs. Hibbs has turned a profit Department reversed its decision, granting Sister Diana her and kept his em ploy ees well compensated for a quarter cen- visa. She will return to Iraq and her community. But just for the tury simply by dint of a passion and acumen for his business. record: Our country—our president—is amnestying millions Continuing to do either in San Francisco’s zealously progres- of illegal aliens who came from Mexico and Central America. sive economy does not require superhuman strength, but it Would it be so bad to accept some Iraqi Christians, whom mon- might be nigh heroic nonetheless. sters are promising to rape and murder?

n “Puerto Rican citizens—U.S. citizens—ought to have the n Lest you think Democrats are the Empire State’s only right to determine whether they want to be a state,” Jeb Bush crooks—former assembly speaker Sheldon Silver (D.) is under said recently. They already have such a right: The island has indictment for federal corruption, while current speaker Carl voted against statehood three times, and approved the idea Heastie (D.) has been accused of profiting from his mother’s once only narrowly, in a convoluted symbolic referendum in embezzlements—Dean Skelos (R.) resigned as senate majority 2012. When Alaska and Hawaii joined the union, they voted leader after being indicted on corruption charges of his own. to do so by margins of six-to-one or better. Another referen- (He allegedly pressured companies to make payments to an

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environmental firm that retained his son Adam as a consul- but the present king, Salman, is not even going to turn up and tant.) The closest thing the state has to a two-party system is its shake hands. Nor are the rulers of Bahrain and Oman. Po lite- very own Inspector Javert, U.S. Attorney for the Southern ness, the care not to give offense, is one of the keys to Arab cul- District Preet Bharara, long may he prosecute. Honesty in gov- ture. These rulers and their officials make sure to say there is ernment is a necessity. But what New York also needs is a zero tension and no disappointment in their relationship with break from pig-trough statism, the soil in which corruption so the American president. Yet the snub is obvious. These are readily grows. The local GOP is as unwilling to provide the Sunnis who have looked to the United States for protection, second as it is unable to offer the first. only to see that it is empowering Shiite Iran. Absence is their way of saying that Obama has lost the Sunnis.

n James Franco, actor and occasional thorn in Pyongyang’s n Running the United States out of Yemen and looking to side, wrote an excellent piece in the Washington Post about emerge winners in the final stage of the long-drawn-out nu cle ar the job he had at McDonald’s when he was an unknown per- negotiations, Tehran needs to test the point when the United former—a job he never felt “too good” to do. It is a lovely States might say no and mean it. In a move of typical crafti- piece about the virtues of doing simple work and enjoying ness, its rulers engineered a dispute with Maersk, a huge ship- its rewards—even when those rewards are a modest payday ping company that just happens to provide transport services to and the odd hijacked French fry. “When I needed Mc - the U.S. military. It also just happens that the major proportion Donald’s, McDonald’s was there for me,” Franco wrote. of crude oil from the Persian Gulf to Asia is shipped via the “When no one else was.” No, most McDonald’s jobs do not Straits of Hormuz. Claiming that the Maersk Tigris was tres- pay enough to raise a family of four in comfort—those jobs passing in Iranian territorial waters in these straits, naval units are there for other purposes. As rites of passage go, the fast- of the Revolutionary Guards fir ed shots across her bow and es - food job is an American classic. NATIONAL REVIEW has had cort ed her in to Bandar Abbas. None of the crew was Ameri - a surprising number of former Burger King employees pass can and the ship was carrying no arms, but the crew was held through its doors; Charles C. W. Cooke of McDonald’s is for a week “under armed guard,” as their captain put it once the odd man out. But it’s not a bad roll they had been released. Since American forces did nothing ex - call: Sharon Stone, Carl Lewis, cept “monitor” this piracy on the high seas, Tehran is likely to Jay Leno, Pink, and Jeff Bezos, feel quite free to act as it pleases. who brags that he can still crack eggs with one hand, all served n Conservative victory is the significant major drama of the under the golden arches. Most British general election, and the defeat of George Galloway in former McDonald’s em ployees the constituency of Bradford West is the significant minor don’t go on to become billionaire drama. In and out of Parliament, he’s been the very model of entrepreneurs or movie stars; a modern mindless agitator. Thrown out of the Labour party neither do most former IBM for saying to a surprised Saddam Hussein, “Sir, I salute your em ployees. But the beauti- courage, your strength, your indefatigability,” he started his ful thing about the free own party. Respect, this startlingly misnamed party, has been market—and it is a mouthpiece for Muslim grievance. Bradford West has a high beautiful—is that it proportion of Muslims, and Galloway played to what he makes the most of thought their prejudices were. For him, President Bashar our efforts and our Assad of Syria is “a fortress of the remaining dignity of the talents, wherever we Arabs,” and he declared his constituency “an Israel-free are in life, if we let it. zone.” His opponent, Naz Shah, has Pakistani origins, and found herself in the strange position of being attacked as an indifferent Muslim by someone who wasn’t a Muslim at all. A n On May 8 (May 9, Moscow time) 70 years ago, Nazi Ger - dead crow was laid on her doorstep. Ben Judah, a Jewish re - many surrendered unconditionally to its triumphant enemies. por ter, was roughed up. In the face of unprecedented nasti- As time winnows the surv ivors, commemorations of V-E Day ness, the Muslim voters rose to the occasion. Naz Shah’s pass from living memory to history. But history itself is the majority is 11,420. plaything of politics. Russia marked the occasion with a dis- play of tanks and modern military might, as if Stalin’s death n On its website, the Australian Broadcasting Company pub- struggle with his former ally were being repeated today in lished an article headed “Is Having a Loving Family an Unfair Putin’s thuggish intervention in Ukraine. The crushing of Advantage?” Interviewed was a philosopher named Adam Swift GETTY IMAGES / Hitler and Nazism ended a deadly and dynamic regime; it lifted (not to be confused with Adam Smith, or Jonathan Swift). He a threat from the United States and Britain and a curse from said, “One way philosophers might think about solving the Western Europe. For Central and Eastern Europe it meant trad- social-justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. CONTRIBUTOR / ing one curse for another. Let us give (measured) thanks. If the family is this source of unfairness in society, then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be n It’s embarrassing to throw a party when the guests don’t a more level playing field.” While families cannot be abolished, come. That’s President Obama’s plight at Camp David. He they unlevel the playing field in all kinds of ways. Take the issue DOMINIQUE CHARRIAU may have bent in obeisance to the former king of Saudi Arabia, of bedtime stories: Children whose parents read to them are bet-

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A Multi-millionaire’s Personal Blueprint For Surviving the Coming Currency Collapse “This is what I’m doing to protect my family DQGP\¿QDQFHV²,UHFRPPHQG\RXGRWKHVDPH´ Dear Fellow American, America is in for some strongly encourage you to take these All I ask is that you pay $5 to I have a question for you… Do major changes to our simple steps, too. cover the costs of shipping. you think the U.S. economy is really economy, our country, and My new work is called: America If you are interested in this work, “back to normal” when: our very way of life over the 2020—The Survival Blueprint. please act soon. next five years. » Roughly 75% of Americans are In America 2020 you’ll learn: Get started today by going to still living paycheck to paycheck, The way you live, work, travel, * The three assets you www.newamerica15.com. with essentially zero savings? retire, invest… everything is going (legally) do not have to report to Here you’ll find a secure Order » Or when the “Too Big To Fail” to change. 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ter off than children whose parents don’t. So, should reading at more? Perhaps not; the federal DOT says it’s negotiating with bedtime be disallowed? No, says Swift, he would not go that city officials to work out an exclusion for Times Square, possi- far—though parents who read to their children should think occa- bly by removing its NHS designation. If only Obama’s EPA and sionally about how they are “unfairly disadvantaging other peo- Justice Department could be so reasonable. ple’s children.” Typical liberal half-measures. n Businessman Nick Loeb and actress Sofia Vergara created n The NFL suspended the and froze two embryos while they were dating, then broke up. New England Patriots’ all- Now he wants to be able to raise them as daughters, while she star quarterback, Tom Brady, wants them to stay frozen. The courts will probably side with for four games after an inde- her. In part that’s because they made a legal agreement that pendent investigation found arguably allows the embryos to be implanted in a womb only on that it was “more probable the consent of both of them. It’s also because courts dealing than not” that he was “at least with embryos have generally found that not being made a par- generally aware” that Patriots ent against one’s will is the greatest interest at stake, and should staff had tampered with game trump everything else. What the courts should do, instead, is balls in their AFC champion - rule as they would in custody disputes, in the best interests of ship matchup against the those young lives—because both of the adults in this case, Indianapolis Colts—the scan- whether or not they both like it, are already their parents. dal known as “De flate Gate.” In addition to Brady’s suspen- n “He’s a heavy-handed son of a bitch, and he doesn’t know any sion, the Pats will lose a 2016 other way of operating, and he will do anything he can to win at first-round draft pick and a any price, including ignoring the rules, bending the rules, writing 2017 fourth-round pick, and rules, denying the House the opportunity to work its will. It will have to pay a $1 million brings disrespect to the House itself.” So said Rep re sen ta tive fine. In its letter of suspen- Dick Cheney (R., Wyo.) about his colleague Rep re sen tative Jim sion, the league wrote: “Each Wright (D., Texas). Wright was majority leader from 1977 to player, no matter how ac - 1987. Then he was speaker. He bedeviled President Reagan and complished and otherwise re - Republicans on Central America and many other issues. He was spected, has an obligation to forced to resign in 1989 on ethical charges: He had apparently comply with the rules and arranged for certain parties to buy his autobiography in bulk, as a must be held accountable for way of getting around limits on gifts and speaking fees. He his actions when those rules received a 55 percent royalty on the book. The man was not with- are violated and the public’s out charm, as when he said, “Royalty proceeds are going to my confidence in the game is called into question.” In other words, favorite charity: Mrs. Wright and me.” Dead at 92. R.I.P. the NFL de mands equality before the law. The Justice De part - ment could learn a thing or two here. n Ben E. King’s years as a top-selling singer occurred n Andre Saraiva, a renowned graffiti artist, recently tagged a during the fearful/hopeful boulder in Joshua National Park in the desert of southeastern interlude between Elvis’s California. Nature lovers protested. Saraiva answered that the joining the Army and the boulder fell outside the boundaries of the park, but critics went Beatles’ invading (or be - to Google Maps and proved him wrong. An editor of the men’s tween Sputnik and LBJ, or fashion magazine L’Officiel Hommes, Saraiva owns nightclubs Little Rock and “I Have a in Paris and New York and evidently does not share the tastes Dream”). His easy, confi- and values of hikers, conservationists, and those who go to dent baritone and supple national parks for nature that has not been too defaced by the phrasing made bittersweet busyness of human beings, whose i mpulse to stamp their ego classics of such songs as on everything is natural, in its way, but not always lovely. “Spanish Har lem,” “Save GETTY IMAGES / the Last Dance for Me,” n Highways bring to mind Route 66 and a roadster with the top “This Magic Mo ment,” and CONTRIBUTOR / down, not smog and sidewalk vendors. But under MAP-21, the “Stand by Me” (which King federal transportation bill passed through Congress and signed co-wrote). When English by President Obama in 2012, where Broadway and Seventh Av - accents, feedback, and psy- PAUL NATKIN : en ue intersect is part of the National Highway System, as well chedelia came into fashion KING ; as subject to the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, which pro- and rhythm and blues be - hibits billboards over 1,200 square feet within 660 feet of a came soul, King’s popularity high way. That’s a big problem, since that intersection happens waned, but his fans stood by GETTY IMAGES / to be Times Square: Media reports said the federal Department him, and he kept singing for ELSA : of Transportation was ordering New York City to take down another half century, which BRADY Times Square’s illegal billboards. Bright lights, big city no saw a creditable stab at 1970s

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funk with the chart-topping “Supernatural Thing” and a movie-inspired 1980s revival of “Stand by Me”—then as now a universal anthem of faith, trust, love, and loyalty. Dead at 76. R.I.P.

BRITAIN Cameron Wins—and So Does UKIP

N the face of it, the main result of the 2015 general elec- tion suggests the restoration of stability to British poli- O tics. The Tories went from senior partner in a coalition government to sole governing party. Labour lost seats but remained far ahead of any rivals as the principal opposition party. The 2015 election ended the experiment in coalition government and restored two-party politics as the main feature of the Westminster system. Right up to the announcement of the BBC exit-poll results, almost everyone was expecting a virtual tie between Labour and the Tories, and accordingly a Parliament in which a governing coalition might have to be composed of three parties. Compared with such a disorderly vision, a simple Tory victory seemed like a return to the 1950s party duopoly. In fact our surprise was an artifact of the opinion polls: If no polls had existed, we would have likely calculated that a government surfing along on a wave of economic recovery would defeat an opposition party led by an untried leader with a left-wing economic agenda. That surprise has led many commentators to over-interpret the Tory victory. Prime Minister David Cameron’s party won an America’s) first-past-the-post electoral system sets for incum- ad di tion al 24 seats and a parliamentary majority of twelve that bent parties rather than how UKIP performed in terms of votes. will allow it to remain in power for a full five-year term. But that In fact, electorally, UKIP showed the most improvement in the parliamentary result rests on a share of the U.K. vote of 36.9 per- election: It won 12.6 percent of the total U.K. vote (and 14 per- cent, which itself represents an increase of only 0.8 percent over cent of the English vote), which was an increase of 9.5 percent the 2010 share. This is a clear victory but far short of a landslide. over its 2010 base. In other words, UKIP more than quadrupled Similarly, Labour was soundly defeated but not routed entirely. its vote. In percentage terms, that is twice as strong as the SNP’s Its share of the vote actually rose by 1.5 percent, to 30.4 per landslide. Admittedly, because UKIP’s support is geographically cent—a higher rise than the Tory one—and it retains electoral dispersed, all those votes have won the party only one seat. But it strongholds in three regions of Northern England. Indeed, it is now a permanent part of the political system, with an adminis- gained a net 24 seats outside Scotland. trative structure, mass membership, and seats in local govern- The two-party seesaw thus remains the underlying structure of ment, Westminster, and the European parliament (where it has a British politics. But there the stability ends: Almost all the other plurality of British MEPs). So it is now a challenge to both parties election results point to massive and unsettling change and a new and a complicating factor in all their calculations. UKIP is emerg- status quo in British politics: ing as the party of working-class conservatism throughout Eng - One. The collapse of the “centrist” (in fact, center to quite far land outside London. It poses a future challenge both to Labour left) Liberal Democrats. Their popular vote cratered by 15.2 per- on class grounds and to the government as an ideological rival, cent, to a meager 7.9 percent, and their parliamentary seats by 49 undermining the previous Tory monopoly on conservatism. It will to only eight. act as a check on David Cameron’s freedom of action on both Two: The SNP’s landslide in Scotland. The SNP now has 56 of Europe and Scotland. If he deviates too far from the interests of the 59 Scottish seats. With 56 seats in the Commons, they will his conservative base or those of national-minded English voters, have the ability and perhaps the legitimacy to press the indepen- UKIP will be able to challenge him in special elections, local dence case strongly. The SNP’s rise confronts the Tories with elections, and European elections. As a result, there are now two what looks like a painful choice: Either yield independence or conservative parties in Britain. bribe the Scots to stay in the U.K. with ever-rising amounts of That is the bad news for Cameron amid his triumph. The good money from Whitehall. news for him, and for Britain, is that those two parties now make Three: The unnoticed but irresistible rise of UKIP. Most up a majority of the electorate.

BLOOMBERG VIA GETTYreports IMAGES have suggested that the U.K. Independence party had an / un successful election because it won only one parliamentary seat EDITOR’S NOTE: The next issue of NATIONAL REVIEW and its leader, Nigel Farage, lost his own bid for one. Those dis- will appear in three weeks. JASON ALDEN appointments, however, reflected the high bar that Britain’s (and

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leave the false impression that the right of free expression is somehow contin- gent upon the permission of the public, and to suggest, too, that it is possible for a person to speak or to draw or to dress in a manner that justifies her being harmed. Clearly, it is not—not only because it is never acceptable to meet words or paintings with bombs and with bullets but also because there is no feasible means by which one might credibly determine which topics are legitimate and which are not. Offense, taste, hatred—these all ultimately reside in the eye of the beholder, and there are many beholders’ eyes. By contrast there is one rule to which we all must hew devotedly—namely, Don’t Kill People for Speaking Peacefully—and it is not subjective at all. Indeed, it is clear as day. What does Pamela Geller believe, and what does my opinion of her say about me? Who cares? One answer to the latter question, Free Speech without Apologies alas, is: a good chunk of the American When bullets start to fly, who cares who is their target? commentariat, which has spent much of its time since the attack distancing itself from Geller and suggesting—some- BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE times openly, sometimes by implica- tion—that she should not be treated as DO not care what Pamela Geller manner in which such qualifications a champion of free expression because thinks about Islam, or about any- have been used during l’affaire Geller, she is too vulgar or too provocative or I thing else. I do not care whether I shall henceforth do no such thing. because she has the wrong intentions. Geller is a bigot or a freedom Instead, I shall briefly establish that my This is flatly wrong. If one wishes to fighter. I do not care whether she is personal views about a person’s charac- understand what separates a person right or wrong. I do not care whether ter or cause cannot possibly matter one who is “standing up for free speech” she shares or loathes my politics, whit in such a case, and then I shall from a person who is merely speaking whether she is theologically ignorant move on to the only important question within a free market of ideas, one must or religiously sound, whether she is a at hand—which is whether we are to look not at what that person is saying cynical self-promoter or an earnest live as free men, at liberty to speak as but at how his enemies are treating team player. I do not care whether she we wish, or whether we are to self- him. At present there is a clear and

-41063/ is rude or merely blunt. I do not care censor in the hope that the crocodiles obvious difference between the conse- whether she is selfish or kind. I do not will spare us. quences that will attach to a speaker WRONG -

OR care what is in the deepest recesses of In the correct context, it can be who mocks, say, the pope and a speaker - her heart. I care only that, on a Sunday worthwhile to appraise the words and who mocks Mohammed, and, as a re - RIGHT - evening in May, in Garland, Texas, two deeds of America’s many provocateurs. sult, there is a difference in the mean- NEITHER

- extraordinarily illiberal people hoped At a peaceful debate, it can be edifying ing of their mockery.

ISLAM to fire bullets into her body until she to critique the positions that the assem- Insulting as it might be to the people - VS - was dead, and that they intended to do bled orators elect freely to put forth. of Salt Lake City, the musical The Book this as a punishment for her blasphemy. But once the bullets start to fly, such of Mormon cannot credibly be said to GELLER - Everything besides this fact is irrele- inquiries are rendered immediately and be striking a blow for “free speech,” PAMELA / vant to me. What matters is that she violently moot. One would not react to because nobody whom it might offend was shot at for speaking, and that this the news of a rape by asking how short is trying to hurt the cast. The relevant FEATURED / is a bloody disgrace. the victim’s skirt was—whatever one’s questions for a person intrigued by the COM . Up until now, I have included in all sartorial tastes—and neither would one show, then, are: Is it funny? Is it well of my defenses of free speech a pre- take the opportunity to reflect on the written? Is it gratuitously offensive? amble in which I have explained what I quality of a murdered artist’s work or to Do I like the people who made it? COMMDIGINEWS . personally thought of the person I was damn the rhetorical style of an assaulted Would I recommend it to others? Is WWW defending. But having watched the raconteur, for to do so would be to there any merit to it? By contrast, the

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cartoons of Mohammed that were put Americans will eventually learn that out by Charlie Hebdo and by Pamela they should not provoke radical Geller’s friends are not there to be Muslims, and thus that self-censorship judged as if they were any standard is the order of the day, or radical A 2016 Policy work of art; they are there to make a Muslims will learn not to be provoked. broader point. Unless one believes that Whether they have intended to or not, Preview it can sometimes be right to shoot peo- those who have proposed that Pamela Taking a look at the GOP hopefuls’ ple for expressing themselves, the con- Geller and her ilk should voluntarily re - nascent agendas tent of these cartoons is immaterial, frain from provoking Islam’s discontents and the relevant question is whom we have run the risk of tacitly endorsing the BY RAMESH PONNURU are going to blame for the violence: the former outcome. Is “I don’t like Pamela victim or the perpetrator? Geller, but she shouldn’t have been shot Which is to say that once we have at for hosting a ‘Draw Mohammed’ com- T would be an overstatement to say crossed the line into violence, the petition” really a stronger argument than that the Republican presidential can- equations change dramatically. Writ - the much blunter “Pamela Geller shouldn’t I didates are debating one another’s ing in The Atlantic, David Frum put it have been shot at for hosting a ‘Draw policy ideas. Very few of the can- well: “When vigilantes try to enforce Mohammed’ competition”? didates have put forward extensive policy agendas. Several of the candidates have not yet formally announced that they are even running. We are, however, begin- It is not just the champions of free ning to get a slightly clearer picture of expression who have an interest in the where the candidates will stand, and where they might fight. removal of this problem from American Immigration seems as though it should be a dividing line—the party life; the champions of Islam do, too. truly has deep differences of opinion on it—but so far that line is not clear. All the tenets of a faith by violence, then it It is not just the champions of free of the candidates appear to be open to becomes a civic obligation to stand up expression who have an interest in the providing legal status to illegal immi- to them.” How nuanced or tasteful or removal of this problem from American grants eventually, if certain conditions respectful those who fulfill this obliga- life; the champions of Islam do, too. In are met: if, for example, the border is tion might be is entirely beside the the last decade or so, the tendency of secured and the illegal immigrants pay point. Their contributions are not there certain Muslim groups to react to a fine first. to entertain; they are there to establish mockery or criticism with violence has Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are also civic norms. Fittingly enough, the win- prompted many on the left to offer a open to providing citizenship to illegal ning entry in Geller’s “Draw Mo ham - characterization of the Islamic world immigrants. The distinction between med” competition summed this up neatly. that is flatly—almost comically—self- legal status and citizenship sometimes “You can’t draw me,” an angry Moham - contradictory. Islam, we are told by its occasions debate, but it may not lead to med is seen to be saying. “That’s why I apologists, is an unthreatening reli- a robust one in the primaries for the draw you,” replies the artist. gion of peace, and it should not be simple reason that not many Republi - In my experience, there are two main feared in the way that it is. But, it is cans appear to care about it. An AP/GfK reasons that so many commentators suggested in tandem, it is also a reli- poll in May found that public support who are ostensibly happy to defend gion that is chock full of adherents for legal status runs about even with free speech nevertheless share personal who are likely to kill you if you say or public support for citizenship. reservations in their preambles. The draw anything that offends them—and Legal immigration could also gener- first is that they wish to establish them- in consequence should not be pro- ate conflict. Rick Santorum wants to selves as people of good taste—as peo- voked. There is, it should be clear, reduce it by 25 percent. Scott Walker ple, that is, who dislike people like only one liberal way for this circle to be has said that legal-immigration policy Pamela Geller. The second, which is squared, and that is for the Muslim should be set with an eye on American related, is that they are well aware that world to realize that there will be no wages and that he is listening to many people in their audience simply indulgence of violence here in America. restrictionist senator Jeff Sessions. do not understand that to defend a prin- Only when this has been achieved will Those comments were enough to draw ciple is not to express admiration for all the claim that there is no problem to be charges that he is against legal immi- who act on it. On a purely human level, dealt with hold up to scrutiny. Only grants, but Walker has not explicitly the desire to clarify one’s private per- when her words are not reflexively said that he thinks their number should spectives is understandable. But one met with a volley of bullets will it be fall. A real debate could begin if Walker cannot help but feel that, in this case at reasonable for people to say in earnest, does say that, if Santorum rises, or if least, it is counterproductive. “I hear Pamela Geller is being provo - the candidates take clearly opposed In the long run there can be only two cative again. What do you think of positions on when legal status should possible outcomes to this fight: Either what she’s saying?” be offered.

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Rand Paul’s presence in the race was reform, on the other hand, is either the deductions for charitable giving and supposed to guarantee a heated debate ignorant or demagogic. Contrary to mortgage-interest payments, have a lot about foreign policy, but the libertarian what he suggests, the currently retired of political support. has been steadily shrinking the distance are getting much more from entitle- Christie has a vague outline of a between himself and the rest of the field. ments than they contributed, and most plan, too. He says he would reduce the He recently signed a letter from nearly reform proposals hold them harmless number of tax brackets to three, make all the Republican senators warning the anyway. There is no doubt, however, the top income-tax rate 28 percent at Iranian government that any deal with that he speaks for many Republican most, cut the bottom rate, reduce tax President Obama might not survive into voters on these issues: They are far less breaks other than those for charities the next U.S. administration, and spon- uniformly supportive of entitlement and most mortgages, and cut payroll sored an amendment to increase defense reform than their candidates have been. taxes for senior citizens and young spending. Some traces of heterodoxy Tax reform is a traditional interest of people. He promises to keep the deficit remain, though. Paul cheered Obama for Republican candidates. The Republi - from rising as a result of these changes; moving to lift the Cuban embargo, tak- cans who ran in 2012 had light plat- it will be a tall order. ing shots at Rubio on the issue. Bush, forms, but even most of them had tax Rubio and Bobby Jindal have pro- Chris Christie, and Ted Cruz also favor plans. The two most developed plans in posed plans to replace Obamacare. the embargo. the current field belong to Rubio and Both of them would get rid of not only A few of the candidates have staked Huckabee. Rubio would reduce income- that law but also of a federal policy out opposing positions on criminal jus- tax rates, abolish taxes on capital, get rid that has been in place for decades. The tice and civil liberties. Bush, Christie, of the alternative minimum tax, cut tax code has long encouraged people to and Rubio are strong supporters of the taxes on businesses of all kinds, and get health insurance through their National Security Agency’s surveillance expand the tax credit for children. employers rather than purchasing it of telephone-call information, while It is a pro-growth reform that offers a themselves. The plans of Rubio and Cruz and Paul are critics. Cruz, Paul, lot of tax relief to middle-class families, Jindal would create a level playing Rick Perry, and to a lesser degree Bush but it has political vulnerabilities. While field between the two types of insur- want to reduce our reliance on mass the senator justifies expanding the child ance arrangements. The main differ- incarceration, and Paul in particular credit on the ground that the burdens of ence between the plans is that they wants a less punitive approach to illegal the welfare state fall particularly hard make a different trade-off between cost drugs. Christie and Rubio, on the other on families, some conservatives say it’s and coverage. Rubio would enable hand, believe in the drug war. a special-interest tax break. The plan more people to get health insurance Almost all of the Republican candi- would also reduce revenue over the next and thus avoid the charge that replacing dates support free trade and reforms to decade by roughly 10 percent, if you Obamacare means taking away people’s reduce the growth of entitlement spend - assume it would not boost growth. And coverage. Jindal would cover many ing. Mike Huckabee breaks from the the reform would raise tax bills for fewer people but create more room for consensus on both points. While most some people: Affluent childless people reductions in tax rates. economists believe that the Trans- in high-tax states, for example, would Education is another issue where Pacific Partnership is likely to boost the pay more. Rubio and Jindal stand alone. Jindal is economy, Huckabee fears that the agree- Huckabee favors the “FairTax,” a the only candidate with a plan for K–12 ment would cause U.S. workers to “take national sales tax that would replace the education: He is an enthusiast for school it in the backside.” income and payroll taxes. Under the choice, which he has fought for as gov- Bush, Christie, and Rubio have FairTax, the federal government would ernor of Louisiana. Rubio has promoted come out for raising the retirement age. get $30 for every sale that makes $100 several proposals to make higher educa- Christie also believes Social Security for the vendor; the consumer would pay tion more affordable, such as letting benefits should be cut for senior citi- $130. This idea has dedicated fans, but it investors finance college in return for a zens who make more than $80,000. is a big new tax. And senior citizens who share of students’ future income. Rubio has suggested that we should have paid income and payroll taxes their Rubio has the most detailed and wide- “reduce the growth of benefits for whole lives would have to pay this new ranging policy agenda, followed by upper-income seniors.” The senators tax as they spent what they have left. Jindal. At this early stage of the cam- in the race have voted to shift Medicare Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson paign, most candidates don’t have either to a “premium support” model that say they favor a flat tax, but have not yet a health-care plan or a tax-reform plan. seeks to use consumer choice to save produced any details. If they chose a The proposals we have show us how money. Huckabee, on the other hand, rate that raises the same amount of rev- some of the candidates will use policy condemns such proposals as acts of enue as the current tax code, they would proposals in their campaigns. Huckabee theft against senior citizens who be proposing a tax increase on many will present himself as the champion of spent their working lives contributing lower-income and middle-income house - the working class and the elderly, or at to the program. holds. They could avoid that problem least of the white Evangelicals among Not every reform proposal seems by setting a lower rate, but then they them. Rubio and Jindal will be the ideas well considered. Christie’s would would be widening the deficit. The flat men. Whether other candidates want to penalize seniors for working and hav- tax would also have to eliminate a lot of stake their claim to that label remains to ing savings. Huckabee’s opposition to tax breaks. Some of them, especially be seen.

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These supply-side heresies have not hurt Wisconsin’s economy. Unemploy - ment has dropped from 7.9 percent to 4.6 Scott percent since 2011. Wisconsin’s labor- force-participation rate has dropped by Walker’s Tax much less than the national average, and has even increased slightly in the past Populism year. While Wisconsin’s economy has not The Wisconsin governor has wisely performed significantly better under jettisoned supply-side orthodoxy Walker than those of other midwestern states with Republican governors and legislatures, his policies have allowed BY HENRY OLSEN middle- and working-class families to keep more of their income. IKE all the GOP presidential con- Walker has ridden these populist tax tenders, Scott Walker is being cuts to great political success. Wisconsin L advised by economists and edi- has not voted for a Republican for presi- torial writers to adopt a “cut the dent since 1984, yet Walker has now car- top rate first” tax policy. It would be a ried the state three times in the last five shame if he followed their advice, which years, with at least 52 percent of the vote would mean abandoning the approach each time. That is six percentage points that he has employed in Wisconsin to better than Mitt Romney did in such political and economic success. Wisconsin in 2012, and it’s been fueled Standard “supply side” tax policy by Walker’s strong support among argues that the inventions and advances of Wisconsin’s working- and middle-class the economy’s most active participants whites. Whites with a college degree con- drive most growth. Thus, tax policy’s pri- stitute nearly half of Wisconsin’s elec- ority should be to encourage more of that torate even in presidential years, and activity by lowering the marginal rate on top bracket (which for families starts at Walker carried them by a margin of 58 those participants’ income. Since the most $320,000 in taxable yearly income) only percent to 42 percent last year, doing sig- economically active people tend to earn a smidgen, from 7.75 percent to 7.65 nificantly better than Romney did run- the most, supply-siders inevitably focus percent. Moreover, Governor Walker ning on a tax plan that was a mild version on cutting the top tax rate—which, at the approved two new deductions, one for of supply-side orthodoxy. federal level, currently starts at $457,601 contributions to health savings accounts Walker’s tax policy helps address the for couples—as much as possible, even at and another for private K–12 tuition pay- GOP’s biggest weakness, the perception the expense of tax cuts for earners in other ments. These policies fly in the face of that it is the party of the rich and doesn’t income brackets. They vociferously standard supply-side doctrine. “care about people like me.” Polls since oppose adding new tax credits or deduc- Walker has followed the same approach 2012 have consistently shown that tions to the code, and often even argue for with his other tax-policy changes. Supply- Americans think the economy is unfairly the repeal of credits and deductions siders strongly favor reducing corporate- tilted toward the rich and that the already on the books in order to “broaden tax rates, but Governor Walker has not Republicans are the party of the rich. A tax the base” and finance further cuts to the lowered them at all. Instead, he has policy that essentially says America isn’t top rate. secured the passage of two large corporate- doing enough for rich people is unlikely to This theory has become Republican tax credits. One is available to individuals help the GOP nominee in 2016. orthodoxy over the past two decades. It is, or corporations that derive income from Romney lost because Obama beat him however, the exact opposite of what manufacturing or agricultural activities in by 63 points among the fifth of Americans Governor Walker has pursued. Wisconsin. The other allows a business to who thought the most important charac- Walker has lowered Wisconsin’s rates deduct up to $4,000 per new full-time- teristic in a president was that he “cares on the personal incomes of all taxpayers, equivalent employee working in Wiscon - about people like me.” Romney’s prob- but he has done so more for those in the sin. Walker’s corporate-tax policy directly lem was even greater in Wisconsin. He bottom tax bracket than for those in the rewards in-state economic activity rather lost by 74 points the nearly one-quarter of top. On his watch, the marginal rate for than cutting marginal rates. Wisconsinites who held that belief. Given families earning no more than $32,000 Walker’s other major tax-policy change this, why would Walker even think about in gross income per year dropped from is an across-the-board reduction in changing his tax policies? 4.6 percent to 4.0 percent. He cut the property-tax rates. It applies to all owners The example of Kansas governor Sam marginal tax rate for all income-tax of property and thus counts as a tax cut for Brownback should cure Walker of any GETTY IMAGES brackets, but cut the rate for those in the both people and businesses. It does not, lingering desire to embrace the GOP’s / however, conform to supply-side theory, conventional tax wisdom. Brownback has Mr. Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public since the rate of property taxation has no adopted a state version of the orthodox Policy Center. bearing on the marginal incentive to work. playbook. Kansas couples making JUSTIN SULLIVAN

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$30,000 or less per year have seen their the sort of middle-class tax cut that rates cut from 3.5 percent to only 2.7 per- today’s supply-siders deride. cent on his watch, but top-bracket earners Reagan’s break with supply-side theol- have seen a larger drop, from 6.45 percent ogy seems even more pronounced when A Time for to 4.6 percent. Brownback has also com- one examines his rhetoric. Supply-side pletely eliminated the state income tax for theory lionizes the entrepreneur; it holds Rescue any individual filing as a “pass-through that certain people are “job creators” and In Israel, a play entity,” as most small-business owners that society benefits only by letting those casts light on a crisis do. In essence, Brownback reduced the people lead. But one will look in vain to tax rate on a large number of top-bracket find even a semblance of that sentiment in BY DAVID PRYCE-JONES earners from 6.45 percent to zero, theo- Reagan’s speeches. retically removing any state-tax disincen- I’ve read all of the major speeches tive for job creators to generate wealth. Reagan gave on the economy or taxes Tel Aviv This supply-side approach has yet to between 1979 and his signing of the tax- SUALLY it’s been some act significantly increase employment or eco- cut bill in 1981. In these speeches, he of violence—war, intifa- nomic growth in Kansas. Kansas’s unem- never argues that economic growth is due U da—that has brought me to ployment rate is only slightly lower than to the very few. He is always adamant that Israel as a reporter. This time, Wisconsin’s, and it has declined by less we all contribute, that we are all “makers.” the purpose is cultural, and even singu- since both governors took office in 2011. Indeed, he used the word “entrepre- lar—namely, to attend the opening The labor-force-participation rate is also neur” only once during this period. It was night of a play. The life story of a long- nearly the same in the two states. in his first inaugural address, and the man- standing friend by the name of Agi Brownback’s tax policies have dramat- ner in which he used it speaks volumes Yoeli is the subject of this play. Well ically cut Kansas’s revenues. The gover- about the gulf between supply-side ortho- known in artistic circles, she is a sculp- nor has been forced to propose cutbacks doxy and Reagan’s actual thinking: tress and ceramicist whose work has a or freezes in funding for a variety of pro- fantasy and humor all its own. But there We have every right to dream heroic grams, especially education, as a result. dreams. Those who say that we’re in a is a lot more to it than that. He has also proposed cutting the state’s time when there are not heroes, they Born in Berehovo, a small town in the payments into its employees’ pension just don’t know where to look. You can Slovak part of Hungary, Agi grew up plan, exactly the sort of underfunding that see heroes every day going in and out of speaking Hungarian and Czech, in the Republicans loudly criticize elsewhere. factory gates. Others, a handful in num- course of events adding German, French, Fiscally, Kansas’s supply-side experiment ber, produce enough food to feed all of English, and Hebrew. She played the has been a lot of pain with little to no gain. us and then the world beyond. You meet piano well enough to plan on a musical There has been political pain, too, and it heroes across a counter, and they’re on career. During World War II she married has been severe. Brownback was barely both sides of that counter. There are Laczy Leichtman from Budapest. He was reelected in deep-red Kansas, winning by entrepreneurs with faith in themselves soon conscripted into a labor battalion. and faith in an idea who create new only a 50–46 margin in a GOP wave year. After the Nazi occupation of Hungary in jobs, new wealth, and opportunity. He ran ten points behind Mitt Romney’s They’re individuals and families whose March 1944, she, her sister Ilu, and her 2012 showing in Kansas—even as Walker taxes support the government and whose parents were deported to Auschwitz. On ran six points ahead of him in a much less voluntary gifts support church, charity, arrival, the parents were murdered. Agi Republican state. The 2014 exit poll also culture, art, and education. Their patrio- thinks she may have caught one last found that 53 percent of Kansas voters tism is quiet, but deep. Their values sus- glimpse of Laczy, deported separately to thought Brownback’s tax cuts were “bad tain our national life. the camp. She was expecting a child, for Kansas.” and when the baby was born an SS Now, I have used the words “they” and None of this would have come as any woman killed it in front of her. A slave “their” in speaking of these heroes. I surprise to the biggest tax innovator of could say “you” and “your,” because I’m laborer, she was put to work making them all, Ronald Reagan. Many claim addressing the heroes of whom I speak— fuses for rockets. After liberation, she him today as the political father of supply- you, the citizens of this blessed land. was waiting for a train when she saw, side tax policy, but his words and deeds passing herself off in the crowd, the SS show that it was not quite so. For Reagan, the entrepreneur is not woman who had murdered her baby. Reagan’s two major tax cuts included someone who is better than we are. His Instead of having her arrested, Agi went many provisions that supply-side advo- or her contributions are no less, and no into the stationmaster’s garden and cates would criticize today. By indexing more, important to American prosperity either picked or pulled up flowers there. standard deductions and tax brackets than those of the worker, the farmer, or One brother of hers, Feri, was the only for inflation, he steered hundreds of the shopper. To say anything else is not surgeon in a local hospital when the war millions of dollars to middle- and only anti-Reaganite; it runs afoul of began. While shaving, he was listening working-class families, money that Americans’ deep belief in equality. If one day to an announcement on the theoretically could have been used to Scott Walker wants to win the GOP wireless guaranteeing that the Germans cut top rates even more. And his 1981 nomination, and the presidency, he would not invade—when he caught tax cut allowed all workers to con- should resist the supply-side temptation sight in the mirror of German tanks rum- tribute to tax-deductible IRAs, exactly and rekindle Reagan’s magic. bling up the road. His hospital would

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alone is in a position to fulfill that role but declines to do so. The current adminis- tration hedges its bets by supporting the Sunnis a little and the Shiites a lot, creat- ing uncertainty about its objectives and so obtaining the worst of everything. American diplomacy bewilders many if not all Israelis. President Obama’s policy may be to put in place the miss- ing balance between Sunnis and Shiites, but the conception is utopian. How is it possible, Israelis want to know, to con- cede so much to an Iran that has the worst record of human rights—that is engaged in several military adven- tures, deceptions, and the crudest anti- Americanism? Does Obama realize, they go on to wonder, that he is responsible for the reelection of Prime Minister Netanyahu as a realist able to get the better of a dreamer? The handling of Iran’s nuclear development conveys a moral vacuum that a death wish is steadily filling. Ari Shavit has claims to be the foremost journalist in Israel, and in a recent op-ed for Haaretz he ex - pressed the general fear: “Only a last- Agi Yoeli moment awakening of public opinion in the free world in the face of Iranian now serve German soldiers. The nursing very end of the play, and then only to be audacity can stop the most abject march staff warned that nobody was available making light of it. “I hear you were in of folly of our time.” to replace Feri and that his deportation Auschwitz,” she quotes some fatuous Ron Tira is a strategist with a back- would mean the closure of the hospital. Englishman saying to her in his own ground in intelligence. According to He was alr eady locked in the transport to language. “What was it like?” To which him, 2010 or 2011 was the right time Auschwitz when the SS hauled him out, she replies in her special vein of humor, to bomb the Iranian nuclear plants. saving his life for their own purposes. “Not very nice.” Netanyahu maintains that his senior Another brother, Gabi, escaped death The State of Israel depends on the advisers have opposed what would cer- when two SS teams each thought the central proposition that Jews are able to tainly prove a high-cost mission. But other had searched the house in Buda - lead productive and creative lives if look at the instability already afflicting pest where he was hiding. only they choose to live there. Rescue the Middle East. Whim and prejudice Agi and both brothers reached Man- from extremes is the lot of pretty well predominate. In a short space of time, dated Palestine in 1947, in time for the whole population, and Agi’s play Iran and Turkey have switched from Israel’s War of Independence. Agi was makes a fable of it. The theater critic of friendship with Israel to hostility, although to marry Pinchas Yoeli, a refugee from Haaretz, a most influential man with a no clashes of interest are involved, Hitler’s Germany, the commanding offi- column in the country’s most influen- merely the ideology of the rulers. To cer of her unit, and eventually a univer- tial newspaper, treated it that way in a prevent Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and sity professor. rave review, which he followed up the Egypt (and perhaps the Islamic State Almost invariably, Agi refuses to very next day with a half-page article to too) from getting their hands on a talk about wartime experiences on the the effect that the country needs more nuclear bomb, Ron Tira advocates a first grounds that to do so puts a burden on of Agi and Naomi. strike on Iran now. Destruction of 20 the listener who can do nothing about it. The trouble is that at the moment percent of the Iranian program is feasi- A relation of hers by marriage, Naomi things in the Middle East are not very ble and sufficient, though of course Yoeli, is a stage director with an estab- nice at all. Irrational but historic forces repairs would oblige Israel to an open- lished reputation. She had the idea of are in play. Unable over centuries to ended series of strikes. Impossible given obtaining the text of the play by allow- enter into some sort of balance or equi- the distance, said the senior diplomat ing Agi to spe ak for herself in interviews table relationship, Sunni Islam and with whom I tested out this scenario: over a long period of time, leaving her- Shiite Islam are poised to do great dam- Arab countries might turn a blind eye to self in the role of narrator. Reluctant to age to each other. In the recent past, one Israeli over-flying once but not twice. impose emotional burdens, she refers to or another external power obliged Mus - A play that makes a fable of rescue is the ordeal she has survived only at the lims to keep the peace. The United States indeed timely.

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country is known as the Former Yugoslav There is another middle finger down- Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM. town, a giant statue of Alexander. In As probably befits a Balkan state, the recent years, Skopje has undergone a Homage to republic is Balkanized. Approximately 65 renaissance, at least architecturally. percent are ethnic Macedonians, who The government is erecting many neo- Macedonia speak a Slavic tongue. Approximately Classical buildings and monuments. Shaky times in a gutsy Balkan state 25 percent are Albanians (who speak The capital could really use it. In Albanian). The rest are Turks, Roma, decades past, Skopje was hit with twin BY JAY NORDLINGER Vlachs, and so on. disasters. One was an earthquake, which Evidently, there is no intermarriage hit in 1963. It destroyed 80 percent of be tween ethnic Macedonians and Al - the city. The other disaster, of course, Skopje, Macedonia banians. Such a thing is taboo, on both was Communism, with its preference HEN you say “Macedonia,” sides. I remark to a friend here, “Boys for brutalist architecture. Little of pre- you may have to clarify. and girls tend to do what they do. Surely Communist Skopje remains. W Macedonia is both a region there are some Romeo and Juliet stories Politically, there are two main parties, and a country. Regionally, it in this country.” “Not really,” he replies. known by initials. The party in power comprises parts of Greece and Bulgaria, Near the Serbian border, there are is the VMRO-DPMNE (abbreviated to and the whole of the country. That coun- Macedonian and Albanian villages cheek “VMRO”). This is a conservative party, try, the Republic of Macedonia, is a for- by jowl. In 2001, the people in these vil- led by Nikola Gruevski, the prime minis- mer constituent of Yugoslavia. lages were killing each other. Before we ter. The other party is the post-Communist The great hero in this part of the world enter an Albanian village, my friend party, the SDSM. They prefer to be is Alexander III of Macedon, a.k.a. says, “Once they find out you’re an known as social democrats now, and their Alexander the Great. He lived 2,300 American, they’ll probably slaughter a leader is Zoran Zaev. years ago, but, to some people, it seems lamb in your honor.” (In the 1998–99 Both parties have different camps or like yesterday. Kosovo War, we Americans bombed strains. In VMRO, there are some Macedonia, the republic, is just Serbs, to protect Albanians.) The lambs gung-ho, Reagan-style, America-loving north of Greece, and the size of Mary - are spared on this day. conservatives. They tend to be very land. Its other neighbors are Bulgaria, Skopje is the Macedonian capital, and knowledgeable about the United States. Kosovo, Serbia, and Albania. A word to its airport is called “Alexander the Great.” One politician asks me where I’m from. the wise: When you’re in Greece, be That is a middle finger to the Greeks. I tell him I live in New York but grew up careful about referring to the republic as “Macedonia.” In the Greek mind, Macedonia is Greek, period. The people in the former Yugoslavia have usurped the name and hijacked history. The Greeks fear, or say they fear, the republic’s encroachment on them. A whipping up of greater Macedonian aspirations. So inflamed are they by the “name issue,” as it’s known, they have blocked the republic’s accession to the EU and membership in NATO. In the mid 1990s, the Greeks went so far as to impose an economic embargo on the republic. So, the Macedonians—the republi- cans—appeased them. They changed their flag, which had featured an ancient Macedonian symbol. It is now a splash of red and yellow, resembling the Ari - zona flag (and the Tibetan). Also, they reworded their constitution, making it clear that they had no designs on their big neighbor to the south. The Greeks lifted the embargo, but, because of the name issue, still use their veto power to deny Macedonia its place in the EU and NATO. The American gov- ernment has been calling Macedonia “Macedonia” since 2004. At the U.N., the

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in Ann Arbor, Mich. With a shocked the country’s lustration process to have Nonsense, says VMRO. The UBK expression, he says, “It’s the Soviet been a police informant in Communist “patriots” are actually old Communists Union!” (Ann Arbor is a university days. Not only conservatives are galled. and “traitors,” wanting to bring down a town.) While I’m laughing, he says, “Or A man of the democratic Left tells democratic government with their tried- northern Havana. Havana del norte!” me, “Milcin does not belong at some- and-true tricks. Zaev tried to blackmail By and large, my VMRO friends are thing called ‘Open Society.’ That is Gruevski with these recordings, and Euro-skeptics, and would not like to laughable.” Milcin, for his part, has Gruevski would not submit—instead see Macedonia join the EU. At the same denied wrongdoing. exposing Zaev. time, they’re irked to be kept out by the In America, Soros-funded groups have The crux of the matter, say conserva- Greeks. And they take bitter satisfac- included MoveOn.org, Media Matters, tives, is that the “post-Communists” feel tion in the following fact: Greece, and the Center for American Progress. entitled to run the country, the way they which has blocked Macedonia, appears Macedonia has its rough equivalents. or their forerunners did for so long. They to be the first EU country to go down Consider an interesting tidbit: Open are not used to having to compete for the tubes. Society has translated Saul Alinsky’s power, and, when they lose elections, As I said, SDSM is the post-Communist Rules for Radicals, that 1971 primer. It they lash out or connive. party, but, in Eastern Europe, you has guided Left activists for two or three Smiling at all this are the Greeks, who often have to question the “post.” generations now. say, “Told you these fake Macedonians Does redness linger? SDSM people The U.S. taxpayer is involved in the were not fit for the EU and other interna- are apt to call one another “comrade,” following way: Our government, through tional organizations” (as though Greece and their party flag includes a tradi- USAID, gives money to the local Soros should talk). tional star and a clenched fist. But they foundation. (Money to Soros may strike May 1 is May Day, i.e., the Left’s are probably not Communists at heart. you as coals to Newcastle, but there you day. They are out on the streets of True-believing Communists are few go.) Macedonian conservatives say that Skopje in force. There are public-sector and far between. SDSM-ers are more we have simply picked sides in the poli- unions, SDSM officials, professional like opportunists, looking for power tics of their country: the SDSM or “post- protesters—the whole gang. and control. Communist” side. Others say that the Red flags are everywhere, and they are In April 2014, they lost their ninth Right makes a bogeyman out of Soros, plain, unadorned. They look a little for- straight election to VMRO. They have and that the U.S. acts as an honest broker, lorn without their hammers and sickles, 31 seats in parliament to VMRO’s domi - holding all sides to account. or even a star. But soon I see one or two nant 61. Claiming electoral fraud, and In any event, conservatives are wound- stamped with the image of Che Guevara. not very credibly, SDSM has been boy- ed—pained—by American relations with The noise of the Left is deafening, as cotting parliament. Macedonia in the Age of Obama. “We’re usual. People blow non-stop on whistles A very big name in Macedonia is the pro-American, pro-Western party,” for no apparent reason—intimidation?— George Soros. He is the Hungarian-born they say. Some add, “You’re driving us and bellow through bullhorns. The crowd American billionaire who funds the into the arms of the Russians.” is now chanting something. A friend says, political Left in America. He funds it in Moreover, it’s the Soros people who “It’s ‘No justice, no peace.’” Makes me Macedonia too, which is a sore spot for inform the rest of the world about feel right at home. conservatives, to put it mildly. Their Mace donia. Conservatives say this, A sign depicts Gruevski and says view goes essentially like this: and it is almost certainly true. The that he takes from the poor and gives to In the early years after the collapse of “Sorosoids” are “well networked,” in the rich. Virtually the whole Occupy Communism, Soros did many good the words of one observer. And they tableau—with noise—is in place. things in Eastern Europe, with his Open portray a country governed by VMRO But this is a tableau that moves. They Society Institute. He helped to liberal- as sliding out of democracy and into are marching on one side of a broad ize and democratize. When the Greeks authoritarianism. avenue. On the other, a smallish group blockaded Macedonia, Soros loaned Macedonia is now in the midst of a huge is marching, in parallel, all by itself. the new country money, a lifeline. In wiretapping scandal (not the first in its Why? My friend explains, “They’re recent years, however, he has become a brief, 24-year history). The charges and feuding with another group. They think bald partisan, showering his millions countercharges are Byzantine, dizzying, that the other group is corrupting the on the Left and pushing for its agenda. but I will write a few lines about them. workers’ movement, by accepting so He does this with an army of NGOs and According to SDSM, Prime Minister much Soros money.” activists—activists known, unflatter- Gruevski wiretapped more than 20,000 In September next year, the Republic ingly, as “Sorosoids.” people, a who’s who of Macedonia. He did of Macedonia will mark its 25th anni - One conservative remarks, “He came this in order to steal elections, undermine a versary. The country is “not a perfect into Macedonia like a Trojan horse, and free press, suborn the judiciary, and so on. democracy,” as the aforementioned man now he is an octopus.” SDSM’s leader, Zaev, says that he was of the democratic Left says. “But you For more than 20 years, the head of handed recordings by “patriots” within the can’t go to bed in a Communist country Soros’s Open Society branch in Mace - UBK, the nation’s secret police. They and wake up in Denmark. You have to donia has been Vladimir Milcin. There were appalled by the prime minister’s cultivate roots and develop institutions.” is nothing more galling to conserva- undemocratic machinations, and wanted True, true—and may this country be tives. Milcin, they say, was proved by the recordings to see the light of day. given the time.

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Tocqueville’s Matchmaker Patti Stanger teaches anew an old lesson about the sexes

BY ELIANA JOHNSON

ATTI STANGER looks like a feminist hero. She’s single, ing. It’s all a way of announcing: Pay attention, ladies, this is she’s rich, and she, as they say, has it all. The host of what men want. Stanger regularly doles out beauty advice that P Bravo TV’s The Millionaire Matchmaker is herself a many women are resistant to hearing: “Curly hair is like red- self-made millionaire whose empire includes her hit heads—they just don’t get a lot of play,” she told the New York television show as well as an off-air matchmaking business, a Times in 2011. “I just know that to be a dream girl you need podcast, books, DVDs, and, most recently, a line of California straight, long, silky, humidity-resistant hair.” It’s no coinci- wines in “aphrodisiac flavor s.” She’s an independent woman dence we always see her long, dark hair styled pin-straight. at the height of her powers. The age-old system in which women exerted great control It’s in her work as a matchmaker that things get tricky. The over dating and romance by making men wait for sex has laws of love, she has found, have not bent to the arc of the largely vanished. The predominance of casual sex has shifted feminist movement. She has observed that men still like control to men, and today, college campuses are full of young feminine women, and women still like masculine men. Men women wondering, after sexual encounters, when they might still prefer to chase, and women still prefer to be chased. hear from that young man again. (Usually, never.) They wait, Stanger is tough and outspoken, and her views have sent worry, cry. They suppress their desire for something lasting. self-proclaimed feminists reeling. Here’s the journalist Jodi The men hold the reins: In a culture saturated by casual sex, Walker writing in the women’s magazine Bustle: “I don’t there’s little incentive for them to learn how to romance like the premise that one side of a relationship needs to have women. They don’t have to. money. I don’t like that the other side needs to have looks. I Without rules, religious or social, to guide them, many don’t like Patti Stanger—she’s mean.” women—and some men, too—find that dating has devolved Stanger is 54, but she regularly appears on set in a miniskirt and into groping around in a dark closet, a confusing and often sky-high heels. Her cleavage is almost always . . . evident. She painful search for principles to guide the interactions ROMAN GENN wears animal prints, jewel tones, and plenty of bejeweled cloth- between the sexes.

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TANGER is trying to change all of that. She is the doyenne On each episode, Stanger sets up two of her millionaire of what Alexis de Tocqueville called mores, which he clients, usually two men, handpicking about a dozen potential defined largely as the “habits of the heart.” In America, women for them to choose from before asking each to settle on STocqueville said, “it is woman who shapes these mores,” one for a full -fledged date. Beforehand, and at the outset of through her clear-eyed view of the “vices and dangers of society.” each episode, she reviews a one-minute introductory videotape The American woman, unlike the European, wasn’t sheltered the men have submitted; then she sets off to meet them in per- or protected, so she developed a “singular skill” and “happy son. After watching these tapes, Stanger usually, but not audacity” for navigating these vices and dangers, and an ability always, diagnoses her clients: delayed adolescent, control to steer her “thoughts and language through the traps of freak, commitment-phobe. sprightly conversation.” As a result, “she is full of confidence In his video, David Sheltraw, a great-looking 50-year-old in her own powers.” Though Tocqueville wrote in the mid 19th divorcé, says he’s looking for a wife—a woman with Meg century, his words aptly describe Stanger. Ryan’s bubbly personality—and a family. Stanger hasn’t met Call it mean, audacious, or downright cold, Stanger’s Sheltraw yet, but she sizes him up for the audience. “I’m a little straight talk is how she gets through to her clients, who have bit stumped,” she says. “On the video, he’s perfect! But no guy included professional athletes, reality-television stars, and is perfect. There’s something really wrong with him, otherwise wealthy fortysomethings suspended in adolescence. This sea- he wouldn’t be here.” son alone, she tried to pair off the onetime child rap phenom At an initial meeting, Stanger pushes, probes, and challenges Lil’ Romeo; Lindsay Lohan’s mother, Dina; and Olympic on matters both profound and petty. She asks Sheltraw, for short-track speed skater Allison Baver. Stanger’s goal is to get example, what feedback he gets from his friends about his them married, and that requires the delivery of some harsh approach to women. But he doesn’t approach women at all, he Stanger truths. Men must become “hunters.” Women must curb tells her. “I have probably walked up to two people in my life- their “male energy.” And the use of her services (which, depend- time,” he says. ing on the client, can include personal coaching, therapy, psy- Stanger has found the problem. “A common syndrome for chic readings, and lessons in flirtation) requires adherence to a good-looking people, male or female, is that when they’re really sacred rule: No sex, of any sort, before monogamy. that good-looking at a very young age and they grow up like By the standards of the day, it sounds archaic, and many of that, they never ha ve to work for it,” she says. “But generally her clients greet the announcement with slack-jawed disbelief. speaking, you see this in women, not men.” She sends him off But Stanger is a ruthless enforcer, and clients who break her to a life coach and promises him that approaching women is rules regularly experience what has come to be called “the like riding a bike—once you get the confidence to do it a cou- wrath of Patti.” ple of times, it won’t be a problem again. Take Zagros Bigvand, a Kurdish real-estate executive, and After she diagnoses her clients in this way, Stanger orga- Teal McKay, an aspiring model, who violated the rule after a nizes a cocktail-party-type “mixer” where both of the week’s handful of windswept dates. Enter Stanger. “Did he say, ‘I millionaires mingle with the singles she has picked for them. want you exclusively?’ Did he say, verbally, he wants you They’re allowed two “mini dates,” or five-minute conversa- exclusively?” Well, Stanger discovers, he said he might want tions, with their favorite women, and one “master date,” a that “eventually.” proper date that the TV audience will watch unfold. Some “Okay, well, that’s a bunch of baloney,” the matchmaker matches work, some don’t, but Stanger likes to say that all her says. “I’m not God here, I can only introduce two people clients learn something. together. But if you break my rules, if you do things I tell you Michael Persall is 30 and handsome, but he isn’t aggressive not to do . . . ” She leaves it hanging that having sex too soon with women. And he isn’t attracted to the spunky woman he kills the possibility of intimacy, and her anger is full bore. “You chose for his date, either. “Well, if the two people are subdued, don’t even know this person, you don’t know this person, and they might as well be corpses in the ground,” Stanger says. you just gave him your vagina! . . . You could spend more time “So, you don’t like aggressive girls, you need to be the leader, buying a house or a car in this economy or a mortgage than you need to be the aggressive one, you need to collect those doing something like that. This is sacred.” Bambis in the woods.” Bigvand, the charming millionaire, is not spared, either. During The Millionaire Matchmaker’s first season, the fem- “Zagros, for your information, women need to emotionally inist magazine Bitch published a piece headlined “True connect before they loosen up downstairs. It’s Sex 101. . . . You Confessions: The Millionaire Matchmaker—WTF Am I guys didn’t even know each other, you moved too fast. You Watching This?” The author, Anna Breshears, dismissed as a should have slowed it down and done the courtship thing.” One “puritanical twist” Stanger’s concern with delaying sex until can almost visualize the women of America nodding in appre- the woman is in a monogamous relationship. But she admitted ciative agreement. that she enjoyed “watching Patti rather savagely describe While we’re far removed from Fifties culture, Stanger reels in what’s wrong with these guys and why they have trouble get- a sizeable number of Bravo’s overwhelmingly female viewers. ting and keeping themselves in real relationships.” She con- The Millionaire Matchmaker, which just finished its eighth cluded by asking whether she could “continue to watch this season, premiered this year to an audience of 1.5 million. Even show and write for Bitch in good conscience.” Millennials, who have marinated in feminist dogma their Stanger gets this sort of approbation from men and women entire lives, are tuning in: The show’s most-watched episode, alike because she’s demanding of both sexes. She takes chau- which aired in late March, drew 2.2 million viewers, including vinists to task, and she spends a lot of her show bossing men 1.2 million in the coveted 18-to-49-year-old demographic. around. She’s also built a multimillion-dollar empire from the

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ground up: Her line of romance-friendly wines, PS Match, is Krause). “He said it was because I don’t observe Shabbat,” she the latest in a litany of Stanger-themed products. So feminists tells me. “Okay, buh-bye, that was the end of that.” can’t easily dismiss her. But fundamentally, there’s a growing Stanger is a disciple of the psychotherapist and renowned frustration, among Millennials in particular, that there simply relationship expert Pat Allen, whose work is devoted to dis- are no rules governing relations between the sexes, and mantling what she calls the “pop theories” about relationships Stanger offers some. that have arisen in the wake of the feminist movement. Allen She insists that men behave like, well, men. They must act describes her views as “politically incorrect but scientifically masculine but well-mannered, and women must give them accurate.” The problem with feminism, she has written, is that the space to do so, by allowing them to plan and pay for dates, the equality it championed invaded the bedroom. “With both by containing their own aggressive impulses, and, of course, men and women vying for the same position, the courtship by withholding sex until the man has made a monogamous dance was abandoned to two partners struggling for the lead,” commitment. These are the sorts of unwritten cultural norms she wrote in her book Getting to “I Do” (1994). “Relationships that the feminist movement did away with and that, on her became a battleground on which men and women sought equal show, Stanger is trying to put back in place. This might make status, equal degrees of power and prestige.” Romance died. There’s a growing frustration, among Millennials in particular, that there simply are no rules governing relations between the sexes, and Patti Stanger offers some.

her the most powerful messenger of conservative social val- Both Allen and Stanger say that while men and women may ues in popular culture, at least when it comes to sex and be equal, they’re fundamentally different. On her show, romance, although most social conservatives have probably Stanger demands that they act accordingly. “That’s life, that’s never heard of her. biology. People need to study science before they throw stones at me.” Does she consider herself a feminist? “I didn’t choose Gloria Steinem as my poster woman,” she replies. “Feminism, TANGER grew up in New Jersey, the adopted daughter of to me, is equal pay for equal dollar. We still want chivalry, we Ira Stanger, who worked in New York City’s garment still want doors opened.” district, and Rhoda Goldstein, a part-time clerk for In Democracy in America, Tocqueville observed that the Macy’sS and the now-defunct high-end giftware retailer notion of equality between the sexes was taking Europe by Settings. Her father, she says, “hated when my mom worked.” storm. “There is no subject on which the crude, disorderly Stanger was raised Jewish—she calls herself a “food Jew”— fancy of our age has given itself freer rein,” he wrote. “There and her show has a Jewish feel. She’s a third-generation are people in Europe who, confounding together the different matchmaker, but the first in her family to make a career out characteristics of the sexes, would make man and woman not of it. Her mother and grandmother reveled in pairing up sin- only equal but actually alike. They would give to both the same gles at the local synagogue, she tells me, and The Millionaire functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both Matchmaker is peppered with Yiddishisms. She often talks the same rights; they would mix them in all things—work, of doing a “mitzvah,” or a good deed, for a client, or of find- pleasure, public affairs.” ing his “bashert,” a Yiddish term that means literally “des- This desire for sameness is championed by many feminists tiny” but is colloquially us ed to refer to one’s divinely today who offer all kinds of advice to women about how to predestined soul mate. climb the corporate ladder. A proliferation of female role models Stanger is part of a tradition of socially conservative and, in encourages women in the workplace to act more like ambitious fact, Jewish voices in pop culture that acknowledge funda- men and “lean in.” But 50-plus years after the publication of mental differences between the sexes and call for a standard of The Feminine Mystique, many women have realized that casual conduct to gov ern the relationship between them. There’s the sex and professional success aren’t, in fact, all that fulfilling. strident Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who talks openly about her And now there’s a scarcity of advice about how to find the conservative politics and traditional values. There’s also the things that might prove more important and satisfying: a more soft-spoken Dr. Drew Pinsky, who for years now has romantic relationship, a husband, a family. used his various radio and television platforms to criticize the To find what they’re looking for, Stanger says, women hook-up culture and warn about the dangers of casual sex. shouldn’t confuse equality with similarity—because similarity Stanger is neither particularly political nor particularly reli- emasculates men. “You really have to be a woman, a feminine gious. “I’m not a Republican or a Democrat,” she tells me. woman. People think that’s anti-feminist, but it’s not.” “I’m more for the best person.” She loves Hillary Clinton and Tocqueville was blunt in his critique of what we might now “would like to see a woman president, but a smart woman, not call “sameness feminism.” “It is easy to see that the sort of a stupid woman—maybe a businesswoman.” She has worked equality forced on both sexes degrades them both, and that so as a psychic and an astrologer and once consulted a rabbi to ask coarse a jumble of nature’s works could produce nothing but why she was still single (she broke off an engagement some feeble men and unseemly women.” That’s what Stanger con- years ago and is now dating the mortgage banker David fronts on her show. “We’re raising our sons horribly,” she tells

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me. “We tell them, ‘Don’t be mean to so and so, you shouldn’t have done this, now here’s a lollipop.’ And then they grow up to be men who have man-child personalities.” On the show, The Riot Show! Stanger calls them “Peter Pans.” The most persistent issues Stanger faces among her male News media glamorized anarchy and clients are, on one hand, infantile chauvinism and, on the other, the sort of feebleness Tocqueville predicted would become reinforced lies in Baltimore common. She attributes both to a lack of manliness. The 40- year-old trust-fund millionaire Justin Levine, for instance, BY HEATHER MAC DONALD describes himself as “30 plus ten” and says he’s never going to grow up. Levine, Stanger says, “needs to become a man in order to catch a woman.” HAT if they held a race riot and the media stayed Stanger is equally tough on women. This is the kind of away? At the very least, we would be spared the rebuke one is apt to hear as she shoos the rejects out the door: W nauseating spectacle of sycophantic reporters fawn- “Did you go through your grandmother’s closet, what is ing on opportunistic thieves, as was repeated yet that?” And: “Are you a man, are you a woman? Are you a again during the latest outbreak of anti-police violence in mouse?” Or simply: “Are you pregnant? Because you need to Baltimore. More important, the vandals would lose a bounty as lose some weight.” valuable as their purloined booty: notoriety and legitimacy. Her female-millionaire clients often come in for a rude The Baltimore riots of April 25 and 27 were held in the name of awakening. Nicole Sherwin, a 40-year-old divorcée and the Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old drug dealer with a lengthy arrest founder of an eco-friendly events company, hears from record who died from a spinal injury a week after being trans- Stanger that she must tone herself down—advice Stanger gives ported in a Baltimore police van. Gray had taken off running after other female millionaires who come to her for help. The dating making eye contact with an officer on bike patrol in a high-crime pool for women shrinks when women “have to do a man’s job area; police reportedly claim he was involved in illegal activity. in order to survive, and nobody ever talks about that,” Stanger After a chase, he surrendered and was cuffed, searched, and says. “We are taking men’s jobs. They feel emasculated. They arrested for possession of an illegal knife. According to the see that and go, ‘Well, what do you need me for anymore?’ It’s Baltimore prosecutor, he asked for an asthma inhaler but was not becoming a matriarchal society, but we’re lonely.” given one; he was not secured by a seatbelt while being trans- Tocqueville would probably say that American society has ported in the police van, and though the officer driving the van always been matriarchal in important ways, or at least that it’s repea tedly checked up on Gray, the officer did not provide at its best when women control dating and sex, and men are requested medical assistance. It was during this time, according to forced to prove their worthiness. He liked the influence of the prosecutor, that he suffered his ultimately fatal spine injury. democracy on romance, because it gave women power. These latest riots followed a drearily familiar script: Upon the “There is hardly a way of persuading a girl that you love her,” first outbreak of violence, a crush of reporters flock to the scene he wrote, “when you are perfectly free to marry her but will with barely suppressed cries of glee. Surrounded by sound trucks not do so.” As Beyoncé might put it: If you liked it, then you and camera crews, outfitted with cellphones and microphones, should have put a ring on it. they breathlessly narrate each police–looter skirmish for the view- Like Stanger, Tocqueville’s American woman is gutsy and ing public, thrusting their microphones into the faces of spectators self-assured; Tocqueville also made the broader point that she and thugs alike to get a “street” interpretation of the mayhem. The is critically important to the democratic project. All of soci- studio anchors melodramatically caution the reporters to “stay ety’s ills, according to Tocqueville, begin at home. In Europe, safe,” even though the press at times may outnumber both looters where he saw the relationship between men and women being and the police. Meanwhile, the thieves get to indulge in the plea- thrown off kilter, men felt “scorn for natural ties and legiti- sures of anarchic annihilation while enjoying the desideratum of mate pleasures,” he wrote. They brought that instability, that every reality-TV show cast: a wide and devoted audience. “taste for disorder,” into the public square. Not so in America, The performative quality of the live, televised race riot has cre- he believed, where women were able to provide steadiness ated a new genre: riot porn, in which every act of thuggery is amid the rough and tumble of democracy, and stability in a lasciviously filmed and parsed in real time for the benefit of country where men could make a fortune one day and lose it at-home viewers. “Did you see that?” CNN reporter Mi guel the next. That’s why, he said, “if anyone asks me what I think Mar quez asked studio anchor Wolf Blitzer as vandals slashed a is the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing fire hose brought in to try to save a burning CVS store on April 27. power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the supe- (Marquez is given to philosophizing on social justice as he walks riority of their women.” alongside protesters during anti-police demonstrations.) “Wolf, if So to women, Stanger says: Be patient, and keep your you just saw that, they just, while we were talking there, they just standards high. “Men are like buses, they show up every 15 cut the hose with a knife, trying to—and then ran, trying to thwart minutes. Make sure he’s going to the right place. Most the efforts of the authorities to actually turn out this fire.” women are desperate. We need to qualify our buyers and Wolf confirmed that he had in fact seen the close-up foot age: “I know that we are the deal, not the men.” Heartbreak and just saw that guy, yeah, I just saw that guy cut the hose as well, [a frustration are the alternative: “You’re going to end up hav- ing sex, thinking he’s cute, and then he can’t afford to pay Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for your Caesar salad.” and the author of Are Cops Racist?

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guy] with a gas mask.” Naturally, the TV audience also got to see situated whites and blacks unequally. The effort always comes up the vicious sabotage. The street scene at these televised riots can short. “Racial differences in patterns of offending, not racial bias be eerily static. People mill around listlessly like extras on a by police and other officials, are the principal reason that such movie set, while more energetic thugs, perched on the roofs of greater proportions of blacks than whites are arrested, prosecuted, police cruisers, stomp out the cars’ windshields or throw garbage convicted and imprisoned,” criminologist Michael Tonry con- cans through the rear windows. The smartphone camera has cluded in his 1995 book Malign Neglect. A 1994 Justice De - only magnified the specular nature of the anarchy, as passers-by partment survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest memorialize their own presence at the festival of lawlessness. urban areas found that blacks had a lower chance of prosecution As in last year’s Ferguson, Mo., race riots, CNN topped all following a felony than whites, and were less likely to be found other television channels for relentless oversaturation, keeping a guilty at trial. Blacks were more likely to be sentenced to prison round-the-clock phalanx of reporters in West Baltimore to medi- following a conviction, but that result reflected their past crimes tate portentously on the meaning of the riots long after the looting and the gravity of their current offense. was finally suppressed. Among national print outlets, the New The rioting also gave fresh impetus to the liberal narrative York Times’ output was the most frenzied, with four or five stories about cities: that their viability depends on government spend- a day on policing and racism, topics the Times had already been ing. “There are consequences to indifference,” Obama said at obsessively pursuing for the last nine months. Both organizations Lehman College. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman have only marginally diminished their coverage of Baltimore opined that the riots “have served at least one useful purpose: since the fires were extinguished. drawing attention to the grotesque inequalities that poison the lives of too many Americans.” Krugman blamed stingy federal outlays for the “grotesque inequalities.” HE ideological yield from this latest urban tantrum has The idea that the federal and local governments have been been considerable. Inevitably, academics and pundits con- “indifferent” to urban decay is ludicrous. Taxpayers have coughed ferred political legitimacy on the riots, deeming them, in up $22 trillion on over 80 means-tested welfare programs (not Tthe words of the online publication Vox, “a serious attempt at forc- including Social Security, Medicare, or grants for economic ing change.” Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake apolo- development) since the War on Poverty was launched in 1964, gized for calling the rioters “thugs.” And President Obama and according to the Heritage Foundation. In the 1990s, Baltimore Hillary Clinton both affirmed the dangerous myth that the “invested” $130 million in public and non-profit dollars to trans- criminal-justice system is racist. Speaking at Lehman College in form the West Baltimore neighborhood where Freddie Gray lived, the Bronx a week after the Baltimore riots, President Obama to no effect, as NATIONAL REVIEW’s Ian Tut tle has documented. opined that young black men experience “being treated differently This lack of effect is not surprising. Baltimore’s crime rate has by law enforcement—in stops and in arrests, and in charges and been among the nation’s highest for decades. In 2013, the only incarcerations. The statistics are clear, up and down the criminal- cities with higher murder rates were Detroit, New Or leans, justice system. There’s no dispute.” Hillary Clinton seconded this Newark, and St. Louis. Baltimore’s violent-crime rate is over theme at Columbia University several days after the riots. “We twice that of New York. That violence would have doomed any VIA GETTY IMAGES have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and jus- hope for economic revival in high-crime areas even without the tice in America. There is something profoundly wrong when latest destruction of 350 businesses by arson and looting. West African-American men are still far more likely to be stopped and Baltimore residents have been complaining to the tenacious post-

WASHINGTON POST searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer riot crowd of reporters that Bal ti more’s Inner Harbor area is spiffy THE / prison terms than are meted out to their white counterparts.” and thriving, while their neighborhood is not. But if they have any This claim of disparate treatment is simply untrue. For decades, other options, potential business owners are not going to locate in liberal criminologists have tried to corroborate the Left’s cher- a neighborhood where they fear for the safety of their employees MARVIN JOSEPH ished belief that the criminal-justice system responds to similarly and customers. Lowered crime is a precondition to economic

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revival, not its consequence. New York’s economic renaissance involuntary manslaughter to second-degree murder.) Upon began only when crime started plummeting in 1994, thanks to a announcing the charges mere hours after receiving Gray’s policing revolution there. autopsy and a day after receiving a police report on the arrest, The post-riot media narrative has virtually ignored Bal ti - Baltimore’s prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, declared that she had more’s sky-high crime in favor of an all-consuming focus on heard the “call for ‘no justice, no peace.’” Positioning herself as allegedly racist policing practices. The Baltimore Sun, however, the head of a crusade rather than as part of a legal system dedi- to its credit, has noted the shooting rampage that began after cated to prosecuting individual cases, not causes, Mosby contin- Freddie Gray was arrested on April 12 and escalated following ued in an Obama-esque vein: “Last but certainly not least, to the the riots, as officers backed off from proactive enforcement. youth of the city: I will seek justice on your behalf. This is a From April 28, the day after the most destructive riot, to May 7, moment. This is your moment. Let’s ensure we have peaceful there have been 40 shootings, including ten on May 7. Fifteen and productive rallies that will develop structural and systemic people were murdered during that period, more than one a day. changes for generations to come. You’re at the forefront of this The total of 82 homicides through May 7, 2015, is 20 more than cause and as young people, our time is now.” it was at the same point in 2014. None of these deaths have dis- Mosby had already displayed her penchant for the crassest of lodged the still-dominant “Black Lives Matter” conceit that the racial rabble-rousing following the decision of a Ferguson, Mo., biggest threat facing young black men today is the police instead grand jury last November not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for of other young black men. None of Bal ti more’s post-riot killings the shooting death of Michael Brown. Mosby questioned the have triggered protests. They are treated as normal. “motives” of St. Louis County district attorney Robert McCul - Baltimore police officers now face a street environment that is loch, reports St. Louis Public Radio. “In Ferguson, over 68 per- even more dangerous and hostile than usual. Ninety-eight officers cent of the population is black and less than 6 percent votes,” were injured, 43 seriously, during and immediately after the Mosby said on Baltimore TV. (Mosby did not explain why that riots. Every arrest now brings a crowd of bystanders pressing in, low turnout is the fault of anyone other than the non-voters.) “So jeering, and spreading lies about the encounter. On May 4, officers you have an individual who is in office and does not share your received a call about a man with a gun at the corner of a torched interests and values and is making decisions about your daily CVS store. His movements, captured on a police camera, also life. . . . We say bring in special prosecutions.” suggested that he had a gun. The suspect, 23-year-old Robert Mosby has reversed herself regarding special prosecutors Edward “Meech” Tucker, had previously been convicted on gun now that the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police is charging her and drug charges. When the officers approached him, he took off with several financial and familial conflicts of interest in the running (just as Freddie Gray did when he saw officers watching Freddie Gray case. “I can tell you that the people of Bal ti more him). Tucker’s gun fired. Tucker then dropped to the ground and City elected me, and there’s no accountability with a special began screaming and rolling around as if he had been shot. prosecutor,” she said at a post-indictment press conference. One Bystanders claimed that they had seen the police shoot him. The can only hope that the criminal-justice system will backstop crowd threw bricks, Clorox bottles, and water bottles at the offi- whatever accountability to the facts Mosby herself feels. cers; one man lunged at them but was held back by other pedes- While the second-degree-murder charge against the driver of trians. In fact, no officer had discharged his gun or even taken the police van carries the direst individual consequences, aim at Tucker. Even though Tucker had not been shot, not even Mosby’s charge of “false imprisonment” against the arresting by his own gun, word in the street continued to maintain that the officers raises a risk of shutting down policing across Bal ti more. cops had shot him. Mosby alleges that the switchblade knife possessed by Gray was not illegal under Maryland law. The Baltimore police respond that it was prohibited under a city code. Even if Mosby’s reading UCH lying about officer–civilian interactions is endemic in of the knife statutes is correct, her imposition of criminal liability urban areas. But even though the country has just wit- for an officer’s good-faith interpretive error is preposterous. The nessed the evisceration of the Michael Brown “hands up” remedy for an arrest not supported by probable cause is to throw hoaxS by none other than the federal Department of Justice, the the case out at the station house or prosecutor’s office, or in media and the authorities continue to seek out allegations of court. If officers now face prison terms for trying to keep the officer misconduct and to treat them as the gospel truth. The New streets safe, they will stop making discretionary arrests. Bal ti - York Times quoted a drug dealer as an authority on the Balti more more’s recent spike in gun violence suggests that such depolicing police: “They trip you, choke you out, cuss you out, disrespect may have already begun. (A little over a week after the riots, you.” Maybe so. (The anti-police bar has won judgments or set- Mayor Rawlings-Blake requested that the U.S. Justice De part - tlements against the Baltimore Police Department in over 100 ment investigate the Baltimore police for systemic civil-rights civil-rights and brutality cases over the last four years, a fact that violations. Lynch agreed the next day.) could reflect a pattern of abuse or a pattern of aggressive litigation A riot’s unchecked destruction of livelihoods and property is and a supine city law department.) But it is also possible that that certainly newsworthy, threatening as it does the very possibility dealer is lying through his teeth. It never occurs to elite opinion- of civilization. The breakdown of law and order is a policy con- makers that the pervasiveness of crime in the inner city creates a cern of enormous note. But the 24-hour cable-news cycle, with large block of residents—not just criminals but their friends and its insatiable craving for live visual excitement, creates a co - families as well—who view and treat the police as antagonists. dependency between reporters and rioters, and the politics of the The riots also led to rushed and likely excessive criminal mainstream media guarantees a “root causes” exculpation of the charges against the six officers involved in the arrest and transport violence. Short of a filming blackout on the actual violence, riots of Freddie Gray. (Four officers face homicide counts ranging from should be covered in sorrow, shame, and dismay.

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The Tarring of E-cigarettes At the Centers for Disease Control, perfect defeats good

BY SALLY SATEL

HEN the prime-time cameras caught Julia Louis- Dreyfus “vaping” an electronic cigarette at the W 2014 Golden Globes ceremony, cries of disap- proval arose from our nation’s capital. Representa - Julia Louis-Dreyfus at the 2014 Golden Globes ceremony tive Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), then the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Representative Frank the devices are much less harmful than the considerable harms of Pallone Jr. (D., N.J.) told the president of NBC that they were combustible cigarettes. Pragmatists are not fixated on whether “dismayed” that the actress was “sending the wrong message to vaping is completely safe but on whether it is safer for smokers kids about these products.” than cigarettes are. They are willing to make policy trade-offs on In a bruising Senate hearing a few months later, Senator Jay the basis of cost–benefit analyses. Some pragmatists hope that Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) tore into executives of two major e- the FDA will go so far as to deem e-cigarettes outside its regula- cigarette companies: “I’m ashamed of you. I don’t know how tory purview altogether—a decision that the agency could theo- you go to sleep at night. I don’t know what gets you to work in retically make within the next few weeks or months but almost the morning except the color green of dollars. You are what is surely will not. Pragmatists also want states to tax e-cigarettes wrong with this country.” minimally if at all, to incentivize smokers to switch. Pragmatists To listen to these reactions, you would never guess that e- do agree with precautionists about e-cigarettes on one point: The cigarettes, battery-powered devices that produce an aerosol devices should not be sold or marketed to children. solution of nicotine free of carcinogenic tar, offer any health benefits to smokers. In truth, e-cigarettes have the potential to ignite a public-health revolution. But thanks to alarm over NE of the highest-profile precautionists in the U.S. is speculative dangers, misleading spin on facts, and outright Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease misrepresentations of the evidence, various lawmakers and Control, which oversees the nation’s anti-smoking public-health officials threaten to dash that promise. Oefforts. “There is much we don’t know about e-cigarettes,” he What is driving the controversy over e-cigarettes? At its core often laments. But we do know quite a bit: foremost, that they / lies a tension between two camps: the precautionists and the don’t combust tobacco and so do not produce carcinogenic tars pragmatists. and disease-producing gases, including carbon monoxide, SMOLDER - The former have several concerns about e-cigarettes. First, which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. This advan- that the health risks of the products haven’t been fully estab- tage makes vaping at least 95 percent safer than smoking tobacco, LAWMAKERS - lished. Second, that e-cigarettes will “renormalize” smoking according to toxicologists. MAKES

- and undo the gains of five decades of anti-smoking advocacy. E-cigarettes work by heating a nicotine solution, or e-liquid, Third, that vaping among teens will serve as a “gateway” to which contains, in addition to flavoring, a substrate called propy- their eventual tobacco smoking. lene glycol. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration generally CIGARETTES - E - The critics’ anxieties are not without merit, but they need to be regards propylene glycol as safe; it is used in toothpaste, asthma OF - placed in the context of the good that e-cigarettes do by sparing inhalers, nicotine inhalers, and many other foods and cosmetics. nicotine-dependent individuals from carcinogenic smoke. Still, epidemiologists should monitor its long-term effect, if any, PORTRAYAL - Precautionists are unmoved by the harm that comes to smokers on the health of e-cigarette users, since the devices have simply SEXY - who have failed to quit but who cannot take advantage of less not been around very long. GLOBES

- dangerous ways of using nicotine. Accordingly, this camp seeks Vapor can contain other harmful substances, but the amounts are heavy regulatory oversight by the FDA and bans on television very low compared with those in cigarettes. For example, traces GOLDEN / advertising and on vaping in public. of nitrosamines, which are known carcinogens, can be found in NEWS / The pragmatists, who advance a public-health approach called e-liquid, but they exist at levels comparable to those found in COM . “tobacco-harm reduction,” support electronic cigarettes because medicinal products such as nicotine gum and patches, and at concentrations 500 to 1,400 times lower than those in regular CBSNEWS . Sally Satel, M.D., is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She has cigarettes. Cadmium, lead, and nickel may be present in e-cigarette WWW received no financial support from e-cigarette companies. vapor, too, but in amounts and forms considered non-toxic.

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Formaldehyde, a carcinogen, is low to non-existent in To recruit someone for its ad, the CDC advertised a payment vapor, but a report published in January in The New England of $2,500 for “ex-smokers of any ethnic background who have Journal of Medicine gave a far different impression. Titled been diagnosed with [a serious health condition] while smok- “Hidden Formaldehyde in E-Cigarette Aerosols,” the article ing.” The agency could have sought out one of the thousands demonstrated that when a vaping device was overheated at of smokers who now enjoy easier breathing because they were unrealistically high voltage settings, the vapor was contami- finally able to quit their cigarette habit by substituting e- nated by levels of formaldehyde five to 15 times higher than cigarettes, but Kristy was a better fit for the CDC’s purposes. those found in cigarette smoke. The “gateway” theory mentioned earlier looms large in the A huge swirl of media coverage followed: “E-cigarettes Can CDC campaign. If vaping truly made young people more likely to Churn Out High Levels of Formaldehyde,” said the headline at progress to smoking, this would definitely be worth knowing. But NPR; “E-cigarettes Can Produce More Formaldehyde than there is no sign of a gateway effect, at least not yet. In fact, while Regular Cigarettes,” warned the one in the Los Angeles Times; more kids are vaping each year, teen cigarette consumption (mea- “High Levels of Formaldehyde in E-cig Vapor,” announced sured as use of a conventional, combustible cigarette “at least once WebMD.com. In truth, no user would ever heat an e-cigarette within the past 30 days”) continues to fall. Indeed, the latest CDC high enough to produce the recorded levels of formaldehyde in data, released mere weeks after the campaign launch, show a the study, because the resultant vapor would be intolerably irri- tripling in the rate of use of e-cigarettes by high-school students, tating to the throat. Indeed, when the researchers tested the from 4.5 percent in 2013 to 13.5 percent in 2014. Notably, this device at a voltage level normally used by vapers, no formalde- occurred in the context of a historic drop in the smoking of tradi- hyde, none, was detected. This reassuring detail was buried tional cigarettes, from 12.7 percent of high-schoolers in 2013 to deep in the news stories. just 9.2 percent in 2014. (Do note, however, that the CDC measure What of nicotine? In its pure form, nicotine is highly toxic, but of frequency—at least once in the past month—does not distin- the level delivered by vapor is low compared with that in ciga- guish among teens who once tried a puff of a friend’s e-cigarette, rettes, and at that low level it is generally benign in healthy peo- those who were intrigued and experimenting, and those who were ple (pregnant women being a major exception). But Frieden of using it specifically to quit smoking.) the CDC sounds the alarm: “Nicotine can cause serious damage One cannot rule out the possibility that a gateway effect will to the developing brains of teens.” This is a wildly exaggerated manifest itself in the future—the CDC has been collecting data statement based on experiments with rat brains. To be sure, no on e-cigarette use by teens for only four years—but the current one endorses vaping by non-smoking teens, but to date, no numbers indicate that e-cigarettes are a gateway out of tobacco researcher has demonstrated negative or lasting clinical effects smoking for some teens and are diverting others from taking up of nicotine on adolescent cognition or behavior. the habit. So far, the CDC’s own data are encouraging, yet Misrepresenting the facts about e-cigarettes and instilling Frieden called them “shocking” and “alarming.” “This is another doubt about their superiority to cigarettes is a dangerous game. generation being hooked by the tobacco industry,” he told the It keeps smokers inhaling deadly toxins. After all, why give up New York Times. the combustible devil you know if vaping is just as bad? Yet such fear-mongering is now a standard talking point of major health organizations. Here is the American Cancer Society: EYOND the precautionary impulse, the war on vaping is “Until these things are monitored and regulated, there’s a real also haunted by the specter of Big Tobacco. (E- potential risk for unexpected exposure to toxic chemicals.” And cigarettes contain no tobacco leaf, but their nicotine is the American Lung Association is “concerned about the potential Bextracted from the plant.) The major tobacco companies Altria, health consequences of electronic cigarettes.” Globally, the Reynolds, and Lorillard now have e-cigarette lines and adver- World Health Organization has called e-cigarettes a “threat.” In tise their brands. That connection to the tobacco industry response, 53 international health experts wrote a joint letter urg- imparts too much of a taint to vaping, some public-health ing the WHO’s general director to “resist the urge” to “control advocates insist. “Given the long history of tobacco-industry and suppress” electronic cigarettes by classifying them as equiv- deception, such advocates assert that there can be no room for alent to cigarettes for purposes of regulation. co mpromise when it comes to a product in which Big Tobacco In the U.S., the CDC, the nation’s lead public-health agency, has any interest,” wrote Amy Fairchild and Ronald Bayer, both is the most vocal and visible critic of e-cigarettes. Last March, it of Columbia University’s School of Public Health, in Science. launched a 20-week ad installment called “Tips from Former Such anti-tobacco animus helps explain a glaring paradox Smokers.” In one of the ads we meet 35-year-old Kristy, who within public-health circles: Many public-health experts avidly lifts up her pink sweater to reveal a nasty-looking scar on her embrace harm reduction for other conditions—needle chest. “I started using e-cigarettes but kept smoking. Right up exchange and methadone for heroin addicts, “wet” public hous- until my lung collapsed,” she says, unmistakably implying that ing for people who continue to drink, condom distribution and e-cigarettes made it happen. HPV vaccination for sexually active adolescents—but, for But wait. As the CDC explains elsewhere, Kristy’s lung col- nicotine addiction, they urge abstinence and downplay the lapsed sometime after she used e-cigarettes for a few months, importance of a less risky alternative. stopped, and then resumed smoking tobacco. There are no There is also the question of money. The rise of e-cigarettes reported cases of e-cigarette use resulting in collapsed lungs. If means lower profits for the pharmaceutical companies that make anything, when smokers with asthma or chronic obstructive nicotine gum, patches, and anti-smoking medications, and less pulmonary disease switch to vaping, their lung function tends revenue for states that are addicted to cigarette taxes. For tobacco to improve. companies, each e-cigarette purchased means fewer cigarettes

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sold. It’s not surprising, then, that the profit-seekers have aligned with the prohibitionists to promote heavy-handed and costly FDA regulation that would suppress e-cigarette use and over- What’s whelm the budgets of small, upstart vaping companies. Economist Bruce Yandle calls such collaboration between odd bedfellows the “bootleggers and Baptists” model of regulation, reminiscent of the days when both bootleggers and Baptists Loving Got to wanted saloons to be closed on Sunday—the bootleggers to boost illicit sales of alcohol, the Baptists to raise church atten- dance and preserve the Sabbath from dishonor. Do with It? In general, the prospect for electronic cigarettes is not as glowing as it should be. Only 8 percent of the nation’s 40 mil- Gay-marriage supporters misuse a precedent lion smokers use them regularly. There are several reasons for this. For one, even the newest generation of e-cigarettes is not as satisfying as standard cigarettes, many smokers report. Also, BY MATTHEW J. FRANCK the perception that e-cigarettes are dangerous is growing, thanks to menacing portrayals of them by precautionists. A report last year in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine N the same-sex-marriage case recently argued in the showed that whereas nearly 85 percent of smokers in 2010 Supreme Court, the petitioners have claimed a “funda- believed that e-cigarettes were safer than cigarettes, that num- I mental right to marry” protected by the Constitution and ber had dropped to 65 percent in 2013. unmoored from biology, the complementarity of the To be sure, there are instances in which concerns about quality sexes, or the universal understanding of what “marriage” has control are warranted. Most vaping products are well made, but meant in every culture in human history until the last 15 years. there have been reports of inaccurate labeling of e-liquids and of Their most persistent and compelling comparison of their legal shoddy counterfeits, exported from China, that emit unaccept- situation has been to the laws that once banned interracial able levels of toxin in the vapor. The FDA can fix these problems marriage in many states, until they were overturned by the by issuing standards for the production of e -liquids and for bat- Supreme Court 48 years ago in Loving v. Virginia. But a closer tery and electronics safety and by modestly regulating flavoring look at that precedent reveals that it is no help at all to their through a ban on diacetyl, which, when inhaled, can cause a rare case—quite the contrary. And the advocates of same-sex mar- form of obstructive lung disease. Also needed is childproof riage are deluding themselves if they think that a judicial vic- packaging that carries a warning: “This product contains nico- tory for their side would be widely greeted as a t riumph for tine, which is addictive and intended for adult smokers only.” justice, as the Loving decision was. And more research on e-cigarettes must be done. We should As Robert P. George and Ryan T. Anderson, among oth- monitor, f or example, the possibility of a gateway phenome- ers, have pointed out, America’s shameful record of “anti- non in case its manifestation lags years behind the documented miscegenation” laws is a historical anomaly. Rooted in slavery teen experimentation already under way. Epidemiologists need and codified during the Jim Crow era after the Civil War, legal to refine their survey questions to get a more nuanced under- prohibitions on interracial marriage spread ultimately to 30 standing of usage patterns. Long-term effects, if any, of propylene states by the second quarter of the 20th century. These laws had glycol must be tracked, and so on. nothing as such to do with defining marriage or regulating The standoff between the precautionists and the pragmatists what was a legitimate marital union. They had everything— essentially boils down to their orientation toward risk—should we and only—to do with paranoid racial theories entertained by a aim for none, or much less than there is now—and the moral con- white power elite obsessed with the “purity” of their own race. notations they attach to it. The contest will not be resolved readily Consider the law struck down in Loving—Virginia’s Racial because any vacuum of information leads those with a precau- Integrity Act, passed at the same session in 1924 as another on tionary temperament to imagine worst-case outcomes, mass- “sexual sterilization of inmates of state institutions,” upheld by produce reams of nervous commentary, and sanctimoniously call the Supreme Court in its 1927 Buck v. Bell ruling. These laws for tight restriction on the freedom to engage in novel practices. were of a piece in their eugenic purpose of maintaining white The CDC falls squarely in the precautionist camp. It gives dis- supremacy; the Racial Integrity Act forbade the marriage of proportionate weight to skeptics’ unsubstantiated claims about e- “any white person” with someone of another race, defining cigarettes as it minimizes their estimable benefit and foments “white person” as one “who has no trace whatsoever of any panic. This is bad for smokers who have tried to quit and can’t, blood other than Caucasian.” Such marriages were declared bad for the integrity of public health as a field, and bad for the void without need of a divorce or any other process; the parties credibility of the CDC, whose tarring of electronic cigarettes is a to the marriage were guilty of a criminal offense, as was any- shameful violation of public trust. one who solemnized their union; out-of-state interracial mar- The introduction and technological evolution of electronic riages were subject to the same strictures for any Virginia cigarettes presents a golden opportunity for the agency to resident; and cohabitation and extramarital sex across racial show the public the necessity of weighing tradeoffs. For those lines were forbidden. who have tried and failed to quit smoking tobacco, the CDC is basically saying, “Drop dead.” Its message to them should Mr. Franck is the director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on instead be “Thank you for vaping.” Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J.

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Clearly the makers of these laws understood that marriage the same race. Speaking for eight of the nine justices (Justice was naturally possible for interracial couples. Ironically, these Potter Stewart wrote a narrowly grounded one-paragraph con- laws were premised exactly on a recognition of childbearing’s currence in the judgment), Warren got the job done in just centrality to the meaning of marriage; they were all about eleven pages, declaring that there was “no legitimate over - “mongrelization” and the “amalgamation” of the races. The riding purpose” to a law that interfered with ordinary marital Supreme Court that struck them down recognized them as a relations simply “to maintain White Supremacy.” His last and white-supremacist intrusion on a fundamental right to marry of most decisive word was this: couples who could marry, and who would marry if the law let The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice them alone. to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Contrast this with the “bans” on same-sex marriage enacted Under our Constitution the freedom to marry, or not marry, a per- by many states in the past two decades. They actually prohibit son of another race resides with the individual and cannot be nothing on the part of same-sex couples—forestalling only infringed by the State. state recognition of their relationships as marriages. No act is criminalized, and no relationships of adults with each other or The governing presumption here that couples should be free with children are targeted for disruption. to marry who can marry—because they are legally and naturally In our entire legal history, no one bothered to legislate a re- able to do so in every other way but the irrelevant one of their striction of marriage to sexually complementary couples until race—could not be plainer. the day before yesterday because everyone understood what Suffice it to say that if the justices invent a constitutional “marriage” meant and would (if asked) have thought it natu- right of same-sex marriage, they will have to work a good deal rally impossible for two men or two women to marry. No injus- harder to justify it than this. Thirty-plus states whose protec- tice to anyone was ever the intent or purpose of American tions of conjugal marriage are threatened by such a ruling are marriage laws where same-sex couples are concerned—in waiting to discover whether laws of recent vintage, passed as stark contrast to the purposeful Jim Crow attack on men and measures of defense against culture-war aggression—not out- women of different races. When states began in the 1990s and moded old laws of racial aggression—will survive the modern 2000s to legislate the man–woman definition of marriage, it Supreme Court’s creativity. Many states have weighed in with was to protect the conjugal meaning from redefinition by cul- amicus briefs arguing for the preservation of their people’s ture warriors and judicial activists—not to interfere with mar- right of self-government. So have scores of prominent religious riages everyone recognized as actual ones but wished to leaders, academics, legal scholars, and other opinion leaders— prevent for the sake of a racist ideology. And this time the the sort of people conspicuously missing from the defense of law’s salute to children’s centrality to marriage was embodied Jim Crow marriage laws a half century ago. All told there are merely in the elementary recognition that the institution should about a hundred amicus briefs in the same-sex-marriage case, be restricted to those who can be mother and father to a family with almost equal numbers on the two sides. built on their union. There will be no eleven pages for a unanimous Court this time. We can expect ten or 20 times that many pages, in multi- ple opinions fro m a deeply divided bench. It is true that this ONSIDER next the circumstances of the legal challenge great spilling of ink will happen no matter which party is vic- to the Jim Crow anti-miscegenation laws. From a peak torious. But only in an age riven by ideology, dishonesty, and of 30 states with such laws in the 1920s and ’30s, the a struggle to rearrange the moral furniture in people’s heads Cnumber declined to just 16 states by the time of the Loving could it require more than Warren’s few pages to turn aside the case, only one of those states (California) doing away with its transparently politicized absurdity of a claim to a constitutional law by a judicial decree. After Brown v. Board of Education, “right” of same-sex marriage. The Minnesota supreme court in the struggles of the civil-rights movement, and the passage of 1971 took just five pages to dispose of the first such claim in a the federal Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the Loving court of law, only four years after Loving—and the following case can be viewed as a mopping-up operation to fulfill the year the high court in Washington dismissed a petition for long-frustrated promise of the Reconstruction amendments review of that state ruling, with prejudice, “for want of a sub- and Lincoln’s new birth of freedom. Make no mistake: The stantial federal question.” Nothing about the Constitution has remaining anti-miscegenation laws still had a lot of social changed in the meantime. Only the elite cultural power of the inertia backing them in 1960s white America, where sentiment gay-rights movement, and a deepening confusion about the against interracial marriage ran high. But the legal prohibitions meaning of marriage, have made all the difference this time. were already an embarrassment even to their residual sup- Whether this will suffice to prompt a nakedly political deci- porters. As Peggy Pascoe notes in her 2009 history What sion, clothed in a hundred pages of legal jargon, is what the Comes Naturally, only one state—North Carolina—submitted country waits to discover in June. an amicus brief in support of Virginia’s defense of its law in the Supreme Court. When the Loving case was argued, Chief Justice Earl Warren ONSIDER finally the aftermath of Loving, and the very had no trouble forging a unanimous front on the part of the jus- different future that awaits us if the justices rewrite tices. This was an easy case, made still easier by the Court’s both the Constitution and the definition of marriage. 1964 reversal of an 1883 precedent in which it had permitted CAs Pascoe relates in her history, there was some initial resis- states to punish interracial adultery and fornication more tance to the Loving decision in southern states. But it was cer- severely than the same offenses when committed by persons of tainly not the “massive resistance” that had greeted the Brown

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ruling in some quarters a decade earlier, and it collapsed with gratifying speed. Within a year or two, state after state complied with the constitu- tional requirement to permit interracial couples to marry, and most states even went the legally gratuitous extra mile of expunging the old embar- rassments—dead letters already—from their law codes. Within a generation, Pascoe notes, the country had put the shame of anti-miscegenation laws so far behind itself that it was hard for many Americans to remember they’d ever existed, let alone how widespread the racial ideology had once been in its grip on the law. Today, discussing legal bans on interracial marriage with college students is like explaining a party-line telephone. It’s all eye rolls and disbelief. Why such a sudden implosion of a legal regime that had been in place for decades in a large portion of the country? First, the Loving decision put a period to the last sentence of offi- cial segregation in American law. The ruling looks effortless and natural now, and it proba- bly came fairly easily then, only because of a long prior struggle to overcome official racism stretching back into antebellum history. The American people were thus already prepared to repudiate the vestigial legacy of old injus- tices and put them forever behind them. Second, there was therefore no constituency, no prominent elite, and, perhaps most impor- tant, no religious leadership willing to fight for maintenance of the old laws. No leaders, no spokesmen, no followers—the 19th-century eugenic innovation of “miscegenation” was as dead as a doornail overnight. If the partisans of judicially imposed same-sex marriage think a ruling in its favor will be as tri- umphant as Loving was, they are deluding them- selves. Such a ruling would not vindicate the ancient idea of marriage, shedding a repugnant distortion of it adopted for narrow, prejudicial Mildred and Richard Loving, 1967 reasons. It would be a flagrant innovation, a re - definition of marriage by judicial fiat, not the last defeat of high proportions. It is easily forgotten, however, that Roe too exhausted ideologues but the first broadside in a new phase of was followed by a brief burst of support, especially among the the culture war, its grapeshot indiscriminately wounding mar- young. But the mockery Roe made of the Constitution, the ideo- riage as an institution, the welfare of children, the rule of law, logical tyrannies it inspired, and most of all the very real hor- and the freedom of Americans to live and act according to their rors of its effects have caused it to be viewed increasingly as religiously informed consciences. the Dred Scott of our times, and pro-life sentiment has grown. The model for what awaits us if the Court gets this easy A Supreme Court diktat removing the central pillar of sexual question wrong is not Loving v. Virginia, but Roe v. Wade. The complementarity from the law of marriage would not be a logi - GETTY IMAGES

/ New York Times claimed the day after Roe that the decision cal extension of Loving, or go down in history as a happy or was a “historic resolution of a fiercely controversial issue.” easy victory over bigotry. The cascade of bad effects, legal and This is by now a grim joke, since Roe resolved nothing and sociological, would come rolling in for years to come. Leaders only made the controversy fiercer. Given the high respect paid of the conservative religious communities in America would to pronouncements of the Supreme Court (an unaccountable stand fast, for freedom and for family. Each new generation phenomenon to those of us who study it for a living), a drop in would witness the consequences, and the merits of the historic THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION / support for the traditional meaning of marriage would be no understanding of marriage would over time recover their right- su rprise after a decision to redefine it. And young people in ful place in the public mind. If the justices want to bring on this particular, more thoroughly marinated than their elders in the needless struggle and sacrifice their own legitimacy in the FRANCIS MILLER moral fashions of the day, already accept same-sex marriage in process—again—they know just what to do.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

saving and investing for retire- ing your legal taxes fun and lively. ment, the ins and outs of rental You’ll barely realize that you’ve property, how and in what specific learned anything at all, and you ways 501(c)3 funds must not be can appear on your MSNBC sig- considered “income,” and many, nature show with the confidence TO: All MSNBC On-Air many other fun and fascinating and swagger of someone who has Talent topics, including how to fill out a paid taxes that year! FROM: HR legal tax form and how, exactly, to Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? IN RE: Financial Planning write a check to cover your taxes We’ll even assign each on-air and Compliance Webinar for the current year! personality a personal “tax con - Each webinar takes approxi- cierge” to make sure that you pay mately 45 minutes to complete, your taxes in full each year, every Hello all! along with a 15-minute “refresher year, for as long as you’re on the Great news! quiz.” Don’t worry! It’s all very air at MSNBC. HR and senior administrative low-key! And as a special service Ask your personal “tax con - staff have decided to offer ALL to Ed Schultz and the Reverend Al cierge” anything at all about your on-air talent FREE financial Sharpton, there will be no math finances, your rental income, your advice! As some of you may required! current tax liens, anything at all! know, we’ve offered our junior That’s right! If necessary, we’ll even assign and lower-level staff financial Wait a minute, we can hear you you two tax concierges to handle products via the NBCU/Comcast say. How can those boring old however many sets of books you corporate savings and investment subjects be fun and fascinating? keep! plan, but this is the first time What are we? Republicans?? What’s the catch? we’ve offered similar services for LOL. No, we’re not! If we were, There isn’t one! All of these the on-air team at MSNBC! we’d be in trouble with the IRS! financial products and services are If you’ve been reading the news So here’s how we make it fun: free to you! That’s right! Abso - lately, you’ll know that current tax In the first place, the webinars lutely no cost. Courtesy of the laws have gotten more and more are conducted in a relaxed and go- NBCU/Comcast management. We complicated. It seems like every at-your-own-pace tempo. In the know that it’s hard enough to advo- day there’s another story in the second place, all of the relevant cate for progressive activist gov- news—not our news, of course, information about handling money ernment policies without the but other people’s news—about and, for instance, paying your extra burden of filling out a 1040! certain MSNBC on-air talent hav- taxes is delivered in a high-energy Sign up today in the main cafete- ing trouble keeping track of just hip-hop-style rap by two sunny, ria! Just look for Notorious IRS what the heck Uncle Sam is owed. funny, clown-like characters, No - and Da Big Bad Compliance Bear Over the past few weeks, we’ve torious IRS and Da Big Bad at the sign-up tables near the salad heard from our on-air team that Compliance Bear. bar. (Note to Ed Schultz: The salad something has to be done about all You’ll laugh and clap along with bar is that long stainless-steel of these complicated taxes! It’s a these two incorrigible trade- counter that often attracts a crowd. stressful and near-impossible task marked characters, and before you Note to the Reverend Al Sharpton: to maintain your vibrant and know it you’ll be an expert in the Please do not eat directly from the active roles on air, advocating for arcane ways of federal and state salad bar.) meaningful change in America’s income-tax law. You’ll be a master —The HR Team at NBCU/ fiscal and cultural policy, while at at adding up your income, plug- Comcast the same time complying with the ging it into a popular online tax- details and drudgery of what the preparing website, and instantly P.S. Please note that attendance at IRS demands! determining your personal tax lia- all of the webinars and training ses- You can’t do it all! bility! sions is mandatory for all on-air tal- You asked, and we listened! Simple as that! ent. Failure to attend and demonstrate We’re offering several easy-to- Notorious IRS and Da Big Bad up-to-date tax status will result in take webinars on such subjects as Compliance Bear will make pay- immediate suspension.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Breakfast of Bureaucrats

HE man was tall, broad, and bald, with a • For a city with such grand monuments, D.C. has some prophet’s fierce spark in his eyes. He wore a remarkably dull downtown architecture. The old small long thick filthy coat that flapped as he strode buildings that provided charm and variety were razed for T up the sidewalk. “THERE’S GONNA BE A FIIIIIIRE,” innumerable dull blocks—brick-and-steel factories for he shouted. “THERE’S GONNA BE A BIG DAMN FIIIIIIIIIRE.” extracting money and spinning it into influence and opin- People ignored him. They looked at their phones. They ion. There are some notable exceptions, but for the most walked with the usual big-city purpose. In the distance, a part surv eying the streets makes you think that the archi- siren started to wail, and a grin split the man’s face. He tects delivered an interesting building but no one thought knew i t. He’d called it. Somewhere, there was a fiiiiire. A to take it out of the box it came in. big damn fire. • I’m sure there’s a lunch counter around my hotel, but I was back in D.C., remembering what I hadn’t missed: they’re a dying breed in most cities. You can’t walk in, take the theatrically ill. The dispossessed, the homeless, the a stool, order up a couple of eggs—wreck ’em!—and toast shambling souls hunched over a cart liberated from a gro- and coffee. You must stand in line at Starbucks for coffee cery store, pushing it around until dark came and they whose price suggests the b eans were individually washed could find an alcove to hide in. When in the spittle of a rare peacock, then I used to live here, it seemed worse— choose a Breakfast Brioche Panini or my old neighborhood, Adams Mor - some such precious item that’s basi- gan, had spare-changers spaced every cally an Egg McMuffin after a semester twelve feet, as if by city ordinance. If at the Sorbonne. you were inclined to give to the first, I ended up at a deli whose window your heart was less permeable to their boasted “Breakfast Bar.” A buffet of cries by the end of the block. By the the usual suspects. You load up a end of a week, less so. By the end of clamshell, they weigh it, and you sit at the month, you stopped your ears. a wobbly table and try not to wince Welcome to D.C.! We’ll teach you when the plastic knife squeaks against not to care. the Styrofoam. I tried to cut my pan- After being away for a long time, then returning twice in cake; the fork bent. Either the pancake was made of ceramic five months, I feel completely qualified to pass a few broad or the fork had no spine in its tines. I tried the fork on the judgments, culminating in a breakfast-based metaphor for eggs; it managed to pierce the surface if I stabbed them the entire Obama experience. perpendicular. But not the pancake. The pancake would • Went to one of the new neighborhoods downtown; not yield. Perhaps the pancake was old and had been sit- quite a change. The old motto for the area was “Mind the ting there for a long time and its exterior had assumed an Urine-Flecked Broken Glass!” and now it’s cafés and condos armadillo’s protective abilities, but the problem was most and innumerable single people in their early 30s—the likely the fork. main diet for the D.C. machine, by the way; they’re still You could snap the tines off an old plastic fork. They cheap and always replaceable, and can be worked to death were stiff but frangible. That must have seemed like a if need be. On Sunday the men were dressed in hipster problem to someone. Why, a person could choke on that garb—T-shirts with obscure band logos, tattoos on their busted piece. A miscreant could poke someone and draw legs, shins thick as bowling pins from riding an old blood. A fork that could go through a pancake like a mos- Schwinn with three gears, a jaunty trilby on the head, black quito’s proboscis into skin was a hazard. Who knows what glasses. The usual garb of the Eastern Urban Intellectual liability you opened yourself up to? Better to go with the with rarefied tastes. Well. soft fork. Just to be safe. Coming to D.C. to be a hipster is like going to Chicago To paraphrase the line about the appeal of militant to be a farme r. Perhaps they wear this stuff on weekends Islam: When people see a strong fork and a weak fork they because Monday brings the yoke and the khakis. are naturally drawn to the strong fork. None of them make anything, except perhaps posters for I’m probably wrong, but one can’t help but suspect there their banjo-and-fife revival band. The money comes from was a law behind this. If not a law, then a campaign to raise somewhere; meetings are held; initiatives are launched; concern. If not a campaign, then rumors of a class-action consciousness is raised; the money empties out and is s uit against the Breakfast Bar–Industrial Complex. Some - replenished by hidden springs. Repeat until you move from where in a twelve-story box on a street with a letter for a the Foundation for Water Cleanliness to the Organization name, someone set in motion the events that would make for Clean Water, then do it all over again. it impossible to use a plastic fork on a pancake, because that’s why you came to D.C. in the first place. Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. To make a difference.

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intervention. Noting that American for- Osama bin Laden, Obama was able to The Sources eign policy is usually a hybrid of these satisfy or at least mollify the hawks. types, Dueck locates Obama’s grand Meanwhile, by generally withdrawing strategy in a mixture of retrenchment from major commitments abroad, Obama Of American and accommodation. shored up his liberal base. He went Through retrenchment of international into the 2012 election with higher Conduct commitments, Obama seeks to husband approval ratings on foreign policy than resources for his progressive domestic on the economy. MARIO LOYOLA agenda of “nation-building here at home.” The apparent success of the “Obama But this emphasis, argues Dueck, is rein- doctrine” lasted just long enough to see forced by Obama’s sincere belief that the him through reelection. Not long after, United States should be more accommo- the chickens started coming home to dating toward potential adversaries. “At roost. “If the goal of U.S. accommoda- heart . . . Obama does not really believe tion and retrenchment was to strengthen that conflict is the essence of world poli- America’s position abroad and encourage tics” as do realists in the tradition of Hans potential adversaries to accommodate the Morgenthau and Henry Kissinger. He United States,” writes Dueck, “then it has seems to believe that tyrants are not in - to be said the strategy did not work.” By trinsically dangerous, but that an over- the time Obama backtracked on Syria bearing America sometimes makes them in 2013, “the overpowering impression so. “Through accommodation, these po - was simply one of weak, confused lead- The Obama Doctrine: American Grand tential rivals can be turned, if not into ership.” Great-power competitors such Strategy Today, by Colin Dueck friends, then at least into something other as Russia and China have jumped at the (Oxford, 336 pp., $24.95) than adversaries.” apparent opportunity. Terrorist safe Under Obama’s foreign retreats and havens have proliferated and congealed FTER years of “leading from vertiginous defense cuts, U.S. foreign from Pakistan to Libya. Whole regions of behind,” and often not lead- policy has fallen into the familiar trap of the world are sliding into chaos. Dueck’s ing at all, President Barack letting international commitments far case-by-case narrative of these failures Obama’s foreign policy is exceed the assets available to back them makes for harrowing reading. Afinally proving transformational. It’s not a up. That was precisely the mistake that Dueck tries his academic best to give pretty sight. In the most crucial regions, Walter Lippmann blamed for both world Obama a fair assessment, noting that allies fear that they will have to fend wars, and John Lewis Gaddis blamed the Obama is highly intelligent and analyti- for themselves. Russia is growing more Korean and Vietnam wars on more or less cal. If “U.S. policies are incoherent to - aggressive and China more assertive. the same strategy. day,” he concludes, “it is largely because Tyranny and narcoterrorism grow un - But Obama has also manfully limited the president sees no compelling reason challenged in Latin America. And mili- the commitments themselves. Just two for them to be otherwise.” Despite the tant Islam is in the ascendant across half months into office, he announced a major mounting evidence of failure, Obama the world as the Middle East spirals surge of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and “continues to view himself as highly deeper into chaos and Iran reaches the at the same time promised that the U.S. pragmatic, careful, and internationally cusp of nuclear weapons. would retreat by a date certain, thereby effective.” But, adds Dueck, “this is not Many critics of Obama can’t seem to revealing that he was ambivalent about prudence—it is a profound complacency.” decide whether he is actually malevolent victory. A similar complacency has Obama’s most pronounced trait as a toward America or just “a floundering naïf marked his commitments of American foreign-policy thinker may indeed be who thinks ATMs aggravate unemploy- power in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and complacency. In early 2014, in response ment,” as George Will put it. But Obama even the Iran situation, on which he has to a question about ISIS advances on clearly thinks of himself as a profound staked his foreign-policy legacy. Fallujah in Iraq, Obama professorially strategic thinker acting in America’s best In all these moves, writes Dueck, asserted that not every foreign disaster “is interests. So what is his strategy? Obama has shown a much keener politi- a direct threat to us or something that we Historian Colin Dueck takes a sober cal sensibility than is commonly appreci- have to wade into.” Fallujah, mind you, is and analytical approach. He begins with ated. He has managed somehow to where we not only won the greatest battle a taxonomy of the major “types” of U.S. channel both America’s desire to hunt of the Iraq War, at enormous human cost, grand strategy: retrenchment of national down al-Qaeda after 9/11 and its anti- but also managed in the process to win commitments; containment or rollback interventionist mood swing after the over virtually the entire population of of adversaries; accommodation through trauma of the Iraq War. With limited Anbar Province. concessions; offshore balancing of re - commitments of force, such as drone By the time Obama got into office, the gional powers from afar; and strict non- strikes and the daring operation to kill Sunnis of western Iraq were hopelessly

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dependent on U.S. protection. Obama left diplomatic and economic instruments of them defenseless. And when they pre- U.S. foreign-policy activism. They favor Lost, Not dictably got caught in a murderous cross- clear American leadership internationally fire between Iranian-backed militias and [and] support a forward U.S. strategic ISIS, he basically decided it wasn’t worth presence overseas. . . . Conservative Forgotten internationalists believe U.S. interests bothering over. Obama’s handling of Iraq abroad to be extensive, and perceive mul- has been one of the most shameful dere- tiple threats to those interests. JOSEPH POSTELL lictions of duty in the history of American foreign policy. Conservative internationalists differ What’s the alternative? Dueck is par- from liberal internationalists in empha- ticularly helpful in connecting the dots sizing ad hoc cooperation among sov- between America’s foreign policy and ereign democracies over resort to the its domestic politics. Among Republi - United Nations (hence Rumsfeld’s cans, Dueck notes, there are historically “coalitions of the willing” in various three major foreign-policy tendencies: contexts); strong defense over arms anti-interventionism, nationalism, and control; and diplomacy backed by mili- internationalism. tary leverage over purposefully non- The anti-interventionist sentiment has confrontational dialogue. its roots in the isolationism of the 1920s Dueck thinks that the supposed dis- and 1930s, and is based on the idea that crediting of “neoconservatives” is over- Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of what happens beyond our borders is hyped and obscures “the true reasons for America’s Founding Document, by Mike Lee generally none of our business. It has the underlying strength of a distinctly (Sentinel, 256 pp., $27.95) seen a resurgence lately because both Republican internationalism over re- George W. Bush and Obama succeeded peated generations since World War II.” E certainly do not want for in discrediting internationalism in many Virtually every GOP presidential nomi- books about the Consti - Republi cans’ minds. But the isolationist nee since 1952 has been a conservative tution. They are ubiqui- plank has been an automatic disqualifier internationalist, as is virtually every po - tous. Why should we read in every election since World War II, and tential 2016 nominee today, with the Wanother? What does it tell us that we although that may be less true today, the exception of Rand Paul. haven’t already encountered elsewhere? stance is not likely to be advantageous, Even in this golden age of libertarian One does not have to proceed far into argues Dueck. isolationism, solid majorities among both Senator Mike Lee’s new book to find the Conservative nationalists, on the Republicans and tea-party supporters answer. In a book about the Constitution, other hand, are instinctively commit- favor a strong defense, as well as the use one hardly expects to encounter extensive ted to defending a strategic perimeter of force to end state-sponsored terrorism, discussions of Andrew Jackson’s famous of traditional alliances, but are other- stop genocide, and prevent the spread of duel or John Wilkes’s epic standoff wise wary of foreign entanglements. weapons of mass de struction. More than against King George III. Our Lost Consti - Their support is concentrated in the two-thirds of Republicans say they would tution uses these stories to teach the South, and among rural voters, working- support U.S. airstrikes to stop Iran from reader about some of the Constitution’s class folk, and the Tea Party. They getting nuclear weapons. fundamental principles. The result is a believe Obama to be weak on national Dueck advocates a synthesis of book that teaches constitutional law and security but are more intently focused conservative-nationalist and conservative- history but reads like a thrilling tour on opposing his domestic agenda. internationalist tendencies, which he through some of the most interesting “They cherish the preservation of styles “conservative American realism.” episodes in American history. America’s national sovereignty as a It combines Walter Lippmann’s focus The book is fundamentally about the primary goal in itself,” writes Dueck, a on the defense of strategic perimeters strange fact that we live under a Con - deft observation that helps explain the be yond our borders (the nationalist ten- stitution that is still ostensibly in effect, nationalists’ focus on defending the dency), George F. Kennan’s strategy of and still revered by most Ameri cans, but Consti tution and Second Amendment containment (the internationalist ten- has been circumvented time and again in rights. This group, writes Dueck, is cru- dency), and a recognition that the capa - practice. Five provisions of the Con - cial because it forms “a critical plurality, city of our friends and allies to govern is stitution are given extensive attention pivot point, and median on foreign- often our first line of defense (the real- here: the origination clause (all bills for policy issues” among Republicans. ism of the neoconservative position). raising revenue must originate in the The third major Republican tendency Obama came to office believing that House), the clause vesting “all legislative is conservative internationalism, whose he could be a transformational president. adherents believe that “American mili- He has certainly proved that much, and Mr. Postell, an assistant professor of political science tary power undergirds a stable interna- has thereby made a compelling case for at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, is tional order”: the policies that he committed his presi- a co-editor of Rediscovering Political dency to reversing. The pendulum always Economy and Toward an American Conservative internationalists, past and swings back, writes Dueck. “The only Conservatism: Constitutional Conservatism present, support military along with question is when.” during the Progressive Era.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

powers herein granted” in the Congress, general power to invade the homes of branch of government responsible for the establishment clause of the First British citizens rather than rely on par- making laws.” Amendment, the Fourth Amend ment’s ticular warrants and probable cause) and In addition, “liberty cannot long sur- prohibition of illegal searches, and the the reaction it produced in the American vive in a nation where the person or entity Tenth Amendment. Each chapter ad- colonies. Wilkes became a hero to the that enforces the laws is the same person dresses its clause in two parts: first by colonists, some of whom even adapted or entity that writes the laws.” Un - telling an interesting story about the his- the Apostles’ Creed to memorialize fortunately, “that ideal of separation of tory of the clause, and then by illustrating Wilkes’s opposition to the Crown’s arbi- powers,” like the ideal of lawmaking by a contemporary event during which the trary power. elected representatives, “is far from the clause was ignored or abandoned. Lee’s concerns are not so much with reality in which we live. . . . Most laws are If you are wondering which one of these specific political issues as they are with now written and promulgated by execu- clauses is not like the others, you’re not matters of constitutional and govern- tive agencies, not by Congress.” (One alone. The origination clause is not typi- ment structure: Are we going to continue might note, as a modest correction, that cally considered a critical bulwark of lim- to be governed by our own representa- some of these agencies aren’t even “exec- ited, constitutional government, yet it is tives? Will the government respect time- utive agencies” but rather independent the first clause treated in the book. It is not honored constitutional principles, such regulatory commissions, a truly “headless hard to understand why Lee emphasizes as the right to be free from arbitrary gov- fourth branch.”) the clause: It was central to the legal battle ernment searches? Can Congress fulfill This change came about gradually, but over Obamacare, because that bill was its traditional constitutional role, or Lee draws our attention to one of the most eventually determined to be a tax increase. should we resign ourselves to a new form important moments in the process: the The bill was deemed to have originated in of executive government? inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt in the House, but only through creative and The book’s most crucial chapter dis- March 1933. FDR’s first inaugural ad - questionable legal gymnastics. cusses the vesting clause, which opens dress was one of the most audacious But the difficulty with using the origi- Article I. That clause states that “all leg- speeches in American history. Nearly nation clause to oppose Obamacare is islative powers herein granted shall be everyone remembers his famous admoni- twofold. First, doing so accepts the vested in a Congress.” It does not permit tion that “the only thing we have to fear is premise that the Affordable Care Act Congress to exercise all of the legislative fear itself.” Sadly, fewer are attentive to was a bill for raising revenue (which is far powers granted to the national govern- the remainder of that speech, in which from clear). And second, it elevates the ment; it mandates that Congress exercise FDR compared the Great Depression to origination clause to the stature of the those powers. However, for decades most “the emergency of a war” and called other clauses Lee discusses, thus failing to federal laws have been generated by upon “a trained and loyal army willing distinguish between temporary controver- agencies through the process of adminis- to sacrifice,” with Roosevelt as its sies and principles of permanent impor- trative rule-making. leader. Self-appointed Generalissimo tance: That tax bills originate in the House Lee attacks this circumvention of the Roosevelt proceeded to assume the as opposed to the Senate is hardly as Constitution as a violation of two princi- power to plan and control the entire U.S. essential to freedom as are the other pro- ples: the republican principle that we economy—until he was challenged by visions addressed in the book. elect those who make the laws that bind the Supreme Court, at which point he Our Lost Constitution is written in an us, and the separation-of-powers princi- threatened to pack that body with judges engaging manner without sacrificing sub- ple. He explains: “[The vesting clause] who supported his interpretation of the stance. I have studied the Constitutional captures, more than any other, the Constitution. The darker side of FDR’s Convention for years, and I learned new audacity of the American experiment famous speech is something more Ameri - things about that great moment in our and its break with millennia of pharaohs, cans should know about, and Our Lost history from reading this book. I had not despots, and divinely inspired poten- Constitution should be commended for known, for example, the full story of tates. It was no accident that the framers highlighting it. British parliamentarian John Wilkes’s made it first in the structure of the new No book is without deficiencies, of courageous opposition to King George Constitution. . . . They understood that course, and there are a few to be found in III’s invasive practice of general warrants ‘We the People’ would never truly be this one. First, the book suffers from jar- (in which British officers would claim a free unless we retained control over the ring shifts of tone between its historical narratives and its discussion of current controversies: The present-day sections immediately become more partisan. THE PROPHETIC ANT Second, the book’s chapters on reform I saw the fabled colors, coming down. are short on specifics. The titles of four chapters in part 2 of the book suggest that Gold cannot hold. we will learn how the courts, Congress, Red sinks like lead. and the people can restore the lost Con - Time’s green kingdom will lose its crown, stitution. But, especially with regard to And dry leaves drag a desert through the town. the courts and Congress, the reader receives very little in the way of detail. —LEE OSER The chapter on the courts tells the story of

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the successful litigation in District of The Court did not propound the myth Columbia v. Heller that established that Reclaiming of judicial supremacy until 1958. But the Second Amendment applies to indi- when it did so (in Cooper v. Aaron), it viduals as well as state militias. But it pro- tried to concoct a venerable history. It vides little guidance on how to achieve Citizenship falsely contended that Marbury v. Madi - similar results in other areas. What are the son—the landmark 1803 ruling that potential opportunities out there for suc- EDWARD WHELAN expounded the power of judicial re - cessful litigation? What kinds of institu- view—“declared the basic principle that tions should be built to pursue these The Constitution: An Introduction, by Michael the federal judiciary is supreme in the avenues? The chapter is silent on these Stokes Paulsen and Luke Paulsen exposition of the law of the Constitution.” important practical questions. (Basic, 368 pp., $29.99) Even more brazenly, without any men- The chapters on using Congress to tion of Lincoln’s compelling refutation restore the Constitution are more specific, (or of Thomas Jefferson’s and Andrew but they essentially boil down to a three- E live in a legal culture Jackson’s similar contestations), the pronged strategy: pass the Regulations besotted by the myth of Court asserted that the concept of judicial from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny judicial supremacy. Ac - supremacy had “ever since [Marbury] (REINS) Act, to require Congress to cording to this myth, been respected by this Court and the affirmatively pass major agency rules Wthe Constitution means whatever five Country as a permanent and indispens- before they go into effect; pass the USA Supreme Court justices claim it able feature of our constitutional system.” Freedom Act “to rein in and reform gov- means, and all other governmental The myth of judicial supremacy per- ernment surveillance”; and make good on actors are duty-bound to abide by that vades our legal culture, even if it is often the threat to defund legislation. Of course, supposed meaning. invoked only selectively to protect and in order to do these things successfully, This mistaken concept of judicial leverage favored rulings. Although there advocates of this strategy will require the supremacy is often confused with the are some scholars, both on the right and support of the American people. And this power of judicial review—the ability of on the left, who challenge it, most lawyers is the real issue, as Senator Lee seems courts to review the constitutionality of across the ideological spectrum, having reluctantly to accept. Unless the Ameri- laws and regulations that they are asked suffered the detriment of a modern legal can people start to care about these consti- to apply. It is one thing for the Supreme miseducation, embrace it. In our modern tutional principles and are willing to hold Court to decline to apply a law that it regime of government by judiciary, the their elected officials accountable for vio- deems to be unconstitutional; it is quite non-lawyer may readily be pardoned for lating them, there is not much that our another for it to maintain that presi- doing the same. national institutions can do. dents, members of Congress, and state This impressive book by the father- In fact, the Founders designed things officials must likewise regard the law son duo of Michael Stokes Paulsen and this way. They believed that (in George as unconstitutional and, further, must Luke Paulsen dispels with admirable Washington’s words) “the preservation of accept and follow the rationale of the clarity this and other common and “thor- the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny Court’s decision. oughly en grained misconceptions about of the republican model of government, Thus, Abraham Lincoln, in his first the Constitution, constitutional history, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps inaugural address, famously defended his and constitutional law.” Paulsen père is an as finally, staked” not on the Consti - rejection of the Dred Scott ruling: “If the accomplished professor of constitutional tution’s parchment barriers but “on the policy of the Government upon vital law and has long ranked very high in the experiment entrusted to the hands of the questions affecting the whole people is to small group of legal academics whose American people.” The final chapter of be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the work I admire. (At my encouragement, he Our Lost Constitution grants this point: Supreme Court, . . . the people will recently joined me as a regular contribu- “In the United States the people always have ceased to be their own rulers, hav- tor to NATIONAL REVIEW’s Bench Memos ultimately have the power to rein in, redi- ing to that extent practically resigned blog.) Paulsen fils is a recent graduate rect, or kick out their elected represen- their Government into the hands of that of Princeton. Their book, which they tatives. They need only marshal the eminent tribunal.” Lincoln’s actions as worked on together as a vacation project political will to do so. . . . Congress and president were faithful to his words. In over eight summers, is in its own way an the courts each have a role to play in defiance of the dual holdings of Dred eloquent testament to the Constitution as reclaiming the Constitution. But if we Scott, he signed into law a bill that out- a covenant across generations. wait around for them to act on their own lawed slavery in the federal territories, The Paulsens intend their book both for initiative, we will be waiting forever.” and he instructed the State Department to college students and for the general public, Therein lies both the promise and the issue passports to free blacks (thus rec- but most lawyers and law students would peril of our experiment in self-government. ognizing them as citizens). Lincoln also also benefit from it. They recount the his- It is up to citizens to ensure that the refused to obey Chief Justice Taney’s tory of the Constitution as a gripping lost parts of our Constitution are re- order, in Ex parte Merryman, to release a story: The Constitution begins in 1787, as covered. Our Lost Constitution is a prisoner from military custody. “a group of distinguished Americans book that should be on the shelf of every gathered in Philadelphia . . . plot the over- citizen who wants to aid in the process Mr. Whelan is the president of the Ethics and Public throw of their own government.” It is of recovery. Policy Center. “dramatically preserved and radically

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

Enjoy the summer lights for DANIEL HANNAN, MARY KATHARINE HAM, MICHELE BACHMANN, PAT CADDELL, 7 nights on the Westerdam! JONAH GOLDBERG, JAMES O’KEEFE, JOHN SUNUNU, NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY, KATIE PAVLICH, ANDREW KLAVAN, PETE HEGSETH, KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON, YUVAL LEVIN, JAMES LILEKS, KEVIN HASSETT, JAY NORDLINGER, DANIEL J. MAHONEY, JIM GERAGHTY, REIHAN SALAM, JILLIAN MELCHIOR, JOHN HILLEN, KATHRYN LOPEZ, CHARLES C.W. COOKE, ELIANA JOHNSON, JOHN J. MILLER, JOHN FUND, RAMESH PONNURU, KATHERINE CONNELL, ROB LONG, PATRICK BRENNAN, JOEL GEHRKE, KAT TIMPF, and ROMAN GENN!

ake part in one of the most exciting seafaring adventures Over 400 readers—make certain you’re among them!—are you will ever experience: the National Review 2015 expected t o take this wonderful trip, which is why we urge you to T Alaska Summer Cruise. Featuring an incredible cast of act now to reserve your stateroom. Alaska cruises are mega-popu- conservative speakers—and affordable accommodations—this lar because of the region’s raw beauty. For Mother Nature at her special trip will take place July 18-25, 2015. Set for the absolutely finest, you can’t beat the stunning waterways hugging the 49th ideal time to visit Alaska and enjoy its unique, breathtaking beau- State, or the glaciers and other wonders that adorn it from the ty, the phenomenal journey—which would make for an excellent Arctic to the Gulf. And as an unrivaled family summer vacation family vacation or reunion—will sail round-trip from Seattle destination, how can you compete with an Alaska voyage? You aboard Holland America Line’s beautiful MS Westerdam, visiting can’t. So don’t beat them, join them (with your family)!—on the Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka, Glacier Bay, and Victoria, B.C. National Review 2015 Alaska Summer Cruise. This is a unique opportunity to meet preeminent conserva- There’s a cabin to meet everyone’s budget: Prices start at just tive celebrities and to discuss the day’s most important issues, $2,299 per person, and “Single” staterooms begin at an affordable including : HotAir.com Editor-at-large Mary Katharine Ham, $3,399 (the same prices we offered on our last trip here in 2007!). Daniel Hannan, the popular “Euroskeptic” British MEP, former If you’ve wanted to go on an NR cruise, but haven’t, consider New Hampshire governor and “Bush 41” chief of staff John this: the “typical”R N cruise “alumnus” has been on an average of Sununu, ace economist Kevin Hassett, former congresswoman four of our seafaring trips! They keep coming back again and Michele Bachmann, pollster Pat Caddell, National Affairs edi- again for an obvious reason: an NR cruise is sure to be a great tor Yuval Levin, Townhall.com editor Katie Pavlich, videog- time. It’s time you discovered this for yourself. rapher James O’Keefe, top social commentators Naomi An NR cruise is your unique chance to meet and intimately Schaefer Riley, James Lileks, and Andrew Klavan, discuss politics and policy with some of the true giants of conser- military/security experts Pete Hegseth and John Hillen, lead- vative and political affairs. Our exciting seminars—we’v e sched- ing conservative academic Daniel Mahoney, and from NR’s uled eight panel sessions (each preceded by a great one-on-one editorial All Stars Jonah Goldberg, Jay Nordlinger, Rob Long, interview of a special guest speaker)—provide a scintillating take John Fund, Roman Genn, Ramesh Ponnuru, Kevin D. on current events. Then there are the exclusive “extras,” such as Williamson, Eliana Johnson, Jim Geraghty, Kathryn Jean our three cocktail receptions (convivial affairs featuring great food Lopez, Charles Cooke, John J. Miller, Patrick Brennan, and libations), two late-night “Night Owls,” one post-dinner Jillian Melchior, Joel Gehrke, and Kat Timpf. poolside “smoker” (with world-class H. Upmann cigars and com- plimentary cognac!), plus intimate ONE C OOOOL WEEK OF SUMMER FUN AND CONSERVATIVE REVELRY! dining with speakers and editors on two nights. DAY/DATE PORT ARRIVE DEPART SPECIAL EVENT Then there’s the Westerdam: Its accommodations (elegant state- SAT/July 18 Seattle 4:00PM evening cocktail reception rooms and glamorous public spaces) SUN/July 19 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars are luxurious, and matched by the “Night Owl” session indulgent staff, superior cuisine, and top-notch entertainment and excur- MON/July 20 Juneau, AK 1:00PM 10:00PM morning seminar

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

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sions. And then there is the spectacular LAST CHANCE TO BOOK A CABIN! itinerary, starting with beautiful Seattle, and followed over the next week with these Superior service, gourmet cuisine, elegant accommodations, and top destinations: great entertainment await you on the beautiful Westerdam. Prices are per-person, based on double occupancy, and include port GLACIER BAY National Park protects a unique fees, taxes, gratuities, all meals, entertainment, and admittance to ecosystem of plants and animals living in concert and part icipation in all National Review functions. Per-person with a changing glacial landscape. You’ll be awed: mon- rates for third/fourth person in cabin (by age and category): umental chunks of ice split off glaciers, crashing into the sea, Categories J & C 17-younger: $ 736 18-up: $1451 roaring like thund er, water shooting hundreds of feet into the air. Category VC 17-younger: $1301 18-up: $1501 Glacier Bay has more actively calving tidewater glaciers than anyplace Categories SS & SA 17-younger: $1354 18-up: $1554 else in the world. DELUXE SUITE Magnificent luxury quarters (from 506 sq. JUNEAU is the place to let your imagination run wild. Explore the ft.) features use of exclusive Neptune Lounge and lush Tongass National Forest. Visit the rustic shops in town. Or get out personal concierge, complimentary laundry/dry- and kayak, dogsled, raft, whale watch, flightsee or fish. There’s no end cleaning service, large private verandah, king- to the adventure because we’re in port long enough to truly take size bed (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool bath/shower, dressing room, large sitting advantage of the long daylight hours. area, DVD, mini-bar, refrigerator, safe, SITKA The onion domes of St. Michael’s Cathedral are your first clue and much more. that Sitka was once a Russian settlement. Today, be greeted by Tlingit Category SA native people and astonishing marine life. DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,499 P/P SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 9,799 KETCHIKAN clings to the shores of Tongass Narrows and drapes the mountains with a cheerful air. The main attractions include Creek SUPERIOR SUITE Grand stateroom (from 273 Street, the Tongass Historical Museum, and To tem Bight State Park sq. ft.) features private verandah, queen-size (and a floatplane flightseeing trip to Misty Fjords National Monument bed (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool is a transforming adventure not to be missed). bath/shower, large sitting area, TV/DVD, mini-bar, refrigerator, floor-to-ceiling win- VICTORIA, B.C. A touch of England awaits in this beautiful port: dows, safe, and much more. afternoon tea, double-decker buses, and the famed Butchart Gardens (a brilliant tapestry of color spread across 50 blooming acres). Category SS DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,399 P/P Use the application on the following page to sign up for what SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 7,499 will be seven of the most fun-filled days you’ll ever experience. Or you can reserve your stateroom at www.nrcruise.com (or call DELUXE OUTSIDE Spacious cabin (from 213 sq. The Cruise Authority at 800-707-1634). Remember, there’s a ft.) features private verandah, queen-size bed cabin to fit your taste and budget, but don’t tarry: all Westerdam (convertible to 2 twins), bath/shower, sitting staterooms are available on a first-come, first-served basis, and area, mini-bar, TV/DVD, refrigerator, and floor-to-ceiling windows. supply is limited. Join us this July on the Westerdam, in the company of Daniel Category VC Hannan, Mary Kat harine Ham, John Sununu, Kevin Hassett, DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,799 P/P Michele Bachmann, Pat Caddell, Yuval Levin, Katie Pavlich, SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,999 Naomi Schaefer Riley, James Lileks, Andrew Klavan, Pete Hegseth, James O’Keefe, John Hillen, Daniel Mahoney, Jonah LARGE OCEAN VIEW Comfortable quarters Goldberg, John Fund, Rob Long, Roman Genn, Jay Nordlinger, (from 174 sq. ft.) features queen-size bed (con- Ramesh Ponnuru, Kevin Williamson, Eliana Johnson, Jim vertible to 2 twins), bathtub/shower, sitting area, Geraghty, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Charles Cooke, John J. Miller, TV/DVD, large ocean-view windows. Patrick Brennan, J illian Melchior, Joel Gehrke, Reihan Salam, Katherine Connell, and Kat Timpf on the National Review 2015 Category C DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,999 Alaska Summer Cruise. P/P GET YOUR CABIN! CALL 800-707-1634 SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,299 NOW OR VISIT WWW.NRCRUISE.COM LARGE INSIDE Cozy but ample cabin quarters (from 151 sq. ft.) features queen- size bed (convertible to 2 twins), shower, sitting area, TV/DVD.

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transformed” by the Civil War, the “sin- including their cogent denunciations of gle most important act of constitutional the Court’s pro-abortion diktats in Roe v. The Woeful interpretation in America’s history.” And Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. it survives or thrives, through eras of Casey (1992). betrayal, restoration, and controversy, to It is inevitable, of course, that virtually Whitney the present day. no one will agree with all of the Paulsens’ In their first five chapters, the Paulsens assessments. For my part, I’m skeptical— ROGER KIMBALL explore the genesis and design of the orig- to cite but one example—of their claim inal Constitution. They highlight its four that the Court “deserves credit” in sex- cornerstone features—the novelty of a discrimination cases for supposedly BOUT a decade ago, Time written “supreme Law of the Land”; its “working its way toward a principled magazine (remember Time?) creation of a republican, or representative, standard” that is consistent with the voted the Genoese-born star- form of government; the separation of original meaning of the equal-protection chitect Renzo Piano one of powers among the three federal branches; clause. More broadly, the Paulsens’ rosy Athe 100 most influential people in the and the federalist division of power take on how the Constitution “has world. He’s won every architectural between the federal government and the arguably worked itself pure” seems belied award possible, including, in 1998, the states. They then examine in detail the by their critique of so many of the Court’s Pritzker Prize, the top pop. He calls his powers of each federal branch, and they persisting precedents. But the Paulsens company a “building workshop,” but survey the package of Bill of Rights seek to spur conversations about the Con - “factory” might be a more appropriate amendments. Alongside their praise for stitution, not to end them. term for the tireless multinational enter- the genius of the Framers, they expose Far from being heavy-handedly didac- prise that disgorges buildings the way an and condemn the several critical respects tic, the Paulsens allow their lessons to assembly line disgorges automobiles. in which the Constitution protected slav- emerge organically from the stories they Piano was first catapulted to celebrity— ery. While pointing out that the common tell. Consider, for example, their case fame is something different—in the late attack on the three-fifths clause has things against the myth of judicial supremacy. In 1970s for his part in Centre Georges backward (it was in the interest of the the debate over ratification, they present Pompidou, the art edifice in Paris whose slaveholding states to count slaves fully Alexander Hamilton’s famous defense, in notable innovation was to put the build- for purposes of representation), they Federalist 78, of the power of judicial ing’s insides on its outside. It’s a hideous explain how the clause gave the South a review. That power, Hamilton under- structure, horrendously difficult and ex - “huge, distorting advantage” in favor of stood, derives from the supremacy of the pensive to maintain, but it garnered pro-slavery presidents and Congresses. Constitution, not of the judges. Because enough publicity to ensure that irrespon- In their second set of five chapters, the the Constitution is supreme over ordinary sible museum directors the world over Paulsens provide a lively and informed laws, judges must give effect to it rather would clamor for Piano’s services. overview of how the Constitution has than to laws that conflict with it. Chief A few years ago, Piano defaced the played out over our nation’s history. They Justice Marshall’s reasoning in Marbury Morgan Library in New York with a truly take positions—often firmly, sometimes “tracks almost precisely Hamilton’s argu- ugly addition, and he has performed simi- less so—on a host of constitutional cases ment” and, the Paulsens show, does “not lar courtesies for the Isabella Stewart and questions. Although they don’t label rest on any claim of judicial supremacy.” Gardner Museum in Boston, the Fogg at themselves advocates of “judicial re - They recount in detail Lincoln’s fidelity Harvard, and the High Museum in Atlanta. straint,” they do maintain (soundly, in to his own readings of the Constitution His latest act of architectural vandalism is my view) that the Constitution leaves and his refusal to abide by Dred Scott the new Whitney Museum of American “the bulk of policy choices to the people, or Merryman. The attentive reader will Art on Gansevoort Street in the Meat - through elected, representative institu- glean that the myth of judicial supremacy packing District of New York City, be - tions” and that “it is improper to read is flatly contrary to the principle of con- tween the High Line and the Hudson one’s views of desirable policy into” the stitutional supremacy from which the River. Until a few years ago, this neighbor- Constitution. Yes, courts may override power of judicial review flows. hood was populated at night by creatures democratic enactments, but only when The Court, to be sure, has significant deeply “confused about their sexuality.” those democratic enactments are, after institutional advantages in advancing and Huge infusions of cash have rendered that careful analysis, clearly incompatible entrenching its mistaken readings of the species of psychopathology less flagrant, with the Constitution. Constitution. More than four decades but the insertion of the Whitney Museum Libertarians will bristle at the Paulsens’ after the Court’s power grab on abortion, ensures that the budget of perversity in the condemnation of the so-called Lochner and on the apparent cusp of a radical rul- neighborhood will remain high. era (from 1905 to 1936) as part of a broader ing that would forbid the people in the In April, a few days before the nation’s post-Reconstruction perversion of the various states to retain the perennial defi- school-lunch czar, Michelle Obama, lent Fourteenth Amendment “into a device for nition of marriage, it is difficult to be her distinctive luster to the gluten-free invalidating state legislative policy choices hopeful that citizens will soon reclaim opening of the Whitney, I had occasion to on matters of social welfare and economic their rightful powers of self-government regulation.” And liberals will object to on these and other matters. Reading and Mr. Kimball is the editor of The New Criterion. their criticisms of the “modern era of judi- reflecting on the Paulsens’ book would be His most recent book is The Fortunes of cial activism” (from 1960 to the present), a very good way to start. Permanence.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

stroll through the building with an archi- building in which the architect has lav- lism of the art world was already shift- tect friend during a press preview. In years ished thoughtfulness upon every aspect of ing. In 1966, when the Whitney opened gone by, I attended many such jamborees. the structure, from its siting and the quality its doors on Madison, the collection I go to fewer these days, and I was sur- of the materials to the shape of the rooms numbered some 2,000. Now, God help prised by the size of the throng assembled and their ornamentation and workman- us, the collection is somewhere north of in the hangar-like ground floor of the ship. The guide of good architecture is the 21,000 objects. museum that morning. There were many human body. You know instantly whether The Whitney has some good art. hundreds milling about waiting for some a room is well or ill proportioned, whether Almost all of it dates to before 1950. And honeyed words from the great architect its detailing is carefully thought through, the nearer one approaches to the present who had just gobbled up nearly half a whether the structure is a fitting and pleas- day, the more absurd, politicized, preten- billion dollars in exchange for this eight- ant abode for the human spirit. The new tious, inane, and pathological it becomes. storey monstrosity. The atmosphere in Whitney is conspicuous for its thought- Item: Self Portrait/Cutting, by Catherine the room was festive, impatient, self- lessness. It was not designed so much as Opie, a color photograph of the naked conscious. “This is a happening event— it was assembled or agglomerated. The back of Miss Opie. The “cutting” in ques- isn’t it?” was one unasked question. “We’re many outdoor patios and cantilevered tion is scalpel-incised bleeding stick fig- important—aren’t we?” was another. “plazas” have a bleak institutional feel, ures of two women holding hands along My friend and I gave the presentation a more suitable to a correctional facility or a with a house and a cloud. The photograph, miss and headed up to the top of the build- fantasy by Piranesi than an art museum. a wall label helpfully explains, depicts ing, where America Is Hard to See, the (Piano’s press release says they function Opie’s “dream for a lesbian domestic rela- Whitney’s inaugural exhibition—more as a “decompression chamber between tionship,” but the “fresh wounds suggest than 600 works by some 400 artists, all street and museum,” In fact, as one wit ‘the contradictions within that wish.’” drawn from the vast repository that is the observed, they really function as invita- Of the more than 600 objects on view Whitney collection—began. tions to suicide by jumping.) in this inaugural show, I’d estimate 580 The first thing that attracted my notice There is one attractive aspect, or are on the level of Opie’s sad feat of exhi- was the flooring. Throughout the exhibi- prospect, attending the new Whitney, but bitionism. Consider Untitled, by David tion space, the floors are seven-inch un - it’s God’s work, not Piano’s. I mean the Hammons. The list of ingredients tells finished pine. “Does Renzo Piano have a views of the Hudson River that the build- you all you need to know: “Human hair, brother in the lumber business?” I won- ing commands. They are spectacular. wire, polyester film, sledge hammer, dered. In a high-traffic space like an art They are best seen not from the vertigi- plastic beads, string, metal food tin, panty museum, the floors take a beating. The nous outside spaces but from the corridor- hose, leather, tea bags, and feathers.” Whitney’s floors will be trashed in no like spaces on several floors that are Now multiply that by 580. time. The museum folks know this, how- segregated from the exhibition spaces by This is not art. It is the end of art. ever, for I was told that they have tucked a partition. Stand with your back to the Rather, it is the end of the art world’s in loads of spare planks against the evil partition and gaze out through the huge enfranchisement as the guardians and day—it will be along soon!—when the windows and from certain spots you can transmitters of art. The Whitney, like floors need to be replaced. see neither the building nor its contents, a most major cultural institutions today, “What is essential in a work of architec- double blessing. serves to mock, undermine, and besmirch ture,” Immanuel Kant once observed, “is An art museum is by definition a re - the culture it was created to cherish. The the product’s adequacy for a certain use.” pository for works of art, and the signif- Whitney, again like most museums today, I wish that Renzo Piano had attended icance of Piano’s new Whitney cannot be poaches on the prestige of art to purvey a to this simple but important injunction. understood apart from the objects and species of anti-art fueled partly by money, He has not. The Whitney Museum, like activities it was fabricated (“designed” is partly by snobbery. In this sense, the so much else he has produced, is con- too strong a word) to contain. The ghastly gigantic, expensive failure that is Renzo spicuous for two things: 1) anonymous, truth is that when one considers what the Piano’s new building is paradoxically a convention-hall space combined with a Whitney is all about, Piano’s building success, for it is the perfect objective cor- shocking lack of attention to detail and can be seen to have a certain perverse relative of the pretentious confect of art- 2) shoddy workmanship. The façade of appropriateness. The institution is called world snobbery, lavish though pointless the new Whitney is clad in whitish gray “The Whitney Museum of American expenditure, and aesthetic nullity it was enamel-covered steel intersected with a Art,” but it would be better called “The created to encompass. The irony is that huge block of concrete through its Whitney Museum of Pretentious Gar - there is a vibrant and growing artistic cul- midriff. The steel will begin rusting in a bage Masquerading as Art.” Like so many ture in this country. It lives on in the old few years (does he have a cousin in the art museums these days, especially those way, in out-of-the-way ateliers, studios, steel-plate business?). The massive con- art museums devoted mostly or entirely and schools, where the spirit, traditions, crete is already cracking and showing to contemporary art, the Whit ney is con- and techniques of the masters are passed signs of deterioration. (It is curious that cerned only incidentally with art in any down from teacher to student. But you Piano doesn’t do better with concrete: He traditional sense. The origins of the Whit - won’t catch any glimpses of that at the worked with Louis Kahn, a master of that ney date back to the 1930s, but by the Whitney. They’re too busy heralding the material, in the 1960s.) time it arrived on Madison Avenue in latest art-world poseur and fundraising The lack of attention to detail is sys- Marcel Breuer’s neo-totalitarian cube, celebrity event to look in on the real life of temic. What a pleasure it is to walk into a the place of the Whitney in the metabo- American art.

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Film A Right Quadrangle

ROSS DOUTHAT

RUE confessions. I first read Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, in which the willful Bathsheba Everdene is Tcourted by three suitors and chooses Carey Mulligan and Tom Sturridge in Far from the Madding Crowd wrongly and then right, when I was in tenth grade—Mrs. Blumberg’s English no respite between them. And the brevity mouthed, embodying his character’s class, Salud!—and smitten, persistently does create some problems: Since Hardy’s weaknesses well enough but without the and unsuccessfully, with a close friend in plot depends so much on coincidences, sexual charge that explains Bathsheba’s the class. I was not the only one; another missed connections, and sudden rever- swoon. Mulligan, taking on yet another friend had a crush on her as well. But she sals of fortune, piling them all so close literary icon after her role as Daisy in Baz had recently starting dating yet another, together throws the story’s sheer unlikeli- Luhrmann’s Gatsby, is much better: She slicker character—a junior, part of a ness into rather sharp relief. gives us a proto-feminist Bathsheba, cooler crowd, and for a time the embodi- But this is cinema, where a perfect set doughty and independent until the fall ment of everything I hated about this piece is worth a lot more than a granular into Troy and aged by self-loathing cruel, unjust world. realism, and the new version—scripted afterward. She’s well matched with As I said, we were reading Hardy, and by David Nicholls, directed by Thomas Schoenaerts, who is slow-burning and it didn’t escape my attention (though I Vinterberg—does its set pieces, its fires somehow beautifully large; only his face was grateful when another friend, female and storms and shootings, very well in- is slightly wrong, too essentially Belgian and sensitive to my plight, pointed it out) deed. The first one is the reversal of for- (the actor’s nationality) for a role that’s that there were certain parallels between tune with which the story opens: Gabriel, supposed to be organically English. his love quadrangle and my own situa- played by Matthias Schoenaerts, is a ris- The best is Sheen, though: His Bold - tion. The object of my affection was (of ing sheep farmer when he first proposes wood is a figure of tremendous pathos, course) Bathsheba; her beau of the mo - to the young Bathsheba, but she has barely the most Shakespearean of the story’s ment was the rakish Sergeant Troy, who turned him down when he loses his flock parts—something I didn’t realize as a takes her heart and hand unworthily; off a cliff—a moonlit nightmare shot teenager, when I obnoxiously saw him my male friend was the stolid, hapless from above, the shepherd racing desper- (and even more obnoxiously cast my Bold wood, whose unrequited love for ately uphill, too late. friend) as just another needless obstacle to Bathsheba drives him to extremes. And With that, he’s reduced to a hireling, True Love. But he’s not the obstacle, he’s I was—well, who else could I be but while she suddenly comes into a lucky the example, because his love is so true it Gabriel Oak, as solid and deep-rooted as inheritance—her late uncle’s house and triumphs over sanity itself. And Sheen his name, who loves Bathsheba first, farm, deep in Hardy’s Wessex, the fic- plays him, pitch-perfectly, as a man sell - serves her faithfully for years, and in the tionalized southwest England, where the ing both his dignity and his self- end (spoiler, if your English teacher didn’t rhythms of the land still hold the dark awareness piece by piece, clinging to assign it) wins her as his own. satanic mills at bay. By chance (those the hope that before he’s sold everything Reader, I didn’t marry her. But the book coincidences!), the itinerant Oak finds he’ll get his heart’s desire in return. that I read my own high-school melo - his way to her again, lending a hand in a The movie’s landscape is visually but drama into still has a place in my heart, granary fire and then taking charge of not culturally rich; the film does not even and so I’m not speaking as an entirely first her sheep and then the farm entire. try to go as deep into rural folkways as the unbiased viewer when I say that the new Meanwhile Boldwood (Michael Sheen), novel. But it gives us a few true Wessex adaptation, with Carey Mulligan as Bath - her wealthy-landowner neighbor, courts mo ments, among them a lamplit dinner sheba, casts a potent two-hour spell. her elaborately and unsuccessfully; with the farmhands and their mistress, At that running time, this Far from the then the dashing redcoated Troy (Tom where Boldwood shows up as an uninvited Madding Crowd is an hour shorter than Sturridge) swoops in, seducing her with guest and then is coaxed (quite willingly) the teeming late-’60s version with Julie his bladework (no euphemism intended) by the crowd of yeomanry into singing an Christie and Alan Bates, and there will be and making her his wife. old ballad. Bathsheba, more reluctantly, fans of both the novel and that adaptation Their union is obviously foredoomed, joins him, and they harmonize briefly. For who find this one too swift and stream- but perhaps even more so in the movie a moment, more fleeting even than a high- lined, too much of a CliffsNotes version, than in the book, because Sturridge is school English class, he has exactly what FOX SEARCHLIGHT a series of suddenly bursting crises with the cast’s weak link—pallid and mush- he wants. And that’s all he ever gets.

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Happy Warrior BY DAVID HARSANYI The Regulated Dream

T was James Breslow Adams who popularized the you haven’t yet heard, it’s gone missing. While some con- phrase “American dream” in his 1931 book Epic of servatives believe our best days came and went in some America, defining it as “a dream of a land in which morally pristine bygone era, most progre ssives and pop- I life should be better and richer and fuller for every ulists—people who have been gaining ground in political man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or life—know the precise date when the American dream was achievement.” Considering how pliable and sweeping this eradicated: January 20, 1981. idea is, it’s not surprising that the term has become a political From the 1930s to the late 1970s, “as gross domestic platitude used to bolster every crackpot idea floating in the product went up, wages increased more or less across the ether of American discourse. board,” Warren and de Blasio argue in the Washington Post. Which brings me to progressive favorites Elizabeth “As the economic pie got bigger, pretty much everyone was Warren and Bill de Blasio, who recently wrote a Washington getting a little more,” and the United States was able to Post op-ed detailing exactly how they plan to revive the create a mighty middle class. American dream. There they offered a host “Then in the early 1980s, a new theory of ideas and said, “Rebuilding our middle swept the country . . .” class won’t be easy, but real change rarely Scary stuff. According to the Left, during is. It’s time to be bold.” What blinds the past 35 years, the top 10 percent of The most striking thing about a progres- Americans greedily devoured the entire sive proposal to resuscitate the American people to growth of income and left the rest of us dream isn’t that it embraces theories that picking up the scraps. For 25 years, a few would constrict economic growth, or that it this truth, as people squirrelled away trillions while the places the bureaucratic state at the center of you might rest of us were left to buy preposterously moral and social life, or even that it peddles useful smartphones that connected us to the the zero-sum idea that the poor can be fed by imagine, is world, eat a more eclectic selection of nu - eating the rich. No, it’s that the agenda is the tritious foods than our grandparents ever antithesis of bold. Politically speaking, it’s ideology. knew existed, and live annoyingly long “easy,” risk-averse, tedious, and small. lives. We, the rest of America—“90 percent So I ask: What happened to progressives? If the American of Americans,” for those of you who struggle with num- dream can encompass anything at all—from a shining city on bers—got nothing. “Zip. Zero,” the duo informs us. a hill to equality before the law—how did Warren and de Does anyone really believe that the American middle Blasio end up with “Make work pay by increasing the min- class, in general, is worse off now than it was in the imum wage” as their lead item? Where are the Upton 1970s or even the 1950s? One of the commonly agreed- Sinclairs and Margaret Sangers? Where are the big ideas? The upon meanings of the American dream is that parents trust-busting and the utopia molded by eugenics? How are we will see their children do better than they did. Does the going to blow up this gilded age acting like a bunch of pikers? mayor of New York City really believe that kids in his One way for progressives to sell voters on their imagining town were better off in 1975 than they are in 2015? I of the American dream is to try to make the United States imagine that deep down he understands that in every seem correspondingly small. Convince voters that they’re area of human existence worth measuring, we are better living in a nation lorded over by oligarchs. Convince them to off than our parents. think more about ideology than about their everyday exis- What blinds people to this truth, as you might imagine, is tence. Progressives want you to vote like you spend your ideology. And in the case of these two, that ideology is time selling apples on corners rather than driving affordable unionism. If only we had the lunch-pail ethic of the 1950s, and increasingly safe vehicles to the local Applebee’s for a when Americans made stuff! You know, when we led the reasonably priced meal. kind of lives people like Elizabeth Warren and Bill de George Carlin famously quipped that the “reason they Blasio believe might be delightful for your children but call it the American dream is because you have to be asleep probably not so much for their own. A world where Ameri - to believe it.” The few of us who still believe we live in a cans can be judged by pay scales and seniority rather than meritocracy and have faith in human adaptability disagree. their ability or achievement. But it is, perhaps, simply human nature to believe we have it Yes, there are those who have been left behind. Society has worse than our parents—to romanticize the past and under- its struggles. This is not unique to our time or our place. rate our own lot in life. Neither is our anxiety about the world. Human beings have Voters are incessantly told to embrace policies that will long worried about economic unraveling or runaway tech- allow them to recapture the American dream—because, if nology or environmental disasters. But nothing should ter- rify Americans more than politicians and technocrats who Mr. Harsanyi is a senior editor of the Federalist. think they know what your dreams should look like.

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GENERAL JOHN M. KEANE, U.S. ARMY, RETIRED R5 "#,'(65 (-.#./. 5 ),5." 5./35) 5, R5 "#,'(65 ()&&1))5)/(.#)( R5 ,/-. 65),"'5(#0 ,-#.35(5Ļ 5 ),! 585 ,-"&&5)/(.#)( R5 ),' ,5
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THE LYNDE AND HARRY BRADLEY FOUNDATION WILL PRESENT THE AWARDS AT A CEREMONY ON JUNE 3 AT THE JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS. Founded in 1985, e Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is devoted to strengthening American democratic capitalism and the institutions, principles and values that sustain and nurture it. Its programs support limited, competent government; a dynamic marketplace for economic, intellectual and cultural activity; and a vigorous defense, at home and abroad, of American ideas and institutions. Recognizing that responsible self-government depends on enlightened citizens and informed public opinion, the Foundation supports scholarly studies and academic achievement.