SECONDABOUT THOUGHTSMARY #METOO EBERSTADT

JUNE 25, 2018 $5.99 THE NEW VIRTUE POLICE • KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON on Heretics & Etiquette • JAMES CAMPBELL meets Lionel Shriver

WEEKLYSTANDARD.COM Contents June 25, 2018 • Volume 23, Number 40

2 The Scrapbook A man-hating op-ed, a source close to the reporter, & more 5 Casual Christine Rosen remembers the ’80s 6 Editorials The Summit of Our Fears • The Pimp and the Primary 9 Comment Hed Goes Here BY FRED BARNES France learns a hard lesson about immigration BY CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL 5 The assassination conspiracy theories that just won’t die BY PHILIP TERZIAN The struggle to drain the swamp will never cease BY JAY COST Articles

15 A Time of Reckoning BY MARY EBERSTADT Second thoughts about the sexual revolution

17 The IT Guy and Wasserman Schultz BY JENNA LIFHITS Allegations of fraud, theft, bigamy, and violence surround Imran Awan

19 Deferring to Trump on Trade BY HALEY BYRD Congress could in theory have a greater say on tariffs. Don’t hold your breath. 6 21 Commodification, Where Is Thy Sting? BY STEPHEN MILLER The world needs more of it, not less Features

22 Heretics & Etiquette BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON The social-media generation is the most status-obsessed since the ancien régime

26 The Lion of South London BY JAMES CAMPBELL Lionel Shriver does not want to write books in which people only say the right thing

31 As the E.U. Weakens BY DOMINIC GREEN The nation-state reconsidered 19 Books & Arts

34 Decline . . . BY PHILIP DELVES BROUGHTON From crumbling infrastructure to broken meritocracy, Steven Brill sees problems

35 . . . and Division BY JAMES BOWMAN The decisions that led to today’s heightened partisanship

38 From Ironic to Iconic BY CHRISTOPHER ATAMIAN How Takashi Murakami unites kitsch, mockery, and tradition

40 Understanding the ‘Beautiful Game’ BY ALAN JACOBS The logic of the world’s most popular sport

41 Ragtime to Riches BY JOHN CHECK A musician’s knack for covering songs in vintage styles led to a YouTube powerhouse

43 Heist in Heels BY JOHN PODHORETZ All-woman crew boosts bling in latest Ocean’s caper

22 44 Parody The other summit giveaway COVER BY DAVE CLEGG THE SCRAPBOOK Anthony Bourdain, 1956-2018 ny assessment of Anthony Bour- the country that made him famous A dain’s life, his suicide notwith- and wealthy and he never engaged standing, is likely to be tinged with in the sort of anti-patriotic tut-tut- jealousy. We suppose someone had ting one sees from many famous to get paid to be a world traveler and Americans abroad. The writer James bon vivant, but did Bourdain have to Gleick reports that he appeared on be so good at it? At a minimum, few a panel discussion with Bourdain in people have a constitution that can Australia where an audience mem- alternately subsist on gallons of rich ber asked whether the 9/11 attacks bone marrow and spicy Asian street weren’t America’s own fault. While food cooked in hygienically mysteri- Gleick was mulling over what to say, ous circumstances. Bourdain immediately responded America’s favorite food writer was with string of profanities directed at brusque and opinionated and, ­perhaps cooks regard these ­members of the the questioner ending with “and the too often, offensive. But there was dining public—and their Hezbollah- horse you rode in on.” much to admire in a man who refused like splinter faction, the vegans—as Imaginative, ferociously curious, to abide mediocrity or bow to the dic- enemies of everything that’s good and humane in the widest sense, cool tates of cultural fashion. The 1999 New decent in the human spirit.” but never pretentious—Anthony Yorker essay that made him famous Bourdain was not unaware of Bourdain was one of those rare celeb- declared of vegetarians that “serious America’s shortcomings, but he loved rities who was justly celebrated. ♦

The (Unruly) Streets “People are starting to ask, ‘Maybe Washington Post is a strong contender we need a Rudy Giuliani?’ ” one resi- for Dumbest Op-Ed Ever Written. of San Francisco dent tells the Times. Giuliani, readers The article, by Suzanna Danuta Wal- will remember, saved New York by ters—according to her byline a “pro- bucking the doctrinaire liberalism of fessor of sociology and director of the the city’s political and cultural elite and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Stud- directing its police force to, you know, ies Program at Northeastern Univer- arrest people for breaking the law. sity” and “editor of the gender studies The primary reason more of San journal Signs”—is headlined “Why Francisco’s concerned citizens don’t Can’t We Hate Men?” simply plump for the GOP—such is The question is rhetorical. She the impression of the Times reporter, can and does hate men, judging from anyway—is Donald Trump. Nobody her contribution to the Post. Walters’s Awaiting their Hizzoner wants to be associated with that reasoning goes something like this: guy. “It’s hard,” says one resident, Although it’s true that not every male hings have gotten bad in Cali- “because people don’t want to iden- on earth is a bad person, she doesn’t T fornia. So bad, in fact, as the tify as Republican, per se. But then like to hear feminists qualify their New York Times recently reported, they look around.” arguments with the statement that all that some not insignificant num- Irving Kristol famously quipped men aren’t bad. Why? Because most ber of San Franciscans are actually that a neoconservative is a liberal men are really really terrible. thinking of . . . voting Republican. who got mugged by reality. Maybe Or something like that. Anyway, The streets are filthy, crime is on the a San Francisco Republican is just a we’ll spare readers the trouble and skip uptick, and government services are Democrat who got mugged. ♦ to the end: in decline. Add to that the city’s bur- geoning homeless population—an So men, if you really are #WithUs and excess generated at least in part by #MeThree would like us to not hate you for all the millennia of woe you have produced California’s generous welfare programs e’ve read some dumb and sub- and benefited from, start with this: and the state’s year-round beautiful W standard political pieces in Lean out so we can actually just stand weather—and you begin to think of our day—we may even have gener- up without being beaten down. Pledge

New York City in the early 1990s. ated some—but a June 10 piece in the to vote for feminist women only. Don’t BOTTOM: / GETTY; JOSH EDELSON / AFP GETTY MORRIS / BLOOMBERG PAUL DAVID TOP:

2 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power. We got this. And please know that your crocodile tears won’t be wiped away by us anymore. We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Femi- nism. And win.

You may wonder how the professor’s demand that men step aside and let women win—a demand prem­ ised, isn’t it, on the surely anathema sup- position that men are stronger?—is supposed The illustrious to further the cause Professor Walters of feminism. If so, that’s because you’re not a tenured academic and director of a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. ♦ For Sale: Local Journalism, Like New ar be it from The Scrapbook to F judge the philanthropic impulses of the extremely wealthy, but the recent announcement of a $20 million gift to the City University of New York struck us as a bit rich. The money, which will fund the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, was the gift of Craig Newmark, described by the New York Times as “the Craigslist­ entrepre- neur who arguably forced the news- paper industry to change its business prices, a decrease in circulation, conference, seems unlikely. But he’s model after his website put a dent in and . . . a decrease in display-ad rates.” clearly developed the philanthro- the lucrative classified ads business.” Newmark’s network of free pist’s taste for seeing his Well, everything is “arguable,” we sites, the Economist noted, name attached promi- suppose. But Craigslist’s free ad list- “has probably done more nently to his acts of gener- ings did far more than “put a dent” than anything to destroy osity: The newly endowed in the “lucrative” business of classi- newspapers’ income.” CUNY program will now fied ads. Newmark’s website, launched Yet suddenly he views be known as the Craig in 1996, was the first horseman of himself as journalism’s sav- Newmark Graduate School the Internet apocalypse that gut- ior. “In this time,” he told of Journalism. ted the newspaper industry. It extin- the Times, “when trustwor- “The way you stand up guished many small, local newspapers thy news is under attack, these days is by putting Craig Newmark that relied on classified ad revenue somebody has to stand your money where your to stay afloat. The company’s trade- up.” Newmark claims he “developed mouth is, and that’s what I’ve done,” mark hippie purple peace sign not- a serious interest in journalism about he remarked humbly. That’s great for withstanding, a Harvard Business 10 years ago, when he started attend- the non-journalist academics who’ll School study found that Craigslist ing journalism conferences,” which, get sleek new offices at CUNY. But

TOP: VIA YOUTUBE; BOTTOM: VIA YOUTUBE; TOP: J.D. LASICA led to “an increase in subscription if you’ve ever attended a journalism we would have preferred to see some

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 3 of that dough channeled to the many decades of precedent and named Fox small-market newspapers that are on News’s James Rosen a “co-conspira- life-support. Or, failing that, perhaps tor” in an espionage case. a fund for out-of-work reporters. He Unlike Watkins, the journalists in could put his name on that, too: Call these cases were doing their jobs with www.weeklystandard.com it “Craig’s Kids.” ♦ consummate professionalism. Pulitzer- Stephen F. Hayes, Editor in Chief winner and former Times reporter Richard Starr, Editor James Risen, who himself successfully Fred Barnes, Robert Messenger, Executive Editors Sources Close Christine Rosen, Managing Editor fought a court battle to avoid being Peter J. Boyer, Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Matt Labash, to the Reporter forced to testify in an espionage case, National Correspondents here was gnashing of teeth last wrote an op-ed in the paper about the Jonathan V. Last, Digital Editor Barton Swaim, Opinion Editor T week when it emerged that the Watkins incident. The headline: “If Adam Keiper, Books & Arts Editor Kelly Jane Torrance, Deputy Managing Editor Trump administration had seized Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Eric Felten, Mark Hemingway, the emails and phone records of New Thank Obama.” ♦ John McCormack, Tony Mecia, Philip Terzian, Michael Warren, Senior Writers York Times national security reporter David Byler, Jenna Lifhits, Alice B. Lloyd, Staff Writers Ali Watkins in an investigation of for- Rachael Larimore, Online Managing Editor mer Senate Intelligence Committee Only in ’Merica Hannah Yoest, Social Media Editor Ethan Epstein, Associate Editor aide James A. Wolfe. hile much of America learned Chris Deaton, Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editors Priscilla M. Jensen, Assistant Editor Wolfe had been W this week that Washington, Adam Rubenstein, Assistant Opinion Editor leaking like a busted D.C., has a professional hockey team, Andrew Egger, Haley Byrd, Reporters Holmes Lybrand, Fact Checker gasket to Watkins The Scrapbook was reminded that San Sophia Buono, Editorial Assistant Philip Chalk, Design Director and is accused of Diego still has a Major League Base- Barbara Kyttle, Design Assistant lying about it to ball team. At the Braves-Padres game Contributing Editors Claudia Anderson, Max Boot, Joseph Bottum, Justice Department at Petco Park, caught on video that Tucker Carlson, Matthew Continetti, Jay Cost, Terry Eastland, Noemie Emery, Joseph Epstein, investigators. quickly became social-media famous, David Frum, David Gelernter, Reuel Marc Gerecht, The initial out- Braves outfielder Ender Inciarte Michael Goldfarb, Daniel Halper, Ali Watkins Mary Katharine Ham, Brit Hume, Thomas Joscelyn, rage, however, was popped a foul ball into the stands. The Frederick W. Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, Yuval Levin, Tod Lindberg, Micah Mattix, muted when it emerged that the wun- Victorino Matus, P. J. O’Rourke, John Podhoretz, derkind reporter had had a three-year Irwin M. Stelzer, Charles J. Sykes, Stuart Taylor Jr. affair with the 57-year-old Wolfe, who William Kristol, Editor at Large is three decades older. The incident MediaDC Ryan McKibben, Chairman calls to mind a legendary episode Stephen R. Sparks, President & Chief Operating Officer involving the late New York Times edi- Kathy Schaffhauser, Chief Financial Officer Mark Walters, Chief Revenue Officer tor Abe Rosenthal, who found out that Jennifer Yingling, Audience Development Officer David Lindsey, Chief Digital Officer a reporter had been sleeping with a Matthew Curry, Director, Email Marketing Philadelphia politician she was sup- Alex Rosenwald, Senior Director of Strategic Communications Nicholas H. B. Swezey, Vice President, Advertising posed to be covering. He fired her on T. Barry Davis, Senior Director, Advertising Gabby DiMarco gives Padres fans their Jason Roberts, Digital Director, Advertising the spot and silenced the newsroom by Andrew Kaumeier, Advertising Operations Manager declaring, “I don’t care if you [exple- most memorable moment of the season. Brooke McIngvale, Manager, Marketing Services Advertising inquiries: 202-293-4900 tive] an elephant, just so long as you Subscriptions: 1-800-274-7293 don’t cover the circus” for the paper. The Weekly Standard (ISSN 1083-3013), a division of Clarity Media Group, The Trump administration’s seizure is published weekly (except one week in March, one week in June, one of Watkins’s records is nonetheless week in August, and one week in December) at 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, troubling. And it seems to be following DC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Weekly Standard, P.O. Box 85409, Big Sandy, TX 75755-9612. For in the footsteps of the Obama admin- subscription customer service in the United States, call 1-800-274-7293. istration in this regard, though far less For new subscription orders, please call 1-800-274-7293. Subscribers: Please send new subscription orders and changes of address to The aggressively, to be sure. The Obama Weekly Standard, P.O. Box 85409, Big Sandy, TX 75755-9612. Please include your latest magazine mailing label. Allow 3 to 5 weeks for administration’s ardent leak-hunting arrival of first copy and address changes. Canadian/foreign orders require led to its seizing phone records from ball was caught by Padres fan Gabby additional postage and must be paid in full prior to commencement of service. Canadian/foreign subscribers may call 1-386-597-4378 for a number of AP bureaus in 2012. As DiMarco—in her beer cup. Somehow subscription inquiries. American Express, Visa/MasterCard payments accepted. Cover price, $5.99. Back issues, $5.99 (includes postage and the AP reported at the time, “The most of the beer stayed in the cup even handling). Send letters to the editor to The Weekly Standard, 1152 15th exact number of journalists who used after the ball landed in it, so DiMarco Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005-4617. For a copy of The Weekly Standard Privacy Policy, visit www.weeklystandard.com or write to the phone lines during that period is did the only rational thing she could Customer Service, The Weekly Standard, 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, unknown but more than 100 journal- do: She drank it. Washington, DC 20005. Copyright 2018, Clarity Media Group. All rights reserved. No material in The Weekly ists work in the offices whose phone And for that brief moment, we were Standard may be reprinted without permission of the copyright owner. records were targeted.” That wasn’t the absolutely certain that America is not The Weekly Standard is a registered

IMAGES VIA YOUTUBE worst of it: Obama’s DoJ broke with in decline. ♦ trademark of Clarity Media Group.

4 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 CASUAL

believe they were the coolest people I’d Wonder Years ever meet. She had lots of heavy black eyeliner and dyed purple hair and wore scuffed Doc Martens. I can’t remember round the corner from my summer camp when I first stumbled what he looked like because I couldn’t house the sequel to the into Commander Salamander. After stop staring at his Circle Jerks T-shirt hit movie Wonder Woman a day and a half stuffed into an over- and feeling a vague embarrassment. is being filmed. This is heated van with my fellow campers, I They were real-life versions of some- Aa bigger deal than you might think wanted some time to myself, so I told thing I could only dream of becoming given that I live in Washington, D.C., the rest of my group I would meet myself: They were punk. which countless times (and appropri- them at the nearby public library in I lost track of time as I looked at ately) has been called Hollywood for an hour. Wandering down Wisconsin the weird hats and racks of jewelry, the ugly people. When celebrities come Avenue looking for something to eat, I dark glittery makeup and Manic Panic through town to promote their pet heard the unmistakable sound of the hair dye, the leopard print bags and causes on Capitol Hill, it’s newswor- Dead Kennedys. It was coming from endless rows of T-shirts. I wanted it thy, and you would be surprised how a shop whose cluttered windows and all, and for the first time in my young often jaded policy wonks turn into funky signage differed markedly from life I understood what it meant to sycophantic fan-girls around even covet. Alas, the only thing I could the hoariest reality TV star. afford was a small Commander Sala- It’s no wonder, then, that sight- mander pin—neon orange with the ings of Wonder Woman (the actress store logo and a smattering of little Gal Gadot) have been breathlessly black salamanders—which I imme- reported on my neighborhood list- diately pinned to my backpack. serv, and nearby restaurants boast of Within a year I had shaved off half serving her dinner. Gadot’s costars my hair, thinking my asymmetrical Kristen Wiig and Chris Pine have style looked new wave when in fact supposedly been spotted at the I resembled a confused escapee from nearby organic taqueria. Neigh- A Flock of Seagulls. I was sternly borhood busybodies might bicker rebuked by school officials for my about parking restrictions and traf- “unladylike” appearance. fic disruptions from the shoot, but Eventually I outgrew the weird every last one of them would start hair and my punk phase (although I grinning like an idiot if they hap- still own a pair of motorcycle boots pened to bump into one of the stars. the bistros and boring clothing stores reminiscent of that shopgirl’s Doc The movie, titled Magic Hour, is to that dominated the rest of the block. Martens). Commander Salamander be set in the 1980s (the last decade dur- To a kid from Florida who attended closed in 2010, and the space it once ing which my neighborhood could be a strict Christian fundamentalist occupied is now a bank. considered even remotely hip), and school, walking into Commander Sala- I could only peer through the win- the producers have made the shoot as mander was akin to entering an alter- dow of the re-created store, but what authentic as possible by re-creating native universe. I tried not to look I saw—lots of bad track-lighting some of the 1980s storefronts. shocked by the “Satan is my home- and aggressively primary colors— Which is how I found myself once boy” T-shirts and the vinyl bras and screamed 1980s. When it’s completed, again standing in front of the Com- hot pink go-go boots. I attempted to the set will no doubt provide a suit- mander Salamander store. act nonchalant while examining pins able backdrop for the lissome Wonder Founded by a flame-haired propri- that said things like “Too fast to live. Woman and her costars, but it will lack etress named Wendy Ezrailson in the Too young to die.” I had only recently the edgy weirdness of the original. Per- 1970s, Commander Salamander was found one or two likeminded friends haps that’s why seeing the Commander for a time the locus of the punk scene at school with whom I passed around Salamander logo again after all these in Washington. Ezrailson hosted a like samizdat cassette tapes filled with years prompted more melancholy than party for Andy Warhol to celebrate alternative music. Meanwhile, the Manic Panic. the launch of Interview magazine, and adults in my life still thought I listened That’s the thing about nostalgia. celebrities like Cher were known to to Amy Grant. Like an ill-considered haircut, it’s best shop there when they were in town. The young man and woman work- experienced from a distance. I was 11 years old and passing ing that day had just the right amount through Washington on my way to of new wave insouciance to make me Christine Rosen

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 5 EDITORIALS The Summit of Our Fears

he June 12 meeting in Singapore between Donald regime imprisons entire families when even one member Trump and North Korean dictator Kim ­Jong‑un is suspected of a thought-crime. “I learned he’s a very tal‑ T has generated a bewildering array of responses from ented man,” announced Trump. observers around the world. These responses do not fall The verbal follies have only continued in the days along predictable ideological lines. Back and forth across since the meeting. After he landed at Andrews Air Force the ideological span, we find everything from cautious opti‑ Base, he tweeted: “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat mism to outrage. from North Korea.” That alone warns And went on: “Presi‑ against confident pro‑ dent Obama said that nouncements about North Korea was our what the dialogue biggest and most dan‑ between Trump and gerous problem. No Kim may produce. longer—sleep well We’re reminded, too, tonight!” As if a single that this is far from the sit -down were all it first time an American took to tame a totali‑ president has engaged tarian regime that with a dictator and his worships its twisted regime, often in the leader as a god. face of sharp criticism. There were sub‑ Dwight Eisenhower stantive follies, too. hosted Joseph Stalin’s The administration loyal subordinate Nikita had insisted that there Khrushchev at Camp would be no negotia‑ Kim Jong-un in Singapore, June 12 David. Ronald Reagan tions until Pyongyang received Mikhail Gorbachev at the White House when the took—as Vice President Mike Pence put it—“credible, ver‑ Soviet Union’s gulags were very much operational. Richard ifiable, and concrete steps toward denuclearization.” The Nixon visited Mao Zedong, a man responsible for the deaths Kim regime has taken no such steps. The North does claim of 60 million people. it destroyed its main nuclear facility, the one at Punggye- None of this justifies Trump’s sitting alongside Kim ri, but the site may well have fallen into disuse. Journalists Jong -un as though the latter were a legitimate leader rather were allowed to film an explosion, but that is all the verifi‑ than an international hoodlum and a murderer. Nor is it cation Trump got. beyond dispute that these earlier American presidents were The United States, meanwhile, made a significant con‑ right to treat the leaders of evil regimes with outward def‑ cession: the cessation of joint military exercises with South erence. But it does suggest that presidents are sometimes Korea. Trump, using Pyongyang’s own propagandistic lan‑ called upon to glad-hand men whom they know to be guage by calling the drills “very provocative,” surprised guilty of grave crimes. both South Korea and the Pentagon with this concession— In sharp contrast to previous presidents, however, admittedly a nonbinding announcement. He dismissed the Trump has gone out of his way to exacerbate the already importance of these exercises by calling them “tremen‑ deeply vexed symbolism of the meeting. Earlier presi‑ dously expensive,” but that is one reason Kim wants them dents were aware of the need to speak carefully, knowing to stop. Every time we run a ground drill, every time a U.S. that their adversaries would scrutinize their every word or South Korean jet flies a sortie, the North runs a recipro‑ in search of weaknesses to exploit. Trump blathered about cal operation. These are painfully expensive for a govern‑ Kim as though he were holding a campaign rally. “Great ment that has no money. These war games are in essence personality and very smart,” the president said about a man another sanction on North Korea, there as part of the max‑

who murdered his uncle and half-brother, a man whose imum -pressure policy. Lifting them eases the pressure. / AFP GETTY LOEB SAUL

6 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 Trump made a similar case regarding the U.S. troop Korean rapprochement as an excuse to circumvent sanc‑ presence in South Korea. The troops will not be coming tions on Pyongyang even more flagrantly than they already home now, he said, in an interview with Fox News’s Bret do. Other rogue states will conclude they, too, should Baier on Air Force One after the talks. But, he added: “I acquire nuclear weapons so that they, too, can demand would love to get the military out as soon as we can because meetings with the American president. Kim, if the his‑ it costs a lot of money and a lot of money for us. We don’t tory of engaging with thug regimes is any guide, will inter‑ get paid fully for that military which—you know—I’ll be pret his newfound parity with the American president as talking to South Korea about. But we have 32,000 soldiers license to engage in greater criminality—especially since in South Korea. I would like to get them home.” few words were said in Singapore about the human-rights The United States is the leader of the free world. We abuses in the North. created a global, rules-based order that redounds to the In the interview with Bret Baier, Trump turned a ques‑ benefit of no one so much as ourselves. The presence of tion about these horrific abuses into an excuse to praise U.S. troops in South Korea has been crucial to maintain‑ Kim Jong-un. “He’s a tough guy. Hey, when you take over ing the uneasy peace on the peninsula. It has allowed us a country, tough country, with tough people and you take it to extend America’s benevolent sphere of influence in East over from your father—I don’t care who you are, what you Asia and protect important allies and our access to their are, how much of an advantage you have. If you can do that markets. Whatever money we’d save by withdrawing our at 27 years old, you—I mean that’s 1 in 10,000 that could troops tomorrow would be spent many times over in the do that. . . . So he is a very smart guy.” long term, with an unstable North Korean regime and an We strongly suspect Kim Jong-un will do exactly what expansionist China. his father and grandfather did. Talks with the United The agreement that came out of the summit is, as such States will begin with sunshiney rhetoric. Once there are joint statements often are, bereft of substance. It doesn’t obligations for the North Koreans, they will not meet them even define “denuclearization.” For the United States, the and instead will accuse the United States of duplicity. And term means North Korea getting rid of its nuclear weap‑ eventually, whatever agreement our diplomats fashion with ons program in toto; for North Korea, it almost certainly their North Korean counterparts will fall apart, with the means the peninsula being rid of the U.S. presence. Kim regime stronger as a consequence of sanctions abey‑ But the agreement is not for that reason meaning‑ ance and further along in its quest for a workable nuclear- less. The agreement will have results—destructive ones. warhead delivery system. Time is on Kim’s side whenever China and Russia will almost certainly use the U.S.-North we ease the financial pressures on the North.

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 7 Yet, leaving aside its risible implementation, Trump’s some of those who chose him over Hillary Clinton in 2016 approach of meeting first with Kim and working out the correctly insist that the choice was no easy one: Clinton details later is not obviously worse than what this coun‑ was a determined foe of social conservatism on every point; try has tried for 30 years: working out the details first and she was a case study in corruption and mendacity; and she watching the various Kims flout them. It’s unlikely that was ready to drag her besmirched husband back into the Kim will denuclearize and decide he wants prosperity White House. more than he wants global conflict and absolute control But there were crucial differences between Clinton over his population. Unlikely but not impossible. For the and Trump on the question of character. Whereas Clin‑ moment, North Korea remains this nation’s biggest and ton’s personal failings were mostly ethical, Trump’s were most dangerous problem. We will not sleep well. ♦ mostly moral. Whereas she took morally abominable views on social questions but did not live by them, Trump took mostly traditional views but lived as a libertine. And whereas Clinton labored to pretend she had no moral shortcomings—her vice paying tribute to virtue—Trump flaunted his flaws, or at least hardly bothered to hide them. The Pimp and Republicans, and in turn the American electorate, chose Trump over Clinton. The question is whether that choice will lead Republicans and conservatives to soften or the Primary abandon their belief that the bearers of public office should live morally circumspect lives. That’s why this otherwise mong the hundreds of primary election results insignificant primary election in Nevada should trigger from around the country, this one didn’t even klaxons among elected Republicans, conservative activists, A make the topline news: Dennis Hof, the owner of and—especially—the leaders of religious organizations half a dozen brothels in Nevada, won a GOP primary, oust‑ who have embraced the Trump presidency as their own. ing an incumbent, for a seat in the state legislature. The It was one thing to argue in 2016 that Trump was bet‑ district leans Republican, so ter than the alternative, or even it’s very likely that a pimp will that, for all his flaws, he would win the general election. secure some worthy policy Hof is an outspoken and victories. The election of Hof colorful man, famous in part offers no such mitigating argu‑ for a tawdry HBO reality show ments. Voters chose him over set in his brothels. He seems a perfectly acceptable incum‑ to possess considerable talent bent Republican. And while it as a showman, and it should would be nice to dismiss Hof’s be noted that there’s nothing victory as a manifestation of illegal about Hof’s businesses; weirdness from a remote region his brothels operate in the only of the West long inured to legal area in the country—a few prostitution, Hof campaigned remote counties in Nevada— explicitly on national issues and where prostitution is legal. Dennis Hof at the Playboy Mansion in 2012 emphasized his (and Republi‑ Had Hof achieved as much can voters’) affinity for Trump. success in some other field, his candidacy wouldn’t raise This suggests that Hof aims to go beyond state poli‑ an eyebrow. tics. If he decides to use the statehouse as a springboard But prostitution, legal or not, will never be right. We’re to national office, the Democrats and the media can be open to various ideas about how the criminal-justice sys‑ counted on to use his campaign as a constant reminder of tem should penalize it, but the oldest profession is always Republican hypocrisy on moral issues. We hope that won’t and everywhere morally wrong. A society that normalizes happen, but if Hof doesn’t follow his Columbus into this it normalizes the exploitation of women for monetary gain. strange New World, other unprincipled men surely will. “It’s all because Donald Trump was the Christopher The sacredness of the traditional family, the reality Columbus for me,” Hof told the Associated Press. “He of fixed moral standards, the virtues of sincere religious found the way and I jumped on it.” Hof campaigned calling observance, and the importance of personal character— himself the “The Trump of Pahrump” (a town in Nevada). these are what an earlier generation perhaps mawkishly He even campaigned with sometime Trump adviser Roger called “family values.” But they are worth preserving all Stone, himself not unknown for sexual misadventures. the same, and conservatives who hide them under a bushel

No one is unaware of the president’s moral failings, and to win a few elections will lose far more than they gain. ♦ / FILMMAGIC ARCHULETA PAUL

8 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 COMMENT

FRED BARNES Trump Does It His Way

n February, then-secretary of state Some things have changed. His Another risky act only Trump was Rex Tillerson was informed by a learning curve has picked up. He’s on brave enough to commit was moving I North Korean envoy that Supreme the verge of becoming a foreign policy the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Leader Kim Jong-un wanted to meet president. But he’s still an outsider, Aviv to Jerusalem. He wisely did it on with President Trump. Tillerson which means he doesn’t fit the White short notice. The Palestinians favored accepting the invitation House mold and is stuck inside a sys- exploded, but got over it quickly. quickly. Trump didn’t. tem that limits his political creativity. Whoever introduced Trump to The president had been talking pri- His staff isn’t much help. They’re tweeting—perhaps it was his own vately for months about a one-on-one Republicans, after all. doing—was a genius. As a method of session with Kim, a former communication, it fits Trump’s per- administration official said. sonality. I can’t prove it, but I believe “North Korea is what he President Trump his saber-rattling tweets must have wanted to do.” But the pres- ‘now dictates to pushed Kim toward the tête-à-tête ident preferred to wait and with Trump. make preparations, while aides what he “Trump is primarily not staffed,” not engaging the State would like to see Gingrich says. The New York Times Department and White is horrified. He likes to begin every House staffs. happen, as opposed visit with a foreign leader with a per- He secretly assigned to seeking a range sonal meeting, just two leaders swap- Mike Pompeo, then CIA ping tales. That, rather than relying director, to handle the of views,’ according on White House aides or Washing- response to North Korea. It ton “experts,” is where he develops led to three results: Tiller- to the New York what Gingrich calls “his higher qual- son’s ouster, Pompeo’s ele- Times. Telling his ity of knowledge.” vation to secretary of state, Had the State Department been and Trump’s historic meet- underlings what running the show, the meeting with ing in Singapore last week to do is Kim would likely have been a formal with Kim. diplomatic production. Trump would The whole affair also hardly worrisome. have had less chance of stirring any shed light on the presi- rapport with Kim than Elizabeth dent’s style after 17 months in office. But think for a moment about the Warren does of convincing Cherokees The first event with Kim in Singa- end run with Pompeo, leaving Tiller- she’s one of them. pore was a face-to-face meeting with son and the foreign service slugs in Meanwhile, Trump has learned interpreters in the room but no staff. the dark. It was inspired. He assigned from the real experts how to func- “It was parallel to Reagan when he one of the few people in Washington tion in the world. Before the Kim met Mikhail Gorbachev at a lake he trusts to line up things for the love- meeting, Trump conferred at the house in Geneva” in 1985, says fest with Kim. The Trump-haters White House with South Korean Trump’s friend Newt Gingrich, the were stunned. president Moon Jae-in in May and former House speaker. Remember how efficiently Trump Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe That setting was conducive to got rid of the Paris climate accord, last week. His last meeting with Chi- friendly dialogue. So the Reagan-Gorby one of many decisions other presi- nese president Xi Jinping was in chit-chat was deemed a success. Trump dents would have been afraid to November 2017. After Xi met with wanted something like that to emerge make? The president recruited Scott Kim in May, he sent a message to between him and Kim and it came Pruitt, the EPA administrator, who Trump that Kim was looking for- close to happening. Now he’s bent on knows the downside of the treaty by ward to getting together with the working again outside the smothering heart. When Trump announced his president in Singapore. formalities of establishment Washing- decision to pull out, he was persua- Lots of presidents have complained ton. That’s establishment, NeverTrump sive. A press secretary couldn’t have about being tied down by the White D.C.—enemy territory. handled this job as well. House system and try to break outside

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 9 it. That causes leakers to step up to as predecessors may have done, peo- responsibility for the ship under the the challenge. In Trump’s case they’ve ple close to him say,” according to Dublin rules lay with the tiny island unloaded their worries to the New the Times. nation of Malta, also a member of York Times. “Rather than trusting the Telling his underlings what to do the E.U. people around him, Mr. Trump has is hardly worrisome. But Washing- Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph taken to working the phones more ton is a liberal town and the media Muscat accused Italy of breaking aggressively to seek counsel from out- rush to defend the status quo when international rules. Spain’s justice side voices,” the Times reported two it’s threatened by an interloper. minister Dolores Delgado warned days before Trump met with Kim. When outsiders intervene, their that Italy could be prosecuted under Trump “now dictates to aides what influence declines. It’s a binary prop- international law, and the new Span- he would like to see happen, as osition. On this front, Trump has ish premier, Pedro Sánchez, offered opposed to seeking a range of views, made the right choice. ♦ to welcome the migrants in Valencia as a goodwill gesture. But it was France’s politicians who really hit COMMENT ♦ CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL the roof. Gabriel Attal, spokesman for Macron’s presidential movement, called for more sensitive language on France learns a hard lesson such matters—“migrant” was a dehumanizing term and it would be about immigration far better to describe those on board the Aquarius as “people”—before ast week, France’s youthful and immigrants come in contact with is adding: “The line of the Italian gov- dapper president Emmanuel responsible for them. This is to keep ernment makes me want to puke.” L Macron swaggered into a battle migrants from flocking to the north- Macron himself then accused Italy of of wits with the inexperienced and ern European countries that have the “cynicism and irresponsibility” and much-mocked lugnuts who run Italy’s most generous welfare states. called Salvini a provocateur. new populist government. Years ago, Italy would have wrung Macron was humiliated. its hands, explaining why its deci- That very same Italian pop- Years ago, Italy sion did not constitute racism or ulist government, mean- would have wrung xenophobia. The Italians would have while, threw down a apologized. Now they told France to gauntlet before half its hands, explaining take a hike. Economics minister a dozen of its European Giovanni Tria, one of the “moder- neighbors and won. why its decision did ates” imposed on the new govern- While everyone was not constitute racism ment by Italy’s president, canceled a paying attention to refu- meeting with his French counter- gees from Syria tramping or xenophobia. part. In Rome the foreign ministry into Europe across Turkey The Italians would summoned France’s ambassador. and Greece, sub-Saharan Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio said Africans started crossing have apologized. Now of Macron’s accusation of hypocrisy: the Mediterranean from they told France to “He should talk.” Prime Minister Libya and Tunisia into Giuseppe Conte appeared likely to Italy on fast motorboats at take a hike. skip a meeting with Macron planned the rate of 150,000 a year. for June 15. But Macron backed There are more than 600,000 of them Both of Italy’s new ruling parties, down. Conte announced that the now in Italy’s cities and villages, and the anti-corruption Five Star Move- meeting was back on and that his they are costing the Italian govern- ment and the nationalistic League, priority was to fix the Dublin rules ment, which is already dead broke, got elected on anti-immigrant plat- that had been so unfair to Italy. $5 or $6 billion a year in lodging and forms. The League’s leader Matteo Italy won for three reasons. First, welfare. Negotiations are ongoing in Salvini, now the interior minister, it was unified. Journalists and politi- Luxembourg over how other coun- campaigned on a promise to halt the cians have been slow to understand tries in the 28-member European flow. He is leaving no doubt he will or admit that Italy’s government is Union might share the costs with try to make good on it. In early June, something new in Western Europe. Italy, but since this would likely mean he refused landing permission to the It represents a big anti-E.U. major- sharing the actual refugees, the talks giant rescue ship Aquarius, run by an ity. It is considerably more skeptical never go anywhere. Under the E.U.’s activist charity in Berlin and loaded about European institutions than “Dublin accords,” the first country with 629 travelers, arguing that the Britain was at the time it voted to

10 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 exit. Euroskepticism in Italy is of COMMENT ♦ PHILIP TERZIAN almost Hungarian intensity. Second, Italy was right. For years, it is France that has been cynical. The assassination conspiracy According to Salvini’s numbers (the European Union’s are similar), theories that just won’t die France promised in 2015 to share a small fraction of Italy’s refugee bur- ne of the pleasant surprises awakening about the facts of his den: It would take in 9,610 of the of this movie season has father’s murder, which occurred more than half-million Italy is now O been Chappaquiddick, an exactly a half-century ago and are caring for. France has taken 640, well account of the famous episode from scarcely in dispute. Why now? It under 10 percent of its commitment. 1969 in which Mary Jo Kopechne brings to mind the spectacle, two Third and finally, the dynamic of was left to drown in a car driven into decades ago, of the widow and chil- political opinion is changing—all a pond, and abandoned, by Sen. dren of Martin Luther King Jr. across the continent, and not just on Edward M. Kennedy. It’s not a per- embracing the innocence of James the “right wing.” Marco Minniti, fect film by any means; but Kennedy Earl Ray in King’s assassination two Salvini’s decidedly progressive pre- is treated not as the Lion of decessor at the interior ministry, the Senate or sad inheritor himself considered closing Italy’s of a famous legacy but as an The lurid contrast ports to migrants. In Austria, the empty suit surrounded by new chancellor Sebastian Kurz an abundance of promi- between victims and closed a half-dozen radical mosques. nent yes men. As I say, a perpetrators—the In Germany, interior minister Horst pleasant surprise. Seehofer, a conservative ally of Less surprising, perhaps, sainted King and the Angela Merkel, has threatened to is the news that Edward debonair Kennedys, blow up the German coalition gov- Kennedy’s nephew​—​Robert ernment if harder rules on political F. Kennedy Jr., the 64-year- brought to grief by asylum are not agreed on. Merkel old third-oldest child of herself has urged fellow European Ted’s older brother Bobby— nobodies—offends our leaders not to leave Italy to shoulder recently visited his father’s contemporary sense its responsibilities alone. assassin, Sirhan Bishara Even the new and fragile Socialist Sirhan, in his California of cosmic justice. government in Spain, which surely prison not because Sirhan is intended its welcome of migrants as seeking redemption but because Ken- months before Robert Kennedy’s. a rebuke to Italy, has since moder- nedy has concluded that Sirhan was To his credit, Kennedy junior has ated its tone. This is partly a tribute wrongly convicted. said little beyond endorsing the pos- to the Italian government’s disci- “I went there because I was curi- sibility that a proverbial “second pline. When Spain accepted the ous and disturbed by what I had seen gunman” might have been involved Aquarius, Salvini let the ambient in the evidence,” he told the Wash- in his father’s death. No such insults pass and merely thanked ington Post, which heralded the tid- restraint was exercised by the King Sánchez for having a “big heart.” ings on its front page. “I was disturbed survivors. In 1999, after her son But it is also a reflection of Spain’s that the wrong person might have Dexter had visited Ray in his Ten- vulnerability. Valencia can accept a been convicted of killing my father.” nessee prison and asked him if he boat with 629 migrants today. But This is not the place to repeat the had killed his father (“No, I didn’t,” there are 50,000 more migrants in assertions that have proved so persua- replied Ray), Coretta Scott King Tripoli right now ready to cross the sive to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Suffice it announced her belief that her hus- Mediterranean. There will be another to say that the younger RFK—a stal- band had been the victim of “a boat tomorrow, and another the next wart of the second generation of Ken- major, high-level conspiracy” involv- day, and another the day after that. nedys in politics from which much ing organized crime and the Lyndon Sánchez and his aides were quick to was expected—has been best known Johnson administration. insist that this generosity should not in recent years for his crackpot views The assertion was preposterous— be taken as a precedent. It has on vaccines and autism, as well as his poor LBJ was, if anything, King’s not been lost on them that a la-di-da dogged belief in a cousin’s innocence greatest benefactor—but sufficiently attitude on migration has become a in a separate murder case. Accord- sensational at the time that the Clin- reliable way to lose elections. In ingly, his theories about Sirhan are ton White House felt constrained to recent days it has finally dawned on equally dubious. undertake its own inquiry into the Emmanuel Macron, too. ♦ What intrigues me is Kennedy’s case against Ray. The conclusion was

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 11 that Ray, who had confessed to the faith in the perfectibility of man and Chappaquiddick, which can hardly be crime and offered no contradictory the efficiency of police agencies. welcome to the custodians of the evidence, was guilty as charged. Moreover, the lurid contrast between Kennedy family mythology, so com- We like to think that we moderns victims and perpetrators—the pelling. The particulars of the inci- are relatively sophisticated people, sainted King and the debonair Ken- dent are not beyond comprehension with cutting-edge views on social nedys, brought to grief by slovenly but quite easy to believe and accept. issues and impressive knowledge of nobodies—offends our contempo- The only conspiracy surrounding science and emotional life. But the rary sense of cosmic justice. Irony the death of Mary Jo Kopechne human brain is not quite as evolved plays a part, too: Advances in foren- involved not the facts of her case but as we like to believe and, when it sic science and technical expertise the all-too-human effort to conceal comes to the violent disruption of have not so much laid rumors to rest its details and make Edward Ken- the political order, astonishingly ret- as kept them alive indefinitely. nedy appear to be something he rograde. Social media, which func- Which is what makes a movie like was not. ♦ tion as a kind of unbuttoned national id, surely make things worse. According to polls, a majority of COMMENT ♦ JAY COST our fellow citizens believe that John F. Kennedy was the victim of a con- spiracy that has held tight for the The struggle to drain past 55 years. And the King family’s benevolent attitude toward James the swamp will never cease Earl Ray and suspicion of the gov- ernment is shared to some extent by resident Donald Trump was The Roman historian Polybius such well-known associates of Dr. elected in 2016 in part on a expanded on this idea to develop a King in the civil-rights movement as P pledge to “drain the swamp,” to cycle through which he believed all Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and former eliminate the corruption that many governments pass: from monarchy to U.N. ambassador Andrew Young. Americans have come to believe dom- tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democ- The same primeval instinct that inates our politics. Here, Hillary Clin- racy, and finally mob rule, in a perpet- impels Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to ques- ton served as a perfect foil, a stand-in ual process of “growth, zenith, and tion the validity of vaccines seems to for all the politicians who have gone decadence.” As a consequence, Machi- have affected his judgment about to Washington to do good and ended avelli advised “prudent legislators” to family tragedy. up instead doing very, very well. refrain “from adopting any one of Yet the curious fact is that 19th- Anxiety about political corruption those forms” and to create instead a century Americans, for all their is nothing new. In making his pitch, system that included the rule of the benighted attitudes about other mat- Trump was drawing upon themes in one, the few, and the many; “such a ters, were considerably less supersti- republican political theory that stretch government would be stronger and tious than we are about national back to ancient Greece and Rome, run more stable,” for the defects of each calamities. The assassination of through the Italian city-states of the form would be countered by the vir- Abraham Lincoln (1865), who really Renaissance and the English common- tues of the others. The republican rev- was the victim of a political conspir- wealth ideology of Cato’s Letters, and olution brought about by the Founders acy, did not obsess his countrymen resonate through the founding era of was to dispense with such mixed while the event lived on in common our nation—the notion that a govern- estates and found a government solely memory. It was Lincoln’s life, not ment that serves the public interest is on the authority of the people at large. his death, that mattered to the very fragile and easily lost. How can corruption be arrested or Gilded Age. And the assassination of Many ancient thinkers believed reversed once it has begun to set in? William McKinley (1901), who was that corruption was an endemic fea- Machiavelli analogized the corruption shot and killed by an anarchist at a ture of any “unmixed” common- of a republic to the physical decay of time when anarchy was regarded as wealth. According to Cicero, each type the body due to age, and he suggested the terrorism of its day, did not of good government (monarchy, aris- that the way to reverse civic degenera- inspire conspiracy theories into the tocracy, and democracy) “has a path— tion was “to return to its original prin- next half-century. a sheer and slippery one—to a kindred ciples,” thereby “restor[ing] the One difference, I suppose, is that evil” (tyranny, oligarchy, or mob rule). prestige that it had at the outset.” In people with more literal religious James Madison’s view, “no government beliefs might have been inclined to This essay is adapted from contributing editor is perhaps reducible to a sole principle accept such heinous acts as beyond Jay Cost’s new book, The Price of Greatness: of operation”; rather, “different and their control—God’s will, as it were. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and often heterogeneous principles mingle By contrast, we have an implicit the Creation of American Oligarchy (Basic). their influence in the administration.”

12 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 In a suggested preamble to the Con- are to be instituted by individuals for bring about a better understanding stitution, Madison offered a compre- the benefit of all—there is an inherent of how government functions in hensive view of the principles upon tension there that lends itself to cor- practice. We the people must which the United States was founded: ruption, in the days of Cicero, Madi- endeavor to do likewise. son, and Hamilton as in our own. We should further appreciate that That all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from Purging government of corruption the republican quality of government the people. is probably impossible. But if we wish has proven itself to be the most diffi- That government is instituted, to deal with it in an effective manner, cult to maintain over the generations. and ought to be exercised for the ben- we need to return to the principles Our government vigorously pursues efit of the people; which consists in embodied in our founding creed—not all sorts of national endeavors, and the enjoyment of life and liberty, in some vague, anodyne sense of grati- individual rights—both negative with the right of acquiring and using tude. Instead, we have to reengage with and positive—are more respected property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. them and relearn critical lessons that than ever before, but it feels as though That the people have an indubita- seem to have been forgotten. To start, our government has been hijacked ble, unalienable, and inde- from the people. It is easy to assume feasible right to reform or that our country is a republic because change their government, Hamilton had elections are free and open to all adult whenever it be found citizens, but this is a mistake. As adverse or inadequate to the implemented an purposes of its institution. Madison noted in the National ingenious system of Gazette, it is possible for a government In this proposal, Madi- finance, but it also to “support a real domination of son made explicit the three the few, under an apparent liberty principles that combine to enabled political of the many. Such a government, form the spirit of the laws in wherever to be found, is an imposter.” the United States: national- insiders to enrich Madison appreciated that the poli- ism, liberalism, and repub- themselves based on cies that Hamilton was promoting licanism. The people of the were undermining the principle of United States—bound their foreknowledge popular sovereignty, even though they together in a single nation— of his system. had no effect on the form of govern- are free because the govern- ment. We must remain mindful of ment respects their rights and because we must appreciate that the Constitu- this and appreciate that policies that they participate in the creation of the tion did not settle the relationship advance the national project or the laws that govern them. among liberalism, republicanism, and liberal project must also remain con- The political battles that ensued nationalism for all time. Public policy sistent with the republican principles after ratification revolved around con- in all forms necessarily advances or that are just as essential to the Ameri- flicts among these principles. Our hinders each principle. Though we can creed. nationalist ambitions clashed with our typically do not think of contemporary Above all, we should remember that republican principles in a way that political questions in these founda- sovereignty ultimately belongs to the offered no clear resolution. Secretary of tional terms, Madison understood that people, and if we wish the government the Treasury Alexander Hamilton had this was always the case, and we should to become more republican, we our- implemented an ingenious system of follow his example. selves must rediscover that lost tradi- finance, but it also enabled political We must also remember that these tion. As Madison put it, “the force of insiders to enrich themselves based on values are often in tension with one public opinion” is what maintains gov- their foreknowledge of his system. another. Republicanism and liberal- ernment in practice. “If the nation Many members of Congress stood to ism come from different traditions of were in favor of absolute monarchy, the gain financially if his plan was enacted, political thought. They overlap in public liberty would soon be surren- a conflict of interest that likely made some ways but conflict in others. dered by their representatives. If a the difference on key votes. Worst of And nationalism is different alto- republican form of government were all, Hamilton’s friends in the financial gether; a strong nation need not be preferred, how could the monarch community formed a banking syndi- either republican or liberal. Thus, resist the national will?” We get the cate that tried to corner the domestic holding these values in their proper government we deserve, in other market for government debt—and balance has to be a constant struggle. words. So when the American people their failure precipitated the first finan- Neither Madison nor Hamilton demand a return to republican propri- cial crisis of the new nation. “solved” the problem, for it is a para- ety, the government will acquiesce, for If all of this sounds familiar, it only dox that admits of no final answer. “public opinion sets bounds to every goes to show that the ancients under- But both are to be credited for trying government, and is the real sovereign stood politics very well. Governments to solve it, for in so doing they helped in every free one.” ♦

14 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 of sexual activity thanks to contracep- tion has been accompanied by levels A Time of Reckoning of divorce, cohabitation, and abortion never before seen in history. And as the MeToo movement shows, the same Second thoughts about the sexual revolution. shift has contributed to a world in which on-demand sex is assumed to by Mary Eberstadt be the norm, to the detriment of those who resist any advance, for any reason. egel famously wrote that the Tolstoy wrote then is plain. Once the Second, the revolution is having del- owl of Minerva flies only at facts of any event are admitted to eterious consequences—and not only H dusk, meaning that history’s the record, to pretend we do not see on the young—in the form of broken unfolding is most plainly seen in ret- them is to sin by omission and, figu- families and the attendant disadvan- rospect. With all due respect to Herr ratively speaking, against truth itself. tages conferred by fatherless homes, Doktor, some moments are so trans- And so it is with the sexual revolu- as has been excruciatingly well-docu- parently situated at a cultural cross- tion. Following are five facts about the mented by social scientists for many road that they illuminate history even revolution’s impact that are by now decades. Over half a century into the in real time. Improbably enough, the empirically incontestable—five truths sexual revolution, the human damages MeToo movement seems at the end of life’s tele- to be one. scope are now also vis- As anyone following ible. Today, for example, events can see, the ongo- one of the most pressing, ing sex scandals that gave and growing, issues for rise to MeToo are more researchers is the plight than just placeholders of the elderly, who face in the news cycle. They the challenges of aging reveal a shift in the cul- amid shrunken, broken, tural plates of the last half- and truncated families. century and demonstrate Google “loneliness the many ways in which studies” and you will that shift has changed find a sociological cot- American families, work- tage industry in every places, romances (and supposedly advanced lack thereof), politics, and Mothers and children in the cafeteria at the Laurence G. Paquin country in the world— culture. Unlike our fore- School for Pregnant Teenagers in Baltimore, 1994 France, Germany, the runners in 1968, those of United States, the United us living today have access to some- that the record of the past half-cen- Kingdom, Australia, Portugal. Many thing they didn’t: 50 years of socio- tury has established beyond reason- social scientists now call this phenom- logical, psychological, medical, and able doubt. enon an “epidemic.” To mention just other evidence about the sexual revo- First, the destigmatization and one example, toward the end of last lution and its fallout. Thanks to the mass adoption of artificial contracep- year, the New York Times published MeToo movement, the time has come tion, beginning in the 1960s, followed a harrowing story about what the so- to examine some of that evidence. by widespread legalization of abor- called “birth dearth” looks like in old Such an examination is not theo- tion, has radically changed the world age: “4,000 lonely deaths a week. . . . logical or religious or even necessarily in which we now find ourselves. Each year, some of [Japan’s elderly] philosophical. It is empirical, based on This is an important countercul- died without anyone knowing, only objectively derived evidence and data. tural point. Over the years, a great to be discovered after their neighbors Over a hundred years ago, a Russian many people have claimed that sex is caught the smell.” writer was sent to report on the facts merely a private act between individu- It is critical that we not avert our of what transpired inside a slaugh- als. They’ve been wrong. We know eyes from this tragic picture and what terhouse. After setting them down in now that private acts have cumulative it tells us about the impact of the sex- detail, he added this immortal line: public effects. Individual choices, such ual revolution. Fifty years after the “We cannot pretend that we do not as having children out of wedlock, embrace of that revolution’s prin- know this.” The meaning of what Leo have ended up expanding the modern ciples—undeniably because of that welfare state, for example, as the gov- embrace—atomization and severely Mary Eberstadt is a senior research fellow ernment has stepped in to support chil- reduced human contact is spreading

at the Faith & Reason Institute. dren who lack fathers. The explosion across the planet. MARK PETERSON / CORBIS GETTY

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 15 Third, the libertarian conceit often already strong and makes the already harassment aren’t just a progressive embraced by the sexual revolution’s weak even more vulnerable. thing. Even so, it is undeniable that supporters, that pornography is a This is true, for example, of the a disproportionate number of the harmless activity, is no longer viable. young women recruited for so-called prominent men brought down by The damages caused by pornography egg harvesting, who put their own fer- these scandals have been identified are legion: Pornography use is fre- tility and health at risk either to keep with—and sometimes indistinguish- quently cited as a factor in divorce their own future childbearing options able from—a political worldview that cases; therapists report increased open or to earn money for selling their enthusiastically embraces the tenets demand for treatment for pornog- eggs. It is true of the women and chil- of the sexual revolution. Indeed, raphy addiction, including for chil- dren exploited, drugged, beaten, and many proudly wore their feminist dren. Is it any surprise that many of otherwise abused who are now vic- credentials on their sleeves. the stories to emerge from the MeToo timized once more by the frighten- These men infiltrated important moment seem drawn directly from ing effort to normalize prostitution cultural precincts under the false flag the narratives of pornography? as “sex work.” And it is true of the of being “pro-woman” and succeeded After all, at the root of all these young women damaged by the diseases because they were seen to be on “the stories of harassment and abuse is acquired from buying into the promise right side” of the abortion debate. this: men forcing themselves in vari- of sex without consequences. Although Wolves in Planned Parenthood cloth- ous ways upon women who did not teen pregnancy rates have declined in ing, they used pro-abortion politics as want their attentions; men who have recent years, rates of sexually transmit- protective cover for harassment and insisted, sometimes plaintively in ted disease continue to rise. exploitation, just as Playboy founder their public apologies, that in their This same empowering of the Hugh Hefner, who advocated for legal own minds, the acts were consensual. already-empowered is also behind abortion many years before Roe v. As one public figure caught up early gendercide, the killing of millions Wade, also did in his lifetime. As femi- on in the scandals put it, “I always of unborn female babies around the nist Susan Brownmiller put it in the felt I was pursuing shared feelings.” world precisely because they are New York Times after Hefner’s death, Here was Charlie Rose, one of the girls. To defend abortion on demand, dissenting from the fawning eulogies most prominent television journalists without restrictions, is effectively to about his purported feminism, “The of his generation, a CBS co-anchor defend gendercide, since abortion reason Mr. Hefner supported abor- with an eponymous show, accused by is the means for enabling this perni- tion was not from any feminist feel- many women of acts that, if true, are cious practice. ing; it was purely strategic.” And so, manifestly awful and clearly violated Finally, the MeToo movement it would seem, is the enthusiastic sup- the women’s consent. And his self- offers an opportunity to bridge ide- port for abortion exhibited in the pub- defense is the one offered by many ological divides as the traditional lic lives of many of the men accused other figures lately disgraced who cheerleaders of the sexual revolution in today’s scandals. Whatever their insisted they thought their behavior reckon with the empirical record. personal political views, women need was welcome. Even former president The recent scandals have produced to be aware of a pattern the MeToo Bill Clinton had the temerity to tell powerful new evidence for everyone movement has confirmed: Being pro- PBS NewsHour in early June, “I think to weigh. What are the two common abortion and being pro-woman aren’t the norms have really changed in denominators among the alleged the same thing. terms of what you can do to somebody offenses? One was the assumption What the MeToo moment proves against their will.” that all women are sexually available above all is that the time for magical Where do otherwise sophisticated at all times—what might be called the thinking about the sexual revolution and knowledgeable men learn such sexual revolution’s first command- is over. Until now, many people sim- obtuseness, such emotional unintel- ment. The other is that many exploit- ply accepted the realities of the post- ligence? Surely the credit belongs in ative men have taken cover in venues Pill world as non-negotiable facts. It’s part to pornography, which, like the closely identified with pro-revolution- time to challenge that worldview as revolution of which it is a bastard ary politics: Hollywood, mainstream one that lacks moral and intellectual child, has become ubiquitous. Pornog- print, radio, and television journal- maturity. One of the first prominent raphy deforms individual relation- ism, Silicon Valley—and even the men to fall from grace, a former edi- ships and works its way like invisible New York attorney general’s office. tor at the New Republic, exited public ink into the scripts and expectations Yes, cads and brutes have always life with the line “I will not waste this of our time. been with us; yes, accusations reckoning.” Nor should people along Fourth, we can no longer pretend shouldn’t be lodged cavalierly and all points of the political spectrum that the sexual revolution operates need to be assessed carefully; and yes, waste the opportunity to reckon with in any other way but as the world as the examples of Fox News and the massive experiment in chaos and imagined by Socrates’ interlocu- other workplaces have revealed, confusion that made these scandals tor Thrasymachus:­ It empowers the harassment and accusations of possible in the first place. ♦

16 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 also discovered that the Awan group had logged on to one Democratic Cau- The IT Guy and cus server 5,735 times over the course of seven months. The networks that the Awans were accessing don’t hold Wasserman Schultz classified information, but they do hold lawmakers’ password-protected email, according to the Washington Post. The House’s chief administrative Allegations of fraud, theft, bigamy, and violence officer told lawmakers this April that surround Imran Awan. by Jenna Lifhits the IG had also uncovered “evidence of procurement fraud.” The Awans t’s a story reminiscent of a spy the course of several years, the group had manipulated invoices for expen- novel. But the scandal surrounding earned millions of dollars. sive equipment into incremental pay- I Imran Awan has plenty of elements Abid ran a car dealership (named ments of less than $500. This allowed of the surreal and the farcical, too. Cars International A, or CIA) on the the purchases to be “left off the offi- Awan was a congressional IT staffer. side. “It’s not clear where the dealer- cial House inventory,” according to Numerous members of his family ship’s money was going,” wrote Ros- the Post, which also reported that this joined him on the congressional pay- iak, “because it was sued by at least five equipment was sometimes delivered to roll. Now he is awaiting trial for bank different people on all ends of a typical the Awans’ homes. fraud. What started in 2016 as an inves- car business who said they were stiffed. The matter was passed on to Capi- tigation into equipment and data tol Police and the FBI in October theft has evolved into a case about 2016 and is ongoing. Gowen rejects falsely obtaining home equity loans the basis for the investigation, which and sending money to Pakistan. he says is politically motivated and As the probe evolves, there have grew out of the IG report on shared been dozens of shocking reports employees. “The right-wing media about the family’s activities and and a few members of Congress blew access. The plot twists have spawned this up and got the FBI’s attention, numerous conspiracy theories. got the U.S. attorney’s attention,” he Awan’s lawyer Christopher Gowen says. “They started this giant inves- says that all these reports are com- tigation that’s probably the most plicating the trial. “Every time we thorough, exhaustive investigation think it’s done, Johnny-on-the-spot Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the history of this country prob- over there at the Daily Caller writes ably. Or close to it.” The available something and we have to start back CIA didn’t pay the security deposit, clips of the IG report, he added, have into this investigation,” he says of Luke rent or taxes for its building, it didn’t been “taken out of context.” “There’s Rosiak, the investigative reporter at the pay wholesalers who provided cars.” In multiple logins because they shared a Daily Caller News Foundation who has 2012, Abid filed for bankruptcy. workstation,” he notes. “They worked done the most work on the case. “Every In 2016, the Awans caught the eye of for separate offices so you have to log single thing that has been alleged, congressional investigators. The initial in to one office, then when you switch hypothetically, by the Daily Caller has allegations, contained in presentations to do a different assignment for the been investigated thoroughly.” by the House inspector general, did other office, you log in to that office.” Imran Awan, born in Pakistan in not look good. Rosiak, who obtained a The five workers were banned from 1980 but a naturalized U.S. citizen, PowerPoint summary of the presenta- the House network in February 2017. started working on the Hill in 2004. tions, reported that the Awans “made Most congressional offices quickly His brother, Abid, soon joined him. unauthorized access to congressional fired them, though one kept Imran Awan’s wife, Hina Alvi, came on board servers in 2016, allegedly accessing Awan on despite the mounting allega- in 2007, and his younger brother, the data of members for whom they tions: the office of Florida congress- Jamal, began in 2014. Abid’s friend did not work, logging in as members woman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Rao Abbas was also added to the con- of Congress themselves, and covering who had been chair of the Democratic gressional payroll in 2012. The five their tracks.” “Excessive logons are an National Committee from 2011 to were “shared” employees and worked indication that the server is being used 2016. Awan’s potential access to Was- for dozens of House Democrats. Over for nefarious purposes,” the IG presen- serman Schultz’s emails, combined tation said, “and elevated the risk that with allegations of data theft, have Jenna Lifhits is a staff writer individuals could be reading and/or spawned conspiracy theories about

at The Weekly Standard. removing information.” Investigators whether the family was responsible for ANDREW BURTON / GETTY

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 17 the infamous 2016 leak of DNC emails. Awan after he was charged with bank to Pakistan so that they could “rent out Wasserman Schultz drew criticism fraud. According to the affidavit, their home to be able to satisfy mort- for refusing to fire Awan. “He didn’t Imran and his wife Alvi listed a rental gage obligations” and to “temporarily have access to the network, but he was property as a primary residence when escape the media frenzy.” able to give us guidance and advice and applying for a $165,000 home equity The Daily Caller News Foundation troubleshoot on a wide variety of other line of credit in December 2016. That has published scores of other reports technological issues,” she told the Sun- money was then wired to Pakistan alleging wrongdoing by the Awans. A Sentinel and suggested that Awan was in January 2017 as part of a $283,000 recent one said that Awan was mar- being targeted because he is Muslim. transfer. The Awans had also applied ried to two women, one of whom told Gowen thinks that Republicans in for a second line of credit for $120,000. Virginia police that he “kept her ‘like Congress concocted the Awan scandal Prosecutors said in court documents a slave.’ ” Weeks after her statement to to target Wasserman Schultz. “They that “based on the suspicious timing police, gunmen in Pakistan “shot into worked for a female Democrat who of that transaction,” the pair “likely her family home,” Luke Rosiak fur- is one of the targets of the knew they were under inves- ther wrote. Hina Alvi has also alleged Republican party,” he said. tigation at that time.” polygamy and fraud by her husband. “And so they said, ‘Whoa, we When a Congressional After news of the criminal probe got Pakistan, we got female, Federal Credit Union wire- broke, Imran put his house up for rent we got Democrat. Let’s roll.’ ” transfer specialist called Alvi and a Marine Corps veteran moved in. In the months between about the request, Awan The tenant told Rosiak that he found the Awans being barred answered and pretended to “wireless routers, hard drives that look from the House network and be her, according to court like they tried to destroy, laptops, [and] Imran Awan’s arrest in July Imran Awan documents. Asked about the a lot of brand new expensive toner” in 2017, Capitol Police found reason for the wire, Awan the house. He called investigators, who an “unattended bag” in a small room said “funeral arrangements.” The spe- reportedly seized the equipment. Awan on Capitol Hill. The bag contained cialist questioned whether that was then threatened “to sue the renter for a laptop with the username “Rep- a “sufficient reason for such a large stealing” the hard drives. DWS,” copies of Awan’s driver license transfer.” Awan then changed his rea- “That man is a criminal,” Gowen and congressional ID, a Pakistani ID son to “purchasing property.” says of the Marine, who he says also card, “composition notebooks with Awan was arrested in July 2017 at failed to pay his rent. “He’s the one that notes handwritten saying ‘attorney cli- Dulles airport on his way to Pakistan, has reported that there are these dam- ent privilege,’ ” and letters addressed a scene that inspired reports of his flee- aged hard drives. When they finally got to prosecutors, according to a police ing the country. Wasserman Schultz to looking at all of what they found, it report obtained by Luke Rosiak and rejects the notion that Awan was flee- was one damaged, old BMW radio.” the Daily Caller News Foundation. ing. She told the Sun-Sentinel, “When President Trump has tweeted about Wasserman Schultz sought to you’re trying to flee, you don’t fill out the case a number of times. This stop law enforcement from access- a form with your employer and go month he wrote, “Our Justice Depart- ing the contents of the laptop and on unpaid leave.” Awan’s lawyer says ment must not let Awan & Debbie at a May 2017 hearing went after the that he was traveling on a “round-trip Wasserman Schultz off the hook. Capitol Police chief about the pro- ticket with an extended return date.” The Democrat I.T. scandal is a key to tocol for handling a member of con- Prosecutors said in court documents much of the corruption we see today. gress’s equipment when the member that they believe Awan “deleted the They want to make a ‘plea deal’ to is not under investigation. The chief contents of his phones hours before his hide what is on their Server. Where is suggested that an ongoing criminal arrest.” He had $9,000 on him. Server? Really bad!” investigation changes the traditional Months earlier, Alvi had also Gowen thinks that the tweets are protocol. “I think you’re violating the been stopped at Dulles by the FBI, giving the defense ammunition. “We rules when you conduct your business also on her way to Pakistan. She had thought there’s nothing we can do that way and you should expect that “abruptly” taken her three children out about this bank-fraud issue, until there will be consequences,” Wasser- of school, according to an affidavit, and President Twitter got on the Twitter man Schultz said. was traveling with “numerous pieces of last week and just blatantly lied on Months later she said that Awan had luggage,” including cardboard boxes behalf of the Justice Department,” he “accidentally left” the laptop, which containing household goods and food says. “Now we may have something to belonged to her office, somewhere, and items. Customs agents searched her work with here because of that idiot.” that the loss had been reported. “This bags and found $12,400 in cash. Alvi, He told CNN that the latest tweet vio- was not my laptop. I have never seen who booked a return flight for Septem- lated his client’s due-process rights. that laptop. I don’t know what’s on the ber, was permitted to board her flight. It’s just the latest twist in Capi- laptop,” she said. The Awans’ lawyers said in court docu- tol Hill’s most mysterious bank

Wasserman Schultz finally fired ments that Alvi and the children went fraud case. ♦ VIA YOUTUBE

18 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 Republicans were quick to urge the White House to tailor them to affect Deferring to Trump China rather. And their strategy of pleading and hoping for the best worked—at first. Trump included on Trade indefinite exemptions for close trad- ing partners when the tariffs went into effect. But the Republicans’ objections Congress could in theory have a greater say weren’t strong enough to stop Trump on tariffs. Don’t hold your breath. by Haley Byrd from scrapping the exemptions held by countries such as Canada, Mexico, hen President Donald Indeed, Trump’s aggressive use and members of the European Union Trump first announced of Section 232 of the Trade Expan- at the end of May. The move, which W in March that he would sion Act—a provision intended to be alienated allies and resulted in retalia- impose far-reaching tariffs on for- employed in cases of national secu- tory tariffs being slapped on a num- eign steel and aluminum without rity—presents a political conundrum ber of American products, came just congressional approval, South Caro- for Republicans. Opposing Trump’s days after the president announced lina Republican Mark Sanford was tariffs by passing legislation to cur- his plan to impose tariffs of 25 percent the first lawmaker to on foreign automo- tell me that Congress biles under the same should step in to pre- national security vent it. “The nature of justification used for the party in power is that tariffs on imports of everybody wants to be steel and aluminum. deferential to the execu- That announce- tive branch, but that’s ment appears to not what the Founding have been a break- Fathers intended,” San- ing point for some ford said at the time. Republicans on Cap- “Doing anything less itol Hill. At the time, than robustly pushing Tennessee Repub- back against a stupid and lican Bob Corker destructive and danger- was incredulous at ous idea … would come the administration’s back to haunt all of us,” increasingly bold he predicted. use of Section 232 On June 12, Sanford authority, telling lost reelection to a primary challenger, tail his trade powers would spark a reporters there is “no rational person Katie Arrington, who is more eager to backlash among the president’s loy- that could think we have a national support the president. The congress- alists at the polls. But American con- security issue with auto manufactur- man—always one to call it like he sees sumers and industries might become ing.” “It’s an abuse of that authority. it—had provoked Trump’s rage by collateral damage in the trade war It’s very blatant,” he said. criticizing him, seemingly without fear launched by Trump’s 25 percent tar- A short time later, Corker intro- of the political repercussions. Most of iffs on steel imports and 10 percent duced a bill that would claw back some Sanford’s colleagues in the House have tariffs on foreign aluminum, both of Congress’s Article I trade powers. not exhibited similar carelessness. And of which threaten to undermine the The measure would subject Section when it comes to trade, the South Car- Republican party’s midterm election 232 tariffs to congressional approval. olinian’s loss serves as another example message of economic growth. Repub- It would apply retroactively for two to congressional Republicans of what lican leaders weighed their options years, meaning Trump’s steel and alu- could go wrong if they oppose Trump’s and have come up with an admit- minum tariffs could be re-evaluated protectionist impulses and support tedly insufficient solution: Remain by the legislative branch. Corker’s bill free trade, a tenet many of them have deferential to the president while air- has a bipartisan roster of cosponsors, faithfully espoused for years. ing half-hearted complaints about his including Democrats Heidi Heitkamp, trade policies. In other words, GOP Mark Warner, Brian Schatz, Chris Van Haley Byrd is a reporter lawmakers are all bark and no bite. Hollen, and Jeanne Shaheen, along-

at The Weekly Standard. After Trump announced the tariffs, side Republicans Pat Toomey, Lamar GARY LOCKE

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 19 Alexander, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, lake, along with Corker, is set to from trade agreements. The measure Jeff Flake, Jerry Moran, Johnny Isak- F retire after the November mid- has stalled since it was introduced, and son, and Ben Sasse. terms. That gives him more leeway it has just five cosponsors. Trump allies, such as South Caro- to challenge Trump than Republicans Lee says that getting his colleagues lina Republican Lindsey Graham, who have to worry about upcoming to support a bill like his is a challenge argue that passing legislation to limit elections. But what does it say about because members of Congress serving the president’s trade powers would the state of the party that the most out- today are accustomed to outsourcing weaken Trump’s hand in ongoing spoken opponents of protectionism Article I powers to the executive and trade negotiations. And Republican have been effectively driven from its believe it is the norm. “It takes some leaders have been unwavering in their ranks? Flake acknowledges the trend, time to get people thinking about the opposition to the bill. House speaker but points to senators who cospon- fact that it wasn’t always that way and Paul Ryan noted that such a bill would sored Corker’s bill and are still run- that constitutionally, it’s not supposed have to secure a veto-proof majority ning for office. “You have Pat Toomey to be that way,” Lee tells me. Asked in order to become law. “You would standing firm,” he says. “There are whether Congress would take up leg- have to pass a law that he would want some, obviously, who don’t want to islation to limit Trump’s trade powers to sign into law,” Ryan told reporters. poke the bear,” Flake admits. “To just if the president were to try to proceed “You can do the math on that.” give [Section 232] to the president and with something like automobile tariffs, Senate majority leader Mitch let him use national security as a rea- Lee says predicting a response is dif- McConnell said during a press confer- son to block free trade? We ought to ficult, but such a move would “com- ence that he would not call up the bill stand up. We need to stand up.” pound the concerns that have already for a standalone vote. Corker hoped to Flake tells me he hasn’t worked to been expressed.” include the bill in an annual defense promote Corker’s bill with any GOP Warren Davidson, a freshman authorization measure that was up for members in the House, but inter- Republican from Ohio’s Eighth Dis- consideration in the Senate the week views with Republicans on that side trict, has introduced the House com- of June 11, but leadership blocked his of the Capitol show support among panion bill to Senator Lee’s Global amendment from receiving a vote. rank-and-file members for the idea. Trade Accountability Act. During an In a fiery floor speech on June 12, Republican Study Committee chair- impromptu hallway interview, he pon- Corker lambasted Senate Republicans man Mark Walker tells me he thinks ders why more of his colleagues have for their reluctance to “poke the bear” “the more that we exercise our Arti- not rallied behind the idea. David- by holding the vote. “Well, gosh, we cle I powers, the better.” He is joined son recalls a March poll of Republi- might upset the president. We might by members all along the ideologi- can Study Committee members that upset the president of the United cal spectrum, such as Florida mod- showed that more than 87 percent States before the midterms. So gosh, erate Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who says of the group of nearly 160 members we can’t vote on the Corker amend- she’s in favor of anything that keeps answered in the affirmative when ment because we’re taking, rightly Trump in check. And Oklahoma asked whether Congress should be so, the responsibilities that we have Republican Tom Cole, a member able to review and reconsider the to deal with tariffs and revenues. We of the Republican whip team, tells me president’s proposed tariffs. He says can’t do that because we’d be upset- the Constitution is clear on matters of he was encouraged by the results of ting the president,” Corker yelled, trade. “That’s our power,” he says. that poll and decided afterward that mocking his colleagues. “I can’t But the fact that some members say it would be a good time to intro- believe it,” he added. “I would bet they are willing to exercise a greater duce Lee’s legislation in the House. that 95 percent of the people on this role in trade policy doesn’t mean Cork- He expected to have 100 cosponsors side of the aisle support intellectually er’s bill—or any similar measures—are on the bill within the first few days. this amendment.” becoming law anytime soon. Instead, the current count sits at 13. During a conversation with report- Consider the fate of Utah senator That disparity, he says, highlights ers following a GOP Senate lunch Mike Lee’s Global Trade Account- the gap between policy and politics meeting the same day, retiring sena- ability Act. Lee was early to the issue, within the Republican conference. tor Jeff Flake echoed Corker’s com- introducing his bill to roll back the “No one wants to be seen as oppo- plaints, telling reporters it shouldn’t president’s trade powers on the very site of the president,” Davidson says. be so unthinkable for the Republican first day of Trump’s presidency, Janu- “It’s not meant to be an adversarial party to stand up for something its ary 20, 2017. Lee’s legislation is more bill, but it is ideologically different.” members have supported for decades. comprehensive than Corker’s, address- Still, he doesn’t think that should “This is a big part of what we stand ing not only Section 232 but also stop Republicans—or even President for,” Flake said of free trade. “If requiring congressional approval for all Trump, for that matter—from sup- Republicans can’t stand up against unilateral trade actions, including the porting his bill. “It’s not a pro-Trump tariffs and for free trade, I mean, what imposition of tariffs, new restrictions, or anti-Trump thing,” he tells me. “It’s are we here for?” and suspensions of or withdrawals more pro-Constitution.” ♦

20 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 proof of ownership, they cannot com- modify their assets. Commodification, Leftists usually wring their hands over the commodification of health care and culture. Health care in Where Is Thy Sting? the United States has never been a totally commodified service. It is a highly regulated industry. What are arguably the best health care sys- The world needs more of it, not less. tems—e.g., in Switzerland and the by Stephen Miller Netherlands—have a mix of market and nonmarket mechanisms. ommodification has always off the path to my townhouse this past What about culture? People who been deplored in leftist jour- winter, he did not send me a bill. The lament that poets don’t make as C nals, but now attacks are wife of a friend of mine volunteers as a much money as advertising copy- appearing in the mainstream press. lawyer for a shelter for abused women. writers often clamor for more gov- Elizabeth Bruenig, a Washington Post Another friend delivers meals to the ernment support for the arts, but why columnist, recently called for “decom- elderly. A dentist I know—the daugh- should Americans underwrite fellow- modifying labor.” In a letter to the ter of a friend—works a few days a ships for writers or painters? Please Times Literary Supplement, Lesley month at a free clinic for people who don’t tell me that we need more “cre- Chamberlain, a British historian and cannot afford dental care. ative people.” If you want to embark biographer, upped the ante, deploring Capitalism makes volunteerism pos- on a career in the arts, be prepared “the commodification of everything.” sible. Volunteers generally have the to be poor. Samuel Johnson said that What is commodifica- “no man but a blockhead tion? According to the ever wrote, except for Oxford English Dictionary, money.” Since he wrote it is “the action or pro- poems and essays—stuff cess of treating a person or that pays poorly—he too thing as property which was a blockhead. can be traded or whose Leftists are hazy about value is purely monetary; how to decommodify labor. the treatment of a person Do they want a govern- or thing as a commodity; ment agency to assign a commercialization.” Marx financial value to the skills spoke of “commodity people have? Whatever fetishism,” but commod- decisions a government- ification is a relatively appointed board made new word; the OED’s inevitably would be called first citation is 1975. unfair by many people. Empty shelves in a Caracas supermarket Its usage (Google says) Decommodifying labor has soared in the last two decades. wherewithal to do unpaid work because means politicizing labor. It makes Commodification is the fuel that in the commodified world they get much more sense to let the impersonal makes market economies run, so writ- paid well for their skills. Volunteerism market put a price tag on one’s skills ers who attack commodification are doesn’t flourish in socialist countries. and assets. attacking capitalism. Bruenig says It should go without saying that it There will always be disagree- “capitalism . . . turns every relation- would be wrong to commodify cer- ments about the extent to which the ship into a calculable exchange.” tain things, which is why we have government should interfere in Really? Most people in democratic laws against child labor, sexual traf- the market, but attempts to severely capitalist countries have many non- ficking, and the buying and selling curtail market forces have always commodified relationships. My wife of human organs. But in many parts of ended in disaster. Look at Venezu- and I take care of two grandchildren the world there is an urgent need for ela—a formerly prosperous country after school several days a week. When more commodification, not less. The that now has severe, life-threatening my young neighbor shoveled the snow business writer Rachel Botsman notes shortages of food and medicine. Ven- that “an estimated 5 billion people, ezuela needs more commodification, Stephen Miller’s latest book is Walking mostly in the developing world, have not less. As the joke goes, if social- New York: Reflections of American difficulty proving that they own land, ists took over the Sahara, there soon

Writers from Walt Whitman to Teju Cole. businesses, or cars.” Because they lack would be a shortage of sand. ♦ IMAGES / LIGHTROCKET GETTY ROMÁN CAMACHO / SOPA

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 21 Heretics & Etiquette The generation that reached what passes for maturity in the age of social media is the most status-obsessed since the ancien régime

By Kevin D. Williamson was only in 2009 that he was detained by Swiss police at American request and then held in Gstaad under house bout a year ago, I was at one of those elitist dinner arrest until Swiss authorities rejected the U.S. extradition parties that the talk-radio guys are always going request, citing incomplete documentation. When Polan- A on about, albeit in the Swiss Alps rather than ski wasn’t making sorties into high society, he was making inside the Beltway—how’s that for one-upmanship? It was films. No less a Hollywood social-justice warrior than Jodie a very agreeable gathering at the end of a practically unim- Foster was happy to work with him as recently as 2011, provable week, but toward the end of the evening, an unex- along with the rest of the cast of Carnage: Kate Winslet, pected (by me, anyway) guest appeared: Roman Polanski. John C. Reilly, and Christoph Waltz. The Iranian-French That presented a dilemma both ethical and etiquettical. playwright Yasmina Reza, who wrote the play on which Does one meet Roman Polanski? Shake hands? Exchange Carnage was based, apparently had no qualms about col- pleasantries? Put on my critic’s hat and laborating on the screenplay with the great engage in a little friendly commentary? “I malefactor. Whoopi Goldberg was a pub- really enjoyed Chinatown, but I didn’t think lic Polanski apologist with her unfortunate Carnage quite lived up to the play. I’m not and illiterate “rape,” but not “rape-rape” saying it was as bad as being drugged and defense. Tilda Swinton, Monica Bellucci, forcibly sodomized, but, you know, John C. David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Michael Reilly is no James Gandolfini.” Mann, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodóvar, Tricky. Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, and many I wish I could say that my most imme- others put their names on a petition calling diate concern was transcendently moral, but for Polanski’s liberation during his relatively apparently I am more a willow than an oak, brief detention by Swiss authorities. and the first thing that crossed my mind was Woody Allen and Harvey Weinstein, how to avoid embarrassing my hosts. And I Roman Polanski in 2015 too—inevitably. That was 2009, when confess that I did spend a second or two con- The Pianist producer Henning Molfenter sidering all the malicious uses to which a picture of me announced that he would boycott the Zurich film festival shaking hands with Roman Polanski might be put. in protest, telling the Hollywood Reporter: “There is no way In fact, the dilemma proved easy to avoid. I stayed in I’d go to Switzerland now. You can’t watch films knowing my corner, and Polanski didn’t exactly work the room. Roman Polanski is sitting in a cell five kilometers away.” He must realize that introducing himself potentially puts Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of the world’s most celebrated people on the spot. There is an etiquette for pariahs, and liberal intellectuals, wrote a 2010 essay titled “Why I Polanski has had time to master its complexities. Defend Polanski, More Than Ever,” and the Huffington But it took him a long time to become a pariah. He was Post was happy to publish it. a high-toned exile for years, having pleaded guilty to hav- Polanski is hardly the only famous man to have exhib- ing sex with a minor in 1977 and then fleeing when he sus- ited a sexual interest in young girls. Iggy Pop, long an pected he might get real prison time. The original charges ornament of high society, boasted of his sexual relation- had been worse than what he was convicted of: rape by use ship with a 13-year-old girl; Fox News regular Ted Nugent, of drugs, lewd act upon a child under the age of 14, etc. It who used to be a rock-’n’-roll singer, wasn’t making it all up with “Jailbait”; Jerry Lee Lewis married a 13-year-old Kevin D. Williamson is the author of The End Is Near and It’s cousin; David Bowie and Jimmy Page both had relation- Going To Be Awesome, The Politically Incorrect Guide to ships with a 14-year-old girl—the same 14-year-old girl,

Socialism, and, most recently, The Case Against Trump. in fact—and the former died a beloved cultural icon while ADAM NURKIEWICZ / GETTY

22 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 the latter is an officer of the Order of the British Empire. in “Nasty Woman” T-shirts I see shopping at my local Chuck Berry was a genuine creep, but you wouldn’t know Whole Foods, checking out the $59.99/pound wild-caught it from the eulogies offered on his behalf by Hillary Rod- river salmon while Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes is on the ham Clinton and Barack Obama. gently modulated in-store sound system singing: “I pray Why Polanski? And, probably more relevant at the every single day for a revolution,” as if the Hollywood mul- moment, why Harvey Weinstein, who now has been timillionaire who went on to produce Christina Aguilera’s charged with rape? Polanski’s crimes were horrible and “Beautiful” and P!nk’s “Get the Party Started”—and obvious, and he remains utterly impenitent. Weinstein’s the crowd at Whole Foods—wouldn’t be the first one up worst transgressions remain to against the wall come the revolu- be adjudicated, but the known tion. I’ve got some bad news for and uncontested facts of his case you, Sunshine: You aren’t fight- are horrifying enough. Maybe ing the Establishment. You are a better question is: Why not the Establishment. Iggy Pop, who just released a One could spend a few new record with electronic act entertaining hours listing the Underworld? Why not Jimmy beloved celebrities who would Page? Why not Aerosmith’s Ste- be shunned by polite society— ven Tyler, who went so far as to here meaning polite Hollywood become the legal guardian of society and polite leftish society the underage girl he was sleep- more generally—if they were ing with? Why not the ghost of Harvey Weinstein arrested in New York on trying to get started today. Eddie Charles Dickens, who left his May 25, above, and parodied by Tom Cruise, below, Murphy’s Delirious made him a wife for an 18-year-old actress, in the closing credits of 2008’s ‘Tropic Thunder’ superstar, and it made HBO or Norman Mailer, who thought a ton of money. Anybody want to that “A little bit of rape is good talk about how many times the for a man’s soul”? Why not a few word “faggot” is used in that act of the celebrities who have been or about how the entire first sec- hauled in on domestic violence tion is one long rant about bug- charges: Sean Penn, Emma gery and AIDS? Anybody want Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Carmen to revisit the personal life of Electra, Michael Lohan, Mickey Errol Flynn? And consider the Rourke, Josh Brolin, Terrence question of which big publisher Howard, Stormy Daniels, etc.? would bring out Philip Roth’s True, many of them never have first few novels today without been convicted of any seri- trigger warnings—and without ous crime. Neither has Harvey subsequently firing whomever Weinstein. Not yet, anyway. acquired them in the first place. Part of the answer is found in The original opening number what Iggy Pop had in common with Pat Buckley, his some- from Disney’s Aladdin is practically samizdat today, and time dinner-party hostess in Gstaad: fashion. Weinstein is poor old Howard Ashman would be un-personed if he had out of fashion. Weinstein may have been a fearsome figure penned those purportedly anti-Arab lyrics in 2018. in Hollywood, but he also has long been a figure of fun. Middle Eastern sensibilities are, in a sense, what’s Tom Cruise gave the second-best performance of his sto- actually in play in all this. ried dancing career as the Weinstein-inspired Les Gross- The word takfiri, familiar to those who follow the reli- man in the closing credits of Tropic Thunder. It was not a gious and intellectual currents sustaining Islamic extrem- loving parody. It’s been a long time since Polanski’s was ism, is useful in other contexts as well. A takfiri is a Muslim a name to conjure with, and his épater la bourgeoisie sexual- who accuses another Muslim of apostasy—of being impure. outlaw shtick is out of fashion in a Hollywood that as a That’s a big deal in the Muslim world, because some of matter of social norms might be characterized the way Gil- your more energetically orthodox Muslims believe that it bert Osmond described himself in Portrait of a Lady: not is religiously acceptable—or mandatory—to massacre infi- conventional, but convention itself. The soi-disant radicals dels wherever they are found (and an “impure” Muslim is

TOP: KEVIN HAGEN / GETTY; BOTTOM: KEVIN HAGEN / GETTY; TOP: DREAMWORKS of Hollywood Anno Domini 2018 remind me of the ladies an “infidel”). Some Sunnis argue that all Shia are infidels

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 23 and that killing them is therefore in accordance with sense that Chelsea Clinton is—or that Bradley Manning is Islamic law. As with everything related to Islamic sectari- no more a woman in that sense than Bradley Cooper is— anism, it gets more complicated: Takfiri itself is used as a may be controversial, but that belief alone does not place sectarian slur by Shia jihadists to denote a Sunni tendency one among the infidels. What does bring out thetakfiri ten- that apparently is to be regarded as just too bonkers for the dency is “misgendering,” refusing to—or simply failing people who run Iran. to—conform to the orthodox court etiquette touching these The same tendency can be found less violently issues. The gentlemen at National Public Radio found that expressed outside the Islamic world: for example, in the out the hard way when in the interest of journalistic clarity exasperating tendency of Anglo-American Protestant they used the name Bradley Manning in a story about Brad- sects to divide and subdivide over what would appear to ley Manning deciding to adopt a new name and to begin the outsider to be incredibly trivial questions of doctrine living as though he were a woman—which is to say, they and practice (cf., the curious used the name Bradley Man- case of the Methodists vs. the ning at a time when every- Anglicans), breaking off into body who followed the news new congregations inevitably knew who Bradley Manning describing themselves as prac- was but nobody had ever heard ticing mere biblical Christian- of Chelsea Manning. ity while casting their former No one seriously believes co-factionalists into the outer that the people who man- dark. The Brethren Church, age editorial practices at NPR a Christian congregation with have the sexual politics of Rick radical pietist roots, is one Santorum or Mike Huckabee. example of “non-creedal” Prot- And if hooked up to a poly- estantism, i.e., a church that The takfiri tendency at work graph machine by electrodes claims to have no creed but the attached to the genitals associ- New Testament. Any number of more conventional evan- ated with the sex assigned to them at birth, not many peo- gelical storefront churches make the same claim and come ple would take seriously the insistence that a biologically to radically different theological and social conclusions. male human being who entered this vale of tears capable of Political movements work the exact same way. I am fathering children becomes a woman in the same sense as sure that more than a few readers of The Weekly Stan- a biologically female person who walks this Earth capable dard (and probably all the people who work there) have of bearing and nursing children simply because we mon- been told from time to time that they are not “real conser- key around with a few pronouns and call the result a “trans vatives,” often by the same people who the day before yes- woman.” Much of the social tension associated with gender terday mocked them for opposing Donald Trump on the dysphoria could be managed with such old-fashioned bour- grounds that he is not a conservative. As a matter of both geois values as kindness and liberality rather than the care- logic and rhetoric, that sort of thing is inevitable: If the fully cultivated group psychosis currently prescribed. But words “conservative” and “Christian” and “Muslim” and bourgeois values are unfashionable to speak about, espe- “civilized” mean anything at all, then there must be some cially among those who profit most handsomely by living people or institutions that are not conservative, not Chris- in accord with them. Some of that is homeopathic magic tian, not Muslim, not civilized, etc. And people will dis- straight out of The Golden Bough, but more of it is etiquette agree about where those borders are, partly for good-faith obsession straight out of Versailles. reasons and partly because there’s generally some juice in Watch what you say: Someone is. it. Those “Call Now If You Have IRS Problems” radio ads The question at the center of social life at Versailles aren’t going to sell themselves. was: Who belongs where? Who belongs at court, and who But where religious and political organizations inevita- does not? Who stands where—literally and figuratively, bly police creedal issues, the social-justice mobs on Twitter though there was scarcely any difference in many con- and Facebook do that only incidentally because they are texts—in relation to the king? Proving that one belonged not actually very much interested in politics or ideology. in one’s place—and avoiding gauchely giving any impres- Their animating concern is etiquette. sion that one did not belong—governed practically every Consider, for example, the bubbling kulturkampf over aspect of court life: how to sit, how to stand, how to walk, transgender issues. To believe, as many radical feminists how to speak, how to knock on a door (the correct method do, that Chelsea Manning is not a woman in the same was to scratch at it gently with a fingernail until noticed),

24 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 how to button a coat, pursue a romance, make money. The time. Status obsession does funny things to one’s map of word “status” literally means standing. social reality. It leads to all manner of bizarre thinking. The generation that reached what passes for maturity A second party scene: Some years ago, I was at a cook- in the age of social media is the most status-obsessed—and out at a friend’s in the suburbs of Philadelphia. One of the hence etiquette-obsessed—since the ancien régime. They guests was a well-meaning young Democratic state leg- are all miniaturists: There hasn’t been an important and islator of the familiar modern type: doggedly and dully original book of political ideas written by an American progressive, rich, suburban, Osmondite in his regard for millennial, and very few of them have read one, either. convention, overly self-assured, and—this was before it But they are very interested in individual pronouns and became a red flag in and of itself—dating a pretty young 280-character tweets. It is extraordinarily difficult for any woman about half his age. He wanted to talk about abor- one of them to raise his own status through doing inter- tion, because that’s what people like him do at parties. esting and imaginative intellectual work, because there It was a cordial enough conversation, and he—being is practically no audience for such work among his peers. insufficiently schooled in the new etiquette—used the Worse, the generation ahead of him stopped paying atten- descriptors “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” And every time tion to millennials years ago, and the generation behind he uttered the words “pro-life,” his hall-monitor of a girl- him never started. friend (I do hope they got married; it would serve the both What that leaves is the takfiri tendency, scalp-hunting of them right) snapped at him: “anti-choice.” Like an angry or engineering a court scandal at Versailles. Concurrent little weasel, making whatever noise it is that angry little with that belief is the superstition that people such as Har- weasels make when they’re laying down the mustelid law. vey Weinstein or Bret Stephens take up cultural space that Kind of a chirp, really. Neither one of us was exactly wob- might otherwise be filled by some more worthy person bly in our respective views on abortion, and neither one of if only the infidel were removed, as though society were us was likely to change his own mind or the other’s. That an inverted game of Tetris, with each little disintegration wasn’t the point. helping to enable everybody else to move up one slot at a I wonder if he knew that. I wonder if she did. ♦

Entitlements: A Slow Motion Crisis

THOMAS J. DONOHUE than expected, and the trust fund is allow our entitlement programs to PRESIDENT AND CEO now expected to be entirely depleted collapse, or run up the federal credit U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE by 2034. Meanwhile, the 2018 Medicare card until lenders cut us off. This is Trustees Report shows that Medicare’s why we must act now to reform Social The U.S. is barreling toward one of hospital insurance fund will be Security and Medicare and save them the most predictable economic and depleted in 2026, three years earlier for future generations. That doesn’t social crises in our history: the collapse than anticipated. mean cutting them—it simply means of our entitlement programs. Social The lack of sustainability in these slowing the rate of growth in the programs Security and Medicare represent our programs has many causes including and making other strategic reforms. nation’s compassionate commitment lower rates of economic growth, rising Congress has known about this to the elderly and the sick. While medical costs, and a massive influx looming crisis for decades, and it our government has a responsibility of retirees who are living longer than has ignored it for just as long. The to protect these programs for future ever. At current spending levels, situation is quickly growing too generations, it is currently failing to entitlement programs and net interest serious to ignore. The U.S. Chamber of meet that responsibility—and two will consume 98% of federal revenue Commerce is blowing the whistle, and recent reports show the situation to be by 2028. This means our federal we’re ready to work with lawmakers more dire than previously thought. government will have to borrow to on sensible reforms. The well-being of The 2018 Social Security Trustees pay for almost everything else— our most vulnerable citizens, the basic Report, released earlier this month, education, defense, infrastructure, functioning of our government, and reveals that Social Security’s costs will research and development, and more. the economic vitality of our country exceed its income this year for the first Without some changes, our leaders depend on finding a solution before time since 1982, forcing the program to will face stark choices in the not the clock runs out. dip into its trust fund to cover benefits. too distant future: stop investing in This is happening three years sooner priorities that are crucial to our society, Learn more at uschamber.com/abovethefold.

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 25 The Lion of South London Lionel Shriver does not want to write books in which people only say the right thing. She is pushing back against prudence.

By James Campbell of students at Bowdoin College in Maine for organizing a Mexican-themed party. “The hosts,” she noted, “provided n a speech delivered at the Brisbane Writers Festi- attendees with miniature sombreros, which—the hor- val in September 2016, Lionel Shriver confessed to ror—numerous partygoers wore.” Some were placed on being “much more anxious about depicting char- probation. The student government issued a “statement acters of different races” than she used to be. Even of solidarity” with those adversely affected by the antics of accents, she said, “make me nervous.” When start- their fellow students. Safe spaces were marked out. Shriver Iing out as a writer, Shriver had scarcely hesitated to draw wound up her talk by placing a sombrero on her head. African-American characters in her fiction or to conjure Her defense of the right to dress up provoked a the sound of “black dialects, for which, having grown up response from a Sudanese-Australian woman, Yassmin in the American South, I had a pretty good ear.” Her first Abdel-Magied, known for video broadcasts with titles novel, The Female of the Species (1987), contains not only such as “What Does My Headscarf Mean to You?” and rounded and recognizable black characters, such as Leo- for her advocacy of sharia law (“it’s about mercy, it’s about nia Harris of the South Bronx—“Out there on the street kindness”). Abdel-Magied heard Shriver’s speech as a Ray Harris get treated no better than a wad of gum stuck privileged Western woman “mocking those who ask people on somebody shoe”—but also an obscure Kenyan tribe of to seek permission to use their stories.” Her reaction was her own invention, Il-Ororen. published by the Guardian: “I breathed in deeply, trying to In the decades since, the law of trespass governing make sense of what I was hearing. . . . I was reminded of my literary territory has become noticeably less liberal, but ‘place’ in the world.” Shriver remains resolute in the conviction that she is as How to be serious in a time of absurdity? Shriver entitled to describe the speech, look, and attitudes of fel- is not untouched by this and other incidents that have low creatures of whatever race or class as anybody else led to a flurry of accusations, including that of “racist is to describe her. “All boundaries between cultures are provocateur.” The medium for that particular message fluid,” she told me recently. “We are living in a big hash. was Twitter, and the messenger was pseudonymous. In It’s fun . . . and interesting . . . and it’s complicated.” In her March, in one of her regular columns in the London pacing, and not least in her impressive articulacy, Shriver Spectator, Shriver wrote, “Try this exercise: prove you’re sometimes talks as if addressing a lecture room. As it not a racist. . . . The more you go on about your laudable happens, she has done so on this topic, “cultural appro- color-blindness, the dodgier you’ll sound.” priation,” more than once. Her thoughts emerge in clear While not lacking in confidence, she nonetheless outlines. “But the solution is not to place a fence around admits that the public criticism has nibbled deleteriously everybody. We are putting together a version of the world at her sense of duty as a novelist and led to inner confu- that is false: Not only do you not own your culture, whose sion on the question of self-censorship. “She has become boundaries you are therefore not allowed to police, but embattled over the years,” says Fraser Nelson, editor of the you don’t even own your self. Which is to say, you are Spectator. Nelson invited her to step in last year when a unavoidably a part of other people’s lives.” previous columnist left. “It was a moonshot name on our At the Brisbane event, Shriver recounted one of the list. I was delighted when she accepted.” He cannot think pettiest examples of this thoroughly modern offense-tak- of any other contemporary novelist who could fulfill the ing: the prosecution by university authorities of a group role of pugnacious columnist, jabbing at liberal pieties, as successfully as she does. “She is very topical. Her latest James Campbell writes a weekly column for the Times Literary novel, The Mandibles, for example, tackles issues like cryp- Supplement. His books include This Is the Beat Generation tocurrency and has an astonishing grasp of economics. and, most recently, Syncopations, a collection of essays. It’s also hilarious. In addition to her intellectual qualities,

26 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 she brought to the Spectator an ele- got was that “maybe I’d like to make gance of expression.” Jocanda white.” It is the kind of lit- Nelson reaches for the pleas- erary advice last heard by authors in ing phrase “a gentle fearlessness” to the 1950s, when James Baldwin was describe Shriver’s public stances, earnestly advised by his New York but she herself occasionally won- publisher to make the gay hero of ders if she ought to be watching her Giovanni’s Room a woman. step. Will her career as a novelist Seated in the kitchen of her tidy suffer if she steps across one newly house on a busy street in a not yet drawn line too many? “Unless I up-and-coming quarter of South push back against my own pru- London, Shriver is defensive of dence,” she wrote in an essay on a position that has only recently the subject of cultural appropria- seemed in need of being defended tion in the British magazine Pros- in liberal Western countries: what pect in March, “my fictional worlds Gail Winston calls “the right of will fail to reflect the world I live authors to create the characters they in. My literary palate will pale.” believe best serve the story.” Shriver Shriver’s editor in New York, Gail insists that she acted on good artis- Winston of HarperCollins, admires tic instinct in making Jocanda who her for holding her ground. “We she is. “First, it’s Atlanta, which are mired in a historical moment has a very large black population— that is obsessed with cultural also a large middle- and upper-mid- appropriation, microaggressions, dle-class population. It’s perhaps safe spaces—for better and for the biggest wealthy black commu- worse—so anyone who takes a firm nity in the country. So I liked that position on these matters leaves flipping of economic conventions. themselves open to criticism. Lio- She’s from a better part of town nel has to stay true to herself.” than the main character. I know Rising to the call to do what now that any ethnic characters I use she believes she does best, Shriver are going to be hyperexamined for wrote a story called “Domestic sins. And people who are looking Terrorism” in 2016. The locale is for sins always find them. It doesn’t Atlanta. The cast includes Har- matter how innocuous that charac- riet, “on the threshold of sixty,” ter is, the very existence of him or her her “socially awkward” son Liam, will attract criticism.” and Liam’s African-American girl- The story was declined by the friend Jocanda, one of Shriver’s magazine in which Shriver had many skillfully drawn youthful hoped to see it published. “We’ll creations. Jocanda has “mighty never know,” her agent concluded. powers,” not only in Liam’s bed- Lionel Shriver “Domestic Terrorism” is, however, room but even while reclining on included in Property, the new col- Harriet’s sofa, “eyeing her hostess through the roseate lection of her shorter fiction. A reviewer in theFinancial glow of her Negroni—a cocktail whose name made Har- Times, Luke Brown, echoed the anxious opinion of her riet anxious.” agent. He depicted Shriver as an author who has “not It is a comic touch in keeping with the tone of the story, had an easy time over the past two years” for insisting on which is transmitted through Harriet’s concerned and car- being “allowed to represent the lives of those from differ- ing mind. To any goodwilled reader, it is evident that the ent races and backgrounds from her own.” Shriver her- author feels as attached to Jocanda as Harriet does. But self feels she’s been having a hard time, but any rapport goodwill is the primary instinct of fewer readers than was between author and reviewer ended there. Brown singled once the case. When Shriver sent “Domestic Terrorism” to out “Domestic Terrorism” as an example of Shriver “spoil- her agent, with the aim of having it submitted to a maga- ing for a fight,” blundering into caricatures and “lapses

ROBERTO RICCIUTI / GETTY zine “that had published me in the past,” the response she in taste,” determined to assert “her right to write black

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 27 characters.” To which Shriver, blending weariness and Margaret-turned-Lionel was emboldened. “I decided irritation, responds: “I can either hide in a lily-white past I wanted to be a writer when I was seven, shortly after I or I can be defiant.” learned to read. On the one hand, how can you decide what Margaret Ann Shriver was born—in 1957 in Gastonia, you want to do when you’re seven? On the other hand, I North Carolina—under a defiant star. Her father, Donald, never changed my mind.” She describes herself as having is a Presbyterian minister who later became president of been “a natural contrarian” in youth. “I didn’t like being the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and told what to do. In that sense I didn’t especially enjoy her mother, Peggy, worked for the National Council of being a child. I liked the play aspect of childhood, but I Churches. “I’m afraid all this church created an allergic really didn’t like the powerlessness of it. I couldn’t wait to reaction,” Shriver says. “Now I can’t stand church.” Nev- get out from under.” She has said that there was “a very ertheless, she describes herself as “classically Protestant . . . thin line in my family between God and my father.” Her hardworking, self-righteous, and most recent novel but one, Big Brother cheap”—by which she means “frugal,” (2013), was inspired by the plight of a word she reaches for more than once. ‘She’s a force,’ Gail her elder brother, Greg, about whom Shriver doesn’t own a car, preferring to she wrote in 2009: “He’s topping walk or cycle to reach most places in Winston says. ‘Anyone 330 pounds: 24 stone. He was once 5ft London. She rifles through the clothes meeting her for the 7in tall, but his vertebrae have com- racks in thrift shops. The idea of home first time is struck by pressed, and at 5ft 3in I now look him improvements fails to move her. “The her blunt honesty and straight in the eye. I used to look up to thought of looking it all up online and arresting opinions. An him in every sense. I ended our last two then choosing. . . . And the disruption!” visits in tears.” She added: “I doubt if A night owl, she works till dawn and encounter with Lionel, he’ll see 60.” Hours after she filed the declines friendly lunches. “It breaks up in person or on the piece, Greg was admitted to hospital the working day. Anyway, in my case page, is stimulating.’ and died two days later, aged 55. it’s more like breakfast.” In “My Old In Big Brother, the narrator Pan- Man,” a mostly affectionate portrait of dora’s account of meeting Greg’s fic- her father written a decade ago (both parents are still alive), tional avatar, Edison, at the Cedar Rapids airport is pungent Shriver admitted that for him, as for her, “compliments with shock and disgust and love. A “very large gentleman” is have a shelf life of five seconds, but criticisms fester.” rolled into baggage claim “in an extrawide wheelchair”: Her father wanted her to study nursing, a suggestion she sees as emanating from old-style patriarchal parenting. “I I peered into the round face, its features stretched as was suited [for it] by neither temperament nor inclination, if painted on a balloon. Searching the brown eyes, nearly black now so hooded, I think I was trying not to recognize only by dint of being female,” she wrote. In a tomboyish him. The longish hair was lank, too dull. But the keyboard twist, she changed her name to Lionel at the age of 15. Not grin was unmistakable—if sulphurous from tobacco, and even her father calls her Margaret now. In the article, she tinged with a hint of melancholy along with the old mis- described him as having a face “drawn along strong, square chief. “Sorry, but I didn’t see you.” “Find that hard to believe.” Somewhere under all that Kennedy lines,” and her face is similarly strong, occasionally fat was my brother’s sense of humor. “Don’t I get a hug?” tilting towards strictness. Her father could boast a “tawny, “Of course!” My hands nowhere near met on his leonine thatch” and so can Lionel, drawn into a long pony- curved back. tail. When she smiles, as she often does with a touch of droll- ery, everything lightens. “She’s a force,” Gail Winston says. In Bermondsey, Shriver lives with Jeff Williams, an “Anyone meeting her for the first time is struck by her blunt American jazz drummer who has worked with Stan Getz, honesty and arresting opinions. An encounter with Lionel, Joe Lovano, Paul Bley, and others. (Edison in Big Brother in person or on the page, is stimulating.” is a jazz pianist.) They have no children, but family mat- Donald Shriver has written books on religious top- ters show up in her fiction all the time. Williams is her sec- ics, in some cases mixed with current events: An Ethic for ond husband—she had what she calls a “starter marriage,” Enemies, one of his incursions into civil rights, bears the under pressure from her parents. And he was previously subtitle “Forgiveness in Politics.” Another is The Unsilent married to a literary agent who once acted for Shriver. South. Peggy Shriver’s publications have included Pinches Success was in no hurry to catch Shriver. The Female of of Salt: Spiritual Seasonings, a collection of poems written the Species came out in 1987. The six novels that followed to show that “grace can be found in daily life.” in the next nine years were mostly well received, while cre- Growing up in a house already occupied by authors, ating no firm impression. A Perfectly Good Family (1996)

28 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 made a dent in relations back home, however, causing a commercially successful book no matter where it falls in rift that took several years to heal. “The problem was that their writing career—but Lionel had written standout fic- that novel dispelled the notion that I held my parents in a tion before Kevin.” Shriver’s back catalogue returned to kind of awed esteem, which is what they expected. I rep- print, and she has written another five novels sinceKevin . resented them as mortal, with foibles and hypocrisies, Property is her first collection of short fiction. like everyone else.” Funnily enough, she adds, “they took In her Spectator columns, written in a straight-from- exception to all kinds of things that weren’t actually in the the-shoulder style, Shriver tries to interrupt a conversa- book. I never heard anything about the parts that were tion she sees as being controlled by the left. Unregulated indeed precisely about them.” She immigration is a recurring topic. has stated that “one line” in her Official figures ought to be taken fifth novel,Game Control (1994), with a pinch of salt, she said in a hurt her father’s feelings: He recent piece headlined “Why Mass “misconstrued it to mean that his Immigration Explains the Housing daughter did not think him hand- Crisis.” The government, Shriver some.” Now that her father is in his declared bluntly, “has a) no idea 90s and her mother is in ill health, how to track people with every “I probably won’t write about them motivation to keep off the radar, again until they’re dead.” and b) every motivation itself to Shriver’s conversation, like her underestimate an unpopular social journalism, is seldom lit up by the phenomenon, with a range of name of a favorite prose writer or adverse consequences, that it can- poet. She is a natural storyteller, not seem to control. Do I sound with a direct narrative force, but bigoted?” Reduced to a single sen- her sentences do not in general tence, her view is “Current global draw attention to themselves. Toby demographics make open-border Lichtig, fiction editor of theTimes policies in the West untenable.” Literary Supplement, regards her as Fraser Nelson feels that while “notably wide-ranging in her sub- “there is a strong left-leaning con- jects, applying a journalist’s rest- sensus among the cultural elite in lessness to her authorial craft. I like Britain, the public is different. The this about her. Authors, as Hilary readership of the Spectator, neither Shriver dons her sombrero in Brisbane in 2016. Mantel has said, are there to ‘bring broadly left nor right, responds us news’—and this is something Shriver has done very positively to Lionel’s columns. She swims against the cur- effectively over the course of her career. She’s a serious rent, and readers like that.” ideas novelist, but she doesn’t let the ideas get in the way Shriver’s voice gathers heat as she steers the kitchen- of a good story.” table talk away from routine facts about her background— It was the slow-burning success of We Need to Talk she spent 12 years in Belfast before moving to London—to About Kevin that bent the shape of her career into an what it means, in terms of her career, to be an outspoken upward-looking position. Published in 2003 by small public intellectual. “The left does more or less shape the houses in both the United States (Counterpoint) and Brit- literary sphere in the U.K. and in the U.S. So the people ain (Serpent’s Tail), it won the Orange Prize, at that time who make judgments about my books, and even determine a prestigious award. When a sanguinary film directed by whether or not they’re published, are left-wing. And if I’ve Lynne Ramsay was released in 2011, with Tilda Swinton become too identified with the non-left, then my goose is in the role of Eva Khatchadourian—Kevin’s mother, who cooked. I’m not even on the right—that’s the irony! And narrates the tale of a high-school massacre carried out by if my goose is cooked, then it’s just going to encourage all her son in a series of letters—success happened all over my colleagues to be paranoid and careful and to shut up.” again. The latest Serpent’s Tail edition boasts, “One mil- Lichtig disagrees that any particular group “controls” lion copies sold.” the literary sphere in Britain or America. “This state- “We Need to Talk About Kevin was a sensation and the ment seems to me a classic example of Shriver’s tendency book that put her on the map,” Gail Winston says. “So of towards hyperbole—the sort of tendency that makes her course people make the assumption that it was her first an appealing columnist, particularly for right-wing outlets novel. It’s not unusual—authors are known for their most such as the Spectator.”

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 29 On June 12, Shriver was sacked as the sole judge for a everybody else is saying, following the happy liberal line, short story competition organized by the British feminist which, Shriver says, signals the virtue of the person pur- quarterly Mslexia, after the journal’s editors voiced their suing it. “Isn’t it interesting how quickly that term ‘vir- dissatisfaction with comments made in Shriver’s Specta- tue-signaling’ caught on? There must have been a need tor column about the new “Inclusion Tracker” devised to for it.” For that reason, she has avoided writing about the measure the ethnic diversity of authors at Penguin Ran- current U.S. president in her fiction, including the novel dom House UK. Mslexia’s editor, Debbie Taylor, spoke of she is working on now. “I tend to be topical as a novel- providing “a safe space for all women writers” and of wel- ist, but one of the pitfalls of topicality is that you run the coming “open debate” at the same time as announcing the risk of your books aging badly. I suspect that, post-Trump, removal of the woman writer with opposing views. nobody’s going to want to read about him.” Anyway, she Another way to cook a goose was demonstrated by says, Trump is “too broad” to make a good fictional char- the novelist Ken Kalfus in a review of acter. “He’s crude and crudely The Mandibles in the Washington Post self-drawn. There’s no art to in July 2016. A character in the dys- On June 12, Shriver him—no depth or irony. He topian tale—“a secondary character,” was sacked as the sole would be implausible on the Shriver stresses—is suffering from judge for a short story page.” The novel does, however, advanced early-onset dementia and is contain scenes with non-white apt to wander off into the labyrinthine competition organized characters. “We’ll see what hap- city, placing herself and others in dan- by the British feminist pens with that.” ger. Luella has married into the Man- quarterly Mslexia, Before departing, I offer some dible family, and as Shriver put it in after the journal’s remarks from an interview with the “prove you’re not a racist” Specta- editors voiced their Toni Morrison that appeared in tor column, she “happens to be black.” the Paris Review 25 years ago. In order to curb her erratic behavior, dissatisfaction with They concern one of the first family members guide her through the comments made in battles fought on the field of cul- streets on a leash. Kalfus was dismis- Shriver’s Spectator tural appropriation, though it was sive of Shriver’s adventitious “happens column about the new not called that then, over William to be.” The Mandibles are white, he ‘Inclusion Tracker’ Styron’s 1967 novel, The Confes- stated pointedly; Luella, “the single sions of Nat Turner. A year later, a African American in the family,” is devised to measure group of authors banded together physically restrained and led through the ethnic diversity and issued William Styron’s the streets of lawless New York at the of authors at Penguin “Nat Turner”: Ten Black Writers end of a cord. “If The Mandibles is ever Random House UK. Respond, in protest against a white made into a film, my suggestion is that Southerner’s depiction of the man this image not be employed for the who led a murderous slave revolt movie poster.” In a follow-up article on the subject, Kal- in 1831. Styron’s version was necessarily an invention. A fus added that he was “thinking of ads in bus shelters and, thin pamphlet of “confessions” issued after Turner’s grisly honestly, I imagined they’d be wrecked.” execution gave him the title for his novel and generated The Mandibles is not so far in film production. “I think more than 400 pages of lyrical first-person narrative. James it’d be fine,” Shriver replies when asked how she thinks Baldwin’s defense of Styron is well known: “He has begun any future adaptation would deal with the Luella ques- the common history—ours.” Morrison’s much less so. The tion. “The action as described makes perfect sense. That Paris Review interviewer ventured “a lot of people felt that reviewer”—whose name she claims to have forgotten, as Styron didn’t have a right to write about Nat Turner,” to she does the critic of Property in the Financial Times—“also which she replied: “He has a right to write about whatever said that you go for hundreds of pages in the book without he wants. To suggest otherwise is outrageous.” a joke. I was far more offended by that than I was about the Shriver appears vague about Styron’s novel, its date charge of racism, which I felt was so stupid that I couldn’t of appearance, and its historical inspiration, but is openly take it seriously. I want to have characters who are able to delighted by the Toni Morrison quote. “Good for her! say whatever they want—things that maybe are offensive Nobody’s saying that. Only I’m saying that. I don’t under- to certain people. I do not want to read books in which stand why everyone isn’t saying that. I’m not quite sure people only say the right thing! It would put me to sleep.” why it seems only to fall to me. I wish I had had that quote Saying the “right thing” often means saying what a long time ago.” ♦

30 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 As the E.U. Weakens The nation-state reconsidered

By Dominic Green economy and crucial to the political drive towards “conver- gence” into a single European state. But voters in France ichael Novak’s ideal of “democratic preferred not to cede their rights and laws to a suprana- capitalism” sounds like it has two ele- tional entity. Across Europe, resistance to the E.U. has risen ments, but it really has three. In The sharply since then. The nation-state has become an impass- Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982), able obstacle on the E.U.’s road to convergence. Novak defined the American system The modern nation-state was born in Europe. It Mas a triple alliance of free markets, a democratic polity, and was declared dead in Europe, too, in the years after 1945, a classically liberal system of values. In Novak’s American although reports of its death now seem exaggerated, if not and Catholic application of Max Weber’s German and Prot- utopian. Still, the nation-state’s reputation remains poor in estant theories, the spirit of a culture shapes the matter of its Europe. To many postwar Europeans, raised on the mood governance and the materials of its capitalism. music of the European Union and the memory of two world Two’s company; three’s a crowd. At the end of the Cold wars, defense of the nation-state was deemed heretical, a War, democratic capitalism inherited the earth. The years rejection of the dogma of peace and progress. Indeed, too until the Great Recession were a global victory tour. Those ardent a defense carried undertones of racism, imperial nos- of us who enjoyed its progress must now admit that the talgia, and even sympathy for fascism. Western-sponsored market system and Western politicians Now, however, the memory of World War II is fading. alike frequently treated values, the ethical foundation of The E.U.’s political development has been stalled for more society, as a silent partner. In the United States and Europe, than a decade. Europe’s social peace and its welfare sys- politicians like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair even persuaded tems are threatened by mass immigration, terrorism, and centrist voters to let them push values out of bed entirely, the unending “migrant crisis.” Some voters are turning the better to enjoy their intimacy with the free market. But to the nation-state for the protection that the bureaucrats in across the West, that silent partner has come to life in vari- Brussels seem unwilling or unable to provide, just as their ous “shock” election results in recent years. medieval forebears might have sought the safety of a castle. Throughout the 1990s, and even after the onset of the But others never stopped experiencing nationhood as an Great Recession in 2008, Western governments pulled inescapable reality. Today, Europeans and Americans too are towards capital and market values and away from people shedding the ideal of a borderless world, some with regret, and social values—towards transnational systems, and away others with glee. A working alternative, and the political from local traditions. This uncoupling of democracy and forms of a democratic future, need to be defined. capitalism, or at least capitalism as we have known it since 1990, led to a revolt of democracy and values against capital hether it’s happened deliberately or not, and a governing class that has taken on the aspect of aris- it’s the results that interest me,” says Gil tocracy: self-perpetuating, self-serving, and contemptuous ‘W Delannoi. It is a precociously warm spring of the governed when they persist in adhering to the wrong afternoon in Paris, and we are sitting beneath a tree in kind of values. the garden of an old house on the Left Bank. Delannoi, a In the United States, early signs of this revolt appeared political scientist at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, on the fringes of both major parties, with the Tea Party in or “Sciences Po,” has just published a thoughtful book on 2009 and Occupy Wall Street in 2011. But the cracks showed the mixed legacies and potential uses of democratic national first in the European Union. In 2005, 55 percent of French identity, La nation contre le nationalisme, or The Nation voters rejected a proposed constitution for Europe. The alli- Against Nationalism. ance of France and Germany is the foundation of the E.U.’s In France, the nation has been historically identified with the state, and the state with the universalism of the Dominic Green is culture editor of Spectator USA and a frequent French Revolution, as well as the errors of imperialism contributor to The Weekly Standard. and Vichy. France’s national institutions are unanimously

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 31 Europhile; it is as though the nation-state has recognized And secondly, ‘Can you peacefully change policy and gov- the inevitability and desirability of its Hegelian absorp- ernment?’ ” He laughs. “At least the European Union fulfills tion into the higher universal form of the European Union. the first condition—but not the second!” Meanwhile on the lower slopes of history, the traditional “Not that I’m a Euroskeptic,” Delannoi clarifies. “My political parties have either collapsed into the center or critique of the E.U. is all about this deficit. In a democracy, scattered to the fanatic fringes, and the loudest defenders there is Politics A and Politics B. If A doesn’t work, you can of national particularity are the Le Pen family. As these are go for B. The E.U. functions only in a nondemocratic mode. fractious times in Europe, La nation contre le nationalisme has Even if it has human rights and a parliament, it still has only attracted intense and often hostile interest. one policy. So if you criticize the policy, you’re not favoring “Whether we like it or not, national consciousness an alternative. You’re against the union’s existence.” exists,” Delannoi writes. “It is urgent that, instead of exalt- Delannoi, an expert on Isaiah Berlin, sees Europe’s lib- ing or condemning it, we know and understand it.” In eral democracy squeezed between two globalizing forces. the decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, the idea of the One is “the world market” into whose open-bordered sys- nation was “denigrated,” and its historical demise seen as tem the European Union has integrated itself, regardless “ineluctable, irreversible and sometimes even of its subjects’ political desires. The other is destined.” Yet while transnational institutions the imperialism of values represented by fun- and the American-led order spread across the damentalist Islamism. Both have their extrem- globe, the European nation-state revived with ists, their servants, and their useful idiots. Both the reunification of Germany and the restoration sense their power of conquest and, like all con- of sovereignty to the ex-Soviet states. querors, believe their conquests to be irreversible. “In all nationalisms, you find the idea that Recent events have forced us to consider political identity corresponds to cultural iden- once more the passions of religion and how tity,” Delannoi says. For all the E.U.’s suc- politically to constrain them. We have not, cesses, European democracy failed to develop Gil Delannoi Delannoi believes, accepted history’s suggestion at the supranational level. This produced what that the contemporary passion for “openness” the Brexit-minded British call the E.U.’s “democratic defi- may also require limits. “What does this passion signify?” cit.” A fatal lack of accountability severs Europe’s collective he asks. What is “the hidden object of institutionalized political identity from its constituent cultural identities. multiculturalism? Is it hiding a desire for empire? And “The E.U. and the global commercial institutions may why is it hiding it?” not practice war or violence,” Delannoi concedes. “How- The answer, he implies, is an unstated complicity ever, they don’t practice what I believe is the most elemen- between Europe’s national publics and their unaccount- tary of democratic characteristics. That isn’t even universal able supranational rulers in Brussels. Both wanted the prof- suffrage so much as offering political options and alterna- its and pleasures of a borderless world without the economic tives. If there’s a basic definition of democracy, it’s the possi- and social costs. After nearly three decades of mass immi- bility of legally protected political change. People should be gration and a decade of economic stagnation, the national able to choose between multiple possibilities.” electorates now find those costs have grown too high to pay. The European Union and its precursor institutions “The public resists two different aspects of global- were founded against nationalism—or rather, Delannoi ization,” Delannoi says. “Firstly, there’s the deindus- argues, against a false image of nationalism raised by the trialization of wealthy states, a new phenomenon. The two world wars. This has caused what Delannoi calls a case problem that demands our attention is that it’s going of natiophobie, “nation-phobia.” Europe’s political managers to be difficult to go all the way, to the absolute extinc- are suspicious of particularism and of democracy in general. tion of industry in the richest countries. Maybe the “Technically speaking, the E.U. is a democracy of del- other, emerging industrial states can become rich too. egates. To belong to the E.U., you have to satisfy certain But if it’s completely to the detriment of the older rich democratic criteria. And elected politicians nominate the states, it’s evident that the population will say, ‘Stop!’ at leaders on the European Commission. So the E.U. seems some point. And that’s what’s beginning to happen.” to defend certain democratic principles. But when I go to The second stumbling block is “cultural membership,” any country in the world, the question that I ask, especially without which a nation cannot have common values. And if I don’t know the country, isn’t, ‘Do you have an elected that means confronting immigration, Islam, and terror- president or parliament?’ nor even ‘Is the press entirely ism. “We have to be very precise here,” Delannoi warns. He free?’ Instead, I have two principal questions. ‘If you’re in is a classical liberal, a species rarer in France than among

opposition, do you risk imprisonment without reason?’ the Anglo-Saxons, and does not wish to give intellectual DOMINIC GREEN

32 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 ammunition to the National Front. He manages to discuss experimented with abandoning their “almost perennial the French state’s crisis of relations with French Muslims political mission,” the democratic expression of their peo- without mentioning Islam. ples’ culture and values. In the lean years since, the authori- “We used to have a great divergence between nations in tarian democracies of Russia and Turkey have encroached Europe, but we also had a number of circumstances favor- on Europe like their empires of old. ing multiethnic integration around common political prin- “The issue today isn’t whether we can keep things ciples. We’re going to have problems, because that model as they were. That’s not possible,” Delannoi concludes. no longer works. These populations want to live in Brit- “It’s if we’re going to have a more globalized world, who ain or France but no longer want to say ‘We’re British’ and is in control of it? If it’s going to be controlled by inter- ‘We’re French.’ ” national companies and institutions, can we trust them In truth, Europeans were never enthusiastic about inte- and their sense of responsibility? If it’s not controlled at grating their immigrants. The British left them to their own all, that’ll be very difficult. Some of my colleagues want devices, often in their own slums, in the name of multicul- to suppress the state. I tell them, ‘Go live for a year in a turalism. The French installed them in purpose-built slums, country which is considered to have no state, and then then lectured them on the virtues of French republicanism, come and see me.’ ” which, though theoretically universal, are in reality highly The Hobbesian reality, Delannoi insists, is that we need particular. The Germans created a mostly Turkish under- the state for security if not for the luxury of democratic class, denying citizenship even to the grandchildren of Turk- expression. “Just to collect taxes and to ensure a minimum ish guestworkers until the European Union, performing one of police and social protection. You can’t organize those of its better deeds, made that sort of discrimination illegal. things on a global scale. Therefore, the system cannot be The European Union has complicated integration, post-national. It can only be international. It can only work Delannoi thinks, and has “wavered between two strategies.” internationally with relatively strong nations.” In order to build a “post-national” state, the E.U. sought The current crisis of democratic legitimacy in the to weaken its nation-states. But while it has drawn execu- West has developed because the pursuit of free markets tive powers upwards to Brussels, it has also sought to lessen has uncoupled democratic polities from their value sys- nationalist resistance by encouraging “sub-national” and tems. Pluralities, and sometimes majorities, of voters regional identities. The result is that the Scots feel more have revolted because they feel that democratic capitalism Scottish than British, and the Catalans more Catalan than has betrayed its own spirit and then failed to deliver the Spanish. And that leads to local revolts against the estab- material goods. The vocabulary of denigration—populist, lished nation-states. nativist, extremist, ultranationalist—suggests that popu- “The policy can be justified economically, as in the case lism is a protest from the fringe. In fact, populism is a dis- of Alsace and other regions that straddle national borders,” torted centrism, a consensus run amok. It arises from the Delannoi allows. “But it was a bad policy. It consisted in level of values and emotions but is displaced to the mar- simultaneously encouraging national identity while also gins by the weaknesses of the institutions that are at the expecting it to disappear.” The logical consequence was center of political life. the Catalan referendum on secession from Spain—and the Anyone who thinks that we have passed peak populism imprisonment and extradition of the Catalan premier from is probably deluding himself. The stakes are high, for we Germany on an E.U. arrest warrant: a perfect example of have enough problems already. A socialist revival would what Delannoi calls the E.U.’s “negation of politics.” very probably turn the current crisis into a disaster. Yet if we The E.U.’s double policy towards nationalism has also do not repair popular democracy, we may well get populist complicated the integration of immigrants. “It’s much collectivism. This takes familiar economic form in unwork- harder to integrate someone who comes from another conti- able promises of redistribution from socialists like Bernie nent—maybe it’s different if you come from another Euro- Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn and familiar cultural form pean country—if you’re also saying, ‘We’re asking you to in Europe’s “new nationalism,” with its explicit impulses make an effort to integrate into something that our elites toward authoritarianism and bigotry. say should disappear.’ ” Better the old nation-state, the liberal nation-state, which was created in order to protect freedom of conscience hile Americans argue over whether culture and local traditions of liberty, but also to contain the excess is upstream from politics, Delannoi locates energies of nationalism. If the state is to regulate national- W Europe’s crisis of legitimacy in the weaken- ism, it must regain the trust of the nation. For though the ing of the nation-state, which is where culture and politics political seas are heavy, the nation-state remains, as Gil meet. In the boom years after 1990, liberal nation-states Delannoi says, “the closest democratic horizon.” ♦

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 33 Books&Arts

Steven Brill lists the 2007 collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis as a prime example of American dysfunction. Decline ... From crumbling infrastructure to broken meritocracy, Steven Brill sees problems everywhere. by Philip Delves Broughton

teven Brill was prompted to which he describes in the book, read- write his assault on the “people Tailspin ers might wonder whether he is aton- and forces behind America’s The People and Forces ing for his own success—whether they fifty-year fall” while riding in Behind America’s Fifty-Year Fall— are about to witness a spectacular act of and Those Fighting to Reverse It Sa taxi from JFK into Manhattan. He journalistic seppuku. by Steven Brill was struck by the parlous state of the Knopf, 441 pp., $28.95 Alas not. Brill walks us briskly up to infrastructure. The airport terminal had his founding of American Lawyer maga- been dumpy, the traffic was bad, there zine, and then . . . no more autobiogra- were potholes along the Van Wyck. Next His new book Tailspin begins with phy. He himself is one of the talented, time, he might want to try the AirTrain an interesting premise: driven Americans he describes. He got to Jamaica and the E train to Midtown; there by merit. And then what did he it’s cheaper, faster, and better for the The most talented, driven Americans do? How did he educate his children? chased the American dream—and environment. But what’s a French- won it for themselves. Then, in a way What benefits did he provide his staff cuffed baby boomer to do? Brill, by all unprecedented in history, they were at his various companies? After his long accounts, has made more than enough able to consolidate their winnings, wind-up on how meritocracy, while money from selling his various publish- outsmart and co-opt the government well-intended, has in practice become a ing ventures to afford a chopper. But that might have reined them in, and kind of aristocracy, Brill goes all quiet. pull up the ladder so more could not maybe seething in a yellow cab is part share in their success or challenge He cites numbers rather than names. of the fun. their primacy. What I’d like to know is what he thinks of the Clintons and Obamas arriving in Philip Delves Broughton is the author, Knowing of Brill’s rise from Far Rocka- Washington and promptly bypassing most recently, of The Art of the Sale: way, Queens, to Deerfield Acad­emy to the public-school system to install their Learning from the Masters About Yale and Yale Law School to a reward- daughters in an elite private school,

the Business of Life. ing career as writer and publisher, all of Sidwell Friends? What message did that MANDEL NGAN / AFP GETTY

34 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 send to the rest of the preening equal- opportunists Brill so derides? Evidently, B A do what we do, not what we say. & So instead of what Brill promises in his opening salvo, what we get is a slog through some of his greatest hits. ... and Division The desecration of the First Amend- ment so that corporations get to speak The decisions that led to today’s as freely as individuals? Check. The heightened partisanship. by James Bowman staggering rise in lawyers’ incomes? Check. The iniquities of big pharma and the greed of bankers? Check and n the first and only political check. Brill has hit all these themes science course I ever took, just The Polarizers hard and convincingly in previous over 50 years ago, the first and Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era by Sam Rosenfeld books and journalism. almost only thing I remember Chicago, 399 pp., $30 Brill’s takedown of Johnson & John- Ilearning was that the United States son for its reprehensible peddling of was different from most represen- the antipsychotic drug Risperdal to tative democracies in having “bro- the McGovern-Fraser Commission) children is magnificent. But he has ker” political parties rather than the in the runup to the 1972 campaign done it before and it seems a random “missionary” parties that were more was not entirely original to them. It example to pick of all that’s wrong with typical in, for example, European had been anticipated by Paul But- America. And we really don’t need countries. For historical reasons, ler’s chairmanship of the DNC in another account of how America’s bank both major parties in this country the 1950s—and, before him, by the executives escaped the financial crisis had coalesced around regional, eth- Progressives of the Woodrow Wil- scot-free, their backs groaning under nic, racial, religious, class, and cultural son era, for whom, Rosenfeld writes, the weight of bonus money. They were loyalties and only sporadically and “making the parties more cohesive greedy and self-interested. Got it. Look secondarily around ideological ones. and programmatic was bound up in at the profession they chose. Liberal Republicans and conserva- a broader reform project aimed at Brill’s views sometimes reek of old- tive Democrats were both forces to be adapting America’s cumbersome and school hair tonic. He laments the fact reckoned with in their respective par- antiquated constitutional structure that truck-driving jobs are “no longer a ties and had to be conciliated—often to the needs of a modern industrial bedrock of the middle class,” since anti- by what was called “balancing the and military state.” corruption measures reduced member- ticket”—when it came to choosing Butler’s efforts on behalf of what he ship in trucking unions, resulting in candidates for national office. called “party government” or “party reduced wages and pensions. Even as I sat in that classroom, responsibility” and what James Q. however, the parties were begin- Wilson called “amateur Democrats” In the 1960s and 1970s, the Teamsters ning what Bill Bishop has dubbed had been successfully opposed by the Union was an engine of economic “the Big Sort.” The Democrats were party’s professionals of the period, security and mobility. True, top lead- ers overpaid themselves and gave to take the lead, after the upheavals especially by the bosses of big-city mob-connected trucking companies of 1968 and Hubert Humphrey’s political machines (referred to euphe- sweetheart wage deals, while siphon- loss to Richard Nixon, in purging mistically by Rosenfeld at one point ing off pension funds to finance the their (mainly Southern) conserva- as “nonideological patronage-based building of mob-run Las Vegas casi- nos. They left enough on the table, tive bloc—which Nixon’s “Southern organizations”), as well as by South- though, to boost their members into Strategy” had been designed to wel- ern Democratic leaders in Congress— the middle class. come into the Republican party. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn Yet, as Sam Rosenfeld shows in and Senate majority leader Lyndon Ah yes, those golden days of Jimmy The Polarizers, the work of ideo- Johnson in particular. Such men were Hoffa and cement boots. When all it logical homogenization performed far from alone at the time in seeing took to be a member of the middle by George McGovern and liberal the old, nonideological party system class was an iron rear and a CB radio. congressman Don Fraser of Min- as the route to a peculiarly American It scarcely bears mentioning that truck nesota with the Democrats’ Com- kind of consensus politics. driving wasn’t all Clint Eastwood and mission on Party Structure and “The parties have been the his orangutan, Clyde. It required—still Delegate Selection (better known as peacemakers of the American com- requires—weeks away from family and munity,” wrote Clinton Rossiter in nights in an uncomfortable cab. James Bowman is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. see BOWMAN, page 36 see DELVES BROUGHTON, page 36

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 35 DELVES BROUGHTON, and financial aid programs tells Brill “Because of Trump’s tweets, the crazy continued from page 35 that the school’s job is “moving people things he does, and the crises he ignites, into the middle class or higher.” Eat we’re not paying attention to what he’s Curiously for a man who has set up your heart out, Ivy League barista. doing to the day-to-day functions of a number of media and technology Brill’s examples are all sound and the country,” Kelleher says. “He has businesses, Brill has little to say on the worthy. But he’s stingy with his credit. spread all these termites throughout impact of technology on work. This His view of America’s cycle of rebirth the departments and agencies who are is a live issue as artificial intelligence and renewal is limited. There are no eating away at all aspects of our gov- eats away at existing jobs (including, New England hipsters making cheese ernment, day and night. They don’t perhaps soon, trucking jobs). This to rival any in France. No Iowa tech- believe in the laws they have sworn an complicated, rapidly evolving subject nologists reinventing the global pay- oath to enforce.” could use someone with Brill’s insight ments system. There is no Larry Page Bankers are scaling back regulations and journalistic experience slashing or Jeff Bezos. There is no yogalates. put in place after the 2008 financial through the regulatory and legal under- It is a sign of how quickly Presi- crisis. Energy executives are running growth to figure out what happens next. dent Trump has moved on many of the the Environmental Protection Agency. issues confronted by Brill that much Health care executives are running the rill ends each chapter with an in his book already feels out of date. Department of Health and Human Bexample of people doing things Although he decries the effects of Services. The foxes aren’t just in the right. After arguing that American free trade, he offers us nothing on the henhouse. They’ve killed the chick- universities are unintentionally creat- Trump administration’s determination ens, cleaned up the blood, and turned ing a less economically mobile society to tear up America’s major trade deals in Washington into a most accommodat- he describes the wonder that is Baruch the name of protecting America’s jobs. ing fox house. College. Baruch educates 18,000 stu- When Brill was writing, the Volcker Brill’s solutions are dull but necessary. dents at a time from all over New York Rule, which limits the range of trad- More bipartisanship. More engagement in its bustling Lexington Avenue “ver- ing activities banks can undertake, was with the political system. A demand for tical campus.” The average income of merely under siege. Since then, it has better leaders. “That can only happen a Baruch student’s family is $40,000; come under full-blown attack. if Americans borrow some of Trump’s tuition for New York state residents Brill does, though, offer a splendid bravado. The obstacles and all of their is $6,600 a year. While more vaunted insight from Dennis Kelleher, a former side effects must become energizing schools charge 10 times that and tie corporate lawyer turned anti-lobbyist. challenges, rather than excuses not to themselves in knots of political cor- Kelleher runs Better Markets, a pack try.” This is a book that pulses with dry rectness, Baruch is getting on with of legal terriers who harry and expose intelligence and righteous anger. Some giving its charges the tools to get well- lobbyists as they press their cases in gutsier return fire would have livened paid jobs. The head of its admissions obscure Washington hearing rooms. it up. ♦

BOWMAN, continued from page 35 American parties was a feature rather Democratic party’s conservative con- than a bug. gressional leadership—all conspired to Parties and Politics in America (1960), provide McGovern, Fraser, and their “the unwitting but forceful sup- Today it is easy to forget the extent progressive allies in the party with a pressors of the ‘civil-war potential’ to which Johnson had governed by window of opportunity that had been we carry always in the bowels of our consensus before his presidency foun- denied Butler. diverse nation. Blessed are the peace- dered on the rock of Vietnam. “Of all Meanwhile, across the aisle, the makers, I am tempted to conclude.” the major Great Society laws passed shakeout of liberal Republicans that As late as 1968, between 1964 and 1967,” writes Rosen- had come with the Goldwater candi- feld, “only one, the Economic Oppor- dacy in 1964 proved to be less than per- as one analyst [Charles Ogden Jr.] tunity Act encompassing several War manent after he lost—but the ruin of put it, Butler’s commitment to imple- on Poverty programs, failed to garner the Nixon presidency and the electoral menting responsible party principles betrayed a disastrous misunderstand- at least 25 percent of Republican votes losses of 1974 and 1976 gave new heart ing of the American system, where in both chambers. Most enjoyed signif- and ultimate success to the conservative federalism and the separation of pow- icantly larger percentages than that.” insurgency represented by Ronald Rea- ers demanded that parties serve as Various events and trends—John- gan’s primary campaigns of 1976 and “arenas of compromise”—decentral- son’s decision not to run again in 1968, 1980. Conservative dominance of the ized “multi-group associations with liberal and conservative wings.” To demographic shifts away from the cit- party was solidified with Reagan’s vic- those skeptical of the responsible party ies (and thus machine politics), and tory in the latter year’s general election, vision . . . the very “irresponsibility” of a gradual erosion of the power of the although it took a bit longer for the last

36 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 liberal Republicans to be made to feel tune of coming to the presidency in even though they have seen the elec- unwelcome in their party. a time when both the New Left of the tion of the most polarizing president Students for a Democratic Society and since the Civil War. Surely the 2016 o some political junkies, reading the New Right, as represented by Wil- election and its aftermath deserve more T Sam Rosenfeld’s book will be an liam F. Buckley’s National Review, were examination and explanation than exercise in almost unbearable nostal- united in their celebration of a new poli- Rosenfeld gives them here. His notion gia for that world of political stability tics of principle—something to which of the “rightward movement of both and comity and the kind of genuine we have by now grown so accustomed major parties” seems badly out of date, debate that can only come with mutual that it seems strange even to question it. and his argument that Democratic lib- respect between those of differing politi- In reading the book, there eralism did not die out under the “New cal points of view—as we can see now are moments when one is inclined Democrats” of the 1990s is as redun- that both genuine debate and mutual to suspect that Rosenfeld is trying to dant as the New Democrats themselves respect appear to have vanished from demonstrate his own version of that in the era of Elizabeth Warren and Ber- our politics. Such things are themselves time-honored tactic of the left, which nie Sanders. anathematized by the culturally domi- Bill Clinton’s attempts in the 1990s nant left as part of the institutionaliza- at “triangulation” were designed to tion of all that they most hate about the mitigate partisan animosities but only American past—that is, racism, sexism, succeeded in increasing them. This homophobia, etc. at home and quasi- happened, I think, because of a gra- imperialism abroad. Even to wish for a tuitous moralization of politics that, return of what was good in the past is to indeed, built upon the “principled” make oneself complicit in what the ris- politics of the 1970s and 1980s but ing generation is being taught to regard that, as government has been increas- as its crimes. ingly taken out of the hands of This must be part of what accounts elected officials and put into those for the acrimonious “polarization” of of judges and unelected bureaucrats, today’s political culture, though that has taken a side-turn into virtue sig- seems too mild a word to describe what naling. Nor should we neglect the we see routinely hurled by each side role of the media and their incessant against the other on Twitter. Back in hunt for scandal, in which they have Paul Butler’s day, says Rosenfeld, “con- now been joined by politicians them- sistent majorities of Americans” did not selves, who don’t seem to have any- want ideological parties. To the extent thing better to do. that that changed during the 1960s it All this has made polarization was largely as a result of “the explo- Paul Butler, DNC chairman from 1955 into at least as much a social as it is sion of the long civil rights struggle to 1960, pushed his party leftward. a political phenomenon, and it has into a mass movement of direct action enabled Donald Trump to appeal and moral reckoning”—which, accord- is to bog down committee meetings in over the heads of both parties to ingly, introduced an element of moral- such boring detail that all those with popular (and populist) resentment izing into the rest of our politics that a less herculean tolerance for tedium against what he calls “the swamp”— has since become a habit, exacerbating than the zealots themselves—like some widely understood to comprise both what Rossiter called (borrowing from of those on the McGovern-Fraser com- an unelected but governing elite and Austin Ranney and Willmoore Kendall) mittee—go home, leaving the latter in a broad bipartisan consensus among the “civil-war potential” that has lately possession of the field and the commit- elected officials that belies all their come to seem so much closer to actual. tee. This may sound like a backhanded fierce and allegedly polarizing rheto- Lyndon Johnson may have put compliment, but it is also a tribute to ric. In response, the scandalmonger- it best when he said that “what the the meticulousness of his scholarship ing has become so routine that even man on the street wants is not a big in reconstructing such a difficult and if Trump were, as he is so often said debate on fundamental issues; he wants complicated history, one that was com- to be, the most scandalous president a little medical care, a rug on the floor, a plicated, at least in part, deliberately: in our history, no one not committed picture on the wall” and “the biggest in order to disguise its aims from the to one side or another in the political threat to American stability is the poli- observation of the less left-wing and wars could ever know it, since that tics of principle.” Or, in the Rosenfeld the less dedicated. kind of claim and counterclaim is just summation, “he implied that Ameri- Unfortunately, Rosenfeld’s scholarly how we do our political business now- cans shared core premises and sought energy appears to flag toward the end adays. If this is where “party respon- from politics only incremental improve- of the book. The 1990s are treated only sibility” and “principle” have led us,

FRANCIS MILLER / THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION GETTY ments.” But Johnson had the misfor- cursorily and the 2000s hardly at all, maybe it’s time for a rethink. ♦

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 37 Mu­raka­ mi’s­ blending of new pop sub- jects with inherited themes results in projects that are sometimes immedi- ately recognizable, sometimes strange and otherworldly. Among the pieces in Murakami’s 2010-11 Versailles show were person- sized statues of his characters Kaikai and Kiki, perfect embodiments of the Japanese notion of kawaii, which in essence means cute or adorable. A cartoon-like alien character in white clothing, Kaikai sports a pink babyface and bunny ears. At Versailles he stood mischievously on a small multicolored The Murakami characters patchwork globe holding a long, thin Kaikai (left) and Kiki in a red staff in his right hand with three 2010-11 Versailles exhibition human skulls attached at the top. Kiki, similarly shaped and sized, with smaller B A bunny ears—and with fangs and three & eyes—stood on another globe nearby. The incongruity of these brightly col- ored pieces with the classical statues From Ironic to Iconic and busts behind them and the baroque splendor of Versailles enhanced their How Takashi Murakami unites kitsch, mockery, kawaii-ness. Another piece, Oval Bud- and tradition. by Christopher Atamian dha Gold, looked down on the Versailles gardens. A huge golden idol of Bud- dha sitting on a pillar, from one side o those unfamiliar with Murakami’s company, Kaikai Kiki— the statue looks placid and might be Takashi Murakami, his art part art studio, part promotional and mistaken for a cartoonish nod to the can seem almost psychedelic, merchandising business—has offices in lavish statuary of Versailles. But it has bursting with color and both Tokyo and New York. As the New a second face on the other side, with Tmanga-inspired designs. The 56-year- York Times noted in 2005, Kaikai Kiki big eyes and pointy teeth jutting out old is sometimes called the “Warhol of is run much like a factory, with long like missiles in crude—and humor- Japan” and his work, like Andy War- hours, timecards, and training manu- ous—mockery. The most overtly sexual hol’s, is characterized by a postmodern als. With dozens of artists following his of Mu­raka­ mi’s­ works at Versailles, Miss project of uniting kitschy, mass-pro- lead, Murakami creates large, fantasti- Ko2, is a tall statue of a leggy, busty duced pop culture with high art. He is cal paintings as well as sculptures of blonde waitress or maid with a Barbie- perhaps best known for his trademark acrylic and fiberglass that meld manga doll smile; she greeted exhibition visi- “superflat” drawings and paintings; (comics) and anime (cartoons) with tra- tors with an outstretched arm. She is the name refers to the tradition of two- ditional Japanese styles. He has risen clearly parodic, a comment on both dimensionality that Murakami detects to the level of contemporary art super- Western ideals of beauty and how they in traditional Japanese art as well as to star by dint of hard work, originality, have in turn been incorporated into the shallowness of Japanese consumer and a deep understanding of both his- Japanese pop culture. To fully under- culture, which he playfully critiques. torical and contemporary art traditions, stand the layers of tribute and parody A couple of years ago, a pop-up café in Japanese and Western. Unlike Warhol, in this statue—and indeed in much of Tokyo was dedicated entirely to his whose art largely commented on percep- Mura­ ka­ mi’s­ work—would require the work, with even the hamburger buns tion and commodification, or Roy Lich- knowledge and mindset of an otaku, a imprinted with his signature smiling tenstein, whose merging of ad speak hardcore fan of manga or anime. flower faces. A few years before that, and comic-book imagery tried to blur Murakami’s most notorious manga- Murakami’s work graced—or disgraced, the boundaries between the high and the inspired works are Hiropon (1997) and depending on your view—the royal low, Mura­ka­ ­mi’s work draws deeply My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), jubilantly apartments at Versailles. from historical traditions. (In fact, cartoonish and pornographic statues Mu­raka­ mi­ holds a Ph.D. from Tokyo representative of, yet also mocking, the Christopher Atamian is a writer University in the traditional Japanese kinds of extremely sexualized figures

and critic in New York. painting technique called Nihonga.) in some Japanese comics. Hiropon is an RAPHAEL GAILLARDE / GAMMA-RAPHO GETTY

38 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 Above, Murakami’s Transcendent Attacking a Whirlwind (2017); below, Soga Shohaku’s work of the same name (circa 1764)

outrageously proportioned and with a series of Baka (Idiot) Paint- scantily clad young woman. My ings, with Murakami’s stylized Lonesome Cowboy, perhaps Mura­ ­ face at the center of the drawings. ka­mi’s most daring and fantastic The first of the series,Idiot , is creation, is a nude young man; apparently a sort of artist’s mani- the title is a reference to Andy festo; it contains text bemoaning Warhol’s satirical Western Lone- the lack of dynamism in contem- some Cowboys. In each statue, porary Japanese art. The word exploding bodily fluid is comi- Baka is scrawled at the top of the cally used as an object (milk as a jump nese picture contest) with the country’s painting like a watermark, with the art- rope, semen as a lasso). The works highly regarded art historian Nobuo ist’s tiny bespectacled visage ironically bring together such diverse elements— Tsuji. Traditionally Nippon-e-awase set off from both the text itself and the from manga aesthetics and Jeff Koons- involved a court dialogue between, say, piece’s title. like sculptural execution to the incor- an emperor and a famous artist who The Perrotin show also included poration of a certain raunchy gay cul- would then undergo a scathing critique. an homage-with-a-twist by Mu­ra­ka­mi. ture—that they become almost visually In this contemporary version, Tsuji pre- This time, however, instead of respond- overdetermined. They are provocative sented works by famous Japanese artists ing to some classic from Japan’s artis- and funny, erotic and disturbing. through the centuries and Murakami tic past Murakami took as his subject Much of Murakami’s art draws on returned with ingenious riffs on them. the 20th-century English artist Fran- recurring characters and faces, like the Some of the work to emerge from this cis Bacon, known for his bloody, raw omnipresent smiling flowers, which can project was radically different from the representations of crucifixions and the seem not just kawaii but downright dis- originals. Other responses came back twisted, gnarled faces in many of his por- turbing: When reproduced by the hun- only slightly different but more compel- traits. The paintings in the exhibition dreds on a huge wall, the smiles, friendly ling, like Murakami’s take on Hakuin contained many Mura­ ka­ mi­ tropes: eyes, at first, eventually seem to mock the Ekaku’s Half-Length Portrait of Daruma, mushrooms, characters, all enshrined viewer. His best-known ­creation, “Mr. an 18th-century depiction of an impor- in multiple layers of platinum leaf. The DOB,” is complex in a way that is typi- tant Buddhist monk with a pronounced results are strange, colorful, manga- cal of Mura­ ­ka­mi. Created in 1993 as overbite. Murakami’s version is shad- inspired creatures, funny and fright- an alter ego of sorts, its circular head owed darker and seems like a more ening at once. Lovers of Bacon may and features—with the letters D and textured caricature but is remarkably find it hard to recognize anything in B written on ears that suggest Mickey similar to the source material. these compositions that reminds them Mouse—spell out its name, a contrac- of his work, but that is part of the fun. tion of the Japanese nonsense sentence urakami has often shown his In the first panel of Homage to Francis Dobojite dobojite (Why? Why?) and the M work in American galleries, Bacon (Second Version of Triptych (on light comic catchphrase oshamanbe. With including in more than a dozen exhi- ground)), the main character or mon- a wide, Cheshire-cat grin, Mr. DOB bitions at Manhattan’s Galerie Perro- ster sits grumpy, menacing, and alight is patently absurd. Its appearance in tin. (Its founder, Emmanuel Perrotin, in color, decorated in twirls and waves Mura­ ­kami’s­ art ranges from the whim- was the first person to exhibit Mu­ra­ and other elements taken from classic sical to the twisted and demoniacal. kami­ outside Japan.) The gallery’s lat- Japanese art. In the middle of the trip- From 2009 to 2011, Murakami est Mura­ ­ka­mi show, held this spring, tych, the main character, perhaps part

TOP: TAKASHI MURAKAMI / KAIKAI KIKI CO., LTD. / COURTESY OF PERROTIN; BOTTOM: FENOLLOSA-WELD COLLECTION / BOSTON MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS / COURTESY OF PERROTIN; BOTTOM: FENOLLOSA-WELD LTD. MURAKAMI / KAIKAI KIKI CO., TAKASHI TOP: engaged in a Nippon E-awase (a Japa- sprawled across three floors. It opened chandelier with multiple heads and eyes,

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 39 appears stacked low to high; in the third panel, tentacles come out of the many- B A mouthed, many-visaged character, heads & with tongues thrusting out toward a cir- cle—a ball of fuzz? a black hole?—with a small drone-like creature floating to the Understanding the left. The colors are bubblegum spectrum and manga-inspired; these monstrosi- ties, like so much of Mu­raka­ ­mi’s work, ‘Beautiful Game’ combine the grotesque and the comic. Another recent Murakami work— The logic of the world’s most popular sport. the 33-foot-long Transcendent Attack- by Alan Jacobs ing a Whirlwind, made up of 10 wood panels—is simply spectacular. It is painted in acrylic and highlighted aurent Dubois devotes in gold and platinum leaf, and is an around 10 pages of The Lan- The Language of the Game homage to a famous screen by the same guage of the Game to describ- How to Understand Soccer by Laurent Dubois name from about 1764 by the Edo mas- ing how soccer’s offside rule Basic, 320 pp., $26 ter Soga Shohaku. In Murakami’s ver- Lhas changed over the decades. “Nego- sion, a red dragon caught in a storm tiating the offside rule is one of is surrounded by characters in tra- the most complex and absorb- ditional dress. The composition is ing features of the game both all circles and swirls that emphasize for strikers and defenders, an the drama—the dragon’s tail merges intricate dance that involves into the waves as more swirls fall positioning and timing of the from the sky and leap up from the most nuanced kind,” he writes. ocean. Two men, one to the extreme “To appreciate and understand left of the composition and the other this dance is, on a basic level, to the extreme right, seem to do battle to appreciate and understand from afar with the dragon, somehow soccer.” If anything, Dubois unleashing the swirls of color and understates the case. The off- aggression onto the monster. They also side rule is the very heart and remind the viewer of Greek gods—the soul of what we aficionados, in man to the left could well be Zeus. exalted moods, call “the beau- An homage to Japanese scroll paint- tiful game.” Please bear with ings, part of the beauty of this work me as I explain this. Brazil vs. Uruguay in the 1970 World Cup semifinals lies in the fact that it can be read on mul- At the risk of oversimplifi- tiple levels: as a response to a long-gone cation: The offside rule decrees that a annoyed with your teammate for being Japanese painter but also as a response player may not pass the ball to a team- so far out of position. to concerns of the here and now— mate unless, at the moment of the pass, Almost all of the wonderful patterns violence, societal conflicts, and other two members of the opposing side are and geometries of soccer are generated not-at-all-mythical worries. closer to the goal than that teammate. by this one rule, which also generates Murakami repeatedly expressed a Imagine that you are a soccer player something that many non-fans greatly sense of debt and obligation to Profes- with the ball. You look up and see a dislike: a paucity of goals. But soccer sor Tsuji in their Nippon-e-awase for teammate all by himself, no defender fans get exasperated when goals flow too helping him hone his talents and cre- anywhere around him, 30 yards from freely. Scoring should not be easy, and, ativity while recalling hundreds of years the goal. All you have to do is loft the as with gold and diamonds, there’s a of Japanese art history. Even in his lat- ball in his general direction and he’ll link between rarity and value. The true est work, we continue to see a constant be playing one-on-one against the goal- fan delights in players who have not just back-and forth between traditional and keeper. But you can’t. Instead of rejoic- the physical gifts but also the imagina- new. Like some giant manga Shiva, ing in a scoring opportunity you’re tion to circumvent the rules that seem Murakami is a creative force who takes designed specifically to prevent scoring. in, processes, and ejects the once famil- Alan Jacobs is a distinguished professor of One of the most famous moments iar, creating a new hybrid. His work is the humanities in the honors program at in the history of soccer occurred in the fascinatingly odd, sometimes unset- Baylor University and the author, most 1970 World Cup, in a semifinal match tling, infinitely generative, and in any recently, of How to Think: A Survival between Brazil and Uruguay. Brazil’s

case unique. ♦ Guide for a World at Odds. forward Tostão has the ball on the left TRINITY MIRROR / MIRRORPIX ALAMY

40 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 side of midfield and looks up to see no obvious home and might be intro- of the Game is an excellent place to his teammate Pelé to his right, run- duced at any point. (Dubois lays out start. Dubois doesn’t quite capture the ning full-tilt toward the goal. Tostão the basics of formation in the chapter unique fascination of this game, but has to make his pass quickly, before on the defender.) And one consequence that’s only because it can’t be captured Pelé gets past the Uruguayan defenders of that model of organization is that in ordinary discursive prose. Like an and is therefore offside. He makes it: The Language of the Game doesn’t work ant colony or a slime mold, the game a beautiful long curling roller. But the well as a reference guide, but rather as of soccer exhibits emergent complex- Uruguay goalkeeper sees the danger a narrative. You need to be willing to ity: A mere handful of rules generates and comes rushing out to clear it. Pelé read the whole book rather than dip in an astonishingly wide range of action. continues at top speed, which is very here and there, though there are many That is why Johan Cruyff, one of the fast indeed, and it looks like he may passages that the neophyte will want to greatest of soccer players and thinkers, just beat the keeper, but that there will mark and return to. the closest thing the game had to a phi- surely be a terrible collision between If you want to understand what this losopher-king, so often spoke in para- the two men—and then—a millisec- most popular of the world’s sports is doxes. I’ll leave you with my favorite ond before the inevitable crash—Pelé all about, or if you already understand one: “Playing football is very simple, alters course slightly to avoid the it and want your friends and family but playing simple football is the hard- keeper and the ball, which rolls right to share your interest, The Language est thing there is.” ♦ on diagonally across the pitch. You can’t watch the scene without catching your breath, and only then do you ask: A How did Pelé even think to do that? B& But what happens then? Well: Pelé darts over to the ball, torques his body to take a tightly angled shot at the now- Ragtime to Riches empty goal—and misses. Again, this is one of the most A musician’s knack for covering recent songs in vintage famous moments in the history of soc- styles led to a YouTube powerhouse. by John Check cer, and it ends in a missed shot. I do not believe that there is another sport in which a play that ends in a failure cott Bradlee’s life was changed to score could be so celebrated. But by a piece of music. He had Outside the Jukebox the stroke of mental brilliance that been a reluctant piano student How I Turned My Vintage Music precedes the miss is so remarkable to who had no use for the minu- Obsession into My Dream Gig by Scott Bradlee soccer fans that the former eclipses the Sets and sonatinas his teacher wanted Hachette, 244 pp., $23 latter. (By the way, Brazil went on to him to learn. Practicing was a chore win the match and then, in the final he found he could dispense with. After against Italy, the World Cup.) two fitful years, he quit taking lessons. ertoire expanded to include current It might be easy to conclude that soc- But one day he heard a neighbor play- music popular among his friends. Hop- cer is the sort of game that you either ing Rhapsody in Blue—this lit a fire ing to impress them, he once boasted get or don’t get, yet Laurent Dubois under him. He returned to the piano, that he could take any song they could takes up the noble and difficult task of this time on his own, without a teacher. name and transform it into a piece of trying to make soccer comprehensible He forced himself to learn pieces that jazz. They challenged him with the and interesting to people who are used were beyond him, including, eventu- Notorious B.I.G. rap song “Big Poppa.” to games that follow a different logic. ally, the Gershwin. Soon he was prac- Bradlee recalls what happened next: It’s a task he handles very well. ticing three or four hours a day; then I played it as jazz by swinging the The book is organized by posi- it would be eight. As he gained profi- [synthesizer] line, giving it a Count tion. Dubois begins by describing the ciency, the piano became for him “a Basie feel. After finishing, I further task of the goalkeeper, then moves to portal to another universe.” demonstrated my ability by playing the defender, the midfielder, the for- This sonic universe included early it with a stride left hand, giving it a turn-of-the-century ragtime feel. ward—working his way from defense jazz-piano styles from ragtime to Now I was just showing off, but to offense, which is appropriate for stride. Bradlee immersed himself in I couldn’t help it. . . . It took my reasons noted above—and concluding the rags of Scott Joplin and the record- friends a beat to wrap their heads with the manager, the referee, and the ings of Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, around the transformed tune, but fan. One consequence of this struc- and James P. Johnson. Soon his rep- once they had done so, they were roaring with delight. ture is that certain key elements of the game, for instance the various possible John Check teaches music theory at the Bradlee never forgot the delight he occa- formations of players on the pitch, have University of Central Missouri. sioned by mixing styles old and new.

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 41 The years that followed saw him hits in an array of anachronistic styles. complete with fake-theremin hijinks. graduate from high school, go to col- Postmodern Jukebox’s breakthrough As Postmodern Jukebox became lege to study music, and launch a was a version of “Thrift Shop,” the popular, tours followed—of Europe, career as a pianist in Hartford. Hav- 2012 song by the hip hop duo Mackle­ Australia, North America, South Amer- ing achieved a degree of success, he more and Ryan Lewis. A funny and ica. Recording contracts were offered. decided to try his luck in New York catchy number to begin with, “Thrift Musicians clambered to sing or per- City—but there he faltered. He was Shop” was transformed by Bradlee form for Bradlee, who through it all new in town, had no connections, and and company into something straight kept working, kept making videos, faced stiffer competition than he had out of F. Scott Fitzgerald, a hot jazz devoting up to 80 hours a week to his expected. In time, through a combina- number with an infectious, swing- many projects. tion of giving lessons and playing in ing beat. Bradlee describes setting up Bradlee is not the most graceful restaurants and other venues, he was the recording equipment, running writer, but Outside the Jukebox will be making enough money to pay his bills, through the piece with the musicians, of interest to up-and-coming musi- but little more than that. It was a liv- cians and Internet performers, not ing if not exactly a life—or, rather, least because of his description of the life he had imagined. the traits and habits that helped him Frustrated that he wasn’t making flourish. For example, as a pianist- the progress he craved, Bradlee dis- for-hire in Hartford, he learned covered a new interest, physics, and to read a room and tailor his set before long it absorbed him as music list according to the applause he once had. In 2009, in his late 20s, he received. Later, working at Robert, applied to college for a second round a restaurant in New York, he began of undergraduate studies. He felt streaming his performances over the liberated, having decided to walk Internet, gaining new listeners in away from a career in music. Still, the process. He was alert to celebri- on a lark, remembering the pleasure ties patronizing the restaurant and he once gave his friends, he made a would find clever ways of acknowl- video of himself that spring playing A Postmodern Jukebox cover of edging them in song. (A visit from a medley of pop hits from the 1980s ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by Guns N’ Roses; Alan Alda prompted Bradlee to play interpreted in ragtime fashion. He author Scott Bradlee is on the piano at left. the M*A*S*H theme in no fewer posted it to YouTube. “Nothing,” than 14 styles. For this he received he writes, “could have prepared me for recording a good take, and celebrating a $20 tip from Hawkeye himself.) As what happened next.” with falafel sandwiches. After every- the leader of Postmodern Jukebox, Overnight the video received 25,000 one left, he sat down to listen to the Bradlee has learned how to judge and views and hundreds of comments. recording. “It occurred to me that we showcase the strengths of the musi- The view count doubled in a week. may have caught lightning in a bottle.” cians with whom he works. He recorded and posted more videos, They had indeed: Overnight their ver- He sprinkles advice to aspiring musi- refining his efforts, taking into account sion of “Thrift Shop” received more cians throughout the book. Recalling the comments he received, dropping than 100,000 views. Before a week was his early experience with Rhapsody in what didn’t work, giving fans more out, it had been viewed a million times. Blue, he writes, “the very first step in of what they enjoyed. Soon a future in Many more videos followed, learning any discipline is finding a physics was abandoned as better piano some of which have been watched way to get yourself feeling profoundly gigs began to come his way. Through tens of millions of times. Lady Gaga’s inspired and invested. . . . Unless you’re one of these he met his agent and was “Bad Romance” becomes a dramatic approaching your learning from a place offered a chance to deliver a TEDx 1920s-style number with a tap dancer. of genuine inspiration, you’re prob- talk on music and technology. Success Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” ably going to have a hard time staying begat success. Quickly he was offered a gets a hopping treatment with Brad­ committed to the process, especially job producing music for a video game, lee’s fingers scrambling up and down when the going gets tough.” Inspira- Bio­Shock Infinite. As opportunities the keys. Blues singer Miche Braden tion, though, amounts to little without arose, he made good on them—and all belts out New Orleans-style rendi- desire: “Ambitious young people gener- along he kept grinding away, making tions of “Sweet Child o’ Mine” by ally start off with a great deal of creative and posting videos. Guns N’ Roses and “Story of My Life” hunger, but as they age and experience While working on one of his proj- by One Direction. Even the songs tastes of success . . . the drive has a way of ects, Bradlee conceived the idea of that don’t work all that well musically dissipating.” Here’s hoping that Brad­ Postmodern Jukebox, a music collec- score points for creativity and fun, lee’s hunger for success and his love of tive with a rotating cast of singers and like the makeover of Aqua’s “Barbie music keep him producing joyous, win-

instrumentalists that performs current Girl” in the style of the Beach Boys, ning work for many years to come. ♦ YOUTUBE

42 / The Weekly Standard June 25, 2018 good reason except that Anna Wintour B A demands it of them. & Bullock’s crew features her old team- mates Blanchett (who now runs a hip club—yawn) and Sarah Paulson (who is Heist in Heels a suburban mother—oh my God she’s in hell, I tell you, hell). They recruit a All-woman crew boosts bling brilliant hacker (Rihanna) whose teen- in latest ‘Ocean’s’ caper. by John Podhoretz age sister (Nathanya Alexander) is a bril- liant metallurgist—don’t ask me how that’s possible except that the plot needs it. There’s a wacky pickpocket (Awkwa- fina) and a jeweler (Mindy Kaling). And there’s a dress designer on her uppers played by Helena Bonham Carter. The crew needs to get Anne Hatha- way, the gala’s star, to hire Bonham Carter to make her dress, and get Bon- ham Carter to persuade Hathaway to ask Cartier for the loan of the giant necklace. The night of the gala finds the crew all over the Met, doing devious Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock, left) and her gang prep for their heist. and clever things, much of it made pos- sible by the advent of the 3D printer. ou gotta love a heist movie. And here’s the central problem with I saw The Sting the day it Ocean’s 8 Ocean’s 8: The stakes are very low here. Directed by Gary Ross opened, Christmas 1973, Everything just works too smoothly. and from that day to this There’s almost no conflict. In both I’mY not sure I’ve ever had a better time the original 1960 Ocean’s 11 (featur- in a movie theater. But The Sting is to ing Sinatra and the Rat Pack) and the heist pictures what the Bible is to reli- for Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels. So Clooney remake, the gang was squaring gion. What about other such pictures? while she was educated in thievery by off against a ruthless Vegas kingpin. In Oh, there are so many good ones. a man, she doesn’t want to work with Ocean’s 8 there’s no threat whatsoever Diggstown? Fantastic. Skin Game? To p - any men. There’s a line of dialogue from anyone to our heroines. Remem- notch. Rififi?Wonderful. Topkapi? Can’t that explains why, but I forget what it ber in The Sting that halfway through beat it. Even The Pink Panther and The was, so it must not have been clever. the picture, Robert Redford is forced to Return of the Pink Panther, both primar- The desideratum is a gigantic dia- turn on his fellow con man Paul New- ily epics of slapstick, feature some won- mond necklace that has been sitting in man—adding a layer of potentially derful hyperplanned thief hijinks. a Cartier vault for half a century because tragic drama to the proceedings. Here, The question posed by the release of nobody knows what to do with it. Deb- everyone in Debbie Ocean’s crew is Ocean’s 8—the new distaff heist picture bie Ocean’s plan is to have it brought out too busy modeling the unlimited joys starring Oscar winners Sandra Bullock of the vault, hung on the neck of a celeb- of close female friendships to plan any and Cate Blanchett trying hard to have rity, and paraded through New York’s kind of double cross. cool-as-a-cucumber fun in the vein Metropolitan Museum of Art, where There’s also one gigantic plot hole of the George Clooney-Matt Damon it could be stealthily removed from involving someone in the crew getting Ocean’s movies—is this: Are you gonna the celebrity’s neck. Now, this seems a an extraordinarily desirable job for no love a heist movie that’s only just okay? little bit of a ripoff since another heist good reason whatever. If she doesn’t get Bullock is Debbie, a con artist movie, The Thomas Crown Affair with the job, the heist can’t work. We’re told who’s just been released after nearly Pierce Brosnan, was set there too. But Debbie Ocean was planning the heist six years in the clink—so of course to be fair, Brosnan was trying to steal a for five years. How could she know she’s raring to assemble a crew and painting during business hours while there would be this key job opening pull off a new job. She learned her looking like the Magritte guy with the and that her crew member would get it? criminal trade from her (supposedly) apple in front of his face. The Ocean’s 8 Ocean’s 8 is a kind of heist in itself: late brother Danny, who did the same heist takes place during the annual Met It steals your money and then runs off Gala, known to one and all as the eve- before you realize it didn’t get the job John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, ning during which every famous woman done. Even so, I gotta admit, you kinda

is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic. in the world wears a fancy dress for no gotta love it. ♦ BROS. WARNER

June 25, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 43 “Potty prep: North Korea's Kim Jong-un brings his own toilet to Singapore summit with Trump” PARODY —USA Today headline, June 11, 2018

June 25, 2018