SWEDISH MESSAGE

CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL

SEPTEMBER 24, 2018 $5.99

Rise of the (Catholic) Resistance JONATHAN V. LAST MARY EBERSTADT

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington WEEKLYSTANDARD.COM Contents September 24, 2018 • Volume 24, Number 3

2 The Scrapbook Reagan nostalgia, Kavanaugh hysteria, & more 5 Casual Joseph Epstein, eyeing the exit 6 Editorials Trying Is Half the Battle • Democratic Crack-up • Competitors and Adversaries 9 Comment Steele and the State Department by Eric Felten Woke emotionalism is not a substitute for sober policy debate by Charles J. Sykes The rise of ‘senior officials’ and decline of the presidency by Philip Terzian

5 Articles

14 A Well-Aimed Blow by Jeremy Rabkin John Bolton is right about the International Criminal Court

16 A Gruesome Plan by Wesley J. Smith Keep the ‘dead donor rule’

17 Idlib and Beyond by Thomas Donnelly The vultures are circling in Syria

19 An Equal Opportunity Offender by D. G. Hart Mencken mirrors our own complexities

21 The Adjective ‘Late’ by Stephen Miller 6 A guide for the perplexed Features

22 The Rise of the (Catholic) Resistance by Jonathan V. Last Pope Francis, Cardinal Wuerl, Theodore McCarrick, and the crisis of a church divided

27 The Elephant in the Sacristy, Revisited by Mary Eberstadt Catholic scandals past and present

32 Swedish Message by Christopher Caldwell The anti-immigration nationalists come up short Books & Arts 22 36 Fear and Quoting by Michael Warren in Trump’s White House

39 How Football Became the American Game by Michael Nelson As the season kicks off, a roundup of new and forthcoming books

44 The Kafka Papers by Christoph Irmscher It took an international legal battle to settle the fate of the author’s manuscripts

46 The Ol’ College Heist by Grant Wishard Why four young men risked prison to steal rare books from a university library

47 Evil in the Dock by John Podhoretz Retelling for a new generation the story of Eichmann’s capture and trial 39 48 Parody Another anonymous op-ed COVER BY WIN MCNAMEE / GETTY THE SCRAPBOOK He Was Honest, Eventually ast week, Barack Obama finally “good new ideas” or just bad ideas; affordable for a nation with the bud- L did what Democratic activists had and in any case we haven’t the slight- getary obligations of the United been desperately hoping he would est clue what the connection is States—$32 trillion over 10 years. do—he reproached his successor between “egregious corporate tax But hold on. We seem to remem- ahead of the midterm election. It was cuts” and the high costs of higher ber that in 2009 Obama specifically a long, discursive oration, as Obama’s education. But we can’t let Obama’s disavowed any intention of national- orations usually are, and it contained endorsement of “Medicare-for-all” izing the health-care industry. “What lots of impromptu gibes and derisive are not legitimate concerns are those harrumphs that made the 44th presi- being put forward claiming a public dent sound less like a retired states- option is somehow a Trojan horse for man than a candidate vying for office. a single-payer system,” Obama said Amidst all the verbiage, though, to the American Medical Associa- even those of us perverse enough to tion soon after taking office. “I’ll be listen to the whole speech might have honest. There are countries where a missed a key moment: the bit where single-payer system works pretty well. Obama admitted—finally—that he But I believe—and I’ve taken some favors nationalizing the health-care flak from members of my own party industry. “So Democrats aren’t just for this belief—that it’s important for running on good old ideas like a our reform efforts to build on our tra- higher minimum wage,” said the man ditions here in the United States. So who gave us the Affordable Care Act; when you hear the naysayers claim “they’re running on good new ideas pass without comment. The phrase that I’m trying to bring about gov- like Medicare-for-all, giving work- was made famous by Bernie Sanders, ernment-run health care, know this: ers seats on corporate boards, revers- and it signifies the full-on national- They’re not telling the truth.” ing the most egregious corporate tax ization of the health-care industry That’s a tortured quotation, so cuts to make sure students graduate so that everybody can enjoy the ben- allow us to summarize what the presi- debt-free.” efits of America’s most expensive and dent meant nearly a decade ago: If you We’ll leave readers to decide if worst-run health-care program. It also like private-sector health care, you can these items are “good old ideas” or signifies a plan that’s not remotely keep it. ♦

special attention being given to what- The Gipper ever the president might say. and the Pictures Weinberg saw hundreds of films n our latter years The Scrapbook with the Reagans this way. In the I has become rather a sucker for book he recalls 17 of them, includ- books about Ronald Reagan. We own ing Ghostbusters, The Untouchables, a couple of shelves of them and admit Chariots of Fire, 9 to 5, and Top Gun. to enjoying even the mediocre ones, He recalls what the president said so highly do we esteem the modern about each one and suggests ways era’s greatest president. in which each may have shaped his One of these volumes, published thoughts about the challenges facing earlier this year by Simon & Schus- his administration. ter, gave us particular delight: Mark Among the book’s best chapters is Weinberg’s Movie Nights with the the Aspen Lodge screening room, the one about what is, in our view, Ste- Reagans: A Memoir. Weinberg was a the president and the first lady would ven Spielberg’s best film:E.T. the Extra- deputy press secretary in the Rea- welcome guests—his personal aide, Terrestrial. That screening happened at gan White House, and it fell to him his physician, a military aide, a Secret the White House, not at Camp David, to represent the press office in the Service agent, Marine One’s pilot, and Spielberg himself was there. So president’s entourage when Reagan and so on—and watch the week’s were Neil Armstrong and the newly traveled to Camp David on week- selection. Afterward the group would confirmed Sandra Day O’Connor, as

ends. There, at precisely 8:00 p.m. in assemble and discuss the movie, well as other guests and their children. ARCHIVE / GETTY / HULTON BOTTOM: FOUNDATION GARY LOCKE. JOHN KOBAL TOP:

2 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 After the movie ended, the presi- dent stood up and thanked Spielberg, then said: “And there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true.” That led a number of hacks in the press and elsewhere to speculate that Reagan believed in aliens, but Weinberg gets at the truth when he writes that E.T. was “fundamentally Reaganesque in tone and approach. Its wholesome depiction of Middle Amer- ica, its impish sense of humor, and its subtle placement of the protagonist in opposition to the government aligned with his identity.” Weinberg’s memoir captures Rea- gan at his best—witty, kind, keenly intelligent. It also reminds us of the great man’s robust capacity to see the world not just through politics and policies but also, perhaps especially, through the imagination. ♦ Shut Up, She Explained he spectacle of protesters jump- T ing out of their chairs at regular intervals to shout incoherent slogans during the Brett Kavanaugh­ hearings did not lend itself to the view that those who oppose the judge’s confir- mation are especially clearheaded in their beliefs. Their antics, if we may speak plainly, made them look like idiots. The fact that they were encour- aged and abetted in their behavior by Democratic senators—the very officeholders who regularly (and often rightly) castigate Donald Trump for And so it was. Consider, for instance, particularly hysterical about wanting his uncivil and unbecoming con- a column in the Washington Post by to keep them. There’s also nothing duct—leads us almost to despair. Monica Hesse headlined “ ‘Civility’ particularly hysterical in pointing out Even so, we were confident that the vs. ‘hysteria’ at the Kava­naugh hear- that real people will be impacted by laws. Thousands of women had ille- great majority of Americans beheld ings.” As a piece of sophistry it’s aver- gal abortions before Roe v. Wade; hun- the protests with disgust. Most of our age: It takes her 800 words to make dreds of them died. We should weigh countrymen, we feel sure, still believe the point that incivility is okay when that. Really weigh it, whether we are that the reasoned expression of com- it’s about something really important. pro- or antiabortion, because nobody plex views by accomplished public It’s really important, in Hesse’s view, wants women to die. servants deserves something better if it “relates to central questions in our than the tantrums of ignoramuses. democracy”—meaning, we’re led to That’s true; no one wants women We were equally confident, how- conclude, that the more impor- to die. But another thing we should ever, that the opinion-makers tant a question is, the more we weigh, really weigh, is that this year of progressivism would should shout at each other: alone around 600,000 pregnancies find a way to defend There’s nothing particularly will end in abortion—that is, death— and praise these civil about taking away peo- in the United States. About half of tantrums as some ple’s rights to bodily auton- those aborted would otherwise grow

BOTTOM: GARY LOCKE kind of public good. omy, and there’s nothing up to be women. ♦

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 3 Nota Bene Hate Crime ntiquarian-minded visitors to and Punishment A Georgetown may have heard he Scrapbook has never been to of the Halcyon House, a mansion on T South Yorkshire, England, but we www.weeklystandard.com Prospect Street. The majestic Federal- are eager to go. The place is evidently Stephen F. Hayes, Editor in Chief style structure was built in the 1780s so free of crime that the police have Richard Starr, Editor Fred Barnes, Robert Messenger, Executive Editors by Benjamin Stoddert, the first sec- nothing to do but make sure people Christine Rosen, Managing Editor retary of the Navy, and dramatically aren’t jerks to each other. The South Peter J. Boyer, Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Matt Labash, expanded in the 1900s by Albert Cle- Yorkshire Police National Correspondents mens, the nephew of Samuel Clemens recently advised Jonathan V. Last, Digital Editor Barton Swaim, Opinion Editor (aka Mark Twain). residents on the Adam Keiper, Books & Arts Editor Kelly Jane Torrance, Deputy Managing Editor Jennifer Porter-Lupu, an archaeol- subject of “hate Eric Felten, Mark Hemingway, ogy doctoral candidate at Northwest- crimes”: “In addi- John McCormack, Tony Mecia, Philip Terzian, Michael Warren, Senior Writers ern University, recently delivered a tion to report- David Byler, Jenna Lifhits, Alice B. Lloyd, Staff Writers lecture on the Halcyon House to the ing hate crime, Rachael Larimore, Online Managing Editor Georgetown Neighborhood Library. please report non- Hannah Yoest, Social Media Editor Ethan Epstein, Associate Editor We were a little nervous when we read crime hate inci- Chris Deaton, Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editors Priscilla M. Jensen, Assistant Editor that Porter-Lupu’s research was made dents, which can Adam Rubenstein, Assistant Opinion Editor possible by grants from the Sexuali- include things Andrew Egger, Haley Byrd, Reporters Time to tell the cops! Holmes Lybrand, Fact Checker ties Project at Northwestern, but all like offensive or Sophia Buono, Philip Jeffery, Editorial Assistants Philip Chalk, Design Director our skepticism of the modern univer- insulting comments, online, in person Barbara Kyttle, Design Assistant sity didn’t prepare us for the content or in writing. Hate will not be toler- Contributing Editors Claudia Anderson, Max Boot, Joseph Bottum, of this talk. “Her take on the Hal- ated in South Yorkshire. Report it and Tucker Carlson, Matthew Continetti, Jay Cost, Terry Eastland, Noemie Emery, Joseph Epstein, cyon House is that it may have been put a stop to it.” David Frum, David Gelernter, a queer community space,” according Wowsers. Imagine the New York Reuel Marc Gerecht, Michael Goldfarb, Daniel Halper, Mary Katharine Ham, Brit Hume, to a local news report. “Porter-Lupu Police Department, say, asking New Thomas Joscelyn, Frederick W. Kagan, Yuval Levin, Tod Lindberg, Micah Mattix, Victorino Matus, found evidence in trash buried in the Yorkers to report “offensive or insult- P. J. O’Rourke, John Podhoretz, Irwin M. Stelzer, backyard that she says suggests Cle- ing comments” made “in person.” Charles J. Sykes, Stuart Taylor Jr. mens dressed as a woman. Female Case backlogs would explode. William Kristol, Editor at Large lingerie items such as garters, stock- Of course, the whole concept of MediaDC Ryan McKibben, Chairman ings and metal clips from corsets were “hate crime”—crimes given spe- Stephen R. Sparks, President & Chief Operating Officer among the objects found in the dig.” cial status owing to the motivations Kathy Schaffhauser, Chief Financial Officer Mark Walters, Chief Revenue Officer Some in the audience politely sug- rather than the actions of their per- Jennifer Yingling, Audience Development Officer David Lindsey, Chief Digital Officer gested that the presence of discarded petrators—produces endless varieties Matthew Curry, Director, Email Marketing ladies’ undergarments doesn’t mean of this kind of nonsense. In the out- Alex Rosenwald, Senior Director of Strategic Communications Nicholas H. B. Swezey, Vice President, Advertising the house’s male owner wore them. look of anti-“hate” campaigners, it’s T. Barry Davis, Senior Director, Advertising Jason Roberts, Digital Director, Advertising Still, the lesson is clear: Be sure to worse to strike an old lady because Andrew Kaumeier, Advertising Operations Manager clean up the backyard when you move she belongs to some ethnic or other Brooke McIngvale, Manager, Marketing Services Advertising inquiries: 202-293-4900 houses, or who knows what some aca- minority than for the purpose of Subscriptions: 1-800-274-7293 demic will be saying about you a cen- stealing her purse or for no reason at The Weekly Standard (ISSN 1083-3013), a division of Clarity Media Group, tury hence. ♦ all. But why? is published weekly (except one week in March, one week in June, one What struck us most about the week in August, and one week in December) at 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, police department’s announcement DC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Weekly Standard, P.O. Box 85409, Big Sandy, TX 75755-9612. For was an accompanying promotional subscription customer service in the United States, call 1-800-274-7293. graphic: “No-one,” it says, “should For new subscription orders, please call 1-800-274-7293. Subscribers: Please send new subscription orders and changes of address to The have to live with fear, anxiety or Weekly Standard, P.O. Box 85409, Big Sandy, TX 75755-9612. Please include your latest magazine mailing label. Allow 3 to 5 weeks for consequences of being ‘different.’ ” arrival of first copy and address changes. Canadian/foreign orders require What can it mean to say that no additional postage and must be paid in full prior to commencement of service. Canadian/foreign subscribers may call 1-386-597-4378 for one “should have to” live with fear subscription inquiries. American Express, Visa/MasterCard payments accepted. Cover price, $5.99. Back issues, $5.99 (includes postage and and anxiety? Presumably, we should handling). Send letters to the editor to The Weekly Standard, 1152 15th all walk around in a state of puerile Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005-4617. For a copy of The Weekly Standard Privacy Policy, visit www.weeklystandard.com or write to bliss. But surely few things are going Customer Service, The Weekly Standard, 1152 15th St., NW, Suite 200, to ramp up fear and anxiety more Washington, DC 20005. Copyright 2018, Clarity Media Group. All rights reserved. No material in The Weekly And here we’ve found what we think are the than an invitation from the police for Standard may be reprinted without permission of the copyright owner. remains of the last moderate Democrat, from neighbors to inform on each other The Weekly Standard is a registered trademark of Clarity Media Group. sometime in the early 21st century. for offensive comments. ♦ BOTTOM: VIA YOUTUBE. TOP: BIGSTOCK

4 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 CASUAL

needs them? Not this dude, surely. This Will See Me Out If all this is true, and I assure you it is, why do I find myself fairly fre- quently strolling into resale, con- signment, thrift shops, and used he other day at my neigh- not, the silvery figure of a jaguar on its bookstores? In one such store the borhood shoe store I bought hood above its roundish grill. The car other day I found, for $5, a small a new pair of house-slip- is taking on the feel, if not quite the white, polished clay Roman chari- pers. My old slippers gave look, of Inspector Morse’s 1960 red oteer behind two rearing horses. For Tout, the bottom of one of them having Jaguar, which I always thought was $10 I recently brought home a large detached itself from the main body, the true star of that English television poster of a slightly menacing ele- causing me in the early mornings to show. Every time I get into my 2007 phant advertising guided tours of the flap my way round our apartment. Jaguar, I say to myself, gently patting Serengeti. In a clothing consignment I bought the same kind of slipper I the false wood on the front dash, “I’m shop near my apartment I discovered, had before, blue, wool-felt, clog-like, counting on you to see me out.” in a perfect fit, an unsullied tan suede made by Haflinger, a German out- Here is a partial list of See Me Out jacket for $24. A trip to a nearby fit. C. Wright Mills, a once-famous items in my possession: Three blue used-bookshop yielded a copy of Les- American sociologist, years ley Chamberlain’s Nietzsche ago gave a lecture in which in Turin and Barry Strauss’s he attacked the East and the The Battle of Salamis, the two West, all religions, the fami- for under $10. ly, children, dogs, and much Now what is a man who else. In the question session finds himself regularly mut- after the lecture, a student tering about this or that item asked him if he believed “seeing him out” doing buy- in anything. “I do,” said ing tchotchkes, wall decora- Mills, “German motors.” tions, clothes, and yet more I guess I must believe in books? Is it that I cannot German slippers. resist a bargain, which, when When I arrived home, come upon, still brings a unpacked, and tried on my pleasing frisson? I prefer to new slippers, I heard myself think it is instead evidence mutter, “These should see me that I am far from ready, out,” meaning I’m unlikely without aid of stage direc- to need another pair during my life- blazers. Four Latin and three French tions, to exit at left. My friend Edward time. I must have picked up the dictionaries. One pair of tennis shoes Shils, at my age, would occasionally phrase from an old English movie. (for a man who doesn’t play tennis). buy a bowl or a new kitchen utensil. In my mind’s eye I see an older actor, Five copies of H. W. Fowler’s Modern “Doing so,” he told me, “gives me a trying on an overcoat, adjusting his English Usage. Six pairs (in various sense of futurity.” Santayana wrote shoulders to feel the snugness of the shades) of gray trousers. Seventeen that no matter what one’s age, one fit, examining briefly the length of wine glasses. Thirty-seven shirts, long should live as if one expected to live the sleeves, and announcing, “This and short sleeved. Fifty-six neckties. another 10 years. I don’t know at what should see me out.” By “out,” of One tuxedo. All these, I do believe, age Santayana wrote that, but he him- course, he meant until death. should see me out. self lived to 88. When one gets to a certain age—at Not, please understand, that I am My new German slippers may well 81, I am there—the future becomes in any hurry to leave. I like it here, on see me out, though I’m counting on decidedly more finite, and one tends earth, like it exceedingly. But a man the exact departure time being still a to view one’s needs in a much dif- of a certain age, an alter kocker, if you good way off. When that time does ferent, drastically less expansive way. will (and why wouldn’t you?), has to come, I hope that I, like the man I have an 11-year-old car—a black think about what he no longer needs. presented with his hat by a butler in S-type Jaguar with fewer than 50,000 With advanced age, I find envy, like many an English movie, may be alert miles on it—that has given me no any interest in movies about people enough to say, “Thanks just the same, trouble, is not overly advanced tech- under 40, has departed, and with but I’ll see myself out.” nologically, is in every way comfort- it covetousness. Villas in Tuscany,

DAVID CLARK DAVID able, and has, as the newer Jaguars do Rolls-Royces, French mistresses, who Joseph Epstein

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 5 EDITORIALS Trying Is Half the Battle

he Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on Supreme and/or overhaul of the Affordable Care Act, on which most Court nominee Brett Kava­naugh on September 20. congressional Republicans campaigned for years, never T The nomination will almost certainly pass out of happened. And despite the growing prospect of a Demo- committee on a party-line vote, then head to the full Sen- cratic takeover after the November elections, they appear ate, whereupon Kava­naugh will become the newest mem- uninterested in trying anything else. ber of the High Court. Democrats are railing that Republi- Why? cans rushed the nomination, but the entire process has taken One answer has to do with McConnell’s excessive cau- about as long as the confirmations of Neil Gorsuch, Elena tion. The majority leader is more interested in increasing his Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor: between 9 and 13 weeks. caucus’s numbers and fortifying its majority than in achiev- Charles Grassley, chairman of the ing policy aims. His super-PAC, the Sen- Judiciary Committee, deserves enormous ate Leadership Fund, inserts itself into credit for keeping the Kava­naugh nomi- primary races across the nation, backing nation moving despite the opposition’s those McConnell perceives to be elect- disingenuous howls that they hadn’t able against their Republican opponents. seen enough of the nominee’s paper trail. Inside the Senate, he takes few risks. Grassley, as Fred Barnes explained in our On Obamacare, McConnell had a September 3 issue, bombarded his fel- slim majority with which to pass a repeal low Republicans on the committee with or a repeal-and-replace bill but for months background material to counter Demo- wouldn’t allow votes on those bills; he did cratic objections and letters from prom- little to forge consensus around any one inent legal authorities in support of the option. When a limited repeal bill failed, nominee. The 84-year-old Iowan put in he concluded the effort was too risky and 18-hour workdays making documents simply gave up. Judge Brett Kavanaugh testifies during available, fielding requests from report- the second day of his hearings. Another explanation, put forward by ers and Senate Democrats, and prepping Yuval Levin in Commentary earlier this Republicans for the attacks. It has paid off—the Democratic summer, holds that while individual members of Congress complaints look and sound like what they are: attempts to crave personal notoriety, they have little desire to achieve delay the vote past the November elections. policy ends or to consolidate political power. “Simply put,” The other key to success has been majority leader Mitch Levin wrote, McConnell. In Donald Trump’s first two years as president, the Senate has confirmed 26 circuit court judges—more many members of Congress have come to see themselves as than for any other president in his first two years. Trump’s players in a larger political ecosystem the point of which is two Supreme Court picks have sailed to confirmation not legislating or governing but rather engaging in a kind of despite threats and wailing from the minority. McConnell performative outrage for a partisan audience. Their incen- has achieved this level of success by keeping his caucus uni- tives are rooted in that understanding of our politics and so are not about legislating. They remain intensely ambitious, fied and by calling for votes at the most advantageous times. but their ambition is for a prominent role in the theater of The ruthless efficiency with which the Senate GOP is our national politics. And they view the institution of Con- filling the judiciary, however, contrasts sharply with the gress as a particularly effective platform for themselves. party’s failure to do much of anything else on the Hill. Republicans control both houses of Congress, and the Levin’s words appeared before the Kava­naugh hearings, president will sign just about anything they send him— which lends a special credibility to his interpretation. yet they send him almost nothing. Apart from passing the Whatever the reason for congressional Republicans’ do- House speaker’s tax-reform legislation while cramming nothing behavior, they now find themselves in the difficult some extra provisions into the bill (notably the elimination position of running for reelection on the basis of only two of the individual health-insurance mandate), Republicans accomplishments—the confirmation of judges, with which

have accomplished little in the 115th Congress. The repeal GOP House members had nothing to do, and the passage of ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP GETTY

6 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 a tax bill. All the other big victories—the rollback of regula- Believe in Borders—but it’s hard to see how this minor dis- tions, withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and Paris cli- grace can hurt such a successful charlatan. mate accord, the U.S. embassy’s move to Jerusalem—were Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a proponent of democratic initiatives of the executive branch. socialism who defeated 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in Rank-and-file Republicans, whether they are fans of the New York’s 14th District primary in June, will almost cer- president or skeptical of him, are desperate for demonstra- tainly take a seat in Congress in January. Her unlikely pri- ble accomplishments—if not an overhaul of Obamacare, at mary victory and youth (she’s 28) have made her a celebrity least piecemeal reforms to the health-care system; nonmili- on the left and in the media. But she is a constant source of tary budget cuts of almost any description; the elimination rhetorical and ideological folly. She associates herself with of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and on. The the progressive cause of abolishing the Immigration and aggressive work of Mitch McConnell and Charles Grassley Customs Enforcement agency (#AbolishICE); believes col- in the confirmation of conservative judges shows that it can lege education, health care, and housing are “rights”; and be done. has a special talent for claiming obviously wrong things— Thanks to Democrats’ changes to long-observed rules “Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs,” governing judicial nominations, confirming judges may be “One of the biggest problems that we have is 200 million easier than passing substantive bills. Legislative victories Americans make less than $20,000 a year,” and so on. are messier, and in an era of rancor and polarization they Just as appalling are the Democrats’ most talked about occasion fierce antagonism from activists and much of the presidential contenders. New Jersey senator Cory Booker media. But the problems to be solved are many and serious, shamed himself during Brett Kava­naugh’s confirmation and time is short. ♦ hearings when he claimed to have deliberately broken Sen- ate rules in releasing confidential documents. He called the stunt his “I am Spartacus moment” when in fact the docu- ments had been cleared for release already. Booker sim- ply doesn’t care whether what he’s saying at one moment matches what he’s said at another: In 2016, for instance, he The Democratic remarked that he was “blessed and honored” to work with then-Senate colleague Jeff Sessions. Less than a year later, Booker testified against Sessions in the latter’s confirmation Crack-up hearings for attorney general because the Alabama senator had a “decades-long record” of “deny[ing] citizens voting rom a New York podium on August 15, Andrew rights” and “fail[ing] to defend the civil rights of women, Cuomo took what he no doubt thought was a clever minorities, and LGBT Americans.” F shot at Donald Trump: “We’re not going to make California senator Kamala Harris, another party leader America great again,” he intoned; “it was never that great.” with an eye on 2020, similarly made herself odious during The governor’s deeply stupid remark came from his need to the Kava­naugh hearings by badgering the nominee with sound leftier than his primary challenger, the actress Cyn- unbelievably tendentious lines of questioning. Her accusa- thia Nixon. That was a tall order, even for Cuomo. Nixon tion that Kava­naugh deliberately confused “abortion-induc- had promised to double New York’s spending in the first ing drugs” with birth control because he intends to “go year. The state budget, she believes, is “as much a moral after birth control” has been debunked by the Washington document as a fiscal statement.” Yet the fact that Cuomo Post and even Politifact. These refutations didn’t stop Hillary felt he needed to flirt with soft anti-Americanism in order Clinton from repeating Harris’s claims on Twitter. to earn credibility with his party suggests that something Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, widely has gone badly wrong. assumed to be running for president, believes companies Something has. with revenues (not profits,revenues ) of more than $1 bil- Consider Keith Ellison, the number two at the Demo- lion should be “chartered” by the federal government and cratic National Committee. Ellison, a six-term member of forced, among other things, to let employees elect 40 percent the House of Representatives, has proven himself unfit of their boards. We won’t burden readers with an explana- for office time and again but nonetheless recently won the tion of Warren’s flawed premises. It’s sufficient to point out Democratic primary for attorney general of Minnesota. He that one of the Democratic party’s best-known presidential has a long history of hobnobbing with arch-racist Louis hopefuls actively promotes a kind of Fabian socialism. She is Farrakhan. He defends and praises cop-killers and terror- the heir, in that sense, to Bernie Sanders, but unlike Sanders ists. He’s entangled in allegations of sexual harassment and she’s a Democrat in good standing, not an independent. domestic abuse. The man campaigning to be Minnesota’s This magazine has over the last three years lamented chief law enforcement officer was recently seen in a T-shirt the unlovely state of the Republican party, led as it now by bearing the words “Yo No Creo En Fronteras”—I Don’t a man who shares few of the GOP’s traditional ideals and

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 7 is unfit by temperament and character for the presidency. Mitt Romney suggested Russia was America’s chief foe), but But the Democrats aren’t in any better shape. The origins of we assume that skepticism will melt back into naïveté when the party’s disorder lie further back than 2016, but Trump’s someone other than Trump is president. victory drove Democrats into a state of delirium. The presi- Republicans meanwhile are traveling in the other direc- dent’s awfulness has somehow given them license to indulge tion, thanks largely to Trump’s hopeless ambivalence on their most radical and reckless impulses. On September 11, Russian intentions. On the one hand, the president fawns Jimmy Carter, of all people, warned the faithful about the over Vladimir Putin at every opportunity, to the point of sudden veer toward a “very liberal program.” “Indepen- congratulating the Russian dictator on a bogus election vic- dents,” he noted, “need to know they can invest their vote in tory and publicly taking his word over that of U.S. intelli- the Democratic party.” gence officials on the matter of election meddling in 2016. It’s less than two months to the midterm election. In a On the other, the Trump administration has imposed pun- saner world, the Democrats would be presenting themselves ishing sanctions on Putin-aligned oligarchs and companies as the safe alternative, the party of reasonableness and mid- and is selling lethal defensive weaponry to Ukraine, which dle-class values. Instead they are the party of scoundrels is resisting Russia-backed insurgents in its eastern territory. and know-nothing ideologues who believe loathing Donald Trump’s contradictions are now manifesting themselves Trump is enough to gain the favor of voters. Cuomo had it in the Republican party, which once offered salvific clarity half right, anyway: Today’s Democrats aren’t going to make on the subject of the Soviet empire’s aims. In a Gallup poll America great. ♦ published in July, 40 percent of Republicans said Russia is either an ally or friendly toward the United States. That’s up from 22 percent in 2014. (Democrats changed little in that same period: 28 percent said Russia was a friend four years ago; 25 percent say so now.) The trouble with this kind of shift in opinion is that Competitors some elected officials will chase it, and a posse of Repub- lican lawmakers spent their July 4 holiday in Moscow in an effort to discuss “improving relations” with the Rus- and Adversaries sian regime. The trip was led by Alabama senator Rich- ard Shelby and included Steve Daines of Montana, John o no one’s surprise, Russia is the main suspect in Hoeven of North Dakota, Kay Granger of Texas, John the mysterious attacks on U.S. diplomatic person- Thune of South Dakota, John Kennedy of Louisiana, and T nel in Cuba. Since 2016, 26 people at our embassy in Jerry Moran of Kansas. “We could have a better relationship Havana have experienced sudden and severe cognitive dif- between the U.S. and Russia, because there’s some common ficulties, and intelligence officials believe interests around the world that we could it’s due to attacks engineered by agents hopefully work together on,” Shelby told of the Russian government. The source Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. is thought to be pulses of microwaves or “We are competitors, but we don’t neces- some similar electromagnetic weapon. A sarily need to be adversaries.” related attack affected one U.S. worker There’s nothing wrong with squishy in China. Russian involvement fits with rhetoric in the service of U.S. interests, what we know about the quiet malignity but it’s easy to suspect that Trump’s con- of the country’s foreign intelligence activ- fusion and the left’s sudden Russophobia ities—notably its use of radiation poi- Just a competitor? have tempted weaker-minded Repub- soning to murder Alexander Litvinenko licans into a gullible optimism about in 2006 in London and its (mercifully) unsuccessful use of Moscow’s intentions. The United States and Russia are still nerve agents against Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, adversaries—not because we choose bellicosity but because England, in 2018. Putin’s government invades neighboring states, murders its We don’t know the full truth yet, but if Moscow was opponents with impunity on foreign soil, undermines the behind this attack, the regime has carried out something an elections in Western democracies, perpetrates cyberwarfare earlier age would have considered an act of war—a vile and against America and its allies, and supports malign govern- unprovoked act of aggression against American diplomats. ments around the world with both money and expertise. And so the question arises again: Is Russia our enemy? Republicans should be fully aware that Putin’s aim is to The American left and much of this country’s news undermine America’s interests and diminish its influence media have cherished a newfound hatred for Russia since wherever possible. What’s needed from them, as from the the 2016 election (“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their White House, is clarity of expression. Diplomatic balderdash

ALEXEI NIKOLSKY / TASS / GETTY / TASS ALEXEI NIKOLSKY foreign policy back,” quipped Barack Obama in 2012 when aside, there’s no reason to call an enemy a competitor. ♦

8 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 COMMENT

ERIC FELTEN Steele and the State Department: There’s no such thing as a free memo

hen Christopher Steele was mation as he developed it,” Winer and information valuable to Deripaska hired to compile his “dos- wrote in the Washington Post in Febru- (whom the New York Times describes as W sier” on Donald Trump in ary. Winer took some of Steele’s Russia “so close to the Russian president that 2016, he already had an extensive his- memos to Nuland. “She told me they he has been called ‘Putin’s oligarch’ ”). tory of presenting private intelligence were useful and asked me to continue How close was Steele to Deripaska? analysis to U.S. policymakers. The for- to send them,” Winer wrote. “Over “Congress has documents showing mer British spy had for years been fun- the next two years, I shared more than Steele making numerous requests to neling reports on Russia and Ukraine 100 of Steele’s reports with the Rus- Bruce Ohr on Deripaska’s behalf,” says to senior State Department Russia ana- sia experts at the State Department, one congressional source. “It’s hard to lysts. Materials recently turned believe Steele was doing that for Deri- over to Congress show that while Asked about Steele’s paska just because he likes the guy.” Steele was giving memos to State Steele had done business with the he also maintained close ties to memos, the official oligarch’s organization going back to the billionaire Russian indus- said, ‘We were not the early days of his private practice. trialist Oleg V. Deripaska. Some After he retired from MI6, the New York congressional investigators are aware of his specific Times reports, Steele “opened a busi- thus concerned that his memos ness intelligence firm, and had tracked may have been a channel of Rus- sources but assumed Russian organized crime and business sian disinformation. that many of them interests for private clients, including Here’s how Steele got his one of Mr. Deripaska’s lawyers.” work distributed in the halls were close to Putin When asked by The Weekly Stan- of Foggy Bottom, according and were peddling dard about Deripaska and the Steele- to those who opened the door produced memos Winer shared with for him. During “the Ukraine information that was State, Winer had his attorney respond: crisis in 2014 and ’15, Chris useful to the Kremlin.’ “Mr. Winer did not provide informa- Steele had a number of com- tion to anyone at the State Depart- mercial clients who were asking him who continued to find them useful.” ment at any time that was funded by, for reports on what was going on in No one seems to have asked who or related in any way to, Mr. Deripaska. Russia, what was going on in Ukraine, paid Steele to produce the materials. Any statement to the contrary is false.” what was going on between them,” The memos may have been free for the Without access to the books of former assistant secretary of state for State Department, but someone was Steele’s company, Orbis Business European and Eurasian affairs Victo- paying Steele to produce them. And as Intelligence, it’s impossible to know ria Nuland told CBS’s Face the Nation we’ve since learned—the Clinton cam- who exactly was paying for his many in February. “Chris had a friend at the paign and the Democratic National memos. But the notion that Steele’s State Department, and he offered us Committee’s funding of the Trump information was not “related in any that reporting free, so that we could dossier being Exhibit A—Steele, like way” to Deripaska is another matter. also benefit from it.” many in the international fraternity Deripaska was such a frequent That friend was Jonathan M. Winer, of consultants, had no qualms about topic of discussion between Steele then State’s special envoy for Libya writing intel in the interest of clients. and the Justice Department’s Bruce and now a scholar at the Middle East Would it matter if the person doing the Ohr that the two referred to him as Institute. Winer and Steele had been paying for Russia-policy memos was a “OD” or “OVD.” And often those dis- pals since 2009, back when each was top Russian oligarch? cussions suggest Steele was doing his in the private international affairs con- The Department of Justice recently best to grease the skids for the oligarch sulting trade. Winer, who had left the provided Congress with materials, who, because he was under U.S. sanc- State Department in 1999, returned including emails and handwritten tions for his role as a Putin crony, had there in 2013. Soon after that, Steele notes, involving onetime associate dep- a perennial problem getting visas to approached Winer with a pitch: “He uty attorney general Bruce Ohr and enter the United States. On Febru- asked me whether the State Depart- Steele. The former British spy regu- ary 8, 2016, Steele wrote to Ohr: “our

LIKENESSES: DAVE CLEGG LIKENESSES: DAVE ment would like copies of new infor- larly asked his friend Ohr for favors old friend OD apparently has been

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 9 granted another official visa to come to Washington lawyer/lobbyist. Steele emailed Ohr that he had information the US later this month.” Steele went told Ohr he was “circulating some about “the unfolding Government of on, “As far as I’m concerned, this is recent sensitive Orbis reporting” that Ukraine-RUSAL dispute” that “Paul good news all round.” Steele seems purportedly showed Deripaska wasn’t H” had asked him to pass along to Ohr. to have been on the lookout for any a “tool” of the Kremlin, simply under “Naturally he [Hauser] wants to protect information affecting Deripaska’s visit, pressure from the Russian regime to the client’s interests and reputation,” and suggests it isn’t the first time he toe the line. Steele wrote. has adopted that role: “As before,” he Steele had remarkable access to Steele’s extensive interactions with wrote to Ohr, “it would be helpful if Deripaska. When the FBI tried (and Deripaska and Deripaska’s lawyers you could monitor it and let me know failed) to “turn” the oligarch into a con- make it unlikely that the succession if any complications arise.” fidential source in 2015, it was Steele of memos on Russia and Ukraine The communications between who “helped set up a meeting between he offered to Winer and the State Steele and Ohr show that Steele not the Russian and American officials,” Departmen were not “related in any only produced memos about Deri- according to the New York Times. And way” to Deripaska. Ukraine was a paska and issues important to the when congressional committees were pressing issue for Deripaska and the businessman, he did his best to spread looking to interview Steele in 2017, crisis there was the main topic Steele those memos around official Washing- the dossier author turned to Deripas- was analyzing. ton. Typical is an email Steele sent Ohr ka’s Washington lawyer, Waldman, to Does the fact that those memos February 21, 2016, titled “Re: OVD— attempt back-channel negotiations. were distributed at State for years Visit To The US.” Steele wrote he had Even in the thick of compiling mean U.S. policy might have been been in touch with “Paul H and Adam the Trump dossier, Steele found time warped by Russian disinformation, as W.” That would be Paul Hauser—a to look out for Deripaska’s interests. some on Capitol Hill fear? No, says a London-based lawyer who describes In the middle of October 2016, the senior State Department official who himself as “legal counsel for Mr. Deri- president of Ukraine issued sanctions was serving at the time—because the paska and for various of the businesses against more than 100 Russian com- Russia hands weren’t naïve. Asked associated with him”—and Adam panies, including Deripaska’s alumi- about the Russia and Ukraine memos Waldman, then Deripaska’s registered num giant, Rusal. Within a day, Steele Steele provided to State, the official

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10 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 tells The Weekly Standard, “We were Nuland. The taint that Steele’s work problem: Demagoguery is a helluva not aware of his specific sources but carried at State may explain why she drug and some Democrats apparently assumed that many of them were close ran as far and as fast as she could from cannot help themselves when it comes to Putin and were peddling informa- Jonathan Winer when he showed up to overreaching, even when it under- tion that was useful to the Kremlin.” with a condensed version of Steele’s mines their case. The official says the Putinesque spin Trump dossier in September 2016. In That may not be decisive in the of the memos led them to take Steele’s an interview with Politico last Febru- upcoming midterms, but it poses a lon- analysis with more than a grain of salt: ary, Nuland says her reaction to the ger-term problem for the party, espe- “There was a huge discount factor for summary of Steele’s Trump-Russia cially in 2020. And it seems awfully that reason.” allegations was that it was “not the familiar to those of us who watched This was the reputation Steele had business of the State Department.” what happened to Republicans and at the upper reaches of State: Among Give the thing to the FBI, she said, conservatives over the last decade. the people who saw his work most fre- which may have been the good-gov- Given the shifting standards of quently and who had the most exper- ernment response—and may also have judicial politics, the overwrought tise in Russian issues, the onetime MI6 been sensible hand-washing by one of tone of the Kava­naugh hearings was officer was seen as “peddling informa- the few people who were in a position perhaps inevitable; there are plau- tion that was useful to the Kremlin.” to know what Steele’s Russia report- sible reasons why Democrats might Which brings us back to Victoria ing was worth. ♦ be leery of Kava­naugh’s constitu- tional conservatism. But any serious discussion of judicial philosophy was COMMENT ♦ CHARLES J. SYKES effectively drowned out by Booker’s histrionic and thoroughly bogus “I am Spartacus” moment and by Har- Woke emotionalism is not a ris’s attempts to demonize Kava­ naugh with misleading soundbites substitute for sober policy debate and insinuations that she failed to substantiate. or some reason, I find myself Many observers blamed the backlash In particular, Harris’s suggestion thinking a lot about Paul Well- against the funeral spectacle at least in that Kavanaugh­ was confusing birth F stone’s funeral lately. A popu- part for Mondale’s defeat. control with “abortion-inducing lar and outspoken liberal Democrat, Which brings us to the latest itera- drugs” drew pointed rebukes from the the Minnesota senator died tragically tion of over-the-top political theatri- fact-checkers at the Washington Post, in a plane crash just weeks who awarded her four Pinocchios. before the 2002 election. This is the problem Even the often tendentious Politifact Not surprisingly, emotions rated her charges “false.” ran high, culminating in a with asymmetrical But not to be outdone, other Dem- nationally televised funeral ocrats on the committee have taken that morphed into a rau- ethics: If your to suggesting that Kavanaugh­ per- cous political pep rally. opponent lies and jured himself during the hearings. Some of the speeches This brought a mild rebuke from Ben took on a harsh partisan distorts as a business Wittes, the editor of Lawfare. tone, and the crowd booed model, it becomes Wittes, a political centrist who Trent Lott, then the Senate often aligns with the Democrats, Republican leader, when more difficult to wrote on Twitter, “One of the reasons he entered the arena at hold yourself to a to oppose him is not that he’s some the University of Minne- kind of terrible person. He’s a thor- sota for the service. After- higher standard. oughly decent and honorable person.” ward, some of the orga- Wittes pushed back on allegations nizers apologized for the tone of the cality—last week’s hearings on the that Kavanaugh­ was a liar. “He’s not. event, but the damage had been done. nomination of Brett Kavanaugh­ to Full stop,” he tweeted. “There’s no Democrats assumed that former vice the Supreme Court. need to demonize one’s opponents. president Walter Mondale would be Democrats are understandably And there’s no need to gin up a ‘per- able to ride the tide of emotion and concerned about the nomination, jury’ issue here.” hold Wellstone’s seat, but Mondale but the histrionics of senators Cory And with that, Wittes’s Twitter wound up losing to Republican Norm Booker, Kamala Harris, and even a feed was set on fire, as progressives Coleman (who would, in turn, lose to few who are not running for presi- swarmed to denounce him. Within comedian Al Franken six years later). dent suggest Democrats have a deeper days, the mild-mannered Wittes

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 11 announced that he was swearing off aisle, even as the evidence mounts during the hearings. But those who Twitter, at least for the time being. that they are mirroring the tactics of object to the falsehoods of Harris or L’affaire Wittes illustrates again their opponents. To suggest any sort Booker run the risk of being consid- how the frame of acceptable rhetoric of “false moral equivalency” or “what- ered insufficiently woke. has shifted toward the extremes. Emo- aboutism” is an arch-heresy on the This raises several questions: Will tional overstatement has no patience left, and there is massive pushback it be like this if the Democrats take for anything short of the most hysteri- against any suggestion that the left has control of Congress? Will they realize cal denunciations. As Nebraska’s Ben any need or responsibility to police its that woke emotionalism is not a sub- Sasse noted, Kava­naugh “has been own borders or clean up its messes. stitute for sober, substantive politics? accused of hating women, hating chil- To be sure, there are responsible Will they discredit their legitimate dren, hating clean air, wanting dirty voices who were troubled by the investigations with illegitimate alle- water.” It is not enough to disagree eagerness of some liberals to latch gations? Will they embrace Trump’s with his jurisprudence on executive onto the bizarre conspiracy theory own ethos in their efforts to over- power, he must be “declared an exis- that a young lawyer named Zina Bash throw him? Will they overreach and tential threat to the nation.” (with both Mexican and Jewish heri- propel Republicans to a 2020 victory? This reflects the incentive structure tage) was flashing white power signs Can they even help themselves? ♦ of Trump-era politics, which rewards bombast over substance or nuance. All of this is familiar to those of us COMMENT ♦ PHILIP TERZIAN who watched this same scenario play out on the right. Politico noted the obvious parallels in a piece headlined The rise of the ‘senior officials’ “Harris and Booker borrow Trump’s tactics in Supreme Court fracas”: and the decline of the presidency

It hardly mattered for their primary o paraphrase a onetime assis- dence based on experience doesn’t nec- audience that Kamala Harris offered tant to an earlier president, I essarily make it true. Nor am I the first no firm evidence to support one of her sharpest lines of questioning, or T sleep each night a little bet- individual to regard the personal con- that Booker’s “Spartacus” uprising ter, a little more confidently, knowing duct of a president in office as less than amounted to a demand for docu- that “a senior official in the Trump desirable—or, in the judgment of the ments that had already been autho- administration” is in the White “quiet resistance,” potentially harmful rized for release. House—assuming, of course, that the to the country. One thing Democrats are learn- senior official exists or works in the The essential difference here is ing from President Donald Trump: White House. that I am a private citizen express- Floating an incendiary charge, with little to no factual basis, can draw the He tells us that he and his like- ing an opinion while Senior Official spotlight and force the opposition to minded colleagues within the Trump is a political appointee (I am guess- prove a negative. administration’s “quiet resistance” have ing) who knows better than the elected the country’s best interests at heart, president what’s good for America and This is, of course, the problem with which is reassuring when you gaze at can do something about it and does it. asymmetrical ethics: If your opponent the picture he paints in the op-ed pages Yet it may come as a surprise to learn lies and distorts as a business model, it of the New York Times of President that, in fact, Donald Trump stands in a becomes more difficult to hold your- Trump’s “amorality” and “impetuous, long line of presidents whose perceived self to a higher standard. On the right, adversarial, petty and ineffective” lead- mental or physical deficiencies were attempts to hold the line on telling the ership style. So we have reason to be regarded as political liabilities, even truth have been denounced as signs of thankful for Senior Official’s selfless- incipient dangers. weakness and “cuckservativism.” If ness, along with the everyday acts of In the early years of the last cen- your opponent is an existential threat, statesmanship he and the other “adults tury, for example, the British ambas- then you must be prepared to believe in the room” commit on our behalf in sador Cecil Spring Rice was a lifelong any vile thing about him, no matter the Trump administration. friend and admirer of the erratic and how implausible. This opened a door Or do we? As I have said before, I impulsive Theodore Roosevelt but to all manner of mendacity, as well as would be the first to acknowledge that liked to remind visitors to Washing- to trafficking in conspiracy theories. Trump’s behavior and temperament ton that “you must always remem- And so we got Trumpism, with all of are unprecedented in the modern pres- ber that the president is about 6.” its appendages. idency and they, along with his ubiq- So dolorous was the mood in the Much of the progressive move- uitous presence on Twitter, probably post-1929 White House of Herbert ment is adamant in denying that there do him more harm than good. But just Hoover that Secretary of State Henry are any parallels on their side of the because I say this with a certain confi- Stimson complained to his diary that

12 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 “it was like sitting in a bath of ink to Which brings us to Topic B in ing” quality of Fear is not so much sit in his room.” political Washington this past week: where the Trump presidency is tak- Woodrow Wilson spent the last year Bob Woodward’s new bestseller Fear, ing us as how we are getting there: and a half of his presidency in a state an exhaustive account of the “harrow- the president’s volatile temperament of invalidism after a stroke, and the ing” life in Trump’s White House and and limited attention span, his casual final year of Franklin Roosevelt’s ten- (in its publicists’ words) the “explo- approach to decision-making, his ure during the Second World War was sive debates and the decision-mak- reliance on visceral instinct at the a slow and steady decline unto death. ing in the Oval Office, the Situation expense of administrative custom Depression, nervous exhaustion, Room, Air Force One and the White and Senior Officials. even psychosis have all been variously House residence.” Once again, I am not entirely con- diagnosed in the White House, from As is always the case with this par- vinced that this is a bad thing. One Calvin Coolidge’s deep melancholy ticular chronicler, trust in the authen- of the striking aspects of the postwar after his younger son’s tragic death ticity of Fear’s content has much to presidency is the extent to which it to the “paranoid” behavior of Lyn- do with the reader’s attitude toward has become deeply bureaucratized, don Johnson and Richard the product of a mechanical staff sys- Nixon late in their presi- tem that subsists on ever-wider con- dencies. Older command- Whether one trusts sultation, memoranda in triplicate, ers in chief such as Dwight Fear’s content has strict chains of command, and limited Eisenhower, Ronald Rea- options. The West Wing, like the State gan, and George H. W. much to do with one’s Department across town, is a giant Bush were each regarded faith in Woodward mulching machine for ideas. as mentally diminished Dwight Eisenhower, who reorga- by physical infirmity and and his formula of nized the White House staff in the age, and in the pages of second-hand dialogue, 1950s with an eye to military efficiency, Bush on the Couch (2004) is partly to blame for this for, like most a well-publicized profes- voluminous memory, reforms, Ike’s vision of accountability sor of psychiatry at George and coherence has been transformed Washington University disguised sources, into a spectacle of administrative obe- declared George W. Bush hearsay, and telepathy. sity and policy inertia. Presidents with delusional, unstable, mad creative instincts—Franklin Roosevelt for power, and, above all, cognitively its subject and, not least, faith in was never happier than when playing impaired by alcoholism. Bob Woodward and his formula of one subordinate off another or unex- In nearly all of these cases there second-hand dialogue, voluminous pectedly switching gears—are now were varying numbers of people memory, disguised sources, hearsay, effectively bound by White House pro- who, like Senior Official, saw things and telepathy. tocol and deftly maneuvered by Senior clearly in their own minds and felt I have no way of judging such Officials into inaction. Or, in their constrained to take action, either things in this particular instance; view, stability. to protect their patrons from expo- but I do know that Woodward is a In that sense, it seems an open ques- sure and inquiry—Wilson’s wife and creature of the nation’s capital and, tion—at least a topic ripe for discus- physician took control of the White as such, predictably preoccupied sion—whether democracy is best House in the president’s name while with the customs and processes of served by a crockery-breaking presi- FDR’s resident doctor issued cheery the presidency at the expense of sub- dent or a self-protective bureaucracy bulletins—or, in more recent times, stance. Accordingly, the “harrow- with friends in high places. ♦ to ensure domestic tranquility while keeping a watchful eye on behalf of the 25th Amendment. Worth Repeating from WeeklyStandard.com: It may well be, of course, that Competitive races are demographically scattered across the map. Senior Official’s motives are as disin- terested as he claims they are, and that Some competitive House districts are largely white, some aren’t. the better angels of Trump’s nature Some are well-educated, and others aren’t. Obviously not every are encouraged while his demons are type of district is competitive. I don’t know of any majority-black thwarted. But I am not wholly per- districts that are up for grabs, and most rural Appalachian districts suaded that Trump’s successes in are looking uncompetitive. office—which are numerous and not trivial—are thanks to Senior Official —David Byler, ‘Can Any One Demographic Group and his sober friends and not the wild- Predict the House Elections?’ and-crazy Trump himself.

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 13 that any official of any corrupt or tyrannical regime who is locally desig- A Well-Aimed Blow nated a “judge” must have a claim on our respect. That is not respect for law but for the mystique of the robe. John Bolton is right about One of Bolton’s points was that the ICC is not a legitimate tribunal the International Criminal Court. by Jeremy Rabkin in American eyes because it is not anchored in a larger constitutional he Trump administration is world—since it threatens target- scheme, in which prosecution policy often accused of swinging ing actual judges! That is missing the answers in some way to a separate T wildly—and sometimes with point. As a nonparty to the ICC treaty, executive—in the last resort by the reason. But the speech delivered by the United States has never agreed availability of a pardon for egregious national security adviser John Bolton to submit its nationals to the court. convictions. There is nothing of this on September 10 was very well aimed. Still less has the United States agreed sort with the ICC. If the prosecutor It was a sustained warning to the offi- that third-party states can extradite decides not to pursue a case, judges cials of the International Criminal can order that it be reconsidered—as Court (ICC), delivered at Washington’s an ICC panel did when the prosecu- Mayflower Hotel, the same venue (as tor declined to pursue a case against Bolton noted) where candidate Don- the Israel Defense Forces for attack- ald Trump gave his first major foreign ing a blockade-running ship in the policy speech in the spring of 2016. Mediterranean. Under the terms of If Trump is sometimes suspected the ICC charter, not even the U.N. of mouthing positions crafted by oth- Security Council can order the court ers, no one can doubt that Bolton had to terminate a politically question- carefully considered the argument able prosecution. It is a machine on of his speech. Bolton helped orga- autopilot, grounded on the fantasti- nize the response of the George W. cal supposition that a hodgepodge of Bush administration to the ICC in international officials would never its first term, when the new president abuse their powers if designated “unsigned” the initial (though highly “judges” and “prosecutors.” qualified) endorsement of the ICC A more sophisticated criticism of treaty by President Bill Clinton. the speech was that it was premature, John Bolton, September 10 The item in Bolton’s current speech as the Washington Post complained in that gathered the most attention was Americans to this court in The Hague. an editorial. But that is also implau- the threat to take legal action against It is one thing for national courts sible. The ICC prosecutor announced ICC officials involved in prosecuting to prosecute Americans for offenses last fall that she would seek to pur- Americans or nationals of American committed on their territory. We sue an investigation of alleged abuses allies such as Israel (which he men- might bargain with the state involved by American troops in Afghanistan tioned by name). The United States, in such a case and might well impose (though not so alleged by the govern- he said, may “ban [ICC] judges and diplomatic sanctions if we thought ment of Afghanistan). When the court prosecutors from entering” the coun- the prosecution improper. It is some- was established, advocates insisted try, “sanction their funds in the U.S. thing quite different for a court claim- it was aimed at the most monstrous financial system,” and even “prosecute ing to speak for humanity at large to abuses by the most lawless states, so it them in the U.S. criminal system.” try Americans without—as we see was very unlikely to target a Western And these sanctions extend to “any it—any serious legal ground for such state with reliable rule of law. company or state that assists an ICC action. The Trump administration is Now the ICC is signaling that it’s investigation of Americans.” currently imposing sanctions on Tur- ready to go there after all. It restrained Some critics warned that such key and Iran in part to protest what itself from doing so in its early years action would undermine respect we regard as contrived charges against (it started operations in 2002). Perhaps for the rule of law around the captive Americans. We have in the ICC officials then calculated it was past tried to prosecute terrorists for better to hold off, in hopes of wooing Jeremy Rabkin is professor of law at Scalia kidnapping Americans. Why are the American support or at least acquies- Law School, George Mason University. officials of the ICC entitled to a special cence. As the court now signals that His most recent book is Striking Power: privileged status? To say that Bolton’s it wants to take on the United States, How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons blast against the ICC undermines why wait for the details to warn that

Change the Rules for War (with John Yoo). “respect for the rule of law” implies we reject its authority altogether? WIN MCNAMEE / GETTY

14 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 The argument that U.S. opposi- did not surrender when indicted by The important thing, as Kant says, is tion to the ICC will embolden mur- the ICC, but Britain’s attorney gen- to prove one’s good intentions by mak- derous tyrants is, as Bolton pointed eral kept assuring Parliament that all ing no exceptions—which means, in out, rather hard to reconcile with the British airstrikes in the course of the practice, no serious judgments about court’s actual record—a mere eight 2011 intervention in Libya were care- circumstances and ground-level reali- convictions in over 15 years, none of fully assessed for compliance with ICC ties. Bolton’s warning was to the point: them a major figure, none from out- standards. In consequence, the fight- States that take the side of the ICC side Africa. As Bolton said: “The ing went on for six months, wrecking can’t be reliable partners. idea that faraway bureaucrats could any prospect for a peaceful transition Finally, there’s the complaint that strike fear into the hearts of the likes of power. Bolton was engaging in Trump-style of Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Stalin, and Making the ICC the final judge of bluster when he threatened individu- Qaddafi is preposterous, even cruel.” Western war measures is no contribu- alized actions against ICC officials. To say we undermine respect for tion to any policy goal in facing rogue The U.S. Code does not authorize the Geneva Convention standards incor- states. But all of our NATO allies have U.S. government to take such actions, porated into the ICC Statute (regard- joined the ICC. So does Bolton’s hard says John Bellinger (former legal ing war crimes and “crimes against line complicate our relations with adviser to the State Department). I humanity”) is akin to saying we risk would not take his word for it, espe- undermining respect for human rights cially in a short, next-day blog post. by withdrawing from the U.N. Human Originally, ICC advocates But if more legal authority is Rights Council, a diplomatic pigpen insisted it was aimed at the required, the Trump administration that year after year has generated more most monstrous abuses by should ask Congress to provide it. In condemnations of Israel than of any 2002, both Hillary Clinton and John other state and often more than all the most lawless states. As Kerry voted in favor of the American other states combined. International the court now signals that it Service-Members Protection Act— institutions tend to reflect the priori- wants to take on the United authorizing use of force to rescue ties of member states, and standing up Americans detained by the ICC. How for human rights is not a priority for States, why wait for the many members of Congress would most U.N. member states. details to warn that we reject take sides against our armed forces to Bolton’s charge that it’s “cruel” to its authority altogether? show their higher loyalty to the court consign victims to the ICC is the most in The Hague? Let’s find out. telling. It is a retreat from any kind There may be some members of of serious global policy. Neither the potential partners in future military Congress who think the International United States nor any other country actions? After all, the ICC now has Criminal Court has a necessary role can ensure that murderous govern- jurisdiction over the crime of “aggres- to play. Some critics complain that ments restrain their worst tendencies. sion,” defined in vague but wide-rang- the Obama administration failed to Sometimes, though, there may be no ing terms. Perhaps it is all to the good do justice in its extended investiga- alternative to force, especially when to be candid with our partners. tions of U.S. interrogation practices in the challenge is thwarting interna- President Trump has repeatedly Iraq and Afghanistan. They may think tional aggression. complained that most NATO states resorting to The Hague is the only But the ICC was established on shirk the costs of military prepared- way to assure ultimate justice. I doubt the premise that all states may need ness. That’s a serious problem. But there are many people in Congress backup from international author- surely it is worse when our partners, who think this way. It will be useful ity. It makes no distinctions between lacking the resources to provide mili- for voters to know their names. democracies and tyrannies, rule of law tary assistance, still want to partici- John Bolton has focused the issue states and murderous police states. pate in legal second-guessing of what squarely. I don’t think his protest will The undeniable fact, however, is that fighters have done. The European idea beFind ignored, out even what in Europe. all the kids ♦ it is precisely democratic and lawful seems to be that Americans will do the are talking about. states that are most vulnerable to the fighting and Europeans assist with the political sting of ICC accusations. judging. Meanwhile, Angela Merkel Some critics have said Bolton’s boasts that the security of Israel is a speech will make it harder for the ICC fundamental principle of German for- to pursue indictments against Taliban eign policy (staatsraison), but there is atrocities in Afghanistan. But the no sign that her government will lift Taliban will ignore such indictments, a finger to resist ICC prosecution of while Western states may be deterred Israeli soldiers for what officials in the from helping to fight the Taliban there safety of The Hague regard as excessive by exposure to legal liability. Qaddafi force in responding to missile attacks. At weeklystandard.com/podcasts

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 15 that means, and even that vague limi- tation is under court attack. And bear A Gruesome Plan in mind, too, that patients request- ing euthanasia usually do not receive any suicide counseling services before Keep the ‘dead donor rule.’ they are killed. Conjoining euthanasia with organ by Wesley J. Smith donation would thus send the insidi- ous message to vulnerable people that he Hippocratic Oath is dead. journal has published a radical pro- their deaths have greater social value “Do no harm” medicine is posal that would demolish the ethical than their lives. For the particularly T fast becoming extinct. Con- foundation of transplant medicine— vulnerable, that could be the point temporary health care is increas- the “dead donor rule.” that tips their decisions. Moreover, ingly under the sway of a utilitarian The rule requires that donors be following the path the authors urge bioethics that makes declared dead before would transform a life-saving medi- the elimination of vital organs are pro- cal sector into one that also ends lives, suffering the prime cured and that the imposing on transplant specialists the directive—to the det- surgical transplant pro- dual role of both healer and killer. riment of traditional cedure not be the cause The NEJM was once one of the standards of medical of the donor’s death. In most powerful institutional oppo- morality that deem their NEJM piece “Vol- nents of medical utilitarianism. In all human life equally untary Euthanasia— 1949, it published a famous and worthy of care and Implications for Organ powerful argument against allow- protection. Donation,” Dr. Ian M. ing such values into the practice of The prestigious New Ball and bioethicists medicine. Writing after the revela- England Journal of Medi- Robert Sibbald and tion of the depraved practices of the cine has been among Robert D. Truog urge Nazi regime’s doctors, who engaged the instigators of this that those rules be loos- in infanticide, the killing of disabled shift. As early as 2005, ened in countries where adults, and many other infamies in the journal published Hippocrates euthanasia is legal: the name of science, Leo Alexander, a (without significant psychiatrist and medical adviser to the criticism) the so-called Groningen Pro- Although some patients may want to office of chief counsel at the Nurem- tocol—a bureaucratic checklist from be sure that organ procurement won’t berg war crimes trials, warned that the the Netherlands that instructs Dutch begin before they are declared dead, utilitarian infection that destroyed doctors which terminally ill or seri- others may want not only a rapid, German medical ethics could spread: peaceful, and painless death, but also ously disabled babies they can lethally the option of donating as many organs inject. In 2010, NEJM published advo- as possible and in the best condition Whatever proportions these crimes cacy in favor of an invidious health- possible. Following the dead donor finally assumed, it became evident to care rationing measure known as the rule could interfere with the ability of all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. QALY (“quality-adjusted life year”), these patients to achieve their goals. In such cases, it may be ethically pref- The beginnings at first were merely a adoption of which has the effect of lim- subtle shift in emphasis in the basic iting care to the disabled and disadvan- erable to procure the patient’s organs in the same way that organs are pro- attitude of the physicians. It started taged whose lives are bureaucratically cured from brain-dead patients (with with the acceptance of the attitude, rated as lower in quality than the lives the use of general anesthesia to ensure basic in the euthanasia movement, of others. the patient’s comfort). that there is such a thing as life not In its September 6, 2018, edition worthy to be lived. though, NEJM has outdone itself. In other words, rather than wait All it took for doctors to be led With Belgium and the Netherlands for the patient’s heart to stop after astray, Alexander warned in “Medi- already allowing the conjoining of lethal injection—as currently is done cal Science Under Dictatorship,” organ donation and euthanasia, and in the Netherlands and Belgium—the was utilitarian calculation, “the infi- with Canada debating whether to patient could be anesthetized and his nitely small wedged-in lever from follow them off that moral cliff, the organs procured while he is still alive. which this entire trend of mind Bear in mind that legal euthana- received its impetus”: Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow sia in Belgium and the Netherlands Physicians have become danger- at the Discovery Institute’s Center is not limited to the terminally ill. In ously close to being mere technicians on Human Exceptionalism and a consultant Canada, the euthanasia patient’s death of rehabilitation. . . . In an increas-

to the Patients Rights Council. need only be “foreseeable,” whatever ingly utilitarian society these patients DEAGOSTINI / GETTY

16 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 [with chronic or terminal diseases] are advocacy? How could it? By running the intra-Shia struggle is just hitting being looked down upon with increas- articles openly supportive of infanti- high gear—are imperfect proxies for ing definiteness as unwanted bal- cide, health-care rationing by “qual- Iran, just as Hezbollah has been. And last. A certain amount of rather open ity” of life, and now of conjoining like the Lebanese original, which contempt for the people who cannot be rehabilitated with present knowl- euthanasia and organ harvesting, the occasionally surprises even itself by edge has developed. . . . At this point NEJM has become the very wedge lurching into open war against Israel, Americans should remember that the against which Alexander so power- it seems quite likely that the rump enormity of a euthanasia movement is fully inveighed. regimes in Damascus and Baghdad present in their own midst. Perhaps it is time for a name change. will from time to time contravene I suggest that the New Euthanasia Jour- Iranian direction in pursuit of their Would today’s NEJM publish nal of Medicine more accurately identi- immediate interests. Yet from an Ira- Alexander’s powerful anti-utilitarian fies the values it embraces. ♦ nian perspective, these are not bugs but features of a model that has per- mitted Tehran to exert influence well beyond what might be feasible were its “revolutionary” posture to appear Idlib and Beyond too Persian, too overtly imperial. And this “soft-power” approach has yielded hard-power benefits. Both The vultures are circling in Syria. Hezbollah fighters and, in recent years, Shia fighters from Iraq have by Thomas Donnelly served in Syria; these militia members have taken on some of the qualities of ver the past several weeks, the in the north through Damascus to the mercenaries, if not professionals. war in Syria has crept back southern border. The last link in this The creation of Larger Leba- O into the headlines, even com- chain, still not reclaimed by Assad, non already has had profound geo- peting with the drama and comedy of runs through Idlib, which is also the political effects in the Levant and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. The last part of the U.N. “de-escalation the Gulf. It is making life even more focus of attention is a potential human- zone”—a fiction that has considerably miserable for Turkish strongman itarian crisis and the prospect that the eased the Syrian government’s task. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, constraining Assad regime might again use chemi- The larger question is whether the his ­neo-Ottoman dreams. Erdogan, cal weapons. Even President Donald conquest of Idlib would mark simply not surprisingly, is sharing his pain Trump interrupted his normal Twit- the end of the Syrian war and the sur- with Europe, warning that the Idlib ter flow to warn the Syrians, Russians, vival of the Assad dynasty or whether offensive will generate a new wave and Iranians not to “recklessly attack it would signal the creation of a mod- of refugees that he will be unable to Idlib Province”—the last large pocket ern Iranzamin—loosely, “Greater control. There is some truth in this, of Syrian resistance—lest “hundreds of Iran”—a sphere of influence reaching although Erdogan’s current unhap- thousands” of people be killed. “Don’t from the Caucasus and Central Asia piness may have more to do with the let that happen!” urged Trump. to the Mediterranean, and what that lack of respect shown him by Mos- The coalition backing Bashar al- might mean for the regional balance of cow and Tehran, and the collapsing Assad may be ruthless, but it isn’t power. The Idlib campaign also raises Turkish lira, than sympathy for his reckless. Over the seven years of questions about past and present pros- “Syrian brothers,” as he calls them in the Syrian conflict, it’s stuck to its pects for American interests and allies. his tweets. At the recent summit in guns, closely synchronized its dip- That the Assad regime survives Tehran with Vladimir Putin and Ira- lomatic and military efforts, and, as at all is something of a wonder, after nian leader Hassan Rouhani, Erdo- the tide of the fighting has turned in seven years of bloody war arising from gan was very much the junior partner its favor, adhered to a coherent cam- relatively small and peaceful protests among the self-described “guarantor paign plan to reestablish control of in January 2011. The process of sur- states” of the situation in Syria. Tur- the major population centers in the vival, however, has cost Assad much key may have a seat at this table, but country. That campaign has largely of his autonomy, mortgaged to Russia Iran and Russia are in control of the centered on Syrian Highway 5, the and, especially, Iran. Indeed, what is menu. The Lebanonization of Syria major north-south line of communi- emerging from Baghdad to Damascus and Iraq poses a strategic challenge to cation in the east, connecting Aleppo is a kind of “Larger Lebanon,” where which Erdogan—who has been burn- Tehran-backed Shia militias, created ing his bridges with Europe and the Thomas Donnelly is director of in the image of Hezbollah, hold the United States—has little response. the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies keys to the kingdoms. While the Turks have moved tanks at the American Enterprise Institute. To be sure, Syria and Iraq—where to their border with Syria, the Russians

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 17 have resumed and ratcheted up the militias and special assets, including for staying in Afghanistan as well. intensity of airstrikes against south- covert operatives. After three years of These forces, along with the contin- ern Idlib. This repeats the pattern of steady but manageable effort, Russia ued U.S. Navy patrolling of the Gulf the Syrian reconquest: initial Russian shows no signs of exhaustion or over- and the Arabian Sea, do not them- longer-range strikes to soften up oppo- stretch and now enjoys a reputation selves make for a policy of containing sition strongholds followed by Assad for standing by its allies that resonates Iran, let alone a strategy of rollback; regime terror-bombing and then, cau- across the region. the military presence is necessary but tiously, a mix of Syrian troops, Ira- hardly sufficient. nian Quds Force operatives and Shia his is precisely what the United More telling is the administration’s militias, and a sprinkling of Russian T States most lacks. The Trump patience with Saudi Arabia, includ- forward observers and contract fight- administration, it must be said, has ing its tolerance of the very ugly Saudi ers. Because Idlib is the last redoubt at least stopped the hemorrhaging of war in Yemen. The larger strategic of the opposition, it has received an American strategic credit. This is sur- prize—and perhaps a light at the end influx of perhaps as many as a million prising, considering the president’s of the current very dark and long tun- refugees from other parts of western oft-expressed desire to complete the nel—is the success of Crown Prince and southern Syria, and is defended withdrawals begun by his ­predecessor. Mohammed bin Salman’s project of by some 60,000 or reform in Riyadh. That more well-armed mili- may be a long shot, but tia members of its own, such is the degenera- including a number of tion of American influ- hardcore jihadist units. ence in the Arab world The bombing effort is since the retreat from likely to be a patient Iraq. Indeed, the United one, perhaps punctu- States now finds itself ated by U.N.-moderated in a position similar to ceasefires that allow the where it was in the late attackers to regroup and 1940s, when Presidents the resistance to slip Roosevelt and Truman through the desert to the lashed America’s Mid- east or over the moun- dle East hopes to the tains to the north. The masts of Saudi Arabia regime and its allies are Wreckage from an airstrike by pro-Assad forces and Israel. more than willing to near Idlib Province, September 8, 2018 Stepping back into the destroy Idlib to save it, public square the other but they are also sensitive to their own It also may not survive the inevita- week, Barack Obama rightly described manpower limits. ble departures of Defense secretary Trumpism as not the cause but the It is also likely that Russia will James Mattis and White House chief effect of the divisiveness and dema- remain an important player for the of staff John Kelly, whose Marine goguery besetting American politi- coming years, even as Iran tries to careers were defined by the wars of cal life over the past decade. He would consolidate a Larger Lebanon. Not the Middle East. Whether Secretary know. And what is true domestically only do Russian aircraft, air defenses, of State Mike Pompeo could carry is true internationally, too. Even more and long-range artillery provide the load alone seems doubtful, and so: “Iraq Derangement Syndrome” has important tactical elements to the who can predict how a setback in this been more virulent and long-lived than coalition, but its role in deterring fall’s midterms—not to mention the hatred of our last or our current presi- American intervention would remain denouement of the Mueller probe and dent, and it certainly will not be cured critical—even past the point at which the impeachment proceedings that by a change of administration. Iran achieves a nuclear capability. might follow it—will further unhinge The dismemberment of Idlib will Putin’s bold if small 2015 investment the president? create not only a humanitarian disas- in Syria has thus far returned giant There is, however, the shadow of ter but a strategic one for the United strategic profit, and Russia is now a Middle East strategy flickering on States, its interests, and its allies, in the sole broker for all interested par- the White House walls. Recent news Europe and well as the Middle East ties, able to bargain with the United reports indicate that the administra- proper. Donald Trump is right to States, Saudi Arabia, and even Israel, tion intends to retain a residual U.S. scream, “Don’t let that happen!” But as well as Iran and Assad. Experience force of several thousand in western until he, or we, are prepared to do probably has given Russian intelli- Iraq, nominally to ensure the contin- something beyond appealing to the gence the best outside appreciation of ued suppression of ISIS or its third- tender heart of Vladimir Putin, it’s

the strengths and weaknesses of Iran’s generation spawn. There are plans going to happen. And happen again. ♦ AMER ALHAMWE / AFP GETTY

18 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 republished in the Library of Amer- ica series, a just canonization. In the An Equal Opportunity 1930s, as the country suffered through high unemployment, food lines, and bank foreclosures, Mencken’s contrar- Offender ianism did not seem nearly as witty and his reputation faded. Thanks to Harold Ross’s encouragement at the New Yorker, Mencken got a second Mencken mirrors our own complexities. wind writing articles about his Balti- by D. G. Hart more boyhood. These led to his popu- lar 1940s memoirs, the so-called “Days very year, two organizations At the subdued Mencken Society, we Trilogy” (Happy Days, Newspaper Days, bearing the name of H. L. are content to hear people speak about Heathen Days). E Mencken meet to hear speakers Mencken; the Club prefers to echo the A severe stroke kept Mencken from and enjoy the camaraderie that comes Baltimorean’s contrarian tone. That reading and writing for the last eight with belonging to a niche institution. difference highlights the problem of years of his life (he died in 1956), I am president of the Mencken Soci- Mencken for a time when tweets and which left the fortunes of his reputa- ety, which was formed in the 1970s videos use provocation to go viral and tion to the publishing industry. Had by people who had known the Sage of campus administrators try to protect he written poetry or fiction (he tried at Baltimore and hoped to keep his writ- students from hurtful ideas. both and failed), the professors might ings, ideas, and spirit alive. Our annual The Mencken Club has been in have kept him alive. But journalism meeting combines business and speak- the news lately thanks to the White rarely qualifies as literature or history. ers, along with a re-creation of the House’s termination of speechwriter His contemporaries knew Mencken Saturday Night Club (with whom Darren Beattie. His offense was to be disagreeable and at times offen- Mencken assembled to play classical speaking at the Mencken Club in sive. Walter Lippmann, who rivaled music, eat, and drink; we just eat and 2016 alongside the alt-right journal- Mencken as one of the nation’s lead- drink). The Society also has a website ist Peter Brimelow. Richard Spencer, ing columnists, acknowledged that that features Mencken’s work and sup- one of the chief leaders of the alt- when the “Holy Terror from Bal- ports a journal as a forum for scholarly right, has also spoken at the Mencken timore” calls you “a swine, and an study of the writer. Club. Beattie denies having anything imbecile,” he “increases your will to If we are ever in the public eye, it to do with Brimelow’s or Spencer’s live.” But they also recognized his is because we are sometimes confused extreme views. His 2016 talk was on gifts. Joseph Wood Krutch, another with the Mencken Club, which takes “The Intelligentsia and the Right,” gifted midcentury literary critic, wrote its inspiration from its namesake’s and he stands by his remarks, which that Mencken was the best prose attacks on “the egalitarian creed, dem- contained in his estimation “nothing writer in 20th-century America, some- ocratic crusades, and welfare statism objectionable.” His mere presence at one who employed a “vocabulary and with which American democracy was the Mencken Club was deemed guilt a rhythm” that in anyone else’s hands already identified during his lifetime.” by association, though. would have been “vulgarity.” The group’s explicit questioning of Beattie’s career aside, this inci- One of the charms of Mencken’s mainstream politics could qualify the dent is another dent in the fender of outlook was that no subject was safe, Mencken Club for membership in the Mencken’s reputation. Commenta- not even himself—his memoirs were Intellectual Dark Web. tors on the firing were all too happy successful partly because of their self- Both organizations lay claim to to associate Mencken with the alt- deprecation. He began Happy Days by Mencken’s writing—his irrever- right, white nationalists, and racists. observing that the “science of infant ent, iconoclastic, and side-splitting The problem for those of us who want feeding,” when he was born in 1880, essays and columns about the foibles to protect what is left of his stature is “was as rudimentary as bacteriology or of everything American, from rela- that Mencken gained his standing social justice, but there can be no doubt tions between the sexes to the follies precisely by shocking the gatekeepers that I got plenty of calories . . . even of urban politics. The Club is edgy, of good taste. That was by no means an overdose.” For evidence, Mencken though, in ways that the Society is not, all Mencken did, of course. His cor- referred to a photograph of himself as a thanks to the degree to which it also pus runs to roughly 50 books—and baby that “the milk companies” could identifies with Mencken’s cussedness. even these do not include all his col- well have used in the Sunday papers to umns, articles, and literary criticism. whoop up “zeal for their cows.” Ever D. G. Hart, the Novakovic Fellow His six volumes of Prejudices—many a hearty eater and drinker, Mencken at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, of his best essays from the 1910s and noted that if “cannibalism had not teaches history at Hillsdale College. ’20s about American life—have been been abolished in Maryland . . . I’d

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 19 have butchered beautifully.” Such self- Whether the Mencken Club is a be adorned by a downright moron.” deprecation was not enough to keep an white supremacist organization or Throughout his writing, wit and audience after Mencken died. Accord- not, its invocation of the writer owes insight ran alongside vitriol and scorn. ing to Terry Teachout, the author of a much to the reception of his diaries. This mélange leaves Mencken an superb 2002 biography, between 1956 Paul Gottfried, the Jewish-Ameri- acquired taste. John Rossi, a La Salle and 1990, Mencken “seemed little more can political philosopher who first University history professor, recently than a nostalgic relic . . . no more to be gathered the Mencken Club (and predicted in the American Conserva- taken seriously than Calvin Coolidge.” who coined the term “alt-right”) tive that even though Mencken “was What was left of Mencken’s stature hardly qualifies as an anti-Semite. He a brilliant stylist and changed Ameri- in the worlds of journalism and letters explained his choice of Mencken in can journalism much in the way that took a precipitous dive in 1989 with 2008 in the context of a feud among Hemingway transformed American the publication of his diaries. Fred conservatives; his hope was to form fiction,” his reputation would never Hobson, who wrote another excel- a right that was an alternative to neo- recover from a “raw cynicism” that lent biography of Mencken, noted the conservatives and libertarians. The is “no longer acceptable.” Such aver- diaries returned “to center-stage the Mencken Club is less about restoring sion to Mencken even makes sense sharp-tongued commenta- to Kevin Williamson, a jour- tor of the 1920s” and gave the nalist whose quick wit and hook to the “1940s chronicler clever words were them- of childhood.” Owing to hos- selves punished by a quick tile remarks about Jews and exit at the Atlantic. In a piece African-Americans (for start- at National Review on the ers), Mencken went before politics of hate, William- the court of public opinion son conceded that although on charges of anti-Semitism Mencken and Twain could be and racism. Witnesses varied. charming and “uproariously” Garry Wills in the New Repub- funny, “at the bottom of each lic called Mencken an “ugly man’s deep well of humor was American.” For the defense, a brackish and sour reserve Joseph Epstein countered in of hatred.” Commentary that Mencken Perhaps the best way to was “no anti-Semite.” The account both for Mencken’s verdict came, in a foretaste outlook and the way Ameri- of the contemporary felling cans remember him is to fol- of Confederate monuments, low Joseph Epstein’s advice. when the National Press Club He acknowledged Mencken’s removed Mencken’s name comic affect; he “lifts the from its library. H. L. Mencken, circa 1932 spirit” and is one of the few Jonathan Yardley, long- modern writers to make read- time book reviewer at the Washington Mencken’s reputation than reviving ers “laugh aloud.” But comedy was Post, wondered why anyone who had his assault on all establishments. not the point, Epstein argued. It was ever read a writer who compiled six For those of us who belong to the a means for reckoning with human volumes of Prejudices was shocked or other group, the Mencken Society, the existence. Mencken’s humor, he wrote, surprised by adverse opinions in his trick is to downplay the writer’s preju- always possessed a “tragic sense of private writing. No one had been safe dices to attract members and readers. life,” and the writer had the capacity in Mencken’s gaze. He was an equal- After all, Mencken issued still-relevant to “look into the pit of existence with- opportunity offender. His column opinions about a whole range of human out flinching or whining,” even to the about Warren Harding’s inaugural activities—from how to cook soft-shell point where skepticism produced “a address is a good example: crabs to the merits of various German certain humility.” composers. In reporting on a presiden- “It’s complicated” is a favorite [Harding] writes the worst English tial campaign, he might mix with local explanation these days for everything I have ever encountered. It reminds farmers and write of their hospitality from health care to intersectionality. me of a string of wet sponges; it that they served “sound country wine, The decline in Mencken’s reputation reminds me of tattered washing on as thick and rich as mine­strone.” On suggests that if Americans admit life’s the line; it reminds me of stale bean- complexity, they have little room for soup, of college yells, of dogs barking the next stop he could worry that “on idiotically through endless nights. some great and glorious day the plain writers who mirror our own compli- It is so bad that a sort of grandeur folks of the land will reach their heart’s cations—or hold them up strenuously

creeps into it. desire at last, and the White House will before our eyes. ♦ STEICHEN / CONDÉ NAST GETTYEDWARD

20 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 the top 10 countries for happiness. They are Finland, Norway, Denmark, The Adjective ‘Late’ Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and Australia—all countries with strong A guide for the perplexed. market economies. The notion—common on the by Stephen Miller left and the right—that Sweden is a socialist country is wrong. The World f you read any progressive of “the indignities and absurdities of Economic Forum ranks Sweden as highbrow magazine these days, you our contemporary economy” and the Europe’s leading country for innova- I will come across the terms “late “tragicomic inanity . . . of contempo- tion. In 2016, Inc. magazine reported capitalism” and “late modernity.” An rary capitalism.” that “in recent years . . . Stockholm article in the Atlantic (May 2017) is enti- The author’s overheated rhetoric has made massive strides in terms of tled “Why the Phrase ‘Late Capitalism’ makes it clear that “late capitalism” economic growth. Small businesses Is Suddenly Everywhere.” A reviewer is a polemical term, not a descriptive have become prolific creators of jobs. in the Times Literary Supplement (July one. Those who use the phrase are The city has raised its standards for 10) refers to “a troubled late moder- usually enemies of capitalism—early, fostering new talent and implemented nity.” What does the adjective late mean middle, or late. Defining late capital- new regulatory systems to drive entre- when it modifies these nouns? ism, the OED sounds uncharacteris- preneurship.” The economic histo- “Late” is an adjective with many tically strident: “characterized by the rian Deirdre McCloskey notes that meanings. The Oxford English Dic- dominance of multinational corpora- the Swedish government refused to tionary lists 12. We say “the late . . . ,” tions, globalization, and consumer- bail out Saab Motors when it went meaning that the person is deceased. ism, and as having permeated all areas bankrupt. “Nor did the Swedes object (A novel by J. P. Marquand is entitled of social and cultural life.” when the Chinese bought both bank- The Late George Apley.) We speak of a Reader—have all the areas of your rupt Saab and solvent Volvo.” late model car, meaning it’s not very social and cultural life been “perme- “Late capitalism,” I would argue, old. We speak of “late Beethoven” ated” by late capitalism? is a meaningless phrase. What about when talking about the works he com- The term “late capitalism” first “late modernity”? It is not a polemical posed towards the end of his life. A appeared in Germany around the turn term like “late capitalism,” but what musician (or painter or writer) need of the 20th century (Spätkapitalismus), does it mean? Most observers say early not be dead in order to speak of his but it was made famous by the post- modernity began around 1600. When late phase. A writer in the Times Lit- war German philosopher Theodor did late modernity begin and what are erary Supplement says that the novelist Adorno. In a speech on late capitalism its defining characteristics? Ian McEwan’s recent work may be “a in 1968, Adorno made a stunningly Late modernity is often contrasted distinctive late phase.” McEwan is 70. stupid remark: “The [capitalist] eco- with postmodernity. Some observers The following OED definition best nomic process continues to perpetuate say we live in a postmodern age; oth- approximates what late means when domination over human beings.” ers say we live in a late modern age. it modifies capitalism: “Occurring or In this country, “late capitalism” has In a paper entitled “Late Modernity/ taking place towards the end of a par- been the signature phrase of Fredric Postmodernity,” a professor of politi- ticular event, process, etc.” “Late capi- Jameson, a Duke University profes- cal science equates late capitalism talism” seems to mean that capitalism sor and author of Postmodernism, or the with late modernity: “Postmodernity is nearing its demise. Which of course Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991). is commonly perceived as a stage of is nonsense. Market economies—to use The book is written in impenetrable late modernity or late capitalism that a less emotive term than capitalism— academic jargon, but we get his drift: follows modernity, whereas postmod- are churning along, doing well in coun- Late capitalism is capitalism at its cru- ernism is understood as a theoretical tries where there is freedom, the rule of elest, but the cruelty is so subtle that trend that attempts to unsettle a num- law, and a low level of corruption. people don’t know how much ber of key concepts associated with The author of the Atlantic article on they are being manipulated. the Enlightenment.” Got it? late capitalism, Annie Lowrey, would If late capitalism is so To make matters even disagree with this assessment. In her bad, why do people try to more confusing, sometimes view there are many signs that capi- emigrate to places where “modernity” is modified by talism is in its final stage. She speaks capitalism is flourishing? I “high” or even by “liquid.” doubt that anyone is trying But I have no time to explain Stephen Miller is the author of Walking to sneak into North Korea what “liquid modernity” New York: Reflections of American or Russia or Venezuela. The means. I’m late, I’m late for a Writers from Walt Whitman to Teju Cole. World Happiness Report lists very important date. ♦

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 21 The Rise of the (Catholic) Resistance Pope Francis, Cardinal Wuerl, Theodore McCarrick, and the crisis of a church divided

By Jonathan V. Last seminary, both of which lay within Wuerl’s jurisdiction. In or about 2009, Pope Benedict XVI placed McCarrick under onsider what we know, and what has been some sort of sanction. (The exact nature of the sanction is alleged, about Pope Francis, Cardinal still unknown, but it seems to have been something like Donald Wuerl, and disgraced former Car- house arrest. It is also unclear when, exactly, Benedict first dinal Theodore McCarrick. learned about McCarrick or how much time passed before For several decades, Father, Bishop, he acted.) Yet somehow Wuerl insists that he knew nothing CArchbishop, and eventually Cardinal McCarrick preyed about any of this until June 2018, when the McCarrick fire- sexually on the priests and semi- storm exploded into public view. narians serving under his author- Wuerl’s defense is that he is ity. There are credible allegations not an evil man who looked the he abused boys as young as 11. other way about the behavior of a To the extent that this behavior known sexual predator, but merely was a secret within the American an incompetent dolt. And Wuerl church, it was very badly kept. seems to think that being guilty of Between 2005 and 2007, three dio- gross incompetence should entitle ceses in New Jersey paid out large him to keep his job. A responsible cash settlements to keep allega- leader of good character would tions of abuse by McCarrick quiet. have walked away in disgrace the As Bishop Steven Lopes told First moment he learned of these scan- Things, “I was a seminarian when dals. Wuerl’s first public comment Theodore McCarrick was named on the McCarrick story was to say, archbishop of Newark. And he “I don’t think this is some mas- would visit the seminary often, and sive, massive crisis.” On literally we all knew.” the same day that the Pennsylva- McCarrick ended his career as nia grand jury report was released, cardinal of the Washington, D.C., McCarrick, left, with his successor as archbishop Wuerl’s diocese launched a barrage of Washington, Donald Wuerl, in May 2006 archdiocese and was succeeded by of defensive propaganda in the Archbishop Donald Wuerl, who arrived having just served form of a new website, “The Wuerl Record.” It was quickly as bishop of Pittsburgh. Wuerl’s former diocese has been taken down when it became clear that it was hurting the in the news recently after the release of a grand jury report cardinal’s reputation rather than helping it. Then Wuerl by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office outlining called for “a season of healing” with special massses in his decades of abuse by priests in the state. archdiocese. The best that can be said of Wuerl is that his As Wuerl arrived in Washington in 2006, McCarrick crisis PR handling has bolstered the incompetence defense. retired to the Redemptoris Mater seminary and was later It was only after a month of trying to cling to his job ejected and sent to the Institute of the Incarnate Word that Wuerl said he plans to fly to Rome to discuss his future with Pope Francis. Francis has yet to say or do any-

Jonathan V. Last is digital editor of The Weekly Standard. thing about Wuerl despite the fact that, as do all cardinals POST / GETTY BILL O’LEARY / WASHINGTON

22 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 over the age of 75, Wuerl had a letter of resignation on file first lawman. But while individuals might be harmed by with the Vatican. Francis could have disposed of him in rogue cops, the system of law enforcement isn’t jeopardized an afternoon without having to do anything more compli- by police misbehavior. The damage to the system comes cated than accept a pre-existing letter. when the other mechanisms of law enforcement protect, Those are the facts we know. None of them are in rather than prosecute, bad cops. If that happens often dispute. enough, citizens can eventually decide that the system is Then there are the allegations: On August 25, 2018, broken and take to the ballot box to reform it. The laity Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published a letter in which have no such recourse with the church. he claimed that he had been party to several attempts to The Catholic church is unlike any other earthly insti- make the Vatican aware of McCarrick’s abuses over the tution. It is strictly hierarchical, with its ultimate power years; that he had personally discussed them with Wuerl; derived from the son of God. The head of the church—the and that Pope Francis—knowing full well all of the above— successor of Peter—is elected to a lifetime appointment rescinded the house-arrest order of his predecessor, made McCarrick his “trusted counselor,” and, at McCarrick’s behest, began elevating certain bishops—such as Blase Cupich and Joseph William Tobin—to positions of power in the American church. If true, this would mean that we have one cardinal who was a sanctioned sexual predator, (at least) one cardinal who turned a blind eye to this man’s crimes as they were happening within his jurisdiction, and a pope who didn’t just look the other way but took affirmative steps to help both the criminal and his enabler. And if all of that is true, well, then what? The potential answers to this question aren’t very nice. They include: schism, the destruction of the papacy, and a long war for the soul of the Catholic church. Because the story of Theo- dore McCarrick isn’t just a story about sexual abuse. It’s Pope Francis gives Theodore McCarrick a hug following about institutions and power. a service in Washington, D.C., in September 2015.

he abuse itself is terrible, of course. We should say by his peers, and his authority over them is total. He can that out loud, because while the details are unspeak- allow them to carry on sexual affairs in broad daylight, as T able they must be spoken of. Without the release of Francis did with Father Krzysztof Charamsa, a priest who the Pennsylvania grand jury report, we would know much worked for years in the Vatican curia while living openly less about the evil inside the church. (It is also instructive to with his gay lover. Or he can drive them from the church, note that authorities within the church opposed the release as Francis did with Father Charamsa after the priest made of this report.) But individual priest-abusers aren’t cata- his situation public in the Italian media in 2015. He can strophic to the church in any structural way. Predators will make either of these choices—or any choice in between— always be among us. It is a human pathology from which not for any reason he likes. Or none at all. Such is the supreme even priests are immune. But the remedy for predation is power of the vicar of Christ. straightforward: Whenever and wherever such men are dis- Yet the pope’s immediate subordinates—the cardinals covered, they should be rooted out and punished. and bishops—function like feudal lords in their own right. The institutional damage is done not by the abusers but by The bishop can preach in contravention of the teachings the structures that cover for them, excuse them, and advance of the church, as Cardinal Walter Kasper does on the sub- them. Viewed in that way, the damage done to the Catho- ject of marriage and infidelity. He can forbid the offer- lic church by Cardinal Wuerl—and every other bishop who ing of both species of the Eucharist, as Bishop Michael knew about McCarrick and stayed silent—is several orders Burbidge does in Northern Virginia. He can punish and of magnitude greater than that done by McCarrick himself. reward priests under his care either because of merit or By way of analogy, consider the dirty cop. About once caprice—because the deacons and priests all swear a vow a week we see evidence of police officers behaving in of obedience to the bishop (or cardinal) himself. ways that range from the imprudent to the illegal. It has All of which is the long way of saying that there is no

JONATHAN NEWTON / WASHINGTON POST / GETTY NEWTON / WASHINGTON JONATHAN no doubt been this way since Hammurabi deputized the mechanism for a man such as Donald Wuerl to be dealt

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 23 with by his peers. The bishop of Madison can fulminate Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Walter Kasper, Godfried against Wuerl all he wants to, as Bishop Robert Morlino Danneels, and Karl Lehmann formed “Team Bergoglio” did in late August. His fellow bishops have no power over is detailed in Austen Ivereigh’s worshipful biography of him. The only man Wuerl is accountable to is the pope. Francis, and even though the cardinals subsequently And the structure of the church has no remedy when a denied the account, their protestations are supremely pope is foolish or wicked. unconvincing.) As the Catholic News Agency reported In the weeks after the Viganò letter was published, at the time, this politicking wasn’t simply a matter of bad Francis preached a homily in which he declared, “with peo- taste: The apostolic constitution, Universi Dominici gregis, ple lacking good will, with people who only seek scandal, expressly prohibits cardinals from forming pacts, agree- who seek only division, who seek only destruction” the best ments, promises, or commitments of any kind. Oh well. response is “silence” and “prayer.” If this sounds like Fran- During his time on Peter’s throne, Francis has worked cis believes the real villains in this mess are Archbishop to dismantle many orthodox positions in an attempt to Viganò and people who want to know what the bishops radically reorient the church toward—by total coinci- knew, and when they knew it, well, yes. dence—the long-held preferences of those four radical In another homily on September 11, Francis went fur- cardinals. For instance: He has criticized Catholics for ther, saying that not only was Viganò the real villain, but the being “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage, and con- bishops were the real victims: They were being persecuted by traception. He has derided Catholic women for having the devil: “In these times, it seems like the Great Accuser too many children and behaving “like rabbits.” He sent a has been unchained and is attacking bishops,” Francis papal blessing to the lesbian author of the Italian version preached. And Satan “tries to uncover the sins, so they are of Heather Has Two Mommies—a tract for children extol- visible in order to scandalize the people.” (The Father of ling the virtues of same-sex parenting. Lies—as he is referred to in the Bible—has not traditionally All of this is in addition to his bizarre insistence that been regarded as the revealer of sins in Catholic thought, but “never has the use of violence brought peace in its wake” this pope has never been known for having a supple mind.) and that the benefits of free-market growth have “never Francis then offered counsel for his poor, suffering brother been confirmed by the facts.” (In case people didn’t get the bishops: “The Great Accuser, as he himself says to God in message, Francis posed for pictures with a crucifix made of the first chapter of the Book of Job, ‘roams the earth looking a hammer and a sickle.) Yet as bad as free market capital- for someone to accuse.’ A bishop’s strength against the Great ism is, the pope insists “the most serious of the evils that Accuser is prayer.” afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and Other parts of the church hierarchy also seem to view the loneliness of the old.” Which is a . . . curious view of themselves as victims. In late August, Washington Post our fallen world. columnist Elizabeth Bruenig decided to try to get to the The most outré of the pope’s initiatives, however, have bottom of the Viganò story by asking McCarrick himself. been his efforts to dismantle the restrictions on admittance She went to the church-owned property where the former of divorced and remarried Catholics to communion. For cardinal now resides and knocked on the door. Whatever this, Francis convened a synod, attempted to ram through representative of the church—God’s vessel for Truth and a change to Catholic teaching, and, when that failed, pro- Light—lives there declined to answer. Instead, he called claimed via an apostolic exhortation that priests were free the Post to complain about her. to use their discretion on the matter. To non-Catholics, this may not sound like a big deal, o what is to be done if the vicar of Christ is a fool who but it is: Communion for the divorced and remarried is the sides with bishops who enabled or hid abusers? Or first theological step to doing away with the concept of adul- S is a wicked man who sides with the actual abusers tery. If such a change is accomplished, the Catholic church themselves? That’s an excellent question and we’ll get to it. would eventually be forced to change all of its teachings The more immediate question is: Why would he do on marriage, sexuality, and the family: Divorce, pre-, and that? And the answer is simple: power. ­extra-marital sex would all then be sanctioned by the church. The pontificate of Francis can, perhaps, best be under- And so would—crucially—homosexuality and same- stood as a political project. His election at the conclave in sex marriage. Now maybe you like these things and 2013 was—unbeknownst to the world at the time—the maybe you don’t. Some Christian denominations embrace result of a campaign planned out in advance by four radi- them. But the Catholic church has never sanctioned any cal cardinals who saw then-cardinal Jorge Mario Bergo- of them and the entire revolutionary project of changing glio as the perfect vehicle for the revolution they wanted the church’s teaching on family and sexuality necessarily to launch within the church. (The story of how Cardinals begins with communion for the divorced and remarried.

24 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 This project and the pope’s apostolic exhortation were bias, maybe the percentage of homosexuals in the priest- serious enough that several cardinals sent the Holy Father hood is many times higher than 1.6 percent, maybe not a formal document, known as a dubia, asking if he truly all male-on-male abuse is perpetrated by men who would intended to change Catholic teaching in a heretical man- identify as gay. But the correlation is still high enough that ner, or if he had just made an honest mistake. Francis sim- it is impossible to ignore. ply ignored them. And despite the fact that everyone wants to insist that Which is his way. In his only conversation with report- abuse by priests has nothing to do with homosexuality, it’s ers about the Viganò testimony, Francis declined to address strange that the people who most want to open the church the charge that he had known about McCarrick. Viganò’s sacramentally to homosexuality are the ones strenuously letter, Francis said, “speaks for itself.” When it wasn’t clear ignoring the abuse. Priests such as Cardinal Cupich are what the Holy Father meant by this— certainly acting like they think there’s Was Viganò’s account true? Was Viganò a linkage and that if the church were a mountebank?—Francis continued, say- to crack down on abuse and the bish- ing, “It’s an act of trust. I won’t say a word ops who enabled it, it would somehow about it.” endanger their project. The pope’s favorite American car- And it’s not confined to the United dinal is Blase Cupich, who heads the States. In Chile, too, Catholic bishops archdiocese of Chicago and has been the have presided over a sickening culture most persistent cheerleader for the Fran- of abuse and coverup. Confronted with cis project in America. He has said quite charges of abuse, Francis stood by the a few words. Asked about the Viganò Chilean bishop Juan Barros Madrid, say- letter by a reporter, Cupich said it was a ing of the allegations, “The day someone “rabbit hole” and “[T]he pope has a big- brings me proof against Bishop Barros, ger agenda. . . . he’s got to get on with then I will talk. But there is not one single other things” such as “talking about the piece of evidence. It is all slander. Is that environment and protecting migrants.” clear?” This, despite the fact that Francis This was not a gaffe. A few days later, Archbishop of Chicago Blase Cupich had been warned about Barros and there Cupich met with a group of seminarians was a mountain of evidence against him. who very much wanted to talk about the priest-abuse prob- Barros was on Team Francis, which is what counted most. lem, the Holy Father, and this dark night of the church. In July, a group of 50 seminarians in Honduras pre- Cupich told the group, “I feel very much at peace at this sented Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga with a letter moment. I am sleeping okay.” Then came this, per the and corroborating evidence alleging a ring of homosex- account in the Chicago Sun-Times: ual abuse at the country’s largest seminary. Maradiaga’s response, per the reporting of Edward Pentin, was to The source said Cupich also told the group that, while the accuse the seminarians of being “gossipers.” You can think church’s “agenda” certainly involves protecting kids from harm, “we have a bigger agenda than to be distracted by all of Maradiaga as the Donald Wuerl of Tegucigalpa. He is of this,” including helping the homeless and sick. also one of Francis’s closest advisers. Whether or not it’s coincidence, the American bishops Which brings us, finally, to the question of what this in the most jeopardy now—McCarrick, Wuerl, Cupich, “agenda” actually is. Tobin—are also the ones closest to Francis and most sup- portive of his desire to revolutionize the church. t is difficult to disentangle the hundreds of cases of abuse in the church from the subject of homosexu- here was a general sense among Catholics follow- I ality. No one wants to say, or even to insinuate, that ing the pontificate of John Paul II that the church homosexuality and abusiveness are one and the same, or T had been jolted by an influx of orthodox young that all, or most, or even a large proportion of gay men are priests. In time, the thinking went, these men would climb abusers. Those statements are objectively false. and, eventually, they would stock the positions of power At the same time, the math is pitiless: According to throughout the church. Thus the church would remain, at our best data, a mammoth CDC study done in 2013, 1.6 least for the medium-term, an orthodox institution. percent of Americans identify as gay. Yet 80 percent of the But the election of Francis changed all of that. Even abuse cases involve priests abusing other males. You can though the radical elements within the church were a small

GIULIO ORIGLIA / GETTY include all the caveats you like—maybe there’s selection and aging minority, the progressives realized that the only

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 25 person who really matters is the pope. That’s why they orga- warming, or the minimum wage, or whatever else is trend- nized to get Francis elected. Since then they have understood ing on Vox.com. They could toe the dirt and accept sacra- that if Francis and his faction can find just a few score of mental same-sex marriages, even if it destroys the theology like-minded priests to elevate, they can ensure that the cur- of the body. After all, times change. Religions change. And rent pope’s successor will share his ideological preferences. if you really trust in the Lord, then no change could come The College of Cardinals is supposed to have 120 vot- to His church without its being the will of the Father. ing members; currently there are 124 members eligible to The third option is schism. There has been loose talk participate in the next conclave. That’s more than the cap about schism since the early days of Francis’s pontificate. should allow. Why? Because 75 of them—including Cupich The conversation became less whimsical at the time of and Tobin—have been appointed by Francis. Unlike his the synod and the dubia. It will become deadly serious if predecessor, Francis understands power. And because there Viganò’s accusations are corroborated and Francis shelters are so few high-level progressives in the church, Francis in place. Even so, it remains one of those low-probability, understands that losing any of these men could endanger extinction-level events that every Catholic should pray his succession, which could endanger his larger project. does not come to pass. His confederates, in turn, understand that losing Francis The fourth option is resistance. We are only at the cur- himself at this moment could sink it entirely. rent moment because the forces that conspired to elevate The chances of the church’s losing Francis, however, Francis refused, for decades, to leave the church, even are slim. You cannot impeach a pope. And barring an though their desires were at odds with its teachings. unexpected return to our Heavenly Father, Francis will Despite the fact that the Catholic church rejected their remain pope for the foreseeable future. Which leaves four preferences as false, the South American liberation theolo- possible pathways, none of which is attractive. gists, the German cardinals who wanted to redefine mar- Some conservative Catholics, such as Princeton’s Rob- riage, and the American progressives who never met a ert P. George, have suggested that Francis ought to resign— social justice cause they didn’t like all hung on. Eventually especially if the Viganò letter is corroborated. This is an they organized. And after a generation of orthodox papacy, attractive idea and would align with the cause of justice. during which time most American Catholics forgot that Anyone in the church hierarchy who knew, or should have there even was a radical side of the faith, they worked known, about specific abusers in their midst should, at the together to elect Francis. Organization works, if you’re least, be removed from any position of responsibility. They willing to play the long game and play for keeps. simply cannot be trusted. If you were to extend this view all So Catholics could starve bishops such as Wuerl, the way to the bishop of Rome, there is a certain cleanliness Cupich, and Tobin of funds. Not a dime for any church to its logic—a sense that maybe the church could make a in any diocese headed by a bishop who refuses to root out clean break and begin to make things right anew. abusers and their enablers. But it might be a cure worse than the disease. The bishops who do care about these things could start In the last 600 years, only one pope has abdicated: Bene- organizing for the next conclave now, identifying potential dict XVI, the man who immediately preceded Francis. Two candidates and laying the groundwork for the election of abdications in a millennium are an aberration. But two abdi- the next pope. cations in a row would have the practical effect of breaking Then, when the pendulum eventually swings back—be the modern papacy. From here forward, all popes would be it next year or 40 years from now—orthodox Catholics could expected to resign their office rather than die in harness. take from these years a very sobering lesson about power. This expectation of resignation would, in turn, create And with neither malice nor mercy drive men such as incentives for the pope’s theological adversaries to fight Cupich, Tobin, and Wuerl into the sea and purge the church and wound him, in the not-unreasonable hope that if they of anyone who believes that climate change is a more press- could make him unpopular, he could be shuffled out of the ing matter than the abuse of Catholics by the clergy. palace and they could try their luck with a new pontiff. None of these pathways is attractive; each leads to a Before you know it, you’d have polling data and opposi- church that is at best impoverished and at worst crippled. tion research and the papacy would become an expressly Then again, the church survived Caligula, the bubonic political office. No Catholic should yearn for this outcome. plague, the Third Reich, the Gather hymnal, and the auto- The second option is capitulation. Catholics could harp. It will survive McCarrick, Wuerl, and Francis, too. shrug and give up. They could let Cardinal Wuerl live But crucibles are rarely pleasant experiences for his best life and then slink off to a graceful retirement; those inside them and a great many souls may be lost in they could make peace with Cardinal Cupich’s view that the transition. the church exists, first and foremost, to deal with global Those men will have much to answer for. ♦

26 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome The Elephant in the Sacristy, Revisited Catholic scandals past and present

By Mary Eberstadt the wrongdoing was supposedly explained by reference to clericalism, celibacy, sexual immaturity, and other attri- ixteen years ago, at the height of the 2002 butes invoked to avoid the obvious. I examined and dis- clergy sex scandals in the Catholic church and missed those analyses, offered up an alternative, and made on the eve of a meeting of bishops in Dallas, several recommendations for cleaning up the Catholic The Weekly Standard published an essay of church of the future. The scandals, I wrote, were: mine called “The Elephant in the Sacristy.” It Sincluded an in-depth look at some of the most notorious a cluster of facts too enormous to ignore, though many clergy abuse cases of the time. Back then, like today, the labor mightily to avert their eyes. Call it the elephant in the sacristy. One fact is that the offender was himself molested plain facts of the scandals were submerged in what we now as a child or adolescent. Another is that some seminaries call whataboutism. According to these evasive maneuvers, seem to have had more future molesters among their stu- dents than others. A third fact is that this crisis involving Mary Eberstadt is a senior research fellow at the Faith and Reason minors—this ongoing institutionalized horror—is almost entirely about man-boy sex. Institute. This essay is adapted from a speech delivered at a September 8 conference cosponsored by the Thomistic Institute and Like most people, I could hardly bear to read what

First Things at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington. needed to be read about the cases. As well, anyone back / GETTYSPENCER PLATT

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 27 then who described the facts in unadorned English was he first area of improvement concerns the lan- guaranteed vituperation, and got it. But I wrote it anyway guage we use in speaking about the scandals. If because of the conviction that “the most important mis- T we’re going to clean up the church, we must first sion facing the bishops and, indeed, all other Catholics . . . sharpen the vocabulary that we use to chip away the dirt. is the responsibility of doing everything in one’s power to What’s more obvious now than 16 years ago, for exam- prevent this current history, meaning the rape and abuse of ple, is that anyone who cares about accuracy should use innocents by Catholic priests, from ever being repeated.” the word gay with the greatest caution, if at all. There may That was then. Here we are now. be instances when gay is unavoidable as an adjective, a Seen one way, this moment looks like a catastrophically necessary shorthand. But as a noun, it is a word that Chris- familiar place, with more clergy sex scandals revealed not tians qua Christians should avoid. only in the United States but around the world. Viewed Why? The label is spiritually vague and antagonizes more widely, though, we are in a far better place than we people unnecessarily. The phrase “gays in the priesthood,” were 16 years ago. for example, fails to distinguish between those who remain First, same-sex marriage has tri- celibate and those who do not. umphed, and ironic though this out- It also inadvertently gives rise to come may be for the Catholic faithful, In 2002, the laity’s main the incorrect accusation, “You’re that victory has removed one of the saying all gays are pedophiles!” chief obstacles to truth-telling about the reaction to the scandals which no one is claiming. In the scandals. Yesterday’s secular advocates was hand-wringing and interest of removing unnecessary for same-sex marriage shouted down protestations of shock. red flags wherever possible, we anyone who suggested that homosex- Within the sadder but shouldn’t use it. uality had something to do with the wiser laity of 2018, The word gay and related abuse, because they feared the connec- terms like LGBTQ should be tion would harm their political cause. action is being demanded avoided for a deeper reason. They Having prevailed, their attentiveness of religious leaders, from are insufficiently respectful of the to the church is now much diminished. individual parishes to human beings who are described Accordingly, and very much unlike yes- St. Peter’s Square. in this way. Such identifiers sell terday, today the fact that the scandals humanity short by suggesting revolve for the most part around homo- that sexual desire amounts to the sexual coercion by older men of younger men and boys is most important fact about an individual. However well- widely acknowledged, even in the secular press. intentioned (or not), these terms advance a reductionist Second, the Catholic laity, at least in the United States, view of men and women incommensurate with the reality is in a dramatically different frame of mind following that we are infinitely rich and complicated beings, created the revelations about former cardinal Theodore McCar- in the image of God. rick. In 2002, the laity’s main reaction to the scandals was It is bad enough when the wider culture, interested handwringing and protestations of shock. Within the sad- in exploiting carnal desires for commercial or prurient der but wiser laity of 2018, action is being demanded of reasons, objectifies human beings in this way. When reli- religious leaders, from individual parishes to St. Peter’s gious authorities do the same, the damage is worse. I’m Square. The pewsitters of yesterday asked the clergy to reminded of Fr. Arne Panula, a prominent Washington, fight for them by cleaning up the church. Today, they are D.C., priest of manifest goodness and wisdom who died fighting for a holier church themselves. last year. In one of our last conversations, he mentioned Third, the same information tsunami swamping the meeting a friend-of-a-friend in Italy. This friend felt com- world with pornography and cat videos is also working pelled to tell him, “Fr. Arne, I’m gay.” To which the priest an unexpected miracle for the church: It has made the replied, “No, you’re not. You’re a child of God.” Fr. Arne scandals inescapable and undeniable. The Internet has was making the point that the most important fact about empowered the laity to connect factual dots and share this man was not his erotic leanings. information. It’s been suggested by Cardinal Blase Cupich Another word that continues to cloud rather than illu- of Chicago that for the sake of the church’s broader mis- minate is homophobe, and its related variants, homopho- sion, Catholics should not go down the “rabbit hole” of bia and homophobic. Inside parts of the church, and accusations. To the contrary. Every rabbit hole needs ubiquitously outside it, homophobe has become an auto- inspection in order to see what’s hiding in it. We need matic smear deployed for partisan purposes. We see this tools, workers, and light. clearly by observing that related teachings of the church

28 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 are not similarly made into epithets. Do people speak of of Fr. Gilbert Gauthe of Louisiana, who was sentenced to contracept-ophobes, to criticize church teaching against con- 20 years in prison for the rape and sexual abuse of more traception? Do they decry klepto-phobes or forni-phobes? than three dozen boys ranging in age from 7 to 15. Other The fact that those other words aren’t in circulation prominent offenders, such as Fr. Paul Shanley of Massa- shows that homophobe is meant to shame, intimidate, and chusetts, whose indiscriminate predation was documented sideline apologists for the magisterium. Homophobe, like in detail by Maureen Orth for Vanity Fair, also abused gay, has become a political term, not a spiritual one. It’s an young children and teenagers. As I noted 16 years ago, epithet, not an argument. Shanley was “no textbook pedophile or ephebophile, but Words are never a matter of indifference. As Aleksandr rather a sexually active gay man with a taste for children Solzhenitsyn insisted, we aren’t obliged to participate or and adolescents too.” even to acquiesce in false accounts of reality. If we can’t In addition to sharpening language, the Catholic left speak clearly and plainly, we can’t think clearly and plainly. And if we can’t think clearly and plainly, we will never be able to reduce the damage being done in the house of God by the pachyderm trying to wreck it from within. Some critics might object that people should call themselves what- ever they like; what’s the harm in using this noun or that one? But as Daniel Mattson argued in Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay, identities and proclivities are different, and efforts to prove that sexuality belongs in the former category are problem- atic. Taken to its logical conclusion, labeling ourselves whatever we like can be subversive of reality itself. Survivors and members of Ending Clergy Abuse call for the sanctioning of We have to start calling things by bishops implicated in child sexual abuse and cover-ups, in Geneva, June 7. their proper names, beginning with refusing to participate in the dominant ideology of secu- now needs to learn a lesson that was learned by the Catho- larism, which celebrates what the catechism calls sin and lic right during the last round of scandals. ­Truth-telling reduces the human person to evanescent erotic desires in isn’t, or shouldn’t be, a partisan game. Reluctance to defiance of Christian teaching. acknowledge whistleblowers has been an impediment to understanding and thwarting the scandals for many further aspect of the scandals both past and pres- years. This was true in 2002. It remains true in the ent also concerns language. Just as unthinking use ­mirror-opposite way today. A of phrases imported from secular postmodern- Sixteen years ago, tradition-minded Catholics lagged ism has obfuscated rather than clarified reality within the behind their more progressive brethren in grasping the church, so has the resort to the language of therapy. lethality of the scandals exposed in 2001 and 2002. Many Today’s throwback invocations of the supposedly sci- of the faithful were disinclined to believe the terrible rev- entific distinctions between pedophile and ephebophile are elations and so wrote them off as a partisan plot aimed at empirically problematic. Such categorization may indeed harming the church. Today, by contrast, it is impossible be useful for some purposes—like designing criminal sen- for people acting in good faith to see the scandals for any- tences. But as descriptions of what the clergy scandals have thing but what they are: evidence that parts of the church actually been about, they misrepresent reality. These priests have become safe spaces for abusers and their apologists. are abusers, and often polymorphous abusers at that. Another reason for the failure of some to speak out is Consider the notorious case explored at length in the the result of whataboutism. Whenever tradition-minded opening of Jason Berry’s groundbreaking book, Lead Us Catholics pointed out the homosexual nature of the major-

FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP GETTY FABRICE Not into Temptation (1992). Berry documented the offenses ity of the priest scandals, their progressive counterparts

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 29 would counter, “What about your defense of super-pred- the people uncovering the truth have been disparaged as ator and Legion of Christ founder Marcial Maciel?” The haters, for example, including by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, who disgraced priest was regarded as one of the best fundraisers is presumed by many to speak for the pope. Haters, like for the church. homophobe, is an epithet imported from the antinomian Like McCarrick, Maciel was undoubtedly given a pass secular political culture. Its suggestion that some people by some because of his financial acumen, including within are beyond redemption is profoundly un-Christian. It the Vatican. This compromised legacy offers Catholics a should never be used by anyone in religious authority. warning going forward: Know where the money is com- Another slur is even worse than haters. Many agonized ing from when it comes your way; know who’s dispensing Catholics desiring only to know whether allegations are it; and know that accepting it in ignorance can be a great true are now accused of participating in religious trea- liability and cause of further scandal. son—of planning a “putsch” within the church, as Michael Finally, most sources of the original reporting on the Sean Winters has put it in the National Catholic Reporter. scandals decades ago were outside traditionalist circles, Or consider some characterizations of the testimony of and so (wrongly, in my view) those traditionalists dis- Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former nuncio to the counted them—until the resignation of Boston’s Cardi- United States and author of a historically unprecedented nal Bernard Law made the scandals into front-page news and detailed 11-page letter released last month, accusing impossible to avoid. the pope and others of covering up abuse. Theologian They should have been acknowledged in full before that, Massimo Faggioli has called the work a “coup operation.” because the investigations were revealing the truth. Impor- Fr. James Martin has tweeted similarly of a “coordinated tant work was being done in the National Catholic Reporter; attack” intended to “delegitimize” the pope. in Jason Berry’s groundbreaking research; in the work of This list could go on and on. Such martial language is the Boston Globe’s reporting team (later made famous in the designed to marginalize and malign anyone interested in movie Spotlight); and elsewhere on what’s sometimes called the veracity of Viganò’s claims. It also sends the terrible the Catholic left. The evil being revealed was also grasped in signal that some churchmen and theologians underesti- full by the late priest Andrew Greeley, another bête noire of mate the sufferings caused by unchecked abusers hiding traditionalists; he repeatedly drew attention to the scandals, behind Roman collars. The increasingly hysterical insis- which he called “perhaps the most serious crisis Catholi- tence that all will be well if only everyone leaves the pope cism has faced since the Reformation.” alone underestimates the intelligence of the laity. Anyone The essential elements of priestly abuse were also who has read Viganò’s letter knows that the testimonial called out by these same observers. “Blatantly active isn’t some anonymous comment tossed into cyberspace homosexual priests are appointed, transferred and pro- but a series of intricate assertions about who knew what moted. Lavender rectories and seminaries are tolerated. and when—all of which can be verified or not in the long National networks of active homosexual priests (many run. That bishops and others in authority have testified of them church administrators) are tolerated,” Greeley to the credibility of its author makes the document even wrote in 1989. The next year he urged the archdiocese of harder to discredit, let alone ignore. Chicago to “clean out the pedophiles, break up the active Partisan attempts to deflect attention from both the gay cliques, tighten up the seminary and restore the good Viganò report and the scandals are jeopardizing the integ- name of the priesthood.” rity of the church. In the absence of answers to the charges A similar evasion of reality is afoot today—but in ideo- of coverup, who could blame mothers and fathers newly logical reverse. Rod Dreher’s exhaustive exposures in the fearful for their children for withdrawing from the pews? pages of the American Conservative are a gift to the church So far as the laity is concerned, and contra what curia-first- that keeps on giving; he deserves a Pulitzer. Yet his inves- ers seem to understand, there is nothing Rome needs to do tigations are insufficiently attended to by Catholics and more than address these scandals. others who stop reading at the word conservative. The same goes for the investigative labors of Catholic News Agency hat can be done? and other sources outside liberal circles that are consis- First, clerical leaders around the world who tently delivering new information about the scandals. W do believe in a hereafter must avoid further Today the moral coin is flipped: It is the antagonists scandalizing the remaining faithful. They must grasp that of tradition-leaning Catholics who are trying to look the just as the scandals themselves have become an engine of other way and carry on against overwhelming evidence secularization, so too has the refusal to address them. that there’s nothing to see here. In the past two months alone, additions to what the They’ve also put new slurs into circulation. Some of faithful now know have included but not been limited to:

30 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 the revelations and ongoing accusations about McCarrick; an abuser. Whether that causal connection rises to the level the Pennsylvania attorney general’s report; the announce- of a “perpetual impediment” to ordination, to use the lan- ment of new investigations by New York, New Jersey, and guage of Canon 1040, is for lawyers to decide. For the rest a lengthening list of other states; and the ongoing revela- of us, it is enough to know that if seminaries had screened tions of seminarian abuse by religious superiors in vari- for a history of childhood sexual abuse, the ledger of the ous countries. To that ledger could be added the recent past several decades might have been radically different. departure amid sex-abuse accusations of an auxiliary The Catholic laity is far from blameless in this hour. bishop in Chile, who served under one cardinal living in The scandals might have been reduced long ago if the Rome, and the recent news of more than 3,600 victims of laity’s rejection of church teaching on birth control hadn’t abuse by clergy over many decades in the Catholic church led to collusion of mutual misuse. Many priests winked in Germany. Second, as many have noted since the news about McCarrick first broke, the church needs more spotlights, not fewer. Toward that end, investigators might do some- thing that has not yet been done. They might consider as possible sources of information the offend- ers, jailed and otherwise, who might now want to clear their consciences by sharing what they know about these groups of abusers. For as the Pennsylvania report and other sources confirm, the prob- lem is not only one of individuals, but of networks. Those who have been caught and punished presum- ably know them well. That fact has Protesters hold quilts bearing the portraits of abused children outside the Roman yet to be exploited in full by anyone, Catholic cathedral in Los Angeles, February 1, 2013—one day after the release either in the church or outside it. of personnel files of priests accused of sexual misconduct. Both law enforcement and journal- ists might benefit from connecting dots that perpetrators at the laity’s breaking the law against contraception and can provide them. Of course, such testimonies call forth many laity tacitly returned the favor by not worrying over- caution in the determination of their truth. But they could much about their priest and some of his friends. be as useful to the church of the future as other examples But in this grave moment for the church, the laity of “turned” evidence are to law enforcement. knows more than it did 16 years ago. Back then I wrote, “If Finally, changes in church law might also help to humility is now required of Catholics, so too is backbone. rebuild the sacristy. As canon lawyer J.D. Flynn writes, If it takes shutting down certain seminaries to protect boys “the most likely long-term outcome of this summer of of the present and future, close them now. If vocations scandal is a universalized protocol for handling allegations to the priesthood should be so far reduced by stringent of clerical sexual misconduct or abuse involving adults.” screening for abuse victims that American Catholics have I am not a canon lawyer. But I would submit, based on to travel 50 miles to Mass, let them drive.” Today, a laity what was known 16 years ago, as well as on the revelations forged in this latest round of scandal knows all too well since, that another area of canon law may be relevant to that there are worse things for the church than a priest the church of the future as well. shortage. And thanks again to the Internet, the same laity Canon 1025.2 says that a man is only to be ordained if, is scrutinizing the hierarchy as never before. in the judgment of his religious superior, he will be useful Good things will come of the evil confronted today. for the ministry of the Church. Judging by the signs of newfound courage and question- Nothing is less useful to the ministry than preying on ing, they already are. The ultimate legacy of 2018, whether the young. Individual cases and secular studies have shown we live to see it in this world or not, will be a holier and

FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP GETTY that childhood sexual abuse increases the risk of becoming more transparent church. ♦

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 31 Swedish Message The anti-immigration nationalists come up short

By Christopher Caldwell let him speak. When he was done, his supporters and entou- rage appeared eager not to tarry any longer than the seven Malmö, Sweden vans full of police did. y the time anti-immigration firebrand Jim- Åkesson is soft-spoken, nonintellectual, and “real”—in mie Åkesson arrived for a rally in Malmö on the sense that he has run-of-the-mill problems that have the eve of this month’s elections, his party, the won him as much sympathy as contempt. He suffered Sweden Democrats, had been striking fear from an online gambling addiction and took six months’ into the hearts of international newspaper leave after the 2014 election to recover from what he called Breaders for a year. To anyone standing in the main square, it “burnout.” Despite all the messages of foreboding, Åkesson was hard to see why. Malmö, with 300,000 residents, is Swe- did not look that day like someone who was about to turn den’s third-largest city and, thanks to a 20-year-old bridge Sweden’s constitutional system upside-down. that crosses the sound to Copenhagen, its most interna- And indeed, come election day, he did not. The Swe- tional. After decades of unbroken mass migration, culmi- den Democrats finished a weaker-than-predicted third. nating in a record intake of refugees from the Muslim world Their hopes of forcing on Sweden a new way of addressing in 2015, it is also the least ethnically Swedish. In Scania, as the immigrant problem seem for now to have gone by the that part of southern Sweden is called, the transformation board. Whether that is Sweden’s curse or blessing is unclear. has gone poorly, bringing more welfare payments and lots more crime. The Sweden Democrats are the number-one ore than any other Western land, Sweden has party in most districts there. Yet the thousand or so people allowed immigration to escape its control. Its who showed up to hear Åkesson did not look hopping mad. M experience started with labor migration from They looked like a relatively civil lunch-hour crowd in any Yugoslavia in the 1960s, but that was mostly temporary. multicultural American metropolis. The country always had a crusading humanitarian side, That soon changed. As Åkesson, a bespectacled 39-year- admitting Jews from Poland after 1968, when the govern- old with a pleasing baritone, began to speak, small groups of ment there took an anti-Semitic turn, and Chilean leftists people amid the crowd raised rainbow flags, banners with after Pinochet’s coup against Salvador Allende in 1973. “Refugees Welcome” on them, and signs hand-scrawled That was a matter of a couple thousand people a year. But with obscenities. Police patiently steered them to the back after the anti-American Olof Palme took over the Social of the crowd, the area designated for protesters. This went Democratic party in the late 1960s, Sweden lost the habit on for the 45 minutes Åkesson held the stage. As it did, the of saying no. It accepted Somalis and Bosnians in the front of the crowd got older, quieter, and more ethnically 1990s and Iraqis and Afghans in the new century, along Swedish and those in the back got younger, browner, more with any family members who cared to join them. After numerous, and more voluble—a recapitulation of Scandi- the turn of the century, a steady 110,000 people were com- navia’s recent history. By the time Åkesson was done talk- ing year-in, year-out. This was an increase of well over 1 ing, the square was pulsating, full of loud chants (“Refugees percent a year. Over time such a migration will change a have no choice!” “No racists on our streets!”) and pumped country at its core. fists, and it was not the Sweden Democrats who were doing In 2015, when refugees from the war in Syria and more the chanting and pumping. opportunistic migrants from around the Muslim world Åkesson urged deporting those migrants who com- began marching overland to Europe, the Scandinavian mit sex crimes and imitating the American practice of countries were especially open-hearted. Denmark received jailing arraigned criminals pending trial, but mostly he 21,000 asylum applications, Norway 31,000, Finland 32,000. complained that, when he came to Malmö, people wouldn’t Sweden took in 162,000. Now Sweden is in a situation that no modern country in the West has ever found itself in. If Christopher Caldwell is a national correspondent the United States considered itself overburdened at 13 or at The Weekly Standard. 14 percent foreign-born, so desperately overburdened that

32 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 it would turn to Donald Trump for leadership, how can maintained with practically zero intrusion into citizens’ we expect tiny Sweden, a rustic monoculture until the day private lives. But once a society grows more diverse, the before yesterday, to behave, now that it has a foreign-born state must become hands-on—appearing inquisitorial and population of almost 19 percent? intrusive to those who remember the old days and granting This is a question that not even the Sweden Democrats a privileged level of privacy to those whose customs remain have faced squarely. In much of Europe there is talk about too “exotic” to decipher. how, if migration isn’t slowed down, this or that country The roots of these problems are in Sweden’s con- will lose its traditional culture. In Sweden, it is too late to do sensus politics and go back decades. But for the past few anything about that. Sweden’s Muslim population is now years it has looked likely Swedes would lay the blame on 8.1 percent. According to the Pew Research Center, Sweden Social Democratic prime minister Stefan Löfven for his will be 30 percent Muslim by 2050 if refugee flows continue especial recklessness and punish him at the ballot box the and 21 percent Muslim in the unlikely event that they stop next chance they got. In late August 2015, Angela Merkel altogether. Already, the part of Sweden’s population that is invited hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees to settle of foreign origin is 31.7 percent, and in Germany. “Wir schaffen das,” she more than 30 percent of its babies are said. “We can manage it.” Days later, born to foreign mothers. on September 6, Löfven tried to offer moral support: “In my Europe, we t has been a conspicuously unsuc- don’t build walls,” he said. “We help cessful immigration. Unskilled each other out.” I labor from what used to be called The next weeks were a shock the Third World is a poor match with for Sweden. Migrants are very well- the Swedish economy, which revolves informed about what awaits them around collaborative brainwork. After where. Many of those who had seemed eight years, most migrants are still to be converging on Germany after not in a job. After 15 years, only 60 Merkel’s invitation arrived there and percent are. Generous welfare means walked right on through. They boarded they do not seek jobs as household boats to the Danish island of Falster. helpers or landscape gardeners, the They walked through Denmark, too, way migrants to less egalitarian soci- Jimmie Åkesson, Sweden Democrats leader while Danes lined the road to watch eties do. They often live, out of sight and help them. They were heading for and out of mind, in the housing projects that the Swedish Sweden. Löfven blamed other countries in the European government built in the 1960s. A large crime problem has Union for their unwillingness to take their share of the been one consequence. Gangs have proliferated, including migrants he had invited. But he quickly reversed course the ones that two weeks before the elections set fire to cars and instituted passport checks at Sweden’s borders for the across the country. Shootings have doubled since 1997, first time in decades. New arrivals have recently fallen to and hand grenades have become a signature weapon of 1,500 a month. Swedish gang warfare, with a hundred incidents between The Social Democrats have been the country’s num- 2014 and 2016. There is terrorism, too: A rejected asylum ber-one party since World War I, and Sweden’s top income seeker with ISIS connections drove a stolen beer truck tax rate of 60 percent sounds like a socialist anachronism down Stockholm’s pedestrian Drottninggatan in April in this era of lean, mean states. But Sweden also remains 2017, mowing down shoppers and killing five. Rapes one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial countries have become common in and around the suburban proj- on earth: Ikea, Absolut, ABBA, Spotify and a lot of the 21st ects. Muslims account for half the anti-Semitic incidents century’s best crime fiction were conceived here; this city- in Sweden, according to the Svenska Dagbladet columnist sized country once even built its own fighter jets. For much Paulina Neuding. (The radical right accounts for another of the past quarter-century Sweden has been ruled by a 5 percent and the radical left for 25.) shifting free-market coalition, now called “the Alliance,” Westerners, it is now clear, lost sight of something which undertook an ambitious program of opening charter important during the long heyday of ethnically homo- schools, closing post offices, and privatizing pharmacies. geneous nation states. They are learning belatedly how For people frustrated with Löfven’s reckless- much public order and safety depends on the knowabil- ness on migration, the problem was not that it was ity, the legibility, of a society’s various subcommunities. If impossible to dislodge him but that it was pointless.

JULIA REINHART / NURPHOTO GETTY a society is relatively homogeneous, this legibility can be ­Libertarian-conservative policies on borders differed little

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 33 from those of the Social Democrats. In December 2014, are often attacked as intolerant for wishing to ban the to prevent the Sweden Democrats from acting as a king- niqab—the black covering for women with only a slit for maker between the two evenly matched blocs, Löfven’s the eyes, common in the heavily Muslim housing develop- “left” cut a deal with the four-party coalition of the “right” ment Rosengård in Malmö. But the niqab is already banned that whichever bloc had the most votes would be allowed in Denmark, not to mention in Algerian schools. There is a to pass its budget. This smacked of collusion. When the Swedish neologism—the verb brunstämpla—that describes migration crisis broke, the Sweden Democrats were the the casting of dissident opinion as fascist. only party that Löfven did not invite to help work out an Nowhere is groupthink more prevalent than among emergency response. This led a lot of Swedes to assume, journalists. In a country with a nine-party system, 41 per- quite naturally, that the Sweden Democrats must be doing cent of journalists vote for the tiny Green party. Over the something right. Working- and middle-class Swedes began summer, the Stockholm press corps seemed sure that the to abandon their old parties—exit polls this month showed hot summer, doubtless brought on by global warming, 18 percent of the Sweden Democrats’ vote came from the and the forest fires that raged in its wake would guarantee Moderates and 19 percent from the Social Democrats. a huge election result for the Greens. Instead, the party’s vote plummeted—it barely reached the 4 percent thresh- ho are the Sweden Democrats? They describe old, below which it would have fallen out of the Riksdag themselves as the country’s “only opposition (Sweden’s parliament) altogether. W party.” Löfven and others who oppose them The determination of what is the proper subject matter prefer to stress the party’s “roots in Nazism.” This is a bit for politics rests with the right-minded. How do we have to unfair. The party, which dates from the 1980s, was indeed change Sweden to make it possible for immigrants to integrate into founded by members of the extreme right. But it had mod- it? is deemed a legitimate question. Why should we change erated considerably by the time Åkesson joined it in the Sweden in the first place? is not. It is not surprising that a mid-1990s and moderated even further by the time he and rather broad conservative counterculture, producing high- three friends from Lund University took over its leader- quality journalism and social science, has arisen in Sweden ship in 2005. Under a “zero tolerance” policy, Åkesson has in recent years: The sites kvartal.se, edited by the journal- purged extremists. At this point, it is hard to say whether ist Paulina Neuding, and ledarsidorna.se, by the renegade establishment politicians are freezing out the party because Social Democrat foreign-policy thinker Johan Westerholm, of its past or raising its past because they seek pretexts for are two of its high points. freezing out the party. The most extraordinary attempt to rattle the familiar Swedish conformism is a mighty, mighty force. The late debate over immigration came from a young economic sociologist Åke Daun used to say that Swedes “like being researcher, Tino Sanandaji. An immigrant himself, born in like each other.” That Swedes are so alert to, and influenced Iran to Kurdish parents, Sanandaji sought in 2016 to make by, their neighbors’ feelings is perhaps a legacy of Lutheran- a cost-benefit analysis of migration to Sweden. The title ism, or of living at a latitude where, in the winter, it is dark of his book, Mass Challenge, was a bit of a gag—it referred round the clock and dangerously cold all the time. Swedes to Swedes’ tendency to cast any negative outcome not as a themselves are fascinated by this conformism, and find “problem” but as a “challenge.” much in it to be proud of—it can be easier, for instance, to be Mass Challenge is a rich book, with a set of original a free-thinking individual if you’re in the bosom of a loving heuristics that can be applied to the study of migration community. But it is also true that Swedes can turn politi- anywhere and a fine-grained focus on certain Swedish cally like a school of fish or a swarm of bees. That is how you communities, like Södertälje and Botkyrka, in which can have one party at the top for more than a century. Swedish Swedes now make up a minority, and Malmö, And over the last half-century, Swedish conformism has where they are getting close. Sanandaji found Sweden been enhanced, if that is the word, by enforcement tech- accepted four times as many migrants as the average Euro- niques drawn from American civil-rights law. What looked pean country. The population of Swedes of Swedish origin in the 20th century like consensus can now look like coer- (a figure that includes those who have one foreign parent) cion, or censorship, or political correctness—particularly on is stable at 7.7 million, Sanandaji found, but the country as matters of immigration. A policeman in Örebro was inves- a whole, now with a population of over 10 million, is grow- tigated for “inciting racial hatred” after listing the national ing at a rate as fast as Bangladesh. origin of violent criminals in a tweet. In Denmark one reads On political correctness, the book can be genuinely articles about the problems of violent crime among specific funny. Sanandaji cited the way the country’s paper of record, communities—Somali and Palestinian—that one would Dagens Nyheter, covered riots in the Stockholm suburbs: never see in the Swedish papers. The Sweden Democrats “Södermalm 1719, Old Town 1848, Kungsträdgården 1987

34 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 and Husby 2013. . . . Rock-throwing is timeless and the riots transform Sweden into a different kind of political society. in Husby are far from the first in Stockholm’s history.” The stakes were enormous. Sanandaji’s statistics are reliable—weighing statistics In the end, the Sweden Democrats got 17.6 percent of the is what he does for a living—but not alarmist. They cer- vote, their best-ever showing, and journalists sent to cover tainly understate the immigration-related disruptions to the story wrote the story they were sent to write —that this Swedish life because they do not include the numbers from had been an “earthquake” in Swedish politics. But it was no 2015. Sanandaji showed that arguments about the “enrich- such thing. It was an earthquake narrowly avoided. This, the ment” of migration tended to employ certain tricks—using first election since 2015, was the most propitious moment for total GDP instead of per capita GDP to pass off population a populist victory, and it did not happen. The populists lost. growth as economic growth, for instance. Every serious To win, the Sweden Democrats would have needed study shows that migration to Sweden since the 1980s has enough votes—somewhere between 20 and 30 percent, imposed a net cost, economically and socially, and Sanan- which was the tally Åkesson predicted on election morn- daji even measured it: about 760,000 SEK ($85,000) per ing—to force the country’s establishment to the negotiating migrant. The book has everything—except a respectable table. Because when the election season was getting under- Swedish publisher. Although Sanandaji was armed with a way, Åkesson was selling himself to the public not as one doctorate in public policy from the University of Chicago who hoped to join the establishment but as one who would, and is the brother of a prominent given a chance, destroy it. His first Swedish consultant and author, infomercial was directed not just no one would put his book out. at the Social Democrats but at the He decided to self-publish. It Moderates as well: rose to the top of bestseller lists People have been murdered and and sold out in six days. will continue to be murdered as a result of your policies, and you o the stage was set for the will continue to cover up and lie. election of 2018 to be a The conflict in Sweden is not about who is right or left, rich or S referendum on Swedish poor, man or woman. The conflict migration policy. There seemed is between those who are destroy- to be only two propositions on Refugees roll cigarettes in a temporary house ing the country and those who are the ballot: for asylum seekers in Klädesholmen, February 2016. working to save it—the conflict is between you and us. (1) Our migration policy has been a mistake and ought to be changed. Now, armed with his insufficient mandate, Åkesson has (2) Our migration policy has been a mistake, but what called for dialogue about regime building with Ulf Kris- the heck. tersson of the country’s establishment Moderate party. The Sweden Democrats were not the only force rep- Kristersson must have thought: Are you putting me on? resenting option 1. All the parties paid lip service to it, None of this changes the essential predicament in including the Social Democrats, even though they are half- which Sweden finds itself. Ethnic relations are worsening. way through the process, familiar in all Western countries, The delegation of 63 Sweden Democrats in the Riksdag is of converting themselves from a party of workingmen’s going to make rising crime and the deteriorating economic protections to a party of minority rights. They got 80 per- position of the Swedish working class harder to ignore, cent of the vote in Herrgården and other heavily Muslim just as the Alternative for Germany has done in the Reich- neighborhoods in Malmö and put out campaign materials stag in Berlin. Whichever governing coalition comes to in Arabic that the Moderate party called defamatory. power, the establishment’s room for maneuver is going to But two, possibly three, of the four conservative Alli- be narrow. But in the win-some, lose-some battle between ance parties actually believe in a hard line on immigra- European political establishments and European popu- tion and crime, just as the Sweden Democrats do. And if lar insurgencies, Sweden’s election represents the biggest the Sweden Democrats got a high enough score to make establishment victory since Emmanuel Macron won the an anti-multicultural government possible, then these presidency of France in the early summer of 2017. It had establishment conservative parties would be forced into been feared that Swedes harbored a secret extremism that choosing between their standing with the bien-pensants of they would not share with pollsters and that a terrible sur- Stockholm and their standing with voters. This, in turn, prise awaited on election day. In the end, the election was would drive the country towards a new conformism of decided not by something Swedes didn’t dare to admit but

DAVID RAMOS / GETTY DAVID retarding multiculturalism rather than promoting it, and by something they didn’t dare to face. ♦

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 35 Books&Arts

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence with four men who would be out of the administration within its first seven months: chief of staff Reince Priebus, chief strategist Steve Bannon, press secretary Sean Spicer, and national security adviser Michael Flynn Fear and Quoting

in Trump’s White House. by Michael Warren

ant to understand “I’ll be down at 10,” Trump said. how President Donald Fear “Why don’t you guys come and see me Trump and his White Trump in the White House then? We’ll figure it out.” by Bob Woodward House operate? Con­ Simon & Schuster, 420 pp., $30 It’s not clear whether Trump was siderW what happened on July 26, 2017. lying when he told his aides he’d dis­ Early that morning, chief of staff Reince cuss the issue with them later, changed Priebus, chief strategist Steve Bannon, legal, and political considerations to take his mind shortly thereafter, or simply and a number of administration lawyers into account, and while officials from forgot that he had promised to continue called the president at the White House the pertinent agencies had studied the the conversation. But between 8:55 and residence. Prompted by a promise the question and debated its implications, 9:08 a.m., the president announced the president made during the campaign, there was not yet agreement about the policy change—in a series of tweets: the Department of Defense and other best way to move forward. “After consultation with my Generals relevant agencies had begun studying Priebus was calling to alert Trump and military experts, please be advised how to pull back on an Obama-era deci­ that the Pentagon had arrived at four that the United States Government will sion that allowed transgender individu­ options, which ranged from keep­ not accept or allow . . . [t]ransgender als to serve openly in the United States ing the Obama status quo to banning individuals to serve in any capacity in military. There were many practical, transgender servicemembers, and told the U.S. Military. Our military must be the president his team would walk him focused on decisive and overwhelm­ Michael Warren is a senior writer through each option in more detail ing . . . victory and cannot be burdened

at The Weekly Standard. once he arrived in the Oval Office. with the tremendous medical costs and DREW ANGERER / GETTY

36 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 disruption that transgender in the mili­ compulsive liar—or perhaps both. The beginning of the book, in which he tary would entail. Thank you.” book’s title, Fear, is explained in the claims he conducted interviews on Later that day, according to veteran epigraph, a quotation from Trump in a “deep background” with sources who Washington journalist Bob Woodward March 2016 interview with Woodward: were “firsthand participants and wit­ in his new book on the Trump White “Real power is—I don’t even want to nesses” to the events. From this he pro­ House, the president asked Priebus use the word—fear.” A better title for duces vivid scenes that include direct what he thought of the tweets. the book, unpublishable though it is, quotations from the participants, all “I think it would’ve been better if might have been F—ing Liar. That’s rendered in his signature neutral, fly- we had a decision memo, looped Mat­ the sentiment Woodward attributes on-the-wall narrative style. Woodward tis in,” Priebus responded. That was to Trump lawyer John Dowd, who in knows the state of mind of figures as putting it gently. The tweets appar­ the final pages struggles to convince they discuss interest rates or North ently infuriated a vacationing James Trump that he cannot submit to ques­ Korean missile capabilities. One official Mattis, the defense secretary, and tioning by special counsel Robert “watched in admiration” as a colleague frustrated the rest of the Pentagon handled a confrontation with Trump bureaucracy, some members of which deftly. The blocking and positioning told a clamoring press that Trump’s The impression of people in scenes is described with announcement was “new guidance.” script-like detail. Ivanka is sitting on a There was no warning, no preparation, Bob Woodward couch, John Kelly standing behind a no media strategy. Trump had made has taken from his chair, Gary Cohn halfway through the his decision. His message to the rest door of the Oval Office. Chris Christie, of the administration trying to pick up interviews with during a low point of the 2016 campaign the pieces? You’ll figure it out. aides, staffers, and following the Access Hollywood tape, says Woodward has perhaps a hundred something “with a note of finality”— examples of Trump’s, well, unusual others around the whatever that means. Oh, and Christie, approach to management. My personal president is that he is we learn, is wearing “sweatpants and a favorite occurred during the post­ ball cap.” The dialogue flows smoothly. election transition, when, in a Trump either very stupid or The drama builds perfectly. Tower meeting with Goldman Sachs Too smoothly, too perfectly? Per­ executive Gary Cohn, Trump was so a compulsive liar— haps. One problem with the Wood­ wowed he complained out loud that he or perhaps both. ward approach is that he blurs the lines should have hired Cohn to be the Trea­ between what’s verifiably true and what sury secretary. Trump’s unannounced is reconstructed from the recollections pick for that job, Steven Mnuchin, was Mueller. The book ends with Wood­ of his sources. Notes from a White sitting right there. Before Cohn had ward quoting Dowd, having resigned House official taken just after a conver­ left the building, Woodward writes, from Trump’s legal team, expressing sation are more reliable than an inter­ the news of Mnu­chin’s selection for what he could not say directly to the view with that same official about the Treasury was being reported on TV. president: “You’re a f—ing liar.” same conversation days or weeks later. Mnuchin, apparently worried that the The accuracy of a scene in the Oval president might act on his remark and owd and others named as fig­ Office is vastly improved if Woodward actually retract the promised nomina­ D ures contributing to the book’s has four sources in the room instead of tion, decided to box him in by leaking unflattering portrayal of Trump have just one—especially if the four sources it to the press. “Mnuchin just put that been suggesting that Woodward agree on the nature of the description. out,” Jared Kushner told Cohn. himself is a f—ing liar since the first But readers are given no guidance on Trump actively despises formal pro­ excerpts of Fear appeared in the press how solidly sourced each detail is. cesses and looks for ways to circumvent a week before the book’s official Some of the interviewees benefit them. He regularly misleads—whether publication. Individual events, quo­ from l’esprit de l’escalier—they always consciously or not is unclear—his staff tations, and moments Woodward have the perfectly crafted retort, while and advisers about his intentions. He reports are “completely false” (says their opponents sound foolish or say focuses on how others, particularly the Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow), “exactly nothing at all. One of the book’s most news media, react to him rather than the opposite” of true (says current dramatic scenes comes six months into on how his words and actions might chief of staff John Kelly), “fabricated Trump’s presidency. The administra­ affect the people who work for him and stories” (says press secretary Sarah tion’s cabal of globalists—Mattis, Cohn, are trying to implement his agenda. Huckabee Sanders), and “the product Rex Tillerson—spirited Trump away The impression Woodward has of someone’s rich imagination” (says from the comforts of the West Wing taken from his interviews with aides, defense secretary Mattis). and into the Tank, the impressive con­ staffers, and others around the presi­ The denials were as predictable as ference room in the Pentagon where the dent is that he is either very stupid or a Woodward’s “note to readers” at the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet. The change

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 37 of setting might have allowed them to Bannon’s account, never lets us judge. ward’s book is a “scam,” as President impress upon Trump the seriousness of Woodward doesn’t come across as Trump has called it, is that its depic­ addressing what was already emerging partial to one particular side of the many tion of the commander in chief is con­ as the “Big Problem”: “The president splits within Trump World. He lets not sistent with much of what those of us did not understand the importance only Bannon but several others—Cohn, who cover the White House and the of allies overseas, the value of diplo­ Dowd, staff secretary Rob Porter, Sena­ president have seen and heard every macy or the relationship between the tor Lindsey Graham—have turns at day since he descended the escala­ military, the economy and intelligence driving his narrative. Unsurprisingly, tor in Trump Tower in 2015. There is partnerships with foreign govern­ several of his likely sources end up look­ nothing new in the implied conclu­ ments.” During the meeting, each of ing suspiciously like heroes—although sions of the book: Trump is erratic, Trump’s advisers walked the president some of what he describes isn’t as heroic impetuous, ignorant of basic facts, through the merits of the “rules-based, as his subjects seem to think it is. unfocused, forgetful, mercurial, cruel international democratic order”: alli­ Cohn and Porter, allies on the issue of to his subordinates, bored by details, ances, NATO, free trade. With every trade against the protectionists encour­ self-absorbed, obsessed with TV. Sure, pitch, Woodward lets you see Trump’s aging Trump’s pro-tariff instincts, regu­ it’s possible that Woodward manipu­ crossed arms get tighter, his brow lated hours and hours of inter­ get furroweder. views and reporting to produce During the Tank meeting, the a book that would conform to anti-globalist Steve Bannon was and confirm this widely accepted sitting in the back of the room. He characterization. But it’s also pos­ serves as a kind of Greek chorus for sible that the man we see at ral­ Woodward’s account of the meet­ lies, in televised interviews, and ing, injecting his own disapproval on Twitter is exactly who he is and identifying how the whole behind the scenes and that his effort is only hardening Trump’s aides and advisers are even more views. Finally, some time during alarmed than the majority of Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin’s Americans. This is the premise turn, Bannon-as-truth-telling-hero of Fear; readers either will accept steps into the scene, supposedly it or they won’t. after getting a subtle nod from As Woodward has defended Trump himself to get involved. the book against accusations that it is false or unfair, he has chal­ “Hang on for a second,” Bannon said to everyone as he stood up. lenged the subjects of his book “Let’s get real.” Woodward visiting Trump Tower in January 2017 to refute specifics. The denials He picked one of the most contro­ from current and former White versial international agreements that larly interfered in the president’s reck­ House and administration officials bound the United States to this global less trade actions. Woodward reports have been broad and general, not nar­ order. “The president wants to decer­ tify the Iranian deal and you guys are that Cohn stole bad trade declarations row and focused. No administration slow-walking it. It’s a terrible deal. He off the Resolute desk before Trump could officials have yet emerged to say they wants to decertify so he can renegoti­ sign them and that Porter put memos weren’t in a meeting that Woodward ate.” Trump would not just tear it up, intended for Trump from his top trade said they were. A few, like Mattis and as he’d promised in the campaign. adviser, Peter Navarro, into a file in his Kelly, have denied making the insult­ “One of the things he wants to do is” impose sanctions on Iran, the chief desk, never to be seen by the president. ing comments about Trump that the strategist said. “Is one of your [f—ing] For the sake of saving the global trade book attributes to them. Woodward great allies up in the European Union” order, American hegemony, and even says the two Marine generals are “not going to back the president? All this Trump’s own political position, Cohn telling the truth.” talk about how they are our partners. and After reading Fear, I asked one for­ “Give me one that’s going to back the and Porter’s subterfuge is defensible president on sanctions?” commendable. But is it honorable to mer White House official who is men­ Mnuchin attempted to answer on lie to the president? Is it in keeping tioned in the book whether an incident the importance of the allies. with your oath of office? Is it heroic to in which he was depicted as being “Give me one guy,” Bannon said. unload your story to a journalist? involved was described accurately. The “One country. One company. Who’s going to back sanctions?” official did not confirm or deny any­ Nobody answered. ut back to the question of thing and instead requested to speak B whether all, some, or any of it is about it off the record. If Woodward’s What was the substance of Mnuchin’s actually true. Even with the question­ account is inaccurate and the people he attempt to answer? Did he have a sound able writing style and obscured sourc­ identifies care about their credibility,

argument? Woodward, clearly relying on ing, the trouble with claiming Wood­ they ought to speak up. ♦ DREW ANGERER / GETTY

38 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 Super Bowl I: the Green Bay Packers and B&A Kansas City Chiefs at L.A.’s Memorial Coliseum on January 15, 1967 replaced them all failed too. The com­ How Football Became missioner prevailed on his friend, Washington laundry owner George the American Game Preston Marshall, to found a team not in the nation’s then-sleepy capi­ As the season kicks off, a roundup of new tal but in Boston. In the prevailing practice of the day, Marshall’s new by ichael elson and forthcoming books. M N football club played in a major league baseball stadium—Braves Field—and any of the most head­ targeted schools saw the handwrit­ adopted the baseball team’s name. line-grabbing contro­ ing on the wall and emulated North When Marshall’s deal with the Braves versies in the history Dakota, becoming the RedHawks, War eventually fell through and he moved of football have been Hawks, Crimson Hawks, or other birds his team to Fenway Park, he changed Munrelated to the game itself. Take the of prey. the team’s name while preserving the fights in recent years over team names. At the professional level, the most Indian theme and linking it to the new At the college level, the NCAA in 2005 conspicuous fight over a team name park’s major league franchise. Red Sox banned “hostile and abusive” names, has involved the Washington Red­ plus Braves divided by two somehow even threatening the University of skins. It’s not my purpose here to settle became Redskins. North Dakota and the state’s legisla­ the controversy—except to join the late The name remained when Wash­ ture that if they didn’t change from Charles Krauthammer in asking those ington boomed during the Great the Fighting Sioux to something else who defend the team’s name whether Depression and Marshall decided he (eventually the Fighting Hawks), the they could imagine themselves call­ at last could make money by moving university would be barred from host­ ing an actual Native American who is the Redskins to his hometown. Once ing postseason competition. Only the their own size or bigger a “redskin” to there, he doubled down on the Indian handful of teams whose relevant tribes his face. Of more immediate interest is theme. A theatrical impresario, Mar­ made clear they were unoffended— John Eisenberg’s account in his deeply shall built halftime shows around a notably the Florida State Semi­ researched, surprise-on-every-page, and marching band whose theme song, noles—were exempted. Other NCAA- altogether marvelous new book The “Hail to the Redskins,” featured lyrics League of how the name originated like “Scalp ’um, swamp ’um, we will Michael Nelson, Fulmer professor of nearly nine decades ago. take ’um big score.” Things got even political science at Rhodes College, is the In 1931 the National Football more extreme when Marshall, a fer­ author of Resilient America: Electing League was floundering. Twelve fran­ vent segregationist, decided to market Nixon in 1968, Channeling Dissent, chises had disbanded in the previous the Redskins throughout the South as

and Dividing Government. four years, and the four that partially not just the southernmost team in the FOCUS ON SPORT / GETTY

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 39 league but also as the last one to remain give a team the right to kick a goal, were part of the game. Glenn “Pop” Warner, all white. For a time in the late 1950s soon awarded points in and of them­ for example, argued that “basketball and early 1960s, the line “Fight for old selves, fewer at first than field goals, but techniques” like passing had no part in D.C.” in the fight song became “Fight more in time. The extra point after a what was properly the “rushing or kick­ for old Dixie.” touchdown is the vestige of what used to ing” contest he and Camp had grown Marshall made money from his be the game’s main scoring chance. used to. Early passes were not allowed extensive network of Southern radio Most important, to keep teams from to cross the line of scrimmage and, if and television stations even as the Red­ just sitting on the ball to the infinite incomplete, turned over possession of skins, devoid of talented black players, boredom of spectators, Camp per­ the ball to the other team. became the league’s doormat. Only in suaded the representatives of the other For the most part, football was foot­ 1961, when his hand was forced by Sec­ Ivy League schools to require that ball as we know it by the time the NFL retary of the Interior Stewart Udall, did they advance it at least 5 yards in three formed in 1921. (A major exception: Marshall grudgingly begin the process downs (later 10 yards in four downs). Players were not required to wear hel­ of integration. Observe the federal laws How to measure yards on the field? By mets until 1939 in the college game and on nondiscriminatory hiring or for­ marking lines so “it would look like a 1943 in the pro league; some of them get about playing in the new, spacious, instead tried to protect themselves by National Park Service-operated D.C. sculpting massive man buns.) What’s stadium, Udall told him. especially revealing about team names Of even greater interest on the sub­ in the early professional game is the ject of football names is what they tell extent to which they reflected what us about the origins of the sport. Ever Eisenberg describes as its highly local, wonder why the game we call soc­ “industrial town origins.” Providence cer is what the rest of the world calls had its “Steam Roller,” Pittsburgh its football (and what we call football “Majestic Radios,” and Decatur, Illinois, most other countries have no inter­ its “Staleys” (after the A. E. Staley Man­ est in)? As Roger Tamte explains in ufacturing Company, a starch maker). his comprehensive (but not bogged- Even in the contemporary era of Raid­ downishly detailed) Walter Camp and ers, Chargers, and Jets, remnants of the the Creation of American Football, the league’s early days survive in the Green American game began emerging in Bay Packers (packers of meat, that is) the 1870s from the primordial soup and the Pittsburgh Steelers. in which soccer, rugby, and the ear­ liest glimmerings of a new sport all n the 1930s and for a quarter-century swam. When Yale invited Harvard to Walter Camp, father of American football Ithereafter, when a core group of com­ play football in November 1875, for mitted owners began to coalesce, the example, Yale was all set to play soc­ gridiron,” Camp suggested. The downs- NFL—“paid football,” as it was deri­ cer and Harvard to play rugby, both of and-distance rule, Tamte writes, turned sively known—was not only secondary them English games. They settled on the game into a “steady stream of com­ to college football, but also to baseball, rugby but also began what turned out pelling narratives”—a series of discrete horse racing, and boxing. As Eisenberg to be an extended, incremental pro­ plays, each designed and practiced shows, over time the pro game was able cess of “messing with it, changing it,” in advance, creating the illusion that to climb out of this hole because those with Yale student Camp at the heart of “watching a football game is like watch­ owners—the Redskins’ Marshall, the every development. ing a military campaign.” Steelers’ Art Rooney, the Chicago Bears’ Instead of beginning plays rugby- The innovations continued. In time, George Halas, the New York Giants’ Tim style with a forward movement, Amer­ forward passes, previously banned, Mara, and the Philadelphia Eagles’ Bert ican football players soon began kicking were allowed and the rounded, melon- Bell (who borrowed his team’s name the ball backward to a teammate. This sized ball was streamlined to make from the emblem of FDR’s National “snapback,” eventually accomplished passing practical. Camp, who initiated Recovery Administration) embraced a by hand rather than foot, later became most of the early changes in the game strategy grounded in a subtle blend of known as the “snap.” “Fullbacks” and codified them in annual rulebooks, competition and cooperation. who stood 15 yards behind the line of was dubbed “the father of foot-ball in The owners fostered competition by scrimmage and “halfbacks” who stood American colleges” by Outing magazine continuing to modify their version of 10 yards back soon yielded primacy in 1886, even though he made his liv­ football after the colleges, content with to “quarterbacks” who, standing just ing as a rising executive with the New their popular success, stopped innovat­ 5 yards behind the line, could more Haven Clock Company. But like oth­ ing. Football had become dull, these reliably receive the snap. Touchdowns, ers of his generation, Camp was slow to owners realized. In 1934, for example,

which previously had no value except to accept passing the ball as a legitimate the losing team failed to score a single KEYSTONE-FRANCE / GAMMA-KEYSTONE GETTY

40 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 point in more than half the games. Usu­ absorbed the lessons of Paul Brown’s door, eventually, for American Samo­ ally at Marshall’s initiative, the NFL success as co-owner and coach of the ans, whose bittersweet saga of contrib­ removed most restrictions on passing, team that was his namesake. As told by uting the largest “number of athletes moved the hash marks closer to the mid­ Jonathan Knight in his breezily ador­ per capita” of any ethnic group in dle of the field so that the offense had ing Paul Brown’s Ghost, Brown’s innova­ recent years while suffering dispropor­ more room to maneuver, and split the tions—studying opponents’ game film, tionately from their island culture’s league into two divisions whose seasons dividing the team into specialized units physically reckless, all-in-for-the-team culminated in a championship game. with their own assistant coaches, and approach to the game is told in Rob Then, even as college football con­ using substitutions to send in plays— Ruck’s Tropic of Football. tinued to forbid players from being turned coaches into field generals and Ruck engagingly traces the cultural freely sent in and out of the game, the game into “an exercise in preci­ roots of Samoans’ distinctive suitabil­ the NFL decided to allow unlimited sion.” Brown would later coach and co- ity for football to fa’a samoa—the way substitutions. The result was the cre­ own the American Football League’s of Samoa—which combines intense ation of separate offensive and defen­ Cincinnati Bengals. He shepherded group loyalty with a zest for fighting. sive units whose players were less that team into the NFL as well. Until recently that meant villages exhausted and more skilled at play­ The NFL also elevated itself by trading blows with other villages. But ing on one side of the ball or the under American colonial influ­ other. “We’re in show business,” ence, the ethic was transposed said Marshall, who was as innova­ to school football teams playing tive a marketer as he was intransi­ other schools, eventually yield­ gent on race. “And when the show ing a harvest of hard-hitting, becomes boring, you put a more intensely team-oriented NFL interesting one in its place. That’s stars like Junior Seau and Troy why I want to change the rules.” Polamalu. As recently has become Just as important as the innova­ plain, however, all too often the tions that made pro football more consequence of playing the game competitive with the college game fa’a samoa-style is brain damage was the cooperation among the culminating in misery and even owners that made this competition suicide, as in 43-year-old Seau’s possible. Ending the open mar­ tragic case. ket in player signings that allowed The sixties were also the wealthier teams to dominate year in decade in which “pro football and year out, in 1936 they followed became America’s game,” as later-commissioner Bell’s advice 49ers center Jesse Sapolu, four-time Super Jesse Berrett points out in Pigskin and instituted an annual draft in Bowl champion ‘whom many Samoans Nation, his cultural-studies-based which the worst teams would have venerated,’ according to Rob Ruck (but non-scary) study of football first crack at the best college play­ and politics from 1966 to 1974. ers. To their credit, Halas and Mara, embracing radio and television, con­ “Baseball is what we were,” colum­ who owned the deep-pocketed Bears tinuing to play during World War II nist Mary McGrory observed in 1975; and Giants respectively, realized that after many colleges suspended their “football is what we have become.” although their clubs would suffer in the programs, and expanding west to Cali­ At a time when violence seemed standings from the draft, the league— fornia. The last move had the benefi­ everywhere out of control, with riots and thus their franchises—would cial side effect of opening the league to and assassinations at home and a frus­ endure only if teams were well-matched. black players when the commissioners trating war abroad, football thrived The best evidence that Bell and the who ran the Los Angeles Memorial by being “violent but not sadistic,” in owners were right came when a rival Coliseum told the Rams in 1946 that Berrett’s phrase—“precise and bruis­ league, the All-America Football Confer­ they could play there only if they inte­ ing” in Life magazine’s equally pithy ence, formed in 1946. It soon collapsed grated. “There were only so many good description. Conservatives loved foot­ because one of the new franchises, the players, and when you eliminated half ball’s raw masculinity and “merito­ Cleveland Browns, was so dominant of them, it was tough,” said Redskins cratic traditionalism.” Richard Nixon, that fans outside Cleveland didn’t think halfback Jim Podoley in 1960, one year for example, was a true fan who also saw their teams were worth seeing and fans before his own team finally became that publicly embracing the game was a in Cleveland, taking success for granted, integrated in response to similar pres­ way to connect with previously Demo­ didn’t buy tickets either. sure from its new landlord. cratic Southern whites and blue-collar The NFL absorbed the Browns, San The 1960s were the decade in which Northerners. But even Nixon’s liberal Francisco 49ers, and Baltimore Colts African Americans became a major opponents, Hubert H. Humphrey­ and

AL GOLUB / ZUMA ALAMY AL GOLUB and let the rest of the AAFC die. It also force in pro football—opening the George McGovern, realized that their

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 41 best endorsers were football players who more common, a trend that to some Trump as a suitor again and again since were “at once celebrities and regular degree has been reversed by athletes’ the early 1980s, had long disdained his Joes.” It fell to novelist Don DeLillo to responses to the recent police shoot­ efforts to become one of them. In 1983, get the game’s resonance with the spirit ings of black men and boys in Fergu­ Trump bought a franchise in the new of the age exactly right. Football is “not son, Missouri, and elsewhere—not to United States Football League and just order but civilization,” he wrote in mention Nike’s decision to feature the soon organized an anti-monopoly law­ End Zone: the leashing of humankind’s protesting former 49ers quarterback suit against the NFL in hopes of forc­ aggressive nature by rules, referees, Colin Kaepernick in its latest “Just Do ing the league to let him in. When the organization, and self-discipline. It” advertising campaign. lawsuit earned the USFL only one dol­ Merging with the 11-year-old upstart Newly outspoken players had no idea lar (actually $3.76 when triple damages American Football League in 1970 also what an uproar reviving “the Heritage” and interest were added), the league helped the pro game. The AFL didn’t would trigger. As Bryant points out, the folded. As Mark Leibovich recounts make the same mistake as the AAFC: 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in his windy, overly personal, but often It not only drafted college players to not only made the soldiers who fight insightful new book Big Game, Trump keep the league competitively balanced overseas wars objects of veneration at then made unsuccessful runs at the but also distributed revenue from its New England Patriots in 1994 and national television contract to all teams. the Buffalo Bills in 2014. Spurned yet The new league added Southern fran­ Say what you will again by the owners as a “scumbag chises, put players’ names on their about the merits of the huckster,” “a clown and a con man,” jerseys, and allowed two-point conver­ Trump hit back as a candidate and as sions, all of which were innovations recent on-field protests; president. His attacks on the owners for the NFL adopted after the two leagues taking a knee in that not cracking down hard enough on the merged. The cherry on top, as Dave protesting players touched “a throb­ Anderson chronicles in his newly back- setting takes guts. bing nerve on the right, making the in-print reporting classic Countdown to Bending the knee to NFL an improbable symbol of permis­ Super Bowl, was the 1969 championship sive leadership and political correct­ game in which the AFL’s underdog Trump, as the owners ness,” Leibovich writes. “Football has New York Jets defeated the NFL’s pre­ become soft,” Trump sniffed. viously dominant Baltimore Colts. have done, takes none. To be sure, today’s team owners and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, acial integration came late to the football games, it did the same for first together the focus of Leibovich’s book, R NFL but in a torrent when it did. responders at home, especially police have responded to these and other new Rising at an accelerated pace after the officers. For a player to kneel or raise a challenges with none of the adroitness merger with the AFL, the percentage of fist as the national anthem is sung was or public spiritedness that Eisenberg African American players in the league seen by many fans—especially white discovered in the founding generation. eventually reached its current level of fans—as slurring the flag the soldiers Say what you will about the merits of about 70 percent. As it happened, full fought under. To aim the protest at the the on-field protests; taking a knee in integration’s late arrival overlapped police was to insult officers in what had that setting takes guts. Bending the with the rise of major product endorse­ become their ceremonial backyard. knee to Trump, as the owners have ment deals for celebrity athletes—Hertz When Kaepernick sat during the done, takes none. Nor, for that matter, for running back O. J. Simpson and anthem before the first two exhibition does cringing when the players bark Coke for Mean Joe Greene in foot­ games in 2016, hardly anyone noticed. back, as the owners also have done. ball, Nike for Tiger Woods in golf and Only about a dozen other players emu­ “The Membership” aka “the Michael Jordan in basketball, and so on. lated him that year, and then just occa­ Thirty-two” is a considerably older, The result, Howard Bryant argues in his sionally. It took the president of the stodgier, and more entitled group than all-too-discursive but often on-the-mark United States to light the match that the founders (80, Leibovich notes, is book The Heritage, was that black stars ignited the firestorm. “Wouldn’t you “ ‘middle-aged’ by Membership stan­ became reluctant to embrace controver­ love to see one of these NFL owners, dards”). Unlike their predecessors, the sial civil rights causes that would jeop­ when somebody disrespects the flag, to Thirty-two feel little loyalty to their ardize their appeal to white consumers. say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field home cities. Stan Kroenke, named Earlier black stars like Jackie Rob­ right now. Out! He’s fired,’ ” Donald after St. Louis Cardinals icon Stan inson, Muhammad Ali, and Cleveland Trump told an Alabama crowd in Sep­ Musial, didn’t hesitate to leave behind Browns running back Jim Brown (sub­ tember 2017. generations of devoted fans and move ject of a fine, albeit leftish, new biogra­ Most commentators picked up on his hometown team to Los Angeles. phy by Dave Zirin) tended to speak out Trump’s attacks on the players; few Nor did Mark Davis blink before leav­ on racial issues. This practice declined noticed that the direct object of his ire ing passionate Raider enthusiasts in as lucrative endorsements became was “these NFL owners” who, rejecting Oakland after Las Vegas flashed “a

42 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 near-billion-dollar stadium deal . . . to accumulate suggesting that not just with CTE in his mid-20s, murdered a like a high roller dangling a C-note at severe concussions but also the cumu­ man in 2015 and then killed himself a strip club.” lative effects of many routine hits can in prison two years later? “To suggest Owners also are prone to making damage the brain in ways that may it didn’t would be ridiculous,” argues retro remarks to players, like “You later bring on CTE, ALS, Alzheimer’s, Hernandez’s lawyer Jose Baez in his guys are cattle and we’re the ranch­ Parkinson’s, dementia, severe cogni­ troubling book Unnecessary Roughness. ers” and “We can’t have the inmates tive impairment, and other diseases. Looking forward, are there ages at running the asylum.” With so much After scientific research and espe­ which, because the braincase is still money at stake, Thomas George shows cially bad publicity forced its hand, hardening and necks are still thicken­ in Blitzed (an example of a worthy the NFL finally began taking head ing, playing organized tackle football article pumped up to book length), injuries seriously as a medical prob­ should be forbidden? Would addi­ rookie quarterbacks are often drafted lem with implications both for how tional rules changes, like banning the higher than they should be and shoved the game is played—helmet-to-helmet three-point stance for linemen that into starting assignments pre­ places their heads directly in maturely, lest jersey sales and the path of collisions, make the local ratings flag. game measurably safer? Even Tom Brady—To m The brain-damage issue Brady!—was hung out to dry aside, marked as it is by the by New England Patriots NFL’s long concealment of owner Robert Kraft when he important information from decided to appeal his suspen­ its own front-line, in-the-arena sion for allegedly deflating the employees, it’s worth remem­ footballs used during the first bering that professional foot­ half of the 2015 AFC champi­ ball players are just that, profes- onship game. Describing the sionals: grown men who choose goosebumps he felt when he to embrace a violent career in was accepted as a member of hopes of receiving massive com­ the Thirty-two, Kraft declared, pensation. As Nate Jackson, an “we won’t appeal” because “I ex-player who lasted six seasons don’t want to continue the rhet­ in the NFL (about twice the oric.” “What the f—?” Brady average), wrote in a typically exclaimed to NFL Players lyrical passage from Slow Get- Association executive director ting Up: A Story of NFL Sur- DeMaurice Smith, according New England Patriots Tom Brady and Aaron Hernandez; vival from the Bottom of the Pile, to Casey Sherman and Dave Hernandez’s lethal violence and suicide may have been professional players are “pulled Wedge in their generally per­ linked to brain damage he endured playing football. toward the mayhem. . . . [T]he suasive pro-Brady book 12. smell of grass and sweat: sacra­ Generally persuasive because although tackles were banned, and then in time ments for bloodshed.” Still, he added, at the end of the supposedly deflated- for the current season all helmet-first when the money is gone, “there is no ball first half the Patriots led the India­ tackles were; kickoffs were moved incentive to continue. There’s a reason napolis Colts 17-7, they outscored them forward to the 35-yard line; and play­ why you don’t see grown men at the 28-0 in the second half with undisput­ ers were forbidden to make a run­ park in full pads playing football.” It’s edly pumped-up balls. ning start before the ball is kicked. the same reason more and more parents How injured players are handled has are steering their kids into different he public-relations problems the changed, too: “Shake it off ” was out; sports. Even ex-NFL stars Troy Aik­ T NFL created for itself with its awk­ “no-go” for games and practices with­ man, Brett Favre, and Terry Bradshaw ward handling of the players’ protests out an okay from an independent neu­ have said that knowing what they now and deflategate are as nothing compared rologist was in. know they’d want their sons to stay with the long-term threats to the viabil­ To be sure, there’s a lot that we away from the game, at least for a while. ity of the game from chronic traumatic still don’t know about football and Evidence of life-ruining injuries encephalopathy (CTE) and changes in the brain. Are there contributing fac­ aside, why do football and other sports the broader culture. tors—genetics? steroid use?—that wax and wane in popularity? Michael Starting on September 28, 2002— explain why some former players suf­ Mandelbaum, in his deeply thoughtful the day when the autopsied brain of fer severe brain damage in later life 2005 book The Meaning of Sports, argued a dead ex-NFL player was first found while most do not? Did it “impact that during most of the 20th century to bear evidence of CTE—a massive Aaron [Hernandez]’s behavior” when baseball was America’s leading sport

JIM DAVIS / BOSTON GLOBE / GETTY / BOSTON GLOBE JIM DAVIS amount of scientific research began the former Patriots tight end, afflicted because it served as a pleasant reminder

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 43 of an agrarian past for city dwellers who often were just a generation or two away B A from the farm. Football, according to & Mandelbaum, was the right game for the mid- and late-century urban indus­ trial nation. As with modern life in gen­ The Kafka Papers eral, and in sharp contrast to baseball, football is “played by the clock” and in It took an international legal battle to settle the fate disregard of weather. It was, he wrote, of the author’s manuscripts. by Christoph Irmscher “the sport of the machine age because football teams are like machines, with specialized moving parts that must hen, at the end of function simultaneously.” Franz Kafka’s great Kafka’s Last Trial Not football but basketball, with its novel The Trial, the The Case of a Literary Legacy by Benjamin Balint free-flowing, networked action, may judgment rendered by W. W. Norton, 279 pp., $26.95 soon come to dominate the age we live aW remote court for a crime that has in, Mandelbaum argued. Today he never been disclosed is carried out, might add that although basketball is when Josef K. feels the knife enter­ dutifully burned her sister’s corre­ intensely physical, it’s seldom debilitat­ ing his chest, the final thought that spondence but spared the poems; had ing—basketball players bang hard, but flashes through his mind has the pre­ she been any more loyal, no one would it’s shoulder-to-shoulder and elbow-to- cision and clarity that eludes us in know the name Emily Dickinson chest, not head-to-head. NBA owners life: “ ‘Like a dog!’ he said; it seemed today. Brod does have a point: If you in particular have avoided confronting as though the shame was to outlive want to make sure, do the job yourself. players about pregame protests, know­ him.” There is nothing so clear-cut A lesson heeded by Henry James, who ing that it takes two to rumble and in and distinct about the thoughts of the made a bonfire in his Lamb House the absence of fight-club-style public­ protagonists of Benjamin Balint’s tale, backyard and threw in the letters he ity, the media, the public, the play­ which is, in the most general sense, wanted to keep from posterity. ers—and the president of the United about who has a right, legal or moral Kafka’s Last Trial, Balint’s engag­ States—are less likely to turn up the or both, to the papers that Kafka left ing new book, is full of such examples volume. A 2013 ESPN survey found that behind when, in 1924, aged only 40, he of second-guessing, full of people and basketball has already surpassed football succumbed to tuberculosis. institutions appearing to know how (and everything else) as kids’ favorite Balint’s story is a complex one, Kafka would have preferred to view sport to play, and the NBA generates far due in no small degree to the fact that himself or where, had he not wanted more action on Twitter than any other Kafka hadn’t really wanted to leave them destroyed, he would have liked professional league. Grownup spectators anything behind. In a note he kept in his manuscripts to be—in the Ger­ still rank football first, but as ofa Janu­ his desk, the Jewish-Czech-German man Literature Archive, the main ary Gallup poll, just 37 percent do so writer asked his closest friend, Max national collection of papers by Ger­ now, down from 43 percent as recently Brod, to burn his manuscripts, an man writers; in the National Library as 2007. NBA ratings are up and NFL order Brod ignored. Lest anyone think of Israel; or in the hands of the woman ratings down, fewer boys are playing that refusal a betrayal of their friend­ Brod had chosen to take care of them: football in youth leagues, and so on. ship, Brod later suggested that Kafka Esther Hoffe, his former secretary. Still: Football’s reign has not yet should and would have known that Kafka himself envisioned something ended. Between them the current gen­ he could never do such a thing. Were like this situation in the haunting last eration of NFL owners possess 20 of it not for Brod, Kafka would not have story he wrote, “Josefine the Singer, the world’s 50 most valuable sports ascended to his hallowed status as one or the Mouse Folk,” about a fragile, franchises, according to Forbes. But of the most important European mod­ vulnerable mouse singer intent on after the real work of building the ernists; without him, we would not perfecting her extraordinary art. The league was done by Rooney, Halas, have the great novels (The Trial, The mouse folk, her devoted followers, vir­ Mara, Marshall, and Bell and carried Castle, and Amerika), the letters, the tually imprisoned, fear that when she on by Bell’s successor as commis­ diaries, and many of the stories. Lit­ leaves all music will stop or disappear. sioner, Pete Rozelle—the names we’ll erary history abounds with such well- As the story goes on, the less-than- remember long after the Kroenkes intentioned acts of defiance. Lavinia sympathetic narrator begins to insinu­ and Davises pass from the scene—how Norcross Dickinson, for example, ate that Josefine perhaps isn’t all that could the Membership not thrive? As talented, that her singing might be a offensive lineman Eric Winston notes, Christoph Irmscher, provost professor of series of squeaks rather than the raptur­ “Hey, even the worst bartender at English at Indiana University, is the author, ous coloraturas that the mouse people spring break does pretty well.” ♦ most recently, of Max Eastman: A Life. think they hear. At the end of the story,

44 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 Josefine disappears, losing herself, with self largely out of the story, appear­ not for Kafka, I wonder if the oppo­ some relief, the reader imagines, in the ing mostly as a capable reporter and site might be true also: that Brod’s “countless throng” of ordinary mice. patient interlocutor, summarizing the entanglement with Kafka’s estate has There is reason to suspect that opinions of others (“in this view”) prevented us from considering such an Kafka, in that finicky mouse artist, had rather than disclosing his own. His interesting figure (who was, inciden­ given us his self-portrait, that his wish narrative proceeds in spurts, with tally, a composer as well as writer) on not to have his papers preserved was necessary information often withheld his own merits. due to his horror at the thought of see­ until long after it was needed, a struc­ Some plot elements of Balint’s tale ing his unfinished work made widely tural principle that I found at first dis­ evoke that archetypal story of liter­ available. But the option to disappear concerting but then came to accept as a ary possessiveness, Henry James’s among his people—Josefine’s exit rather fitting equivalent for the convo­ The Aspern Papers (1888). Eva Hoffe’s route—was not given to him even after luted nature of his material. righteous indignation at the intru­ death. The legal and moral motives sions of the Israeli state into her people have given for laying claim to affairs does remind us of the fury of his literary remains are, taken on their Miss Bordereau, erstwhile lover of the own terms, perfectly understandable. poet Jeffrey Aspern, and her piercing The state of Israel, concerned about scream, at the end of the novella, when shoring up its own cultural legacy, she finds the narrator attempting to wants to keep inside the country major break into her shrine of manuscripts: cultural assets connected with the his­ “Ah, you publishing scoundrel!” But tory of Judaism. The German Litera­ Balint’s story has little of the simmer­ ture Archive in Marbach, which had ing eroticism of James’s work—and it already acquired the original manu­ certainly never matches the magic of script of The Trial from Esther Hoffe Kafka’s fictions. His characters don’t and would like to own more, sees come as shockingly alive as Kafka’s Kafka as an integral part of German figures do, whose every feature, from literary history. Finally, Eva Hoffe, the tattered clothes they wear to the Esther’s surviving daughter and heir, perspiration that gathers on their fore­ sees the papers (and her right to decide heads, invades and then permanently whom to sell them to) as an integral inhabits the reader’s consciousness. part of her own financial survival. This is not Balint’s fault. All in all, the There is the additional question of battle over Kafka’s literary remains, whether Germany, forever compro­ fought by mostly reasonable people mised by the Holocaust, should be Franz Kafka (1883-1924) with mostly reasonable claims, is insis­ allowed to have a place at the bidding tently mundane, never turning into table at all. While Kafka was an unre­ And though Balint agrees with the the parable of our darkest fears Kafka liable Zionist at best, he experienced canard of Brod’s lack of greatness, he would have made of it. his share of virulent anti-Semitism. ironically makes him the subject of And unlike Kafka’s novels, Kaf- In an unforgettable anecdote, shared the book’s most memorable, beauti­ ka’s Last Trial has a happy ending of with his sister Elli, he recounts sit­ fully conceived vignettes: Brod fleeing sorts. On August 7, 2016, Israel’s high ting on a bench in Berlin’s botanical Prague on the last train out, carrying court ruled that Kafka’s papers, along garden admiring a lovely, long-legged a tattered suitcase with Kafka manu­ with Brod’s own estate, belonged in girl only to realize, belatedly, that the scripts; Brod in a permanent state of the National Library of Israel. Hoffe, word she had called out to him was displacement in Israel, hampered by at best a flawed guardian of Kafka’s an insult: “Jude” (Jew). Elli and Kaf­ his lack of fluency in Hebrew; Brod, manuscripts, felt disenfranchised, even ka’s other two sisters perished in the aged 84, dying in a Tel Aviv hospital, “raped,” by the judges, but I was death camps. liberated from his wrist restraints by impressed by the care and literary acu­ the ever-present Esther Hoffe. Brod’s men that some of them displayed in enjamin Balint spent hours inter­ desperate grandeur and his attempts their written opinions. The National B viewing people, sitting through to make sense of a world that no longer­ Library has promised to digitize Kaf­ endless sessions in high-ceilinged needs the likes of him are touching. ka’s manuscripts. Yet what might be Israeli courts, and going for walks Gershom Scholem once lamented the the archival scholar’s dream-come-true through the streets of Tel Aviv with curious twist of fate by which Kafka’s would, arguably, have been Kafka-Jose­ Eva Hoffe. He also did a fair amount reputation had become intertwined fine’s worst nightmare: the imperfec­ of reading, particularly of the works of with such a mediocrity. But while it is tions of his work laid bare, for every­ the prolific Brod, Kafka’s most faith­ generally accepted that no one would one to see, a mere mouse-click (pun

ful faithless friend. But he keeps him­ recognize Brod’s name today were it intended) away. ♦ ANN RONAN PICTURES / PRINT COLLECTOR GETTY

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 45 This isn’t quite wrong, but it is too simplistic. The movie is also a rumi­ B&A nation on memory and purpose. In a master stroke, writer-director Bart Lay­ ton includes the real Spencer, Warren, The Ol’ College Heist Eric, and Chas in the film—so the four men comment on the story as it unfolds Why four young men risked prison to steal rare books and interact surreally with the actors from a Kentucky university library. by Grant Wishard portraying them (respectively Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters, Jared Abraham­ son, and Blake Jenner), as when an older, ou probably missed Ameri- wiser real-life Spencer watches sadly as can Animals in June when American Animals young “Spencer” drives past, unstop­ it hit theaters—starting in Directed by Bart Layton pable, to his ruin. The drama-docu­ just four of them, in a lim­ mentary hybrid also lets Layton explore itedY run in New York and Los Angeles. the ways memories have smudged over But thanks to Amazon’s streaming the last decade. service, the indie has a chance to As to the big “why” question, reach the audience it deserves. after seven years in prison, all The film tells the true story of of the real-life thieves have had four male college students who, in plenty of time to put words to their December 2004, stole rare books angst, but none of them seems worth millions of dollars from the able to explain his motivations library at Transylvania University well. All express remorse—espe­ in Lexington, Kentucky. On a visit cially for the terror and harm they to the library, the promising young inflicted on B. J. the librarian—but art student Spencer Reinhard is they can’t quite explain why they struck by the beauty of a book did what they did. Money doesn’t displayed prominently in the spe­ The robbers in their old-man disguises seem to have been the chief moti­ cial-collections room: John James vator; it is scarcely mentioned and Audubon’s The Birds of America. It is The Taser is needed to overcome never dreamed about. one of the most valuable books in the the greatest obstacle, logistically and Spencer comes closest to articulat­ world; copies have sold for $8-12 mil­ morally, in their path: the librarian in ing what drove him. “Growing up, I lion. Spencer casually mentions this to charge of the rare books, Betty Jean had a desire for some kind of life-alter­ his impulsive childhood friend War­ “B. J.” Gooch (played by Ann Dowd). ing experience,” the real-life Spencer ren Lipka, and while accounts differ as Three of the conspirators refuse to have explains. The character Spencer makes to which of the two guys is the Danny anything to do with “neutralizing” or a similar point early in the film, asking Ocean of this heist, they are soon work­ “eliminating” her—the men use vague Warren whether he shares the feeling of ing on a plan to steal the Audubon and and unspecific words to avoid confront­ “waiting for something to happen but other books. ing the truth of the violent act their you don’t know what it is? But it’s that They stake out the library, draw whole enterprise depends on—so War­ thing that could make your life spe­ escape routes, and arrange covert meet­ ren promises to handle Gooch alone. cial?” Spencer had read about famous ings in New York and Amsterdam with The “hows” of the heist—and what artists—including Audubon—who had people who might help them fence the goes wrong to land the men in prison— to overcome great suffering for their stolen goods. Spencer and Warren bring make for entertaining and suspenseful work and he felt like they somehow aboard two other accomplices—students viewing, but they take a back seat to understood more about life than he did. Eric Borsuk, the strategic brains of the the “whys.” Why would a talented art For college-age Spencer, and per­ operation, and Chas Allen, the getaway student, a star soccer player, a smart haps the other three young men, with driver. While taking classes and study­ accounting major, and a kid who had lives of moderate bourgeois success ing for exams, the four start researching bought his first rental property at 16 and frustration mapped out for them, thefts—relying on Google and movies want to put their comfortable lives at the heist offered a forbidden oppor­ like The Thomas Crown Affair—and for­ risk? Critics have largely concluded tunity for true greatness. American mulate a plan involving a gray minivan, that the movie is about upper-class Animals is about the longing for such elaborate old-man disguises, and a Taser. privilege. Parents and teachers shielded undefinable yet life-definingexisten ­ the boys from life’s consequences, told tial transformations—and the costs Grant Wishard is a writer them they were special, and next thing they can exact, both on others and on

in Northern Virginia. you know, little Johnny’s in lockup. one’s own soul. ♦ THE ORCHARD / MOVIEPASS

46 / The Weekly Standard September 24, 2018 “Un momentito, señor,” and subdued him until colleagues drove up and stuffed B&A him in a car. Once they got Eich­mann to the safe house where they had to stash him for 10 days while they prepared Evil in the Dock to spirit him from the country, Malkin unexpectedly became the key to getting Retelling for a new generation the story of Eichmann’s Eichmann to talk about his crimes and capture and trial. by John Podhoretz cooperate at a crucial moment. His ter­ rific 1991 book Eichmann in My Hands, written with Harry Stein, is the key or those who know about the source material for the movie; in the astoundingly nervy mission in Operation Finale book, he portrays himself as a far jaun­ Directed by Chris Weitz which Israeli agents in Argen­ tier and more amused person than the tina secretly apprehended the solemn and haunted fellow Oscar Isaac Ffugitive war criminal Adolf Eichmann limns in Operation Finale. and whisked him off to Jerusa­ But Isaac’s Malkin isn’t lem to be tried as the architect really a character; he’s a stand- of the “Final Solution,” the in for Israel and post-Holo­ new film Operation Finale may caust Jewry. He is haunted by seem unnecessarily didactic. the memory of his sister Fruma The movie stops here and and her children, slaughtered there and forces the actors to in a mass grave in a Polish provide wooden exposition forest, and is unable to form about the historical details it meaningful human attach­ portrays. It is unfortunate that ments as a result. By bringing screenwriter Matthew Orton Eichmann to justice, he finds a and director Chris Weitz were measure of peace and is able to unable to find a more grace­ move on with his life. ful or supple way to handle If the movie has a flaw apart these matters. from its earnestness, it is that But then it occurred to me: Ben Kingsley’s Eichmann is How many people today actu­ such a compelling character ally do know about the Eich­ Ben Kingsley as Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem you kind of miss him when he’s mann case? His seizure took not on the screen. In part this is place 58 years ago, his trial 57 years the power to judge their executioner. due to the fact that Kingsley is one of the ago, his execution 56 years ago, and It is a great and twisty story that greatest actors alive. But it is also due to the publication of Hannah Arendt’s begins with a happenstance: A blind the decision made by Orton and Weitz Eichmann in Jerusalem 55 years ago. Jew living incognito in Argentina to offer an implicit criticism of Arendt’s The never-ending controversy over (played by, of all people, the 1970s horrific “banality of evil” thesis. Their Arendt’s repugnant treatment of the miniseries king Peter Strauss) figures Eichmann is satanic in his incompre­ case is likely responsible for the fact out that his daughter’s new beau is hensible mysteriousness—a subtly devi­ anyone knows anything at all about Eich mann­ ’s son. The news is trans­ ous manipulator of his interrogators Eich­mann today. mitted to Jerusalem, and the legend­ who maintains a chilling power even in Three generations have come to life ary spy chief Isser Harel (played by his hopeless state. The movie’s indelible since he was apprehended. More than Lior Raz, creator and star of the popu­ moment comes when Malkin feeds a three-quarters of Americans were not lar Israeli Netflix show Fauda) begins blindfolded Eichmann for the first time yet born when Israeli prime minis­ designing the mission to capture Eich­ and watches him bite and chew with ter­ ter David Ben-Gurion announced to mann. (In fact, it took several years for rifyingly regimented precision. a shocked world that Eichmann­ had the mission to get underway, but the I took my daughters, 14 and 11, to been removed to Jerusalem to face trial compression of time here makes sense see Operation Finale. Now they know for his crimes—the first time in his­ for dramatic purposes.) something crucial about their people tory, as Orton has Ben-Gurion say in The movie focuses on the intelli­ and our history they did not know Operation Finale, that the Jews secured gence officer Peter Malkin—the Israeli before—about a moment in time when who approached Eichmann­ as he a victimized people transcended their John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, walked home down Garibaldi Street victimization. For that alone, I am

is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic. in Buenos Aires on May 11, 1961, said deeply thankful this movie was made. ♦ MGM

September 24, 2018 The Weekly Standard / 47 “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” —Anonymous, New York Times, September 5, 2018 PARODY

September 24, 2018