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November 28, 2011 $4.99 Violence & OWS Keynes vs. Hayek Is Foreign Aid Worth It? —Anthony Daniels —Tyler Cowen —Elliott Abrams

NNeeiitthheerr PPooppuulliissttss NNoorr TTeecchhnnooccrraattss The Case for the Constitution $4.99 48 YUVAL LEVIN

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NOVEMBER 28, 2011 | VOLUME LXIII, NO. 22 | www.nationalreview.com

James Rosen on Joe Frazier COVER STORY Page 30 p. 28 What Is Constitutional Conservatism? BOOKS, ARTS The Left’s simultaneous support for & MANNERS government by expert panel and for the 43 THE ETERNAL STRUGGLE Tyler Cowen reviews Keynes unkempt carpers occupying Wall Street Hayek: The Clash That is not a contradiction—it is a coherent Defined Modern Economics, by Nicholas Wapshott. error. And the Right’s response should 45 MID-CENTURY MIND be coherent too. Yuval Levin Richard Brookhiser reviews Masscult and Midcult: Essays COVER: POODLESROCK/CORBIS Against the American Grain, by Dwight Macdonald. ARTICLES 46 THE QUEST FOR RULES 18 THE CHURCH OF GRIEVANCE by Anthony Daniels Joseph Tartakovsky reviews Design Occupy Wall Street’s dangerous creed. for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the 20 CRISTINA’S WHIRL by Andrew Stuttaford Rule of Law, by Richard A. Epstein. Argentina heads into troubled waters. 48 RELIGIOUS RIGHTS Jacob Mchangama reviews Silenced: WHAT’S NEW IN BAKU? by David Pryce-Jones 22 How Apostasy and Blasphemy Alas, not much. Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide, by Paul Marshall and A HERO OF US ALL 26 by Jay Nordlinger Nina Shea. Chen Guangcheng, China’s blind and brutalized lawyer. 50 FILM: THE FALL 28 THE GREAT, TRAGIC JOE FRAZIER by James Rosen Ross Douthat reviews Margin Call. A boxing legend, dead at 67. 51 THE STRAGGLER: THE PROPER STUDY FEATURES To Mann, or not to Mann? John Derbyshire responds. 30 WHAT IS CONSTITUTIONAL CONSERVATISM? by Yuval Levin Neither a populist nor a technocrat be. SECTIONS 33 THE FREELOADER MYTH by Ramesh Ponnuru Fear not the 47 percent. 4 Letters to the Editor 6 The Week 35 SO YOU WANT DEBT RELIEF? by Kevin D. Williamson 40 Athwart ...... James Lileks Let’s stop lending money to OWS. 41 The Bent Pin ...... Florence King 42 The Long View ...... Rob Long 37 CONSERVATIVE FOREIGN AID by Elliott Abrams 47 Poetry ...... Jennifer Reeser There is such a thing, but the GOP presidential candidates haven’t defined it. 52 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

NATiONAL RevieW (iSSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATiONAL RevieW, inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, inc., 2011. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., NATiONAL RevieW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATiONAL RevieW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATiONAL RevieW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATiONAL RevieW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 11/7/2011 1:49 PM Page 1 letters--ready_QXP-1127940387.qxp 11/9/2011 2:27 PM Page 4 Letters

NOVEMBER 28 ISSUE; PRINTED NOVEMBER 10 The Friedman-Durbin Amendment?

EDITOR In The Week (October 31), the Editors write that the Durbin amendment’s cap Richard Lowry on the fees that merchants pay for debit-card transactions prompted banks to Senior Editors “transfer the fee from merchants to their customers” in the form of a $5 month- Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger ly charge for debit-card users. But I think it was Milton Friedman who noted that Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts the final consumer pays all costs: The fees were already being paid by con- Literary Editor Michael Potemra sumers. I own a retail store. When you raise credit- or debit-card fees, I raise my Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy National Correspondent John J. Miller prices. (And incidentally, Bank of America has since killed the $5 fee.) Political Reporter Robert Costa Art Director Luba Kolomytseva The piece also calls the measure “a special favor to retailers” that Durbin Deputy Managing Editors inserted “having been lobbied by one of the nation’s biggest retailers, Wal- Fred Schwarz / Kevin D. Williamson Associate Editors greens.” However, the law is a boon for retailers of all sizes, and rightly so: Helen Rittelmeyer / Robert VerBruggen Previously, according to the contracts they had to sign to accept cards, retailers Research Director Katherine Connell Executive Secretary Frances Bronson often had to socialize the cost of interchange fees, raising prices for everyone Assistant to the Editor Christeleny Frangos regardless of how they paid. Now, under a Durbin-amendment provision your Contributing Editors Robert H. Bork / Shannen Coffin / John Derbyshire piece doesn’t mention, businesses may offer a discount for customers who pay Ross Douthat / Rod Dreher / David Frum in cash—charging each customer for the services he uses. I believe you will see Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin many small businesses doing so in the new year. Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne David B. Rivkin Jr. George Ackerman

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Newport News, Va. Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editor Edward John Craig News Editor Daniel Foster THE EDITOrs rEPly: How much power businesses have to pass on costs to con- Editorial Associates sumers is the subject of some dispute among economists. Extra costs can raise Brian Bolduc / Charles C. W. Cooke Brian Stewart / Katrina Trinko prices; they can also reduce profits, reduce quality, reduce choices, or reduce Web Developer Gareth du Plooy Technical Services Russell Jenkins wages, depending on the particulars of the market in question. Why anybody would think that senator Durbin is better positioned to manage relations EDITORS- AT- LARGE between merchants and service providers than are the merchants and service Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan Contributors providers themselves suggests at the very least an unfamiliarity with the career Hadley Arkes / Baloo / Tom Bethell of Dick Durbin. James Bowman / Priscilla L. Buckley Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman Beyond Art History James Gardner / David Gelernter George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kudos to Andrew Kelly for his excellent piece extolling the virtues of voca- Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune tional training (“Beyond Home Ec,” October 31). For the past half century, and D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons much to our eventual disadvantage, America’s educational cadre has sniffed at Terry Teachout / Taki Theodoracopulos the nation’s tool and die makers to concentrate on baccalaureate-seeking theo- Vin Weber rists. skilled workers in the utilities and manufacturing trades now command a Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman fairly healthy salary owing to this bias and their relatively low numbers. Accountant Zofia Baraniak The “taxi driver with a master’s degree in art history” conundrum that leads Business Services Alex Batey / Elena Reut / Lucy Zepeda the article requires no explanation for those with a basic knowledge of supply Circulation Manager Jason Ng and demand. Almost irrespective of where we are in the business cycle, engi- WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 neers and other such applied-science-trained individuals generally suffer few SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 disappointments in seeking employment. so while I would not advocate a math- ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 and-science diet for all collegians, I would suggest that all research their post- Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler graduation employment prospects. At least that way, should they still press on Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet for a doctorate in art history, they will do so with full knowledge that the cor- ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Olivett porate world regards their discipline as essentially without value. PUBLISHER Jack Fowler K. O. Randel CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes Via e-mail

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

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n The headline above an Associated Press story on the 2012 See page 10. election read, “Obama’s team banks on his ‘regular guy’ appeal.” We’re not in the habit of giving advice to the Obama campaign, but: Maybe bank on something else?

n An enduring problem for liberal presidents is that the people they govern just cannot seem to rise to the chief executive’s high standards of idealism and self-sacrifice. The canonical expression of liberal presidential disappointment in us, the citizenry, was Jimmy Carter’s 1979 “malaise” speech: “Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and con- sumption,” etc. Now we are hearing similar complaints from Barack Obama. Back in September, he told an interviewer that we have “gotten a little soft.” Then here he was the other day at a fundraiser in San Francisco saying that “we have lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge.” Well, Mr. President, our willingness to do those things sprang from the desire to im - prove our lives and those of our fellow citizens through honest individual enterprise—the motive force for all our nation’s progress. Since that desire is presumably a human universal, we should ask what is currently stifling it. The answers are not hard to find: excessive regulation, taxation, and litigation. Is n Rick Perry gave a speech in Manchester, N.H., to Cornerstone there any prospect of this triple burden’s being lightened? Not Action, a conservative group. He chucked the stiff demeanor under Barack Obama’s administration. that has served him so ill in candidate debates; plugged his tax plan, saying that even Timothy Geithner could fill out the forms; n Combine our Puritans Gone Wild sensibility—both sala- and got a standing ovation. But selected clips of the loosier- cious and censorious—with our endless news cycle, and a goosier moments (keyword: maple syrup) went viral, and liber- presidential candidate accused of sexual offenses is like a als piled on: Comic Jon Stewart and non-comic Rachel Maddow house snatched up by a tornado. Herman Cain is now in the suggested he was drunk. This is unfair: You could edit Abraham funnel. Politico started it with vague charges that one, then Lincoln to make him sound like Hee Haw. But Perry is in a two, and eventually three unnamed women had been harassed near–death spiral, where all the previous stumbles of a rocky by Cain while he was president of the National Restaurant As - rollout create the expectation of new ones. Herman Cain’s so ci ation. Two of them received payouts from the association, boomlet arguably helps him, giving him time to regroup while of the kind that corporations award both to hush up embar - the spotlight falls elsewhere. rassing truths and to cut short frivolous litigation. Then Sharon Bialek, accompanied by shock-lawyer Gloria Allred, came for- n Gov. Mitt Romney came out for entitlement reform in a ward to accuse Cain directly. Then one of the anonymous speech. Federal Medicaid funding should be divvied up among accusers was identified as Karen Kraushaar, now a Treasury the states and its growth capped, he said. Social Security benefits Department spokesman. Cain, in his latest major comment should grow more moderately than planned. Medicare benefi - before press time, declared, “I have never acted inappro - ciaries should be able to take their share of the program’s funds priately with anyone—period!” If any of these accusations to purchase the insurance policy of their choice—including the proves to be true, Cain is done: Bill Clinton rode out his tor- choice of the traditional Medicare program. On all of these points nados, but the country, and especially the GOP, would not there is now a consensus among Republicans: The party will not stand for a repeat. If they peter out, Cain still stands as an be divided going into the election, which once looked possible. amateur in the big leagues: Politico had alerted him to its Governor Romney was wise, in his speech, to explain that the story days in advance, yet his early responses were slow and alternative to the politically dangerous steps he advocated was bumbling (at one point, he accused the Perry campaign of not doing nothing, but rather President Obama’s preferred option planting the stories, without evidence). The sex storm artifi- of higher taxes and rationing. Republicans will of course have cially prolongs Cain’s prominence in the polls by winning to respond to the inevitable distortions of their agenda, and him conservative sympathy, and by distracting from less remember always to connect it to its goals: an affordable retire-

ROMAN GENN sensational signs of political unreadiness. ment system, a stronger economy, and better health care.

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“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower week_QXP-1127940387.qxp 11/9/2011 2:30 PM Page 8

THE WEEK n The “supercommittee” charged with finding $1.2 trillion in 19 percent between 2005 and 2011; for women, it merely ticked deficit reduction over ten years has arrived at a familiar impasse up from 8 percent to 10 percent. The largest causes of the trend on taxes. Most Republicans say they will not countenance any net seem to be the economic downturn and its disproportionate tax increase, while most Democrats refuse to entertain restraints impact on young men. While one might suspect this stems from a on entitlement spending without one. The essential choice before deeper and continuing infantilization of modern American men, the supercommittee, as before anyone concerned about the coun- the number was lower in 2005 than it was in 1995. Given all the try’s long-term fiscal health, is how much to tax the middle class other phenomena these numbers are tied to—the continuing eco- and how much to spend on entitlements for it. Raising middle- nomic malaise, the questionable job market for low-skilled men class taxes in order to afford more middle-class benefits would be even when the economy is doing well, the dearth of men whom a mistake: If we want people to have more resources in retirement, today’s women find marriageable, etc.—we can only hope these let them keep the additional money themselves. The only sensible men find jobs and secure their independence. argument for a tax increase is political: It may be the price needed to secure real entitlement reform, and if so may be one worth pay- n Pres. Barack Obama, kicking off the vote-buying season, ing. But why should Republicans commit in public to tax increas- announced a plan under which college-loan repayment schedules es, as a few of them favor, in return for no public concessions on will be reduced for some borrowers. Under current law, borrow- the other side, which is what they are getting? The stakes in this ers can apply under the Income-Based Repayment program to negotiation are high, since the law that established the super - have their loan payments capped at 15 percent of their income and committee imposes automatic cuts to the defense budget if it fails. any remaining debt forgiven after 25 years of payments. Under If it does, Republicans will simply have to continue to fight for Obama’s plan, those numbers will change to 10 percent and 20 entitlement reforms and a strong defense. They can succeed on the years, respectively. (The change had been scheduled to take place supercommittee only if it is clear that failure is an option. in 2014, but President Obama decided to fast-track it.) This is a nod to Occupy Wall Street, the collection of petulant middle-class n Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) blasted President Obama’s “politics permanent adolescents camped out in Zuccotti Park in New York of division” in a speech at the Heritage Foundation. Ryan pro- City and elsewhere, whose top complaint appears to be college- ceeded through a series of contrasts between Obama’s approach loan debt. The government should get out of the college-loan busi- and that of Republicans: spending restraint vs. tax increases, the ness: Its loan guarantees and interest-rate shenanigans simply Why are undead Fannie and Freddie allowed to continue staggering on, wreaking destruction and wasting money at every step?

goal of upward mobility vs. an obsession with inequality, free shunt streams of cash into the higher-education market, encour- markets vs. an alliance of “bureaucrats and connected crony aging ever-higher tuition rates. A college education is extraordi- capitalists”; American success vs. European decline. These con- narily valuable to some people, and less so to a great many others. trasts are too schematic: Liberals have criticized Ryan for im - In neither case should the government subsidize it. plying that the U.S. has more economic mobility than Europe, when the best evidence suggests the reverse is now true. Some n Nothing succeeds like failure. That was made clear by the of Europe’s economic policies compare well with ours, such as latest news about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, where ten top its low taxes on corporations. But Ryan is quite correct to insist executives will share $12.8 million in bonuses for persuading that we not view economic policy through the distorting lens of Americans to modify mortgages on homes facing foreclosure. economic egalitarianism. We suspect that Americans care more Never mind that the federal programs involved—HAMP (the about mobility, and it is heartening to see a political leader give Home Affordable Modification Program) and its benighted off- voice to that sound instinct. spring, HARP (the Home Affordable Refinance Program)—suc- ceeded in modifying only a handful of mortgages, and those n The median wage—the paycheck taken home by the worker in often for people who could not afford them. Never mind also the middle of the income distribution—has fallen to the same that Fannie and Freddie, which of course got us into this mess level as in 1999. What looks like stagnation is actually worse, to start with, have just asked for another $6 billion to tide them since a higher proportion of the population was employed back over until their next request for funds. The question is why then. At least taxes are lower now. The recession and anemic undead Fannie and Freddie are allowed to continue staggering recovery explain the recent wage trends. But wage growth was not on, wreaking destruction and wasting money at every step. It’s robust even before the crisis hit. Rising health-insurance pre - time to dispatch them with a stake through the heart before they miums ate up a larger and larger share of workers’ compensation do even more damage. before they ever saw it. Without a more competitive and transpar- ent system of financing health care, we will keep running in place n Once there were the Wise Men—rich WASPs who moved even when the economy revives. seamlessly between Wall Street and Washington (usually the State Department), building America’s mid-century empire even as n According to the Census Bureau, the proportion of men ages they tended their portfolios. Now we have the Wild Men—same 25 to 34 who are living with their parents rose from 14 percent to career paths, different results. Their epitome is Jon Corzine. The

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THE WEEK former Goldman Sachs CEO won a Senate seat in New Jersey in Tennessee would change that, forcing firms such as Amazon and 2000, and the governorship in 2005. He spent a combined $100 eBay to calculate taxes and keep records for the 8,000 or so sales- million in the two races. But the Garden State, under his steward- tax jurisdictions in the United States, offering sales-tax simplifi- ship, was an even bigger spender. In 2009, New Jerseyans re- cation in exchange. A similar bill was proposed by Democratic placed him with Chris Christie. Corzine went back to the private senator Dick Durbin of Illinois earlier in the year, and a separate sector as CEO of MF Global, a multinational bond dealer. He effort is afoot to have the so-called supercommittee institute new snapped up Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese debt, betting that the Internet-tax measures as part of its deficit-reduction plan. A series Eurocrats would not let these countries fail. But as the market in of exemptions and the vagaries of law have given online retailers bad euro-debt softened, MF Global went bankrupt. About the only an advantage in certain situations, and there is no good way to base Corzine hasn’t slid into, spikes flying, is higher education. resolve that. Imposing a heavy new tax-compliance burden on Are there any Ivy League schools with billion-dollar endowments these firms unquestionably will obstruct their businesses. If we he might manage? wish our economy to prosper, it makes little sense to force vital and innovative new enterprises to adopt business practices that would have been familiar to Richard Sears and Alvah C. Roebuck. n Michelle Obama was firing up the crowd at a Democratic The free and dynamic Internet economy should be the model for National Committee fundraiser in Jacksonville, Fla.: “Let’s reforming unproductive and outdated arrangements with roots in not forget what it meant when my husband appointed those distant history—not the other way around. If online commerce is two brilliant Supreme Court justices, and for the first time in to be taxed at all, it should be taxed at the business-unit level— history our daughters and our sons watched three women take meaning that if the product ships from Topeka, Topeka gets the their seats on our nation’s highest court.” She continued, “But sales tax—and there only. This would keep compliance burdens more importantly, let us never forget the impact their de - low and promote tax competition, a beneficial thing. cisions will have on our lives for decades to come—on our privacy and our security, on whether we can speak freely or n How socialists love dams! No propaganda magazine out of the worship openly, and, yes, love whomever we choose. That is USSR failed to include a picture of some mighty dam; and the what’s at stake here.” Love whomever we Three Gorges dam on the Yangtse River is Chinese Communism’s choose. Do Republicans plan to ban proudest engineering achievement. Nothing says “heroic materi- love? Is Mrs. O. making an allusion to alism” like a dam. No surprise, therefore, to see Rachel Maddow same-sex marriage? Doesn’t her hus- on MSNBC standing in front of the Hoover Dam telling viewers: band oppose it, currently? Speak freely. “You can’t be the guy who builds this. You can’t be the town that Isn’t it Obama-supporting liberals who builds this. You can’t even be the state that builds this. You have impose speech codes on campus? Worship to be the country that builds something like this.” So the Hoover openly. Is it conservatives who have driven Dam was built by government employees? No: It was built by a religion out of the public square? Etc. The first consortium of six private companies. It was financed by govern- lady’s speeches aren’t any more closely reasoned ment money, though, wasn’t it? Only if you think there truly is than her husband’s. such a thing as government money: The dam was financed by taxes drawn from the economy. The federal government super- vised the project, at least, didn’t it? It did—and the consortium had n Are teachers overpaid? Andrew Biggs of the American Enter - to fight all the way against pettifogging regulations and efforts by prise Institute and Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation have Interior Secretary Harold Ickes to have the workforce unionized. a new paper arguing that they are. Conservatives have long point- The Hoover Dam was finished early and under budget, by Amer- ed to widening wage gaps between similarly situated public- and ican business. private-sector workers as evidence that powerful public unions have hijacked the labor market. Liberals have responded that, n Sunlight may not be an efficient form of energy, but it con - when one takes into account the average public-sector worker’s tinues to be the best disinfectant, as the $535 million taxpayer- greater education and experience, they are actually underpaid rel- guaranteed loan to now-defunct solar-energy company Solyndra ative to the private sector. But what if all that education isn’t worth reminds us. Uncovered documents have already shown that senior that much? Biggs and Richwine marshal data showing that educa- White House officials tried to influence the loan-approval process tion majors enter university with below-average SAT, GRE, and IQ in favor of Solyndra, whose chief investor happened to be a scores, but receive above-average GPAs, and go on to make more prolific Democratic fundraiser. The Obama administration is money than other students with similar cognitive abilities. In any now refusing to comply with a House-issued subpoena to turn generalization there are, of course, many exceptions. But if this is over additional documents relating to the loan. Reasonable people the rule, it is consequential. Arguing that teachers are overpaid can debate the question of executive privilege, but the debacle has because they are relatively dumb is not the easiest sell in a culture certainly shone a bright and unflattering light on a president who that values educators. But acknowledging it, and fixing it, are pledged to make transparency the “hallmark” of his adminis - critical for a culture that values education. tration and hold himself “to a new standard of openness.” NEWSCOM / GETTY / n Under current law, online retailers can be coerced into collect- n Not content merely to stand and marvel at the scale of its $8 bil- AFP / ing and remitting sales taxes only in those jurisdictions in which lion budget shortfall, the state of California has devised a plan to they have a physical presence. A bill sponsored by Republican spend yet more. The objet d’affection? A high-speed-rail line

JEWEL SAMAD senators Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Lamar Alexander of between San Diego and Sacramento. The project’s purpose is ill-

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defined, and its projected cost equal to an entire year’s state bud- n On November 8, Ohioans voted to repeal Senate Bill 5, a 302- get, but that does not seem to have discouraged its advocates, even page law of collective-bargaining reforms that Gov. John Kasich as the price tag has risen from the $43 billion figure when it was and the state legislature approved in March. Unlike in Wisconsin, approved by referendum to a potential $98.5 billion, according to where similar reforms have survived several assassination at - the latest estimate of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, tempts by the Left, in Ohio, public-employee unions won the and the “high speed” part has been called into question. It appears election by defining the issue: Senate Bill 5 was an overreach by that the fastest thing about the proposition is the way it has been newly elected Republicans flush with power. Despite the GOP’s dashed through: “It’s being rushed through without proper protestations, the argument stuck: Voters soured on the law even research and without vetting it to the public,” Assemblyman though majorities of them favored certain aspects of it, such as the David Valadao (R.) said. That blur in the distance? Fiscal respon- requirement that public employees pay at least 10 percent of their sibility in the Golden State. wages toward their guaranteed pensions. It didn’t help that the

Percentage Play

HE top 1 percent is a funny thing. If you got rid of in the group for the entire 17-year run. Meanwhile, roughly T all the 1 percenters tomorrow, a new top 1 percent 80 percent of American millionaires are the first generation would take its place. There will always be a top in their families to be rich. 1 percent. This dynamic is more ironclad than the apho- In other words, the top 1 percent is a mathematical palace risms about getting rid of drug dealers, kudzu, or cock- that many people visit, but where few reside for long. The roaches. They used to sing “There’ll Always Be an same largely holds true for the way stations of economic England”; well, that’s mere wishful thinking compared progress. Four-fifths of 40-year-old Americans do better with the mathematical imperative permanently requiring than their parents did when they were 40. It’s also worth not- a top 1 percent. ing that the material stuff—electronics, food, cars, etc.—of That’s why the sloganeering about the top 1 percent is today’s poor is fundamentally superior to the stuff poor peo- simultaneously brilliant and daft. It dehumanizes the villains ple had in earlier generations. A twentysomething with a car, of the tale by turning them into a per- an iPhone, and a modestly equipped manent mathematical abstraction. apartment is, in significant respects, No reform will ever go far enough richer than the richest 1 percent from be cause there, on the horizon, like a century ago, whether he feels that a moon you can sail toward for way or not. And many poor Amer - all eternity without ever getting any icans are richer than rich people in closer to, will remain the 1 percent other countries. looking down on the lumpen-ninety- Now, to point this out doesn’t niners with cold disdain. In this mean everything is fine. The fact that sense the “top 1 percent” is a more the grading of such things is subjec- Marxist formulation than anything tive and relative doesn’t justify com- found in Marx. Karl talked about the placency. If you are born poor in this inexorable laws of historical progress and the ironclad country, it is still too hard to make yourself un-poor. Scott rules of Hegelian determinism. But he at least conceived of Winship, who wrote about economic mobility in the last a day when the dog would catch the car. The 1 percenters issue of NR, explains that “picking the right parents” remains are such a complete abstraction that they will remain for all the best way to ensure relative economic success in life. eternity like the unreachable final drawing in one of those But that is not an indictment of America; it is an indictment Escher paintings of an Escher painting of an Escher paint- of bad parents. If you changed the habits of the heart at the ing. bottom of the economic ladder, those at the bottom would Hence also the stupidity of it all. For while there will have a much easier time climbing out of it. And that’s why always be a top 1 percent, the people occupying that reducing these things to quintiles and percentages is so evil. category come and go with remarkable frequency. The Fueled by envy, the self-described 99 percenters exonerate permanence resides entirely in the abstraction, not in themselves of all responsibility for their woes and place the the reality. blame on abstractions, as if being in the top 1 percent were According to IRS data, from 1992 to 2008, 73 percent of not an admirable accomplishment but the unfair happen-

GETTY the 400 richest taxpayers were in that category for only a stance of a wholly random lottery. / single year and only one-tenth of 1 percent of them were —JONAH GOLDBERG MARIO TAMA

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THE WEEK unions outspent their rivals by almost three to one, but Repub - be infinite, there is no reason to believe that 6 or 7 or 10 billion is licans could have done better: They could have passed these anywhere near the limit. It is now clear that science can expand reforms in several smaller (and more politically palatable) pieces agricultural production greatly; that starvation is almost always of legislation that would have been easier to defend. Chastened the result of bad government, not finite resources; and that pros- by defeat, they seem prepared to do just that. We say, Give it perity and modernity, especially the education of women, will another go. lead to a natural decrease in birth rates. So we greet Baby 7B by saying the more the merrier, and hoping his or her generation will n After the Department of Justice threatened a civil-rights law- realize that the best fix for the purported ills of overpopulation is suit, Ohio’s Cuyahoga County agreed to print bilingual ballots— not planned economies, forced wealth transfers, or draconian lim- and so voters on November 8 saw three proposed statewide laws its on family size, but technology, democracy, and free markets. displayed in both English and Spanish, side by side. Beneath the English versions, the ballot asked, “Shall the law [or amendment] n Those who know about Israel’s intentions toward the Iranian be approved?” To record their choice, however, voters had to look nuclear weapon aren’t talking, and those who are talking don’t below the Spanish-language question, “¿Debérá aprobarse la know. Which is why Israeli president Shimon Peres has upset the enmienda?” and mark ovals labeled “Yes/Sí” and “No/No.” The applecart by telling the world that an Israeli strike on Iran’s odd design, observed the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “causes confu- nuclear facilities is likely. Or again, with more nuance or possibly sion.” Even more confusing is why the federal government would more linguistic clumsiness, he said, “The possibility of a military force foreign-language ballots on anyone: Most immigrants who attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the appli- naturalize have to demonstrate competency in English. Cuyahoga cation of a diplomatic option.” On behalf of David Ben-Gurion’s County is an especially strange target because less than 5 percent government half a century ago, Peres was procuring arms and of its population is Hispanic, according to the 2010 Census. Its is widely thought to have pushed for Israel to have a nuclear recent election now becomes the latest perversion of the Voting program. Now in his late eighties, he has long since become the Rights Act, which has been confounding our language, Babel- national peacenik. Can it be coincidence that Israel has been prac- like, for more than a generation. ticing long-range air strikes and holding large-scale civil-defense exercises simulating the response to all kinds of missile attacks? nThe University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, which The International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog, receives at least $60 million annually from the federal govern- also happens to be publishing an unprecedented warning that Iran ment, informed nurses in its same-day-surgery unit that beginning has reached the final stages before fitting nuclear warheads onto in October they would be required to assist in performing abor- missiles. In the circumstances, Peres might have been put up to tions. Nurses who objected were threatened with termination, and propagating misinformation, disinformation, or a bluff or double twelve of them have filed a suit against UMDNJ for violating state bluff, or maybe he was just testing whether Washington could and federal laws that explicitly prohibit such coercion in publicly campaign seriously for international sanctions. One way or funded institutions. A federal court has issued a temporary re - another, the strategy of defense against Iran by keeping heads straining order against the hospital until a hearing scheduled for deep under the sand appears to be coming to an end. November 18. UMDNJ has a long history of lawlessness: It was the subject of a federal criminal investigation several years ago for n Earlier this fall, the Palestinian Authority made a bid to become massive Medicaid and Medicare fraud and the awarding of no-bid a full member of the United Nations, despite not having achieved contracts to the politically connected. “This place is a public statehood through a peace agreement with Israel. The bid failed. embarrassment,” said U.S. attorney Chris Christie at the time. It But the PA has now been successful at becoming a full member of is still that. a U.N. body, UNESCO. More than a hundred nations voted in favor of the Palestinians’ admission. The United States immedi- n Two employees of Kermit Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion ately cut off funding to UNESCO, as a 1990s law requires: U.N. mill—where babies were routinely delivered alive and then bodies that admit the Palestinians as a full member, despite no stabbed with scissors, where Gosnell instructed his employees legitimate statehood, shall not benefit from American largesse. where to sever a baby’s spinal cord to “ensure fetal demise” (his So, UNESCO has just lost 22 percent of its funding. The 107 expression), and where the infant bodies were disposed of in shoe- nations that voted for the Palestinians’ admission probably boxes and spring-water bottles, sometimes after having their thought they were doing them a favor. To encourage Palestinians limbs cut off for Gosnell’s gruesome collection of specimens— in the belief that they can get what they want without making have pled guilty to third-degree murder in connection with eight peace with Israel does no one any favors. deaths at the clinic. But only those eight. n Cuba is embarked on a very modest program of market- n On Halloween, according to the U.N., the world’s popula- oriented reforms: Cubans will be allowed to set up independent tion hit an estimated 7 billion. All the predictable hand-wringing businesses, to buy and sell automobiles, and to buy and sell real ensued from all the predictable quarters, though by this point the estate—all within very narrowly limited confines. Amusingly, co- anguished response has a ritualistic quality, since it was the fourth dictator Raúl Castro explained his newly liberal attitude thus: time the odometer has turned over since Paul Ehrlich’s hysterical “The state has no business getting involved in a matter between 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb ignited a wave of neo- two individuals.” Well, well. There is now a fairly well-defined Malthusianism. Malthus’s and Ehrlich’s argument was simple: arc to socialists’ reform projects worldwide: The more robust the Fixed amount of arable land, ever-increasing population, result socialism, the quicker the country’s impoverishment; once the starvation. Yet while the world’s capacity to feed people may not impoverishment has reached a certain sufficiently desperate stage,

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THE WEEK reforms begin—at first by turning a blind eye to black markets, now impossible to return [the sculpture] to its original state,” and then by instituting official reforms in key areas. And then— lamented a gallery spokesman. Really? How difficult is it to stain nothing, usually. China, Cuba, even North Korea have seen vari- a bowl? And if they hadn’t told us about the incident, would ous degrees of liberalization, but none of them has emerged, or anyone have known? shows any sign of emerging, as a decent and democratic society. Even the Russians, for whom the West had high hopes during the n The acronym STEM has been showing up a lot in newspaper age of glasnost, are slipping back into authoritarianism. So reporting about education. STEM stands for “science, technology, Cubans will be allowed to buy houses—on the Castros’ terms, engineering, and math.” These are obviously fields in which a with the Castros’ permission, unless the Castros change their modern nation needs plenty of expertise. Does the U.S. have minds. Any new openness is to be welcomed, but there is more enough? The administration does not think so: President Obama to life than the housing market. has called on colleges to graduate 10,000 more engineers a year and 100,000 new teachers with STEM majors. So how’s that n It used to be an iron rule of immigration, applied in all nations, going? Not well, reports the New York Times. Forty percent of stu- that rights of settlement were conditional on the immigrant’s not dents planning engineering and science majors either switch to being a charge on the public fisc. That rule is long gone in Europe other subjects or drop out altogether. Principal reasons: STEM and the Anglosphere. All advanced Western nations are plagued subjects are difficult and unglamorous, and lead to only mediocre by foreigners who freeload on the welfare systems that citizens wages. The last of those reasons follows from the temptation, have built up over decades. Now, however, Switzerland seems to which is irresistible to U.S. firms and unrestrained by any gov- be moving back toward the older, wiser dispensation. In the more ernment action, to preferentially employ cheap foreign STEM conservative Swiss cantons at least, information sharing has been graduates over Americans. The second follows from the last, and established between social services and immigration authorities, from our culture’s fascination with finance, law, and entertain- so that welfare-dependent immigrants can be identified. The ment. The first is adamant. Zurich-based newspaper Tages Anzeiger reported on the case of a Turkish woman who moved to Switzerland in 2006 to marry a n In 1979, William Niskanen was working for Ford—which was Turk already resident. The man was abusive, so the woman left then on Washington’s doorstep, hat in hand, begging for protec- him following the birth of their daughter in 2010. Thereafter tion from the Japanese menace, in the form of quotas on imported mother and child lived solely on welfare benefits. After the Japanese cars. Niskanen argued to Ford’s executives that all of divorce came through, immigration authorities in Zurich deported the political favoritism in the world would not save the company, them. The old rule was a sound one; we hope this is the beginning which was making subpar cars with terrible fuel economy. Nis - of its revival. kanen was fired for his advice, even though Ford ultimately took it. (A prophet is not without honor, except in his own boardroom.) n The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo celebrated an Ford survived, and so did Niskanen, who went on to have a bril- Islamist political victory in Tunisia by naming the Prophet liant career offering similarly good advice to American business Mohammed editor-in-chief and depicting him in cartoons. For and political leaders, spending 23 years as chairman of the Cato these jokes its Paris office was firebombed. “We won’t let it get to Institute. Educated at Harvard and the University of Chicago, us,” said editor Stéphane Charbonnier. It got to Bruce Crumley, a veteran of the Reagan administrations in Sacramento and Time’s Paris bureau chief, who wrote a scathing account of Washington, Niskanen was principled rather than partisan, intel- the attacked. “Idiotic,” “divisive,” “destructive,” “stupid,” “outra- lectually honest, curious, and famed for his gracious manner. As geous,” “unacceptable,” “condemnable”—that’s the language an academic, he was an important proponent of public-choice Crumley unloaded on Charlie Hebdo. Crumley found the maga- economics; as a leader, he helped make Cato the invaluable zine’s “claims . . . of exercising free speech” “unconvincing,” institution it is today. Dead at 78. R.I.P. since “in Western nations . . . that right no longer needs to be proved.” Doesn’t it? Theo van Gogh, Dutch filmmaker, was mur- dered, and Kurt Westergaard, Danish cartoonist, suffered a home THE CULTURE invasion, all for treating Islam harshly or even lightly. Didn’t Violent Occupation Crumley notice? The case for free speech, alas, seems to need proving to some of its primary beneficiaries. HAT was quick. After scarcely two months, the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began as an urban, ideal- n The German artist Martin Kippenberger died in 1997, but his T istic Woodstock, has entered its Altamont phase. The works still generate controversy. In 2008, an Italian museum left-wing tent cities, scattered across the country, have become defied Pope Benedict by refusing to remove Kippenberger’s magnets for bums and criminals and centers of dirt and disease. sculpture Feet First from an exhibition. Feet First shows a green The mother camp, at Zuccotti Park in downtown New York, frog nailed to a wooden cross. Now Herr Kippenberger’s work is has set up an 18-person “safety tent” to accommodate women in the news again. A different sculpture, titled When It Starts terrorized by groping, predatory males. A female Occupier in Dripping From the Ceiling, is currently on display at a gallery in Vancouver died of a drug overdose; Occupy Portland an - Dortmund, Germany. This piece, valued at $1.1 million, is a tower nounced an outbreak of head and body lice. Washington, D.C., of wooden slats with a plastic bowl at the bottom. The bowl is Occupiers protesting an Americans for Prosperity conference deliberately discolored to make some kind of “statement” (don’t shoved a 78-year-old woman down cement stairs, sending her ask us). One of the gallery’s cleaning staff, however, took the dis- to the emergency room with bruises. The worst came in Oak - coloration at non-ironic face value and scrubbed it clean. “It is land, where cops accidently fractured the skull of a protester

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THE WEEK who was an Iraq War vet with a tear-gas canister; a week later Occupiers rampaged through the city streets, and successfully shut down the nation’s fifth largest port. The Occupy movement brings together three distinct but converging groups of people. Self-styled anarchists (actually left-wing revolutionaries) are more common in Europe than here, though they did stage a riot at a 1999 World Trade Or - gan iz ation meeting in Seattle. Given the chance, they will push Occupy demonstrations directly to the confrontation stage. Most of the warm bodies are young people, from college age and up. In 2008, many of them were thrilled by Barack Obama; three years later, hope has changed. They have reason to feel hopeless: A healthy economy provides opportunity, but a stretch of 9 percent unemployment means spending your ex - tended adolescence in your parents’ basement. Rather than readjust their priorities or understand why recessions linger, they rail at the nature of things. Alongside the violent and the unhappy are the organizers: the remnants of ACORN; labor unions looking for a left-wing Tea Party; and enabling local politicians, eager to strike poses. New George Papandreou York mayor Michael Bloomberg is an egregious example of the last: The archetypal Wall Street tycoon, anxious to cast himself or a Cyprus, but which in any case will be decided in accord as a rights crusader as his third term ends, encouraged Occupy with no country’s national interest but in accord with the inter- Wall Street in its early days, though he has begun to change his ests of the bureaucratic elite in Brussels. tune. There is very little reason for Greece, Spain, and Portugal to The movement could end in ugly confrontations or the ad - share a single monetary policy with Germany and France— journ ment provide by winter. But it will leave an aftertaste. their public finances, labor conditions, balance of trade, and Those who were not molested may look back to their days in other economic fundamentals are radically different, and can- tents as Arcadias of idealism and solidarity. Aging baby not be brought into harmony without something approaching a boomers cheer on Occupy from the sidelines, remembering the soft dictatorship. The business cycles of the members of the Sixties; Occupiers will do the same, world without end. In the European Union are not coordinated, and neither are their eco- shorter run, the aftereffects could be acute. Play-acting com- nomic interests. Less competitive nations such as Greece suffer munal organizing has given thousands of people a taste of par- particularly from sharing a currency with highly productive allel institutions; if the recession dips twice and hard, and if nations such as Germany, because it takes away the option of Obama loses a painfully close race, Occupy veterans may try using currency depreciation to make one’s exports more attrac- again, with revolutionary zeal. tive on world markets. Germany, a strong exporter, has benefit- ed from this arrangement. There is some wisdom in human traditions, and it turns out that the Germans and the Greeks have THE WORLD ECONOMY separate countries for a reason—one of them being that they are Greece on Fire separate peoples. But Greece needs the money. Unhappily, the Europeans GREEk default appears to be imminent, and a change aren’t much in funds these days, which has them appealing of government is under way. Prime Minister George to China for assistance in their bailout scheme. Which is to A Papandreou promised and then canceled a national say, not only would the deal make Athens entirely subordinate referendum on conditions to be imposed on Greece by the to Brussels, it would make Athens entirely subordinate to a European Union in return for another bailout. When it became Brussels that is partly subordinate to Beijing. clear that his government would not survive the turmoil, he The best and least likely outcome of this mess would be to entered into negotiations with the opposition to select the pre- have the economically stable northern-European countries mier of a new national-unity government, the purpose of which break away to form their own union. The second-best and more is to ensure the continued flow of bailout payments. As of this likely outcome is for Greece to leave the eurozone, voluntarily writing, the favored candidate was former European Central or involuntarily. Either scenario would probably entail a default Bank executive Lucas Papademos. and would bring about massive economic disruption, and So the Greek people are not to be allowed a vote on their own not just for the Europeans. But the alternative is a prolonged, national economic policies. That is the European Union in slow-motion crisis and the entrenching of the one-size-fits-all, miniature: economically incoherent and politically incompati- central-planning approach from Brussels that is a very large AP / ble with democracy and national sovereignty. This incom - part of the present problem and no part of its solution. pa tibility has come to a head now over fiscal questions, but it might have come to a head as easily over questions of national EDITOR’S NOTE: The next issue of NATIONAL REVIEW defense or immigration—questions in which the interests of a will appear in three weeks.

PETROS GIANNAKOURIS France or a Finland are very different from those of a Bulgaria

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lilies, they toil not, neither do they spin. They certainly do not photosynthesize, yet neither do they seriously expect to go hun- gry or consider it even a vague possibility. Having known no shortage, they are not grateful for an abundance that exceeds all previous abundance, nor do they enquire where it has come from. For them, abun- dance is natural, hardship anomalous. By the standards of all previously existing humanity, and much of humanity that still exists today, they are—in short—spoilt. Many among them are sufficiently spoilt that they revolt against what has spoilt them, namely the regime of private pro - perty. They have absorbed and made their own a prejudice that is widespread and that they believe to be generous, namely that against the rich, though it is an open ques- tion whether this or racial prejudice was responsible for more deaths in the last century. Now of course there is such a thing as The Church of Grievance illicit enrichment, ranging from the social- ly and economically deleterious to the Occupy Wall Street’s dangerous creed downright illegal. Sometimes such enrich- ment does great harm, and it is never attrac- tive to see. But it does not follow from this BY ANTHONY DANIELS that such enrichment is the only or even the major cause of the ills of so complex a soci- rOTEST and violence are like gun- some times feel that he is being exploited ety as that of the United States. Such ills are powder and explosion: It is not to pay the debts of others, contracted fool- often dialectically related: The sub-prime altogether surprising when one ishly or corruptly by both borrower and crisis, for example, started as liberal social P leads to the other. This is espe- lender? Who is pleased when chief execu- engineering for the sake of partisan advan- cially so when the protest is not the expres- tives who have overseen, or even actively tage and ended as suspect financial manip- sion of a particular grievance that can be brought about, the collapse of their finan- ulation for short-term personal gain. easily assuaged by some specific measure, cial institutions depart with sums of money If chief executive officers of corpora- but of a general resentment and a sense of that most people can only dream of, having tions have appropriated shareholders’ fundamental dissatisfaction requiring paid themselves royally in the meantime? funds, have not bureaucratic drones seized, deep but unspecified and diffuse change. I have reason, then, to heave a brick and on a vaster scale, taxpayers’ funds? A The vaguer the demand, the greater the through my bank’s window, just like bureaucrat who is paid $100,000 a year to frus tration; and there is no balm to the frus- every one else, and in protest block the do something that does not need to be trated soul like the sound of the tinkling street on which it operates. But the demon- done, or is actually harmful, is no more of smashed plate glass. Destruction is the strators are not merely complaining that laudable than a CEO who pays himself five compensation of the resentful. every time they phone their bank they are times as much as he would be prepared to When people build large bonfires in made to jump through hoops, finally to work for. But it would be wrong to hate all places such as Oakland, they can hardly reach someone, possibly on the other side bureaucrats indiscriminately, both because claim that they are on the side of the fire of the world, who sounds as alert as a bear many really do try to serve the public inter- brigade. The crackling of flames is a joyful woken in the midst of its hibernation. They est and because such hatred feeds on itself sound to those who think that their anger is are instead protesting the supposed root and can lead to the Oklahoma City bomb- a manifestation of generosity of spirit; and of all evil, for though secularist, they think ing. There is nothing quite like hatred for to burn down a city in the name of right- themselves of Biblical stature: getting things out of proportion. eousness has long been among the illicit Those who see evil only in corporate pleasures of mankind. For the love of money is the root of all evil: greed see its symbols everywhere, for This is not to say that anger is always which while some coveted after, they have example (and perhaps especially) in build- misplaced, or frustration unjustified. Who, erred from the faith. . . . But thou, O man ings that, by comparison with an individual of God, flee these things; and follow after when dealing with his bank, does not or his belongings, are huge and sumptuous. righteousness. The huge and sumptuous are a provocation Mr. Daniels is the author of Utopias Elsewhere Of course, the protesters are not exactly to the dissatisfied and anxious, who draw

DARREN GYGI and other books. lilies of the field either: Even if, like the an invidious comparison with their own

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condition. They come to see these symbols Spending was too high, tax revenues too almost as individuals, or extensions of low. Foreign lenders filled much of the gap. individuals, whom they blame for their dis- Cristina’s Today’s Greeks know how the story ends. satisfaction. By causing the symbols harm, They should also note this: Billions in ad - by destroying them, they are therefore act- Whirl ditional borrowing and belated attempts at ing against human evil itself. Churches, austerity were not enough to put things synagogues, palaces, mansions, banks, and Argentina heads into troubled waters right. The economy plunged. Capital fled. offices have always been the object of In December 2001, the government intro- popular outrage or resentment. To destroy BY ANDREW STUTTAFORD duced the corralito (later toughened into leads to a relief of feelings, if never to an the corralón), a measure that (more or less) amelioration of one’s actual situation. How F you want to understand why froze all bank accounts. argentina went many of us have never felt the urge to argentina’s Cristina Fernández de into default shortly thereafter. destroy something in a fit of rage, though Kirchner triumphed quite so con- This remains (fingers crossed) the we know perfectly well that a smashed I clusively (with 54 percent of the largest sovereign-debt default ($95 billion) plate or cup will avail us nothing? vote against 17 percent for her nearest in history. The dollar peg was dropped a When these natural, or at any rate com- challenger) in October’s presidential elec- few weeks later; the peso crumpled. Dollar mon, reactions are united to an ideology tion, the University of Buenos aires’s deposits in argentine banks were swapped they become very dangerous indeed. The Museum of Foreign Debt is a splendid into hugely depreciated pesos, a precedent idea that our whole society is illegitimate, place to start. That such an institution that ought to alarm savers in the eurozone’s founded substantially on injustice, fraud, exists says nothing good about argentine PIIGS. If the drachma and its feeble kin and misappropriation, justifies almost any financial history. What it contains sug- are to return, there will be corralitos first. violent or destructive behavior. Normal gests yet more turbulence ahead. Depositors have been abandoning their inhibitions evaporate; smashing a window The museum is a showplace for an un- banks in Greece, Ireland, and elsewhere. or setting fire to a bank becomes a virtuous convincing national alibi. argentina is in - Who can blame them? act, an act in favour of the people. The nocent and maligned, its tale not one of argentina’s financial breakdown had world, no matter how complex, has been squandered wealth, but of victimhood, as it been accompanied by trouble in the streets divided neatly into them and us: them, the is repeatedly plundered by anglo-Saxon (of and chaos in the corridors of power. De - bloodsuckers, the parasites; us, the victims course!) financiers, helped in later years by pending on how the term “president” is of the bloodsuckers and parasites: their stooges at the IMF. Under Juan Perón, defined, the country had as many as five however, things had been different. During of them within two weeks. The last was The history of all hitherto existing society the Peronato, the foreign debt was repaid. eduardo Duhalde, appointed interim presi- is the history of class struggles. . . . Op - Indeed it was, but (as is not explained in dent by the legislative assembly. after elec- pressor and oppressed stood in constant the museum) that owed more to the capital tions 16 months later, he was succeeded by opposition to each other. . . . Our epoch, surpluses built up during World War II than Néstor Kirchner, a left-Peronist governor the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: It has sim- to Peronism’s autarkic economic model, from refreshingly distant Patagonia. The plified class antagonisms. Society as a which was in deep trouble by the time its fever had broken. argentina took a mulli- whole is more and more splitting up into creator was deposed in 1955. No matter, gan. Private savers had been crushed, and two great hostile camps, into two great Perón’s curious mix of fascism, corpora - much of the middle class was pushed into classes directly facing each other—Bour - tism, and evita has never quite lost its poverty, but many businesses were saved geoisie and Proletariat. grip on a nation forever searching for a by the effective “devaluation” of their magi cal solution to its largely self-inflicted debt. Peso collapse bailed out exporters and I quote, of course, from the Communist woes. and now, a decade of growth un der a local manufacturers battered by the once- Manifesto. If we replace the words “bour- new generation of Peronists has convinced overvalued currency, as did a reviving geoisie” and “proletariat” with “Wall many argentinians that the conjurer- economy fueled by the accelerating global Street” and “common people,” we recog- caudillo was on to something. commodity boom (argentina is a major nise an attitude to be witnessed not far from It’s hard to blame them. Just ten years food exporter) and increased government the offices of NaTIONal RevIeW. Just ago, the botched free-market experimenta- spending. That spending was financed by because it is wrong, a grotesque simplifi - tion of the 1990s had pushed argentina into the fruits of recovery, the windfall from cation, does not mean it is not gratifying— the abyss. It began well enough, but peg- taxes on those ever-more-valuable food and dangerous. ging the peso to the U.S. dollar (a key part exports and, in a sense, the lower debt bur- For the moment in our societies reli- of the process, and the wrong currency to den that was default’s naughty reward. In gious buildings are safe (that is one sign of choose) without sufficient structural reform 2005, argentina repaid its IMF loans the decline of the importance of religion), left argentina increasingly uncompeti - ahead of schedule. Kirchner no longer though there is no guarantee that attacks tive. lower export prices and successive intended to listen to the organization’s will not return. Much more serious and emerging-markets crises in the latter part nasty “neo-liberal” advice. dangerous at the present conjuncture is a of the decade made matters worse. The Growth continued to soar. Kirchner festering hatred of all that, whatever its country’s budget swung wildly off-kilter. would have won comfortable reelection in defects, errors, and crimes, has made us the 2007, but stood aside for his wife, Cristina, most fortunate and privileged people in Mr. Stuttaford is a contributing editor of an abrasive would-be evita, but without her history. NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE. cult appeal. Only a few months after taking

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office, she lost a brutal fight with farmers controls, whether direct (such as those on over plans to hike export taxes, a defeat that utilities) or indirect (export taxes), have contributed to her allies’ taking a hit in merely forced this inflation to express itself What’s New nationwide legislative elections in 2009. through shortages and underinvestment, a In a tango variant of the Putin-Medvedev variant of the distortions now emerging as In Baku? waltz, Néstor Kirchner was due to succeed a result of the country’s growing protec- his wife as their party’s candidate in the tionist tilt. Alas, not much presidential elections in 2011, but ended up With public spending still roaring ahead, doing something even more useful for the a cash crunch is drawing closer, exacerbat- BY DAVID PRYCE-JONES cause: He died last year, aged only 60. ed by the way that the 2001 default and its tragedy is often a vote winner, and par- heavily litigated aftermath have (and per- ut of the blue, I found myself ticularly so in a place like enthusiastically haps this is just as well) constrained access invited to Baku. Azer bai jan morbid, histrionic Argentina. Cristina’s ap - to international capital markets. the gov- has immense deposits of oil proval ratings jumped 25 points. As a char- ernment has taken to raiding the central O and natural gas, and in a blithe acter in a novel by Argentine author tomás bank’s foreign-currency reserves to pay nouveau riche spirit chooses to put itself Eloy Martínez once said, “Every time a those overseas debts it does acknowledge. on the map by spending fortunes having corpse enters the picture in this country, In a different smash-and-grab, private anyone and everyone come on a visit. the history goes mad.” A black-clad Cristina pension funds worth $24 billion were World Amateur Boxing Championships threw her widow’s weeds into the political nationalized in 2008 (in the pensioners’ had just been staged in Baku, and a battle with aplomb, gusto, and tears. Nés - best interest, of course), a move that also conference on humanitarianism was to tor (“he is watching, he is here, isn’t he?”) boosted the state’s ability to meddle in follow. On arrival I was taken in charge haunted her speeches and her rallies, trans- some of the country’s largest companies, a by a posse of minders, put up in a five- formed into the lost leader who sacrificed temptation that it will probably find diffi- star hotel, and fed at a succession of all. It worked. Wander around Buenos cult to resist: the Kirchner years have banquets, meals, and receptions. the Aires, a city more skeptical about the already seen the outright nationalization Soviet experience in old days had taught Kirchners than most, and you will see of a number of enterprises. me that guests with a full stomach are numerous stenciled graffiti of Néstor as El the markets have read the runes: For - expected to have an empty head. they’re Eternauta, an iconic Argentine cartoon fig- eign direct investment in Argentina has then supposed to go home and to spin the ure who traveled through time and space, slowed sharply and the locals have fol- illusion that everything they’ve seen on and to the left. Cristina, already Evita, also lowed suit. Capital flight is accelerating the trip is for the best in the best of all became Juan to Néstor’s Evita, keeper of and is now estimated at $3 billion per possible worlds. the martyr-spouse’s flame. month, something that has provoked a Azerbaijan is one of half a dozen Mus - the economy lent a large hand. By draconian response, even if reserves (for lim republics that were colonies of the year’s end, GDP will have grown by over now) remain reasonably healthy. Just after Soviet union until that empire’s collapse 90 percent since its 2002 nadir. the spoils the election, Kirchner launched a new 20 short years ago. All of them have adjust- of success have been spread around. series of initiatives designed to bring dol- ed from the rule of Com mu nist strongmen thanks to better times, unemployment has lars back home. these included ordering to the rule of Muslim strongmen. Inde - been more than halved from 2002’s 20 the country’s energy and mining business- pendence has created laboratory condi- percent. the number of those in poverty es to repatriate their export revenues, and tions in which to observe how the historic has fallen sharply. Income inequality has compelling insurance companies to cash legacy of Mus lim absolutism is incompat- shrunk. Social spending has leapt. the in their foreign investments by year’s end. ible with to day’s demands for government descendants of Evita’s descamisados (the these diktats were another display of an of the people by the people. shirtless) knew whom to thank. throw in a authoritarianism that has become more Nine million strong, the Azeris of Azer - divided and uninspiring opposition, and visible as the economic miracle comes baijan are mostly Shia Muslims who have the rest was victory. under pressure. Economists have been never gone in for jihad or extremism (18 the worry is what comes next. Growth fined for publishing inflation data that dif- million more Azeris are a minority on the is forecast to ease to a still impressive 4–5 fer from the official spin. the inconve- far side of the border with Iran). Baku, the percent in 2012 (after a little over 8 percent niently independent president of the capital, had the reputation in the 19th this year), but envious PIIGS should be cen tral bank was forced out with the assis- century of being the most progressive city aware that there’s plenty of snake oil in tance of questionably legal maneuvers. anywhere in Islam. In the aftermath of the the Kirchner cure, and danger too. Revving the tactics deployed in the long struggle First World War, the Musavat party won up the demand side can work (and has against the giant Clarín media group have elections and set up the very first Mus lim worked), as can devaluation, but, like ste - become ever rougher, and show little democracy anywhere. Lenin and the Bol - roids, such policies are best not overdone. respect for the idea of a free press. under sheviks soon put a stop to that. the neigh- And they have been overdone. Officially the circumstances, Kirchner’s fondness borhood has always been a roughhouse running at a fantasy-math 10 percent, infla- for Hugo Chávez is no surprise, nor is her of Russians, Iranians, turks, Georgians, tion is now thought to stand at around 25 recourse to conjuring up a handy foreign and Armenians, all of them poised to start percent, a level that has been eroding the devil: that “crude colonial power in de - fisticuffs again at any opportunity. As a devaluation advantage (the trade balance cline,” Malvinas-stealing Britain. result of the long Soviet occupation, Azeris has deteriorated in recent years). Price this is unlikely to end well. tend to speak Rus sian, and the bookshops

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have many more publications in Russian career typical of the times, he knew exact- writer. Freedom of speech is controlled. than in Azeri. ly how to perform what was demanded A few years ago Elmar Hu seyn ov, a criti - One Soviet crime inflicting long-term of him, rising to be first secretary of the cal journalist, was murdered, and nobody damage was the transfer of territory for Azerbaijani Communist party, head of the has been arrested. On trumped-up charges divide-and-rule purposes from one eth - Azer bai jani KGB with the rank of major of causing public disorder or evading mil- nic group to another, creating claims and general, and finally the first Muslim to be itary service, about 16 other journalists uncertainties bound to lead to violence. appointed to the Soviet Politburo, the body (some say more, some say fewer) have just Geographically, Nagorno-Karabakh is a of about a dozen personalities who used received prison sentences between one and sizable enclave that falls entirely within to decide everything down to trivial details three years. Here’s someone who was Azerbaijan but whose sovereignty was in the Soviet Union. warned that he would have to mend his allocated to Armenia. In the final years His self-enrichment by means of bribery ways or else his son would pay for it. “In before the end of the Soviet Union, Mik - and corruption was common knowledge. Soviet times, at least they kept to the rules,” hail Gorbachev made such a botch of the In a notorious example of sycophancy, he he says. “Now we have no rules. They’re a issue that both sides resorted to massacre commissioned an expensive diamond ring criminal gang. You have to protect your- and ethnic cleansing. A million Azeris are and presented it to his master, Leonid self.” still refugees, and since 1993 Armenia has Brezhnev. He timed his exit from the The oil wealth is in the hands of the pres- been occupying a Nagorno-Karabakh in - Soviet hierarchy perfectly. Far the most ident, the first lady, his two daughters and habited only by Armenians. This national powerful man in an independent Azer bai- one son, and five or six ministers who disaster preoccupies Azeris much as the jan, he mounted a successful coup and then French used to concentrate on recovering rigged his election as president with a vote Alsace-Lorraine. of 98.8 percent. After ten years in power, Handsome stone houses, even pal aces, he fell seriously ill and in 2003 passed a line the broad avenues in the center of decree appointing his son Ilham Aliyev Baku and testify to long-lost Russian impe- to succeed him. rial grandeur. Gi gan tic al ly disproportion- The Muslim order has a disposition ate towers, hulks of glass and concrete and towards forming dynasties; witness the all manner of postmodern architectural fol- schemes of Saddam Hussein, Mo ammar lies, are monuments to the new oil wealth. Qaddafi, and Hosni Mubarak to have their An attractive promenade with gardens and sons inherit their role as su preme leader. In children’s playgrounds runs for a mile or Syria, the late president Hafez Assad suc- two along the Caspian Sea front. Among cessfully manipulated his son Bashar to the crowds on their evening stroll are succeed him. Two of a kind, Bashar Assad young men holding hands with their girl- and Ilham Aliyev are obliged to maintain friends and even cuddling on a bench—a the central illusion that their fathers’ efforts sight I have not seen in any other Arab to hand on the presidency are legitimacy or Muslim city. Few women are wearing enough. Hence the posters and personality headscarves. A recent study by Suha Bol- cult in evidence in Baku and subjected to Heydar Ali yev uk basi, a Turk ish professor in Ankara, has attack in Syrian towns. the information that under the Soviets Guidebooks describe an ecological dis- receive rewards for unquestioning loyalty the whole country had only 16 working aster at Ramana, a site 40 minutes from to the family. One of them owns 250 com- mosques, hence the widespread indiffer- Baku, where the Soviets abandoned the panies. Everyone has stories of corruption ence to Islam and even the atheism. On the machinery of oil extraction on a scale so involving construction, land, transport, boulevards—phonetically spelled “bul- horrible that it becomes fascinating. Day licensing, communications, and much else. var” in the Azeri language—are shops after day, the minders said the road was Brib ery is the regular way of doing busi- displaying the brand names of famous closed. Such open supervision made me ness. Those glittering bulvar shops are Western designers and pro vid ers of luxury fear that my contacts with Azeris were empty because their function is to launder goods. Mys te ri ous ly, they have no cus- being recorded. In the real Azerbaijan, money. The ruling elite may not want all tomers. people took no precautions to hide their the money for its own sake, but they have Huge posters everywhere show a man names or their helpfulness to me. Ilham to make sure that it doesn’t get into the trying to look youthful, smiling slightly, Aliyev’s New Azerbaijan Party, YAP in hands of anyone who might use it to topple sometimes wearing a black-tie dinner jack- its Azeri ac ro nym, I heard, is a clone of them. Instead of liberating, then, oil wealth et. The posters have no words or slogans on the old Communist party. Its ideologist, is serving to block reform and stabilize them. Though dead for almost ten years, Ramiz Mehdiyev, was once head of the injustice and corruption. The few are eat- Heydar Ali yev needs no identification. Communist-party school. Isa Gambar, ing up the many, and this can’t last. Sooner He’s the strongman who made the transi- head of Musavat, the party that initiated or la ter, the Arab Spring or its equivalent tion from Communism to personal rule. democracy a century ago, has been in will reach the Caspian, so I hear. The mis- GETTY /

AFP Al though a creature of Stalinism, he was takes, contradictions, and selfishness of

/ prison. driven by ambition and greed ra ther than The Writers’ Union is also exactly as it Ilham Aliyev are quite enough to bring blood-lust. In 1945, aged 22, he joined both was under the Soviets. The first lady’s down the curtain on his dy nas ty and the

VANO SHLAMOV the Communist party and the KGB. In a grandfather has been built up as a great antiquated rule of the strongman.

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local Party officials. At first, the govern- part ment and the EU uttered their peeps. ment in Beijing seemed pleased with him. Organizations were good enough to give A Hero of In China, believe it or not, forced abortion Chen awards, in absentia. Nothing moved and forced sterilization are illegal, official- the Chinese government. Us All ly. Beijing signaled that it would punish He was released from prison in Sep - the guilty locals. But Chen was getting tember 2010 and confined to his home in Chen Guangcheng, China’s blind attention in the international press, cele- the village of Dongshigu. This sort of con- and brutalized lawyer brated as a whistleblower, and a blind finement is known as ruanjin, or soft peasant, at that. This displeased Beijing, detention, but it has been very hard. Chen BY JAY NORDLINGER which left Chen to the mercies of the local and his family have been watched con- officials. stantly and subjected to escalating abuses. AST month, there were reports that They seized him in March 2006. They In February, he managed to have a video Chen Guangcheng was dead. harassed, detained, and beat members of smuggled out to the West. It was publicized That they had at last killed him. his family and his lawyers. To him, they by a group in Texas called the China Aid L “They”? China’s ruling Com mu- did worse. Eventually, they gave him a Association, which said that the video had nists, who have tormented Chen for years. trial, but it was the usual sham. For exam- come courtesy of a “sympathetic govern- Other reports said, No, he is not dead: just ple, his lawyers were forbidden to attend. ment source.” in very bad shape. Any report about Chen Chen’s wife, Yuan Weijing, said, “There In the video, Chen described the circum- is now impossible to confirm or deny. The isn’t much hope. ... We live in a nation stances in which he and his family were authorities are not letting anyone from the without law, a nation without morality.” being kept, and he said, “The thing we outside see or talk to him. He was sentenced to four years and three need to do now is conquer terror” and Many people in the world regard Chen months in prison. expose practices that are “lacking in hu - as one of the greatest men we have known There, he faced what political prisoners man conscience.” He said he was “fully in the last decade. These admirers work on can be expected to face. He was beaten prepared” to be tortured after the video’s the assumption that Chen is alive. A furious international campaign is under way to save him. Chen was born on Nov. 12, 1971, in the Linyi area of Shandong Province. When a year old, he contracted a fever, which left him blind. Just a peasant, he educated him- self, including in the law. He was ready and available to help people. Jianli Yang, a dis- sident now in America, calls him a “born leader,” someone who has always cared for others and whom others respond to. To the extent he could, Chen helped the disabled petition for their rights. He helped farmers, too. In the worldwide press, he has been known as “the blind lawyer,” or With their son Kerui “the barefoot lawyer,” or “the blind rural activist.” Many Chinese throughout the over and over. He went on hunger strikes. release, but was “not afraid.” Yuan Weijing country know him simply as “the blind He was denied medicine. spoke too, saying that her family was in man.” His wife, sometimes under house ar - danger. With a breaking voice, she ex - What gained him his fame, and torment, rest, sometimes not, did all she could to pressed the hope that friends would take was his exposure of one fact: In the year help him. The months before the Beijing care of their children, Kerui and Kesi, if 2005 alone, in just the Linyi area, there Olympics in 2008 were especially bad for something happened to them, the parents. were 130,000 forced abortions and ste - dissidents and other “troublemakers,” What happened immediately is that rilizations. These procedures are brutal. although Western supporters of those Chen and Yuan were beaten to a pulp. A let- Moreover, relatives of those who escaped Olympics had said the Games would do ter from Yuan, made available in June, told the procedures were detained and tortured. wonders for China’s liberalization. The us the following: Harry Wu, a long-famous dissident work- guard around Yuan increased from ten ing in America, says that few outside China men to 40. She wrote a letter to Chinese More than ten men covered me totally really understand the consequences of the president Hu Jintao, calling herself “noth- with a blanket and kicked my ribs and all over my body. After half an hour’s non- one-child policy. Jing Zhang, another dissi- ing but a rights defender’s wife.” She told stop torture, I finally squeezed my head dent, associated with the Boston-based of the humiliations she and her family out of the blanket. I saw more than ten

NEWSCOM group All Girls Allowed, points out that endured.

/ men surrounding Chen Guangcheng, tor- Chen touched one of China’s most sensi- The West protested too, in various ways. turing him. Some of them twisted his arms GETTY / tive nerves. At the U.N., there were “working groups” AFP forcefully while the others pushed his /

STR He organized a class-action suit against and “special rapporteurs.” The State De - head down and lifted his collar up tightly.

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...Guangcheng was not able to resist and his “good friend Ryan Kavanaugh and passed out after more than two hours. his great company Relativity” and promis- es to “provide the best service possible in The Great, The letter details a great deal more. order to help make the movie success - Infuriated by the video, the authorities ful worldwide.” Naturally, human-rights Tragic did their best to ensure that nothing could groups have asked Relativity Media to use get in or out of the Chen home. They re- whatever leverage it has to help Chen moved the family’s electronics and sealed Guangcheng, or at least inquire into him. Joe Frazier the windows with metal sheets. They in - The company has so far seemed disin- stalled surveillance cameras. They plun- clined. A boxing legend, dead at 67 dered the house of almost everything, On another front, Jianli Yang has written down to family photos, toys, and Chen’s the State Department, asking it to bar from BY JAMES ROSEN white cane. The goal was to isolate the entering the United States a Party official family completely. named Li Qun. Li studied at the University ON’T you know I’m God?” Over the months, a stream of visitors of New Haven in Connecticut, and even taunted Muhammad Ali, in have trekked to Dongshigu, hoping to see served as an assistant to New Haven’s the first of the epic trilogy Chen. These include writers, lawyers, mayor. Now, according to Yang, he is the ‘D of heavyweight prizefights advocates for the disabled, and ordinary Party official chiefly responsible for with Joe Frazier that defined the early citizens. They also include foreign dip - Chen’s ordeal. 1970s. Ali even took to accompanying lomats and journalists. All have been re - Have international protests done any each word—Don’t—you—know—I’m— pulsed by teams of thugs at the four good at all? Reggie Littlejohn, president of God?—with a swing of his fists, unleash- entrances to the village. These thugs—a Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, says ing another flurry of his lightning-fast mixture of policemen and their hirees— yes: “I believe Chen would be dead by now punches. Frazier, undaunted, singularly have detained, beaten, robbed, and shot at but for people in the West speaking out for unaffected by Ali’s sophomoric doggerel the would-be visitors. Many of these inci- him.” and sophisticated psy-ops, kept boring in dents are meticulously documented. Across China, Chen is a symbol of hu - on his opponent, a steady, bobbing, weav- Impossible to document, of course, is man rights, like Gao Zhisheng, another ing machine, and spat back through his Chen’s condition at the moment. But we lawyer, who has been “disappeared,” and bloodied mouthpiece: “Well, God, you know for sure that beatings, malnutrition, Liu Xiaobo, the political prisoner who is gonna get whupped tonight!” and illness have taken their toll. The ques- also the 2010 Nobel peace laureate. But And very near the end of that first tion is, To what degree? Chen’s supporters Sharon Hom of Human Rights in China encounter between them, on March 8, in China and around the world are redou- makes a point that is depressing and inspir- 1971—the Madison Square Garden bling their efforts in his behalf. Some peo- ing at the same time: There are many, many spectacular between two undefeated ple are risking a journey to Dongshigu on like Chen, Gao, and Liu, but whose names heavyweight champions, billed, without November 12, Chen’s 40th birthday. There are unknown to us. They languish in pris- hy per bole, as the Fight of the Century— is also a “sunglasses campaign.” Chen, like ons, “black jails,” psychiatric wards, and Frazier made good on his promise. many blind people, wears sunglasses, and other dark places. They have stuck their It was 26 seconds into the 15th round. supporters are donning their own sunglass- necks out for their rights and all people’s. With his signature roundhouse left es and having their picture taken, to be Why do they do it? Why do they risk, or hook—the 30th he’d landed, the final posted on the Internet. It is a gesture of sol- guarantee, the full wrath and murderous explosion in a breathtaking night of idarity, a way of getting Beijing’s attention. power of a dictatorship? Of Chen Guang - fireworks—Frazier connected with Ali’s There is also pressure on an American cheng, Harry Wu says, “He had to tell the right jaw, snapping his head back and movie company. Relativity Media has just truth. Simple. He had no choice but to tell dropping The Greatest to the canvas. started filming 21 and Over in, of all the truth. That is why people appreciate Bedlam at the Garden! Ali was up quick- places, Linyi. They must be within shout- him, and why the government hates him.” ly, but with that one punch, “Smokin’ Joe” ing distance of Dongshigu. The company Perhaps Chen’s blindness gave him an entered the ranks of the immortal, one of is working in cooperation with the same extra dose of compassion and courage. only three professional fighters ever to Party officials who are brutalizing Chen. Perhaps not. In any case, there is someone put Ali down. The pride of Philadelphia The movie, according to publicity, is a much like him in Cuba, the blind lawyer had answered definitively, at least for “hilarious comedy” about “two childhood and activist Juan Carlos González Leiva. one night, the questions that haunted friends who drag their straight-arrow The bravery of such people is hard to boxing, and America at large, at the close buddy out to celebrate his twenty-first account for. But it can be admired. of the fiery Sixties. birthday the night before an all-important In that video, released earlier this year, Who would triumph: the beautiful medical school interview.” And “when one Chen said, “A society that is not built on dancer and satirical poet, or the grunting, beer leads to another, the evening spirals a foundation of fairness and equality, but uneducated working man? Was history into a wild epic misadventure of debauch- instead relies on bullying and violence, ery and mayhem that none of them will cannot possibly maintain lasting stabili- Mr. Rosen is the chief Washington correspondent of ever forget.” ty.” He is probably right about that. Yet Fox News. He is the author of The Strong Man: The same press release quotes Zhang think how many suffer and die in the John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate Shajun, a key Party official. He welcomes meantime. (2008) and is at work on a book about the Beatles.

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on the side of anti-establishment rebels and countercultural heroes, or unalloyed toughness and Richard Nixon’s silent majority? At last, America had an answer: The uglier man, the less captivating fig- ure, the African American who was dark- er and came from more impoverished southern origins, but whom Ali derided, inexplicably and unforgivably, as the Uncle Tom between them, the traitor to his people; yes, for one night, this man, Joe Frazier, would prevail. “What a man!” marveled screen legend Burt Lancaster in his ringside color commentary. For those of a different mindset, the great event proved altogether depressing. “A very painful experience in every way,” Hunter S. Thompson lamented in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, “a proper end to the Sixties . . . [with] Cassius/Ali belt- ed incredibly off his pedestal by a human hamburger, a man on the verge of death. The Fight of the Century Joe Frazier, like Nixon, had finally pre- vailed for reasons that people like me Greatest would have produced, in boxing FRAY-zhuh!” in the first round of the refused to understand—at least not out circles, an irresistible clamor for Ali to match in which Frazier lost his heavy- loud.” meet Frazier, a hero of the 1964 Tokyo weight belt to George Foreman, in Frazier himself, of course, bristled at Olympics, much earlier than March 1971. Jamaica, on Jan. 22, 1973. Foreman’s others’ ascription of political symbolism And in such circumstances, Ali would punches literally lifted Frazier off the can- to him, and even more at his eternal asso- have made short work of Frazier: The Ali vas, and put him back down there, six ciation with Ali. Smokin’ Joe wanted to be of 1967 was faster, sharper, less given to times in two rounds. known simply as a great fighter and a peo- tomfoolery in the ring, flat-out better, than A final cruelty: The Ali–Frazier–Foreman ple’s champion, not another chapter— the Ali of 1971, and Frazier would not yet axis served, with unusual clarity, to dis- even the ultimate one—in the towering have reached his prime. What’s more, prove the applicability of the transitive Book of Ali. In this sense, Frazier’s death, their showdown at the Garden was only property to sports. If A is greater than B, at the pitiably young age of 67, brims with Ali’s third bout after his three-year layoff, we all learned, and B is greater than C, the cruelties that pockmarked his life and it came just 90 days after Ali had then A must also, by definition, be greater and boxing career. For while Joe Frazier endured 15 grueling rounds, in the same than C. Not in boxing. Frazier floored was truly a great fighter, he was not The Madison Square Garden ring, against the Ali, and Foreman annihilated Frazier, Greatest—cruel, but true—and there can confounding Argentinian slugger Oscar so in transitive terms, Foreman should be no discussion, Frazier’s desires not - Bonavena. have absolutely decimated The Greatest. withstanding, of Frazier without Ali. Another cruelty of history and fate: But in the Rumble in the Jungle, the Indeed, it is worth pondering whether Frazier attained the heavyweight cham- Foreman–Ali fight held in Kinshasa, even Frazier’s transcendent moment of pionship only because he won the elimi- Zaire, on Oct. 30, 1974, and memorial- triumph over Ali would ever have come to nation tournament held after Ali was ized in the documentary When We Were pass had Ali himself been less a man. Had stripped of his license to fight. The cap- Kings, Ali easily KO’d Foreman in eight he bowed to the establishment—of which stone moment for Smokin’ Joe came rounds. even William F. Buckley Jr. acknowl- on Feb. 16, 1970, when he defeated an There followed the long anticlimax edged Ali, in 1989, to have been “a special otherwise forgotten heavyweight named of Frazier’s post-championship life and victim”—and accepted the call of the Jimmy Ellis—best known as Ali’s spar- career, and the irrevocable sentence he Vietnam-era draft board, staging easy ring partner and the first opponent Ali was doomed to serve out, as a character in exhibition matches for starstruck GIs would fight (and beat) after his historic the story of Muhammad Ali. But wherev- across the Mekong Delta, Ali would never loss to Frazier. er Joe is smokin’ today, whatever ring have been banned from professional Crueler still: The boxing call most now trembles at his plodding, bobbing, boxing during the peak of his athletic enduringly associated with Smokin’ weaving, left-hooking genius, let us prowess: from April 1967 to October Joe—perhaps the most famous boxing honor his humanity with the fervent wish 1970, by which time he had turned 28. call of all time—is a testament to Frazier’s that the place is packed to the rafters with And had Ali’s reign as champion con- complete destruction, an oral epitaph at appreciative fans, all there to see Joe CORBIS

/ tinued unchecked across the last third of the nadir of his career: Howard Cosell’s Frazier, good and decent man, heroic the Sixties, it is likely that the dwindling hoarse cry of “Down goes FRAY-zhuh! fighter and heavyweight champion, and

BETTMANN ranks of suitable opponents for The Down goes FRAY-zhuh! Down goes no one else.

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What Is Constitutional Conservatism? Neither a populist nor a technocrat be

BY YUVAL LEVIN

his fall, liberals from the president on down have begun from public pressure. “Radical as it sounds, we need to counter the to grasp the scope of the political and intellectual disas- gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less ter that the past three years have been for the Left. Their democratic.” Two weeks later, North Carolina’s Democratic gov- T various responses to the calamity have tended to have ernor, Beverly Perdue, made a less sophisticated stab at the same one thing in common: immense frustration. But the different general point, proposing to suspend congressional elections for expressions of that frustration have been deeply revealing. a few years so members of Congress could make the difficult They should help Americans better understand this complicated decisions necessary to get our country out of its deep problems. moment in our politics, and, in particular, help conservatives Orszag and Perdue both seemed to channel a long and deeply frame their responses. held view of the Left—that the complexity of modern life and the Liberal frustration has fallen into two general categories that intensity of modern politics should lead us to put more power in seem at first to flatly contradict each other: denunciations of the hands of technical experts who have the knowledge to make democracy and appeals to populism. in september, Peter Orszag, objective, rational choices on our behalf. Leaving things to the President Obama’s former budget director, wrote an essay in The political process will result only in delay and disorder. President New Republic arguing that “we need less democracy.” To address Obama has frequently expressed this view himself—wistfully our country’s daunting problems, Orszag suggested, we need to complaining to his aides earlier this year, for instance, that things take some power away from Congress and give it to “automatic would sure be easier if he were president of China. policies and depoliticized commissions” that will be shielded At the same time, the Left has been rediscovering the joys of populism. Populism can mean many things, of course, but in Mr. Levin is the editor of National Affairs and a fellow at the Ethics and Public America it has often meant not only a faith in the wisdom of the

Policy Center. masses but also a channeling of resentments into a case that the DARREN GYGI

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majority is being oppressed by an elite few. And that is just what constitutional system. In the 1912 election, the Progressive-party the president has sought this fall. On the stump, he has been rail- platform proposed not only the direct election of senators but also ing against wealthy corporate-jet owners and their Republican the enactment of federal laws by public initiative, and even ad - henchmen, who care not for the struggling working man and want vocated allowing the public to overturn some court decisions by only “dirtier air, dirtier water, fewer people on health care, [and] referendum. less accountability on Wall Street.” Meanwhile, a small but opu- And the progressives generally did not see a contradiction lently publicized populist protest movement has arisen to “oc - between their technocracy and their populism. They expected cupy” parts of New York’s financial district as well as parks and their technocratic ideas to be popular, and so they expected pop- public spaces elsewhere around the country. Although it seems at ulism to lead to more expert government. Technocracy and pop- times to be all fringe and no center, the movement does appear to ulism would together undermine the power of the moneyed be held together by resentment against corporate greed and crony interests, freeing our government from corruption by the wealthy capitalism, and a sense that the large mass of the public shares and thereby making it both more democratic and more rational. that resentment. Those moneyed interests, the progressives argued, were protected So should we be guided by expert commissions or a popular by our constitutional system, which, with its slow-moving mech- movement? Does the public have too much of a voice in our anisms and counterbalanced institutions, made any kind of change politics or not enough of one? It is tempting to see the Left’s very difficult to bring about. As the progressive theorist Herbert simultaneous calls for populism and technocracy as a profound Croly put it in 1914, the desire of the American people for a in coherence, because we are inclined to see the two as opposite government that serves them rather than the rich and powerful ends of an argument about who should govern. was constantly thwarted “not by disconnected abuses, but by a For that reason, too, it has been tempting to respond with perverted system.” populist outrage to the stunning administrative overreach of The simultaneous populist and technocratic appeals of the pro- Washington liberals in recent years—from banning Edison’s light gressives’ successors in today’s politics seem to echo this premise. bulb to giving 15 experts the authority to set health-care prices to They at least implicitly suggest that technocracy and populism are expanding the scope of regulatory discretion seemingly without two sides of the same coin. limits. For all its populist rhetoric of late, the Left has leaned far And the framers of our Constitution seemed to think so too. But more heavily toward government by experts. And on its face, pop- whereas the progressives championed both technocratic govern- ulist outrage does appear to be the character of the conservative ment and direct democracy, the Constitution stands opposed to response to the Obama years. It has been embodied above all in an both.As the framers saw it, both populist and technocratic politics extraordinary populist movement—the Tea Party, which has tried were expressions of a modern hubris about the capacity of human to fight back against the incursions of technocracy. beings—be it of the experts or of the people as a whole—to make But the Tea Party has been very unusual for an American pop- just the right governing decisions. The Constitution is built upon ulist movement. It has not been focused on soaking the rich, as a profound skepticism about the ability of any political arrange- left-wing populists always have been. It has not even been pri- ment to overcome the limitations of human reason and human marily focused on reducing the tax burden on the middle class, as nature, and so establishes a system of checks to prevent sudden right-wing populists usually are. Rather, the Tea Party has focused large mistakes while enabling gradual changes supported by a on restraining government. It originated in outrage about federal broad and longstanding consensus. Experts should not govern, bailouts, and has directed its energies toward pulling back the cost nor should the people do so directly, but rather the people’s repre- and reach of the state. It has asked for fewer government give- sentatives should govern in a system filled with mediating institu- aways, not more. It has even given voice to a tight-money pop- tions and opposing interests—a system designed to force us to see ulism, criticizing the Federal Reserve for inviting inflation—a far problems and proposed solutions from a variety of angles simul- cry from populists of old. And the Tea Party has also been intense- taneously and, as Alexander Hamilton puts it in Federalist 73, “to ly focused on recovering the U.S. Constitution, and especially increase the chances in favor of the community against the pass- its limits on government power (and therefore on the public’s ing of bad laws through haste, inadvertence, or design.” power)—another very unusual goal for a populist movement. That such a system is far from populist should be obvious. In These substantive demands of the Tea Party have been at least Federalist 63, James Madison says plainly that the constitutional as important as its populist form. But that form, and the energy it architecture involves “the total exclusion of the people in their has brought to the effort to resist Obamaism, risks causing us to collective capacity” from directly governing. The democratic ele- draw the wrong lesson from the past few years. Populism as such ments of the Constitution are intended to be checks on the power does not define the proper response to the rise of technocratic of government, not expressions of trust in the wisdom of the pub- administration, and cannot be the essence of the defense of our lic as a whole. And even as checks, these elements are imperfect. constitutional order against a resurging progressivism. As Madison argues in Federalist 51, “A dependence on the peo- ple is no doubt the primary control on the government, but expe- rience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” N fact, a look at the progressives themselves would help us to But those precautions do not amount to the rule of experts. The see that. The original progressives of the early 20th century, framers were disdainful of the potential of technocratic know- I just like today’s seemingly incoherent liberals, were populist it-alls whose abstract expertise was often of value only in what and technocratic—they argued both for direct democracy and for Hamilton calls, in Federalist 28, “the reveries of those political expert rule. Even as they called for enlarging the scope of the fed- doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental eral government and putting a class of educated specialists in instruction.” And even men with expertise in administration charge of it, they also called for radical democratic reforms of our should not be given too much power. In Federalist 68, Hamilton

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argues that, while good administration is very important, the idea One view, which has always been the less common one, holds that the best-administered regime is the best regime is a “political that liberal institutions were the product of countless generations heresy.” There is much more to government than administration. of political and cultural evolution in the West, which by the time Thus expert omniscience could not be trusted to check the of the Enlightenment, and especially in Britain, had begun to excesses of popular passion, and public omniscience could not arrive at political forms that pointed toward some timeless princi- be trusted to check the excesses of expert arrogance. In the view ples in which our common life must be grounded, that accounted of the framers, there is no omniscience; there is only imperfect for the complexities of society, and that allowed for a workable humanity. We therefore need checks on all of our various excess- balance between freedom and effective government given the es, and a system that forces us to think through important deci- constraints of human nature. Liberalism, in this view, involves the sions as best we can. This may well be the essential insight of our preservation and gradual improvement of those forms because constitutional system: Since there is no perfection in human they allow us both to grasp the proper principles of politics and to affairs, any system of government has to account for the perma- govern ourselves well. nent imperfections of the people who are both governing and gov- The other, and more common, view argues that liberal institu- erned, and this is best achieved through constitutional forms that tions were the result of a discovery of new political principles in compel self-restraint and enable self-correction. the Enlightenment—principles that pointed toward new ideals This emphasis on moderating forms—that is, the focus on and institutions, and toward an ideal society. Liberalism, in this arrangements that impose structure and restraint on political view, is the pursuit of that ideal society. Thus one view under- life—is crucial, and it has always been controversial. Indeed, it is stands liberalism as an accomplishment to be preserved and what troubled the progressives most of all about our system, and enhanced, while another sees it as a discovery that points beyond what troubled many other technocrats and populists before them. the existing arrangements of society. One holds that the prudent But as Alexis de Tocqueville noted a century before the New Deal, forms of liberal institutions are what matter most, while the other “this objection which the men of democracies make to forms is holds that the utopian goals of liberal politics are paramount. One the very thing which renders forms so useful to freedom; for their is conservative while the other is progressive. chief merit is to serve as a barrier between the strong and the The principles that the progressive form of liberalism thought it weak.” And he added, with his usual prescience, “Forms become had discovered were much like those that more conservative lib- more necessary in proportion as the government becomes more erals believed society had arrived at through long experience: active and more powerful.” In other words, we need them now principles of natural rights that define the proper ends and bounds more than ever. of government. Thus for a time, progressive and conservative lib- The framers’ formalism, with its humility about our knowledge erals in America—such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine and its limits on our power, is at work not only in our political on one hand and James Madison and Alexander Hamilton on the institutions but in our economic system too. American free enter- other—seemed to be advancing roughly the same general vision prise, like our constitutional system, establishes rules of the game of government. But when those principles failed to yield the ideal that restrain the powerful and create competition that helps bal- society (and when industrialism seemed to put that ideal farther ance freedom and progress. And in economic policy, just as in pol- off than ever), the more progressive or radical liberals abandoned itics more generally, that framework is undermined by a populism these principles in favor of their utopian ambitions. At that point, that wants to take from the wealthy and by a technocratic mindset progressive and conservative American liberals parted ways—the according to which Washington should pick winners and losers. former drawn to post-liberal philosophies of utopian ends (often In economics and in politics, our defense against these dangers translated from German) while the latter continued to defend the has to start with an adherence to procedural rules and forms that restraining mechanisms of classical-liberal institutions and the restrain the hubris of the powerful—defending markets, not cod- skeptical worldview that underlies them. dling big business or soaking the rich; defending the Constitution, That division is evident in many of our most profound debates not advancing technocracy or populism. today, and especially in the debate between the Left and the Right about the Constitution. This debate, and not a choice between technocracy and populism, defines the present moment in our T is no surprise that we find the same pattern in our econom- politics. Thus the Left’s simultaneous support for government by ic and our constitutional debates. In fact, the humble assump- expert panel and for the unkempt carpers occupying Wall Street I tion of permanent human imperfections and the humble is not a contradiction—it is a coherent error. And the Right’s desire for forms that might prevent large mistakes are at the core response should be coherent too. It should be, as for the most part of the greatest achievements of the modern age: of constitutional it has been, an unabashed defense of our constitutional system, democracy, of the free market, of the scientific method. Yet the gridlock and all. most ardent champions of liberalism in our politics have too often Because the Left has been so much more technocratic than failed to see the power of such humility, instead articulating a lib- populist these past few years, the Right’s response has naturally eralism rooted in utopian ambitions or their mirror image—naïve drifted into populist tones. That is appropriate, and it has been resentments—all dressed up as a theory of justice. effective, but the tone must not overwhelm the substance of the The difference between these two kinds of liberalism—consti- Right’s critique. In this time of grave challenges, conservatives tutionalism grounded in humility about human nature and pro- must work to protect the fundamentally constitutionalist charac- gressivism grounded in utopian expectations—is a crucial fault ter of the Tea Party, and of the conservative movement—avoid- line of our politics, and has divided the friends of liberty since at ing the excesses of both populism and technocracy as we work least the French Revolution. It speaks to two kinds of views about to undo the damage done by both, and to recover the American just what liberal politics is. project.

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bad news is that worrying too much about this number will lead The Freeloader conservatives down an intellectual and political dead end. CCORdIng to the tax Policy Center, provisions of the tax code that exempt subsistence levels of income from MYTH A income taxes—the standard deduction, personal exemp- tion, and dependent exemption—are the reason for about half of Fear not the 47 percent the tax filers who owe no income tax. Another large group of filers pays no income tax because its members are elderly and benefit BY RAMESH PONNURU from such features of the code as the non-taxation of some Social Security benefits. the tax credit for children and the earned- income tax credit, an effort to boost the pay of low-income work- t began as a retort and became a fear. For years, when liberals ers, wipe out income-tax liability for other taxpayers. those credits would accuse conservatives of cutting taxes for the rich, our are “refundable,” meaning that beneficiaries can get money on top main argument was that low marginal tax rates on high earners of paying no income tax. Other provisions of the code account for I were good for the economy. But we would also respond that the rest of the 47 percent: education credits, the non-taxation of rich people actually pay a large share of all income taxes. Over welfare payments, itemized deductions, and so on. time, many conservatives grew convinced that the true fairness the tax Foundation, a conservative think tank, has estimated issue raised by the tax code is that this share is too large—and, even how many people paid income taxes each year going back to 1950. more, grew alarmed by how many people were not paying income that year 28 percent of filers had no (or negative) income-tax taxes. liability. It dropped for the next two decades, reaching a trough of that 47 percent of all tax filers have no income-tax liability is 16 percent in 1969. It rose, bumpily, back to 26 percent during the now one of the most widely known statistics on the right. (Actually, Carter years, fell again to 18 percent in 1984, and then began to according to the tax Policy Center, the figure was 47 percent in rise—especially after the gingrich Congress introduced the child 2009 and will be 46 percent for this tax year, but 47 is the number credit. Pres. george W. Bush expanded that credit, and also that has lingered in the public debate.) Economist Michael Boskin, reduced the 15 percent tax rate that applied to many lower-income a veteran of Republican administrations, fretted in a recent Wall workers to 10 percent. Both moves increased the number of peo- Street Journal op-ed that tax policy “can create a majority paying ple with no income-tax liability. during the last few years, the nothing and voting more spending at the expense of a taxpaying number leapt upward because of the severe economic slump. minority.” When he announced his presidential campaign, texas Many people saw their incomes drop to levels at which they were governor Rick Perry said, “We’re dismayed at the injustice that eligible for the earned-income tax credit, for example. It is gener- nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.” ally assumed that the percentage of non-payers of income tax will Michele Bachmann, also running for the Republican nomination, drop once a real recovery begins. says she will reform taxes so that everyone pays some amount in that last point is one that liberals typically make when con- income taxes. fronting conservative complaints about the 47 percent: the fig- Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin echoes this concern. “We’re com- ure is temporarily inflated. the other thing liberals typically say ing close to a tipping point in America where we might have a net is that the vast majority of people who do not pay income taxes majority of takers versus makers in society and that could become pay other taxes to the federal government, especially the payroll very dangerous if it sets in as a permanent condition,” he said in a tax. Federal taxes are still “progressive”—higher earners pay a recent speech to the Heritage Foundation. disproportionate share of federal taxes—but the tax Policy this point of view has even inspired a bit of agitprop. In re - Center estimates that only about 18 percent of filers pay neither sponse to left-wing activists’ claim to represent the oppressed “99 income nor payroll tax. percent” of Americans, some conservatives launched a website How to count payroll taxes is a disputed subject. Many conser- where people could post statements from “the 53 percent” who pay vatives argue that since payroll taxes are dedicated to Medicare and income taxes. Slogan: “those of us who pay for those of you who Social Security, people who pay only payroll taxes are contributing whine about all of that . . . or that . . . or whatever.” to their retirements but not to the general operations of the gov - the argument these conservatives are making has two compo- ernment. the irony here is that FdR deliberately and explicitly nents. First, it is wrong as a matter of civic morality for some peo- introduced the payroll tax to accompany Social Security because it ple—let alone large numbers of people—to contribute nothing would encourage people to draw this false connection. In reality, to the support of the federal government. Second, this situation is the relationship between payroll taxes sent to Washington and politically dangerous because it means that, for a large number of Social Security benefits sent back is loose: today’s beneficiaries voters, big government is, or appears to be, free. these voters will get much more than they sent, and tomorrow’s will get less. (In the therefore support the expansion and oppose the retrenchment of case of Medicare, there is no relationship.) government, voting themselves goodies at other people’s expense. the point of the payroll tax, for FdR, was to ensure that “no the good news is that these fears are overblown. the 47 percent damn politician” could ever take away the benefits because (to figure does not mean we are near a tipping point. Most of the peo- paraphrase conservative author William Voegeli) all the damn ple included in that figure do make financial contributions to the voters would think they had earned those benefits through their federal government, and there is no reason to think that nonpay- payroll taxes. All federal taxes go to the federal government, and ment of income taxes is turning millions of Americans liberal. the all federal spending comes from it: the rest is accounting, and

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accounting tricks. People who pay payroll taxes are funding the more than long-term ones. When conservatives argue for tax federal government, and conservatives who deny it are falling for cuts for high-income voters, or against tax increases for them, a trap FDR set for them. we often point out that some people who are “rich” today will It follows that the conservative hostility to “refundable” tax not be in ten years, and vice versa. We argue, further, that high credits is mistaken. If a tax credit counts as a tax cut when it applies taxes reduce the incentive to work, save, and invest, which pre- against income taxes, it counts as one when it applies against pay- supposes that people can anticipate the taxes they will pay if roll taxes too. A particular credit may or may not represent sound they gain income. But if they can anticipate future taxes, then the policy, but that determination cannot turn on refundability. fact that they do not happen to pay income taxes at the moment It matters how we treat payroll taxes because, while fewer peo- should not matter. ple pay income tax than did so in the Seventies, the burden of the That point has special relevance for parents who are paying no payroll tax has gotten heavier. Count both the payroll and income taxes because of the child tax credit. That credit will not be avail- tax and there is no trend toward lighter federal taxes on the lower able to them when their children have become adults. Parents are middle class. The Tax Policy Center has estimated tax rates over almost by definition more oriented to the long term, on average, time for families of four who make half the median income. People than other voters. They ought to be able to see that their taxes are at that income level in 1955 paid 2 percent of their income to the going to go up when their children grow up, and that if they vote federal government and faced a 2 percent marginal tax rate on their for big government now they will have to pay the bill later. next dollar earned. People at that income level in 2005 paid the fed- In one respect, the fixation on the number of people paying eral government 4.2 percent of their income and faced a marginal income tax is absurdly optimistic. Conservatives who worry about rate of 38.7 percent. the political implications of this number are assuming that people Count both the payroll and income tax and there is no trend toward lighter federal taxes on the lower middle class.

heRe is a certain plausibility to the claim that the more peo- who pay no income tax will conclude that expansions of govern- ple fall off the income-tax rolls, the more will support fed- ment serve their material interests and vote accordingly. But if T eral activism. But there is a series of evidentiary hurdles that’s the case, then surely anyone who pays some income taxes, that this claim cannot begin to overcome. There is no evidence but gets more in benefits from the federal government, should that changes in the percentage of people who pay income tax reach the same conclusion. The real “takers” coalition would then has had any effect on public opinion, let alone a large one. The include anyone who is a net beneficiary of the federal govern- U.S. that began the Democrats’ 40-year reign in the house of ment. Under those circumstances merely requiring everyone to Representatives in 1954 had roughly the same percentage of pay some amount in income taxes would change nothing. Any non-payers of income tax (24.9) as the U.S. that ended it in 1994 welfare state will have a large number of net beneficiaries. In a (24.4). A relatively large proportion of the citizenry paid income welfare state that runs routine, large deficits, almost everyone taxes in the early 1960s. It didn’t stop the Great Society from may be among them. being enacted. The number of people who pay no income taxes It is entirely plausible that receiving benefits from the govern- moved up fast between 2006 and 2010, which has helped set off ment biases some beneficiaries against needed reforms, and that conservative alarms. But voters turned sharply right between the the problem grows more acute the more beneficiaries there are. elections of those two years. Surely this is the real cause for concern: Conservatives cannot The Tax Foundation has calculated the percentage of filers really believe that it was a flaw in America’s founding that nobody in each state who pay income tax. The ten states with the high- paid income taxes to the federal government for almost all of the est number of non-payers are a strongly Republican bunch: country’s history before the welfare state. eight of them went for John McCain in 2008, and nine of them But conservatives should seek to remedy the problem by cut- have Republican governors. Keith hennessey, an economic ting benefits rather than by raising taxes in the hope it will make adviser in George W. Bush’s administration, notes that the his- people more eager to cut benefits. To seek to raise taxes on poor torical data suggest that the child credit was the main reason and middle-class people would be a terrible mistake. The idea is for the increase in the number of non-payers between 1995 and bound to be unpopular. And it would alter the character of conser- 2007. If the conservative story about falling income-tax rolls is vatism for the worse. A desire to cut taxes for people at all income true, then, we should expect to see middle-income parents levels, and to oppose tax increases at all income levels, was key moving left, compared with the general electorate, during that to associating conservatism with the diffusion of opportunity in period. There is no evidence that anything of the sort has hap- the Reagan years and after. Changed circumstances may demand pened. a different approach than that of three decades ago. They do not The story also relies on implausible psychological assump- compel conservatism to become a creed openly focused on help- tions. It assumes that people who pay payroll taxes but not ing one group at the expense of another, a kind of mirror image of income taxes make a sharp distinction between the two. But egalitarian liberalism. what if they, or many of them, simply think that they have paid There are many things to worry about in this world. The num- taxes? It assumes, further, that immediate circumstances matter ber of people paying income tax isn’t one of them.

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who have not defaulted have been going ever deeper into debt. According to the Commerce Department, U.S. households So You Want saw their disposable income rise 0.1 percent in September—a respectable figure, though hardly one that will set the economy on fire. Unhappily, the same report found that household spending Debt Relief? had increased by 0.6 percent, meaning that it is growing six times as fast as household income—a feat that not even the Let’s stop lending money to OWS knuckle-dragging miscreants in Congress have managed. The savings rate—which has been negative quite often within recent memory—declined from 4.1 percent of income to 3.6 percent. BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON And that savings is concentrated among a minority of U.S. house- holds: not the wicked 1 percent, but the oldsters. The wealth gap OlleGe loans are the big greasy grievance enchilada between young and old households has never been higher, and down at Zuccotti Park, but there’s other debt, too. One households headed by those 65 and older have on average 47 young woman was carrying a placard complaining of times the net worth of those headed by people 35 and younger. C the $40,000 she owed to her mortgage lender. If I had Occupy Grandma’s house! to guess, I’d have put her at about 27 years old—not a bad age to Understandably, then, a very large number of Americans, espe- be $40,000 away from owning a home free and clear, but pre- cially the young’uns, feel entrapped by their debts. One sympa- sumably there are others in worse shape, including those unfortu- thizes with their situation, and, happily, there is a relatively easy nates who are upside-down on their mortgages. Total outstanding public-policy solution to this problem: Stop lending them money. college loans are expected to top $1 trillion this year, making them A great deal of the indebtedness of the American people is a a bigger burden than is total credit-card debt. But credit-card debt result of public policy. There is the public debt, of course—nom- is pretty big, too. The aggregate household debt has been declin- inally around $15 trillion at the federal level, with trillions more at ing a bit since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, but that’s not the state and local levels, and tens of trillions more in unfunded the good news that it seems: A closer look at the figures shows that liabilities for government workers’ pensions and federal entitle- the debt written off to defaults on mortgages and credit cards ment programs. Government has contributed significantly to pri- exceeds the amount by which U.S. households have reduced their vate indebtedness, too: Federal mortgage guarantees contributed debt. That means that all of the debt reduction that U.S. house- to the erosion of lending standards during the housing bubble, and holds have collectively achieved has been through default, not federal college-loan guarantees have contributed to the college- through paying down mortgages and credit cards, while those tuition bubble, which finds college administrators jacking up Enjoy the rewards. Get something back for your everyday purchases. Use your National Review Magazine Platinum Plus® MasterCard® credit card with WorldPoints® rewards, and you’ll earn points you can redeem for cash, travel, merchandise, even unique adventures.N Rewards for the things you buy anyway. You also have the chance to show your support for National Review Magazine every time you present your card.

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tuition every time Washington makes more money available for to consume in sufficient quantities is not the problem—ever been student loans, and Washington making more money available to McDonald’s? Walmart? Tiffany? A household with 600 cable for student loans whenever college administrators jack up tuition. channels? The after-Christmas sale at Saks? Neo-Keynesian Just as bankers have less incentive to apply rigorous credit stan- sophistry to one side, no man, no household, and no nation be comes dards to mortgages they plan to hand off to third parties, bankers wealthy through consumption. We become wealthy through pro- who made student loans for years had few incentives to cast a duction. And our policymakers get the direction of the consumption- beady eye upon those 18-year-old C-plus students signing up for production vector 180 degrees backwards: As Say’s Law teaches $50,000 to finance bachelor’s degrees in feminist anthropology. us, we produce in order to consume; we don’t consume in order Now that Uncle Sam has made himself a virtual monopolist in the that others may produce. But Washington continues to believe that student-lending market (having discontinued the private-sector if it can just goose consumption enough with cheap money and student-loan program), one might expect that even less reasonable giveaway interest rates, production and economic growth will standards will be applied to college loans. That is because, as magically follow suit. You can empirically test that theory by wish- Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) points out, the Department of ing for lunch and seeing how long you remain hungry. Education will be able to borrow from the Treasury at a very low If I want something I can’t afford—say a Lamborghini Gallar - rate and lend the money out at a higher rate, spending the spread do—there are two ways for me to go about getting it. One, I could on . . . “programs,” meaning paying Department of Education per- save up $10,000 a year for the next 20 years, which, at a real return sonnel inflated Department of Education wages to do things that of around 4 percent, should put me in the driver’s seat before I turn the Department of Education wants done, like perhaps initiating 60. Or, we could apply the model that we’ve been using for mort- programs to extend its monopoly student-loan racket. Too bad the gages and college educations and such: Have the federal govern- name “Bank of America” is taken. ment issue me a car loan, or guarantee one on my behalf. Granted, Government policy also bears some responsibility for high lev- a 20-year loan on a car would be an unusual thing, but if the els of general consumer debt. Because federal policymakers are in lessons of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and post-bailout General thrall to primitive notions about how the U.S. economy operates, Motors tell us anything, it is that government is capable of engag- every bump in the economic road is met with floods of cheap ing in wild financial innovation when it has the will to do so. We No man, no household, and no nation becomes wealthy through consumption. We become wealthy through production.

money and low interest rates from the Federal Reserve, i.e. with a stood normal bankruptcy law on its head and kicked it in the groin devaluation of the dollar. As anybody who has been in the market during the General Motors bailout—a 20-year car note is in com- for a decent certificate of deposit lately or invested in Treasury parison practically Calvinist in its propriety. If I should for some bonds will tell you, trying to get a meaningful rate of return on reason stop making my Lambo payments, or if I die a pauper savings in a near-zero-interest-rate environment is really hard. (which happens to a lot of Lamborghini owners, I hear), then the When the prices of real goods are increasing at a higher rate than taxpayers can eat it. But America will be better off, under the what you’re earning on your savings, the rational thing to do is to Obama-Reich-Krugman view of the universe, because we will save less—to consume. And Washington loves it when Americans have spurred consumption. (If you’re worried about my having consume—in fact, when consumer spending goes down and the bought an imported car, I will, as a concession to you and Pat savings rate goes up, Washington starts to freak. To be fair, it is not Buchanan and the Cro-Mags down at the UAW, take a Saleen S7 as though Ben Bernanke had a gun to Americans’ heads forcing instead, although it is more expensive—but what’s another them to put unnecessary purchases on their Visa cards, but the $100,000 when you’re buying American?) government has done plenty to make saving unprofitable and It sounds silly in the specific, of course—and it would be silly. consumption relatively attractive. But how is it any less silly in the general? We subsidize con- sumption beyond our means by keeping interest rates artificial- ly low and by offering other incentives, such as loan guarantees, UT consumption is 70 percent of the economy!” the to finance the purchase of politically favored goods, such as neo-Keynesians protest. That is not entirely true. The houses and college educations. Homeownership and education ‘B consumer-spending category on our national ledger are the cute warm puppies of politico-economic rhetoric. Who includes a lot of stuff that is not, strictly speaking, what we’re talk- could be against home and hearth and educating the children? ing about when we talk about consumer spending. For instance, Anybody with a lick of sense, that’s who: Houses are not always Medicare is in that column. So is Medicaid and other health-care good investments, for the homeowner or for the taxpayer- spending, which adds about $2 trillion to the account. So is the guarantor; college educations are not always good investments, spending engaged in by nonprofits, political parties, and the like. either—go down to Occupy Wall Street and ask a few of them if Michael Mandel of Bloomberg calculates that real consumer their four to seven undergraduate years were worth the hit. Or, spending amounts to something more like 40 percent of GDP. better yet, engage one of them in five minutes’ worth of conver- Whatever consumer spending amounts to as a share of the sation and see if you can detect any evidence of $50,000 worth economy, we do not need to encourage it, because getting people of learning.

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O, let’s do the 99 percent a favor and give them what they want: a life free of debt. There are some good ways S to do that. Conservative The first would be to stop subsidizing mortgages and en - couraging homeownership. No more tax-credit welfare for McMansionistas making high mortgage-interest payments. If you Foreign Aid want to reform the mortgage-lending industry, may I suggest (as I often suggest) the Texas model? Texas didn’t have much of a There is such a thing, but the GOP housing bust, because Texas didn’t have much of a housing boom. presidential candidates haven’t defined it And that is because Texans, contrary to the impression we some- times give, are capable of learning from our mistakes. Texas had BY ELLIOTT ABRAMS a real nasty real-estate boom-and-bust episode a generation back and, as a consequence, adopted laws that make it really, really dif- ficult to write a mortgage or home-equity loan in excess of 80 per- here is no softer target in GOP primaries than the Uni - cent of the value of the property. That means 20 percent down ted Nations and foreign-aid spending. Nonetheless, it payments—real money, not theoretical money. Unemployed ille- is worth asking whether a blanket “Cut this now!” gal aliens with no documentable income do not typically have 20 T approach really makes sense, even in a year when cut- percent to put down, even in a place like Muleshoe, Texas. That’s ting federal spending is a necessity. Let’s consider what the not to say there were no “liars’ loans” in the Lone Star State, but republican presidential candidates are saying, and ask what you either have 20 percent down or you don’t. Keeps a lot of bums “foreign aid” is anyway. out of the market. And with a minimum of 20 percent equity in Perhaps surprisingly, there are stark differences between the your house, you’re unlikely to end up upside-down on your mort- candidates on foreign aid. ron Paul has the clearest position: Cut gage. Win-win. it all. As Paul put it at the republican debate on October 18, for- There’s real macroeconomic benefit to be had from this. A eign aid “should be the easiest thing to cut. It’s not authorized in study from the Federal reserve Bank of San Francisco tracked the the Constitution that we can take money from you and give it to household-debt levels of counties across the United States in the particular countries around the world. To me, foreign aid is taking years leading up to the financial crisis—which was, as the Fed money from poor people in this country and giving it to rich peo- study notes, “preceded by the largest increase in household debt ple in poor countries. . . . No matter how well-motivated it is . . . I in recent history.” You will not be surprised to learn that those would cut all foreign aid.” counties that saw the steepest increases in household debt fared Such an approach leaves Paul alone in the field, in that he wants the worst in the subsequent recession, and that those with the low- to cut military aid to Israel as well as assistance to other countries. est increases fared the best. Debt forecloses options. Cash is king. More typical is herman Cain, who in the same debate said: “If we So, let’s have Texas-style 20 percent down payments from sea clarify who our friends are, clarify who our enemies are, and stop to shining sea. It’s not a libertarian utopia, but it beats the heck out giving money to our enemies, then we ought to continue to give of Dodd-Frank. money to our friends, like Israel.” Michele Bachmann agrees College loans are an easy fix, too: Government should stop about Israel, calling it “our greatest ally” in 2008, but made clear making them, and stop guaranteeing them. This would put serious that it is an exception: “The United States is the most generous downward pressure on college tuitions, would make the families nation on earth. We have to have a balancing act between our of marginal students think twice about spending fifty grand or a benevolence and our prosperity. And our prosperity today is at hundred grand, and, perhaps, would strike a blow against the risk. We will not survive if our benevolence allows the Treasury nefarious idea that a bachelor’s degree is the ticket to a productive to not only be empty, but to have us be a debtor nation greater than life and a remunerative career. As a few observers have noted we have ever been before.” rick Perry was cautious: “I think it’s around these parts, what a B.A. really does is signal to an employ- time for this country to have a very real debate about foreign aid.” er that a candidate has a certain minimal level of competence—he And Mitt romney appeared to be generally against foreign aid: “I can show up on time to appointments for four years and follow happen to think it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to borrow instructions. (Anybody who thinks a B.A. certifies a certain level money from the Chinese to go give to another country for human- of smart is certifiably not.) employers probably would be better itarian aid,” he said. When asked later whether this meant he off administering IQ tests (currently illegal) and hiring candidates favored zeroing out all such assistance, his campaign replied that on a six-month trial basis to screen them for honesty and depend- he did not: “The goal of assistance programs must be to enhance ability. No B.A. required, and no $50,000 loan required, either. the security and prosperity of the United States and our allies, and Those are specifics. Big-picture, what government can and the programs must be effective. This means focusing our assis- should do, over time, is raise interest rates. raising interest rates tance . . . on those programs that best support an international makes saving more attractive and consumption less attractive. system based on free markets, representative government, and Saving is the source of investment, which is the source of produc- human rights.” tivity, which is the source of wealth, economic growth, and jobs. By expressing clear support for humanitarian assistance, rick A strong dollar and a T-bill that is paying real rates are of little Santorum has taken a distinctive position among the candidates. interest to Washington, of course: Being the biggest debtor on God’s green earth, Congress has every incentive to run the other Mr. Abrams, a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, was the way at maximum velocity, shrieking in terror. But people get rich deputy national security adviser handling the Middle East in the George W. Bush by saving their money, not by spending it. Countries, too. administration.

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In an April 2011 speech, he called “generosity and humanitarian- increases the size and power of government in the receiving ism” a “unique feature” of American society. He continued: “We country instead of enlarging the private economy and empower- need to keep our commitment to humanitarian aid, especially in ing individuals. The result, concluded the World Bank in 1997, Africa. China and Islam are competing for the hearts and minds of was most often corruption and inefficiency: “Governments em - much of Africa, and we cannot turn our back from the investment barked on fanciful schemes. Private investors, lacking confidence and commitments we have made. I helped lead many of our in public policies or in the steadfastness of leaders, held back. efforts to address third-world debt and the global AIDS crisis, and Powerful rulers acted arbitrarily. Corruption became endemic. our investments have paid off. For example, 200,000 babies do Development faltered, and poverty endured.” This was Milton not have AIDS today who otherwise would have, and millions of Friedman’s view as well, and he once said that “foreign aid has people are alive today due to American-provided anti-viral drugs. done far more harm to the countries we have given it to than it has This is what I call pro-life foreign policy. And it is one of our best done good. Why? Because in every case, foreign aid has strength- international investments, especially considering less than 1 per- ened governments that were already too powerful.” cent of our budget goes to such foreign aid.” Those arguments, iconoclastic when Bauer and Friedman The case of Israel brings up a key question in the debate over started making them in the 1950s, are accepted by almost all con- foreign aid: What exactly is it? Israel, for example, receives no servatives now. Theirs is the kind of thinking that led George W. American economic assistance, only military aid. Those who Bush’s administration to invent the Millennium Challenge Cor - want to cut economic aid need not fear the impact of such a step poration (MCC), a new approach to development assistance. on the Jewish state. Separate from the U.S. Agency for International Development How much “foreign aid” the United States gives depends on and designed to be a more private-sector-oriented agency, it pro- one’s definition. The figure usually cited is roughly $50 billion, motes democracy, free markets, transparency, and rigorous testing but that number counts everything from military aid to the Voice of the effectiveness of aid programs in generating economic of America to our U.N. dues. It also counts especially high growth. USAID’s operating budget is about ten times that of Isn’t it a touch hard to believe that the best way to promote entrepreneurship and individual autonomy in poor countries is to fund programs run by American bureaucrats?

amounts in the last decade for Afghanistan and then Iraq, on pro- MCC, however, so the Bush approach must still be said to be grams that will certainly decline in size in the coming years. Most embryonic. countries count only non-military aid in the term “overseas devel- What has been striking about the Republican debate so far is opment assistance,” and by that definition the United States gives that the arguments have been sweeping rather than careful. It about $30 billion—still more than any other country. This number would be easy to argue, for example, as only Rick Santorum counts economic aid, food, health care, refugee assistance, and has done, that humanitarian aid is valuable and within the a wide variety of programs, good and bad. American tradition, while economic-development programs The problem with “overseas development assistance” as a mea- often fail. Or to note that more of our aid should be conducted sure of our foreign aid is what it excludes. It counts federal spend- through private charities—which have very low overhead ing only, but such spending is just one part of the picture. Hudson costs—instead of through USAID or “Beltway bandit” com- Institute’s invaluable annual report “Index of Global Philanthropy panies around Washington that get billions in federal contracts and Remittances” reminds us how much more there is. The latest to carry out work in the third world. While USAID does chan- Index, for 2011, says that total U.S. “economic engagement” in nel many programs through private charities, the vast amounts developing countries in 2009 was $226 billion. Of that, roughly that go to private firms (often staffed by former USAID em - $70 billion was in private-capital flows such as business invest- ployees) ought to be an obvious target for cuts. Republicans ments, and $90 billion was in remittances, the money individuals might also argue for shifting more aid to MCC, or for closing who have immigrated to the United States send back to relatives down most of USAID and using private charities to deliver in the countries from which they came. And while our official more assistance. foreign aid was just under $30 billion, and what the federal gov - Missing as well is a discussion about what forms of aid we ernment calls “bilateral economic assistance” was $20 billion, the really might want to continue providing. Should we favor straight amount of private philanthropy—through churches, charities such humanitarian aid but end economic-development assistance, for as Samaritan’s Purse and Save the Children, foundations, cor - the reasons Lord Bauer presented decades ago? Isn’t it a touch porations, and so on—was far higher, at $37.5 billion. hard to believe that the best way to promote entrepreneurship and Thanks, initially at least, to the writings of Lord Peter Bauer, individual autonomy in poor countries is to fund programs run by a late British economist and close adviser to Margaret Thatcher, American bureaucrats, most of whom have never actually been conservatives have understood for decades that government part of the private economy? Another issue: Should we continue bureaucracies are not the most efficient entitities to help econ- food aid, the old P.L. 480 programs (so called for the part of the omies develop. Government-to-government aid, argued Bauer, legal code establishing them)?

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and, far from the least important matter, should we increase or hat might a conservative foreign-aid program abandon efforts to promote human rights and democracy? Do look like, then? It may well be nearly as large as Republicans believe that this is a luxury we cannot now afford, or W the current one, but much more efficient and effec- should it be the core of any good foreign-aid program? the tive. there are many programs that need a careful look. For National Endowment for Democracy was created by Ronald example, what have we really achieved by spending roughly Reagan during the Cold War, and its budget was enlarged by $2.5 billion a year in Pakistan, where we appear to be hated George W. Bush after 9/11. Not very much is spent on its efforts— more widely every year? If Egypt moves away from peace its budget is roughly $115 million per year. If promoting democ- with Israel, and indeed from democracy and religious free- racy is a bad idea, why not stop; if it’s a good idea, why aren’t we dom, under its next government, at what point do we stop doing more of it? giving it $1.5 billion a year? Do we have to spend $1.5 bil- None of these issues has been carefully analyzed in the lion a year on “bilateral and multilateral programs to address presidential-primary campaign, partly because the foreign- global climate change”? how about the hundreds of millions policy debates are to be the last face-offs and moderators in the administration wants to send to the International Clean the debates have so far asked little about foreign affairs. Such technology Fund and the International Strategic Climate Fund, matters are not foremost in voters’ minds, perhaps; but they can both of which appear to be searching for overseas versions of give us real insights into the candidates’ views of the world and Solyndra? america’s place in it. We might attend to some good advice from Paul Bonicelli, What should be noted is that there is a huge distance between now the executive vice president of Regent University, who in the combination of nationalism and internationalism that we saw the George W. Bush administration was dispatched to USaID in Ronald Reagan’s leadership, and what some of the Republican rather like a missionary sent to live among hostile tribes. candidates are saying today. Reagan’s 1984 platform is worth First, Bonicelli says, we should remember that poverty is not revisiting. First, Reagan did not seem to contemplate eliminat- the product of a lack of resources, but rather of culture, bad eco- ing economic aid: nomic policy, and bad government (including corruption). Ultimately, aid money is wasted unless it promotes free mar- Developing nations look to the United States for counsel and guid- kets, respect for private property, and the rule of law. Unless we ance in achieving economic opportunity, prosperity, and political are promoting political and economic freedom, we are treating freedom. Democratic capitalism has demonstrated, in the United symptoms, not causes, for we are not giving people the tools to States and elsewhere, an unparalleled ability to achieve political and fight their poverty themselves. civil rights and long-term prosperity for ever-growing numbers of Second, we should target aid money at friends and allies—as people. We are confident that democracy and free enterprise can succeed everywhere. a central element in our programs of econom- Bonicelli puts it, “those who are our allies, are plausibly our ic assistance should be to share with others the beneficial ideas of allies, could be induced to be our allies, and those who want to democratic capitalism, which have led the United States to eco- be our allies but are repressed and need our help to be free.” he nomic prosperity and political freedom. notes that the last category includes democracy activists who are effectively governments-in-waiting and may eventually Nor did Reagan want to cut military aid. his platform makes become aid donors themselves, as former aid recipients in a prescient reference to terror: “Foreign military assistance South Korea and India have done. strengthens our security by enabling friendly nations to provide Bonicelli concludes that giving money to corrupt and dicta- for their own defense, including defense against terrorism.” It also torial regimes will never work, but that promoting free markets suggest that aid is for friends only: “to strengthen bilateral foreign and freedom itself will. he favors continuing to fund the assistance, we will reduce or eliminate assistance to nations with National Endowment for Democracy, as well as the Millennium foreign policies contrary to our interests.” and the platform argues Challenge Corporation, because “there are always Lech Walesas for strong U.S. support for human rights and democracy: to support and there are always commonsense ways for gov- ernment to dispense aid.” the american people believe that United States foreign policy he is right. a conservative approach would strengthen our should be animated by the cause of human rights for all the world’s friends around the world and help reduce poverty and oppres- peoples. . . . Republican concern for human rights also extends to the sion by supporting the rule of law, private property, and free institutions of free societies—political parties, the free press, busi- markets. It would recognize that private efforts—whether moti- ness and labor organizations—which embody and protect the exer- cise of individual rights. the National Endowment for Democracy vated by the search for profits, the desire to help family mem- and other instruments of U.S. diplomacy foster the growth of these bers overseas, or religious faith and pure humanitarianism—are vital institutions. . . . the National Endowment for Democracy has far larger and more effective than official aid programs, and that enlisted the talent of private american institutions, including the private voluntary organizations are usually far more efficient aFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to educate our than government agencies. It would confidently assert that we friends overseas in the ways of democratic institutions. have the proven formula for development, namely political and economic freedom. and it would demand that our aid programs this was not just charity: be designed to promote that formula with the greatest possible For Republicans, the struggle for human freedom is more than an efficiency and the least possible bureaucracy. end in itself. It is part of a policy that builds a foundation for peace. Cutting “foreign aid” is a reliable applause line, but it is fair When people are free to express themselves and choose democratic to ask candidates who seek conservative votes to be a bit more governments, their free private institutions and electoral power con- specific. Just where do they think Ronald Reagan had it stitute a constraint against the excesses of autocratic rulers. wrong?

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Lucky Strikes, Then Lucky Charms

hE FDA wanted to put hideous pictures of dead Packs used to warn that the surgeon general had deter- people and gorge-jolting images of disease on cig- mined smoking was hazardous to your health, and that was arette packs, intending to warn us that smoking is it. Everyone knew it meant the Big C. In their guts they knew T bad for you. There’s one person still unaware of it was true. But rationalization immediately followed: maybe that fact, Mr. harold P. Johnson of Grotte Plate, Idaho, and not me, and surely not yet. In the meantime, brother, this sat- even he says, “Well, they can’t be good for you.” Other coun- isfies. Sure, that last drag tasted like airplane glue licked off tries show rotted lungs on their packs, so we must do the a pig’s foot, but 20 minutes from now you’ll get that twitchy same, lest Europeans come over here and sneer at our pathet- insistence that says how about another? Hmmm? Sure, ic attempts at promoting public health. (Between puffs on a maybe it takes a minute off your life, but it’ll come at the end Gauloise, of course.) But to the surprise of many, early this when nothin’s going on. They bargain: I’ll quit after the hol- month Judge Richard Leon said no to the FDA. Any decent idays. I’ll quit after this project is done at work. I’ll quit after right-thinking person might wonder if he’s in the pocket of I’m elected president. In the meantime I need these. They’re an organization that makes a lot of money off cigarettes, and my only vice! Aside from sloth and lust, but at least the first the answer is obviously yes: the government. makes me too lazy to do anything about the second. But his decision was not based on emotion or concern Back to the judge: “It is abundantly clear from viewing for The Children, which makes him a peculiar throwback. these images that the emotional response they were crafted how did this all unfold? Well, the FDA got the power to re - to induce is calculated to provoke the viewer to quit, or design legal products under the Family never to start, smoking: an objective Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Con - wholly apart from disseminating purely trol Act of 2009. It’s worked great so factual and uncontroversial informa- far—when was the last time you saw tion,” he wrote. a family smoking?—but the word “Con - Whoa: Can he say that? Modern dis- trol” suggests that this is their first shot course is all about the emotional reac- at timorously asserting some jurisdic- tion. Facts are useful, if they support the tion. hah! Seen a cigarette billboard proper conclusions, but feelings are bet- lately? No. Banned. The sweeping vis- ter: They’re subjective, which means no tas of a Marlboro ad, with its rugged one can empirically disassemble your guys on rugged horses in rugged lands argument. Banning hideous cigarette smoking ruggedly, were so compelling ads because they’re intended to produce that hundreds of thousands of people an emotional response must strike some moved west to be cowboys before figur- people as the same sort of incomprehen- ing out the ads were intended to make them smoke. sible decision that finds gun-control laws in violation of the And then they started smoking. Ads turn us into pliable Second Amendment. putty. Free will evaporates. See a Luckies ad, and you walk The FDA is also turning its talons to children’s breakfast with a zombie’s gait to the store, buy a pack, smoke them all, cereals, concerned that cartoon mascots make children want throw up, and think, “That’s for me.” So it stands to reason sweetened oat nodules that will make them fat and give that horrible pictures on cigarette packs will change behav- them diabetes. In the case of Lucky Charms, they may also ior. They would: You’d see a booming aftermarket in ciga- want to study whether the ads encourage belief in Irish rette cases with a Playboy rabbit logo or hello Kitty or a necromancy, as well as the impact of Lucky’s conflict-reso- skull-and-crossbones. If you put the pack in the box and lution style. The kids are after me Lucky Charms. Oi’ll build don’t see the picture, you probably won’t get whatever dis- a magical bridge that’ll vanish after Oi’m over it. Might it ease is on the box. That’s how it works. not be better if he considered a fair division of his posses- But even smokers know they’re fooling themselves. Most sions, and handed out a pamphlet suggesting nutritional believe they will quit, they should quit, because smoking is alternatives? And didn’t he have a clay pipe in his earlier expensive, stinks up your clothes, drapes a blue haze around incarnations? the house, makes you cough up a bolus of goo in the morn, In a decade it will probably be illegal to eat a bowl of and might put you in the box with the nice satin fabric and cereal within 20 yards of a school, thanks to the Family shiny handles. Besides, the packs already have warnings, and Breakfast Adjustment and Cereal Control Act of 2021. smokers know them by heart, including the one about heart Pictures of rotten teeth on the box, stumpy limbs lost to disease. They’re oddly relieved when they get the one that amputation. Punitive taxes will compensate for the health- says smoking’s bad for pregnant women. hey, great, I got the care costs. Tony the Tiger will still be able to say “They’re pregnancy-warning pack. So I guess this one doesn’t count. grrrreat!” but there will be a disclaimer: Assertion of great- ness not verified by regulatory officials. But that’s still a Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. few years off. Crunch ’em if you got ’em.

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The Bent Pin BY FLORENCE KING The 24-Hour Contempt Cycle

MERICAnS prefer to avoid comparisons with the with our cellphones, secret fears have never been more on French lest the subject involve an area in which display or interpreted with such unabashed glee. We have we could not possibly hold our own. Having turned into taunters, ever on the lookout for pleading eyes, A already emerged as the laughingstock in attitudes perspiring upper lips, nervous gestures, and unconscious involving mistresses, bidets, and thrift, we are loath to go up habits, and quick to react to them in ways reminiscent of the against the French unless it can be demonstrated that we old movie Vacation from Marriage, wherein Deborah Kerr have some real chance of finding common ground on a level and Robert Donat were so trapped in domestic familiarity playing field. that only the geographical dislocations of World War II could Lucky us. We do now. As our political and cultural collapse stop them from getting on each other’s nerves. continues, we are having our very own version of the “Revo - Our search for clay feet has expanded into a search for irri- lution of Contempt,” Lamartine’s name for the overthrow of tating habits, so that it sometimes seems as if everybody is Louis Philippe in 1848. married to everybody else. Does the candidate clear his You remember Louis Philippe. He was the head of the throat a lot? “If you don’t stop doing that I’ll scream!” the House of Orléans, the lateral branch of the Blood that claimed viewer snaps at the TV. Is the candidate too pert? “If you the throne after the mainline Bourbon branch died out in 1830. wink one more time I’ll put my foot right through this Because the Bourbons had believed in the divine right of screen!” What of the candidate who keeps pursing his lips or kings, Louis Philippe set out to show the rubbing his right sideburn? “That makes people what a nice egalitarian monarch an my stomach tie up in knots!” And what if Orleanist could be. He removed the fleur-de- Mitt Romney decides to take one of his lys from the Palais Royale, styled himself stabs at scintillating wit? Caveat contemp- the “Bourgeois King,” and walked around tor, Mitt, that sudden pain in your ankle is Paris in his sturdy black business suit, carry- from thousands of exasperated wives all ing his own umbrella, pretending to be no kicking you under the table to send you that different from anyone else. timeless spousal message, “Shut up!” The familiarity did what familiarity al - As with lions and human blood, once con- ways does, except that it worked in slow tempt has been tasted there is no going back, motion. It took Louis Philippe 18 years to so if political jugulars aren’t handy we can breed enough contempt to get dethroned get the same satisfaction from watching a Louis Philippe because he did not have modern media to “reality show.” This is the media’s ground speed things up. By contrast, our three one-term presidents of zero of familiarity, where you can sit in on someone else’s can- recent memory all got some help. The contempt directed at the cer exam or attend someone else’s drug-counseling session, physically clumsy Gerald Ford was mostly the good-natured and where ditzy broads who could be your sister or best- kind, the laughter of a vaudeville audience at literal pratfalls. friend-forever turn cartwheels without wearing underpants. Mewling, puking Jimmy Carter collected a lot but it was More serious “concerned” Americans may prefer to get couched in the word “impotence,” if you can call that couch- their contempt fix from one of the Special Reports on bully- ing. As for the first George Bush, he seemed almost comfort- ing that keep cropping up. If you wonder why this subject has able with contempt, as if he had been registered for it at birth. suddenly become so ubiquitous, wonder no more. It has As long as the media supply the familiarity, viewers will little to do with our schools or “our chillldrunn,” as the wail supply the contempt, but today’s media have upped the ante. of concerned Americans would have it. If we strip away the The word used to mean television, radio, and newspapers— rationalizations we are left with a simple fact: Bullying is period. now, with three 24/7 cable news channels, C-SPAn, organized contempt and our current obsession with it is a websites, blogs, tweets, Google, and apps without end for manifestation of the breakdown of a culture that is caught every hand-held device known to man, we can’t get away in a trap of all familiarity, all the time. from our politicians and they can’t get away from us. now Familiarity does not breed contempt if it’s handled right. A everything is going full tilt as never before; America’s famil- civilized example was tendered by Mrs. Patrick Campbell, iarity factories are working three shifts and contempt has leading lady of Victorian England’s theater, who was the first become our gross national product. actress to blow her nose onstage, during a crying scene in the Contempt, not the economic downturn, is the motivation 1893 play The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. Her realistic touch for the stunning rudeness and snide challenges displayed by won the hearts of the audience because they were too far away

MUSÉE NATIONAL DU CHÂTEAU DE VERSAILLES voters at town-hall meetings and presidential debates in

/ to see and hear the physical effects of tears. By contrast, the the last couple of years. Thanks to the up-close-and-personal blubbery, smeary bawling on daily display in our television shots of politicians, especially the unguarded ones we take close-ups has a very different effect. We get the distinct impression that we are drowning in the body fluids of total Florence King can be reached at P.O. Box 7113, Fredericksburg, VA 22404. strangers, and we despise them for it. FRANZ XAVER WINTERHALTER

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

mean, right? Got stress stuff to deal I think you’re handling this totally with, work stuff, all sorts of stuff. And right. Don’t get me wrong. I just every now and then we gotta relax. mean, you know, if maybe there was HERMAN CAIN: As I’ve said, sir, I cate- some way for someone on the Cain NSA Surveillance gorically deny any and all allegations Team to get a message to that gal that Transcript of that nature. a certain former president is sitting at BILL CLINTON: Right, right. Right. Of home clicking on Drudge and feeling Document Extract: 11.08.11 course. his heart go pitter-pat, I’d be awfully GMT 08.93 HERMAN CAIN: Is there anything else I grateful. can help you with? HERMAN CAIN: Mr. President, there’s Begin Extract BILL CLINTON: It’s just that I read here nothing more to say. I don’t know the on Drudge that some gal was in a car woman, I deny the charges, and, sir, I UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: Hello? with you? And you slipped a hand up really have to hang up now. UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #2: Who is her skirt? And maybe kind of indicated BILLCLINTON: Okay, okay. I get it. this, please? what you had in mind? Don’t get all huffy. Look, whatever UNIDENTIFIEDMALEVOICE: Herman? HERMAN CAIN: I’ll say it again. These happens this year, at some point, Her - Herman Cain? This is Bill Clinton. are all categorical untruths. man—can I call you Herman?—at HERMAN CAIN: Bill Clinton? The Bill BILL CLINTON: Okay, fine, we’ll play it some point you’re going to be a guy Clinton? that way. But, then, hypothetically, who something big happened to and BILL CLINTON: You got it! does that work? Because in my exper - then who suddenly found himself HERMAN CAIN: What can I do for you, ience, if you actually push the gal hanging around the house during the Mr. President? against the car seat and— day, watching hot moms walk around BILL CLINTON: I thought I was returning HERMAN CAIN: Sir, I have a very busy the neighborhood and clearing the his- your call. day ahead of me. Is there anything else tory on the Web browser. And at that HERMAN CAIN: No, sir. I didn’t call you. we need to talk about? point, sir, I want you to remember this BILL CLINTON: Are you sure? BILLCLINTON: Well, I mean, I don’t call. HERMAN CAIN: I think I’d remember want to get into hypotheticals, okay? HERMAN CAIN: I don’t mean any dis - that. Let’s just stipulate that this is just respect, Mr. President, but I don’t think BILLCLINTON: Heck, I know. I just two dudes talking, just two brothers I’m that kind of guy. wanted to reach out to you. I’ve been smokin’ and jokin’, but I was wonder- BILL CLINTON: Oh, hell, Herman. We’re reading the papers and whatnot about ing about that gal who is in the news all that kind of guy. your current . . . issues. Just wanted to this morning, the gal from Chicago HERMAN CAIN: I have to run, sir. say hey, how’s it going, maybe ask a with the blonde hair and the figure? BILL CLINTON: Fine. Fine. Okay. Go run couple of questions. You know who I mean? She’s a big your big campaign. But I’m serious. HERMANCAIN: I think I know what gal—not too big, but she’s got some- I’m here for you, man. You ever just this is all about, Mr. Clinton, and I’ll thing to hold on to, know what I’m want to hang out, maybe grab a few tell you what I’ve told the media and saying? beers, then grab a few waitresses, let everyone else who has asked. I did HERMAN CAIN: What’s your question, me know. You, sir, would be a legen - not do any of those things I’ve been Mr. President? dary wingman. accused of— BILL CLINTON: You wouldn’t happen to HERMAN CAIN: Thank you, sir. [Chuckling on the line.] have her number, would you? BILL CLINTON: Sure you can’t help me BILL CLINTON: Yeah, yeah. Could sing a HERMAN CAIN: Again: I’ve never met out with that gal’s number? few bars of that myself. But seriously, that woman. I’ve said it hundreds of HERMANCAIN: Goodbye, Mr. Presi - I just want to say that I’m here for you, times. dent. in your corner. You know, folks don’t BILL CLINTON: No, no. No, of course, understand guys like us. We’re guys, I you’ve never met her. I get that. And End Extract

4 2 | www.nationalreview.com NOVEMBER 2 8 , 2 0 1 1 books11-28_QXP-1127940387.qxp 11/8/2011 6:36 PM Page 43 Books, Arts & Manners

man coined the now-current term “Aus - Hayekians are the counterpunchers terian” to describe those who believe in rather than the ones taking the intellec - The Eternal both Hayek’s “Austrian” economics and a tual offensive. policy of fiscal austerity. As the story progresses, the reader Struggle Most notoriously, Hayek and Keynes is treated to a remarkable amount of square off in two rap videos, produced research, but almost always with a light TYLER COWEN by economist Russ Roberts and film- hand. We learn of Hayek’s first letter maker John Papola. The first video has to Keynes (asking for a book copy), received over two and a half million Hayek’s original history as a socialist views and the second, released this year, and his plan to run the Austrian central is already over 1 million views. The au - bank, how tensions rose between Hayek teurs present both sides of the debate, but and Keynes after the Depression, how a careful viewing of the second video Hayek’s thick Viennese accent held him shows that while Hayek wins the fight, back as a lecturer and pundit, how the analogized in terms of a boxing match, other British economists started to mock the referee calls it for Keynes. In July, and disrespect Hayek, and how Ayn the London school of economics staged Rand later dismissed Hayek as a “com- an actual Hayek vs. Keynes debate, promiser” and—in the margins of The with contemporary scholars filling the Road to Serfdom—scribbled that he was roles. a “total, complete, vicious bastard.” Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern so what’s all the fuss about? nicholas It remains hard to judge the Hayek– Economics, by Nicholas Wapshott (Norton, Wapshott’s new book, Keynes Hayek, Keynes debate, in part because there 400 pp., $28.95) does an excellent job of setting out the were several Hayeks from the time of broader history behind this revival of the the Great Depression. In the late 1920s, eynes vs. Hayek” has old debates. Wapshott brings the person- Hayek recommended a policy of mone- turned out to be a more alities to life, provides more useful in- tary stabilization, rather than deflation, durable theme than could formation on the debates than any other in response to a depression. In the early ‘K have been expected in the source, and miraculously manages to 1930s, Hayek came out for tight money 1930s. As recently as the 1990s, big-time write for both the lay reader and the ex- and letting bad investments liquidate macroeconomic debates seemed to be pert at the same time. Virtually every themselves, rather than propping them over forever; the nineties seem now like page is gripping, and yet even the pro- up with state subsidies and carteliza - a very long time ago. fessional economist will glean some tion, popular ideas at the time. Much On the side of Hayek, Glenn Beck pro- insight (e.g., in Wapshott’s discussion later in his career, Hayek admitted that pelled The Road to Serfdom to no. 1 on of Hayek’s now-obscure essay “The his proposed “do nothing” policies were Amazon with his repeated warnings that ‘Para dox’ of saving”). inappropriate for the early 1930s. Un - President Obama was bringing socialism The tale starts with Hayek in Vienna fortunately, it was this deflation-tolerant to the United states. The man overseeing and Keynes in Cambridge. Hayek is Hayek of the early 1930s who ended up the Federal Reserve in the House of Rep - impelled by fascism to leave the Con ti - crystallized in the debate with Keynes. resentatives, Ron Paul (R., Texas), is an nent and ends up teaching at the London On this point, decades of research, in - avowed fan of Hayek’s 1970s “denation- school of economics. Keynes spreads cluding classic papers by Milton Fried - alization of money” idea. his influence to both Washington and man and Anna schwartz, have shown On the other side, Paul Krugman, London, often through a growing num- that Hayek was wrong: sharp deflation- through his New York Times column and ber of loyal disciples. Keynes dies in ary shocks have never been friendly to blog, has revived the fortunes of Keynes - 1946, but Wapshott takes us through free markets or classical-liberal ideas, ian economics by insisting that we are Hayek’s nobel Prize and intellectual and Hayek—at least for a while—did suffering from a shortfall of spending comeback in the 1970s, including his not grasp this truth as clearly as he need- or “aggregate demand.” A big swath of influence on Margaret Thatcher and ed to. the economics profession has become the post-Communist reformers. By the There is one part of the longer story more Keynesian in the last five years. 1980s, Keynesian remedies are some- that Wapshott leaves out, and it is a quite Krugman, Brad DeLong, and other writ- what out of fashion, Communism is recent development. Circa 2009, enter ers devote a lot of energy to attacking about to fall, and Hayek seems to have scott sumner, professor of economics at the Hayekian vision of macroeconomics, lapped his old rival, at least until the Bentley University and author of the blog which by now is over 80 years old; Krug - financial crisis of recent years. Unstable TheMoneyIllusion. sumner has almost financial markets and lasting unemploy- singlehandedly resurrected the tradi - Mr. Cowen is a professor of economics at George ment often seem more susceptible to tion of Milton Friedman and, more broad- Mason University. Keynesian explanations, and so now the ly, the philosophy of neo-monetarism.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Although Sumner is a brilliant thinker, difficult. Hayek stressed that a market and extremely well read, he admits he calculates value in a way that a central hasn’t given Hayek’s Prices and Pro - planner cannot—but lying behind this duction a thorough tussle; he seems to ability to calculate is some basic macro- find the ideas too difficult and too ob - economic stability. At the key moments, scure, as indeed do most other profession- Hayek did not offer the proper recipe for al economists. Sumner’s diagnosis is that stability. simple: The American economy has col- Hayek’s biggest intellectual victory lapsed because the Fed did not stabilize probably has come in the aftermath of the flow of purchasing power in the econ- the Obama fiscal stimulus. A lot of the omy, or what Sumner calls “nominal modern-day Hayekians, most notably GDP.” Circa 2008, the Fed let purchasing Mario Rizzo of New York University, power decline when it should have sup- predicted that the stimulus would not ported it with an aggressive commitment provide lasting aid to the economy but to reflate the economy. This may sound rather would impose an artificial boom- too interventionist to many free-market bust structure on the economy. The early supporters, and the parts of the argument spending of money would boost mea- that emphasize “aggregate demand” seem sured national income, but eventually suspiciously Keynesian. Nonetheless, those jobs would prove unsustainable: Sumner persuasively couches the entire The stimulus funding would run out, the argument in terms of constraining the Fed jobs would disappear, and the economy with rules, in this case a “nominal-GDP would slow down once again. That is rule” that would stabilize the flow of pur- exactly what we saw in the spring and chasing power and create a predictable summer of 2011. In essence, the Amer - macroeconomic environment for busi- ican government spent almost a trillion nessmen and consumers. dollars to postpone our economic pain The bottom line is this: Whether we by the grand span of two years. like it or not, the Fed has to do some- Keynes, like Hayek, was brilliant, but thing, and letting the money supply con- he, too, missed some crucial points. tinue to fall, in down times, is one of the Most notably, virtually all of his policy worst options. It will give the economy a recommendations were written for sharp negative shock in the short run and philosopher-kings. You won’t find too sweep interventionists and their cure-all many of those in the current U.S. Con - policies into power, while creating a gress. Keynes, after finishing Hayek’s public hungry for quick-fix recipes. That Road to Serfdom, recommended more is indeed what has happened in the and better planning, rather than a greater United States. reliance on decentralized institutions Over the last two years, I’ve been with healthy trial-and-error checks, as amazed, and pleased, to see how many Hayek had recommended. In other Itonly market-oriented economists have come words, Hayek made some big errors in around to Sumner’s point of view. (These the debate with Keynes, but he had a days I cannot go anywhere in the world sound overall framework in a way in takes a of economics, or blog readers, without which Keynes did not, and in fact was at hearing his name.) What that means is not war with. moment. a victory for either Hayek or Keynes, but The deepest question raised by this rather a comeback for Milton Friedman, book is why we look back to old econo- Make a difference Irving Fisher, and the good old-fashioned mists to the degree we do. Is it that con- in the lives of the men and women “quantity theory of money.” Stabilizing temporary economists are, for the most who protect our freedom. the flow of purchasing power is indeed part, so hyperspecialized that they no VOLUNTEER. DONATE. REMEMBER. what the central bank should be trying longer become iconic? Or does studying USO.ORG to do, even if it achieves this end only and discussing old economists give us a imperfectly. comforting impression that “our side” For all his brilliance, Hayek didn’t—at has a continuity of thought and values in the critical time—have a good enough a way that anchors world history in an understanding of the dangers of defla- easy-to-grasp “us vs. them” narrative? tion. He didn’t fully realize the extent Maybe it’s a bit of both. In any case, of sticky wages and prices and, more Hayek and Keynes remain the touch- deeply, he didn’t see that ongoing de - stones for current economic debates, and flation would render the “calculation if you wish to learn about them, this book problem” of a market economy more is a very good place to begin.

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    shooting himself. Macdonald goes on in Mid-Century his own voice to say interesting things  about hemingway’s achievement and  its   limitations, but the good  sense, like the       Mind good fun, is marred by killing a man who  has already done it.    RICHARD BROOKHISER Macdonald’s other journalistic quality, rarer than humor, was patience.  the best    pieces here examine cultural artifacts with the care of a tSa patdown. in “the String Untuned,” he compares the third edition of webster’s New International Dictionary (1961) with the Second (1934), siding con- sistently with the older. webster’s Second issued judgments and gave guidance, while webster’s third found it “snobbish to insist on making discriminations— the very word has acquired a Jim crow

Masscult and Midcult: Essays Against the American flavor—about usage.” Macdonald gives Grain, by Dwight Macdonald (NYRB ex amples of the third’s slack ness—bi - Classics, 272 pp., $16.95) monthly defined as both “once in two months” and “twice a month”; depre- wight MacDonalD (1906–82) cate/depreciate, disinterested/uninterested, was a clamorous figure in 20th- and infer/imply treated as synonyms—and century new York intellectual concludes that it “claims no authority and D circles. Simply living here, one merely records, mostly deadpan, what in absorbed anecdotes about him, by os - fact every tom, Dick, and harry is now mosis: that an annoyed trotsky said he doing.” favored revolution in one consciousness; “Updating the Bible,” Macdonald’s that he gave nude cocktail parties on cape analysis of the Revised Standard version “Rated One of New York City cod. he was a journalist who, over a long (1952) and the King James version ‘Best Value’ Hotels.” ... Zagats career, wrote pretty much everywhere: (1611), rises to the level of artful criticism. Fortune, Esquire, The New Yorker, The he admits the need for repairing the King New York Review of Books, a flock of little James version, either because Jacobean magazines. is he worth reading now? words have disappeared or changed their almost. this collection of essays makes meaning, or because new textual sources the best case for him. have been discovered. But he shows that

Macdonald was a wayward leftist with the Revised Standard version went far New York’s all suite hotel is located in a tory sensibility: in an attack on the beyond clarification. thousands of little the heart of the city, near corporations, young national Review, he said the only tweaks and shuffles combined to level the theatre & great restaurants. Affordable elegance with all the amenities of home. feature he liked was Russell Kirk’s col- whole text. Sometimes the modern trans- umn. these essays highlight his toryish lators level down, “convert[ing] into tepid 149 E. 39th St. (Bet 3rd & Lex) New York, NY 10016 side, as he takes on writers, books, and expository prose what in [King James] is Reservations 1-800-248-9999 cultural trends. wild, full of awe, poetic and passionate.” Ask about our special National Review rates. like many good journalists, Macdonald But at other times, they insert a bogus ele- had a savage sense of humor. one of his vation. “the lovely phrase in ecclesiastes books was an anthology of parodies, and 12:5, ‘Man goeth to his long home,’ with he begins an essay on ernest hemingway its somber, long-drawn-out ‘o’s, is Spelled by channeling hemingway’s late manner: out into ‘Man goes to his eternal home,’ which sounds like a mortician’s ad.” Mac - he was a big man with a bushy beard and donald angrily compares the Revised everybody knew him. the tourists knew Standard version to an act of war: Reading him and the bartenders knew him and the it “is like walking through an old city that critics knew him too. he enjoyed being has just been given, if not a saturation recognized by the tourists and he liked the NATIONAL REVIEW is now bartenders but he never liked the critics bombing, a thorough going-over. . . . is very much. he thought they had his num- this gone? Does that still survive? Surely available on iTunes and in ber. Some of them did. the hell with them. they might have spared that!” there is a family resemblance between the Android Market. this stunt edges from damning to Macdonald’s targets. hemingway by the NR APPS ARE FREE TO DOWNLOAD. damnable when it ends with hemingway time he won the nobel Prize, the new

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Webster’s, and the new Bible were all mid- Macdonald wanted a shortcut because of century totems: big-deal, big-ticket items. his need for authority. As a Tory he craved Macdonald tried to define their common it and as a sensible man he knew it could The Quest essence in the lead essay of this volume, not come from counting heads. Where then “Masscult and Midcult,” an exercise in his- could he seek it? Not in religion. His dis- For Rules tory and sociology. Once upon a time there cussion of Bibles is notably free from any was culture, and folk art. Then, early in the notion that they might impart truths, apart JOSEPH TARTAKOVSKY 18th century, new means of production from proverbial or psychological ones, in - brought literature—Macdonald wants to cidentally. His mind was not philosophical survey all the arts, but his interests are and his temperament was anarchic. That mostly literary—to larger and larger audi- meant the only authority could be the crit- ences. Masscult—junk in bulk—was the ic himself—Macdonald, with perhaps the result. Avant-garde modernism, a few dec- help of a few friends. But no critic can pos- ades either side of 1900, was a reaction to sibly be authoritative about everything, the result. But by the mid-20th century, even everything artistic. Masscult and enough people had become sufficiently Mid cult offered to lighten his task by clear- educated to be embarrassed by Masscult ing the field. But the wind bloweth where pure and simple. So a third thing appeared: it listeth, and we should be willing to no - Midcult, junk with pretensions. Midcult tice it wherever it stirs. A host of critics, “has the essential qualities of Masscult— from George Orwell to Manny Farber to Design for Liberty: Private Property, the formula, the built-in reaction, the lack Camille Paglia to Terry Teachout, have Public Administration, and the Rule of Law, of any standard except popularity—but it suggested as much, but Macdonald could by Richard A. Epstein (Harvard, decently covers them with a cultural not hear them 50 years ago and would not 248 pp., $29.95) figleaf.” Macdonald’s main modern targets now. were Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sometimes a critic looks straight at HERE are many ways to expe- Sea), Thornton Wilder (Our Town, still something and gets it wrong. That is no rience the joys of overregula- ubiquitous), Archibald MacLeish (a for- crime—once we know we can’t know tion, but friends tell me that gotten play, J.B.), and Stephen Vincent everything, we also know we make mis- T one of the finest was a dinner Benét (John Brown’s Body, once assigned takes—but the editors of this book should date in Moscow circa 1986. First, you to high-school students), but he ranged far not have ended with an instance. “Para- were lucky just to find a cab: Drivers got and wide, sorting everyone from Lord journalism” is Macdonald’s takedown of a salary that didn’t depend on taking Byron to Zane Grey into one or another of Tom Wolfe, written in revenge for a hit passengers, so many just siphoned off his categories. Wolfe did on The New Yorker when it was their gas for resale, set out the pickles This has the qualities—bright, sweep- edited by William Shawn. Macdonald’s and vodka, and called it a day. Local ing, full of holes—of all historical just-so rebuttal is a curious case of winning all the chefs, meanwhile, desperately cultivat- stories, from Condorcet to Fukuyama. As a battles but losing the war—or wars, for ed a reputation for inedible food—their guide to art it is disastrous because it sub- he misjudged both The New Yorker and paycheck came in even as patrons kept stitutes, for judgment, a shortcut to judg- Wolfe. He shows that Wolfe carelessly got out. Richard Epstein, who has recently ment whereby whole classes of things and many things wrong about the magazine. been installed as the Laurence A. Tisch deeds may be ruled out ahead of time, sight Yet the world—or at least the world that Professor of Law at New York Uni - unseen. The most obvious misjudgments cares about The New Yorker—would learn versity School of Law, knows this coun- in Macdonald’s own essay come when he that it was far more cult-like and dysfunc- try isn’t the USSR, but neither is it quite ventures beyond words. He dismisses rock tional under William Shawn than even the U.S.A. of his youth. “Once upon a ’n’ roll as Masscult. Most of it is garbage. Wolfe depicted it. Macdonald was equally time,” he writes in his new book, Design But all of it? Every last 45? He consigns wrongheaded about Wolfe. I am no Wolfe for Liberty, “I was confident that the most of Hollywood to the same dungheap, groupie—his art books are gap-toothed, forces of growth and prosperity could with five exceptions: D. W. Griffith, Erich and the “new journalism,” of which he was maintain the upper hand. But watching von Stroheim, Chaplin, Keaton, and Orson supposed to be the avatar, was nothing the flailing of political actors, and the Welles. What a meager list that is. The Film more than a promotional bumper sticker. drift of our economic system, I am no Forum, one of the temples of haut fandom Yet Wolfe had an eye and a voice—courtly longer so sure.” in New York, recently did a retrospective Richmond, strolling amusedly among the When Professor Epstein speaks, of Victor Fleming. His achievement was glory and detritus of mad America. “I you listen. He is author of two dozen directing Gone with the Wind and The don’t think Wolfe will be read with plea- books, the best known perhaps being Wizard of Oz in the same year (1939). sure, or at all, years from now, and perhaps his classic Takings: Private Property Macdonald didn’t notice. He liked jazz, not even next year,” wrote Macdonald. and the Power of Eminent Domain which, at the time he wrote, had been com- Oops. (1985) and How Progressives Rewrote mercial popular music for almost half a It is a sad thing when a distillate, a best century. That would make it Masscult, so of the best, is longer than it should be. Read Mr. Tartakovsky is a contributing editor of The he tried to save it, absurdly, by calling it “Updating the Bible,” then give this book Claremont Review of Books and a fellow of folk art. to the thrift shop. the Claremont Institute.

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the Constitution (2006). In an academy morals. Without them, government as built the thing. And the flipside of an that prizes specialization, he has single- we know it would not exist. agency’s specialization is often deep handedly taught an entire curriculum: Epstein, however, is unable to recon- bias, whether toward management or civil procedure, constitutional law, cor- cile their power with what we call the labor, landlord or tenant, firm or in - porations, communications, contracts, “rule of law,” that ancient, majestic vestor. criminal law, and corporate taxation— union of legal principles comprising The old order was largely founded on just to take the ones that start with “c.” “neutrality, generality, clarity, consis- the law of contract, where private indi- His comprehensive mind unfolds here tency, and prospectivity.” He sees a viduals freely bound themselves, and in what amounts to a 200-page brief society choked with regulation, need- the law of property, in which you did as against the errors of modern American lessly and self-defeatingly inefficient, you liked with your property so long as law and governance. His “central propo- ignorant of economic fact. He knows your use didn’t intrude upon others. sition” is that “ambitious social agendas that Social Security must be dispensed Now, he argues, officials routinely sup- introduce massive amounts of adminis- and highways built; his plea, rather, is plant tailored agreements or restrict the trative discretion that are inconsistent to have us recognize that “large doses disposition of one’s own land. Epstein with the rule of law.” The time is ripe for of discretion” produce rent-seeking, particularly laments what he sees as “critics of central planning” to “resur- caprice, waste, and delay. The SEC the willingness of courts to accept an rect” the “modest and more focused checks the free flow of information; agency’s “reasonable” interpretation of classical liberal system” that progres- affordable-housing schemes reduce the its own statutory mandate. He points to sives displaced, an order based on the supply of homes; politically charged how the Army Corps of Engineers, once “twin pillars” of contract and property green hearings strangle investment. A tasked with managing the “waters of the common law. California developer reports that the United States” (i.e., waters capable of What went wrong? He would answer: number of functionaries needed to issue supporting navigation), has been permit- What didn’t? Woodrow Wilson’s Federal a permit authorizing a new 2,700- ted, after the Supreme Court’s Rapanos Trade Commission (1914) and Herbert square-foot building outnumbered the decision (2006), to interpret its domain Hoover’s Revenue Act (1932) only pre- number of construction workers that to include wetlands, sloughs, mudflats, figured FDR’s National Labor Relations streams, prairie potholes, even “natural Act (1935), Fair Labor Standards Act ponds.” The “secret of good govern- (1938), and Securities and Exchange ment,” he writes, is to “select a few key Act (1934). LBJ signed the Economic GHOST AND GUEST tasks and to perform those well,” tasks Opportunity Act (1964), Civil Rights Act such as “picking up the garbage from (1964), and Medicare and Medicaid acts Collapsing on a sleeping friend public streets.” The First Amendment, he (1965), while Nixon and Ford waded Upon the couch, I fell has said elsewhere, should have stopped into environmental protection (EPA, Sincerely sorry to offend after “Congress shall make no law.” 1970), workplace safety (OSHA, 1970), The road to swell is paved with inter- This guest in my “hotel.” and employee pensions (ERISA, 1974). ventions, but regulation in a complex, Behind each aggrandizement of author- fast-changing world tends to backfire. ity was the conviction that impartial Our customary schedules changed, Carter-era EPA rules that made it costly experts could protect us in ways that free He lay as if in pitch, to build new smokestacks often en- markets, overburdened legislators, gen- No boundaries, his form estranged sured that outdated, dirtier ones con - eralist judges, and citizen juries could From which idea was which. tinued to foul the air. General Motors not. That spirit, Epstein feels, thrives. had 500,000 workers 30 years ago, Last year saw the Wall Street Reform but—Epstein claims—because FLSA and Consumer Protection Act and the He panted thrice, but barely stirred, union-negotiation requirements prevent- Patient Protection and Affordable Care His fright dry and compressed— ed the automaker from lowering wages to Act. Neither of us with a word, fend off foreign competition, there are Government today, in terms of sheer We two: the ghost and guest. now 61,000 workers. “Right now, federal tonnage, means agencies. They take agencies are at work on more than 4,200 shape in departments, boards, and com- rules,” wrote Sen. Susan Collins (R., missions. The Bureau of Land Manage - My pulse stopped years ago, it’s true. Me.) in the Wall Street Journal in Sep - ment leases public land; the Internal That person is a ghost tember. “More than 100 are major rules, Revenue Service collects taxes; the Who stumbles; this, perhaps, he knew— with an economic impact of more than Centers for Disease Control gathers epi- Unseeing, yet engrossed. $100 million each.” A sighing Epstein demiological data; the Air Force orders wishes Washington would just let the jets; the Transportation Security Ad - market do its thing. His health-care fix, I fled the scene in full control, ministration removes your shoes. The for one, is not more regulation; for, in his more muscular agencies bring lawsuits, Apologies ad hoc. view, “impediments” to the “ordinary inspections, and criminal fines, or pro- My terrorizing of a soul operation of market forces”—e.g., licens- mulgate binding “rules” that govern Had come as little shock. ing restrictions on doctors’ moving be - banking, insurance, utilities, finance, tween states—artificially raised prices in industry, labor, professions, health, and —JENNIFER REESER the first place.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS In his opening chapters, Epstein offers a Arguably worse than this legal repres- theoretical framework that purports to sion is the mob violence—often insti - blend “natural law” and “utilitarianism,” Religious gated by senior religious figures and but the real theory is soon revealed as eco- tolerated by the police—which shows nomics: He speaks of “n – 1 lawsuits,” and Rights that religious fundamentalism is not urges lawmakers to seek “Pareto-optimal limited to governments but has strong distributions,” a con sideration that Rep. JACOB MCHANGAMA support in segments of the general popu- Barney Frank un accountably omits from lation. his speeches. Eco nomics has done won- Some, no doubt, will speculate as to ders to elucidate our law, but it also has a the authors’ motives in so meticulously tendency to muddy clear expression with detailing the often brutal oppression abstraction. In far too many passages in many Muslim countries, as well as Epstein neglects to explain what, precisely, the attempt by radical Muslims to ex - he has in mind. What are we supposed to port these practices to the West. Might think of when told of a “set of insights” that not the authors be bigoted “Islamo - “so limits the form of discourse that the phobes”? The answer, emphatically, is complex cases of individuated judgments no. Shea and Marshall’s defense of can typically be limited to the small class these fundamental freedoms is as com- of emergencies in which one party is put passionate as it is compelling. One in the unfortunate position of trying to Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes senses in this book genuine compassion minimize the risks that emerge from the Are Choking Freedom Worldwide, for, and solidarity with, the hundreds of misconduct of others”? And why, again, by Paul Marshall and Nina Shea thousands of victims in Iran, Saudi must the “initial function of the system (Oxford, 480 pp., $35) Arabia, Pakistan, and elsewhere, most invoke[] a strong just-compensation prin- of whom are Muslims (even if reli - ciple to block negative-sum projects”? HIS book is indispensable for gious minorities such as Christians are The reader daunted by the conceptual blur anyone seeking to under- often disproportionately targeted). often yearns for those blessed words, “For stand the degree to which The au thors adopt an unapologetic, example . . .” T the freedoms of religion and universalist insistence that freedom of Nonetheless, Epstein is peerless in his expression are being violated in ex pression and religion is a principle talent for exposing the often roundabout Muslim-majority countries, and why that can and should guide Muslim- ways that government can slight consti- this development has serious conse- majority countries, even if the current tutional principles. If the Takings Clause quences for the West. The book’s first prospect for this is bleak. prohibits the state from seizing private part discusses the blasphemy and apos- The universalism of this defense of property for public use without compen- tasy laws in Muslim-majority coun- freedom is bolstered by the inclusion sation, rent control, he argues, is nothing tries, the second focuses on Muslim of contributions by Muslim authors, but a taking, since it forces landlords to attempts to globalize these laws, and including the late Abdurrahman Wahid retain tenants at below-market rates. In the third presents criticisms of these (a former president of Indonesia) and the Black Lung Benefits Act (1972), laws written by prominent Muslim the late Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid which required mine operators to pay intellectuals. Abu-Zayd—both of whom argue that retroactive benefits to miners suffering The first part is the most shocking and Islam does not require worldly punish- lung disease, Epstein sees gross disre- informative. While most people are ments for blasphemy or apostasy. The gard for the axiom that you cannot later aware that freedoms of expression and book also introduces the reader to a penalize conduct that was lawful when religion are restricted in Saudi Arabia host of other Muslim voices who have engaged in. And though law, to be legiti- and Pak istan, Nina Shea and Paul Mar - challenged the increasing religious mate, must be known and stable, all the shall’s detailed account demonstrates intolerance in Muslim-majority coun- clerks of old Byzantium, toiling for a the pervasiveness of religious repression tries. How many Westerners know that century, could not improve upon the throughout Muslim-majority countries. there are ayatollahs in Iran who, based impenetrable grotesqueness of the 2011 In chapter after chapter, the authors show on the Koran, do not preach the de- United States Tax Code. This year it con- how even purportedly secular Muslim- struction of Israel and hatred against tains roughly 141 short-term provisions majority countries oppress citizens if infidels but rather the separation of subject to renegotiation, a marvel of they challenge religious dogma. Punish - religion and politics and freedom of uncertainty and ex post facto liability. ments may range from death sentences, expression and religion? This, Shea And so on, in a dozen other areas of as in Iran and Pakistan (though such and Marshall tell us, is the message of law—product liability, eminent domain, sentences are rarely carried out), to Aya tollah Seyyed Hossein Kazemeyni free speech, nuisance, etc.—Epstein con- reeducation camps, as in Malaysia. Borou jerdi, who has been held at the cludes that wherever we stray from the infamous Evin Prison since 2006. wisdom of the common law and the still Mr. Mchangama is director of legal affairs at the Another of the book’s strengths is the wiser limits of our Constitution, “trouble Danish think tank CEPOS and external lecturer in authors’ insistence on letting the facts awaits.” How much? “I am no longer so international human-rights law at the University of speak for themselves. Silenced con- sure.” Copenhagen. tains none of the conspiracy theories

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and doomsday prophecies about an and radicalization from Islam ists, ideologies have become a tool for re - impending Muslim takeover of the many of them homegrown. Yet rarely if pressing political and religious debate West that all too often dominate writ- ever do Western governments call out should also serve as a warning to those ings on the dangers of Islamic radical- the naked and shameless hypocrisy of European politicians and intellectuals ism. This is not to say that Shea and the OIC: Until recently, the plight of who argue that the threat to Western Marshall promote the idea that the “real religious minorities in Muslim-majori- freedom from radical Islam requires Islam” is a peaceful and tolerant reli- ty countries has been underreported, restrictions on the freedoms of religion gion that has simply been hijacked by and absent from the agenda of human- and expression of Muslims. One cannot a fringe of fundamentalists. The many rights violations at the international credibly fight a battle for freedom of incidents of mob attacks and vigilante level. This book is a highly welcome expression and conscience by denying violence by private citizens clearly de- corrective to this imbalance. these freedoms to others. Moreover, mon strate that many ordinary Muslims While the “defamation of religion” once such restrictions are in place they do hold extremely intolerant views on agenda has been defeated at the U.N. will inevitably be used for other pur- freedom of religion and expression that (for now), Shea and Marshall are right poses when new political majorities are incom patible with pluralism and to point out that the campaign to limit assume power. freedom, and that these views are based criticism of Islam under human-rights Where the threat against free speech on their understanding of Islam—an law is far from over. The OIC has now from Islamic radicalism in Europe is understanding that seems to be in the shifted its focus to existing hate-speech unique is in the widespread use of ascendancy in most Muslim-majority prohibitions in international human- intimidation through threats and actual countries. rights law and European criminal codes. violence and, in a few instances, even Silenced is also a forceful empirical In this, it is being aided by numerous killings of those who are critical of rebuttal of the fallacious argument Western human-rights experts and poli - Islam—a development well document- that blasphemy and hate-speech laws ticians, and even by human-rights courts ed by Shea and Marshall. While most are needed to foster social harmony that insist that multicultural societies of those convicted under hate-speech be tween the adherents of different require the policing of “intolerant” laws are let off with a fine, the danger religions: Nowhere are interreligious speech. of violence has prompted many to har mony and genuine tolerance less Which brings me to a minor shortcom- abstain from speaking out, or to resort widespread that in those Muslim- ing of the book: Shea and Mar shall’s to anonymity. The physical threats majority countries where blasphemy treatment of European hate-speech laws. and attacks are all the more serious and apostasy laws are most frequently While Muslim organizations frequently because of their arbitrariness: It is being enforced. The authors make invoke these laws to silence debate, impossible to know when a self- abun dantly clear the need to resist the they were not adopted at the insistence appointed defender of the prophet is ongoing attempts to turn Islamic blas- of Muslims, nor are critics of Islam sufficiently offended to take matters phemy laws into international law the only victims of them. Numerous into his own hands. through human-rights language—an groups claiming to represent Jews, This reviewer once insisted that a international campaign that has been Christians, gays, the disabled, and eth- book chapter he wrote on free speech waged primarily by the Organization of nic minorities routinely invoke such be accompanied by the (in)famous car- the Islamic Con ference (OIC). laws, whose protections seem to be the toon of Mohammed with a bomb in his Considering the systematic repres- ultimate recognition for groups in an turban, and no violence ensued. But in sion of minorities and the denial of era of identity politics. It is therefore September 2011, Sweden’s intelligence basic human rights in many Muslim- difficult to fault Muslims for the pre - service asked an art festival to cancel majority countries, it defies belief that carious legal protection of controver- an appearance by cartoonist Lars Vilks, the OIC has been able to dominate the sial speech in Europe (although the who had been attacked several times, agenda of the U.N.’s Human Rights coordinated campaigns by Muslim since his security could not be guaran- Council with its insistence that “de - groups to invoke blasphemy and hate- teed. A few years ago, such a develop- famation of religion” should be pro - speech laws has certainly increased ment would have occasioned huge hibited under human-rights law. This dramatically the pressure to enforce numbers of headlines in Scandinavian demand is based on the premise that such laws). media; but the ubiquity of such intimi- Muslims suffer systematic repression The fact that laws aimed at protect- dation has almost become routine, and and discrimination in the West. While ing democracy against totalitarian raises few eyebrows: a chilling indict- there are certainly Muslims who have ment of our times. been subjected to unfair suspicion Silenced is an uncomfortable but es - under the anti-terror measures, it is sential contribution to a most important indisputable that Muslims in the West debate that many would prefer to sit enjoy far greater freedoms than reli- out. Its sober, balanced, and detailed gious minorities and, indeed, Muslims account of the threat from Islamic blas- in Muslim-majority countries. This is phemy laws—whether in Pakistan, all the more remarkable when one takes at the U.N., or in Europe—lucidly into account the fact that many Western “‘Time is an illusion’?—How long did it take you demonstrates that we do so at our own societies face the threat of terrorism to come up with that?” peril.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS far, far too much on residential mortgage- the way out the door, he slips a Zip drive Film backed securities and stands to go belly- to Quinto’s analyst: it contains a break- up in short order. But late in the story, a down of the company’s exposure to the profane mid-level banker played by Paul soon-to-be-worthless securities that Wall The Bettany gives the story the context it street firms have been trading with aban- deserves, lecturing a subordinate who don for some time. the analyst works late, Fall questions the point of their business: finishes his ex-boss’s simulation, and then freaks out when he realizes what it means. ROSS DOUTHAT if you really want to do this with your so does Bettany’s middle man ager, when life you have to believe you’re neces- he’s summoned back to the office at mid- sary—and you are. if people want to live rosPerity has a thousand night to reckon with the data, and the mes- fathers; economic ruin is an like this in their cars and big [expletive] sage of panic quickly climbs the corporate houses they can’t even pay for, then orphan. Few liberals want to you’re necessary. the only reason that ladder—first to the rumpled head of trad- P acknowledge that our Great ing (Kevin spacey), then to his sleeker they all get to continue living like kings is recession was made, in part, in Wash - because we’ve got our fingers on the superiors (simon Baker and Demi Moore), ington, D.C., by the well-meaning politi- scales in their favor. i take my hand off and then to the top man himself (Jeremy cians and bureaucrats whose subsidies and and then the whole world gets really irons), a human velociraptor with the regulations helped inflate the housing bub- [expletive] fair really [expletive] quickly richard Fuld–like name of tuld. ble. Many conservatives are loath to admit and nobody actually wants that. they say Most of the pleasures of Margin Call that it was Wall street, not Washington, they do, but they don’t. they want what involve watching all of these fine actors that turned an American bubble into a we have to give them, but they also want play off one another, trading dialogue that global Götterdämmerung—that capitalist to play innocent and pretend they have no owes more to David Mamet than to Wall idea where it came from. greed as well as government interference Street while the clock ticks down to the brought the world economy to its knees. this is self-serving, of course. (the next day’s trading and the bankers decide the Left blames Wall street and deregu- speech comes from a man who earlier what is to be done. (irons gets off the film’s best line, telling his subordinates to explain the complexities of their analysis to him “as you might to a small child, or a golden retriever.”) the answer seems to be to sell everything, as fast as possible (a maneuver the real Lehman never quite managed), in the hopes of being the first rat off the sinking ship. But spacey’s head of trading, the man who will actually need to supervise the selling, resists: selling worthless paper to the bank’s slower and more gullible trading partners offends his sense of honor, and he thinks that it will destroy the firm’s reputation even if it saves its finances. this dilemma is the hinge on which the last act turns, but the movie leaves lit- tle doubt which way its characters will ultimately break. Margin Call is a film, Paul Bettany in Margin Call ultimately, about the magnetic power of lation, the right blames Fannie Mae and admitted to blowing tens of thousands of mo ney, and the way that the extraordinary the Community reinvestment Act, and dollars on strippers.) But it’s also entirely rewards of a financial bubble siphoned a neither points a finger in its own direc- true. And by acknowledging that the sins generation’s worth of elite talent to Wall tion. that it depicts were part of a larger web of street, and away from fields—engineering the best moment in Margin Call, a very greed and self-deception, in which home- and science in particular—where they good movie about 24 desperate hours in owners and politicians were as complicit might have done something more last - the life of a Lehman Brothers–like invest- as any trader or analyst or Ceo, Margin ing with their lives than tip the scales for ment house, comes when the script es- Call hoists itself above the usual run of subprime-financed McMansions. its finan- capes this trap, breaking from its focus on Hollywood polemics, and becomes a cial world is a particularly well-remunerat- the sins of Wall street to offer a wider lens worthy portrait of our present crisis. ed microcosm of early-2000s America as a on our predicament. this is a claustropho- the crisis has already arrived when the whole: a place where everybody should bic film, most of it set within the walls of movie starts, in the form of market turbu- have known better and done other than a single Manhattan tower on the autumn lence and mass layoffs that claim the job he did, but where the rewards of self- night when a young analyst (Zachary of eric Dale (stanley tucci), the bank’s deception were simply too extraordinary

ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS Quinto) realizes that his company has bet hangdog head of risk management. on to pass up.

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Charterhouse of Parma once, but can self-esteem) accuracy of a Saudi execu- The Straggler now remember only the name of the tioner. hero: Fabrizio del dongo. (Which is hard There are excuses with which I can to forget.) There is reading for pleasure, console myself. I was a STEM student. The Proper and there is reading for improvement. I That’s what we’re supposed to say now a - am too ill-disciplined for the latter, and days: STEM. It stands for “science, rarely get far into a book someone has technology, engineering, and math.” Study told me is important. I take some comfort Mas ter ing differential equations doesn’t from Kingsley Amis’s apothegm that “in leave a lot of time over for Turgenev. Not literature, ‘importance’ is not important; that we didn’t do our best. We math geeks only good writing is.” used to quip defensively that when we These things are relative, of course. dated girls from the humanities or soft- An anonymous writer calling himself science departments, while visiting their Professor X has recently published a rooms we could browse their books while book, In the Basement of the Ivory they were making coffee or powdering Tower, that describes his experiences noses; but they never browsed our books. JOHN DERBYSHIRE teaching evening sessions to working- It was true, too. I dated a girl from the class citizens who need a college cre- Spanish department at a neighboring col- hould I read Thomas dential. he is sympathetic towards these lege, and at odd intervals while in her Mann?” Miss Straggler people, who are in a place they do not rooms read an entire book about lope de wanted to know. She has want to be after a hard day’s work, but Vega, though I did not have and do not ‘S enrolled in some sort of he is frank about their un-bookishness. yet have the slightest interest in Spanish freshman Western lit course at college, “They have no truck at all with books or literature. I did, of course, have a deep and keeps coming up with these ques- any sort of intellectual commerce,” he interest in the girl. (do you have any idea tions. tells us. “They don’t go anywhere where how prolific lope de Vega was? The What to say? I have never, to my there are books, not even the college number of plays he wrote is not known to knowledge, read a single word Thomas library.” the nearest hundred! I bet he was well- Mann ever wrote, though I did sit through I’m way more bookish than that, but read, too.) By contrast, the only hands that sappy dirk Bogarde movie of Death still out of my depth in high-literary cir- that ever took Riesz and Szőkefalvi- in Venice. one’s offspring look up to one cles. It irks me that I am not a well-read Nagy’s Functional Analysis down from for guidance on such things, and I didn’t man. (May I say “am ill-read”? Thank my bookshelf were mine, and that very have any. I confessed my ignorance, fol- you.) It puts me in company with the reluctantly—it is a dull book, with no lowing up with a sheepish stale quip stereotypical bourgeois boor, who wishes exercises. about the proper study of mankind being he were better educated than he is, and So, ha! I may not have read Cranford man, but not necessarily Thomas Mann. even tries to fake bookishness. Flann or The Magic Mountain, but I have read I seem to have gotten away with o’Brien, in one of his fantasy-comic every word of Tarski’s Introduction to it—without, I mean, any very dramatic sketches back in the days when books Logic, and of hilbert and Cohn-Vossen’s bursting of Miss’s balloons. Perhaps, were sold with uncut pages, conjured up Geometry and the Imagination, and after 20 years’ close acquaintance with a man who, for a fee, would come to your hardy’s Pure Mathematics. Also some her dad, she has none left to burst. They house and cut the pages of the books in good-sized translated chunks of Gauss’s take our measure at last. your library. he would also crack their Disquisitiones Arithmeticæ and lan - My insecurity in this zone is acute, and spines, turn down some page corners, and dau’s Primzahlen, and even, as a college getting acuter. The Charles dickens bi - introduce strategic coffee stains here and task, a few pages of Whitehead and centenary is almost upon us, and I live in there. Persons browsing in your library Russell’s Principia Mathematica (which dread that one of my editors will ask me would then suppose that you were a well- is written mostly in a made-up logical to write something about the old boy. read man. symbolism). Take that, you literary My acquaintance with dickens is basic: The pain of my own deficiency is the snobs! Pickwick, Copperfield, Twist, and a cou- greater because I am surrounded for a fair But no, it won’t do. It is by under- ple of others. I read the American Notes, part of my workday with sensationally standing ourselves, in our social rela- too, and recommend them as a corrective well-read persons. david Pryce-Jones tions, that we become wise, and a to anyone, if there still is anyone, who takes the palm. Not only has he read novelist of genius can bring us to that thinks lightly of slavery. I have never absolutely everything in at least two understanding more pleasurably, and read Great Expectations, though, nor half languages, he has been personally ac - with less mental labor, than any formal a dozen others. If dickens were a ski quainted with a good portion of the study. Mathematics is beautiful, but resort, I could just about cope adequately 20th-century writers he’s read. Rick as Bertrand Russell noted, its beauty is with the blue slopes. Brookhiser, with whom I cohabit on this “cold and austere . . . without appeal to Even more distressing than Great page, is in the same league, and can drop any part of our weaker nature.” The prop- Books I have not read are the ones I have an apt allusion from Thackeray or Tur - er study of mankind is man, after all. If I read but retained no impression of. This genev into a conversation about wood- am not wise, it’s because I have too little happens a lot with translations. I read The burning stoves with the lethal (to my literature.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Treadmarks

HENEVER I write in these pages about the pedestrian has been glimpsed in years. Some new federal corrosive effect of Big Government upon regulation requires them to be posted wherever pedestrians the citizenry in Britain, Canada, Europe, are to be found, or might potentially be found in the years W and elsewhere and note that this republic is ahead. I just drove through Barre, Vt., which used to be the fairly well advanced upon the same grim trajectory, I get a granite capital of the state but, as is the way, now offers the fair few letters on the lines of: “You still don’t get it, Steyn. usual sad Main Street of vacant storefronts and non-profit Americans aren’t Europeans. Or Canadians. We’re not community-assistance joints and whatnot. For some reason, gonna take it.” it has faded pedestrian crossings painted across the street I would like to believe it. It’s certainly the case that Amer - every few yards. So, in full compliance with the Bureau of icans have more attitude than anybody else—or, at any rate, Compliance, those new signs have been stuck in front of attitudinal slogans. I saw a fellow in a “Don’t Tread on Me” each one, warning the motorist of looming pedestrians, T-shirt the other day. He was at LaGuardia, and he was being springing from curb to pavement like Alpine chamois. trod all over, by the obergropinfuhrers of the TSA, who had The oncoming army of lurid lime signs uglies up an decided to subject him to one of their enhanced pat-downs. already decrepit Main Street. They dominate the scene, lin- There are few sights more dismal than that of a law-abiding ing up in one’s windshield with the mathematical precision citizen having his genitalia pawed by state commissars, of Busby Berkeley’s chorines in Gold Diggers of 1935. And but him having them pawed while wearing a they make America look ridiculous. They are, “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt is certainly one of in fact, double signs: One lime green diamond them. with the silhouette of a pedestrian, and then Don’t get me wrong. I like “Don’t Tread below it a lime rectangle with a diagonal arrow, on Me.” Also, “Don’t Mess with Texas”— pointing to the ground on which the hypo - although the fact that 70 percent of births in thetical pedestrian is likely to be hypothetically Dallas’s largest hospital are Hispanic suggests perambulating. The lower sign is an exquisite- that someone has messed with Texas in recent ly condescending touch. A nation whose citi- decades, and fairly comprehensively. zenry is as stupid as those markers suggest they In my own state, the Department of What - are cannot survive. But, if we’re not that stupid, ever paid some fancypants advertising agency why aren’t we outraged? a couple of million bucks to devise a new What’s the cost of those double signs—300 tourism slogan. They came up with “You’re bucks per? That’s the best part of four grand we Going To Love It Here!,” mailed it in, and cashed the check. don’t need to have wasted on one little strip of one little street The state put it up on the big “Bienvenue au New Hamp- in one small town. It’s not hard to see why we’re the Brokest shire” sign on I-93 on the Massachusetts border, and ten Nation in History: You can stand at almost any four-way minutes later outraged Granite Staters were demanding it across the land, look in any direction, and see that level of be removed and replaced with “Live Free or Die.” So it was. statist waste staring you in the face. Doesn’t that count as Americans are still prepared to get in-your-face about their being trod on? They’re certainly treading on your kids. In in-your-face slogans. fact, they’ve stomped whatever future they might have had No other nation has license-plate mottos like “Live Free into the asphalt. or Die.” No other nation has songs about how “I’m proud to A variant of my readers’ traditional protestation runs be a Canadian” or “Australian” or “Slovenian”—or at least like this: “Americans aren’t Europeans, Steyn. We have the no songs written in the last 20 years in a contemporary pop Second Amendment, and they don’t.” Very true. And Ver - vernacular. And yet, underneath the attitudinal swagger, mont has one of the highest rates of firearms ownership in the Americans are—to a degree visiting Continentals often re - nation. And Howard Dean has a better record on gun rights mark upon—an extremely compliant people. than Rudy Giuliani. Or Chris Christie. But one would be For example, if you tootle along sleepy two-lane rural reluctant to proffer the Green Mountain State as evidence of blacktops, the breaks in the solid yellow line are ever farther any correlation between gun rights and small government. apart. One can drive for miles and miles without an opportu- If I’ve sounded a wee bit overwrought in recent columns, nity to pass. Unlike the despised French surrender monkeys, it’s because America is seizing up before our eyes. And I’m Americans are not to be trusted to reach their own judgment a little bewildered by how many Americans can’t see it. I on when it’s safe to pull out and leave Gran’ma eating dust. think about that chap at LaGuardia with “Don’t Tread on Odd. But these days what can Americans be trusted with? Me” on his chest, and government bureaucrats in his pants. You may have noticed those new lime green pedestrian signs And I wonder if America’s exceptional attitudinal swagger sprouting across the fruited plain, in many cases where no isn’t providing a discreet cover for the shriveling of liberty. Sometimes an in-your-face attitude blinds you to what’s Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). going on under your nose. GETTY

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years40 A Liberating Education

“Learning from masters such as St. omas and Aristotle has helped free me from the assumptions of our time and the need to accept opinions as fact. It has given me condence in what I know and the means to tackle what I do not.” – Jorge Guardado Class of 2011

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Two companies controlling this much wireless industry revenue creates a one-sided conversation.

77.6% AT&T and Verizon (Post T-Mobile Takeover)

Wireless

24% 18% 36.3% 27.5% 36.8%

Oil Airline Banking Auto

AT&T’s proposed takeover of T-Mobile would result in two companies controlling more than 77% of wireless industry revenues. In other major industries, the two top fi rms control much less. Two wireless industry giants would marginalize the ability of other providers to keep prices competitive for consumers and infl uence the pace of wireless industry innovation. This is a bad idea for consumers, competition and our country.

Wireless industry source: Individual company annual fi nancial reports for 2010. Oil source: www.alacra.com/acm/2042_sample.pdf, page 22. Note: data includes oil refi ning and gas. Airline source: DOT, form 41, Schedule P-1.2. Banking source: DATAMONITOR’S “Banks in the United States” and www2.fdic.gov/sdi/main.asp. Auto source: SEC 10-K fi lings, (includes cars and trucks and may include other revenue streams). Foreign currencies converted to dollars using prevailing exchange rates.