Forget Reaganreagan His Foreign Policy Was Right for His Time—Not Ours

Home , Bill Kauffman, Clive James, David Stockman, James Bovard, Lucky Gordon, Philip Giraldi

Our Lousy Generals Immigration Reformed American Pravda Sex, Spies & the ’60s ANDREW J. BACEVICH william w. chip ron unz christopher sandford

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IDEAS OVER IDEOLOGY • PRINCIPLES OVER PARTY ForgetForget ReaganReagan His foreign policy was right for his time—not ours

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Available at booksellers everywhere and at TANBooks.com e Publisher You Can Trust With Your Faith 58 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 1-800-437-5876MAY/JUNE 2013 Vol. 12, No. 3, May/June 2013

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COVER STORy FRONT LINES ARTS & LETTERS

12 Reagan, Hawk or Dove? 7 Defense spending isn’t 40 The Generals: American The right foreign-policy lessons defense strength Military Command From to take from the 40th president william S. Lind World War II to Today DANIEL LARISON 8 How to debunk the BBC’s by Thomas E. Ricks war fever Andrew J. Bacevich ARTICLES Neil Clark 44 Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American 16 Immigration Made Right 9 Mrs. Thatcher’s Hong Kong diplomacy Idea in an Age of Discontent Can reform be comprehensive by E.J. Dionne TODD CROWELL and conservative? P atrick J. Deneen William W. Chip Commentary 46 After Tocqueville: The Promise 22 Our American Pravda and Failure of Democracy by How the media miss key stories 6 The age of Keynes Chilton Williamson Jr. of espionage and corruption daniel j. mahoney R on Unz 11 Europe’s faith no more pa trick j. buchanan 49 American Diplomacy: Sixtieth- 28 Sex, Spies, and the 1960s Anniversary Expanded Edition Tabloid culture began with the 21 Drones for “regime protection” philip giraldi by George Kennan Profumo Affair. J OrdAN MICHAEL SMITH Cohrist pher Sandford 38 For President Buchanan BILL KAUFFMAN 51 Devouring Freedom: Can Big 34 Clive James at Last Government Ever Be Stopped? He’s a wit, but can he confront 58 Goodbye to the 1980s by W. James Antle III evil? taki JAMES BOVARD R .J. STove 54 Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic by Mark David Hall Kevin R.C. Gutzman 56 Most Likely to Secede ed. by Ron Miller and Rob Williams kirkpatrick sale Cover illustration: Michael Hogue

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 3 Reactions

“The War’s Most Lasting Legacy” That doesn’t mean Vietnam was ir- Gov. Huntsman’s argument in “Why True, there’s no necessary connection relevant, but in the absence of the cur- Marriage Equality Is Right” (March/ between the Bush administration’s Iraq rents of domestic social change, I sus- April) is unsubstantial. How can the floundering and, say, the right’s set- pect the Vietnam debacle would have governor implore the value of Amer- backs in the gay-marriage debate. But looked more like, say, the Korean War, ica’s political traditions while, in the cultural change is a complicated thing, the memory of which did contribute same breath, dismiss the very moral built on narratives and symbols and in- to the Democrats’ losses in 1952 and principles that lay the foundation for tuitive leaps. 1956, but did not lead to a long-term America itself? As The American Conservative’s Dan realignment. There is a tendency to Not unexpected, Mr. Huntsman ne- McCarthy noted in a shrewd essay attribute those social changes to the glects to provide any compelling evi- (“The GOP’s Vietnam,” March/April), disillusion caused by the Vietnam War, dence to his position, instead obscuring the Vietnam War helped entrench a but I suspect this is also a mistake—the the issue with references to an emerging narrative in which liberal social move- Generation of ’68 was a global phe- Hispanic population, fiscal responsibil- ments were associated with defeat in nomenon. ity, and the personal testimony of his Indochina—and this association didn’t NOAH MILLMAN own marriage. It is more of the same have to be perfectly fair to be politically Excerpt from a blog post at The hollow rhetoric that quickly rendered and culturally potent. American Conservative Mr. Huntsman irrelevant among his In a similar way, even though Don- Republican peers this past election year. ald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney weren’t The war was instrumental in driving Whatever misperceived political op- culture warriors or evangelical Chris- younger voters away from the GOP portunity Mr. Huntsman found in tak- tians, in the popular imagination their and into the Democratic coalition in ing this position has undeniably shown legacy of incompetence has become a 2006 and 2008, and most of them have to be the governor himself “feeling for reason to reject social conservatism as remained there since then. Of course, stones” in the river dividing regional well. Just as the post-Vietnam Demo- Iraq was not the only thing about the and national politics. crats came to be regarded as incompe- Republican Party and mainstream con- JONATHAN ARMESTO tent, wimpy and dangerously radical servatism that alienated Millennials, but Ave Maria, FL all at once, since 2004 the Bush ad- it is correct to say that the Iraq war in- ministration’s blunders—the missing creased and hastened Millennial alien- Huntsman’s argument that support for W.M.D., the botched occupation— ation from both. The important point marriage equality is a conservative cause have been woven into a larger story is that the GOP was already going to be is significant for reasons that don’t neces- about Youth and Science and Reason struggling to appeal to a more diverse, sarily have anything to do with politics. and Diversity triumphing over Old more liberal younger generation, and a As a cultural matter, there are moun- White Male Faith-Based Cluelessness. foreign policy defined by the Iraq de- tains of social science studies that show Of all the Iraq war’s consequences bacle has made that task even more dif- that relationships involving committed for our politics, it’s this narrative that ficult. So the sobering thing for Repub- couples, regardless of the gender pair- may be the war’s most lasting legacy, licans to consider is that the Iraq war is a ings involved, are far more stable that and the most difficult for conservatives liability for them with Americans of all “casual” relationships. Additionally, it’s to overcome. ages, and it has already proven to be a fairly clear that established families are ROSS DOUTHAT disaster for them with younger voters. far better for children than single par- New York Times DANIEL LARISON ent families, and the evolving practice of Excerpt from a blog post at The homosexuals either bearing children via I’m unconvinced that Vietnam is the American Conservative artificial insemination or adoption has key reason why the Democrats lost their shown that such relationships are just as status as the majority party. Rather, I be- The Case for Marriage beneficial for children as heterosexual lieve it was overwhelmingly domestic Former presidential candidate Jon relationships. What all of this suggests is policy considerations—and particularly Huntsman’s op-ed expressing support that allowing gays and lesbians to enter the nexus of race and crime—that over- for gay marriage literally made news, into a legal marriage tends to lead to ex- whelmingly drove the “Silent Majority” generating enough media attention to be actly the kind of social stability that con- into the arms of Richard Nixon, and, mentioned in a White House press brief- servatives claim that they support. subsequently, motivated the Democrats ing. His endorsement garnered 120,000 DOUG MATACONIS of Macomb County, Michigan, to pull pageviews and 35,000 Facebook shares Excerpt from a blog post at Outside The the lever for Ronald Reagan. on TheAmericanConservative.com. Beltway

4 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 The American Conservative Publisher Ron Unz E ditor Daniel McCarthy Senior Editors Rod Dreher Caorpor te Relations the pews. But, as David Brooks pointed Daniel Larison In his discussion of sex and culture, out in a recent New York Times column Mark Nugent Rod Dreher (“Sex and Christianity,” (“How Movements Recover,” March 15, E ditorial Director, Digital Maisie Allison March/April) gives scant attention to 2013), an institution that responds to A ssociate Editor the supra-nationalist corporate order crisis by following the impulse to “purge Jordan Bloom that has been imposed upon all of us— and purify” risks sacrificing its author- National Correspondent the very generator of modernist morals ity in its effort to avoid being tainted by Michael Brendan Dougherty and mores. For the extraction of ever- the world it seeks to influence. A case Contributing Editors increasing profit margins, this amoral could be made that it is actually the re- W. James Antle III, Andrew J. Bacevich, system requires a mass psychology of fusal of the Roman hierarchy to follow Doug Bandow, Jeremy Beer, James Bovard, Patrick Deneen, Michael Desch, Richard Gamble, narcissistic individualism and the re- the course set by Vatican II that has led Philip Giraldi, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, lentless creation and stimulation of ar- to the marginalization of the Catholic Freddy Gray, Leon Hadar, Peter Hitchens, tificial wants and desires—all of which Church in the western world. Philip Jenkins, Christopher Layne, Chase Madar, Eric Margolis, James Pinkerton, demand instant gratification and none Mr. Buchanan’s evaluation of Bene- Justin Raimondo, Fred Reed, Stuart Reid, of which can ever be completely satis- dict’s papacy, that he restored “majesty” Sheldon Richman, Steve Sailer, John Schwenkler, Jordan Michael Smith, fied or sated. Until this corporate com- to the liturgy and poached a few Angli- R.J. Stove, Kelley Vlahos, Thomas E. Woods Jr. modification of all human relation- can congregations that objected to the A ssociate Publisher ships is recognized and confronted, ordination of women and homosexu- Jon Basil Utley any thought of a renewal or revival of als, rings as faint praise indeed. John Publishing Consultant moral values, traditional or otherwise, Paul’s charisma may have hastened the Ronald E. Burr remains mere idle and utopian specu- demise of communist regimes in East- E ditorial Assistants lation. ern Europe, but his opposition to the Jonathan Coppage Matthew Taylor MARTIN COMACK, PhD impulses of Vatican II may have simul- Founding Editors Somerville, MA taneously weakened the ability of his Patrick J. Buchanan, Scott McConnell, church to inspire spiritual renewal in Taki Theodoracopulos Reimagining Vatican II the cradle of Christianity. Does Pat Buchanan really blame the ROB ABBOT The American Ideas Institute Second Vatican Council for the decline Arlington, VA P resident Wick Allison of the Roman Catholic Church in Eu- rope and America? (“Pope Benedict’s Whither the European Union? The American Conservative, Vol. 12, No. 3, May/June 2013 (ISSN 1540-966X). Reg. U.S. Farewell,” March/April) Even if we as- Taki’s article (“Escape From the EU”) Pat. & Tm. Offic. Published 6 times a year by sume that the impulses reflected by in your March/April issue evoked a The American Ideas Institute, 1710 Rhode Island Avenue NW, Suite 1200, Washington, Vatican II (decentralization and col- long held observation of mine. One of DC 20036-3128. Periodicals postage paid legiality in church polity, engagement the powerful and lasting impressions of Washington, DC and additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA. POSTMASTER: Send of the laity in the Mass, engagement of living in London during the stock mar- address changes to The American Conservative, the church in the modern world) were ket “Big Bang” conversion of 1986 was P.O. Box 1091, Selmer, TN 38375-1091. misguided, the potential for these ini- that the concept of the EU was doomed Subscription rates: $59.95 per year (6 issues) in the U.S., $69.95 in Canada (U.S. funds), and tiatives to fundamentally affect the way to eventual failure. It was obvious that $79.95 other foreign via airmail. Back issues: the church operates was severely lim- this effort consisted of troweling over $12.00 (prepaid) per copy in USA, $13.00 in Canada (U.S. funds). ited by a Vatican hierarchy that, work- chasms of differences, many irreconcil- For subscription orders, payments, and other ing through the increasingly conserva- able, which defined the European na- subscription inquiries— tive Pope Paul VI and then led for 23 tions, with a veneer of similarity. This By phone: 800-579-6148 (outside the U.S./Canada 731-434-1129) years by John Paul II, systematically was in complete contrast to the U.S. Via Web: www.theamericanconservative.com blunted or reversed each of the reforms where we have a thin veneer of differ- By mail: The American Conservative, P.O. Box launched by the Council. ences covering a bedrock of commonal- 1091, Selmer, TN 38375-1091 There is no question that the Roman ity among our states, Civil War and all. Please allow 6–8 weeks for delivery of your first issue. Church faced significant challenges to My bet is that the artificial EU cannot Inquiries and letters to the editor should be its authority and relevance in the sec- prevail over the genuine independence sent to [email protected]. For advertising ond half of the last century. If nothing of the European countries. If the USSR sales call Ronald Burr at 703-893-3632. For editorial, call 202-955-3600. else, the rise of relativism as an accepted could not do it, I doubt the EU can. This issue went to press on April 25, 2013. ethical framework made it harder to WES WALLACE Copyright 2013 The American Conservative. recruit priests or to keep the faithful in via email

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 5 { Vol. 12, No. 3, May/June 2013 }

Springtime for Keynes

he Great Recession started off well for conser- down could be seen was a correlation that did not vative economic theories. They seemed vindi- obviously imply a direction of causation. cated, particularly the ideas of the Austrian The weight of circumstances no longer favors Tschool of economics. The real estate bubble’s burst arguments for austerity. Neither does the political looked like a textbook turn of the Austrian business climate, to judge from the results of the 2012 cycle, with lax monetary policy encouraging over- election, which saw the relatively budget-conscious investment in a series of inflated assets—first dot- Republican ticket of Romney and Ryan go down in coms, then real estate—and finally leading to a ti- flames to the president who has spent more than any tanic collapse. Austrians prescribed buying gold and other. In the battle of perceptions, Keynesians have waiting for the inflation that would inevitably follow the upper hand—with the more dedicated of the the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing.” breed, such as Paul Krugman, criticizing President More conventional small-government conserva- Obama for not spending nearly enough. tives also had a ready remedy for the crisis. Plum- Conservatism is not a mere economic dogma, meting federal revenues and new stimulus spending however, but a political philosophy. And there are led to trillion-dollar deficits, which made the case reasons beyond those of the “austerians” for look- for cutting government more compelling than ever. ing askance at the burgeoning of the welfare state in Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth this time of prolonged misery. The greater immedi- Rogoff stepped in to show that debt-to-GDP ratios in ate danger is not dependency—millions of Ameri- excess of 90 percent correspond to significantly di- cans are genuinely in need amid a hollowed-out minished growth. Spending our way out of the dol- working-class economy—but the socially atomizing drums was impossible—only revving up growth by effects that even helpful government programs can reducing spending held any possibility of escape. The have. The last thing the country needs, in the face of a rise of the Tea Party in 2010 and the nomination of faltering employment base, is further erosion of civil Rep. Paul Ryan as the GOP’s candidate for vice presi- society and the family. But there are few, if any, poli- dent in 2012 testified to the popularity of this view cies in place to counteract the crowding out of the among Republican voters. private realm by public assistance. Maybe these theories are correct. But the short- Conservatives must give at least as much attention term evidence has not borne them out. Inflation has to these problems as to overarching economic been modest, while in April Rogoff and Reinhart’s theories—which, even when correct, may be far from seminal paper, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” came in any practical implementation. But there are grounds for withering criticism from three University of Mas- for solace even in this age of Keynes. The man whose sachusetts scholars—one of them, Thomas Herndon, name is a synonym for statism to many on the right a graduate student—who found the study employed in fact “believed that budgets should be balanced questionable assumptions and selective data sets and over the business cycle, with surpluses in good years even included a glaring spreadsheet error. Revising to offset deficits in bad years,” as Bruce Bartlett has its conclusions would show, the critics maintained, observed. On that much, at least, conservatives may that there was no remarkable choke off of growth find themselves not altogether opposed to Lord once debt-to-GDP hit 90 percent, and what slow- Keynes.

6 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 Front Lines

Rand Paul’s Realignment the Republican Party’s base lie in the middle class, and the usual outcome The senator points his party toward a stronger defense policy. of a debt crisis, inflation, threatens the by WILLIAM S. LIND middle class with ruin. Inflation wiped out the German middle class twice in concept central to our medi- Led by Minority Leader Mitch McCo- the 20th century. Not only can it hap- eval forebears’ understand- nnell, they supported him. The mouth- pen here, on our current course it will. ing of how life works was the piece of the permanent war party, Sen. The Tea Party grasps this fact, which wheel of fortune. Whoever John McCain, was left spluttering. means Republican officeholders must Awas on top would soon be on his way TheFinancial Times, the world’s best also grasp it or be replaced. down, and whoever was humble and English-language newspaper, caught What Republican members of Con- lowly would find himself on the way up. the moment and its import. FT report- gress thus far have not understood If there is any place where the wheel ed on March 11, is that clear thinking about national of fortune still turns, it is Washington. defense also leads to a dramatically There, over the past couple months, the The ties that bind Mr Paul and smaller defense budget. Almost all our Republican Party’s wheel has begun to fellow Kentucky senator Mitch defense spending goes to equip and revolve. The permanent war faction, McConnell reveal just how influ- support forces designed for wars with with its allies the Pentagon budget- ential the conservative Tea Party other states. As we have seen in Iraq and stokers, has tumbled, while the long- movement, of which Mr Paul is Afghanistan, such forces are not effec- despised foreign-policy realists and a favorite, remains within the Re- tive against non-state, Fourth Genera- “cheap hawks,” those who want an ef- publican party and how it is shift- tion opponents. Yet our most vital inter- fective military at an affordable price, ing the party’s position on foreign est—our interest in maintaining a world have begun to rise. policy. And it marks a challenge to of states and not of spreading stateless Two events impelled the wheel’s traditional defence hawks such as disorder—dictates that we should avoid movement. In the House of Repre- Senator John McCain, who used war with other states. The question of sentatives, the Republican majority, to dominate the party. what the bulk of our armed forces are faced by sequestration with a choice for, then, is no longer answerable. between cutting the deficit and pro- That “used to” is significant. More As this column warned repeatedly tecting the defense budget, chose the so is the fact that Mitch McConnell, since before our invasion of Iraq, the former. President Obama did his best up for re-election in 2014, now needs most likely outcome when we go to war to terrify House Republicans with the Rand Paul and the rising grassroots with another state will be the creation boogeyman of “undermining our mili- forces he represents. of a new stateless region. That will then tary,” even channeling George W. Bush These actions, taken once, become be another petri dish for the incuba- by speaking at the Norfolk shipyard easier to repeat. The fulsome embrace tion of more Fourth Generation war. where our aircraft carriers are built. of blowzy, poxy Madame Pentagon, This prediction was supported by the The Republicans shrugged. once forgone, looks ever less beguiling. outcomes in Iraq and Libya, and it ap- In the Senate, Rand Paul’s filibus- So far, Republicans’ abandonment pears on track in Afghanistan as well. ter against the use of drones at home of defense spending as their highest The test of any theory is its predictive marked another turn of the wheel. It budget priority is driven by financial value, and there seems to be something was not so much what he said, impor- considerations. A majority of House of a trend here. tant as that was—Americans will not Republicans now recognize that the As a growing number of Republicans enjoy living under constant surveillance greatest threat to America’s security is agree, if the party is to win elections, its and possible obliteration by drones any the enormous federal deficit and the policy agenda needs updating. The pres- more than do Pakistanis, Gazans, or ballooning national debt. Debt crises ent agenda, as faithfully represented by Yemenis—rather, it was the reaction to have destroyed more than one great presidential candidate Mitt Romney, is him from establishment Republicans. power. Both America’s strength and as stale as H.M.S. Surprise’s hardtack. By

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 7 Front Lines refusing to be panicked into dropping the challenge posed by Fourth Genera- “There was no such pressure for sequestration because it means cuts to tion war, the party will, at least in those senior BBC staff to go over the broad- the Pentagon, House Republicans be- areas, be addressing the future and not caster’s systemic failure to challenge gan that updating. With their support the past. Only then may it hope to ride US-UK propaganda over Iraq’s non- for Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster, Senate fortune’s electoral wheel upward. existent WMD. This media failure Republicans laid aside their fear of iden- paved the way towards war in Iraq and tifying with foreign-policy realism—a William S. Lind is author of the Maneuver the subsequent brutal and bloody oc- realism our deficits and debts compel. If Warfare Handbook and director of the cupation. Instead of responsible pub- Republicans can next find the courage American Conservative Center for Public lic-service journalism, BBC News pro- to update their defense policy to reflect Transportation. vides a reliable conduit for government propaganda, most notably the state’s supposedly benign intentions in foreign wars and international relations. The Left vs. the Liberal Media That is the daily news diet we are all spoon-fed.” Media Lens debunks the BBC’s humanitarian interventionists No such presumption of good faith by NEIL CLARK applies when journalists discuss the actions of countries that don’t toe the t all started in July 2001 when two coverage in Britain. Although he is Washington line. “It is, of course, fine men, concerned about bias in the clearly a man of the left—his working- for journalists in the West to point to corporate news media in the UK, class childhood was an “interesting mix the crimes of official enemies and to Ibegan to send out “media alerts” to a of Catholic and Communist” influenc- mock them for their transparent pro- small number of family and friends. es—Cromwell’s not one to be deceived paganda efforts. Thus, the BBC’s Em- Twelve years on and Media Lens—the by labels, an important skill to possess ily Maitlis was able to introduce the brainchild of writer David Edwards, a in an age when wars are sold as “hu- flagship television program ‘News- former manager in sales and market- manitarian interventions” to gain sup- night’ with a touch of sardonic wit: ing, and David Cromwell, a physicist port from liberals. ‘Hello, good evening. The Russians by background—has established itself Media Lens has been outspoken, are calling it a “peace enforcement op- as the UK’s media watchdog. There’s when the need arises, in its critique of eration.” It’s the kind of Newspeak that no doubting the impact they have so-called liberal-left media. Many on would make George Orwell proud.’ made. “Without their meticulous and the British center-left give the BBC a “Maitlis was referring to the inva- humane analysis, the full gravity of free pass because they have swallowed sion of Russian forces into the Geor- the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan the line that the organization is some- gian province of South Ossetia in might have been consigned to bad how “left-wing.” Yet Cromwell and Ed- August 2008. By contrast, imagine a journalism’s first draft of bad history,” wards have shown that when it comes BBC presenter referring skeptically to is the verdict of veteran reporter and to propagandizing for illegal wars and the government’s claim of a ‘peace en- filmmaker John Pilger. peddling establishment views, the BBC forcement operation’ for the West’s in- It’s been an eventful twelve years. In has at least as bad a record as commer- vasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya addition to the “debacles” of Iraq and cial news networks. and describing such language as ‘the Afghanistan, we’ve had the (ongoing) When I caught up with David to talk kind of newspeak that would make menacing of Iran on account of an un- to him about his new book, the BBC George Orwell proud.’ It just would proven nuclear-weapons program and was in the middle of what has been de- not happen.” Israeli military assaults on Lebanon in scribed by some as the biggest crisis in I ask Cromwell how he would re- 2006 and on Gaza in 2008 and again in its 90-year history: the resignation of its spond to those who say that Media 2012. Add in the global financial crash Director-General and other bigwigs af- Lens should devote all its energies on of 2008, and there’s been plenty to keep ter the fallout from a “Newsnight” pro- attacking neocon über-hawks rather the two Davids occupied. gram on child abuse. But while heads than criticizing the liberal media, David Cromwell’s new book, Why rolled over the state-owned broadcast- which might agree with the group’s Are We The Good Guys?, discusses er getting allegations wrong on just one standpoints, say, 70 percent of the these events and the work that he and program, Cromwell points out that the time. “Media Lens has indeed spent Edwards have done to counter the BBC was never held accountable for more time analyzing the liberal media “elite-friendly value assumptions and the role it played in the lead up to the than right-wing outlets. Why? Because judgements” that characterize their Iraq War. the liberal media is often regarded as

8 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 the outlets where the most progres- tween the antiwar left and the antiwar coming together peacefully to sive and the most challenging views right. “I’d be wary of an overt alliance overcome state power. can be seen and heard. If you like, it’s with anyone, right-wing or otherwise, one end of the acceptable spectrum of who espouses other views that I might Cromwell certainly thinks that in news and views. But if even here there find distasteful. But certainly tradi- challenging elite state propaganda are severe limits on permissible chal- tional conservatives should be—and we’re in a better position now than we lenges to state-corporate power, what often are—vehemently opposed to were when Media Lens began in 2001. does that say about society generally? what goes by the benign-sounding “One positive thing I’ve noticed is that It’s like a litmus test for dissent.” term ‘neo-liberalism,’ which I unpack more people are challenging the me- Cromwell believes that the role in the book.” dia, at least judging by the messages of the media in promoting the doc- One of the most riveting chapters posted on our board and Facebook trine of ‘liberal interventionism’ has in Cromwell’s book is called “Beyond page, the emails we get and the tweets been absolutely crucial. “If the public Indifference,” in which he talks about we receive. Often, even before we’ve was better informed, and not so of- his philosophical influences. He con- worked up a media alert, we’ve been ten misled by those in power, there cludes—rather like Aldous Huxley— beaten to it by our readers—although, would likely be a stronger rein on the that if we do want to “free ourselves” to be fair to ourselves, we do typically governing elite. But it’s not happen- and live better lives, it all starts with wait a few days or longer to see how an ing. A major reason for this is that undertaking “small acts of kindness event is being played out in the media. the corporate media acts as an echo for others.” And in contrast, he writes, Ideally, I would hope that in five years’ chamber and amplifier of government time there would be less need for propaganda. Even when challenged, Violence feeds on violence, as Media Lens to be on the internet ‘ha- senior journalists say that their role is wise people have known for ranguing’ and ‘vilifying’ journalists, to report what those in power say and thousands of years. For example, as skeptics and opponents sometimes do—even what they ‘think.’ if brutal state repression is met by say! And surely by ten years from now “For example, when the BBC’s Nick violence from some elements of I can be happily retired and pottering Robinson was the ITN political editor, society, it provides an excuse for about in a garden shed. Preferably my he wrote of the war in Iraq: state forces to ramp up fire-power own and not some random neigh- and crush dissent with even more bor’s.” In the run-up to the conflict, I brutal and widespread violence. and many of my colleagues, were The current state of Permanent Neil Clark is a UK-based journalist, blogger, bombarded with complaints that War can only be ended by people and writer. we were acting as mouthpieces for Mr Blair. Why, the com- plainants demanded to know, did we report without question Thatcher Goes to China his warning that Saddam was a threat? Hadn’t we read what Scott Why Hong Kong recalls the Iron Lady fondly Ritter had said or Hans Blix? I al- by Todd Crowell ways replied in the same way. It was my job to report what those s the swinging ’70s gave way to date? (Virtually all land in Hong Kong, in power were doing or think- the more anxious ’80s, people then as now, is “crown” land and par- ing... . That is all someone in my in Hong Kong became increas- celed out on long-term leases.) Would sort of job can do. Aingly apprehensive about a fast-ap- contracts be honored? More to the proaching, though once comfortably point: what did China intend to do “Robinson performs the same com- distant, date—1997, the expiry date with Hong Kong? pliant role today as political editor for for the vast (by Hong Kong definition) It was against this background the BBC,” Cromwell says. hinterland acquired in 1898 on a 99- that British Prime Minister Margaret In the ’90s we saw an informal al- year lease and still known as the “New Thatcher made her famous first visit liance formed between neoconserva- Territories.” to Beijing in Sept. 1982, to begin nego- tives and progressives united behind Many businessmen were worried tiating the future of the British colony their support for “liberal interven- about the uncertain impact this change with the Chinese Communist govern- tion.” I ask Cromwell if he thinks that would have on business basics: would ment of Deng Xiaoping. The meeting a similar alliance can be formed be- land leases be extended beyond that did not go well.

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 9 Front Lines

Thatcher went to Beijing hoping Much has been made in retrospec- laudatory. “We have no reason not to to persuade China’s leaders that con- tives following Mrs. Thatcher’s recent show our respect to this woman who tinuing British administration of the death of how the “Iron Lady” had signed the Sino-British Joint Declara- territory was necessary for the sta- met her match in Deng. This is un- tion,” wrote the Global Times, an af- bility and prosperity of Hong Kong. fortunate. To be sure Deng, a former filiate of the official government organ The chaos of the Cultural Revolution, revolutionary war commander, was a China Daily. which essentially ended only with tough hombre. But in truth Thatcher The British political figure that Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, was still had a weak hand, which she was smart Beijing truly hated was the last gov- a vivid memory, China’s reforms only enough to understand. As the British ernor, Christopher Patten (appointed just beginning. would say, continued colonial admin- by Thatcher’s successor, John Major). She knew relatively little about istration of Hong Kong was just not He took a confrontational tone with China or Hong Kong, although she on. Beijing, which hit back with such en- was undoubtedly briefed that China It took two more years for the Brit- dearing terms as “sinner of a thousand did not recognize as valid the 19th- ish finally to come around to this po- years.” It will be interesting to see how century treaties that had ceded Hong sition. They were trying times. In Oct. the Chinese press handles his death. Kong island and the tip of Kowloon 1983, when it appeared that negotia- As Hong Kong and China look back tions might collapse, the on the nearly 16 years since Hong Hong Kong dollar began Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty, to plunge in value. That both find their worst fears unrealized led to the pegging of the but so too their best hopes. Many As the British would say, continued currency at HK $7.8 to Hong Kongers, though recognizing colonial administration of Hong Kong the U.S. dollar, a peg that that their basic liberties are intact, are continues to this day. still disappointed that the territory is was just not on. In 1984 London for- only partially democratic, with only mally agreed to sur- vague promises of more to come later. render sovereignty over Beijing is happy that the territory the entire territory, as has not become, as it had feared, a Thatcher confirmed in base for subverting Communist rule peninsula to Britain “in perpetuity” a letter to Chinese premier Zhao Zi- on the mainland. But it is a source of after the Opium Wars. She must also yang. Later she made her second trip disappointment that their punctilious have known that Hong Kong could to Beijing to sign the Joint Declaration observation of the terms of the Joint not continue as a viable entity without at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the Declaration has not earned China’s the New Territories. People. leadership much love. Hong Kong The prime minister, however, Thatcher had been out of office for people still think of themselves as seemed to think she had a duty at least seven years when the actual transition Hong Kongers first and Chinese—as to try to uphold the treaties, which took place at midnight on June 30, in citizens of the People’s Republic of she claimed were still valid under any 1997, so she didn’t have to sit on the China—second. consideration of international law. dais and watch the Union flag lowered Indeed, tensions between Hong The issue came down to sovereignty. for the last time. That role fell to new- Kong people and mainland Chinese Would the British keep it beyond ly minted Prime Minister Tony Blair. visitors have been rising in recent years, 1997, or would they have to surrender She was probably happy to be out of it. as newly rich Chinese jack up prop- the entire territory? In a 2007 interview Thatcher ex- erty prices and hog space in maternity For his part, Deng Xiaoping was pressed “regret” that she could not wards to give birth to “anchor babies.” unmovable: China would resume persuade China to accept continued Of late, protestors have taken to dis- full sovereignty. Anything less would British rule. But there is no shame in playing the old British colonial flag. It make him complicit in the treasonous playing a leading part in what was one is meant mostly to irritate Beijing, not territorial giveaways of the late Qing of the most enlightened yet practical as nostalgia for colonial days. But one Dynasty. Yet otherwise, he was willing acts of diplomacy in modern times. It imagines that Thatcher would take a to grant generous concessions guar- gave Hong Kong far more autonomy quiet satisfaction from the sight. anteeing Hong Kong’s way of life and than any of the so-called “autono- liberties post-1997, under his famous mous regions” in China proper. Todd Crowell is the author of Farewell, My but never-before-tried one-nation, Most commentary on Thatcher’s Colony: Last Days in the life of British Hong two-systems formulation. death in Hong Kong and China was Kong.

10 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 Made in America Patrick j. Buchanan The West Loses Faith

he Faith is Europe and On redistribution—“Is he a conser- a fallible and erring Church? Why Europe is the Faith,” vative, or a Great Society liberal who not follow our separated brethren of “ wrote Hilaire Belloc af- will push the ‘social gospel’?”—the the Protestant faiths, and choose what ter that bloodbath we call new pope passes with honors. He has doctrines we wish to believe and what WorldT War I. “Europe must return to a simple apartment, rides the bus and commandments we wish to obey? the Faith, or she will perish.” lives among the Buenos Aires poor. And how have those churches fared By 1938, Belloc concluded Christian But on the “social issues”—”Is Pope that have accommodated themselves Europe was done: Francis a progressive who will move to the world? “The bad work begun at the Refor- the Church to a more ‘tolerant’ view of Of the Christian denominations, mation is bearing its final fruit in the abortion and same-sex marriage?”— the closest to Catholicism has been the dissolution of our ancient doctrines— the disappointment of the media elite Anglican or Episcopal Church. For a the very structure of society is dissolv- was evident. time, Anglicans were not regarded as ing.” He was right. Europe is the dying Pope Francis adheres to orthodox heretics. For though they had rejected continent. Catholic teaching that abortion is the the primacy of Rome, they had not re- And looking back at the history of killing of an unborn child entailing jected the truths fundamental to Ca- the Old Continent, we see the truth of automatic excommunication for all tholicism. They had been seen in the G.K. Chesterton’s insight: when men involved. He has denounced same- time of Henry VIII as schismatics. cease to believe in God, they do not sex marriage and regards homosexual But lately the Episcopal Church has then believe in nothing, they will be- adoptions as a crime against children. been in the vanguard of all Christian lieve in anything. That the media showed visible dis- churches in ordaining women priests Consider the idols to which Eu- appointment at learning this makes and consecrating women and homo- ropean Man has burnt incense since one wonder if they know anything at sexuals as bishops. losing his faith: Darwinism, Marxism, all about the Catholic Church. Result? No church has suffered Bolshevism, fascism, Nazism, now glo- To be Catholic is to be orthodox. greater losses, as Catholicism has ben- balism—the idea of a secular paradise Indeed, let us presume the impos- efited from a steady stream of defecting where mankind’s needs are met by the sible—that the Church should sud- Anglican clergy. state and people spend their lives con- denly allow the ordination of woman, What the secular media reaction to suming cultural and material goods and decree that abortions in the first Pope Francis reveals is that traditional until the time comes for the painless month of pregnancy are now licit, and Catholicism is today almost as deeply exit. that homosexual unions, if for life, will alien to our present-day West as it was Wednesday, even as Europe has said henceforth be recognized and blessed. in Roman times, only the West chooses goodbye to Rome, Rome began to say This would require the Church to to ignore Catholicism, where Rome goodbye to Europe. admit that for 2,000 years it had been feared and persecuted it. The College of Cardinals, for the first in error on matters of faith and mor- President Obama sent to the official time ever, chose a pope from the New als, and hence is not infallible. But if installation of the Holy Father to repre- World: Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Ar- the Church could have been so wrong sent America our ranking Catholic of- gentina. for so long, while the world was right, ficeholders, Vice President Joe Biden, To be exact, Pope Francis is not of and many had suffered for centuries along with former Speaker Nancy the indigenous peoples of the New because the Church erred, what ar- Pelosi. World. Yet, though by blood an Italian, gument would be left for remaining One wonders what His Holiness was Pope Francis, heart and soul, does not Catholic? thinking when he greeted these orna- belong to Europe. If the Church were to admit it had ments of American Catholicism, both The reaction of our secular media been wrong since the time of Christ of whom regard Roe v. Wade as a mile- to the election of this first Jesuit pope, about how men must live their lives to stone of progress for women’s rights who lives his “preferential option for attain eternal life, why should Catho- and homosexual marriage as the civil the poor,” was easily predictable. lics obey the commandments of such rights cause of the 21st century.

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 11 Cover

Reagan, Hawk or Dove? His foreign policy wasn’t what you think—and may not matter today.

by Daniel Larison

he uses and abuses of Ronald Reagan’s re- to identify them with the Reagan record. cord have greatly influenced arguments on Self-described realists often emphasize Reagan’s foreign policy over the last 25 years. Rea- willingness to engage the USSR in arms-reduction gan’s example has been cited to support negotiations. Noninterventionists tend to focus on Teverything from engagement with Iran and with- his aversion to sending U.S. forces abroad and his drawal from Iraq to George W. Bush’s “freedom relatively rare and limited uses of force. Hawks in agenda” and the arming of rebels in Libya and Syria. general remember Reagan for his increased military His name has also been abused to justify an aggres- spending and support for anticommunist insurgen- sive, militarized post-Cold War role for the U.S. that cies—the Reagan Doctrine—while neoconservatives has little to do with the foreign policy that Reagan in particular celebrate the combative rhetoric Rea- conducted while in office. Perhaps the most useful gan directed against Communism and his eventual thing conservatives can learn from Reagan today is support for democratic movements in the Philip- that his example is of limited relevance in a world pines and South Korea. The Reagan administration’s where the Soviet Union no longer exists, Commu- foreign policy included all of these things, but they nism has collapsed almost everywhere, and the U.S. weren’t all desirable or successful. is more secure than it has been in decades. How these factions interpret the same events dur- The farther removed from Reagan’s time in office ing the Reagan years represents another way that the that conservatives are, the more intent vying factions 40th president’s legacy is co-opted and reinvented on the right have become to identify their preferred in contemporary debates. The decision to send U.S. foreign policy with him. Reagan is the one national forces into Lebanon in the wake of the 1982 Israeli Republican figure of the last 40 years whose repu- invasion and then the decision to remove them after tation with most conservatives has improved over the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut remain time. That is partly the result of Reagan’s departure some of the most contested episodes from the Rea- from the political scene after leaving office, and it is gan years. The way that different factions on the right also partly because of the tendency of later conser- perceive Reagan’s Lebanon policy exposes the fault vatives to reimagine his administration as what they lines that divide them sharply from each other. wished it had been. As the last politically success- Noninterventionists and other conservative ful, self-identified conservative president, Reagan is supporters of foreign-policy retrenchment view the one of the few modern leaders most on the right will agree to imitate. Anyone wanting to make his policy Daniel Larison is a TAC senior editor. His blog is arguments appealing to conservatives feels the need www.theamericanconservative.com/larison.

12 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 Michael Hogue Michael

withdrawal from Lebanon as an example of how Re- tionists that there is nothing to be gained for the publicans can and should be willing to acknowledge U.S. by becoming involved in conflicts in countries a major policy error and correct it by avoiding ad- whose history and internal divisions Americans ditional American losses in unnecessary missions don’t even begin to understand. Indeed, withdraw- abroad. In 2011, Grover Norquist used the example ing U.S. forces from Lebanon had no significant of withdrawal from Lebanon as a model for how harmful consequences for U.S. security. It was only conservatives could agree to cut U.S. losses in Af- much later, following the 9/11 attacks, that hawks ghanistan and end that war sooner. During the 2008 put a new, implausible spin on the decision to leave and 2012 primaries, Rep. Ron Paul cited Reagan’s Lebanon as an invitation to future strikes against us. decision to pull troops out of Lebanon as proof that At its best, Reagan’s foreign policy was a response calls for terminating foolish interventions quickly to contemporary realities and problems, and most of had a good conservative and Republican pedigree. these no longer exist. Conservatives who fail to take The original decision to intervene in Lebanon these changes into account are substituting nostalgia stands as a warning for conservative noninterven- for sound analysis. Instead of worrying about what

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 13 Cover

Reagan would do today, conservatives should de- ago dismissed the importance of deterrence when vise a foreign policy that advances U.S. security and dealing with states much weaker than the Soviet interests in the world as it is. Rather than trying to Union. It is common now for advocates of regime- relive the Reagan years, conservatives would do well change and preventive war to profess their commit- to scrutinize which of Reagan’s decisions still make ment to “peace through strength,” but the substance sense with the advantage of more than two decades of the policies they prefer shows that they reject the of hindsight. concept as Reagan understood it both in principle His most hawkish decisions as president make and in practice. Instead of deterring aggression to sense only in the context of the Cold War and have protect international peace, the new “peace through little or no application to contemporary issues. The strength” often serves as rhetorical cover for the vio- U.S. has no superpower rival to contain any longer, lation of that peace through acts of aggression. and it faces no coherent ideological challenge on par There is likewise little in common between Rea- with that of Soviet Communism. A military build- gan’s actual foreign policy and the so-called “neo- up comparable to Reagan’s today would serve no Reaganite” foreign policy promoted by neoconserva- purpose except to bloat the Pentagon’s budget—and tives over the last 20 years. This is the approach Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan introduced in a 1996 Foreign Affairsarticle, which presented the case for U.S. “benevo- lent global hegemony.” The creators of There is little in common between Reagan’s actual “neo-Reaganite” foreign policy were foreign policy and the so-called “neo-Reaganite” determined to combat what they saw as insufficient conservative and Re- foreign policy promoted by neoconservatives. publican support for larger military budgets and an activist American role in the world. “Neo-Reaganites” wanted to “remoralize” American foreign policy, to make “moral clarity” defense contractors’ wallets—to the detriment of its focus, and to “restore a sense of the heroic” to its America’s fiscal health. To the extent that Reagan-era conduct. In practice, this meant pushing for regime- increases in military spending contributed to Soviet change in some countries and meddling in the inter- collapse, they had some value, but it makes no sense nal affairs of the rest. The Cold War had ended, but to maintain military spending that exceeds even as far as “neo-Reaganites” were concerned, the only that of the Reagan era when no comparable foreign difference this made was that it freed the U.S. to be threat exists. even more assertive in exercising global leadership. There is no longer anything to be gained by sup- The neoconservative use of “neo-Reaganite” as porting insurgents against weak dictatorships, and the brand name of their foreign policy was intended no reason for the U.S. to embroil itself in the inter- to signal to conservatives disaffected with George nal conflicts of other nations. Whatever value the H.W. Bush’s domestic policy record that they should Reagan Doctrine may have had in the 1980s, it now also reject the elder Bush’s more realist approach to stands mostly as a cautionary tale about the damage world affairs in favor of a more militarized and mor- that arming foreign insurgencies can do to the coun- alistic one. If Bush had proved to be a poor heir to tries affected and the abuses that may come from Reagan at home, the “neo-Reaganites” were saying, waging such proxy wars. When there is nothing for he must have “discarded” Reagan’s foreign-policy the U.S. to “roll back,” there is no need for anything views as well by not being missionary enough. This like a policy of rollback. deliberately obscured the extent to which Reagan The most common abuse of Reagan’s legacy is had moved in the direction of the realists during his the rote recitation of the slogan “peace through presidency, and it ignored how in response to this strength.” Originally, the phrase implied support for “neo-Reaganites” and their forerunners had con- creating a strong defense as a deterrent to aggres- stantly faulted Reagan for being too accommodating sion. As the threat of aggression by other states has with the Soviets and too ready to negotiate and agree receded, it has come to mean something very dif- to arms reduction. ferent. Many Republican hawks rely on this phrase Sen. Rand Paul’s speech at the Heritage Founda- to describe their foreign-policy views, but they long tion in February was an attempt to claim Reagan for

14 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 the Republican realist tradition, but with the added order to topple foreign regimes. As Kennan said in twist of connecting Reagan’s record to George Ken- the same op-ed: “Nobody—no country, no party, no nan’s understanding of containment. Paul identified person—‘won’ the cold war. It was a long and costly the link in the claim by Jack Matlock, a former Reagan political rivalry, fueled on both sides by unreal and national security official, that Reagan’s Soviet policy exaggerated estimates of the intentions and strength was closer to Kennan’s thinking than any president’s of the other party.” approach that had come before it. Matlock’s 2007 ac- Congratulating Reagan for winning the Cold War count of the views that Kennan and Reagan shared is one more form of widespread abuse of Reagan’s covered many different issues, but perhaps the most legacy that has adversely affected how conservatives important point of convergence was on containment think about foreign policy and the proper U.S. role itself. Matlock wrote: in the world. This has warped how the right understands American power and U.S. relations with au- Both men rejected what Kennan called ‘libera- thoritarian and pariah states for the last two decades. tionist slogans,’ those that had been used, par- It also blinds many conservatives to the fact that ticularly in 1952, to attack his containment pol- other nations resent and reject American interfer- icy. Reagan also refused to play the ‘nationality ence in their political affairs. In spite of the failures card,’ attempts to stir up the non-Russian popu- of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan and the lation of the Soviet Union. While he thought collapse of the so-called Freedom Agenda, this myth that the independence of the Baltic countries continues to make many on the right overly confi- should be restored, he did not set out to bring dent in our government’s ability to influence over- down the Soviet Union. He tried to change So- seas political developments to suit American wishes. viet behavior, not to destroy the Soviet Union. The conservatism of the Cold War era was in large part defined by anticommunism, as this provided If there were important points of agreement be- the common cause that united disparate groups on tween Reagan’s policy and Kennan’s thinking, Ken- the right and informed their prevailing foreign-pol- nan himself was appalled by Republican triumpha- icy views. Ever since the end of the Cold War, con- lism that sought to credit the Reagan administration servatives have sought in vain to find something that and the GOP with winning the Cold War. In an Oc- might replace anticommunism, and they have tried tober 1992 op-ed for the New York Times, Kennan to conjure up a new ideological foe that could fill the dismissed the claim that the Reagan administration same role that Communism did for four decades. “won” the Cold War as “intrinsically silly.” He reject- Many conservatives have sought to use the existence ed the idea that an event as momentous as the disso- of jihadism as a justification for a new global ideo- lution of the USSR could be attributed to the actions logical struggle, and even Senator Paul suggested of any American administration. Kennan wrote: something along these lines in his speech at Heritage with his comparison of “radical Islam” and the Soviet The suggestion that any Administration had the Union. Yet what is necessary for conservatives now power to influence decisively the course of a is to stop conceiving of the U.S. as the leader of one tremendous domestic political upheaval in an- side in a global ideological struggle, and that isn’t other great country on another side of the globe likely to happen so long as conservatives keep falling is simply childish. No great country has that back on arguments about what Reagan did and what sort of influence on the internal developments he would do today. of any other one. Conservatives certainly can and should still learn from Reagan’s successes and mistakes—as they The idea that Reagan “won” the Cold War is one should from those of Nixon, Eisenhower, and other of the more pernicious and enduring distortions of past leaders. However, if there is to be a conserva- Reagan’s real success, which involved both opposing tive foreign policy that is well-suited to advancing and engaging with the Soviet Union as its system col- present-day U.S. security interests, conservatives lapsed from within largely on its own. The claim of cannot continue relying on the crutch of imitating winning the Cold War greatly exaggerated the ability and invoking Reagan. If conservatives are supposed of the U.S. to shape events in other countries. That in to understand and cope with the world as it is, rather turn has inspired later generations of conservatives than how it once was or how we would like it to be, and Republicans to imagine that they can success- nothing would be worse than to mimic a foreign fully promote dramatic political change overseas in policy that was created for another era.

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 15 Politics

Immigration Made Right The GOP is being stampeded into enacting the wrong reforms.

by William W. Chip

n Nov. 6, President Obama won re-elec- amnesty. In addition, they could hardly have missed tion with 39 percent of the white vote and the relentless message of the liberal and Spanish- 72 percent of the Hispanic vote. Repub- language media that all opposition to the president’s lican challenger Mitt Romney’s share of immigration policies grew from fear and hatred of Othe Hispanic vote (28 percent) was not much lower Hispanics. Even so, opinion polls consistently showed than John McCain’s share four years earlier (31 per- that immigration policy was a low priority for most cent) and was higher than that of some other recent Hispanic voters. Indeed, in a May 2012 Gallup poll, GOP nominees, such as George H.W. Bush (25 per- immigration policy ranked fifth—behind healthcare, cent) and Bob Dole (21 percent). Yet on this slender unemployment, economic growth, and the gap be- evidence, the mainstream media has for months tween rich and poor. pulsated with the theme that Romney’s weak show- Even if some Hispanic voters are turned off by Re- ing among Hispanics cost him the election and that publican restrictionism, Republicans face a dilemma. his problem with these voters was the GOP’s “harsh Their opposition to unions, minimum wages, and rhetoric” on immigration. taxes on the rich gives them to little to show white The importance of the Hispanic vote to the out- working men and women why conservative Repub- come of the 2012 election is easily overestimated since licans, and not liberal Democrats, are on their side; many Hispanics live in states like California and Texas limiting wage competition by restricting immigration where a GOP loss or win was a foregone conclusion. is one of the GOP’s few truly blue-collar policies. In a Allison Kopicki, polling editor at the New York Times, study reported in the December 2012 issue of Social explained in the Nov. 20 edition how Obama could Science Quarterly, University of Houston political sci- have won re-election even if Romney had taken a ma- entist George Hawley concluded that supporting am- jority of the Hispanic vote in key swing states. More- nesty would lose more white votes for the GOP than it over, the reasons for President Obama’s popularity would gain them in Hispanic votes. among Hispanic voters are complex. Hispanics are on That a number of Republican politicians have average less educated and wealthy than non-Hispanic nonetheless leapt for the media’s bait should not be whites and are drawn to generic Democratic policies surprising. There have always been factions within the such as raising the minimum wage. Even on the so- GOP that favored loose enforcement of immigration called “social issues,” Kopicki points out that Hispan- law, mostly those in thrall to businesses in search of ics were far more likely than white voters to support cheaper labor but also libertarians who in principle Democratic priorities such as same-sex marriage (59 detest market regulation of any kind. (Shortly after percent versus 47 percent) and abortion on demand the election, the editors of the Wall Street Journal in- (“two thirds” compared to “slightly more than half”). toned: “The GOP needs to leave its anti-immigration No doubt some Hispanic voters were also moved by absolutists behind.”) Yet along with these establish- the President’s promise of a “path to citizenship” for ment conservatives, who have never hidden their the millions of illegal aliens residing in the country. affection for more liberal immigration policies, a Hispanic citizens are more likely than the rest of us to be related to, or personally acquainted with, an ille- William W. Chip is an international lawyer in Washington, gal immigrant who might benefit from the president’s D.C.

16 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 significant number of formerly reliable conservatives that the House Judiciary Committee will report out a in the media and Congress, such as Sean Hannity of bill that would meet the most basic demands of CIR Fox News and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, have advocates, let alone their more exotic proposals, such decided to go with the flow and pronounced that Re- as unlimited numbers of visas for the foreign part- publicans must do “something” to prove that they are ners of gay citizens and immigrants. Even those Re- not anti-Hispanic—or at least to get immigration out publicans who jumped on the amnesty bandwagon of the spotlight. are having second thoughts about creating millions The apparent crumbling of Republican opposition of new Democratic voters and are imaging versions to a general amnesty for the 11 million illegal aliens of legalization that do not lead to citizenship—a non- estimated to be residing in the United States has trig- starter with most Democrats. The wild card is Speaker gered a euphoric reaction and sense of empowerment John Boehner, who is widely believed to be among the among a host of liberal and business interest groups. small but potent class of Republicans who would let They demand not only an amnesty for the huddled the Chamber of Commerce write the rules for legal masses “living in the shadows” but also expanded “guestworker” programs to satisfy the demand for unskilled labor that fostered illegal immigration in the first place, tens The importance of the Hispanic vote to the outcome of thousands of additional visas for of the 2012 election is easily overestimated. skilled STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workers, and millions of additional visas for the foreign relatives of naturalized immigrants now stalled in decades-long immigration and give Democrats the amnesty for waiting lists. This accumulating “immigration wish which they lust in the vain hope that the media would list” is grudgingly accompanied by promises to in- then stop casting Republicans as nativists. crease security at the border and to make mandatory No outcome to this byzantine process is predict- the now-voluntary “E-Verify” system, by which em- able, but every aspect of immigration policy will be ployers may instantaneously confirm the validity of up for grabs, which means that the pending legisla- newly hired employees’ social security numbers. The tive process may yield the most fundamental revision resulting package of amnesty, guestworker programs, of U.S. immigration law since the 1960s, shaping the more legal immigration, and improved enforcement country’s economic and cultural future for the re- bears the label “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” mainder of the 21st century. (CIR), so christened when a somewhat less grand ver- Given the multifaceted nature of immigration, is sion was proposed by President George Bush in 2004. there a version of “Comprehensive Immigration Re- Where this will end is hard to predict. Hearings form” that ought to appeal to true conservatives, who have taken place in both the House and the Senate. A are not beholden to the bottom line of a global busi- group of four Democratic and four Republican Sena- ness or to the ideological dictates of Ayn Rand? I think tors—the “Gang of Eight”—has introduced legisla- there is. Indeed, the outlines of Immigration Reform tion that would legalize the undocumented popula- that would be both comprehensive and conservative tion immediately but defer citizenship until certain are not even that hard to discern, if the effort is made enforcement targets had been met. The president is to understand what immigration is all about. putting together a similar plan, to be proposed only if the Gang of Eight’s plan does not move promptly ince before the American Revolution, there has in the Senate. The chairman of the House Judiciary been a division of interest between American Committee, Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, and the business, looking to minimize labor costs, and chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, South SAmerican workers, for whom minimal labor costs Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, are expected to follow mean minimal incomes. In this respect, the current the example of outgoing committee chairman Lamar debate over illegal immigration is simply the present Smith, who opposed amnesty and favored upgrading incarnation of the 18th century debate over inden- the skills requirements for legal immigrants without tured servitude, the 19th century debate over slavery, increasing their numbers. and the 20th century debate over unionism. While it is early in the game, it is hard to imagine Myself, I don’t like unions. They create artificial

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 17 Politics

monopolies in the supply of labor so that privileged If American public schools excel at anything, it is castes of workers may extract high wages for medio- the production of unskilled workers, young men and cre service. Still, I know of no conservative who does women who in decades past would have counted on not believe that a healthy society must be based on working as bricklayers, janitors, waiters, or even farm- functioning families. With illegitimacy rates of over workers to make a living. When slavery was abolished 70 percent among blacks, over 50 percent among His- in the 1860s, cotton farmers wailed that the cotton panics, and nearly 30 percent among whites, conser- would “rot in the fields.” When the Bracero Program vatives should be rallying to policies, including even a for Mexican farmworkers was ended in the 1950s, to- higher minimum wage, that make it more certain that mato farmers made the same “rotten” argument. In young men and women may expect to raise families both cases, technology quickly came to the rescue, on their wages alone. After all, the original “Ameri- and farmers learned to plant and harvest in a manner can Dream,” as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, compatible with living wages for their workers. The need for immigrant workers was comprehensively addressed by the U.S. Commission on Immigration Re- The affluent must expect, in the president’s words, form, which was authorized by the Im- to pay “a little bit more” in taxes if they migration Act of 1990. The head of the commission for most of its seven-year are unwilling to pay a little bit more for lettuce, existence was Barbara Jordan, a for- landscaping, and cleaning their pools. mer Democratic congresswoman and African-American civil rights leader appointed to her post by President Clin- ton. The recommendations of the Jordan was of a nation of yeomen, not beholden by penury Commission, given their provenance, should be be- either to privileged interests or to the state. But since yond reproach to liberals. Based on extensive stud- the days of the New Deal, we have not had the option ies conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, of having parents compete in a free labor market for the commission concluded that the United States, their family’s daily bread and then make do with the with nearly 300,000,000 people and the world’s pre- outcome. If competition with immigrant workers premier university system, suffered no overall shortage vents native workers from earning enough to support of workers and that amnesties and guestworker pro- a family, they will not form families at all, or they will grams would do more harm than good. elect Democrat politicians who will balance market outcomes with food stamps, Obamacare, and a host he Jordan Commission also challenged the cen- of other public subsidies that conservatives rightly re- Tterpiece of American immigration policy, the gard as insidious when they become normal. right of every citizen to sponsor the admission of In other words, the affluent must expect, in the members of both the family he created (his spouse president’s words, to pay “a little bit more” in taxes if and children) and the family that created him (his they are unwilling to pay a little bit more for lettuce, parents and siblings). Granting this priority to rela- landscaping, and cleaning their pools. Maybe those tives of prior immigrants was a legacy of the 1965 im- libertarians who want to demolish the welfare state migration reforms, which replaced national quotas will someday have their way. But in the meantime, is that favored European immigration with equal per- it not better to ensure that a family-supporting wage country quotas that opened the door to Asian immi- is available from full-time employment so as to mini- gration. By granting preference to relatives of prior mize the attraction of direct dependency on govern- immigrants, the sponsors of the reforms thought ment? And is it not better to sustain a living wage by they would preserve an overwhelmingly European controlling immigration than by mandating wage migration flow. rates or by empowering labor unions? But in post-1960s Europe, most families had only As a conservative who worries about a nation one or two children, and most did well enough eco- where many and eventually most men will depend nomically to stay put, whereas in Asia, Africa, and on the government to care for their families, I hold to Latin America families of three or more children a very high standard of proof the claims of the busi- remained commonplace, and economic conditions ness community that foreign workers are needed to made immigration to the United States immensely perform unskilled work that “Americans won’t do.” attractive. Within a few decades, family-sponsored

18 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 immigrants were overwhelmingly originating from be illegal, and most honest employers would volun- the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia. Moreover, tarily enroll in E-Verify to avoid the hassle. allowing sponsorship of the family that created the sponsor, as well as the family the sponsor created, led here is no good policy reason for giving am- to chain-migration, whereby a naturalized immigrant Tnesty to the 11 million illegal aliens believed to sponsored his siblings and a spouse, the spouse spon- be living in the United States, or to any significant sored her own siblings, the siblings sponsored their portion of them. The only reason amnesty is consid- own spouses, ad infinitum. The result was exponen- ered at all is that the Democratic Party stands rock- tial growth in the demand for immigrant visas and solid against enactment of the Jordan Commission decades-long waiting lists in numerically limited cat- recommendations—or any other reform of the im- egories, only temporarily relieved by a huge increase migration laws—unless accompanied by a blanket in visas for relatives in 1988. amnesty for whomever happens to be here illegally The Jordan Commission recommended limit- when the reform is enacted. Arguments in favor of ing sponsorship rights to an immigrant’s immediate amnesty break down into two categories: “sympa- family—spouse, minor children, and parents—with a thy” and “inevitability.” Most Americans, myself in- ceiling of 400,000 per annum, allotting an additional cluded, can sympathize with aliens who have taken 150,000 visas to refugees and exceptionally talented risks to leave their country in search of a better life for aliens. While one might not agree with all the findings themselves and their families. Nevertheless, there are and recommendations of the Jordan Commission, millions of aliens who have legally entered the United they were the outcome of a bipartisan process involv- States for the same reasons. Some of them will live ing years of work under the auspices of the National and work here for six years or more before their visas Academy of Sciences. They ought to be the starting expire. How does one explain to one of those legal point for any reasoned national discussion about im- alien workers why he must now return home while migration policy. The Jordan Commission also recommended that the E-Verify system, already mandatory for There is no good policy reason for giving amnesty federal contractors, be made man- to the 11 million illegal aliens believed datory for all employers. The business community has one reason to be living in the United States. for opposing E-Verify with which I sympathize. Employers are already obligated to submit a Form W-4 to the IRS that gives the name and social security the fellow working beside him, who sneaked across number of every new employee. The IRS shares that the border two years ago, is invited to stay for the rest information with the Social Security Administration of his life? (SSA), which knows which numbers are invalid—or If making illegal aliens accept the same conditions are suspicious because there are being used in mul- on their stay as we routinely impose on legal aliens tiple locations or belong to children or the very el- does not break our hearts, then what about their fami- derly—and generally does nothing about it. The SSA lies? Some of their children may be U.S. citizens; even refuses to share evidence of fraudulent use of Social those who are not may have been raised in this coun- Security numbers with U.S. Immigration and Cus- try. I invite those whose hearts are broken to speak toms Enforcement (ICE). When Bush administration with some of the hundreds of thousands of legal aliens officials approached the chairmen of the Social Se- living or studying here on temporary visas, many of curity committees in Congress about a fix, they were whom also have children born or raised in the Unit- rebuffed. ed States but who will nevertheless repatriate with In other words, but for a handful of senators and their families when their visas expire. When finished congressmen jealous of their bureaucratic pre- speaking with them, I suggest a call to a few of the rogatives, the federal government would not need millions of American men and women who serve in to mandate E-Verify. If employers knew that ICE our armed forces and are expected every three years, would be notified of false or suspicious Social Secu- with a few months notice, to move their households rity numbers—“G-Verify”—unscrupulous employers across the country, if not across the globe. would be deterred from hiring workers they knew to Illegal-alien advocacy groups take for granted that

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 19 Politics

aliens with U.S.-born children represent a special case, bond of loyalty to the United States. since the U.S. government treats those children as U.S. Three years ago, the Washington Post reported on citizens. But there is nothing special about their case, the phenomenon of “birth tourism,” exposing doctors since many alien women who come temporarily to from China and other countries who had made a lu- the United States, whether to work at an embassy or to crative practice of arranging accommodations in the visit Disney World, give birth during their stay and do U.S. for well-to-do pregnant women from overseas not think of asserting that they have thereby acquired who were entering the country for the sole purpose rights to live here forever. Instead, they feel blessed of attaining U.S. citizenship for their children, usually that their children now have the option of someday so that they would later be eligible for free or reduced living here, as well as in the parents’ native land. tuition at U.S. schools and universities. Impoverished Treating the American-born children of illegal Mexican mothers have been crossing the border for aliens as U.S. citizens is in any event bad policy. While this purpose for decades, giving birth to what are called “anchor babies” because they provide the child’s parents an “anchor” in the United States that may protect them from deportation and entitle them to Treating the American-born children of illegal certain government benefits. Although illegal-alien advocates have treated the aliens as U.S. citizens is in any event bad policy. term “anchor baby” (and even “illegal alien”) as derogatory, perhaps the Post’s revelations of how the well-off abuse an overbroad interpretation of birthright citizenship will permit the subject to be illegal-alien advocates focus on the privileges of which discussed in polite company. the child would be deprived if the United States did The “sympathy” argument at least has the merit of not grant citizenship, they ignore the responsibilities starting with a fact—that many illegal aliens merit with which such children are burdened, including the our sympathy, albeit not the grand prize of per- obligation to fight in our wars if the military draft is manent residence and citizenship. The “inevitabil- re-instituted and the obligation to pay U.S. income tax ity” argument, that “we cannot deport 11 million on their worldwide income for the rest of their lives. people,” is wholly meretricious. No one in the im- The so-called “birthright citizenship” that supposedly migration debate has proposed that. True immigra- is bestowed on children of illegal aliens (if one focuses tion reformers have proposed only that aliens who on the privileges) or imposed upon them (if one fo- find themselves in our country under any auspices cuses on the responsibilities) is based upon the Four- should obey all of our laws. Aliens who have been teenth Amendment’s prescription that all persons admitted to study here are not allowed to work, and “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject aliens who were not invited at all should not be al- to the jurisdiction thereof” are U.S. citizens. lowed to work either. This prescription was intended to remove any Every day, between 400,000 and 500,000 aliens en- doubt that Americans born as slaves would be U.S. ter the United States by air, land, or sea. Depending on citizens. Yale Law Professor Peter Schuck, in his 1986 their visas, they may visit for a day or stay for years. treatise Citizenship Without Consent: Illegal Aliens in We do not rely on deportation to ensure the return of the American Polity, laid out a convincing case that the 11 million aliens who will enter the United States the term “jurisdiction” here refers to the mutual duties in the next three weeks, and we will not rely on de- owed between an individual and the state. The courts portation to ensure the return of the 11 million who have reasoned that Fourteenth Amendment “jurisdic- happen to be living here illegally at present. Most alien tion” does not apply to the children of Indian tribes visitors choose to obey our laws, including our labor and foreign diplomats, and this same reasoning would laws. When they run out of money, they do not “self- exclude from birthright citizenship the children of deport,” they “go home.” If Congress enacts G-Verify, tourists, illegal immigrants, and other aliens whose then even those alien visitors who are willing to break presence here cannot reasonably be construed as an our laws will find that almost all jobs are closed to implicit pact with the child that whatever tribal or them and, like countless other visitors, they will go foreign citizenship he or she would otherwise inherit home when they run out of money. from the parents has been superseded by a greater Illegal aliens change jobs frequently. If the govern-

20 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 ment were to institute G-Verify or mandate E-Verify, In short, packaging together the recommendations the great majority would soon be out of work. Pre- of the Jordan Commission, enabling G-Verify, clarify- sumably there are some innocent employers who ing birthright citizenship, and issuing transitional visas would be inconvenienced and many innocent family to illegal aliens should qualify as immigration reform members whose lives would be disrupted. Even a pro- that is conservative as well as comprehensive. Sadly, ponent of strict law enforcement might countenance comprehensive conservative immigration reform has a transitional program that granted temporary work little chance in the real world. The Democrats’ leader- permits to those illegal aliens who came forward, so ship will sign on to nothing that does not include an that their employers might find replacements, their amnesty, and the Republican leadership will approve children might finish the school year, etc. Twelve nothing that does not provide for guestworkers to pick months would be more than sufficient—and would our crops and build our homes. We may perhaps hope give more notice than we give our sailors, soldiers, that serious conservatives serving in Congress will at and Marines before shipping them and their families least see that America gets as much as possible of the to Timbuktu. good, with as little as possible of the bad.

DEEPBACKGROUND by PHILIP GIRALDI

edia reports of CIA preparations to use Afghanistan that has reportedly led to a majority drones to target al-Qaeda-linked rebels in of the adult male population being recorded using MSyria, should the post-Assad situation war- biometric identifiers, enabling the U.S. military rant such an intervention, are only party correct. The and CIA to track and identify suspected militants plan to use drones under certain circumstances is through technologies that are still top secret. The in reality part of the much larger CIA program in Iraq U.S. concern is that western Iraq and Syria, which that parallels the program being set up in Afghani- are now both part of a linked insurgency, could easily stan. CIA initiatives in both countries are related to become a center of jihadi activity, so an intensive what is being mandated by the National Security effort is underway first to identify and then separate Council as a policy of “regime survival” to help keep the hard-core elements from the less radicalized in place governments that are at least nominally spear-carriers before the situation metastasizes friendly to Washington and that will be dependent after the expected fall of Assad. As is often the on American technology and intelligence resources case in volatile situations, the CIA does not have a for the foreseeable future to maintain their own good handle on who the players are and what their security. The CIA will bear the brunt of the two motivations might be, in spite of having had a large operations, as it can do so without a highly visible presence in Iraq since 2003. It is having trouble military footprint. In Iraq it includes, among other identifying the “friendlies.” The Agency particularly elements, the continued training of something akin lacks good connections in the Sunni region and is to an elite counter-terrorism Praetorian Guard to largely reliant on technical collection of informa- protect senior officials while also advancing efforts tion rather than spies who could provide context against a growing Salafist presence in the country, for the intelligence coming in. The numbers being linked to resurgent Sunni terrorism that is attempt- suggested in Washington regarding the size of the ing to weaken the government of Nouri al-Maliki. The cross-border insurgency alleged to be affiliated Obama administration is hoping to develop a level of with either al-Qaeda or its Iraqi affiliate al-Nusra are cooperation with the Iraqi government that will en- unreliable, as they tend to come from liaison with able the identification of extremist elements, some Iraqi intelligence and can include anyone who is of which are taking the opportunity to transit into adult, male, and Sunni and is regarded as resisting Syria. They are a threat to what are perceived to be the Shia government of al-Awlaki. This is not unlike the long-term interests of America and Iraq’s Shia the questionable estimates made of Taliban strength government. Those who are identified as al-Qaeda- in Afghanistan. linked militants could become drone targets in Syria, if the situation in that country deteriorates. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive The program would be similar to one adopted in director of the Council for the National Interest.

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 21 Media

Our American Pravda The major media overlooked Communist spies and Madoff’s fraud. What are they missing today? by Ron unz

n mid-March, the Wall Street Journal carried pleasant chapter in the history books, so today these a long discussion of the origins of the Bret- facts are hardly much disputed. For example, liberal ton Woods system, the international financial Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein matter-of-factly framework that governed the Western world for referred to White as a “Soviet spy” in the title of his Idecades after World War II. A photo showed the two column on our postwar financial system. But during individuals who negotiated that agreement. Britain the actual period when America’s government was was represented by John Maynard Keynes, a tower- heavily influenced by Communist agents, such ac- ing economic figure of that era. America’s represen- cusations were widely denounced as “Red-baiting” or tative was Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of ridiculed as right-wing conspiracy paranoia by many the Treasury and long a central architect of Ameri- of our most influential journalists and publications. In can economic policy, given that his nominal superior, 1982 liberal icon Susan Sontag ruefully acknowledged Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., was a gentleman that for decades the subscribers to the lowbrow Read- farmer with no background in finance. White was ers Digest had received a more realistic view of the also a Communist agent. world than those who drew their knowledge from the Such a situation was hardly unique in American elite liberal publications favored by her fellow intel- government during the 1930s and 1940s. For exam- lectuals. I myself came of age near the end of the Cold ple, when a dying Franklin Roosevelt negotiated the War and always vaguely assumed that such lurid tales outlines of postwar Europe with Joseph Stalin at the of espionage were wildly exaggerated. I was wrong. 1945 Yalta summit, one of his important advisors was The notion of the American government being in- Alger Hiss, a State Department official whose primary filtrated and substantially controlled by agents of a loyalty was to the Soviet side. Over the last 20 years, foreign power has been the stuff of endless Hollywood John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and other scholars movies and television shows, but for various reasons have conclusively established that many dozens or such popular channels have never been employed to even hundreds of Soviet agents once honeycombed bring the true-life historical example to wide atten- the key policy staffs and nuclear research facilities of tion. I doubt if even one American in a hundred today our federal government, constituting a total presence is familiar with the name “Harry Dexter White” or perhaps approaching the scale suggested by Sen. Jo- dozens of similar agents. seph McCarthy, whose often unsubstantiated charges The realization that the world is often quite differ- tended to damage the credibility of his position. ent from what is presented in our leading newspapers The Cold War ended over two decades ago and Communism has been relegated to merely an un- Ron Unz is publisher of The American Conservative.

22 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 and magazines is not an easy conclusion for most ed- designed to prevent exactly the sort of frauds that ucated Americans to accept, or at least that was true brought down those huge companies. When a system in my own case. For decades, I have closely read the fails so dramatically at its core mission, we must won- New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and one or der which of our other assumptions are incorrect. two other major newspapers every morning, supple- Just a few years later, we saw an even more sweep- mented by a wide variety of weekly or monthly opin- ing near-collapse of our entire financial system, with ion magazines. Their biases in certain areas had al- giant institutions such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, ways been apparent to me. But I felt confident that by Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, and AIG comparing and contrasting the claims of these differ- falling into bankruptcy, and all our remaining major ent publications and applying some common sense, I banks surviving only due to the trillions of dollars in could obtain a reasonably accurate version of reality. government bailouts and loan guarantees they re- I was mistaken. ceived. Once again, all our media and regulatory or- Aside from the evidence of our own senses, almost gans had failed to anticipate this disaster. everything we know about the past or the news of to- Or take the remarkable case of Bernie Madoff. His day comes from bits of ink on paper or colored pix- colossal investment swindle had been growing un- els on a screen, and fortunately over the last decade checked for over three decades under the very noses or two the growth of the Internet has vastly widened of our leading financial journalists and regulators in the range of information available to us in that latter New York City, ultimately reaching the sum of $65 category. Even if the overwhelming majority of the unorthodox claims provided by such non- traditional web-based sources is incorrect, at The events of the past dozen years least there now exists the possibility of extract- ing vital nuggets of truth from vast mountains have forced me to completely recalibrate of falsehood. Certainly the events of the past my own reality-detection apparatus. dozen years have forced me to completely recalibrate my own reality-detection apparatus. Thoughtful individuals of all backgrounds have undergone a similar crisis of confidence during billion in mostly fictional assets. His claimed returns this same period. Just a few months after 9/11 New had been implausibly steady and consistent year af- York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued that the ter year, market crashes or not. None of his supposed sudden financial collapse of the Enron Corporation trading actually occurred. His only auditing was by represented a greater shock to the American system a tiny storefront firm. Angry competitors had spent than the terrorist attacks themselves, and although he years warning the SEC and journalists that his alleged was widely denounced for making such an “unpatri- investment strategy was mathematically impossible otic” claim, I believe his case was strong. Although the and that he was obviously running a Ponzi scheme. name “Enron” has largely vanished from our memory, Yet despite all these indicators, officials did nothing for years it had ranked as one of America’s most suc- and refused to close down such a transparent swindle, cessful and admired companies, glowingly profiled while the media almost entirely failed to report these on the covers of our leading business magazines, and suspicions. drawing luminaries such as Krugman himself to its In many respects, the non-detection of these busi- advisory board; Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay had ness frauds is far more alarming than failure to un- been a top contender for Treasury secretary in Presi- cover governmental malfeasance. Politics is a partisan dent George W. Bush’s administration. Then in the team sport, and it is easy to imagine Democrats or blink of an eye, the entire company was revealed to be Republicans closing ranks and protecting their own, an accounting fraud from top to bottom, collapsing despite damage to society. Furthermore, success or into a $63 billion bankruptcy, the largest in Ameri- failure in public policies is often ambiguous and sub- can history. Other companies of comparable or even ject to propagandistic spin. But investors in a fraud- greater size such as WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, and ulent company lose their money and therefore have Global Crossing soon vanished for similar reasons. an enormous incentive to detect those risks, with the Part of Krugman’s argument was that while the ter- same being true for business journalists. If the media rorist attacks had been of an entirely unprecedented cannot be trusted to catch and report simple financial nature and scale, our entire system of financial reg- misconduct, its reliability on more politically charged ulation, accounting, and business journalism was matters will surely be lower.

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 23 Media

The circumstances surrounding our Iraq War dem- cession and its aftermath cut the personal net worth of onstrate this, certainly ranking it among the strang- the median American household to $57,000 in 2010 est military conflicts of modern times. The 2001 at- from a figure nearly twice as high three years earlier. tacks in America were quickly ascribed to the radical Comparing these assets and liabilities, we see that the Islamists of al-Qaeda, whose bitterest enemy in the American middle class now hovers on the brink of Middle East had always been Saddam Hussein’s secu- insolvency, with the cost of our foreign wars being a lar Baathist regime in Iraq. Yet through misleading leading cause. public statements, false press leaks, and even forged But no one involved in the debacle ultimately suf- evidence such as the “yellowcake” documents, the fered any serious consequences, and most of the same Bush administration and its neoconservative allies prominent politicians and highly paid media figures utilized the compliant American media to persuade who were responsible remain just as prominent and our citizens that Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs posed a highly paid today. For most Americans, reality is deadly national threat and required elimination by whatever our media organs tell us, and since these war and invasion. Indeed, for several years national have largely ignored the facts and adverse conse- polls showed that a large majority of conservatives quences of our wars in recent years, the American and Republicans actually believed that Saddam was people have similarly forgotten. Recent polls show the mastermind behind 9/11 and the Iraq War was that only half the public today believes that the Iraq being fought as retribution. Consider how bizarre the War was a mistake. history of the 1940s would seem if America had at- Author James Bovard has described our society as tacked China in retaliation for Pearl Harbor. an “attention deficit democracy,” and the speed with True facts were easily available to anyone paying at- which important events are forgotten once the media tention in the years after 2001, but most Americans loses interest might surprise George Orwell. Consider the story of Vioxx, a highly lucrative anti-pain medication mar- keted by Merck to the elderly as a sub- The speed with which important events stitute for simple aspirin. After years are forgotten once the media loses interest of very profitable Vioxx sales, an FDA researcher published a study demon- might surprise George Orwell. strating that the drug greatly increased the risk of fatal strokes and heart attacks and had probably already caused tens of thousands of premature American deaths. Vioxx was immediately pulled do not bother and simply draw their understanding of from the market, but Merck eventually settled the re- the world from what they are told by the major media, sulting lawsuits for relatively small penalties, despite which overwhelmingly—almost uniformly—backed direct evidence the company had long been aware of the case for war with Iraq; the talking heads on TV the drug’s deadly nature. Our national media, which created our reality. Prominent journalists across the had earned hundreds of millions of dollars in adver- liberal and conservative spectrum eagerly published tising revenue from Vioxx marketing, provided no the most ridiculous lies and distortions passed on to sustained coverage and the scandal was soon forgot- them by anonymous sources, and stampeded Con- ten. Furthermore, the press never investigated the gress down the path to war. dramatic upward and downward shifts in the mortal- The result was what my late friend Lt. Gen. Bill ity rates of elderly Americans that so closely tracked Odom rightly called the “greatest strategic disaster in the introduction and recall of Vioxx; as I pointed out United States history.” American forces suffered tens in a 2012 article, these indicated that the likely death of thousands of needless deaths and injuries, while toll had actually been several times greater than the our country took a huge step toward national bank- FDA estimate. Vast numbers Americans died, no one ruptcy. Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and was punished, and almost everyone has now forgot- others have estimated that with interest the total long- ten. term cost of our two recent wars may reach as high as Or take the strange case of Bernard Kerik, New $5 or $6 trillion, or as much as $50,000 per American York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s police commissioner household, mostly still unpaid. Meanwhile, econo- during 9/11, later nominated by President Bush to be mist Edward Wolff has calculated that the Great Re- America’s first director of national intelligence, a newly

24 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 established position intended to oversee all of our vari- the staff of the Hartford Courant providing a wealth of ous national-security and intelligence agencies. His additional detail and pointing to a likely suspect and appointment seemed likely to sail through the Repub- motive. lican-controlled Senate until derailed by accusations Although the letters carrying the anthrax were pur- he had employed an undocumented nanny. With his portedly written by an Arab terrorist, the FBI quickly political rise having been blocked, the national media determined that the language and style indicated a suddenly revealed his long history of association with non-Arab author, while tests pointed to the bioweap- organized-crime figures, an indictment quickly fol- ons research facility at Ft. Detrick, Md., as the prob- lowed, and he is currently still serving his federal prison able source of the material. But just prior to the arrival sentence for conspiracy and fraud. So America came of those deadly mailings, military police at Quantico, within a hairbreadth of placing its entire national-se- Va., had also received an anonymous letter warning curity apparatus under the authority of a high-school that a former Ft. Detrick employee, Egyptian-born dropout connected with organized crime, and today Dr. Ayaad Assaad, might be planning to launch a na- almost no Americans seem aware of that fact. tional campaign of bioterrorism. Investigators quickly Through most of the 20th century, America led cleared Dr. Assaad, but the very detailed nature of the something of a charmed life, at least when compared accusations revealed inside knowledge of his employ- with the disasters endured by almost every other ma- ment history and the Ft. Detrick facilities. Given the jor country. We became the richest and most power- near-simultaneous posting of anthrax envelopes and ful nation on earth, partly due to our own achieve- false bioterrorism accusations, the mailings almost ments and partly due to the mistakes of others. The certainly came from the same source, and solving the public interpreted these decades of American power latter case would be the easiest means of catching the and prosperity as validation of our system of govern- anthrax killer. ment and national leadership, and the technological Who would have attempted to frame Dr. Assaad effectiveness of our domestic propaganda machin- for bioterrorism? A few years earlier he had been in- ery—our own American Pravda—has heightened volved in a bitter personal feud with a couple of his this effect. Furthermore, most ordinary Americans Ft. Detrick coworkers, including charges of racism, are reasonably honest and law-abiding and project official reprimands, and angry recriminations all that same behavior onto others, including our media around. When an FBI official shared a copy of the ac- and political elites. This differs from the total cynicism cusatory letter with a noted language-forensics expert found in most other countries around the world. and allowed him to compare the text with the writ- Credibility is a capital asset, which may take years to ings of 40 biowarfare lab employees, he found a per- accumulate but can be squandered in an instant; and fect match with one of those individuals. For years I the events of the last dozen years should have bank- told my friends that anyone who spent 30 minutes rupted any faith we have in our government or media. with Google could probably determine the name and Once we acknowledge this, we should begin to accept motive of the likely anthrax killer, and most of them the possible reality of important, well-documented successfully met my challenge. events even if they are not announced on the front This powerful evidence received almost no atten- pages of our major newspapers. When several huge tion in the major national media, nor is there any in- scandals have erupted into the headlines after years or dication that the FBI ever followed up on any of these decades of total media silence, we must wonder what clues or interrogated the named suspects. Instead, in- other massive stories may currently be ignored by our vestigators attempted to pin the attacks on a Dr. Ste- media elites. I think I can provide a few possibilities. ven Hatfill based on negligible evidence, after which Consider the almost forgotten anthrax mailing he was completely exonerated and won a $5.6 million attacks in the weeks after 9/11, which terrified our settlement from the government for its years of severe dominant East Coast elites and spurred passage of harassment. Later, similar hounding of researcher the unprecedented Patriot Act, thereby eliminating Bruce Ivins and his family led to his suicide, after many traditional civil-libertarian protections. Every which the FBI declared the case closed, even though morning during that period the New York Times and former colleagues of Dr. Ivins demonstrated that he other leading newspapers carried articles describing had had no motive, means, or opportunity. In 2008, I the mysterious nature of the deadly attacks and the commissioned a major 3,000-word cover story in my complete bafflement of the FBI investigators. But eve- magazine summarizing all of this crucial evidence, nings on the Internet I would read stories by perfectly and once again almost no one in the mainstream me- respectable journalists such as Salon’s Laura Rozen or dia paid the slightest attention.

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 25 Media

An even more egregious case followed a couple of outlandish and ridiculous charges, accusing high years later, with regard to the stunning revelations government officials of selling our nuclear-weapons of Pulitzer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg, one of secrets to foreign spies. I paid no attention to such un- America’s foremost Vietnam War reporters and a likely claims and never bothered reading any of the former top editor at the New York Times. After years articles. of research, Schanberg published massive evidence A couple of years went by, and various website ref- demonstrating that the endlessly ridiculed claims of erences to that same woman—Sibel Edmonds—kept America’s Vietnam MIA movement of the 1970s and appearing, although I continued to ignore them, 1980s were correct: the Nixon administration had secure that the silence of all my newspapers proved indeed deliberately abandoned many hundreds of her to be delusional. Then in early 2008, the London American POWs in Vietnam at the close of the war, Sunday Times, one of the world’s leading newspapers, and our government afterward spent decades cover- ran a long, three-part front-page series presenting her ing up this shameful crime. Schanberg’s charges were charges, which were soon republished in numerous publicly confirmed by two former Republican House other countries. Daniel Ellsberg described Edmonds’s members, one of whom had independently co-au- revelations as “far more explosive than the Pentagon thored a 500 page book on the subject, exhaustively Papers” and castigated the American media for com- documenting the POW evidence. pletely ignoring a story that had reached the front Although a major focus of Schanberg’s account was pages of newspapers throughout the rest of the world. the central role that Sen. John McCain had played in Such silence struck me as rather odd. leading the later cover-up, the national media ignored Philip Giraldi, a former CIA official who regularly these detailed charges during McCain’s bitter 2008 writes for this magazine, suggested he investigate her presidential campaign against Barack Obama. One of charges. He found her highly credible, and his 3,000- America’s most distinguished living journalists pub- word article in TAC presented some astonishing but lished what was surely “the story of the century” and very detailed claims. none of America’s newspapers took notice. In 2010 Schanberg republished this material in a dmonds had been hired by the FBI to translate collection of his other writings, and his work received Ewiretapped conversations of a suspected foreign glowing praise from Joseph Galloway, one of America’s spy ring under surveillance, and she had been dis- top military correspondents, as well as other leading turbed to discover that many of these hundreds of journalists; his charges are now backed by the weight phone calls explicitly discussed the sale of nuclear- of four New York Times Pulitzer Prizes. Around that weapons secrets to foreign intelligence organizations, same time, I produced a 15,000-word cover-sympo- including those linked to international terrorism, as sium on the scandal, organized around Schanberg’s well as the placement of agents at key American mili- path-breaking findings and including contributions tary research facilities. Most remarkably, some of the from other prominent writers. All of this appeared individuals involved in these operations were high- in the middle of Senator McCain’s difficult reelection ranking government officials; the staffs of several- in campaign in Arizona, and once again the material was fluential members of Congress were also implicated. totally ignored by the state and national media. On one occasion, a senior State Department figure An argument might be made that little harm has was reportedly recorded making arrangements to been done to the national interest by the media’s con- pick up a bag containing a large cash bribe from one tinued silence in the two examples described above. of his contacts. Very specific details of names, dates, The anthrax killings have largely been forgotten and dollar amounts, purchasers, and military secrets the evidence suggests that the motive was probably were provided. one of personal revenge. All the government officials The investigation had been going on for years with involved in the abandonment of the Vietnam POWs no apparent action, and Edmonds was alarmed to are either dead or quite elderly, and even those in- discover that a fellow translator quietly maintained volved in the later cover-up, such as John McCain, a close relationship with one of the key FBI targets. are in the twilight of their political careers. But an ad- When she raised these issues, she was personally ditional example remains completely relevant today, threatened, and after appealing to her supervisors, and some of the guilty parties hold high office. eventually fired. During the mid-2000s I began noticing references Since that time, she has passed a polygraph test on one or two small websites to a woman claiming to on her claims, testified under oath in a libel lawsuit, be a former FBI employee who was making the most expanded her detailed charges in a 2009 TAC cover

26 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 story also by Giraldi, and most recently published a that dictatorships frequently achieve in their elections book recounting her case. Judiciary Committee Sena- and plebiscites, yet perhaps those secret-ballot results tors Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy have publicly may sometimes be approximately correct, produced backed some of her charges, a Department of Justice by the sort of overwhelming media control that leads inspector general’s report has found her allegations voters to assume there is no possible alternative to the “credible” and “serious,” while various FBI officials existing regime. Is such an undemocratic situation re- have vouched for her reliability and privately con- ally so different from that found in our own country, firmed many of her claims. But none of her detailed in which our two major parties agree on such a broad charges has ever appeared in any of America’s news- range of controversial issues and, being backed by to- papers. According to Edmonds, one of the conspira- tal media dominance, routinely split 98 percent of the tors routinely made payments to various members of vote? A democracy may provide voters with a choice, the media, and bragged to his fellow plotters that “We but that choice is largely determined by the informa- just fax to our people at the New York Times. They tion citizens receive from their media. print it under their names.” At times, Congressional Demo- cratic staff members became inter- A democracy may provide voters with a choice, ested in the scandal, and promised but that choice is largely determined by the an investigation. But once they learned that senior members of information citizens receive from their media. their own party were also implicated, their interest faded. These three stories—the anthrax evidence, the McCain/POW revelations, and the Sibel Most of the Americans who elected Barack Obama Edmonds charges—are the sort of major exposés that in 2008 intended their vote as a total repudiation of would surely be dominating the headlines of any coun- the policies and personnel of the preceding George try with a properly-functioning media. But almost no W. Bush administration. Yet once in office, Obama’s American has ever heard of them. Before the Internet crucial selections—Robert Gates at Defense, Timothy broke the chokehold of our centralized flow of infor- Geither at Treasury, and Ben Bernake at the Federal mation, I would have remained just as ignorant myself, Reserve—were all top Bush officials, and they seam- despite all the major newspapers and magazines I regu- lessly continued the unpopular financial bailouts and larly read. foreign wars begun by his predecessor, producing Am I absolutely sure that any or all of these stories what amounted to a third Bush term. are true? Certainly not, though I think they probably Consider the fascinating perspective of the recent- are, given their overwhelming weight of supporting ly deceased Boris Berezovsky, once the most power- evidence. But absent any willingness of our govern- ful of the Russian oligarchs and the puppet master ment or major media to properly investigate them, I behind President Boris Yeltsin during the late 1990s. cannot say more. After looting billions in national wealth and elevat- However, this material does conclusively establish ing Vladimir Putin to the presidency, he overreached something else, which has even greater significance. himself and eventually went into exile. According to These dramatic, well-documented accounts have been the New York Times, he had planned to transform ignored by our national media, rather than widely Russia into a fake two-party state—one social-dem- publicized. Whether this silence has been deliberate ocratic and one neoconservative—in which heated or is merely due to incompetence remains unclear, but public battles would be fought on divisive, symbolic the silence itself is proven fact. issues, while behind the scenes both parties would A likely reason for this wall of uninterest on so actually be controlled by the same ruling elites. With many important issues is that the disasters involved the citizenry thus permanently divided and popular are often bipartisan in nature, with both Democrats dissatisfaction safely channeled into meaningless and Republicans being culpable and therefore equally dead-ends, Russia’s rulers could maintain unlimited eager to hide their mistakes. Perhaps in the famous wealth and power for themselves, with little threat words of Benjamin Franklin, they realize that they to their reign. Given America’s history over the must all hang together or they will surely all hang last couple of decades, perhaps we can guess where separately. Berezovsky got his idea for such a clever political We always ridicule the 98 percent voter support scheme.

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 27 World

Sex, Spies, and the 1960s The John Profumo scandal made Britain modern

by christopher sandford

hortly before 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 24, young women. The two had met some years earlier 1962, a 36-year-old Soviet naval captain, gour- when they had happened to find themselves sleep- mand, and priapic man-about-town named ing (if not concurrently) with the same partner. Her Yevgeni Ivanov entered a low-lit restaurant in name was Christine Keeler, a would-be actress, and in SLondon’s fashionable South Kensington. Although 1962 she informally shared Ward’s home with another dressed in the standard boxy dark suit and gabardine free-spirited friend, Mandy Rice-Davies, a dancer and raincoat, Ivanov cut a striking figure even in that showgirl. Both women were, as the jargon of the time free-swinging era. There was a certain bustle about had it, of doubtful reputation. him, and he moved through the restaurant with a In due course, Ivanov had become an associate simian lope, all flashing gray eyes, crinkly dark hair, member of their convivial ménage. These arrange- tufted mustache, and abounding predatory energy. ments took on a new layer of complexity one night in He looked like a Russian spy out of central casting, as July 1961, when Ward held a garden party at Cliveden, interpreted by Groucho Marx. the English country estate owned by the Astors, where Ivanov was there to talk about the Cuban missile he rented a summer cottage. One of the other guests crisis, which had entered an ominous new phase was 46-year-old John Profumo, the British Secretary of that morning when 19 destroyers of the U.S. Second State for War, whose wife—Valerie Hobson, an exotic Fleet took up stations in an arc around the island, society beauty with a skirt made from python skin— with orders to turn back ships found to be carrying actually was an actress, starring in the original stage offensive weapons. The world held its breath: “we all production of “The King and I.” Profumo was then sat with our hearts in our mouths to see whether any a rising politician, half-Italian, slightly balding, with of the Russian ships did turn around,” recalled David a “boyishly happy leer” customarily plastered on his Ormsby-Gore, the British ambassador to Washing- face. He met Keeler for the first time when she emerged ton. About the time Capt Ivanov walked into the res- nude from the Cliveden swimming pool to demurely taurant, President Kennedy picked up the hotline to shake his hand. Perhaps not surprisingly, they, too, had call Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in London. entered into a relationship, which thus brought a na- The two leaders discussed possible Soviet reactions to tional-security dimension to the proceedings. that day’s embargo. Then, “rather unexpectedly,” re- Stephen Ward, the ringmaster of these various af- corded Macmillan in his diary, “President asked me fairs, was a clergyman’s son who had emerged from straight out the 64 thousand dollar question—‘Should the army medical corps with a growing osteopathy we take out Cuba?’” practice and an unfulfilled yearning to be a very im- Ivanov’s guest that day was a 49-year-old osteo- portant person. “I know a lot of major people, and am pathic physician and portraitist named Stephen often received in some of the most famous homes in Ward. Permanently sun-tanned, a fastidious dresser, the country. Sir Winston Churchill and many lead- and with a harsh, high-spirited laugh, in one account ing politicians have been among my patients,” he Ward looked “like the sort of professional Englishman you might see on a Club Med holiday.” A “man of pil- Christopher Sandford is a Seattle-based writer and the author, low fights and romping,” as another friend described most recently, of Masters of Mystery: The Strange Friendship him, Ward shared Ivanov’s flair for collecting nubile of Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini.

28 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 Michael Hogue Michael

later informed a court. This was the man who now with the Russians, and neither side could af- sat down to lunch with the libidinous Soviet diplomat ford to lose face by seeking a compromise. The whom, he thought, might be preparing to defect to British alone could save world peace by calling the West. For once, Ward recalled, Ivanov appeared to an immediate summit conference in London. want to talk not about girls, but about great “issues.” There would be great credit for Britain, Ivanov And talk he did. Brilliantly. At length. He had all added, in demonstrating that she was not mere- the details. He knew the facts and figures. According ly a pawn of Washington but a power capable to the American diplomatic correspondent Elie Abel, of independent action for peace. He said that author of a bestselling book on the Cuban crisis, he could guarantee Khrushchev’s acceptance of a British invitation to immediate talks, add- Ivanov told Ward that the US had created a dan- ing that Khrushchev had personally told him gerous situation, they were on a collision course he was prepared to turn back all ships carrying

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 29 World

arms to Cuba and to discuss the removal of the years had used an impeccably respectable address missiles already installed. in the London suburbs to supply Soviet intelligence with material from Britain’s highly secret Underwa- Whether Ivanov really was in the confidence of ter Weapons Establishment. Some of the informa- the Kremlin, or just another of those plausible fan- tion was passed on in the form of microdots pasted tasists who tend to accumulate on the fringes of an into antique books that were mailed to Moscow. international crisis, remains uncertain. But Ward was Even before the criminal trial and parliamentary flattered by his friend’s words, which seemed to take investigating committee into that affair came about, their relationship from “one based primarily around a there was the case of George Blake, who held the mutual appreciation of sex, to one touching on the fu- seemingly contradictory roles of being a senior of- ture survival of mankind,” as he put it with character- ficer of MI6 and an openly practicing Communist. istic modesty. Following their lunch, Ward lost little Blake, too, was tried and found guilty of selling se- time in communicating Ivanov’s remarks to his con- crets to the USSR. He was given a 42-year sentence, tacts in the British government. We know this from a said by the press to represent one year for each of statement Macmillan himself made to the House of the agents killed when he betrayed them. Five years Commons nine months later. “During that week” of later, Blake escaped from prison with the help of the Cuban missile crisis “the strain was certainly very some anti-nuclear campaigners who admired him. great,” he allowed, He later resurfaced, to some fanfare, in Moscow, and as of early 2013 he is still living there, aged 90, on a Naturally the same was true of the Soviet gov- KGB pension. ernment, who were doing all they could to fur- Next up was the tragicomic case of John Vassall— ther their policy and weaken the resolution of another vicar’s son and a cipher clerk at the British the West. Part of this Soviet activity was public, Embassy in Moscow—who had been lured into a ho- some of it private … Ivanov, with the assistance mosexual trap and blackmailed into becoming a Sovi- of Mr Ward, was perhaps rather more persistent et mole, “though without the least ideological convic- than most. On 24th October, Ward telephoned tion in the matter,” as he later put it. After his posting the Resident Clerk at the Foreign Office and gave to Moscow, he had transferred to Naval Intelligence him an account of a conversation he had just had in London. Over the next five years, Vassall was able with Ivanov, this to be passed on to me … to abstract secret military documents and to photo- Ivanov had told him, Ward said, that the graph others until, in September 1962, he was arrested Americans had created a situation in which there following a tip-off from the CIA and put on trial. As was no opportunity for either Americans or Rus- Macmillan remarked with notable self-composure to sians to compromise, and that the Soviet govern- Roger Hollis, the head of MI5, who asked if he was ment looked to the United Kingdom as their one “pleased” at Vassall’s capture: hope of conciliation. No, I’m not. There will be a great public outcry. At the time he made this statement, Macmillan had Then the security services will not be praised for no way of knowing that the names Ivanov, Ward, Kee- how efficient they are but blamed for how hope- ler, and especially Profumo would within weeks bring less they are. There will then be an enquiry… about his own downfall. There will be a terrible row in the press, there will be a debate in the House of Commons, the Gov- einforcing the political insecurity of Britain in ernment will probably fall. No, I’m not pleased. R1963—a country still in thrall to a class system essentially unchanged since Edwardian times, led by On October 22, the day the Cuban missile crisis an apparently decrepit 69-year-old man known for erupted, Vassall was sentenced to 18 years’ imprison- his shuffling gait and grouse-moor plus-fours, yet ment. He served ten of them and later lived under an where the likes of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones assumed name as a lawyer’s clerk in London, where he were now coming up—was a series of security scan- died in 1996, aged 72. dals that set the table for what became known as the The case had repercussions for Macmillan’s govern- Profumo affair. ment because Vassall had for a time been employed by In January 1961, Scotland Yard rather belatedly the socially well-connected Tam Galbraith, a Conser- rounded up the “Portland Spy Ring,” a cabal of two vative MP and Civil Lord of the Admiralty. Had their Englishmen, two Poles, and a Russian that for five relationship perhaps “had a whiff of impropriety?” the

30 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 PM wondered in his diary. The press was not slow to Now all that remained after the hors d’oeuvres was seize on a story that had all the ingredients of a classic the main dish of Profumo. British political scandal—sex, espionage, and a pos- On March 21, 1963, the House of Commons debate sible connection to the highest rungs of the ruling es- on the two jailed journalists took an unexpected turn tablishment. “Fleet Street,” Macmillan wearily told the when a Labour MP, Colonel George Wigg—one of House of Commons during the Vassall debate, “has those both sinister and faintly comic figures who lurk generated an atmosphere around this case worthy of on the edges of the “intelligence community,” with Titus Oates or Senator McCarthy … a dark cloud of the hooded eyes and sagging jowls of a particularly suspicion and innuendo.” Another official enquiry dilapidated bloodhound—took the opportunity to was launched, and two journalists called to testify, refer publicly to Profumo’s widely known but still un- Brendan Mulholland of the Daily Mail and Reg Foster reported involvement with Christine Keeler. “There of the Daily Sketch, refused to disclose to the judges is not an Honourable Member in the House,” he an- the sources on which they had based their stories. nounced, “nor a journalist in the Press Gallery, nor Since, in fact, there were no sources— they had simply made the stories up— they could hardly have done otherwise. In March 1963, Mulholland and Fos- ter were each sentenced to six months’ The story had all the ingredients of a classic imprisonment for contempt of court. As British political scandal—sex, espionage, and Macmillan rightly remarked, “the Press will not forget or forgive the incident … a possible connection to the highest rungs they will be represented as martyrs for of the ruling establishment. years to come.” In Britain that spring tawdry revelation was matched by vile animus; almost every morning, one awoke to headlines suggesting, if not shouting, that the government was in the hands of a bunch of doddering old fools deep in a do I believe that there is a person in the Public Gal- mire of frivolity and corruption, with dubious sexual lery who, in the last few days, has not heard rumour habits to boot; the Mirror’s PRINCE PHILIP AND upon rumour involving a member of the Government THE PROFUMO SCANDAL—RUMOUR UTTERLY Front Bench.” Wigg then used the protection of par- UNFOUNDED surely set a benchmark for menda- liamentary privilege against libel prosecution to refer cious innuendo. One need only think of the consensus to “the parties at the heart of the scandal … this de- media attitude to Richard Nixon in the final days of plorable breakdown of public morals” by name. Watergate, with added prurience, to get the flavor. The next day, a heavily tranquillized Profumo got “In all our later difficulties,” Macmillan noted in his up in the House to assure the Honourable Members, diary, “There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquain- tanceship with Miss Keeler.” He promised to sue for the Press was still actuated by rancour at the libel should any newspaper or individual publicly re- mere suggestion that they could be held respon- peat the allegation. It was left only for the prime min- sible for the statements they printed. I have never ister and the senior members of the cabinet to put on understood this position, which is, however, record their “unstinting” and “wholehearted” support sincerely held by many editors and journalists. for their colleague. In time, the “No impropriety” line The Press, in demanding full protection for their would become as iconic in its way as Nixon’s “I’m not ‘sources,’ have even claimed the privilege of the a crook.” Profumo’s lie was the one truly imperishable priesthood… . The whole [series of scandals] led moment of the scandal, and with it the stage was set to a spate of questions, involving every crude va- for the saga that eventually led the Secretary of State riety of wink and insinuation. for War to admit he had been sharing a mistress with a possible Russian spy. “A laughingstock” was the way One way or another, it was all “sordidly distaste- Macmillan accurately described himself as a result. ful” wrote the prime minister—born in 1894—and he On April 4, Scotland Yard, apparently at the urg- professed little sympathy for its principal cast. “Every- ing of Colonel Wigg, opened an investigation into one’s ‘darling,’” he complained in his diary. Stephen Ward for living off immoral earnings—

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 31 World

oddly enough, an offense in Britain only since 1956. himself as a victim of events. “On me,” Macmillan Christine Keeler was also interviewed and eventually said, “as Head of the Administration, what has hap- signed a statement confirming that she had been Pro- pened has inflicted a deep, bitter and lasting wound fumo’s lover and that certain “considerations” for this … I find it difficult to tell the House what a blow this arrangement had been passed to Ward. The Labour has been to me, for it seems to have undermined one opposition seized its opportunity. On May 24, Wigg of the very foundations on which political life must and his colleague Harold Wilson wrote to Macmillan, be conducted.” When the final vote of confidence enclosing a long letter from Ward—now rightly con- came to be taken, there were 27 abstentions among cerned that he was about to stand trial for pimping— the Conservative back-benches. in which he, too, alleged that Profumo had not told Macmillan had won, but with his reputation for the truth in his statement to the Commons. The PM’s unflappable dignity in ruins. On his irregular “meet response was to set off to the moors of Scotland on the people” tours, hecklers—hitherto unknown on a shooting holiday. When he returned to London in formal occasions—shouted ribald remarks at him June, he found events had moved at “a rather alarm- about call-girls and spies. Rumors were rife about ing” rate. Under continuing parliamentary pressure, Macmillan’s own home life. A Gallup Poll in July Profumo admitted that perhaps he had slept with 1963 showed him at the nadir of his popularity, with Christine Keeler after all. For his “inexcusable folly” a 35 percent approval rating, the lowest for a Prime in lying to the House, he was immediately resigning Minister since Neville Chamberlain at the time of his cabinet appointment, his Privy Councillorship, Munich. and his seat in Parliament. It was left for Macmillan to announce that a Meanwhile, a West Indian lover of Keeler’s had in Judicial Enquiry under Lord Denning would report a jealous rage shot at Stephen Ward’s house; another on the security aspects of the affair, which the press West Indian, this one named “Lucky” Gordon— had built into a cause célèbre that linked not only brother of “Psycho” Gordon, a London jazz entre- the Tory government but the ruling establishment preneur with alleged Mob connections—was on trial as a whole to an underworld of prostitutes, pimps, at the Old Bailey for wounding Keeler in the street. spies, topless go-go dancers, and exotic household Ward himself had been arrested and charged with a practices. One widely circulated story was said to in- variety of sexual offences, including keeping a broth- volve an eminent politician who had waited at table el. The Sunday News of the World began the serializa- at a fashionable London dinner party naked and tion of Keeler’s life story, and there was talk of her masked, wearing a placard that read, “If my services recording a pop song. And Captain Ivanov appeared don’t please you, whip me.” If true, a sorry lapse from in print as a “hairy chested Russian” who had shared the late-Victorian public etiquette Macmillan him- pillow talk with this versatile woman. No wonder the self seemed to embody. British press, in one of its cyclical fits of morality, saw On July 22, Stephen Ward appeared on trial at the the whole thing as a gift with which to attack a tired Old Bailey on a variety of morals charges. Over the and corrupt government. next nine days, the proceedings saw a series of col- “Eleven years of Conservative rule have brought orful witnesses give evidence against the accused— the nation psychologically and spiritually to a low whom The Times thought a “wretched” and “visibly e b b,” The Times editorialized. There was even a trans- shrunken” figure—including an ‘intimate model’ atlantic dimension to the affair. As a senator, Presi- named Vickie Barrett and a “masseuse and interpre- dent Kennedy had slept with one Suzy Chang, a New tative dancer” sworn in as Ronna Ricardo. (None of York prostitute who had moved to London and was Ward’s society friends, by contrast, came forward to part of the Ward vice—or “V-girl”—ring. In June testify to his good character.) Christine Keeler and 1963, Chang was said to be anxious to sell her story Mandy Rice-Davies also appeared, the latter provid- of nights with a “high-elected US official” to the New ing the scandal’s second immortal aphorism. When York Journal-American. According to the journalist the prosecuting counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones Seymour Hersch, Robert Kennedy used his consid- pointed out that Lord Astor, owner of the Cliveden erable influence with the Hearst family, who owned estate, denied having met her, Rice-Davies replied, the Journal-American, to spike the story. “Well he would, wouldn’t he?” The line quickly en- The scandal accelerated rapidly. With Profumo tered the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. now disgraced and an object of public mirth, Mac- Following a harsh attack on his character in millan was obliged to make an emergency statement Griffith-Jones’s closing speech, Ward went home to in the House on June 17. He made it clear that he saw his flat and took an overdose of sleeping pills. The

32 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 next morning, while the defendant lay comatose in Christine Keeler served nine months in jail for a hospital bed, the jury at the Old Bailey found him perjury relating to the “Lucky” Gordon case and guilty of living on the immoral earnings of Keeler later achieved a sort of immortality when she was and Rice-Davies. The judge deferred sentencing “un- photographed straddling a chair with nothing on— til such time as the criminal may be fit to return to voted one of the Sixties’ “iconic images” in a BBC court,” which in the event meant never. Three days poll. Now 70, she continues to publish a series of ar- later, Ward died without having regained conscious- ticles and books insisting that she wishes to be left ness. He was 50. His suicide note read, “I am sorry to alone. Mandy Rice-Davies converted to Judaism and disappoint the vultures.” opened a chain of successful nightclubs and restau- On September 26, Macmillan’s cabinet received rants in Tel Aviv and elsewhere. She has described the Denning Report, which like Kenneth Starr’s 35 years later would go on to become one of those rare government publications to be a public bestseller. People lined up the streets for it. 125,000 copies were sold—6,000 in the first hour. With chapter titles like “The Slashing and the Following a harsh attack on his character in Shooting,” “Christine tells Her Story,” “He’s a Liar,” “The Man Without a Head,” Griffith-Jones’s closing speech, Ward went home and “The Man in the Mask,” the 70,000- to his flat and took an overdose of sleeping pills. word narrative perhaps promised more than it delivered. Much as with Kenneth Starr, some felt that Denning’s innate Puritanism—at one point he referred to Ward’s preference for the sexual ménage a trois as “this practice of a revolting nature”—rendered him unfit for an investigation that her life as “one slow descent into respectability.” Cap- even touched upon, as it were, the dimension of a tain Ivanov was recalled to Moscow, where in short Cabinet minister’s genitals and the “outstanding up- order he found himself abandoned by his wife and holstery of Miss Keeler.” out of favor with the Kremlin. An alcoholic, he died The report laid blame squarely on Profumo for ly- insane in January 1994, aged 68. ing to his colleagues about the nature of his associa- But perhaps the most poignant post-scandal after- tion with Keeler, though Macmillan and his cabinet life was that of John Profumo himself. Following his were criticized for failing to respond adequately to resignation, he simply disappeared from public life. “glaring proof” of the war minister’s adultery. There One morning in December 1963, Profumo knocked was no evidence “for believing [the] national secu- on the door of Toynbee Hall, a welfare center for rity has been or will be endangered,” Denning con- down-and-outs in the east end of London, and asked cluded. if he could help in any way. He would remain there as That was, in effect, the end of the Profumo scan- a full-time volunteer, doing everything from clean- dal, though its longer-term consequences included a ing the toilets to raising large sums of money for the disinclination among the British public ever to take disadvantaged, over the next 40 years. His wife Val- politicians quite so seriously again. As a result, news- erie, the once glamorous actress, also devoted her- papers were free to abandon any vestiges of deference self to the charity until her death in 1998. Profumo to the patrician establishment and quickly substituted never publicly spoke about the scandal, preferring to the cocktail of sexual gossip and topless photographs take the flagrantly unfashionable view that it was all that readers of British tabloids enjoy today. For this a private matter between him and his family. Most reason, it’s been called the ignition-point of Britain’s commentators came to agree with the verdict of the “modernization crisis.” Macmillan himself resigned Daily Mail that he should be remembered “as much on grounds of ill health less than a month after pub- for his contribution to society after his fall from po- lication of Denning’s report, the victim of a misdiag- litical grace as for the folly which caused that fall.” nosed prostate problem that the doctors had told him His award of the CBE in 1975, for services to Toyn- might be fatal. He lived until December 1986, a few bee Hall, signaled a partial return to respectability. weeks short of his 93rd birthday. John Profumo died in March 2006, at the age of 91.

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 33 Ideas

Clive James at Last A genius sunburned by his faith in humanity

by R.J. Stove

ere is Orwell, writing in 1941 on H.G. done: succeed in Oxbridge and London on his own Wells, then 75 years old: “is it not a sort terms. When you had recovered from his finest jour- of parricide for a person of my age (thir- nalism’s impact, there was his finest rhymes’ impact ty-eight) to find fault with H.G. Wells? to contend with. (Petrarchan sonnets, if you please, HThinking people who were born about the begin- or the quatrains of his new translation of The Divine ning of this century are in some sense Wells’s own Comedy.) He was polyglot. He was routinely televised. creation.” He was prodigiously well-read. He was—and this fac- For “H. G. Wells” substitute “Clive James,” and for tor’s charm should never be minimized—bald. Af- “thirty eight” substitute “fifty.” This done, the above forded every incentive to adopt Margaret Thatcher’s passage’s first sentence becomes relevant to what the speech patterns, he still talked like a New South Wales Sydney-born Clive James meant for most of us Aus- coalminer. So he was, to his compatriots, fundamen- tralian scribes who emerged during the 20th cen- tally ours. And his wit was like nothing attained in his tury’s last two decades. Not merely did we long in homeland before or since. vain for James’s mastery of English. We also could The locus classicus of James’s wit, and the James not imagine imitating any other Australian author. production which all should read if they read no oth- What recent local models—outside the mon- er, is his Unreliable Memoirs: the best autobiography strously overcrowded Australian annex of the John by an Australian (which will suggest thin praise) and Berryman bughouse—did we have then? Well, we among the best modern autobiographies by anyone had Patrick White, whose tortured poeticisms usu- (which should not). Its account of James’s conscrip- ally resembled the first prize in a Saul Bellow parody tion—his was Australia’s last pre-Vietnam draft—is contest. We had Roman convert James McAuley, also dazzling as to leave the much-lauded Good Sol- most forgotten save by his friends, with most of his dier Schweik asleep in the sentry-box. Any editor verse and polemics out of print following his prema- will writhe in sympathy with the book’s account of ture 1976 demise. We had a half-dozen female novel- James’s early days as a broadsheet proofreader: ists, ranging from gentility to grunge, who reversed the late Nora Ephron’s motto: they achieved more writing is essentially a matter of saying things in kudos for describing hangnails than their mascu- the right order. It certainly has little to do with line colleagues could for describing cancer. At least the creative urge per se. Invariably the most pro- all the above were recognizably literate, as was the lific contributors were the ones who could not Americanized and often virtuosic Robert Hughes, write a sentence without saying the opposite who died last year. A far more prevalent danger lay of what they meant. One man, resident in Woy in aping ex-historian Manning Clark, whose fake- Woy [50 miles north of Sydney], sent us a new scriptural bombast and superhuman carelessness novel every month. Each novel took the form of James himself epitomized in seven cruel words: “Let 20 thick exercise books held together in a bundle. alone rewrite, he doesn’t even reread.” Each exercise book was full to the brim with neat Then along came James, aged 22 when early in 1962 handwriting. The man must have written more he reached England. Surmounting initial setbacks, he did what few literary émigrés since T.S. Eliot have R.J. Stove lives in Melbourne, Australia.

34 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 Michael Hogue Michael

compulsively than Enid Blyton, who at least at home in fiction, except with Brrm! Brrm!, as sadis- stopped for the occasional meal. Unlike Enid tically perfect a novella as Saki could have furnished. Blyton, however, he could not write even a single Still, to dip into many of James’s non-fiction releases phrase that made any sense ... It was my first, is to be enriched beyond the proverbial dreams of cruel exposure to the awkward fact that the arts avarice. attract the insane. They arrived in relays from On stoicism: “We would like to think we are stoic daylight to dusk. For all the contact they had ... but would prefer a version that didn’t hurt.” with reality they might as well have been wearing On the clueless antipodean abroad: “An Austra- flippers, rotating bow-ties, and sombreros with lian expatriate in London or New York has only to model-trains running around the brim. mention Proust or Rilke and he is greeted as an ava- tar, as if Paracelsus had come to town.” Alas, the law of diminishing returns mars Unreli- On Schwarzenegger: “A condom stuffed with wal- able Memoirs’ four sequels. Nor is James inherently nuts.”

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 35 Ideas

On a photo of Bill Clinton shaking Nelson Man- lack thereof—seems to have left that particular spiri- dela’s hand: “Both these men have highly outspoken tual concussion which Molotov-Ribbentrop once wives, but only one knows where her husband has left upon Marxists. If 9/11 was James’s Nazi-Soviet been every night for the last 26 years. Which one?” disillusion, worse came with the October 2002 Bali On the notorious blank-faced, rifle-toting image bombings. They appear to have formed, for him, of Dallas’s best-known killer: “Lee Harvey Oswald in the non-Marxist equivalent of Khrushchev’s secret an early attempt to avoid suspicion.” speech and Hungarian invasion combined. On Josephine Baker: “She joined the Resistance Someday a profound sociological tome will ana- during World War II, as distinct from other enter- lyze Homo Australianus’s public meltdowns in re- tainers who joined it after the war was over.” sponse to the Bali atrocity. They had no local prec- On Brezhnev: “Lenin had been injected with edent. Sure, we hated—rightly enough— Hirohito’s formaldehyde after his death. Brezhnev had appar- Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere for its disgusting crimes. (The emperor’s Aus- tralian prisoners included James’s own father, killed in 1945.) But our general To dip into many of James’s cognition did not cease thereby. We had not then acquired what our education non-fiction releases is to be enriched system’s subsequent progressive gurus beyond the proverbial dreams of avarice. imposed on us: the adamantine conviction that, for Aussies, death is optional. This conviction—as can be confirmed by the oafish mummery which charac- terizes Australia’s average post-Chris- ently received the same treatment while still alive.” tian funeral rite—has become, above all since Bali, (Improbably, Brezhnev made a lasting appeal to our cultural default mode. James’s critical imagination. His 1978 attack on Mos- Indonesia’s 1975–1999 extermination of 180,000 cow’s official Brezhnev biography is among man- East Timorese inspired in the Australian masses to- kind’s greatest book reviews. It starts: “Here is a book tal indifference—and in Australian Prime Ministers so dull that a whirling dervish could read himself to from Gough Whitlam to Paul Keating a discreet but sleep with it. If you were to recite even a single page active pleasure at having 180,000 fewer Catholics in in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and the neighborhood to disturb the Western Enlighten- dogs drop dead.”) ment Project. Not so the Bali carnage. Over the slay- ing by terrorists of 88 roistering Australian night- o James, early in the 21st century, something clubbers—the other 114 victims were Lesser Breeds, Tpeculiarly bad happened which straightforward and thus could be safely ignored—our rent-a-mobs memento mori cannot explain. Perhaps the Internet set up the same institutionalized howling with which must take the rap. The Internet’s knack for driving London’s schmaltzy sans-culottes and their junk- into near-extinction “the man of letters”—or, in the media enablers had greeted Princess Diana’s apothe- comparable 1934 phrase of composer-conductor- osis. James had prided himself on channeling Homo critic Constant Lambert, “the disappearing middle- Australianus, just as Walt Whitman had channeled brow”—appears infinite. Bernard Levin, Kingsley Homo Americanus. Now Bali hurled the credo of Amis: how authoritative their historiographical “the Anti-Death League” (Amis’s terminology) back pontificating sounded in the 1980s, and how easy it in Homo Australianus’s face. is now to demolish most of their allegations after 20 Can you imagine James’s resultant anguish? His minutes’ Wikipedia perusal. pre-2001 worldview had exceedingly little room for James can no more be impugned for not predict- Kant’s “crooked timber of humanity,” or in non-Ger- ing cyberspace’s intellectual impact than Passchen- man language, Original Sin. That it had any transient daele Tommies could be impugned for not predict- room whatever is to James’s lasting credit. Pascal ing atomic weapons. Where he can more reasonably would not have been ashamed to write what James be queried is in post-Berlin-Wall geopolitics. Upon once wrote about Satan: “the beast drives a car and James, 9/11—rather than being the nightmarish but knows what time our daughter leaves school.” But ultimately foreseeable shock that it was for anyone from this insight into evil, what did James conclude? familiar with Washington’s Middle East policy, or It is not altogether evident.

36 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 lifetime’s reading is distilled in James’s 876- nied to James: an actual operative moral philosophy A page Cultural Amnesia (2007). While many with which to undermine the commissar. habitual essayists have turned to a big book, none James has delightfully mocked the commissar, can have invested more ardor in the marathon a species now largely confined to Pyongyang, Ot- than James did. Had James simply announced, “I tawa, Canberra, and Harvard. But what creed can hope I earn lots of money for these brief smooth he set against the mullah, the Beltway chickenhawk, profiles of 106 notables whom I enjoyed writing the cyberpornographer, and the therapeutic stat- brief smooth profiles of,” nobody could have had ist? Mere liberal secular democracy: a phenomenon the smallest objection. But when you have grown largely meaningless outside European-derived mo- less interested in art or commerce than in saving res and, at best, intermittently functional within the world, a profiler’s dexterity no longer suffices. them. It might continue to play in Peoria. Its allure James wanted Cultural Amnesia to be not just his in Tehran, Cairo, Beijing, Harare, Jakarta, or Riyadh big book but his Summa Theologica, and indeed his (Eretz Netanyahu we shall silently overlook) remains university. Hannah Arendt had her Human Condi- probationary. tion and Origins of Totalitarianism, so why should Forbear to blame him. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not James join the epic writers’ club? (It is true that not in our Australian stars, including our Australian James, unlike Arendt, had never got up close and TV stars, but in our Australian selves. Take away the personal with Heidegger, but it is equally true that short-lived influence of B.A. Santamaria’s Catholic- Arendt, unlike James, had never dared appear on dominated political machine—doomed by its failure Japan’s trash-television.) to prevent Whitlam’s 1972 election—and Australia’s The sad reality is that Cultural Amnesia, not- Cold Warriors consisted disproportionately of ten- withstanding its commendable things, suffers over- ured Sydney and Melbourne academics whose re- whelmingly from the Economist Syndrome. As sponse to Enver Hoxha’s atheism Mmuseums was to James Bowman said in these pages seven years back: build their own atheism museums, from which they “The Economist is an excellent magazine for keeping debarred Hoxha on an aesthetic technicality. informed about subjects you don’t know anything about, but its deficiencies begin to appear as soon as bout the recent developments in James’s it addresses one you do.” Let us concede that James Ahitherto private life—that is, the eight-year must have examined Poland’s Witold Gombrowicz extramarital debauch—compassion demands a and the Franco-Austrian psychologist Manès Sper- diplomatic reticence. Apropos James’s leukemia- ber more deeply than has any other individual, living induced torments, gossip would be unseemly. He or deceased. Meanwhile James continues to display himself has confessed that today he needs so much difficulty in getting right the simplest facts about far extra oxygen as to render future Australian vis- more distinctive figures. Relying, as he does, on the its impossible. How desolate this realization must posthumous Shostakovich “memoirs” is like rely- make him can be gauged from Unreliable Memoirs’ ing for Holodomor scholarship on Walter Duranty. glorious final prose-poem: The research level of James’s references to Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Herbert von As I begin this last paragraph, outside my win- Karajan would disgrace a sophomore. But then, any dow a misty afternoon drizzle gently but inexo- overarching theme in Cultural Amnesia amounts to rably soaks the City of London. Down there in no more than: “liberal secular democrat four-legs the street I can see umbrellas commiserating good, elitist or even quietist two-legs bad.” “Darkest with each other. In Sydney Harbor, 12,000 miles Zeitgeistheim”—C.S. Lewis’s phrase—is still a pris- away and 10 hours from now, the yachts will be on, even if James is as ebullient within it as were the racing on the crushed diamond water under a Blues Brothers in Joliet Penitentiary. sky the texture of powdered sapphires. It would Arendt, in her big books and elsewhere, tri- be churlish not to concede that the same abun- umphed on three vital counts where Cultural Amne- dance of natural blessings which gave us the sia cannot. First, she was from head to toe a scholar, energy to leave has every right to call us back. not a publicist, even a prodigiously gifted publicist. ... Pulsing like a beacon through the days and Second, she gave her readers the benefits of a strato- nights, the birthplace of the fortunate sends out spheric Mittel-European IQ. Third, being conversant its invisible waves of recollection. It always has with abstract thought imbued her with what a ma- and it always will, until even the last of us come lign fusion of temperament and Anglo privilege de- home.

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 37 Home Plate BILL KAUFFMAN

For President Buchanan

ne disadvantage of hav- “message” movies, or didacticism, or secession with force.” Writing in 1974 ing exiled our television deck-stacking. Lord knows American of “our hero,” Updike noted hopefully for several years is that I’m movies are in need of alternative per- that “it may be, in these years of high counting on Rona Barrett spectives, but the world can do without indignation over unbridled and cor- Oand Mary Hart to relay this news, but a libertarian Stanley Kramer or a local- rupting Presidential power, that we can if for some reason they are stuck in ist Gene Roddenberry. give more sympathy to Buchanan’s cau- analog TV traffic, I must tell you that I mentioned the unlovable James tious and literal constitutionalism than Ron (“Gettysburg,” “Gods and Gener- Buchanan, who has been on my mind has been shown him in history books als”) Maxwell’s new movie, “Copper- since I recently reread Buchanan Dy- written by Lincolnophiles and neo-ab- head,” which opens June 28, is from a ing, John Updike’s imaginatively em- olitionists.” screenplay I adapted from the novella pathetic play about the despised 15th Airball, John. by Upstate New York’s greatest novel- president, who on his deathbed re- Vidal did not care much for Updike, ist. No, not James Fenimore Cooper visits the people and the climacteric whose books, he said, were surrounded (of whose Deerslayer Mark Twain said, moments of his life in Lancaster and by a “force field” that rendered them “its humor is pathetic; its pathos is Washington. impenetrable. Vidal tamped his enthu- funny; its conversations are—oh! in- James Buchanan was something of siasm for Buchanan Dying because he describable; its love-scenes odious; its a cold fish, an inveterate office-seeker, thought Updike skirted the matter of English a crime against the language”) and—typical of the decayed Democ- Buchanan’s ambiguous sexuality. Up- but Harold Frederic, the pride of Utica racy of that era—an expansionist/im- dike gives Buck an Ann Rutledge of his (along with Annette Funicello and perialist who coveted Mexico, Cuba, own, Anne Coleman, who takes her life Roscoe Conkling). and any other southerly territory that in despair over her suitor’s lack of ar- Ron and cast and crew did a marvel- wasn’t nailed down. He temporized— dency. He ignores the possibility—the ous job of making vivid the world and or played for time—as the Union rup- possibility—that Buchanan had eyes story of Copperhead, which concerns tured during the interregnum between instead for his erstwhile roommate, an Upstate farmer who in the sangui- Lincoln’s election and assumption of Senator (and Vice President) William nary years of 1862–3 says No to the office, and Updike makes the best case Rufus King of Alabama, a silk-scarved war for the Union. Abner Beech (Billy he can for the wisdom of this course. dandy who made Oscar Wilde look Campbell, in a subtly powerful perfor- The play is an act of Pennsylvania like Ernest Borgnine. (The roomies mance) is neither a doughface—i.e., patriotism. As Updike explained, “In were known around Washington as a Northern man with Southern prin- my Pennsylvania childhood, I knew “Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan.”) ciples, a la Lincoln’s predecessor, James him to be the only President our great As if playing his own devil’s advo- Buchanan—nor a congenital contrar- and ancient state had produced, but cate, Updike quotes in his afterword ian: he is, rather, a Jefferson-Jackson where were the monuments, the Bu- Henry James: “The ‘historic’ novel is, agrarian in the Upstate New York chanan Avenues, the extollatory ju- for me, condemned … to a fatal cheap- Democratic tradition. His side will venile volumes with titles like Jimmie ness … . You may multiply the little lose, his tradition almost disappear, but Buchanan, Keystone Son in the White facts that can be got from pictures & Abner will not be moved. House or ‘Old Buck,’ the Hair-Splitter documents, relics & prints as much as No spoiler alerts here; see the mov- Who Preceded the Rail-Splitter?” you like—the real thing is almost im- ie. I will say that “Copperhead” ap- In the tradition of such Middle At- possible to do …” proaches the Civil War from an angle lantic men of letters as Harold Fred- Buchanan Dying, like the historical of vision unusual in American popular eric, Edmund Wilson, and Gore Vidal, novels of Gore Vidal and Thomas culture, and even there it might sur- Updike was something of a war skep- Mallon, among others, refutes James. prise you. Place and verism, after all, tic, even a Copperhead, who referred On screen, I think “Copperhead” does must always trump ideology. I despise to “the dubious cause of putting down too. But you be the judge of that.

38 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013

Arts&Letters

(1991) to that list. Unfortunately, the mance on the pitch falls short of what’s ‘Good Guys’ Make brief and seemingly glorious encounter needed to win championships. Bad Generals that was Operation Desert Storm turned What explains this gap between ap- out to be a mere preliminary bout. parent potential and actual achieve- by ANDREW j. BACEVICH Forays ending in something other ment? When Americans send their than victory—i.e., conclusive opera- army to fight, why doesn’t it return The Generals: American Military tional success yielding desired politi- home in triumph? In The Generals, Command From World War II to cal outcomes—have been both more Thomas R. Ricks ventures an answer to Today, Thomas E. Ricks, Penguin Press, numerous and of greater moment. that question, with his book’s title fin- 565 pages The Cold War provided the occa- gering the chief culprits. sion for one costly draw (Korea) and Writing in 1932, the soldier- y all accounts, the present-day one humiliating defeat (Vietnam). historian J.F.C. Fuller identified the United States military is the The post-Cold War era has included essential attributes of successful gener- best—that is, the most capable— one outright failure, the embarrass- alship as “courage, creative intelligence Bin all the world. In the estimation of ing if quickly mythologized Somalia and physical fitness.” A prize-winning their countrymen, today’s American intervention, along with two wars of journalist best known for his cogent warrior (the homelier term G.I. hav- middling size, long duration, and am- analysis of the Iraq War, Ricks does ing now gone the way of doughboy) biguous outcome. Whatever verdict not question whether senior Ameri- may well be the best of all time. Yet historians ultimately render regarding can military officers can do the requi- America’s Army doesn’t win. Except Iraq and Afghanistan, they are unlikely site number of push-ups and sit-ups for small-scale skirmishes, it hasn’t to classify them as roaring successes. to demonstrate their physical vigor. since World War II. Indeed, mounting evidence suggests Yet since World War II, he argues, the In terms of providing its army with that these two badly managed wars quality of creative intelligence found bountiful resources, no nation comes may have rung down the curtain on in the upper echelons of the United even close to the United States. In terms the so-called American Century, with States Army has declined precipitously. of willingness to commit that army into the self-described “world’s only super- So too has the quality of civil-military action, no nation (except perhaps Israel power” now facing irreversible decline. interaction—the dialogue between se- and the United Kingdom) compares. Yet The United States Army is like one nior officers and senior civilian officials the roster of victories achieved by the of those chronically underperform- that is essential to effective war man- United States Army since 1945 is an ab- ing professional sports franchises: the agement. Here the problem stems at breviated one: the Dominican Republic team looks good on paper but somehow least in part from pronounced lapses in (1965), Grenada (1983), and Panama doesn’t quite get the job done. Despite a moral courage. Together, these failings (1989). Twenty years ago, observers huge payroll, a roster loaded with talent, at the top explain why an army that might have added the Persian Gulf War and an enthusiastic fan base, perfor- seemingly ought to win doesn’t.

40 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 Michael Hogue

Ricks also offers an explanation for writes, the key is to be deemed a “good sergeants and captains do or don’t do. why this decline occurred: the Army guy.” The good guy projects the right General officer responsibility turns out officer corps no longer polices itself, attitude, strikes the right pose, and re- to be more nominal than real. Reflect- at least not its upper echelons. Back cites all the right clichés. Good guys are ing on the Iraq War, one disenchanted in World War II, generals fired gener- team players. They don’t rock the boat. American officer put it this way: “As als who performed poorly. Today that They get ahead by going along. In prac- matters stand now, a private who loses is no longer the case—indeed, it hasn’t tical terms, demonstrated adherence to a rifle suffers far greater consequences been for several decades. The demise of orthodoxy becomes the premier quali- than a general who loses a war.” Need- this ethic of professional accountability fication for admission. Heretics need less to say, that officer’s invitation to has created an environment in which not apply. join the club never arrived. people getting to the top are patently And according to Ricks, once you’re unqualified for the responsibilities that in, you’re golden: with membership t didn’t use to be that way. At the await them. Worse, even when they come privileges and protection. So Ioutset of World War II, Ricks writes, screw up they get a pass—and some- when events expose the limitations of a George C. Marshall, the Army chief times even get promoted. William Westmoreland in Vietnam or of staff, established strict standards To become a general officer is to join a Tommy Franks in Iraq, other senior of general officer accountability. In an exclusive club. As with many clubs, officers cognizant of those shortcom- the field, commanders like Dwight ranking members decide whom to ad- ings keep mum. Sergeants or captains D. Eisenhower enforced those stan- mit, restricting entry to those who sat- falling short in the performance of duty dards, ruthlessly sacking division isfy the criteria for being the right sort. might feel the axe; not so with the gen- and corps commanders found want- In American military vernacular, Ricks erals said to be responsible for what the ing. Meanwhile, those generals who

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 41 Arts&Letters demonstrated a capacity for combat crisis, Clark’s practice was “to blame ferred cronies and courtiers. The only leadership—among them J. Lawton everyone but himself.” If the Marshall creative intelligence he valued was his Collins, James Gavin, and Matthew system worked as Ricks claims, he own. Rather than competence or in- Ridgway—reaped rewards: swift pro- ought to have been sacked. Yet as a dependent judgment, therefore, suck- motion and assignment to positions personal friend of Eisenhower, Clark ing up to the boss determined who of greater responsibility. For Marshall, flourished, achieving four-star rank flourished under his command. After war was the ultimate Darwinian en- and remaining a blight on the Army President Harry Truman had finally vironment, separating fit from unfit for years to come. had his fill of MacArthur’s insubordi- (or perhaps lucky from unlucky). The More problematic still is the case of nation and dismissed him, Ridgway clash of arms rendered judgments; Douglas MacArthur, who presided over sought to reinstate Marshall’s stan- Marshall’s system accepted those the Southwest Pacific theatre of opera- dards, but with a twist: rather than judgments as authoritative. tions with an imperial disdain for what- being fired outright, failed command- Did this Marshall system actually ever George Marshall (not to mention ers were quietly transferred. Shielding exist? The case that Ricks advances for Franklin Roosevelt) might want. In a generals, and the Army, from embar- answering that question in the affir- 2010 blog post, Ricks fingered MacAr- rassment was becoming a priority. mative falls short of being conclusive. thur as “the worst general in American Worse was to come. In the wake His approach is nakedly didactic: The history.” Here he concedes that MacAr- of Korea, a new “corporate model of Generals consists of a series of chapter- thur “stood outside of” the Marshall generalship” emerged, embodied by length profiles, each focusing on a par- system. Yet a system of accountability Maxwell Taylor and by Taylor’s protégé ticular senior officer whose personal that allows the worst (not to mention William Westmoreland, officers who qualities, performance of duty, or ulti- most narcissistic) general in U.S. history were smooth, bureaucratically savvy, mate fate reveals something about the to run roughshod over his superiors intellectually shallow, and less than evolution of American generalship. while cultivating an undeserved reputa- honest. Taylor “made a habit of saying The individuals to whom the author tion as a Great American Hero may not not what he knew to be true but in- directs attention form a motley, even actually qualify as a system at all. Some stead what he thought should be said.” whimsical, group. Some are colorful, exceptions confirm the rule; others ex- Westmoreland displayed a similar ten- others bland. Some—George S. Patton pose the rule as fiction. dency to shade the truth, especially on for example—meet anyone’s standards Still, even without enshrining World matters affecting his own image and for historical importance. Others— War II as some sort of golden age of reputation. Among senior officers, American generalship, plain speaking was becoming a lost Marshall, Eisenhower, Pat- art. The Army, writes Ricks, “was fast ton, and the rest of them becoming a collection of ‘organization The leadership system that had (even including he likes men’ … who were far less inclined to produced victory during World War II of Clark and MacArthur) judge the performance of their peers.” did get the job done. The Generals “were acting less like stew- almost immediately began to decay. war ended with the United ards of their profession, answerable to States on the winning side. the public, and more like keepers of a We may wonder how much closed guild.” credit for that outcome is Here for Ricks lies the key explana- raise your hand if you’ve heard of Terry due to superior U.S. military leader- tion for why Vietnam became such de la Mesa Allen—qualify as marginal. ship as opposed to German strategic a debacle: Army generals screwed it But the key point is this: tinker with folly, Japanese economic weakness, up. They misconstrued that war’s ac- the cast of characters and you’re likely and the extraordinary resilience of the tual nature. They employed methods to reach different conclusions. Red Army. But that is not the question (“search and destroy”) that were wrong- Even some of the figures Ricks uses that Ricks wishes to entertain here. headed, unnecessarily brutal, and mas- to build his argument cast doubts Instead, according to the story he sively counterproductive. Attempting about the Marshall system’s efficacy. chooses to tell, the leadership system to deceive and manipulate their civilian Mark Clark offers a case in point. Ricks that had produced victory almost im- masters, they helped create a poisonous correctly identifies Clark, the erstwhile mediately began to decay. By the on- civil-military relationship. And with liberator of Rome, as a petty, if exceed- set of the Korean War, it had all but Marshall’s standards of accountability ingly ambitious, officer of negligible ceased to exist. In choosing subordi- now fully abandoned, they prospered. ability, “disliked and distrusted by sub- nates, MacArthur, the dominant fig- Senior officers who ran the army into ordinates and superiors alike.” In a ure during the war’s early stages, pre- the ground as they led it to defeat reaped

42 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 rewards, winning medals and promo- conception reduced combat to a se- places like Abu Ghraib prison. To tions. Westmoreland’s fate was emblem- ries of discrete, measurable tasks. In remove from circulation every poten- atic: Ricks suggests that Marshall would DePuy’s eyes, to master tasks was to tial “terrorist” was to assure ultimate have canned him; yet after four years of master war itself. Paying lip service to victory: here was the modified ver- mismanaging the Vietnam War, Westy war’s human dimension, disdaining sion of body count. ascended to Marshall’s old job as Army its political aspect altogether, DePuy’s In painful detail, Ricks recounts the chief of staff. approach—which became the Army’s failings of successive U.S. command- From their experience battling in- approach—pretended to a sort of pseu- ers in Baghdad and of the equally surgents in Southeast Asia, army gen- do-empiricism, as if war were akin to a lackluster four-stars back in Washing- erals took one lesson: never again. That large-scale industrial enterprise. ton who had little to offer to civilian apart, they learned next to nothing. In- Demanding compliance with pre- leaders badly in need of competent deed they wasted no time in conclud- scribed formulas, checklists, and deci- military advice—even if they were ing that the war had nothing to teach. sion matrices, DePuy’s Army had little slow to acknowledge that need. The In recounting how the Army recov- use for critical thinking or indepen- roll call of generals that Ricks singles ered from Vietnam, Ricks rightly em- dent judgment. This was the Army that out for spanking—the “dull and ar- phasizes the contributions of Gen. Wil- in 1991 fought Saddam Hussein and rogant” Tommy Franks, the clueless liam DePuy. Today a forgotten figure, then in 2003 came back for a second Ricardo Sanchez, and the slow-on- DePuy may well rank as the most con- go—an Army led by “good guys” who the-uptake George Casey (“up to his sequential U.S. military officer in the had mastered minor tactics but were ears in quicksand and he doesn’t even last quarter of the 20th century, both as intellectually complacent, strategically know it”)—certainly sustains his over- chief architect of the Army’s post-Viet- illiterate, and wore their antipathy for all thesis. Not since Irvin MacDowell, nam reforms and as the senior officer politics like a badge of honor. George McClellan, John Pope, Am- most insistent on declaring the entire Against Saddam’s undistinguished brose Burnside, and Joe Hooker sub- Vietnam experience irrelevant. legions, this proved good enough to jected the Army of the Potomac to DePuy’s interest in burying that war win battles but nowhere near good serial abuse had American soldiers was understandable: as Westmore- enough to win wars. Against the more suffered under such mediocre leader- land’s operations chief he had devised resolute opponent that American sol- ship. the concept of “search and destroy,” diers confronted in occupying Iraq Extending that comparison would confident that superior U.S. firepower (and Afghanistan), it wasn’t good find David Petraeus serving as the would bludgeon the Communist insur- enough to win anything. Iraq after 2003 Iraq War’s equivalent of Ulysses S. gents into submission. In effect, DePuy became the war that DePuy’s Army had Grant, the general who turns looming in the 1960s applied to a Vietnamese been so intent on avoiding: it was Viet- failure into victory. Yet Ricks won’t go civil war methods that Ulysses S. Grant nam redux. Yet generals imbued with that far. Rather than winning the Iraq and William T. Sherman had employed DePuy’s mechanistic approach to war- War, he writes, Petraeus succeeded in during the American Civil War in the fare proved no more adept at grasping merely “putting a new face on it.” He 1860s: grind the enemy down until he the problem actually at hand than had applied the tourniquet that slowed gives up. Yet the two wars were utterly the prior generation of senior leaders the loss of blood. The tourniquet held dissimilar. DePuy’s approach badly un- who all but destroyed the army they just long enough for Washington to derestimated the capacity of the Viet professed to love in their vain pursuit declare the patient stable and hastily Cong and the North Vietnamese Army of an ever bigger body count. leave the scene of mayhem that the to absorb punishment and still carry United States itself had unleashed. on. And in a contest where the pros- enerals who had come of age in Furthermore, the Petraeus Mo- pects of success turned on winning the GDePuy’s army took for granted ment by no means inaugurated a support of a contested population, it the superiority of American military full-fledged renaissance of American employed means that victimized and technique. They did not question its generalship. According to Ricks, Pe- alienated that population. relevance to the battlefield that they traeus’s ill-concealed ambition and Yet the abject failure of that con- confronted in Iraq. For this genera- operating style, more than slightly cept in Vietnam—a failure above all tion of senior leaders, creative intel- reminiscent of Taylor or Westmore- of creative intelligence—prompted ligence amounted to bearing down land, had always marked him as an little soul-searching on DePuy’s part. harder in the face of resistance, an “outlier.” Petraeus assiduously courted Nothing that had occurred there al- impulse that found its ultimate ex- journalists. Devoting considerable entered his pre-existing conception of pression in the madcap effort to lock ergy to winning favor among politi- warfare. Stripped to its essentials, that up every military age Iraqi male in cians, he achieved rock-star status on

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 43 Arts&Letters

Capitol Hill. In recruiting staff, he sur- Community or his book as a corrective to the imbal- rounded himself with fellow Ph.D.’s, ance currently found in the political seemingly valuing academic creden- Leviathan? views of American conservatives, even tials over experience gained while as he also triumphantly lauds the cur- leading troops in the field. None of by Patrick J. Deneen rent balance between individualism these qualify as standard “good guy” and community to be found in the attributes. Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle Democratic Party and embodied in As a consequence, Ricks depicts Pe- for the American Idea in an Age of the presidency and person of Barack traeus as a one-off. When he departed Discontent, E.J. Dionne, Bloomsbury Obama. from active duty to become CIA di- USA, 336 pages Dionne certainly has a point con- rector, the Petraeus Moment ended. cerning a main current of American Were there doubts on that score, the n his most recent diagnosis of the conservatism today, and he rightly sex scandal that booted “King David” state of America’s political soul, the notes that there is a strong intellectual out of Langley quashed them. The re- journalist and political thinker E.J. tradition within conservatism that sult was an Army left in the hands of IDionne begins with a simple thesis. In supplies correctives to the libertarian, senior officers no more interested in the opening pages of Our Divided Po- Randian leanings found among some critically examining their service’s (or litical Heart, he asserts that “American on the contemporary right. Among their own) performance in Iraq and history is defined by an irrepressible those correctives he identifies the Afghanistan than DePuy had been and ongoing tension between two core work of such thinkers as Robert Nis- interested in critically examining his values: our love of individualism and bet, Peter Berger and Richard John service’s (and his own) performance our reverence for community.” The Neuhaus, and the early George Will. in Vietnam. To judge by the evidence inevitable “creative tension” between However, Dionne is so exercised about that Ricks assembles, the present gen- these two commitments, he argues, is the rise of the Tea Party in Republican eration of senior officers may lack the source of ongoing American de- politics that he somehow misses that a capacity for introspection, but its bate as well as American strength. We “individualism” is hardly a pathology members suffer no shortage of self-es- need to hold firmly to both values, as to be found exclusively among deni- teem. “I think we’ve got great general difficult as that can be in practice. zens of the American right; arguably, it officers,” remarks one Army four-star But while Dionne states that these pervades the very essence of the con- quoted by Ricks, insisting that any- two commitments do not simply “face temporary American left. He makes thing that had gone amiss in Iraq was off against each other”—that there is a fundamental category mistake by clearly the fault of civilian politicians. no party of “individualism” aligned supposing that the left’s “balanced” For this very reason, the eminently against a party of “community,” but position, and especially its support for sensible suggestions for improving rather commitments to each ideal are “community,” can be discerned in the the quality of senior military leader- to be found “in the consciousness and left’s support for the role of the national ship that Ricks offers in concluding consciences of nearly all Americans”— government. his account—in essence restoring in fact, throughout his book Dionne A serious, rather than glancing, the professional ethic that produced ends up making an argument distinct engagement with Nisbet would have George C. Marshall and that he him- from his opening thesis. He insists that been educational for Dionne, and self subsequently sought (however there is, in fact, one party of individu- would have helped him move beyond imperfectly) to uphold—have little alism today. That party— alternatively the partisan limits of his analysis. Di- chance of implementation. The suc- “conservatives,” “Republicans,” and onne posits that “the American quest cessors to the generals once so keen the “Tea Party”; they are all named as for community has taken national as to forget Vietnam are now hell-bent purveyors of this view—has developed well as local forms,” but throughout the on forgetting Iraq and can’t wait to do the notion that American prosperity book he equates the left’s identification the same for Afghanistan. They are and power derive almost exclusively with “community” to its willingness to “good guys,” able to do their push-ups from the efforts of individuals, and support an activist federal government. and sit-ups. Just don’t look to them for that government is everywhere and al- With a seemingly uncontroversial ref- much by way of moral courage or cre- ways a baleful influence. According to erence to Robert Nisbet’s 1953 book ative intelligence. Dionne, Democrats/liberals/progres- The Quest for Community, Dionne in- sives, by contrast, maintain the tradi- advertently reveals a superficial famil- Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of tionally salutary view that America is iarity with the conservative tradition history and international relations at Boston a combination of both individualism he purports to recommend—and he University. and community. He purports to offer unintentionally reinforces the continu-

44 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 ing relevance of Nisbet’s analysis. Dionne is so confused about this liant upon the government because Nisbet spoke of the “quest for point that he misses it even when he there is no evidence of any support of community” as an inherent longing of endorses it. For instance, in commend- family, community, church, or friends every human person. But modern so- ing the “balanced” view that he finds in her life. In her middle age, she (on ciety increasingly had been organized expressed in the speeches of Franklin her own accord, apparently) “decides” to thwart, undermine, or re-direct that Roosevelt, he italicizes the following to have a child, and in one scene is longing away from local forms of mem- line in which the ends of government shown sending young “Zachary” off to bership. The modern project, as Nisbet activism are revealed: not to hamper school; he is never to be seen again for described, could trace its origins back individualism, but to protect it. Were the rest of her life. It is the very picture at least five centuries to such think- Dionne attentive to the pincer move- of the Leviathan—in this world, there ers as Bodin, Hobbes, and Rousseau ment described by Nisbet—in which are only individuals and the state. and consisted of the organized effort the state supports the liberationist am- There is similarly no mention of an to align the supposed mutual interests bition of autonomous individualism, incident early in Obama’s first presi- of autonomous individuals (demanded and autonomous individuals increas- dential campaign, when he argued by the rise of capitalism) and central- ingly appeal to and rely upon the state (while campaigning during the Michi- ized government power, both working toward undermining a range of constitutive and “limiting” human associations such as church, guild, schools, and even families. As a result, the “quest for community” became pathologically redi- rected toward identification with the state. Government becomes, as Nisbet anticipated, the “only thing that we all belong to”—a line that was highlighted during the intro- ductory video shown at last

year’s Democratic National Michael Hogue Convention. But this “quest for community” in fact results in the effective strengthening of centralized government power and individualism alike, at the expense of more local forms of constitutive community. as guarantor of their liberation—he gan and Ohio primaries) that there Dionne reveals a lack of familiarity might have noticed that this same ba- might be a need to revisit terms of the with the basic contours of Nisbet’s ar- sic devotion to individualism lies at North American Free Trade Agree- gument, and in his insistence that the the heart of the contemporary left, and ment (NAFTA) that were undermin- contemporary left embraces both com- particularly the president he claims as ing and even destroying the economic munity—in the form of an activist fed- the very embodiment of “balance.” base of communities throughout the eral government—and individualism, There is no mention in Dionne’s upper Midwest and elsewhere. As was what he misses is that actual forms of 300-page book, for instance, of the reported in hushed tones afterwards, constitutive community are the los- campaign commercial that launched Obama quietly dispatched his econom- ers in this arrangement. Our “political President Obama’s re-election cam- ic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, to Canada heart” is far from divided—it is rather paign, “The Life of Julia.” Julia is por- to assure our northern neighbors that in love with a unified and ongoing ef- trayed over the course of her life as the the president-to-be didn’t really mean fort to use the power of the state to beneficiary of a bevy of government it. Obama’s policies have consistently liberate the individual. The elites who programs; notably, with the exception used the power of the federal govern- lead the two parties are of one mind of one slide, she is constantly pictured ment to “liberate” upwardly mobile and one heart in this respect. alone. She appears to be especially re- individuals while leaving communities

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 45 Arts&Letters to fend for themselves in a globalizing several million fewer such voters even Don’t Despair of and rapacious economic order. When bothered to turn out in 2012? Where has the word “NAFTA,” or any debate do we see this resurgent concern for Democracy about “free trade,” been heard during “family, faith and community” in the the Obama administration? Would you policies of President Obama? by Daniel J. Mahoney rather be a trader on Wall Street under Dionne is correct on two main points: someone named Clinton or Obama or a major element of the Republican Party After Tocqueville: The Promise someone named Bush? today is dominated by individualistic and Failure of Democracy, Chilton Dionne is enraptured, however, by tendencies, and government can indeed Williamson Jr., ISI Books, 264 pages any rhetorical flourish in which Presi- do good things to assist people, espe- dents Clinton or Obama speak admir- cially against the depredations of global lexis de Tocqueville is the great ingly of community: he cites speeches capitalism. But this book is keenly dis- analyst and “prophet” of the appointing as anything more “democratic revolution” that than a campaign handbook. Arelentlessly continues to transform the Dionne willfully refuses to modern world. He remains an indis- Where do we see a resurgent concern extend his analysis to con- pensable reference point for everyone for “family, faith and community” in sider more comprehensively who wants to think about the human the pathologies of American soul under conditions of modernity. the policies of President Obama? political life, particularly the In After Tocqueville, the conservative complicity of his partisan man of letters Chilton Williamson friends. Jr. sets out to analyze Tocqueville’s Perhaps most lamentably, insights and the prospects for de- by each as proof-positive of their care Dionne not only overlooks the system- mocracy in a world marked by cen- and concern for community, while he atic ways in which the left today advanc- tralization, bureaucratization, moral consistently dismisses conservative es the power of government to support relativism, and the full torrent of what rhetoric—such as Ronald Reagan’s sen- the liberation of autonomy-loving indi- Walter Lippmann called the “acids of timental appeals to small-town Ameri- viduals, but he also misses the opportu- modernity.” ca—as so much deception that shrouds nity to encourage the growing number Williamson admires Tocqueville policies that advantage Wall Street at of articulate conservatives who have even if he thinks that we live in a post- the expense of Main Street. taken up the banner of the likes of Rob- Tocquevillian age. He is a capable Again, Dionne has a point: many ert Nisbet—one of whom, New York analyst of Tocqueville’s thought even Republican policies have proven harm- Times columnist Ross Douthat, recently if he does not always capture its exact ful to communities, particularly those provided the introduction for a new nuances or remain faithful to its sober policies that have supported forms edition of Nisbet’s Quest for Communi- but demanding warning against both of crony-capitalism that have treated ty. Where, on the other hand, does one utopianism and despair. Williamson the small producers and blue-collar see evidence of intellectual creativity on rightly describes Tocqueville’s “sympa- American workers as an afterthought. the Left today that consistently shows thy and controlled admiration for the But have the Democrats lauded by Di- concern for the condition of “faith, fam- young American democracy,” a sym- onne done any better for communities ily and community?” You will search in pathy and admiration that were “never in this regard? Have those “moderate vain for the health of our actual commu- blind to its flaws.” As Williamson notes, traditionalists” who came to mistrust nities in the pages of this book—written Tocqueville loved “liberty, legality, and Democrats for their aversion to speak- by one of America’s most celebrated respect for rights, but not democracy,” ing positively about “family, faith and communitarian thinkers—unless you as the great Frenchman himself put it community” simply been in the throes unreflectively accept that “government” in a revealing private note in 1841. De- of false consciousness since the 1980s? and “community” are the same thing. mocracy was a “political phenomenon” Did Obama win them back in 2012 by But that view is finally nothing more for Tocqueville and never a “faith” or appealing to those rooted aspirations— than the “quest for community” gone an object of passionate and disfiguring or did he succeed in driving them awry, something Dionne, more than love. away from supporting any candidate anyone, should realize. For his part, Williamson argues at all, as they finally realized that they that modern democracy, transformed were fundamentally unrepresented in Patrick J. Deneen is David A. Potenziani by “advanced liberalism,” has become the American political system today? Memorial Associate Professor of Constitution- a “false religion, a form of govern- Shouldn’t Dionne be concerned that al Studies at the University of Notre Dame. ment based on faith,” or rather an

46 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 anti-faith. “Modern democracies the highest, most humanly fulfilling, retical support for the religion of de- are morally relativist and inherently and historically favored form of gov- mocracy in the post-Cold War era, in atheistic societies devoid of abso- ernment, one likely to endure in fact Bernard-Henri Lévy’s book American lute principles....‘One Nation Under and in ideal so far as the prophetic eye Vertigo—a facile effort at replicating God’ may be a pretty phrase, but it can see.” For Williamson, advanced Democracy in America—the French is a lie nonetheless.” But surely a self- liberalism, emphasizing autonomy “new philosopher” unintentionally respecting Tocquevillian ought to and liberation from restraints, is highlighted “the displacement, by challenge the moral relativism of late transforming democracy—and hu- secularism and moral relativism, of modern democracy in the name of man life—beyond recognition. (Wit- traditional morality rooted in Chris- those goods and principles—includ- ness the subversion of marriage in the tian doctrine.” In his effort to update ing religious faith—that are necessary name of a pure abstraction, “marriage Tocqueville’s travelogue, he did not to sustain a liberal order. “One Nation equality.”) The modern democratic see or appreciate the “indispensable Under God” is not merely a slogan, state wars with the intermediary in- connection between religious be- however antiquated, but a description stitutions of society that Tocqueville lief and democratic government on of the great desideratum of a free soci- famously praised as “barriers to tyr- which Tocqueville insists throughout ety that aims to do justice to the moral anny.” A “New Class” of intellectuals, Democracy in America.” Instead, he contents of life. One must contest the bureaucrats, experts, and technocrats expressed his chagrin at the persis- anti-traditional subversion of democ- displaces the patriotic elites of old. tence of poverty and capital punish- racy both for the good of democracy For a century or more, the left has ment and the considerable strength of and for the health of the human soul. challenged the great goods of our evangelical Christianity in the United It is a mistake to succumb to a fatal- civilization that have a “connection States. Lévy won’t be content until the ism that declares democracy to be an to, affinity for, or compatibility with conservative features of American de- enemy of civilization and therefore of Christianity.” In a par- a life worthy of man. ticularly memorable pas- If the task of free men and women sage Williamson writes remains to educate, moderate, and that “the Left today places where possible to elevate democracy, it Western culture, rationali- Tocqueville remains an indispens- cannot be said that we live in a post- ty, the rule of constitutional Tocquevillian age. Williamson insists law, free markets, the white able reference point for everyone who that “the various elements hitherto race, the human male, sex- wants to think about the human soul thought necessary to civilization” do ual morality, the family, ‘pa- under conditions of modernity. not include democracy. But if de- triarchy,’ intermediate social mocracy remains our “fated circle,” as institutions, moral restraint, Tocqueville so suggestively put it in and religious authority at the final paragraphs of Democracy in the top of its list of idols for America, then surely we are obliged destruction.” to sustain civilization amidst the de- Democracy is more revolutionary, mocracy are replaced in the name of mocratizing—the equalizing—pressures more acidic, more destructive of the a humanitarian, secular, and egalitar- of the age. This is a demanding task, goods of life than even Tocqueville had ian version of democracy. Tocqueville perhaps even a Sisyphean one, but one anticipated. And contra Fukuyama, the lamented the tendency of democracy that need not culminate in inaction or free, rational, and neutral political and to continually “democratize;” Lévy despair. Williamson needs more con- social order at which it aims is destined in contrast applauds, or at least takes fidence in the promise of democracy, to be “fundamentally unfree, irrational, for granted, its self-radicalizing and even if he is right to eschew democracy and biased.” The partisans of the “end “emancipatory” tendencies. as an object of religious faith. of history” are blind to the erosion of Williamson rightly observes, “it was If Williamson respects Tocqueville, civilization and falsely believe that the in his fears, perhaps more than his he is positively scornful of contem- human condition, marked as it always hopes, that the author of Democracy in porary commentators such as Fran- is by tragedy and the persistence of evil, America proved himself to have been cis Fukuyama and Bernard-Henri can somehow be “solved.” (Williamson a man of deep intuition and a true Lévy who in different ways have suc- makes particularly good use of Ber- prophet of history.” But his articulation cumbed to democratic triumphalism. trand de Jouvenel’s notion of “the myth of these themes did not aim to enervate He cannot accept Fukuyama’s claim of the solution.”) or to undermine commitment to dem- that “liberal capitalist democracy is If Fukuyama provided the theo- ocratic liberty. Instead, his work was in

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 47 Arts&Letters the service of democratic self-correc- excuse for aggressive nationalism. Yet of Tocquevillian political science. tion. Unlike the aristocratic enemies of American resistance to the tyranny of Many of Williamson’s pronounce- democracy, Tocqueville believed that international law—a resistance in cru- ments do not stand up to critical scru- the goods of human life could only be cial respects undermined by the pres- tiny. For example, he declares the Cold saved within the democratic dispensa- ent administration—is a victory for the War to have been a form of “national- tion. He rejected every kind of fatalism nation and thus for the political form ist rivalry,” even though we know that and upheld an “art of liberty” whose that is the natural home for democracy Lenin and Stalin despised Russian aim was precisely to moderate the ten- in the modern world. If the sovereign national consciousness. And as the dency of democracy to free itself from state and the democratic nation go Soviet archives have confirmed, all its moral and cultural prerequisites. hand in hand, America still offers an Soviet leaders spoke their ideological, Williamson is no doubt right that admirable alternative to the “non-na- wooden language behind closed doors Tocqueville would be “shocked and tional democracy” (the phrase is Ma- as well as in public. They thought and scandalized by the United States to- nent’s) that is the dominant political acted as the ideologists that they were. day.” But since the alternatives avail- form in Europe today. In contrast, post-Communist Russia able to the acting man still involve As we have suggested, Williamson’s pursues a national-minded foreign some variety of democratic liberty or considerable learning and insight is policy rather than the ideological one democratic despotism, Tocqueville undermined by a fatalism that borders that was characteristic of the Soviet on despair. He goes so Union for 70 years. That is a source far as to suggest that of potential conflict between Russia Russia, China, and the and the West but also a guarantee that United States are in the there will be no return to the absolute Democracy is more revolutionary, process of “converg- animosity of old. ing” into a new form of My reservations aside, Williamson more acidic, more destructive of corporate nationalism. has written a thoughtful and provoca- the goods of life than even Tocqueville This version of “conver- tive book. His prose is often sparkling had anticipated. gence” makes no more and his insights jarring. He allows sense than the version us to think along with Tocqueville, put forward in the Henry Maine, Walter Bagehot, Or- 1960s that foresaw the estes Brownson, Bertrand de Jouvenel, eventual convergence Pierre Manent, Reinhold Niebuhr, and would surely caution against despair. of Soviet Communism and American a host of other outstanding guides to Williamson, in contrast, takes aim at capitalism. Woefully underestimat- our democratic discontents. He is right American exceptionalism, which he ing the persistence of real forms of to warn us against “pushing forward, sees at best as a “pleasant fiction” that self-government in the United States, thoughtlessly and relentlessly” toward encourages a dangerously evangelical Williamson effectively declares dead the “premature completion of history,” attitude toward the spread of democ- a constitutional order that is still wor- even if he underestimates the resources racy. But it is arguably the case that thy of our loyalty and affection. for civilizational renewal—resources Tocqueville would still be impressed Of course, the rise of a bureaucratic that are discounted at our peril. For the by the attachment of so many Ameri- New Class in the United States ought foreseeable future, we are destined to cans to religious faith and to a proud to be of grave concern to friends of live with the “acids of modernity,” and and principled affirmation of the na- liberty. But the profound differences each generation is obliged to come to tion. Americans have not succumbed between American liberty and a Le- terms with the threats to democratic to the “pure democracy” lamented by ninist party-state in China and “man- self-government and to the integrity the French political philosopher Pierre aged democracy” in Russia are enough of the human soul that accompany it. Manent, a European-style “democra- to make the prediction of a new con- Williamson’s book is a welcome addi- cy” that downplays national sovereign- vergence not only mistaken but bereft tion to the literature on this unnerving ty, ignores the will of the people, and of even the slightest confidence in the theme. wishes to be “untainted by national, capacity of American democracy for ethnic, and cultural peculiarities and self-renewal. It is the quasi-fatalism Daniel J. Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair prejudices.” of Williamson’s analysis—and his ac- in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption Williamson laments the absence of companying tendency to pronounce College. He is the author, most recently, of patriotism in post-national Europe but rather than to argue—that separates The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal can see in American patriotism only an his approach from the sturdy sobriety Order.

48 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 bed that year—the man was frequently his Quaker gospel but not push within Why Kennan Matters ill, in part due to anxiety problems—he the Department.” dictated to his secretary an analysis of So much for the context of the lec- by Jordan Michael Smith Soviet behavior that the State Depart- tures. Kennan’s purposes in deliver- ment had requested. Kennan’s exposi- ing them, he wrote in the first (“The American Diplomacy: Sixtieth- tion came to 8,000 words, far more than War With Spain”), was to explain why Anniversary Expanded Edition, George F. State had had in mind. He admitted America in 1900 was “so secure … Kennan, University of Chicago, 192 pages years later that it was an “outrageous en- [and] had relatively little to fear,” yet by cumberment of the telegraphic process,” 1950 was “insecure” and faced condi- n his classic 1951 book American but he believed it was necessary to con- tions “dangerous and problematical in Diplomacy, Cold War strategist vey his views accurately. the extreme … hemmed in as we are George F. Kennan rethought not The “Long Telegram” became fa- by a thousand troubles and dangers, Ionly his own views but also those of mous. Suffice to say it offered a persua- surrounded by a world part of which American policymakers from the sive, eloquent, historically grounded seems to be actually committed to our 1898 war with Spain to the outset of explanation for the sources of Soviet destruction and another part to have the Cold War. The book was com- conduct and American strat- prised of six lectures delivered in 1951 egy to counter the threat. at the University of Chicago under “My reputation was made,” the auspices of the Charles R. Wal- Kennan recalled in his Mem- green Foundation. A newly expanded oirs. “My voice now carried.” George Kennan’s analysis of Soviet edition, published by the University Indeed, he became instru- behavior served as the basis for U.S. of Chicago, adds an 11,000-word in- mental in forging America’s policy throughout the Cold War. troduction by University of Chicago postwar foreign policy, help- (there is a trend here) political scientist ing to devise the Marshall John Mearsheimer, as well as two of Plan along with aid to Greece Kennan’s Foreign Affairs essays (from and Turkey and providing the 1947 and 1951) and his 1984 reflec- framework for the containment strategy lost confidence either in ourselves or in tions on the Chicago lectures, along that, in mutated form, served as the ba- itself, or in both.” with a foreword he wrote for an edi- sis for U.S. policy throughout the Cold What is striking about these sen- tion of the book that year. War. tences is that they contradict Kennan’s Kennan’s Walgreen Lectures have His influence was at its zenith under sentiments not only in some of his other been called “the most famous series Secretary of State George Marshall— writings but also in other passages of of lectures ever delivered on Ameri- and declined swiftly under Marshall’s American Diplomacy. Even in the same can diplomacy” by Cold War histo- successor, Dean Acheson. Kennan lecture, he argued, “in 1900 we exag- rian Melvyn Leffler, who believed that took a leave of absence in 1950 and gerated the security of our position and nothing Kennan subsequently wrote soon thereafter delivered the lectures. had an overweening confidence in our matched their impact. Indeed, Foreign Under Acheson, he recalled, he had strength and our ability to solve prob- Affairs called them “for many years the been “relegated to the sidelines” and lems, whereas today we exaggerate our most widely read account of American “outside the chain of command, one dangers and have a tendency to rate our diplomacy in the first half of the twen- step removed from the real decisions.” abilities less than they actually are.” Ken- tieth century.” Yet their influence has Acheson had merely tolerated him: nan oscillated between optimism and waned over the years, not because the “he was, I suspect, sometimes amused, despair. His ambivalence was perhaps Kennan’s thinking has aged poorly but sometimes appalled, usually interested; best revealed in a note he sent to Ache- because the appetite among the public but there were times when I felt like a son before he left government, at a mo- and policymakers for Kennanesque court jester, expected to enliven dis- ment when the Korean War had begun views has declined. cussion, privileged to say the shocking to go south—or more accurately, north, Kennan had been at the summit things, valued as an intellectual gadfly above the 38th parallel dividing the two of policymaking before he delivered on hides of slower colleagues, but not Koreas and that the U.S. military had these lectures. He had served several to be taken fully seriously when it came now crossed, only to find the Chinese diplomatic tours in the Soviet Union, to the final, responsible decisions of entering the war. Kennan wrote: including a stint as deputy chief of mis- policy.” Acheson, for his part, recalled sion under Ambassador Averell Harri- that he once told Kennan he ought to In international, as in private, life man from 1944 to 1946. While sick in quit the Foreign Service and go “preach what counts most is not really

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 49 Arts&Letters

what happens to someone but thought. “There is, let me assure you, site: “it is a curious thing, but it is true, how he bears what happens to nothing in nature more egocentrical that the legalistic approach to world af- him. For this reason almost ev- than the embattled democracy,” he fairs, rooted as it unquestionably is in erything depends from here on wrote in his 1960 book Russia and the a desire to do away with war and vio- out on the manner in which we West Under Lenin and Stalin. “It soon lence, makes violence more enduring, Americans bear what is unques- becomes the victim of its own war pro- more terrible, and more destructive tionably a major failure and disas- paganda.” Even historian John Lukacs, to political stability than did the older ter to our national fortunes. If we in his admiring 2007 biography called motives of national interest.” accept it with candor, with dignity, simply George Kennan, conceded that But even as a realist, Kennan was sui with a resolve to absorb its lessons Kennan’s criticisms of democracy in- generis. In his first Walgreen talk, Ken- and to make it good be redoubled termittently progressed into hatred, nan faults one thinker for falling prey and determined effort ... we need “something that even his friends and to the “overestimation of economics, of lose neither our self-confidence admirers ought not to ignore.” trade, as factors in human events and nor our allies nor our power for Yet Kennan also writes in American … the corresponding underestimation bargaining. But if we try to con- Diplomacy, “The system under which of psychological and political reac- ceal from our own people or from we are going to have to continue to con- tions—of such things as fear, ambition, our allies the full measure of our duct foreign policy is, I hope and pray, insecurity, jealousy, and perhaps even misfortune, or permit ourselves to the system of democracy.” And while boredom—as prime movers of events.” seek relief in any actions of bluster he believed public opinion in the short Most other realists “underestimate” or petulance or hysteria, we can term is “easily led astray into areas of those explanations too: they see inter- easily find this crisis resolving into emotionalism and subjectivity which national affairs as the raw product of an irreparable deterioration of our make it a poor and inadequate guide competition for power in an anarchic world position—and of our confi- for national action,” he also wrote, “I do world; domestic factors affect the in- dence in ourselves. not consider public reaction to foreign- ternational struggle only in exceptional policy questions to be erratic and un- circumstances. And while Kennan had Such self-doubt mixed with confi- dependable over the long term.” a lifelong hatred of nuclear weapons, dence in America’s capabilities per- The best one can say is that Kennan most realists today believe they pre- vades American Diplomacy. was not dogmatic about democracy. vented the Cold War from becoming a Another matter on which Kennan Indeed, he was dogmatic about very hot one. was of two minds was American de- little. One is struck by how little theory Kennan may have the better ap- mocracy. Exasperation at its failings or ideology occupied his mind. He was proach—at the very least, it is better flows continually though his work, as generally identified as a “realist” in the that policymakers have specialized mold of Hans Morgenthau, and knowledge than adhere to any theory, he maintained a fruitful corre- even the best of which will have imper- Kennan’s criticisms of democracy spondence with the godfather fections and gaps. Whereas the only of American realism. The two thing that men like John Foster Dulles intermittently progressed shared the view that a state’s pri- knew about the Soviets was that they into hatred. mary task is to preserve its na- wore red and fought bears, Kennan tional interest—Kennan wrote could connect their behavior to Peter in American Diplomacy, “our the Great’s. He was, as a result, bril- own national interest is all that liantly able to discern what secretive he ascribes the failures of U.S. foreign we are really capable of knowing and governments like Stalin’s were after. policy to lawmakers’ deference to pop- understanding.” Both also eschewed He understood that the Soviets’ mo- ular opinion. In American Diplomacy, romanticism in policymaking. Perhaps tives were a mixture of Marxist ide- he calls this “diplomacy by dilettan- the most famous lines in Kennan’s lec- ology and typical great-power ambi- tism.” He would have preferred a corps tures are that he “see[s] the most seri- tions. Mearsheimer believes Kennan of professional officers to have unre- ous fault of our policy formulation to was incorrect in seeing ideology, not strained power to make foreign policy. lie in something that I might call the the will to power, as the source of So- He famously compared democracy legalistic-moralistic approach to in- viet behavior, but the two could not be to “one of those prehistoric monsters ternational problems.” He opposed at- separated in Kennan’s view. The Soviets with a body as long as this room and a tempts to apply domestic concepts of needed Marxism to provide ideologi- brain the size of a pin.” Such lines were justice to the international arena. Not cal rationalizations for their immoral, not aberrations but part of his lifelong because he was amoral; just the oppo- tyrannical actions. “That is why So-

50 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 viet purposes must always be solemnly bara Tuchman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Bipartisan Predators clothed in trappings of Marxism, and 1962 book, The Guns of August. We now why no one should underrate the im- know it to be false. In 1959, Fritz Fischer by James Bovard portance of dogma in Soviet affairs,” he was the first historian to publish findings wrote in the Long Telegram. from the archives of Imperial Germany. Devouring Freedom: Can Big He extracted larger lessons from his He discovered that in fact Germany did Government Ever Be Stopped?, W. own experiences abroad. He warned in want a war, and it simply exploited the James Antle III, Regnery, 256 pages American Diplomacy against “the ac- assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdi- ceptance of any sort of a paternalistic nand to realize its ambitions to domi- he friends of freedom are ac- responsibility to anyone, be it even in nate Europe. As Philip Bobbitt wrote customed to being beaten like the form of military occupation, if we in The Shield of Achilles, after Fischer’s a rented mule in Washington. can possibility avoid it, or for any peri- work, it is “impossible to maintain” that TIs it time to give up hope for any roll- od longer than is absolutely necessary.” the war was a “ghastly mistake” and not back of Leviathan? Not according to In his Memoirs he echoed his hero of Germany’s design. Kennan was un- James Antle, a contributing editor Gibbon’s remark that “there is noth- able to see that Germany, once reunified for The American Conservative and ing more contrary to nature than the by Bismarck, could not be contained a very talented writer who has done attempt to hold in obedience distant without war. fine work for the American Spectator, provinces.” He learned this, he wrote, American Diplomacy’s most endur- Wall Street Journal, and other publi- from his scrutiny of Nazi Germany’s ing, brilliant insight was perhaps its cations. problems as an occupying force. definition of the U.S. interest in world Antle’s new book, Devouring Free- Kennan did not fully acknowledge affairs: that “no single Continental dom, seeks to provide a roadmap for the power of nationalism, however. land power should come to dominate how politicians and activists can curb (Mearsheimer astutely points out that the entire Eurasian land mass.” Should federal spending and power grabs. the word barely appears in American one do so, it would enter “on an over- Antle is bluntly realistic: Diplomacy.) Among the great trag- seas expansion hostile to ourselves and edies of World War I, he wrote, was supported by the immense resources of Cutting government is extremely that it dissolved the Austro-Hungari- the interior of Europe and Asia.” Pre- difficult and rarely accomplished. an Empire, and thereby allowed Ger- venting that is all the U.S. needed. And In a perversion of Say’s Law (‘sup- many to dominate Europe. But it was so it remains. The only difference is ply creates its own demand’), the simply an illusion to believe that the that now China, not Russia, Germany, supply of government creates Hapsburg Empire could survive; the or Japan, poses the greatest challenge. its own demand. The breakneck wonder is that it existed as long as it Everything Kennan ever wrote is growth of a deficit-financed wel- did, as Gibbon said of the Roman Em- worth reading. As Lee Congdon argued fare state makes it inevitable that pire. Twelve main nationalities and in his fine 2008 book, George Kennan: more voters will develop similar some 15 language groups comprised A Writer’s Life, part of what makes the attachments to proliferating gov- the empire, a deeply unstable polity in Milwaukee-born diplomat so compel- ernment programs, though the a post-1848 world. Similarly, Kennan ling is the sheer beauty of his prose—few broad-based tax increases that writes that both World Wars “were other historians come close to matching they entail will dampen the en- fought, really, with a view to changing its gorgeousness, which seems to come thusiasm of some. Germany; to correcting her behavior, from his deep reading of great works to making the Germans something of fiction. (He would have liked to have He reveals some of the ways the different from what they were.” He been a novelist.) But of course, what game is rigged: “Even the conven- wrote that “If you tried to compute makes us go back to Kennan’s works tional economic statistics are stacked the various degrees of guilt,” for World decades after the Cold War are his en- against the opponents of big govern- War I, “you got a rather fuzzy pat- during insights into American foreign ment: they measure a dollar spent by tern: the Austrians and the Russians policy. That few Americans read him Washington without taking into ac- no doubt in first place, the Germans today says more about the public than count whence that dollar came.” with less but certainly with a goodly it does about Kennan. To profit from his Unlike your typical political sci- share … . Above all, you could not say genius, American Diplomacy is the best entist or Washington Post columnist, that anyone had deliberately started place to start. Antle recognizes the charade of cos- the war or schemed it.” metic reforms: “Government pro- His was the popular view well into the Jordan Michael Smith is a contributing writer grams are like weeds. If they are mere- 1960s, epitomized by the success of Bar- at Salon and the Christian Science Monitor. ly trimmed, they will grow back. They

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 51 Arts&Letters

must be uprooted when possible.” Un- fortunately, there is a distinct shortage of weed pullers inside the Beltway. Unlike many right-leaning pundits, Antle does not fudge on the disastrous record of George W. Bush: “Enroll- ment in 25 major federal programs increased three times as fast as the population between 2000 and 2006.” Bush did much to propel the explo- sion of food-stamp enrollment even before the 2007 recession. The No Child Left Behind Act de- serves the brickbats it receives in De- vouring Freedom. That law was falsely sold as giving freedom to local school officials. In reality, it empowered the feds to judge and punish local schools for not fulfilling arbitrary guidelines. Many states “dumbed down” academic standards, using bureaucratic racketeer- ing to avoid harsh federal sanctions. Though the No Child Left Behind Act promised to permit children to escape “persistently dangerous” schools, most states defined that term so as to claim that all their schools were safe. Regnery may have targeted Devour- ing Freedom at readers who have not closely followed political battles in recent decades. The book declares, “The nexus of big-government and big business remains a well-kept secret.” This is a secret only to people who get all their information from their “Obama phone.” David Stockman, former director of Reagan’s Office of Manage- ment and Budget, flogged business subsidies 30 years ago, and even the mainstream liberal media sometimes jibes corporate handouts. The book is kind to a fault to Newt Gingrich’s glory years. It declares that the 1996 “Freedom to Farm act set agricultural subsidies on a glide path to elimination.” In reality, that farm bill tripled cash handouts to farmers and sufficed with an unenforceable pledge to phase down subsidies in the next century. The budget deficits of the mid-1990s vanished primarily Michael Hogue Michael because federal revenue rose almost

MAY/JUNE 2013 three times as fast as the inflation rate tion Conference to blunt attacks on to support Rand Paul’s Senate filibus- between 1994 and 1998. In a series of federal infrastructure and military ter on this issue. And despite a token budget deals with Bill Clinton, Gin- spending. Campaign for Liberty gesture to Paul from Attorney General grich did more than any other Repub- president John Tate observed that the Eric Holder, Americans still know al- lican to unleash the federal spending proposed lobbying effort “smacks to most nothing about the extent of, and he later deplored while seeking the a lot of people as taking big money to legal rationale for, Obama’s preroga- Republican presidential nomina- do the bidding of big business.” tive to order killings based solely on tion. (The fact that so many Repub- When Georgia governor Lester his own decrees. licans still consider Gingrich a “deep Maddox was criticized in the late Few Republican congressmen to- thinker” does not inspire hope for the 1960s for the abysmal conditions in day have the gumption to oppose movement.) his state’s prisons, he blamed the prob- almost boundless executive power, Antle justly lauds the Republican- lem on the poor caliber of the con- even when the executive branch is controlled Congress of 1947–48, victs. Similarly, government has been controlled by their arch-enemy. Can which struck down some of the New growing by leaps in bounds thanks you imagine Everett Dirksen taking Deal’s worst excesses. “Led by Sen. in large part to the mental turpitude the floor of the Senate to boisterously Robert Taft ... the Eightieth Congress and character defects of the typical champion President Lyndon Johnson’s rolled back the militarization of the member of Congress. Antle observes prerogative to read the private mail of U.S. economy and prevented the cre- late in the book: “Opponents of big Dirksen and every other Republican ation of a full-blown European-style government ... overestimated the de- member of Congress? With their own welfare state.” Federal spending fell gree to which the average from a wartime high of 43.6 percent American understands the of GDP to 11.3 percent in 1948. “War- details of the federal bud- time price controls on food and other get and what’s at stake.” But consumer products were repealed. most members of Congress Taxes were cut. The peacetime draft also have little or no under- “Freedom” is a word that Republicans was, at least temporarily, suspended.” standing of the vast major- enjoy evoking when Democrats are And changes to federal labor law curity of federal programs. For tailed the power of the nation’s larg- every Tom Coburn—the in charge of the White House. est unions. President Truman pil- Oklahoma Republican loried Republicans as a “do-nothing senator who plunges av- Congress.” But after a long period of idly into the details and is- mushrooming government, repealing sues reports on backburner bad laws and slashing spending is the boondoggles—there are a height of public service. score of congressmen who vote like a party in the White House, however, Devouring Freedom reminds one know-nothing herd following leader- GOP members of Congress gave Bush of a passionate football coach chalk- ship’s command. a standing ovation when he bragged ing out savvy defensive plays in front “Freedom” is a word that Republi- about his illegal “Terrorist Surveil- of a roomful of listless players who cans enjoy evoking when Democrats lance Program” warrantless wiretap- have no desire to tackle their oppo- are in charge of the White House and ping in his 2006 State of the Union nents. Many Americans, remember- executive branch. But one of the best address. Perhaps many of today’s Re- ing the rhetoric of Barry Goldwater gauges of character is the number of publican members of Congress are so and Ronald Reagan, have counted Republican congressmen who openly clueless that they do not recognize the on conservative organizations to resisted the abuses and power grabs peril of permitting Obama to perpet- resolutely block the expansion of of George W. Bush. To say that the list uate the secret surveillance that Bush government power. But the sellouts is short is the understatement of the commenced. keep on coming. The New York Times year. Devouring Freedom warns, “Repub- reported on April 9 that the Ameri- It is pathetic that the biggest civ- licans who are committed to the fight can Conservative Union has solic- il-liberties issue thus far this year against big government may have ited contributions from business is whether the president should be to fight their leaders first.” Unfortu- lobbyists to help thwart the push for permitted to assassinate Americans nately, it is difficult to see any sign of budget cuts. A draft proposal circu- residing within the nation’s boundar- a learning curve from GOP leadership. lating in Washington even offered to ies. Even more appalling is that few Antle notes, “Shortly after the No- use the Conservative Political Ac- congressional Republicans stepped up vember 2012 elections, Congressional

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 53 Arts&Letters

Republicans purged four strong fiscal Constitutional as if George Washington, Thomas conservatives—Justin Amash of Mich- Jefferson, James Madison, Ben Frank- igan, Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, Da- Calvinist lin, Alexander Hamilton, and John vid Schweikert of Arizona, and Walter Adams (a group disproportionately Jones of North Carolina—from their by Kevin R.C. Gutzman composed of deists and marginally preferred committee assignments.” committed Christians) were the en- Kicking Amash and Huelskamp off the Roger Sherman and the Creation of the tirety of the Revolutionary generation, Budget Committee signaled that the American Republic, Mark David Hall, and then to deduce the meaning of Republican leadership would not toler- Oxford, 224 pages America’s original commitment to re- ate any principles when it came to ne- ligious freedom from the ideas of those gotiating tax-and-spending deals with his is the best life of Connecti- men. One illustration of this tendency Obama. Expelling Walter Jones from cut’s foremost Founding Father is that, by Hall’s calculation, Supreme the House Financial Services Commit- ever written. More than that, it Court justices writing opinions about tee was especially tawdry since Jones Tdemonstrates once and for all that Cal- the First Amendment’s religion clauses was out of the few courageous and vinism played a very significant role in have referred to Thomas Jefferson 112 sagacious Republicans opposed to the shaping the American Revolution and times and to Sherman only three, even Iraq War (an unforgivable sin). U.S. Constitution. Henceforth, histo- though Sherman helped write the First Antle does not lull readers with as- rians will have to take account of Mark Amendment and Jefferson was away surances of no-sweat victories: David Hall’s book in all studies of “the on diplomatic business in France at creation of the American republic.” the time. It would be foolish to claim that Hall sets out to correct a serious It is a bit naïve for Hall to think that stopping big government is easy. flaw in the historiography. While correcting the record will influence Many people clearly benefit from prominent accounts of the American justices’ opinions. After all, Associ- government. Others perceive Revolution’s intellectual underpin- ate Justice William Rehnquist showed benefits where they may not exist. nings devote considerable attention how little relationship there is between Most of all, asking politicians to to the influence of Lockean, classical Jefferson’s private views on church think of something more impor- republican, Scottish Enlightenment and state and the meaning of the First tant than fundraising or reelec- traditions, the influence of Reformed Amendment in his Wallace v. Jaffree tion cuts against human nature. Protestantism—that is, Calvinism— (1985) dissent, yet the majority in that But big government has been tends to be overlooked. Although the case and other justices since have gone challenged before, with some suc- focus is on Sherman’s political think- right on pointing to Jefferson’s meta- cess. With some courage—and ing, Hall tell us, his book shows that phor of “a wall of separation between more than a little luck—it can the Reformed tradition was central to church and state” as the essence of the happen again. Learning from the the thought of Samuel Adams, John original understanding. For those of recent past is a great place to start. Hancock, Oliver Ellsworth, Jonathan us who want actually to understand Trumbull, William Paterson, John our heritage, however, knowledge of But how many Republican con- Witherspoon, and several other prom- Reformed politicians’ role in the Revo- gressmen are more interested in free- inent Calvinist politicians as well. lution and early Republic is essential. dom than in power? Far fewer than As Hall puts it, “I am not arguing Roger Sherman played a unique role most readers would wish. And what that Calvinism was the only influ- in making America. Only he signed are the chances that an effective core ence on Sherman and his colleagues, the Declaration of Independence, the of pro-freedom congressmen will simply that it was a very important Articles of Confederation, and the arise who are as eloquent as Reagan, influence that needs to be taken more Constitution, as well as helping to as tough as Phil Gramm, and as well- seriously if we are to appreciate the draft the Bill of Rights. Not only did he informed as David Stockman? political theory and actions of many sign the Declaration, but he was also Antle points Republicans and con- of America’s founders.” Hall here con- on the five-man committee charged servatives in the right direction, but it tinues the project on which he, Daniel with writing it. The typical account is unclear how many will heed his mes- L. Dreisbach, and Jeffry H. Morrison of the Declaration has Thomas Jeffer- sage. have long been jointly and severally son producing a Lockean document embarked: that of fleshing out the sto- notably devoid of traditional Chris- James Bovard is the author of Lost Rights, ry of religion’s influence on the politics tian language. Hall demonstrates that Attention Deficit Democracy, and a new e- of the Revolution and Early Republic. while the Declaration’s reference to book memoir, Public Policy Hooligan. Hall decries the tendency to write “nature’s God,” its claim that govern-

54 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 ment’s function is to protect citizens’ were few. 1. defence agst. foreign dan- tion that was ratified by the states and rights, and its assertion of a right to ger. 2. agst. internal disputes & a resort that has served America well for more overthrow usurpatious rulers are con- to force. 3. Treaties with foreign na- than two hundred years,” Hall says. sistent with Lockean thinking, they tions 4. regulating foreign commerce, Yes, it does seem that Sherman stood also are perfectly in keeping with John & drawing revenue from it … All oth- at the center of the effort to persuade Calvin’s teaching on those subjects, er matters civil & criminal would be Connecticut to ratify the document, which antedated Locke’s Second Trea- much better in the hands of the States.” and his views on government were tise—and likely influenced Locke. That Positions that Sherman unsuccess- popular in his home state. Yet if the Sherman and his fellow Calvinists fully took included opposition to di- Constitution remains in effect over in the Second Continental Congress rect election of representatives, advo- two centuries later, it no longer is ap- should have signed the Declaration cacy of House apportionment by free plied in a similar way to one that Sher- is not the mystery that Louis Hartz inhabitants, advocacy of an executive man expected: none of those three and other proponents of the idea that council to share executive power with general principles remains part of American has always been Lockean the president, and opposition to giv- American constitutionalism. have wanted to make it. ing the president veto power. Still, he Turning to Sherman’s career in the Of particular note in Sherman’s ca- did win an enumeration of Congress’s new federal government, perhaps the reer is his role in the Philadelphia Con- powers in lieu of Madison’s proposal most startling datum that Hall convention of 1787. Hall demonstrates for a general grant of legislative author- veys is that, “At sixty-nine years of age, that the Connecticut Compromise be- ity and the reduction of the threshold [Sherman] was the oldest member of tween advocates of apportioning rep- for congressional override of a presi- the Congress.” As I write, 26 U.S. sena- resentation in both houses of Congress dential veto from a three-fourths to a tors and 50 U.S. representatives are 69 by population and proponents of equal two-thirds vote. His fingerprints are or older. What in the late 18th century representation in both houses was not on several other provisions as well. was a young man’s service has long dreamt up in Philadelphia by Sherman One reason that the more famous since become an old person’s career. and Oliver Ellsworth. Sherman had Revolutionaries draw so much at- Congressman Sherman argued already called for reform to the Ar- tention is that, with the exception of against allowing presidents to remove ticles of Confederation along the same George Washington, they were all appointed officials unilaterally. The lines several years before. (Hall also so eloquent. Sherman was not. Yet president and Senate each had a check makes the interesting point that once his wisdom does occasionally come on the other when it came to appoint- the Constitution had been altered to through. Thus, for example, in one of ing, he said, and he moved that lan- provide the Nutmeg State five seats in his newspaper essays advocating rati- guage empowering the president to the first 65-member House, Sherman’s fication of the Constitution, Sherman remove the secretary of state without state had the same weight there as it counseled, “Philosophy may mislead involving the Senate be deleted from would have had if representation had you. Ask experience.” Here one hears a pending bill. He lost, 34–20. As in been apportioned equally.) echoes of a more famous statement Philadelphia, where he had favored Another notable Philadelphia Con- by Patrick Henry, that prominent Vir- denying the president the veto pow- vention decision in which Sherman ginia Episcopalian orator. As was typi- er, others insisted on a more potent played a prominent part was the omis- cal of Americans, Sherman disliked executive than Sherman desired. He sion of a bill of rights. Sherman insisted speculation. remained a steadfast opponent of at- that since the new government would In the ratification process, Sherman tempts to extend the president’s pow- have only the powers the Constitution answered Antifederalist critics bewail- ers, but he often failed to defeat them. gave it, there was no reason to add pro- ing the absence of a bill of rights by We should not assume that because visions saying that specific powers not insisting that a paper guarantee was of Sherman resisted construction of a granted to the new government were no real use. What would protect Con- powerful executive he opposed all not to be exercised by it. Sherman won necticut citizens’ rights was “the nature of the Washington administration’s the day easily. of [their] government.” Not a rhetori- signature initiatives. In fact, he had In general, however, Sherman did cal statement, but republicanism and called for assumption of state debts in not get what he wanted from the Con- popular fealty to inherited principles 1780 under the Articles of Confedera- vention. His idea was that the central were the best—the only—trustworthy tion, and he liked the idea in 1790 as government should be limited to a very safeguard. well. To him, that the common effort few purposes. As Farrand’s Records Sherman’s “support for limited gov- should be funded out of the common recounts one of Sherman’s speeches, ernment, states’ rights, and legislative fisc seemed “justice.” He also favored “The objects of the Union, he thought superiority helped create a constitu- Hamilton’s Bank Bill the next year.

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 55 Arts&Letters

When James Madison brought the Roger Sherman’s statesmanship. Even all the processes that have been ceded House to consider a suite of proposed at that, I completed the task of reading to (or seized by) the federal govern- constitutional amendments, Sherman it with regret. Because it was published ment over the years: money, business dusted off his argument from Phila- by an academic publisher, it is pricey regulation, energy, health, education, delphia: that since Congress had only in hardback. If it appears in a more democracy, food safety, information, the enumerated powers, and it had reasonably priced paperback edition, I the commons, and social policies such not been given enumerated powers to will make a habit of assigning it to un- as abortion and marriage. encroach upon individual rights, no dergraduates for years to come. Even if Obviously, every attempt to in- amendments denying it such powers it does not, I recommend it highly. crease or establish independence on were necessary. He also trotted out the the state level will eventually run up point he had made in the Connecticut Kevin R.C. Gutzman is the author of James against laws and regulations on the ratification dispute about the useless- Madison and the Making of America. federal level. Take food, for example. ness of “mere paper protections.” Re- One essay here points out that Ver- publicanism must be the chief defense mont will not be able to have food of American liberty. In a day in which produced “locally and regionally … Congress routinely ignores the Fourth, until we openly name and then dis- Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth Amend- The Rise of mantle the tyranny of our corporate- ments, and in which the federal courts Nullification industrial food system—which is sup- almost always uphold federal legisla- ported by our government.” It goes on tion, can we say that Sherman was by Kirkpatrick Sale to look at federal regulations that have wrong? grown and grown in the 20th century, When a committee of the House Most Likely to Secede: What the which “did achieve a certain level of reported amendments for the full Vermont Independence Movement food safety” but at the cost of “creating House’s consideration, Sherman rose Can Teach Us About Reclaiming a system where small abattoirs and lo- to object. Madison’s project—sprin- Community and Creating a Human- cally available meat are scarce because kling amendments throughout the Scale Vision for the 21st Century, Ron of the capital investment required to Constitution, each in the relevant sec- Miller and Rob Williams, eds., Chelsea comply with all of the safety stan- tion—overlooked the distinction be- Greeen. 272 pages dards.” So, too, with milk, which the tween the original Constitution and federal government has long required amendments. The original Constitu- presume to review this book, even to be pasteurized and produced and tion, he said, was of a different nature though I am a contributor to it, bottled in expensive settings with ex- than any amendments would be, as it because it is a fine representation pensive processes that make it very had been adopted by the people direct- Iof an increasing tendency across this hard for a small farmer to comply. ly through their ratification conven- land of resistance to a federal govern- So if the food movement in Ver- tions, while amendments would be the ment grown inept, corrupt, overreach- mont—which has done a lot in recent work of state legislatures. Therefore, ing, overlarge, and overintrusive. That years to promote local farming and the amendments ought to be affixed tendency may be labeled, for conve- marketing—is ever to set up a truly to the end of the document. Madison nience: nullification. independent and truly local agricul- resisted, but Sherman won out. Had he It doesn’t matter that the word does tural system it will have to find a way not, our tradition of referring to, for not appear in this volume, for its spirit to push back federal regulations and example, “the Seventh Amendment” does. The volume is called Most Likely practices: that is, nullification. would make no sense. to Secede, and it grows out of a seces- Or take education. Another essay Customarily, reviewers of good sion movement in Vermont that has here lays out all the ways in which Ver- books note that they cannot capture been active, off and on, for a decade mont could have schools that develop a work’s entire content in a short re- now. But I don’t think secession really independent thinking, regardless of view. That customary act is especially is in the immediate future. Instead grades and testing, and gives examples appropriate here because Sherman re- the subtitle comes closest to what of this being done in a few places in mained on center stage for so long and this book is all about—state indepen- the state. But it is hard to expand these did so much with his opportunities, dence. It is a collection of essays from models when the state government is and because Hall condenses the story a magazine called Vermont Commons, obligated, by state and national laws, to into so few pages. which started publishing in 2005, and have standardized education. “One vital As Hall notes, this book is not a full they deal with every aspect of what it goal of Vermont independence,” writes biography, but a focused account of takes for a state to assume unto itself Ron Miller, a founder of the “holistic ed-

56 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 ucation” movement, “is an educational in Arizona, Utah, Maine, and recently things that make Vermont culture that respects and encourages Virginia—the state that first used nul- unique—we need to detach from learning on a human scale, that sup- lification, in 1798, against the Alien the national system. So long as ports caring and loving communities and Sedition Acts. decisions about our schools, for- of learning.” But it runs up against “au- Additional state nullification acts ests, and water are being made thoritarian educational policy” and fed- have been introduced this year over by senators from South Carolina, eral “No Child Left Behind” and “Race threatened gun control measures presidents from Texas, and judg- to the Top” requirements. “National (called Second Amendment Preser- es from Chicago, Vermont’s best educational policy is one more reason vation bills) in 25 states, over Obam- interests are not going to be kept why we need to challenge the burgeon- acare in 6 states (and one has passed in mind… . ing power of the American empire,” he in North Dakota, while an additional There’s no question that the writes. “We ought to decline the Federal 26 states have refused to set up state things that make Vermont Ver- government’s inducements to partici- “exchanges” under it), and over drone- mont are under increasing pres- pate in any ‘race to the top’.” invaded privacy in 14 states (one has sure from a variety of external But declining that means more than passed in Virginia). That’s in addition sources. The question is what to a polite “no thank you.” It needs a de- to the 15 states that have refused to do about it. Does Vermont make liberate campaign to nullify federal comply with the Real laws. That takes courage, but that’s ID Act of 2005 and what a surprising number of state leg- the 10 others where islatures are now displaying. resistance has passed Nullification acts have been intro- both houses of the leg- There are more than 70 proposed bills duced in state legislatures all across islature, a rejection so to nullify federal laws and practices the country, particularly in the last complete that the law, now in state legislatures. few months: no fewer than 10 states which was supposed to took up proposals in the last week of go into effect in 2008, February. According to one estimate now remains dormant at the Tenth Amendment Center, without any sign of the which tracks such things, there are feds pressing to effect it. And, just to more sense, does it become more more than 70 proposed bills to nullify make this complete, numerous states itself somehow by going its own federal laws and practices now in state have proposed laws for one or more way? A simple test helps answer legislatures, sometimes consciously of these causes: gold and silver as le- this. If Vermont had been an labeled nullification, sometimes not. gal tender, Tenth Amendment recog- independent republic all along, For example, 12 states have intro- nition, sheriff primacy (over federal would you now vote for it to join duced proposals for state marijuana lawmen), National Guard protection, the United States? Of course not. laws in defiance of federal regulations and freedom from federal regulation It would be unthinkable. under the Controlled Substances Act of hemp, food, and the environment. of 1970, joining the 15 states that have All in all, convincing evidence— So there you have it. Unassailable already passed various decriminal- generally ignored by the media, logic. A state that wants to do things ization provisions, including most mainstream and rivulet—that there differently from the dictates of the recently Washington and Colorado. is widespread resistance to the federal Federal government has to start by (Interestingly, they are not confined to government, sufficient to get laws in- nullifying the laws it does not want to blue or red states but stretch across the troduced and passed by states finally live under—and eventually it will have land: Alaska, Washington, California, exercising Tenth Amendment rights to “become more itself” by “going its Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Mon- that have long been dormant. own way.” That’s called secession— tana, Michigan, Arkansas, Vermont, One essayist in this volume, writer and who knows? On the basis of the Rhode Island, and Maine.) Roland Jacobson, effectively sums up book, Vermont really might be most State laws against National Defense the case for Vermont independence likely to secede. Authorization Act provisions that al- and the reason it has to come through low the president to detain indefi- directly confronting the national gov- Kirkpatrick Sale is director of the Middle- nitely anyone, citizen or not, whom ernment. bury Institute and the author of a dozen he suspects of terrorist ties, have been books, most recently Emancipation Hell: The introduced in almost half the states, If we are to cultivate our own Tragedy Wrought by Lincoln’s Emancipation again from coast to coast, and passed traditions—to let thrive those Proclamation 150 Years Ago.

MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 57 Taki

Thatcher Was No Neocon

979 was a particularly good year aggression should not be allowed to work and principle, but one of going for me. My column in the Lon- pay and the Falklanders should be al- along in order to get along. Maggie don Spectator had taken off, lowed to live under the government of Thatcher would never have allowed then Clay Felker—the legendary their choice.” She broke the unions that the Islamic invasion of Europe that has 1American editor who had discovered were holding the nation hostage, re- taken place since her fall 23 years ago. Tom Wolfe—flew over to London and fused to cancel the conference she was Blair did and continues to brag about asked if I would be interested to write attending after the Brighton bomb- it. Maggie Thatcher knew that this infor Esquire in America. But the best ing—where her closest friend was vasion is more underhand and more news came in May of that year, while murdered—and did not shed a tear in treacherous than the centuries-past swimming off a beach near Corfu. The public, “but a hell of a lot in private,” as expansionism of Islam. Maggie would captain of my father’s boat informed her hubby told me. never have gone along with George me that a woman—he could not pro- All this goes to show one thing: stead- W’s disastrous Iraq invasion and would nounce her name—had been elected fastness and courage under pressure have told him outright that the neo- British prime minister. breeds respect from enemies. Ronald cons were a fifth column, not the cold I did not meet her until she had Reagan I never met, but he, too, showed warriors they posed as before the So- become Lady Thatcher, having been the same qualities whilst in power. Van viet collapse. stabbed in the back by nonentities like Galbraith, our ambassador to Paris un- Ronald Reagan would never have Michael Heseltine and Geoffrey Howe. der Reagan, once told me that his favor- held hands with the head of a kleptoc- But she had written a short note of en- ite moment during his ambassadorship racy—the Saudi ruling family of close couragement earlier when I had a spot was looking out from the French win- to 30,000—that actually subsidizes of bother with some illegal powder in dows onto his garden and seeing Mar- terror by financing the thousands of my pocket, and she came to stay with garet Thatcher almost lecturing Ronald terror schools throughout the Arab me in Switzerland in the summer of Reagan and waving her finger at him. world in return for being allowed to 2000. Lady T, as her intimates called “That’s when I did something no gentle- keep their palaces and whores at home, her, made breakfast for her husband man is known to do, but I cocked my their yachts, planes and villas abroad. every day before going to work at 7 ear and listened.” Margaret was telling George W. did. Thatcher and Reagan a.m. She knew how important it was Ronnie that the Soviets were bust, want- would have seen the Balkan interven- to save money, and when I offered to ed to deal, and that we should help them tion as a strategic and political disaster, send a private plane for her visit to along, or words to that effect. The presi- establishing a Muslim zone of influence Gstaad, she personally rang and said, dent listened like a respectful schoolboy, in the middle of Europe and granting “As a friend is lending me his airplane said Van. “I still don’t know whether he rights to a gangster nation like Alba- to go to Austria, why don’t I combine was humoring her along or taking her nia to export its criminals while giving the trip, stop over to see you and then advice.” cover to Islamists zealots. fly eastwards, thus saving you a penny So, those were the good old days, Finally, both RR and MT would or two?” This was vintage Thatcher, a n’est-ce pas? Nowadays not so good, have read the riot act to Tel Aviv long responsible housewife who respected don’t you agree? What happened? ago because of its brutal policies of other people’s money as much as her That’s an easy one. Spoiled rich boys ethnic cleansing in the Holy Land. It own. like the Bushes and Blair, and lying would have been unpopular within the She also showed her mettle when Southern white trash like Clinton, took Beltway and in smart London circles, the Argentine junta grabbed the Falk- over, people whose characters were but that’s what RR and MT were not lands, with just one sentence: “Armed formed not under an ethos of hard about.

58 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 Visit alphapub.com for FREE eBooks and Natural-law Essays Did you know that having the awareness of good and evil is a distinguishing characteristic of mankind? Yes, it is a form of awareness that separates humanity from other living creatures: animals, birds, and bugs.

The writer learned about this kind of awareness from Richard W. Wetherill who had identifi ed a created natural law he called the “Just found your site. law of absolute right. It specifi es people’s behavior to be rational I was quite impressed and honest in order to be safe and to succeed. and look forward to Wetherill predicted that living with the law of absolute right hours of enjoyment “written in our hearts and minds,” as is nature’s gravitational and learning. Thanks.” - Frank force, ends choices based on judgements of good and evil. Infants born with no awareness of the choice they face often emit com- plaining cries as a fi rst deviation from the law of right action. In his lecture, Wetherill referred to a manufactured temperature gauge in which a certain kind of mechanical awareness turned the gadget on and off. The gauge was programmed by its inven- tor to respond to the predetermined temperature settings, whereas people’s awareness enables their decisions to be based on considerations they think will be good or evil, right or wrong. Daily newscasts report the devastating results of “bad” people who harm their victims. So-called “good” people are admired, but such goodness is not based on nature’s law of right action. It is based on people’s choice to be good and not evil. Do people complain or refuse to keep their balance? No, they surrender to a natural law. It is our surrender to the law of “I have fi nished reading absolute right that is needed to nullify the creator’s warning the book How To Solve that reasoning from good and evil results in death. Problems. So simple, Reasoning from the creator’s law of right action prolongs life. yet so profound and powerful. Thank you.” Visit alphapub.com for more information or for a free mailing - Alex write to The Alpha Publishing House, PO Box 255, Royersford, PA 19468.

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