PONNURU on Isolationism DANIELS

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July 18, 2011 49145 $4.99 DANIELS on Indignation w PONNURU on Isolationism

DAUGHTERDAUGHTER OFOF LIBERTYLIBERTY $4.99 The unlikely presidential campaign of 29 Michele Bachmann BY ROBERT COSTA

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JULY 18, 2011 | VOLUME LXIII, NO. 13 | www.nationalreview.com

COVER STORY Page 29

The Battle from Waterloo Kevin D. Williamson on Taxation p. 20 Michele Bachmann hopes her campaign will be a magnet for people of all BOOKS, ARTS political stripes, whether they are fed & MANNERS up with Obama or with the GOP presidential field’s tired talking points. 38 OPENING TO THE EAST Dan Blumenthal reviews On China, She is a face familiar to activists, by Henry Kissinger.

but the rest of the country is just 41 WAS MALTHUS RIGHT? tuning in. Robert Costa Michael Knox Beran reviews What’s Wrong with Benevolence: Happiness, Private COVER: THOMAS REIS Property, and the Limits of Enlightenment, by David Stove, ARTICLES edited by Andrew Irvine. 42 MANAGING WAR 18 IMAGINARY ISOLATIONISM by Ramesh Ponnuru Mackubin Thomas Owens reviews Pat Buchanan continues not to be the Republican party. A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush Administration Mismanaged 20 NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION by Kevin D. Williamson the Reconstruction of A message from the future. Afghanistan, by Dov S. Zakheim.

22 WHAT’S STEP 2? by Robert VerBruggen 44 MUSIC: A COMPOSER’S HOUR The illogic of Operation Fast and Furious. Jay Nordlinger on the Russian master Rodion Shchedrin. 24 AN ENVIRONMENTAL REFORMATION by Steven F. Hayward Standing up to Pope Carl. 46 FILM: CRUEL, CRUEL SUMMER 26 MAD AS HELL by Anthony Daniels Ross Douthat reviews Super 8. A little pamphlet, a lot of rage. 47 THE STRAGGLER: EX LIBRIS SMOKE ALARM by Daniel Foster John Derbyshire quantifies his 27 inventory of books. The nanny state’s ghoulish new cigarette labels.

FEATURES SECTIONS

29 THE BATTLE FROM WATERLOO by Robert Costa 4 Letters to the Editor Representative Bachmann runs for president. 6 The Week 36 The Long View ...... Rob Long 34 HAVES AND HAVE-MORES by Arnold Kling 37 Athwart ...... James Lileks A two-tiered health-care system is inevitable. 43 Poetry ...... Len Krisak 48 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

NATiONAl Review (iSSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATiONAl Review, inc., at 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, inc., 2011. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., NATiONAl Review, 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATiONAl Review, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATiONAl Review, 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATiONAl Review, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/27/2011 1:40 PM Page 1

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Mystery Mnemonic JULY 18 ISSUE; PRINTED JUNE 30 In his column in the June 6 issue, Richard Brookhiser mentions what he says is a EDITOR mnemonic: “Some men have many stones, but we have lots of hair.” Please, Richard Lowry please ask him to tell us what this mnemonic is supposed to help one remember. I Senior Editors am going nuts. Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Raymond Lewkowicz Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra Via e-mail Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy National Correspondent John J. Miller Political Reporter Robert Costa RIchaRd BRookhISeR RePlIeS: My wife tells me that it was a way to remember a Art Director Luba Kolomytseva particular correlative conjunction in ancient Greek (some . . . but others). as some- Deputy Managing Editors Fred Schwarz / Kevin D. Williamson one who has less and less hair, I find it troubling. Associate Editors Helen Rittelmeyer / Robert VerBruggen Research Director Katherine Connell Research Manager Dorothy McCartney Mental-Health Break Executive Secretary Frances Bronson Assistant to the Editor Christeleny Frangos e. Fuller Torrey misses the mark badly in his assault (“Bureaucratic Insanity,” June Contributing Editors 20) on the Substance abuse and Mental health Services administration. as an orga- Robert H. Bork / John Derbyshire Ross Douthat / Rod Dreher / David Frum nization that is very familiar with SaMhSa’s work and priorities, we know that Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin their programs are directly relevant to the treatment of individuals with schizophre- Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi nia and bipolar illness. Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne David B. Rivkin Jr. SaMhSa is a leader in the development of technologies to better serve people

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE with severe mental illnesses. Rather than ignoring the problems of mental illness Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez among the homeless and persons in jails or prisons, SaMhSa has set an example Managing Editor Edward John Craig News Editor Daniel Foster in addressing these issues. In fact, these issues, among others of concern for people Editorial Associates Brian Stewart / Katrina Trinko with severe mental illnesses and their families, are prominently featured in Web Developer Nathan Goulding SaMhSa’s newly announced strategic initiatives, which Mr. Torrey references. Applications Developer Gareth du Plooy Technical Services Russell Jenkins Initiatives related to trauma and justice, recovery support, and health reform have immediate relevance, while others include components targeted at persons with EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan severe mental illnesses. contrary to Mr. Torrey’s assertion, SaMhSa is the one fed- Contributors eral agency that has sought to correct the errors made in deinstitutionalizing state Hadley Arkes / Baloo / Tom Bethell hospitals. Its longstanding community-support program has provided the template James Bowman / Priscilla L. Buckley Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier for state and community response to these legacy problems faced by persons with Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman schizophrenia and bipolar illness, and its block-grant funds provide key safety-net James Gardner / David Gelernter services for exactly the same population. George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler While we agree with Mr. Torrey that research must be a priority, it must never be David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune the only tool for addressing public health needs. We should bridge the “science to D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons services” gap, not widen it, and agencies such as SaMhSa help bridge it. Terry Teachout / Taki Theodoracopulos Vin Weber If we are serious about responding to the diverse needs of individuals with seri- Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge ous mental illnesses, we need to deploy programs and services that SaMhSa Accounting Manager Galina Veygman offers. They make a critical difference. Accountant Zofia Baraniak Business Services David L. Shern Alex Batey / Amy Tyler Circulation Manager Jason Ng President and CEO, Mental Health America WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 e. FulleR ToRRey RePlIeS: Mr. Shern is indeed “very familiar with SaMhSa’s WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 work,” since SaMhSa is a major funder of his organization. The quality of ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd SaMhSa’s efforts in behalf of severely mentally ill individuals can best be assessed Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet in relationship to three facts. First, these individuals make up at least 30 percent of ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Olivett the homeless population. Second, they now make up approximately 20 percent of

PUBLISHER inmates in the nation’s jails and prisons. Finally, they are responsible for approxi- Jack Fowler mately 10 percent of the nation’s homicides. all three statistics have increased in CHAIRMANEMERITUS recent years. Thomas L. Rhodes

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

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n Rich Lowry’s wedding to Vanessa Palo went off without a hitch, and the two are now on honeymoon. So the trend of beautiful young brides jilting old magazine editors is officially over.

n Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) regularly gives GOP leaders heartburn, rapping them for cutting spending deals with the White House. Her detractors dismiss her presidential campaign because she is gaffe-prone, lacks executive experience, and has run through staffers like teabags. But at her announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, her childhood home, Bachmann argued that she is more than a cable-news star with a flair for anti-Obama rhetoric. She offered herself as a bridge between Republicans with fiscal, those with social, and those with foreign-policy concerns. The latest poll from the Des Moines Register has her in a dead heat with frontrunner Mitt Romney in Iowa. She shone at the first New Hampshire debate in June. Last cycle, she raised $13.5 million, more than any House Republican, including Speaker John Boehner, who may get to rest easy as she hits the trail. Her 2012 competitors will not have that luxury.

n Jon Huntsman, two-term governor of Utah and former ambassador to Singapore and China, announced his presidential candi- dacy in Jersey City, facing the Statue of Liberty. He focused on Obama’s mismanagement of the economy: “For the first time in history we are passing down to the next generation a country that is less powerful, less compassionate, less competitive, and less confident than the one we got.” He needs to hammer that theme, since he got his China posting from Obama—not a useful creden- tial in a Republican primary, and at best ambiguous in a general Blago after Goya (see page 12) election. Huntsman—trim, experienced, capable—is the kind of candidate who looks good on paper, and who was sometimes be forced on unwilling candidates. The drawback to the second tapped by party bosses when bosses did the tapping. He will have pledge is that it is, as written, absurd: It would block pro-lifers to persuade conservatives and Republicans that he is bold enough from supporting Romney over Obama in November 2012 be - and principled enough to pull the country out of the mud hole into cause he has not made any commitments about the secretary of which feckless ideologues have driven it. health and human services. The Susan B. Anthony List should itself take a pledge: to make sure it’s advancing its goals and not n The Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life group, urged presidential setting them back. candidates to take a pledge to enact various pro-life laws, pick constitutionalist judges, and appoint only pro-lifers to government n Call it “Recovery Summer II: Jobless in July.” Research by posts relevant to abortion policy. All the Republican candidates economists at the International Monetary Fund and the Fed finds save Herman Cain, Huntsman, and Romney signed the pledge. structural unemployment in the United States at a historic high of Romney said that the pledge would force him to support cutting around 8 percent. The U.S. unemployment rate has jumped near- off government funds to all hospitals that perform abortion— ly 5 percentage points since 2007, a far worse performance than something the organization denied—and that he would pick the even those of other recession-wracked countries, such as the best appointees for each position in his administration, all of United Kingdom and Italy. (Germany has reduced its unemploy- whom would have to implement his pro-life views. The pro-life ment since 2007.) Structural unemployment—the horse-buggy group then circulated another petition, this one for citizens pledg- wheelwright in the age of the automobile—is a particularly nasty ing to support only those presidential candidates who had agreed form of joblessness, and the study suggests that it now accounts to its demands. The drawback to the first pledge is that it may for about 40 percent of long-term unemployment in the U.S. This make pro-life politicians who sign it look weak, make pro-life means that, boom or bust, these Americans are unlikely to find politicians who do not sign it look as though they were not pro- satisfactory work. The usual prescription for such a situation is

ROMAN GENN life, and make the pro-life cause look like an albatross that has to worker-training programs, but these have shown at best limited

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THE WEEK effectiveness. Better would be to adopt economic policies that six weeks to argue against unionization before a vote, but under encourage investment in real capital—factories, assembly lines, the proposal that time would shrink to as little as ten days. machinery—the force-multiplier that makes labor competitive in Employers already face serious restrictions on what they can and a high-income society such as ours. President Obama has been cannot do to resist having their businesses unionized against their adopting something very close to the opposite of such policies, will; the NLRB will now also require them to share business and he will have much to answer for if unemployment remains records, such as contact databases, to help union organizers in elevated in November 2012. their campaign. (Of course, there exists no reciprocal obligation on the unions’ part.) President Obama’s reelection hopes are n He himself blames our ever-advancing technology for our threatened by a very high rate of unemployment, but his admin- widespread unemployment. “There are some structural issues istration positively bristles with hostility toward the world’s best with our economy, where a lot of businesses have learned to source of employment: employers. become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers,” he told NBC’s Ann Curry. “You see it when you go to a bank and you use n Eric Cantor and Jon Kyl, the number-two Republicans in the an ATM; you don’t go to a bank teller.” Before the Ned Ludd House and Senate respectively, withdrew from budget talks with Appreciation Society could offer the president an honorary mem- Vice President Biden and said they would not return until tax bership, however, he reversed himself. In a weekly address, he increases were taken off the table. The backdrop to the talks is of touted a robotics company that was “working with unions to cre- course the pending exhaustion of the federal government’s ate new jobs operating the robots” and “saving cities millions of authority to borrow money, which is currently expected to occur dollars in infrastructure costs.” Clearly, the president doesn’t in late summer. The opposition party always prefers not to raise understand that economic growth occurs when we produce more the debt ceiling, and Republicans, especially these days, are goods and services with fewer resources. But at least he has more ideologically averse to doing it than Democrats. A deal that stopped blaming Pres. George W. Bush. raises the debt ceiling and raises taxes is therefore unattractive to them—even if the tax increases take the form of removing tax n The National Labor Relations Board has been radicalized dur- breaks, which they would prefer to do as part of a reform that ing the Obama administration, and it now proposes to rewrite lowers rates. With Democrats reportedly balking at entitlement union-election rules in a way that disadvantages businesses and reform, Cantor and Kyl have the right idea: Walk away from the privileges union organizers. Employers now have about four to table in the hope of a better deal.

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n The government announced its budget: the Libyan govern- yes, “one could be yours.” The president’s 2012 campaign is dan- ment, that is. The green eyeshades around Moammar Qaddafi gling the opportunity of dinner with him, a dinner to include four expect to spend $31.4 billion for the rest of 2011. Reports of supporters. (So, wouldn’t that necessitate five place settings, not Libya’s assets vary—a defecting central banker says Qaddafi forgetting the host’s?) All you have to do is make a donation and has only half a billion in cash in hand plus 155 tons of gold, register. If you’re chosen—by whom or how is unclear—the while the IMF says Libya’s sovereign-wealth fund holds $150 campaign will pay for your airfare and the grub. Just recently, billion—but some confusion is to be expected from a govern- Obama made a special announcement, by video: that Joe Biden ment that is grappling with a rebellion and (sort of) with NATO. would be joining the group—making it six place settings. Selling When our kinetic military actors will present their own budget is dinner with the president, or vice president, is not the unseemli- anybody’s guess. est thing in the world. But it’s not the seemliest either.

n A McKinsey study found that 30 percent of companies might n What the Democrats have done with legislation is alarming, drop their health plans as a result of Obamacare. The White but perhaps more alarming is what they have done without legis- House and its allies trashed the study, demanding that McKinsey lation. When pesky public opinion keeps Congress from enacting explain its methodology—which it then did, disproving all the regulations that the nation desperately needs, some bureaucrat dark hints of shoddiness. The administration has three reasons simply issues an order. One of the main users of this method for concern. First, most people like their company plans and do is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which, after not want to be forced out of them. Second, Obama repeatedly Congress failed to pass amnesty legislation for illegal immi- promised that they would not be. Third, Obamacare’s budget grants, circulated a memo ordering a policy of lenient enforce- assumes that they are not. The more people there are who lose ment that (as the Houston Chronicle has shown) led to the their employer coverage, the more there will be on Medicaid and dis missal of thousands of strong deportation cases against illegal on the subsidized exchanges Obamacare establishes. Many immigrants with criminal records. The officials responsible for Democrats predicted that the legislation would grow more this unilateral policy change then made it worse by telling the popular over time; we’re still waiting. public it had never happened. Amnesty is a bad idea by itself, but when it is brought in through the back door, against the will of the n Have you registered yet? We mean, for “Dinner with Barack.” people, through internal memos, it is not only poor policy but “You could be invited.” There will be “four place settings.” And, contrary to the spirit of democracy.

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THE WEEK n The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Pro - creating a vicious circle. “I was a stranger, and ye took me in,” testant denomination, passed a resolution on immigration at its the Lord says. And America has long done so—under law. annual meeting in Phoenix. The resolution includes laudable goals (making border security a national priority, penalizing n In April the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights employers who flout the law) and one especially lamentable issued a command to universities across the United States: one: granting a conditional amnesty to the millions of illegals Henceforth all sexual-harassment cases on campus must be already resident within our borders. The resolution says that it is decided on a “more likely than not” basis, rather than by the “not to be construed as support for amnesty for any undocu- happy norm of reasonable doubt. This edict effectively hands a mented immigrant,” but that is precisely what it is. The Baptists license to discipline to anyone who considers that he, or more are framing the resolution in the language of realpolitik; the Rev. likely she, has been made to feel uncomfortable. Instead of adopt- Paul Jimenez, the force behind it, told the Associated Press: “I ing as a standard the sensible 1999 Supreme Court definition laid think Southern Baptists understand it’s just not politically viable out in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education—the victim to send an estimated 12 to 15 million undocumented immigrants must have been “denied equal access to an institution’s resources back where they came from. It’s not humane either.” But an and opportunities” by behavior that is “severe, pervasive and amnesty simply creates a magnet for millions more illegal immi- objectively offensive”—the department affords each institution grants, whose deportation would present the same problems, the scope to enforce its own definition of harassment, even

Tax Breaks for the (Democratic) Rich

HERE has been a lot of publicity about Al Gore’s and $178 in red states. I suspect that the state- and local- massive carbon footprint. The former vice presi- income-tax discrepancy would be even larger. T dent talks a good game on global warming, but The problem with these special favors is that they cause because of his many houses and jet-set lifestyle, he real economic harm. The state-and-local deduction trans- emits more greenhouse gases than a plain full of flatulent fers monies from efficient states to bloated ones. The buffaloes. mortgage-interest deduction distorts consumption deci- Consider, as a comparable hypocrisy, the Democratic sions in favor of McMansions and lifts the tax rate on enmity toward rich people. Higher taxes on them are everything else, including job-creating businesses. always seen as desirable—unless, of course, they might A prudent tax reform that eliminated these loopholes fall on Democratic rich people. could easily revive the American economy, but it will not Our tax code is filled with special tax treats for the happen if it requires Democratic votes. Democrats will Democrats’ wealthy constituents. The two biggest-ticket continue to obstruct tax reform, in order to protect the spe- items are the federal deduction for state and local taxes cial treatment for their own wealthy that is already cement- and the mortgage-interest deduction. The former dispro- ed into our tax code. portionately benefits higher-income individuals who live —KEVIN A. HASSETT in states with bloated governments and higher taxes— California, here I come. The latter disproportionately benefits those who live in well-established metropolitan Blue States Benefit Most from the real-estate markets. Mortgage Interest Deduction Economist Martin Sullivan recently analyzed the political Average Per Capita Tax Benefit and 2008 Presidential-Election Results dimension of the mortgage-interest deduction. In his arti- $500 $499 $464 cle published in the journal Tax Notes, a scintillating publi- $446 $438 $436 cation that NATIONAL REVIEW staffers may be found carrying $400 about in a brown wrapper, Sullivan analyzed 2008 tax data and found that states with the highest level of per capita $300 tax benefit from the deduction tended to vote Democrat. $281 As can be seen in the accompanying chart, the discrep- $200 ancy is quite large. The average mortgage-interest tax $100 $119 benefit for a resident of Maryland was $499 in 2008, while $118 $110 $108 $102 the average benefit for a resident of West Virginia was $102. $0

Virginia The 13 states with the greatest per capita benefit were Maryland California Arkansas Connecticut New Jersey Mississippi all won by Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. U.S. Average South DakotaNorth Dakota West Virginia

By contrast, the six lowest-benefit states were all won by NOTES: BLUE INDICATES A STATE WON BY BARACK OBAMA IN 2008. John McCain. Across the country (including the District of RED INDICATES A STATE WON BY JOHN MCCAIN IN 2008. SOURCE: SULLIVAN, MARTIN A., “MORTGAGE DEDUCTION HEAVILY Columbia), the average benefit was $310 in blue states FAVORS BLUE STATES,” TAX NOTES 130: 364-367 (2011)

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Facts and figures were deemed accurate as of June 2011. ©GovMint.com, 2011 ® week_QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/29/20111:55PMPage12 “Blago,”incurably blind to the indications of his own imbe- der: “I’ve got this thing and it’s golden,” f****** he boasted. president-elect Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bid- recall,wasforced outofoffice after attempting tosell then- charges.buffoonishTheformerIllinois governor, will you corruptionof slew a ofcourtroom Chicago a inconvicted thislessonbroughtwas Blagojevich,Rod home to recently “Ifyouhave tosayyou are, youprob’ly ain’t.” Atlong last saying that being powerful was comparable to beinghearing ladylike: whether his union was really powerful, responded by n THE WEEK THE it on a constitutional footing would at least be a step forward. ders. While we would prefer to end the drug war, putting part of legalize pot that is grown, sold, and consumed within their bor- chose—couldso states—iftheythat ischange would that All interceptstillshipmentsalsocountries.woulddrugotherfrom feds The marijuana. of transfer interstate the forbidding laws federal theeffect in leavewould bill the andcommerce, state TheConstitution allows the federal government to restrict inter- end to this, constraining the federal government to itsBarney proper Frank role.(D., Mass.) and Ron Paul (R., Texas) wouldReps.introduced billbyputsanctionedpot. A businessessell an that state-raidedauthoritieshave federalMontana, Californiaand In land.throughoutthe weed ban thatlawsfederal with clash rights: Sixteen states have legalized “medical marijuana,” only to time it is the Department of Education. frivolous.butt;thisoftenhasbeensaidthateveryajokehas It though many such definitions have been highly subjective, even one union flack to destroy all semblance of civility. to take World War III to get rid ofleaders] Adolf areChristie.” trying Butto doit tookin Newonly Jersey.”that’s He what concluded,Christie and his “It’stwo generals [Democraticgoing legislative bellowedto a crowd of protesters, “was go after the unions. And costs. “The first thing that the Nazis andemployees Adolf pay Hitlerlarger did,”shares Sheltonof their health-insurance“AdolfChristie” forhisrecently approvedand planmaketo public pension Trenton, N.J., the union activistin rally dubbed a Christie. ChrisAtthe descriptionRepublicanof a was governorit that guess sketchof AdolfHitler. Chris Shelton, ontheother hand, would Churchill’sWinstoncharacterfrom is passage this that guess might individual well-informed reasonably A Fuehrer.’” ‘the companythe acceptance of his personal control. Alreadyhe was leaders, and by his passion and genius forced upon the hypnotised n n 2 1 An official of the Teamsters Union, asked during a Senate Among its many sins, the War on Drugs has trampled on states’ “By the middle of the following year he had ousted the original cility,remained comically defiant eventhein midst of the proceedingsthemidstof against him.The toriously few consolations. One of them, sordid politics of Chicago, in which public their delusions of grandeur,delusionstheirofpresentsno - figures seem to rise in direct proportion to | however, is the lowering of the proud. the oflowering the however, is .nationalre .com o c w. e i ev r l a n o i t a n w. w w Thistoo-seldom sightgivesoff a distinctly golden glow. puzzled. legitimatelyisCongress Otherwisehim. kill must you queen, Obama’s half-hearted anti-Qaddafi policy. When you strike at a Presidentoffruit the also is lurch?).Itthe Americanin action will (but fact Congress the ever, except extraordinaryin after circumstances, leave days an 60 approval congressional ing allows the president to commit troops on his own, while requir- This is a predictable fruitit. for of pay thewill it Warbut Libya, bombing Powersbe should we Act, think whichnot arguably cut off funds for fighter-jet and drone attacks. The House does to 238–180, of vote a by year,failed, one then for action itary mil- authorized have would that resolution a 295–123, of vote a by rejected, It floor. dance the around turn clumsy a made of the termstheparole.hisofminimum,of a atSo, statethe suc-has suffers from.” The artist himself is saying nothing in public, one attitudein confessing his crimes, as well as a chronic disease he The state agency said he was out on parole “because of his good famouspoets. Now, after three months, they have released him. most famous artists the in of the country, one Weiwei, and Ai the was son of onearrested of China’s authorities most the ics the Arab world. Some Chinese were getting ideas.year,thiserdemocraticwhen unrestOnespreadingwas throughout of the crit- jail, or worse. But they became extra-energetic in doing so earli- grabbingtheir critics, or perceived critics, and throwing them in the same thing. sterdam. But multiculturalism is, and often enough it amounts to ments.establishedthenotIslamis church21st-centuryof Am - establish- religious buttressed laws blasphemy Traditionally, intact,andwith ittheenshrinement inlawofblasphemy codes. resisted. The scaffolding of the illiberal court remains very muchseems to have interpreted it in this light. But triumphit ofis freea speechtemptation over fanaticalbest religiosity. Wilders himself Itmight reactionarybetempting tofaith. regard the verdict asa differ with those of the most violent adherents wasof littlethe moreworld’s than a most sinister attempt to criminalize lyunderstoodopinions inthe homelandthat ofthe First Amendmentthat this expressing a foolish wish to ban the Koran.often enthusiast, Still,free-speech a it willhardly behimself readi-is Wildersthat offense? mustAadmitted Itbefewstrident criticisms Islam. of chargesspeech.hate onofHis Dutchcourt acquittedwasa by trial lawyers. legal fees. It is a win, in short, for the rule of law over the rule of thepennies theycould expect massivefroma class action after them to press forward with suits that might bring them moregally, than assuming any exist, since the defeat of this casefemale Walmartwill enableemployees who have actually been treated ille- encouragefirms tocentralize their decisions. Itis also wina for federaltheforcourtsmy,helpfulhardly ittocan besince to it enabledthem to discriminate. Theruling is awin for the econo- whichpersonnel,over discretion much too managersstore its for supposed discrimination. Plaintiffs alleged that Walmartemployees gave of Walmart in a class-action suit against the company Circuit’sattempt to enlist roughly one and ahalf million female n n n n The saga of Geert Wilders has ended after the parliamentarian The CommunistsThe Chinarunwhohaveneveraboutbeen shy The House took up Obama’s quasi-war against Libya and Libya against quasi-war Obama’s up took House The The Supreme Court unanimously swatted down the Ninth the down swatted unanimously Court Supreme The LY U J 8 1 , 1 1 0 2

SCOTT OLSON/GETTY week_QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/29/2011 1:55 PM Page 13

ceeded in shutting him up. International pressure had much to do He married then–Princess Elizabeth with Ai’s release. Politicians and others, particularly his fellow in 1947, telling a friend at the time artists, made him a cause. Pity the less famous and talented. that “I suppose I won’t be having any fun anymore.” He seems in fact n Jacob Zuma snubbed Michelle Obama during her visit to have had a great deal of fun: sail- to South Africa: The first lady was not given any face time ing, playing polo, and helping or - with President Zuma or, for that matter, with anyone more high- ganize carriage driving as a formal ranking than the minister for prisons. Perhaps Zuma was indicat- equestrian sport. Philip’s sports- ing his displeasure with Mrs. Obama’s husband’s intervention in manship and devotion to his family Libya, which he has outspokenly opposed. Or perhaps Zuma, as have been a mo del for men every- a polygamist with three wives, has simply had his fill of first where; his sharp tongue, humor, ladies. and impatience with humbug— what we nowadays call “political n Whitey Bulger, legendary Boston mobster, was captured, after correctness”—have en deared him 16 years on the run, at his apartment in Santa Monica, Calif., after to the British, and to many foreign- a tipster led the FBI to the fugitive’s long-time girlfriend. Be care- ers too. Happy birthday, sir. ful of legends. Some of them live up to their billing—Wash- ington, Lincoln, Lou Gehrig. Others fall off, all the way to n Starting a few years ago, we heard rumblings about a phe- perdition. Bulger had a folk-hero-ish aura: the South Boston local nomenal teenage golfer out of Northern Ireland, Rory McIlroy. boy who made bad, ratting out the New England Mafia for the The world at large got a good look at him in the Masters this FBI while using corrupt agents to protect his own illegal enter- year. Age 21, he was leading the tournament by four shots prises. But this sly fox is wanted for his role in murdering 19 peo- going into the final round. He collapsed in that round—but he ple: businessmen he was trying to shake down, inconvenient came back in the next “major,” the U.S. Open. Came back in a girlfriends of his criminal partners. He led an evil life. How many big way: destroying the field by eight shots. McIlroy is a bun- other Bostonians he will implicate as he is tried will be local dle of charisma, topped by carefree curly hair. In his charisma, drama in the Hub for years to come. daring, and skill, he reminds people of another youngster who shot to the top: Seve Ballesteros, who died this May. Jack n London literati have been ringing one another up to discuss the Nicklaus has said, “I like his moxie.” Golf in general has not case of James MacGibbon. Everyone knew this gentlemanly fel- had much to cheer about since Tiger Woods tumbled in late low who had started and run a small publishing firm with a left- 2009. So far, there has been no Tiger comeback to cheer about, ist flavor. It turns out that that there was more to him than the or talk about. But McIlroy is a reminder that, in any field, or easygoing manner. A Russian researcher, Svetlana Chervonnaya, most fields, anyway, there is always someone “else,” someone has been digging in the relevant archives to add yet another name next. to the long list of pro-Soviet spies and traitors headed by Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt. MacGibbon was a member of the n Yelena Bonner was one of the great dissidents in the history of Communist party, but when he applied for a job in the British the Soviet Union. This fact is slightly obscured by another fact: government during World War II, the panel that vetted him inex- that she was the wife, then widow, of the unfathomably great plicably failed to discover this fact. Infiltrating into a special Andrei Sakharov, the top nuclear physicist who gave up every- department of the War Office, he passed hundreds of secret doc- thing to campaign for human rights and democracy. Bonner cam- uments to his Soviet handler in London. German intelligence had paigned right along with him. She fought hard, suffered a lot, and penetrated the Soviet secret service, and MacGibbon’s docu- was incredibly brave all through. People who knew her can attest ments could have given away information that exposed Ultra that she was cantankerous, impossible, and heroic. Solzhenitsyn (the British interception of German radio traffic, of which the introduced us to the image of the oak and the calf. As you remem- Germans were unaware). In that case, MacGibbon’s treachery ber, the calf butted its head against the oak, trying to knock the would have lengthened the war, even prejudicing the outcome. A tree down. This was an image of futility. Bonner was one of the question for the London literati is how many others in their calves who, butting, knocked the oak down. She has passed away acquaintance may still be revealed as holders of the Order of at 88. R.I.P. Lenin. n Peter Falk was a fine actor in highly serious dramas, notably n We offer belated but heartfelt good wishes to Prince Philip, those directed by his friend, the legendary John Cassavetes. He Duke of Edinburgh and consort of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, on also starred in one of the most beloved cult-favorite film come- his 90th birthday. Philip’s pedigree is complex even by the stan- dies of the 1970s, 1979’s The In-Laws. But Falk’s greatest impact dards of European aristocracy. One of his grandfathers was a on the culture came, of course, through his long-running TV Danish prince who became George I of Greece and married a series, Columbo. The particular genius of this program was its Russian countess; the other was Louis of Battenberg, a German downplaying of the whodunit aspect: Viewers would watch who married a granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria. somebody commit a crime, and then, for the next hour or so, GETTY / AFP

Philip’s father, Andrew, suffered the indignity of being exiled watch the criminal squirm as Lieutenant Columbo got closer and / twice from his native Greece, the second time when Philip was closer to the truth. In the crime-ridden 1970s, it was surely cathar- less than two years old. Educated in France and Britain, Philip tic to see criminals on the hot seat for a change, nervous about

served with distinction in the Royal Navy during World War II. whether they would get away with their crime; and it helped that CARL DE SOUZA

1 3 week_QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/29/2011 1:55 PM Page 14

THE WEEK the policeman who brought them to justice was a funny and forces were not sent into the south to kill or capture bin Laden. lovable Everyman. Peter Falk created a character that lives on in As we proved, that could be done with a handful of Navy the American heart, because he captures some of the qualities we SEALs making a raid into Pakistan. The surge forces have prize most. Dead at 83. R.I.P. been seeking to beat back the Taliban to keep it and its al- Qaeda allies from taking over the south, then to hold the terri- n Paddy Leigh Fermor was really Sir Patrick, but the for- tory, and eventually to hand it over to Afghan forces as their mality of title and name did not suit him. A rolling stone, a proficiency and numbers increase. The goal of the United marvelous linguist, a wit and a dandy but very tough, a writer States and NATO was to complete this mission by the end of who applied the word rocambolesque to the rich style of his 2014. travel books about pre-war and picturesque central Europe, he President Obama’s decision could render these ambitions will be remembered as long as anyone is interested in the moot as he opts for a “half-Biden.” The vice president had British contribution to the gaiety of nations. At the age of 29, he advocated a counterterrorism mission rather than a war of also pulled off one of the most daring exploits of World War II, counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Instead of holding territory the subject of the film Ill Met by Moonlight. In German- with boots on the ground, we would rely on drone strikes and occupied Crete, Paddy stayed undercover with local partisans the like. He lost the initial debate, but Obama is now belatedly to organize resistance. Gen. Karl Kreipe, the German com - siding with him. Many of our troops have already died gaining mander of Crete, always took the same route to his office. ground in Afghanistan, and 70,000 will remain there even after The dominant prism through which the Afghan War is viewed in our political debate is futility.

Paddy and another officer, Stanley Moss, put on German uni- the withdrawal of the surge forces. So we will still have a coun- forms, stopped the general’s staff car, dealt with the driver, held terinsurgency footprint in Afghanistan, just one that may not a pistol to the general’s head, and were saluted by sentries as be large enough to succeed. they drove through some twenty checkpoints. Making their get- Perhaps 10,000 troops does not sound like a lot. But our away across the island, Paddy and the general exchanged Latin troops are already stretched thin in the south, and that is before quotations, a moment of chivalry that will also be remembered they have even attempted to pacify the east, where the ex - for a long time. Settling in the Mani peninsula of southern tremely dangerous Haqqani network is dominant. There aren’t Greece, Paddy and his wife Joan proved that it was possible to troops to spare, unless we abandon areas we have recently cap- be aristocratic and bohemian, cosmopolitan and English. He tured. And removing all the surge forces by the end of next died aged 96. R.I.P. summer—in other words, before the end of the next fighting season—means that the Taliban may need only to bide its time for about a year, and that the Haqqani network may never get AT WAR its reckoning. Obama Flinches There’s a reason Gen. David Petraeus opposed this kind of drawdown and that, apparently, no general supported it. When RESIDENT OBAMA, in a speech to the nation, announced Pres. George W. Bush went over the heads of some of his brass his decision to begin rapidly unwinding his Afghan to order the surge in Iraq, at least some other generals thought P surge. Of the 30,000 additional troops committed, it made sense. It is Obama’s prerogative as commander-in- Obama wants 10,000 out by the end of this year and the rest out chief to make whatever strategic judgment he deems appropri- by the end of next summer. This risks giving back to the ate, but the lack of military support for this decision highlights Taliban all that has been won over the last year with blood, its essentially political nature. Obama’s party long ago backed sweat, and tears. off “the good war,” and the public has grown weary of all our The dominant prism through which the Afghan War is wars. viewed in our political debate is futility. If that were the correct Perhaps we’ll get lucky, and the Taliban and al-Qaeda will way to look at it, our troops would have arrived in the south of prove to have been so hurt that they cannot come back. Or per- Afghanistan and foundered in the “graveyard of empires.” haps the Afghan forces—which have made strides over the last Instead, they routed the Taliban from its strongholds in year—will be able to hold what we have taken. But we also Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where it had come to may be headed toward a downward spiral. If our enemies have expect no serious challenge. A front-page New York Times arti- a resurgence in Afghanistan, it will embolden those forces in cle reported how the Taliban had been reduced to tiny bands Pakistan that have always argued we have no staying power and how it had failed so far to regain its footing, despite des- and that it therefore makes sense to support extremist proxies perately trying to fight back. The boys in the Quetta Shura to influence Afghanistan’s ultimate fate. Our allies on the must be delighted at the opening President Obama is handing ground will be discouraged, and fence-sitters will flip to the them. other side. We may be able to maintain a counterterrorism Obama suggested that a drawdown would be safe because of campaign in the near term, but if the Afghan government sens- the successes we have had, most spectacularly the killing of es we are losing and don’t care whether the country sinks back Osama bin Laden. But this is almost a non sequitur. The surge into chaos, it will become even less cooperative.

1 4 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 1 8 , 2 0 1 1 base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/27/2011 3:18 PM Page 1

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NEWSCOM plementarity are a package deal. The first two norms make norms two first The deal. package a are plementarity featuresmarriage,of permanence, exclusivity, sexualandcom- normative As type. and size every of relationships recognize fining marriage leaves no principled reason—none to at all—not sterit:manyliberals As concedenoweven andembrace, rede - it. But the core argument is simple, and pieces like Franke’s bol- of marriage is inevitable because there isn’t even an argument for wrong. same-sex marriage passes in New York, tells us that equalpersonaldignity. KatherinethatNowdaytheFranke, on recently,relationshipnecessaryfor Morerecognitionthatwas should be used to make andsame-sexcould couplesit livethat by maritalThen, needs.norms. concretecouples’ meeting for in same-sex civil marriages expressly reject sexual exclusivity. the empirically as supported them “open see secret” to about how readers often improvementspartners her after all. But trusting then the not perhaps marriage, marriage.” of definitionnarrow, legal the on, improve often and exceed, rulesmarriage”—theof freedomform relationshipsto that“far one-size-fits-all“greater“thefreedom”themgivesthanwhich partnership, domestic their social keep to and want respectability. benefits They employment shared to on hold to order fearthat inpractice itmight force them tobelegally married in partner will not seek a marriage license under the new law. They descended from Hefner and Kinsey. with Plato and Aristotle for the 60-year-old liberationist wouldtradeideology2,300-year-oldthe intellectual tradition originating who some to evenagreeable are points these words, other In Centerfor Gender and sexuality Law at Columbia Law school. Katherine Franke,by a lesbian left-winger who is conservatives—butdirector of thesocial by Not proponentalredefining of it. Times a h ilpse.Nti N day the in bill Not passed. in law and culture, from other romantic arrangements. well be tal norms on same-sex unions, where they make less sense, may different structures, inherently norms, andhave social may roles and unions purposes. Imposingsame-sex mari-and female Male- them. denigrating to amount doesn’trelationship ple’s more likelythattheanswertoquestionwillbe“yes.” it made just the Obama to) President haven extremists. safe other and provide Taliban least at (or by ruled be to fated is it whether is question it. The for expectations great no have always will be. Afghanistan is a poor, tribal society. We should 6 1 A MARRIAGE Unmade in Thelatest canard is that the defeat of the conjugal conception For years, we were told that same-sex marriage was necessary Franke leaves out just outleaves Franke hersupportedFrankeandThoughpassage,theysee,its you Yet every one of these points had been made as recently as the providinggovernmentalformalNot peo-recognition two of That government is a mess and—to one extent or another— o by a traditional Not supporter of marriage,. but by a liber- unfair lawmakers may have been ignoring some basic facts: YorkNew June,late partnershipssame-sex modatein s they enacted legislation redefining marriage to accom- . There are good reasons to keep marriage separate, | .nationalre .com o c w. e i ev r l a n o i t a n w. w w New York how ATIONAL these relationships “far exceed”relationshipsthese“far R Times evIeW had already divulged , but in the that was all New York sense, and a blow to the bedrock of civil society. broke a promise in order to pass is a failure of moral mentand topolitical support marriage and oppose its redefinition. The explicitcampaignlawcommit-an he renegedonGrisanti, Markwho caved—especially who senators state Republican the of four ing ever greater need for state intervention. pathologieswillonly deepen, especially amongthe poor, creat- father,amothersocial andwithouta both up childrengrow to parenting and permanent monogamy further erode, leaving more theold laws as their premise.) Andas the ideals of opposite-sex riage laws and the movement that favors them takemar- thenew thegovernmentracism—andbigotry fightbothandsociety of would avail in the long run. There are very few limits tectionsnotwithstanding.on statutorystrong howthatprotections (Not our citizens and business owners will be forced to revisionistcomply,ideology,sexualdissentingofespecially whention token pro- nothing libertarian or neutral about state-imposed moral ratifica- free to form whatever private relationships they wanted. There is upon itself, and for no apparent reason. votes,NewYorkthe senate’s Republican majoritybrought this unfavorableblockstatehouses fleeingto been minorities have that put the issue to a referendum. But in a yearreason:one statesTheywouldwhen31allhavetheylost, have inas Democratic beenover. Liberals opposedmarriagea referendum exactlyfor tothe people, without moral or political cost, and it would have Republican senators could have tabled the bill and sent the issue should recall that there was nothing inevitable about theirquasi-religiousit. NewInevitablemythof HistoricalYork Progress, we Non-stigmatization? It won’t hurt anyone else’s marriage?) most fulfilling? Non-discrimination among loving relationships? easily extend to just. (Think: Which argument for same-sex “marriage” wouldn’t riagebad.isForclearheaded andcandid liberationists, it’s only ingly, is whether the loss of these link once-defining the betweenprocreation.marriageattributesandquestion,only increas- of The of because mar- norms—only as intelligible sense—are ConservativeNew Yorkersshould send a clear message to all It certainly wasn’t for conservative reasons. New Yorkers were push to victorythis useemboldenedliberals when so, And any relationship that someone, somewhere, finds LY U J 8 1 , 1 1 0 2 base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/27/2011 3:35 PM Page 1 9:26 AM Page 1

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was safe. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a middle-of-the-road Republican who runs his caucus’s campaign committee, said the same thing. Romney greeted Obama’s speech with an ambiguous statement that drew com- plaints from some supporters of the Afghan war: “We all want our troops to come home as soon as possible, but we shouldn’t adhere to an arbitrary timetable on the withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan. This decision should not be based on politics or economics.” Left unanswered was whether Romney thought Obama’s decision was correct. But the next day, after Gen. David Petraeus testified on Capitol Hill, Rom - ney condemned the troop withdrawal for not being based on military advice. Romney isn’t taking an isolationist position. He’s hedging his bets politically. (McCain criticized him during the 2008 primaries for hedging on the surge in Iraq.) Imaginary Isolationism No new Republican senator enjoys Pat Buchanan continues not to be the Republican party more tea-party support than Marco Rubio of Florida. He supports the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and has even criticized BY RAMESH PONNURU Obama for not moving more forcefully in Libya. The Republican party’s much- OHN MCCAIN watched the first view. . . . The evolution also highlights a heralded tea-party-influenced isolationist big Republican presidential- renewed streak of isolationism among streak does not appear to have had any primary debate, and he didn’t Republicans, which has been influenced effect whatsoever on his popularity. J like what he saw. Rep. Michele by the rise of the Tea Party movement and Second, opposition to a particular Bachmann (R., Minn.) was saying that a growing sense that the United States can deployment of the U.S. military abroad— America had no vital interest in Libya. no longer afford to intervene in clashes or to several of them—is not the same Herman Cain seemed to say the same everywhere.” Republicans “would turn thing as opposition in principle to over- thing. Rep. Ron Paul (R., Tex.) said, “I’d the country inward,” worried liberal seas intervention. It could simply be a bring [the troops] home as quickly as pos- columnist Richard Cohen, who invoked judgment that particular interventions are sible.” Mitt Romney’s answer to a ques- the 1930s as an unhappy example of the imprudent. Representative Bachmann tion about Afghanistan emphasized his results of this type of turn. believes “we’ve got to finish the job” in desire to bring the troops home, too. A few All of this is terribly overblown. Afghanistan, for example, while oppos- days later, on This Week with Christiane Let’s start with a fact none of these ing the Libyan intervention. She isn’t an Amanpour, McCain said, “This is isola- analyses and lamentations mention: The isolationist just because she isn’t an tionism.” Republicans’ “streak of isolationism” undiscriminating enthusiast for all inter- Former Minnesota governor Tim Paw - must be set against a larger streak of ventions. And conservatives are supposed lenty, another of the candidates in that hawkishness. When President Obama to be skeptical of government programs, debate, echoed McCain’s comments. “I announced troop withdrawals from are we not? don’t like the drift of the Republican party Afghan istan in mid-June, Republican The bar for “isolationism” has been set toward what appears to be a retreat or a foreign-policy officials mostly criticized so low that one can favor continuing to move more towards isolationism,” he told him for it. True, Richard Lugar of spend more on the military than the rest of Politico. Sen. Lindsey Graham expressed Indiana, the ranking Republican on the the world combined; preserving our troop similar concerns. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said presence in Japan, South Korea, and The resurgence of Republican isola- he wanted a faster drawdown. But the Europe; and maintaining our security tionism became a journalistic theme. On chairmen of the House Armed Services guarantees to Israel and Taiwan—and still the front page of the New York Times, Jeff Committee and the House Foreign Re - be stuck with the label. Sen. Rand Paul Zeleny reported, “The hawkish consensus lations Committee, Buck McKeon (R., (R., Ky.) is often taken as the leading on national security that has dominated Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., spokesman for anti-interventionists in Republican foreign policy for the last Fla.), respectively, said that we should D.C. When he was running for office,

NEWSCOM decade is giving way to a more nuanced not withdraw until military leaders said it however, his campaign manager said that

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Paul was “not for wholesale withdrawal” So they are increasingly receptive to argu- from Afghanistan and Iraq. “Now that ments for retrenchment and for letting we’re there we have to win,” he added. other advanced countries relieve us of No Taxation The only actual isolationist in the some of the burden of global leadership. Republican party is Patrick Buchanan. He That does not mean that they believe an Without wants to cut the country off from trade American withdrawal from the world is and immigration. He would have kept out possible or desirable. (That is true even if of not only the Iraq War but also World the impulse is expressed carelessly. When Representation Wars I and II and the Civil War. But President Obama and Republican presi- Buchanan is a marginal figure in the dential candidate Jon Huntsman say it is A message from the future Republican party, which he felt com- time for “nation building at home,” pre- pelled to leave during his last run for pres- sumably they do not mean that we should BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON ident. Even Buchananites generally reject employ violence to reconstruct our soci- the term “isolationist” as pejorative. ety and its politics, as we have attempted Ey, Grover Norquist—I have (Their opposite numbers, meanwhile, in Iraq and Afghanistan.) a message from Mason and generally prefer to say they advocate a Whether these attitudes are justified Emma, two adorable little “robust foreign policy” rather than label is a matter of judgment, because the H new born Americans still in themselves “warmongers.”) answer depends on an assessment of diapers: “Pay your own goddamned In short, there simply isn’t a sizable iso- particular circumstances and not on the taxes.” lationist faction within the Republican goodness or badness of American en - Mr. Norquist, the president of Amer - party. At most one could say that the less gagement in general. At some point, icans for Tax Reform, is the Republican interventionist Republicans are more iso- even someone who has strongly support- party’s self-appointed policeman work- lationist than Senator McCain. It’s a true ed all of our military actions over the last ing the beat against tax hikes—for us. but not terribly informative statement— two decades might conclude that it was In effect, he’s working for tax hikes on like saying Ronald Reagan was more time to draw back—and without becom- those Americans being born today and socialistic than Ron Paul is. ing an isolationist. in the next several years, Americans who have no say in our current fiscal policies but will end up paying a heavy price for Republicans are, like the country our indiscipline. Most Republicans in Congress have at large, tired of the wars. This signed a well-meaning but destructive does not mean they believe an pledge to Mr. Norquist’s organization that they will not vote for any tax American withdrawal from the increase. This includes not only increases in tax rates but also ending special- world is desirable. interest tax subsidies, such as the ri diculous ethanol handout that lately Look away from the distraction of “iso- Looking at the question from the other renewed the war of words between Mr. lationism,” and two trends in Republican direction, it is also true that the desire to Norquist and his chief Republican foreign-policy views can be seen. One is a scale back our efforts overseas may be antagonist, Sen. Tom Coburn. Senator tidal shift in foreign-policy partisanship. mistaken even if it is not isolationist. Coburn, to his credit, has been pushing At the height of George W. Bush’s admin- Nearly every argument for leaving to get rid of part of our embarrassing istration, it was easy to misunderstand Af ghanistan emphasizes that we have corn-gas program, specifically, the part the relationship between the president’s been there for ten years. George Will composed of special tax credits for the popularity and the party’s foreign-policy often notes how much shorter our ethanol emirate. Mr. Norquist, to his dis- views. Many Republicans supported the involvement in World War II was. The credit, insists that any reduction in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because they impatience is understandable, but impa- ethanol tax subsidy be accompanied by supported Bush—not vice versa. Their tience is not an argument. If we had been an equal reduction in other taxes, lest the enthusiasm for foreign intervention has doing the same thing there for ten years maneuver constitute a net tax increase declined along with their congeniality with no progress to show for it and no and thereby start transforming United toward, and trust in, the commander-in- plan but to continue, that would be a States into Germany or Canada or some chief overseeing it. For similar reasons, good reason to abandon the effort. But other country not running Godzilla- the Left, while it wants out of Afghan - by most accounts, our current strategy in sized deficits and spending its children istan, seems unwilling or unable to orga- Afghanistan, which we have pursued in into future penury. nize the kind of protests we saw against full force for only a year, has been work- Senator Coburn, Mr. Norquist argues, Bushitler. ing. is an absolute fiend for tax increases: Second, Republicans are, like the pub- That’s the case that supporters of the “He’s trying to screw the rest of the lic at large, tired of the wars and con- war in Afghanistan, including Senator Republican party because he is so mad cerned that we are overextended abroad, McCain, should be making, instead of at the world,” Norquist told NATIONAL especially in light of our budget disaster. jousting with imaginary isolationists. REvIEW ONLINE. “He didn’t want to get

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rid of the ethanol tax credit without rais- next to where our entitlement programs low-impact kicks in 2075, the two big- ing taxes. The important thing in his life are going. Children being born today boy entitlements will be leaving annual was raising taxes.” Senator Coburn has might expect to retire around 2075. craters in the American economy about his shortcomings, to be sure, but it is Unless we take serious action in the the size of the one left by the meteor that plainly absurd to claim that “the impor- very near future to reduce the size of our sent T. Rex & Co. into the evolutionary tant thing in his life” is “raising taxes.” public debt, those newborn Americans version of Chapter 11. Left on its cur - Mr. Norquist’s rhetoric then took a sharp will almost certainly spend their work- rent course, Social Security—Social turn from the absurd to the perverse as ing lives encumbered by much higher Security alone—will run a deficit of he characterized Senator Coburn’s tac- taxes—88 percent higher to accommo- $3.758 trillion in 2075. (Those are 2011 tics thus: “He said, ‘Ha, ha, popped your date present spending, according to an dollars, not inflated spaceman dollars cherry, lost your virginity. Now give me International Monetary Fund working from 2075, when a loaf of bread will $2 trillion in tax increases.’ As soon as paper, “An Analysis of U.S. Fiscal and cost $20 or so, if inflation in the next they voted, he turned around and called Generational Imbalances: Who Will 65 years equals inflation in the past 65 them sluts. Guys like that didn’t get sec- Pay and How?” You can imagine what years.) Add in Medicare hospital insur- ond dates in high school.” As tempting such a tax increase would do to eco- ance (which the Social Security trustees as it is to apply psychoanalysis here, I’ll nomic growth, investment, innovation, also estimate) and you have a one-year stick to fiscal analysis. and the prospects for satisfying employ- deficit of $4.802 trillion—for two pro- The original Americans for Tax Reform ment. (If you want a picture of the grams. That’s under the “intermediate” were the Boston Harbor renegades and future, imagine a boot stamping on your scenario. The trustees also calculate a the musket-toting revolutionaries of paycheck—forever.) The middle-of- “high-cost” run-for-the-hills scenario, 1776, and they marched under the banner the-road version from the IMF crew is a under which that 2075 deficit hits $19.3 of “No Taxation without Representation.” mere 35 percent hike in every federal trillion—which then jumps to $30.5 tril- The Crown had argued that the American tax, combined with a 35 percent cut in lion in 2085. That’s not the whole fed- colonists enjoyed “virtual representation” benefits, just to maintain basic national eral deficit—that’s just the deficit from in a parliament in which they had no vote. solvency. two programs in one year. The Amer icans didn’t buy it, and neither And national solvency is a real con- Admittedly, the high-cost scenario is did William Pitt, whose fine English nose cern. To get an idea of the size and heft unlikely, which is not to say implausi- detected a distinctly bovine aroma about of the millstone we’re hoisting around ble; fiscal forecasting is hardly an exact the “virtual representation” argument: the necks of little Mason and Emma (the science. And, sure, Pollyanna says, “The idea of a virtual representation of most popular names in 2011 for boys those numbers look shocking today, America in this House is the most con- and girls, respectively, inexplicably), when our GDP is only about $15 trillion temptible that ever entered into the head take a panicky gander at the annual or so. But in 65 years our economy will of a man,” he proclaimed. “It does not report of the trustees of Social Security be a heck of a lot bigger, and $30 trillion deserve a serious refutation. The Com- and Medicare. By the time today’s little or whatever won’t be such a big bad mons of America, represented in their curtain-climbers get ready to hit the wolf of a terrifying deal. About that, I several assemblies, have ever been in pos- shuffleboard decks or the holodeck or have some bad news for you, Sunshine: session of the exercise of this, their con- whatever it is retirees end up doing for If our economy grows for the next 65 stitutional right, of giving and granting their own money. They would have been slaves if they had not enjoyed it.” Slaves, the man said. But the Stamp Act and the tea tax, odious though they were, are the lightest of yokes compared with the burdens the American Congress is laying upon the shoulders of Amer - ican citizens not yet born, who have absolutely no say in the matter. If tra - dition is the democracy of the dead, as G. K. Chesterton put it, then thrift is the liberty of the unborn, who ought not to be encumbered with massive debts that will fundamentally alter the very nature of the American enterprise without their ever having been given the courtesy of a vote. They should not be indentured under a social contract they never signed and would not sign if they had a lick of sense about them. Your average Age of Obama trillion

ROMAN GENN or so in annual deficits? Chump change

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years at the same rate it grew for the last in effect AWOL on the real issue, which 65 years—and that may be optimistic— is spending. Incredibly, the Re pub - that gets us only to about $100 trillion, licans’ favorite line of attack against What’s meaning that we’d be spending about Obamacare is that it entails Medicare 24 percent of GDP on two entitlement spending cuts. When Democrats pro- Step 2? programs, and about 5 percent of GDP posed cutting Medi care, Sen. Mitch on deficits in those two programs. Cur - McConnell denounced them. When The illogic of rently, all federal spending amounts to Rep. Paul Ryan proposed cutting Medi - Operation Fast and Furious just over 25 percent of GDP—and that’s care, Newt Gingrich de nounced him. nearly an all-time high, exceeded only Granted, the Democrats’ Medicare cuts BY ROBERT VERBRUGGEN during the war years of 1943–45. almost certainly are fictional, but Re - What if we don’t grow as fast as we did publicans ran against the very idea of ONSERvATIvES know that gun for the past half century? If GDP growth cuts—the one thing they should be control is a futile endeavor. But looks more like the 1.9 percent it has aver- championing. If you can’t cut spending even we gun nuts typically sup- aged since 2000 and outlays stay on track, and won’t raise taxes, you are, in effect, C port some basic measures to then we’ll be spending about half of GDP one half of the Bipartisan Co alition for keep weapons out of the wrong hands—for on those two programs, which will be run- Eternal Deficits, haunted by the Ghost example, laws that forbid felons to own ning a combined deficit equal to 10 per- of Taxes Future. guns, laws that require firearms dealers to cent of GDP. Which is to say, we’ll be You think Mason and Emma would, perform instant background checks on spending about twice as much on Social given a choice, vote themselves higher buyers, and laws against “straw purchas- Security and Medicare hospital insurance taxes in order to help Newt Gingrich ing,” that is, buying a gun legally and then as we spend on the entire federal govern- come in third in Iowa instead of fifth? selling it to someone who’s not allowed to ment today. Hard choices have to be made. We de - have it. It is hard to tell a believable story in mand premium Canadian levels of gov- Someone such as, say, a trafficker who supplies a Mexican drug cartel. And yet the Obama administration’s It is hard to tell a believable story in Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) intentionally allowed which a nation remains thriving and straw purchases at Arizona gun shops near the Mexican border. This project, now competitive while spending half of its defunct, was called Op er a tion Fast and Furious. GDP on two entitlement programs. It was a sting operation of sorts, and while it’s not yet clear who designed it, the which a nation remains thriving and ernment spending at discount Colombian ATF’s plan gives us some hints about its competitive—or even solvent and func- levels of taxation. We are demanding that creator: tional—while spending half of its GDP our children pay our taxes so that we don’t Step 1: Let Mexican cartels buy Amer - on two entitlement programs. Not when have to pay them ourselves. Cutting ican guns and use them in crimes. the Congressional Budget Office is pro- spending would be a lot easier, and there Step 2: ? jecting that, barring some real reform, would be a greater constituency for it, if Step 3: Bring down the cartels! our publicly held national debt will hit we paid our own taxes. Yes, all signs point to the Underpants 200 percent of GDP around the time King George III, like any self- Gnomes, the cartoon crime syndicate from Mason and Emma are getting out of col- respecting power-mad colonial poten- South Park whose business plan is as fol- lege. (That’s under CBO’s “Alternative tate, taxed the unrepresented to lard up lows: Fiscal Scenario,” which is not a worst- his treasury and keep himself in wig Phase 1: Collect underpants. case projection, but one “incorporating powder. Our forefathers showed his Phase 2: ? some changes in policy that are widely generals the door at the point of a bayo- Phase 3: Profit! expected to occur and that policymakers net. To what end? We’re all Hanovers This is perhaps too flippant a way of have regularly made in the past,” as now, practicing a form of inter-temporal discussing a government operation that CBO puts it.) colonialism, a particularly nasty variety supplied thousands of firearms to violent Everybody but Grover Norquist and of taxation without representation, pil- criminals, including two guns that were the majority of our elected representa- laging our own children and grandchil- found at the scene of a shootout that killed tives is starting to get the picture. Even dren to put off unpleasantness now. The a Border Patrol agent. But based on what AARP, which for years has been to longer we wait to fire both barrels at the we know of Fast and Fu ri ous, it doesn’t Social Security reform what Americans deficit and debt, the bigger the tax shortchange the logic behind the program for Tax Reform is to tax reform—a pig- increase we’re passing on to Mason and one bit. headed obstacle—has quietly conceded Emma, and the lower the standard of There is no question that the Mex i can that some cuts in benefits are inevitable, living we’re leaving them. No taxation drug trade has grown incredibly bloody in if not de sirable. ATR and its allies have without representation—not for us, not recent years, and there is no question that been adamantine on taxes but have been for them. some of the guns the cartels use come from

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the U.S. To combat this trend, the ATF works with federally licensed gun dealers, who report suspected straw purchasers. Typically, the ATF questions the suspects, interdicts the weapons, and if possible makes arrests. Sometimes this happens right at the gun store, while other times, ATF agents let straw purchasers lead them to stash houses or third-party buyers—but, in keeping with their training, the agents always make sure not to let the guns escape entirely. That’s not what happened under Fast and Furious. Rather, dealers were instruct- ed to sell guns to straw pur chas ers, and the ATF recorded the serial numbers in its Suspect Gun Database. Often, the ATF or local law-enforcement officers followed the buyers to see where they went. But at that point, they just let the guns “walk.” Perhaps 2,000 firearms—including AK-47 Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley variants and .50-caliber sniper rifles— escaped the ATF’s watchful eye in this tels],” according to a congressional report Eventually, Issa and Grassley convened way. prepared for Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) hearings, and they are releasing a series of There were no tracking devices in the and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa). Of reports about the project. The first of these guns, so there was no way the weapons course, the ATF and the Mexican gov - contains some truly disturbing informa- would lead the ATF to a cartel strong hold. ernment were already trying to find this tion. ATF agents and gun-store owners Instead, the ATF simply waited until the nexus using crime guns that had escaped complained and warned of disastrous con- guns turned up in the hands of criminals, ATF surveillance. Apparently the bureau sequences, to no avail. One whistleblower hoping that the Mexican government or figured that 2,000 additional data points described a supervisor as “jovial, if not, not local U.S. law enforcement would submit would somehow fill in the timeline be - giddy . . . that, hey, 20 of our guns were them to the bureau for tracing—complet- tween the straw purchases and the crimes, recovered with 350 pounds of dope in ing the circle back to the gun dealer who’d facilitating arrests of everyone involved— Mexico last night. And it was exciting. To cooperated with the ATF and the straw even though this plan provided no infor- them it proved the nexus to the drug cartels. purchaser the ATF let walk away. Even mation about where the guns had traveled It validated that . . . we were really working then, the ATF continued to let the straw during that time. The ATF was confident the cartel case here.” By the time of the purchasers buy guns. enough in its scheme to funnel thousands Terry murder, the man who had bought the Note that the recovery of these extra guns of guns to violent drug gangs just for the guns used in the shootout had been an ATF adds nothing to existing law-enforcement opportunity to document where they ended suspect for a year, and another gun he’d tools. There are two crimes being com- up. purchased had been recovered by the mitted here, the straw purchase and the If this was indeed the ATF’s thinking, it Border Patrol—and yet he had not been eventual crime by the cartel, and Fast and is bizarre—and, unsurprisingly, it didn’t arrested. Furious helps solve neither. The ATF can destroy any cartels. The only criminals Here’s how one whistleblower, Agent go after straw purchasers without letting arrested through the program were about John Dodson, expressed his frustration: the guns out of its surveillance, and if law 20 straw purchasers, who face up to ten enforcement finds a gun that was used in a years in prison. And the ATF knew most of Every day being out here, watching a guy crime and appears to have been supplied these folks were straw purchasers before go into the same gun store buying another by an American trafficking group, the ATF Fast and Fu ri ous even started. 15 or 20 AK-47s or variants . . . five or ten Draco pistols or FN Five-seveNs . . . [He can trace the serial number to a specific The program began to unwind follow - doesn’t] have a job, and he’s walking in dealer and buyer regardless of whether it’s ing the Border Patrol shootout mentioned here spending $27,000 for three Barrett in the Suspect Gun Database. The only dif- above, which took the life of Agent Brian .50 calibers. . . . [He] walks in with his lit- ference Fast and Furious made was that Terry in December 2010. Then, ATF tle bag go ing in there to buy it, and you are more American guns were found at crime whistleblowers began coming forward. sitting there every day and you can’t do scenes, because the American government The media were slow to take notice, but anything. put them there. CBS News did a groundbreaking report, The best guess as to what the ATF was and some other outlets followed. Most One thing Issa and Grassley have not thinking—the best candidate for Step 2— recently, CBS reported that “‘walked’ guns been able to ascertain is who bears final is that the bureau “hoped to establish a have been linked to the terrorist torture and responsibility. President Obama claims nexus between the local straw buyers in murder of the brother of a Mexican state that neither he nor Attorney General Eric Arizona and the Mexico-based [drug car- attorney general last fall.” Holder knew of the program, and Issa

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released e-mails proving that ATF acting when he pointed out that Kyoto-style director Kenneth Melson did know—but emissions reductions failed any reason- between those two ends of the Justice An able cost-benefit test. This venture into Department hierarchy, little evidence “the emperor has no clothes” territory exists. The department “continues to deny Environmental inspired Rajendra Pachauri, the head of that Operation Fast and Furious was ill- the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on conceived and had deadly consequences.” Climate Change, to say the following to a At a press conference in January 2011, Reformation Danish newspaper in 2004: “What is the when asked whether the ATF had let guns Standing up to Pope Carl difference between Lomborg’s view of “walk,” Bill Newell, of the ATF’s Phoenix humanity and Hitler’s? . . . If you were to field office, responded, “Hell no!” BY STEVEN F. HAYWARD accept Lomborg’s way of thinking, then The question of who approved Fast and maybe what Hitler did was the right Furious is especially pertinent in light of a HEN Gregg Easterbrook’s vol - thing.” talking point that President Obama and uminous book A Moment on The examples of rigidly enforced con- other gun controllers began trotting out in the Earth: The Coming Age formity could fill several volumes, and 2009: the claim that 90 percent of crime W of Environmental Opti mism no amount of criticism from outside the guns recovered in Mexico come from was published in 1995, it received the pre- environmental citadel is likely to break the U.S. The number was bunk; it was de - dictable reaction from the environmental though the walls. So, is there any chance rived not from all crime guns recovered in community: outrage. Despite—or proba- that reform will come from within? Mexico, but rather from crime guns sub- bly because of—Easterbrook’s bona fides Perhaps. There have been some signs mitted to the ATF for tracing. Mexican as a mainstream-liberal writer for The New that the stranglehold of environmental authorities submit only guns they suspect Republic, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, orthodoxy is weakening, beginning with are American, and most of the time, their and Newsweek, the envi ronmental lobby the provocative jeremiad about “the death suspicions are correct. (This statistical swung into full distort-and-denounce of environmentalism” that Ted Nordhaus trick hasn’t died; in mid-June, the Wall mode. The Environmental Defense Fund, and Michael Shellenberger delivered at Street Journal used new ATF data to claim for example, alleged the existence of fac- the 2004 annual meeting of the Environ - that “American-Sourced Wea pons Ac - tual errors that “substantially undermine mental Grantmakers Association, the left- count for 70% of Seized Fire arms in his thesis that many environmental prob- leaning conclave of funders who fork Mexico.”) The real number is perhaps 17 lems have been overstated.” over the green for the greens. Nordhaus percent—making American guns a con- Something similar happened in 2001 and Shellenberger are two veterans of tributor to cartel violence, but not the pri- when Bjorn Lomborg published The left-liberal causes, having consulted for mary enabler of it. Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring labor unions, advocates of tax increases, But if President Obama is so concerned the Real State of the World, which also gay-rights groups, and the whole rainbow about American guns’ finding their way argued that most environmental prob- of environmental organizations, including into the cartels’ hands, why was his ATF lems were overestimated and most Earth First! So, needless to say, when allowing precisely that to happen—appar- global conditions were stable or improv- they unleashed a scathing critique of the ently without informing Obama, his attor- ing. The favorable publicity Lomborg en vironmental movement, Nordhaus and ney general, or the Mexican government? received—even the New York Times Shellenberger were denounced every bit It is outlandish to suggest, as some on the wrote well of The Skeptical Environ - as much as Easterbrook and Lomborg had right have, that the administration deliber- mentalist—sent the environmental com- been. The Sierra Club’s Carl Pope, perately fueled Mexican violence with Amer- munity into a rage, and the counterattack haps the most doctrinaire member of the i can guns to bolster the case for gun control was swift. Scientific American devoted a environmental politburo, pronounced in the U.S. Not only does this scenario special issue to a tag-team assault that himself “angered” by the “death of en - envision our government’s acting as a it represented as “science” “defending” vironmentalism” critique, and further comic-book supervillain, it fails to recog- itself against Lomborg, as if Lomborg blasted Nordhaus and Shellenberger as nize that the gun-control movement is per- were the Vatican censuring Galileo. The self-promoters, which may be the most fectly happy to make up facts rather than tacit premise of the attacks on Lomborg extravagant example ever of the pot’s create real ones—as evidenced by the seemed to be that environmental opti- calling the kettle black. widespread use of the 90 percent statistic to mism is “beyond the pale of respectable Nordhaus and Shellenberger kept at begin with. But the government owes Issa discourse,” as The Economist put it. it, though, extending their critique into and Grassley, not to mention the American Lomborg’s most egregious heresy was a 2007 book, Break Through: From people and the family of Agent Terry, an over global warming. Although Lomborg the Death of Environmentalism to the answer to this question. conformed to the conventional green Politics of Possibility, which I reviewed, It also owes us an explanation of who view that global warming is happening mostly favorably, here in NR (“Green designed this plan, who approved it, and and may have a serious impact a century Death?” Dec. 31, 2007). In brief, the how far up the chain of command knowl- from now, he departed from the script book argued against the essential Mal- edge of the program went. And while thusianism of environmentalists, spoke Obama and his subordinates are at it, they Mr. Hayward is the F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow at the up for economic growth, and blasted the might answer another question as well: American Enterprise Institute and the author of the environmental lobby for having become What’s Step 2? Almanac of Environmental Trends. a narrow and unthinking special interest.

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The empire struck back again against the modernization, whether midwived by the much left standing of Malthus and his “bad boys of environmentalism” (as they state or by the private sector. epigones (especially Paul Ehrlich) after became known), but the script hasn’t But their work on environmentalism Pearce gets through mauling their factual played out the same way. Slowly and qui- remains the point of the spear in this and conceptual errors. And David Rob - etly, Nordhaus and Shellenberger have effort. Stewart Brand, of Whole Earth erts, the deep-green writer for Grist.org been gaining fervent allies among jour- Catalog fame, is an ally, speaking enthu- who coined the term “climate hawks” to nalists, scientists, and even some figures siastically of nuclear power, genetically describe the most dedicated global- of prominence deep inside the environ- modified crops, reviving extinct species warming crusaders, wrote recently in The mental establishment itself. While not through genetic engineering, and other American Prospect that “after 20 years, it embracing the skeptical view of global “environmental heresies,” as he put it at a may be time to admit that the climate warming, the duo fiercely rejects the cli- conference. Brand delights in pointing movement’s fundamental strategy, not a mate campaign’s agenda of deep emis- out that a single organic farm in Germany deficit of personal courage or heroic sions reductions, and in 2009 produced has recently killed more people than have striving, is behind the lack of progress.” some of the most withering critiques of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. They’ve also dumped all over Obama’s “green jobs” fraud; the pair called it “green jobs for janitors” in The New Republic. It is almost as if they nailed their 95 theses to the door of the Green Church, and set off a Reformation. In my review of their book four years ago, I noted: “By the end it becomes clear that Nordhaus and Shellenberger aren’t just trying to save environmentalism; they are trying to save liberalism, which they consider nearly as intellectually dead as environmentalism.” Lately this ambition has taken wing, with their modest think tank, the Breakthrough In sti tute (based in Oakland, Calif.), sponsoring a conference called “Modernizing Liberalism” and launching the quarterly Breakthrough Journal. I attended the conference as the Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus conservative provocateur; it seemed to be concentrated wholly on ideas, with no all the nuclear power plants Germany is The reform liberalism and realistic grubby calculations about how to keep rushing to shut down. Peter Kareiva, environmentalism contemplated in this liberal interest groups happy. the chief scientist of the Nature Con- effort won’t sweep all before it, and, to In their inaugural essay in Break - servancy, and two co-authors have a extend the analogy offered above, the through Journal outlining what is meant paper slated for the next issue of Break - Counter-Reformation of the established by “modernizing” liberalism, Shellen - through Journal that will smash many of interest groups will be ferocious. Part of berger and Nordhaus offered a number of the established icons of the standard- what is going on here is a generational departures from current liberal ortho- issue environmentalism, such as the transition (Shellenberger and Nordhaus doxy, including: “A new progressive pol- cliché about the “fragility” of nature— are in their 40s), and the fossils of the itics must take liberalism’s commitment “an obsolete paradigm of traditional con- environmental movement—the Al Gores to broadly-shared prosperity forward servation.” and Carl Popes—won’t change their while leaving the old, redistributive Beyond the growing movement Shel - minds or their ways. And to be sure, even agenda behind.” Despite these and other len berger and Nordhaus have catalyzed, a modernizing liberalism will have many tergiversations, the duo resist the label there are additional signs that at least a points of friction with conservatism. But “neoliberal,” not simply out of dis - few within the environmental estab - this seems the most promising effort at comfort with the symmetry of the now- lishment are starting to have some long- self-criticism by our liberal cousins in a dreaded “neoconservative” but also overdue second thoughts. There are long time. be cause they think the neoliberalism of starting to appear serious books from I happened by chance into a conversa- the 1980s and 1990s conceded too much major publishers that not only break with tion with a program officer for one of the to minimal-state libertarianism. They still standard environmental orthodoxy but major liberal foundations in New York a believe in a strong role for the state as a verge on outright optimism about the few months ago, and asked, “So—what modernizing force, but correctly perceive planet’s future. Perhaps the most sur - do you think of Shellenberger and Nord- that liberalism’s current power brokers prising is British journalist Fred Pearce’s haus?” He responded: “They’re a couple (such as labor unions) are in fact reac- The Coming Population Crash and Our of a*******!” Pause. “But they’re very tionary forces, standing in the way of Planet’s Surprising Future. There’s not smart.”

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was sent to another camp, and escaped gram was recognized by all the move- again, this time for good. His personal ments, parties, and unions adhering to the Mad as Hell courage cannot be impugned, therefore; Resistance, of which there was only one and it seems almost heartless, or at the leader, General de Gaulle. A little pamphlet, a lot of rage least callow, for someone like me, whose Reasonable as this might have been in discomforts have been entirely self- the particular circumstances of the war, BY ANTHONY DANIELS inflicted, to suggest that his pamphlet is it does not occur to Hessel that it might stupid and even sinister, and that its suc- not be appropriate to peacetime: Indeed, He vicissitudes of the market- cess is a sign that universal education has its caesaro-corporatism has a distinctly place are, as everyone knows, not much improved the critical faculties Pétainiste ring. So do other of his pro- not easily calculable. Who, for of much of mankind. nouncements: “The general interest must T example, would have foreseen Heartless or callow as it might seem, I prevail over the private,” for example. that a pamphlet written by a 93-year-old feel impelled to criticize M. Hessel’s little As the Marshal himself said, any citizen man, and published by a hitherto obscure essay, even if, to quote Bishop Butler, “I who seeks private wealth outside the publisher (of anarcho-vegetarian-noble- express myself with caution, lest I should public good goes against reason. What savage tendencies) in Montpellier in the be mistaken to vilify reason, which is Pétainiste would disagree with Hessel’s south of France, would not only have sold indeed the only faculty we have where- demand that the press should be free from hundreds of thousands of copies in its with to judge concerning anything, even foreign and moneyed interests? Where home country, but similar numbers in revelation itself.” And the plain fact is that Hessel says that one of the principles of Spain, and then inspired demonstrators while a man who has been tortured re - the Resistance was that there should be a against government austerity measures in mains tortured, he is not thereby trans- complete system of social security, assur- both Madrid and Athens? muted into an oracle, whose every ing all citizens the means of existence at The pamphlet was called “Indignez- utter ance must be treated with reverence, all stages in life, Pétain said that all work- vous!” (“Work yourself up into a rage!”), as a revelation from a realm that is free ers should be secure from the hazards of and the demonstrators called themselves from error. A man who writes must, final- unemployment, illness, and poverty in old les indignés, or los indignados, the indig- ly, be judged by what he writes rather than age. nant. Its author is Stéphane Hessel, and by his biography. Hessel is obviously a socialist, believ- his pamphlet has been the european pub- Hessel tells us that the whole founda- ing that “all sources of energy, banks, lishing sensation of the decade. tion and compass of his political life has insurance companies, mines, giant cor - Certain qualities assisted the progress always been the Resistance and the polit- porations, and private monopolies”—in of the pamphlet, no doubt. First, at 13 ical program that the National Council of short, our old friends, the commanding pages of text, it is very short, a great the Resistance drew up 67 years ago, “of heights of the economy—should be “re - advantage in these times of reduced atten- whose principles and values we now have turned to the nation.” But Pierre Laval, tion span and alternative sources of enter- need more than ever.” This political pro- speaking in the name of Pétain, was also a tainment. Second, the author’s biography makes it rather difficult for the critic to avoid appearing nasty. After all, to write anything at the age of 93 is remarkable enough in itself, and therefore to criticize the pamphlet for its mere content seems almost unfair, like challenging a cripple to a boxing match. More difficult still for anyone who would criticize the pamphlet, Hessel, who is Jewish, has experienced depths to which few people have plunged. He was born in Germany to a family who emigrated to France in 1924; he fought in the French army, joined General de Gaulle in London, and was infiltrated into Paris in 1944, where he was arrested by the Gestapo, was tortured, and was sent to Buchenwald, where he managed on the eve of his execution to exchange his identity with that of a Frenchman who had just died of typhus, escaped, was recaptured, NEWSCOM / Mr. Daniels, a physician, is a contributing editor of SIPA / City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at

BALTEL the Manhattan Institute. Stéphane Hessel

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socialist: “Socialism will be installed impresarios of indignation. He wants the everywhere in Europe, and the form it young of Europe to be indignant at, will find in France will be designed by our among other things, the gap between the Smoke national character.” rich and poor countries, which, he says Not surprisingly, Hessel is somewhat (precisely at the time when economic Alarm indulgent to the old Soviet Union. He growth in most of the rich countries is far attributes the French defeat of 1940 to exceeded by that of much of Africa), has The nanny state’s ghoulish new the fear of Bolshevism by the propertied never been greater. Hessel virtually sug- cigarette labels classes, rather forgetting that at the time gests indignation as a career, and claims the Soviet Union was Nazi Germany’s never to have been short of it himself. “To BY DANIEL FOSTER ally, supplying it with a lot of war ma - the young, I say: Look around you, you tériel, and that the French Communist will find reasons to justify your indig - ERE is an image for you: The party (heavily dependent financially upon nation. . . . Seek and ye will find.” If gray pall of a middle-aged the Soviet Union) was hardly supportive Pirandello were writing it, he would call it woman on her deathbed, her of the French war effort. “Six Indignations in Search of a Reason.” H hairless head the synecdoche of His summary of French intellectual his- Indignation is for Hessel the motor of a body racked by tumors. She is all color- tory with regard to the Soviet Union could the correct, that is to say Hegelian, view less lips, sunken cheeks, and frail hands hardly be more mendacious, as well as of history, which sees history not as one hugging too-prominent clavicles, empty sinister: damned thing after another (the incorrect eyes casting a thousand-yard stare, per- and, in his opinion, the only other possible haps at the dread visage of the Reaper As for Stalin, we all applauded the vic- view), but as “the freedom of man pro- himself. tory of the Red Army over the Nazis in gressing step by step”: “The history of Here’s another: a waist-up shot of dead 1943. But we already knew about the societies progresses, and in the end, Man man, mouth agape and naked on the great Stalinist trials of 1935, and even having attained his complete freedom, we stainless-steel dissection slab of some if it was necessary to keep an ear open towards communism to counterbalance have the democratic state in its ideal morgue, complete with the freshly sta- American capitalism, the necessity to be form.” pled “Y-incision” that is the tell-tale of a opposed to this insupportable form of That this astonishing drivel—complete recent autopsy running the length of his totalitarianism was obvious. freedom and ideal democratic states, sternum. How about a tight shot of a indeed!—could have captured the imagi- dime-sized hole in a man’s throat? Or an This is a rewriting of history of which nation of millions of young people is . . . extreme close-up of fingers prying a Stalin himself would have been proud; the well, disheartening. But I do not really mouth apart to reveal an incomplete row idea that the French Left understood the think that it is what drove them onto the of brown teeth set in gangrenous gums? necessity of opposing Communism from streets of Madrid and Athens. You cannot, Or an illustration of a mother blowing the date of the show trials is preposterous, after all, corrupt the incorruptible. No, smoke full-on into the face of the infant as the reception of Gide’s book Retour de what drove them onto the streets was the clutched at her bosom? l’U.R.S.S. (1936), and of Kravchenko’s realization that the whole system of subsi- These are not the elements of a ma - I Chose Freedom (1946), demonstrates. dized employment was coming to an end cabre collage put together by some creepy That Stalinism was an insupportable form just as they were joining the labor market. Goth kid for his junior-college art exhibit. of totalitarianism suggests that there is a They were demonstrating for a continua- They are the product of federal bureau- supportable form; and equating the mani- tion of the subsidies that would allow crats and of federal policy, and beginning fest deficiencies of American capitalism them to rob their children as they them- next year they will by law adorn every with the deliberate killing of tens of mil- selves had been robbed by their parents pack of cigarettes sold in this country, lions is surely a symptom of severe moral and grandparents. (In France, most young alongside blunt textual warnings such as deficiency. people want to be fonctionnaires, public- “Smoking Can Kill You.” But Hessel’s pamphlet is principally an service employees, and a recent survey The garish goriness of the labels appeal to the young, who, after many showed that two-thirds of their parents evinces a kind of B-horror-movie aes - years of free and compulsory education, endorse these ambitions.) Alas, pyramid thetic, and implies the same kind of con- may be expected not to know any of these schemes collapse sooner or later, and tempt for the intelligence of the audience. things. Hessel also relies on their inability those who have not gotten out in time lose It is clearly the issue of a government that to think, for his logic is truly astonishing: a great deal. thinks not only that you are too stupid to The basic motive of the Resistance was Perhaps, then, Stéphane Hessel is right make your own decisions, but that you are indignation, he says, therefore it is good after all, and the young of Europe have too stupid even to understand your igno- for everyone to be indignant, and indigna- reason to be indignant. But as usual with rance—a kind of pre-Socratic imbecility tion is resistance. “I want all of you,” he indignation, it attaches to all the wrong that means the only way you can be reached writes, “and each and every one of you, to things. Indignez-vous, by all means, but is by playing on your most primordial have a motive for indignation.” Hessel is do, please, make sure that you aim at the fears. Indeed, as Danny McGoldrick of thus the Descartes of indignation: I’m right target. It is not true that (as both the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a indignant, therefore I’m right. This rather Hessel and Pétain maintained) indiffer- group that has strongly lobbied for the overlooks the fact that Hitler and the ence is the worst of attitudes. Wrongful warnings, put it in a recent NPR appear- Nazis were the great entrepreneurs or indignation is worse. ance, the labels are meant to make “an

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emotional, graphic,” and “fear-arousing” for when they demand government in- substituting “pragmatism” for “principle” appeal to smokers to quit. Call it Smox- tervention. But this is often not the con - in our political vocabulary that govern- ploitation. versation we’re having. Dur ing the ment busybodies and their enablers ask The labels, which must occupy at least afore mentioned NPR segment, which in - only how they can modify a behavior 50 percent of the real estate on a given cluded McGoldrick and FDA commission- without ever wondering whether it is cigarette pack, are required by the Family er Margaret Hamburg along with yours any of their business to do so. As with the Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Con - truly, most of the debate be tween panelists supporters of things like seatbelt laws, trol Act of 2009, which garnered 79 votes and callers centered not on whether the sodium restrictions in fast food, and a in the Senate and nearly 300 in the House, spooking and shaming of smokers was thousand other well-intentioned assaults and gave the Food and Drug Adminis - within the proper purview of the govern- on volition, when you ask the do-gooders tration broad new authority to regulate the ment, but whether it would work. in favor of laws retarding tobacco con- production and sale of tobacco. It is part It’s a fine question. At one point during sumption what philosophical or constitu- of a broad White House–led effort to the segment, an earnest Louisiana woman tional principles justify such restrictions, effect a decrease in the number of smok- wrote in to suggest that “if these pictures they will as often as not blink, shrug, and ers, one that includes $225 million in stop even one person from taking up the tell you: “Because it’s bad for you.” funding from the now-infamous Recovery habit or scare somebody into stopping, This won’t do. Conservatives rightly Act and provisions in the (also now- they’re worth it.” This, of course, is buf- champion folk virtues as a powerful infamous) Affordable Care Act that will foonery. You don’t rouse the United States source of societal order. But it is quite a require Medicaid, as well as many private Congress, not to mention the tobacco different thing for the activist class to insurance plans, to cover “smoking cessa- lobby, to exertion and appropriate that assume that their latest prejudices rightly tion” treatment. many zeroes just to touch one heart. So command the status of law. As William F. It would be one thing to ponder the use will the campaign put a dent in cigarette Buckley Jr. was fond of pointing out, not of taxpayer dollars and the force of law to use? Even the FDA’s own estimates sug- everything disreputable should be illegal, change smokers’ habits, if this were hap- gest the answer is: not really. Against the and each act of creeping nanny-statism pening within the context of a serious background of a smoking population of brings us closer to that eventuality. conversation about whether individual de - about 46 million, they estimate the labels Slippery-slope arguments are in the cisions to smoke impose substantial enough will, if you’ll excuse the expression, cre- rhetorical doghouse these days (not least, effects on non-smokers—in terms of air ate or save some 213,000 non-smokers. I’d argue, because they’re inconvenient quality, socialized health-care costs for the That’s less than half a percentage point of for the sort of soft-and-cuddly totali - treatment of tobacco-related illnesses, and improvement—a bad number even for a tarians who, e.g., banned home-packed the like—to justify restrictions. Even the stimulus project. lunches at one Chicago grade school in most libertarian-leaning conservative un - But neither should the conversation favor of the more “nutritious” cafeteria derstands that there are negative externali- even get this far. It is a testament to the food). But we’ve seen what liberty- ties, though he may set a high threshold total success of progressive politics in squeezing incrementalism does here in New York City. When Lord Mayor Mike Bloomberg pushed to outlaw smoking in restaurants and bars in 2002, there were shouts; when the city council extended the ban to 1,700 parks, beaches, and other public areas this February, there were murmurs. When Hizzoner Weiner bans lighting up altogether in 2015, will it be seen as anything but an inevitability? To a man, my liberal interlocutors on this topic have stopped me to ask whether I’m a smoker myself—identity politics to the last. I tell them this: I will still take a cigarette with friends on the odd Saturday night, but no longer consider myself “a smoker.” I cut back drastically due to the familiar concerns about health and hy - giene, but I did not quit outright—due to the familiar concerns about having a little fun in this world before I leave it. I have made, and moderated, my mistakes. If you want my advice on whether you should repeat them, I’ll tell you that if I were you, I wouldn’t. But thankfully for

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES both of us, I’m not you. And neither is . S .

U the FDA.

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The Battle from Waterloo Representative Bachmann runs for president

BY ROBERT COSTA

Waterloo, Iowa EAR the cornfields, her parents danced. On hot summer As Bachmann drove at sunset to Electric Park, where hundreds nights in the Sixties, when things were good and the of supporters packed the dusty dance floor, it clicked: This town kids were young, David and Jean Amble would shim- was not some one-day backdrop for the campaign, but the heart N my to the music of Ray Charles and Bill Haley at the of her message. More than any policy, more than any slogan, she Electric Park Ballroom. Down the road, their headstrong daugh- would be Waterloo. As she burst through the ballroom doors, her ter, Michele, would order ice-cream cones for her three brothers petite frame twirling from handshake to handshake, her adrena- at Jensen’s Dairy Queen, two blocks from the family’s working- line surged. class home. Forget the notes, Bachmann thought as she spied rows of The day before she announced her presidential campaign in reporters leaning against the wall, their Flip cameras and note - late June, the former Michele Amble, now Representative Bach - pads ready. She would extemporaneously celebrate her roots, mann of Minnesota, returned to her childhood haunts. She was using them to paint a picture of the America she hopes to lead. pleased to see that the Dairy Queen was bustling, with a line of She knew that to some she might sound like a Norman Rockwell cars at its drive-through window. The house on East Ninth Street, enthusiast, more June Cleaver than Margaret Thatcher, but with where she lived until she was twelve years old, was there too, but millions of Americans out of work and remembering better times, its porch now sloped in disrepair, its brown paint peeling. she would connect. Bachmann soaked up the nostalgia. She stopped by First Up on stage, in her high-pitched midwestern voice, which Lutheran, her family church, then visited East High School, not stretches the letter “O” for seconds, Bachmann made a simple far from the rumbling Cedar River. Everywhere she went, she case. “This is what we need more of—we need more Waterloo,” met old friends and neighbors. Four decades after she left, much she said. “We need more Iowa. We need more closeness, more had changed, but the ghosts and good memories remained. Even families, more love for each other, more concern about each though fast-food chains and a 24-hour Walmart nested nearby, other.” She paused as the roar grew. “It is not too late,” she said, this was the America she knew. Before she moved away, before beaming under the Klieg lights. “Hallelujah!” shouted the gen-

her parents divorced, before everything, this was home. tleman beside me. ROMAN GENN

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ACHMANN’S raucous homecoming was the latest in “Every day, we walked from the elementary school back to a series of strong performances by the Minnesota the college,” Marcus tells me. On those strolls, they opened B Republican, who only recently announced that she up to each other. “Michele was interested in intellectual, would seek the presidency. While big-name contenders, such as philosophical, and political conversations,” he says. The sum- Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, have been running hard for mer after she graduated from high school in Anoka, Minn., she months, Bachmann waited until the summer to pounce. Since had worked on a kibbutz in Israel, and she fascinated him with launching her effort, she has rocketed into contention, especial- her stories. ly in Iowa, where she hopes to make a splash later this summer The pair became fast friends, and soon the relationship blos- in the Ames Straw Poll, an important prelude to the state’s first- somed beyond the schoolyard. That summer, they worked in-the-nation caucuses. together on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign. Both were The latest Des Moines Register poll of GOP caucus-goers pleased that Walter Mondale, Minnesota’s favorite son, was shows Bachmann in a dead heat with Romney, trailing the for- chosen to be the Georgia Democrat’s vice-presidential nomi- mer Massachusetts governor by one point, 23 percent to 22 per- nee. “By that time we were dating,” Michele says. “Jimmy cent. Pawlenty, her longtime competitor for the Minnesota Carter, to us, seemed to be a likable candidate. He was a born- spotlight, has struggled to catch fire, with barely 6 percent again Christian.” support. The rest of the field is gasping for oxygen. After Carter topped President Ford at the polls that To Beltway Republicans, Bachmannmania has been a sudden November, Marcus surprised Michele with two tickets to the though not entirely surprising development. “She has very good inauguration in Washington. “Neither one of us had ever been instincts about what matters to core Republicans, and she also to Washington before,” she says. “He told me that it’d cost believes it,” says Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National $100, and I said ‘No way,’ since I would not put 25 cents in a Committee chairman. “She is not cowed by the attacks on her soda machine. But we went, and we danced at an inaugural by the liberal media and the elite. Plus, on talk radio, on Face - ball.” book, and on Twitter, she has a real presence.” For 2012, he For Bachmann, the experience was a thrill, especially seeing says, that matters. the Capitol dome for the first time, a sight that moved her to Indeed, the notion that an ambitious, contentious House tears. But that was her last dance with Democratic politics. By member could never stand a chance against more experienced the spring of 1978, their senior year, she and Marcus were national Republicans has been discarded by most political oper- planning a post-graduation fall wedding. Their affection for atives, many of whom are impressed by Bachmann’s fundrais- Carter was evaporating. They talked about how he was aimless ing prowess. Last year, she raised more than $13.5 million for on foreign policy and a blubbering mess on social policy, his her reelection. She is also a cable-news star, whether she is bat- supposed strength. tling MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball or detailing the A key moment in their political development came that horrors of Obamacare with Sean Hannity on Fox News. spring when they both attended a campus screening of the Yet in a few quiet minutes before her hometown tour, Francis Schaeffer film How Should We Then Live? The Rise Bachmann told me that her quick rise into the top tier of the and Decline of Western Thought and Culture. “The message GOP primary can be attributed to more than political celebrity. encouraged our beliefs that life is precious,” Marcus tells me, She argues that it is due to her ability to connect the tea-party reflecting on how the evangelical thinker influenced them. movement to the broader economic and social themes that are Michele agrees. From that moment, her pro-life and pro-family shaping this election. “I have been able to reach out to people values began to crystallize into a firm political worldview. After who have never been political a day in their life,” she said. years of seeing politics as partisan scraps, Bach mann began to “From disaffected Democrats to independents, they have seen notice a difference between the Democrats she grew up with what President Obama has done to devastate our economy.” in Waterloo and the monolithic Left running Jimmy Carter’s At first, this rings off-key. Bachmann, perhaps more than any Washington. House member, is identified as a leader of hardline conserva- The final straw came on a train ride back home one evening tives on Capitol Hill. She chairs the Tea Party Caucus and con- in the late Seventies. Bachmann was reading Gore Vidal’s stantly tangles with GOP leadership. For her to talk about her Burr, a historical novel. When she realized that passage after appeal to the center, about her ability to attract independents, passage was mocking the founding fathers, she threw the book sounds strange. But as our conversation continues, and she down, disgusted with how the liberal writer described her talks about her political education, it emerges that this tea-party heroes. darling is also a complicated and canny mother, activist, and “I was offended,” she says. “When I grew up in a Dem - educator—one who has a history with Jimmy Carter. ocratic family, we were respectful of the founders, we were very patriotic, we loved the country, and we were reasonable, fair-minded Democrats, like many of them are. I put the book ARCuS BACHMANN, Michele’s husband of 33 years, down, looked out the window, and thought that this is not what immediately knew that she was different. In the I recall growing up. I thought, I must not be a Democrat, I must M spring of 1976, when they were both sophomores at really be a Republican.” Winona State university in southeastern Minnesota, he spotted A couple years later, in 1980, both Bachmanns backed her across the playground at an elementary school near campus, Ronald Reagan. Politics, however, took a backseat in her life where they supervised recess and youth sports. They were both for the next decade as she paid her way through Oral Roberts (barely) paying their way through school and jumped at the Law School, which at the time was known as O. W. Coburn chance to make a few dollars. and was a Bible-based institution. The couple then lived in

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Virginia while she earned a master’s in tax law from William Bachmann’s cries for education reform were soon heard and Mary. around Minnesota as she and her allies campaigned against the Marcus simultaneously earned his master’s degree in educa- St. Paul progressives. “I put together a two-hour commentary tional counseling from Regent University in Virginia Beach. and went everywhere,” she says. “We talked about the curricu- The young couple also began their family of five children, start- lum being dumbed down and about how this is devastating for ing with Lucas, who would later become a medical student, an our kids.” avid follower of William F. Buckley Jr., and, currently, one of Her charisma and denunciations generated buzz in Stillwater. his mother’s most trusted advisers. In 1999, she took her first step into electoral politics, running Eventually, the family settled in Stillwater, Minn., where for a seat on the local school board. But it was not to be. She and Marcus opened Christian counseling centers, which he contin- a slate of her conservative friends mounted bids. All of them ues to run today. Michele, for a few years, worked for the lost. “We had no idea about politics,” she chuckles. Bachmann Internal Revenue Service as a lawyer. (On the campaign trail, shrugged off the defeat, looking for other ways to contribute. she cleverly calls herself a “federal tax attorney.”) In her spare A year later, lightning struck when she decided at the last time, she assisted with the family business. As the children minute to attend the state GOP convention, where many of her grew, she slowed her legal activity, and most of her work took allies from the educational fights had congregated, trying to place inside the family’s home—as an educator. nominate conservative, pro-reform candidates. As Bachmann With a group of parents, Bachmann founded New Heights, a tells it, she was not even planning to attend, but was there for a charter school, in 1992. The experience—dealing with state wedding. government, stirring neighbors to get involved—taught her “I told Marcus that I felt like I should go, since I was in the much about organizing and, for the first time, how to deal with area, and asked if I could skip the wedding. He said sure, so I the media. But after butting heads with some parents about the put on jeans, moccasins, and a sweatshirt with a hole in it,” she curriculum, Bachmann, a board member, resigned. says. She met up with her friends. As the afternoon unfolded, no She turned her full attention back to her children. The one seemed to be interested in challenging Gary Laidig, her dis- Bachmanns homeschooled all five of them, teaching them to trict’s longtime incumbent state senator and a moderate read and write before the state would even have started with Republican. them. NATIONAL REVIEW, Time, Newsweek, and local newspa- Bachmann, without consulting her family, was prompted by pers were required reading for the brood. Rush Limbaugh a friend to put her name in for consideration. The GOP staffers played over the radio on many afternoons, along with Michele’s were shocked when she walked up to the front and filed papers favorite composer, J. S. Bach. on a whim. “I was thinking that maybe if I ran, and we could get By the mid-Nineties, Marcus and Michele were welcoming a discussion going on our issues, then it would be worth it,” she foster children into their home. It began with one, then another. says. Winning, it seemed, was almost out of the question. She By 1998, 23 teenage girls had lived with them at different junc- felt she was doing her duty as an activist and a mother. tures. It was at times a challenge, but always a labor of love. After she signed her name on the dotted line, Bachmann Some of Bachmann’s own children remember long lines for the thought she could return to her pack of friends in the back of the bathroom, but, beyond that minor snag, they are in awe of their hall. No, no, said one of the party operatives, you must give a parents, especially their mother, for her boundless energy. five-minute speech if you want to be an official candidate. “I “Our adolescent foster children came to us as the last stop in got up there and delivered a speech about freedom,” she says. the foster-care system,” Marcus says. He and Michele were “I spoke about how it relates to the cause of life, taxes, and edu- determined to make sure that they were not lost in the system, cation.” Laidig watched all of this from afar. He was up next. just another name in a state worker’s manila folder. “When our It was already over. Bachmann won the nomination on the foster children were older teens, I had the rule that summer was first round of votes. When she returned home as a state-senate not for idleness. From 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, they either candidate, she says, Marcus had no idea about the turn of found employment or volunteered.” The disciplined guidance, events. “I was hiding upstairs in our bedroom. The phone kept he says, worked: Each of their foster children graduated from ringing and he came upstairs. He gave me that look and said high school. that there is something you need to tell me.” She told him the news. “You know, he told me, you can’t take this back.” She didn’t. “I was the accidental politician,” Bachmann says ACHMANN, one of her sons recalls, never seemed to rest. of winning at the nominating convention. “We laughed that our Her professional legal work and her never-ending campaign slogan would be ‘We know nothing, and we can B efforts as an educator of her children did not stop her prove it.’ Gradually, we began to build a team when the sena- from becoming involved in conservative causes. She would tor got back in to run in the primary. Our kitchen table was attend pro-life meetings whenever possible and take her chil- piled with mailers, and I worked extremely hard. I ended up dren to see conservative speakers at local college campuses. winning the primary 61 percent to 39 percent—it was a huge During Bill Clinton’s second term, Bachmann decided to shock in state politics.” She then swept the general election. speak out beyond the neighborhood coffee klatch. The Left’s In the legislature, Bachmann established herself as a leading heavy influence over the state’s public schools, which enabled social conservative. On life and marriage issues, no one was bureaucrats to craft shoddy, politically correct classroom mate- more vocal. Not everyone liked her combative style. She was rial, motivated her to join the Maple River Education Coalition, the opposite of a backbench rookie and eschewed learning the a group of parents and community members who, like her, were ropes. When she started, she took the reins, with vigor, on her upset with the quality of public-school education. issues—without asking permission.

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Minnesota pols tried to shoo her out of office during the Hardball, Bachmann began to sink in the polls. The Cook 2002 redistricting process, unsuccessfully, and when Mark Political Report flipped the district from “Leans Republican” Kennedy, her area’s Republican congressman, decided to run to “Toss Up.” One of her senior advisers at the time remembers for the U.S. Senate in 2006, Bachmann knew that it was time her “really fearing that she could lose, that it really might be to take the fight to Washington. ending.” As brash as she was in public, behind the scenes she “In the general election, she went up against Patty was no fantasist, and kept close watch of the polls. In the event, Wetterling, a high-profile advocate for abused children,” says she won by three points—a five-point drop from her 2006 mar- Brad Biers, one of her first campaign staffers. The Mark Foley gin. scandal, he says, in which the Florida Republican was accused Instead of pulling back, Bachmann doubled down on anti- of inappropriate interactions with congressional pages, was a Obama rhetoric. And there are concerns about more than her real burden for Bachmann as she ran. National Democrats words. Bachmann’s congressional office is constantly in flux. ladled cash into Wetterling’s coffers, hoping to pick up a ruby- She has had six chiefs of staff in her short congressional career, red seat. and a bushel of press secretaries. Former staffers tell me that “She was a natural at connecting with the grassroots,” Biers she is demanding, press-obsessed, and a scheduler’s night- says, “but the transition from being a legislator and figuring mare. She also reportedly rarely listens to her paid advisers, out how to run for a major office, that part had a major learn- instead relying on her husband and her son Lucas to help her ing curve. In many ways, she was raw around the edges.” navigate the political waters. To her relief, Bachmann was boosted in the final weeks by “It was impossible,” says one former Bachmann aide. “You her fervent conservative supporters, whose enthusiasm never either get out of her way or you get out of the picture. She does seemed to wane. After years of speaking at sparsely attended not take disagreement well, and that was fine—that’s not GOP functions and joining mothers and local pastors for cof- unusual in Washington. But she would never listen; she was fees and conversation, she found the district’s suburban, evan- impulsive. There was a lot of passion, and that was great, but gelical community to be more than a circle of friends—it that was the only part of it that was great.” was a political bloc. Wetterling faded by Election Day and The most damning criticism of Bachmann on the Hill, whis- Bachmann won, 50 percent to 42 percent. Washington had no pered by conservative staffers, is that the House GOP does not idea what was coming. have its best face in the presidential field. Bachmann, says one senior GOP aide, is more sales than manufacturing. “I can’t think of one bill that she has crafted and passed,” he says. O understand Michele Bachmann, congresswoman, you Another chortles that her record is a series of television hits. have to understand how she handles herself behind Bachmann’s friends contend that she has attempted to do more, T closed doors on Capitol Hill, says Rep. Louie Gohmert, only to be blocked. a Texas Republican and one of her closest allies. In two such When others urged her to sit on the sidelines after the 2010 venues, he says, the House GOP conferences and the congres- midterms, she ran for a leadership slot, GOP conference chair, sional prayer group, she is a dynamic, inspiring figure. During against Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Texas fiscal hawk. She the weekly party confabs, where House Speaker John Boehner dropped her bid before the votes were tallied, but her support- opens the floor for off-the-record dissent, Bachmann does not ers were miffed at how she was largely ignored by party lead- pull punches. At the prayer group, she is the warmest of ers. One leadership aide, in a conversation earlier this month, friends. threw cold water on that claim. “There was no move to push That sweet-and-sour combination is unique in the Repub - her out,” he says. “That’s not how this works. She just never lican conference. Most Republicans keep quiet during the con- had the votes—period.” ference meetings, wary of irking the leadership. Others rarely, That loss forced Bachmann to grapple with her political if ever, spend time with their colleagues deep in prayer. future. At 55 years of age, nowhere near a committee chair- Bachmann garners respect for this reason, even from those manship, and not ensconced in the leadership, she needed to who do not much care for her. She is seen as a spoiler, to be find a way to do more than crow on the cable airwaves. She sure, but also as well-intentioned and powerful with conserva- was not interested in running for Senate, and though she en - tive constituencies. When Bachmann opposed the 2008 bank joyed her new post on the Intelligence Committee—assigned bailouts and Boehner’s April 2011 spending deal with Obama, after she lost her leadership race—it did not satiate her thirst she gave the leadership heartburn. She is doing it again this for the national stage and her hope to lead the fight against summer with her nonstop push against raising the debt ceiling. Obama. But it is Bachmann’s Obama barbs, more than anything, that This spring, Bachmann began to seriously think about run- have made her a nationally known name. In October 2008, she ning for president. She traveled around the country giving appeared on MSNBC and told Chris Matthews that Obama speeches, road-testing herself. It was not an entirely smooth may hold “anti-American views.” Her remarks set off a endeavor—the gaffes were embarrassing, setting off a string of firestorm. Many in the GOP establishment became skeptical of giggle-giggle stories on the political blogs. In New Hampshire her approach. Online and at rallies, however, there were mur- in March, she told local Republicans that they were from the murs of agreement, and a stream of small donations began to state “where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington flow into to her campaign. That fundraising faucet—$50 here, and Concord.” (The first shot in the Revolutionary War, as we $100 there—has not been shut off since, and neither has she. know, was fired in neighboring Massachusetts.) Her propensity to play with fire has nearly ended her con- If the incident had been an isolated slip, it probably would gressional career. In 2008, days after she appeared on have been forgotten. But Bachmann had made verbal stumbles

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before, such as saying that the founding fathers played an inte- Pawlenty is flailing. Romney is a machine—tough, precise, gral role in abolishing slavery. but no heart. Herman Cain, a popular black businessman and Her saving grace may be her sense of humor. After the tea-party leader, could potentially cut into her base, but at the Concord remark, Bachmann took to Facebook to discuss the CNN debate and elsewhere, he too has found it hard to compete flub with her supporters. “It was my mistake,” she wrote. with her brash, in-the-arena message. Rick Perry, the Texas “Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is governor who may jump in, could receive the same reception in where they are still proud of it!” Since then, the 24-hour story, Tea Party Land. You can compete, but, unless you are named which set politicos abuzz for a bit, has mostly become part of Sarah Palin, you may never enjoy Bachmann-level adoration. the background noise of her campaign, nothing more. Longtime GOP observers tip their hats to her crackling start but are taking a wait-and-see approach before they proclaim her the nominee. Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for ACHMANN is the first to acknowledge that she has been Tax Reform, says that her debate performance showed the Left an imperfect politician. But when it really counts, she that she is for real. “They thought of her as a talking head,” he B says, when she has to perform, she burns the midnight says. “They were not ready for her to speak in whole para- oil. graphs.” That said, “it is very tough to run for president from a Prior to the June 13 debate on CNN, Bachmann’s first as a House seat, but she is certainly making a good impression.” likely presidential candidate, she holed up in her home on On the timber front, Bachmann’s staff, long a problem in the Johnson Drive. She kept a light schedule, avoiding the press, House, appears to be stable, at least for the moment. She has shelving her BlackBerry. The kitchen, for years the family’s hired hands from Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential cam- Grand Central Terminal, suddenly was quiet, part library, part paign. Huckabee, a preacher and former Arkansas governor, war room. On the table sat a binder, chock full of policy briefs. won the caucuses last cycle, and his staffers know how to nav- In the chairs sat her prep team, including forensic guru Brett igate the state’s 99 counties. Still, things could get wild. Former O’Donnell, who has advised Sarah Palin in the podium arts. For Reagan adviser Ed Rollins, who managed Ross Perot’s 1992 a week, Bachmann pored over the book, ordering in Mexican campaign and Huckabee ’08, is on board to helm the ship. He food—her favorite—when necessary. Supreme Court cases is a major name—and one Bachmann wooed for months—but were discussed, and so was her record. O’Donnell pulled out is a longtime, ever-swirling political tornado who loves to dusty videotapes from past congressional races, polishing away knocks rivals, the press, you name it. tics and mannerisms. But all of that—the inside baseball of presidential politics— On Monday night, Bachmann arrived at Saint Anselm is the sideshow, Bachmann tells me. She is running to change College, a liberal-arts school, with a small entourage of aides, the country, not to make headlines or score a cable-news show. family, and friends. Once outside the green room, alone on “I know what this will take,” she says. “We need someone with CNN’s makeshift dais, she roamed, eyeing the stars and stripes a titanium spine who will stand up and repeal Obamacare and etched onto the set. She placed her hands on the podium, shift- turn this economy around.” ed her shoulders, and exhaled. As the cameras went live, she Bachmann hopes her campaign will be a magnet for people prayed with her hands clasped, her mouth closed. Only Marcus, of all political stripes, whether they are fed up with Obama or watching from afar, could tell. with the GOP presidential field’s tired talking points. She is a Within seconds, moderator John King, a silver-haired face familiar to activists, but the rest of the country is just tun- smoothie, cut to her. “Hi, my name is Michele Bachmann,” she ing in. At this point, she says, what seemed implausible after said, her white teeth gleaming. “I am a former federal tax- losing her leadership race—standing a real chance of contend- litigation attorney. I am a businesswoman. We started our ing for the GOP presidential nomination—appears possible. If own successful company.” The rest of her story came out in you’re lucky, you end up on the ticket. More likely, Bachmann bursts: congresswoman, wife, mother, foster parent. The crowd could run for reelection and remain a player in the House. cheered. Bachmann swats away talk of contingency plans. “I believe To ensure that she would make headlines at the debate, Obama is highly vulnerable, that he will be a one-term presi- regardless of how things unfolded, Bachmann had decided to dent,” she says. “I will bring the resolve and the guts we need reveal some news in her first response, announcing that she had to have in the White House so that the United States can remain officially filed papers to run—a side dish to what turned out to the indispensable nation of the world.” be a strong performance. If things break her way, Bachmann could be that leader. Her On question after question, Bachmann kept her voice even, early stops on the trail have the energy and crowds that the so- her answers focused. She talked up her efforts to repeal the called frontrunners rarely see, and most of them have been run- Dodd-Frank financial-regulation law; she underscored her ning for months. Her activist background, her motherly instinct, opposition to abortion. She also looked like a star—and not the all of it makes for potent, visceral political appeal. Beltway type. On a stage full of stiff suits, she popped. And don’t think for a minute that she is not serious. A few hours after our chat, as she exits the Electric Park Ballroom, Tom Petty’s “American Girl” blasts. The speakers are rocking, the ACK in Waterloo in late June, Bachmann continues to crowd is ecstatic. Bachmann is swarmed. She keeps her chin up, wow Republicans with her easy manner, her pointed her smile wide. Marcus shadows her as she poses for pictures B attacks on Obama, and her up-from-Iowa story. Her and kisses infants. The deejay turns up the volume. Bachmann, kick-off rally was a winner. More important, her path to the with a quick glance, eyes me in the corner. She nods. nomination, though still difficult, is looking clearer by the day. Her look says it all: She intends to win.

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extend or improve life but will not approve reimbursements for procedures that have high costs and low benefits. Individuals who want such discretionary procedures would have to find their Haves and own funds to pay for them. This approach, which also is favored by the Obama administration, implies a two-tiered health-care system. One tier consists of necessary medical procedures. The Have-Mores government guarantees that everyone has access to this tier. The other tier consists of discretionary medical procedures, available only to people who can afford them. A two-tiered health-care system is inevitable The market-oriented alternative to the rationing-by-experts approach is for individuals to choose health plans and medical BY ARNOLD KLING procedures on their own. Even if most people are able to obtain health care in a market-oriented system, voters are unlikely to s health care a normal economic good, subject to limitations want to see people denied necessary procedures because of and tradeoffs? Economist Paul Krugman says that it is: “We lack of wealth. Accordingly, we are likely to see some form of have to do something about health care costs, which means government insurance so that everyone will be able to undergo I that we have to find a way to start saying no. In particular, necessary procedures. given continuing medical innovation, we can’t maintain a system This approach also implies a two-tiered health-care system. in which Medicare essentially pays for anything a doctor recom- One tier consists of necessary medical procedures. For poor mends.” households, a voucher or other form of government support However, there are those who disagree. For example, econo- guarantees that everyone has access to this tier. The other tier mist Paul Krugman writes: consists of discretionary procedures, available only to those who can afford them. How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to Assigning key decisions to government experts will lead to a refer to medical patients as “consumers”? The relationship between two-tiered health-care system. Using vouchers to give the choice patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost to consumers will also lead to a two-tiered health-care system. sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act We will end up with a two-tiered health-care system either way. of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car—and their only complaint is that it isn’t This reflects the reality of health care. Only some procedures commercial enough. What has gone wrong with us? are clearly necessary for longer or better life. Many procedures, perhaps most, offer benefits that are far less certain. These pro- Thus, in the same column, Krugman occupies both sides of the cedures, which range from routine diagnostic screening to divide. On one hand, he derides the notion that we cannot put a heroic late-stage treatments, have some potential value. For the price on health care; on the other hand, he derides the notion that majority of patients on whom they are performed, the outcome is health care is a “commercial transaction.” no better, and sometimes worse, than it would have been without All of us wrestle with these sorts of mixed feelings. When we the procedure. think of health care as a matter of life or death, we cannot ima - Pundits speak about the health-care budget in misleading gine applying spending limits, accepting trade-offs, or employing ways. One example is the phrase “bend the cost curve.” To iden- other economic concepts. When we remember that the United tify health-care costs as the problem places the issue entirely on states spends about twice as much per capita on health care as the supply side. The implication is that services are delivered other advanced nations without enjoying obviously superior inefficiently and/or that providers are paid excessively. health outcomes, and when we confront the budget outlook for Medicaid and Medicare, we cannot imagine continuing to make an open-ended commitment to pay for any and all medical pro- O one can deny that American health care has inefficien- cedures. cies or that doctors earn high incomes. But the relentless What we want is unlimited access to medical services without N growth of health-care spending does not reflect in - having to pay for them. But to the extent that health care is paid creasing inefficiency or rising provider compensation. Instead, it for collectively, our access will have to be limited by the institu- mostly results from more extensive use of medical services, par- tions doing the paying, whether government or private insurance ticularly those that require specialists and sophisticated equip- companies. On the other hand, to the extent that responsibility is ment. given to individuals to share in the cost of our medical care, we Experts raise the level of debate when they focus on this trend will have to make decisions based in part on cost. rather than on “costs.” Even in discussing utilization, however, they can be misleading. For example, in an op-ed in the Financial Times during the debate over Obamacare, budget director Peter rUgMAN would resolve our conundrum by having a Orszag wrote: panel of government experts set policies determining K which procedures are to be covered. He assumes that the Based on estimates by Dartmouth College and others, the Us experts will approve reimbursements for procedures that clearly spends about $700bn a year on healthcare that does nothing to improve Americans’ health outcomes. Mr. Kling is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of Crisis of reducing the number of tests, procedures and other medical Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care. costs that do not improve health presents an enormous opportunity.

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What is misleading about this is that it suggests that one can 99 percent of cases? An operation that successfully treats cancer easily identify hundreds of billions of dollars of procedures that in 2 percent of cases? provide no benefit. Unfortunately, the problem is considerably The process also is going to be politicized and lobbied. Some more subtle. The high rate of spending on health care in this constituents will insist that fertility treatment is necessary, while country is due mostly to procedures that provide at least some others will view it as discretionary. The makers of drugs that benefit in at least some cases. On average, the benefits are treat erectile dysfunction will argue that their products are a vital low, but they are not zero. This makes cutbacks much more necessity. problematic than they would be if the procedures truly had no Private health-insurance companies also will draw a line benefit. between what they will cover and what they will not cover. But Consider the following: government will have to be especially selective in its definition l In the United States, the number of MRI and CT exams per of “necessary care” in order to get control of its budget. capita is more than double the average for OECD countries. The A taxpayer-funded system will ensure that households have benefit of these scans for aggregate health outcomes has not the funds to receive necessary care. This would be true whether been demonstrated. MRI and CT exams provide real benefits in poor households were given complete freedom of choice or particular cases, but their extensive use means that, on average, were limited to a single health plan. They could be enrolled in a they provide no documentable benefit. government-run program along the lines of the Veterans’ Affairs l Screening for colon cancer is recommended for all system. Alternatively, they could be given vouchers that would Americans over the age of 50 at least once every ten years, and allow them to purchase any health plan, provided that it met more frequently for those with risk factors. However, about 90 certain government-specified criteria. percent of these procedures are likely to turn up nothing. In The instinct of market-oriented policy proponents is to Canada and in other countries, routine colonoscopy is not prac- fight for vouchers for low-income households and oppose a ticed. government-run program. For poor households, a more paterna - l In December of 2007, my father was diagnosed with termi- listic system, closely managed by government officials, nal esophageal cancer. In January of 2008, he had a fall and might be inevitable, and in fact might provide better service. broke his hip. In many other countries, he would have been The important policy objective is to ensure that middle-class placed in a queue, and he probably would have died before households retain choices and a fair share of responsibility for obtaining surgical treatment. Instead, he was operated on the their health care. next day. But he was never able to walk or to leave the hospital Americans will have the freedom to choose discretionary care. before he died in April, and thus he is an example of how tens of In the United States, it is highly unlikely that an ideological com- thousands of dollars can be spent in the last few months of life. mitment to egalitarianism will prove so strong as to convince l In January of 2011, my mother-in-law was given a rela tively voters to restrict health-care services that people may obtain new procedure to treat partial blockage of her aorta. The proce- with their own funds. Krugman clearly does not envision such a dure was successful, but she immediately contracted an in - scenario. fection and died. Although doctors had good intentions, the Affluent and middle-class households will be able to consume outcome probably was worse than it would have been if she had more health-care services than poor households. These addi- never undergone the procedure. tional services will consist, however, of discretionary care, and l On a more positive note, a friend in his 50s was successful- the effect on average health outcomes will be minimal. The main ly treated for kidney cancer by means of a therapy that the doc- benefit may be to offer reassurance (scans that show nothing) or tors said works in less than 5 percent of patients. Given the low hope (procedures that rarely succeed). success rate, the cost per life saved may be in the millions of Government health-care programs will cease to be open- dollars, but when you are close to the person, it seems worth it. ended. Medicare is currently structured to reimburse health-care It is not known in advance how any procedure will affect an providers for a potentially limitless number of procedures. outcome, and so the individual always has an incentive to re - Medicaid is a similarly open-ended commitment on the part of ceive treatment if there is some possible benefit, particularly if the federal government to subsidize state programs. the cost is paid by insurance. Yet on average, the benefits may be Such arrangements will end as the line between necessary and low relative to the costs—and Americans choose to undergo so unnecessary care is drawn. In order to control spending, govern- many procedures with high average costs and low average ben- ment must have mechanisms in place to enforce a fixed budget. efits that the budgets of Medicare and Medicaid are under severe The obvious alternatives are vouchers and rationing. Vouchers stress, while private health insurance is difficult to afford. This can be allocated in fixed-dollar amounts, giving the government is not sustainable. a precise handle on its budget. Under a more socialized system, government can fix the total compensation it will pay to various health-care providers, leaving it up to doctors to ration the use of IVEn the foregoing, I think that America’s health-care available resources, including their own time. system is likely to evolve along the following lines: Eventually, our health-care policy will have to limit the G The government will draw a boundary between neces- amount of taxpayer funding for discretionary care. By narrow- sary care and discretionary care. This process is going to be ing the policy focus to necessary care, the government can avoid imperfect. It ought to involve comparative-effectiveness the ineluctable escalation of spending that is a property of our research, but that in itself cannot and should not supply all of the current programs. But access to discretionary care will remain answers. There are inevitable ethical questions involved. Which for those who can afford it—meaning that our choice is between is necessary: an operation that successfully cures tennis elbow in two kinds of two tiers.

3 5 longview_QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/28/2011 9:58 PM Page 36

The Long View BY ROB LONG

believe the government has a duty to FEMALE 29: Who benefits? That’s a provide health care for its citizens.” good question. Who would like to go first? MALE 27: That’s a very corporate way MALE 19: I think the pizza guy is here. to look at it. It’s offensive. FOR AARP STRATEGY MODERATOR: No, he’s not. That’s just MODERATOR: Come on! Can we GROUP ONLY the cleaning staff next door. please focus? I have five statements I MALE 27: That’s racist. need to get your reaction to. That’s it. CLOSE HOLD DOCUMENT MODERATOR: I wasn’t trying to be My God it’s hard to get people your racist. But the noise next door is, in age to think about anything for longer Focus Group Results fact, coming from the cleaning crew. than ten seconds. MALE 27: You assume. But you don’t MALE 22: I find your anger threaten- AARP Medicare and Entitlement know for a fact. You’re a racist. ing. Reform Messaging Strategy MODERATOR: I wonder if we could MODERATOR: I’m sorry. Present: table that discussion and get back to FEMALE 29: I feel very at risk. MODERATOR reacting to some statements on health MODERATOR: I said I was sorry. I’m MALE, AGE 19 care. just frustrated. I’m trying to get MALE, AGE 22 FEMALE 29: I’m concerned that there through this. MALE, AGE 27 isn’t enough diversity on this panel to MALE 27: That’s an awesome tattoo. FEMALE, AGE 18 reach a meaningful consensus. FEMALE 25: Thanks. It’s the Chinese FEMALE, AGE 25 MODERATOR: We’re not trying to symbol for “peaceful transformation FEMALE, AGE 29 reach a consensus. We’re trying to get into empowerment.” some reactions to a series of state- MODERATOR: No, it’s not. MODERATOR: Welcome, everyone, and ments that— FEMALE 25: Excuse me? It is. thanks for coming. As you know, there FEMALE 25: Is there anyone on this MODERATOR: I speak Mandarin, okay? are currently several proposals being panel right now who self-identifies as It’s the symbol for “diesel fuel talked about nationally about the prob- a member of the LGBT community? only.” lem with soaring Medicare costs, and I MALE 22: I don’t like to be categorized FEMALE 25: That’s not what my tattoo wanted to get your thoughts on these. as a letter. guy said. You all represent a generation that FEMALE 25: I’m sorry. MODERATOR: Oh, then by all means, will, in effect, be financing the health- MALE 22: Letters are reductive. If any- forget I said anything. care costs for the generations ahead of thing, I’m a number. Or one of those FEMALE 29: I’m offended by this con- you, and I thought we could spend the letters that’s like two letters together. versation. next hour reflecting on statements FEMALE 25: Like that a-and-e thing in MALE 22: I’m offended too. As an a- about health-care expectations. Okay? French? and-e combination. Can we begin? MALE 22: Totally. MALE 27: This is so typical. You see MALE 19: There’s pizza, right? FEMALE 25: That’s very cool. our generation with our awesome tat- MODERATOR: Yes, sir, there’s pizza on FEMALE 29: My larger concern here toos and big round things in our ears, the way. is that we’re supposed to be quote- with our denim and our stocking MALE 22: Vegan? unquote reacting to health-care state- caps, and you instantly think we’re FEMALE 25: Yeah, we were promised ments when in fact we haven’t either stupid. You want to know what we vegan options. I feel very strongly gathered a diverse group of voices or think about health care? We think it that you should offer vegan, vegetar- dealt with the nation’s massive envi- should incorporate more alternative ian, and cruelty-free pizza choices. ronmental problems. cures like herbs and body rubs. MODERATOR: Understood. It’s all MALE 22: That’s so true. It’s like, what FEMALE 29: Especially herbs. taken care of. The pizza is on the way. about health-care for the planet? FEMALE 25: Especially body rubs. Now, if I could, I’d like you all to MODERATOR: Okay. Yes. Fine. But for MALE 22: With a vegan option. think about what kind of health-care right now, for right now in this room, MODERATOR: If you’ll excuse me, I’m system you expect when you reach can we just respond to health-care going to call the AARP and tell them retirement age. As you know, the cur- statements. For instance, how would not to worry. Sir, miss? Sir? Miss? rent system will be technically insol- you, as people in your twenties, re - MALE 19: Hmmmm? vent well before you reach retirement spond to this statement: “I’m con- FEMALE 18: Yeah? age. I’d like each of you to reflect cerned that the generations ahead of MODERATOR: I don’t want to interrupt on that as I ask you to respond to the mine will bankrupt the nation before your, um, socializing, but the focus following statement: “I personally I can receive my benefits”? group is over.

3 6 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 1 8 , 2 0 1 1 lileks--READY_QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/28/2011 9:58 PM Page 37

Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS To Save the Dead-Eyed Child?

hILe the dead-eyed child squirms in your Today’s games contain much more realistic depictions of hands, piteously begging to be freed, the ballistic perforations. “Realism,” however, is a shifting stan- voice in your head gives you a choice: kill dard. In the mid-1990s, which is two geological ages ago in W it, or save it. You suspect there will be con- gamer terms, there was “controversy” over Doom, which sequences either way. now looks like you’re fighting off angry pieces of Lego. That’s a scenario in the video game BioShock, and you Duke Nukem provided a ration of hysteria when someone can imagine the outrage: This is entertainment? What sort of heard from someone else that the player could shoot strip- culture produces such depravity? Perhaps this will help: The pers. Ink was spilled like blood in the last reel of a Peckin - child is possessed by a drug-induced insanity, she’s accom- pah film, condemning this new low, but it missed the point. panied by a lumbering robot that wants to kill you, you’re in You could shoot anything in the game. If, however, you hit a ruined underwater city populated by people driven mad by what we call in the post-Weiner era a “featured dancer,” you genetic manipulation, and the entire story is about a society would be swarmed by policemen who had been mutated constructed along the principles of Ayn Rand. into bipedal hogs by space aliens, and you would die. It was hope that helps. If not, play the game. BioShock rewards the game’s way of establishing a moral code. your humanity, plays with your loyalties, picks apart your Yes, that sounds silly. You like to think that all your par- character’s sanity. It’s a way of telling a story that some hes- enting instilled the “don’t shoot the strippers” lesson early itate to call Art, because unlike Tolstoy, on, if only by the behavior you modeled. you can shoot fireballs from your hand. But then a gamer of a certain age hears But for the kids who grew up controlling about games like Grand Theft Auto, digital alter egos, it’s high literature—and which most disapproving press accounts was probably illegal for minors in Cali - describe as a sociopathic instruction kit fornia. Until the courts weighed in. on the best way to apply a tire iron to a Late in June the Supremes struck down streetwalker, and the gamer yearns for the a California law that said it shall be illegal old days when there were codes of honor. to sell, rent, describe, admit the existence Oh, for the simple Manichean duality of of, or otherwise disseminate a violent Pong! Then Pac-Man ruined everything video game to minors, even if they can by making us seek the fruit at the expense join the Army after their birthday to - of our own safety. That’s when it all fell morrow and get a serious gun with actual apart. bullets. The decision contained lots of solid eye-glazing If games weren’t the primary daily entertainment option constitutional folderol, most of which confounds parents for millions of minor boys, it might not be an issue. But who wonder why it shouldn’t be illegal to sell a ten-year-old concern over a few bad games vilifies titles like L.A. StrangleFest Death Party. (But Mom! The controller Noire—you’re a cop in a Chandler world—or the sprawl- vibrates to simulate the death throes of your victims! Timmy ing western Red Dead Redemption. Not for the Pooh set, has it! Pleeeeeze!) Shouldn’t the Supreme Court take on real but if they’re off-limits to a 16-year-old, then so’s a Road issues, like whether protected speech includes marching Runner cartoon. right down to the store that sold your kid the horrible game Basic kvetch: Does there have to be a law, for heaven’s and giving them a piece of your mind? sake? When you have a law that says kids can’t buy the Some on the right liked the pushback of a speech-regulat- game, but shall borrow a friend’s copy on the sly, then ing law; others worried about the kinder-kulture coarseness you get rulings that establish a minor’s free-speech right of shoot-’em-ups. either way, you can’t say it was a glib to Grand Theft Auto, which means you’ll have a kid sue decision: The Court noted that literature abounds with vio- his parents because they didn’t give him Chainsaw Bob lence, citing some torture-porn from homer. This might be Orphanage Fracas IV for Christmas. It’s not hard for par- relevant if kids were playing homer simulators. But reading ents to find out what a game’s about, thanks to this thing is not doing; watching is not doing. Games are kinetic enter- called “the Internet.” They might be alarmed to learn tainment activities, if you will. They’re spellbinding and there’s also a popular game in which small children are immersive. There will always be those who see such statutes encouraged to imprison creatures in cramped, dark spheres, in the continuum of hapless prudery: Why, back in the 19th letting them out only to battle in cockfights that often send century, there were laws preventing an adult from describ- one to the hospital. Michael Vick got put away for some- ing a bout of fisticuffs with semaphore flags if there was a thing like that. minor present. That comstockery was struck down by the The game goes by the name of Pokémon. courts, too. Same thing here. But not really. By the way, if you release the child in BioShock, you get all sorts of rewards. Never met a gamer who didn’t let the Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. kid go. TWO INTERACTIVE SOFTWARE - TAKE

3 7 books7-18_QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/28/2011 6:26 PM Page 38 Books, Arts & Manners

adviser henry Kissinger set in motion a engage in all three simultaneously to grad- pattern of unproductive relations. during ually and patiently advance their objec- Opening to the negotiations, china continually raised tives. When Kissinger turns to Western the price of doing business, erecting ob - strategic culture, however, he creates a The East stacles that Washington had to remove for straw man. To assert that in the clause - the prize of normal relations. This pattern witzian tradition, “with war the statesman DAN BLUMENTHAL of sino-american relations has barely enters a new and distinct phase” is a strik- changed. ing misinterpretation. in fact, as Kissinger The story of how the rhythms, tenor, himself acknowledges, the Prussian mili- and characteristics of the sino-american tary theorist made precisely the opposite relationship began is recalled in vivid point: War, he famously wrote, is politics detail and with characteristic eloquence by by other means. in fact, politics at all lev- Kissinger in his new book, On China. The els drives the american way of war in all brilliant and larger-than-life Kissinger was its dimensions. it would certainly come a central player in Nixon’s china policy. as a surprise to Gens. david Petraeus and The book is thus equal parts memoir, ray odierno as well as to amb. ryan analysis of chinese strategic history, and crocker, the architects of the iraq War attempt by Kissinger to explain his role turnaround, that the soldiers and diplomats On China, by Henry Kissinger in sino-american relations over the past they led were destined to engage in force- (Penguin, 586 pp., $36) three decades. The history portion, to on-force clashes devoid of political con- which Kissinger devotes considerable siderations. The diplomatic-military team res. richard NixoN entered space, is the weakest part of the book. it is behind the iraq surge employed highly office with a grand plan to re - riddled with errors and clichés. (These sophisticated statecraft—combining shuffle the geopolitical deck. mistakes have been well documented by killing terrorists with providing security P china had top billing in his the scholars arthur Waldron, Jonathan and helping iraq fashion a stable society. designs, and an opening to Beijing was spence, and Jonathan Mirsky.) For exam- For an earlier example of american stra- within reach. Nixon primarily wanted ple, whether china ever had a unitary tegic practice, one need only look to a china card to play against the soviet civilization or was as homogeneous a Lincoln’s approach to war. our civil War Union. he also viewed relations with Bei - populace as Kissinger describes is a mat- president rode herd on his generals to jing as a potential way to exit Vietnam ter of debate among historians. ensure that the aim of all military opera- honorably. Kissinger can be excused for the weak- tions was to keep the Union intact rather china wanted—desperately needed—a nesses of his history of china. his main than to drive back a southern insurrection. thaw with the United states as well. purpose in writing the history is to prove even as war raged, and he become more Beijing was emerging from the horren- that china has a distinct way of statecraft focused on crushing the rebellion, he kept dous cultural revolution unleashed by and a worldview that colored his nego - a keen eye on how to rebuild and recon- chairman Mao Tse-tung. The soviet tiations and continues to shape sino- struct the south. Kissinger is far too in - Union was prepared to “smash” china as american relations today. in Kissinger’s telligent to make this mistake about border disputes between the two powers telling, the elements of this statecraft clausewitz specifically and american were escalating. and, by the early 1970s, include subtlety, indirection, and strategic statecraft more broadly. Perhaps his pur- when sino-american negotiations intensi- positioning. The chinese play wei qi—an pose is to deliberately exaggerate a con- fied, Beijing feared that Vietnam might ancient game that one wins by properly trast with china? win the war against the United states positioning oneself and surrounding But his depiction of chinese strategic (ironically, with the assistance of china), an opponent. Westerners play chess, a traditions is off the mark as well. it is not enter into an alliance with the soviet more direct and confrontational game. clear that china always employs strategies Union, and challenge china’s asian hege- Kissinger uses this metaphor to describe of subtlety, indirection, and encirclement. mony. in sum, the People’s republic was each side’s strategic inclinations. once While china achieved surprise in its inter- back on its heels and eager to do business this contrast is established, Kissinger turns vention in Korea, the waves of chinese with the United states. to how sino-american diplomacy has soldiers attacking american soldiers did While Washington faced its own diffi- unfolded. so rather directly. its bracketing of Taiwan culties, china’s position was far more pre- But the book’s dominant theme—the with missiles in 1995 and 1996 was not carious. But instead of negotiating for the disjuncture between chinese and West - exactly a display of subtlety either. best normalization deal possible with a ern strategic practice—is problematic. Kissinger’s pop assessments of chinese weakened china, then–national-security according to Kissinger, chinese states- versus american ways of strategy point men—unlike their Western counter- to a larger problem: his analyses of Mr. Blumenthal is director of Asian studies at the parts—make no fine distinction between the sources of american foreign policy American Enterprise Institute. diplomacy, politics, and war; rather, they are cursory and somewhat shallow. if

3 8 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 1 8 , 2 0 1 1 base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/27/2011 3:44 PM Page 1 Page 1

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS American statecraft is as Kissinger de- the watch of national-security adviser dicing the final disposition of competing scribes—characterized by frontal assaults Zbigniew Brzezinski—a kindred spirit of claims of sovereignty. (It is one of the in the military realm and a lack of nuance Kissinger in the arts of realpolitik—that gross perversities of international politics in diplomacy—then of course China will China attacked Vietnam with tacit U.S. that North Korea is a signatory to U.N. seem more sophisticated and subtle. But support. conventions that it regularly violates and the analysis holds neither for the United During the ten years of Sino-American receives lavish attention from U.S. diplo- States nor for China. In the U.S., the diplomacy that led to a normalization of mats, while Taiwan, a democracy with a “exceptionalism” Kissinger describes as a relations, China accomplished all of its stellar human-rights record, is excluded sometime driver of foreign policy indeed goals. It deterred a Soviet attack, secured and isolated.) Leaving aside the injustice enjoys a strong purchase both in the polity the de-recognition of Taiwan, began to done to Taiwan, American geopolitical at large and among its leaders. Americans receive much-needed investment from interests were harmed by this diplomatic strongly believe that their country is the United States, and demonstrated to malpractice. A dose of clarity about the exceptional: It is founded on a set of Vietnam that it would not cede its domi- U.S. and U.N. position on the island’s sta- ideals and principles that are universal. nance in Asia. It was indeed quite an tus could deter conflict. Finally, Kissinger But Washington usually shows great accomplishment for a poor, internally rav- writes that he made the withdrawal of U.S. sophistication in how and when it presses aged country facing a dire threat from a military forces from Taiwan “conditional others to accept these universal principles. superpower to receive unrequited conces- on the settlement of the Indochina war.” Take the case of Asia: American leaders sions and support from the United States. Indeed, the war was settled—with the pushed their stalwart Cold War allies But China’s success may have had less to humiliating withdrawal of U.S. forces South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines do with diplomatic acumen than with the leaving the South Vietnamese to the tender toward democratic reform. We needed diplomacy of Kissinger and his succes- mercies of Ho Chi Minh’s followers. these countries to help contain Com - sors. Nixon and Kissinger’s opening to China munism and looked the other way when Kissinger was mesmerized by China’s was important and consequential—as they abused their citizens’ rights until we leadership, including the murderous Mao, Nixon famously wrote, we could not let could do so no more. If this alliance Chou En-lai, and Deng Xiaoping. He was this massive and once-great country with diplomacy is not an example of sophisti- too enthusiastic about the prospect of all its latent talent sit outside the “family of cated statecraft, then what is? In contrast, achieving a world-historical breakthrough nations.” The opening also paved the way Chinese statecraft over the past three with an ancient civilization he clearly for Deng to unleash the impressive entre- years undermines any claim to Chinese reveres. In retrospect there is no reason preneurial energies of the Chinese people. subtlety. Beijing has managed to antago- why Nixon-Kissinger, Ford-Scowcroft- But the supposedly hardheaded realpolitik- nize Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Kissinger, and Carter-Brzezinski could ers who negotiated normalization made a the Philippines, Australia, and India—has- not have driven a harder bargain. China series of bad deals. As he himself points tening the very encirclement Beijing so was in a bad state. It is likely that Wash - out, Kissinger set the tone for future fears. ington could have gotten more out of the diplomatic transactions—and like him, This brings us back to the story of Sino- negotiations. For example, under Presi - Kissinger’s successors failed to see the American rapprochement. In the end, dent Nixon, then–ambassador to the leverage the U.S. had over China. In 1989, Kissinger’s story is damning of his own United Nations George H. W. Bush tried as China felt the heat from Communism’s diplomacy. He writes that Nixon had two unsuccessfully to maintain recognition collapse in Eastern Europe, the cry for free- main goals: garnering Chinese help in an for the ROC in the United Nations while dom among domestic protesters, and the American withdrawal from Vietnam and simultaneously supporting the PRC’s emergence of a reformist faction within taking advantage of the Sino-Soviet split claim to China’s permanent seat on the the Chinese elite, Deng Xiaoping sent to create a more favorable balance of Security Council. tanks into Tiananmen Square to kill the power for the United States. But the price But Kissinger makes no mention of protesters. It took only a few months for of this policy turned out to be unduly high. this effort. Did he not support it? Surely a Washington to promise Deng secretly that Kissinger entered the negotiations without more sophisticated diplomacy could have all would be fine after a decent interval. preconditions, but China had many. Most allowed for U.N. recognition of both the (Kissinger is quick to point out that he pressing for China was its demand that the PRC and the ROC—just as both East and played a role in this particular turnabout.) U.S. abandon its Cold War ally, Taiwan. West Germany and North and South In retrospect, that was the time to exert Kissinger was too pliable. Washington Korea were recognized—without preju- maximum pressure on China to form agreed to withdraw military support, and, democratic institutions. under Kissinger’s successors, diplomatic And therein lies the heart of the problem recognition to the Republic of China. with Kissinger’s book and, more impor- What did Kissinger actually receive in tant, his diplomacy. Democratic reform in return? The book does not provide any China is the last great hope for lasting concrete answers. peace in Asia. What the “realpolitikers” Moreover, it’s clear in retrospect that never grasp is that for Americans, a pref- China’s eagerness for American backing erence for democracy’s march is not a was driven by a desire to squash Vietnam’s paean to special interests, but a deeply ambitions in Southeast Asia and relieve “You’ve written a nice editorial on Sarah Palin here, imbedded national theory of how peace the danger of a Soviet attack. It was under but change ‘said’ to ‘spewed’ and ‘speech’ to ‘vitriol.’” is won.

4 0 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 1 8 , 2 0 1 1 books7-18_QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/28/2011 6:26 PM Page 41

far from patently noxious, while other Defenders of the modern welfare state kinds end in cruelty, horror, and the gulag. indignantly deny that its modest, Fabian Was Stove believes that bad benevolence is forms of benevolence have anything in likely to be vast and even universal in common with the fanatic philanthropy of Malthus scope; it has for the objects of its solicitude Bentham or Lenin. Modern Sweden is not, not a particular person or a small group of to be sure, Bolshevik Russia, but Stove Right? people, but great multitudes of men— argues that, whatever form it takes, bad often, indeed, all of humanity. Bad bene - benevolence is characterized by the same MICHAEL KNOX BERAN volence, moreover, is what Stove calls evil: It creates more misery than it relieves. “external” in its operation. The altruist Stove is right—but for the wrong reason. proposes to bring about the happiness of At the heart of his book is a Mal thu sian cri- others, not by changing their characters, tique of the welfare state. In 1798, Thomas but by altering their circumstances: He Malthus, curate of a Surrey par ish, pub- does nothing to buck up the inner man. lished An Essay on the Principle of Pop- Stove argues, finally, that the dispenser ulation. In it he argued that anti-poverty of bad benevolence is likely to be disinter- programs create the poor they maintain. ested. Marx and Bentham could not know Poverty, Malthus reasoned, checks the personally all of those whom they intended growth of population; anti-poverty pro- to help, nor did they expect a material grams counteract the check. “exemption reward for their philanthropic exertions. from anxiety about how your children are There was, Stove writes, “‘nothing in it’ (as to live,” Stove writes, “must tend to pro- we say)” for them. I wonder if this is quite duce a larger number of children than you What’s Wrong with Benevolence: Happiness, Private right. The dispenser of bad benevolence is would otherwise have had.” More chil- Property, and the Limits of Enlightenment, by less a disinterested figure than an uninter- dren, but not, alas, more food. The result? David Stove, edited by Andrew Irvine ested one. He yearns to save Mankind, and Food grows dearer; more people fall into (Encounter, 221 pp., $23.95) has little sympathy for actual men. His penury and throw themselves on the par - kindness, being a perpetual abstraction, is ish. Taxes rise to support the swelling dole, e live in an age in compatible not only with intensely selfish driving still others into poverty. The pro- which humanity is the motives, but also with appalling cruelty. So gram has created more of the thing it was fashion.” So Sir John subtly has self-love been woven into the intended to eliminate. ‘W Hawkins (he had the fabric of our natures that it is in many But do even the most improvident peo- misfortune to write the other biography of instances vain to conjecture where kind- ple really base their sexual commerce on Dr. Johnson) lamented in 1787. David ness ends and selfishness begins. But sure- assumptions about the poor laws? Western Stove, an Australian philosopher whose ly Henry James was on to something when europe has some of the most comprehen- lucid and original writings have provoked in The Princess Casamassima he showed sive welfare regimes on the planet, yet the fresh interest since his death in 1994, knew that the benevolence of the princess her- French welfare state, far from stimulating what Sir John meant. In his posthumously self—a great lady who goes in for slum- improvident procreation, has been com- published book What’s Wrong with Bene - ming and social reform—is prompted by pelled to offer Frenchmen special boun- volence, Stove argues that a misplaced the acutest self-love. The princess wants to ties—on top of the usual welfare-state faith in the virtues of altruism is the great feel herself virtuous (for her riches have subsidies—to bring more Jacqueses and humbug of our age, one that has conjured given her a bad conscience), and she wants Mariannes into the world. a welfare state of such colossally good to have others in her power (for their own Malthus wrote his essay to explode the intentions that, even as it devours the sub- good, of course). fantasies of William Godwin, but he was stance of the commonwealth, there is (in Can there be any doubt that the philan- forced by the necessities of his theory to Stove’s view) “no social force in sight” thropic insanity of, say, Bentham was the question the political economy of Adam capable of stopping it. fruit of morbid self-regard and passionate Smith as well. Malthus argued that, given It might seem paradoxical that charity, will? “But for George the Third,” Bentham a limited supply of food, man’s passion which St. Paul ranks among the virtues, said, “all the paupers in the country would, to propagate will always leave the poorest should be at times an evil. But one has long ago, have been under my manage- of the poor at the edge of subsistence. only to consider 20th-century Com mu- ment.” Stove is closer to the truth when he Manufacturing labor cannot change the nism, Stove says, to know that it is so. says that benevolence is moral heroin. It equation: Wealth derived from it, Malthus For it “is quite certain,” he writes, “that intoxicates the conscience, and dulls the wrote, has “little or no tendency to better the psychological root of 20th-century pain that even a morally obtuse person may the condition of the labouring poor” or Communism is benevolence.” What Stove feel when he plays the tyrant. Thus the give them “a greater command of the nec- wants to know is why some acts of bene - slaveholder, affecting a paternal interest in essaries and conveniences of life.” Smith, volence, if they are not actually good, are his chattels, persuades himself that slavery by contrast, argued that liberty of action is a benevolent institution; thus Bentham, and the division of labor produce a “uni- Mr. Beran is a contributing editor of City Journal designing his various geometrical torture versal opulence which extends itself to the and the author, most recently, of Pathology of the chambers, persuades himself that he is lowest ranks of the people,” a vision at Elites. saving humanity. odds with the dismal calculus of Malthus.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS History during the last two centuries has dence has shut them out from the possibil- vindicated smith. The “global population ities—the upside—of an expanding econ- increased fourfold in the 20th century,” omy. At the same time, the tribunes who Managing writes Matthew Taylor, head of the Royal administer the wealth the benevolent state society for the Encouragement of Arts, exists to redistribute have an interest in War Manufactures, and Commerce, “but per creating new kinds of dependence. In capita resource consumption multiplied doing so they enlarge their own power and MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS nineteen fold.” The technological revolu- steadily sap the vitality of the productive tion that produced this embarrassment of element of the nation, which alone can riches might seem to refute Malthus’s pes- generate the wealth and possibility smith simism. stove, however, believes that the foresaw. most significant of the advances, energy The other difficulty with What’s Wrong derived from oil, was a lucky break—a with Benevolence is stove’s argument that fluke that has enabled the welfare states the Enlightenment “invented” benevo- temporarily to evade the pains nature in- lence. This is too simple. The English poor flicts upon those who transgress her law of 1601, an early example of flawed Malthusian laws. The benevolent state benevolence, antedated the utopias of might, stove concedes, “be saved again by the philosophes by several generations. another energy revolution,” but this, he Elizabeth I’s measures were a response to thinks, is unlikely. the dissolution of the charitable institutions A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush Administration stove may be right: It is possible that we of medieval Christianity: The Virgin Mismanaged the Reconstruction of Afghanistan, have reached the limit of innovation—the Queen replaced the Virgin Mary as the reg- by Dov S. Zakheim (Brookings, 320 pp., end, not of history, but of progress. such a nant dispenser of mercy. The modern cult $32.95) conclusion, however, plays into the hands of benevolence, like the modern cult of of the welfare state’s defenders. If, as social reform, has carried further the work s Cicero observed in his Fifth Oliver Wendell Holmes believed, the of the Reformation. Henry VIII and Eliza - Philippic, “money forms the “crowd has got all there is,” the “howl beth made the church an arm of the state. sinews of war.” Of course, against the rich is really a howl against the Condorcet and Godwin would make the A money is never limitless, and present possibilities of life.” A Malthusian state into a church. The children of light wars have foundered on this fact. Any pessimism about the “present possibilities sought to build with purely secular materi- strategy that ignores resource constraints of life” undercuts the strongest argument als an ersatz version of the redemptionary is destined to fail. against the redistribution of wealth that architecture and pastoral care of traditional This reality is driven home by Dov the cult of benevolence enjoins. “That Christianity. Peter Gay said of Diderot that Zakheim in his important and informa tive some should be rich,” President Lincoln atheism “repelled him even though he new book, A Vulcan’s Tale. From his per- said in 1864, “shows that others may be - accepted it as true,” while Catholicism spective as under secretary of de fense come rich, and hence is just encourage- “moved him even though he rejected it as (comptroller) in the Bush admin istration— ment to industry and enterprise. Let not false.” Writing to his mistress, sophie “the guy holding the check book”—Zak - him who is houseless pull down the house Volland, Diderot “cursed the philosophy— heim provides a useful overview of the of another, but let him labor diligently and his own—that reduced their love to a blind administration’s approach to the post- build one for himself, thus by example encounter of atoms. ‘I am furious at being 9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a assuring that his own shall be safe from entangled in a confounded philosophy useful supplement to other recent memoirs violence when built.” which my mind cannot refrain from ap - by major actors in the post-9/11 drama, Guizot was blunter: “Enrichissez-vous,” proving and my heart from denying.’” most notably Donald Rumsfeld. he said—get rich yourself. But if the age The prophets of benevolence wanted The word “Vulcans” of the book’s title of heroic growth is over—if the possibili- the universe to be again adorable, as it had originated with Condoleezza Rice, who ties of life are as sharply circumscribed been for their forebears, who believed it applied it “somewhat playfully” to a as they seemed to be to Malthus—the to be the work of a divine hand. Unable to group of eight individuals who advised howl against the rich, muted in good live without a messianic compensation of George W. Bush on foreign and national- times, will grow fiercer, and the advocates their own, the architects of the benevolent security issues as the Texas governor of confiscatory benevolence more popu- state substituted for the redeemer God a made his first run for the presidency. The lar. Gloom and doom—to borrow Presi - re deemer statesman, for the inspired Vulcans, in addition to Zakheim, included dent Reagan’s phrase—are the twins of tax church an inspired state, for the priestly Richard Armitage, Robert Blackwill, and spend. clerisy an administrative clerisy, for the stephen Hadley, Richard Perle, Robert Until we are certain that the party is kindly friar a benevolent social worker, over, it is better to make the case against for voluntary almsgiving (conceived as Mr. Owens is professor of national-security the welfare state on smithian rather than a duty) compulsory expropriations (con- affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.; Malthusian grounds. Those who become ceived as a prerogative of sovereignty). editor of Orbis, the quarterly journal of the Foreign reliant on its subsidies are not (in the The imitation has everything to recom- Policy Research Institute (FPRI); and author of smithian view) dragging the poor as a mend it except the spirit that made the US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: whole closer to famine, but their depen- original work. Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain.

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Zoellick, Paul Wolfowitz, and Scooter misleading. While Zakheim makes many faced problems within the executive Libby. All had served in the Reagan or important observations about the mis- branch itself, most notably the Office of George H. W. Bush administrations, Zak - takes the administration made regarding Management and Budget (OMB), which heim as deputy under secretary of defense Afghanistan, the real value of the book is insisted on inserting itself into the detailed for planning and resources for the Reagan in its treatment of a broad array of topics process of authorizing the distribution Pentagon. The group was the subject that go far beyond the particulars of of congressionally appropriated funds to of James Mann’s 2004 book Rise of nation-building in Afghanistan. As he the military services. It did not help that the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War observes, “the devil is indeed in the he had a contentious relationship with Cabinet. details” when it comes to implementing the deputy director of OMB, Robin According to Zakheim, “the Vulcans public policy: “As someone who had Cleveland, who was able to make end composed a core of individuals whose spent half his professional life in the runs around Zakheim to reach Paul Wolf - experience, personal ties, and role in the world of policy and the other half in the o witz, the deputy secretary of defense. campaign affected the views and con- world of programs and budgets, I saw Despite the fact that both Zakheim and duct of the Bush administration” during unfold before my eyes, to my regret, Wolfowitz were Vulcans, they often dis- and after the 9/11 attacks and the sub - strong evidence that the twain still do not agreed on policy issues. sequent wars. He is quick to point out, meet.” As Cicero observed, money lies at The military services created another however, that the composition of the the heart of implementation. complication for Zakheim as comptroller. group, the homogeneity of its members’ The comptroller’s job is to ensure that Donald Rumsfeld is often criticized for views, and its influence on the actual the money is available to run the Pen - his failure to adapt to the changing char- conduct of affairs have been greatly dis- tagon. But Zakheim details the many acter of the Iraq War once that conflict torted. restrictions that the Department of De - began, shortchanging the troops by failing For example, Zakheim argues that Vul - fense faced as it tried to spend the money to provide them with armored “humvees” can and neoconservative—“a label that that Congress authorized and appropriat- and the like. But Zakheim makes it clear has itself been distorted beyond recogni- ed in the wake of 9/11. The fact is that that even as the Iraq War was under way, tion from its original meaning”—are not DoD’s annual appropriation is for the nor- the Army did not immediately ask for the synonymous. Some of the Vulcans were mal operation of the department; supple- vehicles; its priority, as is usually the case indeed “muscular idealists” who favored mental appropriations are necessary to with the uniformed services, was to a democracy agenda, but most, including finance wars. Congress places restrictions acquire “big ticket” items. It was only Zakheim, were realists of one sort or on how supplemental funds may be spent, after the insurgency began and the threat another who saw democracy promotion which limits the discretion of the depart- posed by improvised explosive devices as “naïve and potentially dangerous.” And ment in “reprogramming” appropriated (IEDs) became apparent that the Army Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin money. This makes sense most of the began to push for supplemental spending Powell, Douglas Feith, and George Tenet time, but under the circumstances that to “up-armor” the utility vehicles. were never Vulcans; and of these, only DoD faced in the aftermath of 9/11 and Along these lines, Zakheim also points Feith might be called a neoconserva - the lead-up to the U.S. counteroffensive in out one of the dominant civil-military tive. Afghanistan, these restrictions created strains of the Iraq War: the clash between While Zakheim expresses pride in his real problems. the Army and Rumsfeld over the latter’s service during the Bush administration, As DoD comptroller, Zakheim also concept of defense “transformation.” The he confesses disappointment with some of the consequences of the administration’s policies. But, he says, his “tale is in no way lurid. The administration’s short- BLUE SKIES, 8:46 comings were not a consequence of crim- inality, or moral debasement, or stupidity, That I can safely watch them safely graze or a lack of patriotism and good inten- Might seem like little. Still, it feels like much tions, as so many frenzied anti-Bush ide- Beside this fenced-in field this day of days. ologues have charged . . . [but] above all, The distant bay and—close enough to touch— of the inherent novelty and difficulty of The chestnut underneath the towering willows the challenges the administration faced,” Crop off the green I’d like to think is clover as well as of deficiencies arising both On rolling paddock hills as plump as pillows. from the structure of the federal gov- As if I’d asked them if the worst was over, ernment and from its leaders. Thus A One sun-streaked sorrel and one shadowed roan Vulcan’s Tale is a helpful corrective to the widely accepted narrative that U.S. Lift up their heads to answer with a neigh foreign policy during the Bush adminis- Almost together, in a kind of koan. tration was hijacked by a cabal of neocon- Shaken from reverie and torn away, servatives. I start the car by which I’m borne away The book’s subtitle, “How the Bush From pastures lovelier than I can say. Administration Mismanaged the Recon - struction of Afghanistan,” is somewhat —LEN KRISAK

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Army saw Rumsfeld as an adversary who world. Seriously. Of course, you might opposed the service’s modernization. Music put in a bid for Andre Agassi and Steffi Rumsfeld saw the Army as resisting the Graf, too. transformation of the military into a more A Rodion Shchedrin was born on mobile and flexible force. This bad blood Dec. 16, 1932. (There was another com- did much to poison civil-military relations poser born on December 16: Beetho - during the Iraq War. Composer’s ven.) His father was a composer and In September 2002, Rumsfeld tapped music teacher. Many, many composers Zakheim as the coordinator for Afghan Hour have been sons of composers, or of pro- reconstruction, a job that normally would fessional musicians: Bach, Mozart, and have fallen under the purview of Douglas JAY NORDLINGER Beethoven, to begin with. Shchedrin’s Feith, the under secretary of defense for first name is an old-fashioned Russian policy. His appointment to this collateral VERY now and then, I’ll inter- one, shared by Raskolnikov in Crime duty convinced Zakheim that a war view a musician, and I’ll often and Punishment. The last name looks against Iraq was imminent and that the ask, “Who are the living com- fearsome in its spelling, but is easy administration was losing interest in E posers you admire or respect? to pronounce, or approximate: Shed- Afghanistan. Is there anyone worth listening to today?” REEN. There were to be turf wars with the Usually, the musician will smile at the He studied with two top musicians Department of State and conflicts with cheeky way the question is phrased. at the Moscow Conservatory: Yuri his nemesis at OMB, Robin Cleveland. Almost never will he protest, “What do Shaporin and Yakov Flier. The former The former reflected a lack of unity of you mean? There are many, many fine was his composition teacher, the latter effort that undercut U.S. operations in composers among us.” Chances are, he’ll his piano teacher. Flier was little-known the country; the latter meant that OMB say, “Well . . .”—then give me two or in the West, unlike some other pianists inadequately funded State and the U.S. three names. One of those names is likely from the Soviet Union. But he was Agency for International Development to be that of a Russian composer, Rodion magnificent. Shchedrin has said he was early in the war, paving the way for an Shchedrin. the best he ever heard, after Vladimir extended conflict. But for Zakheim, this In the last 15 years, he has grown ever Horowitz. That’s a powerful statement, shift away from Afghanistan illustrated more popular, championed by some of even allowing for a student’s natural a quintessentially American problem, our best musicians. These include three loyalty. demonstrating “that, as had been the major conductors: Valery Gergiev, Lorin With respect to composition, Shched - case when the Soviets were driven out of Maazel, and Mariss Jansons. One of rin came of age in “a rather lean time,” as Afghanistan, the United States simply his biggest boosters was Mstislav Ros - he put it in an interview earlier this could not maintain its focus on an area tropovich, the great cellist and conductor year. Even the Impressionists—Debussy, that no longer had ‘crisis’ written all who died in 2007. When you had “Slava” Ra vel—were scorned as tune-happy over it.” in your corner, you were the beneficiary squares. Abstraction and devotion to Zakheim observes that historians will of an almost superhuman force. method were the rule of the day. “For 35 long debate whether the costs of the Iraq The Lincoln Center Festival, here in years, there was a dictatorship of the War were the consequence of flawed New York, will feature Shchedrin this avant-garde,” Shchedrin said in another policy or inadequate implementation. He month, when the Mariinsky Ballet, interview, “and I was never a part of it.” contends that no such debate is necessary from St. Petersburg, comes to town. He lays great stress on what he calls when it comes to Afghanistan: “Through Gergiev will conduct, and such lumi- “intuition.” Especially in earlier years, sins of both commission and omission, naries as Diana Vishneva will dance. he wrote his share of abstract, or semi- the Bush administration was often inca- Two of Shchedrin’s ballets will be per- abstract, music. But he insists that pable of effectively implementing mani- formed: The Little Humpbacked Horse “music should touch the heart and soul.” festly good policies, sound ideas, and (1955–56), based on the fairytale poem And he has referred to himself as “a post- wisely chosen goals.” by Yershov, and Anna Karenina avant-garde composer.” A Vulcan’s Tale provides valuable (1971), based on you-know-what. The Once, he was asked what he was pre- insight not only regarding the wars of the Mariinsky will also perform Shchedrin’s pared to listen to, right that second. He post-9/11 era but also about the activities Carmen Suite—i.e., his arrangement of replied that he was always prepared to of the U.S. government in general. He Bizet’s score. Maya Plisetskaya, one of listen to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker— observes that too many Washington the greatest dancers of all time, pre- “because each and every section of the policymakers see themselves as “big miered this ballet with the Bolshoi in score is a masterpiece.” That is a very thinkers” for whom “the details will take 1967. rare declaration for a modern composer care of themselves.” But even the best Shchedrin has a great affinity for bal- to make. Even those who believe it— policy goals are not likely to be fulfilled let in general, and for Plisetskaya in par- who know it’s true—would shrink from without equally good plans for imple- ticular: They were married in 1958. They saying it. menting them. As the mice in one of are still an attractive, even a glamorous Shchedrin is one of those people with Aesop’s fables realized, belling the cat is couple, she in her mid-eighties, he in his a huge appetite for music, music of every a good idea in theory, but someone actu- late seventies. Also, you could argue that period, and of every type. And his own ally has to do it. they are the most talented couple in the music reflects an awareness, and absorp-

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tion, of the past. He is not trying to invent (Shostakovich did not have much to be atoned for? Shchedrin has spoken of the wheel; he knows he stands on shoul- twinkle about.) The subtitle of Shched - awful compromises: “In a totalitarian ders. Shostakovich liked to say, “I love rin’s Concerto for Orchestra No. 1 is system, relations between the artist and everything from Bach to Offenbach.” “Naughty Limericks.” Later, he wrote the regime are always extremely com- Incidentally, Shchedrin knew Shosta ko - Three Funny Pieces, for piano trio. (They plex and contradictory. If the artist sets vich, and knew him well. And, as Shos - are, too.) And his Humoresque is one of himself against the system, he is put takovich wrote a tremendous variety of his most popular pieces—ingeniously behind bars or simply killed.” music—from elephant walks to unbear- funny, almost laugh-out-loud. Of course, I will not don judicial robes or put ably painful string quartets and sym- the humor in Shchedrin’s catalogue can Shchedrin in the dock. I will record just phonies—so has Shchedrin. He’ll give be of the dark or ironic kind. For 40 a few facts. He wrote an oratorio, Lenin you an atonal piano concerto, an Ortho - years, he composed in the Soviet Union, Is Among Us, for the centenary of the dox liturgy, or a quadrille. after all. founding tyrant in 1970. Of course, In his catalogue are five operas and Since the demise of that country, or others, including Prokofiev and Shos - five ballets. And, for these and other entity, or empire, he and Plisetskaya takovich, wrote such music too. He works, he has drawn on a library of have divided their time between Mos- was head of a composers union—like Russian writers: Pushkin, Gogol, Chek- cow and Munich. And Shchedrin has Shostakovich. Perhaps worst of all, he hov, Mandelstam, Nabokov . . . (One of written a lot of music, a gusher of music. signed a letter denouncing Andrei his operas is Lolita.) Shchedrin is devot- The end of Communism, he has said, Sakharov, the great physicist and greater ed to all things Russian, drinking deep freed his mind, his body, his spirit, and dissident and man. So did Shostakovich, from his culture, and extending it. You his pen. More than a third of his overall Khachaturian, others. can see this in the titles of his works. output has been written since the Soviet Shchedrin, in various venues, points For example, his Concerto for Orchestra Union expired in 1991, when he was out that he never joined the Communist No. 3 is subtitled “Old Russian Circus 59. party, and that, in 1968, he refused to Music.” And his Op. 94 is, get this, The A delicate subject, Soviet times. Since sign a letter supporting the invasion of House of Ice: Russian Fairytale for 1991, there have been many arguments Czechoslovakia. Here is something else: Marimbaphone. and recriminations concerning Shched- Plisetskaya’s father was executed by the His regard for music at large can be rin and others. Who did what? Who was state; her mother was sent to the Gulag, seen in yet more titles: such as Hommage honorable and who was dishonorable? but survived. In 1964, Plisetskaya ac - à Chopin and In the Style of Albéniz. And What can be given a pass and what must cepted the Lenin Prize. Her husband no one is more important to him than accepted it 20 years later. The Soviet Bach. “The highest point of music,” he Union, as you know, was a strange place, has said. In common with Shostakovich, as well as a vicious, evil one. Shchedrin has written 24 preludes and Prokofiev died the same day as Stalin; fugues—for such composers, it is almost Shostakovich, who was eleven when the a duty, a happy duty. Communists seized power, died 16 years One summer, the Shchedrins and the before they fell. Shchedrin has pointed Shostakoviches were vacationing to - out the ways in which he himself has gether in Armenia. Shostakovich asked been lucky: He was 20, just starting out, Shchedrin, out of the blue, “If you could when Stalin died. He got to compose in take one score with you to a desert relative—and let me stress “relative”— island, what would it be? And you have freedom. And when the Soviet Union ten seconds to decide.” Shchedrin named ended, he still had some time left: and is Bach’s Art of the Fugue. Shostakovich— having a hell of an Indian summer, as surprisingly, you may well think— Haydn, Verdi, and Saint-Saëns, to name named Mahler’s Song of the Earth. three, did. (Schubert died at 31.) Be assured that Shchedrin cares if you Will some of his music last? That is listen. (In 1958, the American composer always a hard thing to predict, but I Milton Babbitt wrote a notorious essay myself think so, yes. There will be audi- called “Who Cares If You Listen?” The ences who want to hear it, musicians title came from an editor, not him, and he who want to play or sing it—dancers always bemoaned it.) Shchedrin doesn’t who want to dance to it. Type the name mind pleasing his audience, while re - Shchedrin into YouTube. See the happy maining true to artistic standards, and he faces, and engaged faces, and moved especially doesn’t mind pleasing those faces. Shchedrin reaches people. By who perform his music, who are the first enriching musical life, he has enriched audience, so to speak. He regards it as a life in general. Right this second, I’m TASS - mortal sin to be boring. going to listen to his little Troika for ITAR / Often in his pictures, you see piano again. After that, maybe the Amo - Shchedrin with a twinkle in his eye. roso from the Chamber Suite—a sweet,

YURI BELINSKY He loves humor, as Shostakovich did. Rodion Shchedrin sad caress.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS and Green Lantern and X-Men as far as much more entertaining) quest to make a Film the eye can see. zombie movie. The would-be George This season’s only original block- Romero behind the camera is the pudgy, buster—I mean it, literally the only shouty Charles (Riley Griffiths), and our Cruel, Cruel one—is J. J. Abrams’s Super 8, an inter- protagonist is his makeup-and-effects mittently winning aliens-and-Americana man, Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), whose Summer flick that bears roughly the same relation- dad is the deputy sheriff and whose mom ship to the lost age of summer entertain- is recently deceased. Their team of yap- ROSS DOUTHAT ment that Julian the Apostate’s paganism ping, geeky pals is supplemented by a bore to the classical variety. It’s a well- lone female (Elle Fanning), whose acting HEn Christopher nolan’s meaning homage, rather than a new talent elevates Charles’s wooden zombie- Inception made a fortune at beginning, and its pleasures are nostalgic movie dialogue and whose loveliness the box office last summer, rather than immediate and visceral. It’s makes Joe swoon. W while the usual lineup of less a new thing than a reminder of what The whole gang is filming a scene at sequels, remakes, reboots, and superhero we’ve lost, and it half-succeeds as enter- an abandoned train station when the real vehicles failed to live up to expectations, tainment only to the extent that it evokes science-fiction element kicks in. An there was a sudden burst of optimism that a host of better films. Air Force train derails around them in a Hollywood might finally find room for a Chief among those films is E.T., whose burst of digitalized pyrotechnics, and few more original stories in its annual story Super 8 shamelessly recycles—with Something Big breaks out of its boxcar summer smorgasbord. “Stu dio execs at Steven Spielberg’s approval, I should prison, unseen by the kids but captured on their still-running movie camera’s titular brand of 8-millimeter film. From this point on, the movie’s charming shaggy-dog element (the kids, their movie, and their angsts) is gradually crowded out by a predictable alien-movie plot. Some sinister military types sweep in, things go bump in the night, the town is evacuated, and then there’s a big reveal that probably cost a fortune but ultimately looks a lot like every other digitally conjured monster you’ve seen onscreen in the last ten years. This arc will be familiar from previous J. J. Abrams productions, on the big and smaller screen alike. The wunderkind director is a slicker and more superficial Spielberg, with the master’s third-act diffi- culties (the ending is almost invariably the weakest part of any Spielberg movie) but Elle Fanning and Joel Courtney in Super 8 without his humanistic wizardry. There’s War ner Bros., Paramount/DreamWorks, note, since he serves as a producer. The a little more personality in this movie than and Universal,” New York magazine’s settings are similar (Super 8 takes place in most of Abrams’s previous efforts, but Vulture blog reported optimistically, “are amid the raised ranches and wood panel- the overall recipe is still the same: slick now madly pinging agents and managers ing of Carter-era suburbia), and the narra- production values, successful tension- with an uncharacteristic, desperate, and tive elements are pretty much identical: a building, some heartfelt moments, and welcome request: Send us your fresh mate- single-parent family (forged by sudden then an inevitable letdown when the magi- rial!” death, in this case, rather than divorce), cian has to show his cards. Maybe that fresh material is all in the precocious kids on bicycles, military sci- A few critics have joked about Super pipeline, poised to hit theaters in 2012 or entists, and a mistreated alien who proba- 8’s ability to conjure up an unlikely haze 2013. But on the evidence of this sum- bly just wants to get back home. To be of nostalgia around what may be the least mer’s lineup, anyone hoping for a return sure, Abrams’s alien is bigger and scarier fondly remembered moment in recent to the days when blockbuster entertain- than the original E.T., but then again he American history. But when Abrams’s ment didn’t have to come “pre-sold” (as has (alas!) a bigger special-effects toolkit movie works, it isn’t because its call-outs studio jargon has it) is a king of wishful than the 1980s Spielberg ever did. to “My Sharona” and Three Mile Island thinking. Original comedy is alive and He also has one genuinely original remind the audience of what it was like well, and the art-house scene is thriving. idea: His gaggle of early-teen protago- to be young in the age of stagflation and But when it comes to big popcorn movies, nists are also amateur filmmakers, and malaise. It’s because Super 8 reminds us a genre that gave us Alien and Back to the their quest to figure out what the heck is that there was once a time, not so very Future and Indiana Jones and Jaws once happening in their small town is inter - long ago, when summer blockbusters

PARAMOUNT PICTURES upon a distant time, it’s just Transformers woven with their equally important (and were actually worth seeing.

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most especially if you do much book The written word, like everything else, is The Straggler reviewing, you end up on the rolodexes of fast being digitized. Our local shopping all the marketing assistants of all the pub- center used to feature a Tower records lishing houses in the english-speaking store right next to a Barnes & Noble book- Ex Libris world. it’s nice of them; it saves me the store. Then one day, five or six years ago, trouble of reading their catalogues to know the Tower records store had gone. i asked what’s forthcoming; and i’ve been comped one of the Barnes & Noble sales clerks some gems i treasure; but space is getting what had happened to it. “Out of business,” to be a problem. he explained. “Nobody wants music on given that random element of comped CDs any more. Heck, you can just down- books, and the fact that i don’t bother about load it.” Then, as i was turning away, he bindings, inscriptions, or first editions—i added: “and we’re next.” Probably he was just want to read the things—i consider right. On my commuter train nowadays i myself not really a book collector, merely a see as many of those Kindle gadgets as JOHN DERBYSHIRE book amasser. The other day, for the first actual books. time, i quantified the mass. it seems an awfully fragile arrangement. iss sTraggler, just gradu - My colleague Tony Daniels had recent- given that all the bits and bytes on all ated from high school and ly told me that when changing his main the world’s servers could be annihilated with time on her hands, domicile from england to France, he by a major solar storm of the type that, M came home the other day moved five tons of books. Tony had astronomers tell us, occurs once per 500 with two boxes of secondhand books on explained, borrowing a figure from the years, or even just by some out-of-control the back seat of the car. “Found them out- great Dr. Malthus: “i buy books at a geo- cyberwar, are we really sure we want all side Book revue,” she explained, naming metric rate, but read only arithmetically.” human knowledge uploaded to the in - the local independent bookstore. “There Five tons! it had sounded mighty impres- ternet? But then i suppose similar argu- was a sign saying to please take them.” sive at the time. in an idle moment at home, ments were made when paper books first The books were mainly fiction. going however, i got to work on my own library came in. i can imagine some Babylonian through the boxes, i recognized most of the names from idle hours spent mooching around at the newsstands in airports and The written word, like everything else, railroad stations: Maeve Binchy, stephen Coonts, Dick Francis, Patricia Cornwell is fast being digitized. . . . good, capable storytellers, i have no doubt, and on my scale of values well with a tape measure and bathroom scales. scribe scoffing at the fad for papyrus deserving of the fame and fortune i hope reckoning an average 15 pounds to the scrolls as he sends the cuneiformed they have accumulated; just not writers foot, my 250 feet of shelved books comes blocks of his latest potboiler off to the i have ever engaged with. in at close to two tons—not quite in Tony’s kiln to be baked: “Where’s the archival in among the Binchys and Coontses league, but getting there. value? some fool knocks over a candle were some sci-fi oldies i thought i might The space problem is made worse by the and—whoosh!—there goes your library!” reacquaint myself with if i ever had the free difficulty of getting rid of books nowadays. He was in fact right, as at least three chief time. i pulled them out and left the rest to The aforementioned Book revue has a librarians at alexandria found out, to my daughter, who, to judge by the week or small secondhand section, but it is heavily Western Civ’s irrecoverable loss. so the boxes have since sat undisturbed, prejudiced towards the Binchy-Coonts and speaking of burning books, what has lost interest. life lesson, honey: Just demographic. No market there for The Test will happen to book-burning as an expres- because a thing is free, you don’t necessar- of Our Times (Tom ridge’s Homeland sion of disapproval, or of absolute power? ily have any use for it. i suppose Binchy & security memoir) or Coolidge’s Treatise “Where they have burned books, they will Co. will end up on the curb one garbage- on Algebraic Plane Curves (a classic in its end in burning human beings,” said collection day. That’s okay. i can be senti- field, but i have two copies). When i settled Heinrich Heine, simultaneously looking mental about books up to a point, but in this town 20 years ago there were two back to the inquisition and forward to uninvited secondhand lowbrow bestsellers stores selling only secondhand books. modern totalitarianism. (Prophetically in are well beyond that point. either would give you five dollars for a box the latter case: The Nazis burned his i have too many books anyway. The of books, however recondite or battered. books.) in ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel family joke, when a new package arrives Both have now gone. “They’re online,” Fahrenheit 451, the authorities of a philis- from amazon or abebooks, is for Mrs. people tell me. so how do i get my books tine, hedonistic future U.s.a. maintain straggler to ask what we shall do when to them? i had it explained to me, but the squads of “firemen” to seek out and burn there is no more space in the house for new only thing i retained is that the process is all books. What would be the digital equiv- books, to which my customary response is: way more troublesome than putting a box alent? i suppose the grand inquisitor could “Buy a bigger house.” it’s not just my own of books on the passenger seat of my car just click the “erase all” button on some purchases clogging up the shelves, either. and driving to Main street. master app, but it doesn’t have the same There is a steady incoming stream of The 2,000-year reign of the paged paper dramatic force. i feel sure we shall come comped books. if you write for magazines, book may anyway be coming to its end. up with something better.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Debtor Demographics

HE other day, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, the governor of oped to breaking point: Not enough people do not enough Afghanistan’s central bank, fled the country. The work for not enough of their lives. In the course of so doing, only wonder is that there aren’t more fleeing. Not they have fewer children later. And the few they do have T Afghans; central bankers. I mean, you gotta fig- leave childhood ever later—Obamacare’s much heralded ure that throughout the G-20 there are more than a few with “right” for a 26-year old to remain on his parents’ health the vague but growing feeling that the jig’s up big time. insurance being merely a belated attempt to catch up with the Round about the time the Afghan central banker was head- Europeans, and one sure to be bid up further. ing for the hills, the Greek central banker ventured some rare A society of 25-year-old “children” whiling away the criticisms of his government. “Piling more taxes on taxpay- years till early middle age in desultory pseudo-education ers has reached its limit,” said Giorgos Provopoulos. The has no desire to fund its prolonged adolescence by any alleged austerity measures do not “place enough emphasis kind of physical labor, so huge numbers of unskilled Third on the containment of spending.” World immigrants from the swollen favelas of Latin Amer - All very sensible. Prudent and measured. Outside, in the ica or (in Europe) the shanty megalopolises of the Muslim streets of Athens, strikers struck, rioters rioted, and an world are imported to cook, clean, wash, build, do. On the already shrunken tourism industry dwindled down to an Continent, the shifting rationale for mass immigration may international press corps anxious to get on with societal col- not illuminate much about the immigrants but it certainly lapse. “We don’t want your money, Europe,” declared a tells you something about the natives: Originally, European protesting “youth,” Iamando, 36. “Leave us alone—please, leaders said, we needed immigrants to work in the mills and please, please.” factories. But the mills and factories closed. So the new I would bet that, somewhere not too deep down, Giorgos rationale was that we needed young immigrants to keep the Provopoulos understands that the problem is not the Greek welfare state solvent. But in Germany the Turks retire even economy or the Greek government but the Greek people. younger than the Krauts do, and in France 65 percent of Many years ago in this space, I quoted the line Gerald Ford imams are on the dole. So the surviving rationale is that a liked to use when trying to ingratiate himself with conser- dependence on mass immigration is not a structural flaw vative audiences: “A government big enough to give you but a sign of moral virtue. The evolving justification for everything you want is big enough to take away everything post-war immigration policy—from manufacturing to wel- you have.” And I suggested there was an intermediate stage: fare to moral narcissism—is itself a perfect shorthand for A government big enough to give you everything you want Western decay. isn’t big enough to get you to give any of it back. That’s the Most of the above doesn’t sound terribly “fiscal,” because stage Greece is at and so, to one degree or another, is the rest it’s not. The ruinous debt is a symptom of our decline, not the of the Western world. In the United States, our democracy is cause. As Angela Merkel well understands every time she trending as Athenian as the rest: We’re the Brokest Nation in switches on the TV and sees a news report from Greece, History, but, as those Medicare polls suggest, getting enough culture trumps economics. I had a faintly surreal conversa- people to give enough of it back isn’t going to be any easier tion with two Hollywood liberal pals not so long ago: One than it is in Greece. From Athens to Madison, Wis., too many moment they were bemoaning all those right-wing racists people have gotten used to a level of comfort and ease they like Pat Buchanan who’d made such a big deal about the haven’t earned. crowd cheering for the Mexican team and booing the It’s not a green-eyeshade issue. The inability to balance the Americans at a U.S.–Mexico soccer match in Pasadena, and books is a symptom of more profound structural imbalances. deploring the way the U.S. goalie had complained that the Over on the Mediterranean, the only question that matters is: post-match ceremony was conducted entirely in Spanish. Are the Greek people ready to get real? Most of us, includ- Ten minutes later they were sighing that nothing in Los ing Mr. Provopoulos, have figured out the answer to that. Angeles seemed to work quite as well as it did when they first Since Obama took office, it’s been fashionable to quote came out west over 40 years ago. Mrs. Thatcher’s great line: “The problem with socialism is And it never occurred to them that these two conversa- that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” But tional topics might somehow be connected. we’re way beyond that. That’s a droll quip when you’re Meanwhile, at Redwood Heights Elementary in Oakland, on mid-20th-century European fertility rates, but we’ve ad - Californian kindergartners are put through “Gender Spec - vanced to the next stage: We’ve run out of other people, peri- trum Diversity Training” in order to teach them that there are od. Hyper-rationalist technocrats introduced at remarkable “more than two genders.” speed a range of transformative innovations—welfare, fem- The social capital of a nation is built up over centuries inism, mass college education, abortion—whose cumulative but squandered in a generation or two. With blithe self- effect a few decades on is that the developed world has devel- confidence, the post-war West changed too much too fast. We changed everything, and yet we’ll still wonder why Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline. (www.steynonline.com). everything’s changed.

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