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June 23, 2014 $4.99 THE EDITORS: OBAMA’S AFGHAN FOLLY ROSS DOUTHAT ON GODZILLA DAVID HARSANYI WILLIAMSON: THE RISE & FALL OF PATTON BOGGS ON UNREAD BOOKS

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RANDY E. BARNETT DARCY OLSEN

Carmack President, Waterhouse The Goldwater Professor of Institute Legal Theory, Georgetown University Law Center

KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL TERRY TEACHOUT

Editorial Board Drama Critic, Member and The Wall Street Columnist, Journal and The Wall Street Critic-at-Large, Journal Commentary

Photo by: Ken Howard, 2009

THE BRADLEY PRIZES WILL BE PRESENTED ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18 AT THE JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. The Bradley Prizes recognize outstanding achievements that are consistent with the Foundation’s mission statement. Founded in 1985, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is devoted to strengthening American democratic capitalism and the institutions, principles and values that sustain and nurture it. Its programs support limited, competent government; a dynamic marketplace for economic, intellectual and cultural activity; and a vigorous defense, at home and abroad, of American ideas and institutions. Learn more at www.bradleyfdn.org. TOC -- READY:QXP-1127940144.qxp 6/4/2014 2:10 PM Page 1 Contents

JUNE 23, 2014 | VOLUME LXVI, NO. 11 | www.nationalreview.com BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS ON THE COVER Page 30 40 DYSFUNCTIONAL Fight the GOVERNMENT Fred Siegel reviews The Fourth Dragon Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State, by John As any economist’s model Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. demonstrates, both China and 41 WHEN TO GO TO WAR the United States will benefit Mario Loyola reviews Point of Attack: Preventive War, from greater wealth if they International Law, and Global build strong trade ties and Welfare, by John Yoo.

open their markets to each 43 HIGH STAKES other. But while the United Paul Lettow reviews Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty- States strives to cooperate by Eight Hours That Ended the opening its market, China has Cold War, by Ken Adelman.

chosen betrayal. Oren Cass 44 THE REAL TINSEL Rob Long reviews COVER: THOMAS REIS Citizen Hollywood: How the Collaboration between LA and ARTICLES DC Revolutionized American Politics, by Timothy Stanley. 16 RIGHT REFORMS by Ramesh Ponnuru Liberalism is not the future of conservatism. 45 THE GREAT FLOOD Michael Novak reviews 18 #NONOTME by Charles C. W. Cooke The Johnstown Girls, The UCSB killings were not caused by “white male privilege.” by Kathleen George.

21 A CONCERT OF DEMOCRACIES by John Yoo 50 FILM: MONSTER MASH Russia’s aggression shows the need to move beyond “collective security.” Ross Douthat reviews Godzilla. 51 HOMECOMING THERE’LL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND . . . by David Pryce-Jones 24 Richard Brookhiser remembers the life . . . but will there be a Britain too? of Sergeant Shawn Michael Farrell II. 28 A LONG WAY FROM HARLAN COUNTY by Jay Nordlinger One man’s reflections on labor unions in our time.

SECTIONS FEATURES 2 Letters to the Editor 30 FIGHT THE DRAGON by Oren Cass 4 The Week China’s threat to the economic peace. 38 The Long View ...... Rob Long 39 Athwart ...... James Lileks 35 VICTUS by Kevin D. Williamson 45 Poetry ...... Stephen Scaer The rise and fall of Patton Boggs. 52 Happy Warrior . . . . . David Harsanyi

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., 2014. 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. letters -- READY:QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/4/2014 12:55 PM Page 2 Letters JUNE 23 ISSUE; PRINTED JUNE 5

EDITOR Richard Lowry Is Causation Magical? Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones While I share David Pryce-Jones’s aversion to Gabriel García Márquez’s unfor- Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra givable political affiliations and the undue accolades he received in eulogy, Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy I’m not certain that Mr. Pryce-Jones’s article “Poet of Self-Pity” (May 19) Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson National Correspondent John J. Miller accurately represents magic realism. First, though magic realism had its ori- Art Director Luba Kolomytseva gins in Latin America, I would argue that the former director of the national Deputy Managing Editors Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz library in Argentina, Jorge Luis Borges, had more to do with the genesis of this Associate Editors genre than did García Márquez. More important, the definition of magic realism Patrick Brennan / Katherine Connell Production Editor Katie Hosmer I provide for my students is “a genre of literature that combines the mundane Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace with the fantastic in order to demonstrate how imagination affects perception.” Contributing Editors Rather than promoting the idea that consequences require no response and Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg / Florence King effects exist independent of causes, García Márquez’s surreal scenarios illus- Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin trate how our preconceived notions, cultural biases, and innate limitations pre- Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne vent or at least significantly challenge our ability to objectively view the Reihan Salam / Robert VerBruggen world. The result or effect is a world where what is so (reality) and what we NATIONALREVIEWONLINE think is so (fantasy, i.e., magic) are inextricably bound insofar as we experi- Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editor Edward John Craig ence it. Consequently, we should acknowledge this limitation and make a con- News Editor Tim Cavanaugh scious and conscientious effort to accurately understand circumstances and National-Affairs Columnist John Fund National Reporter Eliana Johnson respond appropriately. Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke Political Reporter Joel Gehrke This admonition is aptly demonstrated in García Márquez’s short story “A Associate Editors Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” in which Father Gonzaga, the village Molly Powell / Nat Brown Editorial Associates priest, denounces a genuine miracle—the appearance of a very old man with Andrew Johnson / Christine Sisto enormous wings—while embracing (one suspects) the almost certainly fake Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Developer Wendy Weihs sideshow attraction of a woman turned into a spider for disobeying her parents. Web Producer Scott McKim Meanwhile, the village doctor simply examines the winged being without try- EDITORS- AT- LARGE ing to categorize him according to a preexisting scheme and concludes only Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan that the old man’s wings seem quite natural. Regardless of whether one accepts Contributors or rejects García Márquez’s conclusions, it is important to understand what Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza those conclusions are. Ironically, García Márquez did not heed his own advice: M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner Despite overwhelming evidence against it, he embraced the clearly immoral David Gelernter / George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart and logically flawed ideology of Marxism. Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Erik Griffith Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber English instructor Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Allen Community College Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak Iola, Kan. Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu Circulation Manager Jason Ng WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com DAVID PRyCE-JOnES RESPOnDS: I am certain that I do not represent magic realism MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 accurately because by definition it can’t be done, and that goes for the branch WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 of it known as Marxism. ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Beware the Clown Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Director of Development Heyward Smith Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell Upon seeing the cover of the June 2 issue, the thought flashed through my

PUBLISHER mind that it could have borne the words “A Dangerous Clown,” comparing Jack Fowler Senator Harry Reid to Tonio in the opera I Pagliacci. CHAIRMAN Kevin Wolf John Hillen Via e-mail CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes

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

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n Hillary Clinton has a new book out. At this point what dif- ference does it make?

n President Obama gave a commencement address at West Point, which he meant as a defense of his foreign policy. It read instead as a compendium of general principles; it might have been given by any president over the last 60 years. American leadership underpins world stability and advances liberation. Peace and enlarging freedom work to our interests as a commer- cial nation. We will use force, even unilaterally, when we must, but we should also rely on alliances and robust international organizations such as NATO (yes) and the U.N. (well . . .). The greatest threat we face today is terrorism from spin-offs of al- Qaeda. Obama’s one flat-out wrong argument was a riff on lead- ing by example: The examples he chose were climate control, signing the Law of the Sea Treaty, and closing Gitmo. This pas- sage was a celebration of ineffectual gestures. But speeches, especially surveys such as this, do not shimmer in a void. They draw their force from the record of the speaker. After five years this president succeeds only at leaving: Iraq, Afghanistan. Bad actors seek to follow in his wake: Iran, Russia, China, North Korea. They scorn the most eloquent words. Better a president who was silent—but strong. was even a movie made about that one.) Someday, we will have n What sort of a movie will Saving Sergeant Bergdahl be? Bowe a Republican president again, and relations between the press and Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban in 2009. It is alleged that the White House will be back to normal. he deserted first: According to a 2012 article in Rolling Stone, he became disaffected and e-mailed his parents, “I am ashamed to n Eric Shinseki resigned as secretary of veterans affairs a few be an American.” Bergdahl’s culpability remains to be estab- weeks after the widespread, potentially criminal mismanagement lished. The badness of the men for whom he was exchanged does of his department became well publicized by the media. Shin - not. The Obama administration gave up five high-ranking Tali - se ki, an honorable man, surely wanted to fix the broken bureau- ban held at Gitmo, including Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, a cracy he inherited. But he failed to do so, so he had to go. Plenty confidant of Mullah Omar, and Mullah Mohammed Fazl, a com- more has to be done: The Senate should pass the VA Ac count a - mander accused of massacring Shiites and Tajik Sunnis. The bil i ty Act, which was approved by the House 390–33 and will transaction would be bad even if Bergdahl were blameless. We al low the secretary to fire senior officials much more easily. negotiated with a barbarous and brutal enemy, as if we were (None, to date, has been fired over the recent scandals.) It should peers. We advertised other Americans as kidnap bait, to be used also be made easier for vets to go outside the VA system. If we in future exchanges. (Ronald Reagan in Iran–Contra and Israel in built from scratch a system for giving vets care today, it would recent years made similar deals; they were wrong too.) Obama never look like the fundamentally unaccountable, fully socialized seems set on leaving Afghanistan and emptying Gitmo as briskly system we have. But we can hold the system more accountable as possible—consequences, and honor, be damned. and subject it to more competition than has been the case, and we should. n When President Obama traveled to Afghanistan, the White House press office distributed a list of all the officials he would n Elliot Rodger’s berserker spree in Isla Vista, Calif., killed be meeting with. The list went to some 7,000 people. On the list sev en people, including him, and injured 13. Yet it did not result was a particular name, followed by the person’s job title: “Chief in calls to ban guns, in part because he stabbed his first three vic- of Station.” He was the head of the CIA’s operations in Af ghan i - tims to death. The talking nation focused instead on misogyny, stan. Presumably he is not any longer, his cover having been for al though he killed more men than women, Rodger left a blown by the White House. The release of the station chief’s grotesque manifesto lambasting the sex, and his failure to win name to the press was a gross mistake. It has occasioned barely a their sexual favors. So should he be understood as a misogynist, murmur in the press or punditocracy—compare this with the or (the conservative variation) a loser in the sexual free-for-all?

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THE WEEK plain crooks. There are some of them to hate every strand in the nize same-sex marriage. Judges with a sense of self-restraint national skein. But the great majority of haters are not multiple would have likewise refrained. Instead they took the real charge murderers. Most multiple murderers are crazy young men. We of Windsor to lower judges to be: Go as far and as fast in rewrit- need to spot and treat the severely mentally ill. Arsonists look at ing the marriage laws as you wish; we are no longer in the realm the world around them and see fuel. We cannot stop them all, but of law. Given the absence of anything resembling traditional we should be on the lookout for them—not their lighters, or their legal reasoning in Justice Kennedy’s controlling opinion in alleged ideas. Windsor, it cannot exactly be said that these judges are interpret- ing the case mistakenly. Local officials such as Pennsylvania’s n Much of the tragedy of acute Republican governor, Tom Corbett, in declining to appeal these mental illness is that one of its decisions, are doing their part to ensure that self-governance is common symptoms is an inability subverted. Not just marriage laws but civics books will have to to recognize it. American law be rewritten to accommodate this cause. too often lets its sufferers go without treatment, deferring to n Kentucky Republicans had a Senate primary with two tea- the free will of people too radi- party candidates. Businessman Matt Bevin was endorsed by cally impaired to exercise it. prominent tea-party-supporting groups, the Senate Conserva - Rep re sen ta tive Tim Murphy, a tives Fund, and FreedomWorks. But Senate minority leader Pennsylvania Repub lican, has Mitch McConnell beat him with the support of most tea-party introduced legislation to change voters (an NBC/Marist poll showed him leading Bevin among that and has won an impressive GOP tea partiers by 53 percent to 33 percent). The out-of-state degree of bipartisan support. push to take down McConnell seemed fueled by Beltway House Democratic leader Nancy grudges disguised as a crusade for unworldly purity. Neither is Pelosi is, however, backing an an attractive motive. Kentuckians recognized that McConnell alternative bill by Rep re sen ta tive Ron Barber (D., Ariz.). Her is both conservative and shrewd (witness his friendly relations spokesman says that she wants a bill “that actually has the sup- with junior senator and tea-party beau ideal Rand Paul, who port of the mental-health community.” Instead of trying to en - endorsed him). The Senate Conservatives Fund endorsed sure that the most severely ill get treatment, the bill concentrates McConnell after his victory and urged Republicans to unite on ex pand ing treatment options for the more mildly troubled. against his Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes. Where Murphy’s bill clarifies federal law to let doctors give In that spirit we say: Better late than never. parents and caregivers information about patients in the midst of a crisis, for example, Barber’s bill would instead ex pand anti- n Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) became the first major politi- bullying counseling in the schools. Murphy and the Republicans cian to advance a reform of Social Security since President and Dem o crats behind him deserve credit for recognizing that George W. Bush’s effort failed almost a decade ago. He would parts of the “mental-health community” are a problem. bring future spending down by slowly raising the retirement age and reducing benefit growth for the highest earners. At the same n Obamacare remains as unpopular as ever, but some Re pub li- time, he would make it easier for people to work and save for cans on the campaign trail are talking about it differently than their own retirement. Seniors still in the work force would see they were before. Rather than promising to “repeal and replace” their taxes fall, for example, and people without access to it, a few of them are saying they will “fix” it, or using the word company 401(k)s would be able to participate in the Thrift “replace” without “repeal.” Several of them are waffling about Savings Plan for federal workers. In a speech announcing his whether they would leave the law’s Medicaid expansion or ex- plan, Rubio also reiterated his support for a reform of Medicare changes in place. It is not, in itself, all that important that the word that would use the power of competition to make the program “repeal” be used if a candidate would vote for a “fix” that would affordable. Youthful-looking as he is, Rubio is a grown-up on this take health-care policy in a very different direction from Obama - issue, one of too few in Washington, D.C. care: Substance matters more than rhetoric. The defensiveness and clumsiness of these moves, however, suggests that Re pub li- n The Internal Revenue Service announced in late May that it cans are paying a price for failing to commit to a specific replace- will revise proposed regulations that would have severely re - ment plan, at least in outline. Without one, they cannot say what, stricted the activities of 501(c)(4) social-welfare groups. The ad - in a post-repeal world, would become of people who are now get- min is tra tion claimed it needed new rules—the existing ones have ting their insurance through Obamacare provisions; this political been on the books, without a problem, since 1959—to clarify vulnerability is making them wobble, at least rhetorically; and the confusing tax laws that supposedly led to the targeting of tea- wobbling in turn will demoralize conservatives who will have party groups. In reality, the new rules would have codified that fresh reason to question Republicans’ commitment to undoing targeting, which the agency, on Lois Lerner’s watch, carried out FILE , Obamacare. An alternative to Obamacare is also an alternative to furtively for years. In essence, the proposed regulations would flailing. have limited the amount of time social-welfare groups may de - vote to such activities as voter registration and voter education (in n Same-sex marriage is on a legal roll, with Oregon and the case of the Tea Party, on subjects such as the size and scope

LAUREN VICTORIA BURKE Pennsylvania the latest places where federal judges have rewrit- of government). But they affected liberal organizations too, and / ten state marriage laws. The Supreme Court, in last year’s groups from the ACLU to the NAACP charged that the regula-

AP PHOTO Windsor decision, pointedly did not rule that states had to recog- tions would violate their First Amendment rights. So out they

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THE WEEK went. The IRS, though, has not been tamed: The agency has argue for conservative reforms: breaking the higher-education promised to rewrite the rules, taking into account the 150,000 cartel, bringing real competition to health care, mak ing anti- public comments, most of them negative, that they garnered. If poverty programs work-oriented. The book launch, at the they were serious about considering the feedback, they’d scrap American Enterprise Institute, included supportive comments the effort entirely. across the range of today’s Republican party: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and House majority leader Eric Cantor n Room to Grow, an essay collection published by YG Net- lauded the book, and so did tea-party stalwarts Senators Mike work, a conservative group, brings together much of the fresh Lee and Tim Scott. Room to Grow is the latest evidence that conservative thinking that journals such as National Affairs— conservatism may be experiencing an intellectual resurgence as and, ahem, NATIONAL REvIEw—have been featuring on health well as a political one. care, financial reform, higher education, and other issues. The conservative authors of the book refuse to concede any of these n Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne is the worst car areas to a Left that has often seen them as its exclusive territory, salesman ever. Speaking about his firm’s 500e electric car at and refuse as well to adopt the role of defending a dysfunctional the Brookings Institution, he told those assembled: “I hope status quo from liberals who would make it worse. Instead they you don’t buy it, because every time I sell one it costs me

Betting the World Cup

S the World Cup approaches, soccer fans from Each column shows the predicted probability that each around the world are preparing for a bacchanalian team would make it to a certain round in the tournament. A soccer binge that will inevitably lead to a deep So for Brazil in 2010, for example, the probability was emotional crisis for all but one nation. Even with the many 26.6 percent that it would win, 39.2 percent that it would disappointments, the rapture of fans in the winning nation make the final, and so on. The cells are highlighted to is so great that the World Cup undoubtedly contributes show how teams actually performed—for example, Ger - positively to worldwide happiness. World Cup revenues, ma ny made it to the second round, then the quarterfinals, after all, are projected to be northward of a billion dollars, and the semifinals, while Portugal made it only to the with tourism spending piling billions on top of that. second round and Italy and France, despite good odds, So who will the lucky winner be? Economics has a sur- failed to advance at all. prisingly large amount to say on the subject. Forget Thomas Piketty: By far the most important academic study out this year is Goldman Sachs’s massive “The World Cup and Economics 2014.” 2010 Model Predictions 2014 Model In order to calculate the chances of success for coun- Team 2nd Round Quarters Semis Final Champion Champion Brazil 92.5 73.3 51.6 39.2 26.6 48.5 tries in each round of the tournament, the Goldman Spain 84.9 59.0 40.6 27.7 15.7 9.8 Netherlands 88.2 68.9 37.3 25.5 14.9 5.6 Sachs economists who authored the study drew on data Germany 83.1 63.1 44.4 24.8 12.7 11.4 England 82.8 53.2 33.0 13.7 6.4 1.4 going back to 1960. Discounting friendly games and Italy 84.8 49.8 22.7 12.1 5.3 1.5 France 76.0 49.7 27.4 11.1 4.7 0.8 focusing instead solely on mandatory international Argentina 71.8 41.3 20.4 8.3 3.2 14.1 matches, they tested the ability of several different vari- Mexico 54.7 31.5 15.0 5.0 1.7 0.1 Portugal 57.1 20.5 8.9 3.6 1.0 0.9 ables to predict the winners of about 14,000 such con- USA 57.8 23.3 10.1 2.9 0.8 0.5 tests. These variables included whether a team was a Uruguay 45.5 21.5 8.6 2.5 0.7 1.1 host to a match, whether a team was playing on its home continent, the number of goals scored by a team in its previous ten matches and the number scored on the The model performed remarkably well in 2010, with the opposing team in its previous ten matches, whether the final including two of the top three teams, and the semi- match was a World Cup match, and a composite mea- finals three of the top four. So it is quite likely that the sure of a team’s success called the Elo ranking. semifinals will, after all of the drama, include Brazil, The authors developed the best possible econometric Spain, Argentina, and Germany. model drawing on those data, and used it to generate a And from that scenario, one can be sure of two things. prediction that Brazil has a 48.5 percent chance of being First, if Brazil wins, the celebration in the home country the World Cup champion. The accompanying table sug- will be so wild that the rest of us will simultaneously be gests that fans from other countries should be worried. sorry we are missing it and glad we are not there. For reference, the table below indicates in the far-right Second, if Brazil loses, it will be one of the bigger upsets column the Goldman Sachs prediction for this year. To in soccer history. the left of that, for historical perspective, is the output of the model for the previous tournament. —KEVIN A. HASSETT

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THE WEEK $14,000.” The electric Fiat exists not because of consumer de- full time since 2009.” Only a small minority of Americans opt mand—there is hardly any—but to satisfy zero-emissions to have their genitals surgically altered, and the percentage of rules in California and other jurisdictions that impose them. the nation’s seniors who do so is presumably even smaller, but Fiat’s plan is to sell the minimum number of electric cars it is the ruling will accelerate the trend of private insurers’ rou- required by law to sell, at whatever loss it must endure, and tinely covering the operations. It will also accelerate the nor- then to sell not one more. Marchionne added that if auto- malization of a practice that is not properly classified as makers are forced to suffer losses in order to satisfy political medical treatment at all. whimsy, then they will be back in Washington asking for another bailout. n The New York Times Magazine had an article about the burgeoning marijuana industry. The article was written by an n Under the terms of the bargain that Chris Christie, New economics reporter for the paper, Annie Lowrey. She said, Jer sey’s Republican governor, made with Democratic state “Despite the potential, many investors are still hesitating at legislators, Christie is reappointing the court’s liberal chief spending the money that might make joints and brownies less justice, Steven Rabner, in exchange for the appointment of a ad hoc, more corporate. Why spend $20 million on a grow site Re pub li can justice—one who, according to conservative legal that might be shut down, or a new brand that might get scholars, does not have a reassuring track record. Rabner’s stamped out by the next administration’s Justice Department? record, on the other hand, is quite reassuring to liberals: A surfeit of laws—and confusion between them—is holding Among other things, he forced New Jersey to recognize same- the market back.” Is that so? Amazing. Maybe Lowrey can sex marriage. Christie has reneged on an important campaign teach her paper that what goes for pot goes for an economy at promise: In 2009, the governor-to-be pledged to remake the large. state supreme court. That pledge meant something to conser- vatives, because the New Jersey supreme court is perhaps the n The Obama administration has announced that it’s consid- most out-of-control in the country: Since the late 1960s, it has ering recognizing Native Hawaiians, an ethnic group that gradually usurped the powers of the legislature and the exec- makes up one-fifth of the Aloha Isles’ population, as an utive, ordering education funds to be disbursed in a cockeyed autonomous political entity. This would give the group, cur- wealth-redistribution scheme and nullifying the state consti- rently rep re sent ed by the state’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs, tution’s protections against profligate spending. We under- the right to construct a race-based government like an Indian stand that a conservative governor of New Jersey has to pick tribe and, likely, all the privileges of this right that it may find his battles. But conservatives expect the future of the courts to profitable. The idea came up in Congress during the Bush be one of them. years, and Obama’s proposal to impose it via executive fiat is certainly unconstitutional. It’s a terrible idea in any case: n First lady Michelle Obama has declared Republicans to be Native Hawaiians—geographically dispersed and with no waging a war on “our children’s futures,” “sound science,” history as a sovereign na tion—are almost nothing like an and the judgment of experts. Their crime in this instance is a Indian tribe, and the only point is to give a politically powerful proposal by a Republican congressman to allow schools to constituency valuable powers over state land, tourism policy, postpone compliance with federal school-lunch nutrition stan- and more. They lost us at “Aloha.” dards if they lost money on the program last year. As part of a 2010 law passed by Congress largely through the first lady’s n Fifty members of the U.S. Senate sent a letter to the com- efforts, limits on fat, sodium, sugar, and calories—and re - missioner of the National Football League. The letter was on quirements that whole grains, fruits, and vegetables be served— Senate letterhead, and the senators were all Democrats: Re - have be gun to be phased in over the past couple of years, with pub li cans were not asked to sign. The letter demanded of the stricter rules set for the upcoming school year. A review NFL that the Washington Redskins be made to drop their nick- released earli er this year from the Government Accountability name. (It studiously avoided the use of the word “Redskins.”) Office found that implementation of the standards so far has “The NFL can no longer ignore this,” said the senators, “and per- been both costly and wasteful, as students routinely throw petuate the use of this name as anything but what it is: a ra cial away unwanted servings of fruits and vegetables or forgo the slur.” Reasonable people differ on this question, including unpalatable meals entirely. It turns out that you can lead a kid American Indians. But why are senators, in their official ca - to veggies . . . pa ci ty, bothering the NFL? This is bullying, or in football lan- guage, piling on. n A Health and Human Services board decided in late May that Medicare recipients must be allowed to apply for taxpayer- n “Heavy fighting” was reported in early June near the eastern funded coverage of their sex-change operations. The board Ukrainian city of Slovyansk and other places between official overturned a 1981 determination that transsexual operations Ukrainian forces and what are usually described as “pro- were controversial and experimental, with insufficiently Russian separatists” or “insurgents.” In fact the latter are a known long-term effects and frequent serious complications, mix of Russian soldiers, mercenaries in the pay of Ramzan and would therefore not be covered by Medicare. Now such Kady rov, the pro-Russian Chechen strongman, and local operations are deemed by the board to be “safe and effective” thugs and criminals. They are equipped with heavy weapons and potentially medically necessary. The decision came in re - capable of shooting down planes and helicopters. And they sponse to a suit by a 74-year-old man who, the AP reports, move freely back and forth across the Russo–Ukraine border. “has lived as a woman on and off since she was a teenager and In other words the heavy fighting is the first stage not of a civil

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war but of a covert Russian invasion. It was probably de- they are also a source of concern: As chief minister of Gujarat, signed by Russian military planners to spark a civil war when he was ac cused of doing effectively nothing as Hindus mas- one did not erupt spontaneously, as they had first hoped. But sacred more than a thousand Muslims in reprisal killings for recent political events have made it unlikely that it will develop an attack on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, in which 59 were on those lines. A new Ukrainian president was elected by a killed. Modi has declined to make the sort of goodwill ges- clear majority across almost all regions without the need for a tures toward Muslims that other BJP leaders have made as a runoff election. The “neo-fascist” parties alleged by the matter of course. Modi may be personally clean, but what Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus to be running the Kiev gov- matters is that his government be clean: Corruption is a heavy ernment got 1 percent of the vote in the same elections. tax, especially on India’s poor. “Separatists” and “insurgents” were revealed in their true anti- democratic colors when they destroyed ballot boxes and beat up those trying to vote. Even in these discouraging circum- n King Juan Carlos of Spain has announced that he will stances, opinion polls showed that two-thirds of easterners and abdicate and that his son, Crown Prince Felipe, will suc- a larger percentage of all Ukrainians wanted an independent ceed him on the throne. The king’s reputation had been Ukraine outside Putin’s authoritarian grasp. Ukraine is stabi- damaged by scandals in recent years. Hunting elephants in lizing in response to Putin’s attempted subversion. Its newly Botswana in 2012, he fell and required hip surgery, which “legitimate” president is offering a stronger military response made the news and exposed his expensive lifestyle to scorn to Russia’s salami tactics—and, for the moment, an effective at a time when Spaniards were adjusting to austerity mea- one. Success in mil i ta ry conflict is uncertain, however, and sures imposed by their cash-strapped government. He was Kiev might not restore its authority in the East. President embarrassed by a legal investigation into embezzlement Obama, visiting Europe, should reset the reset button. His charges against his daughter. Some on the Spanish left are promise of $1 billion and more troops for NATO is a welcome using Juan Carlos’s concession to the de cline in his popular down payment—but no more than that. support to argue that the monarchy be abolished. Though it n Awoken by the euro crisis to the undemocratic nature of the is fading, the memory of his heroism European Union, about one-third of Europe’s voters cast their after Franco’s death, as the Spanish ballots for “anti-establishment” parties in elections to the king steered his country toward European parliament. Five million Spaniards abandoned the democracy in the 1970s and early nation’s two major parties; the Front National defeated the 1980s, still lives, however, and the two equivalent parties in France; and UKIP, led by Nigel will to keep the monarchy alive Farage, was the first insurgent party since 1910 to win a U.K. appears strong enough to prevail. national election. The parties are disparate: The hard-right Spaniards with enough of both hind- nationalism of the Front National is very different from the sight and foresight appreciate that welfare-state protectionism of the Danish People’s party or the institution that saw the free-trading liberalism of UKIP. But they are all reacting them through such a to the failure of supranational Euro-governance, and they all severe po li ti cal crisis want a return of powers from Brussels to national parliaments. not so long ago could Prudent leaders in national politics recognize such earth- someday prove help- quakes, but the leaders of the established parties in the ful to them again. European Parliament are too besotted with European integra- tion to concede anything serious to the new arrivals. Instead they will work together in an unacknowledged “grand coali- n Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. France has once tion.” The trouble with Eu ro pe an politics does not lie on its again tried to impose punitive taxes on its citizens’ incomes, fringes, but in its fanatical center. and it has once again faced a backlash. In May, ministers in the country discovered that despite rises in the income tax, n Amid the usual sentimental claptrap about the majesty of VAT, and corporation tax rates, receipts from the three streams the world’s largest democracy going to the polls, India has came to 16 billion euros—a 14 billion–euro shortfall. It is not elected as its new prime minister Narendra Modi of the just rich actors who have rebelled. President François Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata (Indian People’s) party. Hollande’s approval rating among all voters is hovering at Modi re places Manmohan Singh, who won admiration as the around 20 percent, his Socialist party has been greatly weak- main ar chi tect of India’s economic reforms only to find his ened in parliament, and his own prime minister, Manuel Valls, AP IMAGES / government mired in an endless succession of corruption has complained that “too much tax kills tax.” What’s French DPA / scandals unfortunately typical of India. Modi’s promise is to for “Laffer curve”? combine an economic-modernization program with squeaky- ALLIANCE - clean ethics: He himself is an austere-living man with a very n Many Venezuelans are enjoying a blog headed “RELOJES PICTURE

/ modest income; though le gally wed as a teenager in an DEL CHAVI$MO”—wristwatches of chavismo. It depicts arranged marriage, he has lived a bachelor’s life for all of his and comments on the luxury timepieces sported by Hugo adult years, and is believed to have taken a vow of celibacy in Chávez–style officials, who thunder against yanqui capitalism. the service of a strict Hindu faction. While Modi’s religious Socialist and Communist leaders, like other people, have long

PATRICK VAN KATWIJK scruples may be of some reassurance to scandal-weary India, abided by “Do as I say . . .” When he attended U.N. meetings

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THE WEEK in the 1980s, the Sandinista chief Daniel Ortega liked to how many times have we all turned on CNN to see live cover- exploit New York for shopping. He had a particular fondness age of a deranged fencer poking terrified students in the chest for luxury eyewear. In fact, President Reagan called him a with a foil’s blunt tip? None? Well, that just shows that the “dictator in designer glasses.” Hypocrisy is maybe the least of policy works—though, to be absolutely safe, we need a national the chavistas’, and the Sandinistas’, offenses, but it is one of registry of pistes and lamés, along with in-depth background them. checks to make sure potential purchasers haven’t rented too many Errol Flynn movies. n Michael Bloomberg, speaking at Harvard’s commencement, gave students, parents, and faculty nationwide something to n For rock stars and novelists, dying has long been a good think about. “You have to wonder whether students are being career move. For Richard III, it was better to be dug up. Ever exposed to the diversity of views that a great university should since his bones were exhumed last year from beneath a offer,” Bloomberg said, citing data that showed that 96 percent Leicester parking lot, his reputation has been extensively of the faculty and staff in the Ivy League who gave money dur- reassessed in the British media. Instead of the villainous ing the 2012 election gave it to Obama. “There was more dis- Machiavellian murderer of Shakespeare’s portrayal, he is seen agreement among the old Soviet Politburo.” Bloomberg also as fair-minded, a friend to the poor, something of a policy rapped Brown students for shouting down NYPD commissioner wonk—the David Cameron of his day, perhaps, except for the Ray Kelly last year. “What were [they] afraid of hearing? Why “not Machiavellian” part. Now a scientific reconstruction of did administrators not step in to prevent the mob from si lenc ing his spine reveals that, contrary to tradition, he was not a hunch- speech?” In answer to Bloomberg’s points: Students are not back. Far from being Shakespeare’s limping, “bunch-back’d being exposed to diversity, because too many of them fear it and toad,” he merely listed a bit to starboard due to a touch of sco- too many of their keepers hate it. liosis. So his physical rehabilitation now parallels his moral one, and the strange-new-respectification of Richard III con- n In April, the University of South Carolina Upstate’s Center tinues. Next thing you know, the Kennedys will give him a for Women’s and Gender Studies scheduled a satirical one- Profile in Courage Award. woman show—How to Be a Lesbian in Ten Days or Less—as part of its “Bodies of Knowledge” symposium. Some state leg- n General Wojciech Jaruzelski islators got upset, and the show was canceled. Now, as a result was an outstanding example of of state-budget cuts, the center is closing. Some on the left are the human puzzles that Com - calling foul, alleging an affront to academic freedom. USC- mu nism habitually threw up: Upstate chancellor Tom Moore said that the decision has nothing a dupe, a traitor, or a patriot, to do with ideology and is just “part of an effort to be consistent according to perspective. Born and systematic across academic affairs in how we administer into the Po lish gentry, he was and support various programs.” The center’s $45,000-per-year deported by the Soviets in 1939. budget will be repurposed to teach USC-Upstate students about Also deported, his father died. America’s founding documents—which we have to admit Privileged people like them, he sounds like a better use of funds in the service of more impor- used to feel, de served such tant “bodies of knowledge.” fates. A slight figure who was impersonal behind the dark n In Monroe, Mich., there was a teacher named Alan Barron. glasses he needed to wear, he He was suspended a few weeks before his retirement. The prob- became a commissar and rose lem was, he was teaching his eighth-graders about racism and in Sovietized Poland to be prime minister, first secretary of the Jim Crow. In the course of this lesson, he showed a video, Communist party, and finally president. Solidarity under Lech which depicted white actors in blackface. The point was, this is Walesa was the first mass movement to threaten Communism. what passed for entertainment in America once upon a time. An Claiming that the Soviets would invade to suppress Solidarity, assistant principal, noticing the video, demanded that it be Jaruzelski de clared martial law. Dozens were killed, thousands stopped, then suspended the teacher. While on suspension, Mr. detained. Whether the Soviet Un ion would really have sent the Barron was forbidden to attend the annual banquet that honors tanks in is still a mystery. Pushed by Mikhail Gorbachev, retiring teachers. Parents went on a social-media campaign for Jaruzelski finally negotiated to hand power over to Solidarity him. One mother (whose daughter is half black) said, “It’s so without more violence. Poles forgave him, and Walesa came to sad this has happened to him. He’s one of the best teachers church for his funeral. Dead at 90. R.I.P. we’ve had. We can’t believe that this is happening.” The sus- pension was lifted. But the teacher had a rotten ordeal at the end n One fears that Bill Clinton tapped Maya Angelou to read at his of his career. 1993 inauguration in order to have a black-female answer to Robert Frost, JFK’s inaugural bard—racial and sexual box- n At North Dakota State University, the fencing club has been checking. (Three lines from the poem she read, “A Rock, A River, prohibited from practicing on campus, since its foils, epees, and A Tree,” survive the occasion: “History, despite its wrenching sabres are considered dangerous weapons and banned under pain, / Cannot be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not NDSU’s safety rules. (Off campus, on the mean streets of Far go, be lived again.”) And yet she had real skills as a memoirist, and there is no such prohibition, so the club meets in a nearby a life of memorable episodes. Pregnant at 16, she bore her child

AP PHOTO school.) Scoff if you wish, but it’s just common sense: After all, and worked any number of jobs to support him. And she prac-

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THE WEEK ticed the right to bear arms. When she heard an intruder trying the THE EPA door of her house, she warned, “Stand four feet back because Obama’s War on Coal I’m going to shoot now.” (She did; no one was hurt.) When the cops observed that the shots had been fired from inside, she avInG failed to get the Democrats’ cap-and-trade said, “Well, I don’t know how that happened.” Would Mrs. scheme through Congress, President Obama intends to Wharton have done that? Maybe not. Emily Dickinson? H create it through fiat, with the Environmental Pro - Definitely. Dead at 86. R.I.P. tection agency issuing what amounts to a bill of attainder against coal-fired electricity generators. the regulation will set AT WAR a national limit on greenhouse-gas emissions from coal plants and then offer states a phony menu of choices for meeting that Abandoning the Afghans standard, stacking the policy deck in such a way as to force RESIDEnt ObaMa’S afghanistan policy is, in substance them into cap-and-trade programs administered by multistate and timing, ideal for his political interests: He can boast cartels. P (and already has) that all U.S. troops will be home from afghanistan before the end of his eight years in office, and that he just brought home an american soldier from taliban custody. but it’s ruinous for just about everyone else: for the U.S. and natO troops now asked to continue sacrificing while Obama’s policies strengthen the taliban; for both of the af ghan presiden- tial candidates, who are running on a strong, permanent partner- ship with the United States; and for the afghan people, who have tentatively and hopefully thrown in their lot with the West. Good politics at home and in the short term looks very dif- ferent abroad and for the long term. the president has broken an implicit promise he repeatedly made that the U.S. would stand by the afghan government. It has long been agreed that the afghans should assume full responsibility for combat operations after this year, and, partly to Obama’s credit, their forces have grown dramatically in size and capacity over the past several years. but they still need support and training from american troops, and the president has now put an expiration date on that aid. afghans will soon go to the polls to choose between two pres- idential candidates. both of them got to the final round by prom - is ing to sign a bilateral security agreement with the United It is far from obvious that the Obama administration has States, and both of them will face the task of knitting together anything like the legal authority for this; until quite recently, a political coalition, maintaining the loyalty of the country’s the White House seemed to think that it was necessary for Con- manifold prov inces, and holding off the taliban. Whoever wins gress—remember Congress, the lawmaking branch of govern- will now as sume office with al-Qaeda, the taliban, and plenty ment?—to pass a law creating a cap-and-trade program. but, of other dead ly foes knowing that in two years he will be fend- having lost that vote, President Obama is pressing on in rule- ing for himself. by-decree mode, apparently having mistaken himself for President Obama had never promised a large enduring pres- Charles de Gaulle. ence in afghanistan, but he had promised that this would remain to what end? there are two fundamental realities that the an important partnership—meaning on-the-ground security administration is committed to ignoring. One is that, even if we cooperation and support. the Obama administration has instead swallow whole the most alarmist version of the global-warming proposed total withdrawal by 2016, with troop levels to be cut to story, the phenomenon is inescapably a global one. In order for COUNTRY

- 5,000 or so next year. It’s still better than going to nothing imme- the United States to make national cuts that are of global sig-

COAL diately, but strategy is a futures game, and afghans will start nificance, they would have to be substantially larger than any- - hedging. thing under current consideration, and reducing emissions FROM - and we suspect President Obama may not even have the from coal-fired plants exclusively would be nowhere near VIEW -

THE political will to continue U.S. funding for the afghan armed sufficient. and that assumes that the rest of the world stands / 01 / forces. their gains will go for naught if the afghan government still, which is un like ly to be the case in consideration of the 12 / doesn’t have the money to pay the salaries of 350,000 soldiers second reality: Coal does not care where it is burned. If we 2009 /

COM and tens of thousands of police whom americans have trained. reduce demand for coal in the United States by substituting . the next american president will inherit an alliance worth other fuels in our electricity plants, that does not transform a virtually nothing in a region where radical Islamism and militant corresponding sum of the world’s coal deposits into fairy dust. WORDPRESS . groups of all stripes will grow more or less unimpeded, goaded It will still be coal, and it will still be useful for producing elec- on and supplied by rogue regimes. Once upon a time, President tricity elsewhere. Obama said that afghanistan was the good war, the one where the administration’s hope is that we will be leading the world VLSCOPENHAGEN

:// we’d focus, where he was committed to victory. He has now for- by example. In this case, when it comes to the global economy,

HTTP mally, even proudly, broken that promise. we suspect it really will be leading from behind.

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de voted one of his weekly Wall Street Journal columns to the book. Galston summarized several of the chapters and appeared to agree with much of their content. He thinks, however, that the book is too timid about changing the Republican platform and disagrees with some of the specific political judgments implicit in the book. (He does not think conservatives will get anywhere advo- cating a replacement for Obamacare and faults the book for saying little about immigration, which he considers a cen- tral problem for Re publicans.) E. J. Dionne Jr. has written the most thorough liberal examination of reform conservatism. His essay appeared in the “Establishment” and “Tea Party”—growing together journal Democracy a few days before Room to Grow was published, but it shows that Dionne has been reading the Right Reforms reformers attentively. Like Galston, he agrees with many of the reformers’ points Liberalism is not the future of conservatism but wishes we would go further. He wants us to make a sharper break with conser- BY RAMESH PONNURU vatism as it exists today by accepting a larger role for government, moving left on IBERALS are taking the publica- leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) was social issues, and criticizing our fellow tion of a new collection of essays one of the speakers, and Senator Mike conservatives more bluntly. by conservatives as an occasion Lee (R., Utah) was another. Both the Dionne’s analysis, it seems to me, goes L to diagnose what ails the Right. bête noire and the champion of many off track by setting reform conservatism The favor should be returned. Liberal- tea-party groups could agree to laud in opposition to tea-party conservatism. ism’s reaction to the rise of “reform con- Room to Grow. The reformers, he writes, did not find the servatism” shows us one of its great Liberals, reasonably enough, have been Republican party’s “wall of opposition” flaws: an unwarranted confidence in its less enthusiastic. Several commentators to President Obama’s agenda during his own basic intellectual health. took the view that reform conservatism is first term “particularly appealing,” and “Reform conservatism” is the label merely a new coat of paint on a rusted tea-party primary victories “sent a chill that has been attached to a group of writ- right-wing agenda. Scott Winship’s chap- through the reform cause.” He thinks we ers who believe that the conservative ter argues, among other things, that trans- are too frightened of our tea-party adver- agenda needs to be updated and broad- ferring many families from Supplemental saries to denounce them. He believes that ened: that conservative reforms to the Security Income to other aid programs we “pander to anti-Obama feeling” and nation’s tax code, health-care system, would reduce the risk of multigenera- refuse to acknowledge the moderation of higher-education policies, and safety net, tional dependence on federal support. many of his policies, including especially among other institutions, would make it Michael Hiltzik, writing for the Los Obamacare, because we “don’t want to easier for the American middle class to Angeles Times, inveighed against the offend” people to our right. grow and thrive, and that offering such “contempt for the underprivileged” sup- I’m confident that I do not speak only reforms would make it easier for conser- posedly behind such ideas. for myself in saying that my opposition vatism to grow and thrive. In May, the YG Other liberals have noticed that most to almost all of Obama’s policies is quite Network, a conservative group, published Republicans have yet to take up these sincere. And about three-quarters of the RICK BOWMER

Room to Grow, a book presenting such an reformist ideas and then concluded that proposing legislation that bears the / agenda. (I contributed an essay to it, and they have no political future. Taken to - reform-conservative imprint would not

my wife, who works for that group, ran gether, these common reactions put exist if not for the tea-party victories of AP PHOTO : LEE

the project.) reform conservatives in a no-win situa- Senators Mike Lee and Marco Rubio. ; Conservatives who have commented tion: Either the reformists’ proposals have (Dionne writes off Lee as merely trying to EASLEY on the book have almost unanimously been made before by Republicans, in rebrand conservatism, which I don’t think . offered it handsome praise, and this which case they can be dismissed as does justice to his record of introducing TIMOTHY D consensus has leapt over some of the retreads of old ideas, or they have not, in creative new bills.) / divisions that typically fracture the which case they can be dismissed as polit- Reformers disagree with many tea AP PHOTO Right. When the American Enterprise ically irrelevant. partiers, as Dionne notes, on some mat- : Institute hosted a set of panels to dis- A few liberals have avoided this ters: We tend not to think, for example,

cuss the book, Senate Republican simple-mindedness. William Galston that President George W. Bush’s over- MCCONNELL

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spending, as regrettable as it was, was aggressive in such areas as higher educa- one of the major reasons for Republican tion and health care, where for decades decline during his second term. But tea- we have been passive while liberals have #NoNotMe party conservatism and reform conser- tried, to some extent successfully, to set vatism overlap considerably, and it would policy. The UCSB killings were not caused be inaccurate as well as counterproduc- Both Dionne and Galston draw a par- by “white male privilege” tive for reformers to deny it—much as it allel between the efforts of Republican may sadden Dionne. Both groups believe reformers today and those of the Demo - BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE that too many Republicans have been cratic Leadership council in the late complacent and detached from the con- 1980s and early 1990s. There is quite a OLLecTIve guilt is en vogue at cerns of most Americans. bit to the analogy, which is why people the moment, the ever-supple Like other conservatives, most re- often make it. What the analogy misses is concepts of “privilege,” “rape formers think that the health-care law also important. The Democrats of the C culture,” and “entitlement” preserves the private-sector domination 1980s had to respond to a country that having been gradually brought into the mainstream and then ruthlessly applied to anything that moves. At first the ten- Today the Republicans must reorient dency was limited to cultural criticism and reserved to practitioners of that themselves in a country that is peculiar form of word salad that is native persistently unhappy and where liberal to the college campus. Of late, though, it has taken a more sinister turn. In May, policy successes are too hard to detect a shooting carried out by a cal i fornia man—and justified by him in disgrace- to be the basis for concessions. fully misogynistic terms—became a rally ing point for exponents of the idea of health insurance mostly as a matter of was largely happy with Republican gover- that supposed structural inequalities in outward form and rests actual decision- nance and to specific conservative policy American life have, literally, turned making authority over everything impor- successes; much of what they had to do deadly. tant with the federal government. It is took the form of concessions to conser- As the details of the killer’s ugly man - true that features of Obamacare resem- vatism. Today the Republicans must i festo became public, a Twitter hash- ble policies that some conservatives in reorient themselves in a country that is tag—“#YesAllWomen”—collected the the past have supported. But those con- persistently unhappy and where liberal ac cu sations of the aggrieved. If, as ca m - servatives were, to my mind, mistaken, policy successes are too hard to detect to ille Paglia claims, feminism has in deed and even at that the law went much far- be the basis for concessions. “become a catch-all vegetable drawer ther in a centralizing direction than they Dionne writes that reform conserva- where bunches of clingy sob sisters can favored. tives are “far too timid in their store their moldy neuroses,” then it is Some of the skeptical notes Dionne approaches to economic injustice and to apparently in the darker corners of sounds about reform conservatism are the structural problems in the economic Twitter that the leaders of the traveling reasonable. He asks whether we are system.” We diagnose those injustices sisterhood have found their forever “willing to put the money behind [our] and problems differently than he does. home. There, the killer’s peculiar moti- solutions.” The expanded child tax credit But isn’t the contemporary progressive vations were grafted onto all men—the many of us advocate, for example, agenda pretty timid and unimaginative, extraordinarily complex problems of leaves less room in the budget to cut too, even on its own terms? The central untreated mental illness, a surfeit of guns, income-tax rates (a trade-off Senator demand of a progressive president on eco- and a culture in which running amok has Lee’s proposal faces). Dionne, though, nomic matters is a higher minimum wage, become the go-to outlet for the deranged goes a telling step further. He warns that and the left-wing favorite who recently being quickly cast aside in favor of we “often engage in ‘rob Peter to pay became mayor of New York city wants buzzy terms with pliable definitions. Paul’ budgeting by calling for sharp more funding for preschools. even if I Few bothered to look into the details of reductions in programs progressives see thought these ideas were good ones, I the case. The shooter was white and as essential.” To complain that we do not would not think them likely to improve male, and had written a long manifesto share progressives’ budget priorities American life in any major way. outlining his hatred of women. What else amounts to complaining that we are not In his treatment of “the reformicons,” did we need to know? progressives. Dionne is thoughtful and even at times It wasn’t just “misogyny” and “male “The promise of reform conservatism generous. But he seems to think that what entitlement” that got an airing. The is that it will move the right to more mod- contemporary conservatism needs is to be trendy concept of “white privilege”— erate and practical ground,” he writes. more like contemporary liberalism. con - and its more serious brother, “white su - More practical, yes; but not, in any con- servatives should decline the invitation prem a cy”—reared their heads, too. ventional sense, more moderate. I rather and, because the condition of liberalism is “How many times,” Rutgers’ Brittney think of reform conservatism as expand- not exactly enviable, should decline it cooper asked at Salon, “must troubled ing the Right’s agenda by making it more without regret. young white men engage in these terror-

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Henry Kissinger supposedly once joked that a full-blown “battle of the sexes” was unlikely because “there’s just too much fraternizing with the en e my.” He was right. It remains the case that men are stronger than wo men, that in consequence there is violence against women, and that, for as long as we priv- ilege the presumption of innocence, prosecuting such violence will remain tough. Nevertheless, the vast major- ity of women do not spend their days in constant fear of attack—nor, for that matter, do they feel perpetually put upon. The shooter in Isla Vista was not a more savage version of the average male, istic acts that make public space unsafe lege.” Nothing, apparently, can shake the but a deeply disturbed exception—a for everyone before we admit that white theory’s appeal. Last year the Navy Yard “crazy” person, in the now unfashion- male privilege kills?” killer, who was black, had his crime able term. Among the beliefs expressed This approach has two key flaws. attributed to white culture. in his manifesto and final video were that First, its advocates conflate individual It is illogical and insidious to judge if women were not willing to have sex cases with societal or historical trends— individuals based on group means. But it with him, they should not be permitted to and highly selectively, too. If the statis- is worse when the beliefs used to inform have sex with anybody; that if they were tical link between men and violence this confusion are demonstrably false. not smart enough to want him of their serves as sufficient warrant to tar an Contrary to the general public’s concep- own volition, they should be put into entire sex with impunity, then one would tion, white people do not commit more concentration camps and executed under expect the statistical link between mass shootings than any other race but his watchful eye; and that the only cir- minorities and crime to be similarly treat- stay neatly in line with their demographic cumstance in which men might be free to ed. It is not. What are the chances, do we share. Where, then, is this supposed enti- fulfill their potential would be if sex think, of seeing a “#YesAllWhitePeople” tlement culture manifesting itself in the were all but abolished. hashtag? Al most zero. (And thank good- nation’s shootings? This is a repugnant worldview, to be ness.) Where, too, one might ask, do we find sure. But, with obsessed murderers, if it The second problem is that nothing evidence that the prevailing popular cul- is not one thing, it is likely to be another. whatsoever seems to be sufficient to fal- ture of the United States holds that men John Lennon’s killer was obsessed with sify any claims that are being made. are “entitled” to women’s bodies and that J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye; Neither that more men than women were the shooter was an obvious symptom of Charles Manson with the Beatles. Gabby killed in Isla Vista nor that the shooter a generally sick country? If anything, it Giffords’ assailant was fascinated by hated men with a passion served to seems that the opposite is the case. Marx; the Navy Yard shooter was con- undermine the “rape culture” claim; it College campuses, Hollywood, and the vinced that the surveillance state was just showed that misogyny is a “problem new cabal of mor al ly posturing online stalking him. In Isla Vista, the shooter for everyone.” That the killer had been in scolds that has ta ken to the Internet as believed he was justified in his actions. therapy for years and was refusing to Lady Godiva did to her horse have spent But, importantly, in this he was pretty take his medication did not suggest that he the better part of the last 40 years build- much alone. There is no burgeoning anti- was unstable and therefore a poor exam- ing a case for the existence of what we woman movement in the United States ple of anything; instead, it was deemed now refer to as “rape culture.” In doing in whose name rational operatives are to be irrelevant—an excuse leveled by so, they have defined what constitutes staging massacres—nor, in all likeli- friends of the sta t us quo. That he was “consensual sex” so narrowly as to make hood, will there ever be one. Violence half Asian did not undermine the early a mockery of the relevant language, and is a traditionally male trait, and some claim that he was an exponent of “white have thereby obscured what is awful in men can be brutish and unrestrained. supremacy”; it reinforced it, Salon’s the very real offenses that a small num- But those are separate problems, and Joan Walsh self-parodically asserted, ber of men commit against women. Are ones about which the abomination in claiming that he was both a practition- we honestly to believe that genuine mi- Cali fornia has little of importance to er and a victim, and coining a new so gyny is anything other than a mar gin al teach us—hashtags and righteous

LUBA MYTS term in the process: “half-white privi- attitude? indignation or none.

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hard.” “But at the same time,” he believed, “everyone must realize that From Fox News anchor A Concert of the Germans themselves had brought on this horrible war, and that they had vio- Democracies lated all ethics of international law and international procedure, and had created BRET Russia’s aggression shows the need to a series of crimes that had amazed and move beyond “collective security” shocked beyond belief all the people of the world.” Rather than a tool of great- power politics, war would become a BAIER BY JOHN YOO crime in a world governed by interna- comes the triumphant true tional law that global institutions would story of his son’s bravery, USSIA’s annexation of Crimea enforce. and continuing pressure on After the League of Nations col- survival, and his very Ukraine reveal more than lapsed in the inter-war years, FDR res- R the Obama administration’s urrected this idea of collective security SPECIAL national- security paralysis and a lack as the governing principle of the United of strategic vision. Like the collapse of Nations. Russia has now brushed aside HEART the League of Nations between the the U.N. Charter. In violation of Article world wars, it marks the failure of the II of that document, Russia resorted to progressive dream of collective security. “the use of force against the territorial The pressing question is not whether integrity” and “political independence” Russia has violated norms against of Ukraine. As a permanent member of aggression—it has—but how the the U.N. Security Council, it blocked United States and its allies should any collective authorization of force, respond so as to strengthen the interna- military aid, or even economic sanctions tional system. in response to the invasion. Europeans, Only the United States can lead the especially the German and French gov- world’s democracies to rebuild a world ernments, which opposed the 2003 inva- order that allows forceful measures to sion of Iraq for lacking U.N. approval, protect international peace and stability. do not seem to feel the same sense of Though far superior in economic and outrage in this case. Fast forward a military might, the United States and its decade, and now European leaders re - European allies have shrunk before portedly are resisting tougher sanctions Putin’s boldness. Russia annexed the on the Putin regime and European intel- Crimean peninsula without firing a shot, lectuals are pleading for respect for is stirring up unrest in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s historical sphere of interest. and has massed troops on the country’s Beyond further undermining the U.N. border. President Barack Obama has system, Putin’s latest land grab may sig- responded by sending a token force to nal the decline of the American post-war k Eastern Europe, imposing economic project. Between the end of World War sanctions on a few of Putin’s supporters, II and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “THIS IS A STORY and sending only food and non-lethal the United States and its democratic YOU’LL NEVER aid to Ukraine. allies succeeded in keeping the peace in Russia’s successful aggression sig- Europe. Once the tinderbox for wars FORGET.” nals the crowning failure of the progres- that killed tens of millions throughout —NORAH O’DONNELL, sive approach to international affairs, the world, Europe has gone more than co-host, CBS This Morning which began with Woodrow Wilson’s six decades without direct conflict be - attempt to outlaw war following World tween the great powers. In the words of War I. NATO’s first secretary general, Lord 100% of what the author receives As the Versailles peace conference Ismay, the Atlantic Alliance was de - from the sale of this book concluded, Wilson admitted, his physi- signed to “keep the Russians out, the is donated to various cian recounts, that the terms were “very Americans in, and the Germans down.” non-profi t pediatric heart causes. The United States spread this peace Mr. Yoo is Heller Professor of Law at the University throughout the globe. The rate of death Also available in downloadable audio and ebook formats of California, Berkeley, and a Visiting Scholar at the from inter-state wars has fallen lower in SpecialHeartFamily.com American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of the last 50 years than at any time in the the recently published Point of Attack: last five centuries. Several reasons con- centerstreet.com Preventive War, International Law, and tributed to the “long peace,” as John Center Street is a Division of Global Welfare. Lewis Gaddis has described the Cold Hachette Book Group

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War. Nuclear weapons deterred wars not set up a permanent inter national force used other than in self-defense, between the great powers. The balance institution, which would only replicate constrains only democracies and allows of power between the superpowers kept the failures of the U.N. and the League autocracies to run riot. small conflicts from expanding into of Nations. Instead, it could set up an A new approach to global security regional or worldwide wars. informal alliance of democratic nations would offer concrete responses to But equally important was the role of to coordinate their efforts to maintain Russia’s aggression. The United States the United States in building and main- international peace and security. could terminate the New START treaty, taining a world order that spread political History provides a guide. After the which limited both nations to 1,550 and economic liberty. Much as the Royal end of the Napoleonic Wars, for exam- nuclear warheads. Russia, which can no Navy enforced a 19th-century Pax ple, the great powers established a longer afford to project power globally, Britannica, America supported NATO in “Concert of Europe,” a cooperative sys- should not enjoy an arsenal comparable the West, defended Korea and Japan in tem aimed at maintaining the status to that of the U.S., which has broader the East, and contained Commu nist quo. The Concert, and the balance of responsibilities to ensure peace. Russia Russia and China. In underwriting Euro- power it expressed, enjoyed relative cannot keep pace with the United States

Today’s international law, which criminalizes force other than in self-defense, constrains only democracies and allows autocracies to run riot.

pean and Asian security, the United success in keeping a general peace for and would have to cut its nuclear arsenal States has led more people to freedom about a century, until the onset of World anyway, so the agreement forces mean- and prosperity than have ever enjoyed War I destroyed Europe. More recently, ingful cuts only on the U.S. arsenal. them at any previous time in recorded under the leadership of John Bolton, the Washington could restore anti-ballistic- human history. Bush administration started the Pro - missile defenses in Eastern Europe. Whether by fault or design, the liferation Security Initiative, in which Concerned about Iran’s nuclear-weapons Obama administration is bringing this democratic nations cooperated to stop program, the Bush administration pro - age to an end. The Pax Americana is the spread of WMD and missile tech- mised to deploy the systems in Poland receding from Eastern Europe and the nology to rogue regimes. Other informal and the Czech Republic. President Middle East. Asian allies such as Japan, coalitions removed Saddam Hussein Obama canceled the program as part of Korea, and the Philippines openly from power in Iraq and Qaddafi from his administration’s “reset” with worry that American security guaran- power in Libya. Russia; redeploying it would be an tees have little value. Washington’s A more permanent Concert of Demo - important American commitment to spending cuts are preventing the U.S. cracies could achieve similar benefits NATO and raise the costs on Russia. armed forces from shouldering global today. Cured of collective security’s These policies would require the responsibilities. The administration paralysis, the United States and its Obama administration to turn away shifts responsibility for maintaining allies could openly confront nations from its strategy of depending on inter- peace to regional players, even though that use aggression to seize power and national legal solutions and return to collective security has never proven territory. Such a system would rely on unilateral solutions or cooperation only able to replace a hegemonic power. The the great powers to maintain interna- with our allies. fading of hegemony has usually prompted tional peace, rather than blaming them A more fundamental and effective widespread war and economic destruc- as the cause of instability. Today’s step would be to eject Russia from any tion—American assump tion of world international law, which criminalizes meaningful role in global security. leadership in the wake of Britain’s Along with China, Russia has used its decline after World Wars I and II veto on the Security Council to act as the remains a rare exception. defense attorney for oppressive regimes But this development is not in evitable. throughout the world. The United States The United States could avoid it by dis- cannot remove Russia from its perma- pensing with collective security and nent seat, but it can develop an alterna- enhancing the power of its democratic tive source of legitimacy for military allies. It could lead a Concert of Demo - force. The Ukraine setback is a chance cracies that would take steps, ultimately to make a stand against nations that including the use of force, to respond to pursue aggression abroad and oppress threats to world order: terrible human- their populations at home. This kind of rights disasters, aggressive rogue new approach may not suit President nations, the spread of WMD technology, “From now on, maybe we should let somebody else’s Obama, but the security of the world and terrorist groups. Washing ton need conscience be our guide.” hangs in the balance.

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identity. Scotland, a significant part of have been steadily ceding authority to the mainland, would be following the Brussels, ethnic or national minorities There’ll example of Eire. The folly of the present everywhere are encouraged to assert will then have undone the genius of the themselves and claim independence. If Always Be an past. every nation is to have a state, and every The Scots have long since formed a state is to be a nation, lines and defini- very successful nation. Their culture is tions will have to be fudged and bound- England . . . instantly recognizable and widely aries put at risk. Slovaks obtained their . . . but will there be a Britain too? admired, with literature and speech, state peacefully; Macedonians and law, clothes, food, music and dances, Bosnians and Croats violently; Kosovars BY DAVID PRYCE-JONES athletics, and a religious enthusiasm through a dangerous manipulation of the and enduring clan system all their own. great powers, and perhaps only for the n September 18, the 5 million The dual identity of Scottish and time being; and Moldovans, Ukrainians, or so who live in Scotland British reinforced the sense of being and now Scots are still among the unde- will be able to take part in a special. Time was when schoolchildren cided. In short, the hostility of Brussels O referendum to de cide whether were familiar with the example of the to the nation-state has the contrary effect or not their country is to be independent. Scots Greys charging at Waterloo to of spawning more of them, but smaller, Polls show that the Yes vote is steadily gain a British victory with the war cry and all the offspring of destabilizing gaining on the no vote, with barely a “Scotland forever!” Time was, too, incoherence. couple of points between them. Three when Scottish bankers, traders, doc- Until quite recently, Scotland was a centuries ago, the English, Scots, and tors, engineers, and soldiers recog- stronghold of the Conservative party. Welsh put in place the United Kingdom nized that being British gave them Westminster used to contain a solid bloc in order to stop fighting one another to privileges wherever the English lan- of Tory members representing Scottish the death. Britain and British were guage had spread. constituencies. Friction between Scots make-believe concepts in this United Do the Scots really wish now to have and English was at the level of barroom Kingdom, but they served so well to a state for their nation? What conceiv- jokes about supposed national charac- express the common identity that they able benefit might that bring? These teristics. Discovery of north Sea oil in became believable. The Irish in their questions should be addressed in the the early 1960s began the shift in atti- island stayed apart, and the existence of first place to Brussels. The founders of tudes. The windfall of money raises Eire is a standing reproach that the the European Union held that the expectations that have disrupted every British have found hard to live with. A nation-state was the cause of war and oil-producing country, and Scotland is Yes vote must bring to a head what has therefore had to be eliminated. Because no exception. Bearing comparison with been a slow-motion collapse of British central governments over the years the Shiite minority who feel deprived of the revenue from the oil- rich provinces they inhabit in Saudi Arabia, many Scots have come to complain that money that should be theirs goes into English pockets. In sober fact, the Treasury has had in place for years a complex formula whereby every Scot receives a larger subsidy from the central gov- ernment than does every English man or Welshman, in effect buying off the Scots. But any benefit that this for- mula might have produced was lost when in 1989 Mrs. Thatcher introduced a poll tax and inexplicably tested it out in Scot land. Scots in - stantly perceived discrimina- tion aimed at them and staged violent riots that spread, destroying Mrs. Thatcher’s reputation and wiping away the Con servative party in

ROMAN GENN Scotland.

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The Scottish Labour party looked set he understands that the decision to vote to govern Scotland indefinitely. Of the Yes depends on the Scots’ thinking of 59 Scottish seats in Westminster, 41 are themselves as victims; self-pity will today in the hands of Scottish Labour, mobilize them as never before. and just one is a Scottish Conservative. Theoretically, Conservatives and La - The law of unintended consequences bour both participate in the No cam- I then took over. The governments of paign, whose slogan, “Better Together,” M P O R T A N T John Major and Tony Blair both deter- indicates their lack of inspiration. mined that only self-rule could resolve Afraid that anything they do or say N O T I C E the sectarian confrontation in Northern might be counterproductive, the Con - Ireland. Appeasement of one set of servatives are not even leading from to all National Review nationalists necessarily meant appease- behind. The Labour party is in the ment of all. A first referendum on devo- thankless position of having to defend subscribers! lution—a move toward self-government the status quo, something contrary to its short of independence—failed in 1979. habitual political stance. Conviction is In 1997, in the manner now perfected in missing. Unpopular on several counts, Europe, a second referendum was held Tony Blair does not dare show his face. to reach the required decision. Assembly The No campaign is in the hands either       We are moving our buildings were hurriedly run up in of former prime minister Gordon Edinburgh and Cardiff. Like Lewis Brown or of Alistair Darling, his chan- subscription-fulfillment      Carroll’s White Queen, Tony Blair be - cellor of the exchequer. Both men are 
   office from lieves six impossible things before patriotic Scots, but it is impossible to breakfast, and he was emphatic that forget that these two wrecked the Mount   Morris, Ill. devolution was handing strictly limited British economy. Since losing office,    to Palm Coast, Fla. powers to the new assemblies—and Gordon Brown, a Scottish member at Please continue moreover was a final end in itself. He Westminster, is like Achilles sulking in    was indignant with whoever insisted his tent. Darling is an unimaginably to be vigilant: that devolution was the thin end of a soporific speaker, and they seem more      There are fraudulent wedge and must lead ultimately to inde- concerned to sideline each other than to 
   pendence. rally the voters. Johann Lamont, the agencies soliciting This naïveté was soon exposed. Vio - machine politician at the head of the your    National Review lence has been suspended in Northern Scottish Labour party, thinks it is suffi- Ireland but the gunmen have not cient argument to rant that the SNP’s subscription !  renewal reformed. In Scotland, devolution opened drive to independence is “the most dis- without    our authorization. the way for the Scottish National party, honest, deceptive, and disgraceful polit- Please reply only to the SNP. For years, the SNP had been ical campaign this country has ever   marginal, a rabble with a hint of quasi- seen.” The SNP does resort to intimida- National Review   
  fascism about it. Parties of the kind tion, but Lamont’s argument is less per- renewal notices or need a leader able to impose himself, suasive than it might be because it so     and Alex Salmond is one such. Fifty- happens that the Scottish Labour party bills—make sure the nine, a man of the people, he is confi- has just been caught in really disgrace-     return address is dent, smooth, every inch a populist ful behavior: Rigging internal elections politician. Thanks to him, the SNP has is the least of it.     Palm Coast, Fla. captured the Scottish parliament and The English are objecting that they Ignore   all requests for forms the government. He and his crit- ought to have their say about the renewal that are not ics throw suggestions and statistics break-up of the Union. Some hope to
    back and forth. Whether the queen will be rid of the Scots, and point out that     directly payable be head of his Scottish state and without the 59 Scottish constituencies to National Review. whether it will have the pound sterling Westminster would be forever Conser -     as currency are subjects of debate. vative. The millions of Scots who live If you receive any mail or Membership in the EU and NATO may outside Scotland are excluded from vot- telephone     offer that makes or may not be accepted. The future of ing in the referendum, an injustice that    you suspicious contact Scottish banks, tariffs, Scottish regiments, looks prearranged to exclude probable the Trident nuclear-submarine base at No voters. Anxiety about the future is [email protected]@nationalreview.com.. Faslane, and passport and border controls already turning into dismay and outrage. Your cooperation are among issues left in the air. A socialist “Britain” and “the British” look like they     as much as a nationalist, Salmond plays are becoming terms without relevance,      is greatly appreciated. on the unspoken grievances against the on a par with “Soviet” or “Yugoslav,” of English, especially if they own property. historic interest only. And it’s left to luck The Scottish Milosevic in this respect, to save the day.

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You deserve a factual look at . . .

Why Should the U.S. Fund the Palestinian Authority? The Palestinians spurn peace talks with Israel and now plan to align with Hamas terrorists. Should we be sending them more than half a billion dollars a year? Despite all efforts by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) has rejected U.S. diplomatic efforts and a negotiated peace with Israel by unilaterally signing on to 15 international agreements. Even more alarming, the P.A. just announced a merger with the Islamic terror group Hamas. Currently the U.S. sends some $440 million dollars annually in direct aid to the P.A., plus an additional $225 million in funding through the U.N. Is this the best use of American tax dollars? 2011: President Abbas proceeded to seal that agreement WhatSince 1979,are the the Unitedfacts? States has expended untold anyway—though the deal later fell apart—knowing full well that diplomatic capital to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Yet every it is against U.S. law for Congress to fund any organization with time peace has seemed at hand—including the U.S.-brokered Oslo terrorist ties. Now Abbas has announced a new merger with accords in 1993, and Israel’s historic Camp David offer in 2000 of Hamas, the faction that openly advocates the conquest of every a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem—the inch of Palestine, cleansing it of Jews, and establishing a Palestinians have refused to make peace. In 2008, following the fundamentalist Islamic caliphate. Above all, Hamas refuses to Annapolis summit, Israeli Prime accept the state of Israel and Minister Olmert again offered the condemns any efforts to negotiate Palestinians a state based on 1967 “If a Palestinian state were declared today, it peace. borders and a capital in Jerusalem, would be neither democratic, nor peaceful nor In 2011, President Abbas rejected but P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas willing to negotiate with Israel.” pleas from the Obama administration walked away without a counter offer. and the European Union to return to In 2010, in order to bring the parties U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen negotiations with Israel and refrain together for new peace talks, from making a bid for unilateral President Obama convinced Israel to enforce a moratorium on recognition of a Palestinian state at the U.N. Instead, Abbas building in the Jerusalem suburbs for ten months. For eight proceeded to the U.N. and made his request. Now he has signed months, P.A. President Abbas refused to take part in talks, and documents requesting additional recognition by 15 U.N. and eventually walked out. Now the Palestinians have again effectively other international organizations. ended peace talks with Israel unilaterally by seeking international Time to stop aid to U.S. enemies. In 2011, Secretary of State recognition and a unity government with the Hamas terrorist Hillary Clinton stated that “We will not deal with nor in any way faction. fund a Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless and In addition to its diplomatic investment, the U.S. has over the until Hamas has renounced violence, recognized Israel and decades given the Palestinian Authority more than five billion agreed to follow the previous obligations of the Palestinian dollars in aid. Today, the United States provides more than $665 Authority.” In fact, annual U.S. foreign appropriations bills million annually in direct aid and funding through the United expressly forbid funding for “assistance to Hamas or any entity Nations. effectively controlled by Hamas or any power-sharing Yet despite this generous diplomatic support and financial government of which Hamas is a member.” largesse, Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Authority officials Both houses of Congress have already overwhelming passed have verbally attacked the United States and snubbed U.S. aid. In resolutions that threaten withdrawal of aid from the Palestinian 2011, the Palestinian Authority announced a “boycott of the Authority if it persists in efforts to circumvent direct American consulate, its diplomats, and the American negotiations with Israel by turning to the United Nations for institutions in Jerusalem,” adding that Americans “cannot extort recognition—which it has done—and if the Palestinian the Palestinian people and humiliate it with a bit of aid.” Authority shares power with a recalcitrant Hamas. According to Referring to these huge U.S. financial grants, Abbas said, “This the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana does not mean that they [the U.S.] dictate to us whatever they Ros-Lehtinen, “Despite decades of assistance totaling billions of want.” dollars, if a Palestinian state were declared today, it would be The Palestinian Authority did indeed reject requests by the neither democratic, nor peaceful nor willing to negotiate with United States not to form an alliance with Hamas terrorists in Israel.”

By allying with the terrorist group Hamas, abandoning peace talks with Israel, and taking its case for statehood unilaterally to international bodies, it’s clear that the Palestinian Authority has no respect for the interests of the United States in the Middle East, including peace with Israel. With today’s ailing economy and soaring budget deficits, isn’t it time for Congress to stop spending more than half a billion American tax dollars annually supporting the rogue Palestinian Authority?

This ad has been published and paid for by FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world. Your tax- deductible contributions are welcome. They enable us to pursue these goals Facts and Logic About the Middle East and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines. We I P.O. Box 590359 San Francisco, CA 94159 have virtually no overhead. Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational Gerardo Joffe, President work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail. 130A To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/3/2014 10:30 PM Page 28

on account of our grievances, don’t stop little people, being exploited by big life for others.” people. To be on the side of the unions A Long Way I further thought back to October, and was to be on the side of the angels, or the opening night of Carnegie Hall in certainly of humanity. From Harlan new York. Actually, Opening night did In my part of the country—south- not come off. There was to be a concert eastern Michigan—we learned about by the Phila delphia Orche stra. But the Walter Reuther and the Battle of the County stagehands union had a grievance. And Overpass. This was the day in 1937 One man’s reflections on labor they decided that Opening night would when the United Auto Workers took a unions in our time not take place. So it didn’t. stand, and were smashed by the goons The orchestra had no say. The con- of Ford Motor. They rose again, how- ductor and soloists had no say. neither ever, stronger than before. There was BY JAY NORDLINGER did the thousands of ticket-buyers or something romantic about the Battle anyone else. Only the five guys who of the Overpass, and about unionism n May, the Oslo Freedom Forum belong to the union. They were like an generally. takes place. It is the premier human- emperor who can give thumbs up or Countless TV shows and movies had rights conference, held in the nor - thumbs down. They could stop life for businessmen as the villain and labor as I wegian capital. This year, it was others, and did. the hero. In 1976, when I was twelve, canceled, or postponed. The reason: a These are not horny-handed sons of there was a celebrated documentary hotel-workers strike. Conference orga- toil: The head guy makes $530,000 a about the Harlan County coalminers: nizers could not find a way around it. year. The other four make over 400. black-lunged sufferers who merely Hundreds of people from all over the There are millions of long-term unem- wanted their simple rights. Three years world were set to fly to Oslo. But, at the ployed in our country. I imagine some after that, there was a big Hollywood eleventh hour, they were called off. of them would be willing to put out movie, Norma Rae, about textile work- They had something important to do. chairs and stands for a mere $350K. ers. Adorable Sally Field held up a sign Many of them are former political pris- Some of them might be willing to go as that said “Union.” Hearts and con- oners or otherwise victims of gross per- low as 295. sciences swooned. secution. They were going to give their I once wanted to be a supporter of That same year, 1979, there was a testimonies to an international audience, labor unions and their efforts, but I truckers strike. I was 15 and becoming including the press. But the hotel workers, found that, in my time and place, it was ever more interested in politics. The in a sense, decided that the conference impossible. When I was quite young, I striking truckers were shooting at scabs would not take place. So it didn’t. got the idea that unions were noble, (or “replacement workers,” to use the I thought, “We all have grievances at standing up for the rights of people who hated euphemism). I mean, shooting bul- work, from time to time. But most of us, were relatively powerless. They were lets at them. They killed a driver, in Alabama. (His name was Robert Tate.) This shook me up a little: Strikers weren’t supposed to be black hats. They weren’t supposed to be murderers. In my town, Ann Arbor, the teachers went on strike from time to time. They weren’t murderers (well, one was), but it sure seemed they were working fewer and fewer hours, at greater and greater pay and bene- fits. There was a time when teachers were almost like missionaries. They took vir- tual vows of poverty, to serve the community. In the summer, they had to take odd jobs, such as painting houses, to make ends meet until September. I wouldn’t have wanted a return to that. But weren’t current de - mands a little excessive?

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We had a neighbor, Mr. Southwick, makers they opposed to rally on their not a cute, cuddly rat, but a giant nasty who took walks around the block. One lawns and intimidate families inside. one. Non-union workers are supposed day, I asked him what he thought of the There was a whiff of actos de repudio to be “rats,” you see. Didn’t Nazis teachers strike, then under way. He said, about this. These “acts of repudiation” equate their opponents with vile ani- “Well, first, I don’t think professional are routine in Cuba, where Communist mals? Last Octo ber, before the opening people should strike.” I was shocked at mobs go to the homes of dissenters for night that never occurred, the stage- the answer. It wasn’t that I disagreed the purpose of screaming, denouncing, hands placed this rat in front of Car - with it. It’s that I never knew anyone had and cowing. There is physical violence, negie Hall. That tells you even more that opinion. too, of course. about their character. In 1981, when I was going into my By the way, Fidel Castro holds the I hate this rat. I hate the word “scab.” I senior year, the new president, Reagan, key to the City of Madison (the Wis- hate the idea that you can’t cross a picket fired the air-traffic controllers. (“I didn’t consin capital). It was given to him by line—some holy cordon. I hate the fire them, they quit,” he would say— Mayor Paul Soglin in the 1970s. That whole bullying, ugly, greedy, undemo - because they broke a law that he was man, Soglin, is mayor today. And his cratic nature of unions. To a degree, I am stunned and abashed to be anti-union and pro-management. I would not have planned or wished it.

merely enforcing.) I heard a family friend Castro is still boss of a one-party To a degree, I am stunned and abashed friend say to his brother, “Say what dictatorship with a gulag. to be anti-union and pro-management. I you will about Reagan, but at least I long ago reached the point where I would not have planned or wished it. someone stood up to labor.” These can barely stand to read about unions Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s first U.N. words were so foreign and interesting and their tactics. Harry Bennett (Ford ambassador, became a Republican at age to me: Labor was something to stand Motor’s notorious head of security in 59. She had always been a Demo crat, up to? But didn’t they exist to do the the time of the Battle of the Overpass) and not just any Democrat, but a member standing up? Like, to the Man? Was had nothing on them. At the end of of Hubert Humphrey’s inner circle. labor the Man? 2012, my NR colleague Jillian Kay When she switched her registration, she A union, or union movement, I could Melchior had a piece called “Unions said, “I would rather be a liberal.” admire without reservation was Soli- Defend the Worst of the Worst.” It I know just what she means. But you darity in Poland. They were led by Lech began with a report of nursing-home have to adapt to the atmosphere and Walesa, the stirring electrician. Soli - workers in Connecticut, who had a politics around you. And what have darity was standing up to the Man of grievance. Before they walked off the American unions been in my lifetime? dictatorship. The movement was strongly job, they sabotaged their workplaces, From the Harlan County coalminers to supported by President Reagan, and also endangering the health of their pa - the purple-shirted saboteurs, or the plu- by the president of the AFL-CIO, Lane tients. For instance, they monkeyed tocrats of Carnegie Hall, it’s a “fur piece,” Kirkland—who was a dedicated anti- with equipment. to use Faulkner language. It is a long way. Communist. (He and the founder of Jillian talked to a man whose wife Underdogs have become appalling over- NATIONAL REvIEW, William F. Buckley lives in one of the homes (or at least did dogs. David is Goliath. Jr., had a warm, teasing relationship. at the time). He refused to have his The Universal Declaration of Human WFB would greet him with, “How’s name disclosed, though, because union Rights says, “Everyone has the right to socialism?” Kirkland would answer, members had threatened him, and her. form and to join trade unions for the “How’s Wall Street?”) “I don’t want to get in volved,” he told protection of his interests.” I believe I could pause at many points along the Jillian. “My wife is helpless.” that (I guess). But I also believe in tem- way—the Hormel meatpacking strike in The nursing-home workers belong to perance. With every passing year, I see 1985, for example—but let’s go to the Service Employees International that a bane of our existence is extrem- Wisconsin, in 2011. The scenes there Union, famous for their purple T-shirts. ism—extremism of Right or Left. The were among the most sickening I have In fact, the union boasts of forming a taking of something good and pushing it ever seen in America. Teachers and other “purple ocean,” in order to get their too far, into destructiveness. One defin- public employees descended on the capi- way. When I see these shirts, and the ition of conservatism, I suppose, is anti- tol, to protest reforms by Governor Scott mob mentality that goes with them, I extremism. Walker. Fine. But how did they protest? can’t help thinking they seem a little In the previous issue of NR, I ended By screaming, beating drums, littering, brown. a piece with the admonition attributed equating Walker with Hitler, etc. On the sidewalks of New York, there to Talleyrand, and often quoted by Bill These are people we want teaching is often a huge inflatable rat parked in Buckley: Surtout pas trop de zèle. children? front of a building, blocking your way. Above all, not too much zeal. This Worse, they and other public em - A union has put it there, to shame the maxim may be square or boring, but it’s ployees went to the homes of law - people within. They are non-union. It is not unwise.

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Fight the Dragon China’s threat to the economic peace

BY OREN CASS

he standard economic model treats free trade as obvi- wealth if they build strong trade ties and open their markets to ously positive, creating prosperity for all participants. each other. But while the United States strives to cooperate by Conservatives, and most neoliberals, have embraced opening its market, China has chosen betrayal. It restricts access T that view and consistently press for further liberaliza- to its market, aggressively subsidizes its domestic producers, and tion while condemning as backward and reactionary “protec- shamelessly expropriates intellectual property, all while manipu- tionism” any proposed obstacles to the free flow of goods and lating its currency and loaning the ensuing surplus of dollars back services. But the model is incomplete, and blind allegiance to it across the Pacific to the United States. only weakens the U.S. economy and the health of the interna- Just as the betraying prisoner goes free while leaving the coop- tional trading system as a whole. erative one behind in a jail cell, China has produced unprece- Rather than an easy win-win for all involved, trade policy pre- dented economic success at the expense of the United States. In sents a variation on the prisoner’s dilemma, the classic game- 2009 it overtook the United States as the world’s largest exporter, theory problem in which two people must choose whether to in 2011 as the largest manufacturer, and this year it may be cooperate with or betray each other. each has an individual declared the world’s largest economy. The U.S. economy, mean- incentive to betray, but responding to those incentives and while, will likely stagger in 2014 to its ninth straight year of less betraying leaves both worse off than had they cooperated. than 3 percent growth, after having experienced only one stretch So it is with the global economy and specifically with China of even four years since World War II. Other open, Western and the United States, its two dominant players. As any econo- economies face similar challenges, while other developing mist’s model demonstrates, both nations will benefit from greater nations watch China’s success and dream of emulating it. Fortunately, today’s challenge differs from a prisoner’s Mr. Cass was the director of both domestic and trade policy for Mitt Romney’s dilemma in one important respect: Rather than choosing a strat-

presidential campaign. egy once and living with the consequences, the players are in a IMAGINECHINA VIA AP IMAGES

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“repeated game.” The United States need not allow itself to be nomic strategy falls within three broad and complementary cat- taken advantage of forever, or assume that China and its fol- egories: market distortion, intellectual-property theft, and cur- lowers are irrevocably committed to their course. To the con- rency manipulation. trary, America and her allies have the opportunity to make clear Market distortion comes naturally to China, a Commu nist that they will no longer play on these terms, that they would country with a barely market economy dominated by state- rather take their ball and go home than continue to compete on a owned enterprises. While its WTO commitments establish the tilted playing field, and that it is the cheaters who must decide official tariffs it can impose on imports, they are unable to restrain whether they will finally comply with the rules or be ejected it from placing importers at other insurmountable disadvantages from the game. when attempting to sell into the Chinese market. China designs Forcing such a decision is not “starting a trade war” any more regulations and establishes technical standards that its domestic than committing to the defense of one’s borders constitutes an producers can more easily meet, provides direct subsidies to give invasion. Indeed, far from being protectionist, threatening those producers a financial advantage, and slows the approval of nations like China with severe trade sanctions is critical to ensur- foreign products. It establishes “local content” requirements that ing a prosperous future for the global economy. force foreign firms to set up shop within the country and enter

Market distortion comes naturally to China, a Communist country with a barely market economy dominated by state-owned enterprises.

The international trading system is governed primarily by the into joint ventures with local companies, rather than manufactur- World Trade Organization (WTO), an international body, created ing at home and exporting the finished goods to China. And it in 1995, with more than 150 member nations. In theory, the WTO ensures that government procurement gives preferential treat- guarantees that all nations engage in free trade under the same ment to local firms—no small matter in a state-run economy rules and receive reciprocal benefits from their trading partners. where the government is often the primary consumer. In practice, it does nothing of the sort. As a result, China pays its “dues” into the global economy The agreements covered under the WTO at the time of its for- by offering up a massive domestic market that is in theory open mation provide only limited protection for trade in services and but in practice closed to competition. The situation is only for intellectual property, the bedrocks of U.S. economic strength, worsening. The Economist announced in a cover story earlier and were always intended to evolve through subsequent negotia- this year that “China loses its allure,” noting that while tions. Unfortunately, no such evolution has occurred—in its 20 “China’s government has always made life difficult for firms years the WTO has failed to take a single step forward on trade in some sectors . . . the tough treatment seems to be spreading” liberalization. Expectations have fallen to the point where a and companies are being forced to pull out. recent, unremarkable streamlining of customs procedures led the Even when American companies do have the opportunity to organization’s head to declare: “For the first time in our history, enter the Chinese market, they are rightly reluctant to do so for the WTO has truly delivered.” fear of falling victim to the pervasive intellectual-property theft Nor does the WTO provide an effective enforcement mecha- that the Chinese government permits and in many cases facili- nism for those rules that are in place. It does not have the power tates. It is official Chinese policy to promote “indigenous inno- to enforce penalties against nations whose policies defy exist- vation” by forcing foreign firms to transfer their technology and ing agreements. Rather, after lengthy litigation and appeals trade secrets to local Chinese companies as a condition of doing processes, a nation wronged by another wins only the right to business in the country. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had retaliate in kind—an approach to conflict resolution typically left described the policy as “a blueprint for technology theft on a behind sometime around kindergarten. Any such retaliation may scale the world has never seen before.” Meanwhile, the govern- then itself be the target of further litigation. ment provides little to no enforcement of protection for foreign Prospects for future progress are no better. Any agreement firms that find their patents and trademarks ignored by their would require unanimous support from all 157 nations—support Chinese counterparts. that is not forthcoming from those that benefit from the existing Nor does staying away from China provide a respite; China’s weaknesses. In short, the WTO has become little more than an market distortions and intellectual-property abuses come home economic United Nations, an/ ineffectual debating society to roost in the U.S. market as well. A subsidy that advantages beholden to agendas running directly counter to the organiza- Chinese firms in China gives a similar advantage to those firms tion’s supposed purpose. when they export across the Pacific. And China is actively pur- suing an unprecedented global campaign of industrial cyber- espionage, targeting thousands of U.S. companies as diverse as INCE joining the WTO in 2001, China has ruthlessly Google, Coca-Cola, and the New York Times. The issue has exploited the free-trade system’s reliance on mutual trust risen to the top of the U.S.–China economic dialogue as hundreds S and goodwill, wreaking havoc in the markets to which it of billions of dollars’ worth of intellectual property has been gained access while bullying entrants in its own market. Its eco- seized through centrally coordinated Chinese cyber-attacks that

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have given Chinese firms access to their competitors’ strategies. In a stark sign of that dialogue’s failure, the U.S. Department of Justice last month indicted five Chinese- military officials for cyber- attacks on the proprietary data of American steel, solar, and nuclear-power companies. One can read through page after page of case studies, com- piled at the request of Congress by the U.S. International Trade Commission, that detail how Chinese policies are systemati- cally eroding the position of crucial American industries— software, telecommunications, automotive, aero space, renew- able energy—by blocking their market access and appropriat- ing their technology. Ironically, one of the report’s few exam- ples of successful participation by a U.S. exporter in the Chinese market was American Super conductor (AMSC), a provider of From the demand side, U.S. employers that might have wind-turbine technology to Sinovel, the largest Chinese wind- employed U.S. workers and exported the resulting goods and turbine manufacturer. But today, the two firms are embroiled in services to China are instead forced to set up shop in China multibillion-dollar litigation across two continents. AMSC (often in joint ventures with Chinese firms), which is unsus- accuses Sinovel of outright stealing its software and building it tainable in the short run for U.S. workers who are now unem- directly into the Sinovel products—as it discovered after ployed and in the long run for the firms that succeed only at the Sinovel abruptly canceled all of its AMSC contracts and pleasure of the Chinese Communist party and, in the process, Sinovel turbines showed up in Massachusetts running the give up their intellectual property. Even where U.S.-based (allegedly) stolen software. multinational corporations are able to position themselves for Underpinning this systematic perversion of a supposedly free- long-term success, the ensuing profits are most likely to be held market trading system is a program of intensive financial engi- and reinvested overseas, away from the U.S. tax and capital neering that allows China to maintain an enormous, otherwise bases. Ensuring that the American people share broadly in that unsustainable trade surplus with the United States. Last year, prosperity would require an aggressive redistribution of wealth China exported $440 billion in goods to the United States while from the owners of those corporations to their (now unem- importing goods worth only $122 billion—an imbalance of more ployed) former work force. than $300 billion at a nearly four-to-one ratio. In theory that As the Chinese economy grows ever larger, its technological should not be possible: An excess of U.S. dollars should build up capabilities expand, and its policymakers become emboldened in China while a shortage of Chinese currency develops in the by the world’s acquiescence, the situation only becomes more U.S., driving up the value of the Chinese currency and therefore dire and the U.S. ability to respond more constrained. One can the relative cost of Chinese goods so that the trading relationship hear in this warning echoes of largely overblown fears raised by rebalances. Instead, the Chinese government manipulates its cur- Japan’s economic rise several decades ago. The devastation rency, extracting the dollars and in many cases turning around Japan wrought on major U.S. industries was real, however, and and lending them back to the U.S. government to finance the fed- its success helped to blaze the trail that China follows today. eral budget deficit. China, led by a political regime fundamentally incompatible with The combined effect of these Chinese policies applies a pincer America’s, is ten times larger than Japan, its abuses are more movement to the U.S. economy. From the supply side, the U.S. severe in degree and in kind, and it is steamrolling its path into a market is flooded with cheap foreign goods that drive domestic freeway down which many more nations will enthusiastically firms out of business. Lower prices are generally desirable, and cruise. If China is the next Japan, the United States should be very one might think that if China wants to send over subsidized prod- worried indeed. ucts, often on effectively free credit, then Americans should gladly accept the offer. But this represents a form of predatory pricing— a tactic rightly banned under antitrust law—on a geopolitical hE issue of currency manipulation has become a sym- scale, and the resulting long-term cost in destroyed firms and bolic flashpoint in policy debates not because it is the eroded economic strength greatly exceeds any short-term benefit. T most serious of the Chinese abuses but because it is the

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most obvious instance of America’s failure to take Chinese approach is “appeasement.” In the military context conserva- abuses seriously. tives generally reject it, recognize that removing the conse- Almost no one disputes that China manipulates its currency. quences for aggression only in vites further aggression, and The U.S.–China economic and Security Review Commission, a argue for imperiling American lives in defense of the national federal body established by Congress to monitor the economic interest. Yet somehow, when the topic turns to trade and it is a relations between the two nations, stated plainly in its last annual quarterly profit statement potentially im periled, bold declara- report that “China continues to manipulate the value of its cur- tions of “peace through strength” turn into squeamish equivo- rency, the RMB, to achieve a competitive advantage with the cations about the need for dialogue. United States.” In its semi-annual report on currency manipula- Perhaps once upon a time, when China’s economy was small, tion, released in April, the Treasury Department declared China’s its violations were a mere inconvenience unworthy of response. currency “significantly undervalued” and noted “continued But that time has long since passed. China’s strategy is causing [Chinese] actions to impede market determination.” Chinese severe, permanent damage to the U.S. economic interest, and policy appeared to be worsening, and “recent developments,” it the United States needs to make clear that, faced with such mis- said, “raise particularly serious concerns.” conduct, its choice will be retaliation rather than tolerance. The United States needs a comprehensive arsenal of retaliatory economic weapons that it can credibly threaten to use if China does not quickly and sharply alter its course.

But as in every other report of the past two decades, the China will then need to decide whether to return to a peaceful Treasury Department refused to call a spade a spade and offi- equilibrium in which all sides play by the rules or to continue cially designate China as a currency manipulator, for fear of down its current path and destroy its economic relationship offending the Chinese. Therein lies the root of the problem. with the United States. even as China thumbs its nose at the international trading sys- Given only those two options, following the rules would seem tem and surges forward economically at U.S. expense, the con- the obviously more attractive one for all involved. That is the sensus remains that the United States should do nothing to hope and the goal—not actually to retaliate but rather to create respond lest it provoke China’s ire. The situation is so sensitive, conditions under which betrayal is no longer contemplated by evidently, that even taking the extraordinarily tepid step of either side. But the crucial point is that if China does in fact pre- assigning the (entirely accurate) label of “currency manipula- fer an open trade war to genuine free trade, then collapse of the tor” could trigger a painful response. And yet, if China knows economic relationship is inevitable. With a country that prefers that it will face no consequences for even its most blatant and a trade war to free trade, the United States has no better hope of undeniable abuses, who can blame it for taking an ever more maintaining a beneficial relationship than it has of keeping the aggressive approach? peace with a country that prefers war to remaining within its China has found itself an ideal arrangement, in which it own borders. betrays while the United States cooperates. It has calculated— The typical condemnation of such an approach as “starting a correctly, so far—that faced with this betrayal the United States trade war” represents a nonsensical form of economic pacifism. will opt to continue its cooperation anyway rather than risk The trade war has already started, but only one side is fighting. open economic conflict. But this arrangement is not sustain- The question for the United States is whether to respond or sur- able. The international trading system is not self-enforcing; it is render, bearing in mind that a response has a good chance of a reciprocal construct in which only the prospect of benefits defusing the conflict, whereas a surrender will only embolden denied compels each nation to operate within the rules in a man- nations with no commitment to free markets, undermine the ner that can make all nations better off. If the threat of retaliation health of the trading system as a whole, and leave the committed is not credible—if large economies so fear the possibility of a free-traders to fight on far less favorable ground at some point trade war that they would rather simply surrender—then more in the future. and more countries will flout the rules more and more aggres- If America will not respond to the current abuses, when will sively and the system will unwind. it respond? When China’s economy is dramatically larger, less This dynamic is not unique to the economic sphere. It is the reliant on exports, and supported by robust alliances with other same one that plays out in potential military conflicts, where a mercantilist nations? When China announces it will no longer credible willingness to meet force with force is critical to deter- purchase American drugs and will instead manufacture its own ring aggression in the first place. As long as nations prefer versions locally? When the first Chinese commercial airliner peace to war, the peace is kept. But if Nation A believes it can rolls out of the hangar, looking suspiciously similar to Boeing’s choose force that will be met not with force but with compla- latest model but available at half the price? cence, using such force suddenly becomes the most attractive option. It is in this moment, when Nation A chooses force, that Nation B must decide whether to fight back. he United States needs a comprehensive arsenal of retal- There are always those calling on B to tolerate the provoca- iatory economic weapons that it can credibly threaten to tion as preferable to open conflict. The word for such an T use if China (and, in the future, any other nation) does

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not quickly and sharply alter its course. Some of these weapons property theft in either their products or their processes, and it can develop and deploy unilaterally. Others will rely on coor- such firms should be barred from selling products in the U.S. dinated action among developed economies to achieve the market or from accessing U.S. capital markets. A finding that desired effect without disadvantaging U.S. producers. All Chinese cyber-espionage has targeted an industry in which should be designed as ratchets that can apply increasing pres- the Chinese firm competes, supported by evidence from sure—the goal, after all, is not to actually use any of them or to American companies that demonstrates the type of intellec- do damage but only to make clear to the Chinese that the threats tual property that has been stolen, should be treated as suffi- of such action are credible. cient to create a rebuttable presumption that the Chinese firm has benefited from the theft. Chinese firms could be offered UNILATERAL U.S. ACTION a limited time frame and process for clearing their names and The United States should create structures that enable broad- demonstrating the integrity of their products. based retaliatory actions against the government subsidies and intellectual-property theft embedded in Chinese exports, while MULTILATERAL ACTION also applying maximum pressure at discrete points where it Bringing the world’s developed economies together to pres- has the most leverage. The best leverage point is America’s sure China will greatly amplify U.S. leverage, both because higher-education system, access to which is desperately covet- the magnitude of threatened economic disruption will be ed by the Chinese and is a critical ingredient to their techno- greater and because it will make Chinese retaliation far more logical advancement and economic development. More than difficult. Where the United States acts alone, it risks Chinese 200,000 Chinese nationals studied at American universities retaliation against U.S. firms, leaving them at a long-term last year, representing more than 25 percent of all foreign stu- disadvantage against other competitors in the Chinese mar- dents (though only about 1 percent of total enrollment). None ket. Where nations act in concert, they can do so without fear- of these students need be expelled, but visas for new entrants ing such a consequence. And while none have been harmed should be sharply curtailed and ultimately cut off. Such a move by China’s approach to trade as much as the United States has would pose no threat to America’s academic preeminence, but been, all would benefit greatly from the successful curtail- it would badly damage China’s human-capital development ment of those abuses. and focus the injury directly on the Chinese elite with the most The most powerful step that the world’s developed nations leverage over their nation’s policy. could take would be to form a multi-party free-trade agree- A second leverage point is the American life-sciences ment that encompasses all of their economies while excluding industry, which produces an extraordinary array of technolo- China and other nations that exploit the trading system— gies for which there is often no substitute. While China’s essentially, a trade-focused analogue of NATO to complement health-care system is still in its infancy, the country will the U.N.-like WTO. The agreement would be “open,” mean- increasingly seek to provide access to these products—par- ing that it would establish clear standards in critical areas such ticularly for its wealthier citizens. The U.S. should bar man- as services trade, capital-market regulation, and intellectual- ufacturers of the most sophisticated and difficult-to-replicate property protection and would offer membership to any nation biologic treatments from discounting their prices in the willing to abide by its terms. Chinese market below what they charge to private-sector Such an agreement would have immediate value to those U.S. insurers. So long as China is running a $300 billion trade nations committed to the principles of free trade, allowing surplus, it can surely afford to pay list price. The U.S. should them to make significant progress on strengthening the free- also bar those manufacturers from establishing production trade system outside the WTO framework. The agreement facilities in China, lest the technologies be “transferred” to would place substantial pressure on China, excluding it from domestic Chinese producers. U.S. firms might find them- a host of economic benefits made available to its competition selves with a limited Chinese market, and China might and making it an unattractive node in international produc- attempt to produce generic versions of the treatments, but tion networks. And the agreement would provide a forum in both outcomes are likely (and more attractive to China) under which to coordinate other actions. current policy as well. The first such action should be the establishment of intellectual- More broadly, the U.S. should designate China as a cur- property sanctions to bar the introduction of sensitive tech- rency manipulator and then classify that manipulation as an nologies into the Chinese market, where they would likely be illegal subsidy that benefits all Chinese products entering expropriated. Such policies already exist for sensitive military the U.S. market. Such a finding would give the Department technologies under the Wassenaar Arrangement and are of Commerce authorization to impose a countervailing employed case by case in the application of other sanctions duty—i.e., a tariff to offset the subsidy. The result would be regimes (as with efforts to prevent nuclear technologies from a tax of likely 20 to 30 percent applied to all imports from reaching Iran). To China’s indigenous-innovation policy, China, phased in gradually over a number of years. This which clearly identifies the industries whose intellectual would drive prices in the United States back toward market property it intends to take—aerospace technology, biotech- levels while reducing the advantage enjoyed by Chinese nology, etc.—other nations should respond by refusing to firms. It was the threat of similar action in 2005 that first led allow their firms to transfer such technologies into the China to relax its currency peg and allow the RMB to appre- Chinese market. ciate significantly. Finally, the U.S. and its allies should restrict access to their The U.S. should also create a process through which Chi - capital markets for Chinese state-owned enterprises and firms nese firms can be designated as beneficiaries of intellectual- identified as benefiting from subsidies and intellectual-property

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theft. China’s own capital markets are no match for their Western counterparts, and depriving Chinese firms of access to both management discipline and sources of funds would hobble Victus their growth while denying them important symbols of economic status. Nations should also restrict the terms on which their firms may bring foreign direct investment to China, further constrain- The rise and fall of Patton Boggs ing access to capital and know-how. And they should block Chinese investment into their own economies in sectors where China does not accept unfettered incoming investment. BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON Particularly in the current interest-rate environment, China needs those investment opportunities—to manage its capital flows and to gain strategic ground—far more badly than devel- here were a few plying the dark arts of lobbying in oped nations need China’s capital. Washington before it, but Patton Boggs was in some ways the original modern lobbyist shop. A D.C. law T firm with its roots in the old Washington aristocracy— T must be stressed again that the goal in developing each and in Washington “aristocracy” is mostly a polite term for of these tools is not to use any of them. The United States nepotism-ocracy—Patton Boggs had a winning pedigree. I should not want to exclude Chinese students from its Thomas hale Boggs Jr. was the son of a long-serving schools, to impose tariffs, or to restrict access to medical Louisiana Democratic congressman, a former house majority technologies or capital markets. But developing these tools is leader and a member of the Warren Commission who every bit as important as developing the next generation of bequeathed his seat in Congress to his wife upon his death; military technologies, and being prepared to use them is Boggs mère held the seat for nearly 20 years before Bill every bit as important to preserving the international system. Clinton eventually made her the ambassador to the holy See. The United States should begin by clearly outlining what it So, Mom and Dad were in the house, and his sister Cokie expects of China and what steps it will take, on what timeline, roberts (that’s Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne if those expectations are not met. Assigning the formal “cur- roberts, née Boggs) happily does the Democrats’ business in rency manipulator” designation would be a good first step in the media, while another sister served as mayor of Princeton. demonstrating that the game has changed. But more-substantive Mr. Boggs himself made a run at a house seat in 1970, just steps would need to follow close behind if Chinese practices four years after leaving Lyndon Johnson’s White house to continued as before. join James r. Patton Jr.’s law firm. The my-dad-was-in- This course of action risks an escalation by China, either Congress model worked splendidly in the early days, that because it would truly prefer an all-out trade war to good golden age when, as Mr. Boggs would later put it, there were behavior within the trading system or because it hopes that only “fifteen people who ran the government.” The most suc- the U.S. could be scared back into capitulation. But China, cessful lobbyists formed what the Washington Post would already committed to an offensive strategy, has only so many describe as a “cult,” and Mr. Boggs was that unholy congre- more levers left to pull. It already distorts its market as gation’s pontifex maximus. aggressively as it believes wise and steals intellectual prop- Like many high priests before him, Mr. Boggs was quick to erty as rapidly as it can. Firms are already abandoning the see the value of a specialized language in which only initiates Chinese market; forcing them out has only so much effect. were fluent, in this case the increasingly technical language of Bringing WTO cases against the United States would be of federal law. Mr. Boggs played a small role in helping to launch little value to China when victory would only entitle it to the explosion in the size and scope of the federal government withdraw concessions it has never truly made. While some during his time in the Johnson administration, and then he analysts look at China’s massive holdings of U.S. debt and surfed the wave he’d helped create to a position of immense currency and fear that it could use these tools to gravely harm wealth and power. he knew that the boutique lobbyist shop— the U.S. economy, that assessment badly misconstrues generally run by a former federal-agency head or a member of China’s leverage as the party that has made the loans and a political family such as himself—was soon to be a thing of needs the assets to retain their value. the past. What was needed, he calculated, was a lobbying oper- If the U.S. were forced to move forward from threats to ation integrated into a sophisticated and diversified law firm, action, it would no doubt experience significant economic pain so that the highly specialized lawyer sitting on the govern- as well. Some firms would be hurt. Some consumer goods ment side of the desk was facing a highly specialized lawyer would become more expensive. Some economic disruption with the same technical knowledge and subject-matter mas- would occur. But that is the inevitable result when a bad actor tery. Lobbying was to be not about trading or simply suborning in the international system forces a conflict of any kind. Tariffs favors, but about having a hand in writing the law itself, and other market interventions are blunt, inefficient tools, whether in the form of legislation or of regulation. made more so by the political machinations that will accom- And that model worked well for a long time. Patton Boggs pany their use. But that is an unavoidable cost of the large- occupied a sweet spot from the 1970s until the turn of the scale government action that such a conflict demands. century, its combination of political connections and legal Freedom isn’t free, and neither are free markets. If a resilient, expertise perfectly suited to the model of government preva- free-market system of international trade is worth fighting for, lent at the time: big enough and complicated enough to the United States must be prepared to fight for it. require highly specialized legal representation, but concen-

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trated enough that Patton Boggs could be extraordinarily well adversary with vast resources and a seemingly limitless connected across the legislative and executive branches both, appetite for litigation,” and it attempted to explain away evi- with strong ties to leaders of each party both in and out of dence of corruption in the case, including a videotape of the office. When Trent Lott and John Breaux started a bipartisan judge talking about the disbursement of $3 million in bribes. firm to exploit their own deep ties to the Senate, Patton Adding to the generally lame-thriller-novel aesthetic of the Boggs simply bought them. proceedings, the memo’s subheads read like Robert Ludlum But there were problems. Patton Boggs had a great deal of titles, e.g., “The Alegato Finale.” It even contemplates using diverse legal expertise, but it was very much Mr. Boggs’s the work of the American Tort Reform Association, which is firm. Clients worried, and competitors hoped, that its domi- dedicated to opposing lawsuit abuses, as a guide to shopping nating position would erode as the aging Mr. Boggs handed for a plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction in which “judges—not over more responsibilities at the firm to the succeeding gen- only juries—tend to be plaintiff-friendly.” eration. On top of that, the firm’s infamous eat-what-you- The bottom-line promise was a piece of the $18.2 billion kill compensation model, which allowed senior partners to judgment against Chevron, or, short of that, at least of a cruise along for years taking an unusually large share of the smaller settlement still amounting to billions of dollars. In profits from business that they had originated but had long reality, Patton Boggs would end up offering Chevron an since stopped actively working on, put the senior partners abject apology—along with a check for $15 million. And and the junior members of the firm at odds. In the Reagan more. years, when it still seemed possible that a man might go to The general theory of the Chevron shakedown seems to work for a firm and remain there for his entire career, wait- have been that the oil giant would, in the end, settle, espe- ing to move up to the top of that food chain was simply part cially if given the option of doing so at some fraction of that of how the world worked. But after the dot-com explosion a $18.2 billion. But Chevron was disinclined to do so. It is not decade later, which saw people in their early twenties start- clear whether Patton Boggs knew exactly how corrupt the ing firms that would go on to be worth billions, waiting for action it became involved with was—Chevron executives, old lawyers in seersucker suits to kick off became less attrac- having signed a “non-disparagement” agreement with Patton tive. Patton Boggs became a high-turnover firm, and as the Boggs as part of the settlement, aren’t saying—but the law partnership’s finances deteriorated, it wasn’t just low-level firm would later confess that there were certain “factual find- lawyers looking for better opportunities elsewhere. “When ings about matters which would have materially affected our partners leave, sharks smell blood,” writes legal observer firm’s decision to become involved and stay involved as David Parnell. “That’s what sharks do. Only romantics and counsel.” Those findings, spelled out in district appellate poets smell roses.” judge Lewis Kaplan’s opinion in March, included collusion By the first decade of the 21st century, history had caught with and payments to judges and supposedly neutral experts, up with Patton Boggs. There was pressure on revenue, and with reports and judicial rulings that were literally written by the sloppy internal financial management for which big, old- the plaintiffs’ agents rather than by the judges and experts school law firms once were infamous took a toll. At one whose names appeared on them. Patton Boggs, whose role point, money was so tight that senior partners were asked to was to seek to collect on the judgment, was a step removed stop taking their “draw”—the salary-like deductions from the from that, but it would be remarkable if a firm composed of firm’s expected revenues through which the majority of the some of the nation’s most sophisticated lawyers and political firm’s profits were paid out. operators did not recognize a grand-scale shakedown when But Patton Boggs believed that it had a line on a Perry Mason they saw it. moment, a chance for a dramatic turnaround in the form of a big Similarly, it is not entirely clear how much of that corruption piece of a multibillion-dollar action against one of the world’s was known to such Democratic political operators as Andrew largest, most profitable, and most prominent firms. It spelled Cuomo’s ex-wife, Kerry Kennedy, who had a $40 million out its strategy in a private internal memo bearing the title stake in the suit in the form of a percentage assigned her as part “Invictus,” in reference to the William Ernest Henley poem of her work as a PR consultant for the plaintiffs, and Karen that, among other things, constituted the last words of Hinton, the former Cuomo and DNC aide who angled for a Timothy McVeigh. And the Invictus strategy would do to percentage of the Chevron judgment while she was blasting Patton Boggs roughly what McVeigh did to the federal build- the firm at Politico and boasting that she was personally ing in Oklahoma City. responsible for siccing the attorney general of New York on the company (“He is doing this for me. Because I asked,” she wrote in a 2009 e-mail). Whether these Democratic operatives HEN Patton Boggs agreed to act as the U.S. legal and D.C. lawyers knew they were engaged in a wildly corrupt arm of the Ecuador-based conspiracy to shake enterprise is something that will come out in future litigation W down Chevron for billions of dollars based on per- and, possibly, criminal investigations. The very friends-and- jured testimony, falsified evidence, and bribes to corrupt family model that launched Patton Boggs all those years ago judges, the firm assured its employees that it was taking the could entangle an entire cadre of Democratic activists and moral high ground—Texaco, it said, had undeniably commit- environmental opportunists. ted horrible environmental abuses in Ecuador, and Chevron Regardless of what Patton Boggs knew, what matters is that had acquired responsibility for those crimes when it took Chevron knew. It knew precisely how corrupt the action against over Texaco. In language that would come to be mercilessly it was. And so it was willing to spend a harrowing amount of ironic, the Invictus memo spoke of “facing an unscrupulous money to fight it out. “Corporations that find themselves in a

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similar position in the future may use Chevron’s strategy as an worried that their individual involvement in ongoing litiga- example,” writes legal reporter B. Keith Gibson. “Although tion would render them unemployable, or at least seriously costly to pursue, the aggressive approach taken by Chevron damage their post-Patton prospects. When they finally sur- has likely saved the company hundreds of millions, if not bil- rendered, they surrendered hard: $15 million in I’m-sorry lions, of dollars. Additionally, the brand capital that was likely money, a statement of regret, assignment of all the firm’s saved by shifting the focus of the case from alleged pollution interests in the case to Chevron, and, perhaps most important, of rainforests in Ecuador to a corrupt legal process cannot be an agreement to share certain documents with Chevron. By overlooked.” means of their $15 million gesture of goodwill, Patton Boggs Though far from taking Pollyanna’s view of the U.S. legal and its partners ensure that they will not be invited to the system, throughout the process Chevron remained confident what-did-they-know-and-when-did-they-know-it party that that if it could get its evidence in front of an honest judge, it is awaiting the plaintiffs and their agents. Mr. Donziger has would prevail. Which is what happened: Judge Kaplan not only protested that the apology prejudices the case and that the threw out the judgment against Chevron but opened the door to sharing of documents violates attorney–client privilege, but suing or even prosecuting the plaintiffs under organized-crime Patton Boggs has stated that no privileged documents are to laws. That was a shocking outcome for the main legal mover be shared, which brings up the very interesting and as yet behind the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, Steve Donziger, an old bas- unanswered question of what exactly is in those files. ketball buddy of Barack Obama’s. And it was a knockout Invictus, the unconquered, was anything but. Patton Boggs, punch to Patton Boggs. Patton Boggs was a law firm unusu- a felled giant with its metaphorical tail tucked firmly between ally dependent on its lobbying business, and it had not only its legal legs, merged with a competitor, Squire Sanders, and read the legal realities in the case wrong—it had misread the some genius decided that the new firm would have the goofy politics. quasi-medieval name “Squire Patton Boggs.” A few weeks after With partners and associates already headed for the doors the election-law team departed, at least two dozen attorneys and as the firm’s financial woes deepened—its top election-law policy experts, including one who specialized in representing specialists, including Mitt Romney’s campaign lawyer, government contractors, left the struggling firm en masse as decamped as one for a competitor—Patton Boggs suddenly the merger was being implemented. had a problem that put the partnership at odds with its part- Patton Boggs, as it was, is no more. But the men behind it, ners. Those senior partners looking to scurry like white- and the business model behind it, are still out there. And they shoed rats off the sinking corporate vessel were intensely probably always will be.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

North Africa and recruiters in Algeria, have been paying Brown tuition for the Yemen, and the Af–Pak region. The past three years—but we’re still confi- largest tranche of detainees comes dent that we can trade these 25–30 under the heading of “Moderate “High Value” detainees for the Brown Value,” and that numbers about 100. University French majors with little The issue at hand, sir, is what to difficulty. According to our Qatari Memorandum trade these detainees for. Unfor - intermediaries, the Taliban authorities tunately, due to the professionalism would like to be rid of them. CONFIDENTIAL and bravery of our armed forces, we We suggest throwing in the 15–20 don’t have any more “military” cards detainees rated “Low Value” as a TO: POTUS to trade, whether in the AWOL ranks bonus, to show our goodwill and com- FROM: Strategy or “treason” classification. mitment. (This category of detainee is RE: Rebranding as “Promise Keeper” On the other hand, we’ve made a hard to assess, risk-wise. They are pretty exhaustive count of our other mostly suicide bombers and single- Sir: “assets” in the region, and a couple of victim murderers, and as such unlikely We’ve spent the past few cycles see- them seem promising in terms of trad- to make headlines for the duration of ing where we are in re: our rebranding ing value for detained terrorists. your time in office.) efforts, and we think we’re making In 2011, three Philosophy of French That leaves roughly 100 “Moderate great progress. Literature majors from Brown Uni - Value” detainees—these are mostly In the past few days, we’ve seen a versity slipped into Afghanistan on a technicians, bomb-builders, experts of shift in national attitudes from, “The “personal witness for peace.” They this kind—who still need to be president broke his promise when he were quickly taken prisoner by Taliban released. said ‘If you like your health plan, forces and have not been heard from Unfortunately, we’ve run out of you can keep your health plan’” to since, save for a few odd and underlit American deserters and college “The president kept his promise to YouTube videos in which they de - students with which to make an release all suspected terrorists from nounce the American-military pres- effective—and politically accept - Guantanamo Bay.” ence in the region and claim to have able—trade. This is terrific news! Everyone at the converted to Islam. These videos can To that end, the Strategy Shop sug- Strategy Shop couldn’t be happier. We easily be removed quietly from gests that we accept, in exchange, feel that a concentrated strategy to YouTube servers in the coming weeks color ful Afghan handicrafts—to in - release as many “Gitmo” detainees as if necessary. They are mostly inconclu- clude, but not to be limited to, the possible will help mitigate—and even sive and irrelevant, except for the fact eponymous “Afghan” blankets so pop- erase—any lingering impression that the former students now speak ular with American collectors and craft among the voters that the Obama almost flawless Pashto. enthusiasts on websites such as administration cannot be trusted. We In early 2012, a delegation from an Etsy.com. The optics of this are, obvi- may have broken a promise when it ad hoc group calling itself “Lesbian, ously, excellent. As you know, women comes to people’s health insurance, but Gay, Transgendered, Questioning, are the prime creators of these kinds of we’re keeping one in re: releasing ter- Bisexual, and Queer Activists for craft objects, so there’s a way to make rorists. Reconciliation” entered the unse- this less about “Obama Lets Terrorist There are approximately 149 de - cured zone around Kandahar. Radio- Masterminds Go Free” and more about tainees left in custody, and that gives communication intercepts indicate “Republi cans Hate Afghan Women.” us a stretch-goal to close out 2014 that they are being held in some kind We’re right now brainstorming with an entirely empty facility in of unclear status. These are remote on the appropriate Twitter hashtag Cuba, save the awkward possibility locations, many miles from villages to describe this kind of policy— that recently traded prisoner Bowe and other social situations. We don’t something along the lines of Bergdahl will end up, after his court- know much about their current mind- #CraftersForDetainees or #FullHearts - martial for desertion and treason, in set, though experts surmise that the EmptyGitmo—but the key is to tie it that same facility. But that falls in the “Questioning” members of the dele- all in with the overarching concept of a category of cross-that-bridge-when- gation are no longer in that category. president who keeps his promises, we-come-to-it. It’s unlikely that we’ll get the kind of especially in regard to freeing sus- Of the 149 remaining, we assess the terrific photo-op we got with Sergeant pected terrorists. value of 25–30 of them as “Very High Bergdahl’s parents—for example, the Let’s discuss as soon as possible. to High,” due to their past employment parents of all three Brown University Would like to get this project moving as al-Qaeda field commanders in undergraduates seem relieved not to before the midterms.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Argument of the Week

T would appear that writers for Slate wake, stretch, more likely to concentrate on his true essence instead of yawn, and think: What comfortable, familiar, harm- the cut of the suit. Is it time to rethink clothing?” less aspect of life can we destroy today? What means At least we’d have a conversation about it, because I of arranging society, accumulated over the centuries, that’s what counts. Nowadays if you can’t make any- can be torn asunder by whelps hungry for novelty? Latest thing like gasoline or circuit boards or steaks, you make case: the need to rethink the week. conversation-starters. It isn’t as easy as it appears. Start “The case for the week was never airtight. It’s now weak with some blog posts; a few tweets that establish your and getting weaker.” credibility (“Hump day combines racist camel imagery & Having never thought “the week” needed a series of pos- rape-culture slang. #RethinkTheHump”); and perhaps tulates and proofs, I found this line alarming. All these some funny pictures of your cat looking angry because years we’ve accepted the week, but without sufficient evi- it’s Monday, which makes sense only within the chrono- dence? Duped by Big Calendar! Year after year, we’re sold logical hegemony of the existing system. more pro-week propaganda with pictures of puppies, and Then you get the call to the editor’s room: We’ve seen we accept the week as an unalterable fact of life, when in your work on the days of the week, and we really enjoyed fact it’s one of those “certainties” that can be redefined, those videos you did in support of 45-minute hours. We must be redefined, like gender or marriage or which Dr. think it’s time you tackle the big issues. Now, we have Who was the best. Sonja working on the necessity of doing away with the You think: If they want a ten-day week called the month—it’s a women’s issue, you understand—but I think “deca,” and I balk, I am a decaphobe. you’re ready to help the world rethink the week. The author continues to build his case: This is what the bossy hyperactive Left does these days: “Most Westerners no longer observe a weekly Sabbath, shout “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG,” from the days of and the coordination advantages of keeping everyone on the week to the way you make your coffee. the same uniform schedule have evaporated.” At this point you may be asking exactly how the Slate Poof! Gone like a spritz of mist on a hotplate, just like writer intends to replace the week, and I can’t tell you, that. Makes you realize what’s been nagging at you the last because I do not care. This will be mistaken for cranky few years: diminished coordination advantages. mulish resistance to thinking outside the box, as if society “So why does this arbitrary time cycle still dictate the hadn’t been frogmarching everyone out of the box for the rhythm of our lives? Is it time to abolish the week and find last 40 years. The only way for a progressive to be taken a better way to structure time?” seriously is to purge society of all its boxes, which (a) Possible responses: guarantees we can look at our problems with fresh eyes 1. I’m sure you have put a lot of time and thought into unclouded by the useless lessons of history and (b) guar- your new calendar, mister. Judging from your note- antees jobs for the Box-Elimination Commissars, who will books—thick, smudged, filled margin to margin with guide us through the transitional period. cryptic squiggles and big block-letter eureka moments Great! Let’s do it. Let’s remove the past’s dead hand like “NON-VARIABLE COORDINATED CALENDRI- from the controls. Let’s rethink the public schools. The CAL OPTIONS = RULING-CLASS PRIVILEGE” ruinous effects of regulation. The obese VA bureaucracies underlined in red—well, it’s impressive! But we are at a that result in six-month wait times for a hemophiliac coffee shop and you smell faintly of eau de hobo and I bleeding out in the ER. The notion of federal rules for would like to return to my magazine and no I will not school-sandwich composition. The idea that cities exist to lend you a dollar. transfer money from residents to the pensions of public 2. Yeah! Abolish the week! It would be great if we workers. All the century-old ideas that have turned into demolished centuries of tradition. We still get Friday, rusty, ossified chains trailing behind the withered corpse of though, right? There’s a keg at the office Friday afternoon 20th-century progressivism like Marley’s cash boxes— at one place I work and that’s awesome, although my con- well, the case for managerial collectivism was never air- tract with them is up in a month so they can get rid of the tight. It’s weak and getting weaker. calendar after that. Nah, bro, that’s . . . conservative. Let’s get rid of the 3. Or you think: Is this your job? Coming up with things week. If enough people like the idea on Facebook the that will never, ever happen but make you sound like a author can be trusted to write why driverless cars will bold freethinker? Can’t wait for your next one. “Clothing! help eliminate the fallacy of autonomy, and that would We waste time and money on choosing what fabrics we be awesome. You’ve heard about Google’s self-driving will use to cover our skin, when a heat-conserving foam, cars, right? A progressive’s dream: No steering wheel. applied by nozzles in the shower, would make everyone No brakes. Of course it leads to Utopia! Where else could it pos- Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. sibly go?

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added taxes and the difference is made state into the market,” the authors write, up with debt that obscures the govern- the Swedes are extending that market Dysfunctional ment’s arrears. Further, generous social into the state. spending hasn’t spared France and Italy Swedes are still “socialist,” they Government from a sharp rise in inequality. explain, in that Sweden provides public Long-term unemployment has wreaked goods such as education and health care FRED SIEGEL havoc on both sides of the Atlantic. In “free at the point of delivery”—“but it the U.S., rent-seekers and Silicon Valley uses capitalistic methods of competition oligarchs have, under Obama, produced to ensure that those public goods are both unprecedented wealth and an delivered as successfully as possible.” unprecedented growth in joblessness. The benefit is that Sweden, empowered The upshot has been a resentment and by a cross-party consensus, has reduced cynicism that have undermined the public spending from 67 percent of GDP West’s ability to pull itself out of its cur- in 1973 to 49 percent in 2009 without a rent torpor. social upheaval. The underlying problem, according It’s Sweden in the West and Singapore to the authors, is that the West, which in the East that carry the authors’ hopes has at different junctures reinvented for reinventing government: We live in government, is caught between the third an era “when the West no longer has all The Fourth Revolution: and fourth iterations of Western govern- the best policies.” For proof of this The Global Race to Reinvent the State, ment. They present England as their claim, they cite the way the combination by John Micklethwait and Adrian model. The first stage, monarchy, was of intelligently authoritarian rule and a Wooldridge (Penguin, 320 pp., $27.95) succeeded by the second, which incor- system of public-welfare investments porated Lockean limited government transformed Singapore from a swamp to hIS book speaks directly to into the royal system. The third iteration a shining beacon of neo-modernity stud- the malaise that has accompa- was the welfare state, which was a re - ied by Chinese and Westerners alike. nied Barack Obama’s second sponse to industrialization; and the fourth, “Our strength,” explains Lee hsien T term in office. “The West,” emerging from globalization and the cur- Loong—Singapore’s prime minister and write John Micklethwait and Adrian rent technological transformation im - the son of Lee Kuan Yew, the architect Wooldridge, “has lost confidence in the posed by digitalization, is now struggling of Singapore’s success—is that, by sub- way it is governed.” The authors, both to be born. stituting meritocracy for democracy, editors at The Economist, are referring to The authors tell their story with a “we are able to think strategically and the loss of political confidence not only sprightly style. Writing about Beatrice look ahead.” By contrast, he argues, in America but in Europe as well, where Webb and the Fabians, who shaped a Western democracy is “a never-ending a government capable of achieving an British welfare state organized around auction whereby votes are purchased electoral majority has become a rarity. experts and a purblind over-centralization with debts to be paid off in the future by “The modern overloaded state,” they of government, they note that she de- the coming generations,” and charity rightly insist, “is a threat to democracy”: scribed herself as “the cleverest member has become entitlements that subsidize “The more responsibilities Leviathan of one of the cleverest families in the indolence. assumes,” the worse it performs them cleverest class of the cleverest nation in The authors have a wide range of ref- and the angrier the people become. the world.” She was so clever, they point erence, sprinkled with sparkling quotes They argue that government in the out, that she became a fervid apologist and apt bons mots, which makes the West has metastasized because people for Stalinism. book an enjoyable and informative demand more services even as they are Micklethwait and Wooldridge take read. They quote, for instance, the in - unwilling to pay for them. America, succor from the reforms that have taken sight of the British small-“l” liberal they scold, taxes “itself like a small- place in Scandinavia and Asia. Sweden, Gladstone that “if the government takes government country and spends like a for instance, seems to have cured itself into its hands that which the man ought big-government one while hiding its of “Baumol’s disease”—the disorder to do for himself, it will inflict upon him true liabilities.” But of course, when it that extracts an ever-increasing cost in greater mischiefs than all the benefits comes to liabilities, the same is true of order to run a government in which ser- he will have received.” But their over- much of Europe: In Italy and France, vices seem immune to any efforts at effi- arching argument, while appealing, is income taxes are piled on top of value- ciency. Sweden, which has benefited thin: It is far better at describing the from widespread educational vouchers democratic disorders that threaten to Mr. Siegel is the author of Revolt against the and “arguably the most efficient [health bring us low than a purported fourth Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined care] in the rich world,” has reversed the revolution that will save us from our- the Middle Class. old ratchet. “Rather than extending the selves.

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Micklethwait and Wooldridge assume without Security Council “authoriza- that the Swedish and Singaporean effi- tion.” Therefore, assuming a deadlocked ciencies that engage them will appeal to When to Security Council, it would have been American liberals because liberals nec- illegal for the Allies to act preemptively essarily have an interest in conventional Go to War against Nazi Germany until the attack on measures of success. This is badly mis- Poland was finally “imminent.” taken. So is their bald and bizarre asser- MARIO LOYOLA This supposed rule has several inter- tion that Marx’s naïve view that the state esting features. First, it is remarkably could disappear once private property stupid, given the circumstances that led had been abolished was strangely similar to World War II. Second, it fails any to what they see as the anarchist under- moral test because it doesn’t distinguish tones of the Tea Party’s anti-Washington between acts of pure aggression and mil- rhetoric. They seem unaware that many itary actions that are urgently necessary in the Tea Party are far from naïve; many for humanitarian or defensive reasons. support a constitutional conservatism And, not surprisingly, it is not the rule aimed at arresting the growth of an that the Allies thought they were agree- encephalitic central government con- ing to when they ratified the Charter. ducive to crony capitalism. The Tea War is always a tragedy. But often- Party, whatever its numerous failings, times war is the answer, because the has long recognized, like many other alternatives can be so much worse. That critics of liberalism, that apparent fail- Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, is the argument of John Yoo’s new book, ures such as the breakdown of the family and Global Welfare, by John Yoo (Oxford, Point of Attack. Yoo attempts to recon- can serve as a boon for the expansion of 272 pp., $35) nect international law to reality—from social services and hence state power. which it has become mostly unwound, Public-sector unions are the linchpins HErE never was a war in especially in academic circles. A former of contemporary liberalism. They are all history easier to pre- senior attorney in the Bush-era Justice powerful, their inefficiencies notwith- vent by timely action,” Department, Yoo attained brief notoriety standing, because they can deliver bloc ‘T said Winston Churchill in for his advocacy of sweeping presiden- votes, such as those that helped elect his Iron Curtain speech of 1946, “than tial powers in response to 9/11, including Obama as president twice and Eric the one which has just desolated such the power to use enhanced interrogation. Garcetti and Bill de Blasio as the may- great areas of the globe.” Had they con- Now back in his previous position as law ors of Los Angeles and New York. fronted Hitler over Germany’s remilita- professor at the University of California, Liberalism in deep-blue states such as rization of the rhineland in 1936, or the Berkeley, Yoo takes a quintessentially California and New York has no interest Anschluss of Germany and Austria in academic approach to the subject, first in reinventing government. It is doing 1938, or his aggressive claims on the tracing the history of the international just fine with government as it is. Czech Sudetenland later that same year, law of war, then proposing what he thinks Liberals had lost three consecutive the French and British could have pre- the right rule is. presidential elections in the 1980s, so, in vented the war—because Germany was He starts the story at the beginning, in the 1990s, they turned to reform out of still weak. the middle of the terrible Peloponnesian necessity. Prompted by the Democratic Instead France and England waited War between Athens and Sparta. After Leadership Council’s concepts for rein- to declare war until Germany actually its failed expedition to Sicily, Athens venting government, Clinton and Gore attacked Poland in 1939. But by then de manded that Melos, a small island adopted reforms as a matter of electoral Hitler had already undone the strait jacket city-state aligned with Sparta but for- strategy. But in the current climate of imposed on his country by the Treaty of mally neutral, join its coalition or face polarization, the moderate Democrats, Versailles and had put Ger many in a posi- destruction. so central to the 1990s reforms, have tion of overwhelming strategic superi- According to Thucydides, a lively been crushed. The Democratic party ority. By 1939, the conquest of Europe legal debate ensued. Melos claimed that nationally and its state strongholds are could no longer be averted. it had the right to refuse to join any firmly in the grip of a bi-class alliance of The United Nations Charter stands out coalition it didn’t want to join. The those who have most benefited from as one of the few peace treaties that Athenians responded that “expediency” globalization and those who are either would actually have made the last war was on their side. Yoo presents this as an the least likely to be in the labor force or more likely. This is because, as com- early historical example of the dispute the government workers who service monly understood nowadays, the U.N. between a moral argument and material them. Neither of these classes has any Charter permits preemptive self-defense, interest. interest in adopting the reforms that but only if an attack is “imminent.” What continues to elude scholars, appeal to Micklethwait and Wooldridge Otherwise, a first use of force is illegal however, is why the Athenians found it but threaten the combination of crony necessary to threaten Melos in the first capitalism and public-sector unionism Mr. Loyola served as counsel for foreign and defense place. The expedition to Sicily marked that currently dominates American gov- policy to the U.S. Senate Republican Policy the beginning of the end for Athens. ernance. Committee. Perhaps they felt that they needed to

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS cow Melos in order to avert a break of an increase in “per capita world gross breach,” failed to resolve it, or rather neutral city-states in favor of Sparta. product” might be a useful benchmark). resolved it in Saddam’s favor, by appar- Maybe they acted out of what they An economic cost-benefit analysis will ently shifting the burden of proof to the thought was dire necessity. strike some as cheapening life. And real- U.S. But was it just? Classical and medieval world decisions of war and peace nor- In general, the issues Yoo addresses in philosophers struggled to devise a theory mally have to make do with woefully his book—and there is hardly one he of the just war. “St. Augustine’s approach incomplete information about costs and leaves untouched—deserve better treat- justified a broader scope for war” than benefits. ment than they’ve gotten among legal Cicero’s had, writes Yoo: “Cicero’s just Still, Yoo’s rule cannot be hastily dis- scholars. One of Yoo’s strengths is his war was either defensive or sought com- missed, because, unlike the Charter, it ability to organize and categorize with pensation for a past injury. Christian just corresponds to the actual practice of clarity. Point of Attack manages to stitch war pursued a broader, punitive dimen- states. Especially in democratic soci- international law and reality back to - sion that sought not only to make the eties, the desire to achieve the greater gether again not just at points, but all state whole but also to punish the wrong- good is what almost always animates along the seam. doer for violating moral principle.” leaders as they contemplate sending the The victors of World War II thought The 17th-century Dutch philosopher nation’s young men and women to war. that they were ratifying a treaty that Hugo Grotius, commonly considered The principles are not economic, but would permit the use of force in accor- the father of modern international law, they are utilitarian, as Yoo’s rule im - dance with the purposes of the U.N. alighted on a cardinal problem: Some - plies—although, to be sure, political Charter, which included “the preven- times, both sides in a dispute have “jus- self-interest and the vagaries of public tion and removal of the threats to the tice” on their side. opinion impose their own constraints. peace.” Obviously Churchill had no The Anschluss presents the dilemma Yoo seems to accept that Iraq falls intention of granting Joseph Stalin a in stark form. Nazi propagandists into the category of misguided wars veto over Britain’s use of force in mat- claimed that the German-speaking because Saddam was not likely to attack ters of urgent concern to the British peoples wanted to unify, and they had the U.S. anytime soon, and it turned out Empire. The point of the U.N. was to on their side the principles of “self- that there were no WMD. He thus passes facilitate preventive action, not con- determination” and “political indepen- too quickly over a case that, despite all strain it. Alas, that understanding of the dence” enshrined in Woodrow Wilson’s the controversy, deserves more careful Charter died with those who created the Fourteen Points. But if this union pro- treatment than virtually anyone has United Nations. What remains today is ceeded, Czecho slovakia—the key to given it. the poorly written text of the Charter, the defense of Europe—would be sur- Those who think the Iraq War was a which unfortunately supports the idea rounded by Nazi Germany on three mistake take it for granted that a military that preventive self-defense is illegal sides, and become indefensible. occupation was unnecessary because without Security Council authorization. The episode demonstrates how dan- there were no WMD. But if that is so, a Notwithstanding the Charter’s text, gerous a bad rule of international law military occupation was necessary to virtually every U.S. administration since can be. Once widely accepted, rules of prove that a military occupation was World War II has affirmed the right to international law help shape both diplo- unnecessary. Otherwise, what would we act preventively when necessary, re - macy and public discourse. It is true have known? gardless of the imminence of the threat. that governments have often ignored More precisely, why was Saddam un - Consider the Cuban Missile Crisis, or international law, but only when they able—or unwilling—to prove that he the fact that Clinton nearly bombed could afford the political risks of vio- had no WMD? Hans Blix, the chief U.N. North Korea’s nuclear reactor at lating it. And sometimes they can’t: The inspector, would have leapt at any evi- Yongbyon in 1994 and decided not to unresolved diplomatic dispute over the dence that Saddam was in compliance for (unsound) military reasons, not legal legality of the Iraq War helped to mire with disarmament obligations. But in ones. Even Israel’s 2007 strike on a the war in contro versy and nearly crip- report after report to the Security Syrian nuclear reactor was later en - pled the war effort. Council, he reported only that he could dorsed by Candidate Obama in a speech Yoo argues for a rule that distinguishes come to no firm conclusion and needed to AIPAC. As Yoo patiently demon- between legitimate and illegitimate uses more time. It was soon clear that strates, the rule of the Charter has never of force according to a cost-benefit analy- Saddam’s regime was simply too crim- worked, will not ever work, and needs to sis based on global welfare. “Only when inal and irregular to permit a conclu- be jettisoned. the benefits to global welfare—not just to sive audit. A just war can be rooted in compelling that of the intervening nations—exceed The Iraq situation raised a crucial reasons of state. Charles de Gaulle lived the costs should nations resort to force,” question for both grand strategy and to see France nearly destroyed by he writes. Yoo draws a page from the international law. Absent conclusive Germany twice, yet he believed to the “Chicago school” of law and economics, evidence, should the benefit of the doubt end of his days that a strong, unified characterizing peace as a “public good” go to Saddam, or to his enemies? Once Germany was vital for the future. Henry (like clean air) that “the market” will not that problem was brought to the Security Kissinger once asked him how he hoped supply absent the right legal incentives. Council, the place to resolve it was the to keep an unfettered Germany from Yoo relies a bit too much on economic Security Council. But Resolution 1441, dominating Europe. Said de Gaulle sim- rationality (at one point he suggests that which warned against “further material ply, “Par la guerre.”

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part memoir, part requiem—he looks to have the time and space to reform that back on that weekend and does his part system, he needed to curtail the Cold High Stakes to answer those questions. Adelman’s War competition. The Soviets were de - PAUL LETTOW career before joining the Reagan admin- voting obscene resources to that global istration had been unorthodox. He had contest—far more, relatively speaking, held a post in the Ford-administration than the United States—while falling Pentagon, but had also served as a staffer ever farther behind economically and in the nixon White House’s anti-poverty technologically. Adelman usefully in - office and as a translator for Muhammad cludes meeting notes taken by Gorba - Ali before his “Rumble in the Jungle.” chev’s closest aides as the Soviet side Since leaving the Reagan administration, prepared for Reykjavik. Gorbachev told Adelman has devoted much time to his colleagues that should he fail to teaching and writing about Shakespeare. secure an agreement at Reykjavik, “we Perhaps because of that background, will be pulled into an arms race beyond Adelman’s book is more deftly written, our power, and we will lose,” because Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended and more infused with humor and wist- the USSR was “presently at the limit of the Cold War, by Ken Adelman (Broadside, fulness, than the typical effort by a for- our capabilities.” “The arms race over- 384 pp., $29.99) mer official. burdens our economy,” he said. “That is Adelman vividly conveys what it was why we need a breakthrough.” n October 1986, President Ronald like to be there that weekend. The officers Long before he became president, and Reagan and Soviet general secre- who carried each country’s nuclear codes throughout his years in office, Reagan tary Mikhail Gorbachev met in stood silently, just a few feet apart from believed that the Soviet Union was vul- I Iceland for what were supposed to each other, in the hallway outside Reagan nerable—economically, technologically, be brief working discussions to prepare and Gorbachev’s meeting room. Reagan ideologically—to a sustained, reinvigo- for a summit later that year in Wash - and Gorbachev each selected a handful of rated competition from the West, includ- ington. What actually transpired over that negotiators to work in greater detail on an ing a military buildup. We know this weekend in Reykjavik was one of the arms agreement during a break in their because he said so, over and over. He also oddest episodes of the Cold War. Reagan own sessions. Led on the U.S. side by the believed that if faced with that all-out and Gorbachev engaged in over ten hours 78-year-old Paul nitze, who had held a competition, Soviet leaders could be of wide-ranging, unscripted debate. The senior post in the Truman administra- forced to change, to moderate their for- Soviets caved on long-held arms-control tion, and on the Soviet side by Marshal eign policy and also the internal Soviet positions one after another, which stunned Sergei Akhromeyev, who had stood his system. The Reagan administration drew and elated the Americans. In their final ground for 18 months during the Siege of up classified strategy directives in his first session, Reagan proposed to Gorbachev Leningrad, the teams pulled an all- term that combined a thoughtful analysis that they abolish all of their nuclear nighter. (Adelman’s first, he notes.) of the Soviet regime with a policy weapons. Gorbachev agreed. Yet Gorba- Adelman and the other U.S. officials mar- approach aimed at shaping the environ- chev insisted on tying arms reductions to veled as Akhromeyev, head of the Soviet ment in which Soviet leaders made deci- terms that would sharply limit Reagan’s armed forces and Hero of the Soviet sions, so as to encourage the mellowing of cherished dream of a defense against mis- Union, made sweeping concessions to the Soviet behavior and even changes in the siles. Reagan refused. The media, which Americans, restraining his Soviet col- nature of the regime. And, through its had known little of what had been going leagues when they tried to relitigate prior actions, notably its military buildup, it on all weekend, suddenly witnessed a positions. Officials from the two coun- pressed hard. furious Reagan and a resigned Gorbachev tries, united in being mystified by the one Reagan also had a utopian side. He parting outside the wooden house where copier in the house, resorted to writing believed it was something of a personal they had met. their agreements on carbon paper, which mission to abolish nuclear weapons. And From that moment, the almost universal the Soviet officer who brandished it in his beloved Strategic Defense Initia tive, reaction to Reykjavik, including among referred to as “Soviet high-tech.” During his program to research and develop a U.S. allies and even members of Reagan’s the climactic session, the U.S. and Soviet defense against missiles, Reagan saw both own administration, was bafflement. In delegations waited upstairs, anxiously a catalyst for a nuclear-free world and a the meeting’s aftermath, few seemed to and helplessly, as throughout the weekend guarantor of it. Adelman rightly empha- understand what had happened, why, or the only advisers Reagan and Gorbachev sizes a fact that is underappreciated still what it would mean. As it turns out, two had with them in their meeting room were today: To Gorbachev and others in the who did were Reagan and Gorbachev. their foreign ministers, who barely got a Soviet leadership, the promise of SDI Ken Adelman was Reagan’s arms- word in edgewise. seemed to embody their fears about falling control director at the time of the Adelman keeps a sense of perspective, behind the United States economically Reykjavik meeting, and participated in which means that the central figures are and technologically. It raised the specter of it. In Reagan at Reykjavik—part history, Reagan and Gorbachev. His portrayal of a new, high-tech arms race when they Gorbachev is both appreciative and real- were struggling with the existing one. And Mr. Lettow is the author of Ronald Reagan and istic. Gorbachev knew that the Soviet sys- Adelman notes that only one person at His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. tem had to change. And he believed that, Reykjavik, and maybe in the world, actu-

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS ally believed Reagan’s pro mise that the are wrong. Now it’s time to make the dis- U.S. would share a working missile de - cussion public. fense with the Soviets: Reagan himself. The Real Reagan’s combination of hardheaded- Note to young people: Murphy Brown ness and idealism was on full display at Tinsel was a sitcom. Reykjavik. Gorbachev repeatedly com- If you’re in your forties or older, you’ll plained during the meeting that while he R O B L O N G remember the result of those paragraphs: was making unprecedented concessions, pandemonium. The earth shook. holly - Reagan simply pocketed them and moved wood and the liberal media went bananas. ahead. Reagan genuinely wanted to abol- Dan Quayle—despite being factually cor- ish nuclear weapons, and was genuinely rect in his analysis and moderate in his upset that Gorbachev scuttled their deal language—was portrayed as a dangerous- because he insisted on trammeling SDI. ly unhinged lunatic. Later, of course, after Yet he understood that Gorbachev’s the freakouts had ended and the liberals moves had been motivated by something had revived themselves from their faint- not far from desperation. ing couches—a moment roughly coinci- Despite his hyperbolic subtitle, dent with the election of the Democratic Adel man does not actually argue that challenger, Bill Clinton—they all decided Rey kjavik ended the Cold War. But he that, in the words of The Atlantic, “Dan observes, quite properly, that after Citizen Hollywood: How the Collaboration Quayle Was Right.” Reykjavik, Gorbachev saw much less between LA and DC Revolutionized American But that’s not the cool part. The cool hope of restraining the U.S.–Soviet com- Politics, by Timothy Stanley (Thomas part is that I was working in television at petition through near-term agreements, Dunne, 320 pp., $26.99) the time and somehow came across a copy and more urgency for making more- of the top-secret script of the Murphy thorough changes in Soviet foreign and he story can now be told. Sort Brown season premiere in which the main domestic policy. Adelman also observes of. character “responds” to the vice president. that while Reagan was relentless in push- Almost 1 million years ago, It was weird, obviously: The vice presi- ing the Soviets and seeking advantage T when then-president George h. dent was a real-life person and “Murphy over them, he was nimble in working W. Bush was running for a second term, Brown” was a fictional character, but back with Gorbachev when he perceived, his running mate, Dan Quayle, gave a then—before Twitter and Facebook and much earlier than most, that Gorbachev speech in which he drew the connection Instagram and, especially, Fox News—a could be the critical source of change he between the breakdown of the American big network-television show was a serious had sought for so long. family—then, as now, a major reason so piece of political artillery. Reagan left office over 25 years ago. many families remain poor—and the pre- I had in my hands a pretty powerful he haunts us now like a ghost of great- vailing attitudes in popular hollywood object, something that I knew my polit- ness. Leaders of his party yearn to be the entertainment. ical allies would want to see. But I was next Reagan. even President Obama After connecting the statistical dots also—and defiantly remain—an absolute wraps himself in the Reagan mantle, at between fatherless households, poverty, coward who didn’t want his fingerprints least on the subject of nuclear abolition. and crime, the vice president summed it on any professionally compromising here is something we forget, or over- up this way: transaction. So what I did was this: I said look: Reagan was a strategist. he under- in a loud voice to no one in particular stood what our adversaries were up to, Ultimately however, marriage is a moral that it would be good if this script some- why, and what it meant for us, and how we issue that requires cultural consensus, how found its way to my friends in the could shape the environment in which they and the use of social sanctions. Bearing Bush campaign, friends whose specific babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong. made decisions through peaceful competi- addresses were clearly hand-printed in Failing to support children one has tion. he was keenly attuned to the relative fathered is wrong. We must be unequivo- my address book (remember: 1992). Oh, strengths and weaknesses of the United cal about this. and Fedex one to Rush Limbaugh while States and our adversaries, ex ploiting the It doesn’t help matters when prime- you’re at it. Soviet Union’s comparative vulnerabilities time TV has Murphy Brown—a charac- That last part, by the way, is the cool while relentlessly pressing U.S. compara- ter who supposedly epitomizes today’s part. tive advantages. In league with perhaps intelligent, highly paid, professional You will not find that story in Timothy only the Roosevelts and eisenhower, woman—mocking the importance of Stanley’s smart and far-ranging history of Reagan understood how trends in hard fathers, by bearing a child alone, and call- hollywood and politics, Citizen Holly - power—economic, technological, and ing it just another “lifestyle choice.” wood, but you will find an interesting and military—affected our and others’ free- I know it is not fashionable to talk (to me, at least) much more persuasive about moral values, but we need to do it. dom of action in the world, including the even though our cultural leaders in argument about the effect hollywood ability to promote one’s values. In short, hollywood, network TV, the national storylines have on the culture at large. Reagan played the long game. newspapers routinely jeer at them, I think The Murphy Brown example, Stanley Those who would be Reagan, take that most of us in this room know that avers, was a foolish one for a Republican note. some things are good, and other things pro-life candidate to bring up:

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If Quayle had watched the show closely which Hollywood progressives like Paul enough he’d have noted that Murphy newman threw their support behind makes what some would see as the very Eugene McCarthy, and, in their opinion, The Great conservative decision to keep her baby helped unseat Lyndon Johnson. And it rather than abort it. Some Republicans wouldn’t be a book about Hollywood if it Flood thought the show’s message admirable. didn’t include some casting-couch gossip, “Murphy Brown was right,” the right- some Communists, and some complicated MICHAEL NOVAK wing pundit Pat Buchanan told me. “She kept her child. What did Dan want her to interactions with nazis. do with it?” Stanley’s book is witty and entertain- ing, and does a thorough job of illustrating Hollywood’s liberal bent has been the ways in which Hollywood works exhaustively documented, but Stanley’s Washington, the ways Washington works book is a wider and more sweeping survey Hollywood, and the ways both are subject of the ways Hollywood and Washington, to the surprisingly unpredictable whims D.C., have interacted since the days of of the American public. Coolidge, when Secretary of Commerce Hollywood is basically like the drunk Herbert Hoover jotted a note to Louis B. at the party: It’s loud and sloppy, but it’s Mayer promising that he’d be “glad to see also close to inconsequential. (As long as you anytime on 24 hours’ notice,” which it doesn’t break anything.) One of the was quite a promise in those days. Hoover strengths of Stanley’s book is that he takes The Johnstown Girls, by Kathleen George helped MGM build a powerful—and a critical and unconvinced look at the cur- (Pittsburgh, 348 pp., $24.95) monopolistic—radio empire: an early rent vogue among conservatives to blame sign, as Stanley notes, that the old politi- the “liberal media” or “Hollywood val- n May 31 of this year, the cal bosses were losing power to the new ues” for the things that plague us. “In often-flooded city of Johns - masters of the American audience. most cases,” Stanley writes, “TV and town, Pa., marked the 125th There’s some great dish in this book, movies haven’t driven social changes but O anniversary of the Great too. Louis B. Mayer’s first night as a guest simply reflected them.” Flood of 1889. Five hundred more peo- in the White House—born in Russia! a That has certainly been my experience ple died that day (more than 2,200 out penniless kid!—kicks off the book in a working in Hollywood for 25 years. The of a city of 29,000) than died in the charming way, but Stanley quickly gets place is filled with progressive liberals— horrific Hurricane Katrina in 2005. into the grimier stuff. He describes the movie-studio parking lots are a sea of There were more civilian deaths in complicated rings of power at a Holly - Priuses and Obama stickers—but the real Johnstown that day than in any Ameri - wood political-fundraising dinner—the role of the entertainment industry is to can disaster except 9/11. higher the ticket price, the closer to the deliver cash to the Democratic party. It’s a Whole families were wiped out in cen ter—and how the little fish along the powerful function, of course, but that’s minutes. Once darkness fell, many bod- edge can nibble their way closer to the big about where the influence ends. ies were consumed when debris piled up producers at the high-rollers’ table. He That’s what I learned, anyway, in my at the Stone Bridge burst into flame. In tells us about a friend of his who consis- brief experience as a dark operative for the next days, bodies—many never to be tently—and successfully—gatecrashes the Republican party. You can send the identified—lay in temporary morgues these kinds of events. There’s great back- top-secret script to the campaign. You can all along the flood’s path. More than ground stuff about the famous Democratic send it to Rush Limbaugh. What you can- 2,000 coffins were needed immediately. presidential-primary campaign of 1968, in not do is reelect a president. Hundreds of unidentified corpses now lie buried in neat rows in Grandview Cemetery high up on West mont Hill OVERHEARD overlooking the flood plain. Ever since I was seven years old, I have “Just think about her name and hit ‘delete.’” I want to interrupt, say, “Don’t believe been collecting books and articles on the the steps could be so simple and complete. Great Flood, hoping to write the full Love rifles through your trash bin to retrieve account myself. David McCullough’s The each image that your consciousness erases, Johnstown Flood (1968) was so brilliant and send you pop-up pictures of her smiles that it rendered my own ambition otiose. and longing gazes with familiar places now for a second time: A novel has in the background; corrupt all other files. appeared far better than the one I have No download can remove her memory, no shield can stop it hacking as it will. Mr. Novak, a Templeton Prize winner, is the author No matter what we spend on R and D, of two novels and many other books, and is currently we’ll never match its data-mining skill. a distinguished visiting professor at Ave Maria Since man first scratched his code across papyrus, no one has engineered an anti-virus.” University in Florida. He delivered the keynote address at the 125th-anniversary event in Johnstown —STEPHEN SCAER this May 31.

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day #4 on THE Nr 2014 post- ELECTION Cruise

Well, after four incredible days aboard the Allure of the Seas, you wouldn’t have known that Mary and I once thought we “weren’t cruisers.” I’m so glad our friends finally convinced us to really check out those NR magazine cruise ads we’d been looking at for years. Those NR post-election trips always sounded like fun, and heck, now I can admit, they ARE. No question, this voyage is a BLAST. It’s everything my pals said it would be, and more. Take the ship for starters: It’s beautiful. The cabins: beautiful. The restaurants (there are many to choose from): beautiful. And the food: deee-licious. The public spaces: beautiful. You like spas? The Allure’s are super. You like quiet places? There are plen- ty, so you can read, write, nap, whatever (on Monday Mary handed me a pencil and this notebook and pointed at some palm trees: I think I am getting the hang of it! Didn’t know I was an artist!). Want to zip line or climb a rock wall? Yep, you can. Make new friends? We’ve made a lot, including a few of the NR speakers. Morning PANEL Session Every “panel” is an exclusive and inti- mate 2 1/2-hour ses- sion that kicks off with a fascinating one-on-one interview. This morning’s began with Jay Nordlinger quizzing Luis Fortuno about Puerto Rico’s future. Jay’s way of get- ting to the heart of any matter is the tops. After a short break there was an hour-plus panel with Jon Kyl, Tim Pawlenty, Ralph Reed, Cal Thomas and Fred Thompson--yep, all of them--giving very smart analyses of the elections. One was better than the other. And Mary even got a chance to ask a question (to Pawlenty, or as we now call our new pal, “Tim,” about the 2016 race).

Afterwards, we figured we’d hang around, just a few minutes, to get Cal to sign his new book, and, well, as he was signing we got to talking, one thing led to another, and we ended up having lunch with him and his wife (she is so cool, and even funnier than Cal). You see the ads, you wonder--are these guys and gals really going to be on the cruise; are Allen West and John Yoo two page Caribbean 2014 cruise new format:Panama cruise.qxd 6/4/2014 12:36 PM Page 2

(I played blackjack with him in the casino the first night!) and Brent Bozell and the NR Gang of Rich, Ramesh, KDW, K-Lo and Charlie Cooke (damn he is sharp!) and the rest going to be on the ship? They are! And they’re so accessible, fun, friendly. I swear I was Rob Long’s BFF for a few minutes after I lit his H. Upmann cigar at last night’s smoker. afternoon­PaNel Where to start? Andy McCarthy and VDH (my favorite!) and Bing West made mincemeat of Obama’s national security policy. They were brilliant--what a unique chance this was to hear them expound. And that came after a kick-off inter- view of Cleta Mitchell by John Miller. Turns out Cleta knows everything about the IRS scandals--I wish she had another hour to talk. That was just one of nine sessions happening this week. When it ended I turned to say some- thing to Mary, and she had such a look of contentment. I don’t think she ever looked so beautiful. This really is proving to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. 6:00pm--private­cocktail­Party Great event! Out by the pool hundreds of NR guests were enjoying each others company. We met several people just like us (Red State vote, Blue State address) and before you knew it a dozen of us were talking about the direction the conservative movement is taking and shared our local-level experiences. Then Jim Geraghty and Tim Phillips joined us. I can’t tell you how cool that was. It only ended when the steward came around chiming his bells letting us know it was time for dinner. 10:15pm--”Night­Owl”­ What could you possibly do after a sumptuous dinner? We walked into the show lounge to see Jonah, Rob, Michael Walsh, Michael Ramirez, and James Lileks talking about Hollywood and Washington, and having us in stitches half the time. What a way to end a phenomenal day: Another one is just a few hours off. Mary and I are so glad we decided to come on this great cruise! ­­­DON’T­MISS­NR’S­POST-elecTION­cRuISe! FT.­lauDeRDale,­NaSSau,­ST.­ThOMaS,­ST.­MaaRTeN,­ RcI’S­alluRe­OF­The­SeaS . NOveMbeR­9-16,­2014 www.NRcRuISe.cOM .1.800.707.1634 see more 2014 caribbean cruise application:carribian 2p+application_jack.qxd 3/4/2014 3:26 PM Page 1

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been working on (an imagined first- Ben—and will not approve. Nina has even while there was still a chance. person account) for the last 15 years. also arranged a trip to the South Fork Ellen cannot forget Mary’s wails. Kathleen George, a Johnstown girl Dam that afternoon, and a 14-mile This novel is essentially about the herself, is a professor of drama and drive down the route the flood took character of the people of Johnstown, creative writing at the University of before it burst out of the narrow valley still today. Cloudbursts lasting for days Pittsburgh, and a successful detective onto Johnstown. brought new floods in 1936—when novelist several times over. Here she The next morning Ben is to interview waters climbed nearly as high as in has figured out an extremely imagina- the surviving twin, Ellen Emerson, who 1889, but with nowhere near the fury of tive way to tell the story both of the has been brought to his attention by the 20 million tons of water from the flood and of the wreckage it left in Nina. He discovers that Ellen, walker bursting dam. In 1977, days of rain, thousands of individual lives. She and all, is now a very alert 103. Brilliant nearly a foot in one day alone, over- does it through the tense story of the since birth, Ellen was sent on a scholar- whelmed Johnstown again. ship to New York University. She be - reuniting, after a hundred years, of Down all these years, the hometown two twins pulled apart by the 40-foot- came an editor at a well-respected novelist wants to show what Johnstown     high, constantly tumbling-over flood- book-publishing house, where she slowly girls are like—what her mother, and waters. became mistress to the publisher.    TheEllen,  and  everyone else she knew and One of the girls went missing, and two of them handled the affair with con- loved, were like. And she nails it. For everyone else thought that she had to be siderable dignity and mutual considera-  her, here is what defines Johnstown dead; but her twin sister, Ellen, knew tion, until Ellen began to  discern  the (in my  summary): Work. Work. Work. that her sister was still living—how true relation of her lover to his wife,  and Persistence.   Love. Sacrifice. Do not ever could that part of herself not be alive? quietly went back to Johnstown. There  be surprised at how painful life is. Never, But where could she be? she became one of the best teachers    never panic. Hold steady. And: We still The story of these twins has been Johnstown ever had—perfectionist, have a chance—throw that “Hail Mary”! known since the days after the flood, loving, and inspiring to three  genera- Fling  it as far as you can.  when eyewitnesses came forward and tions of students. Even Ms. George’s heroine, Nina, newspapermen from New York inter- Ellen and a favorite student of hers, exemplifies the type. She discerns early viewed the lone survivor. The two were Ruth, a black woman utterly dedicated enough that Ben’s wife, despite her pre- being swept along on a mattress atop to caring for her best teacher ever, are vious ugly behavior, wants a second the roiling waters, until it hit smack setting the table for a lovely lunch with chance, and Nina insists that Ben give it against a floating house. the visiting journalist. On every big to her (maybe only for the sake of Ben’s According to the long-accepted story, anniversary, journalists come into town, two boys). Nina will not accept a Ben the mattress and the cart into which it seeking an easy story with “the last sur- divided, only whole. He must give his had been rammed lodged against the vivor,” and every time her story has wife the six-week chance she wants. house for a moment while an older remained invariant. Ben has been told Otherwise how will any of them ever cousin saved himself, then pulled one of by his editor to come back from Johns - know? the three-year-olds through an open town with “some thing new.” And at the end, while Ben is on a last- window. Then churning waters tore Luckily for him, coals have been burn- ditch weeklong retreat with Amanda away the other little girl, who was wail- ing in Ellen’s chest for many decades. and unreachable, an incredible break ing pitifully. So, just before Ben arrives, she decides comes Nina’s way. I will not reveal the This brisk novel begins with two that 100 years of respecting a family plot twists; suffice it to say, this book intrepid reporters from the Pittsburgh secret is long enough. If she trusts the has one of the most joyous endings I Post-Gazette arriving in Johnstown in reporter, she will at last tell all. have ever experienced. 1989 to do a feature for the 100th Ellen does like the polite and consid- anniversary. The older reporter is the erate Ben, and she looks him in the eye feature writer, Ben Bragdon, who has and says that for years she has been some time earlier been kicked out of lying to reporters . . . well, not telling “Rated One of New York City his home by his wife with a blurted-out the whole truth. And now she wants to ‘Best Value’ Hotels.” ... Zagats “You disgust me!” The younger jour- do it, and back it up with written proof. nalist, Nina Collins, 27, is along as a Decades ago, she was threatened by her guide, for she knows Johnstown and older cousin, who slinked back into the flood story and has prepared the town and frightened the child that she way. must never tell: She must protect her Nina is also along as the loving new family. mistress to a not-yet-divorced older The long-hidden truth is that the older New York’s all suite hotel is located in cousin, when the mattress lodged the heart of the city, near corporations, man. The hold of Ben’s magnetism theatre & great restaurants. Affordable over her is beautifully rendered. She against the floating house, has kicked elegance with all the amenities of home. and Ben slip into the Johnstown her father back into the angry water to Holiday Inn to make love the day his death, saved himself, then pulled 149 E. 39th St. (Bet 3rd & Lex) New York, NY 10016 before Nina tells her mother that she Ellen up, but could not bring himself to Reservations 1-800-248-9999 Ask about our special National Review rates. will arrive. Mother knows nothing of make an attempt to save her little sister

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS ash and lizard tails, and a healthy restraint there’s at least a stab at humor here and Film when it comes to revealing too much too there, a rumor of a shadow of a hint that soon. And the narrative starts out promis- actual human beings might have been Monster ingly enough, with opening credits that involved in the writing of the dialogue. play with the original Godzilla mythos in this case, it feels as if the script were (a scaled, spiny back rises amid footage “written” by a computer program tasked Mash of the Bikini Atoll tests) and then the first with assembling the flattest dia- introduction of Ken Watanabe, Bryan logue from 1950s B-movies, and then ROSS DOUTHAT Cranston, and Juliette Binoche as our with editing it, with algorithmic rigor, to apparent leads, a Japanese scientist erase anything that remained that even ometimeS your feelings about a studying prehistoric megafauna and resembled soul or wit. two-hour movie can be summed two married nuclear-plant supervisors the story, meanwhile, has a moronic up by the way you react to a sin- doing expat work in the land of the ris- rhythm that becomes almost reassuring S gle fleeting scene. in the latest ing sun. after a while: Start with a boneheaded incarnation of Godzilla, that moment But this is a movie in which the quality military decision, then put a cute dog in arrived for me in the film’s final act, of each actor’s work correlates almost peril, then show Ken Watanabe mur- when the titular monster and his two inversely with his or her screen time, and muring something about nature’s awe- radiation-devouring rivals are having so before you can say “nuclear accident someness, then throw a cute child into their way with the innocent skyscrapers of San Francisco. in one shot, we see the city-destroying creatures through the win- dows of an office building’s 80th-or-so story, from whose cubicles and confer- ence rooms a cluster of hapless Bay Area white-collar types watch, screaming, as their doom comes sweeping in. And all i could think was: What are those people doing on the 80th floor of a skyscraper? Don’t they know what’s going on outside? Keep in mind that by this point in the movie, Godzilla and Co. have been leading the nightly newscasts for days, large portions of Japan, Hawaii, and Las Vegas have been reduced to rubble by their tails and claws and wings, and the Bay Area is under military occupation, with schoolchildren being bused across the bridges and civilians herded into BARt shelters. Yet the office-building that isn’t really an accident at all,” it peril, then a still more inexplicable mil- shot is staged as though the people becomes clear that the master thespians itary decision, then back to Watanabe, inside had been somehow taken com- are around just to cash paychecks, and then put a bus full of cute children in pletely unawares—too preoccupied the actual leads are going to be a tragi- peril, then have the military try to sal- with their tPS reports, apparently, to cally body-built Aaron taylor-Johnson, vage its terrible strategy with a surpass- hear about the prehistoric monsters con- playing Cranston and Binoche’s grown- ingly idiotic gambit, then Watanabe, verging on their city. up marine son, and elizabeth olsen as still murmuring . . . and then, at last, the this is a small detail, a pedantic com- his San Francisco–based m.D. wife. monsters fight. plaint, the kind of whine you’d expect to i know that both taylor-Johnson and the fighting is good: edwards under- hear from the Comic Book Guy on The olsen can act; i’ve seen the movies stands how to direct a slugfest, and it Simpsons . . . except that the whole movie where they proved it. But let’s just say was a smart choice by the filmmakers to is like this. Scene by scene, line by line, that in this case i could have replaced resurrect the vintage Godzilla-versus- the script and story aren’t just lazy, they them with two pretty faces plucked at the-monsters trope and make the big are offensively lazy, in ways that no random from the streets of Hollywood dude, ultimately, a humanity-saving amount of spectacle can overcome. and saved the filmmakers a lot of money hero. this is unfortunate, because, as specta- without reducing the quality of their But all this only makes the movie’s cles go, the new Godzilla is a visually movie one iota. underlying terribleness more frustrating.

LEGENDARY PICTURES accomplished work: the director, a new- in fairness, the leads are working off a A weekend of script doctoring—heck, an .; bie named Gareth edwards, has a gift for script that, as noted earlier, doesn’t even afternoon—could have made this movie shooting action sequences, an eye for bother trying. You don’t go to a Godzilla a solid B-plus blockbuster, instead of

WARNER BROS moments of beauty amid the flame and movie for the repartee, but usually what it is: a big, scaly G-minus.

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Drum. He deployed to Afghanistan from Country Life March 2011 to March 2012, then again in November 2013. “sergeant Farrell was Homecoming the first to greet me to my new platoon,” a fellow sergeant in Afghanistan told the DVIDs (Defense Video and Imagery Distribution system). “Just about anytime anyone new came to the platoon, he was always the first to greet them. . . . If a sol- dier didn’t understand something, he sat down and taught them what they needed to know.” On April 28, sergeant Farrell was sup- porting a special Forces team in the shrinks it back to a village.) There are fire RICHARD BROOKHISER Nejrab district of Kapisa Province, north trucks and sheriff’s and police cars; the of Kabul. “We got ambushed from multi- black vehicles for coffin and family; most s a weekender, I do not sub- ple positions,” wrote a special Forces sol- impressive, because most unusual, the scribe to any of the daily dier, who was there, on a blog called Patriot Guard Riders. Formed originally newspapers upstate, so I had “Breach Bang Clear.” “[sergeant Farrell] to block off and drown out the evil mum- A no advance notice of sergeant was on the Mk 47. . . . He had gone mery of the Westboro Baptist cult, the shawn Farrell’s homecoming, which hap- through multiple cans, we were two hours Patriot Guard Riders now accompany mil- pened on a Wednesday. But signs of it into the TIC and his truck was already itary, veterans, and first responders to their remained for days afterward. shot up. The gun went down so he pulled long home. so they rode, two by two, bike The state road follows the diagonal of out the sAW and exposed himself over after bike, as if in a dream, the steady the valley from northeast to southwest. the chicken plate to engage a s**tload of murmur of their engines a kind of silence. The first markers were the clusters of dudes in multiple positions.” Mk 47 is a In the city, the National september 11 flags, thicker and more numerous even grenade launcher; sAW (squad automatic Memorial & Museum has opened at the than on Memorial Day or the Fourth of weapon) is a machine gun; chicken plate site of the World Trade Center. The con- July, sprouting like red, white, and blue is a gun shield (ironic—gunners are not sensus of the early reviews is that the daffodils in front of stores and on lawns. chicken); cans are cans of ammunition; layout and the exhibits—from twisted Then, all the roadside reader boards, black TIC stands for “troops in contact,” or the girders to ownerless eyeglasses—are both letters on white backgrounds, that usually engagement. “Then he caught one through powerful and sensitive. (The gift shop and announce tractor pulls or hardware sales, his arm into his chest. This kid was sling- a planned museum café are another mat- instead carried unfamiliar messages. The ing it, and his last words to his team were, ter.) But the full september 11 Memorial driving eye, jogged by the first few, ‘I got him.’” spreads beyond the city, nationwide. focused on the subsequent ones and regis- sergeant Farrell is survived by his par- sergeant Farrell had just turned twelve tered the common sentiment, differently ents and stepparents, three brothers and years old when the Twin Towers were expressed: sGT. sHAWN FARRELL two sisters, and his wife of one year and taken down; because they were, he died MIssED BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. four months. The first comment on the when he was 24. If it were not for al- sGT. sHAWN FARRELL FAIR WINDs Breach Bang Clear blog entry was from Qaeda and its soulmates, no American AND FOLLOWING sEAs. OUR his mother. “Thank you for sharing more would go to Kapisa Province in Afghani - LOCAL HERO sGT. sHAWN FAR- detailed information on my son’s final stan from one century to the next. But we RELL. A talk with a friend and a search moments. I am so proud of him but miss do not get to choose the times we live in. online told the story. him so very much.” This is not the place to argue the course of shawn Michael Farrell II, born sep - At the state capitol, his state senator the war or the wisdom of its commanders. tember 1, 1989, joined the Army Reserve offered a resolution in his honor, whose But even the best causes and leaders pre- in his senior year in high school. The last Whereas reads, in part: “It is fitting sent a butcher’s bill. The American Revo - Oneida Daily Dispatch interviewed his and proper that we who are the benefi- lution and World War II are well thought track coach. “Farrell joined the team ciaries of those who risk their lives, leav- of; Nathanael Greene and Douglas because he needed to be able to run a ing their families behind, express our MacArthur were on the whole capable mile-and-a-half in a certain amount of appreciation and eternal gratitude for warriors. Tell that to the soldiers at Fort time to join the Army. ‘I can remember their sacrifices and courageous acts.” Washington or Bataan. “I have always him saying, “I’m not a runner,”’” his The governor ordered flags at state office regretted that the last assault at Cold coach recalled. Farrell became one buildings to fly at half-staff. Harbor was ever made,” wrote Ulysses enough to qualify for active duty. “I can The motorcade that accompanied Grant crisply in his memoirs. remember when he first came into school sergeant Farrell on May 7 up the Thruway sergeant Farrell and the other 2,321 in his Army fatigues,” the coach added. and down the valley took eight minutes to American military who have died in and After training at Fort Benning and pass any one point; footage of it is online, around Afghanistan have done their duty. assignment to Fort Riley, Farrell joined too. (America is a country of millions and Ours is to think and vote wisely, and to the Tenth Mountain Division at Fort time zones, but the Internet sometimes remember. R.I.P. and thank you.

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Happy Warrior BY DAVID HARSANYI Personal Library

OT long ago, I popped into a Salvation Army novels. There were books about punk rock and country store in suburban Maryland to check out the music and histories of heavy metal and modern classical used-book section. I’d unearthed plenty of music. There were inane manifestos from long-forgotten N gems in similar places, so it wasn’t surprising politicians and trendy books on pop economics. There that the visit proved similarly productive. Home came were the mystery books and there were mysterious books. copies of William Safire’s On Language and the novel For reasons unknown, for instance, I own not one but two Van Loon’s Lives, an 890-page tome written in 1942 that biographies of the acerbic Oscar Levant and two books of imagines what dinner parties featuring some of history’s “conversations” with Woody Allen. Perhaps, I rational- most famous people might look like—Torquemada dines ized, these tomes may be useful when I pen that historic with Robespierre, Saint Francis with Mozart, and so on. book on the American Jewish comic—a project I’d con- Or, at least, this is what Wikipedia informs me Van Loon’s cocted mere seconds earlier. The same shelf featured a Lives is about. The thing is, I probably won’t read Van book titled “The Anatomy of Swearing,” which is Loon’s Lives. Actually, I may never again crack open Van undoubtedly fascinating, and Neal Pollack’s Stretch, Loon’s Lives. Yet there it sits on my bookshelf between which is about a middle-aged man discovering the well-worn copies of A Short History of Byzantium and A restorative powers of yoga. Yoga? Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex There were books I hadn’t read and there were books Chilton—and, if I have my way, there it will sit for the I had read but would never read again and then there next 30 years. were books I wished I hadn’t read in the first place. This kind of bibliophilic overindulgence has caused Killing Yourself to Live is an account of Chuck me plenty of angst over the years. The last time I moved Klosterman’s journey to the sites of tragic rock stars’ my family—and we’ve moved multiple times—there deaths, and Frank Sheeran’s I Heard You Paint Houses is were many more boxes of books than there were of about the Mafia hood who confessed to killing Teamster clothing, utensils, dishes, and all other household items leader Jimmy Hoffa. Neither was particularly enjoyable combined. So, unsurprisingly, every so often, mutiny or educational, so why were they taking up space in a breaks out and domestic forces prod me into scaling basement that should contain evidence of my children’s back my collection. This typically entails frivolous hobbies? Do I really need The Story of Tibet or The Story protests about the amount of “space” my books take up of Sushi? Do I really care “Why Mahler Matters”? Is it or equally unpersuasive arguments about how stacks of rational for someone to eat up valuable square footage in “messy” books scattered across the house are aestheti- the Washington, D.C., area with Arthur Koestler’s cally disagreeable. Other shaky arguments include: absurdly ahistorical The Thirteenth Tribe or a history of “You’ve already read them.” “You’ll never read it the Westies? again.” “Why don’t you get a Kindle like a normal per- Turns out it is. son?” A book collection is, of course, the story of your intel- This year, in the hopes of quelling insurrection, I lectual and cultural life—with all the high-mindedness, decided to defend my book collection. “Every book is pretentiousness, shallowness, and curiosity that comes necessary. Surely I am not, as popular opinion around with the project. As sappy as it sounds, browsing through here has it, some kind of hoarder.” Well, things began my own unreasonably cumbersome book collection, one somewhat precariously when it took me 20 minutes to that took more than 20 years to compile, became some- decide whether I should retain a single slim volume thing of a sentimental experience. It turns out that even called “Extra Lives,” an amusing history of video games, what you don’t read says something about you. Perhaps or condemn it to exile in some far-flung Goodwill where some of your books aren’t about what you know; they’re it would mingle forever with discarded copies of A Brief about what you hope to know and what you once thought History of Time or yellowing Robert Ludlum paperbacks. you wanted to know. This connection simply can’t be It did not get any easier from there. Though I was only made in digitized form. As Joe Queenan pointed out in able to find maybe ten books suitable for expulsion, I had One for the Books, it is the objects themselves that are to admit that I probably owned hundreds of books for no sacred. One stack in my home features The Servile Mind, practical or logical reason whatsoever. The Rational Optimist, Cryptonomicon, and Parliament There were the science-fiction books with covers so of Whores because together they say something about my juvenile I’d be embarrassed to read them in front of my sensibilities. And I hope that one day I will read that preteen kids. There were academic books on science and biography of Disraeli or Diarmaid MacCulloch’s gargan- mathematics, the contents of which I couldn’t possibly tuan book Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. pretend to begin to understand. There were Umberto Eco There might be better, less messy, less intrusive uses for that space. But I can’t think of a single one. At least, Mr. Harsanyi is a senior editor of the Federalist. that’s the story I’m going with.

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