WQSum06.Final 6/20/06 2:09 PM Page 1 The Are Video India’s Path Getting a The “Bigger, Games Evil? to Greatness Grip on Better”

WILSON By Chris By Martin Ourselves Nightmare Suellentrop Walker By Daniel Akst By James Morris

The WILSON QUARTERLY SURVEYING THE WORLD OF IDEAS QUARTERLY Us

IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA & Them Immigrants in America Essays by Peter Skerry, G. Pascal Zachary, Blair A. Ruble, Stephen G. Bloom Summer 2006, Vol. 30. No.3

SUMMER 2006 $6.95 ($9.95 CAN)

The WILSON QUARTERLY SUMMER 2006 volume xxx, number 3

The Wilson Quarterly Published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars www.wilsonquarterly.com

FEATURES

14 Playing With Our Minds | By Chris Suellentrop Video games aren’t for adolescent geeks anymore—if they ever were. Now they’re powerful teaching tools, for better and for worse. DEPARTMENTS

22 India’s Path to Greatness | By Martin Walker 2 EDITOR’S COMMENT After decades as a backwater, India is jumping into the first rank

of nations. Where it lands will shape Asia’s future—and America’s. 4 LETTERS

31 Who’s in Charge Here? | By Daniel Akst 11 FINDINGS Self-control is the new Holy Grail of virtues as the crimes of 75 Years Tall Dante’s Inferno become mere lifestyle choices. Damned Depressed The Smoke Hoods in the ’Hood 38 What’s New | By James Morris Puttin’ Off the Blitz The Next Big Thing could be bathtubs with diving boards. Notes on the great American quest for novelty. 69 In ESSENCE The Attack of the Killer Unknown

43 US & THEM: IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA Race and Real Estate Today’s immigrants are not just more numerous than those of Does the Death Penalty Deter? the past. They are coming from different countries, making Turkey and the West their way to new U.S. destinations, and maintaining new kinds

of ties to the lands they left behind. 91 CURRENT BOOKS 44 Mother of Invention | By Peter Skerry Max Byrd on the Battle of New Orleans 48 The Hotel Africa | By G. Pascal Zachary Florence King on not-so-good 56 Mélange Cities | By Blair A. Ruble cheer Albert Innaurato on the man 60 The New Pioneers | By Stephen G. Bloom behind the Met

Brief Reviews: Nick Gillespie, Lawrence Rosen, J. Peter Pham, Max Holland, David Lindley, Amy E. Schwartz, and others

ON THE COVER: Photographs by Chuck Savage/Corbis (left) and Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. Design by David Herbick. 112 PORTRAIT

The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Young Man Going West

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 1 The WILSON QUARTERLY EDITOR’S COMMENT

EDITOR Steven Lagerfeld After Immigration MANAGING EDITOR James H. Carman LITERARY EDITOR Stephen Bates

SENIOR EDITOR Judith M. Havemann Assimilation has become one of those words one hesitates to use in ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sarah L. Courteau polite company. It is acceptable to talk about the assimilation of Jews, EDITORS AT LARGE Ann Hulbert, James Morris, Italians, and other ethnic groups in the past, but it is generally not OK Jay Tolson COPY EDITOR Vincent Ercolano to suggest that the assimilation—much less Americanization—of His- CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Daniel Akst, Martha panics and other groups is one of the big issues underlying the current Bayles, Linda Colley, Denis Donoghue, Max Holland, Stephen Miller, Walter Reich, Alan Ryan, anxiety about immigration. Yet no matter what the outcome of the Edward Tenner, Charles Townshend, Alan Wolfe, Bertram Wyatt-Brown debate over how many immigrants to admit to the United States and RESEARCHERS Flora Lindsay-Herrera, what to do about the millions here illegally, many more newcomers Mark F. McClay BOARD OF EDITORIAL ADVISERS will arrive and much anxiety will remain about how they fit into K. Anthony Appiah, Cynthia Arnson, Amy Chua, American society. Robert Darnton, Nathan Glazer, Harry Harding, Robert Hathaway, Elizabeth Johns, Jackson Nineteenth-century America did not possess a magic formula for Lears, Seymour Martin Lipset, Robert Litwak, Wilfred M. McClay, Richard Rorty, Blair Ruble, assimilation, but it did have something we lack: a rough consensus Peter Skerry, Martin Sletzinger, S. Frederick Starr, Philippa Strum, Martin Walker about what newcomers must do to enjoy the rights and privileges of FOUNDING EDITOR Peter Braestrup (1929–1997) citizenship and how to help them meet those responsibilities. Today, BUSINESS DIRECTOR Suzanne Napper we cannot even agree whether immigrants are fortunate newcomers CIRCULATION Cary Zel, ProCirc, Miami, Fla. The Wilson Quarterly full of potential to help make a better America or oppressed minorities (ISSN-0363-3276) is published in January (Winter), April (Spring), July (Summer), and who must be protected from a malign society bent on stripping them October (Autumn) by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 of their identity. The public schools, political parties, and other institu- Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20004–3027. Complete article index available online at tions that once guided the immigrant transition are in disarray. And www.wilsonquarterly.com. Subscriptions: one year, $24; while immigration policy, whatever its many complications, is almost two years, $43. Air mail outside U.S.: one year, $39; two years, $73. Single copies mailed upon request: exclusively a matter of federal law, there really can be no such thing as $8; outside U.S. and possessions, $10; selected back issues: $8, including postage and handling; outside assimilation policy, since assimilation is influenced by an immense U.S., $10. Periodical postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. All unsolicited tangle of political, social, and economic forces. manuscripts should be accompanied by a self- The articles in this issue take a street-level look at how things are addressed stamped envelope. MEMBERS: Send changes of address and all subscrip- working out in everyday life. They offer a mixed picture. Here in tion correspondence with The Wilson Quarterly mailing label to Subscriber Service, The Wilson Washington we may get only a partial view of that reality, but it is Quarterly, P.O. Box 420406, Palm Coast, FL largely an encouraging one. Particularly when I visit the schools my 32142–0406. SUBSCRIBER HOT LINE: 1-800-829-5108 children attend, I marvel at the good fortune that has brought Amer- POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to The Wilson Quarterly, P.O. Box 420406, ica so much energy and talent. When we are finished with our latest Palm Coast, FL 32142–0406. Microfilm copies are available from Bell & Howell In- immigration debate, I hope we can still say, as George Washington formation and Learning, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. U.S. newsstand distribution through BigTop did, that “the bosom of America is open” to people from abroad, along Newsstand Services, a division of the IPA. For more with “a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and information call (415) 643-0161 or fax (415) 643-2983 or e-mail: [email protected]. propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.” ADVERTISING: Sandi Baker, MKTG Services, Inc. Tel.: (215) 968-5020, ext. 152, Fax: (215) 579-8053, —Steven Lagerfeld E-mail: [email protected].

2 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006

LETTERS

HOW TO RETIRE to 64; by 2006, only 13 percent did. and the elderly. Swedes were willing to in “paying for it” [wq, spring People without these benefits are forced make compromises in public pensions ’06], Sylvester Schieber reminds us that to delay retirement until they reach 65 because they had confidence that poor the first wave of baby boomers has and become eligible for Medicare. elderly people like those described by turned 60 and asks how we will pay for These incentives for continued Beth Shulman [“Sweating the Golden their retirement, arguing that inertia employment are already having an Years,” WQ, Spring ’06] would not be has prevented the United States from effect. After a three-decades-long forced to work or middle-aged people addressing the impending crisis of pop- decline in the age of retirement, in 1992 forced to forgo care because they had no ulation aging. Yet we have had to make the trend began moving in the opposite health insurance. room for the baby boomers every step direction. From 1995 to 2005, labor Jill Quadagno of the way. When they entered kinder- force participation rates among men Author, One Nation, Uninsured: Why the U.S. garten, playgrounds were littered with aged 62 to 64 increased from 46 to 51 Has No National Health Insurance (2005) trailers because classrooms were full. percent and among women from 33 Professor of Sociology When they reached college age, enroll- to 39 percent. In the same period there Florida State University ments soared. When they began pur- was also an increase in labor force par- Tallahassee, Fla. chasing homes, housing prices sky- ticipation among men and women 65 rocketed. Now that they are retiring, and older. can we handle the challenge? If economic growth continues at its despite intense debate over I suspect that we can. Several incen- present pace and the baby boomers Social Security reform, most recently tives, some planned, some inadvertent, retire later, the Social Security crisis prompted by President George W. are already in place to encourage later may never materialize. More likely, any Bush’s failed attempt at a fix, no signif- retirement. The first is the uptick in the future crisis will be triggered by health icant legislation has been enacted since age of eligibility for full Social Security care costs. These costs can only be con- 1983. Sylvester Schieber argues that benefits, from 65 to 67, which Congress tained through a program that guar- reform is necessary sooner rather than enacted in 1983. The second is the shift antees universal coverage, eliminating later to deal with the fiscal conse- from defined-benefit to defined-con- the inefficiency and cost shifting in the quences of demographic aging. Like tribution plans that both Schieber and current mix of public and private ben- other proponents of partial privatiza- Andrew Achenbaum [“What Is Retire- efits that leaves 46 million Americans tion, Schieber refers to foreign models ment For?,” WQ, Spring ’06] describe. uncovered. to make a case for the supposedly press- Unlike defined-benefit plans, which Schieber is correct that it is time to ing need to restructure Social Security. encourage retirement after so many stop dithering. The question is, what He does not explicitly acknowledge that years of service, defined-contribution solutions will resolve the impending age comprehensive pension reform is a plans reward continued work. Finally, crisis in a just way? If we look to Sweden complicated political task in most ad- retiree health benefits are going the for a solution, then we need to remem- vanced industrial countries. way of the dinosaur. In 1985, 70 percent ber that Sweden has remarkably little Schieber states that Canadian leg- of employers offered health-insurance income inequality and provides social islators reduced the level of benefits benefits to early retirees, those aged 55 protection for children, young families, that wealthier citizens receive through the Old Age Security program, a mod- LETTERS may be mailed to The Wilson Quarterly, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. est flat pension that remains quasi-uni- 20004–3027, or sent via facsimile, to (202) 691-4036, or e-mail, to [email protected]. The writer’s telephone number and postal address should be included. For reasons of space, letters are usually edited for versal. Yet the truth is that the fiscal publication. Some letters are received in response to the editors’ requests for comment. claw-back mentioned by Schieber

4 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 LETTERS

affects only a small portion of the eld- front a significant demographic and erly population, and saves relatively lit- fiscal challenge down the road, the tle for the federal treasury. In the second American demographic situation is half of the 1990s, the Chrétien govern- comparatively less disadvantageous. ment’s proposal to abolish the flat pen- Japan and many European countries sion failed miserably amid labor and face the prospect of significant popula- feminist protest. tion decline, which is not the case of the In countries where major pension United States. This fact translates into reforms did occur, the reform process a moderate fiscal challenge for the often involved long negotiations decades to come. According to the 2005 between economic and political actors, Social Security Board of Trustees report, as was the case in Sweden. Of course, “Social Security could be brought into Sweden enacted a comprehensive actuarial balance over the next 75 years reform that will help it to contend with in various ways, including an immedi- the long-term consequences of demo- ate increase of 15 percent in the amount graphic aging. Yet this reform occurred of payroll taxes or an immediate reduc- in a country dealing with a far greater tion in benefits of 13 percent (or some fiscal and demographic challenge than combination of the two).” Considering the United States faces. Without major that the American payroll tax is much restructuring, the Swedish pension sys- lower than that of countries such as tem would have collapsed. Germany, Italy, and Sweden, even a Although Social Security will con- two-percentage-point increase in pay-

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 5 LETTERS

roll tax would leave the United States in Security check. New retirees will dis- freedom from responsibility; it is the a competitive position where payroll cover that their parents need physical freedom to be responsible.” And for tax levels are concerned. Interestingly, and/or financial help, and that they these ordinary Americans, that Schieber does not even mention the are first in line to provide it. Much of included responsibility for them- possibility of a modest tax increase, what gets written about retirement selves, their families, their friends, which would represent a much more overlooks the reality of these care- and their communities. straightforward way to avoid any future giving responsibilities, and the four Civic engagement itself receives fiscal crisis than the partial privatization articles in the WQ’s “The Sovereign only passing comment in the WQ’s many American conservatives—includ- State of Retirement” cluster are no essays, yet it is a major focus in the ing President Bush—support. exception. lives of American retirees across the Social Security reform is a contro- In truth, I never thought about this class spectrum. Many of the institu- versial political issue. Considering the myself until 1993, when I began to tions and initiatives that improve the growing electoral influence of the “gray follow a cohort of working and mid- quality of community life—schools, lobby” and the fragmented nature of dle-class people in rural New York as churches, beautification projects, federal institutions stemming from they approached, entered, and expe- petition drives, mentoring programs, checks and balances, it is unlikely that rienced the first five years of life after libraries, hospitals, refugee centers— a painful reform involving benefits cuts work. They too had bought into the greatly benefit from the volunteer and/or tax hikes will occur in the image of maturity’s freedom and active energy of elders. Arguments about absence of a short-term fiscal crisis. lifestyles promoted by the media and generational equity and the social Even more than it does in other coun- the AARP. Many did enjoy such a costs of paying for retirement need to tries, Social Security reform in the retirement, but others quickly learned factor in these alternate ways in United States remains a political puz- to expect the unexpected. The which retirees continue to pay society zle. In such a context, using foreign unplanned-for but not-so-uncommon for the benefits they receive. models to promote unnecessarily rad- events in this group included a Joel Savishinsky ical reforms is unlikely to work, espe- spouse’s heart attack, the dementia of Author, Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of cially when the data available suggest an in-law, the cancer of a close friend, Retirement in America (2000) that the United States faces compara- and the birth of a grandchild with Professor of Anthropology and tively modest demographic challenges health problems, all in the years just Fellow of the Gerontology Institute that a set of small-scale adjustments before or after formal retirement. Ithaca College could ultimately solve. Approximately 13 percent of Ithaca, N.Y. Daniel Béland Americans who serve as family care- Author, Social Security: History and Politics givers for people older than 18 are From the New Deal to the themselves over 65. They have MALI’S RECIPE FOR Privatization Debate (2005) learned that even if you can afford to DEMOCRACY Associate Professor of Sociology retire from work, you can never retire “mali’s unlikely democracy” University of Calgary from your relationships. The recent, [WQ, Spring ’06], former U.S. ambas- Alberta, Canada dramatic growth in the number of sador Robert Pringle’s account of one of American grandparents now raising Africa’s recent success stories, contains their children’s children—the 2000 many lessons that apply far beyond aging baby boomers are cer- census shows close to 2.5 million Mali’s landlocked borders. His use of tainly among the beneficiaries of such older caregivers marking up Robert Kaplan’s gloomy predictions for the longevity we’ve achieved in mod- homework, not marking time— Mali and the rest of Africa as a foil for ern times, but they are not alone. speaks to the critical intergenera- his assessment of Mali’s accomplish- Many of the boomers’ own elders will tional commitments of retirees. As ments over the past 15 years is apt. still be alive when their grown sons one of the people in my study Kaplan and other journalists—Bryan and daughters receive that first Social expressed it, “Retirement is not just Mealer, writing on [ Continued on Page 9]

6 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006

FROM THE CENTER

ENGINES OF THE CENTER

As i was chairing a meeting of the wilson sider what they thought were settled lessons of history. Center’s Board of Trustees recently, a hubbub erupted in Christian and Kent are two of the scholar- the hall outside as dozens of people poured out of a con- administrators who head the 22 programs at the Wilson ference on “aid for trade” in the auditorium next door. It Center, and they are complemented by a small but highly was just another day at the Wilson Center, where it is not effective administrative team—all under the supervision unusual to have four or five events stretching into the of Michael Van Dusen, the Center’s indispensable deputy evening. But in fact there is nothing ordinary about what director. Many of them were sitting in on the board the Center does, I thought at that moment, and especially meeting, from Leslie Johnson and John Dysland, the about the staff that makes it happen. heads of administration and financial management, Lee Hamilton, the Center’s president and director, respectively, to Robert Litwak of the Division of Inter- rightly serves as its chief public face. But the team that national Studies and Cynthia Arnson, who oversees the works under him includes people of great and diverse tal- Latin American Program, to Wilson Quarterly editor ents. The aid for trade conference was put together in Steven Lagerfeld and dialogue host George Seay. Also cooperation with other institutions by Kent Hughes, among those attending was Middle East Program direc- who came to the Center after a varied career in public tor Haleh Esfandiari, an accomplished journalist, admin- service capped by a stint as associate deputy secretary of istrator, and scholar who taught at Princeton after the rev- commerce. Kent, who holds a Ph.D. in economics, heads olution in her native Iran, with whom I have worked the Center’s Program on Science, Technology, America, particularly closely and productively because of my deep and the Global Economy, and his particular accom- interest in the Middle East. plishment in this conference was to get scholars, senior Christian was preceded before the board by Robert figures from corporations and international institutions Hathaway, director of the Center’s Asia Program. Bob such as the World Trade Organization and the World detailed his large menu of activities and joked that a Bank, and top trade officials from developing countries program concerned with half the world’s population together to find ways to help those countries build the surely deserves half the Center’s financial resources. That infrastructure needed to liberalize their trade. got a chuckle from the room, and it also crystallized the As this impressive throng jammed the hall outside, spirit of this very unusual place. another Wilson Center program director addressed In my long career in business and diplomacy, and in the board. Historian Christian Ostermann has over- my association with many nonprofit organizations, I seen the Center’s History and Public Policy Program have never seen an institution in which so many people for nine years, spearheading its work to secure and combine intellect, entrepreneurial ability, and a capac- make available to scholars and the public the archives ity to work together collegially. And in a city all but of formerly communist states and other countries, defined by partisan divisions, the Center is notable for and to analyze the new materials. (These materials are the absence of such considerations in its work. The com- available at the Center’s website, www.wilsoncen- mitment to excellence and open inquiry that the WQ’s ter.org.) This is foundational scholarly work of the readers see in its pages is the same commitment that ani- first order, with fruits that you read about in your mates the Center every day, making it that rare Wash- daily newspaper. It has spurred a complete reinter- ington institution where one can be sure the hubbub in pretation of Cold War history—as reflected in The the hall is not all sound and fury, but the sound of some- Cold War: A New History (2005), by Yale historian thing good happening. John Lewis Gaddis, who chairs the program’s advisory Joseph B. Gildenhorn board—and has prompted policymakers to recon- Chair

8 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 LETTERS

[ Continued from page 6] Congo in the April Lee H. Hamilton, Director 2006 issue of Harper’s, is a recent BOARD OF TRUSTEES example—offer lurid but entertaining Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Chair David A. Metzner, Vice Chair depictions of a dysfunctional continent EX OFFICIO MEMBERS: James H. Billington, in its death throes. Such assaults on Librarian of Congress, Bruce Cole, Chair, National Endowment for the Humanities, Michael O. Leavitt, “nation-building” and democracy pro- Secretary of Health and Human Services, Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, Lawrence M. Small, Secretary, motion are becoming fashionable, and Smithsonian Institution, Margaret Spellings, Secretary Pringle provides a healthy antidote. of Education, Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States. Designated Appointee of the President from Democracy in Mali would seem Within the Federal Government: Tami Longaberger unlikely because it is a poor country PRIVATE CITIZEN MEMBERS: Carol Cartwright, Robin B. Cook, Donald E. Garcia, Bruce S. Gelb, with a history of dictatorship, contend- Sander R. Gerber, Charles L. Glazer, Ignacio E. Sanchez ing ethnic groups, and a predominantly THE WILSON COUNCIL Sam Donaldson, President Muslim population. Yet like Mali, many Elias F. Aburdene, Jennifer Acker, Weston Adams, B. B. Andersen, Cyrus A. Ansary, David B. Apatoff, David Bass, other poor countries in West Africa and Lawrence E. Bathgate II, Tom Beddow, Theresa other parts of the continent with simi- Behrendt, John Beinecke, Joseph C. Bell, Steven Alan Bennett, Stuart Bernstein, James D. Bindenagel, Rudy lar histories and demographics have Boschwitz, A. Oakley Brooks, Donald A. Brown, Melva Bucksbaum, Richard I. Burnham, Amelia L. Caiola Ross, made significant political progress in Joseph A. Cari, Jr., Mark Chandler, Julia Chang-Bloch, Peter B. Clark, Melvin Cohen, William T. Coleman, Jr., the same time span, and continue to do David M. Crawford, Jr., Michael D. DiGiacomo, Sam so. Benin held its fourth set of demo- Donaldson, Elizabeth Dubin, F. Samuel Eberts III, I. Steven Edelson, Mark Epstein, Melvyn J. Estrin, Susan cratic national elections in March, in R. Farber, A. Huda Farouki, Julie Finley, Michael Fleming, Joseph H. Flom, Charles Fox, Barbara which the incumbent stepped aside Hackman Franklin, Norman Freidkin, John H. French, after two terms and an independent Morton Funger, Chris G. Gardiner, Sarah Gewirz, Alma Gildenhorn, David F. Girard-diCarlo, Roy M. Goodman, newcomer assumed the presidency. Raymond A. Guenter, Kathryn Walt Hall, Cheryl F. Halpern, Edward L. Hardin, Jr., Marilyn Harris, John L. Ghana’s liberal democracy is also well Howard, Osagie O. Imasogie, Darrell E. Issa, Benjamin Jacobs, Jerry Jasinowski, Shelly Kamins, James M. established by now, and President John gence of a new party, suggest that Kaufman, Edward W. Kelley, Jr., Christopher J. Kennan, Kuffour is expected to step down after democracy is alive and well. Looking Joan Kirkpatrick, Willem Kooyker, Steven Kotler, Markos Kounalakis, Richard Kramer, William H. elections next year. After years of vicious elsewhere around the continent, from Kremer, Daniel Lamaute, James Langdon, Jr., Esq., Raymond Learsy, Dennis A. LeVett, Francine Gordon civil war, Sierra Leone and Liberia are South Africa to Somaliland, Mozam- Levinson, Harold O. Levy, Frederic V. Malek, David S. Mandel, Esq., Jeffrey A. Marcus, J. W. Marriott, John recovering with fledgling democracies. bique to Mauritius, Botswana to Mason, Jay Mazur, Robert McCarthy, Esq., Stephen G. Mauritania’s (Muslim) dictatorship fell Burundi, nearly every country can be McConahey, Donald F. McLellan, Charles McVean, Alan L. Meltzer, J. Kenneth Menges, Jr., Esq., Tobia G. after a coup last year, and the current said to have made progress, if not Mercuro, Kathryn Mosbacher, Jeremiah L. Murphy, Martha T. Muse, Dean O’Hare, John E. Osborn, Paul military government has pledged to always as dramatic and sound as Mali’s Hae Park, Gerald L. Parsky, Carol Ann Petren, Jeanne L. Phillips, Michael J. Polenske, Donald Robert Quartel, Jr., hold democratic elections and hand example. Bruce Ratner, Thomas R. Reedy, Larry D. Richman, over power to civilians, citing Mali as an There are exceptions, of course. Carlyn Ring, Edwin Robbins, Esq., Juan A. Sabater, Roger Sant, Timothy R. Scully, George P. Shultz, Raja W. inspiration. Senegal’s mature (Muslim) Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate. Sidawi, John Sitilides, William A. Slaughter, James H. Small, Shawn Smeallie, Gordon V. Smith, Thomas F. democracy will hold elections later this Yoweri Museveni’s success in changing Stephenson, Robert Stewart, Norman Kline Tiefel, year that are sure to be exciting—and the constitution to permit him a third Timothy Towell, Mark C. Treanor, Anthony G. Viscogliosi, Christine M. Warnke, Ruth Westheimer, peaceful. Impoverished (Muslim) term in Uganda was a setback. Eritrea, Faith Whittlesey, Pete Wilson, Deborah Wince-Smith, Herbert S. Winokur, Jr., Paul Martin Wolff, Joseph neighbor Niger is democratic. Nigeria Rwanda, and Equatorial Guinea Zappala, Richard S. Ziman, Nancy M. Zirkin has been disappointing, as President remain closed dictatorships, and Soma- The Wilson Center is the nation’s living memori- Olusegun Obasanjo is suspected of con- lia is still mired in anarchy. Neverthe- al to Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. It is located at One Woodrow sidering a third term and unrest in the less, even such hard cases as the Demo- Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20004–3027. Created by law in Niger delta is roiling oil markets, but the cratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, 1968, the Center is Washington’s only independent, wide-ranging institute for advanced study where country will hold its third set of elec- and Ethiopia are arguably making vital cultural issues and their deep historical back- tions next year, and recent political painstaking progress in emerging from ground are explored through research and dialogue. Visit the Center at http://www.wilsoncenter.org. developments, including the emer- devastating conflict and dictatorship.

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 9 LETTERS

Negotiations, elections, and action by Pringle is also right to encourage into public policy. She recalls for us that the press and civil society do make a dif- wealthier nations, and the United presidents Wilson and Truman openly ference. Much of the continent is a work States in particular, to do more to sup- displayed and made on-the-job use of in progress, but the traditional systems port Mali’s democracy and its eco- their religious beliefs—and she cites and a national foundation mythology nomic development. The U.S. gov- their great accomplishments. Attribut- that Mali has put to the service of ernment and news media paid ing their success to “the hand God democracy, as Pringle so eloquently virtually no attention to the transition played,” she wonders why we are so describes, are also at work elsewhere. to democracy in this West African apprehensive about Bush. She seems to Mali certainly “punches above its country, focusing instead on collapsed regard faith-based politics as an accept- weight” in Africa and internationally. It states and civil and ethnic conflict in able alternative to secular politics. will host the fourth conference of the the region. Mali’s success story— Alas, Spalding has addressed her Community of Democracies in 2007, granted, an unpredictable and initially message to the wrong audience. which reflects the leadership role it has hesitant one in a very poor, strategi- Directed at the less secular (and more played on the continent in promoting cally unimportant, and generally suspensive) worriers, it might have democracy, and should also highlight unknown country—was largely some effect. Directed at the more sec- the democratic progress elsewhere in ignored. Yet it is not too late for Wash- ular group, it falls on deaf ears. True Africa. The Bush administration, Con- ington to promote the continuation secularists reject all notions of knowl- gress, and their counterparts in the of democracy in the region. edge acquired by any other means international community deserve credit As for economic progress, Mali has than reason. We are irreligious, not for their support of Africa’s efforts at done a very good job in halting the merely unreligious. We oppose polit- reform and democratic development. spread of HIV/AIDS. Its tourism sec- ical decisions supported only by reli- The process has been messy and there tor could be developed dramatically. gious dogma. We abhor even the will always be setbacks, but that should Mali currently lacks the infrastructure smallest sign of religious extremism in not be an excuse for despair or with- for expanded tourism, but the potential public affairs. We see many such signs drawal. Africans are taking the lead is certainly there and should be tapped. in the Bush administration. and making headway, no matter what Mali’s road to further democracy Dewey Wasser the pessimists say. and development is sure to be long and Thousand Oaks, Calif. Dave Peterson complicated. However, the United Director, Africa Program States can play an essential role, not National Endowment for Democracy only by aiding Mali but also by enhanc- RE-READING PEARL BUCK Washington, D.C. ing America’s image in Africa and the i am a teacher, and i can’t Muslim world in general. imagine any history or English teacher Andrew F. Clark in the world excluding The Good Earth robert pringle rightly Professor of African and Global History from the classroom; we have hard- credits two leaders, Alpha Konaré and University of North Carolina, Wilmington cover editions since they get so much Amadou Toumani Touré, for their roles Wilmington, N.C. use. But it’s almost impossible to find in Mali’s transition from years of mili- current material relevant to Pearl tary dictatorship to democracy, and Buck. Sheila Melvin’s article [“Pearl’s highlights the success of the national RELIGION IN THE Great Price,” WQ, Spring ’06] was conference in 1991 that brought WHITE HOUSE priceless, not only for the historical together a diverse group of Malians to elizabeth edwards spalding background but for its treatment of decide the future of the country. Other [“True Believers,” WQ, Spring ’06] Pearl Buck and her work as they figure African countries can learn from this attempts to ease the concern of “more into current relations between China model of change as well as the moder- secular” Americans who worry about and the United States. ating and restrained influence of the extent to which President George Susan Addelston Konaré and Touré. W. Bush integrates his religious beliefs New York, N.Y.

10 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 FINDINGS brief notes of interest on all topics

75 Years Tall 9/11 casts a different light over sev- Valley (2000), “and one Dartmouth An Empire vast and secure eral moments of Empire State Build- honors graduate was delighted to ing history. secure the job of flushing all its The Empire State Building’s 75th When the skyscraper opened in unused lavatories every day to anniversary, on May 1, had a bitter- 1931, deep in the Depression, it prevent chemicals in the water from sweet tinge, for it was 9/11 that seemed a towering miscalculation. marring the porcelain finish.” Archi- restored the skyscraper to its status “Many of its floors were closed off,” tect Frank Lloyd Wright rejoiced. He as New York City’s tallest. But then, writes Piers Brendon in The Dark termed the Empire State Building “a tomb that will mark the end of an epoch,” and said that Manhattan should outlaw these “Molochs raised for commercial greatness” by impos- ing a height limit of five stories. (Wright later changed his mind and designed a mile-high skyscraper, never built.) On September 17, 2001, New Urbanists James Howard Kun- stler and Nikos A. Salingaros likewise called for a strict height limit, pronouncing “the age of skyscrapers...at an end.” War brought the Empire State Building prosperity, but also catastrophe. On July 28, 1945, a B- 25 bomber, lost in fog, smashed into the 79th floor. One of the plane’s engines killed an “elevator girl”; the other tore through the building and out the other side. It was a Saturday, so the crash and ensuing fire killed just 14 people. For all the obvious differences, a few aspects of the dis- aster prefigure 9/11: heroic rescues by firefighters and tenants, charred bodies, and, in at least one instance, The Empire State building had been standing for only14 years when an errant B-25 bomber crashed into a man who leapt to his death rather its upper floors in July 1945. Eleven office workers and three crew members were killed in the accident. than die in flames.

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 11 FINDINGS

After Hiroshima, attention trials,” Andrew D. Leipold writes in low at the Wilson Center, who sued to turned to a new peril. “If fused The Washington University Law make the regulations freely available. correctly,” Major General Thomas Quarterly (vol. 83, no. 1). Criminals Earlier this year a court ruled for F. Farrell told Reader’s Digest, “one aren’t the only ones who misreckon Pavlov, but the bureau appealed. of those [atomic] bombs could the consequences of their actions. Then, in late May, shortly before the blow the Empire State Building to appeal was to be heard, the tale hell. There might be a sort of Damned Depressed shifted from Kafka to Mario Puzo. stump left for a few floors above “I was putting my briefcase in the the ground, but it would be com- The Transylvania blues back seat of my car when some guy pletely unlivable.” Given the popularity of diagnosing asked me if I had a screwdriver,” But would a 9/11-like attack on the dead—Did Herod suffer from Pavlov told Russia’s St. Petersburg the Empire State Building leave kidney disease, Napoleon from stom- Times. “I said I didn’t.... I was only a stump? Not necessarily. ach cancer, Oscar Wilde from menin- about to get into my car when he hit “The Empire State’s foundations gitis?—it was only a matter of time me in the back of the head with a are firmly planted in bedrock; its before someone diagnosed the hard, sharp object.” Pavlov collapsed, stairwells are encased in thick con- undead. In the lit-crit anthology and two or three other men ap- crete, and its steel interior, Vampires (Rodopi), Pete Remington peared and brutally kicked him. He married to the limestone cladding, argues that the bloodsuckers in Anne ended up hospitalized with a con- is more like a vertical radiator Rice novels exhibit classic symptoms cussion and several stitches. In Rus- than the spindly framework typi- of depression: They eat oddly and sia, promoting free information can cal of newer towers,” Mark sporadically, sleep to excess (some- exact a high price. Kingwell writes in Nearest Thing times for centuries), and grapple to Heaven: The Empire State with issues of self-esteem arising The Smoke Hoods from eternal damnation. Forget the Building and American Dreams in the ’Hood (Yale Univ. Press). So “if a jet plane wooden stakes and silver bullets: cue ever struck the building, it is the Zoloft and Paxil. Dress for distress unlikely it would melt and collapse With Preparedness Now! An Emer- from the inside as the twin towers Standards of gency Survival Guide for Civilians did.” And this year’s 75th-anniver- (Process Media), the Bureau and Their Families sary celebration would have pro- Aton Edwards aims to make ceeded on schedule. Regulations’ costs survivalism chic. Edwards will pro- The Russian Bureau of Standards, mote the book at a Virgin Records Irrationality at the Bar Rostechregulirovanie, establishes store in New York City later this year technical requirements that manu- with Chuck D., the former frontman Better tell it to the judge facturers should heed. But, of Public Enemy, who’s “a fan of Three-quarters of the time, a criminal contrary to Russian federal law, the Aton’s and a proponent of prepared- defendant in federal court will seek a bureau declines to reveal those ness to the post–New Orleans hip- trial by jury rather than a bench trial requirements to the public. Instead hop community,” according to the before a judge—mainly because it sells its information to certain book’s publisher. (Post-New defense attorneys consider judges corporations, which in turn sell the Orleans?) The evening will feature more likely to convict. Actually, full set of regulations for roughly models in “modified SWAT team judges are far less conviction prone. $10,000 U.S., or a single page for uniforms and other military gear, “Between 1989 and 2002, the average nearly $20—a profitable arrange- customized and transformed into conviction rate for federal criminal ment all around. survivalist hipster fashion,” who will defendants was 84 percent in jury Enter Ivan Pavlov, a human rights display “the highest-end prepared- trials, but a mere 55 percent in bench lawyer and former Starovoitova fel- ness gear available.” The new bling.

12 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 FINDINGS

Wrong Holes name in commerce—even when confusion is nearly impossible (the Snafus after death ale’s label features a vicious-looking During the Korean War, each GI’s Tasmanian dog). Tasmanians were file included a punch card record- equally surprised to learn that an ing his name, rank, serial number, American corporation owns the and much else. A half-century later name of their native animal, the cards still exist, but there’s no according to Tasmanian Devil device that can read them. Erin (Allen & Unwin), by David Owen Mitsunaga, a case manager with and David Pemberton. In 1997, a the Defense Department’s Joint lawyer for Time Warner reassured a POW/MIA Accounting Command, Tasmanian newspaper that it’s fine recently broke most of the code, to call “a Tasmanian devil a then compared the data on a sam- Tasmanian devil”; you just can’t use ple of cards to information in the the name as a brand for goods. Any files. Some disparities proved con- goods. Tasmanian politicians have siderable, she reports in The Jour- In this poster urging Poles to vote at “high noon,” protested, but to no avail. In car- GaryCooper was enlisted as a Solidaritysupporter. nal of Forensic Science (May 2006). toons, as it happens, Taz is known Error rates on the cards ranged for his rapaciousness. from one percent (a serviceman’s posters of Cooper as Marshal Will birth year or serial number) to 63 Kane in the 1952 film High Noon. Puttin’ Off the Blitz percent (his shoe size); more than a The 1989 Cooper wears a Solidar- third of the cards recorded the ity logo above his badge and An imperturbable prophet wrong height. The fog of war can carries a ballot in his hand. More In H. G. Wells’s novel The War in the confound those who punch keys as important, Bertrand M. Patenaude Air (1908), London (and most of the well as those who pull triggers. And notes in A Wealth of Ideas: Revela- rest of the world) gets destroyed by the glitches may matter: During tions From the Hoover Institution bombs dropped from “aeroplanes” and after the war, the military Archives (Stanford Univ. Press), and dirigibles. Some three decades relied on the cards and primitive the designer erased Cooper’s hol- after the novel’s publication came IBM computers to help identify the ster and gun—a signal that the Blitz, during which Wells refused remains of unknown servicemen. “Poland’s revolution was to be to leave London or, on at least one Because of the miscoding, some nonviolent; the call was to the bal- occasion, the dining table. families probably received and lot box, not the barricades.” As Wells was lunching one buried the wrong remains, and afternoon, Philip Seib recounts some identifiable remains joined Trademark Deviltry? in Broadcasts From the Blitz the unknowns in a military (Potomac), Nazi bombs began cemetery. Owning a species falling. Wells’s hostess, Lady Sibyl In the late 1990s, Buffalo Bill’s Colefax, headed for the air raid shel- Posthumous Stardom Brew Pub in Hayward, California, ter, but her guest wouldn’t budge. began marketing Tasmanian Devil “I’m enjoying a very good lunch,” High noon in Gdansk´ ale. The beer caught on, but efforts he protested. “Why should I be dis- Gary Cooper may have played his to trademark the name fizzled. turbed by some wretched little bar- greatest role 28 years after his Time Warner owns the Looney barian adolescents in a machine? death. As Poland’s 1989 elections Tunes character Tasmanian Devil, This thing has no surprises for me— approached, Lech Walesa’s or Taz, which, the company insists, I foresaw it long ago. Solidarity movement printed gives it control over every use of the “Sibyl, I want my cheese.”

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 13 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Playing With Our Minds

Violent video games teach our kids to point and shoot, say their critics. The truth may be every bit as frightening to members of a generation raised to believe they’re thinking outside the box.

BY CHRIS SUELLENTROP

On a monday evening last fall, in the All You Can Be” (now “An Army of One”) television ads. Crystal Gateway Marriott a few blocks from the Penta- But the game has evolved beyond mere propaganda for gon, a group of academics, journalists, and software the PlayStation crowd into a training platform for the developers gathered to play with the U.S. military’s modern soldier. newest toys. In one corner of the hotel’s ballroom, two If you have absorbed the familiar critique of video men climbed into something resembling a jeep. One games as a mindless, dehumanizing pastime for a nihilis- clutched a pistol and positioned himself behind the tic Columbine generation, the affinity between gaming steering wheel, while the other manned the vehicle’s and soldiering may seem nightmarishly logical: Of course turret. In front of them, a huge, three-paneled television the military wants to condition its recruits on these Skin- displayed moving images of an urban combat zone. ner boxes, as foreshadowed by science fiction produced Nearby, another man shot invisible infrared beams from when video games were little more than fuzzy blips on the his rifle at a video-screen target. In the middle of the American screen. The film The Last Starfighter (1984) room a player knelt, lifted a large, bazooka-like device to and the novel Ender’s Game (1985) depict futuristic mil- his shoulder, and began launching imaginary antitank itaries that use video games to train and track the progress missiles. of unknowing children, with the objective of creating a The reception was hosted by the Army Game Project, pools of recruits. (The code name for America’s Army best known for creating America’s Army, the official when it was in development was “Operation Star Fighter,” video game of the U.S. Army, and was intended to demon- an homage to its cinematic predecessor.) strate how the military’s use of video games has changed Some members of today’s military do view video in just a few years. America’s Army was released in 2002 games as a means of honing fighting skills. The director as a recruiting tool, the video-game version of those “Be of the technology division at Quantico Marine Base told The Washington Post last year that today’s young recruits, Chris Suellentrop writes The Opinionator, an online column for The the majority of whom are experienced video-game play- New York Times, and has written about video games for Wired and the online magazine Slate. ers, “probably feel less inhibited, down in their primal

14 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 The U.S. military initially released the video game America’s Army to attract recruits, but is now using it as a training tool. Here, a game developer runs through a convoy exercise in the army’s version so he’ll know what to shoot for as he programs for new civilian audiences. level, pointing their weapons at somebody.” In the same slaughter, the shoot-first-ask-questions-later bluster that article, a retired Marine colonel speculated that the gam- hardcore gamers deride as “button mashing.” Players of ing generation has been conditioned to be militaristic: America’s Army participate in small units with other “Remember the days of the old Sparta, when everything players connected via the Internet to foster teamwork and they did was towards war?” The experiences of some sol- leadership. diers seem to bear out his words. A combat engineer Nor is the U.S. military alone in recognizing the train- interviewed by the Post compared his tour in Iraq to ing potential of video games. The Army’s display was Halo, a popular video game that simulates the point of only one exhibit at the Serious Games Summit, “serious” view of a futuristic soldier battling an alien army. being the industry’s label for those games that are created To view video games merely as mock battlegrounds, to do more than entertain. Games have been devised to however, is to ignore the many pacific uses to which they train emergency first-responders, to recreate ancient civ- are being put. The U.S. military itself is developing games ilizations, to promote world peace. The Swedish Defense that “train soldiers, in effect, how not to shoot,” accord- College has developed a game to teach UN peacekeepers ing to a New York Times Magazine article of a few years how to interact with and pacify civilian populations with- ago. Rather than use video games to turn out mindless out killing them. Food Force, an America’s Army imita- killers, the armed forces are fashioning games that impart tor, educates players about how the United Nations World specific skills, such as parachuting and critical thinking. Food Program fights global hunger. A group of Carnegie Even games such as those displayed at the Marriott that Mellon University students, among them a former Israeli teach weapons handling don’t reward indiscriminate intelligence officer, is developing PeaceMaker, a game in

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 15 Video Games which players take the role of either the Israeli prime min- As far back as 1982, when video games consisted of sim- ister or the Palestinian president and work within polit- ple fare like Space Invaders—a two-dimensional arcade ical constraints toward a two-state solution to the Israeli- game—a rabbi warned on The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour Palestinian conflict. about their dehumanizing effects: “When children spend The very phrase “serious games,” however, suggests hours in front of a screen playing some of these games that that unserious games may well be the societal blight that are inherently violent, they will tend to look at people as many believe them to be. It’s easier to vilify games such as they look at these little blips on the screen that must be those in the Grand Theft Auto series, in which the player’s zapped—that must be killed before they are killed. And it goal is to rise to power in various criminal organizations by is my concern that 10, 20 years down the line we’re going carjacking vehicles and killing their owners with a variety to see a group of children who then become adults who of weapons—a baseball bat, a Molotov cocktail, an AK-47. don’t view people as human beings, but rather view them But Grand Theft Auto and its sequels are popular not just as other blips to be destroyed—as things.” because of their transgressive content, but also because they The rabbi articulated an objection that has been heard are designed to allow players to roam freely across a gigan- repeatedly as video games have grown from a pastime for tic three-dimensional cityscape. (With their combination awkward, outdoors-fearing children into a form of mass of technical accomplishment and controversial subject entertainment enjoyed mostly by adults. Last year, Amer- matter, the Grand Theft Auto titles might be the video- icans spent a total of $7 billion on almost 230 million game analogues of movies such as Bonnie and Clyde or, computer and video games, according to the Entertain- more recently, Pulp Fiction.) ment Software Association, an industry group. Both of

In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, players adopt the role of a gang member attempting to win back territory from rivals in a crime-ridden virtual cityscape.It is one of the chief targets of politicians and other critics who claim that video games are teaching children violent behaviors and bad values.

16 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Video Games those numbers—sales revenues and units sold—have more optimistic vision of their role in shaping Ameri- roughly tripled over the past 10 years. Defining who is a can society. Opposite the rabbi on that MacNeil/Lehrer “gamer” can be tricky, as the definition can include every- broadcast a quarter-century ago was Paul Trachtman, one who has played Minesweeper on a personal computer an editor for Smithsonian magazine, who argued that or who kills time at the office with computer mahjong, but video games provide a form of mental exercise. Ignore studies conducted by the ESA and others estimate that the dubious content, the “surface or the imagery or the roughly half of all Americans play computer and video story line,” he suggested, and you will see that games games. According to a study released in May by the ESA, teach not merely how best to go about “zapping a ship the average American gamer is 33 years old. A full quar- or a monster.” Underneath the juvenilia is “a test of ter of gamers are over 50, while only 31 percent are your facility for understanding the logic design that younger than 18. Playing video games is still a predomi- the programmer wrote into the game.” Games, in short, nantly male pastime, but almost 40 percent of gamers are are teachers. And electronic games are uniquely suited women; more adult women play video games than do to training individuals how to navigate our modern boys 17 and under. information society. As the gaming generation has matured, it has advanced this idea with increasing vigor. Last year, hose who assume that video-game players are a Steven Johnson published Everything Bad Is Good for bloodthirsty lot might be surprised to learn that You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making T of last year’s 10 best-selling games for the Us Smarter, which included a brief for an idea that has PlayStation and Xbox consoles, not one was a shoot- been gaining currency among academics and game ’em-up. Six of the most popular games were sports developers: All video games, even the ones that allow titles—including Madden NFL, a cultural juggernaut you to kill prostitutes, are a form of education, or at least among athletes and young men—and the other four were Star Wars games. The bestselling PC game DESPITE THEIR POPULARITY, video last year was World of Warcraft, a multiplayer games remain, in the opinion of many, swords-and-sorcery game that millions of subscribers brainless or, worse, brain-destroying candy. pay a monthly fee to play. World of Warcraft is the latest and most popular in the genre of massively mul- edutainment. Games can do more than make you a tiplayer online role-playing games, commonly called better soldier, or improve your hand-eye coordination “virtual worlds.” In these games, thousands of players or your spatial orientation skills. They can make you can interact with each other by connecting simultane- more intelligent. ously over the Internet. (There’s a debate among spe- On one level, this argument isn’t very surprising. cialists whether some of these worlds, such as Second Games of all kinds are a part of almost every human Life, which offers its “residents” no competitions or society, and they have long been used to inculcate the quests, even qualify as games.) next generation with desirable virtues and skills. We Despite their popularity, video games remain, in enroll our kids in Little League not only so they will have the opinion of many (particularly those who don’t play a good time, but also to teach them about sportsman- them), brainless or, worse, brain-destroying candy. But ship, teamwork, and the importance of practice and for as long as critics have decried video games as the lat- hard work. The Dutch historian Johan Huizenga argued est permutation in a long line of nefarious, dehuman- in Homo Ludens, his 1938 ur-text of game studies, that izing technologies, others have offered a competing, the concept of “play” should be considered a “third

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 17 Video Games function” for humanity, one that is “just as important as its Windows operating system with solitaire and other reasoning and making.” games, Digital Equipment Corporation, the manufac- In the case of video games, even their critics turer of the PDP-1, began shipping it with the game pre- acknowledge that they are instructing our children. loaded in memory, influencing computer science stu- The critics just don’t like the form and the sometimes dents around the country. violent and sexually explicit content of the instruction, In 1972, Magnavox introduced Odyssey, which, like which they believe teaches children aggressive behav- Higinbotham’s game, was an adaptation of Ping-Pong iors. Yet if such games are nothing more than “murder (for whatever reason, table tennis was the game of simulators,” as one critic has called them, why is it—as choice for early video-game creators) that was the first gaming enthusiasts never tire of pointing out—that the home console for video gaming. The next 30 years saw murder rate has declined in recent years, when there are the introduction of Atari, Nintendo, Sony’s PlaySta- more video games, and more violent ones, than ever? tion, and Microsoft’s Xbox, not to mention the many Why do IQ scores continue their slight but perceptible games designed for the growing numbers of personal rise if an entire generation of children, the oldest of computers. Higinbotham’s black-and-white blips have, whom are now in their thirties—a cohort to which I over the past half-century, morphed into sophisticated belong—stunted its development with electronic pap? displays of computer animation that increasingly resem- The important thing to find out about video games ble films, with original scripts, music, and often-breath- isn’t whether they are teachers. “The question is,” as taking visual beauty. The King Kong video game game designer Raph Koster writes in A Theory of Fun released last year to coincide with Peter Jackson’s film for Game Design (2004), “what do they teach?” remake featured an arresting parade of apatosauruses marching through a valley on Kong’s home of Skull Island. The sequence was so gorgeous that I set down he generally uncredited father of video games my controller and just marveled at it for a while. was William A. Higinbotham, who, while work- As was true of games before the digital age, there’s T ing as a government physicist, invented a game a remarkable array of video games. Chess and bowling of electronic Ping-Pong and displayed it during a visi- aren’t very similar, but we intuitively understand that tors’ day for the Brookhaven National Laboratory on both are games, if different species of the genus. Like- Long Island in October 1958. By the next year, the wise, video games encompass everything from simple game had been dismantled because its computer and online puzzles to simulated football games and profes- oscilloscope components were needed for other jobs. sional wrestling matches to the “God game,” in which Higinbotham’s game might have been forgotten— the player adopts an omniscient view to influence the except by readers of the Brookhaven Bulletin, which development of entire societies. In The Sims, the best- published a 1981 story speculating that he had invented selling PC game of all time, players control the lives of the first video game—were it not for the fact that one of individual humans as they go about their mundane the lab’s visitors that day was high school student David lives. (It may sound unappealing, but The Sims comes Ahl, who would write the 1978 book Basic Computer from a long tradition. It is, in effect, another way to play Games and become the editor of Creative Computing. house.) New genres frequently emerge. A “music” genre From the pages of this magazine for computer hobby- has arisen in response to the popularity of Dance Dance ists, Ahl proclaimed Higinbotham the grandfather of Revolution, a game in which players must move their the phenomenon in 1982. feet in time to music on different areas of a dance pad. The more influential and more commonly acknowl- It’s basically a fast-moving, musical, single-player ver- edged grandfather was Steve Russell. As a Massachu- sion of Twister. setts Institute of Technology student in 1961, Russell Exactly what is new about video games, other than created a rocket-ship duel called Spacewar! that could their electronic nature, can be difficult to pin down. In be played on one of MIT’s handful of computers, the the 21st century, almost all children’s toys have an elec- PDP-1. Then, in the same way that Microsoft packages tronic component, but that doesn’t make them all video

18 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Video Games games. In The Ultimate History of Video Games (2001), first “progression” game, a new model that inspired most game journalist Steven Kent cites pinball as a mechan- of today’s video games, from Grand Theft Auto to Halo. ical ancestor of today’s digital games. Pinball created a panic in some quarters—no pun intended—as a new and dangerous influence on society. Foreshadowing ongamers who watch their slack-jawed, twitchy- the antics of today’s antigaming politicians was New thumbed children and conclude that they are York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who smashed pinball Nbrain dead are making the mistake of observing machines with a sledgehammer and banned them from the spectator rather than the game itself. Research has his city in the 1930s, a prohibition that was not lifted shown that playing video games can help people improve until the 1970s. (To be fair to La Guardia, governments their ability to manipulate spatial information, and that have long perceived societal threats from new games. In as little as 10 hours of play can improve a person’s ability the 1400s Scotland banned golf, now its proud national to process visual information. (These studies were pastime, because too many young men were neglecting approvingly cited by the deputy director of the Army archery to practice their swings.) Game Project last fall.) But focusing on how video games Nowadays you can play pinball on your PC, as every improve coordination and memory misses the point. In Windows XP machine comes packaged with a video- a recent issue of Wired, well-known game designer Will game version. The difference between this digital pinball Wright compares this mistake to studying film by watch- and its mechanical prede- cessor is, at root, aesthetic. The rules of the game are the same, just as the rules GAME DESIGNER WILL WRIGHT and gameplay of computer solitaire and chess are iden- proposes that video games teach “the tical to those of their analog forebears. (Beyond the essence of the scientific method.” translation of playing cards and chess pieces into pixels, there are some key differences, of course. For one thing, ing the audience rather than what’s on the screen: “You the computer doesn’t let you cheat—or, in pinball, “tilt.”) would conclude that movies induce lethargy and junk Jesper Juul, a Danish video-game theorist, defines games food binges. That may be true, but you’re missing the big such as pinball, solitaire, and chess as “emergence” games, picture.” by which he means that the gameplay emerges from a rel- Wright proposes that video games teach “the essence atively simple set of rules. Football and basketball— of the scientific method,” that “through trial and error, whether played online or off—are also emergence games, players build a model of the underlying game.” To succeed, as are chess, backgammon, Othello, and board games a player must establish a hypothesis about some aspect such as Risk and Monopoly. All those games can now be of the game, test it, and evaluate the results of the exper- played using computers, but that doesn’t make them iment. The organizer of a playground game explains the new, exactly. rules in advance, but a video game often hides its rules, The first game that diverged from this 5,000-year-old revealing them only as the player figures out how to emergence model was a 1976 computer game called unlock the game’s secrets. And when that happens, a Adventure that combined the elements of narrative with game player can experience an ecstatic Archimedes gameplay. Adventure was essentially an interactive text, moment. somewhat similar to the books in the Choose Your Own Perhaps most important of all, the game adapts itself Adventure series. While reading the story, the player to the player’s ability. “The secret of a video game as a typed in commands to tell the character what to do and teaching machine isn’t its immersive 3-D graphics, but its to learn what happened next. Juul calls Adventure the underlying architecture,” writes James Paul Gee, an edu-

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 19 Video Games cation professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and came to the provocative conclusion that having played and author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us video games as a teenager explains the entire generation About Learning and Literacy (2004). “Each level dances gap between those under 34 years of age and those older around the outer limits of the player’s abilities, seeking at (the book was published in 2004, so presumably the every point to be hard enough to be just doable. In cog- benchmark is now 36). nitive science, this is referred to as the regime of compe- Beck and Wade argue that the gamers somehow intu- tence principle, which results in a feeling of simultaneous itively acquired traits that many more-senior managers pleasure and frustration—a sensation as familiar to took years to develop and that their nongaming contem- gamers as sore thumbs.” It is in that spirit that Atari poraries still lack. According to their survey, video game founder Nolan Bushnell has said, in a statement that players are more likely than nongamers to consider them- probably best distills the gamer ethos, “The way to have selves knowledgeable, even expert, in their fields. They are an interesting life is to stay on the steep part of the learn- more likely to want pay for performance in the workplace ing curve.” rather than a flat scale. They are more likely to describe Despite the omnipresence of video games—on our themselves as sociable. They’re mildly bossy. Among these computers, our televisions, our phones, and now the back traits, perhaps the most important is that gamers, who are seats of our cars in handheld units—most people who well acquainted with the reset button, understand that don’t play them still fundamentally misunderstand them. repeated failure is the road to success. Nongamers often assume that video games, like so many The very purpose of every game is to become boring, as electronic media, are designed to deliver instant, electronic the player develops successful strategies to defeat it, the gratification. The opposite is the case, Johnson insists in game designer Raph Koster observes. The best video games Everything Bad Is Good for You. The best video games are are designed to assist players in figuring out those strate- gies. The video games that are the most like the real world are often the least fun THE REAL WORLD doesn’t always let you to play, because they don’t do a good job of communi- hit the reset button and start over. In the cating to the player what is important and what isn’t— real world, there isn’t always a way to win. which paths should be taken and which can be safely ignored, which items need brilliantly designed puzzles. The Grand Theft Auto titles to be collected and which can be safely left behind. But the can take as long as 60 hours to complete. Finishing them real world doesn’t come with big blue arrows pointing requires discipline, problem solving, decision making, and toward the next door you need to open. The real world repeated trial and error. doesn’t always let you hit the reset button and start over. In In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks the real world, there isn’t always a way to win. suggested that delayed gratification is the key to success in As games become better at adapting to the talent and school, work, and life, and that it is a learned trait. If that’s skill levels of their players, more video games will be true, and if the mental gymnasium of video games teaches decoding the players as much as players are decoding the delayed gratification, then gamers should be, on average, games. “Soon games will start to build simple models of more successful than nongamers. No researcher has prof- us, the players,” Wright predicts. “They will learn what we fered that comprehensive a thesis yet, but the authors of Got like to do, what we’re good at, what interests and chal- Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business lenges us. They will observe us. They will record the deci- Forever suggest that gamers do come out ahead in the sions we make, consider how we solve problems, and eval- world of business. John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade sur- uate how skilled we are in various circumstances. Over veyed 2,500 Americans, mostly business professionals, time, these games will become able to modify themselves

20 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Video Games

Four members of the Bonner family in Haddon Township, Pennsylvania, play Halo 2, a video game in which a genetically enhanced soldier defends humankind from an evil alien race.About half of all Americans play video games, whether killing time playing computer solitaire at the office or killing mutant dinosaurs. to better ‘fit’ each individual. They will adjust their diffi- orders, and you’ll be just fine. culty on the fly, bring in new content, and create story Whether you find the content of video games inof- lines. Much of this original material will be created by fensive or grotesque, their structure teaches players that other players, and the system will move it to those it the best course of action is always to accept the system and determines will enjoy it most.” work to succeed within it. “Games do not permit inno- It feels preposterous and yet believable to suggest vation,” Koster writes. “They present a pattern. Innovat- that the adaptive nature of video games might be one rea- ing out of a pattern is by definition outside the magic cir- son for the rise of the Organization Kid, a term coined by cle. You don’t get to change the physics of a game.” Nor, David Brooks when he visited with Princeton students for when a computer is the referee, do you get to challenge a 2001 story in The Atlantic Monthly. “They’re not try- the rules or to argue about their merits. That isn’t to say ing to buck the system; they’re trying to climb it,” Brooks that there aren’t ways to innovate from within the system. wrote of the respectful, deferential students he met. A Gamers are famous for coming up with creative Princeton sociology professor Brooks interviewed could approaches to the problems a game presents. But devis- have been describing ideal soldiers when he said of his ing a new, unexpected strategy to succeed under the students, “They’re eager to please, eager to jump through existing rules isn’t the same thing as proposing new rules, whatever hoops the faculty puts in front of them, eager to new systems, new patterns. conform.” Brooks summarized the love-the-power world- Our video-game brains, trained on success machines, view of the Organization Kid like this: “There is a fun- may be undergoing a Mr. Universe workout, one that damental order to the universe, and it works. If you play leaves us stronger but less flexible. So don’t worry that by its rules and defer to its requirements, you will lead a video games are teaching us to be killers. Worry instead pretty fantastic life.” That’s a winner’s ideology: Follow that they’re teaching us to salute. ■

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 21 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

India’s Path to Greatness

After decades of dormancy, India has blossomed into one of Asia’s two emerging powers and an important strategic partner of the United States. How—and whether—it navigates its rise could well determine the future of the whole region.

BY MARTIN WALKER

When the u.s. air force sent its proud f-15 nificance of the Cope India war games is that they demon- fighter pilots against the Indian Air Force in the Cope strated the extent of the cooperation between the Indian and India war games two years ago, it received a shock. The U.S. militaries. Their mountain troops now train together American pilots found themselves technologically out- in the Himalayas and Alaska, and their special forces mount matched by nimbler warplanes; tactically outsmarted by joint exercises in jungle and underwater warfare. Their air- the Indian mix of high, low, and converging attack waves; craft carrier task forces have conducted exercises in the and outfought by the Indians, whose highly trained Indian Ocean, and joint antipiracy and antisubmarine drills pilots average more than 180 flying hours a year— are routine. Indian and U.S. forces are working together with roughly the same as their U.S. and Israeli counterparts an intimacy once reserved for the closest NATO allies. The and slightly more than those of NATO allies such as goal—that the militaries of the two countries be able to oper- France and Germany. U.S. general Hal Hornburg said ate in lockstep—would have been inconceivable in the Cold that the results of the exercise, against Indian pilots fly- War era, when India, with its Soviet-supplied military, was ing Russian-built Sukhoi Su-30 and French Mirage seen as a virtual client of Moscow. 2000 fighters, were “a wake-up call.” According to tes- The foundation of this new relationship was laid before timony in a House Appropriations Defense Subcom- George W. Bush took office in the White House. In the mittee hearing, the U.S. F-15s were defeated more than spring of 1999, Bush, then governor of Texas, was briefed 90 percent of the time in direct combat exercises against for the first time by the team of foreign-policy advisers that the Indians. became known as the Vulcans, after the Roman god of fire But beyond the evidence of India’s military expertise and and iron. Bush began with the frank admission that he its possession of state-of-the-art fighter aircraft, the real sig- knew little about foreign policy. The Vulcans, led by Con-

Martin Walker is the editor of United Press International and a senior doleezza Rice—later to be his national security adviser and scholar at the Wilson Center. His most recent books are America Reborn: A then secretary of state—delivered a broad-brush survey of Twentieth-Century Narrative in Twenty-Six Lives (2000) and the novel The Caves of Périgord (2002). the world, its problems, and its prospects, and recom-

22 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 India

In New Delhi, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh celebrate the controversial U.S.-Indian nuclear agreement in March. mended muscular American leadership in cool-headed House as a guest at the banquet for visiting Indian prime pursuit of American interests. When the group finished, minister Manmohan Singh, where Bush introduced him as Bush had one question: What about India? Another Vulcan “my good friend from Texas.” team member who was present, future ambassador to India Bush’s question to his Vulcans prompted Rice to include Robert Blackwill, recalled asking Bush why he was so inter- a highly significant paragraph in her January 2000 Foreign ested in India: “He immediately responded, ‘A billion peo- Affairs essay “Promoting the National Interest,” which was ple in a functioning democracy. Isn’t that something? Isn’t widely studied as the blueprint for a Bush administration that something?’ ” foreign policy. She contended that China should be regarded Bush’s curiosity had been stirred by a number of Indian as “a strategic competitor, not the ‘strategic partner’ the supporters living and prospering in Texas, including some Clinton administration once called it,” and suggested that businessmen who helped build the state’s high-tech corri- America should redirect its focus. The United States “should dor, dubbed Silicon Canyon. One of those businessmen pay closer attention to India’s role in the regional balance. was Durga Agrawal, born in Lakhanpur, a central Indian vil- There is a strong tendency conceptually to connect India lage without water or electricity, who had earned a master’s with Pakistan and to think only of Kashmir or the nuclear degree at the University of Houston and stayed on to found competition between the two states. But India is an element a highly successful company called Piping Technology & in China’s calculation, and it should be in America’s, too. Products and to raise more than $100,000 for the Bush India is not a great power yet, but it has the potential to presidential campaign in the local Indian community. After emerge as one.” Bush became president, Agrawal was invited to the White The intervening September 11 terrorist attacks and the

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 23 India

Iraq war perhaps explain why it took five years for the Bush another panicked round of diplomacy in early 2002, after administration to act formally on that calculus. But on a an attack on the Indian parliament by Kashmiri terrorists March 2005 visit to India, Rice told Prime Minister Singh with apparent Pakistani connections. At one critical point, that part of the United States’ foreign policy was to “help then–U.S. deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage asked India become a major world power in the 21st century.” At his staff, “Who thinks they’re heading for nuclear war?” a later briefing, U.S. ambassador to India David Mulford and everyone except for Armitage reportedly raised a hand. described the vision behind a broader strategic relationship One senior British official who was involved recalls it as the with India that would foster cooperation on a number of nearest thing to nuclear war since the 1962 Cuban Missile fronts. “The U.S.-India relationship is based on our shared Crisis. common values. We are multiethnic democracies commit- ted to the rule of law and freedom of speech and religion,” Mulford said, adding that “there is no fundamental conflict erhaps these brushes with disaster served as an or disagreement between the United States and India on any awful warning to India. Or perhaps its successful important regional or global issue.” P market-style economic reforms in the 1990s, along A July 2005 visit by Prime Minister Singh to Washing- with the palpable weakness of its old friends in Moscow, ton, and President Bush’s trip this year to New Delhi, along gave the country’s leaders the spur and the self-confi- with detailed negotiations for nuclear, military, economic, dence to rethink India’s foreign policy. But there was a fur- and technological cooperation, have institutionalized that ther goad: India’s nervousness at the rapid growth of its relationship. But, as former deputy secretary of state Strobe Asian neighbor, China, by whom it had been humiliated Talbott said of his own earlier path-breaking negotiations in a brief border war in 1962. In May 1998, at the time of with foreign minister Jaswant Singh, “What took us so India’s nuclear tests, Indian defense minister George Fer- long?” nandes claimed that China was exploiting Pakistan, The short answer is the Cold War. American officials Burma, and Tibet in order to “encircle” India. “China has were uncomprehending and resentful of India’s determi- provided Pakistan with both missile as well as nuclear nation to stay neutral as a founder and pillar of the Non- know-how,” Fernandes said, adding, “China has its nuclear Aligned Movement. By contrast, Pakistan swiftly decided to weapons stockpiled in Tibet right along our borders.” He become an American ally and to buy American weapons. In concluded that China was India’s most severe threat, and response, India bought Soviet weapons. Pakistan, with that while India had pledged “no first use” of nuclear whom India has fought three wars since the two countries weapons, the Indian nuclear arsenal would be targeted simultaneously became independent from Britain in 1947, appropriately. was also a close ally of China, so the Sino-Soviet split gave With Pakistan to the west and China to the north and Soviet diplomats a strong incentive to cement their ties east, India has long feared encirclement. Despite soothing with India, deepening American suspicions. diplomatic statements, China has sharpened these fears India’s explosion of a nuclear device (not a weapon, with an assertive new presence in the Indian Ocean, Indira Gandhi’s government insisted) in 1974 exposed India beginning in the late 1990s with an electronic listening to various restrictions in obtaining nuclear supplies under post in Myanmar’s Coco Islands. In 2001, China agreed to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and to some other help Pakistan build a new port and naval base at Gwadar, mildly punitive but symbolic U.S. legislation. After India’s close to the Iranian border and the Persian Gulf. China has full-scale nuclear weapons tests in 1998 (swiftly followed by also pitched in to build a road network from the new port rather less impressive tests by Pakistan), the Clinton admin- to the Karakoram Highway, a feat of engineering that istration sought engagement through the Talbott-Singh connects China and Pakistan through the Himalayas. talks and Bill Clinton’s own highly successful visit to India. The Gwadar naval base planned to India’s west is matched When Pakistan-backed militants crossed Kashmir’s moun- by another to the east, where Chinese engineers are build- tains into the Indian-controlled area of Kargil, Clinton’s ing a similar facility on Myanmar’s Arakan coast, con- intervention prevented the incursion from escalating into nected by a new road and rail link through Myanmar to a full-scale war. The Bush administration had to launch China’s Yunnan Province. China is also helping Cambodia

24 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 India build a rail link to the sea, and in Thailand, it is propos- against Pakistan under every circumstance, but it is not ing to help fund a $20 billion canal across the Kra Isthmus, sure about holding out against China.” which would allow ships to bypass the Strait of Malacca. The irony and the danger is that China has similar rea- A recent Pentagon report described these new bases as sons to feel encircled. The United States has established China’s “string of pearls” to secure the sea routes to the vital new military bases in Central Asia since 9/11, adding to oil fields of the Persian Gulf. existing outposts in Japan and South Korea, and it is In a number of off-the-record conversations in New expanding its existing facilities at Guam to include a base Delhi on the eve of Bush’s visit earlier this year, including for submarines and long-range stealth bombers. Now extremely rare meetings with senior officials of the secre- Beijing nervously watches the warming strategic part- tive Research and Analysis Wing, Indian security and nership between Washington and New Delhi. Moreover, military figures stressed their profound concern at these China’s construction of the “string of pearls” reflects its own developments. The degree of alarm is evident in India’s deep concern about the security of its oil supplies. Its recent flurry of arms pur- chases, including a $3.5 bil- lion deal to buy six Scor- pene “stealth” submarines THE TENSION BETWEEN India and from France along with the technology to build more. China, both rising powers, is underscored The Scorpene will augment India’s existing submarine by their rivalry for essential energy sources. fleet of 16 vessels, mainly Soviet-built Kilo and Fox- trot attack submarines. India was the world’s biggest cus- tankers must pass through the Indian Ocean, and China’s tomer for arms last year, and more deals for advanced air- new pipeline from the Kazakh oil and gas fields of Central craft are in the works, which seem likely to include Asia will lie within easy cruise missile or air strike distance U.S.-made F-16 and F-18 warplanes, even as India builds of India. its own family of nuclear-capable Agni missiles, the latest The tension between these two rising powers is under- version of which is designed to reach Shanghai. With scored by their rivalry for essential energy resources. almost 1.4 million troops, India’s armed forces are already “India, panicked over future oil supply, went after inter- roughly the same size as those of the United States, and national oil assets competing directly with China,” India they are increasingly well trained and well armed. India Daily reported last year when Subir Raha, chairman of is so far the only Asian country with an aircraft carrier, India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, announced that which can deploy British-built Sea Harrier fighters, ver- the company was buying a fifth of Iran’s giant Yadavaran tical-takeoff jets like those used by the U.S. Marines. oil field and was in the market to buy assets of Yukos, the The alarm over China’s rise is plain in India’s military Russian energy giant. The Indian company had already and policy debates. An article last year by the Indian invested nearly $2 billion to buy a share of the Sakhalin- Defense Ministry’s Bhartendu Kumar Singh in the jour- 1 field in Siberia, run by ExxonMobil. India, which imports nal Peace and Conflict, published by the New Delhi-based more than two-thirds of its oil, has since signed a $40 bil- Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, is typical. Singh lion deal with Iran to import liquefied natural gas and join speculated that China’s military buildup might be in developing three Iranian oil fields. explained in part by Taiwan, but that its long-term goal Energy geopolitics can promote harmony as well as could be to ensure Chinese dominance of the Asia-Pacific rivalry. Pakistan and Turkmenistan have signed a mem- region. While Singh doubted that this challenge would orandum of understanding on a multibillion-dollar gas result in an all-out war between China and India, India pipeline through Afghanistan that could eventually end as was bound “to feel the effects of Chinese military confi- a “Peace Pipeline” in India, in what would be a major dence.... Is India prepared? It can wage and win a war breakthrough in Indo-Pakistani relations. Former Indian

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 25 India petroleum minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, a strong advo- over one billion includes 145 million Muslims. cate for the pipeline, says, “Almost everywhere in the It is in this context that the nuclear dimension of the world where an Indian goes in quest of energy, chances are Bush administration’s embrace of India has aroused so that he will run into a Chinese engaged in the same hunt.” much controversy. The administration seeks to steer India Aiyar proposed that India, China, Japan, and South Korea into “compliance” with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and establish a system of cooperative access to energy supplies. the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) system His subsequent demotion to minister for youth and sport while leaving India’s nuclear weapons reactors out of the was widely perceived in India as reflecting U.S. pressure international control regime. This stance has been chal- against the Iran oil deal. lenged by critics in the United States for driving a coach Indian security officials already see themselves fated to and horses through the Non-Proliferation Treaty just as play central roles in what Aaron Friedberg, a Princeton international support for diplomatic pressure on Iran scholar now on the White House national security staff, depends on strict compliance with it. has called “the struggle for mastery in Asia.” That phrase Under the deal, India will separate its civilian from its was the title of an essay he published in the neoconserv- military nuclear programs, but it has until 2014 to com- ative monthly Commentary when Bush was first elected. plete this division. New Delhi will declare 14 of an expected Friedberg’s central message was that over the next several total of 22 nuclear reactors to be for civilian use and place them under IAEA controls. But India has managed to keep its new fast-breeder INDIA IS NOW PLAYING tortoise to reactors out of the control system, which means that China’s hare, not only in its rate of growth there will be no nuclear fuel shortages to constrain the but also because the Indian and Chinese future manufacture and development of nuclear economies are two very different creatures. weapons. Moreover, be- cause India will reserve the right to determine which decades the United States would likely find itself engaged parts of its nuclear program will be subject to IAEA con- in an “open and intense geopolitical rivalry” with China. trols and which will not, it will be able to shield its own “The combination of growing Chinese power, China’s nuclear research labs from the IAEA system. New Delhi effort to expand its influence, and the unwillingness of the has also reinterpreted the U.S. insistence that the deal be United States to entirely give way before it are the neces- made “in perpetuity” by making this conditional on con- sary preconditions of a ‘struggle for mastery,’ ” he wrote, tinued supplies of enriched uranium, of which India is des- adding that hostilities or a military confrontation could be perately short, to fuel its reactors. slow to develop or could occur as a result of a “single cat- The main concession India made was cosmetic. It alytic event, such as a showdown over Taiwan.” agreed not to be formally included, in the eyes of the The strategic and energy concerns of the United States, United States and the IAEA, in the category of the five rec- China, and India will be difficult to manage. But Pakistan, ognized nuclear weapons states (the United States, Rus- Russia, Japan, and North and South Korea all factor into sia, Britain, France, and China). The deal is still the sub- the extraordinarily complex equation of Asian security. ject of hard bargaining in the U.S. Congress, where it has (India maintains that Pakistan’s missile technology came yet to be ratified, despite intense pressure from the Bush from China and North Korea.) And through Pakistan administration. But if, as expected, the agreement suc- and the terrorist attacks from militants in Kashmir, India ceeds, India will become a special case, with a free hand also feels itself threatened by Islamic extremism, a matter to augment its nuclear weapons systems, and to develop of grave concern for a country whose population of just its nuclear power stations with full access to the fuel and

26 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 India technology monopolized by the 45-nation Nuclear Sup- China launched its own economic reforms. While India pliers Group. And India will secure all this with the bless- 30 years ago enjoyed a slightly higher per capita ing of the IAEA, thus negating the efforts of the interna- income than China, today it has an annual per capita tional community since the 1970s to constrain India’s income (at purchasing power parity) of $3,300, not nuclear ambitions by putting sanctions on its access to quite half of China’s level of $6,800, and less than nuclear fuel and technology. one-tenth of the $41,800 level of the United States. In India, the agreement has come in for criticism for India is now playing the tortoise to China’s hare, not wedding the country to U.S. strategic interests, to the only in its rate of growth but also because the Indian and detriment of India’s relations with China and Iran. Chinese economies are two very different creatures. China The policy is also viewed by some Indians as a lever to has become the world’s low-cost manufacturing center, steadily increase international control over India’s making and assembling components that are often nuclear assets, and to make it more dependent on the designed or developed elsewhere, and relying heavily on United States as the prime supplier of nuclear fuel. foreign investment. India’s boom, by contrast, has so far India long saw itself as neutral and nonaligned, been largely based on services and software, and it has endowed by Gandhi’s nonviolent legacy with a singu- been self-financing, with about a tenth of China’s level of lar innocence of such geopolitical games. It has been foreign direct investment. Still, it has produced an Indian thrust with remarkable speed into a prominent strate- middle class—usually defined by the ability to buy a pri- gic role that matches its new economic robustness. vate car—of some 300 million people, a number greater But its ability to sustain military power and buy than the entire population of the United States. advanced weaponry will clearly depend on its eco- One central reason why India has not enjoyed a Chi- nomic growth, which began in earnest 15 years after nese-style boom led by manufacturing is the dismal

The vast slums around Mumbai’s international airport testify to the poverty that still afflicts India.Yet because they have the vote (unlike China’s poor),the Mumbai squatters have for years prevented badlyneeded airport improvements,while winning jobs and neighborhood improvements from the government.

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 27 India

The Indian military struts its considerable stuff every year on January 26, India’s Republic Day. On display here is the country’s first indigenously developed ballistic missile,the short-range Prithvi (Earth),which debuted in 1988.Newer missiles are capable of being nuclear armed and striking China. state of so much of the country’s infrastructure. Its ports, Yet there is no denying the furious commercial railroads, highways, electricity supplies, and grid systems energy of a country that is currently signing up five mil- are aged and ramshackle, and traffic jams and power lion new mobile phone subscribers each month. Com- outages are routine, reinforcing each other when the traf- petition has come to the container industry, the air- fic lights blink out. Critical segments of the economy— ports are being privatized despite labor union opposition, such as the container transport system, which allows and new highways are being built. The gas and electric- easy shipping of freight by land, sea, and air—have been ity grids are slated for reform next. India has its high-tech state monopolies, subject to the usual debilitating prob- centers of Bangalore and Hyderabad, as well as a few lems of the breed. Arriving foreigners receive a star- new towns such as Gurgaon, just outside Delhi, with a tling introduction to the bustle and backwardness of modern automaking plant, high-rise shopping malls, India before they ever reach a hotel. On my most recent and telemarketing centers. But it can boast nothing like trip to New Delhi and Jaipur, the maddening endemic the jaw-dropping array of new skyscrapers that zigzag traffic jams included bicycles, flimsy three-wheeled rick- the skylines of modern Shanghai and Guangdong. shaws, and somnolent cows, whose excrement was Still, some of the smart money is on the tortoise. The swiftly scooped up by hordes of small children and pat- global consultancy firm PwC (still better known by its old ted into flat, plate-shaped discs, which are dried in the name, Price Waterhouse Coopers) produced a report this sun and sold for fuel. So to the usual tourist dangers of year forecasting that India would have the fastest growth stomach upsets from eating local foods is added the among all the major economies over the next 50 years, prospect of respiratory infection from breathing air suf- averaging 7.6 percent annually in dollar terms. In 50 fused with fecal matter. years’ time, the Indian and U.S. economies would be

28 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 India roughly equivalent in size. The report also suggested that of state power in aggressive pursuit of economic and by 2050 the existing economies of the G-7 group of strategic goals. Indians are stuck with their messy but advanced industrial nations (the United States, Britain, comfortable democracy. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, an France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada) would be Oxford-educated economist who is deputy chairman of overtaken by the E-7 emergent economies of China, India, the national planning commission, says, “The biggest Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Mexico, and Turkey. thing about India is that it’s a very participative, very plu- The most significant difference between India and ralistic, open democracy where even if the top 1,000 peo- China, however, may be how their respective demographic ple technocratically came to the conclusion something trends and political systems shape their futures. The Chi- is good, it has to be mediated into a political consensus. nese leadership is already coming to regret its nearly And I’m being realistic. I don’t think it’s going to be 30-year-old policy of permitting most couples to have that easy to put in place everything that from a techno- only one child. Now China is rapidly aging and heading for a pensions crisis, as an entire generation of only THERE IS NO DENYING the furious children grapples with the problem of helping to sup- commercial energy of a country that is port two parents and four grandparents. A recent currently signing up five million new DeutscheBank survey on China’s pension challenge mobile phone subscribers each month. predicted, “China is going to get old before it gets rich.” The policy has also created a serious gender disparity. cratic point of view everybody knows needs to be done.” The ability to predict the sex of a fetus in a country limited In short, India’s pluralism could be to China’s advan- to one child per family has led to a situation in which 120 tage, although given the track record of bureaucratic tech- boys are born for every 100 girls, and President Hu Jin- nocrats from Moscow to Japan in wasting massive tao last year asked a task force of scientists and officials to resources to pursue the wrong goals, it may not be that address the tricky problems posed by an excess of single simple. But India has its own special asset, recognized by men. India has a similar sex disparity problem in certain the American presidential candidate George W. Bush regions, notably those where Sikhs are numerous, but and suggested by the celebrated prediction a century ago overall, with half of its population below the age of 25, it by Otto von Bismarck that “the most important fact of the boasts a far healthier demographic profile. 20th century will be that the English and the Americans speak the same language.” The most important factor in the 21st century may well be that Americans and Indians he contest between the Indian tortoise and the (and perhaps Britons and Australians and Microsoft Chinese hare has a political dimension as well. employees and global businesspeople) all speak English. T India is a democracy, without an equivalent of This is not simply a matter of a shared language, although China’s ruling Communist Party. Its elections, provincial that is important; it also encompasses those other aspects governments, and free news media give the country great of the common heritage that include free speech and free social resilience. China’s breakneck economic growth and press, trial by jury and an independent judiciary, private social disruption seem likely to have potent consequences property, and individual as well as human rights. While as its new middle class finds a political voice. retaining its rich and historic cultures, India is thoroughly The Chinese Communist Party is becoming less ide- familiar with these core values and determinants of the ological and far more technocratic in its orientation, American civic system. And as a religiously tolerant, multi- but it still can manipulate the most authoritarian levers ethnic democracy with commercial, legal, and educa-

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 29 India tional systems developed during the British Raj, India is— wealth and status. But at the same time, the new U.S.- like the English language itself—familiar and reassuring Indian accord could help spur a new nuclear arms race to Americans. in Asia, where Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and prob- A decisive factor in the short term may be India’s ably North Korea already have the bomb, and Japan, importance to the United States in the strategic and South Korea, and Taiwan have the technological capa- cultural campaign now being waged against Islamic bility to build it quickly. One wild card is already being extremism. This will be a struggle much deeper and played that could bring this about: the prospect of Japan longer than the mainly military effort the Bush admin- and India sharing in American antimissile technology. istration calls GWOT (Global War on Terrorism), as If India gains the ability to shoot down incoming mis- currently being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. India, siles, this threatens to negate the deterrent that Pakistan itself a regular target, has been from the beginning a firm and China thought they possessed against India, with partner in the war on terrorism, instantly offering flyover potentially destabilizing results. and landing rights to U.S. aircraft engaged in the war Even though India’s prospects now look brighter against the Taliban. But with its 145 million Muslims, than they have for a generation, the country faces some India risks becoming embroiled in the tumult now shak- sobering challenges, including the accelerating pace of ing so much of the Islamic world as the faithful try expectations among its own people and their under- simultaneously to grapple with the cultural, theological, standable demand that the new wealth be shared economic, and social revolutions now under way. quickly, that the poorest villages get schools and elec- Facing the additional problem of militant Hindu tricity. Almost half the population still lives in rural nationalism, India has no choice but to stand in the hamlets, and only 44 percent of these rural residents front line against Islamic extremism. India is the great have electricity. Enemies of globalization populate the geographic obstruction to an Islamic arc that would Indian Left and sit in the current coalition government. stretch from Morocco across Africa and the Middle East India must grapple with the familiar difficulties of Hindu all the way to Malaysia, Indonesia, and into the Philip- nationalism, inadequate infrastructure, and a large Mus- pines. Pakistan and Bangladesh are deeply uncomfort- lim population, as well as environmental crisis, deep able neighbors for India, being Muslim, poor, the scenes rural poverty, and the caste system. of concerted jihadist campaigns, and worrisomely close India finds itself in a delicate position. It must manage to becoming failed states. But there is another arc, which and maintain its relationship with China while accom- stretches from Japan and South Korea through China modating American strategists who are relying on its and the increasingly prosperous countries of the Asso- support to keep Asia on the rails of democratic globaliza- ciation of Southeast Asian Nations to India. This swath tion. Americans also regard India as insurance against of rising prosperity and economic growth now includes China’s domination of Asia to the exclusion of the United three billion people—half the world’s population. It is States. India, on the other hand, wants freedom of action easy to foresee wretched outliers such as North Korea, and does not want to serve merely as a tool of American Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Pakistan being swept up in influence. the wake of this boom, should it continue, but for that to “We want the United States to remain as the main happen, Asia needs stability, peace, and a cessation of stabilizer in Asia and the balance against China until arms races. such time as India can manage the job on its own,” an influential security adviser to the Indian government said recently, very much on background. What will t is an open question whether the burgeoning new happen once India believes it can do this alone? I strategic friendship of India and the United States asked. “Well, then we shall see,” he replied. “By then it Iwill help this process or derail it. It could do both, will be a different Asia, probably a different China, deterring China from adventurism or bullying its neigh- and possibly a different America. It will certainly be a bors, and stabilizing the strategic environment while different world, dominated by the Indian, Chinese, India and China manage a joint and peaceful rise to and American superpowers.”■

30 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Who’s in Charge Here?

The 20th century taught us that repressed desires are the source of human unhappiness. Now, with more possibilities for pleasure and fewer rules and constraints than ever before, the happy few will be those able to exercise self-control.

BY DANIEL AKST

Most of us who live with children and how hard it can be to control ourselves nowadays in a computers know about software for controlling how the landscape of boundless temptation. Thanks to rising former use the latter. But what about the grownups who affluence, loosening social constraints, and the inex- can’t control themselves? For adult Internet users ready to orable march of technology, most of us have more oppor- admit that they’re in the grip of a higher power, there is tunities to overindulge than ever before. Life in modern Covenant Eyes, a website that will keep track of all the other Western cultures is like living at a giant all-you-can-eat websites you visit—and e-mail this potentially incrimi- buffet offering more calories, credit, sex, intoxicants, nating list to an “accountability partner” of your choosing. and just about anything else one could take to excess Covenant Eyes even rates websites on a kind of taboo scale than our forebears might ever have imagined. (the higher the score, the raunchier), so that your spouse America is the biggest buffet of all, of course, and we or pastor can tell at a glance whether you’ve been poring invented the Internet to supply home delivery. Pornog- over market research online or taking in a peepshow. raphy, for example, once accompanied by shame and The existence of Covenant Eyes is a measure of just inconvenience, is now instantly and anonymously acces- sible to anyone with an Internet-connected computer at Daniel Akst writes frequently for The New York Times, The Wall Street no charge whatsoever. Or how about gambling? In 1970 Journal, and other publications. His most recent book, a novel, is The Web- ster Chronicle (2001). casino gambling was legal only in Nevada, while New

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 31 Self-Control

Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York were the only self-gratification. Scarcity is falling away in China and states with lotteries. Today the picture is almost entirely India as it did long ago in North America and Europe, reversed, with 47 states having legalized casinos or lot- where bounty has led companies to exquisite refine- teries, or both. And if near-ubiquity still isn’t convenient ments in the art and science of selling—in exploiting enough, the Internet entices with offshore “virtual” casi- taste, color, sound, and even smell to overcome con- nos accessible from the comfort of home. sumer resistance. Nor is the family, that other tradi- While temptations have multiplied like fast-food tional brake on behavior, anything like the force it outlets in the suburbs, the superstructure of external once was, here or elsewhere. In the world’s most afflu- restraint that once helped check our impulses has been ent nations, the family’s role has evolved from one of seriously eroded, in part by the same inexorably sub- economic production to emotional satisfaction, trans- versive force—capitalism—that has given us the where- forming its inherent bias from discipline to indul- withal to indulge. Oh, we’re tougher on drunk driving gence. And families are less likely nowadays to be and there’s social pressure not to smoke, but as the social intact or extended. The willingness of adult offspring historian Peter Stearns writes, “The adjustments that to move far away from parents—and vice versa, when retirement comes—has weakened ties that once circumscribed behavior AMERICA IS THE BIGGEST BUFFET much more tightly. At the same time, the of all, and we invented the Internet to eyes of neighbors are no longer upon us. Despite a supply home delivery. good deal of hand-wring- ing over electronic-data security, the fact is that produced the 20th-century style of self-restraint have, on most of us enjoy an unprecedented degree of personal the whole, reduced protective arrangements and behav- physical privacy. Those who live alone—and their num- ior laws, placing more responsibility on the individual for bers are growing—are especially free to do, watch, or eat knowing and following the rules.” pretty much any darned thing they please, but the rest Stigma, the ugly form of social shame that once helped of us are a long way from the in-home surveillance of keep so many of us in line, has withered like a cold soufflé. 1984 as well. Freestanding houses in sprawling sub- Drug and alcohol abuse, while not exactly applauded, are urbs—and the universality of motor vehicle travel— seen as medical afflictions rather than moral shortcomings, mean that, for the most part, nobody has any idea when and while adultery may be frowned upon it is also under- you come and go, what your destination is, or what you stood, very often, as a painful part of the search for self-real- do when you get there. A scarlet letter today would have ization. (The same can be said of adultery’s frequent off- to go on your license plate. spring, divorce.) Financial constraints, meanwhile, once a Then again, what civil or religious authority today ready substitute for willpower, have been swept away by could impose such a mark? In the non-Islamic world, at surging affluence and the remarkable openhandedness of least, church and ideology no longer provide much in the lenders. Last year alone Americans received five billion way of traditional limits on individual behavior. Commu- credit card solicitations in the mail; given the barrage of nism, with its tyrannies large and small, is dead, and as a products (and product advertising) on offer everywhere we character in a Donald Barthelme story once remarked, look, it’s no wonder that so many of us decide to sign on the opium is now the opiate of the people. Amen, let us hasten dotted line, with predictable consequences for our indebt- to add. Who wants someone else to tell us what to do? edness and personal savings. Covenant Eyes, after all, is something we can only impose Few of these phenomena are uniquely American, on ourselves. And though lots of people are ready to criti- even if we do tend to be the pioneers in most areas of cize affluence, nobody I know truly craves the opposite.

32 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Self-Control

The hypnotic allure of slot machines is captured by Charles Bell’s photorealist painting Rol-a-Top (1981).

vents have conspired, then, to force each of us to ries, both in dollars and preparation time, has fallen to per- rely more on himself or herself for the kind of haps the lowest level since Adam and Eve left the Garden E restraint that was once imposed, or at least sternly of Eden. But these changes have not been matched by reinforced, externally back in the bad old days. And there increases in willpower, with the result that roughly two- are real doubts whether the modern self is up to the job. thirds of us weigh more than we should. Obesity is now a “Self-regulation failure is the major social pathology of the growing problem, if you’ll pardon the expression, in coun- present time,” say psychologists Roy F. Baumeister, Todd F. tries all over the world. Heatherton, and Dianne M. Tice, who explore the subject Technology has only stoked temptation. Forget the in their book Losing Control: How and Why People Fail at Internet for a while; just think about the world without the Self-Regulation (1994). They add that “all over the country, birth control pill. Television is yet another skilled crusher people are miserable because they cannot control their of restraint, not just through the power of advertising but money, their weight, their emotions, their drinking, their also by exposing people everywhere to levels of affluence, hostility, their craving for drugs, their spending, their own sexual license, and other forms of personal freedom they behavior vis-à-vis their family members, their sexual couldn’t readily visualize before. Tevye’s fantasies of wealth impulses, and more.” in Fiddler on the Roof included time to study the sages, but Humanity’s worldwide struggle with its weight is per- he never watched The O.C., whose vision of sunshine, sex, haps the quintessential example of self-restraint under and intrigue does not figure heavily in the Talmud. stress. Americans have been gaining weight roughly since As the structures of constraint come tumbling down, the introduction of the microwave oven, as the price of calo- the ability to control ourselves will play an ever more

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 33 Self-Control important role in our happiness. Already, that role is large. ery, this may come as a bitter pill. Happiness, after all, is A little self-restraint can greatly reduce your chance of often held to require letting go, giving in, indulging, rather developing heart disease and lung cancer. If you are a than remaining in thrall to those terrible inhibitions by man, it can preserve your marriage (a strong predictor which we thwart our own fun. So we drink bourbon, smoke of marital stability is the husband’s ability to control his marijuana, undergo primal scream therapy, ask our lovers wandering impulses). And if you are a student, it can lead to tie us up, all to free ourselves from...ourselves. “We long to higher lifelong earnings, since you are likely to do bet- for a holiday from our frontal lobes, a Dionysiac fiesta of ter—and go further—in school. The psychologists Angela sense and impulse,” writes Oliver Sachs. “That this is a need Duckworth and Martin Seligman, in fact, found in study- of our constrained, civilized, hyperfrontal nature has been ing middle-school students that self-discipline (as rated recognized in every time and culture.” by parents and teachers and derived from the students’ own questionnaire responses) was a much better pre- dictor of academic performance than IQ. It’s worth et if self-control appears to be in decline across bearing in mind, at this juncture, that education is cor- the board, there are areas where it has increased, related not just with income but with longevity. Y suggesting something like a law of conserva- The marketplace has already delivered its verdict, lav- tion of self-regulation. There may only be so much to go ishing huge incomes on society’s scary new self-control elite, around, in other words, and right now we’d rather use it those “resumé gods” who seem to excel at both self-restraint to quit smoking than to lose weight. Consider how much (the ability to resist) and its more vigorous cousin self-dis- self-control the average person expends navigating the cipline (the ability to persist). Not only did these lords of dis- modern workplace. At the office we are expected to reg- cipline withstand all those boring texts in graduate school, ulate our attire, our attitudes, and our outbursts, smile but they keep themselves thin by carefully regulating what at customers, refrain from off-color remarks, remain they eat after flogging themselves off to the gym at the crack awake despite every postprandial impulse to the con- of dawn. We all know who these people are: They’re the trary, and produce urine free of illegal narcotics when- ones who schedule their children’s perfectly calibrated mix ever it might be demanded. If factory jobs threatened to of mental and physical exertions with minute-by-minute make us into physical automata, at least “they impinged precision, all the while plotting little Taylor’s path from pre- less on personality styles than did the keep-smiling school to Harvard. injunctions of sales gurus like Dale Carnegie or the The postrestraint era leaves us not only to control efforts to mollify anger ranging from foreman-retrain- ourselves, but to ask, self-control for what? What larger ing programs in the 1930s to Total Quality Manage- purpose, if any, should our self-regulation serve? The ment schemes in the 1990s,” Peter Stearns observes. “In answer may be that self-restraint not only benefits each sum, significant portions of most workdays are now of us, but all of us. It’s easy to make fun of the resumé marked by levels of emotional restraint not widely gods and the choices they have made, for instance, but attempted in the 19th century.” these folks don’t seem to be doing badly to me, at least Our struggle to control ourselves dates back much fur- compared to us self-control hoi polloi frantically rolling ther than that—at least as far back as Odysseus, who com- over our credit card balances and ordering the fried manded his sailors to lash him to his ship’s mast and plug cheesecake whenever we see it on a menu. On the con- their ears lest he (and they) succumb to the seductive song trary, America’s aristocracy of self-control seems ideally of the Sirens. To the Greeks, the familiar problem was adapted to the world in which we find ourselves, blast acrasia, a lack of control or self-command. Plato went their steely backbones. It’s as if they got the news ahead back and forth on this, ultimately holding that people may of the rest of us—no doubt by waking up earlier—that judge badly what is best but can’t really act against their self-control may well be the most important personal own will, a view that left later philosophers unpersuaded. trait of the 21st century. E. J. Lemmon, for instance, argued in 1962 that “it is so For a people conditioned by the popular belief that notorious a fact about human agents that they are often suppressing our innermost desires is the surest path to mis- subject to acrasia that any ethical position that makes this

34 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Self-Control seem queer or paradoxical is automatically suspect for just Anyone who has ever spent a sleepless night can attest this reason. Of Socrates we can say that as a plain matter to how little control we have over our own thoughts, never of fact he was just wrong—acrasia does occur, or in Aris- mind our own actions, and skeptics can easily prove this for totle’s phrase, knowledge just is, however sad this may be, themselves by following the example of Leo Tolstoy’s frequently dragged about by desire.” brother, who challenged the future novelist to stand in a To the early Christians, self-control was a religious corner until he could no longer think of a white bear. Later issue. “I do not do what I would like to do,” Paul laments in researchers have found that asking people not to think his letter to the Romans, “but instead I do what I hate...so about a white bear (or its equivalent) does in fact make it I am not really the one who does this thing; rather it is the hard to get the creature out of their heads. Forbidding a sin that lives in me.” Self-control later became a problem topic can even make it more appealing; in one experi- for Augustine, the influential church thinker who, lacking ment, subjects told not to think about sex had higher lev- the outlet offered to later repenters by Oprah Winfrey, els of skin conductance—they sweated more—than those chronicled his struggle with his own impure impulses in his who were told to think about sex. Apparently, in the sup- Confessions. To modern Americans, heirs to strong tradi- pressors, renewed excitement occurred every time sex tions of moralizing on the one hand and philosophical popped involuntarily to mind. pragmatism on the other, a lack of self-control is a personal All this notwithstanding, lots of people still contend that failing. We expect people to exercise willpower, perhaps rec- self-mastery is within our capabilities—and that we ought to ognizing that society would fall apart if we didn’t. But the nature of willpower makes this conclusion trou- ANYONE WHO HAS EVER spent a blesome for philosophers. Justin Gosling, in a slender sleepless night can attest to how little volume called Weakness of control we have over our own thoughts, the Will (1990), puts the point succinctly: “If I am physically too weak to lift a never mind our own actions. weight, it is not my fault if I fail; so why does the same not hold if I am too weak of will, suffering, as it were, from have the self-discipline to instill it in our children. Roy debility of spiritual muscle?” Where, in other words, is the Baumeister has derided the recent focus on self-esteem in moral shortcoming in bad muscle tone? American families and classrooms, arguing that an empha- And what if poor willpower is hereditary? There is evi- sis on self-control instead will produce accomplishments that dence for this. Research has shown that addictions to gam- not only shore up self-esteem but also lead to success in life. bling and alcohol, for example, have a strong hereditary This viewpoint is hardly new, even if it has become component, although environment matters too, of course. uncommon outside a certain class of professional scolds (The Harvard Mental Health Letter reports that the rate of who, sooner or later, turn out to be playing games with pre- problem gambling is higher among people living within 50 scriptions or playing high-stakes roulette in Vegas. No less miles of casinos.) Certainly there is a physical dimension to than William James (Henry’s smarter brother) urged us to all this, which we know from cases of brain injury: Delib- “keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous eration and self-control are activities of the prefrontal area exercise every day. . . so that, when the hour of dire need of the brain, for whose size, shape, and (probably) powers draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved or untrained to none of us bears much personal responsibility. Indeed, stand the test.” some psychologists have argued that nobody really has any Even in James’s day, psychologists suspected that self- self-control, because consciousness itself is just an auto- control had an address. In the late 19th century, the Eng- mated physical process. lishman John Hughlings Jackson suggested a three-part

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 35 Self-Control

loose is reflected across the arts in the very shape of new works, now constrained by fewer of the formal require- ments that once prevailed in, say, poetry and painting. John Elster, who wrestles with self- constraint and its advantages in such works as Ulysses Unbound, cites Henri Peyre’s observation from the 1940s: “After a long century of indi- vidualism, many of our con- temporaries seem to be over- weighted by their absolute artistic freedom which has rendered any revolt insipid.” Self-control met its Water- loo in the 1960s. The empha- sis in those days was on escap- ing not just the tyranny of capitalist-inflected social con- trol, but also aspects of self- Impossible to resist? control that seemed equally imposed and unjustifiable. cerebral hierarchy corresponding to different evolutionary The youth culture’s embrace of consciousness-altering drugs levels, and that the job of the highest part was essentially can be seen as an attempt to internalize this broader revo- to keep down the lower. Sigmund Freud, with his Jack- lution, a turn to pharmacology for help in overthrowing a sonian notion of the superego riding herd over some drool- superego so insidiously effective we might not even be ing and libidinous id, was the psychologist with perhaps the aware of its string pulling and suppressions, so familiar greatest impact on our thinking about self-control. To and even comfortable were its constraints. The interest in Freud—a man of considerable will who was no stranger to Eastern mysticism, meditation, free love, and other means cocaine and tobacco—self-control was the price of civi- of getting over and around ourselves—in letting it all hang lization, and the human tragedy was that we can only live out—was part of the same revolutionary upheaval under- in society by subjecting ourselves to some serious psycho- taken by individuals working hard to get out of their own logical constraints—which are themselves the cause of our grip. individual unhappiness. This whole free-spirited project has lost much of its Although absent from the rogues’ gallery at your local charm, at least outside Hollywood, where repressed movie post office, repression was soon recognized as a significant characters still haunt central casting waiting to be opened public enemy. In the 19th century, literary characters such up to life by freewheeling buddies and appealingly daffy as Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, and George Hurst- love interests. In real life, feminists demand that men con- wood got into trouble by failing to control themselves, but trol themselves in the workplace as well as on dates. Par- in 20th-century novels such as Anne Tyler’s Accidental ents demand that boys do likewise, employing pharma- Tourist, self-control was more often itself the cause of cology to impose constraints rather than subvert them. unhappiness, or at the very least a symptom of some- “Zero tolerance” policies for all sorts of transgressions have thing deeply amiss. This brave new emphasis on cutting given us the spectacle of a kindergartener punished for a

36 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Self-Control peck on a fellow pupil’s cheek—and have sent the message demanded that his raving future self be restrained. Simi- that even the tiniest of us better exercise more self-control. larly, Cowen notes that Victor Hugo reportedly worked in Of course, these new social restrictions are low fences the nude, having instructed his valet to withhold his cloth- compared to the heights of freedom all those social changes ing lest he go off somewhere instead of staying inside to have given us. Feminism has placed a greater burden of self- work. And John Elster reminds us that Samuel Taylor control on women, with more failures of self-regulation one Coleridge, in Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an Eng- predictable result. By 1987, lung cancer—mostly from lish Opium Eater, hired men to forcibly prevent him from smoking—had surpassed breast cancer to become women’s going into drug dens. “But,” De Quincey wrote, “as the leading cause of cancer death. Women are gambling more, authority for stopping him was derived simply from him- and having more problems with gambling. The end (or at self, naturally these poor men found themselves in a meta- least the erosion) of the traditional double standard about physical fix.” sex has lifted a major constraint, with costs as well as ben- If self-restraint is hard for people such as Hugo, it’s efits for women and men alike. even harder for whole societies. Is it any wonder that greenhouse gas emissions and government deficits are a problem in most of the advanced industrial economies? n the absence of such external restraints, we get to This is why societies engage in precommitment as well. choose our own, which brings us back to Covenant The Constitution is a good example: It can be seen as a IEyes. That particular website, like Odysseus’ orders to form of precommitment in which the nation’s earliest his men, is a classic example of what is known among the electorate bound itself, its leaders, and all those to come cognoscenti of self-restraint as “precommitment,” and against the infringement of individual rights and undue examples of such self-imposed outside constraints abound concentration of power. The Social Security system is a once you start looking for them. Most of us engage in pre- collective form of precommitment against individual commitment sooner or later. We may avoid having ice financial imprudence; think of it as a government man- cream in the house, for example, to help keep our weight dated Christmas club, whereby you let Uncle Sam take down (if we had some, we’d eat it). If that doesn’t work, we your money now and use it without paying interest, all might get our jaws wired shut or our stomachs surgically so you can be sure to have something when you really reduced. If drinking is the problem, we may take medica- need it later. tion that causes vomiting and other unpleasantness in In a sense, the crux of the self-control problem is the those who consume alcohol. Isn’t marriage a kind of pre- future and how much regard we have for it. Today the commitment as well? Why else would one need to wrap future looks scary, in part because we are so lax—about romance in a legal contract if not to guard against the day warming the planet with fossil fuels, increasing national when fidelity might waver? Louisiana even offers some- debt, and countless other issues. But if we can do better, thing called “covenant marriage,” which is harder to get out we should also remember that things could be much of than the regular kind. worse. That technology helped get us into this mess To understand human behavior in this arena, it can be means that it may well have the power to get us out. Can useful to think of our selves as different and at times dis- the time be far off when pills permit us to eat almost any- senting individuals. The economist Tyler Cowen has sug- thing without gaining weight? What about when we’re gested that we all harbor two contemporaneous selves, finally able to manipulate the genes of our offspring? one impulsive and the other rules-oriented, but others Will we engineer superhuman self-control? And will the have proposed an infinite number of selves stretching off law punish those who don’t possess it? into the future, all of them subject to costs and constraints Meanwhile, let’s look on the bright side. That self-con- we might impose today. Obviously our desires are not con- trol may be the most significant challenge faced by many sistent across time, which is why we might do something of the world’s people in the 21st century is a blessing in tonight that we’ll hate ourselves for in the morning. When not much of a disguise. Self-regulation is a challenge, but precommitment occurs, one’s present self is typically the one not nearly so daunting as the poverty and tyranny that prudent one. Thus, Odysseus’ careful current self are its most effective substitutes. ■

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 37 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Nothing new was once the norm. think of how many centuries our ancestors lived out their lives in cir- What’s cumstances that changed not at all from cradle to grave— that cycled through the seasons untouched by material advance or technological invention, following patterns that seemed beyond alteration. If they’d had clocks, it New wouldn’t have mattered whether the hands moved. The exacting second hand on a modern clock and those ubiq- uitous digital displays, with a colon sometimes pulsing BY JAMES MORRIS the seconds between hours and minutes, locate us in every moment. We expect time to go not in a circle but like an arrow; if it lands in unfamiliar terrain, so much the better. We’re suckers for the new, and “putting things behind us,” Novelty beckons Americans as whether the things be lovers, careers, addresses, attitudes, never before. As the wreckage fashions, gadgets, or disasters, is our norm. Several years ago, in one of those Southern California of our headlong race for the beach communities where everyone is 24 and in perpetual motion so as to live forever, I took a wrong turn looking for next new thing recedes in the a Coke. I entered a sumptuous big-box-store-sized market, rearview mirror, will we where the fruits and vegetables, gently misted and more fully documented than millions of the nation’s residents, were a remember what we’ve lost? lot better off than they had been outdoors. Olives had a

38 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Novelty

mammoth circular display table of their own, yogurts a had his eye on eternal grand cycles of life and death, achieve- separate wing; affidavits from coddled cows were available ment and loss. He was a big-picture kind of guy, unswayed on request, and armed clerks kept watch at the door for the by the here-and-gone particulars. I think that, for my young rogue chemical additive and, apparently, the Coke truck. On Californian, life was still mostly about the particulars, and my way out I asked a young clerk, “Is this place new?” An of them there was an infinite, cascading supply, each swept inane question, because the brightly lit answer was all from its brief prominence by the one rushing up fast behind. around me. Or so I thought. “New?” he echoed, giving me Given a chance, the clerk might have come to a reasonable the look of benign exasperation that is youth’s frequent accommodation with his ancient soul mate: “Dude, there is judgment on age’s confusion. “No,” he said. “It’s been here no new thing under the sun for long.” since January.” We spoke in March. When I first heard the words “That’s so 20th century,” You don’t go to a grocery store for signs and wonders, but spoken five years into this century by a friend’s teenage I couldn’t help but wonder whether the precise clerk had daughter, I tried to put the best face on them. At least she given me a sign. Was his way of measuring time peculiar to was aware that there had been a 20th century, and her ver- Californians (there have always been rumors on this coast dict hinted at some familiarity with its defining character- of an alien world on the other), or did he speak for multi- istics. Alas, she wasn’t situating the Great Leap Forward. In tudes? How long had it been before the novelty of the pro- an “old” movie on TV, a female character had just negotiated duce palace wore off for him? A week? A weekend? The a doorway in a shoulder-padded 1980s power suit. When blithe Californian had come by an alternative route to pretty I commented that the fashion was, technically, only “so much the same conclusion as the dour voice in Ecclesiastes: 1980s and so 1940s,” she laughed. “You know what I mean. “There is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing It’s all ancient history.” whereof it may be said, See, this is new?” That glum fellow (who was, after all, writing a chunk of the Old Testament) James Morris is an editor at large of The Wilson Quarterly.

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 39 Novelty

For adults of a certain age and disposition, the 20th is lives—in what we eat and wear, in how we’re impressed or still the century, even after the demarcation of 9/11. Though amused or provoked or healed. The new is a defibrillator to past, it’s present, and relaxing our grip on it, and its on us, jolt our flagging selves. “But wait,” comes the objection. does not come easy. It’s the vast warehouse from which we “Hasn’t that always been so, at a level commensurate with routinely retrieve our instances of what’s foolish and wise, the ability of each age to meet the demand?” Yes, it has. But shaming and ennobling, cause for despair and reason to what’s new is the intensity of our expectations and their ele- hope. Yet the century has no hold at all on the young. How vation to entitlement, the proliferation of outlets for satis- could it? They reckon time by other clocks. But so, increas- fying what have become our proliferating needs, and the ingly, do we all. Indeed, the relentless encroachment of the capacity of so many people to afford to indulge them. What’s new on our lives—our insistence on it, our adjustment to it— new is the rapidity with which the new becomes old. We spin renovates us too. We’re new, but maybe not improved. through fads and passions as rapidly as tornadoes lift, sus- Of course, there’s new and there’s new. Newness was tain, and drop the contents of a landscape. What’s new is the sunk into this country with its European foundation sup- seemingly infinite upward spiral of American abundance ports. In the New World were New Spain, and New Nether- (though not—never—an abundance for all), a stairway not land, and New France, and New England, and they were just just to heaven but to the emptiness beyond. the beginning. An atlas today shows the astonishing num- What’s new is the degree of agitation in normal lives. ber of locations, large and small, scattered across America There’s so much less relaxing into anything or luxuriating in that have appended newness to their identities. The New the traditional and settled—indeed, so little tolerance for let- World was a vast staging ground for trial and error, a place ting things become traditional and settled. Seventy years ago, of risky, limitless potential. And that defining characteris- that so-20th-century Thomas Stearns Eliot wrote a line in tic of the nation must never be lost—the new that’s against the poem “Burnt Norton” that could be our new national stagnation, the new that won’t put up with setback, the new motto: “distracted from distraction by distraction.” Our that enables medical, scientific, and technological advance heads are full of noise, and it’s not just metaphorical. We’re and farsighted social policy, the new that says “go west” even weaning ourselves away from interior silence as if its source when “west” is only a metaphor and the frontier a cloud were a poisoned spring. The majestic, brooding eagle has bank. With that invigorating newness let there be no quar- been routed by the jittery hummingbird. We’re up and rel. But not everything new resuscitates. doing before the task at hand is down and done. Attention We’ve come to expect a regular dose of novelty in our deficit disorder could be the mascot malady for the national mood. But it faces a scrappy new challenger: restless legs syndrome. The TV ads hawk- ing a drug to tame the willful extremities make a point of reassuring skeptics that the syndrome is “a recognized medical condition,” affecting millions. It’s also the perfect external enactment of an inner impatience. Fewer and fewer of us remember a time before abundance. Those who do need no convincing that abundance beats want. But when does so much of so In the wireless world, remote engagements are the rule. much become too much of

40 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Novelty too much? There’s no limit to the previously unsuspected much better need a bathroom be? Caracalla himself could needs of which we’re daily made aware. If we can take or have learned from the builders of the new luxe bathroom, leave the excess, shed it like a false friend in narrowed cir- with its multiple adjacent toilets, bidets for every bottom, cumstances, no harm is done. But if the excess clings to us and showers roomy enough for a correctional facility. A big like a second skin, if no description of us that omits it is com- tub, raised several steps like the altar in a shrine, is fed by a plete, the new selves we’ve exchanged for old are no bargain. circle of jets that pummel or caress, depending on your We’ve bartered Manhattan for trinkets. mood. The first time you sink into the water’s plush motion, An extraordinary proliferation of almost everything, you emit a spontaneous “Sweet!” And next day, you learn even genders, has become the norm. The trivial parapher- that your neighbor’s big tub has a diving board. nalia that clutter our lives and are continually replaced— Jesus said that we’ll always have the poor with us; he upgraded, we like to think—alter us as surely as we’re let the rich find out for themselves that they’ll always changed by the real historic advances from, say, gaslight to have the richer. electric bulb, wagon to car, calculator to computer, prayer to vaccine. We come to take as our due things that start out as luxuries and frivolities. We swim daily through a Sargasso othing will refashion us more than the wonders Sea of stuff. Random examples are so many and so com- we’re promised by technology—our new toys, our monplace that they fall below the register of our notice: Nlineless new lifelines. Technological development paper towels with motifs, and trash bags with texture; has brought us to the borders of a wireless state whose ter- water that costs more than milk; the rows of cheeses flaunt- rain we’ve only begun to enter. To buy into a technology’s nov- ing their age and breads flaunting their youth that are now elty, we’re willing to lock our better judgment in the attic. available in even the least super of markets; the wild pro- When the CD was introduced in the early 1980s, for exam- fusion of Dockers, which multiply like pet projects in a ple, the ads promised “Perfect sound. Forever.” OK, maybe congressional budget. not if you used the lustrous discs as coasters or Frisbees, but So we rise to new levels of expectation, and the elevation otherwise. In fact, the sound of those first CDs was awful, and is both wonderful and unsettling—the latter literally so, the prospect of its lasting forever was terrifying. But the because we’re dislodged from the fixed states we once found discs improved, as did the equipment to scan their surfaces acceptable, as if “increase of appetite had grown/By what it and spin their data into sound. The upstart CD won our alle- fed on.” That’s Hamlet on his mother’s lust, but it nails our lit- giance and vanquished the venerable LP, though to this day tle lusts too. To be fair, Shakespeare can also bolster a coun- there are those who claim superiority for the analog sound terargument, as when addled old King Lear tells his niggling of the vinyl record. Like old priests left to guard the rituals of daughters, “Allow not nature more than nature needs,/ a dying religion, they continue to dust surfaces, purify the tips Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.” of styli, and calibrate the force of tone arms rather than slide But Lear did not live to see a $15,000 Sub-Zero a “perfect” disc onto a tray and push a button. (The priests are refrigerator. right, but they’ve lost the war to that old devil convenience.) The upscale contemporary kitchens to which many Now we’re told that it’s time to put the CD, too, behind now aspire are dominated by refrigerators, big and stainless- us, in the Dumpster with the records and cassettes, and wel- steely enough to qualify as morgue annexes, and great gas come the superaudio CD (which may in turn lose a war to stoves, flaunting their cockpit-class control panels and that new devil, downloading). At least the CD had a run of shooting flames of lagoonish blue from battalions of burn- a couple of decades. Pity the adolescent but already obso- ers. Granite and marble weigh upon the kitchens’ sprawl- lescing DVD. That’s also to go behind us, in favor of one of ing counters and the island in their midst. When too many two incompatible new technologies set for a war of their kitchens have an island, the new norm will be an own. We didn’t know we were dissatisfied with DVDs until archipelago. we got the word, like vagrants being whacked with a cop’s A bathroom indoors rather than out, with water that ran nightstick and told to move on. hot and cold and a toilet that flushed, was once a new thing, The cell phone is perhaps the most conspicuous artifact and it was plainly better than the alternative. But how of the new age, a fact of life about which parents really do

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 41 Novelty need to have a graphic sit-down with their kids. “Novelty child, yet it’s being promoted as the password to our always has some power, an unaccustomed mode of begging newest world. What we want when we want it; better, excites an unaccustomed degree of pity,” said Dr. Johnson. what I want when I want it. Bespoke satisfaction. The new How else to explain the pandemic popularity of this device, technology is a marvel, but it allows us, encourages us, to an implement that has reduced to Russian roulette–diciness be extraordinarily self-ish. Imagine two earbudded music the previously settled purpose of a phone conversation: to listeners sitting face to face, each in a state of acoustic bliss. communicate? We now drift in and out of such conversa- They share . . . what? The cocoon of silence around them, tions across a minefield of echoes, elisions, and gaps, mak- cradling the din-to-order in their skulls. The technology ing what sense we can of large portions of them as if they empties the common ground. Or so goes the common were encrypted messages in wartime. (Yes, I know, cell indictment. But does this new splintering of exposure to phone technology is a work in progress and will one day be the largely negligible products of popular culture really perfected, like the initially oval wheel.) The weighty rotary matter? If the two were reading books, would we expect models of the 1950s and ’60s, the high-watermark of phone them to read aloud to each other? design, commanded respect. They knew their corded place on desks and bedside tables. They didn’t come with you; you went to them. Drop one on a foot, and you risked a toe. But he magical devices will get smaller and smaller and the old phones did their job. Their designers had calibrated perhaps be implanted in us, so that images can be a comfortable distance between earpiece and mouthpiece. Tprojected onto the back of an eyeball and there will Rotary dials could be rushed forward, but they took their never be a moment when we can’t order up diversion. own imperial AT&T time to retract. While waiting, you Sure, there’ll be a debate about the risks of driving 80 miles gathered your thoughts. an hour with one eye on the road and the other on ESPN, In a remarkably short time, the cell phone has changed one hand on a cell phone, the other on a Mocha Magnum, the character—lowered the bar—of daily life. The transfixed and the wheel in one’s teeth. But it will be a crisis manu- young cannot imagine that there was once a time when, if factured by the nine remaining Luddites. We’ll develop you were on an operating table or snorkeling or committing new capacities to meet our new challenges. Evolution adultery, you were temporarily out of reach. Individuals who isn’t done with us yet. After all, what would a TV viewer would bristle at the prospect of covert snooping into their of 50 years ago have made of today’s typically cluttered lives have come to terms with abject public self-exposure— news broadcast, with a ceaseless flow of information of their business dealings, their personal entanglements, scrolling horizontally and descending vertically around an their pets’ travails (“I told the vet to take the tail but keep it oblivious talking head in the center? One adapts, and in a jar just in case”), their least movements (“I’m at the air- doesn’t look back. A world without the omnipresent port, the silvery terminal, in a black seat, near the Cinnabon beamed image will become harder and harder to recall, as stand, and I need a bathroom”). This widespread eaves- will a world that made less use of the adjective “instant” dropping on others’ lives is new for ordinary citizens, and and one where phones stayed put. it’s accompanied by the same pretense that no one’s listen- The electrical wires that still trail and tangle in the real ing as government eavesdropping. and fading world have been, for all our lifetimes, telltale evi- The cell phone is the scraggly bellwether of our new “on dence of what leads where. In the wireless replacement demand” existence; tattered phone conversations are but world, who knows where what is leading? We think we one of its capacities. Among the other things it does just roam free, but we’re on a new electronic leash. The credit as well are take pictures, play music and tiny movies and cards and keyboard clicks that seal the deal, over and over TV shows, and keep us Web tethered; one day soon it will again, the radio devices already hidden in ordinary tutor our children (unless it does that already), make cof- purchases—in clothing and cosmetics and books—draw a fee, and pick up the dry cleaning. It’s all the defibrillator map of our wants. And on that grid of our desires we’re we’ll need. And it awaits our commands, or, rather, tracked and pinned. demands. “On demand” is an unpleasant phrase, sug- In years to come, no one will be able to remember a gesting the stomped foot and tedious wail of the denied world where that was not so. ■

42 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Us & Them

Immigrants in America

Much has changed since the nation’s last great immigration

debate more than 40 years ago. The immigrants’ education and skills, their countries of origin, and even their destinations within the United States are all very different from what they were in the past. As arguments rage once again, all eyes are on America’s borders. But what happens after the newcomers arrive?

Peter Skerry on the Statue Blair A. Ruble on mélange

of Liberty myth ...... p. 44 cities ...... p. 56

G. Pascal Zachary on the unex- Stephen G. Bloom on Hispanics

pected influx from Africa . . . . . p. 48 and Hasidim in rural Iowa ...... p. 60

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 43 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Mother of Invention

The Statue of Liberty stood for decades in New York harbor before it became a symbol of welcome to newcomers. In forgetting that fact, Americans reveal their taste for myths about immigration.

BY PETER SKERRY

“It says something about our country that President Bush’s comment reminds us how much people around the world are willing to leave their homes, immigration is bound up with our national identity, and leave their families, and risk everything to come to America,” inevitably our national myths. More than most public- President George W. Bush declared this past April, when policy debates, the one over immigration is permeated Americans were in the midst of their most intense debate with powerful rhetoric and symbolism. At the same time, over immigration in decades. immigration is an arcane, complicated area of policy in The president’s observation is surely correct, as far as it which legislative details directly affect the lives of millions goes. Yet it also says something about our country that we so of individuals, families, and businesses. The combination readily embrace such flattering characterizations of our- of emotional symbols and rhetoric, technical complexity, selves. One consequence is that we routinely downplay less and targeted, high-stakes interests makes immigration a gratifying, more complicated dimensions of our national unique—and uniquely intractable—issue. experience with immigration. Millions of people from around Advocates, politicians, journalists, and immigration pol- the world have left behind much that they cherish and icy experts have all been using rhetoric and symbols to great endured great difficulties to live in the United States. Yet it effect in today’s debates. Yet at one time or another, all have is not necessarily true—as the president clearly suggests—that felt the need to bring the argument back down to earth, at all, or even most, migrants to these shores have intended to which point they typically focus on the role of concrete inter- settle here permanently and become Americans. We can ests in immigration policy. Unfortunately, this usually trans- point to the Irish who arrived fleeing famine and British rule lates into a narrow emphasis on business interests. But and never looked back, or to Jewish refugees escaping because immigration can never be reduced simply to a pogroms in czarist Russia who never dreamed of returning. debate over any such interests, the focus eventually moves Nevertheless, many others came planning to stay only for a back to the emotionally satisfying and intellectually unde- time, and then return to their families and homelands. Sim- manding rhetoric and symbols of our immigration history. ilarly today, millions arrive here not intending to make this Among such symbols, none looms larger than the their permanent home—though over time, of course, their Statue of Liberty. As it turns out, the history of that mon- plans change, and many do end up staying. ument itself demonstrates the mutability of symbols. This history was explored more than 30 years ago by the dean Peter Skerry, a former Wilson Center fellow, is a professor of political of American immigration historians, the late John Higham, science at Boston College and the author of Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority (1993). in an insightful but overlooked essay, “The Transformation

44 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration of the Statue of Liberty,” in a remark- able collection of his articles titled Send These to Me (1975). As every schoolchild knows (or at least used to know), the statue was a gift from France to the United States. Intended to commemorate French support of our war for independence, Liberty— actually, only her raised arm holding the torch—made her first appearance at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876. The sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, was part of a circle of French liberals who conceived of Liberty as a gift from the French people to their republican brothers and sisters across the Atlantic. One consequence, as his- torian David Hackett Fischer points out, was that its cost was underwritten not by the French state but by private subscription and lottery. More to the point, Liberty was depicted as a woman whose austere, classical demeanor was meant to suggest the universality of America’s founding ideals. These were underscored by the tablets of law that she cradles in one arm and the torch she holds high with the other. And with her back to New York, Liberty strides oceanward, send- ing her light out into the world. Thus, at its origins the Statue of Liberty had nothing to do with immi- gration. It was intended as a beacon of hope to those struggling for liberty in their own lands, not as a welcome light for those seeking liberty here. As Higham points out, when the statue was unveiled on its completed pedestal in New York Harbor in 1886, the dig- nitaries’ inaugural speeches “concen- trated almost exclusively on two sub- jects: the beneficent effect on other countries of American ideas, and the desirability of international friendship “Liberty Enlightening the World”was the official name its French donors gave the Statue of Liberty. and peace.” It is shown here under assembly in France three years before its 1886 dedication in New York.

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 45 Immigration

Yet even before the statue was in place, its transforma- ing in New York Harbor and passing by Liberty on their tion into a symbol of welcome to immigrants from around way to nearby Ellis Island. The emotional impact of the world had subtly begun. In 1883, with the statue almost that scene—whatever immigrants’ motives for coming completed but the pedestal only half finished, the private here—fueled the symbolic transformation begun by Pedestal Fund Committee sponsored an art auction to Lazarus’s still-unknown poem. In Higham’s words, the raise desperately needed funds. Among the items auc- immigrants saw Liberty “not as a beacon to other lands tioned off was the manuscript of a sonnet inspired by the but as a redemptive salutation to themselves.” This statue, “The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus. The daugh- remained only immigrant folklore, however—nothing ter of a wealthy New York sugar refiner, Lazarus was a sec- more than an unofficial interpretation. ular, assimilated Jew. But in the early 1880s, as Jews flee- But then, thanks to the tireless efforts of Slovenian- ing pogroms in Russia began to arrive in New York, she American journalist Louis Adamic, the immigrants’ emo- became a champion of her people. And thus began the rein- tional responses to the statue became truly part of the national consciousness. Starting in the late 1930s, Adamic’s countless articles and lectures about immigrants invariably The New Colossus quoted from “The New Colossus.” During World War II, the Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, sonnet was set to music and received even more attention. With conquering limbs astride from land to land; In 1945, the bronze tablet of 1903 was moved from its Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand obscure location to Liberty’s main entrance. A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame The event that most decisively brought Lazarus’s sonnet Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name to the attention of the American public was the plight of Jew- Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command ish refugees in Nazi-dominated Europe. This was, of course, The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. reminiscent of the situation that had so moved Lazarus more than 50 years earlier. Yet this time the association of the “Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she Statue of Liberty with refugees and victims of oppression gen- With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, erally stuck. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed a his- Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, toric immigration reform law in a ceremony at the base of the The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, statue, and he cited Lazarus’s poem, using the occasion to I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” announce a new program to aid refugees from Castro’s Cuba. —Emma Lazarus This understanding of America as a haven for those seeking liberty is not incorrect. As Higham notes, “The con- cept of America as a refuge from European oppression sup- terpretation of the Statue of Liberty into a symbol not plied one of the original, fertilizing elements of our national merely of welcome to immigrants but, more specifically, of consciousness.” But focusing exclusively on this one aspect of refuge to those fleeing persecution and oppression. our immigration history hinders a fuller understanding of the Still, Lazarus’s sonnet remained in obscurity for more complicated motivations of immigrants to these shores. than half a century. At Liberty’s inauguration, the poem For example, contrary to Lazarus’s stirring phrase about went completely ignored. Twenty years after the auction, “Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” many immi- in 1903, a friend and admirer of Lazarus had her words grants have come to the United States not on account of lofty engraved on a bronze tablet, but it was placed on an out- aspirations for political freedom but because of much more of-the-way interior wall of the pedestal. Through most of mundane appetites for economic security and advance- the 1930s, the statue remained nothing more than a sym- ment. Obviously, these two motives are not unrelated. But bol, as Higham writes, of “Franco-American friendship and they are distinct and should not be so readily confounded. liberty as an abstract idea.” Even when President Franklin Another source of confusion has been Lazarus’s lan- Roosevelt celebrated the 50th anniversary of the statue in guage about “your tired, your poor . . . The wretched refuse 1936, he failed to mention Lazarus’s sonnet. of your teeming shore.” Historian Josef Barton, among oth- Yet throughout this period, immigrants were arriv- ers, has pointed out that immigrants to America in the past

46 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration were typically people with at least some modest means to do not place as much emphasis on learning English as they plan ahead and pay for transatlantic passage. The most otherwise might. Or why many feel conflicted about assim- deprived and downtrodden in any society are the least likely ilating into American society and are reluctant to let go of to be able to do that. their native culture. Finally, such ambivalence might well Perhaps most difficult to absorb is the fact that immi- explain why immigrants do not always seem as grateful to be grants have often planned not to settle here permanently. here as Americans would like. Labor economist Michael Piore reminds us that in the period leading up to World War I, about one-third the number arriv- ing from Europe returned home. The emigration rates for mmigration is often not the dramatic, single-moment- specific southern and eastern European nationalities (with in-time event we think of when we envision immi- the notable exception of Jews) were significantly higher. Igrants sailing past the Statue of Liberty. It is a com- And none of the historical statistics captures the presumably plicated, drawn-out process, subject to diverse and even larger numbers of immigrants who arrived in the contradictory pressures. Instead of being surprised or United States planning to return home but failed to do so. offended by immigrants’ failure to meet our ill-informed Today similar patterns are evident, especially among and romanticized expectations, we Americans should think Mexican immigrants. Princeton sociologist Douglas about what we might do to clarify the many choices immi- Massey has documented that it is not the most destitute grants must make once they arrive. We could be much who migrate north to the United States, but rather those more explicit about what we expect of them, while at the with a modicum of education and resources. Indeed, same time doing much more to help them meet those Massey argues that Americans’ perceptions of Mexico gen- expectations. Instead of arguing about bilingual ballots and erally are distorted, pointing out that it is not exactly the education, for example, we could focus our energy and poor, underdeveloped country we assume. He acknowl- resources on developing better English-language programs. edges the gap between America’s per capita income In effect, we need a greater dose of realism in our think- ($36,300) and Mexico’s ($8,900), but contrasts Mexico’s ing about immigration. A good place to begin is with Rein- standing with the Congo’s ($600), emphasizing Mexico’s hold Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History (1952), in rough equivalence to Russia, with a per capita income of which he carefully distinguishes among pathos, tragedy, $9,700. And in terms of life expectancy, Mexico surpasses and irony. Pathos elicits pity because it emerges when Russia—72.3 versus 67.7 years. humans are overwhelmed by circumstances and are effec- The evidence is that many immigrants arrive in the tively denied choice. In contrast, tragedy provokes admi- United States today intending to return home. Massey’s ration because it involves the conscious choice of evil for the research on Mexican migrants demonstrates this intention sake of good. among many legal as well as illegal immigrants. The journey Irony is more complicated—and compelling. It arises to El Norte typically reflects a conscious plan to maximize when contradictory or inconsistent reasons for our actions income, minimize expenditures, and return with enough remain hidden from our understanding. Niebuhr empha- money to start a business or, especially, build a house. Anthro- sized that irony, unlike pathos, involves responsibility. Yet pologist Leo Chavez calls such immigrants “target earners,” unlike tragedy, it does not involve full consciousness of people who come with specific savings goals that they meet choices being made. Ironic tension can be resolved only by enduring many hardships—including long hours at dan- when individuals—or nations—come to a truer under- gerous jobs and substandard, overcrowded living conditions. standing of themselves. To be sure, such plans change, and many immigrants put Niebuhr counseled Americans to move beyond irony, to down roots here and stay. But that process is gradual, and the see through the illusions and pretensions to which our original intention of returning home has enduring effects. For unique history and power have made us particularly sus- example, it helps to explain why school districts in the South- ceptible. In a similar way, the American debate over immi- west with large immigrant populations empty out for weeks gration would benefit from more self-conscious scrutiny of at a time in the winter, when Mexican families return home the beloved symbols and rhetoric that distort our under- for the holidays. It also may explain why many immigrants standing of this critical dimension of our national life. ■

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 47 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

The Hotel Africa

A growing number of Africans are arriving in the United States in search of a better life. But even as these immigrants learn to negotiate a complex new culture, they cannot forget the beloved and blighted lands that sent them forth, yet call them back.

BY G. PASCAL ZACHARY

I dread phone calls from africa. Her mother and father live in Nigeria’s second-largest A sister is having a baby, her fifth, and wants us to city, where they can afford to rent only a small, win- send cash before the birth. An aunt calls on Christmas dowless room with no running water, bathroom, or Day, hoping to tap our holiday spirit. Can’t we pay for kitchen. Chizo regularly sends money to her parents, human traffickers to sneak her into the United States? her six siblings, and her favorite aunts. She also sup- The price is “only” $5,000, which strikes me as sus- ports a daughter in Togo, whom we are preparing to piciously low. My father-in-law rings just long enough bring to America. to ask for a return call. Another aunt calls to No matter how much money Chizo sends, her announce that, tired of waiting for us to send money, African relatives are never satisfied, and she feels she’s changed her name from Patience to Joy. She that her obligations to them remain unmet. She is really has. Then there is the distant relative phoning haunted by Africa, haunted by requests for money for the first time, asking us to pay his rent, his chil- and her great distance from the motherland. From all dren’s school fees, anything. of 8,000 miles away, she misses Africa, and the ache These people telephone because my wife, Chizo, is in her heart is not diminished by her support of fam- an African living in America. To be precise, Chizo is ily members. a Nigerian living in northern California. The tele- When Chizo came to California three years ago, phoners are Nigerians too. They don’t know Califor- she joined an estimated one million African immi- nia from the Carolinas, but they are poor, needy, and, grants living in the United States, many of whom by comparison with Chizo, in dire straits. They want have come in recent years because of changes in U.S. her help, and usually help means sending cash. Chizo immigration laws. Before 1980, African immigrants is a hair braider, working long hours for low pay and overwhelmingly moved to Europe, in part because its earning nothing when there are no heads to braid. former colonial powers left more doors open. That

G. Pascal Zachary, a former foreign correspondent for The Wall Street year, Congress made it easier to enter the United Journal, often writes on African affairs. His books include The Diversity States as a refugee, and in 1990 it created visa “lot- Advantage: Multicultural Identity in the New World Economy (2003), and he is currently working on a memoir of his marriage to an African. teries” for high school graduates from nations his-

48 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration torically underrepre- sented in the United States, such as Ghana and Nigeria. “This lot- tery,” notes Salih Omar Eissa, a child of Sud- anese parents who has studied immigration law, “quickly became the pri- mary method by which Africans immigrated” to the United States. As a result of these changes, the African- born population has boomed. More than half of the sub-Saharan, or black, Africans living in the United States today have arrived since 1990. Hailing from Nigeria, my wife is part of the largest single African contingent. More immi- grants—an estimated 150,000—have come to the United States from Nigeria than from any other sub-Saharan country. Newcomers from Ghana rank sec- ond, Ethiopians third, Liberians fourth, Soma- lis and Kenyans fifth and sixth. Though these numbers reflect both legal and illegal immi- gration, they seem to undercount Africans in the United States. No matter what the actual number is, Africans are a tiny part, a mere 2.8 percent, of the foreign- Two worlds: Despite great success after more than 30 years in America, the Ahonkhai family of suburban Philadel- born population legally phia still feels the tug of Nigeria. Most African immigrants have fared well. Vincent Ahonkhais is a corporate vice in the United States, president,Bernadine holds an education doctorate,and their four children hold undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 49 Immigration according to the U.S. Census Bureau. degrees; an astonishing 98 percent reportedly have Yet the significance of these new African immigrants completed high school. One-third of African women eclipses their relatively small number, for it highlights the and 38 percent of African men hold professional and enormous changes in American society over the past 40 managerial jobs. Because of their education and years while reminding us that for centuries Africans because Africans generally live in the largest Ameri- came to this country in chains. “More Africans Enter U.S. can cities, where wages tend to be highest, both sexes Than in Days of Slavery,” The New York Times headlined earn about 20 percent more than the median pay of a front-page article last year. Because of the central role all American workers. African immigrants are of slavery in American history and the still-vexing prob- younger than other immigrants. Only 2.6 percent lem of black-white relations, African immigrants are are over 65, the lowest percentage of any immigrant worth watching. group; more than 70 percent are between 25 and 54. To be sure, generalizing about Africans is tricky. I talk with Africans regularly in my frequent vis- Africa south of the Sahara is highly diverse. The term its to Africa and in the United States, and so I meet “African” is a construction open to gross misunder- them in Africa dreaming about coming to America and meet them in Amer- ica dreaming of return- ing to or saving their YEARS ABROAD HAVEN’T diminished motherland. The princi- pal challenge for recently Ike Nwadeyi’s sense of identity. “You can’t arrived Africans in Amer- ica is not succeeding in put a Nigerian in your pocket,” he says. the United States—they are—but realizing their desire to maintain a dynamic relationship standing. (George W. Bush, during his first presi- with Africa. Their attachment to the motherland arises dential campaign, compared Africa to Mexico, as if at least partly from a belief that the enormous outflow both were countries.) Travel within sub-Saharan of talent from Africa, however understandable given Africa is frequently difficult, and people from differ- the hardships of life there, poses a great developmen- ent parts of the region often do not display any imme- tal handicap. “Africans are doing incredible things in diate solidarity, racial or otherwise. I was reminded the U.S.,” says Derrick Ashong, a Ghanaian-born Har- of Africa’s great diversity when I attended a private vard graduate who lives in New York City and is party recently at an Oakland nightclub, not far from building an African media company. “Would our where Chizo and I live. The guests were mainly from countries be underdeveloped if our energies were Cameroon and spoke French. In the same club, in the applied back home?” So long as Africa suffers under next room, a group of Ethiopians were also partying. the burden of poverty and inequity, war and disease, The two groups ate different foods, listened to dif- Ashong’s question is both a challenge and a reproach ferent music, dressed differently, danced differently— to Africans in America. and carried on separately. No wonder. Paris and Moscow are much closer to each other than Lagos and Addis Ababa. ke Nwadeyi is a stickler for manners. He wants Despite such differences and a tendency to stick his daughter to greet him each day with the close to their own, African immigrants in the United Iwords, “Good morning, sir.” When she lived in States have much in common. They tend to be highly America with him, she told him, “Hi, Daddy.” He educated and to come from relatively privileged back- angrily replied, “You don’t tell me, ‘Hi, Daddy.’ ” grounds. More than four in 10 hold university This breakfast banter explains why Nwadeyi’s

50 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration seven-year-old daughter is growing up in Nigeria Saharan Africa is the only major region of the world while he works in Washington, D.C., and obtains that has grown poorer over the past several decades his American citizenship. “America will spoil my and that has seen a dramatic decline in the job mar- daughter,” he insists. “Children have no manners ket for highly skilled workers. The development arcs here. By growing up in Nigeria, she’ll know what I of Mexico, China, India, South Korea, and most mean by respect.” other countries exporting people to the United States Nwadeyi’s daughter lives with his wife, a geologist are traveling in the opposite direction. These coun- working for Chevron in oil-rich Nigeria. Her job is tries are increasingly sophisticated, wealthy, and too well paying and too interesting for her to aban- accommodative of the needs of talented people. don. So she stays in Nigeria, while Nwadeyi lives in Indeed, in some parts of India and China and else- the United States and drives a taxi. “There’s no enjoy- where, job opportunities are now far better than in ment in this country,” he says. “Nothing. This coun- the United States. try has no life.” But working in America affords him Only in black Africa, among the world’s regions, the chance to visit Nigeria for long stretches when he have conditions deteriorated, and not just for the wishes. His presence in the United States and his elite. Because of the plights of their home countries, American citizenship give his family an insurance Africans are forced to create a distinctive relation- policy against the instability that always threatens ship with both America and Africa. In short, no Nigeria, but he is typical of the many Africans who other immigrant group carries anything like the bag- leave their young children behind in Africa so they gage that Africans carry—a homeland that is a source can be raised properly. of embarrassment but also offers an unparalleled Before Nwadeyi came to the United States, he opportunity to give back. lived in Thessalonica, where he studied business at Africans feel that the quickest route to becoming a Greek university. His many years in Europe and the “super-empowered” individuals capable of giving United States, however, have not diminished his back to the motherland is success in the United sense of identity. “You can’t hide a Nigerian,” he says. States. The pull of their homeland paradoxically “We are loud. It is natural. You can’t put a Nigerian drives them to greater heights in America. “They in your pocket.” are fast learning how to live the American dream,” Nwadeyi’s straddle of two worlds is typical of wrote Joseph Takougang, a professor of African his- recent African immigrants. “Africans represent a tory at the University of Cincinnati, in a recent sur- new type of immigrant,” writes Sylviane A. Diouf, a vey. “They are becoming involved in their commu- scholar of African migration who is a researcher at nities, starting small businesses, and participating in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture local politics.” in New York City. “They are transnationals, people who choose to maintain their separateness in the host country and retain tight links to their commu- s people of African origin have gained visi- nity of origin.” Drawing strength from migration, bility in America in recent years, their some- Diouf observes, “they generally view their Ameri- A times-troubled relations with African Amer- can experience as transitory, the most effective way icans have belied Americans’ monolithic views of to construct a better future at home for themselves race. Many white Americans as well as African Amer- and their relatives.” icans have assumed that African immigrants are nat- Of course, Diouf’s description of Africans might ural allies of African Americans, and are surprised be applied to many immigrant groups. Filipinos, when tensions surface. Koreans, Central Americans, Mexicans, Russians, One figure who has put the spotlight on Africa is Chinese, and Indians maintain strong ties to their Illinois senator Barack Obama, son of a Kenyan. In countries of origin. What sets Africans apart is the his 2004 senatorial campaign, he had to establish his undeniable marginalization of their homeland. Sub- “blackness” in the eyes of the African-American elec-

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 51 Immigration

The friction between African immigrants and African Americans is per- haps starkest in applica- tions of affirmative action policies. Often, hiring pref- erences work to the advan- tage of people who have just arrived in the United States. Because many African immigrants are highly educated, they can compete for jobs that might otherwise to go to African Americans. Ten- sions between the two groups are exacerbated by African insensitivity. “Too many Africans are dismis- sive of African Americans in a general way,” says Vic- tor Mallet, a Ghanaian who works with black small-business owners in Philadelphia. He notes that Africans fear being lumped together with African Americans as sec- ond-class citizens. They also harbor some of the same stereotypes of African Americans held by many whites. To be sure, Africans in Chizo,the author’s wife,shares a light moment with her husband at a Ugandan fruit market.Cheap air transportation America experience rac- makes it relatively easy for today’s immigrants from even very distant places to maintain close ties to home. ism and outrages, such as the death of Amadou torate because he had been raised by a white mother. Diallo, an unarmed New York street vendor from Even his Africanness was considered attenuated. In Guinea who was shot by police in 1999. Events such his memoir, Dreams From My Father: A Story of as the Diallo killing promote a common under- Race and Inheritance (1995), Obama symbolically standing of what it means to be black in America by reclaims his Africanness by traveling to Kenya. None reminding Africans that black people still face some- of these gymnastics in the establishment of identity times-fatal racial prejudice. Mallet, who grew up in makes sense in an African context. In the United Africa with a white mother and a black father, feels States, Obama’s carefully constructed identity is crit- obliged to sympathetically hear out African-Ameri- ical to his public career. can objections to mainstream American society.

52 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration

“More Africans need to look past the appealing her race, but outside her ethnic group. Possessing notion that America is a meritocracy and that there pride born partly from their communal suffering is equal opportunity for all,” says Mallet, who first during the Biafran war, Igbos have the kind of eth- came to the United States to attend the Massachu- nic solidarity found in Armenian, Jewish, and Koso- setts Institute of Technology in the 1990s. “While var communities. Africans are right not to hide behind the excuse of racial bias, they also must comprehend the history of African-American exclusion—and how racial aware- fricans have no monopoly on ethnic narcis- ness continues to distort American life today.” sism. More striking, actually, is their open- The core division between Africans and African A ness to wide currents and their willingness Americans is rooted in radically different notions of to draw on materials not indigenous to Africa. A identity, and is therefore unlikely to vanish anytime young African writer, Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu, a Yale soon. For Africans, ethnic identification—what was graduate living in New York, has coined the term once known as tribe—trumps race. When my wife “Afropolitan” to highlight the benefits of blending a first came to California, she did not view black peo- cosmopolitan outlook with continuing participation ple as natural allies, but sought help from West in one’s African community. “Perhaps what most Africans, people reared close to her home turf. She typifies the Afropolitan consciousness is this . . . visited braiding shops, looking for casual work and effort to understand what is ailing Africa alongside new friends, and joined a shop managed by two Cameroonian women and staffed by braiders ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, and technological from Senegal and Gabon. The braiders became forces are driving Africans in America toward Chizo’s best friends and the shop a virtual Africa playing a larger role in their home countries. that helped ease her tran- sition to a new and alien country. the desire to honor what is uniquely wonderful,” My wife is the only Nigerian in the braiding shop, Tuakli-Wosornu writes. but she found many nearby, even members of her The Afropolitans must succeed in America, but in own ethnic group, the Igbo. A local grocery story, run a manner that pushes them toward Africa, not away by an Igbo man, sells her favorite foods from home: from it. The emergence of a new generation of gari (cassava), dried fish, fresh yams, plantains, and African writers, who succeed first in the United an exotic spice called ugba. A community of Igbo States and then gain an audience in Africa, illustrates Catholics holds a monthly Mass in her native lan- this pattern. In his short-story collection The Prophet guage. In our living room, she hangs a Nigerian flag of Zongo Street (2005), Mohammed Naseehu Ali, (and the flags of the United States and Ghana, where who lives in Brooklyn and has spent 17 years in the she and I first met). United States since arriving at the age of 18 to attend Too great an attachment to one’s community of university, rescues the rich folk stories of his Hausa origin can encourage provincial thinking, of course. forebears in Ghana and Nigeria. Ensconced in Amer- Chizo’s own fellow Igbos are quite clannish, and of ica, by day he works at the database company Lexis- the scores I have met in America, not one is married Nexis, and at night he emerges in Brooklyn as a to a non-Igbo, and certainly not a white American. troubadour of the wisdom of his ancestors. “I have To the Igbos I meet, my wife is somewhat suspect. great hope for Africa,” he says. They question why she would marry, not outside Like a number of African writers, Ali published

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 53 Immigration

In the past, many new immigrants to America said they would maintain tight links to their countries of origin, but over time they—and their children and grandchildren—have not. Fidelity to Africa, so intensely felt by most immigrants, may also fade over time. “Are they [African immigrants] going to melt into the African-American population?” historian Eric Foner asked in an article in The New York Times last year. “Most likely yes.” The opposite could well happen. Economic, social, and technological forces are driving Africans in Amer- ica toward playing a larger role in their home countries in the years ahead. The spread of cell phones in Africa and the rise of Internet telephony in the United States make calling back to Africa—once an expensive and tedious task often requiring many connection attempts—inexpensive and easy. Flights to all parts of sub-Saharan Africa, while not cheap, are more fre- quent than ever. And private companies operating in Africa are beginning to see the pool of skilled Africans working in the United States as a source of manage- Lobbying on issues of concern back home is a time-honored practice of immigrants, and now Africans are adding their voices. Here, Ethiopian rial and professional talent. Though Africa’s brain immigrants call for U.S.pressure on longtime Ethiopian ruler Meles Zenawi. drain continues, a small but significant number of people are returning to the continent to take jobs or first in the United States and is preoccupied with the start businesses. African experience, home and away. Uzodinma Demographic forces are at play too. As the first big Iweala, who last year published a celebrated short wave of African immigrants from the 1980s novel, Beasts of No Nation, also draws on African approaches retirement, some look homeward. No sta- sources in his tale about child soldiers. Shuttling tistics are kept on Africans who move back for good. between D.C. and Lagos, he is now building a liter- But some members of all immigrant groups do return ary reputation in Nigeria on the strength of his home and always have, even before the days of easy American success. “You can’t ever escape being a travel, telephone calls, and money transfers. Roughly Nigerian,” he told an interviewer in the United States half of all Italian immigrants to the United States recently, adding: before World War I returned home permanently. Today, because documentation is essential for cross- If you try to say, ‘No, I am not Nigerian,’ people say, ing borders, legal immigrants must first acquire a ‘What are you talking about? I know where your green card and then, usually, a U.S. passport. Once in father is from. I know the village. There is no way possession of papers, an African who leaves the United that you can tell me you are not Nigerian.’ In fact, States invariably will come back to it, if only to work. if you don’t come back and maintain the ties, peo- As they age, some Africans are retiring to their home ple start asking questions. It’s not as if when you countries, funding an African lifestyle with American leave you are looked down upon for leaving your dollars. So many Ghanaians are repatriating, for country. Most Nigerians that you speak to here instance, that a Texas homebuilder has an operation expect to return to Nigeria at some point in time— in Ghana that has constructed hundreds of houses for whether or not that will actually happen is not returnees. important. It’s the mentality. Africans commonly travel back and forth, moti-

54 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration vated as much by opportunity and nostalgia as by a and is repairing rooms floor by floor. Soon he will kind of survivor’s guilt. My wife often expresses nag- reopen the long-empty pool on the roof. He knows ging doubts about the fairness of living affluently in that the project is a drain, robbing him of capital he America while her family lives in deprivation back might invest in his American life, but he finds it irre- home. “Why did I escape the poverty of Africa,” she sistible. “Sometimes when I think about this hotel, it asks. “What kind of God chooses paradise for me and brings tears to my eyes,” he says. “I am resurrecting my misery for my loved ones?” father’s pride and joy.” The hotel even boasts wireless The cries of Africans left behind are difficult Internet access, which not even its poshest competi- to drown out, and they shape the aspirations of tors in Douala offer. Kamgaing wants to establish a Africans in America. Consider the choices made by mid-priced hotel, but the odds are against him because my friend Guy Kamgaing, an engineer from Camer- oon who arrived in the United States to attend THE CRIES OF AFRICANS left behind are graduate school 11 years ago. Now 35, he has built difficult to drown out, and they shape the a successful career in Los Angeles in the burgeon- aspirations of Africans in America. ing field of mobile teleph- ony. He holds a green card, is married (to another Cameroonian, an ac- the city’s few foreign visitors usually want luxury, not countant), and has two children. He is living, in short, nostalgia and value. the American dream, and the corruption and difficulty Back in northern California recently, Kamgaing of doing business in Cameroon make him reluctant to visited my house for dinner. While he spooned up my return full time. Yet Kamgaing maintains a big African wife’s goat meat and pepper soup, he admitted that dream. He is renovating a hotel in the Cameroon port perhaps he has gone slightly mad in reviving the old city of Douala that his father, now 72 and still living hotel. But he’s proving that he hasn’t forsaken the in the city, built and ran through good times and bad. land of his birth. The 160-room hotel is a relic—sprawling, decrepit, a My wife has yet to find her Hotel Africa. I was nuisance, and, until recently, shuttered. reminded of the delicacy of her search one night not long ago, when she and I dined with a Jewish friend and his father, approaching 85, who was visiting from ne morning, I met Kamgaing on the roof of Long Island. As a child living near the home of Anne the hotel. He has opened a café there, and the Frank in Amsterdam, the father had been snatched by Owaiter served us café au lait and croissants. the Nazis and sent to a death camp. Chizo told him I could see for miles: the Atlantic Ocean, the forests that his ordeal and that of the Jewish people in Europe ringing the city, the crowded streets. It was the rainy reminded her of the suffering of her own people, the season, the air was heavy, and I could feel the two of Igbo, who tried to secede from Nigeria some 35 years us moving back in time, to 40 years ago, soon after ago and form their own nation, Biafra. Her older independence, when Cameroon was wealthy thanks brother and sister, then infants, died during the war to abundant timber, oil, and agricultural production; that followed—along with a million other Nigerians. it was home to tens of thousands of French people; “Every people suffer,” she said. The old survivor smiled. and the future looked bright. The hotel, called the The persistence of suffering in Africa may bind Beausejour Mirabel, is a means by which Kamgaing African immigrants to their homeland in unexpected can honor his father and revive his country. ways. Perhaps Africans will never forget, and will be The task is difficult. He has renovated the lobby defined by memory, just as Jews have been. ■

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 55 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Mélange Cities

The disruption that immigrants bring is often a benefit.

BY BLAIR A. RUBLE

Tensions and conflict get the headlines and the evidence suggests that we should view such when peoples make contact, but historically migration transformations with more hope than fear. is not a singular event tied always to a “crisis.” Migrants Montreal offers the clearest example in North Amer- of all sorts—immigrants, emigrants, refugees, displaced ica of the creative disruption wrought by new immi- persons, guest workers—have become a significant pres- grants. In that city divided—and defined—for decades by ence in cities around the world. According to the UN conflicts between Francophones and Anglophones, a Human Settlements Program, there are approximately curious story appeared in the press a couple of years ago. 175 million official international migrants worldwide, not During the depths of a typically harsh Quebec February, including those without complete documentation. Even it was reported that Filipino and Hispanic parents were this massive movement of people is not unprecedented. trekking with their sick children through snow-filled During the past 500 years, Europeans began to inhabit streets to a small apartment complex in the fringe neigh- the rest of the world and nearly 10 million African slaves borhood of St.-Laurent, where they desperately were forced to migrate to the Americas; another 48 mil- beseeched an iconlike portrait of the Virgin Mary to lion people left Europe for the Americas and Australia cure them. Abderezak Mehdi, the Muslim manager of between 1800 and 1925. That is not to mention the tens the low-rise building, claimed to have discovered the Vir- of millions of people who have migrated across other gin’s image in the garbage. According to Mehdi and national boundaries, continental divides, and oceans Greek Melkite Catholic priest Michel Saydé, the Virgin during the past half-century. Migration is simply part shed tears of oil that could cure the ill and tormented. and parcel of human existence. And it has always Michel Parent, the chancellor of the Roman Catholic brought fruitful encounters as well as conflict. archdiocese of Montreal, cautioned skepticism, noting The transformative power of today’s migration is that “while it is true that nothing is impossible for God, easiest to see not in established “mélange cities” such as historically, that is not how God acts.” New York but in traditionally more insular communities This small and almost comically inclusive multi- such as Washington, D.C., and Montreal, which were cultural scene of healing, which unfolded in a dreary long divided by race, language, culture, religion, eth- neighborhood built at a time when Montreal was starkly nicity, or class. Once split along single fault lines between divided between speakers of French and of English, two core groups—whites and blacks in Washington, captures some of the positive aspects, as well as some of French-speakers and English-speakers in Montreal— the tensions, of a change that has occurred over the past these urban centers have become new mélange cities, three decades or so, as immigrants and their Canadian-

Blair A. Ruble is the director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute born children have grown to number more than a quar- and its Comparative Urban Studies Program. His most recent book, Creat- ter of the city’s population. ing Diversity Capital (2005), examines the impact of transnational migrants on Montreal, Washington, and Kyiv. Immigrants are not the only force for change. Mon-

56 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration

A mélange city moment: Tara Hecksher (center), the product of an Irish- Nigerian marriage, was queen of Montreal’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 2004. treal’s growth into a sprawling metropolitan region laced ontreal may be further along the road to true cul- by freeways that provide a new organizing structure of tural diversity than most North American cities, daily life has rendered many old cultural and geo- Mbut its experience is hardly unique. Metropoli- graphical boundaries meaningless. The Internet is like- tan Washington, D.C., another historically divided city, was wise no friend to the old order. But it is the newcomers, the United States’ fifth largest recipient of legal migrants dur- who have no stake in the city’s past divisions, who have ing the 1990s, and it is beginning to experience some of the had a singular impact on its political life. The once- same sort of change affecting Montreal. powerful Francophone sovereigntiste movement, which Twenty-first-century Washington is already dramatically long pressed for the secession of the entire province of different from the “Chocolate City, Vanilla Suburbs” days of Quebec from Canada, has lost momentum in consider- the 1970s. New arrivals from El Salvador and Ukraine, able measure because of opposition from immigrant Ethiopia and Vietnam, Brazil and India, and dozens of groups. Those groups were an essential component of other countries, as well as other areas of the United States, the very narrow majority that defeated the last referen- have fanned out across an expanding metropolitan region dum on Quebec sovereignty in 1995, 50.6 percent to 49.4 that extends from Frederick, Maryland, 50 miles to the percent. Pro-sovereignty politicians have since been west, to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and beyond to the looking for ways to court the immigrant vote. The com- east; from north of Baltimore more than 100 miles south to munally based populism that once dominated Mon- Fredericksburg, Virginia. The region as a whole is an incred- treal politics is giving way, slowly but surely, to a new ible polyglot blend. The neighborhoods in the inner-ring Vir- pragmatism more suited to a world in which commu- ginia suburb of South Arlington defined by zip code 22204, nities compete for investment and bond ratings. as well as zip code 20009 in the city’s trendy Adams Mor-

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 57 Immigration gan–Mt. Pleasant area, are each home to residents from stadium, most local observers were not prepared for the more than 130 different countries, according to a group of spectacle of a raging city council debate waged virtually with- Brookings Institution analysts led by Audrey Singer. Yet not out any reference to race. very many Americans or even Washingtonians appear In other new mélange cities, the story plays out in dif- aware that their capital has become a mélange city. ferent ways. The Latinization of Denver’s population and After Congress gave up its direct oversight of the capi- voter base has encouraged both political parties to reach out tal city and reinstated partial home rule in the 1970s, local to minority voters. Once-sleepy Charlotte, North Carolina, affairs quickly came to be dominated by the politics of race. has been transformed by, among other things, a 932 percent As children of the civil rights battles of the 1960s, many of increase in its Hispanic population between 1980 and Washington’s first elected officials appeared to view local pol- 2000. The country’s second-largest city, Los Angeles, elected itics as a new version of the nation’s great racial struggle, and Antonio Villaraigosa in 2005 as its first Hispanic mayor since it was a village of 6,000 people, back in 1872. Similar shifts are occur- NEW ARRIVALS FROM El Salvador, ring throughout the world. In the Ukrainian capital of Ukraine, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Brazil, India, Kyiv, immigrants from Viet- nam, China, Pakistan, and and many other countries have made the Middle East are blunting the force of a nationwide America’s capital a mélange city. population decline, and offi- cials are beginning to speak of migration as a long-term symbolic politics took precedence over pragmatic city man- answer to the country’s economic and demographic decline. agement. This civil rights regime began to fray as the city’s Even as seemingly homogenous a society as Japan financial and management problems grew, and by the time has felt the impact of immigration. Japan’s shrinking Mayor Marion Barry was arrested in 1990 on charges of population and economic uncertainty are helping to smoking crack cocaine, the dream of the city’s activist lead- drive companies to relocate factories abroad. Japan’s ership to transform D.C. into a showcase for their values and reputation for homogeneity is not unearned, and policies had been shattered. Congress essentially placed national policies do not encourage immigration, but the city in receivership by appointing a financial control local leaders in some cities have decided that the best way board in 1995. to keep their local economies healthy is to actively seek The collapse of local government prompted a new gen- out migrants from abroad. eration of neighborhood leaders to enter local politics, shift- Few cities anywhere in the world have been as aggres- ing attention to pragmatic concerns about city services and sive in pursing international migrants as Hamamatsu. A city neighborhood quality of life—a focus that began to allow of more than half a million located half way between Tokyo immigrants into the city’s political mix even as their presence and Osaka, Hamamatsu boasts major Honda, Yamaha, and became a subject of debate. During his 2002 reelection cam- Suzuki factories. Realizing that the city would lose its eco- paign, for example, Mayor Anthony Williams stirred con- nomic base without new residents, municipal officials began troversy by proposing that noncitizens should be allowed to to recruit workers from Japanese migrant communities in vote in local elections. Arriving in large numbers just at the Brazil and Peru. The officials assumed—rather naively, it moment of municipal regime shift, immigrants helped would seem to American eyes—that given their Japan- mold a new, broader political environment in which race ese heritage, the immigrants would easily fit into local yielded its preeminence to more pragmatic concerns. When neighborhoods and workplaces. In fact, the migrants the first major issue of the new era emerged in 2004 in the were descendants of Japanese who had left the home form of a controversy over the financing of a new baseball islands as much as a century before. They were Brazil-

58 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration

Ethnic Japanese immigrants returning after manyyears in South America have injected samba and other unexpected elements into the life of the home islands. ian and Peruvian more than they were Japanese. Other changes that cannot be measured neatly may be cre- As a result, Hamamatsu—like Montreal, Washington, ating opportunities for communities to escape dysfunc- and many other mélange cities—is no longer the commu- tional institutions and patterns of life. One unexpected nity it was. There are four Portuguese newspapers, four effect of the search by Hamamatsu and other Japanese Brazilian schools and a Peruvian school, Portuguese and cities for labor from abroad has been pressure from below Spanish community centers, and numerous samba night- on the traditionally hyper-centralized Japanese state to clubs. City hall now publishes local laws and regulations in cede some central control over immigration policy. several languages, and municipal leaders have learned to How should we weigh the negative and positive embrace Brazilian holidays as their own, often using them impacts of immigration? Is all change for the worse? as launching pads for local political campaigns. Heightened anxiety over international terrorism has cast suspicion on cities themselves as a social form and on migration as a social phenomenon. The impulse to with- ther cities in Japan have been changing as well. draw into a cocoon of homogeneity increasingly under- Osaka, long the home of Japan’s largest Korean mines the acceptance of difference. The experiences of Ocommunity, publishes city documents in nearly a mélange cities such as Montreal, Washington, and Hama- half-dozen languages. Sapporo and other communities on matsu show us another course. Voluntarily or not, such the island of Hokkaido post street signs in Russian. Tens of cities have come to represent lively alternatives to a 21st- thousands of city residents of all ages and races turn out for century metropolitan future in which everyone seeks pro- Kobe’s annual samba festival. tection from others unlike themselves. Despite the new Migrants, though still few in number, have brought sig- mélange cities’ obvious imperfections, their enormous nificant change to Japan. Some of that change is measura- intercultural vitality provides the basis for successful ble and lamentable, such as increasing income inequality, strategies for a 21st century in which people’s movement rising crime rates, and enervated traditional institutions. around the world remains a fact of human existence. ■

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 59 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

The New Pioneers

Rural America is hemorrhaging its native population, clearing the way for newcomers who see in its wide open spaces and plentiful menial jobs a land of opportunity. And small-town life is changing forever.

BY STEPHEN G. BLOOM

The insulated world of new york movers where I live, names like and shakers ends abruptly at the Hudson River. For Wash- Yoder, Snitker, Schroeder, ington power brokers, that border is just outside the belt- and Slabach are as common way. For California pop-culture machers, America ends at as Garcia, Lee, Romero, and the Golden State Freeway. What’s in between—roughly Chen are in big cities. 2,900 miles—is flyover country: jigsaw-puzzle pieces scat- Rural America has tered with thousands of dots that make news only when always been homogenous, as white as the milk the mil- rivers overflow, twisters spin out of control, or shy Iowa lions of Holstein cows here produce. Many towns are so seamstresses deliver septuplets. insular that farmers from another county are outsiders. Much of what our nation’s coastal elites might think Historically, at least after 1920, whether because it was characterizes small-town rural America is true: Friday fish too hard to get to, too uninviting, or too short on oppor- fries at the American Legion hall, shopping at Wal-Mart, tunity, few newcomers chose to knock on rural America’s Christmas crèches with live donkeys, camouflage-clad door. hunters stalking turkeys in the fall. You can tell who is driv- Until now. ing past just by the familiar sound of the vehicle. The rea- Four states—California, Texas, New York, and son everyone seems related is because, if you go back far Florida—get two-thirds of the nation’s immigrants. But for enough, many are, by either marriage or birth. In Iowa, many immigrants these states serve only as ports of entry; once inside the United States they move north, east, and Stephen G. Bloom is the author of Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heart- land America (2000). He teaches journalism at the University of Iowa. west, converging in rural America in waves of secondary

60 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration Photographs by Erica Bleeg Erica by Photographs

A few blocks of Lawler Street serve as the main thoroughfare in Postville, Iowa. The town’s population, now more than 2,300, has nearly doubled since it began attracting immigrants to fill hundreds of jobs at a reopened meatpacking plant.

migration. Other newcomers head directly inland, alto- reason: jobs. They are taking the places of the old who are gether bypassing coastal cities. However the immigrants dying, the young who are leaving, and the locals who get here, rural America, which makes up 75 percent of the refuse to take the low-paying, menial jobs that abound. In landmass of the United States, is up for grabs as tens of doing so, they are shaping rural America’s future. thousands of pioneers, almost all Hispanic, arrive each That future hinges on simple demographics. Iowa, in month. the heart of the heartland, is home to the highest per- While the countryside is changing fast, these new- centage of people over 85, the second-highest percentage comers arrive in a place where homes still sell for $40,000, over 75, and the third-highest percentage over 65. Iowa’s a serious crime is toilet-papering a high schooler’s front greatest export isn’t corn, soybeans, or pigs; it’s young yard, the only smog comes from a late-autumn bonfire, adults. Many born in rural Iowa towns grow up well edu- and getting stuck in traffic means being trapped behind cated, products of the state’s land-grant universities and a John Deere tractor on Main Street. But immigrants an abiding familial interest in education. (Iowa has more don’t flock here for the quality of life. They come for one high school diplomas per capita than any other state.) The

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 61 Immigration only state that loses a higher percentage of college- larly at many rural meatpacking houses, and the high educated youth is North Dakota. turnover results in a revolving work force of inexperi- At the University of Iowa, where I teach, 60 percent of enced employees prone to accidents. graduates each year choose to leave the state. With diplo- The journey to this jobs mecca is not without its own mas in hand, few want much to do with farming or living perils. Many Americans got a glimpse of those dangers in in a state where the nearest movie theater might be a 30- October 2002, when 11 smuggled Mexican immigrants mile drive and the first freestanding Starbucks store were found dead inside a sealed Union Pacific grain hop- opened just two years ago. From 1980 to 1990, all but per railcar in the Iowa meatpacking town of Denison, 130 seven of Iowa’s 99 counties lost population. School districts miles west of Des Moines, that had originated in the bor- consolidated or closed. If any state needed an influx of new der city of Matamoros, Mexico. Other popular Iowa des- residents, it was Iowa. tinations for slaughterhouse workers include Marshall- And that’s what it got, starting in the mid-1990s. town (home to one of the largest pork-processing plants Almost all the newcomers were Hispanic immigrants, in the world, with 1,600 production jobs), Postville (home some legal, most illegal. Between 1990 and 2000 Iowa’s to the world’s largest kosher slaughterhouse), Columbus population grew by 5.4 percent, to 2.9 million. Two-thirds Junction, Cherokee, Waterloo, West Liberty, Storm Lake, of that growth was due to immigrants, mostly Latinos and Sioux City, Sioux Center, Hartley, Tama, and Perry. Once immigrants arrive, securing work is relatively easy. Just showing up at the MIDWESTERN MEATPACKING plants employment window with a Social Security card, which provide easy employment opportunities for can be purchased for as lit- tle as $100, is usually all immigrants. Just showing up at the employ- that’s required. So many undocumented immigrants ment window with a Social Security card is have converged on rural slaughterhouses that, even usually all that’s required. if there were a mandate to enforce employment laws, the immigration authorities mostly from Mexico. By 2000, Iowa’s Hispanic population couldn’t begin to do so. The dirty secret in rural states had grown 153 percent. The 2000 census counted 82,500 about undocumented workers is that, politicians’ and Hispanics in Iowa, but many say today that there are industry leaders’ comments to the contrary, it is very upwards of 150,000 here. By 2030, half of Iowa’s popu- much in their best interest to keep things the way they are. lation of three million is expected to belong to minority Without undocumented workers, the U.S. meat- groups. By far the greatest number will be Hispanics processing industry would grind to a halt. working in low-level jobs. For more than a century, slaughterhouses were located Entry-level work for these newcomers is plentiful, in cities. Chicago rose to prominence because of its famed usually as kill-floor employees at slaughterhouses, where cattle-processing industry. The city’s Union Stock Yards workers don’t need to know a word of English. The only opened in 1865 and eventually grew to 475 acres of slaugh- requirements are a strong stomach and a strong back. It’s terhouses. Today, only one slaughterhouse remains in no wonder locals spurn dangerous work as knockers, Chicago. Industry leaders realized decades ago that it stickers, bleeders, tail rippers, flankers, gutters, sawers, and made more economic sense to bring meatpacking plants plate boners, toiling on what amounts to a “disassembly to corn-fed livestock than to truck livestock to far-off line.” Turnover in these grueling jobs often exceeds 100 slaughterhouses in expensive cities with strong unions. percent annually. Safety instruction is minimal, particu- Refrigeration allowed for processed meat to be trucked

62 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration

Phone and fax services for Hispanic immigrants eager to stay in touch with friends and family back home are among the offerings at El Vaquero, a store opened three years ago by Mexican-born Gustavo Moncado in Postville, Iowa.As he and son Luis mind the store, the television shows a World Cup match. without spoilage. At the same time, the industry became Today, 90 percent of all packinghouses employ more highly mechanized. Innovations such as air- and electric- than 400 workers. The meat and poultry we eat are powered knives made skilled butchers unnecessary. Larger processed in plants owned by large corporations such as plants in rural outposts became more profitable than Tyson Foods, Cargill Meat Solutions, Swift & Company, small urban slaughterhouses. and Smithfield Foods, located for the most part in Amer- Wages for union meat-production workers peaked in ica’s small towns. The rural states of Nebraska and Kansas 1980 at $19 an hour, not including benefits. Today at rank first and second in beef processing. The world’s many slaughterhouses, located in isolated pockets of largest turkey plant, Smithfield-owned Carolina Turkey, America, starting pay is often not much more than min- processes 80,000 turkeys a day and is located in the unin- imum wage, with few or no benefits. At Postville’s meat- corporated eastern North Carolina community of Mount packing plant, pay starts at $6.25 an hour. Health insur- Olive (population 3,957). ance is available to workers and their families at about $50 a week, but few can afford such a hefty deduction, and many immigrant workers aren’t familiar with the concept uch has been written about the proliferation of health insurance plans. Some don’t believe they’ll need of fast-food restaurants and Wal-Mart stores the coverage, some think there must be a catch to it, and Min the rural United States, where, if immi- some figure they’ll be fired or deported if injured. grants can procure documents, they often find work. But

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 63 Immigration little has been noted about another industry that increas- Iowa, for example, one-quarter of the slaughterhouse ingly serves as a job magnet for newcomers: legalized production employees, about 450, come from the casino gambling, with its insatiable appetite for low- Mexican town of Villachuato in the state of wage restaurant and service workers, laborers, maids, Michoacán. These workers, mostly men, travel fre- and janitors. Iowa, in particular, has become fixated on quently between Villachuato and Marshalltown, but casino gambling, which has led many to call the Hawk- few become permanent residents of Iowa. In a sense, eye State the “Nevada of the Midwest.” Since Iowa legal- they are commuters—working to earn money in Iowa, ized gambling on licensed excursion boats on the Mis- saving and sending it back home to Mexico, then sissippi River in 1989, no fewer than 17 casinos have returning to their families for months at a time. While opened in the state. Since its enactment, the law has been here, they live and work together, forming a tight-knit modified to allow gambling on licensed stationary river- Mexican enclave. boats, then in licensed casinos located on or adjacent to a body of water. Several casinos in Iowa today are miles from any river or lake, but are built on elaborate under- ostville, Iowa, has become a classic boomtown. ground bladder systems to comply with the law. And In 1986, Aaron Rubashkin, a Hasidic butcher more are on the way. Casinos opened in the rural towns Pfrom Brooklyn, New York, bought a defunct of Northwood and Emmetsburg this past spring, another slaughterhouse in Postville, installed his sons as man- is scheduled to open in rural Riverside in September, and agers, and soon started killing the rich, corn-fed Iowa a fourth will open next spring in Waterloo (population beef. The meatpacking plant, AgriProcessors, ulti- 66,767). The casino industry makes peculiarly efficient mately became the largest kosher slaughterhouse in use of the immigrant work force, targeting non-English- the world. As more and more Hasidim moved to town, speakers as both low-wage workers and gamblers, in a tiny Postville became home to the most rabbis per new spin on the old company store. Immigrant workers capita of any municipality outside Jerusalem (meat return much of their wages by gambling in the same casi- must be certified by a rabbi to be labeled kosher). nos that employ them. When all four new Iowa casinos Hasidic Jews belong to one of 40 or so ultra-Orthodox are in operation, they will employ as many as 2,000 sects; Rubashkin, his sons, and many who settled in low-income workers, and that doesn’t include those in Postville are members of one of the largest, Lubavitch. building trades needed to construct these gambling The kosher slaughterhouse in Postville operates six palaces. days a week, except for the Jewish Sabbath and holi- Once they arrive for such jobs, learning local Mid- days, and has a seemingly never-ending need to fill its western culture is nearly impossible for most outsiders. 800 jobs. As many as 90 percent of its workers are In Iowa, county fairs, Future Farmers of America, Hispanic. In 1990, the town’s population was stagnant regional dialect, knowing everyone and their parents, at 1,472. By 2000, Postville had grown 64 percent, to and foods such as seven-layer salad, Tater Tot casseroles, 2,273, and today its population is 2,352. Unofficial loose-meat sandwiches, Red Waldorf cake, and Lit’l estimates place the population closer to 2,600, about Smokies (the state’s ubiquitous appetizers) are elements one-quarter Hispanic. that bind natives together. Half of Iowa’s 952 incorpo- When I started reporting on Postville in the mid- rated towns have fewer than 500 residents, and two- 1990s, the kosher slaughterhouse owners flatly told thirds of the state’s towns have fewer than 1,000. The me they preferred to hire Eastern Europeans over typical Iowa high school has so few seniors that there is Hispanics. Most workers on the kill floor then were a tradition of ordering T-shirts printed with the name of neither Jews nor locals, but Russians, Ukrainians, each member of the graduating class. Kazakhs, Bosnians, and Poles. Many lived in trailer Some newly arrived immigrants do what they can courts on the outskirts of town or in small apartments to integrate with their rural neighbors and start the downtown that five or six men rented together. Some process of becoming Americanized; most, though, do would hang out at the Club 51 tavern on Lawler Street, not. There’s no need to try to fit in. In Marshalltown, which cashed workers’ paychecks. When I walked

64 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration into Club 51 one Friday evening, the cigarette smoke lords, Kermit Miller. A Pentecostal church is sched- was so dense that I couldn’t see from one end of the uled to be built within the complex in the next six bar to the other. Weary Russian and Ukrainian men, months. (About half of Postville’s Guatemalans are chatting in their native tongues, stopped in for quick Pentecostals, who for now meet in the basement of the shots of vodka. At Spice-N-Ice Liquors down the Presbyterian church for services.) block, there was an astonishing array of vodka for Many Hispanics gather at the two Mexican restau- sale: 24 brands and types from Russia, Denmark, rants in town, Sabor Latino and Red Rooster (which Sweden, and Finland. I felt I wasn’t in rural America serves Tex-Mex food). On Saturdays, when Agri- at all, but in a working-class Eastern European neigh- Processors shuts down, the coin-operated Laundro- borhood after the factory whistle had blown. mat in town, Family Laundry, is a busy place. There’s Today, Eastern Europeans by and large have also a new Mexican clothing store, El Vaquero (the stopped coming to Postville. The slaughterhouse jobs Cowboy), which sells sombreros, Mexican-style baby are too menial and the pay too low. Most of these clothes and dresses (particularly for baptisms and workers have begun the process of mainstreaming quinceañeras), shirts, and Mexican flags. Every night, into larger cities in the state—Des Moines, Cedar scores of Mexican men play soccer in an open field at Rapids, Dubuque. At Spice-N-Ice, the vodka has given the edge of town. way to Mexican beers and tequilas, but the store’s owner says most Mexi- cans he sees prefer Amer- ONCE THEY ARRIVE, learning local ican products such as Budweiser beer and Black Midwestern culture is nearly impossible Velvet whiskey. Like the Mexicans for most outsiders. from Villachuato who have emigrated to Mar- shalltown, many of the slaughterhouse workers in Attempts to Americanize Hispanic immigrants Postville come from a single Mexican village, in this generally begin in school programs designed to teach case El Barril, a town of 2,300 in the state of San English to children of workers who do bring their Luis Potosí, 300 miles north of Mexico City. Postville families. This approach has produced mixed results. also has become a destination for scores of In Postville, the influx of immigrants has spurred a Guatemalans, who, unlike Mexican workers, often white flight of Anglo students to outlying school dis- bring their families and show little intention of mov- tricts. Superintendent David Strudthoff doesn’t mince ing back to their native country. words when he says white parents who pull their chil- Like many onetime immigrant communities, from dren out of the school district are engaging in “ethnic New York’s Lower East Side to Los Angeles’ Boyle cleansing.” To prevent the student body’s ethnic Heights, the areas of Postville that once belonged to makeup from becoming more lopsided, Postville cre- locals, and later to Eastern Europeans, now have given ated a desegregation plan in 2003 that allows two way to Latino immigrants. Newcomers who don’t live Anglo students to transfer out of the district only if one in trailers or storefront apartments in town find their new immigrant student matriculates. way to a complex of newly built but already deterio- Immigration is a double-edged sword in small rating duplexes and apartment buildings north of towns such as Postville. This fall, the Postville Com- town. At least 225 workers—about a third Guate- munity School District will receive $5,141 per year malans and two-thirds Mexicans—live in the com- per Anglo student, which comes from property taxes plex. A sparsely furnished two-bedroom apartment and state education coffers. But for each immigrant rents for about $400 a month, says one of the land- student, the state will chip in an additional appropri-

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 65 Immigration ation that goes toward hiring teachers to provide Eng- brate Mass once a week in Spanish. lish-language instruction, bringing the total to $6,272. More than a few local parishioners retaliated by For Hasidic families in Postville who send their chil- taking their prayers 10 miles down Highway 18 to St. dren to the yeshiva in town, the school district will Patrick’s Church in Monona, where Mass is strictly an realize $3,084 per student. More than a third of the English-language affair. “A small group told me that 578 students currently enrolled in Postville’s public the migrants were stealing our Mass,” Father Oud- schools are immigrant children. The proportion of erkirk told me recently. “They said their ancestors immigrants is 14 percent in high school and 29 percent built the church, and because of that, they deserved all in middle school. In the town’s elementary school, it Masses to be in their language.” Another group of jumps to 55 percent. Anglo parishioners took a different tack, said Oud- In an era when rural schools are consolidating erkirk. “They said that if I continued with Mass in because of dwindling enrollments, Postville school num- Spanish, I’d be catering to the Hispanics, and they’d bers are strong. Since 1999 the district has received never move away.” Ouderkirk is now retired, but he grants of more than $2 million from government agen- returns to Postville to celebrate one Spanish Mass a week. Postville is still the kind of community where par- FIRST THE HASIDIM reopened the ents drop their kids off at the municipal pool on Wil- long-defunct slaughterhouse and made it son Street to swim all day long without worry. Every- hum, and now Hispanics have converged one’s phone number still starts with the same 864 on Postville to work there. prefix. But the insulated nature of the town is changing. Residents lock cies earmarked for a variety of purposes, but, says their doors now—both front and back. Crime isn’t ram- Strudthoff, all are based on the increased number of pant, but it’s more common than it was 10 years ago, immigrant children attending Postville schools. The lat- when on a summer night residents would leave their car est grant requires a dual-track language program. Start- engines running while they popped into Casey’s con- ing in the fall, all Postville kindergarten students will venience store on Tilden for a cherry ICEE. receive mandatory half-day immersion instruction in A large number of single Hispanic men in their both Spanish and English, and Spanish-language train- twenties live in Postville with little to do but work, ing will be required for all students in each subsequent sleep, and hang out. As in other meatpacking com- grade level through high school. munities, few have high school educations. They For the most part, rural American towns have belong to the demographic group with the highest always been self-contained extended families, with incidence of criminal activities, write rural anthro- just about every resident white and Christian. For pologists Michael J. Broadway and Donald D. Stull. many Iowans, shared faith is the litmus test for accept- Since 2000, there have been one murder and three ance. Since many Hispanic immigrants are Catholic, attempted murders involving Postville immigrants. religion is one area where relatively little assimilation Drugs are a reminder of the influx of newcomers. would appear necessary. Most natives in this part of Authorities suspect that the Mississippi River town of Iowa are Lutherans, but many towns have a Catholic Prairie Du Chien, 26 miles away, is a hub for drug traf- church as well. In part to attract this younger, emerg- ficking. In June, Postville police and the Clayton ing constituency, several years ago the priest at St. County sheriff’s office were instrumental in a bust in Bridget’s Church, Paul Ouderkirk, decided to cele- Rockford, Illinois, that yielded 625 pounds of mari-

66 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Immigration

Hasidic Jews are a common sight on the once-homogenous streets of Postville,which has become home to the most rabbis per capita outside of Jerusalem. A member of an ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish sect operates the world’s largest kosher slaughterhouse there, which has altered life in the tiny town. juana. Drunk-driving arrests in Postville went from immigrants for many of Iowa’s ills, employing some two in 1992 to 36 last year. Domestic trouble calls to fairly vitriolic rhetoric. “Thousands of Americans die at the police in 1992 totaled 32; last year there were the hands of illegal aliens every year,” one of King’s press triple that number. releases reads. “Every murder, every rape, every violent gang crime committed against Americans by illegal aliens is an utterly preventable crime.” King is riding a n every community, cultural norms are tested when crest of conservative anti-immigrant support in Iowa. A newcomers arrive. When five local high school boys bill now pending in the Iowa legislature would prevent Igather on a Postville street corner on a Saturday banks from awarding home mortgages to illegal immi- night and wave at a local girl driving her dad’s pickup, grants. The state supreme court ruled in 2005 that that’s OK. In fact, it’s what everyone expects. But when undocumented persons are not eligible for driver’s five Hispanic guys on a corner whistle at the same girl? licenses. The net impact is that many undocumented This can stretch community tolerance, leading to talk of workers drive illegally, with no insurance. Hispanic gangs, not to mention the endangered virgin- In Postville, some members of the city council appear ity of heartland daughters. frustrated by the indelible impact of newcomers. First Politicians have exploited such fears with varying the Hasidim came to town and reopened the long- degrees of success. Steve King, a Republican congress- defunct slaughterhouse and made it hum, and now His- man from the western quadrant of the state, blames panics have converged on Postville to work there. In

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 67 Immigration

May, the Postville Herald-Leader published this letter to able land and a longing for isolation. the editor, written by a council member: “Pioneers go places civilized people shun,” writes Iowa historian Michael J. Bell. “And they tend to go there, wher- A diversity of values is at the core of what some want ever ‘there’ is, because the one thing they can be sure of is to call racist or bigots or anti-Semite. One group that civilization is not there waiting to tell them how things wants to isolate itself, by dressing a little differently, ought to be done.” That’s why disciples of the Maharishi keeping their children out of our public schools and Mahesh Yogi incorporated a community in 2001 near wanting a different day for the Sabbath. They gener- Fairfield, Iowa, 200 miles south of Postville, and called it ally will not eat in other establishments. Another Vedic City, where more than 150 homes, topped with small group here sends money back to other foreign coun- gold-colored vessels, face east, and community-wide med- tries and brings with it a lack of respect for our laws itation sessions take place twice a day. It’s why more than and culture which contribute to unwed mothers, 125 families belonging to a cult called the Old Believers— trash in the streets, unpaid bills, drugs, forgery, and which in dress and custom attempts to mimic life in 17th- other crimes. We also have savvy employers that hire century Russia—settled in rural Erskine, Minnesota, in people at the lowest possible rates to obtain the great- 1998. And it’s why Mennonites have moved into the north- est value to their company, which in turn contributes central Iowa town of Riceville, buying up local businesses to overcrowded housing and increased use of public and starting their own school. services and lowers the standard of living. The common thread running through slaughterhouse boomtowns, casino outposts, and revivalist communities The following week, the newspaper published several is opportunity—whether rooted in economics or in faith. responses, including one signed by 13 community lead- The stories of these small towns are parables of change in ers, repudiating the letter. rural America, where unplanned and uncontrolled social In a community that awards a yard-of-the-month cer- experiments are taking place. This aging, long-neglected tificate, many locals are irritated by how messy they per- region is being defined anew by a pioneer mentality sus- ceive the newcomers—Hispanic and Hasidic—to be. tained by young blood and vitality. Power is seldom relin- Lawns are often not mowed and garbage sometimes is quished easily, and many of these rural towns are, or will strewn in front yards. Some immigrants don’t hang cur- be, battlegrounds for acrimonious power struggles. tains over their windows. Dilapidated cars are parked on People in rural America have gotten along just fine for some front lawns. Lowriders with the bass turned up rat- more than 150 years. But times have changed. The only way tle windows. Parties, often thrown by Hispanics, are so the natives of these insular communities will gain traction loud that the council last year authorized the purchase of as their own numbers continue to dwindle is to forge power a decibel reader so police could issue citations. alliances with newcomers. How successfully thousands of rural towns enfold newcomers into a workable social struc- ture foreshadows how the greater American society will be nless something wholly unexpected happens, able to incorporate larger and larger blocs of new Americans more and more immigrants will stream into who increasingly demand to be defined on their own terms. U rural America. Some will return home after a few Immigrants by nature are pioneers—as American as months and never come back; others will be itinerant Huck Finn, who reckoned he had “to light out for the workers, coming and going, in constant flux; many will stay Territory ahead of the rest.” That’s what immigrants do. and become part of the evolving social fabric of the rural A sense of purpose and adventure pushes them to seek United States. A separate group, already Americanized, will their futures in unfamiliar and distant places, while oth- not arrive directly from their homelands, but from crowded ers back home, perhaps more timid, choose to stay put. coastal cities, seeking middle-class opportunities—buying It is in getting to such faraway places, often in tiny rural up property and starting businesses. Other newcomers, like towns, and staking their claim, that these new pioneers the Hasidim in Postville, will be members of cohesive reli- are forever changing the rules of America—and of gious groups that move to rural America because of afford- becoming American. ■

68 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 In ESSENCE reviews of articles from periodicals and specialized journals here and abroad

Foreign Policy & Defense 69 // Politics & Government 72 // Economics, Labor & Business 74 // Society 77 Press & Media 79 // Religion & Philosophy 81 // Science & Technology 83 // Arts & Letters 86 // Other Nations 88

FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE were apparently built with compo- nents that should have deteriorated by now. Rogue states are fewer. Libya and Iraq are neutralized. The The Attack of the remaining such countries, North Korea, Iran, and Syria, are far away. Killer Unknown China may never be able to spend even half of what the United America must plan to defeat all of States does on defense. Right now it THE SOURCE: “You Never Know(ism)” by Benjamin H. Friedman and Harvey M. them. You Never Know. spends one-tenth. Sapolsky, in Breakthroughs, Spring 2006. Actually, argue the authors, Everyone involved in national today’s Americans are probably the security focuses on eliminating Chaos, enemies, disorder, most secure people in history. The threats rather than assessing the civil war, terrorism, attackers, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan do not likelihood of their occurrence. pirates are all out there, waiting to endanger the American homeland. While Friedman and Sapolsky don’t pounce on vulnerable Americans. Terrorists are a threat, but they kill see a deliberate effort to exaggerate Who and where? Well, You Never only a fraction of the number of peo- the peril, they say media coverage Know. ple who die each year from the flu. causes the public to develop an You Never Know is the enemy, exaggerated sense of danger. write Benjamin H. Friedman, a doc- You Never Know is You Never Knowism is a product toral student, and Harvey M. out there, waiting to of politics. In a democracy, govern- Sapolsky, a professor of public pol- ment expenses require justification. pounce on vulnerable icy and organization, respectively, at Threats justify budgets, so strategies Americans. MIT. You Never Know is all power- sell threats. This is not deliberate dis- ful. You Never Know can’t be honesty. It is organizational culture. beaten. No number of weapons is Their attacks since 2001 have been Uncertainty and ignorance are sufficient. No threat too preposter- conventional and local, and most of not sufficient grounds for precaution ous. No enemy too weak. No plot the terrorists do not live nearby. and costly defenses. Decisions too implausible. You Never Know. Predictions of terror attacks should weigh the probability of dan- Read the latest defense planning understate the complexities of mak- ger, the cost of its realization, and document, the Quadrennial Defense ing, transporting, and detonating the effectiveness and cost of counter- Review. The United States now biological and nuclear weapons. measures, the authors say. Skep- faces a hostile mix of terrorists, Worries about the theft of ready- ticism should be employed, rather national failures, civil insurgencies, made nukes are real but probably than endless dollars, to defend missiles, and bloated militaries. exaggerated. Most Soviet weapons against . . . You Never Know.

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 69 IN ESSENCE

FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE ment, fair distribution of wealth, ern Left reign dating to 1990. national sovereignty, and (to varying The populist Left, on the other Facing Latin Facts degrees) democracy. The modern hand, is a “peculiarly Latin American” Left, however, took its original inspi- phenomenon, whose ancestry THE SOURCE: “Latin America’s Left Turn” ration from the Bolshevik Revolution includes such storied figures as Juan by Jorge G. Castañeda, in Foreign Affairs, May–June 2006. and has had a historical experience Perón, who came to power in Argen- much like that of Europe’s socialist tina in the 1940s. The contemporary The peruvian presidential parties. It has acknowledged its own populist resurgence began in 1998 election that pitted Alan García past errors and those of its former with the election of Venezuelan presi- against Ollanta Humala this past role models, the Soviet Union and dent Hugo Chávez , who has since June highlighted two facts of life Cuba. It has a genuine commitment been joined by Néstor Kirchner in about Latin American politics. The to democracy, emphasizes social pol- Argentina, Tabaré Vázquez in Uru- region is thoroughly dominated by icy within “an orthodox market guay, and, recently, Evo Morales in the political Left, and the Left itself is framework,” and values good Bolivia. Populist leaders are waiting neatly divided into two competing relations with the United States and in the wings elsewhere, notably Mex- groups. The winner in Peru, García, other Western countries. In recent ico, where Andrés Manuel López represents the “modern” Left, while years, that has been a formula for Obrador has a good chance of win- Humala represents the resurgent success in Left-governed countries ning this year’s presidential election. “populist” tradition. The United such as Chile, where new president Although widely seen as champi- States, argues Jorge G. Castañeda, Michelle Bachelet continues a mod- ons of the working class, the populists former foreign minister of have “no real domestic Mexico, has no choice but agenda.” Stridently nation- to support one of Latin EXCERPT alistic, they are intent on America’s two Lefts. picking fights with Wash- The spread of democ- ington in order to whip up racy beginning in the Populism on the March popular support and on 1980s and the persistence playing to the crowds by of widespread poverty and Whereas a Bolivian populist directs his fire at nationalizing industries inequality virtually foreor- international energy companies, a British populist is such as oil and gas (which dained the Left’s rise. The more likely to target immigrants. The reason is that gives them control over vast market-oriented reforms developing countries need foreign capital to grow, revenues). Such economic and other policy changes and that is what globalization gives them. By policies as they have that began in the middle of contrast, developed economies need foreign labor— amount mostly to crony that decade failed to pro- ideally as productive as homegrown labor, but less capitalism, and their duce sufficient economic expensive. Sometimes, of course, the reality is a bit respect for democracy, growth. “The impoverished more complicated. But, for voters concerned about human rights, and the rule masses,” Castañeda says, their economic prospects—and for the politicians of law is tenuous at best. “vote for the types of poli- wooing them—globalization and its apparent foreign Washington’s best cies that, they hope, will beneficiaries provide a convenient scapegoat for a option is actively to support make them less poor.” The host of economic anxieties. The result is that, around the “right Left,” Castañeda collapse of the Soviet the world, populism is on the march. argues. That means signing Union helped by freeing a free-trade deal with Chile, leftist parties from charges —NIALL FERGUSON, a Harvard historian, and negotiating in earnest on of foreign control. SAMUEL A. JOHNSON, Ph.D candidate in Harvard’s trade with Brazil, and oth- Both Latin Lefts government department, in The New Republic (June 19, 2006) erwise helping responsible emphasize social improve- leftists deliver the goods to

70 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 IN ESSENCE

voters. The leaders of the “wrong months in the summer, unpredictable Left,” meanwhile, need to be Sailing through a floating ice can make the transit per- reminded of their countries’ commit- thawed Northwest ilous. According to the Arctic Climate ments to democracy and human Impact Assessment, years in the mak- Passage could be rights and of the imperative of contin- ing, summer commercial shipping as much as 40 percent uing to build an “international legal might be possible “within several order.” But Washington must “avoid faster than going by decades.” Prohibitive insurance costs the mistakes of the past,” even if that existing routes. now rule out most uses of the routes. means allowing Chávez, for example, Even so, the high probability of to acquire nuclear technology from phenomenon appears likely to make continued melting means that the Argentina, as long as international two routes—the Northwest Passage region can no longer be ignored as safeguards are in place. If it acts and the Northern Sea Route, claimed a potential theater of military oper- wisely, the United States could help as internal waters by, respectively, ations. The combination of dis- the region “finally find its bearings.” Canada and Russia—irresistible puted territorial claims, vast natu- paths for shippers. Such shortcuts ral resources, and the ever-present FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE would be about 40 percent faster requirements of homeland security than existing routes, and save even could well create a need for an Arc- The Northwest more time for the huge tankers too tic naval presence. Without plan- big to fit through the Panama Canal. ning, training, and ships, Hanna Passage at Last The oil and gas reserves says, “the Navy’s lack of preparation

THE SOURCE: “In the Dark and Out in the discovered under the Arctic have could leave the United States in the Cold” by Magda Hanna, in Proceedings, already made the area a leading eco- dark and out in the cold.” June 2006. nomic development center for Rus- Captain henry hudson trig- sia, and multinational companies FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE gered a mutiny among his sailors are continuing to explore in the nearly 400 years ago in the frigid bay Beaufort Sea off the coast of Alaska. The Crude Toll bearing his name when he tried to get As the world’s hunger for oil grows, THE SOURCE: “The First Law of Petropoli- them to spend a second summer the economic and transportation tics” by Thomas L. Friedman, in Foreign looking for a northern passage to the benefits of Arctic sea routes will Policy, May–June 2006. Orient. Now, scientists are saying that surely increase. The Russians within decades this fabled Arctic sea estimate that the volume of oil mov- The high price of oil is route between the Atlantic and Pacific ing through the region will increase certainly not pleasant for the average oceans may be open for routine use from one million to 100 million tons driver, whose fill-up has doubled in by commercial ships carrying oil and a year by 2015. price in less than four years. And it is other products. Magda Hanna, a U.S. Meanwhile, the Navy has cut Arc- clearly a burden for the American Navy lieutenant, warns that her serv- tic research funds and allowed its ves- economy. But you might think that it ice is unprepared and poorly sels to fall into such disrepair that it would be a boon to oil-exporting equipped to navigate in such an was forced to lease a Russian nations as once-cheap oil bobs environment. icebreaker to resupply a polar mission around the $70-a-barrel mark. Global warming appears to be last year. However, you would be thinking melting the icecaps at the top of the Writing in Proceedings, a publica- completely backward under the First globe with startling speed. Arctic ice tion of the nongovernmental U.S. Law of Petropolitics, posited by has retreated northward by three per- Naval Institute, Hanna notes that reg- author and New York Times cent a decade and thinned by 40 per- ular northern sea runs are hardly columnist Thomas L. Friedman. His cent in the past 20 years, according to likely to begin soon. While the passage First Law holds that the price of oil U.S. submarine surveys. The can be navigated during one or more and the pace of freedom always move

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in opposite directions in oil-rich foreign investment and a coup failed. to attain higher levels of education or “petrolist” states. “The higher the But as the price rose to $50, freedom to specialize in needed occupations— average global crude oil price rises, shrank, according to an analysis by pursuits that can produce a more the more free speech, free press, free the research organization Freedom articulate, economically independent and fair elections, an independent House. public that can keep the heat on an judiciary, the rule of law, and Or Nigeria. When oil was hover- authoritarian government. independent political parties are ing around $23 a barrel, there was a The tide of democracy and free eroded,” he writes. boom in independent newspapers. As markets that followed the collapse of A petrolist state is a country whose oil rose toward $30, local elections the Berlin Wall is now running into a economy rests on oil and has weak were postponed indefinitely. countercurrent of petro-authoritar- national institutions or an outright To explain the phenomenon, ianism, Friedman writes. This gives authoritarian government. Among Friedman draws on work by UCLA some of the worst regimes in the the examples are Azerbaijan, Iran, political scientist Michael L. Ross. world extra cash with which to cause Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi The oil bonanza relieves governments mischief. Arabia, and Venezuela. Friedman of the necessity of taxation that other- And all of these negative impacts tests his theory by comparing oil wise breeds popular demands for rep- could poison global politics. Cutting prices to citizen freedoms. resentation. It gives rulers plenty of oil consumption, he says, should not Take Venezuela. When oil was in cash for patronage, police, internal be the goal only of high-minded envi- the $10-to-$20-a-barrel range, the security, and other dangerous indul- ronmentalists. It is a national security country’s oil industry was reopened to gences. It reduces pressure on citizens imperative.

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT one hand, the idea of the United States as a nation built on the foun- dation of self-evident, rational, and universally applicable propositions What Kind of Nation? about human nature and human society; and, on the other hand, the the very notion that it exists as a idea of the United States as a very THE SOURCE: “The Founding of Nations” by Wilfred M. McClay, in First Things, unique historical moment. (For an unusual, historically specific and March 2006. example, see “Tom Paine’s Myth,” contingent entity, underwritten by a p. 80.) In this view, as McClay sum- long, intricately evolved, and very Today’s swirling debates over marizes it, the Founding was the particular legacy of English law, lan- fundamental issues such as work of “flawed, unheroic, and self- guage, and customs, Greco-Roman immigration, religion, and spread- interested white men [that] offers cultural antecedents, and Judeo- ing democracy abroad have sparked nothing to which we should grant Christian sacred texts and theologi- a fresh crisis of identity in the any abiding authority.” It sees the cal and moral teachings.” United States. Forced “to think Constitution as “a mere political In attacking the legitimacy of the more deeply and clearly about who deal meant to be superseded by Founders, historians attempt to and what we are,” writes historian other political deals.” erase the cultural side of the equa- Wilfred McClay, Americans have In attacking founding “myths,” tion, reducing American identity to looked instinctively to the past. historians are taking sides in the all creed and no culture. That would But what past will they find? For age-old tension between the respec- leave nothing, according to McClay, a century, historians and intellectu- tive roles of creed and culture in the but “abstract normative ideas about als have been busy hacking away at making of American national iden- freedom and democracy and self- the “myths” of the Founding and at tity. It’s a tension between “on the government that can flourish just as

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POLITICS & GOVERNMENT Partisan Fire

THE SOURCE: “Theory of Partisan Relativ- ity” by Alan Ehrenhalt, in Governing, March 2006.

The ferocious partisanship in Washington has not stopped at the Capitol Beltway. It has swept state legislatures across the country, creating the same sense of dismay and resentment as the conflicts in the nation’s capital do, and a lot of Americans are saying they aren’t going to take it any more. Last year, Oregon state senator Charlie Ringo, a Democrat from Beaverton, near Portland, got the Oregon Senate to pass legislation essentially eliminating political par- ties from state government. The Ore- Americans may tend to romanticize the Founders—as in The Apotheosis of Washington, which graces gon governor, the attorney general, the U.S.Capitol rotunda—but manyhistorians are eager to strip the Founding of all mythic dimensions. and all state officials and legislators would run on a ballot without party easily in any cultural and historical account of the ups and downs of the identification. Party caucuses and soil, including a multilingual, post- “feckless” Israelites, who continually party leadership would no longer be religious, or post-national one.” broke the laws of their covenant- needed. McClay, who teaches at the Uni- making God. No American under- In the end, the bill didn’t go any- versity of Tennessee, Chattanooga, is stood the value of the nation’s foun- where in the Oregon House, but its no partisan of a purely cultural view ding myths better than Abraham Senate passage by a 2–1 margin of American identity, and he thinks Lincoln, who summoned America suggested that Ringo was on to that American sentimentality about to fulfill its ideals by invoking the something that resonated with a the Founding needs occasional cor- “mystic chords of memory.” sizable number of politicians. Then rection, but debunking alone is not As Lincoln understood, Amer- he retired unexpectedly earlier this enough. Founding myths are not ica’s founding myth “does not year, saying, “The blind allegiance prettified fairy tales, as detractors depend on a belief in the moral to party is killing us.” think, but “a structure of meaning, a perfection of the Founders them- In neighboring Washington, manner of giving a manageable selves,” McClay writes. “We should state treasurer Mike Murphy tried shape to the cosmos.” And they are not try to edit out those stories’ to get the legislature to make his surprising in their moral complexity strange moral complexity, because own office nonpartisan. Murphy’s and capacity to instruct. Consider it is there for a reason. Indeed, it is proposal lost, as did an effort to the often hair-raising creation precisely our encounter with the make county sheriffs nonpartisan myths of antiquity, such as the story surprise of their strangeness that officials, but his ideas are alive and of Romulus and Remus, the foun- reminds us of how much we have kicking in Seattle and the state cap- ders of Rome, or the Scriptural yet to learn from them.” ital. In Colorado, two dozen first-

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term legislators have brief golden age of parti- started a bipartisan cau- san harmony between cus to allay growing pub- EXCERPT 1945 and 1965. But it was lic resentment of partisan achieved by what North- excess. Two California western University politi- legislators are seeking to McCarthy’s on the List cal scientist Jeffery A. create a citizens’ commis- Jenkins calls a “historical sion to reach the same History is full of leaders—Danton, Trotsky, aberration.” Much of the goal. Sentiment that par- Nkrumah—who seemed to arrange their own country, he said, was tisanship is out of hand is destruction as Raskolnikov arranged his own operating under a one- rife in Wisconsin and exposure in Crime and Punishment. . . . The anti- party system. Reformers Minnesota as well. leader type is the man (or woman) who has led and had a solution for this There is no question lost. He is that rare individual who can still evoke state of affairs. They that the past decade has grand memories even as he now sounds an called, not for less parti- brought a marked in- uncertain trumpet, stimulating a halfhearted and sanship, but more. crease in partisan un- foredoomed charge. Continually flirting with self- Ehrenhalt thinks that pleasantness almost destruction, he lives his private nightmares in public the epidemic of partisan- everywhere in the coun- places. While winning, he plans his defeat. He ship in the past decade try, according to Alan suddenly loses his will to prevail at precisely the has not been a good Ehrenhalt, executive edi- moment when one lightning-flash stroke would grant thing, but it’s unrealistic tor of Governing. But the all he might have willed. to banish it from legisla- sense that the phenome- tures altogether. He takes non is new and shocking, —ARNOLD BEICHMAN, research fellow at the Hoover his cue from George a departure from a previ- Institution and the author of Herman Wouk: The Novelist as Washington, who wrote ous golden age of civility Social Historian, in Policy Review (Feb.–March 2006) that partisanship is “a and goodwill, is wrong, fire not to be quenched. he writes. Nasty partisanship has and rotten heart” and urged loyal It demands a uniform vigilance to been around at least since Thomas Jeffersonians to “devoutly pray for prevent its bursting into a flame, Jefferson denounced Patrick his death.” lest, instead of warming, it should Henry as having “an avaricious Historically, there was indeed a consume.”

ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS needed substantial amounts of money—up to a third of the value of a home—to secure a mortgage. And what they got were, in effect, Race and Real Estate “balloon” mortgages; after five to seven years, buyers had to secure

THE SOURCE:“The Creation of Homeown- created the Federal Housing new loans or, in many cases, were ership: How New Deal Changes in Banking Administration (FHA). Even forced to sell their homes. Regulation Simultaneously Made Home- ownership Accessible to Whites and Out of though the nation was then in the The FHA revolutionized home Reach for Blacks” by Adam Gordon, in The grip of the Great Depression, the finance by extending guarantees to Yale Law Journal, Oct. 2005. number of housing starts soared, qualified buyers, allowing them to America’s modern love rising from 93,000 in 1933 to borrow from banks at low rates for affair with real estate probably 619,000 in 1941. increasingly longer terms with began in 1934, when Congress Before the FHA, Americans down payments of only 10 percent.

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equal terms with whites when buy- ing a home, but three decades of discrimination had already prevented many blacks from “becoming homeowners and build- ing assets.” Gordon argues that further remedies are needed. Among the options are stepped-up attacks on exclusionary zoning and “mobility grants” for blacks in the form of direct payments—in effect, repara- tions—or mortgage subsidies. The straightforward anti-discrimination steps taken so far fail “to adequately address . . . the past disparity in wealth building” and its conse- In 1942, this African-American family was able to move into a federally built home in Detroit, but discriminatory mortgage practices effectively shut them out of private housing open to whites. quences—the segregated, depressed neighborhoods “that the FHA But the revolution bypassed an made. If there was sufficient helped create.” important group: African Amer- demand among black home buyers, icans. Whites were given a genera- some scholars argue, private mort- ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS tion’s head start on accumulating gage insurers would have stepped in wealth through homeownership. to serve those excluded by the FHA. Is Property Today, the median white household Gordon believes he has the explana- has 10 times as much wealth as the tion for why this did not happen: Sacred? median black household. Because private lenders adopted the THE SOURCE: “Did Insecure Property Rights Slow Economic Development? Some The FHA, says Adam Gordon, a same flawed FHA lending model, Lessons From Economic History” by Naomi third-year law student and senior edi- their discriminatory criteria “effec- R. Lamoreaux, in The Journal of Policy tor at The Yale Law Journal, tively became binding law.” History, 2006: No. 1. established underwriting guidelines In November 1962, President One item stands atop the that were based on the racial makeup John F. Kennedy signed an list of reforms the World Bank and of a neighborhood. Areas with a executive order directing the FHA the International Monetary Fund greater proportion of whites, in the to make its loans available push on developing nations as part FHA model, were deemed to have regardless of “race, color, creed, or of what’s called the Washington stable, relatively high property values, national origin.” That order, and Consensus: better guarantees of while predominately black neighbor- later reforms, such as the Fair Hous- property rights. If the full force of hoods were assumed to have low val- ing Act of 1968, put blacks on nearly the law isn’t behind the principles ues. This loan-granting model that investors’ assets can’t be seized, severely limited access to FHA mort- Three decades of dis- that corporate accounting can’t be gages for black Americans. In 1960, tampered with, and that loans must criminatory lending nonwhites held only 2.5 percent of be repaid on time and in full, then practices prevented FHA-insured loans. people will be reluctant to risk their This story is well known to schol- many African Americans hard-earned cash in a country’s ars. What’s disputed is how much from building assets. economy. difference the FHA policies actually That logic seems incontestable,

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observes Naomi R. Lam- prospectors and others, oreaux, an economist and and creating the U.S. Geo- historian at the University EXCERPT logical Survey to map of California, Los Angeles, those lands. but it is contradicted by That brings Lamor- both history and the latest The Curse of Innovation eaux to the Beijing Con- doings on the Web. sensus, an alternative to A few years ago, for New products often require consumers to the Washington version example, an Oklahoma change their behavior. . . . Many products fail that calls for a more active man plunked down $750 because of a universal, but largely ignored, governmental role in eco- for a nine-room stone psychological bias: People irrationally overvalue ben- nomic development and house in a quaint seaside efits they currently possess relative to those they less preoccupation with village—quite a deal, don’t. The bias leads consumers to value the property rights. These will except that it was a virtual advantages of products they own more than the ben- emerge “endogenously” house that existed only in efits of new ones. It also leads executives to value over time, advocates say, the Internet fantasy game the benefits of innovations they’ve developed over as the beneficiaries of eco- Ultima Online. The buyer the advantages of incumbent products. nomic development had no property rights That leads to a clash in perspectives: Executives, become larger and more whatsoever. Yet such vir- who irrationally overvalue their innovations, must powerful, just as they did tual investments are predict the buying behavior of consumers, who in the United States. And becoming increasingly irrationally overvalue existing alternatives. The today’s globalized econ- common in online games. results are often disastrous. Consumers reject new omy adds another endoge- Wired magazine’s blog products that would make them better off, while nous influence, since recently reported that a executives are at a loss to anticipate failure. This developing-country gov- Miami man paid double-edge bias is the curse of innovation. ernments know that $100,000 for a virtual investors can easily go space station resort, from —JOHN T. GOURVILLE, author of Eager Sellers, elsewhere if they com- which he hopes to make Stony Buyers: Understanding the Psychology of New Prod- pletely trample property money. uct Adoption, in Harvard Business Review (June 2006) rights. Attracting those The real world offers investors in the first place its own counterevidence. In late- Screw’s majority shareholders. with more profitable opportunities, 19th-century America, investors American courts generally assumed Lamoreaux believes, ought to be poured millions into the country’s that majority owners always acted priority number one. rising corporations, even though in the best interests of the company. minority shareholders enjoyed scant Why did Americans (and others) ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS protection under the legal doctrines continue to invest in the new corpo- of the day. Corporate executives and rations? Because the profit opportu- A Queen’s Whims majority owners (often a handful of nities, despite the risks, were supe- THE SOURCE:“What’s in a Surname? The people) were largely free to manipu- rior to the alternatives. Lamoreaux Effects of Surname Initials on Academic late businesses to their own advan- points out that the federal Success” by Liran Einav and Leeat Yariv, in Journal of Economic Perspectives, Win- tage. In 1850, for example, the government had a great deal to do ter 2006. Rhode Island Supreme Court with creating those opportunities, stoutly upheld the New England through actions such as providing Economics is the queen of Screw Company’s sale of assets on the legal authority and the “financial the social sciences, and it owes favorable terms to another company fillip” to build the nation-spanning much of its success to its

largely controlled by New England railroads, opening public lands to hypothetical homo economicus, a CARDINAL password: Archive

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tireless soldier who has colonized affected by alphabeticism. The and Yariv guessed that alphabeti- other disciplines by seeming to advantage climbs to nearly a full cal discrimination wasn’t common point the way toward understand- one percent per letter in being in the past, and that’s exactly what ing the rational basis of human named a fellow of the prestigious they found: no alphabeticism as behavior. However, there has been Econometric Society. Being closer recently as 1990. What about an outbreak of irrationality in the to A may even get economists other fields in which authors are queen’s own court: alphabetical closer to the Nobel Prize. not listed in alphabetical order? discrimination. Of course, there’s a rational In one field they checked, psychol- According to Liran Einav and explanation for all this, and it ogy, there was no discrimination. Leeat Yariv, economists at appears to reside in an oddly Curiously, alphabeticism also Stanford and the California Insti- irrational tradition among disappears outside the top tute of Technology, respectively, academic economists: When they economics departments. That the awful truth is that professors publish multiauthor articles, the may be because lower-ranked at the nation’s top university eco- authors are listed in alphabetical departments put more emphasis nomics departments are more order. Not only do those closest “on vitae and publication counts, likely to have tenure if their last to A get the benefit of top billing, while top departments care more names begin with a letter toward they enjoy a monopoly of about visibility and impact.” the beginning of the alphabet. In attention in all subsequent cita- There are some obvious fixes the top 10 departments, every let- tions of the article, which give for this little bit of irrationality— ter that brings a professor closer only the first author’s name banning “et al.,” for example—but to A increases the chance of followed by “et al.” Yariv may not wait for the invisi- tenure by more than half a Because there’s been a steep ble hand to work its magic. She’s percent. increase in multiauthor econom- thinking of dropping the Y from Tenure isn’t the only privilege ics articles in recent years, Einav her last name.

SOCIETY ing a different time period, intro- ducing comparison groups, chang- ing the variables, and using other alternative analytical techniques. Does the Death The fundamental difficulty with all these studies is that executions Penalty Deter? occur so rarely in the United States, they write. Thus, the number of THE SOURCE: “The Uses and Abuses of several studies have shown that homicides the death penalty can Empirical Evidence in the Death Penalty killing convicted murderers does plausibly have caused or deterred Debate” by John J. Donohue and Justin Wolfers, in The Stanford Law Review, 58:3. deter future murders. After reana- cannot be reliably disentangled lyzing the data used in the most from the large year-to-year changes At the heart of the debate prominent of these studies, how- in the homicide rate caused by other about whether the United States ever, Yale law professor John J. factors. should retain capital punishment is Donohue and Wharton business One of the most often cited the question of whether it deters professor Justin Wolfers conclude capital punishment studies is by murder. Some argue that executing that none of them demonstrates a economist Isaac Ehrlich, who murderers may actually cause more clear deterrent effect. changed the American debate with murders by desensitizing society at Donohue and Wolfers tested the a 1975 analysis of national time- large to killing. But over the years, findings of original studies by cover- series data that led him to claim

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that each execution saved eight death penalty laws did not change. SOCIETY lives. The Supreme Court had Another problem with studies ruled three years earlier that exist- such as these two is that their con- Who Said It? ing death penalty statutes were clusions don’t hold up when unconstitutional, but a year after examined against comparison THE SOURCE: “The Quote Verifier” by Ralph Keyes, in The Antioch Review, Ehrlich released his study, the cases, say Donohue and Wolfers. Spring 2006. Court ended the death penalty Canada hasn’t executed anyone moratorium in Gregg v. Georgia. since 1962, though narrow death As mark twain never put it, Ehrlich’s results have been penalty statutes remained on the “Quotations are only as good as questioned over the years. Though books until 1998. Yet Canada’s the writers who invent them.” And his study covered the years 1935 to homicide rate has moved in “there’s the rub,” as William Shake- 1969, his conclusion that the death virtual lockstep with that of the speare did write (Hamlet 3.1.65), penalty is a deterrent relied heav- United States. And within the although who’s to say he didn’t ily on an upsurge in the homicide United States, homicide rates in cadge that line from someone else? rate after 1962, combined with a the six states that had no death Ralph Keyes, whose work as fall in the execution rate during penalty between 1960 and 2000 the author of such books as The the same period. A 1978 National moved in close concert with those Wit and Wisdom of Harry Academy of Sciences report of states that did have death Truman (1995) and The Wit and pointed out that this “simple pair- Wisdom of Oscar Wilde (1999) has ing” of more murders and fewer An oft-cited 1975 death made him a quote sleuth, says executions between 1963 and 1969 penalty study estimated there are many reasons why “accu- explained his results. For all of his that each execution rate ascription of quotations is sophisticated econometric analy- such a slippery slope of saved eight lives, but ses, Ehrlich did not fully take into scholarship.” Take Leo Durocher’s many researchers have account other influences on the famous saying, “Nice guys finish homicide rate. questioned that conclu- last.” What Durocher actually said In a 2004 study, Hashem Dezh- sion over the years. was “The nice guys are all over bakhsh and Joanna M. Shepherd there. In seventh place.” The more analyzed the same kind of data penalty statutes in effect during at familiar quote is, as Keyes writes, Ehrlich considered for the period least some portion of that period. “boiled down to its essence,” just 1960 to 2000 and suggested that Despite efforts to control for a like “blood, sweat, and tears” around 150 fewer homicides occur range of social and economic trends, sounds better than Winston per execution. But this study say Donohue and Wolfers, the stud- Churchill’s original: “blood, toil, included the same distorting mid- ies failed to capture some of the fac- tears, and sweat.” 1960s period. And Dezhbakhsh tors that influence homicide rates. At least those flawed sayings and Shepherd’s case was also Of the half-dozen or so studies that are associated with their origina- helped by the fact that homicide Donohue and Wolfers scrutinized, tors. Misattribution of quotes is rates were higher during the death none produced statistically signifi- just as common as misquotation, penalty moratorium in the mid- cant evidence of deterrence upon reports Keyes. On the eve of the 1970s than during the early or late re-examination. war in Iraq, for instance, the years of the decade. The obvious Noting the impact of such stud- familiar quote “No plan survives implication that lifting the death ies on public policy, the authors cau- contact with the enemy” was much penalty explains the difference, tion against rushing to change the bandied about by commentators. however, is contradicted by the law based on any study that hasn’t It was ascribed, variously, to fact that there was also an upsurge stood the test of time and rigorous Dwight Eisenhower, Napoleon, in murders in states where the scientific validation. and George Patton. Prussian field

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marshal Helmuth von Moltke “If it’s about honesty, Lincoln they quote: Vice President Jack (1848–1916) was the actual origi- most likely said it (or Washing- Garner compared his office to “a nator, though, like Durocher, von ton), about fame, Andy Warhol pitcher of warm piss,” but in the Moltke didn’t put the thought in (or Daniel Boorstin), about cour- newspapers it was sanitized to “a very pithy form. age, John Kennedy (or Ernest pitcher of warm spit.” And while President John F. Kennedy was Hemingway).” Parochialism also such misquotes might have had a serial misquoter. “All that is nec- plays a role. “Winning isn’t every- limited reach in former times, essary for the triumph of evil is thing, it’s the only thing,” said today the Internet does more to that good men do nothing,” he football coach Vince Lombardi (if abet misquotation than contain it, ringingly declared, (mis)citing you’re American) or soccer coach spreading each error like a “verbal Edmund Burke. It certainly Bill Shankly (if you’re British). virus.” sounds like something Burke “Golf is a good walk spoiled” is But there’s nothing new about might have said, and Kennedy’s “given to Mark Twain in the misquotation. The New York wit imprimatur has kept that fiction United States,” says Keyes, and to Dorothy Parker was so often cred- alive. (The true provenance of the “author Kurt Tucholsky in ited for things she didn’t actually quote is unknown.) Keyes says Germany.” say that the playwright George S. many misquotes follow patterns. Newspaper reporters routinely Kaufman once lamented, “Every- If it’s something saintly, then improve the grammar, diction, thing I’ve ever said will be attrib- Gandhi said it (or Mother Teresa). and, yes, the thoughts of those uted to Dorothy Parker.”

PRESS & MEDIA in the days after one was reported. Not guilty of influencing suicides, say the authors, were national televi- sion news, movies, and soap operas. Coverage That Kills Coverage in local newspapers and news shows accounted for virtually

THE SOURCE:“Are News Reports of Suicide Romer, Patrick E. Jamieson, and all of the increase. Contagious? A Stringent Test in Six U.S. Kathleen H. Jamieson, all Social scientists who have stud- Cities” by Daniel Romer, Patrick E. Jamieson, and Kathleen H. Jamieson, in researchers at the University of ied the phenomenon aren’t sure Journal of Communication, June 2006. Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public how to explain this “contagion Policy Center. They took a close effect.” Some troubled people may It’s often hard to say how statistical look at the experience identify with celebrities or others strongly the news media affect the in six cities over a four-month who kill themselves; some may behavior of individuals, but in one period, aiming to sort out the feel less inhibited when public instance the influence is sur- influence of everything from local attention is focused on what is prisingly clear: Media coverage of news broadcasts to soap operas normally a socially proscribed act. suicides encourages more people to and movies. The authors don’t suggest that the take their own lives. They found that media news media stop reporting A dozen studies point clearly in attention to suicides led to 21 suicides, but journalists could this direction, showing that front- additional deaths, or 2.5 percent “reduce the potential for suicidal page stories and those involving of all such deaths in the six cities. imitation by downplaying the celebrities are most likely to moti- The suicides occurred among the romantic or sensational aspect of vate others to take their own lives. youngest and oldest age groups. suicide deaths as well as the impli- Yet each of these earlier studies People in the 25-to-44 age group cation that suicide resolves prob- had limitations, note Daniel were less likely to commit suicide lems for the victim.”

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PRESS & MEDIA and their cultural center. But far was engineered by a cadre of from being reproduced “in every elites including Benjamin Rush, Tom Paine’s Myth colony and town,” as Lodge and Benjamin Franklin, and Samuel others have written, it was Adams who wanted to spread the THE SOURCE: “Disseminating Common reprinted in 14 towns in only pamphlet’s ideas without risking Sense: Thomas Paine and the Problem of the Early National Bestseller” by Trish Loughran, seven of the 13 colonies, and in their standing by attaching their in American Literature, March 2006. only one town south of Philadel- own names to it. Thomas paine’s political phia. The highly localized colonial So why has the myth of Com- pamphlet Common Sense (1776), economy and the difficulty of mon Sense as the colonies’ Da an impassioned argument for mass distribution, particularly of Vinci Code endured? None of the independence from Great Britain, luxuries such as printed matter, historians who wrote in the years has become a revered artifact of meant that pamphlets such as immediately after the Revolution America’s founding, often cited as Paine’s were seldom distributed mentions Common Sense as a evidence of a thriving early Amer- outside their area of origin. decisive factor in the decision to ican print culture that connected The reception and distribution separate from Britain. But later isolated towns and frontier of Common Sense, far from being historians, such as Lodge, adopted settlers. Common Sense was a grass-roots, spontaneous a new standard for writing his- widely reproduced in the colonies phenomenon, Loughran adds, tory, tending to rely on an accru- in the lead-up to the ing archive of official Declaration of Indepen- state papers, writes dence to become the EXCERPT Loughran. Early Ameri- nation’s first bestseller. can history came to be In an 1898 history, constructed around Henry Cabot Lodge said No Mortals, Please texts, exaggerating the that 120,000 copies of role of the written word. Paine’s pamphlet were In the late ’70s, when I was trying to figure out At the same time, the sold in three months. what to do with my life, I went to visit a family friend miraculous version of “This means that almost named Scott Newhall. Scott’s best known as the the story of Common every American able to man who edited The San Francisco Chronicle in the Sense’s rise served read,” wrote Lodge, “had 1950s and ’60s, but when I went to see him, he was certain political ends. read ‘Common Sense.’ ” running a small-town paper called The Newhall “The myth of the best- Or so goes the myth, Signal. After saying hello, I asked him what it took to seller thus enables that says Trish Loughran, an be a journalist. He looked at me for a minute and most democratic of fic- assistant English profes- then asked if I was the Messiah. tions—the belief that all sor at the University of “What?” I said, somewhat perplexed. the people were (or Illinois, Urbana-Cham- “Are you the Messiah or not?” could be) equally pres- paign. In fact, Paine “OK, fine, you caught me,” I said after a long ent at the scene of their himself produced the pause. subjection, all inter- often-repeated estimate “That’s a good sign,” he said. “Because nobody ested and invested read- of 120,000, apparently ever made it in journalism without thinking he was ers in a common culture based on little more than the Messiah.” of consent,” writes his own self-interested Loughran. That concep- speculation. Common —JOHN NIELSEN, an environmental tion of the United States Sense was indeed a sen- correspondent for National Public Radio, as a unified “We, the sation in Philadelphia, on the Mixed Signals blog at NPR.org (June 6, 2006) people” remains a pillar the colonies’ biggest city of America’s identity.

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RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY spiritual cleansing or personal rebirth for the activist,” says Mack- lin. Mosley himself said after the war, “We have not lost, we’ve gained, we’ve won.” The fascist The Fascist Faithful leader compared his own captivity with that of Adolf Hitler in 1923—a

THE SOURCE: “ ‘Hail Mosley and F– ’Em tive vision of self-sacrifice and of mar- cathartic purification along the All’: Martyrdom, Transcendence, and the tyrdom to achieve a national and path to ultimate victory. (Hitler ‘Myth’ of Internment” by Graham D. Mack- lin, in Totalitarian Movements and racial rebirth—both drawing heavily himself, a guest at Mosley’s 1936 Political Religions, March 2006. upon the metaphors, mysticism, and wedding, said during the war that symbolism of Christianity.” the British fascists might still help In november 1945, a crowd At one internment camp, turn the tide in his favor.) of nearly a thousand hysterically Mosley’s followers were allowed to When Mosley went on after cheering supporters greeted Sir hold a dinner celebrating the 1945 to found a new political party Oswald Mosley at London’s Royal anniversary of the founding of their with the unlikely goal of European Hotel. What made the event party. When a toast was proposed, unification, many followers fell in remarkable was that Mosley was one of them wrote later, a life-size step. He ran for Parliament twice Britain’s leading fascist, and that he portrait of the Leader was unveiled. after being released, and six years had just emerged from five years of “The whole audience . . . burst forth after his death a group of his old wartime detention. Amazingly, his with as passionate a cry of saluta- acolytes started marking his birth- political career was not over. tion—Hail Mosley!—as I have ever day every year. Mosley (1896–1980) formed the heard.” As the British writer Rebecca British Union of Fascists in 1932 and “Ideological re-dedication was West put it, “Only death cures such was interned by the British govern- often accompanied by ...a sense of obstinacy.” ment along with more than 800 other party activists in the spring of 1940, as British troops faced Hitler’s onslaught on the Continent. The long internment deprived the party of what little mass following it had and broke the spirit of many detained activists, writes Graham D. Macklin, a visiting honorary fellow at the University of Southampton’s Parkes Institute for the Study of Jew- ish/Non-Jewish Relations, but it proved a crucible for others. It’s a story “not without contemporary rel- evance” to the case of today’s interned Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects. From the start, Mosley’s movement was as much religious as it was political. “The Leader,” as he was Fascist leader Oswald Mosley is saluted by his followers at a London gathering in the early 1950s,when called, held out a “powerful redemp- his Union Movement claimed hundreds of adherents.Mosley twice ran for Parliament after World War II.

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RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY north and west across America. Evi- lon while simultaneously proclaiming dence of its effect can be seen in the it God’s chosen nation. Their histori- Divine Politics breakthrough success of Billy cal experience kept America’s funda- Graham’s 1949 Los Angeles crusade, mentalists from following in the path THE SOURCE: “The Sword of the Lord: How ‘Otherworldly’ Fundamentalism Became a in the grass-roots support for Barry of other militant religious groups, Political Power” by George Marsden, in Books Goldwater’s 1964 presidential cam- such as Islamists. The Baptist tradi- & Culture, March–April 2006. paign, and in the successful Califor- tion from which most American fun- So pervasive is the in- nia gubernatorial run of Ronald Rea- damentalism springs has always fluence of the Religious Right on gan in 1966. “From that time on,” stressed separation of church and contemporary American politics writes Marsden, “it would be difficult state. And in America’s revolutionary that it is sometimes hard to remem- to find an aspect of renewed religious period, Protestants were closely allied ber that the deep involvement of and cultural militancy of the emerg- with the national cause, unlike the evangelical Protestants in politics ing Religious Right that did not have status quo religious groups of Europe, dates only to the 1970s. Earlier in a major southern component.” for example. Thus, while American the 20th century, a few prominent Something still held back the fun- fundamentalists are not especially preachers campaigned against alco- damentalists’ political tide, however. more pacific than their Islamic coun- hol or communism, but as a group, In 1965, a young Jerry Falwell deliv- terparts, because of their unique his- evangelists were largely inert politi- ered a sermon titled “Ministers and torical experience they are perfectly cally. Mainline Protestants criticized Marchers” in response to growing comfortable with exhorting their them endlessly for their inward- calls to respond to antiwar demon- nation to act as “an agency used by looking emphasis on conversion and strations: Evangelical Christians must God in literal warfare against the the private practice of faith. “preach the Word,” Falwell exhorted, forces of evil.” It’s a slippery, According to George Marsden, a not “reform the externals.” It was not complicated path, and Marsden ends historian at the University of Notre until the late 1960s and early ’70s, with a reminder that the Bible is filled Dame and author of Fundamental- says Marsden, that “changes in stan- with cautionary stories about mixing ism and American Culture (2nd ed., dards for public decency, aggressive political power and influence with 2005), it was the South’s gradual second-wave feminism, gay activism, “unambiguous moral obligations.” integration into the American main- and challenges to conventional family stream that propelled fundamental- structures” spurred evangelicals to RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY ists into public life. Until the mid- greater political engagement. (Evan- 20th century, the fundamentalism gelical opinion on abortion, he notes, Ungodless Nation preached by Southern Baptists and remained divided until the late other evangelicals fit snugly into a 1970s.) Perhaps inspired by the cru- THE SOURCE:“Atheists as ‘Other’: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in “custodial” role in insular Southern sade of Phyllis Schlafly (a Catholic) American Society” by Penny Edgell, Joseph culture, allowing them to ride herd against the Equal Rights Amendment Gerteis, and Douglas Hartmann, in Ameri- can Sociological Review (April 2006). on public morality. The turmoil of during the early 1970s, and disil- the civil rights era all but guaranteed lusioned by “born again” President In an era of increasing that any evangelical forays onto the Jimmy Carter, whom they had sup- religious tolerance, only one group national political scene would be ported, fundamentalists finally flexed of Americans approaches some- tainted by charges of racism, but their political muscle in 1979 with the thing like pariah status: atheists. other developments were already founding of Falwell’s Moral Majority. In a survey of more than 2,000 pushing believers from their provin- As fundamentalists asserted people, nearly 40 percent said that cial cocoon. Marsden cites a massive themselves, it was precisely their atheists, much more so than migration that occurred from the character as moralizing “outsiders,” Muslims and homosexuals, did not 1930s through the ’50s, when white says Marsden, that allowed them to agree “at all” with their vision of Southerners carried their values rail against America as the new Baby- American society, report Penny

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Edgell, Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas and people without college degrees. identify, since there are no visible Hartmann, all sociologists at the Not surprisingly, the lowest rate of signs of nonbelief. University of Minnesota. Just under rejection of atheists is among those The attitude toward these half of those polled said that they who do not go to church or claim a godless few is telling, write the would disapprove if one of their religious identity, and who report authors. “If we are correct, then the children wanted to marry an athe- that religion is “not at all” salient to boundary between the religious and ist. A third said they would them. Yet even 17 percent of these the nonreligious is not about disapprove of a Muslim spouse. survey respondents say that atheists religious affiliation per se. It is about Churchgoers, conservative do not at all share their vision of the historic place of religion in Protestants, and people who say America, and one-tenth indicate American civic culture and the that religion is highly salient to their that they would disapprove of their understanding that religion lives are less likely to approve of child marrying an atheist. provides the ‘habits of the heart’ intermarriage with nonbelievers It may come as a surprise that that form the basis of the good soci- and more likely to say that atheists nonbelievers are actually hard to ety. It is about an understanding do not share their vision of Ameri- find. Only about one percent of that Americans share something can society. White Americans, Americans self-identify as atheists, more than rules and procedures, but males, and college graduates are though the real number may be up rather that our understandings of somewhat more accepting of athe- to three percent. And the members right and wrong and good ists than are nonwhites, females, of this small band would be hard to citizenship are also shared.”

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY CERT, an independent Internet security organization based at Carnegie Mellon University, graphi- cally illustrates. In 1988, it began How to Save the Internet documenting the number of virus and worm attacks on Internet

THE SOURCE: “The Generative Internet” measures that would fundamentally systems, and it was easy work until by Jonathan L. Zittrain, in Harvard Law change the nature of the Internet. the late 1990s. In 2004, however, , May 2006. Review Some corporations and regulators CERT announced that it was giving For almost as long as there would be glad to satisfy this up: Attacks had quadrupled in just has been an Internet, enthusiasts demand. a few years. have worried that it would be ruined The key to the Internet’s Zittrain sees several possible by the intrusion of commerce. Now, enormous “generativity” has been routes to a more secure but less that nightmare is closer than ever to unimpeded access of one end user “generative” Internet that might being realized. It’s not corporate to another, writes Zittrain, allowing tempt consumers. For instance, the ogres or bloodsucking regulators that “upstart innovators to demonstrate personal computer could morph pose the chief danger, according to and deploy their genius to large into an “information appliance,” Jonathan L. Zittrain, a professor of audiences.” Virtually every innova- running only programs loaded by its Internet governance and regulation tion, from Amazon.com to Wiki- manufacturer. That’s not far- at Oxford University. It’s us. pedia, MySpace, and Skype, has fetched. TiVo video recorders, Xbox Today’s rapidly proliferating depended on the creators’ ability to game consoles, and Web-enabled threats to Internet security have the send executable code as well as data smartphones are among the devices potential to provoke a backlash to the user’s personal computer. But that already fit this description. among computer users, creating that accessibility also opens the door The recent spread of automatic consumer demand for protective to danger, as the experience of software updating via the Internet

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could allow, say, the providers of SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ries are held to overall federal operating systems such as Windows standards of proficiency, but the gov- to block users’ access to material on Anything Goes ernment has created no specific stan- the Internet that somebody deems dards for genetic tests. inappropriate. That somebody THE SOURCE: “Federal Neglect: Regula- Genetic tests fall into two broad tion of Genetic Testing” by Gail H. Javitt could be the software maker itself, and Kathy Hudson, in Issues in Science categories, “test kits” and “home seeking to “protect” consumers; it and Technology, Spring 2006. brews.” Test kits contain all the neces- could be a government regulator; or Suppose you’re a pregnant sary elements—such as reagents, as it could be a company filing suit to woman, and you read an adver- well as instructions for conducting require the software maker to block tisement touting a genetic test that and interpreting the test so that a lab- consumers’ access to such things as can predict whether your unborn oratory can perform a particular online music files or to disable soft- child might develop cystic fibrosis. genetic test. The Food and Drug ware already on an individual’s Even though you know there are all Administration (FDA) regulates test machine that enables that person, kinds of potential threats to your kits as medical devices, but so far only for example, to copy DVDs. child, you keep picturing that smiling four have been approved. Most A third possibility is that com- woman holding her baby: Wouldn’t it genetic tests fall into the largely puter users could embrace “the digital be better to be certain? unregulated “home brew” category, so equivalent of gated communities”— As Gail H. Javitt and Kathy Hud- called because laboratories concoct closed systems that drastically restrict son point out, such a test may not their own chemical combinations and communication with outside guarantee any clear answers. Javitt, a procedures. (The FDA does regulate computers, somewhat like the old the reagents used in such tests.) No CompuServe system. pre- or postmarket assessment is Even if a genetic test is Ironically, Zittrain sees this last done by either the FDA or the U.S. accurate, there are scenario as the likeliest outcome if the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid most zealous defenders of the old questions about how Services of the effectiveness of home Internet-as-free-for-all approach to interpret the results. brew tests. have their way and virtually no action Even if a test is accurate, there is taken to respond to the rising policy analyst at Johns Hopkins Uni- are questions about how to interpret threats to online security. Those who versity’s Genetics and Public Policy the results. Does the presence of a truly want to preserve the Internet’s Center and a researcher at the univer- particular gene, for example, really creative life must accept some com- sity’s Berman Bioethics Institute, and mean the individual is prone to a promise, he argues. Among Zittrain’s Hudson, who directs the center and is certain disease? What is the risk? suggestions: a new nonprofit institu- a professor at the institute, report that There is “virtually no oversight” of tion that would identify and label all the federal government “exercises such questions of “clinical validity.” the pieces of code zooming around only limited oversight of the analytic That is a special source of concern in the Internet and automatically supply validity of genetic tests.” That the case of genetic tests marketed that information online to users every oversight only covers a small portion directly to consumers, often over the time they encountered new code of the tests currently available to Internet. Only a handful of such on the Internet. What has to be patients that screen for more than tests are currently available—for sus- avoided above all is the creation of 900 genetic diseases. For most of the ceptibility to depression or “centralized gatekeepers” and the tests—which can influence such criti- osteoporosis, for example—but the “lockdown” of personal computers. cal decisions as whether to undergo number is certain to grow. Otherwise, we face the prospect of an prophylactic mastectomy or termin- Consumers are easy prey for mis- Internet “sadly hobbled, bearing little ate a pregnancy—the only vouchsafe leading advertisements, and they resemblance to the one that most of of accuracy comes from the laborato- “lack the requisite knowledge to the world enjoys today.” ries that perform them. The laborato- make appropriate decisions about

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whether to get tested or how to inter- gloom about what could be accom- first laid eyes on them.” The pret test results,” Javitt and Hudson plished in the future by ignoring the reductions cost only $200 per ton argue. While some state great gains America had already of emissions cut, not the $2,000 governments have attempted to step made in reducing pollution. At the originally projected. in where the federal agencies fear to time, he was somewhat skeptical of The lesson: “Create a profit tread, “as of 2001, more than half of claims about human-caused global incentive for greenhouse gas reduc- the states permitted [direct-to-con- warming, but no longer. The ques- tion, and human ingenuity will rap- sumer] testing for at least some types tion now is what to do about it. idly be applied to the problem.” of tests.” The Federal Trade Commis- Critics of the Kyoto Protocol, rat- That means eschewing detailed sion has so far done nothing to curb ified by more than 160 countries but government regulation and creat- genetic testing ads. not the United States, are right, ing “a market-based system of auc- Javitt and Hudson believe that the Easterbrook says. Even if the treaty tioned or traded greenhouse gas FDA and other government agencies were perfectly enforced, “atmos- permits.” Major emitters of gases already have the means and authority pheric concentrations of greenhouse such as carbon dioxide would be to review genetic testing but lack a gases in 2050 would be only about issued permits allowing them to clear mandate to do so. New legisla- one percent less than without the release certain quantities of the tion that clarifies oversight authority, treaty.” (The Bush administration’s gases. If they produced less, they they conclude, is needed to ensure the unsung multinational methane would be entitled to sell leftover “quality of all genetic tests and the reduction pact of 2003, Easter- permits to producers who emitted safety of consumers.” brook adds, “may do more to slow more than their quota. Everybody global warming than perfect com- would have a strong financial SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY pliance with the Kyoto treaty.”) And incentive to reduce emissions. perfect compliance is a pipe dream: That would speed the adoption Turning Down “Most nations that have ratified the of new technologies, from the Kyoto treaty are merrily ignoring it.” familiar wind and solar power the Heat Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions alternatives to the less known. are 24 percent above the Kyoto- General Electric, for example, has THE SOURCE:“Case Closed: The Debate About Global Warming Is Over” by Gregg mandated level, for instance. developed coal-fired power plants Easterbrook, in Issues in Governance Easterbrook’s optimism comes that emit no greenhouse gases. Studies (June 2006). from U.S. experience in reducing More important, such incentives The global warming debate ordinary air pollution during the would unleash the human power is gridlocked in part because the past 30 years. “Today, any make of invention, with results we can’t problem seems almost too big and or model new car purchased in even imagine now. costly to solve. That’s foolish, argues the United States emits about one What about the developing Gregg Easterbrook: “Greenhouse percent the amount of smog- world, with its soaring output of gases are an air pollution problem, forming compounds per mile as a greenhouse gases? In a global and all air pollution problems of the car of 1970, and the cost of the system that gave credits for cutting past have cost significantly less to fix anti-smog technology is less than emissions in places such as China, than projected, while declining $100 per vehicle.” Remember where old and antiquated technolo- faster than expected.” acid rain? After Congress enacted gies could be quickly updated, the Easterbrook, a visiting fellow at an emissions permit trading plan gains could be huge. the Brookings Institution, detailed in 1991, the output of harmful The United States led the world that history in his 1995 book A sulfur compounds dropped by in finding ways to tame smog and Moment on the Earth. He also criti- more than a third, and “Appal- acid rain, Easterbrook declares, cized environmentalists (with whom achian forests are currently in “and we should be first to overcome he was sympathetic) for inducing their best health since Europeans global warming.”

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ARTS & LETTERS performers, historians, and frequently the choreographers themselves,” writes West. In the case of traditional dances such as Leading the Dance Cambodia’s, the only archive may be the dance performers. within an inch of killing off the Modern dances are also subject to THE SOURCE: “Dancers as Living dance,” writes Martha Ullman West, a erosion or distortion. Financial and Archives” by Martha Ullman West, in The Chronicle Review, April 7, 2006. Portland, Oregon, dance writer. managerial difficulties crippled Dances can be preserved Martha Graham’s dance company In the khmer rouge’s deci- through film, video, various after her death in 1991. Lacking conti- mation of Cambodia’s educated notations, the visual arts, and, nuity in artistic direction from classes in the mid-1970s, 90 percent sometimes, by written accounts. dancers who personally worked with of classical Cambodian dancers were But there is no more satisfactory Graham, the company’s perform- killed. With each death went a reposi- method of transmitting the intrica- ances faltered, though a recent tour tory of more than 4,500 gestures and cies of movement than from dancer shows evidence that it has righted positions, the vocabulary of move- to dancer. “Long after they leave the itself somewhat. “Without Graham’s ments that comprise classical Cambo- stage, in their minds and muscles dancers, works that are as much dian dance, an offshoot of India’s they hold the memory of form, America’s national treasure as Khmer Bharata Natyam. “By killing off the rhythm, mood, and intent, consti- dances are Cambodia’s were nearly dancers, the Khmer Rouge came tuting an irreplaceable resource for relegated to some wobbly films—and

A young dancer at the School of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, learns classical dance from a survivor of the Khmer Rouge cultural purges.

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very few of those,” writes West. ARTS & LETTERS place as “the first god of realism Even those dances that are after Caravaggio.” recorded on film may not be Rembrandt’s Yet a misunderstanding of adequately preserved. Avant-garde Rembrandt’s realism has been choreographer Yvonne Rainer com- Theatrical one of the pitfalls of the effort by plained of the camera’s fixed position Realism the Rembrandt Research Project and its tendency to foreshorten when and others to eliminate work she assessed a film of her own THE SOURCE: “The God of Realism” by falsely attributed to Rembrandt performance of her piece Trio A. The Robert Hughes, in The New York Review from his canon. One art historian film “reveals someone who can’t of Books (April 6, 2006). discredited a putative Rem- straighten her legs, can’t plié ‘prop- brandt called David Playing the erly’ and can’t achieve the ‘original’ The works of some great Harp Before Saul (1650–55), on elongation and vigor in her jumps, artists inspire admiration and the grounds it was “too theat- arabesques. . . and shifts of weight,” awe, but fail to connect at the gut rical.” Says Hughes: “Theatrical- she wrote. Rainer’s work has been level with the viewer. Not so the ity doesn’t disprove Rembrandt; notated and she has taught it to paintings of Rembrandt van Rijn it is one of the things that makes “authorized transmitters.” (1606–69), observes art critic him a great Baroque artist, as But some dances simply can’t Robert Hughes. In an age domi- well as a great realist.” endure unchanged. Many of the nated by grand paintings and The task of authenticating nuances of Russian-American chore- ennobled human subjects, Rem- Rembrandt’s work is vastly com- ographer George Balanchine’s signa- brandt never used “the human plicated by the milieu in which ture 1946 ballet The Four Tempera- form as a means of escape from he painted. Hardly a reclusive ments are lost, even in current the disorder and episodic ugli- genius, Rembrandt surrounded performances by the company he ness of the real world.” He im- himself with students and assis- founded, the New York City Ballet. bued his subjects with enough tants who learned to emulate his Dance historian Nancy Reynolds has flaws and “ordinariness” to earn a style. Hughes lists among the filmed various aging characteristics of Rem- dancers who worked with brandt’s work the hon- Balanchine as they coached EXCERPT est, even vulgar, details younger dancers on the of commonplace life, the finer points of the per- ability to depict “unvar- formance. It remains to be Room for Improvement nished, unedited pain,” seen whether this project as in his gory The Blind- can preserve the spirit of Poetry writing is more humane than life. It’s full ing of Samson (1636), the dance. of second chances. Your sentence, so to speak, can and a skill as “the As for Cambodia’s clas- always be revised. You can fix the inappropriate, supreme depicter of sical dancers, a few did sur- adjust every carelessness, improve what you felt. inwardness, of human vive. Many of them went to How perfect for someone like me: unabashed thought,” even in the United States and avoidance one afternoon, a little excess in the allegorical figures. Europe, with the memory evening, a few corrections in the morning. The Touches of humanity’s of the dance embedded in various ways I’ve embarrassed myself, crumpled up, imperfection, to their muscles and their in the wastebasket, never to be seen. Hughes, serve to drama- minds. Otherwise it would tize the subject matter. have been lost, for, as one —STEPHEN DUNN, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, In The Return of the survivor said, “the dancers in The Georgia Review (Winter 2006) Prodigal Son (c. 1668) were the documents.” the boy has lost a shoe

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in the rush to embrace his father; Rembrandt without The Polish painter Apelles, who, upon visit- his bare foot is at once humanly Rider,” writes Hughes, “is rather ing the studio of a fellow master vulnerable and a “none-too-sub- like trying to imagine Wagner painter and finding him absent, liminal image of the stripping of without Parsifal.” drew a perfect freehand circle the spirit.” Rembrandt left only the on the studio wall, letting his Paintings once revered as barest explanations of how he artistic skill serve as his calling the essence of Rembrandt, such viewed his art. Hughes sees his card. Rembrandt couches the as The Man With the Golden conception of himself as artist allusion in a scene from his daily Helmet (c. 1650), are now widely embodied in the Kenwood painterly life; he provides both a regarded as the work of others. House self-portrait of 1661–62. glimpse of his humanity and Today debate swirls around Rembrandt sits before a canvas an “incontrovertible, utterly The Polish Rider (c. 1653), on which two arcs are painted. simple proof of mastery.” Realism which hangs in New York’s Frick The half-circles allude to the becomes a conduit for the Collection. “To imagine ancient Greek story of the power of the sublime.

OTHER NATIONS and three large reservoirs formed the basis of a water management system that completely altered the natural landscape. Around the canal system grew a “vast low-density What Killed Angkor? patchwork of homes, temples, and rice paddies” scattered over a thou-

THE SOURCE: “The End of Angkor” by Buddhism in the area. sand square kilometers. Richard Stone, in Science (March 10, Thirty years ago French research- One mystery of Angkor’s water- 2006). ers proposed an alternate catalyst, a courses is a spillway branching off Located in modern-day sharp decline in crop yields possibly from one of the canals that seems to Cambodia, the once-sprawling city caused by the silting of irrigation have been purposely destroyed. of Angkor was the center of a power- channels sped by deforestation. Then Archaeologist Roland Fletcher ful Khmer kingdom whose rule in the rule of the Khmer Rouge from hypothesizes that Angkor engineers Southeast Asia lasted from the ninth 1975–79 and subsequent chaos tried in vain to remedy a flow prob- to 15th centuries. At its height, halted archaeological efforts in lem, then tore apart the spillway to Angkor boasted a population of sev- Angkor for nearly 20 years. Recent prevent it from causing further dis- eral hundred thousand, an extensive discoveries made by the ruptions. According to Fletcher, system of reservoirs and waterways, Australian-led Greater Angkor Angkor’s water infrastructure and many elaborate Hindu temples Project reveal that a combination “became so inflexible, convoluted, such as the immense, gilded Angkor of bad engineering and geological and huge that it could neither be Wat. Thai armies encroached on the uplift of the area’s riverbeds replaced nor avoided, and had area in the mid-15th century, and by centuries ago may have hindered become both too elaborate and too the 16th century the city lay the functioning of Angkor’s engi- piecemeal.” As a result, it became abandoned for reasons unclear, Sci- neered water system and left the less able to accommodate events ence’s Asia news editor, Richard city vulnerable to food shortages. such as drought or flood. Future Stone, writes. Among the theories The team used satellite imagery research into the changing climate offered for Angkor’s demise are the and ground surveys to reveal a city conditions of the area will reveal shift of trade southward toward the that was far larger than previously whether erratic monsoons between sea and the ascension of Theraveda thought. The canals, water tanks, 1300 and 1600, leading to drier

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weather, exacerbated Angkor’s or even primarily” because of the Sovi- water troubles. ets but was motivated by “its activist Castro was willing to The destructive combination of revolutionary ethos and its determina- shoulder substantial changing environmental conditions tion to expand its own political influ- costs, including Soviet and poor infrastructure is not pecu- ence in the Third World at the disapproval, in pursuit liar to Angkor. Archaeologists also expense of the West.” attribute the downfall of the Mayan Following the 1974 collapse of of his goals. Empire, by ad 900, to a series of Portuguese rule in Angola, Agostinho droughts coupled with overpopula- Neto’s left-wing Popular Movement troops to Angola,” says Gleijeses. And tion. “Angkor’s downfall,” says Stone, for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) Castro’s adventures ended President “may be a cautionary tale for mod- emerged as the likely successors, Jimmy Carter’s talk of normalizing ern societies on the knife edge of prompting covert U.S. opposition relations with Havana. The Cubans sustainability.” and, eventually, an invasion by South lost more than 2,000 troops in Africa, African troops. Neto appealed to not to mention the services of the tens OTHER NATIONS Cuba for help and Castro agreed, of thousands of Cuban soldiers and writes Gleijeses, because defeat for aid workers whose labor could have Fidel’s African the MPLA would mean “the victory of helped Cuba’s ailing economy. The apartheid and the reinforcement of Soviet Union supplied Cuba’s weap- Adventures white domination of the black major- ons, and Soviet economic aid in-

THE SOURCE: “Moscow’s Proxy? Cuba and ity in southern Africa.” Cuban aid and creased over the years, but “clear evi- Africa 1975–1988” by Piero Gleijeses, in technical workers also poured into dence” of a link between the aid and Journal of Cold War Studies, Spring 2006. Angola, reaching a peak of 5,000 and Cuba’s actions “may lie in sealed staying through the mid-1980s. Cuba boxes in the Cuban and Soviet Americans watched in eventually sent aid and technical archives.” The linkage, says Gleijeses, alarm during the 1970s as Fidel Cas- workers to 11 other African countries “should not be exaggerated,” though tro upped the ante on a forgotten and military missions to five others, Cuba could not have done what it did front of the Cold War by sending including Mozambique and Benin. without Soviet support. thousands of Cuban troops and aid The Soviet Union eventually What did Cuba achieve? By com- workers to Africa. The arrival of accepted Cuba’s Angola intervention, ing to Ethiopia’s defense, Castro 36,000 Cuban troops in Angola but the two countries “repeatedly upheld the principle of inviolable bor- beginning in November 1975 was fol- clashed” over strategy there and ders but also propped up a brutal lowed in late 1977 by deployment of throughout southern Africa. But the regime. “Call it bias,” writes Gleijeses, another 16,000 troops to war-torn Soviet leadership commended Castro “but although I cannot condemn the Ethiopia. Many observers were per- for his foray into the Horn of Africa in Cuban role, I cannot applaud it either.” suaded that Cuba was simply doing 1977, when he sent 16,000 troops to In Angola, the MPLA regime became the Soviet Union’s bidding. support Mengistu Haile Mariam’s repressive and corrupt, but the alter- Using U.S. and Soviet archives and Ethiopian junta against a Somali natives were still worse. Above all, unreleased Cuban documents to attack. That support allowed Gleijeses argues, Cuba saved Angola which he has access, Piero Gleijeses, a Mengistu to unleash a “war of terror” from white South Africa’s inter- professor of American foreign policy against Eritrean rebels in the north. vention, ended the myth of South at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced Castro was willing to shoulder African invincibility, and ensured by International Studies, concludes that substantial costs in pursuit of his its presence that Pretoria would later Cuba was not playing the Kremlin’s goals, including a possible breach in accept the independence of Namibia, pawn, at least in Angola. A 1978 U.S. relations with the Soviet Union, furthering the historic transition that interagency study concluded that whose leader, Leonid Brezhnev, would lead to the end of the apartheid Cuba was not involved in Africa “solely “opposed the dispatch of Cuban regime in South Africa.

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OTHER NATIONS based in northern Iraq.” Incidents “only 14 percent of Turks actually such as one in July 2003, when U.S. think that Turkey will ever be admit- Tenuous Turkey forces in northern Iraq arrested a ted to the EU.” Other stumbling dozen Turkish special forces troops blocks to Western rapprochement THE SOURCE: “Turkey on the Brink” by and detained them, hooded, for 24 with Turkey include a long-sim- Philip Gordon and Omer Taspinar, in The Washington Quarterly, Summer 2006. hours, have only heightened tensions. mering dispute concerning Turks Turkey’s ties with the West living on the Greek-dominated Turkey is often held up by the once seemed unbreakable. The secu- island of Cyprus (an EU member). United States as an example of the larist reforms of Mustafa Kemal We could soon be asking “Who lost kind of democratic, secular, and Mus- Atatürk (1881–1938) following the Turkey?”, warn the authors. They raise lim nation it hopes to bring about in collapse of the Ottoman Empire— several troubling scenarios, including Iraq and elsewhere throughout the abolishing many Islamic unilateral Turkish action to block the Middle East. Yet there are increasing institutions, emancipating women, emergence of an independent Kurdis- signs that Turkey, a longtime strategic and changing the dress code—set tan in Iraq, resulting in “confrontation partner in the North Atlantic Treaty the country on course for eventually with the United States and . . . prob- Organization (NATO) once seemingly joining Europe. It joined NATO dur- ably ending Turkey’s hope of joining assured membership in the European ing the Cold War. But military coups the EU.” Or Turkey might “opt for Union, is becoming disgruntled with in 1960, 1971, and 1980 damaged its closer strategic relations with coun- Europe and the United States. standing in European eyes, and its tries such as Russia, Iran, China, and Although the country has officially bloody campaign against the PKK in India.” One hopeful sign is that politi- begun the process to join the EU, the 1990s was a black mark. cal power now resides with the AKP, a France recently altered its constitution “Enlargement fatigue” brought on by moderately Islamic party that has vig- to require a referendum vote on future the addition of 10 new central and orously pursued reforms in order to EU “enlargements,” and officials in eastern European members in 2004, win EU membership. Helping Turkey both Germany and the Netherlands as well as the recent upsurge of anti- achieve that dream, the authors assert, have expressed hesitation about Muslim sentiment, further dimmed would go a long way toward preserv- admitting what would instantly Europe’s never-high enthusiasm. ing an alliance that the West can ill become the Union’s second-largest Today, say Gordon and Taspinar, afford to lose. nation in terms of population. In the past, say Philip Gordon and Omer Taspinar—senior fellow and research fellow, respectively, at the Brookings Institution—Turkey relied on its strong ties to the United States whenever European relations soured. The American-led invasion of Iraq, however, has undercut that option. The Turks fear that the chaos in Iraq will lead to “the creation of a de facto . . . independent Kurdistan” in northern Iraq, reigniting separatist sentiments among Turkey’s 15 million Kurds. Those fears are bolstered by “the revival of violence and terrorist attacks by the separatist Kurdish Kurdish separatists gather in April in the southeastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa to mark the birth- Workers’ Party (PKK) now partly day of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, at one of a series of demonstrations that left 16 dead.

90 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2006 Also in this issue:

Florence King on not-so-good cheer CURRENT

Albert Innaurato on the man behind the Met BOOKS Nick Gillespie reviews of new and noteworthy nonfiction on magazine editor Willie Morris

Lawrence Rosen on Morocco A Battle Glorious and Needless

J. Peter Pham on Reviewed by Max Byrd America’s muddled Winston groom has that most mission in Africa identify the “war hawk,” PATRIOTIC FIRE: enviable gift in a writer, an instantly likable drawled John Randolph AndrewJackson and Max Holland on voice. He is unpretentious and intelligent, of Virginia, by its monoto- Jean Laffite at presidential easygoing, casual, even Deep South folksy. nous cry, “Canada, the Battle of commissions When he explains that New Orleans is a Canada, Canada!”) New Orleans. town you leave either crying or drunk, or Groom begins with a By Winston Groom. Knopf. 292 pages. $26 David Lindley on remarks that if the British had known more sketch of the new Ameri- the hinterlands of algebra about Andrew Jackson they “might have can nation in the early 19th century—eight worried some,” you can almost hear the ice million strong, an “unwieldy economic Amy E. Schwartz cubes tinkle against the julep glass. But giant”—and a brief account of the war’s on faith and readers of his nonfiction, works such as A largely disastrous progress for the American evolution Storm in Flanders (2002), as well as his side. Madison’s War was no mere skirmish. novels—among others, Forrest Gump By late 1814, the British had marched (1986)—know that he also possesses a through Washington and burned the White remarkable historical imagination, sensitive House and the Capitol. In New England, at once to patterns and to personalities, and where, because of the massive disruption of fully capable of bringing a neglected or half- trade, the war was exceedingly unpopular, forgotten moment bursting noisily back to the Hartford Convention was furiously life. That’s exactly what he has done in this debating secession from the Union. And splendid resurrection of the Battle of New though British and American delegates had Orleans. sat down together in Ghent, Belgium, to The War of 1812—“President Madison’s negotiate a peace, out on the open sea an War”—resulted from repeated British armada of troop-laden British ships was seizures of American merchant ships and steadily making its way toward what Groom sailors, British agitation of western Indian calls “America’s crown jewel of the West,” the tribes against American settlers, and the city of New Orleans. unslaked ambition of congressional leaders He makes very clear what was at stake: such as Henry Clay to invade and annex the Once New Orleans was conquered, it seemed vast, snowy territory to the north. (You could likely that the British would demand a huge

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striding up and down the improvised mud ram- parts his ragtag “Dirty Shirt” soldiers had built in the plantation fields south of New Orleans in hopes of repelling the British army. The novelist Groom does as well as anyone at capturing the swirling contradictions and energies of Jackson’s nature: one moment, charming the governor’s wife in a polished drawing room, and the next, hammering his fist on a table and thundering, “By the eternal, they shall not sleep on our soil!” Against Jackson’s broad and unmistakable passions, history, the Muse of Opposites, placed the Creole Odysseus, Laffite. Groom is especially good on this mysterious and romantic figure, who was probably born at Port-au-Prince in what is now Haiti and who followed a winding path as privateer, gambler, and smuggler to the marshy island world of the Mississippi delta, close by New Orleans. In his early thirties at the time, he Brilliant leadership at the Battle of New Orleans propelled was younger than Jackson, subtle and given to General Andrew Jackson all the way to the White House. disguises, handsome, “ ‘well made,’ in the parlance of the day—with a physical stretch of American territory as a condition for comportment something like that of a large, peace, and quite possibly “declare the Louisiana powerful cat.” Although the British offered Purchase void and plant the Union Jack in that money and rank if he would aid in their attack, priceless territory, comprising all of the American Laffite spurned them and instead put himself, his land west of the Mississippi—an area larger than men, and his extensive arsenal of weapons and the United States itself prior to the purchase.” The gunpowder at the Americans’ disposal. Jackson, fall of New Orleans, Henry Adams later observed, who had a prudish streak, at first demurred (the would have been “the signal for a general demand pirates were “hellish banditi”), but soon changed that Madison should resign.” his mind. From this wide-scale backdrop, Groom Stage set, actors in place, Groom proceeds to rapidly narrows his focus to the two larger-than- the core of his book, a long, thrilling, almost day- life figures of his title: General Andrew Jackson by-day narrative of the battle. Little here is origi- of Tennessee and the genial pirate king of the nal, but everything is extremely well done. He Gulf of Mexico’s Barataria Bay, Jean Laffite. begins by looking over the shoulder of the British These are Homeric characters. The 47-year-old fleet as it sails across the Gulf of Mexico in mid- Jackson, a man of enormous and vivifying December 1814, more than 60 vessels, eventually hatreds, can serve as anybody’s Achilles. He is to about 14,000 men. So massive a war machine all appearances little more than an amateur, will find it cumbersome to land and work its way untutored in military science or much else, but north through the endless green spider’s web of full of wrath against the English, who had bayous, creeks, and canals that lies between the imprisoned and orphaned him in the Revolu- Louisiana coast and New Orleans itself. But the tionary War. There are few images more stirring British, driven by visions of plunder (their pass- in American history than the ailing but indom- word was said to be “beauty and booty”), make a itable Jackson, cigar clenched between his teeth, foothold at a desolate, mosquito- and alligator-

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infested bog called Lake Borgne. And from there, soned British veterans march forward in columns, they slowly advance to the Villeré Plantation, ramrod straight, drums beating, against some about eight miles below the city, directly in front 4,500 entrenched Americans: militia, volunteers, of Jackson’s line of defense—while Jackson strug- Choctaws, men of color, Tennessee and Kentucky gles to arm and deploy his troops. sharpshooters. When Winston Groom’s brilliant account is over, 2,036 British soldiers have been riting about battle requires high liter- killed or wounded, and three British generals lie ary skill—there must be clarity, dead on the field. Jackson’s casualties are an aston- W energy, constant vivid physical ishing eight killed, 13 wounded. action. Groom has a wonderful eye for detail. It was a battle, historians always note, that Here is Laffite’s odd cutthroat brother Dom- need never have been fought—on Christmas Eve, inique You beside his cannon: “squat, smiling his some 5,000 miles away, the British and Amer- perpetual grin, his neck thick as a tortoise, and ican commissioners had already signed the smoking a cigar.” Groom understands when to Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812. But no pause for readers to catch their breath, or to build one in North America would know that for suspense. He makes full use of primary sources, another six weeks. Meanwhile, the Battle of New particularly the numerous British diaries that Orleans had already begun to take its place, in have survived. He has a moving empathy for the Groom’s words, as “a defining event of the Ameri- soldiers on the eve of combat: “As to the emotions can 19th century.” It put an end forever to British a man feels on confronting an enemy, one whom territorial designs in the United States. It solidi- he will actually see at any moment, there is no fied, for a time, the faltering Union. And it known expression in the English language; his launched Andrew Jackson and his un-Jefferson- mind can only work through an abstract collage ian brand of populist democracy straight toward of uncertain thoughts. This morning the men the White House, which would soon enough be stood or squatted, honing knives, cleaning rebuilt from its ashes and receive him as the sev- weapons, . . . or dreaming restlessly of violence.” enth president.

The climactic moment arrives on Sunday ■ Max Byrd, a professor emeritus of English at the University of morning, January 8, 1815. While the church bells California, Davis, is the author of the historical novel Jackson (1997), as well as Jefferson (1993), Grant (2000), and Shooting the are still ringing in New Orleans, some 5,300 sea- Sun (2004).

Benumbed by Joy Reviewed by Florence King

There’s nothing like an authoritative, ria. All three instrumentalities ARTIFICIAL well-documented Grand Guignol horror story. have a common goal of “artifi- HAPPINESS: If you’ve ever wondered about the source of cial happiness”—happiness as The Dark Side of the those big, ecstatic American smiles or the franti- an end in itself, an induced New Happy Class. cally cheery commands to “have a nice day” emotion with no connection to By Ronald W. Dworkin. that have become an inescapable part of our the facts of one’s life. Carroll & Graf. 343 pp. $24.95 national life, read this riveting book and wonder An M.D. who is still a no more. Chances are that the perpetrators of practicing anesthesiologist, Ronald W. the friendly fire are zonked out on antidepres- Dworkin is also a senior fellow at the Hudson sants, floating on magnetic clouds of alternative Institute with a Ph.D. in political philosophy— medicine, or overexercised into a state of eupho- that rarity, the doctor-as-intellectual who’s

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educated in the humanities and well read in still a bitch. I can’t stand her. But now I don’t care something other than his narrow specialty. He so much. I still feel good no matter what traces the beginnings of artificial happiness to happens.” Dworkin believes that society is the vic- the 1950s. Reacting against the alienating con- tim when millions choose this stupefied state of formity described in David Riesman’s The least resistance, because it eventually destroys Lonely Crowd (1950) and William H. Whyte’s conscience and character on a national scale. As The Organization Man (1956), popular clergy others have noted, we need only imagine Abe of the day published cheery self-help books. Lincoln, a clinical depressive, on Prozac: “Well, For the comfortable Protestant middle class the Union is finished, we’re two countries now, there was Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of and slavery is a fact of life, but hey, I feel good Positive Thinking (1952), which counseled, about myself.” “Practice happy thinking every day. . . . Develop Except for certain chiropractic techniques, the happiness habit, and life will become a con- Dworkin takes an equally dim view of alternative tinual feast.” For Catholics there was Bishop medicine. Meditation, yoga, acupuncture, mag- Fulton J. Sheen’s Way to Happiness (1953), and nets, herbs, and aromatherapy are all variations for Southern Protestants there was Billy on the placebo principle. They bring patients to Graham’s The Secret of Happiness (1955). “a state of weakened rational activity, filling the Not surprisingly, the tranquilizer Miltown emptiness in their lives with romantic notions became popular and grabbing hold of them with useless around this time, fol- substances.” Meditation, yoga, acu- lowed by Valium and He’s at his most mordant on the fitness craze, Librium in the 1960s, which got its start in 1975 when a scientist study- puncture, magnets, herbs, when the Age of ing runners’ euphoric “second wind” discovered and aromatherapy are Aquarius hit and Tim- naturally occurring stimulants in the human all variations on the othy Leary upped the brain that attach themselves to receptors in the placebo principle. happiness ante in The same way that morphine attaches to opiate Politics of Ecstasy receptors. Scientists first called these stimulants (1968). In 1994 Eliza- “endorphines,” “endo” for endogenous and beth Wurtzel published Prozac Nation, a memoir “orphine” for morphine. An e was later dropped of her 10-year depression. The book and Prozac and a buzzword was born. Given a medical both took off. Over the next 10 years, prescrip- imprimatur, joggers never miss a chance to tions for antidepressants tripled, as doctors announce, “Gotta get those endorphins going.” began treating depression the way the managed Mild exercise isn’t enough to produce artificial care insurance system wanted them to: fast. With happiness. It has to be obsessive, “a testament of 13 minutes allotted for each office visit, a piety and rectitude; going to the gym regularly prescription for Prozac, Zoloft, or Paxil kept the became medicine’s Sunday school version of life.” assembly line moving. The happiness of fitness freaks is more like con- vert’s zeal. It is also the happiness of schaden- workin presents a gallery of legal drug- freude, “expressed most commonly in contempt gies who are so content with their artifi- for fat people and an elevation of trim people to Dcial happiness that they have lost all sainthood.” The culture of exercise “is not about incentive to take action against what made them health; it is about pride.” unhappy in the first place. A man who stays mar- Dworkin admits that he has had scant success ried to a mentally unstable virago, lest a divorce in alerting political activists to the dangers of enable her to clean him out financially and gain artificial happiness. His remarks were received custody of their son, tells Dworkin, “My wife is with polite indifference by a gathering of

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religious conservatives fixated on beginning-of- ties, so that they can relate to each other on a life and end-of-life issues, yet, as he shows, our deeper level. This would never work in America, belief that happiness is the measure of life has a because we know that introspective people tend direct bearing on both abortion and euthanasia. to be unhappy. But at least Dworkin himself has The first-trimester fetus lacks the rudimentary read widely, and it shows on every page. His best nervous system to experience self-awareness. observation is reminiscent of a poem by Wallace Without self-awareness there can be no Stevens or the baleful imprecations of ancient happiness, and thus, in the happiness-is-all Greek drama: “And there is something unpleas- worldview, no need for life. By the same token, ant about their happiness, something lacking in unhappiness inevitably increases in old age. We warmth. There is nothing sunny in the sun; it’s are moving, Dworkin predicts, toward accepting more like a hot moon. Their happiness radiates physician-assisted suicide as a preemptive strike unwholesomeness because it emanates from an against the miseries of decrepitude. unnatural source, not from real life.” The book bogs down only once, when ■ Florence King is the author of 10 books, including Confessions of Dworkin, straining to find a cure for our happi- a Failed Southern Lady (1985), With Charity Toward None: A ness addiction, advises patients to read philoso- Fond Look at Misanthropy (1992), The Florence King Reader (1995), and, most recently, STET, Damnit!, a collection of her phy and doctors to take courses in the humani- National Review columns from 1991 to 2002.

Final Bow Reviewed by Albert Innaurato

For 123 years, new york’s metropolitan Joseph Volpe has been the THE TOUGHEST Opera has been one of the greatest purveyors of Met’s general manager for 16 SHOWON EARTH: the art form in the world. Its stage has been graced years, the first to rise to the top My Rise and Reign by such legendary figures as Enrico Caruso and from the working ranks of the at the Metropol- Rosa Ponselle. In the 1930s, it proved that Richard house. Now, having announced itan Opera. Wagner’s music dramas could sell out the house, plans to retire later this year, he By Joseph Volpe, with and such Wagner specialists as Kirsten Flagstad has written his memoir. Charles Michener. Knopf. 304 pp. $25.95 and Lauritz Melchior virtually took up residence. Those familiar with Volpe’s For many years, well into the 1940s, the Metropol- scheming ways will note a queer passage late in itan produced new and very interesting operas on the book. He speaks glowingly of a Swedish a vast scale (the old Met on Broadway was soprano named Erika Sunnegårdh, even likening immense, as is the new Met, now 40 years old, at her to the legendary Rosa Ponselle, though it Lincoln Center) while also helping to keep familiar appears that he has never heard Sunnegårdh in a works alive. The podium has been home to Gustav complete performance. When writing this, Volpe Mahler, Arturo Toscanini, and, more recently, was aware that the all-but-unknown Sunnegårdh James Levine, who has transformed an uneven was scheduled to make her Met debut on April orchestra into a world-class ensemble. The Met 13, 2006. But he couldn’t possibly have known has produced opera seven times a week every sea- that she would substitute for the beloved Karita son since the early 1950s, often with the most Mattila in a broadcast performance of Beetho- famous singers in the world. Only a few European ven’s Fidelio on April 1, and would stand in for houses can match that schedule, and they have Mattila on another occasion before the scheduled fewer seats and far more government funding. debut. The broadcast got enormous hype, includ-

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ing a huge article in The New York Times, which many children of immigrants in his gener- has been rather chary with its Met coverage in ation, Volpe mostly grew up in suburban com- the past decade. Such an article takes time to set fort on Long Island, not in an Italian-speaking up and place. “If Erika Sunnegårdh makes inner-city ghetto. Though his was not an anything like the splash Ponselle did, it will be opera-loving family, his maternal grand- front-page news,” Volpe writes—coyly?—in his mother sometimes played 78s of the inter- memoir. When the article appeared, several divas mezzo from Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rus- e-mailed me to wonder what the “indisposed” ticana. He had middle-class and even Mattila had been paid or promised to stand upper-middle-class opportunities (his uncle down. It’s just like Volpe, many thought, to try to was an important Washington lawyer). He just rig something thrilling to give his book a grand didn’t take them. Rather, he devoted his high sendoff. school years to flashy dressing and doo-wop In the event, it was a damp, if not wet, squib. (so he says), and lasted only a week at St. On the radio broadcast, poor Sunnegårdh got John’s University in Queens. lost in her big act 1 aria. In the house, her voice Volpe fell in love with cars, which, he seemed relatively small and undeveloped save for claims, later enabled him to relate to the hal- the very top, a surprising problem for a woman of lowed conductor Herbert von Karajan. (Kara- 40. But, in keeping with the Met’s current artistic jan hated artistic and intellectual types—they dictates, she is pretty, and able on stage. were too hard to dupe.) Volpe’s father got him Maybe it’s just a coincidence, and Volpe a bank loan, an uncle helped him form a cor- didn’t manipulate Sunnegårdh’s timing or pub- poration, and, at 17, he opened an Amoco gas licity. But that doesn’t let him off the hook for station on Long Island. He promptly started a straining credulity in his book. He writes, for price war, but still managed to get elected the instance, that he once scoured the Met archives most successful young businessman in Nassau for something to read and emerged with the County when he was 20. He also made the first memoir of the incomparable Giulio Gatti- of three marriages (he has seven children). Casazza, the Met’s longest-ruling general man- A year later, in 1961, leaking gas in the ager, who served from 1908 to 1935. (Since repair shop ignited, and Volpe was burned out 1908, the Met has had only four general man- of his service station. So he fled to that pit of agers.) Now, Volpe is too well known as evil, the theater district, dominated in those defiantly anti-intellectual—a cover, perhaps, years by the old Met (the Met moved into the for insecurity about his ignorance of opera—for new Lincoln Center in 1966). Not a union this to wash. One can imagine him down in the member, Volpe took every job he could get in archives only to bury dead bodies. Like a lot of that union-controlled environment. Late at this book, the incident reads as though it were night, he changed the marquees on the Astor, cooked up by Volpe’s scrivener, Charles Mich- the Victoria, and the Paramount—long hours ener, an editor at The New Yorker. and dangerous work at the time—and then crawled back to a cheap, cockroach-filled flop ne assumes that Volpe’s memoir was house, rarely sleeping at his Long Island home pitched to publishers as a Dickensian with his wife and kids. His earnings took a O tale. Born in Brooklyn in 1940, the major hit. Why did he do it? One assumes that Pip-like spawn of Italian immigrants, our Joe this rather sheltered young man was on the rises through hard work, luck with mentors, lookout for adventure, but Volpe, rarely intro- and a big heart to joust with and best the bil- spective, never explains. lionaire snobs on the Met’s board. There’s Soon, one of his mentors got him to take something a little fishy about this, too. Unlike the union test, even though he told Joe, “You

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Joseph Volpe (left) shares a Met moment with tenor Placido Domingo. don’t know how to keep your mouth shut.” production, might contain a nugget of truth.) When Volpe easily passed, the mentor said, How he slipped past the wasps’ nest sur- “You want to build the best and biggest sets in rounding the outwardly genial conductor the world? . . . You do that at the Metropolitan James Levine, one of the more powerful musi- Opera.” So Volpe went to the Met and got cal presences in the Met’s history. How he hired as an apprentice carpenter. He mentions positioned himself to control those areas of passing the bust of Enrico Caruso, outside the operations outside Levine’s interest. Volpe is office of the then–general manager (the an operator of near genius, and his patience famously elegant and icy Rudolf Bing). “I nod- was admirable. When, in his own mind, it ded at the great tenor, and he nodded back” was finally his turn to take charge, the board may be the cheesiest line in the book, but it considered some 400 people, none of them has plenty of competition. named Volpe. The board selected a courtly Volpe’s first assignment was to go out for man with a British accent, who proved hope- coffee for the other carpenters. His first deci- less. Seven months later, in 1990, Volpe was sion was to refuse. “Every apprentice gets cof- in—but as “general director,” not “general fee,” he was told. “I don’t,” he said. More such manager.” For that title, he had to wait standoffs with superiors followed. Even so, until 1993. Volpe rose to master carpenter in 1966, techni- cal director in 1978, assistant manager in 1981, olpe provides few fresh details here that and the top job in 1990. reveal the real inner workings of the No doubt there’s an interesting story in his V Met. He rehashes, for an entire chapter, ascent: How he courted and abandoned men- his controversial firing of soprano Kathleen tors. (He ruefully admits that claims of Battle, but fails to note that the poor woman betrayal by John Dexter, the late director of had been a problem for years and that he

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waited until she stopped selling out the house composers), masterworks by Michael Tippett, to rid himself of her. He calls Luciano Pavarotti Hans Werner Henze, Gyorgy Ligeti, and and Placido Domingo his “Siamese twins,” an Olivier Messiaen were ignored, and no stream appellation neither would appreciate. Of was developed to encourage new American course, he doesn’t speak of Pavarotti’s inability works. (Peter Gelb, Volpe’s successor, has to read music, which cost the Met his presence promised to change that.) A steady on stage and a fully funded recording of Verdi’s developmental process is important for attract- La Forza del Destino in the late 1990s, or of ing opera-shy composers to the form, because Domingo’s altering of sections of most of the it lets them find and fix problems before open- scores he has performed in the house since ing night. 1995 to be sung in a lower key. Volpe does, however, boast repeatedly about his friendship or those with an interest in the maze of with Rudy Giuliani. To Volpe, music doesn’t the Met, Johanna Fiedler’s Molto seem to matter as much as power. F Agitato: The Mayhem Behind the Music In answer to the often-raised criticism that at the Metropolitan Opera (2001) is probably the Met does too few new works, Volpe remarks the best insider guide, though it’s still very that not even the esteemed Met archivist Robert guarded. To get a sense of one of Volpe’s more Tuggle could name the eccentric mentors, try John Dexter’s The Hon- composers of several Although there were crises ourable Beast: A Posthumous Autobiography new operas presented (1993). For a sense of Volpe himself, though, during Volpe’s Met tenure, there in the past: The you’ll have to look elsewhere than his memoir. this slim volume leaves one Man Without a Coun- When I interviewed him for Forbes in 1999, he with the odd sense that he try, The Island God, talked about his difficult relationship with his didn’t really matter. and The Warrior. But father, as though a need to prove something to Tuggle would surely a doubting parent fueled his ambition and know the names Walter Damrosch, Gian Carlo energy. But this paternal conflict gets drained Menotti, and Bernard Rogers. More important, of all import here. in the very teeth of the Depression, the Met pro- Although there were crises during his duced Deems Taylor’s Peter Ibbetson, Howard tenure, this slim volume leaves one with the Hanson’s Merry Mount, and Louis Gruenberg’s odd sense that Volpe didn’t really matter. The The Emperor Jones. “hot” Met that took off in the late 1980s didn’t By contrast, from roughly 1985 to 1995, last past the mid-1990s. Attendance has fallen Volpe—with the support of the ad man Bruce badly, and many of the once-new productions Crawford, his champion on the all-important, now seem humorously old-fashioned. Volpe notably conservative board of directors, and a didn’t attract a younger, nontourist audience, staggeringly rich patron from Kansas named or find powerful new works. What’s the value Sybil Harrington—presented the eye-numbing, of an institution that costs so much to attend soul-killing, derrière-garde, stupidly grand pro- and delivers so little? A frank and detailed ductions of the played-out director Franco Zef- account of Volpe’s career and, more broadly, firelli. Never has there been a less human La the “corporatization” of American not-for- Bohème, a more bloated and preposterous profit art institutions might be enlightening, Tosca, a more garish Turandot, or a more zoo- shocking, and sad. But this collection of trivial like Carmen, with greater attention paid the anecdotes and stale headlines is of no use. donkeys than the cigarette girl. Though Volpe’s Met did stage the occasional new opera (not ■ Albert Innaurato is a playwright who has written about music and culture for Opera News, The New York Times, Forbes, always by the best or most stage-savvy and other publications.

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IN BRIEF Jackson Pollock and Kenneth Noland as the only ARTS & LETTERS true heirs to Impressionism, he stuck to his bet in Critic and Creep an age of critical opportunism. He revised his work obsessively, read serious books, and, deeply This is the second biog- and continually, relished ideas. In a harrowing raphy of Clement Greenberg, ARTCZAR: kind of way, he was fun. kingmaker to that group of The Rise and Fall of Greenberg was born in 1909 in New York City. Clement Greenberg. artists now known as Abstract Literature was his first love. He majored in Eng- Expressionists, to appear since By Alice Goldfarb lish at Syracuse University, then mostly lolly- Marquis. MFA Publica- his death in 1994. And Alice tions. 321 pp. $35 gagged around his parents’ house in Brooklyn, Goldfarb Marquis, like the ear- reading and sleeping, until his aggrieved father lier biographer, Florence Rubenfeld, can’t help sent him out west to supervise the family necktie noticing that Greenberg was a terrible, terrible business. Greenberg’s sojourn lasted only long man. He socked people at cocktail parties, ne- enough for him to marry, knock up, and abandon glected his wives and children, whinged through his first wife, after which he an abbreviated tour of military duty, tormented fled back to New York, to his comfortably middle-class parents, scorned hole up with “that herd of low-class “Jews that wear jewelry,” bullied and independent minds,” as manipulated his friends. He was a selfish, lying, Lionel Trilling called the cheating, arrogant, lazy, misogynistic SOB. In his intellectuals of his day, in 1998 New Yorker review of the Rubenfeld biogra- Greenwich Village. Sur- phy, art critic Adam Gopnik seized upon the rounded by his betters in the moment when character became destiny: During field he loved most, literary a visit to the countryside, five-year-old Clement criticism, Greenberg found pursued an unsuspecting tame goose and the visual arts wide open for clubbed it to death with a shovel. “Anyone famil- interpretation. Writing iar with the varieties of popular biography,” wrote about art for The Nation Art critic Clement Greenberg in 1948 Gopnik, “can sense the future as it approaches: and Partisan Review in the the slow escalation in targets, the growing taste 1940s and ’50s, Greenberg filled a critical void. for blood, the rise to bigger and uglier assaults, His take-no-prisoners tone easily upstaged the the sordid end. The die is cast; the boy will gee-whiz art appreciation of Life and Time. become an art critic.” Greenberg’s relationships with Pollock, Of course: Art criticism isn’t for mensches. Yet Noland, Helen Frankenthaler (his love interest as Marquis wends her way toward Greenberg’s for several years), David Smith, Morris Louis, “sordid end,” a reader may begin to feel, if not and other Modernists weren’t so much apprecia- admiration, at least a measure of interest. Green- tive as dictatorial. Clem separated the “good” berg treated himself with the same cruelty he paintings from the “bad” ones, steered the artist meted out to others—drank with a vengeance, in a given direction, then mounted a critical chain-smoked, drugged himself to sleep every offensive, telling the viewing public what it night, alternately promoted and subverted his needed to know. Along the way he inspired Tom career all the way to his grave. If not exactly loyal, Wolfe’s facetious guide to abstract art, The he proved perversely stubborn: Having anointed Painted Word (1975).

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As a student at Bennington College, I showcased that path-breaking mix of fictional witnessed the critic’s power one afternoon in techniques and shoe-leather reporting known as 1975. Greenberg was visiting Ken Noland in the New Journalism. nearby Shaftsbury, Vermont (dating one of He hired David Halberstam, who wrote long Noland’s friends gave me guest credentials). The articles that formed the core of The Best and entourages of painter and critic waited in the Brightest (1972), about the hubristic archi- suspenseful silence as Greenberg entered tects of America’s Vietnam policy, and The Noland’s studio and began examining the target Powers That Be (1979), about the intersection paintings. “What if you turned these around?” of mass media and politics. Morris rejuvenated Greenberg finally demanded, meaning, what if Norman Mailer’s flagging career by turning the squares were turned into diamonds? A studio over virtually entire issues of the magazine to assistant hopped to; Greenberg nodded. A few the novelist’s first-person reportage on war months later, a show of diamond-shaped protests outside the Pentagon, the 1968 Repub- Nolands appeared on 57th Street. lican and Democratic national conventions, Marquis, author of The Art Biz: The Covert and the feminist movement, which became the World of Collectors, Dealers, Auction Houses, books The Armies of the Night (1968), Miami Museums, and Critics (1991) and Marcel and the Siege of Chicago (1968), and The Pris- Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare (2002), oner of Sex (1971). Morris was in steady writes engagingly, making a reasonable case for demand on TV and op-ed pages, and he was a Greenberg’s enduring importance, a dozen fixture at Elaine’s, the Manhattan restaurant years after his death. He didn’t “rise and fall” so that’s a den of power brokers and literati. How much as rise and fade away, obscured and hot was he? “There were eight million tele- eventually buried under Pop Art (which he phone numbers in the Manhattan directory, despised), Keith Haring and Julian Schnabel, and every one of them would have returned my the vile careerism of the 1980s, and whatever’s calls,” he boasted in his memoir New York Days come next. Now that we’ve begun to look back (1993), exaggerating only a bit. on the 1950s and ’60s as a time of high serious- Yet in 1971 Morris resigned from Harper’s ness—it’s all relative—Greenberg’s star will after battling its then-owners, the Minnesota- likely rise again. based Cowles family, over the magazine’s —Ann Loftin spiraling costs and, more important, its left- leaning politics. Though only in his mid- thirties, Morris never regained his luster. Bitter Tell Them Willie Boy and despondent, he decamped from Manhat- tan to the Hamptons for a decade and then to Was Here his beloved home state of Mississippi, where he Few magazine editors became Ole Miss’s first writer-in-residence. cast a longer shadow than IN SEARCH OF Over the years he published a string of novels, Willie Morris (1934–99), who WILLIE MORRIS: reminiscences, and nonfiction works, none of took over the top slot at The Mercurial Life of which achieved the literary acclaim of his pre- a LegendaryWriter Harper’s in 1967. The 32-year- and Editor. cocious memoir North Toward Home (1967). old Morris rapidly turned Though his children’s books proved popular, By Larry L. King. Public- America’s second-oldest Affairs. 353 pp. $26.95 especially My Dog Skip (1995), the basis of a continuously published maga- successful 2000 film, his post-Harper’s years zine (the oldest is Scientific American) from a and output are rightly seen as a coda to what stuffy old men’s club into a cutting-edge cabaret he called his brief attempt “to remake literary that, along with Esquire and New York, America.”

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The central mysteries of Larry L. King’s engaging, personal, and often moving biogra- Herd on an Island phy are why Willie Morris threw in the towel at I don’t have to tell you Harper’s and why he didn’t get the second act that Anne Barclay Priest is an TRAFFICKING IN SHEEP: he deserved. As one of Morris’s first hires at eccentric. All I have to tell you AMemoir—From Harper’s and a lifelong friend and boon is that for many years she man- Off-Broadway, companion, King—best known for coauthoring aged a flock of sheep on an NewYork,to the musical The Best Little Whorehouse in island off Nova Scotia while Blue Island, Texas—seems amply qualified to unravel these acting in plays in New York Nova Scotia. mysteries, but, as he acknowledges, he doesn’t City. By Anne Barclay Priest. altogether succeed. “Why didn’t Willie Morris In 1971, she buys a Nova Countryman. 253 pp. $19.95 fight back? . . . Why did he exile himself?” asks Scotia waterfront lot overlook- King. “I have no single conclusion that will ing the hauntingly lovely Blue Island. For shelter, please everybody—or even myself.” Morris was she brings an old house from Massachusetts “wounded,” “bereft,” and “angry,” King notes, (paying $800 to buy it and $6,000 to move it). before suggesting that clinical depression, When she hears that developers are nosing intensified by boozing and pill popping, helps around the 138-acre Blue Island, she buys it to explain the long literary denouement. protect her view. (Modest inheritances, she says, The psychological explanation is doubtless pay for all this.) And once she owns the island, important, but there are social factors to con- she decides to put sheep on it. This isn’t uncom- sider as well. Morris’s belletristic vision of “lit- mon; many local islands support livestock. I once erary America” was wedded to liberal concep- saw bison grazing quietly on an island in Blue tions of good politics and good taste. In New Hill Bay, Maine, beyond the seals and porpoises. York Days, Morris confessed that he didn’t run Priest loves the region, the people, and the a “watershed” essay on Sino-American adventure. She becomes close friends with some relations by a pre-presidential Richard Nixon of her neighbors, but not all. When she puts simply because he “did not want Richard range cattle on the island, to clear brush before Nixon in Harper’s.” But by the end of the ’60s, bringing in the sheep, a fisherman plants himself the tradition to which Morris was loyal was on her mainland property one afternoon and already being eclipsed by fresh understandings informs her, “Sheep are okay. Lots of people keep of cultural meaning and power. America splin- sheep on islands. But not critters.” tered not just politically but aesthetically too, Priest pays no attention. Later, she asks with new values infusing everything from pop another neighbor, “Do you think people would music to partisan politics. It’s no accident that criticize me if I put pigs out on Blue Island?” the magazines that defined the ’70s (Rolling “Anne. People would criticize you if you put Stone), the ’80s (Spy), and the ’90s (Wired) were very different from Morris’s Harper’s in tone and focus. King notes that New York Days, Morris’s last truly serious book, “lacked meaningful candor and tough-minded self- examination.” Whatever personal demons were hounding him, Willie Morris must have felt increasingly out of touch with a world in which he was just one more aging wunderkind. —Nick Gillespie A few of Anne Barclay Priest’s sheep graze on Blue Island.

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angels out there!” CONTEMPORARY AFFAIRS Priest gives up on pigs and goes straight to sheep, buying her first flock of hardy Scottish Morocco’s Moderation blackfaces from a transplanted English sheep breeder who once worked for James Herriot. She Middle east analysts MOROCCO: gets a Border collie to help control her herd, and often cite Morocco as a country The Islamist learns the immensely sophisticated, demanding, with at least reasonable poten- Awakening and and rewarding pleasures offered by one of the tial to become a democracy. A Other Challenges. world’s great dog breeds. nation with a history of By Marvine Howe. Priest also learns that you don’t just drop relatively moderate politics, Oxford Univ. Press. 448 pp. $29.95 sheep on an island and leave them. Shearing, Morocco has 33 million vaccinating, breeding, and culling all require people, nearly all of them Muslim, who value trips in small craft and uncertain weather to deal education and independence in equal measure. with stubborn and uncooperative creatures. The Though Morocco remains a monarchy, its tasks also require help from the community: the citizens now elect local officials as well as repre- fishermen, carpenters, contractors, and others sentatives to a parliament, and its recent kings, who own the boats, block and tackle, trucks, tele- whatever their failings, haven’t been tyrants. phones, and everything else she finds that she A New York Times and BBC correspondent needs. Despite some initial doubts, most since the 1950s, Marvine Howe observed everyone lends a hand. firsthand the end of the French protectorate in In the years that follow, Priest buys another 1956 and the evolution of Moroccan independ- sheep farm in upstate New York, where she and ence in the decades thereafter. She offers a the lambs spend winters. She increases her flock broad-stroke summary of Morocco’s past, and watches it prosper—a favorite sheep, Mischa, coupled with the captivating and clearheaded races about the pasture, making beautiful balletic reportorial detail necessary for assessing its leaps. She buys a guard donkey to protect the future. And she has spoken firsthand to many of sheep in New York from dogs, puts goats on the the figures who have shaped the past and will island in Nova Scotia, branches out into another have a hand in the future: Mehdi Ben Barka, the sheep breed, and attends a sheep-herders’ peace opposition leader who was murdered in 1965, mission in Israel. seemingly for political reasons; the young prince A foreign correspondent before becoming an Moulay Hassan, who went on to reign from 1962 actress, Priest has a voice that’s energetic and to 1999 as Hassan II; and leading human rights opinionated, funny and beguiling. “Despite my activists. being an oddity, I had the silent support of the Howe characterizes the rule of Hassan II as men at the wharf,” she writes at one point. “They a “prolonged despotic regime,” which seems an were always ready to help whenever I needed a overstatement. To be sure, Hassan was a mas- hand, . . . but no one ever made me feel that I ter of playing parties against one another, and didn’t belong there. I also know that I gave con- he jailed political opponents, though rarely for siderable pleasure all around when I fell into the long. After his death, his son and successor, water, which I did about once a year.” She is Mohammad VI, appointed a truth and recon- firmly connected to the natural world and takes a ciliation commission, which has granted great deal of joy in inhabiting it. And she makes amnesty to thousands of former prisoners, us wonder why we’re eccentrically here, instead though without any direct criticism of the of running sheep on an island—which is clearly monarchy. Yet despite his occasional severity, so much fun. Hassan generally allowed quite open political —Roxana Robinson discussion at the local level, a tradition that

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continues under his son. Political parties are free to vie for an electoral role so long as they Beyond don’t oppose the monarchy—which makes for Humanitarianism authoritarianism of a comparatively mild sort. Howe is especially acute in her assessment of With a few notable ex- the multiple groups contending for political ceptions—Chester Crocker in AFRICA-U.S. RELATIONS: legitimacy in the name of Islam. the Reagan administration, Strategic Though she has only limited knowledge of Herman Cohen under the first Encounters. the daily lives of ordinary Moroccans, Howe rec- President Bush, and Princeton Edited by Donald ognizes the difficulties they face. A fifth of the Lyman in the Clinton adminis- Rothchild and Edmond population lives below the poverty line; half the tration—Africa specialists in J. Keller. Lynne Rienner. 299 pp. $55 population is illiterate (schools are cherished but the U.S. government take an sparse); four million people live in slums; the almost perverse pride in the idiosyncratic nature unemployment rate is 10 percent nationwide of their portfolios. Although poverty, disease, and and closer to 20 percent in some cities; and the conflict are hardly strangers to many areas of the gap between rich and poor continues to widen. globe, only with respect to Africa do these At the same time, the policies of the Bush scourges frame American policy. Africa is administration give Moroccans repeated oppor- needy—and nothing else. In his contribution to tunities to mount anti-American protests that Africa-U.S. Relations, Lyman blames this myopia are often, in actuality, vehicles for critiques of partly on the news their own system. The king may find his ability media, which call our to maintain order tested by events such as the attention to Africa only The continent-in-need Casablanca bombing of 2003, which killed 45 when catastrophe approach of relief advo- people. strikes: “drought and cates essentially pushes Yet Morocco has significant strengths as well, famine in Ethiopia, bru- Africa to the bottom of the including a diverse economic base, substantial tal amputations in U.S. foreign-policy agenda. remittances from Moroccans working abroad, Sierra Leone, land and the harrowing example of Algeria next door, mines claiming the lives as well as a close-knit society and generally of children in Angola and Mozambique, and responsive institutions. All of this gives many racial and ethnic cleansing in Darfur.” Moroccans a sense of optimism that can mystify After a natural or human disaster, the United outsiders—but not Howe, who cautiously shares States may pump hundreds of millions of dollars their hope. into relief efforts. Many advocates for Africa no As she notes, King Hassan used to say that doubt derive satisfaction from the fact that their “Moroccans are not a people of excess.” But he work is driven by humanitarian and moral con- also spoke of Morocco as a lion tethered to him: cerns untainted by geopolitical or economic Sometimes it pulled him, and sometimes he had interests. However, the continent-in-need ap- to jerk the chain and try to lead it. With many proach essentially pushes Africa to the bottom of Arab states backing away from their modest the U.S. foreign-policy agenda, a fact under- promises of liberalization, and with many of scored by the scant time and resources that both their citizens more concerned about peace and Democratic and Republican administrations order than individual liberties, the Moroccan devote to it in comparison with other regions of lion and its keeper will continue to lurch the world. onward. But who will be doing the pulling Noble as it is, the humanitarian impulse sim- remains uncertain. ply doesn’t have the sustainability of national —Lawrence Rosen interest and other traditional elements of state-

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craft. Consequently, the American government worked with the governments of Djibouti, has made few long-term investments in Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and especially post–Cold War, now that there’s no Yemen to keep the peace and enhance security. danger of dominoes falling to the Soviets. To be sure, many experts still see pursuing Further, the trauma of American casualties dur- self-interest and alleviating suffering as mutually ing the 1992–94 humanitarian mission to Soma- exclusive, and their linkage as ethically suspect lia—especially the deaths of 18 soldiers during or, at the very least, unrealistic. Even some of the the episode made famous by Mark Bowden’s authors here come across as hesitant in their Black Hawk Down (1999) and its movie adapta- efforts to balance mundane national interests tion—eliminated any possibility that the Clinton (both African and American) with more idealistic administration would move beyond the usual visions of humanitarianism. Change will be grad- neglect. Campaigning to succeed Clinton, George ual, but solid works like this one may hasten it. W. Bush went so far as to declare Africa strategi- —J. Peter Pham cally insignificant to the United States. However, several factors have shifted the HISTORY geostrategic calculus since Bush took office: growing hydrocarbon production in West Africa, Champion of Liberalism the availability of ports and airfields along the lit- toral of East Africa, and, post-9/11, concern The passing of richard RICHARD about transnational terrorist networks penetrat- Hofstadter, felled by leukemia HOFSTADTER: ing southward from North Africa. In this book, at 54, was a sad loss for An Intellectual Donald Rothchild and Edmond J. Keller, politi- American scholarship. His Biography. cal scientists at, respectively, the University of masterly studies of American By David S. Brown. Univ. California, Davis, and the University of Califor- political thinking—including of Chicago Press. 291 pp. $27.50 nia, Los Angeles, bring together American and The American Political Tradi- African scholars to consider a new model for tion and the Men Who Made It (1948), The Age American relations with Africa. Essays in the of Reform (1955), and Anti-Intellectualism in book focus on security issues, such as terrorism American Life (1963)—constitute an enduring and ethnic conflict; social problems, such as legacy, as does the work of the talented and HIV/AIDS and the environment; and economic prolific successors he trained at Columbia Uni- troubles, such as trade policy and debt. While versity, such as Robert Dallek, Lawrence W. many of the authors continue to regard the conti- Levine, and the late Christopher Lasch. All the nent as an object of humanitarian and moral more tragic, then, that when he died, solicitude—as does President Bush on some Hofstadter had barely begun what was to be his issues, most notably HIV/AIDS—they also recog- masterwork, a three-volume history of Amer- nize the connection between America’s strategic ica’s political culture from 1750 onward. concerns and Africa’s needs in terms of human Hofstadter (1916–70) made his reputation in security. As Keller writes, “The United States has the 1950s by attacking the Progressive historians, a vital interest in strengthening the military and notably Frederick Jackson Turner, Charles Beard, intelligence capacities of poor countries like the and Vernon Parrington, for imagining an Amer- ones we find in Africa. For their part, African ica riven by class conflict. Shocked by the emer- countries could measurably improve their ability gence of the “radical right,” he exposed its hyper- to solve problems of peace and security with the patriotism as a populist expression of “status aid of the United States.” Such efforts are already anxiety.” Ironically, though, he found his work under way. Since 2002, for example, the Com- under attack from the New Left in the late 1960s. bined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa has Younger historians, drawn to the neglected

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underside of the American experience, Consider this observation in his half-century-old repudiated his “consensus history” and disdained The Age of Reform: “War has always been the as grandiose apologetics the sort of gracefully Nemesis of the liberal tradition in America. From written synoptic narratives he composed. our earliest history as a nation there has been a Buffeted from both extremes of the political spec- curiously persistent association between demo- trum, and appalled by radical assaults on univer- cratic politics and nationalism, jingoism, or war.” sities, Hofstadter clung to his faith in America’s —Sanford Lakoff liberal values but anguished over the rising gen- eration’s apparent disdain for them. In this splendid account, David S. Brown, a Commission the Truth historian at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylva- Presidents frequently PRESIDENTIAL nia, shows that Hofstadter’s own past shaped his resort to blue-ribbon commis- COMMISSIONS & understanding of the American past. An eastern sions to help them find a way NATIONAL urbanite, he was leery of agrarian parochialism. through, or at least temporary SECURITY: The son of a Jewish father and a Protestant shelter from, political storms. The Politics of mother, he felt himself both outsider and insider. High-level commissions took Damage Control. As a student during the Great Depression, he was on the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 By Kenneth Kitts. Lynne Rienner. 194 pp. $49.95 drawn to Marxism and even joined the Columbia surprise attacks, President unit of the Communist Party in 1939, leaving it John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and any after only four months, disillusioned by Stalin’s number of lesser crises, such as the Iran-contra purge trials. He came to believe that the best fea- scandal during President Ronald Reagan’s tures of the American experience were its liberal- second term. Their reputation is decidedly ism, pluralism, and inclusiveness; the worst, its mixed. More than four decades after JFK’s mur- anti-intellectualism, penchant for vigilante der, for example, the Warren Commission’s violence, and confusion of patriotism with report remains the object of widespread ridicule. conformism—in the phrase he coined, its “para- Yet such panels continue to appeal to presidents. noid style.” Kenneth Kitts, an associate provost and political Though Brown shows admirable insight and science professor at South Carolina’s Francis sure-footedness in linking Hofstadter’s personal- Marion University, sets out to explain why. ity and values to his work, he does less than full He focuses on five panels, all concerned with justice to his subject’s central ideas. He would have done well to take more seriously the contention of Hofstadter and the influential political scientist Louis Hartz (who is neglected here) that, from the outset, American political discourse has been framed by a mythic and sometimes stultifying belief in what Hofstadter called laissez-faire individualism and Hartz termed “irrational Lockianism.” That thesis goes a long way toward explaining why socialism made scarcely a dent on the national consensus and why today the United States has the highest degree of income inequality among the world’s richest nations. The Roberts Commission on Pearl Harbor was cited as a precedent bymanywho pushed Clearly, there is much in Hofstadter’s under- for creation of a 9/11 commission. They overlooked the fact that the earlier investiga- standing of this country still worth pondering. tion,headed bySupreme Court Justice Owen J.Roberts (in darksuit),was seen as flawed.

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national security: the Roberts Commission on toward the latter explanation, though he brings Pearl Harbor (1941–42); the Rockefeller Com- no new information to bear either way. Could mission on the CIA’s domestic activities (1975); President Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease, unrec- the Scowcroft Commission on MX missile ognized at the time, help account for the dis- deployment (1983); the Tower Commission on parate accounts? Kitts doesn’t even mention Iran-contra (1986–87); and the 9/11 Commission the possibility. (2002–04). Four of the five (the exception being The outlier here is the Scowcroft Commission, the Scowcroft Commission) came into being in which came into being because President Reagan response to catastrophes or apparent scandals, wanted blue-ribbon sanction for his plan to de- and were ostensibly established to uncover what ploy a new land-based missile. Though com- happened, who was to blame, and how missions are frequently convened to legitimize recurrences might be avoided. precooked decisions, Kitts would have been wise Kitts makes a solid attempt to draw back the to dispense with this one and devote more of his curtain of mystery behind which these commis- relatively short book to mining the history of the sions typically operate. other, more controversial panels. He rightly emphasizes Kitts concludes that in appointing these com- In appointing commissions, the paramount impor- missions, presidents tend to be concerned more tance of who is selected with protecting their own interests than with fer- presidents tend to be con- to serve on them, and reting out the facts. At the very least, commis- cerned more with protect- provides many insights sions buy time until their reports come out and ing their own interests than into the political establish one axis for debate. That’s true enough, with ferreting out the facts. intrigue behind the though congressional investigations—which scenes. His sketches of Kitts generally takes at face value—are no less the members of the tainted by self-interest and political agendas. Roberts Commission investigating Pearl Still, and despite its limitations, Presidential Harbor—four military men and a Supreme Court Commissions & National Security succeeds in justice—demonstrate that the panel was congeni- turning a spotlight on a phenomenon that tally flawed. Major General Frank McCoy, for deserves scrutiny: the efforts of temporary pan- example, was compromised by his friendship els, their life spans measured in months, to inves- with Secretary of War Henry Stimson; and the tigate the permanent government and its failings. panel’s chairman, Justice Owen Roberts, was —Max Holland notable for an almost childlike naiveté. Some of Kitts’s omissions are curious, though. Soldiers Who For example, he notes that the Tower Com- mission on Iran-contra portrayed President Rea- Made France gan as confused and out of the loop, a president The remarkable feat- FRANCE AND who had allowed National Security Council aides ure of French history in the THE FRENCH: to run amok and cross-wire two covert oper- last 30 years is that it has AModern History. ations (arms to Tehran in exchange for American ceased to hinge upon soldiers. By Rod Kedward. hostages and cash, with the cash then diverted to French politics in the first Overlook. 741 pp. $35 the Nicaraguan contras). By contrast, two sepa- two-thirds of the 20th rate investigations, one by a joint congressional century were very largely defined by Captain committee and another by independent counsel Alfred Dreyfus, Marshal Henri Pétain, and Gen- Lawrence Walsh, found that Reagan, in Kitts’s eral Charles de Gaulle, and the intense loyalties words, “had actively presided over an illegal and and hostility they variously inspired. The impor- politically unsound policy.” Kitts seems inclined tance of these three soldiers reflected the extraor-

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dinary role that the French army, known as the Purged and divided, this political punching school of the nation, played in the popular imagi- bag of an army then faced the industrialized nation and political life. Conscription meant that slaughter of World War I, in which Pétain made the army became the great shared experience of his name defending Verdun. The troops held on, Frenchmen, the institution in which Bretons and just. But even America’s entry into the war in Provençals and Parisians learned a common lan- April 1917 could not avert the sullen mutinies of guage and culture. that summer by an exhausted army that could no The false accusations of espionage against longer sustain the monstrous losses of doomed Dreyfus starting in 1894 were only on the most attacks, and Pétain again saved France and her visible level about injustice and anti-Semitism. army, this time by suspending offensives for the The Dreyfus case also represented another rest of the year and allowing morale to recover. outbreak of the argument that had divided France The consequent status of national hero brought since the Revolution of 1789. Was the army the him out of retirement when the Germans custodian of the nation, timeless and Roman returned in 1940—but after France’s defeat, Catholic and resting atop a deep monarchical tra- Pétain became the figurehead of the puppet dition, or of the Republic, secular and modern Vichy regime, a role that proved curiously and democratic? Soon after Dreyfus was cleared congenial to the deeply conservative old man. He of all charges in 1906 came the Republic’s relished the Vichy slogan “Family, Country, revenge. The ministry of war began keeping secret Work,” chosen in deliberate opposition to the dossiers on each officer’s religious beliefs and “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” of the Republic. practices. A Mass-going officer would find his So, having saved France in 1917, Pétain promotions blocked, whereas a staunch and anti- betrayed her in 1940—this was the first of the clerical republican could rise through the ranks. myths established by France’s next essential sol- dier, de Gaulle. Like his myth of a widespread and self-generated Resistance, it was only partly true. The old division between a France for and against the Revolution, for and against Dreyfus, revived under Pétain. At least until late 1943, when the Nazis began losing the war, the Vichy regime was rather more popular, and the Resis- tance very much more marginal (and very much more dependent on British arms and inspiration) than de Gaulle later insisted. In peacetime, de Gaulle saved a kind of democracy by becoming a kind of dictator. He sought to reconcile those deep French divisions by inventing a new constitution for his Fifth Republic, one that combined republican form and monarchical powers. He preferred plebi- scites to elections and abjured political parties. And, aside from the dreadful Algerian War, he was lucky. His presidency, lasting from 1958 to 1969, overlapped with les trente glorieuses, 30 years of economic growth. His successors have After World War II, Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) carefully stoked the myth of a widespread French Resistance to the labored instead under les trente piteuses, 30 years Nazi occupation, with himself as de facto leader. of relative stagnation.

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Rod Kedward is a leading historian of the Christian. His topic here is evolution, and he Resistance, and his book comes trailing almost wants to reach out not only to the scientists who, worshipful reviews in Britain. A skillful as he does, embrace and study it, but also to the chronicler of Dreyfus, Pétain, and de Gaulle, he is evangelicals who spurn it. If both sides dismiss also marvelous on social change and intellectual him as insufficiently doctrinaire—he rebukes life. He is splendid, too, on the selective and atheists as illogical while imploring his fellow delayed French memory, and the ways that the Christians to reconsider their antievolution collaborations of Vichy and the torture of Algeria orthodoxies—then both will be the poorer for it. have recently returned to haunt a chastened Collins is hardly the only scientist with France. He presents a France torn and yet also religious convictions. As he notes, some 40 per- defined by competing identities and differing cent of biologists, physicists, and mathematicians narratives and realms of memory, an approach say that they believe “in a God who actively com- that leans on historian Pierre Nora’s celebrated municates with humankind and to whom one divisions among the traditions of the Republic, may pray in expectation of receiving an answer,” a the Nation, and les France, the last an almost proportion that hasn’t changed significantly over untranslatable notion of a single France com- the years. But Collins is one of the few such scien- posed of many different elements. tists who habitually and publicly use the lan- Kedward concludes that “the identity sought guage of faith in talking about science. Appearing by France within Europe had long become insep- alongside President Clinton in 2000 to announce arable from attitudes to the global market econ- the first complete draft of the human genome— omy,” which is to say that one way or another, the DNA sequence in each of our cells that holds France’s future as a nation is increasingly being the building blocks of life—Collins took the subordinated to the grander narratives of Europe podium to remark that he was awed to catch “the and of globalization. But at least the soldiers first glimpse of our own instruction book, previ- finally seem to have faded from the picture, and ously known only to God.” And he’s one of the few President Jacques Chirac’s recent decision to end in this polarized debate with the nerve to point to conscription is taking the army from the central the elegance of the evolutionary mechanism, and role in national life that it has enjoyed and en- the splendor of its results, as evidence of God’s dured since Napoleon. hand in the world. —Martin Walker This book does more than just review the voluminous evidence for evolution, though the author’s intimate acquaintance with the genome RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY makes him ideally situated to do so. Collins’s Seeing God’s Hand aims are broader, more ambassadorial. Seeking to give nonreligious readers some sense of the in Evolution religious mindset, he offers a narrative of his own The most dangerous conversion in young adulthood, quoting at length THE LANGUAGE place to be on any battlefield is OFGOD: from the writings of C. S. Lewis and St. Augus- smack in the middle, between AScientist Presents tine that influenced him. He challenges his fellow the opposing forces. So one can Evidence for Belief. Christians to see the dangers posed to faith both only imagine the scorn likely to By Francis S. Collins. by young earth creationism (the doctrine that all be heaped on this mild and elo- Free Press. 304 pp. $26 life was created in its current form several thou- quent book as it seeks to appeal to both sides in a sand years ago) and by intelligent design, which war that seems endless. Francis S. Collins is a he calls a “God of the gaps” theology—one that’s noted genetic scientist who chaired the Human dependent for reverence on the puzzles in nature Genome Project, and a self-described evangelical that we do not yet understand. And he

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demonstrates that those puzzles aren’t necessar- ier name. He proposes “BioLogos,” from the ily insoluble. For instance, intelligent design ad- Greek bios (life) and logos (the word of God). herents often describe the mammalian eye and Alas, this sounds less like a theology than a mac- the bacterial flagellum as so “irreducibly com- robiotic cereal. But never mind. The book itself plex” that they couldn’t have resulted from evolu- has a credible shot at spreading the word about tion, but Collins offers clear and accessible expla- the little-appreciated middle ground—at least, nations of how step-by-step evolution could that is, for those who have ears to hear. indeed produce such structures. —Amy E. Schwartz To Collins, evolution and faith are altogether compatible—indeed, each lends depth to the SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY other. Why, he asks, would studying the laws of nature and the intricate mechanisms of the uni- Spectral Mathematics verse do anything but increase one’s wonder at creation? “Many believers in God have been Most of us can handle a UNKNOWN drawn to young earth creationism because they little arithmetic. We can tot up QUANTITY: see scientific advances as threatening to God. But grocery receipts, buy enough AReal and does He really need defending here? Is not God cookies for a children’s birth- Imaginary the author of the laws of the universe? Is He not day party, or estimate how History of Algebra. the greatest scientist? . . . Most important, is He much gas we’ll need to reach By John Derbyshire. honored or dishonored by those who would de- our destination. Numbers that Joseph Henry Press. 374 pp. $27.95 mand that His people ignore rigorous scientific represent familiar things—dol- conclusions about His creation?” lars, cookies, gallons of fuel—generally don’t This approach, known as “theistic evolution,” induce mental panic. But once we begin to think probably predominates among scientists of faith. of those numbers as entities in their own right, Collins suggests, with sweet ingenuousness, that obeying an abstract system of rules, we leave it might attract broader support if it had a catch- mere arithmetic behind and enter the realm of

Credits: Cover, left, © Chuck Savage/Corbis, right, © 2006 Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; pp. 11, 81, © Bettmann/Cor- bis; p. 13, Hoover Institution Archives; p. 15, © Benjamin Lowy/Corbis; p. 16, Art courtesy Rockstar Games/Newscom.com; p. 21, Sarah J. Glover/Philadelphia Inquirer/KRT; p. 23, AP Photo/Gurinder Osan; p. 27, © Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photo; p. 28, AP Photo/Ajit Kumar; p. 31, © Images.com/Corbis; p. 33, Courtesy of Louis K. Meisel Gallery; p. 36, © Cat Gwynn/Corbis; pp. 38–39, Panoramic Images/Getty Images; p. 40, © H&S Produktion/Corbis; p. 43, Illustration by F. Victor Gillam, ca. 1903, From the Collections of the Library of Congress; p. 45, Photography Collections, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations; p. 49, Ahonkhai Family by Vera Viditz-Ward, ca. 2000, The Balch Institute Collections, The Historical Society of Penn- sylvania; p. 52, Courtesy of G. Pascal Zachary; p. 54, AFP PHOTO/Karen BLEIER/Newscom.com; p. 57, Tara Hecksher, © Linda Dawn Hammond/Indyfoto 2004; p. 59, AP Photo/David Longstreath; p. 73, Courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol; p. 75, © Corbis, All Rights Reserved; p. 86, AP Photo/Antonin Kratochvil/VII; p. 90, Reuters/Stringer/News- com.com; p. 92, General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans (oil on canvas) by Alonzo Chappel (1828–87)/Chicago Historical Museum, Chicago, IL/Bridgeman Art Library; p. 97, © Porter Gifford/Corbis; p. 99, Photo by Leonard Mccombe/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images; p. 101, Courtesy of Anne Barclay Priest; p. 105, Hawaii War Records Depos- itory, Photo #154, © Honolulu Star Bulletin; p. 107, © Cornell Capa Photos by Robert Capa © 2001/Magnum Photos; p. 112, George Armstrong Custer by Unidentified Artist, Ambrotype, c. 1860, Image: 10.8 x 8.3cm (4 1/4 x 3 1/4") Case Open: 11.7 x 19.2 x 1.3cm (4 5/8 x 7 9/16 x 1/2") National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.81.138.

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mathematics. And that, for many people, is imagines a hearty, no-nonsense schoolmaster where puzzlement, if not outright phobia, sets in. marching his pupils across the moors in a howl- John Derbyshire, author of the elegant Prime ing rainstorm, turning back occasionally to say, Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Come along now, it’s just a bit of water, it won’t Unsolved Problem in Mathematics (2003), hurt you! attempts here to render non-threatening the There’s no escaping the reality, however, that large branch of mathematics known as algebra. this is a book about algebra. Readers will be able Algebra began with number problems our ances- to judge the depth of their fascination by mark- tors must have dealt with. How do you allot grain ing the page number at which they begin to fall fairly among families of different sizes? If one behind. I made it about two-thirds of the way sheep’s worth of wool makes a rug of a certain through, but then I was trained merely as a theo- size, how many sheep do you need for a rug twice retical physicist. As the concepts become more as long and wide? Early on, there must have been abstruse, the operations more convoluted, an people of a mathematical bent for whom working urgent question presses: What’s it all for? out number puzzles was an attraction in itself. A Perhaps Derbyshire would regard the cuneiform tablet from the Babylonians records question as crass. To the mathematician, juggling the solution, awkwardly expressed in words, of esoteric concepts and searching out their abstract what we would now call a quadratic equation. relationships needs no justification beyond the But lack of a handy notation hampered progress pure intellectual pleasure it affords. But for the for millennia. Not until the 17th century did the rest of us, the journey becomes a bit of a slog. familiar x’s and y’s become commonplace, and Derbyshire has written a charming, demanding that’s when algebra took off. book, but even he can’t bridge the unbridgeable. At first, letters stood plainly for numbers, so Mathematics—like golf or opera—offers endless an algebraist could solve a problem in a general delight to some, but brings others, sooner or way, then answer a specific question by plugging later, to a state of baffled exasperation. in actual values. But true mathematicians —David Lindley deemed the last step uninteresting. It was the manipulation of symbols according to logical Better Living Through rules that caught their fancy, not the real-world applications. Soon, they realized that they could Neurochemistry? denote a certain operation—a swapping of coeffi- In the relatively near HARD SCIENCE, cients in a cubic equation, say—by a symbol, then future, brain science may pro- HARD CHOICES: explore the algebraic properties and rules duce all sorts of technological Facts,Ethics, governing that symbol. Repeat, ad infinitum. breakthroughs: brain scans and Policies Algebra, in this generalized sense, concerns logi- that determine whether some- Guiding Brain cal relationships among abstract entities whose one is telling the truth; tests Science Today. definitions in terms of simple numbers have been that uncover secret urges or By Sandra J. Ackerman. Dana Press. left far behind. We are in the world of fields and latent tendencies, such as a 152 pp. $12.95 groups, rings and manifolds, homology and penchant for violence; pills homotopy—and a strange, self-referential, and other treatments to erase traumatic memories infinitely fertile world it is. or reduce the misery they cause, as well as treat- Derbyshire has a witty, almost brusque way ments to strengthen one’s memory skills; and pro- with words. He offers pithy anecdotes, sardonic cedures to treat and even cure blindness, quadri- asides, and sharp-eyed vignettes of his protago- plegia, epilepsy, and Parkinson’s disease. nists. Admirably, he doesn’t talk down to readers Some of the near-miraculous possibilities but leads them on with breezy confidence. One raise daunting questions. Should a “truth-detec-

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tor,” even if it’s flawlessly accurate, be allowed in fessor Hank Greely, for example, sees no problems trials, job interviews, contract negotiations, fam- with enhancement per se: “I’m a teacher; enhance- ily therapy? Can we prevent memory pills and ment is my business.” By contrast, neurologist the like from creating social divisions between Anjan Chatterjee describes a disturbing scenario users and nonusers, divisions likely to reflect, at in which a businessman pops amphetamines to least in part, wealth? Should brain sensors be master Arabic (research on stroke victims used in nonmedical settings—such as offices, indicates that the drugs may help people learn), where they might help people communicate while his school-aged son takes Viagra before com- more efficiently with computers? Such are the peting in races (as Ackerman notes, it helps the questions that the nascent field of “neuroethics” lungs work more efficiently, “among other effects”). aims to address. So who’s right? You won’t find conclusive answers In Hard Science, Hard Choices, based on a con- here—the field is too new and the science too rap- ference held in May 2005 at the Library of Con- idly changing for that. gress, Sandra J. Ackerman reviews the expert Ackerman’s account can be disjointed and opinions on these topics. Sections of the book are superficial. For example, she declares without devoted to brain scans, brain-computer interfaces, elaboration that “we can never really know and drugs. Throughout, she stresses two inter- whether anyone else is conscious.” (I don’t know related questions: What can we do? And what that my wife is conscious?) Such slips may should we do? reflect the project’s genesis as a summary of oral Many of the technological advances offer the presentations, as well as Ackerman’s presumed possibility not just of curing the ill but of improv- emphasis on trying—mostly with success—to ing the healthy— of making people, in the oft- translate medical jargon into lay terms. Though heard phrase, better than well. Drugs such as occasionally frustrating, her book provides a Prozac and Ritalin are already being used in this speedy and engaging introduction to the scien- way, and future medicines and implantable tific and moral issues, as well as a chance to devices will provide more extensive possibilities. eavesdrop on the beginnings of a debate that’s The participants are divided about the moral, likely to continue for decades. political, and social challenges. Stanford Law pro- —Peter Schwartz

CONTRIBUTORS

■ Nick Gillespie is editor in chief of ■ Ann Loftin is a writer and editor Center fellow, is Cromwell Professor Reason, winner of the 2005 Western who lives in Connecticut. of Anthropology at Princeton Univer- Publications “Maggie” award for best ■ J. Peter Pham, director of the Nel- sity as well as an adjunct professor at political magazine. son Institute for International and Columbia Law School. ■ Max Holland is a contributing editor Public Affairs at James Madison Uni- ■ Amy E. Schwartz is a former colum- versity, is the author most recently of of The Wilson Quarterly. nist and editorial writer for The Wash- ■ Sanford Lakoff, a professor of political Child Soldiers, Adult Interests: The ington Post. science at the University of California, Global Dimensions of the Sierra Leonean Tragedy (2005). ■ Peter Schwartz is on the faculty of San Diego, is the author of Max Lerner: the Indiana University Center for Pilgrim in the Promised Land (1998). ■ Roxana Robinson is the author of Bioethics as well as the Department of ■ Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life (1989) and David Lindley, the author of Degrees Medicine, Indiana University Medical six works of fiction, most recently Kelvin: A Tale of Genius, Invention, Center. and Tragedy (2004), is at work on a Perfect Strangers and Other Stories history of Heisenberg’s uncertainty (2005). ■ Martin Walker is the editor of principle. ■ Lawrence Rosen, a former Wilson United Press International.

Summer 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 111 PORTRAIT

Cadet George Armstrong Custer, ca. 1859

Young Man Going West

Before General George Armstrong Custer (1839–76) American history and lore. Movies, books, and became the mustachioed icon with the jaunty wide- songs about him, and some 1,000 pictures depicting brimmed hat, he was a lackluster young West Point the fight, have made Custer one of the handful of cadet. After the Civil War he turned Indian cam- figures from the Old West whom Americans can still paigner, and on June 25, 1876, without waiting for identify by sight, remarks Larry McMurtry in Oh reinforcements, he led the Seventh Cavalry against a What a Slaughter (2005). This ambrotype, for large force of Lakota and Cheyenne by the Little which Custer probably sat in 1859 while on leave Bighorn River in Montana. He and all his men were from West Point, is displayed at the National killed in the battle, which became known as Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., which “Custer’s Last Stand” and won him a spot in reopened July 1 following six years of renovations.

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