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FUND ON CHARLES C. W. COOKE: THE WORST FISH IN AMERICA the de Blasio Left KING ON KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: THE WORTHY RICH P. J. O’Rourke
Obamacare’sObamacare’s NebraskaNebraska NemesisNemesis
Rising Conservative Star Ben Sasse
JOHN J. MILLER JOHN J. MILLER $4.99 04
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JANUARY 27, 2014 | VOLUME LXVI, NO. 1 | www.nationalreview.com
ON THE COVER Page 24 Andrew Stuttaford on Vladimir Putin Obamacare’s p. 20 Cornhusker Nemesis BOOKS, ARTS With Ben Sasse, Nebraska Republicans have an opportunity to elect not merely & MANNERS a man who promises to vote for the 37 THE GARRULOUS GENERATION repeal of Obama’s signature policy Florence King reviews achievement, but a senator who The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way and It Wasn’t My almost immediately would become one Fault and I’ll Never Do It of the GOP’s most visible and articulate Again, by P. J. O’Rourke.
experts on the health-care law’s defects 38 BEST-LAID PLANS and the ways to replace it. John J. Miller Victor Davis Hanson reviews Strategy: A History,
COVER: MATTHEW DEBOER by Lawrence Freedman.
ARTICLES 41 LET MY PATIENTS GO Kevin D. Williamson reviews 16 THE HARD-WORKING RICH by Kevin D. Williamson The Cure in the Code: How Idle heirs are tough to find. 20th-Century Law Is Undermining 21st-Century BILL DE BLASIO’S OTHER PARTY 17 by John Fund Medicine, by Peter W. Huber. How the Working Families party is coming to power. 19 WHICH GENDER GAP? by Reihan Salam 44 PEACE AND PRINCIPLE Policymakers are focused on the wrong one. Victor Lee Austin reviews In Defence of War, by Nigel Biggar. 20 VLAD THE CONSERVATIVE by Andrew Stuttaford So says Pat Buchanan. 46 FILM: GENERATION OF A VOICE 22 BOOKS AND COVERS by Jay Nordlinger Ross Douthat reviews Her. On “looking liberal” and “looking conservative.” 47 COUNTRY LIFE: HEAVEN’S ARRAY Richard Brookhiser discusses FEATURES astronomy. 24 OBAMACARE’S CORNHUSKER NEMESIS by John J. Miller Ben Sasse, health-care expert and Senate candidate. SECTIONS 27 GREEN DROUGHT by Charles C. W. Cooke California’s farmland lies fallow for a fish. 2 Letters to the Editor 4 The Week 31 THE COLLEGE TRAP by J. D. Vance Our higher-education system hurts the poor. 35 Athwart ...... James Lileks 36 The Long View ...... Rob Long 33 A NEW HEALTH SAFETY NET by David Goldhill 40 Poetry ...... Sally Cook National catastrophic coverage should complement markets. 48 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn
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EDITOR Richard Lowry The Vanishing Appalachians Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones My only beef with Kevin Williamson’s moving Appalachian elegy (“Left Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Behind,” December 16) is the treatment of the coal industry, which he just Literary Editor Michael Potemra Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy briefly describes as a “bulwark against utter economic ruin.” Williamson sug- Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson National Correspondent John J. Miller gests that one reason for the impoverishment of Owsley County, Ky., the poorest Art Director Luba Kolomytseva county in America, is the drift of workers closer to coal operations. This would Deputy Managing Editors Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz suggest that mining towns are little islands of relative prosperity and happi- Associate Editors Patrick Brennan / Katherine Connell ness, but, in reality, some of the starkest poverty in Appalachia and a dispro- Production Editor Katie Hosmer portionate level of negative health effects are closely associated with areas Research Associate Scott Reitmeier Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace where mountaintop-removal mining is taking place. Some studies suggest that Contributing Editors coal production is actually a net economic burden rather than a boon for Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg / Florence King Appalachia, and communities near mining sites report some of the lowest Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin scores in the multi-factor Gallup/Healthways Well-Being Index. Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne It is a conservative temptation to merely blame government mining regu- Reihan Salam / Robert VerBruggen lations—the “war on coal” derided on many a West Virginia billboard—for NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez economic hardship, but as the piece pointed out, the region often confounds Managing Editor Edward John Craig the simple bumper-sticker slogans mouthed across the political spectrum. War National-Affairs Columnist John Fund Media Editor Eliana Johnson may be an apt analogy, though. There are now 500 fewer mountains in the Political Reporters Andrew Stiles / Jonathan Strong ancient Appalachians than there were a century ago, and a greatly reduced Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke mining work force uses millions of pounds of explosives a day to obliterate Associate Editor Molly Powell Editorial Associate Andrew Johnson what remains. Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Developer Wendy Weihs Elsewhere in the December 16 issue (“The Tao of Enchantment”), Web Producer Scott McKim Christopher Tollefsen notes the long battle against disenchanted materialism EDITORS- AT- LARGE by C. S. Lewis: “There are, among Lewis’s opponents, no principled limits to Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan the use of . . . technology.” Lewis’s enemies are on the march in Appalachia. NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Enchanting natural beauty is replaced by blight and pollution, but the poverty Alec Torres / Betsy Woodruff endures. Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza John Murdock M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner Hallettsville, Texas David Gelernter / George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons A Flag in Kiev Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge I was surprised to see the picture accompanying your note on the Euromaidan Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak protest in Kiev in the December 31 issue (The Week). It showed protesters Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu / Lucy Zepeda waving seven Ukrainian flags and one half-black, half-red flag of the nation- Circulation Manager Jason Ng alist Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a murder- Assistant to the Publisher Kate Murdock WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com ous World War II Nazi-collaborationist organization led by Stepan Bandera. MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 Bandera’s forces perpetrated ethnic cleansing of Poles in what is now western SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 Ukraine and participated in the Holocaust. ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Together with your note, the picture provides an accurate commentary on Advertising Director Jim Fowler the events in Kiev, but I doubt the collaborationist flag is known to the Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet English-speaking public. The darker side of Ukrainian nationalism, which has Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Director of Development Heyward Smith been on the rise since the Western-oriented government of Viktor Yushchenko Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell disintegrated, has to be acknowledged. PUBLISHER Jack Fowler Katya Rapoport Sedgwick CHAIRMAN John Hillen Alameda, Calif.
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n The de Blasio administration is just aiming for a zero net impact on the city’s quantity of horse****.
n The revelations in the new Robert Gates memoir, Duty, may be bombshells, but they aren’t surprising. The former defense secretary writes that President Obama lost faith in the Afghan war after ordering more troops there—“for him it was all about getting out.” Gates also recounts how the president and Hillary Clinton admitted that their opposition to the Iraq surge was po - li ti cal. All of this has been obvious to anyone who reads the newspapers, but confirmation from such a highly placed and credible source as Gates is still devastating. The president asked his fellow Americans to die for what he thought was a mistake.
n Can forcing the Little Sisters of the Poor to offer coverage of contraception (and drugs that may cause abortion) be the least burdensome way for the federal government to advance a com- pelling interest? That’s the Obama administration’s po si tion. The Little Sisters have filed suit, and Justice Sonia Soto mayor has enjoined the enforcement of the contraceptive mandate. Most courts so far have sided with religious-liberty claims. The administration’s supporters, notably the New York Times, are trying to maintain that the real issue in the case is that the Little Sisters and like-minded groups are trying to impose their reli- gious views on unwilling workers. If you consider the failure of See page 14. your employer to provide you with contraceptive coverage an intolerable violation of your human rights, then you probably has done a public service by revealing illegal behavior by gov- are not working for the Little Sisters of the Poor. But that is the ernment. That he has done so is a debatable proposition. What is kind of practical understanding of a free society that the admin- not debatable is that he has revealed a lot of secret government istration has banished from its deliberations. activity that is clearly legal and raises no privacy concerns at all. He has revealed, for example, some details of our surveillance of n Colorado has made the prudent choice to legalize the use of foreign leaders—and, worse, how we spy on the Afghan Taliban. marijuana, not only for medical purposes but for the much more In no way does this exposure make Americans freer. It merely common purpose of getting high. Here the argument from prin- makes us less safe. Snowden has done huge damage to the work ciple and the argument from consequences both counsel against of his country’s security services, now and in the future, and is prohibition: The cost of banning marijuana, whether measured hiding from the due punishment by seeking refuge in a hostile in police expenditures or in the more relevant currency of lib- foreign country that benefits from the fallout of his work. He is erty lost and privacy violated, is far too high to justify such scanty acting more like a defector than a whistleblower. benefits as may be had from our mostly fruitless efforts to sup- press the use of a largely benign drug. The experience of other n The Times also published an ostensibly comprehensive inves- legalizers, such as the Netherlands, suggests that Colo rado can tigation of the Benghazi attack that turned up no evidence of in - expect higher rates of drug use, though not radically so, and that volvement from al-Qaeda, and suggested that the infamous the most significant problem associated with legalizing mari- YouTube video “Innocence of Muslims” had led to the violence. juana is likely to be stoner tourism, which presents unique prob- In doing so, the Times ignored its own previous reporting, which lems of its own. This is not to say that we should be indifferent to found strong evidence that al-Qaeda-linked groups participated the use of drugs—we should, as WFB put it back in 1988, “eman- in the attack, and the reporting in its own story, which found only cipate ourselves from the superstition that that which is legal is late-coming bystanders angered by the video. The al-Qaeda links necessarily honorable.” Colorado has taken a step away from the are everywhere for anyone who’d like to look: Just a week later, world in which everything not compulsory is forbidden. U.S. officials confirmed that they now believe an Afghanistan- trained former associate of Osama bin Laden helped plan the n The New York Times wants the U.S. government to offer attack—a suspect the Times specifically ruled out. Even more
amnesty to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, on the grounds that he appalling than the credulity of the Times, however, is that of the ROMAN GENN
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THE WEEK white House. when islamic terrorists who support the ideology n oregon has been a generous fount of health-care news for and sport the heraldry of the global al-Qaeda network killed an conservatives lately. in the two months after the state rolled American ambassador on the anniversary of 9/11, the obama out its exchange, “Cover oregon,” with a psychedelic series administration eagerly accepted their version of the story: that of promotional videos, zero people signed up. the ex - locally based protests had responded to offensive western blas- change’s website wouldn’t work at all, forcing the state to phemy. the president will never contest another election, so he enroll people with paper applications. that method yielded may not have to answer for this. the Times has done its best to about 12,000 enrollments by the end of the year, but no one ensure that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have to, either. knows how many of the applications are valid or complete, and therefore how many oregonians have actually gotten n there’s a good argument and a bad argument against extend- private insurance. Cover oregon’s executive director and ing unemployment insurance, and Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) is chief information officer have both resigned over the fiasco. making both of them. He says that it raises unemployment by Between jobs, they may come to regret the wreckage of their reducing the incentive of recipients to take jobs, and he says that state’s individual-insurance market. he would be fine with it if spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget offset the cost. the first argument is the weaker one, n All Marine recruits are supposed to be able to do three pull- though even it would have merit in different circumstances. Right ups. while 99 percent of male trainees meet this requirement, now, however, there are three job seekers for every job opening, only 45 percent of females do. A spokeswoman says that so ex tended benefits are probably doing much more good than Corps brass “will continue to gather data and ensure that harm. Congress should cut spending to make room for them. (if female Ma rines are provided with the best opportunity to suc- it needs a list, we recommend combing through our back issues.) ceed.” trans la tion: the Pentagon will lower the requirements or find some way to evade them, most likely by “gender- n obamacare was supposed to save money by cutting down norming” so that women have to meet different standards than on eR visits by the uninsured. But a new, careful study on men. we’ll have to pick our future enemies very carefully oregonians undermines that promise. Medicaid patients, it turns indeed. out, visit the emergency room significantly more often than the uninsured, seeking ordinary or acute care there rather than secur- n look here upon this picture, and on this. At year’s end, ing an appointment. we already had reason to doubt the promise, MSNBC hostess Melissa Harris-Perry and a panel of col- since Massachusetts did not see any reduction in eR use follow- leagues mocked the Romney family’s Christmas card, which ing its own universal-coverage program. Post-obamacare, the included Kieran Romney, an adopted grandchild who is whole health-care system seems headed for the eR. black. the MSNBCniks whooped and laughed: “one of these things is not like the other,” one sang; the picture was like a GoP convention, said another, with one black face. Days later, Harris-Perry gave a tearful on-air apology. And AN APPEAL FOR HELP Romney—accepted it. “if you get in the political game, AND AN UPDATE you can expect incoming,” he said. “[But] for children that’s beyond the line. i think [the folks at MSNBC] under- As readers of our website are well aware (from our stand that and feel that as well. i think it’s a heartfelt apol- constant dunning of them for help, if nothing else), ogy, and i think for that reason we hold no ill will NAtioNAl Review is getting sued by climate scientist what soever.” Class act, governor. Maybe MSNBC should Michael Mann. He took offense at a Mark Steyn post play the clip in their talent’s dressing rooms; they might in our blog the Corner that mocked his famous learn something. “hockey stick” graph. when he threatened legal ac - tion, our editor, Rich lowry, wrote an online piece n Frank wolf, the virginia Republican, has served in Congress telling him to get lost—which become part of his com- since 1981. He has announced his retirement plaint against us. the case has dragged drearily on, at the end of the present term. He has but it looks as though an initial, misbegotten decision been one of the great champions siding with Mann against our motion to dismiss has of human rights in Congress, been tossed aside, and our motion to dismiss Mann’s and in America. in the world, current complaint will now likely be heard by a dif- actually. very few congress- ferent judge. this is heartening. Nonetheless, it is all men have cared to champion very expensive, and we hope you can see fit to con- what he has: one thinks of tribute to support our legal defense (215 lexington the late tom lantos (a Ave, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10016). At stake Hungarian refu gee and most narrowly is the question of whether Mann’s Holo caust survivor); lin c oln work can be vigorously criticized, and more broadly Diaz-Balart (born in Cuba); is the fate of free speech in an increasingly politically ileana Ros-lehtinen (ditto); Chris correct society. when Mann first threatened to sue, we Smith; eliot engel. wolf has BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES / pro mised to teach him a lesson in the First Amend - been indefatigable, irre- ment, and that’s exactly what we intend to do. pressible, and a credit to
DENNIS BRACK public life.
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THE WEEK n Elizabeth Cheney dropped her bid to be a senator from choice” to have shrunk and aged markedly over the past two Wyoming, citing family health issues. The polls had her behind decades. The number of abortions performed has fallen the incumbent Republican, Mike Enzi, who has voted in line about 25 percent since 1990, even as the population has with his state’s conservatism even if he has not offered much risen. In 1991, 2,176 abortion clinics were operating in the leadership. Press coverage of the race had dwelt primarily on U.S.; on January 1 of this year, that number was down to whether she was a carpetbagger (having spent most of her life 582. A record number of clinics, 87, closed in 2013, reflect- outside the state) and on her family’s divisions over same-sex ing in part the increasing inability of abortion providers to marriage (she opposes it, her sister is in one). Cheney is a tal- meet various state-level health and safety regulations, some ented public servant and conservative advocate, and we hope we of them recently established, some longstanding but only will be hearing more from her in a more auspicious year. recently enforced. The abortion industry and its defenders often sound hysterical, given that abortion remains legal n By all measures, abortion in the United States continues throughout pregnancy. But you can see why they’re con- to decline. Polls show the constituency for the label “pro- cerned.
Free the Freeways!
S President Obama and the Democrats prepare for Hymel showed that these costs add up: Using data on the midterm elections, they have once again turned congestion, existing road infrastructure, and employment, A their focus to economic policies, such as increasing he estimated that a 50 percent decrease in congestion in the minimum wage, that they think give them political the United States’ ten most congested cities could boost advantage. An underappreciated contributor to excessive long-run employment growth in those cities by 10 to 30 partisanship is the tendency for politicians to focus all of percent, and economic growth along with it. their attention on the few things we disagree about most. Along with slowing economic growth, congestion takes Our policies are such a mess that there are potential a toll on health. Janet Currie and Reed Walker describe in areas for progress lurking around every corner. Perhaps a 2011 paper how introducing the E-ZPass at toll booths the biggest juicy piece of low-hanging fruit is something was tied to a decrease of 10.8 percent in prematurity in many NR readers experience every day: traffic congestion. infants who lived near toll plazas, owing to fewer cars Congestion in the U.S. today is a larger drag on growth idling at plazas. Living near highways has been tied to than almost anything else, and better traffic and planning increased rates of asthma and heart disease as well. policies in many urban areas could go a long way to There is plenty of policy Sudafed for this problem. We improving the economy. could build more roads, increase tolls during rush hour, As the nearby chart shows, traffic congestion in the U.S. add more fast-passes to avoid tollbooth traffic, and im - has grown worse and worse over the past three decades, prove public transportation. While members of the differ- as the population has grown, people have moved to cities, ent political parties might favor different combinations, the and the number of miles driven by Americans each year key point is that pricing road use could help solve the has increased. The chart displays the total hours and total problem, and provide a double dividend as revenues are gallons of gasoline wasted due to congestion each year. used in other ways. These totals were calculated by measuring the difference —KEVIN A. HASSETT between a free-flowing trip and the actual speeds that commuters experience and tallying these differences up over each year. Although the general upward trend dipped Costs of Congestion marginally in the years following the recent recession (the
Total Hours of Delay, Millions jobless don’t commute), it is clear that the amount of time 7,000 140,000 Total Gallons of Excess and gasoline wasted due to congestion has grown to an Gasoline, Millions 6,000 120,000 astonishingly high level. All of this congestion also means Total Cost of Congestion, Millions of Dollars added emissions from cars that sit in traffic. 5,000 100,000
As congestion has grown worse, so has its estimated 4,000 80,000 cost each year, represented in the chart in millions of dol- 3,000 60,000
lars. In 2011, the total estimated cost of congestion in the Dollars (Millions) U.S. topped $120 billion. Think of that as an annual tax on 2,000 40,000
Americans that could be eliminated with better road man- 1,000 20,000
agement and the scale of the policy opportunity becomes Hours of Delay and Gallons Gasoline (Millions) 0 0 readily apparent. 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 Year Congestion slows business activity as well, which raises SOURCE: TEXAS A&M TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE costs and reduces sales and output. A 2009 study by Kent ANNUAL URBAN MOBILITY REPORT, 2012
8 | www.nationalreview.com JANUARY 2 7 , 2 0 1 4 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 1/6/2014 10:54 AM Page 1
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Old Testament scriptures predict a future time when nature’s deadly assaults on this earth are to be followed by a pure language. “Just found your site. I was quite impressed and Decades ago Richard Wetherill identifi ed a natural law he called the Law look forward to hours of enjoyment and learning. of Absolute Right, requiring people’s rational, honest thoughts and ac- Thanks.” - Frank tions. In later years, he suggested that the scriptural “pure language” is defi ned by that natural law. Do nature’s many assaults on this planet in the form of earthquakes, fl oods, volcanoes, wildfi res, tsunamis, and extremes of weather qualify to introduce that pure language? Think about it. Wetherill also referred to a language of thought that had disclosed nature’s laws of physics to researchers. In turn, they imparted those laws to the public. Now, in effect, gravity speaks its language of thought to all people for their safety. Consider that the creator’s Law of Absolute Right, calling for rational, “I have fi nished reading honest thinking and behavior describes the promised pure language! If the book How To Solve Problems. So simple, yet it does, nature’s assaults on earth could worsen until the “impure language” so profound and powerful. of human thought and behavior is abandoned. Thank you.” - Alex Join in thought with others now learning to adhere to the pure language defi ned in the creator’s Law of Absolute Right: Think, say, and do only what is rational and honest.
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THE WEEK n Two federal courts attacked Utah’s marriage laws. One struck ning the use of so-called electronic cigarettes—which are notable down a law that made it illegal for married people to “cohabit for not being cigarettes and contain no tobacco—anywhere with another person,” part of the state’s policy against polygamy. smoking is prohibited. E-cigarettes are devices that deliver Another set aside the state law defining marriage as the union of nicotine to those who desire it without producing smoke—the a man and a woman and required the state to recognize same-sex “smoke” they produce is water vapor, which human beings marriages. The Supreme Court has stayed that second ruling, as inhale and exhale with every breath. E-cigarette “smoke” also it should have. Nothing in the Consti tution prohibits the people contains propylene glycol, which Broadway-loving New Yorkers of any state from recognizing marriage as the union of a man and should know as stage smoke. The use of e-cigarettes looks like a woman, and the Supreme Court has not ruled otherwise. smoking, and so offends the tender sensibilities of Nurse Federal judges may well disagree with these laws, but they ought Bloomberg and those of his oddball puritanical bent. The law is to stand down. a literal triumph of form over substance.
n Meet the illegal lawyer: Sergio Garcia, an illegal immigrant, n James Craig may be the most sensible police chief in the has been admitted to the California bar by order of the state United States—and he works in a city badly in need of good supreme court. He is therefore subject to California’s Business sense, Detroit. Recently, he spoke about the deterrent effect of and Professions Code Section 6068, which holds that an attorney gun ownership. He spent many years working in Los Angeles must uphold the “laws of the United States and of this state,” and then went to Portland, Maine. He had a “stack” of concealed- which Mr. Garcia, by definition, does not. He should have stayed weapon permits he was denying, he said. “That was my orienta- an undocumented lawyer. tion.” But “I changed my orientation real quick. Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good n There are almost 200 countries in the world, and the American Americans were armed.” Maybe more police chiefs should do a Studies Association has voted to boycott one of them. No prizes stint in Maine. for guessing which one: Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, the only truly free country in that region. There are two pos- n Obama is seldom more annoying than when he and his wife try sible reactions to the ASA: You can laugh at them. Or you can to uplift the masses. The Agriculture Department’s 2012 school- recognize that the delegitimization of Israel makes physical lunch guidelines were meant to instill proper food habits by attacks on Israel more acceptable. establishing maximum calorie counts, restricting meat and fat content, and encouraging greater use of vegetables and “meat n In one of his last acts in his lamentable career as a public nanny, alternatives” (bureaucratese for tofu). The results were pre- outgoing New York mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a law ban- dictable: The part of a 650-calorie meal that a grade-schooler
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THE WEEK considers edible was far too small to sustain human life; “smart” States and rival Islamists. He has a plan to replace the current snacks (e.g., “light” popcorn, low-fat tortilla chips) proved about parliamentary democracy with rule by a president, himself of as popular in most schools as smart kids; and the program’s rules course, whose powers would make him an updated version of the and regulations (“State agencies may authorize alternatives to the old Ottoman sultan-caliph. POS lunch counts, such as stationing staff at the end of the salad bar, to ensure each student leaves with a reimbursable meal”) n The Winter Olympics are about to come up in Sochi, in approached Obamacaresque complexity. Instead of hiring southern Russia. Vladimir Putin has spent an estimated $50 arugula police, schools dropped out of the program (forsaking billion on them and wants to get his money’s worth. Nobody has its generous subsidies), and now the USDA has changed the rules claimed suicide bombings on two successive days in Volgograd, to allow considerably more flexibility, in the hope that schools the former Stalingrad, 400 miles or so from Sochi, but presum- can devise meals that students will actually eat. The climbdown ably they were intended to frighten spectators off. Thirty-four is a welcome acknowledgment that you can’t teach people to people were killed, 62 injured. One victim was a policeman who “make smart choices” by removing choices. Better still would be allegedly was approaching the first bomber just outside the rail- for Washington to leave school lunches to the lunchroom ladies. way station. The authorities have been quick to blame Doku Umarov, a well-known Chechen terrorist. In the absence of any n Al-Qaeda in Iraq is back. The terror group reoccupied, at least proof, however, in the tried and tested Russian manner thousands temporarily, Fallujah and parts of Ramadi, towns in the Sunni of policemen are conducting checks in Volgograd and have heartland. U.S. troops had wrested these places from militant rounded up about 700 people. The shadow rises of the terrorist control during the height of the insurgency and pacified them at murders at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. a great cost. Their reversion back to the militants is a potent symbol of the country’s slide toward chaos since American n The French government has proposed to triple the tax on rid- forces left. The withdrawal drastically limited our influence over ing schools. And, as the Associated Press reported, advocates of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who has ruled in a riding “fear the higher tax will make lessons too expensive, and ham-fistedly sectarian manner perfectly suited to stoking a force many schools to close.” They also worry that “it will further renewed civil war. For now, the Sunni tribes fear and hate AQI chip away at rural traditions already struggling in a stagnant even more than does Maliki, but this may not be true forever. economy.” The Left’s hostility to horse-riding is something to During the Bush years, we experienced the costs of intense en - ponder. In 1984, the speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, made the gage ment in the Middle East; now we are experiencing the costs following statement about President Reagan: “The evil is in the of precipitous retreat. White House at the present time. And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the n The tide of scandal sweeping over Turkey laps around Prime future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse. He’s Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and could well sweep him cold. He’s mean. He’s got ice water for blood.” Yes, and did we away in the end. He has committed the government to huge also mention he likes to ride a horse? The French Left surely im - multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects. Prosecutors have ar - a gines it is striking a blow against Louis XVI and Marie An toi - rest ed dozens of people who allegedly paid bribes in connec- nette. The truth is, they’re just giving country folk the shaft. tion with these projects. Three of the accused are sons of cabinet ministers, and Bilal, Erdogan’s son, is said to be in - n As all the world that watches TV knows, the Robertson family volved. Prosecutors have also ordered the release from prison of of West Monroe, La., were successful makers of duck calls who the popular General Cevik Bir, on the grounds that the Erdogan- became the stars of Duck Dynasty, the super-successful reality inspired accusation that he had been plotting a coup was false. show. Then, as all the world that follows the culture wars knows, Hitting back in his customary no-holds-barred style, Erdogan has family patriarch Phil gave an interview to GQ in which he called fired some 700 policemen, including 16 police chiefs engaged in homosexuality a sin, comparing it to bestiality and fornication. the corruption probe, and blocked prosecutors in a second round The gay pressure group GLAAD complained; A&E, the show’s of investigation. As usual when in trouble, Erdogan has also broadcaster, announced that Phil was suspended from the show; found a conspiracy to blame, supposedly between the United then a wave of protest forced A&E to bring Phil back. A&E took on the Robertsons as mockable rubes, but they turned out to be popular as well as amusing. GLAAD and other such groups seek to turn America into a continental college campus where social pressure and speech codes throttle debate and sounding off alike. It lost this time, but it will be back.
n For those who find Unitarians too doctrinaire, there is now an outfit called Sunday Assembly, where nonbelievers gather once a week to refrain from worshiping together. It might be summed up as “the Green party at prayer,” and indeed, some hard-core atheists find Sunday Assembly entirely too churchy. So for adherents of that old-time irreligion, a splinter group has started
BURHAN OZBILICI Godless Revival, which promises to put the “a” back in / “atheism.” Still, the problem remains of persuading people to
AP PHOTO celebrate a negative; atheist services are like getting together
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every Sunday to root against a football team. So yet another sect spent his convalescence has emerged: Atheism+, which, like the early Christians who dreaming of a more efficient adapted pagan rites, has co-opted liberals’ religious fervor over way to kill Ger mans, and the politics by emphasizing “social issues like sexism, racism, GLBT AK-47 was the final result of issues, politics, poverty, and crime.” How can the absence of that. In one of history’s great dogma spawn so many heresies? ironies, the fact that Commu - nist states did not recognize n Ninety-year-old George Hicks, a Dayton, Ohio, laundry patents meant that the AK- owner, wins our Second Amendment in Action Award (Senior 47 design be came nearly Division) for valiantly fighting off a would-be robber. When the universal through out the hoodie-clad miscreant entered the R&J Laundromat and Commu nist bloc and the demanded cash, Hicks reached into his coat pocket and pulled out Third World, and the weapon that Mr. Kalashnikov designed to a semi-automatic handgun, and, as he later recalled, “when I went protect his motherland from outside invaders became a favorite for my gun I said I’ll blow your [expletive] brains out and he was of, among others, terrorists who seek to do it violence from with- gone. . . . Why get scared? I’ve got the gun and he’s running. It in. Mr. Kalashnikov was something of a mixed bag, singing the was just funny.” Hicks has our admiration, and our hope that he praises of Joseph Stalin one day, wishing that he had instead will be spared any further such amusement. been famous for inventing a useful farm implement the next. The Soviet Union is long gone, but the AK-47 remains: From n english without its Latin heritage would be like Beowulf, only Tiananmen Square to Srebrenica to Iraqi Kurdistan, it is an less intelligible. For a good millennium, literate englishmen used instrument of slaughter in the service of political tendencies inti- Latin, the lingua franca of europe, alongside their native, vernac- mately related to those that got the Kalashnikovs exiled to ular tongue. The two languages mingled and slowly gave rise to Siberia in the first place. Dead at 94. R.I.P. modern english, this wildly successful integration of the North Sea with the Mediterranean. In 1913, Robert Whitwell, an english n For over 30 years, Bob Grant (né Robert Gigante) was the philologist with a love for his language’s ancestry, wanted a more incendiary conservative voice of various radio stations in New comprehensive dictionary of British Latin than was then avail- York City. Genial, even courtly in person, Grant could be like a able. He pitched the idea to an international learned society, and nutmeg grater on air, telling callers to get lost and scourging one hundred years later, Ecce! Oxford University Press and the public figures he did not like. Many of these were black (he com- British Academy published the final fascicule of the Dictionary of pared New York mayor David Dinkins to a “washroom atten- Medieval Latin from British Sources in December. In the spirit of dant”) and twice Grant went far enough to be fired from his gigs. its ultimate entry, zythum, a kind of beer, gaudeamus igitur. Rush Limbaugh, who in some respects emulated Grant, differed in that his hallmark was (and is) confidence. Grant seemed to need n Our heroes of the Hanoi Hilton—those who survived their to cross the line, and be rebuked for it; his persona was inextrica- captivity and torture—are dying. In our November 25 issue, bly bound up with bullying and grievance. Limbaugh is the happy we eulogized Robinson Risner, an ace in more senses than one. warrior, Grant was the angry sharpshooter. Dead at 84. R.I.P. We now do the same for edwin A. “Ned” Shuman III, who has died at 82. He wanted to organize a church service at n Al Goldstein was both a smut-peddler and a moral exemplum. Christmas 1970. He Other porn kings—Hefner, Guccione, Flynt—leavened their knew it would result wares with fiction or journalism. Goldstein’s flagship publica- in his torture, and it tion, Screw, trafficked in hard stuff and ads for escort services did. It resulted in tor- and massage parlors (i.e., prostitution), and made a fortune. ture for at least four Then it all came apart. Internet competition drove him into others as well. But the bankruptcy; he feuded insanely with his family; he sank to a remaining men were homeless shelter. Fin-de-millennium America allowed him to able to get through the do just what he wanted, and he reaped all the rewards. Shame on Lord’s Prayer. Having him; shame on us. Dead at 77. R.I.P. resisted on that day, our prisoners were HEALTH CARE able to conduct their makeshift Sunday services until they were released. One ex- A Failure in Progress POW, Leo Thorsness, wrote, “I know I will never see a better eCAUSe the Obamacare website is performing better example of pure raw leadership” than Ned Schuman. We always than it did during its admittedly disastrous first weeks, knew our guys were better than Jane Fonda and the rest por- B and because congressional Democrats have not de - trayed; but they were even better than we knew. R.I.P. fected in the numbers that would have put the law’s near- term survival in question, supporters of the law believe that n Mikhail Kalashnikov, a self-taught engineer, left the world an they have turned a corner. They are convinced that those of iconic invention, the Avtomat Kalashnikova Model 1947, us who oppose the law can do no more than temporarily
known as the AK-47. The son of a peasant family exiled to obstruct it, and that the benefits it is starting to bring to the JENS MEYER / Siberia in the early days of the Soviet terror, he was conscripted American public will ultimately make it popular and then
into the Red Army and was wounded at the battle of Bryansk. He unchallenged. AP PHOTO
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THE WEEK In reality, Obamacare remains an unpopular law with POLITICS deep flaws. It is performing much worse than the advocates NYC’s Left Turn predicted as recently as September. At the end of that month, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen HE inauguration of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New Sebelius said to NBC Nightly News, “I think success looks York City puts a proudly left-wing politician in the like at least 7 million people having signed up by the end of T national spotlight. March 2014.” It was last year that the Congressional Budget The most traditional thing about the new mayor may be his Office came up with that estimate for the number of people family: a progressive dream (black ex-lesbian wife, mixed-race who would enroll in Obamacare’s exchanges. Nobody now children), laid over a template straight out of Leave It to Beaver: expects the target to be hit. The administration is not tout- Dad, Mom, two kids. All that’s missing is a dog. De Blasio did ing that measure of success any more, and neither are its well to put them front and center during his campaign. supporters—even after the supposed triumph of its “tech De Blasio, who managed Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate race, surge.” was sworn in by Bill Clinton. De Blasio can help the Clintons The administration is not providing the information to fend off challenges from the left as she makes her next presiden- allow us to evaluate other aspects of its performance. We tial run. As his patrons, they will however become hostages to his suspect that in many states, the population in the exchanges record as mayor. is older and sicker, and thus more expensive to cover, than How can he succeed? De Blasio won by attacking Michael the administration or the insurers had anticipated. We sus- Bloomberg’s New York as a tale of two cities, riven by pect as well that a large percentage of the people whose inequality. That inspires his base, but New York’s mayor, enrollment the administration is applauding will never pay though relatively powerful compared with other mayors, is their premiums, were previously insured but forced off their still constrained in numerous ways (he must get approval from plans by Obamacare, or both. The truth will, however, even- Albany for his tax policies). Socialism in one city is a hard goal tually out. to achieve in the American system. And while Obamacare will be able to publicize positive In practice, a de Blasio administration will most likely repre- stories—people who finally have help with their medical sent a return of local Democrats to power—and to the trough. bills notwithstanding their preexisting conditions, for New York’s city councilmen and borough pols are a collection of example—the negative stories will keep accumulating, too. midgets, many of them crooked. The big players in the party are More people will lose their existing coverage, or see their its labor unions: teachers and other public-service workers, what premiums increase, or their choice of doctors restricted. Bloomberg called the “labor-electoral complex” as he left office. More exemptions will be granted from the law, too. Note The unions’ idea of the new equality is to win fat contracts for that the biggest one so far, the hardship exemption from the their members, paid for they care not how. individual mandate for people who lost their coverage De Blasio’s first move, his equivalent of Rudy Giuliani’s owing to Obamacare, was announced after the surge. The pounce on the squeegee men, was to announce that the horse- overall picture does not seem likely to make the law popu- drawn carriages that take tourists through Central Park would lar. be phased out. Giuliani attacked a criminal menace; de Blasio The premises on which the law was sold also seem to us will destroy small businesses. There is also a whiff of an old- likely to keep unraveling. It is now widely acknowledged that fashioned payoff in the deal, since one of de Blasio’s backers, the president spoke falsely when he said his law would let Steve Nislick, is a developer who appears to covet the 64,000 people who liked their insurance keep it; it will soon be clearer square feet that stables now occupy on the West Side. that what he said about keeping their doctors was also false. Start spreading the news . . . In re cent months studies have suggested that merely expand- ing in sur ance coverage does not do much to improve health outcomes, or reduce ER visits—which were crucial to the ar - gu ment of advocates of the law that it would restrain health- care costs. This is no time, then, for opponents to flag in calling for the repeal and replacement of Obamacare. Republicans should continue to press at the law’s weakest points. They should challenge Democrats to suspend the individual mandate for everyone, legislatively. The exchanges are likely to put seri- ous financial strain on the insurance companies, who will want a bailout; Republicans should seek to repeal the claim on federal money that the law creates for them. And they should explain that conservative reforms can provide care for the sick, and peace of mind for the healthy, without the many costs of Obamacare. Republicans will then be advocating a better deal for FRANK FRANKLIN II
/ Americans while Democrats are trying to lower the bar for the law’s success—lower it so far that its mere survival
AP PHOTO qualifies. We trust voters to draw the right conclusions.
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You deserve a factual look at . . .
Israel: Its Success for the Long Haul What Are Israel’s Great Strengths to Achieve Its Continued Success? On its 65th birthday, Israel can be described as a great success. Now, looking forward, we need to project what Israel will be like for the next 60 to 100 years. From what we can foresee, it is going to be a continuation of its success. There are good reasons for this optimistic assessment.
exporter of such products. WhatNational are Security. the The facts? balance of military power, as compared A Cohesive Society, a Flowering Democracy. Unique in the to its neighboring Arab enemies, is decisively in favor of Israel. Middle East, Israel is a democracy on the US model. That means Israel’s military might is substantially greater than that of any a state of laws and of the will of its citizens. Although a highly combination of its potential adversaries. It is highly unlikely that militarized nation, and in contrast to all of its neighbors, there any Arab state would venture to attack powerful Israel. Military has never been any hint of a putsch or of a coup in Israel. It has threats are more likely to come from non-state adversaries such the same important institutions as our country, including the as Hamas or Hezbollah. Israel’s non- nation’s Supreme Court playing an important and decisive role. state enemies are armed with Despite having successfully thousands of rockets, virtually all of “Yes, indeed, the future of the integrated millions of people since the them supplied by Iran. But Israel’s country’s creation in 1948 – the sophisticated missile defense systems Jewish state for the next 60 to population is essentially would be fully competent to intercept 100 years seems to be assured.” homogeneous, united by the Jewish and incapacitate virtually all such faith. Even the large block of Soviet incoming rockets. immigrants has been successfully The only credible threat would be an implacably hostile Iran. absorbed. The large contingent of Ethiopians has had a It is, however, certain that Israel, with or without the help or somewhat more difficult adjustment. Many of the Arab citizens, approval of the United States, would not allow Iran to be in a even though all venues are available to them, have still not fully position to attack. If worse came to worst, there is, as a last accepted their country. Much work remains to be done. The resort, Israel’s own nuclear potential, which, though most difficult remaining division is between the secular majority unconfirmed, is purported to be formidable. and the ultra-religious haredim. But even they are beginning to A Strong Economy. Next to military power, a strong economy adapt and to integrate, with many of the young haredim willing is a fundamental requirement for a successful future. Israel’s to serve in the IDF, the country’s military. Israel is blessed with economy is vastly ahead of its neighbors – unique in the Middle a disproportionate number of college graduates – probably the East and equal to most and superior to some European highest percentage of population in the world. It has the highest countries. Israel was admitted into the Organization for number of Nobel laureates to population and the highest Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a union of the percentage of patents issued. most developed countries of the world. The International International Relations. Even despite its problems with Arab Monetary Fund (IMF) has expressed its confidence in Israel’s and Muslim nations, Israel has full diplomatic relations with 156 long-term vitality. out of 193 U.N. members. The only implacable enemy is Iran, Israel is a fount of productivity. Most major American which, under the Shah, was one of Israel’s firmest allies. Turkey, companies have subsidiaries and research/development affiliates also a former close friend, is, under its current Islamist in Israel. Israel is a world leader in microchip technology, in government, in an ambiguous relationship with Israel. The two medical instrumentation, in missile defense, in robotics, in fastest growing and most populace countries – China and India unmanned aerial vehicles and in many other categories. – are in friendly relationships with Israel. They are not infected Although much effort has been expended by Israel’s enemies to by the anti-Semitic virus that has poisoned much of Europe. isolate it economically, that is a forlorn cause and will continue They think of Israel as an ancient civilization, just like their own. to be unsuccessful. But the most important international connection by far is that As a result of ceaseless exploration, huge oil and gas fields have with our country, the United States, which has been a strong and been discovered in the Israeli sector of the Mediterranean, generous supporter of Israel from the very day of its creation and which, beginning almost immediately, will fulfill its domestic considers it to be one of its most important and most reliable demands and will, in all likelihood, propel Israel to become an allies. Yes, indeed, with its strong military, its flourishing economy, its cohesive population, and its firm international relations, the future of the Jewish state for the next 60 to 100 years seems to be assured.
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stitutes a smaller share of their assets than it does for middle-class and poor households. They live modestly relative to their means, and for the most part do not work on Wall Street or as corporate executives. The caricature of the rich American as a child of privilege who inherited a fortune and spends his days shuttling between mansions in a private jet is largely a product of the imagination of such would-be class warriors as elizabeth Warren and Robert Reich. The relatively minor role of inherit- ed money in the lives of wealthy Amer - i cans is worth examining in some detail. Senator Bernie Sanders, the self- described socialist from Vermont, has been known to complain indignantly that “today the Walton family of Wal- mart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America.” But that fact is rather less telling than Senator Sanders imagines it to be. Never mind the Wal - tons: If you have a net worth of $0.01, The Hard-Working Rich then your wealth exceeds that of the poor- est quarter of Americans combined— Idle heirs are tough to find their net worth begins in negative territory and tops out at $0.00. BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON The Waltons are not typical of rich America. Wealth transfers—inheritances and gifts combined—constitute a small HeRe is in Dallas an establish- classic Amer i can success story, an immi- part of the holdings of the rich, whether ment called the Idle Rich Pub, grant who launched another pub that you define “rich” in terms of income or where you can find an excellent became so successful that it was too net worth. For the top income quintile, T plate of fish and chips but few crowded for his taste—inspiring him to gifts and inheritances amount to 13 per- if any actual idle rich folk, who seem to open a new place partly as an act of self- cent of household wealth, according to be scarce as hen’s teeth. There are plenty indulgence, thus the self-deprecating research published by the Bureau of of rich people in and around Dallas, as a name. Labor Statistics. For the top wealth quin- walk down euclid Avenue in Highland The Idle Rich Pub is not the first tile, they amount to 16 percent. For the Park will confirm, but unlike in New York Dallas drinking establishment by that hated “1 percent,” inherited wealth City’s Upper east Side or San Francisco’s name. As the Dallas Observer points out, accounts for about 15 percent of hold- Mission Dis trict, Dallas’s outdoor cafes there was another bar called the Idle Rich ings. Contrary to the story the Left likes and boutiques are deserted on a typical some years back, a hangout for newspa- to tell about economic inequality in the weekday afternoon: Dallas’s rich are in per reporters and “cops who, once over- United States, those numbers have gone the main the working rich. Dallas is no served, would empty their revolvers into down over recent decades—by almost longer the Dallas of Dallas, but it still is a the moose head above the bar.” In a city half for the wealthiest Americans. Mean - city in which the very well off are not at of up-and-comers such as Dallas, it is while, inherited money makes up 43 per- all shy about their money—there are hard not to see the professionals drinking cent of the wealth of the lowest income plenty of Bentleys parked in front of the $21 glasses of Macallan as the cultural group and 31 percent for the second- Mansion at Turtle Creek, because Dal las (and perhaps in some cases literal) heirs lowest. In case our would-be class war- is the sort of place where rich people of the blue-collar crowd at the old Idle riors are having trouble running the drive Bentleys and they call their nicest Rich. numbers here, that means that inherited hotel “the Mansion.” Those Bentleys Rich America is a lot more like Dal - money on net reduces wealth inequality belong to energy traders, hedge-fund las—and even more like relatively in the United States (measured as a ratio) geeks, restaurateurs, real-estate devel- understated Houston—than it is like ra ther than exacerbating it. opers, dentists, importers, exporters—to Fifth Avenue. Rich America is working There is a reason that money earned the extent that there are trust funders, America—wealthy households contain from work accounts for a relatively large they’re keeping a relatively low profile on average more than four times as many share of the holdings of rich Americans: everywhere but the charity circuit. The full-time workers as poor households, They work more—a lot more. While Idle Rich Pub is owned by a man with a and, surprisingly, inherited wealth con- Census Bureau data document a very
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large gap in the prevalence of college ley found that the most popular make of degrees among the top 20 percent vs. the automobile among the wealthy was not bottom 20 percent, there is an even Ferrari or Mercedes but Ford, and that Bill de larger and more significant gap—60 the most common Ford model owned by percentage points—between full-time a millionaire was the F-150 pickup Blasio’s employment for householders in the top truck.) income group vs. the bottom income But this is not just an invitation to group. There is, to be sure, such a thing moral crowing about the virtues of the Other Party as the working poor, but the most salient rich. If one assumes that a very large How the Working Families party is characteristic of poor households is the por tion of the poor would ceteris par i - lack of full-time workers in them. For bus prefer to be better off, then our coming to power the bottom income group, there is an analysis of the problem must begin by average of 0.42 earners per household, acknowledging that while there is sig- BY JOHN FUND
S recently as 1998, New York There is a reason that money earned State’s Republican party con- from work accounts for a relatively trolled the governorship, a A United States Senate seat, and large share of the holdings of the mayor’s office in Manhattan. Today, rich Americans: They work it is greatly diminished, with its sole beachhead of influence in the state sen- more—a lot more. ate, where it shares a majority with four independent Democrats. with 68.2 percent of householders not nificant inequality when it comes to In contrast, the Working Families working at all, as opposed to 1.97 earn- income, the more radical and significant party (WFP), a 15-year-old left-wing, ers per household and only 13.3 percent instance of inequality is in the oppor- union-fueled group with just 20,000 not working for the highest income tunity to earn any income in the first members, now holds the whip hand over group. place. Blaming the rich for the pre - much of the dominant Democratic party Not surprisingly, 78.4 percent of those dicament of the poor is insupportable in in New York—and is already spreading highest-income families were married the face of the data: If the Waltons its wings to other states. The WFP not couples, as opposed to 17 percent for the dropped off the face of the earth tomor- only was a major force behind Bill de lowest-income group. What this means row, that would make no difference at Blasio’s victory for mayor last No v em - in brief is that the highest-income fami- all to the 68.2 percent of poor house- ber; it dominated the rest of the election, lies are composed almost exclusively of holders who have no work but cannot too. “They propelled all three citywide two-earner households, the overwhelm- afford to be unemployed. officials in New York City into office, ing majority of them married couples. But what if the above assumption is and have a huge chunk of the city Those who are inclined to see public wrong? While it would be uncharitable council allied with them,” says Hank policy mainly through green eyeshades to begrudge the poor the money that is Sheinkopf, a leading Democratic consul- may sniff at the social conservatives and spent on them by the welfare state, tant who has worked for Hillary Clinton. their quaint worries about marriage, but especially considering that we spend a “They are a real force.” there is a very strong connection be - great deal more subsidizing the middle In New York, the WFP’s power is tween how we conduct our family lives class, the fact is that as a practical matter magnified by state laws that allow and our economic outcomes—the very we are running out of ways to spend minor parties to cross-endorse major- word “economy” derives from the money on the needy: We already pay for party candidates, which has given rise Greek term for household ad min istra - education, food, housing, job training, to a number of influential third parties. tion, οἰκονομία. All the best people health care, heating, etc. There are a (Incidentally, one such upstart, the may roll their eyes at “tiger mom” Amy number of charitable organizations that Con servative party, provided the ballot Chua’s admiration for Asian- exist for the sole purpose of providing line for WFB’s mayoral campaign in American, Ni ger ian-American, and poor people with appropriate clothes to 1965 and his brother’s successful Mormon domestic culture, but it is dif- wear to job interviews. But something Senate campaign in 1970.) But cross- ficult to dismiss the results. is missing, that priceless thing that endorsements are especially crucial in This is not an invitation to moral makes an immigrant into a valedictorian New York City: Rudy Giuliani won the crowing about the virtues of the rich— or a successful publican, that inspires mayoralty in 1993 only by running on okay, maybe it is: The country would be people to make the most out of the the lines of both the Republican party far better off if more people lived the opportunities afforded by a society that and the heavily left-leaning Liberal way the top 20 percent do: married, is, for all of its present difficulties, stuffed party. He re warded the Liberals with working their butts off, saving and with them. Mitt Rom ney might have patronage jobs and hefty pay increases investing their money, and living within some ideas about that, but Americans got for their teachers’-union allies. Mike their means. (In his research for The a good hard look at him in 2012 and Bloomberg won in 2001 only by having Millionaire Next Door, Thomas J. Stan - said no. both the Re publican- and Independence-
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party lines, and in 2009 he even his administration with her operatives. legal bills to Randy Mastro, a former actively negotiated with Working Fami - “Our ties in the government run deep,” Giuliani deputy mayor who brought lies for their en dorse ment, until his rep- she boasts. She also makes clear de the suit. It also signed a court agree- resentative ad mitted “the price was too Blasio is on a tight leash: “When we ment that DFS would end its associa- high.” disagree with Bill, we’re going to say tion with the party. But in 2011, DFS But Mayor de Blasio isn’t going to it. We’re not letting people off the filed an appeal with the court, saying it have to negotiate with Working Families, hook.” had to remain linked with Working because he is in large part their creation. When the ire of Working Families is Families—by far its largest client—or He helped found the party, used the dis- aroused, it can be crushingly effective. suffer “extreme economic and logistical counted services of their grassroots In 2010, city-council speaker Christine hardship.” In April 2011, state-supreme- organizers to win election to the city Quinn was positioning herself to run court justice Anthony Giacobbe held council in 2001, and then won the city- for mayor as someone who could bal- DFS in contempt for failing to follow wide office of public advocate with ance left-wing loyalties with a realistic through on its agreement to separate their backing in 2009. Their agenda approach to business issues. She opposed from Working Families. might as well be his: a new city-wide a controversial bill to mandate paid sick Mastro has said the party claims it “living” minimum wage, tax hikes on days at private companies because, she “needs the DFS’s people there so vitally, upper-income New Yorkers, require- said, “businesses are on the brink, and they so close at hand that they need to be there ments that developers build “afford- fear that any new costs will put them operating in the same office space with able” housing units on a massive scale under.” Working Families leaders yelled the same people.” in exchange for building permits, betrayal and helped lead a left-wing attack While legal investigations grind on, tougher rent controls, retroactive wage machine against Quinn that eventually WFP is making progress elsewhere. hikes for public employees, and severe drove her into a poor third-place finish in It continues to perfect its Alinskyite curbs on the growth of non-union char- the mayoral primary and helped defeat tactics in New York: recruit activist ter schools. some of her allies in city-council races. leftists to run for office on the WFP line “None of this should surprise anyone,” Working Families is now spreading and the Democrats’, help them raise Steve Malanga, an urban-affairs expert into other states that allow cross- money that can be generously supple- for the Manhattan Institute, says of the endorsements by minor parties, such as mented by city financing, and make party’s policies. Working Families, he Connecticut. It’s also trying to change certain they change election laws in the points out, was founded in 1998 by hard- laws in other states to allow cross- party’s favor. In 2005, WFP allies on core union activists, from the Communi- endorsements, also called “fusion vot- the city council were instrumental in cations Workers of America, the United ing.” In 2010, Democrat Dannel Malloy overturning a ruling by the city’s inde- Federation of Teachers, and the New won the governor’s office in Connecti - pendent Campaign Finance Board that York chapter of the ACORN “community cut by a mere 5,000 votes; he won restricted union political donations. organizing” group. 27,000 votes on the WFP line. He later Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., then the New York political operative Bertha fulfilled a key plank of the WFP plat- chairman of the Campaign Finance Lewis was the head of national ACORN form by signing a paid-sick-leave bill Board, complained that the changes when its employees were convicted of into law. “create a gaping loophole for union voter-registration fraud during the 2008 But while it expands its influence, the contributions, undermining the contri- presidential campaign. She presided over Working Families party is coming bution limits established by the Cam - its collapse in 2009 after a series of under - under increasing scrutiny. In 2012, paign Finance Act.” cover tapes showed its employees in Brooklyn attorney Roger Adler, a Demo- New York’s loophole-ridden campaign- Brooklyn, Baltimore, and Wash ington, crat, was appointed as a special prose- finance laws have been a happy hunt- D.C., giving advice on how to hide pros- cutor to probe allegations that Working ing ground for Working Families for titution activities and cheat the tax sys- Families had been manipulating state years. But now there’s a new sheriff tem. and city election law. Last year, a New in town, unaffiliated with the de But now, thanks to de Blasio’s victory, York City grand jury issued subpoenas Blasio–WFP cadre. The day before he she’s back in the saddle. “Bertha Lewis as part of an ongoing probe of the party left office as mayor, Mike Bloomberg is one of the city’s most passionate and and its tangled links with Data & Field announced a new head for the city’s effective progressive leaders, and I’m Ser vices, a company that provides cam- Campaign Finance Board: Rose Gill proud to have worked with her for paign workers and organizers to candi- Hearn, a no-nonsense lawyer who for- years,” de Blasio said during the 2012 dates. Critics of WFP have charged for merly headed the city’s watchdog, the campaign. On primary-election night years that Data & Field Services (DFS) Department of Investigations. “She last September, Lewis stood onstage has provided heavily discounted con- has been getting worms out of the Big next to de Blasio and told interviewers: sulting work for Working Families can- Apple” for years, the New York Daily “We’re baaaack. The right wing will didates, essentially giving them in-kind News reported last year in an article have to deal with it.” contributions without publicly disclos- highlighting her dogged investigation She was one of the privileged few who ing it. procedures. attended de Blasio’s private midnight In 2010, Working Families agreed to Working Families may be at the top of inauguration at his house in Park Slope settle a civil lawsuit on the issue but didn’t New York City politics for now, but on New Year’s Day, and is busy seeding admit wrongdoing, paying $100,000 for Hearn, and others, will be watching.
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to a recent report from the Pew Re- than ever. unmarried women and sin- search Center. There are many reasons gle mothers are an overwhelmingly Which for this transformation. One familiar left-of-center political constituency, narrative is that married mothers with and one assumes that Democratic calls Gender Gap? children have been pushed into the for paycheck fairness, or gender parity, work force as men’s wages have suf- have been part of the party’s enduring Policymakers are fered. Another narrative, however, is appeal to female voters. Though wo - focused on the wrong one that women, including married mothers men have made dramatic gains in earn- with children, have been pulled into ings in recent decades, a gap remains, the work force as household work has albeit a shrinking gap, be tween the BY REIHAN SALAM grown less culturally prestigious and wages earned by women and those less physically and intellectually chal- earned by men, though not in all cate- usT over a century ago, a small lenging, and as women’s rising educa- gories. Among part-time workers, for number of states, led by Massa - tional attainment and changing cultural example, female earnings surpass male chusetts, established mini mum attitudes have opened up more attrac- earnings. And among people in younger J wages, a policy experiment that tive employment opportunities. These cohorts, the gender gap between full- reverberates to this day. What is strik- push and pull factors interact. For time year-round workers falls almost to ing about these early minimum-wage example, as women have entered the zero. But overall, a gender gap persists. laws is that they applied only to work force for a variety of reasons, Whereas Progressives of the 20th women and minor children, as mini- including a desire to find meaningful century favored a gender gap large mum-wage laws for adult males were work and to provide for themselves, enough to deter women from entering seen as an unacceptable infringement they may well have put downward the work force at all, progressives of of their right to free contract. Adult pressure on men’s earnings. the 21st century aim to close a gender females, however, were placed in an Then there is the fact that married gap that, in their view, reflects a legacy entirely different category of human mothers with children, the group that of discrimination. In both cases, the being. Women were deemed physical- the family-wage ideal indirectly sought impulse is to use the power of govern- ly and morally fragile and in need of to protect, represent a shrinking share ment to achieve the desired outcome. the state’s protection from the vicissi- of women as a whole, as Americans The trouble is that the sources of the tudes of the labor market. More over, defer marriage and delay childbearing. pay gap are complex, appearing to be working women were seen as a poten- With no male breadwinner to provide rooted less in simple discrimination tial threat to male breadwinners and for unmarried women, or for mothers than in real differences discerned by their central role in family life. As raising children on their own, the family- employers. Heavy-handed government women entered the work force, the fear wage ideal has been eclipsed. intervention that ignores these differ- was that they would undercut male As Pew reports, single-mother fami- ences risks doing more harm than workers and thereby force down the lies with children have risen from 7.3 good. “family wage” that allowed fathers to percent of all families with children in Enter Harvard economist Claudia keep their wives and children clothed, 1960 to 25.3 percent in 2011, while Goldin, widely regarded as America’s housed, and fed. families with children in which a mar- leading economic historian and co- To have spoken of a “gender gap” in ried woman is the primary bread - author of The Race between Education this area—a gap between female and winner have risen from 3.5 to 15 and Technology, a comprehensive look male wages—wouldn’t have made percent. That is, women are the sole or at how the relationship between human- much sense, not least because the use the primary breadwinners in 40 per- capital development and labor-market of the term “gender” to refer to sex was cent of households with children. This outcomes has unfolded in u.s. history. not yet de rigueur. The Progressives rise of “breadwinner moms” has made Goldin’s research has delved into the who championed restrictive labor- the gender gap more politically salient evolution of women’s roles in the work market regulations were well aware of force—a thorny subject, and one that a substantial gap between the compen- she tackled in a recent address to the sation offered to women and that American Economic Associ ation. offered to men. The goal was, if any- Goldin notes that the gender gap in thing, to widen that gap in men’s favor. wages is closing. The gap reflects dif- Much has changed since then. The ferences in human capital, including most important change, perhaps, has educational attainment, work experi- been that the family-wage ideal no ence, and other factors that we can easily longer fits the realities of the American identify and explain, as well as some family. residual that could reflect discrimina- As of last year, women represent 47 tion, or other differences that are harder percent of the work force, and the share to identify and explain. There are many of married mothers with children who theories as to the role of discrimina- work has increased from 37 percent in “Some doctor!—that guy is tion; the harder-to-explain factors may 1968 to 65 percent in 2011, according obsessed with diet and exercise!” include wo men’s (supposed) greater
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unwillingness to negotiate aggressively, worlds (like the corporate, finance, and or the reluctance of employers to pro- legal sectors, which Goldin studies mote women because they are more most closely) have big consequences. Vlad the likely to leave the workplace to devote For the gender gap to be eliminated time to their families. entirely, Goldin argues, firms need to Conservative Goldin observes that, gradually, the lower the cost of the flexibility that human-capital component of the wage female workers, and particularly moth- So says Pat Buchanan gap has all but vanished, as women ers, prize. This could involve granting have come to “look” more like men in workers more autonomy, so that one BY ANDREW STUTTAFORD terms of skills. What is left of the gap, team member doesn’t depend so much according to Goldin, largely reflects on others, or else making it easier to ACk in the mid 1980s, Pat Bu - how firms reward workers for their substitute one worker for another, per- chanan was the communica- willingness to give up some measure haps by standardizing the nature of tions director for the Reagan of workplace flexibility, particularly in tasks. B White House, and Vladimir Putin was a kGB officer in East Ger - many. Times change: The former Soviet secret policeman—if there is such a thing Gradually, the human-capital as a “former” Soviet secret policeman— component of the wage gap has is, after a bogus intermission, now serv- ing a third term as Russia’s president, largely vanished, as women have and the old Cold Warrior seems to have become something of a fan. Writing in come to “look” more like men in his syndicated column in December, terms of skills. Buchanan wondered whether, “in the culture war for mankind’s future,” Putin was in fact “one of us.” high-end occupations. Among college- The firms that succeed in developing The immediate trigger for Buchanan’s educated professionals, the wage gap new business models that capitalize on comments was Putin’s state-of-the- between women and men starts out the talent of working women have an nation address just a few days before. small (with women earning in the 90 enormous and lucrative opportunity Stung, probably, by criticism of gay- percent range of men in their 20s) before ahead of them. It’s just not obvious bashing legislation in Russia, Putin had widening as women age, falling in some how government can help this process taken aim at “the destruction of traditional cases to the 70 percent level. The gap along. values” elsewhere in the world—by starts to decrease again as women enter Where government can make a dif- which he meant the West—and, just so their 40s. ference is in tackling the gender gap there could be no doubt about what he While some occupations see pay at the low end of the U.S. labor force. was referring to, had thrown in a refer- increase with work hours in a straight In “Wayward Sons,” a report for the ence to “so-called tolerance, neutered line, others see nonlinear increases— center-left think tank Third Way, and barren.” No stranger to chutzpah, that is, working twice as many hours economists David Autor and Melanie Putin, an unlikely champion of the ballot yields more than twice as much pay. Wasserman of MIT describe the “tec- box, noted that these changes to “moral The gender gap is low in occupations tonic shift” whereby younger cohorts values and ethical norms” had come in which there is a one-to-one relation- of men, particularly less-educated “from above” and were “contrary to the ship between wages and hours worked. younger men, are falling behind will of the majority.” As such, they were In nonlinear occupations, however, the women in educational and employ- “essentially anti-democratic.” gender gap is higher. Linear occupa- ment outcomes. Just as the gender gap After years of aggressive judicial tions will be those in which it is rela- at the high end is closing in women’s activism and dramatic social change at tively easy and cheap to plug in one favor, the gap at the low end appears to home, those were words likely to appeal employee for another. Nonlinear occu- be widening to the disadvantage of to quite a few American conservatives, pations are those in which switching men. Having ceded their role as bread- some of whom might perhaps already from employee to employee is difficult winners, less-educated, and even have found themselves in unexpected and expensive. For example, a team of moderately educated, American men agreement with the kremlin not so long lawyers working on a case might find are struggling to make their way in a ago. After all, it was only last summer that it is much easier to get its work new economy. It seems far more like- when Republican congressmen Steve done if everyone works the same long ly that female corporate executives, king and Dana Rohrabacher made it clear hours, as filling in a team member who financiers, and lawyers will close the that Buchanan was by no means the only is there only half of the time takes time gap with their male counterparts than figure on the American right to be of - and energy that might otherwise be that working-class men will soon be fended by what he has somewhat histrion- spent more profitably. Nonlinear occu- in a position to offer working-class pations tend to be the most lucrative, women the economic support they Mr. Stuttaford is a contributing editor of and so gender gaps in these lofty need. NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE.
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ically described as “half-naked” (by Iranian standards, perhaps) and “ob - scene” (not so much) protest in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior by the fem- inist punk-rock group Pussy Riot. It is, of course, hardly surprising that a protest by an altar—even if brief, and largely mimed (a soundtrack was re- corded later for a music video using footage from the protest)—would appall many, and not just the religious, in this country. But Pussy Riot’s critics should have taken a closer look before jumping onto Putin’s sleigh. America is not Russia, a country where an authoritarian regime has suborned the national church for its own purposes, and where that church, bribed with privilege (ask bullied Russian Baptists how that works), a degree of power, and no small amount of mammon, ego. Some excesses and mistakes—too autocracy, and nationality” first devised has for the most part gone along. That is mild words, those—are included, but as a Russian state ideology for Czar why Pussy Riot was protesting in a cathe- other horrors are downplayed or have Nicholas I (1825–55) as a response to dral. Theirs was an infinitely lesser blas- simply gone missing. There is, however, the liberal challenge at home and phemy. room for both the preservation (or restora- abroad. Putin may well be a Christian of tion) of Soviet iconography and a lavish Well, Orthodoxy is back, what’s left sorts (the influence of his supposed biopic about Admiral Kolchak, one of the of Russia’s nascent democracy is under dukhovnik—spiritual father—Archiman - most prominent of the anti-Bolshevik pressure, and “nationality” never went drite Tikhon Shevkunov is a source of commanders in the Russian Civil War. In away. In his speech Putin acknowledged much speculation), but then again so were a large national poll organized in 2008, the multi-ethnic nature of the Russian the Borgias. Divorce and all the rest aside, Stolypin, the tough, authoritarian reformer Federation (albeit with a swipe at “rowdy, Putin might even quite genuinely, if in a who was the last czar’s most effective insolent people from certain southern rather rough-and-ready fashion, be a prime minister (significantly, Putin gave Russian regions”), but he went on to social conservative, but his public decla- him a shout-out during his speech), was emphasize “the all-encompassing, unify- rations on these topics are likely more a rated the second-greatest Russian of all ing role of Russian culture, history, and matter of political calculation than moral time. Stalin (a Georgian and a mass mur- language,” terminology that harks back conviction. Corruption, economic slow- derer, but no matter) came in third. both to czarist-era Russification and to down, and increasingly dictatorial rule It is a narrative intended to put to - the brutal Soviet approach to “lesser” have eroded Putin’s support among the gether what history in reality has torn nationalities. intelligentsia and in the more metro- apart, a fable in which czar and com- But as he hymned the rebirth of a politan centers, and so, Orthodox Church missar can coexist, united in their love strong Russian state, Putin was careful in tow, he has—what’s the term these for the motherland and a shared sense of (as Buchanan noted approvingly) to days?—“pivoted” toward Russia’s “silent the messianic destiny that Holy Russia— stress that Russia “does not encroach on majority” (Pussy Riot didn’t have too home of Moscow, the “Third Rome,” anyone’s interests . . . or try to teach many local fans), a maneuver that the and also the birthplace of Lenin’s radiant others how to live their lives.” Unfortu - Buchanan of the Nixon White House future—has long felt is its due, a fantasy nately, the first of those claims is non- would have both recognized and appre- reinforced by physical as well as intel- sense. To take just a few instances, Russia ciated for its savvy. lectual distance from the Enlightenment has been throwing its weight about in It was also a move that dovetailed West. The fact that such ideas have proved northeastern Europe, it has grabbed a neatly with a longer-term theme running most congenial to authoritarian rule has slice of Georgia, it is bullying Moldova, through the Putin years. The defining mis- not escaped Putin’s notice. and, in what may be Putin’s most im - take of post-Communist Russia has been Regardless of the nods to the coun- pressive coup yet, it may just have an unwillingness to come to terms with try’s Soviet heritage, the Commies—fear “bought” Ukraine. Russia is on a roll, the reality of its Soviet past. Putin himself not—will not be coming back anytime with sporadic humiliations of a direc- infamously referred to the break-up of soon. Too much loot is being amassed tionless America—from Snowden to the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical by those in charge for that. Instead, the Syria—for added spice. Yes, Putin’s grip catastrophe” of the 20th century. Histor - philosophy that underpins the current may well be more fragile than it looks, ical truth—uncomfortable, divisive, and regime (an admission of crude self-interest but when Forbes magazine recently shameful—has been replaced with a wouldn’t really do the trick) looks more designated him as the most powerful patriotic confection designed to reconcile and more like an updated, more subtle, person in the world, it was not without
ROMAN GENN the irreconcilable and soothe the national more capitalist variant of the “Ortho doxy, reason. The recent release of two Pussy
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Rioters and Mikhail Khodorkovsky was The word “metrosexual” was used a a declaration of strength, not weakness. lot. The editors of Investor’s Business For a retro great power to behave like Books and Daily spoke of the “hipster metrosexual a retro great power is not particularly cradling cocoa in his red onesie” (a kind of shocking, but it is essential to remember Covers pajamas). Friends of the model felt oblig- that Russia (even more than the U.S.) is a ed to protest his robust heterosexuality. nation that considers that it has the right to On ‘looking liberal’ and There was another issue, too—sort of play by its own rules. Thus Putin’s insis- ‘looking conservative’ in the shadows. In the first hours of the tence that his country is not interested in general mockery, I was concerned that trying to “teach others how to live their anti-Semitism might enter into it. Either lives” is not only a rebuke (as Buchanan BY JAY NORDLINGER the mockery would include some anti- correctly notes) to Western universalism, Semitic stuff or the mockery would be but also a reminder that Russia has no HEN we were in kinder- interpreted, by someone, as anti-Semitic. intention of yielding its sovereignty to the garten—if not before—we Sure enough, the Forward published an emerging supranationalist order. That’s a were taught that you can’t article headed “Obamacare ‘Pajama Boy’ reasonable, even commendable, position, W judge a book by its cover. Controversy Wrapped in Anti-Semitism.” but it is no reason for those on the foreign- Which is true. Or rather, you can’t neces- The writer, Jay Michaelson, said, policy right to think that they have found sarily judge a book by its cover. Often, it Yes, Virginia, Pajama Boy is a member of a friend in Putin. There are areas where is an error to do so. Related is an old the tribe. Look at him. Pale Ashkenazic American and Russian interests overlap expression, usually attributed to Oscar skin, Jew-fro’d black curls, Woody (something that Buchanan has also high- Wilde: “When you assume, you make an Allen specs. Even the smart-ass expres- lighted). The fault for not taking better ass out of u and me.” sion on his face screams of the Wise advantage of them lies on both sides and Well and good. But I remember some- Son from the Passover Seder. so far as is possible should be remedied, thing I heard a writer say on television, Parenthetically, the model himself is but a degree of rivalry, sharpened by many years ago. (It wasn’t Oscar Wilde. one Ethan Krupp, an Organizing for Russia’s refusal to accept its loss of It may have been Harlan Ellison.) He America [actually, Action] staffer who empire, is inevitable, natural, and, if said, “If the cover shows a strapping is, in fact, Jewish. But whether Krupp handled with an appropriate degree of woman amid the stars, wearing a metallic himself is circumcised or not, Pajama realism, not particularly dangerous. brassiere and brandishing a light saber, Boy is semiotically Jewish, even stereo- typically so. And (hesitant as I am to give advice to chances are the book is science fiction.” this constituency) social conservatives Which brings me to “Pajama Boy”— I couldn’t help thinking of a strange should be warier still. To Buchanan, Putin the young man pictured in a pre-Christmas fact: The model/staffer shares a name “is seeking to redefine the . . . world con- ad touting Obamacare. The ad said, “Wear with the famous, and infamous, arms- flict of the future as one in which conser- pajamas. Drink hot chocolate. Talk about manufacturing family in Germany. Hitler vatives, traditionalists, and nationalists getting health insurance.” That’s what the once told the lads at Nuremberg, “In our of all continents and countries stand up young man was doing (we could assume). eyes, the German boy of the future must against the cultural and ideological imperi- The ad came courtesy of Organizing for be slim and slender, fast as a greyhound, alism of what he sees as a decadent west,” Action, a group dedicated to promoting tough as leather, and hard as Krupp steel.” a piece of wishful thinking on Buchanan’s President Obama’s agenda. At the very moment America was part that gives Putin’s pronouncements an By the way, leaving “action” aside, I contemplating Pajama Boy, we were international significance that they do not have become allergic to the word “orga- also contemplating Duck Man, i.e., Phil deserve and could not sustain. nizing.” It’s a fairly innocent word, but I Robertson, the star of the Duck Dynasty History, Mark Twain is said to have remember what the actress Susan reality series. He had made controversial observed, doesn’t repeat itself, but it Sarandon said, after Obama was elected: remarks about homosexuality in a maga- rhymes. Almost exactly two centuries “He is a community organizer like Jesus zine interview. He could not be more ago, the devout if possibly unhinged Czar was, and now we’re a community and he unlike Pajama Boy in his appearance. He Alexander I (1801–25) was peddling the can organize us.” looks like a combination of prophet and notion of a reactionary “Holy Alliance” It was said throughout the conservative backwoodsman, with long hair, bandana, between the nations that had seen off universe that Pajama Boy “looked liber- and long gray beard. He looks like the Napoleon. When the czar explained this al.” Others prefer the word “progressive” homespun Christian conservative he is— idea to Lord Castlereagh, Britain’s con- (including “progressives” themselves). unless he looks like a member of Willie servative foreign minister (the no less George F. Will wrote a year-end column, Nelson’s entourage, not unfamiliar with conservative Duke of Wellington was also saying, “In 2013, the face of progressivism marijuana. And I could easily see him in the room), the meeting did not go well. became Pajama Boy, the supercilious, manning a booth at the Ann Arbor Art “It was not without difficulty,” wrote semi-smirking, hot-chocolate-sipping Fair (whose official atmosphere, come Castlereagh later, “that we went through faux-adult who embodies progressives’ to think of it, is marijuana). the interview with becoming gravity.” belief that life should be all politics all Ann Arbor, Mich., is the town I grew up Translation: It was difficult to keep a the time—come on, everybody, spend in. I occasionally tease it in my writings, straight face. your holidays talking about health care. usually describing it as “a small citadel of There’s a lesson there. He is who progressives are.” the Left.” When Pajama Boy splashed all
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over the media, a colleague of mine asked me, “Is that what the people in Ann Arbor looked like?” Yes and no. When I was growing up, the Left was scruffier, grungier, dirtier. They would not have wanted to be clean-cut, looking like a Boy Scout, churchgoer, or Republican. Confronted by hippie hecklers, ol’ George Wallace said, “They know a lot of four-letter words—but there are some they don’t know. Like W-O-R-K and S-O- A-P.” Campaigning for Eugene McCarthy in 1968, the countercultural types did not want to scare the Middle American types. To me, Mussolini looks like the ulti- he said, “and we’re hearing generalities.” So they shaved and showered, adhering mate fascist thug. He is almost a cartoon. Bush said, none too nicely, “Pierre, let me to the slogan “Get clean for Gene.” Do I think this because I know he was, in help you.” Du Pont has never been known The Left is very clean today, I find— fact, a fascist thug? Stalin looks like a as “Pierre,” only “Pete”—but Bush scrubbed, slicked, and affluent. I was genocidal monster, with that menacing played the French card (underhandedly, I back in Ann Arbor over Christmas, and black crop of hair, and those “yellow think). Later, David Broder, the “dean of saw a store with the (typically) preten- tiger’s eyes,” as David Pryce-Jones says. the Washington press corps,” wrote that tious name of My Urban Toddler. That’s But I imagine some of his victims looked the “night belonged to Bush—the man the spirit now. like him, too, especially in Georgia. Mao who dared to call a Pierre a Pierre.” Is it possible to “look liberal” or “look probably looked like a number of his vic- In the 2008 Republican primaries, conservative”? “At 50,” George Orwell tims as well—although they would have Mike Huckabee got a lot of mileage out of wrote, “everyone has the face he de- been thinner, having to live, or not live, saying that Mitt Romney “looks like the serves.” I don’t know about that. And I under Mao’s policies. guy who laid you off.” I thought this was know that looks can be deceiving, in- When I look at Lincoln, I think I am cheap populist nonsense. To me, Romney cluding in a political sense. There are looking at the soul of moral leadership. looked like a guy who could make an some who “look conservative” but aren’t, The visage matches the man. But could economy hum, and create jobs for the and vice versa. Let me remind you of a bank robber have looked like that? sadly unentrepreneurial like me. During Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary Probably so. (And there are Americans his years in the national spotlight, Rom - of state under Colin Powell (and George even now who look at Lincoln and see a ney was a kind of Rorschach test: heart- W. Bush). He looked like a right-winger, war criminal and tyrant.) less capitalist to some, model citizen and a bruiser, a bull of a man. But he consis- In the Reagan ’80s, some Repub - leader to others. tently took unconservative, or Powell - licans made sport of Tip O’Neill, the To ask it again, is it possible to look esque, positions. Demo cratic speaker of the House. They conservative or look liberal? I think it is— William Safire, the late columnist, who said he looked like the liberal welfare but I could not give hard-and-fast descrip- liked to have fun, had fun with Armitage’s state: bloated, boozy, creaky, past it. tions. I’m a little like Justice Stewart and appearance. One time, he wrote, “The Our guy, Reagan, was one year older, pornography (“I know it when I see it,” he heavyset, bullet-headed Armitage is but he looked more like the brighter, said). Are conservatives white and fat? known for having a good head on his healthier future. Plenty of bloated and Some are, sure, but so is Michael Moore, shoulders. (That is primarily because he boozy types, however, were on our the leftist documentary-maker. Are there has no neck, but as they say on the seventh side. people who look like Pajama Boy in lib- floor of Foggy Bottom, better neckless All through the 2004 presidential cam- eralism? Yes, lots of them, but they exist than feckless.)” paign, James Taranto of the Wall Street in conservative think tanks, too, and on I’ll occasionally see pictures or videos Journal referred to John Kerry, the the staffs of conservative congressmen. of Ed Schultz, the MSNBC host. If he Democrats’ nominee, as “haughty” and Thank heaven. were an actor, he could be cast as a right- “French-looking.” This was an effective Years ago, I found out that an ac - wing blowhard: stocky, slightly sweating taunt. One of my favorite politicians looks quaint ance of mine was conservative, or (maybe). Instead, he is a left-wing blow - like a French aristocrat, and why not? conservative-friendly, and you could hard. But, according to Wikipedia, he He is Pete du Pont, or Pierre S. du Pont have blown me down. An art critic with used to be a conservative, so maybe his IV. When they were running for the a ponytail and a dozen other liberal give- looks are left over from that period? 1988 Republican presidential nomina- aways—except those “giveaways” were Very different in appearance is Schultz’s tion, George Bush—George Herbert misleading. What a glorious discovery. MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow. She Walker Bush, no peon—made use of du More often than kindergarten teachers has the same views, but her looks are Pont’s pedigree. would like to admit, or should admit, more classically liberal. (I hasten to say William F. Buckley Jr. was hosting the you can judge a book by its cover. The that classical liberalism, as represented first debate of the season. Du Pont was glorious discoveries make life more by Locke et al., has nothing to do with jabbing at Bush for a lack of specifics on interesting (and so, by the same token, MSNBC or its hosts.) arms control. “We’re waiting for details,” do the inglorious ones).
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Obamacare’s Cornhusker Nemesis Ben Sasse, health-care expert and Senate candidate
BY JOHN J. MILLER
t’s not easy to pile up more than 20,000 sheets of paper— certain to elect a Republican to succeed retiring GOP sena- the number of pages of regulations associated with Obama - tor Mike Johanns, so the state’s main election will take place care, according to some estimates. Yet it’s an effective on May 13, when sasse squares off against banker sid I prop for Ben sasse, a Republican running for senate in Dinsdale, former state treasurer shane Osborn, and two Nebraska. “this is a picture of what government can’t do well, other Republicans in this year’s first truly contested senate wasn’t built to do, and inevitably fails at,” he says, gesturing primary. Between now and then, each candidate will posi- toward the tower of paper. At full height, the pages stand more tion himself as a conservative and rail against Obamacare. than nine feet tall. On the evening of December 17, in the First With sasse, however, Nebraska Republicans have an oppor- National Bank of Holdrege with its eight-foot ceiling, the top tunity to do more: they can elect not merely a man who segment has to rest on a nearby table. “Government this big promises to vote for the repeal of President Obama’s signa- squashes freedom,” says sasse. A man in the audience senses a ture policy achievement, but a senator who almost immedi- more imminent threat: “I’m hoping that stack doesn’t fall on ately would become one of the GOP’s most visible and you!” It stays up during an hour-long town-hall meeting in part articulate experts on the health-care law’s defects and the ways because a pipe runs through the middle of the pages like a spine, to replace it. holding them together. Aides wheel the contraption around on a the 41-year-old Benjamin Eric sasse is a fifth-generation dolly and store it in the bowels of the campaign’s RV. Nebraskan, a fact that he’s eager to point out because he’s sasse is betting that deep discontent with Obamacare will spent most of his adult life away from the Cornhusker state. drive him into the senate later this year. Nebraska is all but His stump speeches often begin with a reference to family
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reunions near Beatrice, a farming town that is also the site of apparatus weren’t talking to each other,” he says. “I had some the Homestead National Monument, honoring the Homestead experience with post-merger integration in the business Act of 1862. “It was one of the most important pieces of legis- world and thought I might be able to help.” His time as a cor- lation in American history,” says Sasse of the law that put 270 porate adviser influenced both the way he thinks about prob- million acres of public land into private hands. “It was only a lems and the way he talks. In conversation, Sasse has a page and a half long.” The Affordable Care Act requires about tendency to slip into consultantspeak, mentioning “modal a dozen pages just to get through its table of contents. experiences” and “utils.” He casually refers to “the Murray After growing up in Fremont, where he was the high- adjacencies” when he means issues related to those raised by school valedictorian, Sasse left for Harvard: “Not because of Charles Murray. superior academics, but because of inferior athletics,” he Within a few months of 9/11, Sasse was chief of staff at the jokes. He wrestled for two years and specialized in head- Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, a kind of in- butting his opponents. Sasse has a long scar at the top of his house think tank where he concentrated on everything from forehead, along his hairline, from falling off a hayloft as a intelligence-sharing rules to Islamic radicalization in federal boy. “I have no feeling there,” he says. “It gave me a small prisons. He went on to work for Republican congressman Jeff advantage.” He left the wrestling team to spend his junior year Fortenberry of Nebraska, and later as an assistant secretary at abroad, and then earned a degree in government. Next came the Department of Health and Human Services. There, during an itinerant career in business consulting, combining full- the final two years of the Bush administration, Sasse dealt with time employment with full-time study. He roamed the country, health policy every day. “I started digging into the data on working with clients such as Ameritech and Northwest Air - health-entitlement spending and all the promises that politi- lines, while he also pursued a master’s degree from St. John’s cians have made, and I saw that the math didn’t add up,” he College in Annapolis, Md., and then a Ph.D. in history from says. “Most of us were taught that government exists to pro- Yale. His dissertation, on populist conservatism from the vide for the common defense—a military and a social-safety 1950s to the 1970s, won a pair of prestigious campus prizes. net—but the actual budgets show that our government has “He’s insanely disciplined and incredibly hard-working,” become a big insurance company that also runs a navy.” His says Will Inboden, a University of Texas professor who lived responsibilities at HHS included providing advice on the across the street from Sasse when they were graduate stu- implementation of the Medicare prescription-drug program dents at Yale. “It’s amazing how much he did.” The virtue of known as Part D, a Bush-era entitlement whose adoption Sasse work is a constant theme in Sasse’s speeches and conversa- says he opposed. tion. “Work is where meaning is,” he says. “I don’t know how After Obama’s election, Sasse moved back to Nebraska but capitalism and America function if people work to get be- also traveled around, giving speeches to investor groups and yond working, just so they can get to leisure.” One of his holding debates with former Democratic presidential candi- favorite recent books is Coming Apart, by Charles Murray, date Howard Dean. In 2009, Sasse wrote a column for U.S. especially for its section on the importance of industrious- News & World Report calling Part D “enormously success- ness. ful” and a “viable model for reform.” At least one of his opponents, Shane Osborn, has cited these lines to question Sasse’s conservative credentials. “Look,” says Sasse, frustrated S a boy, Sasse embodied industriousness: He spent by the allegations, “I was making a case that when writing his summers “walking beans and detasseling corn”— future legislation, policymakers should understand why Part D A i.e., weeding soybean fields and controlling corn pol- is the least bad way to run one of these programs. Medicare lination. He describes cool and wet mornings, hot and humid would be much better if Parts A and B looked more like Part D. afternoons, muddy furrows, sore ankles, spider bites, sun- You can say truthfully that one part of a program is decent, and burns, and “corn rash,” which forms on hands, arms, and yet more fundamentally that we shouldn’t have unfunded faces when corn stalks deliver nicks and bruises hour after entitlement programs. I’ve always been against the genera- hour, day after day. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, tional theft that goes on in Washington. We need honest bud- and the most formative experience of my life,” he says. gets.” Howard Dean, for his part, wonders why anyone would “When you survive a season of this, you’re a different person doubt Sasse’s bona fides. “He’s absolutely a free-market con- at the end.” He worries that young people don’t learn the servative,” he says. “I wouldn’t vote for him, but he sticks to the same lessons today. “We have a crisis in the work ethic,” he truth and makes good, tight arguments for conservative health- says. “Politics can’t fix our culture, but politics can lie to us care reform.” long enough to keep us from focusing on the cultural issues Since returning to Nebraska, Sasse has spent most of his in our own lives.” time focused on his day job as president of Midland Uni- In 2001, Sasse was pushing toward his Ph.D. and commut- versity, in his home town of Fremont. When he took over in ing from New Haven to San Diego. With planes grounded in 2009, the 130-year-old Lutheran school was suffering from the aftermath of 9/11, he couldn’t fly home to his wife and dwindling enrollment, stumbling toward bankruptcy, and their newborn daughter. So he rented a car. “I was driving thinking about shutting down. From a small office where he through Texas on I-40, listening to high-school football regularly wobbles on a balance board while taking phone games on the radio,” he says. “The announcers were full of calls, Sasse laid off staff, ended lifetime tenure for profes- patriotic zeal.” By the time he reached the eastern seaboard, sors, and recruited students. Today, Midland is one of the he wanted to join what would become the War on Terror. fastest-growing colleges in the Midwest, and it recently “Everybody was complaining that parts of the intelligence acquired Dana College, a historic competitor. Sasse has
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served in this role for more than four years—his longest stint on air. The hosts of the show wind up calling him “Dr. with any single employer. Sasse.” As a college president, Sasse likes to conduct informal That makes him sound like a medical doctor, even though surveys of students. “I ask them what the Republican party his doctoral degree is in history. Yet Sasse talks about health stands for,” he says. “Most don’t have a clue. They think care often enough to seem like a physician—or at least a Republicans are for rich people and big business. We’ve got physician who specializes in policy. “I’ve read the entire to do a better job of conveying our ideas. We need to have Affordable Care Act,” he says. “It was a slow period in my an American constitutional, reformation, revival move- life,” he adds, almost apologetically. “The Obamacare world- ment.” view is that only government can solve big problems, budget honesty doesn’t matter, and dependency is our future.” He thinks repeal is a possibility, but only if the next two cycles YEAR ago, Sasse’s candidacy was inconceivable, as of congressional elections go well for conservatives and a most people in Nebraska figured that Senator Johanns Republican wins the presidency in 2016. Yet he’s no wild- A would opt for a second term. In February, however, eyed optimist: “The most likely outcome is a single-payer Johanns said he wouldn’t run again, at which point specula- system because that’s the easiest thing for a lazy and broken tion shifted to Dave Heineman, the term-limited Republican Washington to lie about and let us drift into.” Avoiding this governor: Surely he would seek the open Senate seat. Sasse future, he says, will take more than a few victories at the even donated to the governor’s political committee. Yet by ballot box. “Conservatives have to remember that “One of the most common questions I get is some version of whether we’ve come to the end of America,” says Sasse.
Memorial Day, Heineman had bowed out as well. Two months Obamacare didn’t break health care. It was broken in 2008 as later, Sasse decided to kick off his first political campaign. He well. One of the reasons we wound up with Obamacare is raised money like a veteran: By October, he boasted a haul of because conservatives didn’t communicate an alternative.” $815,000, far outpacing his competitors. A string of high- Sasse recommends a three-point approach: End the tax bias profile endorsements followed: the Senate Conservatives that has turned health insurance into a perk of employment, Fund in October, the Club for Growth in November, and allow consumers to buy policies across state lines, and give Republican congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin in De - states more responsibility for their social safety nets. “Demo - cember. crats may be the party of bad ideas, but Republicans too often A chief concern of first-time candidates is name recogni- are the party of no ideas—and bad ideas will beat no ideas tion: Voters haven’t heard of them before. Sasse tried to every time,” he says, in a line that he repeats whenever he’s in tackle the problem on January 4, with an advertisement during front of voters. Last summer, in an op-ed for the Omaha World- the NFL playoffs, becoming the first candidate in his race to Herald, he called on Republicans to defund Obamacare. While air a television commercial. He hopes to repeat the success of he has clashed with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell Deb Fischer, an obscure state lawmaker who won Nebraska’s in private, he is not eager to declare war on GOP leaders who Republican Senate primary two years ago against a pair of opposed the government shutdown. He thinks he understands better-known candidates. Nearly half of the state’s GOP voters the popular appeal of the tea-party insurrectionists, especially live in the state’s big third congressional district, in the vast Senator Ted Cruz of Texas: “He’s trying to bring urgency to the open spaces where the Midwest meets the West. Fischer biggest problems we face. His acclaim is driven by the fact that comes from this area—and Sasse spends as much time there he’s willing to say the house is on fire—and so much of as possible, driving around in an RV with giant red-and-white Washington refuses to admit this truth.” messages on the outside and shotgun-shell Christmas lights At campaign stops along I-80, nobody wants to talk to Sasse on the inside. “It’s like I’m Chevy Chase in a Vacation movie about Iran’s nuclear program or the NSA’s intrusions on cell- about running for office,” he says. phone privacy. Instead, he faces a barrage of questions about Sasse faces an additional obstacle: a surname perhaps best health care, from workers watching their costs skyrocket and described as unfortunate. It rhymes with “pass” but looks small-business owners worried about growth. There are broader like “sassy,” and a bad-luck photo-cropping job could put concerns, too: “One of the most common questions I get is him in front of a campaign sign that simply says “ass.” In some version of whether we’ve come to the end of America,” any other state, his perfectly good first name would be an says Sasse. “People are worried that we’re in decline, and that excellent bumper-sticker option, but in Nebraska it recalls one of the reasons we’re in decline is because our leaders that other Ben, the retired Democratic senator Ben refuse to discuss it.” When the subject comes up, Sasse tries to Nelson—he of the “Cornhusker kickback” and the 60th vote acknowledge these concerns and sound a few hopeful notes. for Obamacare. At a television studio in Lincoln on De - Then he says ordinary citizens must do their part: “We have to cember 19, Sasse tries anyway: “My last name is Sasse, but teach the American idea to our kids. The inertia of motion does feel free to call me Ben,” he says to a producer before going not preserve a republic.”
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vided with incomparably fecund terrain, farmers can do their thing as never before. Green The results speak for themselves. Just under 13 percent of all agricultural production in the United States takes place in the region, which the locals refer to proudly as “the Food Basket of the World” or, occasionally, “America’s Salad Bowl.” Most of Drought the country’s asparagus and raisins are born in these fields; nearby Kings County boasts the largest cotton farm in the world; California’s farmland lies fallow for a fish and among the astonishing array of products shipped out from the area are citrus fruits, pistachios, grapes, peaches, lettuce, tomatoes, garlic, alfalfa, and kiwi fruit. All in all, 250 different BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE crops are grown. “We supply almonds to the world—80 percent of the total global output,” Bourdeau explains when we arrive at San Joaquin Valley, Calif. Harris’s shelling facility. “They’re one of the things we’re actu- E have the greatest factory anywhere on earth,” ally exporting. That’s great for a country that’s a net importer of Harris Farms’ executive vice president, William things.” Bourdeau, tells me, as our car bumps rapidly It is great, yes. Astonishing and mesmerizing, in fact. And ‘W along the dirty, uneven track. “These are pista- yet I am soon made aware that there is trouble in paradise, for, chio trees,” he says, sweeping his hand across the horizon. “Over having first seen what Harris is doing, I am shown in no uncer- there, we have asparagus.” He points through the windshield. tain terms what Harris is not doing. Suddenly, as if crossing a “And in that facility, we process garlic.” line of demarcation—I am reminded of Checkpoint Charlie, the Around the corner and away from the freeway, I see almonds, gate that linked West and East Berlin—we leave healthy fields broccoli, onions, watermelons, and tomatoes. Lettuce, which in bursting with life, and we arrive at . . . well, we arrive at noth- the grand scale of things is a mere afterthought for Harris, is ing: just dust, quiet, and a few pieces of unused farming equip- produced nevertheless on an astonishing scale, with 3 million ment. It’s quite the shift: a real-life Before and After comparison. cartons—72 million head—being shipped out each year, the And sadly, most of the farm looks like this. Some 9,000 of fruit of 700,000 man hours. On neighboring Harris Ranch, the Harris’s 15,000 acres are fallow—devoid of water and therefore largest in the West, there are 100,000 cattle, most of which will of crops and of workers and of attention. “Uncertainty is the new eventually end up at In-N-Out burger joints along the Pacific normal,” CEO John Harris sighs from the driver’s seat, his smile Coast and throughout the Southwest. The smell of the cattle disappearing. “This is no way to run anything.” permeates the air for a good mile around, announcing the farm Harris tools the car around untouched pastures, and I am told to travelers before any signs come into view. In the distance, the at length about the Water Troubles. “Without water, we can’t mountains loom large. work,” Bourdeau laments from the backseat. “It’s not healthy. “Factory” is a good word to describe California’s San Joaquin Valley. But “laboratory” might be a little better, for the region is an agri-tinkerer’s delight. The soil being uncharacteristically fertile and the summers being long and dry, growers are afforded that most valuable of things: control. Emancipated from Gaia’s caprice, farmers here can deter- mine precisely not only how much water they wish to provide to their crops but when to add it, too. Which is to say that, in the Central Valley, irrigation is achieved not by the whimsy of the sky but by deliberately placed pipes, pumps, and microprocessors. It is here that the ancient earth meets the best of tech- nology; where Silicon Valley meshes with the baser elements and, together, they yield life. “If the Pilgrims had landed in California,” Ronald Reagan liked to joke, “the East Coast would still be a wilderness.” Undoubtedly. I suspect fewer Pilgrims would have died, too. Make no mistake: This place is a miracle—a vast greenhouse in which,
BOB BUKIN unmolested by the elements and pro-
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We’ll do what we can. We’ll grow what we can grow where we This is a classic tale of activist government run amok—and, can grow it. But without knowing how much water we’re going too, of the peculiarly suicidal instincts that rich and educated to get, it’s so difficult to plan!” A pistachio tree, for example, societies exhibit when they reach maturity. Were its conse- takes five to seven years to grow. “How can we plant one now if quences not so hideously injurious, the details would be almost we can’t guarantee we can water it in a couple of years?” comical. As a direct result of the overwrought concern that a few Bourdeau asks. well-connected interest groups and their political allies have That the drought is making planning all but impossible is a displayed for a fish—and of a federal Endangered Species Act refrain I hear all across the region—both from the established that is in need of serious revision—hundreds of billions of gal- farmers who are desperate to draw next year’s crop map and lons of water that would in other areas have been sent to parched from the wannabe planters who cannot secure the loans they farmland have been diverted away from the Central Valley and need to start up on their own. One aspiring rancher tells me that deliberately pushed out under the Golden Gate Bridge and into he is thinking of selling his land and moving out. “I wouldn’t the Pacific Ocean, wasted forever, to the raucous applause of lend me the money I need to plant,” he gripes, honestly. “I’m Luddites, misanthropes, and their powerful enablers. The later stuck, I guess. I can’t plant. But who will buy my land?” chapters of “The Decline and Fall of the United States” will make interesting reading. Make no mistake: The rare, hard-done-by, and rightly pro- OU have almost certainly never heard of the Delta smelt tected manatee the Delta smelt is not. According to some esti- and, in all honesty, nor should you have. As fish go, it is mates, there are no more than 3,000 manatees left in the United Y undistinguished. Inedible, short-lived, and growing to a States, and, when left unchecked, human beings have had a maximum length of just under three inches, smelt are of interest nasty tendency to maim and kill them in the service of nothing to nobody much—except, that is, to the implacable foot soldiers more exalted than speedboating. By contrast, when the Great of the modern environmental movement, some of whom have Smelt Freakout of 2007 began, there were 35,000 to well over recently elevated the smelt’s well-being above all else that has 100,000 of the little buggers, depending on whom you ask. And traditionally been considered to be of value. Human beings, the yet the powers that be have seen fit to decree that no more than production of food, and the distribution of life-enabling water 305 of them may be killed in a given year. As an exasperated can all be damned, it seems. All hail the smelt, the most impor- Harry Cline, of the Western Farm Press, put it in February, last tant animal in America. year “800,000 acre-feet of water went to waste based on the sci- The Central Valley’s woes began in earnest in 2007, when ence of four buckets of minnows. That is enough water to pro- the hardline Natural Resources Defense Council won a lawsuit duce crops on 200,000 acres or 10 million tons of tomatoes; 200 against California’s intricate water-delivery system, sending million boxes of lettuce; 20 million tons of grapes. You get the farmers like John Harris into a tailspin. In court, the NRDC’s picture?” lawyers contended that the vast pumps that help to funnel “When they do their fish surveys,” the California Water water from the reservoirs up in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Alliance’s Aubrey Bettencourt tells me, with a wry smile, “they River Delta down to the Central Valley, to Southern California, kill thousands of the smelt. It’s ridiculous. Last year they killed and to the Bay Area were sucking in and shredding an unac- 3,500.” In other words, I suggest, the government kills ten times ceptable number of smelt—and, the smelt being protected by the number that are allowed to be killed every year in order to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) since 1994, that this was find out how many have died. illegal. “Right.” Given that the NRDC has long wished for farming operations “Meanwhile,” Bettencourt laughs, “upstream, the state gov- in the valley to be curtailed on the peculiar grounds that it isn’t ernment is planting non-native striped bass to help the fishing native to the area, this struck many observers as rather too con- industry and placate the fishermen.” The great joke? “These feed venient. Nevertheless, the outfit managed to convince Oliver on the Delta smelt.” Wanger, a George H. W. Bush–appointed federal judge on the Politically, agriculture is in a difficult spot. California’s water United States District Court for the Eastern District of Cali - system was designed to balance municipal, industrial, and agri- fornia, and with so much authority over matters environmental cultural interests. Now a new player—environmentalism—has having been delegated, centralized, and put in the hands of been added to the equation, and its share of the spoils has had to judges and bureaucrats, that was all that mattered. Wanger ruled come from somewhere. That somewhere has been agriculture. that the protections afforded to the smelt were insufficient and “No politician is going to screw over the needs of industry or ordered the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to issue a new of people,” Bettencourt explains. “That would be political sui- “biological opinion” on the matter. This the service obediently cide.” So, they take the water away from the farms instead. delivered in early 2007, overturning its previous assessment “Farmers still pay for the water, even if they don’t get their allo- that the smelt was in “no jeopardy” at all. And that, as they say, cation,” she notes. Last year, farmers got only 40 percent of the was that. What the NRDC could never have achieved legisla- water they bought, despite the reservoirs’ being almost full. tively, it achieved via the good old American tradition of One can’t see a clear path for the farmers. According to the lawyering up and smiling at a man in a robe. In 2007, the 2010 census, 3,971,659 of California’s 37 million residents live pumps were turned off; the Delta’s water output was lowered in the Central Valley—about as many people as live in the city dramatically, contingent now upon the interests of a fish; and of Los Angeles. But since they lack the political clout to get the farms that rely on the system in order to grow their crops much done, their cause has languished. Once upon a time, most were thrown into veritable chaos. Predictably, a man-made Americans knew at least one farmer, and they realized all too drought began. well that there was a genuine risk involved in working the land.
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Perhaps they killed and skinned their food themselves; perhaps that the Book of Genesis has a section on the farming cycle. they raised chickens; perhaps they bought produce by the side of “Behold,” Joseph warns, interpreting Pharaoh’s dream, “there the road from the Jones boy in the next village. Being involved come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of in the production process in some way or another, they knew Egypt. And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; where food came from. In the age of abundance, it is a different and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the story. Nowadays, most Americans buy their food from the super- famine shall consume the land.” One can’t help feeling that, had market. They are assiduously inoculated from exposure to Joseph been in California in 2013, he might have interpreted the reality, and they enjoy the time and the sense of material secu- dream differently. Seven years of dearth here? That would be rity that is necessary for a religion such as Environmentalism to preposterous. Right? Well, not if Pharaoh had lived in Wash - flourish. “Basically, our priorities have changed,” Bettencourt ington, D.C., and had a Sierra Club sticker on his Subaru, no. concludes—an understatement. Driving out of Harris Ranch after my tour, I am met by a string Congress’s priorities have changed, too. In 2009, when the of protest signs that have been erected by a neighboring farmer. deleterious consequences of the elective drought made national “STOP THE CONGRESS CREATED DUST BOWL!” one news, Republican representative George Radanovich of Cali - reads. “NO WATER = NO JOBS!” says another. A third has fornia proposed the Drought Alleviation Act, which would have some choice words for Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer. The funded a fish hatchery to replace any smelt that were killed by farmers here are frustrated, of course. But their unease is noth- These, it seems, are the Hoovervilles of the West—forgotten towns that have been ruined by the drought and have still not recovered.
the pumps, thereby allowing a return to normalcy. The House’s ing compared with that of their workers. In a coffee shop on the Democratic leadership refused even to discuss the bill. In the outskirts of Fresno, I meet Maria Gutierrez, a retired Univision same year, Devin Nunes, another California Republican, intro- employee who now volunteers at El Agua Es de Todos, a duced the Turn On the Pumps Act. It was defeated in the Hispanic advocacy group that aims to highlight the pain that Democratic-led House, with not a single California Democrat government policy is causing workers in the area and to get voting aye. In 2012, the Republican House passed another bill, immigrants and their families involved in the debate. H.R. 1837, which would effectively have exempted the smelt “Seeing what having no water in this valley did to our com- from the ESA. It was dead on arrival when it reached the munities in 2009,” Gutierrez tells me, “I had to get involved. Senate. Harry Reid is on record opposing the bill, and President It was devastating: The unemployment rate was 45 percent; Obama has promised to veto it if it ever reaches his desk. So, people were standing in food lines. It had a terrifying impact.” for now at least, the power will remain in the hands of federal “People think of rich farmers,” Gutierrez continues, “but they bureaucrats. The smelt will prevail. don’t think about the people who actually work on these farms.” Those people have had it tough. Gutierrez shows me pho- tographs that, but for their clarity and for their subjects’ clothing, OW times change. Speaking in 1962 at the ground - could well be mistaken for Depression-era snapshots. In them, breaking of the San Luis Reservoir, John F. Kennedy lines of hungry children snake around boarded-up blocks; arms H announced enthusiastically that the project was the are outstretched as volunteers ladle soup into plastic cups; fam- largest that the federal government had ever undertaken in ilies are living in tents. These, it seems, are the Hoovervilles of cooperation with a single state. Hitting a familiar we-choose- the West—forgotten towns, such as Mendota and Huron, that to-go-to-the-Moon-esque note, Kennedy told attendees that have been ruined by the drought and have still not recovered. “for many years, some believed that the water problems of this “They’d come up to me,” Gutierrez recalls, “and they’d say, state were too controversial and too complicated to solve. They ‘Maria, I lost my car first, then I lost my house, then I lost my believed there was no escaping the effects of drought and marriage, and now my kids can’t go to college.’ It was horrible. flood.” Now, the president proclaimed, such claims were obso- I couldn’t stand on the sidelines any longer. We need to do some- lete. “Water,” he argued, “is man’s oldest and most precious thing about it.” natural resource.” The reservoir would guarantee its distribu- I ask about the politics. Does this divide neatly along party tion. lines? “This shouldn’t be a political issue,” Gutierrez tells me, Alas, our 35th president could evidently not imagine the envi- diplomatically. “This is an everyone issue.” Still, there is cer- ronmental movement, nor, for that matter, a future in which the tainly an opportunity here for California’s moribund Re - federal government would be sent down to California not to turn publicans. Polling conducted by El Agua Es de Todos shows that on the spigots and to celebrate great feats of engineering but Hispanics are willing to consider anyone who will take the water to close them down. The devastating consequences that the issue seriously. Currently, Hispanics in the Central Valley swing volatility of the water supply has had on the production of food Demo cratic by 70 to 30 percent. If the generic Republican made and on the stability of life have been known to man from the an issue out of the water problem? It would swing to 60–40 beginning of time. So closely is water linked with survival Republican.
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Locals here are nervous that what happened in 2009 might question,” an “ends/means equation where the end justified the happen again—and perhaps even worse this time around. “It had means no matter how you get there.” Wanger trained his fire on a domino effect on free enterprise here,” Gutierrez tells me. “If Fish and Wildlife Service’s Jennifer Norris in particular, com- people aren’t working, they aren’t buying. So the small business- plaining that she had provided completely different testimony in es close. Look at all the stores that have closed!” The fear is well two different sessions, and that the “record says the opposite of founded. At the time of writing, the California Department of what [she cited] the record for.” “I find her testimony to be that Water Resources is promising an initial allocation of just 5 per- of a zealot,” Wanger wrote. “I’m not overstating the case, I’m cent of purchased water deliveries for 2014. This could always not being histrionic, I’m not being dramatic. I’ve never seen increase later in the year, but, in the meantime, farmers are left anything like it. . . . Protecting endangered species is crucially with two ugly choices. They can choose to rely instead on what important. It’s a legislative priority. And even the plaintiffs don’t little water is left in their groundwells, but, well water being full dispute that. But when it overwhelms us to the point that we lose of salt and boron, this may damage their land and reduce future objectivity, we lose honesty, we’re all in a lot of trouble. Serious, yields (almond trees and the soil they grow in react especially serious trouble.” badly to this). Alternatively, they can simply let their land remain Changing the Endangered Species Act seems equally un - fallow. Neither is good for production—or for their workers. likely—at least with Washington, D.C., in its current configu- Ismael Reyes, Harris Farms’ soft-spoken irrigation manager, ration. And absent an act of Congress, the chances that the smelt is concerned for the area’s future. Reyes emigrated from Mexico will be removed from the list are pretty much nonexistent. The to the United States with his family in the late 1960s and has seven-member Endangered Species Committee (ESC), which lived in the valley almost his whole life, “I came here when I was has the power to exempt federal departments from protecting little,” he tells me, “and I worked on the land since I was 15 years species named in the Endangered Species Act in cases of old. I’m 56 now. I dropped out of school to help the family, and regional or national importance, has convened only six times I started in the fields. We didn’t believe in welfare—still don’t. since it was formed in 1978, and only once in its history has it By 1975, I was promoted. I don’t have a degree, but I had deemed conservation to be less important than the competing learned the language and could keep records.” Reyes is putting interests. The ESC, which critics call the “God Squad,” is his four children through college but worries that they will not expected to make its decisions on the reasonably simple princi- be able to do the same—and even that they might have to move ple that the benefits of any permitted behavior must exceed the out of California. benefits of conservation. It would seem that crises such as this “It’s falling apart,” he tells me. “In my opinion, this is a one were precisely the reason that rueful lawmakers created the choice. The government is allowing this to happen. If there is a ESC—that now would be the time for a body that exists solely shortage of water, we understand. But there is no reason for this. to ensure that environmentalism doesn’t get out of hand. But It hurts farmers; it hurts the workers; and we can never plan. It’s precedent, alas, is not on Californians’ side. a choice—a bad choice. That’s what it is.” Inexplicably and inappropriately, it is on this question that It is a choice that will be difficult to unmake. Suing is futile. President Obama has found his inner federalist. Obama has The “biological opinions” on which the water allocations now repeatedly implied that this is an issue for California to resolve rely are required only to hew to the “best available science,” and on its own, even as he has threatened to veto any changes to the this term appears to be as meaningless and as malleable as it Endangered Species Act, which trumps state law and takes the sounds. Environmentalist groups claim that the smelt is an “indi- immediate question out of the hands of local legislators. Nor are cator species”—the canary in the coal mine whose supposed Californians likely to get much help from their homegrown decline demonstrates that pumping in the area is destroying the power players. Nancy Pelosi is an outspoken environmentalist natural habitat—but the degree to which one considers this to be and, hailing from the Delta area herself, was involved in the true appears to be based less on objective research than on polit- original federal power grab in the early 1990s. Senators Barbara ical posturing. For a long time, both the state government and the Boxer and Dianne Feinstein have both expressed regret, but they Fish and Wildlife Service flatly refused to agree to expanded pro- are unwilling to countenance changing the smelt’s protected sta- tections, with officials noting that the smelt’s population has tus. Oddly, Governor Jerry Brown has been the most useful of all fluctuated routinely—sometimes falling to dangerous lows, the Democrats. But without a federal initiative there is little sometimes soaring. Now, these officials have bought the line. he can really do, and his welcome proposal to build a series Quite why is anybody’s guess. of underground tunnels that would bypass the smelt completely would take 15 years to be completed even if it were to be started tomorrow. T will remain that way. Because the ESA holds that And so nothing happens. Each year, farmers sit and wait— researchers can declare their work private property, scien- praying for rain, and hoping that the federal government will I tists must release only their findings and may keep their send them a few drops of water so that they do not have to leave data and methods secret. Even when the work has been made perfectly good land fallow and tell their employees that this public, the government’s case has been flimsy at best. In a sub- month there will be no work. Of all our present troubles, Cali - sequent case in 2009, the judge who set the ball rolling, Oliver fornia’s farming woes are perhaps the most inexplicably sourced Wanger, slammed researchers who were providing the bio- and the most easily fixed. Complacently convinced of their infal- logical opinions on which the water allocation is based, accus- libility, legislators in the nation’s richest state have prostrated ing them of zealotry, fraud, and junk science, publicly lamenting themselves at the feet of many silly ideas in recent years. But for the consequences of his earlier decision, and charging that the authorities to have put the livelihood of millions of citizens at federal government was providing “an answer searching for a the mercy of a tiny little fish is almost too much to bear.
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studied Michel Foucault. The New York Times recently reported that these new education requirements often have little to do with The College ensuring that employees possess a particular skill set. Instead, they’re an easy way to winnow the applicant pool: There are so many degree holders these days that you can eliminate all non–degree holders and still have plenty of people to hire from. Trap Unfortunately for many working-class Americans, that winnowing process falls hardest on them. As it’s currently Our higher-education system hurts the poor played, the college-education game simply isn’t fair. Part of the problem is that bright low-income children don’t BY J. D. VANCE apply to colleges that match their talents. The brutal irony is that, for the poor, the colleges with the highest sticker prices are free FEW years ago, a friend learned that a mutual acquain- (or close to it) because of generous need-based aid. So there’s tance had accepted a job with an elite D.C. law firm, at much to be said for policies that make low-income students a starting salary of $160,000. She turned pre-law aware of the options they have. A almost overnight. Because I was thinking about law Still, there are many subtle ways that colleges discriminate school myself, I knew that those high-paying jobs were vanish- against working-class students. Take, for example, the admis- ing for all but the luckiest graduates. My friend was undeterred: sions process. A common critique of modern affirmative action She took an extra year of classes to raise her GPA for the appli- is that class is a far better metric of misfortune than race, and that cations (incurring thousands in debt in the process) and crammed colleges should adjust their admissions preferences accordingly. for the law-school admissions test. It was an admirable effort. But The underlying assumption is that a poor student gets no admis- eventually the reality of the employment market set in, and she sions boost relative to a wealthy student. But this actually under- took a different job. She never did go to law school. states the problem: Poor students are actively disadvantaged in My friend displayed a classic middle- and working-class the process. In a recent study, Princeton sociologists Thomas mindset. In his 2010 book How Rich People Think, Steve Espenshade and Alexandria Radford discovered that at private Siebold criticized the almost religious belief “that master’s colleges—whose graduates have, on average, significantly better degrees and doctorates are the way to wealth.” I had that belief employment prospects than graduates of public schools—a poor too—it’s why I wanted to go to law school in the first place— white student is three times less likely to receive an admissions and so does virtually everyone I’ve ever known. When you grow offer than his wealthy counterpart with the exact same grades up at the bottom or even in the middle, advanced education is the and SAT scores. Race doesn’t explain this, and neither do grades holy Grail. Parents mortgage their homes and children donate or standardized tests. their plasma (seriously) to pay for it. Lately, writers have questioned whether many people spend too much on college and get too little in return. This fear has hAT does explain it? One factor is that a lot of colleges motivated recent proposals to encourage online education or make are not “need-blind”: They are simply less likely to a $10,000 bachelor’s degree available to everyone. But there is a W accept students who will need more financial aid. deeper problem with the college cult than the diminishing value Another answer is obvious to anyone who’s applied to a presti- of certain degrees: In our zeal to give many a college education, gious college. To gain admission to these places, you don’t just we’ve made it an employment barrier for those who lack it. need scores and grades, you need a padded résumé—intern- You can imagine the reaction if, tomorrow, Congress passed a ships, sports, extracurriculars, and leadership positions. The worker-identification law with the following provision: “Only Princeton Review, a test-coaching company, estimates that up to those who carry their federal ID card may apply for jobs that pay a third of the average college application is based on exactly more than $45,000; ID cards may be obtained from government these “soft factors.” But for a working-class child, chess club, vendors for $100,000.” The country would erupt in protest. Yet baseball, and student government usually give way to an after- this is what college does. When two people apply for a job, and school job. And admissions officers apparently care little about they’re alike in every way except schooling, the employer will an applicant’s experience bagging groceries. almost always hire the more educated. That’s true even of the When these students do get into college, they often encounter many jobs that don’t require a college degree. As economists other barriers unique to their circumstances. Most parents com- Neeta Fogg and Paul harrington recently found, a shocking 39 plete their kid’s financial-aid forms, for instance, but a lot of percent of new graduates are working such jobs. poor students must fight through the bureaucratic morass alone. Academics call this phenomenon “degree inflation.” In an That’s harder than it sounds: For the 7.5 million impoverished economy populated by college graduates, bachelor’s degrees kids living with single moms, filling out Dad’s income figures become necessary just to get your foot in the door. A host of pro- on the annual financial-aid application requires serious detective fessions—photographers, lab technicians, and equipment opera- work. One recent graduate I spoke with had to borrow money tors—have seen their ranks swell with college graduates, despite from a friend so that he could pay his first month’s rent and the absence of any obvious need for forklift drivers to have security deposit. Even though he’d been awarded tens of thou- sands in financial aid, the money wasn’t disbursed until a month Mr. Vance, a recent graduate of Yale Law School and a Marine Corps veteran, is after classes had started. working on a book about the social mobility of the white working class. He can be This is the minefield that progressives and many conserva- reached through his Twitter account, @jdvance1. tives have labored to make the only path to the top in modern
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America. Of course, we married ourselves to college for all the a shame, because we have evidence that alternative approaches right reasons: Policymakers wanted to help people, and statistics to skill formation might actually benefit the working class. In showed us that college graduates earned millions more than Europe, well-designed apprenticeship programs ensure that everyone else over a lifetime. The next step was obvious: Send interested students leave high school with practical, marketable more people to school. It was one of the truly bipartisan issues skills. In contrast, as Boston Consulting Group senior partner in our society. In the 2000 presidential campaign, Al Gore Harold Sirkin recently wrote, “U.S. factories are begging for offered a $10,000 tuition deduction while George W. Bush skilled workers.” Unfortunately, our country is too obsessed promised more funding for scholarships and Pell Grants. with the almighty B.A. to supply them. But to the extent that politicians viewed college education as a It’s no surprise that Germany, with its aggressive efforts to pro- panacea for rising inequality and reduced upward mobility, they mote vocational education, bests the United States in both youth were wrong. The average college graduate may make more employment and upward mobility. Finland has experienced sim- money, but anyone can tell you that a Harvard degree pays more ilar success with its emphasis on practical-skill formation. We than one from the online University of Phoenix—so statistics ought to follow their lead and divert some of the subsidies for about the “average” graduate tell us little. The truth is that grad- higher education into similar vocational programs. Progressives uates of America’s worst colleges have little to show for their often say they want the U.S. to be more like Europe. On this time besides mountains of debt. And the graduates of those col- issue, conservatives can lead the way. leges are disproportionately poor. Liberals justify the tens of billions we spend on college educa- tion on at least one other ground: that it ensures that our society ddrESSInG this lack of practical skills, while helpful, is is better prepared for the “new economy.” President Obama has still only a partial solution. A big part of the problem repeatedly committed the United States to leading the world in A is that by the time many of our poor kids reach college college-graduation rates by 2020, a goal that, if achieved, would age, they’re so far behind the curve that they’ll never catch up. allegedly cure many social ills. But if college is the key to the future, University of Chicago economist James Heckman, a winner of then it makes little sense that South Korea, Japan, and Canada— the nobel Prize, has shown that far too many poor children the best-educated societies on the planet—rank far behind the lack the soft skills—such as the abilities to delay gratification United States in per-person productivity. Meanwhile, Singapore and to cooperate—that help set the successful apart from and Switzerland, among the few countries that outrank us in terms everyone else. His research has found that high-quality early- of per capita GdP, lag behind the U.S. in college completion. childhood education is the most productive investment in the So, at the national level, the link between college education lower class. In fact, it’s an investment that pays returns: We and productivity is virtually nonexistent. If we’re not creating spend so much less in incarceration costs, welfare payments, and much value with the billions we spend on education, it’s worth the like that we actually save tax dollars. The case for investing asking what those billions have bought. And the answer is: good more in early-childhood education is based not just in fairness jobs for university employees, and a social system that disad- but in economics. vantages the poor. not all early-childhood education is created equal. As pro- Economists have long understood that subsidies work best gressives push for an expansion of the largely ineffective, feder- when producers are able to increase output. It’s a very intuitive alized Head Start program, there is a better option: subsidizing concept. If universities can’t produce more employable gradu- early education in the same way we subsidize college education. ates but are still taking in loads of cash, they’ll spend it some- Give people money and let them decide how to spend it. where else. In practice, this meant that dorms grew plusher, Conservatives have supported vouchers for all the right rea- professors earned more, administrative staffs swelled, and an sons: Vouchers give kids the opportunity to escape a failing industry of for-profit colleges sprouted from nowhere. A Gold - school, they give parents a choice, and they force educators to water Institute report found that since 1993, administrative outlays compete. Yet it needs to be said that vouchers grow less effec- have increased by 61 percent per student. My own alma mater, tive as children age. Skills beget skills, and knowledge begets Ohio State, employs six non-teachers for every full-time faculty knowledge: Heckman’s research shows that a good preschool member. This is where our education dollars go. produces significantly better results for children than does a So, in a world with a finite supply of degree-requiring jobs, good high school. The most effective voucher programs will giving colleges more money will have negligible social value. target our youngest kids, not those nearing adulthood. Even if the colleges increase enrollment, the enrollees don’t bene- This means that subsidizing college is a terrible way to pro- fit from their degrees in any tangible way. From 2000 to 2010, mote opportunity. Of course, college still has value. There are national college enrollment swelled by 6 million—an astonish- millions of jobs that require advanced education. And many of ing 37 percent increase. For millions of these new enrollees, our universities produce cutting-edge technologies that create though, college was little more than an expensive career detour, real growth and improve our nation’s future. But we have because the market simply couldn’t provide enough degree- reached a point of diminishing returns. Our society turns its nose requiring jobs. Ultimately, then, you have a redistribution to the up at 19-year-old plumbers while reinforcing the notion that education establishment, at everyone else’s expense: It takes every undergraduate is “going places.” All the while, our gov- from the many and gives to the already well-off few—professors ernment finances the creation of more undergraduates while new and old, and their support staff. College does not solve or doing little to help young kids close the skill gap. ameliorate the crisis of opportunity; it exacerbates it. The irony is that our economy needs more plumbers and And in a world with finite resources, as we spend more on col- fewer undergraduates. And America’s poor need more oppor- lege, we’re necessarily spending less on everything else. That’s tunity, not heavily subsidized pieces of paper.
3 2 | www.nationalreview.com JANUARY 2 7 , 2 0 1 4 2col:QXP-1127940309.qxp 1/7/2014 11:07 PM Page 33
Health care will improve only if consumers are empowered to make both private and public actors accountable to the one force A New Health capable of disciplining them: a competitive market. The alterna- tive to a public, single-payer system is a private, as-many-payers- as-possible system. There is no more powerful economic force for good than Safety Net direct competition for price-sensitive, quality-conscious cus- tomers. In any segment of our health-care industry dominated by National catastrophic coverage actual customers paying their own money—dental care, optical care, cosmetic medicine, over-the-counter drugs, clinics for should complement markets undocumented aliens, concierge care for the rich—we usually see the normal benefits of the consumer economy: clear pricing, BY DAVID GOLDHILL transparent service, efficient record-keeping, and value. Apart from these areas, current health-care policy requires consumers to buy medical services through powerful intermediaries, such Re conservatives ready to think about health care inde- as insurers and Medicare and other public agencies, even though pendently of Obamacare? Because even if the Afford - these intermediaries have either refused or been unable to exer- able Care Act achieves its goals, American health care cise meaningful discipline. A will remain extraordinarily expensive, incompre- Advocates of this system criticize calls for normal markets by hensibly complex, and inaccessible to millions. The Left is invoking the very complexity that the absence of markets has largely unified around the idea of eventually implementing created. They say things like “Who wants to shop around when a single-payer system—a type of “Medicare for all.” This you have a heart attack?” or “How can we ask consumers to nav- approach is at least superficially attractive: Single-payer coun- igate our complex system on their own?” One gets the impression tries seem to adequately meet the basic health-care needs of all these are the only Americans who have never shopped for any- their people with much less complexity and at lower cost. On the thing other than health care. Functioning markets would reduce right, the widespread assumption is that the ACA mess should be the amount of work consumers need to do and force providers replaced by—what, exactly? to do more work to serve us. They would make the experience What most conservative ideas have in common is a preference of buying health care more like the experience of buying any- that the private sector take on responsibilities increasingly thing else—in other words, easier. assumed by government. In theory, there is also much that is Obamacare is a Rube Goldberg solution to the problems of a attractive in this approach. Unfortunately, though, the idea that system that was already Kafkaesque. No matter how we receive private is preferable runs contrary to most Americans’ experi- health care, we experience this system’s incomprehensible struc- ences with health care. ture, hidden costs, and bureaucratic weirdness. It requires us to Americans see the private health-care sector behaving badly: negotiate “pre-approvals,” coordinate the services of specialists, Rapacious insurers and providers seemingly work in tandem to and scrutinize indecipherable bills. It has so under-invested in make health care expensive, confusing, and unreliable. Many information technology that health care has the worst customer conservatives love to say that America has the best system in the service, the most primitive record-keeping, and the least respon- world, but how can a system so opaque, costly, and ineffective be siveness of any American industry. Worst of all, the lack of com- considered good? How can we reconcile claims of great doctors, petition and transparency allows truly awful practitioners to hospitals, and technology with our system’s extraordinarily high provide care, useless care to be sold as essential, and dangerous rates of unnecessary care and all the resulting injury and death? sloppiness to be covered up. Many conservatives claim more specifically that private insurance can meet social needs, but that is not how health insur- ance has actually developed in our country. Tax advantages for e hear all the time that technology is driving up the employer-provided insurance have had the perverse effect of cost of health care—a weird claim on its own terms, making any other way to pay for any care prohibitively expen- W since technology has elsewhere tended to reduce costs sive. There is nothing market-driven about this situation, in while improving quality—but has the fundamental structure of which even routine care is accessible and affordable only for any industry, much less a tech-driven one, changed less in the those who have insurance. Nor is the business model of that past 50 years than that of health care? Doctors remain the gate- insurance—which drives up the volume and cost of predictable way into the system. Hospitals—even if now largely through care, and therefore the premiums paid for it, while declining to their outpatient services—are still the providers of much of the insure people whose health-care expenses are unpredictable— major care. Drug, device, and equipment companies are the market-based. It may be “private sector,” but it is a private sector source of most technological innovation. And insurers and pub- highly distorted by government policies, and a major cause of the lic agencies continue to be the payers, driving—in theory, if not problems we need to address: complexity, high prices, unrelia- in practice—improvements in value, quality, and safety. bility, and terrible service. However, all this unusual industry stability has been accompa- nied by a lot of change in the nature of health and of care. To Mr. Goldhill is the CEO of GSN, a media company, and the author of begin with, Americans have gotten much healthier in the past 50 Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about years. We smoke less, drink less, eat better, enjoy a cleaner envi- Health Care Is Wrong. ronment, have far fewer accidents, and are wealthier (itself a
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major contributor to health). Health care has gotten better, too— But while more of us are seeing the cost and administrative more conditions can be controlled with pharmaceuticals, and mess of our current system, we continue to worry about whether fewer surgeries require long-term hospitalizations. we can pay for treatment of a health catastrophe. This concern Health care is also more often long-term and planned. For most can be allayed with a national catastrophic-care insurance plan: patients, even cancer treatment now involves a choice of options cradle-to-grave protection of all Americans against the most and facilities; that’s why cancer centers advertise. Health care has extreme health crises. It should be single-pool, since much of the gone from being something used primarily in emergencies to complexity of our current system—and therefore the unrelia- being a service consumed with deliberation. bility of our current safety net—comes from the endless transi- Perhaps the biggest change is that medical services have tions between forms of coverage. Such a system should be seen become a presence throughout our lives. In any given year, as a safety net much more than as traditional insurance, because health-care use is concentrated among a small percentage of the bad luck in the genetic lottery will always sentence some share population. But over a lifetime, almost every single person now of our population—sometimes from birth—to crippling medical uses a lot of health-care resources, with extensive end-of-life care problems. Premiums would be charged, but they should be assuring that the medical industry doesn’t miss out on any previ- roughly the same for all, with slight variations according to the ously healthy customer. The need for care is no longer a “risk” to age of the consumer. be insured against; it’s a certainty to be planned for. At the same time, we should try to shift as much funding of The health-care system itself, despite these changes, looks like health care as possible to individuals. That means building it did in 1965 because provider institutions have been able to use into the national plan an intelligent definition of what is cata- their leverage—especially their political leverage—to retain their strophic, and reducing its coverage benefits over time as positions even as the fundamentals have shifted. Americans build up personal health accounts. In the near term, Conservatives should sharpen their critique of Medicare in this means revising the tax code so that it treats individual particular. Self-interested politicians may have to defend this health accounts more favorably than insurance premiums. sacred entitlement, but market-oriented analysts can be more This would reduce the incentive to over insure. It also means honest about its double-edged quality. Medicare is the embod- providing more of our aid to the needy in the form of cash iment of the uniquely American view that it is a good thing to transfers to personal health accounts, so that all individuals can fund all health-care “need” without regard for budget con- participate equally in the new system. Medicare and Medicaid, straints or even a cost/benefit analysis. It has led providers to by contrast, segregate the old and the poor as second- and relentlessly expand the definition of “need,” culminating in third-class customers. For perspective, consider that the cost the full medicalization of our senior years. The rise of the of subsidized care in our current system—roughly $1 tril- government as the primary customer of health care has been lion—is enough to grant 100 million people the funds to pay associated with the rise of the health-care industry as the catastrophic-insurance premiums and enjoy a substantial leading lobbyist, with a predictable impact on quality, price, health savings account as well. and accountability. The supposed low price of services paid for The risk of any national-insurance program is that it will lack through Medicare, and its low administrative costs, are merely accountability and become a driver of excess care at high prices, optical illusions disguising a series of perverse incentives that, as became the case with Medicare and Medicaid. But there are a along with a lack of effective oversight, have encouraged the number of ways to reduce this risk. The program could be struc- provision of massive amounts of unnecessary care and allowed tured like Singapore’s, in which the government subsidizes cer- extraordinary rates of error, with all the harm and death asso- tain types of care but individuals always make the purchasing ciated. decisions directly. The benefit could be defined based on diag- nosis, with participating providers required to accept patients at this fixed price (similar to the initial conception of Medicare’s lOT of very smart people are developing new and trans- payment system). Premium growth could be limited by statute formative medical therapies, and the 21st century may (for example, held to the rate of inflation), and the national A be remembered as a time of breakthroughs that we can’t insurer required to balance its books each year. imagine today. How will our system adjust to such change? How The transition to a national catastrophic plan and privately will we exploit the opportunities presented by more personalized funded basic care would take time. At first, the plan would sit medicine? By longer life expectancies? By low-cost monitoring on top of current public and private insurance schemes, essen- and testing? Will it be able to differentiate between valuable care tially reinsuring them for catastrophic loss. Over time, as the and costly or unnecessary care? Will it achieve the efficiencies benefits of running more of our dollars through a “many payers” necessary to make health care broadly accessible? normal marketplace became clear, we could accelerate the tran- We can get there, but not overnight. The first step will be to sition to a consumer-driven health-care economy. satisfy the need for some sort of reliable and universal safety net. The ultimate goal must be to free up the bulk of the money Until we solve that problem, we’ll never move on to a conver- that currently goes into our health-care system—and the bulk sation about making health-care markets truly competitive. of the subsidies we provide to our neediest—and put it back in One of the blessings of the ACA is that the layers of insurance, the hands of the one force capable of truly disciplining health- tax subsidies, public aid, and mandated care that are supposed to care providers: consumers. A simple, universal safety net that magically create “affordability” are being seen for what they are. provides catastrophic coverage will help get us there. We should Ever more Americans are realizing that we’re putting a lot more start working on it now as the long-term alternative not just to into the system than we’re getting out of it, and this has created Obamacare but to the bipartisan mess that is our current health- fertile ground for a new approach. care system.
3 4 | www.nationalreview.com JANUARY 2 7 , 2 0 1 4 lileks -- READY:QXP-1127940387.qxp 1/7/2014 11:46 PM Page 35
Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Economics for Dummies
ErfECTLY timed for the first week of legal pot the jaw-closingly simple idea of getting all your food sales in Colorado, Rolling Stone published a from an intravenous shunt! manifesto called “five Economic reforms One question: Isn’t living on the dole the same as being P Mil len ni als Should Be fighting for.” You unemployed, which blows? could take it as a mordant satire on the cloud-cuckoo ideas “3. Take Back the Land.” You’re wondering if anything of mushy campus Marxists, or a manifesto designed to get blows, and if so, whether it’s a nor’easter or coming from “Millennials” off the couch and into the streets. Either the south, bringing humid tropical airs. Yes. “Ever notice way, it’s fun. Let’s take a look. how much landlords blow? They don’t really do anything “It’s a new year, but one thing hasn’t changed. The to earn their money.” As opposed to Rolling Stone writers, economy still blows.” Brave: A panel of leading econo- who earn it by advocating the confiscation of yours. See, mists had earlier concluded that the economy “sorta here’s the problem with property owners: “They just sucks,” but could lapse into “blowing” later this year. He claim ownership of buildings and charge people who ac - says it already blows. Buy gold! tu al ly work for a living the majority of our incomes for the Well, no. Take away everyone else’s gold is more like privilege of staying in boxes that these owners often didn’t it. Here are the Glorious five Points: build and rarely if ever improve.” “1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody. Unemployment They “claim” ownership, as if they got there first and blows.” Gusty little fellow, eh? He’s a dreamer: “Imagine said “Mine! All mine!” You didn’t build that! You just a world where people could contribute the skills that in - bought it. A perfectly good justification for taking every- spire them—teaching, tutoring, urban farming, cleaning one’s private home, when you think about it. If you like his up the environment, painting murals—rather than tele- house, you can keep his house. marketing or whatever other stupid tasks bosses need But of course he couldn’t advocate anything that dra- done to supplement their millions. Sounds nice, doesn’t conian, right? it?” “4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody. Hoarders Well, imagine a world where sleek hover-cars picked blow.” He means the people who have money he can’t you up from your circular driveway and whisked you off to take, so the government should buy up the stocks and a silvery tower where you spent the day braiding flowers bonds of the top 10 percent and pay dividends to all the cit- into the manes of unicorns. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? izens. While we’re at it, let’s buy up all the seed corn and I worked as a telemarketer for one day, selling Time- put it in the microwave because I have fierce munchies. Life books. I was unaware that the harried boss who ran “5. A Public Bank in Every State. You know what else the operation had millions in need of supplementing. He really blows? Wall Street.” This will get the kids empty- must have driven himself to a joyless office park in the ing into the streets, don’t you think? What do we want? A middle of winter for the joy of it. He must have conjured public bank that cannot possibly blow due to the word up the idea of getting college students to sell hardcover “public” in its name! When do we want it? As soon as the compendiums about the Old West to shut-ins because he confiscated capital can be assembled into an institution wanted to keep us busy doing stupid tasks, and prevent us whose charter forbids lending discrimination based on his- from expressing ourselves with vibrant murals of Cuban torical patterns of oppression including, but not limited to, role models. gender, race, class, immigration status, and sexual prefer- After one day I knew I had better find a job that didn’t ence, including those who chose not to identify at all! make me want to scrub the sense of failure off my skin Also, free toasters with every new account! with pumice soap. Bad jobs are good motivators. But that He concludes: “If that idea—or any of the others de - was another era, of course; nowadays, kids can only imag- scribed in this piece—sounds good to you, there’s a bitter ine a world where they get a job teaching. political struggle to be waged. Let’s get to work.” Cool “2. Social Security for All. As much as unemployment manifesto, bro. So what, we occupy something now? blows, so do jobs.” You’re beginning to think that the No, you get behind candidates who spark a nationwide author got stoned, turned on a hair drier, stared at it for revival with some simple, clear ideas: taking away peo- five minutes, and pronounced it the greatest symbol of ple’s investments, packing more people into municipal modern life since, I don’t know, Hot Pockets. “What if housing, paying legions not to work, and hiring others to people didn’t have to work to survive?” he asks, channel- pursue their dreams of being a snake-charmer who hand- ing the first caveman who declined to go on the hunt and weaves his baskets from locally sourced reeds. Property was driven from the clan to starve in the wild. “Enter the will be taken away from the wrong people. This will re - jaw-droppingly simple idea of a universal basic income.” quire a long, bitter, national struggle, so let’s roll up our And what if people didn’t have to eat to survive? Enter sleeves. Otherwise, you know who will win? The Tea Party. Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. You know, the radicals.
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The Long View BY ROB LONG
From Variety, March 23, 2014: building was created,” said the tele- vision personality, guiding a tour of “A&E Networks Announce New her new home in a casual dashiki. Series Spinoff: Duck Dynasty on “I wanted it to be a place where Broadway” friends can hang out, but also a place After the record-breaking debut of that’s built for a family,” she contin- Season Five of the boffo cable series, ued. As if on cue, Tyler, her recently A&E Networks has announced a adopted white baby, stirred in his crib. News new project under the Duck Dynasty “White babies are so fussy,” she brand. laughed, as she went to pick him up. From 2014 “We believe the wonderful, color- “I’ve been trying to Ferberize him, ful world of the Robertson family but how can you resist those chubby From the Washington Post, belongs on the musical stage,” A&E pink cheeks?” February 14, 2014: president Nancy Dubuc said at the announcement. “The whole family is “Clintons to Renew Marriage Vows working together with the top musi- From the New York Times, on Valentine’s Day” cal-theater talents on Broadway to November 17, 2014: Citing a renewed and deeply felt bring their life and lifestyle to audi- commitment and joy in their long— ences on the Great White Way. It’s a “Colorado Now Nation’s Fattest” and, some say, turbulent—marriage, terrific and no-brainer kind of brand The state of Colorado, once one of former president Bill Clinton and extension.” the nation’s fittest and most active former secretary of state Hillary While the Robertsons will not be states, site of world-famous ski re - Clinton plan to renew their wedding performing in the production—only sorts and whitewater rafting, is now vows. two of the clan have any experience facing an epidemic of obesity and “It was just time,” longtime Clin - dancing on the stage—they will be Type 2 diabetes. Experts point to the ton confidant Sidney Blumen thal closely involved, supervising the recent legalization of marijuana— said. “Both of them have been so book, music, lyrics, and choreogra- the sale and consumption of which busy for the past few years, travel- phy of the show. became legal statewide on January 1 ing the globe with a message of “This is going to be . . . interest- of this year—which in turn fueled peace and progress, that when they ing,” a source close to both the family the most unprecedented consump- finally got home and caught their and A&E have said. “I just don’t tion of complex carbohydrates ever breath they were, like, Hey, I love know how . . . well, I mean, let’s just recorded. you.” see how it goes.” “The law has adversely affected Although conservative media Auditions begin next month. So indigenous peoples and other ethnic stalwarts such as Rush Limbaugh far, only one role has been cast. minorities,” said Dr. Theresa Jones- and Mark Levin have questioned Multiple–Tony Award–winner Nathan Henderson, a public-health expert both the sincerity and the timing of Lane is set to play the patriarch of the based in Boulder, Colo. “We’re cur- this announcement—Mrs. Clinton family, Phil Robertson. Others eyeing rently looking at ways to apply the has frequently been mentioned as a key roles include former American legalization law to a smaller popula- front-runner for the 2016 Demo - Idol star Clay Aiken and members of tion. Affluent white teenagers, specif- cratic presidential ticket—friends the Fox television hit Glee. ically.” and colleagues of both Clintons say that the two of them seem like new- From Variety, lyweds. “Why else would they do From Parade magazine, December 20, 2014: this on Valentine’s Day,” Blumen - Sunday, June 1, 2014: thal asked, “unless it’s because they “Duck Dynasty Musical Shelved: really really love each other and are “MSNBC Host Melissa Harris- A&E President” totally into it?” Perry: ‘I’m Just a Homebody!’” Citing difficulties in auditions and The renewal ceremony will occur A rare and intimate look into the friction between family patriarch in a place “special to them,” a family world of MSNBC host Melissa Phil Robertson and the choreographer friend said. “The First Baptist Church Harris-Perry, and the historic Brook - of the production, A&E Networks of Ames, Iowa.” The reception has lyn brownstone she has recently reno- president Nancy Dubuc announced yet to be arranged, but sources close vated. today that the project has been sus- to the couple speculate that it will “We wanted the renovations to pended indefinitely. take place the day after the ceremony have an integrity—to be respectful of “There was a disconnect,” Dubuc in Manchester, N.H. the time and the place where this said.
3 6 | www.nationalreview.com JANUARY 2 7 , 2 0 1 4 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 1/7/2014 6:36 PM Page 37 Books, Arts & Manners
eliminated copying exercises and taught Rahm Emanuel. It is the Baby Boomer The reading with flashcards. “It is no accident way. . . . What unifies the Baby Boom is that SpellCheck is a product of the Baby the way we talked everybody into let- Boom,” he notes, “and it is no accident ting us get away with it. Garrulous that we misspelled ‘spell check.’” But talk is not cheap, O’Rourke warns: The Junior class are those born in the “Whenever anything happens anywhere, Generation early 1950s, who took most to heart the somebody over fifty signs the bill for it.” motto coined by the Seniors: “I have to be They get what they pay for, because “we FLORENCE KING me.” They became groupies, teenybop- have the enormous power of bulls**t.” pers, and barefoot hippies who descended The striking thing about this entertain- on Haight–Ashbury to become individu- ing and informative book is how often it als with all the other barefoot hippies. disappoints. O’Rourke seems to know it, The Sophomore class, born in the late to judge by his response to the charge that 1950s, had the least amount of rebelling to Boomers carry things to extremes. “In do. By the time they reached adolescence fact, we’re a generation that carries things the Baby Boomer ethos had permeated as far as we want to, until we get tired of society. Sex and drugs were so last year carrying them, then we drop them on the that many Sophomores could forget they rest of you.” He starts, and then stops, a were supposed to be rebelling and buckle comparison of the Boomer era with the down in college, while some even went 19th-century Romantic movement, decid- The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way and for an M.B.A. and became Young Urban ing that the Romantics did not have a big It Wasn’t My Fault and I’ll Never Do It Again, by Professionals—the Yuppies of the 1980s. enough cohort waiting in the wings “to P. J. O’Rourke (Atlantic Monthly, It’s the freshman Boomers that make it stick.” Then he combines Lord 263 pp., $25) O’Rourke has it in for, because they are Byron’s “mad, bad, and dangerous to nothing but talk. Born in the early 1960s, know” image with his fight for Greek f you are suffering death by a thou- they did not witness anything “monu- liberty to create a poet-patriot ideal; but sand tweets from the garrulous mental” from an adult point of reference. Byron’s incestuous relations with his half- ubiquity of the “social media,” you The monumental civil-rights movement, sister give O’Rourke pause, so he puts it I can blame it on the Baby Boomers, the monumental Kennedy and King assas- aside with the curious observation that or, as charter member P. J. O’Rourke calls sinations, the monumental struggle over “medical science has cured the club them, “exploding children.” Born between the military draft, were all inchoate child- foot.” He could actually have found 1946 and 1964, they are the largest gener- hood memories and subjects they studied some interesting parallels between the ational cohort America has ever had, prod- in high-school history class. Studying any- Boomers and the Romantics, especially ucts of the longest period of prosperity we thing monumental in class, says O’Rourke, if he had brought in the logorrheic Jean- have ever seen. Celebrated as the hope of turns it into “an unvisited Grant’s Tomb of Jacques Rousseau; this would have made the future for whom nothing was too the mind.” freshman Boomers frequently Boomers seem less of an anomaly. good, they believed it and developed a don’t even seem like Boomers, but there Making sex funny is the pinnacle of dark side. “Children want to be adults,” is no mistaking them. “The tip-off is the wit, and O’Rourke has proved himself in says O’Rourke, “but we wanted to be blather, the jabber, the prattle, the natter, this art many times before; but testos- older, greater children.” They got their the gab, gas, yak, yab, baloney, blarney, terone measured in cohorts is an over- wish when they were encouraged to be bunkum, the jaw-slinging, tongue- dose. The f-word is only to be expected what earlier generations of children were wagging, gum-beating, chin music that nowadays, but O’Rourke also uses the not supposed to be: heard. is the Baby Boomer gift to the world. Mf-word as blithely as the customers in O’Rourke, one of the earliest Boomers, Stephen Colbert is a freshman. So is Ann Detroit’s Hardcore Pawn reality-TV separates the cohort into four academic Coulter. So are Jon Stewart, Sarah Palin, show. But worst of all, incredible really, classes. He and his fellow Seniors experi- Conan O’Brien, and Larry the Cable is his parody of New Testament verses: enced some aspects of pre–World War II Guy. . . . Even our T-shirts can’t shut up.” “So faith, hope, and love abide, but the life. Home was “a shining suburb on a And neither can 52-year-old Barack greatest of these is a b***j*b.” hill” with one telephone and dead-end Obama, writes O’Rourke: He also commits stylistic faults that I streets that had not yet been upmarketed don’t remember from his previous books, The freshman Baby Boomer is born into as cul-de-sacs, but education standards e.g., overuse of parentheses: “We’re as a sea of hooey and swims about comfort- were beginning their downward spiral as ably therein unaware that other environs proud as our parents of knowing right a post-war crop of progressive teachers of discourse exist. for all we know, while from wrong (and think our knowledge is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright fulmi - superior).” He combines this fault with a Florence King can be reached at P.O. Box 7113, nated and swore, the future president was frantic section of overwriting that sounds Fredericksburg, VA 22404. fiddling with his BlackBerry blabbing to like an analogyesistic hemorrhage of the
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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS metaphor gland: “In the California get their way with uncertain markets, King–sized bed of the ego, on the four- unsympathetic politicians, or crusty hundred-thread-count sheets of pleasure, Best-Laid unions. Sir Lawrence Freedman, a pro- we like the honest embrace of vice better fessor of war studies at King’s College than the sanctimonious pillow talk of Plans London, is as interested in these “strate- virtue. (Although we’re quick enough to gists” as he is in generals, and thus further jump out of the sack, lock vice in the en VICTOR DAVIS HANSON redefines strategy broadly as “getting suite bath, slap on some lip service, run a more out of a situation than the start- brush through our sophistry, and wrap ing balance of power would suggest.” ourselves in floor-length false piety if one “It is,” he writes, “the art of creating of our kids shows up without warning.)” power.” Would you believe he follows this with yet In the world of Freedman, almost another parenthetical sentence, this one everything becomes strategic and every - indented and standing alone? Here it is: one a strategist of some sort, from a “(And let’s not confuse personal hon- comic dramatist to a CEO to a communi- esty with anything we do at work or on ty organizer. But to paraphrase Frede rick the Internet.)” the great, does he who defines strategy Finally, he commits the favorite fallacy as everything risk reducing it to noth- of the lazy, the ad hominem attack, e.g., ing? Ayn Rand was “a loony old bitch.” I In some sense, he does. A theme of could hear Cyrano’s “Oh, sir, what you Strategy: A History, by Lawrence Freedman Freedman’s wide-ranging inquiries is could have said.” (Oxford, 768 pp., $34.95) pessimism about the efficacy of strategy. All that aside, the best parts of this Even the most brilliant minds with book are O’Rourke at his best, his glass TRATEgy as we know it today rigidly planned guides to power often always reassuringly half-empty: Jaws is is far more than the greeks’ underestimate the omnipotence of the the movie that destroyed cinema. Now original and limited notion of unforeseen and coalitions that form out that “felony indictment” has become a S strategika, the “things related of nowhere to chip away at their seem- sports statistic, does anyone still think to the art of generalship.” The latter ingly permanent success. They certainly that football builds character? Philistine meant nothing more than troop arrange- fail to understand that nothing ever parents do the best job of building a child’s ment (taktika), siegecraft (poliorketika), quite ends. By June 1941, Hitler had self-esteem because their unwavering artillery (belopoiika), and tricks (strateg - won his intracontinental European war; response to modern art is “My kid could mata). No wonder that, from Onasander’s by June 1942, he was increasingly paint that.” Boomers care about educa- Strategikos (a first-century manual on understood to be losing it. Count up the tion. Proof? Their parents let the PTA the duties of the general) to the Byzantine gulf wars—1991, 2003, the insurgency alone but Boomers picket it, sue it, and Maurice’s late-6th-century Strategika, between 2004 and 2009, and the pre- post anonymous abusive tweets. such “strategic” reading is dull and slow- sent mess. At what point was removing Except for that, though, they wouldn’t going. Saddam from Kuwait a victory? At what hurt a fly, because they were so coddled After the Enlightenment, and particu- point did it become a precursor to later and protected that they want to make larly in the 19th century, strategy, while removing him from Iraq—another win, everyone wear hockey helmets to play understood to have arisen from politics which begat the insurgency, which checkers. Their safety hysteria, especially and war, expanded to the larger science begat the successful surge, which begat when combined with their vanity, makes of how rational thinking could achieve the increasing violence after the recent Boomers the most unthreatening people power and influence in a climate of resis- American exit in toto from Iraq? the world has ever known. They will tance and uncertainty. By the late 20th Freedman’s monumental survey is never become suicide bombers, he attests, century, if everyone had a strategy, from arranged in a roughly chronological because strapping on explosive vests a professor wanting tenure to a Little fashion, ranging from the Old Testament would make them look fat. History is full League coach hoping to advance his and the greeks to the Iraq wars and con- of bad things that Boomers would not son’s baseball future, the goal was still temporary America. Freedman draws dream of doing. They would never have the same: to figure out how to acquire not just on history and political science, become barbarian hordes either, because more of something, and then retain your but also on fiction, poetry, drama, eco- galloping across the Mongol steppes winnings. nomics, and business. Indeed, in his con- triggered all their existing allergies and In our age, community organizers, clusion, he focuses more on film than on added a new one, to horse dander. They social activists, and Wall Street captains the great wars or critiques of classical could not have “lived off the fat of the of industry have all fancied themselves strategists. land” because they were trying to cut warrior generals employing “strate- He begins with stories from the Bible down on fats in their diets. As for pillag- gies” on their civilian battlefields to and Homer to review the well-known ing, how could they carry the pillage dichotomy between guile and muscle away without wheelie bags? Mr. Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover (David’s sling versus goliath’s brawn, No. They won’t hurt us. They’ll just talk Institution, Stanford University, and the editor of and Odysseus’ cunning in antithesis to us to death, as they are already doing. Strategika. Achilles’ brute force). He continues this
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antithesis through references to classics dimensional man with skills that tran- through, or over the walls, Aeneas is the such as Sun Tzu, Paradise Lost, and scend the ossified world of Homer’s better guide. The Prince, and adroitly concludes that aristocracy—and all the odium that Twelve chapters in Part II, titled the two poles are not so much antithetical those skills incur from traditionalist “Strategies of Force,” offer a valuable as complementary. While there is no grandees. tour of both historical and abstract tradi- substitute for the use of hard power, the Guile in the West has traditionally tional military thinking. The usual sus- latter works best when used sparingly been seen as inferior to the use of pects—Napoleon, Jomini, Clausewitz, and decisively. Likewise, it may be easier power in decisive battles. The bowman von Moltke, Delbrück, Mahan, Liddell for the powerful to become tricky than and slinger are objects of derision even Hart, Mao, the nuclear strategists, and the the tricky to become powerful. The U.S. when they nullify traditional Athenian revolution-in-military-affairs bunch— certainly did counterinsurgency in Iraq or Spartan power at disasters such as all make their appearances. The net far better than the Iraqis did conven- those on Sphakteria or in Aetolia. In takeaway from their work is rather tional warfare. early classical Greece, there is winning, ironic. The employment of overwhelm- Freedman might have reminded his and then again wanting to win the right ing state power could often be derailed by readers more forcefully that many of his way—which sometimes, tragically, insurgents, guerrillas, and terrorists. But examples are not historical, but literary. ensures losing. these irregulars themselves sought tradi- This is an important distinction, and not Freedman does not discuss cultural tional power, and so eventually accepted just in the most obvious sense. Char - difference much, but it can explain dif- that to establish and maintain their con- acters may not be simply voicing philo- fering strategic approaches in some of his trol they too would have to metamor- sophical observations of the author (or examples. The Arcadian Aeneas Tacticus phose into what they once opposed—by others), but also must conform to the wrote at roughly the same time as Sun creating conventional military forces that demands of plot, character, and theme. Tzu, but they remain a world apart cul- in turn might provoke new insurgencies. One example: Odysseus, especially in turally. If a besieging captain wished a Apparently, strategy never sleeps. later tragedy, “cheats” by not fighting in holistic account of proper temperament, In Part III, “Strategy from Below,” the open and in unambiguous fashion, the hot and the cold, the yin and the yang, Freedman explores in novel fashion because, as a precursor to the new con- then he might read the latter. If he just how the less powerful—socially, polit- sensual polis, he represents a multi - wanted to know how best to go under, ically, and economically—sought to
THE WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. FELLOWSHIP IN POLITICAL JOURNALISM. APPLICATIONS ARE NOW BEING ACCEPTED.
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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS trump the entrenched. What do Marx, Ford, Alfred Sloan, Peter Drucker, and The text is vast and displays an enor- Engels, Bakunin, Lenin, Weber, John the faddish business gurus who currently mous amount of knowledge, but it can Dewey, Gramsci, Gandhi, Martin Lu - advise American industrialists. Here also make for slow reading, whether in ther King, the Sixties radicals, and polit- Freedman is at his most pessimistic. He its synopses of a Thomas Kuhn or ical operatives of the past 20 years all is not at all sure that military modes of Michel Foucault, or in prose that occa- have in common? Their shared desire strategic thinking translate into com- sionally turns cumbersome. E.g.: “They was to galvanize the masses to force merce, noting that, given the capricious- noted the complexity of relationships, concessions and wrest powers from the ness of the market, there has been no not only with customers, suppliers, and state. That could be done violently, or consistent strategic blueprint that over- competitors, but also complements— through civil disobedience and peaceful rides the business environment. He con- that is, other players with whom there protests; it could even be undertaken cludes that being an enlightened manager was a natural cooperative and mutually by elements within the establishment, means accepting uncertainty, preparing dependent relationship (for example, using existing communications and pro- for cyclical downturns, and treating asso- hardware and software firms in comput- tocols to focus on more populist mes- ciates and underlings fairly. Common ing).” And: “When we seek to under- sages. sense and street smarts seem a better stand the present it is unwise to assume The net result of these forces over the prognosticator for success than the pre- that things are the way they are solely last two centuries in the West has been a set axioms of gurus. because strong actors wished them to sharing of power and broadening of the In a short, final section, “Theories of be thus, but when we look forward to middle class. Hierarchies of class, race, Strategy,” Freedman suggests that his the future we have little choice but to religion, and gender have blurred, and the more than 700 pages of examples and identify a way forward dependent upon redistributive welfare state has grown. analyses lead to an underwhelming human agency which might lead to a Despite formal income inequality and result: “One large conclusion of this good outcome.” Unfortunately, there because of technological revolution, there book is that such plans struggle to sur- are few chapter or section summaries is a sense that the proverbial people vive their encounters with an awkward that remind the reader of the central have never had it so good. I do not know reality.” In lieu of such fossilized pre- themes of these widely different discus- whether the aim of Marx or Gandhi was planning, Freedman suggests, “scripts” sions. to render indistinguishable to the casual offer more hope of achieving a goal by Freedman begins his study by quot- observer the Wall Street grandee, with his assuming that constant improvising and ing Mike Tyson and ends with a discus- iPhone, sneakers, and jogging outfit, deviation from dogma are necessary to sion of American film director Frank from the inner-city teen on public assis- advance along a trajectory, in which even Capra. In between, he has written a vast tance, but such superficial equality is a successful end point inaugurates a new exploration of strategy that is difficult now a mark of the times. beginning and an entire set of new chal- to read, full of surprises, and marked by The elites, of course, were not idle in lenges. Whether even the most careful unsurpassed erudition. It also is witty enacting their own visions of creating thinkers can control events depends on a and reminds us that he in the world who wealth, both collective and personal. In sort of resigned acceptance that success in knows most about strategy may be the a section titled “Strategy from Above,” business or victory in war must invite one who is the most unimpressed with Freedman turns to business—Henry resistance—and on and on and on. it.
A PASSING BREEZE Boats on the lake sang hymns of distant hum; Homage to warm winds, as the radiant fall Raised up its descant, muted, almost dumb, But yet precise. A melancholy call In minor key, it added slant to sum Of summer’s energies. I loved it all— Fast traffic on the blazing, tidemarked beach Soon seared my feet; placed summer within reach.
A purple scent rose up from wine-soaked ground, As grapes, like moments, split and burst apart. Decisions carved from stone fell all around, While bees in every flower left a dart. Delphinium was abject, blue. A cloud Complained the passing breeze was much too loud.
—SALLY COOK
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medicine: are needlessly denied potentially life- Let My America underwrote much of the global saving treatment because they are admin- war on smallpox and helped save hun- istered placebos in order to satisfy the dreds of millions of lives worldwide, demands of the double-blind model. Patients Go and because we no longer have to protect The villain of the piece is what Huber ourselves against smallpox, Americans describes as the FDA’s “thalidomide KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON today save as much every month in brain.” Regulatory agencies are slow to direct and indirect societal costs as their adapt to new scientific realities in part grandparents spent on the entire small- because they do not understand those pox campaign. According to estimates new realities; but they are also hobbled made in 1994, every dollar spent on polio by wrong lessons learned from the past. vaccine saved about five times as much in such costs. The measles immunization Frances oldham Kelsey, the FDA func- payoff was 13 to one. . . . socialized tionary who blocked the official licens- medicine’s hundred-year war against ing of thalidomide in the U.s. market, germs did far more to improve human is to this day a name to conjure with health and extend life expectancy than among regulators, and she was awarded all the rest of medicine developed before the nation’s highest civilian honor by or since. President Kennedy for her role in pre- The problem for policymakers today, venting official approval of the drug. The Cure in the Code: How 20th-Century Law Is he argues, is that “the medical future The episode is a telling one: Kelsey Undermining 21st-Century Medicine, looks nothing like the medical past—the seems to have been more or less in the by Peter W. Huber (Basic, diseases are different, and so are the dark about the specific consequences of 304 pp., $28.99) cures.” For very complex diseases such thalidomide—she merely thought its as cancer, the idea of a “cure” is itself makers were making suspiciously extrav- s statements of qualified problematic: Better to speak of cures in agant claims, and judged them to be praise go, “writes well for a the plural, because every cancer, like shifty. More significant, her resistance lawyer” is a cousin of “doesn’t every cancer patient, is unique, and the to licensing the drug did not keep it from A sweat much for a fat chick”— frontiers of molecular medicine have in being distributed to patients, or keep it does not rise even to the level of a many cases reached the point where the those patients from suffering its ill effects; vacant superlative such as WFB’s question no longer is “Does it work?” she did, however, spare the FDA the “tallest building in Wichita, Kansas.” but “Does it work—for him?” With that embarrassment of having given its impri- Better to say that Peter W. Huber writes in mind, Huber goes about exploring the matur to thalidomide, and allow it to well—exceedingly well—and is a lawyer. shortcomings in public institutions, absolve itself of any responsibility for the He is much more than that: a former MIT especially in law and in the regulations drug’s horrific consequences. professor, a contributor to publications administered by the FDA and related That lesson of bureaucratic self- as diverse as NATIoNAl RevIeW and agencies, and constructs a multifaceted protection has not been lost on the FDA, Wired, a Manhattan Institute fellow, and argument that, while medical science is as Huber notes: one of the few men walking the earth always by necessity a work in progress, who could write a book about FDA re- our ability to treat diseases and to By late 2010 . . . minor deviations in test- ing protocols were being cited as reasons form that is not only profitable but plea- ameliorate their symptoms is now con- for rejecting very promising results, some surable to read. strained much more severely by the involving drugs for deadly diseases for The book is exciting, in that it suggests limitations of politics than by the limi- which there is no other good treatment. possibilities for significant im prove ments tations of science. In 2010, for example, the FDA rejected in our ability to treat terrifying diseases Though never shrill, Huber is absolutely the only medication able to treat a rare, in the near future; but it is also depressing, damning on the subject of the FDA, fatal lung cancer (idiopathic pulmonary because its sophisticated analysis—in arguing that its methods are not only fibrosis) because the drug—which had flying so far above the regulation– cumbrous and counterproductive but already been licensed in Japan and was deregulation and government–market ultimately unethical. Forcing researchers about to be licensed in europe—had binaries that dominate so many of our to follow outmoded blind-trial protocols completed only one of the two large policy de bates—cannot help but draw when there is available a superior alter- studies required by the FDA. The frac- tion of cancer drugs granted accelerated one’s attention to the intellectual pov - native—the adaptive protocol, under approval had been cut in half. erty of Washington’s practically pre- which large databases of molecular- Copernican approach to im portant level information are constantly updated Huber lays out a fairly specific policy policy decisions. to provide a learn-as-you-go research agenda, not only for reforming the FDA The Cure in the Code begins with a method—means that many potential and our drug-licensing practices but also brief and bracing discussion of large- treatments go undiscovered or unap- for helping to ensure that the economics scale public-health efforts in the recent proved, for example those that provide of cutting-edge medical research will past, and is hindered by no libertarian significant results but only for a rela- work toward the benefit of patients. scruple regarding the successes of what tively small number of patients. Worse, Among his prescriptions is liberalizing Huber accurately describes as socialized it means that large numbers of patients the flow of information between drug
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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS manufacturers and health-care pro - has moved on to such voguish concerns viders: Under current rules, drug com- as GMO food.) panies are in many cases effectively Science in fact matters very little to Peace and silenced when it comes to discussing federal health-care commissars: Under possible off-label uses of their drugs— the Affordable Care Act, the federal Principle not because their claims are not backed government has positioned itself to up by solid research, but because of begin subsidizing such scientifically VICTOR LEE AUSTIN innocent practices that Washington unsupported hokum as chiropractic, insists on calling “fraud.” Under the acupuncture, herbal medicine, and the False Claims Act, the federal govern- like. Huber’s approach would put more ment holds that encouraging off-label decisions in the hands of relatively prescriptions is equivalent to encour- competent authorities with local know- aging fraud against the federal govern- ledge and more intelligently aligned ment. “As Washington sees it,” Huber incentives, but in the case of the FDA, writes, as in the case of many similar agen- scientific truth is irrelevant in the eco- cies, the people are the regulators’ nomic fraud cases. So are the prescrib- problem as much as the regulators are ing doctor’s medical judgment and the the people’s problem. The political patient’s informed choice. The fraud incentives the FDA responds to have lies in extracting money from Wash - as much to do with Oprah as they do In Defence of War, by Nigel Biggar (Oxford, ington by saying things to others that with what happens in Congress—pos- 384 pp., $55) Washington hasn’t certified to be true, sibly more. at a time and in a manner that Wash - The book is sprinkled liberally with HIS book, which is hands- ington hasn’t certified to be good. down the most ambitious and Pfizer may be sued or prosecuted if it sentences that are thought-provoking breathes an unapproved word about gems, each worthy of an essay of its own: consequential defense of the “Saquinavir doesn’t care a fig about sex- T Christian just-war tradition Viagra to any pediatrician who pre- scribes the drug to infants [as a treatment ual orientation; it hates HIV protease we’ve seen in decades, is, first of all, an for premature babies with breathing and nothing else”; “Pound for pound, argument “against the virus of wishful problems] and then bills the govern- bacteria, viruses, and other microbes thinking.” ment. Even if every word breathed has contain far more intelligence than we What wishful thinking? That Jesus an anchor in rock-solid science. Even if, do”; “[Maurice] Hilleman saved lives by was a pacifist; that Paul was a pacifist; by the time Pfizer gets hauled into the carton, at grocery-store prices—acres that the Christian tradition, when it is court, the FDA itself has reviewed the of cartons, hundreds of millions of warm true to itself, is pacifist. That Nigel science, accepted it, and approved Baby eggs replicating his genius around the Biggar would call such views—widely Viagra. world”; “We don’t choose Cherry Garcia; espoused by Christian theologians If there is a shortcoming in Huber’s it chooses us.” Huber occasionally goes today—“wishful thinking” is but the critique, it is his implicit belief that legal farther down these rabbit holes than is second sign (the first is the title) that and political institutions can be man- absolutely necessary, but it is a pleasure here we have a Christian ethicist of no aged dispassionately, in a manner con- to follow him. mean courage. His thought is careful and sistent with pure science. This is a blind I used to suggest a year-long project to exact—he really does mean, for in - spot analogous to the FDA’s “thalido- my writing students: Read T. S. Eliot’s stance, that Christian pacifism is “wish- mide brain,” and a few of Huber’s own “The Waste Land,” and then read (or at ful thinking” for the precise reason that it anecdotes illustrate this. Our culture least read from) all of the works referred is not grounded in realism and imports limits the ability of our democratic insti- to in the poem: the Bible, the Upanishads, into its Biblical exegesis unwarranted tutions to approach many of our medical The Divine Comedy, Donne’s Devotions, assumptions. challenges in even a roughly rational The Golden Bough, From Ritual to Ro - Like a contemporary Thomas Aqui nas, way. The name of Oprah Winfrey crops mance, Prothalamion, the poems of Biggar begins by laying out the views he up more often than one would expect Gérard de Nerval, etc. One might under- disagrees with. He sets forth the pacifist from such a serious book, but her take a similar project with Huber’s book. arguments of Stanley Hauerwas (once impact, and the impact of those who It is not absolutely essential that one called by Time magazine “America’s best share her style of emotion-driven analy- know all about the possible role of theologian”) with care, citing, as it were, sis, is not trivial. Huber cites Winfrey’s tumors in the famous Hatfield–McCoy chapter and verse for each step. He does role in distorting the public’s under- feud, or possess an understanding of the same for John Howard Yoder and for standing of the AIDS epidemic—in Bayes’s theorem, or know the saga of Richard Hays; more than anything else, 1987, she passed on to millions of BioThrax, to appreciate all that Huber Hays’s influential work has cemented viewers the prediction that 20 percent of has to offer in this very rich book, but it the notion that the New Testament itself heterosexuals would die of AIDS in the would be a shame to fail to make use of ensuing three years—and her spreading the selections of such a wide-ranging and Mr. Austin is the author of Up with Authority: of destructive anti-vaccine junk science. insightful mind. Why We Need Authority to Flourish as (Oprah’s love affair with junk science But start with The Cure in the Code. Human Beings.
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eschews violence. (And all this is just the once he has, the victim offers forgiveness- us thereby on what proportion really first chapter.) as-absolution. This latter aspect of for- requires. Biggar is a man of distinctions. He giveness is conditional on the actual But more immediately, Biggar caps off agrees that soldiers appear in the New repentance of the wrongdoer, and leads this book with an extensive and nuanced Testament as sinners, but so do tax col- to their reconciliation. evaluation of the Iraq War. He applies to it lectors. He disagrees that soldiering per Every friend or counselor will find this the just-war criteria that his book has se is sinful. Tax-collector Zacchaeus’s analysis helpful, but its importance here elucidated, patiently weighing the evi- sin, he notes, is fraud, and soldiering is the Christian sense it makes of punish- dence as well as the arguments of the sins, as much as they are mentioned, are ment, both within a state and between critics. He concludes, with significant “robbery by violence and false accusa- states. And it shows how war, as an nuance, that the war was justified. tion, and discontent over wages.” And extreme but arguably sometimes neces- At the center of the book Biggar takes once soldiering is recognized as not sary form of retribution for wrong done, on the contemporary analytic philoso- essentially sinful, the thin edge of the can be interpreted and understood as an pher David Rodin, who is known for his wedge is in place to overturn the pacifist expression of love for the enemy. arguments that just-war thinking fails reading of the New Testament. We then Besides being a professional Christian both in theory and in practice. What can acknowledge that Jesus’s repudiation ethicist—he is the Regius Professor of Biggar shows is that there is a traditional, Biggar asks, Is it possible to see war as an expression of love?
of some kinds of anger and violence— Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford— Christian body of thought on war, running for instance, messianic violence—does Biggar studies accounts of actual wars. from Augustine through Aquinas and the not amount to a repudiation of violence This book includes reflections by soldiers 16th-century Salamancan theologians to in general. We can recognize the verbal on their conduct. Some of them are brutal. Hugo Grotius in the 17th century, of violence of his language against his But others show love: in the treatment of which Rodin seems ignorant. Con - opponents (you brood of vipers!). captives; in the care for comrades; in the tempo rary philosophical just-war think- I linger over the first chapter because, disciplining of anger and training that ing, as espoused, for instance, by Michael for a moral theologian today, it is an works against bloodthirst. Biggar does Walzer, is rights-based and takes self- impressive achievement. But it is only the not argue that all war is an expression of defense as the justifying grounds for war. first of many refreshingly clear chapters. love, only that it is not impossible for it to Rodin’s attacks on that view are success- If we admit that the New Testament be so, and that one can find instances ful, Biggar argues; but they do not show does not forbid all violence, we also must when it was. that the older tradition falls short. admit that it calls for everything to be Now to love someone is incompatible This is because the justification for done in love. So, Biggar asks, is it possi- with intending to kill him; therefore, war in the older tradition was based not ble to see war as an expression of love? Biggar must argue that soldiers should on self-defense but on the need to show Start with the Biblical call to forgive- never intend to kill the enemy. This too, love for the neighbor, both, as noted ness. The problem is obvious to almost he finds, is not impossible. We could above, the neighbor who is under attack every person: So-and-so has harmed imagine in the midst of a battle that sud- and also the neighbor who is the enemy. me, perhaps grievously; I know I’m denly the enemy was rendered impo- Such war is undertaken for punitive pur- supposed to forgive him; but how do I tent. If soldiers then did not kill the poses, to provide judgment where there do that? Biggar sees forgiveness as a enemy, it would show that killing was is an unmet need for justice that is so process comprising distinguishable mo - not their intention. Their intention, in - grievous that it is worth the terrible costs ments. Initially, the victim should offer stead, was to stop the enemy from doing of war. In this tradition, the written laws her enemy the forgiveness of compas- harm. of states, and such written international sion. This is unconditional, and amounts Biggar is a realist about human beings law as there might be, are never the final to a recognition of fellow humanity. (we are sinners capable sometimes of word on what is just. For, in Biggar’s Forgiveness-as-compassion forswears very good things; realism here lies be - realism, there is real right in the world, vengeance and intends conciliation. tween idealism and cynicism). He is right that is not dependent on positive or But then the victim offers “proportion- also practical. For war to be justified, the written law, and that in extremity can ate expression of resentment and retri- good it aims at must not be overborne by bring judgment on that law. bution.” She does this to prevent the disproportionate costs. The battle of Conservatives, liberals, persons of wrongdoer from harming others (and attrition of the Somme—in which, in faith, agnostic philosophers, professors, thus shows love for others). But it is also four months of 1916, there were politicians, citizens anywhere who seek to communicate to the wrongdoer him- 600,000 British and French casualties in careful and clear thought pursued with- self the wrongness of his actions. And the making of an “advance of about six out rhetorical slander and with courage: this is done to show love for the wrong- miles”—has long been held up as an If such people wish to seek whether and doer, with hope that it will enable recon- example of disproportionate, and thus how war might be justified, and when it ciliation. Then, should the hope find unjustified, warfare. Biggar takes the might be necessary, this book is worth fulfillment, the wrongdoer repents. And reader through the battle, and enlightens their time.
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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Film Generation Of a Voice ROSS DOUTHAT
n Her, the fourth film from the self-consciously idiosyncratic di - rector Spike Jonze, the artificial- Joaquin Phoenix in Her I intelligence revolution finally arrives—and instead of rapturing hu - hilariously—when his partner, “Sexy Where they tend (at least in my experi- manity into a Singularity or wiping us Kitten” (the voice of Kristen Wiig), turns ence) to pull us inward, into self-enclosed out Skynet-style, it just breaks our fragile, out to have a dead-cat fetish. worlds, tiny screens, and the abbreviated all-too-human hearts. But just when you think this is a thoughts required for tweets and texting, Her is set in an unspecified near-future movie about alienation in an online age, she pushes Theo outward, back into the Los Angeles, which is like our present Phoenix’s character signs up for a new physical—literally sitting in his front except that its streets are cleaner, its pub- virtual assistant—a breakthrough OS, or pocket, watching the world through his lic transportation more spacious, and its operating system, that comes graced with handheld device’s camera, and egging buildings somewhat more exotic-looking self-awareness and the smoky, laryngitical him on to look, wander, picnic, explore. (Jonze cleverly used the Shanghai skyline voice of Scarlett Johansson. She takes the So Samantha isn’t a natural extension as a backdrop). Also, high-waisted pants name “Samantha,” and she moves swiftly of the way we relate to technology now; have made an unexpected fashion come- from reorganizing Theodore’s files and rather, she’s appealing, to Theo and to us, back. messages to capturing his heart. because she’s a kind of dea ex machina Our protagonist, Theodore Twombly This turn of events is played entirely who saves him from the way we relate (Joaquin Phoenix), is a writer who straight—not as a nightmare or as a to technology now. Which makes for a makes his living via creative anachro- comedy, but as a real, entirely heartfelt deeply comforting conceit, in a way: nism, working for a company called love affair, between two hearts that don’t Sure, the movie implies, all of this digital- BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com, need to share a literal embrace to rest age technology may be cocooning us in where he ghostwrites missives for digi- happily in each other. (And, yes, do other illusion and alienating us from one another, tal natives who still crave the ink-and- things as well.) And mostly the movie but eventually we’ll hit an A.I. break- paper touch. He’s an isolated figure, pulls this off, with great credit going to through point and then the computers, dri- mustachioed and unhappy, dodging his Phoenix’s performance and Johansson’s ven by their own hunger for experience, friends’ calls, listening to a disembodied voice work, which combine to make what will pull us back into reality and teach us Siri-esque computer assistant read his could have seemed absurd feel plausible, to appreciate our humanity again. e-mails through an earpiece, and flash- then normal, and then—as Samantha’s This is part of why the movie’s ro - ing back longingly to happier days with rapid evolution makes their relationship mance leaves an odd taste—because, his soon-to-be-ex-wife (Rooney Mara). increasingly difficult to sustain—gen- despite Johansson’s best efforts, Sa - At first, there’s a gently dystopian ele- uinely moving. mantha is finally more of a savior figure ment to the story. Everyone else seems But despite its surprising effective- than a partner, more a benevolent mix of almost as socially isolated as Theo, and ness, I also found Her subtly annoying, mother and lover archetypes (one of the though the future has a warm, Crayola- for reasons that I’ve struggled to pin few questions the system asks when Theo box palette, there’s an androgynous down. It’s the best-reviewed of the big signs up for his OS is about his relation- sterility to the clothes and architecture, holiday releases, and browsing through ship with his mother) than an actual per- and a quiet desperation to the few people the positive notices I found critic after son. And seen in that light, Her can feel we get to watch up close. Theo’s closest critic praising Jonze for his movie’s a little bit like a pretentious, highbrow friend, a video-game designer played by timeliness—for capturing “the mood of gloss on themes that were explored more Amy Adams, spends her days fiddling the times,” for spinning a scenario that crudely, but also more honestly, in John with a game called “Perfect Mom,” “isn’t too far from our present reality,” Hughes’s Weird Science 30 years ago. where players win points for achieving for illustrating the future our own era Jonze is a smart enough filmmaker that perfect domesticity; meanwhile, her “aspires to evolve into.” it’s possible that these currents are all (childless) marriage is collapsing just Which it does, in a way. But watching intentional, and that he intends to subvert like Theodore’s did. His one attempt at it also makes those aspirations feel his own story in the telling, or at least romance ends painfully, with his date somewhat self-deceived, because part of complicate its gauzy mix of futurism and (Olivia Wilde) babbling drunkenly what’s striking about Theo’s relationship humanism. In the end, I’m just not sure about how much she’s been hurt and with Samantha is how little it really has in what he intended—which is both a sign of how she’s too old to wait for him to call; common with the way we relate to our an interesting movie, and a reason to
ANNAPURNA PICTURES his attempt at virtual sex ends badly—if smartphones and computers nowadays. withhold the fullest praise.
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we call them the Big and Little Country Life Dipper. One unmistakable constellation rules the cold sky: Orion. He casts Heaven’s his leg above the midnight hill in the fall, and marches earlier and Array earlier as the frost comes on. His shoulders and head are ill de - fined—when I was a little boy I thought he must be wearing a conical helmet, like a lampshade— but his belt and the sword that hangs from it can neither be missed, nor imagined as anything else. He is the warrior, the enforcer, the man who the comet so faint that the visitor was means, if not trouble, certainly business. lost in a field of glory. A beautiful sight, If I were both patient and mathemati- spoiled only by expectation. cally inclined I could make of my sky- The great rival of the winter stars is the RICHARD BROOKHISER light a clock, the branches of the trees winter moon. When the sun is lowest the marking intervals of time, the sweep of moon is highest. Leafless trees let it stalk ur house in the country grew stars through them its passage. Specific the woods. With snow on the ground, its over time, long before we stars would appear and disappear at dif- light is redoubled. Getting up to go to the bought it. First it was a ferent times as the season advanced, but bathroom in the middle of the night in O hunter’s cabin. Then the their rate of motion would remain the midwinter can be a startling experience. owner added a living room with a fire- same. My eyes and mind, two trees taller Who cued the floodlights? You could not place and chimney. Finally he put on a and older than I am, and several dozen read this article by the glow, but you could separate bedroom, no bigger than a slot stars light years away and galactic years certainly read the headline. (a king-size bed would fill it almost wall- older all carry the same watch. In a great Seeing a star in the city is an event. On to-wall), but in some burst of inspiration sonnet, George Meredith depicted Prince the clearest nights, some planet, Jupiter he put a large square skylight in the roof. Lucifer, “tired of his dark dominion,” ris- or Venus, may fight its way through the It needs to be hosed off periodically, and ing up in rebellion one more time, only to ambient glare. So we have our own stars: every so often it springs a leak at its edges, be disheartened by the constellations: The time display on the clock radio. but we are blessed to have it. For half Soaring through wider zones that pricked The message window on the answering the year, half of it is filled with the leaves his scars machine, which always reads 0 messages of a pair of hickory trees that grow in With memory of the old revolt from Awe, since no one phones anymore. The green front of the house, but now that their He reached a middle height, and at the dial of the humidifier. The tower of the branches are bare, on clear nights you stars, PC. (I know, I know, so retro, but what - can look through them at the stars. Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, ever replaces it probably has unwinking, When I was a Boy Scout, I earned the and sank. all-seeing eyes of its own.) Down in the astronomy merit badge at summer camp Around the ancient track marched, rank street and over the roofs, the thousand in the Adirondacks, where the night sky on rank, lights of the never-sleeping city. Night- simply blazed; consequently the summer The army of unalterable law. shift traffic; walk / don’t walk; scattered constellations are the ones that remain Einstein would pop up to point out that apartments whose inhabitants are doing most vivid to me. Some of them closely the stars and their observers on earth, both what exactly at this hour?; a few belated resemble their names. Sagitta the arrow humans and hickory trees, carry different Christmas trees; lights in stairwells; lights has two points defining its shaft and two watches. Small comfort to Lucifer. in office buildings as the janitors make more marking its feathers; Delphinus the Every so often we are promised a guest their rounds; 24-hour diners; signage; the dolphin has a neat little rhombus of a star, an auxiliary in the army of unalter- Empire State Building and the Chrysler body with a fifth point suggesting his tail; able law: the Comet of the Century. The Building, futures of the past. Draco the dragon curls like the beast on latest was comet ISON (for International Perhaps the most charming stars in imperial Chinese postage stamps. The Scientific Optical Network, the russian the city are the constellations on the ceil- names of other constellations put on airs: star trackers who discovered it), which ing of the Main Concourse of Grand Big Cross and Small T must not have however seems to have been dismantled Central Terminal. Grimy from years of seemed romantic enough, so these shapes by its swing around the Sun. I hoped to smoke, they were restored in 1998. These became birds in flight, Cygnus the swan see Halley’s Comet the one time I had the are golden on a greenish background, and Aquila the eagle. Popular sentiment chance in 1986. We had no country house with the things and beings they repre- keeps two fancy names in check: ursa then, so my wife and I arranged to stay sent drawn in (Orion, helmetless, raises Major and Minor, the great and little with a friend upstate and the three of us a mighty club). There is one flaw: Don’t bears, really don’t look like bears at all— went out into a freezing field one morning take them outside for a star chart, some- their tails would be much too long—so before dawn. But the sky was so clear and one put them up backwards.
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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN In to Win
MeRICA is a land of acronyms, and, useful as journalism, no eviscerating editorials. NR runs special- they are, acronyms can quickly curdle into ized blogs on both legal matters and climate change, yet jargon. SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuit they too have been all but entirely silent. I assume, from A against public participation”—i.e., using legal this lonely outpost on NR’s wilder shores, that back at action to cow an opponent into silence, and withdrawal head office they take the view that it’s best not to say any- from the public square. It was coined in the eighties by thing while this matter works its way through the courts. Penelope Canan and George W. Pring at the University of In other words, a law explicitly intended to prevent liti- Denver, and in the Nineties they turned it into a book: gious bullies from forcing their victims to withdraw from SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out. And it proved “public participation” has resulted in the defendants so influential that by the Oughts various jurisdictions themselves voluntarily withdrawing from “public partic- were passing “anti-SLAPP laws,” to the point where ipation.” That’s nuts. they’re now on the books of 28 states, one territory, and Meanwhile, in the same period, Dr. Mann has been the District of Columbia. The purpose of an anti-SLAPP brandishing his hockey stick out on the campaign trail law is to get such suits quickly dismissed. So, when you against Republican candidates. In Virginia, he appeared in find yourself the target of one and tootle along to see your the Democrats’ attack ads against Ken Cuccinelli, and lawyer, your first conversations are all anti-SLAPP this helped get Clinton’s bagman Terry McAuliffe elected and anti-SLAPP that. governor. When his candidate Mark Herring also pre- That’s what happened to me and this magazine. In a post vailed over the GOP in the attorney general’s race, Mann at NATIONAL ReVIeW’s website, I mocked Dr. Michael crowed and published tweets from his acolytes congratu- Mann, the celebrated global warm-monger, and his “hockey lating him on “two fresh notches on your hockey stick.” stick,” the most famous of all the late-Nineties global- That would seem, definitively, to move the hockey stick warming climate models to which dull, uncooperative into the realm of political speech explicitly protected by 21st-century reality has failed to live up. So he sued. We the First Amendment—and perhaps one day, two or three then filed an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss. Our first court or five years down the line, a D.C. court will agree. But date was January 20th last year. That’s to say, we are now it’s not much of a First Amendment that requires a bazil- entering the second year of the anti-SLAPP phase of our lion dollars in legal fees and a half-decade vow of silence case. So a law specifically designed to expedite a resolu- to enjoy the security thereof—all while the plaintiff’s tion of the matter has become just another bit of protracted, using his freedom of speech to knock off your political interminable, lethargic procedural ping-pong in an already allies. sclerotic legal system. I don’t think much about the First Amendment these In fairness to Dr. Mann, the two-year anti-SLAPP hear- days. As a practical matter, it’s simply not feasible in a ing is not entirely his fault. We are now having to start all global media market to tailor one’s freedom of expression over from scratch, with a brand new complaint, brand new to the varying local bylaws. So I take the view that I’m motions to dismiss, and a brand new judge—all thanks to entitled to say the same thing in Seattle as I would in the original judge’s remarkable incompetence and careless Sydney or Stockholm, Sofia or Suva. But, were Dr. Mann management of her case. I’m an immigrant and I’m told to prevail, it would nevertheless be the case that his pecu- that in America one shouldn’t criticize judges, but I’ve liarly thin skin and insecurities would enjoy greater pro- done so in england and Ireland, Canada and Australia, and tection under U.S. law than they do in Britain, Canada, I don’t really see why a third-rate judge should be any Australia, and other jurisdictions. It would thus be a major more immune from criticism than a third-rate plumber. setback for the First Amendment. At the risk of oversimplifying, I wonder if in a republic a That’s worth making a noise about. Up north, following society’s natural monarchical reverence doesn’t simply a similar SLAPP suit from the Canadian Islamic Con - wind up getting transferred elsewhere—in this case to gress, my publisher Maclean’s, who are far less ideologi- omniscient robed jurists. At any rate, it seems to me that a cally simpatico to me than NR, nevertheless understood fear of offending judges is unbecoming in a free people. So the stakes—and helped get a disgusting law with a 100 screw that. percent conviction rate first stayed by a hitherto jelly- But by far the biggest consequence of this ridiculous spined jurist and ultimately repealed by the Parliament of case is in these pages. If you are only a print subscriber Canada. This too is a free-speech case. Free speech is (as opposed to an Internet reader), you will have no idea about the right to thrash out ideas—on climate change, that NATIONAL ReVIeW is in the midst of a big free-speech gay marriage, or anything else—in the public square, in battle on one of the critical public-policy issues of our bright sunlight. And you win a free-speech case by shin- time. There have been no cover stories, no investigative ing that sunlight on it, relentlessly. As we embark on our second year in the hell of the D.C. court system, that’s Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). what I intend to do.
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