Imitating Israel The Rich Secede Conservative Kerouac Elitism & Its Enemies ANDREW J. BACEVICH MIKE LOFGREN ROBERT DEAN LURIE SAMUEL W. GOLDMAN

SEPTEMBER 2012

What’s Exceptional About America? IDEAS OVER IDEOLOGY • PRINCIPLES OVER PARTY What’s Exceptional About America? RICHARD GAMBLE

When News Becomes

theamericanconservative.com

This Month Vol. 11, No. 9, SEPTEMBER 2012

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ARTICLES COVER STORY ARTS & LETTERS

16 How We Became Israel 12 American Exceptionalisms 42 Twilight of the Elites: America Peace means conict for Federalism, not empire, makes A er Meritocracy by Tel Aviv—and us. us unique Christopher Hayes ANDREW J. BACEVICH RICHARD GAMBLE SAMUEL W. GOLDMAN

19 Revolt of the Rich FRONT LINES 45 e Political Philosophy of e super-auent secede from Alexander Hamilton by Michael America 6 Dudes shirk parenthood Federici MIKE LOFGREN ROD DREHER GEORGE W. CAREY 24 LePage Against the Machine 7 Syria’s gang war 47 ey Eat Puppies, Don’t ey? Maine’s Tea Party governor WILLIAM S. LIND by Christopher Buckley SCOTT GALUPO MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY 8 Alexander Cockburn, RIP 28 Battle of Columbus RON UNZ 49 e Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About “Fast and Furious” gets a sequel 9 Obama recruits for Republicans Coming Conicts and the Battle ED WARNER JORDAN BLOOM Against Fate by Robert D. 31 e Right & the Drug War COMMENTARY Kaplan Will conservatives embrace WILLIAM ANTHONY HAY legalization? 5 We are all isolationists now ANTHONY GREGORY 51 e Passion of Bradley Manning: 11 Al-Qaeda’s master plan e Story of the Suspect Behind 34 Killer Culture PATRICK J. BUCHANAN the Largest Security Breach in We’ve been anesthetized U.S. History by Chase Madar to violence 18 Two new wars for us CHRIS BRAY R.J. STOVE PHILIP GIRALDI 53 e Republican Brain: e 38 e Conservative Kerouac 27 Defense budget freeze Science of Why ey Deny An icon of rebellion who MICHAEL D. OSTROLENK Science—and Reality by Chris loved his Church 37 Mind your language Mooney ROBERT DEAN LURIE HENRY CHAPPELL RICHARD M. WEAVER 41 Gore Vidal in letters 55 “ e Best Man” on Broadway NOAH MILLMAN BILL KAUFFMAN 58 Olympic gold TAKI Cover illustration: Michael Hogue

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 3 e American Conservative Publisher Letters Ron Unz Editor Daniel McCarthy Senior Editors Rod Dreher Daniel Larison Mark Nugent BUCKLEY AND RUSHER the Buckleys’ Manhattan apartment. Editorial Director, Digital Wick Allison’s review of David Frisk’s He continued doing so even when the Maisie Allison biography of William A. Rusher, If Not directors’ meetings became largely cer- Associate Editor Jordan Bloom Us, Who? (July 2012), is (mostly) ter- emonial aer June 2004, when WFB National Correspondent ric. Allison, following Frisk, accords transferred the National Review stock to Michael Brendan Dougherty Bill Rusher his rightful place in the a new entity, Constitutional Enterprises. Contributing Editors vanguard of the conservative move- Indeed, David Frisk, in the book under W. James Antle III, Andrew J. Bacevich, ment, and he is de and perceptive in review, records WAR’s attendance at the Doug Bandow, Jeremy Beer, James Bovard, Patrick Deneen, Michael Desch, Richard Gamble, his characterization of Rusher. Allison’s very last directors’ dinner, in October Philip Giraldi, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, review is also beautifully written, with 2007, and reports that “Rusher sadly Freddy Gray, Leon Hadar, Peter Hitchens, some stunning metaphors. conded that Buckley, Van Galbraith, Philip Jenkins, Christopher Layne, Chase Madar, Eric Margolis, James Pinkerton, It is all the more a pity, then, that Al- and others of their generation seemed Justin Raimondo, Fred Reed, Stuart Reid, lison couldn’t resist those three sentenc- to have aged considerably.” Sheldon Richman, Steve Sailer, John Schwenkler, Jordan Michael Smith, es concluding his account of the 1990 LINDA BRIDGES R.J. Stove, Kelley Vlahos, omas E. Woods Jr. meeting at Bill Buckley’s home in Con- Editor-at-Large, National Review Associate Publisher necticut at which he, Rusher, and John New York, N.Y. Jon Basil Utley O’Sullivan argued against Buckley’s in- Publishing Consultant tended sale of National Review to Rupert Wick Allison replies: Ronald E. Burr Murdoch. In those sentences Allison anks to Linda Bridges for her good Editorial Assistants doesn’t exactly say but more than implies words and for her corrections to the re- Andrew Downing, Nicole Gibson, that WFB’s anger over their opposition cord. I was wrong to conate the timing Simeon Morris was what led to the departure from Na- and therefore connect John O’Sullivan’s Founding Editors Patrick J. Buchanan, Scott McConnell, tional Review of Allison and O’Sullivan, departure to the Rupert Murdoch inci- Taki eodoracopulos and that it led also to a permanent rup- dent. Indeed, John was agnostic on the ture between WFB and WAR. question. And, of course, I was plainly e American Ideas Institute I have never known the full story wrong about Buckley and Rusher’s con- President of those departures, but it seems a bit tinuance of their long association, for Wick Allison unlikely that if Buckley were angry which I apologize. Buckley and I had e American Conservative, Vol. 11, No. 9, September 2012 (ISSN 1540-966X). Reg. enough about his colleagues’ disagree- lunch once a year until his death, and it U.S. Pat. & Tm. O c. Published 12 times a ment to re them, he would wait nearly is no surprise that he and Rusher would year by e American Ideas Institute, 4040 Fairfax Drive, Ste. 140, Arlington, VA 22203. a year in Allison’s case and seven years meet as frequently as their travels per- Periodicals postage paid Arlington, VA and in O’Sullivan’s. mitted. Linda’a correction reminds us of additional mailing o ces. Printed in the USA. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to e As for Bill Rusher, who had already the generosity and loyalty that were the American Conservative, P.O. Box 9030, Maple retired, Allison writes, “I doubt that hallmarks of both of these great men. Shade, NJ 08052-9030. Rusher was ever invited back.” Since Subscription rates: $49.97 per year (12 issues) in the U.S., $69.97 in Canada (U.S. funds), and YANKEE COME HOME such an estrangement would have been $89.97 other foreign via airmail. Back issues: sad indeed, I’m very glad to be able—as In “Neighborhood Watch” (July 2012), $6.00 (prepaid) per copy in USA, $7.00 in the keeper of the Buckley calendar—to W.W. Chip claims Ron Paul is “naïve” Canada (U.S. funds). For subscription orders, payments, and other report that the two Bills next lunched and “simplistic” in calling for the re- subscription inquiries— together in May 1991, one of many moval of the American military from By phone: 800-579-6148 meetings over the ensuing 17 years. In foreign soil. I can only ask: what is naïve (outside the U.S./Canada 856-380-4131) Via Web: www.theamericanconservative.com May 1992, WFB asked WAR to serve and simplistic about this long overdue By mail: e American Conservative, P.O. Box as moderator for three “Firing Line” corrective to foolish American inter- 9030, Maple Shade, NJ 08052-9030 shows he taped in Taipei. ventionism? ere is no valid reason Please allow 6–8 weeks for delivery of your Furthermore, Bill Rusher remained why U.S. troops are garrisoned all over rst issue. Inquiries and letters to the editor should be an active member of National Review’s this planet. Mr. Paul is right on target in sent to [email protected]. For advertising board of directors, faithfully attend- proposing to bring our troops home. sales call Ronald Burr at 703-893-3632. For editorial, call 703-875-7600. ing the twice-yearly directors’ meet- TOM RAMSDELL is issue went to press on August 16, 2012. ings (followed, always, by dinner) at Oreland, Pa. Copyright 2012 The American Conservative.

4 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 { Vol. 11, No. 9, SEPTEMBER 2012 }

No More Isolationists

enry James was “cosmopolitan isolation- antipathies against particular Nations, and passion- ist,” Henry Cabot Lodge an “isolation- ate attachments for others” and advised us “to steer ist imperialist.” Randolph Bourne was clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the an isolationist who “espoused principles foreign world.” President Jeerson proved to be one Hthat we would today call internationalist,” while the as well, when he called for “Peace, commerce, and ever bellicose Newt Gingrich is an isolationist be- honest friendship with all nations ... entangling alli- cause he favors “energy independence.” Such are the ances with none.” And John Quincy Adams, despite lessons of a new book—Promise and Peril: America being author of the doctrine that carries President at the Dawn of a New Age by Christopher McKnight Monroe’s name, sounded like the worst isolation- Nichols—and a recent review of that book in Dissent. ist of all when he said America “goes not abroad in Don’t laugh. e smear “isolationist” has been search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher used so oen and in so many contexts that a case to the freedom and independence of all. She is the can be made for any of these gures tting the bill. champion and vindicator only of her own.” President Bush’s critics on the le routinely counted Each of these men fails the adventuresome ideo- him an isolationist, despite his invasion of Iraq, be- logue’s test, whether administered by the le or the cause he was a unilateralist. (Even that’s not strictly right. e wars that followed the French Revolu- true: the war did, aer all, involve a certain “Coali- tion, aer all, were exactly the kinds of things neo- tion of the Willing.”) However inaccurate its use may conservatives today would clamor to ght—though have been, the term allowed progressives to believe on which side is unclear. ( eir ideological fury they had been consistently ghting the same struggle and aspirations to world-shaping power match the from the 1930s to the 21st century—from Charles Girondists and Napoleon, but they make quite a Lindbergh to Donald Rumsfeld. show of their disdain for the French.) Progressives, Neoconservatives cherish the word for much the meanwhile, would fault these fathers of the republic same reason: it allows them to say the enemy has al- for their aversion to global-scale government. ways been on the side of fascism and appeasement. Yet Washington, Jeerson, and the Adams fam- For them, not wanting to invest American blood ily were not isolationists, any more than is anyone and treasure in Iraq was tantamount—nay, identi- so labeled today. America in her infancy was sur- cal—to ceding Europe to Adolf Hitler; thank you, rounded by great powers: the British to the north Neville Chamberlain. No matter how much anti- and ocean east; Spain to the south in Florida; war libertarians might favor free trade and open France in the lands Jeerson would purchase from borders, no matter how European the outlook of Napoleon. What the statesmen of the early repub- traditional conservatives might be (and not just Eu- lic sought was to marshal the country’s strength by ropean, in the case of Irving Babbitt and others with avoiding unnecessary conicts—wars of choice— keen Eastern interests), all deserve the isolationist and while they were not averse to deploying that tag. Because the only thing that isn’t isolation, evi- strength in limited engagements when necessary, dently, is war. they envisioned no role as peacekeeper, let alone By either measure, then—that of the progressive ruler, of the world. America would lead—but by le or the aggressive right—George Washington example, not arms. And those who follow this must have been an isolationist when he warned in counsel today are not isolationists; they are, with a his Farewell Address against “permanent, inveterate small-r, republicans.

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 5 Front Lines

of sociological history, Family and Civ- Four Men and No Babies ilization, republished by ISI Books in Is “Fortress Astoria” the end of the family? 2008, the late Harvard social scientist by ROD DREHER tracked developments in family forma- tion in three great civilizations: ancient n a large Queens apartment its in- “I think the secret to our success is Greece, ancient Rome, and the modern habitants have dubbed “Fortress that we don’t think too much about the West. It is always a mistake to blame a Astoria,” four middle-aged bach- future,” says another. “We live together civilization’s decline on a single cause, elors are making a what-me-wor- because we live together. at is all.” but Zimmerman makes the case that Iry? last stand against marriage and the It’s hard to get too upset about the the fall of both ancient civilizations had conventional trappings of manhood. Fortress Astorians. ey all seem like much to do with the long, slow collapse e men, all college buddies, all het- nice guys who pay their bills with mon- of family life—a collapse that was al- erosexual, have been living together ey earned from respectable jobs. Be- ready well underway in the West at the since their university days. Accord- sides, not everybody is cut out for mar- time of Zimmerman’s writing. ing to a recent prole in e New York riage and family life. If these fellows It is impossible to do justice to Zim- Times, they choose to live together be- have found a way to support them- merman’s argument here, but the gist selves and do happy, of it is this: when a civilization quits productive work, what’s believing in familism—the conviction When a civilization quits believing in the big deal? It’s not the that a key purpose of society is to sup- familism—the conviction that a key end of the world, is it? port and advance the family—it falls Well, it might be. e apart. And when people think of mar- purpose of society is to support and Fortress Astoria man- riage and family as a choice, not as an advance the family—it falls apart. children, says the Times, obligation or (less onerously) simply are part of a growing something one does, it becomes hard trend in American life, in to stop the unraveling. cause they enjoy each other’s company which traditional family structures and “Familism has to be motivated by the and because doing so makes it nan- patterns break down and are replaced acceptance of ideals of behavior based cially viable for each to pursue his ar- by “uid networks and bonds not de- upon a way of life and not upon the tistic calling. pendent on blood ties.” In Fortress As- usual systems of rewards and punish- Now, as the “man-children” (as one toria, the dudes have no sense of mis- ment in nonfamily society,” Zimmer- calls himself and his housemates) ap- sion in life beyond making themselves man writes (emphasis in the original). proach 40, without wives and children, happy in the moment, which requires It’s not hard to understand why. without a steady career path, and with- keeping their options open—with jobs Marriage and family cost plenty, in out savings in the bank, are they re- and with their girlfriends. terms of sacrice of individual free- thinking their choices? No. What becomes of a society that con- dom and nancial gain. Men and “ e freedom this has allowed me siders marriage and family to be only women alike have to subordinate their to have—to gure out my own quirks one choice among many, with no ex- own desires for the sake of the family. and foibles—has been much more im- pectation that one ought to commit to is loss of autonomy can be fright- portant than investing in things that one over another? Readers of the soci- ening to the unmarried, but it’s com- might have tied me down to something ologist Carle C. Zimmerman know the mon for young couples with children that would have kept me from guring answer: it may well disappear. to speak of the surprising joys that those other things out,” says one. In his unjustly neglected 1947 work come from this necessary sacrice. In

6 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 fact, Zimmerman contends that one strongly as the bachelors from Queens the conquered lands of familism. En- can only understand the meaning of that marriage and family are not in- sconced in its ramparts, they’re not familism from experience. stitutions and practices to which one thinking too much about the future. When family formation is seen as must conform but rather an expres- It should come as no comfort to these culturally optional, and men can nd sion of individual choice. is, not man-children that the future—which sexual satisfaction without marital familism, is the way of life into which history suggests belongs to the fecund commitment or loss of social status, Americans today are acculturated. and familial—is not thinking much what pressure compels a man to trade us does Fortress Astoria, manned about them, either. in dudehood for manhood? (if that is the word) by the Knights of ere are no conventional rewards Eternal Dudehood, stand as a crusader Rod Dreher is a TAC senior editor. His blog is and incentives that make the sacrice castle of the progressive creed amid www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher. of marriage and childbearing worth- while, as national governments fac- ing falling birthrates have learned to their dismay. Either people believe in Gangs of Aleppo familism as a matter of pre-rational conviction, oen supported by reli- The Arab Spring succumbs to post-state violence gion, or they don’t. Once that con- by WILLIAM S. LIND viction is lost—especially, says Zim- merman, among the opinion-leading n the view of our Laputan foreign- can and otherwise take what they want classes—it is all but impossible to stop policy establishment, what is hap- from anyone too weak to resist them. civilizational demoralization, decay, pening in Syria and elsewhere is eir only loyalty is to each other—to and ultimately, dissolution. a conict between “democracy” their gang. at’s a lot to put on the shoulders of Iand dictatorship. Valiant youths who One of the characteristics shared by four middle-aged guys in Queens who ght for “freedom” are destined to most disintegrating states is a vast sur- will likely get rich when Judd Apatow triumph, bringing happiness and plus of young men who have no access inevitably decides to make a lm about prosperity to their formerly oppressed to jobs, money, or women. Gangs are a their cutesy living arrangement. But lands. is is the Whig version of his- magnet for them. We see this in Ameri- no matter how many times we hear it, tory—the progressive narrative. It can contexts as well: in public schools, ideas really do have consequences. Ac- bears little resemblance to reality. in ethnic neighborhoods, and in our cording to their own unembarrassed A Syrian Foreign Ministry spokes- prisons, most of which are controlled testimony, the men of Fortress Astoria man Jihad Makdissi came closer to not by wardens but by racially dened only think of themselves and the pres- truth. He was quoted in the New York gangs. ent moment—two psychological char- Times as saying that Syria faces “gang Young men are also drawn to ght- acteristics of childhood, not adulthood. warfare.” ing, which, conveniently, is something In that, they are a bourgeois-bohemian Gangs are one of the most basic, and gangs do. Much of what we see in states version of the social decomposition most potent, building blocks of stateless struggling for their lives such as Syria is that has conquered black America and Fourth Generation war. We commonly supply-side war. Fighting spreads not is rapidly overtaking the white work- think of gangs in connection with crime. because of some “cause” like democracy ing class, with the notable and happy But through most of history, the line be- but because idle young men see a ght exception that none of the Astorians tween crime and war was blurred, oen and join in. Why not? ey have noth- are siring children outside of wedlock. to the point of vanishing. (See Barbara ing to do, nothing to lose, and thanks to e irony is that among the educat- Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: e Ca- their new gang and AK-47, lots to take: ed classes, marriage is stable and get- lamitous Fourteenth Century.) money, women, and fame. e New ting stronger. e Fortress Astorians It was the state that drew the line York Times reported from Aleppo: are exceptions to a trend within their clearly, but today in much of the Middle own social class. East and elsewhere states and the state Residents said there were not just Or are they? Many educated people system are collapsing. What is succeed- clashes between the government in media and academia—the values- ing the state looks much like the 14th and insurgents, but also rival mili- forming class in this culture—prefer century Europe Tuchman describes: tias from the countryside ghting not to impose their own familistic people and regions are at the mercy of for control of individual streets. ... beliefs on others, except to insist on roving bands of armed men who hire In a central old quarter, one man gay marriage rights. ey believe as themselves out as soldiers when they said a friend had warned him not

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 7 Front Lines

to visit because young gunmen Buckley’s Unlikely Heir had established a checkpoint to Alexander Cockburn (1941–2012) rob car passengers. by RON UNZ Gangs ght not only the govern- ment but also each other, and their rst encountered the writing of entire remaining sheet of gray news- internecine wars further weaken the Alexander Cockburn in the early print. Eventually, I noticed that his col- state. We need look no further than to 1990s on the op-ed pages of the umns had stopped appearing, which our southern neighbor, Mexico, where Wall Street Journal, where he served didn’t much surprise me. the killing elds spread as drug gangs Ias a regular columnist. Given that Alex His second act in reaching my aware- massacre one another and any civilians was one of the premier radical-le jour- ness came just over a decade later, fol- or agents of the state who get in their nalists of our era, this highlights the lowing the September 11 attacks. Dur- way. e state arose to bring order, and unique background of the man. ing the years of public build-up to our widening gang wars reveal the state’s Being myself then a rather moderate ill-fated Iraq War, which my old friend impotence. In the struggle for legitima- and mainstream conservative, I don’t Lt. Gen. Bill Odom later described as cy that lies at the core of Fourth Gen- recall reading any of his particular “the greatest strategic disaster in Unit- eration war, a state that cannot control pieces or holding them in high regard. ed States history,” it was extremely rare gangs becomes an object of contempt With the Berlin Wall having already to nd an opinion in any mainstream for friend and foe alike. fallen, the Communist regimes of East- media outlet not fatally contaminated While gangs are not prominent on ern Europe overthrown, and the Soviet with the sort of ignorance or cowardice the radar screen in America at present, Union itself undergoing dissolution, that was leading America straight over they have been in the past and will be I had the sense that Cockburn was a the cli. again. e lm Gangs of New York, set bit dismayed by these revolutionary In this parched desert of rational in the mid-19th century, was not c- changes which were so welcomed by discussion, I somehow in 2002 or 2003 tion. West Side Story reected a fear almost the entire thinking world. So I stumbled across a link to one of Alex’s of gangs that was widespread in the put him down as something of a stub- Counterpunch columns, which seemed 1950s. Crips and Bloods were big news born le-contrarian and aer glancing to provide the sort of remarkably good a few years back. at his column usually shied my atten- sense almost totally absent from the pag- e voices in Washington who call tion to the endless discussions of tax es of the major newspapers and opinion for us to suppress gangs in places half- policy and free trade that occupied the magazines. As I told a few friends at the way around the world underestimate time, perhaps that Cockburn the opponent. When the economic fellow really isn’t the silly le- crisis really begins, it may take all the ist I’d vaguely assumed him to resources of the American state to con- be. And as I gradually began trol gangs here at home. ey are no to spend some time reading less a refuge for unemployed young the collection of well-written men in Chicago or Atlanta or Tuscon commentary he daily provid- than in Benghazi or Damascus. ed on his shoestring website Meanwhile, if you want to envision operation, its perspective on places such as Libya, Syria, Somalia, Ye- reality came to seem more men, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali—the list and more credible, while that keeps growing—you could do worse of the New York Times op-ed than to think of spreading rumbles in page sank at an equal speed. the ’hood. at is a far more accurate Given my own scientic picture than the two-sided “democracy background in theoretical vs. dictatorship” image purveyed by physics, I tend to follow a politically correct Polyannas. e bul- simple rule in attempting letins of the Syrian Foreign Ministry, to discover the reality of it seems, mislead less than those of the the world. When people say U.S. State Department. things widely denounced by all established opinion but William S. Lind is director of the American that turn out to be correct, Conservative Center for Public Transportation. Alexander Cockburn in 1977 I grant them an extra point.

8 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 But when allegedly well-informed the mid-1980s. NR’s loss was Counter- Credibility represents a valuable people backed by massive resources punch’s gain. capital asset, one that may easily be say things that seem absurd to me Similarly, Paul Craig Roberts had for invested for further gain or loss, and and these turn out to be totally false, decades been one of the leading conser- Alex always had the courage to risk his they lose a point. By the time the mas- vative intellectual gures at the intersec- holdings boldly, including on those is- sive hoax of the Saddam’s WMD had tion of academics and policy, playing sues which greatly infuriated his usual exploded into international ridicule a major role in craing the economic allies on the le. and national disaster, Alex’s Counter- policies of the Reagan administration In the mid-2000s, I was quite sur- punch and the Sulzbergers’ Gray Lady and holding a variety of top-ranking ap- prised to read Alex’s columns un- had largely switched their positions of pointments in the conservative rma- masking himself as a global-warming credibility in my mind, at least across a ment, while being one of the most wide- “denialist,” making some pretty good broad range of issues. In the years that ly distributed national columnists. But arguments for his skepticism, and ridi- followed, there were many mornings aer he refused to toe the line following culing the notorious group-think of when I would read endless amounts 9/11, he was ruthlessly purged, and his America’s lock-step—and scientically of absurd, dishonest nonsense in the important voice might have been lost if illiterate—punditocracy. Not having news pages of the New York Times and Counterpunch and a few other websites investigated the subject myself, I don’t the Wall Street Journal, only to discover had not provided him a venue. really have a position, but I would say a far more plausible and accurate dis- Add the names Ray McGovern, that Alex’s sincere perspective counted cussion of world events on Counter- Winslow Wheeler, Franklin Spinney, more for me than that of a hundred du- punch’s bright pages. Pierre Sprey, and a few others to this tiful oil-company hirelings writing for Meanwhile, my own intellectual ho- list, and it sometimes seemed like half conservative think tanks and could go rizons were steadily broadened by his the Counterpunch articles I read were toe-to-toe with the absolutely univer- stable of regular contributors, some- by authors with unassailable national- sal views found among all their main- times in unexpected ways. Alex was intelligence, military-aairs, or even stream opponents. very decidedly a man of the le, indeed movement-conservative credentials. Alex Cockburn was simply a re- of the second generation, given that Purged, blacklisted, or simply ignored markably courageous, honest, and his father Claud had been one of the by Conservativism, Inc., they oen re- free-thinking journalist, which in these leading communist journalists of the lied upon Alex’s webzine as the prima- dark days marked him as a very rare 1930s. But the severe compression of ry distributor of their well-informed gure indeed. the allowed ideological landscape in writings. Once or twice I joked with American journalism had established Alex that perhaps he was actually Bill Ron Unz is publisher of TAC and founder of his website as a port in the storm for Buckley’s truest heir. Unz.org. conservative voices as well. It was at Counterpunch that I rst encountered the pungent military analysis of William Lind. When I once The Party Left Him showed one of Lind’s articles to an ac- quaintance, he denounced Lind as an Obama helped make former Rep. Artur Davis a Republican ignorant leist, only to be shocked by JORDAN BLOOM when I explained that Lind had had an illustrious career as a congressional rtur Davis, a former Dem- reemerged in 2012 as a Virginia Re- staer specializing in military reform ocratic congressman from publican, oating tantalizing though and was also the longtime closest col- Alabama, was the rst decidedly noncommittal hints that laborator of Paul Weyrich, one of D.C.’s House member outside he might run for oce again. TAC re- most prominent movement-conserva- AIllinois to endorse Barack Obama’s cently spoke to him: tive leaders. presidential bid. Yet over the next I appreciated the thoughtful com- several years he bucked his party on TAC: e Republican Party’s platform mentary on our Middle East policy by a number of high-prole votes and hasn’t changed much since the Bush Kathleen and Bill Christison, former became the sole member of the Con- years, except with a bit more scal CIA analysts specializing in that re- gressional Black Caucus to oppose stringency thanks to the Tea Party. gion, and later discovered the same last the president’s healthcare reform law So did your views change, or did the name on articles of the same subject in in 2010. Aer losing a primary bid Democratic Party simply become in- back issues of National Review from for governor in his home state, Davis hospitable?

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 9 Front Lines

one it serves today, but es- I’m torn about the too-big-to-fail sentially it’s nanced in the question. When I hear legitimate con- same manner. at’s not sus- servatives like Stephen Moore [of the tainable. We can’t sustain a Wall Street Journal], whose credentials system where Medicare is a are indisputable, say for the rst time universal program that is a that they think there is something to God-given American right the idea of preventing large invest- if you’re a senior with a cer- ment banks from occupying such a tain income level. If we want large space of this economy, I have to to preserve the safety net as- take that seriously. pects of Medicare, which we absolutely need to, we’re go- TAC: Who are some of your intellec- ing to have to make changes tual inuences writing today? to the program. We are going to have to give people a viable AD: Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat, option out of Medicare, par- who wrote a very constructive book ticularly when they’re auent several years ago about Republicans re- and when they can aord it. fashioning themselves to be a middle- Social Security will not class friendly party, as conservatism exist like it does today for was in the Reagan era. David Brooks people under 30. It absolutely is sometimes a mile wide and an inch Rep. Artur Davis won’t. And if we don’t make deep, but at his best he makes sound smart, prudent changes in the observations about the challenges in system, we will end up with a the American economy and the limits Artur Davis: e Democratic Party system that can’t even meet basic safety of an untethered free-market approach became more insular, and I nally de- net goals. And I think that’s the risk the to the capital markets. And he has cided over the course of the last year Democrats are incurring now—that by made some sound observations about and a half that the things the Demo- their loyalty to the present system for the need for conservatives to construc- crats were saying weren’t resonating nancing and sustaining Social Securi- tively address gaps in this society. We with me and that the things that the ty and Medicare, they are contributing do have a gap in this country between Republicans were saying did. I’m cer- to an insolvency that will eventually rich and poor. We do have a gap be- tainly one of many Americans disap- undercut the safety net goals that were tween people whose livelihood is in pointed with the Obama presidency, a core part of these programs. the manufacturing sector and people one of many Americans who voted for whose livelihood is in the high-tech promises that haven’t been delivered TAC: You’ve been a critic of both a sector. ey exist and it’s not wrong for on. So my switching parties may be laissez-faire approach to Wall Street conservatives to think constructively of interest to people because I used to and the new regulatory regime em- about how markets and public policy be an elected ocial, but it’s frankly a bodied in the Dodd-Frank Act. Are can meet those gaps. fairly broad trend in parts of the coun- there regulatory solutions to the - Conservatism oers to the public a try. And you’ll denitely see that in nancial system without breaking up sense of responsibility, scally speak- Virginia. Barack Obama got about 53 the big banks? ing. A sense of personal responsibility percent of the vote in Virginia. Barack in terms of the obligations individuals Obama is running about 46 right now. AD: I’m a Republican that believes that have towards themselves as opposed ere are a lot of people who le the we do need regulatory reform in the to obligations government has towards Democratic Party. next couple years. And I’m a Republi- them. And conservatism does contrib- can who does worry that some of the ute a sense of limits. I think conserva- TAC: To what do you attribute the Dem- large banks continue to take on risk tives ought to be pushing to inject that ocratic Party’s failure to advance any that is at an unacceptable level. I worry perspective into the questions of how credible plan for entitlement reform? that the rules are entirely too hazy. I we address the gaps in our society in- worry that the lines of what is permis- stead of acting as if they are somehow AD: e Medicare program construct- sible behavior and what’s not permis- things we shouldn’t be bothered with. ed in 1965 was for a dierent country sible behavior are more opaque than and a dierent population than the ever in the aermath of Dodd-Frank. Jordan Bloom is associate editor of TAC.

10 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 Made in America PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

Al-Qaeda’s Map

part from political maps of population seems fated to rise and the massacred, on Iran. But neither the mankind, there are natu- Muslim Brotherhood to rule, as hap- Bulgarians nor the Americans appear “ ral maps of mankind. … pened in Egypt. e fall of Assad and to know who did it. And why would the One of the rst laws of po- his Shia Alawite minority would be cel- Iranians—who following the slaughter Alitical stability is to draw your political ebrated by the Sunni across the border publicly denounced such atrocities boundaries along the lines of the natu- in Iraq’s Anbar province, who would against civilians—do it? ral map of mankind.” then have a powerful new ally in any Were an Iranian hand to be found So wrote H.G. Wells in What Is campaign to recapture Sunni lands lost in this act of barbarism, it would give Coming: A Forecast of ings to Come to Iraqi Shia. With its recent murder- Israel justi cation for an attack, ignit- Aer the War in the year of Verdun and ous attacks inside Iraq, al-Qaeda seems ing a war in which America could be the Somme Oensive. In redrawing the to be instigating a new Sunni-Shia war dragged in. Why would Iran want a map of Europe, however, the statesmen to tear Iraq apart. e fall of the Alawi- war with the United States when that of Versailles ignored Wells and par- tes in Damascus would end the dream would mean destruction of its air force, celed out Austrians, Hungarians, Ger- of a Shia crescent—Iran, Iraq, Syria, navy, missile force, and nuclear pro- mans, and other nationalities to alien and Hezbollah—leave Hezbollah iso- gram, a crippling blockade, and per- lands to divide, punish, and weaken lated, and conceivably lead to a renewal haps destruction of its vital oil facilities the defeated peoples. So doing, they set of Lebanon’s sectarian and civil war. on Kharg Island? the table for a second world war. e losers in all this? Certainly Iran, Whoever was behind the attack on e Middle East was sliced up along which seems fated to lose its only Arab the Israeli tourists seems to want a war lines set down in the secret Sykes-Picot ally, Syria, and its land link to Hezbol- between the Jewish state of Israel and agreement. But with the Islamic awak- lah. at would make Israel a winner. the Shia state of Iran. Who would ben- ening and Arab Spring toppling re- But Israel’s situation appears more per- e t from such a war? gimes, the natural map of the Middle ilous than it was a decade ago. Answer: Al-Qaeda, which, during East seems now to be asserting itself. In Egypt, the Muslim Brother- the Iraq War, urged the United States Sunni and Shia align with Sunni and hood has replaced Hosni Mubarak, to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. Shia, as Protestants and Catholics did who kept the peace in Sinai and the An al-Qaeda aliate has also attacked in 17th-century Europe. Ethiopia and lid on Hamas. Recently, new Egyptian Israeli vacationers before, at Egyptian Sudan split. Mali and Nigeria may be President Mohamed Mursi met with resorts on the Gulf of Aqaba. next. While world attention is focused Hamas’s Khaled Meshaal at the presi- “ere is an international plot on Aleppo and when Bashar Assad dential palace in Cairo. e Sinai is against Gulf states in particular and might fall, Syria itself may be about to becoming a no man’s land where ter- Arab countries in general … to take disintegrate. rorists plot and Africans cross to Israel. over our fortunes,” says Dubai’s chief of In Syria’s northeast, a Kurdish mi- To Israel’s east, there is no true peace police. “I had no idea that there is this nority of two to three million with with the Palestinians, and the Jordani- large number of Muslim Brotherhood ethnic ties to Iraqi Kurdistan and 15 an throne has rarely been shakier. On in the Gulf States.” million Kurds in Turkey seems to the Golan Heights, quiet for decades, What is al-Qaeda’s goal? Ignite Sun- be dissolving its ties to Damascus. A the future may see Syrian troops loyal ni-Shia wars and Muslim-Christian Kurdish nation carved out of Syria, to a militant Sunni regime in Damas- clashes in Arab states. Draw in the Iraq, Turkey, and Iran would appear to cus. Hezbollah sits on Israel’s northern Americans to smash Iran. And when be a casus belli for all four nations. Yet border. Beyond is a Turkey no longer the Sunni are ascendant, expel the in any natural map of the world, there friendly. Americans and Christians, isolate Isra- would be a Kurdistan. Israel is blaming the atrocity in Bul- el, and set about creating the caliphate e Sunni four- hs of the Syrian garia, in which Israeli tourists were of Osama bin Laden’s dream.

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 11 Cover

American Exceptionalisms e old kept us out of conict; the new leads to empire.

by RICHARD GAMBLE

n 1765, John Adams unwittingly penned one numbing predictability from neoconservatives and of the proof texts of American exceptionalism. their allies. Dissidents nd themselves in the cross- “I always consider the settlement of America hairs as apostates from the American civil religion. with reverence and wonder,” the young lawyer e speed with which this neo-orthodoxy has been Iwrote in his diary, “as the opening of a grand scene fastened onto the popular mind is astonishing. In and design in Providence for the illumination of the America by Heart, Sarah Palin’s 2010 “reections on ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of family, faith, and ag” (as the subtitle promises), the mankind all over the earth.” former Republican vice presidential candidate used is one sentence sums up what we have come the word “exceptional” 20 times, the word “exception- to assume is America’s calling: to be a beacon to the alism” 14 times, and devoted all of chapter three to world and a liberator on a mission of universal re- “America the Exceptional.” Palin’s preoccupation with demption. is was heady stu for 18th-century colo- this idea is remarkable in contrast to her 2009 memoir, nists with the chutzpah to resist the British Empire. Going Rogue. ere she—or ghostwriter Lynn Vin- Perhaps such a powerful meta-narrative helped them cent—didn’t use the word once. In the year between triumph over impossible odds. these books, “exceptionalism” became central to the But the simple story of the American identity gets GOP’s marketing campaign. “ ere is a depressing complicated when we discover that Adams edited predictability to conversations about America these out these musings when he extended his thoughts a days,” Palin complained. Indeed there is. short time later for publication as his Dissertation on In Palin’s chapter on “America the Exceptional,” she Canon and Feudal Law. When his son John Quincy quoted Barack Obama’s now-infamous answer to a came upon the excised words, he regretted the omis- question posed by Financial Times reporter Ed Luce sion and exclaimed, “Who does not now see that the at a televised press conference in Strasbourg held in accomplishment of this great object is already placed conjunction with the 2009 NATO summit. e for- beyond all possibility of failure?” Charles Francis Ad- mer Alaska governor complained that the president ams in 1851 called his grandfather’s sentiments “the said “that he believes in American exceptionalism in most deserving of any to be remembered.” If John the same way ‘the Brits believe in British exceptional- Adams had reservations about American exception- ism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.’” alism—and he did—later generations got over them. Obama’s artful equivocation struck Palin as say- Today, the United States owes more to the hubris- ing that no one is special if everyone is special. By tic exceptionalism of Adams’s descendants than to relativizing America’s sense of itself, she charged, the anything bequeathed to us by the Founders of the republic. Hardly a trace of humility survives among Richard Gamble is the author of In Search of the City on a the boasts of collective excellence we encounter with Hill: e Making and Unmaking of an American Myth.

12 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 president stood apart from an enduring

tradition that united patriotic Demo- Hogue Michael crats and Republicans into a single vi- sion of the Redeemer Nation. But con- text matters. Here is the rest of what Obama told reporters in Strasbourg:

I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this sum- mit and what it means, I don’t think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrices of our troops, the enormous amount of re- sources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in cra- ing an Alliance that ultimately led to the unication of Europe. We should take great pride in that.

At one level, Obama endorsed American exceptionalism. At another, he nessed exceptionalism with a post- modern air that rendered his words anything but an armation of Amer- ica’s uniqueness. And the backstory of his comments reveals the charade go- ing on at the nexus between the media, presidential rhetoric, and America’s in- creasingly politicized image. In an online post on April 4, 2009, Time White House is staged contrast in 2009 between Obama and correspondent Michael Scherer wrote that “[Obama’s] his recent predecessors masks a deeper division in answer was fascinating to me.” He detected a telling American history between two incompatible excep- contrast between the new president and his predeces- tionalisms, what we might call the “old” exceptiona- sors in the Oval Oce. “While in the past the idea that liam and the “new.” On this view, Obama and Mitt America was exceptional, the shining city on a hill, was Romney do not speak from separate traditions but evoked as an objective description, a fact, a prediction from within the same ideological construction of the and a course by which the ship of state could be sailed, purpose-driven nation. Both speak for the new ex- Obama used the phrase, by contrast, in a more subjec- ceptionalism and sound like Tweedledum and Twee- tive, self-aware way, acknowledging that the fact that he dledee. But we need not remain trapped in Alice’s held this belief was not so, well, exceptional.” looking glass. e necessary resources are still there Yet it turns out that Scherer was the one who wrote in our history for conservatives to articulate a com- the question in the rst place and fed it Luce, who ad- pelling alternative. We might forego the word “excep- mitted this in a tweet on June 14, 2012. e C-SPAN tionalism” as damaged beyond repair by ideologues, video of the news conference clearly shows the presi- but we need not reject all notions of America’s dier- dent working from a prepared list of questioners. e ences. ere is a reason why ordinary Americans re- pretense here is breathtaking. A reporter writes a spond to these ideas. question, gives it to a colleague, who is then chosen to ask the question, and does so, aer which the rst ne place to turn is the work of William Graham reporter writes a glowing editorial praising the clever- OSumner. More than a hundred years ago the ness of the answer. One can’t help wondering if the Yale sociologist noticed the damage being done to president saw the question ahead of time and if the the old exceptionalism. His classic 1899 speech “ e answer was scripted. Conquest of the United States by Spain” arms the

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 13 Cover

old exceptionalism in a way that might prove useful the irony that by claiming it had a unique civilizing in combatting the new exceptionalism that bolsters mission to perform, America sounded just like every nationalism and imperialism while undermining other major power at the end of the 19th century. what’s le of federalism. “ ere is not a civilized nation which does not talk Sumner dely captured his thesis in his title. about its civilizing mission just as grandly as we do,” America had militarily defeated Spain on land and he remarked. e English, French, Germans, Rus- sea. But with that victory the United States had been sians, Ottoman Turks, and Spanish said the same. conquered by the old European lust for empire. By “Now each nation laughs at all the others when it its adventures in the Pacic and the Caribbean in the observes these manifestations of national vanity. You Spanish-American War, the U.S. was not venturing on may rely upon it that they are all ridiculous by virtue something new but on something very old and even of these pretensions, including ourselves.” America’s un-American. e old imperialism gave birth to the divine mission was emphatically not what set it apart new exceptionalism. in history. is kind of exceptionalism placed the U.S. “ e point which I have tried to make in this lec- on a crowded stage. ture,” Sumner emphasized, “is that expansion and Sumner also feared that the new exceptionalism— imperialism are at war with the best traditions, prin- the belief that Americans were somehow secure from ciples and interests of the American people, and they changing circumstances, immune to limits on power will plunge us into a network of dicult problems and resources, and exempt from the impact of war and political perils, which we might have avoided, and empire on free institutions—had seduced the while they oer us no corresponding advantage in public into believing that their prosperity, liberty, and return.” security were inevitable blessings accruing to a spe- ere is much in Sumner’s long speech of contem- cial people, rather than the fragile products of abun- porary relevance. His indictment of President William dant land, a small population, and benign neighbors. McKinley could apply as easily to Bush or Obama. “A Once these circumstances changed, Americans would statesman,” he said, “could not be expected to know in discover that “liberty and democracy” required hard advance that we should come out of the war with the work to sustain. Philippines on our hands, but it belongs to his edu- “People say that this country is like no other; that cation to warn him that a policy of adventure and of its prosperity proves its exceptionality, and so on,” he gratuitous enterprise would be sure to entail embar- cautioned. “ ese are popular errors which in time rassments of some kind.” will meet with harsh correction.” Sumner believed that the plunge into war and Sumner’s realism enabled him to put aside messi- territorial expansion pointed rst and foremost to anic and chosen-nation delusions and ground Amer- a failure of statesmanship, the craven use of foreign ica’s uniqueness in something far more valuable for a policy to wage domestic party warfare, the “truck- free and self-governing people—the historically rare ling to popularity” at the expense of “moral courage.” creation of a federal republic. In an 1896 essay, “ e But he knew that we cannot simply blame our lead- Fallacy of Territorial Extension,” he had already ad- ers. A dangerous public appetite for spectacle and dressed this point. Americans in the late 18th century pomp made cynical political exploitation of impe- had seized the opportunity handed to them by history rialism possible. and geography to build a system that escaped Europe’s “ e thirst for glory,” he said, “is an epidemic which errors: “ is confederated state of ours,” Sumner robs a people of their judgment, seduces their vanity, claimed, cheats them of their interests, and corrupts their con- science.” (Sumner was no “national greatness” con- was never planned for indenite expansion or for servative.) “My patriotism is of the kind which is out- an imperial policy. ... e fathers of the republic raged by the notion that the United States never was a planned a confederation of free and peaceful in- great nation until in a petty three months campaign it dustrial commonwealths, shielded by their geo- knocked to pieces a poor, decrepit bankrupt old state graphical position from the jealousies, rivalries, like Spain.” and traditional policies of the Old World and When Sumner came to the question of what set bringing all the resources of civilization to bear America apart from other nations, he debunked the for the domestic happiness of the population most popular and supercial conception of exception- only. ey meant to have no grand state-cra or alism and looked at history to ground America’s iden- ‘high politics,’ no ‘balance of power’ or ‘reasons of tity in something more substantial. Sumner rst noted state,’ which have cost the human race so much.

14 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 is claim takes on even more signicance when McDougall’s image, the U.S. turned from Promised we recall that America had been through a bloody Land to Crusader State. war of national unication in the 1860s, yet Sumner e old exceptionalism was consistent with the was still able to say that the United States was not a ethos of American constitutional democracy; the unitary nation-state on the model of the Old World, new is not. e old was an expression of and a means but rather “a confederated state of a very peculiar and to sustain the habits of a self-governing people; the articial form. It is not a state like the states of Europe, new is an expression of and a means to sustain a na- with the exception of Switzerland.” tionalist and imperialist people. e old exceptional- In the speech’s closing section, Sumner repeatedly ism suited a limited foreign policy; the new suits a used the words “no,” “not,” and “never.” is makes messianic adventurism out to remake the world. sense if authentic exceptionalism is more about what e task is not to recapture a Golden Age of Ameri- America doesn’t do than what it does, more about na- can exceptionalism from a distant epoch when we tional self-restraint than national self-assertion. e got it all exactly right. e challenge is to articulate a early republic dreamed of a land, he said, with healthy exceptionalism that is true to our history, tra- ditions, principles, and institutions, that helps sustain no manors, no barons, no ranks, no prelates, no a constitutional republic of limited powers. idle classes, no paupers, no disinherited ones ex- With apologies to C.S. Lewis, we might call the old cept the vicious. ere would be no armies ex- exceptionalism our republic’s “discarded image.” at cept a militia, which would have no functions but picture of American exceptionalism showed that em- those of police. ey would have no court and pires were incompatible with republics; that wars and no pomp; no orders, or ribbons, or decorations colonies were expensive indulgences that led to high or titles. ey would have no public debt. ey taxes, excessive borrowing, and perilous debt; that repudiated with scorn the notion that a public empire did something to the soul of a virtuous people debt is a public blessing. If debt was incurred in and not just to its pocketbook; that statesmanship war it was to be paid in peace and not entailed on required self-restraint and placing the good of one’s posterity. ere was to be no grand diplomacy, people above personal and party ambition; that one because they intended to mind their own busi- should demand of one’s nation what one demanded ness, and not be involved in any of the intrigues of one’s own character and no less—namely, that a na- to which European statesmen were accustomed. tion ought to cultivate a reputation for integrity, fru- gality, keeping its word, fair-dealing, and courage. In 1814, half a century aer the publication of his umner did not oer nostalgia, and no statesman Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law, John Adams Sshould do so today. What had been possible at the wrote to his Southern adversary John Taylor of Car- Founding may no longer be possible: “We know that, oline. In the course of defending his constitutional as time has gone on, and we have grown numerous principles, Adams issued a warning that the new and rich, some of these things have proved impos- exceptionalists will never quote, let alone heed: “We sible ideals, incompatible with a large and ourish- may boast that we are the chosen people; we may even ing society, but it is by virtue of this conception of a thank God that we are not like other men; but, aer commonwealth that the United States has stood for all, it will be but attery, and the delusion, the self- something grand in the history of mankind, and that deceit of the Pharisee.” its people have been happy.” A people, as surely as an individual, cannot stand e shi from the old exceptionalism to the new in the presence of the world and congratulate itself on did not happen all at once. e examples of John its unassailable virtue without leading itself into moral Quincy Adams and his son Charles show that the blindness and earning the contempt of others. Noth- old and the new have existed for a long time, per- ing about the American achievement is “placed be- haps since our beginning as a people. ere were yond all possibility of failure,” as John Quincy Adams new exceptionalists among the old and there remain boasted. It would be fatal for a republic to entertain old exceptionalists among the new. But where the such presumption. ere is nothing inevitable about old once predominated in how Americans thought our future, and no facile talk about exceptionalism about where they came from, who they are, and how will make it so. A history and a tradition—an authen- they ought to relate to the rest of the world, now the tic, fully American history and tradition—is available new does. William Graham Sumner believed he wit- to us, but only if we turn away from the myths of the nessed the tipping point in 1898, when, to use Walter new exceptionalism.

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 15 Strategy

How We Became Israel Peace means dominion for Tel Aviv—and now for us.

by ANDREW J. BACEVICH

eace means di erent things to di erent gov- dened requires not simply military advantage but ernments and di erent countries. To some military supremacy. it suggests harmony based on tolerance and From Israel’s perspective, threats to supremacy re- mutual respect. To others it serves as a eu- quire anticipatory action, the earlier the better. e Pphemism for dominance, peace dening the relation- IDF attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 ship between the strong and the supine. provides one especially instructive example. Israel’s In the absence of actually existing peace, a nation’s destruction of a suspected Syrian nuclear facility in reigning de nition of peace shapes its proclivity to use 2007 provides a second. force. A nation committed to peace-as-harmony will Yet alongside perceived threat, perceived opportu- tend to employ force as a last resort. e United States nity can provide sucient motive for anticipatory ac- once subscribed to this view. Or beyond the connes of tion. In 1956 and again in 1967, Israel attacked Egypt the Western Hemisphere, it at least pretended to do so. not because the blustering Colonel Gamal Abdel Nass- A nation seeking peace-as-dominion will use force er possessed the capability (even if he proclaimed the more freely. is has long been an Israeli predilection. intention) of destroying the hated Zionists, but because Since the end of the Cold War and especially since preventive war seemingly promised a big Israeli pay- 9/11, however, it has become America’s as well. As a o . In the rst instance, the Israelis came away empty- consequence, U.S. national-security policy increasingly handed. In the second, they hit the jackpot operation- conforms to patterns of behavior pioneered by the Jew- ally, albeit with problematic strategic consequences. ish state. is “Israelication” of U.S. policy may prove For decades, Israel relied on a powerful combina- benecial for Israel. Based on the available evidence, it’s tion of tanks and ghter-bombers as its preferred not likely to be good for the United States. instrument of preemption. In more recent times, Here is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however, it has deemphasized its swi sword in favor describing what he calls his “vision of peace” in June of the shiv between the ribs. Why deploy lumbering 2009: “If we get a guarantee of demilitarization … we armored columns when a missile launched from an are ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demili- Apache attack helicopter or a bomb xed to an Ira- tarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish nian scientist’s car can do the job more cheaply and state.” e inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank, if with less risk? us has targeted assassination eclipsed armed and suciently angry, can certainly annoy Is- conventional military methods as the hallmark of the rael. But they cannot destroy it or do it serious harm. Israeli way of war. By any measure, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) wield Whether using tanks to conquer or assassins to liqui- vastly greater power than the Palestinians can possi- date, adherence to this knee-to-the-groin paradigm has bly muster. Still, from Netanyahu’s perspective, “real won Israel few friends in the region and few admirers peace” becomes possible only if Palestinians guaran- around the world (Americans notably excepted). e tee that their putative state will forego even the most likelihood of this approach eliminating or even dimin- meager military capabilities. Your side disarms, our ishing Arab or Iranian hostility toward Israel appears side stays armed to the teeth: that’s Netanyahu’s vision less than promising. at said, the approach has thus of peace in a nutshell. far succeeded in preserving and even expanding the Netanyahu asks a lot of Palestinians. Yet however Jewish state: more than 60 years aer its founding, Is- baldly stated, his demands reect longstanding Is- raeli thinking. For Israel, peace derives from security, Andrew J. Bacevich is a visiting professor at the University of which must be absolute and assured. Security thus Notre Dame.

16 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 rael persists and even prospers. By this rough but not er in Full Spectrum Dominance, set out to liberate or inconsequential measure, the Israeli security concept pacify (take your pick) the Islamic world. e United has succeeded. Okay, it’s nasty: but so far at least, it’s States followed Israel in assigning itself the prerogative worked. of waging preventive war. Although it depicted Sad- dam Hussein as an existential threat, the Bush admin- hat’s hard to gure out is why the United States istration also viewed Iraq as an opportunity: here the Wwould choose to follow Israel’s path. Yet over United States would signal to other recalcitrants the the course of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama quar- fate awaiting them should they mess with Uncle Sam. ter-century, that’s precisely what we’ve done. e More subtly, in going aer Saddam, Bush was tacit- pursuit of global military dominance, a proclivity for ly embracing a longstanding Israeli conception of de- preemption, a growing taste for assassination—all terrence. During the Cold War, deterrence had meant justied as essential to self-defense. at pretty much conveying a credible threat to dissuade your opponent describes our present-day MO. from hostile action. Israel had never subscribed to that Israel is a small country with a small population view. Inuencing the behavior of potential adversaries and no shortage of hostile neighbors. Ours is a huge required more than signaling what Israel might do if country with an enormous population and no enemy, suciently aggravated; inuence was exerted by pu- unless you count the Cuban-Venezuelan Axis of Ail- nitive action, ideally delivered on a disproportionate ing Dictators, within several thousand miles. We have scale. Hit the other guy rst, if possible; failing that, choices that Israel does not. Yet in disregarding those whack him several times harder than he hit you: not choices the United States has stumbled willy-nilly into the biblical injunction of an eye for an eye, but both an Israeli-like condition of perpetual war, with peace eyes, an ear, and several teeth, with a kick in the nuts increasingly tied to unrealistic expectations of adver- thrown in for good measure. e aim was to send a saries and would-be adversaries acquiescing in Wash- message: screw with us and this will happen to you. ington’s will. is is the message Bush intended to convey when he Israelication got its kick-start with George H.W. ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Bush’s Operation Desert Storm, a triumphal Hundred- Unfortunately, Operation Iraqi Freedom, launched Hour War likened at the time to Israel’s triumphal Six- with all the condence that had informed Operation Day War. Victory over the “fourth largest army in the Peace for Galilee, Israel’s equally ill-advised 1982 in- world” fostered illusions of the United States exercising cursion into Lebanon, landed the United States in an perpetually and on a global scale military primacy akin equivalent mess. Or perhaps a di erent comparison to what Israel has exercised regionally. Soon thereaer, applies: the U.S. occupation of Iraq triggered violent the Pentagon announced that henceforth it would set- resistance akin to what the IDF faced as a conse- tle for nothing less than “Full Spectrum Dominance.” quence of Israel occupying the West Bank. Two suc- Bill Clinton’s contribution to the process was to cessive Intifadas had given the Israeli army ts. e normalize the use of force. During the several decades insurgency in Iraq (along with its Afghan sibling) of the Cold War, the U.S. had resorted to overt armed gave the American army ts. Neither the Israeli nor intervention only occasionally. Although dicult to- the American reputation for martial invincibility sur- day to recall, back then whole years might pass with- vived the encounter. out U.S. troops being sent into harm’s way. Over the By the time Barack Obama succeeded Bush in 2009, course of Clinton’s two terms in oce, however, inter- most Americans—like most Israelis—had lost their ap- vention became commonplace. petite for invading and occupying countries. Obama’s e average Israeli had long since become inured to response? Hew ever more closely to the evolving Israeli reports of IDF incursions into southern Lebanon or way of doing things. “Obama wants to be known for Gaza. Now the average American has become accus- winding down long wars,” writes Michael Gerson in the tomed to reports of U.S. troops battling Somali war- Washington Post. “But he has shown no hesitance when lords, supervising regime change in Haiti, or occupy- it comes to shorter, Israel-style operations. He is a spe- ing the Balkans. Yet the real signature of the Clinton cial ops hawk, a drone militarist.” years came in the form of airstrikes. Blasting targets Just so: with his anity for missile-ring drones, in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Serbia, and Sudan, but above Obama has established targeted assassination as the all in Iraq, became the functional equivalent of Isra- very centerpiece of U.S. national-security policy. With el’s reliance on airpower to punish “terrorists” from his anity for commandos, he has expanded the size stando ranges. and mandate of U.S. Special Operations Command, In the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush, a true believ- which now maintains an active presence in more than

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 17 Strategy

70 countries. In Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, and drones,” writes the columnist David Ignatius, “to kill the frontier regions of Pakistan—and who knows all the enemies we will make if we turn the world into how many other far-ung places—Obama seemingly a free-re zone.” And if Delta Force, the Green Berets, shares Prime Minister Netanyahu’s expectations: keep army rangers, Navy SEALs, and the like constitute (in whacking and a positive outcome will eventually en- the words of one SEAL) “the dark matter … the force sue. that orders the universe but can’t be seen,” we prob- ably don’t have enough of them either. Unfortunately, he government of Israel, along with ardently pro- the Obama administration seems willing to test both TIsrael Americans like Michael Gerson, may view propositions. the convergence of U.S. and Israeli national-security e process of aligning U.S. national-security practices with some satisfaction. e prevailing U.S. practice with Israeli precedents is now essentially denition of self-defense—a self-assigned mandate complete. eir habits are ours. Reversing that pro- to target anyone anywhere thought to endanger U.S. cess would require stores of courage and imagina- security—is exceedingly elastic. As such, it provides a tion that may no longer exist in Washington. Given certain cover for equivalent Israeli inclinations. And the reigning domestic political climate, those holding to the extent that our roster of enemies overlaps with or seeking positions of power nd it easier—and less theirs—did someone say Iran?—military action or- risky—to stay the course, vainly nursing the hope that dered by Washington just might shorten Jerusalem’s by killing enough “terrorists” peace on terms of our “to do” list. choosing will result. Here too the United States has Yet where does this all lead? “We don’t have enough succumbed to Israeli illusions.

DEEPBACKGROUND by PHILIP GIRALDI

ormally Washington bureaucracies shut unrest to Lebanon. Even the Turks are backing away down in August, but this year the intelligence from more direct involvement, worried that major Ncommunity was working flat out to develop refugee and Kurdish-based terrorism problems are information on two crises in the Middle East. One of- developing. ficial describes a deep sense of foreboding, recalling The Iran crisis is more troublesome because NSC Counter Terrorism Security Group chairman the possible consequences are graver. Defense Richard Clarke’s description of walking around the Secretary Leon Panetta traveled to Israel at the West Wing in August 2001 with his “hair on fire.” end of July to get a commitment from Israeli Prime Syria is on the frontburner as a shooting war in Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iran which the U.S. is already clandestinely involved. before America’s elections. A commitment was not The attempt to come up with a consensus National forthcoming, with Netanyahu demanding as quid Intelligence Estimate on the crisis has been put pro quo that Washington publicly break o‘ negotia- on hold, both because the situation is too volatile tions with Iran. Intelligence analysts in Washington and because new intelligence paints an increas- are split 50-50 over whether Netanyahu is bluŒng. ingly dark picture of the insurgency. A number of Some analysts are convinced that an attack will atrocities against civilians previously attributed to come in October when the weather is still good in the Assad government are now known to be the the region and at a point when President Obama will work of the rebels, who are becoming less reticent have no choice politically but to support the Israelis. about their plans to eliminate all regime supporters, There has been some intelligence suggesting that which would include most Alawites as well as many Israel has already made the decision, fearing that in the Christian community. U.S. intelligence has Obama will ratchet down his tolerance for a military also come to the conclusion that rebel militias are option whether he wins or loses. Reports suggest heavily infiltrated and frequently commanded by that Israeli leaders privately view Mitt Romney as jihadis linked to al-Qaeda. Attempts by CIA oŒcers useful but cautious, even timid, and do not trust his to discuss the issue with the rebels’ political repre- overblown and politically motivated assurances of sentatives in Lebanon and Turkey have been blown support if war were to break out. o‘ or deferred, suggesting that the movement’s leadership might be fully complicit. There is also Philip Giraldi, a former CIA o cer, is executive director increasing concern about a domino e‘ect spreading of the Council for the National Interest.

18 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 Class

Revolt of the Rich Our nancial elites are the new seccessionists.

by MIKE LOFGREN

t was 1993, during congressional debate over nation and from any concern about its well being ex- the North American Free Trade Agreement. I cept as a place to extract loot. was having lunch with a sta er for one of the Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial rare Republican congressmen who opposed the India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it. If one can Ipolicy of so-called free trade. To this day, I remember a ord private security, public safety is of no concern; something my colleague said: “e rich elites of this if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause country have far more in common with their coun- less apprehension—and viable public transportation terparts in London, Paris, and Tokyo than with their doesn’t even show up on the radar screen. With pri- fellow American citizens.” vate doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the at was only the beginning of the period when the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare? realities of outsourced manufacturing, nancializa- Being in the country but not of it is what gives the tion of the economy, and growing income disparity contemporary American super-rich their quality of started to seep into the public consciousness, so at the being abstracted and clueless. Perhaps that explains time it seemed like a striking and novel statement. why Mitt Romney’s regular-guy anecdotes always At the end of the Cold War many writers predict- seem a bit strained. I discussed this with a radio host ed the decline of the traditional nation-state. Some who recounted a story about Robert Rubin, former looked at the demise of the Soviet Union and foresaw secretary of the Treasury as well as an executive at the territorial state breaking up into statelets of di er- Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup. Rubin was being ent ethnic, religious, or economic compositions. is chau eured through Manhattan to reach some event happened in the Balkans, the former Czechoslovakia, whose attendees consisted of the Great and the Good and Sudan. Others predicted a weakening of the state such as himself. Along the way he encountered a traf- due to the rise of Fourth Generation warfare and the c jam, and on arriving to his event—late—he com- inability of national armies to adapt to it. e quag- plained to a city functionary with the power to look mires of Iraq and Afghanistan lend credence to that into it. “Where was the jam?” asked the functionary. theory. ere have been numerous books about glo- Rubin, who had lived most of his life in Manhattan, a balization and how it would eliminate borders. But place of east-west numbered streets and north-south I am unaware of a well-developed theory from that avenues, couldn’t tell him. e super-rich who deter- time about how the super-rich and the corporations mine our political arrangements apparently inhabit they run would secede from the nation state. another, more rened dimension. I do not mean secession by physical withdrawal To some degree the rich have always secluded from the territory of the state, although that happens themselves from the gaze of the common herd; their from time to time—for example, Erik Prince, who was habit for centuries has been to send their o spring to born into a fortune, is related to the even bigger Am- private schools. But now this habit is exacerbated by way fortune, and made yet another fortune as CEO the plutocracy’s palpable animosity towards public of the mercenary-for-hire rm Blackwater, moved his company (renamed Xe) to the United Arab Emirates Mike Lofgren served 16 years on the Republican sta of the in 2011. What I mean by secession is a withdrawal House and Senate Budget Committees. He has just published into enclaves, an internal immigration, whereby the e Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shaed.

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 19 Class

10.9 percent of all federal rev- Taxes as a share of share of federal revenues enues. By 2007, the last “nor- mal” economic year before Payroll and other federal revenues began falling, Corporate federal retirement they made up 33.9 percent. By income contributions contrast, corporate income taxes taxes were 26.4 percent of fed- Corporate eral revenues in 1950. By 2007 Payroll and other income they had fallen to 14.4 percent. federal retirement taxes So who has skin in the game? contributions While there is plenty to criticize the incumbent presi- dent for, notably his broad- 10.9% 33.9% 26.4% 14.4% ening and deepening of President George W. Bush’s extra-constitutional surveil- 1950 2007 lance state, under President SOURCE: ??? Obama the overall federal tax education and public educators, as Michael Bloom- burden has not been raised, it has been lowered. Ap- berg has demonstrated. To the extent public educa- proximately half the decit impact of the stimulus bill tion “reform” is popular among billionaires and their was the result of tax-cut provisions. e temporary tax-exempt foundations, one suspects it is as a lever payroll-tax cut and other miscellaneous tax-cut pro- to divert the more than $500 billion dollars in annual visions make up the rest of the cuts we have seen in federal, state, and local education funding into private the last three and a half years. Yet for the president’s hands—meaning themselves and their friends. What heresy of advocating that billionaires who receive the Halliburton did for U.S. Army logistics, school priva- bulk of their income from capital gains should pay tizers will do for public education. A century ago, at taxes at the same rate as the rest of us, Schwarzman least we got some attractive public libraries out of An- said this about Obama: “It’s a war. It’s like when Hitler drew Carnegie. Noblesse oblige like Carnegie’s is pres- invaded Poland in 1939.” For a hedge-fund billionaire ently lacking among our seceding plutocracy. to defend his extraordinary tax privileges vis-à-vis the In both world wars, even a Harvard man or a New rest of the citizenry in such a manner shows an ex- York socialite might know the weight of an army traordinary capacity to be out-of-touch. He lives in a pack. Now the military is for suckers from the labor- world apart, psychologically as well as in the esh. ing classes whose subprime mortgages you just sliced Schwarzman benets from the so-called “carried into CDOs and sold to gullible investors in order to interest rule” loophole: nancial sharks typically take buy your second Bentley or rustle up the cash to get their compensation in the form of capital gains rather Rod Stewart to perform at your birthday party. e than salaries, thus knocking down their income-tax sentiment among the super-rich towards the rest of rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. But that’s not the America is oen one of contempt rather than noblesse. only way Mr. Skin-in-the-Game benets: the 6.2 per- Stephen Schwarzman, the hedge fund billionaire cent Social Security tax and the 1.45 percent Medicare CEO of the Blackstone Group who hired Rod Stew- tax apply only to wages and salaries, not capital gains art for his $5-million birthday party, believes it is the distributions. Accordingly, Schwarzman is sting the rabble who are socially irresponsible. Speaking about system in two ways: not only is his income-tax rate low-income citizens who pay no income tax, he says: less than half the top marginal rate, he is shorting the “You have to have skin in the game. I’m not saying Social Security system that others of his billionaire how much people should do. But we should all be part colleagues like Pete Peterson say is unsustainable and of the system.” needs to be cut. But millions of Americans who do not pay federal is lack of skin in the game may explain why income taxes do pay federal payroll taxes. ese taxes Romney has been so coy about releasing his income- are regressive, and the dirty little secret is that over the tax returns. It would make sense for someone with last several decades they have made up a greater and $264 million in net worth to joke that he is “unem- greater share of federal revenues. In 1950, payroll and ployed”—as if he were some jobless sheet metal work- other federal retirement contributions constituted er in Youngstown—if he were really saying in code

20 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 that his income stream is not a salary subject to pay- man whom God has punished for his sins … is to roll deduction. His e ective rate for federal taxes, at 14 do wrong … let us remember there is not a poor percent, is lower than that of many a wage slave. person in the United States who was not made Aer the biggest nancial meltdown in 80 years poor by his own shortcomings. and a consequent long, steep drop in the American standard of living, who is the nominee for one of the Evidently Conwell was made of sterner stu than only two parties allowed to be competitive in Ameri- the sob-sister moralizing in the Sermon on the can politics? None other than Mitt Romney, the man Mount. Somewhat discordantly, though, Conwell had who says corporations are people. Opposing him will been drummed out of the military during the Civil be the incumbent president, who will raise up to a bil- War for deserting his post. For Conwell, as for the lion dollars to compete. Much of that loot will come modern tax-avoiding expat billionaire, the dollar sign from the same corporations, hedge-fund managers, tends to trump Old Glory. merger-and-acquisition specialists, and leveraged- e conjoining of wealth, Christian morality, and buyout artists the president will denounce in pro for- the American way of life reached an apotheosis in ma fashion. Bruce Barton’s 1925 book e Man Nobody Knows. e super-rich have seceded from America even as e son of a Congregationalist minister, Barton, who their grip on its control mechanisms has tightened. was an advertising executive, depicted Jesus as a suc- But how did this evolve historically, what does it mean cessful salesman, publicist, and the very role model of for the rest of us, and where is it likely to be going? the modern businessman. at wealth-worship—and a consequent special But this peculiarly American creed took a severe status for the wealthy as a kind of clerisy—should have hit aer the crash of 1929, and wealth ceased to be arisen in the United States is hardly surprising, given equated with godliness. While the number of Wall the peculiar sort of Protestantism that was planted Street suicides has been exaggerated in national here from the British Isles. Starting with the Puritan- memory, Jesse Livermore, perhaps the most famous ism of New England, there has been a long and inti- of the Wall Street speculators, shot himself, and so mate connection between the sanctication of wealth did several others of his profession. ere was then and America’s economic and social relationships. e still a lingering old-fashioned sense of shame now rich are a class apart because they are the elect. generally absent from the über-rich. While many of Most present-day Americans, if they think about the historical roots of our wealth-worship at all, will say something about free The super-rich have seceded from America even as markets, rugged individualism, and the Horatio Alger myth—all their grip on its control mechanisms has tightened. in a purely secular context. But perhaps the most notable 19th- century exponent of wealth as virtue and poverty as the mark of Cain was Russell the elites hated Franklin Roosevelt—consider the fa- Herman Conwell, a canny Baptist minister, founder of mous New Yorker cartoon wherein the rich socialite perhaps the rst tabernacle large enough that it could tells her companions, “Come along. We’re going to later be called a megachurch, and author of the im- the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt”—most had the wit mensely famous “Acres of Diamonds” speech of 1890 to make a calculated bet that they would have to give that would make him a rich man. is is what he said: a little of their wealth, power, and prestige to retain the rest, particularly with the collapsing parliamen- I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty tary systems of contemporary Europe in mind. Even to get rich. … e men who get rich may be the a bootlegging brigand like Joe Kennedy Sr. reconciled most honest men you nd in the community. Let himself to the New Deal. me say here clearly … ninety-eight out of one And so it lasted for a generation: the wealthy could hundred of the rich men of America are honest. get more wealth—fabulous fortunes were made in at is why they are rich. at is why they are World War II; think of Henry J. Kaiser—but they were trusted with money. … I sympathize with the subject to a windfall-prots tax. And tycoons like Kai- poor, but the number of poor who are to be sym- ser constructed the Hoover Dam and liberty ships pathized with is very small. To sympathize with a rather than the synthetic CDOs that precipitated the

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 21 Class

latest economic collapse. In the 1950s, many Repub- pauperized labor beats down their wages. … licans pressed Eisenhower to lower the prevailing 91 e fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen percent top marginal income tax rate, but citing his to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprec- concerns about the decit, he refused. In view of our edented in the history of mankind, and the pos- present $15 trillion gross national debt, Ike was right. sessors of these, in turn, despise the Republic and Characteristic of the era was the widely misquot- endanger liberty. From the same prolic womb ed and misunderstood statement of General Motors of governmental injustice we breed the two great CEO and Secretary of Defense Charles E. “Engine classes—tramps and millionaires. Charlie” Wilson, who said he believed “what was good for the country was good for General Motors, and It is no coincidence that as the Supreme Court has vice versa.” He expressed, however clumsily, the view been removing the last constraints on the legalized that the fates of corporations and the citizenry were corruption of politicians, the American standard of conjoined. It is a view a world away from the pres- living has been falling at the fastest rate in decades. ent regime of downsizing, o shoring, prots without According to the Federal Reserve Board’s report of production, and nancialization. e now-prevailing June 2012, the median net worth of families plum- Milton Friedmanite economic dogma holds that a meted almost 40 percent between 2007 and 2010. corporation that acts responsibly to the community is is is not only a decline when measured against our irresponsible. Yet somehow in the 1950s the country own past economic performance; it also represents a eked out higher average GDP growth rates than those decline relative to other countries, a far cry from the we have experienced in the last dozen years. post-World War II era, when the United States had by Aer the 2008 collapse, the worst since the Great any measure the highest living standard in the world. Depression, the rich, rather than having the modesty A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation concluded to temper their demands, this time have made the that in measures of economic equality, social mobility, calculated bet that they are politically invulnerable— and poverty prevention, the United States ranks 27th Wall Street moguls angrily and successfully rejected out of the 31 advanced industrial nations belonging to executive-compensation limits even for banks that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and De- had been bailed out by taxpayer funds. And what I velopment. ank God we are still ahead of Turkey, saw in Congress aer the 2008 crash conrms what Chile, and Mexico! economist Simon Johnson has said: that Wall Street, is raises disturbing questions for those who call and behind it the commanding heights of power that themselves conservatives. Almost all conservatives control Wall Street, has seized the policy-making ap- who care to vote congregate in the Republican Party. paratus in Washington. Both parties are in thrall to But Republican ideology celebrates outsourcing, glo- what our great-grandparents would have called the balization, and takeovers as the glorious fruits of capi- Money Power. One party is furtive and hypocritical in talism’s “creative destruction.” As a former Republican its money chase; the other enthusiastically embraces congressional sta member, I saw for myself how it as the embodiment of the American Way. e Citi- GOP proponents of globalized vulture capitalism, zens United Supreme Court decision of two years ago such as Grover Norquist, Dick Armey, Phil Gramm, would certainly elicit a response from the 19th-centu- and Lawrence Kudlow, extolled the o shoring and - ry populists similar to their 1892 Omaha platform. It nancialization process as an unalloyed benet. ey called out the highest court, along with the rest of the were quick to denounce as socialism any attempt to political apparatus, as rotted by money. mitigate its impact on society. Yet their ideology is nothing more than an upside-down utopianism, an We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the absolutist twin of Marxism. If millions of people’s in- verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Cor- terests get damaged in the process of implementing ruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legisla- their ideology, it is a necessary outcome of scientic tures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine laws of economics that must never be tampered with, of the bench. e people are demoralized. … e just as Lenin believed that his version of materialist newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, laws were nal and inexorable. public opinion silenced, business prostrated, If a morally acceptable American conservatism is homes covered with mortgages, labor impover- ever to extricate itself from a pseudo-scientic invert- ished, and the land concentrating in the hands ed Marxist economic theory, it must grasp that order, of capitalists. e urban workmen are denied the tradition, and stability are not coterminous with an right to organize for self-protection, imported uncritical worship of the Almighty Dollar, nor with

22 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 Miguel Davilla Miguel

obeisance to the demands of the wealthy. Conserva- reactionary—has propounded this theme. e title of tives need to think about the world they want: do they Ortega y Gasset’s most famous work, e Revolt of really desire a social Darwinist dystopia? the Masses, tells us something about the mental at- e objective of the predatory super-rich and their mosphere of this literature. political handmaidens is to discredit and destroy the But in globalized postmodern America, what if this traditional nation state and auction its resources to whole vision about where order, stability, and a toler- themselves. ose super-rich, in turn, aim to create a able framework for governance come from, and who “tollbooth” economy, whereby more and more of our threatens those values, is inverted? What if Christo- highways, bridges, libraries, parks, and beaches are pher Lasch came closer to the truth in e Revolt of possessed by private oligarchs who will extract a toll the Elites, wherein he wrote, “In our time, the chief from the rest of us. Was this the vision of the Found- threat seems to come from those at the top of the so- ers? Was this why they believed governments were in- cial hierarchy, not the masses”? Lasch held that the stituted among men—that the very sinews of the state elites—by which he meant not just the super-wealthy should be possessed by the wealthy in the same man- but also their managerial coat holders and profession- ner that kingdoms of the Old World were the personal al apologists—were undermining the country’s prom- property of the monarch? ise as a constitutional republic with their prehensile Since the rst ziggurats rose in ancient Babylo- greed, their asocial cultural values, and their absence nia, the so-called forces of order, stability, and tra- of civic responsibility. dition have feared a revolt from below. Beginning Lasch wrote that in 1995. Now, almost two decades with Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre aer the later, the super-rich have achieved escape velocity French Revolution, a whole genre of political writ- from the gravitational pull of the very society they ings—some classical liberal, some conservative, some rule over. ey have seceded from America.

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 23 Politics

LePage Against the Machine is street-tough governor is a new kind of Maine Republican.

by MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY

ntil 2010 the state of Maine produced sional transformed into an oce. the most exquisitely moderate Repub- “I have to make one confession that I never made licans. Whenever Democrats needed a in that old confessional,” said LePage. “Halloween vote for gun control, a tax hike, or bi- was really big in Little Canada because we had these Upartisan cover for a social issue, they could dial a apartment buildings; candy was aplenty. When I was Maine area code and make a date with one of the 12 I got lazy, so I used to hide right here down the ever-temperates of the Pine Tree State. street in the little alleys between buildings here. We But in that year an avenging populism swept used to hide there and when little kids came by we through the state. e Republican Party that used to used to steal their candy.” elect Olympia Snowe and William Cohen practically e crowd responded with a big disapproving burned its old platform and replaced it with anoth- “aww” and laughed. er that calls for the abolition of the Department of “Isn’t that awful?” LePage said, as the laughter Education and the Federal Reserve System, adhering grew and a naughty smile crossed his face. “And now to the principles of Austrian economics, and, rather I’m governor of Maine. What do you think of that?” darkly, the prosecution of those perpetrating “the Someone shouted. “Don’t steal our candy!” global warming myth.” “Well, I’ll tell you, now that I am governor of At the head of this revolution is a new governor Maine, there is nothing le to steal,” he said. who has compared the IRS to the Gestapo, said that By 2010 Maine was facing a post-crash shortfall Obama could go to hell, and pointed to the press box in revenues, yawning decits, and daunting un- during his inaugural address warning, “You’re on no- funded liabilities. Long-term it faced a brain drain tice.” Paul LePage is one of the most intriguing and of its brightest young people: depopulation and de- infuriating men in American politics. Bumptious, cline. Amid this, LePage’s bootstrapping biography dogged, quick to anger, openly resentful of Maine’s and outsized personality allowed him to win two 38 political class, and witty in a down-home way, he is percent pluralities. e rst came against seven Re- an authentic specimen of the movement. And his publican primary opponents, the next against three governorship is turning into a fascinating test case, general-election rivals—an assortment of life-time revealing the limits and the possibilities of the Tea politicos and bland moderates all around. It was as Party populism he champions. if this plurality of Mainers saw their desperate situa- But how did Maine get here, and how did a man tion reected in LePage’s early life and hoped that if like LePage get to the Blaine House? he could turn his own fate around, he could do the One of LePage’s rst public appearances as gov- same for Maine. ernor gives some clue. Shortly aer taking oce And what a life: it began in the apartment blocks LePage returned to the town where he was born, of Lincoln Street in Lewiston. He was the rst son Lewiston, to speak at the Franco-American Heritage of the 18 children born to his Francophone parents. center. e building used to be his childhood parish, e apartments his family lived in were practically in St. Mary’s Church, a gothic fortress where the mill- the shadows of the Bates textile mill, the state’s larg- workers of “Little Canada” worshipped. Its interior est employer until the 1960s, with St. Mary’s parish is now converted into a museum and concert space, with the maniples encased in glass and the confes- Michael Brendan Dougherty is TAC’s national correspondent.

24 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 at the end of the same block. would lower some tax rates but institute a new sales LePage’s mother, eresa, was a devout woman taxes on most services, Webster and others saw their who led her many children through the rosary on opportunity. Anger over the tax was the impetus her knees. His father, Gerard, was a drunkard given behind successful petition and voter-registration to insane, violent ts. LePage’s brother Moe has said drives that laid the ground for the state’s Republican that as a child he refused to go to sleep before Gerard revolution. did because the old man would occasionally stu a LePage was a natural candidate for this backlash slipper with newspapers, douse it in kerosene, and from Maine’s rural and lower-middle-income vot- put it under the television before lighting it on re ers. His populist edge has always been evident in and quietly slipping out of the house. the way he governs. As mayor of Waterville he kept Gerard broke Paul’s nose in one conict when the open hours on Saturdays to let residents complain to future governor was just 11 years old. Paul le and him, a practice he has brought to the governorship. never returned: he remained homeless for the next ough he doesn’t support Ron Paul, he has insist- few years, spending nights with friends, in horse sta- ed that the national Republican Party seat Maine’s bles, even at a strip club, the Hotel Holly. He would unanimously Ron Paul-supporting delegates, who, work as a shoeshine boy, dishwasher, short-order through an organizational coup, took over the state cook, and bartender. party convention. LePage occasionally let his posi- LePage credits Peter Snowe for the big turnaround tions become known by giving people he chatted in his life. He was Senator Olym- pia Snowe’s rst husband. It was he who suggested that Paul be al- lowed to take the verbal portion Paul LePage is one of the most intriguing and of the SAT in his mother tongue, infuriating men in American politics. French. at was the dierence between going to Husson Col- lege and staying in odd jobs. “If it wasn’t for Peter Snowe, seriously, I would still be in generational poverty. I would still with on Facebook permission to publicize their con- be on the streets and I would be on welfare,” LePage versations. LePage and most of his fans acknowledge told a Tea Party rally during his gubernatorial cam- cheerfully that he is “not politically correct” and “not paign. a normal politician.” Paul improved his English, edited the school In many ways, LePage is what you would expect newspaper, eventually pursued an MBA. He formed if your voluble Tea Partying-uncle went almost di- a consulting rm that carried out signicant busi- rectly from railing at cable news to the governor’s ness turnarounds, and worked at Marden’s, a major mansion. Since taking oce he’s hired his daughter Maine retailer. He joined the city council of Water- as an assistant to his chief of sta. He’s removed a ville and eventually became mayor. mural depicting the history of the labor movement By 2010, LePage was a man meeting his party and from a state building, under the not-exactly-credi- the political climate of his state at the right time. ble pretense that certain (unnamed) business own- GOP House Speaker Bob Nutting also attributes the ers viewed it as unwelcoming. He routinely blasts sudden success of Maine Republicans to national dy- the performance of most of Maine’s public agen- namics. “It was probably an overreach on the part of cies. And he’s implied that Maine schools are so the president’s administration. We also had an active bad, its students so “looked down upon,” that Vir- conservative Tea Party group in the state, and a bet- ginia’s College of William and Mary makes Maine ter than normal candidate recruitment.” students take a special test for admission. at isn’t Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster true. has for years been working to box in liberals as the Politicians in Maine oen complain about LePage’s party of Portland elites and the public sector. He has suspicion of expertise. “He runs things on anecdotes been passing out bumper stickers and plastering up and doesn’t tell you the source. He just takes one billboards with the message, “Working people vote datapoint out of the whole if it furthers his ideo- Republican” and has taken to recruiting bartenders logical agenda,” says Justin Alfond, a Democratic and hairdressers as candidates. When, before the state senator. Maine’s political and media class had a election, the legislature proposed a tax reform that freak-out when Forbes ranked the state dead last for

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 25 Politics

its business climate two years straight. In response expert opinion, and the press, LePage has some seri- to the latest 50th-in-the-nation placing, LePage gave ous accomplishments to his name. In his rst year an address in which he recounted what editors at as governor LePage passed a two-year budget—with Forbes had told him the state needed to tackle: “they supermajorities in both chambers—that included said, ‘Unless you get your scal house in order, and the state’s largest ever tax cut and a lowering of the you address energy, you address work force devel- top income tax rate from 8.5 to 7.95 percent. Chang- opment, and you get yourself [so] that you spend es were made to Maine’s generous welfare system to within your means, you’re in the cellar.’ is mission bring it in line with other states, including a 5-year here this year, you’re going to hear an awful lot of limit on benets and mandatory drug tests for re- education, energy and the economy. Unfortunately, cipients who have been convicted of drug crimes. we’re starting out with welfare, because we’re going e budget also eliminated the provision of Maine’s broke,” he told his audience. state nanced healthcare to non-citizens. Overnight Forbes promptly reported that LePage’s account Maine became more competitive with neighboring of their conversation was entirely inaccurate. “Sorry New Hampshire. Governor, but I didn’t say any of those things,” editor For decades the state had been building a mas- Kurt Bandenhausen wrote. “Welfare? Not even a part sive unfunded liability with its generous public of the rankings. Getting your ‘scal house in order’ is pensions. In the 1990s, new groups of public em- sound government, but once again has nothing to do ployees were added to the pension plans without with our ranking of business climates.” funding. e state also borrowed from the pension LePage’s populist anger isn’t just boob-baiting—it fund and postponed its debt payments. e stock is distressingly authentic. market crash of 2008 wiped out another $2.1 bil- Aer Democratic state senator John Patrick sent lion. But the budget under LePage closed this un- out an e-letter to constituents criticizing the gover- funded liability by half, a full 16 years ahead of nor for cutting government spending and threaten- the date by which the state has determined it must ing to delay bonds, LePage sent him a note on the take its unfunded liabilities down to zero. And the governor’s stationary, in large and angry handwrit- changes, though painful in some respects, were not ing: nearly the shock to the system that has been deliv- ered to states like Wisconsin and Ohio under other You are a bald-faced liar and cheat! Character Republican governors. LePage can’t take all the eludes you. It is up to the Governor’s discretion credit; both houses of the citizen legislature play a when bonds are sold, he has ve years. Paul. large role. But as he did during his days as Water- ville’s, he set down ambitious goals and drew deep, To another senator he wrote: almost non-negotiable lines. In a characteristically inside-out compliment, J. Senator Alfond, Scott Moody of the right-leaning Maine Heritage Policy Center called the above reforms “not at all It must be election time! … As for my plan for modest” and attributed them to LePage’s will and a Millinocket I am reluctant to divulge it to you political climate that overnight “pitted one interest as I believe you will do anything to defeat [sic]. group, public workers, against everyone else.” But We have attempted to implement “best practic- Speaker Nutting emphasizes the bipartisan nature of es” for two sessions but you sat on your hands the reforms, which has tamped down opposition and criticizing everything we do and vote against given them a more durable character. everything with my name on it. Hypocit [sic] It is hard to argue that the electoral shock of LeP- comes to mind. age and the 2010 Republicans, even with its bombast and nastygrams, is not getting something worth- Although many who have worked with him testify while done in Maine. e Blaine House that had for to a personal sweetness outside of politics, LePage years been the home of a self-assured liberalism and wears his vengeful reputation proudly. He once took a genteelly moderate Republican party was suddenly a Democratic campaign yer picturing him under invaded by the hairdressers, bartenders and shit- the word’s “Augusta’s Biggest Bully” and displayed it kickers of the Tea Party. e result is a state house in his oce tucked into the frame of a Ronald Rea- that is a lot more paranoid and populist, more un- gan portrait. mannerly and ugly. But, at last and at least, a little But underneath all of the hostility to his colleagues, more frugal.

26 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 Budgets & Bullets

How to Freeze the Pentagon by MICHAEL D. OSTROLENK

n July, freshman congressman that we are deadly serious about our pork programs at DOD? Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), along spending problems, and not just using with Rep. Barney Frank (D- the decit as a convenient excuse to cut MM: Clearly. But to do so will take a Mass.), introduced an amend- spending on programs that we gener- much larger commitment from Repub- Iment to the House’s 2013 defense ally just don’t like. licans in general and conservatives in appropriations bill freezing defense particular. Too many Members of Con- spending at 2012 levels. ough it TAC: What pushback did you receive gress are still afraid to cut even a penny merely eliminates a proposed $1.1 bil- and how will you overcome it in the from the defense budget out of fear of lion increase in defense spending, the future? looking “weak on defense.” We need to Mulvaney-Frank amendment was an change the culture that exists now that acknowledgment that the endless mil- MM: e conversations with my col- equates dollars spent with commitment itary-spending hikes since 9/11 cannot leagues were fairly simple and focused to national defense. Certainly, there is continue. e legislation passed the mostly on educating folks on what the a link between the two at some point, House 247-167, with 88 Republicans amendment was, and was not. For ex- but wanting to be smart with taxpayer in support, and the Senate will take up ample, many initially thought that this dollars and defending the nation are far the bill this September. was somehow related to the sequester; from mutually exclusive. American Conservative contributor it wasn’t. And others thought it repre- Michael Ostrolenk, co-founder and sented a cut; it was actually just a freeze. TAC: Many Republicans are warning national director of the Liberty Co- Once we were able to get down to the that possible future cuts to the Penta- alition, caught up with Congressman facts of the matter, the amendment was gon will lead to job loss and economic Mulvaney before the August recess an easy sell to many conservatives. e impacts. at sounds a lot like military to discuss conservative support for a push back was mostly from the appro- Keynesianism. How do you respond to more scally sound national defense. priators, who believed that the bill was such warnings? ne as it was. ey also attempted, for TAC: Why is this an important issue for a short time at least, to argue that we MM: Republicans are just as guilty of you? had “already cut defense substantially” awed Keynesian thinking when it or that we were somehow “gutting” the comes to defense spending as Demo- Mick Mulvaney: I think it is important defense budget. Again, the best tools crats are on social spending. Indeed, that conservatives show a willingness here working in our favor were the that aw weakens our correct argument to look at all spending with the same facts: the cuts mentioned were to the we make against social spending, as it level of critical analysis. To think that War Budget and not the base budget; allows the opposition to easily—and ac- the Defense Department is somehow the “gutting” was only 0.17 percent of curately—cast us as hypocrites. Govern- immune from the same tendencies the total defense budget; etc. It is some- ment spending is government spending, toward ineciency and waste as we what encouraging that, at the end of and it does not magically have dier- know all other areas of government the day, the facts won out. ent impacts on aggregate demand just to possess, is just absurd. More im- because it is spent on guns instead of portantly, perhaps, showing that will- TAC: With military operations nished delivering the mail. We have to be cou- ingness builds our credibility when it in Iraq, the conventional war in Afghan- rageous in our convictions that govern- comes to reducing spending elsewhere. istan winding down and the fact that the ment spending does not create net new Put another way: if we show a willing- U.S. is $16 trillion dollars in debt, is it a jobs. Period. We need to divorce the jobs ness to at the very least freeze defense good time to not only freeze Pentagon discussion from the military spending/ spending, it may well send the message budgets but to look at seriously cutting national security discussion.

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 27 Corruption

Battle of Columbus Obama’s Fast and Furious scandal gets a sequel in New Mexico.

by ED WARNER

here are my guns?” demanded to the cartels, with no explanation yet forthcoming. Pancho Villa, amboyant bandit- It has led to a D.C. tussle with the Republican House “ warrior of the Mexican revolu- citing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt tion. ough he had paid for of Congress and the Democrats crying “witch hunt.” them,W the store across the U.S. border in the town Lost in the tumult is the heart of the matter: what were of Columbus, New Mexico hadn’t delivered. He had U.S. agents doing with those guns? other grievances as well. So in the early morning of e White House says the goal was to track the March 9, l916, Villa led some 500 troops in an attack guns to the cartel leaders. What then? Drop a drone on Columbus that lasted until dawn, without doing on them, only to have them replaced by any of dozens too much damage. Next day, General John J. Persh- of other eager mobsters lusting for the job. “You cut ing, of World War I fame, accompanied by George o one head and [another] hydra head emerges,” says Patton, hero of World War II, arrived to drive out the James Phelps, assistant professor of border and home- Villistas and pursue their leader into Mexico. ey land security at San Angelo University in Texas. didn’t catch him. He was eventually assassinated by But there are no signs that agents were doing any other Mexicans in some kind of political intrigue. tracking. A dierent explanation is gaining ground: Until now this was Columbus’s main claim to that the feds were helping to arm one cartel, Sinaloa, fame. Today, it’s been overtaken by another gun sale. against more sinister ones like Los Zetas, whose In March last year federal agents drove into Colum- trademark is a severed head on a pike. Many of the bus and arrested virtually all its top ocials, includ- latter’s members have had military training in Mexico, ing the mayor and police chief, for selling weapons some in the United States. ey are well equipped for to the Mexican cartels, who thereaer used them to violence and have in icted some of it in this country. kill other Mexicans, which is their habit. e arrests Better to have a comparatively benign cartel facing us. were no real surprise to Columbus citizens, who won- Dealing with any cartel has its risks. Guns from dered why Mayor Eddie Espinoza had been driving Fast and Furious have been used to kill U.S. Border a $50,000 car on a $700-a-month salary. Police Chief Patrol agent Brian Terry and who knows how many Angelo Vega already had a criminal record. In this Mexicans. Meanwhile, Los Zetas is still going strong. town, says Addison Bachman, who runs a website re- A trial of the Columbus gang could reveal what op- porting on local events in Columbus, “You get a job erations like Fast and Furious are all about. But then, with a rap sheet, not a resume.” there will be no trial since the prisoners have pleaded e dozen oenders have all pleaded guilty. e guilty, no doubt in exchange for appropriate bargains mayor has received 51 months in prison, and two from prosecutors. e cover-up continues. others have also been sentenced. e rest await their In a borderless war, it’s hard to know what’s what punishment, which seems slow in coming—and in or who’s who. “Nothing is black and white,” says Ray- the meantime, one has escaped. Yet another, police of- mond Cobos, sheri of Luna County, which includes cer Ian Garland, claims agents from the Bureau of Columbus. With little available work on the border Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives encour- that pays more than a pittance, crooked money is too aged him to sell the weapons to the cartels. tempting, says former Border Patrolman David Ham: What’s that? Shades of “Fast and Furious,” the Ari- zona operation that delivered some 2,500 U.S. guns Ed Warner is a former editor-reporter for the Voice of America.

28 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 “Wherever there’s a connection to the border, look for be truly destructive to the country. But we’re not really trouble.” But be careful not to talk about it, cautions ghting it. Most Americans are not even aware of it. Columbus activist Karen Lee. “ere’s no freedom of e citizens of Columbus, however, have been le speech on the border. To survive is to say nothing.” bankrupt by the cartels, with some in danger of their “We are a microcosm,” says Addison Bachman, lives. Ordinarily the drug lords don’t like to harm who in addition to running his website is minister Americans. It’s bad publicity. But they make an excep- of the Promised Land Community Church in Co- tion for lawmen they can’t corrupt and who continue lumbus. Small as it is, Columbus is ground zero for to ght them. Before they were arrested, crooked the drug runners. Robert Plumlee, a former contract town ocials threatened to kill Deputy Odom. Twice pilot for the CIA, notes that Los Zetas has acquired police chief Vega tried to run him o the road at property in the Columbus area, where it stores arms night. ey are gone now and unlikely to return from and drugs destined for anywhere in the United prison: since they’ve been talking to the feds, the car- States. Little stands in its way, certainly not media coverage. We read continually of arrests of small-timers with pockets of mari- Federal lawmen estimate there are more people juana. But the big guys? Not much. working for the cartels in the United States A notable exception is a recent than in Mexico, and they are busier than ever. New York Times article revealing that Los Zetas used drug money to buy a large ranch in Oklahoma with 300 quarter horses for which they paid a million tels would make short work of them. But their fami- dollars a month. One of them recently won a major lies remain with the prospect of the cartels’ revenge no race in New Mexico. is enterprise was broken up by doubt in mind. the U.S. Justice Department. Michael Vigil, a former “e raid has swept out some of the dark corners,” top DEA ocial, tells the Times, “e Zetas are particu- says Odom, but more light is needed. He adds that larly adroit at spreading their tentacles across borders.” the cartels are not operating openly in Columbus. e cartels’ vast network reaches into the United ey’re discreet and quiet at the moment. But cross- States, concentrating in hundreds of larger cities but ing the border is hazardous for a lawman whose face increasingly in smaller towns as well. ey prefer areas is known. It could mean courting death or worse. e with a Mexican population where they can blend in. cartels are skilled at torture, like dismembering a vic- Federal lawmen estimate there are more people work- tim while he is still alive. “You’ve got to understand ing for the cartels in the United States than in Mexico, the new reality,” says Odom. and they are busier than ever. While the number of Corruption on the U.S. side of the border now ri- illegal immigrants has dropped dramatically, far more vals that in Mexico, thanks in part to the rapid hir- drugs are arriving, and with them the cartel bosses, ing of anti-terrorist personnel aer 9/11 without among the most vicious people on earth. sucient background check. e Los Angeles Times ey don’t always look the part, say those who get reports that in the last eight years 130 U.S. Border Pa- to see them. ey may be smooth, suave, just the gen- trol agents have been arrested and 600 more are under tleman next door who donates generously to churches investigation. “We take this kind of thing for granted and charities. Let the thuggish underlings handle the in Mexico,” says Odom. “at’s history. We’re immune rough stu. But these bosses should not be underrat- from history, right?” ed or misunderstood. ey are not here just to make Sheri Cobos, now in charge of the Columbus po- money. ey also seek power. “Money is a manifes- lice, is a Mexican American of staunch visage and can- tation of power,” says Robert Odom, recently retired did speech—not to be easily crossed. His grandfather deputy sheri of Columbus. Since they have taken joined Pancho Villa’s invasion, though unlike his chief over much of Mexico, why not a much larger prize to he decided to stay in America and make his way. Sher- the north? ere’s a challenge. i Cobos says he was so strictly brought up—“I was Money more than weapons paves the way—just an- told if I looked at a girl the wrong way she would get other interest group buying up politicians and other pregnant”—that he was invited to teach anti-crime, worthies on the path to a narco-state. While wars in anti-drug classes at a Mormon settlement in Mexico. the Middle East and South Asia bear scant relevance to He wonders why we can’t secure the border. Other the national interest, this is the real war within that can nations with fewer resources have managed this. It

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 29 Corruption

would cost a fraction of the war in Afghanistan. He’s each day to go to school in Columbus or 30 miles dubious of federal law enforcement and suggests a further north in Deming. is presents a problem. better acronym for the DEA; “Don’t Expect Any- Some inevitably are given drugs to carry. At no age thing.” Why did the feds wait so long to arrest the do you refuse a cartel request, and not everyone can town fathers, he asks, when they had ample evidence be searched. And cartel cash is addictive. “Once in front of them? A federal agent informed Deputy you’ve started taking money, there’s no way to stop Odom: “We don’t necessarily trust local law enforce- taking it,” says Deputy Odom. Don’t want to cooper- ment.” Replied Odom: “I’m not oended because I ate? Well, we know when your kid leaves school and don’t trust you, either.” ... you get the point. A school bus driver was arrested Sometimes it’s not altogether clear who the enemy for transporting drugs along with children. With is. We had a drug-running, gun-running operation that human cargo, it was easy for him to get through that didn’t seem to interest authorities, says Bach- checkpoints. Sheri Cobos never ceases to marvel at man. Are they pursuing some other plan we don’t the tactics of the cartels. “If only they could put all know about? “We’re kept in suspense.” that energy and ingenuity into something useful like Today law enforcement in Columbus seems to curing cancer.” be in good hands, and life is more or less back to ose who closely follow the drug war are increas- normal in a town where most amenities are in easy ingly dismayed by the way it’s fought. Guns don’t walking distance. A library is especially well sup- stop drugs. Eliminate the narcotics in one place, they plied. ere’s a Pancho Villa state park that people move to another. Money determines. Don Wirth, a enjoy, except perhaps for the name. No sign of rude- former senior special agent with the Department of ness or anxiety amid a friendly population of only Interior, told the Tucson Weekly in May that the war 2,000. House and car doors are le unlocked. ere’s is a “tremendous waste of the country’s resources. no street crime. More than that, people are loyal to We’ve spent billions ghting that stu and haven’t their town. Because of its empty treasury (a million made a dent. And the violence escalates. is is un- dollars was lost to the gun-runners), many town usual for somebody in law enforcement to say, but employees are working for no pay until the not-too- we’re never going to win the drug war. We need oth- sympathetic county oers some money or takes over er approaches.” the municipality. e best approach, some say, is to legalize drugs, at includes the remen who double as ambu- at least marijuana, which comprises anywhere from lance drivers. ey are required to pick up anyone 50 to 80 percent of cartel earnings. at would free who has a medical emergency on the border. Many lawmen to concentrate on the harder but smaller pregnant Mexican women show up so they can bear drugs and human smuggling (oen for prostitution). their children in the United States, where they auto- In an interview with Truthout, Ethan Nadelman, ex- matically become citizens. Columbus’s new mayor, ecutive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, says, “a Nicole Lawson, sidelines as an ambulance assistant law enforcement strategy cannot defeat a dynamic and has helped deliver 24 newborn Americans. “Our global commodities market. So as long as there is town spirit has been crushed by the arrests,” she says, demand, there will be supply. Attempts at interdic- but apparently not hers. tion just move the drug tracking around, wreaking ree miles down the road is the Mexican bor- havoc in its wake.” der town of Palomas, somewhat larger and livelier Border towns have to live with that havoc, facing than Columbus, but not as lively as it used to be. incursions of a kind far more dangerous than Pan- A few years back there was considerable violence cho Villa’s. What does the future hold for Columbus? that ended when one cartel managed to oust its ri- Addison Bachman suggests making something of vals and restored the peace in its own way, a sort of the past—and what a past it is: a town that repelled Pax Narcotica. Today tourists still shy away because a very rare invasion of America, launched by one of of past troubles, but a number of Americans come its most colorful enemies. Maybe statues to Pershing for inexpensive dentistry and glasses. “How do you and Patton could be erected to accompany Villa’s. like these teeth?”, an American asked, pointing to But yesterday’s enemies are now friends in a closely some replacements. Like new, I said. Amid the many integrated society: for all intents, Palomas and Co- shops, in deference to the past, there’s a statue of lumbus are one. is is an invisible gem that needs Pancho Villa charging on horseback. Never say die. the right kind of exposure, says Bachman. People go back and forth across the border. Some So Americans, come on down and enjoy yourselves. 300 students, most of whom are U.S. citizens, cross But please, no drugs or guns.

30 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 Liberties

e Right & the Drug War Conservatives are the last prohibitionists, but that’s changing.

by ANTHONY GREGORY

at Robertson began publicly criticizing the conservatives have tended toward decriminaliza- drug war in December 2010, and he has be- tion. Right-wing talk radio, the information source come more vocal since. Unlike the vague for millions, has also featured many voices skeptical critiques o en heard from prominent g- of drug laws, from the sensationalist Michael Savage Pures—even Barack Obama has called the drug war a to Jeersonians like Mike Church. e common- failure—Robertson’s insights have been precise, and sense center-right has o en decried the futility of consistent, and deeply-rooted. “We here in America marijuana prohibition in particular. make up 5 percent of the world’s population, but we Missing in the conservative approach to the issue make up 25 percent of jailed prisoners,” he noted has been an understanding of the grave threats pro- in March, appearing genuinely moved by the issue. hibition poses to the social institutions that cultural “I really believe we should treat marijuana the way conservatives, including the Christian right, hold we treat … alcohol,” he told the New York Times. dear. If Robertson foreshadows a coming shi in Beyond the practical argument, Robertson sees the the Silent Majority’s sentiments, this void will nally moral dimension: “I believe in working with the be lled. Despite the prominent critics among their hearts of people, and not locking them up.” ranks, everyday conservatives have consistently re- In light of his key role in the religious right, Rob- vealed themselves in polls as more hostile to decrim- ertson’s comments take on special signicance. e inalization than liberals and moderates. A socially man speaks to a particular strain of social conserva- conservative turnaround on the issue would change tives, not straying from their rhetorical comfort zone everything. Just as many moralists who championed even as he champions drug legalization for princi- temperance turned against alcohol prohibition af- pled reasons. He even blames the le for a burgeon- ter seeing the social destruction it unleashed in the ing police state: “Every time the liberals pass a bill—I 1920s, today’s social conservatives could play a de- don’t care what it involves—they stick criminal sanc- ning role in ending drug prohibition. tions on it.” e drug war embodies secular leviathan like few Should “theocons” adopt a more tolerant view on other government eorts. e federal anti-drug cru- drugs, it would shake the entire right-wing on the sade began with Woodrow Wilson’s signing of the issue. ey would be the last prominent faction to Harrison Narcotics Act in 1914, escalated with Frank- demonstrate skepticism. e American right has lin Roosevelt’s signing of the Marijuana Tax Act in long had its share of drug-war critics. William F. 1937, and tyrannically expanded to cover previously Buckley articulately defended legalization on a half- legal psychedelics and other substances during Lyn- hour PBS special in 1996. George Will has o en don Johnson’s Great Society. Bill Clinton increased explained the unintended consequences of prohi- marijuana arrests and drug task force spending, bition, although he still falls short of calling for de- greatly accelerating the Reagan-Bush drug war. Un- criminalization. Barry Goldwater expressed skepti- der Obama, the policies have once again enjoyed a cism toward the criminal-justice approach. boost: his 2009 stimulus bill included major hikes in Neocons have either not cared much about drugs drug enforcement spending that had dwindled under and other domestic matters or have sometimes em- George W. Bush. braced drug decriminalization as a nod to their so- cial liberal side. Fusionist and libertarian-leaning Anthony Gregory is a research fellow at the Independent Institute.

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 31 Liberties

If alcohol prohibition qualied as the progressives’ killing spree has taken tens of thousands of lives in greatest domestic triumph in the early 20th century, just the last couple years, have shattered the peace on drug prohibition has achieved even more as a usurpa- the border and become the subject of the Obama ad- tion of traditional morality and the social order. Con- ministration’s most notorious scandal. Some conser- stitutionalism, states’ rights, subsidiarity, community vatives have wondered aloud whether the “Fast and norms, traditional medicine, family authority, and the Furious” program of arming Mexican drug gangs role of the church have all been violently pushed aside was intended to create an excuse to crack down on to wage an impossibly ambitious national project to American gun ownership. Regardless of the ATF’s control people in the most intimate of ways. For years, intentions, the drug violence has indeed served as a the federal DARE program rationale to restrict Ameri- encouraged children to rat can liberties, including the out their parents for minor right to bear arms. But very drug oenses, an intrusion little of this would be possi- into family life all too remi- ble if these cartels could not niscent of Soviet Russia. fund themselves with the Prohibition-fueled gang amplied prots that drug warfare has not only inict- prohibition produces. (No ed violence upon the social wonder all of the conserva- fabric; the crime wave has tive movement’s heroes of also served as a rationale to economic science—Ludwig weaken the very civil liber- von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and ties that conservatives most Milton Friedman—were cherish—particularly Sec- unambiguous in opposing ond Amendment rights. the drug war, on practical as Bloodshed on city streets at- well as moral grounds.) tributed to the 1920s liquor Recent polls indicate that trade spawned the National a slight majority of Ameri- Firearms Act of 1934. Con- cans is now open to legal- gress specically targeted izing marijuana. Somewhat drug users in its Gun Con- surprisingly, residents of trol Act of 1968. e 1990 liberal California are less Crime Control Act focused likely than the nation at on creating drug-free school large to support the idea, zones, but semi-automatic according to a USC Dorn- ries also came under its sife/Los Angeles Times poll, ambit. Even the 1993 Waco stando, rationalized by although Democrats and voters in the le y Bay Area the Clinton Justice Department as an anti-assault- favor decriminalization in far higher numbers than weapons operation, started with search warrants du- Republicans and the rest of the state. Conservatives biously directed at nding a meth lab. In the 1980s are still the main ideological barrier to drug liberal- drugs had served as the excuse to carve out exceptions ization. to the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act forbidding military But the tide may be turning. At a Republican pri- involvement in domestic law enforcement. e radi- mary debate in South Carolina last May, Ron Paul calized grassroots patriots in the post-Cold War 1990s likened the freedom to use drugs to the freedom to who saw national police power as a threat to their lib- worship according to one’s faith, a radical insight erty, their guns, and their families should have recog- about the liberty of conscience usually heard mainly nized America’s drug laws as a principal culprit. from proud proponents of psycho-pharmacological Today drug money nances not just domestic gangs experimentation. Moderator Chris Wallace asked but foreign thugs as well. In the last decade many re- the Texas congressman whether using heroin was porters have commented on how opium prots have simply an “an exercise of liberty.” Paul responded enriched the Taliban—a nearly unavoidable result of with a rhetorical question: “How many people here America’s drug policies, which keep narcotics highly would use heroin if it were legal?” He mocked the protable. But today the most conspicuous violent very idea of paternalistic prohibition: “Oh yeah, I foreign threat comes from Mexico. e cartels, whose need the government to take care of me. I don’t want

32 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 to use heroin, so I need these laws.” Raich many times. Dissenting conservatives on the e audience erupted in laughter and enthusiastic court attempted to nd a distinction between the two applause. Many of Paul’s supporters sat in the crowd, rulings, but many commentators noted the corner but more important was the lack of booing from the into which Scalia in particular had painted himself, more conventionally conservative attendees. In this viewing federal power as nearly unlimited concern- Republican audience in a right-leaning state, some ing medical marijuana but restrained on health in- of the most radical arguments for heroin legalization surance. omas was right in Raich that a federal po- fared surprisingly well. Even if today’s conservatives lice power that can supersede state marijuana laws, do not buy into all the reasons to end prohibition, bust down someone’s door, and jail him for growing they no longer nd them as dangerous or worthy of a plant for personal use, faces no eective limits and ridicule as in years past. is the very face of tyranny. e liberals who endorsed Also in May, a survey conducted by Mason-Dixon unmitigated federal power on Obamacare as well as Polling & Research found that 67 percent of Repub- on medical marijuana were being completely consis- licans wanted to see an end to federal medical-mar- tent. e logic of the drug war is the logic of the New ijuana raids. President Obama’s policies are not only Deal, national supremacy, and everything conserva- out of touch with his liberal base, they are far more tives profess to hate about Obama-style governance. draconian than what most con- servatives want. On the issue of national power, this is not a com- pletely new development on the President Obama’s policies are not only out of right. Citing states’ rights, George touch with his liberal base, they are far more W. Bush suggested he would put a stop to the raids in 1999. A er draconian than what most conservatives want. becoming president, he stepped them up instead, but not nearly as much as Obama has done. Ac- cording to Americans for Safe Access, the Obama Drug laws expose the tension within the conser- Justice Department conducted 170 SWAT-style raids vative movement: devoted to localism and national- of medical-marijuana dispensaries between October ism, freedom and law and order, today’s conserva- 2009 and Spring 2012. Given his campaign prom- tives, if they are to mount a meaningful resistance to ises to the contrary, Obama has “gone from rst to the unrestrained bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., worst,” according to Marijuana Policy Project Execu- must choose between their conicting values. Many tive Director Rob Kampia. “ere’s no question that on the Tea Party right have come to regard the Bush- Obama is the worst president on medical marijuana.” created Transportation Security Administration e federalism argument against the raids has al- (TSA) as clumsy and despotic. ey cling proudly ways seemed more appealing to conservatives than to their guns and religion. ey worry about their liberals. In 2005, the Supreme Court upheld the privacy in the face of a relentlessly growing central marijuana raids in Gonzales v. Raich in the name state. But it was the drug war that rst shredded the of preserving an expansive federal commerce pow- Bill of Rights in modern times. er. Antonin Scalia joined the majority, but Clar- Public opinion has gradually been turning against ence omas, Sandra Day O’Connor, and William the militarized Just Say No approach. Meanwhile, Rehnquist dissented. Justice omas, the court’s special interests like the tobacco and law-enforce- most conservative member, issued the most stirring ment lobbies continue to put pressure on politi- rebuke, which he grounded in a restrictive reading cians to maintain the status quo. Democrats do not of Commerce Clause power: “If the Federal Govern- have the political will or capital to push for major ment can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis changes. Perhaps Republican leaders—unafraid of plants for personal consumption (not because it is accusations of being so on crime, emboldened by interstate commerce, but because it is inextricably a conservative movement increasingly skeptical of bound up with interstate commerce), then Congress’ unlimited police power—are the ones most likely to Article I powers—as expanded by the Necessary and lead the charge toward liberalization. is prospect Proper Clause—have no meaningful limits.” leaves much to be desired, but for the rst time in Tellingly, the Supreme Court’s opinion uphold- many years perhaps there is some hope on the hori- ing Obamacare this summer cited the precedents of zon, and from an unexpected direction.

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 33 Evil

Killer Culture Have we lost the meaning of iniquity?

by R.J. STOVE

“A rain of blood has blinded my eyes … extreme circumstances a case conceivably existed We are soiled by a lth that we cannot clean, for censorship, whether applied to the pornography United to supernatural vermin.” of libidinous appetite, or to the more menacing por- nography of violence. —T.S. Eliot, “Murder in the Cathedral” Hers was not a Dwight Macdonald-style philippic against dumbing-down. ere is almost no doctrine “Art is what you can get away with.” in her book at all. No party-political program is ad- vocated (albeit Lord Snow served in Harold Wilson’s —Andy Warhol rst cabinet). Nor does On Iniquity invoke any reli- gion, other than rare and mildly approving referenc- ho currently reads Pamela Hans- es to the Christian creed, and an implied endorse- ford Johnson, or even recognizes her ment of Orwell’s maxim that “bourgeois morality” name? Yet once she ranked among means no more than “common decency.” Johnson Britain’s 10 favorite living novelists. gave her readers a sequence of pensées, in which the WBorn in 1912, she produced between 1935 and 1963 ow remains logical but unpredictable. bestseller a er bestseller, including e Unspeakable Desensitization: that is her specic nightmare, on Skipton; is Bed y Center; Too Dear For My Pos- every page. She probably never encountered Saint- sessing; and Night and Silence, Who Is Here? (Clearly Saëns’s warning: “Why cannot we understand that in she had a knack for memorable titles.) Broadly speak- art, there are some things to which we must not ac- ing, she appealed to that audience which also gravi- custom ourselves?” But repeatedly she asks, in dier- tated toward authors better remembered these days: ent language, Saint-Saëns’s question. A few excerpts Anthony Powell, Nancy Mitford, Barbara Pym, and might convey the volume’s avor. C.P. Snow—who became her second husband and, At one point, she quotes a young Englishman eventually, Lord Snow. All were grunge-free zones; all whose employment had forced on him frequent vis- purveyed not-quite-satirical but sharp-witted narra- its to Hitler’s Nuremberg before Kristallnacht—in tives of genteel malice. en, a er 1967, the progress other words, when Jews were being spat on, derided, of Miss Johnson’s career went somehow, as billiards dismissed from workplaces, and thrashed, but sel- players would say, out-of-true. dom actually killed. is is what the youth told her: In that year she issued a monograph called On In- iquity. ere she did something almost too fright- e rst time [when he saw thugs tormenting ful, too dishonorable, and too loathsome for words. Jews] it was such a shock, I felt so sick, that I She postulated—and this amid Swinging London, simply took to my heels. … e second occa- forsooth—three unfashionable theses. First, that a sion I felt it was my duty to see just what was nation’s entire mass culture could become morally going on, so I stopped just for a minute. I felt toxic without any blackshirts or commissars smash- as sick as ever, and did so the third time I tried ing skulls, without even Madison Avenue wash- to watch. ing brains. Second, that the British mass culture of On the fourth I stood in that jeering crowd 1967 bore unarguable signs of such toxicity. ird, and most appalling of all: she dared imply that in R.J. Stove lives in Melbourne, Australia.

34 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 for quite a while. It seemed awful, but not quite o anybody within the former British Empire— so awful as before, almost as if it were a play. … Tas well as in Britain itself—who remembers the I was in serious danger of becoming acclima- mid-1960s, the words “Moors Murders,” “Myra tized, to feel all this was a part of life, the way Hindley,” and “Ian Brady” have not forfeited one things happened. And then I took to my heels iota of their power to induce revulsion. e cause for the second time, and I went back to England for this revulsion may be tersely, and in bowdlerized as soon as I could get my bags packed. manner, recounted. Hindley and Brady, well before they took to slaying Johnson’s gloss on the above: “For the second time youngsters, were already whining, rutting, race-bait- he took to his heels. For many of us, there might be ing, animal-slaughtering trailer-trash. Brady possessed no second chance to run. I wish I had not forgotten highbrow pretensions of an incoherently National So- his name, because I shall never forget what he said.” cialist kind. In their folie à deux they kidnapped and Earlier comes Johnson on Crime and Punishment’s killed ve persons—the eldest 17 years old, the young- Raskolnikov: est 10—with numerous renements of erotic cruelty. Arrested and tried in 1966 for only three murders (the Novelists are conceited people; they tend to be- relevant victims’ names were Lesley-Ann Downey, Ed- lieve there is no mind into which they cannot ward Evans, and John Kilbride), the pair took till 1985 imagine themselves … [Dostoyevsky] has such to admit to the other two. In the dock, they waged de- demonic projective force that we tend to swal- marcation disputes over who did what, but they never low whatever he tells us. He believes in the ul- simulated either lunacy or guiltlessness. A few years timate triumph of repentance in the murderer, beforehand, the scaold would have awaited them, but that he must come to hate what he has done. in 1965 Harold Wilson’s government jettisoned capital … [Yet] I believe very few of the guards in the punishment. So the judge handed down life sentences. concentration camps were true sadists: what en the fun really started. had disappeared in them was the capacity to Hindley got religion. You might think that a quin- think of those they tortured as human beings at tuple infanticide who insists that the Holy Spirit de- all. e prisoners were animals; they didn’t have the same feel- ings as ourselves. ere have been far more horrors commit- Hindley and Brady, well before they took to slaying ted in our time by the aect- youngsters, were already whining, rutting, less than by the pathologically race-baiting, animal-slaughtering trailer-trash. cruel.

Near the end occurs a discourse on what the progressive will usually die rather than scended on her in Her Majesty’s Prison, Holloway, admit: the sheer nancial greed of so many voyeurs and converted her to the Catholic faith would have and their pimps, for all their squeals about “libera- been unable to convince a bong-toting kindergar- tion,” Getting In Touch With My Feelings, and so tener. Sadly, you would be wrong. Not one but two forth. “One of the oddities of the entire situation,” adult media panjandrums frantically backed her she avers, “is that, in becoming so un-prudish about cause. ese men were no Émile Zolas passionately sex, we have suddenly become extravagantly prud- committed to proving Captain Dreyfus’s innocence. ish about money.” (Katherine Anne Porter, in an ey knew Hindley had done everything for which overdue Damascene conversion to taste, admitted she had been convicted. And still they wanted her in 1960 that she and her fellow anti-censorship lob- released. byists had “championed recklessly the most awful Panjandrum #1 was Lord Longford, the airhead- wormy little books we none of us would have given ed spouse of brilliant historian Elizabeth Longford. shelf room … [to gratify] a low cynic cashing in.”) Few associated this egotistic earl, pre-Hindley, with But it might be asked: why should Johnson’s anything much except his heavy-breathing rever- thoughts have been pointed on such lines in the rst ence toward JFK and an unexpected distaste for place? Because of what she says at the outset: “I was homosexuals. For Longford, the “save Myra Hind- asked by the Sunday Telegraph to spend a day or so at ley” crusade just lay waiting. ere are Longfords in the Moors Trial and write of my impressions.” every neighborhood: when they do not gush over

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 35 Evil

peroxide-haired child-killers, they solemnly an- New Labour, or notionally Conservative—sided nounce that the moon landings and 9/11 were faked, against Levin and with James. Levin’s beatic vision that the pope sends them secret messages through of England’s green and pleasant land rendered even their dental llings, and that the European Union is more pleasant by a liberated Hindley’s mischievous controlled by giant subterranean lizards. Today they frolicking remained at the utopia stage. proclaim these dogmas in upper-case emails to ab- solute strangers and are usually thwarted by the anti- anada scrapped the death penalty in 1976, spam button. CAustralia in 1984. No Scandinavian realm has Panjandrum #2 was wholly dierent: Bernard carried the penalty out since Denmark shot its last Levin, a bellicose columnist with considerable anti- war criminals in 1950. e results, not least on the Soviet courage, with adolescent glee in others’ suf- characteristic televised British crime bulletin, con- ferings, with a reputed tendency to lionize Wagner rm Lord Melbourne’s lament: “What all the wise even when under general anesthetic, and with the men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.” When capital-punish- ment abolitionists get their way, the When capital-punishment abolitionists get very nature of bloodbaths, not merely their way, the very nature of bloodbaths, not the rate of them, changes. Number of rampages in Britain, merely the rate of them, changes. Canada, Australia, and Norway when executioners still had jobs and almost every household still had rearms: most boorish prose idiom since eodore Dreiser zilch. Rampages in these lands a er abolition: here last vomited alphabet soup. we go. In 1977 Levin needed a new heroine and found Fi een people murdered within minutes at Hun- one: Hindley. He accused those who decried a pos- gerford, Berkshire, in August 1987 by a gunman sible Hindley pardon of being actuated purely by ven- whose victims included his own mother. Fourteen geance: “e inevitable fury,” Levin complained, “is, female students murdered on a Montreal campus in of course, based on the theory of punishment that is December 1989. Sixteen children butchered at Dun- supposed to have no place in our system, to wit the blane, Scotland, in March 1996 by a pedophile. ir- retributive. Myra Hindley did terrible things to chil- ty-ve tourists eliminated at Port Arthur, Tasmania, dren; therefore, runs the instant but unreasoning an- in April 1996. Twelve wiped out in a brief killing swer, she must rot in jail for the rest of her life.’” spree at Cumbria, England, in June 2010. (Um, about Clive James, with children of his own—Levin had those post-Dunblane gun-conscation laws…) And no ospring, though two long-term concubines—re- latterly, of course, Anders Breivik’s spree in July 2011, sponded: leaving 77 corpses. e only reason Oslo lawyers dis- seminate the consummate lie of Breivik’s psychosis e whole article takes the same high tone of is the pitiable hope that a certied maniac might en- judicial detachment. He sounds like Solomon, dure slightly more inconvenience than the 21 years’ Cato the Elder and Oliver Wendell Holmes all taxpayer-funded lodging which forms the maximum rolled into one. Levin likes nothing better than possible chastisement for Norway’s sane. to hand down a ruling. But although it is prob- ably true that the majority of the public would he rest is almost silence. Hindley died, still a be furious if Myra Hindley were released, it is Tprisoner, in 2002. Twenty morticians refused to unlikely that their desire to keep her locked up cremate her before the 21st consented. Brady sur- has anything to do with revenge. ey just don’t vives to this hour, having improbably found—to want her to do it again. … is might seem an quote Hannah Arendt on Eichmann—some mem- elementary point to make, but when you are bers of the human race willing to share the earth dealing with Levin’s high-and-mighty treat- with him. Longford passed away in 2001. ree years ment of world politics you are forced to make later Levin succumbed to Alzheimer’s. Any syllable elementary points all the time. of Hindley-related remorse that either Longford or Levin voiced has not been documented. Successive British governments—Old Labour, Of the foregoing horrors Pamela Hansford Johnson

36 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 knew, thankfully, zero. Her death in 1981 occurred at bizarre novelty) on which the Moors Murderers a time when British public culture retained a certain had recorded Lesley-Ann Downey’s screams and civility. David Cameron’s England—that militaristic sobs for help while they tortured her to death. eir porno-despotism tempered by Sharia, where Fourth tape lasted 13 minutes. Estate “freedom” amounts in practice to the choice e other day, a middle-aged author abruptly between Julius Streicher and Jacques Hébert—re- recollected, from his distant boyhood in rural New mained, in 1981, unsuspected. Yet On Iniquity hints South Wales—and despite vigilant parental cen- that Johnson might have guessed, in some cloudy sorship—a tabloid announcement of that tape. On witching-hour, at what her grandchildren would ex- the very same day there came to him the news that perience. Batman’s Joker had arrived at a cinema in Colorado. One more incident must yet be mentioned. e Which even now (blessed be the name of the Lord) Brady-Hindley courtroom heard something that consoles its bereaved by sanctioning, for the Joker, scorched the most blasé correspondents’ souls. lethal injection. What was that something? A reel-to-reel tape (in- And suddenly, ashamedly, that author could no nately exotic: few Britons in 1966 owned tape-re- longer staunch his tears. He wrote, for better or for corders at all, and cassettes constituted a still more worse, the essay you have just read.

OLD and RIGHT

e live in an age that is frightened by the dicult of restoration. If one examines the strikingly very idea of certitude, and one of its really dierent signications given to “democracy” and disturbing outgrowths is the easy divorce “freedom,” he is forced to realize how far we are from Wbetween words and the conceptual realities which that basis of understanding which is prerequisite to our right minds know they must stand for. is takes the healing of the world. To one group “democracy” the form especially of looseness and exaggeration. means access to the franchise; to another it means Now exaggeration, it should be realized, is essentially economic equality administered under a dictator- a form of ignorance, one that allows and seems to ship. Or consider the number of contradictory things justify distortion. And the psychopathic mind of war which have been denominated Fascist. What has hap- has greatly increased our addiction to this vice; in- pened to the one world of meaning? It has been lost deed, during the struggle distortion became virtually for want of deners. Teachers of the present order the technique of reporting. have not enough courage to be deners; lawmakers A course of action, when taken by our side, was have not enough insight. “courageous”; when taken by the enemy, “desperate”; e truth is that our surrender to irrationality a policy instituted by our command was “stern,” or has been in progress for a long time, and we wit- in a delectable euphemism which became popular, ness today a breakdown of communication not only “rugged”; the same thing instituted by the enemy was between nations and groups within nations but also “brutal.” Seizure by military might when commit- between successive generations. Sir Richard Living- ted by the enemy was “conquest”; but, if committed stone has pointed out that the people of the Western by our side, it was “occupation” or even “liberation,” world “do not know the meaning of certain words, so transposed did the poles become. Unity of spirit which had been assumed to belong to the perma- among our people was a sign of virtue; among the nent vocabulary of mankind, certain ideals which, enemy it was proof of incorrigible devotion to crime. if ignored in practice under pressure, were accepted e list could be prolonged indenitely. And such al- in theory. e least important of these is Freedom. ways happens when men surrender to irrationality. It e most important are Justice, Mercy, and Truth. fell upon the Hellenic cities during the Peloponnesian In the past we have slurred this revolution over as a War. ucydides tells us in a vivid sentence that “the dierence in ‘ideology.’ In fact it is the greatest trans- ordinary acceptation of words in their relation to formation that the world has undergone, since, in things was changed as men thought t.” Palestine or Greece, these ideals came into being or Our situation would be suciently deplorable if at least were recognized as principles of conduct.” such deterioration were conned to times of military conict; but evidence piles up that fundamental in- —Richard M. Weaver, tellectual integrity, once compromised, is slow and Ideas Have Consequences, 1948

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 37 Culture

e Conservative Kerouac Beat novelist, Catholic, Republican—do you know Jack?

by ROBERT DEAN LURIE

Someone’s gonna give you wings He did not desire to change America; he intended to You’ll think it’s what you need document, celebrate, and, in the end, eulogize it. You’ll y, man, you’ll be so high Jean-Louis (“Jack”) Kerouac was born in Lowell, But your history acts as your gravity Massachusetts in 1922, the son of French Canadian —Joseph Arthur immigrants. His father Leo, like so many immigrants, ercely loved his adopted country. is belief in the or someone who documented just about ev- land of opportunity remained with him even aer his ery moment of his life in torrents of breath- Catholicism lapsed in the wake of devastating busi- less, “spontaneous” prose, Jack Kerouac—the ness failures. Jack’s conservatism, like his father’s, was late author of On the Road, Big Sur, and other the conservatism of the old ways: of hard work and Fstream-of-consciousness, hyper-autobiographical even harder drink, of big blue-collar families passing novels—remains surprisingly up for grabs ideologi- down oral traditions. Above all, it was a conservatism cally. e hippies claim him as an inspiration, as do of the natural world: of the large, solid, protective many western Buddhists; a biography called Subter- trees, of the perpetually roaring Merrimack and Con- ranean Kerouac attempts to out him as a homosexual; cord Rivers—all combining to cast that crucial illusion a new lm adaptation of On e Road starring Kris- of unchangingness that, in the best of circumstances, ten Stewart opens the door for the Twilight genera- cradles and forties a soul for its journey beyond tion; and I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t more childhood. Late in life Kerouac would tell William F. than a few Occupy Wall Street protestors hunkering Buckley Jr., “My father and my mother and my sis- down in their tents with battered copies of Kerouac’s ter and I have always voted Republican, always.” is e Dharma Bums stued in their jacket pockets. had nothing to do with party planks and everything to Each of these groups is absolutely sincere in its self- do with family identity, with holding onto something, identication with Kerouac. Each sees its concerns no matter how arbitrary, in an otherwise disorienting and agendas reected in his roiling ocean of language. world. We’re Kerouacs and this is what we do. Yet this bopping, scatting, mystical jazz poet who al- Hand in hand with the politics was the pre-Vati- most singlehandedly willed the 1960s counterculture can II Catholicism that saturated Lowell’s tight-knit into being was himself a political conservative and a French Canadian community. Gabrielle Kerouac— Catholic. Jack’s mother—matched Leo’s civic pride with a fer- How can this be? vent religious faith, which if anything intensied aer e key to understanding Kerouac lies in a close ex- the death of Jack’s older brother Gerard, whom Jack amination of his roots, for it was in the small French would later eulogize as an unheralded saint in the Canadian community of Lowell, Massachusetts that novel Visions of Gerard. is was that majestic, fear- the future author was inculcated with the values that some Catholicism that now exists purely in the realm would carry him through his life. He did indeed go of imagination for most modern practitioners: the on to lead a wild existence lled with alcohol, drugs, Catholicism of the Latin mass, of all-powerful priests, and perpetual shilessness; he ed from monogamy of God as the unknowable, awe-inspiring other. To as from leprosy. Yet one cannot grasp the soul of Ker- ouac unless one understands his fundamentally tradi- Robert Dean Lurie is the author of No Certainty Attached: Steve tional core. He never wished to foment a revolution. Kilbey and e Church.

38 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 New England’s mostly impoverished French Canadians, the Catholic Church served as de facto govern- ment, educator, extended family, and cultural arbitrator. Perhaps as a result of this spiritual immersion, both Ga- brielle and Jack saw signs of God and angels everywhere. “ e Catholic Church is a weird church,” Jack later wrote to his friend and muse Neal Cassady. “Much mys- ticism is sown broadspread from its ritual mysteries till it extends into the very lives of its constituents and paris- honers.” It is impossible to overstate the inuence of Catholicism on all of Kerouac’s work, save perhaps those books written during his Buddhist pe- riod in the mid-to-late 1950s. e in- uence is so obvious and so pervasive, in fact, that Kerouac became justi- ably incensed when Ted Berrigan of the Paris Review asked during a 1968 interview, “How come you never write about Jesus?” Kerouac’s reply: “I’ve never written about Jesus? ... You’re an insane phony … All I write about is Jesus.” Berrigan ought to have known better. But casual of “ e Beat Generation,” the last great American lit- readers can be forgiven for failing to grasp the reli- erary movement. Much drinking, drugging, and for- giosity in Kerouac’s writing. Aer all, his version of nicating ensues over the course of Road’s 320 pages. Christianity esteemed visions and personal experi- Not surprisingly, these prurient elements did not ence over doctrine and dogma. He felt a special an- endear Kerouac to the mainstream right of his time, ity for such oeat souls as St. Francis of Assissi, St. which irked the young author, as he felt no anity for erese of Liseux (“ e Little Flower”), and omas the le. Merton, all of whom to some extent de-emphasized He never saw the impartial documenting of his legalism in favor of a direct union with God. Beyond own reckless youth as license for others to drop out the connes of the Catholic Church, the inuence of of society. If anything, the downbeat ending of Road, the painter and ecstatic poet William Blake loomed in which Kerouac predicts the frantic, kicks-obsessed just as large and perhaps fueled Kerouac’s disregard “Dean Moriarty’s” (Neal Cassady’s) eventual slide for what he perceived to be restrictive sexual mores. into oblivion, as well as his uninching depiction of Of course, Kerouac is best known not for his lovely his own nervous breakdown from alcoholic excess in Lowell-centered books but for On the Road, a breath- the follow-up novel Big Sur, make quite clear the in- less jazz-inected torrent of words initially typed out evitable outcome of a “life on the road.” But Kerouac onto a “scroll”—actually hundreds of pages of tracing should not have been surprised by the right’s reaction; paper taped together and fed continuously through this was, aer all, not conservative writing. e books his typewriter—during one epic coee-fuelled writ- did not follow the established standards of the novel ing session in 1951 and ultimately published in 1957. and, in reality, were not novels at all but something e book, now considered an American classic, else entirely: “confessional picaresque memoirs” (a documents the author’s real-life adventures traipsing phrase coined by Beat scholar Ann Charters), with around the country in his mid-20s with friends Allen the names of the participants changed to avoid accu- Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady sations of libel. e conservative critics, missing the who, together with Kerouac, would comprise the core deeper themes of loneliness and the yearning for God,

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 39 Culture

lambasted Kerouac for encouraging delinquency, sensitive soul, Kerouac was woefully ill-equipped for while critics of all stripes complained about his slop- the spotlight and had very little tolerance for criticism. piness and occasional incoherece. Alcohol bolstered his condence to speak in public ese commentators had a point: as novels, the and partially anaesthetized the sting of the many bad books could be frustratingly uneven. Readers oen reviews his books received. Yet it was not enough. His found themselves bewildered by the sheer number of friends watched helplessly as he barrelled onward to characters driing in and out of the pages, unable to his demise, spurred ever faster by the hostile media. keep track of all the “mad ones” that Kerouac strained As the apolitical Beat Generation metastasized into to include in his storylines. Why, the critics wondered, the heavily politicized hippie movement, Kerouac’s couldn’t Kerouac simply create a few composite char- despondency and sense of alienation deepened. “I acters embodying his friends’ most noteworthy traits? made myself famous by writing ‘songs’ and lyrics By any standard such an authorial modication would about the beauty of the things I did and ugliness too,” have vastly improved the readability of the books. he said in a heated exchange with polical activist Ed But that was not Kerouac’s aim. He wished to cap- Sanders on Buckley’s “Firing Line.” “You made your- ture the truth, his truth, as best and as purely as he self famous by saying, ‘Down with this, down with could. And he wanted to do this spontaneously, like a that, throw eggs at this, throw eggs at that!’ Take it jazz musician wailing on his horn during an onstage with you. I cannot use your refuse; you may have it improvisation. Revision, in Kerouac’s eyes, would back.” only dilute the purity of the original performance. He allowed political dierences to play a part in the Furthermore, since he viewed his writing vocation as demise of one of his greatest friendships. “I don’t even rooted in the Sacrament of Reconciliation: revision particularly wanta see [Allen Ginsberg],” he wrote his was tantamount to lying in the confessional. It might friend John Clellon Holmes in 1963, “what with his have have resulted in better novels, but they would pro-Castro bullshit and his long white robe Messiah no longer have been “spontaneous” and “true” novels. shot. ... He and all those bohemian beatniks round And it is the spontaneity and the emotional truth of him have nothing NEW to tell me.” is was a one- these books, more than anything else, that continue to sided breakup. Ginsberg, by then a famous poet, re- speak to readers. mained intensely loyal to Kerouac even aer Kerouac It’s easy to approach On the Road with cynicism: started publicly denouncing his old friend and hurl- an almost rapturous naïveté, or idiocy, permeates ing anti-Semitic insults in his direction. Ginsberg was throughout. Yet this wide-eyed quality is actually one wise enough, and big-hearted enough, to understand of the book’s great strengths; it evokes the exhilara- that Kerouac’s ailing out at him was a symptom of tion of being young, of leaving home for the rst time larger issues. and venturing out into the wider world with an open Kerouac’s sad nal years were spent in an increas- heart and credulous mind. Kerouac had the beguiling ingly frantic quest to nd a true home for himself and ability to nd the admirable and holy in every soul he his mother. On an almost yearly basis he oscillated encountered on his travels, just as he had seen angels between Florida and New England, always following and the Holy Mother emerging from every corner in the same cycle: purchase a home, move in, grow rest- Lowell. And who has not experienced the sweet rush less, sell it; purchase another one, move in, sell it; and of moral transgression or the anguish of having to ac- so on. Tragically, even when he returned to Lowell for cept the consequences of such behavior? On the Road a brief time, he found that the nurturing community captures those emotions expertly. he had written about so fondly for so many years now Kerouac’s self-destructive nature, which led to his existed only in his books. He yearned, as the ctional premature death from alcohol-induced hemhorrag- Odysseus had during his wanderings, for the familiar, ing, is perhaps the most curious aspect of his life story. for something real and stable in his life. His mistake Why would a man who worked so relentlessly at his lay in looking for these things outside of him. Nev- cra, who endured 15 years of obscurity and rejection ertheless, that desire is a good, true, worthy desire, before his triumphant breakthrough, and who seemed and it permeates all of Jack Kerouac’s writing. It is the to derive blissed-out enjoyment from even the most reason why the Beat movement could not last. Allen mundane aspects of life methodically destroy every- Ginsberg, the poet visionary, pined for utopia and thing he had worked so hard to attain? spiritual revolution. William S. Burroughs, the outlaw e answer may lie in a combination of near-crip- libertarian, pined for anarchy and gay liberation. Neal pling shyness and the very emotional openness that Cassady, the exiled cowboy, pined for girls and cars. gave his writing such warmth. A fundamentally quiet, Jack Kerouac, the mystic, pined for God and home.

40 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 Home Plate BILL KAUFFMAN

My Pen Pal Gore Vidal

ow he belongs to the Ages… promised to make General Smedley when they do boy things. Fortunately, Well, why not? Edwin “War is a Racket” Butler his Secretary we’ll never again win or, perhaps, ght Stanton’s grandiloquent of (Anti?) War. Cue the assassin’s bullet. a war based on the bonded squad. Girls sendo for the martyred Vidal was an aristocratic populist. It with lasers in outer space will prevail.” NLincoln applies to Gore Vidal, author of was as if Henry Adams had fallen for He rather liked the current laser- the best ctive treatment our 16th presi- William Jennings Bryan. pointing schoolmarm, Hillary Clin- dent is ever likely to get. Plus it would “As always, the unconsulted people ton. When she visited him in Italy, he have appealed to Gore’s fair vanity. are cowardly isolationists,” mused found her “unexpectedly droll and Gore Vidal’s favorite subject was his Gore as yet another of our endless wars (expectedly) quick.” Curiously, the late country. From Aaron Burr and Daniel began. Le-right rumblings against Carl Oglesby, who headed SDS when Shays to Eugene V. Debs, America and the empire heartened him: “ey are it was healthily rebellious—before the its protagonists were his. is land was terried that anti-imperials will get Weathermen blew it apart—also insist- made for you and me? Of course it was. together and revive America First, no ed to me that Hillary, who had admired So many healthy springs once fed bad rallying cry.” Carl in her Goldwater-girl-goes-le our politics: they were rural, populist, I tried to get him to run in the 1992 phase, was sharp. In public, at least, she patrician, pacist, libertarian, anti- Democratic presidential primaries, but hides her little light well. monopolist, prairie socialist, Main he demurred: “If I had the energy, I’d Another name from the ’90s, Newt Street isolationist. Gore Vidal was ex- make Huey Long seem like Robt Al- Gingrich, has praised Vidal’s Lincoln, plicator, dramatist, and even avatar of phonso Ta—But too much sand’s and Vidal had a so spot for Newt, too. these American currents—which have slipped through the hourglass.” In early 1995 he predicted that “Newt no place in the dreary humorless so- While he saw the value of devolving will self-destruct but he’s the blueprint cial-democratic textbook history that power from the capital to the provinc- for the 1st (post-Lincoln) dictator—New bores our children and su ocates our es, Vidal maintained an independent Age, spacey, Fun.” Beats Dick Cheney. discourse. liberal’s skepticism of my decentral- Gore’s last line in his last letter to me, On a Sunday aernoon of torrential ism, asserting that “if a state, exercis- aer predicting that “the approaching rains and crashing thunder (sound ef- ing its rights, should wish to execute all economic collapse” will “stop the wars,” fects supplied by the Almighty in wink- spinsters over 40 (my father’s dream!), was “I’m always an optimist!” ing tribute to the anti-theist Vidal), I then a Power Higher”—presumably Maybe not, but he was always a sat down and read through the sheaf of a Bill of Rights-enforcing federal gov- patriot. With slashing wit and Ad- letters constituting our long epistolary ernment—“must protect the minority amsian erudition, Gore Vidal, in his friendship. from the majority.” essays and historical novels, lit roads Each missive arrived in a pale blue He enjoyed the sound of my home- not taken, the America we might have envelope bearing the return address town, and so his letters are lled with had. Not a bloated bullying arrogant “La Rondinaia/Ravello (Salerno)/Italy.” exhortations to “Preserve Batavia” and superpower but a modest republic His tone was oen light self-mockery, “Hail Batavia.” A decade ago he told me whose citizens—not subjects—culti- unless the subject was, say, Arthur he was preparing to write a “counter- vate their own gardens. Schlesinger Jr. Amused by Schlesinger’s book” to my Dispatches from the Muck- at’s what Gore Vidal wanted. surprisingly evenhanded review of one dog Gazette, but when one hits one’s at’s why the empire-lovers hated of my books, Vidal wrote, “As no band- octage, energy ags. him. Yet a century hence, Americans wagon is complete without ‘there is this Vidal’s sense of place encompassed will still read, with pleasure and prof- pendulum’ clinging to its buckboard, not only Ravello but his native Hud- it, for laughs and for edication, Burr you seem to have launched a jugger- son Valley, especially his place of birth, and Lincoln and Screening History and naut out of Batavia.” Not exactly. West Point, of which he wrote: “what those magisterial essays. Gore’s “favorite US pol (in my life- I nd intolerable is the presence of So long, Gore. I’ll be reading you in time, that is)” was Huey Long, who had women. Boys don’t like girls around all the old familiar places.

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 41 Arts&Letters

Tyranny of Merit commentators, ey’ve been getting the elite oen have little idea what’s go- their way on Wall Street and in Wash- ing on in less rareed settings. by SAMUEL W. GOLDMAN ington for years, with disastrous results One consequence, Hayes argues, is for the country. that elites have trouble making good Twilight of the Elites: America A er MSNBC host Chris Hayes is no con- decisions. Ignorant of the challenges Meritocracy, Christopher Hayes, servative. But he agrees that America that the poor and middle-class face Crown Publishers, 292 pages is governed by a ruling class that has and separated from the consequences proved unworthy of its power. Accord- of their actions, elites are susceptible lite” wasn’t always a dirty ing to Hayes, the failures of the last de- to making policies that seem reason- word. Before the 19th centu- cade created a deep crisis of authority. able, but which on-the-ground experi- “ ry, the term described some- We counted on elites to do the right ence would expose as ineectual. Take oneE chosen for o ce. Because this thing on our behalf. e Iraq War, ste- the evacuation of New Orleans before typically occurred in the church, the roid scandal in baseball, abuse cover- Hurricane Katrina. It didn’t succeed word possessed distinctly ecclesiasti- up in the Catholic Church, incompe- because many New Orleanians had cal connotations. e pre-Victorians tent response to Hurricane Katrina, nowhere to go, no money to get there, transformed a word imputing reli- and, above all, nancial crisis showed and no cars in which to escape—facts gious status to individual persons into that they didn’t know enough or care the mayor and governor should have a collective noun with class implica- enough to do so. known. tions. By the 1830s, “elite” referred to Twilight of the Elites advances two e distance of elites can also have explanations for these moral consequences. When policies failures. e rst em- fail, isolated elites are more likely to Equality of opportunity tends to be phasizes elite igno- blame their subjects than themselves. rance. People with a Politicians blamed poor New Orlea- subverted by the inequality of outcome great deal of money or nians for being too lazy to evacuate. that meritocracy legitimizes. power aren’t like the Similarly, the sellers of toxic securities rest of us. eir sched- blamed their customers for being too ules, pastimes, and even stupid to appreciate the risks that they transportation are dif- were accepting. In an especially revolt- the highest ranks of the nobility. ferent to those of ordinary people. is ing example, members of the national- ose meanings are no longer pri- isn’t always because their tastes are dis- security establishment blamed Iraqis mary. As invoked by followers of the tinctive, at least initially. It’s oen a job for failing to appreciate invasion and Tea Party movement, for example, requirement. occupation. For elites like these, it’s al- “elite” means essentially a snob. Not, In addition to their unusual lifestyles, ways someone else’s fault. however, a snob of the old, aristocratic elite types don’t spend much time with All elites risk falling out of touch, breed. In this context, “elite” means averages Joes. At work, they’re sur- and always have. As Hayes notes, the men and women who think degrees rounded by subordinates. At home, Declaration of Independence argues from famous universities mean they they live in literally or metaphorically that eective authority must be ac- know better than their fellow citizens. gated communities and socialize with countable authority. e other aspect Elites like these don’t just look down people similar to themselves. Again, of Hayes’s theory of elite failure is more on regular folks from provincial perch- there’s nothing sinister about this. Be- contemporary, though. e problem of es in Boston or Palo Alto. Accord- cause of their distance from the rest of ignorance, he argues, is exacerbated by ing to stump speeches, blogs, and TV the population, however, members of the principle of selection used by our

42 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 most inuential institutions. Accord- ing to Hayes, modern American elites are distinctive because they acquire status by means of ostensibly objective criteria. As a result, they think they de- serve their wealth and power. e ideal of meritocracy has deep roots in this country. Jeerson dreamed of a “natural aristocracy.” But the mod- ern meritocracy dates only to the 1930s, when Harvard President James Bryant Conant directed his admissions sta to nd a measure of ability to supplement the old boys’ network. ey settled on the exam we know as the SAT. In the decades following World War II, standardized testing replaced the gentleman’s agreements that had gov- erned the Ivy League. First Harvard, then Yale and the rest lled with the sons and eventually daughters of Jews, blue-collar workers, and other groups whose numbers had previously been limited. Aer graduation, these newly pedi- greed men and women ocked to New Michael Hogue York and Washington. ere, they took jobs once lled by products of New England boarding schools. One example is Lloyd Blankfein, the Bronx- born son of a Jewish postal clerk, who followed Harvard College and Harvard Law School with a job at a white-shoe law rm, which he le to join Gold- man Sachs. Hayes applauds the replacement of the WASP ascendancy with a more di- verse cohort. e core of his book, how- ever, argues that the principle on which short, according to Hayes, “those who School in New York City. Admission they rose inevitably undermines itself. are able to climb up the ladder will nd to Hunter is based on the results of a e argument begins with the ob- ways to pull it up aer them, or to se- single test oered to 6th graders who servation that meritocracy does not lectively lower it down to allow their did well on statewide tests in 5th grade. oppose unequal social and economic friends, allies and kin to scramble up. Because there are no preferences for outcomes. Rather, it tries to justify in- In other words: ‘whoever says meritoc- legacies, donors, members of minority equality by oering greater rewards to racy says oligarchy.’” groups, or athletes, admission to Hunt- the talented and hardworking. With a nod to the early 20th-century er seems like a pure application of the e problem is that the eort pre- German sociologist Robert Michels, meritocratic principle. sumes that everyone has the same Hayes calls this paradox the “Iron Law It doesn’t work that way. Although its chance to compete under the same of Meritocracy.” student body once reected the racial rules. at may be true at the outset. In the most personal section of the and economic proportions of the city, But equality of opportunity tends to book, he describes the way the Iron Hunter has grown increasingly wealthy be subverted by the inequality of out- Law of Meritocracy operates at his and white. Why? In Hayes’s view, rich come that meritocracy legitimizes. In alma mater, Hunter College High parents have discovered strategies to

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 43 Arts&Letters game the system. By buying cognitive causes. Nevertheless, the Iron Law of per-middle class. As recently as a de- enhancements like foreign travel, mu- Meritocracy elucid why our elites take cade ago, people with graduate degrees sic lessons, tutoring in di cult sub- the form they do and how they fell so and six-gure incomes could think of jects, and outright test prep, these par- out touch with reality. In Hayes’s ac- themselves as prospective members ents give their kids a substantial leg up. count, the modern elite is caught in a of the elite. While the income and in- ese children are better prepared feedback loop that makes it less and uence of the very rich has zoomed than rivals from poor or negligent less open and more and more isolated ahead, however, the stagnation of the families. But it’s hard to conclude from the rest of the country. economy has le the moderately well- that they’ve earned their advantage. What’s to be done? One answer is o at risk of proletarianization. ey’re clearly bright and hardwork- to rescue meritocracy by providing Despite their ideological dierences, ing. Yet they’ve also been fortunate to the poor and middle class with the re- both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall have parents who know what it takes to sources to compete. A popular strategy Street draw support from this class. It’s climb the ladder and can pay for those focuses on education reform. If schools just that the Tea Party appeals to the advantages. e ideal of meritocracy were better, the argument goes, poor parents, while Occupy mobilizes the obscures the accidents of birth. From kids could compete on an equal footing kids. Hunter to Harvard to Goldman Sachs, for entry into the elite. e attempt to Could a radicalized upper-middle the meritocrats proceed through life rescue meritocracy by xing education class turn from the bulwark of meri- convinced that they owe their rise ex- has become a bipartisan consensus, tocracy into its opponent? at seems clusively to their own eorts. reected in Bush’s “No Child Le Be- unlikely for three reasons. is sense of entitlement is one rea- hind” and Obama’s “Race to the Top.” First, the polls Hayes mentions do son meritocratic elites are particularly Hayes rejects this option. e defect not document popular support for re- susceptible to pathologies of distance. of meritocracy, in his view, is not the distribution. ey indicate that Ameri- ey don’t only have distinctive life- inequality of opportunity that it con- cans want to tax the rich to cover the styles. ey’re convinced that they re- ceals, but the inequality of outcome that decit. Americans like their current ally deserve their privileges. it celebrates. In other words, the prob- entitlements and want to keep them. lem is not that the son But there’s no evidence that they en- of a postal clerk has less dorse the egalitarian agenda Hayes has Could a radicalized upper-middle class chance to become a Wall in mind. Street titan than he used Second, there’s a tension between turn from the bulwark of meritocracy to. It’s that the rewards of this agenda and the social liberalism into its opponent? a career on Wall Street to which Hayes is committed. Social have become so dis- scientists have found that we’re will- proportionate to the re- ing to share resources with others like Of course, most elites have fan- wards of the traditional professions, let ourselves. We’re reluctant, however, to cied themselves a superior breed. e alone those available to a humble civil make sacrices for people we consider way meritocracy obscures the role of servant. dierent or objectionable. chance, however, encourages the mod- Hayes’s prescription, then, is simple: In a section on the “two eras of ern elite to think of themselves as un- we should raise taxes on the rich and equality,” Hayes urges us to adopt the usually deserving individuals rather increase redistributive payments to the solidaristic norms that characterize rel- than members of a ruling class with poor and middle class. atively homogeneous societies, includ- responsibilities to the rest of society. Raising taxes is surprisingly popular, ing the United States circa 1960. At the Finally, Hayes argues, the selection at least in principle. According to one same time, he praises the diversity and of the elite for academic accomplish- poll Hayes cites, 81 percent of Ameri- freedom of contemporary America. ment leads to a cult of intelligence that cans favor a surtax on incomes over $1 ese things don’t go together, in prac- discounts the practical wisdom neces- million a year. Nevertheless, these seem tice if not in principle. sary for good decision-making. Re- unlikely to be enacted. Among other e tax regime of 50 years ago was member Enron? ey were the smart- reasons, the legislators who would have legitimatized by a broad consensus est guys in the room. to approve them are either drawn from about the proper uses of shared pros- Hayes oversells his argument as a or depend on the same class that the perity. e more libertarian views unied explanation of the “fail decade.” taxes target. dominant today are also relatively Although it elucidates some aspects of Yet Hayes is optimistic about the consistent across economic and social the Iraq War, Katrina debacle, and - prospects for egalitarian reform. He realms. Hayes thinks that we can com- nancial crisis, these disasters had other places his hopes on a radicalized up- bine the economic virtues of the for-

44 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 mer era with the social virtues of latter. these comparisons. theoretical concerns was largely con- at’s wishful thinking. e contrasts drawn between the ned to the concrete issues within his I mentioned at the beginning of this two are all too familiar: Jeerson artic- immediate political universe. Given review that Hayes is not a conservative. ulated the American creed in the Dec- this orientation, he did not embrace at’s no defect in itself. But this book laration, he was a real republican who or espouse any ideology, nor was he would have been improved, in the end, reposed faith in the people, whereas wont to engage in abstract political by engaging with the conservative tra- Hamilton, out of step with the tem- thought. And, although he was inu- dition. per of the times and ever fearful of the enced by various political theorists, e central insight of this tradition masses, favored a strong central gov- Hume and Montesquieu being among is that there is no society without a gov- ernment with an aristocratic, if not the most notable, Federici concludes erning class. Whether they’re selected monarchical, character. Even many that he does not t comfortably into by birth, intelligence, or some other conservatives, especially those with any school of political thought. factor, some people inevitably exer- libertarian leanings, nd Jeerson to e character and foundations of cise power over others. Hayes mounts their liking because a powerful critique of the meritocratic they associate him elite that has overseen one of the most with unalienable in- disastrous periods of recent history. He dividual rights, a fed- Hamilton did not embrace or espouse lapses into utopianism, however, when eral government with he suggests that we can do without limited powers, and any ideology, nor was he wont to elites altogether. Like the poor, elites a decentralized po- engage in abstract political thought. will always be with us. As the word’s litical system. From original meaning suggests, the ques- their vantage point, tion is how they ought to be chosen. Hamilton fares very poorly. Samuel Goldman is a postdoctoral fellow at e signicance of Federici’s work, Hamilton’s political thought are ap- Prince ton University and a contributor to in my estimation, can best be under- parent, however, from Federici’s re- TAC’s State of the Union blog. stood in this context because it pres- vealing treatment of Hamilton’s imag- ents persuasive evidence that Ham- ination, in which Federici employs ilton may well deserve a place in the Irving Babbitt’s distinction between pantheon of conservative statesmen, the “idyllic imagination,” evidenced while it simultaneously undermines in the thought and approaches of both Hamilton Was Right Jeerson’s credentials for any such Rousseau and Bacon, and the “moral by GEORG E W. CAREY status. is is not to say that these are imagination” that fashioned Burke’s Federici’s conclusions, although he thinking. Federici oers compelling e Political Philosophy of Alexander unquestionably believes that a major reasons to believe that Hamilton’s Hamilton, Michael P. Federici, e reappraisal of Hamilton’s legacy is in imagination was akin to Burke’s. John Hopkins University Press, 291 order. Rather, they are warranted sim- Hamilton, for instance, rejected pages ply in light of the totality of Hamilton’s “the idea that human nature is mal- political thought that he surveys. leable,” which, in turn, contributed oward the end of his work, As Federici acknowledges at vari- mightily to his realism “about the Michael Federici writes, “It is ous points, Hamilton was not a sys- possibilities of politics.” He “was not rare to nd books or articles temic and comprehensive political enamored with the wisdom of the Ton Hamilton that do not in some way theorist. Such is true of virtually all the people or with plebiscitary forms of make comparisons between him and Founding Fathers, though to a greater democracy” and, along with Marshall omas Jeerson.” is is under- extent with Hamilton than, say, John and Washington, he saw an impera- standable given that their dierenc- Adams or James Wilson. is means, tive need for “constitutional checks es, far from being just theoretical or as Federici puts it, that oen “his and restraints” in order to control the temporal, have played and continue political ideas have to be teased out “will to power.” to play a role in determining the di- his writings and one has to be aware Yet his “moral and political real- rection of our economic and politi- that Hamilton was oen writing not ism ... the product of an imagination cal development. What is somewhat to explicate philosophical truth but imbued with Christian and Classical remarkable, however, is that Hamil- to accomplish a political objective.” realism regarding the human condi- ton usually does not fare very well in erefore, the range of Hamilton’s tion” clearly did not prevent him from

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 45 Arts&Letters advocating change. Indeed, Federici still very much with us today. Also diverse and productive economy that remarks, “few Americans did more included is analysis of Hamilton’s could serve the nation’s economic and than Hamilton to change the nation’s “Camillus” essays defending the con- military needs.” political and economic institutions.” troversial and unpopular Jay Treaty In many ways, Federici’s discus- But lasting and benecial change or that failed to secure any substantial sion of Hamilton’s theory of constitu- reform for Hamilton, as for Burke, concessions from Great Britain over tionalism and his commentary on the could only take place “within the pa- its longstanding violations of the Paris Constitution, gleaned primarily from rameters of a structure of reality ... de- Treaty. the Federalist essays, is the most in- ned by historical experience.” Still another chapter centers on teresting. Hamilton believed that civic As Federici shows, these views and those economic and nance policies virtue—i.e., subordinating personal assumptions, among others, serve to that constitute Hamilton’s most en- self-interest for the common good— highlight the basic dier- was essential for a just and ences between Hamilton’s enduring constitutional re- views and those of Jef- public. At the same time, ferson (the latter deriving given his views on human from Jeerson’s “idyllic motivation, he was con- imagination”). ese dif- vinced that this virtue could ferences, not surprisingly, never prevail in the politi- manifest themselves in cal arena for any length of their respective attitudes time without the benets of toward the Jacobins and a natural aristocracy. Con- the French Revolution. sequently, with Madison he Federici points out that perceived the need for “t Jeerson, even aer the characters” in representa- culmination the French tive institutions; characters Revolution, could write, who, always mindful of jus- “e liberty of the whole tice and the common good, earth was depending on would “rene and enlarge the issue of the context, the public views.” He also and was ever such a prize shared with Madison the won with so little inno- belief that provision for cent blood?” Hamilton, delay and deliberation was on the other hand, con- essential to allow for pas- demned the revolution sions to cool and, as he put along the same lines as it, provide “time for more Burke and concluded that cool and sedate reection.” for “a deluded, an abused, Federici makes clear, a plundered, a scourged however, that in impor- and oppressed people,” the Alexander Hamilton tant ways, Hamilton’s Revolution has le “not positions on restraining even the shadow of liberty.” either oppressive majori- Federici’s concerns go well beyond during legacy: his “Report on Manu- ties or government are at odds with comparing the political thought of factures,” his success in pushing for views that seemingly prevail today. In Hamilton and Jeerson. A chapter is the national assumption of state war e Federalist, for example, he argues devoted to Hamilton’s positions on debts, and, among others, the creation against a bill of rights on various ten- various and wide-ranging foreign- of a national bank. In both the eco- able grounds that belie the charge that policy issues, including Washing- nomic and foreign-policy elds, his he was opponent of self-government. ton’s neutrality proclamation, which policies were designed with an eye to e “primary signication” of rights, prompted the Hamilton’s “Pacicus” the security and independence of the he observes, has been the grant of essays and Madison’s response as new nation: on the foreign-policy side rights by kings to the people. As such, “Helvidius”—an exchange that raised this amounted to “protecting the ship he concludes, they have no place in fundamental issues over the direction of state from ideological and imperial the proposed Constitution because and control of foreign policy that are powers”; on the domestic, “building a the “people surrender nothing ... and

46 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 ... retain everything.” He emphasizes reactions to the Virginia and Ken- Baiting the Dragon the Preamble’s “We the people” by way tucky Resolutions and, inter alia, the of a rming that the Constitution’s character of his nationalism. He was by S C OTT GALUPO consensual foundation “is a better not, Federici notes, entirely consistent recognition of rights” than the “apho- in his treatment of issues, tending, for ey Eat Puppies, Don’t ey?, risms” found in the various states’ bills example, “to overestimate the possi- Christopher Buckley, Twelve, 335 pages of right. bilities of politics when power rested In discussing the push to elevate in his hands.” But for Federici, Ham- ith war in Iraq o cially “liberty of the press” to the status of a ilton’s “central weakness” is his failure ended and the one in Af- constitutional right, Hamilton points to recognize “what Tocqueville and ghanistan slowly and pain- to other considerations, namely, the others would later identify as the rich Wfully winding down, lonely eyes are di culties in clearly dening it and American tradition of state and local turning toward the Islamic Republic its potential conict with the legiti- communities, including the place of of Iran. But if the neocon-truckling mate powers of government such a sectional and private groups and asso- Mitt Romney campaign is any indica- taxation. Signicantly, he adds, the ciations in the aairs of the country.” tion, there’s an audience for some old- observance of any such right depends, For this reason, he continues, “Hamil- fashioned saber-rattling at big second- in the last analysis, on “public opinion ton overestimated the extent to which world countries like Russia and China. ... the general spirit of the people and government can control or manage e comic novelist Christopher of the government.” (e validity of the lives of people and communities it Buckley, presciently as ever, is here, this proposition is evident in today’s governs.” cackling wickedly, to greet that audi- America.) Yet it must be said that Hamilton, ence before it even realizes its lamen- Finally, he maintains, stipulat- having experienced rst hand the table existence. ing “things shall not be done, which mismanagement and failures of gov- ey Eat Puppies, Don’t ey? imag- there is no power to do” oers “a co- ernment during and aer the Revo- ines a fantastical military-industrial lourable pretext” for contending that lutionary War, and whose historical plot to foment tensions with China the national government possesses knowledge of the ancient confedera- and thereby induce Congress to fund plenary, not simply delegated, pow- cies gave him reason to fear that the a fancy new toy for the Pentagon. e ers. Nor, as increasingly seems to be states might undermine the Union, principals of the plot are Walter “Bird” the case today, did Hamilton look had good reason for advocating a McIntyre, Beltway lobbyist for a big upon the Supreme Court as the last strong national government. As well, aerospace defense contractor, and An- resort in blocking oppressive mea- we should not forget that Hamilton gel Templeton, the sultry “directrix” sures, correcting for political fail- never espoused the kind of extensive, of an “Oreo-Con” think tank called ures, or addressing minority con- intrusive governmental powers that the Institute for Continuing Conict. cerns. He is adamant that the Court most of the American people today, What, you ask, is an Oreo-Con? It is, should exercise only “judgment” and including many “conservatives,” have Buckley writes, a conservative who is not “will,” the prerogative of the leg- willingly accepted. “hard on the outside, so on the inside.” islature. Beyond this, he holds that Above all, our estimate of Hamilton It’s a wry code for neoconservative, only in the event of an “irreconcil- must also take in account the role he with soness understood as the ca- able dierence” between a law and played in our Founding. In Federici’s sual disregard for the expanding scope the Constitution can the Court le- estimation, “No American did more of domestic policy under the George gitimately nullify the law; a test so to bring it [the Constitution] into ex- W. Bush administration: “Oreo-Cons stringent that the Court would have istence, ensure its ratication, and nur- didn’t really care what presidents and occasion perhaps once or twice in a ture in its infancy.” is estimate may the Congress did so long as they kept century to invalidate laws. In sum, as be generous, but if it is, not by much. the Pentagon and the armed forces well Federici rightly comments, Hamil- We owe thanks, then, to Federi- funded and engaged abroad, preferably ton’s thoughts on judicial power bear ci for this comprehensive and very in hand-to-hand combat.” scarcely any relationship to modern thoughtful work that should go a long Bird McIntyre should be familiar to theories of judicial review. way toward restoring Hamilton to his fans of Buckley. ink of him as an- Su ce it to say that Federici deals rightful place among our Founding other likeable antihero who could have with virtually every aspect of Hamil- Fathers. t nicely into the author’s 1994 novel ton’s political thought—his penchant ank You For Smoking, in which lob- for order, the grounds of his loose George W. Carey is professor of government byists for the alcohol, tobacco, and re- construction of the Constitution, his at Georgetown University. arms industries gathered for a weekly

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 47 Arts&Letters

“Merchants of Death” luncheon. Bird its true purpose is to conjure a new arms race is a news report that the is the MOD nonpareil. ere may be Red Scare that’s scary enough to jus- Dalai Lama collapsed during a meet- more annual deaths attributable to tify Taurus. ing with Prince Charles. anks to booze, cigarettes, and guns, but those Which is where Angel Templeton their eorts, a story is soon planted in products lack the panache of “Dumbo”: comes in. the pliant bottom-feeding New Delhi- a “predator drone,” as one war-weary Angel should be familiar not just based Internet media to the eect that senator describes it, “the size of a com- to Buckley fans but to any consumer the ChiComs had attempted to assas- mercial airliner.” of political news. She—at least a good sinate the spiritual leader of its wan- As Puppies commences, Project portion of her—is Ann Coulter. Behold nabe-breakaway Tibetan province. Dumbo has been shot down by con- the pinup Buckley paints: “Tall, blond, Buckley has great fun with how this gressional appropriators. (e novel, bu, leggy, miniskirted.” Actually, story—“developing,” as we’re accus- incidentally, was written before Buck- “Leggy” isn’t even the half of it. An- tomed to reading on the Drudge Re- ley could have known about the cur- gel’s legs, it is observed later, “seemed port—plays out in the media. “Hard- rent budget sequestration panic in as long as the Washington Monument.” ball” host Chris Matthews appears as Washington.) Buckley’s narrator is As for Angel’s mouth, it sounds a lot himself in several scenes in which the suitably cynical about Congress’s cozy like Coulter’s, too. Echoing Coulter’s plight of the pitiable Tibetans is debat- relationship with defense contractors. smearing of 9/11 widows and antiwar ed. A certain Sarah Palin-like former “In happier times,” he reects, “getting activist Cindy Sheehan, Angel calls a governor named Penelope Kent also approval for a Dumbo-type program woman whose son was killed in action gures briey in the media restorm. a “headline-hungry “I can’t believe she was actually gover- harridan,” an “op- nor of a state,” Bird remarks of Kent. Rather than thunder impotently at this portunist” who had “is country. It’s going to hell.” the invective coming ere’s some well-researched sub- heightened reality, a satirist like Buckley because “she’s under- stance here about the labyrinthine has another, better option: laugh at it. mining the war ef- world of domestic Chinese politics, for t .” too. Buckley sets a good chunk of ere is slightly the book in Beijing, where the (rela- more to Angel than tively) reform-minded President Fa would have consisted of a couple mere Coulterian performance art. Megnyao must fend o hardliners in meetings, a few pro forma committee She has something that passes for an the Communist Party leadership. Fa hearings, handshakes all around, and inner life. She’s a single, Type A soc- is tormented by nightmares of his de- o to an early lunch. Now? Sisyphus cer mom to son Barry (middle name: ceased father and struggles with nico- had it easier.” Goldwater). She interrupts a work- tine addiction (thank him for smok- Consequently, Bird and his CEO, related cellphone conversation thusly: ing!). Bird and Angel’s machinations Chick Devlin, concoct a devious ... “Barry, sweetie! Stay with the ball! Stay have made his precarious position at what’s the advocacy industry jargon? with the ball! e ball! Kick it! Kick the top of the party leadership that ... conict-expansion strategy. eir the ball! Barry! Kick THE BALL!” She much harder to maintain. goal is to sell a tight-sted Congress has a complicated, mildly sympathetic In Buckley’s geopolitical story world, on a mysterious new project code- sexual history with powerful men who there are reasonable grownups, people named “Taurus.” It has something— promise and then fail to divorce their who want to make the thing work, on Chick is not at liberty to say what—to wives on Angel’s behalf, leaving her both sides of the Sino-American di- do with China. e problem is, Amer- with the nickname “Silo.” Bird—mar- vide. And then there are the nitwits, ican lawmakers are loath to confront ried himself to a hell-on-wheels aspir- with their mutually emboldening acts their creditor-in-chief. As Bird notes, ing equestrienne named Myndi—is of aggression, who prot nancially or “China is more or less nancing our instantly attracted to, and utterly in- professionally from making the thing economy.” timidated by, her. Bird concludes he is not work. Rather than thunder impo- “We’ll set up some foundation,” “no match for Angel Templeton. She tently at this heightened reality, a sati- Chick informs Bird. “at way you’ll made the man-eating lions of Tsavo rist like Buckley has another, better op- be technically working for it. Instead look like hamsters. She’d chew him up tion: laugh at it. of the old military-industrial com- and spit him out in little balls of gristle.” Buckley laughs with a human touch, plex, God bless it.” is foundation Initially, at least, this only-in-the- however. ere isn’t a hint of malice will purportedly focus on “national Beltway duo is all business. Its rst in Bird. He does not deceive himself security and Far Eastern issues.” But break in fomenting an anti-China about the nature of his business; rather

48 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 adorably, he deceives himself that the The Map to Power sense without it. Tom Clancy-style techno-thrillers he Kaplan brings a reputation along earnestly pecks away at nightly have by WILLIAM A NTHONY H AY with his point of view. His report- literary merit. He supports a live-in ing from benighted regions during mother suering from Alzheimer’s and e Revenge of Geography: What the the 1990s drew criticism from liberal a brother, Bewks, who spends his days Map Tells Us About Coming Conicts internationalists who objected to his in the “living history” business reenact- and the Battle Against Fate, Robert D. pessimistic tone and caution about ing the Civil War. He’s responsible for Kaplan, Random House, 432 pages democracy-promotion. Deploying the care and feeing of his wife’s horses, what John Ruskin called the innocent whose bloodlines would impress Ann inston Churchill noted the eye—an observer’s ability to see what Romney. All this, plus an apartment symbiotic relationship be- lies before him rather than what he near the Pentagon—the “military-in- tween space and human expects to see—Kaplan ignored the dustrial duplex”—and a money pit of Waction with the remark that “we shape triumphalism of democratic capital- an antebellum estate in Northern Vir- our buildings, and aerwards our ism to sketch a more complex and of- ginia horse country. buildings shape us.” ten bleak vista. Disdain for frivolous Buckley’s performance throughout On a much greater scale, consider preoccupations among civilian elites the book is razor-sharp. Each chapter how the physical world and its con- drew Kaplan closer to the U.S. mili- is a crystalline dialogue-driven episode tours shape human development, just tary, whose Spartan, practical ethos in its own right. Eventually, as these as humanity adapts the environment to won his respect. episodes hurtle along, a Taiwanese its needs. The obvious faded from view Experience—including with the shrimp boat is sunk by the Chinese. in recent decades, however: globaliza- Hobbesian nightmares of Afghani- e U.S. responds by selling F-22 ght- tion set the tone for the post-Cold War stan and Somalia, along with Saddam er jets and Aegis-equipped destroy- idea that old limits mattered little in a Hussein’s totalitarian experiment in ers to the Taiwanese. And the Central very new world. Grand, transformative Iraq—led Kaplan to back nation- Bank of China begins “making noises projects sought to recast societies and building after 9/11. He joined the about sitting out the next auction of institutions. Disappointment ensued consensus behind the Iraq War and U.S. Treasury bills.” with the failure of nation-building in spent periods embedded with U.S. Quelle horreur: the Middle East and the collapse of troops. While some commentators economic prosperity throughout the praised Kaplan as a latter-day Rud- e stock market was doing qua- developed world. yard Kipling, others attacked him as druple-front-ip triple gainers o In The Revenge of Geography, Rob- a cheerleader for American empire. the high board, gas prices were ert Kaplan draws upon many thinkers, Kaplan himself admitted to having spiking at the pump, people were some unjustly neglected, to sketch a come too close to his subject and fall- being laid o everywhere. But guide through the wreckage of these en prey to excessive zeal, even though there was some good news, at least: lost hopes. Far from creating the flat he never took up the polarizing rheto- Gold was at an all-time high! Yay! world Thomas Friedman described ric of the Bush era. The Revenge of So if things got really bad, people in his eponymous (and ephemeral) Geography marks a search for new could by groceries with twenty- bestseller, globalization brings distant perspective. dollar gold pieces or coupons from threats closer to home and draws dif- The way in which geographers, their gold stock certicates. ferences into sharper relief. The future historians, and strategists traced their requires a new map. maps frames Kaplan’s discussion of Such is this American life, “in hock,” Constructing the map to encompass geopolitics. He takes their ideas— as Buckley writes, “up to [our] eyeballs geography in its fullest sense—em- particularly where diverging opin- to the Chinese.” ere have been jere- bodying demographics, climate, and ions raise conflicts—to pose ques- miads written about this state of aairs. resources along with topography— tions rather than providing answers. No doubt more will be written. Chris- highlights the factors that drive world Herodotus, whose account of the wars topher Buckley has given us something trends. History and anthropology between the Greeks and Persia bal- else: a sprightly cocktail of satire that take the analysis further by provid- anced geographic determinism with nonetheless delivers sobering truths. ing context and showing how trends the decisions of men, represents the work over time. Geography, Kaplan sensibility Kaplan seeks to recover. Scott Galupo is a writer and musician living argues persuasively, sets the frame- Environment sets a context, not least in Virginia and a contributor to TAC’s State work within which contingency oper- by shaping culture and custom, for of the Union blog. ates. International politics makes little decisions often made in the grip of

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 49 Arts&Letters

thought that understanding geograph- ical limits pointed to ways of over- coming them. Indeed, Kaplan argues that his vision of geography’s role had a dynamic quality exactly opposed to the static assumptions of determin- ism. Technology, a form of human initiative, modified environments. Railways had a decisive impact by opening land to inexpensive transport of bulk goods. What began as a feeder to ocean or river transport eventually became a means of connecting Eur- asia. Controlling its heartland would confer a decisive strategic advantage. Mackinder sought to chart trends rather than strategize conquest, but his analysis had an obvious appeal to the evil empires of Hitler’s Germany and Soviet Russia. Where Mackinder and Nazi theo- rists like Karl Haushofer focused on the Eurasian heartland, the Dutch-born American Nicholas Spykman argued

Michael Hogue Michael that projecting maritime power from the rimland built on advantages geog- raphy provided the United States. The passion. Dynamics shaping politics between. McNeill’s focus on interac- combination of temperate climate and in the fifth century B.C. still operate tion challenged the view of civiliza- rich resources with effective hegemo- today. Indeed, the region Herodotus tions as developing separately, famil- ny over the Western Hemisphere gave describes between the eastern Medi- iar from Oswald Spengler’s Decline the U.S. power to spare for adjusting terranean and the Iranian-Afghan pla- of the West and Arnold Toynbee’s the balance of power in the Eastern teau remains a critical area of conflict. more optimistic account. McNeill’s Hemisphere. The United States’ loca- William McNeill, author of the idea of history as a study in fluidity tion provides access to Europe that 1963 landmark The Rise of the West, gives Kaplan a starting point to con- South America lacks, while the Ama- also looked to that area linking three sider geography’s impact upon social zon and Arctic create secure buffers. continents for insight into the interac- and political development in Eurasia. Kaplan cites Spykman’s analysis as a tion between civilizations. Isolation The fact that Nazi Germany turned way to see past the immediate press along a fertile river surrounded by geopolitics to the service of conquest of events and discern basic geostrate- desert shaped Egypt by keeping out- tainted the reputation of the field’s gic truths. His approach matters more siders at bay, while Mesopotamia re- founding father, Halford Mackind- than his conclusions themselves. mained vulnerable to predation. Both er, but the continuing relevance of Earlier, Alfred Thayer Mahan of- developed authoritarian, bureaucratic his ideas is undeniable. Geography, fered in 1890 an historical account of regimes, but Iraq had a more brutal Mackinder argued, operates as the sea power that still resonates among political culture forged by insecurity. pivot of history by setting the con- Chinese and Indian strategists. It influ- McNeil describes Greece, India, and text in which men and societies act. enced Spykman, along with Theodore China—all three developed unique It forms barriers of desert, mountain, Roosevelt and Germany’s Wilhelm civilizations, but distance kept China and tundra along with pathways of II. Britain’s ability to control the seas on a separate path while the ebb and river valley and steppe. The seas acted by defeating enemy fleets during the flow of frontiers between Hellenistic, as both, alternately providing a shel- 18th-century wars Mahan narrates en- Middle Eastern, and Indian civiliza- tering impasse and a highway transit. sured that maritime commerce would tions made for a delicate cultural bal- Far from being an environmen- operate on British terms and rendered ance in Greece, India, and the lands tal determinist, however, Mackinder France vulnerable to coastal attack.

50 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 Mahan’s contemporary Julian Corbett likely to shift toward Turkey and Iran, In Defense of refined the analysis by arguing that a with Ankara providing a check on its weaker fleet could effectively contest rival. History and geography give Bradley Manning a numerically stronger foe by attack- logical frontiers to both, along with ing bases and controlling vital choke avenues of influence throughout the by CHRIS B R AY points. Such leverage suited powers, region. Other states lack such clear like early 20th-century Britain, forced borders, making civil disorder in Syria e Passion of Bradley Manning: e to meet widespread commitments with a danger to Iraq and Jordan. Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest limited means. Maritime coalition Geography also sets the terms for Security Breach in U.S. History, Chase building—and a presence in littoral the problem China’s rise presents. A Madar, OR Books, 167 pages spaces to affect land operations—of- continental power like Russia, China fers an alternative to matching high also holds a larg oceanic frontage onto n a short new book about Brad- seas fleets. the Pacific with good harbors. The ley Manning, journalist and civil What do these ideas mean for under- combination provides strategic reach rights lawyer Chase Madar neces- standing present discontents? Kaplan enhanced by decades of economic Isarily and appropriately looks beyond applies insights from these thinkers growth. Kaplan deftly notes the inter- the gure of Manning himself to ask to sketch possibilities in key regions. action between human initiative and how we understand information, how Spykman warned that a united Eu- geography over China’s history and we perceive our relationship to state rope would be a staunch competitor how those factors shape its current am- authority, and how people who serve to the United States and perhaps the bitions. the armed power of the state see their dominant outside power in equidistant But geographic factors also mitigate own place in its project. Writing from parts of South America. Geography, its advantages. Vietnam and Japan what oen seems to be a leist per- however, has divided Europe to facili- look to the United States for help in spective, Madar nevertheless builds tate a balance of power since Roman balancing China, while Korea’s unsta- on a deeply conservative explanatory times, as Edward Gibbon pointed out. ble division presents a problem on its foundation in which political illness- Kaplan notes the appeal Mitteleuropa doorstep. The weakness of neighbor- es have cultural causes. holds as a tolerant cultural zone dat- ing powers can trouble China no less “e United States is an increas- ing from the Habsburg Empire, which than their strength. Sea power allows ingly depoliticized society,” he writes, joined pluralism with the impartial rule the United States to balance China “and we struggle to comprehend the of law. The geographic space Central without forcing a confrontation. Ka- very concept of the political.” Our Europe occupies, however, serves as a plan suggests that a struggle between most urgent problem lies not in the crush zone between maritime and con- them will be more stable than the Cold nature of government but in the fail- tinental Europe. Peace might allow it War rivalry with Russia was. Geopoli- ures of civil society. e pathologies of to flourish, especially with Germany’s tics shapes a subtle dynamic to influ- empire and the national-security state turn from war and Russia’s relative ence other states while avoiding war. grow from our own pathologies of weakness. Sketching geostrategic possibilities thought and speech. is approach is Indeed, the search for peace has is a more useful exercise than mak- familiar: it’s a republic if you can keep driven Europe’s efforts to rearrange ing predictions. Kaplan articulates a it, and we apparently can’t. itself since the 1950s. European inte- realism focused on consequences that Madar is most successful at two gration, particularly in its post-Cold marks a welcome change from the points. First, he places Manning’s at- War phase, aims to transcend limits of fads and theories of the past 20-odd tempt to explain himself against the history and geography to end conflict. years. Instead of narrowing vision explicatory eorts of an exhaustingly Defying those limits, however, made through a theoretical lens that hides banal news media. In chat sessions the single currency a transmission facts out of line with theory, he draws with a stranger on the Internet who mechanism for fiscal strain rather than upon those facts to press questions, (shockingly enough) turned out to a unifying force. Greece, as the weak- and he thereby offers a more nuanced be an FBI snitch, Manning is said to est link in the project, offers a guide to view. Seeing the world as it is, rather have written that he wanted to share the health of European integration. Its than as we might wish it to be, helps “the non-PR versions of world events weakness derives from a history torn navigate the rapids of the turbulent and crises” with his fellow citizens. between Europe and the Middle East era in which we live. Information, he wrote, “should be a that left it politically and economically public good,” allowing people to as- underdeveloped. William Anthony Hay is a historian at sess state action with something more Gravity in the Middle East seems Mississippi State University. than the information the state chooses

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 51 Arts&Letters to provide. Like Madar, Manning ap- like that? Was it a boyfriend thing? the dierence is in the use of those pears to have blended the premises of Second, Madar cogently examines leaks, as senior o cials shape political the le and the right, promising to re- the culture of unchecked government perception by the process of control. veal “how the rst world exploits the secrecy. ere’s something vaguely So- Leaks are okay, as long as they serve third” in very nearly the same breath viet about the American security state the interests of power; “when o cial with which he compared his own al- these days, a familiar sense that the Washington decides to leak, the law leged leaks to the release of the Cli- surreptitious and the pathetic are one fades away.” Again, the taste is faintly mategate emails. However it varies in the same. In 1991, Madar writes, Soviet, and Madar correctly describes in theme and perspective, though, the federal government classied six the eect of metastasizing classica- Manning’s discussion focuses on state million documents; in 2010, it clas- tion in a government that also freely power and public engagement: what sied 77 million. e rapid growth of hands out secret information when it is government doing, and what do we secrecy matches the rapid growth in serves state purposes. “If a rule is se- know about it? bad ideas and administrative incom- lectively only enforced it ceases to be “e intel analyst’s intent is con- petence, as overclassication protects a rule and becomes something else— scious, coherent, historically informed “the delicate ego of the foreign policy an arbitrary instrument of authority, and above all it is political,” Madar elite, whose performance in the past a weapon of the powerful—but not a concludes. Manning is alleged to have decade has been so lethally sub-par.” rule.” If anything, Madar is being too leaked to an organization that “quotes e phrase at the end of that sen- polite on this point. Madison and the Federalist Papers” tence is my favorite moment in the Covering a series of topics—a brief in its mission statement. e people book. Nor is it only in foreign policy history of whistleblowing, secrecy, and behind Wikileaks, Madar writes, “are, that our political elites are implicated the rule of law; Manning’s personal essentially, eighteenth-century liber- in this lethal mediocrity. e worse background; the scope and nature of als who are good with computers.” they get, the more they hide. the leaked information—Madar falls Examining at some signicantly short in only one area of length the material Man- analysis. Discussing Manning’s pre- ning is alleged to have trial detention, many months of which A government that increasingly leaked, Madar compares took place in absurdly punitive soli- targets leakers from its lower and the claimed harm and tary connement, Madar allows that the known harm from “aer a decade, the ‘excesses’ of the middle ranks is the same government several leading exam- War on Terror may have seeped into that leaks constantly from the top. ples. A classied list of our domestic justice systems.” But he “vital strategic interests” quickly pronounces this understand- compiled by the State ing of Manning’s treatment to be “in- Department reveals complete,” moving on to a chapter that Pulling at the masks that cover neo- such sensitive information as the fact looks at the record of solitary con- conservative and neoliberal foreign that the Strait of Gibraltar is “a vital nement and disciplinary brutality in policy, Manning seems to have been shipping lane” and that the Congo is domestic prisons. “On the whole,” he engaged in a small-r republican proj- “rich in mineral wealth.” Secrets like concludes, “the GWOT has been all- ect, looking for ways to give informed these, he writes, may as well have been American.” Military prisons at Guan- citizens the knowledge to restrain “tabulated by a reasonably capable un- tanamo Bay and Bagram Air Field are state power. dergraduate intern” but their release just Pelican Bay and the federal “super- News coverage of Manning’s alleged prompted agonized howling from max” cellblock picked up and planted leaks, on the other hand, shoved aside government spokesmen. “Have we in overseas, and Manning was caught in politics to focus on the young soldier’s America become so infantalized that that same model of incarceration. Pris- homosexuality and the fact that he tidbits of basic geography must now be oners at San Quentin would recognize had sought gender-identity counsel- state secrets?” Madar asks. “Maybe bet- Abu Ghraib; our domestic model of ing. e explanation for Manning’s ter to leave that question unanswered.” prison brutality is our model of prison actions was steered into a few per- e secrecy isn’t exactly secrecy, brutality abroad. missible channels: sexual, emotional, though. A government that increas- But it seems to me that the prem- psychiatric, pharmacological. is ingly targets leakers and whistle- ises of war and threatened security guy leaked information that brings blowers from its lower and middle lie deeply at the roots of that model, the projects of state power into ques- ranks is the same government that as increasingly harsh domestic con- tion—what caused him to go crazy leaks constantly from the top. But nement has grown up alongside the

52 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 rapidly expanding national-security Are Conservatives and liberals are truly dierent people. state. War is the health of the state, Mooney quotes omas Carlyle on but that increasingly vigorous state Irrational? Rousseau: “He could be cooped into doesn’t fall asleep at the edge of the garrets, laughed at as a maniac, le to battleeld. e legal historian Nasser by H ENRY CHAPPELL starve like a wild beast in his cage; but Hussain has usefully described the he could not be hindered from setting “jurisprudence of emergency” in the e Republican Brain: e Science of the world on re.” British empire (and in the postcolo- Why ey Deny Science—and Reality, Keep that cheery image in mind. nial states it le behind). Closer to Chris Mooney, Wiley, 327 pages According to Mooney, conserva- home, Alfred McCoy has described tives’ personality traits, resulting from American counterinsurgency in the hris Mooney believes conser- both genetic and environmental fac- Philippines as a site of origin for the vatives are wrong about many tors, predispose them to resist data that 20th-century American surveillance more important issues than are conict with strongly held beliefs. Re- state. At the very least, each feeds the Cliberals. Like any principled science ferring to research by Yale Law profes- other; domestic power and foreign writer, he’s also certain he could be sor Dan Kahan, Mooney writes, “deep- aggression blend together, sharing wrong. Had Mooney chosen a less in- seated views about morality, and about sources and outcomes. sulting title, he might have convinced the way society should be ordered, But Madar is nally successful at a few conservatives to consider his po- strongly predict who [individuals] opening a discussion that needs to sitions on climate change, evolution, consider to be a legitimate scientic ex- be opened. e war over govern- and President Obama’s healthcare pert in the rst place—and where they ment secrecy is fully joined. Darrell program. consider ‘scientic consensus’ to lie in Issa is living on leaks from the Justice Of course, he’d also sell fewer books. the contested issues.” Department in the “Fast and Furi- He and his publisher know their audi- To his credit, Mooney admits that ous” scandal, for which Border Patrol ence, just as Ann Coulter and Jonah liberals aren’t immune to irrationality agent Brian Terry’s family must feel Goldberg know theirs. Mooney admits and “motivated reasoning.” He points nothing but gratitude. e Food and that he has little hope of changing con- out the equalitarian le’s attacks on Drug Administration has been spy- servative minds through education. sociobiologist E.O. Wilson and the re- ing on its own scientists in an eort His 2005 attempt at an edifying over- exive liberal antipathy toward nuclear to catch and punish internal critics. ture, e Republican War on Science, power and hydraulic fracturing, or And the Obama administration, that failed entirely. “fracking.” But Mooney asserts that the great fountain of transparency and Despite a religious temperament trait is far more pronounced in conser- good government, is pursuing crimi- and natural respect for tradition, an vatives. nal charges against more whistleblow- unsettling, empirical bent forces me He presents Kahan’s model, a Car- ers than every previous administra- into agreement with Mooney and his tesian coordinate system with one axis tion combined. As government tries fellow liberals on the issues of climate running from very hierarchical to very to pull itself down the rabbit hole, its change and evolution. Darwin got it egalitarian, the other axis running from success is unlikely to be prevented by right. ere is no scientically cred- individualist (or libertarian) to very a supine press, especially if Obama ible challenge to the general theory communitarian. All of us would t into is re-elected. Whatever victories we of evolution. Likewise, the scientic one of the four ideological quadrants, may have against a political elite that consensus on climate change—that it’s though we might move depending on wishes to free itself from the restraint real, anthropogenic, and poses a grave the issue. According to Mooney, the of the society it seeks to control will threat—is as solid as consensus on any- hierarchical-individual quadrant cor- come from a culture of shared repub- thing beyond rst principles is likely to responds to American conservatives lican values. And they will come from ever be. while liberals fall into the egalitarian- a genuine freedom of information. Mooney’s guiding light is the Mar- communitarian quadrant. “If we hope to know what our gov- quis de Condorcet, the French Enlight- In one of Kahan’s studies, partici- ernment is so busily doing all over enment philosopher and mathemati- pants were asked to imagine that a the world, massive leaks from insider cian, whom he correctly distances from friend had told them that she is consid- whistleblowers are, like it or not, the Jacobin excesses during the French ering her position on highly charged only recourse,” Madar concludes. We Revolution. Alas, that Mooney dedi- issues, including whether global warm- need Bradley Manning. cates e Republican Brain to Jean- ing is caused by humans and the safety Jacques Rousseau, with no caveat, sup- of nuclear waste disposal. e imagi- Chris Bray is a historian and former soldier. ports his assertion that conservatives nary friend is planning to read a book

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 53 Arts&Letters on the subject but would like opinions the psychological basis of political ori- sound thinking remains unclear. on whether the author is a legitimate entation. e results have been ercely Mooney points to studies that show authority. e study subjects were then attacked by Republican politicians and that Neville Chamberlain demonstrat- shown alleged book excerpts by fake opinion-makers. Yet the studies appear ed greater IC than Winston Churchill experts as well as phony pictures and broad and painstaking, and many of and that abolitionists were just as low resumes. Here’s Mooney’s interpreta- the ndings ring true. Researchers have in IC as apologists for slavery. Mooney tion: “e results were stark: When found that conservatism emphasizes re- associates IC and the liberal tempera- the fake scientist’s position stated that sistance to change and the acceptance ment with creativity. To which I re- global warming is real and caused by or rationalization of inequality. No sur- spond: T.S. Eliot, Flannery O’Connor, humans, only 23 percent of hierarchi- prises there. Or, as a conservative might Evelyn Waugh, Walker Percy, Wilhelm cal-individualists agreed the person say, short of equalitarian despotism, in- Röpke, Robert Nisbet, Christopher was a ‘trustworthy and knowledgeable equality is unavoidable. Mooney admits Lasch, Richard Weaver, Eric Voeglin, expert.’ Yet 88 percent of the egalitari- that the conservative need for order and and of course Edmund Burke, reduced an-communitarians accepted the same management of uncertainty and the ac- by Mooney to an “honest status-quo scientist’s alleged expertise.” companying virtues of patriotism, deci- conservative.” Mooney describes other research siveness, and loyalty to friends are assets e Abrahamic faiths are inherently that suggests conservatives are prone to in a time of crisis. authoritarian, yet more than any insti- “backre eect,” the tendency to a rm Another trait researchers found tution built on abstract Enlightenment strongly-held beliefs even more tena- prevalent among conservatives and notions of Liberty, Equality, and Fra- ciously aer being shown contradictory surprisingly common in the United ternity, they recognize human dignity evidence. Furthermore, Mooney says, States is “authoritarianism,” which and worth. Could there have been a the more educated the conservative, the has been intractably linked to fascism pre-Christian Kant? If we rightly blame more sophisticated the argument—thus thanks to largely discredited work by distorted religion for the Crusades, the “smart idiots” eect. “e ‘smart idi- eodore Adorno. Mooney doesn’t Galileo’s arrest, and the Inquisition, we ots” eect generates endless frustration mention Adorno’s F-scale, nor does he should credit religious longing in its for many scientists—and indeed, for distance himself from it. highest forms with the Sistine Chapel many well-educated, reasonable p e op l e .” “Authoritarians are also increasingly and Alhambra. (Emphasis mine.) strong in today’s Republican Party— Certainly, Enlightenment reason Could it be that the reality of an- and especially in its most extreme freed minds from superstition and thropogenic climate change and the ideological arm. … Authoritarians are opened countless avenues of investiga- culpability of corporate capitalism sim- very intolerant of ambiguity, and are tion. Yet other than a single mention of ply rests easier with liberals than with very inclined toward group-think and “murderous Jacobins,” Mooney glosses conservatives? Does Mooney believe distrustful of outsiders (oen includ- over the historical lesson that rational- the average liberal earnestly studies the ing racial outsiders).” ism and egalitarianism, in the extreme, latest climate data? What if the study Racial outsiders like Colin Powell, lead to gallows and gulag. questions addressed the responsibility Condoleezza Rice, omas Sowell, and At the managerial level, hyper-ra- of the poor for their own condition or Walter Williams, say? tionalism is necessarily utilitarian. But evidence that scientic genius is more Liberals are “pretty much universal in a multicultural society—a liberal common among men? Might there be agents of change,” characterized by cu- project—there can be no agreement some liberal backre eect? riosity and openness to new experience, on what constitutes common good. Mooney quotes Kahan: in some more tolerant of disorder, less tolerant of Despotism is the only recourse. Jeremy conservative communities “people economic inequality. According to Jost Bentham and Peter Singer have sug- who say, ‘I think there’s something to and Mooney, liberals also tend toward gestions. climate change,’ that’s going to mark greater “integrative complexity,” or IC. e liberal mind, in all its purported them out as a certain kind of person, “And not only do liberals tend to have subtlety, can be disastrously, murder- and their life is going to go less well.” much less need for closure than conser- ously wrong. Long aer evidence of What would Daniel Patrick Moynihan vatives. At the same time, liberals oen unprecedented atrocity trickled out of say about the consequences of break- have more need for cognition. ey like the Soviet Union, the intellectual le in ing with liberal orthodoxy? Lawrence to think, in an eortful and challenging the United States continued its infatu- Summers? way, and take pride in doing a good job ation with totalitarian communism, Mooney builds much of his argu- of it. ey enjoy complex problems and seeing in Stalinism the realization of ment on the work of New York Univer- trying to solve them.” the aims of the French Revolution. sity’s Jon Jost and others who’ve studied e relationship between IC and e eugenics movement of the early

54 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 20th century was a progressive project and place is reduced to simple fear of where a revival of Gore Vidal’s political as grounded in racism and nasty pa- change and can be readily interpreted drama “e Best Man” runs through ternalism as it was in good intentions. as racism. Do liberals see no threats September 9. e play, rst produced Today, the le’s doctrinaire support for other than Christians and shagbark re- in 1960—there’s also a lm version programs that incentivize young wom- actionaries? from 1964, starring Henry Fonda and en to have children out of wedlock And this: “Conservatives—espe- Cli Robertson—allows us to partici- virtually ensures increasing poverty, cially religious ones—are also in denial pate vicariously in an epic contest be- dependence, and resentment—prob- about the single most important thing tween a high-minded liberal mandarin lems that could prove as disastrous as that we human beings know about and a ruthlessly ambitious arriviste. climate change. ourselves: Namely, that our species Will the “best man” win? Mooney, in his reverence for science, evolved by natural selection and there- e setting is the Democratic nomi- seems oblivious to potential threats to fore shares a common ancestor with nating convention of 1960. (ere’s a human dignity posed by certain kinds every other living thing on earth.” pretense that the convention could be of genetic, neurological, and psycho- at we evolved by natural selection for either party, but Vidal isn’t fooling logical investigations. “e thrill is to tells us more about ourselves than all of anyone.) William Russell, former sec- be part of a dramatic merger of science, the recorded wisdom of the ancients? retary of state, arrives in Philadelphia to psychology, and biology that ultimately More than the works of Shakespeare claim the nomination, but a rival, Sena- promises to uncover a ‘science of hu- and Dostoevsky? More than the Delta tor Joseph Cantwell, is coming on fast in man nature.’ … Any guesses about blues? the polls—grubby measures of popular- what personality types will want to be If this is where Enlightenment rea- ity that Russell doesn’t have much use working in this area, or how they’re son takes us, Chris Mooney can have it. for. To close the deal, Russell needs to do likely to vote?” Count me on the side of superstition. two things: convince his estranged wife, No doubt, researchers will vote for Alice, to play the doting part expected the party “brimming with intellectuals Henry Chappell is a novelist and journalist of her, and convince former president and Ph.Ds.” en egalitarianism won’t in Parker, Texas. His latest novel, Silent We Artie Hockstadter to endorse him. be demolished by authoritarians, but Stood, will be published next year. e rst of these tasks is unfortu- by liberal scientists. If, as Mooney as- nately accomplished within a half- serts and some studies suggest, white hour. Russell agrees to remain faithful Christian men are especially recalci- for the duration of the campaign; his trant in their denial of climate change wife agrees to put on a good show and and their personalities can be partially Vidal’s Machiavelli not expect more from him than friend- attributed to genes, then surely plan- by N OAH M ILLMAN ship. is easy resolution is regrettable ners and “experts” will need to know because it eliminates one potential the strengths and weaknesses of other “e Best Man,” by Gore Vidal, Gerald axis of drama—the marriage and its groups so as to ensure Progress. Schoeneld eatre, dir. Michael future—for the remainder of the play. It doesn’t seem to occur to Mooney Wilson is structural problem is exacerbated that dogged resistance to climate sci- by one of the few weak performances ence might have something to do our years aer “e Audacity of in the production. While Russell is with loyalty and priority. If you look Hope” and “Change We Can Be- played with ne, understated irritation at an image of a 10-week-old fetus and lieve In,” Americans are endur- by John Larroquette—in his domestic see “human,” instead of a lump of in- Fing a presidential campaign of relent- scenes, the viewer believes his weari- sentient human tissue, then climate less negativity, one side claiming the ness with Alice but also his lingering change is not humanity’s most pressing president needs to “learn how to be an aection for her—Cybill Shepherd, as issue. American,” the other all but accusing Alice, seemed barely to be in the room Early in the book, Mooney promises the challenger of killing a woman with with him. Perhaps she was also aim- not to engage in “what is oen called cancer. It’s enough to make one long ing for understatement, but what she reductionism,” reducing conservatives for the good old days, when politics achieved was opacity. to their psychology. For the most part, was a decorous contest between prin- Russell’s second labor—winning the he keeps his promise. Yet he can’t help cipled opponents. Hockstadter endorsement—is tougher but resort to reductionism when he Anyone interested in a trip down and drives two of the play’s strongest describes responses of various regions this particular lane of memory would scenes. James Earl Jones plays the former of the brain to laboratory stimuli. us do well to take a detour to the Ger- president, and though there are many deep aection for one’s own people ald Schoenfeld eatre on Broadway, ne performances in this production,

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 55 Arts&Letters

Joan Marcus which would only hurt the party, but Cantwell won’t budge. So Hockstadter leaves vowing to ght him tooth and nail—and reveals, as he leaves, that he had planned to endorse him. Just because Cantwell failed his test of character, though, doesn’t mean Hockstadter is sold on Russell. He still worries whether Russell can shed his Hamlet-like indecisiveness and prove tough enough to be president. And so Vidal provides Russell with a test of character of his own. Cantwell, who appears to be without personal blemish—doesn’t drink, doesn’t fool around, has a beautiful, loving wife (played as a shallow sex-kitten by Kris- tin Davis)—has a skeleton in his closet aer all. And it’s a doozie: back in 1944, an o cer he served with was court- martialed for homosexuality. e ac- cused was part of a “ring” of so-called degenerates, and he named dozens of Cybill Shepherd and John Larroquette in “ e Best Man” names. One of them was Cantwell. Is the accusation true? e play Jones is in a class by himself. He plays use them—and when you need to, doesn’t say, but based on the far-away Hockstadter as a cross between Harry you’d better know how. He doesn’t like look Stamos gets when he learns that Truman and Teddy Roosevelt: TR’s Cantwell, but as a professional politi- Russell has made contact with his girth and glasses, his mustache and ex- cian, he rather admires him. old army buddy who knew about the plosive laugh, but Truman’s class and re- Until he meets him. Cantwell, as court martial, I’m inclined to think gional background and position within played by John Stamos, is a restlessly that, in this production anyway, he his party. Hockstadter knows that he strutting rooster, apparent condence is—and this is a crucial moment, could determine who the next president layered over some deep vulnerability. subtle and well-acted, the only one might be. And he’s determined to pick is is a man who isn’t content to win where Stamos lets us see what’s inside the “best man” of the title. the game; he has to win every point. Cantwell’s hard shell. But true or not, But what makes a man “best” for ex- Hockstadter comes to give him some the test for Russell is: will he use this alted o ce? Russell thinks he knows free advice and get the obeisance due dirt? His long-suering campaign the answer: the president ought to be to elder statesman of the party, as a pre- manager, Dick Jensen (Mark Blum), a man with integrity, who is true to lude to making his endorsement. But would. Alice Russell would. Hock- himself and what he thinks is right, Cantwell can’t read the situation. Since stadter practically begs him to. But who neither cares about being popular Hockstadter comes bearing criticisms, Russell? He struggles mightily with nor debases politics with smear tactics. he sees him as an enemy and unloads his own decency, but every time he When he suspects Hockstadter is going on him, revealing the secret weapon nally convinces himself to use the to endorse Cantwell, Russell focuses all he’s been husbanding. Russell had a potent weapon he has at his disposal, of his rhetorical power into an attack nervous breakdown some years before. he inches. And thus begins over an on the unscrupulous senator, letting Saw a shrink. e medical records that hour of dithering. Hockstadter know just what a threat to use words like “suicidal tendencies.” If is is a dramatic problem. Not the republic he considers this upstart Russell doesn’t withdraw, Cantwell will because of the dithering as such— scoundrel to be. distribute these records to the delegates Hamlet dithers for nearly four hours, e speech falls on deaf ears. and Russell’s political career will be ru- and if it’s played well it’s riveting. But Hockstadter doesn’t really care about ined. Hamlet is ahead of everyone else in the Cantwell’s dirty campaign tricks. If Hockstadter tries to dissuade play. In “e Best Man,” it’s President you need to use them, you need to Cantwell from using such tactics, Hockstadter who’s ahead of every-

56 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SEPTEMBER 2012 one, and since the audience has heard of well-drawn political portraits, and On the one hand, the political types Hockstadter explain his reasoning for enough humor to keep the audience are eternal, and the specicity of Vi- choosing and then rejecting Cantwell, engaged through the slow second dal’s prescience is striking. e charg- it’s very di cult to take Russell’s scru- half, most memorably provided by the es against Russell foreshadowed the ples seriously. southern-fried performances of Eliza- travails of omas Eagleton in 1972, If I stoop to Cantwell’s level, Russell beth Ashley and Dakin Matthews as, whose vice presidential nomination asks, where does it end? But Hock- respectively, the chatterbox Sue-Ellen was derailed by revelations that he had stadter has an answer to that: there are Gamadge, chairman of the Women’s undergone electroshock treatment, no ends, only means. is line is de- Division, and anxious Russell-support- and accusations of homosexuality ployed earlier against Cantwell, when er Senator Clyde Carlin. But the ques- continue to dog a variety of crusading he says the ends justify the means in tion of whether Russell will learn to use moral conservatives. In other ways, the his opinion (and hence it’s okay to the shiv or not is too light to bear the play feels like a period piece—conven- smear Russell to win). ere are no weight of tragedy. Vidal came up with tions, aer all, are no longer scenes of ends—there’s no destination but the an ending that cleverly evades the ques- drama of any kind. And the produc- grave. On the way, all that matters is tion of whether Rus- how you treat people and why you treat sell of Cantwell is the them that way. Russell doesn’t deserve “best man”—Rus- “The Best Man” has been described as the treatment Cantwell is about to dish sell withdraws and a contest between ambition and out, in part because it’s totally unnec- throws his weight essary. But Cantwell does deserve what behind a third can- principle, but it’s really about the Russell could give him. e means are didate of whom we falseness of this dichotomy. appropriate to the situation. know nothing. But (Speaking of the grave: two of the that gets less and less nest moments in the play are when satisfying the more you think about it. tion plays up this dated quality, deco- Hockstadter reveals, rst to Russell, If the “best man” is a non-entity, then rating the entire theatre as a mid-cen- then to Cantwell, that he is dying. the whole premise that there is a “best tury conventional hall. Hockstadter admits that he doesn’t man” to nd, or that we need to nd e problem for us in approaching believe in God, and that’s why he’s him, is questionable. In which case it this play today is that 1960 feels like the so terried of death. Russell suggests never really mattered whether Rus- lost golden age, so it is easy to assume that perhaps he can derive some con- sell or Cantwell won. So what have we Vidal took the side of Russell’s stand solation from the quasi-immortality been watching? on principle. is screen of nostalgia achieved through the mark he’s le What we’ve been watching is a civ- prevents us from seeing the drama for on others. To which an incredulous ics lesson, but not the kind we expect- what it is, and the relevance it actually Hockstadter retorts: I suggest you ed. e play has been described as a has for our day. Negative campaign- give yourself that little speech when contest between ambition and prin- ing and dirty tricks, aer all, have al- you face the prospect of annihilation. ciple, but it’s really about the falseness ways been with us. Practical wisdom, Cantwell, meanwhile, avouches him- of this dichotomy. Artie Hockstadter’s though, is not exactly the watchword of self a religious man, but completely situational ethics are a folksy marriage our democracy today. ignores Hockstadter’s revelation, of Aristotle and Machiavelli, his no- Or perhaps we can’t see our own for- returning immediately to business. tion of “character” being about neither est for our rotten trees. Vidal, in 1960, Later, when Hockstadter has died o- delity to principle (Russell’s version) depicted his day as an age when practi- stage, Cantwell shrugs it o as for the nor smirchless personal righteousness cal wisdom passed from the scene, but best; his time had passed already. It’s (Cantwell’s), but practical wisdom, we look back on that time as a golden a perfect capsule of their respective the judgment to know what means are age. Perhaps half a century from now, failings as humans and politicians. appropriate to particular situations. Americans will look back on our polit- Russell takes a real, human situation His death, and the failure of either of ical world as we look back on 1960 and in front of him—a dying man—and his potential political heirs to under- say: back then, there were statesmen; retreats from it into an abstract prin- stand what he was trying to tell them, now, in our fallen day, the best lack all ciple. Cantwell only cares about that suggests that with the passing of the conviction, while the worst are lled situation inasmuch as it aects him. “last of the old-time hicks,” as he calls with passionate intensity. Neither relates to the human being himself, that kind of practical wisdom and his condition.) has gone out of the political world. Noah Millman is TAC’s theater critic. He blogs “e Best Man” contains a number How does the drama play in 2012? at theamericanconservative.com/Shakesblog

SEPTEMBER 2012 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 57 Taki

No Gold for Sportsmanship

o the miracle has happened. A and carried the ag into the Berlin a legend, what about Jim Hines, Bob generation has been inspired stadium in 1936. My father was on Hayes, or Carl Lewis? ey were run- and millions of children have the Greek relay team. ey both said ning 9.90 seconds on high-school sur- been driven away from their that the nerve-wracking part was faces 30 years ago, and in the 200 me- Shand-held devices and have gone the entrance—we always go in rst, ters Tommy Smith ran 19.8 in 1968. out on the track, running, jumping, as well we should, having invented Today he’d be doing 19.5, faster than throwing. For once the Brits got it the games back in 700 B.C.—as all Bolt. right and proved the gloom gluttons athletes back then were required to In 1960 in Rome, I watched my wrong with the London Olympics. march like soldiers, in step and look- friend Tony Madigan ghting for Aus- e rains did not come, just a few ing sharp. Watching the motley way tralia in the boxing seminals against sprinkles. Yes, Uncle Sam came rst athletes marched in on the opening an American with the charming name in the medal count, and no, the Chi- night parade this year had me reach- of Cassius Clay. Aer three furious nese were not caught doping because ing for the sick bag. Mind you, it’s rounds, we thought Tony had it. “It’s they used clones rather than real peo- a sign of the times. Lack of respect, going our way,” said his trainer, “at ple. (At least they acted like geneti- clowning around, using the f-word, least a split decision.” cally engineered humans, or perhaps as Katerina anou, a Greek gold It was a split decision all right, but it it’s just me.) medal winner in the 100-meter dash went Clay’s way. Madigan never com- But let’s be serious for a moment. in Sydney, did once as she stood at the plained, just shook hands with Clay Doping is the large elephant in the podium. (She was expelled for drug and told me aerwards “that’s how Olympic living room that somehow use in 2004 in the Athens games.) sport goes.” Clay knocked out his op- is totally ignored by the professional Compare that with the dignity of ponent in the nal. cheerleaders who report the games. a Jesse Owens winning four golds in You know the rest. In Barcelona in 1992 we were aston- Berlin, forcing even Hitler to go onto I thought of Tony Madigan and ished at the swimming performance the track and shake his hand. e what a gentleman he was and is—we of the Chinese women. eir coach press had Adolf leaving the stadium still correspond—when the chairman had performed similar miracles while in a rage, a total invention. He spoke of the IOC, the aptly named Jacques in charge of the East German swim- to Owens and congratulated him, and Rogge, pronounced “rogue,” said mers during the previous decade. Jesse tried to set the record straight in his opening speech that athletes Many Chinese were caught and their upon his return, but back home he should not take drugs and should medals taken away. Twenty years on, had to sit in the back of a bus, so no always respect their opponents. e a 16-year old, Ye Shiwen, beats the one took his protests seriously. camera then closed in on Muham- time of the male world-record holder is year in London, the Kenyan mad Ali, now in bad shape, bloated and passes the urine test immedi- world-record breaker and gold-medal and trembling. If ever there was an ately following. Is it a miracle or is it winner in the 800 meters, David athlete who did not respect his oppo- that the masking agents the Chinese Rudisha, reminded me of many gold nents, it was Ali. He humiliated them, use are far superior to the detection medalists of yore. His quiet dignity insulted them, and turned boxing methods of the IOC? I am of the lat- and so manner stood out among the into a circus. ter opinion. show-os and the braggarts. Usain Someone should have warned the Sportsmanship has suered in oth- Bolt declared himself a legend, al- rogue to stay away from things like re- er ways, too. My uncle, a hurdler, ran though his actions before and aer a spect and dignity. Only a few athletes in the Los Angeles 1932 Olympics race are hardly legendary. And if he’s still know what they’re about.

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