Iran, Nuclear Weapons And

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April 21, 2014 $4.99 JOHN J. MILLER: JOHN KASICH, WORKING-CLASS GOVERNOR? ROSS DOUTHAT ON WES ANDERSON KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON CHARLES C. W. COOKE: AGAINST THE CREDENTIAL SNOBS ON THE AMERICANS

HOW DARE HE THE DECLINE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN AMERICA David French

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ENDURING AWARENESS

Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance

Network Systems

Secure Communications

Command & Control

Live 1

Bleed

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APRIL 21, 2014 | VOLUME LXVI, NO. 7 | www.nationalreview.com Jay Nordlinger on Michael Gove p. 22 ON THE COVER Page 25

Restore the BOOKS, ARTS Religious Freedom & MANNERS 38 THE PURITANS AMONG US Restoration Act Mary Eberstadt reviews Religious liberty exists as a core civi- An Anxious Age: The Post- Protestant Ethic and the Spirit lizational value not just because plu- of America, by Joseph Bottum. ralist societies profit from it, but 39 THE LAWLESS because the human heart demands it. Amir Taheri reviews If history teaches anything, it teaches Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue that the religious impulse—the sense of Regimes, by Michael Rubin. eternity set in the hearts of men (to 43 RISING DRAGON, paraphrase Solomon)—is nothing if CROUCHING EAGLE not powerful. David French Arthur L. Herman reviews The Contest of the Century: The New Era of Competition COVER: ROMAN GENN with China—and How America ARTICLES Can Win, by Geoff Dyer. 18 OBAMA VERSUS OBAMACARE by Ramesh Ponnuru 45 LOVE IN A DARK TIME The courts need to strike down the administration’s latest lawless fix. Michael Novak reviews I Kiss Your Hands Many Times: Hearts, 19 DROP THE ‘DROPOUT’ by Charles C. W. Cooke Souls, and Wars in Hungary, This country was built by people without formal credentials. by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak.

22 OUR MAN IN LONDON by Jay Nordlinger 46 FILM: ANOTHER LOST A visit with Michael Gove, Britain’s education minister. KINGDOM Ross Douthat reviews The Grand 23 SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE by Kevin D. Williamson Budapest Hotel. The Americans discovers an ongoing Cold War. 47 CITY DESK: NOT-SO-MEAN STREETS FEATURES Richard Brookhiser discusses vehicles in the city. 25 RESTORE THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RESTORATION ACT by David French The Left now hates the liberty it helped preserve. SECTIONS 28 THE MAILMAN’S SON by John J. Miller John Kasich, working-class governor? 4 Letters to the Editor 30 TEN WELFARE-REFORM LESSONS by Robert Doar 6 The Week New York City embraced an ethic of work. 36 The Long View ...... Rob Long 37 Athwart ...... James Lileks 33 MANEUVER WARFARE by Daniel Foster 44 Poetry ...... Stephen Scaer The Pentagon, the Congress, and the future of the tank. 48 Happy Warrior ...... Jonah Goldberg

NATioNAL RevieW (iSSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATioNAL RevieW, inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, inc., 2014. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., NATioNAL RevieW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATioNAL RevieW, Circulation Dept., P. o. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATioNAL RevieW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. PoSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATioNAL RevieW, Circulation Dept., P. o. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 3/31/2014 4:10 PM Page 1 letters -- READY:QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/2/2014 2:08 PM Page 4 Letters

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EDITOR Tax Talk Richard Lowry Senior Editors I fail to understand why N atIoNal RevIew deems a proposal to eliminate the federal Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger tax exemption for state and local taxes paid a “welcome” reform (the week, March Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts 24). the exemption attempts to achieve some degree of parity between residents of Literary Editor Michael Potemra high-tax and low- or no-tax states. Perhaps I’m missing something, but these goals Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson seem in tune with conservative principles. For New Yorkers like me, eliminating that National Correspondent John J. Miller exemption would mean a fairly hefty increase in their yearly tax bill. and moving to Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Deputy Managing Editors another state is not always an option: tearing up one’s roots in a locale chosen for family Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz or work reasons may be neither possible nor desirable. NR’s editors seem to think the Associate Editors federal government should, in effect, stick it to those who suffer under burdensome Patrick Brennan / Katherine Connell Production Editor Katie Hosmer state and local taxes. Frankly, I’m surprised. Research Associate Scott Reitmeier Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace Kay Fiset Contributing Editors Syracuse, N.Y. Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg / Florence King Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin the edItoRs ResPoNd : Far from promoting parity among the states, the deduction for Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne state and local taxes rewards and enables high-tax states. a revenue-neutral tax Reihan Salam / Robert VerBruggen reform that eliminated the deduction would allow low-tax states to reap more of the

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE benefits of their relatively healthy political cultures. People who are stuck in high-tax Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez states might benefit, too, because their governments would have to worry more about Managing Editor Edward John Craig News Editor Tim Cavanaugh driving taxpayers away. National-Affairs Columnist John Fund Media Editor Eliana Johnson Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke Associate Editors In Government We Don’t Trust Molly Powell / Lucy Zepeda Editorial Associate Andrew Johnson Technical Services Russell Jenkins I would have wholeheartedly agreed with arthur herman and John Yoo’s article “a Web Developer Wendy Weihs defense of Bulk surveillance” (april 7) prior to 2008. I spent 30 years as an attorney Web Producer Scott McKim inside the federal bureaucracy and was proud of the high ethical standards expected of EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan federal employees. Now, witnessing how easily the power of the federal government has

NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE been turned to reward political friends and punish enemies, I no longer agree. lois lerner BUCKLEYFELLOWINPOLITICALJOURNALISM gives a green light to bureaucrats to do as they wish. It is stunning—not only the corrup- Alec Torres tion of power but how the whole world stands aside and watches with barely a whimper. Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman terrorists are a threat, but so is unrestrained government. the latter has killed many more Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza than the former. Interestingly, I attended a seminar about balancing public safety with M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. individual rights and found myself agreeing with an aClU attorney, not something I usu- Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner David Gelernter / George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart ally do. he said: “It all comes down to whether you trust the people with the informa- Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler tion.” I used to trust the federal government with information; I don’t any longer. David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Dave Hickman Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Duvall, Wash. Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak aRthUR heRMaN aNd JohN Yoo ResPoNd : we share the writer’s concern about the Business Services abuse of government power by the IRs, which smacks of watergate-era scandals in Alex Batey / Alan Chiu Circulation Manager Jason Ng which taxing authorities were used to pursue the political enemies of the white house. Assistant to the Publisher Kate Murdock there is always the threat of tyranny from the concentration of power. But we think WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 that the Framers, who understood this problem well, chose one system for domestic SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 affairs and another for foreign. with domestic affairs, the Framers infused the WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Constitution with several checks and balances and limits on government power Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd because domestic affairs allow time to consider legislation and the states stand by to Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet handle social problems. with foreign affairs, the Framers gave the benefit of the doubt to government action that could be swift and decisive. even though they understood Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Director of Development Heyward Smith that the chances of tyranny were higher, they believed that only an executive could act Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell with speed and unity of purpose to stop threats to our national security in which the PUBLISHER costs of delay might be very high and there would be no alternatives, such as the states, Jack Fowler to protect the american people. It’s also worth noting that not even edward snowden CHAIRMAN has found an example of any Nsa employee’s abusing his or her power the way lois John Hillen lerner and her colleagues apparently have done at the IRs. CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes

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

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n The get-together between President Obama and Pope Francis was a meeting of giants: One is held by his flock to be infallible, the other merely the Vicar of Christ.

n Rand Paul appeared at Berkeley, the Colonial Williamsburg of campus radicalism, to condemn the NSA and offer measured praise of Edward Snowden (the intelligence community, he said, is “drunk with power, unrepentant and unwilling to relinquish power”). He was warmly received. Paul aims to show that libertarianism can appeal to audiences outside the GOP’s orbit, but he set himself an easy test: He did not try to sell the kids on repealing Obamacare, or defending gun rights and the right to life. Paul is trying to juggle the Tea Party, the GOP powers-that-be (he is friendly with fellow Kentuckian Mitch McConnell), and the supporters of his father, many of See page 16. whom were left-wing anti-Americans. If he manages that, forget the White House, hire him for Cirque du Soleil.

n When Chris Christie’s bridge-lane-closing scandal burst upon the world, the New Jersey governor asked Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a prominent New York law firm, to review his conduct. A dozen lawyers, five of them former federal prosecutors, interviewed 70 people and combed through Christie’s e-mail and the iPhones and Blackberrys of his staff. Their conclusion: Christie had no knowledge of the scheme. This will not end the n Bruce Braley, a four-term Democratic congressman running matter; the investigators did not interview the suspected perps, for the Iowa U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Tom Harkin, told former aides Bridget Kelly and Bill Stepien, and David Wild- a roomful of supporters that if Republicans won the Senate this stein, a Christie appointee to the Port Authority, who are keep- November the Judiciary Committee would be chaired by “a ing mum, presumably in hope of immunity. An investigation by farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.” How many the Democratic-run legislature hangs fire. Traffic report for the ways was this wrong? The “farmer” in question is Chuck Christie campaign: Long detours still ahead. Grass ley, Iowa’s other senator, a popular six-termer. Braley was ad dress ing trial lawyers (a demonizable interest group) in Corpus n The Federal Election Commission sent a letter in March to Christi, Texas (bad-mouthing home folk out of state). And Iowa, Senate majority leader Harry Reid to ask for details about more apart from a few cities and towns here and there, is essentially a than $16,000 in funds his campaign had paid to a “Ryan checkerboard of farms. Braley apologized but the video is rolling Elisabeth” in 2013 for what were described only as “holiday around the Internet and GOP ads. Hint to Braley: Once the GOP gifts.” Reid reluctantly admitted to the press that Ryan Elisabeth primary is decided, don’t say of your Republican opponent that if Reid is his 23-year-old granddaughter. He said his campaign had he only got a pension he would sit in his log cabin with a jug of purchased “thank-you gifts” for staff and supporters from her hard cider for the rest of his days. jewelry company, and though he insisted that he had complied with the law, he planned to reimburse his campaign because, he n President Obama proposed changes to the NSA’s controversial told a reporter, “I just wanted to avoid, and [pause] I’m just bulk collection of phone-usage “metadata”—subscriber numbers very fortunate I could write that check. . . . I’m not going to involved in a call plus its time and duration, but not the substance answer any—read my statement.” Some more digging into of communications. Though maligned by libertarians and the Reid’s campaign-finance reports revealed that the reimburse- Left as snooping on calls, the NSA database does not even con- ment check would need to be larger than initially anticipated: tain name and address information to identify subscribers; nor The senator’s campaign had paid his granddaughter at least does it collect records on every call made in the country (it’s actu- $14,000 in 2012 as well. Ryan Reid is also the founder and artistic ally about 20 percent of them), because it omits cell-phone traf- director of a Brooklyn-based theater company, which, oddly fic—meaning it does not track people’s travel from place to enough, lists various Nevada companies and Democratic donors place. Unlike the IRS harassment of conservative groups, a uni- as financial supporters. Their support for the arts is no doubt as lateral executive-branch project, the NSA program is governed

ROMAN GENN disinterested as Harry Reid’s selection of a jewelry vendor. by statute and monitored by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance

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THE WEEK Court and Congress. In his familiar style, Obama said the pro- a bill that would subject any changes to congressional approval. gram was legal and necessary to national security—but failed to Touting this legislation, Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) was defiant, defend it vigorously and decided it should both continue and telling reporters that “America shouldn’t surrender its leadership change. His major alteration would have the phone companies, on the world stage to a ‘multistakeholder model’ that’s controlled rather than the government, maintain the records. This will make by foreign governments.” The case for American leadership is a the program less efficient, more expensive, and, ironically, more slam dunk and, in an election year that disfavors Democrats in intrusive (phone companies do maintain cell-phone records), red states, conservative proponents have nothing to lose from which is what happens when presidents prefer pandering to per- making it. suasion. n The Vatican and the White House had different takes on Pres- n The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued its i dent Obama’s meeting with Pope Francis, the latter saying that report, and, as usual, the rhetoric is dire while the numbers are the administration’s attack on religious liberty had been dis- mixed. If we take the IPCC’s math as gospel, then the likely costs cussed and the former placing emphasis on their concord on is - of future global warming will amount to something between 0.2 sues of economic inequality. Charles Krauthammer had the best percent and 2 percent of global economic output, while the cost reaction, asking whom we were to believe, the pope or “the man of enforcing anti-warming policies would add up to about 4 per- who said, ‘If you like your plan, you can keep your plan’?” The cent. Those who seek aggressive anti-warming policies dispute Vatican’s statement was quite reminiscent of the one it released that those figures can be meaningfully compared, and they have after Obama met with Pope Benedict XVI. If Obama expected a point—but not the one they think. Both figures assume that anything different, he was misled by the press. policy changes will produce predictable atmospheric changes. The former figure compares a global-temperature increase of 4.5 n Leland Yee never seemed de grees Fahrenheit with a no-warming scenario; the latter figure like the brightest politician in compares the economic costs of enacting stringent emissions San Francisco, but the alleged controls with those of continuing the current policy; but neither antics that got the California accounts for the very likely possibility that policy changes in the state senator arrested by the developed world will have little or no impact on a global scenario FBI required a certain genius that includes China and India, neither of which is likely to com- for stupidity. An FBI special ply with an international agenda that will leave its citizens mate- agent representing a large rially worse off, whatever agreements their leaders accept. While team that worked for over there is a robust and important debate about the science of glo bal a year affirms that, among warming, policy does not proceed with mathematical in ev it a bil - other things, Yee openly dis- i ty from climate models, even very good ones. Modeling climate cussed assisting in an illegal is science; modeling human behavior a century hence is omni- heavy-weapons deal between science. organized criminals and the Philippines’ Moro Islamic n Nearly four years into its experiment with the Common Core, Liberation Front. Not only Indiana became the first state to withdraw from the national stan- that, but the deal involved a dards that 45 other states and the District of Columbia have man Yee knew to be both a signed on to. Governor Mike Pence (R.) said decisions on edu- repeat felon and a former snitch for the federal government. cation should be made at the state and local levels, and that aca- “People want to get whatever they want to get,” Yee told a demic standards in Indiana would be “written by Hoosiers, for federal undercover agent in February. “Do I care? No, I don’t Hoosiers.” The decision shows the worst fears of Common care. People need certain things.” That’s a decidedly more laid- Core’s foes—that the program is a federal takeover—to be an back view than Yee took less than a year earlier when he pushed exaggeration, since Indiana retained the ability to leave (as all wide-ranging bills in Sacramento to require micro-stamping, states do). It also shows the basic unworkability of the idea of restrict magazine choice, and regulate private handling of legally creating common national standards without a federal takeover. owned weapons. Yee’s alleged dealings with storied Chinatown The education world appears set to spend the next several years mobster Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow have earned him doing nothing more productive than fighting over the implica- charges on multiple felonies. Yee has been suspended with pay tions of a paradox. from his $95,291-per-year state-senate seat, but seems certain to remain a public charge for some time to come. n The Obama administration’s buried announcement that the Department of Commerce would be relinquishing oversight of n The Washington Post’s Wonkblog site, the operation formerly the Internet was met at first with an alarming indifference. But a run by liberal wunderkind Ezra Klein, has been letting its bias few voices are starting to ask a simple question: Why? First, for- flow a little too freely recently. Case in point: Two environmen- mer president Bill Clinton teamed up with Wikipedia’s founder, tal reporters devoted an entire piece to alleging that Charles and Jimmy Wales, to express his fear that the measure would lead to David Koch have more to gain than any big oil firm from the con- foreign governments’ “cracking down on Internet freedom.” struction of the Keystone pipeline. Their source for this informa-

RICH PEDRONCELLI Then Senators Tim Scott (R., S.C.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) tion was hazy data from a hysterical report by a left-wing group. / joined the fray, announcing their intentions to make an issue of In reality, as John Hinderaker of the blog Power Line pointed out,

AP PHOTO the plan in the Senate. Finally, six House Republicans introduced Keystone is irrelevant to the Kochs’ Canada holdings. Their U.S.

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“Collin’s story is heartrending and heartwarming.... a witness of how the goodness of God can work miracles in anyone’s life.” — GOVERNOR MIKE HUCKABEE From the Foreword

A VOICE UNDEFEATED by Collin Raye Foreword by Governor Mike Huckabee hen Collin Raye’s powerful, golden voice dazzled the Wcountry music scene in 1991 with his Number One hit single “Love, Me”, country music listeners fell in love with one of the great voices of our time. In this book, journey with Raye as he climbs to the top of the music world; but his story goes beyond the music—A Voice Undefeated is also an intimate diary of a soul who has suffered great professional and personal losses, but has managed to endure with faith and courage. Most recently his beloved nine-year-old granddaughter, Haley, died in 2010 from an undiagnosed neurological disease. Since Haley’s death, Collin has become an advocate for the sick and disabled and has established the Haley Bell Blesséd Chair Foundation to provide wheelchairs to families with special needs children. This is a remarkable, inspirational story of faith, of struggle, of suffering, of profound love, and ultimately of triumph in the Book includes a DVD of a never-before-seen interview midst of tragedy. and three songs written by Collin, )3". sPAGESs3EWN(ARDCOVERs “Undefeated”, “She’s With Me”, )NCLUDESABONUS$6$ANDPAGESCOLORPHOTOS and “Give Me Jesus” that are intimate to his story. 3EEMOREATaVoiceUndefeated.com

PRAISE FOR A VOICE UNDEFEATED “Collin Raye’s belief that an artist’s real success “If there was ever a book to show modern-day is in the quality and artistry of his work makes him a believers that in the end nothing matters but good showman. The love he discovers through his faith faith and family, Collin’s is it.” in God makes him a great man.” — TERESA TOMEO, Author, Extreme Makeover — MOTHER DOLORES HART, Author, The Ear of the Heart “A must-read book to meet the real Collin Raye...“ “The most authentic voices for life are often those of — RAYMOND ARROYO, EWTN Host, The World Over people who can draw from their own experiences. Collin Raye has such a voice.“ “His heartfelt story of perseverance and ongoing conversion is sure to encourage anyone striving to — ABBY JOHNSON, Author, Unplanned live by faith in a secular world.” “The sharp shadow of suffering has fallen across the — MARCUS GRODI, EWTN Host, The Journey Home life of Collin Raye in ways that would have felled lesser men. Through his music, Raye has a rare knack for “Collin’s struggle to integrate his faith into the transforming all that suffering into an experience of whole of life is both inspiring and challenging indescribable consolation.” to fathers, husbands, and everyone.” — MOST REV. RONALD GAINER, — PATRICK COFFIN, Radio Host, Catholic Answers Bishop of Lexington, Kentucky

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THE WEEK refining operations, the brothers’ main business, would likely be demerits in the categories of taste and history. The organization harmed by the pipeline’s construction. No matter, the wonks is distributing pendants in the form of wire hangers to its donors responded: Hinderaker’s fisking is “strong evidence that issues in gratitude for their financial support of its mission of dismem- surrounding the Koch brothers’ political and business interests bering children. As an example of bad taste, the wire-hanger will stir and inflame public debate in this election year. That’s pendant is in Donald Trump’s league; it is also misleading. why we wrote the piece.” By this logic, any baseless attack pos- Despite the myth of the brutal “back alley” abortion and tens of ing as reporting is legitimate as long as someone is moved to crit- thousands of women maimed or dead from self-administered icize it. Bilderberger conspiracy theorists have higher standards abortions in the years just before Roe, Planned Parenthood’s than that. own research from that period found that abortion was “no longer a dangerous procedure,” owing to the fact that the great n The D.C. Abortion Fund wins marks for truth in advertising— majority of them—90 percent by Planned Parenthood’s esti- no “reproductive health” euphemisms in that name—but earns mate—were performed by physicians. We are able to confirm

After the Crisis

T the beginning of the Great Recession, econo- likely due to a decrease in labor-force participation, a A mists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff pattern that has been more dramatic in the U.S. than in warned that the recovery might be a long one other countries and is in part attributable to the great in - because the re ces sion had been preceded by a financial crease in the percentage of the work force claiming dis- crisis. Typically, recovery from financial crises takes at ability insurance. least a decade. While Keynesian ideologues predicted a The massive efforts at stimulus, then, have had little normal V-shaped recovery because of the Obama stimu- visible impact on the relative performance of the U.S. lus, those with a sense of history warned that long-run economy—contrary to a recent White House report on policies such as permanent tax cuts were the only medicine capable of delivering sustained growth. the impact of the stimulus that made the following More than six years after the start of the U.S. financial claim: “Thanks in significant part to the actions of Pres - crisis, with GDP growth still slow and steady and the un - i dent Obama, the economic picture today is much em ploy ment rate only recently falling below 7 percent, brighter.” the early predictions based on the Reinhart and Rogoff —KEVIN A. HASSETT data look spot-on. Unfortunately for the U.S., the economy has followed a path remarkably close to that of other countries recovering from a financial crisis. If anything, U.S. versus Median Performance, the U.S. experience is slightly worse than average. Post−Financial Crisis

The accompanying charts use data on 15 separate fi - United States Median Financial-Crisis Country nan cial crises from a follow-on paper by Carmen Rein - hart and Vincent Reinhart to show where the U.S. stands. Real Per Capita GDP The top chart shows how real per capita GDP has 1.10 changed in the U.S. before and after the financial crisis, 1.05 1.00 compared with the median performance of countries 0.95

similarly stricken. (On the vertical axis, real GDP in the year 0.90

of the financial crisis is indexed to 1, to make a visual com- 0.85

parison easier. On the horizontal axis, the crisis year is to 1) Capita GDP (Indexed Real Per 0.80 T-5 T-4 T-3 T-2 T-1 T T+1 T+2 T+3 T+4 T+5 T+6 labeled “T,” and time before or after the crisis is mea-

sured in years.) The bottom chart compares the unem- 12 Unemployment Rate

ployment experience of the U.S. with that of the median 10

crisis country. 8 Overall, U.S. performance has been a good bit worse 6 than the median experience of other countries. Real per 4 Unemployment Rate capita GDP in the U.S. is about 6 percent below where it 2 0 would have been if we simply had followed the median T-5 T-4 T-3 T-2 T-1 T T+1 T+2 T+3 T+4 T+5 T+6 path. The unemployment rate is slightly below the median Years Before or After Financial Crisis (Crisis Year = T) of other affected countries, but most of that difference is SOURCE: THE WORLD BANK; AFTER THE FALL, BY CARMEN AND VINCENT REINHART

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THE WEEK only one documented case of a hanger being used in a self- of his firm, his firing, or, at the very least, an apology. If Amer i - induced abortion—and it was in 2009, not in 1962. Abortion is cans want to punish a chief executive for having expressed in a grisly and inhumane act of violence, and the fact that outlaw- 2008 the belief that marriage properly understood is between a ing it will not eliminate it does not set it apart from other crimes. man and a woman, they might set their sights a little higher than In the matter of abortion, the question the hanger-pendant set the executive suite at Mozilla—the one at 1600 Pennsylvania never can ask or answer is: Safe for whom? Avenue, perhaps.

n In early March, the West Virginia legislature passed HB n It was business pretty much as usual at the University of 4588—which made abortions later than 20 weeks after con- Michigan. The “BDS” movement was creating an atmosphere ception illegal—with overwhelming support. Had it been of fear and intimidation. “BDS” stands for “Boycott, Di vest - signed, West Virginia would have been the first Democratic- ment, and Sanctions,” and those measures are aimed at one controlled state to institute such a ban. Alas, Democratic governor country, and one country only: Israel. BDS-ers at Michigan Earl Ray Tomblin has vetoed the bill, calling it “un consti- staged sit-ins, yelled slurs, and made death threats. They tutional,” but also saying that “I believe there is no greater gift employed virtually the entire nasty repertoire. At least one proof love than the gift of life.” Just not at 20 weeks, apparently. Israel student called the cops for protection. The student government actually voted down a motion to divest—by 25 to 9, n California’s ban on race preferences in admissions to state with five abstentions. The vote was taken by secret ballot, be - universities, adopted by referendum in 1996, resulted in a cause the anti-BDS members feared what the BDS-ers would surge of Asian-American students. Asian-American opposition do to them. Over in Chicago, the Loyola University student defeated a recent attempt to revive the preferences. Diversity is government passed a BDS motion. “They did something re - turning out, once again, to be the enemy of “diversity.” mark able,” said Sharif Abdallah, a spokesman for Loyola Stu - dents for Justice in Palestine. They certainly did: They took a n New York City’s charter schools, bugbears of the local shot at the only democratic country in the Middle East, a country teachers’ union and their ally, Mayor Bill de Blasio, got a life- to which such unfortunates as Palestinian homosexuals have to line in the latest New York State budget—money from the flee. Maybe the Loyola students will grow up one day. Mean - state, and a guarantee that facilities will be found for them in while, Israel must find ways to survive worldwide ignorance existing schools or in rented space. Their rescuer was Gov er - and hatred. nor Andrew Cuomo: “We want to protect and grow and support the charter-school movement,” he said. Teachers’ unions hate charter schools as competition, but the parents of children n Mike Adams sued the University of North Caro lina– saved by them (many of them black) love them even more in - Wilmington, where he is an associate professor of soci- tense ly. Cuomo may have found a winning issue. If so, de ology and criminology, for discriminating against his Bla sio’s patrons—another New York politician, more recently political (conservative) and religious (Christian) beliefs U.S. sec retary of state, and her husband—had better start bon- when it denied him promotion in 2006. A federal judge in ing up on it. 2010 held that Adams was not entitled to freedom of speech in his capacity as a public employee. Late last month, a n The National Labor Relations Board has decided that the feder al appeals court overturned that decision, arguing that members of the Northwestern University football team are “many forms of public speech or service a professor not amateur scholar-athletes but employees of the university engaged in during his employment” were protected under and therefore entitled under federal law to form a union. the First Amendment. The There is some satisfaction in doing away with the fiction that court found that Adams’s major-college football players are anything other than semi- political commentary at professional entertainers in what amounts to a farm system for Town hall.com and else- professional franchises, but the NLRB’s extension of the fed- where was a “substantial eral snout into the question of university scholarships is or moti vat ing factor” in unwelcome. If the gentleman-scholars of Northwestern wish the vote against his appli- to work their way through college as union men, there are any cation for a full professor- number of occupations open to them, albeit none with cheer- ship. UNCW has said it leaders. will appeal. Advocates of academic freedom n Brendan Eich, recently named the CEO of Silicon Valley have cause for cele- web-browser firm Mozilla, has a past that is neither dark nor bration but not com- secret, but it has his employees in a state of mutiny: He donated placency. $1,000 to the campaign for Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that amended the state’s constitution to define “marriage” as a union between a man and a woman—a fight that n Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s march to power in Turkey is awe- ended when a federal court distilled from the ether a finding that some. After more than ten years as prime minister, he’s calcu- California’s constitution was unconstitutional. Mr. Eich’s dona- lating whether it’s time to appoint himself president for life. tion has been a matter of public knowledge for some time, but With the Islamic card in his hand, he’s squeezing out the secu- his elevation to the top job has led to renewed calls for a boycott lar opposition. The prisons hold hundreds of military men and

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journalists whom he has accused of plotting against him, and part to a recent documentary about the catcalls and sexual he’s replaced judges and senior policemen also by the hun- insults that women routinely experience as they walk down the dred. When leaks opened him to accusations of corruption street in Brussels. Among Belgians, as among most people, and exposed plans for intervening in the Syrian civil war, he opposition to incivility is broad, but the proposed law is broader tried to control comment by banning Twitter and YouTube. It still. It amounts to a license for judges to find any reference to seemed probable that he and his ruling party would be sexual difference criminal. Sexism is that elastic a concept. They trounced in the municipal elections that were due. Not a bit of might as well pass a law against wickedness. it. The Islamic card saved the day for them, and they have won fairly handily. In a victory speech, Erdogan as usual conjured n Divorce is for the polloi. The actress Gwyneth Paltrow and up the specter of foreign conspirators, concluding with a clear her husband, Coldplay singer Chris Martin, announced in threat of mass arrests: “Tomorrow, there will be those who March that after ten years of marriage they would be under- have to flee.” The telephone conversations that seemingly going a “conscious uncoupling.” In a post under that headline reveal financial corruption, he says, were faked, and “espi- on Paltrow’s lifestyle blog, Goop, they wrote that while they onage” lies behind any talk about what Turkey might do in “love each other very much” and “are closer than we have ever Syria. A court has ordered the removal of the ban on Twitter been,” they have chosen to separate and would like privacy as and YouTube, but the argument about free speech is still run- they “consciously uncouple and coparent” their two children. ning. Erdogan’s hard line with protesters has already turned the Paltrow followed up by posting a 2,000-word treatise on con- secular element against him in a vicious cycle that looks bound scious uncoupling from her New Age guru Habib Sadeghi, a to become more vicious still. Los Angeles–based osteopathic doctor, and his wife, Sherry Sami. Sadeghi and Sami tell their clients that the “drama of n The opening sentences of a New York Times report out of divorce” can be avoided by “releas[ing] the belief structures Kabul said a lot: “The Taliban assailants apparently thought we have around marriage that create rigidity in our thought they were attacking an unprotected Christian-run day care center. process,” such as the idea that marriage should be a lifelong But they mistakenly burst into the compound next door, where commitment. They conclude that by “choosing to handle your an American government contractor’s employees were heavily uncoupling in a conscious way . . . you’ll see that although it armed and ready.” It’s so much pleasanter to attack unprotected looks like everything is coming apart; it’s actually all coming Christian-run day-care centers, n’est-ce pas? back together.” The kids might not see it that way.

n An Israeli cabinet minister was speaking anonymously to n ABC Family had a new drama in the works: Alice in Arabia, the press in the Knesset. He was talking about the U.S. and a not-so-clever play on Lewis Carroll’s tale. Written by Brooke Ukraine—and his own country. “The lesson of this crisis Eik mei er, a former cryptologic lin- screams to the sky. U.S. foreign policy is collapsing all over the guist in Arabic for the U.S. Army, world. . . . Israel cannot be Ukraine. It is ridiculous to hear about the show told the story of an Amer - American guarantees for Israeli security, which would at best i can teenager who is forced to relo- last a few weeks. When we’re in danger, they won’t be there to cate to Saudi Arabia to live with defend us. We must be the sole guarantors of Israeli security.” her extended family in the wake of Our White House and State Department object to such words, her mother’s death—and aimed to which is understandable. But the words are understandable too. spark a conversation on women’s issues in the Middle East. Instead, n The British press reported in March that several hospitals in it sparked outrage, on Twitter and Great Britain were incinerating the remains of thousands of among the media and some Mus - aborted and miscarried babies alongside medical waste, in lim groups. “Alice in Arabia sets some cases at “waste to energy” facilities that powered the the scene for a nightmare in which hospitals. British bureaucrats reacted to the revelations with our western heroine must break measured disapproval. The chief inspector of hospitals from free, instantly setting up Saudi the Care Quality Commission was “disappointed” that parents Arabia as an evil other, a different weren’t being consulted (in the case of miscarriages, one pre- and dark place where bad things sumes). Health minister Dan Poulter described the practice as happen to American women,” “totally unacceptable” and asked National Health Service Raya Jabali wrote in the Guardian. The Council on American- med i cal director Sir Bruce Keogh to put a stop to it. Keogh Islamic Relations worried that the show would en courage the agreed that while not illegal, it was “inappropriate” in “these “bullying” of Muslim children, and the American-Arab Anti- sensitive situations” to treat human remains as trash. He did Discrimination Committee accused ABC Family and its parent not explain why it was acceptable and appropriate to have dis- network, the Walt Disney Company, of continuing “to un - membered those bodies while they were living. abashedly perpetuate harmful stereotypes, orientalism, and Islamophobia.” ABC Family capitulated to the demands to nix n Sexist speech will be illegal in Belgium under new legisla- the show, saying that the “current conversation surrounding tion expected to be enacted later this month. A written or spo- our pilot was not what we had envisioned.” “If I had a world of ken remark that is judged to “reduce” persons “to their sexual my own, everything would be nonsense,” the Mad Hatter says dimension” will be punishable by a fine, imprisonment, or both. in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. His world doesn’t seem Belgian politicians who support the measure are re spond ing in so far removed from our own.

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THE WEEK n Skidmore College is offering a summer course called hatred. But do not mistake Phelps for a single-issue activist: “Sociology of Miley Cyrus,” tracing the petite centimillion- He also sued the Reagan administration for sending an ambas- aire’s cultural impact through her artistic development from a sador to the Vatican. He would later receive 30 percent of the winsome ingénue into a siren who simulates sex acts on stage. vote in a Democratic Senate primary. Many of his children To be sure, this won’t be the first college class to bury an and grandchildren fled the cult, saying he was physically as ephemeral entertainment phenomenon under heaps of scholarly well as emotionally abusive. Now he is dead, and, we pray, jargon (nor, for that matter, is this the first time we have com- discovering that God is more merciful than his demented mented on a pop-tart transformed into a pistol). And, to be imagination could allow. R.I.P. sure, it’s entirely possible to analyze the philosophical impli- cations and semiotic significance of sultry Miss Cyrus—or of PUBLIC POLICY Beyoncé (Rutgers), Mad Men (Northwestern), or Star Trek A Season of Obamacare (Georgetown)—while meeting the most rigorous standards of modern academic scholarship. In fact, that’s the problem. HILE successfully urging Congress to pass a sweeping health-care law in 2009 and early 2010, n In July 1965, Commander Jeremiah Denton of the U.S. W Presi dent Obama and his allies made three main Navy was shot down over North Vietnam, where he was tor- promises: The law would reduce premiums, dramatically tured, tortured, and, for variety, tortured. In 1966 a Japanese expand coverage, and leave people who liked their insurance film crew was allowed to interview him; while answering plans and doctors undisturbed. With the official sign-up period their questions he spelled the letters “T-O-R-T-U-R-E” by for Obamacare’s exchanges now over, we can say that none blinking them in Morse code. Which made the behavior of his of those promises have been kept. captors harsher. Released in 1973, per the Paris peace accords, We have, it is true, gotten a modest increase in insurance coverage. Gallup suggests that the percentage of Americans with health insurance has been rising from a recession trough but has not yet recovered to its level before Obama took of fice. Even the most favorable accounts of Obamacare’s effects suggest, first, that the increased coverage is well below the in i tial projections. They suggest as well that many more people have gotten coverage through Medicaid and through stay- ing on their parents’ plans than through the law’s vaunted ex changes (which appear mostly to have signed up the already insured). Moreover, many of the new Medicaid en - rollees are from states that have not participated in the law’s expansion of the program, raising the possibility that a pub- licity campaign could have replicated part of the law’s effect on enrollment. he said, “We are honored to have had the opportunity to serve Among the things we do not know about the new exchange our country under difficult circumstances. We are profoundly enrollees: how many of them have paid their premiums, how grateful to our commander-in-chief and to our nation for this many were uninsured, and how healthy they are. Thus we day. God bless America.” One term as a U.S. senator—a dis- also do not know whether taxpayer subsidies will be needed tinction that other men caper and cheat to attain—lies like lint to protect the insurance companies selling policies on the on his coat. A great patriot, a great man. Dead at 89. R.I.P. exchanges from losses. The administration has tried to take partial credit for the n For a while, James Schlesinger, the economist who became relatively modest rate of increase in health-care costs in CIA director, then secretary of defense in the Nixon–Ford recent years. The trend of declining medical inflation, how- years, seemed like a lonely good guy in a Republican ever, started in 2003 (or, depending on how you measure it, Washington too inclined to accommodate itself to living with even earlier). The $2,500 reduction in premiums that Obama the USSR. Gerald Ford fired him, and he supported Ronald promised has not materialized. The keep-your-plan, keep- Reagan’s 1976 run for the GOP nomination. Then Schlesinger your-doctor promise has long been exploded. switched to Jimmy Carter, who made him energy secretary. The main benefit that the newly insured have gotten is the He backed nuclear pow er and deregulating natural gas, but peace of mind that comes from knowing that medical events also hectored Americans for driving too much, which led to cannot bankrupt them. That benefit could have been won his second presidential firing. “Independent-minded” is usually more cheaply, and for more people, by modifying public policy Beltway code for trending left, but Schlesinger truly was. His to make catastrophic insurance more affordable. The federal conversion from Judaism to Lutheranism typified his go-it- government would not have had to mandate essential benefits aloneness. Dead at 85. R.I.P. for everyone and trample on consciences in the process, or to create a constitutionally suspect board to try to centralize DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE . S .

U n Fred Phelps was a cult leader best known for organizing medical practice, or to tax medical devices, or to subsidize / pickets of military funerals, based on the theory that, as the abortion, or to make an ongoing mockery of the rule of law placards had it, “God hates fags” and has willed the death of by executing it with an editor’s pen. There were better alter-

CHERIE CULLEN our soldiers as punishment for our failure to express that natives. There still are.

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THE WEEK

PUBLIC POLICY requires that its own mores not only prevail in the culture but have the force of law behind them, which is a funny position Hobby Lobby Goes to Court for people who are inclined to complain about “legislating he question before the Supreme Court is whether one morality.” The Greens ask only to be let alone and to conduct may sell scrapbooking supplies to the general public their business in a way that does not do violence to their con- T without also subsidizing the purchase of mifepristone sciences. The law is on their side, and the Court should be, too. for one’s employees. hobby Lobby is a craft-supplies store owned by a trust controlled by the Green family of Oklahoma, THE WORLD who are conservative Christians. The so-called Affordable Unrealpolitik Care Act mandates that they include various kinds of contraception in their employee-insurance programs, including ReSIdeNT OBAmA seems to fancy himself some kind of intrauterine devices and “morning after” pills that the Greens tough-minded practitioner of realpolitik. So how does fear cause abortions. They do not wish to subsidize the pur- P he think Bismarck would respond to Russia’s inva- chase of such products; the Obama administration says that sion, occupation, and annexation of Crimea? No one can real- they must. ly know the answer to that question, since Bismarck lived in a While there are constitutional issues implicit in the case, very different legal and international environment than hobby Lobby is appealing to the straightforward statutory today’s. But he would certainly have exploited the fact that language of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed by Putin’s Russia is a weak and even declining regional power a near-unanimous Congress and signed into law by President economically, demographically, and militarily. he would Bill Clinton in 1993, which requires that even in those probably not have said so, unless it served some purpose instances in which the federal government can demonstrate a beyond making him feel briefly macho, and he would have compelling state interest in burdening the free exercise of reli- known that a regional power is likely to be stronger than most gion, it must do so in the least restrictive fashion. Among the rival powers if the battleground is its own region. many problems with asking an organization that enjoys the But he would have realized that Russia could probably not services of a navy to act as an insurance broker is that phras- afford to invade and occupy the rest of Ukraine if it meant a es such as “least restrictive” are difficult to reconcile with the protracted struggle against Ukrainian guerrilla forces after blunt-force measures generally deployed by national govern- an initial “victory,” or a long-drawn-out imposition of ments. hence the Supreme Court is being asked to answer the Western economic sanctions, or a long-term shift by Western question of whether a national mandate for employer subsi- european energy consumers from Russia to other suppliers, dies of contraceptives of almost every description and the or, still worse, all three. If he believed that Russia might be enforcement of that mandate through the gentle offices of the a long-term threat to his own country, he might even have Internal Revenue Service is the least restrictive means of tried to provoke Putin into a rash invasion that would act as achieving the pressing national business of helping Americans a catalyst for Russia’s decline by bleeding a population to purchase a product available for $9 at Walmart. The answer already weakened by alcoholism, kleptocracy, and other to that question is self-evidently “No,” though whether that social diseases. will be evident to the ladies and gentlemen of the Supreme What he would certainly not do is to offer concessions to Court is unknown. stave off any such incursion. For he would know in his bones By handing out exemptions to some religious groups, the that such concessions would reward and legitimize Putin’s Obama administration has implicitly conceded that the contra- seizure of Crimea, strengthen him at home and international- ception mandate is a substantial burden on the free exercise of ly, and give him breathing space until he decided which slice religion. But it habitually takes a narrow view of religious lib- of Ukraine he would seize in the next salami tactic. If his erty, as if questions of conscience were relevant only when one bones were no help on this occasion, he could consult recent is within sight of an altar. The Left’s tireless Kulturkampf Caucasian history, in which Putin seized two chunks of Georgia, stopped before conquering the whole country, offered to negotiate diplomatically, and was rewarded for his moderation by the West’s forgetting the whole thing. Putin, however, remembered it. The result is that Secretary of State John Kerry is currently negotiating with his Russian opposite number, Sergei Lavrov, not over Russia’s withdrawal from Crimea—that’s seemingly off the table—but over whether Kiev should accept Russia’s demand for a federal Ukraine that would facilitate its next seizure of some area in eastern Ukraine. doing nothing at all would be an improvement on such diplomacy. And if the U.S. ends up pressuring Ukraine to accept some such compromise, we will add shame to folly—and face the same crisis in another part of the forest before too long. TONY GUTIERREZ

Real pol i tik? Bismarck would scorn to consider it. And Neville / Cham ber lain would claim with justice that he was dealt a far

worse hand at munich and played it a great deal better. AP PHOTO

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You deserve a factual look at . . .

Iran, Nuclear Weapons and the “Interim Agreement” Is this the time to relax—or rather increase— economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic? Despite evasions, denials and equivocations, it is clear that Iran continues to pursue the holy grail of nuclear weapons. A temporary agreement recently struck between Iran and Western powers does nothing to disable Iran’s nuclear weapons development, yet it does loosen hard-won economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic. In fact, Iranian diplomats brag that the agreement fails to inhibit them in the least and that their nuclear program will not be stopped. Does it really make sense to relax pressure on Iran, or should the U.S. and Western powers line up additional sanctions should Iran fail to discontinue nuclear weapons development?

Even short of such a war, a nuclear-armed Iran would be in WhatThe P5 +are 1 group the of facts? world powers—the U.S., China, Russia, unquestioned dominance of the Middle East and of its oil supply, France, Great Britain and Germany—celebrated when Iran the energy life blood of the entire world. It would surely cause recently agreed to a six-month interim agreement calling for the intolerable disruption of the U.S. and international economies. Islamic Republic to suspend enrichment of 20% uranium. In Israel, however, is the most immediate target of Iran’s fury. return, the P5 + 1 agreed to allow Iran to Iran’s unquenchable hatred of Israel is based access $4.2 billion in previously blocked on the conviction that “nonbelievers” have funds, and the U.S. agreed to apply no new “We did not agree to no legitimate place in the Middle East. Iran’s economic sanctions for six months. Yet leaders have repeatedly threatened Israel Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad dismantle anything.” with destruction once they come into Zarif says, “We did not agree to dismantle possession of nuclear weapons. anything,” and its president Hassan Rouhani promises Iran will Israel is such a small country that one or two nuclear weapons absolutely retain its enrichment capability. strategically dropped on its narrow coastal territory would destroy U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged that if Iran fails to it. Indeed, the effects of a nuclear attack on Israel are too horrible abide by the interim agreement or to dismantle its nuclear to consider. There can be little doubt, for example, that such an weapons development, he would seek additional economic attack would turn the entire Middle East into a war zone, leaving sanctions and possibly resort to military action. A bill currently wide-spread destruction and a worldwide economic disaster in its before Congress—the Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act—would wake. Clearly this outcome must be prevented at all cost, and no impose just such additional sanctions on Iran if it breaks the effort should be spared to keep the hands of the ayatollahs off the interim agreement or does not cease its nuclear weapons program nuclear trigger. following expiration of this agreement. In other words, the bill What is the solution? Of course, most Americans share the formalizes exactly the diplomatic consequences the President has President’s hopes that Iran can be persuaded to set aside its threatened. No wonder the Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act is nuclear ambitions—and its vendetta against Israel—through currently supported by at least 59 U.S. Senators, a clear majority. diplomacy and other peaceful means. But one thing is certain: It Distressingly, the President has threatened to veto this act if is crippling Western economic sanctions, backed by the threat of passed by the Senate. The White House fears that the threat of new force, that have recently driven Iran to the negotiating table. sanctions—even though they would not go into effect unless Iran Above all, Iran must decommission its nuclear weapons fails to comply—could derail current nuclear disarmament talks. infrastructure. Yet with Iran’s nuclear capability still intact and What are the stakes? The primary targets of the Iranian moving forward and its leaders vigorously asserting that the ayatollahs’ fanatical zeal are the U.S. (the “great Satan”) and Israel Islamic Republic will never reduce its 20,000 centrifuges or shut (the “little Satan”), perceived as being America’s agent in the down its Arak heavy-water nuclear reactor or its Fordow Middle East. Since Iran now possesses long-range ballistic enrichment facility, does it make sense to reduce the pressure of missiles, the United States, Europe and many Arab nations are in economic sanctions now? Sen. Robert Menendez, chairman of the mortal danger of attack by that country. Indeed, as Senate Foreign Senate Foreign Relations Committee believes it’s a mistake to relax Relations Committee member Sen. Richard Durbin notes, “If sanctions: “I am convinced that we should only relieve pressure on these [current] negotiations fail, there are two grim alternatives— Iran in return for verifiable concessions that will fundamentally a nuclear Iran, or war, or perhaps both.” dismantle Iran’s nuclear program.” Since sanctions brought the Iranians to the table, sanctions are clearly the most powerful, peaceful means at our disposal for convincing the Iranians to abandon hopes of acquiring nuclear weapons. But because the Iranians continue to declare themselves steadfastly committed to nuclear development, it’s time to ratchet up the economic pressure. The Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act should be passed now. The survival of the world is at stake.

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(the first a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, the second a health- policy analyst at the Cato Institute, both libertarians who have published often in NR) have made the case for the plaintiffs at length in Health Matrix, a journal of law and medicine. They want the courts to rule that the IRS must stop issuing tax credits, and also stop levying taxes and penalties that are tied to them, in the 36 states covered by the federal exchange. Unlike the challenge to the individual mandate that the Supreme Court decided in 2012, these lawsuits do not question the scope of congressional power. Neither Adler nor Cannon nor any of the other people involved in the lawsuits denies that Congress had the legal power to extend tax credits to people getting insurance from a federal exchange. Congress could, for that matter, have stipulated in the law that for purposes of the law’s treatment of exchanges the federal government would be counted as a state; it did just that with respect to U.S. territories. Supporters of the lawsuit simply ob serve that Con - gress did not exercise its power in these Obama versus Obamacare ways. They are not challenging any provision of the Obamacare law. They say The courts need to strike down the administration’s latest lawless fix they are merely asking that the law be applied faithfully. BY RAMESH PONNURU Fans of Obamacare—the program, that is, and not the text of the law hE Obama administration is urg- So the Obama administration’s In ternal itself—say that denying tax credits for ing federal judges to save its Revenue Service decided that it would the federal exchanges would spell its health-care program from absur- offer tax credits even on the federal end. The basic argument of those fans is T dity. It’s a little late for that. exchange, which covers 36 states. The that Congress did not intend, and could The Obamacare law enacted in March success of the program required going not have intended, to let a tiny portion 2010 authorizes the federal government beyond the letter of the law—several hun- of a law render it unworkable. The New to provide tax credits for people who dred billion dollars beyond it over the Republic quoted one of the lawyers who buy health insurance on exchanges next decade. That decision, in addition to have backed the administration’s posi- established by state governments. It re - being legally questionable, created some tion in these cases: “Congress did not peatedly refers to exchanges “estab- losers. Various taxes and penalties in the have a death wish for this legislation.” lished by the State,” especially when law come into effect only when tax Democratic congressmen and all kinds discussing the tax credits. Because credits are available. Em ployers will be of interest groups—the insurance com- opposition to the law has run higher and subject to a penalty for not offering in- panies, the American hospital Asso - longer than its supporters ever expected surance, for example, only if their em - ciation, AARP—have all filed briefs in early 2010, however, most states have ployees get tax credits on an exchange. arguing similarly. So have various not established exchanges. What the IRS has done, then, is to declare health scholars. They say that if judges The law authorizes the federal govern- that it is going to collect taxes that follow their standard practice of avoid- ment to establish exchanges for states Congress has not authorized in law. ing interpretations of laws that yield that refrain, but has no provision allow- Several lawsuits have challenged the absurd results, the IRS will be allowed to ing tax credits to be offered to defray the administration on this point. While it has keep offering credits on the federal costs of insurance policies offered on won the early rounds of the cases, the exchanges. those federal exchanges. Without the tax D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is now During oral argument in the D.C. credits, though, the policies will be pro- considering one of them. It could make Circuit case, Judge A. Raymond Ran - hibitively expensive for so many people it as far as the Supreme Court. dolph suggested a different way of see-

that the law will not work. Jonathan Adler and Michael Cannon ing the issue. “There is an absurdity ROMAN GENN

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principle, but there is not a stupidity The aaRP brief claims that “it is principle. If the law is just stupid, I don’t implausible, to say the least, that think it’s up to the court to save it.” Congress intended to allow the entire act Drop the If Obamacare had proven popular, to be cannibalized by a state’s choice not though, withholding tax credits in states to establish its own exchange.” all of the ‘Dropout’ that stayed out of the exchanges would pro-IRS briefs say that allowing the have been neither absurd nor stupid. It states to block tax credits by refusing to This country was built by people would have been an inducement to get establish an exchange would frustrate the without formal credentials the remaining holdout states to establish law’s main goal of expanding coverage, exchanges. as adler and Cannon demon- which would be perverse. strate, previous Senate bills tied the avail- Yet nobody disputes that the law BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE ability of tax credits to whether states allowed states to refuse to expand established exchanges. What’s more, Medicaid, which also frustrates that goal. have long argued that any culture some of the legal briefs defending the The law as enacted tried to get the states that fetishizes its system of formal education will soon end up disparag- I ing those who opt out—and it was Congress cannot have intended to let with this somber maxim in mind that a recent headline from the progressive Web the choices of the IRS cannibalize the publication PoliticsUSA grabbed my attention: “College Dropout Scott Walker rule of law. Claims Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War by Busting Unions.” IRS concede that previous bills put this to go along with the expansion by deny- There are no two ways around this sen- condition on tax credits. This wasn’t ing all Medicaid funds to holdouts. The tence—no perplexing ambiguities or some unthinkable error that somehow Supreme Court ruled that the federal gov- contrived interpretations. here, “college made it into the particular bill that ended ernment could not use such a blunt instru- dropout” serves as an unlovely substitute up becoming law. ment: It could withhold some Medi caid for “stupid,” “uncultured,” “unvetted”— The sponsors of the legislation clear- funds but not all of them. or, at the very least, for “lacking in cre- ly did assume that states would estab- The withholding of tax credits from dentials.” It’s a putdown and a swipe—a lish exchanges. “By 2014, each state states without exchanges could similar- churlish, ugly dig in the ribs designed to will set up what we’re calling a health- ly have been meant to induce them to put a man in his place. and, more than insurance exchange,” said President establish them. In that case the law- anything else, it’s a signal for fellow Obama weeks after signing the law. In makers just overestimated how power- fetishists: “This person is not like us.” august 2012, the New York Times cor- ful an inducement it would be, and If it seems unwarranted that someone roborated the point: “When Congress eventually the administration, facing a would attempt to throw this card at the passed legislation to expand coverage disaster for its policy and political successful governor of a state of almost two years ago, Mr. Obama and law- ambitions, used the IRS to nullify the 6 million, that is because it is exactly makers assumed that every state would inducement altogether. The states that: unwarranted. This, after all, is a set up its own exchange.’’ called the feds’ bluff. country built by dropouts, eccentrics, and There’s another problem with the here and there it has been speculated rebels—“the round pegs in the square contention that Congress could not have that the inducement could still work if holes,” in Sydney Smith’s famous formu- intended a policy that would not work. the courts, by applying the law as writ- lation. Outside the public sector, this is The Obamacare law included some- ten, re-create it. If the plaintiffs win, understood rather well. What do we sus- thing called “the Class act,” which was only in a minority of states will people pect are the chances that our headline’s supposed to help the disabled pay for who get insurance from exchanges author would take to his keyboard and long-term care. Critics warned that the receive federal help in paying for it. In denigrate the scholarly credentials of pro gram could not be viable as designed, 36 states people on the exchange will Steve Jobs (apple), Bill Gates and Gabe so the law included a provision saying it face big bills. That hardship and that dis- Newell (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg and would have to be projected to be solvent parity might lead these voters to demand Dustin Moskovitz (Facebook), Michael for 75 years to continue. The critics, it that their state governments start an Dell (Dell), Larry ellison (Oracle), Matt turned out, were right: The program exchange after all—or that Congress Mullenweg (Wordpress), arash Ferdowsi could not establish solvency, and the amend the law so that they can get their (DropBox), aaron Levie (Box), evan administration had to abandon it and subsidies. Williams (Blogger, Twitter), David then agree to its formal repeal. In other Or the law could just collapse politi- Karp (Tumblr), Pete Cashmore (Mash - words: Yes, it is entirely conceivable that cally. Figuring out how the political sys- able), or Daniel ek (Spotify)—all of Congress would enact a law that would tem would react to its ruling is not, of whom thumbed their noses at academic prove unworkable; that it would enact a course, the courts’ job. Getting the law certification and elected to do something law that could be predicted to be right is. Congress cannot have intended that didn’t require it? unworkable; and that a specific provi- to let the choices of the IRS cannibalize What, too, do we presume is the likeli- sion of a law might doom it. the rule of law. hood of creative types’ being subjected to

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the epithet “dropout”? Would it be knows. But we all seem to agree that the ators, but they are in no circumstances thrown with such abandon at Walt graduates deserve one. “I went to col- allowed to reject school in order to get a Disney, Bill Cosby, Al Pacino, Ralph lege,” the unemployed generation tells job at the DMV or at their local public Lauren, Lady Gaga, Wolfgang Puck, us. And we all nod, with pity. school. In most cases, in fact, apostates Tom Hanks, Ted Turner, Elton John, or Why more young people have not may not leave to get a job with the gov- David Geffen—dropouts all? How about noticed that they are being sold down ernment at any level unless they possess our literary luminaries—F. Scott Fitz - the river is a mystery. Why the modern the right credentials. Acquiescence to the gerald, Harper Lee, Charles Dickens, Left is so keen to funnel the nation’s regime is the price of a place within it. Jack Kerouac, William Faulkner, Mark teen agers through the university system, It’s all depressingly Prussian—the end Twain, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. on the other hand, is not. Put harshly, its result of a century-long American fasci- Wells—some of whom didn’t even finish survival as a dominant political move- nation with a German model that really high school? Doubtful. In government, ment de mands it. In part, the urge is doesn’t suit the Anglosphere too well. however, the prejudice is rife. structural. Woodrow Wilson, quite the Ellwood P. Cubberley, a professor at the Credential-focused snobbery has worst of America’s presidents, hoped Stanford Graduate School of Education, always been unseemly, the grim conse- not only to centralize power and to do a contemporary of Woodrow Wilson’s, quence of conflating individual ability and away over night with the array of checks and the architect of much of the United Credential-focused snobbery has always been unseemly, the grim consequence of conflating individual ability and institutional imprimatur.

institutional imprimatur. But it is espe- and balances that his predecessors had States’ educational bureaucracy, was cially perplexing to see it rearing its head so pain stakingly established but also to impressed with the Teutonic approach now, when higher education is yielding establish a regimented bureaucracy that precisely because it ran contrary to the such questionable returns. All across the would be staffed by the best and the instincts of the republic. Once upon a world, universities are churning out brightest of citizens. The federal gov- time, what now seems normal was thor- parades of people who are processed ernment, Wilson argued, should seek to oughly foreign: mandated attendance, through their halls less for didactic bet- “open for the public a bureau of skilled, prescriptive testing for teachers and stu- terment and more because attending col- economical administration” that would dents alike, and a national curriculum lege for four years has become a rite of be populated by the “hundreds who are that guaranteed that the price of literacy passage—“what one does” between high wise” and who would have the explicit was submission to the prevailing preju- school and the real world. intention of thwarting the “selfish, igno- dices and interests of the state. Now, In a significant number of cases, rant, timid, stubborn, or foolish” in - these are uncontroversial. “Our schools,” would-be students have not yet noticed stincts of the voters. Cubberley wrote with characteristic hon- that their enthusiasm for a college place- How to ensure that those skilled ad - esty, “are, in a sense, factories in which ment is predicated upon a fatal miscon- ministrators had the right ideas, and that the raw products (children) are to be ception: that a degree will inexorably the voters didn’t rebel? Take over the sys- shaped and fashioned into products to lead to a better life. Often, it will not. As tem, of course. The 1962 Port Huron meet the various demands of life.” Some - Occupy Wall Street demonstrated rather State ment, written and issued by Stu dents where, Otto von Bismarck smiled. cruelly, the hardest-hit victims of the for a Democratic Society, called for the America has long operated on the Great Recession have been the stu- Left to “distribute” itself throughout presumption that a citizen can rise from dents—the millions of young people who the nation’s higher-education system— a log cabin to the presidency, a beautiful believed that their educations would which, the document’s authors noted clin- conceit that has lost little purchase as insulate them from the undulations and ically, “is located in a permanent position the republic has matured. There can be vagaries of the market. “I have a degree!” of social influence.” The “educational no greater enemy of this principle than many were prone to whine down in function” of the university, they contin- an establishment that rejects as an out- Zuccotti Park, when asked what ailed ued, “makes it indispensable and automat- sider any American who has not been them. “Okay,” one might have respond- ically makes it a crucial institution in the through the system in the manner the ed. “So bloody what?” formation of social attitudes. . . . In an incumbency approves. Leadership, intelli - The instinct is rife. So taken in by this unbelievably complicated world it is the gence, creativity, and focus can all be notion was a dear friend of mine that he central institution for organizing, evaluat- augmented by higher education; but, steadfastly refused to take work for half a ing, and transmitting knowledge.” colleges having a tendency to breed year until he could find what he described It is the central institution for organiz- conformity and requiring submission to as a “graduate job.” Like me, my friend ing and evaluating people, too—espe- hierarchy, they can be ruined and dimin- has a degree in modern history. What cially those who are to be entrusted with ished, too. Let us ask many harsh ques- exactly constitutes a “graduate job” for the affairs of state. Americans, it seems, tions of our representatives but ensure somebody who knows quite a lot about are allowed to leave the school grounds that among them is not “So, where did the French Revolution, nobody really to become great entrepreneurs or cre- you go to school?”

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May 21, 2014 Waldorf-astoria hotel new york city

he Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, named in honor of perhaps the greatest champion of liberty in the 20th century, is presented every other year to an individual who has made a significant contribution to advancing human freedom. Nominees are from all walks of life—scholars, activists, and political leaders have been among the hundreds nominated for the six previous Tawards. The 2014 prize, a cash award of $250,000, will be presented at the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty’s Biennial Dinner, May 21, 2014, in New York City at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

The name of the 2014 award recipient will be available at www.cato.org in the near future. The Keynote Address will be delivered by Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion, Russian pro-democracy leader, and global human-rights activist. For additional information and dinner reservations, please visit www.cato.org/friedmanprize.

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which is very difficult to codify, and which comes only from doing.” You can Our Man observe or read or interview all you want—but, in some areas, there is no In London substitute for doing. Gove remembers the first time he sat at A visit with Michael Gove, the cabinet table. He looked around it, Britain’s education minister saw some more seasoned members, and thought, “What am I doing here?” He BY JAY NORDLINGER says, “I had this very powerful sense, which returns regularly, of impostor syn- London drome.” He quotes a fellow minister, who n immigration officer at Heath - says, “Sometimes you think, ‘When are row Airport asks why I have the grown-ups going to turn up?’ And come to the United Kingdom. then you realize, you are the grown-ups A I say I’ve come to do some in the room.” Says Gove, “That in itself work. He then asks about my job, and I is slightly bracing.” answer. He further asks me what my par- He has learned any number of things, ticular assignment in London is. I’m including this: “One of the problems of going to interview a government minis- politics is that, on those occasions when ter, I say. “Which minister?” he asks. tive think tank, Policy Exchange. And you say yes to a particular interest group, “Michael Gove,” I respond. then he decided to practice politics and they pocket that concession, you’re a hero He scratches his head. “You work for policy, in addition to writing and talking for a day, and then they find their new an American magazine, and you’re going about them. demand on you, and for all the interest to interview our education minister? My He is known as the “radical” of Cam - groups to which you say no, you’re a guess is, most Americans don’t know eron’s cabinet, conducting a “revolu- villain forever.” A colleague was saying who our prime minister is.” tion” in education. What he has done is some thing to him earlier today: “In poli- True—most Americans could not iden- confront the Blob head-on. “Blob,” you tics as in life, but in politics in particular, tify the PM as David Cameron. Fewer may remember, is the coinage of William friends come and go, but enemies accu- could identify Gove as the education J. Bennett, one of President Reagan’s mulate.” minister. But serious conservatives are education secretaries. It means the educa- Gove has a few—more than a few. apt to know who Gove is. When he was tion establishment—the unions, the grad There is hatred spilled at him all the first elected to Parliament in 2005, I schools, the bureaucrats, etc. “Blob” is time, in addition to admiration. How wrote in these pages, “This is cause for used here in Britain, too. Gove has raised does the hatred feel? Can he simply conservative rejoicing—no matter where standards, rewritten the national cur- slough it off? “It must have an effect on one lives. Gove is one of Britain’s best riculum, allowed for innovation. He has me, more profound than I realize,” says political writers, and one of conserva - thrown virtually the whole conservative Gove. Arrows from your opposition are tism’s best writers, and he promises to be playbook at the country. one thing; arrows from those whose a strong politician.” Some of his moves are, in part, sym- support you might expect are worse. He has been that, yes. Since the Con- bolic. In 2011, he sent a King James I make the simple point that, in leaving servative party took power in 2010, in Bible—a facsimile of the original—to his typewriter, or computer, he chose to coalition with the Liberal Democrats, he every school in the land. It was the 400th be “in the arena,” borrowing Theodore has been at the helm of the education anniversary of this book, and Gove did Roosevelt’s famous phrase: “It is not the department. He has performed with bold- not let the moment pass. He described critic who counts,” but rather “the man ness, even audacity, thrilling conserva- the King James Bible as “precious and who is actually in the arena.” Gove says tives at home and abroad, and infuriating unique,” and said, “I want all pupils, of all that he quoted TR’s speech in a speech of the Left (as well as disquieting some faiths and none, to have the opportunity to his own, “about risk-aversion in politics, moderates). understand its place in our history, and its particularly in public-service reform.” A few biographical notes: Gove was significant influence on our language and My gaze is then directed to a portrait on a born in 1967. He is “the adopted son of democracy.” The Bibles were paid for wall—of TR. an Aberdeen fishmonger,” to quote the entirely by private donations. Some of us worry that you can never handy media line about him. A “scholar- Sitting with Gove in his office, I ask beat the Blob. You may push it back for a ship boy,” he attended a distinguished about his experience of politics—now while, but it always returns, smothering. school in Aberdeen whose motto (trans- almost ten years long. Surely he knows no reform ever sticks. Gove does not lated from Latin) is “Be the Best You more about politics now than he did agree with this (which is reassuring)—but Can Be.” Then he went to Oxford. when he was a journalist, right? Oh, yes. allows that “there are tides and cycles in For many years, he worked for the “Funnily enough, I just saw on the Inter - politics.” He elaborates, “Sometimes the Times—London’s, of course, not new net a new edition of Michael Oakeshott’s arguments for free enterprise win, some- York’s—as an editor and columnist. He note books. One of the points that he times the arguments for thrift win, some-

co-founded Britain’s blue-chip conserva- makes is, there is practical knowledge, times the arguments for tax-and-spend PRESS ASSOCIATION VIA AP IMAGES

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seem to prevail.” There is a similar back- writing, whether it’s journalism or fiction and-forth in education, he says. or non-fiction, is culturally far more Here is some advice for conservative significant than any other nation’s. Tech - Scenes from reformers, courtesy of Gove: We should nology is a given. America’s higher- try not to let ourselves be painted as education institutions are the best educa- A Marriage “stern, eat-your-spinach figures”—peo- tional institutions in the world.” ple who demand that the kids memorize Then he mentions “the old Churchill The Americans discovers an their times tables and conjugate their cliché,” which goes, “America will always ongoing Cold War Latin verbs (fruitful as those activities do the right thing, but only after exhaust- are). Instead, “I think we should say, ing all other options.” Gove says, “There’s BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON ‘We’re the civil-rights crusaders’”—peo- a moral sense that guides America’s ple who seek to ensure that kids have the leaders, which, for whatever reason, kicks kind of education that will allow them to in sooner or later. Even if you’ve got a bad HE best modern film about rise. “Children may not inherit wealth, but president or a difficult time, it’s always the American politics is Oliver they can certainly inherit the best that has case that, when the crisis requires it, sooner Stone’s Nixon, the merits of been thought and said.” or later America rises to the occasion.” T which can be appreciated only With this last phrase—“best that has We then move to Israel—another coun- once you have divested yourself of any been thought and said”—Gove is echoing try that Gove knows a lot about, and cares suspicion that it has anything more to Matthew Arnold. And he is one who be - deeply about. I ask, “In our countries, the do with the life and career of Richard lieves that any child can benefit from a Western democracies, is hostility to Israel Milhous Nixon than Antony and Cleo - sound and serious education, no matter rising or lessening?” “Rising,” he says, patra has to do with the biographies of its his personal circumstances. quickly. He believes Israel will survive, eponymous heroes. The Americans, an I tell Gove I’m going to ask him an but makes some unvarnished points. “For FX espionage drama now in its second Oprah-style question: Does his own back- a lot of people on the left, Israel is incred- season, treats the Cold War the way ground affect his view of education? “It ibly subversive of their world outlook.” Shakespeare treated Plutarch—a rich must do,” he says. “But I’m wary of a For example, “how can it be that, when source of character and incident used as simple equation between biography and we argue that the future is in transnational scaffolding to tell stories that are really views.” I tell him I suspect he’d have the governance, this country, which is abso - about something else. same views if he had been born with a lutely determined to be a 19th-century The Americans is a little like the first silver spoon in his mouth. He says, “I liberal nation-state, is so successful?” season of Mad Men in that it considers hope so. I mean, my views on education He further says, “There is a buried anti- the possibility that a picture-perfect are more or less the same as David Cam - Semitism whereby people say, ‘Yes, of suburban couple with two well-scrubbed eron’s.” (The prime minister is not the course, we’re perfectly happy to defend children (a boy and a girl, of course) adopted son of an Aberdeen fishmonger.) Jewish people, Jewish communities, the might be something other than, and en - Eventually, we get to America—a Jewish state, on our terms, so don’t you tirely less wholesome than, it seems. In country that Gove knows a lot about, and dare be so uppity, don’t you dare attempt the case of Mad Men, that meant that the cares a lot about. I put it bluntly: “Are we to determine what your state will be like: remarkably successful husband was in going down the tubes?” “No!” “Are we We’ll tell you the basis on which you fact a fraud, a man raised in poverty in a ‘fundamentally transformed’?” “No!” “Is should live.’” This is how it was in ghetto whorehouse who as a terrified soldier it curtains for us?” “No!” “Lights out?” days. seized upon the death of a superior to get “No!” He then says he would not criticize I say that, in my observation, there are himself out of combat and into a new President Obama or his administration, people who like Jews when they’re weak life under a new name. The Americans as a member of a government allied to and vulnerable, but not when they’re goes that one better: Our happy couple, America. He does discuss America, how- strong and armed. Gove says, “Jews in Mr. and Mrs. Jennings, is in fact com- ever. tanks is not allowed.” posed of two illegal deep-cover KGB All through our history, he says, we He has much more to say, of course, agents joined together by their masters in Americans have asked ourselves, “Is this on a range of subjects—but let’s finish Moscow and inserted into the United a period of decline?” This questioning back on the subject of Britain. He is States in the 1960s. began not long after the founding of the going all out in this government, not The domestic conceit is a clever one: republic, he guesses. And he cites some twiddling his thumbs. He is “making a The early Reagan years, during which later examples. He then says, “If you look difference” (in that most earnest of the series is set, coincided with the cli- at America now, yes, you have a fiscal phrases). Reagan used to say, “We’re not max of the orgy of divorce that began in problem—but then so do most developed here to mark time.” Gove quotes an old the Mad Men era before the graph went countries. And America is the place truism: “The only certainty about office nearly vertical in the 1970s. Like many where tomorrow happens. It’s the most is that you’re going to lose it one day.” unhappy couples in 1981, Philip and innovative and exciting country in the Gove will lose it one day—but, in the Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and world in terms of technological change meantime, if you want an example of the Keri Russell) are trapped in a sham mar- and in terms of intellectual endeavor.” conservative intellectual in action, look riage—with real children. All that which Still? Yes, indeed. “Whose magazines to London, to the education department was implicit in that period’s therapeutic- and books do we want to read? American here on Great Smith Street. culture divorce rhetoric—that they didn’t

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know what they were getting into, that bemused but mostly alarmed, explains to returned to rot in the Gulag. Philip pro- they are victims of forces beyond their her that “the Americans” do things differ- ceeds mechanically. “You’re not a man,” control, that they made choices before ently from the Soviets. She takes a great the refusenik tells him, insisting that they were experienced enough to fully deal of convincing. whatever manhood he might have had appreciate the consequences, that the The show’s opening credits suggest and whatever humanity he might have relationship is loveless—is made literal. a cheap moral equivalency at work— enjoyed have been trained out of him by Mrs. Jennings is the hard-core true American commercials juxtaposed the KGB. believer, one who daydreams about the against Soviet propaganda, Russian folk Philip does not dispute that, though we possibility of raising her children “as dancers juxtaposed against 1980s aero- in the audience know it to be untrue. He socialists” in 1980s America, who subtly bics videos—but the series itself does not is a man in full, one who loves his chil- tries to shape their politics in a pro-Soviet suffer from that defect. The Russians are dren and tries to be a husband to his sham direction during the Age of Reagan. This both fully human and fully monsters. wife, a patriot who loves his country provides some wonderful comedy, such Philip, in his unguarded moments, is a while appreciating the virtues of his as when she discovers to her enemy. But he is also a fiend, revulsion that her daughter is casually killing innocents, secretly attending a Christian exploiting vulnerable women, youth group. “They get them and putting his own children when they’re children,” she in the line of fire to complete protests to her husband. “They a mission he knows almost indoctrinate them with friend- nothing about. ship and songs.” There is a great deal of sex Mr. Jennings is open. Early in the show, another funny on, he is on the verge of propos- little irony. Though they have ing to his wife that they defect, the characteristically puritan- fearing for his family and hav- ical attitudes toward the ing heard of multimillion-dollar instrumentalization of sex in payouts to high-level turncoats. a consumer society—Mrs. His wife, on the other hand, Jennings insistently wipes rats to her handlers that he has excessive lip gloss off of her become too accustomed to daughter’s lips, a prim little Western comforts, that he “likes grimace on her face—she and it here too much.” What’s not to her husband both consistently like? During a flashback to the rely upon sex to achieve their couple’s arrival in the United missions. He grimaces when States, they check into a motel he listens to a particularly racy room during a sweltering Vir - Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell in The Americans tape of one of her seductions; ginia summer, and he intro- she resents that he is in fact duces her to air conditioning, her face casual anti-Semite, asking a captured married to one of his unwitting sources, overcome by wonder. When he broaches Mossad agent: “Is that what you Jews part of an elaborate effort to penetrate the defection, he insists: “America’s not so do? Spy on your friends?” The Israeli FBI’s counterintelligence directorate. bad. We’ve been here a long time— agent’s answer is perfect: “America is The most prominent agent of that what’s so bad about it? The electricity not our friend. America is our father, and directive happens to move in next door works all the time, the food’s pretty great, he thinks that we are not yet ready to and become Philip’s beer buddy. That the closet space . . .” drive his fast car, so, sometimes, when he isn’t even close to the most implausible But the lady of the house is having is not looking, we take the wheel.” He development in the show, but espionage none of that. also tells the KGB man who is ready to thrillers demand the implausible, in no The irony is that his sympathy for the do him in that if he wants to see real small part because running spies is American way makes him the superior Communism, he should visit a kibbutz. among the world’s most boring occupa- operator. In the immediate wake of John “It works better for us.” tions. Unlikely as its plots often are and Hinckley Jr.’s attempted assassination of Philip’s monstrosity is confirmed later domestic as its real dramatic concerns President Reagan and Alexander Haig’s in the same episode when he is preparing may be, The Americans does capture the bungled press briefing—“As of now, I to hand over to the Soviets a kidnapped terror of the age, the sense that while the am in control here in the White House”— Jewish refusenik, a scientist who had nation’s economy and its confidence Mrs. Jennings concludes, as a hostage of been working in the United States. The were at highs not seen since the Eisen - her ideology would, that a coup d’état is man begs for his life, wailing, pleading hower years, everything—everything— under way, and starts digging up arms on behalf of his wife and his son, who is could be over in a flash of light at any caches on the assumption that her cell about to have his bar mitzvah. He offers moment. Keri Russell makes those trag- will be called upon for guerrilla warfare. everything he can think of—even to work ic 1980s fashions look terrific, but there She also begins plotting to assassinate as a Soviet agent if they will allow him to is real fear behind her butterfly-lens

DREAMWORKS TELEVISION Caspar Weinberger. Her husband, partly stay in the United States rather than be glasses.

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Restore the Religious Freedom Restoration Act The Left now hates the liberty it helped preserve

BY DAVID FRENCH

t is perhaps not too hyperbolic to suggest that in the stance while employed at a drug-rehab clinic certainly did. history of the republic, there has rarely been a bill But Smith and Black weren’t going to take no for an answer. which more closely approximates motherhood and Claiming that they didn’t smoke peyote recreationally but as part ‘I apple pie. . . . . In fact, I know, at least so far, of no one of a religious ceremony, they said their drug use was a constitu- who opposes the legislation.” tionally protected free exercise of religion. therefore, they With these words, the late Representative Stephen Solarz (D., argued, it could not constitute “misconduct,” because the First N.Y.) described the unstoppable legislative train that was the Amendment’s religious-liberty guarantee trumps Oregon law. Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Passed in 1993 Smith and Black launched a legal challenge that, after a long and with a voice vote in the Democratic-controlled House and by a winding road, wound up in 1989 at the Supreme Court of the 97–2 majority in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and signed United States, where the Court was asked to decide a single, lim- by Bill Clinton, RFRA was a bipartisan response to a religious- ited question: Did the First Amendment protect the sacramental freedom crisis caused, in part, by a psychedelic drug. use of peyote? In the late 1980s, Alfred Smith and Galen Black worked at an Given the small stakes, the case at first did not generate much Oregon drug-rehab clinic and were members of the Native interest. After all, it wasn’t that different from a number of other American Church, whose sacraments include smoking peyote. free-exercise cases the Court had decided in the preceding that part of their religion was not compatible with their occu- decades. (After hearing few religious-liberty cases in its first cen- pation (or with the law; peyote was a Schedule I controlled sub- tury and a half of existence, the Court started encountering them stance under Oregon law), and Smith and Black soon found much more often after World War II, as the explosive growth of themselves out of a job. the regulatory state brought government into direct conflict with they then did what many millions of Americans do when they a growing number of religious practices, many of them well out- lose their jobs: they filed for unemployment compensation. side the mainstream.) Sadly for religious liberty, their application was denied. Oregon, For example, there were claims that Social Security numbers like virtually every state, doesn’t compensate former employees rob a child of his or her “spirit” (Bowen v. Roy), that road con- when they’re terminated for “misconduct,” and if anything construction would damage an “indispensable” Indian religious site stituted “misconduct,” toking up a Schedule 1 controlled sub- (Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protection Association), and that Social Security payments violated the Old Order Amish faith

Mr. French is a senior counselor at the American Center for Law and Justice. (United States v. Lee). DARREN GYGI

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The Court decided each of these cases, and others like them, To borrow an excellent phrase from Greg Lukianoff, a liberal using the then-accepted “compelling”- or “overriding” - civil libertarian and the president of the Foundation for Individual government-interest test first articulated in Sherbert v. Verner in Rights in Education, America began “unlearning liberty”— 1963. Under that test, once a citizen established that a given state including religious liberty. It’s a story that’s been told a thousand action substantially burdened his exercise of religion, the govern- times. Free speech and diversity of thought—useful concepts to ment could prevail only if it demonstrated that its action furthered dissenters charging the barricades—became annoyances (and a “compelling governmental interest” and the challenged action worse) when the dissenters gained tenure, or became GS-14s was the “least restrictive means” of furthering that interest. deeply embedded in the alphabet soup of federal agencies, or ran While the compelling-interest standard was daunting for the television studios and wrote our songs and sitcoms. government, it was hardly insurmountable. In fact, the govern- While the leftist establishment has been beset by numerous ment routinely won at the Supreme Court, as in the Bowen, Lyng, divisions, largely on economic issues, on one point it has only and Lee cases discussed above. grown more resolute and unified: The sexual revolution may not Back to peyote. When Smith and Black took their case to the be stopped. It may not even be slowed. Or, to quote EEOC com- Supreme Court in the weeks before Thanksgiving in 1989, few missioner and former Georgetown law professor Chai Feldblum, paid attention. To religious-liberty lawyers and scholars, the case “When religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict, I’m having a was of only marginal interest. The Court could quite easily have hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty ruled against Smith and Black on the grounds that the state had a should win.” compelling interest in stopping the scourge of illegal drugs. To And so, in cases across the land, sexual liberty has directly con- most civil libertarians, this outcome would have been unfortunate fronted religious liberty, and religious liberty has often lost. but not particularly important. Whether Christian photographers are compelled to photograph The Court did indeed rule against Smith and Black, but it did gay weddings, Christian students of counseling are compelled to so in a manner that created shock waves—and not just within the mouth pro-gay platitudes, or pro-life activists are compelled to tiny worlds of litigating civil libertarians and fringe religious shut their mouths when close to abortion clinics, the argument practitioners. Its ruling caused the nation’s largest religious has been the same: Religious liberty is hateful and hurtful, and it organizations to express deep dismay. Rather than finding a must recede so that sexual self-actualization may proceed not compelling government interest in enforcing drug laws, the merely unimpeded but increasingly uncriticized. Supreme Court (with Justice Scalia writing the majority opinion) None of this is exactly new. Indeed, same-sex marriage’s threat articulated a new religious test, one that essentially relegated the to religious liberty is the subject of intense debate. And while the free-exercise clause to the scrap heap. Left has won important battles, it has not yet won the war. Under this new test, if a law was “neutral” and “generally A few universities have expelled Christian groups, but most applicable” (in other words, not aimed at religious practice), the have not, and Christians still meet on hundreds of campuses. free-exercise claim would fail. This meant no more balancing New Mexico may require its photographers to lend their creative tests, and thus no more compelling-government-interest require- talents to same-sex weddings, but many states do not, and the ments for state actions. In short, this meant dramatically dimin- number of disputes about photography and other wedding ser- ished constitutional protections for religious minorities. vices can be counted on the fingers of one hand. While the public largely yawned (that peyote was still unlaw- And in the abortion debate, many of the nation’s blue states ful was hardly surprising), religious organizations and civ il liber- continue to censor activists, but the U.S. Supreme Court is decid- tarians were joined by Democrats and Repub li cans who could ing a challenge to Massachusetts’s draconian limitations on pro- easily imagine their constituents’ facing threats to even the most life speech, and liberty may actually win a round. mundane and accepted religious practices (could the underage So the problems, while extensive, were still manageable. Vic - drink Communion wine?). to ries or losses in one location did not require the same result RFRA was the result. The goal was hardly revolutionary: It was elsewhere, and religious liberty, though embattled, proved sur- simply to restore the status quo prior to the peyote case, with the prisingly resilient. same balancing test and the same compelling-interest requirement. Then came Obamacare and the HHS contraception mandate. The statute was passed, people of faith breathed a sigh of relief, Given the explosive growth of the regulatory state, the ideo- and most of America shrugged. After all, the compelling-interest logical commitment of the Left to the sexual revolution, and a test had been in place for decades. There was no chaos. There was partisan bureaucracy in which career staff are increasingly no confusion. There was no threat to “social justice.” divorced and alienated from conservative and religious thought and expression, it was inevitable that there would eventually be a federal act so decisive, so direct, that it put the very existence and ET now, 21 years later, RFRA and its various state viability of religious liberty to the test. incarnations are the Great Satan and Little Satans of Simply put, a nation that can compel its citizens—individual or Y American statutory law, the diabolical gremlins that the corporate—to pay for and facilitate access to abortifacients or Left claims will bring back Jim Crow, spur “secessionist” contraceptives, products that directly violate and indeed shock impulses, and potentially cause the engine of American prog ress the consciences of some mainstream American Protestants (in the to stutter and stall. case of abortifacients) and faithful Catho lics (in the case of con- What happened? Why do the principles that the Left applied traceptives)—especially when such products are cheaply and to protect peyote now threaten the republic when they protect a widely available without employer provision—is a nation that chain of hobby stores from having to pay for products that are has lost any conception of our first freedom. It is a nation that widely (and cheaply) available on the open market? ultimately will not bind or limit the power of its government.

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With the peyote decision granting constitutional approval to ostensibly “neutral” laws like Obamacare, only RFRA—a Democratic-led Congress’s firewall against Supreme Court error—stands in the way of Obamacare’s ultimate ideological achievement. So RFRA must be destroyed. The onslaught has been ferocious and misleading. Writing in The Atlantic, legal scholar Garrett epps called a company’s assertion of rights under RFRA the equivalent of an “ordinance of secession—a statement that religious bodies, and people, and even commercial businesses, no longer belong to society if they decide they’d rather not. The idea depends on an assumption that government itself is sinful, and presumptively illegitimate.” This is a curious claim, since the allegedly secessionist powers are using the federal courts (an instrument of government) and a federal statute (a government law) to challenge a mere federal regulation. It would be difficult to find a protest that more closely adhered to the rule of law. President Clinton signs the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, 1993 But that’s not the only extreme argument. There is of course also the notion that RFRA’s compelling-government-interest ne looks at the misleading assault on liberty and despairs. requirement is somehow the legal equivalent of an “I win” button For too many of our nation’s media, academic, and gov- that will allow businesses to exempt themselves from regula- O ernmental elite, appeals to pluralism and diversity are tions at will, with no democratic recourse. valuable only as tactical tools and rhetorical flourishes to facili- Disturbingly, this was the thrust of one of Justice Kagan’s lines tate their climb to power, with the ladder to be promptly pulled of questioning at the oral argument in the Hobby Lobby case, as up behind them once they reach the sought-after heights. she asked Paul Clement, attorney for Hobby Lobby, whether a Religious liberty exists as a core civilizational value not just ruling for his client could place at risk laws on sex discrimination, because pluralist societies profit from it, but because the human the minimum wage, family leave, and child labor. heart demands it. If history teaches anything, it teaches that the This misconstrues the text of RFRA and the legal history of the religious impulse—the sense of eternity set in the hearts of men compelling-interest test. RFRA does not mandate any outcomes; (to paraphrase Solomon)—is nothing if not powerful. it merely prescribes a balancing test—with the government bear- It’s an impulse that can and does change lives and nations. ing the responsibility of demonstrating a compelling interest It’s an imperative so strong that even the mightiest of totali- when it substantially burdens religious liberty. History has shown tarian governments struggle to suppress it. The desire of many that sex- and race-discrimination laws, minimum-wage laws, millions to follow God is good, but it also just is—it is a pri- child-labor laws, and the Social Security system all survived and mal force that must be acknowledged and respected to the thrived under the very legal regime Justice Kagan hinted was so extent that its exercise does not harm the rights of others. In threatening. Indeed, even the most cursory review of Supreme fact, the very act of suppression in the name of uniformity can Court authority under the compelling-government-interest test perversely fray the bonds of a pluralistic society. In liberty, shows that litigants have often faced long odds (too long) when there is unity. not in conformity. confronting regulatory regimes. In 1993, key elements of the Left in a Democratic-controlled Then there is, of course, the historically nonsensical idea that a Congress seemed to get this, to understand this deep human need. corporation can’t exercise a right to religious liberty. This argu- In that day, at that time, the Supreme Court’s religious-liberty ment builds on the rhetorical fiction that the Supreme Court some- cases were easier for the Left to love, involving minority popu- how caused a cataclysmic legal earthquake in Citizens United v. lations asking for—in the grand scheme of things—the most FEC when it found that corporations have First Amendment rights marginal accommodations. Would society collapse if a tiny sect to free political speech—a mistaken decision, the argument goes, smoked peyote? But now religious liberty threatens bigger that had no support in pre ce dent and was in any case restricted to things, such as the onward march of both the sexual revolution speech. Yet the Court in that case cited no fewer than 23 previous and the regulatory state. So history must be forgotten and the cases recognizing corporate rights to free speech, including—not - faithful must be demonized. a bly—two cases in which the New York Times was the petitioner. In 1991, Representative Solarz declared: “With the stroke of The Times now apparently believes that corporations can speak a pen, the Supreme Court virtually removed religious free- but are not, to quote a recent editorial, “capable of prayer or other dom—our first freedom—from the Bill of Rights.” After religious behavior.” But a corporation engages in religious President Clinton signed RFRA, a different Democrat, former behavior in the same way that a corporation engages in protected congressman Robert F. Drinan, expressed the hope that “with speech, through the human beings that empower its every action. the stroke of a pen, the president gave that right back to the peo- Corporations can be large chain stores with Christian owners, but ple.” As faithful Americans wait for the outcome of Hob by they are also churches, hospitals, soup kitchens, and newspapers. Lobby’s case, they can only hope and pray that the Su preme Some are for-profit, some are not, but they all engage in expres- Court agrees. sion and behavior at the behest of their owners and for the pur- May the vision of these Democrats prevail, and with it religious

NATIONAL ARCHIVESpose AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION of advancing the owners’ values and goals. liberty.

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appropriate demurrals: “I have no interest in running for president,” he says. At the very least, his response at this early point in the presidential cycle shows that he’s not too eager to get out of The Mailman’s Columbus, while he still has a reelection to win in November. Son And have you heard that his dad was a mailman? he 61-year-old Kasich (rhymes with “basic”) became an John Kasich, working-class governor? Ohioan in 1970, when he left Pennsylvania for Ohio State T University. “I was a Pirates fan,” he says, referring to the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team. “We used to say ‘Go Bucs!’”— BY JOHN J. MILLER short for “buccaneers”—“and at first I thought everyone at Ohio State was a Pirates fan because they say ‘Go Bucks!’” As Kasich soon realized, however, they were referring to the Ohio State Greenville, Ohio Buckeyes. Ave you heard that John Kasich’s dad was a mail- A few weeks after arriving on campus, Kasich learned that man? If not, then you’ve probably never been around OSU’s president, Novice Fawcett, had an appointment with Ohio’s Republican governor. “My father carried mail President Nixon. Kasich asked Fawcett to deliver a letter to H on his back for 29 years,” he says on March 14, at a Nixon. It outlined a few of Kasich’s political concerns and con- Whirlpool factory here. Kasich abandons a podium, descends cluded this way: “P.S. If you’d like to discuss this letter further, from a platform, and walks into a seated crowd of about 400 please don’t hesitate to contact me. I’ll make myself available.” workers. “Growing up the way I did, I’m really one of you,” he Nixon wrote back and invited Kasich to the White house. They says to them. met for 20 minutes. A photo shows a mop-headed Kasich shak- That’s the idea Kasich wants to convey: he’s just a regular ing the hand of a grinning Nixon. “I would go on to spend eigh- guy—a blue-collar kid from a little town near Pittsburgh called teen years in Congress, and if you go back and add up all the time McKees Rocks. he might be working the day shift too, except I spent alone in the Oval Office with various presidents, you’ll for the fact that he spent nearly two decades in Congress, made see it doesn’t come close to those twenty minutes,” wrote Kasich a small fortune with Lehman Brothers, and hosted a television in Stand for Something, his 2006 book. show, all before becoming the governor of a big state in the Four years after the encounter with Nixon, Kasich found him- industrial Midwest. self working for a legislator in Columbus—and in 1978, at the If Kasich had a dollar for every time he mentioned his father’s age of 26, he challenged a Democratic state senator in a district job, he might be able to retire with the equivalent of a generous just north of the capital. Kasich outhustled the incumbent and postal-service pension. The references have been a staple of his won. In 1982, he set his sights higher, taking on Democratic con- public addresses and interviews for years—and they’re the type gressman Bob Shamansky. This was the first midterm election of of thing Mitt Romney could not say about himself in 2012, as he the Reagan presidency, and a lousy year to run as a Republican. tried to connect with working-class voters in Ohio and elsewhere Yet Kasich prevailed, becoming the only non-incumbent GOP during his doomed presidential bid. candidate to win a seat in the house that year. Kasich has more than a personal story to share: he also has a In Congress, Kasich was a Republican reformer who allied track record as governor, parts of which are really good. he himself with Newt Gingrich. he joined the Budget Committee, came into office in 2011 and confronted a busted budget. Since and Gingrich promoted him ahead of other Republicans with then, he has turned a deficit into a surplus even as he has low- more seniority. Kasich rose to chairman after the GOP sweep of ered income-tax rates and wiped out the state’s death tax entirely. 1994 and took part in the ensuing Clinton–Gingrich budget bat- The national economy may be sluggish, but Ohio has turned tles, including the federal-government shutdowns of 1995 and heads with its job creation. In January, only Texas generated 1996. Throughout these ordeals, Kasich warned about over- more employment, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. spending and deficits. “he was the Paul Ryan of a generation That’s why Kasich has come to Greenville, where Whirlpool ago,” says Ralph Reed, who headed the Christian Coalition at the plans to expand its KitchenAid small-appliance factory, adding time and is now a GOP political consultant. “Ryan is Kasich 2.0.” about 400 jobs over the next four years. Kasich wants everyone In Clinton’s second term, the federal budget moved from red to to know that it might not have happened without him. “We’re black, and Kasich deserves a share of the credit. rebuilding the state,” he says over lunch at a Bob evans restau- Kasich also earned a reputation for combativeness, and not just rant, after his appearance. because he clashed with Clinton. he irritated defense hawks by So why does virtually no presidential buzz surround Ohio’s joining Ron Dellums, a left-wing congressman from California, governor? Kasich’s résumé looks just about perfect for a Re - in fighting the B-2 bomber. he angered gun-rights advocates publican. he’s the tax-cutting, jobs-growing, pro-life chief exec- by supporting Clinton’s assault-weapons ban. The National utive of a swing state that could represent the difference between Rifle Association gave him a grade of “F.” he once tried to walk victory and defeat for a GOP nominee. he’s also a proven win- onstage during a Grateful Dead concert at RFK Stadium in ner. Since his first run for public office in 1978, Kasich never has Washington, only to get into an argument with the band’s tour lost an election—he’s eleven for eleven—and a few of his races manager that grew so heated it made the papers. Former con- have involved tough and scrappy triumphs that lesser candidates gresswoman Deborah Pryce, an Ohio Republican, once told the might not have pulled off. he answers questions about 2016 with Los Angeles Times that when she saw Kasich board her flight

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from D.C. to Columbus, she pretended to sleep. “Do you know repealed the anti-union law by a wide margin, 62 percent to 38 what it’s like to be trapped on an airplane next to John Kasich?” percent. Kasich doesn’t want to talk much about it now: “People she asked. “Sitting next to all that intensity, after being around all said they didn’t want it. That’s okay. We put it out there. We’ve week? It’s a good thing it’s just an hour flight.” had a lot of wins.” The loss was bigger than he lets on, and In 1999, Kasich decided to run for president, touting his Kasich’s approval rating tanked. Less than a year into his gover- résumé as a budget-balancing conservative from the American norship, he looked like a possible one-termer. heartland (whose dad was a mailman). His campaign lasted just Yet Ohio’s economic rebound was already under way. Since five months, sputtering out before it even advanced beyond the Kasich’s inauguration, the state has ranked fifth in the nation in “exploratory” phase. Yet Kasich seemed to interpret the result as job growth. In February, its unemployment rate slipped to its a temporary setback rather than a permanent defeat. “I would lowest level since 2008. Meanwhile, Kasich has approved $3 actually like to be president one day,” he said the next year, as he billion in tax cuts. “I’m going to drive them lower and lower prepared to retire from Congress. He went on to earn millions at down,” he says. If a proposal he unveiled on March 11 becomes Lehman Brothers, host a weekly show on Fox News, and raise a law, he will have succeeded in slashing Ohio’s top marginal rate family with his young wife. by nearly 18 percent. He also has expanded school choice and Then, after a decade out of politics, Kasich jumped back in. increased oversight of abortion clinics. Even on guns, which He announced a run for governor against Democratic incum- have caused him headaches in the past, Kasich has earned bent Ted Strickland, who probably couldn’t believe his luck: praise for signing pro-gun legislation: “As governor, he’s done What liberal wouldn’t want to face the former partner of an everything we’ve asked him to do,” says Jim Irvine of the investment company whose bankruptcy had contributed to the Buckeye Firearms Association. “We’re really happy with him.” recent financial crisis? “John Kasich is the son of a mailman In February, 51 percent of registered voters approved of his per- and I’m the son of a steelworker,” said Strickland. “That’s formance, in a Quinnipiac University poll. where the similarity ends, because I never forgot where I came from and I think John Kasich did.” Yet 2010 was an outstand- ing year for Republicans, and Kasich nipped Strickland by two AST year, however, Kasich infuriated his conservative percentage points—a mere 77,000 votes in a state of more than base when he pushed to add 275,000 people to Ohio’s 11 million people. L Medicaid rolls in what the New York Times described as a Upon taking office, Kasich plugged an $8 billion budget hole “half-embrace” of Obamacare. The substance of the policy was and cut taxes. He also tried to pare back union power, signing a bad enough: After three years, the federal government’s promise bill to restrict collective-bargaining rights, much as Governor to pay the state’s full bill for expansion ends, leaving Ohio with Scott Walker did in Wisconsin around the same time and as a potentially enormous new budget obligation. “The bribe Republican governors in Indiana and Michigan would go on to money is tremendous, with the goodies on the front end and the do. Yet Kasich ultimately would fail: That November, voters pain coming later,” says Robert Alt, president of the Buckeye

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institute, a free-market think tank in Columbus. what’s more, the extra spending may not help the people who are supposed to benefit, as Medicaid patients often suffer worse health outcomes Ten Welfare- than people with no insurance at all. Among the country’s 30 republican governors, kasich is in a distinct minority. only six others have struck similar deals. Most of the rest have resisted this encroachment of obamacare. So Reform Lessons have the majority of republicans in Columbus. the state legislature, in fact, specifically prohibited Medicaid expansion in last New York City embraced an ethic of work year’s budget. kasich deleted the restriction with his line-item veto and pushed the measure through an obscure panel called the Controlling Board. Conservatives were livid. “the Controlling BY ROBERT DOAR Board has usurped the constitutional power of the General Assembly to appropriate and spend the people’s money,” said ew York CitY’s welfare system is managed out of a state representative ron Young. boxy 25-story office building on water Street in Lower to make matters worse, kasich turned sanctimonious, insist- Manhattan. Approximately 5,000 employees work ing that it was his duty as a Christian to expand Medicaid. “when N there, directing government programs that provide you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded assistance to the poor and going to ask you much about what you did about keeping gov- near-poor. A solid majority of the workers at 180 water Street are ernment small,” said kasich, according to the Dayton Daily African-American or Latino; their voter registration is almost News. “But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor. You certainly overwhelmingly Democratic; and all but about 300 of better have a good answer.” He has used language like this re - them are union members. But from 1995 until this past De - peatedly, as well as the rhetoric of class warfare. “i’m concerned cember, the people who worked in New York’s principal social- about the fact that there seems to be a war on the poor,” he told services agency were leading one of the most conservative and the New York Times last october. “that if you’re poor, somehow successful welfare offices in the country. you’re shiftless and lazy.” this prompted the Times to comment i witnessed it firsthand. From early 2007 until the end of that kasich “occasionally sounds more like an heir to Lyndon B. 2013, i was the commissioner of the New York City Human Johnson than to ronald reagan.” resources Administration (HrA), the agency with the 1960s- there’s no question that kasich is a man of faith. He grew up era name that occupies 180 water Street. And before 2007, Catholic, drifted away from the Church, and rediscovered reli- going back to early 1996, i worked at, and for a time led, the gion following the death of his parents in a 1987 car accident. He state agency that was responsible for overseeing many of the now attends an episcopalian church. His 2010 book Every Other government-assistance programs administered by the city. But Monday describes his long-running participation in a biweekly while my perspective is that of an insider, the facts speak for Bible-study group. “there comes a time in everyone’s life when themselves: From 1995 until the end of 2013, New York City’s things get a little tough, and how we respond to these moments cash-welfare caseload shrunk from almost 1.1 million recipi- of crisis says a whole lot about our character and our worldview,” ents to less than 347,000—a drop of more than 700,000 men, he writes in the book’s first sentence. women, and children. So what does his response to the critics of Medicaid expansion the achievements of welfare reform in New York City were say about kasich? Does he even recognize that invoking Saint about more than reducing the number of people on cash welfare. Peter in a debate with conservative skeptics has rubbed some there were also big increases in work rates for single mothers (up people the wrong way? “Did it?” he asks, facetiously. “i think it from 43 percent in 1994 to 63 percent in 2009) and large reduc- rubbed a lot of people the right way.” He continues: “A large part tions in child poverty (down from 42 percent in 1994 to 28.3 per- of my internal value system derives from the most popular books, cent in 2008). even in the wake of the 2008 recession, child the old and New testaments. it’s all pretty clear. we as human poverty in New York City in 2011 was almost ten percentage beings have an obligation to help people.” And so Medicaid points lower than it had been the year before welfare reforms expansion is a Christian duty? “i’m not going to respond to started. critics. i’m just telling you how i see it.” what does he think of welfare-caseload declines, work-rate increases, and child- obamacare generally? “i fought Hillarycare when i was in poverty declines all happened largely because, for eight years washington and this is Hillarycare redux,” he says. “if i were under Mayor Giuliani and twelve years under Mayor Bloom - president—which i’m not going to be—i would repeal berg, New York City required welfare applicants and recipients obamacare and replace it.” to work, or look for work, in return for benefits. we aggres- in his reelection contest this November, kasich most likely sively detected and prevented fraud and waste (although we will face ed FitzGerald, the Democratic executive from didn’t stop all of it); and we enforced these requirements with Cuyahoga County. Statewide races in ohio are rarely easy for a vigilance that every day led to hundreds of case closings and anyone, though most recent polls give kasich a small but steady welfare-grant reductions as we made clear that welfare came lead. if he wins, a few republicans may talk about drafting a with responsibilities. presidential candidate who has proven that he can carry ohio— or, more likely, they’ll discuss kasich as an excellent running Mr. Doar is the Morgridge Fellow in Poverty Studies at the American Enterprise mate. As that happens, conservatives will want to ask a key ques- Institute. From 2007 to 2013, he was the Commissioner of the New York City tion: exactly what would this son of a mailman deliver? Human Resources Administration, the city’s principal social-services agency.

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Make no mistake about it: My fellow city workers and I were New York City proved this to be true. After we implemented bureaucrats. But we were bureaucrats on a mission to bring the strong work-first requirements and tied our payments to principles of the 1996 federal welfare-reform legislation to New employment-service providers to their actual records in placing York City in a way that helped poor New Yorkers improve their people in jobs, labor-force participation for never-married single station in life. It turns out that, once given the right direction, mothers rose dramatically—far faster than even the most ardent bureaucrats can accomplish big things. Here are ten lessons I welfare reformers expected. Though there are many who prior- learned about how programs for the poor should be run. itize education and job training over employment, it is clear that programs with such an emphasis have not produced the desired results. The priority should be work first, then education or on- lways proMote personal responsibility. The minute an the-job training as a supplement. applicant believes that government will solve all of her Making work pay is welfare reform too. Being off of cash wel- A problems, she loses. Accepting responsibility for one’s fare does not mean a person is off of all assistance. Not only are own future is the vital first step to moving up. This is not the a lot of former cash-welfare recipients still dependent on some typical attitude among government workers, especially ones form of assistance, but the increasing use of these programs means raised on the promises of the Great Society, but in their hearts, that total spending has not been reduced as a result of federal wel- New York City welfare workers knew it was true and were happy fare reform. It has actually increased. to embrace the concept when they were allowed to. They under- Food-stamp benefits, child-care vouchers, and public health stood that taking full responsibility for the people they served is insurance all were part of this arsenal of non-cash “work sup- a burden they could not shoulder. Everyone at the agency knew ports” that we promoted in New York. And so long as these forms that absent some effort by the welfare recipient, victory over of government assistance went to working people, the public was poverty and unemployment is impossible. This is especially true supportive. I remember seeing nodding heads of agreement at a when it comes to getting a job. Lots of “programs” want to say large public meeting in the Bronx when I said in response to a that they got a participant a job, or “placed” a certain number of question about what we were doing to help struggling families, people into employment. But for entry-level jobs, the person who “If you work, we will help you.” gets the job is the person who gets the job, and the sooner the It would be better if low-skilled former welfare recipients clients and the caseworkers realize that, the better. could achieve full self-sufficiency and derive no part of their employment is far better than training and education. In the income from government, but the cost of living and the current years leading up to the passage of the federal welfare-reform leg- state of the labor market require work supports to shore up low islation, study after study showed that programs that encouraged wages. As a result, as cash-welfare caseloads plummeted, the training and education over rapid employment proved less suc- number of recipients of food-stamp benefits grew dramatically, cessful at getting people into jobs that lasted. Our experience in as did the number of people getting public health insurance or

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Medicaid. Most of this growth resulted from assistance to work- On net, immigrants have been an economic boon to the city. But ing adults and their children. And—notably, given the reduction a significant portion of new arrivals apply for and receive welfare in labor-force participation at the national level during the past benefits. The three biggest programs at HRA were cash welfare, seven years—New York City’s labor-force-participation rate has food stamps, and Medicaid, and our data showed that more than risen during a period in which Medicaid and food-stamp receipt 25 percent of cash-welfare and food-stamp recipients and more has risen as well. than 35 percent of Medicaid recipients were non-citizens or chil- Be honest about the importance of married two-parent fami- dren of non-citizens. lies. Very few families with married and involved parents, both You may be thinking: How can that be? Illegal immigrants are working, ever need any form of welfare. This is why I came to not eligible for those programs. They aren’t, but most immigrants believe that it was dishonest for us not to talk about the impor- are here legally, and legal residents who have been in the United tance of their parents’ marriage in reducing the poverty of chil- States for more than five years are eligible for most means-tested dren. Children need stable, two-parent families. No government programs, whether they become citizens at that point or not. or public program can replace a missing parent. It was the recog- There is one aspect of the immigration process that was nition of government’s inadequate response to the problem—and intended to discourage welfare use by non-citizens. It is known my desire to be honest about it—that led us to put together the as the “sponsor recovery” process. Many legal immigrants seek- city’s public-messaging campaign about the consequences of ing citizenship are required to submit a form signed by an teen pregnancy. With messages about the bad employment American citizen who is sponsoring them, and that form clearly prospects or poor school performance of children raised by states that should the person being sponsored receive welfare unmarried teen parents, we created subway and bus posters benefits, the government agency providing those benefits may that told the truth in a way that kids and adults would see and recover the cost of assistance from the sponsor. I know of very understand. We got blowback from liberal commentators and few welfare agencies that have actually enforced this provi- politicians, but independently conducted focus groups with sion—except New York City’s. low-income teenagers found that the people we were trying to During 2013, we sought to recover expenditures from sponsors reach understood and agreed with what we were saying. of immigrants who had received cash welfare as single adults, a Caseworkers don’t cost much; benefits do. I understand the form of welfare that is mostly paid for using city funds. In less temptation to rail against bureaucrats and bureaucracy, but in than a year, we collected more than $600,000 from sponsors just welfare the money is spent mostly on benefits to clients, not the by asking that they make good on their promise. administrative costs of the agency. Welfare-administration costs Welfare recipients (and workers too) will try to “get over.” “To are typically less than 5 percent of a program’s total costs. While get over” is a very New York expression meaning to steal—usu- there is often pressure from some (including conservatives) to ally from government and usually to obtain benefits that one isn’t streamline the benefits-application process with computer tech- entitled to. There’s no better opportunity for it than welfare pro- nologies, this is dangerous for two reasons. First, easier access to grams. Turning a blind eye to the potential for fraud and abuse is benefits may reduce personnel costs, but it will drive up use and naïve. An agency like HRA can have the most capable and unim- increase dependency. Second, the workers’ key role of encourag- peachable top leaders, but these welfare programs are huge and ing work and personal responsibility will be lost. Computers are involve millions of transactions and thousands of workers and great at sending money to an EBT card; they are not so good at recipients. The opportunities to take a little here and a little there saying, “You need to get a job.” are all over the place. During my seven years at HRA, we had Medicaid is where the money is. Whenever someone talks scandals involving child-care centers that had no children, wel- about “welfare costs,” make sure you ask whether he is including fare workers who gave themselves food-stamp benefits, non- the health-care costs associated with Medicaid, the nation’s profit employment-services providers who billed for phony job health-insurance program for the poor. In New York City alone, placements, and health-care programs that never filled out Medicaid cost almost $30 billion in 2012, compared with $3.5 required paperwork for thousands of clients. I recruited and hired billion for food stamps and less than $1.5 billion for cash welfare. a former federal prosecutor and nationally renowned expert in Medicaid dwarfs all other welfare spending nationally, too—just Medicaid fraud to serve as our agency’s chief integrity officer to a slightly lesser extent. Combined federal and state spending and gave him wide latitude to improve all of our protections on Medicaid ($431 billion in 2012) is more than five times spend- against abuse, and I was still worried. ing on food stamps and more than 25 times spending on TANF, The vast majority of expenditures in welfare programs are con- the federal cash-welfare program. sistent with program rules and not fraudulent. But the overall size It’s important to recognize that recipients of government assis- of the spending is so great that even a 5 percent error rate is sig- tance don’t receive Medicaid spending—health-care providers nificant. And more important, taxpayers have a right to expect do. What recipients receive is a card that helps them get doctors that spending on programs be managed properly. To be sure that and hospitals to treat them. Medicaid involves a lot of wasteful our entire agency was focused on fraud detection, we set an and fraudulent overspending, but poor people don’t get any of that. annual goal of more than $600 million in cost avoidance and Immigrants get welfare too. I know the stereotype of the hard- recoveries from anti-fraud efforts. working immigrant who comes to America to find work and When it comes to the disabled, trust but verify. Obviously a opportunity is near and dear to many Americans, liberals and work-based welfare program can’t be successful if someone is conservatives alike, but not every new arrival to the United States too sick or disabled to work. But accepting disability claims at steers clear of the social-services office. face value isn’t the right answer either. That’s why we set up a To be sure, most legal immigrants in New York City are not whole separate (and, yes, bureaucratic) process for welfare appli- poor, work for their income, and contribute to the city positively. cants who claimed they could not work because of some physi-

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cal or mental condition. We required them to see our doctors to get a full diagnostic review with an eye toward determining whether they could work normally, could work with some limi- Maneuver tations, or could not work and should apply to the federal Supplemental Security Income program. the goal was to be sure they truly could not work before shunting them off to the federal disability program. Over the years, we found thousands of peo- Warfare ple who said they could not work but in fact could. We helped an equal number improve their underlying conditions so that they The Pentagon, the Congress, could go to work. And we helped those who really did qualify for the federal program gather the documentation necessary to apply. and the future of the tank Always cheer for the economy. I spent seven years running New York City’s welfare programs for Michael Bloomberg, and BY DANIEL FOSTER as proud as I was of what our social-service programs provided to poor New Yorkers, I never forgot that perhaps the most impor- t was February of 1991, and six weeks of brutal aerial bom- tant key to helping struggling families was a vibrant economy bardment were still no match for Saddam Hussein’s hubris. that offered an abundance of entry-level jobs. that’s why I was His continued refusal to evacuate Kuwait had triggered a always first in line to support and encourage every kind of I coalition ground invasion along a 350-mile front that ran thoughtful economic-development idea that promised job cre- northwest to southeast from the marshes of Hawr al-Hammar to ation. thankfully, we had a mayor who agreed. the Persian Gulf. In the east, two divisions of U.S. Marines sup- At no time was that more apparent than in the period after the ported—without much drama—a largely Muslim and Arab Great Recession, when New York City bounced back far faster army in the liberation of everything south of Kuwait City. In the than the rest of the country. In fact, by the end of 2013, the city west, the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps ambled unimpeded had gained back 300 percent of the jobs it had lost in the reces- through the Euphrates Valley. sion, while the nation as a whole was still struggling to regain the relatively untroubled flanks of the advance helped etch pre-recession job levels. And New York City’s job growth was into our collective memories that the invasion was a cakewalk. citywide: Growth in the outer boroughs was twice the rate of But in the middle was VII Corps, under the peg-legged visionary Manhattan’s. to make welfare programs succeed, always cheer Lieutenant General Frederick M. Franks, who was tasked with for the economy, and those who nurture it. the utter destruction of the Republican Guard. VII Corps’s order of battle constituted the most powerful mechanized force of its kind ever fielded. During the Cold War, VII Corps was HAt does all of this tell us about welfare in general, and tasked with holding the ground between Frankfurt and the about the prospects of New York City in particular? Czechoslovak border against a Warsaw Pact invasion. the re - W Helping people in need is important work that is nec- purposed VII Corps was home to the distilled essence of essary for our nation to fully realize its promise. It’s also hard, America’s heavy-maneuver formations. A normal corps featured and progress is measured in small steps. Poverty is still too high three divisions and supporting units. VII Corps had five heavily in New York and in America; too many families lack two mechanized and armored divisions as well as the scouting force involved parents with at least one full-time worker; and more of the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR)—a tip-of-the- people need to be able to move up the economic ladder. spear outfit composed of tanks and fighting vehicles that could New York City now has a new mayor with his own ideas on match any full division in speed and lethality. how to help the poor. It is likely that many of the policies in place Although Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf would get the glory at HRA will be modified or ended completely. the immigrant- for Desert Storm, Franks led the main attack. In his center, Franks sponsor-recovery effort has already been terminated, and the sent the Second ACR to lead the U.S. third Armored Division and chief integrity officer whom I hired has left. I doubt someone of the Big Red One into the breach they had created in Iraqi defenses his prestige or authority will fill that role, if it is filled at all. the along the Saudi border. Protected by French light infantry on their focus on work as a condition of cash welfare will be harder to left flank and British armor on their right, this strike force broke end, since the federal requirements are still in place, though now out into the Iraqi desert and swung east in the famed “Hail Mary” with less emphasis from Washington. As for non-cash work sup- that would cut off the Iraqi retreat and dismantle the world’s fifth- ports, it is likely that they will be modified to such an extent that or sixth-largest standing army in less than 100 hours. they will become all support and little work. their biggest obstacle was Hussein’s tawakalna Division, “the Will the city’s economy continue to outpace the rest of the jewel of the Republican Guard.” In a 1997 study, military historian country’s? Given the new mayor’s support for policies such as Stephen M. Bourque described the ensuing battle: mandated paid sick leave and a higher minimum wage—both of which make workers more expensive for businesses to employ— the tawakalna was probably the best division in the Iraqi Army. It I am doubtful that job growth will remain as strong as it has been. had fought with distinction during the war with Iran and was one of the lead divisions in Saddam Husayn’s invasion of Kuwait in As a result of these changes, the number of people classified as August 1990. Its two mechanized brigades and one armored poor may grow in New York City. this may come as a surprise brigade were equipped with the most advanced equipment avail- to some, given Mayor de Blasio’s progressive rhetoric. But it shouldn’t be surprising at all—there is a long history of progres- Mr. Foster is a political consultant and a former news editor of NATIONAL sive policies’ losing ground in the war on poverty. REVIEW ONLINE.

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able in the Iraqi Army, including 220 T-72 tanks and 278 infantry As Bing West described it in Proceedings of the U.S. Naval fighting vehicles. On 25 February it had moved into a blocking Institute in 2004, Iraqi Freedom brought maneuver warfare, which position west of the Iraq Petroleum Saudi Arabia (IPSA) pipeline had been deployed at the commander-in-chief and corps levels, about 80 miles from Kuwait city. In spite of the air campaign, most down to field commanders. “Desert Storm in 1991 was described of this division was in position and ready to fight when the US 7th as the ‘generals’ war’ because on the open desert, the generals Corps arrived on 26 February 1991. were at the head of their intact divisions, deciding on each objec- . . . Using US spot reports, situation reports, and analysis of tive,” West wrote. “Iraqi Freedom was a ‘colonels’ war’; the regi- destroyed Iraqi equipment, [we conclude that the attack on the Tawakalna] consisted of several distinct, but integrated actions. mental and battalion commanders were the key decision makers.” Those included attacks on the security zone, the central zone, each After the dust settled and the statues fell in Iraq and of the Tawakalna’s flanks, and against its rear area. The surprising Afghanistan, the coalition armor and mechanized infantry that shock of this massive attack from several directions ensured that the had been critical to the initial invasion receded, and the conflicts Tawakalna division had little opportunity to do anything but either largely became “Humvee wars.” Later, when Humvees proved surrender or fight and die in place. They chose the latter course. devastatingly susceptible to IEDs, they became “Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected” (MRAP) vehicle wars. Initially, the American cavalry was to engage the Tawakalna The change reflected the situation on the ground. Chess-like just enough to determine its disposition and its vigor, before maneuvers on vast expanses of desert were replaced by drawn- establishing a north–south line and allowing heavier elements out battles in cities and towns against a determined insurgency. of the First Infantry Division to “pass through” and finish the (Ironically, Colonel and later Brigadier General H. R. McMaster, job. But at 5:22 A.M. on February 26, Franks ordered Corps who commanded Eagle Troop during the Battle of 73 Easting, Fragmentary Plan 7, which expanded the Second ACR’s zone helped develop and deploy the coalition’s counterinsurgency of responsibility, authorizing a more aggressive attack on the strategy.) enemy so that the Tawakalna could not slip the noose before the The shift mirrored a change in the Pentagon’s strategic thinking. rest of the American force arrived. The M1 Abramses and M2 Bradleys that were the backbone of Attack the Second ACR did, rendering the jewel of the both Iraq invasions are peerlessly lethal. The Abrams features Republican Guard ineffective as a fighting force in just hours, reactive armor that redirects the kinetic force of explosions away despite being outnumbered and outgunned by a supposedly crack from the crew, protecting them from even catastrophic impacts, force dug into prepared positions. The most intense fighting took and its 120-millimeter smoothbore cannon is spec’ed for both place between demarcation lines 70 and 73 Easting. There, the high-explosive shells and giant armor-piercing, depleted-uranium Second ACR’s Eagle Troop—consisting of about nine M1 needles called sabot rounds. The Bradley is a jack-of-all trades, Abrams tanks, a dozen M2 Bradley fighting vehicles, and about armed with a 25-millimeter cannon, machine guns, and tank- 120 soldiers—destroyed more than 75 enemy vehicles in 23 min- killing missiles. Each Bradley can also transport a squad of seven utes while taking no casualties. soldiers to a variety of objectives. But these killing machines are The Battle of 73 Easting became a textbook example of a also technologically and logistically complex, not to mention successful mechanized assault and would even get its own heavy and thus difficult to transport to a war zone. This was not a episode of the Military Channel’s Greatest Tank Battles. Yet if problem when a few thousand of them were permanently parked VII Corps’s destruction of the Tawakalna was a great tank on the windward side of the Iron Curtain or when there was ample battle, it might well be the last. build-up time, as during Desert Shield. But as the military reimag- ined itself in the Aughts as a lighter, nimbler, power-projecting force, it brought online a family of Canadian-designed light- HE battle for the future of American armor is being played armored vehicles called Strykers, which are wheeled instead of out between Capitol Hill and the Pentagon—a pitched tracked; cheaper to operate; easier to transport by land, air, and T fight between appropriators looking to protect their dis- sea; and pairable with a variety of platforms, including cannon, tricts’ lifeblood and Army brass trying to rebuild a fighting force mortars, and missiles. They were also, by everyone’s estimation, a on a shoestring budget after a decade of war. The conflict has put stopgap that was no true replacement for American heavy armor. Congress in the position of forcing cash into the Army’s hands for The Pentagon’s long-term plan was the $87 billion Future tanks the generals say they no longer want. Combat Systems (FCS) modernization program, a top-down The invasion phases of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi approach that was intended to pro- Freedom were not altogether dissimilar to their 1991 antecedent. duce designs and pro- The strategy was textbook maneuver warfare: avoid frontal, totypes for a fleet of attrition-driven confrontations and instead use superior intelli- high-tech gence, mobility, firepower, and air– vehicles ground coordination to isolate and destroy enemy strongpoints along the full depth of the battlefield—cutting off the head to render the body useless. What the military calls “network-centric warfare,” predicated on digital, real-time information-sharing at every level of command, was starting to work its way into U.S. strategy in 2001, but it wasn’t all the way there yet.

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and drones geared toward network-centric warfare. But FCS was built is largely one of repurposing existing expertise. To grossly nixed in 2009, in favor of an explicitly piecemeal approach to oversimplify, the fact that the squat Sherman tank was basically a mechanized modernization, which included an R&D component backhoe strapped to a howitzer made it the technological and tac- for a new panacea ground-combat vehicle designed to replace the tical inferior of the German panzers, but it also meant that compa- Abramses, Bradleys, and Strykers. Yet that program has been nies ranging from Ford Motors to American Locomotive and delayed indefinitely, a casualty of the sequester era, and is out- Pullman-Standard could manufacture them in such great numbers right canceled in President Obama’s latest budget proposal. that they could choke the Wehrmacht like a swarm of gnats—on Despite this, as the Washington Post reported, the Army both fronts. In fact, Sherman production was so prolific that the remains committed to a path that deemphasizes both the Abrams U.S. sent more than 4,000 Shermans to the Soviets under Lend- and the Bradley, a path that could mean mothballing the facili- Lease. When the Red Army rolled into Budapest, where it spent the ties—and the experts—that make these fighting vehicles. next 45 years, it rode in on tanks manufactured in Flint, Mich. A BAE Systems factory in York, Pa., produced the Bradleys In the world that emerged from the ashes of World War II, the that led the Second Armored Cav’s fight against the Tawakalna, constitutional duty to provide for the common defense all but but, as the Post lays out, that factory stopped producing new implies the sort of “military-industrial complex” Ike decried. Bradleys years ago. It thrived for a time repairing damaged vehi- That means both preserving the good of the world-beating tech- cles returning from the early stages of Iraq and Afghanistan and nological and engineering know-how that keeps us safe from all survives as an upgrade and refurbishment facility. enemies and tolerating the bad of the inefficiencies and incest of “The reality of it is we’ve already started shutting down,” one government contracting. To wit, the U.S. government actually BAE executive told the Post. “There’s also some frustration from owns the General Dynamics facility that manufactures the management and my engineering staff as we see the skills erode, Abrams, meaning that mothballing it would mean fallow gov- because we know one day we’re going to be asked to bring these ernment land in addition to brain drift. back, and it’s going to be very difficult.” Likewise, the General It would be one thing if American armor were in some irre- Dynamics plant in Lima, Ohio, that maintains and upgrades versible twilight, as it is faddish in some circles to suppose. But as Abrams tanks is caught in a spiral of downsizing. It was to play a RAND analyst David E. Johnson pointed out in a 2011 paper on major role in Future Combat Systems before that project was the future of American armor, the fact that U.S. heavy formations nixed. Now it is facing further layoffs and uncertainty, with plant “trained for irregular warfare and employed few, if any, of their manager Keith Deters telling a local paper he expects production tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and artillery during operations” to ramp down from about ten tanks a month to one to three tanks in the Iraq War is no argument against armor, since with a mere a month by 2015, an “unprecedented” slowdown. “shift in training emphasis, [heavy mechanized forces] could have Army chief of staff General Ray Odierno, facing the reality scaled up to confront more-capable hybrid or state adversaries.” of sequester, told Congress in 2012 and the AP in 2013 that he But while armored units can trade in their tank treads for boots would rather spend the money dedicated to refurbishing heavy in situations that call for, e.g., counterinsurgency operations, the armor on other priorities. But Congress, convinced by the advo- inverse—transforming light-infantry units designed to fight the cacy of the vehicles’ general contractors and their suppliers, next Afghanistan into armored formations capable of large-scale who warn that shuttering the facilities would lead to major skill maneuver warfare—is much trickier. erosion, has appropriated more than $300 million over what the In other words, armor is superfluous only until the next time Army requested to keep the Abrams and Bradley programs run- the United States needs to meet a well-provisioned nation-state in ning. a shooting match. This is where the slogan that “generals always fight the last war,” a century-old warning that keeps Pentagon futurists up anight, meets the even older maxim that there is noth- O who is right? The conservative spidey-sense is keen to ing new under the sun. If you don’t think the United States will detect pork. Government contracts and manufacturing ever need to be prepared to fight another Desert Storm—that is, S jobs in Pennsylvania—and, for Pete’s sake, Ohio—are not to expel an ambitious strongman from a sovereign territory occu- easily vanquished in the U.S. Congress. This might explain why pied under flimsy pretense—than you ought to watch a few min- known budget hawks such as Representative Jim Jordan and utes of Russia Today sometime. Senator Rob Portman, Buckeyes both, are the programs’ biggest This is not to say that armored doctrine should be frozen in place defenders. or resist innovation. It is only to say that, come what may of tech- The Army says savings from the refit programs could be rein- nological and geopolitical developments, something like armor vested, for instance, in the manufacture of the next generation of likely will be necessary for a long, long time. Or as Forbes defense fighting vehicles set to begin in 2017—if it doesn’t suffer its pre- blogger Michael Peck puts it: “In the end, tanks are as much con- decessors’ fate. Against the defense industry’s worries about cept as technology: the belief that combining firepower, protection capacity and skill erosion, the Army wields a study from an out- and mobility creates a uniquely powerful system on the battlefield. side consulting firm that concludes that only a handful of spe- Perhaps someday, powered armor from Starship Troopers . . . will cialized firms are vulnerable to closure. (Here, I should disclose replace tanks. On the other hand, whatever a man can carry or that I currently work for a different consulting firm that has deal- shoot, a vehicle should be able to carry or shoot more of.” ings in the defense sector.) Perhaps Congress’s calculus—that a few hundred million This may well be true, but it is worth bearing in mind that, as the dollars in the overall defense budget is a worthwhile invest- slogan says, defense is different. The American fighting vehicle ment to prevent American tank production from stopping alto- came into its own during World War II. But the story of America’s gether for the first time since World War II—will prove a deft World War II production miracle and the arsenal of democracy it maneuver.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

December 7, 1941: “Pearl Har - Sebelius said. “We even want women bor Attacked! Democratic President to become part of the labor force. Scores Diplomatic Victory” Say, riveters. Or whatever.” In a stunning rebuke to the war- “Nothing is perfect,” she contin- mongering defense-industry profi- ued. “But I’ve just spoken with the teers Charles and David Koch, the president and he’s pleased and president of the United States won enthusiastic about the changes that From the MSNBC a significant victory against the lie ahead.” archives . . . far-right Imperial Japanese Navy this morning at Pearl Harbor base November 4, 1979: “Americans in Honolulu, Hawaii. Despite the Held Hostage in Tehran. President April 19, 1886: “President Cleve - “spin” and distortions of the Koch- Carter Shows Sophistication, land a ‘Father’ to Many” owned right-wing press, the dam- Mastery” President Grover Cleveland age done to the United States Navy In a widely applauded diplomatic took the extraordinarily brave and infrastructure and fleet was con- coup, President Jimmy Carter forthright step today of acknowl- siderably less than predicted. “Our announced this morning that he had edging his son. A lifelong Demo - internal projections were accurate arranged for 52 American Embassy crat, Presi dent Cleveland, as of and on-target,” Secretary of War personnel to be held against their this writing an unmarried male, Kathleen Sebelius said in a press will in Tehran, Iran. admitted this morning in an emo- release this morning. “It’s irrele- The president scored this signifi- tional and moving address to hav- vant how many ships were lost or cant victory for his foreign-policy ing fathered a child out of wed lock. how far back our fighting capa- team suddenly, without notice, “We’ve all heard the children’s bility has been set. What’s crucial when Iranian students stormed the rhyme,” the president said as he to focus on is that we’re now in a American Embassy in Tehran in the introduced the youngster to the hot war in the Pacific, and this is early morning hours. crowd. “‘Ma, ma, where’s my pa? something the president has been Republicans in Congress— Gone to the White House, ha ha saying all along was the goal. The backed by the oil-and-gas tycoons ha.’ And while this is no laughing president is pleased with the the Koch brothers—instantly de- matter, it is time to set the record progress of the war so far, and we nounced the president and his straight.” consider this morning’s event at agenda, even as it was leading, Republicans in Congress in - Pearl Harbor to be a significant slowly, to a renewed diplomatic ad - stantly attacked the president and victory.” vance on the ultra-religious Iranian politicized “family issues,” which Sebelius was immediately attacked government. up to now have been off-limits for by an all-male chorus of Repub - Experts agree that what the pres- political smears. But Republicans lican lawmakers who de manded her ident has done is shift the national themselves—notably the problem resignation, de spite—or perhaps conversation from focusing nar- drinker U. S. Grant—have been because of—the manifest successes rowly on the strategies of dealing less than loyal to the “family val- of the administration’s policies to with a specific religious govern- ues” agenda. Openly gay Demo - date. By politicizing the event, far- ment to the broader and more cratic president James Buchanan right Republicans in Congress have inward-looking threat of religion in led the charge to a more inclusive shown themselves unable or un - politics in general. While it is true, and open culture, only to be con- willing to lead. in a sense, that a foreign govern- demned by the far-right smear Secretary Sebelius and the presi- ment has taken American citizens machine funded by the Koch dent have successfully shifted the hostage, the president—in a mas- brothers. national conversation from “How terly act of diplomatic strategy— In making this announcement, do we keep the Japanese from has redirected attention to the the president has shifted the focus attacking us?” to a more thoughtful far-right Christian agenda here at from the specifics of his own con- and productive “How do we win a home. duct to a broader conversation war against the Japanese?” “Who are we holding hostage?” about the role of government in the What the administration envi- the president’s spokesman, Jay American family, how society fails sions, ultimately, is a large national Carney, asked today at his usual working women, and the ways that movement to a more progressive press briefing. “Can you tell the public programs can be brought to and inclusive workplace. “We’re ayatollah from the hostage?” bear on the challenges of modern talking about factory jobs, adminis- Conservatives, predictably, took parenting. trative work, everything,” Secretary to Twitter.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Too Darn Hot

HE International Court of Justice, which would decline. Picture a wise EU bureaucrat with one hand on get more respect if they appended “and Pan - a lever that says “TAXES” and a keen eye on a ther- cakes” to its name, has asked Japan to stop whal- mometer. T ing. Japan has agreed, which must have led the But obviously taxes aren’t enough. When stakes are this justices to drop their pens and ask: Could you say that again, high, you need art. please? Someone’s heeding our verdict? Well, let’s try Bush We’re in luck on that count. This month, The Great while we’re on a roll here. Immensity premieres in New York: a musical about climate Japan had insisted it harvested 1,000 whales per year for change. Plot: “Through her search, Phyllis uncovers a “scientific research.” They have proved, for example, that mysterious plot surrounding the upcoming international if you harpoon a whale, it dies. You might have thought climate summit in Auckland.” they proved that already, but the science is never settled. These, of course, are the events dedicated to carbon Another thousand whales, you might find one who says extirpation, attended by people who reach Auckland in “Hey, ouch, okay? Really.” longboats rowed by sturdy vegetarian oarsmen. “Save the Whales” is the perfect empty-gesture bumper- “The Great Immensity,” explains the musical’s website, sticker cliché, proof of one’s bona fides as a good person. “is a highly theatrical look into one of the most vital ques- If Tibet had whales, the amount of ineffectual posturing tions of our time: how can we change ourselves and our you could cram into a car sticker would increase exponen- society in time to solve the enormous environmental chal- tially. But one can distance oneself from the pieties of eco- lenges that confront us?” sensitivity and still ask why, exactly, we need to go out to With catchy songs and instructive lyrics, of course! You the sea and kill whales. I’m thinking of the last time I came could use the “Jet Song” from West Side Story: “When back from the store. you’re a Green, you’re a Green all the way / From your “Where’s the ambergris?” my wife did not say. first protest march against GMO hay! / When you’re a “All out,” I did not reply, my face not set in stoic Green, you’re the most verdant thing, / Little boy, you’re a despair. “There were rumors of scarcity, and the shelves Mann, little Mann, you’re a king! // The planet is doomed, were bare.” / The Arctic ice and floes bake. / Fracking-gas booms / Are “Whatever shall we do?” my wife did not say with an causing all the earthquakes, / For Gaia’s sake!” aching note of despair in her voice. Or “Maria” from the same show: “The Koch bros, / I just “I went to the docks,” I did not say, holding forth a vial. got an e-mail re: Koch bros. / Their utter evil plans / To “I traded my watch. For this.” exploit shale-oil sands / Are clear. // The Koch bros, / I just “The whale-derived medicine! Fetch the plaster, that I sent an e-mail to Koch bros. / My deft sarcastic pen / Will might place it on Baby’s chest,” my wife never said. make them think again / And fear. // ‘The Koch bros’! / Leave the whales alone, one thinks. Likewise, it is pos- Mispronounce, if it’s fun you’re poking, / Say it soft, and sible to care about the Earth and wish it well, and not sub- it’s almost like choking.” scribe to alarums that predict our imminent embroilment But taxes aren’t enough, and art isn’t enough. You also from climate change. The U.N. has a new report, and as need tax money spent on art. We’re in luck here, too: The you can expect it has key doom-flavored phrases in the Great Immensity is made possible by a grant from you. summary so that everyone will assume a state of tremulous Around $700,000 of National Science Foundation money. dread. We must change our ways now or ruin shall be the Searching the NSF’s mission statement for the next few law of the globe. None will be spared! years, which seems to be the result of attempting to cap- Uh-huh. As someone who grew up during the ice-age ture the density of a neutron star in prose form, you find panic of the Seventies, when glaciers were supposed to that the terms “theater” and “musical” come up with zero push the towers of Chicago into the Gulf of Mexico, I am returns. not impressed by such certainties. But if you’re wondering How about a compromise: The government pays for a whether this catastrophe can be averted and the seas can be piece of paper inserted in the program for revivals of My kept down so Toledo doesn’t rebrand itself as the Venice of Fair Lady. “The assertion that ‘the rain in Spain stays Ohio, well, of course. The complicated mechanisms of mainly on the plain’ does not fit with climate models that weather and climate are exquisitely responsive to taxation, show Iberian precipitation moving southward.” Yes, this for example. Global carbon tariffs, if carefully applied, might require coordination between the NSF and the NEA, could bring down global temps by 0.2 degrees, although but a working group could come up with strategies for you have to be careful; if the temperatures look like maximizing outreach. The chairman of the working group they’re skidding down too fast, you have to decrease taxes would be paid $125,000. between 3 and 5.2 percent, depending on the rate of Some Republicans would insist that’s too much, but that’s just the sort of argument you’d expect from people Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. who want the Earth to die.

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included in notable collections. He has a 180-degree view of the national milieu. also worn the hats of literary critic, Contrary to the widely held seculariza- The columnist, editor, books editor, short- tion thesis, according to which the de - story writer, autobiographer, eulogist, cline of Christianity is inevitable, Bottum Puritans public speaker, television pundit, Amazon argues instead that the Puritans and author (via the groundbreaking Kindle Protestants of yesteryear still walk the Among Us Singles series), and visiting professor. If country in new and rarely recognized there were milliners for intellectuals, his “secular” guises. Bonnie Paisley of ore - would be the busiest in town. gon, Gil Winslow of upstate New York, MARY EBERSTADT Yet, as is not widely understood despite ellen Doorn of Texas—these and other this prodigious body of work, Bottum is characters conjured as the “Poster also, at heart, a storyteller—meaning that Children of Post-Protestantism” illustrate he is preoccupied not only with syllogism via their individual stories the author’s and validity but also with literary charac- central point: The mainline hasn’t so ters and creations. once in a while, this much vanished as gone underground to absorption with dramatis personae ends up become what o’Connor once derisively confounding readers—as happened just called “the Church without Christ.” last year, when a long essay of his, pub- To be sure, the idea that secularization lished in Commonweal, arguing the futility has not so much killed God as repurposed of continuing Church opposition to same- Him into seemingly secular shapes is not An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the sex marriage, combusted as instantly and in itself new. It’s the key point in philoso- Spirit of America, by Joseph Bottum (Image, widely as a summer brushfire. That piece, pher Charles Taylor’s work, especially 320 pp., $25) too, as was perhaps insufficiently noted in his prodigious book A Secular Age. at the time, began with and meandered No author, however, has brought this ome writers are “Catholic writ- around a literary character: a former idea to life as Bottum does in An Anxious ers” in the sense that they do friend and foil with whom the piece Age—whose very title, obviously, sug- their work qua Catholics, and amounts to an imaginary conversation. gests the amendment that it is to Taylor’s S their main subject is the im - To observe as much isn’t to say that fic- thesis. Throughout, the Poster Children mense intellectual, social, and aesthetic tion always trumps. It’s rather to note that spring from the pages like so many imp- patrimony of the Catholic Church. But with poets and poetry, for better or worse, ish holograms, turning two-dimensional there also exists a rarer kind of Catholic comes license—including license to chase arguments over “believing” and “belong- writer: the one who is multilingual in arguments into places where other peo- ing” into recognizable and ultimately per- secular as well as religious tongues, ple, rightly or wrongly, fear to tread. suasive companions at the reader’s elbow. whose Catholicism nonetheless runs so That same singular gift is now turned to These Poster Children, the author deep that it cannot help but shape and brilliant advantage in Bottum’s new book. argues, are direct descendants of the suffuse his every line. A strikingly original diagnosis of the “social gospel” of Protestant theologian Joseph Bottum, fortunately for Ameri- national moral condition, An Anxious Age Walter Rauschenbusch: the notion that can letters, is an example of the latter sort. bears comparison for significance and sin has a social and not merely individual In fact, it’s safe to say that if mr. Bottum scope to only a handful of recent seminal dimension. “Social nature abhors a vac- were anything but a writer who is also works. Deftly analytical and also beauti- uum,” notes Bottum in a key passage, known to be Catholic, his name would be fully written, it has the head of Christo - and the past thirty years have seen many mandatory on any objective short list of pher Lasch and the heart of Flannery attempts to fill the space where Protes - public intellectuals, if there were such a o’Connor. Anyone wishing to chart the tantism used to stand. Feminism in the thing. He is the author of several books, deeper intellectual and religious currents 1980s, homosexuality in the 1990s, including a volume of poetry (The Fall & of this American time, let alone anyone environmentalism in the 2000s, the Other Poems), a work of verse set to who purports to navigate them for the rest quadrennial presidential campaigns that music (The Second Spring), a bestselling of the public, must first read and reckon promise to reunify the nation . . . [these] memoir (The Christmas Plains), and now, with An Anxious Age. movements have all posed themselves with An Anxious Age, an immensely The book begins in territory that’s as partial Protestantisms, bastard Christi - ambitious work of sociological criticism. familiar enough: the well-known and on - anities, determined not merely to win His essays have garnered awards and are going collapse of the Protestant mainline elections but to be the platform by which churches, whose floor-by-floor implo- all other platforms are judged. Mary Eberstadt is a senior fellow at the Ethics and sion the author traced first in a seminal once again, the millenarian character Public Policy Center and the author of How the 2008 essay for First Things on “The of contemporary politics—particularly West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Death of Protestant America.” This start- today’s politics of the Left—has been Secularization. ing point soon widens dramatically onto noted before. But once again, Bottum

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digs deeper here to yield truths not hither- rise in “nones.” Similarly, the author’s to inspected. Partial Protestantisms, bas- unspooling of the story of the swallows tard Christianities: It isn’t only that of San Juan Capistrano as a metaphor The ostensibly secular leftism is Christianity for explaining what has happened to in some unexpected, other guise. It’s Catholicism in America is not only arrest- Lawless rather that ostensibly secular leftism is a ing but convincing, succeeding both as particular kind of truncated Christianity: religious sociology and as literary trope. AMIR TAHERI the theological and sociological equiva- None of which is to say that the book’s lent of the fatherless home. every fillip and expostulation amounts to And so, for example, Occupy Wall the last word. Like any serious work, this Street, for all its grubby pretension, is in one excites demurrals, objections, and essence just one more “protest against second and third thoughts. In particular, the continuing reign of Satan and a plea one wants to hear more about the other for the coming of the Kingdom of God, and less cerebral forces that were obvi- with a new heaven and a new earth.” ously at work in the implosion of main- Related yearnings for personal redemp- line Protestantism and its fallout. tion, the author argues, also unite cer- After all, not every religious movement tain ardent young Catholics drawn to emerging from the “burned-over district” “lifeboat theology, escaping the rising in upstate New York suffered the same sea of evil on small arks of the saved.” communal fate. The Church of Jesus Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging These groups are joined, he argues, at Christ of Latter-day Saints, to take one Rogue Regimes, by Michael Rubin the sociological root—proof of what, salient example, went on to become one of (Encounter, 384 pp., $27.99) in a bow to Max Weber, the book calls the most ascendant faiths of the next our “Anxious Age” created by “the cat- century. Why did mainline Presbyte - UST a few months ago, Secretary astrophic decline of the mainline Prot- rianism, say, fall one way on history’s of State John Kerry was praising estant churches that had once been central divide, while Protestant evangelicalism “our Russian partners” for their institutions in public life.” and Mormonism, say, fell another? One J role in making possible a second In a curious way, An Anxious Age also likely answer is that the mainline’s doc- “Geneva peace conference” on Syria. amounts to a limited reenchantment of the trinal neglect and practical abandonment Having spent more time with his Russian intellectual world. When conservatives of the family led eventually to demo- counterpart Sergei Lavrov than with any in particular attack “the elites,” Bottum graphic disaster in the pews. In similar other colleague, Kerry promoted the illu- argues, they “focus entirely on non- fashion, one can argue, Catholics who sion that Russia and the United States spiritual causes.” In this they overlook have behaved like Catholics have seen were teaming up to resolve a number of the essential link between these “elites” their own corners of the religious world issues, including the Syrian civil war and and their Puritan forebears, for “the one prosper—and Catholics who have be - Iran’s nuclear ambitions. And then, all of social ascendency they truly feel, the one haved like mainline Protestants have not. a sudden, we had Russia flexing its mus- deepest in their souls, is the superiority of Other points invite similar friendly cle in Ukraine by breaking the sacrosanct the spiritually enlightened to those still debate, including the author’s claim that rule under which European borders could lost in darkness.” Contrary to what both tomorrow’s Catholicism is necessarily not be changed by force. Lavrov and his the Poster Children and their religious less robust than yesterday’s because it is boss, President Vladimir Putin, were vio- critics seem to think, all are leaning toward no longer as “inherited.” And of course lating not only the emblematic Helsinki the same end: a sense of redemption. one can also question ad infinitum why accords of 1975 but also a set of treaties “Elite or not,” he observes, “they are the Bottum chose to discuss some of the that guarantee Ukraine’s independence elect—people who understand themselves thinkers in these pages, and not others. and territorial integrity. primarily in spiritual terms,” whether they But no shortcomings gainsay the superb In other words, Russia had gone rogue. darken the doors of churches or not. achievement here. As his friend and But what is a rogue state? An Anxious Age abounds in logic and some time collaborator, the author David According to Michael Rubin’s new clarification (and for that reason among P. Goldman, once put it, “One often learns and extensively researched book, a rogue others, it was derelict of the book’s pub- more about the underlying issues from state is one that ignores international law lisher to omit footnotes and an index, both Jody Bottum’s mistakes than from the and accepted norms of behavior when - of which would have helped to signal its dutiful plodding of many of his peers.” ever that serves its policy objectives. A scholarly nature). Even so, it is the book’s Readers who find the Poster Children rogue state may make promises, sign metaphors that will haunt the reader after stalking their imaginations might also treaties, and join international organiza- he puts it down. Who else would describe hope to see more overt works of fiction tions but will always reason as a lone Protestantism in the United States as “our from the talented Mr. Bottum down the wolf that abides by no rules. It may shake cultural Mississippi, rolling through the road. Meanwhile, the daring achievement center of the American landscape”? Likely of the author of An Anxious Age—bring- Mr. Taheri is an Iranian-born analyst of Middle no one—but the image brings to vivid and ing sociology to unique fictional life—is Eastern affairs and terrorism. He is the author, most unexpected life a thousand Pew Research something that the rest of us will be think- recently, of The Persian Night: Iran under the reports on declining attendance and the ing about for a long time to come. Khomeinist Revolution.

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Sailing November 9–16 on THE NATIONAL REVIEW Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas 22001144 PPoosstt--EEleeccttiioonn CCrruuiissee New Speaker ALLEN WEST joins Victor Davis Hanson, Fred Thompson, Tim Pawlenty, Jon Kyl, Luis Fortuño, John Yoo, Brent Bozell, Mona Charen, Jonah Goldberg, Ralph Reed, Bing West, Rich Lowry, Tim Phillips, Guy Benson, Michael Ramirez, Brian Anderson, Ned Ryun, Charles Kesler, Andrew McCarthy, Sally Pipes, Cleta Mitchell, Kathryn Lopez, Jay Nordlinger, Ramesh Ponnuru, Deroy Murdock, Charles Cooke, Kevin Williamson, Rob Long, James Lileks, Christina Hoff Sommers, Michael Walsh, John Fund, Jim Geraghty, John Hillen, Ed Whelan, Cal Thomas, John Miller, William Jacobson, Christian Robey, Roman Genn, & Jennifer Marshall

ign up for what’s certain to be one of the most exciting sea- ist Michael Ramirez, City Journal editor Brian Anderson, faring adventures you will ever experience: the National Claremont Review of Books editor Charles Kesler, NRO editors-at- S Review 2014 Post-Election Caribbean Cruise. Featuring large Jonah Goldberg and Kathryn Lopez, NR editor Rich Lowry, an all-star conservative cast, this affordable trip—prices start at terrorism and defense experts Bing West, Andrew McCarthy, and $1,999 a person—will take place November 9–16, 2014, aboard John Hillen, policy experts Sally Pipes, Jennifer Marshall, and Royal Caribbeans’ MS Allure of the Seas, the acclaimed ship of one Christina Hoff Sommers, novelist Michael Walsh, NR senior edi- of the world’s leading cruise lines. From politics, the elections, the tors Jay Nordlinger and Ramesh Ponnuru, NR essayists Charles presidency, and domestic policy to economics, national security, Cooke and Kevin Williamson, NR columnists Rob Long and and foreign affairs, there’s so much to discuss. James Lileks, ace political writers John That’s precisely what our conservative ana- Fund, Jim Geraghty, John J. Miller, and NR lysts, writers, and experts will do on the Allure cartoonist Roman Genn. No wonder we’re of the Seas, your floating luxury getaway for expecting over 700 people to attend! scintillating discussion of major events, The “typical” NR cruise alumnus (there trends, and the 2014 elections. Our wonderful are thousands) has gone on four NR voyages group of speakers (over three dozen so far!), and knows our trips provide riveting political there to make sense of politics, elections, and shoptalk, wonderful socializing, intimate din- world affairs, includes former Congressman ing with speakers, making new friends, rekin- Allen West, acclaimed historian Victor Davis The beautiful ms Allure of the Seas dling old friendships, and grand cruising. Hanson, former senators Jon Kyl and Fred Thompson, former That and more awaits you in November. governors Tim Pawlenty and Luis Fortuño, legal experts John Here’s our exclusive event program: nine scintillating seminars Yoo, Cleta Mitchell, Ed Whelan, and Legal Insurrection publisher featuring NR’s editors and guest speakers; two fun-filled “Night William Jacobson, liberal-media scourges Brent Bozell and Owl” sessions; three revelrous pool-side cocktail receptions; a late- Christian Robey, syndicated columnists Mona Charen, Cal night “smoker” featuring world-class H. Upmann cigars (and com- Thomas, and Deroy Murdock, top political strategists Ralph Reed plimentary cognac); and intimate dining on two evenings with a and Ned Ryun, Townhall.com editor Guy Benson, Americans for guest speaker or editor. Prosperity president Tim Phillips, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoon- The best reason to come is the luminary line-up. This tremendous ensemble (we’re awaiting more JOIN U S FOR SEVEN BALMY DAYS AND COOL C ON SERVAT IVE NIGHT S RSVPs) guarantee fascinating and informative seminar sessions. DAY/DATE PORT ARRIVE DEPART SPECIAL EVENT a Listen and learn (and Q&A SUN/Nov. 9 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 5:00PM evening cocktail reception too!) as Allen West, Victor Davis Hanson, Bing West, John Kyl, MON/Nov. 10 Nassau (Bahamas) 7:00AM 2:00PM afternoon seminar Fred Thompson, and John Hillen “Night Owl” session sizing up America’s standing in the TUE/Nov. 11 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars world’s most troubled hot spots. WED/Nov. 12 St. Thomas (USVI) 9:00AM 6:00PM afternoon seminar a Hear from former guvs Tim evening cocktail reception Pawlenty (MN) and Luis Fortuño (PR)about the ups and downs of THU/Nov. 13 St. Maarten (NA) 8:00AM 5:00PM afternoon seminar late-night Smoker stateside conservative governance. a Watch Brent Bozell, FRI/Nov. 14 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars Christian Robey, John Miller, “Night Owl” session Brian Anderson, Michael Walsh, SAT/Nov. 15 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars and Rob Long discuss just how evening cocktail reception deep the media (and Hollywood) is SUN/Nov. 16 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 6:30AM Debark in the liberal tank. a Legal experts John Yoo and two page Caribbean 2014 cruise April 7 issue:Panama cruise.qxd 3/18/2014 9:44 PM Page 2

Andy McCarthy will provide razor-sharp insights on national securi- LUXURIOUS, AFFORDABLE CABINS! ty, and join Ed Whelan, Cleta Mitchell, and William Jacobson to RATES START AT JUST $1,999 P/P! score judicial decisions and the Justice Department’s political hijinx. a Our post-dinner “Night Owls” will showcase Jonah Goldberg, Superior service, gourmet cuisine, elegant accommodations, and great entertainment await you on the Allure of the Seas. Prices are per-person, James Lileks, Michael Walsh, Rob Long et al. venting, ruminating, based on double occupancy, and include port fees, taxes, gratuities, meals, and joshing about anything and everything. entertainment, and admittance to and participation in all NR functions. a Political aces Ralph Reed, Tim Phillips, Ned Ryun, and Guy Call The Cruise Authority at 800-707-1634 for 3rd/4th person rates. Benson will analyze the numbers and strategies to explain why this candidate won and that one lost, while Rich Lowry, Jim Geraghty, GRAND SUITE WITH BALCONY Magnificent 371 square Mona Charen, Cal Thomas, Deroy Murdock, Charles Kesler, John feet, plus 114 s/f private balcony. Two lower beds convertible to queensized bed, private bath with shower, large sitting area, pri- Fund, and Andrew Stiles provide expert analyses of the conservative vate balcony, flat panel TV, floor-to- movement and the GOP. ceiling windows, safe. a Picture Jay Nordlinger and John J. Miller leading Christina Hoff Sommers, Jennifer Marshall, Sally Pipes, Ramesh Ponnuru, Category GS Kevin D. Williamson, Charles Cooke, and Kathryn Jean Lopez in DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,999 P/P scintillating discussions of the economy, health care, education, and SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 7,999 the day’s other top domestic policy issues. a They’re funny, and they can draw! Watch and laugh as Pulitizer JUNIOR SUITE WITH BALCONY Spectacular 287 square Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez and NR cover artist feet, plus 78 s/f private balcony. Two lower beds convertible to Roman Genn get their art on to discuss ink, paper, pens, and politics. queensized bed, private bath with shower, large sitting area, private balcony, flat panel TV, floor-to- As for the ship: The luxurious and fun-filled (rock climbing walls! ceiling windows, safe. zip lines! comedy clubs!) Allure of the Seas offers well-appointed, spacious staterooms and countless amenities, with a stellar staff providing Category JS unsurpassed service and sumptuous cuisine. DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,999 P/P And don’t forget the sunny itineraryof Nassau, St. Thomas, and St. SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 6,299 Maarten! Our Post-Election Cruise will be remarkable, and affordable. Prices SUPERIOR OCEAN VIEW WITH VERANDAH Delightful 182 start as low as $1,999 a person (double-occupancy “Category Q” cab- square feet, plus 53 s/f private balcony! Two lower beds con- ins are limited), and there’s a cabin for every taste and circumstance. vertible to queensized bed, private bath with shower, large sitting area, private balcony, flat panel Take the trip of a lifetime with America’s preeminent intellectuals, TV, floor-to-ceiling windows, safe. policy analysts, and political experts. Reserve your cabin online at www.nrcruise.com, (it has complete info on the trip). Or call The Cruise Authority (M-F, 9AM to 5PM EST) at 800-707-1634. Category D8 DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,999 P/P We’ll see you—in the company of Allen West, Victor Davis SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,499 Hanson, Jon Kyl, Fred Thompson, Tim Pawlenty, Luis Fortuño, John Yoo, Cleta Mitchell, Ed Whelan, William Jacobson, Brent OCEAN VIEW Comfortable 174 square feet. Ocean-view win- Bozell, Mona Charen, Deroy Murdock, Ralph Reed, Ned Ryun, dows, two lower beds convertible to Guy Benson, Tim Phillips, Michael Ramirez, Brian Anderson, queen-sized bed, flat panel TV, pri- Charles Kesler, Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Rich Lowry, vate bath with shower, safe. Bing West, Andrew McCarthy, John Hillen, Cal Thomas, Christina Category F Hoff Sommers, Sally Pipes, Rob Long, Michael Walsh, Jay DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,499 P/P Nordlinger, Ramesh Ponnuru, Charles Cooke, Kevin Williamson, SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,099 James Lileks, John Fund, Jim Geraghty, John Miller, Jennifer Marshall, Roman Genn, and Christian Robey—this November in INSIDE Spacious 150-172 square feet. Two lower beds con- the Caribbean aboard the Allure of the Seas! vertible to queensized bed, flat panel TV, private bath with shower, safe. For more information or to apply online go to Category N DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,099 P/P www.nrcruise.com SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,599

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS the hand of friendship with extra warmth better than war-war.” Here, the trick is to zero. The outgoing officials become crit- while holding a knife at the ready behind narrow down all options to just two: talk- ics of the incoming ones, claiming that its back. ing to the enemy or invading his territory. they would have handled the engage- “Rogues are proactive rather than reac- Often, the trick works because most peo- ment better than their successors. tive,” Rubin writes. “They simply do not ple don’t have the time or the informa- Those who are too old to be thinking accept international norms.” Thus, in tion to realize that war is not the only about a second career, people such as dealing with them, “limiting strategy to alternative to sterile negotiations. John Kerry and Joe Biden, favor engage- the normal tools of diplomacy” will result The rogue-wooers also claim that talk- ment; even if it leads nowhere, they in failure. ing helps with “confidence-building” or might be cast as peacemakers and end up The rogues are able to act roguishly the establishment of “parameters” for with a Nobel Peace Prize. Rubin writes: because those capable of reining them in future engagement. They claim that “Elite Washington society often treats succumb to the temptation of securing a “modest progress” has been made or that engagement with rogues as chic and settlement through diplomacy. “constructive dialogue” is under way and sophisticated.” Anyone who suggests that Even before he was elected president, that “encouraging signs” can be detected. some rogues will not stop unless they hit Barack Obama insisted that the U.S. When none of these claims sound con- something hard is labeled a warmonger ought to “talk to its enemies.” In the vincing, the rogue-wooer asserts that or a cowboy. case of the Islamic republic in Iran, he things might have been worse without Furthermore, a maker or implementer offered “a hand of friendship” and pro- engagement. of American policy knows that what - posed a one-on-one meeting with Presi - The rogue states have one crucial ever the outcome of “engagement” with dent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Implicitly, advantage over their democratic adver- rogues, his personal risks are minimal. he blamed previous U.S. administrations saries, including the United States. Ali The interlocutors on the “rogue” side are for three decades of tension in relations Khamenei, the “Supreme Guide” of Iran, in a dramatically different situation. The with Iran. has been a central player in the power slightest mistake could mean loss of But Obama is not alone in the belief structure in Tehran since 1979 and has power, imprisonment, exile, and even that he could do better than his predeces- dealt with six U.S. presidents. President death. sors. Rubin writes: “Carter never gave Hassan Rouhani has been a key figure in Promoting engagement with the rogues up hope that he might broker peace.” the Khomeinist security services since has nurtured a vast appeasement indus- That was because he had “uncritical trust 1980, long before Obama was old enough try that keeps thousands of former offi- in his own power of persuasion” and to nurture political dreams. The Kim cials, real or self-styled experts, op-ed believed that “if past diplomacy had dynasty in Pyongyang has been in charge crusaders, and “Track II” fixers busy. At failed, it had to be the fault of his prede- of North Korea’s destiny for more than a minimum, the would-be appeaser is cessors, not America’s adversaries.” six decades. The Assad clique has domi- rewarded with visas to visit the rogue Rubin shows how successive adminis- nated Syria since 1970. Even Putin is states and access to powerful figures trations refuse to learn from the experi- now in his third decade in power, as there. In a growing number of cases, ence of their predecessors. Take Syria, for prime minister or president of Russia. appeasers have also benefited from example. Sometime in 1970, and for rea- The rogues know that their American lucrative business deals for those on the sons that remain a mystery, the State adversaries are only mildly interested lookout for a fast buck. In time, engage- Department adopted the shibboleth that, in tackling complex issues. American ment becomes an end in itself, not a in the Middle East, there could be no policy makers come and go, write their means to an end. war without Egypt and no peace with- books, launch a second career in think The rogues welcome engagement be - out Syria. Thus, an annual “summit” of tanks or boardrooms, and have little or no cause it removes the threat of military the U.S. president and the Syrian despot, desire to make life complicated for them- action or genuinely hurtful sanctions Hafez Assad, became part of the Ameri - selves. Rubin provides a large number of against them. Kerry’s engagement with can diplomatic ritual. For almost three names of former politicians and diplo- Lavrov has enabled the Russians to keep decades, Damascus became the most pop- mats who have recast themselves as free- Bashar Assad in power in Damascus and ular destination for U.S. secretaries of lance peacemakers. Among them are such to launch a new phase in Putin’s plan to state. George Shultz went there six times, distinguished figures as Lee Hamilton, at least partially revive the Soviet and James Baker doubled that number. Thomas Pickering, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Empire. Engagement with Iran has Warren Christopher more than doubled Brent Scowcroft, and Richard Haass. enabled the mullahs to continue their that again by traveling to Damascus 29 Such individuals are not as harmful as nuclear program while Obama acts as times. No one actually took a moment to professional appeasers, if only because chief lobbyist for them to prevent the assess the results of paying so much atten- they lack consistency in their analyses. U.S. Congress from imposing new sanc- tion to a tin-pot tyrant. Every new secre- Nevertheless, they help perpetuate the tions. This is how Hussein Mussavian, a tary of state taking the road to Damascus illusion of peace, thus helping rogues buy former Khomeinist security official, claimed that he was having success where time in which to make more mischief. assesses the outcome of a previous others had failed. Because the U.S. cycle of elections round of negotiations with the U.S. and Measuring success in “dancing with does not coincide with the diplomatic other Western powers: “During two the devil” is itself an exercise in obfusca- cycle, any change of administration or years of negotiations we made far tion. Among the claims made to justify personnel in Washington could mean greater progress [in uranium enrich- wooing the rogues is that “jaw-jaw is starting the “engagement process” from ment] than North Korea.” The technique

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was simple: Keep talking but continue tion, ethnic divisions, and growing eco- doing exactly what you were doing. nomic and environmental woes. Abdullah Ramazanzadeh, a spokesman Rising Geoff Dyer, the Financial Times’ for former Iranian president Mohammad leading commentator on China, aims to Khatami, is more specific: “We had Dragon, find a middle ground, and succeeds bril- one overt policy—negotiations and liantly. Yes, China and America are confidence-building—and a covert policy, locked in a rivalry that’s only going to which was the continuation of our Crouching intensify in the next decade; and no, we [nuclear] activities.” are not fated to be friends. But pace As part of the appeasement strategy, Eagle Gordon Chang, China isn’t collapsing successive U.S. administrations over- any time soon, either—and neither is the looked crimes committed by rogue states ARTHUR L. HERMAN United States. Dyer sees in this super- against America. For example, since 1979 power rivalry not a clash between free-

the Islamic republic in Tehran has always dom and tyranny, or between ideologies held a number of American hostages left over from the Cold War. He paints a without losing the sympathy of the ap- vivid picture of a clash driven by old- peasement lobby. (Today, five U.S. citi- fashioned geopolitics from the era of zens are being held hostage in Iran.) Bismarck, Teddy Roosevelt, and Alfred President Bill Clinton chose to ignore the Thayer Mahan, the great exponent of murder of 19 U.S. servicemen by Iranian sea power as a nation’s path to domi- Hezbollah agents in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, nance—and contemporary China’s fa - and even apologized for “the wrongs my vorite Western thinker. civilization has done” to Iran. In this contest the United States “will The Kim gang in North Korea has still hold many of the best cards,” he The Contest of the Century: The New Era of pocketed billions in American aid, sup- Competition with China—and How America Can argues—and thereby somewhat under- posedly in exchange for stopping its Win, by Geoff Dyer (Knopf, 320 pp., cuts his thesis. Still, Dyer concludes nuclear program, but is busy expanding $26.95) convincingly, we can guide this rivalry its deadly arsenal. to an end where the two countries re - North Korea, Iran, and Russia are not eCeNT books on China and spect each other’s security interests and the only rogues to come under Rubin’s America tend to wind up in don’t wreck the modern global system. scrutiny. He shows how “engagement” one of two camps. We’re on the verge not of superfusion with the Palestine Liberation Organi - R One is epitomized by exactly, but not of the Next Big One, zation, Libya, and, more recently, the Zachary Karabell’s 2009 Superfusion, either. Muslim Brotherhood produced the oppo- which stressed how the interests of the The real problem is that American site of the results that the appeasers had world’s two biggest economies will policy makers haven’t caught up with the promised. increasingly overlap and draw the two new Chinese self-perception. In the In every case, the rogues or their apolo- nations together. We’re fated to be friends years following Mao’s death, China’s gists knew how to hoodwink the gullible in a post-nationalist world, supporters approach to the rest of the world, espe- Americans. Here is Tariq Ramadan, a of this argument, including Fareed cially the United States, was summed up grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder Zakaria, aver—so don’t spoil it by both- by Premier Deng Xiaoping’s phrase “Tao of the Muslim Brotherhood: “I must ering the Chinese about human rights or guang yang hui”—“Hide the brightness speak in a way that is appropriate for the by worrying about their growing mili- and nourish obscurity.” Two phenomenal ear hearing me.” tary might. decades of economic growth, however, It is not only misguided idealists, oppor- The other camp, by contrast, comes tunists, and useful idiots who preach and with such titles as “America’s Coming peddle engagement with rogues. At War with China” and “Death by China.” “Rated One of New York City times, there are U.S. officials who sym- It foresees a much darker future, with an ‘Best Value’ Hotels.” ... Zagats pathize with causes espoused by them. arrogant and authoritarian China itching Rubin cites as an example the case of for a head-on collision with America, several officials of the Carter administra- the one superpower able to block its tion, among them the analyst Richard global ambitions, either because it be - Falk and the intelligence operative Gary lieves it will win or because—to borrow Sick, who actually misled the president from Gordon Chang’s 2001 book The in order to shield the then-fragile Coming Collapse of China—it wants to New York’s all suite hotel is located in Khomeinist regime against an effective distract from its own intractable corrup- the heart of the city, near corporations, theatre & great restaurants. Affordable American riposte. elegance with all the amenities of home. Rubin has a sober lesson for who - Mr. Herman, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the author, ever cares to learn it: “The first casualty most recently, of The Cave and the Light: 149 E. 39th St. (Bet 3rd & Lex) New York, NY 10016 of engagement with rogues is moral Plato versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for Reservations 1-800-248-9999 Ask about our special National Review rates. clarity.” the Soul of Western Civilization.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS have convinced the Chinese that it’s time Germany than they do Mao’s revolu- age China to play ball rather than be left to shine, and they now demand the re- tionary vanguard. Dyer forcefully points out. spect that goes with being the world’s out that they increasingly feel free to Yet if “lead from behind” has proven a second-biggest economy. take the aggressive lead on foreign dismal failure in the Middle East—not to Yet as Dyer skillfully shows, while affairs, with politicians willy-nilly going mention now in Ukraine—why expect it growth has brought unprecedented pros- along (for example, current premier Xi to succeed in Asia? Here Dyer fails to perity and power, it has also exposed the Jinping owes his rise to being a well- realize that one of the reasons China Middle Kingdom to a new kind of vul- known “military hugger,” while his wife feels free to behave aggressively in nerability that comes with being part of is a major general). places such as the South China Sea, or to a global system. China’s economy now But that new aggressiveness in such filch our corporate and defense secrets feeds on copper from Africa, iron ore places as the South and East China Seas by cyberhacking, is precisely that it’s from Brazil, and oil from Saudi Arabia, has also made new enemies and spawned never had a forceful, determined re - of which 80 percent passes through the a loose coalition of lesser powers—Japan, sponse from the United States. The prac- Malacca Straits—which also happen to South Korea, Vietnam, and the Philip- tical alternative to “China-bashing” or be patrolled by U.S. warships. Mean - pines—that want to limit China’s domi- angry brinksmanship, both of which while, the 2008 financial crisis shocked nance, and that look to the United States Dyer rightly deplores, has been a strange the Chinese leadership into realizing to help them do it. passivity going back to Tiananmen how much they relied on a global finan- Dyer sees here an opportunity for Square, fed by super fusion enthusiasts cial system over which they had little American leadership, but also a risk. during the Clinton and Bush years, direct control. America’s goal in Asia should be the especially in the corporate-business One response has been Beijing’s re- same as it always has been: to prevent a community. cent effort to replace the dollar with the single power from dominating the rest, Obama’s passivity on everything re- yuan as the world’s reserve currency. whether it was imperial Japan in the 20th lated to foreign policy has only made it The other—much more worrying and century or Xi Jinping’s China in the 21st. worse. His “pivot to the Pacific” strate- destabilizing—has been China’s enor- But Dyer also correctly points out that gy is a standing joke in Asian capitals, mous investment in a military, especially the interests of China’s neighbors are too while his administration has done last- a navy, it believes it needs to secure its diverse for building a NATO-style coali- ing damage to the two pillars of Ameri - far-flung interests, which means dis- tion of the kind we used to contain the can strength in the region and around the placing the United States’ traditional Soviet Union’s expansion in Europe; and world: our economy and our military. dominance in the Pacific region. the fact that their own economies are as No wonder the Chinese privately count The result has been that, as Dengism intertwined with China’s as ours leaves us as down and out, and see the 2008 has faded, the People’s Liberation Army them cold to any aggressive economic financial crisis as proof that their hour has enjoyed a new prominence and pres- warfare or sanctions. has come. tige in Chinese society and politics. Instead, he stresses a “lead from be - Yet Dyer remains hopeful that we can Puffed up by annual double-digit in - hind” approach, to “fashion a loose, come back before the final bell. Why? creases in the military budget, its generals informal web of collaboration across the Because the American system has a and admirals now more resemble the region” from behind the diplomatic cur- powerful capacity for self-renewal, he Prussian officer corps of Wilhelmine tain, which will gently but firmly encour- says at the end. Our current energy boom, our universities’ ability to attract and train the brightest minds, our “unique ability to commercialize innovations”—all spell a TO AN EARLY BIRD, MID JUNE way out of our current malaise and a resurgence of American power, and with To-we, to-woo, to-woe! Must you sing it a strong partner for others in Asia to so early, bird? Can these announcements wait lean on. until a better time: say, half-past eight? Yet what are those virtues but the You don’t think this cacophony will bring fruits of a system of private enterprise a friend who’ll share her nest so late in spring? and freedom—and what are China’s strengths, except those that spring April’s the month to serenade a mate, from the regime’s willingness to foster and at the latest, May. Accept your fate: the same freedoms, albeit in a sharply This summer you’re alone. And please don’t cling limited way, in the economy and in sci- to adolescent hopes these clamorous, ence and technology? In short, the tap- brooding lays could win a hen. root of our current rivalry turns out to Sincerity won’t make her amorous be ideological after all. And just as liberty this close to fall. It’s hard to come to terms ultimately prevailed over tyranny in the with passing time. You might see spring again. contest with the Soviet Union in the Cold War, it may provide the key to under- But let’s talk after breakfast. Go find worms. standing who prevails in this contest as —STEPHEN SCAER well.

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be foreign minister. He was Catholic. She war’s end they were wed. Aladár had was Jewish. their gentle, refined court- been appointed minister to the United Love in a ship proceeded at ever-higher tempera- States, so that within a month they made tures. then in 1942 the government, it to Washington, D.C. From a large Dark Time under the pressure of new Nazi laws, for- cache of writings and documents, some bade the marriage of any gentile male to hunted down in various countries, their MICHAEL NOVAK any Jewish woman. At first the two lovers daughter Marianne, born in Wash - paid little heed to this law—it would not, ington, recreated this wonderful story. they imagined, apply to them. Once encountered, it is difficult to for- Awful realities slowly drew tighter get. around them, more and more keeping Marianne Szegedy-Maszak is a won- them apart. For his opposition to the new derful writer, who here employs an and brutal government imposed on ample range of styles and sympathies, in Hungary, Aladár was sent to Dachau, stately and tender rhythms, to bring back where he wasted into a mere shadow of to consciousness a noble way of life, himself. His young sweetheart moved now gone, lived out with grace during I Kiss Your Hands Many Times: Hearts, Souls, and with her family into exile—it cost them history’s most awful years. Wars in Hungary, by Marianne Szegedy- the family fortune to be allowed to leave And yet, as if to test her parents one Maszak (Spiegel & Grau, 400 pp., $27) safely for Portugal (luckily, some of the more time and beyond all bounds, the family’s factories produced war muni- Lord allowed them to endure a pain t was a lovely custom in Hungary tions). For long months, neither lover sharper than a serpent’s tooth: the unnec- between the wars for a man to treat knew whether the other was alive. A essary death of their firstborn son, even each woman as a lady, and to kiss heavy choking pall descended upon them. in “safety” in America. I found even I her hand. the restraint behind such Several times in Dachau, Aladár dropped reading this bit of narrative exceedingly a kiss could be so gently expressed as to into unconsciousness, despair, hallucina- hard to bear. penetrate her heart, awakening passion, tions, and awful typhus until, near the end, the newborn son had been a perfect, even a warming sensuality. But even if a Dutch doctor saved his life. active, darling son, until one day he was not, to be recognized as a lady is its own It took many months for the two lovers plainly in unbearable abdominal pain. elixir. to meet again, he looking like death, she the American doctor told the mother she Add then this: to kiss a lady’s hand tender now, after having been disconso- was too worried and sent her home with “many times” is to express a special pas- late during those empty, empty days. the a useless palliative. He had failed to do a sion, a longing for commitment. Such a letter Aladár sent Hanna when at last he simple, crucial test. the child remained restraint our own poor age does not exer- was able to write from Paris (American in excruciating pain. His intestine had cise. too much, too fast, without any intelligence had spirited him there when become folded over onto itself, from a honor—a heavy price to pay. he was found at Dachau) deserves to be failure to develop normally, and none of Such was the romantic story of love immortalized: his intake could pass. When the doctor that to my amazement bore fruit in my finally grasped his mistake, he hurried My Dear Hancsi, own parish, in the Szegedy-Maszaks’ this is the first opportunity to write you, mother and child to Children’s Hospital. house next door to Blessed Sacrament to ask you: do you still love me and to tell It was days too late. the author records Church in Washington, D.C. that Patter - you that I love you. In my case, there is the death of her parents’ first child 99 son Street home was torn down for the no change, and I wish that you would be days after his happy birth: parish playground, but how much more my wife as soon as possible. that is, romance it once added to our neighbor- unfortunately, one thing that did change. [the baby] survived the operation, but the doctor offered no reassurance, only hood. All parishes are built on intimate I became a bit worn out, physically and sympathy. Hanna’s breasts were still full loves of husbands and wives and (soon maybe even emotionally. I had typhus, myocarditis, prison diarrhea, and nephri- of milk. She and Aladár and tom stood enough) flirting teenagers. But the in little Aladár’s room, watching as each romance of this story, the romance of tis. I almost perished, but I had a Dutch medical doctor friend who saved me at breath seemed to take him farther away the Szegedy-Maszaks, touched a level the last minute. Now I am in general from them. He had stopped crying. they of its own. okay, but I still move around with diffi- would have given anything to hear his their love—Aladár and Hanna’s—tied culty and have to watch my heart. this is cry again. together two of the most prominent fami- the physical part. the emotional one, of Early in the morning of November 4, lies of Hungary. She was from the most course, I cannot judge myself, but some- 1947, he died, a perfectly unnecessary powerful manufacturing company not times I feel as if I have problems there death. only of the nation but of the region. He too. I am even more indecisive and help- Nothing compared to it. Not the Nazis, less than before. Consequently, I feel that not Dachau, not Rákosi. their devasta- was a brilliant rising young man in poli- tion was absolute, infinite, shocking. tics—everybody said he would one day it is irresponsible to want to tie your fate to mine, yet broken and without a job, I If you want to read a love story you am asking you to be my wife. Mr. Novak, author of many books since a first novel will not forget, take up I Kiss Your Hands in 1961, is now distinguished visiting professor at Hanna welcomed him. Oh! did she Many Times. What a brave and tender Ave Maria University in Florida. welcome his note. By Christmas after the couple Aladár and Hanna were.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS But Anderson isn’t particularly inter- tragedy, with darkness waiting at the end Film ested in the lords and ladies; he’s more of farce. interested in the magic, and so his One need not overinterpret all of this, Another Gustave is vivid and eccentric, extraor- I think, to see in Gustave’s meticulous dinary and irrepressible, in a way that magician a clear stand-in for Anderson the black-jacketed servants of Downton himself, his interests and preoccupations Lost are not. (It helps, no doubt, that he’s a and artistic habits. In a recent New York continental rather than a professionally Times piece, Fiennes was quoted as re - Kingdom uptight englishman.) A verse-reciting, marking that Anderson “feels there’s a perfume-wearing dandy, a probable world that happened before, which he ROSS DOUTHAT homo sexual who sleeps with his rich, might have been happy in.” This seems elderly female guests (but only the exactly right: Whether they’re set in the here are ways in which The blondes), he’s an apostle of sophistica- present or the past, all of his films are Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes tion rather than a monk of service, com- inhabited by characters who seem slightly Anderson’s eighth film, feels mitted to keeping alive what he calls the out of time, and defined by nostalgia for T like the key to all his other “faint glimmers of civilization left in things and habits and institutions that the works. Set in the fictional hapsburg- this barbaric slaughterhouse that was 20th century did away with—an e. B. ish dominion of Zubrowka in the twi- once known as humanity.” White–esque New York in Tenenbaums, light of the interwar period, it has as its Under his spell falls a teenaged orphan a raj-esque India in The Darjeeling dominant character a concierge named from the Near east, who goes by “Zero” Limited, a magical english countryside in Gustave h., an arbiter of Old World and whose title in the Grand Budapest is The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and now the elegance who presides over the titular “Lobby Boy.” (he’s also the narrator, or Stefan Zweig/Joseph roth Central eu - hotel—a pink confection, rising against one of them—the movie is framed by rope that drowned under Fascism and an Alpine backdrop—with a glorious flashbacks-within-flashbacks, which be - Communism. fussiness, an imperious exactitude, as gin in present-day Zubrowka and then But this time, with Gustave and The though precision and poetry might suf- leap back to the hotel’s hideous Soviet- Grand Budapest, the self-consciousness fice to hold modernity at bay. era incarnation, where an aging, wealthy is sharpened, the artifice is more ex - Inhabited by ralph Fiennes—not one Zero, played by F. Murray Abraham, posed, and the unrealism of looking of Anderson’s usual players, but lend- tells Gustave’s story to a visiting novel- backward is explicitly conceded. The ing this production the same outsider’s ist played by Jude Law.) con cierge’s “world had vanished long energy that Gene hackman brought to Initially just Gustave’s protégé, Zero before he entered it,” the aging Zero tells The Royal Tenenbaums—Gustave has becomes his partner in an increasingly Law’s novelist, casting the film itself as something in common with dutiful ser- complicated caper, which begins with an exercise not just in nostalgia, but in vants from stories like The Remains of the apparent murder of one of the con - nostalgia for nostalgia—which amounts the Day and Downton Abbey, who keep cierge’s aged conquests, Madame D. to a rueful acknowledgment that the magical kingdoms running smoothly in (Tilda Swinton, buried under face putty). critical world’s anti-Andersonians can the shadow of world war, while the lords The noblewoman’s will leaves an invalu- sometimes have a point. and ladies enjoy a few last little melo- able painting in her concierge/lover’s This self-knowledge is not enough to dramas in their old and fated world. hands, and soon her sinister son (Adrien make The Grand Budapest Hotel one of Brody) and his even more sinister hench- Anderson’s best movies, because it falls man (Willem Dafoe) have Gustave on short in another crucial area. Its youthful the run, in a chase that takes us from a Zero is a bit of a, well, you know (as is his prison cell to a monastery in the heights lady love), which robs the movie of the of the Zubrowkan Alps, and allows for kind of strong early-adolescent, or stunted- cameos from the usual Andersonian roster adolescent, or old-soul/young-body per- of Murrays and Wilsons and Goldblums spective that the Andersonian magic along the way. seems to need to really do its work. Meanwhile, love intrudes: Zero and Rushmore had this perspective, of Gustave receive crucial assistance from course; Tenenbaums had it in the techni- the lobby boy’s paramour, a young cally adult but actually arrested Tenen - dessert chef (Saoirse ronan) with a baum kids; Moonrise Kingdom, his last Mexico-shaped birthmark, whose boxed- film before Grand Budapest (and one of up confections contain highly civilized his best), had it twice over in its teenage de liciousness and sometimes smuggle runaways. Whereas the new movie has weaponry as well. And inevitably, war only Gustave, with Zero as his straight in trudes, too, as the Zubrowkan mili- man and everyone else essentially doing tary police (led by a helmeted edward cameos. Norton) are elbowed aside by black-clad, As great as Fiennes is, that isn’t enough Ralph Fiennes and Tony Revolori in lightning-bolted SS types, whose pres- for greatness. But for fans and students of

The Grand Budapest Hotel ence makes the movie a kind of come- Andersonia, this one is still essential. FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

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New Amsterdam’s. Now spring has come asthma. One of the local congressmen City Desk and the snards have gone; we shall see. has made a crusade of bringing light rail Bicycles for everyone have diluted a into the city, in order to diminish the subculture of the city’s streets. Before miasma of exhaust. Good luck with that. Not-So- they became a badge of good citizen- At the rate that the second Avenue sub- ship, bicycles were the chariots of dare- way has been dug, if we turn the first Mean devils. The symbol of urban excitement shovel for a light-rail network today it and anarchy was the bicycle messenger, will be finished about the time Russia some lean, probably strung-out young leaves Ukraine. Streets man, astride a racing bike whippet-thin as Trucks and vans are the entertain- himself, slipping and shooting through ment, the folk-art gallery and magazine traffic, giving an occasional slap/push-off rack, for slow taxi rides. Look out, read to the many-ton monsters roaring the view. U-haul decorates its vehicles around him. For the pedestrian about to with regional American scenes; each step into his flight path, there was a van is like a page from The Golden Book whistle blast or a shouted Yo! They still Encyclopedia. Produce trucks depict careen, though there seem to be fewer of their contents: families of gigantic fruit; them; no doubt the cops have cracked medieval boar’s heads, tusks rampant; down. i recently saw a young man on placid cattle; seafood of all kinds, from 14th street, a big two-way boulevard, leaping swordfish to lobsters to lugubri- RICHARD BROOKHISER sitting on his handlebars, back foremost, ous bass. For some reason pigs are often pedaling with a reverse motion. This was shown in chef’s hats, as if they collude his is no city for cars. Taxis, affectation merely. But soon thereafter i in their own demise; it is i suppose a yes, of course: We depend on saw another freewheeler pedaling up backhanded tribute to their intelli- them. But for personal cars it is sixth Avenue with an easel strapped to gence—if they got the upper hand, they T a struggle—a feral struggle. his back. he was a hero of old, perform- would grill us. Garaging one here is like renting a second ing a job. The easel swayed back and Tools are another popular motif: ham- tiny apartment. Driving here belongs with forth with every leg pump, threatening to mers, saws, screwdrivers. some stand blood sports, fox-hunting or running the throw him off balance and under some- upright on little tool legs, complete with bulls at Pamplona, when it isn’t rush- one else’s wheels. still he forged on. i feet and shoes; others are carried back and hour slow-dance. Now and again i see a can’t imagine anything, short of a full- forth by miniature workmen. specialists princely car, a Maserati or a Lamborghini, grown pig, harder to carry on a bicycle in AC and heating advertise the results of crawling along in car hell. i own a car than an easel. i worshiped that man. their work: snowmen, sweating suns. One myself but i park it 90 miles away. i The vehicles that make the city work such company, a step more abstract, uses would not keep it an inch nearer. are trucks and vans. They are our red a winking owl: he knows just where to set Our last mayor tried to convert the city blood cells and leukocytes. Any product the dial. to bicycles. What makes bicycles morally that is bulkier than virtual they bring in, When there are no pictures there is text: uplifting? One of the selling points of the and all detritus that is larger than flush- queries about the driver’s driving, with strange sixties/seventies cult of Mao was able they carry away. When they clog the a number to call if he has been driving that all his subjects bicycled. sure, he streets in front of supermarkets with their like Mad Max; addresses in Brooklyn on killed 40 million of them, but the sur- double parking, think: They are feeding streets you have never heard of and will vivors got their exercise. The old mayor me. When they fill the night with racket never visit; townlets on Long island, once made a deal with a bank, and queues of just at sleep-fall, think: They are cleaning Dutch or Yankee communities, now epi- blue bicycles appeared on every third up after me. Take them away and in a few phytes on the trunk of the city; Chinese. street (there is one on my street, beside the weeks we would all be corpses on a mid- it looks like art to non-speakers; in the school named for Washington irving). den (we would still have Wi-Fi though, absence of meaning we make beauty. The bicycles seem sturdy—built for pot- LOL). The plague of the city when i moved holes—and deliberately dowdy, as if to Their help is not without cost. The tran- here was graffiti. it lived in the subways, discourage theft. You release their front sit of so many trucks and vans exacerbates but it spread everywhere. Thousands of wheels from the slots in which they stand tags, one message: Punks rule. You think nestled by swiping a card, then away you you own something, or, as a taxpayer, you go. People do use them, or did until the have a stake in it. No: it’s mine. After retreat-from-Moscow winter set in. years of hard work and years more of Whenever the arctic cold abated, it regular maintenance the plague has been snowed. My friend, the witty cosmo - contained. One entrepreneur who fre- politan atheist, assured me that the bike quents my neighborhood has, as is his program would be a great success, they right, made his truck a canvas of graffiti’d love it in Amsterdam. Amsterdam is on imagery: smudgy drawings, under a veil the North sea, so it must get rain, but of smudgy lettering. One such almost surely its winters are not as lousy as looks interesting. Let it be lonely.

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Happy Warrior BY JONAH GOLDBERG Press Shows Bias

heN a dog bites a man, that is not buried the story as a one-paragraph Associated Press news, because it happens so often. report on page A21, with the bland dog-bites-man head- But if a man bites a dog, that is line, “California: State Senator Accused of Corruption.” news.” This aphorism has been This even though Yee was suspended, along with two ‘W others, from the California state senate in light of the attributed to several barely remembered titans of the indictment. newspaper industry (partisans of Charles Dana, Alfred harmsworth, and John Bogart can duke it out in the letters- CNN, Reynolds went on to note, refused to cover the to-the-editor round file). story at all. When pressed on it by viewers, the network This saying used to annoy my late father to no end. A responded via Twitter that state senators don’t rate atten- longtime news-syndicate editor, he simply knew that it tion from the network that gave us wall-to-wall coverage wasn’t true. here’s an excerpt from an e-mail he sent me of the infamous “poop cruise,” complete with hourly on the subject over a decade ago (my father sent me updates on toilet blockages. (By the way, CNN is still scads of e-mails on everything from the Austro-hungarian covering that historic news event. It recently ran a one- empire to the Talmud to the innate superiority of basset year-later piece on its website: “‘Poop Cruise’ Witness: ‘I hounds): Got Mentally Injured.’”) CNN’s actual explanation was that they cover state sen- I have seen front-page stories over the years about dogs bit- ators “just about never.” Which is just about a lie. They ing men—whether because of a case of rabies, the Post covered then–state senator Wendy Davis’s pro-abortion Office complaining about this continuing hazard to their deliverers, or attacks on people by pit bulls, Rottweilers, filibuster as if the fate of the republic depended on it. They etc. I have NeVeR seen a front-page story on a man biting covered Sandra Fluke’s ill-fated state-senate run. The a dog. And yet, going back to my years at NANA [the North website Weasel Zippers reports that CNN had even favor- American Newspaper Alliance, a once-prestigious news ably reported on Leland Yee numerous times, particularly syndicate—hemingway covered the Spanish Civil War for when he was eager to ban violent video games. In other NANA—where my dad’s career began], we had distributed words, the geniuses at CNN are not only lying about their at least five or six stories about men biting dogs (either out standards, but they actually think Yee became less news- of revenge, pure kookiness, or whatever). Invariably, these worthy when he was charged with bribery, attempted were consigned to the inside pages as “filler,” usually run gun-running, and collusion with the Chinese gangster in the early editions and dropped in the final editions when Ray mond “Shrimp Boy” Chow. “real news” filled up the pages (like dogs biting men, perhaps?). The New York Times was a customer of ours then The real point of the phrase “man bites dog” is to sug- and they used a lot of NANA material, including two con- gest that journalists have a bias toward surprising news, cerning men who bit dogs, as filler material in early edi- even if it’s merely anecdotal. But these days, that’s often tions, both of course dropped when the big stories started at best a half-truth, which is often the most effective kind coming in on land reform in Peru (which everybody, of of whole lie. When it comes to politics, what ignites the course, was waiting for). We even distributed several sto- press isn’t surprise but confirmation. The great herd ries (spread out over a year, which was the time period he stampedes when it hears what it expects to hear. Sur - gave himself) about an Australian who ate his car (yes, prises get squashed or squelched, which is why it has including the engine, headlights, and all)!!!! Did the Times become a parlor game to see how long it takes wire sto- give this proper attention? Of course not. They didn’t run ries about corrupt politicians to mention their party affil- any of them. And yet they used many stories on cars that iation. If they are Republicans, it’s in the lede. If they’re destroyed people. So, when you hear the “man bites dog” cliché, you’ll know that it is just another big lie! Democrats, it’s usually about ten paragraphs down, if anywhere at all. I don’t bring this up simply out of filial nostalgia. I was That’s why actual dog-bites-man stories make it to the reading a column in USA Today by my friend Glenn front pages, while man-bites-dog stories are negligible Reynolds (a.k.a. Instapundit) on the news that California filler. When a Republican candidate does or says some- state senator and candidate for California secretary of state thing awful, it’s a newsworthy dog-bites-man story be - Leland Yee has been charged with some truly stupendous cause the press believes it is their duty to report on the crimes. Yee, a famous champion of gun control, allegedly true, feral nature of conservatives: “Rabid Re publicans tried to smuggle into the country some machine guns and Claim Another Victim.” When a Democrat does or says shoulder-fired missiles from his contacts in the international something awful, it’s a curiosity, an anecdote, at best suit- Muslim-terrorist community. It’s a pretty interesting story. able for a squib in the back pages: “Local Puppy Learns to But—well, here’s Reynolds: Play the Piano.” In this sense, Reynolds had it back- wards. The Yee gun-running spectacle is a man-bites- Outside of local media like San Francisco magazine, the dog story, and, like my dad said, the Times never puts coverage was surprisingly muted. The New York Times those on the front page.

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