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October 16, 2017 $5.99

RAMESH PONNURU SPECIAL SECTION ON KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON Against Upper-Class Tax Cuts EDUCATION For the Tech Monopolies

BERNIE’S

BAD MEDICINE$5.99 42 CHRIS POPE on Medicare-for-All

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OCTOBER 16, 2017 | VOLUME LXIX, NO. 19 | www.nationalreview.com

ARTICLES 13 THE NORMAL ONE by Jim Geraghty What Ed Gillespie’s gubernatorial campaign means for conservatives. 15 A MIDTERM FORECAST by Jay Cost Jim Geraghty on Ed Gillespie Republicans should not forget their umbrellas. p. 13 18 THE PRICE IS RIGHT by Peter Laakmann American health care costs about what it should. BOOKS, ARTS 21 UNTAXING THE RICH by Ramesh Ponnuru & MANNERS A misguided Republican obsession. 52 THE MANY-SIDED 22 CUT THE PAYROLL TAX by James C. Capretta SCI-FI MASTER It will help middle-class households and boost growth. John J. Miller reviews Complete Stories, by Kurt Vonnegut. 24 THE GRAVE HUNTER, HUNTED by Jay Nordlinger Russia’s Yuri Dmitriev on trial. 53 PROVIDENCE AND A POPE Kathryn Jean Lopez reviews Lessons in Hope: My Unexpected FEATURES Life with St. John Paul II, by George Weigel. BERNIE’S BAD MEDICINE by Chris Pope 26 55 BINDING WOUNDS The folly of Medicare-for-all. Nick Ripatrazone reviews The 29 ‘WE ARE AS GODS AND MIGHT AS WELL GET GOOD AT IT’ Ninth Hour, by Alice McDermott. On the tech monopolies. by Kevin D. Williamson 56 CLASSICS OF CONSPIRACY Peter Tonguette discusses paranoid 32 DON’T FORGET HIGH EARNERS by Henry Olsen thrillers. A tax reform that offers them nothing will drive them farther away. 58 APPETITE FOR CREATION Ross Douthat reviews Mother! EDUCATION SECTION 59 URBAN SYMPHONY Richard Brookhiser hears the sounds of 36 CLASSES OF KINDERGARTENERS by Frederick M. Hess & Grant Addison the city. Play-acting oppression at a ‘current-century, progressive’ Chicago school. 38 CONGRESS AND CAMPUS by David French Students and faculty need federal free-speech protection. SECTIONS 42 HISTORY IS FOR MAKING GREAT CITIZENS by Alexi Sargeant Toward a character-centered approach to teaching our national story. 2 Letters to the Editor 4 The Week RECLAIM CHARTER SCHOOLS by Michael J. Petrilli 44 50 The Long View ...... Rob Long Conservatives have forgotten why they liked them. 51 Athwart ...... James Lileks Poetry ...... James Matthew Wilson BOOKS FOR CHILDREN: A SYMPOSIUM 54 48 60 Happy Warrior ...... Daniel Foster

NATIONAL REVIEW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by N ATIONAL REVIEW, Inc., at 19 West 44th Street, Suite 1701, New York, NY 10036. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 2017. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to Editorial Dept., N ATIONAL REVIEW, 19 West 44th Street, Suite 1701, New York, NY 10036. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONALREVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00A. 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., N ATIONAL REVIEW, 19 West 44th Street, Suite 1701, New York, NY 10036 or call 212-679-7330. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to NATIONAL REVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATES: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters-FINAL_QXP-1127940387.qxp 9/27/2017 3:30 PM Page 2 Letters

OCTOBER 16 ISSUE; PRINTED SEPTEMBER 28

EDITORINCHIEF Richard Lowry Give Me Your Poesy Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / Jonah Goldberg / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts I very much enjoyed Kevin D. Williamson’s essay on Emma Lazarus Literary Editor Michael Potemra Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy (“Wretched Refuse, Indeed,” August 28) and the way in which her famous Executive Editor Reihan Salam poem, which had several opportunities to disappear, succeeded in newly Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson National Correspondent John J. Miller branding the Statue of Liberty as representing the welcoming of poor and Senior Political Correspondent Jim Geraghty Art Director Luba Kolomytseva oppressed people. Deputy Managing Editors I concur with all his main points—it’s close to doggerel. But as he notes, Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Robert VerBruggen it remains affecting to many people. I see two reasons. Production Editor Katie Hosmer Assistant to the Editor Rachel Ogden One, the poem is likely to conjure a cloud of sentiments that remind the Contributing Editors reader of other types of mercy. For example, rescuing an orphan cat, setting Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Daniel Foster up a charity hospital for the indigent, setting up an orphanage, and so on. Roman Genn / Arthur L. Herman / Lawrence Kudlow Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long Second, the poem doesn’t make sense if one assumes the distant, poor, Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi Andrew C. McCarthy / Andrew Stuttaford huddled masses will simply be piling up here on our sidewalks and in our

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE gutters as poor huddled masses again. It only makes sense with the impli- Editor Charles C. W. Cooke cation that things will be better here. Again, this conjures favorable senti- Managing Editor Katherine Howell Deputy Managing Editor Mark Antonio Wright ments. They’re not just yearning to be free, but likely to breathe free, stand Senior Writers Michael Brendan Dougherty / David French up, have work, and so on. Critic-at-Large Kyle Smith Thanks for your good work. National-Affairs Columnist John Fund Reporter Katherine Timpf Associate Editors Molly Powell / Nick Tell Manager, Office & Development Russell Jenkins Bruce Quinn Web Editorial Assistant Grant DeArmitt Web Producer Scott McKim Los Angeles, Calif.

EDITORS- AT- LARGE Kathryn Jean Lopez / John O’Sullivan Wages and Immigration BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Alexandra DeSanctis / Theodore Kupfer

COLLEGIATENETWORKFELLOW Perhaps I missed it, but I didn’t see the word “immigration” in “A Wage- Philip H. DeVoe Growth Conundrum,” by Robert VerBruggen (July 31). Contributors If the potential labor pool includes not only Americans but also every Hadley Arkes / James Bowman / Eliot A. Cohen Dinesh D’Souza / Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman tech worker in India and every farm worker in Mexico, etc., etc., surely this James Gardner / David Gelernter / George Gilder Jeffrey Hart / Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler must put rather a lot of downward pressure on wages? David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune / Alan Reynolds Tracy Lee Simmons / Terry Teachout / Vin Weber I’m curious to know why this isn’t addressed in the article.

Vice President Jack Fowler Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Tom Roberts Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Via email Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya Circulation Manager Jason Ng Head of Integrated Sales Jim Fowler OBERT ER RuGGEn RESPOnDS Senior Account Executive Kevin Longstreet R V B : I do tend to believe that immigrants put downward pressure on the wages of natives who have similar skills. PUBLISHERCHAIRMAN E. Garrett Bewkes IV John Hillen (That’s one reason I support limiting low-skilled immigration; see my piece “A DACA Deal” in the October 2 issue of nR.) But there’s simply FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. no good evidence that immigration is producing the wide-scale wage scle-

PATRONSANDBENEFACTORS rosis I documented in this piece. In fact, even George J. Borjas, the econo- Robert Agostinelli mist most willing to challenge his profession’s pro-immigration dogma, Dale Brott Mr. and Mrs. Michael Conway finds that immigration has actually increased American wages slightly Mark and Mary Davis Virginia James overall, though he argues it has been harmful to high-school dropouts and Christopher M. Lantrip college grads specifically (because immigrants disproportionately compete Brian and Deborah Murdock Mr. & Mrs. Richard Spencer with people of these education levels). Mr. & Mrs. L. Stanton Towne Peter J. Travers

Letters may be sub mitted by email to [email protected].

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n Some stood, some knelt, all winced.

n President Trump’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly was a combination of idealism and blunt talk. Most striking was his ode to national sovereignty. The nation-state gets a bad rap, since it is a frequent (though by no means the only) agent of strife. But it is also the most effective forum of liberty and self-rule—an insight of both the Founders and Lincoln (cf. the See page 12. Preamble of the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address). Trump called out regimes that abuse the nation-state’s poten- tial: Iran (“economically depleted rogue state”), Syria (“crim- inal”), Cuba (“corrupt and destabilizing”), Venezuela (“The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully imple- mented”). He gave North Korea a sober warning, proceeding to trash it with an infantile gibe—“Rocket Man is on a suicide mission”—reportedly over the advice of his advisers. If the president wants to make points rather than headlines, he should leave Twitter Trump home.

n The White House has issued a new executive order restrict- ing travel from seven countries. The new restrictions vary by country—the order bars almost all Syrians from entering the United States, but permits Iranian students, for instance, to enter if they pass heightened scrutiny—and are no longer set to expire after 90 days. Nationals of those countries, and of Chad, North Korea, Libya, Venezuela, and Somalia, will face restric- tions until the national-security threats that reside in them are Alabama Republicans had poor choices and picked the candi- “satisfactorily addressed.” The order also includes a thorough date who appeared to believe in something. review of those threats, carves out reasonable exceptions, and sets a process by which the Department of Homeland Security n The 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter on sexual assault, sent to and the State Department can consult to adjust its restrictions. colleges by Barack Obama’s Department of Education, typi- These are welcome changes. The Supreme Court promptly fied his sneaky legislation-by-bureaucracy approach. Under canceled oral arguments on the previous incarnation of the travel the guise of offering “guidance” on Title IX, the federal law ban, and given its new provisions, any challenges to this order that prohibits gender discrimination in education, the depart- should be on even shakier ground. ment specified how institutions must handle rape or sexual- assault claims—tilting the scales in favor of the accuser and n Roy Moore easily beat incumbent Republican senator Lu - discouraging any attempt to steer the proceedings to criminal ther Strange in a primary in Alabama. The circumstances that courts, which are much better equipped to handle such cases. put Strange in his job—he was the attorney general investigat- The letter also required institutions to hire “Title IX coordina- ing a governor, who appointed Strange to Jeff Sessions’s vacat- tors,” whose full-time job would be to handle complaints and ed Senate seat and then resigned as part of a plea deal—also seek out potential violations. Institutions that showed insuffi- made it difficult for him to keep it. Moore and his allies por- cient zeal in this pursuit would be subject to sanctions. The trayed Strange as a compromised tool of Mitch McConnell. results of these ukases are familiar to all of us: kangaroo courts President Trump’s support for Strange does not appear to have expelling students on evidence that even the accuser disavows; done much to help him. Moore is well known for getting boot- hair-trigger disciplinary proceedings against faculty and staff; ed off the state supreme court when he defied federal court rul- and dissenters of all kinds afraid to express their views. Now, ings that he considered anti-Christian. He seems more likely to however, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has reinterpreted be a headache than a help for conservatives. In a recent inter- Title IX, disavowing the 2011 letter and planning to formulate view, he first suggested that parts of Illinois and Indiana were new guidelines that emphasize the importance of addressing operating under sharia law and then said, “Well, let me just put sexual assault and discrimination as well as the need for due ROMAN GENN it this way—if they are, they are; if they’re not, they’re not.” process and free speech. Here’s hoping that DeVos’s policy

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TRAE PATTON/CBS VIA GETTY IMAGES THE WEEK THE to live by. live to “Peace through strength.” More than a slogan, it’s principle a slogan, a than More strength.” through “Peace lgn ltr cod mr fmul, y oad Reagan: Ronald by famously, more a echoed, had later Goldwater Barry slogan, 1964, In important. is This itary.” State lie in ruins. Better late than never. strongholds,last theirbuildinglastingdreamsandofIslamica caliphate. AcrossMesopotamia, theirleadersISIStofledhave accelerationofallied gains and the near-destruction ofthe ISIS problems with Obama’s approach. The consequence President hasthe of somebeenfix tosought an successand goal. this onbuilt Trumphas that toward progress battlefield substantial ally, ordered the reclamation of both Mosul and Raqqa and bombingmade enemy strongholds in both Iraq and Syria and, eventu- quiet, Barack Obama spent the last two years of his should.seriouslytimeititkeptasISISThoughtake as hebegun to in office finally hasgovernment States United the that be wouldever, degrading ISIS, and he’s correct. A better way of putting it, how- out theOrwellianphilosophythatimpartialityisbias. puzzle to have never will students college future that so sticks Those last words are from Dana Rohrabacher,RepublicanDanafrom the arewords last Those make the Right look bad, and to “put our president on the spot.” protests in that city, protests that turned murderous—in order to neo-NaziarrangedLeft the thatbelievetruthers—people who people who believe that “crisis actors” staged the 2012 massacre ment itself. There are also such things as Sandy Hook truthers— that9/11 was an“inside job”—perpetrated bythe U.S. govern- nism that has gutted defense spending—and “rebuild the mil- the “rebuild spending—and mecha- defense gutted has that nism sequestration”—the repeal must “we that said then He madness.” is This combat. in than training in troops more losing now “America’s point: alarming an made Committee, intelligence services. the for advertisement an of much not she’s theories, spiracy con- for weakness her and blindness willful her Between cles. arti- anti-Semitic sharing when “undercurrents” such missing of habit a made had she that out turned then It it. in currents” under- gross “missed had she that claiming sounded—by she obnoxious how know her let someone assume tracking—we i ca’s Wars.” Plame defended the article before furiously back- about an article headlined “America’s Jews Are Driving Amer - tweeted she when September late in news the into back came min is tra She Plame. exposed who neoconservative, a not tion, conservative revenge plot. It was an Iraq War skeptic in the ad neo- - any of evidence of shred a never was there though staff, fore engulfing Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of WattsPenn/Naomi Sean be terrible movie) a (and prosecutor - special a of appointment the precipitated The eventually Iraq. scandal in intervention U.S. the opposed who diplomat a as an undercover CIA agent to punish her husband, Joe Wilson, status her leaked intentionally had government the in vatives neoconser- that claimed She fame. widespread attained Plame n n n n to discredit gun rights. Furthermore, there are Charlottesvilleare thereFurthermore, rights. gun discredit to at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in order 6 For a brief moment during the Bush administration, Bush the during Valeriemoment brief a For John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Armed Senate the of chairman the McCain, John The word “truthers” usually applies to people who believe who people to appliesusually“truthers” word The President Trump claims that the United States is finally is States United the that claims Trump President | .nationalre .com o c w. e i ev r l a n o i t a n w. w w

each other, we’retold. and sometimes cruel boss. Scorpions and frogs are attracted to Sessions should although have known what he spectacle, was getting into dismaying with his mercurial a is It him. berates remains quiet and gets on with his job; Trump undermines and side: one Trump’s.from coming impetus the all with Sessions attack, cold a of more is it truth, In continues. Sessions eral elected official. Leaks, we wish it were a hoax that Rohrabacher is a Re pub Given hisli support for Vladimircan Putin, Julian Assange, and Wiki Francisco Chroniclethe - with interview an In California. from congressman got around to reporting in late September of the next year. next the of September late in reporting to around got to befoundinthewholeaffair. was he that “honored” to be disinvited. In responded truth, there was very little honor Manning it. rescinded nevertheless Elmendorf school,” the at hours few a than “more spend who people many to gives Harvard that title a just is fellow” ing men dorf, El issued a semi-apology.Douglas dean, Though - protesting school’sthat “visit- the traitor, a elevate to choosing for Morrell, Mike director deputy CIA former from, others, among lashing public a taking After soldiers. fellow of lives and indiscriminately released it to WikiLeaks, endangering the information classified stole who felon convicted a is Manning and notably,Twitter.”More queer on @xychelsea as for rights transgender advocates “she noting, fellow,” transgender first “the as Manning touted institution The a fellow. visiting Manning, Bradley Class First Private formerly Manning, n n n The U.S. murder rate was 5.3 per 100,000 in 2016, the FBI the 2016, in 100,000 per 5.3 was rate murder U.S. The Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government named Chelsea named Government of School Harvard’sKennedy The cold war between President Trump and Attorney Gen and TrumpPresident Attorney between war cold The - rsintegrity.er’s Spi c Sean - for out look to job dent’s presi - the why not? It’s not and performance, enjoyed his Emmys Trump says Spicer job. his in lied never he the said at and Emmys, it of fun made cism, criti- ex his over regret pressed WhiteHouse,theSpicerhasof nessor persuasiveness. Now out truthful-forregard withoutding, president’sbid-the doing just was it,andthat didn’the really expect thembelieveto him.He hit. The reporters knew that it hadn’t been, that Spicer knew PresidentTrump’s inaugural address hadbeenbox-officea thatdenyingfor corpspressdishonesty. criticized the He secretary by establishing a reputation for clankingly obvious n SeanSpicer began his brief tenure as White House press , heclaimed, “set-up”a and“totala hoax.” R E B O T C O 6 1 , San 7 1 0 2 base_new_milliken-mar 22.qxd 9/26/2017 12:34 PM Page 1

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That’s 8 percent above where it was in 2015 and 20 percent $800,000 on security for what was supposed to be a week-long above where it was in 2014—a worrying two-year turnaround free-speech event but turned into a 15-minute meet-and-greet of what had been a fairly consistent two-decade downward with Yiannopoulos. Berkeley deserves commendation for its trend (that happens to coincide with the anti-police agitation of willingness to spend top dollar for speakers its students don’t Black Lives Matter). It’s not time to panic; the murder rate was agree with, but couldn’t this all have been avoided if the school about the same in 2016 as it had been in 2008, which no one and city had taken a stronger stance against Antifa in February? remembers as a time of spectacular carnage, and about half of what it was at its peaks in the early ’80s and early ’90s. There n It may be an urban legend that the Pentagon spent $600 on a are also signs that the problem has leveled off so far in 2017. hammer in the 1980s, but it’s no secret that the Department of But there’s no denying the seriousness of a 20 percent increase Defense has at times acquired a well-deserved reputation for in killings. Especially in troubled big cities such as Chicago, boondoggles and profligate spending. So it’s nice to see the ser- law enforcement needs to step up and get this trend line headed vices making do with off-the-shelf equipment when possible— back in the right direction. Thousands of lives every year hang even if that shelf happens to be in your local Best Buy. in the balance. According to the website Engadget, the Navy has decided to replace its Lockheed Martin–designed periscope joysticks, n In 2011, Anthony Lamar Smith was shot and killed by Jason which were clunky and uncomfortable and, with their associated Stockley, a police officer. The incident took place in St. Louis. control panels, cost $38,000 per unit, with Xbox 360 controllers, Smith was black, Stockley is white. Charged with first-degree which cost about $30. Apparently, the game-console controllers murder, the officer has now been acquitted. In St. Louis, protests are perfectly suited to the high-tech periscopes and sensor arrays broke out, and violent ones. Scores of people were injured, in - on our Virginia-class attack submarines, all of which the Navy clu ding about a dozen policemen. Protesters threw bricks and plans to retrofit. And it doesn’t hurt that the Xbox controllers So far during its short but explosive history at Berkeley, Antifa has cost the school over $2 million in damages and security fees.

broke windows at the mayor’s home. They forced the cancel- turned out to be readily grasped by the submariners. It’s almost lation of public events, such as concerts by the St. Louis as though our young sailors grew up using them. Symphony and U2. From what we can tell—which is of course not everything—the judge’s de ci sion to acquit the officer was n The United Kingdom’s process of saying goodbye to the Eu - right. Regardless, the violence in the protests was wrong. ro pe an Union has been getting nowhere because the Europeans are insisting that the U.K. pay tens of billions of pounds to n Hurricane Maria tore through the U.S. territory of Puerto Brussels. This is partly to honor commitments made in the Rico, killing ten people, disabling the electricity grid, and past, partly to intimidate other countries that might also want leaving massive physical destruction in its wake. With cell to exit, and partly to punish the U.K. for its temerity. Prime service sparse at best, many were unable to contact their fam- Minister Theresa May has the unenviable task of squaring the ilies. The normal consequences of natural disaster followed: circle with squabbling cabinet ministers and the Brussels offi- some looting, but also acts of heroism and a fierce response cial team. She chose Florence as the city in which to deliver from the authorities, including the Army. Rebuilding will be what she hoped was a make-or-break speech, or, in plain lan- made difficult by the island’s history of severe financial mis- guage, a concession to demands. Brussels will get the billions management; it essentially declared bankruptcy earlier this year. of pounds, EU citizens already in the U.K. will have the right May the good people of Puerto Rico emerge from this tragedy to stay, and the agreed transition period is to be extended by stronger than before. two years. Brexiteers suspect that her heart isn’t really in leav- ing, although one of her sentences does speak for them: “The n The University of California, Berkeley, spent $600,000 on EU never felt to us like an integral part of our national story.” security for Ben Shapiro’s September 14 speech, anticipating yet another round of violent Antifa protests. So far during its n The real winner in the recent German general election is the short but explosive history at Berkeley, Antifa has cost the party that calls itself Alternative for Germany, or AfD in its Ger - school over $2 million in damages and security fees with its man abbreviation. Founded four short years ago, it began as a campaign to silence speakers they believe to be “fascists”—the grassroots protest against the European Union and the euro in “fa” in the portmanteau. The bill began in February, when particular. Without consultation and never mind public opinion, Antifa cost the school nearly $100,000 in damage while pre- Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, laid a rod on her own protesting a later-canceled talk by provocateur Milo Yian nop ou - back by bringing in a million migrants from the Middle East and los. In late August, the school dropped an additional $600,000 in Africa while also refusing to limit future admissions. The way security fees during the weeks leading up to an also-canceled was therefore open for AfD to become a full-blown nationalist Ann Coulter talk. Security for Shapiro’s event brought the total movement. “We will take back our country, and our people too,” up to $1.3 million, but then, ten days later, the school spent said Alexander Gauland, the AfD chairman now in a position to

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SINCE 1955, NATIONAL REVIEW HAS DEFINED THE MODERN CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT AND ENJOYS THE BROADEST ALLEGIANCE William F. BuckleyOF Jr.AMERICAN founded National ReviewCONSERVATIVES. Institute (NRI), as the sister 501(c)(3) nonpro t educational organization of National Review, to advance the conservative principles he championed, complement the mission of National Review magazine, and support NR’s best talent. NRI has developed an impressive array of educational programs that bring together conservative leaders to help unite and strengthen the broader movement, and educate and inform the general public regarding key conservative ideas and principles. To learn more about NRI’s programs that expand NR’s inuence and bring its best talent to audiences around the country please visit www.nrinstitute.org. And if you like the good work done by National Review writers, please consider making a tax-deductible a gift to National Review Institute.

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muster 94 of the 709 seats in the Bundestag. Demonstrators in than a little ignorant about the nature of the North Korean the major German cities accuse the AfD of being Nazis, the regime. It’s probably safe to assume Handler is both. me dia almost unanimously pin on them the denigrating term “far right,” and the World Jewish Congress speaks of them as “a n The Michigan football team is highly ranked, and the Air Force disgraceful reactionary movement.” In her public pronounce- football team is not. So it goes in our service academies. But they ments, Mrs. Merkel asserts that the AfD will have no effect on played Michigan very, very tough, in a losing effort. Afterward, her pol i cy. The conventional parties have had their worst elec- a Michigan player, Chase Winovich, had a comment to remem- toral re sults since the end of the war, losing such large percent- ber: “I feel bad for the terrorists those guys are eventually going ages of their previous vote that Mrs. Merkel looks unlikely to be to go up against.” able to assemble a coalition to govern anytime soon. No wonder her expression is even more mournful than usual. n Frank Giaccio, an eleven- year-old boy from Virginia, n The Village Voice gave up its print edition, and Jann Wenner, acquired a high-profile client founder/editor of Rolling Stone, put that publication on the for his lawn-mowing business block. The Village Voice, the older of the two, began in the Fif - in September: President Donald ties as an expression of downtown-Gotham feistiness and pe - Trump. Giaccio, who charges cu li ar i ty. Rolling Stone was the Sixties rock magazine that his neighbors $8 per lawn and went big-time. Each harbored notable talents—the pro-life offers “power mower, push civil libertarian Nat Hentoff at the Village Voice, Tom Wolfe at mower, and weed whacker” ser- Rolling Stone—but each was filled with anti-patriotism and vices, wrote to the White House sheer craziness. The demographic fact behind their rise was explaining that “it would be my that the modern teenager had too much disposable income. But honor to mow the White House the teenagers became adults, while the Internet destroyed the lawn some weekend.” “I’d like ad base of the printed Village Voice and offered the music in - to show the nation,” he added, “what young people like me are dus try other means of publicity besides Rolling Stone puff ready for. I admire your business background and have started pieces. Rolling Stone was also crippled by a cover story pro- my own business.” The pitch was accepted, and Gregory made moting a rape hoax at UVA. Sic transit. his way to Pennsylvania Avenue, where he went about his work. Who says the work ethic is dead in America? n Early on a Friday morning, September 15, NASA lost contact with the Cassini spacecraft after it was deliberately sent to burn up n Some breakfast cereals aspire to be healthy while others in Saturn’s atmosphere at high speed. It was the end of a nearly 20- don’t even bother to try. Then there are those such as Corn year mission, the last 13 of which have been spent studying the Pops (formerly Sugar Pops) that pay tribute to the idea of rings and moons of the sixth planet of our solar system. Cassini nutrition with cosmetic changes in their name, packaging, or traveled nearly 5 billion miles, had its mission extended twice, and appearance. A couple of years back, Trix joined the latter witnessed almost half of a Saturn year (which is about 30 Earth category: Formerly made up of defiantly fake fruit-shaped years) before finally running out of fuel in early September. lumps in throbbing neon colors, with flavors vaguely sug- And, tantalizingly, through studying data collected by the gesting “berry” or “citrus” (or, more often, “sugar”), the probe, some researchers have come to believe that the Saturnine cereal switched to tiny, austere balls, naturally flavored and moons Enceladus and Titan could be habitable to life. It’s the dyed in somber shades with vegetable extracts (though the end of an era, and a testimony to the ingenuity and perseverance sugar content remained unchanged). The result resembled of the scientists and engineers who worked on the mission. But nothing so much as a jumbo serving of artisanal heirloom we’ll be back. NASA’s New Frontiers competition has already quinoa. Trix fans erupted in revolt, and now General Mills called for proposals for future missions, which might include has announced that it is bringing back the old-fashioned all- Saturn probes. Finalists will be announced at the end of the year. artificial version. Breakfast nooks nationwide will soon resound with joyous shouts from schoolchildren. Trix are for n Chelsea Handler is a stand-up kids, but some marketing genius tried to sell them to the rab- comedian, late-night talk-show host, bit instead. GETTY IMAGES and self-styled member of the #resis- / tance. Her political preoccupations n Jake LaMotta, the man who inspired the legendary film have not improved her comedy. In Raging Bull, is dead. He was 95 years old. He was a symbol WIN MCNAMEE response to a statement from Kim of America’s complicated relationship with its celebrities. He : Jong-un calling President Trump a demonstrated unquestioned courage and tenacity in the ring. GIACCIO “mentally deranged U.S. dotard,” He was renowned for his ability to take extreme amounts of ; Handler tweeted: “Uhhhh. Kim punishment, only to bounce back and take the fight to his op po - WIREIMAGE Jung’s letter to @realDonaldTrump nent. He fought more than 110 times, won a title, and battled / is a little bit more sane than @real - Sugar Ray Robinson in an epic series of bouts. LaMotta’s DonaldTrump. Maybe we trade?” rage, however, wasn’t confined to the ring. He was married GREGG DEGUIRE

This was apparently a joke. To find it six times, beat his first wife, and was imprisoned for six : funny, one would have to be either a months for encouraging a minor to be a prostitute. He admitted little deranged about Trump or more to fixing a fight in exchange for a title shot. That didn’t stop HANDLER

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him from enjoying a long post-fight career as an actor and Blame for this debacle should go in the first instance to the comic. He appeared in movies, television shows, and stage senators who refused to support the latest version of the bill. productions—proving time and again that America can give John McCain said that he would back a bill only if it had its sports heroes an almost endless series of second chances. Democratic support. So much for his promise during his 2016 LaMotta was famous for his fury. Now he rages no more. May reelection campaign that he would “lead the fight” to repeal he rest in peace. Obamacare. Rand Paul backed a bill that kept nearly all of Obamacare’s taxes and spending, then piously denounced a n In 1957, Edgar Smith, an ex-Marine living in a New bill for keeping 90 percent of it. Susan Collins acted through- Jersey trailer park, picked up Victoria Zielinski, a 15-year- out this year’s debate as though her priority was to keep as old girl, drove her to a sand pit, and beat her to death. Tried much of Obamacare as possible and found new excuses for and sentenced to die, he wrote a series of jailhouse appeals, rejecting bills that stood a chance of passage.

arguing that his confession had been coerced, and letters to But others share the blame as well. Mitch McConnell did WFB, who helped him with publicity and legal assistance. In nothing over seven years to forge a consensus on how to re - 1971, he was released after a plea deal, for time served. Five place Obamacare. Most congressional Republicans were years later, he kidnapped Lefteriya Ozbun, a 33-year-old lightly informed and lightly engaged. President Trump wo man, almost stabbing her to death. This time he was put campaigned on a ridiculous health plan. In office, he away for good (he finally confessed to Miss Zielinski’s mur- proved incapable of describing any of the Republican bills der). Smith, it was recently announced, died earlier this year even in outline, let alone selling them to congressmen or in a prison hospital, age 83. Why did WFB believe him? the country. Desire to do justice (good); desire to run counter to type It was not the job of the press, of course, to help pass a bill. (sometimes good); seduction by style: Smith wrote well It was its job to inform the public, and it failed. Thanks to it, (rarely good); blindness, not to evil but to psychopathy (never the main thing that Americans heard about Republican legisla- good). The end of a bad man, the fault of a good one, the mur- tion was that it would “take away” health insurance from mil- der of an innocent. lions of people. Almost none of them heard that most of those HEALTH CARE millions would voluntarily drop their insurance as soon as the government gave them the chance to do it without paying a Self-Inflicted Wounds fine. But Republicans themselves deserve some blame for the lousy media coverage, which they rarely challenged and never EPUBLICANS have once again failed to pass a bill that challenged effectively. R rolls back Obamacare, let alone one that repeals it as The temptation for Republicans will be to let the Dem o - they have promised for seven years. crats take the initiative on health care again, resisting their Buckleeyy SSppeaks ((SSo Listen UUpp!!)): ““NNNeeal FFrrreeeman’s writinngg, which I have celebrraated ffoor mannyy yearrsss,, is suupperbb..”

s George Will puts it, “Neal Freeman was not just present at the creation of modern conservatism. He was one of the indispensable creators.” Which is whhyy you’ll want to get your copy of this distinguished conserva- tive writer’s new book, SSkkirmiisshes, a terrific de ffaacto history of the movement and its most important players oovver the past 50 years. Big (over 320 pages) and bursting with that special flair that made Freeman (the right-hand of Candidate Buckley in 1965, the instigator of Firing Line the ffoollowing year, and so much more) a ffaaavvorite of NR readers and its founder, SSkkiirrmiisshes merits a notewwoorthhyy position on the shelf of Aevery conservative’s home library. Order your copy of this engaging new book directly from National Review ffoor only $25, which includes ffrree shipping and handling. Also free: the deserved compliments mannyy are paayying Neal Freeman and SSkkkiirrmmiisshes . . .

MARK LEVIN: For those ffaamiliar with his exceptional thinking on matters of liber- ty, country, faith and ffaamily, we haavve all benefited enormously ffrrom Neal’s insights. In so many ways, he has shown us the way. He is the true conservatiivve’s conservatiivve. GEORGE GILDER: Rush to reap the wit, wisdom, and business saavvvvvvyy of Neal Freeman, an unsung genius of National Review and cherished bow-tie to the Buckley years of incandescence.

RICHARD BROOKHISER: Neal Freeman was at the heart of it all—National , Firing Line, that charge of the bright brigade that was WFB’s 1965 run ffoor kept his finger on the pulse into the new millennium. Add a voice that , wry and clean as a breeze . . . what a treat awaits.

oorderrder atat store.nationalreview.comstore.nationalreview.com Skirrmmishes

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ef forts to move farther toward a single-payer system and The president’s remark and follow-up tweets made the contro- thus in practice defending the post-Obamacare status quo. versy about himself vs. team solidarity, resulting in veritable cho- Repub li cans are delighted that Senator Bernie Sanders has rus lines of kneels and (in a less confrontational spirit) locked gotten most of the Democratic party at least nominally be - arms. When Alejandro Villanueva of the Pittsburgh Steelers, a hind single-payer, which would require massive broad-based Bronze Star Afghanistan vet, stood for the anthem alone of his tax in creases and a radical disruption in most people’s health teammates, he became a sudden hero; he subsequently apologized care and insurance. for making the other Steelers look bad (evidently the plan was for Incremental moves toward single-payer will, however, be him to stand with a few other teammates, who botched it). hard to resist if Republicans adopt this stance. Only liberals will Let us run this play again. be offering solutions—a price control here, new subsidies there The police of America do a generally heroic job maintaining —to each dissatisfaction Americans have with their health-care order, in ordinary communities and deeply ravaged ones. So system. They will win some of the time. We will slowly arrive at long as the ravaged are disproportionately black, blacks will a situation in which we get worse health care for the money, and suffer disproportionately from both legitimate and discrimina- especially less innovation. tory uses of force. This is a painful reality, but it doesn’t justify The Republicans’ next steps on health care are therefore disrespecting the nation’s flag. important beyond their effects on morale. The Trump ad - Short of slander and threats of imminent violence, an Amer - min is tra tion should exploit what flexibility the law legiti- i can may say what he likes. His employers and his fans are mately grants it to reduce the burden of Obamacare. And no equally free to take exception. bipartisan effort to “stabilize” Obamacare (that is, to direct Sports are supposed to be a safe space for entertainment, more taxpayer resources toward it) should be allowed to go mock battle, and amateur expertise. To inject politics into forward absent real reform of the program. A better system sports represents the ideological conscription of everything, than Obamacare—one in which people are free to choose which at the extreme turns us, in Yeats’s phrase, into “weasels the in sur ance products they want and in which those choices fighting in a hole.” in clude cheap, renewable catastrophic coverage—should The president should not be fighting down in that hole. re main conservatives’ goal. Left-wingers did not give up When he must wield a weapon, let him use humor or class. when national health insurance failed in the 1940s. When it “The Star-Spangled Banner” is a symbol of aspiration (the comes to perseverance, at least, conservatives should follow first verse ends with a question) and fulfillment. If the tackle of their example. the Centralia Dirt Hogs doesn’t believe that, let him go to THE CULTURE Sem i nary Ridge. Culture-war battles can be as diverting as football games; Bad Sports they certainly make work for journalists. But politicians, ath- letes, and owners should take care lest they wear out their wel- HE kneel to the pre-game national anthem began with comes. Elections are periodic, and many American sports have Colin Kaepernick, quarterback of the San Francisco waxed and waned in popularity over the years. T 49ers, in 2016. Reacting to high-profile police shootings of black suspects, he said he could not “show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” Kaepernick turned free agent at the end of the season, but no team picked him up, either because he was being blackballed for his be - havior or be cause his performance had fallen off (probably some com- bination of the two). Some players who believed the former began tak- ing the knee during the national anthem in sympathy. President Trump, with his hound’s nose for blood, turned the slice into a gash in an aside at a

VIA GETTYrally IMAGES for Alabama senator Luther Strange. “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when DENVER POST somebody disrespects our flag, to THE / say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. JOHN LEYBA He’s fired!’” Denver Broncos players during the national anthem, September 24, 2017

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his views had changed since then, and in speeches, interviews, and ads, he relent- lessly focused on job creation. This was around the worst times of the Great Recession, and Virginia voters gravitated to McDonnell’s emphasis on good schools, curtailing regulations, and build- ing new roads to reduce traffic. (That Gillespie’s campaign video, eight years later, makes similar pledges to frustrated commuters indicates the difficulty of mit- igating traffic congestion.) The McDonnell playbook appeared simple and workable: focus on economic and quality-of-life issues and be nice. As one Virginia GOP consultant put it, the way for Republicans to win statewide was just to “get our base to show up and don’t scare the Fairfax County soccer moms.” Executing that playbook has proven surprisingly difficult. Virginia Republi- cans haven’t won a statewide race since 2009 and have come close only twice. The Normal One Ken Cuccinelli, the attorney general What Ed Gillespie’s gubernatorial campaign means for conservatives under McDonnell, came within three points of beating Terry McAuliffe in the BY JIM GERAGHTY 2013 gubernatorial race, a much closer result than the final polls had suggested. N mid September, the campaign of Republicans—and a signal that Gillespie In 2014, Gillespie came within a per- Virginia Republican gubernatorial hopes to emulate McDonnell’s success centage point of a monumental upset I candidate Ed Gillespie released a of eight years ago. against incumbent Democratic senator funny YouTube video to promote “People are looking for solutions,” Mark Warner. One veteran of that cam- his transportation plan. A dashboard Gillespie says in an interview with paign characterizes the close finish as camera shows Gillespie at the wheel of a NATIONAL REVIEW. “I’ve released 17 being “one stomach-virus outbreak at a light SUV, with former GOP governor specific plans to address their concerns Chipotle away from winning.” Bob McDonnell in the back seat. on everything from K–12 education and With the gubernatorial contest in New McDonnell hectors Gillespie from the higher education to traffic, jobs, the opi- Jersey long having been expected to be a back, reminding him that he signed a law oid epidemic. I mean, I’ve got plans for Democratic rout, the Virginia governor’s requiring seat belts, telling him he’s going everything, and that’s what people are race will be the first true statewide test of too fast, then too slow. Then the men hungry for.” the parties in the Trump era. Virginia is debate whether a right turn on red is per- “In most ways, 2017 is a return to what one of the few states where Hillary mitted at that intersection. At a stoplight, we know works in Virginia—a focus on Clinton won more votes than Barack the former governor teases Gillespie: kitchen-table issues,” says Garren Obama did four years earlier. A good “What shade of green are you waiting for, Shipley, the Virginia communications chunk of that increased margin came in Ed?” The video ends with Gillespie director for the Republican National Fairfax County, the state’s most populous, pledging “to get Virginia moving again— Committee. The slogan “‘Bob’s for a stretch of suburban D.C. where Obama not just our economy, but our traffic.” Jobs’ worked for a good reason: The beat Romney by about 108,000 votes; McDonnell’s cameo is a little surpris- number-one concern of most people is Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 197,000. ing, given that he and his wife were con- keeping their paychecks coming in and But even if Trumpism has limited victed of corruption in federal court in hopefully growing.” appeal to the state’s electorate as a whole, 2014. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme In 2009, the state GOP thought it had quite a few Virginia Republicans like it Court vacated the conviction, concluding cracked the code after McDonnell and have embraced its local personifica- that while McDonnell’s acceptance of crushed his Democratic opponent by tion in the form of Corey Stewart, a gifts from a wealthy maker of dietary sup- almost 20 points. Democrats had strenu- member of the board of supervisors of plements was “distasteful,” the “govern- ously tried to make the race a referendum Prince William County. Stewart built his ment’s boundless interpretation of the on McDonnell’s graduate thesis, written reputation in 2007 by pushing through a federal bribery statute” was not lawful. in 1989 at Pat Robertson’s Regent measure to deny certain county services But McDonnell’s playfully hassling University in Virginia Beach, in which he to illegal immigrants and to direct the visage in Gillespie’s YouTube video is a criticized feminists, working women, and police to enforce immigration laws. In ROMAN GENN reminder of better times for Virginia homosexuality. McDonnell insisted that the years since, he has called for mass

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deportation of all illegal immigrants, Tom Steyer, the founder and president praise the two candidates for their civility labeled Democratic governor Terry of the environmental-advocacy group and focus on substance, declaring, “The McAuliffe a “cuck,” and called Gillespie NextGen America, went even further: Virginia governor’s race is how politics a “cuckservative.” “This ad is the latest example of the hate- should be.” In March, Stewart declared that “the filled, fear-mongering campaign that Ed There’s one other potential far-reaching most important thing in this campaign” Gillespie has run. Equating sanctuary consequence of this year’s gubernatorial was the preservation of Charlottesville’s cities and the immigrant community race. Terry McAuliffe, the current Demo - Robert E. Lee statue—the one that later with the MS-13 gang is coded racism cratic governor, isn’t hiding his interest in became the centerpiece of an alt-right and plays into the hands of the white running for president in 2020. Virginia’s white-nationalist rally and the flashpoint supremacists that marched through Republican-controlled state legislature for a violent riot and an apparent act of Charlottesville last month.” blocked most of his most liberal initia- murder by a white supremacist. As for Being compared to white suprema- tives, so if McAuliffe does run, he will the politicians who support removing cists would make some candidates likely do so on his record, touting himself Confederate statues, Stewart has com- bristle or offer an outraged denial, but as a job creator. Virginia’s unemployment pared them to ISIS. Gillespie uses a bit of rhetorical ju-jitsu rate hit a 40-year low in 2016, and total Stewart’s Trump-style rhetoric almost to contend that those defending sanctu- wages and salaries in Virginia have worked; he won 42.5 percent in the prima- ary cities don’t actually care about increased by 12.2 percent since January ry, to Gillespie’s 43.7 percent. In mid July, immigrant communities. “Immigrants 2014, according to the Federal Reserve Stewart announced his plan to run against themselves are the ones most likely to be Bank of St. Louis. Senator Tim Kaine in 2018 and specifical- victimized by MS-13 and people here But Gillespie points to gloomier data. ly promised “a very vicious, ruthless race.” illegally who commit violent crime,” A report by the state chamber of com- In hindsight, it should be noted that Gillespie says. “I want to protect all of merce and Old Dominion University Gillespie could have spent more money our communities. There have been eight concluded that the state is “experiencing in the primary and that he was deter- MS-13-related murders here in northern relatively slow economic growth,” with mined not to drift too far to the right, con- Virginia since November.” the size of the labor force and labor- ceding a certain portion of primary voters “What’s northern Virginia?” Laura force participation falling. Slower-than- to his rival. The wonky Gillespie, a for- Ingraham scoffed in 2015, pointing to expected job growth in 2016 meant that mer chairman of the Republican National the common wisdom that it’s a problem state tax collections were $266 million Committee, would never have made a for Virginia Re publicans. “All immi- lower than expected, delaying promised particularly authentic bomb-thrower. grant populations have come and raises to state employees, teachers, col- Liberal groups allied with the Demo - moved into northern Virginia. . . . We lege faculty, and some sheriff’s deputies. cratic nominee for governor, Ralph have mass resettlement of Central And in each of the past three years, more Northam, are pursuing a familiar and cyn- America and Mexico in northern people moved out of Virginia than ical strategy in the closing weeks of the Virginia. The northern-Virginia problem moved in. If Gillespie defeats Northam, campaign. They insist there’s no signifi- for the GOP and for politics in Virginia skeptical Democratic presidential- cant difference between Gillespie and is obvious.” primary voters may ask, Just how great Trump, or even between Gillespie and the Except . . . Gillespie lost Fairfax was the McAuliffe era anyway, and why white nationalists who marched in County by only 54,000 votes in the 2014 couldn’t he make a strong case for a Charlottesville in August. Senate race, and McDonnell narrowly Democratic successor? In late September, Gillespie’s campaign won the county in 2009. It’s fair to won- The Virginia gubernatorial election unveiled a new ad focusing on the ruthless der whether “changing demographics” is will test whether Republicans can win international gang MS-13 and sanctuary a convenient excuse for subpar cam- this state with the McDonnell approach cities. After a series of television-news paigns and candidates. of focusing on kitchen-table issues and snippets about MS-13 crimes in the The race appears set to be a nail-biter. using amiable wonkiness to defuse accu- northern-Virginia area, a female narrator Three polls in late September showed a sations of extremism. If Gillespie loses, warns: “MS-13 is a menace. Yet Ralph tie or a razor-thin Northam lead, while a some Trump-friendly Republicans will Northam voted in favor of sanctuary fourth showed a ten-point lead for the no doubt conclude that northern Vir - cities that let dangerous illegal immi- Democrat. A Republican-leaning consul- ginia’s increasing ethnic diversity and grants back on the street—increasing the tant working to elect Gillespie says the social progressivism have made the state threat of MS-13. Ralph Northam’s poli- internal polls are in line with most of the unwinnable for Republicans and that, cies are dangerous.” public ones. with nothing to lose, GOP candidates Lizet Ocampo of the progressive advo- A Northam loss would deeply disap- ought to let their angry, populist freak cacy organization People for the Ameri - point Democrats; the much-touted flag fly. can Way responded by declaring, “Ed “Resistance” to President Trump didn’t But if Gillespie wins, it will show that Gillespie’s decision to smear all undocu- show up in special congressional elec- traditional pre-Trump Republicanism can mented people as murderers and rapists is tions in Kansas, Montana, or Georgia, still prevail in a purple state. And in some the clearest example yet that he’s copying and the Virginia elections were, until the future cycle, Gillespie will be able to sit Donald Trump’s hateful, bigoted play- controversy over the MS-13 commer- in the back seat of another car, telling book. Just like Donald Trump, he’s fan- cial, a low-key affair. The Washington some other future GOP gubernatorial ning the flames of hatred.” Post editorial board actually paused to candidate how to drive.

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GOP. In this period, the chamber has usually been narrowly divided, with an available at average of 225 GOP seats, just a little A Midterm more than the 218 needed for a majority. amazon.com Democrats nearly took the House in Kindle List Best Forecast 2000. They did gain control in 2006, and Republicans should not forget they successfully defended their majority Seller their umbrellas in 2008. It should come as no surprise, then, Officers and troops wanted BY JAY COST that most analysts are expecting a com- to overthrow our government petitive race next year. The Republican and make him king or EPUBLICANS in Congress are majority, standing at 241 to 194, is large military dictator... still focusing on their legisla- but hardly overwhelming. A net pickup R tive agenda, but soon enough, of 24 seats would hand the Democrats No man is immune to the attention will turn from gov- control of the chamber. Opposition par- seduction of absolute erning to campaigning. The 2018 mid - ties usually win seats in a midterm elec- power, not even the father term will be the first election since 2006 tion, and often they pick up more than in which the GOP must face voters after 24. Democrats won 26 seats in 1982 and of our country... having been in complete control of the 30 seats in 2006. Republicans won 54 On March 15, 1783, with government. It will be a challenge for seats in 1994 and 63 seats in 2010. It our Republic atstake, he the congressional GOP to win a vote of would hardly be earth-shattering for the confidence from the people. Democrats to win 24 seats next year. stood alone... On the Senate side, the GOP has a Still, Republicans take some structural nearly insuperable advantage. The seats advantages into the contest. Their biggest up next year were contested in 2012, edge is the distribution of their voters 2006, and 2000—all of which were across the nation. Democrats dominate good cycles for Democrats. Accord - the large cities, so their voters tend to be ingly, the handful of Republican seats concentrated in just a handful of urban that remain are quite solid, while districts. Additionally, the 1982 amend- Democrats must defend more than 20 ments to the Voting Rights Act have since seats. It is hard to imagine the Demo- been read to mandate majority-minority crats’ gaining three seats to take the districts, which has further inhibited the majority from Mitch McConnell. ability of Democrats to find voters across The real action will be in the House of multiple districts. And as a result of the Representatives, where the GOP faces a 2010 wave election, Republicans took genuine threat to its majority. control of many state legislatures in time For most of the last century, the House to redraw district lines following the has been a more or less static institution. decennial census. It is easy to overesti- Republicans took hold of the lower mate the effects of partisan gerrymander- chamber in 1918 amid public frustration ing, but on balance it has helped the GOP. with the Woodrow Wilson administra- As a consequence, the House has a tion and held it through the 1920s. That distinctly Republican tilt to it. Though all changed with the Great Depression, Hillary Clinton won the nationwide when Democrats took control of the gov- popular vote by two points in 2016, the ernment. Between 1932 and 1992, they median House district voted for would lose the House only twice, in 1946 Donald Trump by three points. Like - and 1952. Usually, the interesting ques- wise, Barack Obama won the nation- “Extensively and accurately tion was not whether the Democrats wide popular vote by nearly four points researched...John Ripin Miller’s would win but whether their majority in 2012, but the median House district novel makes George Washington would be large enough for the northern voted for Mitt Romney by about one come alive in one of our nation’s most liberals in the caucus to seize control point. What this means is that the battle exciting and decisive mements.” from the southern conservatives. for control of the House of Repre- Since 1994, the House has been much sentatives will mainly be fought in dis- William M. Ferraro, Managing Editor more competitive, thanks to the bolting tricts that supported Trump over Papers of George Washington, University of Virginia of conservative voters in the South to the Clinton. There are just 23 Republican- held districts that voted for Clinton in Mr. Cost is a contributing editor of The Weekly 2016, compared with twelve Democratic- available at Standard and the author of A Republic No held districts that voted for Trump. More: Big Government and the Rise of Surprisingly, the state with the most amazon.com American Political Corruption. pickup opportunities for Democrats is

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standing. But Trump is unique. He in - herited a growing economy and a nation basically at peace. With past presidents, this has usually translated into strong job-approval numbers, but not with Trump. He entered office with histori- cally low numbers, and his antics over the last several months may have further alienated voters. As it stands right now, Trump is a drag on the Republican ticket, but that need not remain the case. The president received generally favorable reviews for his response to the hurricanes in Florida and Texas, the public applauded his bipartisan negotiations with congres- sional Democrats, and overall his job approval has ticked up a few points in the last month. Moreover, the selection of General John Kelly as chief of staff has brought a measure of order to a pre- viously unruly West Wing staff. If Trump became acclimated to the task of gov- erning, his numbers would continue to stabilize, if not improve, to better reflect probably California—despite the fact Trump’s populist message. Carol Shea- the generally good conditions in the that the party already dominates the Porter represents New Hampshire’s first country. Unfortunately for the GOP, Golden State’s congressional delega- congressional district, based around Trump also created needless controversy tion. While Trump ran ahead of previous Manchester, one of the most competitive with his remarks on the rallies in Republican nominees in the Midwest, districts in the nation. Trump won it nar- Charlottesville and the protests in the he lagged badly in many parts of the rowly last year, after Romney and John NFL. He seems intent on remaining West—especially California. Indeed, McCain lost it. unpredictable and controversial. Clinton’s statewide vote share of 61 per- Ultimately, these factors probably From the congressional GOP’s per- cent is the best any Democrat has done cancel one another out, meaning that the spective, it would be good for Trump to there since 1936. Trump’s unpopularity race will turn on the public mood and the settle into the task of governing. Now is places several California Republicans state of the Union. Right now, those indi- the time when incumbents are making on the hot seat. Dana Rohrabacher, cators suggest a very tight contest their decisions about whether to seek Mimi Walters, Steve Knight, Darrell indeed. Political scientists have built reelection and potential challengers are Issa, and Ed Royce all represent wealthy econometric forecasts that estimate the eyeing a bid for the House. The party constituents in Southern California who aggregate House results based on broad leadership wants to minimize the num- were turned off by Trump. parameters, such as the generic party ber of Republican retirements, which Peter Roskam and Barbara Comstock, preferences of polling respondents and tend to make prime pickup opportunities who respectively represent portions of the state of the economy. One model— for Democrats, and is encouraging its the Chicago and Washington, D.C., sub- designed by Edward Tufte of Yale Uni - top-tier talent to challenge Democratic urbs, face a similar problem. Their afflu- versity and modified by Gary Jacobson incumbents. If the nation has more ent constituents did not care for Trump of the University of California, San confidence in Trump, vulnerable GOP and voted for Clinton. Diego—predicts House elections based incumbents will breathe easier about On the flip side, there are still a handful on presidential job approval and dispos- next year’s campaign, and GOP chal- of Democrats representing predominantly able income and currently finds the lengers will feel bolder about jumping white working-class constituencies that Democrats picking up seats in the range into the race. backed Trump last year. Cheri Bustos of 20 to 30 on net. An alternative metric— So far, GOP retirements have been represents Illinois’s 17th congressional designed by Alan Abramowitz of Emory kept to a relative minimum—just four district, which includes parts of Peoria University—uses the generic ballot to open seats are real pickup opportunities and Rockford. Obama won her district predict shifts in the partisan makeup of for Democrats. In Florida’s 27th con- comfortably in 2008 and 2012, but last the House. Right now, it finds a roughly gressional district, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen year it went to Trump. Iowa’s David similar result. is retiring after 15 terms in Congress. PORTLAND PRESS HERALD VIA GETTY IMAGES / Loebsack and Wisconsin’s Ron Kind A major factor in all of this will be Her heavily Latino Southern Florida are in a similar situation, representing President Trump. To a large extent, that district backed Obama and Clinton, districts in the upper Midwest whose is inevitable, for midterm elections suggesting it is a major midterm oppor- BRIANNA SOUKUP working-class residents were drawn to always hinge in part upon the president’s tunity for Democrats. Dave Reichert of

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Washington’s eighth congressional dis- combines very high GDP with an above- trict is also stepping down, after seven average disposable-income share of GDP. terms. His suburban-Seattle district The relationship between these alter- went for Clinton by three points last The Price Is native measures of material living condi- year. Fortunately for the GOP, state sen- tions, Actual Individual Consumption ator Dino Rossi has declared his inten- Right and Adjusted Household Disposable tion to run. He came just 129 votes short American health care costs about what Income, and national health expenditures of winning the governorship in 2004 and it should (NHE) is consistently much stronger was within five points of Patty Murray in than the relationship between GDP and the 2010 Senate election—impressive, BY PETER LAAKMANN NHE, and using these measures as the considering the Democratic tilt of the basis of comparison puts the U.S. quite state. The GOP also has to defend open comfortably within the normal range of seats in the Detroit and Philadelphia sub- TREMENDOUS amount of misin- variation, either on trend or slightly urbs, where Trump support has been rel- formation permeates the debate above. There is little need to look for atively soft. A over U.S. health care. Much of idiosyncrasies in the U.S. health system Still, the party is not out of the woods this misinformation has be - to explain high health spending, as the just yet. Retirement announcements tend come received wisdom, steered the spending is adequately explained by to come all at once, and there have been debates over health-care reform, and con- larger macroeconomic forces. rumors that many Republican incum- vinced many intelligent and otherwise This does not necessarily mean that bents are getting ready to hang up their reasonable people that we can save tril- high NHE is socially optimal or that we spurs. The more who decide to give up lions of dollars and millions of lives should disregard the merits of proposed politics, the more likely Democrats will annually if only we duplicate the health cost-containment strategies, tax restruc- be to take the House. policies of other developed countries. turing, and the like. Rather, it shows that While it is too soon to say which party Working from such misguided premises health-care finance is not a solved prob- will control the House, it is clear that the has the potential to be very costly. Here lem, and that our ability to lower costs majority will be quite narrow. If the are some counterpoints to dispel a few over the long run by copying the health GOP manages to hang on, it will proba- particularly pernicious myths. policies of other countries is much more bly be by a very slender margin, maybe Conventional wisdom attributes Amer- limited than proponents of such a reform even leaving it with fewer than 220 ica’s high spending on health to some would have you believe. seats. On the other hand, Democrats idiosyncratic features of the U.S. health- Moreover, the relative price of U.S. would really need to score an electoral care system. However, while it is true that health care (i.e., the average price of health blowout to win a comfortable majority, the U.S. spends much more on health than care after correction for domestic purchas- and whatever majority they cobbled the average developed country, it is also ing power in the rest of the economy) is not together would more probably be built true that health expenditures are strongly particularly high. The best available data, upon districts that have historically associated with GDP—and increase at a OECD Health Purchasing Power Parities voted Republican, putting pressure on markedly faster rate than GDP. The U.S. (PPP), suggest that the weighted average party moderates to buck their liberal lead- is an exceptionally rich country, so we price of health care in the U.S. is broadly ership. Meanwhile, the closely divided should expect it to spend an exceptional- consistent with what we would predict Senate will probably remain so. And ly large share of its income on health. for a country of its wealth. According to even if the Democrats do manage to take By applying elementary regression 2014 estimates, the price of health care both chambers of Congress, they will analysis to GDP data, many have argued in the U.S. was just 10 percent more than still have to contend with President that U.S. income levels still do not ade- the OECD average and very closely Trump’s veto pen. quately explain U.S. health expenditures. aligned with U.S. income compared with So, while the particulars of the 2018 This is correct as far as such rudimentary health-care prices in other countries. midterm are too hazy to predict, the analysis goes, but it is also misleading. These patterns were observed across broad outline is fairly clear. Gridlock GDP is a measure of domestic produc- multiple rounds of study, and study will continue to dominate Washington, tion, and it predicts health expenditures indices were carefully constructed to D.C., just as it has for most of the last only to the extent that it accurately reflects enable reasonably reliable apple-to-apple decade. Both parties have won electoral actual material living conditions. But the comparisons of countries (especially by victories since 2010 because voters relationship between these two economic making allowances for non-market trans- have vacillated between the left and the aggregates can vary quite substantially actions, such as surgeries performed in right. Neither side can claim to have a between countries, for many reasons. We government hospitals or by government majority of the people truly behind it, routinely find the U.S. much farther ahead employees, in which conventional mar- which is a prerequisite in our system for in comprehensive measures of household ket prices are not meaningfully avail- actual governance. In all likelihood, the consumption and disposable income than able). In short, reliable price estimates policy logjam of the last ten years will it is in plain old GDP. The U.S. stands apart show that overall U.S. health prices are continue well past the 2018 midterm, from other developed countries in that it not significantly higher than we would enduring so long as neither side is able expect from the economic data, and that to formulate a program that truly Mr. Laakmann is a software engineer and we spend much more than other countries appeals to the electorate. entrepreneur. He blogs at empiricalscrutiny.com. on health care because we consume much

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greater amounts of it (2.1 times the tent: The relative growth in expenditures very large geographic differences with- OECD mean in 2015). is overwhelmingly attributable to the con- in the U.S., particularly in parts of By contrast, the figures typically cited sumption of a much greater volume of Appalachia and the “Black Belt,” that go by critics to suggest that U.S. health-care health care. A variety of associated indi- a long way toward explaining the U.S. prices are obscenely high are unreliable cators, such as the growth of the health- shortfall. These are not closely associated and haphazardly selected. They often focus care work force, are quite consistent with with health-insurance status and other on labor-intensive categories, such as sur- this observation. (Between 1965 and indicators of health provision, but are gical procedures, which the health PPP 2011, the share of the civilian health sec- very closely associated with measured studies show to be much more sensitive to tor that the civilian work force employed health behaviors and lifestyle. income levels than are goods, and fail to grew from about 3.5 percent to 11 percent Four, at least two studies in the U.S. report prices for enough high-income of the non-farming civilian work force.) have found that expanding access to countries. Because of these many sources Additional data suggest that the U.S. health care has had no statistically signif- of error, most of their data cannot be relied private health-insurance system does not icant effects on objective, measurable upon to draw reasonable conclusions. significantly increase net health expen- outcomes. Five, assertions of inadequate U.S. physicians’ pay is not particular- ditures over expenditures made under access to health care among certain ly high compared with that of those in public alternatives. According to the fed- groups are apt to be much overstated, as other countries, nor is it particularly eral Centers for Medicare and Medicaid individual income does not predict influential as a driver of NHE. U.S. Studies, insurers’ net cost of health insur- markedly higher levels of health expendi- physician compensation accounts for ance, which is the difference between the ture (somewhat the opposite, in fact; con- less than 10 percent of NHE and has premiums they collect and the benefits trolling for age and self-reported health grown very slowly in the U.S. over the they pay out, has averaged around 6 per- status, it is estimated that lower-income past few decades, slower in relative cent of NHE since 2003. Some of this groups might consume a bit more health terms than in other OECD countries. In difference ends up as profit and execu- care on average) and even uninsured 2003–04, self-employed general practi- tive compensation (“bad” stuff in the eyes Americans consume around half of what tioners earned 3.4 times the average wage of some), but most of it goes toward vital their insured counterparts do. Six, interna- in the U.S., whereas their counterparts in expenditures such as contracting, claims tional data strongly suggest that returns on the United Kingdom, Can a da, Germany, administration, and fraud prevention. This NHE diminish rapidly with respect to life and the Netherlands earned at least 3.1 suggests that even if one regards profit, expectancy (and other closely related times the average wage in their own executive salaries, and the like as com- measures) and that most of the OECD has countries. If, as some economists argue, pletely worthless, the opportunity for cut- already passed some threshold beyond the wage ratio that U.S. physicians enjoy ting NHE by switching to an exclusively which the returns are close to zero. Based is mostly a result of monopoly powers public system is greatly exaggerated. on this, one would not predict a country (such as restrictions on the total number On this point, we can compare per- with U.S. NHE levels to achieve out- of licensed physicians and movement beneficiary expenditures in U.S. public comes significantly better than those of between practice areas) instead of returns and private health-insurance programs. the median OECD country. Indeed, incor- to skills, time and money invested in Both Medicaid and Medicare cost sub- porating known behavioral and lifestyle medical training, lifestyle sacrifices, and stantially more per beneficiary than pri- differences, we would expect it to be sub- so on, the U.S. is hardly unusual in this vate plans (44 percent and 119 percent stantially worse—and indeed, U.S. life regard, and the price-setting powers of more respectively). Admittedly, the pop- expectancy is a year or two below that of central governments have seemingly ulations they serve require more care most comparable OECD countries. done little to curb physicians’ pay. because they are older and sicker, but Suffice it to say that the weight of the Outside of physicians’ earnings, are public-plan expenditures are markedly evidence suggests that proponents of other health-care prices spiraling out of higher than the OECD averages we single-payer are wildly overpromising. control? Although it is undoubtedly true would purportedly achieve if we scaled This is not to suggest that the U.S. health that certain health-care prices have them out to the rest of the population. system is perfect—far from it—but increased faster than incomes, standard Finally, it is unlikely that the structure rather that a root-and-branch overhaul is estimates suggest that price increases of the U.S. health system explains unlikely to deliver the promised goods. explain somewhere between 0 and 22 much, if any, of the observed shortfall in As in all complex systems, there is room percent of the observed increase in health American health outcomes. There are for real improvement, but this is best spending between 1940 and 1990. Like - several reasons for this. One, cautious pursued carefully and incrementally in a wise, since 1990, growth in nominal GDP estimates suggest that medical care way that preserves the more innovation- per capita has exceeded the average explains less than 10 percent of the vari- friendly elements of the system while growth in the U.S. Bureau of Economic ance in health outcomes within high- rewarding valuable innovation. And in Analysis’s Personal Consumption Ex - income countries, and that factors such as health care, rewarding innovation may be pendi ture health-price index, one of the genetics, behaviors, lifestyle, and social the most important point of all, because most widely trusted domestic health-care- environment are more significant. Two, in the U.S., as in other highly developed price indices, which implies that rising relative to other highly developed coun- countries, technological advancement is prices explain none of the rapid growth in tries, the U.S. has high rates of obesity the main driver of health improvements NHE over this period. The evidence with- and diabetes, car accidents, homicides, and generates large spillover benefits for in and between countries is quite consis- drug use, and more. Three, there are some the rest of the world.

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Untaxing the

A misguidedRich Republican obsession

BY RAMESH PONNURU

VEN during this unusual presi- dency, some features of our E national politics have not changed at all. Republicans are preparing to cut taxes in basically the same fashion they would cut them under any president of their party. Democrats are resisting by using their standard lines, among which “It’s a tax cut for the rich!” has pride of place. The Republicans know their retorts by heart, too; they have 40 years of practice. For anyone disoriented by the political events of the last two years, it’s all very reassuring. Candidate Donald Trump gives a speech on taxes at Trump Tower, September 2015. Conservatives could stand to be a little less reflexive about these issues, though. The Democrats have a point that is worth are actually in that tax bracket. That’s true, reasonably proportionate way will, con- taking seriously. as well, of the 15 percent tax rate. It’s true servatives say, cut taxes more for rich peo- That point is not that Republican tax of all of the tax rates except for the very ple than for middle-class or poor people. policy is motivated by a slavish devotion highest one, the 39.6 percent tax rate. That’s just because rich people bear so to the interests of rich people. The supply- That’s the only tax rate that applies to the much of the tax burden. side economic theory that has underlain next dollar earned by everyone who pays When conservatives use numbers such Republican economic thinking for more it. Cutting it therefore offers more bang for as these, though, they skip over two con- than a generation offers an economic argu- the buck than cutting any other rate. siderations. The first is that high earners ment for seeking to bring down their taxes, That’s the economic case for cutting pay a large percentage of all tax dollars in and even for seeking that goal especially. taxes for rich people. There’s also a moral part because they make a large percentage The theory places great emphasis on the case. Most conservatives do not object in of all income. Looking at the percentage of way taxes reduce incentives to work, save, principle to a “progressive” tax code that each group’s income that goes to taxes is and invest. The highest tax rates—the takes a larger percentage from people who more informative. The second is that while ones that apply to the highest earners— have more income. Even the flat tax and federal taxes are progressive, state and have the biggest disincentivizing effect. the “fair tax” (a proposed national sales local taxes are regressive. The way our income taxes are struc- tax) have this feature, because they have Combine taxes at all levels of govern- tured provides a subtler reason for con- exemptions large enough to let people ment, and the lowest-earning fifth of centrating on the top rate they impose. If afford the necessities of life with untaxed households pays around 15 percent of its you cut the lowest tax rate—the 10 per- income. But how progressive the tax code income in taxes. The middle fifth pays cent rate that applies to the first $9,500 should be is a dividing line between Left around 23 percent. The top fifth pays 33 of a single person’s taxable income— and Right. percent. Within that top fifth, the top 1 per- you’re not just giving people in that tax When liberals say that “tax fairness” cent pays roughly 38 percent. bracket a very slightly stronger incentive requires raising taxes on the rich, and def- Our tax system is, overall, progressive. to work. You’re also cutting taxes for initely not cutting them, conservatives But while conservatives may reasonably everyone in the higher tax brackets, from wonder what’s so fair about a system in wish for a significantly smaller govern- the middle class to Peter Thiel, because which (the top) 1 percent of households ment that would allow these numbers to their first $9,500 will be taxed less too. pays more taxes to the federal government come down, the rates do not rise with a Nonetheless, their incentives to earn than (the bottom) 60 percent does. The top steepness that should shock the con- more will not change at all. The federal 0.1 percent pays more than the bottom 40 science. A household making $2 million a government will still be taxing the next percent, too. These numbers come from year, roughly the average for the top 1 per- GETTY IMAGES / dollar Thiel earns at the top tax rate. the Tax Policy Center, which is not a con- cent, pays 15 percent more of its income to Most of the revenue that the 10 per- servative group; and they include employ- the government than a household making cent tax rate raises for the federal gov- ees’ payroll taxes, not just income taxes. $65,000 a year, the average for the middle ANDREW BURTON ernment does not come from people who Any tax cut that reduces tax liabilities in a fifth. This disproportion is not the kind of

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injustice that a major political party should larger for every group if the Republican make it one of its main items of business to plans resulted in higher economic growth. correct. (Moreover, these percentages Which brings us back to the supply-side somewhat overstate the progressivity of case for tax cuts, and especially for tax Cut the the tax system. Arguably they should in - cuts on large incomes. clude employers’ payroll taxes, which are The problem with that case is that it Payroll Tax a hidden tax on employee wages.) assumes a strongly positive effect of tax It will help middle-class households How skewed to the rich are Republican cuts on economic growth that does not and boost growth tax proposals? Here, again, Left and Right appear to exist. Bill Clinton raised tax tend to use different measurements. If rates and the economy sprinted ahead. BY JAMES C. CAPRETTA you’re trying to make Republicans look George W. Bush cut them and the econo- especially plutocratic, the way to do it is to my limped. Barack Obama’s second term EPUBLICANS are assembling tax- ask how many dollars rich people will featured higher tax rates than his first one, reform plans aimed at pushing save as a percentage of a total tax cut. In and a better economy. This evidence does R economic growth above the 2016, House Republicans endorsed a plan not prove that tax cuts are harmful. It is subpar performance of recent that had as its main features replacing consistent with the possibility that tax cuts years. Since the deep recession associat- today’s income-tax rates with three rates have a mildly positive effect that other ed with the financial crash that ended in of 12, 25, and 33 percent; reducing the tax factors can defeat. It is not consistent with mid 2009, the U.S. economy has grown, rates on capital gains and dividends; elim- the idea that it makes an enormous differ- in real terms, at an average annual rate of inating the estate tax and the alternative ence whether the top tax rate is closer to just 2.2 percent, far below the 3.4 percent minimum tax; increasing the standard 30 or to 40 percent. average annual rate over the period of deduction; and cutting the corporate tax The supply-side argument itself implies 1983 to 2007. rate to 20 percent. The Tax Policy Center that cutting tax rates has diminishing Faster growth is the essential precon- found that the top 1 percent would get 99.6 returns. Reducing the top tax rate from 70 dition for addressing the country’s many percent of this tax cut in dollar terms. to 50 percent, as the initial Reagan tax cuts economic challenges. Without stronger The Tax Foundation, a conservative did, meant that making an additional pre- growth, workers will not see the wage group, highlights a more neutral measure tax dollar netted someone in the top brack- gains they want and expect, and the fed- of how a proposed tax policy affects dif- et 50 cents instead of 30. The incentive to eral government will never have enough ferent groups: the percentage by which it make that dollar was 67 percent higher. revenue to pay for the mounting entitle- changes their after-tax income. These fig- The House Republican plan, by cutting the ment obligations of an aging society. ures aren’t quite as eye-popping, but they top rate from 40 to 33 percent, would Republican leaders in Congress are still show a marked tilt toward high earn- increase the incentive by just 12 percent. committed to pushing tax legislation onto ers. The Tax Foundation finds that the Some changes to tax policy may do real President Trump’s desk. They aim to middle fifth of tax filers would see a 0.2 good for the economy. The mortgage- focus it, first and foremost, on boosting percent increase in their after-tax income interest deduction directs resources toward growth, but their effort could falter if the as a direct result of the House Republican building larger homes at the ex pense of public perceives it as mainly a giveaway plan. The top fifth would see a 1 percent other goods; scaling it back would raise to the rich. Many Democrats are sure to increase. And the top 1 percent would see national income. Cutting the corporate tax make that argument. a 5.3 percent increase in their (already rate and letting businesses write off the And there is a real risk that the accusa- very high) incomes. cost of investments the year they are tion could stick. To boost growth, Re - The numbers would be a little more made would promote investment and publicans want to cut the 35 percent equal if you made two adjustments. therefore growth. While economists corporate income-tax rate, which is well People tend to rise economically as they debate who pays the corporate tax, above the average corporate-tax rate in spend decades working. A tax cut for high changes to it are probably worth making other advanced economies. The GOP earners will therefore benefit more people even if rich people will reap a dispropor- also wants to move to a territorial system over a generation than it does at any point tionate share of the direct benefits. of corporate taxation to allow companies in time. Also, higher-earning households But the likely returns for the economy to bring overseas profits back to the U.S. are so in part because they tend to have from cutting the top income-tax rates are without paying punitive taxes. Further, more workers. So a higher proportion of modest. Neither the economic nor the many Republicans would like to see two-earner couples than of all households moral arguments for doing so are com- across-the-board tax-rate cuts for all indi- will benefit from a cut in the top tax rates. pelling. Why then are Republicans so viduals paying income taxes. But the difference between how well the devoted to this cause? The influence of Tax-reform plans with these provisions tax cut treats the $500,000-a-year and the large donors to political campaigns will inevitably confer large benefits on $50,000-a-year household is too large for could have something to do with it, as is upper-income households because high such issues to make a big difference. often alleged. But I suspect something earners pay the most income tax and also Republican tax plans really do provide a else is at work. Compound interest has own the most corporate stock. bigger payoff for the rich than for the mid- been said to be the most powerful force dle class or the poor. in the universe. Intellectual inertia must Mr. Capretta is a resident fellow at the American At least, a bigger direct payoff. The surely be ranked among the rivals for Enterprise Institute, where he holds the Milton growth in after-tax incomes would be that title. Friedman Chair.

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Republicans can partially blunt the trust funds and without relying on another cut. Cut the tax, and the supply of labor inevitable attacks on their emerging transfer from the Treasury. will increase. plans by embracing a tax cut that would Tax reform should be about cutting Some skeptics argue that a cut in the mainly benefit the middle class—namely, tax rates and broadening the tax base tax rate could, at least in theory, reduce a cut in the payroll tax. Cutting payroll by closing loopholes and limiting tax the supply of labor by boosting the taxes presents the rare opportunity to tar- breaks. To help pay for a cut in the income of workers who could then sub- get pro-growth tax relief on households payroll-tax rate, the government could stitute more time off for time at work. with modest incomes. narrow several existing tax breaks that But there is substantial evidence from Some in the GOP are wary of cutting now reduce the amount of payroll-tax many countries that increases in pay- payroll taxes because the revenue from revenue collected. roll taxes generally have the opposite them helps pay for Social Security and For starters, the current exclusion of effect: High tax rates reduce work Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) bene- employer-paid health-insurance premi- effort by reducing the economic value fits and both programs are projected to ums from taxation will reduce payroll of time spent working relative to that of run short of funds. The current tax rate taxes by $1.8 trillion over the period of time spent not working. for Social Security is 12.4 percent of 2017 to 2026. Capping the amount that is Some economists also argue that wages, split evenly between workers and tax-free so that the least expensive 75 because Social Security and Medicare their employers, up to a maximum percent of employer-provided plans fall benefits are partly based on what an income of $127,200 in 2017. Social below the cap would increase payroll- individual earns while working, the Security has an unfunded liability of tax revenue by about $72 billion over economic value of a payroll-tax cut is $12.5 trillion over the next 75 years. ten years. In addition, company pay- lessened because workers equate pay- Workers and employers also pay a com- ments for disability insurance and other ing the tax with making contributions bined 2.9 percent tax for Medicare, and income-replacement programs are now toward their retirement. But the benefits there is no limit on the amount of wages also excluded from the taxable compen- owed to a worker under Social Security subject to the tax. High earners— sation of workers. Limiting that tax are based on the worker’s earnings each individuals who earn above $200,000 break could provide at least another $100 quarter, not the amount of taxes paid on and couples who earn above $250,000— billion in payroll-tax revenue over ten those wages. Consequently, a cut in the pay an additional Medicare tax of 0.9 years. In a large tax-reform package, payroll-tax rate would in no way lessen percent. The Medicare HI trust fund has there are likely to be additional opportu- future Social Security benefits. Further, an unfunded liability of $3.3 trillion over nities to increase payroll-tax collections the opaqueness and complexity of the the next 75 years. by broadening the tax base. formula for Social Security benefits The payroll tax is a much heavier bur- Congress could limit the benefits of a makes it nearly impossible for most den for the middle class than income payroll-tax cut to households with in - workers to make a sensible connection taxes. According to the Tax Policy comes below a certain threshold, such as between what they earn and what they Center, 62 percent of all taxpaying $75,000 per year. These households will get in retirement. (There often is households paid more in payroll taxes would see their total payroll-tax rate very little connection.) Medicare bene- than income taxes in 2016; and 67 per- drop from 7.65 percent of their wages fits are in no way tied to the amount of cent of households with annual incomes (the employee share for Social Security taxes paid or even to overall earnings. below $100,000 paid more in payroll and Medicare) to perhaps 5.65 or 6.15 Instead, workers must meet a minimum taxes. The average effective payroll-tax percent. Workers with wages above that threshold of wages over a ten-year peri- rate for households in the middle quintile threshold would see the benefits of the od to become eligible for coverage at of the income distribution was 8 percent tax cut phased out as their incomes in - age 65. in 2016, well above the average effective creased. The tax cut could also be time- If anything, a cut in the payroll-tax rate of 3.5 percent for income taxes for limited in the initial legislation to fit rate is likely to increase benefits owed the same households. within available offsetting revenue in - under Social Security by encouraging an In 2011 and 2012, President Obama creases and then extended as more off- increase in the supply of labor, which supported and Congress enacted a reduc- sets were identified. increases earnings and hence the amount tion of two percentage points in the A cut in the payroll-tax rate would be owed to workers under Social Security’s employee portion of the Social Security good for workers. A two-percentage- benefit formula. payroll tax, reducing revenue by about point reduction in total tax would The federal income tax is already $100 billion in 2011 and slightly more in increase the after-tax income of a house- progressive; during successive rounds 2012. The law transferred an identical hold with $50,000 in earned income by of tax changes, the income-tax burden amount from the general fund of the $1,000 annually. on low- and moderate-wage households Treasury to the Social Security trust funds Cutting payroll taxes would also boost has been steadily reduced. But, in rela- to prevent the latter’s depletion. economic growth. The payroll tax is, tive terms, these workers still pay hefty Congress could enact another cut in after all, a tax on work. Cutting it would payroll taxes. the payroll-tax rate of 1.5 to 2 percentage encourage more people to join the labor Cutting that tax is the best way to points (perhaps splitting the reduction force; it would also motivate those who deliver real tax relief to the families that between the Social Security and Medi - are already working to increase the num- need it most, in a manner that will also care portions of the tax) without deplet- ber of hours they work. This would be provide a much-needed boost to eco- ing either Social Security or Medicare the “supply-side” effect of a payroll-tax nomic growth.

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and more defensive of the Stalin era, and on Ved’ma, which means “Witch.” of the Soviet era at large. Monuments to Dmitriev gave the dog that name because Stalin are reappearing. Putin himself he found her on Friday the 13th. The told an interviewer—Oliver Stone, the Arriving in a village, he would American filmmaker—“Stalin was a approach the grandmothers, the old Grave Hunter, product of his time. You can demonize ladies. He did not bring up his subject him all you want, or, on the other hand, directly. Instead, he would say, “Where Hunted talk about his contributions to victory are people afraid to go around here? Russia’s Yuri Dmitriev on trial over Nazism. But the excessive demo- Where are the forbidden places, the nization of Stalin is just one way to attack haunted places?” They would tell him. BY JAY NORDLINGER the Soviet Union and Russia.” And this led to graves. A blogger, Vladimir Luzgin, said that Dmitriev played a major role in dis- T an Oslo Freedom Forum in the Soviet Union invaded Poland in covering the site known as Sandarmokh, September, Vladimir Kara- 1939—a basic historical fact. He was outside the town of Medvezhyegorsk A Murza made a point. He is the prosecuted for saying so. He got away (Karelia). At Sandarmokh, more than Russian democracy leader, with a fine of 200,000 rubles (about 9,000 people were buried. They were mur- twice poisoned, twice surviving. When $3,500). He was lucky: He could have dered in 1937 and 1938. Some 1,100 of the the Russian government wants to lock up been sent to prison. Luzgin was represent- 9,000 came from the Solovki prison camp, its critics, he said, it usually takes care to ed by a lawyer from Memorial. which Alexander Solzhenitsyn would trump up charges. You don’t go to prison In November 2016, Memorial did dub “the mother of the Gulag.” Among for opposing Putin. Well, you do, but the something upsetting—upsetting to the the 9,000 were some 60 nationalities. government’s charge may be embezzle- Kremlin: It released a list of 39,950 Let’s have a few names, shall we? ment, terrorism, or murder. NKVD agents. (Those were the initials Father Peter Weigel, a Volga German For confirmation, we could ask such of the secret police from 1934 to 1946.) priest. Nikita Remnev, a carpenter. Prince political prisoners as Oleg Sentsov, The list was available on the Internet. Yasse Andronikov, a military officer, Alexei Pichugin, and Oleg Navalny. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t. In Karelia, actor, and theater director. Camilla Probably the dirtiest card in the Yuri Dmitriev was getting anonymous Krushelnitskaya, an organizer of the Catho- Kremlin’s hand is child pornography, or phone calls. Did he have further informa- lic underground. any other kind of child abuse. Everyone tion on NKVD agents? Would he or The name Yuri Dmitriev, by the way, recoils from it, everyone is repulsed by it. Memorial release more? is revered by the families of the dead— The person accused of such a crime is Shortly after, he was arrested. the discovered. stained forever. The Kremlin played this Dmitriev was born in 1956 and spent Every year at Sandarmokh, there is a card in Soviet days, and it is playing it his first years as an orphan. Eventually, Day of Remembrance. It is August 5 (the now. The latest victim is Yuri Dmitriev. he was adopted by an army officer and day of the site’s discovery). For years, His case, said Maria Eismont, a Russian his wife. One day, he and some other Russian officialdom supported this day, journalist, is “perhaps the most important kids were playing soccer. They were and participated in it. Gradually, they fell thing happening in Russia right now.” kicking around a skull they had away, as the government adopted a differ- Dmitriev is a legendary researcher in found—a human skull. Later, Dmitriev ent tone. In the months before his arrest, Karelia, the region in northwest Russia. would wonder about these skulls. He Dmitriev felt that they would come for He is legendary for grave-hunting. He would wonder obsessively. him. He sensed that he was being moni- finds mass graves of the Stalin era; he He has devoted his life to uncovering tored. When he related this to Katia, she identifies the victims therein; and he hon- graves and finding out all he can about the said, “Oh, Dad, stop being James Bond!” ors them. He has long been associated people buried in them. His life has been On December 10, 2016, they called with a group called “Memorial.” one great act of remembrance. He has him in for questioning. After several Memorial was founded at the insti- compiled Books of Remembrance, as hours, he was allowed to go back home. gation of Andrei Sakharov, the great they are known. His daughter Katia told He found that the place had been ran- physicist and dissident. Its purpose is an interviewer, Anna Yarovaya, “I re - sacked and that someone had been on his to promote the truth about the past, and member that Dad was constantly going on computer. Three days later, they indeed to promote democracy in the present. different digs. He was constantly study- arrested him. The charge: producing and In recent years, the Putin regime has ing skulls, bringing them home.” distributing child pornography. harassed and threatened Memorial. Last Dmitriev is an unusual man, to say the With his first wife, Dmitriev had two year, the regime labeled Memorial a “for- least. He is cranky, stubborn, and right- kids, Katia and Yegor. With his second, he eign agent.” This is a damning charge in eous. He grew his hair long and grew a adopted an orphan, which was important Russian society. The government wants long beard to go with it. His friends start- to him: He himself had been an orphan, people to believe that its critics are tools ed to call him “Gandalf,” after the wizard adopted. The child’s name was Natasha of foreign interests, enemies abroad. in The Lord of the Rings. Picture Dmitriev and she was three years old. She was sick- Obviously, Putin’s Kremlin does not going off on a dig in his threadbare ly, stunted, all skin and bones. Her head like Memorial’s promotion of democracy. jalopy (a Niva). He is smoking Belomor was full of lice. But why does it object to the truth about cigarettes (nasty). With him is his faith- One day at nursery school, those in the past? The Kremlin is becoming more ful German shepherd, Veda, a variation charge saw what they thought were bruises

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Yuri Dmitriev at work in 2006

on Natasha’s body. They washed off, The trial began on June 1. It is closed to Karelian government erected a monu- however. The marks were residue of a the public and the press. A verdict has ment to Yuri Andropov, the KGB chief treatment that the Dmitrievs had been been expected for weeks now. None has who rose to premier of the USSR. Just this applying to their daughter’s skin. been forthcoming—but human-rights summer, state television aired a piece say- The incident spooked Dmitriev, and activists are not hopeful. “When they ing that the victims at Sandarmokh were he thought that he should keep a record want to convict you, they convict you,” is not victims of the Soviet government at for social services. So he started pho- the sentiment. all; rather, they were Soviet POWs, mur- tographing Natasha, nude, at regular None of Dmitriev’s friends and col- dered by the Finns. intervals. Front, back, left, and right. He leagues believes that he did anything “It is worth noting,” this program wanted to chart her progress. He did immoral or illegal. He may be eccentric, informed the public, “that the ‘discover- this until she was nine. (She was eleven they say—a righteous eccentric—but he er’ of Sandarmokh, Yuri A. Dmitriev, is at the time of her father’s arrest.) Dmitriev is no perv, and he has been a wonderful now on trial for sexual crimes against his kept the photos on his computer in father. Yet to explain what he did is underage daughter. That is the kind of folders marked “Health Diary.” One awkward. And even the suspicion of person he is, this harmless, ‘angelic’ folder for each year. All his life, pedophilia is powerfully damaging, as investigator who has written about the Dmitriev had been a meticulous, com- the Russian government well knows. ‘horrors’ of Stalinist repression and, sup- pulsive record-keeper. The purpose of Dmitriev’s prosecu- posedly, revealed the significance of that On the basis of these photos, the gov- tion, say his supporters, is to discredit ‘bloody’ regime.” ernment charged him as they did. In the accused’s work and to scare off oth- For nearly 50 years, the Kremlin lied January, a month after his arrest, state ers from the same work. Katia has said, about the Katyn massacre. Apparently, television ran a segment headlined “What “My father is paying a big price for they are up to their old tricks. Does Memorial Have to Hide?” They what he revealed.” At the same time, he From his prison cell, Dmitriev sent a showed some of the pictures, obviously has gained admirers. Here is Alexander letter to Anna Yarovaya. “I’m not afraid of fed to them by the prosecution. Gelman, a famed octogenarian writer: the future,” he wrote. “The worst thing In due course, the government dropped “This trial has helped us recognize a that could happen has already come to the first charge—the production and dis- remarkable man. It is a barbaric way of pass: Natasha has been taken away from tribution of child porn—which was too discovering good people, but in Russian us.” Dmitriev is a strong believer, and he ridiculous to sustain. They have instead society it has proved very effective. In said that his fate is in God’s hands. charged Dmitriev with committing inde- this sense, the trial has done some- In one of his Books of Remembrance, cent acts (taking the pictures) and pos- thing worthwhile.” he has a foreword, with some pithy lines: sessing “the main elements” of a firearm Back in the 2000s, Dmitriev grumbled, “The moral of the story is brief: Re - (a broken-down old rifle found in “We don’t know the past, and we don’t member! As is my advice: Take care of Dmitriev’s home). want to know.” This was when the one another.”

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Bernie’s Bad Medicine The folly of Medicare-for-all

BY CHRIS POPE

N September 13, Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) year phase-in, he would prohibit individuals from receiving unveiled “Medicare for all”—an entitlement to com- competing coverage from private insurers and eliminate every O prehensive medical care for every resident of the sort of cost-control mechanism, such as provider networks, claims United States, free at the point of use, to be adminis- reviews, and cost-sharing—with the sole exception of $200 out- tered and funded entirely by the federal government. The senator of-pocket costs to discourage the use of branded drugs. Sanders admits that his proposal to expand benefits, eliminate cost- would expand the benefit package to cover dental and vision care sharing, and cover medical expenses currently paid for by private and expand immigrants’ eligibility for public assistance, eliminat- insurance would require an enormous increase in federal taxes. ing the five-year residence requirement currently associated with But realistic budget constraints mean that it is also likely to federal welfare and health-care benefits and extending coverage reduce access to essential care. As leading Democrats seek a to “every individual who is a resident of the United States.” return to power, they risk being stuck with a 2020 presidential The cost of such a proposal would be phenomenal. It would nominee committed to a policy that has long distinguished itself make federal taxpayers liable for expenses currently borne by by its unpopularity. employers, states, and individuals and would increase the total In one respect, Sanders’s proposal was hardly news. The consumption of health-care services. As sess ing the version Vermont liberal has introduced similar legislation in every proposed by Sanders during his presidential campaign (which Congress since his arrival in the Senate in 2007, never succeed- included an additional $212 billion long-term-care entitle- ing in getting it out of committee and usually failing to attract ment), the Urban Institute estimated that it would increase total any co-sponsors. But after Sanders won 43 percent of the vote in federal spending by $2.5 trillion annually—requiring a tax the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, 16 Sen ate Democrats increase equivalent to 70 percent of the total federal revenue (many with an eye on the 2020 presidential nomination) projected for 2017. embraced the latest version of the proposal. Although the draft legislation is 94 pages long, it presumes GETTY IMAGES / Sanders is proposing not simply to expand eligibility for that no change whatsoever would be required to Medicare’s AFP / Medicare coverage but to transform that program. After a four- hospital- or physician-payment systems other than those already authorized under current law. It gives the secretary of health and JIM WATSON Mr. Pope is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. human services the authority to establish a national health

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budget but provides no guidance as to which services would fund the consumption of health-care services, the more it must need to be cut, for whom, and how. These difficult trade-offs are employ bureaucratic methods. the essence of health-care policymaking, and the Sanders bill The absence of cost-sharing is very expensive. When patients has nothing to say about them at all. bear no expense for visiting the doctor, physician time gets over- This unwillingness to admit trade-offs is not an oversight but whelmed by trivial matters. When individuals have no financial the essence of single-payer’s appeal. Setting out the case for his incentive to see a nurse at an urgent-care facility rather than go to bill, Sanders argued: “In 2015, the United States spent almost a hospital’s emergency room, enormous costs can be incurred for $10,000 per person for health care; the Canadians, Germans, the sake of minor conveniences. French, and British spent less than half of that, while guaranteeing Yet Sanders claims that reducing administrative expenses health care to everyone. Further, these countries have higher life- will actually pay for much of the coverage expansions and expectancy rates and lower infant-mortality rates than we do.” reductions in cost-sharing of his Medicare-for-all proposal. The Since government spending already accounts for more than half senator has argued that “layers of bureaucracy associated with of U.S. health-care costs, this suggests that if the dollar amount of the administration of hundreds of individual and complicated spending is the most important measure, we could achieve out- insurance plans is stunningly wasteful, costing us hundreds of comes similar to those of these other nations by reforming the billions of dollars a year.” portion of health-care spending already controlled by the gov- It is indeed complicated for insurers to make sure that health- ernment. But not even Sanders thinks that would be enough. care services are purchased efficiently, through network arrange- Single-payer advocates rely so frequently on this framing of the ments and utilization reviews, but it is undoubtedly cheaper than issue because a broader assessment of relevant data shows their paying every claim that might be submitted by providers. The lat- claims to be greatly misleading. ter approach led Medicare to im properly pay $41.1 billion in The main reason we spend much more on health care now 2016—accounting for 11 percent of the program’s total cost, or than we did, say, 50 years ago is that vastly more can be done $1,412 per beneficiary. now to treat people who are ill. As countries get wealthier, they Some analysts believe that Medicare is able to get the same hos- are able to afford more such health-care services. Ac cording to pital services at a substantial discount from the rates charged to the World Bank, per capita health-care spending in the three private insurers. But that’s because providers are often more reluc- wealthiest European countries—Norway ($9,522), Switzerland tant to accept private insurance than to accept Medicare. The rea- ($9,674), and Luxembourg ($8,137)—is similar to that in the son is that tax exemptions, subsidies, and drug discounts worth United States ($9,403). $73 billion per year to hospitals are tied to participation in public Higher rates of disease also cause worse health-care out- health-care programs. These indirect payments mean that the real comes while increasing the need for health-care spending. cost of hospital care provided to Medicare beneficiaries is much The United States suffers from higher levels of heart disease greater than what shows up on the program’s accounts and does (21.8 percent) than Europe (11.4 percent), as well as diabetes not represent any sort of efficiency gain that could be enjoyed by (16.4 percent vs. 10.9 percent), cancer (12.2 percent vs. 5.4 enrolling more individuals in the program. percent), and stroke (5.3 percent vs. 3.5 percent). This owes In its early years, Medicare reimbursed hospitals for whatever much to higher rates of obesity (33.1 percent vs. 17.1 percent). costs they claimed were necessary to treat patients. This encour- It also has higher rates of arthritis (53.8 percent vs. 21.3 percent) aged the expansion of facilities designed around costly high-tech and chronic lung disease (9.7 percent vs. 5.4 percent). Health- care delivery, such that Amy Finkelstein of MIT has estimated that care spending can alleviate these conditions but will never the introduction of Medicare was responsible for a 37 percent give people better health than those who never were sick in the increase in the real cost of hospital care between 1965 and 1970 first place. alone. Although prices are now set by regulations, past cost A similar relationship is visible at the state level. Ac cord ing to increases have become embedded in what is a de facto price floor. the Kaiser Family Foundation, average per capi ta health-care Federal law prohibits providers from selling services to the spending in the U.S. was $8,000 per person in 2014. Health-care Medicare program at prices higher than their “usual charges” to spending was $11,944 per resident of the District of Columbia and privately funded patients, so Medicare payments serve to inhibit only $5,982 per resident of Utah. Yet life expectancy at birth is price competition for those covered by other payers. Medicare 76.5 in D.C. and 80.2 in Utah, while infant mortality was 0.67 per- also pays more for services performed by hospitals’ outpatient cent in D.C. and 0.52 percent in Utah. Although these metrics are facilities than for the identical services performed by independent beloved by single-payer advocates, they never draw the obvious clinics (three times the amount, in the case of chemotherapy)— inference that D.C. should emulate Utah’s health-care system. fueling consolidation that gives large hospitals market power to impose high fees on private payers. Medicare has traditionally paid physicians according to the vol- ANDERS recently argued that “our idea is to do what every ume of services provided rather than in return for improving other major country on earth is doing,” but this claim is patient outcomes. It pays for physicians to do tasks that nurses are similarly fictitious. In fact, there is not a single country in capable of doing, reimburses for every diagnostic test that is pro- theS world that offers comprehensive coverage with an unlimited vided, and funds every consultation with a specialist regardless of choice of providers, fully paid for by taxpayers, without insurer necessity. It often takes years to correct well-documented over- gatekeeping, service rationing, or out-of-pocket payments. In real- payments for services—and then largely as a result of the demon- ity, there is a direct trade-off between ease of access to providers stration of lower payments by private payers. and the cost borne by individuals in out-of-pocket expenses. The A single-payer system is necessarily a politicized system, and less a health-care system relies upon cost-sharing to constrain or one with little flexibility to improve payment arrangements. When

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prices for tens of thousands of medical procedures are set by a health by themselves, others will be discouraged from seeking government agency, the individual prices are monitored closely treatment, and a large proportion of the most expensive cases will only by those who stand to gain from them (as opposed to con- die before any money is due to be spent on them. sumers, who are affected by many different prices). Each medical Through Medicaid, the United States currently provides free specialty has its own lobbying group with an intense focus on access to a range of medical services more extensive than that ensuring favorable reimbursement rates. Single-payer, which enjoyed by the poor in almost any other nation. In deed, it is pre- Sanders sees as the potential triumph of a populist movement, cisely because this assistance has traditionally been limited to the would in reality serve to further empower well-funded special most deserving cases that it can be so generous. This means that interests capable of influencing technocrats. Sanders’s proposal would do little to increase spending on those Sanders claims that “as the only major country not to negotiate who are currently enrolled in Medicaid. drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry, we spend tens of bil- Rather, the essence of what he is advocating is an enormous lions more than we should.” In 2013, 84 percent of prescriptions increase of entitlement spending and restriction of access to care dispensed under the privately managed Medi care Part D were for those who are already well insured. The exact cost of the pro- generic drugs—compared with the OECD average of 41 percent. posal would depend on the extent of rationing, but Sanders’s sug- Their prices fell by 59 percent from 2010 to 2015, and the United gestion that a 7.5 percent payroll tax might be sufficient is likely States enjoys some of the lowest generic-drug prices among to be a substantial underestimate. developed countries. It is only for branded pharmaceuticals that Many Americans receive health insurance through their the United States pays more, and Sanders’s proposal would save employers and have been little affected by the upheaval the money only by capping the revenue that innovative drugs can Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) inflicted on the individual generate during their temporary period of patent coverage. Given market. According to Gallup, 65 percent of Americans are satis- that we owe our enormous progress in treating heart disease to fied with how the health-care system works for them. For most, drug development, and that the prospect of similar advances for single-payer represents an enormous amount of pain for very lit- cancer and Alzheimer’s requires billions of dollars of investment, tle benefit. such caps would come at the cost of the future. Democrats recently excoriated Republicans for proposing per capita caps to slow the growth of federal assistance to Medicaid. Yet the national health budget proposed by San ders would go a lot N the op-ed launching his bill, Sanders endorsed Canada’s farther, imposing much tighter caps on coverage currently health-care system, declaring that it had “guaranteed health financed by the government, employers, and insurers, while pre- care” to “every man, woman and child” and “not only venting individuals from purchasing more of it themselves. Iimproved the lives of the Canadian people” but also “saved fami- Although voters are sometimes attracted by the promises that lies and businesses an immense amount of money.” single-payer advocates advertise, they tend to react with horror Canadians spend less on health care than Americans mostly when they learn the details. In 1994, a ballot initiative was orga- because they are not allowed to use as much—not because they nized to establish a single-payer system in Cali for nia. The insur- are getting a better deal. In 2010 the average income of family ance industry had planned a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz physicians (net of practice expenses) was $159,000 in the United to inform voters of the costs of the proposal, but they barely States and US$156,000 in Ontario, while that of cardiologists was needed to dip into the war chest they had set aside, as voters $325,000 in the United States and US$283,000 in Ontario. rejected the proposal by a margin of 73 to 27 percent. John Canada rations the time available for surgeons to use operating McDonough, one of the Democratic congressional staff ers who rooms, limits the ability of doctors to order costly services, and later crafted the Affordable Care Act, recounted that “telephone- restricts access to specialists. While the United States has 0.55 poll takers had gauged support for the single-payer plan by read- specialist surgeons per 1,000 residents, Canada has only 0.35. The ing the proponents’ own description to prospective voters and upshot is that Ca na di ans face average waiting times of ten weeks found that support dropped precipitously with the addition of for an initial consultation with a gynecologist, 38 weeks for joint each successive sentence.” sur gery, and 47 weeks for neurosurgery—and in each case only Things have not changed much since, even after Sanders’s cam- after referral from a general practitioner. paign for the presidency. In November 2016, Colorado voters The economist John Goodman has rightly observed that, by rejected a single-payer ballot initiative by a margin of 80 to 20 per- allocating the bulk of medical resources according to political pri- cent, while a similar effort in Washington State did not even orities (such as improving life-expectancy statistics) instead of in secure the signatures needed for consideration. response to consumer preferences, health-care-rationing systems With single-payer proposals remaining toxic among voters tend to share certain systematic skews. Since many citizens are even in deep-blue states, Democratic leaders have become con- relatively healthy, the services that they use heavily (such as pri- cerned that Sanders is pushing a wedge issue that puts members mary care) tend to be highly subsidized in such systems. By con- of his own party in a painful position. The drive to make single- trast, the elderly and those with serious illnesses, who in any case payer a litmus test for the presidential primary has even upset for- have little time left to live, are rare ly thought to merit expensive mer single-payer supporters such as Paul Krugman, who fear it will treatments. Procedures that do not save lives, such as cataract or take energy and attention away from other, more viable initiatives. hip-replacement surgeries, are made hard to access. Political pres- Sanders’s proposal is far less likely to blaze a trail for left- sures are always focused on meeting immediate needs, and ward reform than it is to force every sector of the health-care investment in developing new therapies is frowned upon for industry into the arms of Republicans, while tarring every potentially inflating costs. Waiting lists are generally seen as the Democrat running for office as a potential advocate of wide - single-payer budgeter’s friend, as some patients will return to spread rationing and astronomic tax increases.

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East Coast pied-à-terre for the family,” the Washington Post daintily reported, “allowing him to avoid hotel bills.” As ‘We Are as though Jeff Bezos, net worth $81 billion, a man who for the sake of convenience just bought the estate next to his estate in Beverly Hills—where he does not live, his main home being in Gods and the suburbs of Seattle—would worry about paying for a couple of rooms at the Holiday Inn. If Donald Trump had Jeff Bezos’s money, he’d die of priapism. Everybody hates Amazon—except its customers: Its sales Might as Well have more than doubled just since 2012, and its gross income has more than trebled during the same period. With the com- pany being oriented toward long-term expansion rather than Get Good at It’ near-term profit, Amazon’s net income is famously low, and it was losing money on paper as late as 2014; in 2016 its net On the tech monopolies income was $2.4 billion. But the shareholders aren’t com- plaining: Shares that were trading for around $250 in 2013 are approaching $1,000 today. Depending on what the market is BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON doing at any given closing bell, Jeff Bezos is either the world’s wealthiest man or near the top of the list. Millions of consumers are delighted by what Amazon does and how it does it—same- VERYBODY hates Amazon. It’s kind of weird. day delivery! Alexa! video streaming!—and are looking for- Donald Trump, as a candidate, threatened to bring ward to further innovations. E antitrust actions against Amazon and accused the There are a few holdouts: New York City’s Sandinista mayor, Internet retailer of dodging taxes, and as president Bill de Blasio, a Luddite and an anti-capitalist, has never used Trump has taken a special interest in the company’s CEO, Jeff the site. “I believe in bricks and mortar,” he told the New York Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, which offends Daily News. “I personally just like the experience of going into Trump by reporting on his antics from time to time. “Believe the store, choosing something myself, having the physical me, if I become president, oh, do they have problems,” he opportunity to see what the thing looks like.” said. “They are going to have such problems.” Farhad Manjoo, writing in the New York Times, said Amazon’s behav- ior during its dispute with book publisher Hachette “is con- firming its critics’ worst fears and it is an ugly spectacle to behold.” Tony Schwartz blasted Bezos for having an overly aggressive management style marked by periodic angry out- bursts. (Tony Schwartz is the man who actually wrote Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal.) Paul Krugman insists Amazon “has too much power, and it uses that power in ways that hurt America.” Krugman also suggested that Amazon was scheming to help Republicans’ electoral chances. The company has been the target of boycotts since the 1990s, and it has been criticized for its handling of taxes, for selling and not selling certain items, and for—incredibly enough—not making enough of a profit. Junie Hoang, an actress you’ve never heard of (Hood Rats 2: Hoodrat Warriors), once sued the company for revealing her age on IMDb, which Amazon owns. Whole Foods shoppers, who tend to be as crunchy in their political preferences as in their produce preferences, have lamented Amazon’s acquisition of the high-end grocery chain, perhaps unaware that Bezos’s politics are well to the left of those of Whole Foods’s liber- tarian founder, John Mackey. Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers pronounced himself “disgusted by Amazon’s cow- ardice and servility” for kicking WikiLeaks off of its Web- hosting service. There was some eye-rolling in the nation’s capital when Bezos acquired two large Kalorama properties—a 27,000- BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES / square-foot museum complex, in fact—which he is convert- ing into what will be Washington’s largest private residence, just around the corner from the Obamas and the Kushners and

PATRICK FALLON Jeff Bezos surrounded by embassies. “The home is expected to be an

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De Blasio is at the moment working very diligently to con- dozen businesses almost entirely unrelated to search, its core vince Amazon to choose New York City as the site of its business. What the heck else is Google going to do with all that new headquarters. money? Of course men such as Jeff Bezos will acquire high- prestige/low-return businesses such as the Washington Post— owning a newspaper (if you can afford it!) is a lot more fun T isn’t just Amazon that brings out the fear and loathing. than playing golf or collecting old sports cars. The quadrumvirate of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and No doubt Bezos dreams of ever larger and more shockingly Apple—GAFA, as they are collectively known—is a ambitious things for Amazon, but does anybody really think he sourceI of broad anxiety felt from the anti-capitalist Left, which is scheming to make himself, personally, another $1 billion or fears that the corporations that dominate commerce will come another $5 billion or another $10 billion? The quality-of-life to dominate culture and politics, to the libertarian Right, which returns on net worth exceeding the first couple of billion has concerns about privacy and fears that freedom of expres- diminish rapidly. (“The first million is the hardest,” the rapper sion may be threatened by progressive-leaning corporate bosses Drake once boasted on Twitter, only to be answered by oilman who seek to smother conservative content and repress conser- T. Boone Pickens: “The first billion is a helluva lot harder.” vative views on social-media platforms. Franklin Foer, the for- That’s why Twitter exists.) Like Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs was mer editor of The New Republic, has just published an known as demanding, competitive, and prone to angry out- anti-GAFA jeremiad titled “World without Mind: The bursts, but the genuine pleasure—the thrill—he enjoyed from Existential Threat of Big Tech.” midwifing cool stuff into existence was impossible to miss. Existential threat? That joy is a big part of the magic that makes Apple Apple, and Foer is entirely serious about that. He believes that firms that watch-me-go exhilaration is what exnihilated Google and such as Facebook and Google are jockeying not just for market Facebook into existence. Billionaires don’t work 80 hours a share but for mind share, that their ambition is nothing less week because they are driven by mere greed. They are driven than to redefine—and in the process deform—what it means to by something far more powerful. Franklin Foer thinks that this be human. Foer’s argument is at times fascinating, though force is hubris, the desire to ascend, godlike, to remake man in what scandalizes him most isn’t the ruthlessness of highly their own image. There is hubris in the mix, but there is some- competitive technology companies but their ambition: “Where thing else there, too: love. do these companies begin and end?” he asks.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google with the mission of OER traces the culture of today’s Silicon Valley back to organizing all knowledge, but that proved too narrow. Google Stewart Brand, the hippie impresario who founded the now aims to build driverless cars, manufacture phones, and con- Whole Earth Catalog and brought a bit of discipline and quer death. Amazon was once content being “the everything Fbusiness sense to Ken Kesey’s psychedelic doings with the store,” but now produces television shows, designs drones, and powers the cloud. The most ambitious tech companies—throw Merry Pranksters. Brand’s mix of LSD-inspired spaciness, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple into the mix—are in a race to Native American mysticism, and countercultural distaste for become our “personal assistant.” . . . More than any previous men in gray flannel suits made him perfectly suited to be the coterie of corporations, the tech monopolies aspire to mold poet of the computer age. “Engineers across Silicon Valley humanity into their desired image of it. They believe that they revered Brand for explaining the profound potential of their have the opportunity to complete the long merger between man work in ways they couldn’t always see or articulate,” Foer and machine—to redirect the trajectory of human evolution. writes. Whereas many of those 1960s rebels saw the computer as a symbol of bureaucracy and control, a product of the ulti- Critics are right to detect a strong whiff of get-off-my-grass- mate gray-flannel-suit corporation, IBM, Brand saw the ism in Foer’s argument, and of course his personal experience computer’s potential as an instrument of liberation—and as editor of The New Republic, which was acquired, and transformation. Foer quotes from an early issue of the Whole ruined, by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, is a splinter in Earth Catalog: his mind. He began his journalism career as a Microsoft employee and now writes for The Atlantic, the venerable mag- We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely azine founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson and recently acquired done power and glory—as via government, big business, formal by Laurene Powell, the widow of the late Steve Jobs, who was education, church—has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to the very archetype of the hippie-capitalist-utopian tech guru these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing— whose machinations keep Foer up at night. power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his While there is much in World without Mind that is over- own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his the-top and some that is ill considered, Foer is right to look adventure with whoever is interested. west: The most interesting and consequential conversations being had in the United States in 2017 are not happening in The Whole Earth Catalog, Brand said, had as its mission to Washington—they are happening in California, which extends advertise the tools and instruments that would make that liber- beyond its formal borders to include parts of Washington State, ation possible. And the technology industry has in a real sense a sliver of Austin, and about five blocks in New York City. more than lived up to the hype of the early days of the World Part of the anxiety that Very High Tech induces in Foer and Wide Web. Individuals have been radically empowered: You others is simply the mind-boggling scale of its reach and the really can be your own publisher—and, as Dan Rather learned, capital it can command. Of course Google is getting into a your own media critic, bypassing the usual gatekeepers and

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ombudsmen in the pursuit of direct and immediate account- change, the nationalist suspicion of those whom Stalinists ability. You can sit in on the best university lectures, enjoy the and Trumpkins sneer at as “rootless cosmopolitans,” and the best music and film immediately, communicate without fric- traditional lefty paranoia about corporate power. Never mind tion, and, in many occupations, do the work of 20 or 100 men. that the big winner from Amazon’s success has been con- Wikipedia, which sounds like a terrible idea on paper, has sumers while the big loser has been Walmart, which was the proved invaluable. Technology has amplified the individual Left’s favorite boogeyman until the day before yesterday— beyond the dreams of 1950s science fiction. The actual limita- new concentrations of private power are always a terror to the tion of the moment isn’t a question of the technology but of its Left. Foer refers to Google and Facebook as “knowledge users: Most people, as it turns out, don’t want to investigate monopolies,” which he characterizes as “a new style of firm.” human-rights abuses in Burma or audit computer-science lec- But that’s not quite right. The nature of the firm has not tures at MIT: They like porn and celebrity news and arguing changed all that much, and the radical ways in which corpo- about dumb things with dumb people on Twitter. The human rations are changing (diminishing corporate lifespans, out- being is and has always been the brake on the utopian tendency. sourcing of secondary business processes, etc.) are if It is not the structure of the technology industry or the charac- anything more relevant to non-GAFA companies than to the ter of its executives that has the homogenizing effect that many technology titans that command Foer’s attention. What’s GAFA critics fret about—it’s the consumers themselves. changing isn’t the character of the corporation but the char- But some people are more ambitious than others, and the acter of the market. technology that has amplified the private citizen also amplifies The traditional case against monopolies is that they are bad the corporate executive, the tech-savvy oppressor, and the bil- for consumers. But some technology companies, especially lionaire dilettante with political aspirations. Stewart Brand was social-media concerns such as Facebook, complicate that, not the first to come along with the offer that “you shall be as because they become more valuable to consumers the more gods.” That was the promise of Prometheus, of course, and, they dominate the market. Facebook is like the telephone. One most prominently, of the Serpent. telephone user finds it not valuable at all—there’s nobody to call. Two telephone users find it of limited usefulness. A net- work of billions of users makes the telephone immeasurably HE backlash against GAFA is partly the usual lamen- more useful. Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and an early tation of the nouveau riche by certain envious people, investor in Facebook (who has written in these pages), says usually writers and academics, who think they’d do that he likes to invest in monopolies, but Amazon, Apple, Tbetter things with all that money. There is the usual fear of Google, and Facebook are not monopolies in the traditional

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sense, leveraging their market power to squeeze more out of consumers via higher prices. They mainly do the opposite. “We measure an antitrust violation by looking at consumer harm— Don’t Forget not harm to competitors,” Penn law professor Herbert Hovenkamp told PolitiFact. That’s one reason the Trump admin- istration, in spite of the president’s big talk, probably won’t move against Amazon: There isn’t a case. When consumers High Earners begin to feel the bite, conventional economic theory goes, then competition will step in and set things right. A tax reform that offers them nothing will But what if the bite isn’t felt? We don’t write a check to Facebook or Google once a month. We compensate them in drive them farther away other ways—attention must be paid and privacy surrendered and personal data sliced and repackaged and traded like a sub- BY HENRY OLSEN prime mortgage. The censors of the Catholic Church helpfully published the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, bringing some much-needed transparency to the process of suppressing S sure as the sun had risen in the east, upper-income, thought: The list of banned books was plain as day. Amazon educated, private-sector-employed whites had for can just disappear a book if it so chooses or, if it’s in a devious A decades voted Republican. Even the growing impor- mood, as it was during the Hachette dispute, it can monkey tance of social issues and rising secularism hadn’t with prices, product placement, and delivery times to quietly changed that fact: Republican presidential candidates still car- hobble a work—or an idea. Many unreflective people cheered ried high-income and college-educated whites, even if their when the nation’s Web-hosting companies decided to dump a margins were lower than in prior decades. number of neo-Nazi websites, effectively removing their mate- All that changed in 2016. rial from the online public square (which is the public square Upper-middle-income, college-educated whites are increas- that matters). A lot of conservatives were a little queasy, ingly unhappy with a Republican party dominated by President though: The same people who support banning neo-Nazi com- Trump and his agenda. Unless the party recognizes the threat munications also believe that everybody to the right of Hillary and tries to keep this group under the Republican umbrella, it Rodham Clinton is a neo-Nazi, that criticism of transgender- could find both its House majority and its dominance in state- rights efforts is “hate speech” that should be prohibited, that houses at risk in 2018. sermons endorsing the traditional view of marriage should Democrats have been making inroads among these voters for be—and could be—a crime. quite some time. Democratic strategists Ruy Teixeira and John But that’s an old problem, too. Corporate groupthink and Judis noted this development in their important 2002 book, The institutional closed-mindedness are not products of technol- Emerging Democratic Majority. They showed that Democratic ogy’s effect on culture, and neither is the “social-justice war- candidates were winning college-educated whites who worked rior” mob mentality behind efforts to exclude certain kinds in the idea- and word-based industries such as publishing, of ideas and voices from the public square. If anything, those marketing, computers, and software. College-educated whites habits are worse in the physical world—especially on col- in these private-sector industries tended to be more secular and lege campuses—than they are in the online space. Of course less concerned about economic issues in politics than other social media, mobile phones, and other technologies make it whites. So long as Democrats remained open to private-sector easier to organize a riot in Berkeley, but riots have been growth, these people would vote Democratic based on their around for a long time. Political violence is as old as politics stances on social issues and their antagonism toward the itself (older, probably). The illiberal impulse has always been southern-Evangelical-tinged tone of the modern GOP. strong, even among academics, corporate leaders, and other Noted tech hubs such as Boston, Austin, and Silicon Valley highly educated people of whom one might expect the oppo- were not the only college-white-dominated regions to become site. The conservative movement was obliged to build an more Democratic. Northern and western suburbs such as those entire intellectual infrastructure from the middle of the 20th found around Philadelphia, Washington, Los Angeles, and century onward because the suffocating progressive consen- Chicago also moved noticeably to the left after 1992. While sus of the time dismissed rightward thinking as nothing more George H. W. Bush carried every suburban county in these than “irritable mental gestures,” as Lionel Trilling put it. regions by large margins in 1988, his son, George W. Bush, lost While the unmediated mobs of Twitter and Facebook have or carried them only narrowly in 2004. By 2008, the transfor- surely contributed to the lowering of our public discourse in mation was complete: John McCain lost every one of these important ways, people trafficking in genuinely unpopular counties except California’s Orange County. ideas have, thanks to the very technology platforms that so But these trends did not hold nationwide. Other high- concern Foer and others, never been in a stronger or more income, educated, white suburbs remained GOP bastions. secure position. The headwinds against free speech are Those around Milwaukee, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and mainly cultural rather than technological. Unhappily, the Cincinnati were at least as Republican in 2004 as they had been illiberal culture of the college campuses and the utterly con- fident ignorance associated with it has found a place in Mr. Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the Silicon Valley, too. author of The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Some gods are more equal than others. Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.

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in 1988. Communities around Jacksonville, along Florida’s west six of those 35 seats from Republicans, while the GOP has coast, and near Phoenix stuck with the GOP even as the party’s flipped none in return. victory margins slipped nationally. Clearly not all upper-middle- Even the most nationally prominent special election this year, income, college-educated, white voters were deserting the GOP. the Jon Ossoff–Karen Handel race in Georgia, sent a shot across That ceased to be true in 2016. Trump’s surprise victories in the GOP’s bow. This House district, formerly represented by Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin masked the fact that he Tom Price (who resigned his seat to join the Trump administra- lost tens of thousands of Romney voters in upper-middle- tion), encompasses the wealthiest and best-educated regions in income places such as Detroit’s Oakland County, Philadelphia’s Atlanta and its nearby suburbs. In 2012 it gave Mitt Romney 61 Chester County, and Milwaukee’s Ozaukee County. Trump lost percent of its vote—but in 2016 Trump carried it by just 1.5 heavily in the suburbs that had been slipping away from the points, 48.3 percent to 46.8 percent, indicating that many GOP for decades, and he was the first GOP nominee to lose Romney voters didn’t just go third-party but actually voted for Orange County since 1936. He also lost areas around cities such Clinton. In a race whose turnout nearly matched the presidential as Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta that had given Romney over 60 election’s, Handel’s 51.9 percent of the vote suggested that she percent of the vote just four years before. kept Trump’s voters and won back some defectors. But the more Fortunately, Trump’s problems did not hurt other Republicans ominous statistic is that Ossoff ran slightly ahead of Clinton. This running down-ballot. Ron Johnson and Pat Toomey won close likely means he kept the Romney-Clinton voters, the sort who Senate races largely because they performed well in higher- just eight months earlier had helped keep Republicans in control income towns. House Republicans targeted by national of the House and Senate by coming back to the party. Democrats for defeat, such as Virginia’s Barbara Comstock, A continuation of this trend could spell disaster for Re - California’s Darrell Issa, and Colorado’s Mike Coffman, held off publicans in 2018. House Republicans hold a majority of 24 their challengers even as Hillary Clinton handily won their dis- seats, but 23 of them represent districts that Clinton carried. If tricts. State legislators running in similar areas also tended to hold Romney-Clinton voters stay Democratic, as they apparently on as Republicans who deserted Trump came back in other races. did in the Georgia special election, then the vast majority of But 2017 has been a different story. According to one analy- these seats could be lost. These voters are also crucial to sis, Democrats have run ahead of Clinton’s share of the vote in Republican hopes of winning back the Virginia governorship 28 of 35 special elections so far. These have not been trivial this fall and retaining statehouses in swing states such as

differences; Democratic candidates have run an average of 13 Michigan, Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin. If Republicans lose

points ahead of Clinton’s total. This has allowed them to poach upper-middle-income voters, their hopes in these states will “It changed tthhhee wwaaayy “ I look at thhee wwooorrrllldd.

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rest even more on the Obama-Trump voters whose habitual payers would see their itemized deductions fall low enough that loyalty is to the Democrats. they’d just take the standard deduction instead, as they don’t It’s not hard to determine why upper-middle-income whites give enough to charity or pay enough in mortgage interest to are now in play. Data from the Voter Study Group’s December make itemizing worthwhile under the proposed system. Both 2016 national poll showed that Romney voters who switched to sets of taxpayers would have more of their income subject to Clinton were much closer to Democratic positions on hot-button taxation than they do now. issues such as immigration, feelings toward Muslims, and trade. Conservatives have been told that all this will mainly hurt vot- Indeed, the Romney-Clinton voter was more liberal than other ers in high-tax blue states, but this just isn’t so. County-level data Romney voters on every issue examined by the New America from the IRS show that upper-middle-income suburbanites in Foundation’s Lee Drutman. These voters may not have been par- key swing states are very likely to see tax hikes because of these tisan Republicans as conservatives understand the term, but they changes. Taxpayers who annually earn between $100,000 and were crucial to the GOP voter coalition. $200,000 in counties with large numbers of upper-middle- Data from the Voter Study Group’s July 2017 poll suggests income voters deducted an average of around $25,000 in 2014, these voters are steadily becoming partisan Democrats. Romney- the last year for which data are available. Taxpayers earning more Clinton voters despise Trump; 87 percent disapprove of him than $200,000 deducted an average of more than $50,000 a year. while only 2 percent approve. And this feeling is spreading Without the state-and-local-tax deduction, a lot more of these down the ballot: About half of Romney-Clinton voters say they taxpayers’ income will become taxable, and most of them are in will vote Democratic for Congress in the 2018 midterms. Only the 25 percent bracket. The GOP tax reform would give these indi- about one-third say they will vote Republican; a further one in viduals a rate cut, but it would not be enough to make up the dif- six are unsure. ference. Anyone currently deducting more than $26,000 would Upper-middle-income areas also saw many Romney voters be at risk of seeing his taxes rise because of the GOP tax bill. who did not back Trump but instead voted for a third-party can- Such people vote in very large numbers in the key swing didate, usually Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin. The 2017 Voter states of Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Study Group survey shows that these voters approve of Trump by The 2016 exit polls showed that $200,000-plus voters were a only a 49–40 ratio. As we saw in Georgia, they are much likelier large share of the vote, ranging from 7 percent in North Carolina Republicans simply cannot have a national majority unless a large share of upper-middle-class voters return to the fold.

to return to the party in congressional races: The same survey to 10 percent in Pennsylvania. Add in voters making between found that over 60 percent said they would vote GOP in the $150,000 and $200,000 and it’s clear that 10 to 15 percent of midterms. But tellingly, over a third said they were unsure which voters in these four states could see tax hikes under the GOP’s way they would vote. Between them and the Romney-Clinton tax-reform proposals. voters, it is clear that the upper middle class is now up for grabs. Republicans are already having too much trouble retaining Conservatives cannot be oblivious to this. Republicans sim- these voters to make such a careless error. These voters already ply cannot have a national majority unless a large share of these are leery of Trump. If the GOP hikes their taxes, their anger will voters returns to the fold. More important, there is little likeli- spread to Trump’s party. hood of majorities in key swing states without their votes. There are some easy, if expensive, alternatives. Instead of keeping the mortgage-interest and charitable deductions item- ized, the Republican tax reform should make them available to HEY say that if you’re in a hole, stop digging, so the first all taxpayers. Doing this—making them what tax pros call item on the GOP agenda should be to stop doing unnec- “above-the-line deductions”—would allow upper-middle- essary things to drive these voters away. That means the income taxpayers to get the benefit of the doubled standard soon-to-be-releasedT tax bill needs to do something tangible for deduction and deduct their other expenses. them. Unfortunately, it will likely make them worse off. Republicans could even adopt a populist tone to advocate The problem comes from the way the GOP wants to change limiting the value of the mortgage-interest deduction to, say, itemized deductions. The administration and the Republican con- $500,000. Such a limit would not harm many upper-middle- gressional leadership need to close some loopholes to finance the income taxpayers, but it would cause much wealthier taxpayers large corporate-tax-rate reduction they seek. So far, their target is to pay more. Since they would also have their rates cut substan- the federal deduction for taxes paid to state and local govern- tially, this would likely only reduce the amount of their tax cut. ments, which mainly helps people making $100,000 or more. Removing the ability to deduct mortgage interest for a second Republican proposals eliminate the deduction entirely but offset home would also largely hit the highest earners, bringing back the loss by nearly doubling the standard deduction. This would more revenue to finance corporate-rate cuts without burdening mean a heavier tax burden for many who itemize their deductions upper-middle-income voters. and a lower burden for many who don’t. Recovering these voters’ trust will take time and effort. The Those with very high itemized deductions wouldn’t benefit current tax-reform proposals will drive them away at exactly from the higher standard deduction at all, and would simply lose the time their loyalties are being tested. Better not to risk a the entire value of the state-and-local-tax deduction. Other tax- backlash next November.

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tioned “Great Locker Lock-Out,” the kindergarteners would arrive at school “to find their [cubbies] taped off” and closed to them. Afterward, students would participate in “repeated discus- sions” to reflect on how the lock-out “connects to the many ways in which groups of people have felt/currently feel discriminated against.” After several days, parents received a cheerful email from the school noting that the kindergarteners had “decided to protest” the lock-out and inviting parents to attend the next morning’s “sit-in.” After the protest, one child’s parent recounted that her daughter had returned from school bewildered and concerned about several students who had cried during the “protest.” The next week, in a bulletin that began by acknowledging that students were only starting to grasp the days of the week, parents were told that the “Happy Puppies” would build a histor- ical timeline in order to “gain a better grasp of the historical contexts that ClassesPlay-acting oppression of at a ‘current-century,Kindergarteners progressive’ Chicago school have surrounded equity issues.” The teachers explained: “For our purposes, BY FREDERICK M. HESS & GRANT ADDISON it is critical that children begin to orga- nize major historical events, such as the Civil Rights Movement or the women’s N a Chicago school this past April, Families” to keep parents abreast of suffrage movement in a sequential way.” one kindergartener fretted to a the goings-on in their child’s class- This would allow these sprites to “make I friend that he wouldn’t be able to room. (“Happy Puppies” is the meaningful connections about the history get to his spare underpants if he school’s nickname for the students.) of our country.” had an accident. Why? Staff at the Amid the standard fare requesting A final “shared experience” would prestigious, private Catherine Cook notifications about upcoming birth- be segregation: Playground access School had opted to deny five- and six- days and praising the children’s work during recess would be restricted; year-olds access to their cubbies in with puzzles and pinwheels, one April some students would enjoy full access order to school them on discrimination. update announced a new “Equality to all of the usual equipment; others If one student did this to another, we Unit.” Five- and six-year-old students would be restricted to one corner of would rightly call it bullying. But what would be “examining the definitions the playground that had none. The do we call it when educators do it? If [of] equality and fairness” and explor- update promised: “We will discuss there were a Hippocratic Oath for ing these concepts by wrestling with what this might feel like and connect it kindergarten teachers, it would doubt- such moral dilemmas as a situation in to how others might have felt when less stipulate that educators not fright- which one child is given more cookies experiencing segregation in other cir- en or browbeat children in service of than her friends. cumstances. We expect children to feel ideological agendas. So far, so good. uncomfortable and possibly angry or Although no scholars or federal agen- The following week, the bulletin sad, depending on where they are play- cies track such practices, we hear informed parents that their children ing that day.” The exercise was at least enough similar complaints from parents were being “introduced to the concepts partly successful—in that some kinder- to suggest that they are far too common. of prejudice and discrimination . . . [and garteners were indeed shaken and con- At the Catherine Cook School, taught] that people can have unfair fused. One girl told her mother that the kindergarten teachers each week thoughts about entire groups.” To help activity had so scared her that she send updates to their “Happy Puppy students “fully comprehend prejudice didn’t want to go back to school. and discrimination,” the April 21 update When some parents raised questions Mr. Hess is the director of education-policy studies at explained, students would be subjected about all of this, they were initially the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Addison is a to several “shared experiences” in the humored. Faculty patience quickly ran ROMAN GENN research assistant at AEI. next few weeks. First, in the aforemen- dry, however. In response to one parent’s

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query about the cubbie lock-out, the University of Virginia, and Harvard— been examined with a great deal of school’s early-childhood-division head including one of the three co-founders rigor, and many applications are theo- replied, “It sounds like we need to of the IAT—have found fundamental retically ungrounded.” clarify the activity and the goals of this problems with the test. Examining 499 Some of what we do know about lesson.” When the “clarifications” studies conducted over 20 years, promoting racial tolerance raises dis- addressed none of the concerns, the involving 80,859 participants, the concerting questions about what parent followed up, endorsing “anti- scholars discovered that not only does transpired at Catherine Cook. One bias” efforts and open discussion of “the correlation between implicit bias review of more than 500 studies on such issues as fairness and privilege. and discriminatory behavior appear[] racial and ethnic interactions found, The parent expressed concerns, how- weaker than previously thought,” but for instance, that the benefits from ever, about the age-appropriateness of there is also “very little evidence that those interactions are conditional on the lessons. In response, the early- changes in implicit bias have anything the presence of positive forces, such childhood-division head brusquely to do with changes in a person’s as common goals, a sense of coopera- brought an end to the exchange after behavior.” As one of the researchers tion, and equal status, and vanish acidly explaining, “We don’t teach told the Chronicle, these findings when individuals become anxious or children that they’re privileged—they “should be stunning”: They “produce nervous about cross-group interac- come to us privileged.” a challenge” for the whole area of tions. The result? Efforts to combat Another family expressed concern research, as “there’s not necessarily bias, ineptly handled, can actually that these lessons were taking time strong evidence for the conclusions magnify racial tensions and conflict. away from the core-subject curricu- people have drawn.” In the hands of kindergarten teachers lum and reported that they’d felt com- As for the actual effect of “prejudice- asked to haphazardly tackle sensitive pelled to hire their child a math and reducing” programs such as those instruction in between explaining reading tutor because she wasn’t get- attempted at Catherine Cook, the sim- shapes and reading stories, well- ting the requisite exposure in school. ple fact is that most have never been intended lessons might do more harm In response, the principal told them, experimentally evaluated. As a semi- than good. “Catherine Cook is a current-century, nal 2009 study in the Annual Review of Asked for evidence that justified this progressive school by it’s [sic] mis- Psychology noted, “Although antibias, kind of instruction, Catherine Cook sion, by it’s [sic] design, and by it’s multicultural, and moral education are faculty pointed parents to resources [sic] curriculum,” literacy, numeracy, popular approaches, they have not from Teaching Tolerance, a leading and grammar apparently being last- century trifles. Educators who regard themselves as socially conscious can get so invested in a political agenda that such issues as age-appropriateness seem hardly worth the worry. Such educators find it hard to believe that foisting their passions onto their students might not be in the students’ best interest. Research justifying the kind of in - struction taking place at Catherine Cook is wafer-thin. The bulk of rele- vant scholarship is far removed from the classroom, focusing on attempts to measure individuals’ level of racial prejudice or bias and ways to reduce or eliminate observed bias in laboratory or controlled training environments. One of the foundational works in this field, cited in thousands of peer- reviewed papers, is the Harvard University–hosted “Implicit Associa - tion Test” (IAT). The IAT has been the most influential measure in the study of unconscious or “implicit” bias since its creation in 1998, but, as the Chronicle of Higher Education report- ed earlier this year, scholars from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the

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provider of free “anti-bias” curricula. for interpersonal development. These Teaching Tolerance is a project of the goals encompass the most basic of Southern Poverty Law Center, an influ- social skills, such as “describ[ing] Congress and ential, left-leaning advocacy organiza- positive qualities in others” and tion. Teaching Tolerance’s resources for “identify[ing] ways to work and play Campus pre-K and kindergarten include such well with others.” It’s quite a leap to Students and faculty need federal titles as “Introducing Kids to the Idea of imagine that the same tykes are free-speech protection Environmental Racism” (“designed to equipped to fruitfully experience and simulate the inequity of environmental process discrimination. BY DAVID FRENCH racism”) and “Think Outside the Box: At a time when battalions of advo- Brainstorming About Gender Stereo - cates are urging schools to join an T colleges across America, stu- types” (“the first lesson in a series on “anti-racist Resistance,” it’s easy for dent protesters are intim idating gender expression”). passion to override good judgment. It’s A conservatives who dare to Notably, even the activists at easy for some educators determined to attempt to speak. And at Reed Teaching Tolerance are more attentive share their convictions to gloss over College, in Portland, Ore., the radical Left to age-appropriate curricula than the students’ developmental needs or the has even turned on its own progressive teachers at Catherine Cook. For in - importance of exposing students to a brothers and sisters. Protesters have occu- stance, Teaching Tolerance’s “The plurality of views. pied classrooms, harassed teachers, and Sneetches” lesson activity appears to Many parents, and many teachers, interrupted instruction. One particular have been the model for the play- can be hesitant to speak up against these target of radical fury is a self-described ground segregation exercise. The les- unwise education methods. They’re “queer,” “mixed-race” professor named son promises, just as Catherine Cook’s inclined to defer to the experts. They Lucía Martínez Valdivia, whom protest - teachers did, that “students will expe- don’t want to come across as retrograde ers call a “race traitor” for failing to rience discrimination” after learning or cause a fuss or anger their children’s oppose a humanities syllabus that was allegedly too white and too male. Before a planned lecture on Sappho, Valdivia At a time when battalions of advocates pleaded with protesters to treat her with respect, claiming that she was suffering are urging schools to join an ‘anti- from post-traumatic-stress disorder. They berated her anyway, reducing her to tears. racist Resistance,’ it’s easy for passion Reed is one of the most liberal col- leges in America, a West Coast version to override good judgment. of Oberlin. But the weed of grassroots, student-led intimidation and censorship the concepts of “fairness and equity.” teachers. But the result is schools in can be found at colleges of all stripes, as Yet even Teaching Tolerance doesn’t which an impassioned minority can the administration-imposed censorship recommend the activity for kinder- exercise undue influence in ways that of the speech-code era in the 1990s gives garteners and takes care to anchor the don’t serve students and might aggra- way to something even worse—a rerun in-class activity in Dr. Seuss’s The vate the very ills they hope to cure. of the 1960s, in which radical students Sneetches rather than Jim Crow. The debate is not over whether stu- impose mob rule. Teaching Tolerance’s “Contemporary dents should be taught about empathy The list of incidents at newly danger- Movements” lesson also appears to have and privilege. They should. And ous colleges is long and growing: Student been used by Catherine Cook’s staff. In kindergarteners should start learning rioters at Evergreen State College, teaching the civil-rights movement, it about ideals such as equality, fair- Charles Murray’s ordeal at Middlebury, involves having students “devise a time- ness, and personal responsibility. But Heather Mac Donald at Claremont line regarding other civil rights struggles it’s difficult to believe that kinder- McKenna, Ben Shapiro at Cal State–L.A. . . . [that] will help them make connec- garteners benefit from play-acting and the University of Wisconsin, and tions and understand the complexity of violations of principles they as yet Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter at interrelationships.” Teaching Tolerance scarcely understand. Berkeley, where city and college police, recommends this lesson for students in Teaching the next generation our at the university’s behest, have operated grades six through twelve—not for common values is a goal that every under a functional “stand down” order kindergarteners. American can embrace. We also should and watched as thugs and criminals have The most striking thing about be able to agree that some things are out shut down discourse. Catherine Cook’s instruction is how of bounds. What happened at Catherine Through it all, timid administrators divorced it is from any obvious consid- Cook should give parents and educa- often encourage students’ belief that dis- eration of what’s healthy and appropri- tors pause and offer a chance to discuss tasteful speech can be a source of spiritual ate for kindergarteners. The Illinois how we can more constructively intro- and psychic harm. Before Shapiro’s state standards for kindergarteners, for duce our youngest students to our appearance at Berke ley this September, instance, set age-appropriate goals shared values. the provost promised his fragile students

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This radicalization decisively adjusts campus incentives. Many universities now see greater risk in free speech than in censorship. Open the marketplace of ideas and you risk faculty revolts, student unrest, and negative attention in the press. Free speech can make an administrator’s life hell. How many people want to live an academic and personal nightmare for the sake of protecting speech that many liber- al administrators find loathsome and repugnant? As one administrator told me at an academic conference, “I’ll do what I want until a court tells me to change.” Even worse, the law itself is fundamen- tally flawed. Yes, federal statutes grant Middlebury College students turn their backs on Charles Murray, March 2, 2017. students the right to sue to protect their First Amendment rights, but they can that counseling would be available if socially liberal libertarians. In short, at almost never collect meaningful dam- needed and then declared, with no evident many campuses, speech carries profound ages. They’ll obtain injunctions and irony, that “no one should be made to feel risks at every turn. attorneys’-fee awards, but courts have threatened or harassed simply because of Ironically, this multi-pronged attack on long held that the value of lost speech is who they are or for what they believe.” the marketplace of ideas comes at a time virtually impossible to quantify. Cases But attacks on free speech aren’t lim- when First Amendment jurisprudence— can drag on for years, and even if univer- ited to violence or threats of violence. overall and as it applies to universities— sities ultimately lose, the resulting finan- Despite years of successful litigation, is the most protective of speech it’s been cial penalty is so small that it’s a rounding too many campuses still impose speech in decades, or perhaps ever. Students who error in the campus budget. A university codes, and administrators often persist challenge university censorship in court has a greater financial incentive to keep in openly applying double standards to almost always win, and no university its sidewalks clear of snow than it does to conservative and liberal speech. Con - speech code has ever been upheld on the protect the fundamental liberties in the servative groups seeking to invite conser- merits. Court cases have forced univer- Bill of Rights. vative speakers often face prohibitive sities to rewrite policies, promote con- It’s time for this to change. Congress “security fees” and “scheduling chal- servative faculty, and fund conservative and state legislators cannot constitution- lenges” that liberal groups do not, and the organizations. Yet free speech on campus ally purge radicals from public and feder- problem is getting worse. The conserva- is imperiled as never before. Why? ally funded private universities (and tive Young America’s Foundation reports The answer is a combination of convic- should not try), but they can decisively that since the election of Don ald Trump, tion and incentives. The left-wing ideo- adjust both the law and, crucially, the 46 percent of its campus events have logical monoculture on campus has incentives to protect free speech. State- been disrupted, up from 15 percent the created a world where, predictably, radi- law proposals, such as the Goldwater year before. Disruptions include student cals thrive. The “law of group polariza- Institute’s model free-speech law, not protests, administrative delays, and some - tion” has done its pernicious work. As only mandate that universities protect times university cancellations. Cass Sunstein wrote in a 1999 Harvard speech, they also mandate that universi- As if the combination of bottom-up Law Review article, “in a striking empiri- ties impose punishments when students, (student-led) and top-down (administra- cal regularity, deliberation tends to move administrators, or faculty violate the First tive) censorship weren’t bad enough, dis- groups, and the individuals who compose Amendment. This means that student senting students now confront a “name them, toward a more extreme point in the protesters would face punishment for and shame” culture in which radicals try direction indicated by their own prede- shouting down speakers. This means that to use peer and economic pressure to liberation judgments.” administrators who refuse to grant con- enforce conformity. Speak your mind, Or, to put it another way, when people servative speakers equal access could and you risk losing friendships or possi- of like mind gather, their views tend to face consequences for their careers. bly job prospects. Students face isolation grow more extreme. So the lack of true While such laws aren’t without risks and peer persecution. Aspiring faculty intellectual diversity on campus means (it’s easy to imagine university radicals members—especially socially conserva- that universities are continually further abusing the student-misconduct provi- tive ones—encounter hostile hiring com- radicalizing. For example, consider the sions to punish conservative speech), it’s mittees. The social conservative in the progression of the argument against free time to go further. It’s time for reform at humanities or social sciences is a vanish- speech. Con ser va tive speech used to be the federal level. Congress should pass a COM

. ing breed. In many departments, to the “discriminatory.” Then it was “dehu- law holding that if a court of final jurisdic- extent that there exists any meaningful manizing.” Now, to some academics, tion finds that a public university has vio- NYTIMES intellectual diversity, it comes from it’s “violence.” lated the First Amendment rights of a

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student or faculty member, the university given statue, teachers should ask who will pay liquidated damages to the plain- else from that figure’s life and times tiff in the amount of no less than $5 mil- History Is for might deserve a statue alongside him— lion. If a university is a repeat offender at or facing him down. any point in the five years following, it America’s influential figures can be will also forfeit 25 percent of its federal Making Great complex and contradictory. Take, for funding in the current fiscal year. Offend example, Taney, a Supreme Court justice a third time in the same span, and the Citizens whose statues were recently whisked university will forfeit 100 percent of its Toward a character-centered approach away in the middle of the night by offi- federal funding in that fiscal year. Why to teaching our national story cials in Baltimore and Annapolis. Taney should taxpayers fund public universities was a Marylander and Andrew Jackson that can’t fulfill their most basic obliga- BY ALEXI SARGEANT crony, the first Catholic in a presiden- tion, to comply with the Constitution and tial cabinet and also the first on the protect our most essential liberties? OW ought we to teach U.S. his- Supreme Court. Portraits show him as a A congressional free-speech act tory? Well, why do we think gaunt and haggard solon. He’s infamous wouldn’t immediately change hearts and H young people should learn U.S. as the author of the Dred Scott decision, minds—nor would it eliminate the cultural history? To avoid repeating the which declared that persons of African threat to free speech—but colleges would mistakes of the past, or to fill in facts and descent were not and could not be citi- respond decisively, as they always do figures on a mental timeline? Perhaps zens under the U.S. Constitution. But he when federal funds are at stake. Order we, with Tolstoy, look back on history as was not a Confederate, and indeed was police to stand down and let rioters run a fatal wave sweeping along princes and conflicted enough about the morality of amok? Lose your funding. Draft and powers willy-nilly. But perhaps the study slavery that he freed his own slaves and enforce expansive campus policies that of history can ennoble and inspire us—if criticized the institution as a “blot on our prohibit speech the Constitution protects? we allow ourselves to meet the great national character.” Taney administered Lose your funding. Impose double stan- individuals of the past and learn from the oath of office to seven U.S. presi- dards on conservatives and liberals, or (as their choices and characters. dents, including his own fiercest critic, at places such as Evergreen) on the Left As students troop back to classrooms Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, and the far left? Lose your funding. this year, there’s a teachable moment to Taney ruled that Lincoln’s suspension of The question is whether liberty-loving be salvaged from our national distemper habeas corpus in Maryland was uncon- legislators have the conviction to over- over public statues of historical figures. stitutional—only to see Lincoln and his power radical campus censors. A few Every fight over an image of Christopher troops ignore that decision. states have acted, but so far Congress has been silent. It hasn’t always been so timid. Federal anti-discrimination laws, such as There’s a teachable moment to be Title IX and Title VI, have helped remake American campuses by providing mas- salvaged from our national distemper sive financial incentives to eliminate sex over public statues of historical figures. and race discrimination. A federal free- speech law could have a comparable Columbus, Robert E. Lee, or Roger B. Does a statue of Taney represent a impact, and passing statutes that protect Taney gives us a chance to discuss whom trailblazing religious minority in the constitutional values is a core congres- we remember and whether and how we U.S. government, a judge who set back sional role. should honor them. It is easy to set out the cause of abolition and whose As images of violent protests fill tele- the stakes: Should we keep up a statue of jurisprudence precipitated the Civil War, vision and Twitter, campus free speech this explorer, that statesman, those rebel or a justice who tried to act as a constitu- is one of those rare issues that not only generals? Students should be encour- tional check on a wartime president unite a fractious Republican party but aged to read and think critically about the ignoring civil liberties? Whose monu- also concern a number of thoughtful and men and women whose legacies are ment might be raised alongside Taney’s alarmed liberals. The coalition is there, being debated. There’s an opportunity to give us a broader look at this turbulent the timing is right, and the stakes are here to teach rhetoric alongside history: era of history—perhaps Dred Scott, the high. The Supreme Court has held that Teachers could open the floor for stu- slave whose case for emancipation the university is a “traditional sphere of dents to debate the merits of historical Taney dismissed but who nonetheless free expression” that is “fundamental to figures as role models and civic hon- died a free man? Here’s where students the functioning of society.” It’s even orees. And if students argue against a should be invited to investigate the facts said that closing off the marketplace of and make their cases. ideas could cause our culture to “stag- Mr. Sargeant is a theater director and culture critic History needs to look back at us with nate and die.” There is no need to court based in New York. He is working on a U.S.-history human faces. If the aim of education is to cultural disaster. There exists a way to teacher’s supplement for Great Hearts, a nonprofit prepare young people for adult life and protect free speech on campus. Do we network of public charter schools with a classical lib- civic participation, then young people possess the will? eral-arts curriculum. need to see history as a story of men,

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women, and the choices they made—not even pay taxes to support the war. It’s a Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, merely a record of trends and impersonal canny move to give faces and voices to Hear My Cry and its sequels. These forces. It’s the outsized, history-shaping the non-famous men and women whose books’ fictional (or fictionalized) protag- personalities we encounter who grip us, choices still shaped the age in which our onists serve as representatives of larger from hatchet-wielding temperance radi- republic emerged. cultural moments. But the Ingalls family cal Carrie Nation to Wizard of Tuskegee Some periods of history must be taught and the Logan family are not ciphers for Booker T. Washington. It’s the people we with a kind of “common man as great “hardy settlers in Kansas” or “victims of meet in our study of the past who show man” approach. The story of westward racism in Depression-era Mississippi.” us how to shape our own futures. After expansion and the Homestead Act, for They are characters grappling with the all, young people can grow up to be great example, finds heroes in ordinary home- moral and practical choices offered by men and women themselves, not to be, steading families. The Great Depression their historical circumstances. The young say, industrialization. is another event best viewed through the characters, Laura Ingalls and Cassie Museum curators grapple with this eyes of ordinary Americans struggling Logan, are making choices on the same challenge as much as teachers do. What to make ends meet. Elementary-school scale as the young readers themselves they have to display are often physical teachers can use classics of children’s (e.g., how to respond to bullying or prej- fragments from the historical period in literature to make the eras come alive, udice), and so teachers can profitably question—some pottery shards here, some thanks to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little discuss the wisdom of those choices with bullet casings there—and while material House on the Prairie series and their students. culture has fascinations of its own, it is not what fires the imagination of the young. They want relics of vivid characters, not What are you looking for in a College? cabinets of quotidian curiosities. The Museum of the American Revolu- ... safe spaces or the great outdoors? tion in Philadelphia, which opened last spring, took this lesson to heart. Its center- piece is George Washington’s war tent, and the video introducing the artifact casts the tent as a symbol of Washington’s steadfastness and integrity. We hear the famous phrase from Henry Lee’s eulogy for Washington: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his coun- trymen.” We are reminded of Washing - ... gender studies or the perennial philosophy? ton’s stalwartness in the face of a harsh winter in Valley Forge, and of how he defeated the Newburgh conspiracy with deft prop work: Potential coup leaders in the Continental Army were reduced to tears as Washington produced a letter from Congress and said, “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have grown not only gray but almost blind in the service of my country.” ... political correctness or the Catholic faith? Of course, the “great-man theory” is hardly an unchallenged consensus among educators and curators. But histories written “from below” can introduce us to individuals as well, and men and women who are not remembered with statues can still teach us. The Museum of the American Revolution highlights ordinary people of the era in interactive displays: You can read and listen to commentary and exhortations from Find out if Wyoming Catholic loyalist merchants, revolutionary wives, Native Americans weighing whether College is the school for you. the Colonies or Great Britain will better protect their interests, and pacifist .WC. Quakers refusing to take up arms or

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From older students, teachers should done. More than 7,000 of these public require more enterprise. The best history schools, which operate independently class I ever took was a middle-school Reclaim from school districts and are open to all course on British history and literature that interested families regardless of their culminated in a night of speeches. Each Charter home address, now serve north of 3 mil- student was assigned a historical figure lion students; in dozens of cities, more (such as Oliver Cromwell or King Charles than a fifth of all pupils attend charter I) and then composed and delivered a ConservativesSchools have forgotten why they schools. Rigorous studies, including speech in character, drawing from that per- liked them those by the Hoover Institution’s Center son’s own writing and contemporary writ- for Research on Education Outcomes, ing about him. In another class with this BY MICHAEL J. PETRILLI show charters outpacing traditional pub- same teacher, we were instructed to mem- lic schools in most places, often provid- orize and deliver Patrick Henry’s “Give HEN conservatives hark ing several months’ worth of additional me liberty or give me death” speech. back to a golden age, they learning to their students over the course These were excellent exercises because W understandably think of the of a single academic year. they created an immediate connection 1980s and the economic While the charter movement has between the student and a great figure growth and Cold War victory that Presi - received proud bipartisan backing in from the past rather than requiring stu- dent Reagan unleashed. But there’s an Washington—Presidents Clinton and dents to be passive consumers of history. argument to be made that the apogee of Obama both strongly supported charter If there’s any doubt of the power that conservative social policy was actually schools, as have Presidents Bush II and person-first history has to inspire inter- in the 1990s, with tough-on-crime laws Trump—charters are almost entirely a est and passion, then let it be allayed by (which broke the back of a crack-fueled GOP accomplishment at the state level, the success of the Broadway musical murder wave), welfare reform (which where charter policy is made. To be sure, Hamilton, by Lin-Manuel Miranda. reined in government dependency), and some blue and purple states can count a Even though it takes some liberties with education reform (which curbed monop- handful of Democratic legislators and the history, the musical captures Alexander oly power of the the teachers’ unions in occasional Democratic governor among Hamilton’s larger-than-life ambition our big cities). proponents, but the charter movement has and accomplishments as documented in It’s no surprise that folks on the left relied on strong Republican support to its source material, Ron Chernow’s deplore this trifecta today, as they did then. sustain it. If that support evaporates, the biography of the Founding Father. It And there’s no shame in conservatives’ movement could hit a brick wall. dramatizes (sometimes in the form of reappraising certain consequences of their One would imagine, then, that advo- catchy rap battles) the great debates of ’90s agenda, such as mass incarceration. cates of charter schools would be exquis- our early republic between Hamilton What’s worrying, though, is to see con- itely attentive to the political math at the and Thomas Jefferson over national servatives grow soft on what has arguably heart of their coalition: They typically banking and foreign military interven- been the most successful and transforma- need virtually every Republican vote, tion. And it puts moral choices at the tive part of the package: education plus a handful of Democrats. Such atten- heart of the story, locating its emotional reform, particularly the charter-school tion would inexorably lead to an obses- climax in the unmerited forgiveness movement. That’s one way to read a new sion with shoring up support on the right Hamilton receives from his betrayed poll from Education Next, where I serve side of the aisle, correct? wife, Eliza. As I wrote in First Things, as an executive editor. We report a twelve- Well, no. Instead, many leaders of the Hamilton posits that “our leaders percentage-point drop in public support charter movement have spent the past require not only vision and drive, but for charter schools from the spring of decade displaying their progressive cre- also strength of character—and that 2016 to the spring of 2017. What’s dentials and chasing after Democratic quality, the show suggests, entails hum- most surprising is that Republican and votes that almost never materialize. Thus, ble contrition, repentance after sin, and Republican-leaning respondents helped the case for charter schools today is almost receptivity to forgiveness. Great Ameri - to drive this trend, with GOP support always made in social-justice terms— cans must be open to the still, small down 13 percentage points. Nor is this a promoting charters’ success in closing voice of grace.” one-year blip; roll back the tape to 2012 achievement gaps, boosting poor kids’ In sum, we should teach history with an and Republican support for charter chances of upward mobility, and alleviat- eye to forming responsible citizens, partly schools is down a whopping 22 points. ing systemic inequities. That was cer- by emphasizing character in two senses: The puzzle is why. This is no idle tainly the approach taken by President the great individuals who shaped U.S. his- question, as Republican support has Obama and his social-justice-warrior tory, and the virtues and vices they dis- been crucial to the growth and success of secretary of education, Arne Duncan. played. Such teaching aims to instill in the charter movement over the past 25 Nothing wrong with that—up to a point. students a love of this country and an years. And grow and succeed it has But it becomes self-defeating when it appreciation of the men and women who erodes support among conservatives and shaped its story—and, with any luck, to Mr. Petrilli is the president of the Thomas B. Republicans, and the polling indicates that help them become men and women who Fordham Institute, an education-reform think tank, many Republican voters are no longer can keep shaping it for the better. and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. aware of charter schools’ conservative

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Education Section 2017

pedigree. Maybe they will come back to what made charter schools conservative schools are three times as likely to be the fold if reminded. in the first place. This means emphasiz- “chronically absent” from school as char- That’s certainly one way to read another ing personal freedom and parental ter teachers, meaning they are absent ten part of the Education Next poll. We did an choice—how charters liberate families or more days per year. And why might experiment in which half of respondents from a system in which the government that be? Because many union contracts were told that President Trump supports assigns you a public school, take it or allow district teachers to take ten days or charters. Not surprisingly, this tanked leave it. Choice brings free-market more of sick or personal leave—on top of Democratic enthusiasm while driving dynamics into public education, using school holidays, on top of summer vaca- Republican support dramatically higher— the magic of competition to lift all boats. tion, on top of professional-development 15 points higher, to be exact, which erased And while some conservatives under- days. That’s two weeks out of the typical the decline from 2016 and then some. It’s standably would prefer private school 40-week school year, and studies show possible, then, that the charter movement choice, which allows a family to select, that students learn significantly less under has been a little too successful in brand- say, a religious school instead of an inde- substitute teachers. Yet unions have the ing charter schools as a liberal thing. pendently run public school, charters are gall to demand these policies, and elected So how to keep conservatives in the much more than a way station to vouch- school boards have the cowardice to charter fold other than by tying the ers. They have proven to be scalable and agree to them. issue to particular politicians? Another powerful, especially in cities. Charter schools, meanwhile, can and approach might be to boost the number of There’s another aspect of charter do expect their teachers to show up for conservative and Republican voters who schools that gets very little attention these work except in urgent situations. In send their children to charter schools, but days, especially from the social-justice some of the best charter networks, this is problematic for two reasons. First, types: Most are non-union. In fact, union chronic teacher absenteeism is virtually it would take decades to accomplish, representation may be the most signifi- nonexistent. That’s because their teach- since the overwhelming majority of cant difference between charter schools ers are fully committed to student suc- charters today are in distressed urban and traditional public schools. It’s hugely cess, understand that their colleagues might have to cover for them while they are gone, and know they will be held accountable if they don’t do their part. In other words, charter schools are like most of America, where employees are treated like responsible adults—and where they rise to that responsibility. We should talk about this more. There are other “conservative” aspects of charter schools worth crowing about as well. Many practice a no-nonsense approach to discipline, for example, in which students are expected to follow rules or face suspensions—commonsense practices that many public schools are nonetheless outlawing. Others provide a “classical” education, with a focus on the great books of Western civilization, that you almost never find in traditional pub- lic schools. Yet others are serious and thoughtful about helping their students follow the “success sequence”—finishing neighborhoods. And second, though char- important. It’s why charter schools can high school, getting a job, and getting ters’ current locations are partly based on and do fire ineffective teachers, why they married before having children—which student need, they also reflect political can turn on a dime when an instructional social scientists have shown is a nearly compromises: In many states, suburban approach isn’t working, why they can foolproof way to avoid poverty. Republican lawmakers have been happy spend their money on the classroom Yet some charter supporters on the to support charters so long as they don’t instead of the bureaucracy, why they can left implore those of us on the right to threaten the traditional public schools in put the needs of students first, every day, downplay these aspects. That is a big their own leafy districts. In the short all day. And yet most charter supporters mistake. If we charter advocates want to term, at least, creating suburban charters almost never talk about any of this. maintain conservative and Republican GETTY IMAGES / could hurt the political coalition more We should. A new study from the support for these life-changing schools, than it helps. Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the think we need to remember who our friends A simpler, more direct way to boost tank I lead, gives us one opportunity. It are—and help them remember why they KLAUS VEDFELT conservative support is to remind people finds that teachers in traditional public liked us in the first place.

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SELECTIONS FROM THE COLLECTED WORKS OF MILTON FRIEDMAN

“Milton Friedman lives on because his ideas are forever and his expository skills are unsurpassed, as shown in this book of special importance in today’s world.”

Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford— GEORGE University. P. SHULTZ Former US secretary of state (1982–89)

Milton Friedman was one of the nation’s LÀˆ˜}Ã̜}iÌ iÀvœÀÌ iwÀÃÌ̈“i> most energeticMilton and Friedmanthoughtful on exponents Freedom of freedom.

of Friedman’s ideas on the values that formed the moral foundation Vœ˜wÀ“Ãof his intellectual life. Milton Friedman on Freedom w} ÌiÀð̈ÃiÃÃi˜Ìˆ>Ài>`ˆ˜}vœÀ> again Friedman’s status as one of America’s greatest intellectual freedom

those who value liberty.

Foreword by John B. Taylor Edited by Robert Leeson and Charles G. Palm

Cloth: 978-0-8179-2034-0 ePub: 978-0-8179-2036-4 Mobi: 978-0-8179-2037-1 PDF: 978-0-8179-2038-8 April 2017

For related titles, visit www.hooverpress.org 3col-education_QXP-1127940387.qxp 9/27/2017 1:30 AM Page 48

Education Section 2017

adventures without a whiff of indoctri- estimated 100 million copies) at the peak nation or upsetting themes to which a of his storytelling powers. Books for child doesn’t need an introduction. I Want My Hat Back and This Is Not Hugh Lofting’s “Doctor Doolittle” My Hat, by Jon Klassen. Treating these Children: A books are similarly charming even if as separate entries would make as much they require some explanation of their sense as considering The Godfather and Symposium occasional racialism in the same way The Godfather Part II separate films. that one would explain Shakespeare’s With his haiku-like text and restrained NATIONAL REVIEW asked five writers to treatment of Jews or Mark Twain’s treat- watercolor depictions of canny, tight- recommend five books that should be ment of Jim. lipped animals, Klassen demonstrates in any child’s library. Here’s how they the deftest of comic touches in acquaint- replied: The books of William Pène du Bois, ing children with themes of private such as The Twenty-One Balloons or property, theft, and justice. MONA CHAREN The Giant. The Temptation of Wilfred Malachey. Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert Jean de Brunhoff’s “Babar” books, The only children’s book by William McCloskey. Mr. and Mrs. Mallard pro- absolutely marvelous and unexceeded. F. Buckley Jr. As another great founder vide loving care to Jack, Kack, Lack, of magazines, Stan Lee, would say: Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack— Chris Van Allsburg’s books, for older ’Nuff said. and immortalize Boston’s Public Garden. children and adults, including not least my series A Kingdom Far and Clear, Mr. Rosen is the chief Washington correspondent for The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. which he illustrated. Fox News and the author or editor of three books. Lewis. Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie are transported to a world Mr. Helprin, the author of Winter’s Tale, A where courage, honor, duty, and honesty Soldier of the Great War, and other books, SARAH RUDEN still matter—and where adventure, dan- has just published the novel Paris in the Present ger, and enchantment enthrall readers of Tense. Richard Scarry’s Great Big Story Book is all ages. (besides a lot else) a droll, thronging, honking, careening set of anthropomor- The BFG, by Roald Dahl. Less JAMES ROSEN phic animal adventures; adult readers- famous than Dahl’s other works, this aloud will appreciate the gentle irony one is full of charming puns and whim- Where the Wild Things Are. With its that prevents cuteness overload. sy, but I chose it because it was the first stark economy of words, intricate cross- book to spur my middle son to read on hatched drawings, and benign toothy Fern is up at dawn ridding the world his own! beasts—inspired by the author’s grating of injustice, declares her father, so the relatives—Maurice Sendak’s master- runt piglet whose life she has saved is A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson piece remains a timeless dreamscape of hers to raise; the hired man Lurvy dresses Burnett. Everything a good story should rebellion, flight, and reconciliation. for the fair in his plaid shirt and purple have: heroes, villains, coincidences, rever- necktie; I cry over Charlotte the protec- sals of fortune, kind-hearted strangers, and City Dog, Country Frog. Written by tive spider’s death: Fifty years later, I a happy ending. Mo Willems and illustrated by Jon J. remember so many other things as well Muth, this tale of an unlikely friendship that I most heartily recommend E. B. The Dangerous Book for Boys, by spanning the cycle of seasons is bril- White’s Charlotte’s Web. Conn and Hal Iggulden. A “how to” do liantly conceived and executed, a gentle, everything boyish—tie knots, escape the bittersweet introduction for young read- The memory test again: A grad stu- woods using only a compass, read sema- ers to the larger cycle of life, friendship, dent at Harvard is reciting, “I will not eat phore, play poker, kiss a girl—along and death. Adults will want Kleenex them in a box, / I will not eat them with with inspiring stories, snatches of poetry, handy—for themselves. a fox”—accordingly, and for sheer charm and histories of famous battles. and low-pressure didacticism, Green Richard Scarry’s The Great Pie Eggs and Ham is my choice among the Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist and Robbery and Other Mysteries. This Dr. Seuss books. a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. compilation of three Scarry classics— The Great Pie Robbery, The Super - Robert Louis Stevenson’s Child’s market Mystery, and The Great Garden of Verses is spookier, lovelier, MARK HELPRIN Steamboat Mystery—captures the illus- and far less icky than A. A. Milne’s trator with the “busy, busy” style (and poetry for children, so I call it the must- Walter Brooks’s “Freddy” series, in the bewildering bibliography of some have collection for very young readers which Freddy the Pig has a lot of 300 titles, reported to have sold an and listeners.

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The wealthy parents eaten by a rhi- By the gifted, singular, #1 NNeew YorkYork TTimimess bestselling noceros, the cruel Aunt Sponge and author of WWinter’inter’’ss TTaleale and A Soldier of the Gr reateat WWarar Aunt Spiker, and the enchanted, aunt- flattening, and airborne giant fruit with companionable giant insects inside it In a magnificent battle both temporal and spiritual, a Fr renchench sur rvivorvivor of the made Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant HolocaustH l t reil hi t ith th t lt f esesent-day Paris Peach particularly beloved to me, and since then I’ve been puzzled by the Praise for MMark Helprin book’s censorious detractors. The last epic novelist . . . he takes the long vieww.”.” —Essquuireire Sarah Ruden is a poet, translator, classicist, and essayist. Mark Helprin writes with ease and sureness . . . with a compassionate understanding and a clean, ucid prose . . . that is all too rare in our fiction.” HEATHER WILHELM ——The NNewew YYoorkk Times Book Reeviewview Arguably our finest living iving fiction-writerr,, Mark Helprin dazzles and soothes with a style that is Blue Hat, Green Hat, by Sandra oth beautiful and apt.” .” —Naatitional Review Boynton. This classic starter book “Constant brilliance nce . . . rarely less than comes with a hidden bonus: If you focus breathtaking.” —TheT Bosttoon Globe on reading each “Oops!” in an over-the- Advancee Praise for top, theatrical, and/or goofy voice, you Paris in the e Present TTenseense are guaranteed to crack up pretty much “A masterpiece filled d with compassion and any child six months old and above. humanityy.”.” —Kirkusus (sttarrearred review) “The fluidity of Helprin’ rin’s prose . . . makes this The Gruffalo, by Julia Donaldson novel of ideas so o utterly captivating.” and Axel Scheffler. Conquer your —Booklist (ssttarrearred review) On Sale fears: This is a crowd-pleaser about Thhe Overlook Press Now courage and creativity for children www.ooverlookpress.com ages three and up, and is particularly beloved by those with a penchant for drama—or, as in the case of my family, a slight obsession with creatures such as Bigfoot.

The Great Pie Robbery and Other Mysteries, by Richard Scarry. Now out of print, this title is worth tracking down A CONSERVATIVE JUSTICE'S for its slapstick comedy, heroic yet bum- bling detectives, ridiculous villains, and LIBERAL OPINIONS nail-biting—for young kids, anyway— David M. Dorsen, close friend to Antonin Scalia, provides a unique glimpse at the mystery stories. liberal side of one of the most important, outspoken and controversial Justices of the last century. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl. This brilliant story “ is book could well prove to be the de nitive works for a wide range of ages and gets review of Justice Scalia’s vast body of work.” better with every read. Fourth Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, author of Cosmic Constitutional eory Where the Red Fern Grows, by "An excellent book whose unique approach sheds Wilson Rawls. For my final choice, I new light on the thinking of the most important was torn between this book and the Justice who has sat on the Supreme Court in excellent “Great Brain” series—see decades." how I just managed to get two book Judge Stephen F. Williams of the D.C. Circuit plugs into one?—but Where the Red Fern Grows wins out for its touching OUT NOW IN HARDBACK | $29.99 look at childhood grit, love, sacrifice, and hope.

Heather Wilhelm is a NATIONAL REVIEW For more information,visit ONLINE columnist and a senior contributor to Cambridge.org/Scalia the Federalist.

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longview2_QXP-1127940387.qxp 9/27/2017 3:10 PM Page 50

The Long View BY ROB LONG

Our suggestion: Make soccer soldiers captured in Iraq, Syria, “America’s game” by incorporating Afghanistan, and the Kurdish In de pen - the flag and the national anthem into dent Zone. Each tournament can begin play. Begin each game with a display with a loud and violent protest as the of firearms—fun, breezy gunplay that American national anthem is sung. celebrates soccer’s—and soccer fans’ Memorandum —love of the Second Amend ment. Use MEN’S HOCKEY the “kiss cam” technique during soc- Hockey suffers from its identity cer’s many, many slow passages to as a Canadian—translation: anti- TO: Programming zoom in on foreign-looking spectators American—sport. To increase its FROM: Publicity and Promotion and demand they show their citizen- popularity here in the United States IN RE: Popularizing non-hot sports ship credentials to the camera. (In a fun and position it to replace professional way, of course . . .) A failure to provide football as a patriotic, pro-American Dear Team: convincing proof of legal-resident sta- pastime, we suggest the following As you all know, ESPN’s ratings tus will result in merry and gripping action steps: have been in a steep decline for the past halftime programming. 1. Remove all Canadians from two or three years. There’s no use in The key here is to forge a link in the Amer ican hockey teams and replace sugar-coating it—we need to address sports fan’s mind between patriotism them with real Americans, or at least our weaknesses across the entire plat- and soccer. deny Canadian players on American form and the entire menu of sports Also suggested: replacing the hex - teams the right to use French-sounding offerings we’re currently programming. ag onal design of the soccer ball with names. To that end, the Publicity and Pro - one that resembles the head of a well- 2. Make the puck bigger, so it shows motions Department has just com- known terrorist, a Hollywood progres- up more clearly on television. Perhaps pleted a pretty comprehensive review sive, or the current secretary general of explore a tie-in with a large fast-casual of our marketing practices and oppor- the United Nations. restaurant chain by refashioning the tunities, and we’ve compiled these puck into a hardened rubber Big Mac concrete suggestions to improve our PROFESSIONAL BOWLING or Whopper. audience share. While professional bowling has 3. Allow legal representation be - Our strategy is simple: Let’s try to been stalwart for almost a century, the fore and during any stay in the penalty increase the overall popularity of growth potential is not there. Stagnant box. Americans love to sue and be some of our lower-cost—and higher- viewership and declines among sur- sued and enjoy courtroom-style ath- margin—sports offerings by leverag- vey respondents who identify as letic competition. ing the current sports profile in the “likely to bowl in the next four years” culture at large, and by taking advan- and “have enjoyed bowling one to WOMEN’S BASKETBALL tage of football’s current troubles in three times during lifetime” suggest The WNBA presents the biggest the PR arena. that drastic and decisive action must challenge in terms of viewer apathy Specific recommendations to follow: be taken. and lack of interest. Bowling, unfortunately, is already Our recommendation is that three MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER seen as a quintessentially American or more professional athletes now The problem here, as we analyze it, sport. The best strategy here is to at - playing in the Women’s National is that professional soccer is still tempt to create notoriety and contro- Basketball Association go immedi- tainted by a vaguely “European” versy in an effort to remind American ately on a violent interstate crime identity. The games are long—often a sports fans that bowling remains an spree, carefully uploading footage of sign of European influence—and activity that is theoretically interesting their actions to all relevant social they regularly conclude in a tedious to watch. media. The crime spree should cover no-winner fashion, with both teams Our strategy rests on two key mul tiple time zones, include both unable to score at all. For many insights: one, that Americans are con- streaming video and Instagram im - Americans, this smacks of European- cerned about terrorism and the prolifer- age ry, and involve acts of such de - style socialism, and especially (in ation of weapons of mass destruction; prav ity and notoriety that viewers light of the zero-scoring, everyone- and two, that Americans are fascinated will finally be interested in watching loses outcomes) French socialism. As by other cultures and faiths. a game and knowing the names of at a result, the television ratings for What we suggest, then, is an entire- least some of the participants. Major League Soccer games are no- ly fundamentalist-Muslim bowling Again, these are just suggestions— tor i ous ly low and are often so tiny as league made up of the current in - culled from a brainstorming session to be impossible to measure with any mates of the federal detention facility and presented as points of departure statistical accuracy. in Guantanamo Bay along with ISIS for our discussions later this week.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Take a Small Knee

OW that we’ve all agreed to politicize sports, we “God Bless America,” or the digital referee ever says have to ask ourselves: What else must be ruined “There’s a flag down on the play” without saying “And that’s by petty, divisive politics? This civil society a yellow piece of cloth signifying an infraction, not the red- N isn’t going to spoil itself, you know. It takes and-white-striped rectangular object that symbolizes aggres- work. We can all pitch in! Let’s see what else requires decent, sion and oppression,” then you take the knee. conscientious people to take a knee in protest. In a perfect and just world, the game-controller’s motion- BOARDGAMES. It goes without saying that Monopoly detecting sensors will detect whether you have kneeled and should be shunned for its ruthless exploitation of the pro- this information will be sent to your online profile; in mul- letariat, who are dehumanized into playing pieces such as tiplayer games, other gamers will see whether you’ve a hat, or a shoe. The game of Life locks its players into kneeled, how many times, and for how long, and thus deter- heteronormative conformity, with the successful path mine whether you have demonstrated sufficient awareness. defined as marriage and career. Sorry is permitted if reti- Whether to kneel will be left up to the player, but he tled “I Apologize for Unconsciously Manifesting My might be surprised to get a message that says YOU HAVE Privilege,” but all non-minority players must agree at the UNLOCKED THE WHITE-SUPREMACIST LEVEL 1 BADGE and find outset not to play. his account disabled. Checkers is okay if the term “King me!”—so monarchical, Why stop with competitive events, though? We can politi- smh—is replaced by “Please elect me the thought-leader for cize anything. the study group,” but chess cannot escape its feudal, warlike PIZZA. How can we ruin pizza? (Besides order it in New origins and may be played only if everyone agrees that the York, of course.) Well, it’s obviously cultural appropriation king may behave like the queen if it identifies as such. if it’s made by anyone who isn’t Italian, and it’s disrespectful Verdict: Take a small knee. to Italian culture if it has pineapples, which the Italians didn’t SPELLING BEES. It is unacceptable to use the term “bee” in have. I’m sorry but who gave you permission to add them? a light-hearted fashion when honeybee colonies around the Hitler? Did Hitler say it was okay? globe are dying off because of GMOs and pesticides and cli- Also, pineapples were grown by capitalist oligopolies that mate change. The competition should be changed to Word- displaced native Polynesian cultures and paid slave wages, Deconstruction Performance, in which the student is given a so they’re problematic to begin with. It’s worse if you add word, is asked to spell it the way he thinks it should be Canadian bacon, which otherizes the bacon by singling out spelled, and then describes the oppressive structure it sup- its national origin, implying that American bacon is the only ports. Example: true bacon and all other bacons must be qualified. You might “The word is ‘parliamentarianism.’” as well eat it wearing a Klan sheet. “Parliamentarianism. Uh . . . par, l, a, m, i, n, t, r, ism. Verdict: Take a partial knee. Meaning: a system that provides a fictional sense of partici- SLEEPING. You might think that sleeping is not political, pation in representative government, masking the influence but since the contemporary term for being socially aware is of corporate control.” “woke,” being asleep is literally the opposite of being Verdict: full knee. attuned to the social issues of the day. You should probably BOWLING. If the study of intersectionality teaches us take a knee before getting into bed, although not to pray; reli- anything, it’s how various forms of oppression are con- gion has long been used as a means of oppression. nected. You cannot discuss race without discussing gender Sleep if you must, but set your phone to make a sound if without discussing class without discussing an economic there’s a Twitter notification about Trump. Train yourself system that invents such fraudulent concepts as the rental to be socially active in your dreams, so that instead of a of shoes—and then performs a ritualized disinfection dream about giving a speech naked, it’s about a naked spraying, as if the shoes had been contaminated by some- speech before a Body-Positivity Seminar. If you have a one not like you. dream about falling, you should be saved by a group of Bowling trains the citizen to think only in terms of his own parachutists who have the diversity found on the cover of a lane. True intersectional bowling would let you throw your college-admissions brochure. And dream that everyone’s ball across several lanes diagonally without being penal- loans are forgiven. ized—but no, the System is set up with literal gutters that In short, strive to make everything political, and berate prevent you from thinking outside your “lane,” or particular those who do not conform to your new standards. You may form of oppression. lose most of your “friends,” but there are millions of Verdict: both knees. strangers on the Internet eager to approve of your newfound VIDEO-GAME FOOTBALL. You’d think this would be obvi- activism. Until you balk when something you really like is ous: If the video game starts with the national anthem or suddenly bad, in which case you’re Hitler. By the way, they spell it “Hitler,” but it’s pronounced Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. “Robespierre.”

5 1 books_QXP-1127940387.qxp 9/26/2017 8:33 PM Page 52 Books, Arts & Manners

lay elsewhere. In the preface to a 1968 the two men shared a curly-haired, musta- The Many- collection of stories, he confessed a mer- chioed look. More significantly, they cenary motive: “The contents of this book wrote with irreverent humor, an ear for are samples of work I sold in order to vernacular language, and skepticism Sided Sci-Fi finance the writing of the novels.” about American power. Whereas Twain Perhaps Vonnegut was being modest or condemned the Spanish–American War, Master facetious—he could be both—but then Vonnegut was a Cold War liberal. he again he really may have meant what he voted for Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s JOHN J. MILLER wrote. Whatever the case, fame arrived and mocked Reagan in Mother Jones as the next year, following the publication “an actor who pretends to steer the United of his breakout book Slaughterhouse- States of America.” Five. It blended a world-weary pacifism The lives of Vonnegut and Reagan with a semi-autobiographical account included peculiar intersections. In of the Allied bombing of Dresden, Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut wrote of which Vonnegut had survived as a pris- a Cadillac that sported a bumper sticker: oner of war, plus zany elements such as “Reagan for President!” Modern readers time travel and an alien abduction. sometimes regard this detail as an aston- Slaughterhouse-Five showed up at exact- ishing example of political prescience, ly the right moment for college students though it was really just a sign of the who were protesting the Vietnam War. In times, as Reagan’s name was in the air its aftermath, the Baby Boom generation following the 1968 Republican con- Complete Stories, by Kurt Vonnegut turned Vonnegut into its postmodernist vention. (Another bumper sticker in (Seven Stories Press, 911 pp., $45) laureate, allowing the author to abandon Slaughterhouse-Five reads “Impeach the short stories that had once sustained earl Warren”—a right-of-center cause he cover of the August 1953 him and focus almost exclusively on the that did not fare nearly as well.) Then issue of Ladies’ Home Journal novels he’d been writing in near obscu- there was their General electric connec- showed a woman wearing a rity since 1952’s Player Piano. tion. Several years before Vonnegut sup- polka-dot swim cap and smil- That’s too bad, because “D.P.” and plied “D.P.” to General Electric Theater, ingT in foamy blue water. The text below many of Vonnegut’s other contributions to he worked as a publicist for the company her image advertised several articles but the fiction-publishing magazines of the in Schenectady, N.Y. That made him a not “D.P.,” a touching short story inside 1950s and 1960s are quite good. Some are corporate colleague of Reagan’s. Reagan about a boy in post-war Germany who is sentimental romances (“Long Walk to “was on the road all the time, lecturing the orphaned son of a German mother Forever”). Others question corporate con- to chambers of commerce and power and an African-American father—and formity (“Deer in the Works”). The best companies and so on about the evils of what happens when he sees a black GI shine with professional polish, products socialism,” wrote Vonnegut in 1999. for the first time. In 1958, “D.P.” of a now-defunct commercial market. “We never met, so I remain a socialist.” became source material for General “Agents and editors back then could tell a The anecdote is charming rather than Electric Theater, the CBS show hosted writer how to fine-tune a story as though angry: Vonnegut at his amusing best. by Ronald Reagan. Sammy Davis Jr., they were pit mechanics and the story Near the end of his life, however, he making his debut as a television actor, were a race car,” wrote Vonnegut in the often sank into witless partisanship. In A starred as the soldier. As Davis recounted introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box. Man without a Country (2005), for in his autobiography, Reagan loved the These works and more are on full dis- example, he quoted lines about mercy tale: “It’s going to be a wonderful play in Complete Stories, which pulls and peace from the Sermon on the episode,” said the future president. together for the first time in a single mas- Mount. Then, without explanation or The man behind “D.P.”—an abbrevia- sive book all the short stories Vonnegut argument—because the truth to him was tion for “displaced person,” or what today ever wrote. Lovingly assembled by so glaringly self-evident—he comment- we might call a “refugee”—was Kurt Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield— ed: “Not exactly planks in the Republican Vonnegut, an Indiana native and former a professor at the University of North - platform. Not exactly George W. Bush, infantryman who in the 1950s had be- ern Iowa and a longtime friend of Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff.” come a struggling writer of fiction. he Vonnegut’s, respectively—they number Admirers treated Vonnegut as a sage, earned paychecks for his short stories nearly a hundred. Fewer than half saw but he could be a sloppy thinker. In 1985, from top-flight venues such as Collier’s publication before Vonnegut’s death in when Vonnegut made his first and only and The Saturday Evening Post as well as 2007, many came out posthumously, appearance on Firing Line, William F. Ladies’ Home Journal and Cosmopolitan and a handful are available only now. Buckley Jr. introduced him as “a distin- (which, as he quipped years later, “wasn’t Vonnegut’s fondest fans regard him as guished American man of letters.” As always a sex manual”). Yet his ambition a latter-day Mark Twain. Superficially, Buckley turned to the program’s subject,

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which was free speech, he quoted Vonne - Stories. In an essay on Vonnegut’s futur- gut’s own words: “What do I want my istic fiction, Klinkowitz does his best to Providence books to accomplish? Well, I hope even- explain them, but his best is weak: “The tually to destroy the American army as an government that mandates equality as effective fighting force.” Buckley grinned practiced in this story is neither liberal And a Pope as he went in for the kill: “It seems to me nor conservative, but rather self-styled that if you destroy the effective fighting government per se.” What this means is KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ force, there isn’t much left there to unclear, though at some level it’s a tired Lessons in Hope: My Unexpected Life with intimidate those who would want to take exercise in moral equivalence. ex- St. John Paul II, by George Weigel away our freedom.” Almost immediate- trapo lating the nightmare world of ly, Vonnegut retreated: “My politics are “harrison Bergeron” from the Left’s (Basic, 368 pp., $32) grotesque because I exaggerate.” In writ- egalitarian obsessions doesn’t demand a ing about the exchange, Vonnegut biogra- vivid imagination—especially today, hen Sister Mary euphemia, pher Charles J. Shields concluded that when they’re surging past previous flood the principal at Cathedral Buckley had “filleted” his guest. marks on American campuses and at the School on Mulberry Street So it might come as a surprise that offices of Google. And so the story lives. in Baltimore, assigned Vonnegut’s best short story—and per- Yet conservatives who have rejected WGeorge Weigel’s eighth-grade class to haps the best thing he ever wrote—is a Vonnegut may suffer from their own lack pray for the conversion of “W-L-A-D-Y- favorite of conservatives and libertarians. of vision. A story from 1962, “2BR02B,” S-L-A-W G-O-M-U-L-K-A” during “harrison Bergeron” first appeared in dramatizes the inhumanity of euthanasia Lent, Divine Providence knew what 1961, in The Magazine of Fantasy and and population control. Vonnegut later nobody in the first Catholic diocese in Science Fiction (not in Galaxy Science updated it as “Welcome to the Monkey the United States could have at the time. Fiction, as the editors of Complete Stories house,” in which a “World Government” “had anyone told me that, some thirty claim). here’s how it begins: “The year encourages “ethical suicide, which years later, I would write books in which was 2081, and everybody was finally consist[s] of going to the nearest Suicide [Communist Party boss] Wladyslaw equal. They weren’t only equal before Parlor and asking a hostess to kill you Gomulka’s complex role in post-war God and the law. They were equal every painlessly while you lay on a Barca- Polish history figured prominently, I which way.” It turns out that they possess lounger.” Another tale, 1952’s “Poor would have thought the prognosticator an equality of mediocrity enforced by Little Rich Town,” is a defense of small- mad,” Weigel writes in this new book. “the United States handicapper General.” town customs as they confront an import- “Yet there it is.” The government seeks to eradicate indi- ed cult of efficiency. Vonnegut was a When Pope Benedict visited the viduality, excellence, and beauty, and so liberal, but in his art it’s also possible to United States in 2008, the archdiocese of smart people have radios implanted in detect a Burkean traditionalist who values Washington took out ads on the Metro, their ears to disrupt their thoughts, tal- individual worth and genuine diversity in proclaiming: “One who has hope lives ented ballerinas perform with weights the face of an obliterating progressivism. differently.” The words came from that to inhibit their motion, and television Conservatives will spot the faint outlines, pontiff’s encyclical on hope, Spe Salvi. announcers suffer from speech impedi- but only if they’re first willing to look. On account of his experience with John ments. A character rejects a suggestion of In 1966, Vonnegut reviewed a dictio- Paul II—writing his authoritative biogra- reform: “Pretty soon we’d be right back to nary for the New York Times. he ques- phy and becoming his friend—Weigel the dark ages again, with everybody com- tioned several of its biographical choices, thinks differently, too, drawn into a trust peting against everybody else.” The story wondering, for example, why it had an in God’s providence. This might in fact ends in violence and gallows humor. entry for norman Mailer but not one for be the chief component of the relation- “harrison Bergeron” is a small mas- William Styron. Then he wrote this line: ship that made the books possible: a terpiece of dystopian literature, in the “And are we to be told throughout eternity shared insistence that God knows what tradition of Brave New World, Nineteen this and no more about Alger Hiss: ‘born he’s doing, a confidence of the same kind Eighty-Four, and, to a lesser extent, 1904, U.S. public official’? And why is that led Poles to break out into “We want Vonnegut’s own Player Piano. Buckley there no entry for Whittaker Chambers?” God” for twelve minutes during what enjoyed “harrison Bergeron” so much Most liberals wouldn’t even have thought Weigel calls “the nine Days that changed that in 1965 he reprinted it in nATIOnAL to ask the question—and those who did the history of the 20th century,” when ReVIeW. “Vonnegut is one of the handful might actually have approved of the deci- John Paul returned home for the first of genuinely great writers of science fic- sion to whitewash the rotten legacy of hiss time as pope in 1979. tion,” said an editorial introduction. On and ignore the greatness of Chambers. “In salvation history—that inner core Firing Line two decades later, Vonnegut Vonnegut was different, and this is why of world history in which God’s purposes expressed his gratitude to Buckley: his fiction stands a good chance to last. are worked out through the action of “There was one time, incidentally, where If we’re still reading dictionaries in divine grace on individual lives—there I was in print in only one place in the 2081—and if we haven’t forfeited our are neither happenstances nor coinci- world, and that was in your publication; language to Orwell’s newspeak or sur- dences,” Weigel writes. “Rather, what and I must thank you for that.” rendered our minds to the handicapper appears to be sheer happenstance or The themes of “harrison Bergeron” General—let’s hope they contain an entry coincidence is an aspect of Providence apparently puzzle the editors of Complete for Vonnegut. we don’t yet grasp.”

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John Paul II believed this about the fact writes, that “Providence acting through This proved crucial to the endeavor that that he was never killed during the Nazi Our Lady, not ballistics, guided the bullet became “the pivot” of his life. And, occupation of Poland, when friends of that missed his abdominal aorta by a few although he was a lifelong devourer of his—including other seminarians and millimeters. He was spared, and for a rea- history, it was only when Weigel finally priests—were. Weigel recounts that John son. There was a mission to complete, and got to know Poland on the ground that Paul, in a memoir about his vocation, the Lord of history would see that he was he learned more fully the essence of given the opportunity to complete it.” Communism and its failure, and this remembered a fellow underground sem- That mission involved leading “a understanding became thoroughly en - inarian, Jerzy Zachuta, with whom he used to serve Mass for Archbishop Adam culture-forming Church that shaped pub- twined with his recounting of the life of Stefan Sapieha. . . . One day Zachuta lic life through an educated and engaged John Paul II. didn’t show up. [Karol] Wojtyla [the laity: a Church that was not identified He explains how the relationship future John Paul II] went to his friend’s with any political party but that taught a between them developed: home after the early morning Mass and vision of the free and virtuous society What struck him, I decided, was that discovered what had happened: The that animated all of society.” we had come by different routes to a Gestapo had come the night before and And Providence does not miss a beat. arrested Jerzy Zachuta, who was later common understanding of the inner Which is why Weigel tells about his own dynamic of the overthrow of European shot. As John Paul wrote more than a half eighth-grade preparation: “Please don’t tell century later, “Sometimes I would ask Communism. He had a well-developed myself: So many young people of my own me those weeks of Lenten prayer in 1960 theory of history: He thought that culture age are losing their lives, why not me? for Comrade Gomulka’s conversion— was the principal driver of history over Today I know it was not mere chance.” seemingly unanswered—didn’t have the long haul, not politics and not eco- something to do with planting in me a nomics. It was a deeply Slavic view of He believed this, too, about the day he seed that would finally flower in a passion How Things Worked. . . . For my part, was shot in St. Peter’s Square. As Weigel for Polish history and literature—and a research in Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1991 had both confirmed and filled out writes: “Some might have thought it a determination to tell the story of a then- my sense that much more was going on mere coincidence that a professional 40-year-old auxiliary bishop of Krakow in the Revolution of 1989 than a rejection assassin, shooting at point-blank range on whom Gomulka and his associates fool- of Communism’s political cruelties and May 13, 1981, the day the Church’s litur- ishly thought a mystically inclined intel- economic idiocies. Something had stirred gy commemorated Our Lady of Fatima, lectual they could manipulate.” in the souls of the people who made the failed to kill his target. But John Paul had God would prepare Weigel in other revolution, and that something had made come to a different understanding of his ways, too. A one-time seminary student, for a different kind of revolution: a “final life and of history. As he put it more than he was unenthusiastic about philoso- revolution.” It was not final in the sense once, ‘One hand fired, and another guid- phy, an essential field when it comes to of temporality (there would surely be other revolutions in the future), but it was ed, the bullet.’” He believed, Weigel understanding Wojtyla, but persevered. final in the sense of “final causality” or destiny—the destiny of the human spirit liberated in the truth.

M.A.C. Weigel continues: “That was John Paul EAST LANSING, MICHIGAN II’s view of things, too, and that agree- ment was the beginning of the bond On either side, the highway’s barren stretch between us.” Is dwarfed by the wide wastes of prairie grass, When Weigel finished his book The Its pale dry leaves weaved with dark heads of vetch End and the Beginning (2010), on John And clumps of sumac shimmering like glass. Paul’s final years, he thought he was done with the subject, that “there was To look on this, you’d think man had just come, no more to be said.” But “I was wrong”: Bloomed with the Queen Anne’s lace, and will not last; Lessons in Hope is a response to a What little he set down as soon succumb “yearning to get to know more personally To stands of pine and maple or wind’s blast. a saint who bent the course of history in a humane direction, and to know him in But, if you see the little streets built up ways that didn’t quite fit the genre of seri- On ancient marsh, the pool hall and brick church, ous biography.” He shares the result with Where we boys grew both conscious and corrupt readers, capturing the warmth and wis- Dispelling boredom, entering on the search dom of John Paul, including stories of his interactions over the years with Weigel’s For just what sort of men we should become, wife, Joan, and their children. For anyone You’ll see the place is thick with ghosts, is haunted in need of hope, this volume—with its By faces kissed, pain felt, and words that drum reliable understanding of history and Through time, as we sought what it was we wanted. Catholic witness, sound analysis, and the humor of both the author and the saint— —JAMES MATTHEW WILSON delivers in abundance.

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was not prepared to discover, or to redis- this to “give comfort to his poor wife,” Binding cover, was that they were questions for but also “because the power of the which the Church also provided answers.” Church wanted him kept out and she, Her fiction has accomplished this, with- who had spent her life in the Church’s Wounds out the droning quality of much devo- service, wanted him in.” tional literature. The Ninth Hour feels Her optimism is tempered by the NICK RIPATRAZONE painfully real, the lives of its characters realism of other nuns, such as Sister authentically messy. Salvation is just out Lucy, who think “all joy was thin ice.” of their reach. Yet Lucy and the other women have The novel begins in early February: their vocations, and they take in Annie, “Was there a moment of the year better who is paid $18 a week and fed. Her suited for despair?” Jim, a 32-year-old infant daughter Sally sleeps in a wicker Irish immigrant in Brooklyn, is alone in basket “fitted with towels and a pil- his apartment. He has convinced his lowslip” while Annie does chores, pregnant wife, Annie, “to go out to do her including “help[ing] Sister Illuminata shopping before full darkness [falls].” with the ironing.” Illuminata is “shrill McDermott methodically traces his in her demands, unbending in her rou- movements around the railroad flat, tine.” McDermott places the women which include reaching behind the stove together “in the basement of the con- The Ninth Hour, by Alice McDermott and removing the gas hose from the tap. vent, amid the dampness and the rising (Farrar, Straus, 256 pp., $26) The scene is somehow surreal and pre- steam, the baby asleep in her crib, the cise: Jim walks with the hose, reminisc- sheets or long johns hung out on the line,” EARLY 25 years ago, Ron ing about Annie, and about how he has and offers a window into the world of Hansen’s novel Mariette in recently lost his job. He sits on his bed, these religious. Ecstasy made convent life fodder for great literature. Hansen’sN exquisite, prose-poetic sen- The nuns’ habitual devotion is buoyed tences dressed a scintillating plot: Mariette, a beautiful 17-year-old postu- by the hope that the divine tips the lant with the Sisters of the Crucifixion, is scales of human folly toward justice. warned: “Don’t try to be exceptional; simply be a good nun.” God clearly has takes off his shoes, prays, and then puts They were not born into this life, but other plans, as “blood scribbles down her the tube to his mouth. He stands again, they do not speak of the world before the wrists and ankles and scrawls like red looks out the window, and “watche[s] convent: “The white horse-blinder bon- handwriting on the floor.” Her stigmata two nuns in black cloaks and white wim- nets they wore did more than limit their are scandalous. The nuns reject her. ples, their heads bent together, skim over peripheral vision. They reminded the Hansen’s novel considers what hap- the gray sidewalk.” Sisters to look only at the work at hand.” pens when habitual devotion cinctures Jim’s suicide starts The Ninth Hour The focus is on their labors, but emotions the heart from accepting wonder and on a dark note, but there’s never anoth- seep through. Sister Jeanne, “small and mystery. The Ninth Hour, the newest er macabre moment in McDermott’s soft-spoken and easily given to laughter novel from National Book Award winner novel. That’s a nod to her worldview, or tears,” often watches young Sally in the Alice McDermott, mines similar territo- but also to her method. In the next afternoon. Jeanne makes a “fairy story of ry. Cast largely with nuns and set in the scene, we are introduced to Sister St. sorts out of each of the Mysteries” of the early 20th century, the novel also shares Saviour, a Little Nursing Sister of the Rosary while the girl falls asleep. In Hansen’s ability to re-create a Catholic Sick Poor. She is 64 and has seen it those idle moments, Jeanne thinks of atmosphere in which faith suffuses all all—addiction, injury, and death. As Jim, and how the “madness with which things. Yet their styles and outcomes are she enters Annie’s apartment and suffering was dispersed in the world very different. Hansen’s paragraphs are moves past the police, she thinks not of defied logic.” peripatetic, their fragmentation a nod to judgment but of empathy: “We’re all Jim’s suicide reverberates through- the intertwining of doubt and belief. feeling it, [she] thought, in this vale of out the novel, collapsing the expanding McDermott’s prose is smooth and direct, tears: the weight of the low sky and the years of The Ninth Hour back into the which makes the accumulating turns of listless rain and the damp depths of this importance of a single moment. The the novel all the more shocking. endless winter.” nuns often speak of the fairness of God, McDermott has written: “I knew that But this is her vocation, and her how their habitual devotion is buoyed the questions I most wanted to ask as a advice to Annie is blunt: “What we must by the hope that the divine tips the novelist were the questions the Church do is to put one foot in front of the scales of human folly toward justice. A had already given language to. What I other.” For Annie, that means dinner and wish does not theology make—and a a place to stay—and, perhaps, a proper wish certainly does not bend the eccle- Mr. Ripatrazone is a staff writer for The Christian burial for her husband, despite sial authorities. Jim is refused a funeral Millions and a contributor to The Atlantic. his final act. Sister St. Saviour wanted Mass. In the thoughts of many of the

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nuns, and in the judgment of the Church, genre did not take off until the 1960s, a he has thrown his life away. Annie is Classics of decade in which institutions, govern- left unmoored, her prayers to God left mental or otherwise, began to be unanswered. regarded with skepticism. In 1962, John God’s fairness might be complicated, Conspiracy Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian but McDermott is a kind novelist—at Candidate—an adaptation of Richard least when it comes to giving her char- PETER TONGUETTE Condon’s novel about a Korean War sol- acters hope. Annie meets Mr. Costello, dier put through a round of brainwashing a milkman who offers her emotional ERTAIN films seem tailor- in order to catapult a figure operating escape. They are both suffering but made for a Friday night at under the influence of Communists into share “no mournful tales, then, of her home or a Sunday afternoon the White House—established a formula widowhood, of his frail wife.” They at a revival house. Think of to be followed by countless successors. spend a year talking with the comfort- Ca cozy romantic comedy such as The film is played sufficiently straight able distance of pleasant acquaintances, Stanley Donen’s Indiscreet (1958) or a not to be mistaken for a satire, à la Dr. until one day she hands him the key to heart-rending domestic drama such as Strangelove or One, Two, Three, but was her apartment, and they both have a Robert Mulligan’s Same Time, Next dotted with enough darkly comic details decision to make. Year (1978)—two fine films that, in never to be confused with a docudrama. At the same time, Sally is growing their strikingly warm and inviting ambi- In his choice of imagery, Franken - up, and though she and Annie are grow- ence, are easy to embrace. heimer signals that The Manchurian ing closer—“more and more like sisters But what about a mystery focused on Candidate was not intended as a solemn than mother and child,” one woman a wary proprietor of a surveillance busi- warning about Communism but as a kind notes—Sally is drawn to the religious ness? Or a thriller in which a small-time of life-size comic book rendered in crys- life. She spends recess in church, not investigative reporter goes up against a talline black and white. For example, the playing with the other children. She corporation that traffics in assassina- brainwashing endured by the soldier, tries on the habits of the Little Sisters. tion? Or a suspense yarn in which a CIA Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), is “Promised to Christ,” Illuminata quips employee squares off with insurgent depicted as a garden-club get-together to Annie. “What man accepts a promise forces within his agency? Films such as in which the ladies of the club are from a girl so young?” Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation revealed to be Chinese Communists. Annie is nervous. She doesn’t want to and Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View Later, Frankenheimer gets much mileage be left alone again. Sally sees the reli- (both 1974) and Sydney Pollack’s Three out of the item whose presence prompts gious life as sweet rebellion, and is Days of the Condor (1975) may be gritty Shaw to do as he’s told: a queen of dia- coaxed on a bit by the sisters. In the or grim, but they possess an undeniable monds plucked from a deck of cards. modern world, after all, what could be popcorn-movie appeal. Their cynical, Garnering a pair of Academy Award more countercultural than devoting conspiracy-tinged visions of clandestine nominations on its way to cult status, one’s life to God? In the convent’s base- corporations and duplicitous govern- The Manchurian Candidate breathed ment, Illuminata sings the right tune: ments belie their essential triviality. life into the paranoid-thriller genre. Two “Down here, we do our best to trans- In telling stories that bear scant years later, Frankenheimer’s follow- form what is ugly, soiled, stained, don’t resemblance to real life, these films— up—the military-coup fable Seven Days we? We send it back into the world like and dozens of other similar “paranoid in May—was released, followed in 1968 a resurrected soul. We’re like the priest thrillers” produced during the same by the decade’s most accomplished, in his confessional, aren’t we?” The old period—can be enjoyed because of, not albeit unlikeliest, entrant in the genre: nun catches herself, but it might be too in spite of, their implausibility. As in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. late. There’s a fine line between the listening to a tall tale or reading a novel Based on an Ira Levin novel, the film is ideal and the real when one is intoxicated by Agatha Christie, the satisfaction comes told from the perspective of a wide-eyed with the religious sense. in the assembling of scattered puzzle Catholic mother-to-be named Rosemary The Ninth Hour is a novel of ques- pieces. Reviewing The Parallax View, Woodhouse (Mia Farrow), who con- tions, but it builds from a concrete state- Time magazine critic Richard Schickel vinces herself that the child she is carry- ment: We are bound to our wounds from perceptively noted: “It is apparently com- ing is sought by a coterie of Satanists. the past. McDermott spends the first forting for many people to believe that Although Rose mary does not under- half of the novel sufficiently convincing the course of the world is changed more stand her situation in full—in fact, the us that the twists and turns and heart- by rational planning, however evil, than Satanists called forth the Devil to breaks of the second half are not simply it is by irrational individual actions.” impregnate her—the film presents a plausible but inevitable. The result is a Paranoid thrillers were made as early creepily credible picture of a paranoid fine novel and, perhaps surprisingly, a as the silent era—Fritz Lang’s Spies state of mind: Rosemary comes to re - rather dark one. A life of devotion is no (1928) is one notable example—but the gard nearly everyone she encounters, easy choice; one’s vocation and will are whether stranger or acquaintance, as a continuously tested. As Jeanne tells Mr. Tonguette has written about the arts for the Wall possible co-conspirator in the effort to Sally, “truth reveals itself.” Sometimes Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and separate her from her offspring. a good novel is needed to remind us that The New Criterion. He is the editor of Peter In one bravura sequence, Rosemary truth is often uncomfortable. Bogdanovich: Interviews. huddles inside a phone booth to call a

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physician in whom she has faith. “Dr. Hill, there’s a plot,” she plaintively insists. “There are plots against people, aren’t there?” For a few fearful moments, Rose- mary suspects that a man looming outside the booth is one of her pursuers—and, because Polanski’s camera remains trained on Rosemary and doesn’t cut to an angle that would reveal the man’s identity, so do we. Throughout the film, the direc- tor sustains a tone of general, pervasive unease; even the cover of a magazine Rosemary randomly picks up—the fa - mous edition of Time that asked “Is God Dead?”—seems to spell doom. In fact, a low-grade sense of society spinning out of control is found in many of the best paranoid thrillers. At one point in Klute (1971), a top-drawer mys- Warren Beatty in The Parallax View (1974) tery centered on a New York call girl, an FBI agent makes the following baseless assertion as though it were nothing more assigned to scour works of fiction for By the end of the decade, however, than a ho-hum fact of life: “There are hints of real-life plots, has a bull’s-eye paranoid thrillers began to lose their lus- thousands of honest, decent men who placed on him by factions within his orga- ter. James Bridges’s The China Syn - simply disappear every year.” This is, of nization. Yet, as is the case with many drome (1979) was too sanctimonious in course, highly unlikely. Yet, to liberal paranoid thrillers, the film convinces with its baldly stated objection to nuclear moviemakers in the early 1970s, the a smattering of details—offhand lines power, shorting entertainment for preach- twin sins of Richard Nixon’s presidency and incidental scenes—that manage to iness, while Pakula’s Rollover (1981) and the continuation of the Vietnam War plausibly hint at a sinister and unseen suffered from the opposite problem: The were evidence enough that the country larger conspiracy. Consider the scene film, though directed with admirable had come unglued. Not coincidentally, in which Joe places a call to the main flair and frenzy, was not even slightly that decade gave rise to the best, most office and the man answering the credible in its panic over the stability of sophisticated, and occasionally most de - phone, identified as “the Major,” leaves financial institutions. The gloom and lirious paranoid thrillers. him with the following ominous in - doom offered in such films was not in In The Conversation, surveillance- struction: “Walk away from the keeping with the mood of a country that business proprietor Harry Caul (Gene phone—don’t hang it up.” Or the clever, was confidently heading toward Ronald Hackman)—like Rosemary Woodhouse, fun-to-contemplate brainstorm Joe offers Reagan’s “morning in America.” Notably, identified as a Catholic—strives with an at one point: “Maybe there’s another CIA one of the most talented filmmakers of almost monastic intensity to decipher a inside the CIA.” the era, Philip Kaufman, kept up with the distorted line in an audio recording. The Parallax View opens with the times: After making the first-rate, science- Caul tinkers with the track until the line most impressive, and genuinely unset- fiction-inflected paranoid thriller In - emerges clearly: “He’d kill us if he got tling, scene in any paranoid thriller. On vasion of the Body Snatchers during the chance.” Because indistinct audio an almost blindingly bright, clear day, Jimmy Carter’s administration, he shift- can be even more mysterious than blurry journalist Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) and ed to the manly patriotism of The Right imagery, the film is more fun than a television colleague, Lee Carter (Paula Stuff during Reagan’s first term. Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up Prentiss), attend an unremarkable cam- In the end, is it altogether healthy to (1966), to which it owes much. As it paign event for a fictitious senator at the continually absorb so much pop culture turned out, The Conversation was so in Space Needle in Seattle. Then, with little in which the structures of society are tune with the mood of the public—or, obvious foreshadowing, the senator is doubted and the worst is assumed about at least, the mood of upscale parts of felled by a pair of bullets; two waiters in those in power? A surer, saner world- Los Angeles—that it was nominated red jackets are seen brandishing guns, view can be found in films that demon- for an Academy Award for Best Picture but only one makes his way to the slop- strate the resiliency of institutions, alongside a far better-known film by ing top of the Space Needle, from which such as John Ford’s gushing tip-of-the- the same director: The Godfather Part he ultimately tumbles to his death. That hat to West Point, The Long Gray Line II (which won). last moment is silent except for the pat- (1955), or Otto Preminger’s more Less respectable—and certainly less ter of shoes, the distant horns of tug- restrained salute to our legal system, wrapped up with theological matters—is boats, and the gunman’s scream. The Anatomy of a Murder (1959). The Three Days of the Condor, which boasts scene is marked by its jumble of con- mindless fun of paranoid thrillers is an especially far-fetched plot: CIA flicting signals—it’s a puzzle that will undeniable but is probably best con- PARAMOUNT PICTURES employee Joe Turner (Robert Redford), take the whole film to solve. sumed in small doses.

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jewel—a forbidden fruit, one might say— Film that the guests aren’t supposed to touch. They do, of course, and thereafter things Appetite for go from bad to worse: Their sons show up, one kills the other, the house gets crowded, Creation and then a pipe bursts and everything floods and Mother chases them all out. ROSS DOUTHAT That’s the first act; from there things get weirder, more gonzo, and ultimately HE universe rests on two di - horrifying once Mother finally has the vine principles, one masculine baby that the title tells us to expect. No and one feminine. The mascu- further spoilers, but again, you can read line principle is restless and the Bible if you like: The allegory is not creative,T the feminine principle nurturing precisely subtle, even if I’m still trying to and custodial. The masculine principle figure out which Biblical figure Kristen feeds on conflict, suffering, desire, loss; Wiig, who shows up briefly as Him’s the feminine principle thrives on beauty, publicist, is supposed to represent. stability, order. The masculine principle But it’s a Biblical allegory with a very draws on the feminine principle’s love in Jennifer Lawrence in Mother! non-Biblical theology. In Noah, his last order to create, but wounds and weakens movie, which many people hated but I Her every time He does. This pushes the inhabits a vast, drafty, and rattling Victor - partially admired, Aronofsky did some- universe into a cycle, in which the eternal ian that’s set down without paths or drive- thing interesting with the source material: He is perpetually allowing the eternal She ways in the middle of a golden meadow, He relocated God’s ambivalence about and what they make together to be pil- circumscribed by distant woods. Her the human race in the flood story into the laged, mistreated, ravaged, abused, and home has been fixed up from a prior character of Noah, making the ark- even crucified, in order to further His cre- burned-out state of disrepair (the antique builder wrestle with whether humanity ative visions, His dream of a constantly kitchen is particularly lovely), but some of deserves to survive the flood. In Mother! outspreading love. And at a certain point the wings are still a bit derelict, the base- the same basic question is at issue, but Her patience runs out, and She turns on ment is a clammy tomb, and she spends this time the deck is stacked against the Him and on creation itself, bringing on her days working in the unfinished spaces, human race: From the first shot to the the apocalypse and setting a new cycle pondering paint colors (yellow is a strong last, we see everything from the baffled, into motion. contender), and worrying about her man. abused point of view of the extra-Biblical I’m not sure about every detail of this That man, hereafter Him, is played by Mother Earth/Sacred Feminine, who gets cosmology—it’s possible that the mascu- Javier Bardem as a monster of artistic ego, ignored and mistreated and taken for line principle precedes the feminine prin- a writer with a God complex that really granted and despoiled, when all she ciple rather than being co-eternal—but I’ll makes sense only once you recognize (I’m wants to do is be alone with God and fin- leave that to future theologians to wrangle not spoiling anything; if you’ve read ish decorating His house! over in the ecumenical councils that will Genesis you’ll recognize what’s going on Aronofsky has told interviewers that doubtless be called to figure out exactly pretty quickly) that God is exactly who he was thinking about climate change what to make of the weirdest, most hate- he’s supposed to be. He has a creative while making Mother! and you can read able, most blasphemous and ridiculous block, which his beautiful wife (“my the movie as a kind of anti-humanist, and also kind-of-fascinating movie of the goddess,” he calls her) and gradually borderline-nihilist eco-fable in which the year, Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! transforming house (“I want to make a world would have been perfect if our For now, I’ve told you all you need to paradise,” she says) have not managed to species hadn’t come along to mess things know to feel smarter than everyone else in undo, and it’s also affecting his perfor- up. Or you can shake yourself free from the theater should you see it. When they mance in the bedroom. But there is a solu- the feminine principle’s “don’t touch that walk out with a what-the-holy-heckity- tion to his writer’s block: He just needs sink!” perspective and see things from the frick-was-that look on their face, you can their fixer-upper solitude to be disrupted point of view of Bardem’s Him and his consult the world-picture sketched above by a steadily increasing cast of violent, creations. In that case, you’d end up with and say, with some authority, Well, you see, obnoxious, needy human beings. the cosmology I started with, in which the universe rests . . . etc., etc. If someone The first to arrive—or to appear, you both He and She have a role to play in is still standing there when you’ve fin- might even say ex nihilo—is a nameless keeping the whole drama going. ished, you’ve made a friend for life. And if Man played by Ed Harris, who turns out If this theological noodling has exhaust- anyone says, “But I thought it was a movie to be an immense fan of his host’s first ed you, you’ll probably be exasperated about real estate and the folly of renovating book. He is welcomed and given a room, by the movie. And it is exasperating— old houses,” just say, “Well, it’s that too.” despite protests from Lawrence’s Mother, and suffocating and strange and perverse The home renovator, to use the non- and once they’ve welcomed him, his and kind of terrible. But a certain kind theological level of plot summary, is a wife, Woman, turns up the next day. of moviegoer will be transfixed. You young wife played by Jennifer Lawrence, Played by Michelle Pfeiffer, she slinks might be one of them. There’s only one PARAMOUNT PICTURES listed as Mother in the credits, who around the house eyeing a precious way to find out.

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streets, may settle in for a night with take- else?) The bulk of the lobby has been City Desk out, dogs, and sleeping bags. But the next turned into the work zone of contractors. day they are gone. So large chaos makes Saws saw, hammers hammer, orders are Urban small order. Even the sidewalk, though, given, always in shouts, whether or not now wears mesh walls, antiseptic but eerie, there is sawing or hammering. One after- like the boarding tunnel of an airplane noon the senior contractor was directing Symphony whose destination might be the next world. his junior, who stood on a ladder drilling Are students being subjected to this? into a girder. A shower of sparks fell, There is a charter school nestled within the graceful as a peacock’s tail. July Fourth in school; parents of every race and status September. I nodded to the doorman, who form a line as for a rock concert in order to I hope was wearing an asbestos shirt. apply for their kids; the winners file out at “Luxury building!” noon, two by two, girls in jumpers, boys in That is what it is, and given the demand neckties, to be shepherded to the nearest for apartments in the city, rightly so. park to play. I do not, however, see the Economic warming brings storm surges of regulars—older, boisterous, dressed any- gentrification. The historic capital of black how, requiring school police to keep them America, where one would rather have from congregating under the scaffolding been a lamppost than governor of Georgia, RICHARD BROOKHISER for chin-ups and pick-ups. Does some is trending white. The oldest outer bor- quirk of regulation cause the difference? ough long ago flipped to beard models and WO buildings on my block are No quirk saves the tenants in the wing of novelists. The dreariest outer borough, undergoing repairs, and I live my building that abuts the school, who Drug Ho Hell, where presidential candi- in one of them. report the sound of endless construction, dates used to stop to furrow their brows at The building next door is a an all-hours hard-hat serenade. blight, is coming up in the world. My schoolT from the 1910s, large, plain, cubi- cal. For the longest time it has been girdled with scaffolding, but then this summer The street is half-blocked, something new appeared. The entire build- ing was wrapped in a mesh curtain. Lit up the sidewalk is spooky, and your at night, it glowed, like an ice palace or a new best friend is racket. maximum-security prison. The mesh was to keep in fragments of whatever was So the street is half-blocked, the side- cousin, who still lives where my parents being applied to or extracted from the walk is spooky, and your new best friend were born, four hours upstate, reports that structure; the lights were to allow work to is racket. Our building meanwhile is suf- two refugee restaurateurs from Brooklyn be done after hours. The side street on its fering a renovation of its lobby. Nothing opened a fancy sandwich shop there. flank was sliced in half lengthwise, and wrong with the old one. Nothing right Given such pressures, anything in the city the near half turned into a work zone. with it either, but I wasn’t expecting San with walls and a roof qualifies as luxury. Bulldozers moved material back and Simeon. Nevertheless, for whatever rea- But still . . . And I know noise is part of forth at ground level, a crane hoisted it to son (if you are thinking, capital improve- the cityscape, like glamour and pollution. higher floors. It was all done with a cer- ment = rent hike, you are probably My neighborhood contains a hospital and tain gigantic delicacy, like a bodybuilder thinking correctly), management chose to a firehouse. I have done radio interviews sidling along a tightrope, but it was irk- do a redo. The glass front doors were over the phone during which the heartland some for traffic, which passed the pain on papered with the notices the city requires host has asked, “Is anything wrong?” I to bystanders. A plane tree across the for untoward circumstances—rat poison, hadn’t heard the sirens. Once my wife and street, four stories tall, lost half of itself in failed restaurant inspections, building I were staying in a homestay in Jogjakarta. a sideswipe. A parked car got tapped on renovations. The walls and ceilings of the The brochure had been a bit deceptive, its left rear fender and rear-ended the car long entry hallway and of the lobby itself showing a charming colonial-style room in front of it, which did the same. were stripped down to the concrete. The of which unfortunately there was only The passage beneath the scaffolding that light fixtures were removed, replaced one, the rest being post-independence bar- covers you, down the block to my very with blazing bare bulbs in yellow latticed racks. Two Australians occupied the nice door, actually became cleaner. The custo- baskets, like lacrosse sticks, their wiring room. Then at breakfast they asked ner- dians of the school, who used to heave encased in metal cables, looped like vously whether they could switch: The swollen stinking bags of garbage onto the bunting. The look is interrogation room street (theirs was a front room) was so sidewalk for pick-up and for vermin buf- meets disaster relief. Our doormen stand noisy. We jumped at the chance. One fets, have had to dispose of them else- at their station, like so many boys on the motorbike all night? Two? Heaven. where. Ditto with the endless quantities of burning deck, taking packages and buzz - So I am street- and sound-wise. But superannuated school furniture: chairs ing up guests as usual, while breathing something about the double hit is pain- with writing arms, old wooden desks, glum sick-building dust. (They have a union, ing the hairs of my ears. I am a walker, a metal filing cabinets. The homeless, whom which has gone on a couple of strikes in listener, a learner, a citizen of the streets, a progressive mayor has returned to the my time; does it do, you know, anything a citizen. Enough.

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Happy Warrior BY DANIEL FOSTER Everything All the Time

T’S no longer the case that technologies of communica- goo-covered with self-righteousness, who threw themselves tion merely accelerate the public discourse, they now like junkies at every last special-teams assistant and ball boy, ensure that every possible public discourse happens panhandling for react quotes and condemnations. I simultaneously. It’s not one damned thing after another. There was the frenzied anticipation of Sunday morning, It’s every damned thing all the time. by which time the kneelers were being posed alternately And so in place of a deliberative democracy, in which we as traitors and as saints, and the standers too, and their as a people could acknowledge, and even tolerate, our differ- quarrel was not anymore about the substance of the protest, ences while working through complex tensions at a pace or even its form, but a tribal referendum on the Very consistent with social cohesion, we get a no-holds-barred Meaning of America. battle royale in which all things are always at stake—in There were so many finely laminated layers of nonsense which we’re fighting every culture battle, past, present, and baked into the final product—as if you’d subbed bullshit for future, right the hell now. butter in a croissant recipe—that I The professional Left has been all found it surreal that anyone could over this for a while. Your neoliberalism expect me to have a substantive opinion is racist. Your anti-racism is sexist. Your on it at all. It was like being asked by feminism is transphobic. And your Kafka’s six-foot talking beetle what I intersectionality is appropriated. It’s not thought of the Electoral College. enough to be woke, you need to be woke But finally there is the endless recur- and tweaking on amphetamine salts. rence of the whole thing, the grim real- But now the Right has gotten in on the ization that this is the umpteenth of game, and we’ve proven to be naturals. umpteen-hundred such culture-war And so let’s talk about football, I guess, and all the little jigs we will be made to dance until we mercifully collapse dumb things that made the “take the knee” controversy the from exhaustion. biggest dumb thing yet in an epoch of big dumb things. Because let’s face it, I’m writing this—and you’re reading There were the competing rhetorics, that Colin Kaeper - it—under duress. None of us asked for this, but there’s no nick was without a job because he was atrocious and that he way out from under it. was without a job because of a league-wide blackball over Poor tackle Alejandro Villanueva knows this better than his protest of police brutality. But the truth lay so obviously most. An ex–Army Ranger, he was made a hero, and a in between—Kaepernick is a middling NFL talent with a prop, by well-intended Americans for being the lone Pitts - specific skill set in declining demand who’d probably have a burgh Steeler to be seen hand-on-heart during the anthem job if he were either better or free of baggage—that all the that Sunday. partisans insisting on the antipodes knew better or really But Villanueva wasn’t trying to make a statement. He was ought to have. honoring the flag as he otherwise would have and standing There was the tossed-off ephemerality of the president’s out in front of his teammates (some of whom can be seen actual remarks, a few minutes in an hour-long free-form- behind him, hands on hearts, in shots that went mysteriously jazz-odyssey campaign event in Alabama, words he might under-selected by photo editors everywhere) because he had not even have remembered having said in the morning if the asked to help lead the team out the tunnel. Rangers know rest of the world hadn’t torched its wigs. something about loyalty, and Villanueva was understandably There was the fact that the kneeling stuff had run its course distressed at being portrayed as having defied the decision to the point where it—like the fight over gay marriage before his teammates had together reached to stay off the field. Obergefell or disco before Saturday Night Fever—was prac- Asked the next day whether he had any problem with other tically dead before a late ejaculation reignited the debate. players’ kneeling, he said “absolutely” not and noted that There was the self-serving neutrality of the NFL response, some players who’d knelt in earlier games had approached the decorous and evasive talk of “unity” from a league that him afterward to thank him for his service. has been quietly taking sides for a while now, nixing cleats The same people who’d raised Villanueva up the day honoring the 9/11 dead and decals in memoriam of assassi- before of course interpreted these comments as a shameful nated Dallas police while standing stock still for Kaeper - coerced apology, and the Steelers’ attempt to avoid a no-win nickism and earlier Ferguson-centered protests. This doesn’t scenario by quitting the field was condemned by all sides. mean the league as a corporate entity is woke, of course. It Meanwhile platoons of men, of all colors, who rely on means it’s corporate. And as we see more and more, corpo- implicit trust to protect their lives and livelihoods were set at rations can be driven to a kind of half-assed performative each other’s throats for no good reason whatever. Metaphors leftism by asymmetrical incentives. for us all. There were the sportswriters (nobody likes writing And it will all happen again next week, next tweet. about things that aren’t sports more than sportswriters), all Are you ready for some football?

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CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF TEACHING FREEDOM

1960s 1970s In the 1960s, an anti-American movement erupts on college campuses. A group of concerned citizens creates Top faculty are assembled to teach free-market The Fund for American Studies (TFAS) to ensure tomorrow’s leaders learn America’s founding principles. economics and constitutional principles.

1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s

TFAS establishes first journalism Iron Curtain falls and TFAS begins TFAS creates Asia and Latin America TFAS expands with addition program to teach ethics and reaching young leaders in the former programs, helping spread ideas of of Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship economics to future journalists. Soviet Union and Middle East. individual liberty abroad. Program and partnership with Foundation for Teaching Economics. Nearly 17,000 TFAS alumni are making the difference TODAY for freedom across the country and around the globe.

LEARN MORE: www.TFAS.org CONNECT: @TFASorg base_new_milliken-mar 22.qxd 9/26/2017 12:46 PM Page 1

I work four jobs to provide the best opportunities for my daughters. I rely on Georgia’s tax-credit scholarship program to send them to a great school of my choice. But then the program came under attack from those who say I shouldn’t have that choice. I fought for my daughters’ education and I won. I am IJ.

Robin Lamp Institute for Justice Stockbridge, Georgia www.IJ.org National Law Firm for Liberty