LAWLESS FRONTIER $4.99 a Crisis in the Rule of Law 31 K E V I N D

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August 5, 2013 $4.99 JAY NORDLINGER: Felix Rodriguez, the Anti-Che RAMESH PONNURU O N T H E 2 0 1 6 R A C E THE EDITORS AVIK ROY: Our Enemy the Hospitals O N Z I M M E R M A N

LAWLESS FRONTIER $4.99 A crisis in the rule of law 31 K e v i n D . W i l l i a m s o n w J o h n R . B o l t o n & J o h n Y o o

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Direct from Locked Vaults to U.S. Citizens! Original U.S. Gov’t Morgan Silver Dollars National Collector’s Mint announces a special A MESSAGE FROM THE limited release of 3,085 Morgan Silver Dollars 92- 37TH TREASURER OF THE 135 years old at $39 each. Several prominent UNITED STATES national dealers charge from $28.75 MORE for a Hello, I’m Angela Marie comparable Morgan Silver Dollar. These Morgans Buchanan. You might know are among the last surviving originals still in me as Bay Buchanan. I existence, and each coin is guaranteed to be in was appointed by mostly Brilliant Uncirculated to Fine condition. Ronald Reagan to be the Due to volatile fluctuations in the precious metals 37th Treasurer of the market, price can be guaranteed @ $39 each for one United States… maybe you’ve seen my week only! signature on some of the bills in your MARKET CONDITIONS AT ANY TIME WITHOUT wallet. So, you can understand why our The last time silver hit $50 an ounce, China was a nation’s coins are vitally important to NOTICE AT THE SOLE DISCRE- poor, underdeveloped nation. Now, the Chinese are TION OF NCM. me. That’s why I’m so pleased to be able rich and using over three times as much silver! Will this to announce this release of Morgan Sil- drive the price of silver back to $50 or even higher? You may order 1 Morgan Silver ver Dollars by National Collector’s Mint. One thing is certain – dramatic increases in silver Dollar for $39, plus $4 shipping, han- Of all the coins ever struck by the U.S. investment have seen silver prices rise over 129% in the dling and insurance, 3 for $124 ppd., Gov’t, none have so captured our imagi- last five years, and as much as 29% in one month alone! 5 for $204.50 ppd., 10 for $403 ppd., nations the way Morgans have. Perhaps But you can still get these Morgans for just $39 each! 20 for $799 ppd., 50 for $1980 ppd., it’s because Morgan Silver Dollars are so 100 for $3935 ppd. If you’re not INVESTMENT much a part of our heritage – that striking 100% delighted with your purchase Increasing prices of precious metals make every image of Lady Liberty has been with us simply send us your postage paid Morgan Silver Dollar more valuable. But acquiring since 1878, a time when America was return within 60 days for a refund of your own private cache of Morgan Silver Dollars is a only 38 states big, and much of our coun- your purchase price. Don’t wait. long term investment in so much more... in history... try was raw frontier. Morgan’s gleaming ACT NOW! in American heritage... in the splendid rendering of silver dollars saw us through two World Miss Liberty’s profile by designer George T. Morgan, Wars. They fueled periods of wealth and whose “M” mark on every Morgan Silver helped us survive the struggle of the Dollar identifies his Great Depression. Of course, they gained masterwork. And, of even more notoriety in the casinos of the course, Morgan Silver Old West and then again, in the casinos of Dollars have not been the new Las Vegas. Most of all, they are a minted for 92 years constant symbol of America. and are no longer in So I invite you to sample some of these circulation. magnificent Morgan Silver Dollars. Phone orders will be Enjoy them. Protect them. Celebrate filled on a first-come, first- them. What better way to hold your his- served basis and a limit of tory, our history, America’s history in the 100 coins per customer will palm of your hand! be strictly adhered to. Due to Sincerely, the extremely limited nature of this offer, mail orders cannot be accepted. THIS OFFER MAY BE WITHDRAWN

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AUGUST 5, 2013 | VOLUME LXV, NO. 14 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 24 The Front Man Barack Obama has spent the past Jay Nordlinger on Felix Rodriguez p. 29 five years methodically testing the limits of what he can get away with. The real import of his poli - BOOKS, ARTS tical career will be felt long after & MANNERS

he leaves office, in the form of a 39 THE IRON LADY RISES permanently expanded state that is Charles Crawford reviews Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized more assertive of its own interests Biography: From Grantham to and more ruthless in punishing the Falklands, by Charles Moore.

its enemies. Kevin D. Williamson 40 PRUDENCE AND PRINCIPLE Daniel Foster reviews The Founding Conservatives: How COVER: ROMAN GENN a Group of Unsung Heroes Saved the American Revolution, ARTICLES by David Lefer. 16 PRESIDENTIAL HOPES AND HOPEFULS by Ramesh Ponnuru 42 LAW, NATURALLY A look at the 2016 Republican field. Edward Feser reviews Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting 17 SENSITIVE SEALS by Arthur Herman Feminist ideology has engaged the Special Forces. the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism, by Robert P. George. 20 SHARIA AFTER MORSI by Andrew C. McCarthy Egypt revolted against inept governance, not Islamic supremacism. 44 QUEEN OF HYANNIS Florence King reviews Rose 22 SALON AND BREAKFAST by John O’Sullivan Kennedy: The Life and Times Kenneth Minogue, R.I.P. of a Political Matriarch, by Barbara A. Perry.

47 FILM: THE BARD IN SOCAL FEATURES Ross Douthat reviews Joss Whedon’s film Much Ado About Nothing . 24 THE FRONT MAN by Kevin D. Williamson Face of the lawless bureaucracy. 27 TREATY BY DECREE by John R. Bolton and John Yoo SECTIONS Obama’s end-run around the Senate, and the Constitution. 2 Letters to the Editor 29 THE ANTI-CHE by Jay Nordlinger 4 The Week Felix Rodriguez, freedom fighter and patriot. 37 Athwart ...... James Lileks 38 The Long View ...... Rob Long 33 AN ARM AND A LEG by Avik S. A. Roy 43 Poetry ...... William W. Runyeon Hospitals are to blame for obscene health-care costs. 48 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

NAtIONAl REvIEw (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NAtIONAl REvIEw, Inc., at 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 2013. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to Editorial Dept., NAtIONAl REvIEw, 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NAtIONAl REvIEw, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. Eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NAtIONAl REvIEw, 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POStMAStER: Send address changes to NAtIONAl REvIEw, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RAtES: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) the editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters:QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/17/2013 2:36 PM Page 2 Letters

AUGUST 5 ISSUE; PRINTED JULY 18

EDITOR Richard Lowry Wind Power’s Spotty Record Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Rupert Darwall’s excellent article “Free Markets Mean Cheaper Energy” (June 17) Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts had a minor, but salient, error. He correctly noted that Danish electricity spot prices Literary Editor Michael Potemra sometimes go negative because of the imbalance in the supply/demand equation Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy Washington Editor Robert Costa introduced by windmills (or, in Mark Steyn’s parlance, “condor Cuisinarts”), but Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson stated that it could happen in the United States. It happens now! As Illinois continues National Correspondent John J. Miller Art Director Luba Kolomytseva to shed manufacturing plants, and as those remaining generally operate less than 24 Deputy Managing Editors hours per day, peak electrical demand in the early morning hours has dropped dra- Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Production Editor Katie Hosmer matically. Illinois also happens to be the fourth-largest wind-generation state, and Editorial Associate Katherine Connell the spot prices of ComEd (which supplies the northern portion of the state) routinely Research Associate Scott Reitmeier Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace go negative on windy nights. Proponents of wind power often calculate the payback Contributing Editors of their bird blenders using the average price of electricity, ignoring the blenders’ Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat effect of pushing prices down precisely when they’re at maximum output! Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty Jonah Goldberg / Florence King Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin Yuval Levin / Rob Long Terry Smith Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy Energy consultant Kate O’Beirne / Reihan Salam Robert VerBruggen Northwest Illinois Automation Lanark, Ill. NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editor Edward John Craig National Affairs Columnist John Fund Media Editor Eliana Johnson Political Reporters Andrew Stiles / Jonathan Strong Art of War Reporter Katrina Trinko Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke As an (NRA) card-carrying gun nut and NR subscriber, I was surprised and delighted Editorial Associate Molly Powell Technical Services Russell Jenkins to read “Remington, U.S.A.” in the July 15 issue. But perhaps author Charles C. W. Web Developer Wendy Weihs Cooke should have shared his newfound knowledge of this great company and its his- Web Producer Scott McKim tory with the illustrator. Even conceding that the rifle pictured above the title was EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan offered as a generic representation, it nonetheless misses the mark badly enough to NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE require correction. For the last hundred or so years of its existence (and leaving aside BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Patrick Brennan / Betsy Woodruff its recent foray into “AR”-type weapons), Remington has been known for two iconic Contributors products: pump-action shotguns and bolt-action rifles. The illustration (ignoring the Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman “Monte Carlo” butt stock, which would never be found on such a firearm) is the Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. equally iconic lever-action product of the Marlin Firearms Company of North Haven, Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner Conn., and since 2007 a subsidiary of Remington with principal operations in David Gelernter / George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler Madison, N.C. Indeed, the piece’s unique lever pivot and ejection port identify it as David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune the Model 336, a gun that to shooters virtually defines Marlin and which has never, D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons ever been manufactured by Remington, notwithstanding its corporate parentage. Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Otherwise a fine and inspiring story. Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak Thomas M. Sullivan Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu / Lucy Zepeda Lake George, N.Y. Circulation Manager Jason Ng Assistant to the Publisher Kate Murdock WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com You probably don’t need another letter telling you about the graphics accompanying MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 the excellent article “Remington, U.S.A.,” but please add this one to your stack. The SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 cover graphic is, of course, the iconic Colt model 1911A1, and the story graphic is ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 an artist’s rendition of a Marlin 336, both fine firearms, by the way. Remington does Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler manufacture its own version of the 1911, but it has never produced a lever-action rifle Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet similar to the Marlin 336. Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Kenneth Scheel Director of Development Heyward Smith Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell Green Bay, Wis. PUBLISHER Jack Fowler CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes FOUNDER Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected]. William F. Buckley Jr.

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Nicholas J. Bruyer Founder, First Federal Coin ANA Life Member Since 1974

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Prices and availability subject to change without notice. Past performance is not a predictor of future performance. NOTE: First Federal® is a private distributor of worldwide government coin and currency issues and privately issued licensed collectibles and is not affiliated with the United States government. Facts and figures deemed accurate as of June 2013. ©2013 First Federal Coin.

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n Mike Bloomberg may want to sit down with Bob Filner and explain what ‘stop and frisk’ means.

n According to conventional wisdom, the Gang of Eight im - mi gra tion bill went from inevitable to dead in all of 60 sec- onds. Its prospects were exaggerated, though, as are current reports of its demise. While Speaker Boehner says the House won’t take the bill up, his caucus is divided on immigration and has yet to settle on a tack. We believe it should pass incremental reforms—enforcement measures, perhaps packaged with a carefully crafted version of the DREAM Act—but worry about what would happen in a conference committee with the Senate. The pressure to adopt a version of the Gang of Eight bill and then send it to the House to pass with the support of Democrats and some Republicans would be enormous. Boehner should make an ironclad assurance to his caucus never to go to conference. This pledge will enhance Boehner’s ability to pass incremental measures, since House conservatives won’t feel compelled to try to block them for fear of an eventual conference. More important, it will truly kill the Gang of Eight bill, which deserves a place in the congressional dust- bin. See page 10.

n Edward Snowden, the world’s most famous fugitive inter- ruptus, was still, as of this writing, bargaining for his future from the Moscow airport. Snowden is seeking asylum from that paragon of transparency, Vladimir Putin. Various Chavez ite countries in Latin America have offered to take him in. Meanwhile the United States has revoked his passport and wants him returned to be prosecuted. His journalistic collabo- in the state—we’ll believe that when we see it—and were de- rator Glenn Greenwald says Snowden has a trove of docu- signed solely for that purpose. Actually, the standards follow ments describing “exactly how the NSA does what it does.” the recommendations of the Philadelphia grand jury that in - True, or bluff? Besides which, two more questions: How did a dict ed Kermit Gosnell. During the special session, protesters flighty creep like Snowden get to have access to such info? on Davis’s side brought tampons and jars of excrement to And do we conceal too much? Every war, including the war on make some sort of point. As though by instinct, they chose tac- terror, requires secret ops. How wide-ranging are our secrets? tics perfectly suited to the ugliness of their cause. When we spy, when must it be secret that we do spy? A responsible Congress and a responsible executive should weigh these n For years he has been a lightning rod for liberal criticism: matters. In the meantime, keep him on the run. the archconservative governor of a deep red state, an evange- listic free marketeer, a man of vocal faith, a tea partier. But n Texas state senator Wendy Davis became a media star and a when his term ends in 2014, Rick Perry will step down as gov- national hero to the Left for filibustering a bill to protect un - ernor of Texas, leaving behind him a state that is the envy, at born children. Many states have been passing such laws. But least economically, of most others in the union. Over his 13 her filibuster, combined with disorder created by a large group years in office (the longest tenure of any Texas governor), Per ry’s of her supporters, kept the legislature from passing the bill dur- conservative policies have helped make Texas the nation’s ing its special session. It also got her in front of the likes of An - second-fastest-growing economy (behind only North Dakota, der son Cooper of CNN, who asked her such tough questions which is in the midst of an unprecedented oil boom), with eight as, “What was it like standing for that long?” Governor Rick of the country’s 15 fastest-growing cities. Perry likes to point Perry promptly called another special session, which passed out that Texas has been responsible for a full third of the net the bill. Abortion will now generally be banned after 20 weeks, jobs created in the entire country over the past ten years. Per ry’s and clinics will have to adhere to new safety standards. Davis’s tort-reform victories, his pro-life advocacy, and his devotion to

ROMAN GENN allies say that the standards will close down all but five clinics the Tenth Amendment will be part of a strong legacy, one that

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THE WEEK will overshadow memories of his disastrous presidential run. separated farming from food stamps, and now, for the first time And his policies are not likely to fade if he is succeeded by his since 1973, the House has the opportunity to consider food attorney general, Greg Abbott, as many expect. stamps on their own merits. A record 47 million Americans— one in seven—receive food stamps, at a cost to the federal gov- n As secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet ernment of $85 billion a year. House Republicans are trying to Napolitano has been the paradigmatic Obama appointee: a introduce a modest work requirement (like that added by the lawyer long on partisan politics, short on subject-matter exper- 1996 welfare-reform law to the Temporary Assistance for tise, and even shorter on effectiveness. After assuming control Needy Families program). They also want to change the rule of the sprawling, largely redundant behemoth created in Wash - that lets people qualify for food stamps when they have merely ing ton’s post-9/11 frenzy to “do something,” she exhibited received a brochure from a welfare office. And they want more stunning ignorance about the law governing her department’s efforts to fight fraud. Outraged Democrats are accusing principal task, falsely claiming that it was not a crime to enter Republicans of snatching food from the hungry. Actually, the U.S. illegally. Napolitano also consulted with Islamists in they’re trying to help struggling Americans get back on their crafting a counterterrorism policy that denies the nexus be - feet. tween Islamic-supremacist ideology and violent jihad. Con - cur rently, DHS issued guidance instructing agents that terrorist n After Senate Democrats threatened to abolish the filibuster “radicalization and recruitment” were likely products of for executive-branch nominees, the parties reached a deal “rightwing extremism” on the part of Christian sects, military over the nominees Republicans had been blocking. Obama veterans, pro–Second Amendment activists, and those op - had made recess appointments to the National Labor Re la - posed to illegal immigration or abortion. She departs to take tions Board even though the Senate was not, in fact, in recess. over the University of California. Sadly, it seems an ideal An appeals court ruled that the move was unconstitutional, match. which is why Republicans were refusing to confirm the nominees to full terms. As part of the deal, the administration will n So determined are House Democrats to derail the investi- submit new nominees, as Senate Republicans have been urg- gation into the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of tea- ing. Other nominees—to the Consumer Financial Protection party groups that they are now calling for an investigation of Board, the Labor Department, and the EPA—will go through the investigator. Mary - without filibusters. We don’t know how much of a Re pub li - land representative Elijah can concession their confirmations represent, since it is not Cummings is leading the clear that Republicans had the votes to filibuster them suc- charge, accusing the Trea - cessfully. Harry Reid may try again to weaken the filibuster, sury Department in spec - and Republicans have not yet agreed on any credible retali- tor general, whose May ation they can threaten. Reid will be less of a nuisance if report found that the IRS Republicans take the Senate in the next election. had been inappropriately targeting conservative or - n Senators Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) and Mark Warner (D., gan i za tions, of concealing Va.) have introduced a bill that would make the two-headed evidence that pro gressive monster that is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into a one-headed groups were targeted and monster, on the theory that this will render it easier to decap- of misleading Congress itate. Senator Corker, to his credit, introduced a bill in the last on the matter. The con- Congress that would have ended these agencies’ public guar- gressman, who has called antee; to his colleagues’ discredit, it attracted very little sup- his committee’s investigation a Re pub lican “witch hunt,” port. Corker-Warner has been put forward as a second-best pointed to “Be On the Look out” lists containing the terms measure. Eight years into the one-headed monster’s life, “Progressive” and “Occupy.” It is Cum mings, however, who Congress would be able to decide whether the corporation is on a partisan expedition. Elizabeth Hofacre is the Cinci n - should be maintained as is or dissolved. This reform would nati agent who led the group that Cum mings claims pored make some progress, but not enough, in ensuring that gov- over the applications of liberal groups. Yet she told congres- ernment support of homeownership doesn’t encourage risky sional investigators that when she received them, “I just sent lending and financial instability. The problem with reforming those back to the specialists or the general inventory.” “I was Fannie and Freddie is that when the economy is down, politi- tasked with tea parties and overwhelmed with those,” she cians are rightly reluctant to undermine the housing industry, said, adding that she “never” processed an application from a but when the outlook is improving, the agencies generate left-leaning organization. House Repub licans have acceded substantial federal revenue, as they are doing right now. to Cummings’s demand and called the in spec tor general Given that Congress has failed to make any serious move before the Oversight Committee to answer questions. If an toward reforming Fannie and Freddie, and given that Senator investigation into his investigation ensues, it will be a scan- Corker’s earlier efforts to simply end the public guarantee dal of a different kind. went nowhere, this plan may be the best of the politically plausible options at hand. Properly understood as a transition

JACQUELYN MARTIN n Farm subsidies have long been packaged together with food to a fully private system of mortgage insurance, Corker- / stamps to form a bill that urban and rural legislators could all Warner represents a step in the right direction. But it is not

AP PHOTO support. But after failing to pass such a bill in June, the House and cannot be the last step.

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THE WEEK n Four years ago, when the Obamans were ascendant and “naturally occurring alkaloids.” McDonnell has denied any Democrats ruled both congressional chambers, Republicans wrongdoing, but a federal grand jury is investigating the rela- were weary and searching for champions. In November 2009, tionship. Behind the scenes, Virginia Republicans, who hope they found two: Bob McDonnell won a gubernatorial race in to keep the governorship in November’s election, say he may Virginia and Chris Christie did the same in New Jersey—both step down. Regardless, his national political career is fin- states Obama had carried. McDonnell quickly became one of ished. These days, the square-jawed McDonnell, who not so the most popular governors in the country. He had sky-high long ago lifted the spirits of his party, is hiring lawyers, not approval ratings, a booming state economy, and the respect of strategists. Beltway insiders, who touted him as a future presidential contender. But McDonnell is now embroiled in a troubling scandal, n We struggle not to choke on the words “Michael Bloomberg and there is talk in Richmond that he may resign. According to is right,” but right is what the New York mayor is in the ker- the Washington Post, McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, fuffle over the city’s stop-and-frisk program. The police tactic accepted more than $120,000 in unreported gifts from Johnnie is controversial because most of those stopped (87 percent) are Williams, an executive at a dietary-supplement company. black or Latino. That is less surprising than it may sound: Most Williams even helped pay for McDonnell’s daughter’s wed- New Yorkers are black or Latino. Moreover, it is unsurprising ding. McDonnell later paid back his friend’s generosity by that these minorities are stopped at rates higher than would be opening the governor’s mansion to him to tout his products, expected if the program were random; it is administered most which have debatable medical benefits; Mrs. McDonnell flew robustly in high-crime areas, which are disproportionately to Florida to serve as a saleswoman of sorts for Williams’s black and Latino. Noting this, Bloomberg argued that the cops The Mean Reaction

F you ask the average person what the most de serv - more often than not, the people raging against apathy I ed ly maligned attitude is, “hate” would almost cer- are actually enraged by disagreement with their position. tainly come out on top of the list. The funny thing is, Not one college president, provost, or professor in a people don’t really hate hate. In fact, if they did hate thousand who routinely rages against apathy would be hate, wouldn’t that make them hypocrites? We use delighted to discover his students had, en masse, been “hate” as a deliberate misnomer for bigotry, be it real, converted into passionate Republicans. The real agenda imagined, or contrived. If I were to declare, “I hate rac - behind jeremiads against hate and apathy alike is con- ism,” few of the usual suspects would say to me: “Don’t formity. Most of the kids who are labeled apathetic are be a hater.” actually quite passionate, just about the wrong things. Besides, hatred is really popular in America, because If I don’t care about global warming, my true trans- Americans love passion. And hatred is an essential part gression isn’t apathy, it’s failure to lend support to one of the anatomy of passion. The sincere lover of the poor side of the argument. As I say in Liberal Fascism, the hates poverty. The committed lover of animals no doubt most fascistic thing said every day on college campuses hates animal cruelty. Hatred is particularly popular is “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the among young people, which should not surprise anyone, problem.” since the principal currency of youth is passion and What brings all this to mind is that I never much cared commitment. about the George Zimmerman trial. I felt real and sincere “I have seen young people, and older people too, who sympathy for Trayvon Martin’s parents. I disapproved of are good democratic liberals, lovers of peace and gen- Zimmerman’s decisions, but didn’t think they were mur- tleness, struck dumb with admiration for individuals derous, and certainly didn’t think they were provably so. threatening or using the most terrible violence for the Racism never seemed like a relevant issue to me, and the slightest and tawdriest reasons,” Allan Bloom wrote in effort to coin a new label, “white Hispanic,” in order to The Closing of the American Mind. Why? Because, make it one seemed truly pathetic. And so I didn’t care according to Bloom, “they have a sneaking suspicion about this story any more than I care about the countless that they are face to face with men of real commitment, other tragedies that dash across the headlines and the which they themselves lack. And commitment, not truth, screens in a given day. Moreover, I resented efforts by the is believed to be what counts.” media to make me care more than the facts warranted. Which brings me to my contender for the most unfairly Does that make me apathetic? Hardly. Does it make maligned emotional state: apathy. It gets all the grief me a hater? I don’t think so. It makes me noncompliant, hate does, but none of the respect. No one says of the which is the only true sin under liberalism. apathetic, “At least he cares”—because the whole point of being apathetic is that you don’t, in fact, care. Worse, —JONAH GOLDBERG

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THE WEEK might be stopping those races too infrequently: More than 90 We’re sure the activists would be quite pleased if we just let the percent of those sought in NYPD murder cases are described detainees starve to death. as black or Latino. Democrats vying to succeed the mayor have variously described his remarks as “outrageous” (Bill de Bla- n For many years now, Walmart has been a bogeyman of the sio) and “incredibly insulting” (Bill Thompson). Yet there is Left. The company employs millions, and offers good prod- little or no evidence that the police have been unprofessional ucts at low prices to many millions more—but the very or ill intentioned in their execution of stop-and-frisk, and there name “Walmart” is ample evidence that it has made a real impact on crime. If the is still anathema last testament of Bloombergism is a Central Park that you may to some. There are not smoke in but can walk through safely, that is not the worst people who would possible outcome. Within living memory, New York City had rather there were no jobs, and no products, than that Walmart over 2,200 murders a year, and vast stretches of the city were existed. Take the District of Columbia. Its city council has unlivable. If the mayor’s critics have their way, Big Gulps may essentially voted to keep Walmart out of D.C. The company be the smallest of New York’s worries. had wanted to open six stores—including in “underserved” areas. It promised to fund transportation projects, create a n Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in disgrace as governor of New job-training program, and so on. But the city council said, York when it was revealed that he regularly used prostitutes, is “Your minimum wage must be $12.50”—50 percent higher running for comptroller of New York City. How many ways is than the District’s regular minimum wage. In the District, this wrong? Prostitution is a debasing traffic that stunts its unemployment among blacks is 20.3 percent. Among black clients and degrades its purveyors. Spitzer was a hypocrite teen agers it is 37.8 percent. Among black male teenagers it since, as attorney general of New York, he had prosecuted is 43.3 percent. At least they won’t have to suffer the ignominy prostitution rings. He makes a fool of his wife, Silda, who, like of working at Walmart. Nor will the “underserved” have to Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, stands by her man. He suffer the ignominy of shopping there. Mona Charen pointed makes a travesty of the concept of regret: Spitzer did penance out the worst part of this whole anti-Walmart effort: Its lead- for his misdeeds by hosting TV talk shows. Like Anthony ing group calls itself “Respect DC.” Weiner, Spitzer is a damaged being, a Brobdingnagian ego attached to a fetal personality without conscience, emotion, or n The Egyptian military’s overthrow of the elected but lawless depth. Spitzer’s fall was so precipitous because none of his Muslim Brotherhood government in early July seems to have fellow politicians would stick up for him: Even they could not been a marginal improvement, and the Obama administration stand his ill-tempered arrogance. Just the man we should want has recognized it as such, providing the strongest support by its in government. reticence: It hasn’t called the coup a coup. By law the U.S. is not supposed to provide foreign assistance to a country where n Bob Filner is mayor of San Diego. A Democrat, and a for- the military has seized power; aid to Egypt would have to be mer congressman, he is what the Associated Press describes as frozen and cooperative military programs and equipment sales a “feisty liberal.” One of the things he has been doing feistily ceased. Our support for the military is a lever we would tem- is harassing women. At this writing, his job is in jeopardy. In porarily lose and permanently weaken if we cut off all support order to save that job, he made a statement that is a classic of until elections occurred and aid could legally resume. The mil- the genre. He was “humbled to admit that I need help.” He had itary is crucial to maintaining free passage through the Suez “begun to work with professionals to make changes in my Canal and, via the Camp David accords, the safety of Israel behavior and approach.” Moreover, “my staff and I will par- and the security of Sinai. Further, it stepped in at a crucial ticipate in sexual-harassment training provided by the city.” point, when the despotism and abject mismanagement of the Why should the staff be dragged into this? In a crowning sen- Muslim Brotherhood had driven millions of Egyptians into the tence, Filner said, “If my behavior doesn’t change, I cannot streets to demand a new government. The right course is for succeed in leading our city.” First, San Diegans should be a the State Department to take some time to make its decision, self-governing people, going about their lives without need of monitoring the military government’s deportment. Eventually, a Dear Leader. Second, is there no one else in San Diego who Congress should grant a waiver to the pertinent law and pro- can be mayor? Bob Filner is not indispensable. By all appear- vide aid even after the coup, contingent on the military’s prog - ances, he’s just creepy. ress toward establishing a constitution that protects mi nor i ty rights and freedom of speech and conscience. n Hundreds of thousands of people, in their homes and in all sorts of health-care facilities, across the country and across the n Christianity in the Middle East is under threat as never globe, are surviving on nasogastric feeding tubes. But that fact before. The fate of François Murad is a sinister omen. A Syrian seems to have escaped Capitol Hill legislators, myriad human- Franciscan aged 49, he was in the monastery of St. Anthony of rights organizations, and celebrities who are calling on the Padua in Ghassanieh, a Christian village in northern Syria. Obama administration to stop force-feeding 45 Guantanamo Islamists thought to be from the extremist group Jabhat al- Bay detainees who are conducting a hunger strike. The five- Nusra broke into the monastery to loot it, and shot Father month strike, reportedly a response to guards’ allegedly mis- Murad dead. A memorial Mass was held for him in Rome, and handling detainees’ Korans during a routine cell search, has another Syrian Franciscan, Father Ibrahim Alsabagh, spoke garnered international attention, particularly in the wake of there about his colleague and friend, singling out that he had President Obama’s recent promise to shut down the facility. been gentle and docile. Franciscans of the Holy Land, he said,

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THE WEEK are always called to testify to their faith: The death of Father stepping on Saudi toes by subsidizing the wrong sort of Murad “made me realize how close martyrdom is.” This has not Islamists in Syria, and upsetting secular or liberal elements stopped him from returning to a Franciscan monastery in by subsidizing the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. The al- Damascus in order, as this moving witness of his faith puts it, “to Thani family exclusively owns Al Jazeera, banned in some be with my brothers and to live the testimony.” Arab countries, popular and opinion-forming in others. The U.S. maintains a huge military base in the sheikhdom, so n There are no words adequate to the horrific attack on a group some anti-Americanism is obligatory, pro forma. In common of schoolchildren in Nigeria carried out by the jihadist Boko with new absolute rulers elsewhere, the new Sheikh Tamim Haram outfit—a partner to the Algeria-based al-Qaeda in the has been greeted as a reformer with an interest in constitution- Islamic Maghreb—which claimed the lives of about 40 chil- alism. More likely is that he’ll try to emulate his father’s dren and teachers in early July. The jihadists set fire to the craftiness in playing both sides of every street. school and then shot children as they tried to escape; many were burned alive. It was the third attack by the group, whose n While Europe suffers a harsh demographic winter bearing name means “Western education is forbidden,” on a school this down on the economies of nations with aging populations, the summer. Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, released a United States merely copes with an autumn chill—but it’s not video after the attacks promising that they would continue. getting any warmer here either, according to a new report “We are going to burn down the schools if they are not Islamic released by the Centers for Disease Control. The U.S. birth rate religious schools for Allah,” he warned. “The Koran teaches in 2011, 1.89 lifetime births per female, was the lowest since that we must shun democracy, we must shun Western educa- reliable records began to be kept in 1920. One reason for the tion, we must shun the constitution.” President Bush was re - decline is that people are less likely to have children during lentlessly mocked for saying, of al-Qaeda et al., “They hate our periods of economic downturn and uncertainty such as we’ve freedoms.” But he was right. lived through for the past five years. But U.S. birth rates have been below replacement level since 1971. Our failure to supply, in adequate numbers, a generation to support us in old age and to n Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving bomber of the Boston continue to be productive when we’re gone greatly darkens long- Marathon, appeared in court to be charged, and he was term economic forecasts and our general outlook on the future. greeted by supporters and fans. They may be classified as Raising the child tax credit might not raise the birth rate much, dumb, mad, and besotted. The dumb ones assert there is no but it would be helpful if only for its symbolic value. Government evidence of his guilt (except video footage of Dzhokhar and can do little to encourage people to have children. It can do a lot, his brother, backpacked at the scene of the crime; except though, to stop discouraging them. Dzhokhar’s message in the boat that was his last hiding place, “When you attack one Muslim you attack all Mus - n A magician who uses a rabbit in his act got an eight-page let- lims”). The mad go even further, arguing in the manner of ter from the USDA (with the folksy salutation “Dear Members of 9/11 truthers that the bombing Our Regulated Community”) demanding, as the magician told was an inside job. The besot- blogger Bob McCarty, “a written disaster plan, detailing all the ted are hot for the little ter- steps I would take to help get my rabbit through a disaster, such rorist (Dzhokhar does look as a tornado, fire, flood, etc. . . . [and] what I will do after the dis- like the young Bob Dylan, aster, to make sure my rabbit gets cared for properly.” It turns out if the young Bob Dylan the USDA has a full-time “rabbit police” division, with licenses had been good-looking). In and inspectors and rules governing work hours for animal per- a country of 300 million formers. There’s no insurance mandate yet, but they’re probably there will be many thou- working on one. sands who are self-hating or incapable of rational thought. n We mentioned here previously Jared Marcum, the West High-profile crimes bring them Virginia eighth-grader facing a $500 fine or up to a year in jail for out like worms after a thunder- “obstructing a police officer” after refusing to take off a T-shirt storm. bearing the NRA’s logo and a hunting rifle. Late last month, the judge dropped the charges against Jared, in what the young man’s attorney, Ben White, called “a victory for common sense.” n While nobody much was looking, there was a coup in Indeed. But while Jared is free to enjoy his summer, Justin Carter, Qatar, one of the tiny sheikhdoms in the Gulf, population just the 19-year-old Texan jailed since March for joking in an online 250,000. It’s the property of the al-Thani family, and they video game about shooting up a school, still faces charges of want to keep it that way. The 33-year-old Tamim al-Thani making “terroristic threats.” In a bit of good news, though, he is replaces his father, Hamad al-Thani, who 18 years ago had finally out from behind bars: In mid July an “anonymous good replaced his father. That’s how they do things there these Samaritan” paid Justin’s staggering $500,000 bail. Taking these days: behind the palace doors and no violence. It matters two cases together, that’s a victory and a half for common sense. because Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied nat-

FEDERAL BUREAU OFural INVESTIGATION gas, and uses its money to gain disproportionate influ- n Doris Kearns Goodwin has had a checkered career—marred / ence, or (as some of the neighbors think) make inter-Arab by plagiarism, brightened by an insightful book on the Lincoln

AP PHOTO mischief. Sunnis themselves, the al-Thanis are nonetheless administration, Team of Rivals. Her address at Gettysburg, com-

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memorating the 150th anniversary of the battle, fell on the minus and the fourth ball he tossed to his neighbors in the stands, bal- side of the ledger. She rambled about presidents she had known, ancing his boyish exploits at the ballpark with those fine and made a pitch for gay marriage, linking Selma with Stonewall, fatherly gestures. The Indians won, 6–4. and both with the Civil War. Selma, yes; Stonewall, huh? Abraham Lincoln’s call for “a new birth of freedom” in the n Soledad O’Brien recently left Gettysburg Address has been used by liberals to justify every pro- her post at CNN to join Al Jazeera ject du jour. Lincoln was a radical in the lengths to which he America, a new English-language would go to defend his principles; a conservative in the care with affiliate of the Qatari-owned which he chose them. They were, he argued, the principles of broadcaster that will focus on the the American Revolution (the “definitions and axioms of free United States. O’Brien made her society,” as he put it on another occasion). If Americans wish to name at CNN by sparring with change the institution of marriage, that is because they wish to do politicians and their surrogates, it, not because the Founders, or Lincoln—or the men who died at especially those of the McCain Gettysburg—would have it. and Romney campaigns. She en - joyed doing so under the mantle n Orson Scott Card’s 1985 science-fiction novel Ender’s Game of “keeping them honest,” despite depicts a young earthling, Andrew Ender Wiggin, battling a race her obvious penchant for relying of aliens known as the Formics. This fall Lionsgate will release a on du bi ous Democratic talking movie version, with Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford, which is points. John Sununu suggested battling a boycott campaign by gay groups. Card, it turns out, has during the 2012 campaign that been critical of same-sex marriage. Lionsgate is sticking by its she ought to “put an Obama movie, but has declared that it is a “proud longtime supporter . . . bumper sticker on her forehead” to reveal that her work was an of the LGBT community” (if they hadn’t already finished the pic- aggressive defense of the campaign. Perhaps her move to a self- ture, they would have dropped Card like a hot rock). It’s a free consciously “progressive,” Global South–oriented (read: anti- country, and anyone can boycott anyone he likes. But observe the American) network will mean she admits her biases a bit more vectors: Gays and their allies will not rest until opponents of gay openly. Though “Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa al- marriage are treated like Mennonites—tolerated oddball fanatics. Thani” probably wouldn’t fit on a bumper sticker. Coming soon, to a life near yours. n The history of the Founding period has been well taught and n Since 1979, Henry Doctor, also known as the Phantom Planter, well studied in American universities for the last four decades, has secretly planted over 40,000 unauthorized flowers in public thanks in great part to Edmund S. Morgan. Morgan began as a places worldwide, and until recently he had never run into prob- student of the Puritans but shifted his attention to the American lems. Doctor thought the Dupont Circle metro station in Wash - Revolution. He and his peers—Douglass Adair, Bernard Bai - ing ton, D.C., which had 176 empty flower boxes lining the lyn—overturned the debunking economic determinism of escalators, could use some flowers. Last October, he planted 150 Charles Beard (which survives in the pop history of Howard daffodils and tulips in the flower boxes, while removing cigarette Zinn) and turned their attention to what 18th-century Amer i - butts, trash, and weeds, without Metro’s even noticing. In June, cans were saying and thinking. In his nineties, Morgan sum- Doctor covertly planted 1,000 morning glories and several other marized his credo thus: “The American Revolution was really plants, which would bloom from August to October in beautiful, what the revolutionaries said it was”—a struggle for and about patriotic colors of red, white, and blue. Fearing that Metro would liberty. Thus a generation of scholars was spared the storms of think the flowers were weeds and pull them out, Doctor sent a Marxism and cultural studies that flattened so much of the letter to Metro confessing his crime and offered to work for $1 humanities. Morgan has died, age 97. The academy and the per year so he could continue to care for the plants. That was the nation are in his debt. R.I.P. wrong move. Metro immediately issued a “cease and desist” order with a threat of imprisonment and fines if he came any- JUSTICE where near the flowers. It sent workers to the station and tore up all the flowers. Even Mao said to let 100 flowers bloom. Duty and Spectacle HE George Zimmerman case was a wretched spectacle n “I know there’s a lot of controversy about whether guys over from the beginning, but for this we are glad: People in 13 years old should bring a mitt to the game,” Gregory Van T America are still tried in the courts rather than by left- Niel said afterward, but he and every baseball fan capable of wing protesters or by the media. To their credit, the jurors enjoying his feat vicariously would say he made the right deci- appear to have decided the case strictly on the facts, which sion. With the glove he carried to Progressive Field in gave them no choice other than to acquit Zimmerman, despite Cleveland on a Sunday afternoon in mid July, he caught four the long campaign of defamation against him outside the foul balls, which may be a record. He questions reports that the courtroom. odds were one in a trillion, noting that the attendance, 15,432, You don’t have to endorse Zimmerman’s poor judgment that was fairly light, reducing his competition, and that section 160, night to realize that he didn’t commit a crime and isn’t a bullying where he sat, on the third-base side of home plate, is a sweet white racist circa 1955. He isn’t even white, so the media had to spot for foul balls off right-handed hitters. He gave one ball resort to the “white Hispanic” label to save their racial storyline.

SIPA VIA APeach IMAGES to his daughter and his two nephews, who were with him, If Zimmerman had set out to assassinate Trayvon Martin, he

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THE WEEK that law and instead made a strict self-defense argument. We wish the purveyors of perpetual outrage would pause from saying stupid and inflammatory things about the Zimmerman case long enough to consider how wrong they were about it all along. But we are realists.

OBAMACARE Delay and Dismantle

EFENdERS of Obamacare have taken to complaining about Republican “sabotage” of the program, and of D good governance generally. The program’s apparent flaws are, they would have you believe, the result of Republican obstruction. It would be working just fine if only all of us had unified behind its greatness. This excuse-making has intensified since the Obama administration announced, first, that it would delay the law’s employer mandate—the fine on companies that do not provide health insurance—for a year, and second, that it would take appli- cants’ say-so on whether they qualify to get insurance from the law’s subsidized exchanges. Yet these delays were plainly the George Zimmerman, July 13, 2013 result of the administration’s own difficulty in implementing the law and its fear that doing so would yield disappointing never would have called the police to alert them to Martin’s results. The only subversion of the law has been undertaken by whereabouts. the administration itself, which does not at first glance have the This call is the act of so-called profiling that is supposed to authority to get rid of the inconvenient portions of its favorite prove Zimmerman’s dark, racist motivation. But he may have legislation. singled out Martin for his youth, his dress, or his behavior; he The delay of the employer mandate gives Republicans an might have been just as suspicious of a white teenager dressed opportunity to advance the day that Obamacare is repealed. and acting the same way. (Zimmerman told the police on the call House Republicans should, as they are considering, call two that Martin seemed like he was “up to no good.”) He didn’t successive votes, to put the employer-mandate delay into law volunteer Martin’s race, but in response to the operator’s ques- and then to delay the individual mandate as well. democrats tion said that he “looks black.” will be unlikely to break with the administration on the first What ensued was a tragedy that would have been avoided had vote, and, having voted to delay a mandate on businesses, they Zimmerman never fastened on Martin and never gotten out of his will find themselves hard-pressed to explain why they did not car to trail him. What Zimmerman’s haters never acknowledge is support one for individuals and families. If, on the other hand, that it also would have been avoided had Martin never, as the evi- they vote to delay the individual mandate, they will be show- dence indicates, hit Zimmerman. It was a prosecution eyewitness ing that there is substantial bipartisan opposition to major fea- who said that he saw Martin on top of Zimmerman beating him tures of Obamacare. From there, House Republicans can move “ground-and-pound” style. on to voting for a delay of the entire law. For Republicans, it’s This made the case a simple matter of self-defense, which is all upside—so long as they make it clear that these votes are a what police initially concluded when they declined to arrest Zim - way of pursuing the replacement of Obamacare and not a sub- mer man. After an enormous firestorm and campaign of race- stitute for it. hustling political intimidation—loosely joined by President Some Republicans may be tempted to think that instead the Obama when he said that if he had a son, he’d look like entire law should be implemented on schedule, on the theory Trayvon—au thor i ties charged Zimmerman with second-degree that voters will feel the pain and move right. But Obamacare is murder. With this, they lashed themselves to the most malign not going to be implemented on schedule: It is going to be imple- interpretation of Zimmerman’s intent from MSNBC and the left- mented however the administration believes will be most advan- wing blogs. They never came close to proving their case and, in tageous to its goals, regardless of the letter of the law. And desperation at the end of the trial, tried to get the judge to allow Republicans’ goal should be to keep the country from suffering the jury to consider a child-abuse charge (the jury was allowed to through Obamacare, not to exploit the suffering. consider manslaughter). House Republicans have rightly voted on multiple occasions Now that the jury has rendered the only verdict it reasonably to register their opposition to Obamacare and their support for its could, the same characters who have spent more than a year repeal, but votes for repeal cannot be the only tactic they employ smearing Zimmerman are indicting the American justice system. in pursuit of the goal. The administration’s move shows that the POOL , The NAACP and Al Sharpton want the feds to pursue Zim mer - law is running into serious difficulties, that its difficulties are not man on civil-rights charges; Eric Holder says he is considering it. the result of Republican obstruction, and that even democrats JOE BURBANK

/ Jesse Jackson wants the U.N. Human Rights Council to take up do not treat it as a fait accompli. Republicans have a chance to the matter. A focus of particular ire is Florida’s “stand your weaken the political coalition behind Obamacare while high-

AP PHOTO ground” law, even though Zimmerman’s lawyers didn’t invoke lighting some of its most obnoxious provisions.

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set its direction. Many conservatives would be excited to see Rand Paul, Ted Cruz (an old friend of mine), Rick Santorum, or Rick Perry run next time, and other conservative favorites such as former congressman allen West have expressed interest in running. It is easier to see several such candidates getting in one another’s way than it is to see any of them unifying the right end of the party and carrying the nomination. even if they lose, however, these campaigns could have an impact on the nominee’s platform and message. Rand Paul might move the party further in his anti-interventionist direction in foreign policy; Santorum might affect how it handles same-sex marriage now that public opinion has turned in its favor. Paul Ryan might in theory have appeal throughout the party. Conser vative scrib- Presidential Hopes blers, including this one, hold him in high regard. Yet it seems implausible that Republicans will nominate someone who and Hopefuls has never held executive office nor won A look at the 2016 Republican field a statewide elec tion. Nor has he shown as much visible interest in running as other potential candidates. It may be BY RAMESH PONNURU that he is looking forward to passing a conservative tax reform as chairman of He next Republican presiden- someone in the center of the party or the House Ways and Means Committee tial nominee is already plan- even to the left of its center, and never to rather than being the person to sign that ning his campaign. If it is not someone on its right. reform into law. T too early for him to think about There are always several candidates Bobby Jindal, the governor of Loui - 2016, why should it be for the rest of us? vying to be the conservative insurgent, siana, is another candidate who could We don’t know, of course, what issues and they split the available vote. Some - have wide appeal. He has been a suc- will be uppermost in the public mind times that split pits social conservatives cessful reformer in a state that badly that year, or what the economy will be against economic conservatives, as in needed one. His competence and intelli- like. Republicans can take comfort, 1988, 1996, to a small extent 2000, and gence are unquestioned, as is his conser- though, in the fact that only twice in the 2008. Sometimes the division is also vatism. His Indian ancestry should be a last century has a two-term president religious, as in 1988 and 2008, when plus in a party that wants to shake off a been succeeded by someone else from evangelical candidates tried to base whites-only image. But a Republican leg - the same party. They should also be their campaigns on their appeal to their i slature forced Jindal to abandon his tax- encouraged that the leading Democratic coreligionists. The party establishment, reform plan earlier this year, and his poll contenders for 2016, at the moment, meanwhile, typically picks its man numbers inside his state are quite weak. appear to be Hillary Clinton and Joe early. He will have to recover fast to make a Biden. Only four times in american his- Some of the insurgent candidates, es - credible run. tory has the public chosen a president pecially in recent seasons, have been If Marco Rubio is planning to seek the more than five years older than his pre- novice politicians whom primary voters presidency in 2016, he is doing it in an decessor (Clinton is 14 years older than in the middle of the party—open in prin- unusual way. In office he has allied with Obama, Biden 19). Since the Cold War ciple to either insurgents or the party the most conservative elements of the ended, the younger candidate has won establishment—cannot see as plausible party on almost every issue—but has all four races that featured a contrast in presidents. The establishment-oriented split with the base on one important issue, age. candidates always pass that test. Those immigration. His boosters say that this Conservatives who disdain the Re- candidates are also willing to do what- issue will not doom his campaign, noting publican establishment and want an ide- ever it takes to co-opt enough conserva- that John McCain won the nomination in ological hero to topple it in the primaries tive activists to win. The establishment 2008 even though conservative activists should be less encouraged. Since 1984, candidates thus win the party’s presi- had vocally opposed him on immigration

the party nomination has always gone to dential nominations while the activists in 2006 and 2007. The difference is that ROMAN GENN

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McCain’s overall record was well to vidually nor in aggregate do they seem the left of Rubio’s, giving him a base of likely to be as troublesome in the pri- support among moderate Republicans. maries as those of the last two nominees Sensitive Rubio could—repeat: could—end up in a were. McCain had tangled with conserv- no-man’s-land, too far right to win those atives on taxes, global warming, immi- SEALs voters who identify as “moderately con- gration, and many other issues. Romney servative” but too heterodox to win those was out of step with the party on health Feminist ideology has who consider themselves “very conserv- care, the top domestic-policy issue of the engaged the Special Forces ative.” Obama years, and also had a moderate Another interesting question a possi- history on abortion, guns, and other ble Rubio candidacy raises is whether issues. Nothing Christie has done seems BY ARTHUR HERMAN there is enough room in the primaries comparable, and he has a draw those two for both him and Jeb Bush. The answer, men lacked, namely his rhetorical com- MERICANS know there’s some- given their overlapping bases of support bativeness toward liberals. (This is also thing special about the SEALs. and positions, is probably no. My guess something that sets him apart from other Arguably the most skilled is that Rubio is the more likely to run, would-be establishment candidates, such A and motivated military unit but Bush—given his built-in advantages as Ohio governor John Kasich.) ever created trains to be ready for any in the race to become the establishment He may also look like a winner. Unlike possible challenge on land, at sea, or in candidate—might be the more formida- Romney, he did not just get elected in a the air. You’d think the Obama adminis- ble contender. deep-blue state; he is running for reelec- tration, after the stunning success of Scott Walker, the governor of Wis- tion, and appears very likely to win. If he SEAL Team Six in killing Osama bin consin, is being mentioned as a dark horse racks up a convincing margin in one of the Laden, would want to avoid monkeying so frequently that he is rapidly ceasing to two big races of 2013—and even more if with this 2,500-man elite force. be one. The case for Walker bears some Republicans lose the other race, that for You’d be wrong. Last month Secre tary resemblance to the case for Tim Pawlenty, governor of Virginia—he will seem like of Defense Chuck Hagel approved a then the governor of Minne sota, four the answer to many Republicans’ prayers. years ago. Like Pawlenty, Walker is a And he will end the year in a stronger Mr. Herman is the author of Freedom’s Forge: northern evangelical and a successful position than McCain ended 2005 or How American Business Produced Victory in governor of a blue state in a region of the Romney ended 2009. World War II, which will appear in paperback in July. country Republicans lust after. He has a great advantage over Pawlenty, though, in that the political battles in his state attracted national attention. Opinions differ on why Pawlenty fiz- zled out early, with a popular explanation being the catch-all of “lack of charisma.” It may also be, though, that there was no room in the primaries for a candidate just one notch to the front-runner’s right. Pawlenty couldn’t compete with Mitt Romney for establish ment support and couldn’t compete with Michele Bach- mann, Herman Cain, and the rest for the hearts of conservatives. Walker may suffer a similar problem. Support for taxing Internet sales is not the type of position that would sink a front-runner, but it is the type of position that could make it harder for a would-be challenger to the front-runner. If Walker were to become a leading contender, the man he would presumably be trying to beat is Chris Christie. By 2016, Republicans might be as desperate to win the White House as Republicans were in 2000 or Democrats in 1992, and thus be willing to put up with ideological deviations. Christie’s deviations have been numerous enough to win him a rep- utation as a moderate. Yet neither indi-

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plan to introduce training for women to in the Services, or DACOWITS, has weeks of SEAL Qualification Training become SEALs. If Congress goes along, become the Pentagon’s PC police, where in parachuting, weaponry, and demoli- the plan will go into effect by March consultants push a gender-neutral agenda tion—not to mention training in how 2016. (The elite Army Rangers will go that has a lot to do with the feminist to resist enhanced-interrogation tech- gender-neutral in 2015.) It’s all part of thesis that men’s and women’s tradi- niques (among them waterboarding)— the administration’s campaign to get tional roles are entirely cultural con- before they finally get to wear the coveted wo men into combat, no matter the cost structs and the result of patriarchy, and Trident pin of a Navy SEAL. or consequences—and for very much very little to do with what’s good for the Concede that it’s possible to find the wrong reasons. services. women who meet all these standards. The The argument is that letting women fly Indeed, the goal from the start was to real question is, How many will really F/A-18 fighter missions or lead an in - transform the military from an instru- want to? fantry platoon—or train to be SEALs— ment of American imperialism into a The SEALs are a fixed part of Ameri - simply acknowledges the fact that they’ve force that would be, in Betty Friedan’s can male folklore—the same folklore the been serving and dying in action anyway words, “sensitive and tender to the feminists are trying to eradicate. How (more than 150 were killed in Iraq and evolving needs and values of human many teenage girls lie awake at night Afghanistan) but have been denied the life.” Madeline Morris, a law professor wondering whether they have the right The SEALs are a fixed part of American male folklore— the same folklore the feminists are trying to eradicate.

opportunity for professional advance- at Duke and consultant to then–secretary stuff to endure weeks of constant pain, ment and the respect that comes from of the Army Togo West, put it this way: sleeplessness, hunger, hypothermia, and serving in a formal combat role (we have “A thoroughgoing integration of women near-drowning in order to wear that yet to have a chairman of the Joint Chiefs into the service would do much to under- Trident pin? Certainly enough males do of Staff who hasn’t). mine group norms” such as “hypermas- to keep Coronado Island crammed with Counterarguments that admitting wo - culinity” and “unalloyed aggressivity,” recruits year after year, even though they men might force the services to lower including on the battlefield. In 1998 fem- know only two in ten of them will make qualifying standards rouse the ire of inist historian Erin Solarno was even the grade. women-in-combat advocates, and the more succinct on the goal of getting Getting women to volunteer for such order then–secretary of defense Leon more women in uniform: “I think it is training in similar numbers can be diffi- Panetta and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen- harder to kill when you might give cult, as the Marines found out when eral Martin Dempsey signed admitting birth”—forgetting that killing is part of they opened their basic Infantry Officer women to combat roles specifically pro- what militaries are supposed to do. Yet Course at Quantico, Va., to women last hibits lowering standards just to get wo - for two decades Pentagon bureaucrats year. Only two female Marines volun- men closer to the battlefront. and service chiefs have gone along with teered for the two-month course, which But the sad fact is that lowering stan- this agenda for fear of arousing ire, both requires marching all day with a 100- dards has been the long-term goal of inside Congress and out, that might pound backpack under a broiling sun women-in-combat advocates such as for- adversely affect their budgets. and being subjected to a mock ambush mer National Organization for Women Certainly one of those bastions of or an emergency medical evacuation president Patricia Ireland and former “hypermasculinity” is the Navy SEALs. under simulated fire at 2 A.M. One failed congresswoman Patricia Schroeder all Indeed, it’s been one of the keys to their the initial combat endurance test along along. Getting women into the SEALs success. with 26 of the 107 male trainees, and only completes a radical-feminist agenda Set aside the question of whether one passed—only to suffer an injury that our military has swallowed hook, women have the upper-body strength or two weeks later that forced her to drop line, and footlocker. bone density to endure the grinding, gru- out. The radical-feminist war on our mili- eling training known as Basic Under - Whether the same thing will happen if tary started back in 1991 after the Tail - water Demolitions/SEALs, or BUD/S, BUD/S is opened up to women is any- hook scandal, when former and current that candidates undergo at Coronado body’s guess. But the SEAL class to Navy aviators were accused of commit- Island outside San Diego, which often which Navy hero Marcus “Lone Survi - ting sexual assault at a drunken party in results in physical injuries and culmi- vor” Luttrell belonged began with 180 Las Vegas. The resulting public outcry nates in the non-stop mental and physical male recruits. By the time it was over, forced the Army, Navy, and Air Force to pandemonium known as Hell Week. there were 30 left. If the women who do respond to demands by activists both on And set aside the fact that those who show up at Coronado experience a simi- Capitol Hill and elsewhere that the ser- survive Hell Week still have to pass Pool lar, or even higher, drop-out rate, how vices clean up their attitudes about wo - Competency (in which instructors tear long will it be before pressure on the men, and fast. off candidates’ masks and tie knots in SEALs from the Pentagon and Congress So over the past two decades the De - their air hoses while holding them down to show “progress” by not only recruit- fense Advisory Committee on Women at the bottom of the pool), and 26 ing women into the program but also

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passing them becomes unbearable—the manage affairs in what is meant to be a alternative being to stand accused of transition, of uncertain duration, to a new sexism? Sharia after elected government based on a new con- In short, the stage is being set for some stitution—one reflective not only of complicated bureaucratic cheating—and Morsi Egypt’s dominant Sunni population but while lowering standards to get women also of its various minority sectors. The in is specifically prohibited under Panetta Egypt revolted against inept hope of secular Muslims and other minor - and Dempsey’s order, the services are ities is for a constitution that enshrines the required to review and revise those stan- governance, not Islamic supremacism protection of minority rights and equal dards on a periodic basis with the goal of protection under the law, with partici- finding one standard for both men and BY ANDREW C. M C CARTHY pants in future elections forced to accept women. Presumably, that would include this framework. BUD/S. nLY seven months ago, by a It probably will not work. It may never BUD/S is not the result of whim or landslide two-to-one margin have been able to work in Egypt. But macho tradition. It has constantly evolved in a free and fair election, establishing any semblance of real demo- in order to reflect what’s needed to get O Egyp tians approved a new cracy will be much harder now. Euphoria maximum performance from every SEAL sharia constitution proposed by their over Morsi’s ejection has already given on the battlefield. Un questionably it does president, Mohamed Morsi of the Mus - way to raging dissent and violence from feed on a male mystique that to be a lim Brotherhood. In assessing Egypt’s the Islamist millions, who have had power SEAL is to be part of the best. prospects now that Morsi has been dri- ripped away from them after playing by As Dick Couch, ex-SEAL and a lead- ven from office, that is the fact to re - what Western governments and trans - ing authority on Special Ops training, member. Much as we’d like to believe national progressives certified as the rules points out, change the standard and you otherwise, the army’s startling July 3 of democracy. will change the battlefield performance. coup, appeasing the millions who poured Something like Sisi’s roadmap should You will also drain away the mystique into the streets for days of pro tests, was have been followed in early 2011, when on which both recruitment and the an indictment of Morsi’s sheer incompe- it was the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak SEALs’ group cohesion depends. What’s tence and of Egypt’s impending economic that had been toppled after Egyptians likely to result is a two-tier SEAL ser- collapse. It is neither a countrywide re - swarmed the revolution’s epicenter, vice: one that includes SEALettes for jection of Islamic su prem a cism nor the Cairo’s Tahrir Square. That did not hap- public-relations purposes, and the other dawn of a true “Arab Spring.” pen because the West, very much includ- made of pre-2016 veterans whom you In announcing that the armed forces ing the Obama administration and the call when you really, really need to get had deposed Morsi, General Abdel Fat tah bipartisan Beltway clerisy, is seized by the job done. el-Sisi gathered by his side a congeries of the fantasy that elections equal democ- According to the AP, Pentagon offi- national leaders. Included were not only racy—that there need be no preexisting cials want to install “senior women such natural Brotherhood opponents as liberty culture. Hillary Clinton’s State from the officer and enlisted ranks” Mohamed ElBaradei of the secular na - Department pressured the Egyptian mil- directly into Special Forces units such tional Salvation Front, who had made itary to hold elections rapidly in order to as the SEALs now, so that women they himself the face of Mor si’s opposition, claim a hollow victory: the purported recruit will have “a support system to and Pope Tawadros II of the beleaguered rise of a real “Is lam ic democracy.” help them get through the transition”— Coptic Christian church; also signing on In reality, moving instantly to popular presumably by adding to their numbers to General Sisi’s post-Morsi “roadmap” elections in Egypt inevitably meant the and making sure evil males don’t flunk were significant Islamist figures: Grand instant empowerment of anti-democratic them out. Mufti Ahmed el-Tayeb of al-Azhar Uni - Islamic supremacists. They, not the chic It’s the kind of gender war the radical ver si ty, Sunni Islam’s academic center young secularists of media lore, are the feminists have wanted all along. Why the since the tenth century, and representa- pulse of the people. As night follows day, men in uniform have supported them in tives of the al-nour party, Salafists even the Islamists crushed the secularists in the that goal remains a mystery. “Everybody more zealous for sharia transformation elections. So to day’s attempt at a do-over knows it’s a system built on a thousand than the Brotherhood. The need to present does not start with a clean slate. Tens of little lies,” ex–Army officer and former visible support from Islamic su prema - millions of Islamists are embittered and State Department official John Hillen cists, even if it proves to be exaggerated perhaps irreconcilable. told journalist Stephanie Gutmann, “but and fleeting, is the tribute the illusion of During Mubarak’s reign, pollsters everybody’s waiting for someone that’s “democratic Egypt” must pay to the found that upwards of two-thirds of high-ranking who’s not a complete moral Egypt that actually exists. Egypt’s 80 million people wanted to be coward to come out and say so.” The goals of the armed forces in de - governed by sharia, Islam’s repressive, That was in 2000. Thirteen years later posing Morsi did not include ruling the discriminatory societal framework and we’re still waiting for a senior general or country day to day. The coup was more a legal code. If Mubarak’s Egypt was pro- admiral with that kind of courage. So now matter of saving the country from finan- American and pro-Western, if it was it’s up to Congress to finally call a halt to cial ruin and rampant social strife. In the committed to peace with Israel, these this absurdity and order an about-face in aftermath, Sisi set about the business of were reflections of the regime’s prefer- Obama’s war on the SEALs. assembling a technocratic government to ences, not the people’s. Between the pre-

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Opponents of Mohamed Morsi in Tahrir Square, July 3, 2013

dominant Islamist culture and the Mus - Morsi’s victory in the June 2012 elec- of food and fuel, with much of its starv- lim Brotherhood’s entrenched network, tion was not a landslide, although given ing population subsisting on two dollars Egyptians, given the chance, were sure that he got a slightly higher percentage a day, and the tour ism industry—Egypt’s to vote for sharia and for the Islamists of the vote than Barack Obama did in major draw—made a shambles by ji - certain to implement it. the 2012 U.S. presidential election, it is hadists. The handwriting was on the wall after amusing to hear hopeful commentators Morsi was incompetent. Worse, the the first popular referendum on amend- portray his “thin” three-point win—over ambitious Brothers are viewed as a threat ments to the Mubarak-era constitution. a Mubarak-regime relic, not a demo- by the Gulf monarchies, whose largesse Secularists and progressives wanted what crat—as a sign of Islamist decline. (Yes, is badly needed by a government with a the military is trying to achieve now: no it’s dizzying to hear both that Islamists structural deficit that now exceeds $20 elections in the near term, and a stabiliz- are moderate democrats and that their billion annually. The Sau dis and the ing transitional period in which all ele- occasional setbacks are boons for demo- United Arab Emir ates—ma jor support- ments of society would collaborate on an cracy.) Still, it is worth emphasizing that ers of the Egyptian army and, not coinci- inclusive constitution—and in which pro- Islamic supremacism is far more popular dentally, the al-Nour par ty—were sitting ponents of real democracy would have in Egypt than is the Brotherhood. The on their wallets when the Brothers ran the time to develop political organizations Western media conflate the two, but they the show. As soon as Morsi was shown that could credibly compete with the are saliently different. The Brothers have the door, they injected $8 billion in aid, Bro th er hood and other Islamists. The successfully marketed themselves glob- with promises of more to follow. Broth ers and their Western enablers coun- ally as the Is lam ist vanguard. Yet in The media vastly exaggerate the im - tered by demanding quick elections. The Egypt, while they have their legions of portance of Morsi’s usurpation of near- Islam ists won the referendum in a rout. loyalists, they are widely regarded with dictatorial powers as a cause of his fall. The parliamentary elections that contempt, not just by secularists but even He claimed legislative authority and the soon followed mirrored that result. The by other Is lam ists. insulation of his “sovereign acts” from Bro ther hood won nearly 50 percent of Coverage of the latest upheaval missed judicial review because the military and the seats, while al-Nour and the other this phenomenon. In the main, the revolt the courts—staffed with Mubarak hold - Sal a fist parties added another 25 per- was against Morsi’s governance and the overs—voided parliament after Is lam ists cent—demon strating that, for all the street Brotherhood’s aggressive duplicity. won control of it, then threatened to noise and media hype, the con stitu ency Secularists and progressives—probably vacate the constituent assembly before it for Western democracy in Egypt is paltry. less than 20 percent of the electo - could finish the sharia constitution. But This gave the Islamists a hammerlock on rate—agitate against sharia implemen- the Brotherhood’s overarching goal was the constituent assembly tasked with writ- tation, but their passions are not the not dictatorship by Morsi but by sharia.

Given the West’s obsession with elec- AMR NABIL ing the new constitution. It also prompted country’s passions. Most Egyp tians fear / the Brothers to renege on their promise a failed state, which is what Egypt is well tions, it made perfect sense for Morsi, as

not to field a presidential candidate. on the way to becoming: a net importer the only elected official left standing, to AP PHOTO

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assert that only he had democratic legit- the best talkers from three continents. imacy, and that the public, not the court, Most of London’s cleverest minds at - should decide whether to adopt the sharia Salon and tended at one time or other—not only constitution. This angered the secular- academics, politicians, and journalists ists, who blasted Morsi as a dictator in Breakfast (Ken’s professional contacts, so to speak) an effort to prod the judges and the mil- but also novelists, sculptors, dancers, itary to block the sharia constitution. Kenneth Minogue, R.I.P. actors, chefs, and composers. The con- But it did not upset the vast majority of versations ranged widely and playfully. the population. When Egyptians over- And those evenings, rich in friendship BY JOHN O’SULLIVAN whelmingly approved the constitution and debate, were stimulated, guided, and last De cem ber, Morsi’s approval rating occasionally calmed by a host who could was 60 percent. f you were a distinguished philoso- match his sharpest interlocutors in logic It nosedived in the following months pher, economist, political theorist, or epigram over a vast range of topics. because Egypt slipped deeper into or literary critic arriving at Heath - Ken’s genius was, among other quali- chaos: food shortages, starvation, ris- I row from the U.S., Australia, or ties, conversational. He was stimulated ing crime, and—emblematic of sharia New Zealand between, say, 1990 and by error, contradiction, folly, and even cultures—increasing repression of reli- 2010, there was a fair chance that you in telligent correction. One can see that gious minorities and women. Nev er the - were heading for 43 Perrymead Street in his Firing Line debate with Bill Buck - less, Egypt as a whole has not shed its in fulham. That was where Kenneth ley, where, though they are in essential Islamic-supremacist character. Minogue, professor of politics at the agreement, they tussle over secondary Thus, the Islamist flank of General London School of Economics and Bri- points—with Ken rarely coming off Sisi’s ad hoc support network vanished tain’s leading public intellectual of the worse. He would test seemingly reason- within days. The army killed scores of Right, and his second wife, Beverly, able propositions by pointing out the rioters—Islamists and their jihadist lived and over the years maintained a odious or absurd consequences of apply- shock troops demanding Morsi’s res tor - high-class B&B for visiting conserva- ing them in practice. He would do so with a tion. The al-Nour party quickly bolted, tives (English breakfast and meta physical fanciful, comic, or homely examples. though not before blocking the secular- debates included). Its guest rooms were And he would delight in having his argu- ist effort to appoint Mohamed ElBaradei almost never empty. The Robert Con - ments caught, turned around, and sent as prime minister (he was la ter appoint- quests, the Tim fullers, the Roger Kim - whirling back by an opponent. Hearing ed vice president for foreign affairs). balls, and (I have to add) the John this mix of logic and wit was rather like Meanwhile, for green-lighting Morsi’s O’Sullivans were among the more fre- listening to a Platonic dialogue rewritten ouster, Grand Mufti Tayeb was scalded quent guests. And the prices were by Noël Coward or Tom Stoppard. In- by Islamist scholars. Sheikh Yusuf al- unbeatable. deed, the nearest thing in art to Ken’s Qaradawi, the globally re nowned sharia Suppose, however, you were unlucky conversation may be Stoppard’s 1972 jurist and Brotherhood totem, an - enough to be visiting London when all play about modern philosophy, Jumpers. nounced that most of the al-Azhar fac- the rooms were booked or, worse, you Not incidentally, Ken was a great ulty found the coup to be a profound were living in the city? No worries. You admirer of Stoppard, to whose trilogy of affront to Islam. would still be welcome at No. 43. In plays on the Russian intelligentsia, The Struggling to defuse the tension, the addition to keeping house for non-paying Coast of Utopia, he gave a rave review. It new interim president, Adly Mansour guests, Ken and Bev gave an apparently is sometimes difficult to see in that (plucked by Sisi from the High Con sti tu - limitless series of lunch and dinner par- review exactly where Stoppard ends and tion al Court), issued a “constitutional ties at which the current boarders, other Ken begins; but this is unmistakably declaration” under which Egypt will be visiting firemen, local Tory intellectuals, Ken: “When an influential set of people governed in the post-Morsi transition. Its sporting left-wingers fond of debate, lose their wits to some grand abstrac- opening articles reaffirm that Islam is the next-door neighbors, and the couple’s tion—Nazism and Communism are the religion of the state and that sha ria, de - extended families—including Ken’s first obvious examples—then whole nations rived from ancient Sunni canons, is the wife, Val—would gather at a long table in go mad. . . . A nation of clever artists, main source of legislation. the conservatory to be fed delicious food, such as the Italians, should never have Naturally, the secularists, progressives, more-than-drinkable wines, and provoca- fallen for [Mussolini’s] idea that they and religious minorities professed shock. tive argument. Ken was a generous host, were all warriors with a mission to “We did not take to the streets to give champagne bottle always at the ready, restore the greatness of Rome.” legitimacy to religious-based political Bev a superb cook in the school of Eliza - Precisely because Ken was a good con- parties that were about to erase Egypt’s beth David, a mistress of both french versationalist, some of his liveliest work identity,” thundered the Maspero Youth and English cuisine. (I share with Roger took place in the lecture room or in polit- Union, one of the savvy progressive Kimball fond recollections of both her ical and cultural journals such as NR, The groups spotlighted by the media as Morsi steak-and-kidney pie and her steak-and- New Criterion, and Australia’s Quadrant, fell. But these groups are actually trying kidney pudding.) where he was responding to immediate to create a new Egyptian identity. The If all those present had been dumb, the crises or topical criticisms. Here he is in current one, Islamic supremacism, will evenings would still have been memo- the British journal Standpoint, illustrat- not be easily erased. rable. In fact the guests included some of ing how the ideology of “niceness,” by

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ignoring such realities as the need for identities from whatever their social sta- adding moral judgments to the expand- social discipline, has destroyed the peace tus had previously dictated to whatever ing schedule of powers they exercise. of the classroom, still solid but threatened their economic and social interests now Nor does the state deal merely with when he was a young substitute teacher require. They can do these things (in principles. It is actually telling its sub- in the tough inner-London district of different times and places) because jects to do very specific things. Yet decisions about how we live are what Brixton: human beings are self-conscious: They we mean by “freedom,” and freedom is reflect upon themselves and their cir- I only once had occasion to call for the incompatible with a moralizing state. cane, which was sent (with the caning cumstances and act in accordance with record book) straight up from the head- their reflections. They can be influenced, One can trace in this set of ideas cer- master’s office. As I raised the cane of course, but they cannot be conditioned. tain echoes and influences from the over the offender’s hand, a chorus came They have to cope with reality. philosopher Michael Oakeshott, the from the class: “Mustn’t raise the cane That is why ideologies from Marxism economist F. A. Hayek, and the political above your shoulder, Sir, LCC [London to feminism that claim to liberate people and literary critic Shirley Robin Letwin. County Council] regulation.” These from false consciousness are not only Ken, within a decade of arriving in were children who had not yet been false, and condescendingly so, but are Britain from New Zealand and Aus - accorded the absurdity of rights, but tralia, where he was respectively born they understood very well that they and educated, was appointed a junior lived under a rule of law. lecturer in the LSE politics department Ken’s conversational style of argument headed by Oakeshott. (Ken remained was also marked by coolness, urbanity, there 50 years and, in due course, be - skepticism, and the making of fine dis- came head of the department.) Not long tinctions (that last very evident in the afterward, he became a close friend of quotation immediately above). It is these two Americans prominent in Lon don’s qualities that permeate his major books: social-cum-political life: Bill Letwin, The Liberal Mind (1963), which depicts professor of government at LSE, and his modern liberalism as an elderly Saint wife, Shirley. Shirley ran one of Lon - George, hooked on idealism and self- don’s few intellectual salons, and Ken applause, desperately searching for ever- was a regular participant at the Letwins’ smaller dragons to slay; Alien Powers tennis and dinner parties, which Hayek (1985), which attempts to discover the also frequented when in London. distilled essence of ideology by boiling a Ken absorbed all these influences but, number of particular ideologies in skepti- mixing them with his own experience cism; Politics: A Very Short Introduction and insights, he turned them into some- (2000); and The Servile Mind (2010), thing distinctive. Not for nothing was he which wittily examines how modern an individualist. By the early 1970s he governments infantilize their citizens by was a central figure in a group of writers, dictating moral judgments to them. All academics, politicians, and journalists these books are in print today, their fre- who exerted intellectual influence on quent republication around the world tes- the Tories—who were then reeling from tifying to the growing appeal of Ken’s two election defeats—through outlets style of conservatism, whose admirers such as the Daily Telegraph editorial range from R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. to page, the magazines Encounter and The Andrew Sullivan. Spectator, and the conservative think What was that style? Obituaries have also attempts (fortunately doomed in the tanks then beginning to sprout: the Centre generally summarized it as the familiar end) to impose a false consciousness on for Policy Studies, the Salisbury Group, conservative theme that the attempts to others. That is also why governments and the Conservative Philo sophy Group. create a heaven on earth generally pro- that attempt to regiment people, whether Margaret Thatcher was de rided by the duce a hell instead. That judgment is not economically or psychologically, in pur- Tory “Wets” as “Daily Telegraph Wo - false—Ken believed it devoutly—but it suit of some collective aim generally man.” She was a founder of the CPS; a is inadequate. I hesitate myself to sum- prove both mistaken and accident-prone. friend to the Salisbury Group; and a marize a set of ideas that are both subtle They impose a single aspiration where scholarship girl, ever eager to learn, at and scattered across works of theory and there are many and draw on limited the CPG, where Ken was an equally reg- daily journalism, but I think they go bureaucratic skills rather than on count- ular pundit. As he might have put it him- something like this. less social ones. And as Ken pointed out self, he risks the guilt of being a founder A free society is composed of people in The Servile Mind, this ambition to of Thatcherism. who, seeking to better themselves, grad- control is spreading: And somewhere along the way he got ually cast off the constricting customs of The evident problem with democracy a taste for salons, which, fortunately, earlier times and develop various skills today is that the state is preempting— Beverly shared, and from which all his and abilities to navigate a changing or “crowding out,” as the economists friends benefited—and maybe the wider

world. In doing so, they change their say—our moral judgments. Rulers are world too. LIBRARY OF THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

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The Front Man Face of the lawless bureaucracy

BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

onservatives have for years attempted to put our Woodrow Wilson’s or richard nixon’s. Barack obama did not finger upon precisely why Barack obama strikes us invent managerial liberalism, nor has he contributed any new as queer in precisely the way he does. there is an ideas to it. He is, in fact, a strangely incurious man. Unlike C alienness about him, which in the fever swamps is ronald reagan, to whom he likes to be compared, President expressed in all that ridiculous Kenyan-Muslim hokum, but his obama shows no signs of having expended any effort on big citizen-of-the-world shtick is strictly sophomore year—the thinkers or big ideas. President reagan’s guiding lights were great globalist does not even speak a foreign language. obama theorists such as F. a. Hayek and thomas Paine; obama’s most has been called many things—radical, socialist—labels that important influences have been tacticians such as abner Mikva, may have him dead to rights at the phylum level but not down bush-league propagandists like the reverend Jeremiah Wright, at his genus or species. His social circle includes an alarming and his beloved community organizers. Far from being the number of authentic radicals, but the president’s politics are intellectual hostage of far-left ideologues, President obama utterly conventional managerial liberalism. His manner is does not appear to have the intellectual energy even to digest aloof, but he is too plainly a child of the middle class to suc- their ideas, much less to implement them. this is not to say that cumb to the regal pretensions that the Kennedys suffered from, he is an unintelligent man. He is a man with a first-class edu- even if his household entourage does resemble the ringling cation and a business-class mind, a sort of inverse autodidact Bros. Circus as reimagined by imelda Marcos when it moves whose intellectual pedigree is an order of magnitude more about from Kailua Beach to Blue Heron Farm. not a dictator impressive than his intellect. under the red flag, not a would-be king, President obama is the result of this is his utterly predictable approach to nonetheless something new to the american experience, and domestic politics: appoint a panel of credentialed experts. His

troubling. faith in the powers of pedigreed professionals is apparently CHARLES DHARAPAK / it is not simply the content of his political agenda, which, absolute. Consider his hallmark achievement, the affordable

though wretched, is a good deal less ambitious than was Care act, the centerpiece of which is the appointment of a com- AP PHOTO

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mittee, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), the expand the power of the bureaucracy, you expand the power of mission of which is to achieve targeted savings in Medicare the Left, of the managers and minions who share Barack without reducing the scope or quality of care. How that is to be Obama’s view of the world. Barack Obama isn’t the leader of achieved was contemplated in detail neither by the lawmakers the free world; he’s the front man for the permanent bureaucra- who wrote the health-care bill nor by the president himself. But cy, the smiley-face mask hiding the pitiless yawning maw of they did pay a great deal of attention to the processes touching total politics. IPAB: For example, if that committee of experts fails to achieve In an important sense, the American people have no political the demanded savings, then the ball is passed to . . . a new com- say in the health-care law, for example, because Congress did mittee of experts, this one under the guidance of the secretary not pass a law reforming the health-care system; instead, of health and human services. IPAB’s powers are nearly Congress passed a law empowering the Obama administration, plenipotentiary: Its proposals, like a presidential veto, require a through its political appointees and unelected time-servers, to supermajority of Congress to be overridden. create a new national health-care regime. The general outline of IPAB is the most dramatic example of President Obama’s the program is there in the law, but the nuts and bolts of the approach to government by expert decree, but much of the rest thing will be created on the fly by President Obama and his of his domestic program, from the Dodd-Frank financial- many panels of experts. There are several problems with that reform law to his economic agenda, is substantially similar. model of business, one of which is that President Obama, and In total, it amounts to that fundamental transformation of more than a few of his beloved experts, have political interests. American society that President Obama promised as a candi- The partisans of pragmatism present themselves as disinterested date: but instead of the new birth of hope and change, it is the servants of the public weal, simply collecting the best informa- transformation of a constitutional republic operating under laws tion and the best advice from the top experts and putting that passed by democratically accountable legislators into a servile into practice. Their only political interest, they would have us nation under the management of an unaccountable administra- believe, is in helping the public understand what a great job is tive state. The real import of Barack Obama’s political career being done for them. Consider President Obama’s observation will be felt long after he leaves office, in the form of a perma- that his worst mistake in his first term was “thinking that this nently expanded state that is more assertive of its own interests job was just about getting the policy right. . . . The nature of this and more ruthless in punishing its enemies. At times, he has office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives advanced this project abetted by congressional Democrats, as them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially with the health-care law’s investiture of extraordinary powers during tough times.” (It never seems to have entered into the in the executive bureaucracy, but he also has advanced it with- president’s head that he might have got the policy wrong.) But out legislative assistance—and, more troubling still, in plain of course there is a good deal more to politics than that. For violation of the law. President Obama and his admirers choose example, the president would very much like the unemploy- to call this “pragmatism,” but what it is is a mild expression of ment problem to be somewhat abated by the time of the 2014 totalitarianism, under which the interests of the country are con- congressional elections, but he knows that this is unlikely to flated with those of the president’s administration and his party. happen with employers struggling under an expensive health- Barack Obama is the first president of the democracy that John care mandate that he has not told enough of a story about. And Adams warned us about. so he has decided—empowered to do so by precisely nothing— that the law will not be enforced until after the elections. Neither does the law empower him arbitrarily to exempt mil- eMOCRACy never lasts long,” Adams famously said. “It lions of his donors and allies in organized labor from the law, soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was but he has done that too. D never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” For This is a remarkable thing. The health-care law gives the liberal regimes, a very common starting point on the road to executive all sorts of powers to promulgate regulations and serfdom is the over-delegation of legislative powers to the make judgments, but it does not give the executive the power to executive. France very nearly ended up in a permanent dicta- decide which aspects of the law will be enforced and which will torship as a result of that error, and was spared that fate mostly not, or to establish a different timeline from the one found in the by good luck and Charles de Gaulle’s patriotism. Long before law itself. For all of the power that Congress legally has given she declared her infamous state of emergency, Indira Gandhi the president in this matter, he feels it necessary to take more— had been centralizing power in the prime minister’s office, and illegally. India was spared a permanent dictatorship only by her political The president and his admirers dismiss concern over this as miscalculation and her dynasty-minded son’s having gotten so much chum for the talk-radio ravers, but it is no such thing. himself killed in a plane wreck. Salazar in Portugal, Austria The job of the president is to execute the law—that is what the under Dollfuss, similar stories. But the United States is not executive branch is there to do. If Barack Obama had wanted to going to fall for a strongman government. Instead of delegat- keep pursuing his career as a lawmaker, then the people of ing power to a would-be president-for-life, we delegate it to a Illinois probably would have been content to preserve him in bureaucracy-without-death. you do not need to install a dicta- the Senate for half a century or so. As president, he has no more tor when you’ve already had a politically supercharged perma- power to decide not to enforce the provisions of a duly enacted nent bureaucracy in place for 40 years or more. As is made clear federal law than does John Boehner, Anthony Weiner, or by everything from campaign donations to the IRS jihad, the Whoopi Goldberg. And unlike them, he has a constitutional bureaucracy is the Left, and the Left is the bureaucracy. duty to enforce the law. Representative Tom Cotton says that elections will be held, politicians will come and go, but if you the president’s health-care delay makes a deal on immigration

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less likely—if the president can simply decline to enforce the ongress’s supine ceding of its powers, and the obama provisions of a law he fought for, why trust him to enforce pro- administration’s usurpation of both legal and extralegal visions of a law he is accepting only as a compromise? repre - C powers, is worrisome. But what is particularly disturb- sentative Cotton must also of course have in mind the fact that ing is the quiet, polite, workaday manner with which the admin- after Congress had unequivocally rejected another piece of istration goes about its business—and with which the American immigration reform, the so-called DreAM Act, that the presi- public accepts it. As Christopher Hitchens once put it, “The dent had supported, he simply instituted it unilaterally, as though essence of tyranny is not iron law; it is capricious law.” Barack he had the authority to declare an amnesty himself. He then obama makes a virtue out of that caprice, having articulated for did away with criminal-background checks for those to be his judicial nominees not a legal standard but a political standard amnestied, also on his own authority. strangely, the order to halt requiring sympathy for politically favored groups: African background checks came down on november 9, 2012, the same American, gay, disabled, old, in his words. day that John Boehner said republicans would seek a compro- We have to some extent been here before. It is a testament to mise on immigration reform. the success of free-market ideas that it is impossible to imag- In a similar vein, President obama has refused to cut off ine President obama making the announcement that President foreign-aid funds to the egyptian government, though he is richard nixon did on August 15, 1971: “I am today ordering a required by law to do so in the event of a coup d’état, which is freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United states.” precisely what happened in July in egypt. It might be embar- President nixon created not one but two IPABs, the Pay Board rassing for the president to punish the egyptian military and the and the Price Commission, which were to be entrusted with The president not only ignores the law but in some cases goes out of his way to subvert it.

grand mufti of al-Azhar for their overthrow of the unpopular managing the day-to-day operations of the U.s. economy. Mohamed Morsi, but the law does not make exceptions for President nixon, too, was empowered by a Congress that presidential embarrassment. The president is not legally em - invested him with that remarkable authority, through the powered to assassinate American citizens, but he has done so, economic stabilization Act of 1970, whose provisions were to after going through the charade of drawing up a legal argument be invoked during times of economic emergency. There was no under which he judged himself entitled to do what the economic emergency in 1971, but it is a nearly iron-clad rule Constitution plainly prohibits. The law also prohibits the presi- of the presidency that powers vested will be powers used. That dent and his allies from using the instruments of government to President obama has adopted President nixon’s approach but persecute their rivals, but that is precisely what the Irs has limited himself to health care might be considered progress if been up to for several years, as it turns out. And not just the Irs: he had not adopted as a general principle one of nixon’s Tea-party activist Catherine engelbrecht was subject to an Irs unfortunate maxims: When the president does it, it isn’t ille- audit, two FBI visits, an osHA investigation, and an ATF gal. President nixon’s lawlessness was sneaky, and he had the inspection of her business (which does not deal in A, T, or F). decency to be ashamed of it. President obama’s lawlessness is And although the Irs has no statutory power to collect as bland and bloodless as the man himself, and practiced openly, Affordable Care Act–related fines in states that have not volun- as though it were a virtue. President nixon privately kept an ene- tarily set up health-care exchanges, obama’s managers there mies list; President obama publicly promises that “we’re have announced that they will do so anyway. gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our The president not only ignores the law but in some cases goes friends.” out of his way to subvert it. The U.s. military carried out the Barack obama’s administration is unmoored from the institu- killing of osama bin Laden, but the records of that event have tions that have long kept the imperial tendencies of the been removed from military custody, where they are subject to American presidency in check. That is partly the fault of Con - inquiries under the Freedom of Information Act, and moved to gress, which has punted too many of its legislative responsi- the CIA, where they can be kept in secrecy. He has attempted to bilities to the president’s army of faceless regulators, but it is in make “recess appointments” when Congress is not in recess and no small part the result of an intentional strategy on the part of has been stopped from doing so by the federal courts, which the administration. He has spent the past five years methodical- rightly identified the maneuver as patently unconstitutional. ly testing the limits of what he can get away with, like one of There exists a federal law called the religious Freedom those crafty velociraptors testing the electric fence in Jurassic restoration Act, which restricts the federal government’s Park. Barack obama is a Harvard Law graduate, and he knows power to force Americans to violate their consciences. The that he cannot make recess appointments when Congress is not obama administration is forcing an abortifacient mandate upon in recess. He knows that his HHs is promulgating regulations practically all U.s. employers, in violation of that law. Kathleen that conflict with federal statutes. He knows that he is not con- sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, who is stitutionally empowered to pick and choose which laws will be responsible for drafting those regulations, received a number of enforced. This is a might-makes-right presidency, and if Barack letters from lawmakers arguing that the mandate she was con- obama has been from time to time muddled and contradictory, templating violated the law; she proceeded anyway—without he has been clear on the point that he has no intention of being so much as getting an opinion from her departmental lawyer. limited by something so trivial as the law.

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In fact, the entire theory of “nuclear zero” adherents is that reductions by nuclear powers such as the United States will Treaty induce others to follow suit and will dissuade non-nuclear states from seeking that capacity in the first instance. There is, of course, absolutely no evidence that the rulers in Tehran and Pyongyang will do anything other than ramp up their own By Decree efforts in the face of American decline. Ironically, the United States may be saved from Obama’s poli- Obama’s end-run around the cies by Vladimir Putin, who has rejected any further bilateral negotiations, arguing instead that China and perhaps others must Senate, and the Constitution be included. No doubt having China on Russia’s border has sharp- BY JOHN R. BOLTON ened Putin’s awareness of living in a multipolar nuclear world, complementing his real objective against the United States: fur- & J O H N Y O O ther gutting our efforts, already gravely slackened under Obama, to create a limited national missile-defense capability. Putin ITh the exception of the SALT I agreement, fears that any further reductions in Russian strategic weapons, every significant arms control agreement dur- combined with even limited increases in U.S. anti-missile capa- ing the past three decades has been transmitted bilities over time, would protect America from Russian retaliation ‘W to the Senate pursuant to the Treaty Clause of after a U.S. first strike. Paranoid as it is, this scenario has moti- the Constitution,” veteran senators wrote the president. “We see vated Moscow’s animus against our missile-defense efforts since no reason whatsoever to alter this practice.” Reagan first proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative. These words did not flow from the pen of Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) or Mike Lee (R., Utah) in a quest to block presidential power. Instead, the authors were the unlikely duo of then- he Constitution, however, still stands athwart Obama’s senators Joe Biden (D., Del.) and Jesse helms (R., N.C.). Biden rush to a nuclear-free utopia. Article II, Section 2 declares and helms did not see eye to eye on much, but they agreed that T that the president “shall have Power, by and with the President George W. Bush had to submit his 2002 nuclear- Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties,” but only if arms-reduction pact with Russia as a treaty: “No constitutional “two thirds of the Senators present concur.” President Obama’s alternative exists to transmittal of the concluded agreement to the last nuclear-reduction pact, the 2011 New START Treaty with Senate for its advice and consent.” Russia, cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal to dangerously low levels, After announcing last month that he would seek deep cuts in 750 strategic delivery systems and 1,550 warheads. It passed the American and Russian nuclear stockpiles, President Barack Senate by a vote of 71–26, but only after breaking a filibuster Obama should consider those words from the man who is now with 67 votes, not one to spare. his vice president. Obama has not been shy about his goal of a Uncertain it can persuade a dozen Republicans to err again, the nuclear-free world, despite the continuing quest of North Korea administration is considering a Russian deal without Senate and Iran for nuclear weapons, Russia’s extensive modernization approval. According to his spokesman, Secretary of State Kerry of both its warhead arsenal and its ballistic-missile force, and told senators that they “would be consulted as we moved forward China’s ongoing expansion of its nuclear capabilities. As Obama into discussions with the Russian Federation, but did not indicate said at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, “Peace with justice means that the administration had decided to codify any results in a pursuing the security of a world without nuclear weapons—no treaty.” Unnamed administration officials say Washington and matter how distant that dream may be.” Moscow could engage in reciprocal weapons cuts without a writ- The policy arguments against bilateral negotiations with ten agreement. Russia in a multipolar nuclear world would seem obvious, Senators of both parties should stop this assault on the separa- especially to a president who barely knew the Cold War. The tion of powers. As advisers to George W. Bush, we supported capacity and technology build-ups by China, the appearance vigorous executive authority to protect our national security after of India and Pakistan as nuclear powers in the late 1990s, and 9/11 through measures that included withdrawal from the 1972 the continuing proliferation efforts by North Korea, Iran, and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. When Bush proposed others all demonstrate that the Cold War paradigm is no negotiating nuclear cuts with Russia and prompted the Biden- longer an adequate basis for determining strategic-weapons helms convergence, however, he wanted the agreement to under- levels or deployments. Obama’s massive cuts in America’s go the Constitution’s treaty process. even though Bush was already tattered nuclear umbrella, with more to come, are far urged to resort to a scheme of reciprocal reductions, he wisely more compelling proof of a failed strategy than is his airy and placed constitutional text and historical practice first. diaphanous notion of “nuclear zero.” Bush’s logic remains valid today. It is for a reason that the Constitution requires that treaties win supermajorities: to ensure Mr. Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a that treaties represent the highest levels of political consensus and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He is the author of Surrender Is that (in the words of Federalist No. 1) we have “good government Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and from reflection and choice” rather than bad government from Abroad. Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and an “accident and force.” Article II, Section 2’s difficult ratification AEI visiting scholar. He is the author, most recently, of Taming Globalization: process checks presidents who may bargain away national sov- International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order. ereignty for political advantage or short-term gain. Playing with

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the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Obama is bargaining away sovereignty’s global governance aims to replicate the administrative state at the most fundamental attribute, the right of self-defense. international level. Proponents of global governance urge vast The administration, however, bears allegiance to what it delegations of authority to regulate domestic and world affairs to considers a higher authority. President Obama and his intel- unaccountable international institutions; thus, the U.N. is respon- lectual supporters would rather replace sovereignty with sible for international peace and security; the Law of the Sea “global governance”: the idea of constraining political author- Treaty sets rules, to be administered by international bodies, for ity at the national level and transferring it to international resolving disputes about the oceans; and the International organizations such as the United Nations or the International Criminal Court can prosecute anyone in the world for war crimes. Criminal Court. They take as their model the European Union, These institutions will constrain U.S. freedom of action by impos- where once-great nations such as the United Kingdom, Ger - ing international “norms” derived from consensus rather than many, France, Italy, and Spain have steadily ceded authority respecting the decisions of constitutional democracy. over their domestic and foreign policies to unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels. No state is superior to any other; all nations—including the United States—are equally excep- T is in the U.S. Constitution that Obama finds the greatest tional, as President Obama notoriously claimed, and therefore obstacle to the pursuit of his international utopia. Article II, not exceptional at all. All nations must submerge their national I Section 2’s requirement of a Senate supermajority puts a interests in an amorphous “international community.” brake on efforts to transfer U.S. sovereignty to international orga- President Obama made clear his worldview in his first address nizations. Thus, as with the proposed Russian nuclear-arms deal, to the U.N. General Assembly: the administration has tried to advance global governance by an end run around the Constitution. In 2012, for example, the It is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009—more than at any Obama administration declared that America would follow, point in human history—the interests of nations and peoples are though not sign, a European Union code of conduct for outer shared. . . . In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero-sum game. No one nation can or should try to space. Drafted by nations that do not bear America’s global dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation responsibilities, the code restricts military activities in space as or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of well as some peaceful dual-use technologies, such as the multi- power among nations will hold. stage rockets that can launch commercial satellites. The Obama administration has even gone so far as to attempt Global governance promises a peace that has so far eluded to override Senate opposition to global-governance treaties. In mankind. For true believers, the prime instrument is the treaty, but 1986, President Reagan wisely decided to block the U.N. one that is a wholly different kind of agreement from those that Convention on the Law of the Sea because it creates an interna- ended the First and Second World Wars. Rather than seek discrete tional authority with the right to tax private undersea mining. political, military, or trade agreements between individual nations, Even though the Obama administration’s efforts to convince the

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Senate to approve the agreement have proven unavailing, it has ordered the u.S. Navy to follow the treaty’s rules, in the hope that they might become binding customary international law. despite The the Senate’s clear rejection of any climate-change agreements (it rejected the Kyoto accords 99–0), the administration sought to cooperate with the Copenhagen global-warming enterprise, which considered pollution quotas and carbon taxes for devel- Anti-Che oped nations. This year, the obama administration signed the u.N. Arms Trade Treaty to impose a “national control system” on Felix Rodriguez, freedom fighter and patriot “small arms and light weapons,” even while its gun-control proposals floundered in Congress. The attempt to advance gun control through the Arms Trade BY JAY NORDLINGER Treaty might surprise average Americans, but not liberals, who have long been frustrated by the Constitution’s limits on government. gun-control statutes, like any others, have to survive both Miami, Fla. the House and the Senate and then win presidential approval. it is elix RodRiguez seems fated to be linked to Che far easier to advance an agenda through treaties, unwritten inter- guevara. This is not entirely just. Rodriguez loves national law, and even “norms” delivered by the “international freedom, and has worked tirelessly for it; guevara community.” F loved tyranny, and worked tirelessly for it. “Two sides opponents of capital punishment have used treaties to press of the same coin,” some people say. Maybe—but only in the the Supreme Court to stop the death penalty in Texas. Women’s- way that light and dark are two sides of the same coin. rights groups advocate an international convention that would Rodriguez had a role in stopping guevara. He was there, in the achieve the goals of the failed equal Rights Amendment. And Bolivian mountains, in 1967. He was the last person to talk with supporters of bans on “hate speech” invoke international norms guevara—a man who did so much to tyrannize the country to defeat First Amendment objections. There also is an interna- where Rodriguez was born, Cuba. tional legal doctrine (embodied in a treaty the Senate has never The story of guevara’s last day has been told many times, in adopted) that during the period when a country has signed but many ways. Rodriguez told it in his 1989 memoir, Shadow not yet ratified a treaty, it must take no measures that defeat the Warrior. it is told in a book published earlier this year, Daybreak treaty’s object and purposes. under some liberal theories, this at La Higuera, by Rafael Cerrato, a Spaniard. la Higuera is the would allow the president to put some measures of the Arms village where guevara met his end. Cerrato’s main sources for Trade Treaty into effect by executive order. Fortunately the the book are Rodriguez, who was working for the Central Constitution’s treaty power, properly understood, prevents these intelligence Agency, and dariel Alarcón Ramírez, whose nom absurd schemes absent the support of a Senate supermajority. de guerre was Benigno. A Cuban, Benigno was guevara’s Constitutional principle here makes for good politics. lieutenant in Bolivia. He was also a member of Fidel Castro’s Scandals over executive power increasingly beset the White inner circle. He defected in 1996—and now he and Rodriguez House. Resorting to unilateral executive initiatives to reduce are friends. nuclear stockpiles can only further undermine trust in the Just a week ago, Rodriguez made a donation to the CiA obama presidency. if obama believes that a 33 percent reduc- Museum: ashes from guevara’s last pipe. But he has a few more tion in our deployed nuclear forces advances our best interests, of those ashes here, in his Miami home. His den is chock-a- the treaty process provides him an advantageous forum to per- block with mementos. on the wall, for example, is a bond signed suade others of his vision. by José Martí, Cuba’s national hero. in this den, we talk about if obama instead insists on acting alone, Congress can respond events past, present, and future. Rodriguez is an excellent talker with its own constitutional powers. As commander-in-chief, the (as well as doer). He is large, sharp, and commanding. president dictates nuclear strategy and tactics, but only the legis- He was born in 1941. His hometown is Sancti Spíritus, in lature’s power of the purse can set the size of the armed forces. central Cuba. His father was a storeowner; his mother helped The Framers designed Congress’s power over the military to out in the store and tended the house. Rodriguez’s earliest frustrate presidential policies. in the 1990s, for example, memory is of being with his mom while she talked about Congress supported the research and development of national what Hitler was doing in europe. The little boy was scared missile defense even while the Clinton administration wrongly that the Nazis would come to Cuba. Among his forebears are believed that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty—it prohibited notable figures from Cuba’s wars of independence. one of all strategic missile-defense systems—reinforced “strategic these figures is Alejandro Rodríguez Velasco, who would stability” between the superpowers. Congress can defeat become the first popularly elected mayor of Havana. in obama’s policy simply by funding the expansion of u.S. nuclear 1895, Máximo gómez sent a letter to this man’s wife—who forces. had asked whether her husband might come home from the unlike a mere executive promise, which the next president field. gómez wrote her a tender letter about the value of can undo at little cost, a constitutional treaty would signal a fighting for freedom. This letter is one of Felix Rodriguez’s long-term commitment by both branches to nuclear-arms con- treasures. trol. if the president expects his dream of a nuclear-free world And who was Máximo gómez? Cubans know: He was an to outlive his term in office, only a Senate-ratified treaty can officer from the dominican Republic, who went to Cuba to help provide the lasting legacy he wants so badly. that country win its independence from Spain. For Cubans, he

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is a Lafayette. In the 1980s, Felix Rodriguez went to El Ukrainians and Romanians, bearing East Bloc weapons. Salvador, as a private citizen, to help that country defeat a Rodriguez later heard that the yacht belonged to Sargent Castro-backed Communist insurgency. The alias he adopted: Shriver, President Kennedy’s brother-in-law. All three times, Max Gomez. Here in his den, he reads out the letter from the something went awry, and the Agency changed its mind about original Gómez—and chokes up. the assassination mission. In late February of ’61, Rodriguez When he was about twelve, an uncle offered him the chance was sent into Cuba as part of an infiltration team, whose mis- to study in the United States. Felix was reluctant at first, sion was to help the Cuban resistance in advance of the inva- because he loved his life in Cuba. But another uncle, who had sion: an invasion that would be known as the Bay of Pigs. studied in Paris, said, “Think hard about this. This is a rare Rodriguez’s mission was, of course, harrowing, with many opportunity, and if you pass it up, you’ll regret it.” Felix heeded close calls. But it was not without its amusing elements. One this advice. And he chose a school in Pennsylvania, because he day, Rodriguez and a companion approached a beach. Not wanted to see snow. The school was called Perkiomen, in thinking, Rodriguez said to a militiaman, “Is it okay to use this Pennsburg, not far from Philadelphia. When he was a junior in beach or is it private?” The militiaman said, “Compañero, high school, his country experienced its cataclysmic event: the where you been? There aren’t any private beaches anymore. takeover by Castro and his fellow revolutionaries. Felix’s par- They all belong to the people!” “Oh, right,” said Rodriguez. ents were on vacation in Mexico. (It turned out to be a long “Thanks, compañero. Power to the Revolution!” But Rodri - vacation.) Felix, just 17, determined to fight the Communists, guez was soon warned away from a particular stretch of beach: as soon as possible. which was marked off for Fidel Castro himself. In his Miami den, Rodriguez gives a detailed account of the Bay of Pigs, an operation that earned the name “fiasco.” The T was possible through something called the Anti- blunders of the American planners are almost unbelievable. Communist Legion of the Caribbean, being formed in the The Cubans had confidence until the end, says Rodriguez: I Dominican Republic—which itself was ruled by a dicta- America was John Wayne. And John Wayne never loses. Until tor, Trujillo. Felix joined up against his parents’ will. He he did. After the Bay of Pigs, Cuban hopes sank, and Castro arrived in Santo Domingo—or Ciudad Trujillo, as it was cemented his power. Fear gripped the island. People shrank then—on July 4, 1959. He hoped that this date, the Fourth of from resistance, understandably. Rodriguez managed to get to July, would be as auspicious for Cubans as it had been for the Venezuelan embassy in Havana, where he was sheltered for Americans. The Anti-Communist Legion staged just one five months: He left Cuba in September 1961. He would not be mission into Cuba, a disaster: Castro was waiting for them, sheltered in the Venezuelan embassy today: The government in and all the troops were killed or captured. Rodriguez had been Caracas regards the Castro dictatorship as a model. Venezuelan excluded from the mission at the last second. A friend of his, oil helps sustain the Castro dictatorship. As Rodriguez sees it, Roberto Martín Pérez, was captured and spent the next 28 Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, is loyal to the Castros, years in Castro’s prisons. Rodriguez vowed to keep doing what like a son to a father (two of them). Maduro’s predecessor, he could. Hugo Chávez, was the same way. One of the themes of his life is that too few people know Rodriguez married a Cuban girl he met when he was 14—“It what it is to have your country seized by totalitarians. In a 60 was love at first sight.” He and Rosa had two children, Minutes piece, aired in 1989, Mike Wallace asked Rodriguez Rosemarie and Felix Jr. The family settled into American why he was helping the Salvadorans. “What is it, are you a life—but not entirely. They were between countries, in a sense, war-lover? Is that it? Are you constantly in search of adven- as so many others in South Florida were. Then, in 1967, came ture?” Rodriguez replied, in short, that people in general are Felix’s rendezvous with Guevara. clueless. You can read about Communism, but until you have experienced it for yourself, you have no idea. Also, there is the experience of exile: to be ripped from your country and family HE old Argentinean guerrilla was in Bolivia to lead a and friends, and not be able to return. revolution, to impose on that country what he had Many people think of Castro and his brother as Northern T already helped impose on Cuba. The “old” guerrilla European–style socialists who occasionally get a little rough— was 39; Rodriguez was 26. He was assigned by the CIA to or as traditional caudillos who flavor their speech with assist Bolivian forces in tracking Guevara down. What was his Marxism-Leninism. In reality, they are in the mold of Hoxha role in ultimate success? We can say the following: Rodri - or Ceausescu, monsters. And the Castros’ grip on Cuba is mon- guez’s skillfully gentle interrogation of a young guerrilla pris- strous. Like many Cubans and Cuban Americans, Rodriguez oner helped the Bolivians home in on the guerrilla leader. On often refers to Fidel Castro simply as “he” or “him.” Equally October 9, Rodriguez met this leader face to face, in the mud- often, he refers to him as “the son-of-a-bitch.” brick schoolhouse in La Higuera. You can imagine some of the At the beginning of 1961, he had an idea: He would assassi- emotion. Guevara had killed many people, personally, back in nate the son-of-a-bitch. It would avoid or shorten the coming Cuba—mainly at La Cabaña, his fortress headquarters. Before war, he reasoned. He and a friend volunteered their services— they died, the Cubans shouted, “Viva Cuba libre!” (“Long live and the CIA accepted. The Agency equipped Rodriguez with a free Cuba!”) and “Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the German rifle, which had a telescopic sight. The Agency also King!”). And now Rodriguez had him at his feet. added a radio operator to the team. Three times, this team Guevara was a cocky killer, but he was not so cocky at this headed to Cuba on a luxurious yacht, whose captain was moment. Still, he had an air of command. Said Rodriguez, American and whose crew was made up of tough, hardened “Che Guevara, I want to talk to you.” Said Guevara, “No one

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The last picture taken of Che Guevara alive, October 9, 1967. Felix Rodriguez is on the left.

interrogates me.” But talk they did—about philosophy, life, had done Rodriguez’s country so much harm, Zenteno said. It and death. Rodriguez asked him about the people he killed at was only right that he have the opportunity. But he declined. La Cabaña. Guevara said they were all “foreigners.” He him- It was left to a Bolivian sergeant. Rodriguez has always main- self had been a foreigner in Cuba, of course. And as Rodriguez tained that Guevara died with courage and dignity. He pointed out to him, he was a foreigner in Bolivia. Guevara admired him for it, and still does. But that’s as far as his admi- answered, “These are matters of the proletariat that are beyond ration goes. your comprehension.” Rodriguez asked how he, an Argen - He remembers meeting a woman some 30 years ago, whose tinean physician, could have become president of the Cuban son had been executed at La Cabaña. He was 15 years old. She national bank. Guevara told him a funny story: One day, Castro went to the fortress to beg for his life. Guevara received her. said to his top cadres, “Who here is a dedicated economist,” or This was on a Monday. He called an assistant and said, “When economista? Guevara thought he had said comunista—and is this prisoner scheduled to be executed?” On Friday, he was raised his hand. That’s how he became president of the national told. The prisoner’s mother thought Guevara was going to bank. Rodriguez thought he might be kidding—but later, grant a reprieve. Instead, he said, “Get him and execute him Benigno, the Cuban defector, confirmed the story. He had been now, so his mother doesn’t have to wait until Friday.” She present, sitting right next to Guevara. fainted. Says Rodriguez, “He was a very, very cruel man.” Rodriguez’s orders from Washington were to do everything What does he think when he sees Guevara’s face on all those he could to keep Guevara alive. Then, the prisoner would be T-shirts? What does he think of the people who wear those transported to Panama, to be interrogated by the Americans. T-shirts? Mainly that they are ignorant, having no idea who But the Bolivians had the authority in this matter. It was their Guevara was or what he did or what he stood for. One day, war, their country—and they wanted him dead. Rodriguez Benigno and his wife saw a young Frenchman in a Che shirt. gave the prisoner the news. “It’s better this way, Felix,” said His wife asked him, “Who is that fellow on your shirt?” The Guevara. “I should never have been captured alive.” Rodri - young man answered, “A rock singer.” guez said to him, “Comandante, do you want me to say anything to your family if I ever have the opportunity?” After an interval, Guevara said, “Yes. Tell Fidel that he will soon see a OdRIGueZ became an American citizen in 1969. And he triumphant revolution in America” (i.e., South America). “And volunteered for Vietnam. From 1970 to 1972, he was in tell my wife to get remarried and try to be happy.” The two men R special operations. He told the Vietnamese with whom embraced. Then Rodriguez walked out of the schoolhouse. (He he worked, “I’ve already lost my country,” meaning his origi-

was never to meet Guevara’s family.) nal country, “but it’s not too late for you: You can fight for your COURTESY OF FELIX RODRIGUEZ / The Bolivian officer in charge, Joaquín Zenteno Anaya, had country.” One Christmas, after he was back home in Miami, he

offered Rodriguez the chance to finish Guevara off. Guevara received a card from a Vietnamese comrade named Hoa. “do AP PHOTO

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you think the United States will ever the Castro-backed, and Soviet- abandon us?” asked Hoa. Rodriguez backed, junta in Managua. Rod - wrote back and said no. In his view, riguez agreed—but fairly rapidly the U.S. did in fact abandon the became disillusioned with the whole Vietnamese, in 1975. He is of the “Enterprise” (as North called it). school that says the U.S. won the Equipment for the Contras was war militarily but lost it politically, shoddy and unsafe. Operational se - and shamefully. After their triumph, curity was shaky. What really stuck the Vietnamese Com munists killed in Rodriguez’s craw was war- about a million. profiteering. In 1987, he testified In 1976, Rodriguez left the CIA, at the Iran-Contra hearings, with- for several reasons. One had to do out a lawyer, and without holding with security. In May of that year, back. That was the end of his in - Zenteno, the Bolivian, was gunned volvement in scandal, he thought. down in Paris. He had been serv- But a month later, there was an ing as his country’s ambassador to eye-popping story in the Miami France. Claiming responsibility was Herald: A convicted money laun- a group that called itself the Inter- derer for the Medellín cartel had national Che Guevara Brigade. Not accused Rodriguez of soliciting long after, Rodriguez received a call drug money for the Contras. This at home. In Spanish, a man asked was a leak supplied by “unnamed for “Felix Ramos.” Then he said, congressional sources.” And who “You’re next.” That name, Felix might they be? It was no mystery. Ramos, had been Rodriguez’s alias In the Senate, John Kerry was in Bolivia. (Unlike “Max Gomez,” chairing a subcommittee known to it had no political or historical sig- Rodriguez in 2011 one and all as the “Kerry Com - nificance.) The Agency offered to mittee.” He was keen to establish a give Rodriguez and his family new identities and move them to link between the Contras and drug-running. He was especially a different state. But Rodriguez decided against: too disruptive. keen to link the vice president, George Bush, to any such drug- So, the Agency added security enhancements to his house, bullet- running. Rodriguez had a tie to Bush, because the vice presi- proofed his car, and took some other measures. They also gave dent’s national-security adviser was Donald Gregg, who had him a very high award: the Intelligence Star, for valor. been Rodriguez’s superior in Vietnam. Rodriguez wanted to For some years, the Cuban dictatorship had a price on testify before Kerry’s committee in an open hearing, so he Rodriguez’s head. From Benigno, Rodriguez learned that could clear his name. But Kerry insisted on a closed hearing. Raúl Castro had a special interest in him. There were at least Toward the end of that hearing, Rodriguez said to Kerry, three plots against Rodriguez. Is there still a price on his “Senator, this has been the hardest testimony I ever gave in head? He thinks not: “The Cuban government has enough my life.” Kerry asked why. “Because,” said Rodriguez, “it is problems without worrying about me. But it’s always possible extremely difficult to have to answer questions from some- that some crazy guy will try to do something to congratulate one you do not respect, and I do not respect you and what you himself.” are doing here.” The senator was not pleased. “Boy, did he Rodriguez has a lot to say about the Carter years—none of it blow his top,” Rodriguez says. But after almost a year—and good—but we will skip ahead to the Reagan years. In 1985, considerable Republican pressure—Kerry apologized to Rodriguez went to El Salvador, as a private citizen, and as Max Rodriguez and acknowledged that the money launderer’s Gomez. He flew hundreds of combat missions with Salva - accusation was false. Fine, says Rodriguez. But if you Google doran forces, applying what he had learned about counter - his name, you will find plenty of references to the Medellín insurgency. He told the Salvadorans exactly what he had told drug cartel. The endurance, the permanence, of the 1987 lie the Vietnamese: “It may be too late for Cuba, but it’s not too rankles Rodriguez. late for you.” El Salvador remained out of Communist hands While Kerry had Rodriguez before him, he took the oppor- and took a democratic path (however stony). Like all astute tunity to question him about Che Guevara and Bolivia. For one observers, Rodriguez sees a general threat to Latin America thing, had he really done all he could to save the guerrilla’s today: The threat is from little Castros who are elected demo- life? Kerry was sarcastic in this questioning. It seems to cratically—once. Then they go about Castroization. Rodriguez Rodriguez that Kerry, at that time, had sympathy for Guevara, cites Evo Morales, among others: He will rule Bolivia for a and the Sandinistas, and Castro. In 2004, when the senator was very long time, presumably. the presidential nominee of the Democratic party, Rodriguez spoke against him at a rally on Capitol Hill organized by Vietnam Veterans for Truth. Today, of course, Kerry is secre- HILE in El Salvador, Rodriguez received a request tary of state—which pains and disgusts Rodriguez. “I despise from a White House staffer, a man soon to become that guy. He is a phony. He was a phony during the Vietnam W famous: Oliver North. Would Rodriguez help with War. He’s a self-promoter.” His voice trails off: “I don’t like the resupply of the Contras in Nicaragua? They were fighting the guy at all ...”

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uBAnS such as Felix Rodriguez expected the Castro dictatorship to last a year, two years, maybe three. He C was 17 when Castro took over; Castro, with his bro ther, An Arm still rules the island, and Rodriguez is 72. Communism in Cuba has lasted longer than Communism in Eastern Europe, by ten years and counting. Obviously, this is more painful and disgusting to Rodriguez than John Kerry’s current status And a Leg as u.S. secretary of state. Cuba was no Jeffersonian democracy when Castro took over. But it was nothing like the total- Hospitals are to blame itarian hell he and his partners made it. And it has had no chance to evolve in a democratic direction, as the Dominican for obscene health-care costs Republic and lots of other places did. When will it end? When will the Communists fall? Cubans are weary of an - BY AVIK S. A. ROY swering this question, after almost 55 years. Rodriguez, though, points to the Castros’ friends in Venezuela: If the oil ever stopped coming, the brothers would be in trouble. n 1994, two eminent Boston hospitals, Massachusetts needless to say, Rodriguez is unsure whether he will see General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Cuba again. merged. Officials hailed it as a new era for integrated, high- Twenty-five years ago, he wrote in his memoir, “Some - I quality care. The state’s secretary of health and human ser- times I feel a little bit like ulysses. ...like him, I am from vices signed off on the merger without a public hearing, with an island nation. like him, I went to war. And like him, I am the blessing of Republican governor William Weld. having a hard time getting home.” How about today? Does The merged hospital entity, called Partners HealthCare, he still feel that way? Is he still trying to get home? Where’s immediately went about raising rates for insurers. Blue Cross home? “It’s complicated,” Rodriguez says. Yes, it is. It is com- Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest private insurer, plicated for virtually all Cuban Americans of his generation. wanted to fight—in 2000, at a gathering of the company’s exec- Rodriguez is a patriotic Cuban. He is also a patriotic American. utives, some suggested refusing to pay the higher fees. But exec- under normal circumstances, this would be a bald contradic- utive Peter Meade delivered a cold slap of reality: “Excuse me, did tion, but the circumstances of the Cuban exile are peculiar, anyone here save anyone’s life today? We are a successful busi- not normal. Rodriguez says that the Cuba he knew has been ness up against people that save people’s lives. It’s not a fair fight.” destroyed, over these 50-plus years. He doesn’t know anyone For 50 years it hasn’t been a fair fight. And understanding that over there anymore. The Communists long ago expropriated is the key to solving a mystery that has puzzled conservatives for his family home in Sancti Spíritus. If the regime fell, he decades: Why is it that no matter what, the largest component of wouldn’t claim it. But he might like to negotiate to buy it, government spending—health care—keeps rising? “for sentimental reasons.” In debates about health care, we spend a lot of time arguing The 60 Minutes piece done on him in 1989 is an exercise in over how we buy it: whether through government payers, private soft-left condescension. It portrays anti-Communism as insurers, or health savings accounts. But there’s an equally some kind of mental disorder, or at least a sign of immaturity. important story, one that nearly everyone in the political class has Of Rodriguez, Mike Wallace says, “He has never lost his love neglected: how we sell health care. Hospitals are at the center of of war nor his anti-Communist ideals.” Rodriguez doesn’t this story. And they are using their economic and political power love war: But he is willing to fight in order to keep or gain to drive up the price of their product. freedom and peace. At the end of the segment, Wallace won- If the Congressional Budget Office’s projections are right, ders, “What does the future hold for this 48-year-old foot health care will account for almost all increases in government soldier in a fading Cold War?” Arthur liman, who was chief spending for the foreseeable future, excluding interest on the debt. counsel to the Iran-Contra Committee, says, “I think that And increasing spending on hospital care is the biggest driver Felix Rodriguez will probably end up—and I hate to say of rising health-insurance premiums, which are in turn the main this—in an unmarked grave in some faraway place, fighting cause of wage stagnation for middle-income Americans. Put the remnants of Communism.” Wallace responds, “A little bit simply, we cannot confront the growth of government, nor of like Che Guevara.” middle-class economic insecurity, without first confronting the William F. Buckley Jr. once came up with a formulation: central role that hospitals play in causing both. Say that Smith pushes an old lady out of the way of an on - rushing bus. Then Jones pushes an old lady into the way of an onrushing bus. It would be absurd to say that these are two OSPITAlS have quite cleverly avoided blame for these men who push old ladies around. Felix Rodriguez will always problems. In 2009 and 2010, Democrats attacked private be linked to Che Guevara, and they both fought. But they are H insurance companies for rising premiums. “There have not alike. Rodriguez’s face will probably not grace a T-shirt. been reports just over the last couple of days of insurance com- He is what they call a “right-wing Cuban exile.” Guevara is a panies’ making record profits, right now,” said President Obama “romantic revolutionary” and “idealist.” His face sits on a during a 2009 news conference. “At a time when everybody’s billion T-shirts. Pilgrims flock to la Higuera, to worship at his shrine there. But of the two men, Rodriguez and Guevara, Mr. Roy is a columnist for NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE and a senior fellow only one deserves honor. at the Manhattan Institute.

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getting hammered, they’re making record profits, and premiums Since Johnson’s agenda was likely to pass with or without are going up. What’s the constraint on that?” southern support, a number of congressional conservatives The president’s comments were disingenuous. As a proportion switched sides and, as had happened with the New Deal, decided of revenues, profits for health-insurance companies have stayed to ride the Big Government gravy train for all it was worth, relatively constant for decades at about 5 percent. What has hap- sponsoring an even more expansive version of Medicare than pened is that hospitals have charged more and more for the same Johnson had originally intended. services and treatments, and insurers have passed these costs on The only opposition left was the AMA, which had, up to that to consumers in the form of higher premiums. Insurers are a con- point, been a resolute opponent of socialized medicine. In 1961, venient scapegoat, both for the real culprits—hospitals—and for during a previous battle over nationalized health care, the AMA a political movement that is hostile to the concept of private health had organized a successful cross-country campaign in which insurance. But blaming insurers is like shooting the messenger. women organized coffee klatches and played a record, narrated The average hospital stay in the developed world costs $6,222. by Ronald Reagan, inveighing against the proposed single-payer In the United States, the average hospital stay costs $18,142. plan. That’s true even though the average hospital stay in the U.S. is only five days long, two days shorter than the OECD average. You might guess that the extra $12,000 pays for whiz-bang technology or extra services that Europeans don’t use, but studies have shown that most of the difference cannot be ex - plained by such factors. American hospitals simply charge higher prices. These higher prices are responsible for the growth in the cost of health insurance. And as insurance becomes less affordable, hospitals don’t try to make their services cheaper, as a normal business would. Instead, they lobby the government for more subsidies, often pointing to the fact that they are required by law to provide free emergency-room care to the uninsured. In 2009, President Obama was happy to adopt this as a talking point for his health-care law: “Those of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it— about $1,000 per year that pays for somebody else’s emergency-room and charitable care.” It will not surprise you that the American Hospital As so ci ation Johnson, recognizing the AMA’s pull, softened doctors’ eagerly supported Obamacare; hospitals will be the single resistance by assuring them that Medicare would contain no biggest beneficiary of the trillions in new spending that the law cost controls. The Medicare bill promised to pay doctors and will authorize. Currently approximately one-third of government hospitals according to “usual, customary, and reasonable” rates. health spending ends up in the pockets of hospitals. This year, The result was that doctors and hospitals could charge what- before the implementation of Obamacare, U.S.-government ever they wanted to. entities will send $500 billion to Amer i can hospitals, a figure that And they did. In the first year of Medicare’s existence, hos- the Centers for Medicare and Med icaid Services expects to grow pital spending increased by 22 percent. For the next five years, to $800 billion a year by 2021. And the more money hospitals get, hospital spending grew by an average of 14 percent a year. In the more powerful they become, giving politicians even greater the decades since, growth in hospital spending has continued to incentive to cater to their interests. exceed that of the rest of the economy. In 1965 Congress projected that by 1990, accounting for inflation, the government would spend $12 billion on Medicare. In actuality, the govern- T was Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society that turned Amer i can ment spent $110 billion on Medicare that year, and another hospitals into a political and economic juggernaut. Be fore $74 billion on Medicaid. Eight years from now, the Centers for I the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, pro- Medicare and Med i caid Services projects, U.S. public spending gressive efforts to pass single-payer health care had been stymied on health care will approach $2.4 trillion. One-third of that, as by two powerful forces: conservative southern Demo crats (who noted above, will flow to hospitals. resisted centralization in general and feared integration man- Every president since Nixon has made a half-hearted attempt dates) and the American Medical Association. to rein in government health spending. It was the Rea gan admin- However, the 1964 elections resulted not only in Johnson’s istration, in 1983, that introduced price controls into Medicare. reelection, but also in large Democratic congressional majorities. But price controls only incentivized doctors to provide more The Democrats gained 37 seats in the House, giving them a kinds of services at a higher volume, to make up for lower prices. 295–140 majority, and two seats in the Senate, for a total of 68. And hospitals have responded to Medi care’s price controls by (By comparison, after the 2008 elections, Dem o crats enjoyed a “cost-shifting”—i.e., charging higher prices to people with pri- 257–178 House majority and controlled 59 seats in the Senate.) vate insurance, and astronomical prices to the uninsured.

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Private insurers don’t have the same leverage as the govern- average HHI scores. And nearly all of that extra revenue from ment. If a private insurer refuses to play ball with the ma jor hos- higher prices went straight to hospitals’ bottom lines, where it pital in town, the insurer will lose customers to a competitor who could be used to pay higher sal a ries, build new wings, and swal- is willing to pay the hospital more. And, as the Blue Cross exec- low smaller competitors. utives in Massachusetts understood, politicians demonize insur- Most hospitals are “nonprofit” entities for tax purposes, which ers and lionize hospitals, so insurers look like the bad guys if they gives the public the impression that hospitals focus on healing the deny their customers access to famous but costly local hospitals. sick instead of making money. But that’s not true. “Nonprofit” This problem, in turn, is caused by the fact that most con- status simply prevents hospitals from distributing earnings to sumers of private insurance don’t buy it directly, but instead owners or shareholders; it does not prevent them from paying receive it through their employers, making them less sensitive to large salaries to their executives and piling up cash for their pro- its price. Workers want access to the top hospitals and get upset prietors. A McKinsey study found that the nation’s 2,900 non- when their plan denies that access, because they don’t directly see profit hospitals have higher profit margins, on average, than our how much they would save by choosing a cheaper hospital. 1,000 for-profit hospitals do; they just retain the profits and use them for expansion, improvements, and so forth. Yale–New Haven Hospital (YNHH), as the name implies, is He Partners case is just one example of a tactic that hospi- the academic hospital associated with the Yale School of tals all over the country have used to gain leverage over Medicine, in New Haven, Conn. In 2011 New Haven had a pop- T private insurers: consolidation. In most sectors of the ulation of 129,585, making it America’s 192nd-largest city. But economy, the government uses antitrust laws to prevent the for- Yale–New Haven is the fourth-largest hospital in the country. The mation of monopolies. But federal agencies and courts have been Yale–New Haven Health System, of which YNHH is the flag- uniquely passive in the face of hospital monopolies. ship, has gradually acquired many of the major hospitals in economists and regulators measure market concentration Connecticut—most recently its major crosstown competitor, St. using a tool called the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, or HHI. The Raphael’s, for $160 million. Rest assured that hospital prices in HHI is calculated by taking all the players in a given market, New Haven will not be going down. calculating their market shares, squaring each market-share And hospitals aren’t just buying up rival hospitals. They’re percentage, and adding up the total. For example, a market con- also acquiring physicians in private practice. According to an sisting of four airlines, two with 30 percent each and two with 20 analysis by Aetna, in 2002, two-thirds of medical practices were percent each, would yield an HHI of 2,600 (twice 900 plus twice owned by physicians, compared with one-quarter by hospitals. 400); a duopoly that split a market 50–50 would yield an HHI of By 2011, these numbers had reversed. 5,000; and a perfect monopoly would have an HHI of 10,000. Hospitals acquire private practices because it lets them control According to guidelines published by the U.S. Department of the patients whom private physicians see. In de pendent physi- Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, a market with an cians can refer their patients to any hospital that accepts their HHI between 1,500 and 2,500 is considered “moderately con- insurance; hospital-affiliated doctors are required to re fer patients centrated,” and one with an HHI above 2,500 is considered to the hospitals they work for. “highly concentrated” and subject to regulatory scrutiny. Hospital-affiliated physicians, in turn, can take advantage of In 1992, hospital markets in the U.S. had an average HHI of hospitals’ market leverage to charge higher prices to patients with 2,440. Nearly half of all localities in America already had a private insurance, an important counterbalance (for them) to the highly concentrated hospital market. Based on antitrust guide- increasing number of people on government-sponsored health lines for the rest of the economy, the U.S. government ought to insurance, which pays much less. have blocked the vast majority of hospital mergers that took place thereafter. Instead, however, the DOJ and the FTC challenged only a ATHeR than address this problem, Obamacare, at the hos- handful of deals. The agencies determined that they would pital lobby’s behest, actively suppresses the ability of bother to address hospital mergers only if those mergers drove R physicians to compete with hospitals. Section 6001 of the HHI to near 5,000. Hospitals, defending their mergers the Affordable Care Act bars the construction of new physician- against the government’s opposition, played up their traditional owned hospitals if those hospitals will accept Med i care patients. image to sympathetic judges: as instruments of charity, as non- While a few such hospitals have dropped plans to accept profit pillars of their communities. Medicare patients in order to evade the law’s restrictions, in The tactic worked. From 1993 to 2008, the DOJ and the FTC other cases investors have lost fortunes shuttering halfway- failed to block a single hospital merger in the United States. By completed projects. 2006, the average hospital-market HHI had increased from 2,440 Physicians are trying to persuade Congress to reverse the ban. to 3,261. But that effort “faces an uphill battle with Democrats,” reports Hospital monopolies and oligopolies use their market pow er Alicia Mundy of the Wall Street Journal, because the ban was a just as other monopolies do: to raise prices. James Rob in son of crucial tool they used to gain the hospital industry’s support to the University of California looked at six common categories of begin with. hospital procedures, such as pacemaker insertions and knee Democrats learned an important lesson from the failure of replacements, and compared what hospitals charged for those national health-care reform in the Clinton years: Don’t anger procedures. He found that hospitals in markets with above- powerful special interests. So Obama’s team took great care to average HHI scores—the highly consolidated ones—charged buy off the pharmaceutical industry and the AARP, to cow the 44 percent more than their brethren in markets with below- insurers into silence, and to cater to the interests of hospitals.

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In most congressional districts, a hospital is the largest or and more Americans will demand that the government further second-largest employer. Combine this fact with hospitals’ pres- subsidize the cost of health insurance, a measure that would only tige as “nonprofit” pillars of their communities, and they receive make the problem worse. enormous deference from members of Congress. Put simply, So what can be done? Simply put, we must reduce the eco- Obamacare would not have passed if it harmed hospitals. nomic—and thereby the political—power of hospitals by coun- This is why Democrats adopted an explicit strategy of “cover- tering the effects of hospital consolidation. age first, cost later”: They knew their primary goal of achieving There are two ways to do so: one, increasing the market near-universal coverage would go nowhere if they tried to crack power of the people who pay for health care: consumers, private down on hospitals’ high prices. Even raising taxes was politi- insurers, and/or the government; and two, decreasing the market cally easier than taking on the American Hospi tal Association. power of hospitals by loosening the restrictions on hospital Indeed, as noted above, President Obama explicitly framed his competition. health-care law as a way to send more money to the hospital The progressive approach is to impose price controls on hos- industry. But his reason for increasing these subsidies—that pitals. Price controls, as a rule, make a market less efficient, not charity emergency-room care by hospitals is a “hidden tax” on more. However, in extreme cases, they might serve as an effec- the insured—was a mere pretext. Hospitals claim that they spend tive regulatory threat, given the difficulties of antitrust litigation. $50 billion a year on uncompensated care, but Obamacare will For example, the federal government could require that all hos- replace this “hidden tax” with more than $200 billion a year in pitals accept Medicare prices from private payers, including the spending on the uninsured—spending that is funded mostly by uninsured, if the market concentration in a given area exceeded explicit taxes. a specified HHI threshold, say 4,000. This might, in the future, And $50 billion is an entirely fictitious number. In March, for deter hospitals from merging for the sole purpose of gaining a Time, Steven Brill documented the degree to which hospitals pricing advantage. massively overcharge the uninsured. Hospitals do not expect to It’s an unattractive solution—but the status quo is worse. If we collect payment on these huge bills, but they can claim any do nothing, hospital monopolies and duopolies will become unpaid balance as uncompensated care for public-relations and increasingly difficult to dislodge. Building new hospitals is a tax purposes. costly and capital-intensive business. It’s a bit like the airline and For example, Sean Recchi, an uninsured lymphoma patient, automobile industries: Hospital entrepreneurs do come along went to MD Anderson Cancer Center, a world-renowned facility from time to time, but only rarely, and they frequently fail. in Hous ton. The hospital charged him $283 for a chest X-ray for Fortunately, there are other solutions more friendly to the free which it would have charged Medicare $20. It charged him more market. Federal and state agencies can more aggressively pursue than $15,000 for blood tests that normally cost a few hundred antitrust action against hospital mergers. Congress can repeal dollars. It charged him $13,702 for a dose of Ri tux an, a lym- Obamacare’s restrictions on new hospital construction. States phoma drug for which the average U.S. hospital price is around can harmonize their medical-licensing regulations so that doctors $4,000. All told, Recchi’s course of treatment cost $83,900. can send patients to health-care providers in other states. And Whatever he couldn’t pay was called “uncompensated care.” states can loosen their “certificate of need” laws, which allow (MD Anderson is not struggling under the weight of bills unpaid bureaucrats friendly with incumbent hospitals to prevent entre- by the uninsured. In 2010, it recorded revenue of $2.05 billion preneurs from building new facilities. and operating profits of $531 million.) In addition, we can do more to place Americans in charge of In May, for the first time, the Centers for Medicare and their own health dollars. Today, the vast majority of Amer i cans Medicaid Services released data on the prices that hospitals don’t pay for care directly; instead, it is paid for on their behalf charge for common medical procedures. They found wide dis- by their public or private insurer. Most econ o mists agree that crepancies. Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, for example, third-party payment for any service will tend to drive up its cost; listed an average price of $66,030 for implanting a pacemaker. just ask anyone who’s paid for an open bar at a wedding. The University of Miami Hospital, across the street, listed an But on top of that, the vast majority of Americans don’t pay for average price of $127,038. In some cases, the costliest hospital their own insurance directly either. We have a third-party system charged five or six times what the cheapest hospital did. Hospital for purchasing third-party health insurance: in effect, a ninth- prices are usually set almost arbitrarily. They have no relationship party health-care system. Is it any wonder that the prices hospi- to what the services cost to provide, or to what insurance com- tals charge bear no relationship to the value of their services to panies and the uninsured actually pay, let alone to any sort of consumers? classical notion of supply and demand. Ultimately, we have to realize that hospitals—and the government policies that empower them—are the principal driver of rising health-care spending. America’s hospitals form a trillion- HE biggest domestic-policy problem facing America to- dollar, taxpayer-subsidized behemoth that will do everything it day is our fiscal crisis. The biggest driver of our fiscal cri- can to grow larger and larger at the expense of the remainder of T sis is the growth and scale of our health-care entitlements: the economy. Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and related programs. And the If Republicans are serious about returning their focus to the growth and scale of our health-care entitlements is, in turn, dri- economic problems of the middle class, they must make the ven by the enormous political and economic power wielded by affordability of health care a central plank of their agenda. To do hospitals. that, certainly, we must reform the way we pay for health care. Furthermore, as hospitals charge ever-higher prices to a shrink- But we must never lose sight of the corrupt and inefficient ways ing cohort of privately insured and uninsured individuals, more that hospitals sell it.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS A Sinecure for Your Thoughts

N the future, I would like to see every sentence that me if you’ve seen this story in some variant in the last few begins “The public official declined comment” end years: with the following words: “and was promptly termi- “The parents of five-year-old Dylan Czerobik say he was I nated under the Mandatory Comment Act of 2013.” placed in handcuffs and put in the backseat of a police car The spur for this idea came from a Wall Street Journal for an hour after day-care officials said he bent a Barbie article on an innocuous subject: An Iowa museum had doll in half and pointed it at another student. ‘The teacher removed a puppet from the lobby. Not just any puppet: said he was using the doll as a gun,’ said Mrs. Czerobik, Floppy, a mascot from an old children’s TV show that ‘but Barbie doesn’t conform to the profile of any known entertained corn-fed tots in the days before cable. Every handgun ever made, and while I’ll admit he’s an imagina- town had one. Some fellow in a costume with an avun- tive boy, the idea of shooting high-velocity projectiles out cular name would amble out, tell tales, talk to a jabber- of the tips of her toes is ridiculous.’ ing piece of cloth with googly eyes, then run a cartoon. “The case mirrors another incident several states away, The show’s gone but the puppet was enshrined in the where an eleven-year-old was tased for wearing a shirt museum, delighting aging boomers for whom it was an that said ‘NRA’—in this case, a vintage graphic of the object of veneration, like seeing Captain Kangaroo’s Mr. Depression-era National Recovery Administration—and a Bunny Rabbit. case in Montana where a middle-school boy was expelled The museum moved it out. The puppet was replaced with for an online remark about ‘painting the school red,’ which “antique bicycles from an exhibit about Iowa’s cycling his- his parents insist was a reference to his Scout troop volun- tory,” which sounds great! because it’s green and sustainable, teering to paint several classrooms for a merit badge in and will no doubt set the stage for an exhibit about the strug- public service. gle of 19th-century transgendered cyclists to choose a boy’s “Reached for comment, the school declined to speak to or girl’s bike regardless of biological identity. a reporter.” The WSJ asked the executive director of Iowa’s De - Of course. Probably wise, since they’d have to admit that partment of Cultural Affairs for a comment: “Ms. Cownie policy requires that any child who draws a picture of a sol- declined an interview request. The museum declined a dier with a gun be treated as if he’d yanked a Luger from his request to examine Floppy and the other puppets.” lunch pail and shouted “COLUMBINE SATAN HITLER.” That’s what set me off. Unless the puppet is a material But under the Mandatory Comment Act, public employees witness in an ongoing sexual-harassment investigation would be free to speak their mind without fear of reprisal. prompted by reports that it flew out of its case and pressed Oh, you might get the rote gargle of bureaucratic lingo: its musty, mite-infested felt against unwilling victims, let “We here at Sanger School strive for an inclusive, safe the paper see the puppet—and if you’re paid by the state to environment that includes a policy of zero tolerance and manage Cultural Affairs, talk to the press, for heaven’s inclusiveness towards all diversity that moves us forward sake. towards fostering a values-based, individually motivated How hard can it be? You could lie: “Oh, Floppy’s just structural change that respects and acknowledges our chal- being restored by a team of puppet historians. We look for- lenges, which is why we are encouraging reusable lunch ward to bringing him back better than ever!” And then trays that can be composted for a sustainable approach. replace the bikes with an exhibition of Buddy Holly plane- Does that answer your question? No? Good day.” wreck fragments gleaned from the Iowa field where he died, This would help the public understand that administrators put out a press release that has a picture of black glasses with regard parents as idiots. the lens shattered, and people will unclench. It might not be Or you might get an honest teacher. Floppy, but at least it’s Iowa. “A kid pointing a Barbie Doll like a gun is a threat to the Or, speak frankly: “You know, we’d planned to put other students? Only little Milton over there, who’s so ner- Floppy in storage, because it’s embarrassing when you’re vous he wets himself when the class hamster sneezes. at a convention of museum people and everyone’s talking Otherwise, c’mon. But hey, it’s policy to regard little boys about what they have in the lobby—a Roman bust, a Hopi as feral maniacs and replace their high spirits with a sense of rug, a Sumerian phallus amulet—and you’re thinking, ‘I shame, and that’ll work out so well they’ll be spending their have a sad dog head that’s like the Shroud of Turin for teen years online shooting peers in the groin with rocket boomers.’ But the outcry has really made me rethink my launchers.” elitist preconceptions and reconnect with the essential In the absence of comments, you’re free to draw your nature of Iowa culture.” own conclusions. Infer guilt and shame all you want. But no. Hence my proposal for the Mandatory Comment Private citizens, of course, are exempt from the Mandatory Act: Public officials may not turn down interviews. Tell Comment Act, but if you’ve rolled the public teat around in your mouth, one simple request. Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. Humor us.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

has one white parent and one parent the falsification of warrant docu- from the Solomon Islands, which ments be prepared for release in qualifies under DOJ guidelines as conjunction with news about the “Caucasian.” After a heated back- Chicago murder rate. As it ticks and-forth with the White Policeman, up, we suggest POTUS prepare a MEMORANDUM the young Asian male paid his back series of press conferences to dis- fines but lodged a blistering critique cuss these “scandals” head on. of the experience on the Yelp page Should the Chi cago murder rate TO: V. Jarrett for the local municipality. We sug- accelerate, POTUS should invade FROM: Staff gest POTUS use this case as a Iran. Time line: NE VER IN RE: Your request for upcom- “teaching moment” and an “illustra- 4. In Texas, an elderly Caucasian ing state and local criminal/civil tion of why we so desperately need male was pushed down the stairs by cases that might be of interest immigration reform,” and call the his elderly Caucasian wife. (Check - young Asian male on the telephone ing: newspaper photo un clear; wife’s Following Monday’s status meet- in the event that the Syrian situation skin tone seems vaguely Hispanic.) ing, staff researchers and others spent deteriorates. Timeline: autumn The reasons were, apparently, some- four days searching state, local-court, 2. In California, a gay couple thing that happened in 1973 but that and police databases for interesting were ejected from a local Crate & both of them had been arguing about cases to bring to the attention of Barrel retail location for rearrang- since. Suggest POTUS refer to this POTUS during the next six to ten ing the furniture displays for “more case for any number of points, espe- months as we gear up for the mid - flow” and “a more chic grouping.” cially: a) immigration (depending terms and follow-on legislativeagen- When asked to leave the premises, on status of wife); b) abortion (Roe da items. they refused until they had success- was decided in 1973. Was this what Thanks to the good work of staff— fully switched all of the sofa cush- they were arguing about? Isn’t it shout-out to the interns!!—we’ve ions in a random and haphazard time to “heal the nation”?); c) come up with four cases of interest fashion because the original dis- upcoming legislative challenges to that POTUS might find useful to plays were “too matchy matchy.” the Patient Protection and Afford able “helicopter into” in the event he/we Police were called by the manager Care Act, as the elderly female now feel the need to raise additional sub- of the store (possible complication: has the sole responsibility and finan- jects in the national media during a he seems gay as well; as yet cial burden of caring for her wheel- period when they seem to be focusing unclear) and charges for disorderly chair-bound spouse; and d) the need only on uncomfortable subjects. conduct were filed. We suggest for tax reform, as the couple are Please note that, in order to achieve POTUS use this event when the small-business owners (million- maximum effectiveness, POTUS third- and fourth-quarter economic- aires/billionaires) and have taken will have to “casually drop” refer- growth numbers are released, and in advantage of estate-planning tax ences to each of these locally based the likely event that further evi- loopholes. This event has a lower proceedings well in advance of our dence of global warming is impossi- intensity factor, so can be held in projected agenda timeline. As we’ve ble to verify. Timeline: autumn into reserve for a task that requires a learned with the recent case in spring smaller-bore distraction. This is a Florida, criminal and civil trials rare - 3. In Chicago, Ill., a five-year- perfect card to play in the event of a ly conform to our schedule. We were old African-American boy was “Biden mouth accident” or a “Kerry lucky this time. shot and killed, along with his brain freeze.” It can also be played Our recommendations are as fol- African-American mother, follow- out gradually, as the midterm num- lows: ing a botched robbery attempt. An bers start to take shape. Timeline: 1. In Michigan, a young Asian African-American male has been 2014 male recently had his car “booted” arrested for the crime. We suggest Researchers and interns are contin- after several unpaid parking tickets. that POTUS ignore this event. In uing to comb the wires for interesting At the payment center in the local fact, we suggest that, if possible, local cases for POTUS to shine his city hall, he apparently became further documentation of the IRS special light on. We feel, in 100 per- angry and entered into a verbal and/or DOJ scandals involving the cent agreement with you and the “debate” with a police officer who improper violation of privacy and political operation, that the local crime blotter is a political goldmine!

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and above all how difficult it is in the heat resorted to exotically stupid maneuvers, of events to attach even the strongest such as the selective Employment tax, to The Iron political convictions to specific policy force investment in supposedly more choices. Many episodes in this book show productive sectors. trade unions exerted Lady Rises that when faced with a complex decision a ghastly grip over much of the economy: Mrs. thatcher often wavered, unsure how We sat in candlelight when strikes turned CHARLES CRAWFORD to proceed: a limpet in a stormy sea of off the nation’s power. events searching for some rock to which All this created inexorable intellectual she could stick fast, once and for all. pessimism. the book quotes John Ken - Margaret thatcher came to symbolize neth Galbraith telling the Observer in an almost unique style of leadership based 1975 that the wage and price controls on unwavering convictions and basic “will be a permanent feature, both in moral beliefs (work hard, live within your Britain and in every other industrial means, tell the truth). John Hoskyns, one nation.” As a student at the Fletcher of her closest advisers, called her “quite school of Law and Diplomacy in 1977, I limited intellectually . . . and philoso - was assigned academic articles insisting phically.” But as future chancellor Nigel that the Western capitalist and soviet Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography: From Lawson said soon after the 1979 election Communist economic models were con- Grantham to the Falklands, by Charles Moore that brought her into Downing street, “a verging. Many people within the British (Knopf, 896 pp., $35) key to understanding Mrs. thatcher was Conservative party and across the wider that she actually said what she believed.” Western establishment had internal- t’s March 31, 1982. Prime Mini - Her supporters saw this as her huge ized this way of looking at things. In ster Margaret thatcher and a few advantage—an ability to be clear, firm, confronting such orthodoxy, Margaret top advisers are grappling with the and practical. Her detractors found her thatcher came across as annoying, naïve, I grim news that Argentina has simplicity banal, uncaring, dangerous. and immoderate. It was not only that her invaded the Falkland Islands. First sea How did a clever but unimaginative ideas were trivially extreme and doomed Lord sir Henry Leach, in naval uniform, English girl, described by an Oxford to fail; she was downright vulgar in joins the meeting and asks for permission University contemporary as a “rather asserting them so enthusiastically. to assemble a naval task force. Charles humourless mouse,” and born above her the book describes how she searched Moore records the exchange: father’s provincial grocery shop (a on both sides of the Atlantic for the heavy house with no hot water or inside toilet), policy ammunition to support her free- “Can we do it?” asked Mrs. thatcher become one of the most influential lead- market instincts. Visiting Washington as with piercing urgency. ers in world history? Conservative leader, she startled Alan “We can, Prime Minister,” said Charles Moore’s biography tells this Greenspan over dinner by opening on Leach, “and, though it is not my place to say this, we must. . . . Because if we story. It draws on his access to Baroness technical monetarism: “Why is it that in don’t do it, if we pussyfoot . . . we’ll be thatcher’s private papers and unpub- Britain we don’t have M3?” Henry Kiss - living in a totally different country lished family letters, many featuring the inger liked her style but thought that she whose word will count for little.” young Margaret’s excitement at scraping would never get elected if she stuck to her together money for new clothes. Without belief in articulating her position boldly At this, Leach remembered, Mrs. thatcher much exploring the sexism issue, it and trying to get the political center to gave a sort of half-smile, as if this was recalls problems she had as a woman ris- move in her direction. what she had wanted to hear. ing through the political ranks (on BBC’s the book reminds us just how long it Different people will take different Any Questions program, she was asked a took for “thatcherism” to work out what things from this weighty, meticulous, question about judging a woman’s intelli- it wanted to do. Even sir Keith Joseph, and powerful biography of Margaret gence by her legs) and how she enjoyed her favorite Conservative thinker, had thatcher. For me, the most striking being one of very few women among written in 1975 that “presumably we do aspect of the book is the way it describes powerful men. not think that denationalization is practi- the ebb and flow of rival political posi- It’s hard now to recall the awful way cable.” (the more positive word “privati- tions amidst competing uncertainties, the United Kingdom was run after World zation,” which would change the planet, War II. the dominating idea was fussy was still to be born.) Mr. Crawford served with the U.K. Foreign and collectivism. Wartime controls had taken Her first government had to find a way Commonwealth Office throughout Mrs. Thatcher’s on a life of their own. the state owned to get the U.K. moving again after the period as prime minister and was subsequently huge areas of industry, and tightly ra- ignominy of the International Monetary British ambassador to Sarajevo, Belgrade, and tioned the money you took overseas on Fund’s demand for harsh reforms. A first Warsaw. He is on Twitter (@CharlesCrawford) holiday. the state imposed wage and powerful move in 1979 was the abrupt and his website is www.charlescrawford.biz. price controls and, as things declined, abolition of exchange controls: People

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS once again were free to move money into accounts of a fast-moving complex inter- and out of the U.K. Sir Geoffrey Howe national negotiation ever written, it brings (Thatcher’s first chancellor of the ex - out the human angle and the role of raw Prudence chequer) later told me how he had been emotion in top-level politics. Given sleepless with anxiety at the audacity of what in fact happened as British troops And Principle this reform: It seemed to take the country forced total Argentine surrender, it is into totally uncharted waters. Thatcher remarkable to read now just how far DANIEL FOSTER showed no doubts. She told a financial Thatcher went—under pressure from her audience that “the prison doors have own advisers and from Washington—to been thrown open.” offer Buenos Aires substantive conces- Other reforms were painful. By the end sions. Was General Galtieri too drunk to of 1979, British interest rates had been grasp what was available? raised to a giddy 17 percent, the highest The book shows Thatcher’s confidence nominal level in British history. Liberal and ruthlessness growing as the conflict U.S. chatterati warned Ronald Reagan not unfolded. In the margin of a Foreign to follow her monetarist path. Her 1981 Office memo recording that “the Argen- budget prompted mutterings of discon- tine claim is not just a matter of law but of tent at senior levels within her party. national honour and machismo,” she The Times of London published a letter wrote: “According to the Foreign Office signed by 364 economists arguing that our national honour does not seem to mat- The Founding Conservatives: How a Group of Thatcher’s policies would “deepen the ter!?” Ronald Reagan’s team found her Unsung Heroes Saved the American Revolution, depression, erode the industrial base of success impressive but also irritating. by David Lefer (Sentinel, 416 pp., $29.95) our economy, and threaten social and When she visited Washington in June political stability.” But Thatcher’s tough- 1982, they briefed Reagan to urge her to love reforms and monetarist discipline be magnanimous in victory. Reagan’s HEn I received my copy of succeeded. The next eight years saw infla- draft speaking notes have a U.S. official The Founding Conser - tion tumble and real GDP growth average noting that she had already “blasted this vatives and saw that it was 3.2 percent, a stunning turnaround. position to smithereens” on two U.S. net- W published by Sentinel, the For Charles Moore’s inside story of works before the two leaders met to talk conservative imprint at Penguin respon- how Thatcher and Reagan worked to - about it. Here, as on many other occa- sible for such titles as 48 Liberal Lies gether to end Communism, we’ll have to sions, Thatcher used her friendship with About American History, I started to wait for Volume Two. For now American Reagan flatly to disagree with him. expect a certain kind of book: one that readers can enjoy the many frank descrip- The book is also worth buying for its reassured the contemporary American tions of Thatcher’s various early meetings many superb quotes. Thatcher heatedly conservative movement that it hosts the with Presidents Carter and Reagan, and of exclaims that “we must defend Christian Spirit of ’76, by, say, tracing a philo- the fierce row over U.S. laws designed to values with the ATOM BOMB!” And the sophical through-line from Thomas stop Western companies from supporting Queen deftly tells the archbishop of Can - Jefferson to Ronald Reagan, or spending the USSR’s new energy pipeline to terbury what was wrong with the contro- pages and chapters arguing that Madison Western Europe. On the latter, two con- versial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral would have opposed Obamacare. There victions collided: Reagan wanted to after the Falklands were recaptured: “I is nothing wrong with that kind of book, squeeze the USSR economically, when don’t think that you should ever leave a per se, but what Lefer—who is not a par- it suited the U.S. to do so (he had lifted the Christian service feeling sad.” ticularly well-known popular historian, U.S. grain embargo to help Midwestern I met Lady Thatcher several times after but who now deserves to be—has done is farmers); Thatcher saw U.K. jobs being she left office. In 2009 John and Melissa quite different. His argument is not that lost and would not accept the extraterri- O’Sullivan kindly included my wife and the titans of the American Revolution— torial reach of the U.S. measures. In high- me in a small, private dinner with her in the men with their faces on our marbles end patronizing British style, British London. She was frail but in lively form, and mountains and money—were “con- official Clive Whitmore drew on his ex - frequently going back to her oldest Meth - servative” in the sense in which we today tensive familiarity with Winnie the Pooh odist pieties. There was a cheering con- employ that term but rather that those to record their difficult exchanges: sensus that Jesus had been “sound” in his men were radicals, often dangerous rad- “She began to take the view that maybe conservative principles. She wistfully icals, and might even have smothered [Reagan] wasn’t quite as intelligent as she said that she was so grateful to have America in its cradle, if not for another, had always held him out to be. . . . He was friends who appreciated her work: “no little-noted and not-long-remembered a bear of very little brain.” one ever says thank you to politicians.” batch of patriots who tempered their zeal The highlight of the book for connois- Well, some of us do. Thank you, Lady with prudence and healthy respect for seurs of Western politics is the extended Thatcher, for your grasp of moral and tradition. account of the Falklands conflict, and political principle. Thank you for being There is a bit of terminological slip- how London saw the frantic moves by one of very few leaders in our lifetime U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig to who truly stood athwart history, yelling Mr. Foster is the former news editor of NATIONAL find a diplomatic solution. One of the best Stop! REVIEW ONLINE.

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periness in Lefer’s characterization of abilis between the First and Second goodwill and esteem he had accrued. these patriots. In the world right before Continental Congresses. We tend to forget Dickinson thought the Declaration not the Declaration of Independence, he how different the former was from the lat- unjust, but imprudent, and wanted to calls them “moderates,” as opposed to ter. At the first, nervous loyalists wrote secure both foreign allies against Britain the “radicals” who had been beating the one another secret, sworn affidavits and a new government for America drum of independence in the streets of attesting to the fact that they had voted before declaring open war on the great- Boston for years before it became the against resolutions they believed trea- est empire in the world. When his coun- colonial consensus. But in the world of sonous. A proposal to create an Ameri can sels didn’t prevail, Dickinson and his July 5, 1776, he calls the same men union with Britain, governed by a Crown- ally Robert Morris (the Liverpool-born “conservatives,” a shift that also sug- appointed president-general, was seri- financier who became America’s first gests the precariousness of the Founding ously considered before news of the financial wizard) decided of their own Conservatives’ position, since, in a mat- siege of Boston tabled it. The banquet accord to stand “behind the bar” during ter of days, the previous bearers of that marking the end of the session finished the July 2 vote, and were officially appellation—Tories loyal to the British with a toast to His Majesty George III. marked “absent.” This tipped Pennsyl - Crown—had transmogrified from polit- Dickinson’s critical role at this deli- vania toward independence, and, along ical enemies of independence to traitors cate juncture cannot be overstated. When with the New York delegation’s absten- to the Revolution. he arrived at the Congress, “The Farmer” tion, allowed posterity to record the vote It’s true that, like the classical Tory, was revered by radicals and moderates as unanimous. Lefer’s Founding Conservatives were alike, and it took every bit of his intellect Dickinson drew scorn from every cor- mostly upper-class, mostly of New York to temper the former even as he stiffened ner of Pennsylvania society as a sus- and Pennsylvania and the Deep South the instinctual obsequiousness of the pected Loyalist, but although he never (while the “radicals” had their base in more Loyalist-leaning elements among signed the Declaration, he proclaimed New England and their island outpost in the latter. It is fair to say that he was himself “resolved by every impulse of Virginia), and mostly beneficiaries of Henry Clay two years before Henry Clay my soul to share, and to stand or fall the status quo (and thus uniformly cau- was born—the Great American States - with [America] in that scheme of free- tious). But they were decidedly not Tory man of the years before there was an dom she had chosen.” And that he did. loyalists, and many became heroes of American state. In the same week he stood athwart his- the war for independence. Even at the Second Continental Con - tory, Dickinson made it, drafting the John Dickinson, the gifted son of an gress, convened against the backdrop of Articles of Confederation, legally chris- aristocratic Delaware plantation owner, the outrages at Lexington and Concord, tening the days-old republic “The Uni - was their unofficial leader, and perhaps Dickinson shrewdly split the difference ted States of America.” Then, as a is the central figure in Lefer’s story. between revolution and rapprochement, colonel in the Pennsylvania militia, he Educated in the law at London’s pres- arguing that the aggressive provision led a battalion to join General Wash - tigious Middle Temple—at the same for war “must go pari passu with mea- ington’s army in the battle for New time young Edmund Burke was there— sures of reconciliation.” Dickinson may York. If a tapestry were made to com- he returned to America with a classical have been privately convinced that both memorate the founding of American erudition tempered by a Country Whig’s independence and all-out war were now conservatism, these events would be as romanticized notion of republican vir- inevitable, but publicly he was instru- good a subject matter as any. tue, and with his formidable intellect mental in securing one final petition to Dickinson had allies. There was became a respected lawyer and a gadfly the Crown for the redress of grievances, Morris, the Presbyterian sea merchant in Pennsylvania politics. Though in against the huffing of the Adamses and who singlehandedly oversaw a smug- contemporary casual histories Dickin - their bloc of New England and Virginia gling operation that outfitted the Revo - son’s name is mostly relegated to de- radicals. What Adams and the radicals lution with matériel and supplies, who pendent clauses, throughout the crises didn’t understand was that Dickinson’s bank rolled the Battle of Yorktown and and provocations of the 1760s—the “Olive Branch Petition” was really paid disgruntled Continental regulars Stamp Act, the Declaratory Acts, the about buying time for war preparations, from his own deep pockets, and who Townshend Duties—he was the colonies’ and giving the colonies something to represented the dynamic capitalism most effective advocate for American rally around when Britain inevitably (some would say war profiteering) of self-rule (though, decidedly, not for rejected it. young America. Morris, a signer of the American independence). His Letters In the fateful summer of 1776, Dick - trifecta of founding documents—the from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, al - inson’s conservatives were instrumen- Declaration, the Articles, and the Consti - though unsigned, briefly made him the tal in securing a one-month delay in tution—put both a conservative and an most famous political pamphleteer on voting for independence that John entrepreneurial stamp on America’s birth the continent—Voltaire declared him Adams, at the time virulently opposed certificates. “the American Cicero”—until a dis- to delay, would admit in 1813 was crit- In Tory-leaning New York, there was gruntled British bureaucrat émigré ical to readying the continent for war. Gouverneur Morris (no relation): tall, penned Common Sense. It was Dickinson, subsequently, who young, and handsome, a foppish woman- Dickinson would figure in virtually rose to make the final case against the izer from a family of rich Loyalists. every significant event of the Founding, Declaration, well aware that in doing Morris came to the revolutionary cause but he had something of an annus mir - so he was expending every ounce of cautiously, having seen the violent

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS demonstrations of the radical laborers, grandest event,” Ben Franklin “an act of stevedores, and merchants in Manhattan violent Injustice.” And it was, in con- and come to believe that, as Lefer puts it, trast to more orderly protests in Phila - Law, “it was crucial for elites like him to join delphia, Charleston, and New York the fight for colonial rights in order to (where a tea-bearing ship was kindly Naturally keep it under control.” Joining Morris in asked to turn back for England as a band New York’s moderate circle were John played “God Save the King”), more an EDWARD FESER Jay (later a co-author of The Federalist example of New England radicalism Papers and first chief justice of the than a reflection of the colonies as a Supreme Court); Robert Livingston (later whole. a jurist who administered the oath of Nor was the domination of the Conti - office to George Washington and negoti- nental Congress by radicals in the early ated the Louisiana Purchase), and James days of the war a uniformly good thing for Duane (later mayor of New York and a the American cause. Through legally federal judge). dubious means, the Adams faction passed Each would become a loyal servant of through the Congress a measure that the United States, some at great personal effectively dissolved Pennsylvania’s cost. (Gouverneur Morris’s mother re- royal charter before independence from mained a Loyalist to the end, giving the Britain was declared. This was unprece- family’s Bronx estate to the redcoats for dented, and emboldened Pennsylvania’s Conscience and Its Enemies: use after the Battle of Long Island.) But radicals to create a new constitution Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism, in the early 1770s, the cabal was con- hostile to property, free speech, and the by Robert P. George (ISI, 290 pp., $29.95) cerned primarily with keeping the rabble right to bear arms, and governed by a in line and exerted great control over the headless, unicameral body that wouldn’t formal instruments of anti-British pro - have looked out of place after the Bastille. ATURAL-LAW theory provides test in New York, stacking the state’s Worse, the form was copied by other the principal philosophical correspondence committee with cau- colonies, many of which would experi- justification of traditional tious aristocrats to balance the landless ment with decidedly European forms of N sexual morality, opposition disciples of Thomas Paine. government until self-evident disaster to abortion, and other paradigmatically What all had in common was a certain compelled them to adopt constitutional conservative views in ethics. Princeton ambivalence. There were shades and regimes like those we’ve come to love. law professor Robert P. George is the gradations, but all shared a suspicion The upshot of Lefer’s survey is that most prominent American advocate of about what they saw as the less praise- even if the conservatives remained un - natural-law theory. He has made influ- worthy elements of the Revolution: its loved and suspect, their ideas—on the ential contributions both to the working leveling effect, its mobbishness, and its conduct of the war, on diplomacy, and out of the theory’s philosophical foun- villainization of the moneyed and the even on the crafting of the Constitution dations and to its application to a cri- aristocratic in favor of what would be - and the early American order—prevailed tique of contemporary liberalism. The come the Jeffersonian ideal of an agrar- at critical moments, or at least prevailed essays contained in Conscience and Its ian republic. enough to save the radicals from their Enemies provide an engaging introduc- This may appear unseemly, even un- own excesses. tion to his work. American, to modern eyes, but Lefer Richard Hofstadter called the 20th- As a critic of liberalism, George is expertly puts their concerns in context century effort by historians to downplay devastating. Generally attributing honest and shows that they were frequently the internal disagreements of the motives to his opponents, he neverthe- justified. He compares the Founding Founders and the political messiness of less ruthlessly exposes the sophistries Conservatives’ political philosophy to the Revo lution the “consensus school” of put forward by defenders of abortion, that of Edmund Burke, their greatest Ameri can history, and Lefer fixes his embryo-destructive research, “same-sex friend in Britain, and suggests that the bayonet against it, to great result. His vol- marriage,” and other “progressive” caus- conservative critique of revolution was ume is a work of revisionism in the best es. For instance, George notes that “pro- vindicated in the subsequent French sense of that word, and I suspect that choice” Catholics such as Mario Cuomo upheaval, which Burke got right and even if you consider yourself a buff, The never explain why it would be wrong Jefferson got wrong. And he does an Founding Conservatives will change to “impose” on others their “personal” excellent job of showing that what we your understanding of the political and opposition to abortion, but not wrong to might call “the radical moment” that philosophical dynamics of the American impose on others their personal opposi- gave the American Revolution its ardor Revolution and the early days of the tion to slavery, the exploitation of work- and zeal, and secured the buy-in of the Union. It capably demonstrates that, ers, or capital punishment. Libertarian ordinary Americans who would actually though the Adamses and Jeffersons of Ronald Bailey fallaciously ignores the fight the war, was in fact late-developing ’76 would write the glorious Revo - and fleeting. As late as 1773, the Boston lution’s history, the Dickinsons and Mr. Feser is the author of several books and, most Tea Party divided even the “tier-1” Morrises did a great deal to ensure that recently, the editor of Aristotle on Method and Founders: John Adams called it “the there were glories of which to write. Metaphysics.

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distinction between something that is see through the immediate benefits of lawyers” highly controversial among merely potentially a human being (a big government to the dangers it poses natural-law theorists who stick more somatic cell from which a clone might be to their freedom. On the contrary, closely to the approach of Aristotle and made) and something that is a human where the family is weak, government Aquinas. I am one of these “old school” being but hasn’t yet actualized all its is bound to become the great provider. natural-law theorists, and one with whom potentials (an embryo). Andrew Sullivan In George’s estimation, the libertarian George expresses polite disagreement in assures us at one moment that “same-sex tendency to try to combine limited his book. marriage” will provide an antidote to government with relaxed morals is “Old” and “new” natural-law theorists male homosexual promiscuity—but at delusional. The sexual libertinism that occasionally come to different conclu- another, he notes approvingly that same- underlies most of the support for abor- sions. (For instance, traditional natural- sex unions might lead to a more flexible tion and “same-sex marriage” is in fact law theory holds that capital punishment attitude toward sexual exclusivity among the enemy of liberty, not its friend. is permissible in principle even if not married heterosexuals. Though a powerful critic of liberal always in practice, while Grisez, Finnis, As the title of George’s book indi- theory and policy, George is on less firm and George maintain that it is always and cates, today it is in fact liberals them- ground when engaged in the positive in principle wrong.) But the differences selves who are often keen to impose task of expounding and defending nat- in method are profound even where the their personal moral views on those who ural law. While the “natural law” label theories agree in their conclusions, as disagree with them. Catholic foster-care might seem to put him in the company of they do on matters of sexual morality. In and adoption agencies face the prospect such thinkers as Aristotle and Aquinas, my view, the weakest parts of Con- of being forced either to place children George is in fact a proponent of the “new scienceandItsEnemies—indeed, the in same-sex households or to go out of natural-law theory” invented by theolo- parts least likely to convince readers who business. The Obama administration gian Germain Grisez in the 1960s and are neutral in the debate over “same-sex wants to require religious employers to further developed by George’s teacher, marriage”—are those in which George pay for contraceptives, sterilizations, Oxford legal theorist John Finnis. George deploys “new natural law” arguments and abortion-inducing drugs. The Com- downplays the differences be tween the concerning sexuality. mittee on Ethics of the American approaches, but they are significant, and For the “old” or traditional natural- College of Obstetricians and Gyne co l - have made the work of the “new natural law theorist, what is good for human ogists has favored policies that would beings, as for other living things, is require doctors to refer patients for abor- defined in terms of the ends or goals tions and sometimes even to perform they must realize in order to flourish as abortions themselves. the kinds of creatures they are. A squir- As George argues, the attack on the WEAVE OF THE DARK rel needs to gather seeds, nuts, and the rights of conscience of those who en- like if it is to feed itself. This end or dorse the traditional understanding of To conceive of the weave of the dark goal (what followers of Aristotle would marriage was inevitable given existing is to lift forward the cloth call a “final cause”) is partially defini- antidiscrimination policy and the logic with a texture of silk, or wool, or nothing, tive of what is good for squirrels, and of the arguments for “same-sex mar- melting into the air, where the mind remains so even if the occasional squir- riage,” in which opposition to it could be is forever pulling for the edge, finding none, rel has for whatever reason (genetic rooted only in bigotry. The hope for a or by the feel of the cloth, melting defect, say) no desire to gather seeds or “grand bargain,” in which traditionalists away, like water from the ice nuts. Human beings too need to realize would accept “same-sex marriage” in that was never cold, from a form the ends or final causes of their natural exchange for freedom to act in accor- the mind could never hold: capacities if they are to flourish, and dance with their religious convictions, it slipped away too fast. this includes the ends of their sexual was and remains an illusion. George And this edge, vanishing like a dream capacities. These ends are both procre- also argues convincingly that the stan- ative and unitive; that is to say, our sex- of time, finds a place to hold fast dard liberal view that the courts are the ual faculties are by nature “aimed” at for a while, a gravity close ultimate check on tyranny is in fact a getting us to mate, and to bond emo- recipe for judicial despotism—a despo- to the forgotten balance of the waters tionally, with a person of the opposite tism Jefferson and Lincoln warned us of the womb, neither warm, nor cold; sex. That some people’s sexual organs about. the horror of drowning, suspended; are damaged or worn out and some The only effective antidotes to tyran- the ebbing ghost of nothingness, people’s sexual desires are distorted in ny, George maintains, are the doctrine formless in the world of darkness, various ways doesn’t change their nat- of enumerated powers, a sovereignty that can, for its time, offer ural end, any more than a squirrel that divi ded between the states and the fed- a drink, sheltered, cool and centering, is missing a leg due to an accident or eral government, and a citizenry that shield against the loss of the dark, birth defect fails to be the sort of crea- understands these institutions and is and the shapes, and landscapes, ture that bynature is four-legged. willing to uphold them. Yet a people like time, soon to slip forward These Aristotelian final causes are of given to license, and afflicted by the from it. course extremely controversial today, and breakdown of the family that is its the “new natural-law theory” is defined in inevitable sequel, is not of a mind to —WILLIAM W. RUNYEON part by its eschewal of such notions. It

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS endorses David Hume’s famous thesis Prize–winning Profiles in Courage. that “values” cannot be derived from Perry does not make the real Rose “facts” (ironically enough, given that Queen of Kennedy stand up, because the real one George allows that Hume’s influence on was Rose’s own meticulously calibrated modern moral philosophy has been Hyannis invention, and it was already standing up. baneful). But if this makes the “new Rather, Perry finds the minuscule pin- natural law” less philosophically old- FLORENCE KING points and fissures that admit slivers of fashioned, it also makes it more opaque. light past even the sturdiest mask. Rather than appealing to the natural ends She has a good eye for the kind of of our sexual faculties, George rests his casual remarks that give us all away. In case for traditional sexual morality on a Rose’s diary of her time in London as set of sometimes odd, and I think uncon- the wife of the American ambassador, vincing, metaphors. she confesses that she wore the wrong Hence George tells us that homo - kind of hat to the funeral of a member of sexual acts involve making the body an Parliament, adding, “No other ambas- “instrument” rather than a part of the sadors’ wives [were] there or one of them self. Yet homosexuals who claim their might have erred as I did.” Perry is quick orientation is genetically based hardly to catch the small-minded insecurity seem to be treating their bodies as some - couched in the throwaway line: “Rose thing external to them. George main- Rose Kennedy: The Life and Times of a Political didn’t wish for someone to have alerted tains that only heterosexual intercourse Matriarch, by Barbara A. Perry (Norton, her to proper attire, but, rather, for some- can realize a “one-flesh union.” But the 416 pp., $27.95) one to commit a faux pas with her.” partners’ fleshy bits can be as snugly She had a way of working herself into fitted together in homosexual acts as in OSE KENNEDY was so often her flattery of others, as when she said of heterosexual ones, and with as much asked for advice on raising a certain Mrs. Fitzgerald: “No wonder I romantic passion. George maintains that children that she risked run- look young and beauteous with such a a copulating heterosexual pair make up R ning out of material. For years, mother!” Lady Bird Johnson got scooped a “single organism,” since both are she had held forth about the mealtime up in a gilded cage when she said that needed for procreation. This is like say- quizzes on current events, the catechism being in the company of Rose was “tall ing that people engaged in conversation recitations, and her knack for drafting cotton.” This southern expression for or competitive games make up a single the older children to keep the younger good times was unknown to Rose, but organism, since as individuals they can- ones in line, but by 1956, all the surviving she had no difficulty defining it: Lady not carry out these essentially social children were grown up and she needed Bird must have felt that being with her activities. something fresh, because Jack was being was elevating and was admitting, in I would argue that such metaphors considered for the vice-presidential spot effect, that she “was not quite up to me.” have whatever plausibility they do have on the Democratic ticket. People were She put on airs even in her personal let- only insofar as they are less direct ways saying that a Catholic could never be - ters, archly confessing that she always of stating what traditional natural-law come president, so Rose came up with a said “Phalaenopsis” to the press because theorists would put in the language of way to teach children about religious big- “orchids” would “sound too nouveau Aristotelian final causes. The “new nat- otry that would stick in young minds. riche.” Either she was poking fun at her- ural lawyers” would in my view be well “Show them the lions at the zoo,” she self—hardly a habit of hers—or else she advised to concede this. Otherwise, in wrote in an article intended for Reader’s did not realize that the Kennedys them- putting aside these final causes, they Digest, “and explain how they consumed selves were nouveau riche. Proof that they will have succeeded only in replacing the early Christians—and so interest chil- were is the P.S. in her letter to her daugh- highly controversial but clear argu- dren.” ter written from Windsor Castle, on what ments with highly controversial and The Digest rejected the piece. It was the surely was crested writing paper: “Pat, obscure ones. And for all their conces- only time she ever put a foot wrong, please keep this note, dear.” sions to modern philosophy, they are according to Barbara A. Perry, who based In several of her family letters, she still widely regarded as reactionaries: this biography on the letters and diaries seemed to harbor a genial contempt for They might as well go the whole hog. of Rose that were released to the public her younger children. The cutoff child (Their real trouble, for us old-school by the Kennedy Library in 2011. Perry, was her fifth, Eunice; those below were natural-law types, is that they’re not author of Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady fair game, though she expressed her opin- reactionary.) of the New Frontier, is a Kennedy parti- ions of them with dry wit. She advised But that is not to say that the argu- san, but not a groupie like Doris Kearns Bobby and Ethel to make better public- ments of liberal sexual moralists are bet- Goodwin, nor a sycophant like Theodore relations use of the fact that they now had ter than those of the “new natural law” Sorensen, who is pretty much assumed seven children and to take a serious role in theorists. In deftly exposing the falla - to be the real author of JFK’s Pulitzer the promotion of worthy causes. “I do not cies in liberal arguments, George has think it is necessary to emphasize the fact done an invaluable service to the con- Florence King can be reached at P.O. Box 7113, that you are both tone-deaf or that cul- servative cause. Fredericksburg, VA 22404. tural things do not play such a large part

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS in your life,” she wrote. As for touch- who lacked control over big issues, she ed material. You must use lots of ellipses football games: “Mention of them ‘could was driven to control minutiae wherever and brackets depending on whether you be eliminated for awhile.’” she found them, including the parking lot are copying a whole quotation, half a quo- She gave Teddy even blunter advice at Hyannisport. The spaces had gotten tation, or bits of several widely spaced when he was recovering from a broken hopelessly confused, so she rearranged quotations; and there are rules on when back sustained in a private-plane crash: them via detailed letters, with carbon you need to change an upper-case letter to “When you are lying in bed, you can read copies sent to every member of the fam- a lower-case one, and vice versa. Thus we a paragraph and then try to rewrite it or ily. She micromanaged a similar upheaval get passages like this quotation of a resay it. Then notice the difference be- over bath towels. Announcing—need- remark by Eunice: “[W]hen [Jack] was tween the succinct, dramatic impressions lessly—that she and Bobby had the same president he would say his prayers morn- of the author and your verbose, discur- initials, she broke the news that some ing . . . and night. Now that doesn’t mean sive, dull recital of the same events.” RFK towels had gotten mixed up with he was terribly religious . . . but the point She never let up on Teddy. When he was other RFK towels and asked Bobby and is that [Rose’s] influence . . .” preparing to challenge Jimmy Carter for Ethel to go through theirs and separate one I gave up on that one. Be prepared to the 1980 nomination, she watched his identical set from another. When they see dots and brackets swimming before interview and promptly told him: “You couldn’t tell the difference, she de veloped your eyes. Rules are important, but the said ‘If I was president. . . .’ You should a case of towels on the brain. Seeing world is not going to end if a writer plays have said ‘If I were president.’” towels, towels everywhere, she asked the a little hopscotch for clarity’s sake. This The high point of her maternal devo- whole family to search for RFK towels problem does, however, raise the interesting question of how nervous the Kennedy Library might be about the material they choose to release, and why. Perry’s book could not be more timely in view of the hysterical controversy in full swing as I write this review. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Rose toured South America with Eunice. In Barbados they were surprised, said Rose, to see “colored and white children sitting together” at a convent school. “The nun said the sisters took them because one could not discriminate and they seemed to get on quite happily together, the children making their own friends as they chose. . . . I have seldom been so moved; to see that group of dark-skinned little faces, with those immense, trustful, gentle brown eyes raised in prayer, convinced me for all time that there must be The Kennedy family: seated from left are Patricia, Robert, Rose, John F., and Joseph P. Sr. with Edward on his lap; standing from left are Joseph P. Jr., Kathleen, Rosemary, Eunice, and Jean angels with dark faces as well as light ones, although I have never thought of tion, lovingly described and breathlessly she believed to be missing. When no one them before.” extolled in countless articles, was the could find them, she announced that she Perry says that Rose was “Eurocentric, exhaustive records she kept on every was sending the housekeeper to search to be sure.” Understandably, she was, yet aspect of each child’s health. Illnesses, all their linen closets. She was Captain no one could miss the difference between inoculations, height, weight, cavities, Queeg, overturning the entire ship to find the cut-glass snobbery of so many of her teeth cleanings were all duly noted on out who ate the strawberries. Her compul- diary entries and her heartfelt description index cards, catalogued, and filed. There sive chiding never stopped and she clung of the mixed-race convent school. She was another file for spiritual health in to minutiae as her power base. Her note obviously “examined her conscience,” as which Rose recorded baptisms with all to Bobby—“I think you should work Catholicism required of her, and found the who-where-when trimmings, First hard and become president after Jack—it the answer therein. Maybe this is what Communions, acolyte services, and First will be good for the country and for lies behind our instinctive certainty that Fridays. Her records were heralded as you”—reduces the presidency to flossing. she really meant it. “meticulous,” a favorite Rose word, but Rose’s perfectionist standards and con- In any event, the incident makes a com- Barbara Perry suggests that “compul- trolling instincts may have influenced her parison with Paula Deen unavoidable. If sive” might be closer to the mark. biographer as well. It must be said that Deen could speak with such grace, clarity, She liked to say, “I never had a phobia, while this book is easy to read for its fas- and grammar—and if she shared Rose’s GETTY IMAGES / I never had a lover, and I never had a cinating content, it can be very hard to Eurocentric birth year of 1890—she fight,” but in fact she was a bundle of pho- read visually owing to Perry’s rigid adher- would not now be suffering death by a

BACHRACH bias. A perfectionist and a control freak ence to the editorial rules for citing quot- thousand tweets.

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Film The Bard In SoCal

ROSS DOUTHAT

iscussions of movies like Joss Whedon’s new version of Much Ado About Noth - D ing—filmed in his own well- appointed california home, remarkably enough, during a lull in the making of the ever-so-slightly-more-expensive film The Amy Acker as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing Avengers—often revolve around how successfully shakespeare can be adapted where in between: it’s an almost-success undo the impressive work of Whedon’s to non-Elizabethan periods of history, whose quasi-contemporary location some- cast—highlighted by Acker’s brilliant contemporary or otherwise. times fits the play but sometimes feels a embodiment of Beatrice (she rather over- But that framing misleads a bit. if the little too contemporary. shadows Denisof’s Benedick), clark question is whether the Bard’s plays can There are aspects of the setting that Gregg as her uncle, sean Maher as the be successfully picked up and dropped work brilliantly with the material. The sinister Don John, and nathan Fillion’s intact into the new York of 1950 or the drunken weekend party, where everyone put-upon, recessive, and entirely hilarious America of 2013, the answer is mostly no, is constantly pouring someone else a Dogberry. The actors are mostly Whe don’s and the would-be adapter is usually better drink, is ideally suited to shakespeare’s favorites from other projects (Acker from off keeping the story but writing his own comedic mix of passion, folly, misinter- television’s Angel, Gregg from The lines—à la West Side Story or even 10 pretation, and reconciliation. The military Avengers), and they combine the necessary Things I Hate about You. The trick to and political background to the story candlepower with an effective “where pulling off a non-16th-century shake - doesn’t quite work with the southern have i seen him?” obscurity. (only Fil - speare, rather, is to eschew historical california backdrop, but it’s not actually lion—the hero of the canceled Firefly, exactitude and create a setting that can that relevant to the plot, so it’s easy to set and now the star of the crime show partake of both the original and some aside those incongruities. And some of Castle—is anything close to a real celeb - other, half-invented time and place. the scenes that Whedon stages—particu- rity, though after this performance i or at least that’s been true of recent larly an extended masked-party scene, would happily sign a petition to get Acker shakespeare screen adaptations. The best with acrobats swinging from the darkened more A-list work.) of them have created settings that feel trees—hit the precise “this could be any What ultimately saves their efforts suitably unmoored from actual recorded era’s revels” sweet spot that the film is from the reverse-anachronism problem is history: the savage “Verona Beach” of aiming for. the fact that Whedon chose to shoot in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, part But there’s also a little too much that’s black and white. That choice balances the modern Rio and part Renaissance italy; on-the-nose contemporary in the way post-1960s bed-hopping vibe with a the fascism-infused alt-1930s of the ian Whedon tells the story. The film opens screwball 1930s quality, and effectively McKellen Richard III; the ancient- with a shot of Beatrice (Amy Acker) and decontemporizes the movie just enough modern hybrids that worked for Julie Benedick (Alex Denisof) waking up in to make it entertain more than it distracts. Taymor in Titus and for Ralph Fiennes in bed together, in a brief fling that’s sup- A screwball quality, and a hint of noir his recent Coriolanus. The disappoint- posed to be a prelude to their subsequent as well. Part of the thrill of Much Ado ments have let their settings distract, in warlike courtship, and this choice and About Nothing, as with shakespeare’s their uneasy fit with the material, from others locate the story a bit too firmly in later romances, comes from the way it the matter of the story: The version of the post-sexual-revolution present. While employs the plot devices of his trage - Hamlet that cast Ethan Hawke as a prince a sexy, earthy vibe is entirely appropriate dies—particularly Romeo and Juliet and of corporate America, and Denmark’s to shakespeare’s material, a world of Othello—but turns them, after a period of succession as a boardroom struggle, was a relatively casual sex simply doesn’t fit turmoil, to happy, resurrective ends. it’s notable example of what such failure with the play’s crucial, unalterable plot to Whedon’s great credit that his sun- looks like. twist, in which not merely chastity but drenched black-and-white, with its echoes Whedon’s Much Ado, which is actual virginity is treated as something of Raymond chandler’s Los Angeles, drenched in socal ambience—a wedding worth prizing, worth disowning some- helps bring that element of darkness spot overlooks a golf course, couples one over, and even worth dying for. out—even if, as always in such adapta- bicker in a custom kitchen and flirt beside The maidenhood issue is not a small tions, the ultimate credit goes to the genius

LIONSGATE a glassy swimming pool—falls some- incongruity, and at times it threatens to who included it in the first place.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Cinema ex Machina

F my two local-ish movie theaters in New by one actor what his motivation was: “Your paycheck,” Hampshire, one has an irksome habit of always snapped Abbott. Dylan McDermott’s motivation is appar- showing the film just a little larger than the ently Lehman Brothers’ paychecks, which is even less per- O screen, so that anything happening out on the suasive. The Russian villain in A Good Day to Die Hard borders of the frame remains a mystery: If memory serves, it dispenses with the same perfunctory pretext more adroitly: was the most recent Die Hard sequel that had all the dateline “Do you vont to know vot I hate about America?” Stage stuff in the lower left-hand corner, so that the two-line pause. “Everything!” “MOSCOW. AUGUST.” appeared intriguingly as “COW. Everything—and nothing. Which is a bit of a problem if GUST.” My second local theater’s even worse, a dingy you’re looking for a film about . . . something. The producer box that always reminds me of being a young cadet at my Lynda Obst has a new book out purporting to explain the age boys’ school, and the dispiriting huts the of globalized “tentpole” “franchise” movies sergeants used to muster us in to show us selling on “pre-awareness.” It’s called, after ancient public-service films on how not to her best-known romantic comedy, Sleepless catch venereal diseases. in Hollywood, which isn’t quite as boffo a hit So, when I’m in the big town, I like to title as her previous tome, Hello, He Lied. catch up on the big movies and see them on Everyone loved that one—such a perfect dis- the big screen. The other day, the big town tillation of the industry’s flattering self-image wasn’t that big—Burlington, Vt.—but it as a shark tank of ruthless cynics that you had a multiplex or two, so I scanned the didn’t need to read the book. Hollywood is listings: Monsters University, the prequel now approaching the condition of Broad - to Monsters Inc.; Man of Steel, the re- way in the “abominable showman” David reboot of Superman; Pacific Rim, something to do with Merrick’s dotage: The shows are boring but the backstage robots vs. aliens; Despicable Me 2, a sequel to a computer- machinations preserve the glamour a while longer. animated cartoon about a reformed supervillain; Grown Ups What did I call those 3D glasses? “Cardboard spectacles”? 2, an Adam Sandler sequel with all the urine and feces gags As Ms. Obst explains in her book, they love 3D overseas. So they cut from the first film; Grown Ups 2 in 3D, the same Hollywood now makes cardboard spectacles for the youth of urine and feces gags but viewed through cardboard specta- developing countries, a half-billion-dollar summer stock cles . . . And, for the first time that I can recall, there wasn’t for the barns of Asia. In Guangdong, the Chinese make a single movie I could face the thought of sitting through. America’s Walmart filler; in Hollywood, America makes I see that conservative critics are blaming Hollywood’s China’s multiplex filler. The Chinese were the co-producers listless summer on its blockbusters’ off-putting politics: In of the recent futuristic dystopian time-travel shoot-’em-up the new Lone Ranger, the sidekick is the star and the bland Looper, which I dimly recollect as a film so disciplined about pretty boy playing the Ranger is just (in Tonto’s words) a its nothingness that, when the old Bruce Willis materializes “stupid white man”; in White House Down, an Obama-esque from the future and meets his younger self and the young hopeychangey president comes under siege in the people’s Bruce asks old Bruce if he’ll remember meeting young house from Tea Party–type terrorists. Bruce upon his return to the future, old Bruce advises him Granted, it’s all terribly tedious, but it’s not really “politi- not to get hung up on details. Don’t even think about it. cal” in any meaningful sense. In The Lone Ranger, the bad- And so it goes on: Iron Man 4, Cardboard Man 6, dies are top-hatted mustachioed railroad barons because the Franchise Man 12. I’m half-ashamed I even know that word, formula dictates someone has to be the villain and, for a but that’s Hollywood—from Franchot Tone to franchise multinational conglomerate like Disney, big business is the drone. What happens to a culture whose economic incentives easiest to hand. In Olympus Has Fallen, last month’s block- drive it ever further from telling its own stories? Say, maybe buster about terrorists attacking the White House, the bad- that’s why the Chinese are so keen to annex the movie indus- dies were North Koreans, which superficially has some try—to so neuter us that, by the time we need to make connection to reality but in the end is no more grounded than another Casablanca, we’ll no longer know how, or why . . . the right-wing Palin worshipers. There’s a scene in which Hey, perhaps that would make a good conspiracy thriller: the president demands to know why traitorous Secret Alan Rickman as the sinister studio chief bought by Beijing, Service agent Dylan McDermott has gone over to the Norks, Scarlett Johansson as the plucky vice president of develop- and he mumbles something about banks . . . bailouts . . . ment who figures out what’s really going on, Liam Neeson whatever . . . Are we done yet? Can we get back to the explo- as her ex-CIA dad who rappels into the backlot and kills all sions now? Rehearsing Damn Yankees 60 years back, the the extras . . . Oh, don’t worry. When they option the script, great Broad way director George Abbott was famously asked they’ll change the villains from the Chinese politburo to a Tea Party 501(c)(4) owned by a subsidiary of the Koch Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). brothers.

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Famous Romans Taught by Professor J. Rufus Fears IM ED T E O IT FF E 1. Publius Cornelius Scipio IM R L 2. Hannibal 70% 3. Gaius Flaminius 6 O 4. Quintus Fabius Maximus 1

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