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November 7, 2016 $4.99

YUVAL LEVIN ELIANA JOHNSON Cronyism’s Threat ’s Maine D. Keith Mano’s Craft

The BlueWave DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES ARE THREATENING TO TURN TRADITIONAL RED STATES BLUE. HOW DO REPUBLICANS SURVIVE? TIM ALBERTA

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NOVEMBER 7, 2016 | VOLUME LXVIII, NO. 20 | www.nationalreview.com BOOKS, ARTS ON THE COVER Page 26 & MANNERS The Blue Wave 39 THE FACTS ON IMMIGRATION Republicans have carried Mark Krikorian reviews We Wanted Workers: the white vote in every Unraveling the Immigration general election since 1968. Narrative, by George J. Borjas. But that’s not enough 40 DARK LOYALTIES anymore. The demographic reviews True Believer: Stalin’s Last American writing is on the wall; if the Spy, by Kati Marton. GOP continues to repel 42 THE DOWNSIDE OF non-whites, it will cease to ROMNEYISM Jason Willick reviews The Upside Tim Alberta be competitive. of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the COVER: Middle Class, by Edward Conard.

44 COLD REDUX ARTICLES reviews Putin’s Master Plan: To Destroy Europe, MAINE DIVIDED by Eliana Johnson 16 Divide NATO, and Restore Its diverging population is poised to split its electoral votes. Russian Power and Global Influence, by Douglas E. Schoen with TWO FLAWED TAX PLANS by 18 Evan Roth Smith. Congress would have to restrain either Clinton or Trump. THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT’S DEMISE by Ian Tuttle 45 BOOKS IN BRIEF 20 Michael Potemra reads about housecats. Now what is needed is an authentic Christian voice. A CASE OF COMPASSION by 46 FILM: TODAY’S NAT TURNER 22 reviews The Birth of One woman’s act of mercy invites us to reflect on the suffering of animals. a Nation. THE GIMLET-EYED by Richard Brookhiser 24 47 APPLE-PICKING TIME On the craft of D. Keith Mano. Richard Brookhiser looks for apples.

FEATURES THE BLUE WAVE by Tim Alberta 26 SECTIONS Republicans must adapt to a diversifying electorate or lose their influence. THE CRONYIST THREAT by 2 Letters to the Editor 32 The Week Conservatives should act to restore confidence in free markets. 4 37 Athwart ...... MASTERS OF THE GAME by Kevin D. Williamson 38 The Long View ...... Rob Long 34 Poetry A word of defense for elitism. 43 ...... Jennifer Reeser 48 Happy Warrior ...... Daniel Foster

NATIONAL REVIEW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by N ATIONAL REVIEW, Inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, , N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © , Inc., 2016. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to Editorial Dept., N ATIONAL REVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONALREVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00A.M . to 10:30 P.M. Eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATIONALREVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to N ATIONAL REVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATES: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters-FINAL_QXP-1127940387.qxp 10/19/2016 2:39 PM Page 2 Letters

NOVEMBER 7 ISSUE; PRINTED OCTOBER 20

EDITORINCHIEF Richard Lowry Looking the Other Way on Abortion Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / / Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Jay Nordlinger’s article “No More Baby” (September 26) concludes that we are a Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra “deeply hypocritical society” because we won’t admit that killing a newborn baby is Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy not much different from killing a pre-born baby by abortion. I agree with this conclu- Washington Editor Eliana Johnson Executive Editor sion, but I believe the hypocrisy goes much deeper. Nordlinger asks whether Emile Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson National Corresponden t John J. Miller Weaver, who was given a life sentence for killing her newborn baby, is “worse—all that Senior Political Correspondent Jim Geraghty much worse—than her counterparts who dispose of their babies earlier and more neatly.” Chief Political Correspondent Tim Alberta Art Director Luba Kolomytseva But by focusing on this question, we avoid other questions that are even more difficult Deputy Managing Editors to face: Are these women “all that much worse” than people who support politicians Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Production Editor Katie Hosmer who take pro-abortion positions only because they calculate it will further their career? Assistant to the Editor Rachel Ogden Research Associate Alessandra Trouwborst As their supporters include friends, relatives, members of religious communities, and Contributing Editors possibly someone sitting next to us at dinner, isn’t it more convenient for us to place Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Daniel Foster the blame elsewhere? And is what these supporters do “all that much worse” than our Roman Genn / Arthur L. Herman / Lawrence Kudlow Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long choice of easy targets in our determination of where blame is placed? Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy Kate O’Beirne / Andrew Stuttaford / Robert VerBruggen Joseph Mirra NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor Charles C. W. Cooke Bronx, N.Y. Managing Editors Katherine Connell / Edward John Craig Deputy Managing Editor Nat Brown National-Affairs Columnist John Fund Merit-Based Education Reform Staff Writer David French Senior Political Reporter Alexis Levinson Reporter Rarely do we hear intelligent solutions to the problem of America’s failing educational Associat e Editors Molly Powell / Nick Tell system—even from reformers, who get caught up in the “golden goose” approach of Digital Director Ericka Andersen Assistant Editor Mark Antonio Wright alighting on a single issue. Frederick M. Hess’s “Ten Priorities for Education Policy” Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Editorial Assistant Grant DeArmitt (October 24), however, is a practical and rational approach to the entire issue. While Web Developer Wendy Weihs teaching in one of the school systems Hess mentioned—Baltimore’s—I had the plea- Web Producer Scott McKim sure of working with fine teachers (and some not-so-fine), but I left, like many others, EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / / John O’Sullivan because of the shortcomings to which Hess intelligently proposes solutions. NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE Most insightful of all, Hess suggests to “permit for-profit educators to compete on THOMASL. RHODESFELLOW Ian Tuttle their merits.” This was the marrow of education—of all true learning—from the appearance of the human race on the planet until the late 1800s, when schooling BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Alexandra DeSanctis / Austin Yack became mandatory. Merit-based, “boutique” education was, on the whole, vastly more Contributors effective, cost-efficient, and entertaining to students and teachers alike. I would add to Hadley Arkes / James Bowman / Eliot A. Cohen this homeschooling and “unschooling,” which have recently proven to be extremely Dinesh D’Souza / Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman James Gardner / David Gelernter / George Gilder effective means of education. These small centers of true learning should receive the / Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune / benefit of tax breaks, freedom from governmental meddling, and a general approbation Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons from the vox populi—for their efficiency, and for their great virtue of relieving an over- / Vin Weber Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge stressed system and an overtaxed people. Accounting Manager Galina V eygman Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya Business Services Alex Batey John C. Young Circulation Manager Jason Ng Pensacola, Fla. Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Assistant to the Publisher Brooke Rogers CORRECTIONS Director of Revenue Erik Netcher PUBLISHERCHAIRMAN In “Russia’s Bloody Tsar” (August 15), David Satter wrote that in May 2007, when he Jack Fowler John Hillen testified before the House Foreign Relations Committee about the 1999 Russian apart- FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. ment bombings, he was the only person publicly accusing the Russian government of involvement who had not been killed. He mentioned Alexander Litvinenko, the author PATRONSANDBENEFACTORS Robert Agostinelli of Blowing Up Russia, as one of the victims but did not note that Mr. Litvinenko’s co- Dale Brott Mr. and Mrs. Michael Conway author, Yuri Felshtinsky is, we are pleased to say, alive and very well. Mark and Mary Davis James Christopher M. Lantrip “Unsullied” (Ross Douthat, October 10) mistakenly identified the flight that Captain Brian and Deborah Murdock Mr. & Mrs. Richard Spencer Sullenberger famously piloted as United 1549. It was, in fact, US Airways 1549. Mr. & Mrs. L. Stanton Towne Peter J. Travers Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected].

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n Bob Dylan is to literature as is to peace.

n “How is that not classified?” That was the stunned reaction of Clinton confidante Huma Abedin upon learning that her boss’s e-mails over a private e-mail system included exchanges with the president of the , who was using an alias. Abedin knew an insurance policy when she saw one: She quickly asked the agents whether she could have a copy, doubtless realizing that if Obama was recklessly communicating about sensitive matters through a non-secure channel, no one was going to be prosecuted for doing so. And, of course, no one was. Subsequent disclosures of FBI reports and the hacked e-mails of Clinton-Obama opera- tive John Podesta prove that the White House and the Clinton campaign fretted over the Obama–Clinton communications from the moment Clinton’s “private” e-mails were subpoenaed by the House Benghazi committee. Nevertheless, Obama first falsely See page 14. denied even knowing about the Clinton e-mail address, then invoked executive privilege to shield his e-mails with Clinton from Congress and the public. A post hoc acknowledgment that they were classified would have made it embarrassingly clear that he’d engaged in the same criminal conduct she had. Indeed, his e-mails would have been admissible evidence at her trial. That’s why, in short, there was never going to be such a trial. gave in 2013 to a Brazilian bank in which she said, “My dream is n Trumpian DNA requires taking even the best point too far. a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open bor- Thus the mogul’s declaration that should not ders, sometime in the future, with energy that is as green and merely be prosecuted but in jail—and that, were he president, the sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity hoosegow is where she’d be. On cue, the commentariat groused for every person in the hemisphere.” The Clinton campaign says that Trump was vowing a dictatorial criminalization of politics. she was talking only about integrating energy markets. Trump Let’s take a breath. Trump, who said he’d appoint a special pros- has said this means she favors unlimited immigration from any- ecutor to investigate the case, was not threatening to prosecute where in the world, “ for everybody,” and “global gov- Clinton for being an enemy of his regime. Clinton appears to ernance.” These accusations are wild. Even if the U.S. enacted have committed crimes that have nothing to do with opposing “free trade for everybody,” abolishing all import tariffs and quo- Donald Trump and that endangered national security. As usual, tas, it would remain as sovereign as it had been the day before, Trump chose his words poorly, but Clinton’s offenses merit a with the power to set whatever trade policy it chooses. Nothing credible inquiry. There is no impropriety in saying so. in Clinton’s remark is suggestive of global governance, either. It is true that Clinton has too rosy a view of supranational organiza- n WikiLeaks, Julian Assange’s clearing house for purloined tions such as the United Nations and a much too liberal immigra- documents and e-mails, has been divulging a raft of Clinton- tion policy. But we need not ferret out any shadowy cabal to campaign and Democratic-party materials, which show Hillary know this: We learn more about it from reading her public record, Clinton and her supporters in a variety of unflattering, sometimes including her website and her speeches during this campaign. arguably illegal, postures. No one has denied the authenticity of Assange’s stuff—which would be easy to do if it were in fact n WikiLeaks exposed an e-mail exchange between Clinton bogus. But it has been clear for quite a while that Assange is a de communications director Jennifer Palmieri and the Center for facto Russian ally, if not an outright agent. Now that the material American ’s John Halpin (Clinton campaign chairman is in the public domain, it is legitimately subject to examination John Podesta was copied) in which Palmieri claimed to have and discussion (see below), but foreign powers shouldn’t be driv - uncovered the true motivations for conservative Catholicism. ing the American political debate. Halpin mused that powerful conservatives were Catholic in part because they were attracted to “severely backwards gender rela- n “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to tions.” Palmieri said, “Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty” was the arresting charge they became Evangelicals.” The presumption that Christians are ROMAN GENN made by Donald Trump. The reference is to a paid speech she insincere and motivated by professional expedience and the desire

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to dominate is, of course, itself a form of prejudice. Many secu- lech, or worse, and Hillary Clinton concealed it to protect her lar progressives really do believe that Christians are nothing but political future. This is America’s great “champion” of women. bigots in disguise. That’s how they justify their own intolerance. n As birds sing at nightfall, so the Trump campaign is shouting n An illustrative exchange from the John Podesta e-mails, pur- that the election is rigged. “The election is absolutely being loined and revealed by WikiLeaks: After MSNBC host Chris rigged,” Trump tweeted. Rigged in the sense of stolen at the Hayes tweeted the name of one of the San Bernardino, Calif., ter- polls? Yes, according to Trump, but also rigged by “dishonest and rorists, Clinton spokeswoman Karen Finney forwarded the tweet distorted media.” Ballot fraud exists. But the scope of a national to Podesta, remarking: “Damn.” Podesta replied: “Better if a guy election, and the division of the states’ political machinery named Sayeed Farouk [sic] was reporting that a guy named between the parties, make it vanishingly unlikely that a modern Christopher Hayes was the shooter.” The progressive mind, in presidential race could be filched. As for media bias, it has existed one sentence. for decades, but smart Republicans learn how to overcome it (Trump’s most loyal surrogate, , won two elections n Campaign memos obtained by DC Leaks revealed that Hillary in deepest-blue New York City). The charge of a rigged election, Clinton’s appearance on the Steve Harvey show in February was three weeks before most Americans vote, is a salve for the ego of entirely scripted, from a lady in the audience asking Clinton for a candidate who fears being branded a loser, and for the self- advice about being a grandmother to Clinton discussing the esteem of those who mortgaged their reputations to support him. country’s racial divide. Every question and answer was crafted between Harvey and Clinton’s staff—even Clinton’s photo - n What do politicians who have endorsed Trump do when graphs shown on the program were prearranged, but she still under pressure? The hokey pokey: Now you put your right foot managed to exclaim “Oh my goodness” when the photo of her at in / Your right foot out / Right foot in / Then you shake it all twelve years old appeared. Clinton knew Harvey wouldn’t ques- about . . . The parade of women who said that Trump had tion her political positions: “The tone of the show is generally groped or assaulted them began the first week of October. Panic light so even on policy questions, Steve won’t go too deep into time, as Republicans who had once backed him blasted him, or details,” the memo noted. So, even on a talk show with virtually even called on him to drop out. Then Trump turned in an okay no political risks, she still didn’t want to hazard just being herself. performance in the second presidential debate (and Hillary Clinton failed to make a kill). Back came many of the dis- n Donald Trump made one of his many careers as a promoter of endorsers. Typical was Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska, who beauty pageants. But the pageant now swirling about him is of said on October 8 that it would be “wise” for Trump “to step women, some of them former contestants, who say that he ogled, aside,” then said on October 11 that she backed the “Trump- groped, or French-kissed them without their consent. The on - Pence ticket.” N.B. Her colleague from Nebraska is Senator slaught has all the look of a prepared trap, into which Trump Ben Sasse, who has been no-Trump all along. Profile in cour - walked, telling Anderson Cooper that, whatever cringe-making age, meet profile in . . . something else. things he might have said to people such as former Access Hol ly wood host Billy Bush, he had never enacted them. Then, n Bucking many of its Evangelical colleagues, World magazine the deluge. As with or Bill Cosby, some of the accu- called for Trump to drop out of the presidential contest following sations may be embroidered, but the number is dismaying, as is the revelation of his 2005 Access Hollywood comments: “A their consistency: with each other, and with Trump’s laughing Trump step-aside would be good for America’s moral standards admis sion—on an old Howard Stern show—that he is indeed a in 2016. It’s still not too late to turn the current race between two “sexual predator.” Trump meanwhile called his accusers liars and unfit major party candidates into a contest fit for a great country.” promised to refute their charges. One Anthony Gilberthorpe Christianity Today editor Andy Crouch also editorialized against claims to have been on a plane flight with Trump and one of his Trump, chastising the latter’s Christian apologists: “Enthusiasm alleged victims and seen nothing untoward, though his testimony for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to suffers from his being a self-confessed former procurer of rent doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord.” These publications might boys to English politicians. The Nineties have called, and they well have taken their cue from the Apostle Paul: “Proclaim the want to give us their sexcapades. word,” he writes; “be persistent, whether it is convenient or incon- venient.” The present moment is nothing if not inconvenient. n Trump trotted out Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, and Juanita Broaddrick, Bill Clinton’s three most public accusers from the n The Arizona Republic has been conservative and Republican 1990s, at a press conference hours before the season’s second throughout its 125-year history. They had never endorsed a Dem - debate. His theatrics smacked of desperation, but on the sub- ocrat for president until this year. They decided that the Re pub li - stance, he was not wrong. As and the Wash - can nominee was unfit, and un-conservative, in too many ways. ington Post recently reminded their readers in long features, So, they published their opinion. Then came an avalanche of hate Hillary was instrumental in silencing Bill’s accusers. When Little and death threats: highly specific threats, which the staff, together Rock-music groupie Connie Hamzy claimed that Bill Clinton with the police, had to deal with. The paper’s publisher, Mi-Ai had propositioned her, Hillary responded: “We have to destroy Parrish, has now written a statement, which is a model of her story.” In his memoir, All Too Human, George Steph an op ou - thoughtfulness and principle. She stands up for the right to prac- los wrote that, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, Hillary tice journalism. She stands up for the separation of journalism “had to do what she had always done before: swallow her doubts, from party politics. She speaks kindly of those Trump supporters stand by her man, and savage his enemies.” Bill Clinton was a who have sent her thoughtful criticisms. She also includes what

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she calls a “personal word”: “To those of you who have said Jesus blamed “animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North will judge me, that you hope I burn in hell, that non-Christians Carolina,” but the still-at-large culprit or culprits have not been should be kept out of our country, I give you my pastor grand- identified. Trump is correct about one thing: If someone had fire- father. He was imprisoned and tortured for being a Christian, and bombed a Democratic-party headquarters, as he told a radio host suffered the murder of his best friend for also refusing to deny two days later, “it would be worldwide news.” Christ.” This was in Korea. Mi-Ai Parrish is in America, demon- strating what an American is. n Evan McMullin is the 40-year-old former CIA agent and Capitol Hill aide who is running as a conservative alternative n On the morning of October 16, the Orange County, N.C., in the presidential race. By any normal reckoning he is not Republican-party headquarters was firebombed, and an adjacent qualified, and his chances of winning are nil. But two recent building was spray-painted with a swastika and the words “Nazi polls show him in a statistical tie with Trump and Clinton in Republicans leave town or else.” Donald Trump immediately his home state, Utah (others show Trump ahead). McMullin is No Coattails for Hillary?

ITH the election right around the corner, polls and So how does the percentage by which a president wins betting markets agree that there will likely be a big affect the number of seats held by the president’s party? W victory for Hillary Clinton. As of mid October, bet- The graph shows very little relationship between how much ting markets posted an 83 percent chance that she would a president wins by and how many seats are gained (or defeat Donald Trump, with the margin of victory in polls then lost). In fact, when running a simple regression analysis averaging about seven percentage points. Granted, false of the president’s percentage win of the popular vote on predictions of Brexit taught us that polls may be less reliable the change of seats held by the president’s party, we find in this strange new world. But assuming Clinton does win by that there is no relationship. This result may appear coun- margins as wide as the data suggest, what happens next? terintuitive, but the data we gathered do not tell any other The answer, it would seem, depends on what happens to story. Indeed, while one should not get too excited spec- the House and the Senate. A scenario in which President ulating about statistically insignificant results, the pat- Clinton comes to power in a landslide seems like a scenario terns in the data suggest that voters may well be wary of that could, at least in theory, deliver her both houses of both political parties and favor ticket-splitting when the Congress. At that point we would discover whether she presidential outcome seems certain. is a Bill Clinton–style moderate Democrat or the Bernie There is, then, no statistical evidence that the presidential Sanders–like capitalism-hater she has at times portrayed victory margin drives pickup of seats in the House or the on the campaign stage. But if Republicans maintain a grasp Senate. So if Donald Trump is trounced in the election but on Congress, there will be more pressure on the deal- Republican candidates for the House or Senate “surprise” making Clintons, who helped give us and on the upside, it should be considered no surprise at all. capital-gains tax cuts, to make a reappearance. To tether this conjecture to reality, we collected data —KEVIN A. HASSETT concerning the 1944 to 2012 elections from the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Repre sentatives, which re - ports the political divisions of the U.S. Senate and the Popular Vote: House going back to the 40th Congress. These data detail Change in Congress Seats the number of seats held by Democrats and Republicans after each bi-yearly election. We also collected data from the American Presidency Project on the percentage of 80 the popular vote won by each Democratic and Re pub - 60 lican presidential nominee.

To understand the relationship between the presidential- 40 election outcome and the number of seats held in Con gress

by the incoming president’s party, we took the dif ference 20 in the popular vote between the winner and runner-up and

0 compared that with the change in the number of seats that Change in Congress Seats the president’s party held in both the House and the Senate. For example, in 1996, Bill Clinton ran against the Re - -20 publican nominee, Robert Dole, and won with an 8.5-point -40 margin in the popular vote. In that election, the Demo - -5 0510 15 20 25 crats gained three seats in the House but lost three seats Party’s Senate Party’s House in the Senate. Percent Presidential Win Over Runner-Up

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a Mormon, and Trump’s alleged restrictions on abortions late in pregnancy so long as exceptions (and admitted) lechery, along are made to protect the mother’s health. But the Supreme Court’s with his mockery of his oppo- rulings on abortion, which she supports, have made such restric- nents’ , make Mormons tions unenforceable because they include a very broad definition leery of him. And if McMullin of health that includes, among other things, emotional health. took Utah—becoming the first The leading Democratic proposal on partial-birth abortion, third-party candidate to win a which Clinton supported, included a health exception that simi- state since in larly vitiated its purported ban. Republicans are justified in 1968—and if neither Clinton nor clearing away her obfuscation, and fact-checkers worthy of the Trump won a majority in the term would assist them rather than add to the confusion. Electoral College, then the House would choose among the top n Clinton said that the child tax credit, now worth $1,000 per three finishers—Clinton, Trump, child, should be doubled for parents of children under five. She McMullin . . . It’s a fantasy; this also wants to increase its availability for poor families with little election will be decided in a income-tax liability. This idea is far superior to Obama’s proposal dump, if not a landslide. But the fact that such fantasies spring to expand subsidies for child care, because it would leave parents up shows what a weak ticket the GOP has fielded. with the choice of how to use the money rather than direct them to commercial day care. As we have long argued, tax relief for n Attacking Hillary Clinton’s foreign-policy record, Libertarian parents is justified because federal law currently overtaxes them: presidential candidate drew a moral equivalence Raising children is a financial sacrifice that contributes to the between U.S. and Syrian military actions, sarcastically telling the health of old-age entitlement programs; taxing parents the same New York Times, “We’re so much better when in Afghanistan, we as non-parents ignores that sacrifice. Republicans have resisted bomb the hospital and 60 people are killed in the hospital.” Given giving tax credits to people who pay no income tax. But payroll the scores of thousands of their countrymen whom Syrian forces taxes also pay for entitlements, and so should also be reduced for have slaughtered, this demonstrates colossal ignorance about the parents—and so Republicans ought to be willing to meet Clinton facts on the ground. Yet ignorance about Syria has become some- halfway on the treatment of low-income parents. Which is more thing of a hobgoblin for Johnson, as he has repeatedly courted than they will be able to do on the vast run of issues should she controversy by demonstrating and even reveling in a lack of become president. knowledge about it. First, he famously asked, “What is Aleppo?” on live TV, which was embarrassing but also forgivable as a n “Ailing Obama Health Care Act May Have to Change to Sur - momentary mistake. He made it worse later by trying to make the vive,” reports the New York Times. Neither insurers nor individ- case that this sort of foreign-policy ignorance actually indicates uals are participating in Obamacare’s health exchanges at the that he would be a better president, since knowing about Syria is expected levels, and the exchanges have proven especially un - a necessary precondition to military adventures there. This is the attractive to people who would have to pay their own way ra - logic of blind non-interventionism. After he appeared to break ther than use subsidies. The main Democratic solution is to with Libertarian ideas on such issues as religious freedom and in troduce a public option whereby the government would pro- gun control, it is comforting to see that Johnson does retain some vide insurance directly. Without any need to make a profit, goes of his party’s principles, even if the worse ones. the theory, they could keep premiums down and so enroll more customers. But insurers are not making a profit on the ex - n David Clarke is the sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wis. He is changes as it is, and the nonprofit co-ops Obamacare created a bold and interesting man who has graced our cover. Recently, have closed in droves. The article ends with a health-care expert he tweeted as follows: “It’s incredible that our institutions of calling for giving people more money to help buy insurance and gov, WH, Congress, DOJ, and big media are corrupt & all we steeper fines on people who do not buy it. The law needs more do is bitch. Pitchforks and torches time.” He accompanied his and more money and more and more coercion to survive— tweet with a picture of an angry mob. We favor constitutional which is why it needs to go. order and law enforcement, not pitchforks, torches, and mobs. So should sheriffs. n The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has always been an odd duck, and now it has been revealed as an unconstitutional n Speaking of pitchforks, the University of New Haven one. The CFPB is like one of those high-school clubs started by bowed to Black Lives Matter protesters and disinvited Sheriff some ambitious but undistinguished student for the sole purpose David Clarke from speaking on campus about the use of forensic of giving himself something to be in charge of, for résumé- science in law enforcement. Of course, the school didn’t admit building purposes. In this case, the ambitious Tracy Flick was that. It simply said, “Circumstances did not permit Sheriff Eliz a beth Warren, a largely unknown academic who desired to Clarke’s attendance.” And here we thought that Yale was New enter public office and who had written a couple of financial self- Haven’s most craven university. help books (All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan, etc.). Warren ultimately was denied directorship of the agency,

GETTY IMAGES n

/ Media “fact-checkers” have risen to defend Clinton from but her role in establishing it was enough to launch her Senate Republican charges that she that unborn children should career, so the organization’s mission is, in effect, complete. But have no legal protections from abortion up until the moment of it remains useful for hassling dissident banks and disagreeable GEORGE FREY birth. They note that she has occasionally said that she favors financiers, so it has survived long enough for the Court of Ap -

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peals for the D.C. Circuit to discover its patently unconstitutional the other, so fighting may well last indefinitely while Saudi design and portfolio: It acts in effect as an independent miniature Arabia and Iran bid to be the undisputed regional power. In legislature, with open-ended power to regulate financial products Geneva, our hapless secretary of state, John Kerry, attended a and to define “financial products” in any way it sees fit. It can conference to try to put in place a cease-fire in Syria. Nothing declare business practices “abusive,” and therefore forbidden, doing. At another conference in London immediately after- with no particular statutory justification from Congress. It does ward, he emerged only to say, “This is the time to implement a not even have the bipartisan board of directors characteristic of cease-fire unconditionally and then move to the negotiating so-called independent federal agencies, concentrating its consid- table.” He might consider having this mantra engraved on cards erable power in the person of one mighty administrator. It is, as to hand out to whomever he meets. currently constituted, a law unto itself. The court demands that it be restructured; the more sensible course is dismantling it. n Over the course of four years, Juan Manuel Santos, the pres- ident of Colombia, negotiated with the FARC, the Communist n The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a Cal - guerrillas. The guerrillas have waged war on Colombian society i fornia law requiring crisis-pregnancy centers to advertise for more than 50 years. In August, Santos and his FARC coun- public programs that provide abortions. The bill had been terpart, who goes by the nickname “Timochenko,” reached a challenged by the pro-life centers as a violation of the free- peace agreement. On October 2, the agreement went to the peo- speech and free-exercise clauses of the First Amendment. ple, in a referendum. By an extremely narrow margin, the people Once again we learn that the “pro-choice” agenda has nothing rejected it—as too generous to the FARC. The negotiators would to do with respecting conscience. have to go back to the drawing board. On October 7, the com- mittee in Oslo announced that the Nobel Peace Prize would go n New York’s city hall was temporarily converted into a Planned to Santos—alone, i.e., without Timochenko, which was a relief. Parenthood facility at the behest of local and national Democrats, (There is so much blood on FARC hands.) The committee said the building festooned in pink lights to celebrate a century’s that it wanted to reward the president’s “resolute efforts.” Also worth of massacring unwanted children. New York is one of the “to encourage all those who are striving to achieve peace, recon- nation’s worst offenders when it comes to using public facilities ciliation, and justice in Colombia.” One of those is Álvaro Uribe, for narrow, partisan political purposes—a few years back, a Santos’s predecessor as president, and now a senator. As presi- Shakespeare in the Park production supported by the city was dent, he weakened and dispirited the FARC, bringing them to the turned into a Democratic political rally, with speeches from negotiating table. He would be our Colombian peace laureate, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Senator Chuck Schumer, who wan- with an honorable mention to his indispensable partner in the dered out onto the stage during the second half of The Winter’s White House, George W. Bush. Tale, bellowing “Vote Democratic!” (Seriously, that happened.) Schumer was on hand for the festivities, n Hong Kong’s Legco (Legislative Council) has limited pow- promising that Planned Parenthood “will never be defunded ers, and since enough of its members are chosen by Beijing- when the Democrats get to political office.” We believe him, and controlled professional groups to give the ruling Communists a hope Americans will therefore vote against them. It is always an permanent majority, it does what the party wants. Still, the cham- ugly and distasteful thing to use what is after all the common ber’s reformist factions tirelessly, if futilely, argue the case for mu ni cipal property of the city for partisan political shenanigans, universal suffrage, free expression, and even independence—and but it is especially nasty to do so in celebrating the ugliest aspect sometimes find other ways to protest. After September’s Legco of American life. election, one newly chosen delegate wore an anti-China flag over his shoulders and kept his fingers crossed as he repeated the oath n An admirable organization in Washington, the Victims of of office. He was denied his seat, as were two others who altered Communism Memorial Foundation, has released its first “An nu - the oath’s wording to make clear their commitment to universal al Report on U.S. Attitudes Towards Socialism.” The marquee suffrage. Hong Kong may never escape from China’s iron grip, finding is this: Thirty-two percent of believe that but, as with the territory’s pro-democracy Umbrella Movement George W. Bush killed more people than Stalin. There was a hip- of two years ago, Legco’s rebels show how determined Hong pie song: “Teach your children well.” It applies, in ways that the Kong’s people are to keep every bit of freedom they still have singers of that song may not have intended. have—and how determined China is to eliminate it.

n What’s happening in Yemen resembles the Syria situation n UNESCO, the U.N.’s educational, scientific, and cultural or - and has the potential of turning out as disastrously. It began as gan i za tion, has—to exactly no one’s surprise—privileged Mus - a struggle for power between presidential thugs, whereupon lim claims to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. In a resolution that Saudi Arabia sponsored one of the thugs on the grounds that he otherwise noted the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and was a Sunni Muslim, like them. Iran responded in kind, spon- its Walls to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, it referred to the soring the Shiite minority in Yemen, known as Houthis. In Sep - Temple Mount itself exclusively by its Muslim name—ignoring tem ber 2014, the Houthis suddenly overran Sana’a, the Yemeni Ju da ism’s ancient claim on the site—and aired Palestinian griev- capital, in much the same way that Islamists in Iraq had unex- ances about Israel’s treatment of the Mount. This is nothing new pectedly overrun Mosul. Saudi Arabia’s sustained bombing has for the U.N. Its various bodies have raised anti-Israeli rhetoric done damage and promises to do more: Sixty-eight hundred and anti-Semitism to a perverse diplomatic art form. In this cir- civilians are said to have been killed, 35,000 injured, and over cumstance, familiarity should in fact breed contempt. Bias is 3 million are displaced. Neither side has the capacity to defeat business as usual at the U.N.

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n In England, the kids at the University of Bristol have forced the n What pronouns would Jesus use? That question may soon have cancellation of the musical Aida. This is Elton John and Tim more than ecclesiastical importance, in Massachusetts at least. A Rice’s version of Verdi’s opera. The musical, like the opera, is new state law governing “places of public accommodation” for- about an Ethiopian princess enslaved in Egypt. The Bristol stu- bids them to maintain single-sex bathrooms and requires every- dents cried, “Cultural appropriation.” Also, they feared that white one in them to, among other things, use whatever pronouns any students would play the parts of Egyptians and Ethiopians. (By individual prefers. The law applies even to churches. Official the way, tell an Egyptian he isn’t white.) As is standard these state guidelines cite “a secular event, such as a spaghetti sup- days, the show could not go on. Wait till these kids find out that per, that is open to the general public” as the sort of occasion Denyce Graves is one of the foremost Carmens of our time. when a church would be subject to the law, but since most Graves is a black American, and Carmen is . . . not. church services are open to the public, it seems inevitable that pastors’ sermons and even parishioners’ conversations will soon n NFL ratings are in decline, serious decline. After a ratings year be fair game for the pronoun policy. This busybody law shows in 2015 that left the league as the cornerstone of live broadcast that the Puritan spirit remains alive and well in Massachusetts, if television, double-digit ratings losses aren’t just shaking the NFL in a manner that would have confounded John Winthrop. front offices, they’re rattling entire TV networks. The NFL claims that it’s losing viewers to the presidential race, to cord- cutting (which causes consumers to drop channels they rarely n It is good to see an American win the Nobel Prize for lit- watch), and to bad matchups. No doubt these are all factors, but erature, especially one who rejected the reflexive anti- the league seems to be in denial about the very real backlash Americanism of the milieu in which he began (Bob Dylan’s against player National Anthem protests. It claims that its “data” shift from protest songs to songs was at least as drastic as his show that its players are still popular, but how long can this shift from acoustic to electric guitar). American popular regard last? Americans don’t tend to look to the gridiron for polit- song, from Stephen Foster on, has been one of our great gifts ical lectures, so as leftists weaponize sports, they risk the very to the world; it is doubly good to see a practitioner of that popularity that they now seek to exploit. genre recognized. If only Dylan’s poetry were better. Apart from a few anthems and (many fewer) love lyrics, he served n Who can withstand the mighty social-justice warrior? Not up a stew of allusion and portent at Supreme Court justice . Days after criticiz- the level of a high-school liter- ing NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during ary magazine. Blame it on the National Anthem as “really dumb,” she backtracked. After Walt Whitman and his many receiving blistering criticism even from longtime allies, she said bastard children, that her comments were “inappropriately dismissive and harsh” from Carl Sand - and that she should have declined to comment. The entire incident burg to Allen represents an interesting window into the Left’s ruthless discipline Ginsberg, who in enforcing the party line. There is no grace in modern political emulated not Whit - correctness, not even for its most revered ideological heroes. man’s real though inter- mittent genius, but his n The Smithsonian has a new museum it is calling the National narcissism and his loose joints. Museum of African American History and Culture. It is in reality Dylan will take it all in stride. no such thing, inasmuch as its curators labor mightily to ignore On to the next gig. out of existence major figures in African-American history and culture, notably Supreme Court Justice . Anita Hill, the obscure federal functionary who made a series of unsub- n Hours before the Indians met the Blue Jays in the playoffs in stantiated allegations against Thomas as part of Democrats’ Toronto, a Canadian judge dismissed a case filed by an activist ef forts to derail his Supreme Court confirmation—Democrats demanding that the Cleveland team stop using its name and one hate a black conservative above all things—is presented as a of its trademarks, Chief Wahoo, a 1950s-era cartoon figure that major figure in black history. Thomas exists only as her purported appears on its uniforms. The Cleveland Indians have withstood victimizer. This is preposterous for any number of reasons. Even such complaints since 1972, when the Cleveland American if Thomas had done everything Hill accused him of (we do not In di an Center, led by Russell Means, sued the club over its logo, believe that, and several people testified in contradiction of Hill), though not its name. The Cleveland Indians are a longstanding he would nonetheless be a major figure of his time, unless it is the American institution. They predate the rise of the Boomer ver- view of the Smithsonian that African Americans can exist only as sion of social-justice-warrior sanctimony and show every sign of victims. Thomas, who grew up in direst poverty in a Gullah- outlasting its Millennial iteration. Reputable polls consistently speaking coastal-Georgia community, represents a different as - show that most American Indians have no quarrel with sports pect of the black experience: triumph over adversity. Edward teams that adopt Indian motifs. Deferring to the minority who do Brooke, the first black man popularly elected to the Senate, object, the Cleveland Indians two years ago substituted a block represented another kind of triumph—and Brooke, a Re - “C” as their primary logo, retaining traces of Wahoo for purposes publican, also has been sent down the memory hole. Thomas of historical preservation. It remains a classic specimen of a FILMMAGIC / Sowell? Al veda King? Tim Scott? Shelby Steele? Invisible golden age of American commercial art and is woven deeply men, one and all. The Smithsonian seems to have forgotten into the popular culture of northeastern Ohio. Its critics think TAYLOR HILL what a museum is and needs reminding. their grievance is moral, but it’s ultimately aesthetic. Go Tribe.

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n Starbucks’s pumpkin-spice latte, a popular seasonal indul- gence, has been exposed by two academics as a sinister totem of white privilege in a peer-reviewed paper titled “The Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins.” Its authors, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia and a professor of southern stud- ies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, pose the question, “Why did PSLs [pumpkin-spice lattes] become the symbol of basic white girlness?” They trace the answer to pump- kins themselves, which they concede “are real, material food plants in addition to being cultural symbols.” Given the existence of a “veritable pumpkin entertainment complex, whose multiple manifestations continue the entanglements of pumpkins, social capital, race, and place,” the role of the pumpkin is difficult to pinpoint. But, in short, pumpkins have a history of being associ- ated with white people and idyllic “rural spaces” in the popular imagination; lattes are luxury items; so combining the two yields a perfect recipe for white privilege. If you thought the calorie count was sufficiently guilt-inducing, think again. Donald Trump (center) prepares for an appearance in 2005 on Days of Our Lives with actress Arianne Zucker (right). He is accompanied to the set by Access n Bhumibol Adulyadej ruled Thailand for 70 years, the right Hollywood host Billy Bush (left). man in the right place at the right time. Born in Cambridge, Mass., and educated in Switzerland, this citizen of the world had Still, the GOP is rightly taking steps to limit the damage from been a jazz musician as well as a Buddhist monk. The Thailand the top of the ticket. Ryan has made it clear that preserving the that he took over at the age of 19 was in theory a constitutional House majority is his sole mission (he would have been wiser to monarchy. Communism was sweeping away other dynastic rul- simply execute this strategy rather than declare it on a conference ers in neighboring countries, and the firmness with which he met call that made him the target of Trump’s ire). Many congressional this standing threat brought him popularity. Throughout his reign, Republicans have separated themselves from Trump, and surely he displayed particular political skills in bringing to heel the suc- more will follow. The party should make saving its congressional cession of military strongmen who wanted power and fortunes wing—an indispensable check on a potential Hillary Clinton for themselves. Imperceptibly taking on the role of a traditional presidency, and a Trump presidency as well, should it come to absolute ruler before whom people prostrated themselves, he pass—its highest financial and organizational priority. proved the guarantee of stability. When he died at the age of 88, It may seem odd that, after so many Trump controversies, people cried in the streets. The grief was genuine; they fear they the Access Hollywood tape provoked such a reaction. It is true will not see his like again. R.I.P. that it doesn’t reveal anything very new about Trump. And surely if hot mics had caught off-color banter from JFK we 2016 would have heard similar talk. But that doesn’t make it any less Save Congress appalling. Here was a nearly 60-year-old man boasting about his attempted adultery and groping, and probably not idly. No ONALD TRUMP is burning through every one of his nine presidential candidate has ever been heard by the public to ut ter political lives. such things before. Shortly after Trump went on the record at D The Access Hollywood tape that broke in early October the second debate saying h e hadn’t engaged in the behavior he sent GOP elected officials fleeing from the Republican nominee described, an array of women emerged to recount their ex pe ri- in a truly historic rupture (although some quickly crab-walked ences of his unwanted sexual advances. back to him). Trump’s odds of winning the presidency were The rejoinder from Trump’s campaign is that Bill Clinton is a already long. With the airing of the tape, and the damaging fall- lecherous creep, and Hillary Clinton has been his enabler. True out, they are longer still. enough. It may be satisfying to see Trump make this case so The weekend that the tape broke, various Republicans called forcefully, but it has very little political upside; swing voters for Trump to step aside—an understandable, if unrealistic, sen- aren’t going to be drawn to him—or repelled from Hillary—on timent. Almost any other Republican would have a better the basis of Bill Clinton’s transgressions. chance of defeating Hillary Clinton, a dreary and corrupt statist It is no secret that we are not fans of Donald Trump, who is not who is the Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis of our time yet a conservative or an honorable man. He has shown no interest in is beating her desperately flawed opponent. But this would the Constitution or liberty; has openly threatened to use state have required that Trump act the statesman; or that Mike power to punish critics and companies that make business deci- Pence, House speaker , and RNC chairman Reince sions he doesn’t like; is thin-skinned, conspiracy-minded, imma- Priebus mount a hardball pressure campaign to force him off ture, and thoroughly dishonest. The only thing to recommend VIA GETTY IMAGES the ticket. Neither was going to happen. Even if Trump had him is that he’s not Hillary Clinton, but even this quality has to be wanted to step aside, the process of choosing a new nominee weighed against the fact that his recklessly selfish campaign is and negotiating ballot access for the party’s designee this late very likely to make her president of the United States. In this cir-

WASHINGTON POST in the campaign would have been unprecedented and perilous cumstance, Republicans need to do exactly what Trump always THE in the best-case scenario. does: ruthlessly look after their own interests.

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the independent Angus King, Mainers elected the right-wing firebrand Paul LePage to the governorship in 2010 and again in 2014. He was in many ways a proto-Trump: Running against Libby Mitchell, then the president of the state senate, in 2010, LePage campaigned under the slogan “I’d rather have my foot in my mouth than Libby Mitchell’s hand in my pocket.” If elected, he promised, he would tell President Obama to “go to hell.” Since then, LePage has told the state chapter of the NAACP to “kiss my butt”; left a Democratic state senator an expletive-laced voice message; and, most recently, told a local radio network that the country may need Trump to “show some authoritarian power” in order to restore the . LePage won both races on the strength of his support among voters in northern Maine. In 2010, he lost in just four of Maine’s 16 counties, all of them in the south, while carrying the majority of the ten and a half counties that compose the northern, second district by double dig- its. A September poll from the Uni - versity of New Hampshire’s Survey Maine Divided Center had LePage’s approval rating Its diverging population is poised to split its electoral votes upside down in the first district, with 33 percent viewing him positively and 61 BY ELIANA JOHNSON percent expressing disapproval, and right side up in the second, with 47 percent of OMETHING funny is happening the 2005 Access Hollywood tape and those surveyed saying they approve of in Maine. For the first time the subsequent allegations from several his performance and 45 percent saying S ever, the state may split its women that Trump had sexually they disapprove. electoral votes between the harassed them. Even after those develop- Today, the political divide between two major-party candidates. ments, he holds a slim lead. the two districts is starker than ever. Unlike most states, Maine, which The potential political break reflects Clinton led the first district by 18 awards four electoral votes, does not broader cultural cleavages among points in a Colby College/Survey USA dole them out in a winner-take-all America’s white population that the poll conducted in September, before fashion. Instead, it grants two to the 2016 election has exposed not just in the Access Hollywood–video scandal statewide winner and one to the winner Maine but across the country. Those erupted. In the same poll, Trump led of each of its two congressional dis- cleavages are particularly visible in the second district by ten points—a tricts. Since 1969, when this system Maine, though, where an overwhelm- whopping 28-point spread between the was implemented, it has largely re - ingly white population is divided neatly two. The latest poll, conducted in the mained a quirky afterthought, be cause into two congressional districts, one wake of the tape’s publication by the the statewide winner has always carried affluent and urban, the other poor and Democratic-leaning Maine People’s both districts; Maine has spoken with a rural, that have become increasingly Resource Center, has Clinton up 17 in unified voice. alienated from each other. the first district and Trump clinging to This year is shaping up differently. That estrangement is expressing itself a one-point lead in the second, an 18- Hillary Clinton holds a commanding politically. In a state once famous for point divide. lead in the state’s urban first district, producing moderate Republicans such That represents a radical shift. The which comprises liberal Portland and as Margaret Chase Smith, Bill Cohen, second district hasn’t voted for a Re - Augusta, where political opinion runs to and Olympia Snowe, there have been publican presidential candidate since the left of Bernie Sanders. But Donald signs that the electorate is moving in a George H. W. Bush won the state in Trump was crushing her in the second— new direction. While still represented in 1988. President Obama won both dis- which encompasses all of rural, north- the Senate by politicians of the old tricts in 2012, running 13 points better in ROMAN GENN ern Maine—before the publication of mold, the Republican Susan Collins and the first district than he did in the second.

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Some Mainers have dubbed the dis- the first district is $59,400, well above tricts, with their differing politics and the national average of $51,700; in the cultures, “the two Maines”; others call second district, it’s $44,500. the northern, second district, geo- These demographic factors help to Two graphically the largest east of the explain why the second district has Mississippi, “real Maine.” But the been trending away from Democrats. Flawed Tax growing split between the state’s When John McCain withdrew from urban, liberal south and its rural, con- Michigan in 2008, after deciding the Plans servative north is a microcosm of the Rust Belt state was out of reach, he Congress would have to restrain broader cultural divide that Trump’s transferred campaign resources to either Clinton or Trump candidacy has revealed among white Maine. In 2012, it was the whitest, most voters: between the city and the coun- working-class district President Obama tryside, the college-educated and those carried. Given that Trump has acceler- BY RAMESH PONNURU without degrees, the haves and the ated the exodus of blue-collar voters have-nots. from the Democratic party, Obama may HIS year’s presidential race “I think Maine, like the rest of the be the last Democrat to win northern may be wildly different from country, is in a transition, and there are Maine for a generation. T past races, but one of the veri- pockets that are looking forward to that Local referenda have helped to accel- ties of our era still holds: transition, they’re optimistic about the erate the split. This year, Proposition 3, Republicans want to cut taxes and Demo - future, and there are pockets that are which would close the so-called gun- crats to raise them. On this issue, Hillary worried about it,” says Dan Shea, the show loophole, will appear on the Clinton and Donald Trump are running as mainstream representatives of their par- ties. The public should hope that Con - gress exercises a restraining influence on Maine’s cultural divides are not either one of them. unusual, even if its allocation of Clinton would raise taxes on high earners in a variety of ways. People who electoral votes is. make more than $5 million would pay a new 4 percent “surcharge. ” The value of director of the Goldberg Center for statewide ballot in November. If the lib- several tax deductions, such as the one Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at erals in southern Maine are kayakers for mortgage interest, would be limited Colby College in Waterville. “There’s a and mountain bikers, the state’s north- for people in the top three tax brackets lot of working-class white voters in ern residents are hunters and fishermen. (including married couples making more Maine that say, ‘Both parties have let “You drive in the northern part of the than $230,000 a year). Capital-gains us down.’ They’re attracted to Trump state and you see ‘Vote No on 3’ every- taxes would rise for investments held and Paul LePage because they’re so where,” says Shea. “You drive in the between two and five years, with higher different. They seem to be breaking southern part of the state and you see rates on the shorter-term ones. Clinton that mold.” ‘Vote Yes on 3.’” The University of would introduce a new set of tax rates on Most residents of the first district fall New Hampshire survey showed that large estates that would reach 65 percent into the forward-looking camp. Port - first-district residents support the initia- at the top, compared with the current 40. land, the state’s largest city, has become tive by a whopping 69-to-25 margin. While Clinton’s plan is a net tax in - an economic hub. The population of the Maine’s cultural divides are not crease, it would also cut tax bills for Portland metropolitan area is, after unusual, even if its allocation of elec- many people. Most parents of children Boston, increasing faster than that of toral votes is. For Republicans, who younger than five would see their child any other in New England, and its em - have eyed the second congressional tax credit, now $1,000, double in size. ployment growth outpaces that of any district for years, the challenge is now Some low-income families would be other region of the state. “In terms of to figure out how to win there and in newly eligible for it. (Some of them where the state is going, certainly other districts like it without alienating already have negative tax liabilities and Portland is becoming a bigger and big- voters in the country’s growing popula- would come out further ahead under the ger and more important piece of that,” tion centers. Though Trump may have proposal.) A new tax credit could be says Amy Walter, the national editor of given the GOP a blueprint for wooing applied against out-of-pocket health the Cook Political Report. Its residents the former, he is performing dismally expenses: That’s Clinton’s way of re - are richer and better educated than those with the latter. This will be one of the sponding to popular unhappiness with of the second district, which is full of most vexing problems facing the Re - the rising deductibles and co-pays that once-thriving mill towns that have been publican party after the November have accompanied Obamacare. hollowed out by competition from election: how to meld the politics of Businesses, too, would see a mix of abroad. Over 37 percent of first-district grievance and despair, legitimately felt, tax increases and cuts. Clinton would residents are college graduates, com- with the politics of growth and oppor- allow small businesses to write off the pared with just 23 percent of second- tunity. Trump’s success in Maine is cost of their investments immediately district residents. The median income in only half the answer. instead of over several years. But she

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says the federal government will raise his reduction in corporate tax rates, save, and invest. That’s why the Tax $275 billion over ten years by reforming could be expected to raise economic Foundation—which, recall, assumes business taxes in some unspecified way. growth. But the that tax rates have a strong effect on Trump’s plan, by contrast, cuts taxes assumes both that cutting taxes on investment—estimates that the econo- on the highest earners. The top income- investment will have much stronger my ten years from now would be 2.6 tax rate would fall from 43.4 to 33 per- positive effects than many other econo- percent smaller with her plan than with- cent. The estate tax would vanish. The mists expect and that increased debt out it. standard deduction would more than will not reduce economic growth. Clinton’s deliberate attempts to change double. Most people would be eligible Without any added economic growth, behavior, meanwhile, are unlikely to be for a new deduction for child-care ex - the total revenue hit would be $5.9 tril- effective. She would complicate capital- penses capped at the average cost of lion. Or even more: The foundation gains taxes to encourage shareholders those expenses in each state—and assumes that a Trump administration and therefore companies to look more Trump has said that stay-at-home moth- would save money by letting stay-at- to the long term. But most corporate ers would receive the full value of that home mothers deduct only a fraction of stock is not held by taxable investors: deduction. (His website is unclear on their states’ average child-care costs, Pensions, for example, would not have that point.) contrary to what Trump has said. It also any additional reason to be long-term- The corporate-income tax, now 35 ignores the extra interest the govern- oriented. percent, would fall to 15 percent under ment would have to pay if it went fur- Health-policy analyst Chris Jacobs Trump’s plan. Our corporate tax rate ther into debt. points out that the new tax credit for out- would thus move in one step from the This large reduction in revenues would of-pocket health expenses could spur highest in the developed world to one of take place at a time when we are already companies to pare back their health ben-

The good news about both candidates’ plans is that Congress might exercise a salutary influence on them. Yes, really.

the lowest. Manufacturers would get a running large deficits. The Congres - efits. They could raise deductibles, for new tax-reducing option: They could sional Budget Office expects the govern- example, knowing that the federal gov- write off the cost of their investments ment to run a $590 billion deficit this ernment would pick up part of the tab. immediately or deduct their interest year, and another $594 billion one next The good news about both candidates’ expenses. How the many businesses that year. Entitlement spending is growing plans is that Congress might exercise a pay taxes under the individual income- fast thanks to the retirement of Baby salutary influence on them. Yes, really. tax code would be treated is something Boomers, and Trump has opposed re - Even a Republican Congress might balk of a mystery, with different think tanks ductions in that spending. Under these at actually passing a tax cut as large as reaching varying conclusions from the circumstances, cutting taxes this much the one Trump is suggesting. George W. campaign’s contradictory comments. would be reckless. Bush had to scale back his tax cut to get Trump would, however, raise some As large a net cut as it is, though, it through a narrowly Republican Senate, tax rates. The bottom tax bracket would Trump’s plan would raise taxes on many and his was smaller than Trump’s from pay a 12 percent rate instead of 10. Some people. New York University law pro- the start. affluent single people—those making fessor Lily Batchelder points out that If Republicans keep the House, let between $110,000 and $190,000 a the elimination of the dependent exemp- alone the Senate, Clinton’s tax increases year—would pay 33 percent instead of tion would leave a lot of people with are doomed. No Republican-controlled 28 percent. The personal and dependent low and moderate incomes paying higher chamber of Congress has passed a tax exemptions would disappear. taxes. Representatives of the Trump increase in more than three decades. (The Overall, it is a very large tax cut. The campaign have said that while a small tax increases that took place at the start Tax Foundation produced several esti- number of people might fall into this cat- of President Obama’s second term hap- mates of the effect Trump’s plan would egory, a Trump administration would pened automatically, because Bush’s tax have on federal revenues. If all busi- work with Congress to prevent them from cuts expired. The Republi can House nesses get to pay the 15 percent tax rate seeing higher taxes. But Batchelder’s passed a bill extending some but not all and the tax cuts boost the economy in analysis suggests that 40 million people of the tax cuts.) Every Republican sena- the way the foundation’s model pre- would be affected, and shielding them tor but one voted in 2015 to repeal the dicts, the Trumpified tax code would from higher taxes would require either estate tax, and one Democrat joined them. yield $3.9 trillion less than the current making the deficit even larger or reneg- They’re not going to vote to raise it. tax code is projected to yield over the ing on some of the tax-cut promises But a Republican House in 2017 is not next ten years. Trump is making. assured. If an anti-Trump landslide wipes That is, however, an optimistic take. Clinton’s plan has a different prob- away the Republican majority, taxes are Many of Trump’s tax cuts, and in particular lem: It would reduce incentives to work, going up.

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ecumenism. Such thinking was friendly to, wane. In 1992, declared to if by no means synonymous with, mid- the Republican National Convention, fol- century political , so when the lowing his primary loss, “There is a reli- The Religious cultural revolution of the 1960s began, the gious war going on in this country. It is a Mainline Protestant churches were pre- cultural war . . . for the soul of America.” Right’s disposed to sympathize. The ecumenical The notion of “culture ” was a handy impulse in the Mainline prompted the paradigm for the battles that ensued over Demise consolidation of Evangelical Protestant Bill Clinton’s in-office lechery. In Deal Now what is needed is an authentic denominations, which resisted the call for Hudson’s Onward, Christian Soldiers: Christian voice “diversity” as the siren song of secularism. The Growing Political Power of Catholics Accordingly, Haight-Ashbury, Vietnam, and Evangelicals in the United States, Tim BY IAN TUTTLE Roe v. Wade, and the near-adoption of the Goegelin, special assistant to President Equal Rights Amendment constituted a George W. Bush and now a Focus on the N June, Jerry Falwell Jr., president of series of related political-cultural disasters Family executive, explains: “The reason the largest Evangelical university in to which the Mainline churches assented the religious Right’s hatred for Bill Clinton I the world (Liberty University; total but against which Evangelicals bucked. was so venomous is that Bill Clinton was a enrollment: 110,000-plus), took a In 1979, disappointed by the first proxy for ’60s behavior; he embodied the grinning picture with Donald Trump, then Evangelical president—Jimmy Carter, same issues that created the movement in the presumptive Republican presidential whose politics did not reflect his religious the first place.” It was little surprise when nominee, in the real-estate magnate’s bona fides—Jerry Falwell, minister of Evangelicals formed George W. Bush’s office. Behind them, clearly ’s largest independent Baptist core constituency in 2000. visible on the wall, was a much younger church, founded the . At its During this time, the religious Right— Trump, tuxedoed, smirking from the cover height, the Moral Majority claimed 7 mil- which, by the 1990s, included a contin- of a 1990 issue of Playboy. The judgments lion members (one-third of whom, Falwell gent of outspoken conservative Catholics, of the Lord, it is said, are righteous and later estimated, were politically homeless such as founder Richard John just. They are also, on occasion, delivered Catholics), and for ten years it was an Neuhaus—was transforming the country with a wicked sense of comic timing. umbrella institution coordinating orga- in extraordinary if often little-noticed Suffering a series of grievous blows in nized opposition to abortion and to legal ways. By the mid 1990s, Evangelicals recent years, culminating in the Supreme acceptance of homosexual acts and sup- were better educated and higher- Court’s 2015 decision mandating official port for Israel and for school prayer. Other earning than the average American, and recognition of same-sex marriage nation- organizations, such as ’s Evangelical institutions of higher learn- wide, the traditional “religious Right” has and Family Research ing, such as Wheaton and Calvin colleges, been in its final throes for some time. The Council and ’s Eagle had begun punching well above their embrace of Donald Trump—an uncouth, Forum, also played crucial parts. And the weight in terms of scholarship; by 2007, unrepentant serial adulterer and alleged effort was aided by a mass-media pres- D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist at Rice sexual abuser; a businessman who’s bul- ence: Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour, University, could publish Faith in the lied widows and stiffed workers; and an which had been on the air since 1956, and Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined apologist for brutalities in China and Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, aired on his the American Elite. Russia—is its death rattle. But it may also own Christian Broadcasting Network. Meanwhile, religious conservatives be the occasion for a new, reinvigorated This mobilization had significant con- pulled the Republican party rightward. By relationship between conservatives and sequences. Evangelical voters went over- the time of his death in 1984, Evangelical orthodox Christians, refashioned for an whelmingly for Ronald Reagan in 1980, theologian Francis Schaeffer had made America whose religious commitments among them a sizable minority who had abortion—until then widely seen as a are dramatically changed. voted for Carter in 1976, and they did so Catholic issue—a central concern in The religious Right was the result of a again in 1984. (Falwell later claimed that Evangelical circles. In the 1990s, when confluence of causes both theological and Reagan never would have won the White many prominent Republicans thought the political. The Protestantism of the domi- House without the Moral Majority.) In party’s future lay in the direction of an nant WASP political and cultural establish- 1988, the Evangelical bloc of the Re - accommodation with Roe, the religious ment of the post–World War II years was publican party was sufficiently strong for Right pushed back. Today, the Republican that of the liberal Mainline, heavily influ- Pat Robertson to capture 9 percent of the party’s official platform declares that enced by the thinking of theologians such national Republican vote in his upstart “the unborn child has a fundamental as Reinhold Niebuhr who encouraged primary bid. right to life which cannot be infringed,” what David Hollinger, in his essay “After Over the course of the 1990s, some of and opposition to abortion is generally a Cloven Tongues of Fire: Ecumenical the original infrastructure associated with litmus test for Republican office-seekers. Protestantism and the Modern American the religious Right was devolved to small- These and other victories should not be Encounter with Diversity,” calls a “mood er, more narrowly tailored organizations understated. But when Jerry Falwell dis- of self-interrogation”—a willingness to (such as Alliance Defending Freedom, banded the Moral Majority in 1989, he undertake a deep critique of American formerly Alliance Defense Fund, founded declared that “the religious conservatives Protestantism’s inherited traditions and in 1993 by Dobson and other Evangelical in America are now in for the duration.” assumptions in the interest of a bold leading lights). But its influence did not That turned out not to be the case.

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It has been widely noted that self-described Evangelicals exhibited surprising enthusi- asm for the candidacy of Donald Trump. That observa- tion must be qualified—most churchgoing Evangelicals pre- ferred other candidates during the primaries, and there have been significant dissenters from the Trump fad, including the student body of Liberty University and figures such as Andy Crouch, executive edi- tor of Christianity Today—but the general tilt is further evi- dence for the thesis proposed by sociologist James Davison Hunter in his 2010 book To Change the World: The Irony, Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife, Becki, pose with Donald Trump in his office, June 21, 2016. Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, What’s obvious is that they will require Catholic theologian R. R. Reno, in his that the emphasis on personal charisma in a new model. The Evangelical energy that book Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Evangelical theology (think megachurch animated so much of the religious Right Society, follows T. S. Eliot in suggesting pastors) inclines the average Evangelical has been lost first and foremost because of that a core of engaged Christians living voter to a similar theory of political lead- the manner of the religious Right’s politi- the Gospel intently—raising up the poor, ership. That goes a long way toward cal participation. The political ardor of defending the weak, promoting solidarity, explaining the lasting affection for many of the religious Right’s charismatic etc.—is well situated to speed the collapse George W. Bush among Evangelicals, or leaders was so fierce that their commit- of a weak, failing secular establishment. the cults of personality that cropped up ment to mobilizing large constituencies on In Onward: Engaging the Culture without around, among others, , behalf of social reforms appeared to, or Losing the Gospel, Russell Moore, presi- , and Ben Carson. actually came to, outmatch their theologi- dent of the Southern Baptist Convention’s 1But the embrace of Trump is also a cal or pastoral commitments. Likewise, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, sign of the times. The 2016 presidential often beholden to nostalgia for a postwar submits that Christians are called to contest has been strikingly devoid of dis- cultural consensus that in reality only ever “engaged alienation, a Christianity that cussion about any of the social issues that half-existed, Evangelicals quickly be - preserves the distinctiveness of our gospel were prominent as recently as 2012. At came reflexive Republican partisans, and while not retreating from our callings as the first general-election debate, in late American Evangelicalism started to be neighbors, and friends, and citizens.” September, abortion, same-sex marriage, seen as baptized Reaganism or Bushism. The paths overlap and diverge in vari- and religious liberty were never men- In a word, the religious Right became more ous respects, but noteworthy about all tioned—just one year after a series of right than religious. And the eyebrow- three is that they reject any easy concord sting videos exposed the savagery of the raising comments of Falwell and others with conservative politics (let alone the country’s largest abortion provider, and (e.g., that “AIDS . . . is God’s punish- Republican party). The priority is the amid ongoing attempts to use the power ment for the society that tolerates homo- authentic living-out of the Christian faith of the state to coerce same-sex-marriage sexuals”), and the hucksterism that and the jealous guarding of its integrity. dissenters. That lacuna is certainly due in became associated with mass-market Theology and politics are integrally re - part to the fact that both of this year’s Evangelicalism (e.g., Jim and Tammy lated, but the interests of the Church must major-party candidates generally endorse Faye Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, et al.), be prioritized over those of the state when a liberal sexual culture. But the power of encouraged the notion that Evangelical the two come into conflict. And that may the old religious Right was to force con- moral authorities really had none. mean that theological faithfulness entails versation about topics over the objections What’s a Christian conservative to do? positions that transgress against conserv- of policymakers. That power is gone. Different alternatives are on offer. Rod ative orthodoxy. Of course, those whose theological Dreher, a senior editor at The American That is not a blueprint for a “new reli- entails political conser- Conservative and an adherent to Eastern gious Right.” But, in truth, such a thing vatism have not vanished. Moreover, their Orthodoxy, proposes what he calls “the may not be what is needed right now. Far leavening influence on a rapidly secular- Benedict Option,” in which Christians more pressing would seem to be the need COM . izing culture is arguably more important would focus on building up tight-knit, for an authentic Christian voice crying in than ever before. But how right-leaning local communities to be “loci of Christian the wilderness, wielding a moral authority KANSASCITY . Christians ought to participate in public resistance” against the fragmentation of independent of party politics, preparing a WWW life is, once again, a wide-open question. the larger culture. First Things editor and way for a renewed public life.

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A Case of

OneC woman’sompassion act of mercy invites us to reflect on the suffering of animals

BY MATTHEW SCULLY

EPRESSED about large and mo - mentous events beyond our con- D trol, perhaps we had best think of humbler matters in which, at least, the decisions are ours alone to make. If that’s your state of mind in the fall of Anita Krajnc gives water to pigs in Toronto on their way to slaughter. 2016, I’ve got just the news story for you. A morality tale out of Ontario, Canada, it’s Boekel, owner of Van Boekel Hog Farms, the spirit of the Comforter and Good known locally as the “thirsty pigs” case pressed charges for what he regards as an Shepherd at the end of the creatures’ lives, and presents choices that are, in their way, interference with his livelihood and prop- and attentive men and women will start to momentous enough. erty: a case of tampering with the food wonder where it was all along. Not good In a court of justice, a 49-year-old wo - supply and nothing more. for business when people get too unearthly man named Anita Krajnc stands accused Anita Krajnc, moreover, didn’t just hap- about these things. Save your prayers for of criminal mischief. Her offense, as pen to be at that intersection. She leads a grace over the meal. alleged by complainants and provincial group called Toronto Pig Save. Part of its For her part, the dumb frickin’ broad authorities, was to give water to pigs mission is to offer water to pigs and other with the water says that she was “just fol- bound for a nearby abattoir. It was a hot farm animals in their final moments. In the lowing the Golden Rule,” understood as day in June of last year. A trailer hauling way of mass-confinement farming these applying wherever human empathy can 180 or so of the animals had stopped at an days, that ride to Fearmans affords their reach. She explained in court that she intersection. Seeing the pigs looking out very first glimpse of the world and their prefers the word “intervening” to “interfer- through the vents, panting and foaming at very last. Often these journeys are hun- ing,” since whatever the law says about the mouth, the defendant let them lap dreds of miles, the pigs crowded into Van Boekel’s property, she was simply water from a plastic bottle, provoking this trucks for as long as 36 hours with no living out her Christian obligation of com- videotaped confrontation related by the food, water, or rest. Krajnc is there to passion for animals, thereby serving : “bear witness,” that they might go to their public good. It was an act of mercy, and in deaths having encountered at least one what kind of enterprise is it forbidden to At that moment, the truck driver emerged human face that wasn’t glaring indiffer- be merciful? I was thirsty and you gave me in protest. ently at them, felt one touch of human drink. Nothing in the ring of those words to “Don’t give them anything!” he kindness. Viewing the woman as incorri- encourage help for an afflicted fellow crea- shouted, his own camera phone in hand. gible, Van Boeckel decided this was his ture? Do humans alone know thirst? “Do not put anything in there!” “Jesus said, ‘If they are thirsty, give chance to put an end to it. The reputations of revered saints in - them water,’” she yelled back. Meanwhile, the Ontario Federation of struct us in gentleness toward animals, “No, you know what?” he shouted. Agriculture, representing hog farmers, along with firm admonitions in Scripture “These are not humans, you dumb informs members that “our coordinated and felony-level penalties recognizing, frickin’ broad! Hello!” action plan has been established” in case toward some creatures, anyway, an obliga- the controversy gets out of hand. “De - tion of justice. So to Krajnc’s supporters The driver, Jeffrey Veldjesgraaf, called velopments in the case and associated it seems unfair that she should be the one police and eventually continued on with actions by interested parties are being compelled to explain herself, facing his doomed cargo down Harvester Road to monitored very closely,” and “we sincere- imprisonment for being merciful, while the suitably named Fearmans slaughter- ly hope the court continues to focus on the Van Boekel, who shows nothing of that house (what pig shouldn’t fear man’s specific issue at hand.” They are under- quality, steps into court like some aggriev- slaughterhouse?). The next day Eric Van standably wary of any inquiry extending ed pillar of the community. Change.org, beyond the property-interference question, petitioning for Prime Minister Justin Mr. Scully, a former literary editor of NATIONAL wishing to steer as far clear as possible of Trudeau’s attention to the case before a REVIEW and senior speechwriter to President George a public moral debate, to say nothing of a verdict comes next month, frames the mat-

ORG W. Bush, is the author of . Dominion: The Power religious debate, about the mistreatment of ter this way: “What is wrong with our legal of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the farm animals in general and about Krajnc’s system, when attempting to alleviate the WIKIPEDIA Call to Mercy. last-hour benefactions in particular. Allow suffering of another being is seen as

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criminal, and those who are inflicting the Anita Krajnc to remind them it’s all just For every product of human cruelty, hu - pain and cruelty are left unchallenged?” made up. Charge her with a lack of sophis- man will offer something better, A satisfactory answer from the prime tication, being too naïve to play along with as it does already with an abundance of far minister would top his viral-video perfor- convenient cultural distinctions that have healthier substitutes for meat. We will mance back in April, when he explained no basis in reality. need no witnesses like Anita Krajnc to quantum computing to a dazzled audience Indeed, we can easily imagine a Chinese gentler, saner ways, because the slaughter- of reporters and academics. Merely ad - or Korean version of the story, a “thirsty houses will be gone. The little acts of dressing the problem of factory farming dogs case” in which some Golden Rule do- mercy will lead to great ones; the ruth- at all would show a truly searching mind gooder dares to offer a merciful bit of water less instead of the kindly will be counted at work. How often do liberals who lay to one of the millions of dogs ensnared in disturbers of the peace. You can take blame for the world’s ills on the greed of the canine meat trade—complete with a that on the authority, as well, of Charles other people, or conservatives on the driver shouting “These are not humans! Krauthammer, a man educated in Canada, weak will of other people, ever question Hello!” and a seller insisting that she take who observed recently on that their own habits and appetites, or consider her damn hands off his food animals. Dogs “in a hundred years people are going to how a change in these might help to avoid in China, South Korea, and elsewhere are judge us as a civilization that killed wan- vast animal suffering? In neither case do subjected to devilish torments; as with our tonly and ate animals. There’s going to be we see the moral idealism of serious peo- farm animals, thirst is the least of their mis- a time when we’re not going to need to do ple at their best, and liberals in particular eries. Call up a few pictures on the Internet that. And they’re going to end up judging receive far more credit than is merited for if you can bear reminding of how utterly their ancestors, meaning us, harshly for thinking and caring about animal causes. depraved some people are toward animals. having been that wanton and that cruel.” So it would be nice if Canada’s progressive And then try explaining why that meat Or, you can take it from Anita, this gra- prime minister set a helpful example. trade is needless, selfish, and hard-hearted cious person whose real offense is to see Should he answer the question put to him but ours is not. If anything, the dog butch- what we are not supposed to notice, and to by Change.org, it is a challenge of mental ers and their customers may be credited say what the world both dismisses as fool- prowess less theoretical than quantum the- with greater consistency, being unselective ish and knows to be true. “When someone ory, and the test of truth is consistency. in their inhumanity toward animals. is suffering,” she told the Post, “it’s actu- For instance, it was pointed out in Wait on the day when all such scenes ally wrong to look away. We all have a Krajnc’s trial that if the court had the same are in our past, finally left behind in what duty to be present and try to help. In the basic set of facts, replacing only the word Wayne Pacelle calls the “humane econo- history of the world, that’s how social “pig” with “dog,” the weight of law would my” (in a powerful book by that name). movements progress.” shift instantly in favor of the defendant, even though dogs also fall rather uneasily into the category of legal property. A con- To some, sunglasses are a fashion accessory… scientious person, seeing a trapped, des- perate, overheated dog, would be expected But When Driving, to offer relief, and in some places, parts of Canada included, the law encourages These Sunglasses exactly that. What would we do? And why should we care in the least what the owner May Save Your Life! Black

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You can tell when they’re faking, with their pupils all rolled The Gimlet- up.’” Here is an execu- tive for public-access Eyed television, on those who On the craft of D. Keith Mano make use of his service: “One man took a record of BY RICHARD BROOKHISER Ezio Pinza singing ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and KNEW D. Keith Mano long before I lip-synched himself to it. met him. My family first subscribed The whole business is frus- I to NATIONAL REVIEW in 1969. trating and silly and sad.” Mano’s regular column, “The Occasionally Mano did Gimlet Eye,” appeared in 1972. His impressions; his favorite mandate, described by WFB, was “to go fake voice was a ruder ver- about seeking strange and remarkable sion of himself, talking things.” This he did, for 17 years, writing Queens. Outer-borough Mano a thousand words in every issue—two or buys a card that identifies him as a three columns in a row, punctuated by a Talent Scout, and reads the accompany- Village brownstone on scientific sky- book review. ing packet. “‘If you are a red blooded lines.” Marian visions in Bayside. “For He was, I would argue, the best writer male’ (me for sure) ‘or female and are more than five years now, two or three to appear regularly in NR. WFB at his eager to make money and have fun times a month, the Virgin Mary has been best was unbeatable, but his ubiquity meeting beautiful women and pho- visiting Mrs. Veronica Lueken. That’s pulled at his batting average. James J. tographing them . . . even in the Nude.’ pretty good: I don’t even have friends Kilpatrick’s presidential-campaign That kept coming up. And I liked the who visit me that often.” pieces, beautiful and wise, came and way they put a cap ital N on it, like it was Republicans in Manhattan. “I thought went like comets. and Peoria, or Des Moines, made it seem they got stored away with the Christ - Florence King (this must be the first sen- even Nuder.” mas balls: those rapt, secure faces you tence in history to include them both) Over and over, he described. A crowd see fox-trotting to Guy Lombardo on shone. But for sustained energy, issue at an Upper West Side synagogue, wait- New Year’s Eve. They look most at after issue, Mano won the gold. ing to hear Abba Eban. “You’ve seen home in cardboard hats, all webbed up Journalism tracks change, for every them before: From park benches on a with paper streamers like Laocoön and day brings something new. But journal- sunlit afternoon they captain those squat, his immediate family.” Overeaters. ism also relies on the familiarity of barge-prowed islands in the middle of “Obesity makes drug addiction look repeating frameworks, or features, Broadway.” Bella Abzug, a raucous far- like thumb-sucking. A trifle. You can whether they be columns, cartoons, or left congresswoman. “Grossness is a give up heroin cold, but you can’t give centerfolds. Mano thrived on the tool, used as Belle Barth [a Sixties come- up food. Every third TV commercial is push/pull of this regimen. I took a dienne] used grossness. To shock. After a pusher.” Pre-season football work- bound volume from NR’s library shelf, all, what you can’t cosmetize must be outs. “This is the awful time, wind- 1975, and read (reread) every one of his made a virtue.” Mano visits Miami sprint time. Some scream while they pieces. The book reviews come closest Beach. “Beaches are a savage hoax. . . . run, getting a jump on their agony. to being dutiful, but even they sparkle. Read? Pages snowblind, one might as Nostrils shear with inbreath; throat lin- Myron, by Gore Vidal: “Gore Vidal is well read the wattage on a lit bulb. ings come apart.” such a bitch” (Mano liked a strong Sleep? The sheets are never changed. Church bingo. “The numbers come, lede). Humboldt’s Gift, by Saul Bellow, Cigarette butts bristle, filter end up. come. Women of seventy shame me. “gets its talkative, awkward form from Beaches are sand-filled marble ashtrays There’s a cortisone in bingo that frees its genre: It belongs, with Crockett’s or from some gigantic hotel lobby.” arthritic joints. One old woman who can Franklin’s autobiography, to confes- Divorce. “Out my way a male black- hardly walk plays five dozen cards at sional not novelistic literature.” Of The widow spider has better odds of sur- once, broadcasting chips, dabbing with Connoisseur, by Evan S. Connell, vival in marriage. I can count eight her marker bottle, fast, sure as a Mano asks, Why do we collect? “To couples uncoupled or uncoupling in Benihana chef.” Pornography. Mano share the thing’s strength, its age, its cre- 1974, about a third of our acquaintance. was cast in a 16mm skin flick once. ator’s talents, as cannibals collect brave When they visit us by halves, we steril- “Then the director put me on a hard- human hearts?” ize the glasses afterward. It’s a virus, I boiled-egg diet to lose ten pounds in ten Mano could listen. Here is Robert, a think: Gauze masks are recommended.” days. It was only after the 15th hard- 15-year-old street magician. “A blind Transcendental meditation. “They pass boiled egg that morality asserted itself. I man approaches,” Mano writes, “and I around a pamphlet full of bar graphs, quit and had three club sandwiches on aim two dimes at his cup. Robert inter- where TM initiates stand out like the the way home.” And finally, in 1975’s cepts my throw. ‘He sees better than I do. World Trade Ce nter next to a Greenwich 20th-anniversary issue, there was an

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D. Keith Mano in 1971

inserted parody of NR, edited by Mano. on real New Yorkers: Andy Warhol and for the women who worked in bars and One of the bogus letters to the editor Bishop Paul Moore, a once-prominent clubs: “They lead a hard life.” scolded “The Gimlet Eye.” “D. Keith liberal Episcopalian). A deeper plot Keith was warm, generous, and Mano’s Gimlet Eye, ‘Chickie on the gradually takes over as Lynxx loses his funny; his marriage to actress Laurie LIRR,’ was a shameless outrage,” wrote senses one by one, finally left only Kennedy blessed them both. He had a Betty Prole. “The teenagers of Baldwin, with grace. hard life writing, though. Talent often L.I., do not—repeat, do not—stand on Mano wrote a lighter, late novel, comes accompanied by anxiety, which railroad tracks to see who will ‘chicken Topless, about an Episcopal priest in - is why so many writers drink, smoke, or out’ first. The sordid fact is that Mr. heriting a topless bar. He sold it to Holly - practice magic. Kipling had to have cer- Mano paid my son, John, and his friend wood as a one-sentence treatment, with tain knick-knacks on his desk, arranged Peter five dollars apiece to stand in front the hook that Tom Cruise play the priest. just so, before he could produce. Keith of the 6:15 express from Penn Station.” The movie never got made, but Mano produced systems that relieved stress by Mano ran a family business in Queens, made a nice payday. For the book party limiting choice. He had a set of rules for which made expandable cement, but his he hired a strip club at the foot of the writing, which he never fully explained vocation was art. He went to Columbia Empire State Building and stood at the to me; the point was to avoid similar and Cambridge, studying with Lionel door, giving guests dollar bills to tip the constructions in adjacent sentences. Trilling and F. R. Leavis (a path also trod dancers. Mano was as interested in sex as He did explain his rules for reading: He by ). He wrote a Donald Trump is, and far more interest- pulled books blindly from a bag. One string of novels, culminating in Take ing about it. Late in life, he experienced source for the bag was the Strand, the Five (1982), a 600-page showpiece. The a shift: He told me he prayed every night great used-book store below Union book had an intimidating reputation. NR Square. Keith would visit it with a pair gave it to the critic to of dice; the first throw review. Kenner, who read picked the aisle, the sec- Pound’s Cantos with ease, ond the shelf, the third the was late with his copy. order in from the end of the What had Mano done? book he would buy. You When I took the plunge, must have got some odd years later, I found it, after ones, I said. An Indian five- two gnarly opening pages, year plan from 1959, he to be easy reading, in the answered. You read the whole best sense: lively, fresh, thing? I asked. There were flowing. The picaresque lots of charts, he said. hero is Simon Lynxx, an Keith, Keith, you could indie filmmaker from Queens have begun every sentence (almost-Mano again) who is with “I think that . . .” and COM

. trying to fund a movie about they still would have flashed. Jesus’ sex life. He encounters And I will never have to roll NYTIMES . a plethora of mishaps and dice to come back to your won - WWW characters (two of them based derful words.

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Voters line up for registration at a caucus precinct in East Las Vegas, Nev. The Blue Wave Republicans must adapt to a diversifying electorate or lose their influence

BY TIM ALBERTA

Prescott Valley, Ariz.; Salem, Va. EE STAUFFACHER and Pam McKinney love their home changing electorate; and a changing electorate usually means a state of California—its paradisiacal climate, its sublime changing government. Stauffacher and McKinney, it seems, L topography—but they had to leave. The state had been can’t escape this cycle. overrun, first by immigrants legal and illegal, their cul- They early one October morning and drove three hours tures and traditions in tow, and then by liberal politicians who east here, to Prescott Valley, where Donald Trump was campaign- seized control of the government by catering to these constituen- ing. The area is rural and overwhelmingly white—hardly repre- cies and turning their communities into Democratic garrisons. The sentative of Arizona, but perfect for reaching his core audience. state became majority-minority in 2001; whites are now 39 per- Some 20,000 people came, law enforcement estimated, though cent of its population and dwindling. In turn, the GOP is essentially only a fraction could squeeze inside the event center for Trump’s extinct, representing conservative enclaves around California but speech. Stauffacher and McKinney were among them. irrelevant in statewide elections. “When I listen to Donald Trump, I hear the America I grew up So Stauffacher and McKinney, a staunchly Republican couple in. He wants to make things like they used to be,” McKin ney, a in their 60s, moved last year to Kingman, an 82 percent–white retired court clerk, says afterward. “Where I grew up, in the San town in Arizona’s ultraconservative northwest corner. They fig- Joaquin Valley, it was a good, solid community, but it fell apart ured, given the state’s ideological reputation—owing to hawkish when the government started pandering to all of these immi- immigration policies championed by generations of GOP office- grants who don’t understand our culture and don’t want to holders as well as Maricopa Coun ty sheriff Joe Arpaio—it was assimilate.” She stiffens. “I’m okay with immigrants as long as the ideal regional antidote to California. they’re legal. But they need to assimilate to our culture. They GETTY IMAGES / But not for much longer. Over the last 25 years, the state’s can have their culture at home. In public, you’re an American. AFP / Hispanic population has tripled, and whites have gone from 74 They’re celebrating their own holidays instead of ours.” percent of the population to 54 percent. Minorities will be the “The good people like us are leaving California because of all RYAN ANSON majority by 2022. Arizona’s changing population means a that—the influx of immigrants, many of them illegal, who are

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getting state ID cards, welfare benefits, and other government undocumented immigrants in 1986; only 30 percent of Hispanics programs, and not even assimilating,” says Stauffacher, 65. voted Republican in 1988, compared with 34 percent in 1984.) “And now it’s happening here. This state is up for grabs.” A To be clear, the party’s predicament isn’t limited to Hispanics. Navy veteran and a retired engineer, he shakes his head in dis- Blacks and Asians, another fast-growing voting bloc, have also gust. “The entire country is changing because they’re letting turned against the GOP in large numbers. Because of this, some people in who will only vote for Democrats.” believe that Republicans should prioritize issues—poverty, edu- Stauffacher is right: The United States is experiencing a cation, the —that would mend their image among all sweeping and unprecedented demographic transformation. It’s non-whites, not just Hispanics. That said, it’s impossible to quan- becoming younger, more diverse, more urban, more secular, and tify how much doing so would endear the GOP to minorities; it’s better educated. These trends show no sign of reversal and por- similarly impossible to quantify how much passing immigration tend ominously for today’s GOP, which depends heavily on reform would improve the party’s standing with Hispanics. What older, white, rural, working-class, religious voters. This isn’t lost is quantifiable is the historic rate at which the country and the on Trump’s loyal supporters. In dozens of interviews across electorate are diversifying. And because Hispanics are the main numerous states, they express uniform disapproval of the change driver, immigration reform continues to be the subject of intense swirling around them. They want a return to the America of their disagreement inside the Republican party. youth. But Trump cannot deliver that; nobody can. The country This divide is equal parts ideological and geographic. The will soon look very different. And the biggest contributor to that majority of reform advocates are politically center-right and hail change—the single trend that could propel the GOP toward from rapidly diversifying states and congressional districts, oblivion—is the ethnic diversification of the electorate. whereas opponents are typically tea-party conservatives who are Republicans have failed for the past half century to attract concentrated in heavily white patches of flyover country. They non-white voters. won 32 percent of non-whites represent the binary worldviews of their constituents and of the in 1960, according to Gallup; no GOP nominee has approached Republican base: on one end, comfortable with the changing that number since. (George W. Bush won 22 percent of non- nature of the country; on the other, alarmed at the scope and The country will soon look very different. And the biggest contributor to that change is the ethnic diversification of the electorate.

whites in 2004.) This was not an existential threat when pace of the change, especially when it threatens to overload the Democrats won the White House in 1992; after all, white voters entitlement system or put them out of work. had cast 87 percent of those ballots. But whites’ vote share has This tension started in 2013, when four Republicans joined declined in every election since, from 83 percent in 1996 to 72 four Democrats as the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” to pursue com- percent in 2012. Today, whites are 69 percent of America’s eli- prehensive immigration reform. Two of them, Arizona’s John gible voters. By 2024, that number will be 64 percent, the McCain and Jeff Flake, saw the population trend lines in their Census Bureau estimates; by 2044, it will be 54 percent. home state. The third, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, warned Republicans have carried the white vote in every general elec- that Republicans faced “a demographic death spiral.” The fourth, tion since 1968. But that’s not enough anymore: Florida’s Marco Rubio, aspired to run for president and to heal won whites, 59 percent to 39 percent, in 2012, but President the fraught relationship between Hispanics and his party. But it Obama won the overall popular vote by nearly 5 million. How? wasn’t meant to be: The Senate-passed bill was blocked in the Romney won just 17 percent of non-whites, in cluding 27 per- House, where many Republicans represent deep-red, mostly cent of Hispanics, the electorate’s fastest-growing group. white districts, and Rubio flamed out in the primaries in part because he couldn’t live down his role in the Gang of Eight. And then Trump became the Republican nominee for president. HIS is a math problem for the Republican party, and its In sweeping to the nomination, Trump took a sledgehammer elected officials differ sharply over potential solutions. to the party’s elite consensus on immigration. Now the fear Some Republicans believe that salvation lies in compre- among GOP strategists isn’t just that his no-holds-barred, ad Thensive immigration reform; they say it will fix a broken system hominem campaign will hurt Republicans with Hispanics in once and for all, while demonstrating the party’s compassion 2016—but also that it’s antagonizing a generation of voters toward Hispanics and depriving Democrats of a devastatingly Republicans will need if they ever hope to reoccupy the White effective wedge issue. But many of their comrades see it differ- House. According to the Pew Research Center, 4 million ently: Any comprehensive endeavor would necessarily promise Hispanics have become eligible voters since 2012. That pace legalization, if not full-fledged citizenship, to parts of the undoc- will only accelerate. With the youngest population in the U.S., umented community, and would include higher levels of legal Hispanics will drive the number of eligible minority voters ever immigration as well. This, they say, would add to the electorate higher, eclipsing white eligible voters by 2052. even more less-skilled, low- income immigrants, many of “For the past 20 years, looking at the rate of change over every whom might never warm to the GOP regardless of its modula- four-year presidential cycle, we’ve been running like clockwork tion on immigration. (Ronald Reagan legalized nearly 3 million nationwide with a 2 percent increase in minority voters, a 1 percent

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increase in college-educated whites, and a 3 percent decrease in thing Republicans wanted was to mobilize them. After all, the white non-college voters,” says Ruy Teixeira, an acclaimed Hispanic community’s political impact has been diluted by its demographer and senior fellow at the Center for American anemic turnout; only 48 percent of eligible Hispanics voted in Progress. “That might not sound like much in the span of four 2012, according to Pew, compared with 64 percent of eligible years. But over 20 years—six presidential cycles—that’s twelve whites and 67 percent of eligible blacks. points more minority and twelve points less white.” This year could be different. The Arizona Hispanic Cham - The implications are neither abstract nor academic. Several ber of Commerce estimates that nearly 200,000 Hispanics once-safe Republican states now lean Democratic in presidential- have been registered since 2010, thanks to the work of well- election years, when voter turnout, especially among minorities, organized liberal groups. Voters such as Arambula—predisposed is higher than in off-years. And barring a dramatic change in to vote Democratic by virtue of their age and ethnicity—rep- voter attitudes, others will soon follow. Two regions in particu- resent a potential tipping point in the partisan struggle for con- lar, the mountain West and the Middle At lan tic states, are under- trol of Arizona. The question now is whether they’ll show up going the speediest transformations. on November 8. In the mountain West, the traditionally competitive states of “There’s still a gap, not just between eligible voters and regis- New Mexico (five electoral votes), Nevada (six), Colorado tered voters, but between those who are registered and those (nine), and Arizona (eleven) either are already beyond reach for who vote,” says Mónica Villalobos, the Hispanic Chamber’s Republicans or soon will be, thanks to booming Hispanic popu- vice president. Her organization, along with the non-partisan lations and diminishing numbers of non-college-educated firm WestGroup Research, conducted a recent poll that found whites. In the Middle Atlantic states, the same can be said for that 40 percent of Arizona Hispanics felt their vote wouldn’t Virginia (thirteen electoral votes), North Carolina (fifteen), and “impact” the election, and another 40 percent felt that neither Georgia (sixteen), all of which have diversifying economies and candidate represented them. “That means 80 percent of His pan ic swelling college-educated urban outgrowth to complement fast- voters here are disengaged,” she says. growing minority populations. This is welcome news for the GOP. Until their relationship Is all hope lost for the GOP? Not yet. But if Republicans hope with the Hispanic community improves, Republican strategists to defy the notion that demography is destiny—and prevent a acknowledge, depressed turnout is their ally. (There’s a reason host of red states from turning blue—Arizona is probably the conservative groups aren’t funding voter-registration drives in best place to start. Hispanic neighborhoods; even the Libre Initiative, a Koch- brothers enterprise that hosts free tax-preparation seminars and English-as-a-second-language courses, doesn’t register voters in HE question isn’t whether Arizona will flip, but when. At Arizona.) If Trump provokes any meaningful uptick in Hispanic least, that’s what political scientists and party strategists turnout, the state could turn blue ahead of schedule. say. For years, they’ve looked to 2024 or 2028 as the elec- “We did a report last year, before Trump came along, with Ttion in which Republicans will finally succumb to the state’s straight-line projections,” says Joe Garcia, director of the La ti no demographic headlock. It will have been one hell of a run: From Public Policy Center at Arizona State University’s Morri son 1952 to 2012, the GOP carried Arizona in 15 of 16 general elec- Institute for Public Policy. “And it showed that even with low tions. The exception was 1996, when Bill Clinton edged Bob registration and low turnout among Latinos, around 2030, Dole by two points en route to a reelection landslide. Arizona will change from a conservative red state into a progres- Something else happened in 1996: Natalie Arambula was born. sive blue state. With Trump, there’s a galvanizing effect on the The daughter of Mexican-American immigrants, she’s now tak- Latino community that could accelerate the change we predict is ing general prerequisite courses at Phoenix College, a two-year going to happen anyway.” school in the heart of Arizona’s biggest city. Between classes, she What makes Arizona tough for Democrats—even with fierce explains why she recently registered to vote for the first time. demographic tailwinds—is the state’s conservative bent going “Trump is a racist,” Arambula says. “I don’t think I’ll ever vote for back to . Generations of GOP dominance are a Republican because of him.” An afternoon spent at Phoenix difficult to surmount. Even now, after a multi-year campaign to College finds a bottomless well of similar sentiment. Many enlist Hispanic voters, registered Re pub li cans outnumber regis- Hispanic students say they’ve also recently registered—assisted tered Democrats in Arizona by more than 160,000; that margin by the white-haired out-of-state activists patrolling the campus was roughly 96,000 in 2008. This can likely be attributed to with clipboards—because of the threat one party poses to their many new Hispanic registrants’ identifying as “other” instead of community. This could make all the difference in November: with either party. But for now, it gives Republicans hope. Trump leads Clinton by one point in the RealClearPolitics polling “For either party to win the Hispanic vote, they’re going to average of Arizona, and her campaign announced a $2 million have to invest. And I have a lot of Hispanic kids telling me that investment in the state three weeks before Election Day. Democrats are taking them for granted,” says Robert Graham, This is a nightmare for the GOP. The Hispanic vote share was chairman of the Arizona GOP. “So yes, the state could go blue. climbing long before Trump descended his golden escalator to But it could also go a brighter shade of red.” seek the presidency. Nationally, Hispanics were 8 percent of the It wouldn’t be without precedent. Texas became majority- electorate in 2004, 9 percent in 2008, and 10 percent in 2012. In minority in 2004, and whites today are just 43 percent of its pop- Arizona, the trend is sharper: Hispanics went from 12 percent in ulation. Yet Democrats haven’t carried the state since 1976. This 2004 to 18 percent in 2012, while whites dropped from 79 per- speaks not only to the conservative worldview of the state’s cent to 74 percent. In a state where Hispanics are now roughly white electorate but also to the relative independence of its one-third of the population—half of them under 18—the last Hispanics. Romney won 25 percent of Hispanics nationally in

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2012; there was no exit poll of Texas, but multiple private sur- has been surprisingly competitive in Nevada due to its sizable veys showed him taking nearly 40 percent of His pan ics there. population of working-class whites, but this is likely to be their It’s a similar story in Florida, the nation’s biggest battleground. last stand. Barring the unforeseen, Nevada will become a per- After it spent 60 years teetering between parties, Democrats manently blue state. hoped its bulging Hispanic population would tip the scales. But New Mexico provides a glimpse of the future. Republicans it hasn’t, thanks to the conservative Cuban vote. Romney won carried the state in six consecutive elections, from 1968 to 1988. 39 percent of Florida Hispanics, exit polls showed. But its non-white population grew steadily throughout. By 1992 That’s the good news for Republicans. The bad news: Ari zo- it was essentially split 50–50 between minorities and whites. na Hispanics have a more liberal voting record. Only 22 percent Democrats won five of the next six elections, the lone exception supported Romney in 2012. Four years earlier, an impressive 41 being 2004, when George W. Bush won a record-high 44 percent percent backed the Republican nominee—but that was McCain, of Hispanics nationally. The last two elections haven’t been their home-state senator, an avowed immigration reformer. close. And with a white population that’s currently 37 percent Graham, who might challenge Reince Priebus for the Repub- and falling fast, New Mexico is no longer considered by either lican National Committee chairmanship, points to McCain and party to be competitive in presidential years. Flake as a model for attracting Hispan ic votes. Yet in demonstra- tion of the GOP’s internecine struggle, after praising the sena- tors’ work in the Gang of Eight, he dodges repeated questions O drive south through Virginia from its northernmost about whether citizenship or even legalization should be consid- point is to traverse polarized empires. It is to leave behind ered for undocumented immigrants. the soaring structures and paralyzed expressways and Much of the GOP base rejects any such amnesty, as evidenced Tclaustrophobic commuter subdivisions, suddenly to discover a by Trump’s ascent. And even if Republicans defied their con- landscape of serrated mountains and abandoned roads and stituents, there would be no guarantee of the party’s being sprawling farms. Virginia as a whole was once like its south ern rewarded at the ballot box. Not only does Reagan’s example region is now: white, rural, agricultural, religious, and blue- loom large, but polling shows that Hispanics—while culturally collar. It voted that way too: Republicans carried the common- conservative and entrepreneurial—hold a fundamentally liberal wealth in 13 of 14 presidential elections from 1952 to 2004. (The view of the role of government, especially in the areas of health lone exception was Lyndon B. Johnson’s 44-state romp in 1964.) care and the environment. Even in his tough campaigns, George W. Bush carried Virginia Without a clear electoral incentive, Republicans may never by eight and nine points in 2000 and 2004, respectively. take meaningful action on immigration; if they don’t, they may That seems a distant memory. Obama won the state by six never win Hispanics. The status quo is unsustainable, GOP lead- points in 2008 and by four points in 2012, and Trump’s cam- ers say, because the endgame is unforgiving: De clining white paign has effectively ceded it to Clinton. Why? The Old Domin - populations almost always foreshadow Dem o crat ic gains at the ion has changed significantly since Bush’s second victory. For ballot box. Arizona can look around the region for proof. starters, whites were 71 percent of Virginia’s voting-age popula- Colorado voted Republican in nine of ten elections from 1968 tion in 2004; today that number is 65 percent, and it is projected to 2004. But from 1984 to 2004, whites decreased by ten points as a share of the population. Unsurprisingly, Dem o crats broke through in 2008 and repeated their victory in 2012 (when just 23 per- cent of Hispanics backed Romney). The state is safely Democratic in 2016, and Republicans will struggle to reclaim it. Colorado is now 67 percent white; based on Census Bu reau projections, it will be 60 percent white in 2030 and majority- minority by 2050. Or take Nevada. It was a Republican lock from 1968 to 1988, carried by the GOP in each of those six elections. As its population diversified, it became a swing state, carried narrowly by Democrats in 1992 and 1996 and by Repub li cans in 2000 and 2004. But Obama’s wins in 2008 and 2012 were lopsided. The obvious explanation is demographic change. Nevada was 63 GETTY IMAGES / percent white in 2004; today it’s 52 percent. It will become majority- minority by 2020, and by 2040 it’s pro- BROOKS KRAFT jected to be 36 percent white. Trump Supporters of Hillary Clinton hold a sign saying ‘I’m with her’ written in Spanish, Miami, Fla., July 23, 2016.

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to be 60 percent in 2030. More consequentially, the state has will become majority-minority by 2026. Like North Carolina, seen a pronounced population shift toward urban areas. As the Georgia owes its minority growth to a mix of blacks, Asians, and New York Times noted, “in 1970, as the first Republican gover- Hispanics. And though it has fewer metropolitan areas than nor since Reconstruction was taking office, just one in eight North Carolina, Georgia has seen massive outgrowth from Virginians lived in the suburban counties outside Washington. Atlanta as college-educated, white-collar voters have moved By 2008, about one in three did.” That trend has continued in. As Josh Put nam, a lecturer in the University of Georgia’s unabated thanks to the proliferation of government-related jobs political-science department and the founder of the elections and a vast corollary expansion of the suburban-D.C. housing website FrontloadingHQ, says, “If North Carolina is tipping market. As a result, Virginia as a whole now resembles (and toward Democrats now, then Georgia won’t be far behind.” votes like) its northern region, having grown more diverse, more urban, and better educated. Pat Counts has watched this transformation from Salem, a town S Ebenezer Scrooge asked the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to- of 25,000 tucked in Virginia’s scenic southwest corner. Counts, Come, “Are these the shadows of things that will be, or 65, was born in Salem and never left; he raised a fa mi ly, served as are they the shadows of things that may be only?” fire chief for 40 years, and is now retired. As he waits for Trump’s AThat question can be answered only by the Republican par ty. running mate, Mike Pence, to address a cap-and-flannel-clad The demographic writing is on the wall; if the GOP con tin ues to audience at the local community enter, Counts says his children repel non-whites, it will cease to be competitive. “Trying to win have all moved to bigger cities—including a son who lives in a presidential election by getting a larger and larger share of a Loudoun County, a wealthy Wash ing ton exurb. “He took a while smaller and smaller proportion of the electorate is a losing strat- to get used to it,” Counts says, laughing. “Down here, we’re more egy,” says Whit Ayres, a top pollster to many Republicans, middle class and laid back, compared to the hustle and bustle up including Rubio, and the author of a book on America’s demo- there. Plus, those people are much more liberal in their beliefs.” graphic transformation. “It’s very clear that Republicans are Counts supports Trump’s immigration proposals, and wishes his going to have to do much better among non-white voters to have state could go back to the way it was. But he knows better. “Every any hope of electing a president in the future.” election now, it looks good for Re pub licans, until all those votes Mindful of this imperative, House speaker Paul Ryan, for start coming in from northern Vir gin ia.” example, has toured the nation’s poorest neighborhoods and met These same trends—the diversification, urbanization, and edu- with community leaders to craft anti-poverty proposals, and has cation of Virginia’s electorate—are slower yet still noticeable in long been a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform. He neighboring North Carolina. Like Virginia, the Tar Heel State was pushed the House GOP to produce a far-reaching policy agenda dominated by Republicans for several generations; the GOP car- in hopes of convincing skeptics—especially those in minority ried nine of ten presidential elections from 1968 to 2004. But it’s communities—that Republicans have a pro active, inclusive now among the nation’s premier battlegrounds: After two double- blueprint to improve their lives. But Ryan, for the time being, is digit Bush wins, Obama carried the state by one-third of a percent- noticeably out of step with his party, as evidenced by its choice age point in 2008, and Romney took it back with a two-point of a candidate whose sincerest pitch to black voters is, “What the victory in 2012. Though North Carolina remains more competi- hell do you have to lose?” tive than Vir gin ia, it may not be for long. The state’s black, Asian, Hence the roles of Trump and Ryan as enemy generals in the and Hispanic populations are all projected to increase steadily Republican civil war, plotting their irreconcilable paths for the over the next 30 years, while whites, who were 75 percent of the GOP’s future. Ryan knows the country is changing and wants state’s population in 1986, are 63 percent today and heading the party to evolve for long-term survival; Trump knows the toward minority status by 2050. It’s not just the racial complexion party’s base rejects this change, particularly the looming threat of North Carolina that’s changing; the state has seen an influx of of higher immigration levels under a Clinton presidency, and young, college-educated residents drawn to the banking industry wants their votes for short-term victory. in Charlotte and the research triangle in the Raleigh-Durham Trump is unlikely to succeed, of course. But even an improb- area. (Between 1980 and 2010, the share of North Carolinians able November 8 victory wouldn’t change the fact that his living in cities of 75,000 or more “nearly doubled” from 14.5 coalition—older, white, and not college-educated—is small percent to 28 percent, according to Rebecca Tippett of the UNC- and getting smaller. Instead of choosing a leader who could Chapel Hill Carolina Population Center.) These changes have appeal to these voters as well as to the ones changing the moun- come at the expense of a vanishing manufacturing industry that tain West and the Middle Atlantic states, Re pub li cans nominated once employed the state’s white work ing class. a man who implicitly denies the demographic changes that make Skipping across ruby-red South Carolina, Republicans also his candidacy such an electoral challenge—and who indulges have cause for concern in Georgia. Once a bastion of the sol id the fantasy of returning to an America that no longer exists. Democratic south, the Peach State swung into the GOP column Helen Best, a 69-year-old loyal Republican and lifelong North in 1984 and stayed there for six of the next seven elections, the Carolina resident, says it’s no mystery why Democrats are exception being Bill Clinton’s 14,000-vote victory over George ascendant. “The country’s morals have changed,” she says. H. W. Bush in 1992. Republicans have carried Georgia by an “This is going to sound racial, but it’s all the free handouts— average of eight points in the five elections since; they control they’re teaching people you don’t have to work for what you get the governor’s mansion, both legislative chambers, both U.S. anymore. And people are voting for them.” Standing outside a Senate seats, and ten of fourteen congressional districts. Yet Pence rally in Raleigh one brisk October evening, she shrugs Georgia’s white share of the population has dropped sixteen with dismay. “People say it’s just a changing of the times. But points since 1984. The state is currently 54 percent white and why do we need to change at all?”

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open competition for the benefit of consumers and citizens— which very often means subjecting powerful incumbents to The Cronyist competitive pressures they would rather avoid. Such fair and open competition is precisely what makes mar- kets engines of prosperity and innovation, and what makes the Threat free-enterprise system well suited to helping a free society address some of its biggest problems. Providing business inter- ests (or labor interests, or any other established, well-connected Conservatives should act to restore group) with special benefits or shielding established market confidence in free markets actors from competition is therefore anathema to the ethic of capitalism and of democracy. That our government now fre- quently engages in precisely such preferential treatment for the BY YUVAL LEVIN well connected is a grave danger to democratic capitalism in America. And that the public identifies such cronyism with cap- italism itself is a failure of the friends of the market system. It is HE past year has highlighted many problems with the as such a failure of conservatism, and it threatens all that conser- ways conservatives tend to approach the broader pub- vatives hope to achieve. T lic—including Republican voters. A lot of these prob- It is so grave a threat because cronyism runs much deeper than lems come down to two kinds of failure: On one hand we generally think. Some examples are obvious and much dis- are failures to take seriously some key public concerns, and on cussed: Direct subsidies to agribusiness and loan guarantees for the other are failures to articulate some key conservative priori- some of our largest exporters use public resources to protect the ties. The combination has meant that conservatives have sold standing of established market giants. The staggering array of tax themselves short as sources of solutions to what ails America. carve-outs and targeted regulations benefits businesses with the This twofold failure is evident in many arenas, but the resources to lobby and to ensure compliance, and comes at the Right’s approach to the question of “cronyism” may offer an expense of new competitors. The corporatism that has defined especially instructive example. Voters of all political stripes the Obama administration’s domestic policy—protecting large, seem increasingly to think that the economy is somehow powerful companies from competition in exchange for their will- rigged against them, and to the benefit of some wealthy and ingness to serve as agents of government power in finance, health powerful interests. This isn’t always true, of course, and it can care, and elsewhere—has advanced the progressive agenda of easily become a convenient excuse for demanding special consolidation at the expense of dynamism and prosperity. favors or protections. Indeed, resentment against the wealthy But cronyism reaches much farther than these relatively obvi- and powerful is frequently channeled by the Left to empower ous examples, to the core of the problems of modern American greater government intervention—ironically creating new government. Self-dealing is, for instance, at the heart of our opportunities for the wealthy and powerful to lobby and to primary- and secondary-education crisis, as schools and districts curry favor. are run in the interests of administrators and tenured teachers But the Left’s tendency to misdirect concerns about rather than students. It is a driving force behind our higher- favoritism and cronyism is not an e xcuse for the Right to pre- education dilemmas, as the already accredited run the accredita- tend that such concerns are baseless. It is important to take tion system and keep out new competitors and new models of those concerns seriously, both because they are in many cases schooling and financing. It undermines upward mobility, as valid and because cronyism badly undermines the kind of mar- established players in one industry after another use licensing ket economics that conservatives think is essential to and certification requirements to keep out competitors. It dis- America’s wealth and freedom. The failure to take complaints torts our immigration debate, as and the about cronyism seriously is in this sense both a political and an interests of powerful employers are willfully confounded. It is a intellectual failure for conservatives—and the two reinforce primary barrier to market-oriented health-care reform. each other. For all these reasons, cronyism also leaves the public mis- Everybody knows that conservatives in America are cham- trus tful of conservative claims to offer solutions on these vari- pions of the market economy as an engine of prosperity. But ous fronts, and of conservative assertions that the competitive too many Americans, including too many conservatives, provision of public services or benefits could help the poor, seem to believe that defending the market economy means elderly, and vulnerable better than today’s welfare and entitle- serving the interests of business. That is certainly how our ment systems. Cronyism thus lies at the heart of our liberal government has too often approached its role as steward of welfare state and is a massive overarching problem for conser- the economy—advancing the priorities of established, well- vative reformers. connected interests, sometimes at the expense of the needs of Indeed, corporatism, or the consolidation of social power in the individuals, families, communities, and the nation as a hands of large, centralized public and private institutions, is a whole, and claiming to do so in the name of economic growth core principle of modern progressivism, such that picking win- and freedom. ners and losers has long been understood by many on the left to But a commitment to the goals and principles of the market be a necessary purpose of public policy. “In economic warfare,” economy is by no means the same thing as a commitment to wrote the progressive theorist Herbert Croly in 1909, “the fight- the interests of the businesses that compe te in that economy. ing can never be fair for long, and it is the business of the state to On the contrary, markets require a government dedicated to see that its own friends are victorious.”

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Cronyist progressivism is thus coherently wrong. But cronyist manufacturers at the expense of American consumers and tax- conservatism is incoherent and inexcusable. And leaving the payers. They often simply reduce costs for purchases that would public with a choice between only these two alternatives, as our have been made anyway, while putting the domestic competitors politics too often does, is a failure of our political system that is of foreign buyers at a disadvantage (such that, for instance, an again attributable to a failure of the defenders of the market econ- American airline pays more for a jet than does a foreign airline omy and of American democratic capitalism. that has its financing backed by U.S. taxpayers). Indeed, the very idea of the market economy arose in large part Champions of such subsidies try to pass them off as protecting to combat cronyist economics. Adam Smith offered his case for American manufacturing workers, and so try to package crony- markets in the late 18th century in opposition to mercantilism— ism as populism—but choosing some American workers over the then-prevailing economic system, which equated the interests others is not nationalism, and subsidizing powerful corporations of a nation with those of its largest manufacturers and trading and foreign buyers is not populism. The purpose of trade policy companies. The economy should instead be geared to the benefit should be to make all Americans wealthier, not just to enrich of consumers, Smith argued. Large companies and powerful selected manufacturing firms and protect only their workers— merchants should be neither preferred nor oppressed; they should while hurting others and raising everyone’s cost of living. be subject to the rules of open competition without exception. Our approach to regulating the financial sector, meanwhile, Our constitutional system, too, was intended in part to help also expressly protects large, incumbent institutions from compe- combat this scourge by creating a stable and predictable legal tition and implicitly protects them from risks inherent in their regime. Cronyism, by bending rules for special interests, under- own investment decisions. The sheer complexity of financial reg- mines the predictability and fairness essential to republican gov- ulation gives an advantage to larger banks over smaller ones,

Large companies and powerful merchants should be neither preferred nor oppressed; they should be subject to the rules of open competition without exception.

ernment. A key effect of the resulting instability, as James since the former are able to afford the immense compliance appa- Madison put it in Federalist 62, is ratus required to live by the rules. A similar pattern prevails in many other industries. The fed- the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterpris- eral government now subsidizes both fossil-fuel production ing, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass (especially through the enhanced oil-recovery tax credit and of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or rev- the marginal-well production tax credit) and renewable- enue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of energy resources (through the wind-production tax credit, the property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, electric-vehicle credit, and others). These policies distort the and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. incentives for energy innovation, pick winners and losers in This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that what should be a competitive marketplace, and redistribute laws are made for the few, not for the many. taxpayer dollars upward. In health care, federal policy frequently privileges large, con- Both the nature of the public problems we now confront and solidated hospital systems at the expense of smaller provider the character of the solutions that conservatives are inclined to groups, and Obamacare is packed full of corporate welfare, par- propose therefore demand that the rejection of cronyism and the ticularly for insurers and hospitals. In agriculture, farm subsidies promotion of fair and equal competition be central planks of any are almost pure corporate welfare. They now cost taxpayers some conservative economic agenda. $20 billion each year, much of which involves upward redistrib- ution from taxpayers to both corporate and family farms whose owners are generally wealthier than most Americans. HAT would this mean in practice? First and most obvi- At the same time, the federal government has certainly been ously, it would mean combating particular instances too lax in enforcing basic antitrust rules in many industries, and of abject cronyism in public policy. Such instances are has permitted and encouraged a degree of economic consolida- Wlegion, and addressing them would help conservatives make the tion that has hurt consumers to the benefit of large and influen- case for market economics as a way to advance not only prosper- tial economic actors. Conservatives should champion a revival ity but also fairness in our economy. of antitrust enforcement and defend it as an appropriate respon- The federal government now uses a number of programs to sibility of a in a free economy. subsidize American companies that export their products, for And at the state and local levels, many incumbent businesses instance. Most notable in recent years (though far from alone) and professions (barbers, manicurists, interior designers, and has been the Export-Import Bank. It provides taxpayer-backed countless others) have successfully lobbied for enormous barri- loan guarantees, among other forms of subsidy, to lower the ers to entry to their occupations. Such rules not only constrain financing costs of foreign consumers who buy high-cost competition, and so tend to increase consumer costs, they also American-manufactured goods (such as aircraft and construction severely restrict upward mobility and close off paths to better equipment). These subsidies benefit foreign buyers and domestic lives. They should be rolled back and resisted.

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REVALENT and infuriating though such explicit favoritism is, we must also recognize that cronyism in public policy is not only a matter of direct subsidies and protections Masters of Pbut also an essential feature of the administrative state and the welfare state. Both frequently become captives of private actors over whom they have regulatory authority or from whom they are charged with procuring products or services. To The Game ameliorate this, the state would need to become a neutral arbiter of competitive marketplaces rather than a manager of A word of defense for elitism inefficient monopolies. Today’s fee-for-service Medicare program, for instance, is BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON an absurdly micromanaged single-payer health-insurance sys- tem in which a federal bureaucracy determines prices for thou- sands of procedures and sets payment rules for millions of Miami providers. The system is thoroughly captured by the largest of HE sun is blazing, and Steelers Nation is restive. It these providers: It subsidizes their operations, protects them from may be that the tribe members gathered at the newly competition, and encourages mass consolidation in American T rechristened Hard Rock Stadium in Miami aren’t health care. Moving from a single-payer, fee-for-service used to getting serious sunburns in October—or it Medicare program to a premium-support model would take the may be that they just aren’t used to losing, at least not to a government out of the business of setting prices and micro- bunch of second-raters like the 1–4 Dolphins with their dopey managing providers and would instead empower seniors to Jimmy Buffett fight song and their just-this-side-of-Scores choose among real alternatives. This would move Medicare “cheerleaders” and their communal “HOO-AH!” after every toward being a competitive market in which insurers and care first down. The visiting fans down in the high-dollar seats turn providers have to vie for consumer preference rather than for ugly in a hurry, with one couple—you know the couple, sitting government favors. on the seatbacks, feet in the seats, Oakley sunglasses, lots and A similar logic applies to education, where parental choice is lots of Coronas—cursing those “f***ing retards” on the field, restricted by systems that protect incumbent teachers and their that “f***ing overpaid p***y” Ben Roethlisberger, who has unions at the expense of students. In many large school dis- led the team to two Super Bowl victories but is wavering today tricts, teachers’ unions use their financial and political muscle with a bum meniscus in his left knee. Two bored rich old guys to control the election of school-board members and so effec- with the look of bored rich old guys come in halfway through tively choose their own negotiating partners, leaving parents the first quarter and do a Statler-and-Waldorf act until they dis- and the rest of their communities powerless to change things. appear at halftime. Breaking up such monopolies, by allowing some of the public Two things become quickly obvious. One is that these dedi- funds that now flow to school systems to be put instead in the cated Steelers fans, for the most part, don’t know the first thing hands of parents and by giving those parents a real choice about football, even as they lay out big money for away-game among educational options, can help these public dollars serve travel and high-dollar tickets. They shout encouragement (and, the public rather than a particularly powerful pressure group. later, abuse) at the quarterback while the defense is on the field These kinds of reforms are not normally what we think of and get a little confused between punts and field goals. (Lots of when we consider the fight against cronyism in public policy, Coronas, we’re talking about.) They loudly encourage line- but they are essential to it. Self-dealing and targeted favoritism backer Lawrence Timmons to “get the ball,” a strategy that prob- are unavoidable byproducts of an overgrown administrative ably has occurred to him. (Timmons answered that advice state, and one of the foremost reasons to pare back the scope by—no kidding—simply puking on the field after a Dolphins and reach of our government is to reduce the potential for and touchdown.) The second undeniable fact about Steelers Nation the reality of such abuses. is: They resent—and maybe even hate—the Pittsburgh Steelers. Indeed, an anti-cronyist agenda is implicit in much of the They hate the star players’ giant paydays (Roethlisberger’s conservative reform agenda of our time, across a broad range of theoretical pay ceiling is $108 million over five seasons, and his issues. But it is important that conservatives make it much more guaranteed payday is $65 million), they hate the offensive coor- explicit. This would help to clarify both the substantive central- dinator (the Steelers had the No. 3 offense in the NFL in 2015), ity and the political necessity of the fight against cronyism for and they intensely hate Mike Tomlin, the team’s stoic, unflashy, our larger cause, and would help voters see that it is the cham- undemonstrative head coach, whom they charge with a lack of pions of the liberal welfare state, not their conservative critics, “passion” and a deficit of “intensity.” who stand for crony capitalism today. In reality, things like “passion” and “intensity” matter about The failure to advance this argument is an instance of a larger as much to a football contest being played at this level as they pattern in which conservatives have become disconnected from do to the functioning of a nuclear weapon or the outcome of a public concerns because we have forgotten the foundations of grandmasters’ chess match. What’s at work on the gridiron our own view of the world. A complacent repetition of vague under the merciless Florida sun is a question of foot-pounds slogans about freedom too often turns the Right into a carica- of energy, endless and minutely specialized drilling, athletic ture of itself. A concerted reengagement with the actual conser- choreography, and bio-mechanics. It is important, for com- vative case for freedom would instead let the Right offer serious mercial reasons, to maintain the illusion that the fans matter, answers to today’s most pressing public concerns. but the reality is that the fundamental game—the game

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itself—could be played without them, and might even be number of liberal economists” agree with conservative econo- played better and more interestingly without them. mists, libertarian economists, and, you know, economists that But that isn’t about to happen. The gyrating cheerleaders and demand curves slope downward—but also advised that these the thumping AC/DC–DMX–Lil Jon–Lee Brice soundtrack concerns could simply be ignored. “Politically, we are not get- changing its tune every 18 seconds and the beer and the salutes to ting any pressure to join this from our end,” Tanden wrote. “I our veterans and the salutes to our schoolchildren and the kiss leave it to you guys to judge what that means for you. But I’m cam and the flex cam and the smile cam may distract th e gathered not sweating it.” clans from what’s actually going on, but the reality is that profes- Contemporary progressives like to pose as disinterested sional football is an esoteric athletic competition embedded in a empiricists, as pragmatic managers who are simply interested in multibillion-dollar media empire embedded in Idiocracy. “what works,” as Barack Obama likes to put it. There’s enough But despite all that, it is not quite a perfect metaphor for question-begging in that formulation to fill a three-foot shelf of presi dential politics: In the NFL, the players know better than philosophy and economics texts (what works to do what?), to ask the boobs in the stands what the next play should be. which does not much matter—because it alway s has been a lie, Not so in politics . with millennial “empiricism” simply being the latest brightly colored, NEW , IMPROVED ! and UNDER N EW MANAGEMENT pack- aging for the strange brew of 19th-century Taylorism and what N April 2015, left-wing groups around the country spent used to be known as “scientific” socialism to which our so- months agitating for a $15 federal minimum wage. New called pragmatists still cling. When it comes down to the basic York City’s feckless Sandinista mayor, Bill de Blasio, facts of political life—the seizure and the maintenance of polit- Iwanted to announce his support for that proposal to highlight ical power—that empiricism goes out the door. Liberal econo-

“our efforts to organize progressives nationally to take on income mists say that more than doubling the minimum wage might put inequality,” as he put it in an e-mail to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s some downward pressure on full-time employment for the low- campaign goons. But there were some problems with that. For skilled workers whose interests Democrats claim to represent? one, the candidate herself was pressing for only a $12 minimum Sure, but there aren’t a lot of economists, and there are a great wage—raising it by a mere 66 percent rather than more than many people who earn less than $15 an hour: How many doubling it, as socialists such as Senator Bernie Sanders, electoral votes does the Brookings Institution have? Clinton’s primary rival, were demanding. The Democrats have shown time and again that, for all their E-mails released as part of the WikiLeaks trove reveal that purported reliance on dispassionate “just the facts” empiricism Neera Tanden, president of the left-wing Center for American and expert opinion, they can be bullied and mau-maued into Progress, advised that “a fair number of libera l economists” accepting whatever insane policy happens to catch the whimsy advised:: that the move “will: :: lose jobs”—which :: : :: is :to say, “a fair of their constituents, so long as the chanting in the stands is loud

'5/6#4.4462*+63 2-556/,3+6 $%6100-,0!6*2 "&1)1(35. nationalreview.com/nrdsubscribe)*%,'#"(+,!0%/+*0,1#-(/- '(0/,0$,-1&+)1 "0.11'*.)+/.

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enough. In 2008, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were our troops are stationed at Kunsan Air Base or Fort Bragg. That’s opposed to gay marriage; today, the default Democratic posi- why cries of “GET TOUGH!” with Islamic terrorists actually tion is that if you look askance at a man in a dress who prefers resonate, as though the CIA and the Marines had never consid- to use the ladies’ locker room at the gym, then you are morally ered getting tough with the enemy. Any set of effective policy identical to Bull Connor. They’re cowards and hypocrites, but reforms is going to be expert-generated and expert-driven, and the Democrats at least make a ceremonial bow in the direction those experts are not going to be, for the most part, graduates of of expertise and informed opinion from time to time. the Continental Truck Driver Training and Education School, A terrifyingly wide swath of Republicans, on the other hand, worthy though that institution may be. They’re going to be from has come to reject that as “elitism.” Harvard and Stanford and the University of Chicago, and they’ll That is partly understandable. Hierarchy is basic to conserva- probably have investment banks and management consultancies tive thought—every one of ’s ten principles assumes and the State Department or the Federal Reserve on their CVs. implicitly or makes explicit the contrast between the natural hier- They’re going to be elites, and we are going to need them. archies of the harmoniously ordered society and the “deadening The second reason to defend elitism is that where elites prevail, egalitarianism of radical systems”—but there are worthwhile hier- policy outcomes are generally more conservative, or at least archies and defective hierarchies. As progressives colonized the more libertarian, especially on economic questions. In Affluence commanding heights of culture and education, they drew the elite and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in institutions they occupied, from Yale to the Modern Language America, Princeton politics professor Martin Gilens finds that Association, into disrepute. The American Medical Association while there tends to be broad agreement about policy questions ceased to be a medical concern and was converted into a lobbyist across income groups, on those issues where the rich (standing for gun control and other lifestyle-liberal priorities; Harvard and in, imperfectly, for our elite) and the middle-class and poor dis- Princeton got into something like a bidding war over Cornel West agree, the rich generally prevail. The rich are less enthusiastic that was not obviously about the greatness of the celebrity academ- about heavy-handed progressive projects such as that $15 mini- ic’s scholarship, such as it is; teachers’ associations and unions are mum wage, less interested in trade , and generally apostles of social radicalism and foot soldiers for Democratic more open to free-market policies than are the poor, and U.S. pol- campaigns; Hollywood, Broadway, the publishing houses, and icy reflects their outsized influence. The economist Bryan Caplan the major newspapers are almost exclusively monopolies of the notes that on a number of important and emotional issues—and center-left, sneering at those bitter non-cosmopolitans who “cling not only economic ones, but also questions such as free speech— to guns and ,” as President Obama put it; the NFL is U.S. policy is in fact well to the libertarian side of public opinion. infested with risible black-power posturing. Even the leaders of That may not make conservatives happy when it comes to gay the political party purportedly dedicated to the interests of those marriage, but it is generally a win. “Democracy as we know it is held in intense contempt by coastal progressives tend to be prod- bad enough,” Caplan writes. “Democracy that really listened to ucts of the same schools, institutions, and in many cases neigh- all the people would be an authoritarian nightmare.” borhoods as their counterparts on the left, the elites of both Listen to 20 minutes of ’s amusingly bonkers political parties having more in common with one another than radio program and see if the pointy-headed fellow from George they do with truck drivers from northern Louisiana or combine Mason U. is wrong on the merits. mechanics in Nebraska. Sometimes, as on the question of illegal Everyone is an elitist when it really matters: If your child immigration, those cultural fault lines are contiguous with very needs brain surgery, you go to the most elite neurosurgeon you powerful political fault lines. On immigration, the elites are sim- can find, not the one you’d most like to have a beer with. We ply wrong on the substance; on the similar issue of trade, the get away with anti-elitism in politics and in culture because elites (including Democrats such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, the stakes are so low. (What’s the most you’ve ever lost on a when she feels secure enough to be honest) have the policy more presidential election?) (Besides your country.) We should not or less correct, and the anti-elitists hate them all the more for it. replicate the progressives’ error—pretending that there are It falls to conservatives to do the politically difficult and thank- empirically right and wrong answers to questions of preference less work of defending the very elitism that has a non-trivial por- and priority—but we should be forthright about the fact that tion of the Republican electorate up in arms—metaphorically, properly functioning elites are necessary to a healthy and free and perhaps literally if we take seriously the torches-and- society. The current populist vogue notwithstanding, amateurs pitchforks talk from the likes of Sheriff David Clarke. are ill suited even to the pursuit of political power at the highest and most demanding level, much more to the actual exercise of that power. The people raging along to talk radio as they stew HERE are two reasons for that. in traffic could no more do Paul Ryan’s work than the frustrated The first is that the policy questions before us really Steelers fans could do Ben Roethlisberger’s. are complicated, but the American public has neither The Miami Dolphins entered the field beneath a splendid dis- Tcommand of those questions nor the appetite to acquire such play of fireworks; Kim Jong-un and Ali Khamenei dream of command. Hence the endless stupidity that characterizes our fireworks of a different kind—and those fireworks are not discussions of the national debt and deficits, which are dominat- merely decorative but central to the game that is in fact being ed by such picayune concerns as foreign-aid spending (generally played. We are going to need to rely upon people who know the less than 1 percent of federal outlays) or discretionary military difference, who know that the exhortations of the cheerleaders engagements that do not in the end add up to very much in a bud- (“WE THE PEOPLE!” “DOWN WITH THE ELITES!”) are at most inci- get dominated by Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest dental to the contest, and who understand that we don’t always on the debt, and ordinary military costs that we incur whether get to try again next Sunday.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS ‘Tear Down This Big, Beautiful Wall’

E were sitting outside a Chicago hotel, No book. Found a housekeeper, and she refused to do waiting for the Uber. This was the modern anything. She spoke no English except “Talk to lady world in all its glory; the proud towers of downstairs.” Apparently the lobby was chock full of ladies W this bustling and bankrupt city rising milling around with baskets of cast-off items. above, a glass-clad slab in my hand summoning a private Found the concierge, said we’d lost a book. He asked: ride to the airport. America has its problems, sure—but What was it? I wanted to say, “It’s about a long twilight from here it looks pretty darn Great already. struggle that played out on distant stages, a war that con- Daughter: Did you get my book from the hotel room? cluded without a treaty or triumphal parade,” just to see Me, in my head: Pretty sure I didn’t. Out loud: What if the concierge would say, “Got it. The . I don’t is it? know what’s worse, the historical amnesia or the revi- The Cold War book for school! I have to have it! sionism. Let me make a call.” But I babbled “It has ‘Cold Me: We have to go to the airport! What do you need to War’ on it,” and the concierge called lost and found. know? It was the Commies’ fault. We won. Seven minutes on hold—during which I imagined our DAD! I have to have it. plane boarding and departing—and then he said they had Me: Does the front cover show Ronald Reagan kick- it and someone would bring it up. ing down the Berlin wall while holding an American The elevator doors opened, and out stepped a nice flag with an eagle on his shoulder? No? Then you don’t young lady holding an ancient tattered ledger that said need it. LOSTAND FOUND. It looked like the first few entries But of course this wouldn’t fly. So. I jog back to the would be “Spats” or “Celluloid collar stay.” hotel, thinking I’ll get housekeeping on the line before I “Cold War book?” I panted, and she said “Cold War get there. the magical pocket computer, summon book!” And I was off. Down the elevator, out to the Uber. up the digital assistant, and ask her to get the phone num- Daughter greatly grateful. ber for the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza Chicago. “The West had better be the good guys in this book,” I I found 17 Holiday Inns around Jacksonville. said, “or I am not running six blocks and talking to a What? No! Chicago! reservation center in Missouri before rifling through I’m sorry, I didn't find anything for Whatno Chicago. maids’ carts ever again.” Eventually the digital assistant came up with the Sigh. “Everything has to be ‘America is great’ with phone number, which went straight to a reservation cen- you.” ter several hundred miles away, and they couldn’t con- “Kidding! Except, sort of. Yes.” nect me to housekeeping. The actual number of the hotel Earlier we’d been on a riverboat cruise to study the was apparently a company secret. Post it online, and architecture of the great city. We came across an enor- heck, everyone’s going to be calling up, wanting to talk mous modern building, and the guide explained its to someone. genius. The architect had a challenge: The building By now I am thinking it would be fine to make America would be in the middle of several beautiful historic incrementally greater again. buildings. He could defer to them or overwhelm them. By the time I got to the hotel I was cursing everyone He chose the former. She described how the massing of for this delay, certain we would miss our plane, all the building turned and stepped back, with tall grey hor- because of the Cold War. Because of STALIN. Partly my izontal bands located below the roofline of the neighbor- daughter, but mostly STALIN. Had to be greedy. I’m sure ing structures. After it had paid homage and admiration the book said it was partly the United States’ fault too, to its predecessors and established its role in this great because it’s a public school and the teacher will probably tableau, it rose on its own terms—making the building finish the subject by playing Peter, Paul and Mary and an individual but part of a process, tying together all the assigning an essay test on what, exactly, was blowing in different voices from the past. the wind. HIPPIEPOTSMOKEAND B.O., THAT’S WHAT. And then she fell silent. Two sets of long elevator rides later, I was on our floor. The name TRUMP hung off the side of the building in I could see four housekeeping carts. Ran to each one, and yuuuge letters. I looked around; no one was taking pic- looked for a book with THE COLD WAR: TOTALLY OUR tures. Everyone was just staring up at the name in silence. FAULT on the cover, or maybe COLD WAR: REALLY, It’s odd: If you look at them from one angle, the silver COULD YOU BLAME THEM? But no. Sunglasses container, letters shine; from another, the reflections make them children’s shirts, a lost shoe—who leaves behind a shoe look as if they’re peeling. It’s hard to imagine them in a hotel room? Did he come for the Cubs game and crowbarring the letters off the building in a few years decide to have an amputation while he was in town? because the brand is poison, but in the Cold War I’m sure the East Germans kicked the wall and thought: Sure. Mr. Lileks at www.lileks.com. That’ll last.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

in the maintenance and hygienic continu- Wilmer, Patton ance of our clients’ long, happy, loving, A professional corporation and totally not fake marriage, and I am eager to continue in that role. IN RE: CLINTON–CLINTON CONTIN- With best wishes, UATION OF MARRIAGE AGREE- Greg MENT 2000, AND ADDENDA, Wilson & Sterling [dictated but not read] UPDATED OCTOBER 2016 A professional corporation Greg: IN RE: CLINTON–CLINTON CONTIN- Wilmer, Patton Please be informed that the e-mail you UATION OF MARRIAGE AGREE- A professional corporation sent was not read, nor was it stored on any MENT 2000, AND ADDENDA, IN RE: CLINTON–CLINTON CONTIN- memory device within or controlled or UPDATED OCTOBER 2016 UATION OF MARRIAGE AGREE- administered by this firm. MENT 2000, AND ADDENDA, Let’s meet at the Peet’s Coffee on 17th Dear Steve: UPDATED OCTOBER 2016 Street NW to discuss this in public privacy. Many thanks for your phone call yes- From your recent communication, I think terday. Dear Greg: we are close to an agreement. My client is As you no doubt agree, the wisdom of I am in receipt of your disappointing eager to once again resume his role as a our clients, in order to protect their lov- letter from last Thursday. Both I and my “loving” and “devoted” “husband,” as ing and committed and deeply normal client are puzzled as to why you and your these terms are defined in the Basic relationship, led them to engage separate client insist upon delaying the com- Agreement, Appendix H, sections 129– counsel. Over the past 16 years you and mencement of discussions, as 398, pages 12,954–16,982. I have, faithfully, negotiated the terms of has pretty much called it. Steve their solid and affectionate and utterly Look, let’s not get bogged down in not weird marriage. In all areas, includ- details. (That was a joke!) My client is will- ing the number of public moments of Wilson & Sterling ing to entertain an ambassadorship to any skin-to-skin contact (e.g., hugs, pecks, A professional corporation beach-adjacent nation with a legal age of hands brushing against each other, prox- consent within his personal target range, IN RE: CLINTON–CLINTON CONTIN- imate standing positions, etc.), we have subject to negotiation. The rest of the UATION OF MARRIAGE AGREE- engaged in what I would term “good points can be addressed on your timetable. MENT 2000, AND ADDENDA, faith” discussions. Sincerely, UPDATED OCTOBER 2016 Thus it is difficult for me to take your Steve recent proposal (Appendix CXXVI (ii): Steve: [dictated but not read] Proposal to Include White House I am here at the Peet’s on 17th Street. Domicile, and Furtherance of Occupa- Just realized you don’t know what I look Wilson & Sterling like. I’m wearing a grey suit with a white tional Interests) to my client, Secretary A professional corporation Clinton. My reasons are as follows: shirt and a red tie. I’m sitting next to IN RE: CLINTON–CLINTON CONTIN- another man wearing a grey suit with a 1. It is premature to begin discus- UATION OF MARRIAGE AGREE- white shirt and a red tie, but his shoes are sions of the Hillary Rodham Clinton MENT 2000, AND ADDENDA, lace-ups and mine are not. The only other White House before the November 8 UPDATED OCTOBER 2016 person in this Peet’s who is wearing a grey election. My client re mains focused suit with a white shirt and a red tie is clearly on winning the necessary 270 elec- Steve: homeless. Hope this is not you. toral votes via popular voting in each Not saying we’re against talking. Let G state by (for the most part) living and me see what I can do re: an ambassador- breathing voters whose votes cannot ship and all-access WH pass for your Wilmer, Patton be challenged effectively in court; client. The plus-one issue will have to be A professional corporation 2. It would be counterproductive to tabled until January. IN RE: CLINTON–CLINTON CONTIN- amend the current agreement (see Between us: There are still some raw UATION OF MARRIAGE AGREE- Appendix XLV (ii): Plus-Ones, nerves and hurt feelings here re: the pneu- MENT 2000, AND ADDENDA, Steadies, and Awkward Misunder - monia incident when your client could not UPDATED OCTOBER 2016 standings) to include the possibility be located for his contractual obligations of a “flexible” domestic arrangement (see Appendix XV of the Basic Agree - Greg: with respect to the Lincoln Bedroom. ment and the agreed-upon “List of I am wearing the lace-up shoes. I have Essential Behaviors Defining a ‘Loving the documents ready for signature. Will I look forward to discussing these mat- Relationship’”). So I counsel patience. report back to my client when we sign that ters and continuing to represent my client Look for an e-mail tomorrow. they have a legal agreement to continue to you and your client in the weeks and Best, their warm and loving marriage for another months ahead. As you know, our work Greg four years, with addenda. here (alas, unsung) has been instrumental [dictated but not read] Steve

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immigrants started to get noticed, he model that predicts a $40 trillion increase The Facts on encountered another kind of ideological in world GDP from the abolition of all enforcer. Libertarian immigration advo- immigration barriers presupposes the cate Julian Simon wrote him warning that relocation of 5.6 billion (with a “b”) peo- Immigration “anti-immigration people” were citing ple from the Third World to the advanced his work. Simon suggested that Borjas industrial countries. He notes dryly that MARK KRIKORIAN write a disclaimer to be read aloud at “glossing over this number is the politi- “meetings about immigration” by a lob- cally sensible thing to do if one wishes to byist (whose name Borjas redacts) to advocate these types of models in policy “embarrass those who would use you to circles.” You can say that again. that effect.” A more basic assumption of this fan- Borjas never wrote the disclaimer, but tastical calculation, which isn’t in the Simon’s request made a deep impression: footnotes at all, underlies much immi- “There was certainly a lot of pressure to gration research (and policymaking): the make sure that the ‘correct’ interpretation assumption that immigrants are simply was attached to whatever academics were labor units. Thus the book’s title, which writing on immigration, lest the ‘xeno- is from writer Max Frisch’s observation phobes and racists’ get the wrong idea about guest workers in his native and actually begin to cite data from Switzerland: “We wanted workers, but We Wanted Workers: Unraveling the Immigration Narrative, by George J. Borjas (Norton, 240 pp., $26.95) Beatles fan Borjas devotes his first chapter to imagining there’s no EORGE BORJAS’s new book doesn’t tell you what to think countries—the economics of John about immigration, but how to think about it. Lennon’s borderless world. GBorjas, the nation’s leading immigra- research studies.” Borjas doesn’t hew to we got people instead.” Borjas notes that tion economist (and an NR contributor), party lines, whether set by Fidel Castro even in economic terms the immigrant- is also the author of one of the top college or Julian Simon. as-worker perspective is false: “Viewing textbooks on labor economics, now in its That is not to say this is an anti- immigrants as purely a collection of seventh edition. But We Wanted Workers immigration book. Toward the end, he labor inputs leads to a very misleading requires no math you didn’t learn in the makes clear he’s not opposed to immigra- appraisal of what immigration is about, third grade. tion as such, and even favors a certain and gives an incomplete picture of the This is a user’s guide to the policy debate amount of unskilled immigration: “I still economic impact of immigration.” In over immigration, summarizing some of feel that it is a good thing to give some of other words, Immigrants Are People, Too. the basic things we know about its eco- the poor and huddled masses . . . a chance The heart of the book is Professor nomic and other effects, explaining the to experience the incredible opportunities Borjas’s taking readers on a survey of caveats, and pointing out the assumptions that our country has to offer.” Nor is that what we think we know (and what we hidden in footnotes that can radically merely a piety for print; I’ve heard him say don’t know), in chapters covering “the change the results of widely touted studies. something similar to a crowd that proba- self-selection of immigrants,” “economic The overarching lesson of the book is bly didn’t want to hear it. assimilation,” “the melting pot,” “the not to take at face value the assertions of Beatles fan Borjas devotes his first labor-market impact,” “the economic ben- immigration advocates, even (or espe- chapter to imagining there’s no coun- efits,” and “the fiscal impact.” It’s a brief cially) if they’re academics. Enforced tries—the economics of John Lennon’s book, so none of these chapters is espe- “narratives” repel Borjas. Listening to borderless world. This may seem fanciful, cially long, and there’s nothing here that “Marxist-Leninist nonsense” in school in but it’s a standard talking point among any reasonably intelligent layman can’t Castro’s Cuba (he emigrated in 1962 at pro-immigration thinkers that abolishing understand. The material is familiar to me, age twelve with his mother) “taught me frontiers would yield tens of trillions of but even I found his digest of it useful. to distrust authority and to be skeptical— dollars’ worth of additional economic And there are many notable bits along very skeptical—of expert opinion.” growth, and that supporters of limits on the way. For instance, he looks under the Later, as his academic work explor- immigration are “leaving trillion-dollar hood of the estimates of the size of the ing the declining skill level of new bills on the sidewalk,” as economist illegal population, and especially at one Michael Clemens puts it. key assumption in such calculations: that Mr. Krikorian is the executive director of the Center So Borjas decided to read the foot- the Census Bureau’s surveys miss 10 per- for Immigration Studies. notes. It turns out that the mathematical cent of illegal aliens, an error known as

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

the undercount rate. Our research at the government redistribution program.” Center for Immigration Studies uses this “The claim that mathematical modeling Dark same estimate for the undercount, since and data analysis can somehow lead to a it’s the only one there is. But where’s it scientific determination of social policy is from? A single unpublished paper pre- sheer nonsense.” Loyalties sented at a conference 16 years ago look- The main takeaways of his survey ing solely at Mexicans in Los Angeles will be familiar to those who follow the RONALD RADOSH County. Professor Borjas’s lesson: “There issue: There are winners and losers from are good reasons for Americans to be immigration. The small economic gain skeptical about government pronounce- (the “immigration surplus”) arises from ments that purport to describe demo- a large-scale redistribution of wealth graphic or economic conditions in from Americans who compete with politically sensitive issues.” immigrants to those who use immi- Elsewhere he illustrates differing grants. And that small economic gain opinions over immigration’s harmful may be entirely canceled out by the fiscal impact on low-skilled Americans by burden of providing government ser- quoting a post from libertarian econ- vices to immigrants. omist Bryan Caplan titled “Are Low- Perhaps the most important lesson Skilled Americans the Master Race?”: comes in the final chapter, “Who Are “Economists are used to rolling their You Rooting For?” Here the economist True Believer: Stalin’s Last American Spy, by Kati eyes when people object to better poli- acknowledges that economics can’t Marton (Simon & Schuster, 304 pp., $27) cies on the grounds that some special determine immigration policy—this is interest will suffer from the change. It’s ultimately a political question, not a HOSE familiar with the Alger time to cross the final frontier, and start technocratic one: “In the end, different Hiss case may remember Noel rolling our eyes when the special inter- beliefs about the right thing to do will Field as one of the people est is low-skilled Americans.” (No, this often lead to different immigration poli- identi- is not a parody.) cies, regardless of what the underlying Tfied as a Soviet spy. Like his friend Hiss, Borjas also discusses what he calls models and data say.” Field was an upper-crust young man: He “saving-the-narrative research,” which Borjas devotes a few pages to spelling grew up at a lakeside villa in Switzerland, whips the data until they sing that immi- out some of his own policy preferences. returning to the U.S. only to attend gration doesn’t have an impact on low- He would continue the current mixed Harvard. In 1918, when Field was 14, he skilled Americans. He specifically focuses system “that generates economic gains met his father’s friend Allen Dulles at a on his reappraisal of earlier research on by admitting high-skill immigrants but lunch held at the villa. Decades later, the impact that the Mariel boatlift had on that also ‘does good’ by admitting some Dulles must ha ve been stunned to learn wages in Miami. Contrary to the old saw of the huddled masses.” He doesn’t spec- that the young man he had turned to and that academic disputes are so bitter ify numbers and categories, but does asked “What do you plan to do with because the stakes are so small, here the offer some concrete items: secure the your life?” had grown up to become an stakes are large and the bitterness, while border, punish law-breaking employers, agent of Stalin. masked, is nonetheless evident. His engage in benign neglect of the current In her riveting page-turner, which main target is Giovanni Peri, a pro- illegal population until we fix enforce- includes information from previously immigration economist who, with a co- ment. He devotes the most space to call- unavailable archival manuscripts, Kati author, wrote, “We think the final goal ing for an immigration counterpart to the Marton offers us Field’s entire story, of the economic profession should be Trade Adjustment Assistance program, to following him as he evolved from an to agree that . . . we do not find any sig- ensure that some of the gains from immi- idealist and pacifist to a committed nificant evidence of a negative wage gration are redistributed to those who Communist, willing to sacrifice literal- and employment effect of the Miami suffer from immigrant competition. ly everything for Stalin and the Party. boatlift.” Borjas’s reply is visceral: You might not agree with all of his Field was not alone. His pro-Soviet “Such a call to arms reminds me very choices—I don’t—but this isn’t a book activities took place in the era de - much of the Marxist-Leninist teachers about his preferences. Instead, Borjas scribed in Arthur Koestler’s novel at that revolutionary school in Havana offers a roadmap for thinking through Darkness at Noon (1940) and in the long ago: They believed. All that was left the consequences of your own policy period immediately after its publica- was to compel everyone else to believe preferences, with the added counsel tion. Koestler’s protagonist, a commit- as well.” that “prudence and caution are traits ted Soviet police operative, willingly Aside from that, Borjas’s tone is mea- that would serve us well in the immi- goes to his execution—not because he sured and sober throughout. But “mea- gration context.” sured and sober” doesn't mean ambiguous However much you think you know Mr. Radosh, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson or equivocal: “The politically correct nar- about immigration, you’ll learn some- Institute, is the author or co-author of many books, rative is wrong: Immigration is not good thing from this book. And buy a second including The Rosenberg File and Spain for everyone.” “After all is said and done, copy for your congressman—he needs it Betrayed: The in the Spanish immigration turns out to be just another even more than you do. Civil War.

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is guilty of anything, but because he with a full-throated performance, in becoming a fierce, independent-minded believes it is necessary to serve the Russian, of “The Internationale,” the opponent of totalitarian regimes, who Party’s current line. Field would illus- Communist anthem. made her own way and ended up suffer- trate the truth of Koestler’s fictional In 1936, Field was presented with a ing the consequences of her relationship character. Koestler’s novel had a major new opportunity that matched the with the Fields. impact on his generation’s view of Soviets’ goals. He was asked to take a Then Field began working out of Stalinist barbarism; Marton’s biogra- job with the League of Nations disar- Marseilles for a relief group, the phy of Field will acquaint a new gener- mament section in Geneva, where he American Unitarian Universalist Service ation with how the search for utopia could be of use to the already existing Committee. His job was to get the ultimately led Field to sacrifice his own Communist-led anti-Nazi movement. interned refugees settled in Eastern and well-being and that of the people he Paul Massing, who later broke with Central Europe, hoping that the loved for the Party’s needs. Communism, noted that, unlike himself Communists he sent back to their home- After graduating from Harvard with and his wife, Field remained a true lands would be in place to build honors in two years, Field, with his wife, believer: “The more irrational, nonsen- Communist states in Europe. “My Herta, went off to Washington, D.C., sical the Soviets behaved, the more goal,” Field bragged, “was to set up a where he entered the West European devoted he was. For Noel, the leaders of Red Aid—to save our cadres.” Marton division of the State Department. Work - the Revolution can do no wrong.” writes that what he worked for was sim- ing there through the 1920s and into the Field certainly proved his loyalty and ply to rescue and return “Communists to Great Depression, Field, like others of his willingness to follow Stalin’s orders their homelands, to start the revolution his generation and social class, turned to when Ignace Reiss, a former top Soviet of his dreams.” Communism, believing that it could put agent in Europe, became disillusioned One family that was notably anti- an end to the failed capitalist economics after the purge trials in Russia. Field was Communist and waiting for passage to that was producing such disastrous asked to me et Reiss and help lure him to Martinique had their small stipend from effects around the world. He thought another agent, who would see to it that the Unitarian committee cut off by Field. Herbert Hoover lacked compassion; he Reiss was killed. Reiss was found with Yet the Communists interned in France drew comfort from Hoover’s defeat and twelve bullets in his back in a forest whom Field supported, Marton notes, hoped that FDR would be open to radi- near Lausanne. Later, Field told the were kept “healthy, well fed, well funded, cal solutions. Massings: “I helped arrange the assassi- and connected to each other.” But Field did not want to wait, and nation of your great friend. He was a Ironically, when the war ended, the had something bigger in mind than traitor. He deserved to die.” people Field had helped who went on to open participation in the American Like leftists the world over, Field sup- have leadership positions in local Communist movement. He met two ported the Republican Popular Front Eastern European Communist parties Soviet agents, Hede and Paul Massing, government in Spain, which had won became the very people whom Stalin who were dispatched to the capital in power in 1936. Now it was threatened and his secret police would use to 1934 to set up American cells for the with overthrow by the invading forces “prove” Field guilty of espionage against Soviet intelligence network. They, along of General Francisco Franco. The inter- Communist powers. In Stalin’s view, all with the American spymaster J. Peters, national Left saw this as a fight between those Communists who had escaped the established the Ware group, which Fascism and democracy, and, with Nazi Nazis and gone to the West or gone to included both Alger Hiss and Field’s and Italian Fascist support of Franco, as Spain to fight against Franco were sus- close friend Larry Duggan. The net- a dress rehearsal for a new world war. pect, possibly “contaminated” by reac- work’s goal was to steal government Field would spend four months in Spain tionary ideas. documents to be sent to Moscow and to for the League, helping to repatriate Field was the perfect American scape- gain entry into critical departments members of the International Brigades goat who could be tied to the now- such as State, War, Treasury, and after the Republic’s collapse. Since the despised Tito of Yugoslavia, who had Interior, where they could influence majority of the Brigade’s fighters were broken with Moscow and taken an U.S. policy. Peters immediately saw the Communists, it was a way for him to independent path. Stalin’s henchmen potential in Field. As Marton writes, he blend humanitarianism and solidarity asserted that, while working with the preferred “tall, pedigreed WASPs,” with the Soviet Union. Unitarian relief agency, Noel Field had since no one would believe that “a In Spain, the Fields took responsibility brought back to Eastern Europe imperi- well-mannered young man with deep for Erica Glaser, the 14-year-old daugh- alist spies, all of whom were coordinated New England roots and immaculate ter of a doctor and his wife who had to by none other than CIA chief Allen appearance such as Noel Field could flee the country after Madrid fell to Dulles. Soon, Stalin would stage a betray his country.” Franco in 1938. Erica had been working major purge trial in both Hungary and So began Field’s journey. The Mass- with her father in makeshift hospitals Czechoslovakia, in which the leading ings successfully recruited him to work when she contracted typhoid fever and Communists confessed to treason and for the NKVD. In 1935, he agreed to was unable to travel. The Fields became implicated Field as the agent they served spy for the Soviet Union. Lest they her surrogate parents. As Marton puts it, in the supposed Titoist conspiracy. question his commitment, Field drove next to his wife, Erica was “the most Deciding to stay and live in the new the couple to the Lincoln Memorial, important person in Noel Field’s life.” Communist countries, Field went to ascended the steps, and serenaded them But she eventually rejected his ideology, Czechoslovakia. Once there, he was

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

immediately grabbed by the secret po- Conard first achieved notoriety with lice, drugged, and taken to Hungary, The another election-year book: Unintended where he was put in a secret prison in Consequences (2012), a Wall Street– which he was interrogated, brutally tor- friendly account of the financial crisis and tured, and brought almost to the brink of Downside of an extended attack on the Obama admin- death. Other Hungarian Communists istration’s first-term fiscal policies. “Be - were tortured until they corroborated Romneyism cause my business partner, Mitt Romney, that they had been recruited by Field. was running for president when Un - Eventually, Field, too, confessed, saying JASON WILLICK intended Consequences was published,” that his recruitment of Communists was Conard writes in the introduction to The a cover for getting them to join the CIA. Upside of Inequality, “the media held up Men were put to death as a result of my book as a defense of the 1 percent.” Field’s false testimony. Though this characterization was unfair, Later, when Erica, Field’s brother he decided to take it as a challenge. “The Hermann, and Hermann’s wife, Kate, critics’ demand for a comprehensive went to Eastern Europe to search for defense of income inequality,” he says, in him, they too disappeared and were a preview of the gleefully contrarian atti- imprisoned and tortured. Only Erica tude that animates his argument, “planted bravely refused to grovel. She was kept the seeds for this book.” up 24 hours a day for five days and Mounting an intellectual defense of the nights, suffering “icy nights of mental market and the unequal outcomes it pro- and physical torture,” leaving her unable The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions duces is a critically important project, to stand up or walk. The Hungarians sen- Undermine the Middle Class, by Edward especially in the face of a newly ener- tenced her to death at the age of 31 and Conard (Portfolio, 320 pp., $29) gized Left increasingly convinced that packed her off to Russia. She was sent to government can command and control Vorkuta, north of the Arctic Circle, where ITT ROMNEY nostalgia is the allocation of resources with few if she laid railroad tracks in subzero tem- cresting among conserva- any trade-offs. But Conard’s effort to do peratures. Only Stalin’s passing allowed tive intellectuals, and for so falls short on a number of fronts, begin- her to escape death. She was freed in good reason. In 2012, ning with his tone and style of argument. 1955, as the most brutal form of RomneyM offered an inclusive center- Like his former colleague, Conard has a Stalinism was in retreat. right politics, one with an appeal starkly tendency to lionize “entrepreneurial risk- Apparently, Noel Field did not learn different from that of Donald Trump’s takers” and use value-laden consultant anything from his experiences. He was 2016 campaign. Trump has a withering buzzwords that obscure more than they finally freed because of the defection to disdain for policy specifics; Romney illuminate. For example, the top 1 percent the United States of the very Hungarian demonstrated comprehensive mastery of income earners are never “rich” or Stalinist torturer who worked on Field of the ins and outs of governance. “wealthy” or “affluent”; they are only and who then told the United States of Trump’s moral record is highly ques- “successful.” (Relatedly, the government Field’s whereabouts and of his situa- tionable; Romney seemed to epitomize does not tax the “incomes” of high earn- tion. Freed by the regime, Field chose personal integrity and virtue. Like ers, it only taxes their “success.”) to live in Czechoslovakia and help many others, I entertained the fantasy of While Conard is confident that lower build the Communist system that had Romney-as-white-knight well into the top marginal tax rates would make suc- imprisoned him. long, hot summer of 2016. cessful people work harder and invest Field explained himself in an article In this new book, Edward Conard— more, he is concerned that cutting taxes he wrote for an American Communist Romney’s longtime friend, business on the middle and working classes (i.e., magazine. He said he bore no ill will associate, and high-dollar fundraiser— non-successful people) would have the toward those who tortured, jailed, and has produced an extended defense of the opposite effect. “The lower price of gov- abducted him because they “hate the economic philosophy that drove the ernment services will motivate demand same things and the same people I Romney-Ryan campaign. And while the for more services,” he says (in an inter- hate. . . . Given their in my guilt, thrust of his argument—that inequality is esting inversion of traditional starve- I cannot blame them. . . . I approve a necessary condition for and by-product the-beast fiscal policy). “Lowering the their detestation.” What he called the of economic growth in the 21st century— middle-class tax rate . . . will likely lower “fundamental truths” of Communism is correct, the book also serves as an inad- work efforts and increase government would “inevitably win out over tempo- vertent reminder of the profound flaws in dependence.” The view that people of rary aberrations.” the donor-class economic ideology that modest means are if anything not taxed With those chilling words, one finds was a more significant force in pre-Trump enough might raise eyebrows today, but it the essence of the totalitarian mentality. Republican politics than we nostalgists was sadly at the heart of Republican One cannot be “right against the Party,” sometimes remember. orthodoxy during Obama’s first term, as Leon T rotsky once famously wrote. forming the basis of Paul Ryan’s “mak- Only the cause matters; the individual is Mr. Willick is a staff writer at The American ers-vs.-takers” framework and Romney’s but its humble servant. Interest. infamous “47 percent” remarks. And

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while both candidates from the 2012 And armies of consultants and accoun- in U.S. government bonds rather than ticket have distanced themselves from tants are enriched by the complexity of “risk-bearing capital” that promotes inno- these positions, Conard unabashedly the U.S. tax and regulatory codes. vation and wage growth. Conard muddles doubles down, insisting that people who This type of “upward redistribution,” these points somewhat when he says that pay less in taxes than they consume in as Teles calls it, doesn’t account for all of the elite that engineered and benefited government services should be “more the rise in economic inequality over the from the trade and immigration policies appreciative of the benefits they are last several decades. But it has played an has no responsibility for working- and receiving from others.” important role, and an effective center- middle-class wage stagnation (and that The Manhattan multimillionaire’s right party would seek out and eliminate people who get more in benefits than they moralism flows from his confidence that forms of rent-seeking and state-enforced pay in taxes have nothing to complain the distribution of wealth in America is a special privileges rather than howl with about, anyway). near-perfect reflection of individuals’ tal- wounded indignation when the public The Upside of Inequality is flawed, but ent and hard work. “The evidence shows expresses concern that the gains from it is also admirably forthright. Conard the top 1 percent of income earners have decades of economic growth have has no qualms about expressing views he largely earned their success by commer- accrued disproportionately to those who knows will be highly unpopular. Some cializing successful innovation,” he says. were already wealthy. of his insights—on the importance of Moreover, the economic surplus from the Though Conard’s tone is aggressively supply-side incentives, the payoffs from innovations they create is captured over- anti-populist, he parts with the Wall Street innovation, and the role of trade—are whelmingly by working- and middle- Journal consensus in offering populist well reasoned and worthy of attention. class families. So why are demagogues prescriptions on immigration and trade. But most of all, this book is useful for dis- “demonizing” entrepreneurs? “To advocate both for more immigration playing what Conard, despite his obvious Conard makes important and under- and for faster wage growth for the work- intelligence and business acumen, fails to recognized points about the proceeds ing and middle class is to work at cross- grasp: that attention to middle-class prior- from innovation; Steve Jobs made Ameri- purposes,” Conard says, recognizing that ities is not optional in politics, that the cans as a whole far wealthier than he the post-1970 wave of less skilled immi- GOP’s supply-side shibboleths can easily made himself. But his representation of gration has suppressed wages. He also veer into self-serving moralism, and that, America’s 1 percent as consisting almost highlights the uneven impact of U.S. trade as journalist Michael Brendan Dougherty entirely of Silicon Valley innovators policy: “Lesser-skilled workers,” he says, has said, “the market was made for man, (most of the wealthy people he cites with “suffer the entire burden of lower wages and not man for the market.” In other admiration are technology tycoons) is but capture only a portion of the benefits words, if and when the Republican party highly misleading. As Jonathan Rothwell from lower-priced offshore goods.” recovers from crude Trumpian populism, demonstrated in a Brookings paper last Moreover, massive U.S. trade deficits it must be careful not to succumb to the March, just one in 20 1 percenters are have depressed productive investment: plutocratic temptation that afflicted the employed in high-tech fields. Foreign governments park their surpluses last GOP campaign. The vast majority of America’s wealthiest people are not entrepreneurs but doctors, lawyers, dentists, bankers, consultants, and even university admin- HOMELAND istrators. While most of these people are talented and highly trained, they are also “. . . I cannot sing well positioned to use government power Amid this horror.” to extract rents from the rest of the public. —Anna Akhmatova Doctors, lawyers, and dentists all control (early draft of “Poem without a Hero”) access to their professions through guilds that are often more concerned with maxi- Months pass without a single word recorded, mizing their members’ compensation Eliminating each suspicious link: than with advancing the public interest. The terrorizing, barbarizing, sordid, (Think of the American Bar Association’s The ones who poison tea, with those who drink. strict barriers of entry to the legal market.) “O, most false love, where be the sacred vials As Steven Teles has argued in National Thou should’st fill . . . ?” A subject lethally dosed, Affairs, bankers are also implicitly subsi- I lurch at each new week’s compounding trials dized through the “insurance of the too- Exploding round, like Hamlet’s father’s ghost. big-to-fail status” and “the creation of a Official, noncommittal X-ray vans huge pool of assets for investment man- Roll swiftly past with purpose, formal seal agers through a variety of tax-advantaged A tip suggesting something heavy scans savings devices.” College administrators For cruel contraband, through stone and steel— benefit from federal higher-education Their fluid cool and zero room for error regulations, which favor entrenched insti- Lending an added facet to the terror. tutions, and from student-loan subsidies, —JENNIFER REESER which enable them to raise tuition prices.

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of the old KGB. A major reshuffle of view of the complacent Western re - Cold War Russia’s security agencies this fall has sponse to Putin. “The e-mails of the created a new super-agency called the Democratic National Committee were Ministry of State Security. The agency, hacked and released, effectively oust- Redux which revives the name of Stalin’s ing its chair just before the Democratic secret police between 1943 and 1953, National Convention,” he writes. “This J O H N F U N D will be as large and powerful as the old looks like a Russian special operation Soviet KGB, employing as many as in the U.S. presidential election, and 250,000 people. the most shocking element is that most Russian hackers appear to have bro- Americans do not understand that or ken into computer systems throughout seem to care.” In addition, Donald the U.S. government and American Trump’s former campaign manager political organizations, not to mention worked for Putin’s puppet in Ukraine local election systems. This appears to until the pro-Western uprising there, be part of an effort to spread uncertainty and Trump, his family, and one of his and turmoil about the legitimacy of foreign-policy advisers have done tens this November’s presidential election. of millions of dollars’ worth of busi- A brand-new report by Dutch authori- ness in Russia. ties conclusively proves that the missile Douglas E. Schoen and Evan Ross launcher that destroyed a Malaysian air- Smith contend that, when all the Putin’s Master Plan: To Destroy Europe, Divide liner over Ukraine in 2014—killing 298 pieces of Russia’s actions are assem- NATO, and Restore Russian Power and Global people—was brought across the border bled, they represent nothing less than a Influence, by Douglas E. Schoen with Evan from Russia and that the missile was global strategy to break up NATO, Roth Smith (Encounter, 200 pp., $23.99) fired from a field controlled by pro- reestablish Russian influence in the Russian fighters. world, and, most of all, marginalize ARELY has a book been as The Kremlin recently sponsored a the United States and the West. The timely and relevant as this conference on the right of “self- strategy is multi faceted. It includes one, a valuable summary of determination” in Western countries. It military action (as seen in Georgia, how Russia’s aggressive for- hosted Texas, Hawaii, and California Ukraine, and Syria) and support to eignR policy is reshaping the world. secessionists in an effort to stir up ten- rogue regimes and terrorists, as well This fall, news shows have continually sions in the U.S. This “Dialogue of as espionage, propaganda, cyberwar- Longtime observers of Russia and Putin say that recently Russia has, at every turn, held the upper hand in its dealings with the U.S.

led with evidence of Russian president Nations” conference received a specific fare, and the use of energy policy to Vladimir Putin’s overseas meddling, grant from Putin’s office. blackmail European nations into sup- including a worldwide propaganda Longtime observers of Russia and porting Russia. campaign, stealthy subversion of adver- Putin say that recently Russia has, at Putin’s advisers have been quite saries, and possibly even interference in every turn, held the upper hand in its open about their methods. The chief of U.S. elections. dealings with the U.S. “Obama says the Russian general staff, Valery Consider just a few examples. A whatever he wants to say, Putin does Gerasimov, has said that Russia is now humiliated Obama administration broke whatever he wants to do,” says Garry pursuing a “a new kind of war” that off talks with Russia over the Syrian Kasparov, a former Russian chess relies heavily on cyberwar and influ- crisis, after it became clear that our gov- grand master and current head of the ence operations. “A perfectly thriving ernment was being played for a fool by Human Rights Foundation. “And if you state can, in a matter of months and Putin. Russia has subverted various look at the map—you look at the even days, be transformed into an arena negotiated cease-fires and has pursued Middle East, you look at Europe—for of fierce armed conflict,” Gerasimov a scorched-earth strategy to keep its any observer, Putin is winning. Obama pointed out in a now-famous 2013 arti- ally, Bashar Assad, in power. As part of keeps sending John Kerry to the Middle cle, through “political, economic, that strategy, Russia works closely East and Putin keeps sending tanks and informational, humanitarian, and other with Iran and its proxies, including jet fighters. Obama retreated from some non-military measures—applied in Hamas and . key parts of the geopolitical map. Putin coordination with the protest potential Putin, who was a KGB secret-police immediately filled the vacuum.” of the population.” officer before the collapse of the Soviet Anders Aslund, a senior analyst at Schoen and Smith report evidence of Union, has presided over the resurrection the Atlantic Council, shares Kasparov’s little-noticed Russian involvement. On

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North Korea, for instance, the authors write: “Since Putin became president in 2000, Russia and China have provided Books in Brief North Korea with $17 billion in aid and URREPTITIOUSLY $10 billion in debt forgiveness. The —one might even say, with Sandburg, “on little cat total assistance of $27 billion is two S feet”—a social revolution has overtaken America. It has been joked that and a half times the GDP ($11 billion) the Internet was invented for national-security and industrial purposes of the North Korean economy.” but is now dominated by, about evenly, porn and cat videos; and it took the And when it comes to the European Internet to make people realize just how dominant the feline presence in our Union, the Syrian conflict has, in addi- national life has become. The number of house cats in the U.S. is approaching tion to allowing Russia to cement a per- 100 million, reports journalist Abigail Tucker in The Lion in the Living Room: manent military force in the Middle How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World (Simon & Schuster, 256 East, driven millions of refugees into pp., $26)—and she tries to explain how this happened. Europe and thereby further attenuated Unlike other domesticated animals, cats serve no obvious utilitarian the EU’s resistance to the Putin regime: purpose: They do not (outside of certain highly questionable restaurants) “Europe’s struggle to deal with the provide human beings with food, nor do they protect our homes or carry social, political, and security ramifica- our burdens. So how did they become a household fixture? Tucker tions of the mass Muslim migration has not only distracted the world from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but also strengthened Putin’s hand against an increasingly fractured European com- munity—and further weakened the EU as an institutional force.” Then there is Turkey, whose presi- dent, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is increasingly looking to Russia for assistance and even inspiration in establishing an authoritarian state. Schoen and Smith point to the danger that Putin could help destabilize Turkey, a valuable NATO member, and lead to increasing division within NATO ranks. The book concludes with some sug- gestions for a sober, realistic approach to contain Putin. “In the short term,” the authors write, “we can send a clear mes- explains that the house cat is the animal that took the lead in its own sage by deploying additional bomber- domestication: As wild cats, such as lions, started heading toward extinc- borne nuclear weapons in NATO tion, the smaller animals that eventually became house cats scrounged for countries that agree to host them. Since food in the garbage surrounding human settlements. That’s how they got the Russians have already violated the involved with human beings. They were subsequently accepted into the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear households because of their cuteness—which, Tucker points out, “is not Forces Treaty, we should scrap it and an arbitrary . . . quality”: deploy land-based nuclear missiles.” They also suggest adding to NATO House cats are blessed with a killer set of what Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz troop deployments in Poland and the calls “baby releasers”: physical traits that remind us of human young, and set off Baltic States. a hormonal cascade. . . . [They] cue a pleasurable, drug-like “oxytocin glow” in By the end of the book, one is left human adults and trigger a set of nurturing behaviors, including enhanced fine- with the clear impression that the motor coordination that prepares us to cradle a baby. Cold War is returning, simply under new Russian management. The levers This fascinating book goes on to explore many other aspects of the house- of Western power that helped defeat cat phenomenon, including the much-discussed question of whether the the Soviet Union have grown rusty, pussycats literally cause mental illness in their owners. (The evidence is sug- and Putin is exploiting that fact. For gestive but still inconclusive.) If you have relatives or friends who are mad now, his moves look like those of a about cats—and the strong statistical probability is that you do—consider master chess player, while the coun- putting this book under their Christmas tree. termoves of Obama and too many —MICHAEL POTEMRA Western leaders resemble a game of Wiffle Ball.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Film Today’s Nat Turner

ROSS DOUTHAT

HE BIRTHOFA NATION starts with a crackerjack idea for a historical epic: the story of Nat Nate Parker in The Birth of a Nation Turner, the rebel slave, and his T1831 uprising in Southampton County, than its uncomfortable reception, that its fearsome than Tarantino’s Django or any Va. If you liked the brutal realism of 12 creator’s personal sins are obscuring what other cinematic revenger. But Parker’s Years a Slave and the slaveowners-get- those initial audiences saw. (That Gibson performance is trapped betwixt and be - theirs catharsis of Django Unchained, had counseled Parker during the making tween: The movie grants him piety and Turner’s famous story promises both ex - of the movie, and that a few critics had bloody visions, but the script keeps swing- periences for the price of one. And at first compared Birth to Braveheart, made me ing back to Ordinary Man Pushed Too Far the promise seemed fulfilled: Produced particularly hopeful that it might rise tropes, with the rapes of his wife, Cherry and directed and co-written and head- above its director’s demons.) (Aja Naomi King), and a little later his lined by Nate Parker, a young African- But no: The Cannes audience was friend’s wife, Esther (Gabrielle Union), American actor who had nothing like this wrong, and the wan reception is mostly as the crucial moments in a “Charles on his résumé, Birth earned standing ova- justified. The Birth of a Nation has the Bronson in magnolias and moonlight” arc. tions at Cannes, got purchased for a raw material of a great American epic, All of this leaves the story overly clut- ridiculous $17.5 million by Fox Search - but the execution is disappointingly ham- tered, so that by the time we arrive at the light, and looked poised to ride a wave of handed, and the main character—one of final, final turning point—Nat decides adulation (plus a little “Take that, Trump” the most fascinating of the entire slave to baptize a white man, some sort of out- sentiment) to the Oscars. era—never comes fully into focus. cast, which finally brings his master’s But then came the intersectionality The structure of the film is sound wrath upon him—it feels rushed and buzz saw. Along with a wrestling team- enough: We meet Nat first as a boy, play- confusing and lacks the theological mate, Parker had been accused of sexual ing happily with Samuel, his master’s son, weight that it should bear. assault in 1999, while he was a sophomore and having his talents noticed by Samuel’s And weight is what the movie lacks at Penn State. His teammate was convict- mother (Penelope Ann Miller), who fate- across the board. Parker has a painterly ed, he was acquitted; their (white) accuser fully gives him a Bible and teaches him to eye at times, but too often his imagery accused them of inciting racial harassment read. But then the master of the house dies, veers kitschward: Some of the religious against her on campus; years later, in and it’s decreed that Nat be sent back out visions feel like The Passion of the 2012, she killed herself. On the promo- to pick cotton, his gifts set aside in favor of Christ by way of Thomas Kinkade. The tional trail, Parker did not handle the a field hand’s lot. musical cues are potent but obvious: revival of this story particularly gracefully, Flash-forward to adulthood: Samuel, “Swing Low” for the cotton fields, and people began to point out unsettling now played by Armie Hammer, is a decent “Stran ge Fruit” for a hanging. The dia- resonances in the film itself—particularly but dissolute master of a failing plantation, logue is often flat and modern-sounding; the (invented, ahistorical) rape of Turner’s while Nat has taken up a role as preacher the script desperately needed a working- wife and the broader use of sexual vio- to the slaves. Again his talent is noticed, over in the successful faux-antique style lence as a spur to the character’s rebellion. this time by the local minister, who recom- of 12 Years a Slave. And for a movie Amid all this social-justice controversy, mends that Nat be rented out to preach to about a radical black preacher, the ser- the reviews turned lukewarm. There was other mistreated slaves, to keep them qui- mons in The Birth of a Nation are mostly more talk about the movie’s various his- escent under their masters’ cruel rule. perfunctory, and even the fieriest mo - torical inaccuracies, some angry think- Needing money, Samuel agrees, and Nat ments get cut off before they can reach a pieces accusing Parker of making a male goes forth to preach and—more impor- real King James–style climax. revenge fantasy that condescends to tant—to witness the crimes that will Finally, the women are, as those think- African-American women, and a general inspire him to rebellion. pieces suggested, mostly props, about sorrowful take that The Birth of a Nation Unfortunately the movie isn’t content as fully realized as Liam Neeson’s fam- just wasn’t the movie that those Cannes just to show us a devout man’s gradual ily in the Taken movies. On this point, ovations had led people to expect. radicalization; it feels the need to pivot and on the larger question of whether As a critic of the social-justice wars’ to typical revenge-drama motivations Parker’s movie is artful enough to make effect on criticism—and as a defender, just as well. The real Turner was a zealot the viewer forget about his sins, the last issue, of Mel Gibson’s artistic talent— and a mystic, an African-American John social-justice police turned out to be FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES I was hoping to report that Birth is better Brown, something far stranger and more decent film critics after all.

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a little atavistic, but mostly consoling, be - the first page said it had been checked out Country Life cause Mother never lets us down. twice, in 1976 and 1988. Behind this town Except when she does. We were dri- is a big, rolling orchard. They have build- ving, as we drive every October, to the ings with cider presses, refrigeration, stor- Apple- hillside orchard of the agronomist. For ten age for crates. The trees march in rows up bucks, you get a bag of apples and a lec- and down an undulating landscape. We Picking Time ture on the history of every variety. The got our picker poles—long handles bear- way goes past the spring pipe—a never- ing metal baskets with clawed ends, like failing rope of water, where people go to angry lacrosse sticks—and drove in. fill plastic jugs when their pumps fail, or On a normal October day, the place for any other reason. Doug was parked would be jammed. The path for cars there, so we stopped. We told him our des- splits, to accommodate coming and tination; he said, don’t bother. There was a going vehicles. No need for that now. late frost in the spring; there is not one Some trees were actually leafless, most apple in the entire valley. We had heard were simply barren of fruit. Had there about the frost in April when it happened, been a battle here? A blight? There was after a warm March; at the time we not a soul to be seen. RICHARD BROOKHISER thought we had heard that it nipped all the We had been told there were some peach buds, but nothing else. Yet when we Romes past the pond, at the bottom of the OU can buy autumn produce drove on, past the Trump signs and the orchard. The ground fell off to a large-ish in the stores, but if that were abandoned farm and the pokeweed, we pond, paved in duckweed. Finally, a row enough, why do the country were greeted at the orchard by a hand- of trees, with one parked car. u-pick places fill this time of lettered sign confirming Doug’s account. In normal years, the fallen apples lie yearY with customers? Cars nuzzle in the We inquired, in person and online. The underfoot; you discard anything blem- dirt parking lots hood to tailpipe, fender to owner of the biggest u-pick place has a ished, and of the other ones you take a bite, fender; extra help directs overflow traffic parvenu surname, since his ancestor and then cast the sample away. Now, apple to otherwise unused fields. Inside the barn arrived in the valley only in the 19th cen- picking was a treasure hunt: You squinted, or outbuilding where the cash registers tury, but the ancestor wed the live, harried parents make last-minute daughter of a family that had decisions about whether to buy their arrived in the 17th century, so he broods hayrides or food for the donkeys. became native by marriage. The There is a brisk side business in ice-cream 21st-century farmer was selling sandwiches, humorous rustic postcards, pumpkins, late tomatoes, late and freshly fried donuts. When the sky is sweet corn, late raspberries, any - blue and the wind is still, it can be a heav- thing and everything he can enly experience, the earthly curtain call coax out of the ground. He had that seems as if it will never end in a dark- had a few apples, but they were ened, shut-up theater. sold long ago. The Italians who Going out to see fruits and vegetables bought a little old farm on a on trees and in the dirt rather than on a back road and made it as artsy shelf in aisle three satisfies an ancient fan- as Tuscany—we call it (not to tasy. men discovered cities, them, of course) sprezzatura in they hankered for the countryside. The campagna—had al fresco oven- desire runs from Theocritus to Jefferson to roasted pizza, homemade hard Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor. We are not cider, and a selection of books on country against the sun, for dark round shapes. there ourselves anymore, yet we know we living. But no apples. The rambling, Then you reached up, between spindly, once were, and we understand, however shambling hilltop orchard that never sharp, small branches, to snatch a fruit, or sketchily, that our next meal will have sprays, and looks it, yet somehow goes to jog the limb on which it hung, hoping begun there. Behind both the tasting menu on from year to year, had no apples. But to make it fall. and the frozen TV dinner lurks the farm. the website of the biggest orchard in the The Rome apple is a big red beauty, Earth is mother, and for those too dena- valley said they had some. discovered in Ohio in the early 1800s, tured to have any experience of the fact, This orchard is behind the fancy town— prized for its color and size. The few we culture, high and pop, supplies a hundred the one with a handful of old stone houses, got were red, but the size of golf balls. clues. Even the digitalized sex mania that an old wooden barn, an old inn, a grange Some were folded, like grimacing old is 92 percent of our intake (in this particu- (that is now something else), a church (still people. Chickadees scolded, a hawk cir- GETTY IMAGES / lar election cycle, make that 98 percent) praying), and an old stone library. I bought cled overhead. After half an hour we had gives a hint: What are the divas and selfie- a de-accessioned book there once, The a bag and a half—a small bag and a half. takers but fertility goddesses decked out Cape Cod Lighter, a collection of “23 new It was worth it, for the chase and the in bling and not much else? Taking a stories” by John O’Hara; it was published lesson. Mother loves you, but not al- ALEKSANDER RUBTSOV day-long agrication is fun, a little exciting, in 1962, and the withdrawal slip pasted to ways enough.

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Happy Warrior BY DANIEL FOSTER Asymmetric Rhetorical Warfare

OME of you won’t read this column until after that anthropogenic carbon emissions can affect climate. But Hillary Clinton is elected 45th president of the because climate alarmists so rarely distinguish between that United States. But I’m writing it before she is, and fairly compelling science and the far shakier climate models S so it feels like I should offer some summation of that suggest impending catastrophe, and because they often these, the longest 83 years of my life, or perhaps a few simply assume that evidence of man-made weighty portents of things to come. is ipso facto an argument for punching the global economy But, really, what’s left to be said? Much less by your wea- in the crotch, it makes a certain amount of sense that conser- ried scribe. Our misery is so over-determined at this point that vative opinion elites would resist yielding any rhetorical the mere continuance of this election seems proof that time is ground on the subject. a sadist. I mean, at this point the coffin is more nails than pine. This dynamic has played itself out across a number of With each new foul discharge from the Re publican nominee, policy areas in recent years, and it is becoming increasingly my couch feels more and more like Milliway’s—the “restau- clear that it is a mistake. To pick just one example, it turns out rant at the end of the universe” in Douglas that conservative wonks such as NR contrib- Adams’s comic sci-fi novel of the same utor Avik Roy have been largely vindicated name—where time-traveling diners clever I’ve spent a for warning that Obamacare was horribly enough to make a reservation after their visit designed and doomed to cost more and can watch the Big Crunch, over and over, good deal of appeal to fewer Americans than promised. from inside a temporal bubble that rocks time thinking But because Roy’s and others’ arguments back and forth across the end of everything. were complex and obscure, and because the Okay. Maybe that’s a bit dark. about how the bill’s proponents were content to cast all But like a lot of us, I’ve spent a good deal opposition as being by or on behalf of heart- of time thinking about how the institutions institutions less corporate shills, the popular conservative of the Right (one lesson of all this is that you of the Right discourse descended to similarly simple- can no longer, and probably never rightfully minded depths and made the debate an all- could, call them “conservative” institutions) can better out battle to stop “socialized medicine.” can better serve their constituencies. How There is of course plenty of truth in that do we produce a public attuned to all the serve their characterization, but in making the debate subtle and unsubtle ways that progressive constituencies. comprehensible for laymen and defining it assumptions and prejudices skew the dis- in terms that would get their blood up, the course without egging them on so much they go full Alex GOP severely limited its own ability to maneuver. It so raised Jonestown Massacre? the stakes that even legitimate victories—such as the work What we don’t want is to produce figures such as Bill by Marco Rubio and others to close the spigot on taxpayer Mitchell. If you’re not familiar with Mitchell, an upstart bailouts for insurance companies—were ignored or inter- Internet radio host and madman, I envy you, because MIT preted as capitulations. propeller-heads have named him the layman with the most This is the painful bit of truth in the Left’s insistence that social-media influence in the election as he flatters his conservative institutions precipitated the alienation, and even- conspiracy-addled followers with “100 percent” guarantees tually the complete cognitive secession, of the segments of that Hillary will lose and assures us that the GOP nominee’s the GOP electorate who turn to Drudge and Breitbart and ground game isn’t in a massive data operation, “it’s in our Infowars for their information. The bad news is that I don’t hearts.” In a recent Weekly Standard profile, we learn that have any solutions. The really bad news is that we’ll have Mitchell is a 56-year-old lover of musical theater, and that plenty of time to think them up. “being a bachelor left him enough time to obsess over his Of course the Left and its collaborators in the press can favorite news sites, Breitbart, and the blog of Gateway hardly be held harmless in this whole mess. Four years ago Pundit, where he’d been a frequent commenter for years.” they elevated “binders full of women” to a kind of statutory Poor Bill’s personal reckoning cometh, and that right soon. rape, and they spent last spring solemnly warning that Ted I don’t envy him his November 9, but I do wonder what can Cruz was the real monster, and they have generally taken be done to keep his successors off the model-airplane glue. every opportunity to display their contempt for the concerns I’ve long been an apologist for asymmetric rhetorical that could drive folks to the soothing pledges of a low-rent warfare. I’ll explain what I mean by example. Years ago I sociopath and the legion of Baghdad Bobs who promise his appeared on a podcast arguing, contra a progressive inter- impending triumph. locutor, that opposition to aggressive, expensive schemes to A promise that—if you’re only just getting around to counteract potential climate change—things such as carbon reading this issue after it sat on your coffee table a few taxes, cap-and-trade, and alternative-energy subsidies—do days—you know was empty before the polls even closed on not actually require denying the underlying science suggesting the West Coast.

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Preserving and promoting the legacy of William F. Buckley Jr.

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organization, was founded by Bill Buckley in 1991 to advance the conservative principles he championed and complement the editorial on how you can leave a mission of National Review. permanent legacy and use your SRVVLEOHDGYDQWDJHRIWD[VDYLQJVassets to support your principles A legacy gift to the National Review Institute is an opportunity—a lasting opportunity—to invest in a perpetually imperative mission that is central and beliefs—including the to who you are and to how you wish to be remembered. for you and your family—please The National Review Institute Legacy Society provides a way for National call us today at: ReviewQDPLQJ1DWLRQDO5HYLHZ,QVWLWXWHDVDEHQHÀFLDU\RIDQ,5$RULQVXUDQFH’s most loyal friends and readers to support the Institute with an estateSROLF\ ZLWKWKHDGGHGSRWHQWLDOEHQHÀWIRUVLJQLÀFDQWWD[VDYLQJV gift through a will, living trust, or other accounts (such as possibly 212-849-2806 or visit us online at: nrinstitute.plannedgiving.org base_new_milliken-mar 22.qxd 10/18/2016 3:14 PM Page 1