An Oklahoma Boy, Oil, and American Prosperity Fall

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PONNURU ON OBAMA’S FALL EDUCATION ISSUE PSEUDO-MODERATION WILLIAMSON JOHN J. MILLER: Sam Brownback—What’s Right with Kansas ON SANCTIMONIOUS WHITE LADIES

StrikingStriking ItIt RichRich AN OKLAHOMA BOY, OIL, AND AMERICAN PROSPERITY

JAY NORDLINGER on

HAROLD HAMM

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OCTOBER 28, 2013 | VOLUME LXV, NO. 20 | www.nationalreview.com BOOKS, ARTS ARTICLES & MANNERS

54 THE MESSIANIC STYLE 16 THE GREAT MODERATE by Ramesh Ponnuru Michael Knox Beran reviews Obama’s self-image in the health-care fight. Wilson, by A. Scott Berg. WHEN IT’S ALREADY BROKEN . . . by Avik Roy 18 57 A NEW WORLD OF WORK Obamacare was doing badly before the shutdown. Michael R. Strain reviews Average Is Over: Powering America 22 STUFF LIBERAL WHITE LADIES LIKE by Kevin D. Williamson Beyond the Age of the Great Wendy Davis and the end of Ann Richards Democrats. Stagnation, by Tyler Cowen.

26 HOPE SPRINGS CAUTIOUSLY by John O’Sullivan 58 THE WAR LOVER A Labour victory could bring long-term advantage to British conservatives. David Pryce-Jones reviews Gabriele D’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War, FEATURES by Lucy Hughes-Hallett.

30 AN AMERICAN STORY by Jay Nordlinger 60 THE DEEPEST TRUTHS The rise of Harold Hamm, Algeresque oilman. Sarah Ruden reviews The Experience of God: Being, 34 THE NTH STATE by Charles C. W. Cooke Consciousness, Bliss, Rural Coloradans want to break with their city neighbors. by David Bentley Hart.

37 WHAT’S RIGHT WITH SAM BROWNBACK by John J. Miller 61 BAD JUDGMENT A look at the Kansas governor. John Fund reviews Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off EDUCATION 2013 the Bench, by John R. Lott Jr.

40 LESSONS FROM KATRINA by Jillian Kay Melchior 62 BEFORE OPRAH The transformation of New Orleans has transformed its schools, too. Florence King reviews Self-Help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America, THE SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS by Richard Vedder 43 by Steven Watts. Obama’s proposals won’t reduce tuition, but markets will.

45 TOMORROW’S ONLINE SCHOOLS by Andrew Kelly Let’s get them here today. SECTIONS RETHINKING HIGH SCHOOL by Chester E. Finn Jr. 48 2 Letters to the Editor Our model is half a century old. 4 The Week 52 The Long View ...... Rob Long 50 THE PROHIBITION OF CHILDHOOD by Joshua Dunn 53 Athwart ...... James Lileks Innocuous play is punished amidst dangerous conduct. 56 Poetry ...... Sally Cook 64 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

NATIONAL RevIeW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATIONAL RevIeW, Inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 2013. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., NATIONAL RevIeW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONAL RevIeW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATIONAL RevIeW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATIONAL RevIeW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters:QXP-1127940387.qxp 10/9/2013 1:54 PM Page 2 Letters OCTOBER 28 ISSUE; PRINTED OCTOBER 10

EDITOR Richard Lowry Senior Editors A Taboo Worth Keeping Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts I am the author of one of the pieces Jonah Goldberg addresses in his article Literary Editor Michael Potemra “The Taboo Cliché” (September 30). While I don’t speak for the other authors Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy Washington Editor Robert Costa he discusses, I know that in the case of my Washington Post op-ed (“The Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson Unintended Consequences of Laws Addressing Sex between Teachers and National Correspondent John J. Miller Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Students,” August 30), his extremely reductive approach utterly misses my Deputy Managing Editors point and trivializes the topic. I did not write this piece out of any desire to gain Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Associate Editors Internet infamy as the poster child for sexual relations between students and Patrick Brennan / Katherine Connell Production Editor Katie Hosmer teachers, but rather out of concern for whether the societal reaction to certain Research Associate Scott Reitmeier types of sexual activity does more damage to the victim than the experience Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace itself. There is ample authority for this position, which is quoted in some of my Contributing Editors Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn longer responses to my critics. Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg / Florence King By reducing the topic to flippant sobriquets and puerile puns, Mr. Goldberg Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi sidesteps the more interesting and subtle points about taboos. Taboos create an Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne Reihan Salam / Robert VerBruggen impermeable wall around certain activities that extends even to rhetoric and dialogue. It is not unreasonable to suggest that in some cases this distorts the NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez societal responses to these topics in ways that are not uniformly healthy and Managing Editor Edward John Craig National-Affairs Columnist John Fund beneficial. Not so long ago in this country, interracial marriage was one of these Media Editor Eliana Johnson taboo topics. The media response to my piece by both the Right and the Left Political Reporters Andrew Stiles / Jonathan Strong was noteworthy for the extremes to which most commentators went to misrep- Reporter Katrina Trinko resent my logic, perfectly illustrating the type of journalistic opportunism and Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke Associate Editor Molly Powell hysteria that ensues when someone challenges an accepted narrative about a Editorial Associates Sterling C. Beard / Andrew Johnson taboo. Technical Services Russell Jenkins And thanks to Mr. Goldberg, once again the concept of examining taboos has Web Developer Wendy Weihs Web Producer Scott McKim been relegated to a circus freak show and escapes serious critical consideration.

EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan Betsy Karasik

NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE Washington, D.C. BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Alec Torres / Betsy Woodruff Contributors JoNAh GoLdBeRG RepLIeS: I want to apologize to Ms. Karasik if I insinuated Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza anything or made any other kind of representation about her motives. First, M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner motives are a distraction and questioning them is often poor form. Second, and David Gelernter / George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart more important, I truly have no idea what Ms. Karasik could have been think- Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune ing. This is especially the case if controversy and scorn weren’t her objectives. D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Ms. Karasik suggests I am trivializing the issues, but she is the one who Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Vin Weber wrote the following: “As protesters decry the leniency of [Stacy dean] Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Rambold’s sentence—he will spend 30 days in prison after pleading guilty to Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak raping 14-year-old Cherice Morales, who committed suicide at age 16—I find Business Services myself troubled for the opposite reason.” She then proceeded with a flimsy Alex Batey / Alan Chiu / Lucy Zepeda Circulation Manager Jason Ng pastiche of an argument held together with gauzy nostalgia for the days when Assistant to the Publisher Kate Murdock she and her teenage girlfriends had consensual sex with their teachers. In her WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 letter, Ms. Karasik makes reference to “ample authority” that supports her SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 position. Maybe some does. But in her op-ed, the only authority she cites is a WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 barely relevant comedy routine by Louis C.K. about pedophiles. Not only will Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler I maintain my healthy skepticism about the burning need to lift the taboo on Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet teacher–student sexual relations, but I will do so in the full knowledge that the Associate Publisher Paul Olivett list of comedians Ms. Karasik can cite is long. Director of Development Heyward Smith No doubt there are—and certainly there have been—some taboos worth Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell overturning. But the rule that teachers shouldn’t bed their underage students PUBLISHER Jack Fowler isn’t one of them, Ms. Karasik’s nostalgia notwithstanding. CHAIRMAN John Hillen

CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected]. FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. 2 | www.nationalreview.com OCTOBER 2 8 , 2 0 1 3 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 10/4/2013 11:33 AM Page 1

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n Our World War II vets surely remember when “To the barri- cades!” had an entirely different meaning.

n The Obama administration celebrated the shutdown face-off by barricading open-air public monuments and scenic-view stops on public highways, and telling fishing boats to stay out of Florida Bay (between the Everglades and the Keys). They also blocked parking lots at Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. Now Mount Vernon is certainly a national monu- ment, but it has been owned since the 1850s by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, a private organization that has never taken a cent of government money. Washington, remember, was the man who wrote his cousin (July 20, 1774): “I think the Parliament of Great Britain hath no more Right to put their hands into my Pocket, without my consent, than I have to put my hands into yours, for money.” One can only imagine the frigid gravity with which he would regard Park Service hacks putting barriers in front of his house.

n The rollout of the Obamacare exchanges was an ill omen indeed. Websites intended to be used to enroll people in the program went down and stayed down, and many of those that were up were dysfunctional. Many did not have prices available, so those who wanted to enroll were expected to do so fly- ing blind. Infogix, a firm that handles data issues for major insurers such as WellPoint, Cigna, and several Blue Cross n Before another audience, Obama sneered, “If you’re working groups, estimated that as few as one application in 100 could here and in the middle of the day you just stopped and said, be processed. “It is extraordinary that these systems weren’t ‘. . . I’m gonna shut down the whole plant until I get something,’ ready,” said Infogix CEO Sumit Nijhawan. Other insurers had you’d get fired.” Strangely, his audience cheered. When workers higher estimates, but even they said that less than half of appli- shut down a plant until they get what they want, it is called a cations could be processed. The fact is that nobody froze his strike, and President Obama and his party are notable supporters toes off at Valley Forge to set up an insurance brokerage, and of the right to conduct one. Either he has unilaterally suspended the federal government is showing itself inept at the business the National Labor Relations Act, in which case he has our admi- into which it has inserted itself. Obamacare is deeply flawed ration, or he simply cannot hear himself when he speaks, in conceptually, and it is as flawed in the particular as it is in the which case he has our envy. general, as the rollout is showing. If a medical device had Obamacare’s failure rate, it would be forced off the market. So n The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate should be Obamacare. Change (IPCC), more or less the arbiter of the global “climate- change consensus,” in September released its fifth report, reach- n President Obama’s big health-care speech, delivered in ing pretty much the same conclusion as its other reports: Humans Largo, Md., in September, represented a new low for clarity continue to push carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to al - and for honesty. Hidden among the usual hits was an attempt most unprecedented heights, while temperatures are rising to ex - to cast the link between the funding of the law and the raising cep tion al ly warm levels (though the temperature projections are of the debt ceiling as illegitimate. Obamacare, the president slightly milder than those in the previous IPCC report, in 2007), said, has “nothing to do with a budget.” Really? This was a and the IPCC now says with 95 percent certainty that humans law, remember, that was crowbarred through Congress using have caused that warming and will continue to do so, up from 90 reconciliation, a procedure reserved for budgetary matters; that percent in 2007. The report essentially elides the fact, which has increases the size of the federal budget by between 5 and 10 become widely accepted only in the past couple of years, that percent; that was sold as a deficit-reduction measure; and that warming appears to have slowed or stopped over the past 15 boasts an unprecedented mandate that was questionably years, while carbon dioxide levels continue to soar. This calls into declared a tax by the Supreme Court. Obama’s claim has noth- question the reliability of the models used to describe the key re -

ROMAN GENN ing to do with the truth. la tion ship at the heart of climate-change predictions: the rela-

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THE WEEK tionship between greenhouse-gas levels and global temperatures, n Wendy Davis, who attracted national attention by trying to pro- both atmospheric and oceanic. The IPCC report, for all its rigor tect the abortionists of Texas from safety regulation and to keep and complexity, does not adequately address these issues. One abortion legal after the 20th week of pregnancy, is running for variable remains predictable in all this: aversion to reexamining governor. Candidates with extreme pro-abortion positions can be the most alarmist conclusions. elected in many parts of the country (and even win the presidency). Unfortunately for her, Texas is probably not one of n The Supreme Court has approved voter-ID laws and struck them—let alone one of those few places where a candidate down perpetual preclearance requirements under Section 5 of defined almost exclusively by enthusiasm for abortion can win the Voting Rights Act, and one might think these decisions had high office. Davis can expect to be celebrated in the press, to gar- restored the VRA to its intended role of stopping true voter sup- ner contributions from liberals nationwide, and to lose. pression. But, as Blutarsky said in Animal House, “Noth ing’s over until we say it is!” In that spirit, Attorney General Eric n Next year’s Republican primary in Georgia’s eleventh con- Holder is suing North Carolina over recent changes in its elec- gressional district is likely to be a crowded slugfest. The incum- tion laws, most notably a photo-ID requirement and a re duc tion bent, Representative Phil Gingrey, is running for the state’s open in the number of the days for early voting. And Holder is ask- Senate seat, and seven Republicans seek to replace him. One is ing not just for these provisions to be struck down, but for the former representative Bob Barr, a loud voice of the Republican entire state of North Carolina to be placed under preclearance Revolution of 1994, and the Libertarian party’s presidential can- (not even the original VRA went that far), using Section 3’s didate in 2008. Barr’s shift from down-the-line conservative to little-known “bail-in” provision. To win, Holder must prove Libertarian-party stan- that North Carolina has intentionally violated the Constitution dard-bearer reflected dra - with the goal of restricting voting rights on racial grounds, ma tic shifts in viewpoint. admittedly a tall order. But even if he doesn’t succeed, this He voted for policies tak- black attorney general, serving under a twice-elected black ing a hard line in the war president, can still use the allegation to give his dwindling band on drugs, then renounced of liberal true believers one more excuse to convince them- them. He in troduced and selves that nothing has changed since 1963. voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, then later n This summer, the Obama administration sued the state of insisted that marriage Louisiana over its private-school-voucher program for low- policies should be set income students in failing schools, in the name of fighting seg- only by states. He voted regation. The Department of Justice contended that the program for the PATRIOT Act, impedes integration, in violation of longstanding de seg re ga tion then spent much of the orders. This attack on a program that benefits, almost exclusive- following decade calling ly, poor blacks may have seemed misguided from the start, but it a dangerous overreach now we know just how hollow it is: A new study from the School of governmental power. Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Ar kan sas He went from drawing found that student transfers in the program made both the a tough line on illegal schools they left and the schools they arrived at more integrated. immi gration to telling School choice is accomplishing, gradually, what forced busing Libertarian audiences he and government fiats never have accomplished, including at the didn’t support a border private schools to which students are sent. At least as long as the fence. Once a consistent Jus tice De part ment doesn’t get its way. pro-lifer, Barr avoided the issue entirely as the Libertarian nominee, deflecting questions about abortion. Now that Barr is run- n So it turns out that Bill de ning in a deeply conservative district in the suburbs northwest of Blasio, probable next mayor Atlanta, his tune changes again. His campaign website declares: of New York, and his wife, “Bob has the experience needed to stand up for family values Chir lane McCray, spent their and most importantly protecting the sanctity of human life.” AP PHOTO

: 1994 honeymoon in Cuba. Georgia’s voters can do better than en dorse this latest batch of

BARR Were flights to North Korea cynical repositioning. ; too expensive? New York City is a liberal place, and n Everything was set for Carnegie Hall’s opening night: The PICTUREGROUP

/ some people cling to youth- Philadelphia Orchestra would play, Yannick Nézet-Séguin ful folly even into their thir- would conduct, Joshua Bell would solo on his violin, etc. But ties. But to think of someone the stagehands decided Carnegie Hall would not have an open- like de Blasio celebrating ing night: They struck, meaning the concert could not take TERRENCE JENNINGS / his happiness in a despo- place. Carnegie Hall’s stagehands are among the luckiest tism so opposed to so many people on earth. The top guy makes $530,000. And don’t lose AP IMAGES

: of his own ostensible ideals sleep over his colleagues: They all make more than $400,000. is, sadly, not very surpris- Carnegie Hall was establishing an Education Wing, and trying

DE BLASIO ing. to afford to do so. Hall officials wanted the union out of this

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THE WEEK wing; the union said noth- There are countless unemployed people in this country who ing doing. Soon, a com- would be happy to set out chairs and stands, for less than promise was reached. But $400,000. the ability of a handful of unionized millionaires to n American Special Forces captured Abu Anas al-Libi, the al- prevent Opening Night for Qaeda terrorist responsible for the 1998 bombings of thousands is hard to under- American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 stand. This is worse than people and set the stage for 9/11. Anas was snatched at his the tail wagging the dog: house in Tripoli. Justice delayed can be just fine. On the same This is the tail banishing day, another American raid—half a continent away, at the town the dog from the house. of Barawe on the Somali coast—killed the bodyguards of a

Apples and Obama

HE online rollout of Obamacare is already the biggest ing has been getting blurrier for decades, but Obama T IT disaster in American history. Admittedly, this is a has taken things to a whole new level. He eschews much fairly short history. If the Internet had existed during of the nitty-gritty detail work of politics, preferring to give the New Deal, you can be sure that there would have been big speeches to friendly crowds. He even turned his problems downloading all of those NRA codes (at which presidential-campaign apparatus into a permanent inde- point, in Joe Biden’s telling, FDR would have gone on TV pendent political army to pressure the political world to reassure the American people). from outside the traditional two-party system. President Obama tried to shrug off the “glitches.” And, so far, it’s failed. Organizing for America pulled “Like every new law, every new product rollout, there are out all the stops on gun control. They couldn’t even going to be some glitches in the sign-up process along achieve Obama’s fairly humble goal of getting a vote in the way that we will fix,” he insisted. “Consider that just Congress—they didn’t even aim for a legislative win, a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile just a vote. OFA has also worked tirelessly in the effort operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, to get young people to sign up for Obamacare (the sys- so they fixed it.” tem will go into an actuarial death spiral if the young People have had a lot of fun with this low-gear spin. and healthy don’t buy more insurance than they need Apple doesn’t force you to pay a fine if you don’t buy an or want). It’s impossible to know exactly how that’s iPhone. If the late Steve Jobs had handled the rollout of its going, since the enrollment process has gone about as most important product in a generation this badly, he’d smoothly as a Miley Cyrus performance at the Vatican. probably have been looking for a new job. The “glitch” in But there are good reasons to believe that getting the iPhone operating system didn’t stop people from being young people to vote as a feel-good exercise is a lot able to use the product, and it was seamlessly fixed after easier than getting them to write a check for insurance a few days. The Healthcare.gov “glitches” are in fact struc- products. tural defects that may take weeks or months to repair. While it’s fun to joke that the Obama administration Apple doesn’t use tax dollars . . . relied on the best and the brightest Amish computer Oh, you get it. You could go on all day pointing out programmers available, there’s an important lesson flaws in the president’s analogy because, well, it’s not a here. A lot of people love politics because they love the very good analogy. excitement of campaigning. They love the feeling of A better, more illuminating comparison is between the shared effort, the strategizing, whatever. And because Obama campaign’s technological brilliance and the they know and love the politics, they think they know Obama administration’s thumbless grasp of very similar and love governing, too. But there are very different technology. It’s a time-honored observation by pols and skill sets applicable to these very different worlds. On ESTO / pundits to note that there’s a difference between cam- the campaign trail, shovel-ready jobs are everywhere. paigning and governing. “You campaign in poetry,” In the government, shovel-ready jobs are an inside Mario Cuomo famously observed, and “you govern in joke. It’s a shame and a marvel that, five years into his JEFF GOLDBERG / prose.” presidency, Barack Obama still doesn’t understand I think it’s fair to say that no president has been more that. confused on this basic point than Barack Obama. In fair- ness, the distinction between campaigning and govern- —JONAH GOLDBERG COURTESY OF CARNEGIE HALL

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planner of the Westgate-mall attack, a barbershop; a mob broke in, and beat and killed him. A video though the target escaped. We shows his body being dragged from the first floor, attached to a salute the enterprise and skill of our tractor, and driven around the streets before burial. The Mus- troops, and the resolve of President lims of Delga then exhumed the corpse and kept on dragging it Obama in dispatching them. Such around. Homer describes Achilles tying the body of Hector to whack-a-mole must be a technique his chariot and dragging it around, but at least Hector had lost in any anti-terrorist repertoire. But his life in combat. Far from anything epic, the lynching of Hani we would have more confidence in Iskander Thomas shows only how barbarity persists down the it if the administration were not ages. so feckless in dealing with proto- Islamists such as the Muslim n If there’s one thing Barack Obama is proud of, it’s being Brotherhood, or with established different from George W. Bush. That, he is. Bush sent terrorist despots in Syria and Iran. Nowruz greetings—i.e., New Year’s greetings—to the people of Iran. When Obama came in, he sent such greetings to “the n The removal by the army of former president Mohamed people and leaders of Iran.” He referred to the country as “the Morsi in Egypt set off attacks on Copts all over the country in a Islamic Republic of Iran”—just the way the theocrats want it. sort of unofficial but determined jihad. What happened in Delga Ordinary Iranians, and certainly the democrats, have a differ- is symptomatic. The town is 150 miles south of Cairo, and ent view of their country. In his recent speech to the United Copts formed a third of the population of 120,000. Calls went Nations, Obama twice referred to the head mullah, out that Muslims in Cairo were under attack, “and everyone Khamenei, as “Supreme Leader.” There are all sorts of things with a weapon” should save them from the Christian infidels. an American president must do for the sake of diplomacy. The result, as absurd as the calls themselves, was an attack on This is not one of them. the Copts of Delga. In the course of several weeks of violence, pro-Morsi forces captured the town from the authorities; van- n Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s instantly famous charm dalized dozens of Coptic properties, including the 1,600-year- offensive did indeed charm Christiane Amanpour of CNN. old monastery of the Virgin Mary; and drove out the bishop and Rouhani shares the view of his regime that the Holocaust did well over a hundred families. Hani Iskander Thomas had owned not happen, or that if it did, not many died. She asked him Great Role Models!

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THE WEEK whether he accepted the Holocaust for what it is. His answer in Farsi and its translation in English generated textual criti- n Nicolás Maduro, successor to Hugo Chávez as strongman cism. CNN has published a transcript that shows Rouhani to of Venezuela, was stopping in Vancouver on his way to New be a master of wea sel words: He does not deny the York, where he was to address the U.N. General Assembly. Holocaust, exactly, but neither does he say it is a fact of his- But he decided to head back to Caracas. Why? He was trav- tory. Amanpour tried to make a scoop out of his ambiguity. eling in a Cuban plane (Russian-made), accompanied by a On her CNN website she made out that he admitted that the cool twelve Cuban agents, all of whom had been issued Holocaust had happened. Fars, the official Iranian news Venezuelan passports. (The Spanish newspaper ABC pub- agency, at once accused CNN and Amanpour of fabrication, lished the names of the agents.) Maduro’s relation to the putting words into Rouhani’s mouth. He does not believe in Castro brothers is quasi-filial, as was Chávez’s. A U.S. offi- the fact of the Holocaust, according to the agency, and CNN cial, speaking to Bloomberg News off the record, said that and Amanpour should account for “untrustworthy and mis- Team Maduro was concerned that the Cuban plane would leading coverage.” If it had been true that Rouhani accepted be seized in the U.S. Maduro had a more interesting expla- and deplored the Holocaust, of course, her report would have nation: He said that two condemned him to spend the rest of his life in house arrest, or Republican former diplo- worse. mats, Otto Reich and Roger Noriega, were n Things are desperate in Greece, and Golden Dawn, the plotting to kill him. Greek neo-Nazi party, is a function of that despair, all very Evidently Maduro déjà vu. Nikos Michaloliakos, the 56-year-old party leader, thought that say- enjoys the title of Führer. The party emblem is a warped ing he was afraid swastika. Members, of whom there are 400,000, do the of our current straight-arm salute. “Blood, honor, Golden Dawn,” they like diplo matic rep- to chant. Golden Dawn holds 18 of the 300 parliamentary resentatives would seats and ostensibly has been going from strength to stretch credulity too strength, becoming the third most popular party in the coun- far. try and positioned to challenge and even bring down the governing coalition. Until, that was, a Golden Dawn member assassinated in the street Pavlos Fyssas, a hip-hop artist n A lawyer from Finland, Kari Silvennoinen, flew into Mos - and so, by definition, a leftist. Wearing balaclavas and body cow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for a meeting with a partner, Vasily Davydov (they are pursuing a criminal case to be heard in Finland). Whereupon Silvennoinen was arrested and held overnight without food or water. He was allowed to call Davydov, who in turn spoke to the border guards, concluding that they just wanted to scare the two of them off the case. But there’s more to this. In Soviet days the Finns prac- ticed Finlandization, a policy of appeasing their demanding neighbor. Not Kari Silvennoinen: He is the author of The Soviet Guilt and Soviet War Crimes against Finland, titles that speak for themselves. Putin has certainly found a target who can understand his gesture.

n Kenyan soldiers and doctors, cataloguing the victims of the al-Shabab attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi, were stunned by the savagery of the terrorists. Hostages were hung from hooks; children were stabbed with knives; eyes, ARIANA CUBILLOS ears, noses, digits, genitals were gouged out or ripped off / with pliers. This tracks the behavior of al-Shabab’s allies AP PHOTO and soulmates, al-Qaeda, wherever they took control in Iraq :

(bestial behavior that finally turned local Sunnis against MADURO armor, the police arrested 18 prominent party members— them). Islamo-terrorists claim to be defending Islam. That is ; lawmakers among them—and have a list of some 30 more to a question for theologians. What they manifestly believe in round up on a charge of belonging to a criminal organization. is death—the death of others, followed by their own, with an A legal report links Golden Dawn to the murder of Fys sas, erotic absorption in the process. The only words that seem PETROS GIANNAKOURISM another killing, three attempted murders, and numerous appropriate are Julia Ward Howe’s: “Let the Hero, born of / assaults. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras vows to wipe out woman, crush the serpent with his heel.” AP PHOTO

Golden Dawn. His grandfather committed suicide in the war, : when the German swastika flew on the Acropolis. Should the n “‘If only you had been a boy,’ my mother complained,” Golden Dawn parliamentarians be acquitted, Samaras may Nancy Verhelst, 44, related before her euthanasia in Brussels

have committed political suicide. on September 30, explaining what she experienced as the MICHALOLIAKOS

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Authentic Historical AuthenticReproductions Historical Reproductions WeWe foundfound ourour mostmost importantimportant watchwatch inin aa soldier’ssoldier’s pocketpocket t’s the summer of harrowing flights in a B-24 bomber and machinery. 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He finds an interesting He nicknamed the watch Ritorno for enjoy the rare, the classic, and the day. He’s only weeks away from now valued at $42,000 according to produced quartz movement. If you timepiece in a store just off the Via homecoming, and the rare heirloom is museum quality, we have a limited returning home. He finds an interesting The Complete Guide to Watches. But to enjoy the rare, the classic, and the Veneto and he decides to splurge a now valued at $42,000 according to number of Ritornos available. We hope timepiece in a store just off the Via our family, it is just a reminder that museum quality, we have a limited little on this memento. He loved the The Complete Guide to Watches. But to that it will remind you to take time to Veneto and he decides to splurge a nothing is more beautiful number of Ritornos available. We hope way it felt in his hand, and our family, it is just a reminder that remember what is truly valuable. If you little on this memento. He loved the than the smile of a that it will remind you to take time to the complex movement nothing is more beautiful are not completely satisfied, simply way it felt in his hand, and healthy returning GI. remember what is truly valuable. If you inside the case intrigued than the smile of a return it within 30 days for a full the complex movement are not completely satisfied, simply him. He really liked the Wehealthy wanted returning to bring GI. this refund of the purchase price. return it within 30 days for a full hunter’sinside the back case that intrigued opened little piece of personal Stauer 1944 Ritorno $147 him. He really liked the We wanted to bring this refund of the purchase price. to a secret compartment. 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THE WEEK theme of her childhood. As an adult, she underwent sex- ideology he embraced in the 1930s. Its triumph was followed change surgery. It was botched, and the cause of her subse- by floods of refu gees, first to South Vietnam, then to the United quent depression was no more mysterious than the cause of the States, or to death in the South China Sea. Two centuries ago longstanding sexual-identity crisis that set in motion the events Byron hoped that the fall of Napo leon would teach the world to of her painful life and her responses to them. She felt unloved scorn charismatic pseudo-liberators. “That spell upon the as a girl and harmed by the operation that turned out badly. Each minds of men / Breaks never to unite again.” But the spell has event led her to make a decision against her body, and the doc- been rewoven many times. Dead at 102. tors in both cases respected her autonomy. What they lost sight of was her self. n Tom Clancy was a hit in Ronald Reagan’s White House before he became a hit with the public—the president called n Guido Barilla, chairman of the eponymous pasta firm, The Hunt for Red October a “perfect yarn,” and his personal caused a kerfuffle when he said that he would not choose to endorsement helped launch a remarkable literary career. A use a gay couple in company advertisements, “not out of a native of Baltimore, Clancy was an insurance salesman in lack of respect, but be cause I do not see it like they do. [My rural Maryland who had a passion for military hardware. It idea of] family is a classic family, where the wo man has a took a specialty publisher—the Naval Institute Press, loosely fundamental role.” He said that he welcomed gay customers tied to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.—to sense but affirmed that those who dislike his views could always “eat another pasta.” The usual firestorm of enraged wailing erupted, and Barilla backed down in the face of boycott threats. The takeaway from the Barilla megillah is an unfortunately familiar one: Sug gest that a family needs a wife and mother and you are in the crosshairs.

n Elevating food preparation to the status of free speech, a restaurant in Chicago quotes the First Amendment on its website, where the owners argue that what they mean to express by their introduction of “The Ghost,” as they call their new burger special, isn’t what their critics think and, besides, even if it were, they’re allowed to express it. Ingredients include goat shoulder and red wine. Topping the dish is a Communion wafer that the restaurant says is uncon- secrated. The burger is named after a Swedish band whose vocalist goes by the name Papa Emeritus II. Members of the band dress as Catholic cardinals to round out the act, a piece his first novel’s potential and put it into print, at which point of heavy-metal boilerplate involving Satanism and the dese- it found a fan in the Oval Office. The story of a Soviet naval cration of symbols the church holds sacred. Anyone tempted officer and his defection in a state-of-the-art submarine, The to shower the insipid performers with salt, as in exorcism rit- Hunt for Red October is both a masterpiece of popular writ- uals, should save it for their eponymous burger, which is ing on a technical subject and a first-rate thriller. More best- equally tasteless. sellers followed, such as Red Storm Rising, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, and Clear and Present Danger. Clancy eventu- n Vo Nguyen Giap, a ally became a brand, with his name not only affixed to book Vietnamese Communist covers but also connected to movies and video games. He general, commanded the was a baseball fan who became a part-owner of his beloved siege of Dien Bien Phu in Orioles, a generous donor to medical research, and an 1954 and the Tet offen- American patriot. Dead at 66. sive in 1968. The latter, unlike the former, was a THE SHUTDOWN failure on the ground—a grand attack, crushingly A Modest Bargain repulsed. But Giap under- EMOCRATS and the press are portraying the partial shut- CARLOS OSORIO / stood that the battlefield down of the federal government as a catastrophe for the

AP PHOTO included the minds of his nation and for Republicans. It is neither, and the Obama

: D enemies. So a war-weary administration’s ham-handed responses to it—the refusal to CLANCY

; United States believed negotiate, the unwillingness to follow the Clinton administra- that it, like France, could tion’s policy of cooperating with Republicans on reopening por- never prevail; we would tions of the government, the petty closures of memorials—have RICHARD VOGEL

/ leave Vietnam for good undermined its ability to win a political victory. seven years later. Giap’s There is, however, also no sign that the shutdown will force AP PHOTO

: victories were in the ser- Democrats to make the concessions that some Republicans had

GIAP vice of Commu nism, the hoped they could get—such as denying funds to Obamacare.

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Republicans may win tactical victories over who deserves blame for closed tourist attractions, but no strategic gains are in prospect for conservatism. With no reason to panic or exult, conservatives should calmly assess the options now available to them. They should, as they do so, continue to eke out those tactical wins. They should, for example, continue to advocate bills to fund portions of the government, such as the National Institutes of Health, countering the spin about Republicans’ intransigence. One option for Republicans would be to try to end the impasse by having the House pass a bill that funds the government while also including the Vitter amendment, which overrides a lawless executive ruling exempting Congress from the harsh treatment of its insurance benefits that would result from the letter of Obamacare. It would be hard for the Democrats, even with the assistance of the press, to stand for keeping the government shut down in the name of congressional compensa- these cases would Republicans achieve a policy triumph for the tion. If they folded, Republicans would score a PR win from the ages. No strategy gets us there on this side of the next two elec- shutdown. tions. But any of them would be preferable to the current strat- An alternative that appears to have the support of Speaker egy of a lot of Hill Republicans, which appears to rely heavily John Boehner is to negotiate a “grand bargain.” Republicans on leaking negative comments about Senator Ted Cruz. would get tax reform, entitlement reform (including changes to Obamacare), and other desired reforms; Democrats would get OBAMACARE something they want, such as temporary increases in spending Defund, Delay, or Repeal above sequestered levels; and Congress would pair these policies with measures to fund the government and raise the debt S noted above, Obamacare’s exchanges opened. It was limit. appropriately rocky. The Patient Protection and Af - The politics of this adventure seem impossible: The parties A ford able Care Act (ACA) is a bad piece of legislation, are just too far apart on these issues. We very much doubt that cre at ing defective bureaucratic structures to implement poli- Democrats would accept any serious structural entitlement cies based on dysfunctional theories. Whether the question is reform, such as premium support for Medicare or reducing the de funding, delay, or outright repeal, the ACA deserves to go— growth rate of initial Social Security benefits. The entitlement not because it is Barack Obama’s legislative centerpiece, not reforms they might accept aren’t worth the tax increases they because Ted Cruz has promised to undo it, but because it is bad would want in return. law that will make life unnecessarily worse for many Amer i - A modest bargain makes more sense than a grand one. cans, including many least able to bear its burdens. Democrats would get a temporary increase in spending, and in Those burdens are growing. Under the ACA, health-care return Republicans would get a delay of the fine on people spending is expected to rise significantly, even beyond the without health insurance. Depending on the amount of spend- usual inflation in medical prices. President Obama’s econom- ing involved, that deal could be a good one for Republicans. It ic advisers originally had calculated that the bill would reduce would be a successful act of resistance to the least popular part health-care spending by $200 billion a year, whence the presi- of an unpopular law, and would set a precedent for delaying or dent derived his indefensible conclusion that the bill would neutering other parts of the “law of the land” Democrats keep save the average family of four some $2,500 a year. Recently, trying to insist is fixed in concrete. Democrats would probably the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services calculated resist, as many of them think the fines are central to the law’s that the ACA will not reduce health-care spending at all and operation. They might go along, however, if they are as confi- will instead add about $70 billion per year in the immediate dent as they claim to be that Obamacare is poised to become future. Estimates of the program’s expense are increasing. It popular now that people are set to draw subsidies from it. will spend more than originally estimated, it will tax more than Of the options, the most promising seems to us to be the mod- originally estimated, and its vaunted deficit-reduction benefits est bargain, because the potential payoff—a delay in the man- have been evaporating at a pace suggesting that, as many pre- date—would be more valuable than the Vitter amendment, and dicted, they will never come to pass. In 2010, the CBO pro- more likely than Democratic capitulation to a continued shut- jected that the ACA would reduce the deficit by $140 billion down. through 2019; today that projection is a mere $4 billion. The

CAROLYN KASTER estimated tax increases in the bill have doubled. That rising price / Wait it out; send the Democrats a government-opening bill that they would have a hard time blocking; or make a modest tag means higher costs for consumers as well as taxpayers: The

AP PHOTO deal: Those seem to us to be the available options. In none of average 27-year-old man buying health insurance on the ACA

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THE WEEK exchanges can expect to pay almost double what he had been marginal tax rate. paying before; the average woman of the same age, 62 percent In its demand for uniformity of insurance products, the more. ACA prevents the emergence of the sort of high-deductible The difference between the increase in men’s rates and those catastrophic-care policies that, by more closely aligning health in women’s rates is one of the more naked bits of ideology care with consumers’ out-of-pocket spending, have shown apparent in the bill. Women spend considerably more on health great promise in reducing prices. It undermines popular pro- care than men do, and hence have paid higher health-insurance grams such as Medicare Advantage and contemplates deep premiums. The architects of the ACA decided that this was not cuts in providers’ fees, which will in turn reduce access to care politically permissible, and so by fiat eliminated the differ- for seniors on Medicare. It creates a central-planning authority, ence, meaning a disproportionate increase in men’s rates. the Independent Payment Advisory Board, that is to operate Likewise, because there can be only so much politically through price-fixing but will be prohibited from advancing acceptable difference in prices paid by the young and the old, substantive reform. the young will pay much higher rates than they did before. The The ACA rides roughshod over the religious liberties and cost curve has indeed been bent—upward. consciences of Americans, including those who do not wish to The entire structure of the ACA is dependent on the eleva- be financially involved in the grisly business of abortion. The tion of political considerations over reality. That begins with ACA offers a few very narrow and inadequate exemptions, but the mandate that insurance companies cover preexisting con- millions of Americans will be compelled under it to violate ditions, which puts them in the paradoxical position of taking their most personal beliefs in the service of the Democrats’ future-directed action—providing insurance—in response to abortion-and-contraception-above-all agenda. If there were no events in the past. From this mandate is born the individual other objection to the bill, this would suffice to justify its mandate, since mandatory coverage of preexisting conditions repeal. creates a very strong incentive for people to forgo insurance But there are other objections. Obamacare will not reduce until they get sick, upending the operating model of insurance. Americans’ health-insurance premiums or the deficit. Uni versal From the individual mandate comes the employer mandate. coverage remains a pipe dream. The law deepens the third- Each has its own set of perverse incentives, the worst of which party-payer problem that is the source of so much of what trou- may be the employer mandate’s creation of a powerful eco- bles our health-care system, thereby preventing the emergence nomic incentive for firms to hire part-time rather than full-time of a real market for medicine and health insurance. It inserts workers: By mandating coverage for those working 30 hours the federal nose into every transaction—which is worrisome or more, the employer mandate makes part-time workers much for many reasons, not least the government’s inability to keep more attractive. private information private. With the IRS making its political A mandate here, a subsidy there, a tax and a surtax—the enemies’ tax records public, look for the same to happen with ACA is the perfect expression of the old progressive dream of medical records. government by expert administration. But its administration is It’s not like health-care laws are sacred writ. The CLASS looking decidedly non-expert, something the president him- Act, the ACA’s long-term-care program, already has been self has been forced to acknowledge in public. There were repealed on the grounds of being actuarially unsound and fis- well-publicized problems in launching the exchanges, but cally irresponsible. One might easily say as much about the Obamacare’s problems are conceptual and structural. For rest of the ACA. It should be repealed in toto. Short of that, example, the program’s architects designed the income limits delaying and defunding are appropriate as preludes to intelli- on its subsidies as hard cut-offs rather than gradual phase-outs. gent reform that does not rely on federal overseers to manage As Ed Driscoll points out, this means that a married couple the marketplace as though Americans were mere chessmen to earning $62,040 would face a $10,000 penalty for earning $1 their grandmasters. Its defenders declare the law a fait accompli. extra—unless they get divorced. That’s a very high effective But we have only begun to fight.

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do with the two biggest legislative accomplishments of his presidency: the stimulus bill and the health-care bill. Obama himself made the case that Republicans had slapped away the hand of friendship on the stimulus. In January 2010, he told Joe Klein of Time his version of the story: “I came in expressing a strong spirit of biparti- sanship, and what was clear was that even in the midst of crisis, there were those who made decisions based on a quick political calculus rather than on what the country needed. The classic example being me heading over to meet with the House Republican caucus to discuss the stimulus and finding out that [House minority leader John] boehner had already released a statement saying, We’re going to vote against the bill before we’ve even had a chance to ex - change ideas.” That does sound pretty bad. The actual events unfolded differently. Obama spoke to the Republicans on January 27, The Great Moderate 2009, a day after nancy Pelosi and david Obey, then the speaker of the Obama’s self-image in the health-care fight House and the chairman of the House budget Committee, had introduced a BY RAMESH PONNURU stimulus bill into which the Repub - licans had had no input. boehner had then said that he would oppose that bill ResIdenT ObAMA has returned eager—while conservatives are im - and that he hoped Obama would replace to one of his favorite themes in placable to the point of insanity. it with something bipartisan. boehner response to the partial shut- Conservatives, of course, do not view summarized his message to Obama to P down of the federal government Obama as at all moderate: They view reporters: “Help us make this plan bet- and the prospect that the govern ment him as an extreme liberal, or worse. The ter so that it will put Americans back to might have to default on some of its gap between the liberal and the conser- work.” debts. That theme: He is a moderate, rea- vative view of Obama is, for liberals, boehner’s plea went unheeded, of sonable, flexible, pragmatic guy who further evidence of the Right’s discon- course, and on January 28 the House finds himself, sadly, in constant battle nection from reality. passed the Pelosi-Obey bill. being shut with conservatives who are none of these It is a gap with a history that long pre- out of the process contributed to the things. dates Obama. As far back as Woodrow decision of every House Republican to Thus his comment in an interview with Wilson, progressives have presented vote against the bill. eleven House John Harwood on CnbC: “John, I think themselves as pragmatists just trying to demo crats joined the opposition. The it’s fair to say that, during the course of move the country forward, with no par- president’s story about Republican par- my presidency, I have bent over back- ticular ideological destination in mind. tisanship on the stimulus, then, is more wards to work with the Republican party. Progressives have presented themselves or less the opposite of the truth: Re - And have purposely kept my rhetoric in this way even when, as in the case of publicans asked for cooperation and down. I think I’m pretty well known for Wilson, they were hostile in principle to received none. The democrats had votes being a calm guy. sometimes people think the philosophy of government that ani- to spare, and what they did was their I’m too calm. And am I exasperated? mates the Constitution and committed prerogative, but what they did should Absolutely I’m exasperated.” He is exas- to replacing it with a new one. not be misrepresented. perated, that is, by how impossible the President Obama speaks less often in The liberal narrative on Obamacare Republicans have made it to deal with a theoretical mode than Wilson did, goes like this: The health-care program them. though, and his recent claim to have a is a Republican plan, based on one cham- Perhaps needless to say, almost all monopoly on pragmatism has concerned pioned by the Heritage Foundation and liberals share Obama’s outlook: Their partisan haggling rather than the ends of signed into law by Governor Mitt Rom - side is eager to compromise—and he, government. The two great examples ney in Massachusetts; over the years

for some of them, is if anything too adduced in defense of his claim have to many Republican politicians had en - ROMAN GENN

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dorsed its most controversial feature, the presumably because he disagreed with individual mandate; and Obama tried it or valued the support of trial lawyers hard to get Republicans to support the more than buy-in from Republicans. When It’s bill. Yet Republicans opposed it, and The policy Obama wanted did not have continued to oppose it, hysteri- admit of much compromise beyond Already cally—simply because, so we are to be- such incidental issues. Once you ban lieve, Obama was the one proposing the insurers from discriminating in almost plan. any way among people based on their Broken . . . There are elements of truth in this health risks, you pretty much have to Obamacare was doing account, but they’re exaggerated. Plenty force healthy people to buy insurance badly before the shutdown of conservative think-tankers always and offer large subsidies for the pur- opposed the individual mandate. Grass- chase. But that is a highly contestable roots conservatives did not oppose it vision of what health-care reform should BY AVIK ROY before 2009, but only because it had look like, and it is liberal dogmatism to never previously come to their attention. see conservative extremism in the rejec- e’Re going to do a Few Republicans had ever thought that tion of it. challenge,” said Jon creating a constitutionally dubious board Had Obama taken a different approach Stewart to Health and to manage federal health-care spending to the policy, he might have gotten more ‘W Human Services sec- was a promising path to reduced health- bipartisan support. He would not have retary Kathleen Sebelius on his Daily care costs generally. had to embrace a plan cooked up by the Show in early October. “I’m going to try Influential Democrats, such as Cato Institute to do it. Republicans, espe- and download every movie ever made, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of cially early in his term, were not all and you are going to try and sign up for New York, endorsed the addition of going to oppose any expansion of the Obamacare, and we’ll see which hap- personal accounts to Social Security. federal government’s role in health care. pens first.” Another Democrat, John Breaux of Forty House Republicans and seven Imagine an alternative universe, one in Louisiana, co-chaired a commission in Senate Republicans voted to expand the which the Republicans had sought a the Clinton administration that en - children’s health-insurance program in delay of the law instead of insisting that dorsed premium support for Medicare. February 2009. it be defunded right this second. The That didn’t stop Democrats from unit- The claim that Obama is moderate as glitchy rollout of Obamacare’s subsi- ing against President Bush’s Social well as flexible, meanwhile, cannot bear dized insurance exchanges would have Security proposal or Paul Ryan’s much scrutiny. His administration has been the lead story in every newspaper in Medicare plans. The Clinton adminis- been relentlessly hostile to school choice, America, a confirmation of Republican tration favored a cap on Medicaid with no allowance for the evidence that it prescience about the law’s delays and spending per capita; elected Demo crats shows promise in improving educational mishaps. Unfortunately, we live in the in Washington, D.C., today have outcomes for some students, does not real world, where Ted Cruz and Co. have shunned the idea. If we are going to hurt any other students, and saves money snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. fault Republicans for opposing Obama - as well. It has repeatedly found its legal Congressional Republicans—sup- care even though some Re publicans positions losing unanimously at the ported by anti-Obamacare activists on had supported important elements of it Supreme Court—on property rights, on the right—had planned to use this fall’s in the past, should we not fault this religious freedom, and on the executive fiscal fights to win a one-year postpone- Democratic backsliding on entitlements branch’s power over state governments, ment of the law. Instead, Cruz, Mike too? If we should, then two parties have for example. It has opposed a ban on Lee, and a collection of outside groups shown rigidity and extremism. abortion even for the purpose of sex pressured a group of 20 or 30 House Note also that on the liberal argu- selection. Republicans not to pass a government- ment Obamacare was a kind of com- The last Democratic administration funding resolution unless it also de - promise because it included ideas that famously undertook a number of bipar- funded the health-care law. Faced with Re publicans should have liked, even if tisan initiatives: welfare reform, free the possibility of losing a House majority actual Republicans did not like them. trade, a reduction in the capital-gains on the budget, Speaker John Boehner Actual Republicans were not offered tax. This administration has taken a few acceded to the rump, and the shutdown much input during the legislative de - smaller steps toward free trade but oth- was on. bate over the health-care law. Obama erwise done nothing to match. A liberal There’s a reason conservative health- dumped the plan’s initial provision for might well defend this record by argu- care activists picked the one-year-delay a “public option,” or government-run ing that the electorate forced Demo- strategy, and it’s not that they are mem- provider of insurance, but it was resis- crats to govern more conservatively in bers of, in Ted Cruz’s words, a “surren- tance to that idea from Democratic the 1990s, when Clinton reigned. What der caucus.” It’s because there were senators rather than from Republicans cannot be successfully refuted is that strong indications that the Obama care that killed it. The president would not on domestic issues, Obama has gov- have had to abandon anything essential erned as a committed liberal without Mr. Roy is a columnist for NATIONAL REVIEW to his plan in order to add medical- much interest in reaching out to his ONLINE and a senior fellow at the Manhattan malpractice reform to it. He did not, opponents. Institute. You can follow him on Twitter at @avik.

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exchanges weren’t ready. Focusing on implementing the health-care law. A for- of Health and Human Services and delay rather than total defunding would mer Obama-administration official de - found that, for the average person en - have put pressure on red-state Demo- scribed the exchanges as institutions rolling in Obamacare’s exchanges, the crats to either endorse the measure or be that “will, unless delayed and fixed, underlying cost of health insurance will held responsible for Obamacare’s first- inflict on the public the most wide- go up by an average of 99 percent for year problems. That, in turn, would spread violation of the Privacy Act in men and 62 percent for women. Poorer have helped put the Senate in play in our history.” people will be protected from these 2014. Usually, you can’t pass bills Meanwhile, it has become clear that increases by subsidies, and very sick repealing existing legislation without the software architecture used to build people will be protected by the law’s majorities in Congress and a supportive Obamacare’s federal exchanges is badly requirement that insurers charge people White House. flawed. “This is not normal mainte- the same price regardless of health sta- Even members of the Obama adminis- nance, this is a huge fix,” Bill Curtis, tus. But everyone else will pay more, tration, and members of pro-Obamacare chief scientist of the software-quality especially the younger people who have state governments, had expressed reser- analysis firm CAST Software, told formed the core of the president’s politi- vations about the implementation of the CNBC. “You just have a system that is in cal support. law. “I’m pretty nervous—I don’t know gross overload. . . . It has all the hall- Obamacare is a deeply flawed law. about you,” said Henry Chao, deputy marks of a project that was in a rush.” But while polls consistently show that chief information officer at the Centers It’s not just that people can’t get into majorities disapprove of it, a significant for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in the federal website, Healthcare.gov, minority of Americans who dislike the March. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a that’s being used in 33 states. Among the law do so because it doesn’t go far Third World experience.” lucky few who have managed to apply enough. A survey of 1,976 registered In February, Edifecs, a health-care for health insurance on Obamacare’s voters conducted by the Morning Con - consulting firm, surveyed a group of federal exchange, after a week of enroll- sult, a health-care/media firm, found that health-insurance executives on how the ment, as few as one in a hundred is com- only 33 percent agreed that Obamacare exchanges were going. “They are not plete enough to allow someone to enroll should be repealed, delayed, or defund- optimistic that the government-run in a plan. These problems are preventing ed. Twenty-nine percent believed that exchanges will be ready on time,” the people from buying a product, health “Congress should make changes to firm concluded. “Almost all of those insurance, that Obamacare forces them improve the law”; 26 percent believed surveyed are concerned that the to buy, under penalty from the IRS. that “Congress should let the law take exchanges have not involved them as Ted Cruz feared that if Obamacare effect” and see what happens; and 12 users in gaining input from the indus- were allowed to move forward, the law’s percent believed the law should be try—traditionally a very bad sign in sys- new entitlements would become too expanded. In other words, for Re - tem development. . . . The executives are popular ever to repeal. Cruz’s inexperi- publicans to have any chance at repeal- very concerned about being able to rec- ence with entitlement policy, however, ing Obamacare or rolling it back, they oncile billing and eligibility information prevented him from seeing what the need to persuade moderates and apoliti- from the exchanges.” conservative health-care activists are cal voters to join them. One of the White House’s talking seeing. Obamacare isn’t like Medicare, This, however, isn’t what the defunders points was that implementation prob- or Social Security, or Medicaid, in are doing. “Look, we saw in Britain, lems were the fault of recalcitrant which the costs and failures of the enti- Neville Chamberlain, who told the British Republicans, in Congress and state gov- tlement aren’t transparent to the aver- people, ‘Accept the Nazis,’” said Ted ernment, who weren’t helping to set up age taxpayer. Cruz of his strategy’s skeptics. “This law the law. But it was in the blue states, Under Obamacare, average Ameri- is going to destroy America and every- most of which elected to create their own cans are receiving notices of extreme thing in America,” said Representative insurance exchanges, that the problems premium hikes—in some cases as high Paul Broun, who is running in a primary were thorniest. “Sometimes it feels like as 300 percent—and they aren’t taking it for Georgia’s open Senate seat next year. we’re driving a car and then changing lying down. “I don’t know whether to “Obamacare is the most dangerous piece the tire at the same time,” Connecticut laugh or cry,” wrote one Forbes blogger. of legislation ever passed in Congress,” exchange CEO Kevin Counihan said in “My premiums are about to rise by warned Representative John Fleming of March. “We’re going to have a challeng- 114.6%. My wife’s rates? Up 109%. Our Louisiana. ing enough time providing the quality of kids? Don’t ask.” Kathy Kristof, a writer Hyperbole has always been part of service that our residents deserve in for CBS MoneyWatch, was sent a notice American politics. But defunders have Connecticut with the deadline that we informing her that “at midnight on spent far more time preaching to the have. If they keep adding new regula- December 31, we will discontinue your converted—and attacking fellow Re - tions, I’m sorry. . . . I wish we had one current plan because it will not meet the publicans—than they have persuading more year.” requirements of the Affordable Care moderates and taking the fight to An unpublished memorandum from Act.” Her premiums have grown by Democrats. the Congressional Research Service, $1,668 a year, an increase of 67 percent. Moderates don’t have a doctrinal written in June, calculated that the My colleagues at the Manhattan opposition to the expansion of govern- Obama administration had missed half Institute and I crunched the numbers in a ment. And they don’t see Obamacare as of its statutorily required deadlines for recent press release from the Department “the most dangerous piece of legislation

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ever passed in Congress.” If they did, Six of the nation’s 20 largest cities are they wouldn’t have voted to reelect in Texas, Houston is the size of Phila - President Obama. These voters won’t be Stuff delphia and Boston combined, and San persuaded by appeals to the founding Antonio is more populous than Prague or fathers. What they will be persuaded by Liberal White Munich. The power centers in those is tangible evidence that Obamacare is cities are not very white, and they are going to make the cost of their health going to be less white over time. The care higher and the quality of their Ladies Like future of Texas liberalism isn’t Wendy health care lower. Wendy Davis and the end Davis trying to recapture Ann Richards’s You have the impression, listening to of Ann Richards Democrats extravagantly coiffured mojo, but the the defunders, that Obamacare will take Castro twins, U.S. Rep re sen ta tive Joaquín America’s free-market health-care system and Mayor Julian of San Antonio, two BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON and turn it into a socialist one. But that’s hard-Left and cynical practitioners of not true. The real government takeover racial-identity politics raised by a La took place in 1965, when LBJ signed the Fort Worth, Texas Raza Unida radical who denounced the Great Society into law. Medicare and f you are looking for the end of the heroes of the Alamo as “a bunch of Medicaid are large single-payer pro- line for the Sanctimonious White drunks and crooks and slaveholding grams, covering 86 million Americans, Lady party, you might very well find imperialists.” José Ángel Gutiérrez, one with a combined budget far larger than I it here in Dallas’s slightly less pre- of the founding figures of La Raza that of the Department of Defense. tentious sister city, where the bleached Unida, famously said: “We have got to In 2010, before Obamacare was enact- blondeness and sequined daywear of the eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by ed, U.S. government entities spent Big D lose just a little of their sparkle as that is if the worst comes to worst, we $3,967 per capita on health-care ser- you approach the ancient stockyards and have got to kill him.” vices. That’s the fourth-highest total in the suburban Hal tom coliseum, and The Castro twins are smart enough to the world, far higher than Germany’s where state senator and newly announced forgo the kill-the-gringo stuff, and they’re ($3,331), Canada’s ($3,158), france’s gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, smart enough to sit this election out. They ($3,061), Sweden’s ($3,046), Belgium’s who became a national liberal cause know it’s not their time—not yet—and ($3,000), or Britain’s ($2,857). Obama - célèbre after staging a filibuster in favor they are happy to watch the last Sancti - care makes this problem worse, but of gruesome late-term abortions, and monious White Lady throw herself into only incrementally. By 2022, according whose candidacy was immediately en - the meat grinder. The SWLs are basically to the Con gressional Budget Office, dorsed and its coffers topped up by A-list reactionary anti-conservatives, and their Obamacare will increase federal health- abortion organizations, is studiously not political philosophy is about as deep as a care spending from $1.6 trillion, under talking about abortion—she doesn’t even facebook post: “OMG! Can you believe prior law, to $1.8 trillion. say the word, in fact—instead giving those Republicans are trying to force America is already broke, and burden- voice to what may very well be the last their Jesus into our uteruses?” Because ing the country with additional spending barbaric yawp of her dwindling tribe. In they are shallow, they have an attraction is a grave mistake. But the right message Texas, you hear a great deal of cocky talk to celebrity candidates, and Senator Davis of conservative reform wouldn’t focus from Sanctimonious White Ladies about fits the bill: Vogue spread, fashionable solely on Obamacare, but on the entire the inevitable demographic changes that accessories (those dopey red sneakers), health-care-industrial complex. will someday soon—and maybe this compellingly semi-tragic Lifetime-movie That reform message would acknowl- time!—turn the Lone Star State into a backstory (from teenage single mo ther edge that the system before Obamacare Colorado, if not a Cal i for nia. Democrats living in a trailer park to Harvard Law), was also unaffordable, in family and fed- have not won a state wide office in Texas and attractive. The SWL agenda is almost eral budgets alike, thanks to decades of since fran çois Mitterrand’s career was a entirely negative, consisting of opposition statist policies. It would make the case for going concern and Netscape Navigator to various Christ ian bogeymen who exist policies that help people shop for inex- was in beta, but they are convinced of the mainly in their im a gin ations. The Castros, pensive coverage on their own, instead of inevitability of their ascendance. on the other hand, have a positive agenda: forcing them to be dependent on their And it may yet come to pass. But don’t power. employer or the government for insur- bet on Wendy Davis’s faction’s being Senator Davis would like Texas to take ance. around to see it. her Sanctimonious White Lady faction Reagan didn’t win the argument on tax There are two liberal camps in Texas: beyond late-term abortions, if only be - cuts by speaking abstractly about the 1. Sanctimonious White Ladies, and 2. cause late-term abortions put her on the value of liberty. He won because he all the other liberals, meaning mainly a wrong side of a two-to-one issue. But it showed that tax cuts lead to prosperity. Hispanic population that is growing in is not clear that there is anything for her Similarly, conservatives need to show that both power and political sophistication, to move on to. Abor tion is what white their approach to health-care reform will working in coalition with government suburban liberal wo men in Texas are all make insurance better and more afford- employees and an increasingly marginal- about. Texas teachers may dream of able. But first they’ll have to actually have ized black voting bloc in and around the belonging to powerful California-style an approach, instead of only shouting major cities. East Coast me dia types labor unions, and the public sector prays about what they’re against. sometimes forget how urban Texas is: devoutly for a state income tax that

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would shunt great streams of revenue about her life was put on at Lincoln for so long you kind of feel bad for into its rav en ous maw, but the fact is that Center this year, barely won office the them—been shut out. It’s like being a the dismembering of unborn children is first time around—she didn’t even secure Cal i for nia Republican or a New York Re - the liberal project in Texas. a majority, it having been an unusually pub li can. Unless you live in the city of Ann Richards cut her political teeth good year for the Libertarian party— Austin, it’s pretty tough. So it’s a little bit on the state-legislature campaign of despite the fact that the Republican in the of hope for them. If she could get [the Sa rah Weddington, the ghoulish lawyer race, Clayton Williams, was a one-man race] down to single digits, which I don’t who argued Roe v. Wade. Richards, clown show with a penchant for rape think she can, but if she could, that would after nearly getting out-abortioned by a humor. Like Senator Davis, Governor be great for them. She’s in it to win it, Demo cratic-primary rival earlier in her Richards was best known for being on the but I don’t think she really can. Unless career, was an absolute drone on the losing side of a lopsided issue—con- Abbott turns into Clayton Williams all of subject. And this drone now speaks cealed carry—and for her feminist- the sudden, which he’s not going to do.” through Cecile Rich ards, the head boss flavored bons mots, which were better Senator Davis’s home turf, Tarrant Sanctimonious White Lady at Planned received in the Georgetown that’s on the County, is the most Republican-leaning Parenthood. Senator Davis is going to Potomac River than in the George town in Texas county with a population of more need a lot of out-of-state money to Texas. She was the recipient of some of than 1 million. On the city council, she mount a serious challenge against pre- the most fawning media coverage in the was something of a stealth liberal—her sumptive Re pub li can nominee Greg history of American politics and was a hallmark issue was the redevelopment of Abbott, the attorney general, and it is sort of mascot for liberals around the a shopping mall—but Mark P. Jones of the political-science department at Rice University considers her the fourth-most liberal Texas senator, and “significantly more liberal” than such players as Juan Hinojosa and Carlos Uresti. You can hide on the Fort Worth city council, and you can even hide in the Texas senate, but you can’t hide in a governor’s race. Not when you yourself have put late-term abortion front and center in a state where some cities have more churches than convenience stores. “Some people say Wendy is the sacri- ficial lamb,” Hashimoto says, “that she’ll get you closer, and one of the Castros can swoop in in 2018. But I don’t think white liberal Democrats are going to give up that easy.” In a world of finite resources, that gets more complicated: “How much money do you spend from out of state on a Wendy Davis suicide mission when you could spend that money in Florida or Texas state senator Wendy Davis Ohio, where you might actually win?” It depends on how sanctimonious abortion that opens up the purses of country, but in 1994 she got sucker- you’re feeling. The Wendy Davis cam- Sanctimonious White La dies across the punched by a Hispanic primary chal- paign probably will end in failure, and fruited plains. Sanc ti mo ni ous White lenger who took more than a fifth of the possibly in abject failure, but it will Ladies can raise the money, and they vote, and then was knocked out by remain an emotionally satisfying cru- have a disproportionate sway in the George W. Bush—it wasn’t even close. sade for white suburban liberal women. Democratic-party apparatus—because She became a spokesman for Doritos and Democrats with their eyes on Hispanic what does an SWL do with her spare moved to New York City. She was a lov- immigration and the subsequent changes time if not attend party meetings?—but able loser, but what kind of party looks at in the nature of the American electorate there aren’t that many of them. Sooner Ann Richards’s shellacking and thinks: think primarily in terms of the losses or later, the people with the votes are “Eureka!” those changes will inflict on Repub - ENNIS going to want the power, too. A Sanctimonious White Lady party, licans, but some elements of their own . RON T

And, in truth, the SWL faction doesn’t that’s what kind. coalition are also going to see the politi- , have a particularly good record achieving “[Wendy Davis’s] candidacy is very cal calculus get very complicated in deed.

They’ll play nice with their teammates TELEGRAM or keeping power. Governor Richards, exciting for a certain class of Dem o crat ic - STAR

one of the most popular political figures voter,” says Mike Hashimoto, a conserv- for now, but when the Castro twins / of her time and an icon with an allure so ative col um nist for the Dallas Morning think about the future, they don’t pic-

enduring that a terrible half-witted play News, “a class that has for a long time— ture Wendy Davis. AP PHOTO

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YOUNG AMERICA’S FOUNDATION’S FALL Conference at the Reagan Ranch

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confidence in its prospects may be exag- handed a bonus. The Daily Mail attacked gerated. Because of the rise of UKIP, his father—Ralph Miliband, a famously Hope Springs the Lib-Dems no longer have a monopoly Marxist academic, whom his son had of the protest vote. They are currently often lauded as his political inspiration— Cautiously polling at around 10 percent—less than as a man who “hated Britain.” This attack half their last general-election total and was entirely justified, but it was a blunder. A Labour victory could bring long- generally a point or two behind the new All that Red Ed had to do by way of reply term advantage to British conservatives challenger. They can hardly expect to was to say that he was outraged at this dominate the two larger parties if their unfair smear of dear old “Dad.” The coun- BY JOHN O’SULLIVAN parliamentary total falls sharply—to, say, try swooned; the Mail’s proprietor, Lord IKE the climate, British politics has 20 MPs or fewer (out of a total of 650). Rothermere, apologized (its editor, Paul seasons. The conference season, That said, the Lib-Dems are closer to Dacre, is made of sterner stuff); and both which opens the political year, is getting and keeping power after the next Labour and its leader rose in the polls. L in September and Octo ber, begin- election than either Labour or the Tories. Thus far Miliband is showing, omi- ning with the Trades Union Congress con- Labour is suffering from—or maybe nously, that leftist politics can be popular. ference, ending with the Tory conference, enjoying—the psychological condition He is burying New Labour and resurrect- and sandwiching Labour, the Liberal known as “cognitive dissonance.” It ing socialism. And he is cleverly exploit- Democrats, and the now electorally sig- entered the conference season slightly de- ing his “dad” to weaken and regulate the nificant United King dom Independence pressed because its lead over the Tories media and to rule criticism of Marxist party, henceforth UKIP, in between. This had been shrinking throughout the year, politics out of order in polite society. An year the three mainstream parties have and, worse, because this was widely iceberg looms across his bow, however. returned to Westminster feeling quite attributed to the uninspiring leadership of The just-published memoirs of Damian chipper while UKIP acknowledges that it Ed Miliband. He was seen as too young, McBride, a notorious Labour spin doc- had a “bad” conference. too inexperienced, too geekish, and too tor, have shown that Gordon Brown’s Except for UKIP’s disappointment, left-wing—“Red Ed” in the vernacular. inner circle, in first the Treasury and then this is not unusual. Spending four days off Miliband may be all of these things, Downing Street, ran a series of poisonous work in the company of like-minded peo- but he is also a risk-taker. He is Labour’s campaigns not only against the Tories but ple (and, these days, of lobbyists pretend- leader today because he took the great also against Tony Blair, his New Labour ing to be like-minded) tends to produce risk of standing in the leadership election supporters, and anyone else who stood in a false euphoria of expectations. “Hey, against his popular brother David, who Brown’s way. The Borgias look scrupu- we’re not as unpopular as we thought,” had earlier shrunk from just such boldness lous by comparison. Miliband was a mem - the delegates tell each other as they order against the widely disliked Gordon Brown ber of that inner circle. Not only the Daily another white wine. “We might just be on and whose political strategy was to stand Mail will want to publish the details of his course to win the next election.” It is obvi- in an elegant pose waiting for his corona- involvement. For the moment, though, ous, however, that if all three parties leave tion. Red Ed looked at the polls below the Labour has seized the initiative. their conferences feeling cheerful, then headline figures; he saw that the underly- Given that, the Tories ought to have two of them are being over-optimistic. ing tendencies still suggested a Labour been gloomier at their conference. But On this occasion it’s possible that all victory—Labour leads the Tories by mar- they convinced themselves that because three parties are cheerful without cause. gins of between four and nine percentage an economic recovery has arrived almost The Lib-Dems have the soundest reasons points. He therefore decided to adopt a two years before the election to happen in for optimism. Though they are doing bold left-wing appeal to the voters that May 2015, they will coast to victory or its badly in the polls—see below—their would give him a strong mandate in gov- near-equivalent in time. UKIP’s poor con- political strategy is rooted less in winning ernment if, as he calculated, Labour won. ference—one of their MEPs (members of more seats than in holding the balance of The ground on which he launched this the European Parliament) made a poorly power in a “hung Parliament” (one in appeal was the cost of living, especially judged sexist joke and was suspended which no single party enjoys an overall fuel prices, which under the coalition has from the party—gave the Tories further majority). Because this looks quite likely, been rising inexorably. So Miliband pro- encouragement. It seemed to justify the their party leader, Nick Clegg (also the posed to impose an energy-price freeze for Cameron gibe that UKIP was a fruitcake deputy prime minister in the current coali- the first 20 months after his election. party that would helpfully self-destruct tion government), came close to boasting That pledge was widely (and rightly) before 2015. They believe that they have that in the future the Lib-Dems would denounced as a deterrent to necessary several policies—on workfare and wel- always be in government, restraining investment in energy and as a return to the fare reform, for instance—on which the whichever party they partnered with from 1970s world of blackouts. But as Prime voters prefer their approach to Labour’s. its customary ideological excesses. The Minister David Cameron ruefully admit- Margaret Thatcher, from whom the media reported this as Clegg claiming that ted, it struck a popular chord. Above all, Cameronians once distanced themselves, he, rather than the voters, would choose the Labour faithful loved it. They left the became their heroine and example. All the government in the future so that elec- conference feeling that Miliband was a these things—plus good speeches from tions would be little more than a formality. more substantial and principled leader Cameron, Chancellor of the Exchequer That is a longstanding Lib-Dem ambi- than they had formerly thought. While he George Osborne, and a loyal-for-the- tion. But it sounds arrogant, and Clegg’s was still enjoying this boost, Miliband was duration London mayor Boris Johnson—

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sent them home hopeful and even happy. May 2015 than it was in 2010. And, finally, radical-environmentalist Lib-Dems, they As Miliband has grasped, however, the polls suggest that Labour is preferred to are still locked into the policy of subsi- brute electoral facts are as discouraging the Tories on the latter’s chosen ground of dizing renewables via consumer energy for the Tories as they were before the con- welfare and policies for “hard-working bills. Their propaganda trumpets can ference season. Britain’s electoral system people.” What this points to is a 2015 elec- only give an uncertain sound. is distorted by a bias that requires the Tories tion strategy by the Tories that concentrates These portents argue against a Tory to get a lead in votes of about six per- heavily on negative campaigning against victory. They suggest that the two most centage points in order to win a knife-edge Red Ed and his revival of socialism. likely election results are an outright majority in parliamentary seats. At present Even there, however, the Tories are Labour victory and a hung Parliament. A the Cameron Tories, at between 32 and 34 hampered in any attack by their own hung Parliament would create havoc and percent of voters, lag behind Labour by em brace of “progressive” issues during strife in all three parties. Exactly what up to nine points. How might they catch Cameron’s crucial “modernizing” phase of kind of havoc would depend on which up? Well, UKIP is currently getting 10 to opposition. Take, for instance, the issue of party won how many seats. Cameron and 11 percent of votes, which, if they went rising energy prices. Miliband ought to Clegg would doubtless want to continue Tory, would give the party a healthy parlia- be vulnerable on that issue since a major the coalition, but the Lib-Dem Left and mentary majority. Some of those conserv- cause of their steady increase is the Climate the Tory Right would both oppose that ative voters may go home, but nothing like Change Act, which Miliband personally continuation or else seek to impose condi- 10 percent. Most dispassionate observers guided through Parliament onto the Statute tions on it that the other party would resist. think that UKIP’s final tally will stay above Book and, which requires energy compa- If Labour became the largest party, then a 6 percent (more than twice its 2010 figure). nies to compel consumers to subsidize Lab–Lib-Dem coalition would be all but That would consign the Tories to varying “renewables” through their (rising) energy unavoidable. If the Tories, then Cameron levels of defeat even if UKIP failed to win bills. A Tory party that logically followed and might be willing to split their parties a single seat. Finally, as Miliband’s shrewd its own free-market convictions would in order to stay together. And if UKIP had choice of the cost of living as his main make hay with the contradiction between a significant number of seats—which is ground of attack illustrates, Britain’s eco- Miliband’s two policies of freezing and unlikely—then the Tories could conceiv- nomic recovery may not be the electoral raising energy prices. Unfortunately for ably split in two directions as some went panacea that Chancellor Osborne clearly the Tories, the party voted solidly in favor with UKIP and some with the Lib-Dems. hopes for. Even if the recovery proceeds of the Climate Change Act, with only five Indeed, a new Center party uniting as expected, the take-home pay of the brave dissenters rejecting it. And because Cameron Tories with the more conserva- average voter will be lower in real terms in the Tories are coalition partners with the tive Lib-Dems while dropping the Right looks something like the logical direction of Cameron Toryism. Getting there, however, would be brutal and uncertain. By contrast an outright Labour victory would make life unpleasant but simple Dr. John Laudan for the Tories. Cameron would leave the leadership pretty quickly, to be succeeded (1931-2013) by someone not closely identified with the “modernizing” strategy that would then have lost two elections. A new leader— Boris, Michael Gove (a “modernizer” but Champion of Liberty one admired by non-modernizers), Owen Patterson (a neo-Thatcherite minister), or someone as yet unknown, but certainly not Friend of National Review George Osborne, who would be seen as Cameron Mark Two—would be selected and begin to map out a new course for the party. That would almost certainly include Requiescat in Pace a constituency-by-constituency electoral pact with UKIP, which is fast becoming a blue-collar conservative party with strong appeal in those regions and classes that at present are Tory-Free Zones. Distinguishing between defeats is not the most pleasant of intellectual games. But a Labour victory, reducing the long- term importance of the Lib-Dems to both main parties, seems like the better of those two outcomes. And, in the end, the more conservative outcome too.

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An American Story The rise of Harold Hamm, Algeresque oilman BY JAY NORDLINGER

Oklahoma City, Okla. arold Hamm is a major oilman, the biggest in the is indicative of Hamm’s personality (insofar as a personality United States. He’s also a significant contributor to can be assessed in an afternoon’s conversation). He is under- our national debate over energy policy. But beyond stated, soft-spoken, unflamboyant. anyone expecting or hoping H those things, he’s an amazing story. Horatio alger for a swaggering oilman is likely to be disappointed. Hamm is would blush to include him in one of his novels. Hamm was bookish and somewhat shy. He’s a bit of a science geek, with a born the 13th and last child of sharecroppers in oklahoma. love of geology. He enjoys showing the rocks and fossils he has Today, according to Forbes magazine, he’s the 90th-richest collected. I ask Hamm’s daughter Shelly, “did you ever think person in the world. (remember, there are more than 7 billion your dad would get so big?” She says, incredulously, “No! No, of us.) Even foes of oil, and of capitalism generally, must smile no.” Hamm, again according to Forbes, is worth about $12.4 a little, if only inwardly. billion. That makes him No. 33 in america. Hamm is the chairman and CEo of Continental resources, a I meet him, and his daughter as well, in his office. He moved company that evolved from one he started in 1967. Continental the company to oklahoma City from Enid last year. (Enid is is now in 20 states, and on the New York Stock Exchange. 100 miles to the northwest.) Behind Hamm is a picture taken Hamm is an oklahoman through and through, and his company in Tel aviv—showing him with Benjamin Netanyahu, the is based here in oklahoma City. Yet he is probably best known prime minister of Israel. “He’s a great leader,” says Hamm. as the major player in North dakota—a state that has experi- Early in our conversation, I ask him, “did your parents live to enced an oil boom for the last few years. With montana and a see your big success?” “When you say ‘big success’—any suc- couple of Canadian provinces, North dakota is home to the cess was big for them.” His mother died while he was in high Bakken formation, a fount of oil. In a conversation with me, school; his father did live to see him get established in busi- Hamm says that a particular section of the Bakken “turned out ness. to be a very, very nice field.” Hamm was born outside lexington, in central oklahoma, in

He says this quietly, almost offhandedly. and this statement 1945. (He will be 68 in december.) His parents never owned ERICK GFELLER

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land or a home. They picked cotton and did other farm work. Harold Hamm Tank Truck Service. (“Real innovative,” he says So did their children. “We went wherever the cotton was of the name.) His old boss at the truck stop, Charles Potter, good,” says Hamm. The harvest could have been in Blair, signed a note for him at the bank—$1,000. “That was enough Okla., or Littlefield, Texas. “Usually, whoever you were for me to operate on,” says Hamm. The only equipment he had pulling cotton for had some kind of housing. Some folks lived was a bobtail Ford truck, a vehicle that is at the center of in tents. We’d pull cotton till Christmas or the first snow, and Harold Hamm lore. In 1967, he started the Shelly Dean Oil then we were out of there.” The Hamm family would return Company (named after his first two daughters). This is the home, and the kids would start school (very late, of course). enterprise that grew into Continental Resources. Did Hamm like it? School, that is? Yes: “It was a lot easier than Hamm looked for oil, reading everything he could, learning pulling cotton.” everything he could, stretching his imagination as far as he When he was 17, the family moved to Enid—this was a could. Another part of the lore is that he hit a “gusher” on his new environment, oil country. At Enid High, he was part of a second well. (I suspect that “gusher” is a term used only by distributive-education program, which meant you got credit non–oil people, not oil people. Hamm confirms that this is so. for working. Hamm worked 50 or 60 hours a week at a truck Oil people are apt to refer to a “flowing” well.) Hamm says that stop, the Potter Oil Company. He’d go to school until 1:30, this is true, about the second well. But he makes clear, without run home and grab a bite to eat, then go work until 11. Then any immodesty, that the first one wasn’t exactly a loser. It he would study, into the early morning. He would also work delivered 20 barrels an hour, and “that wasn’t bad on your first on Saturday and Sunday. shot.” The second one came in at 75 barrels an hour—and “that There is a story he has often told, and he tells it to me: One puts you home quick.” morning, he dragged himself to homeroom, then to a school The “beauty part” of this success, says Hamm, is that, sud- assembly. The speaker was John Frank, an artist from Sapulpa, denly, he could afford to take a breath. “So I did. I took a Okla. There on the stage, he demonstrated pottery, and he had breath and went to college.” At this point, Hamm was in his some watercolors on easels. He spoke of his love of art. And he late 20s. He has been known to say he did things in the said, “You’ve got to find your passion in life. Figure out what reverse order: fortune first, college second. He went to you care about, what you’re most passionate about, and pursue Phillips University, in Enid. (The university, which closed in it.” Sitting there, young Hamm thought, “Well, what have I got 1998, was not associated with Phillips Petroleum. It was an to be passionate about? Pumping gas, washing windshields, institution of the Disciples of Christ church.) “I did not go for fixing tires?” That’s what he was doing at the truck stop. But a degree,” says Hamm. Instead, he took some courses in there was something—something to be passionate about: oil order to improve his “skill set.” He studied petroleum geolo- exploration. Enid was booming, and there were larger-than-life gy, dear to his heart, and important to his career, but also lit- oil types around. Hamm wanted to be involved in that world. erature and other subjects he was drawn to. Indeed, he wanted to be an explorationist. Later on in life came the Bakken. (The name of this forma- For “D.E. class” (distributive education), he wrote a paper on tion is pronounced to rhyme with “rockin’,” by the way. They oil and its leading figures. He shows it to me, here in his office. have a bumper sticker up there: “Rockin’ the Bakken.”) The It’s nicely typed and replete with illustrations. He wrote about Bakken was “a real tough nut to crack,” as Hamm says. People J. Paul Getty, Harry Sinclair, E. W. Marland, Bill Skelly, H. H. had been trying to crack it since 1951, when the oil was dis- Champlin, Frank Phillips—the largest of the larger-than-life covered. Hamm has been in the Bakken since about 1988. figures. Hamm was interested in the following: How did these Many people have heard of hydraulic fracturing, or “frack- guys find this ancient wealth, i.e., oil? How did they land the ing”—the technique by which oil or natural gas is forced from big fields? What talent, or edge, or know-how did they have? rock. Erle P. Halliburton, another Oklahoma oilman, per- These were men who had not only done well for themselves: formed the first frack jobs in the late 1940s. Fracking has cer- They built up the state of Oklahoma, through their businesses tainly played a role in the Bakken, as elsewhere. But the big and their philanthropy. Young Hamm thought, “I’m gonna do thing, says Hamm, is a much newer technique: horizontal that.” It may have been an audacious thought for the 13th, or drilling. “It turned everything around. It’s what made possible any, child of sharecroppers. But Hamm tells me he never felt the renaissance we’re having today.” trapped by his circumstances, never felt that he could not break Like almost everybody, Hamm and Continental absorbed out and succeed. blows in 2008, when the recession hit. But the company, thanks He wrote his paper under a teacher named Jewell Ridge, a to planning, was more resilient than others. And Continental pioneer in vocational and technical education in Oklahoma. He soon had phenomenal growth: 85 percent from December 2010 had been in the war, one of those dropped behind enemy lines. to May 2012. In other words, he had uncommon mettle. “He was one tough The oil business is the most demonized in America, or one dude,” says Hamm, “but he was also as good as gold.” Hamm of them. Hamm has thought long and hard about this. It could delivered a eulogy at his teacher’s funeral. His eyes brim over have to do with the early wildcatters and “Joe Roughneck,” he as he recollects the teacher, and what he meant to an eager stu- says. I counter, “But aren’t those things kind of romantic?” dent. They should be, says Hamm, but they aren’t to all. Also, he continues, “there’s always one bad operator who fouls things up for the whole industry.” On balance, he says, oil is a clean FTER graduating from high school, Hamm went to and safe industry, in addition to an exceptionally helpful one. work in the oil business, gaining a “toehold,” as he (People depend on oil more than they know. It’s in their cars A says. Before long, he had his own company, the and planes, of course. But the list of petroleum products is long

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and varied. Petroleum is a component of sneakers, lipstick, became chief energy adviser to Romney. And he gave almost a balloons—even the wind turbines so beloved of the environ- million dollars to a pro-Romney PAC. mentalist Left.) Hamm’s parents were Democrats, as most Oklahomans I bring up a popular show from the 1980s: Dallas, the night- were. But he himself registered as a Republican. Then he time soap. It was a story of Texas oilmen. Was it realistic? “Not switched to being a Democrat, when state politics led him in at all,” says Hamm. “It was the biggest piece of unreal that direction. Finally, he switched back to Republican— garbage.” And it set the industry back, he says. People thought “because of Washington, D.C., because of national politics.” I of oilmen as endlessly conniving and rapacious. He allows that ask whether he regrets helping Romney, given the election the show was entertaining, though. Last year, there was a Matt results. “Oh, no. No.” He admires Romney and says, “He was Damon movie, Promised Land, whose purpose was to scarify a better candidate than we deserved”—“we” meaning the fracking. Hamm notes with satisfaction that the movie flopped. country. “It’s a shame he couldn’t get there,” he continues. “Eventually, the American people get the story straight.” They “Some things just go against you.” He cites Hurricane Sandy, can’t be fooled for long, he says. which battered New Jersey in the days before the election and gave Obama a chance to look healingly presidential. (On Election Night, an MSNBC host said, “I’m so glad we had that AMM is a staunch advocate of energy independence storm.”) for this country. He points out that the 40th anniver- H sary of the OPEC embargo is upon us. In his view, America has been “held hostage” to Middle Eastern oil, and T bothers Hamm not at all that Romney was born rich— energy independence will free us in a number of ways. It will some people are, most people aren’t, and what matters is give us more options in foreign policy, he says. He believes I what you do with what you have. I ask Hamm a slightly that American boys have been dying for oil. Hamm is the co- odd question: What’s it like to be rich? Are there burdens as chairman of a group called the Council for a Secure America, well as pleasures? In his answer, Hamm talks mainly about the which aims at energy independence. It was on the council’s busi- Vietnam War. ness that he was in Tel Aviv, when the photo with Netanyahu was “I grew up in the Vietnam age, early on in it. There weren’t a taken. whole lot of people going over there, but when I registered in A question: Is energy independence possible under the cur- ’64, I knew I was going. But I wound up not going. When they rent regulatory regime—without the Keystone pipeline, with- weren’t taking married people, I was married. When they out a loosening? Yes, says Hamm. Even under present weren’t taking people with a kid, I had a kid. And so on. I didn’t regulations, we can “get there.” But if the regulations get go join the guards to get out of going to Vietnam. I just didn’t go. tighter, “it’s going to be tough.” Hamm says that the feds “keep And a whole lot of people went and died. In the Ringwood- trying to impose things that would basically shut us down.” Ames area, where I lived at the time, they lost nine boys. Good Well, if regulations get no worse, when can we expect energy kids. We knew them all. Anyway, for the people who are left, independence? By 2020, Hamm figures. And it won’t be wind- there’s a responsibility to carry on and do the right stuff. We’re mills and their kin that achieve that independence: It will be oil blessed. We didn’t die. We didn’t go over there and fight a war. and natural gas. So we have a great responsibility to contribute in whatever ways This phenomenon is highly interesting, to some of us. Oil is we can.” supposed to be old news, yesterday’s energy. But it’s the hot new Hamm is a believer in giving away your money while you’re thing, spurring job creation and economic growth (such as we alive, so that you can see what happens with it. “A lot of peo- have them). Consider North Dakota alone: It has the lowest ple wait till they die, and they don’t get to see anything.” One unemployment rate in America, and the fastest rate of economic of Hamm’s causes is diabetes (he was diagnosed with the dis- growth. There are people in North Dakota from all 50 states, and ease in 2000). At the University of Oklahoma, there is a Harold many of them hadn’t worked for years, before the oil-and-gas Hamm Diabetes Center. Another cause is education. He talks “renaissance” arrived. The United States has just overtaken about the “cycle of poverty” and how to break it. “I saw it per- Russia and Saudi Arabia as the top oil and natural-gas producer sonally. A lot of families just get into it and are never able to in the world. get out of it, those poverty conditions. It continues generation I ask Hamm to tell a story he told to Stephen Moore of the after generation.” He feels sure that education is a ticket out of Wall Street Journal two years ago. It concerns a meeting with poverty. President Obama in the White House. Hamm told the president One problem, he has found, is that people aren’t able to about the renaissance, and the prospect of American indepen- travel from rural areas to go to college, owing to restrictions dence. He wanted to be sure the president knew about this. or responsibilities at home. College is out of reach both Obama replied that we would have to rely on fossil fuels for financially and physically. So he has made it easier for peo- the next few years—but he had been assured by the secretary ple to study where they are. He was involved in setting up a of energy, Steven Chu, that we would have a battery capable of two-year college and a four-year college in Enid: branches of powering our cars brilliantly. We would have it in five years. Northern Oklahoma College and Northwestern Oklahoma (The president held his hand up, showing the number five.) I State University. These institutions have made the hoped-for ask Hamm, “How are we doing? Has it been five years?” No, difference, he says. not yet: Hamm talked with the president in March 2011. It was Hamm is part of the Giving Pledge, a project spearheaded by a depressing, incredible conversation for Hamm. The next Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the richest people in America. year, he supported Mitt Romney for president. Indeed, he It was with these givers that he was at the White House, meet-

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ing Obama. When you take the pledge—congratulations, you’re a billionaire—you promise to devote more than half your wealth to philanthropy. I can’t help telling hamm that I The Nth disagree with his friend Buffett about the estate tax. The Sage of Omaha (Buffett) is a great fan of this tax. he is not such a fan of bequeathing an estate to one’s children. hamm laughs and says, “We all disagree with him on that!” The estate tax State was especially disgraceful, he says, before recent reforms: when it caused relatively humble family farms to go under. Rural Coloradans want to hamm himself has five children, from two marriages. (he is in the process of a divorce right now. The prospect of the break with their city neighbors most expensive divorce settlement in U.S. history is titillating some in the media.) Several years ago in Washington, D.C., hamm’s friend Bert Mackie, an enid banker, introduced him BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE to David Rockefeller. Mackie explained to Rockefeller that hamm was in the oil-and-gas business. Rockefeller said, “Our family has done pretty well by it.” Like the original he United States of America was born after a group of Rockefeller, hamm has enabled a good number of other peo- reckless colonial traitors added their signatures and ple to get rich (certainly richer). This is an effect of entrepre- “sacred honor” to a declaration of political separation neurship. In North Dakota, there are many people who were T and backed it up with force. That document, whose once modestly off, if not downright poor, who are now mil- most famous lines have been transubstantiated into American lionaires—because they had land rights, for example, or, even scripture and learned by rote by all and sundry, is now the better, mineral rights. Does hamm get a kick out of helping revered cornerstone of the republic. But, in becoming so, it has other people get rich? Yes, he says. But he also notes a human in some ways been ossified. We grasp readily the abstract truth tendency: “There are some who forget pretty quick who that sometimes in the course of human events it is necessary helped them ...” for political bands to be dissolved. But we balk at the notion of that time being now. Separationists wear wigs and tricorner hats, we think. They do not drive trucks and have smartphones. TeRRIBLe question sits on many minds today, espe- One man, however, hasn’t gotten this memo. Jeffrey T. cially Republican minds: Is the country going down hare, a tall, balding, middle-aged, and mild-mannered A the tubes? hamm says yes and no. We will not go accountant from Weld County, Colo., is heading up the 51st down the tubes “if we have real leadership, in all the places we State Initiative, an umbrella group for a collection of dis- need it.” It is urgently needed in the Oval Office, he says. gruntled rural Coloradans who are seeking to create a new People like to blame Congress for budgetary impasses and state, “North Colorado.” This is hare’s second foray into other problems. But we could use a strong dose of executive statewide politics, after a failed attempt at securing the leadership, says hamm. “I wasn’t the biggest fan of Bill Republican nomination for a seat in the state’s house of rep- Clinton, but Bill knew when to go to the middle of the road and resentatives in 2012, and he is doing rather well. Thus far, make things happen, get things done.” Moreover, hamm fears eleven of Colorado’s 64 counties have put separatist initia- that we’re on a path to the sort of populism that has blighted tives on their November ballots—and hare hopes that many South America. Then there’s the question of foreign wars. “In more will be on board by the time of the “Declaration the paper this morning,” says hamm, “there’s a report about a Convention” in January. Seven other counties “look likely to boy from edmond, Oklahoma, who was killed. That boy’s life join the working group,” hare reports, and citizens in another is worth so much more than everything they’ve got going on 28 have “shown some interest.” Unsurprisingly, neither over there,” in Afghanistan. “We’ve gotten numb to it all. We Boulder nor Denver—the state’s two most densely populated hear about 15 killed, 20, and we’re just numb.” urban areas—has been enticed to join the fray. For all his concerns, hamm is essentially an American opti- Despite the curiosity about his project, hare will have his mist. “This country is so good,” he says. “We have so many work cut out for him. Separation, in truth an ideologically neu- positive things going on here.” he believes that there are still tral procedure, has been tainted by the one tragic time in opportunities, still openings for entrepreneurs, for dreamers, American history when it was tried in earnest. Americans are for those willing to work and dare. Government may get in unusually friendly toward the advocates of self-determination their way, more than it has in the past. But they can work in other countries, but surprisingly hostile to them here at around it. he quotes an old enid oilman, Jack hodgden: home. Fair or not, to say “secessionist” is, in the imagination “There are more deals than there are people.” There are more of the majority, to say “Confederate.” And “Confederate” is opportunities to be had than there are people stepping up and inseparable from “slavery.” taking them. Nevertheless, hare sees himself as conservative of the Leaving Oklahoma City, I feel a little buoyed. Not every American way. “We are not revolutionary but restorationary,” sharecropper’s son can make the Forbes list (global or national). he explains to me over dinner at Nordy’s, a barbecue joint by Not every poor kid can make horatio Alger blush. But it would the side of the highway near Fort Collins. “We are restora- take a transformation more fundamental than anything we’ve tionists. We seem to be forcing change, but we’re really not.” seen to squeeze the life out of America. he rejects “secessionist” as a slur. “I had a very interesting

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interview with Mike Rosen,” he tells me. “He’s one of the big a sign with his face on it: ‘Do you miss me yet?’ Well, I don’t, talk-show hosts in the morning. He had a guy from the no. If it hadn’t been for 9/11, I think people would characterize Heritage Foundation on, and they were talking about the sepa- him differently.” How so? “For his trashing of the Constitution ratist movement and the 51st-state idea. And Rosen was not and massive expansion of Medicare.” Hare pauses. “And for understanding the difference between our seceding from the the PATRIOT Act.” union and our forming our own state under Article 4, Section “There’s a plethora of issues that have been piling on,” Tom 3. So I called in.” Gilley, president of the 51st State Initiative’s non-profit board, “Five minutes into the conversation Rosen says, ‘Well, if adds. “Seems to me,” Gilley says, “that since 2012, the this doesn’t work out, are you prepared to take up arms and Democratic movement has had a ton of political capital in fight your federal government?’ He was mocking the move- Colorado. They’re not only spending that, but they don’t care ment, of course. I kinda laughed because it was such a ridicu- and don’t respect what other people think. They had an agenda lous comment. If he was really respectful of the right to and they forced it upon people.” Moffat County’s commis- self-government and of self-determination, then he wouldn’t sioner, Tom Mathers, expressed this sentiment more bluntly have been mocking.” in an interview with the Craig Daily Press: “If we had a gov- The Supreme Court’s 1869 Texas v. White decision con- ernor that was actually a governor and not a mayor of Denver,” firmed that states do not have the power unilaterally to Mathers repined, “then this secession wouldn’t be happening.” secede from the Union, but there is, of course, no prohibition The new gun-control law, which recently led to the removal on the creation of new states. Hare’s advocacy is therefore of of the state-senate president and another state senator in the something quite legal. I ask him how he and his associates first recall election in Colorado’s 137-year history, is a driving have been driven to this point. “The genesis really started factor. But rural residents are also seething about a new fuel around the gun-control bills that were being considered,” mandate that commissioners complain increases electricity Hare says. “A group of Second Amendment patriots in Weld costs in the parts of the state that produce Colorado’s renew- County wanted to go to the commissioners and see if the able energy while protecting ratepayers in urban areas from county could do something to nullify the state laws.” They feeling the pinch. Sean Conway, the Weld County commis- couldn’t, of course. But one thing led to another, and before sioner who first suggested separation at Colorado’s annual long they were discussing leaving the state. county commissioners’ conference earlier in the year, con- “This is not a ‘normal’ part of the country,” Hare continues. siders this to be the most important issue. “We are very liberty-minded. And it’s not about parties.” I ask To explain his vision for North Colorado and the United him what he means. “George Bush was just a progressive with States in general, Hare has created a diagram. On it, there are an ‘R’ after his name! The tea-party groups around here put up three triangles, each representing a level of government: The

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federal government has the biggest triangle, followed by the of members in the House (the Permanent Apportionment Act state government, and, finally, the local government. At the of 1929 being apparently indestructible). The new state of bottom is a picture of people being crushed by all three. “The North Colorado would likely be allocated only one or two model going forward,” Hare says, “is We the People being in House seats, while Puerto Rico would yield at least five. If the charge of a strong and powerful local government, relative to analysis of Dudley Poston and Demetrea Nicole Farris of the state and federal governments.” By flipping the model on Texas A&M is correct, this means that the new arrangement its end, the 51st Staters hope that they can win over some would not only represent a net win for Democrats, but would unlikely blue-state allies who will come to see the virtues of lead to the removal of the most recently allocated representa- localism. “Maybe they want marijuana legalized, for exam- tives in Florida, Washington, Texas, California, and Minne - ple,” Hare suggests. “That’s not my thing, but social issues are sota—another roadblock, in and of itself, to congressional supposed to be done locally.” approval. Hare has also drawn up a “roadmap” that confirms a few of In anticipation of these objections, Hare and his colleagues his key principles. “The government exists only to protect the have a handful of other plans. The backup plan, which seems, individuals’ right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” from the offhand way Hare discusses it, to be an afterthought, it says. Moreover, any new state must “avoid federal entangle- strikes me as the most promising: to have northern neighbor Even if the 51st Staters were to succeed in convincing the locals, national Democrats would probably be staunchly opposed to the deal.

ments, where possible.” “I don’t know if there’s a state that has Wyoming annex a series of northern-Colorado counties. Such a model that even comes close to what we envision,” Hare tells a move has already been proposed independently by Moffat me. “At least not in the modern era.” County, which is nestled in the farthest northwestern corner of Colorado and borders both Wyoming and Utah. Wyoming’s governor, Matt Mead, did not greet Moffat County’s offer with HE road ahead would be almost impossible to navigate enthusiasm. successfully, but Hare is confident. “Everyone always Mead’s unwillingness notwithstanding, the Wyoming T focuses on the endgame—on what’s going to happen option would undoubtedly upset the smallest number of peo- when we get to Congress,” he tells me. “The response we’ve ple. No new national senators would be created by the move; been giving is that there will probably need to be a modern-day the northern-Colorado counties would fit nicely into Wyoming Missouri Compromise, whereby we exchange our statehood politically and geographically; Democrats would retain con- for the creation of two senators from a Democratic area. Puerto trol of Colorado and Republicans would solidify their control Rico, for example, or potentially a blue city in a red state. So of Wyoming. The move would be unlikely to change the par- that’s more than likely what’s going to have to happen. Unless, tisan make-up of the national Senate or the House much, of course, when we get there in 2016 or ’17 or ’18 or whenev- either. Meanwhile, most of the locals would benefit from the er it is, there is a Republican majority.” deal—except, that is, for conservatives in Colorado’s urban Despite his enthusiasm, I suspect that the plan as written is and southern areas, who would then lose their ideological dead on arrival. It is just about feasible that Democrats in allies in the rural parts of the state. But, Hare informs me, a Colorado could be convinced to back the scheme. Certainly, statewide initiative could probably pass over the objections of removing the conservative counties in the north would be an these people. attractive proposition, ensuring as it would that the state would Hare’s third suggestion is to remove from the state the pro- retain its unified Democratic government, and also that it gressive cities of Boulder and Denver. This strikes me as wish- would consistently go blue in presidential elections. “If pro- ful thinking. gressives can concentrate their power, we think they will be Occasionally, Hare ranges onto highly eccentric ground. If more than likely to support it,” Hare says. “As long as they can the separation initiatives have no luck, he explains, he hopes to convince themselves that the urban folks subsidize the rural try the “Phillips County proposal.” This would change repre- folks. That isn’t really the case, but we’ll let them believe that.” sentation in the state senate from a system determined by pop- But even if the 51st Staters were to succeed in convincing ulation into a system in which each county in Colorado got to the locals, national Democrats would probably be staunchly elect a senator regardless of its number of inhabitants. Hare opposed to the deal, because it would mean the creation of two admits to me that he knows full well that it has been unconsti- new reliably Republican—or, at least, conservative—senators tutional for states to have such an arrangement since the in the national Congress. Hare’s hope that this could be offset Reynolds v. Sims Supreme Court decision in 1964, but says that by the introduction into the Union of Puerto Rico is unlikely to he doesn’t agree with the decision and thus doesn’t care. In appeal to national Republicans who hope that they can turn fact, he adds, he might even try to sneak such a structure into Colorado red again in presidential elections, and who would be the proposed state constitution of North Colorado to see if he wary of losing seats in the House of Representatives. Puerto can get away with it. Rican statehood would be unlikely to change the total number Writing for the majority in an 8–1 decision in the Reynolds

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case, Chief Justice earl Warren argued that while the U.S. Senate was intended to be the states’ representation in Congress, “legislators” in states “represent people, not trees or What’s Right acres,” and thus their polities may not violate the principle of “one man, one vote.” In response to this ruling, an outraged Senator everett Dirksen of Illinois scrambled to pass an amendment to the federal Constitution that would have With Sam allowed unequal legislative districts within states. If the Reynolds case were allowed to stand, Dirksen contended, “the 6 million citizens of the Chicago area would hold sway in the Brownback Illinois legislature without consideration of the problems of their 4 million fellows who are scattered in 100 other counties,” and “California could be dominated by Los Angeles and A look at the Kansas governor San Francisco.” Dirksen’s idea got nowhere, but it is undeniable that what he predicted has come to pass. BY JOHN J. MILLER This, it seems, is the root cause of hare’s dissatisfaction, and a great challenge for the future of the United States. Topeka, Kan. Whether his strategy turns out to be viable or not, the combi- henever Sam Brownback leaves the governor’s nation of a growing feeling that America’s urban areas are rid- office in the state capitol of Kansas, he faces an ing roughshod over their rural counterparts and of the growth iconic image of John Brown. The big mural of the of government in general is creating real political problems in W militant abolitionist, painted by John Steuart Curry a country predicated on the principles of individual rights and in the late 1930s, hangs across the hallway from his door. It self-determination. The Cato Institute’s David Boaz famously depicts Brown as a hotheaded bitter clinger, clutching a Bible in observed that “the difference between libertarianism and one hand and a rifle in the other, and standing over a scene of socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a Civil War mayhem. his hair sticks up as if on fire, his long beard socialist community, but socialists can’t tolerate a libertarian blows horizontally, and his eyes glow with madness. community.” he might well have been discussing Colorado, “he’s not the kind of guy you’d invite to a barbecue,” jokes for while residents of Weld County do not appear to care one Brownback. “But he does represent Kansas. This is a place where way or another how the denizens of Denver and Boulder live, people have come to fight about right and wrong.” In Brown’s the same cannot be said the other way around. time, the fight was over slavery. In our time, says Brownback, it’s America’s cities, most of which are packed to the rafters about the future of self-government: “Are we going to be europe with people who want to expand government, tend to export a or are we going to be America again?” view of the role of federal power that goes far beyond the care- Brownback is hardly the country’s most visible republican fully delineated federalism of the Founders’ Constitution. governor: he hasn’t battled with Big Labor, like Wisconsin’s Witness, for example, the brazen manner in which new York Scott Walker, and he doesn’t appear to be thinking about a pres- City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, argues that the whole idential run, like Chris Christie of new Jersey, Bobby Jindal of nation should live under new gun-control laws in order to help Louisiana, or rick Perry of Texas. Yet he has quietly become him reduce crime in an area that is home to just under 3 per- one of the GOP’s leading conservative reformers, pushing for cent of the national population. smaller government and lower taxes in the heartland—and he It should come as no surprise that rural areas are pushing back. believes that Kansas has an important role to play in America’s Separatist efforts are currently under way in Michigan’s Upper coming political contests. “You change America by changing Peninsula, in western Maryland, and in northern California’s the states,” he says. “We have a red-state model and a blue-state Siskiyou County, in which commissioners have apparently not model. It’s going to break one way or the other. One will win and given up on the old plan to join forces with rural areas in the migrate to Washington.” nothing’s the matter with Kansas that south of Oregon and to finally create the state of Jefferson. conservative ideas can’t fix, and Brownback intends to make his Meanwhile, a recent University of vermont poll discovered that state a showcase for the country. 13 percent of vermonters would like the state to establish itself Samuel Dale Brownback, now 57, grew up on a farm a few as an independent republic. miles outside of Osawatomie, the town where John Brown and After a couple of hours at nordy’s, Jeffrey hare has to leave. his free-state allies clashed with pro-slavery partisans in the “I have to get up early in the morning to drive down to some 1850s, during a turbulent period known as “Bleeding Kansas.” counties in the south,” he tells me. “They’re holding meetings As a boy, Brownback wanted to be a pig farmer, but he also to discuss the idea, and we want to be there.” he gives me a showed an early talent for politics and began a long climb. In high copy of his statement of principles, shakes my hand, and then school, he won a race to become president of the Future Farmers speeds off into the distance. As his huge pickup truck moves Association of Kansas, and went on to serve as FFA’s national down the unpaved road, kicking up the dust, I take out my vice president. At Kansas State University, he majored in agri- iPhone from my pocket and snap a picture—of the car, the cultural economics and was elected president of the student gov- road, the fields. This will probably always be Colorado, I ernment. By 1986, he was his state’s secretary of agriculture. In think. And hare will probably always be pushing against the 1994, he ran for Congress and was swept into office as a member grain. But I want a photograph to show my children. Just in of the first republican majority in decades. case . . . near the end of Brownback’s first term in the house, Senator

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Bob Dole accepted the GOP nomination for president and Yet Brownback had big ideas as well. Shortly after taking resigned his seat. His replacement, appointed by a Republican office, he began a push to abolish the state’s income tax. “When governor, was Sheila Frahm. Brownback considered Frahm, a you’re a presidential candidate, you’re a political tourist. You see pro-choicer, too liberal and challenged her in a primary, to the different policy environments,” he says. A visit to the border of consternation of the state’s Republican establishment. Brown - Iowa and South Dakota impressed him. “Why is stuff new in back beat Frahm, prevailed again in the general election, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and older in Sioux City, Iowa?” he completed the final two years of Dole’s term plus two full terms asks. “The answer is that there’s no income tax in South Dakota, of his own. so that’s where people go to live.” He rattles off similar examples. One of Brownback’s top aides, first in the House and then the “The California and Texas models just scream out,” he says. Senate, was Paul Ryan. “Kansas is a big state and we would drive “They’re mega states, but California is on its knees and Texas is for five or seven hours at a time,” says Representative Ryan. “It soaring.” Brownback would like Kansas to join South Dakota gave us a lot of time to talk, and Sam taught me the importance and Texas by becoming the eighth state without an individual of really caring about people in politics—how to be warm and income tax. inclusive and how to be a happy warrior.” He may yet have his way. In June, the governor signed legisla- As a senator, Brownback earned a reputation as a social con- tion to drop the top individual rate in Kansas to 3.9 percent by As a senator, Sam Brownback earned a reputation as a social conservative with a strong humanitarian streak—a kind of bleeding-heart right-winger.

servative with a strong humanitarian streak—a kind of bleeding- 2018, down from 6.45 percent when he took office. It will fall heart right-winger. Raised a Methodist, he converted to further, based on a formula, if the state meets certain revenue Catholicism, championed pro-life causes, and crusaded against requirements. In time it could hit zero. To compensate, Brown - sex-trafficking. He cited William Wilberforce, a British politi- back had to lock in the sales tax at 6.15 percent, a hike compared cian who fought slavery, as an inspiration. He also favored immi- with three years ago, when it was 5.7 percent, but lower than 6.3 gration reforms that put him at odds with much of his party’s percent, a rate that his predecessor, a Democrat, had sold as a base. In 2006, he announced a run for president, thinking that “temporary” measure during a budget crunch. his Kansas roots might give him an advantage among the farm- “We’re moving from being a high-tax state to a low-tax ers who vote in the Iowa caucuses. Less than a year later, how- state,” says Brownback. “If we can get our taxes down, we’ll ever, he dropped out, following a bad result at the Iowa Straw stop the migration out of Kansas.” He points to another chart Poll. Brownback might have enjoyed a comfortable career in in his packet, from a July release by the Bureau of Labor the Senate, but he’d pledged to serve just two full terms. So he Statistics. It shows employment trends in the Kansas City area, came home to Kansas and ran for governor instead. He won which has seen job growth on the Kansas side of the border and with 63 percent of the vote. stagnation on the Missouri side. “When you see evidence like this, you realize how much tax policy matters,” says Brown - back. Things won’t be getting any easier for Missouri: On HEN he entered office in 2011, Brownback inherited a September 11, its Republican-led legislature failed to override financial mess—a budget deficit, a poor economy, and Democratic governor Jay Nixon’s veto of a tax-cut bill. “That’s W a state mired in a long demographic decline. Today, Missouri’s choice—and it’s going to send a message that Brownback carries around a packet of more than two dozen Missouri wants higher taxes than Kansas,” says Brown back. pages of charts and graphs. He likes to show it off, and its con- “People will vote with their feet.” tents aren’t all good news. The first page displays a line heading Other governors haven’t fared as well as Brownback in trying downward, revealing a steady loss of population in Kansas rela- to shift their states away from taxing productivity and toward tax- tive to the rest of the country. In 1970, Kansas was the nation’s ing consumption. Earlier this year, Louisiana’s Jindal scrapped a 28th most populous state. By 2010, it had slipped to 33rd, and it’s plan to eliminate the state income tax and replace it with higher projected to fall to 35th by 2020. “You don’t hire a coach to man- sales taxes. In Nebraska, a similar proposal by Republican gov- age decline,” says Brownback. Then he points to the population ernor Dave Heineman has stalled in the legislature. chart. “I want to change that line.” “There’s nothing magical or even inventive about what we’re The governor thinks he can do it through better public policy. doing,” says Brownback. “But change is hard. People don’t like Several of his early initiatives were small-ball, good-government it, even if what they have isn’t working. Change is easy to vilify. maneuvers: He merged the state’s department of transportation I think it comes down to an inherent distrust of government and with its turnpike authority and folded the juvenile-justice system the fear that something new won’t work.” into the corrections department, with an eye toward reducing overhead. He also reformed judicial selection, halting a peculiar practice in which lawyers held more sway than public officials in ROWNBACK, in fact, faced fierce resistance to tax cuts choosing the state’s appeals-court judges—a process that had from within his own party. Even though Kansas votes for blocked conservatives from serious consideration. B Republican presidential candidates and the GOP domi-

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nates the state legislature, conservatives often have felt on the drag on the economy. People aren’t hiring or they’re hiring part outs. “We had a three-party system here, with Democrats and lib- time because they don’t know the impact.” Asked about conser- eral Republicans forming a parliamentary majority that con- vative attempts in Washington to defund the health-care law, he sistently voted for more taxes and bigger government,” says points out that Republicans didn’t fare too well during the shut- Brownback. down controversies of the Clinton years, when he was in Nobody personifies the cozy relationship between Democrats Congress. He sticks to the big picture: “I’m not familiar with and liberal Republicans in Kansas better than Mark Parkinson. a single situation of putting more of the federal government He was chairman of the state GOP in 2002, when Democrat into something and the product getting cheaper. The lesson is Kathleen Sebelius was elected governor. Four years later, how- entirely the other way. With airlines, railroads, and telephones, ever, he quit the Republicans and joined Sebelius on the when we got government out of the way, everything became Democratic ticket as her running mate, winning election as better and cheaper.” lieutenant governor. (He replaced the outgoing John Moore, Democrats crow that Brownback will be vulnerable next year, another Republican-turned-Democrat.) When Sebelius left when he pursues reelection. In February, a survey by Public Kansas to become secretary of health and human services in Policy Polling found that he had an approval rating of only 37 the Obama administration, Parkinson finished her term, percent, with 52 percent of voters disapproving of his tenure. remaining a Democrat the whole time. Even so, Brownback led against each of the six prospective “What we had was perfidy within the Republican party,” says Democratic candidates that PPP tested. Since then, all six have David Kensinger, who managed Brownback’s winning campaign in 2010. That year, tea-party activism helped conservatives gain strength in the state house, mainly at the expense of Democrats. Yet the state senate remained a preserve of liberal Republicans—and an obstacle to Brownback’s full agenda. So Kensinger focused on defeating them in the 2012 primaries. When they were over, conservative challengers had ousted nine GOP incumbents, including senate president Steve Morris, who was last seen complaining to the Huffington Post in September that conservatives had “hi jacked” the Kansas GOP. “We’re more of a traditional Republican party now,” says Brownback. “We’re dominated by conservatives and we have a moderate wing and a good section of libertarianism. I’m driving down the middle of the right side of the road.” Nearly two years ago, President Obama trav- eled to Kansas—and to Osawatomie in particular—to deliver a left-wing barnburner of a speech. Osawatomie is associated not just with John Brown, but also with Theodore Roosevelt, who went there in 1910 to give his hyper- progressive “New Nationalism” speech. Obama wanted to invoke the memory of Roosevelt, and Governor Sam Brownback the New York Times called Obama’s address “his most pointed appeal yet for a strong governmental role declined to run, suggesting that they think Brownback will be through tax and regulation,” infused “with the moralistic lan- tough to beat. On September 17, state-house minority leader Paul guage that has emerged in the Occupy protests around the Davis stepped forward, announcing that he’d take on the tax- nation.” Brownback didn’t hear Obama in person: He learned slashing governor. of the visit only a few days before, and it conflicted with a So Brownback heads into 2014 as a favorite. Would he con- scheduled event in Wichita. “I don’t think the White House sider a new run for the White House in 2016, telling the story of wanted me there anyway,” says Brownback. “I’ve been pretty a “Kansas comeback” fueled by tax cuts? Brownback won’t rule critical of this administration.” When the governor read the it out, though it seems like a stretch. He’s a better bet for 2020, speech later, however, its tone surprised him. “The president after eight years in Topeka and when he turns 64—assuming was just trying to stoke passions,” he says. “The speech had there’s a Democrat in the Oval Office. Brownback hopes that nothing to do with creating the best opportunities for the most before he’s finished as governor, he’s working with a fellow- people in America.” Republican chief executive. “Our country is at an inflection

GETTY IMAGES Brownback doesn’t think anything has changed since then. point, and the next president will have a real shot at pursuing a / AFP / “At this point in an economic recovery, we ought to be off like a federalized model of government,” he says. “Washington is rocket ship and rising. But we’re having trouble hitting take-off going to have to pay attention to what we’re doing out here in

SAUL LOEB speed,” he says. The problem is Obamacare: “It’s a substantial America.”

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They’ve got their work cut out for them. Katrina was shocking not only for the destruction it wrought but also for the longstanding social disaster it exposed. In New Orleans pre-Katrina, nearly one in four residents fell below the poverty level. Twenty-nine percent of house- holds were headed by single parents, and over 15 percent of New Orleans teens reported that they had lost their virginity before turning 13. For the past two decades, at least 158 people have been murdered every year in New Orleans. Louisiana today has the highest incarcer- ation rate in the world, and around one in 14 black men in the Big Easy is serving time. New Orleans’s failing schools have been both a cause and an effect of these social ills. In 2004, around 40 percent of the city’s residents were functionally illiterate. In 2006, about 40 percent of the adult residents of the Lower Ninth Ward had never graduated from high Lessons from Katrina school. Before Katrina, 90 percent of The transformation of New Orleans has transformed its schools, too public schools in New Orleans were performing below the state average. A whopping 74 percent of eighth-graders BY JILLIAN KAY MELCHIOR lacked reading proficiency. On the 2004 high-school exit exam, only 4 percent of New Orleans students exhibited basic proficiency in ArOLD CLAy sat on the cafe- Dubreuil, the run-down street on the English and only 6 percent showed basic teria floor, fighting tears. A outer most edge of New Orleans’s Lower math capability. The school district, cor- classmate had stolen the ice Ninth Ward, and “across from me wasn’t rupt and dominated by union influence, H cream off his red lunch tray flowers,” he says. “It was burnt-up cars, was heavily indebted and barely staving and then pushed him down when he trash, and rats the size of cats.” He off bankruptcy. In the three years before tried to get it back. But, as his uncles attended bad schools with leaky tin roofs the hurricane, the FBI indicted 29 school and older cousins had taught him, boys and no heat in the winter. He had an employees for fraud and corruption. don’t cry. So instead, “I start taking the absent father. He was sometimes hungry, Change came fast. Katrina hit New food off the tray, took the tray in my right he was mad, and he lashed out. Orleans in late August 2005, damaging hand, walked over, tapped him on the Clay almost fell through the cracks. all but 16 of the public-school buildings shoulder, and cracked him on the head But at the end of his sophomore year, and displacing tens of thousands of stu- with that tray,” Clay says. “I was one of an assistant principal named Philmon dents. Within two months, the Louisiana those bad kids. ‘Put him out, put him Edwards saw potential in him and de- legislature had voted to take over New out’—that was the answer.” cided to be the father figure Clay lacked. Orleans’s failing school district, estab- Clay was kicked out of school—not the “Without that man at that time,” he says, lishing the recovery School District and first time he’d been sent home for bad choking up, “I could have become a sta- effectively firing 7,500 teachers and behavior—for this fight. Nobody took the tistic.” school workers. In place of most of these time to understand why he had reacted so Instead, Clay eventually followed in public schools, charter schools were forcefully. Though his family received his mentor’s footsteps. Today, he’s the established. food stamps and aid through the Women, assistant principal of Edna Karr Charter Edna Karr High School reopened in Infants, and Children supplemental- High School, which is recognized nation- December 2005, changing as radically as nutrition program, he still didn’t eat some ally for excellence in education. An out- the rest of the city in those days. Before, nights, so that ice cream his classmate spoken advocate for school choice, Clay it had been a blue-ribbon magnet school, had swiped had real value. He lived on relies on his own experience to fight for with 40 percent of its student body in the the future of his students. He and educa- “gifted” category. These students per- Jillian Kay Melchior is a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow at tors like him are contributing to a post- formed well above the norm, and every the Franklin Center for Government and Public Katrina education revolution in New one of them graduated. After Katrina, the

Integrity. Orleans. school dropped its selective admission ROMAN GENN

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Education 2013

standards, allowing children from any- social workers. The nurse persuades help low-income students achieve acade- where in New Orleans to attend. local doctors to visit for in-house check- mic success. “I had a job before Katrina,” says long- ups; on one occasion, a student had a root Karr’s teachers manage to cram in time principal John Hiser. “Since Katrina, canal on a table in an administrator’s four years’ worth of English and math by I’ve had a mission.” office. the time students enter their junior year. Today, most freshmen enter the high Clay says that because he knows so In May 2013, all but two students in a school with fifth-grade math and sixth- many of his students have an absent senior class of 220 graduated, and 80 grade English skills. Ninety-five percent father, he has employed “a lot of different percent immediately went to college. of the students are black, and 87 percent men around here, and I want to stress That’s in an environment where many receive free or reduced-fee lunch. “We that—men.” Clay gives out his cell- students are first-generation high-school take these kids in,” Hiser says. “We don’t phone number freely so students can call graduates, let alone college students. tell them they’re stupid. We tell them him anytime they need, and he encour- “It’s rewarding when you have an A they’ve got potential.” ages his teachers to be there for their stu- and B student and they succeed,” says Not all New Orleans charters have made dramatic progress, but there’s been a noticeable uptick in the quality of education since the city embraced school choice.

Educational obstacles are one thing; dents, too. “I want them to have a person Cheryl Flotte, president of the Parent- emotional ones are another. “Life’s vicis- to call,” he says. “That’s the benefit of not Teacher Organization. “[But] when you situdes don’t take a day off,” Clay says, being a traditional educator.” have a D student who succeeds . . . I rattling through the depressing litany of Teachers are required to stay late some think, ‘That’s what we’ve got here. We challenges his students face. Some have days, offering remedial help and tutor- offer everybody, from the smartest to the a father in prison. Others never knew ing—an uncompensated extra effort ones that are struggling, the opportunity their father, and “I have a group of kids that a teachers’ union would probably to succeed.’” who feel like, ‘How do you want me to oppose, although it makes a huge differ- Not all New Orleans charters have believe in a higher power when the phys- ence to students’ progress. Karr offers made such dramatic progress, but there’s ical man hasn’t shown up?’” More than ACT preparation and college visits, en - been a noticeable uptick in the quality a dozen students have attempted suicide couraging students to apply for scholar- of education since the city embraced during Clay’s tenure at Karr. Others have ships and make connections for their school choice. Today, almost 80 percent post-traumatic stress from Katrina, which future careers. Administrators recruit of public-school students in the city intensifies whenever there’s a storm community groups and businesses to attend charters, and on average they warning. There are kids whose teeth are volunteer or donate. The school has receive 86 more days of math instruc- rotting in their mouth because they’ve invested in infrastructure, giving the tion and 58 more days of reading than never been to the dentist. students a sense of worth they lacked in their public-school counterparts do, The charter model has given Karr’s their old, broken, dirty learning envi- according to a new report from the administrators flexibility to address ronment. Center for Research on Educational these issues creatively, establishing Sonya Sylve, a parent and Edna Karr Outcomes. Minority students especially what they call a “wrap-around service alum, says that as a charter, Edna Karr benefit. While New Orleans still has a environment.” is “versatile in every way . . . the way long way to go, “I think we’re moving “I think the charter model—and that’s they handle the students, the material in the right direction,” Clay says. “That what I’m going to stress—allows you to that’s brought into the school for the is, we’re putting out better citizens, in do this,” Clay says. “You have a lot of students, parental involvement.” The my opinion, because of the charter charter schools in New Orleans that have students learn from example, coming movement.” [the freedom] to get what they need for away with “the willingness to want to That includes many of his own gradu- the children instead of, ‘Let’s place an learn, to be a part of something new,” ates. One alumus went to West Point. order, let’s make this come from a top- she says. “They’re not afraid to be Another, a football player whom Clay down approach.’” introduced to something that’s differ- fondly describes as “my knucklehead,” Because administrators have more ent, challenging.” attended Columbia on a scholarship. control over budgeting and spending, Though the charter receives the same The school’s 2012 valedictorian, Rosario they’ve been able to prioritize their par- $8,500 per student as any other Louisiana Gardenia, is a native Spanish-speaker ticular needs. In addition to providing school, Karr has made staggering progress who spoke little English when she first robust academics, sports, and extracur- with its students. In the last school year, it came to Karr. She studied hard, applied ricular activities, Karr employs three was one of three schools in the nation to herself, and graduated with not only regular counselors, one college coun- win the Gaston Caperton Inspiration English fluency but also $141,000 in selor, a full-time nurse, and two full-time Award, which honors institutions that scholarship money. Last year’s valedicto-

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year’s valedictorian, Brianna Despenza, was awarded $1.3 million in scholarship offers. “She got to sit back at the table, The School of looking at all of the money and all of the schools, and choose,” Clay says. Hard Knocks The commitment to school choice is Obama’s proposals won’t reduce pervasive in New Orleans’s alternative I M P O schools, and it’s a refreshing shift in a tuition, but markets will R T A N T city where parents had long felt trapped N O T and deprived of options. Not that the BY RICHARD VEDDER I C E teachers’ unions have much cared; in to all National Review 2012, the Times-Picayune of Greater PEAKING in Buffalo on August New Orleans reported, Michael Walker 22, President Obama vowed Jones of the Louisiana Association of that the rapid rise in higher- subscribers! Educators dismissed choice on the S education costs had to stop, and ground that “parents may not have the that he would exercise tough love with time or information to make a decision colleges to help make it happen, includ- about their child’s education.” The ing rating the colleges and withholding paper quoted him as saying, “If I’m a money from them if they raised fees too We are moving our parent in poverty, I have no clue be - much. His speech was filled with strong subscription-fulfillment cause I’m trying to struggle and live day rhet or ic but short on details. to day.” When the smoke clears, I suspect the office from Though the public-school model president will get his wish—a significant Mount Morris, Ill. slowdown of the rise in tuition fees—but failed New Orleans historically, it still to Palm Coast, Fla. has its vocal adherents; school choice is not because of his speech or his actions, by no means a fait accompli. In August, although he will no doubt be quick to take Please continue the U.S. Department of Justice sued to credit. In fact, the federal government is a to be vigilant: block 34 school districts across the state large part of the problem of rising fees. of Louisiana from giving private-school Yet markets work. To be sure, when mar- There are fraudulent vouchers to the around 400,000 eligible ket signals are distorted by government agencies soliciting poor children who attend failing schools. taxes, subsidies, or regulations, or by an Most of these students seeking to escape artificial lack of competition, markets your National Review academic doom are black—but the DOJ function more slowly and less efficiently. subscription ! renewal is claiming, without irony, that it’s acting None the less, there are powerful forces without our authorization. in their interest, because when these at work that are at last overcoming the minority kids leave, it makes the bad distortions caused by our huge and dys- Please reply only to schools less diverse. functional federal student-financial-aid National Review If the DOL and its union allies suc- pro grams and state- government higher- ceed, they will do so against the will of education subsidies. renewal notices or New Orleans parents, who strongly want Before elaborating on the market solu- bills—make sure the to have educational options. More than tion, why do I think the Obama remarks return address is half of New Orleans parents want to send are unlikely to have much impact before their child to a school of their choice, he leaves office? First, recall that the Palm Coast, Fla. according to an April report by Tulane’s president said a year and a half ago, in his Ignore all requests for 2012 State of the Un ion address, “Let me Cowen Institute for Public Education renewal that are not Initiatives. Karr has a long wait list, and put colleges . . . on notice: If you can’t staffers have often seen parents crying in stop tuition from going up, the funding directly payable their front office—out of concern that you get from taxpayers is going down.” to National Review. their children won’t get in, and out of Fees have continued upward—as have relief if they do. total taxpayer subsidies. If you receive any mail or “What we’re doing here, in my opin- Second, there is the matter of timing. telephone offer that makes ion, is the true model of charter, the true While in other areas the president has not model of right to choose, parents having hesitated to issue executive orders that you suspicious contact the opportunity to do their own home- appear to violate constitutional require- [email protected]@nationalreview.com.. work,” Clay says. “Whenever you give Your cooperation stakeholders the opportunity to investi- Mr. Vedder directs the Center for College Affordability gate, do research for a quality education, and Productivity, teaches economics at Ohio University, is greatly appreciated. then we’re doing a great service to all and is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise folk.” Institute.

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ments for legislative action, doing so here cial aid. The federal student-financial- science, technology, engineering, and would potentially lead to a constitutional assistance program gives him a fair mathematics, who typically have high standoff in which the president’s usual amount of potential clout, which is one of earnings, while favoring majors in, say, allies, the higher-education community, many reasons we need to reform and anthropology or ethnic studies, who earn would become his enemy. downsize (or eliminate) that program. much less. Moreover, a policy already in There probably is bipartisan support to Besides rating colleges and adjusting place that forgives a portion of student “do something” about the tuition prob- financial aid, there were two ideas in the loans for those holding “public service” lem, but it will take time for Oba ma to president’s speech, one good and one bad. jobs suggests that people who work for win congressional support for any system The good idea is to encourage schools to nonprofit organizations are morally su - that ranks colleges and ties funding to the be more transparent and provide con- perior to, or deliver greater value than, rankings. It would take more time to actu- sumers with better information. While I, those in the selfish for-profit part of the ally compile the rankings (my Center for like many Amer i cans, have little admira- economy (which pays almost all of the College Af ford a bil i ty and Productivity tion for the IRS, it does have fabulous government’s bills). calculates rankings for Forbes, and it data that would be of great interest to Yet none of these programs and poli- takes us a few months each year, but it is education con sum ers: the earnings of col- cies are necessary. If the president and his unlikely that the bureaucratic Depart - lege graduates. It has the capacity—with education bureaucrats would just re lax ment of Edu ca tion could do it in less the cooperation of the colleges, which and do nothing (hard as that would be for than two years). In short, there is little could be made mandatory—to make pub- them), markets would come to their res- prospect that the feds could implement lic the average earnings of, say, the class cue, because for decades there has been a anything along the lines the president of 2010 at Slippery Rock University. huge disconnect between the number of was talking about before the 2016–17 What is that cohort earning today—not college graduates and the number of new academic year. By then, the problem may only the graduates, but also those who jobs available in the managerial, techni- already be considerably reduced for other dropped out? The data could even be bro- cal, and professional fields, which college reasons (see below). ken down by areas of study or majors. graduates traditionally fill. Beyond the question of presidential The very bad idea that the president This is only partially a consequence effectiveness, however, there is some- promoted was to further limit and excuse of the slow job growth caused by policy thing terribly presumptuous and worri- the repayment of student-loan debt. He ineptitude, investor and consumer fear, some about Obama’s rhetoric: He is wants to limit loan repayments to 10 and the massive expansion of the wel- appointing himself the price czar for col- percent of income, presumably with fare state. It also reflects the triumph of leges and universities. What happened to some limit on the number of years during the “college for all” mentality, which state-level administration and control of which the government would try to col- gives the impression that anyone who public higher education? That’s an impor- lect the loan. In short, he is advocating doesn’t go to college must not be smart tant question, because the unique strength partial loan forgiveness. He is encourag- enough, and that those without a good of America’s universities is that they are ing students to borrow more, knowing post-secondary education are condemned not centrally controlled—and for that rea- that there is a good chance they won’t to a life of poverty and social inferiority. son are impressively diverse. have to repay it all. That strategy would These attitudes have been financially sup- In the Northeast, tuition fees are high increase an already huge problem that ported by long-term double-digit annual and public universities less dominant, ballooning student loans have caused in growth in the federal student-financial- while in other parts of the country, state raising tuition levels: The easier it is for assistance programs. universities tend to be stronger, with students to get tuition money, the more As a consequence of this labor-market/ lower fees. We have a robust not-for- colleges will charge. college-graduate imbalance, we now profit private sector, and even an impor- And the problem goes even deeper. have well over 100,000 janitors, and a tant for-profit sector, despite the efforts Despite policies designed to do the oppo- million retail sales clerks, with bache- of the Obama administration to weaken site, Obama’s partial-loan-forgiveness lor’s degrees or more. The costs of col- it. We have hundreds if not thousands of proposal would punish those who study lege are rising as job opportunities at the governing boards running our universi- margin are worsening, which means that ties, which have considerable divergence many college kids are ending up not only in curricula, great intellectual, ethnic, wage-poor but deeply in debt. As a con- and religious diversity, and wide varia- sequence, younger Americans and their tions in campus culture, academic rigor, parents are starting to say no to college and other characteristics. and to the “college for all” policies of This adds to competition and enhances bureaucrats, do-good foundations, and student choice relative to European-style politicos. systems, in which the ministry of edu- How do we know this? For one thing, cation tightly controls all schools. But last year’s enrollments were down about Obama is trying to assume European- 500,000 from the previous year, a very style powers in education, including meaningful drop. And a good deal of authority over private schools, which “I’m afraid we’ll have to hold Kevin back anecdotal evidence suggests that another are heavily dependent on student finan- a year−he flunked Diversity.” decline may be happening this year. Two

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years in a row of enrollment decline is a Courses were offered in six seven-week very rare occurrence in modern higher terms, providing students with more education. Tomorrow’s opportunities to start a class than a tradi- To varying degrees, colleges are de - tional community college would have pendent on tuition fees to operate. As Online given them. Each student was paired with enrollments fall, college income falls. a “personal success coach” and given Raising fees aggressively to compensate access to free tutoring and career coun- is not an option, as consumers are becom- Schools seling. At $4,250 for a full-time semester ing more price-sensitive. In stealthy fash- Let’s get them here today last year, Ivy Bridge was more expensive ion, many colleges are starting to lower BY ANDREW KELLY than state-subsidized community col- net tuition fees by giving larger “schol- leges, but cost less than half of what arships” (tuition discounts). And some N 2008, Tiffin University, a small Tiffin charges for its on-campus offer- moderately prestigious specialized pro- private college in northwest Ohio, ings (more than $9,900). grams, such as law schools, are cutting teamed up with Altius Education, a The school started with 65 students in enrollments as demand for their services I San Francisco–based start-up, to cre- 2008, but enrollment grew to 1,600 by plummets. ate an entirely new type of college. The 2011. That year, Ivy Bridge officials Necessity is the mother of invention, online institution—named Ivy Bridge reported retention rates of 60 percent, or so Plato allegedly proclaimed. Col- College—was to provide students with and that 90 percent of their students leges are being forced to do the un - an inexpensive online associate’s degree received Pell Grants. thinkable—reduce redundant staff, ask in general studies that graduates could In 2010, Tiffin’s accreditor—one of the pro fessors to teach more, and in gener- use to transfer to one of 150 partner four- independent agencies that govern access al learn to live within their shrinking year colleges. to federal student-aid money—applauded means. The “tough love” that Obama Tiffin handled academics while Altius Ivy Bridge in renewing Tiffin’s accredita- proposes may come not from him, but took care of recruiting and technology. tion, calling the program “an excellent instead from the action of millions of strategic initiative” with “strong curricu- consumers who choose to forgo the col- Mr. Kelly is the director of the Center on Higher lum, efficient and effective academic sup- legiate experience. Education Reform at the American Enterprise Institute. port, [and] excellent instruction.” In 2012,

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Ivy Bridge won one of 13 Next Gene- mates that the amount of debt held by bility, but just a handful have done so. ration Learning grants from the Bill and some 500 four-year campuses more than States also have a say in which organi- Melinda Gates Foundation. doubled be tween 2000 and 2011 (after zations may provide higher education, One year later, though, Ivy Bridge is adjusting for inflation). and authorization boards are often staffed gone—killed off by America’s higher- Meanwhile, the basic elements of a by representatives or graduates of the education cartel. This past August, the college degree—content, instruction, and state’s finest institutions. Farther down Higher Learning Commission—the same assessment—have become more abun- the line, colleges have authority over accreditor that lauded Ivy Bridge just three dant than ever before. In the space of two which credits they accept for transfer and years ago—told Tiffin to stop enrolling stu- years, the MOOC movement has grown have little incentive to award credit for dents in the program, citing a rule change into multimillion-dollar ventures such as courses taken elsewhere. That means that went into effect after the 2010 review. Coursera, Udacity, and edX. After just students can take all the MOOCs they Less than a month later, the Department under two years, Coursera has attracted 5 want, but few such courses will actually of Justice launched a “false claims” inves- million users. Meanwhile, existing col- count toward a degree. tigation of Altius and Ivy Bridge. leges such as Arizona State, Southern These policies have empowered the The Ivy Bridge saga is about more than New Hampshire, and Rio Salado College regulated to serve as the regulators, sti- a pilot program at a small college that went now enroll thousands of students in fling the kind of innovation and compe- out of business. It serves as a cautionary online degree programs. tition that has driven down prices in tale for those who assume that advances in But structural barriers to innovation other sectors of the economy. So while technology are driving American higher remain. The most significant of these is technology has opened up opportunities education toward an inevitable transfor- accreditation. In order to receive federal for more affordable higher education, mation. Breakthroughs like Massive Open student-aid money, colleges must be there are still serious barriers limiting Online Courses (MOOCs) have led opti- accredited, which means that accredita- our ability to capitalize on them. mists to predict “the end of college as we tion agencies govern entry to the market. To see this, take a look at the prices of know it.” But even the most revolutionary But this gatekeeping power is built on a online programs at traditional colleges and innovations are hard-pressed to break up conflict of interest: Accreditors were cre- universities. While evidence suggests that entrenched monopolies that are protected ated by existing colleges, subsist on fees online courses should be cheaper to pro- by government policy. Making higher from the campuses they evaluate, and use vide than in-person courses, consumers education affordable doesn’t require more faculty from one accredited institution to aren’t seeing lower prices. A recent U.S. technology. It requires that policymakers assess another. Accreditation reviews News and World Report analysis of 300 be brave enough to break up the higher- enshrine the traditional college model by online bachelor’s-degree programs at pub- education cartel. focusing on such things as faculty creden- lic universities found that the cost per Higher education has the hallmarks of tials, facilities, and even the number of credit hour for in-state students was higher an industry that is in trouble—prices books in the library. Organizations that in online programs ($277) than it was in have ballooned, returns have stagnated, only provide courses can’t get accredited in-person classes ($243). And U.S. News and student debt has grown. Yet despite because they don’t offer degrees. points to a forthcoming survey from the the public outcry, most campuses have Beyond accreditation, federal rules American Association of State Colleges been reluctant to change their business require that financial aid be awarded based and Universities that finds the same situ- model. In response to declines in state on “credit hours” (or the time students ation: Of the 400 colleges surveyed, 60 funding, most public colleges have spend in class), which discourages pro- percent charged the same tuition for jacked up tuition rather than cut costs. grams that grant credit to students once online as for in-person courses, while 36 Others have taken out mountains of debt they are able to pass an exam, whether percent charged students more to take to finance profligate spending in the face that takes one week or one semester. their courses online.

of declining tuition revenue. Moody’s esti- These programs can now apply for eligi- Why are online programs so expensive? IVY BRIDGE COLLEGE OF TIFFIN UNIVERSITY

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Because such regulatory barriers as MOOC credits to state universities were education market. And we should collect accreditation have created a credentialing watered down or shelved in the face of better data on the costs and benefits of all monopoly among traditional colleges, resistance from faculty groups. types of postsecondary providers so that allowing them to charge whatever stu- What could change the trajectory of col- new and traditional models compete for dents are willing to pay. Instead of using lege costs? A vigorous effort to break up students based on how well they prepare online delivery to lower prices, campuses the higher-education regulatory regime, their graduates. have used it to generate revenue that cross- starting with the accreditation process. The politics here are tricky. Higher subsidizes their on-campus offerings. Markets function best when barriers to education is a big-money industry, and it Arizona State’s partnership with Pearson, entry are low and consumers can make happens to be very widely distributed ASU Online, is projected to bring in $130 informed decisions. Tweaks to the design across the country. Nearly every congres- million (or about 9 percent of the univer- of financial-aid programs that leave anti- sional district has a college within its bor- sity’s projected tuition revenue) by 2020. quated regulatory policies in place—the ders, and in 2011 half of all districts had Southern New Hampshire University’s standard congressional approach—will eleven colleges or more. Representatives online arm generated $74 million in rev- not get us very far. have little incentive to vote for reforms enue in 2012, up from $10 million in 2007. To their credit, Republicans have be - that might hurt their local college. Meanwhile, despite the hype, MOOCs moaned the web of federal regulations Luckily, some leaders with a broader are not yet competing with traditional that govern colleges and universities. vantage point have sounded a call for reg- higher education. As the Chronicle of Senator Lamar Alexander recently re - ulatory reform. In his most recent State Higher Education recently argued, there marked, “Let’s face it: One of the greatest of the Union address, President Obama is little evidence that students are trans- obstacles to innovation has become us— proposed a new, alternative accreditation ferring MOOC credits to existing col- the federal government.” But we should system. And Republican senators Mike leges. Colorado State University Global do more than free existing colleges of Lee and Marco Rubio have both pushed Campus announced that not a single stu- inane federal regulations and overween- for changes to accreditation. More dent had taken it up on its offer to award ing accreditors. We should also knock conservatives should take up this cause. credit for a computer-science MOOC. down barriers that keep new ventures, With out a more competitive market, And efforts in the California and Florida including some that look nothing like tech nology alone will not make much of legislatures to allow students to transfer existing colleges, out of the higher- a dent in the cost of college. “A masterpiece. When I talk to students I show them

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Education 2013

during the freshman year in college. school graduation rate in the United And that’s among those who stick it out States ranked thirteenth among nineteen Rethinking and graduate from high school. Millions OECD countries.” Although the U.S. of young people drop out. School disci- rate rose during the next decade, “gradu- High School pline remains appalling, with gangs, ation rates in other OECD countries also metal detectors, and violence the norm increased. . . . As a result, the U.S. high Our model is in many places. school graduation rate in 2010 was still half a century old The basic institutional structures for below the OECD average.” high school that former Harvard presi- Other countries’ high schools are dif- BY CHESTER E. FINN JR. dent James B. Co nant described and re- ferent, too. Amanda Ripley’s acclaimed com mend ed in an influential 1959 book new book, The Smartest Kids in the S waves of reforms and would- re main pretty much unchanged a half- World, recounts the experiences of three be reforms have washed over century later. The rest of the world has American teens who spent an exchange American public education not been idle, however. Our competitors, year overseas—in Finland, South Korea, A these past three decades, high rivals, and allies have all upped their and Poland—and were surprised and schools have mostly stayed dry. Although games—graduating more of their young challenged by what they found. Not a lot test scores have risen slightly in the people, sending more to universities, and of bells and whistles—few computers, for early grades, especially in math, National boosting their scores on various interna- example—but a culture of serious study Assessment results for twelfth-graders tional measures. On the OECD’s PISA and hard work. In her words, have been flat or down a bit. SAT scores test, for instance, which compares a care- high school in Finland, Korea, and are also flat, and ACT averages much the ful statistical sampling of students from Poland had a purpose, just like high- same. around the world, 22 countries surpassed school football practice in America. ACT, the organization that administers the U.S. in 2009 in the percentage of 15- There was a big, important contest at the college-entrance test of the same year-olds reaching the “proficiency” level the end, and the score counted. Their name, judges only one-quarter of its test- in math. (The test is administered every teachers were more serious, too: highly takers to be fully ready for college-level three years; results for 2012 will be out in educated, well-trained, and carefully academics, and the College Board is not early De cem ber.) chosen. They had enough autonomy to do serious work. . . . The students had independence, too, which made school more bearable and cultivated more driv en, self-sufficient, high school graduates. Better teachers. A clear focus on learning. Higher expectations—and higher stakes for kids. Such basic alterations would reform U.S. high schools more surely than a dozen elaborate pol i cies and government programs. But obstacles to such changes abound, rooted in present- day politics, the weak preparation of many students in the middle grades, and widespread complacency. Because it’s so difficult to launch a frontal attack on structures and practices as deeply ingrained as those of the American high school—where often the biggest policy debate is about starting the day later so teenagers can stay in bed much cheerier. In releasing SAT results And while once upon a time Ameri can longer—the most promising path to for the 1.6 million members of the high- high schools had the world’s highest change is working around the system. school class of 2013 who took the test, the graduation (and college-going) rate, that’s New institutional forms are emerging as board estimated that just 43 percent met no longer true. Writes Harvard education alternatives to Conant’s “comprehensive” its benchmark for college- and career- economist Richard Murnane: “Between model (which envisioned an enrollment readiness—a score of 1550 or better (out 1970 and 2000, the high school gradua- of at least 1,000 students of varying abili- of 2400), which translates to a 65 percent tion rate in the United States stagnated. In ties, receiving instruction in a wide range chance of having a B– (or better) GPA contrast, the secondary school graduation of subjects distributed among several STEVE SHEPARD rate in many other OECD countries in - “tracks”). Specialized “early college” / Mr. Finn is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution creased mark ed ly during this period. A high schools enable motivated students to

and the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. consequence is that, in 2000, the high speed up, earn as much as two years’ GETTY IMAGES

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worth of college credits, and improve charters, virtual options, home-schooling, Bloomberg-era education innovations is what would otherwise be a boring senior and diverse forms of public-sector doubtful. Front-runner Bill de Blasio is year. Dual-enrollment programs also choice—has helped liberate young people likely to follow the lead of Gotham’s allow high-school students to earn uni- from neighborhood schools that are powerful teachers’ union, which is no versity credits, and access to Advanced unsatisfactory for a host of reasons. In - friend of school choice or most other Place ment courses is increasing. STEM deed, choice works best at the high- innovations.) (science, technology, engineering, and school level, because teens are more Other changes under way in U.S. mathematics) schools appeal to young mobile and independent than their public education are likely over time to people with a keen interest in those fields, younger siblings and are also beginning to spread their effects to high schools. The while career/technical schools (some- specialize. There’s a powerful civic and “Common Core” academic standards times in league with community colleges) cultural argument for having everyone for English and math, though contro- help others prepare for gainful employ- learn essentially the same things in ele- versial, are rigorous and substantive. If ment after graduation. mentary and middle school, but people properly implemented—and attached to Virtual schools—often in the charter naturally head in different directions dur- a bona fide accountability system— sector—make it possible to take courses ing high school. they’ll yield more high-school gradu- anytime, anyplace, which is especially In New York City, for example, every ates who are prepared for college-level valuable for those who are homebound, eighth-grader—some 90,000 a year— work (and modern jobs), and fewer who already working, burdened with family must rank up to a dozen preferences need costly, discouraging “remediation.” responsibilities, or keen to study sub- among the city’s 400-plus high schools That’s essentially what has been done in jects not available in their local high and programs. A computerized “match- Massa chusetts, the one state with high- school. “Drop-out recovery” schools— ing” system, like the one used for med- school graduates who can fairly be termed again, often charters—and “credit recov- ical residencies, then sorts them out. “internationally competitive.” ery” options (which may also be online) Though an applicant may put the closest Also inspiring hope is a slow but steady create options for those who quit or flunk, school to his home at the top of his list, move toward viewing education and the then think better of it. nobody is stuck in the neighborhood high institutions that provide it as a continuum The steady advance of school choice at school for lack of alternatives. (Whether from kindergarten (or earlier) at least the state and local level—via vouchers, the next mayor will keep this and other through twelfth grade, and often through

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college, rather than a series of discon- sense of the Court’s establishment nected institutions that follow different The Clause jurisprudence. That area baffles rules and norms. The Common Core stan- even federal judges, one of whom re - dards, for example, are carefully se - Prohibition of ferred to it as “a vast, perplexing desert,” quenced and cumulative from K through so what hope can there be for school offi- 12. our most celebrated charter schools— cials whose entire job is not the inter- the Know ledge Is Power Program, or Childhood pretation of supreme Court rulings? KIPP group, which now has well over 100 Innocuous play is punished Making decisions about what celebra- schools across nearly half the states— amidst dangerous conduct tions of the winter solstice to allow or began with the middle grades but came forbid is, ironically, more an exercise of to realize that, particularly for disad- faith than of legal judgment. regardless vantaged youngsters, they had to start BY JOSHUA DUNN of how they decide, school officials risk younger and stick with the kids longer. offending someone who can accuse Visit Hous ton today and you will find 20 ubble-blowers, fingers, and them of violating his rights. As Justice KIPP schools spanning the grades from pastries: All have led to the stephen breyer said in his partially con- pre-K through 12, plus an earnest new suspension of five-, six-, and curring, partially dissenting opinion in effort (“KIPP Through College”) to con- B seven-year-old miscreants from Morse v. Frederick, the “bong Hits 4 tinue advising and encouraging these America’s schools. Their offenses? Jesus” case, “teachers are neither law - young people after they graduate. Mean - using these implements as imaginary yers nor police officers; and the law while, in ohio, KIPP Columbus (a non- guns. when school officials act on their should not demand that they fully under- profit organization) is constructing a belief that a five-year-old threatening to stand the intricacies of our First Amend - five-school campus on a former golf discharge a Hello Kitty bubble blower ment jurisprudence.” course. KIPP and other feisty charter constitutes a “terrorist threat,” some- The judicial expansion of student organizations are truly circumventing the thing in our practice of school discipline rights prompted schools to rely less on traditional system—not just its high has clearly gone wrong. The pur pose of their judgment and discretion when schools—and creating full-fledged alter- school discipline should be to make stu- establishing discipline policies. They native paths to a quality education for dents behave so that schools can accom- moved toward more formal procedures kids who need it, most of them in urban plish their mission of teaching them, not and zero-tolerance policies, which cre- America. to punish kids for, well, being kids. Now ate the comforting illusion that they are That’s harder to do in communities schools punish innocuous behavior, liberated from having to make any dis- that don’t know they need it and are con- while the Department of education is ciplinary decisions at all. And so dis- tent with what they’ve already got, even encouraging schools to tolerate disrup- proportionate punishment of students though they shouldn’t be. but there’s a tive behavior. has sometimes increased along with glimmer of hope there, too: Individual The proximate cause of this situation their legal entitlements. students re - high schools can now take part in the is not difficult to locate. starting with ceive due process, but if the policy PIsA-exam system, which gauges the Tinker v. Des Moines in 1969 and con- requires severe punishment, the schools reading, science, and math abilities of tinuing through the mid 1970s, the impose it. 15-year-olds, and can thereby compare supreme Court vastly expanded the In addition to impeding the education their students’ performance with that free-speech and due-process rights of of punished students, these policies create of their peers around the developed students. It required “rudimentary” due- a vicious circle that degrades the ability world. (Indi vidual schools’ voluntary process rights for students receiving of schools to educate their students. un - participation is not included in the na - less severe punishments, such as suspen- surprisingly, research shows that as stu- tional averages that were discussed sions of fewer than ten days, and “more dents become increasingly aware of legal above.) when the well-regarded high formal protections” for students threat- entitlements, they become less likely to schools of Fair fax County, Va., got their ened with longer suspensions. The Court view school-discipline policies as fair. PIsA re sults from a 2012 pilot run, for made all school officials personally And students who believe that discipli- instance, it turned out that students in responsible for knowing “the basic un- nary policies are unfair are more likely to plenty of other countries had higher questioned constitutional rights” of stu- disobey teachers and disrupt classroom scores. dents—and personally liable when they instruction. will information lightning bolts such violated them. since the mid 1970s, the supreme as that, plus mounting demands from but what rights count as unques- Court and lower federal courts have employers, outrageous and costly reme- tioned is sometimes quite unclear. Pity been more sympathetic to school offi- diation rates in college, and all sorts of the poor principal who has to make cials in school-discipline cases. recog - new organizational and technological nizing that management of schools is not options for getting a better education turn Mr. Dunn is an associate professor of political science within their institutional competence, all of us into more demanding consumers at the University of Colorado–Colorado Springs and justices from both the conservative and of education? That’s the surest way to is the co-editor of From Schoolhouse to the liberal wings of the Court have cau- break through the mediocrity of far too Courthouse: The Judiciary’s Role in tioned against creating a list of judicially many of our high schools. American Education. crafted rules for schools to follow. Yet

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despite the latitude granted by the judi- investigations will do nothing to prevent firms now view Tinker as an essential ciary, school officials continue to march a seven-year-old from being suspended bulwark against the bullying of reli- toward the institution of ever more legal- for biting a pastry into the shape of a gious students, and often find them- istic disciplinary procedures. They often gun. What they will do is exacerbate real selves allied with the American Civil have more discretion than we and they violence that actually disrupts schools. Liberties Union. Students have been think, but simply choose not to exercise There is no straightforward solution punished by school officials for wear- it. to the problem. Returning to school dis- ing T-shirts with Bible verses on them Nonetheless, some of the discipline cipline policies prior to Tinker is both and forbidden to wear pro-life armbands. and school-security policies that they unlikely and undesirable. And investing Tinker has protected them. Jay Sekulow have adopted, while not ideal, may be discretionary authority in officials who of the American Center for Law and better than any likely alternatives. grow faint at reports of five-year-olds Justice calls it “the decision you have to Some complain about the prisonlike brandishing bubble blowers would be hope to hold onto.” atmosphere created by metal detectors, unwise. As with many of our educational prob- police officers, and strict discipline Some reworking of legal standards lems, greater school choice would go a policies. They exhort us to take advice would help. Limiting the personal lia- long way toward solving the problems from students, who, in their ostensibly bility of school employees would alle- related to school-discipline policy. Rousseauian innocence, would natu- viate their concerns about being sued Parents have the opportunity to consider rally oppose these measures. But the for trivial reasons. That goal would the disciplinary procedures of schools students seem to see things differently. have to be balanced with the need to when deciding where to enroll their chil- When interviewed, they have said that ensure the legal protections that the dren. Do you prefer schools with strict they actually appreciate having in - Supreme Court has created for students. policies? Then send your child to a Know - creased security, because it makes Famously, it held in Tinker that students ledge Is Power Program school. Do you them feel safer, lets them focus on “do not shed their constitutional rights at think they would be too stifling for your learning, and allows school to be a the schoolhouse door.” Schools might child? Then send her to a school with a haven from the violence in their com- punish student speech only when it cre- more latitudinarian approach. Does the munities. ated a significant disruption or threat- thought of six-year-old boys’ pointing The most common complaints heard ened the rights of other students. With their fingers and saying “Pow!” give you about such policies—that they are good reason, many conservative, partic- night terrors? Montgomery County, Md., racially biased, that they turn schools ularly religious, public-interest law has schools for you. into prisons, etc.—often ignore the diffi- culties that schools can have trying to maintain order and discipline. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has launched 14 “large-

scale investigations into disparate discipline rates across the country,” arguing VISITING SCHOLAR IN CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT AND POLICY that higher rates of punishment for minority students is evidence of dis- crimination. Of course, disparate rates do not actually tell us whether students The College of Arts and Sciences invites applications for the were punished because of racism or Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy. We because bad behavior was racially dis- seek a highly visible individual who is deeply engaged in proportionate. either the analytical scholarship or practice of conservative School districts will likely respond thinking and policymaking, or both. The Visiting Scholar to these investigations by tolerating . more disruptive behavior, which will will continue an open dialogue on campus featuring the disproportionately harm minority stu- principles of conservatism The successful candidate will dents, particularly in urban school dis- receive a senior professorial appointment, without tenure. tricts. Following the OCR’s lead, the The term of the appointment is variable, with a minimum Mary land Board of Education and, in of one semester. Specific duties include teaching, delivering California, the Oakland Unified School public lectures, and organizing events. The compensation District have adopted policies requiring package is competitive. The University of Colorado that racial groups receive proportional percentages of school penalties. Under Boulder is committed to diversity and equality in education these policies not only will the students and employment. Materials including a letter of interest who engage in bad behavior be harmed, and curriculum vitae or resume can be submitted to since they will learn that they can disre- jobsatcu.com or directly to: Professor Ann M. Carlos, spect others without consequence, but Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, 275 UCB, so will the other students. These federal University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0275.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

Their communications shop is about servers shut down, and the number the best in the business. What Rouhani of enrollees was pathetically small. is saying is, basically, “We’re here, Question: Is this the beginning of the we’re online, we’re tweeting, we’re end of the Big Government move- cool, and we have nuclear weapons.” ment in the United States of Satan, or Transcript from the Al That’s a powerful message to the simply a glitch along the way? Jazeera political talk show world’s youth. Qu’Turush: Al-Irshad, what’s Al-Irshad: Exit question: Will this important here is that millions of The Al-Irshad Group president reap more or less power and Americans—mostly non-Jews, by prestige from his use of social media? the way—are now going to have Sunday, October 13, 2013 Qu’Turush: More. health-care coverage. Could it have Ali Ba’Nasri: More. Have you been done better? Sure. Could the Host Al-Irshad: Issue One! seen his Instagram? Terrific use of Republicans have stepped up to con- Tweet, Tweet Went the Bird of filters! He did one of a bride burning tribute to the plan’s design? Yeah. But Peace! In the wake of the Revolu - near Isfahan that was just so cool. at the end of the day, are millions of tionary Islamic Republic’s election, Salil Faqtb: This is meaningless non-Jew Americans better off? You President Hassan Rouhani has em - nonsense. You should all die. I will bet. barked on a charm offensive, going douse your beard with petrol and set Ali Ba’Nasri: As a political ques- so far as to tweet messages to the it on fire for your stupidity and trivial tion, though, it’s undoubtedly a black hapless half-man president of the concerns. eye for the silly president. Many Jews United States! Question: Is this the Al-Irshad: Issue Two! Satan Shut - are, in fact, covered by his plan. beginning of a new prestige for the down! As the American government Salil Faqtb: Excuse me, am I on Islamic Re public? I ask you, syndi- enters its second week of budget the right show here? Did everyone cated columnist Qu’Turush. paralysis, the question is: Who profits? here take a stupid pill this morning? Qu’Turush: That’s a simplistic Can the Islamic Republic reap bene- This is nothing less than an attempt way to look at it, Al-Irshad. With fits from the disarray of its sworn by a whoremongering nation to sup- respect, the actions of President enemy? Ali Ba’Nasri? ply itself with free sex pills and Rouhani are exactly consistent with Ali Ba’Nasri: That will be chal- unlimited genital massages! The the actions of his predecessor. The lenging. The key here, of course, is entire nation should be flogged difference is only in the medium. that a very small group of—let’s be sense less, though I have no doubt The last president spoke. This presi- honest—radicals in the House are that many would find that sexually dent tweets. It’s a great way to con- holding the entire budget process appealing. You all disgust me. What nect with the kids. hostage. is this get-along-go-along non- Political Consultant Salil Faqtb: Al-Irshad: Hmmm. “Radicals sense? The increasingly insane and What is this, tweets? What is this holding something hostage” has a blasphemous ramblings of the so- filthy word? It sounds like the noise nice ring to it. called establishment media are why made by a homosexual Jew when he Ali Ba’Nasri: Yes, that’s the ironic so many of our countrymen are tun- puts on his tight pants. I don’t under- part of it. Here, though, I have to say, ing us out. stand this nonsense. it’s disruptive. Let’s get a clean vote, Ali Ba’Nasri: It’s exactly that kind Qu’Turush: That’s the problem up or down. of tone that’s turning off the middle. with our side, right there. Salil Faqtb, Salil Faqtb: You are a diseased Salil Faqtb: Why is this prancing Twitter is a light social network of and pox-ridden man-whore. What are homosexual speaking to me? Die! 140 characters or less— they supposed to do? Sit around and Die a thousand deaths! Al-Irshad: That’s almost twice the wait for the ladyboy president to Ali Ba’Nasri: Seriously? You number of virgins a believer receives wake up and smell the unmistakable want to meet outside? in heaven. odor of the burning flesh of a female Salil Faqtb: I will behead you Qu’Turush: Yes, though I don’t relative who has brought dishonor to right here! see how that’s relevant. her family? Should he . . . wait, where Al-Irshad: Gentlemen! Please! Salil Faqtb: Of course it’s rele- was I? Qu’Turush: Can we talk about vant! Your whore mother be damned! Al-Irshad: Next question—Issue something we surely all agree on? Ba’ath Strategist Ali Ba’Nasri: Three: Server Meltdown! At the offi- Ted Cruz. Can we return to the question? It’s cial launch of Obamacare this week, Salil Faqtb: Love him. really about messaging. This admin- reports were mixed at best. The com- Ali Ba’Nasri: Me too. istration is on message all the time. puter systems weren’t working, the Al-Irshad: Me three! Bye-bye!

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Welcome to Obamacare

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one of the more extraordinary instances do bolster freedom, the freedom to com- of the messianic temperament in Ameri - pete. But whatever the merits of agricul- The can politics. We follow the career of the tural subsidies and federal regulation of anointed one as he attempts to work the the interest rate, it is sophistry to identify Messianic successive reformations of Princeton them with the creation of new liberty. University, the State of New Jersey, the Wilson’s semantic slovenliness enabled American Republic, and at length all of him to endow his humdrum reforms with Style mankind. At the risk of spoiling the plot, a romantic charm. “We live by poetry, not MICHAEL KNOX BERAN I can disclose that he fails to save the by prose,” he said, “and we live only as world, although he does end up on the we see visions.” It would be truer to say cross. “He accepted the decree of Fate as that we live both by poetry and by prose, gallantly as he had fought the fight,” and that we get into trouble whenever we Wilson’s second wife, Edith, wrote after confuse the one with the other. Wilson the president’s breakdown in 1919, “but himself felt a qualm when he reflected on only he and his God knew the crucifixion the hopes his civic poetry aroused. He that began that moment.” foresaw the disappointment that must Writing in 1880, Sir George Trevelyan come when people discovered that his maintained that the successful statesman “new age” was a lot like the old age, and in the modern constitutional state was, as Berg depicts him in 1918 staggering a rule, the one who “spoke to the ques- under the “impossible expectations” he tion,” and whose clarity and precision of had raised. Wilson, by A. Scott Berg language got the better of rivals whose Such moments were rare; like the rest (Putnam, 832 pp., $40) stirring but inflated rhetoric “spoke to the of us, he had swallowed the national passion.” The exception came in time of Kool-Aid. At the back of Wilson’s and HE chapter titles in A. Scott war, when the statesman who spoke to every similar American delusion is the Berg’s life of Woodrow Wil - the emotions was the dominant figure. same snake, tempting us with the belief son—“Advent,” “Baptism,” Thirteen decades later, virtually all that we can realize our hyperbolic fancies T “Isaiah,” “Paul,” “Ascension,” demo cratic statesmen speak to the pas- and evade the limits that constrain other “Resurrection,” to name a few—are, sion, in peace no less than in war, and do nations’ dreams. The theologically doubt - when coupled with the Biblical epi - so in the “perpetual hyperbole” Bacon ful idea that the United States has a ren- graphs, as revealing as anything in the thought “comely in nothing but in love.” dezvous with a providential destiny has book. The chapter on the Paris Peace Such has been the inflation of circum- been deeply imprinted on the national Conference is called “Gethsemane.” It is stance that every decade is now an excep- consciousness from the beginning. Wil - followed by “Passion,” in which the hero tional one, its run-of-the-mill problems son not only took advantage of the breaks down in his attempt to rally the magnified into the moral equivalent of national infirmity, he intensified its grip country to the Treaty of Versailles, and war. Brave new worlds burst upon us by secularizing the old millennial poetry. “Pietà,” with its epigraph from John with such frequency that every incoming Earlier generations of Americans were 19:40. (“Then tooke they the body of presidency is now conceived as the com- slow to accept their secular leaders in Iesus, & wound it in linnen clothes . . .”) mencement of a revolutionary epoch, a the character of prophets and saviors; Curiously, there is no chapter on “game-changing” event worthy of a place nor would they invest a secular hero “Judas,” possibly because Wilson had so in the hyperbolic cycle of New Deals, with the providential mantle until he many betrayers—from Bryan and Lan - New Frontiers, and New World Orders. had earned his apotheosis, as Washington sing to Tumulty and Colonel House. If the rhetoric of today’s democratic did. Setting tradition at defiance, Wilson Notable, too, is the absence of a chapter statesmen is distinguished by its exagger- offered himself as a providentially in - on “Satan,” devoted to the diablerie of ation and louche logic, Wilson himself is spired man before he had done anything Henry Cabot Lodge, which would have partly to blame. Mencken long ago de- provident. When he was nominated for made the book’s symbolical architecture plored Wilson’s “dependence upon greasy the presidency, the whole of his achieve- complete. and meaningless words.” But this was ment consisted in having alienated Prince - Berg, whose Lindbergh won a Pulitzer only the beginning of his rhetorical sins. ton and governed New Jersey for about a Prize, has written an entertaining study of Take his signature phrase, “the New year and a half. Yet when the obscure Freedom.” At the core of Wilson’s pro- scholar offered the nation his prophetic Mr. Beran, a lawyer and a contributing editor of gram were proposals for stronger anti trust services, he was not laughed off the hus- City Journal, is the author of, among other books, laws, farm loans, a federal income tax, tings. On the contrary, the country was Forge of Empires, 1861–1871: Three and a central bank. Give him a pass on the thrilled. Revolutionary Statesmen and the World antitrust plank: Laws that prevent monop- “America is not merely a body of They Made. olistic combinations in restraint of trade towns,” Wilson declared. “America is an

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS idea, America is an ideal, America is a is taught that great men feed on their nests of pigeon-holes full of constitu- vision.” The advent of a president who contempt for the unheroic herd—“dim tions ready-made.” If in his youth he was not merely the country’s first magis- millions mostly blockhead.” Wilson, in ever joined a club without proposing a trate but also its chief prophet and high his efforts to ransom captive Israel with reformation of the rules, the fact has gone priest of its national “vision” marked a tariff reduction and Federal Reserve leg- unrecorded. He would later profess him- great change in our institutions. After Wil - islation, took the advice to heart. “He is a self a disciple of Burke, but he never son, no president would be permitted to good hater,” his publicist Ray Stannard heeded Burke’s warning that, in making a be a mere mortal magistrate, soberly con- Baker noted with approval. Wilson’s fetish of compulsory codes, the enthusi- ducting the business of state. He must be first wife, a rather sweet woman given asts of progress overlooked the suppler poet, healer, charmer, consoler, and seer. to painting landscapes, died while he forms of order inherent in customs, man- Those more modest souls who resisted was in office, and some of the most ners, and culture. messianic pretensions were hooted off amusing pages in Berg’s book chronicle Wilson never outgrew his boyish love the stage, as George H. W. Bush was the widower-president’s courtship of of the rhetorical and paper-made forms when he showed no aptitude for “the Mrs. Edith Bolling Galt. The messiah of order. So potent, for him, was the vision thing.” was in love; yet it soon appeared that the charm of his ideal systems that he could It is true that Teddy Roosevelt did more lady’s principal charm was the way in not bear the least tinkering with them. than Wilson to turn the presidency into which she encouraged her hero to hate. If Princeton could not be reformed pre- the office of first showman and national “You are, oh, so fit a mate for a strong cisely in accordance with his visionary comedian. And Lincoln himself offered a man,” Wilson rejoiced. “And how you design, he would rather quit the univer- precedent for messianic orations. He, can hate, too.” sity than modify the plan. It was the however, had an excuse: When he went What stands out most sharply in Berg’s same with the League of Nations: Better to Gettysburg in 1863 he was covered by account is the rhetorical cast of Wil - to let it go down in flames in the Senate Trevelyan’s rule, which allows for exag- son’s mind. Naturally his speeches are than allow it to suffer the slightest blem- geration in time of war. At the same time, rhetorical, but what is curious is that his ish at the hands of such a fallen angel as Lincoln’s language, though passionate, literary prose is no less so—is as rigid as Lodge. bore some relation to the policy he was the poor man’s own hardening arteries. In After his stroke in 1919, he tottered, advocating. When he predicted that the his lifetime his writings were compared white-bearded, about the White House, nation would have a “new birth of free- to Burke’s, but unlike Burke, who contin- weeping and reciting limericks, and lying dom,” he meant that it would not have uously found metaphors so penetrating awake at night in Lincoln’s bed, afraid of slavery anymore. A rhetoric that equates that they bring us closer to the com - the dark. He spent many hours in the East the growth of freedom with the destruc- plexity of the things he is describing, Room, where the curtains were drawn so tion of bondage is truthful in a way that Wilson turned out pattern language that that he could watch silent movies. When Wilson’s “New Freedom” oratory is not. leads nowhere. he had gone through all the Westerns, he Wilson made the messianic swindle One comes to see that not only Wil - called for Signal Corps footage of his even sillier by yoking it to a philosophy son’s writing, but his thought, is rhetori- reception in Europe, and in his desolation that influenced him rather more deeply cal. His policies are as sclerotic as his watched flickering images of himself at than Christ’s: the hero-worship of Thomas rhetoric, and serve the same bureaucratic the top of fortune’s wheel, adored by Carlyle. Wilson came of the same dys- purpose: to overmaster the crowd and delirious crowds. Then he would go out peptic Covenanter stock as Carlyle, and compel it to submit to the will of the law- for a drive, in an immense Pierce-Arrow, had the same wasp-venom in his blood. If giver. Wilson was early enamored of law happy on the old Virginia roads. When he the reader of the Gospels is urged to tran- codes; like the Abbé Sieyès, he seems to returned, well-wishers would cheer him at scend his hatreds, the student of Carlyle have carried around in his head “whole the White House gate, their presence having been arranged in advance by Colonel Starling of the Secret Service in an effort SOME PAINTED SCENES to lift the president’s spirits. “You see,” Wilson said, “they still love me.” Each segment of the year makes painted scenes, His “spiritual and mental rigidity,” Creating sonnets. Thin and icy greens, Harold Nicolson wrote, was “his undo- Translucent, stuck in frigid air ing.” But if Wilson had “no capacity for Hold promises, stuck in a frozen stare, adjustment to circumstances,” he had And every edge that melts slips to transcend the most astonishing ability to impose a The present, speaks in warming tones to send personal fantasy on the world around Predictions of a lush and creeping green him. Even after he had fallen into the That even now begins in rows, unseen, sere, the man’s willpower was unabated. Presaging jeweled summer. Colors burst, Like the boy he had once been, the old Till I forget that even now they’re cursed, man dreamt of giving law to the nations; Diminished by the narrowness of fall and it is with something like awe that we And caught by frost, until the roundelay behold the rhetorical fantasist in his Of scenes begins again—whirls seeds away. dotage, making notes for his third inau- —SALLY COOK gural address.

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productive because she can make calcu- lives of people who interpret machine lations and work through designs on feedback—of all kinds—quickly,” writes A New World her computer, and so her wages go way Cowen. People who respond to com- up. The janitor is basically left alone: puters the way i was responding to my Of Work Robots can’t clean up an office building GPS will fail. “The gains . . . will go to at the end of each day. The bank teller is the hardy,” predicts Cowen, “those who in the most unfortunate position. The can manage stress and embarrassment, MICHAEL R. STRAIN computer—in this case, an ATM—can but not necessarily to people who act do what the bank teller does, at much like robots.” less expense to the bank. One of the most interesting passages in this scenario, the economy keeps in the book concerns the physician– the high-skill job (engineer) and the computer team of the future. The com- low-skill job (janitor), while the middle- puters that deal with our health will be skill occupation (bank teller) vanishes. very smart—but how much medical Economists refer to the disappearance of middle-skill, middle-earning Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age occupations as “labor-market of the Great Stagnation, by Tyler Cowen (Dutton, 305 pp., $26.95) polarization,” and they expect this trend to continue. hilE i was driving through Washington, D.C., recently, a maddeningly familiar People who would have been bank knowledge will the human operator W scene was unfolding. The tellers now have to find something else need to have? We’re “pretty far from GPS seemed determined to ensure that to do. Either they will be come signifi- accepting this fact,” writes Cowen, “but we were never on the same road for more cantly wealthier by becoming engineers, the person working with the computer than 1,000 feet, didn’t understand how to or they will become significantly less doesn’t have to be a doctor or even a navigate a roundabout, instructed me to wealthy by becoming janitors. medical expert. She has to be good at turn the wrong way down a one-way To say it with Professor Cowen’s pith: understanding and correcting the com- street—and i was growing so irritated Average is over. puter’s mistakes, which is a very differ- that my wife was threatening me with Economists refer to the disappearance ent skill.” She must have “knowledge of divorce. Fortunately, at that point, i re- of middle-skill, middle-earning occupa- smart machines, how they work, and membered something i had read that tions as “labor-market polarization,” what their failings are likely to be.” afternoon in the excellent new book of and they expect this trend to continue Unlike me and the GPS, the good George Mason University economics over the next several decades. physician in Cowen’s future knows how professor Tyler Cowen, the memory of This analysis is not original to Cowen. the computer works and when to over- which sparked a directive: Work with the What’s distinctive about his book is his rule it—how to work with it, as a weird GPS; don’t follow it like you’re a robot, understanding of the impact this trend combination of the computer’s assistant, and don’t work against it. will have on society as a whole and on maintenance man, and supervisor. This The key to success in the world of people’s daily lives. is the skill that matters. The human in the tomorrow, forecasts Cowen in Average imagine you are in a business meet- man–computer physician team doesn’t Is Over, is no more complicated than ing, negotiating a deal. You’re about to need an M.D. that: Work with the machine. say yes and shake hands, but then your Of course, not everyone will have this The basic story has been unfolding for computer tells you to walk away. The skill. What other types of occupation the past few decades. As computers grow computer knows that the deal you’re will spring to the fore in Cowen’s new in importance in the production process, about to accept is bad. Should you listen world of work? Cowen expects a signif- the labor market will reward those to the computer? Should you ignore it? icant increase in the prominence of mar- whose productivity is enhanced by work- (The same thing will happen on a date: keting, as getting people’s attention and ing with computers. And those who are Your pocket computer tells you to kiss keeping it will be increasingly impor- competing against computers will be in your date now. Do you obey?) tant. Related is the importance of per- trouble. The ability to succeed in this new sonal services to the wealthy: florists, Think of three occupations: engineer, world comes down to some basic per- chauffeurs, party planners, landscapers, bank teller, and janitor. Computers come sonality traits, including the ability to and the like. And “it sounds a little silly,” along. The engineer is now much more handle this type of man–computer inter- writes Cowen, “but making high earners action in high-stakes, stressful situa- feel better in just about every part of their Mr. Strain is a resident scholar at the American tions. “We can expect to see dramatic lives will be a major source of job Enterprise Institute. gains in the personal and professional growth in the future. At some point it is

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS hard to sell more physical stuff to high And even if there aren’t riots in the earners, yet there is usually just a bit streets and mobs looting the mansions of more room to make them feel better. the top 10 percent, it’s not clear that pol- The War Better about the world. Better about itics will support a large class of work- themselves. Better about what they have ers whose job it is to be material and Lover achieved.” psychological servants to the rich with- So wages will go up for those who can out instituting massive and destructive DAVID PRYCE-JONES handle man–machine partnerships, and income redistribution. Cowen predicts for those who cater to the material and that “we will move from a society based Gabriele D’Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher psychological needs of the wealthy. on the pretense that everyone is given an of War, by Lucy Hughes-Hallett Cowen thinks we won’t talk about the okay standard of living to a society in (Knopf, 608 pp., $35) 1 percent anymore—more like the 10 or which people are expected to fend for 15 percent. Combine a lot of wealth in the themselves much more than they do n the opening decades of the 20th top 15 percent with a dearth of middle- now.” If that happens at the same time as century, Gabriele D’Annunzio was class jobs and stagnant or even falling a large servant class is born to cater to one of the most famous Italians wages at the bottom, and you will have the mental health and to satisfy the I alive. Writing came easily to him a significant increase in inequality in material wants of the fabulously rich, it and was the basis of his reputation. Cowen’s future. seems to me that our political leaders Among his serious admirers were Marcel But this will be a different kind of will try very hard to take away the punch Proust and Osbert Sitwell. Henry James, inequality from the one many on the bowl and end the party. After all, we’ll no less, praised his “excited sensibility.” left argue we have today. Take a promi- still have one man, one vote. Romain Rolland, a nobel Prize winner nent inequality critic, Paul Krugman, Cowen’s answer is in the meritocratic and a Communist fellow-traveler, was a who wrote recently that “the effect of ideal: “Worthy individuals will in fact rise friend who wrote a book about him and [the] concentration [of income at the from poverty on a regular basis, and that compared him to a pike, a large fish that top] is to undermine all the values that will make it easier to ignore those who devours smaller fish. define America. . . . We’re diverging are left behind.” (My emphasis.) I have It is safe to assert that D’Annunzio’s from our ideals. Inherited privilege is doubts about this. “Worthy” individuals writings are now only of academic interest. crowding out equality of opportunity.” are those who combine innate ability He might have caught the mood of the Cowen envisions, instead, a future of and raw intelligence with motivation moment, but contemporaries such as Car - inequality driven entirely by equality and ambition. Ability, IQ, motivation, ducci and Pirandello were writing for pos- of opportunity, what he describes as a and ambition will not be randomly dis- terity. Turning with passion to politics in “hyper-meritocracy.” Everyone will be tributed among the people of the world midlife, he once more operated as a pike, rated on every aspect of his life: how (the parents in the top 10 percent will out to devour territories to which Italy laid good a patient he is, how good a worker. be relatively more likely to force Junior claim as spoils after World War I. At the There will be fewer second chances, so to complete his online, high-quality time, he appeared to be a public figure in people who exercise discipline in their calculus course). And even if they were, the grand style, a modern condottiere. It youth will be rewarded. And the hyper- the enemies of inequality will quickly became clear to posterity that he had been meritocracy (fueled in large part by argue that no one “earns” what she is nothing of the kind, but merely a com- cheap, high-quality online education) born with and into. It’s hard to imagine monplace nationalist and racist. A col- will mean that anyone will be able to “But we’re a meritocracy now!” being league and a rival of Musso lini, he was shine—provided he’s got the goods. Sons convincing to those who have a strong one of the founding fathers of Fascism. In of wealth and privilege may never reach distaste for vast inequality. the clash of ideologies during the late success, while young people born in the Or maybe not. Maybe, as man–machine 1920s and 1930s, he was another extrem- developing world will routinely die in productivity soars, we will enter a kind ist who might at any moment have sprung old age fabulously wealthy. Income of Star Trek future, where those who a political surprise. Hemingway was to inequality will be vast, but it will be a have a preference for fabulous wealth call him a “jerk,” and Benedetto Croce golden age of economic mobility. can attain it, and those who have a accused him of “sadism and cold-blooded The book is not without its flaws. It can preference for a bohemian lifestyle of dilettantism.” The consensus is that he be repetitive, its organization could be leisure and occasional part-time and has slid close to the bottom of the rubbish tightened, the middle third drags (unless freelance work can indulge. Maybe the bin of history, and ought to be left there. you’re really interested in chess), and man–machine teams will produce so It was a good idea of Lucy Hughes- there are a couple of basic errors (the much that inequality will be vast but Hallett’s to retrieve someone so ambiva- labor-force-participation rate is not the everyone’s standard of living will be lent and hold him up for inspection. A share of people of appropriate age “who high (by today’s standards), obviating previous book of hers has the subtitle in fact have jobs”). the need for crushing redistribution. “Saviours, Traitors, and Supermen.” I also wonder whether Cowen under- That’s the great thing about this Evidently she has a taste for troubled and estimates the role of politics. He argues book—it makes you think. It sparks de - troubling types. Here is a determined at length that the income inequality he bate. Spend a few hours with Professor effort to provide all the evidence for and foresees won’t result in extreme social Cowen’s imagination, and wonder about against D’Annunzio, no matter how triv- instability, but I’m not completely sold. the world to come. ial the details or the huge number of pages

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required to write them up. In the mod- plain, bald, and usually half-naked or in tion of the Italian minority to march on ern style that aims for readability at all some stance that brings out the poseur in Fiume and incorporate it into Greater costs, this book takes liberties with him. Quite a number of people thought Italy. He informed Mussolini, who at chronology and often resorts for effect to there was something feminine about him. the time was consolidating his Fascist the historical present, has chapters with “A frightful gnome” was the realistic party (and would, in 1922, borrow the such portmanteau headings as “Worship,” judgment passed on him by Liane de tactic for the march on Rome that was “Nobility,” and “Beauty,” and is free with Pougy, the Parisian grande horizontale the prelude to his dictatorship). The words and descriptions of physical acts who took her clothes off for King Edward men with D’Annunzio were a ragtag more usually found in what is known as VII. Here was a sadistic satyr with all bunch of mutineers and adventurers. adult literature. sorts of fetishes to do with clothes and Their slogan was “Fiume or death!” The son of a small landowner, surroundings, hands and other body parts. Violence was a permanent feature. D’Annun ziowas born in the Abruzzi in He tried to explain that he was unfaithful Some French soldiers were dragged out 1863, two years after the unification of for love’s sake, and Hughes-Hallett of the brothel where they had found Italy. His generation grew up in the wonders whether he was a cynic or just shelter, and killed. D’Annunzio held afterglow of a heroic age. Now that didn’t understand the pain his promiscuity that Yugoslavia was “a Balkan pigsty.” they had founded Italy, Massimo caused. Identifying with Saint Sebastian Local Croats and Serbs were liable to d’Azeglio—one of the principal states- martyred by arrows, he convinced him- be arbitrarily imprisoned or expelled. men in volved—could quip that it was self that he was the victim of those he “D’Annunzio seems to be having the time to find some Italians. D’Annunzio himself was victimizing. Pain, in short, time of his life at Fiume,” the British was one such. His move as a young man was the spur to passion. Foreign Office reported. More precisely, to Rome was a first indispensable step World War I allowed D’Annunzio to Hughes-Hallett points out that he had toward fulfilling his ambition of great- disguise sadism as patriotism. “I am appointed himself “the insouciant ruler of ness. Reading the influential books of drunk with the joy of war,” he boasted: an outlaw state.” He drafted the Charter of the day, he adopted the fin-de-siècle As Hughes-Hallett puts it, war was his Carnaro, a constitution for Fiume that aestheticism that held life itself to be new poetry. Victory over Austria, the old defined the subordination of its citizens to the truest work of art. His literary style occupying power and hereditary enemy, the demands of the state in accord with is nicely covered by Hughes-Hallett’s would complete Italy’s national libera- Fascist doctrine. As usual, he was playing phrase “word music.” A journalist adopt- tion. If not, death “is as beautiful as life, with other people’s lives. His men, it ing various pen names, he churned out intoxicating, full of promise, transfigura- seems, pioneered the standard Fascist hundreds of pieces about Roman social tive.” Aircraft were a recent invention and punishment for dissidents of forcing cas- and cultural life. Self-promotion was a he had always been interested in their tor oil, a powerful laxative, down their specialty. Publishing his first book of military potential. Now he flew over throats. After a year of upheaval, the poems, he spread a rumor that he had enemy lines, sometimes dropping leaf - Italian and Yugoslav governments signed fallen off his horse and been killed. lets and sometimes bombs. One day the a treaty that satisfied their mutual de - Still in his early twenties, he married pilot on whom he relied was killed, and mands. D’Annunzio immediately con- Maria, daughter of an aristocrat. Leaving another day his plane crash-landed, an demned the compromise as betrayal. In him, she attempted suicide. After Maria accident that left him permanently his eyes, Mussolini’s failure to come to came Olga. Deadpan, Hughes-Hallett blind in one eye. He showed exemplary his aid was contemptible cowardice. writes that D’Annunzio “was attracted to courage in the front line at the Isonzo, Supporters tried to persuade him to take independent-minded women. He liked to where the lives of hundreds of thousands over the national Fascist movement. try out his ideas on them.” After Olga came of soldiers were sacrificed in atrocious When regular Italian soldiers arrived to Barbara. After Barbara came another Maria, circumstances for no strategic purpose. enforce the treaty, the Fiume episode was this one a princess, who also tried to kill To him, combatants were heroes, descen- over. D’Annunzio spent his remaining herself and then went mad. After Princess dants of the legionaries of the Roman years near Lake Garda, creating a muse- Maria came Eleonora Duse, previously Empire. Emotionally pitched ever higher, um to the greater glory of himself. After the mistress of Arrigo Boito, Verdi’s his speeches to the troops repeated words World War II, Fiume was renamed Rijeka librettist. Extremely beautiful, Duse like leitmotifs: “blood, dead, glory, love, and incorporated first into Yugoslavia and was one of the all-time great actresses, pain, sacred, victory, Italy, fire.” Blood now Croatia. Almost all the Italians have and she and D’Annunzio are described was there to be shed. Glory lay in sum- fled, and a circle is closed. here as the most celebrated couple in Italy, moning soldiers to their death. Lucy Hughes-Hallett has done her if not in all Europe. In an affair that lasted When his own blood-and-glory mo - level best to be dispassionate, but there eight years, Duse added a real-life role to ment came, he rose to it. Treaty-making can be no mistaking that she is recounting her usual stage repertoire of suffering at Versailles after the war had failed to a parable about the decline of European heroines. In one of his plays, D’Annunzio decide whether the former Austrian civilization. Forcing men and women depicted her recognizably as a worn-out city of Fiume on the Dalmatian coast to submit unconditionally to his will, degenerate, and she refrained from sui- should be given to Italy or to the new D’Annunzio contributed his bit to the cide only for fear of damaging his image. state of Yugoslavia. In a population of general moral rot of the age of dictators. After Duse came Luisa and Nathalie and 50,000, Slavs outnumbered Italians by Abuse of his undoubted intelligence and a legion of women from all walks of life. about four to one. In the autumn of gifts secured his place in the lineup of con- Photographs reveal D’Annunzio as 1919, D’Annunzio accepted the invita- temporary monsters.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS fighter by night), this new book is hard rhetoricians. Before launching any sneers going. i can see the linguistic face value of at their writing as flimflam, it’s useful The such terms as “ontologically diminished” to recall that for the great mass of the and “immanent entelechy,” but without religious and nonreligious alike, these Deepest friendly orientation i often struggle to tell debates are not about pure, abstract how they work in Hart’s arguments. it intellection, but about making sense of Truths must be doubly intimidating for readers experience—which is to say, personal wholly outside the academy not to have experience, because what other kind is SARAH RUDEN plainer language before their eyes. there? Hart’s book has “experience” in its Hart also assumes in his audience a title, yet disappoints precisely in its short- range of difficult background reading age of direct engagement with this. that no one who is not wholly leisured or C. S. lewis, solicited by arguments in getting paid to read could manage. even favor of God in the most learned environ- the study requirements of my Harvard ment in the world, at last yielded only to Classics doctorate (granted, i completed the undeniable sensation that something it 20 years ago, so i’ve forgotten a lot) was approaching to take command of his don’t always allow me to fill in mentally life. Professional theologians have justly the reasons for a citation of a particular assailed lewis’s own subsequent system, ancient thinker. after a background quest but the works in which it is embedded of mine, Hart usually appears right: long- have been remarkably successful promot- gone generations of thinkers did take ers of belief in God. they are companions The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, more care to sort these things out. But the to the usual deep but inarticulate enjoy- by David Bentley Hart (Yale, 365 pp., $25) number of background quests required is ment of religious traditions and institu- unappealing, especially when a require- tions and people, an enjoyment through aviD Bentley Hart is proba- ment is accompanied by an effective put- which many of us take God as a given. bly the greatest living schol- down, a fleeting treatment of an author i am not criticizing The Experience of arly defender of religious including a haughty correction of a com- God for the category of book it repre- D thought. the title of his 2009 mon (i’m tempted to write “common- sents—for being theology, which is inher- book Atheist Delusions is nicely descrip- sense” or “harmless”) supposition about ently about abstractions. a conventional tive: the book pits the actual Christian him. Here is only the second sentence in concession of even the most abstract tradition against caricatures of it by such an abrupt shift from the authority of ibn works (and i’m thinking of Plato here) to “new atheists” as richard Dawkins and Sina to that of thomas aquinas: ordinary human weakness is illustration the late Christopher Hitchens. Hart’s new of points in memorable ways. When, in Whenever he spoke of the “first cause” of book, The Experience of God, seeks to beings he was referring to an ontological, the section on “Consciousness,” Hart vindicate all theistic religions, that is, all not a chronological priority; and it was began to use himself and the perception of those that describe God as the transcen- solely with this sort of causal priority that a rose as an example, i perked up; but the dence that created and guides the uni- he was concerned in, for instance, the example turned out to be fragmentary and verse. first three of his Five Ways (even the not terribly vivid. there was likewise noth- in three magisterial sections—on third, which is often mistaken—due ing in the “Bliss” section to show me, as a being, consciousness, and bliss—Hart partly to its almost telegraphic terse- writer such as thomas Merton has no trou- insists on the weaknesses of claims that ness—for an argument regarding how ble doing, the importance and the practical these phenomena can be fully accounted the universe started). possibility of being transported behind for through materialistic or deistic theo- a footnote then leads to a lengthy para- ordinary experience. Moreover, for Hart ries, a fundamental conclusion of the graph of further qualification. if the dis- to cite, on this subject, one thinker after latter being that God, though the creator tinction to which Hart is alluding is really another in a cursory, sometimes polemical and also the source of human reason, does vital, then a far more helpful way to style, is singularly ill judged. not either inhere or intervene in what he approach it would have been to include it in the concluding section, he dilates on created. the book makes, in general, a in an overview of aquinas’s “proofs” of the spiritual life (“sobriety, calm, lucidity, very solid case against both prominent the existence of God. joy”) and the promise of a mind rising atheists’ logical stumbling and others’ Hart’s unstinting criticism of fashion- above ordinary consciousness through sloppy attempts to split the difference able pundits can be quite bracing, but as it contemplation—a transcendence that between religion and no-religion. accumulates, an impression of unfairness must itself, in turn, be transcended. But But it is disappointing that, even for me grows, too. yes, his opponents are not there is of course no way to demonstrate (mild-mannered translator of ancient lit- trained philosophers and theologians. mysticism logically; by this point a erature by day, Christian-apologist crime- they are liable to wander around the heavily argumentative book has moved abstract with the aid of mere concrete awkwardly toward pure prescription. Sarah Ruden is a classicist, poet, and journalist. Her signage and notions that derive immedi- Worse, nothing appealingly tangible rec- next book, The Music Inside the Whale, and ately from that; many of them are, after ommends the prescription, in the usual Other Marvels: A Translator on the Beauty all, natural scientists. But this tends to way of inspirational writing. of the Bible, will be published in 2014. make them charismatic, example-packed Part of the problem may be the book’s

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overambitious scope. Here is Hart’s pro- Graduating from a top-10 law school jected topic: increases the length of the confirmation Bad process by 16 percent; being on the law A definition of God . . . that, allowing for review adds another 49 percent to that a number of largely accidental variations, length; having held a clerkship at circuit can be found in Judaism, Christianity, Judgment court adds 6.3 percent; and clerking for Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, the U.S. Supreme Court adds another 41 Sikhism, various late antique pagan- J O H N F U N D percent. isms, and so forth (it even applies in many respects to various Mahayana Consequently, multiplying each of those formulations of, say, the Buddha Con - probabilities together, someone who sciousness or the Buddha Nature, or has accomplished all four will take 158 even to the earliest Buddhist concep- percent longer to be confirmed than tion of the Un conditioned, or to certain someone who has accomplished none. aspects of the Tao, though I do not want Even after highly qualified judges get to upset Western converts to Buddhism on the federal bench, they may not wish or philosophic Taoism by insisting on the point here). to shine too brightly if they wish to be promoted. The most direct way to mea- It would be outside anybody’s capacity sure the influence of a judge, says Lott, is to make a smooth, attractive argument to look at how often his opinions are cited for a common concept of God in all of Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the by other judges: “A 20 percent increase in these systems, reflecting the inevitability Smartest Judges Off the Bench, by John R. Lott Jr. citations by other judges to a judge’s deci- of a theistic God’s existence. For in- (Bascom Hill, 227 pp., $17.95) sions meant that his confirmation process stance, to brush aside the swarm of Hindu was up to 60 percent longer.” gods as no more a contradiction of T’S been over a quarter-century Having a less qualified judiciary has essential transcendent monotheism than since Robert Bork’s nomination to consequences for all of us. “Many vital Judeo-Christian angels are can hardly be the Supreme Court became a defin- legal issues are before the courts, and right. For one thing, many of these gods I ing moment in the confirmation of having the smartest legal minds analyz- are worshipped independently, and this federal judges. Since the distinguished ing them is an advantage. . . . Neither side appears to be not a heretical practice but judge and former Yale Law professor was wants to trust the other side’s brightest part of the mainstream Hindu tradition. “borked” by demagogic personal attacks minds in such positions of power. But These gods are impossible to cram into a and blocked from the Court, confirmation dismissing some of the smartest minds theology like that of Western monothe- battles have grown uglier and more pro- and dumbing down the courts means ists. tracted. more mistakes are made.” When, along these lines, I consider the John Lott, an economist who has writ- Lott admits there are a few counterex- prevailing great differences in Eastern ten thought-provoking books on every- amples to his thesis. The best known is religions between elite thought (Hart cites thing from gun control to the federal the failed Supreme Court nomination of it in favor of his take on Hinduism, for budget, says the pitched battles over White House counsel Harriet Miers, example) and common practice on the court nominations are having real- whom President Bush nominated in 2005. ground, it’s hard not to feel affirmed in world consequences. He argues that our “The one position that we knew she had my preference for the “religions of the federal courts are being intellectually a strong view on was abortion. That’s Book”—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. degraded as politicians in both parties usually a strong litmus test for Demo - God written up for everyone to read about try to keep the brightest and most artic- crats. But Democrats came out strongly in and follow looks a lot more like a neces- ulate lawyers from becoming judges. favor of her nomination. It was Re - sary God: unitary, all-powerful, creating, “Everyone wants to keep the other publicans who defeated her nomination loving. side’s best and brightest off the field, so because she was viewed as limited intel- I have a painful suspicion that Hart, they often use the confirmation process lectually and having no ability to influ- who has immense learning and, at his to delay and kneecap them if they are ence colleagues.” best, unassailable logic going for him, nominated, which can often convince the Lott interviewed some of the nominees has been influenced by political correct- most qualified people not to even want to who were never confirmed for appellate- ness where ideological and cultural be nominated,” says Lott. “Judges who court positions. Lillian BeVier graduated boundary markers are concerned. That’s understand the law and are articulate can at the top of her class from Stanford Law quite wrong of him, as the big distinc- convince other judges hearing cases to School in 1965, became a distinguished tions are pressingly meaningful. The change how they vote. They may also law professor at the University of Vir - major religions truly are not “all alike in write opinions that influence other judges ginia, and was supremely qualified when what counts,” as we keep hearing from around the country.” President George H. W. Bush nominated the intellectually lazy and the socially Bold claims, but Lott has done statisti- her for a judgeship in 1991. But she never timid. But in the fundamental arguments cal analysis on federal court nominations even received the courtesy of a hearing, as of his new book, Hart is unassailable, that bears out his thesis. He examined 345 Senate judiciary chairman Joe Biden sim- making a valuable contribution to public federal-circuit-court and 1,215 district- ply refused to hold one. discourse. court nominations from 1977 to 2005: BeVier told Lott that she “really felt

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS sandbagged by the process.” Robert Ray - Smiling, becoming interested in other mar, a Bill Clinton appointee to the Third people, avoiding arguments, remember- Circuit who was never confirmed, said Before ing people’s names, encouraging others the amount of paperwork and sniping a to talk about themselves, being a good nominee faces today would discourage Oprah listener, using encouragement and praise, many qualified nominees from even dramatizing your ideas, and making the other person feel important—all of allowing their name to be put forward. FLORENCE KING these techniques were honed in the It’s not just the Senate that is respon- dusty towns and bustling general stores Self-Help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in sible for dumbing down the quality of of the South Dakota of the early 1900s. nominees. The American Bar Asso- Modern America, by Steven Watts (Other ciation has shown a decided political tilt Press, 592 pp., $29.95) Watts clearly belongs to the No Note in its ranking of judicial candidates. Lott Card Left Behind school of researchers; notes that Frank Easterbrook, Richard E have been together a if they found it, they’re gonna by-God Posner, and J. Harvie Wilkinson III are long time, Gentle Reader, use it whether they need it or not, though the most influential appellate-court so you will not be surprised this does not explain the passage in which judges in the nation. But when they W by my reaction to this enor- he quotes himself verbatim. were nominated, they had the lowest mous biography of the menacing extrovert All that being said, it’s a pretty good ABA ratings of any confirmed appeals- who wrote How to Win Friends and book because Dale Carnegie was a piece court judges. “The ABA was clearly Influence People. I feel as if I have been of work and Watts reveals some mysteri- looking at things other than pure qualifi- drowned in a half-full glass. I also feel as ous, even avant-garde aspects of him that cations,” Lott concludes. if I have read it not just once but over and we don’t expect to find in a Missouri farm The ferocious growth of the federal over, because both subject and biograph- boy who looked and sounded like Harry government in recent years has played a er are repeating rifles who between them Truman. He was the younger son of poor huge role in the dumbing down of the have pushed the page count up by about farmers named “Carnagey” (accent on the courts. “The stakes are now huge,” Lott 200 more than necessary. Coping with second syllable), and his birth in 1888 notes. “Entire branches of law revolve both of them in the same book is like made him one of those lucky people around recently created federal agencies. being caught between two hiccuppers. who are born into an era made to order Just in the 1970s, new regulatory bodies Dale Carnegie, who never met a point for their particular personality type. The sprang up all over the place. . . . Each of he did not hammer home, filled his writ- stern Victorian ideal of “character” was these organizations created a host of new, ing and speeches with constant refer- yielding to the 20th century’s freer and often controversial regulations.” ences to the care and feeding of the mark more fluid ideal of “personality.” As the As the influence of the federal gov- he called “the other fellow” (“Let the old strict rules of behavior loosened, life ernment has grown, the federal courts other fellow think it’s his idea. . . . Never had to be played by ear and the tone- have increasingly played a role in deter- argue with the other fellow. . . . Keep deaf could no longer survive on rectitude mining public policy. Just last year, the repeating the other fellow’s name be - alone. America was changing from a rural Supreme Court ruled on the legality of cause it’s music to his ears”), all the to an urban nation, and young men were gay marriage, Obamacare, voting rights, while commanding his worshipful fol- leaving the farms for the cities. They were and campaign-finance law. In this com- lowers to find their individuality because ambitious to better themselves, and they ing session, the high court will weigh in “it was yours!”: “Yours! YOURS! Dig. had to learn to deal with the kind of peo- on state abortion laws and the scope of Dig. Dig. It is there. Never doubt it.” ple they had not known all their lives. federal regulatory power. Equally exhausting is biographer Dale was one of many such young men, Is there any way to reverse the dumbing Steven Watts, a University of Missouri but he had an advantage: an outgoing down of the courts? Lott isn’t optimistic: professor, who repeats himself and mother with the gift of gab. Determined to “Because judges have become so power- then hauls in additional sources to make something of her sons, she en - ful, the battle over who is confirmed is repeat his repetition. Here he is de - rolled them in the free Missouri State often a take-no-prisoners contest. Judges scribing Carnegie’s early triumph as a Teachers College, but Dale did not want are becoming more powerful as the size of traveling salesman: “He grasped the to teach children. His only interest was the federal government has kept growing, need to establish personal relation- the debating society, in which he quick- so the stakes over their confirmation only ships and then maintain them in order ly became a star. This was his métier, he get bigger. The only way to make that to sell goods. Success demanded a decided; he wanted to become a lecturer problem smaller is to reduce the power pleasant personality, ease in meeting on the Chautauqua circuit, where William and scope of the federal government.” and conversing with people, using sto- Jennings Bryan had first made his mark. It is ironic that as the federal govern- ries and anecdotes to hold attention, He wanted to get up and talk and make a ment has grown bigger, it has become and conveying an infectious zeal for living at it. “dumber” in finding solutions to the prob- one’s product.” Yet on the very next It was the era of correspondence lems it tries to address. And as Lott shows, page he says the same thing when sum- courses and adult night schools, so he the federal judges who are supposed to marizing another writer’s opinion: devised a course in public speaking and oversee that vast expansion of power are persuaded the New York YMCA to let him becoming part of the problem, not part of Florence King can be reached at P.O. Box 7113, conduct it live. It succeeded so well that he the solution. Fredericksburg, VA 22404. got a request from travel writer Lowell

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Thomas to help him brush up a speech he party. To a man, the intellectuals savaged was due to deliver at the Smithsonian. the book, but the vast majority of fel- &''!"'##*"%&$ !"!"'"%( '#" Thomas was so pleased by the result that lows, and other fellows, loved it. <0;?4<0/-C (& he hired Dale as his manager and took Inspired by the book’s enormous sales, $?-64.,>498'4>60"'#" %)* him on his travels. He subbed for Thomas Carnegie came to see himself as a healer on several occasions, but audiences were without portfolio. “I know men and wo- $?-64.,>498"?7-0< disappointed at not seeing the popular idol men can banish worry, fear, and illnesses 46482,>0&0:>07-0< in person, so Dale quit the Thomas enter- and can transform their lives by chang- ==?0<0;?08.C4A0056C

prise in deep gloom. His intense descents ing their thoughts. I know! I know!! I "?7-0<91==?0=$?-64=30/88?,66C into depression over this rejection were know!!!” Consumed with feverish cer- 88?,6&?-=.<4:>498$<4.0 the first stirrings of his real desire: fame. tainty, he delved into the psychological 97:60>0 !,46482 //<0== 91 89A8 #114.0 91 The early movies were already setting works of William James, New Thought $?-64.,>498 0B482>98 @08?0 "0A +9<5 "+ some people apart simply because they (Mary Baker Eddy), Positive Thinking, were famous—why not him? and the theories of behavioral psycholo- 98>,.>$0<=98,=98"2 But Harry Truman lookalikes do not gist Henry C. Link, who called intro- '060:3980 make matinee idols. He got only one verts “selfish persons” and offered as 97:60>0 !,46482 //<0== 91 >30 0,/;?,<>0<= 9< minor role, in an obscure and mediocre proof his memorable contention that 080<,6 ?=480== #114.0 91 $?-64=30< 0B482>98 stage play, and took to selling neckties on “Jesus Christ . . . was an extrovert.” @08?0"0A+9<5"+ the road to eke out his living. He made a The key to Carnegie’s popularity, ?66 ",70= ,8/ 97:60>0 !,46482 //<0==0= 91 lot more money on his highly successful writes Watts, was “his unique genius for $?-64=30</4>9<,8/!,8,2482/4>9<$?-64=30<,.5 9A60< 0B482>98@08?0"0A+9<5"+ 1915 book, The Art of Public Speaking, soaking up new, controversial ideas that /4>9< %4.3,98 @08?0 before being drafted into World War I. were floating around in the broader cul- "0A+9<5"+ !,8,2482/4>9<,=98 00 In post-war Europe, he wrote a bad tural atmosphere and synthesizing them &>09<>= 0B482>98@08?0"0A+9<5"+

novel and had an unsuccessful marriage. into a popular form.” Watts calls him In the late 1920s, he abruptly returned “the father of the modern self-help move- #A80< ",>498,6 %0@40A 8. 0B482>98 @08?0 "0A +9<5 "+ 98=>4>?>498,6 alone to America and changed the spelling ment,” and we are hard put to disagree, 8>0<:<4=0= 9<:9<,>498 0B482>98 @08?0 "0A of his name to “Carnegie.” Watts thinks considering the endless stream of self- +9<5"+ the new spelling reflected a decision to help books that have been inundating us 89A898/396/0<=!9<>2,200=,8/#>30<&0.?<4>C identify with the unshackled 20th-century for decades. Thanks to Carnegie, we 96/0<=#A84829<96/482 :0<.08>9<!9<091'9>,6 culture of wealth and fame symbolized have become a nation of twelve-stepping, 79?8>9198/=!9<>2,20=9<#>30<&0.?<4>40="980 by Andrew Carnegie. revolving-door rehab aficionados who $?-64.,>498'4>60"'#" %)* The steel magnate could lay claim to never saw a support group we didn’t like. ==?0,>019<4<.?6,>498,>,069A something else that thrilled his new Deepak Chopra, Dr. Phil, and Bill “I feel &0:>07-0< namesake: a manager who was the first your pain” Clinton all do a good imitation B>08>,8/",>?<0914<.?6,>498 @0<,2089 .>?,689 American to earn a salary of $1 million a of Carnegie, but his reincarnation in our .9:40=91 .9:40=91 0,.34==?0 =482604==?0 year. His name was Charles Schwab, and midst is a woman. “Oprah Winfrey is /?<482 :?-64=30/ :<0.0/482 80,<0=>>9 all the steelworkers down to the humblest America’s therapist,” says Watts. “It is 798>3= 146482/,>0 puddler loved him for his outgoing man- now, incontrovertibly, the Age of Oprah.” '9>,6"?7-0<919:40= $,4/,8/9<%0;?0=>0/4<.?6,>498 ner and big smile. Dale Carnegie wrote Watts tends to be an on-the-other- $,4/%0;?0=>0/#?>=4/0 9?8>C!,46&?-=.<4:>498= about Schwab often and lavishly. hander, but he comes down hard on our &>,>0/989<7 Another man of the same type thrilled self-help mind-set in his superbly writ- &,60='3<9?230,60<=,8/ ,<<40<=&><00>)08/9<= him in the grim Depression year of 1933. ten conclusion: 9?8>0<&,60=,8/#>30< "98(&$&$,4/4=><4-?>498 Carnegie did not have the slightest inter- It has created an omnivorous, perpetual '9>,6$,4/,8/9<%0;?0=>0/ est in politics, but Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 4<.?6,>498 appetite for “feeling good about your- “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” <004=><4-?>498-C!,46 self.” . . . Too many modern Americans #?>=4/09?8>C,=&>,>0/ was exactly what he himself told people harbor outlandish emotional expectations 989<7 who dissolved in stage fright when they <004=><4-?>498 [that encourage] wild swings between a #?>=4/0>30!,46 had to make a speech. Soon there would grandiose pole of “empowerment” [and] '9>,6<004=><4-?>498 be two optimists running the country: In a pathetic pole of “victimization,” where '9 > , 6 4 = > < 4 - ? > 4 9 8 1936, FDR was reelected in a landslide outside forces consistently conspire to 9:40=89>4=><4-?>0/ and How to Win Friends and Influence frustrate one’s entitlement to bliss. . . . '9>,6 Personal desires, fears, and problems tend $0<.08>$,4/,8/9<%0;?0=>0/ People was published. 4<.?6,>498 The book’s reception was predictable. to overwhelm all considerations of the public good as much human interaction $?-64.,>498 91 &>,>0708> 91 #A80<=34: *466 -0 The Nation called it “the best outline of the :<48>0/48>30#.>9-0< 4==?091>34=:?-64.,>498 and governance is forced into the mold of science of tail-wagging and hand-licking the psychotherapy session or the support &428,>?<0,8/'4>6091/4>9<$?-64=30<?=480== ever written.” The New York Times said it group or the therapeutic state. !,8,20<9<#A80< was designed for people “who long to be

told how they can think for themselves.” That atones for all the maddening &#" " H. L. Mencken, Malcolm Cowley, and aspects of this book. Skip where you 4<.?6,>498!,8,20< Heywood Broun all joined the lynching have to, but read it.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN The Zombie State

HERE’S a certain amount of lingo that comes with quoted in this space a while back, “Americans love Big the provision of health care. In most developed Government as much as Europeans. The only difference is countries, these words are “doctor,” “nurse,” that Americans refuse to admit it.” And, because they refuse T “scalpel,” “appendix,” that sort of thing. But to admit it, they’ve wound up with a uniquely disastrous American health care has its own unique vocabulary: “co- form of statism—a kind of statism on the sly, in which the pay,” “HMO,” “COBRA,” “doughnut hole” . . . And we’re zombie husks of private industry are conscripted as the always adding to it. The latest word is “exchanges.” A mere front men for de facto nationalization. As part of the sky- twelve months ago “exchanges” were something to do with is-falling rhetoric over the soi-disant shutdown, the stocks or trying to get a larger size when you’re given a too- media warned that, with federal employees furloughed, tight thong for Christmas. Now, suddenly, it’s the new many American homebuyers would be delayed in moving health-care buzzword. You go to the federal website for the into their new homes. “exchanges,” if you can get through, and they redirect you Tragic. But how did it come about that government to the state websites for the “exchanges,” if they’re working. bureaucrats are mixed up in your home closing? It’s bad In Oregon, there are some 1,700 different rules that deter- enough that the feds have a piece of so many mortgages, mine eligibility for the new “exchange.” In Maryland, but it’s far worse that, even if you walk into the realtor’s you’re advised that “we may share information provided in office and plunk down a certified check for the entire cost your application with the appropriate authorities for law of the house, you’re still obligated to comply with all the enforcement and audit activities.” But we’re used to all that federal HUD paperwork. In many key areas of life—your by now, aren’t we? The point is it’s going to be compli- home, your health, your bank—Americans now enjoy cated, time-consuming, and in breach of almost any ele- considerably less freedom of maneuver than Europeans. mentary understanding of privacy. That’s what makes it They don’t think of it like that because it’s statism at one quintessentially American. remove. But third-party statism is inevitably more cum- Most developed nations have a public health-care sys- bersome, bureaucratic, and expensive—summed up in tem and a private health-care system—of variable qual- those commercials for “Medicare supplement plans,” ity, to be sure, but all of them far simpler to navigate than patiently explaining why an already hideously unafford- America’s endlessly mutating fusion of the worst of both able taxpayer-funded entitlement nevertheless apparently worlds. Obamacare stitches together the rear ends of two requires huge additional private expenditures in order to pantomime horses and attempts to ride it to the sunlit function. uplands. Good luck with that. But we should remember If you blur the lines between public and private as art- that this disaster has been a long time incubating. The fully as American statism does, eventually everything Democrats’ objection to the pre-Obama “private” health becomes the government, and your private sphere is no system is that Americans wound up spending more than more genuinely private than those private museums, any other country for what they argued were inferior boat launches, restaurants, and campgrounds ordered health outcomes. But the more telling number is re - closed at no notice by the shock troops of the National vealed by Avik Roy elsewhere in this issue: In 2010 (in Park Service. In South Dakota, the NPS attempted to other words, before Obamacare), U.S. government shut down an unmanned, open-air parking area on the expenditures on health care were higher than those in all shoulder of the highway to prevent Americans from but three other countries in the world. Quick, name a looking at Mount Rushmore. Apparently, the view belongs European social democracy full of state-suckled wimpy to the government and you can enjoy it only with their welfare queens: France? $3,061 per capita in public-health approval. In the days of absolute monarchy, a medieval expenditures. Sweden? $3,046 per capita. Belgium? proverb nevertheless assured us that a cat may look at a $3,000. In 2010 the United States spent $3,967 in public- king. But in South Dakota freeborn Americans may not health expenditures per person—more than anywhere gaze upon their presidents without the permission of the on the planet except Norway, the Netherlands, and bureaucracy. Luxembourg. I am confident that, under Obamacare, we’ll It was a rare, direct, explicit revelation of how, under- be outspending even the Norwegians. But in reality our neath the “exchanges” and other sock puppets, American so-called private system was a public system in all but statism’s conception of itself is as expansive and un - name. bounded as the most doctrinaire Eurosocialist’s. They Why did we think otherwise? That gets back to the funda- should demolish those guys on Rushmore and chisel in a mental disconnect between America’s national myth ology giant federal official-scenic-view application form, with and who Americans are as a people, or at least as a voting sky-high small print explaining that your confidential majority, in the 21st century. To reprise the Frenchman I information will be shared only for the purpose of “audit activities,” and with pyramid-sized boxes to check rising Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). into the clouds and up to the heavens.

6 4 | www.nationalreview.com OCTOBER 2 8 , 2 0 1 3 base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 10/11/2011 2:43 PM Page 1

base:milliken-mar 22.qxd10/7/20133:09PMPage1

Find out more about BP at bp.com/US Ài>Ì}Ê>`ÊÃÕ««ÀÌ}ÊLÃÊÃÊ>ÊiÞÊ«>ÀÌÊvÊÕÀÊVÌiÌÊÌÊiÀV>° ÊÊÊ`>ÀÊvÊ«ÀwÌÃÊi>Ài`Ê iÀiÊ`ÀiVÌÞÊL>VÊÌÊÌ iÊ1°-° UÊ7iÊÛiÃÌÊÀiÊÊiÀV>ÊÌ >ÊÊ>ÞÊÌ iÀÊVÕÌÀÞ°Ê`ÊÜiÊÀiÛiÃÌÊiÛiÀÞÊ to produce them safely. ÊÊÊÛiÃÌi`ÊÀiÊÌ >ÊfxxÊLÊÊ]Ê}>Ã]ÊÀiiÜ>LiÃ]Ê>`ÊÊÌ iÊÌiV }ÞÊ UÊ7i½ÀiÊiÀV>½ÃÊ>À}iÃÌÊiiÀ}ÞÊÛiÃÌÀ°Ê"ÛiÀÊÌ iÊ>ÃÌÊxÊÞi>ÀÃ]ÊÜi½ÛiÊUÊ7iÊÃÕ««ÀÌÊÀiÊÌ >ÊÓxä]äääÊ1°-°ÊLÃÊÌ ÀÕ} Ê>ÊÕÀÊLÕÃiÃÃÊ>VÌÛÌiÃ° and states in between. UÊ7iÊ Ài`ÊÛiÀÊÓ]ÇääÊiÀV>ÃÊ>ÃÌÊÞi>ÀÊ>i]ÊvÀÊ>Ã>ÊÌÊÀ`>Ê nation’s second-largest oil and gasemployer. UÊ7iÊ`ÀiVÌÞÊi«ÞÊÀiÊÌ >ÊÓä]äääÊ«i«iÊÊ>ÊxäÊÃÌ>ÌiÃ]Ê>}ÊÕÃÊÌ iÊ across the country: This business is just one way BP is helping to create and goodjobs support all I’ve been with BP for over 20 years. Today, I’m of part our natural gasbusiness. Our Commitment to Jobs. America:

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